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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 4 years

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this is an alarmist post

This post might sound alarmist because I don’t know the respectable, non-alarmist way to put this. He’s going full final-days-in-the-Fuhrerbunker. I want to be alarmist. We need to be alarmed.

On one level, I’m pretty sure you know this. You can probably see a vague reference to “what happened in Portland” and know exactly what the writer means. Unidentified little green men in military-style fatigues deployed against peaceful protesters. Protesters kidnapped off the streets in “proactive arrests.” ordered by someone illegally acting as the head of DHS. Journalists attacked. Middle-aged women beaten and tear-gassed. The mayor of Portland tear-gassed. It was, of course, worse than it looked, and only the most telegenic of concurrent power grabs.

But it’s really hard to stay at the appropriate level of alarm for even three hours – and we need to stay there for the next three months. It’s exhausting no matter what, and nearly all of our current information environment makes it even more difficult than it needs to be.

Most of what the mainstream media has to say about the election isn’t reporting so much as it is fanfiction. Characters with familiar names and recognizable faces feature in an alternative universe where “normal” political forces (which were defunct ten years ago) apply. Sniping about “messaging,” pathologically boring lectures about “enthusiasm” – it would be annoying anti-Democratic concern-trolling in a world where a free and fair election could be taken for granted. In the real world of powerful and accelerating anti-democratic threats, it is both dangerous and bizarre, like dumping a fifth of vodka into a Super Soaker and trying to use it to put out a brush fire.

The mainstream conversation is so disorienting that it’s understandable why there are also a fair amount of influential progressive commentators who have burrowed themselves into the reverse narrative. It doesn’t matter what we do, Trump is just going to steal the election anyway; it doesn’t matter if he loses, he’s going to refuse to leave anyway. A subset of these fatalists swing all the way around to conventional Pundit Brain: Trump has already blown up all the rules of democratic politics because Democrats aren’t using the One Weird Trick that would make them good at democratic politics!*

Before jumping down the rabbit hole of whether these narratives are true, it’s important to emphasize that they are not constructive. We are in a crisis. In a crisis, you need to help people understand that something abnormal is happening AND that there is something they can do to make things better. Communicating to people that things are fine, as the mainstream horserace normal politics model does, isn’t helpful, because it helps people rationalize the false but comforting belief that everything is fine. Communicating to people that things are hopeless, as the doom-mongering counternarrative does, is even less helpful. If you’re acting normal about something abnormal, there’s at least the off-chance you’ll get lucky and unwittingly bluff your way through the short- and medium-term. But if you’re constantly getting the message that you’re screwed no matter what, it’s human nature to either a) go into denial and double down on an unproductive response, which is irrational but understandable or b) get cynical and give up, which is an entirely rational response to a situation that actually is hopeless.

Trump is already trying to steal the 2020 election. He has help from the henchmen he has put in charge of important federal agencies and from the white-shoe lifers in the Republican legal establishment. Anything you can imagine he might do, you should assume he has at least considered it. He will consider things that would never even occur to you.

He hasn’t succeeded yet. He can be stopped with overwhelming turnout. We know this because of the 2018 midterms. Autocrats who are successfully smothering a democracy do not allow the opposition party to win partial or full control in regional governments, take over half the federal legislature, and gain a foothold in the presidential line of succession. That’s not how autocracy works. If you come across a commentator who is under the impression that a burgeoning dictatorship just gives away that kind of power for the lulz, consider taking that person’s opinions on the subject with a grain of salt.

Thanks to the 2018 midterms, House Democrats have been able to foil some of Trump’s schemes and warn the public about others. Even with Individual 1’s desperate thrashing at the intelligence agencies, we’re getting a lot more specific information about Russian attacks on the election than we were this time in 2016 from the Obama administration.

One more important thing we learned in 2018: just because Trump would do something, doesn’t mean he will. Here’s the Once and Future Speaker a few weeks after reclaiming her title:

At least Trump “didn’t declare the election illegal,” Pelosi said. “We had a plan for that” — though really, she acknowledged, the only workable plan was “to win big. Had it been four or five seats, he would’ve tried to dismantle it.” In his news conference the day after the midterms, Trump spoke respectfully of Pelosi….

The Spectacularly Failed New York Times buried the lead as usual, but there are a few really important points packed in here. Democrats did, in fact, have a plan for that, which you’re going to need to remind yourself if you try to follow political commentary in the next few months. For whatever reason, a surprising number of supposedly anti-Trump writers are eager to undermine Trump’s opposition with false claims that Democrats are bumbling naifs who in 2020 still haven’t realized that Trump might not respect the results of an election.** This demoralizing premise is, as you can tell from the Wayback Machine link, not true, but for some reason it remains a popular lie, so it’s worth debunking.

More importantly, we didn’t know about the plan until afterward because they didn’t need it. Trump has blinked before, so there’s no reason to assume he won’t blink again. We shouldn’t assume he will do the same thing in 2020 that he did in 2018, because it’s a different situation! Just that people who have assumed Donald Trump will act in a completely different way than he has in the past usually end up with egg on their faces.

My two cents – AND THIS IS JUST MY OPINION SO YOU CAN SKIP IT – is that any kind of post-election autocratic power grab would probably need decisive action from Trump within days, maybe even hours, of polls closing. That, in turn, would require Trump to absorb the narcissistic injury of a loss immediately, which he has been psychologically incapable of doing for the first 74 years of his life. Remember, he didn’t have to come to terms with the curb-stomping he received in the midterms right away. At first he could tell himself that Republicans holding onto the Senate (by the skin of their teeth when they should by all rights have swamped it, but whatever) represented a “split decision” and even a moral victory for him, so he could afford to go into, like, con man autopilot mode and try to charm “Nancy.” Everyone else adjusted to the Democratic victory the next day, and the next night, people got into the streets warning him not to try any bullshit. It was only after bigger districts finished counting and mail-in ballots were counted that it sunk in for him how badly he had lost and what the consequences would be. Then he soothed himself by shutting down the government indefinitely, which he seemed to feel was a display of his power – until “Nancy” pantsed and dog-walked him so he had to slink off and pretend it never happened.

If an election which was more or less as legitimate as the 2016 election (questionable but not Belarus) were held today, I think the most likely result would be a scenario a lot like the midterms: East Coast states make it clear which way the wind is blowing to most people, but Trump goes to bed at 3 AM thinking he’s close enough to fight it out in court. Over the next couple of weeks the mail-in ballots get opened, Miami and Philadelphia finish counting, and the real numbers start penetrating even his toxic bubble. Eventually someone reminds him that his armed Secret Service detail can escort him off the premises no matter what he does, so he loses what little nerve he has and skips Biden’s inauguration to go golfing at Mar a Lago. Or maybe Sochi.

But again, that is not a guarantee or even a prediction. The FACT is that anything can happen in the next three months, and Trump and his goons are putting a lot of effort into ensuring that everyone does happen. I spelled out my opinion of what seems most likely at the moment because it can get really easy to dwell on the worst-case scenario, which leads to fatalism and inaction. The least-bad scenario is actually more plausible than it’s been for the last few years, if we motivate ourselves to get it done. We can’t waste all our time and energy thinking about what he’s going to do, because we need to think about what we’re going to do. Voting is the core issue as always, but it helps to be more concrete.

If your state has early in-person voting, and if you can do so safely, vote in-person as soon as you can. Every state’s vote by mail infrastructure was going to be strained this year before these dirtbags decided to sabotage the postal service. If you can cast your vote early, you can help make the lines a little shorter on Election Day while leaving vote by mail resources for people who need them.

If you are a person who needs vote by mail resources for whatever reason, use them! Request your ballot now. Fill it out and return it as soon as you get it. You might not have to mail it back – your county may have drop boxes, or maybe someone can bring it to the local elections office for you. If that’s a safe option for you, please take advantage of it. If it’s not a safe option, mail your ballot back as soon as possible. You’re not helping anyone from the ICU.

If you and the people you live with are relatively low risk, or if you’ve survived COVID and your health care provider thinks you have immunity for the next few months, consider volunteering as a poll worker. Usually a lot of poll workers are retirees, who are by definition in a high-risk group. If enough of them decide to sit this year out – and that’s the smart, responsible choice – then polling places end up closing, which helps Republican voter suppression by making the lines longer. The more volunteers your area has, the more polls they’ll have open, which makes it that much easier to let people vote quickly and at a safe distance from each other.

This last one isn’t directly about voting, but it’s still pretty important: get used to pushing back on bullshit. There already is another effort to drive down turnout by inundating voters with disinformation. Last time we weren’t ready; this time, we have no excuse.

*Avoiding sources because this stuff is toxic. If you think I’m making this up because you haven’t seen it anywhere, good.

**Look, nobody*** is more sympathetic to The Men and their psychological frailties than me, but seriously, guys, some of you need to log the hell off for a few days.

***For certain non-traditional values of “nobody.”

#democracy #2020 election #authoritarianism

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spaceandtimeuniverse · 3 years

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Election Anxiety

Today is Wednesday, six days left until the election.

This morning, I woke up to countless news in related with the election. My anxiety started the moment I got into the news. There are cases that the court took up in related with the voting such as the court uphold Texas governor’s order of having one drop in ballot in each county. It is unfair because in several of counties, there are thousands of people and they all need to send in their ballot in one box? There are several that were rejected in Texas that some officials are trying to stop a suppression of vote such as age eligibility requirement to be lived, allowing curbside voting and waive the witness requirements for mail in ballots in Alabama, or suspend the witness requirement in South Carolina. The Court has rejected those arguments. Although the Court has sided for Pennsylvania to have ballots to be counted if they arrive up to three days after election day, I am still concerned on more cases as this in several states in regarding to the election.

It does not help that a Justice was confirmed early on Monday that has never supervised or argued a case and had little experiences with the court proceedings as Amy Barrett could use her conservative’ beliefs to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the 2008 LGTBA same-sex marriage, DACA and numerous of cases that the majority of Americans does not believe or would agree with if those court cases were overturned. The anxiety increased.

While there are news all over the media that showed Joe Biden is leading in polls where Clinton four years ago would have been declined or gave Trump an advantage in the polls, I am still reminded by the memories of four years ago where all the national polls would claim Clinton to won the election but the world was shocked when the electoral college counted has gotten Trump to arrive to victory. No matter how many positive news about that, the flashback and anxiety would keep increasing. Memories of those past four years would keep coming back.

Do you remember when our president mocked a disabled person? Do you remember when the leaked tapes revealed of Trump’s “locker talk”?

Do you remember where there were protests in Charlottesville and Trump backtracked his condemnation on white supremacists and claimed there were “good people on both side”?

Do you remember the countless, outrageous tweets that Trump tweeted sometimes in the middle of the night, sometimes four in the morning? That many of those tweets that if someone else would say those in public, those people would have been fired?

Do you remember the handling of his first hurricane and procrastinated or never gave the aid to Puerto Rico? (Even if the news found later that it was stolen by local officials, why didn’t his administration double checked)

Do you remember the family separation policy and Trump claiming it was his predecessors’s policy and refused to change the policy? How many families that were separtated? How many children that were locked in cages with “minimal” resources that they could provide to help those children? Remember when ICE was destructive and went to various states including sancturacy cities to take undocumented immigrants from their homes that they were supposed to be safe in?

Do you remember how many people in his administration have ties or working with Russia? Or that they took advantage of their position for personal gain such as Scott Pruitt, Steven Mnuchin, Ben Carson, Betsy Devos, and so many numerous people who shouldn’t be on the job? Why did the Trump’s administration has so many people such as Flynn, Kelly, Sanders, etc. working and left. He has the highest vacancies or people who left his administration than any administration?

Do you remember Trump’s ban on transgender in the military? Do you remember Trump mocking the late John McCain claiming that he wasn’t a war hero because he was captured? Do you remember when he called those type of people ‘losers’ that many veterans took offense because they served their country as well as they did? Do you remember when Trump question the soldiers who fought in Afghanistan and sacrificed and turned to John Kelly and said, “I just don’t get it” when John Kelly’s son died in the war?

I could list so much more. So many more. What was even worse was that under Trump, our country never has been this polarized. This country has never been so divisible. Both parties are blaming each other. While we know that the facts remain about Trump and his administration, there are people who supported him all around the world, claiming “fake news” and refusing to double check those facts themselves. Why is it that lies are more believable than the truth? Is it because people are afraid of admitting they are wrong? Is it because people finally find like-minded people and are stubborn to admit they were wrong because they didn’t want to leave a group where they felt their opinions matter? Is it because people are indifferent to other people’s pain? Their opportunities taken away? Is it much easier for people to shrug off their shoulders and say “it is what it is”? Just as what Trump said during this covid pandemic and how he would respond differently to more than 200,000 lives gone? I am not even surprised that the president had covid, but it doesn’t change his views or his stance on covid.

I am scared. I am scared for the soul of our country. I know our country have its dark history with breaking treaties with Native Americans, with slavery, with Jim Crows laws, segregations, wars, becoming a face of democracy and secretly rigging elections in third world countries because the outcome would benefits our country and so much more. I believe in the positivity of the country’s progress. We have grown up so far so that we could be in a place where we could finally have laws that matched the constitution that “all man are created equal”. All people are created equal and deserve the same rights and the same privileges as each other. So while we have made so much progress, there is this president that America voted four years ago that shred up all of those progress! Look what happened with gun violence, police brutality, voters’ suppressions, etc. Look what happened when the courts or other police stand by or supported the words of the officers over the victims because they were biased toward the police, laws that needed to be changed or there need to be more resources such as dash-cams needed to be installed, or even . Look what happened with the Keystone Pipeline that threatened our native lands!

We even have a president who refused to do something about the climate change! Trees are dying, the ocean is in pollution of numerous of plastics, waste that we contributed to kill off other animals’ lives or that affected their habitat negatively. Trump was against alternative energy, claiming about wind power that is killing birds or that he claimed people are just fine in putting more waste in the environment. Because of his reluctance to helping our Earth, winter are getting more colder and dangerous with snow storms and hurricanes. Our summers are getting more hotter with the fires that devastated the west coast and that thousand of people are dying from heat exhaustion, heat wave, etc. The midwest are dealing with more tornados than before. 2020 has topped all previous weather or environmental records in several states or countries. It is just disastrous! All of those regulations that the president strapped off years ago have given more companies or corporations to gain profit, gain more equipments to do more damage to the environment every day. There was an article that it is not the matter of if anymore. Because the consequences that the world would face has already happened and that it was the matter of now to prevent those consequences from being worse.

Even in the election, we shouldn’t have the fear of what would happen if our president does not concede if he loses. That is something that should scare so many people. What would happen if the president does not concede? Would the Supreme Court sided with Trump about the election? Would there be an illegible recount in hopes for Trump’s officials to try to rig the election with more ballots? What if the recount cause Trump to win? What does that means? Would there be a revolution? A civil war? What if Trump does concede but his supporters would be outraged to cause a civil war?

Whatever that means, all of this shouldn’t happen. A presidential election should just be boring and whoever the next president, the transition should be smooth. Our constitution is in crisis. Our democracy is in perils. If there are something afoul with our government, our democracy, and our votes in this election, then come what may, we should do something. We should get our voices heard or our hands seen. We should go out and protest, revolt if we have to. If it leads to a constitutional crisis or to start off a new government in the process, so be it.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We should go out there and vote! Vote by mail or vote in person safely. Make sure you check if your vote is valid. The power is in our hands. What would you do with that power? Would you keep it for yourself like our president did? Or would you share it for others in need?

#election #anxitey #election anxiety #vote #change #scared #fear #power #hate #love #democracy #2020 election #go biden #fuck trump

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hesupportsyou · 4 years

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Fuck. My great aunt died from the coronavirus this morning.

She was 103 years old. Her son died 5 days ago. She had been in the hospital since Monday.

She was always so healthy and even at 103, never used a cane and walked everywhere and flew by herself twice a year (she didn’t fly this year, obviously, for safety reasons).

I know she lived a long and full life, but some part of me thought she would never die because she was just so invincible. She’d made it this far, you know?

I remember how much she loved it when for her 90th birthday, my mom got her a sweatshirt that said “Wrigley Field, est. 1914″ and on the back added sewn-in letters that said “Cubs Fan, est. 1917″ Something about existing at such an old age and refusing to give out made me think that she could grow to be the oldest living person. And I do wonder how much longer she might have made it had it not been for this disease.

She always had an optimistic attitude and I never heard her complain about anything. She loved having friends of all ages, and she was the type of person who would go out to lunch and stay for hours, introducing herself to everyone at the neighboring tables as well, until they all had a new centenarian friend.

I already said it, but her son was a Trump supporter who acted recklessly about this virus, going on vacation two weeks ago and then refusing to get tested for days after he started having symptoms, and once he was tested, he resisted going to the hospital when his breathing took a turn for the worse. Probably because the president told him not to let the virus define his life. My feelings toward him are complicated, but ultimately the person I blame is the president who is deliberately spreading dangerous misinformation to people he knows will blindly follow him off a cliff. And that’s what they’re doing, and they’re dragging their loved ones off as well.

Even if you think “I’m young and healthy, I’ll be fine if I get the virus,” do remember that not everyone you come into contact with is young and healthy. Be smart and don’t risk exposing the people you love. The fact that our president can get the best healthcare money can’t buy and make a quick turnaround does not mean that it’s a curable disease.

And I’m sure all of you are voting, but it can’t be said enough, please vote. It’s literally a matter of life and death. I mailed in my ballot 11 days ago and got the confirmation that it was received yesterday. the election is in 19 days. Vote to save a life.

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Did Donald Trump Say Republicans Were Dumb

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/did-donald-trump-say-republicans-were-dumb/

Did Donald Trump Say Republicans Were Dumb

What Are The Auditors Looking For

Donald Trump Tells Oprah in 1988 What He Would Do as President

Unspecified evidence of fraud in the state’s presidential and senate races .

They’re tabulating the ballots – something that was done after the election and then again during a routine partial recount that all Arizona counties are legally required to perform .

They’re also looking for somewhat more, shall we say, unusual evidence of malfeasance. They’ve been holding ballots up to ultraviolet light, photographing them with high-resolution cameras, analysing folding patterns on the paper as well as its thickness and colour, and looking for traces of bamboo fibre.

Trump Did Not Disparage Gop In 1998 People Magazine Interview

CLAIM: If I were to run, Id run as a Republican. Theyre the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and theyd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific. Donald Trump in 1998 People magazine interview.

APS ASSESSMENT: False. The president did not make such a comment to People magazine.;

THE FACTS: Singer and actress Bette Midler, who often speaks out against Trump, shared the false quote attributed to Trump on her Twitter account Sunday, with the comment that Trump certainly knew his crowd. Julie Farin, a People magazine spokeswoman, told The Associated Press that the magazine looked into the claim exhaustively when it first surfaced years ago but did not find anything remotely like it made by the president.;

The image used with the false quote shows Trump during a 1988 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show where he discussed running for president, but made no reference to Republicans being the dumbest group of voters. The quote first began circulating in 2015 and has been widely shared across social media platforms, including Facebook. It has been widely debunked since that time.

Heres more information on Facebooks fact-checking program: https://www.facebook.com/help/1952307158131536

This is part of The Associated Press ongoing effort to fact-check misinformation that is shared widely online, including work with Facebook to identify and reduce the circulation of false stories on the platform.

Shades Of 2016: Republicans Stay Silent On Trump Hoping He Fades Away

Just like when Donald J. Trump was a candidate in 2016, rival Republicans are trying to avoid becoming the target of his attacks ordirectly confronting him, while hoping someone else will.

By Maggie Haberman

It was a familiar scene on Sunday when Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota, tried to avoid giving a direct answer about the caustic behavior of former President Donald J. Trump.

Mr. Trump had called Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, dumb and used a coarse phrase to underscore it while speaking to hundreds of Republican National Committee donors on Saturday night. When Mr. Thune was asked by Chris Wallace, the host of Fox News Sunday, to comment, he chuckled and tried to sidestep the question.

I think a lot of that rhetoric is you know, its part of the style and tone that comes with the former president, Mr. Thune said, before moving on to say Mr. Trump and Mr. McConnell shared the goal of reclaiming congressional majorities in 2022.

Mr. Thune was not the only Republican straining to stay on the right side of the former president. The day before Mr. Trump delivered his broadsides against Mr. McConnell, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, presented Mr. Trump with a newly created award for his leadership.

Trump did self-destruct eventually, after four years in office, Mr. DuHaime said. But he can still make or break others, and that makes him powerful and relevant.

Recommended Reading: What Republicans Are Voting Against Trump

So If None Of This Counts What’s The Point

According to those conducting the recount, the purpose of this project is to address a prevailing concern among some voters that the 2020 election was illegitimate. And if the final result is that there was no fraud? That’s fine, too.

“This is not about calling into question the results of the November election,” Ken Bennett, spokesman for the audit, told the Washington Post. “This is about identifying if there are any areas of our elections that need to be improved going forward.”

Few Democrats believe this, of course. They fear that the point of the audit is to simply sow further doubt about Biden’s victory – and pave the way for Republican state-level efforts to enact new voting restrictions that disadvantage their candidates and voters in the name of “ballot security”.

Most Dictators Rig Elections To Win With His Postal Service Gambit Trump Merely Wants Everybody To Lose With Him

What would the U.S. media say if the president of another country was threatening to hobble his nations postal service in hopes of suppressing ballots ahead of an election?

Every once in a while, an American journalist gets this notion: to imagine how the national press would cover a particular domestic story, whether it be white nationalist violence or protests against racist policing, as if it were happening in another country. Its a venerable and sometimes illuminating framea way for Americans, given to believing in their own exceptionalism, to see themselves and their countrys troubles from a different vantage.

But in the postal case, and increasingly in the age of Trump, the if it happened there test proves of little use. It is 2020, after all, and there is no global shortage of demagogues and authoritarians making a joke of democratic processes. They stuff ballot boxes, jail opposition leaders, harass journalists, and threaten voters. They exploit all the tools at their disposal to rig an election in their favor. They increasinglywelcome elections, in fact, with recent scholarship showing that elections can actually prolong dictatorships in the longer term, as three European political scientists put it.

With Universal Mail-In Voting , 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???

Donald J. Trump

You May Like: Are There More Rich Republicans Or Democrats

Trump Gets Slap On The Wrist For Rant On ‘stupid’ Iowa Voters

‘Not good to insult Iowa voters,’ one Iowa Republican says, but the fallout is far from dramatic.

Donald Trump’s slam of Iowans as “stupid” would usually be a breathtaking gaffe for a presidential candidate, but the billionaire businessman has proved time and again that this isn’t any normal presidential race and that he isn’t any normal candidate.

Top Republicans and Republican operatives in the state on Friday disparaged Trump’s comments from his Thursday evening rally at Iowa Central Community College in which he questioned the intelligence of voters who believe rival Ben Carson’s claims of a violent past and subsequent redemption. “How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?” Trump yelled.

“Not good to insult Iowa voters,” Doug Gross, the former chief of staff to Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, told POLITICO on Friday.

Steve Grubbs, the chief Iowa strategist for rival Rand Paul, was happy to pounce on the comment. “Trump’s meltdown last night makes me worry what would happen in a stressful situation in the White House,” Grubbs said.

But many Iowa Republicans also don’t see lasting damage. They see the comments as unfortunate but not nearly enough to send Trump packing.

By BEN WHITE

“I heard audible gasps from those I was sitting by, yet that had no effect in his standing in the caucuses. And I’m not trying to dodge or be cute, but we don’t know. We don’t know what impact this will have,”Strawn said.

Most Of Trumps Stories Then Were About His Pending Divorce From Marla Maples

While the quote has been debunked several times since it apparently surfaced in 2015, users have recently been resharing it on social media.

Most of Trumps stories were about his pending divorce from Marla Maples and appearances at various social and entertainment events.

A magazine photo claiming that US President Donald Trump referred to Republican voters as dumbest voters is false.

The photo- that has gone viral on social media platforms quotes the Peoples Magazine in 1998, where it is alleged Trump said if he were to dip his toes in politics, he would use the Republican ticket.

If I were to run, Id run as a Republican. Theyre the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe anything on Fox News. I could lie and theyd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific, read the message purporting to be a quote from Trump.

Several Twitter users including Azeem ButtValryLeBourg and MuthuiMkenya;in reference to the ongoing US election indicated that one does not have to be smart if their followers are stupid.

While the quote has been debunked several times since it apparently surfaced in 2015, users have recently been resharing it on social mediaespecially after a Democratic Candidate Joe Biden was projected as the President-Elect for the United States.

The Stars fact-check desk established that the meme was first debunked by SNOPES;in 2015, followed by other independent debunks.

Also Check: How Should Republicans Vote In California

This Is What Trump Told Supporters Before Many Stormed Capitol Hill

The president incited those who attended his rally to march to the Capitol.

President Trump speaks at Save America Rally in Washington

Many who participated in the chaos at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday came straight from an event held by President Donald Trump.

Trumps Save America Rally included the president telling supporters to stop the steal of the , urging them to head to the Capitol to demonstrate against Congress certifying President-elect Joe Bidens victory. Among the crowds battle cries was, Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump! Fight for Trump!

Trump spoke at the event for nearly an hour at the Ellipse, a park near the White House. After he spoke, thousands of attendees, many of them without masks, marched toward Capitol Hill as federal law enforcement vehicles raced to beat them there.

Heres what Trump said at his rally:

Media will not show the magnitude of this crowd even I when I turned on today, I looked, and I saw thousands of people here, but you dont see hundreds of thousands of people behind you because they dont want to show that. We have hundreds of thousands of people here, and I just want them to be recognized by the fake news media. Turn your cameras, please, and show what is really happening out here because these people are not going to take it any longer, theyre not going to take it any longer.

Not going to let it happen.

TRUMP:Thank you.

Dumb Son Of A Bitch: Trump Attacks Mcconnell In Republican Donors Speech

Kushner Quote: “Trump Knows Republicans Are Stupid”

At Mar-a-Lago, former president also goes after Fauci and Chao and claims party cant have these guys that like publicity

Donald Trump devoted part of a speech to Republican donors on Saturday night to insulting the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. According to multiple reports of the $400,000-a-ticket, closed-press event, the former president called the Kentucky senator a dumb son of a bitch.

Trump also said Mike Pence, his vice-president, should have had the courage to object to the certification of electoral college results at the US Capitol on 6 January. Trump claims his defeat by Joe Biden, by 306-232 in the electoral college and more than 7m votes, was the result of fraud. It was not and the lie was thrown out of court.

Earlier, the Associated Press reported that a Pentagon timeline of events on 6 January showed Pence demanding military leaders clear the Capitol of rioters sent by Trump.

But Trump did nothing and about six hours passed before the Capitol was cleared. Five people including a police officer died and some in the mob were recorded chanting hang Mike Pence. More than 400 face charges.

At his Mar-a-Lago resort on Saturday, amid a weekend of Republican events in Florida, some at Trump properties, the former president also mocked Dr Anthony Fauci.

I hired his wife. Did he ever say thank you?

Trump also said Covid-19 vaccines should be renamed Trumpcines in his honour.

Recommended Reading: Are Republicans Cutting Social Security And Medicare

So If None Of This Counts Whats The Point

This is not about calling into question the results of the November election, Ken Bennett, spokesman for the audit, told the Washington Post. This is about identifying if there are any areas of our elections that need to be improved going forward.

Few Democrats believe this, of course. They fear that the point of the audit is to simply sow further doubt about Bidens victory and pave the way for Republican state-level efforts to enact new voting restrictions that disadvantage their candidates and voters in the name of ballot security.

Trump Slashes At Mcconnell As He Reiterates Election Falsehoods At Republican Event

Former president Donald Trump called Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a dumb son of a bitch as he used a Saturday night speech to Republicans to blame the senator for not helping overturn the 2020 election and reiterated false assertions that he won the November contest.

Trump, speaking at a Republican National Committee gathering at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Fla., excoriated a number of Republicans even as he publicly called for party unity focusing on those who voted to convict him in impeachment proceedings. But he saved his sharpest vitriol for the Kentucky Republican.

If that were Schumer instead of this dumb son of a bitch Mitch McConnell, they would never allow it to happen. They would have fought it, he said of the election certification on Jan. 6, the day his supporters led an insurrection on the Capitol to block President Bidens formal victory.

Trump spent much of the speech, with many senators in the room, lashing into his former ally in personal terms, often to cheers from the partys top donors. He falsely claimed that he won the Senate election for McConnell in Kentucky and attacked his wife, Elaine Chao, who served as Trumps transportation secretary.

I hired his wife. Did he ever say thank you? Trump said. He then mocked Chao for resigning in response to the Jan. 6 events and Trumps behavior that day.

Some attendees left the private event early, with the speech getting mixed reviews.

Recommended Reading: Why Do Republicans Wear Blue Ties

Trump Gets Slap On The Wrist For Rant On Stupid Iowa Voters

Not good to insult Iowa voters, one Iowa Republican says, but the fallout is far from dramatic.

Donald Trumps slam of Iowans as stupid would usually be a breathtaking gaffe for a presidential candidate, but the billionaire businessman has proved time and again that this isnt any normal presidential race and that he isnt any normal candidate.

Top Republicans and Republican operatives in the state on Friday disparaged Trumps comments from his Thursday evening rally at Iowa Central Community College in which he questioned the intelligence of voters who believe rival Ben Carsons claims of a violent past and subsequent redemption. How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap? Trump yelled.

Not good to insult Iowa voters, Doug Gross, the former chief of staff to Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, told POLITICO on Friday.

Steve Grubbs, the chief Iowa strategist for rival Rand Paul, was happy to pounce on the comment. Trumps meltdown last night makes me worry what would happen in a stressful situation in the White House, Grubbs said.

But many Iowa Republicans also dont see lasting damage. They see the comments as unfortunate but not nearly enough to send Trump packing.

I heard audible gasps from those I was sitting by, yet that had no effect in his standing in the caucuses. And Im not trying to dodge or be cute, but we dont know. We dont know what impact this will have,Strawn said.

Lynn Schmidt: Republican Voters Aren’t Stupid Stop Treating Us That Way

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, of Kentucky, speaks during a news conference Tuesday in Washington. Americans waiting for Republicans in Congress to acknowledge Joe Biden as the president-elect may have to keep waiting until January as GOP leaders stick with President Donald Trump’s litany of legal challenges and unproven claims of fraud.

Why do Republican elected officials treat Republican voters like we are stupid?

Multiple times during the past four years of Donald Trumps presidency, there has been an outcry for Republicans to stand up and speak out against the president. Yet, the leadership has fallen silent. The question of why will be studied for years to come. One of the strongest arguments that I have heard and read is that they are afraid of the base. That base is a Republican voter, of which I am one. What if instead of staying silent, our elected Republican officials came home and spoke to us about what they think? Do they really think we are that stupid and cannot understand?

Lynn Schmidt: Conservative and Republican ideologies intersect less and less these days

Instead of being afraid of us as a voting base, elected officials should educate us, share with us, and strengthen the democracy that put them in office in the first place.

Lynn Schmidt is the Missouri state leader for Stand Up Republic and is a registered nurse. She lives in St. Charles.

Read Also: What Percent Of Republicans Approve Of Trump

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theliberaltony · 4 years

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via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

Welcome to a special edition of FiveThirtyEight’s politics chat. The transcript below has been lightly edited.

sarahf (Sarah Frostenson, politics editor): Sen. Bernie Sanders objectively did not have a good Super Tuesday. He won just three states outright (Colorado, Utah and Vermont) and across the board, he underperformed expectations.

He does seem on track to win delegate-rich California — but because so many voters mail in their ballots, it’ll be weeks before we know the final vote there.

But at this point, it does seem as if Sanders hasn’t succeeded in turning out the voters he needs to win, and now some are arguing that to find a path to the nomination, he has to stop running as an insurgent. So is it time for Sanders to adopt a new strategy?

nrakich (Nathaniel Rakich, elections analyst): I’m not sure I accept the premise of that argument? Obviously, being an insurgent is a core part of Sanders’s identity. And a lot of the party is attracted to that. (He is still averaging almost 30 percent in national polls!) But, of course, that doesn’t preclude him from doing some things to reach out to new voters.

For example, a majority of voters in Super Tuesday exit polls said they supported Sanders’s key policies of Medicare for All and free college — but, paradoxically, a plurality of voters in many states said they wanted to return to former President Barack Obama’s policies. And perhaps as a nod to that, Sanders released an ad today featuring Obama saying nice things about him.

ameliatd (Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, senior writer): So, with the big caveat that we do need to wait and see how Sanders performed in California, which is where he put a lot of resources, it does seem like his choice to bank on voters who don’t normally turn out in high numbers (especially young people) backfired.

In some states, the share of young voters who turned out was actually lower than it was in 2016. That is not a good sign for Sanders.

But I don’t know if his “insurgency” is to blame.

perry (Perry Bacon Jr., senior writer): To me, that Obama commercial feels like a bit of an admission of failure. Wouldn’t the time to run a commercial saying “Obama loves me” be in the run-up to a bunch of primaries in the heavily black Deep South, not afterward?

nrakich: I don’t know if I buy the argument that Sanders screwed up by not being more aggressively conciliatory before Super Tuesday.

The events of Sunday and Monday — the party clearly deciding on former Vice President Joe Biden, and multiple establishment politicians giving up their personal ambitions to do so — were extraordinary.

And would have been very difficult to predict.

A week ago, I ran a table titled “Sanders is forecasted to rack up wins on Super Tuesday“!

I think that until basically Monday, when it was too late, Sanders was totally justified in thinking that divided opposition would allow him to win Super Tuesday if he just stuck to his usual schtick.

perry: I agree with that.

ameliatd: But there was probably some hubris on Sanders’s part in assuming that he could rely mainly on low-turnout voters’ excitement about him.

sarahf: Wait, aren’t you inherently arguing, Nathaniel, that Sanders still needed to pivot at some point?

nrakich: Yeah, maybe, Sarah, but really I’m just saying Sanders has so far made perfectly rational strategic decisions with the information he had.

And now that he has the new information of his loss on Super Tuesday, the timing of this Obama ad makes sense.

ameliatd: I’ll disagree with that a little, Nathaniel — I think Sanders could have done more to reach out to people who are not in his core base once he started doing well in the early states. And maybe being conciliatory could have helped. Or at least he could have, like, not doubled down on his comments praising Fidel Castro last week.

sarahf: I guess the counterargument, though, is: Did a tweet like this ever make sense for Sanders?

I've got news for the Republican establishment. I've got news for the Democratic establishment. They can't stop us.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 22, 2020

It’s weird and it’s complicated and, as you said earlier, Nathaniel, part of Sanders’s appeal is that he is a political outsider and isn’t afraid to call the establishment out. But he’s also not running as an underdog this year, and he’s trying to win the Democratic nomination, so at some point, you have to win … some Democrats. Right?

perry: My view is that Sanders’s losses in Minnesota and the Northeast were related to the consolidation of the establishment. He had no control over that. It was surprising, as Nathaniel said.

The total blowouts in the South were not shocking — but I do think running an ad about how Obama loves him would have been most useful before a lot of the South voted. So we will agree to disagree on that!

But Sarah, I think that tweet was fine and is being overblown.

Sanders’s appeal in the general election is partly based on running as an outsider to both parties.

nrakich: Yeah, tweets are overrated. Only about a fifth of Americans are even on Twitter!

perry: Voters don’t think they are in the establishment either.

nrakich: And I guess I would point out that Sanders has tried to make inroads with voters he wasn’t strong with in 2016. We’ve written about this: Sanders invested a lot in Latino outreach in Nevada and California, and he has improved his numbers with black voters to an impressive degree.

ameliatd: OK, so a lot of things moved very quickly and somewhat unpredictably in the past few days, and none of those things were helpful to Sanders. What should he do now? Again with the caveat that we don’t know what happened in California, it does seem like Sanders has to start appealing to some non-young Democrats.

sarahf: Right, next Tuesday six more states vote: Idaho, Michigan, North Dakota, Washington, Missouri and Mississippi.

So does Sanders pivot now? Will he do a bit better with at least some of those states no matter what? (Three of them are at least sorta kinda in the West, which is where Sanders is supposed to be strongest.)

nrakich: That’s actually a pretty good group of states for Sanders. Sanders is strong in Western states (I think North Dakota kinda counts as culturally Western). And he scored a shocking win in Michigan last cycle, which many Democrats there probably remember.

However, Missouri and Mississippi, as Southern (or Southern-ish) states with significant black populations, definitely do feel like Biden states. Also, next week we’ll get the results of the Democrats Abroad primary, which should be good for Sanders.

ameliatd: I would assume that Bloomberg getting out of the race will be helpful to Biden in Michigan, though.

nrakich: Yeah, that’s going to be the barnburner of the evening. It’s the closest of next week’s races per our forecast (as of Tuesday morning), and it’s also worth the most delegates of any state voting next Tuesday.

perry: Sanders has a bunch of blocs where he is weak: 1. older black voters; 2. college-educated white women; 3. basically anyone over age 45.

And I don’t see how easy it is for him to pivot to win these groups, because his whole campaign is about shaking things up, and these might be groups that are resistant to big change.

ameliatd: There was one very consistent aspect of Sanders’s voters last night (and in the first four states) — he gets more support from men than women. That is going to be hard for him to change.

sarahf: So this is from The Washington Post’s analysis of Super Tuesday exit polls, and as Perry says — aside from really young voters, really liberal voters and Hispanic voters — Sanders really does have a bunch of blocs where he is weak.

So he has to at least start trying to win some of these voters from Biden, right? Or is there an argument to be made that Sanders should double down on his current strategy?

One thing we talked about on the live blog is that if it’s a two-person race by March 15, that could be bad for Biden and good for Sanders, just considering their skills as debaters.

perry: Is Sanders good at debates? (Conceding that Biden is fairly bad at them.)

sarahf: Sanders is more reliable, I’d say.

ameliatd: The problem is that without high turnout among his core groups, how can Sanders stay the course and win? I keep coming back to the fact that young voters have not been turning out in high numbers. That was a big part of his strategic bet, and it just doesn’t seem to be paying off.

nrakich: Not to, like, invalidate this entire chat, but I’m not sure this debate is even relevant. I think Sanders will double down on his current strategy, because it’s just who he is. He is a progressive insurgent bomb-thrower, and he has been remarkably consistent about it throughout his career.

perry: I agree with that Nathaniel.

In fact, Sanders does too. He tweeted this on Wednesday:

This campaign is different. We have received 8.7 million contributions from over 1.9 million donors.

We don't hold high-dollar fundraisers. We don't have a super PAC spending millions of dollars on TV ads. We don't have a single billionaire donor.

We have the people.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) March 4, 2020

ameliatd: One possibility, I guess, is that Biden’s sudden surge could galvanize Sanders supporters and convince them to turn out in higher numbers.

perry: But Nathaniel, are you suggesting that Sanders can’t pivot or won’t pivot?

He did get better on racial issues and outreach to black voters and Latino voters from 2016 to 2020. So he can do better outreach to women and older people? Yes, right?

nrakich: Yeah, that’s a good point, Perry.

Maybe the distinction is that his rhetoric won’t change, but maybe the strategy of his campaign operation will?

ameliatd: But again, I keep coming back to the groups where Sanders is weak. It’s not obvious to me that Warren supporters who see the writing on the wall for their candidate will throw their support to Sanders. And that’s a problem for him.

perry: Amelia, I agree — right now, I don’t think Warren supporters are going in bulk to Sanders if she drops out.

His first move should be trying to get her to endorse him enthusiastically, and I have no idea how that will happen.

ameliatd: What would it mean for the strategy of his campaign operation to change without his rhetoric changing, Nathaniel? I don’t want to sound too down on Sanders, but part of his brand is his rhetorical consistency. How does he change his campaign’s outreach without changing how he talks about his candidacy?

Getting a Warren endorsement would be a big deal, Perry, I agree. Maybe Sanders’s mistake was not being more conciliatory to Warren.

perry: Well, the Obama ad was a shift. Sanders thinks Obama was too centrist as president, but he did run the ad. So I think Sanders can adapt.

nrakich: Right, I think that’s a great example. Lots of people might see that ad and think, “Sanders is trying to reach out to me.” Meanwhile, at rallies, Sanders can keep delivering his usual applause lines.

perry: I think reaching older voters is hard because my sense is they are wary of free college and debt forgiveness (“I paid for college myself, why can’t this generation, etc.”)

The socialist label is hard too, as is the perception that Biden is electable and next in line.

nrakich: Yeah, I feel like the canary in the coal mine will be if Sanders ever begins to deemphasize the “socialism” label.

I feel like he probably won’t. But IMO that is a big obstacle for him winning over both older Democrats in the primary and swing voters in the general.

perry: He should downplay or recast the socialism hat immediately. Give a big speech about how he is a liberal Democrat and that “socialism” is not a big part of his political identity.

ameliatd: I’ve also felt just kind of a sense of exhaustion from the voters I’ve talked to. The idea that Biden was finally getting it together seemed like a relief to a lot of people I spoke with over the weekend and on Monday.

That’s a difficult sentiment to quantify, of course, but I wonder how many Democrats really have an appetite for a knock-down, drag-out fight between Biden and Sanders at this point.

perry: I think that’s right, Amelia.

The group in the party that wants a fight might just be the 30 percent of voters already with Sanders.

sarahf: Right, and as you said earlier, Perry, if his whole campaign’s message is about shaking things up, that might not be an attractive message for a lot of these voters if they’re resistant to big change. Buttigieg had tried to attack him on this front in some of the debates, and I think maybe that’s the biggest problem with a Sanders pivot. He can’t really back down from that message of systemic change.

ameliatd: Also, I wonder if Biden has benefited from Bloomberg being in the race, if only by making him seem a little more liberal and palatable.

perry: I’ve been fairly down on Sanders in this chat. What does his comeback look like? The race has flipped a bunch of times. Surely it can flip again.

nrakich: Exactly.

Maybe Biden is in for another scrutiny cycle now.

Maybe Sanders gets some momentum from some of the good states he has coming up.

Maybe Warren drops out and endorses him.

Or maybe she stays in and her delegates are what Sanders needs to get a majority at a contested convention!

Sanders-Warren unity ticket, anyone?

ameliatd: Part of his comeback has to hinge on doing really well in California, which could still happen. I’ve been critical of Sanders’s outreach campaign in this chat, but he was smart about how he approached that state. And we won’t know the full results there for a while.

nrakich: That’s a great point, Amelia. If California is strong enough for him, it’s still possible that Sanders will be the delegate leader after Super Tuesday!

ameliatd: And I don’t know, maybe his supporters were taking him for granted on Super Tuesday and they get really motivated in the next round of states.

I do agree with you, Perry, that this race has turned around so many times that it feels dangerous to assume everything is settling into place for Biden.

sarahf: Right, we are entering a new phase of the race. The field isn’t as crowded, and to some extent it’s a two-person race now, which will change both Biden’s and Sanders’s strategy. The race can definitely flip again, and I do think Sanders will pivot in some way moving forward. The Obama ad is evidence of this even if its timing felt off.

Biden “won” Super Tuesday, but we’ve still got a ways to go. And Sanders is still very much in this race.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #A FiveThirtyEight Chat

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stephenmccull · 4 years

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Must-Reads Of The Week From Brianna Labuskes

The Friday Breeze

Newsletter editor Brianna Labuskes, who reads everything on health care to compile our daily Morning Briefing, offers the best and most provocative stories for the weekend.

Hello! It’s Friday again and when looking back on the stories from the week I can’t believe some of them happened only days ago — anyone else feel as if we’re living full years in a single day? But I’ll do my best to sum up some of the top news from you.

First, though … if you are having strangely vivid dreams about bugs or lethal injections or tidal waves, you are not alone! A side effect of this pandemic for a lot of people seems to be vivid nightmares. One reason? We’re actually getting more sleep now that we’re not go, go, going. (At least that’s what experts guess.)

At the beginning of the week, there were dire warnings that it was going to be a tough one. The surgeon general went so far as to compare it to 9/11 and Pearl Harbor. The warnings have played out with states reporting some of their deadliest days, pushing the country’s death toll nearly to 18,000 and the number of confirmed U.S. cases to more than 473,000. as of 1:30 p.m. ET.

But amid those grim numbers, a glimmer of hope can be found. In New York, the curve seems to be stabilizing, and California even saw a decrease in the number of ICU hospitalizations for the first time. That should not be taken as a sign that the worst of the outbreak is over — D.C., Philadelphia and Baltimore are already bracing to become the next hot spots, while the pandemic barrels down on unprepared and financially strained areas of the country. But the glimmers do show that the sweeping shutdown measures appear to be moving the needle in the war against the virus.

Meanwhile, Ohio’s early efforts, partly driven by the influential Cleveland Clinic, seem to be paying off — Ohio has fewer than a third the number of people with the novel coronavirus than in three comparably sized states.

And checkpoints to discourage visitors from traveling across state borders are growing in popularity.

So, when will we be able to reopen? It depends on a few factors, but one thing a lot of people can agree on: widespread, quick-turnaround testing is needed to take that step. And the United States has yet to conquer that particular white whale.

The Friday Breeze

Want a roundup of the must-read stories this week chosen by KHN Newsletter Editor Brianna Labuskes? Sign up for The Friday Breeze today.

Please confirm your email address below:

President Donald Trump leaned heavily on familiar strategies (read: deny, deflect and direct blame elsewhere) this week at his daily press briefings, with the World Health Organization being one of his most recent targets. Trump went as far as to say he was going to cut off funding for the global organization because of what he claimed were its early missteps, but he quickly softened the threat.

Meanwhile, Trump’s decision to abruptly fire the head watchdog for the $2.2 trillion stimulus package raised alarm bells on Capitol Hill and throughout the country. Democrats scrambled at the end of the week to try to add a provision to protect the rest of the watchdog panel assigned to overseeing spending. The removal of Glenn Fine is just one of a series of moves against inspectors general in recent days. Trump also publicly scorned HHS watchdog findings about hospital shortages.

And make sure to read The Washington Post’s tour de force of a story that details the 70 days at the beginning of the crisis when the administration knew about the threat (a new report shows that intelligence communities were monitoring a potential outbreak as early as November) and failed to quickly act.

In other news from the administration: a messy rivalry between HHS Secretary Alex Azar and CMS Administrator Seema Verma reignites; CDC Director Robert Redfield has managed to woo over the skeptical MAGA crowd; and Jared Kushner’s push for a national surveillance system brings up unpleasant memories of the Patriot Act.

It was another brutal week for Americans filing for unemployed benefits. Another 6.6 million filed claims, and experts say we haven’t seen this magnitude of layoffs and economic constriction since the Great Depression.

Congress is trying to pass legislation that would help small businesses, which are struggling to get any money from an agency that is working with an aging system and strained resources. But the swift passage of the bipartisan $2.2 trillion stimulus package is appearing more and more like the anomaly we all guessed it was.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to push through a $250 billion bill that was narrowly targeted at small businesses during a procedural session, but Democrats balked at the maneuver they deemed a stunt. (Because it would have required approval of all Democratic senators.) Republicans, on the other hand, balked at Democrats’ push for additional aid for hospitals and health providers.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration is pumping billions of dollars of aid back into the economy, but few, if any, of the oversight measures that Democrats fought for are in place to catch fraud, abuse or mistakes. For example, one of the members of a congressional panel to monitor the spending has been appointed. In addition, a little-noticed provision of the stimulus package lets the Federal Reserve set up a $450 billion bailout plan without following key provisions of the federal open-meetings law.

And it could be years and years before a full picture emerges of the economic ramifications of the outbreak and shutdown, but experts agree that it will include devastation and mountains of debt.

Wisconsin’s primary emerged as a grim preview to the general election if mail-in voting isn’t enacted. Voters were forced into a choice between their civic duty and their health, standing in long lines and braving terrible weather to cast ballots. The images that came out of the state created new momentum for the mail-in-voting movement. Trump is a vocal opponent of mail-in voting (despite the fact he cast an absentee ballot last month). But his claims that it benefits Democrats and is fertile ground for fraud are both false.

“Either be in or out, folks”: Governors grew ever-more frustrated with the federal government, which seemed to be intervening in the distribution of ventilators and other medical supplies just enough to create chaos. They started turning to one another and private businesses for help — California even sent 500 ventilators to other states in need. (Some cynics out there couldn’t help but note that Gov. Gavin Newsom seems to have national political ambitions.)

Speaking of politics, Trump made waves when he granted a request from Republican Sen. Cory Gardner to send ventilators to Colorado — after weeks of ignoring similar pleas for help from the state’s Democratic governor.

And although there’s a lot of attention on ventilators, some doctors are starting to wonder if they’re doing more harm than good. Most patients who end up going on them don’t come off. Patients who need ventilators in the first place (for reasons beyond this outbreak) have mid- to poor outcomes — usually about 40%-50% come off them. But for COVID-19, that number plummets to about 20%.

Meanwhile, HHS has announced that its stockpile of personal protective equipment has been depleted by 90%. (Fun fact: The stockpile was created in 1999 to prevent supply-chain disruptions for the predicted Y2K computer problems.) The U.S. has been trying to acquire gear, but in the demand has created a bit of a “Lord of the Flies” scenario, and let’s just say America is making some enemies with its tactics.

Anyway, all the problems with acquiring PPE from federal resources led California’s Newsom to say “enough’s enough” and use the “purchasing power” of his state to secure 200 million masks a month through a deal with suppliers.

It’s not just health providers who are suffering from the lack of protective gear. Medical personnel in New York are reporting that they’re not going into patients’ rooms as often as they would because they aren’t able to take as many safety precautions with their gowns and masks. That means patients are being seen less, which can have fatal consequences.

The battle over protective gear continues to pit providers against hospitals, who don’t want their images hurt if their health workers speak out. One nurse bought $12,000 worth of protective supplies for her colleagues after using GoFundMe, and her hospital suspended her for distributing “unauthorized” gear. Across the country, there’s a growing sense of betrayal and a simmering anger from doctors and other health professionals at the government’s failure to ensure that front-line workers in this battle are equipped with the gear they need.

Experts working to find a scientifically sound treatment for COVID-19 are frustrated by the hype over antimalarial drugs (driven in large part by Trump’s optimistic support of the treatment). When patients take such unproven medications, they’re treating the fear rather than the disease, said Dr. Andre Kalil, a principal investigator in the federal government’s clinical trial of drugs that may treat the coronavirus.

Billionaires jumped to it this week, pumping their considerable resources into cutting down the frustratingly long timeline for a vaccine. Bill Gates announced that he would pick the seven lead contenders and build factories to develop them, even though likely only one or two will emerge as viable. When compared to the economic loss mounting every day that the country remains closed, what’s a couple of billions of wasted dollars?

The coronavirus outbreak is laying bare in terrible detail all the systemic disparities in the health system, and the country in general, that lead to poorer health outcomes among black Americans. Data shows that COVID-19 can be twice as deadly for both black and Latinx Americans. Black Americans have less access to care and more chronic conditions (something that plays a major role in the lethality of the virus) than white Americans do.

“We are watching, in real time, racial disparities and the pandemic of poverty,” said Michael Blake, an assemblyman from the Bronx.

And other stories to keep you occupied this weekend:

→ The Associated Press: No Halt to Culture Wars During Coronavirus Outbreak

→ Politico: DHS Warns Pandemic ‘Stressors’ Could Trigger Attacks on Houses of Worship

→ The New York Times: Food Banks Are Overrun, As Coronavirus Surges Demand

→ Reuters: From Fine to Flailing — Rapid Health Declines in COVID-19 Patients Jar Doctors, Nurses

→ The New York Times: How Delays and Unheeded Warnings Hindered New York’s Virus Fight

→ Stat: Lilly Lowers Most Insulin Costs to $35 a Month in Response to Covid-19

→ The Associated Press: Modeling Coronavirus: ‘Uncertainty Is the Only Certainty’

→ The New York Times: How the Theodore Roosevelt’s Coronavirus Outbreak Became a Moral Crisis for the Military

Must-Reads Of The Week From Brianna Labuskes published first on https://smartdrinkingweb.weebly.com/

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dinafbrownil · 4 years