Has anyone seen Trump or his family on the front line? Boris Johnson was and he has the virus to show for it. He’s Your President America!!! (ODT)
via Workers Are Warriors in the Fight Against the Coronavirus | The Nation
Author: peterimrich
The US is the world’s leading narco-terrorist state — an indisputable fact!
Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro is the hemisphere’s main enemy of illicit drugs trafficking.
The CIA and DEA are actively involved in facilitating the proliferation of heroin, cocaine, and perhaps other illicit drugs.
Major Wall Street banks profit hugely by laundering billions of dollars of dirty money from the trade — supported by Washington’s bipartisan criminal class by failing to stop it.
Close US ally Colombia is a narco-terrorist state. Other Latin American countries allied with the US are involved in drugs trafficking.
In 2018, the Trump regime falsely accused Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of “profiting from illegal narcotics shipments” — a bald-faced Big Lie.
The Big Lie that won’t die reared its ugly head again on Thursday. The Trump regime falsely accused Maduro and other Venezuelan officials of narco-terrorism — a longstanding US specialty, notably by the CIA since the 1950s, not how the Bolivarian Republic operates.
When repeated ad nauseam, Big Lies take on a life of their own, especially when establishment media suppress truth-telling by supporting the official narrative no matter how distorted, untrue and harmful to ordinary people.
As Trump regime’s CIA director from January 2017 to April 2018, Pompeo notoriously said: “We lied. We cheated. We stole.”
At State he operates much the same way, the latest example on March 26.
He falsely called democratically elected and reelected Venezuelan President Maduro “the previous president of Venezuela” —a bald-faced Big Lie.
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via Phony Trump Regime Narco Terrorism Charges Against Venezuelan Officials – Stephen Lendman
With Covid-19 restrictions closing at least 60 shoots and leaving 20,000 people out of work, the industry is fearful of how long it will take to recover
‘We’ll see bankruptcies’: how coronavirus has shut down Australian film and TV | Film | The Guardian
What Trump called a Hoax was any criticism of him which is worse than if it were a Hoax (ODT) He’s Your President America!!!
The U.S. power elite’s response to the coronavirus crisis has been delayed, halfhearted, and skewed. In an act of criminal negligence, the Trump administration initially ignored coronavirus throughout January and then Trump referred to criticism of his lethargy on the issue as a hoax in late February before spending the first part of March downplaying the severity of the threat that it posed, thus squandering precious time to adequately prepare. Only in the past couple of weeks, in the wake of the widespread diffusion of COVID-19 and reports that inaction could result in potentially as many as 2.2 million individuals dying in the U.S. alone, has the Trump administration been forced to gradually acknowledge the reality—and gravity—of the situation.
via The Coronavirus Effect: Pandemic Exposes Structural Violence of US Ruling Class | The Smirking Chimp
Compare and Contrast two Governments and two Crises (ODT)
Throughout various crises, including the COVID-19 pandemic, our Government has shown negligence towards the good of its people, writes Grant Turner.
He’s so predictable
Another advantage is that the briefings have become so predictable, with Trump endlessly repeating the same falsehoods and self-puffery. Indeed, CNN’s wonderful Daniel Dale recently broke them down into their fairly consistent constituent parts, each of which can be anticipated and prepared for:
Inaccurate progress reports
False, dubious or questionable medical claims
False pronouncements that this was all unforeseen
Media-bashing
Vague economic cheerleading
An empathy shortage
Self-promotion, complaints of victimhood
Trump being Trump
He’s Your President America and it’s All About Him and not You!!!(ODT)
Donald Trump’s biographer and Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston investigates the US stimulus plan and finds, unless a lot more is done, the country faces depression.
We ran the numbers and if Congress and Donald Trump act as cheapskates, it will be devastating — a recession rivalling the 30s.
The $1 trillion coronavirus relief package Congress passed won’t come close to making up for the damage caused by COVID-19 and the Trump administration’s lethal dawdling.
We need the government to act or we could fall into a depression rivalling the 1930s.
via Trumped: pandemic to cost America $5 trillion … or more – Michael West
The GFC saved the Banks from irresponsible lending. Now Trump is supplamenting the Corporate Tax Cuts with massive rescue packages. In the meantime individuals can borrow more money at credit card rates if the have cards (ODT)
We could use a roving gang of indignant citizens today to confront the shameful greed of such corporate scammers as Boeing, American Airlines and Marriott, as well as such billionaire hucksters as Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk. They are among a new breed of pandemic profiteers that have rushed to Washington, shoving aside millions of workers, small businesses, poor people, students, nonprofits, farmers, cities and all other devastated victims of the COVID-19 crisis, demanding that corporations be first in line for a massive government rescue.
via The Pandemic Profiteers Swarm Washington as Trump Goes off the Deep End | The Smirking Chimp
The Senate’s $2 Trillion Coronavirus Relief Package is not fiscal stimulus and it’s not a lifeline for the tens of millions of working people who have suddenly lost their jobs. It’s a fundamental restructuring of the US economy designed to strengthen the grip of the corrupt corporate-banking oligarchy while creating a permanent underclass that will be forced to work for slave wages. This isn’t stimulus, it’s shock therapy.
via The Senate’s Coronavirus Relief Package Must Be Stopped!, by Mike Whitney – The Unz Review
In the case of Noriega one forgets he worked for the DEA. There is nor country on the planet like the USA with rendition, and the abuse of extradition of anybody thay regard as opposition to what they want and the Oligarchy in the USA want Iranian and Venezuelan oil (ODT)
Analysts said the indictments could boost US President Donald Trump’s re- election chances in the key swing state of Florida, which he won by a narrow margin in 2016 and where Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans fleeing authoritarian regimes have political muscle.
Maduro, a 57-year-old former bus driver, portrays himself as an everyman icon of the Latin American left. He’s long accused the U.S. “empire” of looking for any excuse to take control of the world’s largest oil reserves, likening its plotting to the 1989 invasion of Panama and the removal of strongman Gen. Manuel Noriega to face drug trafficking charges in Florida.
The most striking reversal of LNP ideology though was the government’s decision to double the Newstart allowance and extend it to others. Hoping that voters would not see that as tacit acceptance of the repeated advice of countless social advocates, as well as hard-nosed economists, they ditched the name ‘Newstart’ in favour of the more benign-sounding ‘Jobseeker Allowance’. It was obvious to all that the LNP was devoted to the belief that Newstart recipients were bludgers, ‘leaners’ rather than ‘lifters’, people who ought to be out getting a job. It must have been a hard pill to swallow to accept that increasing Newstart would have large economic benefits, as so many have been telling them for months.
Morrison and Frydenberg have been given praise for their package, bordering on lavish from their media set. But we have to ask why it took a crisis the magnitude of the coronavirus pandemic to bring about their awakening.
via The great awakening – » The Australian Independent Media Network
Its a rigged system go to Robert Reich’s explanation on Youtube (ODT
He’s Your President America- Quid Pro Quo Threat
President Donald Trump on Wednesday lashed out at the news media for accurately reporting his remarks about New York officials being nice to him as a prerequisite for getting help with the coronavirus pandemic.
During a Fox News town hall on Tuesday, Trump attacked New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who earlier in the day sharply criticized the federal government’s response to the pandemic.
“It’s a two-way street,” Trump said of helping out New York during the crisis. “They have to treat us well, too.”
But the need for large stockpiles of masks, like the need for ventilators, has been no secret.
via Trump’s Claim That Ventilator Shortage Was “Unforeseen” Is False
When Donald Trump took office, he refused to divest from his business empire, setting the stage for a presidency riddled with conflicts of interest. The coronavirus outbreak, which has battered the hospitality sector, including the president’s collection of hotels and resorts, raised the unprecedented question of whether the federal government might help to bail out Trump’s company. But a provision Democrats inserted in the $2 trillion rescue package that could be passed by the Senate on Wednesday would block the Trump Organization from accessing the biggest pot of rescue funds.
The measure prohibits companies owned by the president, vice president, and other federal officeholders from receiving aid from the $500 billion fund, overseen by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, that is allotted for helping ailing businesses. Also excluded from receiving a federal handout from this fund are companies owned by the spouses, children, or in-laws of these officials—a provision that seems targeted at presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, who retains a stake in his family’s company, which has struggled in recent months. (A final draft of the bill hasn’t been released, but a legislative draft includes the conflict-of-interest language.)
via Democrats Are Trying to Block Trump’s Company From Getting Bailout Money – Mother Jones
The emergency coronavirus legislation that the Senate agreed to on Tuesday can only be described as an outrage. It is not an economic rescue package, but a sentence of unprecedented economic inequality and corporate control over our politics that will resonate for a generation.
It represents a transfer of wealth and power to the super rich from the rest of us, with the support of both political parties ― a damning statement about the condition of American democracy.
via Democrats Are Handing Donald Trump The Keys To The Country | HuffPost Australia
The party whose benefactors hold them to ransom must always put the needs of the rich first. This same pattern of behaviour may be seen in the responses of Tory governments everywhere.
This all adds up to the inescapable conclusion that conservatives will do the right thing but only when a more profitable choice fails to materialise. It is about pushing survival of the fittest, one hand-wash at a time.
The grossly inadequate and slow response from Australia has been primarily only about washing hands. It has not been about stringent quarantine procedures, the production of testing kits, investing in cures or vaccines.
Today they are telling us to wash our hands while they wash their hands of the great unwashed.
via Coalition, conservatives and the great unwashed PR campaign
Virgin Australia boss Paul Scurrah and his predecessor John Borghetti have, over the past two years alone, personally handed Scott Morrison, Josh Frydenberg – and at least 52 other current Coalition MPs – “gifts” worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Already, the Prime Minister and Treasurer have given Virgin taxpayer support – part of the $715 million fees and charges waiver – but Scurrah is chasing more. Does the Government bail-out a company which is 91% foreign owned and which pays no tax? Anthony Klan reports on a classic case of political influence.
While President Donald Trump fantasizes of wrapping up the virus in time for Easter church services, people are getting sick and dying, hospitals are overwhelmed, medical workers are begging for vital supplies and protesting their conditions.
People are literally prevented from social distancing. Premal Dharia, founder and director of the Defender Impact Initiative, describes the situation in carceral facilities across the U.S. and why she is warning of a humanitarian disaster if action is not taken immediately.
United we stand divided we fall and in the English speaking world the division is clear on all global matters like Climate Change and the Coronavirus. China certainly is leading by action Trump is way behind vocalising. (ODT)
Racism is racism whether in your face or subtle. Chanel 9/Fairfax shows just how it’s done when it to calls Covid-19 a Chinese sourced virus as opposed to simply a human pathogen discovered in China and now contained. The Age continues to promote China’s global assistance in suspicious terms rather than for what it is assisting some 89 nations to fight the contagion as it has the experience and knowledge that seems to have contained it. The Age rarely comments on America’s assistance in 144 nations the supply of its commandos and hardware it to has advanced knowledge but of a different sort. No doubt the Age believes it should be trusted more than China that saved the lives of a once starving nation. (ODT)
America will export the virus whenever and wherever it can rather than wait. It’s not about waiting for the last man to stand but the richest left standing. (ODT
via Fed Up With Social Distancing, Trump Goes Back to Likening Coronavirus to the Flu – Mother Jones
Republican Americas response to Covid-19 (ODT)
via American Corporatism on Display: The COVID-19 Response – » The Australian Independent Media Network
It used to be called nationalisation; a term once considered abhorrent for any Liberal leader. But these aren’t normal times.
Rubio was asked by Bartiromo about the timeline of the Chinese response to the virus, and was more than happy to pile on in attacking them for making this worse, which they have, but was unwilling to utter a single word criticizing Trump for his weeks of denying the pandemic and its severity, delaying testing, calling it a “Democratic hoax,” and some sort of evil plot designed to keep him from being reelected.
Incredibly distressing footage of thousands of Australians, all across the country, queueing around the block for Centrelink, then a desperate parliament working into the night to shove through its third bail-out package in as many weeks, each one more urgent then the last. As the country runs short of critical medicines and life-saving protective gear, Michael West reports on those profiting from the tragedy.
via Doctors and nurses exposed, medicines run short, while profiteers run rampant – Michael West
IPA?Murdoch/LNP the triumvariate of an unhinged and diminished Democracy (ODT)
What are some of the things they succeeded in?
Many of the items can be ticked off, as having been completed, or at least attempted. Most, if not all of them, as reactionary, elitist and nasty:
Repeal the carbon tax, and don’t replace it;
Abolish the Department of Climate Change;
Cease subsidising the car industry;
Repeal the mining tax;
Devolve environmental approvals for major projects to the states;
Cease funding the Australia Network; and
Privatise Medibank.It seems like the sort of list that very young, privileged brats would produce before they actually encountered some real life. Let us just say it is a work of stupendous lightness and the Liberal Party has been captured by it for nearly eight years now.
There isn’t one thing that would materially improve the life of a single citizen. It is all self-aggrandisement writ large, with not a thought for the weak or the helpless. We have been blaming Abbott, Hockey, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton for a long time, but they are just dupes of three would-be intellectuals, who wouldn’t know what the words mutual obligation meant.
The IPA gave Abbott a plan for Australia and he bought it.
olddogthoughts 
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