The Trump regime will likely take full advantage of spreading COVID-19 outbreaks for hardened police state rule — instead of prioritizing public health and economic justice actions for ordinary Americans.
It’s not unseeable that Trump could call a National Emergency and cancel the election. (ODT)
No it’s what Trump has said to Americans the virus doesn’t differentiate (ODT)
In his most recent punt, Trump told governors not to wait for federal assistance when it comes to acquiring necessary ventilators, but “try getting it yourselves.”
Get it yourselves. That kind of message is grimly appropriate in a country without national health care. With a message like that coming from the top, it’s no wonder that Americans are stocking up on rice and toilet paper, like people around the world — but more pointedly, guns and body armor as well. If it’s “all for one and one for all” in other countries, in Trump’s America, it’s “all against all.”
This is what happens when you run on a platform devoted to the “deconstruction of the administrative state,” as Steve Bannon put it so colorfully. First you get deconstruction when Trump takes office. Then you get destruction, when Trump’s minions go to work.
Finally, when all the competent people have been escorted out of government, you get uh-oh. In this sense, the coronavirus is nothing new. Americans have been living in the uh-oh stage ever since November 8, 2016.
Trump preparing for the 2020 election (ODT)
Trump has created a liar’s paradise and on that score alone is an historic winner (ODT)
And Obama did really well with the outbreak as Factcheck writers, “While that death toll may sound high, it’s over an entire year and, in fact, ended up being far lower than was initially expected. The strain of influenza also turned out to have a case fatality rate of just 0.02% — well below even many typical seasonal influenzas.”
This imbecile keeps flailing away with inaccurate talking points and improvised puffery that does nothing absolutely nothing because confusion and chaos is the way he likes things. He thought he could fluff the markets like he did on Friday and instead the opposite happened.
So, Trump bleats incessantly about how he wants to withdraw the U.S. from the senseless wars that it has been drawn into but at the same time his State Department sends two Zionist hardliners to Syria on a semi-secret mission to support a policy of regime change in Damascus while also providing aid that will inevitably fall into the pockets of an al-Qaeda linked terrorist group. And ammunition will also be forthcoming for the invading Turks to shoot Syrians, Russians and Iranians. If anyone is seriously interested in what is wrong with U.S. foreign policy, the activity of Craft and Jeffrey might serve as a decent case study on how not to do it. Unless, of course, the actual objective is to screw things up and involve the United States in quarrels that it could easily avoid.
On Thursday, the Federal Reserve announced its biggest market intervention to date, a massive $1.5 trillion injection into the short-term funding markets (“repo”) aimed at preventing grossly-inflated stock valuations from resetting at lower prices. There should be no misunderstanding about the Fed’s real intention or whether its meddling will work. When financial assets are purchased in bulk, prices rise, that is the immutable law of the market. Stocks and bonds do not differentiate between day-traders and Central Bankers. What matters is the amount of money and what securities are purchased. What we know from 3 iterations of Quantitative Easing (QE) is that, when the Fed buys financial assets (USTs or MBS) stock prices climb higher. Friday’s trading will undoubtedly produce the same result.
via The Fed’s latest Welfare Payout to the crooked Wall Street Banks, by Mike Whitney – The Unz Review
Hiding the most important fact. Lack of Testing Equipment!! Yes Now Coronavirus is Real and not as trivial as Trump made out.(ODT)
Trump Responds To Spiraling U.S. Coronavirus Outbreak By Unveiling Europe Travel Ban
The president said nothing about the lack of available testing across the country. The coronavirus has already killed dozens in the U.S. and infected at least 1,200.
The decision came shortly before Trump addressed the nation about the rapidly spiraling coronavirus, which has resulted in the infection of more than 1,200 people so far within the United States. The president said he was banning noncitizens from traveling to the U.S. from Europe for 30 days in an attempt to stave off more infections, but he failed to speak about the availability of testing across the country amid reports that not enough kits are available and that some hospitals are running out of supplies.
via Trump Cancels Travel To Nevada And Colorado This Week Amid Coronavirus Spread | HuffPost Australia
Can you spot the 7 stupid moments of the stupid President? (ODT)
via Here Are 7 Ridiculous and Disturbing Moments from Trump’s Visit to the CDC | The Smirking Chimp
How right is Bernie Sanders?(ODT)
There is good reason to believe the medical infrastructure for acute care has been as neglected as our roads and bridges in the current neoliberal order A survey of California hospitals conducted by the National Nurses Union revealed: “ Only 27 percent report that there is a plan in place to isolate a patient with a possible novel coronavirus infection. 47 percent report they don’t know if there is a plan.
There are policy responses far short of a social revolution that would address these strains. Paid sick leave more work at home four day workweek, universal healthcare, and job guarantees would be a good start. These are portrayed as radical, but they are essential to the health of the body politic and the air that we all breathe.
via Heckuva Job, Pencie! A US ruled for and by the Rich leaves Workers at Risk for Coronavirus
Bernie, not Trump wants to ensure all Americans are safe (ODT)
In Trump’s and Murdoch’s crosshairs AOC defies death (ODT)
Ok, so it’s Monday. The stock market is in free fall, perhaps temporarily, perhaps not. What with Trump’s tariff games in play, that scary virus from China seems to be one of the few things getting into this country from that country. (Though Ivanka’s line of clothes is exempt from those tariffs.) Meanwhile, it looks like the polar regions , north and south, might soon become Margaritavilles.
But the good news is that most of the polls are positive about Bernie Sanders, my personal choice, winning the Democratic Party nomination to lead the fight against Trump in the fall. Most of the polls also show Bernie beating that rotten bastard, too. It’s also clear that he’d be a most formidable debate opponent against Trump.
via What the Hell is Wrong With Us? Are We Really This Stupid? | The Smirking Chimp
Trump is America’s Military weapons salesman while China sells them, consumer, goods that Americans really need (ODT)
The New Silk Roads – or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – were launched by President Xi Jinping in 2013, first in Central Asia (Nur-Sultan) and then Southeast Asia (Jakarta).
One year later, the Chinese economy overtook the U.S. on a PPP basis. Inexorably, year after year since the start of the millennium, the U.S. share of the global economy shrinks while China’s increases.
China is already the key hub of the global economy and the leading trade partner of nearly 130 nations.
While the U.S. economy is hollowed out, and the casino financing of the U.S. government – repo markets and all – reads as a dystopian nightmare, the civilization-state steps ahead in myriad areas of technological research, not least because of Made in China 2025.
China largely beats the U.S. on patent filings and produces at least 8 times as many STEM graduates a year than the U.S., earning the status of top contributor to global science.
via No Weapon Left Behind: The American Hybrid War on China, by Pepe Escobar – The Unz Review
We will soon see how far Trump will go in abusing the pardon authority. He appears to be preparing to do far worse than handing out clemency for cash. The judge who sentenced Roger Stone to almost four years in prison accused the dirty trickster of lying to “protect the president.” When Trump pardons Stone, Paul Manafort and others implicated in the Russia scandal, he will cap the most troubling cover-up in American history.
via Why Trump Must Be Criminally Investigated for His Use of the Pardon Power | The Smirking Chimp
Why would 28 states legislate against the US Constitution? One explanation is that the state governments were bought by the Israel Lobby with money under the table, by promises of political campaign donations, or by threats of financing rival candidates. How else do we explain 28 state governments imposing censorship in behalf of a foreign country?
Abby Martin is one person who will not stand for it. She has brought a lawsuit that—if the US Supreme Court is still a protector of the First Amendment—will result in the 28 state laws and Trump’s executive order being overturned. The protection of Israel against boycotts parallels state laws passed in the 1950s that prevented Martin Luther King’s movement from boycotting businesses that practiced racial segregation. These laws were overturned by the Supreme Court.
The outcome of Abby Martin’s suit will tell us whether the US Constitution is still a living document.
via Will Censorship Prevail over the First Amendment?, by Paul Craig Roberts – The Unz Review
Can we stop tiptoeing around the fact that Trump is behaving like a dictator?
We’re slipping further into fascism as Trump indulges all his worst instincts, with the help of his toadies
via Can we stop tiptoeing around the fact that Trump is behaving like a dictator? | Salon.com
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