GAGGED!!
Trump’s top health officials seen but not heard as coronavirus focus shifts | US news | The Guardian
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Category: Trumpland
Trump doesn’t care because the DEAD DON’T VOTE (ODT)
Esteemed medical journal The Lancet on Friday took an unusual step towards calling on American voters to remove President Donald Trump from office in November, condemning the Trump administration’s “incoherent” response to the coronavirus pandemic and expressing shock at the CDC’s inability to cope with the public health crisis.
The journal’s frustration with Trump centered on the president’s downplaying of the pandemic and his refusal to coordinate a robust national effort of social distancing, lockdown orders, and a testing regime to stem the Covid-19 outbreak.
Trump has already succeeded in his goal of running for president twice without disclosing basic financial information. He has already succeeded in using the office of the president to shield himself from potential prosecution of his suspected financial crimes. Trump has already won. The only question now is how much the rest of us will lose.
We should expect decisions on these two cases in late June. The Supreme Court will then tell us how much more of our democracy must be sacrificed in the service of Donald Trump.
via SCOTUS May Have Just Decided to Exempt Trump From the Rule of Law | The Nation
Sunday night, right-wing media misinformation about the coronavirus’s origins — the idea that it originated in an infectious disease research laboratory in Wuhan, China — has even resulted in the Trump administration shutting down funding for actual pandemic research.
Against all of this background, are you now convinced about the dangerous mental state of the POTUS? What is the Trump Dx? Have recent events been a ‘clincher’ for you too?
If you still harbour doubts, read this article in Salon. Are you alarmed? Is the whole world in peril with this man at the helm?
What can be done?
via The Trump Dx – Have we seen the clincher? – » The Australian Independent Media Network
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Our legal system purports to place no person above the law. The court’s decision on Trump’s tax returns will tell us whether that principle stands strong — or is just so many empty words.
via The stakes of Trump’s tax return case couldn’t be higher (opinion) – CNN
A company that offered to make life-saving protective masks as the coronavirus began its spread across the U.S. in January was snubbed by government officials.
Michael Bowen, the owner of medical supply company Prestige Ameritech, told the Department of Health and Human Services that he could begin producing 1.7 million N95 masks a week, only to be denied, The Washington Post first reported.
“We still have four like-new N95 manufacturing lines,” Bowen emailed a top HHS official on Jan. 22, the day the first coronavirus case was detected in the country. “Reactivating these machines would be very difficult and very expensive but could be achieved in a dire situation.”
Laura Wolf, director of the agency’s Division of Critical Infrastructure Protection, responded that the government wasn’t “anywhere near answering those questions for you yet” in response to Bowen’s offer.
“We are the last major domestic mask company,” Bowen emailed the next day. “My phones are ringing now, so I don’t ‘need’ government business. I’m just letting you know that I can help you preserve our infrastructure if things ever get really bad. I’m a patriot first, businessman second.”
The new revelation is part of an 89-page whistleblower complaint from former federal vaccine chief Rick Bright, who alleges he was removed from his position as retaliation for his early warnings about the pandemic and his refusal to make “potentially harmful drugs” to combat the virus.
In the past, the Pentagon suggested that it does not have the resources to conduct on-the-ground investigations in cases in which civilians are alleged to have been killed. Recently, reports surfaced that the military has begun requesting more funds to help track civilian deaths. But independent researchers and nongovernmental organizations have already been carrying out such investigations for years, with far few resources than the Pentagon — with its vast budget — has at its disposal. All this raises the question of who exactly the military has been killing over nearly two decades of war.
via Pentagon Releases a Rosy Report on Civilian Casualties in Foreign Wars
The decision to shelve detailed advice from the nation’s top disease control experts for reopening communities during the coronavirus pandemic came from the highest levels of the White House, according to internal government emails obtained by The Associated Press.
The files also show that after the AP reported Thursday that the guidance document had been buried, the Trump administration ordered key parts of it to be fast-tracked for approval.
The trove of emails show the nation’s top public health experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spending weeks working on guidance to help the country deal with a public health emergency, only to see their work quashed by political appointees with little explanation.
via Top White House Officials Buried CDC Report On Reopening Country | HuffPost
A majority of Americans are today wary of unlocking the economy and opening up the nation. Yet, each week, more and more people are demanding that it be done. And each week, more and more governors, reflecting the views of their constituents, are moving up the dates for partial reopenings.
By midsummer, the country will have caught up with Trump. That is the idea that animates the pivot.
Behind Trump’s Strategic Pivot, by Pat Buchanan – The Unz Review
Now, sure, you may read Daniels’s piece and wonder: yeah, what’s the point of looking back and holding people accountable?
Well, for one thing, we want a deterrent: we want public officials to fear that if they break laws, act unethically, or otherwise harm the public during a lethal pandemic, they will face some form of justice in the future from those looking back on their actions. That justice can be meted out in all kinds of ways — prosecution, firing, or at least public shaming in front of a national commission that has subpoena and discovery power.
But beyond deterrence, we should also want accountability in order to learn and grow as a society.
A country that doesn’t hold accountable those who lied us into the Iraq War is a country that effectively says it is fine with being lied into any war in the future.
A country that doesn’t hold accountable those corporate executives who created the financial crisis is a country that tells those executives they can continue fleecing us without fear of punishment — just as they have.
In short, a country that lets demands for bipartisanship create a cover-up is a country that refuses to learn from history — and then is doomed to repeat it.
via David Sirota: A Bipartisan Effort to Prevent Accountability for the Coronavirus Response Is Underway
Division for division sake is a political act. (ODT)
via Deconstructed Podcast: Are Trump and the Anti-Lockdown Militias Itching for Violence?
Trump just admits he’s not a multi-tasker (ODT)
President Donald Trump once again deflected blame for his administration’s response to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has infected more than 1.2 million people across the country, saying he had been too busy with probes into his conduct as president to ensure the federal stockpile of medical supplies was prepared for a pandemic.
“Well, I’ll be honest, I have a lot of things going on,” Trump told ABC News anchor David Muir on Tuesday. “We had a lot of people that refused to allow the country to be successful. They wasted a lot of time on Russia, Russia, Russia. That turned out to be a total hoax. Then they did Ukraine, Ukraine, and that was a total hoax. Then they impeached the president of the United States for absolutely no reason.”
Alternative opinions immediately get you fired in Trumpland. Diversity not acceptable. (ODT)
via Official Fired for Standing Up to Coronavirus Corruption
Corporations and Government haven’t changed since British East India Company when 40% of the shareholders were British MPs. Lobbying and corruption is more sophisticated these days but not with Trump. He’s as basic as meat and potatoes. In the open Quid Pro Quo (ODT)
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro says authorities have captured 13 “terrorists”, including two US citizens he described as mercenaries, on allegations they were involved in a failed plot to invade the country and oust him.
In a state television address on Monday local time, Maduro showed what he said were the passports and other identification cards of Airan Berry and Luke Denman, who he described as employees of Silvercorp, a Florida-based company whose owner, Jordan Goudreau, has claimed responsibility for the invasion attempt.
via Venezuela coup attempt: American ‘mercenaries’ detained, says Nicolas Maduro
Non-Payment to the UN, Non-Payment to the WHO, Non-Payment to a global fight against Climate Change, No Payment to The Global Covid Fund Do we get a sense that America has left the planet? No they have armed forces in 149 countries and are sanctioning and threatening others even allies if the don’t support them. The clear message you jump we say how high!! (ODT)
President Donald Trump’s brand of “America First” isolationism was on full display Monday as the U.S. declined to participate in a international pledge drive which raised more than $8 billion during its kick-event to create a global fund to develop and deploy diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines to fight the coronavirus pandemic.
The level of Trump’s mendacity is far grosser than that used to sell the Iraq War by claiming that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Then too there were stories of secret laboratories developing biological weapons. Though Trump is purging US intelligence chiefs and replacing them with Trump loyalists, even they could not stomach his latest conspiracy theory. “The intelligence also concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the Covid-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified,” said a statement from the office of the director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell.
The purpose of Trump’s lies is not to convince by rational argument but to dominate the news agenda by outrageous allegations. This simple PR trick has previously worked well for him, but scapegoating China may not be enough to divert attention away from the price Americans have paid for his calamitous mishandling of the pandemic. The casualty figures tell their own grim story: in China there have been 84,373 cases of the illness and 4,643 deaths while in the US there have been just over 1.1 million cases and 64,460 deaths. Trump loyalists will claim that the Chinese are lying, but then they must also explain away the lower loss of life in South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan.
Definition of Insaniy– Trump is but he can’t say it into Herd Immunity but the the leader of a herd of Lemmings. Belief that while death sky rockets now it will have flattened by Nov 2020. In the meantime he’s a rabid dog on the attack of anyone and everyone not kowtowing to him (ODT)
US President Donald Trump had a quick reaction on Sunday, in the US, after former President George W. Bush called for national unity. He attacked Bush.
National unity, Trump made clear, was not on his agenda for the day, even as the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic that has ravaged the country passed 67,000 and tens of millions of out-of-work Americans struggled to get by.
Amid the death and devastation, the President was busy not only assailing Bush but another predecessor as well, embracing a fringe conspiracy theory to accuse former president Barack Obama of masterminding a “hoax” to take him down.
Trump also attacked a prominent Democratic congressman, denigrated the media and threatened to withhold aid to states hard hit by the virus unless they bowed to his demands on immigration policy.
via Bush calls for unity. Trump attacks Bush. And then a host of others
Trump’s accounting methods like his tax returns are not to be publicly seen (ODT)
Those states — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania and Delaware — have recorded 35,718 deaths out of a combined population of about 53.6 million. That mortality rate of 66.6 per 100,000 for the region exceeds the current figure for every European country except Belgium, which, unlike the U.S., includes in its count a large number of deaths in nursing homes that are suspected of being virus-related, but have not been confirmed by testing.
“When @realDonaldTrump makes a macabre ranking, by pointing the finger at Belgium to give the impression that all is well in the U.S.A. I find it disgraceful, the basest of politics.”
via Trump Uses Sleight-of-Hand to Hide His Failure to Save Lives
The act of encouraging members of his base to court death is clearly that of a man without an ounce of empathy, even for those who love and admire him most — and so of a stone-cold killer. You couldn’t ask for more proof that the only sense of empathy he has lies overwhelmingly in his deep and abiding pity for himself (which matches his staggering sense of self-aggrandizement) and perhaps for his children, other billionaires, and fossil-fuel executives. Them, he would save; the rest of us, his base included, are expendable. He’d sacrifice any of us without a second thought if he imagined that it would benefit him or his reelection in any way.
But there’s no point in leaving it at that. After all, as he pushes for a too-swiftly reopened country, he’s declaring open season on Americans of all sorts. And every one of us who will die too soon should be considered another Covidfire missile death and chalked up to a president who, by the time this is over, will truly have given a new meaning to the phrase assassin-in-chief.
It’s time for the global community to come together in the realization that weapons don’t make us safer. Investment in people—including public health and global cooperation—is infinitely more important than propping up the military-industrial complex.
Fortunately, advocacy and community groups across the world are already mobilizing for change. Even during a time of social distancing, people are finding ways to come together and demand better from our governments.
As the leading military spender, the U.S. has an important leadership role to play in transitioning the world away from military spending and towards spending public funds on things that actually build more resilient communities.
If we’re successful, the next generation will get to experience well-funded public health systems, peaceful societies, and the many benefits that come along with investing in people rather than the Pentagon.
“On the criminally irresponsible directives issued and at the insistence by Trump medications are now being promoted and politicized for use in the USA that show little or no effect on Covid-19 other than saving stockmarket shares and the political image of a president rather than lives of Americans on a “what have we got to lose” basis. Trials have shown that the success rate is as good as Trump’s suggestion to use disinfectant. ( ODT)
Emergency drug approval differs from full FDA approval in that it is only valid while the emergency declaration – in this case, the coronavirus pandemic – remains in effect. Remdesivir is not the first drug to receive such approval for treating Covid-19 – the malaria drugs chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine were approved on an emergency basis in late March.
The infectious disease expert is being kept from appearing before a House panel to talk about the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Meanwhile, some states, including Texas and Georgia, have begun to reopen businesses. President Donald Trump has referred to right-wing protesters demanding that states reopen workplaces as “great people,” despite their open flouting of social distancing measures as they protest.
via White House Blocks Anthony Fauci From Testifying Next Week | HuffPost Australia
“To start with these words is a 100% guarantee that you WILL be lied to on an EPIC scale.”
Trump’s predictions are as solid as Swiss Cheese 60k to 70k now 100k and that’s after underquoting the numbers ” I did better than doing nothing” says Trump. Sorry Mr Trump but Ameriricans were left to scramble and they alone have done their best with minimal help from you. You did say “I’m not responsible”. They heve hed more help from China and your declaration “It’s not up to the Fed” proved actions speak louder than ” We are gaunna we have ordered”. false promises. (ODT)
“So, yeah, we’ve lost a lot of people. But if you look at what original projections were — 2.2 million — we’re probably heading to 60,000, 70,000,” Mr Trump said at a press briefing on Monday.
On Wednesday, the number of deaths passed 60,000, eclipsing the number of Americans killed in the Vietnam War.
The death toll currently stands at 62,406, according to the latest figures provided by the US Centers for Disease Control.
“It will magically go away in April,” said the Statue of Liberty figurine, echoing a statement made by Mr Trump earlier this year.
via Chinese state media releases animated propaganda video mocking US coronavirus response – ABC News
In spite of the hysteria, it is important to note that no Americans have been killed or injured as a result of recent Iranian, Russian, Chinese and North Korean actions. When you station ships and planes close to or even on the borders of countries that you have labeled as enemies it would be reasonable to expect that there will be pushback. And as for taking advantage of the virus, it is the United States that has suggested that it would do so in the cases of Iran and Venezuela, exerting “maximum pressure” on both countries in their times of troubles to bring about regime change. If those countries that are accustomed to being regularly targeted by the United States are taking advantage of an opportunity to diminish America’s ability to intervene globally, no one should be surprised, but it is a fantasy to make the hysterical claim that the United States has now become the victim of some kind of vast international conspiracy.
The president erupted at his top advisers when they showed him polling data indicating eroding support in key states due to his bungled coronavirus response.
via Trump Erupts At Campaign Team As His Poll Numbers Slide | HuffPost
Roughly 25% of known virus-related deaths have occurred in the United States.
HE’S YOUR PRESIDENT AMERICA
Confirmed Coronavirus Cases In U.S. Double To 1 Million In Less Than 3 Weeks | HuffPost Australia
ALSO: Trump Tries To Wish Coronavirus Away As Death Toll Climbs
The five places in the U.S. with the highest daily growth rate of Covid-19 cases are all linked to meatpacking plants with active outbreaks. Requiring meat plants to stay open would likely not only put workers at risk, but surrounding communities, too.
Ignoring the warnings of scientists and public health experts, President Trump threatens to disastrously extend his coronavirus chronology from hell into an increasingly painful future by “reopening” the country too soon. By so doing, he will only accelerate the day when the World Leadership Trophy, held by America since 1946, is handed to the People’s Republic of China.
Well, now we have more possible evidence that Trump wasn’t hyping the drug for personal profit:
A top Health and Human Services official who said he was transferred from his post for pushing back on “efforts to fund potentially dangerous drugs promoted by those with political connections” felt pressured to rush access to chloroquine treatments for the coronavirus after President Donald Trump had a conversation about it with a mega-rich donor, a source close to the doctor told NBC News.
Dr. Rick Bright said he was instructed to implement a national program aimed at expanding access to the drug without proper controls and despite the lack of peer-reviewed clinical data on the drug’s effectiveness following a conversation Trump had with Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison, the source said.
Ellison, one of the president’s top supporters in the tech industry, is a member of the White House economic recovery task force. He hosted a big-money fundraiser for Trump at his home in Rancho Mirage, California, in February.
via Trump Sold America A Malaria Drug Bill Of Goods To Please His Big Donor | Crooks and Liars
Dems call for postal voting in November and guess what(ODT)
The RIGHT of INCREASED DEBT & THE SECOND COMING OF THE GFC = BAILOUT THE BANKS AFTER THEY HAVE TAKEN THEIR PROFIT.
via Small Business Owners Sign PPP Loans Without Clear Terms
While Trump is “promising” America and the world he will save it what he is doing is hidden from Americans and generally the world. (ODT)
via U.S. Airstrikes Hit All-Time High as Coronavirus Spreads in Somalia
Trump or Fox News won’t be reporting this or the fact the Chinese have provided assistance, (ODT)
Murdoch Media the voice of Trump have shut up promoting Chloroquine
After aggressively promoting an anti-malaria drug as a “miracle” in the fight against COVID-19—a push that flew in the face of repeated warnings from experts—President Donald Trump and Fox News personalities suddenly appear to be cooling on hydroxychloroquine just as a new study reports the drug could lead to a higher death rate.
via Trump and Fox News Are Suddenly Silent on Their “Miracle” Drug Hydroxychloroquine – Mother Jones
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