Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

Jackson Diehl writes about why Putin needs the Lord of the Ramp to win re- election:

Putin needs help. He badly needs a win. He needs, specifically, the reelection of President Trump. In ways both more blatant and more subtle than in 2016, he is trying to make it happen. [snip]

... [C]onsider the gifts Trump has given Putin in the past 3½ years. Trump has all but wrecked Putin’s nemesis, the NATO alliance; this month he abruptly decided to withdraw more than a quarter of U.S. troops from Germany. He opened the door for Russian meddling in the Middle East, and to greater influence over Turkey, Egypt and even Israel. He has poisoned the once-close relations between Washington and Ukraine; President Volodymyr Zelensky has still not been invited to Washington.

Most importantly, Putin has learned that, as Bolton put it in a television interview last week, he can play Trump “like a fiddle.” The whole world watched as Putin induced Trump to announce at their 2018 Helsinki summit that he believed Putin’s denial that Russia intervened in the 2016 election. In private communications, according to Bolton, Putin managed to persuade Trump that Venezuela’s opposition leader was comparable to Hillary Clinton, and thus not worthy of support.

A reelected Trump could be expected to continue his campaign to restore Russia as a member of the Group of Seven nations, providing Putin with an enhanced global platform. He could pull the United States out of NATO once and for all. And he could advance Putin’s most important geopolitical goal, returning Ukraine to Russia’s sphere of influence, while opening the way for the lifting of U.S. and European sanctions on the Russian economy.

At his sparsely- attended campaign kickoff Nuremberg rally in Tulsa, the Lord of the Ramp made plenty of racist, ignorant and inflammatory comments, as is his wont.  But one comment in particular made the biggest splash:

President Trump’s Saturday night remark that he asked officials to “slow the [coronavirus] testing down” sparked harsh rebukes from experts and frustration from his own staffers, who say it undercuts their efforts to reassure Americans as the disease surges around the country.

The president’s comment, which came on the same day that eight states reported their highest-ever single-day case counts, drew a chorus of criticism from congressional Democrats and public health officials, who worry the president is more concerned with saving face than combating the pandemic.

“Looking at it as a scoreboard is the wrong way to think about it,” said Amesh Adalja, an infectious-disease expert at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “To think of it as something you can manipulate or slow down based on what the numbers look like speaks to a complete misunderstanding of what an infectious-disease response should be.”

As they always do after a gaffe or particularly inane comment by the Lord of the Ramp, his toadies were out quickly, claiming he was only joking.  He is, after all, known for his sense of humor.

The Lord of the Ramp also declared in Tulsa that his response to the coronavirus pandemic saved "hundreds of thousands of lives."  Reality says just the opposite:

More than 120,000 Americans have now perished from Covid-19, surpassing the total number of U.S. dead during World War I. Had American leaders taken the decisive, early measures that several other nations took when they had exactly the same information the U.S. did, at exactly the same time in their experience of the novel coronavirus, how many of these Covid-19 deaths could have been prevented?

That isn’t a hypothetical question. And the answer that emerges from a direct comparison of the fatalities in and policies of the U.S. and other countries — South Korea, Australia, Germany, and Singapore — indicates that between 70% and 99% of the Americans who died from this pandemic might have been saved by measures demonstrated by others to have been feasible. (our emphasis)

The entire piece details how what the Lord of the Ramp and his toadies in state governments did made matters worse and cost more lives than otherwise would have been the case.  Meanwhile, the world just saw its largest daily increase in coronavirus cases yet, with the U.S. among those seeing cases surge.

Infidel 753 has an essay on "Hard Reality" and why the reliance by some on a shared, tribal rejection of science- based reality is a serious problem for all of us:

This has become a serious practical problem for our country's response to the covid-19 pandemic because much of the right wing has decided that precautions such as masks, social distancing, and lockdowns are markers of political tribal identity.  To them, adhering to such practices is not a pragmatic effort to minimize danger, but evidence of one's membership in the secular left.  Such delusions come naturally to the religion-dominated mind.  After generations of being taught to disregard or deny evidence in order to reject the theory of evolution, and instead interpret the theory as an ideological assault on religion, it was easy to apply the same response pattern to anthropogenic global warming, and then to anything else that came along.  The end result is a mental state insulated from the real world, in which every new assertion is judged not by whether the evidence supports it, but by whether it is being asserted by "our side" or by the Godless libtards.

The problem is that reality is unaffected by such attitudes.  The pandemic does not care whether somebody believes it's a hoax or not.  The laws of physics that govern the trajectory of infectious micro-droplets when somebody coughs do not care why the person isn't wearing a mask.  Amidst a group of people, the virus does not care whether the gathering is a church service or a BLM rally or a Trump rally.  It simply spreads to new hosts more or less easily depending on whether certain objective conditions are met, as impersonally as a magnet jumps toward a bar of iron if you bring it close enough.

We conclude with our usual strong recommendation that you drop into the same Infidel 753's link round- up for a comprehensive array of links to posts around the internet.  If you can't find something worth your time there, it's probably not worth finding.

Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles/ op eds.

In case you missed the latest blame- shifting and conspiracy- mongering by the Golden Turd:

President Donald Trump went off on a rant accusing hospitals, doctors and nurses of hoarding equipment and intentionally exaggerating the things they need.

Speaking in the Rose Garden Sunday, Trump asked, “How do you go from 10 to 20 to 300,000 masks? Where are the masks going, are they going out the backdoor?”

Indeed, the masks are going in the trash after they’re used. The masks are one-use masks, which Trump said he wants to be able to sanitize them so people can reuse them.

“They have to look into that in New York,” Trump said, noting that he heard they went from 10,000 masks to 300,000 masks. 

“I don’t think it’s hoarding, it’s maybe worse than hoarding,” Trump said.

The crooked cheater is projecting again, suggesting that the most heroic, selfless people in our communities are crooks and cheaters like him.  ER doctor and Executive Director of Committee to Protect Medicare Rob Davidson:

Accusing heroic healthcare workers in NYC of stealing #PPE and #ventilators is an all-time low from @realDonaldTrump. They deserve our praise, and they get slapped in the face from this pitiful man. They give more of themselves in one shift than he could give in 1000 lifetimes.

— Dr. Rob Davidson (@DrRobDavidson) March 29, 2020

As the death toll relentlessly climbs, Golden Turd can't help but give himself a pat on the back should we "only" lose under 200,000 lives:

Anthony S. Fauci, the White House adviser, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” that models suggest the virus could cause between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths and that millions of people could be infected. But he stressed that the 200,000 figure was a worst-case estimate that is unlikely to come to pass.

In the Rose Garden on Sunday, Trump compared those numbers favorably with the more than 2 million deaths forecast as a worst-case scenario had the nation not taken strict measures to respond to the virus. If coronavirus-related deaths remained under 200,000, he said, “we all together have done a very good job.”

Spoken like a true sociopath who ignored the health experts, dragged his feet, and placed more value on "the markets" than on human life.

Meanwhile, let's get into the Wayback Machine to remind the Golden Turd about how his regime bungled the medical supply issue from the get go:

The U.S. State Department shipped 17.8 million tons of donated coronavirus medical supplies to China seven weeks ago, when health experts and some American lawmakers were already seeking federal action to prepare the country for the disease.

The massive shipment to China included medical masks, gowns and respirators, now in desperately short supply across America. The supplies were contributed by American companies and nonprofits, according to a U.S. Agency for International Development official.

Maybe should have checked our own stockpiles first? Nah, too competent!

Let's stick with the State Department, run by odious toady Mike "Pompous" Pompeo. Here's  Jackson Diehl on some of what Pompeo has been doing to weaken what's left of our standing in the world:

Let’s recall how the U.S. secretary of state has historically behaved at a time of grave international crisis: circling the globe (at least telephonically); formulating a coherent multilateral response; and lining up nations behind it — starting with America’s closest allies.

Now, consider how Mike Pompeo spent his time last week, as cases of covid-19 soared in the United States and numerous other countries. He kicked off Monday by indulging in a pointless war of words with Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, whom he accused of lying about the country’s grave coronavirus outbreak. [snip]

On Wednesday, Pompeo had an opportunity to lead when foreign ministers of the Group of Seven convened by telephone. James A. Baker III, George Shultz or Madeleine Albright would have emerged with a clear statement of purpose by the world’s leading democracies — perhaps a commitment to aiding the poor nations and refugees that face devastation by the new disease.

Instead, Pompeo blocked the G-7 from issuing any communique after the other ministers sensibly refused to go along with his petty insistence that it refer to the “Wuhan virus.” The message he sent was clear: Scoring a rhetorical point against Beijing is more important to this U.S. administration than forging a consensus with Britain, France, Germany and other close allies.

For all the evidence of Golden Turd's incompetence, vindictiveness and evil you won't ever see on any of the national network news evening broadcasts (they're failing even more spectacularly than they did in 2016), Digby has the lowlights of his latest "briefing."

As we usually do, we highly recommend you visit Infidel 753's link round-up for a much more comprehensive view of what's going on all over the world.  Go!

If Only The Washington Post Editorial Board Read The Post's Reporting

From a news report on today's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle front page:

As President Obama was weighing how to halt Islamic State advances in Iraq, some of the strongest resistance to boosting U.S. involvement came from a surprising place: a war-weary military that has grown increasingly skeptical that force can prevail in a conflict fueled by political and religious grievances.

Top military officials, who have typically argued for more combat power to overcome battlefield setbacks over the past decade, emerged in recent White House debates as consistent voices of caution in Iraq. Their shift reflects the paucity of good options and a reluctance to suffer more combat deaths in a war in which America’s political leaders are far from committed and Iraqis have shown limited will to fight.

“After the past 12 years in the Middle East, there is a real focus by senior military leaders on understanding what the endgame is,” said a military official, “and asking the question, ‘To what end are we doing this?’ ”  (our emphasis)

From the lead editorial in today's once great Washington Post Bezos Bugle:

Mr. Obama’s escalation nevertheless is most notable for excluding the steps that American and Iraqi commanders and military experts have been saying for a year are necessary to decisively reverse the Islamic State’s momentum. These include the deployment of U.S. advisers to front-line Iraqi units, along with spotters who can call in airstrikes, and an increase of close-in air support.

Such tactics worked during the U.S. “surge” in Iraq, and they allowed Afghanistan’s Northern Alliance to overthrow the Taliban government in 2001-2002. That they are not being used now, despite the Islamic State’s recent gains, seems to be explained only by Mr. Obama’s political resistance to reversing his decision to withdraw U.S. forces four years ago.  (our emphasis)

Perhaps it's too much to expect the neo-conservatives on the Post's Bugle's editorial board =cough= Fred Hiatt =cough= "Action" Jackson Diehl =cough= to absorb the reporting of their own staff, or to ever ask "to what end are we doing this?"  Rather than being confused with the facts, they prefer to continue to bang the neo-con drum in an effort to browbeat  President Obama (contrary to the advice of his military officials) into sending someone else's children into war.  Of course, both Diehl and Hiatt were vociferous cheerleaders for Dumbya's Iraq misadventure War and, to no one's surprise, have learned precisely nothing from that experience.  Also, we seem to recall that one of the policies President Obama ran on in 2008 was to bring the troops home from Iraq (in accordance with the timetable set by the status of forces agreement with Iraq signed by -- wait for it -- the Post's Bugle's "surge" hero Dumbya). 

No, it seems the neo-cons of the editorial board are determined to have the United States make the same mistakes they foolishly counseled back in 2003.  Fortunately, no one is listening to them.

(Image:   Fightin' 101st Keyboarder Jackson Diehl -- or is that "J. Fred Muggs" Hiatt?)