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solarbirdShorter list today. Some of it is pretty intense, though. And definitely evil.
Big GOP leadership confab at Camp David this weekend; people are presuming it's a strategy meeting, and it probably is. Maybe some news on that Monday.
Note it's the end of the week and exactly nothing came out of the "IT'S HAPPENING!!1!1!" bullshit from Trump et al at the beginning of the week.
Here's the headlines. And as always, Cascadia Now.
----- 1 -----
Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown
What went wrong in the president’s first real crisis — and what does it mean for the US?
Edward Luce in Washington
May 13 2020
https://www.ft.com/content/97dc7de6-940b-11ea-abcd-371e24b679ed
When the history is written of how America handled the global era’s first real pandemic, March 6 will leap out of the timeline. That was the day Donald Trump visited the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. His foray to the world’s best disease research body was meant to showcase that America had everything under control. It came midway between the time he was still denying the coronavirus posed a threat and the moment he said he had always known it could ravage America.
Shortly before the CDC visit, Trump said “within a couple of days, [infections are] going to be down to close to zero”. The US then had 15 cases. “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” A few days afterwards, he claimed: “I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” That afternoon at the CDC provides an X-ray into Trump’s mind at the halfway point between denial and acceptance.
...
What the headlines missed was a boast that posterity will take more seriously than Trump’s self-estimated IQ, or the exaggerated test numbers (the true number of CDC kits by March was 75,000). Trump proclaimed that America was leading the world. South Korea had its first infection on January 20, the same day as America’s first case, and was, he said, calling America for help. “They have a lot of people that are infected; we don’t.” “All I say is, ‘Be calm,’” said the president. “Everyone is relying on us. The world is relying on us.”
He could just as well have said baseball is popular or foreigners love New York. American leadership in any disaster, whether a tsunami or an Ebola outbreak, has been a truism for decades. The US is renowned for helping others in an emergency.
In hindsight, Trump’s claim to global leadership leaps out. History will mark Covid-19 as the first time that ceased to be true. US airlifts have been missing in action. America cannot even supply itself.
South Korea, which has a population density nearly 15 times greater and is next door to China, has lost a total of 259 lives to the disease. There have been days when America has lost 10 times that number. The US death toll is now approaching 90,000.
...
An administration official says advising Trump is like “bringing fruits to the volcano” – Trump being the lava source. “You’re trying to appease a great force that’s impervious to reason,” says the official.
...
America’s foreign partners have had an equally sharp reminder of Trump’s way of doing business. Few western leaders are as ideologically aligned with Trump as Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister. Early into the epidemic, Morrison created a national cabinet that meets at least once a week. It includes every state premier of the two main parties. Morrison’s unity cabinet projects an air of bipartisan resolve in a country that has lost just under 100 people to coronavirus in three months. Some days, America has lost more people to it every hour.
Trump, by contrast, plays US state governors against each other, much as he does with his staff. Republican states have received considerably more ventilators and personal protective equipment per capita than Democratic states, in spite of having far lower rates of hospitalisation. Trump says America is fighting a war against Covid-19. In practice, he is stoking national disunity. “It’s like saying to the governors that each state has to produce its own tanks and bullets,” says Bernard. “You’re on your own. It’s not my responsibility.”
----- 2 -----
Jeffrey Sachs on the Catastrophic American Response to the Coronavirus
By Isaac Chotiner
April 21, 2020
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/jeffrey-sachs-on-the-catastrophic-american-response-to-the-coronavirus
In the early nineties, the economist Jeffrey Sachs was known as a “shock therapist,” for advising the Soviet Union on its controversial transition to a free-market economy. Since then, Sachs has shifted his focus to poverty alleviation and international development, becoming one of the most visible academics in the world. His book “The End of Poverty,” from 2005, imagined a globe free of the worst forms of destitution; Sachs also attributed misgovernment in much of Africa to poverty, rather than the other way around. (This thesis was much debated by other economists and development experts who were more skeptical about the impact of foreign aid.) From 2002 to 2016, Sachs was the director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute; he is currently a professor at the university and an adviser to the United Nations. He endorsed Bernie Sanders for President in January and has occasionally advised the senator.
I recently spoke by phone with Sachs about the coronavirus and the challenges that the crisis poses to international coöperation and the world economy. His upcoming book is “The Ages of Globalization.” In our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed the root causes of American decline, why some poorer countries have so far avoided large outbreaks, and how Donald Trump has failed to meet even the low expectations that internationalists have for the United States.
Q: One dominant theme in the coverage of the coronavirus has been the supposed trade-off between the economy and our health. In a short-term or a long-term sense, do you accept that premise?
A: The only way to have a viable economy and society is to control this epidemic. So it’s not really a trade-off. The question is how to be effective in controlling the epidemic and driving the transmission of the disease to very low levels. Simply letting the virus run through the society would be unacceptably costly, and that’s why essentially no country in the world is doing that. The real issue is to be effective in the response, and unfortunately the United States has not been effective so far.
...
Q: Is there some leader Trump reminds you of whom you’ve worked with?
A: Trump is the worst political leader I have experienced in all of my professional life, which is forty years of working with governments at a high level. I’ve never seen anything like the narcissism of this man, and here we are, a country so rich in expertise, in resources, in capacities, and yet we’re watching a complete failure of a political response—with a massive loss of life—in real time. It’s quite shocking, because Trump not only does not know how to approach this issue but he blocks those who do.
----- 3 -----
Replace Trump And Bolster The CDC, A Leading Medical Journal Urges
May 15, 2020
Bill Chappell
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/15/856733300/replace-trump-and-bolster-the-cdc-a-leading-medical-journal-urges
Americans should oust President Trump from the White House and elect a leader who will support – rather than undermine – public health experts who are battling the COVID-19 pandemic, British medical journal The Lancet says in a newly published editorial.
The unsigned editorial sharply criticizes the Trump administration, saying it has marginalized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to a degree that is dangerous for both the U.S. and the world.
"Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics," the journal says.
Two months after Trump declared a national emergency over the coronavirus, the U.S. is by far the worst-hit country in the world, with more than 1.4 million confirmed cases and 85,000 deaths from COVID-19, as of midday Friday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Far from the worst-hit parts of New York state, new outbreaks are emerging in places such as Minnesota and Iowa – developments that The Lancet says are renewing questions about what it calls the Trump administration's "inconsistent and incoherent national response" to the crisis.
"The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets — vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear," the journal states. "But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency."
Seeking to lay a pile of critical failings at Trump's feet, the editorial — titled "Reviving the U.S. CDC" — says a federal agency that was once "the gold standard for global disease detection and control" has devolved into an "ineffective and nominal adviser" on the U.S. response to a disease that poses a public health threat of historic proportions.
----- 4 -----
Jeff Gammage
twitter.com/JeffGammage
14 May 2020
https://twitter.com/JeffGammage/status/1261095441896218625
BREAKING: Immigrant advocates say detained migrant families were offered a choice today by ICE: Be separated, the children sent out, or be held together indefinitely amid the pandemic. twitter.com/PhillyInquirer
In news conference tonight, advocates say families at all three family detention centers were called in one by one and told to decide. The three centers include one in Berks County, Pa. Two in Texas. twitter.com/PhillyInquirer
ICE asked at least one family if they wanted to place their child for adoption, advocates say. Some were intimidated into signing forms they didn’t understand, they say. twitter.com/PhillyInquirer
----- 5 -----
Seizing opportunity, DeVos directs coronavirus funds to private schools
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is exploiting the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package to "throw a lifeline" to the private schools she's long championed.
May 15, 2020, 7:40 AM PDT
By Steve Benen
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/seizing-opportunity-devos-directs-coronavirus-funds-private-schools-n1207791
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos hasn't made much of an effort to hide her disregard for American public education. On the contrary, DeVos has long been an enthusiastic proponent of school vouchers, which would effectively privatize the nation's K-12 system through coupons families would take to religious and other private institutions.
The problem, at least from the Michigan Republican's perspective, is that Congress has limited DeVos' ability to funnel public tax dollars into private education. The New York Times reports, however, that the conservative Education secretary is exploiting the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package to "throw a lifeline" to the private schools she's long championed, despite the fact that the law intended to direct those federal funds primarily for public schools and colleges.
----- 6 -----
State Department inspector general fired
By Tal Axelrod - 05/15/20
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/498106-state-department-inspector-general-fired-report
State Department Inspector General Steve Linick was ousted Friday evening, becoming the latest government watchdog to be removed from his post.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed to The Hill that Ambassador Stephen Akard, a former career Foreign Service officer, will replace Linick, who was appointed to the role in 2013 by then-President Obama.
“On Sept. 11, 2019, Ambassador Akard was confirmed by the Senate, 90-2, to lead the Department’s Office of Foreign Missions and we look forward to him leading the Office of the Inspector General,” the spokesperson said.
Linick, whose ouster was first reported by Politico, played a small role in President Trump’s impeachment, providing documents to lawmakers that had been handed over to the State Department by Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer.
----- 7 -----
If Trump had been in charge during World War II, this column would be in German
By Max Boot, Columnist
May 15, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/15/if-trump-had-been-charge-during-world-war-ii-this-column-would-be-german/
The 75th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany got me thinking about how World War II might have turned out if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had acted like President Donald J. Trump.
Picture the scene a few months after Pearl Harbor. The first U.S. troops have arrived in England, and the Doolittle raiders have bombed Tokyo. But even though the war has just begun, the Trumpified FDR is already losing interest. One day he says the war is already won; the next day that we will just have to accept the occupation of France because that’s the way life is. He speculates that mobilization might be unnecessary if we can develop a “death ray” straight out of a Buck Rogers comic strip. He complains that rationing and curfews are very unpopular and will have to end soon. He tells the governors that if they want to keep on fighting, they will have to take charge of manufacturing ships, tanks and aircraft. Trumpy FDR prefers to hold mass rallies to berate his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. He even suggests that Hoover belongs in jail along with the leading Republican congressmen — “Martin, Barton and Fish.”
----- 8 -----
In filing deadline surprise, controversial state Rep. Matt Shea won’t seek reelection
By Jim Brunner and Joseph O’Sullivan
May 15, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/in-filing-deadline-surprise-controversial-state-rep-matt-shea-wont-seek-reelection/
[EDITOR: This bugs me. A lot. This is the guy who worked with the rightist terrorists in Oregon, and who wrote up plans for the fundamentalist religious state he wants to be set up that involves mass killings of non-Christians and worse. Something's up - like, he's going to be too busy planning/executing on more violence and/or has given up on achieving his plans in state government.]
Controversial Spokane Valley state Rep. Matt Shea, who was suspended from the House Republican caucus after an investigation concluded he had engaged in domestic terrorism, will not seek reelection this fall.
Shea did not file to run again for the Legislature as the candidate filing deadline for the August primary expired Friday afternoon, said Mike McLaughlin, elections manager for the Spokane County Auditor’s Office. Shea did, however, file to run as a Republican precinct committee officer.
The surprise development came after Shea had for months defiantly refused calls from Republican and Democratic leaders to resign, vowing to fight on and not bow down to what he called “a coup” against him.
Shea’s decision came after a House-commissioned investigation released in December concluded the lawmaker planned and participated in domestic terrorism against the United States with his involvement in a trio of standoffs against the government.
That report — which was forwarded to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI – alleged the Shea assisted “in the planning and preparation” of the 2016 armed takeover at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon. It also examined Shea’s travel to the 2014 armed standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada, and a 2015 conflict in Bonner County, Idaho.
----- 9 -----
Your Editor
twitter.com/solarbirdy
16 May 2020
https://twitter.com/solarbirdy/status/1261569966442033152
Georgia. Note how the X axis is in nothing like chronological order. Note how it's being shipped around as justification for "opening back up." Note how it's a complete lie, how the data is sorted to make it look like a smooth decline.
This is obscene.
(Clip is from Maddow.)
[EMBEDDED VIDEO: Rachael Maddow going off about a Georgia Department of Public Health case count graph being released in a date order arranged to present the appearance of a clear COVID-19 case count decline. As you read the graph left to right, the case counts show a clear and consistent drop, but if you look closely, the dates hop back and forth in time, because the graph is designed to deceive. Governor Kemp "apologised" for the "error" and it has been retracted - basically because they got caught by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who noticed it first.
This is all in line with my 21 April writeup on the Republican plan.]
Big GOP leadership confab at Camp David this weekend; people are presuming it's a strategy meeting, and it probably is. Maybe some news on that Monday.
Note it's the end of the week and exactly nothing came out of the "IT'S HAPPENING!!1!1!" bullshit from Trump et al at the beginning of the week.
Here's the headlines. And as always, Cascadia Now.
- Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown
- Jeffrey Sachs on the Catastrophic American Response to the Coronavirus
- Replace Trump And Bolster The CDC, A Leading Medical Journal Urges
- ICE to detained migrants, refugees: "Be separated, the children sent out, or be held together indefinitely amid the pandemic."
- Seizing opportunity, DeVos directs coronavirus funds to private schools
- State Department inspector general fired [EDITOR: Nothing happens late Friday night in DC unless it's nefarious. Nothing. This is retaliation.]
- If Trump had been in charge during World War II, this column would be in German
- In filing deadline surprise, controversial state Rep. Matt Shea won’t seek reelection
- Georgia Department of Public Health releases out-of-order graph to mislead Georgians on COVID-19
----- 1 -----
Inside Trump’s coronavirus meltdown
What went wrong in the president’s first real crisis — and what does it mean for the US?
Edward Luce in Washington
May 13 2020
https://www.ft.com/content/97dc7de6-940b-11ea-abcd-371e24b679ed
When the history is written of how America handled the global era’s first real pandemic, March 6 will leap out of the timeline. That was the day Donald Trump visited the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. His foray to the world’s best disease research body was meant to showcase that America had everything under control. It came midway between the time he was still denying the coronavirus posed a threat and the moment he said he had always known it could ravage America.
Shortly before the CDC visit, Trump said “within a couple of days, [infections are] going to be down to close to zero”. The US then had 15 cases. “One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” A few days afterwards, he claimed: “I’ve felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” That afternoon at the CDC provides an X-ray into Trump’s mind at the halfway point between denial and acceptance.
...
What the headlines missed was a boast that posterity will take more seriously than Trump’s self-estimated IQ, or the exaggerated test numbers (the true number of CDC kits by March was 75,000). Trump proclaimed that America was leading the world. South Korea had its first infection on January 20, the same day as America’s first case, and was, he said, calling America for help. “They have a lot of people that are infected; we don’t.” “All I say is, ‘Be calm,’” said the president. “Everyone is relying on us. The world is relying on us.”
He could just as well have said baseball is popular or foreigners love New York. American leadership in any disaster, whether a tsunami or an Ebola outbreak, has been a truism for decades. The US is renowned for helping others in an emergency.
In hindsight, Trump’s claim to global leadership leaps out. History will mark Covid-19 as the first time that ceased to be true. US airlifts have been missing in action. America cannot even supply itself.
South Korea, which has a population density nearly 15 times greater and is next door to China, has lost a total of 259 lives to the disease. There have been days when America has lost 10 times that number. The US death toll is now approaching 90,000.
...
An administration official says advising Trump is like “bringing fruits to the volcano” – Trump being the lava source. “You’re trying to appease a great force that’s impervious to reason,” says the official.
...
America’s foreign partners have had an equally sharp reminder of Trump’s way of doing business. Few western leaders are as ideologically aligned with Trump as Scott Morrison, Australia’s prime minister. Early into the epidemic, Morrison created a national cabinet that meets at least once a week. It includes every state premier of the two main parties. Morrison’s unity cabinet projects an air of bipartisan resolve in a country that has lost just under 100 people to coronavirus in three months. Some days, America has lost more people to it every hour.
Trump, by contrast, plays US state governors against each other, much as he does with his staff. Republican states have received considerably more ventilators and personal protective equipment per capita than Democratic states, in spite of having far lower rates of hospitalisation. Trump says America is fighting a war against Covid-19. In practice, he is stoking national disunity. “It’s like saying to the governors that each state has to produce its own tanks and bullets,” says Bernard. “You’re on your own. It’s not my responsibility.”
----- 2 -----
Jeffrey Sachs on the Catastrophic American Response to the Coronavirus
By Isaac Chotiner
April 21, 2020
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/jeffrey-sachs-on-the-catastrophic-american-response-to-the-coronavirus
In the early nineties, the economist Jeffrey Sachs was known as a “shock therapist,” for advising the Soviet Union on its controversial transition to a free-market economy. Since then, Sachs has shifted his focus to poverty alleviation and international development, becoming one of the most visible academics in the world. His book “The End of Poverty,” from 2005, imagined a globe free of the worst forms of destitution; Sachs also attributed misgovernment in much of Africa to poverty, rather than the other way around. (This thesis was much debated by other economists and development experts who were more skeptical about the impact of foreign aid.) From 2002 to 2016, Sachs was the director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute; he is currently a professor at the university and an adviser to the United Nations. He endorsed Bernie Sanders for President in January and has occasionally advised the senator.
I recently spoke by phone with Sachs about the coronavirus and the challenges that the crisis poses to international coöperation and the world economy. His upcoming book is “The Ages of Globalization.” In our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, we also discussed the root causes of American decline, why some poorer countries have so far avoided large outbreaks, and how Donald Trump has failed to meet even the low expectations that internationalists have for the United States.
Q: One dominant theme in the coverage of the coronavirus has been the supposed trade-off between the economy and our health. In a short-term or a long-term sense, do you accept that premise?
A: The only way to have a viable economy and society is to control this epidemic. So it’s not really a trade-off. The question is how to be effective in controlling the epidemic and driving the transmission of the disease to very low levels. Simply letting the virus run through the society would be unacceptably costly, and that’s why essentially no country in the world is doing that. The real issue is to be effective in the response, and unfortunately the United States has not been effective so far.
...
Q: Is there some leader Trump reminds you of whom you’ve worked with?
A: Trump is the worst political leader I have experienced in all of my professional life, which is forty years of working with governments at a high level. I’ve never seen anything like the narcissism of this man, and here we are, a country so rich in expertise, in resources, in capacities, and yet we’re watching a complete failure of a political response—with a massive loss of life—in real time. It’s quite shocking, because Trump not only does not know how to approach this issue but he blocks those who do.
----- 3 -----
Replace Trump And Bolster The CDC, A Leading Medical Journal Urges
May 15, 2020
Bill Chappell
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/05/15/856733300/replace-trump-and-bolster-the-cdc-a-leading-medical-journal-urges
Americans should oust President Trump from the White House and elect a leader who will support – rather than undermine – public health experts who are battling the COVID-19 pandemic, British medical journal The Lancet says in a newly published editorial.
The unsigned editorial sharply criticizes the Trump administration, saying it has marginalized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to a degree that is dangerous for both the U.S. and the world.
"Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics," the journal says.
Two months after Trump declared a national emergency over the coronavirus, the U.S. is by far the worst-hit country in the world, with more than 1.4 million confirmed cases and 85,000 deaths from COVID-19, as of midday Friday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.
Far from the worst-hit parts of New York state, new outbreaks are emerging in places such as Minnesota and Iowa – developments that The Lancet says are renewing questions about what it calls the Trump administration's "inconsistent and incoherent national response" to the crisis.
"The Administration is obsessed with magic bullets — vaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear," the journal states. "But only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency."
Seeking to lay a pile of critical failings at Trump's feet, the editorial — titled "Reviving the U.S. CDC" — says a federal agency that was once "the gold standard for global disease detection and control" has devolved into an "ineffective and nominal adviser" on the U.S. response to a disease that poses a public health threat of historic proportions.
----- 4 -----
Jeff Gammage
twitter.com/JeffGammage
14 May 2020
https://twitter.com/JeffGammage/status/1261095441896218625
BREAKING: Immigrant advocates say detained migrant families were offered a choice today by ICE: Be separated, the children sent out, or be held together indefinitely amid the pandemic. twitter.com/PhillyInquirer
In news conference tonight, advocates say families at all three family detention centers were called in one by one and told to decide. The three centers include one in Berks County, Pa. Two in Texas. twitter.com/PhillyInquirer
ICE asked at least one family if they wanted to place their child for adoption, advocates say. Some were intimidated into signing forms they didn’t understand, they say. twitter.com/PhillyInquirer
----- 5 -----
Seizing opportunity, DeVos directs coronavirus funds to private schools
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is exploiting the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package to "throw a lifeline" to the private schools she's long championed.
May 15, 2020, 7:40 AM PDT
By Steve Benen
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/seizing-opportunity-devos-directs-coronavirus-funds-private-schools-n1207791
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos hasn't made much of an effort to hide her disregard for American public education. On the contrary, DeVos has long been an enthusiastic proponent of school vouchers, which would effectively privatize the nation's K-12 system through coupons families would take to religious and other private institutions.
The problem, at least from the Michigan Republican's perspective, is that Congress has limited DeVos' ability to funnel public tax dollars into private education. The New York Times reports, however, that the conservative Education secretary is exploiting the $2 trillion coronavirus aid package to "throw a lifeline" to the private schools she's long championed, despite the fact that the law intended to direct those federal funds primarily for public schools and colleges.
----- 6 -----
State Department inspector general fired
By Tal Axelrod - 05/15/20
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/498106-state-department-inspector-general-fired-report
State Department Inspector General Steve Linick was ousted Friday evening, becoming the latest government watchdog to be removed from his post.
A State Department spokesperson confirmed to The Hill that Ambassador Stephen Akard, a former career Foreign Service officer, will replace Linick, who was appointed to the role in 2013 by then-President Obama.
“On Sept. 11, 2019, Ambassador Akard was confirmed by the Senate, 90-2, to lead the Department’s Office of Foreign Missions and we look forward to him leading the Office of the Inspector General,” the spokesperson said.
Linick, whose ouster was first reported by Politico, played a small role in President Trump’s impeachment, providing documents to lawmakers that had been handed over to the State Department by Rudy Giuliani, the president's personal lawyer.
----- 7 -----
If Trump had been in charge during World War II, this column would be in German
By Max Boot, Columnist
May 15, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/15/if-trump-had-been-charge-during-world-war-ii-this-column-would-be-german/
The 75th anniversary of the Allied victory over Nazi Germany got me thinking about how World War II might have turned out if President Franklin D. Roosevelt had acted like President Donald J. Trump.
Picture the scene a few months after Pearl Harbor. The first U.S. troops have arrived in England, and the Doolittle raiders have bombed Tokyo. But even though the war has just begun, the Trumpified FDR is already losing interest. One day he says the war is already won; the next day that we will just have to accept the occupation of France because that’s the way life is. He speculates that mobilization might be unnecessary if we can develop a “death ray” straight out of a Buck Rogers comic strip. He complains that rationing and curfews are very unpopular and will have to end soon. He tells the governors that if they want to keep on fighting, they will have to take charge of manufacturing ships, tanks and aircraft. Trumpy FDR prefers to hold mass rallies to berate his predecessor, Herbert Hoover. He even suggests that Hoover belongs in jail along with the leading Republican congressmen — “Martin, Barton and Fish.”
----- 8 -----
In filing deadline surprise, controversial state Rep. Matt Shea won’t seek reelection
By Jim Brunner and Joseph O’Sullivan
May 15, 2020
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/in-filing-deadline-surprise-controversial-state-rep-matt-shea-wont-seek-reelection/
[EDITOR: This bugs me. A lot. This is the guy who worked with the rightist terrorists in Oregon, and who wrote up plans for the fundamentalist religious state he wants to be set up that involves mass killings of non-Christians and worse. Something's up - like, he's going to be too busy planning/executing on more violence and/or has given up on achieving his plans in state government.]
Controversial Spokane Valley state Rep. Matt Shea, who was suspended from the House Republican caucus after an investigation concluded he had engaged in domestic terrorism, will not seek reelection this fall.
Shea did not file to run again for the Legislature as the candidate filing deadline for the August primary expired Friday afternoon, said Mike McLaughlin, elections manager for the Spokane County Auditor’s Office. Shea did, however, file to run as a Republican precinct committee officer.
The surprise development came after Shea had for months defiantly refused calls from Republican and Democratic leaders to resign, vowing to fight on and not bow down to what he called “a coup” against him.
Shea’s decision came after a House-commissioned investigation released in December concluded the lawmaker planned and participated in domestic terrorism against the United States with his involvement in a trio of standoffs against the government.
That report — which was forwarded to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the FBI – alleged the Shea assisted “in the planning and preparation” of the 2016 armed takeover at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon. It also examined Shea’s travel to the 2014 armed standoff in Bunkerville, Nevada, and a 2015 conflict in Bonner County, Idaho.
----- 9 -----
Your Editor
twitter.com/solarbirdy
16 May 2020
https://twitter.com/solarbirdy/status/1261569966442033152
Georgia. Note how the X axis is in nothing like chronological order. Note how it's being shipped around as justification for "opening back up." Note how it's a complete lie, how the data is sorted to make it look like a smooth decline.
This is obscene.
(Clip is from Maddow.)
[EMBEDDED VIDEO: Rachael Maddow going off about a Georgia Department of Public Health case count graph being released in a date order arranged to present the appearance of a clear COVID-19 case count decline. As you read the graph left to right, the case counts show a clear and consistent drop, but if you look closely, the dates hop back and forth in time, because the graph is designed to deceive. Governor Kemp "apologised" for the "error" and it has been retracted - basically because they got caught by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, who noticed it first.
This is all in line with my 21 April writeup on the Republican plan.]
