A place for progressive atheists.
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Perhaps we can work on convincing the Republicans that they don't need to vote because Trump is a shoe-in anyway. I'm really curious to see how Biden fares in S.C. I really wonder if he has Alzheimers. I knew Regan had it when he was in office.
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Could this get worse? Pence has to approve all information from the CDC re: Coronavirus information and Ttrump expects a miracle re: cure of the virus. Looks like we can expect more 'thoughts and prayers." Fortunately, congress did not follow trump's demand that research into contagious diseases be cut. Maybe trump will stop with the rallies for fear that a big group of people might sneeze in his direction.
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Some good news!
https://www.jpost.com/HEALTH-SCIENCE/Israeli-scien...
And since it's an Israeli state-run lab, there's less likely to be patents and price gouging.
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Heather Cox Richardson
7 hrs ·February 27, 2020 (Thursday)
It appears we are in the chaos that churns in between more stable eras.
The coronavirus is grabbing the headlines, and it is a huge story in its own right, but it also lays bare the rot in the Republican Party that has put Trump in the White House. The coronavirus is a pandemic now, meaning it is a disease that has appeared on a number of continents, and it is killing people, although the numbers of infections and the death rate is so premature that I would not draw any conclusions yet. We know it's not good, but just how not good it might turn out to be is still unclear.
But the coronavirus and the subsequent selling-off in the stock market of the last several days reveals what feels to me like an endpoint of a political era.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the White House by arguing that the activist government of the New Deal, the laws that regulated business, provided a basic social safety net, and promoted infrastructure, were destroying American liberty. "Government is not the solution to our problem;" Reagan said in his inaugural address, "government is the problem."
After 1981, America entered a period when we turned for solutions not to educated experts informing government policy, but rather to individuals who claimed to be outside that sphere of government expertise: men of the people. As we celebrated those "self-made" individualists—usually men-- Congress cut taxes and regulation to free them to run their businesses as they saw fit. After 1981, wealth began to move upward, and yet the Republican Party continued to howl about socialism and insist that we would not have true freedom until all regulations, all taxes, and most government programs were abolished. In their place we would have businessmen who had proven their worth by creating successful businesses. They would run our country in the best way for all of us.
That this system worked well for everyone was a fiction, of course. Republican leaders stayed in power not because a majority of voters agreed with their ideology, but because as their policies moved wealth upward and hurt most Americans, they blamed those economic hardships on people of color, women, and other minorities: "special interests" who were demanding government policies paid for by the taxes of hardworking white men. They also increasingly jiggered the political system to make sure they stayed in power. They disenfranchised Democratic voters and carved up districts so that in 2012, for example, Democrats won a majority of 1.4 million votes for candidates to the House of Representatives, and yet Republicans came away with a 33-seat majority.
The election of Donald Trump to the White House in 2016 was the high water mark of this political mindset. He was an outsider who posed as a successful businessman, disdainful of politics, who promised to gut government bureaucrats—the swamp-- and put into office only the best people, people known for their business acumen or their family connections to others with that skill. Expertise and loyalty to the American government was unimportant—even undesirable. What mattered was the ability to make money and be loyal to the president.
Following in his predecessors' footsteps, Trump slashed regulations, opened up resources to businessmen, and passed a huge tax cut for the wealthy, a tax cut which was supposed to stimulate investment in the economy and promote economic growth. In the midst of growing administration scandals, Trump banked on the fact that a strong economy would keep him in office for a second term and insisted that those opposing his administration, regardless of party, were hostile Democrats who wanted big government "socialism."
Now, a virus from China is exposing the hollowness of a generation of relying on businessmen to manage our government. The administration's response to the coronavirus has been shockingly bad. In 2018, it got rid of the government leadership for handling a pandemic, so we have no one in charge who is trained to handle such a crisis. Then, when the virus broke out, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention insisted on developing its own test, rather than using the guidelines established by the World Health Organization. Their test didn't work, making health officials unable to test people in danger before they got sick. Then, over the advice of the CDC, administration officials decided to evacuate 14 infected patients who had been stranded on a cruise ship in Japan along with healthy travelers. We learned today from a whistleblower that, once landed in the U.S., workers came and went from the facility that housed the patients with no precautions. Now, we have our first case of the coronavirus that appears to have appeared here on its own, and it happened in the same place where these workers came and went (although it is too early to say if there is definitely a connection).
Trump has excused his dismissal of all the experts by saying that they were easy to rehire when necessary, but it has not turned out to be that easy. Today, he appointed a third person to be in charge of the response in addition to the two others he has already named, and, angry at the CDC official who warned Americans that the virus would arrive here sooner or later, he arranged for all statements about the disease to be cleared through Vice President Mike Pence's office. He also revealed his key interest in protecting the stock markets today when he named two new members to the coronavirus task force: Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Director of the National Economic Council Larry Kudlow, who has insisted on television that the virus is "contained."
In a moment that perfectly encapsulated the problem of handling a public health crisis of this magnitude when you are equipped only to promote business, today Secretary of Health and Human Services Alexander Azar, a former drug company executive and pharmaceutical lobbyist, told Congress that when scientists manage to make a vaccine for the coronavirus (12 to 18 months out, by all accounts), not everyone will be able to afford it. "We would want to ensure that we work to make it affordable, but we can't control that price, because we need the private sector to invest. Price controls won't get us there."
This is the modern Republican Party laid bare. Profits before lives, because only businessmen, not government policy, can manage the country.
This moment makes it really clear what happens when the Republicans' ideology comes up against reality. While GOP leaders over the years, and Trump of late, have managed to silence opponents by calling them socialists or making sure they cannot vote, the virus is not going to stop simply by changing the narrative or the body politic. Investors know this, and the dropping stock market shows their realization that you cannot shut down entire countries and keep supply chains and consumer goods moving. The stock market has fallen 11.13% in the past four days, erasing a third of the gains it has made since Trump was elected. We are facing an economic downturn, one that will strain an economy that was excellent indeed for those at the very top, but not good for those who now will be vital to keep consumption levels up… but those very people will be hard pressed to come up with extra income in an economic downturn. It is a problem that the markets are acknowledging with their biggest drops since the 2008 crisis.
This is a crisis that demands expertise and coordinated government health programs, but we no longer have those things. Instead, Trump and his surrogates on the Fox News Channel are falling back on the old arguments that have worked so well for GOP leaders in the past: Democrats are hyping the coronavirus and spooking the markets to hurt the president.
Trump, and Americans in general, are about to discover that there comes a point when image can no longer override reality. We are in the churn of that chaos now. But on the other side of it, we have the potential to rebuild a government that operates in reality, and that works for all of us.
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IL, I sure hope you are right that this represents the end of an era! On a daily basis I wonder how so many people can continue to have confidence in any one in the Republican party. Especially the orange one. I have a neighbor who is running for county commissioner and I always assumed he was a reasonable and nice guy, until I found out he continues to support Trump. Now I have a sign for his opponent in my yard.
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I too, am hoping we are done with the ruination of the Reps. and can get re-started into some real democracy. Democrats are far from perfect and we have had some real issues but I feel that most of our people care about our norms, our laws, and the rule of law, and generally pick decent people for the Cabinet. We definitely need to get out from under the abomination named Trump and all his un-quailed people.
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This is very un PC thing to say, but I think the coarsening of our society overall is one visible result of the lessening of mother- and grandmother-time for kids over the last 40 years, esp group care of babies. I am 58 and when I was 18 most Moms were home with kids through grade school years at least, and many through junior & high school. When you spend a lot of time w your Mom (and or grandmothers) you get a lot of guidance in civilized ways and in empathy. You get good boundaries and met needs. I feel like we need to bring back mothering as an art form that is worthy of respect and support. When I hear universal childcare" I think subsidizing the SAHM of a baby is much more cost effective and a better help to a healthy start.
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Another big change is grandmothers living independently. Growing up DH and I both had a grandmother living with us. My interest in history began when my grandmother told me she was born the year Lincoln died. All of a sudden it wasn't ancient past. It's nice that women don't have to live with their children, but they do in most of those countries that respect the elderly and welcome them into society.
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santabarbarian, substitute the word parent, parenting for mother and I would agree with you. Many people don't understand how to parent. That is a class that should be part of prenatal care for mother and father. Not just taking care of an infant but how to parent throughout the child's life.
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Ananda, that certainly would have been a big help to me. My own folks lived far away when my babies were born and unfortunately my MIL wasn't as much help as I might have had since I was not near good enough for her son. She tolerated me, and I ALWAYS knew it. What training I received was mainly from a friend who was pregnant at the same time I was. Later, I moved to where my parents were and although some of the best learning time had been missed, it was better over-all.
I do think it would be wonderful if mothers could just be mothers for as long as possible. As things are, I think it could be difficult to achieve, but so worthwhile.
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Many European countries have parental leave for both parents. Mom could rotate leave with dad or they could take it at the same time. Of course there is also day care. In France a woman can get corrective surgery and physical therapy after giving birth. Leave it to the French. 😉
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My workplace had parental leave for both mothers and fathers. Usually the mother would take hers first, then the father. I gave the mothers a head start on nursing and bonding time for the fathers. They could have both taken it at once, but usually didn't.
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How to make hand sanitizer. https://m.wikihow.com/Make-Hand-Sanitizer?fbclid=I...
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Contentment comes as the infallible result of great acceptances, great humilities--of not trying to make ourselves this or that, but of surrendering ourselves to the fullness of life--of letting life flow through us. -David Grayson
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I might have to resign from this thread... I am starting to believe in God now, ever since CPAC became ground zero for Coronavirus...
Heh heh
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🤣
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Amen to that, Ananda!
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Yummy, yummy karma
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It hasn't happened yet, but expecting at any time that this administration will jump on the God bandwagon and quote some scripture to place blame anywhere but on team Trump for seriously not understanding the crisis.
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Would not be surprised either since the top admin has to be free from any and all wrong-doing. Amazing to me. No one is right about everything 100 % of the time. Going to be getting so much worse before it gets better.
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Sending thoughts and prayers to the CPAC attendees - but no testing kits.
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No one has ever said the thoughts and prayers have to be for the recipient's good. We've just assumed that.
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hahahahaha!!!
Ok I'll send send thoughts of retirement and prayers for hemorrhoids
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I needed the laugh - hemorrhoids is a good one.
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Yes, a good very needed laugh.
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Heather Cox Richardson
10 hrs ·March 13, 2020 (Friday)
"I don't take responsibility at all."
This quotation, from Trump's answer when a reporter asked him if he took responsibility for the lag in testing for the novel coronavirus, will be in every single history book written about this era.
He went on. When PBS White House correspondent Yamiche Alcindor asked why he doesn't take responsibility for the problems combatting Covid-19 when the White House got rid of the pandemic team in 2018, he answered "I just think that's a nasty question…. When you say me, I didn't do it…. I don't know anything about it." He followed up with "We're doing a great job."
This is the same man who said in his acceptance speech for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination: "I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves. Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it."
Today, at 3:29, Trump held a press conference to announce that he was declaring a national emergency over the novel coronavirus. The national emergency declaration frees up $50 billion in federal resources to fight the novel coronavirus. Immediately after he gave the press conference announcing the designation, the stock market began to rise, and when it closed at 4:00, about a half-hour after he began speaking, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had gone up 1,985 points.
The president immediately sent to supporters—including some congresspeople-- a note with a signed Dow Jones Industrial Average chart, along with screenshots of television coverage of the rising stock market, and a note saying "The President would like to share the attached image with you, and passes along the following message: 'From opening of press conference, biggest day in stock market history!'" (The market's 20% decline over the past couple of weeks is the fastest in history, and yesterday's slide of 2,352 points was the worst day for stocks since the crash of 1987.)
In his press conference, Trump and his advisors also announced that Google had 1700 workers developing a website that would help Americans figure out if they needed a test and, if so, where to get one. His team was actually pretty specific about how that website would work. Unfortunately, the information was simply not true. The company Verily, which is under the same corporate umbrella as Google, is in the early stages of developing such a program for health care workers in the San Francisco Bay area. When New York Times writer Charlie Warzel asked a senior engineer at Google about the program this afternoon, the person answered: "No comment because there is nothing to comment on."
An article today in The Atlantic, written by lifelong Republican Peter Wehner, who worked in three GOP administrations, summed up what some of this craziness means. The title is over-the-top (authors do not write the titles of their articles), but it reads "The Trump Presidency Is Over." Wehner does not mean this literally, of course; he is arguing that the pandemic crisis has finally forced Americans to grapple with the fact that Trump is unfit to be president. They have, Wehner says, "seen the con man behind the curtain." Having recognized that he is worse than useless, he says, they are "treating him as a bystander." Other community leaders are stepping into the place he should have occupied: governors and businessmen and university presidents and sports commissioners. The Trump presidency, he says, is effectively over, although the president, "enraged for having been unmasked, will become more desperate, more embittered, more unhinged." The piece captures the feeling of this week remarkably well, well enough that lawyer and leader of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, George Conway, tweeted that the article is a must-read.
As I write this, at 12:54, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi marshalled a coronavirus bill through the House by a bipartisan vote of 363-40 (all 40 no votes were Republicans, and 9 Democrats and 17 Republicans did not vote. One Independent voted present). I have not seen the final bill, but its general outline would provide benefits to those at the bottom of the economy, suffering from the economic fallout from the pandemic as well as from Covid-19 itself.
Trump today said he would sign the bill, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is not in Washington, D.C., (he's at an event in Kentucky with Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh) so the Senate cannot take it up until Monday. Yesterday, McConnell disparaged the bill as "an ideological wish list" that added "various areas of policy that are barely related, if at all, to the issue before us." He added: "As currently drafted, the proposal appears to impose permanent unfunded mandates on businesses that could cause massive job losses and put thousands of small businesses at risk."
Certainly, the popular mood seems to be changing as hospitals are rushing to set up triage tents in their parking lots and recalling retired doctors, worried the healthcare system is going to be overwhelmed. On Monday, Fox News Channel personality Trish Regan said that Democrats' focus on the coronavirus was "another attempt to impeach the president." They were, she said, trying "to demonize and destroy the president." Today the network announced she is going on hiatus.
One final note. It is my observation that there are two unfortunate things going on in the media right now. First of all, there is a ton of effort to get the administration officials, especially Trump, to admit they screwed up. It's a waste of time: he is a classic narcissist, and he will never admit blame. Ever. We will certainly need to take stock in the future of what went wrong here, but right now this expenditure of energy ain't gonna produce much of use. Better simply to pay attention to those leaders who are working to protect us.
Second, we have a weird cycle going on in which experts on just how bad this virus is are trying to convince unbelievers who have watched the president and the Fox News Channel personalities downplay this disease and now dismiss it. As the experts explain, the unbelievers pooh-pooh them. Then the media tries to show those people how really bad it is, and they push back. Caught in that push-pull are those who really do understand that this is bad and are already terribly worried, and find each warning ratcheting up their anxiety. If that is happening to you, do note that there is a tug-of-war going on in the public discussion, and you are not its target audience.
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I stopped at Lowes yesterday to grab some flowers to plant and overheard an older puffy-faced woman with dyed black hair, scary make-up and a leopard print coat say, "I don't think it's nothin'. I think they couldn't impeach him and now they're trying this to get Trump. I hope it don't work." The sheer stupidity made me grit my teeth to keep from shouting, "First, he WAS impeached, you brainwashed cretin. Second, no one "made up" this pandemic. Why don't you do us all a favor and shut your piehole?!"
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Well, ya know were good, but all of us together aren't good enough to PRODUCE a pandemic virus. I have some family members that aren't quite saying it the way the ladies in Lowes did, but never-the-less think that ALL Democrats hate Trump ( to me that is expending too much energy on him ) and take all opportunities ( Mueller report, impeachment, fake news ) to smear and hopefully destroy him. Trump is like that darn virus. No matter how horrid, it is going to take time to get rid of that much evil. I don't hate anyone, not even Trump but at the same time I will NEVER wish him well and will not feel one ounce of sorrow for him no matter what happens to him that is negative. I tend to regard most in his family the same way.
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And the reporter asked what message he had for the scared public and he went off on the reporter, news outlets in general, and never answered the question. I guess someone asked Pence later and he had an appropriate answer.
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