The Ledes

Friday, October 11, 2024

Washington Post: “Floridians began returning to damaged and waterlogged homes on Thursday after Hurricane Milton carved a path of destruction and grief across the state, the second massive storm to strike Florida in as many weeks. At least 14 storm-related deaths were attributed to the hurricane, which made landfall south of Sarasota at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, officials said. Six of them were killed when two tornadoes touched down ahead of the storm in St. Lucie County on Florida’s central Atlantic coast. The deadly tornadoes, rising waters, torrential rain and punishing winds battered the state from coast to coast as Milton churned eastward before heading out to sea early Thursday.”

Washington Post: “Twelve people were rescued from an inactive Colorado gold mine after they were trapped 1,000 feet underground for about six hours following an elevator malfunction. One person was killed in the accident, which happened about 500 feet underground at the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine near Cripple Creek, Colo., Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell said at a Thursday news conference. The site is a tourist attraction. Eleven other people aboard the elevator at the time, including two children, were rescued shortly after the mechanical malfunction, which Mikesell said 'created a severe danger for the participants.' He said four suffered minor injuries.... Twelve others in a separate group remained trapped in a mine shaft 1,000 feet underground for several hours after the incident, before they were rescued Thursday evening, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said.”

The Wires
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The Ledes

Thursday, October 10, 2024

CNBC: “The pace of price increases over the past year was higher than forecast in September while jobless claims posted an unexpected jump following Hurricane Helene and the Boeing strike, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The consumer price index, a broad gauge measuring the costs of goods and services across the U.S. economy, increased a seasonally adjusted 0.2% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.4%. Both readings were 0.1 percentage point above the Dow Jones consensus. The annual inflation rate was 0.1 percentage point lower than August and is the lowest since February 2021.”

The New York Times' live updates of Hurrucane Milton consequences Thursday are here: “Milton was still producing damaging hurricane-force winds and heavy rainfall to parts of East and Central Florida, forecasters said early Thursday, even as the powerful storm roared away from the Atlantic coast and left deaths and widespread damage across the state. Cities along Florida’s east coast are now facing flash flooding, damaging winds and storm surges. Some had already been battered by powerful tornadoes spun out by the storm before it made landfall on the Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane. In [St. Lucie] county [Fort Pierce], several people in a retirement community were killed by a tornado, the police said.... More than three million customers were without power in Florida as of early Thursday.” ~~~

     ~~~ Here are the Weater Channel's live updates.

CNN: “The 2024 Nobel Prize in literature has been awarded to Han Kang, a South Korean author, for her 'intense poetic prose that confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.' Han, 53, began her career with a group of poems in a South Korean magazine, before making her prose debut in 1995 with a short story collection. She later began writing longer prose works, most notably 'The Vegetarian,' one of her first books to be translated into English. The novel, which won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016, charts a young woman’s attempt to live a more 'plant-like' existence after suffering macabre nightmares about human cruelty. Han is the first South Korean author to win the literature prize, and just the 18th woman out of the 117 prizes awarded since 1901.” The New York Times story is here.

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Public Service Announcement

Washington Post: "Americans can again order free rapid coronavirus tests by mail, the Biden administration announced Thursday. People can request four free at-home tests per household through covidtests.gov. They will begin shipping Monday. The move comes ahead of an expected winter wave of coronavirus cases. The September revival of the free testing program is in line with the Biden administration’s strategy to respond to the coronavirus as part of a broader public health campaign to protect Americans from respiratory viruses, including influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), that surge every fall and winter. But free tests were not mailed during the summer wave, which wastewater surveillance data shows is now receding."

Washington Post: “Comedy news outlet the Onion — reinvigorated by new ownership over this year — is bringing back its once-popular video parodies of cable news. But this time, there’s someone with real news anchor experience in the chair. When the first episodes appear online Monday, former WAMU and MSNBC host Joshua Johnson will be the face of the resurrected 'Onion News Network.' Playing an ONN anchor character named Dwight Richmond, Johnson says he’s bringing a real anchor’s sense of clarity — and self-importance — to the job. 'If ONN is anything, it’s a news organization that is so unaware of its own ridiculousness that it has the confidence of a serial killer,' says Johnson, 44.” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I'll be darned if I can figured out how to watch ONN. If anybody knows, do tell. Thanks.

Washington Post: “First came the surprising discovery that Earth’s atmosphere is leaking. But for roughly 60 years, the reason remained a mystery. Since the late 1960s, satellites over the poles detected an extremely fast flow of particles escaping into space — at speeds of 20 kilometers per second. Scientists suspected that gravity and the magnetic field alone could not fully explain the stream. There had to be another source creating this leaky faucet. It turns out the mysterious force is a previously undiscovered global electric field, a recent study found. The field is only about the strength of a watch battery — but it’s enough to thrust lighter ions from our atmosphere into space. It’s also generated unlike other electric fields on Earth. This newly discovered aspect of our planet provides clues about the evolution of our atmosphere, perhaps explaining why Earth is habitable. The electric field is 'an agent of chaos,' said Glyn Collinson, a NASA rocket scientist and lead author of the study. 'It undoes gravity.... Without it, Earth would be very different.'”

The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

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Publisher & Editor: Marie Burns


Monday
Apr202020

The Commentariat -- April 21, 2020

Afternoon Update:

Manu Raju & Clare Foran of CNN: "Congressional negotiations have reached a deal on a bill that includes hundreds of billions of dollars in new funding for small businesses hurt by the coronavirus outbreak, three sources familiar tell CNN. The text of the bill should be unveiled as soon as Tuesday afternoon as the two sides give the deal a final read. Lawmakers will try to pass it in the Senate at 4 p.m. ET when the chamber convenes for a pro forma session."

Jin Wu & Allison McCann of the New York Times: "At least 28,000 more people have died during the coronavirus pandemic over the last month than the official Covid-19 death counts report, a review of mortality data in 11 countries shows -- providing a clearer, if still incomplete, picture of the toll of the crisis. In the last month, far more people died in these countries than in previous years, The New York Times found. The totals include deaths from Covid-19 as well as those from other causes, likely including people who could not be treated as hospitals became overwhelmed.... In Paris, more than twice the usual number of people have died each day, far more than the peak of a bad flu season. In New York City, the number is now four times the normal amount.... The differences are particularly stark in countries that have been slow to acknowledge the scope of the problem."

Gee, Nobody Saw This Coming. Jeff Stein & Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Senior White House and Trump administration officials are planning to launch a sweeping effort in the coming days to repeal or suspend federal regulations affecting businesses, with the expected executive action seen by advisers as a way to boost an economy facing its worst shock in generations, two people familiar with the internal planning said. The White House-driven initiative is expected to center on suspending federal regulations for small businesses and expanding an existing administration program that requires agencies to revoke two regulations for every new one they issue, the two people said. While the plan remains in flux, changes could affect environmental policy, labor policy, workplace safety and health care, among other areas." The Raw Story has a summary story here. Mrs. McC: If Trump can't kill you one way (Covid-19), he'll kill you another (fall into a vat of chocolate).

Just Ignore Him. Asawin Suebsaeng, et al., of the Daily Beast: "... the White House's coronavirus response has diverged into two camps: one that defends whatever the president has chosen to care about or watch on TV, and another that actively works to ignore and paper over those excesses. The most recent, glaring example of that wild discrepancy came over the weekend, when Trump began encouraging protests against stay-at-home orders overseen by Democratic governors in several states. The president's messaging took on the language of uprising.... Rather than correct the record or even push back internally, [officials] have tried to proceed as if the president didn't just do what he had so clearly done.... [The task force] is now a team operating on a parallel but separate track: working to ameliorate a public-health crisis despite Trump pushing policies that scientists say could make that task harder."

"I Didn't Say That": ~~~

Ed O'Keefe of CBS News: "... Democratic governors asked the White House on Monday for help encouraging Americans to adhere to these local guidelines. The request came amid mixed signals from President Trump over who is ultimately responsible for determining when Americans can resume normal activities. Over the past week, Mr. Trump has insisted that only he could order an economic restart, but later told governors 'you're gonna call your own shots' on when and how to reopen and released federal guidelines on how to do so. But over the weekend, he tweeted support for small bands of conservative protesters that rallied in the state capitals of Michigan, Minnesota, Virginia and elsewhere against restrictions put in place by Democratic governors. Vice President Mike Pence said Sunday he would be speaking to all 50 governors on Monday to discuss testing and reopening the states. On the call, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, said her state is using the White House guidelines to implement 'what we think are going to be best practices here in Michigan for the cautious, thoughtful, slow reopening of certain sectors of our economy. As we do that, any help on the national level to reiterate the importance of stay-at-home orders would be helpful,' Whitmer told Pence, according to audio of the meeting obtained by CBS News." Mrs. McC: Good luck with that.

Brendan Cole of Newsweek: Texas Lt. Gov. "Dan Patrick [R], who turned 70 this month, faced a social media backlash in March for telling Fox News that many of his generation were willing to 'take a chance' and return to work because an economy that was shut down by the coronavirus would harm future generations. As parts of Texas started to reopen this week following weeks of restrictions, Patrick defended his comments on Monday, telling anchor Tucker Carlson again that the recent economic hardship had left him 'vindicated.'... Comparing the death toll in Texas with its population, he went on to say, 'every life is valuable but 500 people out of 29 million and we're locked down and we're crushing the average worker, we're crushing small business, we're crushing the markets, we're crushing this country.... There are more important things than living, and that's saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us....'"

Republicans Are Dangerous to Your Health. Alison Dirr of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Officials have identified seven people who appear to have contracted COVID-19 through activities related to the April 7 election, Milwaukee Health Commissioner Jeanette Kowalik said Monday. Six of the cases are in voters and one is a poll worker, Kowalik said.... Tuesday will mark the 14th day since the election -- a time frame during which epidemiologists agree symptoms typically appear."

~~~~~~~~~~

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Here's the most discouraging story I've read about Covid-19: ~~~

~~~ Jeff Wise of New York: "Hopes for a return to normal life after the coronavirus hinge on the development of a vaccine. But there's no guarantee, experts say, that a fully effective COVID-19 vaccine is possible.... Not all viral diseases are equally amenable to vaccination. 'Some viruses are very easy to make a vaccine for, and some are very complicated,' says Adolfo García-Sastre, director of the Global Health and Emerging Pathogens Institute at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.... Unfortunately, it seems that COVID-19 is on the difficult end of the scale.... At this point, it's not a given that even an imperfect vaccine is a slam dunk. The way that the COVID-19 virus behaves out in the wild makes it hard to predict how it will respond to vaccination.... A recent study in China ... found that many patients who actually had the disease showed very low levels of antibodies in their blood after they recovered -- and in some cases had none at all. This might indicate that people who recover from the disease or get vaccinated against it might be able to catch it nonetheless."

Trump's Latest Threat to the Essence of the Nation: It's the "Foreigners"' Fault. Katie Rogers, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Monday evening that he intended to close the United States to people trying to immigrate into the country to live and work, a drastic move that he said would protect American workers from foreign competition once the nation's economy began to recover from the shutdown caused by the coronavirus outbreak. 'In light of the attack from the Invisible Enemy, as well as the need to protect the jobs of our GREAT American Citizens,' Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, 'I will be signing an Executive Order to temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!' In recent weeks, the Trump administration has used health concerns to justify aggressively restricting immigration.... But the president's late-night announcement on Monday signals his most wide-ranging attempt yet to seal off the country from the rest of the world.... It was not immediately clear what legal basis Mr. Trump would claim to justify shutting down most immigration."

"A Lot of People Love Trump." -- Trump. Ted Johnson of Deadline: At Monday's 5 pm Trump Show, [PBS reporter Yamiche] "Alcindor pressed the president about someone she recently interviewed who said his family got sick and did not take precautions 'mainly because the president wasn't taking it seriously.' 'Are you concerned that downplaying the virus maybe got some people sick?' she asked. Trump replied, 'And a lot of people love Trump. A lot of people love me. You see them all the time. I guess I am here for a reason, and for the best of my knowledge I won. And I think we are going to win again. I think we are going to win in a landslide.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Lawrence O'Donnell of MSNBC said, "That is the answer of a sociopath." Mrs. McC: One reason Alcindor is a super-successful reporter and I'm not is that my follow-up question would have been: "That's your answer? This family got sick because they listened to you and your response is, 'I'm here for a reason.' Using the royal 'we,' you say, 'We're going to win in a landslide'?? Where's your sympathy for the family? Where's your apology? Where's your contrition? Where's one normal response to an American tragedy?" However, this was Alcindor's follow-up: ~~~

~~~ Matthew Chapman of the Raw Story: "When [Alcindor then] asked [Trump] about rallies he held in February and March, Trump lied, ' don't know anything about rallies. I haven't left the White House in months, except to give a wonderful ship, the Comfort ... Why was Nancy Pelosi holding a street fair in Chinatown?'" ~~~

(~~~ Rem Rieder of FactCheck.org: "Pelosi did visit Chinatown in late February in an effort to encourage people to go there to eat and shop. But she did not support parades or parties, try to show the coronavirus didn’t exist or delete a tweet of her visit, as Trump [has] claimed.... On the same day as Pelosi's visit, Trump tweeted, 'The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!'")

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Monday are here. “President Trump mounted a lengthy defense of the country's coronavirus testing capacity during his daily briefing on Monday, even as governors in several states scrambled to access testing materials. Mr. Trump and members of the White House coronavirus task force said they had shared information with state officials about where to find machines to process test samples, and Vice President Mike Pence again said there was' enough testing capacity for every state in America' to make decisions about lifting restrictions.... But officials at the briefing -- including Mr. Trump, who brandished a thick binder that he said listed about 5,000 testing facilities -- emphasized lab capacity over another issue that state officials have underscored recently: an insufficient supply of materials needed to conduct the tests. Pressed about the disconnect, Mr. Trump reacted dismissively to several governors." ~~~

~~~ Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post: "President Trump said on Twitter that the demand for more tests was driven by the same 'Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats' who earlier had demanded the federal government intervene to provide more ventilators for acute-care coronavirus patients.... [At his 5 pm show Monday,] Trump directed some of his ire at Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R), the head of the National Governors Association, who he said 'didn't understand much about what was going on' when he criticized the federal government's performance in addressing the testing issue."

Trump's Evil Plan. Jonathan Chait: "President Trump's current pandemic strategy -- emphasize current; like the cliché about the weather, if you don't like it, wait a few hours -- is a baffling knot of contradictions. He is hurling all responsibility to state governments, leaving it to them to devise effective tests and to decide when to relax social distancing. At the same time, he is starving them of the resources to handle the job. And even as Trump hides behind a policy of deference to governors, he is goading right-wing protesters to force their hand.... Yet there does appear to be a strategy here. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday afternoon that Trump has 'asked White House aides for economic response plans that would allow him to take credit for successes while offering enough flexibility to assign fault for any failures to others.' Trump's seemingly paradoxical stance is an attempt to hoard credit and shirk risk.... On the surface, he is deferring responsibility and blame to the governors. Just below the surface, he is coercing them to resume economic activity as fast as possible, regardless of what public-health officials say." Read on. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Hating people is a waste of energy. I'm beginning to have trouble not wasting my energy on Trump.

Delusions of Grandeur. Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: The 5 pm Trump Propaganda Show is an embarrassing extravaganza every day. David Smith of the Guardian (April 18) wrote an account of this past Saturday's installment of Trump's sideshow. The story is full of chestnuts like this one: "The president ended the briefing-cum-rally as he began, talking about anything but the coronavirus. He attacked the Democratic congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as having a 'very strong anti-Israel bent'. He said of North Korea: 'Look, if I wasn't elected, you would right now -- maybe the world -- would be over'."

Katharine Seelye, et al., of the New York Times describe some of the cloak-and-dagger lengths to which state governors & hospital administrators have gone to try to secure protective gear & other supplies for medical workers & to protect the gear frombeing seized by federal agents or otherwise disappearing. For instance, "In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat ... this month announced a nearly $1 billion deal to buy hundreds of millions of masks from China. He has refused to provide details of the contract even to state lawmakers amid reports of deals getting upended at the last minute, either from countries offering higher prices or from federal agencies stepping in and seizing goods." Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) got his wife Yumi to help get more testing kits; she speaks fluent Korean & called two Korean labs to negotiate the deal.

The Washington Post's live updates of coronavirus developments Monday are here. Fauci Puts a Damper on the Trumpendrooler Protests. "Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's top infectious-diseases expert, said Monday in response to protests of various states' stay-at-home orders that reopening the economy too early would backfire.... '... unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not going to happen.'... Fauci on Monday also cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from antibody tests, which determine whether a person was already infected with a virus. Many of the tests in circulation have not been validated or calibrated, he warned. Fauci added that although antibodies for other viruses generally confer immunity upon people who have them, experts have not proved that protection exists for the coronavirus and how long it lasts if it does exist." (Also linked yesterday.)

Erica Werner of the Washington Post: "The White House and Congress on Monday tried to design another giant bailout package aimed at combating the coronavirus pandemic's economic and health fallout, scrambling to resolve last-minute snags over loan access and testing.... House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on CNN Monday evening, '... now we're down to fine print, but I feel very optimistic and hopeful that we'll come to a conclusion tonight so that it can be taken up [Tuesday] in the Senate and Wednesday in the House or Representatives.'... The new package would amount to roughly $470 billion in new spending, with $370 billion directed to small businesses, $75 billion going to hospitals, and $25 billion set aside for testing." ~~~

~~~ Jonathan O'Connell of the Washington Post: "The federal government gave national hotel and restaurant chains millions of dollars in grants before the $349 billion program ran out of money Thursday, leading to a backlash that prompted one company to give the money back and a Republican senator to say that 'millions of dollars are being wasted.' Thousands of traditional small businesses were unable to get funding from the program before it ran dry. As Congress and the White House near a deal to add an additional $310 billion to the program, some are calling for additional oversight and rule changes to prevent bigger chains from accepting any more money.... Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) criticized the program, saying that 'companies that are not being harmed at all by the coronavirus crisis have the ability to receive taxpayer-funded loans that can be forgiven.'... Some of the companies receiving money are clients of JPMorgan Chase, adding fuel to criticism that Wall Street banks had helped their clients obtain large amounts."

Tom Boggioni of RawStory: "According to a report from the Daily Beast, Attorney General Bill Barr appears poised to take the lead and attempt to force governors to re-open their states during the coronavirus pandemic -- even at the risk of ramping up the spread of the virus when it appears to be slowing down. In the process, he could become the face of Donald Trump's failures to stem the COVID-19 health crisis." --s The Daily Beast story is firewalled. (Also linked yesterday.)

Patrick Wintour, et al. of the Guardian: "US hostility to the World Health Organization scuppered the publication of a communique by G20 health ministers on Sunday that committed to strengthening the WHO's mandate in coordinating a response to the global coronavirus pandemic. In place of a lengthy statement with paragraphs of detail, the leaders instead issued a brief statement saying that gaps existed in the way the world handled pandemics." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Oil Prices Drop to Minus $30/Barrel. That's Right: Minus. Stanley Reed & Clifford Krauss of the New York Times: "Something bizarre happened in the oil markets on Monday: Prices fell so much that some traders paid buyers to take oil off their hands. The price of the main U.S. oil benchmark fell more than $50 a barrel to end the day about $30 below zero, the first time oil prices have ever turned negative. Such an eye-popping slide is the result of a quirk in the oil market, but it underscores the industry's disarray as the coronavirus pandemic decimates the world economy. Demand for oil is collapsing, and despite a deal by Saudi Arabia, Russia and other nations to cut production, the world is running out of places to put all the oil the industry keeps pumping out -- about 100 million barrels a day. At the start of the year, oil sold for over $60 a barrel but by Friday it hit about $20. Prices went negative -- meaning that anyone trying to sell a barrel would have to pay a buyer $30 -- in part because of the way oil is traded." ~~~

~~~ Fred Imbert of CNBC: "Stocks fell sharply Monday, retreating after back-to-back weekly gains, as a historic decline in U.S. crude prices raised concerns about the economic damage being done by coronavirus shutdowns. A delay in funding the for the depleted small business rescue loan program also weighed on sentiment. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 592.05 points lower, or 2.5%, 23,650.44. The S&P 500 slid 1.8% to 2,823.16. The Nasdaq Composite pulled back 1% to 8,560.73."

"Send in the Quacks." Paul Krugman: "... why is there such a close alliance between modern conservatism and quackery? One answer is that a political movement that demands absolute loyalty considers quacks more reliable than genuine experts.... Another answer is that the modern right is driven in large part by the grievances of white men who don't feel that they're getting the respect they believe they deserve, and Fox-fueled hostility to 'elites' who claim to know more than guys in diners -- which, on technical subjects like epidemiology, they do -- is a key part of the movement.... Finally, there has historically been a strong association between right-wing extremism and grifting.... Fake experts have reached a kind of apotheosis under Donald Trump...."

Colorado. Denver nurses stop anti-lockdown nuts: ~~~

Georgia. Paul LeBlanc of CNN: "Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday that certain businesses can reopen this week in a move that breaks from the majority of state leaders and defies the warnings of many public health officials. Kemp said specifically that fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studios, barbers, hair and nail salons, and massage therapy businesses can reopen as early Friday, April 24. Theaters and restaurants will be allowed to open on Monday, April 27, while bars and night clubs will remain closed for now.... According to an influential model often cited by the White House, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Georgia hit its projected 'peak' for daily deaths 13 days ago, on April 7. But that same model predicts that dozens of people will die each day in the coming week. And to limit a resurgence of the virus, the model says that Georgia shouldn't start relaxing social distancing until after June 15 -- when the state can begin considering other measures to contain the virus, such as contact tracing and isolation." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: On the bright side, Kemp does make Florida's Ron DeSantis look a little smarter. At least DeSantis (so far) hasn't recommended physical interactions among strangers in which sweat-sharing, touching, extended touching & breaking the skin takes place.

Iowa. Stephen Joyce, et al., of Bloomberg, republished in Yahoo! Finance: "Hundreds of National Guard personnel are being activated in Iowa as coronavirus sweeps through meat-processing plants in a state that accounts for about a third of U.S. pork supply. Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds (r) said 250 National Guard members have been moved to full-time federal duty status and could help with testing and contact tracing for workers at plants operated by Tyson Foods Inc. and National Beef Packing Co. Activating guard soldiers is the latest attempt to contain the disease, which has forced a growing number of slaughterhouses and meat-processing plants to slow or halt operations. The disruptions are stoking concerns for eventual fresh-meat shortages in grocery stores as well leaving some farmers without a market for their animals. That's pushing down prices for hogs and cattle, while making meat more expensive. Wholesale pork posted its biggest three-day gain in six years."

Kentucky. Christina Zhao of Newsweek: "Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear announced Sunday that the state had set a grim record with 273 new confirmed cases of the coronavirus, the highest single-day rise to date. Kentucky's increase in infected individuals comes after protesters took to the streets throughout the week to call for the state to be reopened. With the 273 additional confirmed infections, Kentucky now has 2,960 cases of the novel virus and 1,122 recoveries. Beshear also announced four new deaths on Sunday, bringing the total number of fatalities across the state to 148."

South Dakota. It's the "Foreigners"' Fault. Albert Samaha & Katie Baker of BuzzFeed News: Gov. Kristi Noem (R) & Smithfield Foods executives blame "living circumstances in certain cultures ... [unlike] your traditional American family" for the huge outbreak of coronavirus among workers in Smithfield's South Dakota pork processing plant. Noem said in a Fox "News" interview "that '99%' of the spread of infections 'wasn't happening inside the facility' but inside workers' homes, 'because a lot of these folks who work at this plant live in the same community, the same buildings, sometimes in the same apartments.' But internal company communications and interviews with nearly a dozen workers and their relatives point to a series of management missteps and half measures that contributed significantly to the spread of the virus."

Texas. Not Their Best Rodeo. Perla Trevino of the Texas Tribune & ProPublica: "The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is the city's largest annual event, attracting 2.5 million people and generating nearly $400 million in economic activity for the region.... Days before the ... rodeo kicked off, area politicians celebrated this great piece of Americana -- dubbed the world's largest livestock show -- which was going forward in the age of the coronavirus. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, a 29-year-old rising political star..., reassured residents that 'the overall risk of COVID-19 to the general public within our counties remains low at this time.'... Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner ... posted a video of himself line dancing to the 'wobble.' But over at the Rodeo Houston headquarters, organizers worried that the 20-day event would have to be shut down early as they watched a global increase in coronavirus cases... Enough evidence existed [at the time] that 'something was probably going to develop during that time period. We just didn't know how or when, [Dr. Kelly Larkin, an ER physician and longtime rodeo board member] told ProPublica and The Texas Tribune.... Many in the community were urging organizers and city leaders to cancel the event.... Ultimately, on March 11, after eight days, the rodeo shut down. A police officer from a neighboring county who attended a pre-rodeo barbecue tested positive for the new coronavirus...."

Ishaan Tharoor of the Washington Post: "Countries such as Germany and South Korea moved to ease restrictions this week, but they have established far more efficient and widespread regimes of contact tracing and testing for the virus [than the U.S].... Even then, they remain wary about the possibility of a second wave ravaging their countries.... German Chancellor Angela Merkel..., in contrast to Trump..., urged local authorities to maintain and enforce social distancing rules to ensure that the country's slowdown in infections would continue.... And none of the indignation of Trump supporters over their apparent loss of rights during a global public health crisis can be heard in the messaging from authorities in countries that are slowly trying to restart their economies."

Brazil. Tom Phillips of the Guardian: "Former presidents, politicians and newspaper editorial boards have lined up to denounce the 'moronic' and 'anti-democratic' behaviour of Brazil's far-right leader after he hit the streets to egg on protesters demanding a return to military dictatorship. As the number of deaths caused by Covid-19 rose to nearly 2,500 on Sunday, Jair Bolsonaro left his presidential palace in Brazil's capital, Brasília, to fraternize with flag-waving radicals." --s

Singapore. Hannah Beech of the New York Times: "After recording its first coronavirus case on Jan. 23, the prosperous city-state [of Singapore] meticulously traced the close contacts of every infected patient, while keeping a sense of normalcy on its streets. Borders were shut to populations likely to carry the contagion, although businesses stayed open. Ample testing and treatment were free for residents. But over the past few days, Singapore's coronavirus caseload has more than doubled, with more than 8,000 cases confirmed as of Monday, the highest in Southeast Asia. Most of the new infections are within crowded dormitories where migrant laborers live, unnoticed by many of the country's richer residents and, it turns out, the government itself. The spread of the coronavirus in this tidy city-state suggests that it might be difficult for the United States, Europe and the rest of the world to return to the way they were anytime soon, even when viral curves appear to have flattened.... If anything, the trials of this intensely urban, hyper-international country hint at a global future in which travel is taboo, borders are shut, quarantines endure and industries like tourism and entertainment are battered."

Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "High levels of air pollution may be 'one of the most important contributors' to deaths from Covid-19, according to research. The analysis shows that of the coronavirus deaths across 66 administrative regions in Italy, Spain, France and ;Germany, 78% of them occurred in just five regions, and these were the most polluted. The research examined levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant produced mostly by diesel vehicles, and weather conditions that can prevent dirty air from dispersing away from a city." --safari: Seem appropriate to remember that the EPA has stopped enforcing environmental regulations now. (Also linked yesterday.)

Jason Wilson of the Guardian: "An emerging shortage of carbon dioxide gas (CO2) caused by the coronavirus pandemic may affect food supply chains and drinking water, a Washington state emergency planning document has revealed. The document, a Covid-19 situation report produced by the State Emergency Operations Center (SEOC), contains a warning from the state's office of drinking water (ODW) about difficulties in obtaining CO2, which is essential for the process of water treatment.... Th main reason for national shortages, according to the CEO of the Compressed Gas Association (CGA), Rich Gottwald, is a ramping down of ethanol production." --s


Justin Wise of the Hill: "President Trump on Sunday lashed out at FBI leadership over the origins of the investigation into Russian election interference, calling investigators who led the probe 'human scum.' Trump made the remarks during a White House briefing after being asked about a pair of his former associates who were sentenced to prison following charges stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Asked whether he'd pardon Paul Manafort and Roger Stone so they wouldn't be exposed to the coronavirus while in prison, Trump said, 'You'll find out.'" Mrs. McC: If you sometimes think maybe Trump isn't mentally disturbed, he's so often ready to disabuse you of your generous musings.

Way Beyond the Beltway

Israel. David Halbfinger & Isabel Kershner of the New York Times: "Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his former challenger, Benny Gantz, agreed Monday night to establish a unity government, a deal that finally breaks a yearlong political impasse and keeps Mr. Netanyahu in office as he faces trial on corruption charges. After three inconclusive elections in the past year, the creation of the new government forestalls what had appeared to be an inevitable fourth election and offers a deeply divided Israel a chance for national healing as it battles the coronavirus pandemic."

North Korea. Jim Sciutto, et al., of CNN: "The US is monitoring intelligence that suggests North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, is in grave danger after undergoing a previous surgery, according to [US officials].... A South Korean source told CNN Monday that the country's top leaders are very much aware of reports about Kim's health status but cannot independently verify details published by Daily NK.... South Korea's Unification Ministry and Defense Ministry have given a 'no comment.'"

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Sunday
Apr192020

The Commentariat -- April 20, 2020

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Trump's Evil Plan. Jonathan Chait: "President Trump's current pandemic strategy -- emphasize current; like the cliché about the weather, if you don't like it, wait a few hours -- is a baffling knot of contradictions. He is hurling all responsibility to state governments, leaving it to them to devise effective tests and to decide when to relax social distancing. At the same time, he is starving them of the resources to handle the job. And even as Trump hides behind a policy of deference to governors, he is goading right-wing protesters to force their hand.... Yet there does appear to be a strategy here. The Wall Street Journal reported Friday afternoon that Trump has 'asked White House aides for economic response plans that would allow him to take credit for successes while offering enough flexibility to assign fault for any failures to others.' Trump's seemingly paradoxical stance is an attempt to hoard credit and shirk risk.... On the surface, he is deferring responsibility and blame to the governors. Just below the surface, he is coercing them to resume economic activity as fast as possible, regardless of what public-health officials say." Read on. ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Hating people is a waste of energy. I'm beginning to have trouble not wasting my energy on Trump.

The Washington Post's live updates of coronavirus developments Monday are here. Fauci Puts a Damper on the Trumpendrooler Protests. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's top infectious-diseases expert, said Monday in response to protests of various states' stay-at-home orders that reopening the economy too early would backfire.... '... unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not going to happen.'... Fauci on Monday also cautioned against drawing too many conclusions from antibody tests, which determine whether a person was already infected with a virus. Many of the tests in circulation have not been validated or calibrated, he warned. Fauci added that although antibodies for other viruses generally confer immunity upon people who have them, experts have not proved that protection exists for the coronavirus and how long it lasts if it does exist."

Tom Boggioni of RawStory: "According to a report from the Daily Beast, Attorney General Bill Barr appears poised to take the lead and attempt to force governors to re-open their states during the coronavirus pandemic -- even at the risk of ramping up the spread of the virus when it appears to be slowing down. In the process, he could become the face of Donald Trump's failures to stem the COVID-19 health crisis." --s The Daily Beast story is firewalled.

Patrick Wintour, et al. of the Guardian: "US hostility to the World Health Organization scuppered the publication of a communique by G20 health ministers on Sunday that committed to strengthening the WHO's mandate in coordinating a response to the global coronavirus pandemic. In place of a lengthy statement with paragraphs of detail, the leaders instead issued a brief statement saying that gaps existed in the way the world handled pandemics." --s

Justin Wise of the Hill: "President Trump on Sunday lashed out at FBI leadership over the origins of the investigation into Russian election interference, calling investigators who led the probe 'human scum.' Trump made the remarks during a White House briefing after being asked about a pair of his former associates who were sentenced to prison following charges stemming from former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Asked whether he'd pardon Paul Manafort and Roger Stone so they wouldn't be exposed to the coronavirus while in prison, Trump said, 'You'll find out.'" Mrs. McC: If you sometimes think maybe Trump isn't mentally disturbed, he's so often ready to disabuse you of your generous musings.

Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "High levels of air pollution may be 'one of the most important contributors' to deaths from Covid-19, according to research. The analysis shows that of the coronavirus deaths across 66 administrative regions in Italy, Spain, France and Germany, 78% of them occurred in just five regions, and these were the most polluted. The research examined levels of nitrogen dioxide, a pollutant produced mostly by diesel vehicles, and weather conditions that can prevent dirty air from dispersing away from a city." --safari: Seems appropriate to remember that the EPA has stopped enforcing environmental regulations now.

~~~~~~~~~~

The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Sunday are here. "President Trump on Sunday said the administration was preparing to use the Defense Production Act to compel an unspecified U.S. facility to increase production of test swabs by over 20 million per month. The announcement came during his Sunday evening news conference, after he defended his response to the pandemic amid criticism from governors across the country claiming that there has been an insufficient amount of testing to justify reopening the economy any time soon. 'We are calling in the Defense Production Act,' Mr. Trump said. He added, 'You'll have so many swabs you won't know what to do with them.... We already have millions coming in.... In all fairness, governors could get them themselves. But we are going to do it. We'll work with the governors and if they can't do it we'll do it.' He provided no details about what company he was referring to, or when the administration would invoke the act." Mrs. McC: IOW, the usual B.S.

** "Incredible Political Sadism." David Wallace-Wells of New York: "Whenever you start to think that the federal government under Donald Trump has hit a moral bottom, it finds a new way to shock and horrify. Over the last few weeks, it has started to appear as though, in addition to abandoning the states to their own devices in a time of national emergency, the federal government has effectively erected a blockade -- like that which the Union used to choke off the supply chains of the Confederacy during the Civil War -- to prevent delivery of critical medical equipment to states desperately in need. At the very least, federal authorities have made governors and hospital executives all around the country operate in fear that shipments of necessary supplies will be seized along the way. In a time of pandemic, having evacuated federal responsibility, the White House is functionally waging a war against state leadership and the initiative of local hospitals to secure what they need to provide sufficient treatment.... We don't know where [the supplies [the federal government seizes] are going. We don't know on what grounds they are being seized, or threatened with seizure." Meanwhile, Trump has repeatedly told governors the states are on their own in securing PPE & other medical equipment.

Daddy Warlocks Hexes Pelosi, Wallace. Nervous Nancy is an inherently 'dumb' person. She wasted all of her time on the Impeachment Hoax. She will be overthrown, either by inside or out, just like her last time as 'Speaker'. Wallace & @FoxNews are on a bad path, watch! -- Donald Trump, in a tweet, reacting to Chris Wallace's interview of Nancy Pelosi ~~~

~~~ Edwin Rios of Mother Jones: "On Sunday, in her first appearance on Fox News since 2017, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that a new $400 billion relief bill could come 'soon but also slammed ... Donald Trump's 'weak' response to the coronavirus pandemic for failing to put forward science-based plans to address the pandemic. 'He doesn't take responsibility. He places blame -- blame on others,' Pelosi told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.... She also sharply criticized Trump's leadership when it comes to expanding testing for COVID-19, telling Wallace, 'We're way late on it, and that is a failure. The president gets an F -- a failure -- on the testing.'... Her comments came as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin indicated on CNN that the Trump administration and congressional Democrats could reach an agreement on yet another aid package would include $300 billion to replenish funds for a federal small business loan program that ran out last week." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "Hurtling from one position to another is consistent with Mr. Trump's approach to the presidency over the past three years. Even when external pressures and stresses appear to change the dynamics that the country is facing, Mr. Trump remains unbowed, altering his approach for a day or two, only to return to nursing grievances.... The president, who ran as an insurgent in 2016, is most comfortable raging against the machine of government, even when he is the one running the country. And while the coronavirus is in every state in the union, it is heavily affecting minority and low-income communities. So when Mr. Trump on Friday tweeted 'LIBERATE,' his all-capitalized exhortations against strict orders in specific states ... were in keeping with how he ran in 2016: saying things that seem contradictory, like pledging to work with governors and then urging people to 'liberate' their states, and leaving it to his audiences to hear what they want to hear in his words.... On Sunday, Mr. Trump again praised the protesters. 'I have never seen so many American flags,' he said." ~~~

~~~ Jim Fallows of the Atlantic republishes a note from Republican Mike Lofgren on what the Trump & Co. astroturf protests/street theater are really about. Here's part of Lofgren's note: "Trump's encouragement of the demonstrators is even more bizarre than commonly depicted.... This is a unique case: the head of the national government egging on residents of the states to illegally impede their state governors from carrying out their lawful, necessary, and proper functions to maintain public safety in a health emergency. So much for 'federalism' under the GOP.... Republican street theater, maybe even (or perhaps especially) when it threatens public safety or human decency, seems always to act like catnip to the mainstream media, who invariably trot out the well-worn tropes of 'economic anxiety.' The U.S. media have done an execrable job on this one." ~~~

~~~ Josh Marshall of TPM: "The protests we've seen in a handful of locations around the country have bamboozled a lot of the national press. Look closely and a lot of the turnout is heavily stocked with militia types and the kinds of groups who turned out for the Charlottesville protests a couple years ago. But the bigger thing is that for now they appear highly orchestrated.... These are basically Trump loyalists supporting Trump at his request and mobilized by key rightist groups. The key question ... is whether what starts here as orchestrated and largely inorganic takes on a life of its own and gains political traction. They now have Fox and an incumbent President cheering them on as a demonstration of political identity." --s ~~~

~~~ James Downie of the Washington Post: "Few on Team Trump are better at deploying up-is-down reasoning to spin news to Trump's benefit [than is mike pence]. But during the vice president's appearances on NBC's and Fox News's Sunday morning talk shows, it was clear that even Pence could not bootlick his way out of the lurch the president's actions leave the rest of us in.... Pence dodged [trying to explain Trump's "LIBERATE" tweets] because the president's actions were indefensible. But Pence can't say that, both because the protests are being cheered by Fox News and like-minded outlets and because Pence wants to stay in the good graces of a president who values loyalty to him above all else." ~~~

~~~ HOWEVER, Piers Morgan, the former CNN & current ITV host, who is so shallow he readily admits to being a friend of Donald Trump's, calls Trump's daily 5 pm propaganda shows "horrifying": ~~~

Hope Yen & Calvin Woodward of the AP: "... Donald Trump is falsely assigning blame to governors and the Obama administration for shortages in coronavirus testing. For much of the week, he was pretender to a throne that didn't exist as he claimed king-like powers over the pandemic response and Congress. But by the weekend, he was again saying governors called the shots and they are the ones to blame -- not the federal government, not him -- for any testing problems. He says governors aren't using all the testing capacity that the federal government has created. It's not true. Meanwhile, Trump denied praising China's openness in the pandemic, when he's on record doing so repeatedly, and declared victory over what he calls relatively low death rates in the U.S. But that's too soon to tell."

Rick Rojas of the New York Times: "Governors facing growing pressure to revive economies decimated by the coronavirus said on Sunday that a shortage of tests was among the most significant hurdles in the way of lifting restrictions in their states. 'We are fighting a biological war,' Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia said on 'State of the Union' on CNN. 'We have been asked as governors to fight that war without the supplies we need.' In interviews on Sunday morning talk shows, Mr. Northam was among the governors who said they needed the swabs and reagents required for the test, and urged federal officials to help them get those supplies. The governors bristled at claims from the Trump administration that the supply of tests was adequate. On NBC's 'Meet the Press,' Vice President Mike Pence said 'there is a sufficient capacity of testing across the country today for any state in America' to go to the first of three phases that the administration says are needed for the country to emerge from the coronavirus shutdown. Mr. Northam, a Democrat, called Mr. Pence's claim 'delusional.'... ​Gov. Larry Hogan​ of Maryland, a Republican, said that it was 'absolutely false' to claim that governors were not acting aggressively enough to pursue as much testing as possible."

Sarah Burris of the Raw Story: "... Donald Trump bragged about ... Abbott Labs for [producing] his 'Quick COVID-19 Test' as 'a whole new ballgame.'... He claimed the lab's test could deliver 'lightning-fast results in as little as five minutes.' This while many leaders are worried about a huge backlog in tests and the need for more testing to discover if social-distancing has stopped the spread or not. Trump's government bought hundreds of devices and sent them out to the states. [BUT] 'In recent days, state and hospital officials found in internal studies that the devices frequently produced inaccurate results, leading at least one hospital to return the devices, they said in interviews,' said the [Wall Street] Journal.... [In addition, according to the WSJ,] 'Most [of Abbott's tests] require a long list of components that come from different producers, including swabs, throwaway polystyrene parts, chemical reagents, glass pipettes, pipette tips and more, resulting in a complex supply chain that easily breaks down when there is a shortage of any particular element.'"

Steve Eder, et al., of the New York Times: "In recent weeks, the United States has seen the first rollout of blood tests for coronavirus antibodies, widely heralded as crucial tools to assess the reach of the pandemic in the United States.... But for all their promise, the tests -- intended to signal whether people may have built immunity to the virus -- are already raising alarms.... Criticized for a tragically slow and rigid oversight of those tests months ago, the federal government is now faulted by public health officials and scientists for greenlighting the antibody tests too quickly and without adequate scrutiny. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed about 90 companies, many based in China, to sell tests that have not gotten government vetting.... But the agency has since warned that some of those businesses are making false claims about their products; health officials, like their counterparts overseas, have found others deeply flawed.... Even as government agencies, companies and academic researchers scramble to validate existing tests and create better ones, there are doubts they can deliver as promised. Most tests now available mistakenly flag at least some people as having antibodies when they do not, which could foster a dangerously false belief that those people have immunity." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Karen DeYoung, et al., of the Washington Post: "More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.... Senior Trump-appointed health officials ... consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said. The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump's charge that the WHO's failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Dana Milbank first revealed U.S. scientists' presence at the WHO in WashPo his column, also linked here yesterday. Putting the onus on the WHO for not informing the U.S. about what it knew about the spread of Covid-19 is another giant lie Trump has repeated multiple times. As U.S. residents began sickening & dying from Covid-19, Trump repeatedly lied about the mortal danger the virus presented to Americans. As Milbank pointed out, Trump has told 18,000 lies since becoming president*, but hiding the truth about the coronavirus is, as Milbank calls it, "a murderous lie." Impeachable? Yep.

Marilynn Marchione of the AP: "A flood of new research suggests that far more people have had the coronavirus without any symptoms, fueling hope that it will turn out to be much less lethal than originally feared. While that's clearly good news, it also means it's impossible to know who around you may be contagious. That complicates decisions about returning to work, school and normal life.... The head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 25% of infected people might not have symptoms. The vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. John Hyten, thinks it may be as high as 60% to 70% among military personnel. None of these numbers can be fully trusted because they're based on flawed and inadequate testing, said Dr. Michael Mina of Harvard's School of Public Health. Collectively, though, they suggest 'we have just been off the mark by huge, huge numbers' for estimating total infections, he said."

Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "In a nation where most health coverage is hinged to employment, the economy's vanishing jobs are wiping out insurance in the midst of a pandemic." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Common Dreams via RawStory: "Days after the Trump administration threatened Central American countries with visa sanctions if they refuse to accept nationals who are deported from the U.S. during the coronavirus pandemic, the Guatemalan health minister said an estimated 75% of the people on one deportation flight from the U.S. later tested positive for the virus. Health Minister Hugo Monroy's claim raised fears that the U.S. is willfully sending sick people back to the countries they left, creating conditions for larger outbreaks in countries including Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras." --s

#FloridaMorons. Emily Shugerman of the Daily Beast: "The state of Florida passed two milestones in the coronavirus pandemic this week: its deadliest day yet, and the reopening of several public beaches.... Hundreds of people flocked to the beaches in Duval County Friday, some engaging group sports like volleyball or spikeball. Photos of the scene drew outcry on social media, spawning the hashtag #FloridaMorons, as well as disdain from officials elsewhere in the state.... Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, who contracted coronavirus himself, called the reopening in Jacksonville 'very concerning,' adding that Florida was 'not out of the woods yet' and the consequences of reopening too soon were 'very, very scary.'... [Gov. Ron] DeSantis [R-Dimwit] said that a task force would also begin meeting daily next week to work on reopening businesses."

Ohio. Patrick Cooley & Jim Woods of the Columbus Dispatch: "Coronavirus has overtaken a vast majority of the prison population at the Marion Correctional Institution, state officials said Sunday. The Ohio Department of Health reported more than 1,000 newly confirmed cases of the coronavirus across the state Sunday, bringing the total of confirmed and probable cases to 11,602. With 20 additional deaths, there have been 471 confirmed and probable deaths from COVID-19, state officials said. The number of hospitalizations rose to 2,565.... Much of the increase in cases has come from Ohio's prison system.... Overall, the state's prison system has recorded 2,426 positive results among inmates, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction said. That number is 21% of the total confirmed cases in Ohio. The majority of those cases are at the Marion Correctional Institution, where 1,828 inmates -- 73% of the total -- have tested positive for the virus, state officials say. The remaining 667 prisoners now are in quarantine."

Mike Spector & Jessica DiNapoli of Reuters: "Neiman Marcus Group is preparing to seek bankruptcy protection as soon as this week, becoming the first major U.S. department store operator to succumb to the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, people familiar with the matter said. The debt-laden Dallas-based company has been left with few options after the pandemic forced it to temporarily shut all 43 of its Neiman Marcus locations, roughly two dozen Last Call stores and its two Bergdorf Goodman stores in New York. Neiman Marcus is in the final stages of negotiating a loan with its creditors totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, which would sustain some of its operations during bankruptcy proceedings, according to the sources. It has also furloughed many of its roughly 14,000 employees." Mrs. McC: I guess rich people aren't buying up enough cashmere sweatsuits online to shelter-in-comfort.

Boris & Donald, Birdbrains of a Feather. Zachary Basu of Axios: "A 5,000-word exposé by the Sunday Times of London -- '38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster' -- finds that Prime Minister Boris Johnson, distracted by personal turmoil and his Brexit victory lap, skipped five early crisis briefings (Cobra meetings) on the coronavirus.... Warnings issued in January and repeated in February fell on 'deaf ears,' according to the Sunday Times, with the lost time potentially costing thousands of British lives.... The U.K. government held its first Cobra meeting on Jan. 24, sensing the looming threat as the virus had spread from China to at least six known countries. Health Secretary Matt Hancock told reporters that the risk to the British public was 'low,' while a spokesperson for Johnson -- who skipped the Cobra meeting -- said the U.K. was 'well prepared for any new diseases.' Johnson went on to skip four more Cobra meetings, distracted by mass flooding, the U.K.'s withdrawal from the European Union, a Cabinet shakeup and a countryside holiday with his fiancée, before finally attending one on March 2." The Sunday Times report is here.


Hyung-Jin Kim of AP: "North Korea on Sunday dismissed as 'ungrounded 'President Donald Trump's comment that he recently received 'a nice note' from the North's leader, Kim Jong Un.... North Korea's Foreign Ministry said in a statement that there was no letter addressed to Trump recently by 'the supreme leadership,' a reference to Kim." --s

Presidential Race

Felicia Sonmez & Dave Weigel of the Washington Post: "... Joe Biden has won the Wyoming Democratic primary, the latest nominating contest to be moved entirely to vote-by-mail amid the coronavirus pandemic. The Wyoming Democratic Party announced Sunday that Biden had won a little over 72 percent of the vote, with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) taking nearly 28 percent. This year marks the first time that Wyoming Democrats have used ranked-choice voting in their presidential nominating contest. The contest has traditionally been an in-person caucus, but because of the coronavirus, the state party switched to a vote-by-mail primary instead. The caucuses had originally been scheduled for April 4."

Washington Post: "A decade ago on April 20, the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig leased by BP was working a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico when a surge in pressure and a blowout triggered a fire that killed 11 crew members and unleashed the largest oil spill in U.S. history.... Today ... attention has shifted to President Trump's efforts to undo safety steps taken by the Obama administration to prevent such a spill from happening again.... Since coming into office..., the Trump administration demonstrated it would roll back those rules by eliminating the need for independent inspectors. That followed the issuance of approximately 1,700 waivers to an industry the administration's Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE).... The United States and other countries remain heavily dependent on deepwater drilling, a daunting engineering challenge in seas so deep that even military submarines cannot venture there.... Despite the potential for another catastrophe, the public appetite for oil has encouraged the petroleum industry to treat those risks as acceptable.... There were 13,187 spills in the federal waters off the Gulf of Mexico from the time of the BP spill through March...."

News Lede

New York Times: "Peter Beard, a New York photographer, artist and naturalist to whom the word 'wild' was roundly applied, both for his death-defying photographs of African wildlife and for his own much-publicized days -- decades, really -- as an amorous, bibulous, pharmaceutically inclined man about town, was found dead in the woods on Sunday, almost three weeks after he disappeared from his home in Montauk on the East End of Long Island. He was 82."

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Saturday
Apr182020

The Commentariat -- April 19, 2020

Afternoon Update:

Steve Eder, et al., of the New York Times: "In recent weeks, the United States has seen the first rollout of blood tests for coronavirus antibodies, widely heralded as crucial tools to assess the reach of the pandemic in the United States.... But for all their promise, the tests -- intended to signal whether people may have built immunity to the virus -- are already raising alarms.... Criticized for a tragically slow and rigid oversight of those tests months ago, the federal government is now faulted by public health officials and scientists for greenlighting the antibody tests too quickly and without adequate scrutiny. The Food and Drug Administration has allowed about 90 companies, many based in China, to sell tests that have not gotten government vetting.... But the agency has since warned that some of those businesses are making false claims about their products; health officials, like their counterparts overseas, have found others deeply flawed.... Even as government agencies, companies and academic researchers scramble to validate existing tests and create better ones, there are doubts they can deliver as promised. Most tests now available mistakenly flag at least some people as having antibodies when they do not, which could foster a dangerously false belief that those people have immunity."

Karen DeYoung, et al., of the Washington Post: "More than a dozen U.S. researchers, physicians and public health experts, many of them from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, were working full time at the Geneva headquarters of the World Health Organization as the novel coronavirus emerged late last year and transmitted real-time information about its discovery and spread in China to the Trump administration, according to U.S. and international officials.... Senior Trump-appointed health officials ... consulted regularly at the highest levels with the WHO as the crisis unfolded, the officials said. The presence of so many U.S. officials undercuts President Trump's charge that the WHO's failure to communicate the extent of the threat, born of a desire to protect China, is largely responsible for the rapid spread of the virus in the United States." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Dana Milbank first revealed U.S. scientists' presence at the WHO in WashPo his column, also linked here yesterday. Putting the onus on the WHO for not informing the U.S. about what it knew about the spread of Covid-19 is another giant lie Trump has repeated multiple times. As U.S. residents began sickening & dying from Covid-19, Trump repeatedly lied about the mortal danger the virus presented to Americans. As Milbank pointed out, Trump has told 18,000 lies since becoming president*, but hiding the truth about the coronavirus is, as Milbank calls it, "a murderous lie." Impeachable? Yep.

Amy Goldstein of the Washington Post: "In a nation where most health coverage is hinged to employment, the economy's vanishing jobs are wiping out insurance in the midst of a pandemic."

Edwin Rios of Mother Jones: "On Sunday, in her first appearance on Fox News since 2017, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated that a new $400 billion relief bill could come 'soon' but also slammed ... Donald Trump's 'weak' response to the coronavirus pandemic for failing to put forward science-based plans to address the pandemic. 'He doesn't take responsibility. He places blame -- blame on others,' Pelosi told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.... She also sharply criticized Trump's leadership when it comes to expanding testing for COVID-19, telling Wallace, 'We're way late on it, and that is a failure. The president gets an F -- a failure -- on the testing.'... Her comments came as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin indicated on CNN that the Trump administration and congressional Democrats could reach an agreement on yet another aid package would include $300 billion to replenish funds for a federal small business loan program that ran out last week."

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The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments Sunday are here. The Washington Post's live updates for Sunday are here.

Steven Mufson, et al., of the Washington Post: "With the number of the covid-19 tests hovering at an average of 146,000 a day, businesses leaders and state officials are warning the Trump administration that they cannot safely reopen the economy without radically increasing the number of available tests -- perhaps into the millions a day -- and that won't happen without a greater coordinating role by the federal government. Though the capacity of private business to produce those volumes remains unclear, state leaders and health experts say that the administration should move with a greater sense of urgency and could do several relatively easy things to speed the production and distribution of tests. On Friday, the American Association for Clinical Chemistry said there were still critical supply chain issues that stand in the way of ramping up testing, including a lack of protective equipment for technicians who run the tests, and a shortage of swabs and reagents -- chemical solutions required to run the tests.... This week the federal government took one step private industry has been seeking -- Medicare doubled reimbursements from $51 to $100 a test, making covid-19 testing profitable for labs." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ Keith Collins of the New York Times: "... new estimates by researchers at Harvard University suggest that the United States cannot safely reopen unless it conducts more than three times the number of coronavirus tests it is currently administering over the next month.... To reopen the United States by mid-May, the number of daily tests performed between now and then should be 500,000 to 700,000, according to the Harvard estimates. That level of testing is necessary to identify the majority of people who are infected and isolate them from people who are healthy, according to the researchers.... The researchers said that expanded testing could reduce the rate [of people testing positive] to 10 percent, which is the maximum rate recommended by the World Health Organization. In Germany, that number is 7 percent, and in South Korea, it is closer to 3 percent." ~~~

~~~ Sally Jenkins of the Washington Post: "The sentiment has been mouthed by every fool from Dr. Oz to the Cheetos-dusted flimflam man in the Oval Office: Rather than damage the economy further, we must accept a certain number of coronavirus casualties so the rest of us can go back to restaurants and football games.... There is something deeply suspect about this rush toward sacrificial death for the sake of American dollars, this framing of margin calls as worth dying over.... It's a false moral equation and a false choice. And the people putting it forward smack of panic. How about we ... [take] common-sense measures to prevent the preventable. Such as, a ramped-up national testing and tracing system that would allow Americans to make legitimate personal-risk assessments and reduce the chance of new outbreaks.... It's called informed consent. And right now, we don't have it.... The crudity of the White House's response to the virus resembles nothing so much as [World War I] -- rudimentary, unskilled, disorganized waste with needless carnage, led by a vain martinet kaiser with extravagant hair who never set foot in a trench." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ~~~

~~~ David Willman of the Washington Post: "The failure by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to quickly produce a test kit for detecting the novel coronavirus was triggered by a glaring scientific breakdown at the CDC's central laboratory complex in Atlanta, according to scientists with knowledge of the matter and a determination by federal regulators. The CDC facilities that assembled the kits violated sound manufacturing practices, resulting in contamination of one of the three test components used in the highly sensitive detection process, the scientists said.... The Washington Post separately confirmed that Food and Drug Administration officials concluded that the CDC violated its own laboratory standards in making the kits. The substandard practices exposed the kits to contamination.... After the difficulty emerged, CDC officials took more than a month to remove the unnecessary [and contaminated] step from the kits, exacerbating nationwide delays in testing...."

MEANWHILE. Juliet Eilperin, et al., of the Washington Post: "U.S. manufacturers shipped millions of dollars of face masks and other protective medical equipment to China in January and February with encouragement from the federal government, a Washington Post review of economic data and internal government documents has found. The move underscores the Trump administration's failure to recognize and prepare for the growing pandemic threat. In those two months, the value of protective masks and related items exported from the United States to China grew more than 1,000 percent compared with the same time last year -- from $1.4 million to about $17.6 million, according to a Post analysis.... Similarly, shipments of ventilators and protective garments jumped by triple digits.... On Jan. 30, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said on Fox Business that the outbreak could 'accelerate the return of jobs to North America' because companies would move factories away from impacted areas.... 'Instead of taking steps to prepare, they ignored the advice of one expert after another,' said Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Tex.). 'People right now, as we speak, are dying because there have been inadequate supplies of PPE.'"

Campbell Robertson & Robert Gebeloff of the New York Times: "One in three jobs held by women has been designated as essential, according to a New York Times analysis of census data crossed with the federal government's essential worker guidelines. Nonwhite women are more likely to be doing essential jobs than anyone else." The article is an expansion of an item that appears in Saturday's NYT coronavirus live updates. (Also linked yesterday.)

Debbie Cenziper, et al., of the Washington Post: "Forty percent of more than 650 nursing homes nationwide with publicly reported cases of the coronavirus have been cited more than once by inspectors in recent years for violating federal standards meant to control the spread of infections, according to a Washington Post analysis. Since 2016, the nursing homes accrued hundreds of deficiencies for unsafe conditions that can trigger the spread of flu, pneumonia, urinary tract infections and skin diseases." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: What is the point of "citing" these Petri dishes if you don't shut them down & sue their owners for their last shiny pennies?

Slaughterhouse 50. Michael Corkery & David Yaffe-Bellany of the New York Times: "... meat plants, honed over decades for maximum efficiency and profit, have become major 'hot spots' for the coronavirus pandemic, with some reporting widespread illnesses among their workers. The health crisis has revealed how these plants are becoming the weakest link in the nation's food supply chain, posing a serious challenge to meat production<. After decades of consolidation, there are about 800 federally inspected slaughterhouses in the United States, processing billions of pounds of meat for food stores each year. But a relatively small number of them account for the vast majority of production. In the cattle industry, a little more than 50 plants are responsible for as much as 98 percent of slaughtering and processing in the United States.... More than a dozen beef, pork and chicken processing plants have closed or are running at greatly reduced speeds because of the pandemic." (Also linked yesterday.)

Edward Moreno of the Hill: "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Congress is 'very close' to a deal on additional funding for the small business Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).... Pelosi's comments come as the program's coffers ran dry Thursday and the Senate adjourned without reaching an agreement on the terms of the fourth coronavirus relief package. Congressional Democrats have been negotiating with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin about the amount of additional money that will go into the program in the next stimulus bill."

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#FloridaMoron#1. Morgan Chalfant of the Hill: "President Trump on Saturday offered a fiery defense of his response to the novel coronavirus and the nation's testing capabilities as the administration faces growing pressure to ramp up testing. In a lengthy briefing that covered various topics, Trump attempted to cast the United States' response to the virus as far better than other nations in Europe and elsewhere. Trump both lashed out at Democratic criticism of his response to COVID-19 while hammering the previous administration of former President Barack Obama, a Democrat, for leaving a bare 'cupboard' of medical supplies for him to pull from." Mrs. McC: Sounds as if his show-of-lies has gone into reruns.

David Fahrenthold & Joshua Partlow of the Washington Post: "Thousands of U.S. hotels have volunteered to help local authorities house doctors, nurses and other medical personnel at reduced rates -- or even free -- during the covid-19 pandemic. President Trump's White House has praised these efforts. But so far, none of Trump's own hotels are known to be participating. In five U.S. cities where President Trump's company operates large hotels -- New York, Chicago, Miami, Washington and Honolulu -- local authorities said the Trump hotel was not involved in their efforts to provide low-cost or no-cost rooms to those fighting the virus." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Mary McCord in a Washington Post op-ed: "President Trump incited insurrection Friday against the duly elected governors of the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia. Just a day after issuing guidance for re-opening America that clearly deferred decision-making to state officials -- as it must under our Constitutional order -- the president undercut his own guidance by calling for criminal acts against the governors for not opening fast enough.... It's not at all unreasonable to consider Trump's tweets about' liberation' as at least tacit encouragement to citizens to take up arms against duly elected state officials of the party opposite his own, in response to sometimes unpopular but legally issued stay-at-home orders." McCord argues that when a president* does it, it isn't protected free speech since the power of his bully pulpit is likely to lead to lawless action. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

It's More Than November. Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "After years of single-minded devotion, the conservative movement is achingly close to dismantling the New Deal political order and turning the clock back to when capital could act without limits or restraints.... In which case, it makes all the sense in the world for Trump, the Republican Party and the conservative movement to push for the end of the lockdown, public health be damned.... And all of this is happening as one of the most progressive generations in history begins to take its place in our politics, its views informed by two decades of war and economic crisis." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "Vice President Pence on Saturday addressed the Air Force Academy's Class of 2020, speaking solemnly about the coronavirus pandemic at a significantly scaled-back ceremony. 'We gather at a time of national crisis,' Pence told the 984 senior cadets before him on the academy's parade field, called the terrazzo, with each of them sitting eight feet apart."

Maggie Severns & Daniel Lippman of Politico: "A senior economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers, whose nomination to a post overseeing health insurance floundered in the wake of revelations of his financial ties to UnitedHealth Group, is now playing a key role overseeing a $30 billion recovery program being administered by UnitedHealth. The choice of UnitedHealth, a leading health insurer, to serve as a conduit in funneling billions of dollars to hospitals and other providers, surprised many in health care, including employees at the Department of Health and Human Services who had assumed that HHS would administer the program itself. Though UnitedHealth says it will make no profit off of the deal, its role in handing out billions of federal dollars to hospitals could boost its relationships with the White House and the public during a tumultuous year and possibly provide it with valuable health care data, experts say.... After the White House withdrew [Stephen] Parente's nomination in the face of congressional concerns about his relationships with the healthcare industry -- and UnitedHealth in particular -- and omissions about finances that Parente had made on his financial disclosure form, the president appointed him to his current post, which does not require confirmation."

Meredith McGraw & Josh Gerstein of Politico: "As ... Donald Trump uses the bully pulpit to press state and local governments to ease their virus-related lockdowns, conservative activists and religious leaders are urging his administration to go further by unleashing a wave of lawsuits arguing that the measures are intruding on Americans' legally protected rights to worship, protest and buy guns. In a letter sent to Attorney General Bill Barr on Friday, the Conservative Action Project, a group of conservative leaders including Matt Schlapp of the American Conservative Union, Tom Fitton of Judicial Watch and Jenny Beth Martin of Tea Party Patriots, called governors and local leaders 'petty, would-be dictators' who had committed 'rampant abuses of constitutional rights and civil liberties' as part of their response to the coronavirus.... Trump told faith leaders on a call Friday afternoon that while he wants everyone to abide by his administration's guidelines, he affirmed the right of churches to meet and their civil liberties to gather.... The president listened to recommendations from faith leaders, according to the participants, who shared their concerns about getting the economy re-opened."

Adam Gabbatt of the Guardian: "Thousands of people are preparing to attend protests across the US in the coming days, as a rightwing movement against stay-at-home orders, backed by wealthy conservative groups and promoted by Donald Trump, continues to take hold.... While organisers claim the protests are grassroots- and people-driven, a closer look reveals a movement driven by traditional rightwing groups, including one funded by the family of Trump's education secretary, Betsy DeVos.... As with the Tea Party, the anti-stay-at-home movement has been promoted by a rightwing media eager for the economy to reopen, including Fox News which on Friday aired a segment on protests in Virginia, Michigan and Minnesota. Two minutes later, Trump tweeted to his 77.4 million followers the need to 'liberate' those states." ~~~

~~~ Salvador Hernandez of BuzzFeed News has more on the fake grassroots protests.

#Florida Morons. Meryl Kornfield of the Washington Post: "Aerial snapshots of people flocking to a reopened beach in Jacksonville, Fla., made waves on the Internet on Saturday. Local news aired photos and videos of Florida's shoreline dotted with people, closer than six feet apart, spurring #FloridaMorons to trend on Twitter after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) gave the go-ahead for local beachfront governments to decide whether to reopen their beaches during a news briefing Friday. Duval and St. Johns counties have reopened their beaches, while Miami-Dade County officials said they are considering following suit. On the same day that Florida reported 58 deaths from the coronavirus -- its highest daily toll since the pandemic began -- DeSantis told reporters that it's essential that Floridians get exercise outdoors."

Kansas. AP: "A federal judge on Saturday blocked Kansas from limiting attendance at in-person religious worship services or activities to 10 people or fewer to check the spread of the coronavirus, signaling that he believes that it's likely that the policy violates religious freedom and free speech rights. The ruling from U.S. District Judge John Broomes in Wichita prevents the enforcement of an order issued by Gov. Laura Kelly if pastors and congregations observe social distancing. The judge's decision will remain in effect until May 2; he has a hearing scheduled Thursday in a lawsuit filed against Kelly by two churches and their pastors." Mrs. McC: Broomes is a Trump appointee.

Rebecca Falconer of Axios: "The star-studded Lady Gaga-curated fundraising event 'One World: Together at Home' raised $127.9 million for the COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund for WHO and $72.8 million for local and regional responders, organizer Global Citizen said in a statement early Sunday.... Saturday's online event honoring and celebrating those on the front lines of the fight against the novel coronavirus was broadcast worldwide and billed as the biggest concert since the 1985's Live Aid, watched by 1.9 billion people. Former first ladies Laura Bush and Michelle Obama were among more than 70 artists and celebrities to take part from their homes." Mrs. McC: What? No Melanie? ~~~

~~~ Per Capita, This Guy Raised A Lot More. Jennifer Hassan of the Washington Post (April 17): "Last week..., 99-year-old veteran [Capt. Tom Moore] set himself a goal to raise money for Britain's widely cherished but chronically underfunded National Health Service during the deadly coronavirus outbreak. He set up a fundraising page and decided to walk the 82-foot length of his garden back and forth 100 times, using his walker for support. He split the journey into chunks of 10 laps with the idea of completing them before his 100th birthday on April 30. Initially, he wanted to raise 1,000 pounds ($1,250).... As of Friday morning, Moore had raised $23 million for Britain's health-care system.... More than 13,000 people in the United Kingdom have died of the virus, including 27 health-care staff."

Presidential Race

Michael Scherer, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump's campaign is preparing to launch a broad effort aimed at linking Joe Biden to China, after concluding that it would be more politically effective than defending or promoting Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic. The decision by top campaign advisers, which has met pushback from some White House officials and donors, reflects polling showing a declining approval rating for Trump among key groups and growing openness to supporting Biden in recent weeks.... The shift represents a remarkable acknowledgment by aides to a self-described ... 'wartime president,' leading during what might have been a rally-around-the-flag moment, to effectively decide it is better to go on the attack than focus on his ;own achievements." ~~~

~~~ Here's Biden's response, via the Huffington Post:

News Lede

AP: "A man disguised as a police officer went on a shooting rampage in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia on Sunday, killing 13 people, in the deadliest such attack in the country in 30 years. Officials said the suspected shooter was also dead. A police officer was among those killed. Several bodies were found inside and outside one home in the small, rural town of Portapique, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Halifax. Overnight, police began advising residents of the town -- already on lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic -- to lock their doors and stay in their basements. Several homes in the area were set on fire as well." An update reports 16 people were killed; it's unclear from the report if that number includes the gunman.

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