Monday, June 8, 2020

Last Call For Trump Goes Viral, Con't

Remember folks, the shutdowns over COVID-19 were not only necessary, but they saved countless lives and prevented literally tens of millions of infections.

Shutdown orders prevented about 60 million novel coronavirus infections in the United States and 285 million in China, according to a research study published Monday that examined how stay-at-home orders and other restrictions limited the spread of the contagion.

A separate study from epidemiologists at Imperial College London estimated the shutdowns saved about 3.1 million lives in 11 European countries, including 500,000 in the United Kingdom, and dropped infection rates by an average of 82 percent, sufficient to drive the contagion well below epidemic levels.


The two reports, published simultaneously Monday in the journal Nature, used completely different methods to reach similar conclusions. They suggest that the aggressive and unprecedented shutdowns, which caused massive economic disruptions and job losses, were effective at halting the exponential spread of the novel coronavirus.

“Without these policies employed, we would have lived through a very different April and May,” said Solomon Hsiang, director of the Global Policy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley, and the leader of the research team that surveyed how six countries — China, the United States, France, Italy, Iran and South Korea — responded to the pandemic.

He called the global response to covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, “an extraordinary moment in human history when the world had to come together,” and said the shutdowns and other mitigation measures resulted in “saving more lives in a shorter period of time than ever before.”
The two reports on the effectiveness of the shutdowns come with a clear warning that the pandemic, even if in retreat in some of the places hardest hit, is far from over. The overwhelming majority of people remain susceptible to the virus. Only about 3 percent to 4 percent of people in the countries being studied have been infected to date, said Samir Bhatt, senior author of the Imperial College London study. 
“This is just the beginning of the epidemic: we’re very far from herd immunity,” Bhatt said Monday in an email. “The risk of a second wave happening if all interventions and precautions are abandoned is very real.” 

COVID-19 remains a marathon effort, not a sprint, but 60 million COVID-19 cases, nearly a fifth of the US population, would have resulted in millions of deaths and the collapse of our health care system as a whole.

Thankfully, America's governors (mostly) did the right thing and saves lives.  Lord knows Trump would have let us all die if it were up to him.

Stay safe out there.
 

The Heir To The Golden Toilet

The Wall Street Journal's Siobhan Hughes seems really keen on Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton's "fascism without Trump's bungling criminality getting in the way" and believes he might be the man to carry the burning banner of white supremacist America in the years ahead.

Sen. Tom Cotton has been a longtime adviser to President Trump, both echoing the chief executive’s bare-knuckled rhetoric on subjects like immigration and China and at times pushing him to take even more aggressive positions.

Last week, the Arkansas Republican and the president were again making different versions of the same argument amid protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd while in police custody. While Mr. Trump weighed whether to invoke an 1807 law to send active-duty military in response to largely peaceful demonstrations that included bursts of looting and other violence, Mr. Cotton was more definitive, explicitly calling in a New York Times op-ed for an “overwhelming show of force” by federal troops and local law enforcement. That column led to the resignation Sunday of the news organization’s editorial page editor James Bennet.

Mr. Cotton’s willingness to court controversy by backing—or exceeding—the president’s agenda puts him in the spotlight as Republicans jockey to influence Mr. Trump, and as a potential carrier of the president’s banner when he eventually leaves the White House.


“Tom Cotton is indeed setting himself up to be the heir to Trumpism,” said Geoffrey Kabaservice, director of political studies at the Washington-based think tank Niskanen Center, who studies Republican politics. “In some ways, I think his case to lead the Trump wing of the party after this era has only been strengthened by this past week.”

Back in Arkansas, Mr. Cotton’s supporters believe he is destined for bigger things. In 2015, Republican Bart Hester, a state legislator, helped put into state law a measure to enable Mr. Cotton, 43, to run for the presidency while simultaneously serving in the Senate.

“He always has a very valid basis for what he believes and why he believes it, and I think he has the best for all Americans in mind at all the time,” Mr. Hester said.

Although the senator and president have foreign-policy differences—Mr. Cotton is more hawkish and in favor of keeping troops in northern Syria, while Mr. Trump ordered a withdrawal, for example—they are frequently on the same page. Mr. Cotton’s op-ed calling for the president to invoke the Insurrection Act was just the latest example of the two men running on parallel tracks
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Oh good, all the straight cartoon fascism without the cuddly senior events and wacky temper tantrums. As I keep saying, Trump is the worst president since the Civil War mainly because there are other, worse Republicans who haven't become president yet, and Tom Cotton is definitely on the top of that particular list.

Oh, and Cotton is up for reelection this November.  The lone Democratic candidate in the primary dropped out six months ago, so Cotton is basically running unopposed.

Keep an eye on this guy.

He's dangerous as all hell. A competent version of Trump would absolutely be the end of America.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The country to melting down along with Trump, and Trump is considering...rebranding!

Amid nationwide protests and a historic economic contraction, President Trump is running for reelection to “Keep America Great” — at least according to the hats he sells on his campaign website, the signs waved by his supporters and the television ads he’s airing in key states.

But in recent weeks he has retreated to contradictory slogans with a less triumphant ring, repeatedly reviving his 2016 motto “Make America Great Again!” and trying out new catchphrases like “Transition to Greatness!” and “The Best Is Yet to Come,” a Frank Sinatra lyric etched on the crooner’s tombstone.

Phrases such as “Promises Made, Promise Kept,” once a cornerstone of the reelection campaign, have been subsumed by current events. Economic messaging still used by the campaign online, including boasts about low unemployment, is now woefully out of date.

The search for a slogan, which Trump confidants say he is likely to resolve in the coming weeks, is a symptom of the president’s larger problem: The booming economy that he assumed would be his chief argument for reelection has foundered for the moment, a casualty of a coronavirus crisis he initially downplayed and more recently has sought to move beyond.

On issues compelling to most Americans — health, economy and national unrest about police violence — Trump has offered few new proposals, relying on pointed warnings that Democrats and their liberal ideas would make the country worse. On Friday, asked whether he had a plan to address systemic racism that has sent millions of Americans to the streets — some in view of the White House — he replied: “That’s what my plan is: We’re going to have the strongest economy in the world.”

The president and his top political advisers met Thursday afternoon to discuss how Trump should make his case and how he could improve his standing among voters, a person familiar with the meeting said. Participants included senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, campaign manager Brad Parscale, his recently elevated deputy Bill Stepien and campaign pollsters. Trump was also presented with “tough” swing state polls from his political team in the Oval Office.

How about "Hitler, Only Better!"

I'm sure that will resonate with the base.

Trump even wants to address the nation, but because he can't help but make things about himself, I'm hoping he'll be talked out of it.

After a weekend of massive peaceful protests around the country, White House officials are currently deliberating a plan for President Donald Trump to address the nation this week on issues related to race and national unity, as Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson hinted in an interview with CNN on Sunday and a senior administration official said was under serious consideration. 
Many allies of the President spent the last week distraught as they watched Trump fumble his response to the police killing of George Floyd, only to follow his perceived silence on the resulting racial tensions with a federal law enforcement crackdown on the protesters near his fortified doorstep. 
Aides and allies were not comforted by the backlash over his decision to have federal officers aggressively clear Lafayette Park in front of the White House to facilitate a widely-panned attempt at a photo-op in front of St. John's Church. And the rest of the week continued on a downward spiral, as protests across the country grew and Trump faced an onslaught of well-known conservatives, generals and former Trump administration officials who excoriated his response and called for new leadership come November. 
Carson suggested during an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper on "State of the Union" that the President this week would further address Floyd's killing and the tensions it exposed. 
"I believe you're going to be hearing from the President this week on this topic in some detail. And I would ask you maybe to reserve judgment until after that time," Carson said.

If you need time still to judge Trump, you're part of the damn problem.

The Biden folks on the other hand should be using "Trump is Out of Control".

80% of the country now think things are completely out of control in America.

Eight out of 10 voters believe that things are out of control in the United States, with majorities still concerned about the spread of the coronavirus, pessimistic about the economy's returning to normal before next year and down on President Donald Trump's ability to unite the nation.

Those are the major findings of a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that was conducted May 28 to June 2, during the aftermath of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis, as the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus surpassed 100,000 and after millions of people have lost their jobs.

But the survey was conducted before Friday's surprising jobs report, which found the unemployment rate declining to 13.3 percent and the economy adding 2.5 million jobs in May.

"Out of control — that's America in 2020," said Democratic pollster Jeff Horwitt of Hart Research Associates, who helped conduct the survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff and his GOP colleagues at Public Opinion Strategies.

Rebrand all you want, Don. Things are going very badly for you.

As protesters gather daily near the White House and the coronavirus pandemic rages on, the American public is souring on President Donald Trump. A new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS finds Trump's approval rating down 7 points in the last month as the President falls further behind presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, whose support now stands at its highest level in CNN polling. 
The survey also finds a growing majority of Americans feel racism is a big problem in the country today and that the criminal justice system in America favors whites over blacks. More than 8 in 10 also say that the peaceful protests that have spread throughout the nation following the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police officers are justified. Americans now consider race relations as important a campaign issue as the economy and health care, according to the survey. 
Overall 38% approve of the way Trump is handling the presidency, while 57% disapprove. That's his worst approval rating since January 2019, and roughly on par with approval ratings for Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush at this point in their reelection years. Both went on to lose the presidency after one term. 
In the race for the White House, among registered voters, Trump stands 14 points behind Biden, who officially secured enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination in CNN's delegate estimate on Saturday. The 41% who say they back the President is the lowest in CNN's tracking on this question back to April 2019, and Biden's 55% support is his highest mark yet.

Joe Biden's going to need to be ahead by double digits to win and top Trump's cheating, Russian interference, and voter suppression efforts.  This election can't be close, because Trump will never leave the White House voluntarily. He has to be forced out, and that means he has to lose so badly that Republicans finally abandon him.

But having said all that...Biden is well on his way.

StupidiNews: Birthday Bash Edition

It's my birthday today, and while I don't ask much from ZVTS readers at all and that some of you have been very generous over the years, if you could click on the PayPal donation button today it would be really appreciated.

Times are tough all around, I know, believe me.

Even a couple bucks would be useful right now if you can.

If you can't, that's perfectly okay. Thanks for being a reader after all these years.  It's been a wild ride since 2008, hasn't it?

Really wild.

Thanks for being here, guys. I don't say that nearly enough.