Last Call For The Worst-Case Scenario, Con't

As Ezra Klein explains, the plans being floated to return America to normal involve a digital surveillance state of breathtaking intrusiveness that absolutely will be used against Americans in the future, and the distrust in the US of both the Trump regime and Big Tech makes anything approaching what we need virtually impossible.

Over the past few days, I’ve been reading the major plans for what comes after social distancing. You can read them, too. There’s one from the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, the left-leaning Center for American Progress, Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics, and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Romer.

I thought, perhaps naively, that reading them would be a comfort — at least then I’d be able to imagine the path back to normal. But it wasn’t. In different ways, all these plans say the same thing: Even if you can imagine the herculean political, social, and economic changes necessary to manage our way through this crisis effectively, there is no normal for the foreseeable future. Until there’s a vaccine, the US either needs economically ruinous levels of social distancing, a digital surveillance state of shocking size and scope, or a mass testing apparatus of even more shocking size and intrusiveness.

The AEI, CAP, and Harvard plans aren’t identical, but they’re similar. All of them feature a period of national lockdown — in which extreme social distancing is deployed to “flatten the curve” and health and testing capacity is surged to “raise the line.” That’s phase one. Phase two triggers after a set period (45 days for CAP, three months for Harvard) or, in the AEI plan, after 14 days of falling cases and a series of health supply markers.

All of them then imagine a phase two, which relaxes — but does not end — social distancing while implementing testing and surveillance on a mass scale. This is where you must begin imagining the almost unimaginable.

The CAP and Harvard plans both foresee a digital pandemic surveillance state in which virtually every American downloads an app to their phone that geotracks their movements, so if they come into contact with anyone who later is found to have Covid-19, they can be alerted and a period of social quarantine can begin. Similarly, people would scan QR codes when boarding mass transit or entering other high-risk public areas. And GPS tracking could be used to enforce quarantine on those who test positive with the disease, as is being done in Taiwan.

To state the obvious: The technological and political obstacles are massive. While similar efforts have borne fruit in Singapore and South Korea, the US is a very different country, with a more mistrustful, individualistic culture. Already, polling shows that 70 percent of Republicans, and 46 percent of Democrats, strongly oppose using cellphone data to enforce quarantine orders.

There's just no way this works in America.  None.  Zero.  Decades of sowing mistrust in the federal government by everything from pop culture to politicians to conspiracy theories to the internet has made something like this absolutely unworkable in 2020.

That leaves massive social distancing efforts that will continue for months on end, also unworkable.

Something has to fundamentally change in the American people to accept what will be necessary to move forward and it won't happen.  We'll have armed insurrections before it does and we'll have COVID-19 dead on top of gun deaths and they might take turns outpacing each other on a daily basis.

A lot of people are going to end up dead before the country relents.

Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, announced Friday afternoon that he planned to sign an executive order that would lift the coronavirus lockdown in a "safe" way, allowing businesses to reopen.

Though Gov. Abbott didn't reveal details about the executive order, he said he's looking into ways to reopen Texas businesses. He promised that details about the executive order will be available next week, but it is expected to provide businesses with a list of guidelines on how to safely reopen.

"We will focus on protecting lives while restoring livelihoods," Abbott said. "We can and we must do this. We can do both, expand and restore the livelihoods that Texans want to have by helping them return to work. One thing about Texans, they enjoy working and they want to get back into the workforce. We have to come up with strategies on how we can do this safely."

"We will operate strategically," Abbott added. "If we do it too fast without appropriate strategies, it will lead to another potential closure."

Abbott also promised testing for the coronavirus that causes the disease COVID-19 would be part of the plan. On Wednesday, the governor announced that Walgreens locations would soon offer a test that can be administered via the drive-thru window, and will provide results within 15 minutes. Abbott estimates that each Walgreens store could test as many as 3,000 people a day. The tests are developed by Abbott Labs; despite the similar name, Gov. Abbott has no connection to the company.

Three thousand tests a day in a state with 30 million people.

It will soon be three thousand deaths a day.

My fear is that Trump and the GOP will sacrifice as many of their constituents as possible to feed the "economy" and we'll still not make the right choices.

The Blue Wave Runs Into Red Rocks

California's special election next month for CA-25, vacated by Katie Hill over her affair scandal, is a 100% vote-by-mail prospect in the age of COVID-19, and Dems are now in serious trouble of losing the seat as angry Republicans in the LA suburbs are treating the election as a golden opportunity to  pick up a seat in the state that has rejected the party for 20 years now. Republican Mike Garcia is now in a close race with Democrat Christy Smith in a race that should not be competitive at all. Dave Wasserman at Cook:

Garcia, whose father emigrated from Mexico (this district is 38 percent Latino), was nominated to the Naval Academy by longtime former GOP Rep. Buck McKeon, who chaired the House Armed Services Committee and remains popular in the 25th CD. As a Super Hornet Strike Fighter pilot, he flew 30 combat missions in Iraq and later served ten years back home as an executive at Raytheon. 

Smith also has an ideal profile for these swing suburbs: the Santa Clarita resident, former Department of Education analyst and PTA mom rose to president of the Newhall School District before raising $2 million in 2018 to flip a GOP-held Assembly seat. Smith strikes a pragmatic tone, emphasizing her work on charter school accountability and public safety, and entered the race with Hill's strong backing. 

However, unlike Hill in 2018 or Garcia now, Smith isn't a first-time candidate and has a Sacramento record to attack. And unlike Hill, who outspent Knight $8.4 million to $2.5 million in 2018, Smith won't have a massive spending advantage. As of mid-February, as most GOP House candidates badly lagged in fundraising, Garcia narrowly led Smith $1.2 million to $1.1 million raised, owing to a much earlier start. 

Besides Garcia's uniquely strong biography and financial competitiveness, there are three reasons both the DCCC and NRCC are spending heavily, and the race is up for grabs despite California's leftward drift and Trump's low approval. 

First, the March 3 all-party primary was a wake-up call. Even with a competitive Democratic presidential primary driving turnout, the five Democrats on the special election ballot only combined for 51 percent of the vote, while five Republicans accounted for 49 percent. In the 25th CD primary for the November race for the full term, six Republicans actually outpolled six Democrats 50 percent to 49 percent. 

There's reason to believe a lower-turnout, stand-alone special election could further add to Garcia's opportunity on May 12. The district only cast about 157,000 primary votes on March 3, compared to 245,000 when Hill won in 2018 and 274,000 in 2016, when Clinton carried the 25th CD. Lower-propensity voters in these fast-growing suburbs tend to skew non-white and friendlier to Democrats. 

Second, the COVID-19 outbreak adds a lot of uncertainty. On the one hand, all 420,928 voters will automatically receive ballots in the mail, and voters stuck at home may have little else to do but fill them out and send them in. Smith's campaign points to recent mayoral elections as evidence all vote-by-mail elections could actually boost turnout, producing a more diverse, Democratic electorate. 

On the other hand, the mandatory stay-at-home order quashes campaign field organizers' ability to "harvest" ballots at doors and turn them in, a practice made legal by a state law change after 2016 and that some Republicans blamed for close losses in 2018. It's impossible to quantify the impact that had in the midterms, but a smaller turnout that skews towards white and longtime voters would help Garcia. 

Third, Republicans believe they have an effective attack on Smith, who chairs the Joint Legislative Committee on Emergency Management. They contend that Smith skipped a committee hearing scheduled for March 4, the day after the primary and the same day Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency. The most recent meeting's agenda discussed wildfires, with no mention of Coronavirus. 

Smith calls the attack frivolous and maintains that she's been urgently focused on getting PPE to frontline workers and helping small businesses acquire bridge loans instead of holding lengthy hearings. But simultaneously playing up her emergency management credentials and explaining that her committee's role is only to look at crises retroactively might seem curious to voters at a time the virus is all-consuming.

It'll depend entirely on how many residents mail in their ballots.  I'm hoping this is Wasserman admitting that there are so many variables right now that the race is impossible to call right now, but Democrats need to be working to save this seat and maybe this will snap them out of it.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

US Attorney General Bill Barr strongly suggests in a FOX News State TV interview that states don't have the right to shut down businesses and schools during a public health emergency, and hints that the Trump regime may take action against states that don't rescind shelter-at-home orders next month.

Attorney General William P. Barr said Wednesday that some of the government-imposed restrictions meant to control the spread of covid-19 were “draconian” and suggested that they should be eased next month.

In an interview with Fox News’s Laura Ingraham, Barr, long a proponent of executive power, said the government — and in particular state officials — had broad authority to impose restrictions on people in cases of emergency.

But, he said, the federal government would be “keeping a careful eye on” the situation, and stressed that officials should be “very careful to make sure that the draconian measures that are being adopted are fully justified.”

“When this period of time, at the end of April, expires, I think we have to allow people to adapt more than we have, and not just tell people to go home and hide under their bed, but allow them to use other ways — social distancing and other means — to protect themselves,” Barr said.

The White House has advised people to limit the size of social gatherings and practice other social distancing measures through April amid the outbreak of the novel coronavirus that causes the disease covid-19. Most states have imposed even more aggressive measures, ordering residents to gather only in small groups and venture outdoors for only essential trips or possibly face fines or other penalties.

Although Barr has appeared twice at White House coronavirus briefings, his comments to Fox News were the most extensive yet that he has made on the public health crisis and the steps the government has taken to stem it. Repeatedly, Ingraham pressed the country’s top law enforcement official on how the government’s actions comport with Americans constitutional rights to gather and worship freely. Churches, like other businesses, have been essentially closed in the crisis.

Barr said that governments had a right to put restrictions on churches, so long as they were treated no differently than other institutions, but added he was “very concerned” about possible encroachments on Americans’ freedom of religion. Barr said he was also concerned about the “tracking of people” that some experts have advised might be necessary to quickly identify and quarantine those infected.

This is the regime all but promising that states that do not lift orders next month closing down businesses and schools and churches will find themselves facing legal action from the federal government, reduced federal resources, or both.

Barr also attacked the Mueller probe, calling it a step "to sabotage the presidency".

Let me be frank here, this is the clearest sign yet that while Barr is willing to allow states to do what they are doing now, that patience expires at the end of the month. Barr is going to bring the hammer down on states in three weeks unless reined in, and there seems little chance of that.

It's going to take tens of thousands of deaths to get the regime to listen, and even then I expect Trump to cut off states or even send in National Guard before allowing states to continue with stay-at-home orders.  Trump gave the game away yesterday.

.@Acosta: How can the administration discuss the possibility of reopening the country when the administration does not have an adequate nationwide testing system for this virus? Don't you need a nationwide testing system for the virus before you reopen?

TRUMP: "No." pic.twitter.com/JokZYfy97T

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) April 9, 2020

It will get lethal very quickly if that happens.  The death toll will skyrocket, and public order will be severely tested.  And trust me, your FOX News State TV-watching relatives absolutely believe they'll be back at Golden Corral and the ball park the first weekend in May.

We may not even make it until May before Trump has Barr go after states.

The Trump administration is pushing to reopen much of the country next month, raising concerns among health experts and economists of a possible covid-19 resurgence if Americans return to their normal lives before the virus is truly stamped out.

Behind closed doors, President Trump — concerned with the sagging economy — has sought a strategy for resuming business activity by May 1, according to people familiar with the discussions.

In phone calls with outside advisers, Trump has even floated trying to reopen much of the country before the end of this month, when the current federal recommendations to avoid social gatherings and work from home expire, the people said. Trump regularly looks at unemployment and stock market numbers, complaining that they are hurting his presidency and reelection prospects, the people said.

Like others, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions.

Trump said at his daily briefing Thursday that the United States was at the “top of the hill” and added, “Hopefully, we’re going to be opening up — you could call it opening — very, very, very, very soon, I hope.”

Multiple Cabinet secretaries in recent days have publicly expressed hope that the various government orders directing residents to stay at home and forcing nonessential businesses to close could at least be partially eased next month.

Nancy Pelosi, for her part, is warning Trump to back off but the House isn't returning to session anytime soon, meaning the fate of any future aid for Americans is questionable at best.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi signaled Thursday that the House is unlikely to return to session later this month, her clearest indication yet that Congress — like the rest of the country — could remain shuttered for weeks or even longer as the coronavirus crisis continues. 

In a half-hour interview, Pelosi issued a stark warning to President Donald Trump, urging him not to prematurely rush to reopen major segments of the country before the coronavirus is under control, which she said could further send the U.S. economy into a tailspin.

“Nobody can really tell you that and I would never venture a guess. I certainly don’t think we should do it sooner than we should,” Pelosi said when asked if she still planned to bring the House back on April 20, which is the current target date.

“This has taken an acceleration from when we started this…Little did we know then that at this point, we’d be further confined.”

If House Democrats fail to act, then Trump will, and it will be a slaughterhouse. Because what's happening in NYC is coming to cities across the country, especially if we let up on social distancing.  And in any other country, what's happening in NYC right now would be called "mass graves".

New York City officials have hired contract laborers to bury the dead in its potter’s field on Hart Island as the city’s daily death rate from the coronavirus epidemic has reached grim new records in each of the last three days.

The city has used Hart Island to bury New Yorkers with no known next of kin or whose family are unable to arrange a funeral since the 19th century.

Typically, some 25 bodies are interred each week by low-paid jail inmates working on the island, which sits off the east shore of the city’s Bronx borough and is accessible only by boat.

That number began increasing in March as the new coronavirus spread rapidly, making New York the epicenter of the pandemic. They are now burying about two dozen bodies a day, five days a week, said Jason Kersten, a spokesman for the Department of Correction, which oversees the burials.

For burial on the island, the dead are wrapped in body bags and placed inside pine caskets. The deceased’s name is scrawled in large letters on each casket, which helps should any body need to be disinterred later, and they are buried in long narrow trenches excavated by digging machines.

“They added two new trenches in case we need them,” Kersten said. To help with the surge, and amid an outbreak of the COVID-19 respiratory illness caused by the virus at the city’s main jail, contract laborers have been hired, he said.

We're only in the opening stanzas of this disaster. If Trump uses the federal government to pressure states into reopening businesses and schools in May or even late April, the death toll will skyrocket.

And that's where we are headed. He's betting millions of lives on "saving" his re-election prospects from a Biden win.  Bill Barr is helping him.

Our lives are all on the line.

StupidiNews!

• UK PM Boris Johnson is out of intensive care but remains hospitalized with COVID-19, the British leader is expected to make a full recovery. 
• Donald Trump says that Russian and Saudi Arabia are close to signing off on an OPEC production deal to raise oil prices after reaching lows not seen in more than two decades.
• Tokyo's local government has reached a deal with Japan's national government under PM Shinzo Abe for business shutdowns in the month-long national COVID-19 emergency period.
• Ethiopia is the first major African nation to declare a state of emergency over COVID-19, businesses and gathering places are expected to be shut down starting this weekend.
• Disney says its Disney Plus streaming service has over 50 million subscribers in April, the company expected to reach 60 million in 2024 but now says it is well ahead of expectations.

Last Call For Ridin' With Biden

Now that Joe Biden is the presumptive nominee, the matchups right now are solidly in his favor against Donald Trump.

Former Vice President Joe Biden holds a wide lead over President Donald Trump in the national race for the White House, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS. 

Biden leads Trump 53% to 42% among registered voters, roughly steady from CNN's poll in early March. The nationwide picture shows Biden starts with an edge among voters generally, but national polling cannot address the state-by-state electoral college race which ultimately determines the presidency. 

The coronavirus pandemic has drastically altered presidential campaigning. Biden and Trump have paused in-person campaign events, and states have pushed back primary elections until the summer months. 

Biden holds an edge over Trump as more trusted to handle several key issues, including the response to the coronavirus outbreak (52% to 43%), health care (57% to 39%) and helping the middle class (57% to 38%).  

But Trump narrowly tops Biden on who would do a better job handling the economy, with 50% saying the President would and 46% saying Biden, despite a down tick in Trump's approval rating for handling the economy and a sharp rise in negative views of the nation's economy, according to data from the same poll released earlier this week. 

Biden's advantages on health care and helping the middle class are bolstered by crossover from those who approve of Trump -- around one in 8 Americans who give Trump positive reviews think Biden would do a better job than him on health care and helping the middle class. 

And even though very few Democrats defect from Biden on those two issues, the President's edge on the economy gets a boost from the 16% of Democrats who say Trump would do a better job than Biden on the issue. 

In the general election match up, however, there is very little crossover support for either Biden or Trump among partisans: Biden is supported by 91% of Democrats, while Trump holds 96% of Republicans. Independent voters break for Biden, 52% behind the former vice president, 40% for Trump. 

The demographic divides that defined the 2016 election seem likely to persist in 2020. Biden carries 62% of women to 32% for Trump, while Trump leads among men (51% to 44% for Biden).

Biden is winning women by 30 points right now, and if that holds, he wins.  Trump can't make up that margin.  Overall, Biden has a 48-47% lead among non college graduates and a massive 63%-32% lead among college graduates.

The only thing keeping Trump in the race is white voters without college degrees, they prefer Trump 63-33%, and he needs a 30-point margin with them just to keep him within ten points overall of Biden.  White voters with college degrees prefer Biden by 27 points.

Joe Biden can win this.  Having said that, we already know the lengths Trump will go to in order to cheat and win, including not having an election, or one where only a fraction of people will be able to vote in.

Take nothing for granted, including your current voter registration.

The Worst-Case Scenario, Con't

Another 6.6 million new jobless claims means almost 17 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the last three weeks, and there's no indication this pace is slowing at all.

Jobless rolls continued to swell due to the coronavirus shutdown, with 6.6 million Americans filing first-time unemployment claims in the week ended April 4, the Labor Department reported Thursday. 

That brings the total over the past three weeks to more than 16 million.

The most recent number represents a decline of 261,000 from a week ago, which was revised up by 219,000 to nearly 6.9 million. 

The ongoing surge in filings for unemployment insurance has been exacerbated by the expansion of those who can file claim. The CARES Act has expanded the group to include the self-employed and independent contractors. 

Prior to the social distancing efforts used to combat the coronavirus spread, the jobs market had been strong. In the six-month period prior to a shutdown that has taken offline much of the U.S. economy’s capacity, nonfarm payroll growth had averaged 221,000 a month. 

However, March saw a decline of 701,000 that only began to measure how deeply the virus had impacted the employment situation.

Jerome Powell and the Federal Reserve have finally stepped in with the $2.2 trillion "Main Street" lending program created by the CARES bill for local government and business loans to help keep cities and towns functioning.

The Federal Reserve on Thursday released long-awaited details regarding its Main Street business lending program and several other initiatives it is undertaking to backstop the reeling U.S. economy. 

Under provisions outlined for the first time, the loans would be geared toward businesses with up to 10,000 employees and less than $2.5 billion in revenues for 2019. Principal and interest payments will be deferred for a year.

The Fed said the programs would total up to $2.3 trillion and include the Payroll Protection Program and other measures aimed at getting money to small businesses and bolstering municipal finances with a $500 billion lending program. 

“Our country’s highest priority must be to address this public health crisis, providing care for the ill and limiting the further spread of the virus,” Fed Chair Jerome Powell said in a statement. “The Fed’s role is to provide as much relief and stability as we can during this period of constrained economic activity, and our actions today will help ensure that the eventual recovery is as vigorous as possible.” 

The Main Street loans would be a minimum of $1 million and a maximum of either $25 million or an amount that “when added to the Eligible Borrower’s existing outstanding and committed but undrawn debt, does not exceed four times the Eligible Borrower’s 2019 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization,” whatever is less, according to a Fed release. 

The Fed will purchase up to $600 billion in loans.

Terms would see an interest rate equal to the Fed’s Secure Overnight Financing Rate, currently 0.01%, plus 250-400 basis points with a four-year maturity.

This includes the Payroll Protection Program loans to keep employees paid through the pandemic, but considering we've already seen 16 million people file for unemployment, who knows where actual job losses are.  It's a mess and coming up on Easter weekend means more delays in getting this money out.

We could see that 16 million double by the end of the month.  Social distancing measures are going to require months, and right now this government is nowhere near being able to handle months of five or six million new jobless claims per week.

We need a US Marshall Plan on New Deal steroids, and we needed it 30 days ago.  America's current for-profit model of basic necessities -- food, shelter, water, power, internet, health care -- is done.  It won't survive another six weeks.

I don't know what will replace it.  But if the Trump regime has its way, it'll be the ultimate in Laffer Curve idiocy.

Republican economist Art Laffer, an architect of the Reagan era tax cuts that paved the way for historic budget deficits in the United States, has a plan to rejuvenate today’s pandemic-crippled economy.

Tax non-profits. Cut the pay of public officials and professors. Give businesses and workers who manage to hold on to their jobs a payroll tax holiday to the end of the year.

What about the extra aid funneled to newly jobless workers by the $2.3 trillion fiscal rescue package? Such government spending, Laffer told Reuters in an interview, will only serve to deepen the downturn and slow the recovery.

“If you tax people who work and you pay people who don’t work, you will get less people working,” Laffer said. “If you make it more unattractive to be unemployed, then there’s an incentive to go look for another job faster.”

Laffer’s unconventional plan isn’t just an academic exercise. First of all, he says he has presented it to his contacts at the White House. They include presidential economic advisor Larry Kudlow, who considers Laffer a mentor.

Laffer is also being floated in influential right-wing circles as a good candidate to head a proposed new industry task force aimed at re-opening the U.S. economy as soon as possible. “Bring in the minds like Art Laffer,” Sean Hannity, the Fox News host said April 6 of the proposed task force.

Trump tweeted his support for the new economic task force on April 4, calling it a “good idea.” He hasn’t yet mentioned Laffer, but on Tuesday reiterated his support for a payroll tax cut, saying it would be a “fantastic time” to deliver it.

Trump awarded Laffer the Presidential Medal of Freedom last year.

Every one of these ideas Laffer has is designed to destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security for good by starving it out and forcing Americans to work until they die.

Which, if this keeps up, will be much sooner rather than later.
This

Taking Stock Of The Situation

Georgia GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler is now fighting for her political life as her insider trading scandal involving buying of COVID-19 medical stocks and selling of just about everything else following a classified Senate briefing in January has become a weapon for her Republican opponent in November as well as her Democratic one.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) announced Wednesday that she is liquidating her stock portfolio and converting the holdings to general exchange-traded and mutual funds amid persistent allegations that she traded stocks based on privileged information about the coronavirus outbreak.  

“Although Senate ethics rules don’t require it, my husband and I are liquidating our holdings in managed accounts and moving into exchange-traded funds and mutual funds. I will report these exiting transactions in the periodic transaction report I file later this month,” she wrote. 

Loeffler, one of the richest members of Congress, made her announcement in a Wall Street Journal op-ed Wednesday afternoon, a day after her Republican opponent, Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.), released an internal poll showing him with a large lead.  

The Battleground Connect survey showed Collins with 36 percent support, followed by Democratic candidate Raphael Warnock with 16 percent and Loeffler with 13 percent.
Collins, Loeffler and Warnock will all face each other in a special election in November. Unless someone wins a majority of the vote, the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will advance to a runoff election in January. 

Collins has attacked Loeffler relentlessly in recent weeks over stock transactions she and her husband made after senators, including Loeffler, received a briefing from health officials on Capitol Hill Jan. 24.  

Loeffler and her spouse, Jeffrey Sprecher, the CEO of Intercontinental Exchange and the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, made more than 20 stock transactions totaling millions of dollars after the briefing. 

“People are losing their jobs, their businesses, their retirements, and even their lives and Kelly Loeffler is profiting off their pain?” Collins tweeted shortly after the transactions were revealed. “I’m just sickened thinking about it.”  

Loeffler has always maintained that the stock purchases and sales were made by third-party investment managers and she was only informed after the fact. 

“As longtime executives at a Fortune 500 financial-services firm, my husband and I put this arrangement in place to insulate ourselves and our colleagues from these sorts of unfounded accusations,” Loeffler, 49, a former investment relations professional who is worth an estimated $500 million, wrote in Wednesday’s op-ed.

The fact is Loeffler is looking for the kind of loopholes that only a US senator worth a half-billion can afford, and in an era where the ranks of the unemployed are rapidly reaching 20% or more, not even Georgia is going to reelect her.  Granted, it means she'll probably be replaced by Doug Collins, who is a real Trumpian asshole, but I'm guessing Collins is going to have his own problems being so heavily tied to Trump.

November seems like a decade from now, but we have to hang in there.

StupidiNews!

• The US hotel industry is in a tailspin as the tourism industry furloughs tens of thousands, with less than 25% of hotel rooms occupied across the country as of last week.
• Clinton impeachment figure Linda Tripp has passed away at age 70, Tripp was a key witness in the hearings who recorded her conversations with Monica Lewinsky about her affair.
• COVID-19 fatalities are sharply rising in NYC as officials are counting more deaths at home, Gov. Cuomo says that social distancing measures are continuing to have a positive impact.
• Doctors say UK PM Boris Johnson's condition is improving but he remains hospitalized for COVID-19 symptoms as London's lockdown continues.
• Researchers say jugglers are able to beat reaction times of even the fastest professional athletes by predicting and practicing patterns.

Last Call For Trump Goes Viral, Con't

At every turn we discover new evidence that the Trump White House was briefed on the dangers of a novel coronavirus pandemic originating in China, and that the warnings came months in advance while the regime did nothing to protect the American people.  Today, it's the fact that US military intelligence picked up on COVID-19 around Thanksgiving.

As far back as late November, U.S. intelligence officials were warning that a contagion was sweeping through China’s Wuhan region, changing the patterns of life and business and posing a threat to the population, according to four sources briefed on the secret reporting.

Concerns about what is now known to be the novel coronavirus pandemic were detailed in a November intelligence report by the military's National Center for Medical Intelligence (NCMI), according to two officials familiar with the document’s contents.

The report was the result of analysis of wire and computer intercepts, coupled with satellite images. It raised alarms because an out-of-control disease would pose a serious threat to U.S. forces in Asia -- forces that depend on the NCMI’s work. And it paints a picture of an American government that could have ramped up mitigation and containment efforts far earlier to prepare for a crisis poised to come home.

"Analysts concluded it could be a cataclysmic event," one of the sources said of the NCMI’s report. "It was then briefed multiple times to" the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff and the White House.
From that warning in November, the sources described repeated briefings through December for policy-makers and decision-makers across the federal government as well as the National Security Council at the White House. All of that culminated with a detailed explanation of the problem that appeared in the President’s Daily Brief of intelligence matters in early January, the sources said. For something to have appeared in the PDB, it would have had to go through weeks of vetting and analysis, according to people who have worked on presidential briefings in both Republican and Democratic administrations.

"The timeline of the intel side of this may be further back than we’re discussing," the source said of preliminary reports from Wuhan. "But this was definitely being briefed beginning at the end of November as something the military needed to take a posture on."

So the Trump regime had more than three months to do something, not two, and they downplayed it, lied, and did nothing instead.

And now 2,000 Americans a day are dying from the virus.  Many, many more deaths are coming.

House Democrats are finally starting to ask questions about the federal response and the role Trump's family is playing in it.

Two Democratic House committee leaders are demanding answers from the Trump administration about Jared Kushner's role in directing and redirecting the flow of life-saving medical equipment among private companies, various levels of government and hospitals in need.

The demand came in a letter sent Tuesday, the day the Kushner-backed supply chain task force abandoned its "war room" at the Federal Emergency Management Agency's headquarters following the revelation that a "partner" of the agency who worked in the area had tested positive for coronavirus. The letter was sent by Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., to FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor, giving an April 15 due date to provide files related to the efforts of Kushner, the president's senior adviser and son-in-law.

The White House has routinely ignored requests from Congress for information, and Trump was impeached by the House last year in part for directing aides to block House investigators from obtaining testimony and documents from the administration. He was acquitted by the Senate in February.

NBC News' requests for comment from FEMA, the White House and Kushner's team on the lawmakers' letter went unanswered.

Thompson, chair of the Homeland Security Committee, and Maloney, chair of the Oversight and Government Committee, are seeking "all communications between any FEMA employee and Jared Kushner regarding the acquisition, distribution of, or federally directed sale of any form of PPE or of medical supplies and equipment to be used for the diagnosis or treatment of COVID-19," according to the letter.

Of course the Trump regime will ignore it.  Trump will go back to screaming about "Witch hunts!" and it'll work just like it did three months ago.

The Last Hat Leaves The Ring

Finally, Bernie Sanders is bowing out.

Well, sort of.

Bernie Sanders ended his presidential campaign, he announced on Wednesday, leaving former Vice President Joe Biden as the apparent Democratic presidential nominee.

"I have concluded that this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful, and so today I am announcing the suspension of my campaign," Sanders told supporters in a livestream, saying he wished he could provide supporters with "better news" but "I think you know the truth."

"We are now some 300 delegates behind Vice President Biden and the path to victory is virtually impossible," he said. Sanders called Biden "a very decent man who I will work with to move our progressive ideas forward."

Calling the decision "difficult and painful," Sanders said he had to make an "honest assessment of the prospects for victory."

He added that he understands some supporters who want him to fight on through the convention, but he could not "in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour" as the COVID-19 outbreak grips the nation.

He pledged to have significant influence over the party platform this summer, as he did during the 2016 convention. He pointed to policies like a $15 minimum wage, which has been picked up in some states and cities since he first began campaigning for it at the presidential level five years ago, as evidence that his progressive platform is winning.

It's good to see him accept reality.  I fully expected him to stay on through whatever virtual train wreck the convention would be at this point, but he's going to settle for fighting his battle on the platform and making Biden's better.

But he'll still never endorse Joe.  He never really endorsed Hillary either, saying he would do everything to help her win in July of that year and then famously telling his own voters bitterly that they were released to "their own conscience" .

I expect more of the same.

Retribution Execution, Con't

House Intelligence Committee chair Adam Schiff is sending up a warning flag to see if Donald Trump will continue his run of firing and replacing various inspectors general watchdogs in the regime with loyalists, Trump has already fired two in the last five days.  Greg Sargent:

After President Trump fired the inspector general of the intelligence community, he didn’t bother disguising his true reason for doing so: because that IG had conducted his lawful duties in a manner that resulted in Trump being held accountable for his misdeeds and corruption.

As Trump himself put it, Michael Atkinson, the fired IG, had done a “terrible job.” How so? Easy: Atkinson had evaluated the whistleblower complaint exposing Trump’s Ukraine shakedown scheme with procedural correctness.

“He took a fake report and he brought it to Congress,” Trump said. That’s what Atkinson was supposed to do, and the complaint turned out to be almost entirely accurate, leading to Trump getting justly impeached over the extraordinary misconduct that came out as a result.

Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) just announced that the House Intelligence Committee, which he chairs, will be examining Trump’s firing of Atkinson. And buried in Schiff’s letter making this announcement is an unsettling glimpse of where all this could be going.
hiff’s letter, which is addressed to acting director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, expresses Schiff’s concern that Grenell is politicizing that office on Trump’s behalf, noting that every Senate-confirmed person in the DNI has been removed.

Schiff’s letter argues that Atkinson “acted with the highest integrity and remarkable professionalism,” while being subjected to a campaign of attacks by Trump and his allies simply for adhering to his oath of office.

Notably, in the section announcing the investigation of Atkinson’s dismissal, Schiff calls on Grenell to confirm in writing whether he ever exercised his “authority” to “prohibit” any other “investigation, inspection, audit, or review” that Atkinson might have undertaken.

Schiff’s letter also calls on Grenell to stipulate in writing that he “will not permit retaliation or reprisals against anyone who has made, or in the future makes, protected disclosures of misconduct.”

Who might make such reprisals against such protected disclosures? Why, one Donald J. Trump, of course.

Those are very suggestive moves by Schiff. They in effect throw down the gauntlet and challenge Grenell not to stipulate to those things.

Ned Price, a former senior National Security Council official and CIA analyst, told me that if Grenell refuses to make these stipulations — which is plausible if not likely — it will underscore how abnormal this administration truly is.

“His decision not to answer would be incredibly telling,” Price said.
Price added that a failure on Grenell’s part to state that he hadn’t interfered in any other ongoing investigations, or a refusal to pledge to defend employees in the future, might signal a willingness to allow Trump to proceed with a “campaign of retaliation.”

Putting Grenell on the spot is the right move, but it's not like House Dems have been able to do much to actually keep Trump from continuing his retribution campaign.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could use a "phase 4" COVID-19 bill to deliver oversight, but Trump has already said he'd completely ignore the oversight put in the third COVID-19 bill.

Trump continues to have the full support of the Senate GOP, who have already said that Trump has every right to dismiss any and every inspector general working "for him".

“Obviously those people serve at the pleasure of the president and as is usually the case, it’s not something that we have any control over,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), the GOP whip. “The president made it pretty clear why he did. But he has the prerogative. We don’t always have to agree with his actions. As we’ve learned in the past he’s going to do what he’s to do.”

Thune said it was too early to assess whether the firing was unwarranted: “I want to talk to the people who are close to it and get some context on it. I don’t understand it at this point. But that’s a question for another day when I can figure out what went into it.”

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who presided over a pro forma session of the Senate on Monday morning, also said more information was needed.

“I think we should get more detail. I agree with that,” she said. “It’s such an odd time it’s hard to say how we’re going to get that info — I mean, you know what kind of priority that information is going to have — but I think that’ll all come out.”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), a top Trump ally, said he was more consumed with reforming the foreign surveillance courts than Atkinson’s firing. But he also made clear it didn’t trouble him, either: “I don’t necessarily have any issues with it.”

“My view is that this is the president’s decision, it’s a decision that’s his to make. It doesn’t give me enormous heartburn,” Hawley said in an interview on Monday. “It’s not the main issue.”

Trump will continue to use COVID-19 to destroy democracy.  The GOP Senate will let him do whatever he wants.

Nobody can or will stop him.

StupidiNews!

• China is lifting its provincial lockdown of Wuhan and the surrounding area as Beijing reports COVID-19 cases have stabilized and that businesses and schools can reopen.
• The Federal Reserve says that jobs being saved by quantitative easing and CARES bill measures are exceeding the number lost so far from the sharp economic drop caused by COVID-19 in the US.
• British PM Boris Johnson remains in ICU care, London doctors report his condition is stable after being admitted last week for COVID-19 symptoms.
• The Trump regime is moving forward with efforts to recommend lifting shelter-in-place measures and business and school closures as soon as this month based on increased COVID-19 testing.
• SpaceX's Dragon cargo rocket has cleared its 20th and final mission as the commercial spaceflight company will now be using the crewed design Dragon model for future missions.

Last Call For Supreme Disenfranchisement

The era of free and fair elections in America ended today, probably permanently, as Martin Longman discusses. Wisconsin's absentee ballot extension deadline due to COVID-19 was annulled by the US Supreme Court yesterday, and today's Wisconsin primary turnout will be in the single digits, all but guaranteeing a Republican sweep of local and state races.

It seems inevitable that Milwaukee will have an immensely reduced turnout, which is tantamount to handing the Republicans victory in every statewide contested election on the ballot. But it gets worse.

Once the Democrats understood that the election would go forward, they went to court to try to make sure that absentee ballots could serve as an alternative, and they convinced an Obama-appointed federal judge to extend the deadline for submitting an absentee ballot from 8pm April 7 to 4pm on April 13. The judge reasoned that this was reasonable because the state had received 1.2 million ballot requests and was struggling to get them mailed out in time for voters to receive them.

But the Republicans appealed this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. On Monday, the Supreme Court voted 5-4 along completely partisan lines to rescind the lower court’s decision and uphold the 8pm April 7 deadline for receiving an absentee ballot. 

Predictably, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg was incensed:

As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg notes in her dissent, “the presidential primaries, a seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, three seats on the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, over 100 other judgeships, over 500 school board seats, and several thousand other positions” are at stake in the Wisconsin election…

…Again, many voters are not expected to receive their ballots until after this April 7 deadline. As Justice Ginsburg notes, “as of Sunday morning, 12,000 ballots reportedly had not yet been mailed out…”

Now, the most egregious thing here is that the Republicans are defying their governor and putting people’s lives at risk. But it’s almost equally offensive that they’re using this crisis to guarantee themselves a slew of easy victories in what are actually competitive elections. And this is all possible because Republican-controlled legislatures and courts are willing to go to any length to help their party electorally, even if it destroys the bench’s reputation for impartiality, and even if it annihilates any respect for the outcome of elections. How can anyone argue that you can have a fair election when Milwaukee can only produce five polling locations rather than the 180 that are needed? How can they say they’re not disenfranchising people when folks have to choose between possible death if they go out in public to vote or not voting at all because they didn’t receive an absentee ballot in time to mail it in by Tuesday night’s deadline?

Expect this nightmare to be repeated in every state that doesn't have universal mail-in ballots.

Imagine in November with COVID-19 still raging across the country that 75% of polling locations are closed on Election Day, that turnout is in the low teens or high single digits, and Republicans easily win every remotely competitive House and Senate race, as well as giving Trump a huge electoral college win.

Imagine what Republicans would do with a 5-4 SCOTUS majority, the House, and 60+ Senate seats, and Trump leading the way, still using "emergency powers" because of the pandemic.

It would be a catastrophe.

We're headed there right now.

Trump Goes Viral, Con't

Dear Leader no longer needs a proxy for his daily mandatory session of lying to the planet, so his press secretary is gone without ever holding a briefing.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham is leaving the job without ever having briefed the press. CNN has learned she is returning to the East Wing as first lady Melania Trump's chief of staff as President Donald Trump's new chief of staff Mark Meadows shakes up the communications team in the West Wing. 

Meadows is currently considering several candidates for the press secretary job, including Trump campaign spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany. The new chief of staff is also considering hiring Alyssa Farah, the current spokeswoman for the Defense Department, for a communications role, among others, two sources with knowledge of the situation told CNN. 

Farah has held several roles in the Trump administration. After leaving her job as the spokeswoman for the House Freedom Caucus to become Vice President Mike Pence's press secretary, she moved to the Pentagon last August. But this would be her first position in the West Wing. Farah has remained close with Meadows since her days at the Freedom Caucus. 

Grisham, who still speaks with first lady Melania Trump on a daily basis, is returning to where she has spent the majority of her time in the administration, the East Wing. 

Grisham did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment.

Grisham is being replaced by campaign press flack Kayleigh McEnany, as new Chief of Staff Mark Meadows retools the White House press office as the campaign propaganda department.

Again, Trump loves this.  He gets to be on TV in prime time every day, seven days a week if he wants, and everyone has to pay attention to him.  He believes he is the star of the Coronavirus Hour and that he'll easily win in November with daily briefings ahead for months. 

Nobody is paying attention to what Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, or Chuck Schumer are saying, but Trump gets on TV live from the White House daily.   The broken media will cover him every day, no matter how much they protest, and the Dems' irrelevancy will continue through November.  2020 is Trump vs. COVID-19, if we even have an election in November, which is now seriously in doubt.

Unless Dems change the message with a major legislative push from Pelosi and Schumer, Trump will use the deaths and destruction to make himself leader for life. Every day is now The Trump Show for a captive, shut-in American audience of hundreds of millions.

And he gets to spread his lies daily. Example #6829 that the Trump regime was warned about how bad a pandemic would be and that Trump wasted weeks and weeks anyway came from all people, Trump's own trade guru, Peter Navarro, at the end of January.

A top White House adviser starkly warned Trump administration officials in late January that the coronavirus crisis could cost the United States trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death. 

The warning, written in a memo by Peter Navarro, President Trump’s trade adviser, is the highest-level alert known to have circulated inside the West Wing as the administration was taking its first substantive steps to confront a crisis that had already consumed China’s leaders and would go on to upend life in Europe and the United States. 

“The lack of immune protection or an existing cure or vaccine would leave Americans defenseless in the case of a full-blown coronavirus outbreak on U.S. soil,” Mr. Navarro’s memo said. “This lack of protection elevates the risk of the coronavirus evolving into a full-blown pandemic, imperiling the lives of millions of Americans.”

Dated Jan. 29, it came during a period when Mr. Trump was playing down the risks to the United States, and he would later go on to say that no one could have predicted such a devastating outcome.

I guess this is Navarro openly covering his ass here, as he's not going to take the fall for "Nobody could have known".  That particular lie was repeated this week by Trump regime economics adviser Larry "Always Wrong" Kudlow, and I guess Navarro's smart enough to see that Trump's going to blame somebody for the failure of the federal government's COVID-19 response and he doesn't want it to be him.

It's not like Trump has any plausible deniability on this anyway.  Multiple sources warned of a pandemic, intelligence, diplomatic, military, public health, the previous administration, and now his own advisers warned him.  Surely Navarro knows his only job is to protect Donald Trump politically though, right?

He must believe his position is pretty solid if this leaked out.

But Trump is getting rid of anyone who is supposed to hold him accountable, as his war on Inspectors General continues.  Hence his real move today, firing the watchdog over the CARES package slush fund after just two weeks.

President Donald Trump has upended the panel of federal watchdogs overseeing implementation of the $2 trillion coronavirus law, tapping a replacement for the Pentagon official who was supposed to lead the effort.

A panel of inspectors general had named Glenn Fine — the acting Pentagon watchdog — to lead the group charged with monitoring the coronavirus relief effort. But Trump on Monday removed Fine from his post, instead naming the EPA inspector general to serve as the temporary Pentagon watchdog in addition to his other responsibilities.

That decision, which began circulating on Capitol Hill Tuesday morning, effectively removed Fine from his role overseeing the coronavirus relief effort, since the new law permits only current inspectors general to fill the position.

“Mr. Fine is no longer on the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee," Dwrena Allen, a spokeswoman for the Pentagon inspector general’s office, confirmed.
Fine’s removal is Trump’s latest incursion into the community of independent federal watchdogs — punctuated most dramatically by his late Friday ouster of the intelligence community’s inspector general, Michael Atkinson, whose handling of a whistleblower report ultimately led to Trump’s impeachment.

Trump has also begun sharply attacking Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm, following a report from her office that described widespread testing delays and supply issues at the nation’s hospitals.

“Another Fake Dossier!” Trump tweeted, mentioning Grimm’s tenure as inspector general during the Obama administration. He didn’t mention, though, that Grimm has been serving as a federal watchdog since 1999, spanning administrations of both parties.

Trump’s targeting of Atkinson drew an unusual rebuke from Michael Horowitz, the inspector general of the Justice Department who also oversees a council of inspectors general. Horowitz said Atkison handled the whistleblower matter appropriately and defended the broader IG community.

At this point Trump is openly doing whatever he wants, and leaving us to deal with a pandemic killing thousands daily.  Removing him from power has never been more necessary and more impossible.

Cruel And Usual Punishment

Alabama's department of corrections is preparing for widespread COVID-19 casualties and mass riots inside jails and prisons that may take calling in the National Guard to put down.

Alabama’s prisons are underprepared to prevent and manage the spread of COVID-19, prompting a worst-case scenario plan that could call on the National Guard to work in the prisons should the virus take hold in the system, according to an internal Department of Corrections document obtained by AL.com.

The 263-page planning document states that the physical design of Alabama's prisons, severe overcrowding and understaffing combine to make it impossible to follow recommended protocols for keeping prisoners and employees from contracting the coronavirus.

In the worst-case scenario outlined in the plan, system-wide shortfalls could result in widespread infection, the need for military intervention and nearly 200 inmate deaths. And the plan shows that the department anticipates that it may need to spend more than $2 million on supplies to respond to the pandemic, including personal protective equipment, medication and body bags.

AL.com obtained a copy of the document, dubbed 2020 Pandemic Continuity of Operations Plan, on Thursday, the same day some officials first received it via email. The document was dated April 1 and signed on that date by Ruth Naglich, the department’s associate commissioner for health services.

Inmates and their families, correctional officers, attorneys, journalists and other stakeholders have been asking the department about the impact of coronavirus on the state prison system and its nearly 22,000 inmates for weeks. Epidemiologists, professors and other experts have been ringing alarm bells about the need for Alabama and other states with overcrowded prisons to take swift, decisive action to keep coronavirus from spreading behind bars and killing large numbers of prisoners.

In a telephone call Friday night, DOC Commissioner Jefferson Dunn said he and the department he runs are doing everything in their power to avoid such a result in Alabama.

"The number one thing in my mind is safety, is trying our best to prevent the virus from getting into the facilities, and then mitigating the impact," he said.

But the DOC has provided little in the way of information about how it is managing the crisis, beyond three written statements since March 19 that failed to address many concerns about its coronavirus response. The DOC planning document was dated nearly two weeks after Gov. Kay Ivey declared a state of emergency in response to coronavirus on March 13, the same day her office released a statement about Alabama’s first confirmed COVID-19 case.

The department says that none of its prisoners have been diagnosed with COVID-19. It recently posted a chart on its website detailing the amount of testing for the virus that has been undertaken in its facilities. The chart showed that only 17 state prisoners had been tested for the virus as of Tuesday. Twelve of those tests came back negative and the results of the other five were still pending, according to the chart.

The department, which operates more than two dozen correctional facilities across the state, reported on Wednesday that two of its employees had tested positive for coronavirus as of that date.

The planning document characterizes prisoners as being at “Very High” risk of being exposed to the disease and says it is “unrealistic to assume cases of COVID-19 will not be found within one or more ADOC facilities.”

This worst-case scenario is already beginning to materialize inside NYC's infamous Rikers Island prison.

A Rikers Island inmate became the first prisoner based in New York to die from COVID-19 Sunday.
The 53-year-old convict passed away at Bellevue Hospital after he was transferred from the infamous Big Apple facility, said the New York Post, citing a statement from Department of Corrections spokesperson Peter Thorne.

Thorne extended the Department's condolences to the inmate's family, adding that their number priority is still the “safety and well-being of those in custody.”

The New York Times pointed that an anonymous official said the inmate had been sentenced on Rikers Island since February 28 before he was transferred to the said hospital on March 26.

As of Sunday, at least 273 inmates, 321 correction employees and 52 healthcare workers have tested positive for COVID-19. Four corrections employees have died since, according to the outlet.

New York City officials have released at least 200 inmates in order to slow down the spread of the virus among detainees, most of which are crammed inside prison blocks.

America's prison system is going to be absolute hell soon, and wouldn't you know it, more black people are going to die from systemic racism in the US, too.