Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

On February 23, a 25-year-old unarmed black man in Georgia named Ahmaud Arbery was jogging through a neighborhood on a sunny day when he was ambushed, shot and killed by two white men lying in wait. He died in the middle of the street and the men still have not been charged, because in 2020 it is still legal in multiple states to kill a black man in broad daylight in the middle of a street and claim "stand your ground".

The killing of an unarmed black man at the hands of armed white men here has sparked outrage and drawn fresh attention to the state’s stand-your-ground law. 

Ahmaud Arbery, 25, was running down a street in the city’s Satilla Shores neighborhood early in the afternoon of Feb. 23 when he caught the attention of Gregory McMichael. A former cop and investigator with the local district attorney’s office, McMichael was sitting in his son Travis’ front yard. 

“Travis, the guy is running down the street, let’s go,” Gregory told his son, according to a police report obtained by The New York Times.

The men, who are white, said they suspected Arbery, who is black, might be connected to recent thefts in their neighborhood. They grabbed weapons—a shotgun and a .357 magnum—and followed Arbery in Travis McMichael’s pickup truck, which bears the Gadsden flag and its “Don’t tread on me” motto. A neighbor, William Bryan, joined the McMichaels in pursuing Arbery, according to police. 

Soon after, the trio confronted Arbery. According to Gregory McMichael’s account in the police report, Arbery turned toward Travis McMichael’s truck as he stopped and exited, and struck Travis. A video that circulated widely on Tuesday—and that Arbery’s aunt, Thea Brooks, said depicted her nephew—shows a black man and white man struggling both on and off-screen as shots ring out. But the video’s provenance, and whether it was the same footage shot by Bryan that was cited by a local prosecutor—who initially declined to press charges in connection with the shooting—was unclear. 

“Travis fired a shot and then a second later there was a second shot,” the police report states. At least two shots struck Arbery, the Glynn County Coroner’s Office told The Daily Beast last week. 

Arbery died in the middle of the street where he fell, and no one has been arrested or charged with a crime. But on Tuesday, District Attorney Tom Durden—the third prosecutor to tackle the killing—announced that he would present the case to a grand jury. 

Meanwhile, Arbery’s family was moving to hold a protest in the area Tuesday evening.
“It’s murder. It’s heartbreaking to even look at. The whole city has seen it,” Brooks, Arbery’s aunt, told The Daily Beast of the clip circulating. “Right now we just have to stay calm because it’s a graphic video, it was very painful to watch, and we know what we knew the other day: one man was murdered, and two men are out.” 

At his son’s home on Friday, Gregory McMichael told The Daily Beast he “never would have gone after someone for their color,” and that the “closest version of the truth” exists in a letter effectively exonerating him and his son that was written by a prosecutor who recused himself from the case, George Barnhill.

Repeated attempts to reach Gregory McMichael, Travis McMichael, and William Bryan by phone after the video surfaced on Tuesday were unsuccessful.

The video circulating appears to have been taken by the third man, William Bryan.   He is in his vehicle driving around a curve and on the right side of the road we see Ahmaud running as Bryan is coming up behind him.  Ahmaud sees a white truck parked on the right shoulder and runs around to the right on the grass to avoid it as the vehicle with Bryan slows down to approach the same truck.

The vehicle pulls up behind the truck and we hear a gunshot.  Two white men come out from the right side of the truck,  Ahmaud is in a struggle with an older white man, who is holding a long rifle. Ahmaud grabs the barrel of the rifle in an effort to defend himself.  A second shot rings out and Ahmaud takes a few steps and staggers to the pavement.

They were lying in wait for Ahmaud.

This was a lynching, straight up, in 2020 America.

Ahmaud Arbery died in the middle of the street.

They took a video of the act.

The NY Times's 1619 Project on the 400-year history of slavery in America won a Pulitzer Prize this week for commentary for Nikole Hannah-Jones.  The right, in particular Federalist editor Ben Shapiro, have ruthlessly been attacking the 1619 Project as "divisive" and "hateful" towards America itself, as "revisionist history".  Shapiro in particular was livid over the award, promising a "large part" of his upcoming book would be dedicated to debunk the "notion" that slavery was the driving force of American history.

I mention this because Shapiro's chief argument is that slavery and racism have been "solved" by white America, and that black America, in particular black folk of my generation and younger, have lived in a country where civil rights have been guaranteed by law all our lives, and that racism is an ugly relic of the past used to blame white America for the problems that black America now needs to "solve" themselves.

And to Shapiro, I say Ahmaud Arbery was ambushed and murdered in the middle of the street like an animal.

A black man was lynched in 2020 Georgia.

Very little has changed from 400 years ago.

Hostage Taking 101, Con't

Donald Trump made it clear again this week that he expects the people in the states who didn't vote for him to suffer catastrophic effects and that he refuses to help them in any way.

President Donald Trump says it would be unfair to Republicans if Congress passes coronavirus "bailouts" for states because he said the states that would benefit from that funding are run by Democrats. 

"I think Congress is inclined to do a lot of things but I don't think they're inclined to do bailouts. A bailout is different than, you know, reimbursing for the plague,” Trump told the New York Post in a sit-down interview in the Oval Office on Monday. 

The president continued, "It's not fair to the Republicans because all the states that need help — they're run by Democrats in every case. Florida is doing phenomenal, Texas is doing phenomenal, the Midwest is, you know, fantastic — very little debt."

The president named California, Illinois and New York as examples of states that are currently run by Democratic governors and are in "tremendous debt" because he said they "have been mismanaged over a long period of time." 

Democrats have made it clear that approving funding for states and municipalities is their top priority for the next piece of legislation. 

Maryland's GOP governor, Larry Hogan, who serves as the chairman of the National Governors Association, has also been urging Congress to send states financial aid. His own state is facing a nearly $3 billion budget shortfall this year. 

"To stabilize state budgets and to make sure states have the resources to battle the virus and provide the services the American people rely on, Congress must provide immediate fiscal assistance directly to all states," Hogan recently said in a statement. 

Hogan said that if Congress doesn't appropriate at least $500 billion specifically for states and territories to meet the budget shortfalls, "states will have to confront the prospect of significant reductions to critically important services all across this country."
Last week, Trump addressed the issue on Twitter, saying, "Why should the people and taxpayers of America be bailing out poorly run states (like Illinois, as example) and cities, in all cases Democrat run and managed, when most of the other states are not looking for bailout help? I am open to discussing anything, but just asking?" 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has suggested that instead of Congress sending aid to states, they should declare bankruptcy, a comment that has deeply angered Democrats.

Trump won't sign a bill that gives money to blue states, period.  If they suffer, why should he care? What is California going to do, not vote GOP?

Be more like red states.

Because red states are completely great with money.

The state of Mississippi allowed tens of millions of dollars in federal anti-poverty funds to be used in ways that did little or nothing to help the poor, with two nonprofit groups instead using the money on lobbyists, football tickets, religious concerts and fitness programs for state lawmakers, according to a scathing audit released on Monday.

According to the report, released by the state auditor’s office, the money also enriched celebrities with Mississippi ties, among them Brett Favre, a former N.F.L. quarterback whose Favre Enterprises was paid $1.1 million by a nonprofit group that received the welfare funds. The payments were for speaking engagements that Mr. Favre did not attend, the auditors said.

Other large sums went to a family of pro wrestlers whose flamboyant patriarch, Ted DiBiase, earned national fame performing as the “Million Dollar Man.” In a news conference on Monday, Shad White, the state auditor, said it was possible that many recipients of the money did not know it had come from the federal welfare program.

Mr. Favre could not be reached for comment Monday. Mr. DiBiase declined to comment.
Mr. White called the findings “the most egregious misspending my staff have seen in their careers.” The audit found that more than $98 million from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF, was funneled to the two Mississippi-based nonprofit groups over three years. About $94 million of that was “questioned” by state auditors, meaning the money was in all likelihood misspent or the auditors could not verify that it had been spent legally, Mr. White said.

The breadth of the audit — which auditors said included funds that were “misspent, converted to personal use, spent on family members and friends of staffers and grantees or wasted” — raises broad questions about the efficacy of America’s social safety net.

In 1996, the TANF program converted the old federal welfare system, in which cash benefits to poor families were deemed an entitlement, to a system of block grants issued to the states. The new program created work rules and time limits on aid — and, notably, gave each state much more leeway on how to spend the money. Critics say that states do not have to clearly justify that they are spending the money on helping the poor.
“There’s this incredible amount of flexibility,” said LaDonna Pavetti, vice president for family income support policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “It could allow for a lot of things to happen.”

Mississippi Republican lawmakers concerned about the misuse of federal funds have enacted safeguards to prevent fraud by potential welfare recipients. A ThinkProgress article found that in 2016, only 167 of the 11,700 Mississippi families who applied for a TANF payment were approved.

For those who support anti-poverty initiatives, the unfolding scandal has left a particularly bitter taste. “It’s just, ‘How can you?’” said Oleta Garrett Fitzgerald, southern regional director for the Children’s Defense Fund.

Monday’s audit comes after the arrest in February of John Davis, the former director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, the agency that distributes the federal welfare block grants. Mr. Davis is accused of taking part in a multimillion-dollar embezzlement scheme.

Trump's been a grifter all his life, maybe the most successful con artist in human history.  But the grift in the GOP has been there for decades, and it always comes at the expense of the people who can least afford it.

Food For Thought, Con't

As I've been talking about for weeks now, the meat shortages are now reaching the retail grocery store level. Kroger is starting to limit meat purchases in the Midwest, and Costco is being hit too, and they have a lot more control over their meat supply chain.

Costco on Monday became the latest retailer to implement purchasing limits on fresh meat because of the slowdown at processing plants during the coronavirus pandemic.

The company announced it’s limiting shoppers to three items of beef, pork and poultry products to “help ensure more members are able to purchase merchandise they want and need.”

Kroger, the country’s largest supermarket chain, announced a similar rule. The limits are because of high demand from shoppers while top meat suppliers are temporarily closing their factories because workers are falling ill.

The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union estimated last week that 20 meatpacking and food processing workers have died so far. The union said last week the closures have resulted in a 25% reduction in pork slaughter capacity and 10% reduction in beef slaughter capacity. President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order aimed at keeping meat plants open during the crisis.

Tyson Foods warned Monday that it expects more meat plant closures this year. The company also said it will continue producing less meat than usual, as workers refrain from coming to work during the outbreak. The pandemic has halved the amount of pork processing capacity in the country, Tyson said in its earnings call.

Demand is up sharply as the weather gets nicer and we get closer to Memorial Day weekend.  People want to grill out in the backyard. They may not invite the neighbors over, but they want to get out of the house and have some semblance of normalcy.  I can't blame them.

Meanwhile, plant closures are happening at the same time.

It's going to get worse before it gets better.

StupidiNews!

• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that the Trump regime is "afraid of the truth" as White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows is blocking any testimony of the COVID-19 task force.
• FOX News has reportedly fallen out of favor with Donald Trump and his son Donald Jr. may be organizing an attempt to invest in far-right rival One America News Network.
• Former Vice President Joe Biden has announced new policy efforts to help black America with a proposed public credit reporting agency and a billion in new first time homebuyer tax credits.
• Donald Trump wants a massive payroll tax cut to help businesses but Republicans are increasingly cool towards the idea in an election year due to lowered Social Security and Medicare revenue.
• Apple and Google have announced new details of their program to track COVID-19 exposure through smartphone metadata that would warn those those near the voluntarily positively diagnosed.

Last Call For Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Two-thirds of states are lifting COVID-19 restrictions this month as governors give in to pressure from Trump, business groups, and oh yeah, domestic terrorists who want to use violence because they refuse to wear masks.

A Colorado man arrested after federal agents allegedly discovered pipe bombs in his home had also been helping organize an armed protest demanding the state lift its coronavirus restrictions, an official briefed on the case tells ABC News.

FBI and ATF agents served search warrants Friday morning at the Loveland, Colorado, home of Bradley Bunn, 53. Agents discovered four pipe bombs and potential pipe bomb components inside the house, according to a press release from the office of U.S. Attorney for Colorado Jason Dunn.

It is not clear what, if anything, Bunn planned to do with the pipe bombs, the official said.

Bunn came to the attention of law enforcement after using social media to encourage people to bring assault rifles to a planned May 1 rally at the Colorado capitol building, ABC News has learned.

In the days leading up to the protest, investigators discovered social media posts described as angry and aggressive, the official said. Soon after, investigators received information that he was in possession of pipe bombs. Bunn was arrested before he could attend Friday’s rally.

And yes, governors are now folding on social distancing and closures because one, they need the tax revenue (because Senate Republicans refuse to help states and local governments) and two, people are getting killed over stupid things like this as the chaos gets worse.

The Genessee County Prosecutor's office said Monday afternoon that a Flint Family Dollar security guard who was killed on Friday was shot following a dispute with a customer who would not put on a mask in the store.

The 43-year-old security guard was shot Friday afternoon at the Family Dollar on Fifth Ave in Flint. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

Police have not released his name but MLive has identified him as Calvin “Duper” James Munerlyn. According to family members MLive spoke with, including Calvin's wife, Latryna Sims-Munerlyn, she was told the shooting was over Calvin's instructions to a customer to wear a mask.

Prosecutors confirmed that to FOX 2 Monday afternoon.

Michigan State Police Lt. Davi Kaiser said Sunday that law enforcement was looking into the possibility that an argument over a mask led to the shooting.

It is required to wear a mask when in an enclosed public space, per Governor Gretchen Whitmer's executive order issued on April 24 to combat the spread of coronavirus.

There are no punitive charges for disobeying the order but stores can refuse service to customers to protect the public and employees.

Shot and killed because he said "no, wear a mask, protect yourself and others."

It's going to be bad, folks.

Very bad.

Trump Goes Viral, Con't

May is going to be a charnel house, and nobody knows that better than the actual pandemic experts that exist in the Trump regime.

As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of cases and deaths from the coronavirus over the next several weeks, reaching about 3,000 daily deaths on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double from the current level of about 1,750.

The projections, based on government modeling pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases now.

The numbers underscore a sobering reality: While the United States has been hunkered down for the past seven weeks, not much has changed. And the reopening to the economy will make matters worse.

“There remains a large number of counties whose burden continues to grow,” the C.D.C. warned.

The projections confirm the primary fear of public health experts: that a reopening of the economy will put the nation right back where it was in mid-March, when cases were rising so rapidly in some parts of the country that patients were dying on gurneys in hospital hallways as the health care system grew overloaded.

“While mitigation didn’t fail, I think it’s fair to say that it didn’t work as well as we expected,” Scott Gottlieb, Mr. Trump’s former commissioner of food and drugs, said Sunday on the CBS program Face the Nation. “We expected that we would start seeing more significant declines in new cases and deaths around the nation at this point. And we’re just not seeing that.”

On Sunday, Mr. Trump said deaths in the United States could reach 100,000, twice as many as he had forecast just two weeks ago. But his new estimate still underestimates what his own administration is now predicting to be the total death toll by the end of May — much less in the months that follow. It follows a pattern for Mr. Trump, who has frequently understated the impact of the disease.

“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” he said in a virtual town hall on Fox News. “That’s a horrible thing. We shouldn’t lose one person over this.”

Mr. Gottlieb said Americans “may be facing the prospect that 20,000, 30,000 new cases a day diagnosed becomes the new normal.”

Some states that have partially reopened are still seeing an increase in cases, including Iowa, Minnesota, Tennessee and Texas, according to Times data. Indiana, Kansas and Nebraska also are seeing an increase in cases and reopened some businesses on Monday. Alaska has also reopened and is seeing a small number of increasing cases.

While the country has stabilized, it has not really improved, as shown by data collected by The Times. Case and death numbers remain stuck on a numbing, tragic plateau that is tilting only slightly downward.

At least 1,000 people with the virus, and sometimes more than 2,000, have died every day for the last month. On a near-daily basis, at least 25,000 new cases of the virus are being identified across the country. And even as New York City, New Orleans and Detroit have shown improvement, other urban centers, including Chicago and Los Angeles, are reporting steady growth in cases.

The situation has devolved most dramatically in parts of rural America that were largely spared in the early stages of the pandemic. As food processing facilities and prisons have emerged as some of the country’s largest case clusters, the counties that include Logansport, Ind., South Sioux City, Neb., and Marion, Ohio, have surpassed New York City in cases per capita.

Understand that this is the nightmare scenario that all the experts have been predicting for months now, where small city and rural hospitals around the country are inundated, and that raises the mortality rate significantly.  We are headed that way right now, in a matter of weeks, not months. Under no circumstances should states be reopening anything.



200,000 cases per day means 10,000 dead per day 7-14 days later.  It will be absolute chaos. reopening the economy now is only guaranteeing a massive spike in cases and deaths, and an economic crash into depression.  As I said before, I guess it's going to take hundreds of thousands of deaths until Americans get it through their thick skulls.

Steve M sums it all up (emphasis his):

I think many Americans won't be able to grasp this because it's close to unthinkable, but let me restate what's being reported here: The president of the United States, who has been incessantly cheerleading for a reopening of the economy, is doing so even though his own administration's model is informing him that this will significantly increase the number of people who are sickened and killed by the coronavirus. President Trump is not crossing his fingers and hoping that the reopenings take place with few bad consequences. President Trump is choosing to kill innocent American citizens.

Trump will not be impeached for this, or for anything else between now and the end of his term in January 2021. But knowingly and willfully causing the deaths of tens of thousands of Americans is an offense worthy of impeachment and removal from office.

At the very least, some Democrats should be saying this now. They should be demanding to see the forecasts. They should be calling Trump a murderer. 

And as bad as May will be?

June will be far, far worse.

Who Was That Masked Man?

Ohio GOP Gov. Mike DeWine is dropping requirements that residents wear masks when out and about, rather it's become a "strong suggestion". Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear is following suit, wanting residents to wear masks starting May 11, but it won't be enforced in any way.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) explained his decision to rescind an order requiring people to wear face masks in retail stores, stating on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday that it "became clear to me that that was just a bridge too far. People were not going to accept the government telling them what to do." 

Why it matters: DeWine has earned praise for his aggressive and early steps to mitigate the impact of the coronavirus in Ohio, such as closing schools before any governor in the country and postponing the state's March 17 primary. 

His decision to reverse himself on the face mask requirement reflects a challenge that dozens of governors are navigating as they attempt to enforce public safety measures while not angering their constituents by overstepping. 

What he's saying: "We put out dozens and dozens of orders. That was one that it just went too far. But at the same time we pulled that back, I said that, look, this is highly recommended." 

DeWine added that wearing a mask in retail stores — if customers are able — is the "kind thing" to do in order to keep store workers and fellow customers safe.

It is the kind thing to do, and the smart thing to do.

And I guarantee you 90% of people will ignore it.

I just don't know what people expect.  We're still seeing 2,500-3,000 deaths per day and while the death toll is dropping in NYC, it's rising pretty much everywhere else.  People are just giving up and pretending it's all over.

It's insane.

StupidiNews!

• Upward revisions in the Trump regime's forecast of COVID-19 deaths now see the toll at 80-90 thousand, which would necessitate a sharp drop in the current rate of deaths already nearing 70,000.
• Vice-President Mike Pence now admits he should have worn a protective mask when visiting the Mayo Clinic last week as he was requested to do by staff.
• Japanese PM Shinzo Abe is expected to extend the country's state of emergency through the end of May as the number of cases in the country has risen sharply on the northern island of Hokkaido.
• Ireland is moving towards breaking a deadlock to form coalition government after historic elections earlier this year as the Green Party is in talks to join.
• Global oil production is only now finally slowing after last month's negative prices on oil futures flipped the market for crude upside down.

Last Call For No Help Coming

There's absolutely no reason to believe another dime will be spent to help Americans on COVID-19.

Don't expect fast action on the next coronavirus stimulus package, known on Capitol Hill as "phase 4." Senior sources in the Republican Senate conference tell me that most GOP senators want to wait a bit before passing another big aid bill.

Between the lines: The two parties are miles apart ahead of the next stage of talks. 

Mitch McConnell has sounded the alarm about the deficit after $3 trillion so far in virus spending. 

In a conference call last week, McConnell urged Republican senators to push back against the White House's impulse to spend trillions on infrastructure. 

Democrats want significantly more money to help state and local governments. 

And McConnell and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy put out a rare joint statement in which they said they won't support another coronavirus bill unless it protects businesses from lawsuits should they choose to reopen during the pandemic. 

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi dismissed this idea: "Especially now, we have every reason to protect our workers and our patients in all of this. So we would not be inclined to be supporting any immunity from liability."

Yes, but: On CNN's "State of the Union," this morning, Trump's top economic adviser Larry Kudlow told Jake Tapper, "There's kind of a pause period right now." 

Kudlow added: "We have put up $3 trillion of direct federal budget assistance in one way or another. The Federal Reserve has actually put in as much as $4 trillion to $6 trillion. So it's a huge, huge package. Let's see how it's doing as we gradually reopen the economy."

Behind the scenes: One idea that's gathering momentum on the Hill and in the White House: legislation that would encourage American companies to build critical supply chains at home, reducing foreign dependency — especially on pharmaceuticals from China.

That's right: more corporate tax incentives.

The White House is now officially operating on the assumption that the worst of the pandemic is over.  They are getting cover from pundits and industry groups who want to get back to record profits, and from dark money groups funding protests around the nation.  Governors are breaking down and giving in across the country, and Americans are simply ignoring social distancing anyway.

It's going to be abundantly clear what the consequences will be very shortly, and may God have mercy upon us when that happens.

Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The "grassroots" anti-government protests against COVID-19 measures to help Donald Trump and sponsored by big GOP interests are of course being used by white supremacist domestic terrorist militias to recruit and to plan further attacks.

America’s extremists are attempting to turn the coronavirus pandemic into a potent recruiting tool both in the deep corners of the internet and on the streets of state capitals by twisting the public health crisis to bolster their white supremacist, anti-government agenda.

Although the protests that have broken out across the country have drawn out a wide variety of people pressing to lift stay-at-home orders, the presence of extremists cannot be missed, with their anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic signs and coded messages aimed at inspiring the faithful, say those who track such movements.

April is typically a busy month for white supremacists. There is Hitler’s birthday, which they contort into a celebration. There is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the domestic attack 25 years ago that killed 168 people and still serves as a rallying call for new extremist recruits.

But this April, something else overshadowed those chilling milestones. It was the coronavirus, and the disruption it wreaked on society, that became the extremists’ battle cry.

Embellishing Covid-19 developments to fit their usual agenda, extremists spread disinformation on the transmission of the virus and disparage stay-at-home orders as “medical martial law” — the long-anticipated advent of a totalitarian state.

“They are being very effective in capitalizing on the pandemic,” said Devin Burghart, a veteran researcher of white nationalists who runs the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a Seattle-based research center on far right movements.

What success the groups have had in finding fresh recruits is not yet clear, but new research indicates a significant jump in people consuming extremist material while under lockdown. Various violent incidents have been linked to white supremacist or anti-government perpetrators enraged over aspects of the pandemic.

The New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness said in March that white supremacists have encouraged followers to conduct attacks during the crisis to incite fear and target ethnic minorities and immigrants. “We have noticed domestic extremist groups taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic by spreading disinformation,” Jared M. Maples, its director, said in a statement. The coronavirus has been dismissed as a hoax, painted as a Jewish-run conspiracy and, alternatively, described as a disease spread by nonwhite immigrants, he said.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security warned law enforcement officials throughout the United States of the mobilization of violent extremists in response to stay-at-home measures, according to a senior law enforcement official and a congressional staff member, who were not authorized to discuss the warning publicly.

A department memo dated April 23 noted the recent arrests of individuals who had threatened government officials imposing coronavirus-related regulations. The memo was distributed to law enforcement “fusion centers” that counter terrorism nationwide and to congressional committees, the officials said.

Extremist organizations habitually try to exploit any crisis to further their aims. While not monolithic, a spectrum of organizations — from anti-immigrant groups to those with a variety of grievances and those that overtly espouse violence — found something to like about the coronavirus.

“They view it as a chance to turn people,” said Megan Squire, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina who tracks online extremist chatter.

At its core is one of the oldest fallacies in the books, the suggestion that COVID-19 is a disease that only kills the inferior. To the white supremacist, it's a tailor-made recruiting tool.

Please note that the biggest proponent of the notion that everything is fine and that everyone is overreacting is our racist-in-chief himself.

But let's not forget the domestic terrorism angle, too.

An emergency proclamation issued Thursday in Stillwater, Oklahoma, requiring the use of face masks in stores and restaurants was amended Friday after threats of violence. 

"In the short time beginning on May 1, 2020, that face coverings have been required for entry into stores/restaurants, store employees have been threatened with physical violence and showered with verbal abuse," Stillwater City Manager Norman McNickle said in a statement. 

"In addition, there has been one threat of violence using a firearm. This has occurred in three short hours and in the face of clear medical evidence that face coverings helps contain the spread of Covid-19." 

Due to the threats of violence the city has decided to amend their emergency order but still want people to wear face masks whenever possible, the statement said. 

The proclamation issued Thursday required, among other things, businesses to require patrons to cover their faces to combat the spread of coronavirus.  

But on Friday, Mayor Will Joyce softened the rule to encourage, not require, face coverings, after several reports emerged of employees being verbally abused and being threatened with physical violence while trying to enforce the order -- all in just three hours of the rule going into effect. 

"Many of those with objections cite the mistaken belief the requirement is unconstitutional, and under their theory, one cannot be forced to wear a mask. No law or court supports this view," said City Manager Norman McNickle in a statement. "It is further distressing that these people, while exercising their believed rights, put others at risk."

It's going to get a lot worse in the weeks and months ahead.

Sunday Long Read: Going Postal

The GOP has been trying to get rid of the US Postal Service and privatize it for decades in order to corrupt the mail and make bank, not to mention rob African-Americans of thousands of postal service jobs, and our Sunday Long Read this week comes to us from Esquire's Jesse Lichtenstein achives from 2013 on why rural America in particular should be going to the pitchforks to keep the USPS.

The letter is mailed from Gold Hill, Oregon. 

The eleven hundred residents of this lingering gold-rush town, mostly mechanics and carpenters and retail clerks in other places, wake with the sun and end their day with a walk to the aluminum mailbox bolted to a post at the edge of their yard. In between, Carrie Grabenhorst heads out of town on highway 99, follows the Rogue River, and turns right on Sardine Creek Road. She turns left at a large madrone tree and heads up a quarter mile of dirt road, takes the right fork, goes past the sagging red barn to a white clapboard house with green trim, where she takes a dog biscuit from her pocket and offers it to the large golden retriever. It's a Monday, about 2:00 p.m. The dog stops barking. This is the usual peace, negotiated after thousands of visits over eighteen years. 

Often Grabenhorst's elderly customers are waiting at the door, or even by the mailbox, for her right-hand-drive Jeep to edge onto the shoulder. Many of them are alone all day. Their postal carrier is that one reliable human contact, six days a week. Some are older veterans. Quite a few have limited mobility, and it isn't uncommon for her to lend a hand with an errand; she's been known to pick up milk in town and bring it along with the mail. Grabenhorst drives seventy miles a day and makes 660 deliveries. On a typical day, that might include fifty packages of medicine. 

Her route is one of 227,000 throughout America. On the South Side of Chicago, carriers walk cracked sidewalks, past empty lots and overfilled projects. In the suburbs of Phoenix, mail trucks deliver to banks of mailboxes outside gated communities. In Brooklyn, they pushed their carts up sidewalks and ducked into bodegas on September 11, as they always do. Residents say they were comforted to see their postal workers still making the rounds, the government still functioning. In rural Alaska, mail comes by snowmobile and seaplane. In chaps and a cowboy hat, Charlie Chamberlain leads a train of postal mules down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon, where a tribe of Havasupai Indians lives. Wearing blue trunks and a ball cap, Mark Lipscomb delivers letters by speedboat up and down the Magnolia River in Alabama. 

Want to send a letter to Talkeetna, Alaska, from New York? It will cost you fifty dollars by UPS. Grabenhorst or Lipscomb can do it for less than two quarters: the same as the cost of getting a letter from Gold Hill to Shady Cove, Oregon, twenty miles up the road. It's how the postal service works: The many short-distance deliveries down the block or across the city pay for the longer ones across the country. From the moment Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general in 1775, the purpose of the post office has always been to bind the nation together. It was a way of unifying thirteen disparate colonies so that the abolitionist in Philadelphia had access to the same information and newspapers as the slaveholder in Augusta, Georgia. 

Today the postal service has a network that stretches across America: 461 distribution centers, 32,000 post offices, and 213,000 vehicles, the largest civilian fleet in the world. Trucks carrying mail log 1.2 billion miles a year. The postal service handles almost half of the entire planet's mail. It can physically connect any American to any other American in 3.7 million square miles of territory in a few days, often overnight: a vast lattice of veins and arteries and capillaries designed to circulate the American lifeblood of commerce and information and human contact. 

Grabenhorst sports a few blond streaks in her brown bangs, which curl over her forehead, perfectly framing her azure eyes and chiseled cheekbones. Rural carriers don't wear official uniforms, so today she's in shorts and an Oregon State T-shirt. Letters arrive at the post office in Gold Hill already sequenced in the order Grabenhorst will deliver them, but the "flats" — magazines, catalogs, large envelopes — and packages do not, so in the back of the post office she and her two colleagues stand at their own three-sided bank of metal slots, hundreds of them, one for each address, and merge the separate streams — a process called "throwing the mail." 

As the junior carrier, Grabenhorst has the peanut route. Paula Joneikis is the senior carrier, thirty-three years on the job; she took over her route from another lifer named Bev Washburn. That's how these jobs work — when you get a route, you hold on to it, maybe even try to pass it on to someone in your family. Failing that, you take a younger colleague under your wing and share your particular wisdom: the life history of your customers, how this one is related to that one, when so-and-so got to town, when so-and-so split up. Joneikis has a lot of "silver foxes" on her route — she tries to remember who's recently had an operation, and she'll come to the door with the mail. "We're a lifeline to these people," she says. 

"All of these people are family," Grabenhorst adds. She color-codes all 660 addresses for her morning sort: a little pink flag affixed to a slot means the customer is on vacation; a yellow flag means the whole family has moved; an orange flag is for customers who don't want packages left when they aren't home; a green flag means an individual has left the family: moved out, gone to college, divorced, died. 

When she gets to their driveway, she'll put the bundle into their box, her box. By law, only the postal service can put mail into a mailbox. It's a monopoly that ensures every citizen, in every square mile of the country, has the ability to receive mail and that the government can reach every citizen. No branch of government serves us so consistently, so intimately — a federal employee literally touching every house in America every day but Sunday. 

In mid-November, the postmaster general, Patrick Donahoe, reported that the post office had lost $15.9 billion for the year and was operating on just a few days' cash flow, having reached its legal debt limit. He all but begged Congress to take action. Mail was down 5 percent from the year before, and wages and benefits and other worker-related costs were an unsustainable 80 percent of the postal service's $81 billion operating expenses.
But nobody wants to hear that more than 70 percent of those losses were for extraordinary budget obligations mandated by Congress, or that the postal service posted its thirteenth-straight quarter of productivity gains. In a nation obsessed with cutting budgets and government fat, there is no better target than the federal postal worker who will have her route delivering paper mail for life, and then try to pass it on to her daughter. 

Eighty-five percent of America's critical infrastructure is controlled by the private sector. We let private companies fight our wars; we have 110,000 defense contractors in Afghanistan compared with 68,000 American troops. We let private companies lock up 16 percent of our federal inmates and instruct 10 percent of our students. They provide our phone service and Internet access and air travel and hospital care. Surely, many believe, private companies can deliver our mail better and faster and cheaper than the federal government. 

If you work with actual pieces of mail — if you are a carrier, a handler, a clerk, but not an administrator — it is said that you "touch the mail." The postal service has more than half a million full-time workers and a hundred thousand contract employees, the vast majority of which are mail touchers. Each morning, Grabenhorst enters into a ledger she keeps at her workstation exactly how much mail she's thrown and will be delivering that day. In Washington, D.C., they count in billions of pieces, but carriers talk about mail volume in feet — the width of a mail stack laid on its edge, face to flap.
On this unremarkable Monday, she'd written 14.75 feet. She flipped the pages of the ledger back to the previous year, to the same date: 17.5 feet. 

That we're sending less mail is not debatable. Nor is it debatable that the post office as we've known it for the past forty years, one built for speed and brute force in sorting and distributing an ever-surging flood of paper documents, is outdated in our digital world. 

This isn't a story about whether we could live without the post office. 

It's about whether we'd want to.

Seven years later the guy in the Oval Office is trying to destroy the postal service just to hurt the man who owns the Washington Post.

Mississippi Burning (With Fever)

Suddenly, the Magnolia State reopening businesses last Sunday is turning out to be a very, very bad idea.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R) is reconsidering his plan to keep reversing his stay at home order after his state saw its largest spike in COVID-19 cases in one day following his first partial rollback.

“Things can change quickly,” the GOP governor said during a press briefing on Friday. “We have to stay flexible.” 

Mississip State Health Officer Dr. Thomas Dobbs, who was also present at the briefing, reported that there were 397 new cases in Mississippi, “the largest number of cases we’ve reported in a single day.” 

Tate, who had issued an executive order that allowed some businesses to reopen effective April 24, told reporters that he had originally planned to announce more reopenings during the press conference, then changed his mind upon hearing about the sudden surge in cases. 

“The increase was a large enough change to make me take a step back, reexamine things and must hold on and reconsider at least over the weekend,” the governor said. “Not to recklessly put people in harms way.”

Two dozen more states have already reopened or are expected to start reopening businesses in the next few weeks, including Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky locally.

Indiana is getting the jump on its neighbors, Ohio and Kentucky, when it comes to reopening restaurants. That’s good news for Steve Van Wassenhove. 

“We miss the day to day,” said Van Wassenhove, owner of Willie’s Sports Café at Hidden Valley Lake. “It’s been extremely challenging at times, but extremely uplifting at times.” 

Van Wassenhove said he and his staff didn’t expect to be back on the job so soon, getting ready for a May 11 reopening after Gov. Eric Holcomb gave the OK, even though they're limited to 50% capacity. 

“We’ve heard from our customers. That’s what they want. They want to be back here, back to normal,” Van Wassenhove said. 

“We want to make sure that everyone that comes here feels as safe as possible and we’re doing everything under the guidelines we can to reopen.” 

That means setting tables and chairs a bit further apart. 

“We’ve set up a floor plan to allow social distancing and allow our customers to be as safe as possible,” Van Wassenhove said.

Holcomb’s announcement came as a surprise, Van Wassenhove said. 

“We were assuming right away we’d be closer to June. Our plans have always been to reopen as soon as we can to get our folks back in here,” he said.

Kentucky is also reopening construction and manufacturing plants on May 11, and Ohio's Mike DeWine is expected to announce a similar schedule on Monday.  Restaurant dining areas aren't expected on the list though, which means the restaurants and eateries over the state line in Indiana are going to be packed with folks from KY and OH here in the Cincy metro area.

It's going to be bad, folks.

Last Call For Giving Them The Business

Small business owners don't want to use the Payroll Protection Program loans to actually keep workers on the payroll. They want to use it to pay off other things, because there's no point in paying workers with no demand.

When a $192,000 loan from the federal government’s small-business aid program arrived in his bank account last month, George Evageliou, the founder of a custom woodworking company, felt like one of the lucky ones.

Under the program’s rules, Mr. Evageliou has eight weeks from the day he received the cash to spend it. But nearly three weeks after the clock started on April 14, he hasn’t used a penny.

His quandary? If Mr. Evageliou wants his loan to be forgiven, he must spend three-quarters of it paying the 16 workers he laid off from Urban Homecraft, his Brooklyn business, in late March. But bringing his workers back now, when they can’t work in their fabrication shop or install woodwork in clients’ homes, won’t help his business. And if New York City remains shut when his eight weeks are up in mid-June, Mr. Evageliou would have to lay off his employees again — something he wants to spare them.

The government has “made this so hard to use,” he said. “It starts to feel like a lose-lose situation.”

The $660 billion Paycheck Protection Program was meant to extend a lifeline to small businesses battered by the pandemic, allowing them to keep employees on the payroll. But it has been dogged by problems. Countless small businesses couldn’t get money, and hundreds of millions of dollars instead flowed to publicly traded companies.

Now many of the small businesses that did get loans are sitting on the money, unsure about whether and how to spend it. That’s compromising the effectiveness of a program meant to help stabilize the country’s reeling economy.

Some owners don’t see the point of hiring back workers when business is so slow. Others chafe at having to use the money within eight weeks, when they would like to keep the financial cushion for longer. And many of the owners are confused about whether they have any flexibility. They would rather use the cash to retool their operations for an altered world or buy protective equipment for workers, but the rules require them to spend it on specific expenses, like payroll.

Owners also say they are afraid of running afoul of the program’s rules, which are complicated, ambiguous and still evolving. Accountants, lawyers and lenders are struggling to understand the nuances and offering clients tentative guidance.

“It’s chaos,” said Howard M. Berkower, a New York lawyer who advises corporate clients. “It’s impossible for businesses to have any degree of comfort that they’re following the rules when the rules are still being written.”

I don't know how I feel about this.

On one hand, I understand that the Trump regime tends to change the rules all they want to as far as enforcement, and I certainly would be wary of taking a PPP loan knowing that the regime could suddenly demand, say, all the money back from all PPP recipients in California or New York because of surprise fine print.

On the other hand, paying your workers would help solve the demand problem, now wouldn't it?

Meet The New Normal, Same As The Old Normal

America is increasingly deciding that stay-at-home orders aren't feasible anymore as cellular metadata shows traffic and grocery shopping patterns are returning to pre-lockdown numbers.

Apple’s Mobility Trends report shows that traffic in the US and other countries like Germany has pretty much doubled in the past three weeks. It had been down up to 72%. And location data provider Foursquare says that gas and fast food visits are back to pre-COVID-19 levels in the American Midwest.

Rural areas are following the same pattern.

“Gas station traffic has returned to pre-COVID-19 levels in the Midwest, and in rural areas throughout the country,” Foursquare said yesterday in a blog post. “Foot traffic to quick service restaurants (QSRs) has risen over the past several weeks.”

Whether governments, medical professionals, and scientists want it to or not, people seem tired of the shutdown and eager to get back to some semblance of normal life.

Another sign of the impending return to normal?

Grocery store visits are down to normal levels, after being 30-40% higher than normal in late March as people tried to stock up for a long shutdown.

While the Apple data is measured by people searching Apple Maps for directions, the Foursquare data is captured by people actually visiting locations. 13 million Americans have granted the company permission to capture their data and use it in privacy-safe ways.

While more people are going more places, it hasn’t impacted a number of hard-hit industries just yet.:
Gyms: still down 65-69%
Clothing stores: still down 72%
Furniture stores: still down 56-60%
Movie theaters: still down 75%

Nail salons, on the other hand, are “only” down 38-42%, and hotels in the Midwest are down just 49%, compared to a 63-70% decline in other regions.

Interestingly, as Apple’s data from Canada shows, while driving and walking are edging back up to normal levels, people are avoiding transit, which is still down 79% from pre-Coronavirus levels. Driving by yourself is safe, apparently, but sitting in a bus or on a train with hundreds of others is not.

The economic damage is starting to come home to roost this month, and  businesses are going to tank very quickly still, but America is clearly done with staying at home.

That remains a serious problem because COVID-19 remains a serious problem.

The World Health Organization extended its declaration of a global health emergency on Friday amid increasing criticism from the Trump Administration about its handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The move comes exactly three months after the organization’s original decision to announce a “public health emergency of international concern” on Jan. 30. At the time, only 98 of the nearly 10,000 confirmed cases had occurred outside China’s borders. 
But the pandemic continues to grow. More than 3.2 million people around the world are known to have been infected, and nearly a quarter million have died, according to official counts. There is evidence on six continents of sustained transmission of the virus.

All of this has led experts in the W.H.O.’s emergency committee to reconvene to assess the course of the outbreak, and to advise on updated recommendations, said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the organization’s director-general.

“The pandemic remains a public health emergency of international concern,” Dr. Tedros said, adding that the crisis “has illustrated that even the most sophisticated health systems are struggling to cope with a pandemic.”

A rapid rise in new cases in Africa and South America, where many countries have weak health care systems, was alarming, he said. The acceleration is occurring even as the spread of the virus has appeared to slow in many countries in Asia and Europe.

Although people are slowly starting to return to work in China after weeks of lockdowns, businesses, schools and cultural institutions are still shuttered in most parts of the world. The virus has badly damaged the global economy.

But Trump and the GOP are convinced, along with now tens of millions of Americans, that this is 100% over.  And anyone who disagrees in the Trump regime is now being eliminated.

President Trump moved to replace the top watchdog at the Department of Health and Human Services after her office released a report on the shortages in testing and personal protective gear at hospitals during the coronavirus pandemic.
In a Friday night announcement, the White House nominated a permanent inspector general to take the reins from Christi A. Grimm, the principal deputy inspector general who has run the office since January.

The White House nominated Jason Weida, an assistant United States attorney in Boston, as permanent inspector general. The announcement said Weida was chosen because he has overseen “numerous complex investigations in healthcare and other sectors.” He must be confirmed by the Senate.

Grimm’s removal follows a purge of high-profile federal officials and inspectors general whose work has been critical of the president. Inspectors general at large agencies serve at the pleasure of the president, but they are considered independent monitors for waste, fraud and abuse.

Trump laced into Grimm at a news conference in April, after her staff report found “severe shortages” of testing kits, delays in getting coronavirus results and “widespread shortages” of masks and other equipment at U.S. hospitals.

The president demanded to know who wrote the report, calling the findings “wrong.” He then accused reporters of having withheld that Grimm had worked in the Obama administration.

“Where did he come from, the inspector general? What’s his name? No, what’s his name? What’s his name?” Trump responded on April 6, when asked about the report, which he said was politically biased. He then attacked Grimm on Twitter, writing, “Why didn’t the I.G., who spent 8 years with the Obama Administration (Did she Report on the failed H1N1 Swine Flu debacle where 17,000 people died?), want to talk to the Admirals, Generals, V.P. & others in charge, before doing her report.” 

Grimm is a career investigator and auditor who joined the inspector general’s office, one of the federal government’s largest, in 1999 when Bill Clinton was president. She has served in Republican and Democratic administrations and is not a political appointee.

She took over the inspector general’s office in an acting capacity in January from another acting official, who retired.

"Everything's going to be normal in a couple of weeks" is the message now.

All of this will be gone by June.

It's fantasy.

Things are going to get horrific, very quickly.

Not Just Another Day In GunCanada

It took just two weeks from the date of Canada's most lethal mass shooting rampage for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government to ban a number of assault weapons for sale.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced an immediate ban Friday on the sale and use of assault-style weapons in Canada, two weeks after a gunman killed 22 people in Nova Scotia. 

“Canadians need more than thoughts and prayers,” he said, rejecting the reaction of many politicians after mass shootings. 

Trudeau cited numerous mass shootings in the country, including the rampage that killed 22 in Nova Scotia April 18 and 19. He announced the ban of over 1,500 models and variants of assault-style firearms, including two guns used by the gunman as well as the AR-15 and other weapons that have been used in a number of mass shootings in the United States

“You do not need an AR-15 to take down a deer,” Trudeau said. “So, effective immediately, it is no longer permitted to buy, sell, transport, import or use military-grade, assault weapons in this country.” 

There is a two-year amnesty period while the government creates a program that will allow current owners to receive compensation for turning in the designated firearms or keep them through a grandfathering process yet to be worked out. 

Under the amnesty, the newly prohibited firearms can only be transferred or transported within Canada for specific purposes. Owners must keep the guns securely stored until there is more information on the buyback program. 

Mary-Liz Power, a spokeswoman for Canada’s public safety minister, said details of how the buyback program will work will be determined by the government and the other parties in Parliament. 

“We can’t prejudge what the result of the parliamentary process will be. That is when details about grandfathering would be determined,” Power said. 

Trudeau said the weapons were designed for one purpose and one purpose only: to kill the largest number of people in the shortest amount of time. 

“Today we are closing the market for military-grade assault weapons in Canada,” he said.

Imagine a government that responded to a mass shooting with more than "thoughts and prayers", with actual action and taking the time to do it right.

What a fantasy, right?

Canada keeps doing all these things that the right-wing says would be impossible here in a "free democratic nation", and yet the country hasn't imploded into a lawless hellmouth of debauchery and rivers choked with dead babies or whatever.

I kind of expect Trump to impose sanctions just to be an asshole.

Canada has problems, of course.  But Jesus, have you seen their neighbors?

Press The Meat, Con't

It's not just Trump going after the media relentlessly, but Mike Pence too.  If you think for a moment that Pence would be less arrogant, vicious or mean towards the media than Trump, think again.

Vice President Pence’s office has threatened to retaliate against a reporter who revealed that Pence’s office had told journalists they would need masks for Pence’s visit to the Mayo Clinic — a requirement Pence himself did not follow.
Pence’s trip to the clinic Tuesday generated criticism after he was photographed without a surgical mask — the only person in the room not wearing one. The Minnesota clinic requires visitors to wear masks as a precaution against spreading the coronavirus.

Pence’s wife, Karen Pence, said in an interview with Fox News on Thursday that he was unaware of the mask policy until his visit was over.

But Steve Herman, who covers the White House for Voice of America, suggested that there was more to the story after Karen Pence’s interview.

“All of us who traveled with [Pence] were notified by the office of @VP the day before the trip that wearing of masks was required by the @MayoClinic and to prepare accordingly,” tweeted Herman, who covered the trip as part of his rotation as one of the pool reporters, who share information with other reporters in limited-space situations.

The tweet apparently enraged Pence’s staff, which told Herman that he had violated the off-the-record terms of a planning memo that had been sent to him and other reporters in advance of Pence’s trip.

Herman said he was notified by the White House Correspondents’ Association that Pence’s office had banned him from further travel on Air Force Two, although a spokesperson in Pence’s office later told VOA managers than any punishment was still under discussion, pending an apology from Herman or VOA.

VOA is continuing to talk with Pence’s staff, said Yolanda Lopez, the director of VOA’s news center. She said it wasn’t clear how the vice president intended to proceed.

By the way, Mike Pence can actually wear a mask when he's required to and actually wants to.

Vice President Mike Pence was photographed on Thursday wearing a mask while visiting a General Motors plant in Indiana in what appeared to be a tacit acknowledgment of the criticism he has received for traveling the country without one.

Mr. Pence drew intense criticism for flouting the guidelines of the Mayo Clinic, which asks all visitors to its campus in Minnesota to wear masks, during a stop there this week.

It was not the first time he has refused to don a mask since resuming a heavy travel schedule representing the administration at graduations, hospitals and factories across the country. But because he appeared to be defying rules put in place by one of the country’s most renowned medical facilities, it seemed to strike a nerve.

At the time, Mr. Pence explained that because he was tested regularly for the coronavirus, he was not at risk of contributing to asymptomatic spread and therefore did not need to wear a mask — an argument that experts immediately dismissed.

Apparently as long as it's a red state, and Pence's home state, he's willing to play by the rules. Point that out though and you get banned. 

That's what this regime does to the press.

Last Call For One Hell Of A May Day

Everything's fine.

Everything's great.

We'll be back to normal in a couple of months at the most.

Also the Pentagon has ordered another 100,000 body bags because we're fucked.

The federal government placed orders for well over 100,000 new body bags to hold victims of COVID-19 in April, according to internal administration documents obtained by NBC News, as well as public records. The biggest set was earmarked for purchase the day after President Donald Trump projected that the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus might not exceed 50,000 or 60,000 people. 

That batch is a pending $5.1 million purchase order placed by the Department of Homeland Security on April 21 with E.M. Oil Transport Inc. of Montebello, California, which advertises construction vehicles, building materials and electronics on its website. The "human remains pouches" have not been paid for or shipped to the Federal Emergency Management Agency yet, according to the company's marketing manager, Mike Pryor. 

"I hope to God that they don't need my order and that they cancel it," Pryor said in a text message exchange with NBC News. 

Body bag contracts bid by Homeland Security and the Veterans Affairs Department are just one illustration of how Trump's sunny confidence about the nation's readiness to reopen is in conflict with the views of officials in his own administration who are quietly preparing for a far worse outcome. 

Around the same time it wrote the contract for the body bags, FEMA opened up bidding to provide about 200 rented refrigerated trailers for locations around the country. The request for proposals specifies a preference for 53-foot trailers, which, at 3,600 cubic feet, are the largest in their class. 

The cache of internal documents obtained by NBC News includes an April 25 "pre-decisional draft" of the coronavirus task force's "incident outlook" for the response, a summary of the task force leaders' meeting the same day and various communications among officials at several agencies. The documents show that task force members remain worried about several major risks ahead, including insufficient availability of coronavirus tests, the absence of a vaccine or proven treatments for the coronavirus, and the possibility of a "catastrophic resurgence" of COVID-19.

We're still having a 9/11's worth of deaths every day from this virus.  People talk about "plateau" and "the other side" and "we're getting through this" but that is wishful thinking.

It's going to go from disaster to catastrophe, and the Trump regime's cover-up is already underway.

The White House is blocking Anthony S. Fauci from testifying before a House subcommittee investigating the coronavirus outbreak and response, arguing that it would be “counterproductive” for him to appear next week while in the midst of participating in the government’s responses to the pandemic.

The White House issued a statement about Fauci’s testimony shortly after The Washington Post published a story Friday afternoon quoting a spokesman for the House Appropriations Committee, who said the White House was refusing to allow Fauci to appear at a subcommittee hearing next week.


“While the Trump Administration continues its whole-of-government response to COVID-19, including safely opening up America again and expediting vaccine development, it is counterproductive to have the very individuals involved in those efforts appearing at congressional hearings,” said White House spokesman Judd Deere. “We are committed to working with Congress to offer testimony at the appropriate time.”

In fact, Fauci is expected to appear at a Senate hearing related to testing the following week, according to a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.

“It’s not muzzling, it’s not blocking, it’s simply trying to ensure we’re able to balance the need for oversight, the legitimate need for oversight, with their responsibilities to handle Covid-19 work at their respective agencies and departments,” said the official, who noted that health risks entailed in moving around in public places were also a factor.

"But it's not a cover-up, he's going to testify before the Senate and he's just too busy."

Sure. Whatever guys.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

While it's still a long shot for the Dems, Cook Political Report officially has Sen. Lindsey Graham's seat in SC in play, and Jaime Harrison at least has a shot at the upset.

Harrison has a unique story to be able to reach both black voters and potentially peel off former Graham voters, especially white college-educated women that were Republicans' Achilles heel in 2018. That combination can be targeted with his money and could make this race a closer one than the state's seen in over 20 years.

Born to a single mother in impoverished Orangeburg, Harrison was raised by his grandparents. He went on to attend Yale University and Georgetown Law School. In between those two, he taught at his old high school and worked with an organization to help low-income students attend college. Then he moved to D.C. to work for Rep. Jim Clyburn, serving as his floor director when the longtime congressman first became Majority Whip after Democrats captured the House in 2006. He also lobbied for the Podesta Group — a tie Republicans are eager to highlight — before returning home again to South Carolina. In 2013, he was elected chairman of the South Carolina Democratic Party, the first African-American ever to hold that post. In 2017, he made a failed bid to be DNC chairman, dropping out to endorse eventual winner Tom Perez. He did get a slot as the national committee's associate chairman, though.

Most impressively, Harrison had a record-setting fundraising haul during the first quarter of this year, bringing in $7.37 million to Graham's $5.68 million (which also would have set the record for the most raised in a quarter in the Palmetto State before Harrison eclipsed it).

Both candidates raised most of their cash from out of state — Graham around 80%, compared to about 92% for Harrison, according to our analysis of FEC reports. And Graham's campaign points out that he suspended fundraising amid the pandemic for the closing weeks of the quarter. The incumbent also still has a cash on hand advantage of about $4.8 million over Harrison.

Graham's political skills should not be underestimated, and he's clearly taking this race quite seriously, as he should. However, we also can't overlook the considerable resume that Harrison also brings to the race, and even South Carolina Republicans admit he is a strong candidate.

One GOP operative in the state told me those fundraising numbers from Harrison's campaign have left Republicans in the state "stunned" and that it is absolutely on track to be the most expensive race in South Carolina history, expected to top upwards of $40 million.

"He's a very dangerous candidate to Sen. Graham," the Republican strategist said, calling Harrison "the best Democratic candidate I've seen here in a very long time."

Others, understandably, remain skeptical, even given Harrison's strengths.

"I just don't think the math works out in Jaime's favor at this point," another South Carolina GOP strategist said. However, the operative did admit that "Lindsey is going to have to work harder than he ever worked before," but that "Jaime would have to run a perfect race, and Lindsey would have to make a lot of mistakes" to win.

Harrison's compelling ads highlight his early biography. He's used his money to run positive spots in every major media market in the state, talking about the challenges his grandparents faced trying to make ends meet in the state's "Corridor of Shame," eventually losing their home; Harrison eventually buys them one. Notably, though, his ads don't mention his party.

I mean with Republican Tim Scott as the state's other senator, that's definitely intentional.

Politics in the South are weird.  Take a look at Georgia, for instance.

An internal poll conducted for the Georgia House GOP Caucus points to troubling signs for Republican leaders: President Donald Trump is deadlocked with Joe Biden and voters aren’t giving the White House, Gov. Brian Kemp or the Legislature high marks for the coronavirus response.

The poll also suggests trouble for U.S. Sen. Kelly Loeffler, showing the former financial executive with 11% of the vote and essentially tied with Democrats Matt Lieberman and Raphael Warnock. U.S. Rep. Doug Collins leads the November field with 29% of the vote, and outdoes Loeffler among Republicans by a 62-18 margin.

The survey, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, was conducted by the political polling and research firm Cygnal between April 25-27 and it involved 591 likely voters. The margin of error is 4 percentage points.

Loeffler is toast. Among the poll's findings:

• Voters are evenly split on Trump, but Kemp’s disapproval rating (52%) outweigh his approval rating (43%). Loeffler is deeper underwater after grappling with an uproar over her stock transactions during the pandemic, with an approval of 20% and disapproval of 47%. Collins’ approval rating is about 10 percentage points higher than his disapproval.
• Georgians say their top priority is controlling the spread of the coronavirus and returning life to normal (35%), followed by rebuilding the economy (25%) and providing access to affordable, quality healthcare (17%).
• Trump and Biden are in a statistical tie in the race for president, with Trump at 45% and Biden at 44%. Only about 5% of Georgians are undecided, and another 6% back a third-party candidate.
• U.S. Sen. David Perdue leads Democrat Jon Ossoff 45-39 in a head-to-head matchup, with 12% of voters undecided.
• More Georgians said they were most concerned with public health (60%) than the economic impact (36%) of the pandemic.
• A majority of voters disapprove of the way Trump (51%) and Kemp (54%) are handling the pandemic. The General Assembly barely breaks even on the question, and many voters signaled they don’t know what lawmakers are doing.
• About 58% of voters said Georgia is moving “too quickly” to ease restrictions, though most (54%) back social-distancing measures and business closures.
• A plurality of votes (34%) think the “worst is yet to come” from the pandemic, while only about 22% think the worst is over. About 30% feel “we’re in the middle of the worst right now.”
• Most Georgians feel social distancing policies should continue at least a few more weeks, if not months, and only about 15% contend the state should “open everything now.”

I understand the theory among the right-wing noisemakers is "The people will make social distancing moot and will go back to work, school, and worship as normal in May" but I'm pretty sure after cases and deaths start skyrocketing in red states like Georgia, Florida and Texas -- and that's almost 100% guaranteed at this point -- that things will change very quickly among the Patriot Dot Eagle Freedom crowd.

Rent's Due And The Devil's Too, Con't

It's May 1 and the rent's due for tens of millions without any sort of fallback protections, as the number of unemployment claims has now hit 30 million over the last six weeks, and millions more unemployed are going uncounted because of overloaded systems. Against this backdrop, Florida is reopening businesses and beaches on Monday as the state records its highest number of COVID-19 deaths to date.

Florida will reopen certain businesses throughout much of the state on Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis said. 

"We will get Florida back on its feet by using an approach that is safe, smart, and step by step," DeSantis said on Wednesday. 

DeSantis said restaurants and retail spaces could let customers inside, but only at 25% capacity, and people must adhere to social distancing guidelines from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

Restaurants can offer outdoor seating if tables are 6 feet apart. 

"Outdoor transmission, as far as we've seen, has been more difficult than the indoor climate controlled transition," the governor said, adding that medical officials recommended the outdoor seating change. 

Movie theaters can't reopen yet. 

"I just think it's practically difficult to do the social distancing," the governor said. "Indoor environments I think are more likely for transmission, so even though you could have done that on phase one, I think prudence dictates that we go a little slow on that."
Bars, fitness centers and places that offer personal services, likes hair styling, also will open later. 

People can schedule non-urgent surgeries again, he said, though it depends on a hospital's ability to handle surges in cases and availability of protective equipment.
Schools will continue to hold online classes, he said. 

DeSantis said the new measures he announced would not include three of the counties hit hardest by coronavirus. They are Broward, Miami-Dade and Palm Beach counties, which account for about 6.2 million of Florida's residents, according to US Census data. 

Texas too is opening up businesses and public areas starting today, and yes, that state just hit a new high in recorded COVID-19 deaths as well.

Texas reported 50 more COVID-19 deaths on Thursday, the most in any one day since the state reported its first deaths in mid-March.

The state also reported it had added more than 1,000 new positive cases of COVID-19, the biggest one-day increase in infections since April 10.

The numbers came out less than 9 hours before Gov. Greg Abbott was set to lift restrictions on many businesses, allowing malls, movie theaters, retail stores and restaurants to begin operating at 12:01 a.m. Friday. Those types of businesses can only operate at 25 percent of their maximum capacity for the next two weeks under Abbott’s phased re-opening plan. After that, if things are going well, Abbott has said those places can go to 50 percent occupancy.

Abbott’s statewide stay-at-home order expires at the end of Thursday.

Georgia makes three Southern red states.

Gov. Brian Kemp will lift a statewide shelter-in-place order for most of Georgia’s 10.6 million residents starting Friday as he continues to roll back coronavirus restrictions, though he urged Georgians to stay at home when possible to contain the pandemic.

The order requires elderly and “medically fragile” residents to shelter in place until June 12, and it calls for businesses to follow existing restrictions through May 13 in order to remain open.

But Kemp told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that it was time to lift other measures to help revive Georgia’s tattered economy, emphasizing that an increase in testing and greater hospital capacity factored into his decision.

“What we’ve done has worked,” Kemp said in the interview. “It’s given us time to build our hospital infrastructure capacity, get ventilators and ramp up testing. That’s what really drove our decision.”

Democrats and others criticized the move, warning that Kemp’s decision risks spreading a disease that’s already killed more than 1,100 Georgians. Some offered a reminder that President Donald Trump was “totally” opposed to Kemp’s earlier steps.

Pushing back, Kemp said Georgians “can have confidence even if they disagree” with him that he’s relying on advice from health experts to arrive at his decision.

In all three states millions of people, and tens of millions more in the weeks ahead as more states "reopen" like Ohio and Kentucky, must now face the choice of returning to work during an ongoing pandemic or losing unemployment.  For some of them there is no choice.

Somebody still has to take care of the kids.

As of this writing, 43 states have closed schools through the end of the academic year. That list does not include New York state, where Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio continue to joust over the issue. But if you are a tri-state area resident who expects to send your kid to school before the fall, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.

For most families, there is no child care without school. In America, school is pretty much the only free or subsidized child care our government provides. Without reliable, affordable, and Covid-free child care, going back to work is simply not an option for many parents.

The school closings only deepen a reoccurring problem most parents face: the summer. In a society that has decided to outsource child care responsibilities to the school system, the fact that this system goes on an annual months-long holiday is already a nightmare for working parents.

Now, the coronavirus pandemic is blowing apart the kinds of summer child care relief that parents rely on. Summer school is not happening. Summer camp is not happening. Summer youth sports leagues are not happening. The coronavirus makes it dangerous to dump your little disease vectors with their grandparents. Where the hell are parents supposed to put their kids during long summer days when they’re supposed to go back to work?

Don't know, don't care.  Work's open, daycares aren't. Go to work, wear your mask, pray you don't get sick, cause if you do, you get fired.  Rent's due, serfs. Get to work or you're all out on the streets.

Or maybe, maybe it's time for a general strike.

Just saying.