StupidiNews!

• The Trump Regime says North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is in a "grave" medical condition after surgery, both CNN and NBC News are reporting.
• Donald Trump tweeted late last night that he plans to unilaterally suspend all immigration into the United States because of the "invisible enemy" of COVID-19.
• US oil contracts for West Texas Intermediate Crude are back into positive territory after closing below zero for the first time ever on Monday due to cratering global oil demand.
• The US Senate will vote on a package of supplemental small business and hospital relief money on Tuesday, the House is expected to return to take up the bill next week.
• Facebook has reversed position on taking down COVID-19 social distancing protest events on its social media service, previously Facebook said it was waiting on states to declare the events illegal.

Last Call For State Of The Pandemic

Georgia GOP Sen. Brian Kemp has decided that more of his constituents need to die in the service of profit, so he's reopening businesses like gyms and tattoo parlors on Friday.

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp announced Monday that certain businesses can reopen this week in a move that breaks from the majority of state leaders and defies the warnings of many public health officials. 

Kemp said specifically that fitness centers, bowling alleys, body art studios, barbers, hair and nail salons, and massage therapy businesses can reopen as early Friday, April 24. Theaters and restaurants will be allowed to open on Monday, April 27, while bars and night clubs will remain closed for now. 

The decision follows new guidance unveiled by President Donald Trump last week meant to help states loosen their social distancing restrictions. 

According to an influential model often cited by the White House, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Georgia hit its projected "peak" for daily deaths 13 days ago, on April 7. 

But that same model predicts that dozens of people will die each day in the coming week. And to limit a resurgence of the virus, the model says that Georgia shouldn't start relaxing social distancing until after June 15 -- when the state can begin considering other measures to contain the virus, such as contact tracing and isolation. 

Notably, Kemp said Monday that no local ordinance can restrict the openings, which will be implemented statewide. "In the same way that we carefully closed businesses and urged operations to end to mitigate the virus' spread, today we're announcing plans to incrementally and safely reopen sectors of our economy," he told reporters.

So good luck to Atlanta and southwest Georgia, two of the hardest hit areas in the country, as I expect a catastrophic spike in the state's COVID-19 cases in two weeks and thousands of deaths in three.

Here in Kentucky, a week after Easter Sunday church services and protests in Frankfort at the State Capitol, we've had our biggest spike in new cases yet.

Kentucky experienced its highest single-day spike in coronavirus cases after protests broke out in the state to lift lockdowns, according to reports.

Gov. Andy Beshear announced there were 273 new cases Sunday, bringing the total to 2,960, news station WCPO reported. 

“We are still in the midst of this fight against a deadly and highly contagious virus,” Beshear said. “Let’s make sure, as much as we’re looking at those benchmarks and we’re looking at the future, that we are acting in the present and we are doing the things that it takes to protect one another.” 

The Bluegrass State is among the regions that have seen demonstrators take to the streets last week to call for the end of lockdown restrictions.

I'm hoping Kentucky doesn't make the same mistake Georgia has, it will be a fatal one for many.

Republicanism is a death cult, full stop.

Fun-Sized Rebellion, Con't

As I pointed out yesterday, the "major protests" against state governors in Michigan, Ohio, Minnesota, Kentucky, and a couple of other states are all the work of Trump supporting right-wing groups with lots of cash and lots of suckers to rile up.  Even the Washington Post has finally figured out they're being played.

A trio of far-right, pro-gun provocateurs is behind some of the largest Facebook groups calling for anti-quarantine protests around the country, offering the latest illustration that some seemingly organic demonstrations are being engineered by a network of conservative activists.

The Facebook groups target Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York, and they appear to be the work of Ben Dorr, the political director of a group called “Minnesota Gun Rights,” and his siblings, Christopher and Aaron. By Sunday, the groups had roughly 200,000 members combined, and they continued to expand quickly, days after President Trump endorsed such protests by suggesting citizens should “liberate” their states.

The Dorr brothers manage a slew of pro-gun groups across a wide range of states, from Iowa to Minnesota to New York, and seek primarily to discredit organizations like the National Rifle Association as being too compromising on gun safety. Minnesota Gun Rights, for instance, describes itself as the state’s “no-compromise gun rights organization.”

The online activity instigated by the brothers helps cement the impression that opposition to the restrictions is more widespread than polling suggests. Nearly 70 percent of Republicans said they supported a national stay-at-home order, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. Ninety-five percent of Democrats backed such a measure in the survey.

Still, the Facebook groups have become digital hubs for the same sort of misinformation spouted in recent days at state capitol buildings — from comparing the virus to the flu to questioning the intentions of scientists working on a vaccine.

Public health experts say stay-at-home orders are necessary to slow the spread of the new coronavirus, which has already killed more than 40,000 in the United States. The Trump administration last week outlined three phases for states to reopen safely — guidelines contradicted by the president when he urged citizens to rise up against the rules that heed the recommendations of his own public health advisers. 

“If people feel that way, you’re allowed to protest,” Trump said Sunday. “Some governors have gone too far, some of the things that happened are maybe not so appropriate.”

Facebook won't lift a finger to stop dangerous misinformation like this from spreading, because they are paid handsomely to spread dangerous misinformation.  The right absolutely learned the correct lessons from 2016.

Facebook said Sunday it did not remove the groups or events partly because states have not outlawed the activity. Organizers also have called for “drive-in” protests, in keeping with recommendations that people keep a short distance between each other. In other cases, involving protests planned for states like New Jersey and California, the company has removed that content, Facebook said.

“Unless government prohibits the event during this time, we allow it to be organized on Facebook. For this same reason, events that defy government’s guidance on social distancing aren’t allowed on Facebook,” said Andy Stone, a spokesman for the company.

Like Trump, they are blaming the states.  It's their fault that protest events aren't being specifically outlawed, you see.  I don't see many governors willing to go that far, either.  It's exactly what these groups want, too, and state governors are smart enough not to create martyrs for the cause.

And of course, these right-wing groups are happily in bed with our white supremacist domestic terrorist friends, because they are all one big incest fest. Will Bunch makes this clear (he's literally written an entire book on the Tea Party phenomenon, The Backlash):

These right-wing groups certainly want to reelect Trump (and keep the wretched DeVos in her Education Department post) but what they’re really afraid of is that both the public-health catastrophe and the growing economic meltdown will lead to a political, economic or even social revolution in the United States that will threaten the status quo — i.e., them. The coronavirus has exposed the everyday disaster that is America’s employer-based health-care system and the broader fragility where millions were just one lost paycheck away from a miles-long line at a food bank. The conservative movement in America, therefore, will die a deserved and overdue death unless the oligarchs can change the political conversation around to your God-given right to buy plant seeds and Baskin-Robbins — and fast.

It’s also worth noting (and probably worthy of a separate column) that these billionaires and millionaires have zero moral qualms about working with some of the worst white-supremacists or neo-fascists in order to make sure a crowd turns out, which would explain how swastikas and the like turned up at the DeVos-sponsored protest in Lansing. Here in Pennsylvania, the protest planned for Monday in Harrisburg by a rapidly growing Facebook group called Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine is led, curiously, by (ahem) a gun activist from (double ahem) Ohio. And just last August, that so-called gun activist, Chris Dorr, was investigated in Ohio after a Facebook rant in which he vowed that, after any effort to restrict the right to bear firearms, “there will be political bodies laying all over the ground ... we gun owners will pull the trigger, and leave the corpses for the buzzards."

Dorr’s alarming words speak to one of the real risks here — the kind that experts call stochastic terrorism, in which a movement leader’s incitements, such as the president of the United States urging gun activists to “LIBERATE” Virginia, are translated into specific acts of violence by low-level and possible unhinged followers. If it sounds familiar, we’ve already seen it play out from El Paso to Germany, and now the danger in this time of coronavirus is very, very real. 

Trump, of course, is a vainglorious narcissist incapable of understanding how his hateful words affect other humans, but the fact that so many other conservatives are willing to amplify this dangerous message should give you some insight into what’s really happening here. The right-wing movement is so used to what it now feels is its entitlement to wield power in America that it is willing to risk many lives — both among its political friends and foes, either from the suffocation of COVID-19 or even from a hail of bullets — in its pathetic need to hold on by its fingernails.

Besides, locking up a couple of hundred protesters kind of assures a new COVID-19 hotspot.

I am glad to see the Post calling these groups out, however, instead of playing the both sides game for once.  These assholes aren't wasting time to try to create deadly distractions to try to help Trump, no matter how many of us die in the process.

The Great Escape (Clause)

A minimum-security prisoner in North Carolina named Richard Cephas escaped from the federal prison camp in Butner, and contacted Raleigh News and Observer reporter Dan Kane to make arrangements to turn himself in if he can serve out his sentence in home confinement, as the Butner prison camp is overrun with COVID-19.

An inmate who fled a federal prison camp in Butner and remains on the loose told The News & Observer on Thursday that he escaped because he feared death from coronavirus. 

“I take ownership of having to serve my time,” said Richard R. Cephas, 54, who had been at the Federal Correctional Complex serving time on a drug conviction. “I signed up for a jail sentence, not a death sentence.” 

Cephas contacted the N&O on Thursday morning, leading to interviews by phone and FaceTime. He didn’t reveal where he was — but he said he wants to turn himself in. He contacted the N&O, he said, to tell the public about the issues he saw at Butner and why he needed to flee. 

Cephas fled Butner two weeks ago after the prison complex reported nine inmates and one employee had tested positive for the virus. Since then, those numbers have surged dramatically. The Federal Bureau of Prisons on Thursday reported 66 inmates and 25 staff had tested positive at Butner, one of the worst outbreaks in the federal system. 

The bureau reported Butner’s first inmate death tied to the virus on Sunday, and has announced three other deaths since then. All had other health issues contributing to their deaths.

Cephas said he has neutropenia, a medical condition that makes him high risk for contracting the virus because his body struggles to make enough white blood cells that combat infections. His attorney, Bill Rhodunda of Wilmington, Del., confirmed in a phone interview that Cephas has the condition. 

Prison officials first reported a positive test at Butner on March 26. Since then, as the numbers grew, Cephas said he grew more fearful for his life. He said he sought early release but said the staff at Butner had not responded to his requests. 

Making matters worse, he said, was the way the prison handled the outbreak. He said he works as an orderly at the prison camp, so he was acutely aware of a lack of soap. A staffer told him there wasn’t enough to go around, he said, and inmates were urged to use soap they had purchased. 

Masks and gloves also hadn’t been issued, he said, and inmates couldn’t socially distance themselves in the confined space. A directive issuing masks for inmates and requiring staff to wear masks didn’t come until five days after he fled the prison, according to an email sent by the facility’s warden and provided to the N&O by an employee. The employee asked not to be identified for fear it could affect their employment.

Families of other inmates have also contacted the N&O in recent days to complain about a lack of soap and other unsanitary conditions. 

Bureau of Prisons officials could not be reached after four phone calls by The N&O on Thursday afternoon. 

Cephas was one of nine people from Delaware arrested as part of an investigation prosecutors called “Operation Bear Trap.” Prosecutors said in a news release at the time that it involved two different drug conspiracies with overlapping participants, one to sell methamphetamine brought in from Mexico and one to traffic cocaine.

This is a man willing to trade additional time as a federal prisoner in order to save his life.  I don't see how prosecutors don't tack on years for the escape, but if he's willing to turn himself in safely and serve home confinement, I think as a federal prosecutor I'd be willing to take the deal.

Of course, this is the Barr "Justice" Department, which means they'll probably pick up the reporter and stick him in a room for a day or two in order to get him to talk, pushing charges of aiding and abetting an escaped federal inmate.

Oh, and I'm sure the cops will kill Cephas on sight, that goes without saying, as he's black and an escaped inmate.

I hope that Cephas's escape will bring attention and help to the inmates still in Butner.  Sadly, with this administration, I don't think anything will change, and a whole lot of people are going to die as a result.

StupidiNews!

And we're back to a normal schedule this week.

• The RCMP confirm one Mountie is dead and 15 other civilians were killed in a weekend shooting rampage in Nova Scotia, the suspect was cornered on Sunday and is reported deceased.
• Donald Trump admits all GOP senators other than Utah's Mitt Romney were included on the White House's task force on "reopening America" due to Romney's impeachment vote to convict Trump.
• Thousands of masked Israeli protesters filled streets in Jerusalem demonstrating against a power-sharing government led by indicted PM Benjamin Netanyahu.
• Congress is close to a $500 billion supplemental small business rescue plan that could be passed as soon as this week as Millions of Americans remain unemployed due to COVID-19 shutdowns.
• COVID-19 is complicating efforts in East Africa to fight a massive new locust swarm, some 20 times larger than the one that ravaged the continent earlier this year.

Last Call For The Retail Apocalypse

The mall, galleria, shopping center near you will most likely never reopen.  It's time for communities to consider rezoning them as mixed-use affordable housing with a few necessary stores like food shops and day care centers, because the era of the mall store is now officially coming to a bloody, horrific end.

Neiman Marcus Group is preparing to seek bankruptcy protection as soon as this week, becoming the first major U.S. department store operator to succumb to the economic fallout from the coronavirus outbreak, people familiar with the matter said.
The debt-laden Dallas-based company has been left with few options after the pandemic forced it to temporarily shut all 43 of its Neiman Marcus locations, roughly two dozen Last Call stores and its two Bergdorf Goodman stores in New York. 

Neiman Marcus is in the final stages of negotiating a loan with its creditors totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, which would sustain some of its operations during bankruptcy proceedings, according to the sources. It has also furloughed many of its roughly 14,000 employees. 

The bankruptcy filing could come within days, though the timing could slip, the sources said. Neiman Marcus skipped millions of dollars in debt payments last week, including one that only gave the company a few days to avoid a default. 

Neiman Marcus’ borrowings total about $4.8 billion, according to credit ratings firm Standard & Poor’s. Some of this debt is the legacy of its $6 billion leveraged buyout in 2013 by its owners, private equity firm Ares Management Corp and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). 

The sources requested anonymity because the bankruptcy preparations are confidential. Neiman Marcus and Ares declined to comment, while CPPIB representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

Other department store operators that have also had to close their stores are battling to avoid Neiman Marcus’ fate. Macy’s Inc and Nordstrom Inc have been rushing to secure new financing, such as by borrowing against some of their real estate. J.C. Penney Co Inc is contemplating a bankruptcy filing as a way to rework its unsustainable finances and save money on looming debt payments, Reuters reported last week. 

A bankruptcy filing would be a grim milestone that Neiman Marcus has spent the last few years trying to avoid. It pushed out due dates on its financial obligations last year in a restructuring deal with some creditors, though the transactions added to Neiman Marcus’ interest expenses.

Macy's, Nordstrrom's, Neiman-Marcus, they're not surviving this.  They're done, or soon will be, gone the way of Radio Shack, Circuit City, and Toys R Us.  Your local mall was always done for, all COVID-19 did was to speed up the process.

The mall's not coming back.  The stores are not coming back.  The jobs aren't coming back.  And in a consumer-based retail economy, that spells a major shift in our shared economic future ahead.

You thought things were bad in 2009?

Give it a few months.

Egghead Week: Fun-Size Rebellion

As if we somehow needed any more proof the modern GOP is a death cult, right-wing activist group Turning Point USA and founder Charlie Kirk are calling on Trump's Junior Brownshirts to openly rebel against stay-at-home orders and pick up a virus or two.

As protests against stay-at-home orders due to novel coronavirus break out around the country, Students for Trump, one of the main political groups backing President Donald Trump's reelection, is calling on its young members to join the efforts. 

During a virtual convention on Friday for Students for Trump, the college campus arm of Turning Point USA, the group's founder Charlie Kirk urged members to launch a "peaceful rebellion against governors" in states like Michigan and Wisconsin.

Kirk, speaking to over 500 members of the conservative nonprofit organization geared at activating college students to reelect the president who tuned in to the event, derided governors like Michigan's Gretchen Whitmer for encroaching on their rights and urged them to join the protests around the country. The event was hosted on Zoom. 

It's not immediately clear if any protests have been organized due to Kirk's comments. 

"Peaceful is the operative word. Charlie is simply calling on Americans to exercise their First Amendment right to peacefully push back against the arbitrary overreaches of certain governors who are prohibiting completely safe activities," a spokesman for Kirk told ABC News in a statement. "Americans have patriotically and heroically unified to slow the spread, and now Charlie believes it's time to let our political leaders know that it's time to open the country back up."

Because Charlie Kirk is the final arbiter of pandemic safety and all.

I'm some 25 years out of college now, but I can't imagine even nihilist Zoomers are going to fall for this nonsense, when there's plenty of documented cases of people under 25 dying to COVID-19.

It's not just Kirk, either, both Texas GOP senators are supporting Gov. Abbott's plans to reopen the state.  It's going to be a disaster.  But here's what I want to know.

Why isn't Kirk out there leading the way instead of holding virtual conferences and expecting college kids to risk their health and the health of those around them just to "own the libtards?"

Because all of this is performative, as Steve M reminds us.  And the audience is the media.

The argument is that it's good politics for Trump to do what his base wants -- even though a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll makes clear that it's not what America wants. 

Nearly 60 percent of American voters say they are more concerned that a relaxation of stay-at-home restrictions would lead to more COVID-19 deaths than they are that those restrictions will hurt the U.S. economy, according to a new national NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. 

But while strong majorities of Democrats and independents are more worried about the coronavirus than the economy, Republicans are divided on the question, with almost half of them more concerned about how the restrictions could affect the economy.

How many polls like this have I quoted to you over the years -- polls in which Democrats and independents are on one side of an issue and Republicans on the other? And yet there's never a suggestion in the mainstream press that the right is out of step with "the real America." In this crisis, it's just the opposite -- the press implies that the minority viewpoint is the emerging consensus viewpoint.

Steve is right of course.  There's maybe 25% support for "re-opening the economy" but the press is pretending like it's 85% support.  It's ridiculous.  The number of people protesting is zilch.  But you'd think there were millions of people in every state waiting to unleash hell unless the orders are lifdted by next week.

There's not. The astroturfing is working beautifully.

I guess the "good news" is by May 1 it'll be pretty obvious that loosening stay-at-home orders will be a disaster and people will hopefully reevaluate.

Well, the living ones will, at any rate.

Sunday Long Read: Cruisin' For A Bruisin'

Bloomberg Businessweek writers Austin Carr and Chris Palmeri bring us this week's Sunday Long Read, how Carnival Cruise Lines completely failed thousands of passengers and crew and left the ship Grand Princess out in the water without a safe port to come back to.

The news, when it reached the Grand Princess early on March 4, barely registered at first. In a letter slipped under passenger cabin doors, Grant Tarling, Carnival Corp.’s chief medical officer, announced that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control had begun “investigating a small cluster” of Covid-19 cases in California that might have been linked to the ship. Thirteen days after leaving San Francisco for Hawaii, the vessel would be skipping a scheduled stop in Mexico on its return voyage and sailing back early to its Bay Area port.

That day, passengers noticed new hand sanitizer stations and crew members wearing gloves, but life on the Grand Princess, which advertises 1,301 cabins, 20 restaurants and lounges, about a dozen shops, and four freshwater swimming pools, otherwise went on as normal. Guests prepared for a ukulele concert, played bridge at shared tables, and took line-dancing classes. That night, Laurie Miller and her husband, John, attended True or Moo, a show featuring an emcee in a cow costume; the following morning, John joined about 200 other passengers in the ship’s Broadway-style theater for a lecture on Clint Eastwood movies. “I’m surprised they’re even letting this event happen,” he whispered to a nearby friend. “This is a big crowd.”

Around lunchtime on March 5, the ship’s captain, John Smith, announced a quarantine over the ship’s public address system. All 2,422 passengers needed to go to their cabins to shelter in place. Laurie Miller was in the Da Vinci dining room eating chocolate peanut butter ice cream. “Oh my God,” she remembers thinking. “This is real.” Then she ordered more ice cream.

Other passengers ambled to the ship’s stores and dining areas, too, to take advantage of the perks while they could. “Evvverrrybody went to the buffet,” recalls 61-year-old Debbi Loftus, who was traveling with her parents. “I just thought, Oh, crap, the ukulele concert is going to be canceled.” Crowds of elderly guests filed to their cabins through narrow hallways and down the stairs of the ship’s 17 decks. Sixty-nine-year-old Karen Dever tried an elevator only to find it packed with fellow passengers. “So much for social distancing!” she joked aloud.

As the lockdown progressed, the ship became a fixture on cable news and social media around the world, livestreamed by frustrated, scared passengers as if it were the Titanic of the TikTok age. Of the first 46 crew and passengers who were tested for the virus, 21 were positive. President Trump suggested they should be prevented from disembarking. At the time the number of confirmed cases in the U.S. was still low, and Trump implied that the vessel’s caseload would make it look like the U.S. was doing a poor job of handling the pandemic. “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship,” he said.

But this wasn’t Carnival’s first outbreak, nor its last. In February, another of its ocean liners, the Diamond Princess, accounted for more confirmed Covid-19 infections than any nation except for China. Since then no cruise operator has been hit harder than Carnival. At least seven more of the company’s ships at sea have become virus hot spots, resulting in more than 1,500 positive infections and at least 39 fatalities. Carnival notes that “other cruise companies have been impacted.”

Carnival’s ships have become a floating testament to the viciousness of the new coronavirus and raised questions about corporate negligence and fleet safety. President and Chief Executive Officer Arnold Donald says his company’s response was reasonable under the circumstances. “This is a generational global event—it’s unprecedented,” he says. “Nothing’s perfect, OK? They will say, ‘Wow, these things Carnival did great. These things, 20/20 hindsight, they could’ve done better.’ ”
Donald says that if his company failed to prepare for the pandemic, it failed in the same way that many national and local governments failed, and should be judged accordingly. “Each ship is a mini-city,” he says, and Carnival’s response shouldn’t be condemned before “analyzing what New York did to deal with the crisis, what the vice president’s task force did, what the Italians, Chinese, South Koreans, and Japanese did. We’re a small part of the real story. We’re being pulled along by it.”

I don't see how the cruise industry as a whole survives this, but Carnival is done, and deservedly so.

If the lockdowns don't end them, the lawsuits will.

Egghead Week: Hit The Beach!

South Carolina is joining Texas and Florida in reopening public beaches and retail businesses this week as Republican governors figure the worst is now over.  I sincerely hope they are right, because if they aren't, a whole lot of people are going to die stupidly.

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster (R) on Monday will announce the reopening of public beaches and retail stores that had been closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, The Post and Courier reported.

The impending restriction rollbacks follow McMaster's announcement that access to public boat ramps and landings was reinstated on Friday.

Trey Walker, the governor's chief of staff, told the paper that the beaches as well as furniture, jewelry and clothing stores will all be reopened for business on Tuesday.

Beaches and retail stores have been closed for just over two weeks in the Palmetto State as it tried to curb the spread of the virus.

Walker told The Post and Courier that infection rates dropped enough to make easing restrictions feasible.

The paper noted that social distancing will still be enforced on the state's beaches. The state has more than 4,000 confirmed cases of the virus and 116 deaths, according to data compiled by The New York Times.

On Friday, Texas became the first state to lay out a defined rollback of COVID-19 restrictions, with Gov. Greg Abbott (R) saying that businesses in the state would being to reopen next week through a series of executive orders.

More Republican governors are expected to open up beaches and businesses soon, and let's remember seven GOP-led states never put stay-home orders in place.

We're about to find out if the "This is no worse than seasonal flu!" theory is correct.

It's not, of course.  Thousands will die as a direct result.

Be smart, folks.

Egghead Week: Trashy With Massie

My congressman, Thomas Massie, is hated by pretty much everyone, but it turns out he's far from the worst Republican running for the seat.

Always one to start a revolt, Representative Thomas Massie is now facing one down — from his own colleagues — less than two months away from his election. 

Mr. Massie, a libertarian from Kentucky known for his contrarian streak, last month drew the wrath of Democrats, Republicans and President Trump when he objected to the passage of a $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief package without a recorded vote, forcing scores of lawmakers to defy public health guidance and drive or fly back to the Capitol amid the rapidly spreading pandemic. 

The move so infuriated members of his own party that the third-ranking House Republican, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, donated to his primary challenger, Todd McMurtry, in a stunning repudiation of a sitting lawmaker by a member of the leadership. Representative Michael R. Turner, Republican of Ohio, also donated, telling Mr. Massie in an acerbic message on Twitter that he did so “because I believe that you don’t belong in Congress.” 

The donations reflected the depth of Republicans’ long-simmering contempt for Mr. Massie, who has for years created procedural headaches and intense frustration for party leaders as the “Mr. No” of the conference, opposing even symbolic legislation as a matter of principle. But in their eagerness to inflict political pain on Mr. Massie, Republicans appear to have handed him a potentially potent political weapon of his own.

Mr. McMurtry, a lawyer who gained prominence when he defended a Covington Catholic student who sued CNN over its coverage of his encounter with a Native American protester in front of the Lincoln Memorial, has written and shared a series of Twitter posts and articles that contain racist tropes, anti-immigrant sentiment and transphobic material. 

In one tweet from December 2019, Mr. McMurtry wrote of the “need to push back against demonization of white people,” adding that “we should not be willing scapegoats for someone else’s agenda.” In another, he complained that “some cartel-looking dude is playing a video of some wild Mexican birthday party at full volume” in an airport, and cited it as a reason that “we should question unlimited immigration. We just cannot integrate so many people.” 

In a separate tweet, he approvingly shared a 2016 blog post subtitled “A Very Brief Primer on Being Alt Right,” which condemned as “cowards” people who describe themselves as conservatives and embrace a progressive agenda, saying they were afraid of being branded “racist, sexist, homophobic.”

“Let’s see them start telling the truth about transsexualism being a mental illness, or about the implication of IQ disparities between different racial groups,” the post read in part. 

In an interview on Friday, Mr. Massie questioned why Ms. Cheney would donate to Mr. McMurtry, citing the posts.

“He has views on race and culture and ethnicity that I don’t think have a place in the G.O.P.,” Mr. Massie said. “But maybe Liz has a different plan for the party, and maybe she thinks backing an alt-right candidate would curry favor with part of the conference.”

In a fight between Liz Cheney and Thomas Massie, I'm rooting for a meteor strike, but Massie has won this round. Cheney has since disavowed McMurtry and demanded her donation back.

Of course, the real lesson is that the Democratic candidate, Dr. Alexandra Owensby, is the person we need in KY-4.

Egghead Week: Our Little Domestic Terrorism Problem

Donald Trump has decided the best way to pick a fight with state governors over whether or not people should be sacrificed to capitalism is to literally induce open and armed rebellion against those governors.

When President Donald Trump tweeted "LIBERATE MINNESOTA!" on Friday morning, some of his most fervent supporters in far-right communities — including those who have agitated for violent insurrection — heard a call to arms. 

The tweet was one of three sent from the president's account, along with "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" and "LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!"

Trump's tweets came after small protests by Trump supporters broke out in a handful of states, many of which were fueled by anti-vaccination and anti-government groups. Anti-government sentiment has percolated among far-right extremists in recent weeks over the stay-at-home orders governors have issued to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. 

Trump's tweets, however, pushed many online extremist communities to speculate whether the president was advocating for armed conflict, an event they’ve termed "the boogaloo," for which many far-right activists have been gearing up and advocating since last year. 

There were sharp increases on Twitter in terms associated with conspiracies such as QAnon and the "boogaloo" term immediately following the president’s tweets, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute, an independent nonprofit group of scientists and engineers that tracks and reports on misinformation and hate speech across social media. 

Posts about the "boogaloo" on Twitter skyrocketed in the hours after the president’s tweets, with more than 1,000 tweets featuring the term, some of which received hundreds of retweets.

Let's not forget there are plenty of folks waiting for a chance to take to the streets and start killing in the name of this regime, a white supremacist race war passed off as "funny memes on Facebook".

It is very real, as I discussed in February.

And now Trump is calling to "LIBERATE" states?

This is all going to end in spectacular bloodshed, I fear.

Egghead Week: Trump Goes Viral, Con't

By pretending he has the power to "reopen the country" and then saying governors are the ones making the decisions, Donald Trump has realized that he can just scapegoat individual states and not have to suffer any political backlash.  And it'll work, right up until the COVID-19 casualty rate starts hitting five figures a day. 

President Trump released federal guidelines Thursday night for a slow and staggered return to normal in places with minimal cases of the novel coronavirus, moving to try to resume economic activity even amid an outcry from political and health leaders about the nation’s testing capacity.

Despite Trump’s desire for a May 1 reopening, his plan does not contain a date for implementation and is a vague set of recommendations for a three-phased reopening of businesses, schools and other gathering places in jurisdictions that satisfy broad criteria on symptoms, cases and hospital loads.

“America wants to be open and Americans want to be open,” Trump said. “A national shutdown is not a sustainable long-term solution. To preserve the health of our citizens, we must also preserve the health and functioning of our economy.”

The plan effectively reverses Trump’s claim earlier this week that he had “total authority” to declare the nation reopened. The federal guidelines shift accountability to governors and mayors, placing the onus on them to make decisions for their own states and localities based on their own assessments of the coronavirus’s spread and risk of resurgence.

“You’re going to call your own shots,” Trump told governors on a conference call Thursday, a recording of which was obtained by The Washington Post.

The White House guidelines are far less detailed than public health guidances drafted recently by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Emergency Management Agency and sent to the coronavirus task force.

Trump’s the-buck-stops-with-the-states posture is largely designed to shield himself from blame should there be new outbreaks after states reopen or for other problems, according to several current and former senior administration officials involved in the response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

To recap:

There is no federal coronavirus response.  None.  What's going on is mass looting of the country by Republicans and their donors while the country suffers catastrophic economic losses.

The states are muddling through the best they can, along with the growing number of regional compacts.  But anything that happens now, Trump thinks, will be on the governors.

He honestly believes he's done with COVID-19, and he can move on to other things.  You'll see him try to do just that.

It will fail. A lot of people are going to die as a result.  Things are going to be dire by June or so.

And Trump won't care.

Egghead Week: What's Cohen On Here?

Former Trump lawyer and convicted felon Michael Cohen is one of the non-violent offenders being released from prison to serve house arrest due to COVID-19.

The federal Bureau of Prisons has notified Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former personal attorney, that he will be released early from prison due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to people familiar with the matter and his lawyer. 

Cohen is serving a three-year sentence at the federal prison camp in Otisville, NY, where 14 inmates and seven staff members at the complex have tested positive for the virus. 

Cohen was scheduled for release in November 2021, but he will be allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence from home confinement, the people said. He will have to undergo a 14-day quarantine at the prison camp before he is released. 

Cohen was notified on Thursday of his pending release, and his lawyer, Roger Adler, confirmed it to CNN. 

His pending release comes as the Bureau of Prisons, which has been under pressure for its early handling of the virus at its facilities, has been thinning out its prison populations by releasing some nonviolent and medically vulnerable inmates to home confinement or furloughing their sentences in response to the pandemic. 

Spokespersons for the bureau and the US attorney's office in Manhattan, which prosecuted Cohen, declined to comment. 

Cohen's pending release comes after a federal judge rejected his request last month. At the time Cohen accused the Justice Department of not treating him fairly and later added his concerns about the virus. 

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to tax fraud, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress. He admitted to helping facilitate hush money payments to two women who alleged past affairs with Trump. Trump has denied having affairs with the women. 

When pleading guilty, Cohen implicated Trump, telling a federal judge that he had made the payments "in coordination with and at the direction of" Trump, who prosecutors identified in court filings as "Individual 1."

So he gets to be stuck at home like the rest of us, I guess.  Only he's stuck until almost 2022.

I kinda hope the judge cancels his cable and internet.

Egghead Week: Power Packed Pact

Just as the West Coast and Mid-Atlantic states have done, the Midwest is forming a regional group of state governments to coordinate getting states back on track, and that includes the KY-IN-OH tri-state.

The governors of Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky announced Thursday that they will work in close coordination to reopen the Midwest regional economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. 

The announcement came in a news release from Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, sent on behalf of all the participating governors. 

"Our number one priority when analyzing when best to reopen our economy is the health and safety of our citizens," the governors said in a joint statement. 

"We will make decisions based on facts, science, and recommendations from experts in health care, business, labor, and education," the statement added.

The governors said they will home in on at least four factors when determining when best to reopen the economy: sustained control of the rate of new infections and hospitalizations, enhanced ability to test and trace, sufficient health care capacity to handle resurgence and best practices for social distancing in the workplace. 

Similar collaborations have been undertaken by governors in recent days on the West and East coasts. 

Two of the governors involved in the new group -- Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers -- made announcements on Thursday afternoon that suggest their states are looking toward how to reopen. 

DeWine said in a news briefing that he is developing a plan for a new phase of the state's response to coronavirus to start on May 1. Details of the new phase will come in the next few weeks, DeWine said. 

He added that talks need to continue with his group of economic advisers and speak with school district superintendents about how to reopen schools and businesses in the state, he said. The plan is to issue new guidance when they determine the best steps to move forward, DeWine said. 

Evers, meanwhile, extended his state's stay-at-home order until May 26 but loosened some restrictions on businesses, a statement from the governor's office read. 

Golf courses are now allowed to open again, and public libraries and arts and crafts stores may offer curb-side pickup, the announcement said. However, the statement also notes that public and private K-12 schools will remain closed for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year.

So hopefully that means getting testing, masks, and ventilators ready for everyone.  Accurate mass testing, tracing of outbreaks, and swift movement to limit them are the only way this works.

We'll see what happens, but this is a good sign.

Egghead Week: Maximum Override in Kentucky

Here in Kentucky, where the state legislature needs only a 50%+1 majority in both the State House and Senate to override any governor's veto, the Kentucky GOP has finally given the state one of the most ridiculous photo voter ID laws in the country, and all the DMV offices issuing acceptable IDs are closed during the pandemic.

Late last month, Gov. Beshear handed down an executive order providing that “all businesses that are not life-sustaining shall cease operations ... except as needed to conduct Minimum Basic Operations.” Among other things, the order suspends “all in-person government activities ... that are not necessary to sustain or protect life, or to supporting Life-Sustaining Businesses.”

Thus, Kentucky voters who lack an ID — perhaps because they recently moved to the state and didn’t get around to obtaining a Kentucky driver’s license before the coronavirus lockdown began — may be unable to obtain this ID in time to vote because the state offices that issue such IDs are closed. The future of life under coronavirus remains very uncertain, and it is, as yet, unclear when the country will return to anything resembling normal.

Even if Kentucky is able to relax restrictions as more testing for the virus becomes available, it may need to reimpose strict limits on businesses and government offices if an outbreak occurs. Voters may only have a limited window to acquire an ID, and that window might close just as a particular voter was preparing to obtain one.

Kentucky’s law, moreover, also resembles a similar Wisconsin law in that it requires voters to show ID in order to obtain an absentee ballot. So voters without ID cannot escape the law by voting by mail.

The new law does permit some voters to cast a ballot without showing photo ID — if they sign a sworn statement affirming that they are lawful voters and providing certain information. But this exemption from the photo ID requirement is only available to a limited group of voters, and it is far from clear that a healthy voter qualifies because they were unable to obtain an ID because government offices were shut down during a pandemic.

Although the law allows a voter to cast a ballot without showing photo ID if they were prevented from getting an ID due to “disability or illness,” the statute is not clear on whether the voter must themselves be infected by this illness in order to qualify. And voters who misuse the exemption could potentially face perjury charges.

It’s worth noting that there could potentially be a very high-profile race on Kentucky’s ballot this November. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is up for reelection, and there is some evidence that McConnell could be defeated if 2020 is a strong year for Democrats. In January, for example, one poll showed McConnell just 3 percentage points ahead of possible Democratic challenger Amy McGrath, and a second poll showed McConnell and McGrath tied.

So, while the impact of voter ID is uncertain under normal circumstances, there are good reasons to believe that such a law could have a larger effect during a pandemic. Whether that impact would be enough to skew a close election from McGrath to McConnell is also unclear. But, at the very least, many voters could struggle to cast a ballot if they are unable to obtain the IDs they need to vote.

Several other party line veto overrides were taken, including passing a measure that would stop the governor from pushing back choosing a Lieutenant Governor running mate, as well as insurance laws and redefining how the state calculates public education achievement gaps, which Beshear said would cut millions of dollars in funding from the poorest-performing schools.

And to top it all off, Kentucky Republicans are quickly crafting a measure that would give the General Assembly the power to reopen businesses across the state as long as state licensing bureaus (now controlled by Republicans in the General Assembly after the Governor's power of appointments to the licensing boards were all but written out this week) approve and can "open non-essential businesses safely" in their eyes.

Finally, the KY GOP is doing everything it can to deem abortion clinics as "non-essential" and taking the choice away from Gov. Beshear as long as the state remains under any health-related emergency.

Because that's the important part right now.