Category: Coronavirus

Saturday Soother – October 31, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Mohawk Trail, just off Route 2, near Williamstown, MA – October 2020 photo by Alahomora

Three days to go.

Happy Halloween, although at the Mansion of Wrong, All Hallows Eve is just another day. We’ve never had a human come to the door looking for treats. Let’s hope that tonight’s not the night.

The reality show that is 2020 really sucks. On Monday in NYC, a man fell about 15 feet into a pit of rats when a sidewalk sinkhole opened under him. He was injured and while he will recover, nobody will ever want his nightmares.

And early on Sunday morning, we turn the clocks back one hour when daylight saving time ends in most of the US. This year, more than 30 states considered legislation to make daylight saving time permanent, something that Wrongo endorses.

Roll Call has this about Trump’s closing argument:

“By arguing that the country is ‘rounding the corner’ on COVID-19 in the face of irrefutable data that the coronavirus is surging, Donald Trump risks appearing more and more out of touch with reality.”

But we know cases are way up. This is the NYT’s chart from Friday:

From the NYT:

“As of Friday morning, more than 9,024,100 people in the United States have been infected with the coronavirus and at least 228,700 have died…”

That’s roughly a 2.5% death rate since the virus came to our shores. It seems serious that cases are rising in most states, while deaths are rising in 24. The NYT reports that the top ten states with the highest death rates are: (in order) North Dakota, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska, Nebraska, Idaho, Iowa and Utah.

Most of these states have significant populations that refuse to wear masks or practice physical distancing. Now, there clearly are people in America who won’t work for the common good, because their backs have never really been against the wall. We’ve become a soft, cartoonish version of what our parents and grandparents had to be in order to survive.

Americans play at being tough. Some of us strap on side arms or long guns to go to the supermarket. We complain when the internet is down because we can’t play Netflix or our favorite video game. We melt down on Facebook when someone objects to our little thoughts.

What this moment should have given all of us was a sense of common purpose that united us against an invisible enemy. Instead, it’s simply too hard for us to delay even a moment’s gratification in the face of the second wave of the pandemic.

Notice too that of those ten states, only one (Wisconsin) is a good bet to vote Blue next week. That’s not necessarily a problem, since the path to 270 for Biden looks like this:

If you look at voters in generational terms, Trump has turned into an electoral cul-de-sac. He’s simultaneously losing younger voters by a 2-to-1 margin, while also losing seniors by nearly 10 percent.

If you’re voting Blue this year regardless of your Party affiliation, you are indeed serving a common purpose, one that you will remember forever: When our democracy was on the brink of collapse, when our fellow Americans needed us, we came together to fire Donald Trump.

There are still a few days left to obsess about the election, but its Saturday, and we need our weekly break from the monster that sucks all of the happiness out of our lives. It’s time for our Saturday Soother.

We had snow on the fields of Wrong on Friday, and the weekend is bringing overnight temperatures in the 20’s, so few outdoor plants will survive that hard frost. We’ve still got a tree to plant that is supposed to arrive today, but Wrongo will wait for next week’s warmer weather to get it in the ground.

No coffee today, but a very relaxing video. The music is by Franz Schubert, his No. 4 Standchen from Schwanengesang, which means “swan song” in German. It’s from a collection of songs written by Schubert at the very end of his life. The Schwanengesangs were composed in 1828, and published in 1829, just a few months after the composer’s death. Franz Liszt later transcribed them for solo piano.

So a hopeful swan song for Trump, and a relaxing moment for all of us who listen today. Here the solo piano is played by Vadim Chaimovich.

The video combines Schubert with images of a Van Gogh painting. Pretty relaxing:

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Trump Says: “What Coronavirus?”

The Daily Escape:

DH Day Barn in Glenn Arbor, MI photo by seedy_reedy_photos

From the WaPo:

“The presidential campaign was roiled this weekend by a fresh outbreak of the novel coronavirus at the White House that infected at least five aides or advisers to Vice President Pence….With the election a little over a week away, the new White House outbreak spotlighted the administration’s failure to contain the pandemic as hospitalizations surge across much of the United States and daily new cases hit all-time highs.

The outbreak around Pence, who chairs the White House’s coronavirus task force, undermines the argument Trump has been making to voters that the country is “rounding the turn,” as the president put it at a rally Sunday in New Hampshire.

Further complicating Trump’s campaign-trail pitch was an extraordinary admission Sunday from White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows that the administration had effectively given up on trying to slow the virus’s spread.”

The WaPo reported that one of Trump’s top staffers acknowledged on Sunday that he (Trump) had tried to avoid disclosing these new White House cases to the public. Some in the VP’s office suggested that White House doctors should release a statement saying that [Marc] Short [Pence’s Chief of Staff] was positive, and that Pence was still okay to travel. But that idea was scuttled by Meadows and others. Meadows later said:

“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” Meadows said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations.”

There is no plan, and no strategy. Trump again said on Sunday in New Hampshire that the country is “rounding the turn”, but there’s no truth to that. Here are the 7-day average Covid statistics as of October 26: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“Yesterday there were 60,789 new confirmed cases, 16,222 recoveries, 340 deaths. The current 7-day rolling average of 68,768 new cases/day grew 38.8% from 14 days ago, while the average of 794 deaths/day grew 13.3%…”

If cases continue to grow at those rates, the number of cases will look like this:

9,221,976 cases in 7 Days; 9,888,654 cases in 14 Days; 12,042,648 cases in 30 Days

Even if you accept the view that: we can’t stamp out the virus, so we’ve just got to live (or die) with it, this just leads you to the other big idea: We knew back in March that even if we couldn’t stop the virus, we had to slow it down enough so that it doesn’t overwhelm our so-called “Greatest Health Care System in the World”.

If the GOP invested as much energy into fighting COVID as they do in voter suppression, we would have fewer cases and they wouldn’t need to suppress votes. Everyone expected that the virus would spread. But the least we should have been able to expect from Trump was an honest effort to inform the public; to do whatever it would take to contain it like the majority of other countries did; and to stop trying to blame someone else for it.

The Covidusa web site says that we’ve already reached a quarter of a million deaths (225,495) in this country. It’s clear that we’re being led by a pack of liars who think it’s more important to win an election than it is to save American lives. And they have the gall to call themselves “pro-life.”

And remember, there are 78 days after the election for Trump to fumble the Coronavirus before he leaves office.

Here’s another Trump delusion: This sheet was left on the seat of every member of the press on Airforce One yesterday. (Hat tip: Automatic Earth)

This suggests that the Trump camp expects a Red tsunami on Election Day. That may be true, but it will be very difficult to undo the massive early voting that is already in the books in all the battle ground states.

Every four years we say “this is the most important election of our lives.” This time, it’s true.

Why? Because if Trump wins again, we may see the freedoms we’ve long taken for granted curtailed, or in some cases, eliminated. You may think that Wrongo is well, wrong, and an alarmist. But do you REALLY want to take a chance that this isn’t the most important election of your life?

Your job is to vote for Biden, and to elect Democrats to the Senate.

There are seven days to go until the election. It’s certainly possible that you may never cast a more important ballot in your life. We have no control over what may happen in the future, but we can control what happens in seven days.

We can elect competence, sanity, and a reaffirmation of our democracy, but only if we all vote.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 25, 2020

Gov. Steve Bullock of Montana is the state’s Democratic candidate for the US Senate. He’s running slightly behind the incumbent Republican, Sen. Steve Daines. Daines is a first-term Senator with few accomplishments, while Bullock is a sitting governor ending his second term. Bullock has high approval ratings for his handling of the pandemic, but his principled stand on masking may cost the Dems a chance to flip the Senate, since Montana happens to be a state where anti-maskers are vocal in their opposition to Bullock.

Bullock issued a mask mandate in the summer, but as the NYT reports, politicians and law enforcement in Montana’s Ravalli County opted not to enforce the order, citing individual rights. Another county, Flathead, has also been somewhat hostile to masking.

At the end of last week, Montana had 25,640 cases of Coronavirus, with 278 deaths. On Friday, Montana tallied a record for new cases at 932, so Bullock announced the state is cracking down on businesses in Flathead County that have refused to comply with masking and social distancing mandates.

That the outcome of a Senatorial election may depend on voters who won’t wear masks in a pandemic says much about what America has become. Many people say that they’ll do anything for America. Some of them even carry their guns in the supermarket. But when they’re asked to take simple protective measures, keep their distance, show patience and courtesy, they just can’t.

There are nine days left until the election. Nine days. Remember that in 2016 in Wisconsin, Hillary’s loss averaged out to just two votes per precinct. Help get your friends to vote. On to cartoons.

The criterion for debate success has fallen too far:

What you get when you do nothing:

In-person voting won’t be easy this time:

Let’s hope the swing hits fast and hard:

Rudy shows a laptop:

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The Closing Arguments

The Daily Escape:

Autumn on Icefields Parkway, Jasper Alberta, CN – September 2020 photo by Argen Elezi Photography

Welcome to the longest 14 days of our lives! The way actual time has blurred between Trump and Covid, November 3 has remained the one date that has stayed fixed in our consciousness. As the calendar days tick off, it gets closer and closer. Now, we’re all sitting in the backseat yelling “Are we there yet”?

The next two weeks will feel like an eternity.

As time winds down to the election, the polls tell us that maybe we’re at least momentarily, a tiny bit less polarized than we were pre-Covid. Many Republicans say they are voting for Biden. Certain groups, the majority of whom supported Trump in 2016, are moving in significant numbers to supporting Biden.

There is growing agreement that controlling Covid and restoring our economy are the top two issues facing the next president and Congress. There is less agreement about what should be done to move us down the path to achieving both.

The big question post-election will be: What do we agree on? Or more accurately, what will the majority of us agree can be done to repair the damage done in the past few years? The next two weeks will have Biden and Trump making their closing arguments on why they deserve our votes.

Crucially the same NYT/Siena College poll referenced above says that Americans see Biden as more capable of uniting the country by nearly 20 points.

Both candidates’ arguments may become clearer after Thursday night’s debate, but as of now, Trump’s closing argument is: Covid doesn’t matter, people are tired of hearing about it. He said on Tuesday that “People aren’t buying it” as America’s biggest problem.

It’s worth noting that despite Trump’s boredom with the virus, there were more than 64,000 new cases just yesterday. And the death toll passed 220k. So, maybe people actually are buying that it’s a big deal.

Trump’s second argument is that he has grievances: Against Fauci, the media, and Joe and Hunter Biden. When Trump talks about his personal grievances, few voters outside the Trump/GOP bubble agree that these are problems that need the time and attention of the next president.

Biden’s closing argument is likely to be “Let’s end the chaos”. That’s totally an anti-Trump argument. But to Biden’s point, we’ve never had a President wage war on America during a national crisis by actively working to undermine the country’s health and well-being.

According to a recent Cornell University study, Trump represents the “the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid” in the world.

Over the weekend Twitter took down a tweet posted by Dr. Scott Atlas, a neuroradiologist who is the latest Trump coronavirus guru, when he linked to an article that claimed wearing a mask does not help slow the spread of the virus. The article also referred to the virus as “some seasonal flu.”

Biden is also likely to say in closing, as he did in his Gettysburg speech on October 6, that some semblance of bipartisanship is necessary to defeat the COVID-19 pandemic and rebuild a battered economy. He also said then that the country must “decide to cooperate” toward the necessary recovery of our public health, and our economy.

Wrongo is reminded of this, written by Jan Flynn in June:

“We now live in a nation where tolerance of our differences is no longer an assumption in the social contract. Hate and judgment are normalized, but no less destructive than they’ve ever been. We retreat further and further into our ideological bunkers, from which we lob fearful words, memes, posts, rocks, bottles, rubber bullets, or actual bullets at our countrymen on the other side.”

How will we build tolerance for our differences? In the real world, we can’t unfriend or turn off the comments of Facebook friends we disagree with.

If Trump wins, the lobbing of words, memes, rubber bullets and actual bullets will continue, and likely get worse.

If Biden wins, he has a massive job ahead of trying to find a coalition of voters and politicians who will work cooperatively, helping bind up our self-inflicted wounds, and moving the nation forward.

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How Republican Use of the Term “Freedom” Hurts Our Coronavirus Response

The Daily Escape:

Fall turning towards winter, Capitol Peak near Aspen, CO – October 2020 photo by campsG

Following up on yesterday’s column on our failing response to Covid, we know that many on the right refuse to wear a mask to help their towns and states stop the growth in coronavirus cases. They say it’s their right to refuse to wear a mask, because the mask requirement impinges on their personal freedom.

They are wrong. Refusing to wear a mask doesn’t mean you are free. It means you are limiting the rights of your fellow citizens to be safe and secure. Axios reported on Monday that Coronavirus hospitalizations are increasing in 39 states, and are at or near their all-time peak in 16 of the 39.

We’re not at a panic point, but rising hospitalization rates are a sign that we’re losing control, and things are getting worse.

Michael Tomasky wrote an interesting op-ed for the NYT on how the right in America seemingly own the use of the term freedom. He quotes Mike Pence at the Amy Coney Barrett coming out party:

“We’re about freedom and respecting the freedom of the American people…”

Tomasky also quoted John Stuart Mill: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“In ‘On Liberty,’ he wrote that liberty (or freedom) means ‘doing as we like, subject to such consequences as may follow, without impediment from our fellow creatures, as long as what we do does not harm them even though they should think our conduct foolish, perverse or wrong.’ ”

Tomasky points out that freedom doesn’t include the freedom to make someone else sick. It does not include the freedom to refuse to wear a mask in the grocery store, or sneeze on someone in the produce section. How is that freedom for the person who is sneezed upon?

For the sneezee, the sneezer’s “freedom” potentially leads to illness, and in a few cases, even to death. Society has lost its social cohesion if that action is part of the definition of freedom.

Ralph Nader, who wrote “Unsafe at Any Speed”, the book that launched America’s national seat belt law, says this about the anti-maskers:

“The same people who don’t want to do social distancing and face masks get in their car and put their seat belt on….Nice irony, huh?”

Nader thinks mask wearing will just take time. Tomasky says that politicians on the right have appropriated “freedom”:

“Freedom belongs almost wholly to the right. They talk about it incessantly and insist on a link between economic freedom and political freedom, positing that the latter is impossible without the former. This was an animating principle of conservative economists in the 20th century like Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman.”

That linkage ignores that other western economies, like the Scandinavian countries, would have had limited economic success instead of their realities of great economies. These countries all have state-controlled economies, but still enjoy political freedom.

If Von Mises, Hayek and Friedman were correct, advanced democratic countries that had state-controlled economies would experience bad economies, along with little political freedom. There are no examples of this outside of the former Soviet Union. China has a robust state-planned economy, while lacking political freedoms.

So why do Democrats let Republicans own freedom as a concept? Why do they allow Republicans to use the concept to defend spreading the Coronavirus, potentially killing other citizens? A last thought from Tomasky:

“Democrats….aren’t very good at defending their positions on the level of philosophical principle…..they’ve been on the philosophical defensive since Ronald Reagan….Well, it’s high time they played some philosophical offense, especially on an issue, wearing masks, on which every poll shows broad majorities supporting their view….Freedom means the freedom not to get infected by the idiot who refuses to mask up.”

Biden has been pretty good at showing the alternative viewpoint on personal freedom. At his Miami town hall, he said:

“I view wearing this mask not so much protecting me, but as a patriotic responsibility. All the tough guys say, ‘Oh, I’m not wearing a mask, I’m not afraid.’ Well, be afraid for your husband, your wife, your son, your daughter, your neighbor, your co-worker. That’s who you’re protecting having this mask on, and it should be viewed as a patriotic duty, to protect those around you.”

Without social cohesion we’re doomed as a society. Coronavirus should be helping bring us together, but Trump keeps using it to drive a wedge deeply into our social fabric.

Just 14 days remain until the election. Help heal America by voting!

Let’s end Trump’s tired act.

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Monday Wake Up Call – October 19, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Price Lake Blue Ridge Mountains – October 2020 photo by Muhammad Sumon

For decades, people around the world have thought the US was “exceptional” in most things. Covid has shown that not only is America unexceptional when it comes to pulling together to beat the virus, we’re close to chaotic.

We do remain exceptional in Covid cases and deaths, leading the world in sheer numbers of each. We’re now back to more than 70,000 reported cases a day, and our current response seems mostly to be indifference.

Wrongo and Ms. Right are in our temporary bubble in Truro on Cape Cod, where almost everyone is still masking, and attempting to achieve sufficient physical distance. But across America, a whole lot of people seem to just be done with Covid. They are moving on.

Only a few states are still taking new infections seriously enough to try to do anything at all to stop the spread. Those states with strong mask requirements still have them, but most states seem to have given up trying to control their citizens.

The persistent growth in new cases is above all, a social cohesion problem. People aren’t willing to forego any comfort, or engage in social distancing unless it helps them personally. So, bad behavior has made the number of Americans sick with Covid much worse than it had to be.

Not enough people are willing to follow rules. Too many believe that putting others at risk is an inalienable personal right. While health professionals and politicians say that “compliance is key”, no one has offered any new ideas on how to bring about more adherence with mask wearing and physical distancing.

Covid is also a leadership problem. Trump has prioritized the health of the economy over the health of our citizens. He only put up a fight against the virus when he got sick, but not while it ravaged the rest of us. And once he got better, he’s spread even more pernicious disinformation about Covid.

We need to do better, but it’s unclear what a Biden presidency can do to make it better.

A national lockdown doesn’t seem legal, and would lead to dissipating a large amount of Biden’s political capital. That could put in jeopardy whatever changes to our economy and politics he might be able to accomplish, if Democrats hold the House, Senate and the White House.

We can expect the CDC to once again provide leadership on how to deal with the virus while we wait for effective vaccines to become widely available. But at this point, it seems too late to re-lock down, and start over.

Luckily, Covid isn’t particularly deadly for a highly contagious virus. We know that it’s terrible for those with preexisting conditions. We’re learning that there are serious long-term health problems for some people who get the disease, the so-called “long haulers”.

We all know these things, but we need to do a better job of thinking through what could change the minds of people who simply won’t comply with the basic rules. They know they can get it, but they don’t think they will die from it. So they figure they’ll be OK, and maybe as Trump says, become immune after having something that’s perceived as not much worse than the seasonal flu.

This is mostly true for America’s White population. It’s far less true for America’s Black and Latino populations. This is how racial privilege works in the US. Possibly, if we experience more cases than right now, there may be the stomach for another lockdown. That’s if it’s accompanied by additional government financial support for those who will suffer financially from any lockdown.

Another idea is to employ rolling lockdowns that impact only the hot spots. The governor of Connecticut is doing this in our few hot spots, and it seems to be reasonably well-supported by citizens. The logic is: “We let you do it your way, now you need to do it our way”. Not all will comply, but most will understand that what they did didn’t work; so it’s time to try something different.

Massachusetts has Covid color codes by town, with red designating towns with more than eight cases per 100k. Reports say that it has changed policies in many places, as people who have a choice try to avoid the hottest Covid spots.

There are lots of possibilities for what may happen going forward, but we need to be smarter about how we deal with Covid. Our policy can’t just be: “we all die of something”.

There’s a lot of value in putting off death for as long as possible.

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Saturday Soother – October 17, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Hiram, ME – October 2020 photo by alexishowardphoto

Wrongo and Ms. Right are camped out on Cape Cod for a week. We’re trying to stave off the approaching cold and dark that will be soon be upon us. Also, we wanted to smell the salt air for a few days at least, in our Covid-filled 2020.

And every single person we’ve had to make small talk with in the past two weeks has said this exact sentence: “It gets dark so early now”.

The two things that dominated the week were the Amy Coney Barrett hearings and the continued growth in Covid cases as we run up to the election. Starting with the Barrett hearings, how is it believable that we have a process where aspirants to hold a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court pretend to have never given any thought to fundamental questions that absolutely every American adult has an opinion about?

She’ll be confirmed, and then we’ll move on to some fresh new Republican outrage.

Wrongo has said for months that this is the Covid election. No one wants to see more cases, but with incompetent presidential leadership, this is where we are with 17 days left until the election:

According to the NYT, over the past two weeks, new cases have increased in 43 states, plus DC and Guam. Deaths are increasing in 23 states. But Trump wants us to talk about whether Twitter is burying a story about Hunter Biden.

He’s bet his re-election on saying the pandemic is no big deal. Sadly for Americans, he’s wrong (again).

If the reaction by the anti-maskers (mostly Republicans) stay as they are currently, with some states encouraging residents to go maskless, then the projected number of deaths by February could be close to 400,000.

But if everybody stopped being stupid and wore masks and skipped large gatherings and kept a safe distance from others, then we could see the number of deaths be closer to 300,000.

Finally, a reason for hope: The Democratic candidate fundraising platform ActBlue just reported its most successful fundraising quarter in history. They raised $1.5 billion in three months from individual donors. That total includes some of Wrongo’s and Ms. Right’s money:

“From July through September, 6.8 million donors made 31.4 million contributions through ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s favored online donation platform, averaging $47 per donation. More than 14,223 campaigns and organizations benefited from the surge in donations, the largest single quarter in the platform’s 15-year history, according to figures shared first with POLITICO.”

In September alone, ActBlue processed $758 million. This doesn’t mean that the fight against Citizens United shouldn’t continue, but it does mean that energized voters can compete with the Big Money when it really counts.

Two years ago, no one thought Democrats had much of a chance of flipping the Senate. Now, with competitive races in North Carolina, Georgia (two), South Carolina, Texas, Kentucky, Arizona, Maine, Iowa, and Colorado, there is better than 50% chance of turning the Senate blue. Since Democrat Doug Jones will almost certainly lose in Alabama, if the Dems can flip five red seats, they will have the Senate to go with the House and the White House.

Voting can change the world. Those over 45 years old made our current, crumbling world. People younger than 45 have the power to remake it, if they turn out by November 3.

On to the weekend. After another rock ’em sock ’em week, you definitely need some Saturday Soother time! Let’s start by brewing up a cup of Colombia Hacienda Casablanca, ($20/12oz.), said to be bright, juicy, and cocoa-rich. It comes to us from Toronto’s Stereo Coffee Roasters.

Now settle back and listen to a classic played in a different way. Here is Debussy’s “Clair de lune” played on solo Harp by Mali Llywelyn. Here, she’s playing at St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London in November 2017:

This will both relax and inspire you.

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Monday Wake Up Call – COVID Edition, October 12, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Camelback Lake, PA – photo by Craig Conklin

Yesterday, Wrongo said Covid is the biggest issue of the 2020 election. Today let’s talk about the death cult that Republicans seem to be when it comes to Covid. They won’t mask up, and they are unwilling to observe social distance in public. Some won’t even self-isolate when they are infected.

If you think this is an exaggeration by Wrongo for political purposes, you would be incorrect.

America is experiencing the long-predicted fall surge in Covid cases, and the surge is concentrated in states that are either Republican-run or are Republican by sentiment. Dan Goodspeed is a blogger who has made an interactive chart that shows the growth in Covid cases since June 1. He chose June 1 because it was about then that countries worldwide had the opportunity to beat back the number of cases with proven preventative measures.

Goodspeed also contrasted the case data with states’ political affiliations, using the Cook Partisan Voting Index. The results suggest that there is a strong correlation between a state’s political leanings and its ability to slow the spread of COVID:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of the top 25 states that had increasing Covid cases since June, 23 of them are Republican. Remember, that the data show cases per million of population, making direct comparisons possible.

If you view this graph at Goodspeed’s site, the bars quickly progress in total cases from June until October. That progression clearly shows what can happen when one Party politicizes a public health emergency. Or when its citizens cherry-pick what facts they’ll believe based on their politics and ideology.

It turns out that red states have done a particularly poor job of dealing with the pandemic, most likely because their citizens have been the most resistant to taking basic precautions, such as wearing face masks, physically distancing and self-isolating.

Yes, it seems that the preventative measures prescribed by infectious disease professionals actually DO work.

If Americans had uniformly accepted that these simple rules at the outset of the pandemic were a smart way to protect public health, the country’s outcome would be different. Instead, more than 214,000 Americans have already died. And the outlook is worsening. Thirty-two states have more new cases this week than last week, according to Johns Hopkins data. Covid is nowhere under control.

Trump stood on a White House balcony Saturday, claiming the coronavirus is “disappearing” while hundreds of people watched from below. Although 2,000 invitations had been sent out, the crowd on Saturday was only a few hundred. The White House said that Trump would speak for 30 minutes, but he spoke for just 18 minutes, instead of the usual 90 minutes or more. Many in the crowd were maskless.

It’s clear that contracting Covid has taught him nothing, and he will continue to endanger Americans until Election Day. He’s planning at least three campaign rallies next week in Florida, Pennsylvania and Iowa. CNN reports that he said:

“We are starting very, very big with our rallies and with our everything”

Since January, Trump has questioned the science. In some cases he’s undermined the scientific authorities who have tried to get the true information out about what we know, and what we should be doing about it.

Trump isn’t going to change. That puts the onus on those around him to do the right thing, and stop enabling his antics. First on the list right now must be his personal physician, Dr. Conley, who has said that Trump poses no threat to others. If that is true, where’s the evidence of Trump’s string of negative Covid tests?

Conley in particular has surrendered his credibility in order to enable Trump’s recklessness. Ultimately, he will become another administration official on the growing list of Trump enablers who can’t justify their colossal misjudgment.

Time to wake up, America! Republicans have become a death cult. Republicans refuse to believe that Covid is dangerous, they refuse to trust the scientists, and they seem willing to get sick for Trump’s sake. Beware what they might do if Trump returns to power for another four years.

If you are one of the few remaining undecided voters, the fact that 23 of the 25 states with the most new cases since June are Republican ought to tell you all you need to know about how Trump will protect America.

Trump’s insisting that his followers vote in person 3 weeks from now. And most of them will happily do it.

If you live in a red state, maybe you should think twice about that.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – October 11, 2020

For Republicans, life begins at conception, and ends when the government requires you to wear a mask.

Wrongo thinks that this election is really about one thing: COVID-19. You may think differently, but you should watch the video linked below. It’s a timeline of Trump’s response to the pandemic. As things stand now, 215,000 (and growing) Americans have died. The argument that if Trump hadn’t played down the seriousness of a pandemic that he KNEW to be serious, untold thousands would still be alive today. This should be convincing to all but the most fanatic Trumpers.

If you are on the fence, this video makes a pretty damning case. The only defense Trump ever uses is that he stopped flights from China on February 2. But even that is untrue. According to a report in The NYT, at least 430,000 people arrived in the US on direct flights from China after the outbreak was reported on the last day of 2019. This included nearly 40,000 in the two months after the February restrictions were put in place.

Here’s the roughly 10 minute video produced by a UK group, Led by Donkeys:

https://twitter.com/ByDonkeys/status/1313830983007973376

On to cartoons.

Trump’s message from the White House on Saturday was “you can beat this”:

How is a virtual debate different from what the rest of us have been doing?

No empathy for you:

Why are we not surprised:

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Saturday Soother – Domestic Terrorism Edition, October 10, 2020

The Daily Escape:

Mt. Moran, Jackson, WY – October 2020 photo by campsG.  The snow is said to resemble an electric guitar.

The plan to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is truly disturbing. According to the FBI, who foiled the plot, the conspirators intended to move her across state lines to Wisconsin where she would be tried by a kangaroo court for “treason.”

Let’s wander back in time to April in Michigan. On April 15, there was a drive by “Operation Gridlock” protest in Lansing. The organizer of that rally received financial assistance from the DeVos family. You know, the one that includes Trump’s Secretary of Education. Then on April 17, Trump tweeted, “LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”

Then came April 30 when a bunch of armed right-wingers showed up and took control inside the state Capitol building, intimidating people with their semi-automatic rifles. One of them had a Whitmer doll with a noose around its neck.

That was followed on May 6 by a lawsuit by Republicans against Whitmer: “Michigan House of Representatives and Michigan Senate v. Whitmer”. And on October 6, the Michigan Supreme Court decided in a 4-3 ruling along partisan lines, that Whitmer did not have the authority to issue COVID-related executive orders after April 30, 2020.

Now we learn that the would-be kidnappers, who called themselves the “Wolverine Watchmen” according to FBI documents filed in court, wanted to create a “self-sufficient” society free from what they called unconstitutional state governments. They discussed plans to storm the Capitol and take hostages, and planned Whitmer’s kidnapping. They allegedly began meeting in June.

These guys were well organized and very well armed. They planned to set off explosives under a bridge to distract authorities while they carried out Whitmer’s kidnapping at her weekend home. At least two of the men arrested Thursday, were also present in the takeover of the state Capitol building.

So the political discord, division, unrest, and violence in this country, fomented by the maskless president has come to this. From David Neiwert at the Daily Kos: (emphasis by Wrongo)

“This remains the indelible lesson from these arrests: Trump’s profoundly irresponsible rhetoric has concocted a cauldron of hatred that the nation will be dealing with long after he has departed the scene, resulting in an army of authoritarian followers eager to mete out terroristic violence against any politician or person who opposes them—a sociopolitical plague that could come to rival the COVID-19 virus in lethality. It certainly seems unlikely to subside anytime soon…”

Trump set the tone for this by refusing to help Whitmer when she asked for federal assistance. He refused to allow Pence, as COVID-19 Task Force chair, to speak to Whitmer, and he encouraged violence with his “LIBERATE MICHIGAN” tweet after the first protest against Whitmer’s orders.

Even after learning of the arrests of the kidnapping conspirators, Trump attacked Whitmer via tweet, saying:

“…I do not tolerate ANY extreme violence. Defending ALL Americans, even those who oppose and attack me, is what I will always do as your President! Governor Whitmer—open up your state, open up your schools, and open up your churches!”

By the way, despite all the Republican whining about opening bars and not wearing masks, Whitmer’s early stay-home orders and restrictions on businesses crushed the virus in Michigan, with cases plunging from a daily high of 1,878 on April 3, to just 56 cases by June 15.

Cases have risen again, largely because of Republican pressure to reopen the economy. There were 1,230 new cases on Wednesday, but deaths have stayed low: From 232 on April 21 to just 8 on Wednesday. Neiwert said in the same article:

“…Trump’s rhetoric and policies have unleashed a second pandemic in the form of far-right domestic terrorism.”

What will Trump’s tweets spawn next as we head into the second wave of COVID-19?

Wrongo knows how difficult it is to relax at times like these, so no coffee for you. Instead take a few moments to remember John Lennon, who was born 80 years ago (10/9/1940) and died at age 40.

His tune, “Imagine” was released on October 8, 1971, itself 49 years ago. And the world has been running from its message ever since.

It’s hard to imagine that Lennon’s been gone for as long as he was alive. Could he have imagined the world in our triple header of a social, political, economic crisis, along with a global pandemic topping it off? Take a break, and think an impossible thought or two on this Saturday. This video starts with a slow walk by John and Yoko, but ultimately, it shows John singing with Yoko by his side.

Never cared much for Yoko, but seeing her looking at John is this video changed my mind:

Imagine a world where people understand and tolerate each other.

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