An Oldie But A Goodie From The Trump Playbook: Blaming The “Lamestream Media” To Save Face
[guest post by Dana]
Last week, it was reported by Axios that Trump’s aides were concerned about the President’s daily press conferences being a negative for him:
President Trump plans to pare back his coronavirus press conferences, according to four sources familiar with the internal deliberations.
He may stop appearing daily and make shorter appearances when he does, the sources said — a practice that may have started with Friday’s unusually short briefing.
…Trump’s daily press conferences — televised to a largely homebound population — have dominated the public discourse about the coronavirus.
…A number of Trump’s most trusted advisers — both inside and outside the White House — have urged him to stop doing marathon televised briefings.
They’ve told him he’s overexposed and these appearances are part of the reason polls aren’t looking good for him right now against Joe Biden.
“I told him it’s not helping him,” said one adviser to the president. “Seniors are scared. And the spectacle of him fighting with the press isn’t what people want to see.”
In spite of the concerns by those close to him, Trump defended the press conferences because, as he claimed, they got good ratings. But that was before his “disinfectant” debacle:
Many close to him believe the daily briefings hurt him more than they help him, with Thursday’s episode being the prime example. The White House spent the last 24 hours attempting to clean up remarks from the President that researchers should look into injecting people with disinfectant or ultraviolet rays to cure coronavirus.
A source close to the coronavirus task force said Trump was upset about the “flack” he was taking after those comments and that appears to be part of the reason why the President cut Friday’s briefing short.
During the earlier questioning from reporters on Friday, Trump said he was being “sarcastic” with his suggestion that people inject themselves with disinfectant, even though he was clearly being serious during Thursday’s briefing.
One White House official said they asked the President to stop conducting the daily briefings last week but he resisted. Another ally told CNN that this concern is not new among those close to him.
And a separate Trump ally told CNN that Thursday’s briefing is exactly what they were worried about when they begged him not to have such long and freewheeling press conferences — that one day he would just say something completely off the wall and off the rails.
Trump apparently got the message, and announced yesterday that daily press conferences were not worth the time and effort. But of course he would have to blame someone other than himself for the situation in which he found himself. So why not go to his old standby, the media:
What is the purpose of having White House News Conferences when the Lamestream Media asks nothing but hostile questions, & then refuses to report the truth or facts accurately. They get record ratings, & the American people get nothing but Fake News. Not worth the time & effort!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 25, 2020
To Trump’s mind, the pressers weren’t a disaster because he mistook them for political rallies where his supporters *want* and *expect* him to go off the rails, and applaud him when he does. No, the fault had to lay elsewhere. It wasn’t hard to find the obvious scapegoat. To his clouded mind, he wasn’t taking flak in the press because he was promoting unproven treatments, brazenly disagreeing with members of his Coronavirus Task Force, or musing about whether injecting disinfectant would be an effective way to fight coronavirus. Nope. To him it was basically the continuation of one very long witch hunt.
Even during a pandemic, it is not possible for Trump to muster up the self-discipline needed to stay on point, stick to the script, give brief and accurate updates, and defer to experts – without challenging them, brazenly disagreeing with them, or interjecting his own wacky theories.
But none of this is surprising. We’re jaded, we’re informed, we’ve seen it all before. It’s always been this way.
–Dana
Pre-emptive strike: This brings me no pleasure. I am not being hysterical. I don’t *hate* Trump. I haven’t *got it in for him*.
What I am, is exhausted from the sideshow. I just want to return to some semblance of normalcy. Especially during an abnormal time.
Dana (0feb77) — 4/26/2020 @ 11:14 amIf the sideshow exhausts you, stop watching…
Colliente (05736f) — 4/26/2020 @ 11:23 amI love the hard-hitting questions Andrew Cuomo fields at his briefings. Really peels that onion!
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/26/2020 @ 11:46 amThere is nothing more detrimental to the Trump reelection campaign — not COVID-19, not the economic collapse, not unforeseen overseas developments — than the President himself speaking off-the-cuff and unprepared. After Joe Biden’s disastrous addresses from his home office, his advisors wisely counseled him to cut it out and lie low, and lo and behold he has since seen his approval ratings increase. President Trump has to be bluntly told that his inflated ego and need for the limelight will do more to hurt his campaign than to help it.
JVW (54fd0b) — 4/26/2020 @ 12:15 pmI missed the part where Cuomo was elected POTUS…or has much of anything to do with anywhere but New York.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/26/2020 @ 12:20 pmI will wait for him to say something as stupid as injecting disinfectant, then Cuomo can get the business. It’s almost like lying less and saying less dumb things affects your “coverage”.
If Trump only said a moronic thing, or lied, on Thursday, that would be one thing, but it wasn’t just Thursday, it’s the other 40 briefings that he lies incessantly and says moronic things.
In a national emergency, it would be one thing, just like January, of 2017-18-19, but it is a national emergency, so less Trump, more anyone else.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/26/2020 @ 12:23 pm“‘You want to go to work? Go take a job as an essential worker.”
— – Gov. Andrew Cuomo
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/26/2020 @ 12:43 pmI will wait for him to say something as stupid as injecting disinfectant, then Cuomo can get the business.
As you well know, Trump didn’t say that.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/26/2020 @ 12:47 pmYou can tell who they are afraid of the most. Apparently it’s Cuomo.
Dustin (e5f6c3) — 4/26/2020 @ 1:03 pmΜαλάκας
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/26/2020 @ 1:13 pm1. Returning to “normal” isn’t that difficult. But first, we have to stop listening to the panic mongers in and outside of the government.
Maybe it is that difficult. :-/
Gryph (08c844) — 4/26/2020 @ 1:17 pmWorld Health Organization (WHO)✔
@WHO
Earlier today we tweeted about a new WHO scientific brief on “immunity passports”. The thread caused some concern & we would like to clarify:
We expect that most people who are infected with #COVID19 will develop an antibody response that will provide some level of protection.
harkin (8f4a6f) — 4/26/2020 @ 1:28 pm_
I am going to emphatically request that people stop trying to frame this as an either/or situation:
Or:
It’s absurd, it’s intentionally mischaracterizating people’s positions, and it ultimately unhelpful.
It is both possible to care deeply about the economy and people who desperately need to get back to work, as well as care deeply about people taking precautions and safeguard measures (social-distancing, maintaining some restrictions until we see whether the coast is clear) while reopening the economy. This isn’t, and should be framed as an either/or, because that isn’t the case. And anyone who keeps doing that is just more interested in playing politics rather than hoping for the best outcome for all parties involved.
You cannot have a thriving economy with mass numbers of sick people. You can’t have healthy people to drive the economy if mass numbers of people are not observing safeguard measures.
Dana (0feb77) — 4/26/2020 @ 1:42 pmIf Trump wants Americans to stop getting Fake News, he should probably stop spreading it at news conferences.
Nic (896fdf) — 4/26/2020 @ 1:49 pmOh you simple, simple, boy. Do you forget we have transcripts and video of the whole spectacle. Silly, simple, boy.
“So I asked Bill a question some of you are thinking of if you’re into that world, which I find to be pretty interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said, that hasn’t been checked but you’re gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you’re gonna test that too, sounds interesting. And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that. So you’re going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me, so we’ll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it goes in one minute, that’s pretty powerful.”
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/26/2020 @ 2:01 pmWe expect that most people who are infected with #COVID19 will develop an antibody response that will provide some level of protection.
Did they make clear what that “some” level meant? I mean, like in reality?
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/26/2020 @ 2:22 pmIn reality, no, they cannot. It is a CYA to label it as “some level”, since it can be anywhere from 0 to 99.9%.
Colliente (05736f) — 4/26/2020 @ 3:00 pmAh, I see Col. Klink is now supporting Col. Haiku by providing the excerpt from the transcript. It’s nice to see you two getting along. But, really, the labels are a personal attack and detract from your contention.
Colliente (05736f) — 4/26/2020 @ 3:03 pmIt’s a good thing Trump didn’t say the thing he said, on video.
In a few minutes, you guys will be saying that the video is fake or that we didn’t see and hear the words right.
What he meant were different words, with different meaning. We’re just confused by words like ‘disinfectant” or “inject”. They obviously mean something different than that from Webster’s.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/26/2020 @ 3:13 pm17. Well, I sorta figured that. But I was hoping harkin would expand a bit, since he provided the partial info.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/26/2020 @ 3:14 pmTrump did not say or imply, “go ahead and put bleach or isopropyl alcohol into your bloodstream.” Did. Not. Happen.
In addition, he asked whether they could disinfect the lungs… which made me think about lung wash, aka lung lavage. Something along those lines.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/26/2020 @ 3:58 pmWords have been provided to you many, many, many times. You could watch, you could listen, you could read, but you choose to do something else.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:06 pmThe idea that Trump has cut short his coronavirus briefings on the advice of his handlers because they’re making him look bad is ridiculously preposterous. We all know Trump doesn’t have any advisors besides his Very Good Brain because he’s the smartest man in the world. And many people have said so, fantastic people, incredibly smart people, people like you wouldn’t believe have said Trump is the smartest, the best, the greatest, the yugest, the most successful in history.
No, we all know the real reason Trump has cut short his coronavirus briefings is because he’s at home sulking and pouting and furiously writing in his tear-soaked diary about how all the mean girls have been saying mean things about him but they’re not true and someday when he grows up he’ll show them, he’ll show them all what a smart, pretty, popular girl he is and then won’t they be sorry!
Jerryskids (702a61) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:09 pmSo the answer is burying one’s head in the sand? The idea is to obsrve, listen, analyze, make judgements, and then vote accordingly. Does this president make the process exhausting? Why yes he does. Ultimately, all of this noise paves the path to decision in November 2020. The only person who doesn’t seem to understand that, is Trump.
Dana (0feb77) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:15 pmRepost-
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:29 pmWithout Trump at the coronavirus briefings, America would get more information from the experts
A frustrated President Trump on Saturday used Twitter to rationalize walking away from the daily coronavirus news briefings that, multiple times this week alone, he had praised as being ratings hits.
….
A Washington Post analysis of the briefings since April 6, though, found 60 percent of the time during which administration officials and guests of the White House spoke at the briefings was spent with Trump at the lectern. Vice President Pence, head of the task force, constituted about 13 percent of the total. Fauci and Deborah Birx, another medical expert on the task force, combined for about 14 percent. A slew of others, mostly officials working on distribution of materials or testing expansion, made up the other 12 percent.
…..That may be, but the briefings will certainly be less interesting and fun to watch. Like a auto accident, it’s a tragedy but you can’t pull your eyes away.
25. Given how horrendously wrong Fauci and Birx have been over the last month, that doesn’t encourage me in the least.
Gryph (08c844) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:30 pmNo you should challenge them like New York Governor Cuomo did in a story he told today.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?471536-1/governor-cuomo-upstate-construction-manufacturing-businesses-open
Not that I want to praise Cuomo all that much.
He, or his government, sent Covid-positive patients discharged from hospitals into nursing homes, and even wrote them that they were legally obliged to take them – they couldn’t discriminate.
Questioned about this last week he said that if nursing homes could not handle that they would be investigated and could lose their licenses.
Today he said if they couldn;t take care of a patient they could call the health department or something.
But it is not Covid positive inhabitants they can’t handle. It is everybody else who is there with them.
Sammy Finkelman (7e803d) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:32 pmPlease explain, in detail, how wrong they are. The certainly haves better track record with facts than Trump.
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:32 pmJVW has it correct.
NJRob (703fca) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:36 pm13 hours of Trump: The president fills briefings with attacks and boasts, but little empathy
President Trump strode to the lectern in the White House briefing room Thursday and, for just over an hour, attacked his rivals, dismissing Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as a “sleepy guy in a basement of a house” and lambasting the media as “fake news” and “lamestream.”
He showered praise on himself and his team, repeatedly touting the “great job” they were doing as he spoke of the “tremendous progress” being made toward a vaccine and how “phenomenally” the nation was faring in terms of mortality.
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:43 pmWhat he did not do was offer any sympathy for the 2,081 Americans who were reported dead from the coronavirus on that day alone — among more than 54,000 Americans who have perished since the pandemic began.
>>>>>>>>>
Gryph-
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:45 pmLooking forward to your response to #28.
So we should just listen to Trump instead? Or, listen only to people who really love Trump?
It’s one thing to listen with an open mind, ask questions, weigh different views against each other. But the drumbeat of disdain for “experts” tout court leaves us with an unanswered question: If the people who spend a lot of time studying a particular topic can’t be trusted for useful information, then who can?
It’s also funny when people trying to demonstrate the unreliability of expertise do so by citing … other experts.
Radegunda (0a00f2) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:45 pm28. There is no way in the darkest pits of hell that “social distancing” accounts for a change in a month from 2.2 million projected to 60,000. None. That said, saying that the experts get it right more often than Trump is damning by faint praise.
32. I don’t think any commenter has been more vocal than I have been about how unfit Trump is for high office. I was saying that back during the 2016 campaign. That has absolutely ZILCH to do with Fauci or Birx and their fitness to wear the mantle of “expert.” In fact, I think that our willingness to surrender our basic rights in the name of credentialed “expertise” is one of the most galling aspects of this whole Coronavirus debacle.
Gryph (08c844) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:48 pmAre people here looking at Trump’s Twitter feed for today?
After railing against the “Noble” committee for awards to journalists he doesn’t like, and being (deservedly) ridiculed for it, he then pretended that he knew perfectly well the difference between a “Nobel Prize” and what he was referencing, and implied that people just didn’t understand his “sarcasm.”
Can the resident Trump defenders seriously maintain that he’s of sound enough mind to be entrusted with the presidency for the next 8.5 months — let alone another four years after that? Really?
Radegunda (0a00f2) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:53 pmThis Japanese Island Lifted Its Coronavirus Lockdown Too Soon and Became a Warning to the World
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 4:59 pmJapan’s northern island of Hokkaido offers a grim lesson in the next phase of the battle against COVID-19. It acted quickly and contained an early outbreak of the coronavirus with a 3-week lockdown. But, when the governor lifted restrictions, a second wave of infections hit even harder. Twenty-six days later, the island was forced back into lockdown.
…….
The announcement lifting restrictions came just before a three-day weekend; Hokkaido residents spilled onto streets and lingered in cafes, celebrating the conclusion of their weeks-long confinement. That likely kicked off the second wave of infections…….
……..
Further fueling it, people from other parts of Japan saw that Hokkaido had relaxed restrictions and began travelling there. Some were university students in big cities, who returned home to Hokkaido when classes were cancelled in April, says Nagase. Others were employees of large companies that typically start new job rotations at that time of year; when the state of emergency was lifted, businesses sent a fresh crop of workers from Tokyo and Osaka to Hokkaido.
………
……..By April 9—exactly three weeks after the lockdown was lifted—there was a record number of new cases: 18 in one day………On April 14, Hokkaido was forced to announce a state of emergency for a second time. The island had 279 reported cases, an increase of about 80% from when the governor lifted the first lockdown less than a month before. As of Wednesday, there were 495 cases in Hokkaido.
………
As for Nagase, the doctor involved in Hokkaido’s response, the hard lesson he and the prefecture have learned, he says, is that until there’s a vaccine or medicine, everyone has to take personal responsibility and understand that, “it really may not be until next year that we can safely lift these lockdowns.”
Thanks Gryph-
Fact free as usual!
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 5:02 pm33: — So who is a trustworthy source of information concerning a public-health issue? Should we all rely on Donald Trump’s “instincts”? To a lot of people, it’s galling that someone so ignorant and unstable is making big decisions affecting the health and lives of us all.
Not long ago, the pro-Trump, anti-“expert” crowd were ridiculing the idea that thousands of people would be killed. They were wrong, but they won’t admit that the experts were more right than Trump — who said the numbers would quickly shrink from 15 to zero.
Radegunda (0a00f2) — 4/26/2020 @ 5:02 pmCoronavirus Means the Era of Big Government Is…Back
…….The crisis has been not just a public-health emergency requiring a sweeping response, but also the cause of the most searing economic pain since the Great Depression, summoning forth a multi-trillion-dollar government intervention into the economy.
Much of today’s new government activism will recede over time along with the virus. Yet conversations with a broad cross-section of political figures suggest there is little reason to expect a return to what had been the status quo on federal spending, or the prevailing attitude toward the proper role of government.
“The era of Ronald Reagan, that said basically the government is the enemy, is over,” said Rahm Emanuel, a moderate Democrat who served as mayor of Chicago, a member of Congress and President Obama’s first White House chief of staff.
An echo came from the other side of the political spectrum. “The era of Robert Taft, limited-government conservatism?” said Steve Bannon, President Trump’s onetime political guru, referring to the Ohio senator who fought the expansion of government programs and federal borrowing. “It’s not relevant. It’s just not relevant.”
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 5:07 pm>>>>>>>>
No, no, no, you don’t get it. What Trump was really talking about was a more geologic time scale. So, by quickly he really meant 2-5 million years…
…ignore the dozen other times he repeats this with actual time frames given in things like days and weeks…uh-oh, I almost got caught too. I can’t know that he didn’t mean 4.3 Billion weeks.
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/26/2020 @ 5:12 pmCoronavirus: First known victim in U.S. died of “burst” heart, pathologist says
A Santa Clara County woman now believed to be the first person in the U.S. killed by the novel coronavirus died of a ruptured heart caused by her body’s struggle to defeat the virus, her autopsy shows.
Patricia Dowd, 57, of San Jose, died at home on Feb. 6 of what seemed like a heart attack while suffering from what seemed like the flu. But this news organization reported Thursday that officials now say she had the coronavirus, which they didn’t know at the time.
A report on her autopsy, posted Saturday night by the San Francisco Chronicle, shows that her body struggled so hard against the virus that a valve in her heart ruptured, a pathologist who reviewed the document told this news organization.
……
Dowd’s heart was a normal size and weight, Melinek said. Heart ruptures like the one Dowd suffered typically occur in people who have bad cholesterol levels.
“There’s an indication the heart was weakened,” Melinek said. “The immune system was attacking the virus and in attacking the virus it damaged the heart and then the heart basically burst.”
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 5:18 pm…….
The story of Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido (35) should be a giant red-flag, cautionary tale that we can learn from, but it won’t.
Dana (0feb77) — 4/26/2020 @ 5:26 pmIt occurs to me, if the White House held a press conference without Trump making an appearance, would the press attend it? It would be interesting to see who would, and who wouldn’t…
Dana (0feb77) — 4/26/2020 @ 5:39 pmThe story of Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido (35) should be a giant red-flag, cautionary tale that we can learn from, but it won’t.
That’s exactly what they said back in ’55, with the release of “Godzilla: King of the Monsters”.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/26/2020 @ 5:42 pmCol. Haiku,
I’m going to assume you are making a funny joke, and not a sarcastic dig. So, Lol.
Dana (0feb77) — 4/26/2020 @ 5:47 pmAs I’ve said before, all the governors that are reopening their states are using their citizens as lab rats.
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 5:49 pmWhite House aiming for Trump pivot from virus to economy
Trump on Sunday denied that he was going to fire Azar in a tweet, saying “Alex is doing an excellent job!”
Well, that’s the kiss of death.
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 6:00 pm38
Kishnevi (7eee2b) — 4/26/2020 @ 6:17 pmAnd they quote two men whose objective is to defeat limited government….
So, Axios (that great unbiaseed news source) has been “Reporting” based on “sources Faimilar with” and “Close to” the White house.
Sorry, an anonymous based report by a left-wing “News” site about what and why Trump is doing something. About as reliable as my what my Aunt Fanny. But go at it! Start with the assumption this is based on something, then attack Trump. Remember: Orange man is always bad. Won’t it be great when “conservative” “smaller government” “libertarian” Joe Biden get elected?
rcocean (1a839e) — 4/26/2020 @ 6:28 pm44… a lame one, but yes, Dana 🙂
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 4/26/2020 @ 6:32 pmOn the contrary. Even the orange is fake with Trump. Here’s a real Orange man. And he’s magnificent.
Radegunda (0a00f2) — 4/26/2020 @ 6:51 pm@38-
I suggest you read the full article, it’s quite long. But there is this:
…..Long before this crisis struck, Mr. Trump had been moving the Republican party away from its Reagan-era embrace of traditional conservative precepts and toward a more populist view of government’s role. That populist philosophy isn’t shy about using government power, or the government’s checkbook, to the benefit of working-class Americans.
Thus, in the midst of the crisis, the Trump administration declared that the federal government would pay the coronavirus health bills of any Americans without health insurance—and reimburse health-care providers at the rates paid by the Medicare health program for the elderly. That step appeared to offer at least a glancing nod toward a Medicare for All system long advocated by the Democrats’ left wing.
Moreover, in direct contradiction to traditional Republican antipathy to deficit spending and a growing national debt, Mr. Trump has explicitly argued in favor of borrowing, at a time of low interest rates, to finance a new, $2 trillion bill to rebuild and improve the nation’s infrastructure. Even before the crisis, there was a push for a larger national effort to build out a 5G wireless network, a cause that seems even more relevant now that much of the nation’s work and learning has moved online.
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 7:04 pm…….
Kishnevi: See #51
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 7:06 pmRip, not disputing the description of the current GOP. Just noting they chose to quote two men who have a vested interest in making people think limited government is a thing 9f the past.
Kishnevi (7eee2b) — 4/26/2020 @ 7:14 pm@48 A little naive there. Both parties want big government, just in different areas.
Nic (896fdf) — 4/26/2020 @ 7:16 pmI They quote quite a few others in article.
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 7:16 pmMy point is that Trump has no interest in limited government either.
RipMurdock (25d26f) — 4/26/2020 @ 7:18 pmYou see a difference between Wickard v. Filburn and MoeLarryCurly’s “I have absolute authority”, except that FDR did it, and did it competently, whereas the orange was merely masturbating in public?
nk (1d9030) — 4/26/2020 @ 7:21 pmHeh! I suspect we’re in violent agreement. h/t Kevin M
nk (1d9030) — 4/26/2020 @ 7:22 pm54,
Yes!
Dana (0feb77) — 4/26/2020 @ 8:29 pm36. Here’s a fact for you to chew on, Rip: Any spineless wimp who would give up freedom for safety deserves neither.
Gryph (08c844) — 4/26/2020 @ 9:45 pmWhat say you on a concept foreign to you…common sense?
Colonel Klink (Ret) (305827) — 4/26/2020 @ 10:01 pmThere is no absolute freedom if you’re living in any kind of society with other people. There is always a trade-off of some measure of freedom for other goods that people generally value.
What’s an acceptable trade-off is a question that people will answer in many different ways. But most people don’t live in an abstract world where any sacrifice of any freedom renders a person unworthy of any human respect.
Radegunda (0a00f2) — 4/26/2020 @ 10:05 pm62. “Freedom is not absolute.” That depends on what you’re willing to do to defend it. Judging by the actions of a good number of my fellow Americans, the answer to that question today is generally “not much.”
61. What I hear people saying here is, “Common sense dictates that you give up your freedom…” Then I hope you don’t expect anyone else to defend yours when it’s at stake.
Gryph (08c844) — 4/27/2020 @ 2:40 am“Freedom is not absolute.” That depends on what you’re willing to do to defend it. Judging by the actions of a good number of my fellow Americans, the answer to that question today is generally “not much.”
No it doesn’t. The two are not related at all.
You could be an amalgam of GI JOE, Patrick Henry and ML King, and there would always be limits on your capacity to do stuff or even not do stuff.
Real mature people understand and even embrace the concept of freedom having natural limits, partly because it couldn’t be any other way.
Selfish children rant and rave about things they find limit their ability to do exactly as they please. Some even try to make it a virtue.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/27/2020 @ 5:50 amHere’s a fact for you to chew on, Rip: Any spineless wimp who would give up freedom for safety deserves neither.
No again. That’s an opinion, not a “fact”. Which, of course, you intended as a personal attack.
We all give up some of what you call “freedom” for safety. A selfish child might insist they have the “freedom” to possess high explosives, but they don’t. No matter how they roll on the floor and scream.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/27/2020 @ 7:09 amSo many people here who clearly think they are more intelligent than the founding fathers. So brilliant. So accomplished.
NJRob (4d595c) — 4/27/2020 @ 8:47 amYou’d be one of the principal ones, Rob.
Ragspierre (d9bec9) — 4/27/2020 @ 9:04 amFirst Trump claimed his “Noble Prize” tweet was sarcasm — his new go-to explanation — and now he bleached his tweet.
DRJ (15874d) — 4/27/2020 @ 9:14 amTrump is a complete idiot. This, those of us who matured beyond elementary school, we know. Even a 3rd grader knows not to ingest household disinfectants in any way, shape or form, certainly not by injection. For the President of the United States to even suggest, or “muse” about (as Dr. Birx tried to call it), the government is going to perform tests on these suicidal (some would say homicidal) treatments is beyond ludicrous, and in fact dangerous, especially at a national press conference that went international in a matter of minutes. Ultra-violet light bulbs inserted into bodies, disinfectants injected into bodies, why not suggest or muse about drinking chlorine bleach to clean out bodies, or inhaling Raid to clear out lungs? Hey, Raid kills roaches and flying insects, why not viruses? I’m actually surprised Trump didn’t go that far in his musings, given how ignorant he is.
But as equally stupid are the governors and mayors rushing to reopen their economies. The lesson from the article about Japan above is a pernicious warning. What happens when you lift restrictions during a pandemic? Um, infection rates and fatality rates increase. People flock out of their homes onto the streets, because they don’t like being secured-in-place by stay-at-home orders. In other words, it prolongs the pandemic. Asymptomatic people spread the virus without knowing it.
Just the other day, the mayor of Las Vegas basically said, and I am paraphrasing not quoting here, “Open up the city. Use it as a control test.” Okay, so that means let’s open casinos and restaurants so that tourists can gamble, because of the economy. That’s a plan. Let’s expose tens of thousands, perhaps hundred of thousands, to the coronavirus, and see what the fatality rate is.
Question: How many people are going to flock to Las Vegas, Sin City, or take a cruise ship to nowhere? Answer: not very many.
The economic damage done by this outbreak will resonate for a generation or more. Businesses, night clubs, bars, concerts, sports events will suffer in the worst way. I don’t see how any of this works out well.
People are scared, and rightfully so. This disease has already killed more people in the US in a few months than the flu killed in a year.
There will be no return to normalcy, not for several years. The real estate market will be dead until at least next year. And when sales are made, it’s going to be for substantially less than what the seller thought or wanted. Because the summer months are always the high point of sales volume, but not this year, and the winter months are always the low point of sales volume.
So, you figure it out. This is going to be bad. Most people have their net worth tied up into the equity of their homes. With sales dropping, values declining, many of these people are seeing their equity vanish. Even worse, state pension plans and Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are all on the verge of insolvency in just a few years.
2020 is the year the 20th century came to die. William Blake would call that “fearful symmetry,” and he would be right.
Gawain's Ghost (b25cd1) — 4/27/2020 @ 9:26 am69. Gawain’s Ghost (b25cd1) — 4/27/2020 @ 9:26 am
l’ll tell you what the most stupid thing anybody fdid ere.
What Trump said didn’t kill anyone, ad the fact that he said it in public was beter, because it got knocked down faster. (he people who work for him are too afraid of being fired or trasnsferred)
It’s what govenors or mayrs did.
Something like this, and the thinking and the ignorance and laziness behind it, killed hundreds, if not thousands of people:
https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2020/03/doh_covid19-_nhadmissionsreadmissions_-032520.pdf .DATE: March 25, 2020
TO: Nursing Home Administrators, Directors of Nursing, and Hospital Discharge Planners
FROM: New York State Department of Health
Advisory: Hospital Discharges and Admissions to Nursing Homes
Please distribute immediately to:
Nursing Home Administrators, Directors of Nursing, Directors of Social Work, Hospital
Discharge Planners
…..During this global health emergency, all NHs must comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals to NHs. Residents are deemed appropriate for return to a NH upon a determination by the hospital physician or designee that the resident is medically stable for return.
Sammy Finkelman (d530d0) — 4/27/2020 @ 9:48 amThis was probably not the main way that coronavirus spread in nursing homes.
Although it would be possible for someone to be sent to ahospital for other reasons, and come back infected with this.
Sammy Finkelman (d530d0) — 4/27/2020 @ 9:53 amI remember back when he was still debating for the nomination, breaking into other people’s time, and yelling incoherently at his opponents. And I thought, then, “Suppose he wins, what would 4 years of this be like?” Now we know, and I have to wonder “”Suppose he wins, what would 4 more years of this be like?” The answer isn’t good.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 4/27/2020 @ 10:37 am71 This would better as:
The State of New York – and New Jersey – treated the matter of where to send discharged coronavirus patients who had been living in nursing homes as if the whole issue was matter of money – and they wanted to stick the nursing homes with the bill.
Medicaid (usually) or the insurance companies didn’t want to pay the hospitals more than necessary – and the New York State Department of Health didn’t want to put more burden on the hospitals – and they didn’t want to put the nursing home residents up in hotels or any place, like they did with some other people with no safe place to go.
So they said: The nursing homes have to take them, (as if the nursing homes would know how to handle that) and they made no exceptions for nursing homes known to have serious violations.
And the nursing homes didn’t even get time to prepare. After all, a hospital wouldn’t.
The nursing home is supposed to know what to do and carry it out – so they blithely treated them like in reality they did and they operated perfectly. It saved the state money and time.
And they told them:
More: https://nypost.com/2020/04/25/new-york-lacked-common-sense-in-nursing-homes-coronavirus-approach
Sammy Finkelman (d530d0) — 4/27/2020 @ 11:37 amAlso in that Michael Goodwin column:
Governor Cuomo yesterday:
Sammy Finkelman (d530d0) — 4/27/2020 @ 11:40 amVery interesting insight Sammy, thank you for that information.
Colliente (05736f) — 4/27/2020 @ 11:48 amIt’s a travesty that Trump didn’t spend as much time on his Presidential Daily Briefings as is his daily press conferences and Twitter blurts. Maybe there would’ve been thousands fewer dead Americans had he actually read the PDBs instead of watching Fox & Friends or whatever he does during his “executive time”.
This bears repeating. Despite more than a dozen briefings in January-February from qualified American intelligence professionals, Trump talked down the virus and accomplished little in preparing for its onset. The latest known death count is 56,560 perished Americans, but the actual number is likely much higher. The DDID reports that, through April 4th, there were 15,400 excess deaths, of which 8,128 were confirmed COVID deaths. If that proportion holds, the more accurate number of casualties from the WuFlu is closer to 107,000.
Paul Montagu (b3f51b) — 4/27/2020 @ 3:35 pm75. And I saw in a newspaper article (linked to in a later thread) that theCenters for Dsease Control and Prevention estimaeted that before the pandemic 380,000 people died each year from infection at long term care facilities.
Not like this thouh I don;t think
Sammy Finkelman (af3697) — 4/28/2020 @ 9:00 amh 27:
https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/calls-to-florida-poison-control-about-disinfectants-hand-sanitizer-increase-during-covid-19-pandemic/67-e111a00c-e34d-4a77-92e1-1fc273932491
This article also said:
Q. If the are calling merely for information, wouldn’t that cause it to be over reported? Of course, with a real accident, maybe they are more likely to call a doctor or a local number or 911. These are all, or the increase is likely, mostly calls for information.
Sammy Finkelman (af3697) — 4/28/2020 @ 9:02 amThat was dated March 27.
Here is something from March 17:
https://www.axios.com/hand-sanitizer-coronavirus-poison-control-ffb34b62-f89f-4a63-be8c-849a13cf0961.html
Up 22%, not because of what Trump said, but because of what the CDC and others said about hand washing, which probably has virtually no value with this disease </b
Sammy Finkelman (af3697) — 4/28/2020 @ 9:04 am