Saturday, March 28th, 2020
Chauncey Devega, - Raw Story
Stephan: Since the days of Reagan, the unspoken private truth of the Republican Party has been vampire capitalism and the profits it produces are more important than people. Now they are saying it out loud.
Trump and Hannity
Donald Trump has given the Democrats a gift — if they are brave enough to use it.
Last Sunday, Donald Trump declared on Twitter: “WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF. AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”
This slogan, imported from the libertarian far right, signaled an important shift toward ending social distancing and “reopening” the economy, even as the coronavirus pandemic continues to spread Trump’s mouthpieces at Fox News and elsewhere then began to parrot the same macabre and disturbing argument.
Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, told Fox News: “Let’s get back to living… And those of us that are 70-plus, we’ll take care of ourselves.”
Right-wing propagandist Glenn Beck told viewers of his BlazeTV show that Americans who are older should just go back to work and prepare to die: “Even if we all get sick, I would rather die than kill the country.”
Brit Hume of Fox News […]
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Saturday, March 28th, 2020
Noam Scheiber, Nelson D. Schwartz and Tiffany Hsu, - The New York Times
Stephan: Here, with this report, we see another aspect of this crisis, the impact of wealth inequality. The truth is in the United States, if you are poor your life just doesn't matter as much as the life of an affluent person. I think this is despicable.
“I’m concerned about her falling behind” in school, Betsy Rubio said of her daughter, Anahi. Their Brownsville, Texas, apartment lacks internet service.
Credit: Scott Stephen Ball/The New York Times
For about $80,000, an individual can purchase a six-month plan with Private Health Management, which helps people with serious medical issues navigate the health care system.
Such a plan proved to be a literal lifesaver as the coronavirus pandemic descended. The firm has helped clients arrange tests in Los Angeles for the coronavirus and obtained oxygen concentrators for high-risk patients.
“We know the top lab people and the doctors and nurses and can make the process efficient,” said Leslie Michelson, the firm’s executive chairman.
In some respects, the pandemic is an equalizer: It can afflict princes and paupers alike, and no one who hopes to stay healthy is exempt from the strictures of social distancing. But the American response to the virus is laying bare class divides that […]
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Saturday, March 28th, 2020
Stephan: In this article, you see clearly the priorities of the christofascist world. I leave it to you to reach your own conclusion.
An elderly woman wears a face mask and plastic gloves as she waits to cross the street in New York City.
Credit: Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty
Forget “15 days to slow the spread.” A growing chorus of conservatives have started arguing that older adults should voluntarily return to work to save the country from financial ruin.
Call it “economic patriotism.”
The proposal has taken root in some conservative circles, filtering up from far-right websites to radio pundits to a few prominent politicians to, finally, Fox News. To its proponents, the approach is merely the cold reality that the country needs to avoid another Great Depression. To its detractors, it’s like a battlefield cry to offer up your own life for the sake of the gross domestic product. To health professionals, it’s a recipe for extending the coronavirus pandemic.
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Eric Levitz, - New York Magazine
Stephan: This is the level of the obscene incompetence of the leadership of the Republican dominated U.S. Senate which, added to the utter incompetence of the Trump administration has resulted in the United States having the worse and most incompetent response to the Covid-19 virus in the developed world.
I didn't really believe this story could be true, until I had checked it with three reliable sources. But, yes, it is true, in the midst of an international pandemic Moscow Mitch and his buddies don't see much need for the Senators to stay in Washington, so they're going to take a month off for vacation. Really.
Spring breakers. Credit: Samuel Corum/Getty
Last week, roughly 3 million Americans lost their jobs. Until today, the all-time record for weekly unemployment claims in the U.S. had been 700,000. Now it is 3.3 million (in seasonally adjusted terms). That record is likely to last exactly seven days, as economists widely believe that more Americans were laid off this week than last.
Meanwhile, confirmed coronavirus deaths in the U.S. just crossed 1,000. In some cities, hospitals are already running out of beds for the severely ill and morgue space for each day’s dead. Some have taken to storing the deceased in refrigerated trucks. Confirmed cases of COVID-19 are still growing exponentially, while much of the country is failing to observe the CDC’s recommendations for containing the virus’s spread. If current trends continue, the United States may soon be the epicenter of both a global pandemic and economic depression.
And the Senate has decided that now would be a good time to take a […]
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DAN DIAMOND and NAHAL TOOSI, - Politico
Stephan: I listen to the news, the tales of the disastrous crisis, realizing as I hear the news commentator go on that it didn't need to be this way. America's Coronavirus apocalyptic pandemic was no one's fault, but the response to it is very much one person's fault. It is the fault of Donald J. Trump, the worst president in America's history. Almost everything he says is a lie, including his claim today that no one could have anticipated what is happening. Actually they could and did, and he was briefed on how to respond to it. But he chose to completely ignore it and even dismantled structures put in place by the Obama administration in anticipation of a pandemic. Here is the truth.
The 69-page preparation briefing Trump was given and ignored.
The Trump administration, state officials and even individual hospital workers are now racing against each other to get the necessary masks, gloves and other safety equipment to fight coronavirus — a scramble that hospitals and doctors say has come too late and left them at risk. But according to a previously unrevealed White House playbook, the government should’ve begun a federal-wide effort to procure that personal protective equipment at least two months ago.
“Is there sufficient personal protective equipment for healthcare workers who are providing medical care?” the playbook instructs its readers, as one early decision that officials should address when facing a potential pandemic. “If YES: What are the triggers to signal exhaustion of supplies? Are additional supplies available? If NO: Should the Strategic National Stockpile release PPE to states?”
The strategies are among hundreds of tactics and key policy decisions laid out in a 69-page National Security […]
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