Super-spreader, Denier, Pants-On-Fire Liar, Pt 2

At today’s rally in North Carolina:

"You know why we have cases? Because we test so much. And in many ways it's good, and in many ways it's foolish."

And:

"Turn on television, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID, COVID. A plane goes down, 500 people dead, they don't talk about it. COVID, COVID, COVID. COVID. By the way, on November 4th you won't hear about it anymore." (A plane crash killing 500 didn't happen.)

It should also be noted that the equivalent of about two of those plane crashes are happening *every day in the United States*, so it would stand to reason that COVID and the people who have died from it are worth covering.

Also, if 500 people died in a plane crash yesterday, that would be 425 fewer people than the 925 people who died from COVID-19 yesterday.

Super-spreader, Denier, Pants-On-Fire Liar

As Trump keeps repeatedly saying this absolute horseshit nonsense and "We're rounding the corner beautifully" and for months "It's going away", "It's going to go away", here's what's happening in America:  hospitalizations are rising, setting records in some states.  The test positivity rate is also rising, and after the usual lag from a spike in cases, deaths have started to rise too.

The crises is getting worse, fast, and there's nothing fake about it.

Somewhat paraphrased from Daniel Dale.

Also, just a reminder that Trump does not care about the American people.  If he did he would not continue to hold rallies, or at least limit the number of attendees or require social distancing or face masks.  The fact that he does none of those things for the safety of the people attending speaks volumes.  The fact that Republicans in Washington condone this behavior speaks to their own priorities, which apparently is not for the well-being of their constituents.

“A President Trying To Construct His Own Reality”

 Debate analysis by David Leonhardt

The final debate

Last night’s presidential debate felt much more normal than this year’s first one. The candidates interrupted each other only occasionally rather than constantly. They argued about big policy issues like the coronavirus, foreign policy and more.

But the debate wasn’t normal by the standards of nearly all of American history. It wasn’t normal because one of the nominees — the sitting president — told one lie after another. He did so about the virus, North Korea, China, Russia, climate change, his own health care policy, Joe Biden’s health care policy, Biden’s finances and the immigrant children who were separated from their parents.

I understand you may be tired of hearing about President Trump’s untruths. I’m tired of writing about them. They hardly qualify as surprising anymore.

But it’s impossible to analyze a debate filled with untruths without first acknowledging them. They undermine an event meant to highlight differences between candidates. They undermine democracy. To ignore them is to miss the biggest story: a president trying to construct his own reality.

How are voters supposed to choose between, say, two different health care plans if one candidate makes up stories about both plans?

No previous president has behaved this way. Democrats often accused George W. Bush of lying, and Republicans accused Barack Obama of lying. And both men made questionable statements and statements that later proved untrue. But when they proved untrue, Bush and Obama stopped making the claims. Trump just keeps making them.

Debate analysis

“From a lying perspective, Trump is even worse tonight than in the first debate … an absolute avalanche of lying” — CNN’s Daniel Dale, who’s been probably the most committed Trump fact checker.

“Biden was again imperfect from a fact check perspective. He made at least a few false, misleading, or lacking-in-context claims. Trump was, as usual, a serial liar.” — Dale. (A Times fact check of both candidates is here.)

“Trump was far more disciplined. He landed a few sharp attacks, even as he diverted into some issues that seem more like fodder for the conservative media-sphere.” — The Times’s Lisa Lerer.

“The subjects Trump most wishes to discuss are ones largely disconnected from those that matter most to voters.” — Jane Coaston, Vox.

“This debate probably isn’t going to hurt Senate Republican candidates in a way the first debate did.” — Jessica Taylor, Cook Political Report.

The moderator, NBC’s Kristen Welker, won praise as the best, most commanding moderator of this debate season (and she had the advantage of the candidates being muted for stretches while the other was speaking).

Two post-debate polls both found Biden to be the winner, by 54 percent to 35 percent in CNN’s and 53 percent to 39 percent in YouGov’s.

Key lines

“I take full responsibility, but China brought it here. It’s not my fault,” — Trump, on the virus.

“People are learning to die with it.” — Biden, after Trump said the country was learning to live with the virus.

“Why didn’t you do it [while vice president?] You had eight years with Obama. You know why, Joe? Because you’re all talk and no action,” Trump, on Biden’s criminal-justice plans.

“It’s not about his family or my family. It’s about your family.” — Biden, after an exchange of personal accusations.

“I would transition away from the oil industry, yes … The oil industry pollutes, significantly. It has to be replaced by renewable energy over time.” — Biden.

For more: See The Times’s main story; seven minutes of video highlights; and Times Opinion writers on the night’s best and worst moments.

I'm Not Tired Of Hearing About It, Are You?

I wonder if the families of the 220,000 U.S. dead are tired of hearing about it.  What about the 8 million plus infected that we know about?  Wonder if they're tired of hearing about it?  Wonder if people are tired of hearing about it even as cases are on the rise?

I think the only person/people that are tired of hearing about it are the one(s) who have utterly failed at every step to lead our country through the pandemic.  If my only strategy was pretend it won't happen, pretend it isn't happening, then pretend that it's going away while leaving states and citizens to fend for themselves and 220,000 and counting Americans die, then yeah, I'd maybe be tired of hearing about it too.

Rats

“It’s tempting to use the analogy of rats fleeing a sinking ship to describe the growing number of Republican elected officials starting to speak out against Donald Trump. But that's really not fair to rats, who tend not to be complicit in driving ships to the bottom of the sea.”

Dan Rather

Speaking Of Fox...

Article by Phillip Bump.

Trump brought data from the Fox News universe to a debate centered in reality

"Trump has at his disposal decades of experience in battling public health crises and aggregated data that could provide an accurate sense of how the country's effort to contain the virus is faring.  But that's not the sort of thing in which Trump immerses himself, preferring the friendlier and more supportive universe of Fox punditry.

(Instead) On Thursday, he brought that world with him to battle a reality-based journalist.  It didn't work very well."

Stay Informed. With Facts, Not Fox

From David Folkenflik, NPR News:

Analysis: Questionable 'N.Y. Post' Scoop Driven By Ex-Hannity Produced And Giuliani

Another First For Trump

Article about the New England Journal of Medicine and 2 other trusted scientific journals by Bill Chappell on NPR

In Rare Step, Esteemed Medical Journal Urges Voters To Oust Trump

It is the first time the prestigious medical journal has taken a stance on a U.S. presidential election since it was founded in 1812:

"When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent," reads the editorial signed by nearly three dozen of the journal's editors. "We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs."

Poetic Justice? Irony?

 Schadenfreude.

I Think We Could All Use A Laugh After That Debate

 Don’t you?

"Do Your Own Research"

 This was posted earlier this year, but I'm going to go ahead and call it evergreen.

And Now For Something Completely Different...

 This is mesmerizing.

Celui qui tombe (The one who falls) by Yoann Bourgeois

You Literally Can't Believe The "Facts" Tucker Carlson Tells You. So Say Fox's Lawyers (And The Judge Agrees)

From NPR's David Folkenflik:

You Literally Can't Believe The Facts Tucker Carlson Tells You.  So Say Fox's Lawyer

"Just read U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil's opinion, leaning heavily on the arguments of Fox's lawyers: The "'general tenor' of the show should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not 'stating actual facts' about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in 'exaggeration' and 'non-literal commentary.'"

"She wrote: "Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statement he makes.""

I Weep For Our Nation, Or, Facebook Is Not Your Friend

How Conspiracy Theories Are Shaping The 2020 Election by Charlotte Alter, TIME Magazine

"The facts that should anchor a sense of shared reality are meaningless to them; the news developments that might ordinarily inform their vote fall on deaf ears. They will not be swayed by data on coronavirus deaths, they won’t be persuaded by job losses or stock market gains, and they won’t care if Trump called America’s fallen soldiers “losers” or “suckers,” as the Atlantic reported, because they won’t believe it. They are impervious to messaging, advertising or data. They aren’t just infected with conspiracy; they appear to be inoculated against reality."

Faux & Friends

 This.

In Other News...

From NPR (Although to be honest it should read “Fails”, as in still does not take it seriously):

Former DHS Official: White House Failed To Take Far-Right Extremism Seriously

"If you had a very clear voice at the top, from the president, from other senior leaders in the Republican Party, denouncing this and warning conservatives — warning Republicans — that these groups are trying to recruit you based on things that might sound like a typical conservative belief, but behind it is this insidious, ugly, evil thing, if we had more clear voices talking about it — it would somewhat inoculate people from that recruitment and that radicalization," she says. "But instead, we have the opposite effect. We have the president not only pretty much refusing to condemn, but throwing fuel on the fire, creating opportunities for more recruitment through his rhetoric."

“A Good Example Of Why I Decided To Vote For Trump”

The morning rundown from The NY Times is below. This is just a few days in the Trump/GOP-fueled dumpster fire.  

A telling sign of how far the GOP have fallen is the “None cared to comment”.  “No comment”, and/or “I haven’t seen the President’s tweet”, and/or “I don’t have time to discuss” and/or “Look over there!” is the mantra of a party that doesn’t care how low Trump sinks while taking America down with him.

Also, in other news demonstrating the abject failure of the administration in dealing with the coronavirus and how little regard Trump has for American lives over his ego:

• The U.S. will not join a global effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine and equitably distribute doses across nations, The Washington Post reports. Part of the reason: The World Health Organization, which the Trump administration has criticized, is involved in the plan.

Good morning. Russia is interfering in the election again. New York City delayed the start of school. And Trump has a new torrent of false claims.

Trump, unbound

President Trump at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Tuesday.Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

President Trump breaks so many of the normal rules of politics that it can sometimes be hard to know when his tweets and comments are truly newsworthy. Even by his standards, though, the past several days have stood out. Consider:

Trump said on Monday that a plane “almost completely loaded with thugs” wearing “dark uniforms” had been headed to the Republican National Convention to do “big damage.” The claim is similar to a baseless conspiracy theory that spread online over the summer, well before the convention. He has declined to condemn the killings of two protesters in Kenosha, Wis. He instead defended the 17-year-old charged in the shootings — a Trump supporter named Kyle Rittenhouse — saying he was acting in self-defense. Trump also promoted a Twitter post that called Rittenhouse “a good example of why I decided to vote for Trump.” He defended violence committed by his supporters in Portland, Ore., who fired paintballs and pepper spray at Black Lives Matter protesters. He compared the police shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha to missing “a three-foot putt” in a golf tournament. He claimed that “people that you’ve never heard of” and “people that are in the dark shadows” are controlling Joe Biden. He claimed Democrats were trying to “destroy” suburbs with “low-income housing, and with that comes a lot of other problems, including crime.” He added that Cory Booker — one of the highest-profile Black Democrats — would be “in charge of it.” He predicted that the stock market would crash if Biden won. He said that Biden, at the Democratic National Convention, “didn’t even discuss law enforcement, the police. Those words weren’t mentioned.” In fact, Biden held a discussion at the convention on policing, with a police chief. Trump claimed that he “took control of” the situation in Kenosha by sending in the National Guard. In fact, Wisconsin’s governor, not the president, sent the National Guard. He retweeted messages asserting that the pandemic’s death toll was overstated. Evidence indicates the opposite is true. He said that protests against police brutality were actually a secret “coup attempt” by anarchists “trying to take down the President.”

Biden has taken a very different approach to the unrest in Kenosha, Portland and elsewhere. He has told no apparent untruths, and he has criticized violence from both the political left and right — even though many liberals, whose votes Biden needs, are uncomfortable with any criticism of people on their side of the debate.

G.O.P. reaction. The Times tried to reach about a dozen leading congressional Republicans and ask for their reaction to Trump’s claims. “None cared to comment,” Mark Leibovich writes. Senator Mitt Romney offered one of the few public responses, calling the president’s comments “simply jaw-dropping.”

Russia adds to the misinformation. A group backed by the Kremlin is again trying to meddle in the U.S. presidential election and push voters toward Trump, Facebook and Twitter said yesterday.

The Malign Fantasy of Donald Trump's Convention

 "...a President whose prospects, left unvarnished by lies and fantasy, were so poor that his strategists had to reinvent him as a different person altogether."

A good summation by Susan Glasser of The New Yorker

7 Takeaways From The RNC

So at least that’s over. Trump alone made at least 20 false or misleading statements in a speech at the circus at the White House last night, and let’s face it - it was a circus.  Aside from the serial lying and hypocrisy, Trump and the Republicans who support him would have you believe that they’re not currently in power - that he hasn’t been president for the last 3 1/2 years, or that they haven’t controlled the senate for the last 5 years.  They would have you believe that Joe Biden is a far-left extremist who will destroy the country if elected - that there would be rioting, massive deaths from coronavirus, and much worse  

But we already have rioting, massive (preventable) deaths from coronavirus, and much, much worse, all of which have happened on Trump and the Republicans watch.  They promise of “I alone can fix it” if re-elected is bullshit.  If we had a competent leader and a responsible governing body they would have already strived to “fix it” or better yet prevent “it” or mitigate it in the first place.

Obviously the Trump they’re trying so desperately to sell is not the same Trump that Americans have seen with their own eyes, heard with their own ears, during his term and before.  The real Trump presents himself to us daily, yet he and his supporters (and Fox and OAN and other propaganda outlets) continue to tell us not to believe what we see and hear, but to believe what they tell us to believe.  Now they want us to believe that only Trump can save America - from the Trump’s America that it currently is.

We’ve gone far beyond mere politics.

7 Takeaways from the Republican National Convention, from NPR

RNC Night Two

 Here’s a summary related to coronavirus and a single paragraph sums it up:

In addition, you also had the scheduled speaker Mary Ann Mendoza who was pulled from the lineup at the last moment for posting earlier in the day a QAnon-laced anti-Semitic conspiracy theory that Jews were plotting to take over the world.  Meanwhile, Qanon supporter and GOP congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene proudly posted the invite she received from Trump to attend his acceptance speech on Thursday. 

A Brief Summary of the RNC's First Night

From the NY Times:

The Grand Old Meltdown - Article

In the cult of Trump, what happens when a party gives up on ideas?

Fox, the DNC and the upcoming RNC

 This is worth a watch.  Good summation starting at 2:30; good observation of the upcoming RNC beginning at 4:15.

This Is What The Republican Party Under The Shadow Of Trump Has Come To

The Republican Embrace of QAnon Goes Far Beyond Trump

As the president all but endorses the internet-driven conspiracy theory, it is shifting from the fringes of the internet to become an offline political movement.

"Late last month, as the Texas Republican Party was shifting into campaign mode, it unveiled a new slogan, lifting a rallying cry straight from a once-unthinkable source: the internet-driven conspiracy theory known as QAnon.

The new catchphrase, “We Are the Storm,” is an unsubtle cue to a group that the F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorist threat. It is instantly recognizable among QAnon adherents, signaling what they claim is a coming conflagration between President Trump and what they allege, falsely, is a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile Democrats who seek to dominate America and the world.

The slogan can be found all over social media posts by QAnon followers, and now, too, in emails from the Texas Republican Party and on the T-shirts, hats and sweatshirts that it sells. It has even worked its way into the party’s text message system — a recent email from the party urged readers to “Text STORM2020” for updates.

The Texas Republicans are an unusually visible example of the Republican Party’s dalliance with QAnon, but they are hardly unique...

...Chief among the party’s QAnon promoters is Mr. Trump himself. Since the theory first emerged three years ago, he has employed a wink-and-nod approach to the conspiracy theory, retweeting its followers but conspicuously ignoring questions about it. Yet with the election drawing ever closer and Mr. Trump’s failure to manage the Covid-19 pandemic harming his re-election prospects, the White House and some Trump allies appear to have taken to openly courting believers."...

 Please read the full article which offers more details by Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman

QAnon Candidates are Winning Republican Primaries - Instead of Disavowing, Trump Congratulates and Embraces

Just to be clear about this insane conspiracy cult, see below and more from this article.  

After congratulating two primary winners who support QAnon theories, Trump was asked about it this week and said the following:  “I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate...I have heard that it is gaining in popularity."

He adds "Trump adds that QAnon believers are people who "love our country" and he's heard they don't like what's going on in Portland."

Then, when told that QAnon believes he's saving the world from a secret satanic cult of cannibals and pedophiles. He says, "Well, I haven't heard that. But uh, is that supposed to be a bad thing? Or a good thing? If I can help save the world from problems..."

What is QAnon?

QAnon is the umbrella term for a sprawling set of internet conspiracy theories that allege, falsely, that the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who are plotting against Mr. Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring.

QAnon followers believe that this clique includes top Democrats including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros, as well as a number of entertainers and Hollywood celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres and religious figures including Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama. Many of them also believe that, in addition to molesting children, members of this group kill and eat their victims in order to extract a life-extending chemical from their blood.

According to QAnon lore, Mr. Trump was recruited by top military generals to run for president in 2016 in order to break up this criminal conspiracy, end its control of politics and the media, and bring its members to justice.

Is that all?

Not by a long shot. Since it began, QAnon has incorporated elements of many other conspiracy theory communities, including claims about the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the existence of U.F.O.s, and the 9/11 “truther” movement.