Monday, May 4, 2020

Today's view of where the general election stands. No wonder @realdonaldtrump &his enablers are freaking out.


A draft report prepared by Johns Hopkins researchers for the CDC shows 200K deaths by June 1. White House does not agree. A "cubic model" prepared by White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett & team predicts deaths essentially stop by May 15. Our latest:


The official, verified campaign Twitter account of John Ratcliffe, Trump's pick for intelligence chief, follows Pizzagaters, JFK Jr. conspiracists, and a 9/11 Truther account with just one follower besides himself.


My dad’s $1200 coronavirus check from Trump just went toward his coronavirus cremation


Let me be clear: Essential workers on the front lines of this crisis deserve premium pay, emergency paid sick leave, and protections that keep them safe. — Joe Biden


The New York Times reported that the U.S. government is privately projecting that deaths from the coronavirus will surge by June reaching 3,000 a day — up from the current daily death toll of roughly 2,000


Courier Journal wins Pulitzer Prize for coverage of former Kentucky governor's pardons


“And if Trump wins a second term? Any nation can make a mistake once, elect a bad leader once. But if Americans choose Trump again, that will send a clear message: We are no longer a serious nation.”


Senator McConnell and Senate Republicans must concentrate on helping Americans recover from COVID-19 not confirming right-wing judges or protecting big businesses that threaten to put workers at serious risk.


Durbin says “of course” when asked if he believes McConnell is putting members’ health at risk by bringing back Senate. "Coming back for Mitch McConnell's former intern to get promoted to the second highest court on the land doesn't fit the prescription of a national emergency."


Citing the "extraordinary crisis" of the coronavirus, Trump's interior secretary relaxed the rules so Trump could hold a Fox News town hall at the Lincoln Memorial.


Holy crap! The Trump administration's *own projections* estimate that coronavirus deaths are going to continue rising steadily for at least another month, yet Trump is still pushing for reopening anyway!


This should end any presidency.


From 2013 -- President @BarackObama on Don Shula: "Coach Shula retired with more wins than any coach in NFL history. Each and every time that perfect record has been challenged, team after team has fallen short." RIP.


Never forget the deaths and suffering caused by the shortage of PPE, something that could have been prevented by a competent and caring federal government.


When a president finds it necessary to revise a projected death toll five times in 13 days, there's a problem.


Amazon VP resigns, calls company ‘chickenshit’ for firing protesting workers


"Every time Barack didn’t get the Congress he needed, that was because our folks didn’t show up. After all that work, they just couldn’t be bothered to vote at all. That’s my trauma," says Michelle Obama in her new Netflix documentary "Becoming."


This recap of Trump's weekend tweets from @brianstelter is exactly how reporters should report on Trump. Doesn't repeat Trump's framing, but frames what Trump is doing by strategies. Still reports the "news," but doesn't allow Trump to use the media's platform against the media.


JUSTICE THOMAS ALMOST NEVER ASKS QUESTIONS FROM THE BENCH BUT HE IS ASKING QUESTIONS DURING THE VERY FIRST LIVESTREAMED AUDIO EVER!!!!!!


Senate Republicans say they won’t support Democrats’ call for further state and local aid without liability protections for companies


China has questions to answer over the information it shared about the novel coronavirus outbreak but a post mortem over its role should come later, Britain’s defence minister said


Native American tribes are disproportionately experiencing the consequences of #COVID19. The Navajo Nation has the third largest cluster of cases, behind only NY and NJ. After more than a month, tribes still haven’t received their CARES Act aid funds.


In Hong Kong, only four confirmed deaths due to COVID-19 have been recorded since the beginning of the pandemic, despite high density, mass transportation, and proximity to Wuhan. Health authorities credit near-universal mask-wearing as a key factor.


The Right Wants to Use Tara Reade’s Claims to Snuff Out the #MeToo Movement


Don’t look now, but the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season could break records


Hopefully, you'll only be a one-term Plague. — Mark Hamill

Happy Star Wars Day

Donald Trump And The Fed Could Be About To Destroy The U.S. Banking System


Today’s first-ever #SCOTUS telephone oral argument is in a fairly boring trademark case. ⁦@NinaTotenberg⁩ suggests will allow the justices to work out the “bugs” in the system before the big ACA contraception exemption case and Trump subpoena case.


In the middle of a pandemic, you don’t want to talk about the pandemic. That says it all. Another distraction from a member of Trump’s cult of death. BTW, US IC, GOP-led Sen. intel. comm. & Mueller all say Putin intervened in 2016 election to help Trump. You can’t handle that.


"Unlike Kavanaugh, Biden hasn't lied about almost every facet of the distant claim of sexual assault the way the Republican jurist did...journalists today who are trying to tag Biden & Dems as hypocrites forcefully ignore that central fact." -


Absolutely unacceptable that Trump is prioritizing bailing out Big Oil companies while dragging his feet to support millions of unemployed people, workers, small businesses, and state and local governments. The American people are tired of this.


@Martina Trump said, “We have a problem that nobody thought about.” But on Dec 29 a 17-year-old from WA launched a site to track the virus. It’s now used by millions. How come a kid knew more than the president? He didn’t. He just took it seriously.


Voices from the Pandemic: "I apologize to God for feeling this way."


Biden and Warren author a joint op-ed: There's no oversight of coronavirus relief — because that’s what Trump wants. "If Congress and the Trump Administration ar


Like most of the US, New York State could’ve reacted sooner to #COVID19, but whatever has been done since then is different from the rest of the nation. This chart of (5-day moving average) daily deaths shows New York has bent the curve, the rest of the country hasn’t.


A contractor with zero experience got a $34.5 million contract to supply the VA with masks and other medical supplies. He flew around the country on a private jet trying to track everything down. He ultimately did not deliver a single mask to the VA.


Analysis: President Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continue to push unsubstantiated Wuhan lab theory on novel coronavirus origins


CNN host Don Lemon made a powerful soliloquy to the TV camera, accusing Trump of being obsessed with Barack Obama after Trump again retweeted a conspiracy theory about his Oval Office predecessor


More than 370 workers at a pork plant in Missouri tested positive for coronavirus. All were asymptomatic


"There is broad, bipartisan support in Washington for punitive actions against Riyadh, ranging from restricting arms sales to demanding justice for Khashoggi." The prince is in a bind


Dr. Andres Maldonado was a 27-year-old physician, normally fit and vigorous. But now he had to be escorted into his own hospital emergency department, pale and fighting for breath,


The Coronavirus Becomes a Battle Cry for U.S. Extremists


Gov. Andrew Cuomo: "How people cannot wear masks, that, to me, is even disrespectful. It's disrespectful. It's disrespectful to the nurses, the doctors, the people who have been front line workers, the transit workers. You wear the mask not for yourself."


NEW VIDEO @realdonaldtrump’s failed presidency has left the nation weaker, sicker, and teetering on the verge of a new Great Depression. There’s mourning in America.


“My President? France, Britain, and over 100,000 American soldiers from WW1 on Line 2.”


The mob profits off human misery. Mass death is his sweet spot.


Worst thing to happen to Lincoln since the play


Trump, asked about hydroxychloroquine, says he's had three calls in the last three or four days from people who credit it with saving their lives. (Again, these anecdotes are not data; people don't always know why they've gotten better; we need real trials.)


Asked what he thinks about the criticism of holding a Town hall in front of the Lincoln Memorial, Trump says - and I am not making this up - that he had no idea, and he thought Fox picked the venue.


Veteran “60 Minutes” correspondent Lesley Stahl revealed Sunday that she contracted COVID-19 and had to be hospitalized


It’s Sunday afternoon, that means @realDonaldTrump is lying, again. His ban allowed in 40,000 non-foreign nationals from China and EVERYONE from Europe. And no, these folks were not tested. That’s why US now leads world with over 1,184,000 cases & 68,000 deaths.


This is constructive, and challenging -- states should be thinking about this as a potential solution


Republicans at risk of a ‘blowout’ in November’s election if they continue to let ‘Trump be Trump’: conservative


Texas Representative John Ratcliffe gets a second chance at becoming Donald Trump’s spy chief


Humanity owes a debt to Takuo Aoyagi, the inventor of the modern pulse oximeter. He devised a formula to cancel out the “pulsatile noise” of the heartbeat, enabling a steady read of oxygen with red & infrared light. Sadly, he died on 4/18 of #COVID


Russia's coronavirus cases rise again by over 10,000


It's difficult to be in NYC, which has honestly felt like the apocalypse, with the city silent except constant sirens and dead bodies piling up outside of funeral homes because they didn't have any room, to now watch the rest of the country not learn a single thing from us.


Coronavirus leaves Washington farmers with a big problem: What do you do with a billion pounds of potatoes?


There continues to be sightings of the Grim Reaper in Florida. This time at a gas station


There is LITERALLY ZERO explanation as to how one very dubious allegation against Joe is worthy of a media storm when Trump’s 29+ allegations, 2 law suits & decades of close ties to Jeff Epstein are not. That’s not just a double standard, that’s Journalistic MALPRACTICE.


J. Crew files for bankruptcy, the first national retail casualty of the coronavirus pandemic


A top Paris intensive-care doctor said retests of patients’ sample showed COVID-19 was in France as early as December


My dad’s gone. #Covid_19


Trump: That’s one of the reasons we’re successful, if you call losing 80k-90k people successful Bret: That number has changed Mr. President. You said 60 Trump: I used to say 65k and now I’m saying 80 or 90 and it goes up and it goes up rapidly


“One of the rules of journalism is ‘Don't become part of the story.’ But instead of covering the pandemic, I was one of the more-than-one million Americans who did become part of it,” CBS’s @LesleyRStahl


Trump claims, again without providing any evidence, that Italy had a bad outbreak because Chinese people who wanted to come to the US instead went to Europe when he imposed his restrictions. (Italy imposed a ban on flights from China before Trump imposed his restrictions.)


Why the flyovers by the Blue Angels and the Thunderbirds angered me.


Heathrow Airport chief: Lines to board jumbo jets would be a half-mile long under post-pandemic rules


"If Wisconsin is any indication," said another, "Americans will have to risk their lives to vote Trump out of office so that he doesn’t kill them while he’s in office." The Party of Lucifer


Florida county’s medical examiner begged officials to close beaches, internal emails reveal


Washington's relentless attacks on China over the cause of the coronavirus outbreak may be emboldening Beijing’s leaders


"according to one of the cop friends i've got down there in the jupiter area, six or seven hundred boats showed up for what they call the trumptilla, and everyone was flying the trump flag"


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Fears rise that Trump will incite a global vaccine brawl


As Nevada looks to reopen, the state’s sex industry is scrambling to figure out how to reduce risk during, um, “close-contact work”


HOLY SHIT!! Don Lemon comes strong with all the right things!!


"Let's say it's 100,000 or 90 or 95" -- Trump just moved the goalposts again about the coronavirus death toll, which he once suggested would be 0


Trump is in full condo salesman mode during his Fox News "Returning to Work” town hall, says to those who have lost jobs, "you'll get a job where you'll make more money, frankly ...I have a good feel for this stuff ...we have to get it back open safely but as quickly as possible"


Pompeo is teaching a master class in how to take a good cause - holding China's Communist Party accountable - and tainting it with cheap slurs (China "infecting the world", "Wuhan virus") that make it impossible to rally allies to our side.


I’m with #BigGretch


The hard truth is that it didn’t have to be this bad. The lack of preparation, the slow response on testing, the failure to administer the relief in the CARES Act appropriately — all of it stems from Donald Trump’s failures as president.


I shit you not, Martha McCallum just asked him if he is worried about the medical ethics of the human trials of an accelerated vaccine process.


The President says the Spanish Flu of 1917 probably ended World War I


At the Lincoln Memorial, Trump says he's being treated worse than Lincoln.


In times of crisis, the American people deserve a president who tells them the truth and takes responsibility. Donald Trump has not been that president.


Trump, who has been talking about 60,000-65,000 deaths as a max in recent weeks, throws out 80,000-90,000 deaths as projection during Fox townhall. Says it could have been 1.5 million-2.5 million deaths. He said in late February the cases would be close to zero.


Texas reported 1,293 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, the third consecutive day that metric topped 1,000—a level not seen in three weeks


I knew Otto Warmbier. He was my friend growing up and we played soccer together throughout grade school. But I’m happy that you, for one, is glad that the dictator who murdered my friend is still alive.


Trump Teen Rape Allegation Resurfaces, Ronan Farrow Claims National Enquirer Tried to Protect Him in New Book


The Lincoln Memorial is one of the nation’s most hallowed sites. It honors the president who freed slaves and united the country, and was host to civil rights history. Tonight Trump is staging a “big show” inside the memorial and complaining he’s treated worse than Lincoln.


Christine O'Donnell made an accusation via her niece against Biden. When found that he wasn't at the event where she said it occurred, she said maybe it happened at the same event a year before--and if so, that would "worse." But he wasn't at the event the year before, either


Trump has to dry hump the American flag and give the Lincoln Memorial a lap dance because he knows that several countries own him - and not one is the United States.


The visual of @realdonaldtRUmp sitting in front of Lincoln’s memorial made him look like the small man that he is. Let that be a reminder to all who serve the Republic: you serve in the shadow of giants. Live up to their example and lead, or quit.


Trump just said the Spanish Flu ended World War I in 1917. I've said it before: if brains were black powder, Donald Trump couldn't blow his nose


Trump’s bit is gettin old, and I know it’s not just me that feels that.


Texas reported 1,293 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, the third consecutive day that metric topped 1,000—a level not seen in three weeks.


NEW: Trump offers lie after lie under Lincoln’s unblinking gaze


Also I’m more and more bothered by the fact that the president refuses to wear a mask. The rest of us wear masks, it’s not just for us it’s to protect the people around us.


In midst of a pandemic where thousands of Americans have died and millions are suffering, only our current president would claim that he’s the victim of a unifying message from a former president. Six months from today, we can end all of this and summon the best in all of us.


Can we all agree that a woman who chickens out of a softball Fox News interview should no longer be equally compared with a woman who testified under oath at a publicly televised Senate hearing?


So, the Republican candidate for president has a long history of alleged tax evasion, yet he has not released his tax returns to the public as promised. I challenge the press to press this issue now. It's still news. Oral argument before the Supreme Court is Tuesday, May 12th.


Today I spent the day cleaning out my dad’s apartment, my dad is one of the 60, 000 people who died from a virus that was supposed to go away as quick as it came. Screw you DT😢😢 My dad was a talented artist, this is one his many drawings


When President Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg in 1863 he delivered a monumental speech for the ages aimed at uniting and healing a torn nation; when Donald Trump spoke at Gettysburg in 2016, he threatened to sue the many women who had accused him of sexual misconduct for defamation.


I think one of the lighting techs at Fox is in the resistance


A 3rd #Russian doctor “fell” from a hospital window. Dr. Shulepov is fighting for his life with head injuries after reporting a #PPEshortage and recording a video saying that he was *forced to work despite testing positive* for #COVID19


Mnuchin is twice his size. It’s like watching Elf, where Mnuchin is a twitchy Wil Farrell & donald a coked-out Bob Newhart


Multiple reports of coup attempt under way in Qatar, home to large US air base.


Trump says there's "no risk" from him speaking at West Point, for which 1,000 cadets need to come back to campus ?, and that he didn't even want to do it but the generals asked him ?.


Trump responds to Joe Biden’s tweet by claiming Joe Biden didn’t write it


Coronavirus VI: Testing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver