AMEN:

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YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

Anna Tomaszewska, a chemical engineer at Imperial College London who recently coauthored a review paper on fast-charging lithium-ion batteries, says one possible solution to lithium plating is to add silicon to the anode. Silicon is cheap, abundant, and can change the anode's crystal structure in such a way that makes lithium plating less likely. "Silicon has been particularly popular with the manufacturers because it can also improve the energy capacity of the battery," adds Tomaszewska.

Indeed, many companies, including Tesla, have added silicon or silicon oxide to graphite anodes to squeeze some more energy from their lithium-ion cells. But Enevate, an energy storage company based in Southern California, wants to take graphite out of the picture. For the last 15 years, the company has been perfecting an XFC, or extremely fast charging lithium-ion battery with a pure silicon anode.

Earlier this year, the company's researchers announced that their latest generation of batteries could be charged to 75 percent in just five minutes--without sacrificing energy density. "We can have a fast charge without losing out on energy density because we're using an inexpensive, pure-silicon approach," says Ben Park, Enevate's founder and chief technology officer.

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A RACE, NOT A RELIGION:

Benny Gantz had three choices before him. He could have betrayed his voters by reneging on his central campaign promise of being an alternative to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Alternatively, he could have betrayed his second campaign promise to not rely on the Joint List to form a minority government. Or lastly, he could have taken Israel to a fourth election.

Ultimately, Gantz was left to decide between rubber stamping Netanyahu's corruption, his annexationist policies, and his attacks on Israel's democratic institutions, or to back Jewish-Arab partnership with the representatives of the majority of Israel's Palestinian citizens. On Thursday, despite polls showing that an overwhelming majority of his voters supported the latter option -- and despite threatening to pass legislation that prevent Netanyahu from serving as he faces trial -- Gantz opted for the former.

By entering into a unity government, half of Blue and White -- a political alliance made up of three anti-Netanyahu factions -- ditched Gantz and went to the opposition. The new government will be far-right, religious, and corrupt, just like the last one. 

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CREDIT WHERE DUE:

Silverstein: Two separate questions. How do you rate Trump's response to the coronavirus pandemic? And then also, the fiscal and monetary stimulus that the government has put out?

Bremmer: Well, I don't know that you can really decouple those things. I mean, Trump's response is both the media response, his communications response. It's his healthcare response. It's his travel response. Right?

Let me tell you what I think about Trump on all of this. If you want to criticize Trump, the two things that you should criticize him for is that he has been a communications disaster and has provided a lot of false hope that probably led to a later response, particularly in red states in social distancing, than we need. And people are going to die because of that. That's a profound negligent leadership point. Right? Trump constantly in sales mode, "This is going to go away. It's going to be a miracle. It's not going to be a big deal." Obviously, something that hurt the country.

Secondarily, under his watch, the United States did not accept the World Health Organization tests. Our tests did not work. We were unable to get them in the hands of enough people fast. As a consequence, we did not have knowledge of the extent of the spread of this virus across metropolitan areas in many states in the United States. Also, putting us on the back foot. So in those two ways, Trump has been a profound failure.

He's also been a failure in terms of the lack of international leadership. Right? That outside of the United States, what the hell have we done? Right? I mean, the Europeans condemned the fact that Trump put travel restrictions in place without telling them first. They found out on CNN. We should never have in this kind of crisis, a response from our allies like that. It should never happen. Our aid on average, $4 million to a country. Right? We're doing virtually nothing. The Chinese are doing vastly more. A lot of their masks don't even work. They're responsible for the damn crisis to begin with, by covering it up. And yet, they're doing better with a lot of our allies, because we're not there internationally.

So those are the three ways that we've really failed, and Trump has really done a bad job. Now, how has Trump done a good job? Well, number one, Trump did shut down travel to China early, and he did it despite the fact that the Chinese were really unhappy about that. And that was really important to do because you had millions of Chinese coming to the United States, and they were infected. Right? A lot of them were vectors, and we didn't have any information on that. We needed to shut that down, so good for us.

Also, the fiscal response and the monetary response that Trump signed... and Mnuchin, his administration worked with Nancy Pelosi. Massive. 

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WHAT NATIONAL REVIEW IS THAT?::

The relationship between right-wing extremism and online media is at the heart of Antisocial, Andrew Marantz's new book about what he calls "the hijacking of the American conversation." A reporter for The New Yorker, Marantz began delving into two worlds in 2014 and 2015. He followed the online world of neofascists, attended events they organized, and interviewed those who were willing to talk with him. Meanwhile, he also reported on the "techno-utopians" of Silicon Valley whose companies were simultaneously undermining professional journalism and providing a platform for the circulation of conspiracy theories, disinformation, hate speech, and nihilism. The online extremists, Marantz argues, have brought about a shift in Americans' "moral vocabulary," a term he borrows from the philosopher Richard Rorty. "To change how we talk is to change who we are," Marantz writes, summing up the thesis of his book.

Antisocial weaves back and forth between the netherworld of the right and the dreamworld of the techno-utopians in the years leading up to and immediately following the 2016 U.S. election. The strongest chapters profile the demi-celebrities of the "alt-right." As a Jewish reporter from a liberal magazine, Marantz is not an obvious candidate to gain the confidence of neofascists. But he has an impressive talent for drawing them out, and his portraits attend to the complexities of their life stories and the nuances of their opinions. Marantz leaves no doubt, however, about his own view of the alt-right and the responsibilities of journalists: "The plain fact was the alt-right was a racist movement full of creeps and liars. If a newspaper's house style didn't allow its reporters to say so, at least by implication, then the house style was preventing its reporters from telling the truth."

As Marantz describes them, the white nationalists, masculinists, and other elements of the alt-right were "metamedia insurgents" interested chiefly in catalyzing conflict. "They took for granted that the old institutions ought to be burned to the ground, and they used the tools at their disposal--new media, especially social media--to light as many matches as possible." As they expanded their online presence, they tailored their memes to the medium. On Facebook, they posted "countersignal" memes "to shock normies out of their complacency." On Twitter, they trolled mainstream journalists, hoping to capture wider attention. On sites such as Reddit, 4chan, and 8chan, they felt free to be "more overtly vile" and "started calling themselves 'fashy' or 'fash-ist,'" sometimes baiting "normies" by claiming that "Hitler did nothing wrong."

The online alt-right, together with the presidential candidate they decided to champion, Donald Trump, played a key role in making white nationalist ideas part of the national conversation. Until 2016, the two major parties and national media reflected a broad consensus--at least in rhetoric, if not in actual policy--that America was a nation where immigrants were welcome and people of all races and religions were equal. When Republicans played the "race card," they did so obliquely in deference to the consensus. Under George W. Bush, the Republican establishment was still pushing immigration reform, while the party was increasingly in opposition to legislation and succeeded in blocking it.

But a few on the far right called for Republicans to go further. They assailed "the Narrative," their term for the dominant liberal ideas about racial and gender equality. Marantz highlights the role of Steve Sailer, an opinion writer who had been arguing since the early 2000s that Republicans should openly cast themselves as a white-identity party, enact pro-white policies, and take aggressive action against immigration, including the repeal of birthright citizenship. Others on the right called this the "Sailer strategy." Social media gave Sailer and like-minded heretics--"many of whom Buckley had banished to the fringes of the movement years earlier"--new ways of disseminating their views that were more powerful than what was appearing in a print magazine like National Review. [...]

The normalization of white nationalism on the right and the growth of online media helped prepare the way for Trump's election. With his disregard for the truth and incendiary use of social media both as a candidate and as president, Trump has been the pivotal and emblematic figure in this political transformation. Repeatedly over the previous decades, as far back as 1987, he failed to get any traction when he floated the idea of running for president. The mainstream news media did not take him seriously, and his views and even his party affiliation weren't clear. In 1999, he mentioned Oprah Winfrey as a possible running mate when he suggested he might run for president the next year.

In 2011, Trump again tried to stir up support for a presidential campaign, but as Marantz points out, he initially had "nothing to command people's attention--no news hook, no controversy, no meme with momentum." Then he turned to two far-right figures, Joseph Farah and Jerome Corsi from World Net Daily, a right-wing online site that had played a central role in promoting the lie that Obama came from Kenya and his Hawaiian birth certificate was a forgery. Seizing on the myth about Obama's birth, Trump generated the political attention he had always craved...

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FED EX HAD THAT ONE RIGHT:

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ONLY FOX CAN PENETRATE HIS BUBBLE:

Scenes out of New York, including bleak hospital images played on Fox News, struck a nerve with President Trump and caused him to drop his aspiration of reopening America by Easter, senior administration officials tell Axios.

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RALLYING ROUND THE FLAG:

NEW YORK STATE
I'd like you to tell me whether you approve or disapprove of the job each is doing to address the pandemic ...

Donald Trump
Approve 41%
Disapprove 56%

Andrew Cuomo
Approve 87%
Disapprove 11%

(Siena College Poll, RV, 3/22-26/20)https://t.co/SbYaMCuW9R

— PollingReport.com (@pollreport) March 30, 2020

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"FRENCH TRUMPIAN" IS REDUNDANT:

Not surprisingly, Raoult's rapid rise raised as many eyebrows as huzzahs. While his fans applaud the 3,000 scientific articles Raoult has co-signed, his critics argue that these staggering numbers do not add up. Do the math, they remark, and it turns out the Marseillais researcher publishes more papers in a month than most productive researchers publish in a career. Raoult's method, according to one critic, is to task a young researcher at IHU with an experiment, then co-sign the piece before it is submitted to publication. "Raoult is thus able to reach this absolutely insane number of publications every year," according to one anonymous source quoted by the site Mediapart. More disturbingly, the critic added, "it is simply impossible for Raoult to verify all of these papers."

Indeed, the question of verification hovers over Raoult's clinical trial on the effects of hydroxychloroquine on the novel coronavirus. Combining a regimen of Plaquenil--the commercial name of hydroxychloroquine--and an antibiotic, Raoult treated 24 patients at IHU in early March who had tested positive for COVID-19. After six days, the virus had vacated the bodies of three-quarters of those same patients. On March 16, Raoult announced the results not in a scientific journal but in a YouTube video, in which he declared the jig was up for the virus. Predictably, his self-proclaimed victory then ignited the hysteria that has since swept the world and reached as far as the Oval Office. [...]

Critics argue that not only were there too few subjects in the chloroquine study, but that some of them dropped out during the trial, potentially skewing the results. In addition, Raoult has not released the raw data from the trial, which, remarkably, was not double-blinded. According to Dominique Costagliola, chief epidemiologist at the Pasteur Institute, the trial was so slapdash that "it is impossible to interpret the described result as being attributable to the hydroxychloroquine treatment."

If this sounds depressingly familiar, it should. There are several disquieting parallels between the stable genius who claims to "understand that whole scientific world" and the reputed genius who claims to have defeated COVID-19. Like Trump, Raoult has made himself a brand: the outsider who defies a sclerotic and corrupt establishment. Like Trump, Raoult is not just a climate skeptic--in 2013, he declared that climate predictions are "absurd"--but a pandemic skeptic. "Three people in China die from a virus, and that sparks a global alert," he observed in an IHU video. "This is crazy." The video was posted on Jan. 21, just one day before Trump reassured Americans that he had the virus "totally under control."

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THE CHINESE CURE? OR THE WUHAN RECOVERY?:

The city at the center of China's virus outbreak was reopening for business Monday after authorities lifted more of the controls that locked downs tens of millions of people for two months. "I want to revenge shop," one excited customer declared as she traversed one of Wuhan's major shopping streets,

Customers were still scarce, though, as those who did venture out were greeted by shop employees who wore masks and carried signs that told them to "keep a safe distance."

Among them was this teacher, who was visiting her family when most access to the city of 11 million was suspended Jan. 23 to stem the coronavirus spread.

"I'm so excited, I want to cry," said the woman, who gave only her English name Kat as she eyed the wares in the Chuhe Hanjie pedestrian mall.

"After two months trapped at home, I want to jump," she added, jumping up and down excitedly.

There must be some geographic name for where the virus was first defeated, right?

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ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

Republicans started the cycle with the advantage, but Democrats have had reason for optimism of late. New polls have shown Democratic challengers ahead of GOP incumbents, the party is recruiting strong candidates, and, perhaps most importantly given the tight correlation between presidential and Senate voting, former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democrat who has polled the best against President Trump, has become the party's likely presidential nominee.

The most likely outcome is still that Republicans maintain control of the Senate, though perhaps with a reduced majority: The status quo favors them, and most of the states where the Senate will be decided lean red. (As a refresher, Republicans currently have 53 Senate seats to Democrats' 47,1 meaning Democrats need to flip four seats, on net, to take control -- or three if they also win the vice presidency.) But Democrats have expanded the map to the point where they have a lot more pick-up opportunities than Republicans do, so they have a lot of upside.

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THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON NEGATIVE PARTISANSHIP:

Ben Domenech, publisher of The Federalist, recently took to Twitter to explain epidemiology to the epidemiologists, proclaiming that "The 3.3 million unemployment claims today are a direct result of everyone from Morning Joe to Tucker Carlson repeating the baseless predictions of the Imperial College as fact." He is referring to recent testimony from Neil Ferguson, lead author of an influential academic report on the virus, which had warned of 500,000 deaths in Britain and millions in the United States unless we took strong measures to stop the spread of the virus. More recently, Ferguson testified that he now thinks fewer than 20,000 Britons might die. As Domenech sneers, "2 million people will die vs 20k people will die is a BIG DIFFERENCE NEIL. I mean, how do you even explain that? I accidentally held down the zero button?"

Take that, experts! You have been refuted with Twitter snark. [...]

The Federalist was not the only outlet to badly mangle this story. So did The Daily Wire and the Washington Examiner. (The Daily Wire piece has since changed to a less inflammatory headline and noted the correction. The Washington Examiner piece's opening paragraphs were stealth-changed, without any indication of an update or correction.) What these articles all have in common is a cheapo, smash-and-grab, clickbait-driven style of journalism that hires young and inexperienced writers to recycle Twitter chatter in a way that reinforces the partisan prejudices of their audience.

But The Federalist has been leaning into Coronavirus Trutherism harder than most, publishing a retired dermatologist's extravagantly harebrained scheme to have millions of young people deliberately infect themselves to acquire immunity to the disease. Among the many things wrong with this idea--it is still unknown, for example, how long immunity to the coronavirus lasts--this is a proposal for the hospitalization and gruesome death of many thousands of young people. As Ann Coulter inadvertently reminded us, the virus may be less deadly for the young than the old--but even for them, it is many times deadlier than the flu.

As for whether the people running the show are pushing this line because they really believe it or out of pure cynicism, I'll just point out that Ben Domenech's wife has rather publicly announced that she is self-quarantining to protect their unborn child. Good for them--but this sure looks like a case of one message for the rubes, and another message for yourself.

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THERE'S NOTHING MORE THREATENING TO HIS FUTURE THAN HIS OWN WORDS:

Watch as Trump gets defensive about his statement questioning how many ventilators Cuomo really needs.

Trump: When journalists get up and ask questions that are so threatening...

Yamiche: I was quoting you directly from your interview with Sean Hannity. pic.twitter.com/KsxxQCQXyl

— Amee Vanderpool (@girlsreallyrule) March 29, 2020

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"JUST SHOWIN' OFF":

Harris showed an early aptitude for music. He played around on a beat-up piano someone left in an empty apartment. Between a community center and his public school, he tried out two dozen instruments, including bassoon and trombone.

"Trumpet, or small mouthpiece instruments, I was terrible at. I just couldn't get the hang of that," he remembers.

Then he discovered a marimba in the seventh grade music room. He picked up the mallets and started playing scales. That eventually led to the vibraphone, with its physicality and lush vibrato. He was convinced he wanted to be a classical musician until one day he discovered jazz through the genius of Charlie Parker.

Being captain of the wrestling team taught him to train and to work hard, and to perform when he played.

"It's almost like you're painting visual images for people who are in the audience. So you're utilizing sound, they're watching your body language, they're watching the mallets dance," he says.

Harris is about to step down as Director of Jazz Arts at the Manhattan School of Music and join the music faculty at Rutgers later this year. He will continue to teach what he believes about how to be a jazz musician and how to be an empathetic person.

"I want my audience to feel the connection between human beings -- five brothers who are on the stage who've known each other for a long time, who've had ups and downs but who love each other. Who are vulnerable, who are willing to take chances in the moment to discover beauty."

He concludes with a smile, "The bandstand is a sacred space."

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IT'S NOT A pROGRESSIVE PARTY:

After her victory in 2018, Ocasio-Cortez encouraged progressives to follow in her footsteps and run for Congress with the backing of the left-wing group Justice Democrats, even if it meant taking on powerful incumbents. Sixteen months later, the Missouri primary isn't the only one Ocasio-Cortez is steering clear of.

Of the half-dozen incumbent primary challengers Justice Democrats is backing this cycle, Ocasio-Cortez has endorsed just two. Neither was a particularly risky move: Both candidates -- Jessica Cisneros in Texas and Marie Newman in Illinois -- were taking on conservative Democrats who oppose abortion rights and later earned the support of several prominent national Democrats.

Ocasio-Cortez's reluctance marks a break with the outsider tactics of the activist left, represented by groups like Justice Democrats. This election cycle, the organization is trying to boot not just conservative Democrats but also some liberal Democrats and to replace them with members who are more left-wing. In other words, to replicate what it pulled off against Rep. Joe Crowley in 2018 by recruiting Ocasio-Cortez.

Ocasio-Cortez's shift coincides with turnover among top aides in her congressional office -- replacing some outspoken radicals with more traditional political professionals -- along with a broader reckoning on the left on how to expand Sanders' coalition after his failure to significantly do so in the presidential primary. Some progressives have questioned whether Sanders should have softened his anti-establishment rhetoric and tried to build bridges with mainstream Democrats who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 rather than betting big on turning out disaffected and first-time voters.

Ocasio-Cortez's endorsement moves are not a fluke but part of a larger change over the past several months. After her disruptive, burn-it-down early months in Congress, Ocasio-Cortez, who colleagues say is often conflict-averse in person, has increasingly been trying to work more within the system. She is building coalitions with fellow Democratic members and picking her fights more selectively.

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DONALD WHO?:

When Goldman Sachs directed more than 12,000 employees in the New York City metro area to work from home two weeks ago, bank President John Waldron didn't need to check with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin -- he got on the phone with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy.

It's one of many calls corporate executives have had to do with state and local officials over the last month as states from California to New Jersey shuttered their economies to prevent the spread of the virus. With the Trump administration taking a backseat to state leaders on coronavirus mitigation, companies and trade associations that traditionally rely on relationships with Washington power brokers are instead being forced to reckon with newly emboldened statehouse executives to deal with a fast-evolving commercial crisis.

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GET IT BACK TO $4 A GALLON WITH TAXES:

"Cars not on the road, airplanes not in the air, factories not working, people not going to work," Yergin said. "We see, in this month of April that's coming, what could be a 20 million barrel a day decline in oil demand."

"It's unprecedented. That's six times larger than the biggest downturn during the financial crisis period (in 2008)," he added.

World oil demand in 2019 stood at around 99.67 million barrels a day, according to OPEC's estimate.

While demand is set to fall, major producers such as Saudi Arabia and Russia have announced they will increase supply in April after the OPEC+ agreement expires at the end of March.

"This is what people are now looking at ... where are you going to put all of the oil?" he asked. When oil storage runs out, prices could fall further, he added. "I think the prices that we're seeing, that you're talking about today are really precursors ... April is going to be a very difficult month."

It's a golden opportunity to speed the end of oil and the Oil Curse.

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IT TAKES SUPERHUMAN EFFORT TO KEEP THE rIGHT THIS IGNORANT:

The @Ichotiner demolition of Richard Epstein is as devastating as you have heard, but you really need to read it to take it in.https://t.co/T2V6QZJEwa

It's the combination of absolute *certainty* by Epstein, and absolute wrongness on numerous provable points, that is amazing.

— James Fallows (@JamesFallows) March 30, 2020

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LISTEN TO YOUR MUTTI:

In her first address to the nation on the coronavirus pandemic, German Chancellor Angela Merkel calmly appealed to citizens' reason and discipline to slow the spread of the virus, acknowledging as a woman who grew up in communist East Germany how difficult it is to give up freedoms, yet as a trained scientist emphasizing that the facts don't lie.

Then, wearing the same blue pantsuit from the televised address, the 65-year-old popped into her local supermarket to pick up food, wine and toilet paper to take back to her Berlin apartment. For her, it was a regular shopping stop, but photos snapped by someone at the grocery store were shared worldwide as a reassuring sign of calm leadership amid a global crisis.

With the coronavirus outbreak, Merkel is reasserting her traditional strengths and putting her stamp firmly on domestic policy after two years in which her star seemed to be fading, with attention focused on constant bickering in her governing coalition and her own party's troubled efforts to find a successor.

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THANKS, LUCKY STARS!:

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WHICH IS WHY IT'S ALWAYS FUNNY...:

As part of a survey about how Americans think about religion, the Pew Research Center asked respondents last month to answer the question, "Who is the first person who comes to mind when you think of Judaism?"

The most common answer, according to Pew, was Jesus.

Some 21% of respondents named Jesus as the first Jew that came to mind. According to the Christian Bible, Jesus was born a Jew and lived in ancient Judea, though Jews do not accept his divinity as Christians do.

The next most commonly named people were also biblical: Moses, at 13%, followed by Abraham at eight percent. Around five percent named non-famous Jewish individuals that they knew personally, while seven percent named various historic figures or celebrities, including Anne Frank, Albert Einstein and Jerry Seinfeld.

The survey also asked people to name Catholics, Buddhists, Muslims, Evangelical Christians and atheists. Jesus was actually less frequently listed as a Catholic or evangelical than he was as a Jew. Only 12% of people picked Jesus when asked to name a Catholic (47% said the Pope), while five percent named Jesus when asked to pick an evangelical (the most frequently named person was Rev. Billy Graham).

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TOUGH LOVE:

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ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

The White House Coronavirus Task Force unanimously shunned President Donald Trump's suggestion of a quarantine in the New York City area, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday.

The president "did very seriously consider" the idea of locking down the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, Mnuchin said on "Fox News Sunday." But Trump was dissuaded after a meeting with the task force led by Vice President Mike Pence.

A new survey conducted by Ipsos exclusively for The Daily Beast provides some of the clearest evidence to date that the president's attempts to paint a rosy picture about the coronavirus' spread throughout the country are not resonating beyond a small segment of the populace with a small exception for those who say they're getting their information from Fox News. 

A full 73 percent of respondents, including 75 percent of Republicans, said that it was not true that "anyone who wants to get tested [for the virus] can get tested." Just 17 percent said it was true.

Only 20 percent of the public, and just 25 percent of Republicans, said that they believed a vaccine will be available soon. Forty-two percent said that was false and 38 percent said they did not know.

Fifty-one percent of respondents, including a plurality or Republicans (46 percent), said it was false that the virus would go away on its own in warm weather, while just 13 percent said that was true.

And 61 percent of respondents said that they believed COVID-19 was more deadly than the flu; with 22 percent saying it was about the same and 11 percent saying they believed it was less deadly.

Someone needs to name a band, Lou Dobbs Death Cult

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SO, LET'S SEE IF WE HAVE THIS STRAIGHT...:

Rawls's monumental 1971 book, "A Theory of Justice," is now regarded as the clearest moral and intellectual justification for modern center-left mixed economies. But the idea comes from somewhere deeper. Rawls was not religious, but his philosophy is essentially in line with the golden rule handed down by the Old Testament prophets and by Jesus, that we should do as we would want to be done by. Some religious leaders have approached the awful dilemmas presented by the coronavirus just as Rawls would, by taking treatment of the worst off as the criterion for social action.

"I hope the lessons we take from our country's experience with Covid-19 aren't about food or avoiding the spread of germs," wrote Russell Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention in the New York Times, "but about how we treat the most vulnerable among us. A pandemic is no time to turn our eyes away from the sanctity of human life."

Pope Francis also invoked sympathy for the most afflicted as he addressed a prayer to an empty St. Peter's Square. "We have realized that we are on the same boat, all of us fragile and disoriented, but at the same time important and needed, all of us called to row together, each of us in need of comforting the other," he said.

Perhaps because of their religious resonance, Rawlsian ideas have guided the approach to the pandemic chosen by authorities in the western world.

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YEAH, BUT SHE'S GOT COOTIES:

First of all, she has a name. Gretchen Whitmer. She is not "the woman" or "all she does is sit there" or "you know who I'm talking about" -- all phrases President Donald Trump has used besides saying the actual name of the person Michigan voters elected to govern us.

It's "Gretchen Whitmer." Show some respect. At a time when Americans must adjust to a world without hugs, kisses or handshakes, the least a president of the United States can do is call our governor by her name.

And stop complaining about her "complaining." Gretchen Whitmer hasn't done anything that every Michigander doesn't want her to do -- ask the federal government for masks, ventilators, test kits and other aid to fight the COVID-19 virus that is infecting and killing us.

She's not speaking for herself. She's speaking for the people.

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OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING:

Setting the stage for the perfect storm, the city of Wuhan had been preparing its annual mass banquet. To celebrate the twentieth anniversary, local organizers had attempted "to break a world record for the largest number of dishes served." The significance of this event cannot be overstated. For at least three weeks prior to the banquet on January 18, 2020, Wuhan authorities had been informed of the virus spreading in the city.

The SARS experience and common sense would have dictated taking immediate measures to protect public health. Instead, Wuhan authorities did the unthinkable: issuing orders to suppress the news and covering-up the gravity of the outbreak. Even after the World Health Organization (WHO) had declared a global health emergency on January 30, media outlets such as Xinhua were instructed to give the news of the coronavirus a positive spin and avoid mentioning the WHO declaration. By this time, the pathogen had already spread well beyond China.

One reason for the suppression of the news--as reported by the Financial Times--was that the mayor of Wuhan had declined the advice of health experts out of concern that measures to contain the disease "may hurt the local economy and social stability." This decision would have two escalatory effects. First, it accelerated the virulence of the virus, given the sheer number of people in close proximity. Second, it facilitated the spread of the virus around the world. The conclusion of the banquet ended with an exodus of some five million people from the city, which helped to transport the virus beyond Hebei province and Chinese national borders.

By January 29, the number of cases of the coronavirus had already risen to 7,700 cases worldwide and 170 deaths in China. The figures were likely very conservative, given the shortage of medical test kits at that time. On the same day, China's Supreme Court finally recognized that the Wuhan police should have been more "tolerant" of those sounding the alarm than accusing them of rumor-mongering. This was a lame gesture to the clear recognition of the facts on the ground. This points to the third mistake.

With the cover-up having now failed, China is slowly and begrudgingly admitting to the inadequacies of its critical response. The advance team from the WHO has only able to enter China as recently as February 10, and it is still unclear when the full WHO mission will deploy, or the latitude they will have to investigate the origins of this infection. The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC)--one of the world's most respected organizations and the most experienced first responders--has not even been invited to assist in the investigation.

To this degree of restriction and censorship, not to mention the potential threats to public health beyond the national borders, there has been a massive outcry not only over the silencing of Li Wenliang, but the government's mishandling of the entire crisis. In this context, one can only tremble at the thought of the estimated one million Chinese Uyghurs in the so-called "vocational training centers" or internment camps in the Xinjiang province. The exiled World Uyghur Congress had sounded the alarm over the risk of spreading the virus inside the camps. According to the Chinese official media, there are only 55 cases reported in Xinjiang.

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THEY MAY JUST BE IN IT FOR THE HOMOEROTICISM:

A bit has been written in these pages recently about the current "tacticool" craze: the lionization of U.S. Navy SEALs and other special operators in imitative street wear that, like laconophilia, speaks to a deep-seated sense of inadequacy. The wildly popular military apparel companies Grunt Style and 5.11 Tactical have huge followings among civilians who have never and will never serve in the military, sporting tactical gear or T-shirts invoking military catchphrases (frequently praising the Spartans), replete with magazine pouches that will never hold ammunition, and FFI (Friend-Foe-Identifier) patches designed to prevent military friendly-fire incidents. 

The ancient Athenians had their own "tacticool" phase, it seems. Xenophon reported the famous Athenian philosopher Socrates wearing only a single, filthy, thin cloak, aping Spartan fashion. A bronze from Pompeii depicts Socrates and the philosopher Diotima, showing Socrates in what some scholars identify as the thin cloak of the Spartans--the triboun--and leaning on what could be a bakteurion--the T-shaped staff carried by Spartan leaders and officials. The Athenian orator Demosthenes criticized "men who by day put on sour expressions and pretend to play the Spartan, wearing short cloaks and single-soled shoes, but when they get together and alone leave no kind of wickedness or indecency untried." Even the famous Aristotle, more critical of Sparta, admitted that its constitution produced virtuous citizens obedient to law. In Aristophanes's The Birds, the comic playwright notes men "were mad for Sparta; they wore their hair long and honored fasting, they went filthy as Socrates and carried staves." 

The historian Polybius was an Achaean, bound to the Roman alliance that dominated Sparta, which had long been in decline before he wrote in the later Hellenistic Age. Yet even he wrote that if safety and security were what you wanted, "there is not now nor has there ever been government better than Sparta's." After its complete fall from power, Sparta remained a tourist attraction for the ancients. The Roman senator Cicero described visiting Sparta to witness the diamastigôsis, the ancient ritual where Spartan boys were flogged bloody, and sometimes to death, before the altar of Artemis Orthia. In the days of Thermopylae, the ritual had been part of Sparta's famed agōgē, but many scholars believe that in Cicero's time it was made even more brutal to satisfy the crowds of tourists. In the third century, the Spartans added an amphitheater to better accommodate the crowds who came to watch. Throughout this Roman-dominated period, the purportedly wealth-hating and xenophobic Spartans engaged in the usual methods that tourist economies employ to attract foreigners and separate them from their money: hosting fairs and creating tax-exemptions to attract merchants, encouraging commerce however they could. 

Laconophilia marched on throughout Western arts and letters, and always on the same theme--praising the Spartans' legendary selflessness, restraint, and devotion to duty. The third-century Egyptian Christian apologist Origen Adamantius compared Leonidas' self-sacrifice at Thermopylae to Christ's passion. Synesius of Cyrene, a fifth-century Christian bishop, proudly (and falsely) traced his lineage to the Spartan royal houses. In the Renaissance, even Machiavelli got in on the act, praising Sparta in his Discourses on Livy: "That republic, indeed, may be called happy, whose lot has been to have a founder so prudent as to provide for it laws under which it can continue to live securely, without need to amend them; as we find Sparta preserving hers for eight hundred years, without deterioration and without any dangerous disturbance." (Sparta achieved nothing of the sort, but in Machiavelli's massaging of anecdotes, the ends justify the means.) John Alymer, the bishop of London just after Machiavelli's time, called Sparta "the noblest and best city governed that ever was."

Perhaps the greatest summary of Renaissance attitudes toward Sparta is captured in Michel de Montaigne's Of Cannibals, which performs the astonishing mental gymnastics necessary to hold the decimation at Thermopylae higher than the successful battles that actually pushed the Persians out of Greece: "There are defeats more triumphant than victories. Never could those four sister victories, the fairest the sun ever beheld, of Salamis, Plataea, Mycale, and Sicily, venture to oppose all their united glories, to the single glory of the defeat of King Leonidas and his men, at the pass of Thermopylae."

American founding father Samuel Adams lamented that his native Boston would never be the "Christian Sparta" he had hoped for. Fellow founding father John Dickinson considered the Spartans to be "as brave and free a people as ever existed." Adams's contemporary, the legendary Jean-Jacques Rousseau, practically drooled over Sparta's myth, praising "that city as famous for its happy ignorance as for the wisdom of its laws, whose virtues seemed so much greater than those of men that it was a Republic of demi-gods rather than of men." This just skims the surface, miles wide and fathoms deep, of the legions of historical thinkers and writers in love with the Spartan mirage, distant and wavering.

For much of this time, laconophilia was a relatively benign ahistorical myth, but Spartan admiration unmistakably turned malignant in the late-nineteenth century with the advent of scientific racism. German scholar Karl Müller included in his influential Geschichten hellenischen Stämme und Städte a history of the Dorian race responsible for founding classical Sparta. Müller's work lionized the invaders' Northern origins, which dovetailed into the early evolution of Nordicism, the pseudo-anthropological notion of a Nordic master race that would become a cornerstone of Nazi ideology. Müller was hardly alone, and European thinking about inherent inequality and Nordic superiority was already maturing in the fevered minds of thinkers like the French aristocrat Joseph Arthur de Gobineau, whose writings influenced the famous composer and German nationalist icon Richard Wagner. It is not surprising that Adolf Hitler saw in Sparta "the first völkisch state" and gushed about the ancient city-state's legendary eugenics: "The exposure of the sick, weak, deformed children, in short, their destruction, was more decent and in truth a thousand times more human than the wretched insanity of our day which preserves the most pathological subject."

Companies like Grunt Style might symbolize today's molon labe culture, but the phrase has long captured the imagination of would-be warriors holding what they believed were hopeless positions. We cannot be certain that revolutionary Colonel John McIntosh was channeling Leonidas when the British demanded he surrender Fort Morris to them in 1778, but we do know his famous reply: "Come and take it!" The same cry was uttered by Texian settlers 57 years later in response to the Mexican army's demand that they return a borrowed cannon. The words were emblazoned beneath an image of the cannon on a battle flag flown at the Battle of Gonzales where Mexican dragoons skirmished unsuccessfully with the Texian rebels to decide the matter. As University of Iowa classics professor Sarah E. Bond points out in her own recent critique of Sparta mythmaking, in all these instances, "the phrase stays true to the ancient context within which it was allegedly first spoken."

That same cannon and phrase are today emblazoned above crossed meat cleavers on the flag of the American Guard--a hard-right white-supremacist group that evolved from the Indiana chapter of Soldiers of Odin USA, an extreme anti-immigrant and anti-refugee group that originated in Finland in 2015. Senator Ted Cruz has repeatedly invoked the same phrase. 

Molon labe is the motto of multiple military units, most notably the United States Special Operations Command Central. But the phrase has special currency with the National Rifle Association and the gun-advocacy community in the United States, where it is a warning growl of the willingness to use violence to uphold the right to bear arms against government infringement. A quick search on social media will reveal the words in both English and Greek--almost always blazoned beneath the stylized Corinthian helmet--inlaid into gun handles, tattooed on skin, and pressed on T-shirts, key chains, pens, bumper stickers, and patch after patch after patch, usually velcroed onto tactical packs carried by military and civilian alike. Molon labe is so synonymous with right-wing gun-fetishism that political opponents have coined a mocking term, "moron label," to counter those under its thrall.

But this twisted veneration of the Spartan myth looms larger than just Leonidas's single quote. Thermopylae imagery was rife among supporters of Trump's presidential bid. A still-public 2016 YouTube video posted by a user under the handle "Aryan Wisdom" depicted then-candidate Trump as Leonidas, holding back a Persian army that included Soros and Obama. At the time of this writing, the video has been viewed over five million times. The far-right white nationalist Identitarian movement's symbol, blazoned in gold against a black background, is the circle of an aspis, the round shield that was a Spartan warrior's principal piece of equipment. It is divided by the upside-down V of the Greek lambda, the sigil falsely believed to have been painted on Spartan shields at Thermopylae. "Generation Identity," a fast-growing European Identitarian party, explains the significance of adopting the Spartan shield for its movement by way of relating the 300 myth: "Both ancient and modern writers have used the Battle of Thermopylae as an example of the power of a patriotic army defending its native soil." This appears on the site's "frequently asked questions" page, just above a section titled "What does the term 'Great Replacement' mean and who is responsible for it?"

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WE ARE ALL CREATIONIST:

Quantum mechanics accurately predicts the outcomes of measurements, but we don't know what to say about particles when we're not looking at them; all we know for sure is that our common sense gets it wrong. So, the interpretation of quantum mechanics remains a topic of speculation, controversy, equivocation, or indifference.

Some physicists argue that unobserved particles are simply none of our business; the business of physics is predicting observations. Let philosophers handle the unobserved particles. Physicists thus divest themselves of awkward questions and focus on what they do best. This viewpoint is admirably humble in its acknowledgment of the limitations of physics. Or is it just lazy?

Some physicists argue that every possible measurement outcome occurs simultaneously in parallel universes. Impassioned arguments are made for and against this "many worlds interpretation" . In its favor, the many worlds interpretation avoids the distinction between abrupt measurements and smooth evolution of probabilities. The laws of quantum mechanics provide probabilities of different outcomes. What, ultimately, determines which outcomes occur, and which don't? The many worlds interpretation circumvents this question entirely because all outcomes occur. The arguments against the many worlds interpretation are plentiful, and include the fact that we simply have no evidence of parallel universes.

Perhaps, instead, the error in our common sense is the belief in free will. Perhaps we are preprogrammed automatons, or the particles under observation diabolically influence our decisions. This possibility, though unpalatable and strange, is duly considered by physicists and philosophers.

Or, perhaps our error is the assumption that the measurement of one particle can't affect a distant particle. Quantum entanglement is a subtle connection undiminished by distance. Can we assert that the connection isn't so subtle, but that the measurement of one particle physically alters the distant particle? I believe this claim can be neither proven nor disproven. If we say that the measurement of one particle affects the other, we really mean that the first measurement, of either particle, affects both; subsequent results are determined by this first measurement.

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THAT DOESN'T END WELL:

"The Brazilian needs to be studied. He doesn't catch anything. You see a guy jumping into sewage, diving in, right? Nothing happens to him. I think a lot of people were already infected in Brazil, weeks or months ago, and they already have the antibodies that help it not proliferate," Bolsonaro said. "I'm hopeful that's really a reality."

MORE:

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IF NOTHING ELSE... (profanity alert):

Jeff Lowe had eyes the color of snowmelt and a neatly trimmed gray goatee. He wore leather jackets, fancy jeans, and a black do-rag wrapped around his balding head. He once worked as Robbie Knievel's manager and now ran a liquidation business. He drove a red Ferrari and a white Hummer. He was once arrested for assaulting his wife. Another time, he was arrested for, and later pleaded guilty to, falsely posing as an employee of Citizens Opposed to Domestic Abuse so he could receive donated goods, which he then resold.

Lowe owned 12 big cats, which he kept in a warehouse in his hometown of Beaufort. He had tried to open a cub-petting operation in a flea market but was shut down by county officials. He believed Carole had been a catalyst behind the protests against him. He referred to her as "the devil incarnate."

Joe and Jeff had made an agreement: Joe would effectively sign ownership of the zoo over to Jeff, and Jeff would help pay to fight Carole. To raise more funds, Jeff moved to Vegas. He began sneaking tiger cubs, hidden inside a Louis Vuitton dog carrier, into hotel rooms along the Strip and charging high rollers $2,000 to pet them.

Meanwhile, back at the zoo, Joe was going through yet another, Pokémonic evolution. Inspired by the unlikely ascension of Donald Trump, Joe launched his own campaign for the presidency in 2015 and then for governor in 2018; he was planning to run for president again, this time on the Libertarian ticket. (This despite the fact that Joe was not a libertarian, nor did he even seem to know what the word meant. He was more of an idiosyncratic populist; one of his campaign pledges was to bring back spanking in schools. Josh Dial, who ran Joe's campaign, likened him to "Donald Trump on meth.") Joe printed his name on the side of a stretch limo and on hundreds of yard signs. His staff was baffled by the amount of money he was wasting on these doomed campaigns, but Joe insisted they were not merely vanity projects. He often asked, rhetorically, "How do a normal person like me ever get heard in this country?"

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THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS QUALITY:

Coquin, a 5-month-old wine bar on Spring Street, is being accused of misleading customers by selling frozen pizzas as "gourmet Roman-style thin crust pizza, with house made marinara sauce and whole milk mozzarella."

Amid an unprecedented financial crisis for the hospitality sector, which has inspired many Charleston-area eaters to shower cash on independent restaurants, and many food-and-beverage workers to safeguard their money, concerned diners who spend time in the neighborhood claim chef-owner Chip Grimalda is selling mass-market pizza marked up 700 percent.

Coquin last weekend launched its pizza program, promoting the new pies on its website and via Instagram ads. According to Grimalda, the restaurant has since sold about 20 pizzas a day, priced at $18 for cheese or $20 for a pizza topped with meat or vegetables.

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YEAH, BUT WE MURDERED THAT SHI'A DUDE!:

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WE DO KNOW WHAT'S NEEDED:

The latest survey, taken on March 23 and 24, shows that experts have not become more certain or increasingly optimistic over the last week. According to the most recent survey, experts think 9 percent of all COVID-19 cases in the U.S. were known at the time of the survey. As a group, they think hospitalizations won't peak for several more weeks or months, and they expect around 246,000 deaths related to COVID-19 in 2020.

"The situation this week is no more clear due to the diversity of responses across states, and uncertainty about the impact of those responses," said Justin Lessler, one of the respondents and an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University.

But, he added, if we "adhere to guidance around social distancing, take all symptoms seriously, and self-isolate at the first sign of potential infection," it's possible the outcome will fall closer to the best-case scenario.

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AND MAKE BARRY THE WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL:

There is another woman with distinctive qualifications to be Biden's running mate and potential successor as president.

She has demonstrated at the highest levels of government unusual ability to attract personal support across a broad range of political constituencies. She has become an eloquent, indeed unique, voice for causes appealing not only to Democrats -- but to independents and Republicans as well. In her public as well as in her private life, she has proven a role model for young and old alike.

True, this woman has not served in elective office, but she has shown an outstanding talent for political campaigns, at both the U.S. state and federal levels. Her record of policy and political counsel, though largely confidential, is recognized by knowledgeable observers as unusually wise.

Rather than running for office herself, she has chosen instead to exert her impressive leadership skills as a private citizen. Writing and speaking extensively, she has addressed many critical issues confronting the nation.

Her life story, told in a bestselling book and occasional media appearances, is moving testimony to her formidable intelligence and dedication.

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THE ORANGE CEILING:

The #GreatLakesPoll finds that Michiganders rate Governor Whitmer's response to the coronavirus 18 points higher than Donald Trump's.

% who approve of the way the way ________ is handling COVID-19

Whitmer - 69

Trump - 51 @townert @laurencopeland0https://t.co/L0iHk6Jc2E

— Robert Alexander (@onuprof) March 28, 2020

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IT'S HIS BRAND:

It should not be lost on anyone that Trump's tirade against GM singles out Mary Barra, the GM CEO, and now he goes after Michigan's governor Gretchen Whitmer. He can't stand strong women.

— Anne-Marie Slaughter (@SlaughterAM) March 28, 2020

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WHITE SWAN:

So basically what @GovWhitmer is going through right now? https://t.co/oIkP9Gw662

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) March 28, 2020

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GOOD TRAINING FOR HIS CURRENT POSITION:

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THERE'S A REASON THE rIGHT ALWAYS FEELS MARGINALIZED:

Just 5% want to relax social distancing right now with the rest split between more aggressive tactics and staying the course. pic.twitter.com/IRoUa95diI

— Nick Gourevitch (@nickgourevitch) March 28, 2020

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HATRED OF MUTTI FLOWS FROM THE SAME SOURCE:

Last year, a total of 871 attacks aimed at Muslims or their institutions took place in Germany, German media reported Saturday.

The German regional daily Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung reported the information, citing the German government's response to an inquiry that had been submitted by a member of the opposition socialist Left party.

Ulla Jelpke, the Left's spokesperson on domestic affairs, who sent the inquiry, said that based on experience, she expected up to another 90 cases to be added on.

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THE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE:

When a group of doctors, ethicists and religious leaders got together to write New York's 2015 ethical guidelines for allocating ventilators in a pandemic, they coalesced around a clear principle: Scarce resources should go to the person most likely to be saved. But they had to contemplate another, tougher, situation: What if a number of patients were equally likely to benefit?

In that case, they decided, a lottery might be the fairest option.

The specter of such extreme rationing - a large number of critically ill patients confronting a finite supply of life-saving machinery - was grim but theoretical when debated by the philosophically minded panel. Now, as New York and other states gird for the possibility of a shortage of ventilators, that ethics roadmap could come actually into practice.

Even scarier is the prospect confronting many other states which could also see coronavirus overwhelm their hospitals: No guidelines at all.

"We haven't had a national conversation about how we are going to prioritize," said Ezekiel Emanuel, a physician-ethicist now at the University of Pennsylvania who was a health adviser to President Barack Obama. "We are not prepared for triage."

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FORCING INNOVATION:

Reduced Regulations 

The Department of Homeland Security temporarily lifted its restrictions for I 9 forms--those are the forms you fill out when you start a new job. You're required to show your identification, in person. Because so many people are working from home, the government is waiving the in-person requirement and allowing verification "over video link, fax, or email, etc." This is set in place temporarily until May 20, 2020, but hopefully, it will stay that way.

Telemedicine opened up when the government decided to allow state-regulated insurance companies to pay for such visits. You want to keep people from catching Coronavirus (or anything else) when visiting a doctor's office, and this can help. But, this also lowers costs and increases flexibility. 

Imagine a future where, instead of sitting in a doctor's office waiting room for two hours, you stay at work, and the receptionist calls you and says, "the doctor will see you now." (Of course, this won't work open office environments.) Businesses and individuals look for ways to save money, and this could be one of them.

One city in New Jersey suspended the need for permits for "minor" repair work, saying that notification is enough, and they'll inspect later. This red-tape cutting can help small businesses prosper in times when many are laying people off.

Greater Flexibility

The global pandemic made Google busier than usual--so it dropped its company-wide performance reviews--for the time being. The goal is for Google employees to focus their time on "pressing, mission critical issues amid the coronavirus pandemic."

Many alcohol producers have started making hand sanitizer. That requires retraining and retooling. And yet, businesses are doing it on the fly. Talk about agility! 

And car manufacturers switched their production lines to make ventilators and masks. Again, think of what you need to do to accomplish that. Companies are working with more flexibility than ever before. These skills will help companies be successful in the future.

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THOSE WITH NO INTEREST IN THE HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE:

So far, there have been 2,500 coronavirus deaths in the megalopolis where the epidemic started. But in the past week, only one new infection was reported in Wuhan. On Wednesday, 63 days after the lockdown, all 171 bus lines were back in operation. From Saturday, March 28, onward, six of seven subway lines will be running according to the normal timetable.

Train travel to Wuhan is soon to be up and running as well. So migrant workers who were with their families elsewhere when the lockdown was announced will be able to come back to their jobs.

China has introduced a national health code system, which assesses individuals according to basic health information and travel history. Many Chinese citizens have been issued QR codes, which store information about their identity and their phone number as well as basic health information and travel history. Before taking public transport, people now have to scan their codes.

Despite these precautionary measures, many Chinese are skeptical. "Even the generation of retirees who were once so loyal to the party don't believe this nonsense," said one Wuhan blogger. "China is trying to prove to the West that it now has zero infections. But it is no more than a slogan."

The US-based Chinese blogger and biochemist Fang Zhouzi has also slammed the official data from Beijing. He said on Twitter that "nobody should believe the local authorities, who are lying about the statistics for the sake of the economy." He said that only when the postponed National People's Congress and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference took place again would he believe that the epidemic had really come to an end. For, he said, "the life of the people is not as valuable as that of those who represent the people."

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IT'S PRACTICALLY SCIENTIFIC...:

They all agreed that strict, nationwide social distancing is necessary. Because the virus spreads person to person when in close contact, the best way to stymie it is to keep people apart. 

"Pretend that everyone -- 100% of people everywhere -- would stay at home, not go out, and not get near anyone else," Roberts said. "There would be no new infections. Infections are caused by the actual infectivity of the virus, the number of contacts, and the length of contacts. Social distancing decreases the last two components of that."

An infectious-disease epidemiologist from Washington, DC -- whose identity is known to Business Insider but is being kept anonymous because her employer has prohibited her from commenting publicly on the coronavirus -- said she would immediately issue "a full, nationwide stay-at-home order for a minimum of two weeks but ideally four weeks." 

That's necessary, she said, because the US's response is now "behind the virus' spread." Officials did not mobilize the use of public-health tools like testing and contact tracing quickly enough, she added -- if they had, "perhaps strict stay-at-home orders wouldn't be needed." 

A person with coronavirus infects two to two-and-a-half other people, on average. Since it's so new, people have not yet developed immunity, which means it can spread easily.

"Exponential growth is actually a very normal pattern for pathogens that a population has never seen before," Meghan May, a professor of infectious disease at the University of New England College of Osteopathic Medicine, told Business Insider. "If no one has any onboard immunity to prevent them from becoming infected, every infected person has the potential to infect many others, who each have the potential to infect many others."

In that sense, she said, the coronavirus is "not necessarily acting in an unusual way -- we are just having an unusual experience because so much spread had already occurred in the United States by the time we were able to routinely test for it."

The US has lagged behind other countries when it comes to coronavirus testing. The CDC at first developed its own test, which proved faulty, and the subsequent test-kit shortage has prevented officials from understanding the severity of the epidemic in a timely manner.

More than a month after the US's first coronavirus case was detected, fewer than 500 tests had been done, according to the COVID Tracking Project. As of Friday, 626,000 tests had been completed.

Within a week of its first confirmed case, South Korea's disease control agency had summoned 20 private companies to the medical equivalent of a war-planning summit and told them to develop a test for the virus at lightning speed. A week after that, the first diagnostic test was approved and went into battle, identifying infected individuals who could then be quarantined to halt the advance of the disease.

Some 357,896 tests later, the country has more or less won the coronavirus war. On Friday only 91 new cases were reported in a country of more than 50 million.

The US response tells a different story. Two days after the first diagnosis in Washington state, Donald Trump went on air on CNBC and bragged: "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming from China. It's going to be just fine."

A week after that, the Wall Street Journal published an opinion article by two former top health policy officials within the Trump administration under the headline Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic. Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb laid out a menu of what had to be done instantly to avert a massive health disaster.

Top of their to-do list: work with private industry to develop an "easy-to-use, rapid diagnostic test" - in other words, just what South Korea was doing.

It was not until 29 February, more than a month after the Journal article and almost six weeks after the first case of coronavirus was confirmed in the country that the Trump administration put that advice into practice. Laboratories and hospitals would finally be allowed to conduct their own Covid-19 tests to speed up the process.

Those missing four to six weeks are likely to go down in the definitive history as a cautionary tale of the potentially devastating consequences of failed political leadership. Today, 86,012 cases have been confirmed across the US, pushing the nation to the top of the world's coronavirus league table - above even China.

More than a quarter of those cases are in New York City, now a global center of the coronavirus pandemic, with New Orleans also raising alarm. Nationally, 1,301 people have died.

Most worryingly, the curve of cases continues to rise precipitously, with no sign of the plateau that has spared South Korea.

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HALF RIGHT; THAT'S WHY THEY'RE TRUSTWORTHY:

Far-right talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, like President Donald Trump, has been a frequent source of nonsense during the coronavirus crisis: on his February 24 show, he equated COVID-19 with "the common cold." And on Friday, the 69-year-old Limbaugh argued that health officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) cannot be trusted because they are part of "the Deep State" and have an anti-Trump agenda.

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HIS MASTER'S VOICE:

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DOWN TO EARTH:

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THE ORANGE CEILING:

Former Vice President Joe Biden bests President Donald Trump by nine points in a 2020 ballot test, in the first Fox News Poll since Biden became the de facto Democratic nominee.

In a head-to-head presidential matchup, Biden is up by 49-40 percent over Trump, a lead that is outside the poll's margin of sampling error.

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SURVIVING THE XI-TRUMP PANDEMIC:

Presumably we're all consuming mass amounts of media.  Got any suggestions?

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60-40 NATION:

[58] percent of Americans said Trump was initially "too slow to take action to address the problem," while 38 percent said he "acted with the right amount of speed" and 4 percent had no opinion on the issue.

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PLAYING TO HIS BASE:

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ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

Since the COVID-19 outbreak began in Wuhan, China, journalists at the biggest U.S. news organizations have diligently reported on the many dangers posed by its rapid spread.

Yet even as entire states - like California and New York - shut down, many Americans still don't believe that the coronavirus is as big a deal as the news media has made it out to be. A poll conducted in mid-March found that only 56% of Americans consider the coronavirus a "real threat," and that 38% believe that it has been "blown out of proportion." A more recent poll similarly found that only 57% of U.S. residents see the coronavirus as "the biggest concern facing your family right now."

It's true that there has been a lot of coverage. The New York Times has consistently documented the spread of the virus across the globe, making it clear just how infectious the disease is.

More recently, the Washington Post published a compelling series of visuals demonstrating the importance of "flattening the curve" so that the effect of coronavirus in the U.S. would be less severe.

The coronavirus has been the main story on television news, too, and the social distancing related to the virus has affected the way television news gets produced.

People aren't missing the coverage, either: Online news consumption has gone up drastically since the beginning of March.

Still, a significant portion of the American people are unprepared and uninformed about the pandemic journalists have warned about for months, which is now upon us all. Why is that? As someone who researches the relationship between journalism and the public, I have observed a growing consensus within journalism scholarship around a possible answer: People simply don't trust what they're reading and hearing.

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THE XI-TRUMP PANDEMIC:

From the first reported case, on Dec. 1, 2019, until Jan. 5, 2020, the Chinese government engaged in a cover-up. As National Review's Jim Geraghty recounted, in early January, China's National Health Commission forbade reporting on the new disease. On Dec. 30, Dr. Li Wenliang sent a message to other physicians warning that a SARS-like illness was spreading. He was arrested (along with six others) and obliged to apologize for "spreading rumors." (Dr. Li Wenliang died of COVID-19 on Feb. 7.)

Throughout early January, as cases mounted, the Chinese government issued soothing statements suggesting that the new pneumonia was not transmitted from person to person. As late as Jan. 15, after Thailand and Japan had reported their first cases, official government sources were denying that human-to-human transmission had been proven, saying the risk was "low."

Only on Jan. 23, six weeks after the first case, did China announce a quarantine of Wuhan. By that time, millions had come and gone from the city during the busy holiday season, and cases had been reported in Vietnam, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea.

USA. President Donald Trump engaged in a series of soothing statements himself. On Jan. 22, after the first U.S. case was reported, he said, "We have it totally under control." On Feb. 2, he boasted that "we pretty much shut it down coming in from China." Twice in February, the president promised that "when we get into April, in the warmer weather -- that has a very negative effect on that, and that type of a virus." On Feb. 26, when cases topped 60, Trump claimed, "We're going very substantially down, not up." In South Carolina, on Feb. 28, Trump likened criticism of his handling of the pandemic to impeachment, saying that "this is their new hoax." On March 6, he continued this theme. Facing criticism for his false statement that "anyone who wants a test can get a test," Trump tried to string together a "fake news"/Ukraine theme. He said the tests were "beautiful," adding, "The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect, the transcription was perfect, right?" Asked whether he was concerned about the virus's spread on March 7, the president said, "No, we've done a great job."

Throughout the first 10 weeks of the pandemic, Trump praised China effusively, as The Bulwark's Jim Swift chronicled. On Feb. 7, for example, Trump said: "Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation. We are working closely with China to help!" A few days later, he shared with Fox News his view that "China is very, you know, professionally run, in the sense that they have everything under control. I really believe they are going to have it under control fairly soon."

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THE PRINCIPLED UNCERTAIN:

 Icelandic data -- they are trying to sample a significant percentage of their population -- suggest an asymptomatic rate of about 50 percent.  To be clear, none of those results are conclusive and they all might be wrong.  (And we should work much harder on producing better data.)  But so far there is no particular reason to think those estimates are wrong, other than general uncertainty.  You would have to argue that the asymptomatic cases usually test as negative, and while that is possible again there is no particular reason to expect that.  It should not be your default view.

Marc Lipitsch put it bluntly:

The idea that covid is less severe than seasonal flu is inconsistent with data and with the fact that an epidemic just gathering steam can overwhelm ICU capacity in a rich country like Italy or China.

So I give this scenario of a very low fatality rate some chance of being true, but again you ought not to believe it. 

MORE:

AS AMERICA'S FIRST week of social distancing drew to a close, I called Dr. Min Pok-kee, who heads up the Covid-19 response in Daegu, the South Korean city hit hardest by the epidemic. Though Min usually works as a dermatologist, he has spent the past six weeks as a volunteer civil servant, commanding an aggressive public health strategy that is now seen as a national model for slowing transmission of the coronavirus. In fact, on Tuesday, President Trump called his South Korean counterpart, Moon Jae-in, to request medical equipment and support.

Min has been following the situation in the United States, where his daughter attends college. But he seemed surprised, and alarmed, by what I told him--especially about the shortage of diagnostic tests and hospital beds. We spoke in Korean; his account has been translated, edited, and condensed. [...]

The United States is very late to this. And the president and the officials working on it seem to think they aren't late. This has both national and global repercussions. It isn't enough for Korea alone to survive. In the US, Trump is talking about taking care of his own, but the entire world has to respond in sync.

The key to keeping mortality low is very quickly differentiating between mild and severe forms of the virus. Those who are young or have no underlying disease should be separated from those who are older or have an underlying disease, and this latter group must be tested and given a chest x-ray as a matter of course. There is one category of young people, in their 40s or younger, who are asymptomatic but lose their sense of smell or taste. They should be examined for the coronavirus.

Trump has spoken dismissively about testing because of his ego. As we scientists see it, he's motivated by pride. The doctors in the US all know that this sort of testing is appropriate.

How are existing facilities in the US going to handle all the infected patients? They can't. So then it's inevitable that you become like Italy. Korea also could have become like Italy, but we assessed the situation very quickly. What should the United States do? For now, social distancing must be instituted comprehensively, and field hospitals must be built.

The UK offers a cautionary tale. Its first response was to say that people would develop herd immunity, though it switched course a few days later. I'd already been concerned about the capacity of the British system, and this made me very worried. Herd immunity only works if you have a vaccine and 85 to 90 percent of the population is inoculated. Right now, in the face of an infectious disease with such a high mortality rate, for the UK to resist acknowledging the reality of the virus could translate into tens of thousands of deaths. It was unthinkable for a government to put out such nonsense. We in Korea were thinking, "Are these people in their right mind?"

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KILL THE PATIENT; SAVE THE ECONOMY:

When the price of oil cratered because of the coronavirus crisis and a price war between Russia and Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration proposed spending $3 billion to fill up the U.S.'s strategic oil reserve and save the oil industry--a line item that didn't make it in the Senate's final stimulus bill, but that the administration plans to continue to pursue. Some environmentalists have a different suggestion: With the price of oil so low, the value of fossil fuel companies has also cratered, so the government could just take ownership of the reeling fossil fuel industry, dismantle it in a way that's fair to workers and states, and help speed the necessary transition to a zero-carbon economy.

"The most effective course of action right now would be a public takeover of the major fossil fuel companies, with a plan to wind down their operations and create new ventures that would create millions of good green jobs and help combat the climate crisis," Mitch Jones, the policy director of the nonprofit Food & Water Action, wrote in a statement on Wednesday.

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TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:

Frugal innovation is the need of the hour in the U.S., with the economy decimated by coronavirus. U.S. firms need a frugal and agile mind-set to not only survive during the current health crisis but also to innovate for success in the recessionary post-coronavirus word. A drastically new world where cost-conscious customers will seek more value for less.

Sadly, corporate America is ill-equipped to innovate frugally and flexibly. Indeed, frugal innovation, which emphasizes speed, agility, and affordability, is the antithesis of how corporate America innovates, instead relying on insular R&D labs, big budgets, and rigid go-to-market processes. [...]

2. REUSE EXISTING RESOURCES

Rather than reinvent the wheel, companies must reuse and repurpose widely available resources (technologies, data, assets) to generate more value. For example, when GE Healthcare engineers developed a low-cost portable ECG device, the MAC 400, that is sturdy enough for use in rural India, they didn't create a new printer from scratch. Instead, they adapted a printer used in buses to print tickets and integrated it into the MAC 400.

Likewise, the Delaware-incorporated startup AlgoSurg uses a patented AI-technology to quickly convert 2D X-ray images into 3D images without requiring an expensive CT scanner or MRI machine. AlgoSurg's cloud-based software enables orthopedic surgeons to virtually simulate bone surgeries very precisely so they can do their operations faster, better, and cost-effectively.

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THE rIGHT DOES NOT BELIEVE IN NEIGHBORS:

As Rod Dreher noted, it is embarrassing that Andrew Cuomo of all people has succeeded in positioning himself as more pro-life than Rusty Reno. The current crisis, in fact, affords Christians an unprecedented opportunity to persuasively articulate our defense of life to a culture that might at last be ready to listen. For the first time in decades, our materialistic society has been put on pause, and people are looking around and asking themselves, "What is this all for? What is the value of human life? Am I willing to sacrifice my freedom to protect my neighbor? Can I sacrifice some comfort to protect life?" As Christians, we can use this opportunity to seize the megaphone and remind those around us of the transcendent value of human life and the frivolity of the kind of "freedom" that our culture so values. Or, we can squander this moment and go down in history as those who stood callously by and said that a few hundred thousand more American deaths is a small price to pay for maintaining our standard of living.

Now, at this moment, a chorus of objections will be raised.

Some will protest that there won't be hundreds of thousands of deaths, and anyone who says so is a fear-monger. My hope too is that the death toll will be relatively low, but if so, it will only be because we listened to the so-called "fear-mongers" or because we got incredibly lucky. The vast majority of the epidemiological data points to a grim scenario in the absence of dramatic intervention. To be sure, models are sometimes wrong and experts are not omniscient, but we rarely hesitate to cut our beach vacations short when a major hurricane--something far less predictable than an epidemic curve--is on its way, so it's hard to see the rational ground for blithely ignoring the threats of this other force of nature--infinitesimally smaller, perhaps, but far more deadly.

More substantively, perhaps, many will protest that it is unfair to characterize this as a tradeoff between economics and human life--even if that is exactly the way that many have carelessly articulated it, not least our own President. After all, economics is all about the preservation and flourishing of human life, or at least it's supposed to be. It has no plausible justification except to promote life, health, and well-being; as John Ruskin argued powerfully in Unto This Last?, in the last assessment, there is "no wealth but life," and our political economy must be ordered accordingly.

So what does this mean for our situation? If people lose jobs, they lose their livelihood. If they lose their livelihoods, they are much more likely to get sick and die--perhaps at some point far in the future, but still, why should we save 500,000 people now if it means losing five million newly-impoverished Americans to drugs, despair, or starvation in the next ten years. Can we knowingly sacrifice some lives now in order to protect other goods, including perhaps more lives later?

This is, I fear, something of an academic question at the current juncture--if public health experts are to be believed, this is not really a question of whether we lose jobs or lose lives, but whether we lose lots of jobs and few lives, or lots of jobs and lots of lives. It is difficult to believe that the economy would continue to properly function in the scenario of unmitigated spread toward which so many contrarians like Reno are goading us.

People are not going to casually ride subways and go out for dinner if hospitals are overflowing and people are dying in the streets. If proactive government action (which oddly now counts as "panic" in the eyes of many) didn't shut down the businesses, real, society-wide panic would likely do so soon enough, and in considerably more disorderly fashion. Still, it has been long since we as a society have stared the prospect of mass death in the face, and many, understandably, cannot imagine or believe that we could find ourselves in that position in a few weeks time. So let us ask the question: if we could choose between losing lots of lives now and losing lots of jobs now, how should we choose? It is an important and serious moral question, one that should not be lightly dismissed. How might we begin to answer it?

The first thing we must do is get clear on what question exactly is being asked of us. Reno seeks to frame the issue in terms of the Christian duty to be fearless in the face of death, but this, I think, rather misses the point. The call to social distancing is an appeal first and foremost not to self-love, but to love of neighbor. Even if you are young and healthy and more than happy to endanger your life by going about your daily routine, that does not give you a right to endanger others, which is precisely what an invisible, often asymptomatic virus may cause you to do. Christians are called to faith and hope, to be sure, but also to love. Traditionally, Christians have taught that the sixth commandment imposes on us not merely an obligation not to kill but to do whatever we reasonably can to preserve life: "The duties required in the sixth commandment are, all careful studies, and lawful endeavors, to preserve the life of ourselves and others..." (Westminster Larger Catechism, Q. 135). So the proper framing of this question is: "is it more loving to our neighbor to increase the number of people who will get sick and die in the near term, or to decrease our economic well-being in the near-term (thus, presumably, increasing sickness and death in the long run)?"

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THE SHEPHERD VS THE CROOK:

On her 80th birthday, Pelosi finds herself in a now-familiar position: Shepherding a critical piece of legislation -- in this case the $2 trillion stimulus package aimed at keeping the economy running during the coronavirus pandemic -- to passage under a tight deadline. [...]

Pelosi, who described herself in a recent interview with The Washington Post's Karen Tumulty as "a troublemaker with a gavel," counts the Affordable Care Act, Dodd-Frank financial reform, repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as just some of the major legislative accomplishments during her time as speaker.

And that's not even counting her decision to (eventually) spearhead the effort that led to the impeachment of President Donald Trump, only the third time in American history a president has been impeached by the House. (Like Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton before him, Trump was not convicted and removed from office by the Senate.)

How you interpret that legislative legacy very likely depends on which side of the partisan political aisle you call home. Republicans have long villainized Pelosi as an out-of-touch San Francisco liberal who believes more government and higher taxes are the answer to every problem facing the country. And even some Democrats -- especially younger liberals over the last few years -- have criticized Pelosi for her allegedly too-politically-calculating approach to legislating and running the House.

But what no one -- from Pelosi's most ardent supporters to her most vitriolic critics -- can deny is the power that she wields. "Total assassin. She's an assassin," former Trump White House political adviser Steve Bannon allegedly remarked while watching an early back-and-forth between the speaker and the President.

What Bannon grasped -- and what many Republicans, not to mention many of Pelosi's one-time challengers within her own party, have failed to -- is that the California Democrat is an unapologetic and unflinching political genius.

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"...BUT WHAT COULD ANY OTHER PRESIDENT HAVE DONE DIFFERENTLY?":

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WHAT GOOD IS TRADE?:

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INNOVATION-R-US:

According to a letter from the company's founder to its employees, James Dyson says the company's goal was "to design and build an entirely new ventilator, The CoVent. This new device can be manufactured quickly, efficiently and at volume. It is designed to address the specific clinical needs of Covid-19 patients, and it is suited to a variety of clinical settings."

Working with The Technology Partnership, the company says it is working on how to quickly produce the ventilators once they are approved by the UK government. Dyson also says it will donate an additional 5,000 units to different countries. Those ventilators will come in handy in places that are quickly running out of beds. It's not an exaggeration to say that this is a life and death effort, as hospitals have become crowded with Covid-19 patients. 

Yes, Dyson is in the business of making things. It also happens to have a history of inventing new ways to build common devices that we use every day. More important, however, is the company's willingness to move quickly towards solving a massive problem. 

Right now, life seems like it's at a standstill as communities literally shut down. People are either working from home or out of work entirely. All of that waiting can make it seem like we're living in slow motion. Except, we don't have time to waste. 

In fact, that's a valuable lesson for every entrepreneur and small business owner right now--that we can solve big problems and do hard things when we move quickly in the right direction. Even if your company isn't building ventilators or donating masks, there's a good chance that there's something you can do right now for your team, your company, or your customers. 

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IT'S IMPOSSIBLE TO OVERSTATE DEFLATION:

Around the world, more people are living with more space at home than at any other time in history.

This may be surprising - cramped, dingy rooms are as familiar in Shanghai as they are in London. But on average, the space per person in Chinese homes has increased by nearly 30 square metres in 40 years, and by four square metres in the UK over the past 15 years.

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THE PROTO-YANG GANG

This is not the time to prosecute the case against austerity again, but one upshot of a high employment recession was how the injustice and inadequacy of our welfare settlement was largely shielded from wider political attention. Suffice to say, the Coronvirus recession will not follow that path - data published yesterday on the US economy showed the largest rise in unemployment registrations in American history and by a huge margin too. That is but one straw in the wind of course and our economic response is certainly more advanced. Nevertheless, a lot of British workers have already lost jobs and despite the Chancellor's efforts, that trend that will surely continue. Ignoring systemic welfare reform, even in the medium-term, will not be an option this time.

You could hear the faintest acknowledgement of this in Rishi Sunak's suggestion yesterday that the self-employed and employee tax regimes need better harmonisation. But if we are to look again at the tax side of this equation we must also acknowledge how the self-employed lack the same pension, sickness and family leave entitlements as employees. 'Portable benefit' options that integrate these entitlements with workers who lack an employer to distribute them do exist, with trade unions often providing the intermediary infrastructure. But the truth is even these solutions would work better in a world where we all enjoyed a minimum entitlement to fall back upon in times of crisis.

Welfare universalism is not a new idea. Nor, to be blunt, is it a cheap one. Yet in a swoop, it does away with the punitive conditionality and pettifogging bureaucracy that have ruled roughshod over poorer people's lives this past decade and which curtail the Chancellor's responsiveness now. It also, as we reminded ourselves when clapping for the NHS last night, speaks to an "all in it together" solidarity that healthy societies need, both in crisis and beyond.

When we finally get through this, the Government should embrace it and explore a universal basic income.

Like Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair is not much interested in ideas. But, like her also, he knows that ideas matter in politics. They chart a course, provide a narrative and rally the troops. So Blair wants some. He encourages those who trade in them. Intellectuals are summoned to Downing Street. Potential themes are market-tested. Friendly thinkers are nourished. The project is to define the Project-in a way which has some chance of becoming public currency.

Enter the Third Way, today's candidate for this role. [...]

As Giddens whisks us briskly through the issues, each one is given the Third Way synthesis. Mix individualism and collectivism, market and state, private and public, right and left. Forget about the old antagonisms. The new politics is pick-n'-mix. The question is whether this provides the basis for a modern progressivism of the centre left.

Giddens is persuasive that it does, although all the issues he touches on-from globalisation to welfare, environment and the family-are offered as no more than trailers for work still to be done. It really is open season for the think-tankers, and even political theorists. The challenge is to synthesise without being synthetic.

The Third Way is necessarily radical, although as Giddens points out "the equation between being on the left and being radical no longer stands up, if it ever did." It is about finding ways to harness a capitalist market economy-to which there is no alternative-to a politics of individual "emancipation" as Giddens describes it. This means an active role for a clever state enabling individuals to cope with social change, but more through new kinds of partnership than through a traditional collectivism.

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TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:

The price of producing renewable energy globally has been continually falling, and it's getting harder and harder for fossil fuels to compete.

In Australia, renewable energy already supplies 23% of the national electricity market (NEM).

Globally, renewable energy is the cheapest source of power generation. Increasingly, it will be more so. It is a matter of time. In China, this will happen as soon as 2027. In Australia it's already the case. Wind and solar are already cheaper, even unsubsidised.

Inside the industry, gas executives see very little demand for their product beyond 30 years from now. The proposed Burrup project in Western Australia has a 50 year life. The Northern Territory fracking projects have a minimum 30 year life. But for both, it's unlikely they will see their 30 year life out.

Prior to covid-19, the gas industry saw increasing demand for their product, even if only within the 30-year projected life span. It will take a long while for all of us to crawl out of the economic effects this virus will heave. It will last for years.

Then there is another issue: there's an oversupply of gas. The global gas glut will not resolve now until about 2030. It was previously projected to resolve by 2025. So why would any gas company look to build new gas now?

The largest cost of renewable energy is the financing. Running a solar plant, for instance, costs very little. In our current climate, financing costs are declining for renewables as interest rates fall, while financing costs for fossil fuels are going up. This is because the debt markets have lost patience. They are downgrading the debt of oil and gas companies.

Currently, the U.S. fracking industry is experiencing a flood of bankruptcies, and soon, some US$86 billion dollars of debt will be due. This will be very difficult for the industry to manage. When enough fracking companies go broke in the U.S., this will force prices back up, at which point gas will become uneconomic to produce.

Whether prices are low or high, it is not good for the fracking industry. Too low and they can't make money, and too high and they lose market share to renewables.

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THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

Senior Israeli officials on Friday denounced the firebombing of a Border Police jeep outside the West Bank settlement of Yitzhar earlier that morning, with IDF generals referring to the incident as a "serious terror attack," while government ministers refrained from such a designation, condemning it instead as an "act of violence."

Interim Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to the attack -- in which three firebombs were thrown at the vehicle -- as a "double crime" as the police are involved in the country's efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic.

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THE ANGLOSPHERIC DIFFERENCE:

From one point of view, Freud's work was an attempt to transplant the idea of the unconscious mind posited in Schopenhauer's philosophy into the domain of science. When Freud originated psychoanalysis, he wanted it to be a science. One reason was because achieving scientific standing for his ideas would enable them to overcome the opposition of moralising critics who objected to the central place of sexuality in psychoanalysis. Another was that, for most of his life, Freud never doubted that science was the only true repository of human knowledge. Here he revealed the influence of Ernst Mach (1838-1916), an Austrian physicist and philosopher whose ideas were pervasive in Freud's Vienna. For Mach, science was not a mirror of nature but a method for ordering human sensations, continuing and refining the picture of the world that has been evolved in the human organism. If we perceived things as they are we would see chaos, since much of the order we perceive in the world is projected into it by the human mind.

Here Mach--like Schopenhauer--was developing the philosophy of Kant, who believed that the world we perceive is shaped by human categories. As is generally recognised, Kant is one of the greatest philosophers of the Enlightenment, who saw his task as rescuing human knowledge from the near-destruction that it had suffered under the assaults of David Hume, an Enlightenment philosopher of equal stature. What is less commonly understood is that Kant's impact was to reinforce the scepticism he aimed to resist. Taking his point of departure from Kant, Schopenhauer came to the view that the world as understood by science was an illusion, while for Mach it was a human construction. It was against this background that Freud took for granted that science was the only source of knowledge, while at the same time accepting that science could not reveal the nature of things.

It is a paradoxical position, as the development of Freud's thought illustrates. If science is a system of human constructions, useful for practical purposes but not a literal account of reality, what makes it superior to other modes of thinking? If science is also a sort of mythology--as Freud suggested in his correspondence with Einstein--what becomes of the Enlightenment project of dispelling myth through scientific inquiry?

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WHEN THE WHITE SWAN COMES HOME TO ROOST:

NEW LONDON -- The mail is taking a day or two longer to get to residents at Woodcrest Village these days, but it's not the fault of the Postal Service.

"We keep all mail and packages quarantined outside for 48 hours because we don't have the cleaning products to wipe them down. We're running out of cloth wipes, and I think we're down to two cans of Lysol," said Bethany Brenner, executive director of the 44-unit facility, which was started by her mother in 1989.

That's the least of their worries, however. The facility is running out of protective gear like gowns and masks that the staff needs when dealing with residents who have symptoms of COVID-19 -- including the 11 residents who live in the memory care unit and can't always understand what is happening.

"We were having a meeting discussing this. The health services director said the gowns have to be a moisture barrier, so you can't just use paper. ... But we just received a bunch of paper tablecloths that have a plastic barrier; I said, 'Maybe if we start duct-taping them, we can use them as gowns,' " Brenner said Wednesday. "We've resorted to eBay, wherever we can get anything. We went online to order welder face shields."

At the heart of their problem is the lack of tests to know who actually has COVID-19 and who has only an unrelated cough and fever. Without that knowledge, they have to assume that every person with symptoms is "a positive" -- infected with coronavirus -- and act accordingly.

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LIFE IN THE BUBBLE:

A narrative rocketed around social media earlier today: An Imperial College study said that COVID-19 could kill 500,000 Brits, but in recent testimony, Neil Ferguson, the head of the group behind the study, put the number below 20,000. Clearly the lying alarmist was walking back his ridiculous predictions!

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DONALD WHO?:

Vastly expanded unemployment benefits through June for anyone who's lost income due to COVID-19.

$100 billion for hospitals.

A change in the "checks for everyone" program to insure that low-income workers get the full $1,200.

Removal of a provision that would have excluded nonprofits that receive Medicaid funding from the small-business grants.

A ban on the Trump family getting aid.

Oversight on the corporate lending facility.

$150 billion for state and local governments.

$25 billion for food stamps.

$30 billion for schools.

Love 'em or hate 'em, this is good work from the Democratic Party. 

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THE BASE:

Although conspiratorial claims by Wiles often target foreigners and LGBTQ people, he rarely misses an opportunity to include Jews. On February 14 he claimed that the transgender rights movement was "a Zionist plot" involving "putting specific things in food, in drink" in order to "make all of humanity androgynous."

Wiles is also an avid supporter of President Donald Trump and once insisted that impeachment proceedings against the president were part of a "Jew coup," warning that the actions would lead to a "civil war."

TruNews received press credentials during Trump's January visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and have claimed several other invitations from the White House.

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EMBRACE THE QUIETUS:

President Donald Trump will hear recommendations from the White House coronavirus task force this weekend on plans to "open the country up" as the economy continues to strain under the pandemic.

The new guidance on how to kickstart the economy will come days after the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the U.S. surpasses China or Italy, making it the country with the largest outbreak in the world.

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EVERYBODY WANTS TO KILL SOMEBODY:

"Right now, these conservatives are making Democrats, who are pro-choice, actually look more pro-life," Scarborough said Thursday morning. "Because they are only worried about the unborn. It is the born -- it is the weakest among us, it is senior citizens -- who they are ready to euthanize, because they want Boeing's corporate earnings to not dip too low."

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AMERICA FIRST!:

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WHITE SWAN:

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CREDIT WHERE IT'S DUE:

"The LameStream Media is the dominant force in trying to get me to keep our Country closed as long as possible..."

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NOTORIOUS FOR HOAXES!:

The director general of the Health Ministry on Thursday said he was "not optimistic" that the healthcare system would be able to deal for much longer with the scope of the coronavirus pandemic.

"I cannot say I'm optimistic about the ability to treat everyone who needs it," Moshe Bar Siman-Tov told Army Radio. "The number could be huge. That is why we are pressuring for the implementation of drastic steps."

Bar Siman-Tov noted that the total number of patients in the country was doubling every three days, and that much is still unknown in dealing with the COVID-19 disease.

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PLANNED DE-PARENTHOOD:

Especially troubling is that some of the people who are making the case that we should intentionally concede lives to the coronavirus--especially the lives of the elderly, the disabled, the vulnerable, the infirm--are prominent figures in the pro-life movement. Even floating as a trial balloon the idea of giving up on the elderly will do damage to the credibility of the pro-life cause. Is that what pro-life leaders and pundits want?

To put it another way, COVID-19 has served as a helpful barometer of who is capable of logical thought and who has allowed their brains to be broken by President Trump. Because a number of people who have built their careers on being pro-life have abandoned that, converting to prosperity gospel by way of Bishop Trump.

Consider the argument posed by Rusty Reno in the pages of the magazine he edits, the largely conservative Catholic First Things. Reno criticizes New York governor Andrew Cuomo for saying "I did everything we could do. And if everything we do saves just one life, I'll be happy." To Reno, Cuomo's statement represents a "disastrous sentimentalism" because "there are many things more precious than life."

Yes, there are causes worth laying down one's life for. But to think of today's social-isolation practices in those terms is a bizarre and extreme misjudgment. In his topsy-turvy interpretation, Reno believes the temporary stay-at-home measures that New York has put in place to protect lives are actually allowing a fear of death to displace other things we should care about. Claiming that the news media and public-health officials are "conspir[ing] to heighten the atmosphere of crisis," Reno says that Satan would approve and that "the mass shutdown of society to fight the spread of COVID-19 creates a perverse, even demonic atmosphere."

Asking people to stay at home during a time of crisis is demonic?

This is the same First Things that was once one of the leading magazines for pro-life intellectual writing?

The same First Things whose writers railed against the "death panels" in Obamacare?

The same First Things that not long ago pushed a manifesto whose signatories said, "We stand with the American citizen. We reject attempts to compromise on human dignity."

What happened?

Responding to Reno's article, Erick Erickson writes:

It is sad to see a religious publication try to cast the extraordinary effort of stopping a global pandemic [as] "demonic." But that is what it does. It cheapens the effort to save lives as sentimental and essentially advances a materialistic approach of wanting to make money and let people die because people are always going to die. Now, of course, the writer knows he is doing this so he chooses to denounce materialism while essentially advocating for it.

And in the liberal Catholic magazine Commonweal, Jared Lucky powerfully rebuts Reno's argument, pointing out that "today's quarantine restrictions complement centuries of Christian response to epidemics." His whole article--especially his devastating rejection of Reno's invocation of Solzhenitsyn--is worth reading, but here's just a taste from the conclusion:

Few Christians would ask for this cup, but we must drink it--to serve God by serving our neighbors, and to grow closer to God through the contemplation of death. . . . Quarantine is . . . a costly act of service that meets the urgent human needs of our neighbors. That service may involve going to work--at a hospital or a testing center--or staying home. But make no mistake: these sacrifices are not a surrender to death. They are a sacrifice to the God who gives life.

While some of the criticism of social distancing from Republicans and conservative commentators surely is motivated by real fears about the economy, you need not be a cynic to wonder whether it is mostly driven by a desire to protect the president.

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THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS IS THE ABSENCE OF HILLARY:

-- With very few exceptions, statewide turnout in the 2020 Democratic primary has been higher than 2016.

-- Suburban areas have seen some of the sharpest turnout increases -- though these areas tend to have higher population growth, they've also trended blue in general elections, perhaps a positive indicator for Democrats looking to the fall.

-- Meanwhile, some rural areas that have been trending away from Democrats in places like North Carolina and Oklahoma saw turnout lag behind 2016.

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DON'T NEED A WEATHERMAN...:

America's top infectious disease expert had a stark response Wednesday when asked about a timeline for when the coronavirus outbreak can be considered contained enough so that some semblance of normal life can be resumed.

"You don't make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline."

That's what Dr. Anthony Fauci told CNN's Chris Cuomo during an interview Wednesday night.

"You've got to be realistic," Fauci said. "If you keep seeing this acceleration, it doesn't matter what you say. One week, two weeks, three weeks -- you've got to go with what the situation on the ground is."

The number of new cases in New York jumped 20% on Wednesday, to 30,811, with nearly 300 deaths. Nationwide, COVID-19 has infected 55,243 people and caused at least 802 deaths.

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IT'S A HOAX; GET BACK TO PARTYING:

Ventilators have become a limited commodity in Louisiana as the number of coronavirus patients who require the machinery practically doubled between Tuesday and Wednesday. According to the Louisiana Department of Health, 94 coronavirus patients required ventilators on Tuesday. On Wednesday, that number shot up to 163 patients.

"If our growth continues, we could potentially run out of vents in the New Orleans area in the first week of April," Edwards said during a Wednesday press conference. "This is a very very difficult item to find because everyone is looking for them all at the same time."

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THE SALUTARY FASCIST INTERLUDE:

In his delegation as Lord Protector he was not always wise; the rule of the Major-Generals in the middle of the Protectorate allowed some of the most serious fanatics in the Kingdom to exercise power; sometimes Cromwell would call time on their activities, but on other occasions their fanaticism was allowed to run its full course. Lay's account of the trial and punishment of the self-advertising Quaker James Nayler -- who called himself the "Prince of Peace" and of whom Lay says "humility was not prominent in his make-up" -- reminds us of the savagery of the period, and how Cromwell's belief in freedom of conscience was not shared by many who acted in his name, nor enforced by him.

When, in the summer of 1653, Cromwell dismissed the Rump, telling them (in one of his nest jokes) that "ye have no more religion than my horse" and, anticipating modern times, that they were "sordid prostitutes", he considered Providence had given him that power; Lay says he might just as easily have said "convenience". Certainly England had to be governed, and in the vacuum that exist- ed after the end of the monarchy and, now, after the end of the Rump, a Protector was perhaps the easiest way to do it. [...]

Great questions remain, which seem beyond the scope of Lay's book to answer. By the standards of the time, was the regicide that was essential to the conception of the Protectorate justified? Many thought not; but Charles Stuart's behaviour throughout his reign, and his determination even when worsted in the First Civil War to turn the tables on his opponents made it hard to keep him alive. As it was, after his death there was a non-stop succession of conspiracies to bring the Protector down and put Charles II back in power.

Was Cromwell a good leader? He had his faults, and Lay denominates them; but the mess in which England found itself was of Charles I's making, and whoever had to clear it up had an unenviable job. Cromwell, thanks to his natural authority, and whatever the shortcomings in his natural ability, was undoubtedly the right choice at the time.

And, as would be seen within 30 years of the Stuarts returning to the throne, they were just in- capable of behaving themselves. Perhaps the finest legacy of the regicides and the Protectorate was that the Glorious Revolution proceeded without a King being decapitated (even though James II and VII probably asked for it far more than his errant father had), and -- the minor irritations of 1715 and 1745 notwithstanding -- at last settled the question of the English Reformation that had started in 1534.

The growth of British power and prosperity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was in great measure built on those secure foundations. Cromwell's part in leading the great change of culture was absolutely fundamental to that.

---

WHEN NANCY'S NOT YOUR LEADER YOU SETTLE FOR FAILURE:

The drive by leaders to speed the bill through the Senate was slowed as four conservative Republican senators from states who economies are dominated by low-wage jobs demanded changes, saying the legislation as written might give workers like store clerks incentives to stay on unemployment instead of returning to their jobs since they may earn more money if they're laid off than if they're working. They settled for a failed vote to modify the provision. [...]

Democrats said the package would help replace the salaries of furloughed workers for four months, rather than the three months first proposed. Furloughed workers would get whatever amount a state usually provides for unemployment, plus a $600 per week add-on, with gig workers like Uber drivers covered for the first time.

Businesses controlled by members of Congress and top administration officials -- including Trump and his immediate family members -- would be ineligible for the bill's business assistance.

Schumer boasted of negotiating wins for transit systems, hospitals and cash-hungry state governments that were cemented after Democrats blocked the measure in votes held Sunday and Monday.

---

HILLBILLY FEVERS:

In the UK, the British National Socialist Movement has disseminated a poster on messenger app Telegram titled "What To Do If You Get Covid-19". The advice it proffers is about as far from socially beneficial as you could imagine, encouraging those infected to visit local mosques and synagogues, as well as spending time in 'diverse neighbourhoods' and on public transport. Anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiments interwoven with the intended exploitation of a national health crisis.

Blaming migrants for the virus has also been a feature of this crisis. The British alt-right figure Paul Joseph Watson, for instance, authored an article stating that the coronavirus 'patient zero' in Italy was a Pakistani migrant who refused to self-isolate after testing positive for COVID-19. However, there is no solid scientific evidence to support this claim, with the authorities continuing to encounter difficulties in tracing an identifiable 'patient zero' in Italy, which now has a COVID-19 death toll of 7,503.

In the United States, far-right actors are capitalising on the coronavirus outbreak to peddle a variety of divisive and unfounded conspiracies. American neo-Nazis on social media platforms such as Telegram - including 'accelerationists' who seek to bring an end to liberal democratic society and the establishment of a white ethno-state - are deep in discussion over how to exploit the COVID-19 pandemic in order to recruit young people to their cause.

---

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

---

DONALD WHO?:

Trump's Department of Justice has long sought to punish "sanctuary" jurisdictions, those hundreds of cities, counties, and states that refuse to enforce federal immigration laws. Most sanctuary jurisdictions prohibit local law enforcement from asking about immigration status, arresting people because of their immigration status, or informing the federal government when it detains a person who happens to be undocumented. These jurisdictions also forbid jails from extending the detention of unauthorized immigrants so federal agents can take them into custody.

The DOJ has no constitutional authority to simply commandeer local police into enforcing immigration law. So, instead, the agency sought to cut off sanctuary jurisdictions from the leading source of federal funding to local law enforcement, the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, if they did not explicitly agree to cooperate with immigration enforcement. This move would deprive these jurisdictions of millions of dollars in federal funding each year, potentially coercing them into abandoning their sanctuary policies.

Before Tuesday, the 3rd, 7th, and 9th U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals had already found that the Justice Department has no authority to slash funding for sanctuary cities and states. Only the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the DOJ rule in a frightening decision that suggested the federal government can require local cops to serve as immigrant enforcers. The 1st Circuit rejected that logic, siding against the DOJ rule in an opinion by Judge Bruce Selya (a Ronald Reagan appointee) joined by Judge David Barron (a Barack Obama appointee) and Souter. (Justices can sit on federal courts of appeals after they retire from the Supreme Court.)

The fundamental problem with the Justice Department's attack on sanctuary jurisdictions, Selya explained, is that it's totally unauthorized. Federal agencies don't have the power to impose new conditions on funding to the states. Rather, Congress must authorize those conditions, within constitutional limits that bar the "commandeering" of state officials. 

---

THE PRO-CHOICE MOVEMENT:

Brit Hume told his Fox News colleague Tucker Carlson that it was "an entirely reasonable viewpoint" to propose that older Americans risk their lives in order to save the economy. And the network's senior political analyst suggested that anyone who disagrees does so because they dislike President Donald Trump. 

After all, they're just a bunch of cells...

---

A RACE, NOT A RELIGION:

[O]n 20 March, the Times of Israel reported that Internal Security Minister Gilad Erdan had decided to release 500 Israeli prisoners into house arrest in an effort to reduce the risk of a coronavirus outbreak in the country's prisons. Erdan apparently accepted the recommendation of acting Israel Prison Service chief Asher Vaknin. Not a single one of the 5,000 Palestinian prisoners held by Israel -- including 180 children, 43 women and 430 detained with neither charge nor trial --is being released, though, not even those with critical health conditions.

---

PLANNED DE-PARENTHOOD:

Republicans who once decried the Affordable Care Act as a harbinger of "death panels" are now toying with cutting out the middleman and sentencing the country's oldest to death without bothering with any panels at all. Yes, the same Republicans who once soberly asserted things like "there is a provision in [Obamacare] that anyone over the age of 74 has to go before what is effectively a death panel" are now cheerfully suggesting that a few dead elderly people would be a small price to pay to protect the U.S. economy in the coming weeks.

---

WHAT BODIES?:

New York City is running out of room to store the bodies of those who've died from COVID-19, a respiratory disease caused by a novel coronavirus that emerged less than 3 months ago.

The city has become an epicenter for the spread of the novel coronavirus due its role as a global hub of travel, tourism, and commerce.

On Wednesday, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said during a press conference that the state has more than 30,000 confirmed cases -- in part due to dramatically expanded testing -- of which about 17,000 are from NYC.

"We're not slowing it, and it is accelerating on its own," Cuomo previously said, in another press conference on Tuesday. He added that the state's projection for hospital beds it will need at the peak of the outbreak will be around 140,000 -- though it currently has only 53,000.

---

MAGA!:

The US is now on pace to have the worst coronavirus outbreak anywhere... pic.twitter.com/GgtcF4788J

— Mark MacKinnon (@markmackinnon) March 25, 2020

---

THANKS, NANCY!:

---

SELF-REFERENCE ALERT:

I'm not judging anyone else, but when VT shuts down--at 5pm tonight--I am exempt because my job is essential and critical to health and safety. Only when the dogs want a walk do I feel so needed....

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) March 25, 2020

---

DOES HE KNOW THAT "LOCO PARENTIS" IS LATIN, NOT LITERAL ENGLISH?:

In an interview Sunday night, Falwell said somewhere between several hundred to more than 5,000 students are expected to live in campus dorms, where they will continue coursework online rather than in classrooms.

Meanwhile, hundreds of professors and instructors without a valid health exemption will come to campus to hold office hours.

"I think we have a responsibility to our students -- who paid to be here, who want to be here, who love it here -- to give them the ability to be with their friends, to continue their studies, enjoy the room and board they've already paid for and to not interrupt their college life," Falwell said.

---

RALLYING AROUND THE FLAG:

Latest Gallup Poll Gives Trump His Best Job Approval Numbers Ever -- Shows Massive Bump In Support Among Independents. https://t.co/e3ljkl7umZ

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) March 25, 2020

---

LIKE HAVING A TEEN-AGE GIRL AT THE HELM:

The latest evidence of the delicate, sometimes impossible, line that these governors have been forced to walk came on Tuesday, when the president took swipes at New York Governor Andrew Cuomo during a televised town-hall-style program with Fox News.

"I watched Gov. Cuomo [today] and he was very nice," the president said of the man steering the state hardest hit by the virus. Cuomo had, moments earlier, conducted a press conference in which he scoffed at how insufficient the administration's help in procuring ventilators had been. 

"He had a choice... He refused to order 15,000 ventilators," Trump said, referencing a recent column by Betsy McCaughey, a hardened Trump supporter and longtime health-care policy crusader on the right. "It says that he didn't buy the ventilators in 2015 for a pandemic, established death panels and lotteries instead." 

Trump would go on to insist he was not blaming Cuomo. But the magnanimity was short lived. "It's a two-way street," Trump said of having the feds help states with a coronavirus response policy. "They have to treat us well, too." 

Under normal circumstances, such a screed would be cast aside as a classic bit of Trumpian shit-talking and thin-skinness. But these aren't normal times. And Trump's comment resonated not only for how callous it seemed but also for how manufactured the evidence was that he was citing.  

---

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

Dr. Fauci discusses new lifesaving face mask: pic.twitter.com/Z41ZAfTkBn

— Sandy Wood (@SandySWood58) March 24, 2020

---

THANKS, NANCY!:

Senate Republicans on Tuesday were characterizing the direct assistance as "snap loans" instead of grants, to avoid the stigma of the proposal being called a bailout, but it has yet to be determined how the government would be compensated.

The bill bans stock buybacks for any corporation that accepts government loans during the term of their assistance plus one year.

Schumer added a provision to ban businesses owned by the president, vice president, members of Congress and the heads of federal executive departments from receiving loans or investments through the corporate liquidity program. The prohibition also applies to their children, spouses and in-laws.

The legislation creates an inspector general and oversight committee for the corporate assistance program, similar to what was done for the Troubled Asset Relief Program of a decade ago, according to the senior administration official. [...]

Republicans were furious when the negotiations dragged past McConnell's stated goal of passing a bill on Monday and Democrats twice blocked procedural motions to move on to a largely GOP-drafted stimulus plan. Democrats temporarily blocked Republicans from speaking on the Senate floor, a tactic Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) could be overheard calling "bull----."

"Are you kidding me?" a visibly enraged McConnell asked from the Senate floor. [...]

The Fed loan program, which Democrats bashed as a corporate bailout program and Mnuchin's "slush fund," was one of the biggest sticking points during the late rounds of the negotiations. 

Republicans argued the Treasury Department needed $500 billion to help the Fed inject enough liquidity into the economy, while Democrats were enraged over a provision they said would let Mnuchin provide loans and guarantees and then wait six months before disclosing who got the assistance. Schumer noted in a letter to his caucus on Wednesday morning that they were able to get that provision removed. 

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) touted that Democrats were able to get "better oversight," including that "you can't just ... go ahead and give all your corporate executives, based on the back of the taxpayers, free carte blanche."

---

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

---

IN FAIRNESS, THE CROSSES PROVIDED SOCIAL DISTANCE:

One moment during President Donald Trump's Fox News appearance on Tuesday served as the starkest example yet of how much he does not understand the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic: He urged Americans to flock to churches on Easter Sunday, just 19 days away.

Trump told Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer he selected Easter as the day he wants businesses to reopen, saying he'd like to see "packed churches all over our country" -- the exact type of large gatherings that the CDC, the WHO, and Trump's top health advisers have all urged suspended to help stop the spread of the virus.

"I would love to have it opened by Easter," Trump said, speaking about when he sees the country returning to normal life.

"That would be a great American resurrection," Hemmer replied.

---

---

HAIL TO THE CHIEF:

Democrats had taken particular issue with the potential conditions imposed on ailing corporations that receive aid from a pool of $500 billion in taxpayer money. On Tuesday, Pelosi said "things like a $500 billion slush fund are really insulting." 

The speaker said she was encouraged by the Trump administration agreeing to add more oversight to the funding pool, which she called a "big change." 

"We think the bill has move sufficiently to the side of workers," she said.

---

AND THEN HE WONDERS WHY PEOPLE PUNCH HIM IN THE FACE?:

On March 5, Paul was the only senator to vote against the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, the first congressional response to the coronavirus outbreak. That bill contained $8.3 billion for a variety of responses, including funding dedicated to research and development of vaccines and $2 billion for federal, state, and local governments to prepare for and respond to the growing outbreak.

On Wednesday, Paul made headlines when he attacked immigrants as "non-people" when discussing an amendment to the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

"My amendment says that if you want to apply for money from the government through the child tax credit program -- this is money that the government gives to people -- that you have to be a legitimate person, you have to have a Social Security number," Paul said on the Senate floor.

"We've been talking about this reform for a decade now and we never seem to be able to get it passed. It has nothing to do with not liking immigrants, it has to do with saying taxpayer money shouldn't go to non-people," Paul added.

While Paul was waiting for his test results to come back, he worked out at the Senate gym and attended a meeting with other senators. After Paul's positive test, both Republican senators from Utah -- Mitt Romney and Mike Lee -- placed themselves in quarantine due to their recent proximity to Paul.

---

THANKS, UR!:

Eleven states and the District of Columbia have opened enrollment under the Affordable Care Act to allow laid-off workers to get subsidized health insurance, and the Trump administration, which has been gunning to repeal the law, is considering opening the federal exchange to new customers. [...]

There are also an estimated 17 million people already uninsured but eligible for marketplace coverage, according to a recent study from the Kaiser Family Foundation. That study found that more than a quarter of those people were eligible for a bronze plan that would cost them nothing in premiums after federal subsidies were applied (they would still have a high deductible). A broad special enrollment period could protect that group from big bills, too, if they contract the disease known as Covid-19.

"If open enrollment were more broad, and there were fewer barriers, that could make it easier for people to sign up," said Cynthia Cox, a vice president at Kaiser and a co-author of the study.

People in so-called short-term, limited-duration health plans -- those offering skimpier coverage that doesn't meet all the requirements of an A.C.A. plan -- could also sign up. Although the administration has encouraged the availability of alternatives, many may now want more comprehensive coverage.

Washington State, which has been enrolling people since March 10, has had 2,9730 residents indicate they plan to sign up as of last Thursday. About 500 have actually done so. In New York, during the first four days of the enrollment period, 150 people signed up, according to state officials.

In Rhode Island, which has had open enrollment since March 14, "we've had a really strong response," Ms. Lang said. As of Friday, 233 people had enrolled, with a further 150 or so in the process of doing so.

For Americans whose income has dipped low enough to qualify them for Medicaid, that program accepts applications all year long. In the 36 states that expanded their Medicaid programs under the Affordable Care Act, that means anyone now earning less than 138 percent of the federal poverty level -- about $17,000 for a single person and $35,500 for a family of four, annually -- can qualify for coverage right away. Eligibility rules vary in the other states. Many people who have lost their jobs and have very low incomes are now likely to qualify.

Marketplace coverage is more complicated: In addition to the need for an enrollment period, enrollees typically qualify for financial assistance with their premiums based on their income declared on their last tax return. Individuals can use a different estimated annual income but may have to provide documentation that their circumstances have changed, Ms. Cox said.

Anyone who already has marketplace coverage but has had an income change can return to the marketplace to apply for an increased subsidy. This is true even in states that have not yet established a special enrollment period.

Initially hesitant to reopen the federal marketplaces, health insurers recently began pushing for a special enrollment period to insure people who suddenly find themselves without a job. 

---

TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:

---

THAT WAS EASY:

Hubei province said Tuesday that travel restrictions on the capital city of Wuhan will be removed starting Apr. 8, which would end a lockdown that began on Jan. 23. 

The virus first emerged in the city in late December, and has since killed more than 2,500 people there. That means Wuhan alone accounted for nearly 80% of the country's total deaths of more than 3,200. [...]

New confirmed virus cases in China have dwindled in the last several days, with all or the majority now attributed to travelers returning from overseas. 

Travel restrictions for the rest of Hubei province will be lifted starting Wednesday, while schools will remain closed until further notice, according to an online announcement.

In another sign that the virus appears to be under control in China, Shanghai announced Monday that beginning Tuesday, the city's emergency response level to the coronavirus will be lowered by a notch -- down from the most severe level. Zhejiang, the third-largest province by exports, also lowered its emergency response level on Tuesday by one notch.

---

WITH GREAT POWER COMES GREAT RESPONSIBILITY:

President Trump has touted the decades-old anti-malaria drug chloroquine and its less-toxic cousin hydroxychloroquine as promising treatments for the COVID-19 coronavirus in press briefings and on Twitter, despite warnings from top federal health officials that the drugs aren't approved to fight COVID-19 and could have harmful side effects. The publicity has led to a run on the drugs, leaving people who use it to treat lupus and arthritis unable to fill their prescriptions. There have also been deaths.

---

INTEGRITY AND COMPETENCE ARE NO-NO'S:

He also admitted that when Trump says something that's not true, "I can't jump in front of the microphone and push him down. Okay, he said it. Let's try and get it corrected for the next time."

Multiple people close to Trump told the Times' Maggie Haberman that they consider such remarks as digs against Trump, and they don't know how Fauci has enough time to even sit down for an interview. Although he may be getting under Trump's skin, the president is aware that a vast majority of the public trusts Fauci, and the benefits of having him in his orbit outweigh the negatives, the Times reports.

Fauci was absent at Monday evening's coronavirus briefing...

---

...AND CHEAPER...:

Dimensions-wise, the Nexo is on the generous side of compact, with seating for five. Maximum range is 380 miles, and Hyundai says a full replenishment of the Nexo's 3-hydrogen tanks takes just five minutes. [...]

The Nexo, however, definitely feels like a vehicle of the future. It's extremely rich with technology, especially in the driver-assistance department. Even the "base" Blue version has active blind spot monitoring with rear cross-traffic alert, adaptive cruise control with stop/go, lane-following assistance and a forward-collision warning system with automatic emergency braking. There's also a digital driver information display, retracting door handles and driver attention monitoring. The Limited trim has a self-parking feature and a 360-degree camera system.

---

The Ballad of Fred Hersch from Swell Cinema on Vimeo.

I hope everybody is safe and healthy and will remain that way. This is an unprecedented challenge to everyone on the planet and we all need resilience and resourcefulness going forward. Starting this Sunday, every day at 1pm EST,10am PST, 7pm in Europe I will do a live mini concert of piano music from my home. You can see and hear the concert here: https://www.facebook.com/fredherschmusic You don't have to "be" on Facebook or sign in to anything to access the concert. Just click the image below. And if you "like" the page you will be notified each day. Wishing you all strength and much love, Fred

---

JUST GIVE THE CITIZENRY MONEY:

Here's the thing. The Depression was over in the UK by 1934. The country was, already by then, back to 1929/30 levels of output.As we know the American disaster toiled on rather longer.

So, what were the big differences?

Firstly, the Americans took the decision to allow the banking system to go bust. As Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz showed in A Monetary History of the United States, this was the single most disastrous decision of the time. There seems little chance contemporary politicians would let the same thing happen now, and more fool them if they did.

While America was expanding the reach of government, the UK cut state spending and put the budget into surplus. At the same time it devalued the pound. This is known as "expansionary austerity" - and it worked pretty well. [...]

As to our current problems. The cause is entirely different, it is not economic in nature in the slightest. In technical terms it is "exogenous", from entirely outside the economy and nothing to do with any economic structure or policy we have been following. It is not, therefore, a crisis of capitalism any more than it's a crisis, or endorsement, of socialism or any other -ism. It simply is and is something to be dealt with. The only useful question is, well, what is to be done?

Useful answers including not making the mistakes of the past. Don't allow the financial system to fall over. Don't try to fix or raise wages artificially, don't start to plan and enforce cartels, even if they're of labour not producers. And yes, once the crisis passes, we will need to cut government spending if only because of all the debt we have accrued dealing with the cursed virus.

The Great Depression had two primary causes: an excessively tight monetary policy caused NGDP to drop in half between 1929 and early 1933, and then a set of New Deal policies such as the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) slowed what would have been an extremely fast recovery after the dollar was devalued in 1933.

I've already talked about how reasoning from a price change contributed to the tight money policy of 1929-33. Most pundits and policymakers looked at the rapidly falling level of nominal interest rates and assumed that money was easy. In fact, rates were falling because of a decline in demand for credit, caused by the Depression itself. Money was actually very tight.

---

WHAT DOES THE rIGHT HAVE TO DO WITH DEMOCRACY?:

---

GOP TO THE TEA PARTY, "DROP DEAD":

Tx Lt Gov Dan Patrick says grandparents would be willing to die to save the economy for their grandchildren pic.twitter.com/wC3Ngvtsbj

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) March 24, 2020

---

THE ART OF THE DEAL:

---

ALL NANCY'S CRAZIEST IDEAS ARE POPULAR:

Nearly three-quarters of voters say companies receiving bailout money should commit to no layoffs, while just 11 percent oppose that requirement, according to the Data for Progress polling. And it's an area where, at least among voters, there is agreement across the political spectrum: 82 percent of Democrats, 61 percent of independents, and 70 percent of Republicans agree on no layoffs.

---

WHO NEEDS SOFT POWER?:

Several months before the coronavirus pandemic began, the Trump administration eliminated a key American public health position in Beijing intended to help detect disease outbreaks in China, Reuters has learned.

---

TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:

Even as many Americans are increasingly seeing gas prices at the pump under $2 a gallon, the drop could soon steepen. That's particularly true in the Great Lakes region, where prices could soon be 99 cents a gallon at hundreds of gas stations.

Here's how Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, figures that: The Chicago spot price, the reference point for prices in surrounding states, has plummeted to 34 cents a gallon. It's a nickel to a dime higher in other regions and 52 cents on the West Coast. Add on gas taxes, he says, and you're getting close to where retail prices could soon be.

---

THE FUNNIEST PARAGRAPH IN HUMAN HISTORY:

---

RED IN TOOTH AND CLAW:

One of the most mind-boggling aspects of the coronavirus crisis in America is the fact that one of the wealthiest countries in the world doesn't have the basic medical supplies necessary to deal with the situation. In addition to a lack of beds, hospitals across the nation have nowhere near the number of ventilators and masks doctors require to both do their jobs and protect themselves. While governors have pleaded with Donald Trump to help them obtain such equipment, he's literally told them they're on their own, seemingly forgetting the fact that he's the one with the power here. For instance, Andrew Cuomo can't invoke the Defense Production Act, which allows the federal government to take some control of the private sector to ensure production of materials relevant to national defense, but Trump can. And yet he's chosen not to. Why? Because corporate CEOs don't like the idea, and the president is more concerned with keeping big business happy than keeping Americans alive.

---

WHAT? NO BILLIONS FOR DONALD?:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said her caucus would unveil legislation Monday "that takes responsibility for the health, wages and well-being of America's workers." It would include, according to a statement from the California Democrat: 

Requirements that corporations getting bailout money shield workers' wages and benefits, and limits on CEO compensation, stock buybacks and layoffs. 

Direct payments to Americans, along with expanded paid family and medical leave.

Grants and loans to small businesses. 

Strengthened unemployment insurance. 

Increased funding for hospitals and tougher safety standards for health-care workers. 

Language urging President Donald Trump to invoke the Defense Production Act to manufacture more health-care supplies. 

$40 billion in funding for schools and universities along with student debt relief. 

More funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and other food assistance programs. 

State election grants and a national requirement for 15 days of early voting and no-excuse absentee voting as fears grow about coronavirus spreading at crowded polling sites.

---

GETTING THE TEA PARTY VOTE:

Several Democratic senators have teamed up to propose giving Social Security beneficiaries an extra $200 per month in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic devastation it is causing.

The plan was put forward last week by Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass.; Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.; and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.

The extra income would apply to all Social Security, Veterans and Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, beneficiaries.

The bonus money would continue through the end of 2021, adding up to an extra $4,000 over the next two years.

---

MADAME PRESIDENT:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on Sunday that House Democrats would draft their own coronavirus stimulus bill after all sides failed to reach a deal on a massive proposal being negotiated in the Senate. [...]

Her comments came just after Pelosi left a meeting with the lead negotiators scrambling to piece together Congress's third relief package in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has tanked markets, led to mass layoffs and encroached on virtually every facet of American life.

The meeting in McConnell's office also featured Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and White House Legislative Affairs Director Eric Ueland. It marked the first time that Pelosi had met face-to-face with McConnell and the other Republicans, who negotiated with Schumer and Senate Democrats while the House was in recess last week.

Pelosi and Schumer, however, have been working hand in glove throughout the process. And Pelosi has vowed all along that House Democrats would craft their own alternative to the Republicans' initial $1 trillion proposal, if only to promote their own stimulus vision as the talks evolved.

---

IT'S ALWAYS FREEDOM V. SECURITY...:

...the beauty of the Anglosphere's resolution of the problem is that republican liberty optimally balances the two.

---

WHEN YOU'VE EXHAUSTED THE PEOPLE'S TRUST:

Republicans mostly caved in on the Democratic demands, but their price was an increase from $200 billion to $500 billion in the loans for big corporations. You might wonder why there was a price for this stuff. Why did Republicans have to be talked into it in the first place? There was some muttering about not trusting the states to disburse the unemployment insurance money, but in the end it was just because they're Republicans. Putting corporations first is in their DNA or something.

Oh, and the $500 billion loan pool would be under the control of the Secretary of the Treasury and would have virtually no strings attached. It's just a giant slush fund that the Trump administration can do anything with. Does anyone think for a second that Trump wouldn't use this as leverage to help his friends and punish his enemies? Of course he would.

This was the straw that broke the camel's back. Democrats were willing to vote for the loan pool, but they weren't willing to make it a Trump slush fund. Even West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who's conservative enough that he could pass for a Republican most of the time, was apoplectic: "They're throwing caution to the wind for average workers and people on Main Street and going balls to the wall for people on Wall Street," he said.

---

THE rIGHT IS THE lEFT:

A study conducted by the Scripps Research Institute conclusively demonstrates that the virus causing the global pandemic: SARS-CoV-2 and the disease called COVID-19 is of natural origin. [...]

Unfortunately, senior figures based in both China and the U.S. have been posting 'fake news' about either the origins of the coronavirus or inferring that the virus is some kind of biological warfare weapon.

Take, for example, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. military brought coronavirus to Wuhan, albeit without providing any evidence (as ABC News has reported). In addition to this, China's ambassador to South Africa has tweeted that the virus was not necessarily "made in China". Again, no scientific evidence has been provided to support this assertion.

In the U.S., many far-right political movements have attempted to use the coronavirus pandemic as a means to propagate various theories relating to societal collapse, biblical rapture, or even the beginning of a race war (The Guardian presents a round-up of these movements and the ideas they are professing).

---

ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul's father, former Texas Congressman Ron Paul, penned an article titled "The Coronavirus Hoax," just six days before his son became the first U.S. senator to test positive for COVID-19.

---

POLITICS, NOT MEDICINE:

---

...AND CHEAPER...:

[R]esearcher Michael Zarnstorff in New Jersey may have recently made a significant breakthrough while helping his son with a science project. In a new paper, Zarnstorff, a chief scientist at the Max Planck Princeton Research Center for Plasma Physics in New Jersey, and his colleagues describe a simpler design for a stellarator, one of the most promising types of nuclear fusion reactors.

Fusion reactors generate power by smashing together, or fusing, two atomic nuclei to produce one or more heavier nuclei. This process can unleash vast amounts of energy. But achieving fusion is difficult. It requires heating hydrogen plasma to over 100,000,000°C, until the hydrogen nuclei fuse and generate energy. Unsurprisingly, this super-hot plasma is hard to work with, and it can damage and corrode the expensive hardware of the reactor.

Stellarators are devices that use external magnets to control and evenly distribute the hot plasma by "twisting" its flow in specific ways. To do this, stellarators are outfitted with a complex series of electromagnetic coils that create an optimal magnetic field within the device.

"The twisted coils are the most expensive and complicated part of the stellarator and have to be manufactured to very great precision in a very complicated form," physicist Per Helander, head of the Stellarator Theory Division at Max Planck and lead author of the new paper, told Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory News.

The new design offers a simpler approach by instead using permanent magnets, whose magnetic field is generated by the internal structure of the material itself. As described in an article published by Nature, Zarnstorff realized that neodymium-boron permanent magnets--which behave like refrigerator magnets, only stronger--had become powerful enough to potentially help control the plasma in stellarators.

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THANKS, UR!:

[T]he air campaign has cost the Russian military at least nineteen manned aircraft (eleven helicopters and eight airplanes) between 2015-2018, leading to the deaths of twenty-three crew and thirty-seven passengers.

For comparison, between 2014 and 2020, the U.S. military lost two aircraft in anti-ISIS operations in Syria: an F-16 jet in 2014 due to an accident shortly after takeoff and a V-22 tilt-rotor in a hard landing in 2017.

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TRUMPBOT FLU?:

White supremacists discussed plans to weaponize coronavirus via "saliva," a "spray bottle" or "laced items," according to a weekly intelligence brief distributed by a federal law enforcement division on Feb. 17. 

Federal investigators appeared to be monitoring the white nationalists' communications on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app that has become popular with neo-Nazis. In the conversations, the white supremacists suggested targeting law enforcement agents and "nonwhite" people with attacks designed to infect them with the coronavirus. 

"Violent extremists continue to make bioterrorism a popular topic among themselves," reads the intelligence brief written by the Federal Protective Service, which covered the week of Feb. 17-24. "White Racially Motivated Violent Extremists have recently commented on the coronavirus stating that it is an 'OBLIGATION' to spread it should any of them contract the virus."

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WHEN WE CLAIM TOP SPOT DO WE START CALLING IT THE AMERICAN VIRUS?:

The United States now has the third-highest number of coronavirus cases in the world, following behind only Italy and China, new data shows.

In recent weeks, the spread of COVID-19 has continued to expand across the country, with the U.S. seeing a total of 26,747 confirmed cases as of Sunday morning, according to an online tracker maintained by the Johns Hopkins University. At least 340 of those cases have resulted in death, with New York and Washington state sharing the brunt of those deaths from the new coronavirus, with 94 and 76, respectively.

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THEY LACK THE COURAGE NOT TO PERFORM:

There exists within Christianity a temptation to performative acts that masquerade as fearlessness. In reality, this recklessness represents--as the early church father John Chrysostom called it--"display and vainglory." Look how fearless we are, we declare, as we court risks that rational people should shun. In the context of a global pandemic followers of Christ can actually become a danger to their fellow citizens, rather than a source of help and hope.

Or, put another way, reckless Christians can transform themselves from angels of mercy to angels of death, and the rest of the world would be right to fear their presence.

But just as Christ rejected performative displays, he also rejected cowardice. He demands sacrifice even unto death. Yet taking up one's cross in imitation of Christ means engaging in purposeful sacrifice. This is the risk of the doctor or the nurse who possesses the courage to continually expose himself or herself to deadly disease to care for the sick and dying. This is the risk of the faithful believer who sheds personal protection to care for the least of these so that they are not alone.

And this person does not then walk into church or to church events--or even surround herself with her own family--to prove God's divine protection. Were the men and women who were infected at a church event in Nashville not faithful Christians who were fearlessly serving the Lord? Yet one man's infection still became their infection, and now dozens of people are paying a steep price.  

I know doctors who are separating themselves from their families. They're treating this moment of crisis in much the same way that a soldier treats a deployment. The normal comforts of home are just not available. That's not fear. In fact, they are fearless in their service. It's prudence. They will not impute their personal risk to the men, women, and children in their family and community.

Veterans are instinctively familiar with the distinction between cowardice, courage, and recklessness. A combat operation requires a soldier to expose himself to extreme danger. The coward shuns his duty. The courageous man embraces the mission, yet he also wears body armor, often fights from armored vehicles, uses cover when he has it, and avails himself of as much air support and artillery support as he can. No one would call that "giving in to fear." Instead, his caution is wise. It maximizes the combat power of the individual and helps retain the cohesion of the team.

There was a moment in my deployment when an officer violated every rule of safety and caution. In an ostentatious display of reckless physical risk, he ordered a subordinate to ride with him in an unarmored pickup truck down an "uncleared" road (an uncleared road was a road that hadn't been swept clean of mines or improvised explosive devices). No one applauded his vainglory. They were livid at his carelessness. And he was instantly repentant. He knew what he had done. In spiritual terms, he had climbed to the top of the temple and cast himself off the edge. 

And what is our mission in this time? Shun performative recklessness. Do not presume that our faith makes us immune to the laws of biology and viral transmission. At the same time, believers should not shrink from purposeful and sacrificial personal risk. There may come a time when you must care for those who are sick. Do so without reservation, but do so prudently with the knowledge that you should not impute your risks to others. 

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IT'S JUST ABOUT RACE:

Here's some context, courtesy of the Christian Science Monitor (my italics):

"As in many states, residents in parts of rural, conservative Virginia say they seem to inhabit an increasingly different daily reality than that of urban and suburban districts. That feeling of separation was compounded by last November's Democratic sweep of the state's elected offices. Now residents in Frederick County are mulling a radical proposal: seceding from Virginia and joining neighboring West Virginia."

Apparently Falwell is part of the effort. He's the head of something called "Vaxit," according to Fox & Friends. Whether that's a real organization I have no idea, but that's not what I'm most interested in. I'm most interested in expressing gratitude to the good reverend for admitting that "states' rights" have nothing to do with conservatism.

Think about it.

If the principle of "states' rights" meant what conservatives have said it meant to them, not one of them, not Jerry Falwell Jr. nor anyone calling him or herself a "principled conservative," would dare suggest that a county secede from a state. If states are sovereign, as conservatives have alleged since Strom Thurmond ran as a Dixiecrat in 1948, calling for a county to secede from a state is traitorous. If "states' rights" are as sacred as conservatives have said they are, the idea of secession is an abomination.

In saying counties should leave the state as casually as ordering unsweet tea with his burger and fries, the Rev. Falwell told us without knowing he was telling us that conservatism in theory is authoritarianism in practice. It cannot and will not tolerate democratic change, despite change coming with the blessing of the majority. If the majority rules, Falwell and his confederates will abandon commitments to democracy.

Once you abandon democracy--once you open the door to treason--there's no end in sight. Once it seceded, "the Confederacy began to deny states' rights," wrote James W. Loewen in Lies My Teacher Told Me. "Jefferson Davis denounced states' rights as destructive to the Confederacy. The mountainous counties in western Virginia bolted to the Union. Confederate troops had to occupy east Tennessee to keep it from emulating West Virginia. Winn Parish, Louisiana, refused to secede from the Union. Winston County, Alabama, declared itself the Free State of Winston. Unionist farmers and woodsmen in Jones County, Mississippi, declared the Free State of Jones."

By February 1864, Davis despaired: "Public meetings of treasonable character, in the name of state sovereignty, are being held." Thus states' rights as an ideology was contradictory and could not mobilize the white South for the long haul.

What mobilized the white South was the defense of slavery.

Jerry's kids don't want to be governed by blacks.

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Our top ten bestselling novels now $1.99 for ebook editions! via @melvillehouse https://t.co/hhIqqONQ05 Every Man Dies Alone is a must read https://t.co/ro6LZUTQ6s

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) March 22, 2020

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PURITAN NATION:

 At a time of great uncertainty, even the seasons seem scrambled. Christmas lights in springtime?

Hung high over Main Street in a New Hampshire town, wrapped around a tree trunk in Colorado and fashioned into a heart in Alabama, holiday lights are going back up. As the coronavirus spreads, the displays are providing a bit of emotional and actual brightness. And they're especially easy to enjoy from a safe social distance.

"We live out in the country, but I know you can see them from the highway," said Julie Check, who turned on the white lights that trace the roof line of her home in Eastman, Wis., on Wednesday night. "Anything I can do to make people happy right now, I'm going to try to do."

In Farmington, N.H., a roughly five-block stretch of downtown has been re-illuminated with holiday lights that swoop and zigzag between tall wooden posts. So cherished is the town's 80-year decorating tradition that taxpayers approved spending $11,500 six years ago to erect the posts after the electric company said lights could no longer be affixed to its poles.

"It's a small town; we don't have a lot of traditions. That was one of them, and we just didn't want it to go away," said Lee Warburton, president of the Farmington Preservation and Improvement Organization, which maintains and installs the lights. At his suggestion, the 27 strands totaling 2,000-plus bulbs were tested and turned back on Thursday night.

"It's tough for everybody right now. Everyone is on edge," he said. "We just thought it would be nice to give the folks in town something to smile about."

Police Chief John Drury was all for the idea. He remembers how pretty the lights looked when he first visited the town for a job interview on a December day 20 years ago.

"It was one of the things that actually drew me to this community when I was first looking to be a police officer," he said. "By bringing the lights back, hopefully it gives people the sense of hope that we're all in this together. We'll get through it."

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CHILD CARE SHOULD BE HIS FOCUS, EH?:

Dr. Anthony Fauci has admitted he has been 'walking a fine line' by publicly contradicting President Donald Trump as he leads the team fighting the coronavirus pandemic amid rumors of tension between the pair. 

Telling Trump 'things he doesn't want to hear' was a 'risky business,' the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases said in an interview with the New York Times. 

The respected immunologist was caught smirking at President Donald Trump during a coronavirus press conference on Friday afternoon 

He was also forced to publicly row back on the president's claims that the anti-malarial drug cloroquine offered a potential cure for coronavirus in the latest of a series of public rebukes.

Fauci said that he tried not to 'embarrass Trump' and said that he attempts to deal with the president by 'continually' talking about scientific facts.

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OPEN SOURCE EVERYTHING:

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WELCOME TO THE LEFT, LOU:

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SCIENCE OR DONALD'S GUT?:

Everyone knows that we're facing a real crisis from the coronavirus. But do you know how we got here and what we need to do next? Ron Klain, former White House Ebola Response Coordinator, breaks it down for us: pic.twitter.com/XRkIw2EzM4

— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) March 21, 2020

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THE SPECTER OF LEONARD (self-reference alert):

To enter out into that silence that was the city at eight o'clock of a misty evening in November, to put your feet upon that buckling concrete walk, to step over grassy seams and make your way, hands in pockets, through the silences, that was what Mr. Leonard Mead most dearly loved to do.
    The Pedestrian

Eller says the story was inspired in part by a very odd story by one David H. Keller, "The Revolt of the Pedestrians," published in 1928, but was triggered by two incidents over a span of years in which, while walking late at night with a friend in Los Angeles (with one friend in Pershing Square in 1940; with another on Wilshire Boulevard in 1949), Bradbury was hassled by the LAPD. "Through these experiences," Eller writes, in his charmingly orotund style, "he had come to see the pedestrian as a threshold or indicator species among urban dwellers--if the rights of the pedestrian were threatened, this would represent an early indicator that basic freedoms would soon be at risk."
    -Ray Bradbury, the Pedestrian (John Wilson, 7 . 13 . 12, First Things)

I'm writing this in the midst of the Trump-Xi flu pandemic of 2020, just as things have started to get truly weird. Up to now, we've not been greatly disrupted personally. The Wife and I are both still working at least, though my staff has been cut in half and our delivery stops drop every day. The two younger kids did have school canceled, but supposedly the High School will start tele-learning on Monday. When the Daughter flew home from her internship in DC she was going to be the only passenger on her first flight, so they bumped her to one where she was with ten people. I got to Logan in an hour and forty five minutes and you could race through Boston, there was so little traffic. But all was at least semi-normal. Now the past few days there are governors ordering entire states quarantined and today comes word that Donald is considering a national lockdown and business closure. Amid it all, the one thing that never changes is that I take our two dogs--a twelve year old labradoodle and a one year old sheepadoodle (apparently the former wasn't degrading enough)--for a five to 9 mile walk every day.

Despite our regularity, this has gotten odd too. For one thing, when we do the longer walk we go across the Dartmouth campus, which is now nearly devoid of people. Students were told not to come back from Spring Break and professors and staff told to work from home. Typically, students who miss their own dogs like to say hi to the puppy, but even those you do see just hurry past. Then we go around Occam Pond, past the elementary school, and down a long residential road, all of which are popular running routes. For a few days the number of folks you'd see out swelled--the combination of nice weather (40s in NH in March) and boredom driving them outside. On Wednesday there were tons of little kids on the playground, riding bikes, etc. Then, yesterday, it seems like the numbers dropped and we shifted to lock down mode. There were fewer runners and walkers out than even on a typical Spring day.

Then a police car drove by....

Mind you, I'm not saying I expected him to stop and order us back inside, let alone arrest us, but it did remind me of this spooky Bradbury tale. Set in some kind of post-Apocalyptic 2053, it features Mr. Leanard Mead, the pedestrian of the title, who defies convention by going shank's mare through an abandoned landscape until the day the police arrest him:

"What are you doing out?"
"Walking," said Leonard Mead.
"Walking!"
"Just walking," he said simply, but his face felt cold.
"Walking, just walking, walking?"
"Yes, sir."
"Walking where? For what?"
"Walking for air. Walking to see."

There are other elements involved but this idea--of walking for pleasure--is so transgressive in the prevailing social climate--"In ten years of walking by night or day, for thousands of miles, he had never met another person walking, not one in all that time"--that Mead is sent to the "Psychiatric Center for Research on Regressive Tendencies." Bradbury's story is quite spare and does not really give us any context for why authorities would be so alarmed about someone being out of doors, beyond the fact that no one else is--everyone else seems to be just watching tv. So it is the individualism alone that appears the threat here, or, if you want, Leonard's rejection of the technology that everyone else is content consuming. Of course, there's an immense irony in that 1951 was the year (according to IMDB) that Bradbury began a prolific screenwriting career, including The Pedestrian on his own Ray Bradbury Theater(!), and tv is one of the saving graces of our current crisis...

I actually did experience a not wholly dissimilar encounter when we were really little kids (excuse any false memories that follow). The Other Brother and I were playing in the front yard in East Orange, NJ when a strange looking black and white went by. The driver banged a u-turn and pulled up, at which point we could see that the windshield was odd because bullet-proof glass was bolted over it. The officer told us to go inside and stay and if our parents turned on the radio they'd tell us why. As it turned out, neighboring Newark had exploded in riots.

Nowadays, in the wake of 9-11 and Black Lives Matter, and with a cop in the family, I make sure to wave every time a police car rolls by us--which happens frequently as the walk takes us past the station. And after a period of perplexity, it's gotten to the point where all the local police wave back. So even if our national situations deteriorates further over the next couple weeks, I'm sure they'd be polite and just tell us our walks were done for awhile, not pack me off to a psych ward. But the specter of Leonard does haunt...


    -WIKIPEDIA: Ray Bradbury
    -AUTHOR SITE: RayBradbury.com
    -FILMOGRAPHY: Ray Bradbury (IMDB.com)
    -BIO: Ray Bradbury (Biography.com)
    -BIO: Ray Bradbury American writer (Erik Gregersen, Encyclopaedia Britannica)
    -WIKIPEDIA: The Pedestrian
    -ETEXT: The Pedestrian (Ray Bradbury, 8/07/1951, The Reporter)
    -AUDIO TEXT: The Pedestrian
    -AUDIO: The Pedestrian (YouTube)
    -VIDEO: The Pedestrian from Ray Bradbury Theater (Amazon Prime)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Ray Bradbury: Short Stories Summary and Analysis of "The Pedestrian,/a> (Grade Saver)
    -STUDY GUIDE: Ray Bradbury's The Pedestrian: Summary, Analysis & Theme (Study.com)
    -STUDY GUIDE: The Pedestrian (eNotes)
    -EPISODE GUIDE: the Pedestrian on Ray Bradbury Theater (IMDB)
    -OBIT: Ray Bradbury, Who Brought Mars to Earth With a Lyrical Mastery, Dies at 91 (Gerald Jonas, June 6, 2012, NY Times)
    -OBIT: Ray Bradbury dies at 91; author lifted fantasy to literary heights: Ray Bradbury's more than 27 novels and 600 short stories helped give stylistic heft to fantasy and science fiction. In 'The Martian Chronicles' and other works, the L.A.-based Bradbury mixed small-town familiarity with otherworldly settings. (Lynell George, 6/06/12, LA Times)
    -OBIT: American science fiction author Ray Bradbury dies age 91 (NICK CLARK, 06 JUNE 2012, Independent)
    -OBIT: Ray Bradbury dies aged 91 (The Telegraph, 6/06/12)
    -OBIT: Author Ray Bradbury, who fused sci-fi with morality, dies at age 91 (Agence France-Presse, Jun 7, 2012)
    -TRIBUTE: Ray Bradbury Believed That Stories Could Change Lives,/a>: The author, who died this week at 91, wrote novels and short stories that highlighted the transformative power of a good narrative. (Joe Fassler, June 7, 2012, The Atlantic)
    -REMEMBRANCE: LOVING RAY BRADBURY (Junot Díaz, 6/06/12, New Yorker)
    -OBIT: Ray Bradbury, a passionate sci-fi writer with the gifts of a painter: Ray Bradbury wrote his more than 500 stories, novels, plays, and poems on a typewriter, creating imagery that helped bring sci-fi and fantasy into the mainstream of American popular culture. (Gloria Goodale, June 6, 2012, CS Monitor)
    -REMEMBRANCE: Ray Bradbury vs. Political Correctness: The science-fiction author, who died Wednesday, was a fierce critic of thought-control. (SOHRAB AHMARI, 6/06/12, WSJ)
    -REMEMBRANCE: Ray Bradbury, Pulp God: The fabulist of the Space Age was half doomsday prophet, half man-child. (Bryan Curtis, June 6, 2012, Slate)
    -REMEMBRANCE: Remembering Ray: A visionary science-fiction writer, and a dispenser of good advice. (Ted Elrick, 6/06/12, National Review)
    -REMEMBRANCE: Ray Bradbury, Dead at 91, Taught Generations of Readers How to Dream: The fantasy writer Ray Bradbury scorned the label of "science-fiction writer" and taught generations of readers the benefits of letting their imaginations run wild, writes Malcolm Jones, 6/06/12, Daily Beast)
    -REMEMBRANCE: Ray Bradbury: Finding Our Reflections Where We Didn't Expect Them (PETER SAGAL, 6/06/12, NPR)
    -INTERVIEW: Ray Bradbury, The Art of Fiction No. 203 (Interviewed by Sam Weller, Issue 192, Spring 2010, Paris Review)
    -INTERVIEW: Rocket Man: In conversational orbit with Ray Bradbury (Steven Mikulan, 6/26/04, LA Weekly)
    -ESSAY: The Truth of Ray Bradbury's Prophetic Vision Michael Moorcock: Why Fahrenheit 451 Endures (Michael Moorcock, May 18, 2018, LitHub)
    -ESSAY: Relevance of Ray Bradbury's 'Fahrenheit 451' stressed in HBO film (Mark Dawidziak, 5/12/18, The Plain Dealer )
    -ESSAY: How Runners Are Getting Creative During the Pandemic: With every race canceled, runners face logistical and ethical dilemmas. Some have turned to unusual solutions. (Martin Fritz Huber, Mar 20, 2020, Outside)
    -ESSAY: Outdoor Meccas Are Not a Social Distancing Hack: As wilderness hubs like Bishop and Moab shutter their gates to visitors, what's an outdoor lover to do during a pandemic? We're here to help. (Christopher Solomon, Mar 20, 2020, Outside)
    -ARCHIVES: bradbury (The Atlantic)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Walking to See: Ray Bradbury's "The Pedestrian" (Robert M. Woods, August 17th, 2012, Imaginative Conservative)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Ray Bradbury, the Pedestrian (John Wilson, 7 . 13 . 12, First Things)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Ray Bradbury's Vision of the Dystopian City (Tyler Falk, June 6, 2012, City Lab)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Ray Bradbury Hates Technology: Analyzing "The Pedestrian" (literature Essay Samples)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Has Mankind Really Made Progress? A Critical Analysis of the Characterization,Theme, and Imagery of "The Pedestrian" (lone Star College)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Revisiting Ray Bradbury: "The Pedestrian" (Pat Shand, February 25, 2016, Blastoff)
    -REVIEW ESSAY: Stumbling in the dark: Ray Bradbury's Pedestrian and the politics of the night (Matthew Beaumont, 07 December 2015, Critical Quarterly)
    -REVIEW: of The Pedestrian (Emily Babb, Dystopic)
    -REVIEW: of The Pedestrian (Superkick Writes)
    -REVIEW: of The Pedestrian (Howard Allen, Owlcation)
    -REVIEW: of The Pedestrian (Weekend Notes)
    -REVIEW: of The Pedestrian (Swinfiction) Men with Lit Matches: a review of Fahrenheit 451, The Fiftieth Anniversary Edition by Ray Bradbury (A. W. R. HAWKINS, The University Bookman)
    -REVIEW: of Fahrenheit 451 By Ray Bradbury (Alexander Zaitchik, NY Press)

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With word of a potential national quarantine coming, I thought of this story on my walk yesterday: Ray Bradbury's Pedestrian https://t.co/RJ1AcTFXZN

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) March 21, 2020

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FOLD:

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AN UNFORTUNATE TIME NOT TO HAVE A PRESIDENT:

'Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were -- they just couldn't get him to do anything about it,' one official stated, adding: 'The system was blinking red.'

Officials were first alerted to reports about cases of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China on January 3, after a director at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spoke with Chinese colleagues. 

'Ominous, classified warnings' purportedly put together by the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence began to increase over the course of the month. 

'There was obviously a lot of chatter in January,' one of the officials told The Post. 

Despite this, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar had trouble contacting Trump until January 18. 

Two officials told The Post that when Azar finally got a hold of Trump over the phone and attempted to discuss the coronavirus, 'the President interjected to ask about vaping and when flavored vaping products would be back on the market'.  

Meanwhile, the intelligence reports also warned that 'Chinese officials appeared to be minimizing the severity of the outbreak'. 

But on January 24, Trump took to Twitter to praise China for its 'transparency' about COVID-19 infections.  

'China has been working hard to contain the coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In Particular, on behalf of the American people, I want to thank President Xi,' he wrote. 

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THERE'S NO CONFUSION:

A better question might be whether any Asian-Americans support Trump's use of the phrase. I asked Cliff Li, a Chinese American businessman who heads the National Committee of Asian American Republicans, what he thinks. The group, which supported Trump in 2016 and is likely, Li said, to do so again this year, boasts 10 chapters around the country and has helped the campaigns of GOP candidates, in particular in Florida. [....]

[E]ven Li would not say he agrees with Trump's words. "I wish he didn't say that, because it could cause some racists in the country to misread it," Li said, echoing the concern raised by Alcindor. "I disagree with that if [that is] the result."

Li said he is bothered by some Americans tendency to confuse "Chinese-American" with "Chinese" and is concerned that Trump's words won't help.

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SEEMS A BAD TIME FOR THE lEFT TO BE HATING INNOVATIVE ECONOMICS:

At its best, business can solve very big problems. Arguably the biggest problem today, worldwide, is the onset and rapid spread of COVID-19. Some executives see an opportunity for innovation to lead the way amid these precarious times. 

George Yancopoulos, president and chief scientific officer of biotech company Regeneron Pharmaceuticals, is one such leader. His company announced this week it has developed a promising drug to fight coronavirus, and will begin human trials by early summer. Regeneron has an excellent track record: It created a treatment that drastically reduced the mortality rate in the Ebola virus outbreak that scared the world just a few short years ago. [...]

At around the 22-minute mark Yancopoulos speaks passionately about the collective need across business, industry, health care, and politics to work together for a cure: "We need to encourage the brightest minds to devote their greatest efforts to innovate and invent the solutions to the existential threats facing humanity. ... We are fighting for our very survival. Innovation has saved us before, and that's what we've got to focus on again."

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NO ONE HATES JUST MEXICANS:

GOP county chair says coronavirus in Kansas isn't serious because there aren't many Chinese people there https://t.co/L7BxpyvZKC Remember, it's about the PRC, not the Right hating Chinese people....

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) March 20, 2020

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THANKS, MARTIN:

Finland was once again crowned as the world's happiest country, extending its lead over Denmark and Switzerland, according to a United Nations-affiliated research network.

Finnish contentment stems from high levels of trust, which also underpins solid rankings across the rest of the Nordic region, the Sustainable Development Solutions Network said in the World Happiness Report on Friday.

Reliable and extensive welfare benefits, low corruption, and well-functioning democracy and state institutions are also key, as are a high sense of autonomy and freedom reported by their citizens.

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YOUR NEXT CAR WILL BE A VOLT:

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WHAT THEY MEAN BY "CHINESE VIRUS":

We are assured that such people are just trying to hold the PRC accountable. https://t.co/EO8cda6Uup

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) March 20, 2020

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THE TRUMP BRAND:

So uhhh... that all-senators Senate Health Committee briefing was on 1/24, right? pic.twitter.com/VuIQhClgt1

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) March 20, 2020

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THE SHOCKER BEING THAT HE DIDN'T BLAME THE UIGHURS:

GOP Rep suggests debunked conspiracy theory that coronavirus is a Chinese bioweapon is "worthy of investigation" https://t.co/jWajnemAJZ

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) March 20, 2020

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THE ONLY EXISTENTIAL THREAT IS INTERNAL:

It is the Likud party that has enabled him over the years to chip away brick-by-brick at Israel's democracy, undermine the judiciary, discriminate against Israeli Arabs as well as Jews of color, alienate the American Jewish community, and torpedo any prospect of a peaceful solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. To be sure, the Likud party has long since lost its conscience as it continues to support its leader, whose manipulative skills are surpassed only by his deviousness and ever-insatiable thirst to stay as prime minister to his dying day - to hell with Israel's future.

And what about the other political parties? Why is it that after three elections, there is still no consensus to form a government? Had the business of the state assumed priority and consensus emerged in developing a cohesive strategy on how to deal with the difficult issues the country must grapple with and set aside personal ambition, a government could have been formed following the first election.

But that was not the case. Not a single party has advanced specific policies to address the rampant poverty that affects nearly two million Israelis (representing 23 percent of the Israeli population), half of whom are children, in a country that has, in relative terms, one of the strongest economies in the world.

Not a single party has a comprehensive plan as to how to fix the broken healthcare system in a country that has some of the most advanced scientific and technological research in medicine worldwide.

Not a single party is paying any attention to the continuing discrimination against some Sephardic Jewish communities and especially against Israeli Arabs, who constitute 20 percent of the population. They are accused of being disloyal and their representatives are shunned away from participating in the political affairs of the state; but then they are expected to support the government's treatment of the Palestinians in the territories as the perpetual enemy to justify their draconian policies.

Not a single party is addressing the growing emigration of disillusioned Israelis who are fed up with government's paralysis and corruption and have lost faith in the country's future. The number of those leaving Israel is greater than the number of immigrants into the country that was supposed to be the promised land for the Jews.

Not a single party is trying to remedy the destructively escalating social and political polarization between the secular and the orthodox, between Arab and Jews, between the haves and have-nots in a country that faces mortal enemies in a region awash with instability, violence, wars, and deadly rivalries for regional hegemony.

And above all, not a single party has come up with a realistic plan to end the seven decades old Israeli-Palestinian conflict that has and continues to consume the Israelis from within, having still no end in sight. Not a single leader of any of the parties can say where Israel will be in 10 or 15 years if there is no solution to the conflict with the Palestinians.

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WE'RE TRYING TO KILL THEM:

Facing one of the world's worst outbreaks of coronavirus, Iranians in local communities are coming together to help those affected as the country battles a disease that has claimed the lives of nearly 1,300 people and infected more than 18,000 across the country, according to official figures on March 19.

Doctors, nurses, celebrities, and others have been posting videos and online messages telling citizens to remain home while volunteers have sown masks, sanitized public places, and made care packages that include medicinal alcohol and masks for poorer families.

The private sector is also pitching in with a coalition of private businesses opening a clinic in the capital, Tehran, and donating protective gear to severely strained hospitals facing shortages of materiel due to the outbreak that has claimed the lives of many health-care workers.

A Tehran-based businessman involved with such efforts told RFE/RL that many feel they have to take matters into their own hands because "the government has no money due to [U.S.-led economic] sanctions, no power, and [poor judgement]."

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RUNNING WITH SCISSORS:

I scrapped Twitter for uses of "Wuhan virus" and related terms to figure out how this began. Among verified Twitter accounts, some used geography-based terms in January, but by early February they had all but disappeared.

This is unsurprising. After the World Health Organization (WHO) officially named COVID-19 on February 11, other terms faded, especially misleading terms like "Wuhan flu." As a result, "Wuhan virus" went virtually out of circulation for 45 days of the disease's brief existence.

So what changed on March 9? First, Republican Congressman Paul Gosar announced he was under self-quarantine after interacting with a "Wuhan Virus" patient at the CPAC convention. (Tweet times are in UTC, so Rep. Gosar's Sunday evening tweet is March 9 in these graphs.)

In response, MSNBC's Chris Hayes called the expression "incredibly gross," and he was quickly joined by David Gura and Molly Jong Fast, both of whom called it flatly "racist," each garnering tens of thousands of likes.

The racism proposition turned out to be a powerful "scissors statement." Many on the left found the racism of "Wuhan virus" self-evident, while many on the right found it just as obviously not racist. This culture war skirmish can be seen in the chart below, which plots how many tweets with the geographic terms for COVID-19 also include words like "racist," "bigot," "xenophobic," and "stigmatizing." The orange-coded tweets are talking about the geographic terms, asserting or denying that they're racist, and do not appear in significant numbers until March 9.

Verified users who tweeted "Wuhan virus," "Chinese virus" and similar terms most frequently over the next week include the conservative blog RedState (151 tweets) and Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec (46). RedState's Twitter account had never used one of these terms prior to March 9, and Posobiec had not since February 3.

Usage spiked again after Donald Trump further popularized the term "Chinese virus," tweeting it for the first time on March 16. Trump's tweet has the most likes (325,000) and retweets (72,000) of any tweet to use "Chinese virus" or similar terms. The only tweet even close to this influence is Trump's encore on March 17.

Whether or not anyone saying "Chinese virus" intends it as racist, the term is now used almost exclusively by conservatives who don't mind arguing against commentary that it harms racial minorities.

---

VLAD CAN'T AFFORD HER WITH OIL PLUNGING:

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RATHER THAN CONTRADICT DEAR LEADER:

This secret recording of @SenatorBurr suggests some in the GOP fully grasped how serious COVID 19 would be, but refused to say so publicly -- putting American lives at risk to maintain allegiance to the Trump WH: https://t.co/QJJT2manDT

— Alex Wagner (@alexwagner) March 19, 2020

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IN FAIRNESS, HE HAS DEMENTIA:

---

RETURNING FROM RACE TO RELIGION:

Buried in the development is a history-making nugget: The Joint List of Arab-dominated parties was among those that recommended Gantz to President Reuven Rivlin as the man they wanted to form a coalition. Its 15 votes provided the necessary majority of 61.

It makes obvious sense: The Arab parties want to oust Netanyahu, whose ministers have reviled their lawmakers as traitors. But the referral heralded a breakthrough of integration that has vexed Jews and Arabs since before the state was established more than seven decades ago.  [...]

It's actually not the first time that Arab-dominated parties have supported an Israeli government. However, it doesn't take anything away from this political moment because Israeli politics have undergone tectonic shifts over the past few decades. 

Hadash and another Arab-dominated party, the Arab Democratic Party, backed the government led by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and then, after his assassination, Shimon Peres, from 1992 to 1996.

Their five members were critical ino keeping Rabin from being ousted after he launched the Oslo Accords. The peace deal with the Palestinians spurred the haredi Orthodox Shas party to leave the government in 1993, reducing Rabin's Knesset majority to the bare minimum of 61.

The two Arab parties reaped benefits for their support. Those four years included rollbacks of discriminatory laws and major investment in infrastructure in the Arab sector. 

But Netanyahu's election in 1996, his policy of marginalizing Arab-dominated parties and the second intifada of Arab violence launched in 2000 made those four years of influence for Arab legislators an anomalous blip.

---

DARPA CALLS A TIMEOUT?:

There were no cases of the novel coronavirus in the past 24 hours in Hubei Province, China, including the city of Wuhan, China, where COVID-19 was first discovered, per a post on the local health department's website Wednesday. [...]

Health officials are still trying to trace the source of the outbreak of the new strain of the coronavirus. But the first known case to have been reported appeared in Wuhan on Dec. 1, 2019, according to a study published in the peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet last month.

---

ADULT SUPERVISION:

Angela Merkel doesn't do drama and she doesn't give speeches on TV. So the mere fact that the German chancellor faced the camera across a desk and spoke to the nation Wednesday evening made the gravity of the situation clear. "Es ist ernst," she said--"This is serious"-- and those three bland words had more power than a hellfire sermon. Then she pivoted from statement to plea: "Take it seriously." Quickly, she moved on to historical context, the reason for her unprecedented impromptu appearance: "Since German unification--no, since the Second World War--no challenge to our nation has ever demanded such a degree of common and united action."

Merkel made no specific announcements and called for no nationwide curfews or additional closures. Yet what gave her address its force was her tone, which was direct, honest, and searingly empathic. She laid bare not just the test we all face but also the solace that leadership can provide. Without accusations, boasts, hedges, obfuscations, dubious claims, or apocalyptic metaphors she did what a leader is supposed to do: explain the gravity of the situation and promise that the government's help would flow to everyone who needed it. She gave full-throated thanks to front-line medical workers, assured Germans that there is no need to hoard, and paused to offer gratitude to a group of workers who rarely get recognized by heads of state on national TV: "Those who sit at supermarket cash registers or restock shelves are doing one of the hardest jobs there is right now."

This is a war without a human enemy, and Merkel lay no blame. She asked for the sacrifice of discipline, for heroic acts of kindness. She acknowledged the paradox in calling for solidarity and apartness at the same time. She understood how painful it is that just when people desperately want to come together, families and friends have to endure separation. To Americans, Merkel's appeals to democracy, and her sadness at having to use the full weight of her authority, come as a welcome shock.

---

LUCKY THE VIRUS DIDN'T START IN TEL AVIV...:

What does the term actually mean, and why is there such a gap in the understanding of it?

It comes from an anti-Semitic trope.

The term to "Jew down" was born out of stereotypes formed during medieval times about Jews being cheap or prone to hoard money. Often they were forced into financial occupations and thus were best known as money lenders, leaving them vulnerable to anti-Semitic misrepresentations. Think of portrayals such as Shylock, the villainous lender in Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice."

The term itself means to haggle or bargain for a lower price than originally agreed upon. The Oxford English Dictionary notes the earliest usage of the term came in 1825 and that it was used in 1870 on the floor of the U.S. Congress to describe a bill setting salaries in the military. The legislation supposedly prompted someone to say that Congress is "ready to Jew down the pay of its generals."

The comparable term "gyp" also was born out of a negative stereotype, in this case about Roma -- often derogatorily referred to as "gypsies" and stereotyped as cheap. To gyp someone out of something is essentially to steal it away.

Same deal with the term "Welsh" -- a verb substituted for swindle or cheat -- derived from a stereotype about Welsh people.

But is it always anti-Semitic?

Trenton's Muschal is correct -- the expression probably has been used a million times. Are all the users anti-Semites if they don't know its history?

Historian Deborah Lipstadt's latest book, "Anti-Semitism: Here and Now," includes a chapter on what she calls the "clueless anti-Semite," which is, she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, "the person who engages in anti-Semitism but doesn't even know it."

"Anti-Semitism has gone so deep into the roots of society that people don't recognize that they are engaging in it when they engage in it," said Lipstadt, the Dorot pro­fes­sor of Mod­ern Jew­ish His­to­ry and Holo­caust Stud­ies at Emory Uni­ver­si­ty. This, she hastens to add, does not excuse such behavior.

She calls clueless anti-Semites just as dangerous as extremist anti-Semites, who know exactly what they are saying when they say it. Expressions of anti-Semitism from both "feeds into the society's perception of Jews."

"It is not meant to be made light of," Lipstadt said.

---

DONALD'S GOAL:

Coronavirus Racism Infected My High School https://t.co/mxQ7qM1TI9

— brothersjudd (@brothersjudd) March 18, 2020

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TAX WHAT YOU DON'T WANT:

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OR WHAT THEY CALL HER BEHIND HER BACK:

This morning a White House official referred to #Coronavirus as the "Kung-Flu" to my face. Makes me wonder what they're calling it behind my back.

— Weijia Jiang (@weijia) March 17, 2020

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IT'S AN IDEAL OPPORTUNITY TO IMPOSE A CONFISCATORY GAS TAX:

Saudi Arabia is bracing for a coronavirus-led economic dip on top of possible austerity measures as crude prices go into free fall, as Republican Senators sent a letter to Mohammed bin Salman over his decision to increase oil production. 

Huge losses are expected after the Arab world's biggest economy shut down cinemas, malls and restaurants, halted flights, suspended the year-round umrah pilgrimage and locked down the eastern Qatif region - home to around 500,000 - in a bid to contain the deadly virus.

The top crude exporter also faces plummeting oil prices, which slipped below $30 a barrel this week for the first time in four years, on the back of sagging demand and a price war with Russia.

---

THIS IS EXACTLY BACKWARDS:

In the age of neoliberalism, all competing social spheres are being  gradually colonized by the market mentality.

And this serves to explain neoliberalism at the policy level. Neoliberal thinkers believe that the market mentality--which receives its most sophisticated treatment in the language of economics--should reign supreme. Thus, they talk of a political market, a marriage market and a religious market, for, in their view, these sites of social life are fundamentally identical, insofar as they all feature individuals operating as rational maximizers and espousing the market mentality. [...]

This cultural definition of neoliberalism--as the colonization of the market mentality--serves to highlight both why the left is correct to worry about neoliberalism and why the term is so often applied haphazardly.

If we accept that what makes neoliberalism distinct is less its content--the market mentality has been a staple of capitalism since its inception--than the degree to which it expands the scope of the cultural logic of capitalism, then identifying precisely what is and isn't neoliberal can never be an exact science. Yet this should not disguise the fact that sweeping change is already underway.

Signs of neoliberal policy are evident across liberal democracies and have been for some time. But the real transformation is taking place at the level of consciousness. Unless we become aware of and reverse the trend, we will soon wake up to find that the sole language we have to describe our relationships, our dreams and the world around us is that of economics. And, I don't know about you, but to me that sounds like a nightmare.

---

A SENSE OF WHAT YOU ARE:

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AND YOU WONDER WHY TRUMPBOTS ARE SO INCOHERENT?:

What a damning indictment of Fox News from the Post video team here. pic.twitter.com/r8Fz8vo5KV

— andrew kaczynski🤔 (@KFILE) March 18, 2020

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YOU CAN'T BE BOTH CHRISTIAN AND TRUMPIST:

One unfortunate side-effect of this global pandemic is racism. Rather than something like this bringing the world together to unite against a common enemy, it is easy to make some people the scapegoat; in this case, people of Asian descent.

True, the coronavirus originated in Wuhan, China, but the virus is not a discriminator of persons. Anyone could have it and anyone can transmit it. There have been documented cases (even captured on video and photos) of people spraying Febreeze on Asians in a New York subway to "disinfect" them; people posting memes (this even happened at my university) on social media of people making disgusted faces at Asians when they sneeze or cough; people avoiding Asian-owned businesses or restaurants; Dutch students wearing Chinese clothes and conical hats and pulling up the corners of their eyes, posing for a Instagram photo with a sign that read "Corona Time"; and the hashtag #kungflu trending; among many others.

"But for many people, having someone specific to blame, or an action specific to do, helps them make sense of this world or give them a sense of control, even if the fear is unwarranted or irrational.  [...]

Third, recognize the humanity of everyone.

Asians are just as scared of coronavirus as everyone else, just as many Muslims are fleeing the terrorism of ISIS. And Asians, like other people, need to be respected. We often hear of just the "big three"--blacks, women, and LGBTQ--and too often it feels like those get the most press while other groups don't get nearly the amount of representation or defenders. In fact, groups which do not historically stand up for themselves are needing more recognition. Everyone is made in the imago Dei.

Finally, learn history: all this is not new.

Remember the "yellow peril" meme in the late 1800's, which charged Asians of being unsanitary and spreading disease (or SARS in 2003)? We've seen this thing before. "Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat its mistakes," said Spanish philosopher George Santayana. Racism does not protect anyone from disease, but does perpetuate disinformation. This not only harms People of Color, it actually can spread the disease further by focusing on the wrong thing.

We as Christians can do better. We are commanded to do better. 1 John 4:20 says, "Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen."

God help us--as we need his perspective in this world to minister to people not just physically and spiritually, but also emotionally and socially.

---

BEING NOT HILLARY:

Our decision desk expects turnout for the Florida Dem primary will end up around 2.25 million. In 2016, it was 1.7 million.

— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) March 17, 2020

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BE GLAD HE'S NOT GIVING THEM POX INFECTED BLANKETS:

An Atlanta attorney who was in immigration court on Monday just self-reported a positive test of COVID-19, and an immigration judge in Denver is out sick with symptoms of the novel coronavirus. But the Trump administration -- and, namely, the Executive Office for Immigration Review, which oversees the United States' 68 immigration courts -- is thus far resisting demands to shutter the courtrooms.

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THE lEFT IS THE rIGHT:

Mayor Bill de Blasio was so intent on keeping city libraries open during the coronavirus outbreak that he went as far as making veiled threats about cutting their funding if they closed, according to multiple people familiar with the conversations.

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HUG A TRUMPBOT TODAY:

Former vice president Joe Biden swept to decisive wins in Florida, Illinois and Arizona on Tuesday, extending his run of victories on a primary election day in which the growing national response to the coronavirus pandemic complicated voting as it threatened to disrupt future contests.

The emphatic wins raised further questions about the viability of the campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). 

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LIFE IN THE BUBBLE (profanity alert):

In a 27,000-member private Facebook group for first responders who support President Donald Trump, firefighters and paramedics have posted thousands of comments in recent weeks downplaying the coronavirus pandemic that they are responsible for helping to handle.

Posts in the group, which is called IAFF Union Firefighters for Trump and has been endorsed by Trump, scoffed at the seriousness of the virus, echoing false assertions by Trump and his allies comparing it to the seasonal flu. "Every election year has a disease," read one meme, purporting to be written on a doctor's office whiteboard. "This is a viral-pneumonia being hyped as The Black Plague before an election." [...]

Posts containing factual information or firsthand experiences with the virus were met with more accusations of plots to harm Trump's reelection. When a Florida firefighter said action was required now to prevent a crisis like is currently underway in Italy, where 27,980 have been infected and 2,158 have died, because the virus spreads at an exponential rate, the first reply was poop emojis and "Trump2020."

Some comments promoted a baseless conspiracy theory that the virus is a biological weapon developed by the Chinese in collaboration with Democrats.

"By the Chinese to stop the riots in Hong Kong," one member wrote.

"[Y]ou are absolutely correct," another replied. "I said that in the beginning. Democrats saw an opportunity to use it against Trump and get rid of older people which they have been trying to do for a while." 

---

IMAGINE PUTTING YOUR FAITH IN HIM?:

Anatomy of a Viral Lie: Watch the President's public statements downplaying and pointing blame for COVID-19 https://t.co/WSha8shN4D pic.twitter.com/yWNa9JPVjf

— The Bulwark (@BulwarkOnline) March 17, 2020

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THAT'S SUBOPTIMAL:

---

THERE IS A THERE THERE:

China is almost the same size as the United States of America. In fact, there's a debate as to which one is bigger -- it depends on precise territorial definitions. In any case, China is big.

It also occupies much the same latitudes as the contiguous United States, although the southernmost parts of China are at Mexican latitudes and the northernmost at Canadian latitudes. So China ranges from the bitterly cold to the steaming hot.

But while America stretches from "sea to shining sea", China stretches from the Pacific Ocean to Central Asia. In fact, the most inland place on the planet is in the far north-west of China.

There's something called the Heihe-Tengchong line that bisects China from the Russian border in the far north-east to the Burmese border in the south. Remarkably, just 4% of the country's population lives west of the line. So, when you look at China on a map, remember that almost everything is going on in the eastern half of the country.

Here's another really important line: the line of latitude that lies thirty degrees north of the equator. It's on or near this parallel that all four of the world's oldest civilisations -- ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley civilisation and ancient China -- got their start. Later civilisations arose further north or further south, but the earliest ones were all at this crucial latitude.

River valleys were another essential ingredient. Whereas in ancient Egypt it was the Nile, in ancient China it was the Yangzi (or Yangtse), the third longest river in the world. Unlike the Nile, however, it runs east-west along the 30th parallel, allowing civilisation to spread and stay connected over a wide area sharing the same sort of climate. Furthermore, not too far to the north is another great river -- the Huang He (a.k.a. the Yellow River). Even better, the land through which both rivers flow is fertile not arid. Tributary rivers (and, later, canals) helped to link up the Lower Yangzi Plain and the North China Plain into a vast and cohesive Chinese heartland.

It was there that Chinese civilisation developed over the millennia and from there that it spread out in all directions.

1. Wuhan -- the crossroads of China

Which bring me back to Wuhan. The city is known as the cross-roads of China for a very good reason.

It sits on the Yangzi about a thousand kilometres inland; a thousand kilometres to the north is Beijing; a thousand to the east (i.e. downstream) is Shanghai; a thousand to the south is the Pearl River delta, which includes Guangdong and Hong Kong; and a thousand to the west (i.e. upstream) are the mighty Sichuanese cities of Chongqing and Chengdu.

Wuhan is also where the Han river flows into the Yangzi -- the Han being the birthplace of the Han dynasty, which in turn gave its name to the Han people i.e. China's majority ethnic group.

Wuhan, therefore, is the most central city in the most populous country on the planet. There couldn't have been a worse place for the coronavirus to take hold. 

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THERE'S ONLY ONE REASON TO USE IT:

Public health experts, including the CDC, have called out for an end to the use of stigmatizing terms amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Donald Trump is ignoring calls from public health experts not to use racist terms for the novel coronavirus that contribute to stigmatizing Asians and Asian Americans amid the novel coronavirus outbreak.

The World Health Organization has warned against using geographic locations to name viruses, saying doing so "has had unintended negative impacts by stigmatizing certain communities or economic sectors."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines stigma as "discrimination against an identifiable group of people, a place, or a nation," and warns that contributing to stigma during the current virus outbreak "hurts everyone by creating more fear or anger towards ordinary people instead of the disease that is causing the problem."

Yet Trump has used a racist name for the virus at least twice in the last 24 hours.

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ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

Sorry Devin Nunes, but Lev Parnas and I will not be joining you at the local pub. Any questions, you've got the cellphone number. Our best wishes for everyone during these very trying times. #CoronaStrong https://t.co/M4d9uNlTua

— Joseph A. Bondy (@josephabondy) March 17, 2020

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CAUSE THEY'RE YELLOW:

Focusing on China allows conservatives to sidestep the question of whether the coronavirus poses a serious health risk at all. That question becomes a sideshow to the primary objective of blaming China. Right-wing organs like the Federalist have mounted a campaign to brand the disease the "Wuhan Virus," scolding anybody who fails to use their lingo as China appeasers. Breitbart's coverage of Joe Biden's coronavirus plan zeroes in on its failure to blame Beijing. "Not once in the detailed plan does Biden mention China or Wuhan -- the origin city of the coronavirus," it reports, accurately, "Instead, the Biden plan repeatedly focuses on fighting 'global' public health threats and refers to the coronavirus in its technical term of COVID-19."

This is a completely bizarre passage to those of us who have read mainstream news. It credits Biden with outlining a "detailed plan," but brushes aside this fact to complain that he describes the virus as a "global threat," which it demonstrably is.

What's so strange about the right's China obsession is that it lacks any policy implications. Cotton has warned, "We will hold accountable those who inflicted it on the world," but what actions could he be threatening? Create a pandemic virus of our own in the United States? There is no prospective course of action that follows from blaming China. It is a global pandemic.

And the reason the mainstream media and liberal elite are using the standard terms for the virus rather than the conservative movement's preferred labels isn't some delicacy about offending China. It's that we don't actually care at this point where it started. Biden focused his speech on ways to prevent Americans from suffering and dying, instead of on ways to blame China, because that seems more important, not because he's secretly in hoc to the Chinese Communist Party (which Cotton, naturally, has also insinuated).

I pay close attention to conservative thought, and try to understand the ideological roots of various strands of right-wing argument. Explaining the China obsession in philosophical terms, though, seems to give its adherents too much credit. It's as if they are unable to grasp the concept of a positive-sum global problem, and lacking the proper capacity to analyze this category of problem, are using the parts of their brains that process external threats. Their lizard brains have transformed a crisis in which every country has a joint interest in mitigation into an act of war demanding retaliation.

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DONALD'S 42% CEILING:

A majority of Americans trust the major health agencies and organizations to protect the country from a major outbreak of coronavirus, according to a new Axios|SurveyMonkey poll. The CDC is the most trusted (75%), with the NIH (68%), state health departments (68%), local offices of emergency management (67%), and the WHO (66%) not far behind. 

Many fewer people--just 42% overall--say they trust President Trump to protect Americans from a major outbreak. 

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DUDE, WHY DO YOU THINK THEY'RE CALLING IT THE CHINA VIRUS?:

For Donald and his ilk it's just an opportunity to gin up racial hygiene hysteria.

---

WHY ELSE WOULD hE COME AGAIN?:

---

IF HE'S TWEETING HE'S LYING:

In his guilty plea, Flynn admitted he had lied to agents in that interview by claiming he did not discuss US sanctions on Russia with that country's ambassador during the presidential transition period.

If the FBI lost records of this interview, it would be a big deal. But neither the FBI nor the Justice Department says this happened. Instead, they say they turned over more than sufficient evidence to Flynn, including the original notes of agents who interviewed Flynn as well as the 302 report summarizing the interview. (You can read a redacted version they filed in court here.)

Powell claims there is a missing "original 302" of the January 24 interview. She has implied the FBI may have destroyed this document and altered evidence to hide evidence of Flynn innocence. (Powell here is pushing a version of a popular theory among right wing pundits that a failure by FBI agent Peter Strozk and other FBI officials to immediately find that Flynn was lying in the January 24 interview suggests he was telling the truth. An alternative understanding is that Strozk's initial impression showed Flynn had lied convincingly.)

Prosecutors, in an October 2019 filing, do indicate that is possible that they no longer have an "earlier draft of the interview report," but they argue that doesn't matter. "[E]ven if an earlier draft of the interview report once existed," the filing reads, "there is no reason to believe it would materially differ from the interviewing agents' handwritten notes or the other drafts--all of which state that the defendant made the specific false statements to which the defendant admitted guilt."

This argument prevailed in court. In a blistering December 16 ruling, US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is known for pushing federal prosecutors turn over any arguably exculpatory evidence to defendants, excoriated Powell's arguments. Sullivan even accused Powell of plagiarism. 

Sullivan found that "there were no material changes in the interview reports, and that those reports track the interviewing FBI agents' notes." He said the material prosecutors turned over is "both consistent and clear that Mr. Flynn made false statements to the FBI." In other words, the judge found that the Justice Department not only turned over adequate records of the interview to Flynn's lawyers, but those records show that Flynn is guilty of the crime to which he pleaded guilty.

That was in December.

---

WHO IS STILL STUNNED BY HIS IGNORANCE AND INEPTITUDE?:

In public, President Trump emits meaningless happy talk and misinformation about the coronavirus pandemic. In conversation with the nation's governors, however, he essentially admitted he has nothing to offer them. They -- and by extension the rest of us -- are on our own.

The New York Times reports:

"Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment -- try getting it yourselves," Mr. Trump told the governors during the conference call, a recording of which was shared with The New York Times. "We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself." . . .

Governors Jay Inslee of Washington, whose state is at the epicenter of the domestic outbreak, and Michelle Lujan Grisham of New Mexico both reacted angrily to the administration's slow response to the crisis.

Good for them. (Take note, former vice president Joe Biden: Lujan Grisham should be on any short list for your pick for your No. 2.) The notion that the federal government is so ill-prepared and still incapable of helping locate and distribute life-saving equipment is an admission of Trump's utter incompetence and negligence. It is also counterproductive, as Lujan Grisham pointed out: "If one state doesn't get the resources and materials they need, the entire nation continues to be at risk." It is stunning that the president does not grasp this.

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HAVING LEARNED NOTHING FROM TANKING MAVERICK:

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WE SHOULD ONLY ELECT GOVERNORS:

As the coronavirus crisis sweeps the US government, the nation has come to rely on a voice of calm from the White House -- only it's not Donald Trump's.

Caricatured as a meek and loyal yes man, Vice President Mike Pence is surprising even some of his critics with an authoritative performance in the role of coronavirus tsar. [...]

Heading the coronavirus task force has to be one of the hardest jobs in US politics today.

Pence not only has to coordinate the response to the pandemic. He has to clean up after his erratic boss -- and please him at the same time.

For weeks, Trump dismissed coronavirus as something that didn't have to be taken seriously. He also repeatedly accused his Democratic opponents and the media of hyping the crisis in a bid to weaken his reelection chances.

"His aides are literally scrambling around to try to make something more sane that's absolutely insane, which happens to be the president," Anthony Scaramucci, who briefly served as Trump's communications director, said in a scathing assessment on Sunday.

And Pence is the one scrambling the most.

He regularly has to massage or clarify the president's statements, all while framing his own comments as support.

But sometimes, the divergence in approaches by the two men cannot be masked over.

While Pence seeks to reassure, Trump, facing an increasingly difficult November reelection, sees conflict everywhere.

So when Pence praised the Democratic governor of Washington state, Jay Inslee, for his response to one of the worst local coronavirus outbreaks in the country, Trump brutally smacked him down.

"I told Mike not to be complimentary," Trump said. "That governor is a snake."

Pence doesn't bite back.

Still, when asked on NBC about the president's Twitter attacks against Democrats during the coronavirus crisis, Pence did issue what was interpreted as a rare rebuke, citing the "irresponsible rhetoric."

---

GOD WHO?:

In a statement, Flynn said: "Actions I acknowledged in court today are wrong, and through my faith in God, I am working to set things right. My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel's Office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions."

---

PRESIDENT-ELECT:

What happened on Sunday night was not a presidential debate. It was former vice president Joe Biden's debut as the Democrats' presumptive 2020 nominee.

The headline of the evening was Biden's declaration that he plans to pick a female running mate, and that he would nominate an African American woman to the Supreme Court.

But it was the confidence with which Biden conducted himself throughout his two-hour exchange with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) that signaled how dramatically the race has changed in the two weeks since the voters of South Carolina rescued his candidacy from oblivion.

---

TO PREVENT TRUMPISM:

The World Health Organization (WHO) announced today that the disease caused by the new coronavirus will be referred to as COVID-19. Until this point, the illness was known as 2019-nCoV acute respiratory disease. Experts refer to the virus that causes the disease as 2019-nCoV, which stands for novel coronavirus 2019.

There are around 43,000 cases of the illness around the world, and it has killed over 1,000 people so far.

"Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatizing. It also gives us a standard format to use for any future coronavirus outbreaks," said Tedros Adhanom, director general of the WHO, in a press conference today.

The name of the disease is linked with the virus that causes it: it starts with "co" and "vi" for "coronavirus." The "d" stands for disease, while "19" indicates the year that it was first discovered. What the name doesn't have is an association with Wuhan or China.

The outbreak started in Wuhan, China, and, initially, people colloquially referred to the unknown illness as Wuhan pneumonia or Wuhan flu. Naming conventions through the WHO say that the formal name given to an illness cannot refer to a geographic location. It also can't refer to an animal or group of people, has to be related to the disease, and must be easy to say.

---

SCRATCH A TRUMPBOT:

Big if true. pic.twitter.com/Gk3lsf01Nf

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) March 16, 2020

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WHEN THE CHICKENS COME HOME TO ROOST:

#BREAKING

New ad going after Trump on lying about #COVID19

pic.twitter.com/WatgoXqqW3

— Biden_Brigade (@biden_brigade) March 14, 2020

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YOU'LL HAVE TO FORGIVE THE TRUMPBOTS' HYSTERIA:

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SUPER ON-BRAND:

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COMIC GOLD:

Great Job by Judicial Watch. Potentially a treasure trove. Too bad you are not given more help, but it will all work out! https://t.co/rTYq9YCj2Q

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2020

---

A RELIGION, NOT A RACE:

 Gantz secured the mandate after the Arab Joint List recommended him to Rivlin. This was a historic move by the Arab Israeli party that many view as a sign that the Arab minority, which turned out to vote in high numbers in the last elections, wants to further integrate into society and have a stake in the government.

---

DONALD WHO?:

At his Friday news conference, President Trump declared his opposition to the House bill meant to ease the burden on businesses and individuals from the coronavirus pandemic. Trump said Republicans had not "gotten enough," a reference to the payroll tax that members of both parties opposed.

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) announced she had reached a deal with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, it predictably did not include that payroll tax. Increasingly, the way to get anything done is for Pelosi and Mnuchin to hammer out a reasonable compromise, let Mnuchin sell it /to the president and then present it as a fait accompli to the Senate Republicans who have no ideas or legislation of their own, having become vassals of the president. This is how it went on the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement trade negotiations.

---

YELLOW SCARERS:

As the science journalist Laura Spinney details in her 2017 book, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World, Spain ended up taking the blame not because the pandemic actually originated there, nor because its outbreak was any more severe. Rather, it happened because while Europe was at war, Spain remained neutral and did not censor its press. Spinney explains that the major combatants in World War I kept their outbreaks under wraps to avoid damaging morale, with French military doctors cryptically referring to maladie onze, or "disease eleven." When influenza hit Spain hard in May 1918, it lit up the international news, and the French, British, and Americans began calling it "Spanish influenza."

With Spain serving as a convenient scapegoat, reports of the disease's spread followed the old xenophobic tropes. For instance, in July 1918, the Fort Worth Record picked up a wire report about a Spanish passenger liner arriving at an unnamed Atlantic port and being "thoroughly fumigated and those on board thoroughly examined by federal and state health officers." The article carried the headline "Spanish Influenza Is an Undesirable," conflating the disease with the foreign "undesirables" blamed for spreading it. The irony, in retrospect, is that the leading theory for the origin of the so-called Spanish flu places it right here in the United States. In early 1918, the first wave of the pandemic started at Camp Funston, an Army training camp in Fort Riley, Kansas, before it spread to other military camps and traveled overseas.

Even when a geographic label for a disease is more accurate in pinpointing its origin, such names can be quickly outgrown. The Ebola virus was named for the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of Congo in central Africa, where it was first identified, but the 2014 epidemic took place far away in western Africa. Similarly, the Zika virus was named for a forest in Uganda where it was first isolated in 1947, but the outbreak that began in 2015 started in Brazil and spread throughout the Americas.

More recently, world health officials have tried to be more sensitive in naming diseases by avoiding geographic references that may seem to assign blame to a particular region. Sometimes names can have unexpected connotations, however. As Spinney notes in her book, the acronym for "severe acute respiratory syndrome," SARS, seems innocuous enough, but it created problems in Hong Kong when the disease reached epidemic levels in East Asia in 2003. Some in Hong Kong found the designation offensive because the official name of the country in English includes the phrase "special administrative region," which is abbreviated as "SAR."

Cognizant of how geographic labels have been unfairly used in the past, the WHO introduced a new set of best practices for naming infectious diseases, in 2015. Geographic names are to be avoided in order to "avoid causing offense," though the WHO did not insist that already established names like Middle East Respiratory Syndrome, or MERS, should be retroactively changed.

When the WHO director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced last month that the new coronavirus disease would be called COVID-19, he referred to the 2015 guidelines to explain why the name did not refer to Wuhan, the city in central China where the virus is thought to have originated. "Having a name matters to prevent the use of other names that can be inaccurate or stigmatizing," he said, adding, "It also gives us a standard format to use for any future coronavirus outbreaks."

---

YET THEY CAN'T MAKE A DECENT PIZZA (profanity alert)A:

By then Buford had published his well-received Among the Thugs, a horrifying and very funny study of English football violence in the 1980s. (A nod to Buford's literary cred: early in Thugs he writes about attending his first English football match with two unnamed friends; he says they were Salman Rushdie and Mario Vargas Llosa.) [...]

Dirt is big, 400-something pages, and the longest thing Buford has written. It started out as a pretty simple idea: go to Paris, work in a kitchen for a few months, bang out a book. This idea was jangling around in Buford's head well before Obama was elected, right after he wrapped up Heat. Basically, do Heat in France.

One problem: the French really didn't care about Buford or his book. If he wanted to go, which at that point meant taking his family (he and his wife, Jessica Green, a magazine editor turned wine expert, had preschool-age twin boys at the time), there would be beaucoup paperwork to fill out for their residency permits. So they did, and with a little fraudulent help from a well-placed friend, the Lyonnaise chef Daniel Boulud, they were in. Which was another problem: then they were there. And in Lyon, not Paris.

What follows is a mix of memoir, culinary anthropology, and immersion journalism, all told in Buford's hallmark erudite and ruthlessly self-effacing way. Early life in Lyon was a parade of difficulties and humiliations: contending with the French fetish for bureaucracy; finding an apartment; failing to find a kitchen to work in; finally getting work, only to be bullied by a 19-year-old kitchen psychopath; coming to realize that strangers thought Buford was a local in a city where, he writes, the men are all "ugly f[****]rs."

"It was a wild thing we did. Really, a wild thing," Buford says. "Because we get there, and everything's going wrong and I can't get into a kitchen, and I think, 'Well, what the f[***]? Now what?' Then I got into a kitchen where any reasonable person would say, 'Why didn't you get out of there?' But of course, as a writer, that's what you want."

The job Buford landed at the Michelin-starred restaurant La Mère Brazier required 15-plus-hour days in a kitchen where the culture resembled that of a pirate ship. The labor was so demanding and physical that he wound up losing weight working in a place where the recipes measured butter in kilos.

"I liked it a lot," Buford says. "I think I enjoy physical activity, but I've got kind of a desk brain. So, the pleasure of the situation--La Mère Brazier was different because it was so intense--is you can have a reflecting brain while you're doing a physical activity. It helps that I know that I'm going to be writing about it."

There are intellectual pursuits in the book as well as the demented rigors of the kitchen. Not to give anything away, but a turning point Buford discovers in the controversial history of interplay among Italian and French food (if you want to piss off the French, tell them French cuisine is actually Italian in origin, as Buford did repeatedly) will have people who care about such things looking at their ragù differently.

---

DUNKERS:

Water ceremony has long been practiced in the old world as a symbol not only of physical but also of moral purification. Christian baptism originates from the baptism of Jesus by John the Baptist. In the first centuries of Christianity, it was always preceded by the introduction of faith. In early Christianity, it was performed on mature believers, who had previously had to apply as candidates for the baptismal rite and to go through the preparatory period by practicing fasting and prayer. Adults who intended to receive it had a special status.

This status lasted about two years, but sometimes the deadline was reduced or increased. If they were worthy of it, or admission to the Christian community, there would be a rite during which the initiate would, without clothing, descend into the water, washing away sins and symbolizing the death of his former self. The priest would then invite the Spirit to descend on the reborn, who wears a white robe and receives honey mixed with milk - food for the newborn. It was performed in streams and rivers, and from Constantine the Great in the special water pools that were at the church.

---

GONNA NEED MORE PABST:

With no live baseball games currently on TV, you can always fill the void by streaming a classic game from your favorite team's past. The MLB Vault account on YouTube has numerous games, and the MLB account has a bunch more, too.

Here's one memorable game for each team that can be watched online, for free, in its entirety...

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IGNORANCE IS BASE:

It's worth noting a significant part of Sal Gentile's expressed lack of concern about the virus: his pointed mention about what "TV stations" were advocating.

Pew data indicate that about 3-in-10 members of both political parties identify cable news as their most common platform for political news. But the preferred cable news station varies widely depending on a viewer's politics. Almost no Democrats of retirement age identify Fox News as their main source of political or election news. Fully half of Republicans did.

Fox News, of course, is home to a number of hosts who've dismissed the threat posed by the coronavirus, framing the sense of urgency conveyed on other networks as being about Trump's presidency rather than the public health. If that is the message that half of older Republicans are hearing, it's not really a surprise that they are less concerned about the virus.

On the other hand, they were way ahead of the curve on President Obama being a gay Muslim Socialist from Kenya...

---

REMEMBER WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO HAVE A PRESIDENT?:

He reminded his audience that he ignored the criticism of his actions and the political advice to impose quarantines and travel bans. Even though polls showed that the country was afraid and distrustful of the reassurances coming from Washington, Obama stuck with the experts.

"Remember, there was no small amount of skepticism about our chances," he said with some understatement. "People were understandably afraid. And, if we're honest, some stoked those fears. But we believed that if we made policy based not on fear, but on sound science and good judgment, America could lead an effective global response while keeping the American people safe, and we could turn the tide of the epidemic."

On Wednesday, he could not resist recalling the bad, often-partisan advice he was getting in October over his response to the Ebola epidemic in West Africa, and the fears of it spreading to the United States. The coverage on cable news channels was nonstop, and the partisan assault was fierce and unrelenting with elections only weeks away. There was enormous pressure to cancel flights from the affected regions and ignore the doctors who said that would be counterproductive.

"In the 21st century, we cannot build moats around our countries. There are no drawbridges to be pulled up. We shouldn't try," he said. With Dr. Kent Brantly, one of the survivors, in the audience, the president recalled how controversial it was to bring him to the United States for treatment. "Some worried about bringing the disease to our shores." But he said he sided with the experts who knew "that we had to make the decisions based not on fear, but on science."

With Republicans often branding him as a non-believer in "American Exceptionalism," Obama offered his own definition. "What makes us exceptional is when there's a big challenge and we hear somebody saying it's too hard to tackle, and we come together as a nation and prove you wrong."

---

JOE BIDEN IS OLD!:

President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser -- who has zero expertise in infectious diseases and little experience marshaling the full bureaucracy behind a cause -- saw the administration floundering and inserted himself at the helm, believing he could break the logjam of internal dysfunction.

Kushner rushed to help write Trump's widely panned Oval Office address to the nation. His supermodel sister-in-law's father, Kurt Kloss, an emergency room doctor, crowdsourced suggestions from his Facebook network to pass along to Kushner. And Kushner pressed tech executives to help build a testing website and retail executives to help create mobile testing sites -- but the projects were only half-baked when Trump revealed them Friday in the White House Rose Garden.

What you need to know about coronavirus

Kushner entered into a crisis management process that, despite the triumphant and self-congratulatory tone of public briefings, was as haphazard and helter-skelter as the chaotic early days of Trump's presidency -- turning into something of a family-and-friends pandemic response operation.

The administration's struggle to mitigate the coronavirus outbreak has been marked by infighting and blame-shifting, misinformation and missteps, and a slow recognition of the danger. Warring factions have wrestled for control internally and for approval from a president who has been preoccupied with the beating his image is taking.

The scramble for solutions is occurring in an overriding atmosphere of trepidation of saying something that Trump might perceive as disloyal and of fear that their fumbles could cost the president his reelection in November.

---

ABOVE AVERAGE IS OVER:

Technologists, working with microbiologists, have made a significant breakthrough in the hunt for new antimicrobials. By using artificial intelligence, a new candidate antibiotic has been identified.

The discovery was made using a machine-learning algorithm. This technology enabled scientists to discover a powerful new antibiotic compound.

---

...AND CHEAPER...:

1. It is already cheaper to build new renewables than to build new coal plants, in all major markets.

Just two years ago, in 2018, Carbon Tracker did a similar analysis and concluded that new renewable energy would undercut new coal in all major markets by 2025. "Using updated data from publicly available sources," it concludes in this year's report, "we now believe these conclusions are too conservative."

In fact, they say, new renewables are cheaper than new coal plants in all major markets ... today.

2. Over half the existing global coal fleet is more expensive to run than building new renewables.

The second threshold, Carbon Tracker finds, has been crossed by about 60 percent of the global coal fleet, which now has a higher LMRC than the LCOE of new renewable energy.

"This trend is most pronounced in the EU, which has a strong carbon price and has benefited from years of investment in renewable energy," the report says. "The US, China, and India are not far behind the EU due to excellent renewable energy resources, low capital costs, and least-cost policymaking."

In markets where this threshold has not been crossed, like Turkey and Japan, the blame generally falls on unsupportive policy and unreliable markets.

3. By 2030, it will be cheaper to build new renewables than to run existing coal -- everywhere.

This is the real mind-blower: even in laggard markets, Carbon Tracker projects that coal power will cross the second threshold by 2030 at the latest.

In other words, within ten years, virtually every coal plant in the world will be uneconomic, producing power more expensive than what could be generated by new renewables. 

Carbon emissions are just a fetish of the Right.

---

WE ARE ALL EPIDEMIOLOGISTS NOW (EXCEPT DONALD):

"We all have to make contacts with people while we live our lives, what we should aim to do is to limit them, and certainly not to add more," says William Hanage, an associate professor of epidemiology at Harvard's Chan School of Public Health. "This may seem silly if your community is not yet reporting infections, but it is best to get used to thinking this way."

From a mathematical perspective, determining how big a crowd is safe depends on a couple of key questions: How many people in a given area are infected with the disease? And how big is the event? If you know those things, you can estimate the probability of someone getting infected at the event. An elegant "Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planner" by the Georgia Tech quantitative biologist Joshua Weitz makes the following calculation: If, say, 20,000 cases of infection are actively circulating the US (far more than are known so far), and you host a dinner party for 10 folks, there's a 0.061 percent chance that an attendee will be infected. But if you attend a 10,000-person hockey match, there's a 45 percent chance. Hence the suspension of the NHL season, along with the NBA, March Madness, and Major League Baseball.

Unlike in a flu epidemic, there's no underlying immunity in the population, meaning if you come in contact with the fluids of an infected person, you're likely to get sick. In light of these sorts of calculations, and the fact that the virus seems to be spreading throughout a number of American communities, "it makes sense to do things like cancel mass gatherings and schools," says Lopman.

Public health experts like social distancing for three reasons. For one, it likely "flattens the curve," or decreases the number of infections at one time, or even overall. That helps prevent overloading the health care system, with its limited number of doctors, nurses, beds, and equipment like ventilators. Also, it buys time for a vaccine to be developed, says Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and the former assistant director of the Houston Health Department.

---

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

For three long years the world has been treated to the sick joke of Donald Trump's presidency. Some days were more sick than others. But now the joke is over.

So is the entire facade of the Trump White House: the gold-plated veneer of power and grift will be stripped bare by a global pandemic and recession.

Of all the obituaries we'll read in the next several weeks, every one will be more meaningful than the political end of a former reality-TV star.

But make no mistake. The humanitarian crisis about to unfold will consume what's left of this president and the Republican party that surrendered its self-respect and sense of duty to flatter his ego and avoid his angry tweets.

Trump was right about one thing, and only one thing, as the coronavirus started to spread across the world. The sight of thousands of dead Americans will hurt him politically. It will also hurt many thousands of Americans in reality.

Multiple reports have detailed how Trump did not just ignore the growing pandemic; he actively sought to block his own officials' attempts to track and stop it. Why has there been such a disastrous lack of testing? Because the president didn't want to know the answer, and because his staff were too busy fighting each other to do the right thing.

"The boss has made it clear he likes to see his people fight, and he wants the news to be good," Politico reported one Trump health adviser saying. "This is the world he's made."

---

MADAME PRESIDENT:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Donald Trump haven't spoken in months, but the California Democrat seized the initiative to strike a deal with the White House on a broad measure aimed at helping Americans cope with the spiraling effects of the coronavirus outbreak.

After Trump didn't deliver on a promised announcement of a "major" economic stimulus package, Pelosi and House Democrats on Wednesday put out their own plan to ease some of the economic impact on workers and families. That began a series of negotiations between Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin over the course of three days and more than two dozen phone calls.

The end result was a rare bit of bipartisanship. The House, with the president's support, passed a bill early Saturday morning on a 363-40 vote to provide paid sick leave, money for food stamps, bolstered unemployment insurance and significant new funding for Medicaid. Those are all are long-held Democratic priorities, though in this version they are scaled back and temporary.

For Pelosi, it was a chance to step into a leadership vacuum and to demonstrate Americans in an election year how a Democratic-led government would function.

"We could have passed our bill yesterday," Pelosi said Friday night. "But we thought it was important to show the American people, that for the American people, that we are willing and able to work together to get a job done for them."

Donald who?

---

RACIAL HYGIENISTS:

On March 10, President Trump retweeted a post from conservative political activist Charlie Kirk, who referred to the coronavirus (COVID-19) as the "China Virus." Kirk also exclaimed in his tweet, "Now, more than ever, we need the wall...the US stands a chance if we can get control of our borders." Trump retweeted this and added the comment, "Going up fast. We need the wall more than ever!"

At first blush, this exchange might seem like the garden-variety white nationalist xenophobia characteristic of Trump or many of his influential supporters. Fox News' Tucker Carlson and GOP House Representative Kevin McCarthy, in fact, have both insisted on continuing to call the disease the "Chinese Coronavirus." But Trump's retweet, and where it originates, helps shed light not only on the Right's brazen xenophobia, but on the link between America's supposed religious heritage and fears of ethnic pollution. 

Charlie Kirk is co-founder of Liberty University's Falkirk Center for Faith and Liberty. The Falkirk Center is described by Liberty's newspaper as a "modern think tank set to renew and defend God-given freedoms and Christian principles throughout American politics and culture." 

That an ambassador of Christian nationalism like Kirk would hold xenophobic attitudes should be no surprise. In Taking America Back for God, we show that such views are fundamental to the Christian nationalist framework. One of the most consistent findings in research on Christian nationalism over the past decade is that Americans who more strongly subscribe to this ideology are more likely to be staunchly anti-immigrant―especially if those immigrants are non-white and/or non-Christian.

But Kirk's repeated "China Virus" tweets, and Trump's powerful retweet, both connecting the spread of disease with the need to keep immigrants out, are a clear reminder that white Christian nationalism has always connected non-white immigrants with social and biological contamination. Immigration is framed as an issue of purity or contamination; a righteous body politic or pathological disease. 

Chinese immigrants have long been the target of such attacks. The Immigration Act of 1882 included the Chinese Exclusion Act, which all but banned immigrants from anywhere in Asia, who were perceived to be plagued with "the social and political diseases of the Old World." Asians in particular, and to a lesser extent Eastern Europeans, were deemed less worthy than immigrants from parts of Europe populated by those more likely to be "White" and "Protestant," which have often been historically been understood  to mean the same thing.

Trump's 2016 Presidential campaign, which was successful due in no small part to his appeals to white Christian nationalism, drew on similar "contamination" rhetoric to shore up support for the Mexican border wall.

---

COME AGAIN...:

In P. D. James's Children of Men, mankind is suddenly and inexplicably stricken with universal infertility. The 2021 England in which the story takes place is a caretaker tyranny, dominated by a figure who suspends democracy and curtails liberty for the promise of an agreeable senescence for a civilization that no longer cares for its future, because it doesn't think it will have one. The youngest living humans are in their mid-20s; no children have been born since.

The lack of children has affected society in myriad ways. The youngest humans are a fearsome force, the last source of any real vigor in society, but unrestrained by any social mores. Infertile couples bury childlike dolls (and controversy rages over whether religious involvement is licit); custody battles rage over pets. Sex "divorced from procreation" has "become almost meaninglessly acrobatic"; the state sponsors pornography in a vain attempt to keep the sexual instinct alive should a miracle occur and reproduction become viable again. And most disturbing: The state sponsors "Quietus," a "mass suicide of the old" in which the elderly are "encouraged" to kill themselves. It is a public ritual whose voluntary status Theo, the novel's protagonist, discovers is a fiction, forcing him to accept the barbarity of the regime perpetrating this euthanasia.

This enervated world originated before universal infertility, however. Theo believes that he "can trace" both the present societal decline and a persistent concern for personal health "to the early 1990s: the search for alternative medicine, the perfumed oils, the massage, the stroking and anointing, the crystal-holding, the non-penetrative sex." Around the same time, "the recognized churches, particularly the Church of England, moved from the theology of sin and redemption to a less uncompromising doctrine: corporate social responsibility coupled with sentimental humanism." This analysis of the "past" in the book is actually a condemnation of the writer's present, 1992.

Though James was not Catholic, her work is steeped in the anxieties of Catholicism that were addressed, but not resolved, in the 1968 papal encyclical Humanae Vitae. This was Pope Paul VI's broadside against contemporary sexual mores and in favor of the Church's ancient teachings, one he delivered against the recommendations of the committee he assembled to assist in its drafting. Catholicism was hardly alone in dealing with these anxieties. At a disputed vote at the Lambeth Conference in 1930, the Anglican Communion ultimately resolved that "in those cases where there is such a clearly felt moral obligation to limit or avoid parenthood, and where there is a morally sound reason for avoiding complete abstinence, the Conference agrees that other methods may be used, provided that this is done in the light of the same Christian principles." Far down the slippery slope of such attitudes, and in a twisted instance of the need to be careful what one wishes for, James's world is a spiritually and sexually hollow place, as consequence-free sex becomes an inescapable reality.

The world imagined by James in Children of Men rings truer in certain ways in our time than does either of the bombastic apocalypses of Miller or Benson. Leave aside the more obvious predictions, such as declining fertility rates and increased contraception use, the child-simulating dolls popular in low-fertility Japan, and the growing popularity of New Age spirituality (the latter also a feature of Benson's dystopia). Only James imagined a world in which institutional, established religion might linger on, but with its doctrinal integrity compromised, and its institutional strength all but vanished. Miller and Benson could imagine only that religious institutions would either be destroyed completely or maintain something of their ancient vitality. But James posited a murkier, middle ground.

---

CAIN BECOMES ABEL:

In 2018, the New York Foundling, a charity that offers child welfare, adoption, and mental health services, was stuck in cut-and-paste hell.

Clinicians and admin staff were spending hours transferring text between different documents and databases to meet varied legal requirements. Arik Hill, the charity's chief information officer, blames the data entry drudgery for an annual staff turnover of 42 percent at the time. "We are not a very glamorous industry," says Hill. "We are really only just moving on from paper clinical records."

Since then, the New York Foundling has automated much of this grunt work using what are known as software robots--simple programs hand-crafted to perform dull tasks. Often, the programs are built by recording and mimicking a user's keystrokes, such as copying a field of text from one database and pasting it into another, eliminating hours of repetitive-stress-inducing work.

"It was mind-blowing," says Hill, who says turnover has fallen to 17 percent.

To automate the work, the New York Foundling got help from UiPath, a so-called robotic process automation company. That project didn't require any real machine intelligence.

But in January, UiPath began upgrading its army of software bots to use powerful new artificial intelligence algorithms. It thinks this will let them take on more complex and challenging tasks, such as transcription or sorting images, across more offices. Ultimately, the company hopes software robots will gradually learn how to automate repetitive work for themselves.

In other words, if artificial intelligence is going to disrupt white-collar work, then this may be how it begins.

"When paired with robotic process automation, AI significantly expands the number and types of tasks that software robots can perform," says Tom Davenport, a professor who studies information technology and management at Babson College.

Not so much, Big Fella.

---

MAYBE IT'S HIS STAFF'S WAY OF INVOKING THE 25TH?:

Despite President Trump saying Friday he planned to get tested for the novel COVID-19 coronavirus, White House physician Sean Conley hours later said the action isn't necessary.

Trump, within the last week, had two interactions with individuals who tested positive for the virus -- he shook hands with Fabio Wajngarten, an aide to Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, and he also shared a table with another person at his Mar-a-Lago resort. But Conley said both instances were "low risk" because neither person was exhibiting symptoms at the time. He added that because Trump himself is without symptoms, testing or quarantine are not recommended.

---

DONALD WHO?

Any tax break on paychecks would come out of the Social Security fund: That would risk seriously denting it or even depleting it, meaning people who depend on their Social Security check each month might not get it in a worst-case scenario. That's the primary reason Republicans oppose a cut, said a senior Republican Senate aide.

It's super expensive: Eliminating the payroll tax for both employees and employers would cost the government about $90 billion a month, aides in Congress estimated. Multiply that over the entire year and you're looking at about $1 trillion in lost government revenue. The New York Times Jim Tankersley put that in perspective: That's more than the 2008 Wall Street bailout or the 2009 stimulus bill to prop up the economy after the crash that ignited the Great Recession.

It would increase most paychecks by 7.65 percent, but that doesn't help shift workers or those who rely on tips, said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, on Wednesday. That's because most of their money doesn't come from paychecks.

It only helps people who are working now: So if you're unemployed -- or lost your job because of the coronavirus -- this wouldn't help you. And from Democrats' perspective, it could distract from the real goal they want: mandatory paid sick leave.

"If a single mom gets a notice from school her child has to stay home, her getting a payroll-tax deduction or refund isn't going to help her if she loses her job," Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) said Friday on MSNBC.

Here's how Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) describes the idea of a payroll-tax cut: "We don't think they should just throw money out of an airplane and hope some of it lands on the people who are affected."

Republicans aren't quite as vocal about their opposition to this, given their reluctance to upset Trump. But behind the scenes, this isn't something that they're seriously considering, no matter how much Trump tweets it or asks Congress for it in national addresses.

---

IT'S ALL IN YOUR HEAD:

---

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

---

CUT HIM SOME SLACK, GIVEN HIS DEMENTIA:

President Donald Trump announced Friday that the US government's coronavirus testing apparatus, which has lagged badly behind other developed nations, would soon get an assist from Google. The search and advertising giant will create a website, Trump said, that would help Americans figure out if they need a test for the virus, and if so where they can find one.

The only problem: There is no nationwide site like the one Trump described. And Google had no idea the president was going to mention one.

A source at Google tells WIRED that company leadership was surprised that Trump announced anything about the initiative at the press conference. What he did say was also almost entirely wrong. 

---

YEAH, BUT PRESIDENT OBAMA IS BLACK:

I ran the White House pandemic office. Trump closed it. (Beth Cameron , March 13, 2020, Washington Post)

When President Trump took office in 2017, the White House's National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense survived the transition intact. Its mission was the same as when I was asked to lead the office, established after the Ebola epidemic of 2014: to do everything possible within the vast powers and resources of the U.S. government to prepare for the next disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming an epidemic or pandemic.

One year later, I was mystified when the White House dissolved the office, leaving the country less prepared for pandemics like covid-19.

---

INCREDIBLE GIVEN THE COMPETITION:

On Friday afternoon, Donald Trump gave the worst speech of his political career.

He appeared at the podium in the Rose Garden half an hour late. He looked and sounded exhausted. He stumbled over the word "coronavirus" in his very first sentence and seemed to struggle at a number of points throughout his address. His wonted improvisations and other departures from the script did not suggest his usual ease. He sounded very much like what one suspects he is: a tired and confused senior citizen. [...]

Agreeing to take questions following his prepared remarks was almost certainly a mistake. In the coming days and weeks and months, Trump will have virtually unlimited opportunities to attack the legacy of the Obama administration. This was not the occasion for it. In so many other contexts, Trump's disdain for the press is defensible and even amusing. Friday it made him seem petty. And it is never a good idea for a president in the face of a crisis to tell the country that he takes "no responsibility" for anything (in this case, delays in virus testing). Taking responsibility is what the office is all about.

---

AND, UNLIKE 2016...:

---

CAPTAIN BONESPUR:

Asked about whether he takes any blame for the botched testing process, Trump said, "I don't take responsibility at all."

---

ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

The Canadian psychology professor Jordan Peterson has been described as "the most influential public intellectual in the Western world." He is an exponent of the Jungian concept of the hero's journey, in which an ordinary person heeds a call to adventure and goes out into the world to struggle and suffer, only to return with heightened self-knowledge. (He has described himself, without apparent irony, as being "raised and toughened in the frigid wastelands of Northern Alberta.") His stern ethos of self-help and bootstrapping has made him a darling of the so-called intellectual dark web, and a gateway drug for countless budding right-wingers who have stumbled upon one of his lectures on YouTube.

So it was something of a surprise to learn, in early February, that Peterson had spent eight days in a medically induced coma at an unnamed clinic in Russia. Peterson's daughter Mikhaila, a 28-year-old food blogger, posted a brief but dramatic video claiming that she and her father had traveled to Russia in early January seeking an unorthodox treatment for his physical dependence on the drug clonazepam. Dependency goes against the core tenets of Peterson's philosophical brand: stoicism, self-reliance, the power of the will over circumstance and environment. "No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life," he admonished in his bestselling self-help book 12 Rules for Life. 

According to Mikhaila, he nearly died several times during his medical ordeal. After weeks in intensive care, he was unable to speak or write and was taking anti-seizure medicine.

The news was met with bafflement by doctors and laypeople alike. What was Peterson doing in a drug-induced coma in Russia? Based on interviews with medical professionals and a close reading of various statements that Mikhaila and Peterson himself have made on podcasts and social media, it is clear that Peterson ended up in Russia after an extended battle to wean himself off clonazepam. And it seems likely that Peterson, a self-proclaimed man of science, succumbed to the lure of a quack treatment--with devastating consequences.  

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JUST MAKE THE MATH WORK:

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OF COURSE, DONALD IS TRYING TO HEIGHTEN THE CURVE

Our #FlattenTheCurve graphic is now up on @Wikipedia with proper attribution & a CC-BY-SA licence. Please share far & wide and translate it into any language you can! Details in the thread below. #Covid_19 #COVID2019 #COVID19 #coronavirus Thanks to @XTOTL & @TheSpinoffTV pic.twitter.com/BQop7yWu1Q

— Dr Siouxsie Wiles (@SiouxsieW) March 10, 2020

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INFORMATION WANTS TO BE FREE:

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THE ONE CORONAVIRUS NO ONE WILL MOURN:

There are a lot of reasons why the U.S. lags other countries in testing for the new coronavirus -- defective early tests by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the decision not to adopt an effective German test adopted by the World Health Organization -- but Politico's Dan Diamond told Fresh Air's Terry Gross on Thursday that politics also seems to have played a role, along with mismanagement and infighting between, for example, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Seema Verma, the Medicare chief.

In January, Azar "did push past resistance from the president's political aides to warn the president the new coronavirus could be a major problem," Diamond said, but he "has not always given the president the worst-case scenario of what could happen. My understanding is [Trump] did not push to do aggressive additional testing in recent weeks, and that's partly because more testing might have led to more cases being discovered of coronavirus outbreak, and the president had made clear -- the lower the numbers on coronavirus, the better for the president, the better for his potential re-election this fall."

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YOU ONLY GET TO RUN AGAINST HILLARY ONCE:

President Trump is as scared of running against Joe Biden as he is of running. The question is, why? One reason he fears Biden is because Biden is like him. He's old, gets confused, mispronounces words, forgets things, and makes gaffes. But attacking him for these things invites the obvious response: "He sounds a lot like you!"

Indeed, Trump can't attack Biden without attacking himself. Biden's weaknesses magnify Trump's, which are far worse. There's nothing that Biden does that Trump doesn't do worse. Biden has been touchy with women; Trump has been criminal with women. Biden has hair plugs; Trump has something worse. Biden said Barack Obama was "articulate." Trump said Obama was Kenyan.

Trump hasn't addressed any of these yet. Instead, he is focusing on Biden's mental acuity. "Sleepy Joe," Trump said last week, "he doesn't even know where he is or what he's doing or what office he's running for. Honestly, I don't think he knows what office he's running for."

In typical narcissistic fashion, Trump is projecting his flaws onto his opponent. He did this in 2016 when he attacked Hillary Clinton for running a fraudulent charity and risking state secrets. When Clinton said Trump was Vladimir Putin's "puppet" in a debate, Trump shot back, "You're the puppet!" Which was unconvincing. By parroting Clinton's accusation, he effectively confirmed it. Trump's team learned a valuable lesson from that: Always accuse your opponent of that which you are guilty -- and do it before he or she accuses you. With Biden, Trump is shouting "You're the puppet!" preemptively.

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THAT WOULD BE BECAUSE HE'S A CONGENITAL LIAR:

The latest survey from Yahoo! News and YouGov found that 53 percent of polled U.S. adults did not have faith in the president to tell the truth about the threat of the new coronavirus, while a third of those polled said they trusted the commander-in-chief.

A further 14 percent of the 1,635 U.S. adults polled said they were "not sure" whether they trusted Trump on the matter.

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CREATIVE DESTRUCTION:

HANOVER -- In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Dartmouth College is telling its 4,400 undergraduates not to return to campus housing until at least May 1 and to plan for the possibility that they may not return to campus at all during the spring term. Students instead are expected to take courses remotely.

The directive came as the college's winter term is ending and students are leaving for a two-week spring break. Many colleges and universities around the country announced they are clearing out campuses to slow the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease first identified late last year in Wuhan, China.

Faculty and staff, including union employees, "will be paid as usual," according to the email. Additionally, graduate students will continue to receive stipends and are not required to leave campus, and there will be some exceptions for undergraduate students to remain on campus for "medical, visa status, and other reasons."

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AMERICA'S LEADER:

If you haven't watched @JoeBiden 's speech today on how we should respond to #coronavirus, take a few minutes to do so. It is both an urgent call to action and a reminder of what responsible, sensible presidential leadership at a time of crisis looks like. https://t.co/CwpGY3uwMD

— Colin Kahl (@ColinKahl) March 12, 2020

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WE'RE WITH DONALD:

---

YEAH, BUT HUNTER WAS ON THE BURISMA BOARD!:

Trump's Coronavirus Speech Sparks 'Total Chaos' in His Own Administration (Asawin Suebsaeng & Erin Banco, Mar. 12, 2020, Daily Beast)

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DONALD WHO?:

US stocks are down more than 8% Thursday afternoon as coronavirus risks build and investors fear near-term recession. The total market cap of the US equities market, as measured by the Russell 3000 index, has declined by $11.5 trillion from its February 19 peak to $23.8 trillion as of Thursday morning.

The current market cap is roughly equal to the size of the stock market when Donald Trump emerged victorious in the 2016 election. The Trump administration repeatedly downplayed the virus and its risks when outsized stock selling began in late February, with top economic adviser Larry Kudlow even saying the outbreak was contained on February 25.

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ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

Experts generally agree that the key swing states to focus on this year are Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin--all of which were won by Trump in 2016.

"Those will be the six most critical states," Paul Maslin, a longtime Democratic pollster who worked on the presidential campaigns of Jimmy Carter and Howard Dean, told Newsweek.

"There will be others that'll be important in varying degrees," he said, "but those will be ones we'll ultimately look back on and say, 'How many of them did Democrats win back and were they able to win enough to win the presidency?'"

Billionaire Michael Bloomberg is making those areas a centerpiece of his revised 2020 agenda for Democrats. The former New York City mayor abandoned his own White House run this week after a disastrous Super Tuesday performance and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden. He's now using his wealth and resources to boost the Democratic nominee in the general election.

Bloomberg's soon-to-be-formed super PAC will focus on advertising in those six critical swing states. Staff in each of those areas have signed contracts to work on the election effort through November, The Washington Post reported last week.

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WINNING THE WAR ON EFFECTIVE GOVERNMENT:

After slashing federal pandemic response teams and kneecapping other public health initiatives throughout his first term, he failed to prioritize the potential for outbreak, declining to devote adequate resources to the looming threat. Now, as the DNI's grim forecast last year proves correct, the United States' national security apparatus is scrambling both to address a growing crisis in the country--and, potentially, within its ranks.

America's national security and defense agencies are grappling with how to combat the virus quickly spreading across the globe--and the country--while simultaneously keeping their own staffs safe. But, critics and observers told Politico Thursday, actions by the Trump administration, like the 2018 ouster of Tim Ziemer, the White House's top pandemic response expert, could make an effective response more challenging. "[Staff shakeups] have had a profound ripple effect, the consequences of which we are seeing play out now, I think," Ned Price, who served in the CIA and on the National Security Council under Barack Obama during the 2014 Ebola outbreak, told the outlet.

As Politico pointed out, Ziemer, who was not replaced; Luciana Borio, the National Security Council's director for medical and biodefense preparedness; and Tom Bossert, the former Homeland Security adviser who oversaw a since-disbanded global health security team, all were ousted in 2018, shortly after John Bolton joined the Trump White House. According to Price, that leaves the current administration with fewer tools than its predecessors to combat public health threats. "There are directorates that can pick up the slack," Price said. "But you don't have the same level of expertise of people who have lived through Ebola, H1N1, and other disease responses."

"It would be nice if that office was still there," Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a leading voice in the U.S. on the coronavirus threat, said on Capitol Hill Wednesday of the global health security directorate the Trump administration disbanded.

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SOMEONE HAS TO LEAD:

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THE FUNNIEST ASPECT OF DEFENDING DONALD...:

The president's speech on the outbreak last night went over like a lead balloon. The new 30-day ban on travel from some parts of Europe took our allies completely by surprise, because they had not been consulted about it at all:

European officials strongly condemned President Trump's decision to severely restrict travel from Europe to the United States on Thursday, a sudden move that took them by surprise and that many saw as politically motivated.

Of all the slights between Washington and Europe in recent years, the new travel restrictions represented a blow an order of magnitude beyond previous disputes. In a short statement on Thursday morning rare in its directness, the European Union expressed only exasperation.

It is not the most urgent problem right now, but once the outbreak is over our allies are going to remember how our government treated them in the middle of a pandemic. Instead of the solidarity and cooperation that one would expect between allies, they get a gratuitous travel ban.

Trump also botched his explanation of the details of his own policy, which created panic among Americans still in Europe who thought that they might be cut off from coming home. That isn't the case, but that didn't stop a run on last-minute airline tickets because Americans thought that they had just a couple days to get out [...]

Markets also tanked because the president initially said that the ban would also apply to goods as well as people...

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WHEN CLOWNS CLEAN UP AFTER ELEPHANTS...:

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ALL COMEDY IS CONSERVATIVE:

Texas GOP Senator Ted Cruz recently questioned the UK's future role in the 'Five Eyes' intelligence sharing partnership in the light of the British Government's decision to continue allowing the Chinese company Huawei access to its 5G network. He joined Donald Trump in criticising the decision and ominously remarked that 'four eyes are better than six eyes', at least, if that extra eye is looking in the wrong direction.

The US decided to extract a top-secret source from Russia after President Donald Trump revealed classified information to two Russian officials in 2017, CNN reported on Monday.

A person directly involved with the discussions told the outlet the US was concerned that Trump and his administration routinely mishandled classified intelligence and that their actions could expose the covert source as a spy within the Russian government.

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IT'S ALL FUN AND GAMES 'TIL YOU ACTUALLY NEED TO GOVERN:

For the 11 minutes he addressed the nation Wednesday, Trump turned in a laboring performance -- one intended to project calm competence that instead seemed to reveal uncertainty. Seated behind the Resolute Desk, the president struggled at moments to read the words on the teleprompter. He clasped his hands and twiddled his thumbs. He spoke with a curious affect, his voice sounding raspy and his delivery lacking the passion typically evident in his speeches. [...]

The stately Oval Office setting underscored the gravity of the crisis, but Trump's demeanor made clear how hemmed in he has become. For weeks now, Trump's handling of the growing crisis has invited intensifying criticism. He has contradicted the public health experts in his own government, spread misinformation, accused the media of overhyping the threat of the virus to hurt his presidency, sought to lay blame on Democrats and the Chinese, and erupted in private meetings with advisers.

The coronavirus is testing Trump's governing philosophy that gut instinct is better than traditional expertise, that preparation and careful study is no match for impulse and luck. And the outcome is threatening his chief claim for a second term: a booming economy.

Donald Trump attempted to mitigate investors' fears about the novel coronavirus and stop the stock market slide with an address to the nation Wednesday night.

However, following the address -- in which he announced a travel ban for most of Europe, getting facts about his own administration's policy wrong in the process -- the market slide more.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average opened down 1,696 points -- erasing another 7% from the market, according to trading data. It triggered yet another automatic stop to trading for the second time in two weeks.

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A RACE, NOT A RELIGION:

The US State Department on Wednesday criticized Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party for "promoting hatred" against Arab Israelis in the two 2019 Knesset election campaigns.

"During the April and September national election campaigns, the Likud Party deployed messages promoting hatred against Arab citizens," the department's annual human rights report says.

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WHO COULD POSSIBLY HAVE FORESEEN CUTS WERE A MISTAKE?:

Dr. Anthony Fauci, a leading health expert and member of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force, predicted three years ago that the administration would have to deal with a surprise disease outbreak.

The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) told a Georgetown University event on pandemic preparedness in January 2017 that there was "no doubt" President Trump's team would face "challenges that their predecessors were faced with" over infectious diseases.

He also called for the creation of a "public health emergency fund" aimed at handling situations such as a surprise virus outbreak, adding that waits for funding had been "painful" in the past.

Delivering a keynote speech at the Georgetown University Medical Center event, Dr. Fauci said: "If there's one message that I want to leave with you today... is that there is no question that there will be a challenge to the coming administration in the arena of infectious diseases.

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ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

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HE'S NOT HILLARY:

Biden is lapping Sanders in voter support, with support from 66 percent of likely Democratic primary voters to 22 percent for Sanders, according to a University of North Florida poll taken March 5-10.

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GARBAGE IN...:

What is "authoritarian blindness"? It's a term for the well-documented tendency of an authoritarian state to be unaware of what is happening in the world around it and unable to respond appropriately. The paradox of authoritarian regimes is that the more efficient and all-pervasive the surveillance state, the less it knows about what is going on. The regime becomes blinded because people are afraid to tell the truth.

A fascinating article by Zeynep Tufekci described how this phenomenon was a factor in the Chinese government's initial response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Because an authoritarian system is designed to suppress information, rather than absorb it, the doctors on the front lines who initially warned about the disease were ignored and sometimes punished: "If people are too afraid to talk, and if punishing people for 'rumors' becomes the norm, a doctor punished for spreading news of a disease in one province becomes just another day, rather than an indication of impending crisis."

Tufekci provides a great analogy:

An Orwellian surveillance-based system would be overwhelming and repressive, as it is now in China, but it would also be similar to losing sensation in parts of one's body due to nerve injuries. Without the pain to warn the brain, the hand stays on the hot stove, unaware of the damage to the flesh until it's too late.

You can begin to see how this might apply to the Trump administration. No, we do not live under an authoritarian system, and there is no well-developed surveillance state or regime of censorship in America. But Donald Trump has developed and promoted two key concepts that produce much the same effect as authoritarian blindness: "fake news" and the "deep state."

The point of the "fake news" concept is to describe information from any media not obsequiously friendly to the president as some kind of conspiracy intended to hurt him. Veteran reporter Lesley Stahl says Trump told her he uses the term "to discredit you all and demean you all so that when you write negative stories about me no one will believe you."

The point of the "deep state" concept is to describe information coming to the president from within the federal bureaucracy as a partisan conspiracy to overthrow him by means of a "coup." (That's the president's word, not mine.) Thus, some of Trump's prominent supporters dismissed a warning from a CDC official by spinning a conspiracy theory connecting her to the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The practical effect of these two concepts is that they create a voluntarily accepted, self-induced authoritarian blindness, in which the administration and its circle of sycophants will accept no information from outside their bubble.

You can already see this blindness manifesting itself in the administration's muddled messages about COVID-19. 

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CLEANING UP AFTER A SENILE OLD MAN:

Minutes after President Donald Trump delivered a major address on the administration's response to the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, his own administration and other US officials publicly contradicted three important claims from his speech. 

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THE ADULT IN THE ROOM:

Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, who has mobilised millions of young people across the globe, asked fellow campaigners to avoid mass protests in a bid to help halt the spread of the coronavirus.

She said her "Fridays for Future" movement would organise online strikes instead.

The Swedish activist warned her followers it was vital they listened to the advice of health experts who have advised people to avoid large public gatherings to slow down the spread of the virus which has infected more than 125,000 people worldwide.

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HATE, LEAVENED WITH CORRUPTION (profanity alert):

President Donald Trump's new European travel restrictions have a convenient side effect: They exempt nations where three Trump-owned golf resorts are located.

Seated behind his desk in the White House Wednesday, Trump looked into the camera and warned Americans of an enemy who has infiltrated our borders. We are at war, he said, with a "foreign virus." [...]

Trump rode into office on a message of division, of fear and hate and xenophobia. He announced his campaign in 2015 by smearing Mexicans. Even his inaugural address was laced with dark notes. "From this day forward," he said during his address, "it's going to be only America first." Xenophobia isn't a bug in the system for him; it's a feature.

Throughout his time in office, again and again, he's rallied his supporters through fear of outsiders -- whether it was fear of travelers from Muslim-majority countries or asylum seekers at the US-Mexico border. He's portrayed foreigners as filthy and derided others' homelands as "s[***]hole countries."

Now, faced with explaining his government's response to an outbreak that's getting worse, he's relying on the same tropes.

On Wednesday night, when he should have been calling on Americans to come together, he attempted to make us afraid of all of Europe. "To keep new cases from entering our shores, we will be suspending all travel from Europe to the United States for the next 30 days," Trump said (excluding the UK for some reason).

This isn't the first time in history a leader has stoked fears among the public by linking outsiders to germs, of course. It's been part of many dark chapters in world history. Researchers have documented the repeated, often unfounded fears of connections between germs and immigrants throughout the 20th century. In a moment of crisis, it's particularly jarring and dangerous.

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CAN YOU CONTRADICT INCOHERENCE:

President Donald Trump is reluctant to declare an expansive emergency to combat the escalating coronavirus outbreak, fearful of stoking panic with such a dramatic step, according to three people familiar with the situation. [...]

"The president isn't persuaded because [an emergency declaration] contradicts his message that this is the flu," said a Republican who speaks to Trump.

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DONALD IS A LOW BAR TO CLEAR:

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WHO LET A PROFESSIONAL IN HERE!:

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THE TIGHTENING NOOSE:

The Trump Organization paid bribes, through middlemen, to New York City tax assessors to lower its property tax bills for several Manhattan buildings in the 1980s and 1990s, according to five former tax assessors and city employees as well as a former Trump Organization employee.

Two of the five city employees said they personally took bribes to lower the assessment on a Trump property; the other three said they had indirect knowledge of the payments.

The city employees were among 18 indicted in 2002 for taking bribes in exchange for lowering the valuations of properties, which in turn reduced the taxes owed for the buildings. All of the 18 eventually pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan except for one, who died before his case was resolved.

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OUR WILSON:

The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government's response to the contagion, according to four Trump administration officials. [...]

The sources said the National Security Council (NSC), which advises the president on security issues, ordered the classification."This came directly from the White House," one official said.

The White House insistence on secrecy at the nation's premier public health organization, which has not been previously disclosed, has put a lid on certain information - and potentially delayed the response to the crisis. 

The first wave wasn't that bad. In the spring of 1918, a new strain of influenza hit military camps in Europe on both sides of World War I. Soldiers were affected, but not nearly as severely as they would be later.

Even so, Britain, France, Germany and other European governments kept it secret. They didn't want to hand the other side a potential advantage.

Spain, on the other hand, was a neutral country in the war. When the disease hit there, the government and newspapers reported it accurately. Even the king got sick.

So months later, when a bigger, deadlier wave swept across the globe, it seemed like it had started in Spain, even though it hadn't. Simply because the Spanish told the truth, the virus was dubbed the "Spanish flu."

Now, as fears about the coronavirus spread, at least one historian is worried the Trump administration is failing to heed the lesson of one of the world's worst pandemics: Don't hide the truth.

Sign up for our coronavirus newsletter to stay updated on the outbreak

"They [the Trump administration] are clearly trying to put the best possible gloss on things, and are trying to control information," said John M. Barry, author of "The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History," in a phone interview with The Washington Post.

When the second wave of Spanish flu hit globally, "there was outright censorship" in Europe, Barry said. "In the United States, they didn't quite do that, but there was intense pressure not to say anything negative." [...]

For the most part, the media followed the government's lead and self-censored dire news. That made everything worse, Barry said.

For example, in Philadelphia, local officials were planning the largest parade in the city's history. Just before the scheduled event, about 300 returning soldiers started spreading the virus in the city.

"And basically every doctor, they were telling reporters the parade shouldn't happen. The reporters were writing the stories; editors were killing them," he said. "The Philadelphia papers wouldn't print anything about it."

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SOCIAL CAPITALISTS:

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NO PLAN B:

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OUR TWO REPUBLICAN PARTIES:

For months -- for years, really -- the media have reported that the Democratic Party has gone far left. They have treated social media as a barometer of the party's political attitudes and characterized center-left candidates as out of touch with their own party. They have done so despite the triumph of moderate Democratic House candidates in 2018; despite the failure of left-wing Democrats to flip a single House seat; despite the polls showing a substantial percentage of Democrats consider themselves moderate or somewhat liberal; and despite the failure of super-progressive presidential candidates to attract the most critical element in the Democratic Party (African Americans).

With this faulty premise, the media's coverage has been at times wildly off-kilter. It was easy for anyone caring to look closely to see that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) did not "win" a single debate, because his ranting and raving merely reinforced the fervor of his own cult while turning off the rest of the party. The media have been obsessed with the "likability" of female candidates, never considering that Sanders's angry and rude demeanor would turn off women, who make up more than half of the Democratic electorate. A simple question -- "Who is he gaining by all this yelling?" -- should have been front and center in the media's coverage. His "movement" was assumed but never examined carefully.

In short, the media have been conned by the left, by the far-left interest groups and social media bullies, by Sanders's results in 2016 (now properly seen as much as an anti-Hillary Clinton vote as a pro-Sanders vote) and by the never-fulfilled promise that he was building a multiracial, young movement.

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HUG A TRUMPBOT:

Maybe you've never heard of Livingston County, Michigan. It's not Oakland County, the vote-rich behemoth located next door; nor is it Macomb County, the much-mythologized home of the culturally conservative "Reagan Democrats" who began defecting to the Republican Party decades ago. It's a lot less populated, and a little too far from Detroit, to attract much notice from journalists and pundits. And yet, as the returns rolled in Tuesday night from Michigan's primary, it was Livingston that told the most compelling story. Not for what it said about Bernie Sanders or Joe Biden, but for what it said about Donald Trump.

Four years ago, Livingston was a safe haven for Republicans. Voters there--white, educated, upper-class commuters who head east to Detroit, south to Ann Arbor and west to Lansing--gave no hint of a coming realignment. The county's congressional seat, property of the GOP for 15 years, was locked down. Its political culture, anchored by a love of God, guns and tax cuts, seemed uncrackable. When the presidential primaries were held, the Republican contest attracted nearly three times more voters than the Democratic counterpart. Trump carried the county by 30 points against Hillary Clinton in November 2016, arguably his most impressive pound-for-pound showing in the state.

Today, Republicans are looking over their shoulders in Livingston County--and for good reason. They're not worried Trump is going to lose there; they're not worried about a wholesale change in the area's political DNA. They're worried about the only thing that matters in Michigan: margins. The reason Livingston is now represented by a Democrat in Congress is because Elissa Slotkin, the freshman Democrat, only lost the county by 19 points, limiting the damage in a way that allowed her to eke out an upset win with strong performances elsewhere in the 8th District.

There was a temptation for Republicans to dismiss Slotkin's victory as an outlier, to not sweat a 30-point margin slipping to a 19-point margin. But there can no longer be any doubt about the trajectory of Livingston County and the trouble it poses for the GOP: In Tuesday's Democratic primary, there were 27,458 votes cast in the county--compared to 17,591 four years ago. For Democratic turnout to jump 56 percent in any affluent, well-educated suburb is incredible; for it to happen in a deeply, fundamentally conservative place like Livingston County is astounding. Some people might think a difference of some 10,000 votes is no big deal. But in a state that was decided by some 10,000 votes, it's a very big deal.

Biden had a spectacular showing on Tuesday, winning every single county in Michigan and blowing Sanders out in three other states that voted, essentially sealing the nomination by leaving his lone rival no plausible path forward. But the big takeaway from the day's big prize, Michigan, isn't that Biden is a spectacular candidate. The big takeaway is that he doesn't need to be.

Two things happened on Tuesday in Michigan. First, Democratic turnout exploded. Second, Biden performed far better with key demographic groups than Clinton did four years ago. If either one of those things happen in November, Trump will have a difficult time winning the state again. If both things happen, the president can kiss Michigan's 16 electoral votes goodbye--and with them, more than likely, the electoral votes of Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.

There goes the White House.

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HAPPILY, THE rIGHT MISREAD 2016 IN EXACTLY THE SAME WAY:

The second Sanders campaign has shown conclusively how badly the left misunderstood the electorate. It is not just that Sanders has failed to inspire anything like the upsurge in youth turnout he promised, or that he has failed to make meaningful headway with black voters. White working-class and rural voters have swung heavily against him. In Missouri and Michigan, those voters turned states he closely contested four years ago into routs for his opponent. Some rural counties have swung 30 points from Sanders 2016 to Biden 2020. The candidate in the race who has forged a transracial working-class coalition is, in fact, Joe Biden.

The factor that actually explains 2016, as some of us chagrined liberals insisted at the time, was Hillary Clinton's idiosyncratic personal unpopularity. 

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WHO'D HAVE DREAMT HE'D HAVE THE ARYAN NATION VOTE?:

A plurality of white respondents back President Donald Trump, undercutting claims that people in prison would overwhelmingly vote for Democrats.

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THE RETURN TO NORMAL:

Biden giving a sober, magnanimous speech right now, rather than spiking the football, which is the right tone given the background of the coronavirus and the foreground of needing to unify the party and reach out to Sanders voters. Worth watching: https://t.co/dbYVpQ8gSL

— (((Yair Rosenberg))) (@Yair_Rosenberg) March 11, 2020

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THE SALUTARY FASCIST INTERLUDE:

At a moment when democratic governance seems increasingly under strain in countries around the world, Taiwan is a rare bright spot. Since emerging from decades of martial law in 1987, the island has held seven national elections unmarred by significant irregularities and experienced multiple peaceful transfers of power between the incumbent Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and its principal rival, the Kuomintang (KMT). During that time, Taiwanese politics has proven resilient in grappling with thorny issues such as same sex marriage, the rights of indigenous peoples, and reliance on nuclear power, all of which have been the subject of civil public debate and incorporated into the platforms of political parties. Last month, Taiwan's democracy successfully conducted what was arguably its most high-stakes election to date, which resulted in a second term for DPP President Tsai Ing-Wen and a renewed majority for the DPP in Taiwan's legislature.

Taiwan's democratic resiliency is especially notable in light of the unrelenting hostility it faces from the government of mainland China, which views the island as a renegade province and has warned that any attempt by Taiwanese authorities to declare independence will be met by force. In recent years, Beijing has engaged in a sustained pressure campaign to persuade the Taiwanese public that reunification is the only viable future for them, including information warfare aimed at sowing division in Taiwanese society, selective limitations on trade aimed at weakening the island's economy, bellicose rhetoric threatening military action, and aggressive diplomatic measures designed to isolate and humiliate Taiwan on the international stage.

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IT'S NOT A pROGRESSIVE PARTY:

There's not a whole lot to say about tonight's results. Obviously Joe Biden won today's primaries in another landslide and just as obviously this is the end for Bernie Sanders. The only question left is whether the Sanders team will accept this, or whether they'll pretend yet again that next week's contest is the real test. [...]

Even without Republican obstruction, Medicare for All was never going to pass. A flat $15 federal minimum wage was never going to pass. Free college was never going to pass. The Green New Deal was never going to pass. A wealth tax was never going to pass. In fact, we'll be lucky if even Biden's versions of these things can pass.

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YEAH, BUT THE GOP STILL HAS OLD WHITE MEN:

(1) The Democratic Coalition Is Less Susceptible to a Populist Charlatan 

The Democrats' national coalition in 2020 was not immune to charlatans or populists but, unlike the Republicans, it made them constitutionally capable of staving one off.

Republican elected officials, strategists, and pundits spent the weeks leading up to Super Tuesday gleefully mocking anti-Trump Republicans and Democrats as the party looked to be stumbling towards nominating Bernie. They claimed that it proved what they had argued all along--that Trump was just a natural reaction because it was the Democrats who were really the crazy ones.

The past two weeks have destroyed these arguments. The Republican commentators didn't understand that the Democratic party is hardier than the GOP was. The Democratic coalition isn't as reactionary. The strong Democratic voting blocs aren't as easily seduced by grifters.

This isn't an opinion. It's just a plain fact. Look at the numbers.

What many of us on the inside had seen coming--but believed we could ward off--was that the Republican party had become ripe for a populist revolution after decades of shedding college-educated, professional-class voters and trading them for working-class voters. 

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NO ONE LOOKS TO DONALD FOR GOOD JUDGEMENT:

This was the day Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) has been warning about -- and essentially predicted. Back in 2017, when the Trump administration first proposed steep cuts to programs that handle disease outbreaks, Cole said, "I promise you the president is much more likely in his term to have a deal with a pandemic than an act of terrorism. I hope he doesn't have to deal with either one, but you have to be ready to deal with both."

Now that the potential pandemic has come, Cole is re-upping his long-standing criticisms of the Trump administration's posture toward preparedness. And on Tuesday, he offered a little bit of an "I told you so," even suggesting that the situation might not be as bad if the administration had listened to him.

At a House subcommittee hearing featuring Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield, Cole offered some veiled rebukes of how the administration has worked with people like him on this issue.

"Your requirement is to come and do what you all do, and that's defend the presidential budget," Cole told Redfield and the other officials testifying. "But I would just submit for the record that administrations would be a lot better off had they listened to us several years ago in this area, and we would all collectively be better off. And I hope we all learn a lesson from that."

Cole said that the outbreak of coronavirus is a "sort of vindication of the bipartisan judgment over the last several years that this was really an area we needed to make investments."

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...AND CHEAPER...:

The 10MW solar-powered Fukushima Hydrogen Energy Research Field (FH2R) project has been completed, according to Toshiba Energy Systems & Solutions Corporation, which oversaw the construction and will oversee the hydrogen energy management system in the former nuclear powered prefecture.

The FH2R project can apparently produce as much as 1,200 Nm3 of hydrogen per hour and is powered by a 20MW solar farm and some power from the grid.

So-called "green hydrogen" projects such as FH2R are becoming more attractive and commonplace, using renewable generated electricity to power the electrolysis of water to create hydrogen. [...]

Japan's Fukushima Prefecture, the scene of the world's most recent nuclear disasters in 2011, has embarked on a $US2.7 billion renewable energy rebirth over the past decade, including plans to transform its now unusable agricultural land into wind and solar farms. [...]

The electricity generated will be sent to the Tokyo metropolitan area - as it was by Tepco before the 2011 earthquake and tsunami destroyed its Dai-Ichi nuclear plant.

The Fukushima government has said it expects the new renewables hub to provide 13-14 percent of Japan's national energy mix by 2030.

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WE'RE 4 YEARS IN, THEY CAN'T HAVE EXPECTED BETTER:

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HAMMER TIME:

I think I saw Tyner perform live twice: once at an outdoor concert at Lincoln Center, where he was a vigorously pulsing dot in the distance, and later at the Blue Note downtown, where he was only a few feet from me and I could stare, mesmerized, at his thundering left hand. He raised it high over the keyboard, above his head, before sending it hammering down, blasting open the time that followed, filling the bars with cascading showers of high notes. That, more than anything else, was the definitive Tyner gesture: opening the musical measure with that heavy left-hand chord, which was simultaneously a drum, a cymbal, and a signal to the rest of the music about where it should begin and end; more than any pianist save Cecil Taylor, Tyner understood his instrument as a series of pitched drums.

How, from that high distance, did his hand know where to find the chord he wanted when it slammed back down to the piano? But that is the least of his miracles. As Johnny Cash said, "Your style is a function of your limitations, more so than a function of your skills." That's a humbling truism about all creative work, but the limiting factors are different for each art form. Writers are stuck with a particular vocabulary, a language, and the deep memory of the kinds of sentences they heard growing up. A singer is stuck with the particular resonating chamber that is their body. Tyner was perhaps blessed by being stuck with those catapult hands and an unwavering conviction that rhythm and melody should tell a story, enact a high drama. It can be cheesy at times, but mostly I find I agree with--am glad to be a part of--the story his music tells.

It's enough, more than enough, really, for an artist to simply find a voice, to chisel it out of the noise and to keep it ringing clear across a lifetime. Though he tried lots of modes and moods, Tyner began his professional career in the early sixties as a fully formed artist, and his last albums, from the aughts, are not unlike his first. From the beginning, his musical voice--seeking, earnest, exciting--was his alone. 

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POT IS THE NEW TOBACCO:

The research, from McLean Hospital, reveals that cannabis users tend to experience more accidents. This is related to users tending to drive at faster speeds, and having a tendency to jump red lights (based on figures for the general population). This applied whether regular cannabis users were 'high' or not.

Cannabis legalization has spread across a large portion of the U.S., displaying growth across a number of different demographic groups. This includes some 'at risk' sectors of the public, such as pregnant women (this is despite medical evidence being presented that this activity could harm their babies).

Another at risk group are young people, and here the McLean Hospital study found that earlier onset of marijuana use (defined as regular use of cannabis prior to age 16) was associated with the most unsafe driving performance, leading to a higher number of accidents. The indication of impaired driving performance, irrespective of when cannabis was last consumed, applied across all demographic groups; however, there was a particular association among those who first took the drug early in life.

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ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

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"HE FIGHTS" (profanity alert):

The worker accused Biden of "actively trying to end our Second Amendment right."

Biden immediately responded: "You're full of s---."

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THE CHEETO CEILING:

The dataset we used, a large academic election survey that YouGov has conducted online every year since 2006, allows us to better understand the share of 2016 Trump voters who are up for grabs. In November 2019, the survey interviewed 18,000 American adults who had been interviewed in 2016 about their vote, asking them how they planned to vote in 2020.

They found that most of Trump's voters plan to stick with him: Ninety percent of those who voted for Trump in 2016 say they plan to vote for him again. But 10 percent seem to be up for grabs. Four percent are already planning to vote for the Democratic candidate, and another 6 percent say that they are still undecided. By contrast, 94 percent of Clinton voters are already committed to the Democrats: just 2 percent of Clinton's 2016 voters are planning to vote for Trump in 2020, with another 4 percent undecided.

The largest share of Trump's support in 2016 came from baby boomers, and only 7 percent of them are considering abandoning him in 2020. Trump's older supporters are quite loyal to him. Where Trump is losing the most support is among Americans younger than 40 who voted for him in 2016.

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DIVINE JUSTICE:

[I]n 2017, Hurricane Maria swept through the island, destroying homes, killing thousands of people, and leaving millions of others stranded. Rivera became one of the tens of thousands of storm refugees who moved to Florida in the following months to try and build a new life.

Now Rivera and the other hurricane refugees have become a vital voting bloc coveted by both the Democratic and Republican parties in the swing state, where elections are often won by just tens of thousands of votes. While the last census data counted about 50,000 in the group, later estimates say there could now be more than 130,000 people who have resettled in Florida.

And they're largely politically active. Rivera, whose home was uninhabitable after the storm, moved close to her daughter, who already lived in the central Florida city of Gainesville. The septuagenarian left behind her church, her friends, and other relatives. But she did not want to give up her right to vote, now more powerful than ever, since Puerto Ricans can only vote in the presidential primaries when living in the territory.

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THE CHEETO CEILING:

In new @QuinnipiacPoll, both Biden and Bernie beat Trump on the question of who would do a better job handling a crisis.
*Biden 56 - 40.
*Bernie 50 - 44.https://t.co/lZT88qPnKV

— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) March 10, 2020

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QUO VADIS?:

Nero, a descendant of Julius Caesar, was born Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus in 37 A.D.; his mother, Agrippina, conspired by an incestuous marriage to make Nero the next in line for the throne. Her husband/uncle, the emperor Claudius, died by poisoning soon after, making Nero, 16 or 17 at the time, the fifth emperor of Rome.

Agrippina attempted to rule via her son but was soon exiled and later executed. And as Nero grew into a young man, he was kind of always DTFF -- down to feast and frolic. He threw lavish parties in extravagant palaces, slept with anyone he wanted and even took to the stage as an actor, poet and musician.

The elites of Rome were not impressed. Orgies were one thing, but acting? In plays? That cheapened the throne, they complained.

Then, in 64 A.D., Nero announced he wanted to level and rebuild most of the city in a more contemporary style. The Senate refused him permission. Soon afterward, the whole city caught on fire.

It burned for six days straight, then rekindled and burned for three more. Ten of Rome's 14 districts were destroyed. And Nero soon began to build his massive "Golden House" on its smoldering ashes.

Trump's Fourth of July history speech: Turns out there weren't airports back then

But did he really fiddle while Rome burned?

No, because fiddles didn't exist until the Middle Ages. But he maybe played his lyre?

His first biographer, Tacitus, wrote in his "Annals" that Nero was 30 miles away in Antium at the time, "but at the very moment when Rome was aflame, he had mounted his private stage, and typifying the ills of the present by the calamities of the past, had sung the destruction of Troy."

Not a great look.

Later biographers were even less charitable. Suetonius claimed that witnesses caught him setting the fires, and that he watched the city burn from a tower, "and exulting, as he said, in 'the beauty of the flames,' he sang the whole of the 'Sack of Ilium,' in his regular stage costume." Cassius Dio claimed he hired a bunch of thugs to set fires and then watched from the palace, singing and playing the lyre in costume.

The famous expression that "Nero fiddled while Rome burned" came later, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica, but it was adapted over centuries from an original story.

In any case, Nero's feckless response to the tragedy is now being compared to Trump's Twitter behavior amid the growing crises of the coronavirus outbreak and its economic fallout. 

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SILENCE BECOMES HIM:

It is a seismic shift for Biden, 77, who in five decades of political office and three White House runs has never had a reputation for breviloquence. It's a habit perhaps nurtured in the Senate, which prides itself on limitless debate and has a special term -- filibuster -- for talking endlessly.

In his shortened speeches, Biden still touches on his platform points, takes subtle jabs at Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and makes more than a few passing references to former president Barack Obama -- he just does it all much faster.

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ALL THE BATTLEGROUNDS ARE RED:

With Tuesday's Democratic primaries hours away, former Vice President Joe Biden has found an unexpected supporter in Sterling Heights, Michigan Mayor Michael Taylor, a Republican.

"Since announcing my endorsement of Joe Biden I have received an outpouring of encouraging messages and believe even more strongly that Joe Biden is the candidate who can defeat Donald Trump in Macomb County and the State of Michigan," Taylor said in a statement to Newsweek on Monday.

While Taylor, a life-long Republican, voted for President Donald Trump in 2016, he said he would cast his ballot for Biden this year because Trump is "deranged."

Quarterly polling by Republican-founded Firehouse Strategies and 0ptimus finds that President Trump's lead dropped considerably against both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders since December in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

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YEAH, BUT OBAMA'S BLACK:

When Roosevelt died, he left an unprepared Harry Truman to take over as his constitutionally mandated successor. Truman inherited an ongoing war, the overblown legacy of a four-term president and a decision to make about blowing up Japan with the world's newest weapon--the atomic bomb.

FDR never deeply briefed Truman, and 82 days into his vice presidency, Truman was thrust into the role of 33rd president. He sought a lifeline from the only other person alive who knew the pressures he was facing and understood the presidency. He needed an ex-president, and the only one available was a vilified California Republican: Herbert Hoover. Truman and Hoover joked that this was the beginning of a "former presidents' club."

Hoover, desperately seeking rehabilitation and respect, hungrily accepted the role of hidden adviser, careful consultant, proven European post-war logistics master and savior.

Trump has not only taken a page from FDR's playbook, he's writing a whole new chapter on political purges, with updated sections on baiting, backbiting and bullying former presidents. Barack Obama meet Herbert Hoover

In the recent past and on solemn national occasions, group photos of living presidents showed the world America's power and unity. It is remarkable to see pictures of Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush and Clinton together. It is powerful to know that they relied on each other for insights into foreign leaders, difficult hostage negotiations, secret two-track discussions with adversaries, joint humanitarian missions and general counsel on thorny issues.

Today, those photos seem like relics of a bygone era. Instead of former U.S. presidents posing for Associated Press photos in the Oval Office, spying foreign journalists are now welcomed into the White House to shoot Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ambassador Sergey Kislyak who yuk it up near Andrew Jackson's portrait.

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THEIR PHILOSOPHERS COULD HAVE DRAWN ON THE ENGLISH EXPERIENCE:

[P]eople like Menetra had no sense of the give-and-take of representative government, and no appreciation of pluralism. The absence of this tradition helps explain why the Revolution, from the taking of the Bastille on, was again and again propelled by popular uprisings when part of the population either became incensed at some turn of events or was manipulated to support a faction in the National Assembly, the body that rapidly succeeded the Estates General when the commoners declared themselves a unicameral assembly. Americans were skilled at compromise because of their long experience of representation in the colonies, but the French relied on direct and violent action, being wholly unschooled in any institution of representative government.

Edmund Burke observed that French philosphes abetted the violence of the Revolution because their abstract theories did not grow organically from political experience. But France had not even fledgling democratic experience on which their political philosophers could draw. As Bernard Bailyn makes clear in his great book, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, many of the English political philosophers on which the colonists relied were themselves practical statesmen, like the Earl of Shaftesbury, or at least advisors to such statesmen, like John Locke. In contrast, Jean-Jacques Rousseau--the patron philosopher of the Revolution--had no substantial connection to politicians. His theory of the General Will, which posits that there is a collective will for the general good that can be sharply distinguished from the view of particular groups within society, discouraged compromise because it made it easier for any faction to fancy itself the sole reflection of that general will. When American statesmen like John Adams read his works, they thought him mad.

Popkin's narrative shows how many of the famous actors in the Revolution--from Georges Danton to Maximilian Robespierre--were borne along by the current of a people unlearned in democracy. As a result, the leaders of the Revolution had little choice but to engage in conspiracies against other factions, because they rightly feared that other factions would also seek to conspire against them, mobilizing the French street at the first opportunity. Danton still has statues in his honor in France and is often contrasted as the good revolutionary compared to the bloodthirsty Robespierre (much like Lenin was once contrasted with Stalin). But in this book, Danton comes across as just a less deft (and more corrupt) schemer in the days of the Terror. Indeed, Robespierre is shown to be more moderate than this reputation. There were politicians farther to his left who were even more eager to destroy the past, whatever the cost, particularly when it came to the Catholic Church. Robespierre tried to restrain them.

My greatest disagreement with this outstanding achievement of narrative history is the author's ultimately positive assessment of the French Revolution. At one point he somewhat excuses the Terror, while lamenting its dreadful excesses, by noting that the Revolution could probably not have survived without it. But on balance, why was the survival of the Revolution desirable? For instance, if Louis XVI had escaped (and it was his lack of ruthlessness in refusing to leave his family behind that doomed his attempt) and had come back with an army to put down the rebellion, the world and France would likely have been better off in the short and long term. Louis XVI was more moderate than the Bourbon brothers who succeeded him after the Restoration and could well have begun the transition to a constitutional monarchy. In any event, the current of the times was such that transition would have occurred.

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THE CHEETO CEILING:

Michigan primary voters repeat the mantra of Democratic voters across the country - 57% say beating Trump is more important to their vote than any policy issue. Another 25% say electability is about as important as their top policy concern while 16% say it is less important than issue alignment. Among those who say beating Trump is their top priority, 60% support Biden and 25% support Sanders. Among primary voters who do not make electability their top priority, Sanders (50%) is preferred over Biden (40%).

"With Trump in office now, electability is certainly more of a factor for Michigan Democrats than it was four years ago," said Murray.

Looking ahead to November, both of the probable Democratic nominees hold narrow leads among registered voters over Trump in a crucial state the Republican won by 10,704 votes four years ago. Biden holds a 48% to 41% edge over the incumbent while Sanders has a similar 46% to 41% lead.

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SNOWFLAKE IN CHIEF:

By now many of the president's advisers are numb to this kind of performance. "There's very little that fazes anyone now," a former official said. But one person who spoke to the president over the weekend saw the press conference as an ominous sign. "He's just now waking up to the fact that this is bad, and he doesn't know how to respond."

As Trump pushes a nothing-to-see-here message in public, sources said he's privately terrified about getting the virus. "Donald is a famous germaphobe. He hates it if someone is eating nachos and dips a chip back in after taking a bite. He calls them 'double dippers,'" a prominent Republican said. Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg recalled Trump's response to the last major outbreak in 2014. "When I worked for Trump, he was obsessed with Ebola," Nunberg told me. (One Mar-a-Lago guest disputed this and said Trump was handshaking with gusto this past weekend. "He was acting like the opposite of a germaphobe," the source said.)

Stories about Trump's coronavirus fears have spread through the White House. Last week Trump told aides he's afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me. The source also said Trump has asked the Secret Service to set up a screening program and bar anyone who has a cough from the White House grounds. "He's definitely melting down over this," the source said.

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WAIT, YOU MEAN SYCOPHANCY IS A POOR SUBSTITUTE FOR COMPETENCE?:

Unlike the seasoned economists and Wall Street players who dealt with the 2008 financial panic such as Lawrence H. Summers, Timothy F. Geithner and Ben Bernanke, or the 1999 "Committee to Save the World" that quelled the Asian financial crisis, today's top policymakers have less expertise steering the government through a crisis.

"There is not any sense yet of a coherent American economic strategy for responding to what's clearly a very important set of developments," said Summers, a former treasury secretary who played a key role in financial crises in the Clinton and Obama administrations. "From the outside, things seem amateurish in terms of international coordination, cooperation with international financial institutions, and the presentation of a joint front by treasury and the Fed."

During the Asian financial crisis, Summers said, it was not unusual for the Treasury to talk to Fed Chair Alan Greenspan multiple times a day along with the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

Today there is a more awkward relationship among the key players. Trump distrusts many global institutions, and he frequently criticizes Powell on Twitter, even calling him an "enemy" in August. These repeated attacks on the Fed alarm many who have steered the economy in the past.

"Throughout both the Bush and Obama administrations, both the president and the treasury secretary left monetary policy alone," said Bernanke, a former Fed chair who led the central bank during the 2008 financial crisis. "It's worrisome that the president seems to think cutting interest rates is the first line of defense."

While W, Ben and the UR were saving the global economy in '08, Maverick and House Republicans were embarrassing themselves.  Donald is just carrying the torch.

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MOTHER OF TWITCHY:

Those who have followed Malkin over the years know that she has always been--how to put this politely--an immigration restrictionist. Though maybe that's too polite, since over the years she's championed not only racial profiling, roundups of minorities, too. In 2004, she wrote a book titled In Defense of Internment. One of the websites she founded, Hot Air, thrived touting her anti-immigration cause through the mid-2000s and she considers the defeat of the McCain-Kennedy 2006 "amnesty" bill as one of her great accomplishments. During those years, Malkin was put on a pedestal by mainstream conservative organizations such as CPAC, Regnery Publishing, and the Young America's Foundation as a leading voice for the movement. She had a Fox News contract and appeared on the network's highest-rated shows.

And she now seems to have turned her back on all of that in order to link arms with the most vocal elements of the white nationalist movement. Oh, I'm sorry. They insist on being called "America Firsters." Same difference. [...]

Last month, her wayward progression continued. For years Malkin had been a star at CPAC. But on February 28, instead of going to CPAC, where she was now banned from the stage, Malkin stood before a new crowd at an event organized by Fuentes. In that speech, she opened her remarks by saying "Thank you. Thank you. Mommy's in the house."

It seemed a little odd that Malkin would again describe herself as a "mom" to these bigots. But it turns out that her imagery was deliberate. This is Malkin's new identity: Mother of groypers.

In her speech she addressed accusations of anti-Semitism with the same sort of mocking "I talked about it, but didn't say it" tone that is so common on the alt-right:

Already right out of the gate, before I even knew who Nick Fuentes was, before I knew who Groypers were, I was being tarred as an anti-Semite. It's become a useless, meaningless term and everybody knows it. And that's why they're so desperate to tar all of us as that. It's anti-Semitic to mention George Soros' billions. It's anti-Semitic to criticize the Anti-Defamation League. It's anti-Semitic to question whatever the precise number is of people who perished in World War II. It is anti-Semitic for me, being married to a 100 percent Ashkenazi Jew, to question dual loyalties of people who are working here as agents of a foreign country.

Oh, and it is an unacceptably anti-Semitic to point out the rank hypocrisy of people who are fiercely protective of an ethno-state and an immigration enforcement system that works--who turn around and call those of us who believe, whatever our backgrounds are, who only have one homeland that they've ever known, to call us--what is it now?--"white majoritarianism" I believe is the term. That's me. Thank you. [...]

The Daily Stormer's Andrew Anglin described Malkin's speech as "beautiful."

In that same speech Malkin helpfully talked about others she considers part of the "family." Among them were Fuentes, Yiannopolous, Identity Evropa Director Patrick Casey, VDARE President Peter Brimelow, VDARE writer (and former National Review writer) John Derbyshire, National Review contributing editor Dinesh D'Souza, Ann Coulter, the Canadian white nationalist Faith Goldy, Frank Gaffney, and Pamela Geller. (Not all of them were thrilled by the honor. Geller posted the video of Malkin's speech, calling it "unconscionable and breathtaking" and linked to an open letter posted on Richard Spencer's "Jihad Watch" website--not that Richard Spencer--asking Malkin to "rethink her defense of a Jew-hater and Holocaust-denier.")

The great irony is that even now, Malkin still has friends in Conservative, Inc.

The Trump administration's Acting Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Ken Cuccinelli, gave Malkin a shoutout from the same CPAC stage she was banned from. Although many outlets, such as National Review and the Daily Wire, stopped carrying her syndicated columns, the Salem Media-owned Townhall.com still does. (When I emailed a Townhall.com executive asking why the site continued to publish her column, I received no reply.)

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