Posts Tagged ‘SCHOOLS’
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 15, 2020 at 12:05 am
The 9/11 terror attacks frightened Americans more than any event since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.. But they didn’t slaughter as many Americans nor affect their lives as intimately as has the advent of COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus.
First, COVID-19 has killed far more Americans than 9/11. As before mentioned, 9/11 snuffed out the lives of almost 3,000 Americans. But as of September 15, more than 194,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. And the plague has not finished its murderous work.
Second, while 9/11 affected two American cities—New York and Washington, D.C.—COVID-19 has spread throughout the country. As epicenters like New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago gain national attention, the virus continues to seep into rural centers—especially in the South and Midwest.
Third, the combination of evil and incompetence of the Trump administration has shaken Americans’ faith in the ability—and even the willingness—of the Federal Government to protect them.
TRUMP AND BOB WOODWARD
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks attacked President Donald Trump in terms usually reserved for serial killers. On the March 13 edition of The PBS Newshour, he said:
“This is what happens when you elect a sociopath as president, who doesn’t care, who has treated this whole thing for the past month as if it’s about him. ‘How do people like me?’ Minimizing the risks. ‘Does the stock market reflect well on me?’ And he hasn’t done the things a normal human being would do, which was to, let’s take precautions….
“And he’s incapable of that. And he’s even created an information distortion field around him.”
Yet even David Brooks could not have predicted the scandal that now threatens Trump’s chances for re-election on November 3.
To understand this, it’s necessary to compare what Trump was saying privately to legendary investigative reporter Bob Woodward—as opposed to what he was telling the American public in countless addresses.
Woodward—along with Carl Bernstein—achieved imperishable fame in 1972-74 as the Washington Post reporters whose Watergate-related stories led to the fall of President Richard M. Nixon.
Bob Woodward
THE ADVENT OF CORONAVIRUS
First, some background on the Coronvirus itself:
The virus first appeared in Wuhan, China, in December, 2019. Its first reported victim became ill on December 1.
By December 31, the outbreak was traced to a novel strain of Coronavirus.
Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that affect birds and mammals. In humans, Coronaviruses can cause pneumonia and may cause bronchitis.
As President, Trump had access to Intelligence sources denied to his fellow citizens.
Trump first learned of the virus on January 3, 2020. This did not prevent him from playing golf on January 4, 5, 18 and 19.
On January 19, the first Coronavirus case appeared in the United States.
On January 27, then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney tried to get the President to act.
But, according to officials who spoke with the Washington Post, Trump was “dismissive” of early briefings “because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.”
Trump fired Mulvaney one month later.
Then, for Trump, it was back to the golf course—on February 1, 2 and 15.
TRUMP CONFESSES TO BOB WOODWARD
On February 7, he decided to share some of his Coronavirus Intelligence with legendary Washington Post editor and reporter Bob Woodward.
Why he chose to do this remains a mystery.
It’s possible that Trump—whose hatred of the press is infamous—thought he could “take” Woodward. Or perhaps even cultivate him.
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks thinks so. On the September 11 edition of The PBS Newshour, Brooks offered:
“First, the hubris to think, you could be the president and talk to Bob Woodward and not get hurt by it. Donald Trump walked right into this.
“Two, the extreme cynicism of not only bumbling around in February and March, because you didn’t know how serious the pandemic was, but the confirmation that you did know, and you still thought you could talk it down, as if you can talk down a force of nature, and that this—you wouldn’t end up getting caught.”
If Trump thought he could “take” or cultivate Woodward, it wasn’t the first time a high-ranking government official had done so.
During the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, CIA director William J. Casey spilled countless secrets to Woodward—which found their way into a 1987 book: Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. Woodward admitted that he didn’t know why Casey had been so forthcoming.
On February 7, 2020, the following telephone interview between Trump and Woodward took place:
Bob Woodward: And so, what was [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] saying yesterday?
Donald Trump: Oh, we were talking mostly about the virus, and I think he’s going to have it in good shape. But it’s a very tricky situation.
Woodward: Indeed, it is.
Trump: It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flues. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?
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In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 14, 2020 at 12:15 am
On September 11, 2001, 19 Islamic terrorists snuffed out the lives of 3,000 Americans in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania.
They did so by turning four commercial jetliners into fuel-bombs—and crashing them into, respectively, the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City; the Pentagon, in Washington, D.C.; and—unintentionally—a field in Somerset County, Pennsylvania.
(Its destination had been the White House or the Capitol Building. But its passengers, alerted by radio broadcasts of the doom awaiting them, resolved to take over the plane instead. The hijackers slammed the jet into the ground to avoid capture.)
World Trade Center – September 11, 2001
But within less than a month, American warplanes began carpet-bombing Afghanistan, whose rogue Islamic “government” refused to surrender Osama bin Laden, the had of Al-Qaeda who had masterminded the attacks.
By December, 2001, the power of the Taliban was broken—and bin Laden was driven into hiding in Pakistan.
For more than 16 years, the United States—through its global military and espionage networks—relentlessly hunted down most of those responsible for that September carnage.
On May 1, 2011, U.S. Navy SEALS invaded bin Laden’s fortified mansion in Abbottabad, Pakistan—and shot him dead.
U.S. Navy SEALs
OSAMA BIN LADEN’S BOASTING
On December 13, 2001, the Pentagon released a videotape of Osama bin Laden discussing the attacks in Arabic with another man who appears to be a cleric.
The videotape had been discovered by American forces in a private home in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.
On the tape, bin Laden says he was pleasantly surprised by the amount of destruction caused at the World Trade Center. He had only expected the top portion of the Twin Towers to collapse:
“We calculated in advance the number of casualties from the enemy, who would be killed based on the position of the tower. We calculated that the floors that would be hit would be three or four floors. I was the most optimistic of them all.
“Due to my experience in this field [he had graduated from King Abdul Aziz University with a civil engineering degree in 1979] I was thinking that the fire from the gas in the plane would melt the iron structure of the building and collapse the area where the plane hit and all the floors above it only.
“This is all that we had hoped for.”
Osama bin Laden
9/11 VS. COVID-19
Now, consider this:
It’s September 11, 2020. Nineteen years to the day since the United States suffered its worst terrorist attack in history—a loss of 3,000 Americans.
And, in less than a year, the United States is nearing a death-toll of 200,000 from an enemy just as deadly and unrelenting as Al Qaeda.
That enemy is Coronavirus, also known as COVID-19.
The September 11 attacks jolted Americans out of their complacency toward Islamic terrorism. Since the 1980s, the United States had responded to terrorism via its legal system. After 9/11, Americans opted for a military response against Middle Eastern terror cells.
For months afterward, America feared the worst—that other cities would soon become targets for massive terror attacks. But, for all the death and destruction wrought that day, this didn’t happen.
There were two major reasons for this:
First, under its new director, Robert Mueller, the FBI completely refocused its mission from investigating crimes to preventing them. This resulted in a proactive rather than reactive mindset and approach. Even terrorists who felt safe abroad found themselves arrested by FBI agents employing the sort of techniques previously used against foreign spies.
Second, the attacks led to the creation of a huge new agency—the Department of Homeland Security. Massive sums of money were doled out to local police departments across the country, arming them with new hires and more sophisticated anti-crime technologies.
And for the first time since the dawning of the age of flight, the Federal Government took responsibility for preventing airline terrorism. Previously, this had fallen to individual airlines—which, seeing it as a financial drain, had assigned it a low priority.
The attacks also led to a complete restructuring of the United States military.
In the past, Americans had excelled in set-piece battles and wars. But when fighting enemies where guerrilla warfare negated overwhelming military power, the United States had done poorly—first in Korea (1950-1953) and then in Vietnam (1960-1975).
As a result, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield reorganized the Pentagon’s bureaucracy, assigning highest priority to building unconventional military units such as the Army’s Green Berets and Delta Force, and the Navy’s SEALs.
These were all major changes resulting from the 9/11 attacks. They cost billions of dollars and got huge publicity. But they didn’t affect the lives of everyday Americans as intimately as has the advent of COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus.
Coronavirus
The 9/11 terror attacks frightened Americans more than any event since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.. But they slaughtered only a fraction of Americans, as compared with the 194,000 who have died from COVID-19, in less than a year..
Osama bin Laden deservedly gained infamy for plotting 9/11. But Donald Trump, who repeatedly lied about the dangers of COVID-19, remains beloved by about 40% of Americans.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Politics, Social commentary, Uncategorized on July 20, 2020 at 12:09 am
The United States has become the country worst-affected by Coronavirus—with more than 3.83 million diagnosed cases and at least 143,000 deaths.
But President Donald J. Trump wants children to return to school—and not through virtual classes at home.
And he’s not asking parents to send their children back to school after summer. On July 8, he tweeted that he may withhold federal funding from schools that do not resume in-person classes this fall.
“In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!”
Donald Trump
Most school funding in America comes from states and municipalities, not the federal government. Nonetheless, the White House is exploring ways to use the next Coronavirus relief bill to tie the slice of school funding that does come from Washington to the pace of different schools’ reopenings.
And moments after making that threat, Trump said the guidelines of his own Centers for Disease Prevention and Control (CDC) for safely reopening schools were too expensive and impractical:
“I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!”
Among those guidelines:
- Schools should have markings on sidewalks and walls, that mark off six feet, and signs reminding students of protective measures.
- Masks should be worn by students and faculty, “as feasible,” and especially when keeping a distance isn’t possible.
- Sharing equipment, games and supplies should be avoided. If that’s not possible, they should be cleaned after each use.
- Playgrounds, cafeterias and dining halls should be shut. Students eat in their classrooms.
- Rooms should be well-ventilated.
- Schools should allow sick staff members to “stay home when they are sick, have been exposed, or caring for someone who is sick,” without being punished for staying home.
Coronavirus
Many Americans have asked: “How can President Trump demand that children return to school in the midst of a deadly plague? Especially when we don’t have adequate testing facilities—and, most importantly, a reliable vaccine?”
On July 10, Paula Reid, White House correspondent for CBS News, provided the answer on the PBS program, Washington Week. Every Friday a panel of distinguished journalists reports and analyses major Washington-related stories.
According to Reid:
“Well, up until now the administration has really deferred to local leaders to determine when they want to reopen their communities based on the situation on the ground. But then you saw this week, when it comes to schools, the president issuing this broad mandate that all schools must open in the fall or else potentially he will cut funding, when in fact we know most schools are locally funded, and he’s also made other threats.
“He’s made it clear that he is putting pressure on governors, and the question is, why is he taking this approach to schools specifically when he’s deferred to states on so many other aspects of this pandemic?
“And just speaking with White House advisers, I’m told the president knows that in order to get parents back to work you need to get kids back to class, and for the president a lot of this is about hoping that that would give an economic boost to the U.S. ahead of his reelection in November.“
For which he could then claim credit.
And Reid warned: “But one of the most significant things out of the administration this week is the fact that Dr.[Deborah] Birx [Coronavirus Response Coordinator for the White House Coronavirus Task Force] said that we really don’t have that much data on COVID in children because the under-10 set is really the least tested.”
In short: As always for Donald Trump, the bottom line is: “It’s all about me.”
Ancient Canaanites offering their children as sacrifices to Moloch
When governors began issuing “stay-at-home” orders in March, Trump saw these as a two-fold threat to himself:
- He couldn’t return to his hate-filled mass rallies until these orders were lifted; and
- The stock market wouldn’t start soaring again so long as the country was “locked down.”
Without his Nuremberg-style rallies and a roaring stock market, Trump faced the danger of being a one-term President. And for a monumental egomaniac who has repeatedly “joked” about becoming “President-for-Life,” that is no small danger.
On April 17, Trump, via Twitter, ordered his supporters to violate stay-at-home orders of Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia.
Masses of protesters—most of them unmasked, many carrying guns, wearing Trump MAGA caps and brandishing Confederate flags—descended on the capitols of those states. They claimed to be defending constitutional freedoms to refuse to wear masks or maintain “social distance” from others.
Thus, Trump risked the lives of thousands of his followers to “reopen the country” and save his endangered Presidency.
Just as the ancient Canaanites sacrificed their children to the god Moloch, so does Trump expect his followers—and opponents—to risk their children’s lives for him.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 23, 2020 at 2:00 am
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has urged Americans to keep at least six feet from their fellows. And most of the nation’s governors have issued stay-at-home orders that ban large gatherings—including visits to parks and beaches.
Yet President Donald Trump has openly encouraged defiance of those orders. On April 17 he issued a series of tweets to his supporters:
“LIBERATE MINNESOTA!”
“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”
“LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!”
All these states have Democratic governors. Their residents are being urged to stay indoors, wear masks when they venture outside and keep a six-feet distance between themselves and others.
These states have been targeted for Right-wing protests—featuring large numbers of men and women standing close together, with most of them not wearing masks. They claim their “freedoms” are being infringed upon.
Writer Steven Pressfield summed up the immorality of these protests: “Why are we asked to wear surgical or face masks in public, to practice social distancing and to observe self-quarantining? Because these practices are not for the individual alone but for the protection of the whole [community].”
Washington Governor Jay Inslee tweeted: “The president’s statements this morning encourage illegal and dangerous acts. He is putting millions of people in danger of contracting COVID-19.
“His unhinged rantings and calls for people to ‘liberate’ states could also lead to violence. We’ve seen it before.”
After the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. President George W. Bush publicly denounced harassment of American Muslims: “Muslim Americans make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. They need to be treated with respect.”
But Trump has openly called for public—and illegal—defiance of the nation’s governors and the health experts of his own administration. Meanwhile, the United States has 855,255 Coronavirus cases—and 47,973 deaths.
During Trump’s 2016 Presidential campaign, he did—for Republicans—the unthinkable: He openly blamed Bush for 9/11.
“He was president, okay?” Trump said on Bloomberg Television. “Blame him or don’t blame him, but he was president. The World Trade Center came down during his reign.”
But now Trump holds the Presidency, with more than 47,000 Americans dead of the virus—after he spent two months dismissing as a threat.
On March 13, PBS NewsHour’s reporter Yamiche Alcindor bluntly asked Trump if he bore any responsibility for the surge in cases. Even more embarrassing for Trump, she noted that he had gutted the White House’s Pandemic Office set up by his predecessor, Barack Obama.
Trump’s reply: “I don’t take any responsibility at all.”
So much for the public side of COVID-19. Now for the personal.
At first, it was thought that only the elderly—those 65 and older—were the targets of the virus. Nursing homes started filling with corpses. By April 18, 6,900 nursing home occupants had died across the nation.
But then its victims started including those in their 20s to 40s—and even teenagers. An Illinois infant became the nation’s youngest casualty.
Schools closed across the country. Parents found themselves living with their children fulltime. Schools quickly moved to provide online learning via the Internet. In Colorado, computers were provided for children whose families could not afford them. But many students in other states were not so lucky.
People who must “fort up” carry a huge emotional burden—especially children, who by nature are highly sociable. They miss their friends and fear that their lives will never be normal again.
But even adults feel similar fears—especially those who have lost their jobs because their companies have shut down. Will an administration dedicated to bailing out wealthy organizations—like cruise ship companies and luxury hotels—care about providing them with life-saving subsidies?
At greatest risk are those whose jobs demand extensive contact with the public—firefighters, janitors, garbage men, police, store clerks (especially in high-volume stores).
At the top of the list are nurses and doctors who treat COVID-19 patients. Many of them do so without Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs)—thanks to Trump’s “you’re-on-your-own” attitude and feuding with governors he feels don’t appreciate him enough.
Each person who leaves home must deal with fear in his or her own way. Some, taking “the stiff upper lip” approach refuse to openly admit the fear that constantly gnaws at them. Others are entirely willing to confess it and refuse to leave home except when forced to. And there are those who seem to dare the virus to take them.
Each person knows there are countless ways to become accidentally exposed to the virus. You can:
- Put on your face mask wrong;
- Be forced by sheer numbers of people to violate the “six-feet-apart” rule;
- Take off your mask when you’re home and, before thoroughly washing your hands, involuntarily touch your face;
- Touch, with virus-contaminated hands, doorknobs, light switches, dishware when you return home.
The last time the United States faced a pandemics was 100 years ago—the Spanish influenza. Raging from January, 1918 to December, 1920, it infected 500 million people worldwide. Estimates of those killed range from 17 to 100 million. Of these, 675,000 were Americans.
With a vaccine for COVID-19 at least a year away, Americans—and the rest of the world—can only take the best precautions they can.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 22, 2020 at 12:27 am
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, going to the supermarket was a routine matter.
You assumed—usually correctly—that those items you wanted would be in stock. Then you would find and load them into your car.
But post-COVID-19 shoppers face a totally different world. Much of the time store shelves are completely bare, as if a marauding army has cleaned them out.
In this case, that “army” consists of your fellow Americans. And their insatiable, fear-driven buying frenzy snapped up the following products as quickly as store clerks could restock shelves:
Week 1: Hand sanitizers, soaps and disinfectants.
Week 2: Toilet paper and paper towels.
Weeks 3 and 4: Spiral hams and baking yeast.
Week 5: Hair clippers and hair dye.
Those who could afford to shop at grocery stores—and find what they needed—were the lucky ones.
Increasingly, tens of thousands of Americans were forced to turn to food banks to keep their families alive.
On April 9, the San Antonio Food Bank aided about 10,000 households in a record-setting giveaway at a South Side flea market. Its drive-thru was the fourth such event for the Food Bank since March 31.
Motorists lined up to receive help from food bank
About 6,000 households preregistered for the food distribution on the Food Bank’s website. But thousands more showed up, hoping to put something on their tables.
Similar scenes occurred at food banks across the United States.
According to Feeding America, a national network of food banks, one in seven Americans relies on a local food bank to eat. Statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveal that 11.8 percent of Americans are food insecure.
But those who don’t need food banks face a serious question: “Is it better to order groceries or go to the store?”
A March 27 article in TIME addresses this and several other issues.
According to “Is It Safe to Go to the Grocery Store?”: “If you can afford to, it’s best to order food online, experts say. Delivery services dramatically reduce your contact with other people: you pay online, it’s packaged elsewhere and the food is left outside your door.”
A Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) spokesperson told TIME that “[currently] there is no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with food or food packaging.”
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
But Jared Baeten, the vice dean of the School of Public Health and professor of global health, medicine and epidemiology at the University of Washington, advises that “for complete risk reduction, you might want to clean off your groceries,” while making sure to not get hazardous chemicals on what you eat.
Dr. Lauren Sauer, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says your primary concern while shopping should be the risk of contracting the virus from other people, not surfaces. She also warns that “not everyone is going to be respectful of that six feet” of social distancing recommended by the CDC. If you see a crowded aisle, skip it or wait for people to leave.
A major casualty of COVID-19 has been the restaurant industry.
Forget about dining out at leisure: Restaurants have been closed across the country. Many of them still offer take-out—provided you can get there to pick up your order. But some that would have never dreamed of delivering their fare have hired platoons of drivers.
Another business that’s suffering badly is taxi services.
Fewer people are out on the streets. There are two reasons for this:
- Many people simply fear leaving their homes; and
- Stay-at-home orders by governors are restricting travel except for the most urgent needs.
So taxi drivers are hurting, making only a pittance of what they formerly made.
But there are risks for those who take cabs or buses.
Some cab drivers are reportedly sick with COVID-19 but, desperate for money, continue to haul passengers in extremely close confinement.
And while the CDC has urged Americans to keep at least six feet from their fellows, it’s impossible to do this on a crowded bus. Moreover, you can’t be certain that the seat you’re occupying hasn’t been sneezed or coughed on by a COVID-19 carrying passenger.
The White House and all prominent public health officials have urged people across the country to stay at home as much as possible to prevent the spread of the Coronavirus.
But as late as March 25, governors of five states—Arkansas, Iowa, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota—had refused to issue lockdown orders for their residents. Three states issued only partial measures.
And the Right—headed by President Donald Trump—has erupted in outrage at being expected to show concern for their fellow Americans.
On April 15, Trump issued a series of tweets, calling on his supporters to “LIBERATE” Minnesota, Michigan and Virginia.
It’s no coincidence that all these states are headed by Democratic governors.And have been the targets of public protests by Right-wingers against stay-at-home orders.
Asked whether those states should lift their stay-at-home orders, Trump said, “No, but elements of what they’ve done are too much. …It’s too tough.”
2016 PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 9/11 ATTACKS, ABC NEWS, ADOLF HITLER, AFGHANISTAH, ALTERNET, AMERICABLOG, ANDREW CUOMO, AP, ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS, BABY BOOMER RESISTANCE, BARACK OBAMA, BILL CLINTON, BLOOMBERG, BUSES, BUZZFEED, CBS NEWS, CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC), CNN, CORONAVIRUS, COVID-19, CROOKS AND LIARS, DAILY KOZ, DAVID BROOKS, DELTA FORCE, DOCTORS, DONALD RUMSFELD, DONALD TRUMP, DRUDGE RETORT, EBOLA, ELDERLY, FACEBOOK, FEAR, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY, FEEDING AMERICA, FIREFIGHTERS, FIVETHIRTYEIGHT, FOOD BANKS, FOX NEWS NETWORK, FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT, GARBAGE MEN, GEORGE H.W. BUSH, GEORGE W. BUSH, GREEN BERETS, GRETCHEN WHITMER, GROCERY SHOPPING, HARPER’S MAGAZINE, IRAQ, JAY INSLEE, LAUREN SAUER, MASKS, MEDIA MATTERS, MIKE PENCE, MOTHER JONES, MOVEON, MSNBC, MUSLIMS, NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL, NBC NEWS, NEWSWEEK, NPR, NURSES, NURSING HOMES, OSBMA BIN LADEN, PANIC SHOPPING, PBS NEWSHOUR, PERSONAL PROTECTIVE EQUIPMENT (PPES), POLICE, POLITICO, POLITICUSUSA, RAW STORY, REUTERS, RUDY GIULIANI, SADDAM HUSSEIN, SALON, SAN ANTONIO FOOD BANK, SCHOOLS, SEAN HANNITY, SEAN HANNITY SHOW, SEATTLE TIMES, SLATE, SOCIAL DISTANCING, SPANISH INFLUENZA, STEVEN PRESSFIELD, TALKING POINTS MEMO, TAXIS, THE ATLANTIC, THE CHICAGO SUN-TIMES, THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE, THE DAILY BEAST, THE DAILY BLOG, THE GUARDIAN, THE HILL, THE HUFFINGTON POST, THE LOS ANGELES TIMES, THE NATION, THE NEW REPUBLIC, THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE PENTAGON, THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE WASHINGTON POST, THINKPROGRESS, TIM ZIEMER, TIME, TRUTHDIG, TRUTHOUT, TWITTER, TWO POLITICAL JUNKIES, U.S. NAVY SEALS, U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT, UPI, USA TODAY, WASHINGTON MONTHLY, WHITE HOUSE PANDEMIC OFFICE, WILHELM 1, WONKETTE, WORLD TRADE CENTER, YAMICHE ALCINDOR
In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 21, 2020 at 12:11 am
One of the biggest differences between the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and the COVID-19 pandemic is this:
After 9/11, Americans drew strength from each other. During Coronavirus, Americans remain isolated and forced to rely on their own resources.
This has its origins at the top—with President Donald Trump.
Like Adolf Hitler, Trump likes to pit individuals and organizations against each other. Hitler, for example, would assign several agencies to tackle the same problem: “That way, the stronger one gets the job done,” he told his architect, Albert Speer.
This creates needless duplication of efforts and wasted resources. But it ensures that Trump—like Hitler—remains the final voice of authority, since so many others are competing for his favor and direction.
Donald Trump
This has not, however, worked out well for the 50 states that make up the United States of America.
During the Great Depression, President Franklin D. Roosevelt intervened powerfully to ensure that all Americans received the help they needed.
Trump has made it clear that each state is responsible for securing its needed supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) for its doctors and nurses aiding Coronavirus patients. This has resulted in a dog-eat-dog atmosphere of cutthroat competition and scarcity, with Americans not only fighting the virus but each other.
Even worse: Trump and Republicans are using a deadly plague as a weapon against those Americans they hate.
On March 26, during an interview on Fox News, Trump blamed the failures of his administration’s response to Coronavirus on Democratic state governors like Andrew Cuomo (NY), Jay Inslee (WA), and Gretchen Whitmer (MI).
On March 27, during his press briefing, Trump said he told Vice President Mike Pence—who’s officially in charge of the White House’s response effort—to not call Inslee and Whitmer because they weren’t “appreciative” enough of his efforts.
Trump said this even as hospitals in each of their states were being overwhelmed with Coronavirus patients.
“I tell him—I mean I’m a different type of person— I say, ‘Mike, don’t call the governor in Washington, you’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan,’” Trump said. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”
Trump said that when people criticized him, they were criticizing the federal government: “When they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps, they’re not appreciative to FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency]. It’s not right.”
Trump also attacked Whitmer on Right-wing Fox News’ “Sean Hannity Show”: “I don’t know if she knows what’s going on, but all she does is sit there and blame the federal government.”
That same day—March 27—Whitmer told a Michigan radio station: “What I’ve gotten back is that vendors with whom we’ve procured contracts—they’re being told not to send stuff to Michigan. It’s really concerning. I reached out to the White House last night and asked for a phone call with the president, ironically at the time this stuff was going on.”
Gretchen Whitmer
A March 29 story in the Washington Monthly sheds light on what lay behind Whitmer’s inability to secure desperately-needed ventilators from her longtime vendors. Its headline ran: “What If Trump Decides to Save Republicans But Not Democrats?”
A sub-headline read: “He’s providing vital resources to red states and ignoring blue states.”
The Black Hand
Florida submitted a request to FEMA on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves—and received a shipment with everything three days later.
On Fox News, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, bluntly told governors: “Take the blame when you have to. When you play with your boss, sometimes it’s better when you don’t win the golf game. He’s the boss, he’s got all the resources.”
The mentality of the Black Hand has come to the Oval Office.
The Washington Monthly story concludes ominously: “What if the White House simply gives all the masks and ventilators to red states and counties, leaving blue ones to struggle? What mechanisms of accountability are left?
“U.S. democracy wasn’t set up to deal with a president openly behaving like a James Bond villain while being protected by a political party behaving more like a mafia than a civic institution.”
But while corpses pile up and Trump wages repeated feuds with state governors, ordinary citizens daily face never-before-imagined fears and dangers.
Coronavirus has forced people to be apart, with each one forced to face his / her own fears of something that can’t be seen and can strike anywhere, anytime, at anyone.
Smart Americans no longer venture outdoors without wearing a mask—a medically-approved N95 one if possible, but at least a homemade one. It’s not unusual to see people wearing blue rubber gloves as well. 
N95 mask
Before COVID-19, a masked man entering a bank meant: “This is a robbery!” Today, tellers aren’t surprised when they see a customer wearing a surgical mask.
Going to the supermarket used to be a routine matter: You would assume—usually correctly—that those items you wanted would be in stock. Then you would find and load them into your car.
No longer.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on April 20, 2020 at 1:01 am
COVID-19 may well change our lives more fundamentally than even 9/11.
Yes, the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were horrific—and costly in lives. Almost 3,000 Americans died that day.
After decades of ignoring Islamic terrorist attacks on American lives and property throughout the Middle East and the rest of the world, America shook off its complacency.
First came a much-anticipated invasion of Afghanistan–the “nation” which had given shelter to 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden. Starting on October 7, 2001, by December American planes and ground forces swept bin Laden’s hosts, the Taliban, from power.
Bin Laden disappeared into Pakistan, but was shot to death by United States Navy SEALs on May 1, 2011.
World Trade Center – September 11, 2001
The 9/11 attacks also resulted in unforeseen events. President George W. bush used them as an excuse to invade Iraq in 2003 and topple its dictator, Saddam Hussein, from power.
Bush had long blamed Hussein for not folding after the President’s father, George H.W. Bush, attacked Iraq in 1991 after its invasion of Kuwait. Hussein’s failure to fall from power, believed Bush Junior, had resulted in his father’s losing a second White House term in 1992 to Bill Clinton.
But once the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, it got stuck there—and remains so to this day. What started as a purely military mission became a “nation-building” one.
Yet another result of the 9/11 attacks was a complete restructuring of the United States military. In the past, Americans had excelled in set-piece battles and wars.
Americans have never forgotten their overwhelming victories over the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm II in 1918 and Fuhrer Adolf Hitler in 1945. But when it came to fighting enemies where guerrilla warfare negated overwhelming military power, the United States had done poorly—first in Korea (1950-1953) and then in Vietnam (1960-1975).
As a result, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield reorganized the Pentagon’s bureaucracy, assigning highest priority to building unconventional military units such as the Army’s Green Berets and Delta Force, and the Navy’s SEALs.
These were all major changes resulting from the 9/11 attacks. They cost billions of dollars and got huge publicity. But they didn’t affect the lives of everyday Americans as intimately as has the advent of COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus.
Coronavirus
First, COVID-19 has killed far more Americans than 9/11. As before mentioned, 9/11 snuffed out the lives of almost 3,000 Americans. But as of April 20, more than 41,114 Americans have died of COVID-19. And the plague has not finished its murderous work.
Second, while 9/11 affected two American cities—New York and Washington, D.C.—COVID-19 has spread throughout the country. As epicenters like New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago gain national attention, the virus continues to seep into rural centers—especially in the South and Midwest.
Third, the combination of evil and incompetence of the Trump administration has shaken Americans’ faith in the ability—and even the willingness—of the Federal Government to protect them.
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks attacked President Donald Trump in terms usually reserved for serial killers. On the March 13 edition of The PBS Newshour, he said:
“This is what happens when you elect a sociopath as president, who doesn’t care, who has treated this whole thing for the past month as if it’s about him. ‘How do people like me?’ Minimizing the risks. ‘Does the stock market reflect well on me?’ And he hasn’t done the things a normal human being would do, which was to, let’s take precautions….
“And he’s incapable of that. And he’s even created an information distortion field around him.”
In 2014, following the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, President Barack Obama created the White House Pandemic Office, run by the White House’s National Security Council (NSC).
Barack Obama
Heading it was Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer. Under President George W. Bush, he had successfully fought malaria overseas. His topflight team of infectious disease and public health experts was creating a national bio-defense strategy. Their goal: Coordinate agencies to make the United States more resilient to the threat of epidemics and biological warfare.
In May, 2018, Trump ordered the NSC’s global health security unit shut down. The reason: Trump’s pathological jealousy of and hatred for Obama.
Compounding that outrage: From January to early March, 2020, Trump and his allies within the Republican party and Fox News Network repeatedly assured Americans they had nothing to fear.
Barnstorming the country in a series of hate-filled political rallies, Trump told his supporters:
- January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.”
- February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.”
- February 26: “The 15 cases within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
- February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
- February 28: “Now the Democrats are politicizing the Coronavirus….We did one of the great jobs….One of my people came up to me and said, ‘Mr. President, they tried to beat you on Russia, Russia, Russia’….They couldn’t do it. They tried the impeachment hoax….It’s all turning, they lost….And this is their new hoax.”
- March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country of keeping it down. A tremendous job of keeping it down.”
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics, Social commentary on August 18, 2015 at 12:54 am
At one time, Americans believed that wholesale rewriting of history could happen only in the Soviet Union.
“The problem with writing about history in the Soviet Union,” went the joke, “is that you never know what’s going to happen yesterday.”
A classic example of this occurred within the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
Lavrenti Beria had been head of the NKVD, the dreaded secret police, from 1938 to 1953. In 1953, following the death of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, Beria was arrested and executed on orders of his fellow Communist Party leaders.
Lavrenti Beria
But the Great Soviet Encyclopedia had just gone to press with a long article singing Beria’s praises.
What to do?
The editors of the Encyclopedia wrote an equally long article about “the Berring Straits,” which was to be pasted over the article about Beria, and sent this off to its subscribers. An unknown number of them decided it was safer to paste accordingly.
In the 1981 film, “Excalibur,” Merlin warns the newly-minted knights of the Round Table: “For it is the doom of men that they forget.”
Forgetting our past is dangerous, but so is “understanding” it incorrectly.
In Texas, state-mandated “history” textbooks omit selected events and persons from the historical record–such as Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King.
This can be as lethal to the truth as outright lying.
Joseph Stalin, for example, ordered that school textbooks omit all references to the major role played by Leon Trotsky, his arch-rival for power, during the Russian Revolution.
Similarly, in Texas students are required to study Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address alongside President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
Such “teaching” should be seen for what it is: A thinly-veiled attempt to legitimize the most massive case of treason in United States history.
(The Civil War started on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter, a United States fort in Charleston Harbor. Fort Sumter surrendered 34 hours later.
(At least 800,000 Southerners took up arms against the legally elected government of the United States.)
The late broadcast journalist, Edward R. Murrow, would have referred to this practice as “giving Jesus and Judas equal time.”
Recently, Jeb Bush has entered the “Rewriting History for Americans” contest.
On August 13, speaking at a national security forum in Davenport, Iowa, he defended the unprovoked 2003 invasion of Iraq by his brother, President George W. Bush:
“I’ll tell you though, that taking out Saddam Hussein turned out to be a pretty good deal.”
And he went on to defend the 2007 troop “surge”, calling it “a great success that made Iraq safer.
“I’ve been critical and I think people have every right to be critical of decisions that were made. In 2009, Iraq was fragile but secure. It was–its mission was accomplished in a way that there was security there.”
(Ironically, the phrase, “its mission was accomplished” proved an embarrassing reminder for the Bush family.
(A banner titled “Mission Accomplished” was displayed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln as George W. Bush announced–wrongly–that the war was over on May 1, 2003.)
Jeb Bush claimed that President Barack Obama had prematurely withdrawn troops from Iraq during his first term, thus allowing ISIS to “fill the void.”
One dissenter to Jeb Bush’s effort to rewrite his brother’s history is David Corn, Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine.
Addressing Bush’s claims on the August 15 edition of The PBS Newshour, he said:
“I mean, I have to laugh a little bit, because I think he was setting a record for chutzpah.
“…It wasn’t until after his brother’s invasion of Iraq that you had something called al-Qaida in Iraq. And that was the group that morphed into ISIS.
“So ISIS is a direct result of the war in Iraq right there. And so he’s wrong on the history.
“But then he said what happened was that Obama and Hillary Clinton orchestrated this quick withdrawal after everything was secure. Nothing was really secure in 2009-2010.
“…But it was George W. Bush in December 2008 who created the agreement with [Iraqi] Prime Minister [Nouri] [al-]Maliki that said that U.S. troops had to be out by 2011.
“And then Obama didn’t renegotiate that. And there is a lot of question as to whether he could even have, given the political situation in Baghdad itself.
“So Bush is totally–Jeb Bush is totally rewriting this.”
Click here: Brooks and Corn on Cuba as campaign issue
This is no small matter. George W. Bush’s needless and unprovoked war on Iraq:
- Cost the lives of 4,486 American soldiers.
- Wounded another 32,226 troops.
- Resulted in the deaths of an estimated 655,000 Iraqis.
- Cost the American treasury at least $2 trillion.
- Turned up no Weapons of Mass Destruction–Bush’s pretext for going to war.
- Led to the rise of Al-Qaeda–and later ISIS–in Iraq.
- Strengthened theocratic Iran by removing its major secularist opponent.
All of which simply proves, once again, that the past is never truly dead. It simply waits to be re-interpreted by each new generation–with some interpretations winding up closer to the truth than others.
Or, in this case, each new Presidential candidate of the Bush family.
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In Bureaucracy, History, Politics on November 7, 2013 at 12:16 am
“The problem with writing about history in the Soviet Union,” went the joke, “is that you never know what’s going to happen yesterday.”
The same can now be said about writing history under the new guidelines of the Texas Board of Education.
The changes to the state’s history textbooks were opposed by historians and civil rights leaders. The new curriculum presents history from a right-wing perspective and de-emphasizes the role of blacks, Hispanics and other minority groups.
The board’s decision will affect students living outside Texas because of the state’s major impact on the nation’s textbook publishers.
Because the Texas textbook market is so large, books assigned to the state’s 4.7 million students often become bestsellers, decreasing costs for other school districts and leading them to buy the same materials.
“The books that are altered to fit the standards become the bestselling books, and therefore within the next two years they’ll end up in other classrooms,” said Fritz Fischer, chairman of the National Council for History Education, a group devoted to history teaching at the pre-college level.
“It’s not a partisan issue, it’s a good history issue.”
The new version of history given Texas students will:
- Celebrate the free market;
- Minimize the role of labor movements; and
- Give greater prominence to conservative figures like Phyllis Schlafly.
Additional changes will include:
- Students will now study Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address alongside President Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
- Upton Sinclair’s book The Jungle, which documented the horrors of working conditions in the meatpacking industry and led to calls for greater regulation, has been removed from the list of suggested readings.
- The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From a Birmingham Jail,” has also been removed.
- Thomas Jefferson’s name has been removed from a list of the country’s great thinkers because he advocated the separation of church and state.
- In a sop to the Christian Right, references have been added to “laws of nature and nature’s God” to a section in U.S. history that requires students to explain major political ideas.
- The word “democratic” has been removed in references to the form of U.S. government, and this will now be described as a “constitutional republic.”
- A reference to the Second Amendment right to bear arms has been added to a section about citizenship in a U.S. government class.
- Economics students will be required to “analyze the decline of the U.S. dollar including abandonment of the gold standard.”
- The names or references to important Hispanics throughout history also were deleted, such as the fact that Tejanos died at the Alamo alongside Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie.
- All references to “capitalism” have been replaced with “free enterprise.”
- U.S. “imperialism” no longer exists; there is only “U.S. expansionism.” Only the Europeans are guilty of “imperialism,” just as only the Soviets committed “aggression.”
- In a rare setback for the radical Right, the slave trade will not be renamed the “Atlantic triangular trade.”
At one time, Americans believed that such wholesale rewriting of history could happen only in the Soviet Union. A classic example of this occurred in 1953, within the Great Soviet Encyclopedia.
Lavrenti Beria had been head of the NKVD, the dreaded secret police, from 1938 to 1953. In 1953, following the death of Joseph Stalin, Beria was arrested and executed on orders of his fellow Communist Party leaders.
Lavrenti Beria
But the Great Soviet Encyclopedia had just gone to press with a long article singing Beria’s praises.
What to do?
The editors of the Encyclopedia wrote an equally long article about “the Berring Straits,” which was to be pasted over the article about Beria, and sent this off to its subscribers. An unknown number of them decided it was safer to paste accordingly.
In the 1981 film, “Excalibur,” Merlin warns the newly-minted knights of the Round Table: “For it is the doom of men that they forget.”
Forgetting our past is dangerous, but so is “understanding” it incorrectly. Deliberately omitting events and persons from the historical record–such as Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King–can be as lethal to the truth as outright lying.
Stalin, for example, ordered the deletion of all references to the major role played by Leon Trotsky, his arch-rival for power, during the Russian Revolution.
Similarly, requiring students to study Confederate President Jefferson Davis’ inaugural address alongside President Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address should be seen for what it is: A thinly-veiled attempt to legitimize the most massive case of treason in United States history.
(The Civil War started on April 12, 1861, when Confederate artillery opened fire on Fort Sumter, a United States fort in Charleston Harbor. Fort Sumter surrendered 34 hours later.
(At least 800,000 Southerners took up arms against the legally elected government of the United States.)
The late broadcast journalist, Edward R. Murrow, would have referred to this as “giving Jesus and Judas equal time.”
All of which simply proves, once again, that the past is never truly dead. It simply waits to be re-interpreted by each new generation–with some interpretations winding up closer to the truth than others.
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DONALD TRUMP: KILLING MORE AMERICANS THAN OSAMA BIN LADEN: PART TWO (OF EIGHT)
In Bureaucracy, History, Medical, Military, Politics, Social commentary on September 15, 2020 at 12:05 amThe 9/11 terror attacks frightened Americans more than any event since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.. But they didn’t slaughter as many Americans nor affect their lives as intimately as has the advent of COVID-19, also known as Coronavirus.
First, COVID-19 has killed far more Americans than 9/11. As before mentioned, 9/11 snuffed out the lives of almost 3,000 Americans. But as of September 15, more than 194,000 Americans have died of COVID-19. And the plague has not finished its murderous work.
Second, while 9/11 affected two American cities—New York and Washington, D.C.—COVID-19 has spread throughout the country. As epicenters like New York City, Los Angeles and Chicago gain national attention, the virus continues to seep into rural centers—especially in the South and Midwest.
Third, the combination of evil and incompetence of the Trump administration has shaken Americans’ faith in the ability—and even the willingness—of the Federal Government to protect them.
TRUMP AND BOB WOODWARD
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks attacked President Donald Trump in terms usually reserved for serial killers. On the March 13 edition of The PBS Newshour, he said:
“This is what happens when you elect a sociopath as president, who doesn’t care, who has treated this whole thing for the past month as if it’s about him. ‘How do people like me?’ Minimizing the risks. ‘Does the stock market reflect well on me?’ And he hasn’t done the things a normal human being would do, which was to, let’s take precautions….
“And he’s incapable of that. And he’s even created an information distortion field around him.”
Yet even David Brooks could not have predicted the scandal that now threatens Trump’s chances for re-election on November 3.
To understand this, it’s necessary to compare what Trump was saying privately to legendary investigative reporter Bob Woodward—as opposed to what he was telling the American public in countless addresses.
Woodward—along with Carl Bernstein—achieved imperishable fame in 1972-74 as the Washington Post reporters whose Watergate-related stories led to the fall of President Richard M. Nixon.
Bob Woodward
THE ADVENT OF CORONAVIRUS
First, some background on the Coronvirus itself:
The virus first appeared in Wuhan, China, in December, 2019. Its first reported victim became ill on December 1.
By December 31, the outbreak was traced to a novel strain of Coronavirus.
Coronaviruses are a group of viruses that affect birds and mammals. In humans, Coronaviruses can cause pneumonia and may cause bronchitis.
As President, Trump had access to Intelligence sources denied to his fellow citizens.
Trump first learned of the virus on January 3, 2020. This did not prevent him from playing golf on January 4, 5, 18 and 19.
On January 19, the first Coronavirus case appeared in the United States.
On January 27, then-acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney tried to get the President to act.
But, according to officials who spoke with the Washington Post, Trump was “dismissive” of early briefings “because he did not believe that the virus had spread widely throughout the United States.”
Trump fired Mulvaney one month later.
Then, for Trump, it was back to the golf course—on February 1, 2 and 15.
TRUMP CONFESSES TO BOB WOODWARD
On February 7, he decided to share some of his Coronavirus Intelligence with legendary Washington Post editor and reporter Bob Woodward.
Why he chose to do this remains a mystery.
It’s possible that Trump—whose hatred of the press is infamous—thought he could “take” Woodward. Or perhaps even cultivate him.
Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks thinks so. On the September 11 edition of The PBS Newshour, Brooks offered:
“First, the hubris to think, you could be the president and talk to Bob Woodward and not get hurt by it. Donald Trump walked right into this.
“Two, the extreme cynicism of not only bumbling around in February and March, because you didn’t know how serious the pandemic was, but the confirmation that you did know, and you still thought you could talk it down, as if you can talk down a force of nature, and that this—you wouldn’t end up getting caught.”
If Trump thought he could “take” or cultivate Woodward, it wasn’t the first time a high-ranking government official had done so.
During the Presidency of Ronald Reagan, CIA director William J. Casey spilled countless secrets to Woodward—which found their way into a 1987 book: Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987. Woodward admitted that he didn’t know why Casey had been so forthcoming.
On February 7, 2020, the following telephone interview between Trump and Woodward took place:
Bob Woodward: And so, what was [Chinese] President Xi [Jinping] saying yesterday?
Donald Trump: Oh, we were talking mostly about the virus, and I think he’s going to have it in good shape. But it’s a very tricky situation.
Woodward: Indeed, it is.
Trump: It goes through air, Bob. That’s always tougher than the touch. The touch, you don’t have to touch things, right? But the air, you just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed. And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flues. People don’t realize, we lose 25,000, 30,000 people a year here. Who would ever think that, right?
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