More Than An Ocean Anyway

Four days after Thanksgiving, Forbes reported

On three days - November 20, 22 and 25 - the volume of travelers passing through U.S. airports exceeded one million. While that is well short of the two million plus travelers recorded daily during Thanksgiving week in 2019, it is still far higher than the number of fliers seen in the early days of the pandemic when the travel volume was in the region of 100,000. With many travelers attending large family dinners held indoors including the presence of over-65s, there is now real concern that the U.S. is set to experience a serious coronavirus shock over the coming weeks.

Over the past week, it seemed that almost every day a record for the number of diagnosed cases, hospitalized individuals, or deaths for the USA was being set.  It is possible that an average of around 3,000 Americans will die daily of Covid-19 the next 3-4 months and leave us with perhaps more than 600,000 deaths by early March.

Obviously, it wouldn't have been this way without a President who has encouraged fatalities. Donald Trump periodically has demonstrated leadership, but of a kind intended to further his dream of purifying the gene pool.

Trump has been a national horror and embarrassment, and threat to the world.  However, governors of fifty states also have demonstrated a lack of leadership, responding weakly and meekly to the coronavirus. At other times, restrictions have been imposed, then relaxed or eliminated, then re-imposed.  A confusing, sometimes bewildering welter of regulations has ensued.

At no time, however, has any governor (let alone the President) demonstrated the leadership exhibited last week 4200 miles from Washington, D.C. when Chancellor Angela Merkel called German citizens to sacrifice with

As hard as it is- and I know how much love has gone into setting up the mulled wine stands and waffle stalls, this is not compatible with the agreement we made to only take food away to eat at home. I'm sorry, I really am sorry from the bottom of my heart. But if the price we pay is 590 deaths a day, then that is unacceptable in my view.

And when scientists are practically begging us to reduce our contacts for a week before we see Grandma and Grandpa, grandparents and older people at Christmas...

Merkel then spoke specifically about schoolchildren before continuing

I only want to say: if we have too many contacts now, in the run-up to Christmas and it ends up being the last Christmas with our grandparents, then we will have done something wrong. We should not let this happen.

Mulled wine stands and waffle stalls. Imagine if last spring, a governor had urged the residents of her state to consider putting aside fairs and festivals, family trips to the lake and to the beach, even family dinners for the summer in order to suppress the coronavirus and allow secondary schools and colleges to open normally in the fall.

And imagine if a governor approaching this holiday season had implored his constituents to limit Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations to their own household. Stay at home, he might have said, so that the lives of hundreds, maybe thousands, of of our residents might be spared. Eat and there, indoors or outdoors, rather than indoors at bars and restaurants. Curtail New Year's Eve revelry. Sacrifice now so people may live.

It might have not worked, and it might be less than a complete success even in Germany. We'll never know, however, because for whatever reason, we don't have in the USA a leader with the courage of an Angela Merkel. And so, death.

 

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Docile In Defeat

Although I have always figured Doug Jones would be tapped by Joe Biden to be the next Attorney General, I have wanted it to be Adam Schiff. As the individual who (by far) most eloquently prosecuted in the House Judiciary Committee the case against President Trump, I believed that he would not shrink from the necessity of investigating the crimes Trump committed against the American people.

That no longer seems to be the case.  From Friday evening's All In with Chris Hayes:

Hayes: You know I think one of the deepest debates, institutional Democratic debates that will happen and unfold over the next few months is a question about how to save and expand and preserve American democracy whether that means fighting fire with fire, meeting procedural maximalism with procedural maximalism or fighting fire with water, meeting procedural maximalism with restraint, with stewardship, with not pursuing that avenue. And on that question Bill Pascrell, today, your colleague, says "Look, the House controls its own membership. Nancy Pelosi should not seat these people that signed on to this if they are calling their own election into question. That's particularly true of the twelve members of the Republican caucus who are in the states that have signed on to this amicus brief to invalidate the votes of. And I want to know what you think of that.

Schiff: Well, to use your metaphor, I don't think when the President of the United States and some of my colleagues are trying to burn the house down around us- when the President is trying to burn the house down on his way out the door that we want to set a new fire. So I don't think that's the answer. You know we had to deal with these kinds of tactics during the campaign and we fought back but we didn't sink to their level.  We fought back and we won and now that victory has been upheld in the Court and Joe Biden will be sworn in as President of the United States. So, you know, I think our strategy worked. We don't want to become them.

No chance of that happening. The GOP seeks power and uses it. They're out to win elections at the national, state, and local levels, and then remake the federal judiciary in their own image. And when they lose, they don't pretend they've won.

Here is the victory which Adam Schiff believes Democrats have won: 1) the presidency; 2)      . In all likelihood, they will be in the minority when the Senate reconvenes, following a campaign in which the GOP was expected to lose its majority. In the House, in which Democrats were expected to gain members, they suffered a net loss of five Representatives. Further down the ballot, there were 86 state legislative chambers (of 99 nationwide) which held elections in 2020 and

Republicans won new majorities in at least two chambers: the New Hampshire State Senate and New Hampshire House of Representatives. There were no chambers where Democrats won new majorities in 2020. In one other chamber, the Alaska House of Representatives, not enough elections were called to determine majority control.

Heading into the 2020 elections, Republicans held a majority in more chambers than Democrats. There was a Republican majority in 59 chambers and a Democratic majority in 39 chambers. In the Alaska House, there was a power-sharing agreement between the parties as part of a coalition.

A state government trifecta is a term to describe single-party government when one political party holds three positions in a state's government. Heading into the 2020 elections, there were 36 trifectas: 15 Democratic and 21 Republican. The other 14 states were under divided government, meaning they had neither a Democratic nor a Republican trifecta. As a result of the elections, Republicans gained trifectas in Montana and New Hampshire, which both entered the election under divided government.

Representative Schiff is merely representing the perspective on political power. of national Democrats. Focus attention on the presidency, de-emphasize Congress, disregard state politics, and assume that justice in courts is blind to partisanship.  That's how Democratic losses mount up during the Obama presidency and, while there is a public health crisis of enormous proportions dramatically mismanaged by the GOP, the Democratic Party is routed at the polls.

GOP members of the House brag that their own elections were illegitimate. Speaker Pelosi and her fellow Democrats will complain about Donald Trump, congratulating themselves for ridding the country of the threat he posed to democracy. Then they will welcome their Republican colleagues who aided and abetted everything PresidentTrump has done, including disenfranchising Democratic and other voters in four states, because that is the Democratic Party.

Don't dare say "But the system worked" when a majority of Republicans in Congress support the overturning of a free and fair election. You don't celebrate a cancer not having killed you yet. You celebrate when you're cancer free.

— Garry Kasparov (@Kasparov63) December 12, 2020

 

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Snubbed

Looking for a fresh angle on the farewell speech of German chancellor Angela Merkel Thursday to the Bundestag, I found a German publication which noted

Wednesday could have been so different for the 66-year-old Merkel. Without the pandemic, she might have held a speech in which she touted the black zero, as Germans call their balanced-budget program, and the increased investments in the country that are thanks to her time in office since 2005. She might have given a positive review of Germany's presidency of the European Council. But this year belonged to the coronavirus pandemic....

That this year belonged to the coronavirus pandemic seems so obvious to be almost a throwaway line. However, it's bolder than it appears.

TIME has held its annual "Person of the Year" contest ("Man of the Year" until  1999) since 1927.  In the last 19 years, the winner has been neither a man nor a woman on seven occasions, the last in 2018, in which the winner was The Guardians, "journalists who faced persecution, arrest or murder for their reporting." If TIME is not to limit its Person of the Year to an actual human being, that was a splendid choice, especially in the age of Donald Trump.

On Thursday, TIME chose Joseph Biden and Kamala Harris, marking the sixth time in the last 20 years that the individual elected to the (American) presidency was given the nod. It thus was a selection as creative as it was wise.  For those keeping score at home: each time a man has been elected president in the 21st century, he has been given the honor of becoming Person of the Year. The selection becomes no less odious because a woman got to be a "Person" along with the man, the first time a running-mate has been picked. 

If a person were to have won the prize, my preference would have been the individual who made Joe Biden- who had not won a Democratic presidential primary or caucus in two previous attempts- the Democratic nominee for President. That was Representative James Clyburn, whose full-throated and moving (and unwise in my opinion, but that's off-topic) endorsement of the former vice-president led the latter to a dramatic and definitive victory in the South Carolina primary. Almost left for dead politically, Biden rode that win to first place in 46 of the 54 jurisdictions which had votes thereafter, and to the nomination.

Merkel's speech, however, persuaded me that there was at least one other individual worthy of TIME's honor.

Dr. Li Wenliang, 1986-2020. Tried to sound the alarm on seeing early COVID-19 infections in Wuhan.

Police summoned him for middle-of-the-night interrogation & under threat of prosecution made him sign a promise not to “publish untrue statements.“

Dr. Li died of COVID on Feb. 7. https://t.co/R1Y8dKIyIa

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) December 11, 2020

This year did in fact belong to the coronavirus epidemic, globally as well as in the USA. And if TIME were open (as it has increasingly been) to honoring a group rather than an individual, 2020 may have presented the perfect opportunity- and certainly an obvious opportunity.

As in numerous nations across the world, one group of individuals stood out in the USA as worthy of recognition. There was one class of workers which sacrificed more than any other in the past ten months.

"Thank you for your service," we are implored to tell active-duty and retired members of the armed services, many of whom have faced great danger, some who have not. But this year, in this country in which a President has been intent on fomenting death, health care workers have stood out.

Their valiant and unusually risky labors have been described endlessly and justifiably, often emotionally, by cable news networks, politicians, and others for the duration of this pandemic. Yet, when it came time for this honor, they did not carry the day.

This year did belong to the pandemic, including the 300,000 human beings in our nation and the 1,600,000 worldwide who have died. They could have been remembered by honoring both those who are risking their lives treating the victims, and the health care workers who assumed additional duties, stepping into the breach for the ones assigned to individuals stricken with Covid-19.

Ultimately, though, health care workers were shunned. They were rejected because of one individual who was elected president, as occurs quadrennially, and another because of the sex hormones and pigmentation passed on to her because of her parents.

Wide acceptance of this decision might say something about ourselves. It surely says something about TIME, and that something is "hideous."

 

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Aye, Aye, Captain

Hours after Joe Biden selected Lloyd Austin as his nominee for Secretary of Defense, The American Prospect's David Dayen wrote

President-elect Joe Biden’s choice of retired Gen. Lloyd Austin for defense secretary raises a number of concerns. Austin left military service in 2016 and sprinted to cash in, taking lucrative jobs on a number of corporate boards. He has board seats with the weapons maker Raytheon and Nucor steel (supplier of raw material for weapons), and a role in an investment firm that cashes in on the experience of recent government officials. But this isn’t just about Gen. Austin.

This isn't about only General Austin, for reasons stated and unstated. The Senate extended a waiver to President Trump's first nominee for defense secretary, General James Mattis, who thereafter was approved to head the Pentagon. Now Democratic senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, scrambling vainly for a spine, states

This is becoming a trend, and I don’t like it. It is difficult to imagine voting for a Mattis waiver and not an Austin waiver. I think for everybody it’s going to be hard to justify doing it for one distinguished retired general officer and not another.

He doesn't like the trend, so he's going to support it.  It is not "becoming a trend" because of one nominee, Mattis. It is "becoming a trend" once it is invoked a second time, especially if there is little reason for it. A waiver is required because the nomination presents an extraordinary situation, and there is no claim there is one here.

We've gone through four years of Stepford Senators, Republicans backing Donald Trump whatever he has done, said, or tweeted. Instead, departments require good managers who will reverse years of conservative governance and set the nation on a badly-needed progressive path. We must be spared four years of Democrats giving every nominee- black, white, Asian-American, Pacific-Islander, or tribal; male or female; straight or gay-  of President Biden a pass.

 

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Not In A Quiet Voice

— Matt Stoller (@matthewstoller) December 9, 2020

All of us- politicians, media, academicians, and the public- need to come to grips with the nature of the evil which will be expunged from public office on January 20. We now learn

Before Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine was proved highly successful in clinical trials last month, the company offered the Trump administration the chance to lock in supplies beyond the 100 million doses the pharmaceutical maker agreed to sell the government as part of a $1.95 billion deal months ago.

But the administration, according to people familiar with the talks, never made the deal, a choice that now raises questions about whether the United States allowed other countries to take its place in line.

It should raise an additional question, one which should have been raised in several quarters months ago. That's especially the case after now that we have learned that President Trump

has said it is “terrific” that nearly 15 per cent of Americans have contracted the coronavirus since the outbreak began in the US, citing the “powerful vaccine" of herd immunity.

During an Operation Warp Speed Vaccine Summit on Tuesday, Mr Trump was asked how Americans in areas with surging cases should protect themselves over Christmas ahead of the likely distribution of a vaccine.

In response, Mr Trump deferred to the Centres for Disease Control guidelines before citing growing immunity in the population as a result of the virus’ virulent spread throughout the country.

“Plus, you do have an immunity. You develop immunity over a period of time, and I hear we’re close to 15 per cent. I’m hearing that, and that is terrific,” Mr Trump said.

It's terrific to have people die, says the man who as recently as September remarked

You have good genes, you know that, right? You have good genes. A lot of it is about the genes, isn’t it, don’t you believe? The racehorse theory? You think we’re so different. You have good genes in Minnesota.

Trump understands that

In the first four decades of the twentieth century, horse racing was one of America’s most popular spectator sports. Members of America’s elite took to breeding and racing horses as one of their preferred pastimes. Coinciding with an increase in immigration and the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics, the idea that careful breeding of thoroughbreds would result in improved horses resonated with Americans worried about racial degeneration....

Thoroughbred breeders followed trends in genetics while contributing to the production of scientific knowledge. Pedigree charts available to bettors at race tracks helped normalize concepts of biological inheritance for race track attendees of all classes. Horse racing’s popularity in the United States contributed to the diffusion of the concept of biological race that originated as an ideological project of the ruling class.

The Pfizer flub may have been a mere error in judgement. But when a guy tells you that he believes in eugenics, knew Covid-19 would rage throughout the country but publicly insisted otherwise, people dying by the thousands "is what it is," and characterizes herd immunity as a vaccine, it has been less a dog whistle than a bullhorn.

"Heard immunity" https://t.co/tmW3Y13Gj2

— Will Bunch Sign Up For My Newsletter (@Will_Bunch) December 8, 2020

 

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Today's Deplorables

It was September 10, 2016 when Hillary Clinton foolishly remarked

I know there are only 60 days left to make our case — and don’t get complacent, don’t see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think well he’s done this time. We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?

Ironically, Clinton probably didn't realize that four years later, the deplorables would be out in full force:

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson says "dozens" of armed protesters descended on her home Saturday night, using megaphones to disrupt what had been a quiet evening with her young son. It was meant to intimidate her, Benson said — adding that it didn't work.

The crowd was made up of people angry over President Trump's election loss. They shouted and chanted slogans outside Benson's house in a Detroit neighborhood, echoing conspiracy theories about the Nov. 3 voting process....

Outside Benson's home on Saturday night, "at least one individual could be heard shouting 'you're murderers' within earshot of her child's bedroom," Nessel said in a joint statement with Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy.

"This mob-like behavior is an affront to basic morality and decency," (Attorney General Dana) Nessel and Worthy added.

Not only an affront to basic morality and decency but also likely to burst out into violence at some point.  526 miles to the southeast, another, less well-armed but better-known group of deplorables let loose a shot across the bow as

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Rules Committee Chairman Roy Blunt of Missouri voted with House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy in blocking the motion, effectively preventing the inaugural committee from publicly accepting that the upcoming inauguration will be for Biden. Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the Rules Committee, voted with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Hoyer voting in favor.

"The extent to which Republicans are refusing to accept the outcome of the election and recognize Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as our next President and Vice President is astounding," Hoyer said in a statement. "Their continued deference to President Trump's post-election temper tantrums threatens our democracy and undermines faith in our system of elections ... Republicans are refusing even to allow (Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies) to say that President-elect Biden and Vice President-elect Harris will be inaugurated on January 20, even when there is no serious dispute over that fact."

There probably will be minimal direct harm done by the threesome. However, indirectly these guys encourage Michigan vigilantes, who will return to Detroit or show up in Lansing or in Washington in the coming months or years. They're also warning the incoming Administration, the Democratic majority in the House of Representatives, and the Democratic minority in the Senate of the sort of thing they can expect. As Charlie Pierce notes

There are no serious Never Trumpers in the Congress right now—or in the Republican Party, for that matter. Joe Biden is not going to be allowed the full powers of the presidency, just as Barack Obama and Bill Clinton before him were denied those prerogatives. He'll be lucky to get his lunch order filled.

 

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Pictures Talk; Words Walk. I Didn't Make The Rules.

MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle revealed Monday morning that she and her family have contracted Covid-19. Striking the right tone, in a piece on the network's website she acknowledges they have been "extremely lucky" and

I was privileged enough to be able to manage those fears, with doctors answering my frantic phone calls and messages. And I work for a company that let me put my life on hold and focus on my health....

We didn't get super sick. We had access to testing, eventually got some results and had the space and the financial stability to isolate safely. We have supportive paying jobs and schools that can offer virtual learning. If I didn't have all of that, maybe it would have been a lot harder to follow the guidelines.

Others are not so fortunate, she notes, because

Across the country, Americans have raised the alarm for months about our haphazard testing and muddled guidelines. And the guidelines have shifted since the pandemic started. Is it any wonder that this spread continues? We're all confused. I still don't know where we got Covid-19.

And forget about contact tracing calls; making them was insanely difficult. So many of the people I might have exposed didn't want to hear it. The people I came in contact with and the big-box stores I spent time in seemed to have no interest in when I might have exposed them. None of the stores took my temperature, but even if they had done so, it wouldn't have made a difference — I had no fever.

On her MSNBC program, Ruhle also struck the right note and addressed the vital issues.  She spoke and wrote eloquently with humility rare in cable news (insufficiently common elsewhere), eschewing any phony reference to "being humbled." There was no false emotion or pathos as she addressed the failure of both government and some individuals to take the pandemic seriously.

However,  she can be seen and heard explaining

As I mentioned at the top of the show, I am now back at work broadcasting safely from home after spending the better part of the last two weeks isolating and recovering from Covid-19.

Given the backdrop, if Ruhle had not mentioned that she was broadcasting from home, viewers would have assumed it was from a well-lit and reasonably appealing studio.  It did not appear that she was sitting in the family's New Jersey house, as she evidently was. or in their Manhattan apartment

This contrasted starkly with the CNN broadcasts in spring from the basement (albeit a well-appointed one) of Chris Cuomo's house on Long Island, NY.  Moreover, in those appearances Cuomo then appeared somewhat gaunt, clearly unhealthy. As she usually does, Ruhle looked healthy and not unattractive.

The latter was right on target with the words and the message, more clearly and modestly than was Cuomo. However, CNN sent the right image visually, accurately reflecting the enormous threat to human health characterizing Covid-19. MSNBC would have better served the public if it had broadcast from somewhere less inviting than the studio, delayed their host's return, or if possible had her appear on camera when she was still in throe of symptoms.

Images count, a lot more than they should, and dangerously so. Ask Lesley Stahl.

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