Fixing the Intelligence

Same shit, different Republican administration.

Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, according to current and former American officials. The effort comes as President Trump escalates a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic.

Once again, we have an administration that has already reached an unsupported conclusion and is now pushing the intelligence community to support their whackadoodle ideas.

What's going on, this time, is Trump's search for anyone else he can blame to deflect from his being asleep at the switch for months, when he was claiming that there'd be no outbreak, that the virus was totally under control, and that claims of a pandemic was a hoax.

Those who parrot Trump's bullshit are not to be trusted with anything sharper than a beach ball.

Gun Q&A

Ian's monthly Q&A session.

It's just over an hour long, but you can use the time index of questions to skip around. The last one is a lot of fun.

Pandemic Humor

One extra:

Shorter Musk: "You Poors Should be Happy to Die So I Can Make More Money."

Elon Musk launched into an expletive-laden rant on Tesla’s earnings call Wednesday, calling shelter-in-place orders “fascist” and demanding political officials “give people back their g-- d--- freedom.”

“To say that they cannot leave their house and they will be arrested if they do, this is fascist,” he said, before the call abruptly cut out. “This is not democratic — this is not freedom.”

The company was forced to shut down its factory in Fremont, Calif., just as it was ramping up production for its Model Y, the crossover vehicle it expects to be its best-selling product. Musk outlined his concerns about that shutdown, saying the inability to resume production was a “serious risk” before launching into his missive. Musk has also been a vocal critic of coronavirus measures on social media, tweeting Tuesday night, “FREE AMERICA NOW.”

It's not about freedom or anything like it. All it is about is that the pandemic is costing Musk money and He. Does. Not. Like. It.

Musk is no different from Charlie Koch, Brian Kemp or Donald Trump: People need to go back to work so the rich don't lose money, coronavirus be damned.

The Dumbest Governor in the Country May Not Be Just Dumb

He may also be evil.

You may recall Gov. Kemp of Georgia, who only discovered early this month that the Coronavirus was being transmitted by people who were not showing symptoms. Three weeks later, Governor Kaiser Blade decided, against the advice of everyone who knows about pandemics, to reopen his state.

However, it seems that there may be a more evil motive at play other than good old greed:

A CDC study released Wednesday found that over 80% of the COVID-19 patients hospitalized in Georgia last month were black. It's the latest analysis showing that communities of color are being hit disproportionately hard by the coronavirus.

This graph from the study is also interesting:

So, is Kemp betting on a resurgence of the coronavirus in Georgia that would mainly kill off people who wouldn't vote for him?

Meanwhile, in Brazil, the Trump clone leading the country, Bolsonaro is doing nothing other than shrugging his shoulders:

More than 5,000 Brazilians have lost their lives to the coronavirus – even more people than in China, if its official statistics are to be believed.

But on Tuesday night Brazil’s president shrugged off the news. “So what?” Jair Bolsonaro told reporters when asked about the record 474 deaths that day. “I’m sorry. What do you want me to do?”

Bolsarno is probably making the same bet that Kemp is: The virus will ravage through people he disapproves of.

No matter what the world does, the disgusting idea of racial eugenics won't die.

Yeah, I Called It.

As I noted yesterday, Trump was asleep at the switch as warning of an impending pandemic were put into his daily brief, which he doesn't read (or listen to when oral summaries are given).

Before Trump became president, there were stories that he wasn't paying attention to intelligence briefings. I noted that in December, 2017 and said that we were going to get another episode of "Bin Laden Determined to Attack the U.S".

This is not meant to be self-congratulatory, as I've been wrong about a lot of shit. What it is meant to note is that it was obvious, to even a most casual observer, that Trump was incurious and ignorant and that he was totally incapable of responding to a national emergency.

And so it has come to pass. This is not Trump's Katrina, it is his Chernobyl-- a disaster that was first ignored, then covered up and lied about until the truth became too obvious to hide.

Pandemic Humor

Shorter Trump Administration: Fuck "Leadership by Example".

Vice President Mike Pence chose not to wear a face mask Tuesday during a tour of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, an apparent violation of the world-renowned medical center’s policy requiring them. ... Pence was the only participant not to wear a mask during a roundtable discussion on Mayo’s coronavirus testing and research programs. All the other participants did, including Food and Drug Administration chief Stephen Hahn, top Mayo officials, Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Rep. Jim Hagedorn.

Pence was blathering that since he doesn't have coronavirus, he didn't need to wear a mask. That, of course, is utter bullshit. The reason that Pence, aka Baby-Trump, didn't wear a mask was because Trump doesn't wear masks.

When Trump wiggles his fingers, Pence's arms move.

Good leadership involves not just telling people what to do, but doing it as an example. Walking the walk, not talking the talk. The term. in this instance, is "presidential modeling", where a president, by his actions and deeds, promotes healthy behavior.

Trump is the fattest president since William H. Taft. Which can be expected, as the only exercise he gets is blowing his fuses on Twitter. Teddy Roosevelt was chunky, but he did exercise and, when war came, he ran to the sound of the guns. Trump, on the other hand, ran to the draft board with an exemption letter that his dad (allegedly) procured.

So one might presume that Trump's bone spurs keep him from wearing a mask.

A Russian Smith & Wesson

It explains why .44 ammunition has .429" bullets. It was the Russian's fault (and a damned good idea).

Trump Was Asleep At the Switch

Do you remember the lambasting George W. Bush caught for reacting to one PDB on the threat posed by al Qaeda, when he said "OK, you've covered your ass" and hen heading out to play golf?

Seems that the intelligence folks tried to brief Trump on the coronavirus a dozen times. But Trump doesn't read his briefing books and he doesn't listen to anything that doesn't incorporate praise to him.

So he ignored it. All of it.

We'll never know how many lives could have been saved if Trump had paid attention to his job. But he never has before, so it's probably a forlorn hope to have wished that he had risen to the challenge, instead of wallowing in his orgies of self-congratulatory bombast.

Pandemic Humor

You Can Tell When a White House Staffer is Lying: They're Breathing.

President Trump’s schedule is so packed amid the coronavirus crisis that he sometimes skips lunch, his aides told The Post — refuting a report that the commander-in-chief spends his days obsessing over TV coverage and eating fries.

White House staffers said the president works around the clock and can make five dozen work-related calls a day during the pandemic.

“I can tell you that the biggest concern I have as a new chief of staff is making sure he gets some time to get a quick bite to eat,” White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told The Post.

One would have to be on the order "buy the Brooklyn Bridge" gullible in order to believe that Trump skips meals, let alone works around the clock.

This "story" is reminiscent of this photo:

the only things Trump is missing during this pandemic are golf and his Nuremberg-style rallies.

Dr. Trump's Magic Medicine Show

Set to music:

You have to wonder: Between pushing quack cures and wanting people in red states to get out and congregate before there is any proof that the coronavirus is under control-- is Trump trying to kill off his supporters?

Pandemic Humor

Lie Lie Lie. Lie Lie Lie Lie, Lie Lie Lie.

President Donald Trump skipped his daily coronavirus briefing on Saturday, tweeting later that it was "not worth the time and effort."

Here is his tweet:

All along, Trump has been bleating about his "great ratings" and did so even here. The reporters weren't asking Trump questions when he started riffing about disinfectants and issued his Clorox Challenge, suggesting that doctors consider injecting disinfect into people's bodies (the medical term for that is "embalming"). Trump didn't suggest shining high-intensity UV light into people's bodies in response to any questions.

No, that was all on Trump. He's been glorying in his "briefings", claiming that they allow him to speak directly to the American people (the briefing are carried live on cable TV). Trump thought that the briefings were a good thing, until he said stuff that was so irredeemably stupid that even the hosts of Fox shows couldn't shrug it off.

Quite possibly, Trump realized that he had handed the Democrats the sort of footage that will fall neatly into attack ads that will portray Trump as being everything from mercurial to as dumb as a creosoted post.

But will Trump stay away? Don't bet on it. He's been watching Andy Cuomo's briefing and he'll start getting jealous. So he'll hold briefings again and as sure as the tides flow, Trump will say something almost as equally stupid. Because Trump can't not be Trump.

Pandemic Humor

Your Sunday Morning Big Prop Noise

AD-4N:

COVID-19 Immunity?

The WHO is saying that there is no evidence that having had COVID-19 means that one is immune to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

That throws a big wrench into the concept of testing for antibodies as a way to determine when it's somewhat safe to reopen an area's economy.

It's going to be interesting to see what happens in Georgia.

Pandemic Humor

Caturday

Leroy & Max.

I don't know who is who.

The Dead End of the Bergmann Pistols

I'm surprised that this was even tried. The system of having the magazine in front of the grip of pistols was obsolete even as the gun was offered for military trials. With the shoulder-stock, it might have made for a half-assed carbine, but then it would have needed a much larger magazine.

The Danes, for some reason. were fond of the Bergmann design. They used an earlier version and didn't change until after their long-term German visitors left in 1945.

Extra Humor, Thanks to Dr. Trump

This embeds as a little large for the regularly scheduled feature, so:

"Right honey, all set. Where are the kids?" pic.twitter.com/YCs51LAMgz

— ❄Steel Snowflake❄ (@Groot66) April 24, 2020

It was sad, in a way, that Dr. Orange-Man dropped this bit of medical advice too late on Thursday for the late-night comedians to pick it up. They don't broadcast on Friday; by the time Monday rolls around, this will be buried by other Trumpian stupidity.

A drink recipe:

Mar-a-largo Martini. Two jiggers of Clorox and splash of Lemon Lysol. Shaken not stirred. Then a nice bake in the high intensity UV tanning bed. Black skin spots optional.

Pandemic Humor

Because It's Friday

Double-heading on the Durango & Silverton

When Will the Trumpanzees Realize That Donald J. Trump is Dumber Than a Sack of Gravel?

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND: Donald J. Trump's Traveling Medicine Show

If an unproven and potentially dangerous pharmaceutical cocktail doesn't cure what ails you, try our sunlight injections or a shot of disinfectant!

pic.twitter.com/Jo1AcmFqmN

— 😷 David Gura 🏡 (@davidgura) April 23, 2020

Yes, you heard right. Our Esteemed President, Mr. Stable Genius, asked about injecting disinfectant into people. That's an idea that is so jaw-droppingly nuts that it defies description.

Who the fuck is he channeling, Dr. Mengele??

It's Coming For You, Too

Overall, there was a noticeable increase of counties with a high COVID-19 prevalence in the Midwest, South, and West over the three-week period between March 29 and April 19. These newly designated high-prevalence counties showed different attributes in terms of urban status, political orientation, and other demographic measures than earlier ones.

The shift was most marked with respect to urban residence status. On March 29, four-fifths of high-prevalence county populations resided in the urban cores of large metropolitan areas. This fell sharply in the subsequent weeks, as more shares of residents in new high-prevalence counties lived in suburbs and smaller areas. Among residents of counties which entered high-prevalence status between April 6 and April 12, for example, only 31% lived in urban core counties, while 45% lived in suburbs and 24% lived in small and nonmetropolitan areas.

Meanwhile, Trump may crow about his TV ratings, but his message is not selling.

Just 28% of Americans say they’re regularly getting information from Trump about the coronavirus and only 23% say they have high levels of trust in what the president is telling the public. Another 21% trust him a moderate amount.

Confidence in Trump is higher among his supporters, though only about half of Republicans say they have a lot of trust in Trump’s information on the pandemic — and 22% say they have little or no trust in what he says about the COVID-19 outbreak.

Meanwhile, the dumbest governor in the nation is reopening his state tomorrow despite zero evidence that the current state of the pandemic supports such a move. Our Nutty King first told Kemp that it was a good idea to reopen Georgia before changing his mind.

There must be something in the Karmic Universe that puts idiots in charge of places named Georgia.

Pandemic Humor

Arf. Arf. Woof. Woof. Woof. or Trump Has Top Men Working the Covid Problem

On January 21, the day the first U.S. case of coronavirus was reported, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services appeared on Fox News to report the latest on the disease as it ravaged China. Alex Azar, a 52-year-old lawyer and former drug industry executive, assured Americans the U.S. government was prepared.
...
At the dawn of the coronavirus crisis, Azar appointed his most trusted aide and chief of staff, Harrison, as HHS’s main coordinator for the government’s response to the virus.

Harrison, 37, was an unusual choice, with no formal education in public health, management, or medicine and with only limited experience in the fields. In 2006, he joined HHS in a one-year stint as a “Confidential Assistant” to Azar, who was then deputy secretary. He also had posts working for Vice President Dick Cheney, the Department of Defense and a Washington public relations company.

Before joining the Trump Administration in January 2018, Harrison’s official HHS biography says, he “ran a small business in Texas.” The biography does not disclose the name or nature of that business, but his personal financial disclosure forms show that from 2012 until 2018 he ran a company called Dallas Labradoodles.

That's right, Gentle Reader. The man in charge of coordinating the response to the coronavirus, the CDC, FDA, NIH and other health and scientific organizations is a fucking breeder of designer mutts.

It's clear, now, that however we muddle through this pandemic, it will not be because of the work of the Trump Administration, it will be in spite of what they do.

In short, we are so screwed.

(H/T)

Too Good Not to Share Now

(The story)

Once a cheater, always a cheater.

Another Weird Gun

The Mateba MTR-8

I was looking to see if he had done a video on the Mateba-6. Apparently not.

Pandemic Humor

Don't Forget: Russia and China Are Our Enemies, Not Our Friends

The alarming messages came fast and furious in mid-March, popping up on the cellphone screens and social media feeds of millions of Americans grappling with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic.

Spread the word, the messages said: The Trump administration was about to lock down the entire country.

“They will announce this as soon as they have troops in place to help prevent looters and rioters,” warned one of the messages, which cited a source in the Department of Homeland Security. “He said he got the call last night and was told to pack and be prepared for the call today with his dispatch orders.”

The messages became so widespread over 48 hours that the White House’s National Security Council issued an announcement via Twitter that they were “FAKE.”

Since that wave of panic, United States intelligence agencies have assessed that Chinese operatives helped push the messages across platforms, according to six American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to publicly discuss intelligence matters.

Want to bet that the Usual Suspects in the Right-Wing Batshit Factory picked up those bits of Chinese propaganda and spread them?

Me neither.

Bad information and shoddy supplies seem to be China's two-pronged attack on the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, despite Trump's rugged belief that Russia hasn't interfered in American elections, the Senate found differently.

A bipartisan Senate report released Tuesday affirms the U.S. intelligence community’s conclusions that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election in a far-ranging influence campaign approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin and aimed at helping Donald Trump win the White House.

The report rejects Trump’s claims that the intelligence community was biased against him when it concluded that Russia had interfered on his behalf in the election.

It's clear, now: Those that deny that Russia has interfered in American elections are either Kool-Aid-Drinking Trumpanzees (Russian "useful idiots") or Russian assets.

We Should All Become Preppers

Even as states move ahead with plans to reopen their economies, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned Tuesday that a second wave of the novel coronavirus will be far more dire because it is likely to coincide with the start of flu season.

“There’s a possibility that the assault of the virus on our nation next winter will actually be even more difficult than the one we just went through,” CDC Director Robert Redfield said in an interview with The Washington Post. “And when I’ve said this to others, they kind of put their head back, they don’t understand what I mean.”

“We’re going to have the flu epidemic and the coronavirus epidemic at the same time,” he said.
...
If the first wave of the coronavirus outbreak and flu season had peaked at the same time, he said, “it could have been really, really, really, really difficult in terms of health capacity.”

During the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic, the United States experienced the first wave of cases in the spring, followed by a second, larger wave in the fall and winter, during flu season.

The same thing happened during the Great Flu Pandemic of 1918. The first round was bad, but the second round was a global holocaust.

Prudent people will get ready. If you've been stocking food, make sure that you rotate them as you buy new items.

Is the Only Obese Man in North Korea Near Death? (Plus, Nice Move, Taiwan)

Reports that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is seriously ill after heart surgery are not true, officials in South Korea have said.

Headlines that Kim Jong-un was "gravely ill", "brain-dead" or "recovering from an operation" were always going to be impossible to verify.

But the presidential office in Seoul has said there have been no particular signs from the North to indicate the 36-year-old is "gravely ill".

Guess we'lk see if Trump'rs received his last "beautiful letter" from the Fat Rocketman.

Meanwhile...

Some 2 million face masks donated by Taiwan arrived in Japan on Tuesday for delivery to public hospitals and special schools across the country in its fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Taiwan got a two-fer, in that they helped out a neighboring country and they stuck a very public finger in the eye of the Communists.

Nicely played.

If Hoover Was Like Trump, Trump Would Not Exist, or Miller Doesn't Let a Pandemic Go to Waste

Shutting off all immigration has been a cherished goal of Stephen Miller. He's a true drawbridger; his family got across, so it's time to raise it. He's been more than willing to twist the facts to suit his racist agenda. The U.S. has more reported cases and deaths than any other nation, so it's unclearfrom what nation Trump is "protecting" us.

Trump is now backing down, a little. People with green cards are still fucked, but if an employer wants somebody, they can get them.

Trump's mother immigrated to the U.S. during the Depression, where she took a job that an American could have done. If Herbert Hoover had been the same kind of batshit-crazy xenophobe that Trump is, Trump's dad would have had to find an American woman who was willing to put up with his shit.

Which may have been unlikely.

Thanks for nothing, O Shade of Herbert Hoover!

The Retail Apocalypse

The vulture capitalists have spent the last several years strangling retail stores, using debt to squeeze out every farthing that they could.

Now, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic, it's time to pay the piper.

American department stores, once all-powerful shopping meccas that anchored malls and Main Streets across the country, have been dealt blow after blow in the past decade. J.C. Penney and Sears were upended by hedge funds. Macy’s has been closing stores and cutting corporate staff. Barneys New York filed for bankruptcy last year.

But nothing compares to the shock the weakened industry has taken from the coronavirus pandemic. The sales of clothing and accessories fell by more than half in March, a trend that is expected to only get worse in April. The entire executive team at Lord & Taylor was let go this month. Nordstrom has canceled orders and put off paying its vendors. The Neiman Marcus Group, the most glittering of the American department store chains, is expected to declare bankruptcy in the coming days, the first major retailer felled during the current crisis.

It is not likely to be the last.
...
[N]one of them were in as immediate dire straits as Neiman Marcus, which has both an enormous debt burden — approximately $4.8 billion, thanks in part to a leveraged buyout in 2013 by the owners Ares Management Corp. and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board — and a raft of expensive rents in the most high-profile shopping destinations, signed during boom times.

The hedge funds and vulture capitalists put the retail chains into the same position as people with a lot of credit-card debt: One has to pay it or sink as there is no cushion of savings to draw on.

So they're going to sink. Even if they restructure through Chapter 11 and shed a bunch of stores, the landlords whose shopping centers those chains anchor will be stuck with large stores that will be very hard to re-rent. Even if they do, it'll likely be to discount retailers that'll pay a small fraction of the rent that the higher-end retail chains did. A shopping mall anchored by large discount stores will have a hard time attracting the smaller stores that sell to middle/upper end shoppers. Hell, a lot of those discount stores close off the access to the rest of the mall, so having a discount place as an anchor tenant doesn't benefit the rest of the mall's tenants.

Which will set off a downward spiral, resulting in more malls that fail.

Pandemic Humor

One Thought About the TrumpBux

I wonder how many of the Trumpanzee/Teabaggers, the ones who constantly bleat about socialism being evil while rereading their copies of Atlas Shrugged are now gleefully taking the $1,200 per adult (and $500 per kid) handouts from the government.

Which reminds me of this old joke:

Man to woman: Would you sleep with me for one million dollars?
Woman: Sure.
Man: How about for ten dollars?
Woman: What do you think I am?
Man: We’ve already established what you are. All we’re doing is bargaining about price.

They've sold themselves rather cheaply.

Crude Oil is Now Cheaper Than Free

These are crazy times.

The dramatic collapse in worldwide demand for oil led to an extraordinary development on Monday: U.S. oil prices fell below zero for the first time ever, and kept falling.

The key U.S. oil benchmark, West Texas Intermediate, settled at negative $37.63.

Driven by a trading contract deadline, traders desperately looked for buyers for the barrels of oil they normally hold in their books. But buyers were hard to find — even when the oil was being given away for free.

So some traders, instead of paying to buy oil, were ready to pay as much as $37.63 to get someone to accept delivery of one barrel of oil.

A few years back, crude was at or over $100/barrel. Now, if you have a tank complex that can accept a lot of crude oil, you can get paid to fill it up.

If the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is not topped off, now's the time.

Which Sign Goes With This Story

A Virginia pastor who told his congregants, “God is larger than this dreaded virus” died of COVID-19 the day before Easter, his church said.

The New Deliverance Evangelistic Church, in North Chesterfield, Virginia, right outside Richmond, announced the death of Bishop Gerald O. Glenn in an Easter Sunday address by Bryan Nevers, a church elder.
...
The Bishop had held a service on March 22, where in a sermon given to a crowd of congregants he said, “I firmly believe that God is larger than this dreaded virus,” according to CBS affiliate WTVR. The next day, Virginia banned gatherings of 10 or more, but had already been encouraging social distancing.

Should I go with this:

Or this:

The "God Will Save Us" crowd never consider that maybe, just maybe, it is the government leaders and the scientists asking people to stay apart from one another are the ones doing His work.

Pandemic Humor

The Genesis of the Luger

Another Forgotten Weapons video.

I was surprised at how few versions of the gun it took to go from the Borchardt C93 to the Luger P08.

Come to Chicago

I saw this ad recently during the evening news:

Which reminded me of this:

How We Got to the 1911A1

Forgotten Weapon's video on the evolution from the Colt Model of 1900 to the M1911A1

I'll probably watch the one on the Luger real soon now.

Not Just the Flu

During flu season, one doesn't see reefer trucks parked outside of hospitals to serve as temporary morgues.

You're going to see a lot of the low-wattage crowd bleating: "See, only 50,000 people died! It's just like the flu."

Which is, of course, bullshit. 50,000 dead is with many states shutting down for a month or more. 50,000 dead is with people practicing social distancing and foregoing air travel. Many of those 50,000 would be alive today if Our Toddler-in-Chief had listened to scientists instead of right-wing pundits. Many of them would be alive if Trump cared about people instead of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Go read any of these posts. Or go read this or this.

Right-wing induced ignorance has its cost. This guy probably didn't have to die. Many more are going to die if we listed to Trump's Army of Covid-19 Surrender Monkeys.

Pandemic Humor

Your Sunday Morning Turboprop Noise

The XC-142:

Just For Grins

Cuomo's Nine-Minute Dismantling of King Donald

It's pretty brutal.

Bernadette: (59:49)
I also wanted to get your response. It looks like the president is also watching this press conference. He tweeted 13 minutes ago, quote: “Governor Cuomo should spend more time doing and less time complaining. Get out there and get the job done. Stop talking. We built you thousands of hospital beds that you didn’t need or use, gave large numbers of ventilators that you should have had and helped you with testing that you should be doing.” It goes on a little bit more. Wondering if you could respond to that and then also the question about the overwhelmed ICU?

Gov. Andrew Cuomo: (01:00:20)
Good. Good. Let’s respond to the president.

Trump: Do As I Say, Not As I Do

Is there anyone on this planet who would be surprised by this:

Thousands of U.S. hotels have volunteered to help local authorities house doctors, nurses and other medical personnel at reduced rates — or even free — during the covid-19 pandemic.

President Trump’s White House has praised these efforts. But so far, none of Trump’s own hotels are known to be participating.

Those thousands of hotels and motels have offered to house medical personnel so they can stay close to work and possibly not bring the virus home to their families.

None of them are Trump properties. Because "giving back" is something that nobody in Trump's family would ever do.

Trump's Dereliction of Duty

US intelligence agencies alerted Israel to the coronavirus outbreak in China already in November, Israeli television reported Thursday.

According to Channel 12 news, the US intelligence community became aware of the emerging disease in Wuhan in the second week of that month and drew up a classified document.

Information on the disease outbreak was not in the public domain at that stage — and was known only apparently to the Chinese government.

US intelligence informed the Trump administration, “which did not deem it of interest,” but the report said the Americans also decided to update two allies with the classified document: NATO and Israel, specifically the IDF.

The Trumpanzees and the Covidiots (big overlap between the groups) are focusing on the six day period between the time that Chairman Xi knew of the pandemic and when he announced it. But they completely ignore the two months or so between when Trump was provably first briefed on the pandemic and when he stopped calling it a hoax and stopped saying that it was going to be no big deal and began taking it seriously.

Now, it's possible that Trump first knew four months before he began to take it seriously.

Heckuvajob, Trumpie.

It's Not "Just the Flu".

Two graphs from The New Atlantis illustrate that:

Nationwide, COVID-19 is posed to be the leading cause of non-criminally caused death in this country. It's not "just the flu". Anyone saying that is an imbecile who should not be listened to under these circumstances.