So....who's supposed to use it then? The military? Federal hospitals and prisons?

It's "ours." I honestly think they see it as the WH's to hand out as gifts for those that respect the President. They don't see it as a stockpile for all Americans.

No, not at all....

https://www.washingtonpost.com/natio...034_story.html


I mean, it's not like the entire point of the federal stockpile was to quickly get supplies to states in need during a crisis or anything.

A lot of talk that at tonight's press conference they seemed to say that the government is buying supplies overseas, flying them to the US and then giving them to companies to sell. That needs followup because it's outrageous. Perhaps that explains the GOP operative who quit and decided to go into the medical supply business.

Good for people living in swing states I'm guessing.

Speaker Pelosi is pushing for more stimulus. The GOP in Congress is expressing opposition.

Leaving aside the question of whether another stimulus bill is a long-term good idea (it is a very worthwhile question (and above my pay grade), but it is beyond the scope of this comment), I think that it is pretty clear that another such program would be in the short-term interest of the President inasmuch as it would make his re-election more likely.

And this is where I think that being a weak President really hurts Trump. Because he hasn't built up the infrastructure around himself and has depended so heavily on Mitch to protect him/look out for his interests, I think that he just lacks the ability to lobby his party in Congress for something that he wants.

I am thinking of how much work the Obama White House did to keep reluctant Dems on board to pass the Affordable Care Act. It is not easy to push your party to do something that it does not want to do, even as the President.

And, now, I don't see how Trump can manage to get the Congress to do something that would benefit him--or even if he understands anything beyond what Mitch feeds him.

(Side question--I also wonder if some GOP reluctance is a bet on its part that Trump will lose reelection, so it is already thinking in terms of starting to obstruct what would help the economy/executive branch).

Or politically connected. KY has supposedly gotten more than it requested.

The Strategic National Reserve Website has changed its webpage description of who it is available to to match Jared Kushner's description of who he says its available to:


Aaron Blake on Twitter: "The Trump administration just changed its language about the Strategic National Stockpile on an HHS website to jibe with Jared Kushner's claim that this isn't for the states.

(h/t @LEBassett)

Before vs. After:… https://t.co/7uAlK3HwFn"

I love how the second sounds like it was written by a high schooler rushing to finish a term paper.



SI

Rewriting history. No doubt, it will be pointed to as the operating principle during an investigation as opposed to what it was BEFORE this all started.

The immediate need for immediate supplies will be immediately handled in an immediate timeframe.

(not sure which thread we were talking about this, but since I'm about to get political, I'll put it here)
Tony Evers is trying to call Wisconsin's legislature into special session to change Tuesday's primary election changed to a mail-in vote that would also change it to a mail-in vote.

I have little faith that the Republicans will do anything other than sit on their asses and do nothing. We have a supreme court election and with only 8 out of 150 wards open in Milwaukee it's set up perfectly for their guy to win.

If they go through with this and given the issues with Milwaukee, is there any recourse with the Voting Rights Act because this will disproportionately affect minorities? Or do those rules only apply to the South?

lol Trump tried to Thanks, Obama his way through a question about faulty CDC covid tests.

"Dear Senator Schumer:

Thank you for your Democrat public relations letter and incorrect sound bites, which are wrong in every way."


This looks like a bad reddit shitpost that now lives on whitehouse.gov. Dear god.

We're back to our regularly scheduled firings. Trump fires Intel IG Michael Atkinson.

It's unbelievable that no one, this entire time, is willing to stop the rolling Friday Night Massacre. The forced brain drain in our country will be one we pay for possibly for the next century. OR the dismantling of 'deep state' is actually what's occurring... morons. Then the Navy Captain relieved of duty and someone said that he'd lost the support of his ship...no, the send off was amazing by the troops.

I hope that the next president reinstates so many folks that have dedicated their lives to making our country great. I hope that Trump goes down as one of the worst presidents of all time and we were able to survive it.

If you're trying to shrink government to the size of a bathtub and make it incompetent at any function, it's an effective way to do it.


SI

that one might be tough as fuckface is actively trying to make us die

Apparently, the GOP is now managed to become less than useless. Various state governments, realizing that the Republican Party has the incompetence of a drunk five-year-old, have started ordering PPE themselves. The federal government is now stopping planes on tarmacs, confiscating the PPE that the states have ordered, and putting it into the “federal stockpile“ to distribute to states that have not hurt Dear Leader’s feelings.

But, please, Bernie Bros. Tell me how “both parties are just as bad.”

And now Trump is back to saying we have to open back up soon.

Dola

I can assure you from first hand knowledge that some banks weren’t able to process applications yesterday. Our church’s bank told us Monday at the earliest.

3 million masks ordered by Massachusetts were confiscated in Port of New York, leading to creative alternative

WTF is this?

That the GOP is going to try to ratfuck elections in all 50 states is sad, but it is not surprising.

The fact that the Dems seem to already be aware that they are going to do this is a pleasant surprise for a party that always seems 5 steps behind the GOP.

I'm not optimistic on this front, but at least there will be an attempt to shine some sunlight on the issue before mid-October.

Coronavirus and a Texas election law could keep millions from voting - Vox

I sit on the Vestry at my church. We engaged one of our members who is an attorney to help understand the ramifications, had our administrator gather all of the information required, and held an emergency meeting to vote on applying to get it in on day 1....


...and our bank essentially said that they didn't have the first clue what do do with the application because they'd received zero guidance/information from the feds. Shocking, I know.

Talk about having a bad week.

Navy Captain Removed From Carrier Tests Positive for Covid-19

We're trying again on Monday, but they couldn't even tell us what kind of documentation we'd need.

As has been said before: "it's all a con."

Today Trump declared himself smarter than a virus.

Well Trump is obliviously the best there is, the best there was, and the best there ever will be.

Trying to get loans out at the speed at which they’re needed while trying to avoid fraud and mistakes would be challenging with an extremely competent and non-corrupt administration

With these fuckers? What a shitshow it’s gonna be.

I bet if you're in the Trump constellation of businesses, you can get your loan no problem. Like, say, if your name is Kushner



SI

Not sure what she hopes to accomplish other than throwing red meat to Trumps base and giving him an endless supply of materiel for his press conferences.

Ohio lawmaker says she'll press crimes against humanity charge against Trump over hydroxychloroquine promotion | TheHill

You are right; this does nothing but help Trump.

I'd check her call logs to see if she's been talking to Russia.

FWIW, there are a lot of people around the world testing pretty much every anti-viral we've ever developed to see if they have any effect on the novel coronavirus.

I think that hydroxychloroquine is turning out to be a dead end. But how wonderful would it be if, say, some random anti-SARS drug that we've got on the shelf could actually make a difference?

March 14: Texas MAGA cultist posts on March 14th that COVID-19 is a all a hoax, goes on anti-socialism rant, says you don't need hand sanitizer but you need prayers and guns.

April 2: Woman dies of COVID-19, family asks for very-pro socialist assistance and sets up GoFundMe

MAGA Cultist Who Downplayed COVID-19 Dies of COVID-19 | Hemant Mehta | Friendly Atheist | Patheos

The problem isn't studying or even trying everything nor is the preparation, the problem is creating false expectations and also pressure.

What people often don't realise is that (if i don't misunderstand the German experts) hydroxychloroquine in theory would be most helpful in a stage where people get worse but you can't yet judge if they will need intensive care eventually or not.
Because the virus does actually stop replicating at some point anyway and that is what the medication would help along in theory.
And so this "what do you have to loose" narrative is insane because at the point where this might (!) help you aren't at a stage yet where that thinking is even remotely apropriate considering the range of side effects including massive cardiac issues.

There is a reason the current studies (including the one from France that Trump loves) are testing it entirely outside the ICU and with relatively young and otherwise healthy patients and not 70+ year olds with a bunch of other issues.

What's the goal of hyping this? Navarro this morning said there was a prophylactic effect. Is the WH saying everyone should take it before they are sick? Should only sick people take it? How sick? What's the dosage? Do we need to take it until we have a vaccine? That's billions and billions of doses, where do we get that? How will it be distributed?

There's no thought or plan behind anything they are saying. They're laying around desperate for a miracle, and this is all they have right now. They could be working on supplies, trials, a realistic plan for reopening, etc, but instead, they're spending a lot of time hyping a drug they hope is a miracle cure because they don't know how to do the hard work that's required.

Everything from this administration is self serving. They think by hyping this drug that they are giving hope to people, thus making it look like they are competent.

This country has a huge problem. As a society we think there is a pill that will cure any ailment, so people think there will be a quick fix for this. The fact that our government is not only disputing that, but actively encouraging that line of thinking is criminal.

The funny thing is that November is still a long way away.

If Trump could get out of the cable news 24 hour cycle of thinking, he could be doing the hard work to get things back to something like normal by the Fall and really help his chances.

But I think that he is incapable of thinking in time frames that long.

The audio of the Sec Navy's comments has leaked. He sounds like a right-wing radio host.

https://taskandpurpose.com/news/navy...arrier-captain

Getting back to the comparisons to how Clinton would have handled this, I don't see how you can argue it's anything but a disaster thus far and Clinton would have very likely handled better simply by not having severely unqualified people at the helm. Not just Clinton, though. I'd have more faith in Jeb, Ted Cruz, Kasich and probably any other than Ben Carson to do a better job than what we've seen.

We have:

*Reports over the weekend that the administration didn't place it's first bulk order for supplies until mid-March. This is absolutely crazy considering we sent 18 tons of medical equipment and PPE to China in early February.

*sent untrained health workers to California without proper PPE to work with quarantined patients and allowed them to leave Travis AFB freely.

*Supplies ordered by states getting seized by the Trump administration after telling states to get their own supplies.

*States that support Trump are getting everything they asked for or more from that national stockpile while others are either getting nothing or very little.

*Kushner claiming the national stockpile isn't for the states and then the Trump administration changing the description on the national stockpile website to fit what Kushner said. I mean, here at least, it's fairly obvious Clinton would have at least used the national stockpile as it was intended considering her husband created it.

*Hyping of an untested and unproved drug with severe side effects.

*Accusing doctors and nurses of selling PPE because that's the conclusion Kushner and his frat buddies that are running this show came to.

*Downplaying the severity of this, which forces Fox News to do the same. This alone has probably killed a countless number of people.

*Mixed messages that have allied governors slow to react or react inconsistently (looking at you Georgia and Florida).




The make up of this country makes it difficult to get everyone, or even the majority, on the same page but changing your message from day to day or even sentence to sentence gives us no chance. I mean, we have Jared Kushner and his college buddies on whatsapp formulating our plan to combat the worst pandemic we've seen since the Spanish Flu while Trump refuses to allow his medical expert talk about the super drug he's hyping.

It's nice to see polling on Trump's handling of this starting to drop, but we still have a significant portion of the population convinced that this is either overblown or a hoax entirely. The GOP war on science and intellectualism has created a situation where people aren't afraid to display their ignorance and openly embrace conspiracies. That's something that's been killing people since the start of this and Trumpism is at the heart of it.

Of course, they're from Texas. Probably live a few miles away from my parents, at most.


SI

I am speechless

But that's the thing. It's not the looniest 4% of the country who believe this MAGA (for lack of a better all-encompassing term) claptrap hook, line, and sinker. It's FORTY PERCENT OF AMERICA. Just the math says that some of the people who go for this stuff are in actual positions of authority and power. They are military officers, police officers, doctors, business owners, and everything else. Yes, some sit at home and shake their fist at "those people" to whatever chant Fox News has going at the moment, but this isn't a trifle. They have captured enough "persuadable" voters to win the Electoral College, this just in. It's not a fringe group.

I realize that my perspective is partially a victim of my hate. But FFS.

And it turns out a Swiss company that makes Hydroxychloroquine was paying Cohen for access to Trump in the early part of his presidency.

Governor Evers postpones tomorrow’s primary in Wisconsin until June after the GOP legislature fails to act. GOP leaders are quickly appealing to the State Supreme Court to go ahead with the election.

If Boris Johnson dies, how do the worlds leaders react?

Sad, I think.