Thanks To Trump

Political Cartoon is by Rex A. Jones at artistrexajones.wix.com/crazycartoons.

The Growth Of Covid-19 In Each State In Last Five Weeks

These numbers are from The COVID Tracking Project.

The first number for each state is the number of cases they had on 3/21/20. The second number (in parentheses) is the cases they had on 4/25/20 (five weeks later).

Alabama..........138 (6026)
Alaska..........14 (339)
Arizona..........154 (6045)
Arkansas..........118 (2741)
California.........1531 (39254)
Colorado..........475 (12256)
Connecticut.........223 (23921)
Delaware..........47 (3442)
District of Columbia..........98 (3528)
Florida..........830 (30533)
Georgia..........600 (22491)
Hawaii..........48 (601)
Idaho..........42 (1870)
Illinois..........759 (39658)
Indiana..........201 (13680)
Iowa..........90 (4445)
Kansas..........55 (2777)
Kentucky..........99 (3779)
Louisiana..........837 (26140)
Maine..........89 (965)
Maryland..........244 (16616)
Massachusetts..........525 (50969)
Michigan..........807 (36641)
Minnesota..........169 (3185)
Mississippi..........207 (5434)
Missouri..........90 (6625)
Montana..........31 (444)
Nebraska..........48 (2421)
Nevada..........190 (4398)
New Hampshire..........65 (1720)
New Jersey..........1327 (102196)
New Mexico..........57 (2521)
New York..........15168 (271590)
North Carolina..........255 (8052)
North Dakota..........28 (748)
Ohio..........247 (14581)
Oklahoma..........67 (3121)
Oregon..........141 (2177)
Pennsylvania..........479 (38652)
Rhode Island..........66 (6699)
South Carolina..........173 (5070)
South Dakota..........21 (2040)
Tennessee..........371 (8726)
Texas..........334 (22806)
Utah..........136 (3782)
Vermont..........49 (827)
Virginia..........219 (11594)
Washington..........1793 (12977)
West Virginia..........12 (988)
Wisconsin..........281 (5356)
Wyoming..........24 (349)

Virgin Islands..........6 (54)
Puerto Rico..........23 (1276)
Guam..........27 (141)

The Grim Reaper Strikes Again

Political Cartoon is by Paul Szep at szep.com.

Trump Won't Do His Homework - And It Shows

(The image at right is by Sally Edelstein at envisioningtheamericandream.com.)

We know that Donald Trump is not a full-time president. He spends his mornings watching cable news (especially Fox News) and tweeting. That's probably a good thing, because the less he works, the less he can screw things up.

We also know that he's not the smartest person to hold that office. One of his teachers called him the dumbest student he had ever tried to teach.

But even a part-timer and slow learner could improve themselves with hard work. Unfortunately, that doesn't describe Trump either. He fails to do his "homework", so he just wings it when he faces the press or his crowds -- just saying what he would like to be true.

The following is from Jonathan Bernstein at Bloomberg.com:

President Donald Trump outdid himself in Thursday’s press conference with an extended riff on miracle cures for the coronavirus that ended with a suggestion that maybe injecting disinfectant into the body would do the trick. (Disclaimer: Do not try this at home. No, really.) It seems destined to go down as the “inject bleach” speech, although he didn’t actually use those words. 

There’s a clip circulating of Dr. Deborah Birx, a member of the coronavirus task force, reacting in resigned disbelief as Trump launches into this digression. It was astonishing in a sense. But also: par for the course. Birx is every trade expert when Trump talks tariffs, every health-policy expert when he talks health care, every defense expert when he talks about the military. He combines uncanny confidence with a total lack of knowledge on topic after topic. 

To listen to him in his briefings and other appearances is to hear howler after howler if one has a reasonable grasp of politics and government. The U.S. military, he says, was out of ammunition when he became president. NATO allies owe us money because they’re behind on their dues. Trade deficits are simply unilateral transfers of money from one nation to another. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t know what “pre-existing conditions” means, even though I’ve heard him discuss the topic dozens of times.

All presidents enter the White House with significant gaps in their knowledge of public policy. Every modern one has worked reasonably hard or very hard to catch up. Trump by all accounts (including his own) instead watches hours of cable news every day. As I’ve said, there’s nothing wrong with presidents monitoring the media, even though they have much better sources of information. It’s a good way to get outside the White House bubble and understand what other people are hearing. But Trump appears to use cable news as a substitute, not a supplement, to basic briefings.

All of which gets us to the worst moment of Trump’s Thursday session. After a discussion of whether the pandemic might prove to be seasonal, a reporter asked him: “If there is a summer sort of ebb with this virus, what would the federal government need to do to take advantage of that time to be better prepared for a possible resurgence in the fall than we were the first time?” Trump didn’t even appear to understand the question. At first, all he could come up with was, “I think a lot of people are going to go outside all of a sudden.” Then he got distracted and talked about a lab he thought was impressive. Then, when the reporter repeated the question, he looked stumped and asked Vice President Mike Pence to step in.

That's a pretty basic question. And Trump’s confused answer underlines the extent to which he is still, even now, disengaged from any real planning to control the pandemic and revive the economy. Perhaps he realized that talking about preparations for the fall might contradict his insistence that the federal response is perfect right now. But even then it’s shocking that he didn't have some kind of prepared answer for a question that’s so central to the crisis. 

Yes, there’s a long history of presidents who deliberately or otherwise sound worse in public than they do in private. It is possible Trump is part of that tradition. Unfortunately, his own staffers regularly tell reporters that he’s no better in private than he is in public. It’s hard to do a good job as president if you don’t do your homework. And watching hours of cable news won’t cut it. 

Replacing The MAGA Kool-Aid

Political Cartoon is by Clay Jones at claytoonz.com.

You're Lucky - Enjoy Your Life

Greed Is A Republican Value

Public Says Economic Problems Will Last Over 6 Months

The charts above are from the Pew Research Center in a survey they did between April 7th and 12th of a nationwide sample of 4,917 adults, with a 2.1 point margin of error.

Playing A Doctor On Tv

Political Cartoon is by Dave Whamond at Cagle.com.

Opinion Of Texas Voters On Coronavirus Pandemic

The charts above are from a recent University of Texas / Texas Tribune Poll -- done between April 10th and 19th of 1,200 registered voters in Texas. There is a 2.83 point margin of error.

Drinking The Trump Kool-Aid

Political Cartoon is by Clay Jones at claytoonz.com.

Trump Shows Again That He Is No "Stable Genius"

Donald Trump has told Americans more than once that he is a "stable genius". He has offered no proof of that (actually threatening schools that could release his grades). And his performance in his current job certainly doesn't support it. This is especially true of his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic. Instead of telling Americans the truth, he has offered lies and dubious (if not dangerous) treatments for the virus.

The following is from Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post:

“And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out, in a minute. Is there a way we can do something like that? By injection, inside, or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. You’re going to have to use medical doctors, right? But it sounds interesting to me.”

That was President Trump’s contribution on Thursday to the portfolio of misinformation, quackery and jaw-dropping ignorance he has shared with the American people during the coronavirus pandemic.

But there was more. “I would like you to speak to the medical doctors to see if there’s any way you can apply light and heat to cure. You know? If you could,” Trump said to Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirustask force coordinator. “And maybe you can, maybe you can’t . . . I’m not a doctor.” Birx, blinking so nervously one would have thought she was transmitting Morse code (“Get me out of here!”), looked like she wanted to disappear into the folds of her silk scarf. She managed to say with a straight face that, no, that would not be a treatment. Medical doctors were compelled to warn people not to ingest poisonous chemicals; the makers of Lysol felt obliged to say “under no circumstance should our disinfectant products be administered into the human body (through injection, ingestion or any other route).”

We can laugh (uproariously) about Trump’s ignorance and inanity, but like his hawking of hydroxychloroquine — which induced hoarding of medication needed by patients with other diseases (and perhaps others to harm themselves) — this is one more instance in which concern for public safety should spur news networks to discontinue live coverage of the daily briefings. Like a con man peddling patent medicine, Trump dispenses false hope and crackpot remedies, thereby promoting disdain for scientific inquiry and valid research. Once more, one is compelled not only to shudder that such an intellectually unfit man could be president but that legions of right-wing hucksters and sycophants could regularly contort themselves not merely to defend his blabbering but also to lionize him.

It is little wonder that only 23 percent of Americans, according to the latest Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll, have a high level of trust in what Trump says. (Some of us find it disturbing the number is that high, although the poll was taken before his latest quackery.) Sixty percent of the country thinks Trump does not listen enough to medical experts. (A poll of his medical experts surely would show unanimity on that point.) . . .

Instead of amplifying Trump’s disinformation and misinforming the public about a life-threatening pandemic, the media should report only after the briefings on any actual news and on the list of untruths Trump uttered. Frankly, by not showing these fiascoes live, the media would be doing the science-addled president a favor. They surely would be performing a public safety function.

Republican Science Kit

Political Cartoon is by Ed Hall at Artizans.com.

The Insanity Of Donald Trump