Another presidential assault on science as fires and pandemic rage

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/15/politics/donald-trump-science-california-wildfires-coronavirus/index.html

 A defining trait of Donald Trump's presidency is his incessant destruction of reason, evidence and science in the service of his personal whims, conspiratorial mindset and political requirements.

On a day when Democratic nominee Joe Biden branded him a "climate arsonist" and global warming burst to the center of the campaign, Trump again ditched research and data for his own wild hunches and odd theories about California's wildfires. And his counter-factual tendencies, which are responsible for widespread harm but are nevertheless embraced by supporters as germane to Trump's political brand, were at work on multiple fronts Monday with America under assault from concurrent crises.

 When another local official told Trump it was time to take "our head out of the sand" by relying on the forest management excuse, the President pounced.

"It'll start getting cooler. You just watch," Trump responded.

"I wish science agreed with you," the official replied.

"I don't think science knows, actually," Trump said, closing the official down.

The exchange was a flagrant example of how the President simply dismisses any information that does not fit his preconceived idea of a problem. While many of Trump's opinions do seem uninformed and not shaped by the almost limitless resources of the federal government, there is also a clear political motivation underscoring his responses.

Trump Tells Woodward "Nothing More Could Have Been Done." Let's See What Other World Leaders Did

Is Cuomo Directive to Blame for Nursing Home COVID Deaths, as US Official Claims?

 https://khn.org/news/is-cuomo-directive-to-blame-for-nursing-home-covid-deaths-as-us-official-claims/

 Cuomo’s criticisms drew a quick reply in a tweet from Michael Caputo, an assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services.

“Does the #DemConvention know @NYGovCuomo forced nursing homes across NY to take in COVID positive patients and planted the seeds of infection that killed thousands of grandmothers and grandfathers?” he wrote.

While experts say this policy was flawed, is it fair to say that the governor’s directive “forced” nursing homes to take patients who were sick with COVID-19? And to what extent did that strategy sow the seeds of disease and death? When we examined the evidence, we found it was less clear-cut than the statement makes it seem. The policy likely had an effect, but epidemiologists identified additional factors that fed the problem. What’s more, the policy did not “force” nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients. Nursing homes interpreted it this way.

 Bottom line: State and federal rules didn’t force nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients, but many of them believed they had no other choice.

Fact check: Trump makes four false claims in one sentence

 https://edition.cnn.com/2020/09/14/politics/fact-check-trump-mccabe-clinton-mcauliffe/index.html

 In what may be a new record for President Donald Trump, he made four false claims in one sentence of a tweet on Saturday.

The sentence was about Hillary Clinton, Trump's 2016 election opponent, and Andrew McCabe, the former deputy director and acting director of the FBI.

 Trump has regularly blasted McCabe in tweets and public remarks. His Saturday sentence on Twitter: "Was Andy McCabe ever forced to pay back the $700,000 illegally given to him and his wife, for his wife's political campaign, by Crooked Hillary Clinton while Hillary was under FBI investigation, and McCabe was the head of the FBI???" 

 Almost everything he said was inaccurate. Let's break down the sentence point by point.

 Trump was referring to $675,288 that was donated to the unsuccessful 2015 Virginia state Senate campaign of McCabe's wife, Dr. Jill McCabe: $207,788 from the state Democratic Party and $467,500 from Common Good VA, the political action committee (PAC) of then-Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe.

There is simply no evidence that any of the donations, which were publicly reported in Jill McCabe's financial filings, broke the law. Trump has a long history of wrongly accusing his opponents of illegal behavior.

 

Fauci: Trump downplaying COVID-19 threat 'not a good thing'; expect no 'normality' until 2021

 https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/09/11/fauci-trump-downplaying-covid-19-threat-not-good-thing/5771294002/

Trump told Woodward in a recorded interview Feb. 7 about how much "more deadly" COVID-19 would be than the flu, a startling juxtaposition from the president's public remarks at the time and in the months since about COVID-19, its lethality and its spread. 

For months in public, the president assured the public that the coronavirus was "under control" in the U.S. and would "go away."

"When you downplay something that is really a threat, that is not a good thing," he said.

Trump Endorses Extrajudicial Executions: Killing of Antifa Suspect Was “Retribution”

 https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/trump-endorses-extrajudicial-executions-retribution-reinoehl.html

President Donald Trump appeared to give a nod to law enforcement officers killing suspected criminals, describing the death of an alleged shooting suspect by U.S. Marshals as “retribution.” Speaking in an interview with Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, Trump spoke of the incident in which a law enforcement officer killed a self-described anti-fascist activist earlier this month in Washington state as they sought to arrest him on suspicion that he fatally shot a right-wing protester in Portland, Oregon. Trump seemed to endorse the killing. “This guy was a violent criminal, and the U.S. Marshals killed him,” Trump told Pirro. “And I will tell you something—that’s the way it has to be. There has to be retribution.”

 

Death of Antifa gunman who was killed by a fugitive task force after allegedly shooting dead a Trump supporter is ruled a homicide as a witness claims cops opened fire without warning while he was eating a gummy worm and clutching his cellphone

 https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8719863/Cops-opened-fire-killed-Antifa-gunman-walked-car-eating-gummy-worm-says-witness.html

• Michael Forest Reinoehl, 48, was shot multiple times and killed by US Marshals outside an apartment block in Washington state last Thursday
• The officers swooped on Reinoehl to arrest him after he was charged with the murder of right-wing activist Aaron 'Jay' Danielson, 39
• Danielson was shot dead during a protest in downtown Portland on August 29
• Coroners ruled Reinoehl's death a homicide Wednesday
• An autopsy revealed he died from multiple shots to his head and torso
• It is still not clear how many times Reinoehl was shot but at least four officers fired multiple rounds at the suspect during the incident
•  A witness has cast doubt on the task force's version of events 
• Nate Dinguss told The Washington Post Reinoehl was not obviously armed with a firearm and was eating candy when the officers opened fire without warning
• Dinguss, 39, said cops did not identify themselves or try to arrest the suspect  
• He also said cops waited 'multiple minutes' before giving Reinoehl medical care 

  The death of an Antifa gunman who was killed by a fugitive task force after allegedly 'lying in wait' and shooting dead a Trump supporter has been ruled a homicide as a witness claimed cops opened fire without warning while he was eating candy.
  

Don the Con

הפוסק החסידי: ילד שחלה לא ילך להיבדק

 https://www.bhol.co.il/news/1137737

 והנה הנהגת הרשויות דאם יש ילד אחד בחידר שנתגלה שיש לו את הנגיף, אז מכניסים את כל הכיתה לבידוד 14 יום ומתבטלים מלימוד התורה כל הכתה הרבה זמן... וע"כ מן הראוי שאם ילד אחד חלה שלא יעשו בדיקות, שעי"ז יתחייבו ע"פ הרשויות לבטל תורה, אלא הילד החולה ישאר בביתו עד שיבריא, וייתכן שישאר עוד שלשה ימים אחר שיבריא, ולא יבטל תורה דאחרים, וכן יעשה באברך בכולל שלא יבטל את כל הכולל על ידו" כותב הגרמ"ש.

 

Janet Napolitano: President Trump ‘Totally Underestimates The American People’ | Katy Tur | MSNBC

Famed Republican lawyer pens scathing op-ed about Trump

Kristof: Trump Bragging About Protecting Saudi Crown Prince Over Khashoggi’s Murder Breaks | MSNBC

Chris Wallace of Fox News DESTROYS Trump Excuse About Not Causing "Panic"

How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”

 https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/07/how-jared-kushners-secret-testing-plan-went-poof-into-thin-air

 But the effort ran headlong into shifting sentiment at the White House. Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures. Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically—and erroneously, it would turn out—predicted the virus would soon fade away.

 Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.