This is a multiple-choice test, with a possible essay at the end.
Trump lashed out at Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer because:
1. She did not praise him enough.
2. She is a woman.
3. Trump hates strong women.
4. Other (write your own guess after reading the following Document-Based Information.)
President Donald Trump has lashed out at several Democratic governors who are responding to the coronavirus crisis, but his harshest words have been reserved for Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer.
Trump said Thursday he had a “big problem” with the “young, a woman governor” in Michigan, complaining that “all she does is sit there and blame the federal government.” On Friday, he said that he told Vice President Mike Pence, “don’t call the woman in Michigan,” and later referred to her as “Gretchen ‘Half’ Whitmer” in a tweet and said she is “way in over her head” and “doesn’t have a clue.”
Those attacks — and her direct response to them — have thrust the first-term governor further into the national spotlight as she manages her state’s efforts to slow the pandemic’s spread, which includes seeking assistance from the Trump administration. Whitmer now finds herself among other Democratic governors, like Washington state’s Jay Inslee and New York’s Andrew Cuomo, who are navigating the deepening public health crisis in their states while also confronting the President’s demand for public praise and appreciation.
Whitmer responded to Trump’s Thursday attacks in a tweet that included a hand-waving emoji, writing, “Hi, my name is Gretchen Whitmer, and that governor is me.”
“I’ve asked repeatedly and respectfully for help. We need it. No more political attacks, just PPEs, ventilators, N95 masks, test kits. You said you stand with Michigan — prove it,” she wrote.
. . . I’m really tired of Trump’s bad-parenting model applied to legitimately elected adults. CBK
“Bad-parenting model”: bingo. Trump is that bad parent who uses withdrawal of approval/ love to leverage desired behavior, & plays one kid off another in a never-ending competition, usually resulting in one overachiever, one underachiever, and a third who checks out entirely.
Isn’t this how Trump’s father raised his children?
Twitler’s Gotta Twit …
lol
How are states supposed to have the resources, the money to get what is needed in a time of crisis? Trump is continuously proving his ignorance. I’m surprised that he has a woman doctor, Dr. Birx, standing next to him. She is a sycophant who can lie just as easily as Trump does.
Not how I see Dr. Birx. She seems to be trying very hard to work with what she’s been handed (a pile of Trump) and still get accurate information out.
Bob Shepherd: Chicago Tribune: Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, gave a stark warning in an appearance on CNN on Sunday, predicting that millions of Americans will be stricken with the new coronavirus and between 100,000 and 200,000 may die.
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Dr. Birx: Coronavirus Data Doesnt Match The Doomsday Media Predictions
White House coronavirus task force member Dr. Deborah Birx warned the public not to panic when they hear about models and projections of the pandemic’s spread.
“Models are models,” she said. “When people start talking about 20% of a population getting infected, it’s very scary, but we don’t have data that matches that based on our experience.”
She said the media should not “make the implication that when they need a hospital bed it’s not going to be there, or a ventilator, it’s not going to be there, we don’t have evidence of that.”…
And the situation about ventilators. We are reassured in meeting with our colleagues in New York that there are still I.C.U. Beds remaining and still significant — over 1,000 or 2,000 ventilators that have not been utilized…
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/03/26/dr_birx_coronavirus_data_doesnt_match_the_doomsday_media_predictions_or_analysis.html
Oh my Lord. This is hilarious!!!! Falling off my chair here, laughing!
Because she said, “I’ll give ya shelter from the germ”
Here is a suggested reply to Trumpty Dumpty from Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer:
“At least I didn’t get elected with help from Putin and Russia.”
Let’s NOT forget that Trump is an illegitimate president because of what the Russians did! And, they are going to try and do it again in 2020.
“Did Russia help elect Trump? – BBC Newsnight
“New evidence on Russian interference in 2016 election”
“How Russia Helped Swing The Election for Trump”
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/10/01/how-russia-helped-to-swing-the-election-for-trump
Y’know Trump lives for people getting outraged at his outrageous behavior. Gov. Whitmer – and everyone else – should wear it as a badge of honor and just ignore the loser. If people actually ignored this kind of silly thing, he’d melt down like the Wicked Witch of the West.
dienne7 I think, by this time, we can probably understand all of the outrageous behavior and airing of psychological degeneracy as a cover for more hidden but powerful and long-lasting political moves. CBK
Maybe to some extent. But most of it is Trump has no internal sense of self. He only exists to the extent he can get people to react to him. He needs that mirroring, whether it’s adulation from his followers or outrage from his critics. Nothing we can do about his followers and sycophants. But we don’t need to add to the attention already piled on him. Any attention, including negative attention, just feeds the beast. Don’t give it to him.
dienne I think we are making the same point? or have I missed something? CBK
Dienne: It’s a good psychoanalysis as far as it goes, but it underestimates the degree of Trump’s dysfunction. You can ignore a childhood playground bully and deflate his power. Trump is more like the mob boss depicted in ‘The Godfather’ movies, who finds mere to-the-letter obeisance potentially suspect & keeps raising the bar to prove loyalty. What he’s after is genuflection and ring-kissing, like the ritual physical demonstrations of submission required by alpha-males in animal primate families.
Dienne77 is right. Trolls thrive on upsetting people. If we ignore the Super Troll in the White House, he will fall apart. To get fed, he will become so outrageous that Moscow Mitch might have to help to get rid of him.
“Don’t Feed the Trolls: How to Handle Jerks on Social Media” This is also good advice to handling the jerk in the WH.
We on this blog may ignore him, but the media will not.
If a tree falls in the forest, does anyone hear it?
I disagree that “if we ignore the Super Troll in the White House, he will fall apart.” As I said above to Dienne, the psychology for dealing with childhood bullies– or internet trolls– does not apply to Trump. He is a continually-negotiating creature. An outrageous statement or action is not simply a demand for the instantaneous self-gratification of reaction, it’s a gauntlet thrown down, or a first crazy-high demand in a lawsuit for damages. Ignore it, & you’ve informed him you are vulnerable & able to be taken down easily.
Will ignoring the corona virus make it go away?
In Trump’s deranged and damaged mind, anything could happen, even forming chaotic thoughts that the COVID-19 crises is over.
It is my hope that the increased awareness in the country of pandemic illness, its causes, its methods of spread, etc., will bring increased attention to the scourge of Standardized Testing Delusion Syndrome, or STDs. This disease, characterized by decreased cognitive functioning, leads sufferers to have delusions that high-stakes standardized tests validly test what they purport to test and so provide actionable “data.” Unfortunately, professional organizations like the National Council of Teachers of English and the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics failed to contain this silent killer of student learning after the initial outbreaks. As a result, STDs is now endemic in our educational system. The only hope is removal from the system and isolation of any and all carriers. Watch, in particular, for data-obsessed administrators and state education officials. Also particularly noteworthy for necessary containment are think tanks where thinking tanks funded by the Waltons, Gates, Bloomberg, Broad, Zuckerberg-Chan, and Jobs.
This has been a public health announcement on behalf of kids and teachers nationwide.
Standardized Testing Delusion Syndrome (STDs). You, too, can be part of the cure!
I’m on the fence about whether the current crisis will cause any change in bureaucratic peddling of/ public buying into stdzd testing as a measure of ed achievement. The mindset was 40 yrs in the making; the details of ed admin escape most Americans; it’s a baton easily picked up & run w/again after a hiatus, supported by the same simplistic hubris…
But the general Q is a frequent topic of discussion between my husband & I as we rattle ’round the house in unaccustomed long hrs together, unbroken even by once-regular visits from our sons… Are there some elements of the nation’s 40-yr decline that might be highlighted & even changed by covid-19?
My husband, from biz perspective, wonders if we might dial back toward mid-20thC domination of the long view– corporate-wise & investor-wise. Back then corps planned far out into future, w/ inventories, personnel/ labor policies, accounting systems & planned design updates to match– ordinary folks accordingly invested in blue-chip stocks; market was not a casino. Clearly, running all w/eye only to next qtr is a colossal failure when deus ex machina intervenes.
My hopes are around attitudes toward govt/ democracy. This crisis could cause average voters who’ve bought into 40 yrs’ infusion of libertarian doxology to reconsider & gain respect for the importance of govt in general. They might even perceive– via the failure of govt to quickly support the vast, winnowed middle/wkg classes– or even the very fact that they & all their nbrs are one paycheck from living in the street & begging for food– that there is power in numbers, the voice of voters must be heard & override special/ corp interests.
Consultancies have made a lot of money in the past 30 years selling Just in Time (JIT) efficiencies. Well, observed, all of this. I hope that we shall emerge from this with a new respect for scientific warnings about health and pollution, climate change, etc. Love the phrase “liobertarian doxology”!
I don’t expect the billionaires that are doing all they can to subvert our Constitutional Republic, strip the federal government of its power, and turn the United States into a faux theocratic, free-market, kleptocracy are going to learn anything. In fact, I expect they will do the same thing some of them did when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and again when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico.
Yup. The vultures will sweep in to feed off the carrion.
Vulture 1: We thank you, Lord, for these gifts we are about the receive.
Vulture 2: What? covid-19 leftovers again?
Vulture 3: How can we ensure that the feast will never end?
I don’t expect this to lead people to awakening about STDs (standardized testing delusion syndrome). In fact, I expect quite the opposite. Petrilli just wrote a piece for the Gadfly Droppings newsletter about how the tests should go forward as soon as kids get back so we can find out precisely what kids missed during their time away from school. He has a bad case. He not only thinks that these tests validly measure what they purport to measure but imagines that they do so in a fine-grained way–that they are very precisely diagnostic. Which means that he has a really bad case of the delusion and clearly hasn’t looked at the tests or the results that are sent out when kids take them. But when was complete lack of familiarity with something been a bar to his (and other Deformers’/Disrupters’) claiming to be an expert and “thought leader” on the subject?
Imagine two scenarios. In one, you have a big grocery store chain. In the other, you have a small, independent corner grocer. Someone shows up at each, loads all the toilet paper in the store into a couple carts and attempts to check out. The cashier in the former has no recourse but to check this person through and say, “Have a nice day.” The small, independent businessperson can say, “No way! I have other customers! Put those back!” We’ve allowed the Walmartization of our country. It’s time to take the country back. But how do we do that?
Costco has been limiting two packages of toilet paper to each customer. I’ve read that they are limiting some other items, too.
Lloyd, re: your 9:35 comment. Billionaires do what billionaires gonna do. Their individual proclivities are irrelevant. We should look at what they’re doing the way we check the weather forecast: given global warming, which is likely next up in the queue of disasters slouching toward Bethlehem– tornadoes? forest fires? coastal flooding?
It’s not really a metaphor. Laissez-faire capitalism and global warming are baked into each other. But there are nations that mitigate the consequences for their people. Take the Netherlands. Gini index 28: along with Nordics, they’re in the bottom 8% of the scale. [Compare US: 42, in the top third, in a cluster incl Congo, Turkey, Argentina.] Netherlands’ portion of public revenue, enormous compared to ours, is used in part for huge-scale cutting-edge civil engrg projects that keep their nation above the rising ocean.
Harhar Bob “Gadfly Droppings” newsletter 😀 One could further emphasize its insignificance: “Fruit Fly Droppings”… “Flea Droppings”… or smallest of all, “Fairyfly Droppings.”
It’s not just what Trump said, but how he said it….the way he spit out the word “woman”. My son had the presser going and we all just stopped whatever we were doing. All of us in the room. The contempt Trump displayed for this leader…a leader of a state of millions during a health crisis…it was stunning.
On another sad note, I was speaking on the phone this morning with an 84-year-old who said, somberly, “Well, I guess maybe we’re not going to have everyone in church on Easter.”
Yeah, there it was, Trump’s outrageously misleading false promise of hope that the churches will be “packed” again on Easter. Believed….bought…hoped for….
The reality is seeping in, the dread, as the death toll climbs in the United States.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/2020/03/27/churches-easter-trump-closed-coronavirus-services/
How disgusting and despicable, offering such false hope to so many people who are scared.
Huge books will be written decades from now about how our nation has fallen so low.
Shame on anyone who can still support this vile president, this miserable human being.
Trump throws out “false hopes” and “what his followers want to hear” all the time because he thrives on seeing his poll numbers climb a bit, even if they are still underwater all the time. If he doesn’t get the occasional blip in his poll numbers, he probably can’t sleep.
This revolting subhuman used to take particular delight in condescending to and verbally abusing Kirstjen Nielsen when she was Secretary of Homeland Security. He would refer to, in cabinet meetings, as “Honey.” Example: “Kirstjen, you didn’t hear me the first time, honey.” He was furious at her when she told him that they couldn’t just shoot immigrants at the Southern border.
Trump is speaking at this moment (in between corporate “titans” kissing his knees). He’s saying that the Easter thing was “aspirational”. Yeah, as in an ass said it without thinking first.
Another Trump gem that I just heard, “This is about death.”
No, duh, as kids might say. It’s taken this guy this long to get to this point?!
“This is about death.”
What if Trump had thought more about this idea three months ago….even two months ago? (See today’s NY Times front page story about critical delays in testing.)
Now Trump is telling a woman reporter “to be nice”. He’s talking down to her, complaining she’s attacking him. He keeps saying, why can’t she just be “nice”..
What a CREEP!
Trump is vicious to the media but expects them to “be nice” to him.
OK, repeat after me: She’s a woman!
The campaign to discredit her is just a small part of the much larger media campaign to undermine the credibility of anyone well qualified to speak about the pandemic. She has ties to Biden and that is why she a target. See the scope of the FOX campaign that supports Trump and feeds him these insults.
http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=4ad32580767970527d407c0804e66551f37bcaf56e8fc92e2a2b1b2083cc869543019657afc79753bb6ab1fd5da0414419690733d9c5491d
Maybe Joe or Bernie should take a look at her…
Joe Jersey @ 4:06 PM: Comment most appropriate…&…rhetorical. IQ45 IS a virus, in & of itself (& I reserve the right to call an it an it–not a he or a she or a they. IQ45 is not human, therefore is not humane & is a misanthropic, misogynistic creature.
Dienne, your analysis is correct (having taught sped, beginning w/3-5-year-olds {& that’s about the age we’re talkin’ bout here!} & having had lots of training in behavioral analysis insofar as stunting & then totally eliminating bad behavior {called “extinguishing”}, which is acted out in order to stimulate outside attention {any attention–+ or negative is better to a needy child in comparison to no attention})–we, here, can ignore but, how do we get the msm to ignore? This, BTW, being the same-old-same-old msm that helped to put it into office in the first place, giving it SO much coverage, way more coverage than any other candidates (as the now disgraced & fired Les Moonves famously said, “It’s good for CBS!”
Since we can’t exactly go out into the streets at this time, perhaps someone can generate a petition to boycott those media outlets that continue to cover it. I wasn’t watching, but a friend of mine told me that the other day one of the cable news stations cut it off, & the host explained that he wasn’t going to broadcast lying about such a grave situation (was it Chris Hayes or Lawrence O’Donnell?).
Oh–& to Denise–just finished watching our fiend–er, friend–Chuck Todd softball interview
“the presumptive Dem nominee”* (Todd’s words), Joe Biden, so, in the world according to the DNC & the msm (except, perhaps, for Chris Hayes, & maybe Lawrence O’Donnell)),
don’t even ask Bernie who he might pick for veep. Despite the fact that he stayed in D.C. in order to better shape, fight for & vote for the stimulus package needed by working people, putting himself (a high-risk person) in danger (&, thanks, Rand Paul), I guess it’s Joe’s pick…
*echoes of his–& msm’s/DNC’s 2016 shenanignas…which helped it get elected.
I like your pronoun for IQ45 & shall immediately adopt. “It” feels just right. Cuts him down to size.
“Sonnit” 45
“It” is just a little bit–
A skosh– a smidge– a chit.
It’s no more than a little zit–
A molecule of grit.
“It”‘s smaller than an olive pit–
More like i-dot when writ.
Bupkis is the size of “it”
A fruitfly glove would fit.
A pinch of dust, “it” can be lit
And won’t ignite a snit.
It’s too small to be hit or crit,
But we can make it quit.
To follicle it clings, a nit:
Let’s tweeze it out– now git!
In your poem, are you referring to Trump’s brain?
I wonder if their ideas have changed since the Orange Moron has extended the coronavirus lockdown until April 30?
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‘A Dangerous Gamble’: Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey Refuses to Order ‘Shelter-in-Place’ for Residents, Leaving Black Alabamans Especially at Risk
Friday 3:30PM
The Republican governor announced during a press conference on Thursday that the state would not be enacting “shelter-in-place” measures, which have been shown in other countries to mitigate the disastrous effects of the coronavirus.
From Talking Points Memo:
“Y’all, we are not Louisiana, we are not New York state, we are not California,” Ivey told a reporter who had asked about a potential order. “And right now is not the time to order people to shelter in place.”
The governor asserted that businesses need to stay open to provide food, medical supplies and jobs.
“We’ve got [to] have all the materials that are needed to keep Alabamians working as much as we can,” she said.
Ivey’s talking points mirrored Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves, who earlier this week said his state would be taking a “wait and see” approach to declaring a “shelter-in-place” order.
“No one at the State Department of Health has recommended that we have a statewide shelter-in-place order,” Reeves said…
“When it hits the black belt, when you see how few clinics and hospitals are in those rural areas, there’s no way in the world you’re going to be able to deal with all those cases,” said Ali…
https://www.theroot.com/a-dangerous-gamble-alabama-gov-kay-ivey-refuses-to-1842528527%3Futm_medium=sharefromsite%26utm_source=theroot_email&utm_campaign=top
Supply shortage goes beyond cash
Demand driving up price; material chain drying up
Associated Press
The billions of tax dollars headed for hospitals and states as part of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus response legislation won’t fix the problem facing doctors and nurses: a critical shortage of protective gowns, gloves and masks.
The problem isn’t a lack of money, experts say. It’s that there’s not enough of those supplies available to buy. What’s more, the crisis has revealed a fragmented procurement system now descending into chaos just as demand soars, The Associated Press has found.
Hospitals, state governments and the Federal Emergency Management Agency are left bidding against one another and driving up prices.
For more than a week, governors have pushed back against administration assurances that supplies are available now, bitterly complaining to President Donald Trump that there’s no coordination.
“It’s pretty much every state for itself,” said Virginia’s secretary of finance, Aubrey Layne, who is deeply involved with his state’s effort to buy medical supplies.
Masks that were priced at $2.50 a week ago are now being quoted as high as $9, he said, and suppliers make clear that there are “plenty of people out here” looking to buy, even at the high prices.
“There is a lot of opportunism going on,” Layne said.
Even if someone took some of this money and built the equipment to make masks, gowns and gloves, it would not solve the problem because none of the materials are made in the United States. That includes latex and rubber, largely from Southeast Asia, as well as textiles used in surgical gowns that can repel fluids but are easily disposable.
“The suppliers that provide the raw materials needed to make such items have to increase their capacity in order to deliver more materials to manufacturers, which could take time and may not be feasible if the suppliers are located in other parts of the world that are currently crippled by the coronavirus,” said Kaitlin Wowak, an assistant professor at University of Notre Dame business school who specializes in analytics and operations.
“The coronavirus is spreading at an unbelievable rate, so you can only expect the demand for personal protective equipment and other medical supplies to follow the same trajectory, which is scary given that there is already a massive shortage of such items at hospitals,” Wowak said.
Doctors and nurses in hot spots such as New York and New Orleans are caring for feverish, wheezing COVID-19 patients without adequate masks, gloves or gowns.
Can the $100 billion carved out for hospitals in the stimulus package solve that?
“It is not about throwing money at this problem,” said Lisa Ellram, a professor of supply chain management at Miami University of Ohio.
Just like consumers who today wander past empty shelves in the toilet paper aisle, state governments and hospitals are finding their suppliers’ warehouses are bare.
The AP reported last week that imports of critical medical supplies were plummeting because of factory closures in China, where manufacturers had been required to sell all or part of their goods internally rather than export to other countries.
Now that bottleneck has tightened as the pandemic sweeps through the world, shuttering potential backup factories from one country to the next. Many manufacturers have been ordered to shut down or limit production throughout Southeast Asia and Latin America, including in India and Mexico. In Malaysia, where 75% of the world’s medical gloves are made, AP found factories were shut down and only allowed to reopen with half staff, who are now locked in hostels at their workplaces.
Shipments of medical gloves are down 23% this month compared with 2019, and medical gown imports are down 64% for the same period, according to trade data compiled by Panjiva and ImportGenius, services that track imports and exports.
No medical-grade N95 masks, made almost entirely in China, have arrived at U.S. ports this month.
An Oregon Nurses Association member who spoke on condition of anonymity out of concern for her job said she’s allowed one N95 mask a day to protect against tiny particulates.
“Wearing the same mask from patient to patient to patient, what are you doing? Are we taking care of them or putting them at greater risk?” she said.
A colleague has already tested positive for COVID-19, she said. Her own test was lost so she’s being retested. But she continues to work treating patients even though she has minor symptoms.
Doctors and nurses working in hospitals have also told AP about shortages of saline flushes to clean intravenous catheters, disposable CaviWipe towelettes to clean hospital surfaces, defibrillator electrodes to shock hearts back into beating and oxygen concentrators, which help respiratory patients breathe.
It’s about time that someone spoke the truth. Needs to be repeated often enough that the population learns.
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As the President fiddles, people are dying.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who told CNN’s Jake Tapper she believes President Trump’s downplaying of the coronavirus has cost American lives.