Illustrating the incredible power of white privilege, a small army of Trump supporters with assault weapons storm Michigan’s capitol, intimidate legislators, and get to go back to their families afterward

About two weeks ago, several hundred Trump supporters, having been motivated by well-funded social media campaigns, descended upon Lansing, risking their lives to demand that we put the interests of Michigan’s business owners before the public health of our citizens, and re-open the state in spite of the guidance of public health professionals. At the time, as you may recall, I shared a Facebook post from the Michigan Militia saying that they were were planning an “armed” follow-up to the event. Well, apparently, today was the day. As you can see in these photos and videos, a small army of militia members stormed our capitol building this afternoon, brandishing assault weapons and demanding, once again, that we give them the “freedom” to get haircuts, ride jet skis, and die alone on ventilators.

Posted in Michigan, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | 88 Comments

Is Michigan’s Justin Amash going to help Donald Trump win reelection?

Michigan Congressman Justin Amash, the former Republican who made news last year by voting with Democrats to impeach Donald Trump, announced today that he is seriously considering a third-party run for president, as the candidate of the Libertarian Party. While he certainly has a right to do so, I, like others, can’t help but think that, if he goes down this path, he may very well help Donald Trump — a man whom he clearly feels is corrupt, authoritarian and unfit for office — win a second term by appealing to principled, conservative independents who would otherwise gravitate toward Biden. To quote Amash’s friend, former Republican congressman Joe Walsh, “If Amash gets the Libertarian nomination and stays in until the end, he could wind up going in the books as the guy who voted to impeach Trump one year, then tipped the election to him 11 months later.” Walsh, who himself attempted to take on Donald Trump in this year’s Republican primary, has also said that he finds Amash’s decision to run both “damn perplexing” and “disappointing.”

And it really is perplexing, given what Amash has said in the past about Donald Trump, the damage he’s done to the Republican Party, etc. One would think that — as Ben Rhodes noted earlier today — if Amash really felt strongly that Trump posed an authoritarian threat to our nation, his first consideration would be to see him removed from office. And, I can’t see any scenario where an Amash candidacy helps accomplish that. [A principled conservative isn’t going to win over any of the Trump base. Walsh tried that, and failed miserably.]

Walsh, for what it’s worth, was asked about this today in an interview conducted by the New York Times. Here’s the question, followed by his response.

You’ve been very critical of President Trump since before he was elected. How concerned are you that running on the Libertarian ticket will help him win re-election?

It’s impossible for anyone to know how things will shake out when you add a candidate or remove a candidate. The math is way too complicated. People claim to know. They don’t know.

A lot of the hype in that direction is based on a few people who are well known — former Republicans who are supporting Joe Biden — and they falsely assume that everyone must be like them, that every person who was a Republican or is a Republican and doesn’t like Trump, is looking strongly at Biden. And I don’t think that’s the case. I think actually a lot of people who like Biden but are Republicans will still vote for Trump because he’s closer to their policies. That’s just the way politics works.

For a lot of those people, their first choice might be me and their second choice is Trump. It’s hard to know. I don’t try to overanalyze that because no person could possibly know. It’s arrogant to think you could know how things will shake out. There are a lot of people who won’t vote for either one regardless, and the entrance of a major candidate provides them an opportunity to vote when they otherwise would not have voted. Nobody really knows. My goal is to win this race and provide an opportunity for people to vote for somebody they believe in.

I don’t have a lot of time at the moment, but I will say that, if Amash thinks that there’s any hope of winning over even 1% of the Trump base with appeals to conservative principles, he’s incredibly naive. The Party has long since moved on. And no one gives a shit about the intellectual underpinnings of fiscal conservatism anymore. Now it’s all about stoking the fires of grievance, and, if you don’t have red meat to the throw to the base, you’re as good as dead. There is no resurrecting the pre-Nixon Party. All that’s left is a hollow shell. And it’s now inhabited by showman who has some 40% of the population under his spell. Any vote Amash gets, you can be sure, will be from someone who was so disgusted by Donald Trump that they were going to cross party lines cast their ballot for Biden.

I should add that there are things that I like about Amash. While I disagree about a number of his policy positions, and hate that he came to office as part of the Tea Party nonsense of 2010, I respect him for doing what other conservatives in Congress were unwilling to do, and refusing to sacrifice his principles in order to appease Donald Trump. That doesn’t mean, however, that I’m going to give him a pass on his vote against the recent anti-lynching bill, or his ties to anti-vaxxers. But I can still respect him for standing up to Trump, and accusing his former colleagues of being hypocrites. It would have been easy enough for Amash to do what several of his former Freedom Caucus colleagues did, and become full-fledged Trumpists. He didn’t do that, however, and I respect him for it. That respect, however, only goes so far. And we’re fast approaching that line.

Sorry for rambling, but I just really don’t want for Michigan to be the thing that puts the worst president in American history over the top yet one more time.

Posted in Michigan, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 71 Comments

How many people have really died from COVID-19?

While some on the right are suggesting that the official COVID-19 death count is inflated, it seems likely the opposite is true. According to new data released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it looks as though the number of “excess” deaths we’ve been seen these past several weeks far exceeds what’s been attributed to the coronavirus pandemic. Here in Michigan for instance, between March 8 and April 11, we saw 2,000 more people die than we would have normally expected over that same time period. But, only 1,391 of those deaths were attributed to COVID-19.

Here, from the New York Times, is a graphic showing our deaths here in Michigan, plotted by week, over the past half-dozen years. As you’ll notice, it’s incredibly consistent up until this year, when the death rate began to skyrocket in March. That, of course, probably isn’t terribly surprising, given the fact that our state was one of the hardest hit by the pandemic. What should be surprising, though, is that, at least as of right now, we’re only attributing about two-thirds of these so-called “excess” deaths to COVID-19. In other words, there are 609 people who died during this period who statistically shouldn’t have, and it’s probably very likely that a good number of them died as a result of COVID-19 as well.

And, of course, this didn’t just happen in Michigan. Given what a terrible job we were doing of testing throughout the country, a lot of people likely died of the disease, and were just never counted. In fact, when researchers at the Yale School of Public Health crunched the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention numbers for the Washington Post, they found that there were approximately 15,400 “excess” deaths over this five week period, which is “nearly two times as many as were publicly attributed to COVID-19 at the time.” Here, from the Washington Post, is a graphic showing the typical seasonal death rate compared to what we experienced this year. As you’ll notice, the confirmed COVID-19 cases don’t come close to accounting for the dramatic increase.

I suspect, over time, we got better at testing the critically ill and attributing their subsequent deaths to COVID-19, but I also think it’s highly likely that the process still isn’t perfect, and that we’re still undercounting significantly in areas where test are difficult to come by. And, even if that’s not the case, and we’re now counting every death caused by COVID-19, there’s still the issue of these several thousand cases that appear to have fallen through the cracks in March and April. According to today’s official count, we’ve lost 61,656 individuals to COVID-19 here in the United States. One wonders what the real number is, though… and to what extent our early undercounting gave people a false sense of security, making things worse. In other words, if we’d known how many people were really dying of COVID-19 early on, is it possible that we would have instituted social distancing measures sooner, saving tens of thousands of Americans?

Posted in Health, Michigan, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , | 244 Comments

Putting aside the unnecessary death, the financial collapse, and the ever-present sense of dread, is there anything about this pandemic that you’ll remember fondly?

I know the world is pretty terrible right now. Jobs have been lost. Friends have passed. There’s a lot of fear, uncertainty and anxiety. But, I suspect, for most of us, there are also the occasional moments of happiness, when we realize that, at least for a fleeting moment, we’re well, happy, and have things in our life to be thankful for. Last night was a good one for my family and me. We snuggled up in front of the fireplace and watched Double Indemnity on my computer amid bowls of rice pudding, popcorn and Win Schuler’s cheese spread. I don’t know that it was necessarily my favorite memory of the lockdown, as I’ve also really enjoyed playing badminton between our patches of kale with my daughter between, building structures from twigs and vines in the backyard with my son, and cooking with my wife, but there’s something really nice about drawing the curtains, shutting out the outside world, and just losing yourself for a few hours in a good Barbara Stanwyck movie. [I’d also recommend The Lady Eve, if you’re looking for a double feature. And, if you’ve got the time, and want to be really ambitious, maybe start things off with her first film, the pre-code Baby Face.] So, what’s it been for you? Assuming we live through this, are there things that you’ll look back on with fondness?

Posted in Mark's Life, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 32 Comments

They want to bankrupt the blue states, and kill public unions, but, yes, let’s talk about the injection of Lysol

Toward the end of this past week, it became evident that the Republicans intended to use this horrific pandemic in order to force individual states into bankruptcy. Mitch McConnell, having worked to deliver hundreds of millions of our hard-earned tax dollars to corporations, said this past Wednesday that the states being hit hardest by COVID-19 would not be getting the same kind of bailout from the government. “We’re not interested in solving their pension problems for them,” the Senate Majority leader said, alluding to the financial crisis looming in America’s largest, most prosperous states, like California and New York. McConnell added that he was, “in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route.” This attitude of McConnell’s, as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said just afterward, is “offensive,” “vicious,” “ugly,” and “reckless.” It’s also not terribly surprising.

If the Democrats held the White House and Senate, I’m sure, right now, we’d be talking about the possibility of instituting something like the Green New Deal, that might accomplish the dual positive results of putting people back to work, while, at the same time, finally putting our nation on the path to addressing global climate change in a significant and meaningful way. It’s deep in the DNA of politics to — in the words of Ram Emanuel — ensure that crises like this don’t “go to waste.” FDR used the great depression to give us the New Deal. The lesser Bush used the 9/11 attack to take us to war in Iraq. And, now, it looks as though the Republicans are using the coronavirus pandemic to once again raid the treasury on behalf of corporate America, shrink government and break public unions. And that’s exactly what this is about. When McConnell says, as he did a few days ago, that he doesn’t want the “federal government to borrow money from future generations” to bail he states out, when they could just go bankrupt instead, he’s not being sincere. If he were, he would have said the same thing when the airlines and cruise ship operators came asking for their bailouts, and when his own party chose to explode the deficit in order to paper over the failings of the Trump economy. The truth is, the want blue states to go bankrupt because they hate government, and want strong unions, like the teachers’ unions, to collapse.

And that’s what I wanted to write about today. I wanted to write about the longstanding Republican plan to destroy government and kill unions. But then Donald Trump came along and said that our scientists should look into ways to get light and disinfectants into the human body to kill COVID-19, and now I feel as though I need to at acknowledge it, seeing as how there are apparently people who, inspired by his remarks, are thinking about shooting-up Lysol… Here, before we get into it, is Trump extolling the possible virtues of introducing bleach and sunlight into the human body. This, by the way, is the best camera angle from the Trump press conference, as it captures the face of White House infectious disease advisor Deborah Birx when Donald Trump appears to sanction the possible use of bleach within the human body.

Trump, for what it’s worth, claimed yesterday that he was being “sarcastic” when he said what he did about finding ways to get sunlight and disinfectants into the body. “I was asking a question sarcastically to reporters like you, just to see what would happen,” Trump said. That’s not what happened, though.

When Donald Trump said what he did, he was being serious. It’s evident from both the video and the transcript. He was attempting to sound as though he has a handle on this incredibly serious situation we now find ourselves in, and he got in over his head. He’d just heard Bill Bryan, the head of the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security, talking about research being done at the National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center, research involving the killing of the virus with light, heat and disinfectants, and he — as he’s known to do — decided to freestyle a bit, just going off extemporaneously about the possibility of getting “light inside the body” and the likelihood that disinfectants might somehow be injected or ingested in order to “clean” out the lungs. A brighter president might have simply thanked Bryan, encouraged the work, and then expressed empathy for the families of the 50,000 dead, but Trump had to insinuate himself into the story by directing Bryan to take what they’d learned about the virus’s response to heat, light and disinfectants, and somehow figure out how to translate that into a treatment… Something like this, given what we know about Donald Trump, was bound to happen.

Donald Trump, feeling the need to look presidential going into the 2020 election, and having been robbed of his ability to hold his ridiculous rallies by the pandemic, had the bright idea that he’d hold daily press conferences, where he’d talk about how much he’d been doing for the American people, how we’d be reopening society soon, etc. The only problem is, he never had anything of real value to convey at these laughable press events, so he’d go off on tangents about how little credit he’s received, the extent to which the Obama administration was responsible, and the promise of untested miracle cures like hydroxychloroquine… which, by the way, the FDA just said was neither safe nor effective. And, on this particular day, the stars just happened to align in such a way that the President of the United States, a man extremely ill-suited for the job, even during the best of times, walked out on stage and appeared to suggest that people might be well-served by self-medicating with bleach… No, he did not stare directly into the camera and command his followers to drink Lysol. And no one is suggesting that happened. He did, however, broach the subject in such a way as to create a great deal of confusion, and make an already terrible situation worse.

This, or something like this, I’d argue, was inevitable. When you take a man like Donald Trump, who refuses to attend scientific briefings, but feels qualified to talk about what was covered during such briefings, these things are bound to happen. The truly criminal thing is that certain press outlets continued to cover these things well past the point when we all knew for a certainty that they were illegitimate. And, now, as a result, we’re seeing stories from places like Illinois and Maryland about people tying up public health offices with questions about the consumption and/or injection of bleach.

But, in Trump’s defense, this isn’t all that unusual. At least, I seem to recall a time or two, after Obama press conferences, were companies, like Exxon and BP, had to issue statements reminding people not to inject gasoline… I mean, it’s just something that happens. World leaders talk off-the-cuff all the time about the injection of things that would certainly kill you. And, yes, Barack Obama did once ask his chief medical advisors to look into the injection of gasoline to kill cancer.

OK, that’s not exactly true. Obama was actually pretty good when it came to not directing people to take their own lives. But he did once wear a tan suit. [#NeverForget.]

Oh, but here’s something that is real. At roughly the same time bleachgate was playing out, Dr Anthony Fauci, our nation’s foremost expert on the COVID-19 pandemic, said the following about our nation’s coronavirus testing capabilities. “We need to significantly ramp up not only the number of tests, but the capacity to perform them…. I am not overly confident right now at all that we have what it takes to do that,” he said.

So, as funny as it might be that our president stood in front of the press and talked about the bleach and sunlight being forced through the bodies of the sick, the fact remains that we still don’t have the testing that we need. And every minute Donald Trump spends talking about potential miracle cures, are minutes he’s not spending actually doing his job, and pushing to expand the testing necessary to counter this pandemic.

Oh, and here’s that video of Trump claiming that his comments about disinfectants and sunlight were said sarcastically to the reporters in the room. [As you can see from the original video, he clearly wasn’t addressing the reporters in the room. He even addresses Dr. Birx by name when asking if it’s possible to get sunlight and disinfectant into the body.]

But this is what we signed up for when we elected Donald Trump. We knew he was a liar. We knew he was a shirker of responsibility, and a passer of the buck. We knew he wasn’t the kind of leader who would thoughtfully analyze problems, but would instead look for easy solutions. And today we’re paying the price. First it was chloroquine, and now it’s bleach. He apparently can’t admit to himself that there isn’t an easy answer. Because, up until now, there’s always been an easy answer. There’s never been a problem that he couldn’t make go away by lying, blaming, and buying his way out of. And here we are, with over 50,000 dead Americans, while he continues to stand in front of us, on live television, searching for easy answers, instead of doing the hard work of being president.

update: It’s now Monday, and Trump is back in front of the press, denying responsibility for people ingesting bleach. Welcome to the new America.

Posted in Health, Politics, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 128 Comments

Connect

BUY LOCAL... or shop at Amazon through this link Banner Initiative Lewinski