monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

California conservatives will hold conference featuring Bannon despite coronavirus concerns

The coronavirus has closed schools and knocked pro sports out of commission.

But not the California Republican Assembly.

The conservative group plans to soldier on with a conference of more than 200 next weekend in Tulare County that includes former White House adviser Steve Bannon and indicted former Trump aide George Papadopoulos on topics that include “the Deep State.”

quite literally shooting himself in the foot.

Your patently puerile reactions used to be kinda cute,
but wearing thin lately.

The mayor of Miami says he tested positive for the new coronavirus after meeting with a Brazilian official who also was in close proximity to President Donald Trump.

The president inaccurately described travel restrictions he had announced, falsely blamed his predecessor for testing shortages and misstated the role Google was playing in mitigating the outbreak.

He fingered the microphone and put his lips up close. He shook hands with everyone he could. Donald Trump, who promised you’re going to win so much you’ll get sick of winning, might also just make you sick.

In the White House rose garden on Friday, the US president defied the advice of medical experts standing behind him and behaved like a one-man coronavirus cannon.

Trump declared a national emergency (“two very big words”, said the man known for his misspelled tweets) that would release up to $50bn to combat the pandemic, which this week topped 2,000 cases and had the lamps going out all over America.

Reporters wanted to know whether this 73-year-old man with a poor diet – his former doctor reportedly hid cauliflower in his mashed potatoes – is putting himself and others at risk. Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro’s press secretary tested positive for coronavirus days after taking part in meetings with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.

Should Trump therefore self-isolate? “Well, I don’t know that I had exposure, but I don’t have any of the symptoms,” he replied. “And we do have a White House doctor and, I should say, many White House doctors, frankly. And I asked them that same question, and they said, ‘You don’t have any symptoms whatsoever.’ And we don’t want people without symptoms to go and do the test. The test is not insignificant.”

But later another reporter pushed him harder, noting that a person without symptoms might still be infected. Question: “Are you being selfish by not getting tested and potentially exposing – ”

Trump: “Well, I didn’t say I wasn’t going to be tested.”

Question: “Are you going to be?”

Trump: “Most likely, yeah. Most likely.”

Question: “When do you think that will happen?”

Trump: “Not for that reason, but because I think I will do it anyway. Fairly soon.”

Coronavirus is a crisis of a different magnitude from those faced by Trump before. It has upended daily life and left liberals cursing the cosmic dice: how come Tom Hanks is infected while Trump gets off scot-free?

When the celebrity businessman has his back to the wall, he calls for the cavalry of corporate America. At Friday’s press conference he rolled in business titans to save the day, treating them to plenty of handshakes and little social distancing.

“You’re going to be hearing from some of the largest companies and greatest retailers and medical companies in the world,” he said, presumably hoping to reassure the stock market. “They’re standing right behind me and to the side of me ... they’re celebrities in their own right.”

Trump announced that “drive-thru” testing centers would be set up in parking lots at CVS, Target, Walmart and Walgreens stores.

This, he hopes, will resolve a spectacularly awful time lag in testing kits being made available. America has been put to shame by South Korea.

The wartime president Harry Truman used to keep a sign on his desk that said: “The buck stops here.” Trump, however, seems eager to wash his hands of the matter, if not actually wash his hands. “Yeah, no, I don’t take responsibility at all, because we were given a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time,” he said. “It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about.”

Then Yamiche Alcindor of PBS asked why, in 2018, Trump had dissolved the White House’s National Security Council directorate for global health security and biodefense.

Like a schoolboy caught red-handed, he blustered: “Well, I just think it’s a nasty question because what we’ve done is – and Tony has said numerous times that we’ve saved thousands of lives because of the quick closing. And when you say ‘me’, I didn’t do it. We have a group of people I could – ”

Alcindor followed up. Trump rambled: “It’s the – it’s the administration. Perhaps they do that. You know, people let people go. You used to be with a different newspaper than you are now. You know, things like that happen.”

It is not the first time he has resorted to the word “nasty” when asked a tough question by a woman of colour.

The buck stops here.

US President Donald Trump does not need a test for COVID-19 or to undergo quarantine, despite having been in contact with two Brazilian officials last weekend who have since tested positive for the virus.

The White House released an official statement by Trump's physician Sean P. Conley stating that the president's interaction with Brazilian officials in Mar-a-Lago, Florida last week "would be categorized as low risk for transmission … and as such, there is no indication for home quarantine at this time."

People who have had personal contact (regardless of travel) with a person less than two metres apart, who has been found to have the virus in the laboratory should contact their local health authority by telephone immediately, regardless of symptoms. Until contact is made, unnecessary contact should be avoided - regardless of symptoms - and the person concerned should stay at home. You should observe the coughing and sneezing label (sneeze and cough into the crook of your arm), don't shake hands and keep generally good hand hygiene.

...Loftus performs standup, has written for television shows such as “Robot Chicken,” and co-hosts a feminist-film podcast called “The Bechdel Cast.” But, in the past few years, she has become best known for her comedic stunts. In 2018, Loftus took Mensa’s I.Q. exam while hungover on shandies, scored in the ninety-eighth percentile, and celebrated her admission with a triumphant blog post titled “Good News, They Let Dumb Sluts into Mensa Now.” Soon after, a Mensa member contacted her to warn that the group is not all “silly fun, board games . . . and happy nerds” but has a “nasty alt-right undercurrent.” She then discovered a reactionary, proudly unmoderated official Facebook group of American Mensans called Firehouse, in which, according to its description, subjects range from “Fluffy Kittens to items that will make you wish you could bleach your brain.” Typical content includes crude memes mocking Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, bad-faith anti-trans bathroom opinions, and support for building a border wall. One post argues that black people have benefitted from slavery and women from human trafficking because “their children enjoy a better life than in ‘shitholes.’ ” Loftus’s desire to understand this “living, breathing hostile comments section” culminated in her attendance at the 2019 American Mensa Gathering, in Phoenix, Arizona. Last month, she released a four-episode podcast miniseries about the experience called “My Year in Mensa.” The show uses first-person reporting to offer insight into how the geeky group became a forum for the far right.

Your comparison with other corona ciruses is bogus, because this is far worse because it has evolved.

NY Gov. Cuomo Becomes the Second Democrat to Praise President Trump’s Efforts to Fight the Coronavirus

"I want to thank the Vice President and especially the President who facilitated this and moved quickly."

Newsom replied: “We had a private conversation, but he said, ‘We’re gonna do the right thing’ and ‘You have my support, all of our support, logistically and otherwise.’ He said everything I could have hoped for.

RNC Chairman destroys democrats in blistering 8-tweet timeline of their coronavirus inaction

In an eight-part Twitter thread posted this week, McDaniel leveled a blistering playback of inaction by Democrats in the efforts to combat the pandemic that has claimed nearly 5,000 lives worldwide.

McDaniel started off with the events of January 7, noting that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention “established a coronavirus incident management system, two days before China announced the outbreak.”

Meanwhile, at the same time, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “began Week 3 of withholding her sham impeachment articles."