Another Today's Today

We commemorate 9/11. 

Hopefully, this year, we can see it in a different context.

How many times do we have to get slammed by something preventable (or at least mitigable) had we listened to the people who were trying to warn us?

How many times do we have to watch Americans die because Republican presidents ignored what their Democratic counterparts and predecessors tried to to tell them?

9/11 was a horror. I sat and watched it on live TV, and worried about how the idiot in the White House would react.

I was pleasantly surprised when Bush43 rose to the occasion and managed to give us the big national hug we needed at the time. Later, of course, he'd allow Darth Cheney to drag us into a ridiculous war of conquest, and only now, in light of what we're being put through by Cult45, am I coming to realize that Dick Cheney and Donald Trump are almost perfectly aligned morally.

Cheney is way more competent, and acts on a broader spectrum of interests, better able to leverage national policy to his personal benefit, while 45* just wants his piece of the action.

Anyway, I continue to marvel at just how fucked we end up being whenever we let Republicans back in the door.

Maybe we'll finally start to listen to those warnings.

COVID-19 Update

• In about a week, USAmerica Inc will be over 200,000 dead.
• Before the end of September, the world total will be over 1,000,000 dead

And even as COVID-19 seems to be starting a comeback in the EU, guess what some Europeans are more worried about.

WaPo:

Germans are more afraid of President Trump’s policies than covid-19, study finds

“Only around every third respondent fears that they or someone they know [well] could be infected with the coronavirus,” Brigitte Römstedt, a researcher with Germany’s R&V Versicherung AG, an insurance company that has commissioned the survey since 1992, said in a news release. The survey question also asked about fears of developing other severe illnesses. The survey was conducted in June and July.

The researchers called the low level of concern in the country about being infected with the coronavirus “astonishing.”

Those concerns are far exceeded by fears of Trump’s policies and their impact — with 53 percent of Germans saying they are afraid that his presidency makes the world a more dangerous place.

Germany has suffered its most abrupt economic downturn since World War II, but its coronavirus caseload remains relatively low compared with that of other countries. Germany has recorded at least 9,347 deaths, compared with more than 30,800 in France and over 41,600 in Britain.

“The Germans have in no way reacted to the pandemic in panic,” Römstedt said in the release.

The German survey’s annual index — which indicates whether Germans are overall more or less afraid than the previous year — fell to its lowest level since the survey was first commissioned three decades ago.

Concerns over the economic impact of the crisis have been on the rise, however, with more Germans saying they fear rising costs of living and a higher unemployment level.

Researchers have warned that countries with less severe first waves of the virus may be less attuned to the risks posed by covid-19 than residents of harder-hit nations. They cautioned that a lack of concern could lead to complacency and a rise in infections. Those warnings appeared to be validated when infection numbers rose over the past month — after the R&V survey was conducted. More recently, however, German infection numbers have plateaued, even as they continued to rise in France and other European Union countries.

Today's Tweet

John Fogarty's tune, Fortunate Son, tells us about a common theme, especially one from the Vietnam era: Rich Man's War, Poor Man's Fight, and the fact that sometimes, privilege includes being able to duck your service and have the government send some other kid to fight and to bleed and to die in your place.

The death of irony, part ∞

“Fortunate Son” plays as Trump de-planes, an entry for the “nobody listened to the lyrics” hall of fame. pic.twitter.com/fJBPI7CxGQ

— Dave Weigel (@daveweigel) September 10, 2020

By The Numbers

Social Progress Index

"Highlights":

• USAmerica Inc is #1 in Quality Of University Education, but we're #91 in Access To Quality Basic Education
• USAmerica Inc is #1 in Medical Technologies, but we're #97 in Access To Quality Healthcare

Get the picture?

Here's a cheery little stick bomb from Nick Christof at NYT:

This should be a wake-up call: New data suggest that the United States is one of just a few countries worldwide that is slipping backward.

The newest Social Progress Index, shared with me before its official release Thursday morning, finds that out of 163 countries assessed worldwide, the United States, Brazil and Hungary are the only ones in which people are worse off than when the index began in 2011. And the declines in Brazil and Hungary were smaller than America’s.

“The data paint an alarming picture of the state of our nation, and we hope it will be a call to action,” Michael Porter, a Harvard Business School professor and the chair of the advisory panel for the Social Progress Index, told me. “It’s like we’re a developing country.”

The index, inspired by research of Nobel-winning economists, collects 50 metrics of well-being — nutrition, safety, freedom, the environment, health, education and more — to measure quality of life. Norway comes out on top in the 2020 edition, followed by Denmark, Finland and New Zealand. South Sudan is at the bottom, with Chad, Central African Republic and Eritrea just behind.

The United States, despite its immense wealth, military power and cultural influence, ranks 28th — having slipped from 19th in 2011. The index now puts the United States behind significantly poorer countries, including Estonia, Czech Republic, Cyprus and Greece.

“We are no longer the country we like to think we are,” said Porter.

The United States ranks No. 1 in the world in quality of universities, but No. 91 in access to quality basic education. The U.S. leads the world in medical technology, yet we are No. 97 in access to quality health care.

The Social Progress Index finds that Americans have health statistics similar to those of people in Chile, Jordan and Albania, while kids in the United States get an education roughly on par with what children get in Uzbekistan and Mongolia. A majority of countries have lower homicide rates, and most other advanced countries have lower traffic fatality rates and better sanitation and internet access.

The United States has high levels of early marriage — most states still allow child marriage in some circumstances — and lags in sharing political power equally among all citizens. America ranks a shameful No. 100 in discrimination against minorities.

The data for the latest index predates Covid-19, which has had a disproportionate impact on the United States and seems likely to exacerbate the slide in America’s standing. One new study suggests that in the United States, symptoms of depression have risen threefold since the pandemic began — and poor mental health is associated with other risk factors for well-being.

Michael Green, the C.E.O. of the group that puts out the Social Progress Index, notes that the coronavirus will affect health, longevity and education, with the impact particularly large in both the United States and Brazil. The equity and inclusiveness measured by the index seem to help protect societies from the virus, he said.

“Societies that are inclusive, tolerant and better educated are better able to manage the pandemic,” Green said.

The decline of the United States over the last decade in this index — more than any country in the world — is a reminder that we Americans face structural problems that predate President Trump and that festered under leaders of both parties. Trump is a symptom of this larger malaise, and also a cause of its acceleration.

David G. Blanchflower, a Dartmouth economist, has new research showing that the share of Americans reporting in effect that every day is a bad mental health day has doubled over 25 years. “Rising distress and despair are largely American phenomenon not observed in other advanced countries,” Blanchflower told me.

This decline is deeply personal for me: As I’ve written, a quarter of the kids on my old No. 6 school bus in rural Oregon are now dead from drugs, alcohol and suicide — what are called “deaths of despair.” I lost one friend to a heroin overdose this spring and have had more friends incarcerated than I could possibly count; the problems are now self-replicating in the next generation because of the dysfunction in some homes.

You as taxpayers paid huge sums to imprison my old friends; the money would have been far better invested educating them, honing their job skills or treating their addictions.

That’s why this is an election like that of 1932. That was the year American voters decisively rejected Herbert Hoover’s passivity and gave Franklin Roosevelt an electoral mandate — including a flipped Senate — that laid the groundwork for the New Deal and the modern middle class. But first we need to acknowledge the reality that we are on the wrong track.

We Americans like to say “We’re No. 1.” But the new data suggest that we should be chanting, “We’re No. 28! And dropping!”

Let’s wake up, for we are no longer the country we think we are.

Today's Poodle

Maggie Haberman can be the poodle-iest of Press Poodles.

Today's "effort" wins her top honors.

Maggie Haberman, NYT:

Trump Admits Downplaying the Virus Knowing It Was ‘Deadly Stuff’

In taped interviews with the journalist Bob Woodward, the president said as early as February that the virus was more dangerous than the flu, even as he told the country otherwise

President Trump acknowledged to the journalist Bob Woodward that he knowingly played down the coronavirus earlier this year even though he was aware it was life-threatening and vastly more serious than the seasonal flu.

“This is deadly stuff,” Mr. Trump said on Feb. 7 in one of 18 interviews with Mr. Woodward for his coming book, “Rage.”

“You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed,” the president told Mr. Woodward in audio recordings made available on The Washington Post website. “And so that’s a very tricky one. That’s a very delicate one. It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flus.”

But three days after those remarks, Mr. Trump told the Fox Business anchor Trish Regan: “We’re in very good shape. We have 11 cases. And most of them are getting better very rapidly. I think they will all be better.” A little less than two weeks later, he told reporters on the South Lawn that “we have it very much under control in this country.”

By Feb. 26, the president was publicly dismissing concerns about the lethality of the virus. “It’s a little like the regular flu that we have flu shots for,” he said at a White House news conference. “And we’ll essentially have a flu shot for this in a fairly quick manner.”

And by Feb. 28, at a rally in South Carolina, Mr. Trump denounced Democrats for their concerns about the virus as “their new hoax,” after the Russia investigation and his impeachment.

The audio recordings show that as Mr. Trump was absorbing in real time the information he was given by health and national security experts, he made a conscious choice not only to mislead the public but also to actively pressure governors to reopen states before his own government guidelines said they were ready.

By March, Mr. Trump was straightforward with Mr. Woodward about his tactics. “I wanted to always play it down,” the president said in an audio recording of an interview on March 19. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

“This is deadly stuff,” the president repeated for emphasis.

Despite the president’s own words in the recordings, the White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, told reporters on Wednesday that Mr. Trump had never publicly played down the virus.

The Post and CNN were given advance copies of the book and published details on Wednesday. The New York Times obtained its own copy.

As part of the White House’s effort at damage control, Mr. Trump told reporters that his recorded remarks to Mr. Woodward were vastly different from what he was telling the public because he was worried about frightening people.

“We don’t want to instill panic,” the president said on Wednesday. “We don’t want to jump up and down and start shouting that we have a problem that is a tremendous problem” and “scare everybody.”

But his acknowledgment that he was fully aware by early February of the perils of the virus only intensified questions about why he was so slow to respond, and why he did not tell Americans the truth to better prepare them for the worst public health crisis in the United States in more than a century.

Mr. Woodward’s book also illustrated that as much as Mr. Trump tries to change the subject before the November election to law and order and a call for a crackdown on nationwide protests against police brutality, he is unable to escape scrutiny for his response to a virus that has killed nearly 190,000 people in the United States and upended the lives of millions more.

The president also told Mr. Woodward on March 19 of the virus: “Part of it is the mystery. Part it is the viciousness. You know when it attacks it attacks the lungs. And I don’t know — when people get hit, when they get hit, and now it’s turning out it’s not just old people, Bob.” He went on: “Just today and yesterday, some startling facts came out. It’s not just old, older. Young people too — plenty of young people.”

And yet in an interview broadcast by “Fox and Friends” on Aug. 5, Mr. Trump asserted: “If you look at children, children are almost, and I would say almost definitely, but almost immune from this disease. I don’t know how you feel about it, but they’ve got stronger immune systems than we do somehow for this.”

Two days later, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that “children are at risk for severe Covid-19.”

One question swirling in Washington on Wednesday was why Mr. Trump had given Mr. Woodward such extensive access. Mr. Woodward, a longtime editor and reporter at The Washington Post who with Carl Bernstein broke the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard M. Nixon, has written books on most of Mr. Nixon’s successors, many of them critical. Karl Rove, President George W. Bush’s former top political adviser, noted on Fox News on Wednesday that nearly every president who has cooperated with Mr. Woodward regretted it.

Current White House officials said that Mr. Trump opened his door to Mr. Woodward in the hope that the eventual book would be positive. Mr. Trump did not speak to Mr. Woodward for his first book on the Trump presidency, “Fear,” and the president has maintained that it would have turned out better had he participated. Officials also said that Mr. Trump, who has great faith in his ability to sell people on his version of events, was eager to have Mr. Woodward’s seal on his time in office.

Although Mr. Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, spoke extensively to Mr. Woodward, White House officials were pointing fingers at one another on Wednesday about who was responsible for giving the journalist such access.

Speaking to reporters on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Trump repeatedly bragged about his limited ban on travel into the United States from China at the end of January, and falsely claimed that almost everyone disagreed with him at the time. Mr. Woodward’s book documents that the majority of the president’s advisers urged him to go ahead with the ban during a meeting in the Oval Office before he ultimately did.

When pressed on why he did not do more in February and March, knowing what he knew, Mr. Trump maintained that he had not expected the virus to spread as far and as fast as it did.

“You didn’t really think it was going to be to the point that it was,” he said. “All of a sudden the world was infected. The entire world was infected. Everyone was scrambling around looking where to buy face masks and all of the other things.”

"You didn't really think it was going to be to the point that it was."

45* had already established that he knew it was bad, and that his people had told him it was going to get worse - in a hurry - cuz that's kinda what happens with a pandemic. 

You can't know something, and not know it at the same time.

On Capitol Hill, several Republicans defended the president.

“I don’t think he needs to go on TV and scream that we’re all going to die,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and an ally of the president who White House aides said encouraged the president to participate in the book. “But his actions of shutting the economy down were the right actions. I think the tone during that time sort of spoke for itself. People knew it was serious.”

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, said he had not seen the book and directed questions to the White House.

Democrats were quick to slam Mr. Trump for his comments. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the minority leader, said that the book offered “damning proof that Donald Trump lied and people died.”

Let's review:

1. Lindsey Graham is not "several Republicans"
2. 45* didn't downplay or mislead or falsely claim - he lied outright 
3. The word "lie" is never used except under cover of a quote from Chuck Schumer
4. 45* wasn't "slow to respond" - he fucking failed

COVID-19 Update

The numbers ticked up again.

And the really bad news is that a safe and effective vaccine won't be (almost can't possibly be) delivered and distributed and administered nationally before another year has gone by.

A simple, straight-line projection using a low-end Average Growth Rate of 1.0025 puts the number dead Americans on Sept 1, 2021 at 475,000.

Here's a MedCram video explaining the potential for fuckery by way of how "Cause Of Death" is recorded on a death certificate.

Some other takeaways:

• Vitamin D (see also Update 59)
• The "excess death" phenomenon pushes the current total of dead Americans from 195,000 to 234,000. Remember - Cult45 is pressuring the health agencies to downplay the effects of the pandemic.

Refresher

Tim Wise - it's a long one, so strap up, bitches. You don't get the smarts without doin' the work.

It Gets Worse

Seriously - these Daddy State assholes belong in prison. All of 'em.

NYT:

Whistle-Blower Says D.H.S. Downplayed Threats From Russia and White Supremacists

The former head of the Homeland Security Department’s intelligence division has accused three senior leaders of warping the agency around President Trump’s rhetoric

Top officials with the Department of Homeland Security directed agency analysts to downplay the threat of violent white supremacy and of Russian election interference, according to a whistle-blower complaint filed by a top intelligence official with the department.

Brian Murphy, the former head of the intelligence branch of the Homeland Security Department, said in a whistle-blower complaint filed on Tuesday that he was directed by Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary of the department, to stop producing assessments on Russian interference. The department’s second highest ranked official, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, also ordered him to modify intelligence assessments to make the threat of white supremacy “appear less severe” and include information on violent “left-wing” groups, according to the complaint, which was released Wednesday by the House Intelligence Committee.

In so doing, the two top officials at the department — both appointees of President Trump — appeared to shape the agency’s views around Mr. Trump’s rhetoric and interests.

Mr. Murphy, who was removed from his post in August after his office compiled intelligence reports on protesters and journalists in Portland, Ore., asserted in the complaint that he was retaliated against for raising concerns to superiors and cooperating with the department’s inspector general. He asked the inspector general to investigate.

“The protected disclosures that prompted the retaliatory personnel actions at issue primarily focused on the compilation of intelligence reports and threat assessments that conflicted with policy objectives set forth by the White House and senior Department of Homeland Security” officials, Mr. Murphy’s lawyers wrote in the 24-page complaint.

The department has stalled in releasing an implementation plan on combating white supremacy and other forms of domestic terrorism for nearly a year. Hours before the release of the complaint, Mr. Wolf highlighted the threat of “white supremacists extremists or anarchists extremists” in an annual address summarizing the work of the department. He said the department would release a blueprint to combat the threats this week, although it was not clear if it would be made public.

House Intelligence Committee Democrats said on Wednesday that the complaint detailed violations of law and abuses of authority that put “our nation and its security at grave risk.”

“We will get to the bottom of this, expose any and all misconduct or corruption to the American people, and put a stop to the politicization of intelligence,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the committee’s chairman, in an accompanying statement.

The whistle-blower complaint comes almost exactly a year after Mr. Schiff’s panel publicized the existence of another intelligence-related complaint about Mr. Trump’s efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rival, Joseph R. Biden Jr., a document that ultimately led to the president’s impeachment by the House. Mark S. Zaid and Andrew P. Bakaj, the Washington lawyers who represented the Ukraine whistle-blower, whose identity remained anonymous throughout the impeachment saga, are now working for Mr. Murphy.

Mr. Schiff said in his letter that he had asked the national security official to sit for a deposition on Sept. 21, and a public hearing could follow. But this time, with fewer than eight weeks until Election Day, the House is likely to have little meaningful recourse beyond publicizing Mr. Murphy’s claims.

CNN first reported the existence of the complaint and the details about its contents.

In a statement, Mr. Zaid said that they had informed the executive and legislative branches of his claims and would cooperate with congressional oversight requests.

“Mr. Murphy followed proper lawful whistle-blower rules in reporting serious allegations of misconduct against D.H.S. leadership, particularly involving political distortion of intelligence analysis and retaliation,” he said.

Das LügenMAGAt

The money quote from Kayleigh McEnany's first day.

And now - per Brian Tyler Cohen:

He Knew

#TrumpKnew

Back in July:

And now, a little analysis of what's being confirmed as Woodward releases his recorded phone conversations - Justine King: