Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Trump Administration Lets Polluters Pollute Away During Pandemic
Citing coronavirus pandemic, EPA indefinitely suspends environmental rules.
The EPA uses this global pandemic to create loopholes for destroying the environment. This is a schoolbook example for what we need to start looking out for.
The Environmental Protection Agency, headed by former coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler, announced on Thursday a sweeping and indefinite suspension of environmental rules amid the worsening coronavirus pandemic, a move green groups warned gives the fossil fuel industry a “green light to pollute with impunity.”
Under the new policy (pdf), which the EPA insisted is temporary while providing no timeframe, big polluters will effectively be trusted to regulate themselves and will not be punished for failing to comply with reporting rules and other requirements. The order—applied retroactively beginning March 13, 2020—requests that companies “act responsibly” to avoid violations.
Also:
Former President Barack Obama issued a rare criticism of the Trump administration Tuesday after it announced it's rolling back his signature fuel standards aimed at combating the climate crisis, saying Americans "have to demand better" of their elected leaders.
"We've seen all too terribly the consequences of those who denied warnings of a pandemic. We can't afford any more consequences of climate denial. All of us, especially young people, have to demand better of our government at every level and vote this fall," Obama wrote in a tweet.
The comment is notable as the former President seldom publicly criticizes his successor, who has focused on undoing his legacy -- particularly his environmental and climate policies. Three years ago, Obama similarly lamented President Donald Trump's decision to pull the US out of the landmark Paris climate agreement, saying the move adds the administration to "a small handful of nations that reject the future."
Earlier Tuesday, the Trump administration, which has already nixed a number of Obama-era environmental protections, announced it is replacing fuel standards rolled out in 2012 with a plan that calls for substantially lower annual increases.
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Thursday, March 26, 2020
A Completely Delusional and Unfit President
After listening to the president’s nearly-two-hour briefing on Monday—in which, among other things, Trump declared, “If it were up to the doctors, they may say … ‘Let’s shut down the entire world.’ … This could create a much bigger problem than the problem that you start off with”—a former White House adviser who has worked on past pandemics told me, “This fool will bring the death of thousands needlessly. We have mobilized as a country to shut things down for a time, despite the difficulty. We can work our way back to a semblance of normality if we hold out and let the health system make it through the worst of it.” He added, “But now our own president is undoing all that work and preaching recklessness. Rather than lead us in taking on a difficult challenge, he is dragging us toward failure and suffering. Beyond belief.”
YES AND NO. The thing to understand about Donald Trump is that putting others before self is not something he can do, even temporarily. His attempts to convey facts that don’t serve his perceived self-interest or to express empathy are forced, scripted, and always short-lived, since such reactions are alien to him.
This president does not have the capacity to listen to, synthesize, and internalize information that does not immediately serve his greatest needs: praise, fealty, adoration. “He finds it intolerable when those things are missing,” a clinical psychologist told me.
“Praise, applause, and accolades seem to calm him and boost his confidence. There’s no room for that now, and so he’s growing irritable and needing to create some way to get some positive attention.” She added that the pandemic and its economic fallout “overwhelm Trump’s capacity to understand, are outside of his ability to internalize and process, and [are] beyond his frustration tolerance. He is neither curious nor interested; facts are tossed aside when inconvenient or [when they] contradict his parallel reality, and people are disposable unless they serve him in some way.”
Racist, Awful POTUS: Photos from His Press Briefings
Trump used racist language to refer to the virus, over-writing his briefing paper.
This is where Trump obnoxiously went after reporter Peter Alexander, calling him a terrible reporter, when Alexander asked what Trump had to say to people who were scared.
This is where Trump obnoxiously went after reporter Peter Alexander, calling him a terrible reporter, when Alexander asked what Trump had to say to people who were scared.
Of course these briefings are famous for Trump bullshitting and making everything worse, like he normally does. And they seem to be the replacement for Trump's rallies where he goes to rant, blather, ramble and generally act like a madman to his zombie-like cult.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Trump: "I Don’t Take Responsibility At All."
The Rude Pundit:
And then at his press conference yesterday, he uttered perhaps the Trumpiest line ever: "I don’t take responsibility at all." It was in answer to a question about the pathetic failure of the United States to start widespread testing until now. He continued, "We were given a-a set of circumstances and we were given rules, regulations, and specifications from a different time. It wasn’t meant for this kind of an event with the kind of numbers that we’re talking about." And that's just another fucking lie. It's been three and a half years since this bitch lumbered into office. It's been two years since he shitcanned the officials who looked out for pandemics and such, which Trump pretended he had nothing to do with and knew nothing about (which, if true, is even more damning than having done it). The only way Trump could be more responsible for the situation the United States faces is if he went around personally infecting everyone, which, at the rate he's prancing around in public and shaking hands and more, he may very well be.
‘I Didn’t Do It,’ Trump Says of Disbanding Pandemics Office
As the United States grapples with the novel coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump said on Friday that he didn’t know “anything about” a reorganization of the National Security Council that dismantled a key pandemics office nearly two years ago.
The head of that team, Rear Adm. Timothy Ziemer, left suddenly after the team was disbanded in 2018 along with other members of the office; he had been tasked with how the country responds to a threat like the novel coronavirus.
When Trump was asked by the PBS NewsHour’s Yamiche Alcindor this afternoon about whether he took responsibility for the decision, the president called it a nasty question, saying it wasn’t him and gesturing to other members of his administration that were part of a group of people that make decisions. “We’re doing a great job,” he added.
Beth Cameron, the former head of the pandemics office who now works at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, wrote an op-ed in Friday’s Washington Post in which she said that the lack of a pandemics office meant the White House was without both speed and leadership when handling the crisis. “We lost valuable time,” she wrote.
Trump on Friday declared a national emergency to tackle the COVID-19 outbreak. The number of cases in the U.S. has so far climbed above 1,600, and public health officials have shared concern in recent days that the U.S. does not have enough tests or hospital beds, among other supplies, to handle a widespread outbreak.
Trump Budget Chief Holds Firm on CDC Cuts Amid Corona Virus Outbreak
Russ Vought, the acting director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, on Tuesday doubled down on proposed cuts to health services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), despite the coronavirus outbreak.
Vought came under intense questioning from Rep. Matt Cartwright (D-Pa.) at a hearing about President Trump’s 2021 budget request. It proposed cutting Health and Human Services funding by $9.5 billion, including a 15 percent cut of $1.2 billion to the CDC and a $35 million decrease to the Infectious Diseases Rapid Response Reserve Fund's annual contribution. “The question I have is, are we prepared to fight pandemics if we cut from programs that are specifically designed to prepare for them, including the coronavirus?” Cartwright asked.
Vought responded by saying Trump signed into law the $8.3 billion emergency supplemental package Congress approved last week. That funding, a significant increase over the $2.5 billion emergency request the White House sent over, would be spread out over several years. The funding in question at the hearing was for next year's spending.
Cartwright pressed Vought as to whether he would amend the request. “The question is today, as we sit here and we know about coronavirus and the impact it’s taking on the people of the world and the economies of the world and the stock market and everything, as you sit here today, are you ready to take that back?” he pressed.
Vought confirmed that the administration was sticking to its request. “If you’re asking if I’m sending up a budget amendment, no, I’m not sending up a budget amendment,” he said. An OMB spokesman said that the CDC cuts in the budget request did not affect infectious disease, and said Trump's request included a total of $4.3 billion in funds for Infectious Diseases and Preparedness, in funds that deal with the flu, opioids, and global health security.
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
Trump's Freakish CDC Visit
The madness captured well by Rude Pundit:
"So it was that our hairless yeti of a president lumbered into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in order to show that he can pretend to be interested in what's being done to slow the outbreak of COVID-19, the coronavirus that is breeding exponentially and spreading with seemingly little pushback in the United States, sort of like Trump's lies. Of course, he ended up doing what he always does, bullshitting, lying, and self-fellating, all while wearing a stupid fucking KAG hat because he's always campaigning.
Trump repeated something that ought to be utterly soul-shreddingly shocking. In his continuing effort to dismiss the coronavirus as essentially the flu (which it decidedly is not), he said, "[L]ast year we had approximately 36,000 deaths due to what’s called the flu. And I was — when I first heard this four, five, six weeks ago — when I was hearing the amount of people that died with flu, I was shocked to hear it. " You got that? The motherfucking president of the goddamned United States just heard a few weeks ago that tens of thousands of Americans die of "what's called the flu." (Note: It's called "the flu" because it's the fuckin' flu.)
That level of giving a shit about the lives of ordinary Americans is, to use a phrase he would understand, par for the course for Trump. In the same response to a reporter's question, he then bragged about the ratings for his ludicrous Fox "news" interview. No, really, he totally did: "I heard it broke all ratings records, but maybe that’s wrong. That’s what they told me. I don’t know. I can’t imagine that." You can imagine that on a regular basis some groveling toad tells Trump that something he did is the biggest or best, and reality can go fuck itself.
And then he literally repeated, "Over the last long period of time, when people have the flu, you have an average of 36,000 people dying. I’ve never heard those numbers. I would — I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve said, 'Does anybody die from the flu?' I didn’t know people died from the flu — 36,000 people died." Just to repeat myself: The President. Of the United States. Didn't know that people die from flu. That's not just sheltered or ignorant; that's "I live in a cave that only shows me Fox and reruns of The Apprentice" level of ignorance."
When asked about the effects on the economy, he bragged about the latest jobs numbers and said he liked that people are staying and spending their money in the United States. Which just makes you want to scream, "What about all the people who aren't traveling from other countries to here?" And then he fucking said again that he was too fucking dumb to know that flu kills people: "You know, they were telling me just now that the common flu kills people and old people is sort of a target." Asked about any concerns about his Nuremberg rallies, he bragged about the size of the crowds and offered this regarding catching coronavirus there: "It doesn’t bother me at all and it doesn’t bother them at all." Of course not. Because they're already sick and damaged if they're going to a Trump rally.
Regarding the ship that's near San Francisco, Trump expressed concern not for the sick people on the boat but for how that would make his coronavirus stats worse: "I’d rather have the people stay, but I’d go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship." The number did go up and not because of the pathetic cruise ship passengers. And then he lied about the availability of tests.
Every fucking thing got turned around by him so he could say how awesome he thinks he is. Asked about cooperation with South Korea, he weirdly said, "We are working very closely with South Korea. As you know, we’re allies. Even though they’ve made much better trade deals in the past than we did, we’re allies with South Korea. You have heard that, right?"
The two absolute weirdest moments were, first, when Trump once again brought up his goddamn uncle who worked at MIT and used that to assert his superior intelligence: "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for President."
I can totally imagine a scenario where Trump walks into a lab and picks up something and says, "You know they call this a test tube? Imagine that" and everyone compliments him and tells him they didn't know that and thank him for sharing his knowledge, fearing he'll go into his gorilla rage if they contradict him. It's why everyone has to suck his dick.
The other weird beyond weird moment came not when Trump insulted Washington Governor Jay Inslee for not properly kissing his ass. No, it was when Trump stood there like a petrified lump of shit and compared the test for COVID-19 to other stuff: "The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect, right? This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good." Yep, the word "perfect" tripped something in his deformed brain and he had to bring up other things he's called "perfect."
It was all a goddamn embarrassment and a clear demonstration that we are on this road by ourselves. The federal government took so long to get its shit together that we are going to be hit harder than we would have by the coronavirus. We're fucked in that uniquely Trumpian way that we've been fucked. It's not just incompetence and ignorance; implicit in Trump's "understanding" of the medical science is that he doesn't fucking care about any of us, certainly not the people who voted for him who live in states without a Medicaid expansion. That idiot horde bought the ticket to ride this locomotive that's run on bullshit. Take it all the way until you run out of track."
"So it was that our hairless yeti of a president lumbered into the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta in order to show that he can pretend to be interested in what's being done to slow the outbreak of COVID-19, the coronavirus that is breeding exponentially and spreading with seemingly little pushback in the United States, sort of like Trump's lies. Of course, he ended up doing what he always does, bullshitting, lying, and self-fellating, all while wearing a stupid fucking KAG hat because he's always campaigning.
Trump repeated something that ought to be utterly soul-shreddingly shocking. In his continuing effort to dismiss the coronavirus as essentially the flu (which it decidedly is not), he said, "[L]ast year we had approximately 36,000 deaths due to what’s called the flu. And I was — when I first heard this four, five, six weeks ago — when I was hearing the amount of people that died with flu, I was shocked to hear it. " You got that? The motherfucking president of the goddamned United States just heard a few weeks ago that tens of thousands of Americans die of "what's called the flu." (Note: It's called "the flu" because it's the fuckin' flu.)
That level of giving a shit about the lives of ordinary Americans is, to use a phrase he would understand, par for the course for Trump. In the same response to a reporter's question, he then bragged about the ratings for his ludicrous Fox "news" interview. No, really, he totally did: "I heard it broke all ratings records, but maybe that’s wrong. That’s what they told me. I don’t know. I can’t imagine that." You can imagine that on a regular basis some groveling toad tells Trump that something he did is the biggest or best, and reality can go fuck itself.
And then he literally repeated, "Over the last long period of time, when people have the flu, you have an average of 36,000 people dying. I’ve never heard those numbers. I would — I would’ve been shocked. I would’ve said, 'Does anybody die from the flu?' I didn’t know people died from the flu — 36,000 people died." Just to repeat myself: The President. Of the United States. Didn't know that people die from flu. That's not just sheltered or ignorant; that's "I live in a cave that only shows me Fox and reruns of The Apprentice" level of ignorance."
When asked about the effects on the economy, he bragged about the latest jobs numbers and said he liked that people are staying and spending their money in the United States. Which just makes you want to scream, "What about all the people who aren't traveling from other countries to here?" And then he fucking said again that he was too fucking dumb to know that flu kills people: "You know, they were telling me just now that the common flu kills people and old people is sort of a target." Asked about any concerns about his Nuremberg rallies, he bragged about the size of the crowds and offered this regarding catching coronavirus there: "It doesn’t bother me at all and it doesn’t bother them at all." Of course not. Because they're already sick and damaged if they're going to a Trump rally.
Regarding the ship that's near San Francisco, Trump expressed concern not for the sick people on the boat but for how that would make his coronavirus stats worse: "I’d rather have the people stay, but I’d go with them. I told them to make the final decision. I would rather — because I like the numbers being where they are. I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship." The number did go up and not because of the pathetic cruise ship passengers. And then he lied about the availability of tests.
Every fucking thing got turned around by him so he could say how awesome he thinks he is. Asked about cooperation with South Korea, he weirdly said, "We are working very closely with South Korea. As you know, we’re allies. Even though they’ve made much better trade deals in the past than we did, we’re allies with South Korea. You have heard that, right?"
The two absolute weirdest moments were, first, when Trump once again brought up his goddamn uncle who worked at MIT and used that to assert his superior intelligence: "I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for President."
I can totally imagine a scenario where Trump walks into a lab and picks up something and says, "You know they call this a test tube? Imagine that" and everyone compliments him and tells him they didn't know that and thank him for sharing his knowledge, fearing he'll go into his gorilla rage if they contradict him. It's why everyone has to suck his dick.
The other weird beyond weird moment came not when Trump insulted Washington Governor Jay Inslee for not properly kissing his ass. No, it was when Trump stood there like a petrified lump of shit and compared the test for COVID-19 to other stuff: "The tests are all perfect, like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect, right? This was not as perfect as that, but pretty good." Yep, the word "perfect" tripped something in his deformed brain and he had to bring up other things he's called "perfect."
It was all a goddamn embarrassment and a clear demonstration that we are on this road by ourselves. The federal government took so long to get its shit together that we are going to be hit harder than we would have by the coronavirus. We're fucked in that uniquely Trumpian way that we've been fucked. It's not just incompetence and ignorance; implicit in Trump's "understanding" of the medical science is that he doesn't fucking care about any of us, certainly not the people who voted for him who live in states without a Medicaid expansion. That idiot horde bought the ticket to ride this locomotive that's run on bullshit. Take it all the way until you run out of track."
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