Watching Trump bring up swine flu (H1N1) shows the magnitude of his stupidity & his belief in the the stupidity of his followers and of conservative media.
The H1N1 response was a huge lesson in how *to* respond to an imminent pandemic and how the USA could lead the world...1
...in response. That a deadly disease killed people is a truism: It is only after deaths begin that anyone knows a deadly infectious outbreak has begun. How you measure success is how a government responded. And Obama's H1N1 response is practically a case study in competence...2
...just start with one comparative date: The key, most important moment in the development of a potential pandemic is when the @WHO, relying on its massive detection network, declares there to be a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Let's look at the dates and...3
...response. WHO declared an international public health emergency with H1N1 on April 25, 2009. On April 26 - the next day! - Obama declared a public health emergency which grants enormous powers to the health agencies. Same day, began releasing 25% of antiviral drugs needed...4
...to treat this new influenza virus from the federal stockpile.
Now, let's compare. We know now on January 28, 2020, Trump was told how disastrous this was. The WHO declared a public health emergency of international concern on Jan 30. The Trump response?...5
...nothing. Five days later, “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” 2/10: "Going to be fine...April, will miraculously go away." on and on...2/26: "Its like the flu."
No real action, other than a half-assed travel restriction put in place after COVID was here from..
...Europe. Finally, on March 13 - two & half months after the WHO declaration, Trump declares a national emergency, finally giving our health agencies powers to fight it. By then, almost 10,000 Americans had died - 90% of total number who died in the entirety of H1N1 outbreak...
...the comparison here - the US developed the gold standard testing kit by April 28, 2009 and distributed testing kits to the world, THREE DAYS after the WHO declaration, we did emergency production and shipped them across the USA and the world (ours was used by everyone...
...because competence made us the gold standard of the world. That one act did more to contain the global spread than anything.
Again, this could go on and on. But calling H1N1 response a failure is more proof: #DimwitDon is too ignorant & incompetent to be president.
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In just three months, Trump has: 1. Wrecked decades-long relationships with USA's best allies, who now have said that relationship is over. 2. Sent global stocks markets into a tailspin. 3. Sent bond markets into collapse. 4. Moved world against dollar as global currency.../1
...5. Lied to courts & refused to abide by rulings, in what could be the greatest breakdown in Constitutional government since founding. 6. Ignored due process before shipping someone to a torture prison. 7. Wistfully discussed his desire to send Americans to torture prisons.../2
...8. Demonstrated, once again, that he is too stupid to understand what tariffs are or how they work. 9. Threatened the independence of the federal reserve. 10. Demanded that the federal government get to determine what private colleges teach. 11. Crippled the FDA, CDC..../3
People looking only at the stock market are missing the full magnitude of Trump's economic incompetence. His "yes-no-maybe" idiocy with tariffs is leaving equity investors with no sense of which way to go. But worse is the bond market..../1
...the near-cliche of markets it that when investors sell stocks, they rush to US bonds. It's a rare time in our history that this standard response does not happen. But...now it's not. The largest holders of our debt are instead scooping up short-term t-bills and gold.../2
...this means that they are losing faith - or certainty - in the US long term economic future. The only way to deal with this is to increase interest rates - thus providing bond investors with higher rewards for taking what they perceive as higher risk..../3
As a German citizen (I hold dual citizenship) Im disgusted by the ignorance of @JDVance & @elonmusk in promoting AfD as if it's a normal party. Perhaps they aren't just ignorant & AfD actually reflects their viewpoints, but there is a reason its founders resigned, the German.../1
...courts have deemed them an extremist organization (which, if you creep 2 far in Germany, can get you banned), why there have been national protests against them, and why the German government's Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz classified Der Flügel, AfD's far-right faction.../2
whose growth of control of AfD is what led to the resignation of its founders, as "a right-wing extremist endeavor against the free democratic basic order" and as "not compatible with the Basic Law." AfD sued, but a court ruled "there were sufficient factual indications.../3
As someone who has been a journalist for almost 40 year, working as a senior writer at the New York Times, Newsweek, etc, the decision by @WilliamLewis, a Murdoch alum, to cripple the @washingtonpost by abandoning endorsements, is one of the most craven actions I've ever seen../1
...taken in the industry. Make no mistake, this wasn't just cowardice. It was @WilliamLewis and perhaps @JeffBezos dragging a now-once great paper into the sewer because of their own political beliefs. If Lewis et al wanted to abandon endorsements, fine. But you don't do it.../2
@WilliamLewis @JeffBezos ...days one of the most consequential elections in history. We have on one side a convicted felon, deemed an ignorant fascist by his own people, who half this country believes is, in fact, a fascist, and on the other side a woman half the country believes is a communist.../3
Make no mistake: The "Haitians are stealing your pets to eat them" lie is a variant of the blood libel that Jews have faced for centuries: In that, Jews are stealing Christian babies to use their blood bake food (Matzah).
Trump and Vance are lying about legal residents..../1
....accusing them of stealing beloved members of the family, and eating them. The point of the Haitian Blood Libel is the same as the original Blood Libel: To create an "other," to unify the hateful and ignorance against an imaginary enemy in their midst, all to seize power.../2
...so please, stop calling the attack on lawful American residents from Haiti as a "lie." Call it was it is: The #HaitianBloodLibel generated by Trump and Vance. A century ago they would have used Jews. And Fox News would have been the May 1934 volume of Der Stürmer.../3
The appeal filed by Jack Smith on Judge Cannon's dismissal of the classified documents cased underscores an embarrassment that should not exist in modern times, things that were evident in her ruling. Cannon is clearly either stupid or corrupt..../1 storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.usco…
...there are SO many elements to her nonsense in her ruling that have been just jaw dropping (ruling that past participles are the same as past tense, and on and on) but Smith thankfully points out the two that most annoyed me: She described what was the central finding in.../2
...US v Nixon as nothing more than "unpersuasive dicta." In fact, it was the foundation of the SCOTUS ruling and had been fully briefed by both sides. Second, she used the TITLE of a statute to overrule what the statute said, even though it includes an explicit statement.../3