The most psychologically fragile, insecure President ever. Also, he has to know anti-Asian vitriol is on the rise and labeling it that way only adds to it. He doesn’t care about people of Asian descent nearly as much as he cares about his image. He doesn’t care about anything nearly as much as he cares about his image.
Other sporting events are getting more coverage than normal. Case in point, “Norway’s Thomas Waerner wins Iditarod”. Interviews with each individual doggie to follow.
From the New York Times.
WASHINGTON — For weeks, President Trump has minimized the coronavirus, mocked concern about it and treated the risk cavalierly. On Tuesday he took to the White House podium and made a remarkable pronouncement: He knew it was a pandemic all along.
“I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic,” Mr. Trump told reporters.
Here is what Mr. Trump actually said from the beginning of the pandemic.
Jan. 22, asked on CNBC whether he was concerned about a global pandemic: “No, not at all,’’ Mr. Trump said. “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Feb. 26, at a White House news conference, about the number of reported cases of the virus: “We’re going down, not up. We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
Feb. 27, at a White House meeting: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
March 7, seated next to President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil at Mar-a-Lago, his Palm Beach, Fla., club: “I’m not concerned at all.” (At least three members of the Brazilian delegation and one Trump donor at Mar-a-Lago on March 7 later tested positive for the virus.)
March 16, in the White House briefing room, warning that the outbreak would last until summer and then suddenly disappear: “So it could be right in that period of time where it, I say, wash — it washes through. Other people don’t like that term. But where it washes through.”
Daniel Dale describes it as “. . . another of Trump’s brazen attempts to rewrite a history that played out in public view.”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/17/politics/fact-check-trump-always-knew-pandemic-coronavirus/index.html
For two more weeks.
Normally, my favorite people on Twitter tend to be intellectuals or comedians, but these days, if I could only follow one person it would be Canada’s gift to the (dis)United States, Daniel Dale. He does an incredible job of repeating exactly what the President says almost in real time and then dispassionately explains all of his fabrications. Highly recommended. I expect him to be at 700k followers in short order.
In related news, for whatever reasons, I can’t get any traction on Twitter. I’m only about 697,350 followers behind D2. When you follow him, follow me too so that little gap doesn’t grow more vast.
On Friday I posted a picture of my empty YMCA weight room and asked if anybody wanted to workout.*
Since then, like a lot of people, I’ve educated myself on the necessity of “physical distancing”—a term some are suggesting in place of social distancing since we also need to be showing social solidarity.
Some astute people probably viewed that post the same way I’ve been thinking about pictures of acquaintances on Facebook bragging about eating out all weekend in different restaurants. Under normal conditions, I’m down with nonconformity, in large part, because I am a nonconformist. When it’s a victimless crime, if everyone is going left, I admit, I prefer right.
But this is different. This is people whose politics prompt them to say fuck public health “experts”; fuck science; fuck the media; fuck all the stupid, crybaby, scared liberals.
It’s one thing to pat yourselves on the backs because you’re “rebels” and you’re the only ones supporting local businesses, it’s another to take pictures of yourselves and advertise your selfish, anti-social disregard for other people’s health for everyone to see.
Like I did on Friday. A weekend makes a world of difference. We’re Italy and things will only get worse in part because of your restaurant going resistance. Not that you’ll even know or probably care, but I’ve quit following you on social media. I can’t take your brazen disregard for the Common Good.
*the Y is closing Monday
The Saturday morning long run is in the bank. But what now when there’s no basketball or golf on the telly? My plan is to read, nap, read some more, nap some more. Basically, I’m morphing into a dog, except for the reading part.
I’m enjoying Kolhatkar’s Black Edge. Traders on Wall St. refer to “white edge” as any information about publicly traded companies that is widely available. “Gray edge” is information about companies that is only known by industry insiders right as quarterly earnings are reported. “Black edge” is illegal inside information about companies that is learned before earnings are reported through targeted, intentional conversations with medical researchers, corporate executives, and other people knowledgeable about a stock’s probable rise or fall.
Thanks to “black edge”, Steve Cohen, a hedge fund manager, earned $10b. The book is about the government’s efforts to prosecute him. Googling “Steve Cohen SAC hedge fund manager” reveals he’s worth $15b today, so we know who “wins”.
People are incredibly misguided to think that poor people of color are more prone to criminal activity. Cohen and his co-workers have no regard for the law. The differences are the scale of their crimes and the fact that they mostly get away with them.
1. The Trump Presidency Is Over. Peter Werner, a former Republican, weaves and bobs through the first half of this essay, and then, midway through, unleashes a flurry of devastating hooks. If it it was an actual fight the refs would’ve stopped it well before the end. Technical knock out for all but the most irrational.
2. Mad About Elizabeth Warren. A friend implores me to “Just get over it.” But how can I with piercing analysis like this?
“Warren the Presidential candidate was that girl with perfect grades in the front row of the classroom, always sitting up straight and raising her hand. “She was too smart, too rigorous, and always right,” as my friend Katherine put it. “‘I have a plan for that’ became a kind of joke at her expense,” another friend added. ‘She was so knowledgeable and so prepared that her life as a brilliant student stood out.”
Even in our famously anti-intellectual country, it is possible for a wonk to win the White House. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were intellectual superstars, and got elected anyway—indeed, Obama’s brain power was one of his major selling points. But, apparently, for a woman, being “brilliant,” “knowledgeable,” and “prepared” are suspicious qualities, suggestive of élitism and snootiness. On the other hand, if Warren had been obtuse, ignorant, and unready, that wouldn’t have worked, either. Being obviously unqualified to lead the free world only works for men.”
3. Merkel Gives Germans a Hard Truth About the Coronavirus. Who knew she’s a trained physicist? Merkel and Warren are two peas in a pod, which begs the question, why are more German men okay with brainy women?
4. I have never really considered what Agnes Callard proposes, that The End is Coming.
“. . . so many of our practices—seeking a cure for cancer, building a new building, writing a poem or a philosophy paper, fighting for a political cause, giving our children moral lessons we hope will be handed down again and again—depend, in one way or another, on positing a world that will go on without us. The meaning of our lives, in the here and now, depends on future generations; without them we become narrowly self-interested, prone to cruelty, indifferent to suffering, apathetic.”
Only to add:
“Because here is something we know for sure: there will not always be future generations. This is a fact. If the virus doesn’t do us in, if we do not do one another in, if we manage to make everything as sustainable as possible, nevertheless, that big global warmer in the sky is coming for us. We can tell ourselves soothing stories, such as the one about escaping to another planet, but we are embodied creatures, which is to say, we are the sorts of things that, on a geological time scale, simply do not last. Death looms for the species just as surely as it looms for each and every one of us. How long have we got? At a recent public talk, the economist Tyler Cowen spitballed the number of remaining years at 700. But who knows? The important thing is that the answer is not: infinity years. Forever is a very long time, and humanity is not going to make it.”
Just because that’s a deeply depressing conclusion, it’s not wrong.
5. All The Ways I Failed to Spend My Massive Wealth. Of course, “he” could’ve just gone all in on the stock market a week ago.
Pressing Pause 