Dr. X's Free Associations

A COVID-19 Obituary For A Texas Man

New York Prosecutor Tells Judge: "Extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.”

Me yesterday, at the end of my post, Trump's Lies on Health Care:

Trump is a compulsive liar. He will do or say anything to win. He had four years to deliver on what he promised. He will never deliver on that promise. Never.

Only one thing matters to Donald Trump: Getting reelected so that he can avoid humiliation and avoid the NY State criminal indictments that will drop if he is defeated.

The news today:

NEW YORK (AP) — A New York City prosecutor [Cy Vance] fighting to get President Donald Trump’s tax returns told a judge Monday he was justified in demanding them because of public reports of “extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.”

ugh... When I was a kid, I knew the victim of this barbaric crime, though I haven't seen him since I came to Chicago. He was a really nice guy, an athlete and smart as a whip, but quiet and humble. Also, his father was my physics teacher in high school--also a good guy. The person accused of killing him calls himself a sovereign citizen:

The FBI describes sovereign citizens as "anti-government extremists" who consider themselves to be non-citizens and "believe they don’t have to answer to any government authority, including courts, taxing entities, motor vehicle departments, or law enforcement.

Apparently, the accused killer thought that, as a sovereign citizen, he could just squat in someone else's home without paying rent and that he's allowed to murder his landlord if told to leave.

Trump's Lies On Health Care

He’s had four years. Everything he says is a lie. #TrumpHasNoPlan

pic.twitter.com/dMMdgoCUnb

— Brett Meiselas (@BMeiselas) August 2, 2020

Four years ago, Trump promised he would cover everyone with a new health plan. Not only would the plan cover everyone, but the coverage would be better and cheaper than Obamacare. And he said he would do it immediately upon taking office.

Before he was sworn in, President Trump made a bold promise: The as-yet-unreleased Obamacare repeal and replacement plan would have “insurance for everybody.”

“We’re going to have insurance for everybody,” Trump said in an interview with The Washington Post. “There was a philosophy in some circles that if you can’t pay for it, you don’t get it. That’s not going to happen with us.”

And:

As he campaigned for the White House that he declared in an interview with CBS’ “60 Minutes”: “I am going to take care of everybody … Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.”

But no health care proposal came until the GOP proposed a plan that would take away minimum guarantees for coverage while sending rates through the roof for middle-aged and older Americans.

While House Republicans and the White House have indicated repealing and replacing Obamacare may take multiple legislative steps, the bill currently on the table would not meet Trump’s pledge. Per the CBO’s score, 14 million people would immediately lose coverage, a number that would eventually rise to 24 million over the next 10 years.

Since that plan failed to pass, conservatives have pursued repeated lawsuits aimed at destroying the health insurance marketplace that brought coverage to millions of Americans who were previously without coverage. The coverage mandate was removed, however, eroding the effectiveness of the marketplace.

Now, three months before the election, after Trump has done nothing to deliver on his promise of better, cheaper health coverage for all, he's claiming he's going to have a new health care plan. How convenient, three months before the election, while the polls show him getting crushed.

Trump is a compulsive liar. He will do or say anything to win. He had four years to deliver on what he promised. He will never deliver on that promise. Never. 

Only one thing matters to Donald Trump: Getting reelected so that he can avoid humiliation and avoid the NY State criminal indictments that will drop if he is defeated.

Local Shots

1352-1354 W. Berwyn Avenue, Chicago, IL

This is in the Andersonville neighborhood on Chicago's North Side. I pass this way sometimes and decided to take a shot today. Pictured in this otherwise unremarkable photo is the early 1940s home of Jo-Raquel Tejada AKA Raquel Welch.

Freedom To Not Wear A Mask

Statement From Democrat Raúl Grijalva

Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, who has tested positive for the virus:

"While I cannot blame anyone directly for this, this week has shown that there are some Members of Congress who fail to take this crisis seriously. Numerous Republican members routinely strut around the Capitol without a mask to selfishly make a political statement at the expense of their colleagues, staff, and their families."

It's all about them, and anyone or anything that gets in the way of their self-serving pursuit of power is expendable, including and perhaps especially the truth.

Another Long-time Republican Strategist Jumps Ship

Top-level Republican strategist, Stuart Stevens:

I spent decades working to elect Republicans, including Mr. Romney and four other presidential candidates, and I am here to bear reluctant witness that Mr. Trump didn’t hijack the Republican Party. He is the logical conclusion of what the party became over the past 50 or so years, a natural product of the seeds of race-baiting, self-deception and anger that now dominate it. Hold Donald Trump up to a mirror and that bulging, scowling orange face is today’s Republican Party.

I saw the warning signs but ignored them and chose to believe what I wanted to believe: The party wasn’t just a white grievance party; there was still a big tent; the others guys were worse. Many of us in the party saw this dark side and told ourselves it was a recessive gene. We were wrong. It turned out to be the dominant gene.

[...]

How did this happen? How do you abandon deeply held beliefs about character, personal responsibility, foreign policy and the national debt in a matter of months? You don’t. The obvious answer is those beliefs weren’t deeply held. What others and I thought were bedrock values turned out to be mere marketing slogans easily replaced. I feel like the guy working for Bernie Madoff who thought they were actually beating the market.

Trump's Disastrous Lies and Machivelian Machinations On COVID-19

Reacting to Rep. Jim Clyburn's statement that US COVID-19 cases are soaring while Europe's cases are way down, President Trump fell back on his repeatedly debunked assertion that the explanation for the difference lies in the US conducting more testing than any other nation.

Earlier this week, in his interview with Jonathan Swan, Trump again stated that you can do too much testing for the virus, absurdly justifying his claim by telling Swan to read the "manuals" and "books."

Here is the exchange with Swan:

"You know there are those that say you can test too much," Trump told "Axios on HBO" host Jonathan Swan in an interview set to air on Monday night. "You do know that?"

"Who says that?" Swan asked.

"Oh, just read the manuals," the president replied. "Read the books."

"Manuals?" Swan pressed. "What manuals."

"Read the books, read the books," Trump repeated.

Really? There are manuals and books on viral transmission that say there can be too much testing? What manuals? What books?

Let me be blunt: That is the kind of vague argument that only a liar or an uninformed idiot would float.

Trump has a long history of stating that "people" or some vague "they" are saying this or that whenever he floats conspiracy theories or false claims without evidence.

On an even more sinister note, this week it emerged that Trump's let-the-governors-handle-it-alone approach may have been due to political considerations. Jared Kushner, who was put in charge of the national effort to control the spread of the virus, proposed a comprehensive national plan that included rapidly ramping up testing. But when the virus was surging in Democratic-controlled states, the plan was rejected because the White House felt they could blame Democrats for failing to control the virus:

Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures. Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically—and erroneously, it would turn out—predicted the virus would soon fade away.

Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.

Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.

And as if to underscore his continuing reckless indifference to the dangers of the virus, Trump held a mini-rally at a Florida airport, yesterday, before a maskless crowd of supporters who were not social distancing. This in a state in the throes of a massive COVID-19 outbreak.

260 Virus Infections Tied To Georgia YMCA Camp

COVID-19 spread quickly among unmasked youth at YMCA camp:

Some 260 cases of the coronavirus have been tied to attendees and staff at a North Georgia YMCA children’s camp in June, according to a report released Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one of the largest known superspreading events in the state.

The article claims that the camp did not adhere to its own requirement that children and staff wear masks. 

We beat Obama 4 years ago, he worked harder than Crooked Hillary, and we’ll do it again! https://t.co/oaqnlkr7bW

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 1, 2020

The president of the United States is a deeply disturbed man.

Reality-Checking Trump On School Reopenings

Trump at his briefing yesterday:

Young people are almost immune to this disease. The younger, the better, I guess. They’re stronger. They’re stronger. They have a stronger immune system. It’s an incredible thing. Nobody has ever seen this before. Various types of flu will hurt young people more than older people.

But young people are almost immune. If you look at the percentage, it’s a tiny percent of 1 percent. It’s a tiny percent of 1 percent. So we have to have our schools open.

Before we run with Trump's spin on this, take a look at the newly-released findings of a large-scale, high-quality study of SARS-CoV-2 transmission by children.

NY Times:

In the heated debate over reopening schools, one burning question has been whether and how efficiently children can spread the virus to others.

A large new study from South Korea offers an answer: Children younger than 10 transmit to others much less often than adults do, but the risk is not zero [the rate is half. But far more concerning] those between the ages of 10 and 19 can spread the virus at least as well as adults do.

Speculation on the reason for a lower transmission rate among the youngest children is quite interesting:

Children under 10 were roughly half as likely as adults to spread the virus to others, consistent with other studies. That may be because children generally exhale less air — and therefore less virus-laden air — or because they exhale that air closer to the ground, making it less likely that adults would breathe it in.

The findings don't indicate that children are immune to the virus. We know that they can be infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, but they tend not to develop COVID-19 symptoms. They can still transmit the virus and cause the full-blown disease in adults. As the Times' report indicates, among children under age 10, the transmission rate is half the adult rate, but children ages 10 and older transmit the virus at the same rate as adults.

Notwithstanding Trump's assertion that children are almost totally immune to the disease so "we have to open schools," the findings in the first large scale study of virus transmission by children do not lead inevitably to the conclusion that we must open schools or that it is safe for America as a whole to do so. I certainly understand that decisions on school reopening are subject to cost-benefit analyses, but we know from Trump's record on lockdowns, mask-wearing, distancing, and the Tusla rally, that he can be reckless in his disregard for the dangers posed by the virus. And as complicated as it is to conduct such cost-benefit analyses, such an analysis is no analysis at all if you are only willing to look at the benefits side of the ledger.

Conservative Law Professor Who Supported Trump Calls For His Impeachment

Steven G. Calabresi, co-founder of the ultra-conservative Federalist Society and Professor of Law at Northwestern University writes:

I have voted Republican in every presidential election since 1980, including voting for Donald Trump in 2016. I wrote op-eds and a law review article protesting what I believe was an unconstitutional investigation by Robert Mueller. I also wrote an op-ed opposing President Trump’s impeachment.

But I am frankly appalled by the president’s recent tweet seeking to postpone the November election. Until recently, I had taken as political hyperbole the Democrats’ assertion that President Trump is a fascist. But this latest tweet is fascistic and is itself grounds for the president’s immediate impeachment again by the House of Representatives and his removal from office by the Senate.

Better late than never, but he really didn't see this coming? I guess this is what happens when you don't understand personality.

He Must Be A Trumper

Dying For Trump's Vanity

Herman Cain entered the hospital with severe symptoms of COVID-19 just 10 days after Trump's Tulsa rally. He died today.