... especially the evangelicals who need to crowd together to feel the spirit.

https://toofab.com/2020/03/26/virginia-pastor-who-posted-about-coronavirus-being-mass-hysteria-dies-of-virus/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/27/opinion/coronavirus-trump-evangelicals.html

#2: Bravo -- Fact Check.org is an excellent source! That second one not so much.

Chuck DeVore is the very embodiment of "figures don't lie, but liars figure" -- a conservative professional spinmaster (aka, rightwing hack) straight out of the belly of the beast. The sewers of rightwing think tanks where he scurries about are normally the first to formulate the original lies and half-truths that cycle into each day's conservative news streams, which rightwing pundits then use to flesh out on their various media platforms, further disseminating Republican talking lies. A lot of this spun-up bat guano is initiated through the morning email feeds and text links to "The Base," which is the phrase cultish Republicans use to refer to their obsequious voters. Anyway, Devore's slanted article was written well before the fast-paced, real-time economic situation that is deteriorating faster than I can type this.

Sometimes Forbes ain't too bad ...for a billionaire rag that is. Although they're big proponents for the plutocracy status quo and therefore spin everything to the right, they do publish mostly factual information amazingly ...when it comes to their side of the one-percent economic equation anyway. They just don't shed a whole lot of light on the plight of the unwashed masses (aka, you and me). Also, be very wary of the rightwing opinion writers whom Forbes sprinkles liberally throughout their pages, both online and in print. Always double-check their numbers against neutral sources, such as factcheck.org.

Conclusion: The economy under Trump did OK but not great.

Objective economists try to analyze all the economic numbers and average all the different sectors of economic growth or decline, including but not limited to: disaffected workers and the black market on the streets; people entering and leaving the workforce; the overall population expansion; consumer and wage inflation; international turbulence; war; atypical events like the pandemic; etc. -- that is to say, not just the blessings of the rich.

If a millionaire enters a bar, all the drunks inside just had their average wealth shoot up 99 percent or more. In a Republican bar, they'd thank him profusely and buy his drinks all night. In a Democratic bar, they'd get him blootered, fluthered, and rubbered, make him buy the drinks, and then pick his pockets. (Or was that a pub back on the Emerald Isle?) Anyway...

In fact, a lot of economists believe that the economy was resilient enough to survive, sometimes barely, not because of what Trump has done but in spite of what he has done. He hasn't exactly inspired confidence with: constantly lying about everything; tearing apart environmental and health safeguards (good regulations that protect both people and businesses); ridiculous and unnecessary trade wars; dangerous international brinkmanship coupled with weak indecisiveness; sowing confusion and hostility toward the U.S. by insulting friends and courting enemies; breaking treaties; disrupting trade pacts; now his pandemic leadership fiasco; and on and on...

Furthermore, one must never neglect to factor in the salient point that led back to a functioning economy in the first place: the fact that Obama, Pelosi, and the Democrats had to literally rescue the world economy from oblivion, from the devastation by the plutocracy under Republicans, who enabled The Village Idiot and Darth Cheney and the endless warfare in the Middle East, and who profited massively from all the death and mayhem until Humpty Dumpty came crashing down ...just like now.

“History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.”

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall;
All the King's horses
And all the King's men,
Couldn't put Humpty together again.

The infamous "Bikini Graph" says it all: Trump and his Party of Takers should be on their knees thanking the Democrats for their "intestinal fortitude in government to rearrange" [thanks, Hephaestus] the mess handed to them -- the economy that they turned around and handed back to Trump and all his shameless Republican mouthpieces, who've been riding the coattails ever since.

Figures don't lie, but Republicans sure do, especially under the tutelage of the biggest liar of all time. Lies, impeachment, and a strange hairdo are all that history will remember about the fake 45th president -- a little prick of dim light that fizzled out into nothing. It's gotta be getting up to 20,000 lies by now since inauguration, considering his rapid rate of increase just since the pandemic-cum-economic freefall.

The following are the real numbers that everyone should be looking at: (Remember, each digit, just a tiny colored squiggle, is a real human being who could be you or me or our loved one, a struggling soul with higher aspirations who feels both the good and bad of life most deeply in his or her own way, embodying the hopes and dreams -- the very spirit -- of all humanity.)

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

https://ncov2019.live/

For profit hospitals do not carry inventory. Inventory cuts profits. Clearly with our for profit healthcare system we were not prepared for a pandemic.

Hephaestus: If you grow special hemp, sometimes ya gotta hold your breath. };--))

Manufacting jobs have skyrocketed under President Trump

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/01/trumps-numbers-january-2020-update/

10 times the growth of the Obama administration.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckdevore/2018/10/16/the-trump-manufactur...

Was in the Denver area for four months and barely made it out on the 15th ahead of that explosion. Came back home to a small town in the northern Rockies where there are only about 5 cases so far, no deaths, knock on wood. It's a valley 2/3 Republican/libertarian/Trumpists, good people generally when one avoids politics. It seems most are following the safety guidelines fairly well, from what I could tell at a glance anyway on the way to my hidey-hole. They know they're in the calm before the storm.

It's looking like our's will be one of the last few areas in the contiguous U.S. to get hit, so people here have had the advantage of longer lead time to stockpile and prepare, especially the two hospitals, thank God. Of course, all the sanitizers were gone, toilet paper aisles were mostly bare, etc. -- like everywhere these days. People said that the biggest problem at first was that so many were not taking it seriously because of what Trump was and still is babbling. Pretty much the same story across the country.

Money over lives -- that always has been the mantra of the plutocracy. Look at all the carnage of our endless resource wars in the Middle East. Look at all the starving victims of extreme wealth disparity all over the world. And never underestimate the countless deaths from big-industry climate destruction that are rising each year.

So death from a stupid little virus is no big deal. Get back to work; start buying stuff; get Trump's numbers up for reelection! Don't have a mask? Well then, put your hand over your face, ya snivelin' bastard! USA! USA! USA!

This is the ad that Thom refers to. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lDjVKMXPMM

Cool; self-quarantined; a slow night on Thom's blog; lots of empty space to practice typing; I apologize in advance:

Tragically, the deadly COVID-19 pandemic will probably be with us for a long time until our much-maligned scientific communities (who are conveniently discredited by Republican hypocrites when it suits their dumbed-down, red-meat political rhetoric) can ultimately discover and develop an effective vaccine or some other miracle drug. Meanwhile, a frightful tally of our loved ones, who will probably die horribly in the next several months, is beginning its inexorable rise as invisible assassins spread like locust across the land.

Those two heretofore unimaginable statements are quickly emerging as irrefutable truths, mainly because Trump failed to heed the early warning signs and act quickly enough to enact a highly viable emergency pandemic plan that was handed off to his administration at the very beginning and painstakingly spelled out in excruciating detail by battle-scarred veterans of the Ebola pandemic. They explained precisely what steps were imperative, that absolutely needed to be accomplished sufficiently ahead of time to prepare for and therefore effectively mitigate worst-case scenarios, one of which is now unfolding exactly as predicted.

For three lost months, the peacock "war president" didn't do a damn thing to save lives. A good president like Obama would have immediately pulled out all stops and taken the appropriate actions in the face of such a serious pandemic. But numbnuts Trump tried to talk it away initially with eye-popping disregard, denial, blame, and bullsh*t. Finally, reluctantly, when it was too ridiculous to deny reality any further, even for him, he instantly reversed everything that he previously assured us was the honest situation on the ground. He made up stories while bodies piled up in Italy -- a modern Western democracy with mostly white people that was reflecting our future two weeks in advance. The big red dots were expanding quickly on the various interactive world maps.

In front of the cameras and microphones, trying awkwardly to project calm, he displayed a weak, robotic acceptance when the ugly truth slowly dawned on him. In reptilian survival mode, he privately freaked out about losing the economy ergo the election. "Mein Gott! Es kommt für die Heimatland!"

Once Trump's Bavarian "war general" grandaddy gene kicks in (Actually, no; Frederick Trump was a draft dodger in his homeland too.), Herr Trump, a remarkable likeness to bug-eyed Sargeant Schultz while facing questions from the press, annoyingly upstages his own experts at his mini Trump rallies, mislabeled as "coronavirus news conferences," to sprinkle unhelpful suggestions and dangerous misinformation that he pulls out of his big butt, as usual. Meanwhile, as a standard operating procedure, the White House frantically scrambles behind the scene to put lipstick on their orange pig, as usual.

Your Honor, if it pleases the court, the People of the United States of America hereby enter into evidence the following as Exhibit A:

Trump consciously and deliberately FAILED to do anything at all when a superb, already existing plan clearly recommended the best and most medically necessary options. So the big question is still hanging in the infected air: Why did he not follow through with it when he must have known full well (the "stable genius" that he is) that the assured outcome of such criminal inaction on such a grand scale would be really, really bad for everyone everywhere?

Neither can his wayward administration claim ignorance or surprise without eliciting guffaws hiding outrage from the frustrated experts who tried vainly to advise them numerous times on the correct course of action.

You'd think that at least someone, anyone, in that gilded den of snakes would have appreciated the full scope and consequence of Trump's monumental incompetence and depravity and would have urgently sounded the alarm so that the so-called "adults in the room" (Ha!) could have intervened and overruled the decrees of the Mad King.

And you'd be wrong. Read the Game of Thrones backstory; it's a good analogy of our own feudal history and the inherited fixation on power-mongering and warfare down through the ages. By the time Aerys II was finally stopped, it was too late; many people had to die to be rid of the Mad King and his inbred lineage.

Of course, nowadays, in a civilized democracy (one hopes), an unhinged tyrant would merely be legally stripped of all authority and thrown into prison rather than have a sword run through his black, shriveled heart. If impeachment and the 25th amendment won't work, then a fair election where every good citizen can and should vote would accomplish the same goal of peaceful abdication of power-- if we can overcome Republican voter suppression and foreign interference; if we can keep some semblance of our crumbling democracy together for another bat-sh*t-crazy ten months!

After he's finally out of office (Please!), then perhaps the People can, at last, have a fair trial, call witnesses, gather evidence (reams of it already), and throw the sonuvabitch in jail! "Lock him up! Lock him up!" Karma's a bitch.

Trump could then enjoy his retirement totally surrounded by his beloved walls, all four of 'em, and be fed a lean healthy diet so that he may live long and ruminate on his past misdeeds. Even a washed-up, sad old man thoroughly rejected by society should be given the opportunity to repent and evolve. No?

Okay, back to grim reality and the genocidal maniac world of the gang of wingnut miscreants. (Always wondered: What do alleged conservatives actually "conserve" anyhow besides dangerous deluded nonsense?) Yup, Trump had this great Obama plan ready to go and plenty of early warning to save the lives of potentially two million hapless citizens; yet, the damn fool -- greedy and power-hungry as always -- has consciously chosen to look the other way, to whistle past the graveyard, to step over the piles of bodies, choose your own sick metaphor.

So how long will the Republican/Trump Party deny the undeniable truth that the rest of us cannot with a clear conscience? Forget the court of law and public opinion; we have to go home, face our families, look them in the eyes.

Not only did this ding-dong know-nothing throw the pandemic plan on a forgotten dusty shelf somewhere in the bowels of his under-administered administration, but he and his band of flying monkeys disbanded the Obama-era pandemic teams in the NSC and dispersed the talent, stubbornly insisted on massive cuts to the CDC and other vital health systems, and generally screwed over our ability to respond intelligently to a pandemic, or to any other major medical crisis for that matter -- you know, all that damn big-guvmunt socialist crap, all the weird stuff that you can't just shoot down or blow up or build a medieval wall against with your big-guvmunt police force and bloated, uh, socialized military. And now we're all suffering the miserable consequences.

Sorry, it ain't gonna work this time to blame Obama and the Democrats -- his instinctive go-to excuse for everything he breaks. (He must have been a real pain as a sibling too, always blaming his farts on everyone else.) Everyone knows in their heart of hearts that Trump's lizard brain simply cannot fathom the wisdom of the last administration's pandemic plan -- first, because it was something smelling of Obama; second, because he just doesn't care how many people have to die (King Aerys II) to save face, money, and power. He and his murderous cult have made that twisted worldview abundantly clear lately, haven't they?

As bad as it gets though -- and it will shock most of us just how bad, as it did in Italy even though they also had a well-run, modern medical infrastructure with highly trained personnel, nurses, and doctors -- the United States of America, as the name suggests, will somehow survive this calamity and thrive. We have always overcome great adversity before anyway.

Well, until now, that has never been seriously questioned. Indeed, could this really be the coup d'état that finally defeats the once-greatest democracy on Earth? No, not the virus threat -- the Trump Reality Show dire emergency! Can our gravely wounded democracy survive another four years of an oligarchic kakistocracy run by an evil clown?

Anyone who listens to and reads the lifetime works of Thom Hartmann or visits his blog (as Legend reminds us), soon discovers that it's all about proper sourcing -- where you get the news that informs and shapes your world view. And does it match up to the common-sense reality that can be detected with one's own eyes and ears and brain, as well as those of others? Does a strong objective consensus emerge? Is it correct? Double-check.

To do that properly, you must have numerous sources, including scientists, investigative reporters, and various other scholars and truthtellers, such as Thom. Hint: stay away from Fux News, Winger Radio, and the Swamp Net. They don't offer legitimate opposing views; they spin-up entire opposing realities -- the imaginary universe of Kellyanne Conway's "alternative facts." Trying to decipher the avalanche of lies spilling down from Trump's Tower of Babble is a complete waste of time and energy.

So what exactly does the phrase "proper sourcing" actually mean then -- you know, in street language, in the real world?

Oh c'mon! Who the f*ck is lying and who the f*ck is telling the truth? Pretty damn simple, ain't it? What is the problem, people? Most of us have 10,000 years of hard-won knowledge that fits into our pockets at our stinky little fingertips. In this day and age, if you're an ignorant asshole, it's because you choose to be.

That defines stupid. And the human race cannot survive stupidity in the nth-degree much longer. Do you not see it? Do you not care?

end of rant

If 60% do not agree with me they are not agreeing with facts. I posted nothing but facts and did not post anything about polls that you posted about. What are you reading into my post that is not there?

Yes, Trump is #1 at something. Today we surpassed China (4x our population) in number of cases of Covid-19 cases. We are #1 in the world despite weeks to months of warning. We are the greatest at something. Unfortunately, we are just beginning. We are going to blow the charts off the wall. We are now the Epicenter and the laughing stock of the world with Trump.

More fun: https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-team-failed-nsc-pandemic-000023392.html

Out of pocket costs for Covid-19 in our for profit healthcare system.

https://money.yahoo.com/coronavirus-hospital-bills-cost-142902046.html