So, Bernie ignored my advice and folded like a secret-sauce soaked McDonald’s napkin. That leaves me no choice but to call the November election right here: Donald John Trump will be reëlected in and serve a second term make himself and those around him even more obscenely rich. I take no glee in this and I gained no solace from Bernie’s postmortem.

Millions of Americans—those who survive President Trump’s criminal mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic—will see their futures become ever bleaker as dreams of a progressive America fade even further in the distance. In this moment I have to say that—despite any belief that if you couldn’t laugh you’d have to cry—Bernie’s first post-capitulation interview did not set a happy note. Of just fuck me with a chainsaw…

And, as if the world wasn’t sad enough, we lost John Prine—10 October 1947—7 Appril2020.

Bonus No. 1: Brandi Carlile Pays Tribute To John Prine.

Bonus No. 2: And, of course, John himself…

Bonus No. 3: John Prine: 25 Essential Songs.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer (it dropped the word Cleveland during the city’s tough times in the 1960s) is not unknown for shabby treatment of its employees. Read: reporters.

Nor has it often managed to escape revelations of its crimes and misdemeanors. After all, it employs reporters. They tend to want to report. And talk.

I have come to believe that the majority of people (includeing our President) do not understand the function of reporting. Therefore, of the reporter’s state of mind. At least the good ones.

Everyone who knows what has been going in Cleveland with its daily newspaper knows what I’m going to write about.

After chopping 22 reporters—all union—and four nonunion, from its payroll the newspaper boss couldn’t wait a week before he struck another blow. This one to the few remaining Plain Dealer people. The management had already separated the staff by isolating the Cleveland.com staff from the PD staff.

This second quick blow could be attributed to Chris Quinn. Quinn is listed daily as Editor, Advance Ohio/Cleveland.com. But he’s the top guy. If he didn’t make the decision, he allowed it.

In this time of pandemic, these decisions are not just shabby but purposely cruel.

This, I believe, has to do with the future of a newspaper here.

It sort of leaves the newspaper itself one step from a permanent garbage pail. Not published four days a week. Not published one day a week. Not published as a paper at all.

That appears to be the strategy.

Produce a product that won’t be missed.

Indignities have befallen PD reporters before. Likely heading that list was a 1982 decision that should be near the top of any list of journalistic malpractice

The newspaper RETRACTED an investigative effort by Walt Bogdanich, now an investigative reporter for the New York Times. Elite city lawyers here had given thumbs up for the reporting. So the PD published.

Bogdanich’s expose reported that Teamster boss Jackie Presser was a government informer.

That’s pretty startling news. And it got backlash. From Teamsters.

It didn’t take long for the other, more pliable lawyers to come in play for the PD and Newhouse retreat.

The Plain Dealer, after publishing the expose, went from one of the city’s establishment firms, Baker-Hostetler, to get a more Teamster-friendly and politically connected law firms, headed by John Climaco. It’s called fixing the result.

That Sunday afternoon, after the retraction appeared, the deep distrust of the PD management was revealed by editorial employees picketing the newspaper.

I wrote at that time: “PD reporters acted sharply because of their trust of reporter Walt Bogdanich… and general mistrust of the editors.”

Some things hardly ever change.

Bogdanich said he had tape recordings of government officials revealing that Presser was an informant. The editors declined to listen to the tapes.

Now, in a move that can only be read as a tactic to make Plain Dealer side reporters writhe in disgust, managers have decided the remaining reporters can no longer report on Cleveland or Cuyahoga County matters. Their normal digs.

They have been demoted to the outer counties—Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina and Portage.

They MUST not report on Cleveland and county matters.

A slap in the face. A kick in the ass.

It is reminiscent of when PD reporters were assigned to review the Glenville riots. They did the job. Then they were told their work wouldn’t be published. Reason: They were unqualified to reach the conclusion they had. Soon after the New York Times sent a team for a similar postmortum. The Times reporters came to the same conclusions as the PD reporters had. The Times plastered the story over its front page.

The same can be said of reporters the PD now is dissing—Rachel Dissell, John Caniglia, John Petkovic, Michelle Jarboe, Laura DeMarco and Patrick O’Donnell.

They have done stellar work. So what?

This is a business. Get it.

How can any editor dismiss that kind of talent and send them essentially to the bench instead of working them in the main lineup of news coverage?

Only a power-hungry editor willing to do the work of the Newhouses no matter the cost to the newspaper or the community would follow those orders.

Chris Quinn apparently has qualified. More and more you hear from PD and former PD people of his power moves.

I could go on with similar malfeasance at the PD. Frankly, I’m tired of it and happy that the Cleveland Scene and Sam Allard have expended the effort to highlight these matters. The latest from Allard is worth reading and saving:

Just to prove this PD hasn’t lost its touch here is a Look Back over 25 years of media malfeasances.

For decades economists and other social scientists have lamented the end of the general hope felt by parents in America that there children would have better lives than they themselves had known. That was the American dream. The 20th century’s Lost Generation, a literary movement lived in the roaring 20’s in the 21st century, the only roaring may be anger.

My nieces and nephews, as well as my former students, are spread across two generations: Millennials and Generation Z. My generation, the Baby Boomers, will be reviled. I’ve felt horrible enough knowing that we could have taken action to prevent global warming—we knew about the coming catastrophe in the ’60s but ignored the warnings—but now we’ve handed our progeny a financial crisis, partially driven by climate change. The kids are, definitely not, alright.

Bonus No. 1: We were excited… But of course there were the possums.

Bonus No. 2: Supreme Court Blocks Extended Voting… Forces Voters Out To The Polls.

Bonus No. 3: Crisis Management (White House style).

Bonus No. 1: Jim James Performs Lean On Me In Honor Of Bill Withers.

[Update at 0927—From Sam Allard at Scene:

On the first workday after a brutal and debilitating round of layoffs at The Plain Dealer, Editor Tim Warsinskey delivered what will be the paper’s final and cruelest blow. He told the 14 remaining newsroom staffers that they would henceforth be forbidden from covering stories in Cleveland, Cuyahoga County, and Summit County and could no longer report on anything that might be deemed a “statewide” issue. Those vast content areas will now fall under the editorial jurisdiction of cleveland.com, the PD’s non-union sister newsroom.

If the PD staffers choose to remain employed, Warsinskey said, they will have to do so as members of a “bureau” responsible for reporting on Northeast Ohio’s outlying counties: Geauga, Lake, Lorain, Medina and Portage.

This announcement came as a shock to those who had survived Friday’s purge and were only now coming up for air. Some level of reorganization within the newsroom was expected—hence the Monday meeting—but the total theft of their beats was “incomprehensible,” according to a statement from the Northeast Ohio Newspaper Guild Local 1, posted moments ago to its Facebook page.

And so the paper’s remaining staffers are now faced with a devastating decision: they can either leave and let the state’s largest paper, (and the country’s first News Guild), die, ceding victory at last to the Newhouses of Advance Publications who’ve been ruthlessly and methodically busting the PD‘s union for years; or they can stay on, suffering the indignities of filing low-stakes stories on distant locales that haven’t been part of the paper’s regular coverage area for years.

So, what the fuck is Wassinkey going to do, and what did his 30 pieces of silver amount to?

And what questions might host Rick Jackson have for Chris Quinn at 9 am. on WCPN’s Weekly Regional Roundtable this Friday? Stay tuned.]

When the results from South Carolina rolled in I said that Bernie should take his money and run—as a third party candidate. That didn’t happen and we are way past the time when that could happen before November, even if we weren’t facing a pandemic. But I do think that 2020 is the new 1854. Now is the time to lay the ground work for a Progressive Party in 2024.

We have the people. We have the funding. We have the need, the need for a political party that represents working people and oppressed people and people who believe that this is a nation founded on We The People.

Ted Rall, writing in Why We Need a New Progressive Party and How We Can Create It, has a few idea on how we could go about bringing such a party to power. Rall begins:

There is no room for progressives in the Democratic Party.

No matter how many votes he or she gets, no progressive will be permitted to be the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.

Progressives who try to work inside of, contribute to and support the Democratic Party have no real chance of moving its candidates or policies to the left.

Remaining inside the Democratic Party achieves nothing; to the contrary, it is insidiously counterproductive. Working for “change from the inside” strengthens centrist politicians who oppose progressivism with every fiber of their being.

If American electoral democracy has a future, and progressives want to be part of that future, there is only one way forward: create and build a new party in which progressivism isn’t merely tolerated or partly accommodated as some fringe or necessary nuisance but is its core mission.

We need a New Progressive Party.

The Democratic Party will go down in flames in November and no flurry of finger pointing will change the fact that the party will have no one to blame other than the elites and their flunkies in the Democratic National Committee. Bernie is done. As much as I wish that wasn’t true, I, and all the other progressives in this country, have to accept that as an immutable fact. We have to start working now—perhaps with Bernie’s help, perhaps not—to build the organization that will do to the Republican and Democratic wings of the Pro-War Pro-Business part what the inchoate Republican Party did to the Whigs and the Democrats in the years leading up to our Second War of Secession. And Rall has the blueprint:

A New Progressive Party will go nowhere if, like the Green Party, it is poorly funded and disorganized and unable to field a slate of candidates across the board, from city council to state representative to congress. It must begin robustly, it must grow quickly, and it must be the only viable outlet for real progressives. Go big or go home.

This could be done. Now is the perfect time.

Keep reading. I’ll explain how.

We would begin with a massive roadtrip, perhaps to Chicago, a city that is symbolic for progressives on many levels. Here’ how Rall sees all this unfolding.

The first step is to convene a founding meeting in a big venue like McCormick Place Convention Center. (Chicago is easy to get to from everywhere in the U.S.) Launch a Kickstarter to cover the cost of renting the hall; unless there are enough pledges to cover the total, no one has to pay up and the attempt is over. It serves as the first test of whether enough progressives are ready to break away from the Democratic Party.

The agenda of the first convention of the New Progressive Party will be dedicated to debating and agreeing to a platform, electing party officials and setting a strategy for the next election.

The newly-elected officials of the party then fan across the nation and start building local organizations in their own communities to recruit, fund and campaign for candidates to local and state office. Like the Democrats and Republicans, every four years there will be a national primary and convention to present a candidate for the presidency.

Some will argue that the creation of a party just for progressives will split the left. That assumes that the Democratic Party represents the left. The truth is exactly the opposite: the Democratic Party is where the American left goes to die. If the left wants to live, it must fight and struggle for the things that it cares about on its own, in its own home.

Bernie’s people care. We know that we do. The only question is: how do we harness that?

Bonus No. 1: Read A Contract With The People: platform of the Progressive Party, adopted at its first national convention, Chicago, August 7th, 1912.

On Friday, Joe Rogan announced on the No. 1 podcast in America—The Joe Rogan Experience—that after endorsing Bernie Sanders back in Janaury, he could not vote for Joe Biden; that he would, and this is why DNC Elites are gnawing on skulls, vote for Trump. I made a brief mention of this yesterday in Bonus No.1 of this post, but this morning: wow!

I know that Bernie is telling people that he is evaluating his future—remember, Bernie was advised to not accept Rogan’s endorsement, but ultimately, to his credit, did so—but he is the only politician in the race right now who can make Trump a single-term president. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional. While even his top advisors are telling him to make a deal and drop out of the race while he and Biden are still on speaking terms, Bernie needs to stay in the race. Dropping out is condemning America to four more years of Trump. The second he announces that he is suspending his campaign, the champagne corks will pop in the White House and the focus will shift from the elections to how much more can they pillage the American economy by 2024.

Meanwhile, in the rest of the news:

Bonus No. 1: Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly is a total asshole.

What is a newspaper? To some it’s just something to read. Or solve a puzzle. To others, the sports section. To many of those who make the every-morning-product it can be a passion.
That’s why it was so gut-punching a blow to read in the Cleveland Scene, not the Plain Dealer, the familiar names of reporters sacked. People you know via their bylines.

It was particularly grueling to pick up the Sunday PD and see the names on bylines on a number of articles, including page-one pieces. And to know, they are gone. Not to return.

The obituaries of these familiar names were there. Sad in a time when sadness is all too near.

I’ve been following this tragedy, episode by episode, for years.

I was a reporter at the PD in 1967 when the paper was sold from under Tom Vail’s feet by his family to the Newhouse family. It took time to understand what that really meant.

Because the Newhouses were in it for the business. For the money. A paper was not something special or sacred to them.

They had their guy, Leo Ring, here in Cleveland. He made sure that the money kept coming. Leo was the heavy—an old composing room worker who went management. Leo came here after periods in Newark, St. Louis and Birmingham. At one PD bargaining session, Ring said that he subscribed to Point Of Viəw, my newsletter, but not under his real name. He learned a lot about the PD, he said.

I spent a lot of time with the PD as subject matter. I always felt it was important because the paper was creating history of the city and its people. I didn’t like the way they did it.

It was murky but came really clear long ago that there was room for only one newspaper in Cleveland. And in 1982 when I happened across a partnership filing at the County recorder’s office that shifted the land under the Press into the personal hands of its then owner, Joe Cole, the death march was not far ahead.

The way the two newspaper owners did it, however, raised questions. It was shabby if not illegal.

These things take a long time to sort out. In 1985 I produced an issue headlined: “IS FIX IN?” with subheads: Cole, Newhouse Face Jail and Will Justice be Served?

The Justice Dept. had two attorneys here who were pursuing the matter more than their bosses found comfortable.

And eventually, as usually the case, the bosses won out. The anti-trust charges, to make a long story shorter, were dropped.

We’ve seen this picture end often enough. Power and Privilege demands their rights even if they aren’t Right. Not even close.

Here in a Look Back are two of many POV issues dealing with the Newhouse/PD gang:

[Update at 1012—The heir to Hunter S. Thompson has left the building. An email with the subject line: Announcement to Readers: I’m Moving popped into my inbox at 0958 followed by: Resetting the Bomb one minute later. In the first Taibbi ledes: From now on, my online writing will be published on Substack. This is my full-time job now. Sort of. He continues:

I first started writing for Rolling Stone in 2003 and will continue a relationship with my good friends there, contributing print features and also maintaining the Useful Idiots podcast with Katie Halper. I love Rolling Stone and have been proud to represent the magazine over the years. If anyone cares to know, I wasn’t asked to leave.

I’ve been thinking about this for some time. Having had experience with Substack – I’ve serialized two books here in the last few years, including Hate Inc.—I believe the path for independent journalists is in a subscriber-based model.

Compensation in news media traditionally involves a reporter working for a corporation or a wealthy patron, who ostensibly paid staff with revenue from advertising and subscriptions. This used to be necessary because delivering content was expensive and required additional labor: design, printing, distribution, marketing, etc.
Distribution is instant now, design can be automated, and there are no printing costs. The logical endgame is cutting out middle steps and having journalists work directly for readers. I think I.F. Stone, who did it with a printed newsletter, had the right idea. This should not only be sustainable, but the preferable way to go.

I think Taibbi is right. This is the way to go. It is not an easy route—just ask Roldo Bartimole—but it is the future. We now return to the original post.]

So, I have been wondering for several weeks if President Donald John Trump’s supporters realize that—under the false flag of defending liberty—he is literally throwing them, and the people they love under the CORVID-19 bus to protect the stock portfolios of the people he really wants to like him: the billionaire class. Does the president know?

I’m not the only one asking this question. Lloyd Green, writing in ‘Trump is killing his own supporters’—even White House insiders know it , clearly believes that President Trump knows what he’s doing, but like the emperor that he wants to be, he doesn’t give a fuck. There is a kind of cutting-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face Darwinism going on here. Green ledes-

On Sunday, initially at least, there was no White House briefing on the president’s public schedule. But the bad news kept coming. Coronavirus deaths continued to climb and reports of the heartland being unprepared for what may be on its horizon continued to ricochet around the media.

In the words of one administration insider, to the Guardian: “The Trump organism is simply collapsing. He’s killing his own supporters.”

Members of the national guard, emergency workers, rank-and-file Americans: all are exposed. Yet Trump appears incapable of emoting anything that comes close to heart-felt concern. Or just providing straight answers.

Rather, he is acting like Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederate States of America: repeatedly letting governors know the burden of shoring up their sick, their doctors and their people falls on their shoulders first.

Forget Commodus or Davis, Trump fancies himself to be General Robert Edward Lee and he has cast of his Republican governors in the role of Major General George Edward Pickett who on that fateful day of 3 July 1863, sent his division stepping out proudly and ended the day a broken man.

And now, this…

Bonus No. 1: If coronavirus… is spread through the air why aren’t we all wearing masks?

Bonus No. 2: In the poorest county, in America’s poorest state, a virus hits home: ‘Hunger is rampant.’

Bonus No. 1: Joe Rogan would ‘rather vote for Trump than Biden…’

Bonus No. 2: Fauci: no evidence anti-malaria drug Trump pushes works against virus.

Bonus No. 3: US surgeon general warns of ‘Pearl Harbor…’ as Trump retreats from view.

Bonus No. 4: To Donald Trump, coronavirus is just one more chance for a power grab.

At the reported suggestion of then advisor Stephen Kevin Bannon, President Donald John Trump hung a portrait of President Andrew Jackson in the Oval Office because Jackson, our first president who was not from either Virginia or Massachusetts, was partially remembered as a populist; a mantle that Bannon wanted Trump to also wear.

Jackson is remembered for a number of reasons, but one—his Kitchen Cabinet—seems particularly relevant now because of President Trump’s reliance on a Shadow Taskforce, with his son-in-law Jared Corey Kushner in the big chair, to deal with the CORVID-19 pandemic. Trump has never been a fan of competence. In his world loyalty is king and he knows that he can depend upon the loyalty of those beholding to him for their well being.

Tom McCarthy, writing in Jared Kushner and his shadow corona unit: what is Trump’s son-in-law up to? for The Guardian, ledes:

The twist of fate that has cast Jared Kushner as a would-be savior in the greatest public health crisis to confront the United States in a century is a dramatic one.

The moment of national peril has been compared to September 11. Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, said coronavirus was her country’s greatest challenge since the second world war.

As the leader of the federal government effort to distribute emergency equipment to the states, Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, has mostly shied from the public stage, but he now is working in history’s spotlight.

His vast responsibilities include weighing requests from governors for aid and coordinating with private companies to obtain medical equipment, work he carries out from a special post created for him inside the Federal Emergency Management Agency, where his team is called “the Slim Suit crowd” for their distinctive tailoring, the New York Times has reported.

Kushner can brag about two qualifications: first, he the son of a billionaire real estate developer; and second, he’s the son-in-law of, allegedly, a billionaire real estate developer. Set those two aside for a moment. Since his father-in-law made him White House Innovations Director back in 2017, how has his track record been? McCarthy is not impressed:

Early this year, Kushner reportedly advised Donald Trump that the coronavirus was not that dangerous—more a threat to public confidence, and the markets, than to public health. Trump stuck with that message for six tragic weeks, between the confirmation of the first US case and a belated federal decision to speed the development of test kits.

And it was Kushner who helped write a disastrous Trump Oval Office speech on 12 March announcing a European travel ban that sent markets into a tailspin and travelers crowding into airports. It was Kushner who solicited help from the father of the fashion model Karlie Kloss, his sister-in-law, to ask a Facebook group of doctors what should be done about the virus.

But he’s the president’s go-to-in-law for managing the single greatest existential threat to or nation?

In a rare appearance in the White House briefing room Thursday, Kushner said some governors did not have precise knowledge of their state’s inventory of ventilators and delivered a lecture on the art of management.

The way the federal government is trying to allocate is, they’re trying to make sure you have your data right,” Kushner said. “Don’t ask us for things when you don’t know what you have in your own state, just because you’re scared.

What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody to be a mayor or governor or president, you’re trying to think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis,” he continued. “This is a time of crisis and you’re seeing certain people are better managers than others.

Walter Shaub, a former director of the Office of Government Ethics under Barack Obama, reacted strongly on Twitter, calling Kushner a “feckless nepotist who presumes to criticize governors striving to fill the void left by this previously unimaginable federal failure!”

Trump has placed top experts in public health and disaster response on his coronavirus taskforce, including Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s foremost infectious disease expert, and Dr Deborah Birx, the former head of global health at the state department.

But the adviser with the most influence over what Trump says and does appears to be Kushner….

Kushner’s sermon from the pulpit made people like Lt. Gen. Russell Honore angry.

It has taken us 40 years to get here, but Trump has shown us what President Ronald Prescott Reagan truly meant when he told us: The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.

Bonus No. 1: How Trump and Kushner Failed on Testing and Ventilators.

Bonus No. 1: You’ve President Donald John Trump’s Never Seen Anything Like This.

Bonus No. 2: Saluting the Heroes of the Coronavirus Pandumbic.

Every Friday at 10 a.m. I look forward to the latest installment of Oliver Burkeman’s This column will change your life series. He hasn’t posted anything for the last two weeks and I assumed he was off on some COVID-19 holiday. I was wrong. I knew that he occasionally wrote other pieces for The Guardian and that, at least last week, was the case.

Last Saturday, instead of a change your life essay on Friday, Burkeman, posted Focus on the things you can control: how to cope with radical uncertainty where he ledes with C.S. Lewis:

In 1939, in a sermon preached at Oxford University in the midst of a different global crisis, CS Lewis made a distinction that’s worth revisiting today. It wasn’t the case, he pointed out, that the outbreak of war had rendered human life suddenly fragile; rather, it was that people were suddenly realising it always had been. “The war creates no absolutely new situation,” Lewis said. “It simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice… We are mistaken when we compare war with ‘normal life.’ Life has never been normal.”

Hence the quickly trited phrase in the age of COVID-19: The New Normal. Burkeman continues:

In this time of acute collective anxiety, this sort of insight might not bring much peace of mind on its own. But it is a crucial first step, because it suggests that something about our gut-churning feelings of helplessness – the sense that we’re facing an absolutely horrible, unprecedented emergency, which we’ll surely lack the personal resilience to cope with—isn’t wholly accurate. And it implies that we might be much better than we think at dealing with radical uncertainty – because in fact, every hour of every day, we already do.

The special trouble with uncertainty is that it’s a doorway to infinity. When you’ve no idea what tomorrow will bring, it’s easy to fill that gap with fantasy, and the world of fantasy knows no bounds.

Infinity is, at least in terms of our individual lives, a myth. A fiction we tell ourselves to pretend that there could ever be such a reality as immortality. That thought brought me to another of Burkeman’s one-offs, published back in October: This Life and Outgrowing God review—heaven, atheism and what gives life meaning. The first is a reference to This Life: Why Mortality Makes Us Free by Martin Hägglund; the second to Outgrowing God: A Beginner’s Guide to Atheism by Richard Dawkins

I’m not so much interested in Dawkins’ book—I’m well past the beginner’s level—but I’m unfamiliar with Hägglund and I was intrigued. Burkeman ledes in this second piece:

Years ago, the magazine US Catholic ran a headline that had the air of being written by a devout believer who had just had an appalling realisation: “Heaven: Will It Be Boring?” If he believed in heaven, the Swedish philosopher Martin Hägglund would answer with an unequivocal yes. And not merely boring: utterly devoid of meaning. “If I believed that my life would last forever,” he writes, “I could never take my life to be at stake.” The question of how to use our precious time wouldn’t arise, because time wouldn’t be precious. Faced with any decision about whether to do something potentially meaningful with any given hour or day – to nurture a relationship, create a work of art, savour a natural scene – the answer would always be: who cares? After all, there’s always tomorrow, and the next day, and the next.

But, of course, then it doesn’t. Burkeman goes on:

I sometimes feel oppressed by my seemingly infinite to-do list; but the truth is that having infinite time in which to tackle it would be inconceivably worse. The question at issue here isn’t whether heaven exists. In This Life—a sweepingly ambitious synthesis of philosophy, spirituality and politics, which starts with the case for confronting mortality, and ends with the case for democratic socialism—Hägglund takes it for granted that it doesn’t. Instead, his point is that we shouldn’t want it to. Religious people, even if they don’t believe in a literal place called heaven (“white bean bags, 24-hour room service, fat babies with wings”, to quote Alan Partridge), nonetheless believe that what truly matters most in life belongs to the realm of the eternal and divine. The result is “a devaluation of our finite lives as a lower form of being”. Hägglund’s alternative, “secular faith”, insists that our finite lives are all we have – and that this finitude, far from being a cause for regret, is precisely what gives them meaning.

I wholeheartedly agree. To the left of my 19th century writing desk—my great, great grandfather brought the desk with him from Wales in 1872—hangs a copy of the Zen Evening Gatha: Let me respectfully remind you Life and death are of supreme importance. Time swiftly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us should strive to awaken. Awaken. Take heed. This night your days are diminished by one. Do not squander your life.

Every night before I ready myself for sleep—that little death from which we irrationally expect to waken—I read those words and consider how closely I came to not squandering my life that day. Some days are better, some are worse, but we only can do or not do.

Bonus No. 1: Tomorrow Never Comes by Ernest Tubb.

Bonus No. 2: Jack Kornfield—How to Find Peace Amidst COVID-19, How to Cultivate Calm in Chaos. (Fast forward to timemark 8:07) to avoid the annoying bits.)

I spoke with my brother last evening to check on happenings in our hometown of Marietta, Ohio. Everyone remains healthy and safe and we talked a little bit about how the pandemic has changed daily life, but we stayed away from the elephant that is always in the room when I visit: President Donald John Trump because Marietta is Trump country.

I glanced at my hometown newspaper—The Marietta Times—this morning and a few headlines include: Food providers adjusting to meet need; More local people monitored; direct testing may come soon; and Memorial opens COVID-19 unit. Marietta, the largest town and county seat for Washington County has a population of less than 15,000. The Times‘ letters-to-the-editor are a good indication of residents’ concerns: food, water and unemployment checks.

I have to wonder to what degree they understand that, as Ralph Nader details, our president has not been their friend in all of this. Nader, in Trump’s 7 Pro-Contagion Reversals Increase the Coronavirus Toll, writes:

Trump ridiculed, then minimized, then delayed the federal government’s response to the coronavirus for weeks. Then finally he wrapped his boastful, confused ego around reality. But Trump is actively pushing programs that will endanger more Americans.

Here’s a brief look at Trump’s pro-contagion activities that leave Americans defenseless in the face of the virus, implemented by his crazed and cruel appointees.

1. Trump is pushing hard to weaken safety regulations for nursing homes. Weakening these regulations leaves elderly residents vulnerable to infectious diseases, meaning more people will get sick and die.

2. Trump is fanatically trying to end Obamacare in court cases. Twenty million people, at least, will lose health insurance. He has no replacement. As a Yale University study just demonstrated, 65,000 to more than 100,000 Americans die every year because they do not have health insurance. Trump apparently is okay with many more people losing their lives to further entrench his cruel, corporatist ideology. Many more people will stay sick because they are uninsured and therefore cannot afford diagnosis and treatment.

3. Trump is lying about his concern for American workers. Why is OSHA weakening workplace safety protections that keep workers safer? The answer: Trump is a crazed and cruel corporatist.

4. Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency henchmen are racing to weaken, revoke, or not enforce environmental safeguards for the air you breathe, the water you drink, and the food you eat. Certain scientifically condemned pesticides, for example, are in your food, but Trump and his EPA lackeys don’t care. These cruel minions are also taking advantage of the coronavirus crisis by signaling to polluters they can open up emission pipes and that the EPA will look the other way. Trump’s EPA is taking actions that mean more people will get sick and more people will die.

5. Last month, Food and Drug Agency announced that it is suspending inspections of foreign manufacturers importing food, drugs and medical devices into the U.S. through April. This decision is madness! FDA will even suspend inspections of Chinese labs producing large amounts of imported drugs for American patients.This is like telling corporate criminals that the panicked U.S. is unguarded without federal cops on the beat. More unprotected Americans will be at immediate risk of death and disease.

6. Just last week, against the advice of even some major auto manufacturers, clenched- jaw Donald rolled back automobile mileage and pollution standards. Trump’s mania knows no bounds! Trump’s compulsive crazy desire to repeal all Obama’s achievements means he is willing to move us backwards, making the future more dangerous and uncertain. The result is more life-destroying pollutants in your lungs, more consumer dollars spent on gasoline for less mileage per gallon, more climate crisis-exacerbating gases.

Trump faces enormous opposition, from medical experts, consumer groups, environmental groups, civil rights groups, anti-poverty organizations, and even conservatives that will take him to court. What does he care?

7. Stubborn Trump’s embargo of Iran and other severe sanctions on nations wanting to sell medicines and equipment to virus-plagued poorer locations disrupts international efforts to contain the deadly virus.

Almost no reporters are asking Trump about his reckless, anti-safety policies in the midst of a pandemic that is especially dangerous for victims with pre-existing ailments and sicknesses.

Again, Trump is a clear and present danger to the U.S.A. He is misleading, egomaniacal, unstable, confused, and cannot process information to make decisions carried out properly and quickly.

It’s all in plain sight, Trump voters! Do you think he will exempt you and yours from the dangers noted above? His actions will cause cancer, respiratory diseases, exposure to perilous medicines, loss of insurance coverage, and more. This is what happens when the government places the greedy wants of Wall Street over the basic needs of Main Street.

Trump voters face a harsh daily reality where they live, work and raise their families. One hopes they will finally demand a President who empathizes with peoples’ dire straits and embraces the Golden Rule. Instead of a President who betrays us while giving sugarcoated campaign speeches and manipulative flatteries.

As Saagar Enjeti has reminded us several times in recent weeks, President George Walker Bush was reëlected in 2004 even though we knew that we had gone to war in Iraq under false pretenses and that the war was not going well. If competenancy were a requirement for reëlection, the president would have followed in his father’s example and been a one-term president. Enjeti does not hold much hope that Trump’s demonstrated incompetence in handling the COVID-19 pandemic will hinder him in November.

I think he’s right.

I had a captain once, Theodore A. Almstedt Jr., who was one scary guy, but he was the one you wanted on the bridge when the situation went into the shitter. I have no doubt that his sailors felt, and still feel, the same way about Captain Brett E. Crozier, as the video above attests.

Fair winds and a following sea, Captain Crozier…

Bonus No. 1: Top U.S. & World Headlines—April 3, 2020.

Bonus No. 2: Leaked Amazon emails reveal smear campaign against fired warehouse worker.

Bonus No. 3: Nationalize vaccines, don’t believe pharma propaganda.

In 1776, Thomas Jefferson was 33 years old. In 1789, Maximilien Robespierre was 31 and Napoleon Bonaparte 20. In 1905, both Leon Trotsky and Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin were 26. In 1950, Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela was 32. In 1953, Fidel Alejandro Castro was 27. In 1955 Martin Luther King was 26.

All were much younger men when they began the revolutionary activities which brought them to those pivotal moments in their lives. I’m 65 and well past my sell-date as a revolutionary. Bernie Sanders is 78. He is the harbinger of revolution, he may even be the leader who storms the Bastille, but he will not be the engineer who shapes a new America.

That person is young enough to be Bernie’s great-grandchild and even in this moment toiling away, unknown and unrecognized at some not-for-profit or fringe political organization or even, as unemployment sours past 10,000,000 in only two weeks, standing in line at a food bank somewhere, sharing stories of frustration with a political leadership that doesn’t give a fuck as long as they get theirs.

Sarah Connor is out there.

Bonus No. 1: Stephen does a double-take in interview with Nancy Patricia Pelosi. (I left this comment on the interview: I am a huge fan of Colbert, but this interview is a perfect example why getting your political news from a comedian is not usually a good idea. Pelosi completely snowed Colbert here. If you’re interested in what she up to, check out Saagar Enjeti’s piece on the topic yesterday.)

Bonus No. 2: Saagar Enjeti: 6.6 Million Unemployment Claims, The Revolution Is Coming.

Bonus No. 3 Well… Maybe…

Bonus No. 4: Millions lose healthcare, Biden doesn’t care.

Bonus No. 1: How Hasan Is Social Distancing.

Bonus No. 2: Biden so WEAK establishment already blaming Bernie for his loss.

Bonus No. 1: Instead of striking, News Guild begs for a bailout.

Bonus No. 2: Ravi Shankar: where to start in his back catalogue.

Bonus No. 2: Ralph Nader Radio Hour— Drugs in a Pandemic; Trump’s Lawsuits/Coronavirus Update.

Bonus No. 3: A Late Show With Stephen Colbert—Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Bonus No. 4: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee—Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and An Honest Message From The White House.

Bonus No. 1: Glenn Greenwald: How to balance authoritarian instinct in crisis.

Bonus No. 2: Good on Cleveland City Councilman Mike Polensek.

[Update at 1629: The crew of the USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) is also infected. Both carriers are currently deployed in the western pacific.

Note: The news on the Reagan is suspiciously old. I’m thinking the Navy has ordered a news blackout while two replacement carriers and their escorts are rushed—read: one or two months away—to replace the stricken crews. Also expect the Navy to cancel all shore leave for the foreseeable future.]

News that COVID-19 is spreading onboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71) is bad. Really, really bad. The idea that the United States Navy could essentially abandon ship, even temporarily, should give us all pause. The Roosevelt is one of 11 aircraft carriers s in the Navy and she requires a crew of nearly 5,680. She is a small, but very busy, town afloat.

There is a general rule in the military that the loss of even 10 percent of a unit’s compliment can render it ineffective for combat purposes. In the Navy, where a jobs are highly specific, the loss of key personnel can take a system or function offline. On an aircraft carrier where there are fewer than 200 pilots on board, the whole function of the ship—to sortie and recover aircraft—is lost if enough pilots fall ill. (Remember, not ever pilot can fly every plane, the skills necessary to fly an F-18 are not the same as those need for an E-2.)

Then there is the question of the third leg of our nuclear deterrent: our ballistic missile submarines. Not only are their crew requirements even tighter, but they operate submerged for months and an outbreak of COVID-19 would bring their mission to a quick end. (See: Some Nuclear Submarine Crews May Not Even Know About the Pandemic.)

Caitlin Kenney, in Captain of USS Theodore Roosevelt requests nearly 4,000 sailors be isolated as coronavirus spreads for Stars And Stripes, ledes:

The captain of the USS Theodore Roosevelt has requested permission to remove most of the aircraft carrier’s crew from the ship and isolate roughly 4,000 sailors to help curtail a coronavirus outbreak aboard the vessel.

Capt. Brett Crozier wrote in an unaddressed letter Monday to Navy leadership that the ship’s environment is “most conducive to spread of the disease” with open shared sleeping areas, shared restrooms and workspaces, and confined passageways to move through on the ship. He wrote the Roosevelt’s crew is unable to follow Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or Navy procedures to protect the health of sailors through individual isolation on the ship for 14 or more days.

“Due to a warship’s inherent limitations of space, we are not doing this. The spread of the disease is ongoing and accelerating,” Crozier wrote.

This is a peacetime Captain’s worst nightmare.

Bonus No. 1: Seth Meyers talks to Bernie Sanders.

I wholeheartedly endorse Mano’s reaction:

Dammit, when I hear Sanders speak so clearly about the problems and how they should be addressed and compare that to the wishy-washy responses of Joe Biden, I am depressed that Biden is in the lead for the Democratic nomination to take on the ignorant self-serving Donald Trump.

Bonus No. 2: Essential Workers and the Reverse Robin Hood Coronavirus Bailout.

This is how the Shock Doctrine works folks: Step One, a terrible event occurs; Step Two, Elites bury actions benefiting only them under a facade of caring actions; Step Three, the One Percent gains wealth and power; and Step Four, The 99 Percent lose wealth and power. Repeat steps two, three, and four for as long as Step One continues.

The latest bi-partisan bailout of the One Percent—did anyone other than Bernie Sanders speak out in the halls of congress?—is no exception. The pillaging of the American People would make a viking blush. Matt Taibbi, in Bailing Out the Bailout for Rolling Stone Magazine, ledes:

“I’ve never signed anything with a ‘T’ before,” Donald Trump quipped at the signing of the $2 trillion CARES Act. He reportedly wants his signature on coronavirus relief checks, as if they were Trump Plaza casino chips. This might be a fitting metaphor for America’s post-virus economic future.

The new bailout bill, which combined with a series of Federal Reserve interventions is more like a $6 trillion rescue, is a massive double-down on the 2008 rescue efforts. This bailout of the last bailout sets the stage for permanent state sponsorship of America’s overheated financial markets.

Like 2008, only moreso, the new mega-rescue is a bipartisan effort. Lawamkers sold this as a good thing.

Yes, rather than have We The People in mind as they gather for a congressional Kumbaya love fest for their elite masters, Congress and President Donald John Trump tossed some crumbs to the rest of us while lauding as much as $4 Trillion on the ü rich. (And no one paused for a nanosecond to ask: Who will we pay for this. Taibbi continues:

Congress needed a year of intense infighting to approve a $4.7 trillion budget, but just a single week to draft this $2 trillion deal. Although members quibbled before the vote over numbers — Bernie Sanders insisted on more unemployment insurance, while others worried about creating a “slush fund” for airlines and other industries — the bill ultimately cruised through, passing in a voice vote in the House and 96-0 in the Senate.

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008, the only comparable “We need a gazillion dollars in ten minutes” legislation in recent history, passed after a bitter battle, with 63 House Democrats and 91 House Republicans opposing.

Analysts and politicians insisted the new bailout in the broad strokes was uncontroversial, a fire hose of money for virus-ravaged hospitals, workers, and small businesses. Even critics of Wall Street agreed that this one wasn’t a complete washout compared to the last disaster, when the taxpayer was asked to bail out the very people who’d caused the crisis.

Taibbi, as only he can, dives deep into the weeds to explain just how we’re getting fucked by the CARES We Don’t Give A Shit Act and every American should read the details. He concludes:

As with 2008, the emergency support is supposed to be temporary, but there’s less belief that this is even ostensibly true this time around. There will be a lot of howling over the irony: Trump when he ran for president in 2016 said then-Fed chief Janet Yellen should be “ashamed” of creating a “false stock market” for Barack Obama. Our future will be a parody of the Yellen economy.

Short-term loans to make payroll and keep tenants in storefronts are only a part of the rescue. The coronavirus emergency is probably temporary. The bailout looks like forever.

And The Who perform to an empty venue.

And now—with apologies to John Oliver—this…

Bonus No. 1: John Prine with Sturgill Simpson And Brandi Carlile: ‘Summer’s End.’

Bonus No. 2: Stephen Colbert Reveals The Results Of “Suit Or No Suit.”

Bonus No. 3: Daniel Radcliffe Is Passing The Time Building Jurassic Park Out Of Legos.

Bonus No. 4: Jonathan Karl… The Front Lines Of Trump’s Coronavirus Press Briefings.

Bonus No. 5: In The Mood For A Vacation?

Bonus No. 6: … I am starting to miss the things that used to annoy the hell out of me.