The President is Infected With Coronavirus

The New York Times writes:

“President Trump revealed early Friday morning that he and the first lady, Melania Trump, had tested positive for the coronavirus, throwing the nation’s leadership into uncertainty and escalating the crisis posed by a pandemic that has already killed more than 207,000 Americans and devastated the economy. 

The dramatic disclosure came in a Twitter message just before 1 a.m. after a suspenseful evening following reports that Mr. Trump’s close adviser Hope Hicks had tested positive. In her own tweet about 30 minutes later, Mrs. Trump wrote that the first couple were “feeling good,” but the White House did not say whether they were experiencing symptoms. The president’s physician said he could carry out his duties “without disruption” from the Executive Mansion.”

Whether the president is feeling good or not is an open question. Since he lies about his health, and most everything else, there is no way to know what his health status is. Presumably it is early in the infection, so he probably is feeling good.

Maybe if he had taken this seriously and made the people around him wear masks this would not have happened. But he didn't and it did. 

This is nothing to gloat or be happy about. It reflects how poorly the US, and the president in particular, have dealt with the pandemic.

Several Updates: Coronavirus, Germaine's Toxicity

“[Johnson repeatedly told the American people] ‘the first responsibility, the only real issue in this campaign, the only thing you ought to be concerned about at all, is: Who can best keep the peace?’ The stratagem succeeded; the election was won; the war escalated. .... President Johnson thus denied the electorate of any chance to give or refuse consent to the escalation of the war in Vietnam. Believing they had voted for the candidate of peace, American citizens were, within months, deeply embroiled in one of the cruelest wars in their history. Deception of this kind strikes at the very essence of democratic government.” -- moral philosopher, Sisella Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life, 1999 (from chapter 12, Lies for the Public Good); Johnson fully intended to escalate the war while at the same time lying to the American people in his campaign for president, telling them that he would de-escalate the war; the moral lesson → → → lies and deceit deprive people of their right to make a choice on the basis of truth

Coronavirus misinformation: The source of the infodemic (misinfodemic, actually)

The New York Times reports that researchers who have analyzed 38 million English language articles about the pandemic find that the single most common source of misinformation is the president of the US. The NYT writes:

“Of the flood of misinformation, conspiracy theories and falsehoods seeding the internet on the coronavirus, one common thread stands out: President Trump.

That is the conclusion of researchers at Cornell University who analyzed 38 million articles about the pandemic in English-language media around the world. Mentions of Mr. Trump made up nearly 38 percent of the overall “misinformation conversation,” making the president the largest driver of the “infodemic” — falsehoods involving the pandemic.

The study, to be released Thursday, is the first comprehensive examination of coronavirus misinformation in traditional and online media. 

“The biggest surprise was that the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around Covid,” said Sarah Evanega, the director of the Cornell Alliance for Science and the study’s lead author. ‘That’s concerning in that there are real-world dire health implications.’”

There are dire real-world health implications of misinformation? That is an understatement. If there are one million SARS-CoV-2 deaths worldwide so far, can one credit about 10-20% of them to the president’s misinformation influence worldwide, and about 60-70% of them in the US? It’s a moral conundrum. Call out the moral philosophers! HEY SISELLAAAAA!! (Marlon Brando voice screams)

Coronavirus testing, or not

Experts have been telling us all along that we need to do more testing to get a handle on control of the pandemic. NPR reported this morning that a new study, presumably based on statistical modeling, indicates that the US needs to do a lot more testing to even come close to dealing competently with the pandemic. At present, the most daily testing the US has done is 1 million tests/day. The experts estimate that to deal marginally competently with testing for just people at high risk, the US would need to do about 4 million tests/day. To deal marginally competently for the US whole population, about 14 million would be needed per day.

The bottom line is clear. The US was not competent in dealing with the pandemic, and it might never be. How much of the responsibility for this ongoing failure belongs to the president? He believes that he has done a great job and deserves an A++, presumably meaning he believes that he is 0% responsible. Other people might think that he gets a well-deserved grade of F-- and 100% of the responsibility.

Once again, we have at least a serious moral problem on our hands. HEY SISELLAAAAA!! And, probably also a political responsibility analysis problem.

Germaine's toxicity assessment: 45% probability

Vuukle says: Germaine has a 45% probability of being toxic

(see the small blue square)

I have just been booted off of a 7th radical conservative, blindly pro-Trump propaganda, lies and social polarization site.[1] This time it is American Thinker that gave poor, well-meaning Germaine the heave-ho. What was different about this site is that it uses a small comment platform called Vuukle (used at 302 websites) instead of Disqus (219,047 websites). 

For a while, I thought that I would be able to roam freely with Vuukle because that site had not kicked me out long ago after I started spewing very unwelcome truth and reason there. What is different about Vuukle is that it uses some sort of comment screening technology to identify and remove undesirables like me. Like Disqus, Vuukle allows downvotes and blocking, which I get a lot of. 

What is different about Vuukle is that once a bad person like me comes into the platform’s and/or website’s crosshairs, a probable toxicity assessment is shown. For Germaine, Vuukle believes that nasty person is 45% probably toxic (see screenshot above). What is interesting is that despite Germaine's probable toxicity, a comment like “Trump is a great guy and I love him” was allowed and posted as usual.

That probably means that sophisticated software is at work assessing the content of comments and instantly blocking undesirable (anti-Trump) comments, while passing pro-Trump comments on. American Thinker is the typical of kind of unreliable radical propaganda site I have been booted out of.

Who is toxic here and who isn’t?

It seems that as the election approaches, radical conservative sites are increasingly aggressive about shutting down commenters who disagree with the radical right's highly divisive, increasingly authoritarian and pro-Trump content. That content is heavily laden with lies, deceit, misinformation, emotional manipulation and hyper-partisan, incoherent reasoning.

Aw, tain’t fair - Germaine is toxic and can't log in any more

Footnote: 

1. The radical conservative sites where I have been blocked, banned or otherwise ejected from so far are Daily Caller, Town Hall, Breitbart, Daily Signal, Daily Wire and Gateway Pundit. All of those sites use the Disqus comment platform. My Germaine II reputation is badly damaged from all the folks who have downvoted and/or blocked me at those sites.  

One Piece of Evidence Suggests Trump Could be a Felon Tax Cheat

I am cheating you

The president's leaked tax documents are being analyzed. The Washington Post write this on one item the New York Times disclosed a couple of days ago. WaPo writes in an opinion piece:

"First, the IRS audit looking into Trump’s $72.9 million tax refund, as revealed by the New York Times, will eventually come to an end. (Did he order it held in abeyance, or do all audits take four years?) Tax guru Daniel Shaviro explains in a post for Just Security that the refund stems from the ordinary loss of Trump’s casinos going bust, but he would only be able to claim that ordinary loss (as opposed to a more restricted capital loss) if he abandoned the asset as worthless. “[Trump] received back a 5 percent interest in the stock of the new entity,” Shaviro writes, suggesting he did not “abandon” the asset. The result is that “if the stated facts are accurate and relevantly complete [it] would cause him to owe the IRS about $100 million, given interest on the prior refund. This leaves aside the possibility of civil or criminal tax penalties for claiming an abandonment loss despite receiving consideration back.” That’s a lot of money for anyone, but especially for someone who has a personal debt of $421 million coming due. 

Will banks bail out Trump once more? Maybe, but it’s unlikely if he faces federal or state prosecution for financial crimes. Even if Trump were to, say, leave office a day early and get a pardon from Mike Pence during his 24-hour presidency, a federal pardon is of no use in civil matters or in state criminal prosecution, which is precisely what Trump could face in New York."

Maybe a noose is tightening around our corrupt president's neck. If so, it is long overdue. Our corrupted tax code and our corrupt congress and two-party system gets much of the blame for this rancid situation. 

If he is not re-elected, our president is facing near-term economic ruin and criminal prosecution. His offspring's inheritance would probably go down with him. I do feel sorry for his niece, Mary Trump and her brother, who will also probably lose out. They have been cheated out of millions, maybe hundreds of millions.

Why Voting Hurts Republicans and How to Suppress Voting

“I don’t want everybody to vote. …Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” -- conservative republican strategist Paul Weyrich

Analyses of the 2016 election indicated that one probably effective republican tactic was to suppress voter turnout. Russian and GOP propagandists targeted black communities with content that falsely painted Clinton as a racist. Such negative messaging appeared to lead some black voters to not vote at all, which helped the president win in key states.

An article at The Hightower Lowdown, Six ways the Right is shredding the vote, reviews six current GOP voter suppression tactics. The The Hightower Lowdown is a self-described progressive populist site. The GOP excuse is to reduce widespread vote fraud, which does not exist. The GOP does not see the voter suppression tactics as voter suppression. Mitch McConnell made the GOP’s position clear: “There’s very little tangible evidence of this whole voter-suppression nonsense.” 

Purge voter roles: One vote suppression tactic is purging voter roles, especially in predominantly areas. various tactics are used to do this, including removing people from voter roles if they do not vote in several elections or if their registration record doe not exactly match other state records. In Texas, more than 90,000 people were improperly removed from voter rolls. The president praised this as proving rampant voter fraud by immigrants. However, it was shown that the thousands of people with Latinx surnames that had been “exposed” were Texans, and US citizens who were eligible to vote. 

Since 2016, about 17 million Americans have been removed from voter roles, which is higher than usual, but THL did not state what usual is.

Litigate & intimidate: The president’s campaign and the GOP have a $20 million fund for vote related lawsuits. Lawsuits have already been filed in Colorado, Florida, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In Pennsylvania, the GOP has sued all 67 counties to allow GOP-hired, out-of-county “poll watchers.”  Presumably, their job will be to intimidate and/or challenge voters. The GOP has also sued California and Nevada to keep them from mailing ballots to all eligible voters.

GOP’s tactics have included sending observers into non-white, immigrant, and Democratic-leaning areas. THL comments: 

“These “poll watchers” single out voters they view as “suspicious” and accuse them of trying to vote illegally. They aren’t subtle. Sometimes packing guns, badges, cameras, arm bands, etc. to pose as official ballot police, they literally pull people out of line to loudly demand proof of eligibility. It’s ugly and frighteningly autocratic … and yet legal in many states.

Back in 1982, Republican thuggishness had gotten so out of hand that a federal judge imposed a consent decree to stop some of the crudest intimidation methods. But, with the Trump campaign’s support, that ban was withdrawn in 2018, and this year’s presidential election will be the first in four decades to allow no-holds-barred voter intimidation.

It’s “a huge, huge, huge, huge deal,” exulted a top Trump campaign lawyer to a Republican group last November. He promised that the party’s 2020 poll patrol programs would be ‘much bigger … much more aggressive [and] much better funded.’ 

Indeed, the national party has been recruiting and training up to 50,000 partisans to confront voters in 15 key states! Adding to the mayhem, True the Vote, a manic fringe group of Trumpeteers, is signing up a freelance militia that includes off- duty police and veterans to enforce “ballot security” in communities of color. The group leader explained the scheme at a February meeting of Republican operatives: “You get some [Navy] Seals in those polls, and they’re going to say ‘No, no. …This is how we’re going to play this show.’”

Eliminate polling places: Another voter suppression GOP tactic is to simply eliminate polling places, or to change their location just before an election. THL writes: 

“Don’t want Black people to vote? Or tribal members on reservations? Or students on campus? Simple: Eliminate their polling places. Or just slash the budgets for voting machines, poll workers, and early voting in their precincts, creating punishingly long lines and waits. COVID can turn this systemic disenfranchisement lethal.”

Disable the post office: THL writes:

“Vote-by-mail totally discombobulates Donald. Desperate to save himself from letter carriers, he (1) personally killed a bipartisan congressional provision in March that ensured America’s crucial mail service would survive the pandemic, and (2) installed one of his rich funders as postmaster general in May. Louis DeJoy’s first action was to sabotage timely mail delivery by drastically cutting postal workers’ hours and then by removing mail-sorting machines and street-side letter boxes. Thus, America’s globally admired mail system is being wrecked by an unhinged president determined to keep you and me from using it to vote.”

THL goes on to point out that suppressing black voters is a key GOP goal. In 2013, the GOP supreme court lifted a Voting Rights Act requirement with a tangible effect: “.... every state that had been subject to the law raced to pass new voter restrictions, while also closing 1,688 polling places, making it harder for African Americans to vote.” THL blames Chief Justice Roberts for being a political partisan who pretends there is no black voter suppression in America any more. 

The First Minutes of the Debate

So far in the first few minutes (~55 minutes so far), the president and pro-Trump "moderator" Wallace are crushing Biden to dust. Biden is failing. Wallace lets Trump talk over Biden and Biden is unable to fight back.

Maybe this debate will play out the same way for the rest of it. Or, maybe it won't. 

So far, Biden is a shitty, weak debater, while Trump remains a constant liar and an overbearing presence that Fox News Wallace allows. Fox and Wallace are clearly on Trump's side.

Trump is wiping Biden into oblivion.

Well, one can only hope that what appears to me to be Biden's failure tonight does not translate to a failure for most Americans.

I sure hope what I see is not what most Americans see. Maybe I am too critical or out of touch with average Americans. I sure hope so.

Advantage: Trump, his lies and his ability to talk over Biden

Biden: Wuss, unprepared, trampled and weak

I repeat, democrats do not know how to message. I've said that before and I say it again. Or debate. If Biden loses, it is his fault, unless Russians and the FBI intervenes for Trump again.

Well, maybe we're looking at another four years of Trump and the demise of democracy and the rule of law. 

This shows how heavily tilted to liars and deceivers the playing field is and how hard it is for people who stick to facts and reason to fight back. The democrats are clueless. That is on them.

I want a third party -- right now. 

Or, do I overreact as of ~55 minutes into this farce debate? Maybe the rest of this will be different. Maybe 

The President’s Tax Returns Have Leaked Out

Tax avoidance - it’s a family affair for people who are 

not losers and suckers

The New York Times reports that it has obtained and analyzed over 20 years of the president’s tax returns. The bottom line is that he aggressively avoids taxes, but with one possible $72.9 million dollar exception has not committed felony tax evasion. Tax avoidance is legal, but tax evasion is illegal. He paid $750 in federal taxes in 2016 and 2017. He paid no income taxes at all in 10 of the last 15 years. The $72.9 million exception is in a 10 year long audit dispute with the IRS. If he loses that audit battle, he will owe the IRS up to $100 million. The returns the NYT obtained do not include his 2018 or 2019 tax documents.

The American people finally get to know that, based on this information, (1) the president is not a criminal tax cheat, (2) there really is an audit of one of his tax returns, (3) the president is under severe financial stress with $300 million in personally guaranteed loans coming due over the next four years, and (4) the president always reports losses for business operations despite taking in hundreds of millions per year. The losses are used to avoid paying taxes, which is legal tax avoidance. 

What appears to be happening now is that the president is under intense pressure to make money to pay his debts coming due. The massive conflicts of interest this poses are blatant. Such conflicts would have sunk any other politician by now. Given his record of successfully ignoring ethics norms, it is reasonable to believe that this will not have much impact on the president’s re-election or his political power or support. It is also reasonable to think that the president will intervene to make the IRS audit go away.

What we still do not know

This information does not tell the full story of the president’s financial affairs. The NYT writes:

“By their very nature, the filings will leave many questions unanswered, many questioners unfulfilled. They comprise information that Mr. Trump has disclosed to the I.R.S., not the findings of an independent financial examination. They report that Mr. Trump owns hundreds of millions of dollars in valuable assets, but they do not reveal his true wealth. Nor do they reveal any previously unreported connections to Russia.”

What se still do not know is whether the president has undisclosed offshore accounts, which is routine for some wealthy tax cheats. The Panama Papers scandal of glimpse of the size and scope of global tax evasion, which the president may or may not be a part of. We also do not know what undisclosed financial entanglements and debts the president has with Russians. Significant hidden Russian debt would make the president subject to blackmail. 

Continued stonewalling

The NYT also comments on a reaction from a Trump Organization attorney.

“In response to a letter summarizing The Times’s findings, Alan Garten, a lawyer for the Trump Organization, said that “most, if not all, of the facts appear to be inaccurate” and requested the documents on which they were based. After The Times declined to provide the records, in order to protect its sources, Mr. Garten took direct issue only with the amount of taxes Mr. Trump had paid.

“Over the past decade, President Trump has paid tens of millions of dollars in personal taxes to the federal government, including paying millions in personal taxes since announcing his candidacy in 2015,” Mr. Garten said in a statement.

With the term “personal taxes,” however, Mr. Garten appears to be conflating income taxes with other federal taxes Mr. Trump has paid — Social Security, Medicare and taxes for his household employees. Mr. Garten also asserted that some of what the president owed was “paid with tax credits,” a misleading characterization of credits, which reduce a business owner’s income-tax bill as a reward for various activities, like historic preservation.”

The NYT also comments on the reality vs. the appearance of the president as a businessman that hios tax returns show:

“They reveal the hollowness, but also the wizardry, behind the self-made-billionaire image — honed through his star turn on “The Apprentice” — that helped propel him to the White House and that still undergirds the loyalty of many in his base. Ultimately, Mr. Trump has been more successful playing a business mogul than being one in real life.”

The NYT points out that the tax records show that his program, “The Apprentice” and associated licensing and endorsement deals brought in a total of $427.4 million. He invested most of that in various businesses but mostly golf courses, that have consumed the cash over the years. This pattern is much like the money he secretly received from his father, at least $413 million. That financed spending leading to his financial collapse in the early 1990s. The president has publicly asserted that he received only a $1 million loan form his father, which he claims he repaid. The truth is that he received at least $413 million from his father and that he never repaid any of.

The NYT comments on the disconnect between the president’s false assertions of business success and actual reality: “But the returns, by his own account, undercut his claims of financial acumen, showing that he is simply pouring more money into many businesses than he is taking out.” The tax documents show that most of Mr. Trump’s core enterprises, mainly his golf courses and his hotel in Washington, report losing millions of dollars, maybe tens of millions, each year. 

The NYT article is long and loaded with details, mostly unpleasant. For example he claims paying a consultant fee of $747,622. It turns out that amount is precisely what Ivanka Trump disclosed in payments from a consulting company she co-owned. It is hard to believe that the exactly matching amounts were a coincidence. In essence the president avoids paying taxes by laundering alleged business expenses through his adult children.