The Commentariat -- March 1, 2020

Afternoon Update:

News Flash! Gail Collins Hopes Millions Will Die & Make Trump Look Bad. Zack Budryk of the Hill: "NBC's Chuck Todd in an interview broadcast Sunday pressed Vice President Pence on his condemnation of 'irresponsible rhetoric' from Democrats on the coronavirus, asking him to cite specific examples. Todd played a series of clips from conservative commentators, including talk radio host Rush Limbaugh, who accused Democrats of having 'weaponized' the virus, and Donald Trump Jr., who said his father's opponents were trying to 'take a pandemic and seemingly hope that it comes here and kills millions of people so that they could end Donald Trump's streak of winning.' 'None of this seems to match the facts. What facts are there that Democrats are doing this?... ' Todd said. 'Well, I will tell you, there's been a lot of irresponsible rhetoric among Democrats and commentators on the left,' Pence ... said. 'Name some names, sir. Because it just feels like gaslighting...,' Todd responded. Pence eventually cited a New York Times column by Gail Collins, whom he did not name, with the headline 'Let's Call It Trumpvirus,' demurring when Todd asked if that applies 'to all people.'" ~~~

     ~~~ Mediaite has video here (begins at about 45 sec. in). Mrs. McCrabbie: If pence had actually read Collins' column, he would find that nowhere in the column does she suggest that the coronavirus needs a new name. Rather, the column cites example after example -- all culled from the news/those nasty little things called facts -- of how Trump & the gang are downplaying the seriousness of the epidemic and mismanaging mitigation. Or are just plain clueless. But still. In her heart, I'll bet Gail -- whom Trump once criticized for having "The Face of a Dog!" -- wants to kill off a sizable chunk of the population so Donald Trump won't enjoy so much winning.

David Sanger of the New York Times takes a sober look at Trump's Afghan "peace deal": "President Trump has left no doubt that his first priority in Afghanistan is a peace treaty that would enable him to claim that he is fulfilling his vow to withdraw American troops. But a parade of his former national security aides say he is far less interested in an actual Afghan peace. And that creates an enormous risk for Mr. Trump and for Afghanistan: that, like President Richard M. Nixon's peace deal with North Vietnam in January 1973, the accord signed Saturday will speed an American exit and do little to stabilize an allied government.... The accord signed on Saturday -- with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo overseeing the moment but not actually signing it himself -- will initially bring down American troop levels to about 8,600 from about 12,000 now. That is almost exactly where they were three years ago, at the end of Mr. Obama's term."

~~~~~~~~~~

Biden Blowout

Jonathan Martin & Alexander Burns of the New York Times: "Joseph R. Biden Jr. scored a decisive victory in the South Carolina primary on Saturday, reviving his listing campaign and establishing himself as the leading candidate to slow Senator Bernie Sanders as the turbulent Democratic race turns to a slew of coast-to-coast contests on Tuesday. Propelled by an outpouring of support from South Carolina's African-American voters, Mr. Biden easily overcame a late effort by Mr. Sanders to upset the former vice-president in a state he has long seen as his firewall. His victory will vault Mr. Biden into Super Tuesday, where polls open in just over 48 hours, as the clear alternative to Mr. Sanders for establishment-aligned Democrats." ~~~

~~~ The New York Times' South Carolina primary vote count is here. Networks called the win for Biden as soon as the polls closed. Both the NYT & WashPo are currently posting some results on their front pages. A related Guardian story is here. Mrs. McC: Biden won an astounding 48.4 percent of the vote, with 100 percent reporting, and Sanders -- his next closest rival -- got nearly 20 percent. Only Biden & Sanders will get convention delegates from South Carolina.

Cleve Wootson & Michael Scherer of the Washington Post: "Former vice president Joe Biden decisively won the South Carolina primary Saturday, as the first Southern primary contest reshaped the race and dealt a blow to the surging candidacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders. The win pumped new life into Biden's struggling campaign, as he became the first candidate to score a clear-cut victory against Sanders this year, boosting his efforts to become the major alternative to the liberal senator. Still, Sanders (I-Vt.) is polling strongly in several of the Super Tuesday states that vote this week, and it could yet prove difficult for any of his competitors to catch up."

Jonathan Chait argues that Joe Biden is now the only plausible candidate who can best Bernie Sanders.

Adam Edelman, et al., of NBC News: "Tom Steyer, the California activist billionaire who has largely been a nonfactor in the Democratic primary campaign, dropped out of the race on Saturday night. Steyer's departure came after a disappointing finish in the South Carolina Democratic primary. With 70 percent of the vote in, Steyer had just 11.5 percent of the vote -- despite spending millions of dollars on campaigning there.... His exit came after he'd spent a total of $158 million on television and radio ads, according to Advertising Analytics. In South Carolina alone, Steyer had spent nearly $21 million as of Tuesday, the firm said." Mrs. McC: The only people sad about this are owners of local TV franchises in upcoming primary states.

Justin Wise of the Hill: "Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) raised more than $46 million from approximately 2.2 million donations in February, his 2020 presidential campaign announced Sunday."

Olivia Rubin of ABC: "For nearly 20 years as an up and coming politician,Bernie Sanders supported ideas on what causes cancer outside of the mainstream, such as sexual inactivity as a cause of breast cancer.... [In an] essay published in The Vermont Freeman and previously reported, [Sanders] extensively and approvingly cites studies suggesting a relationship between 'inhibited sexuality' and cancer risks.... One study he cited in the 1969 piece found that women who achieve orgasm less frequently during intercourse were more likely to contract cervical cancer. Another found that women who achieve fewer orgasms were 'biologically weakened' and are therefore 'highly susceptible to cancer producing stimuli' more generally." --s ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: I'm not so sure how nutty these ideas are. I recall reading, in that same time frame, a study whose results were republished in some mainstream news outlet, that nuns -- so presumbly virgins -- were statistically less likely to get cervical cancer than were women in the general population. That's at odds with Sanders' suggestions, of course, but the point is that it wasn't insane to examine links between sexual activity & some kinds of cancer.

"The Pied Pipers of the Dirtbag Left Want to Lead Everyone to Bernie Sanders." Nellie Bowles of the New York Times: "As Mr. Sanders rises in the polls and claims strong showings in early states, a new set of media stars is on the rise, too.... They are on their way to becoming the socialist's answer to right-wing shock jock radio. Their primary targets, in evidence at that show in Iowa, are not the Republican Party or even Mr. Trump but rather centrist liberals, whom they see as the major obstacle to a workers' revolution. In blurring occasionally violent humor, jovial community meetups and radical politics, they are the Tea Party reborn for progressives, and for their fans the appeal is in a bawdy offensive balance to cautious mainstream liberal politics." (Also linked yesterday.)

Coming to a Neighborhood Near You. Benjamin Siegel & Armando Garcia of ABC News: "... Mike Bloomberg's campaign on Saturday will begin a massive voter outreach push, with plans to hold more than 2,400 events across 30 states ahead of Super Tuesday, ABC News has learned. The mobilization drive, beginning as the rest of the Democratic field remained focused on the South Carolina primary, is a show of force meant to highlight the scale of Bloomberg's nationwide operation." Mrs. McC: I see this as less of a "show of force" than of a project that will be a boon to all Democratic candidates. This is where Bloomberg's utility to Democrats always has been. His candidacy per se is, at best, superfluous, and at worst, harmful to candidates who could oust Trump. (Also linked yesterday.)

Justin Baragona of the Daily Beast (Feb. 28): "Days after MSNBC host Chris Matthews came under fire for his sexist run-in with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), columnist Laura Bassett claimed in a piece for GQ that the veteran MSNBC personality sexually harassed her in 2016 -- something she had previously written about in 2017 without revealing Matthews' name. According to Bassett, the married MSNBC host approached her when she was in a make-up chair prior to appearing on his show to talk about -- ironically enough -- the sexual-assault allegations made against then-nominee Donald Trump.... It was reported in late 2017 that NBC had paid separation compensation to a producer who accused Matthews of sexually harassing her. The network claimed at the time that the host had been 'formally reprimanded' over the incident. Besides that incident, Matthews has a history of both objectifying women on-air ... or expressing contempt for women he thinks are acting 'witchy' or 'anti-male.'" Bassett's GQ story is here. A Daily Beast account of his exchange with Warren is here. ~~~

     ~~~ Maxwell Tani of the Daily Beast: "A day after he was accused of sexual harassment by a journalist, MSNBC decided to keep host Chris Matthews off its airwaves during coverage of the South Carolina primary results. Matthews is normally a fixture of election night coverage, which made his absence on Saturday all the more notable." ~~~

     ~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: If you want to know how seriously NBC suits take repeated incidents of (alleged) sexual harassment, there's this. A person who co-anchored last night's MSNBC coverage of the South Carolina primary was Brian Williams. In 2015, NBC News suspended Williams -- then the managing editor & anchor of "Nightly News" -- for six months without pay for exaggerating an Iraq war story which he witnessed. The network then sent him down to the minors: an 11 pm daily show on MSNBC, no doubt at exponentially less pay than his former top news job garnered. Matthews? MSNBC gave him Saturday night off. ~~~

     ~~~ AND, uh, all black men look alike? ~~~

~~~ Cristina Cabrera of TPM: "MSNBC host Chris Matthews has really been on a roll lately. As he was interviewing Jaime Harrison, a Democratic candidate who seeks to unseat Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), on Friday night, Matthews saw live footage of Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) with Graham at President Donald Trump's campaign rally in South Carolina and somehow believed the man he was talking to in real time was the same person he was seeing at that rally. 'Jaime, I see you next to the guy you're going to beat right there, maybe, maybe, maybe, Lindsey Graham,' Matthews said to Harrison, who was being interviewed remotely..." --s

Darlene Superville & Zeke Miller of the AP: "The U.S. is banning travel to Iran in response to the outbreak of the new coronavirus and elevating travel warnings to regions of Italy and South Korea. Vice President Mike Pence announced the new restrictions and warnings as ... Donald Trump said 22 people in the U.S. have been stricken by the new coronavirus, of whom one has died and four are deemed 'very ill' and that additional cases are 'likely.'... Trump spoke a day after he denounced criticism of his response to the threat as a 'hoax' cooked up by his political enemies. Speaking at a rally in South Carolina he accused Democrats of 'politicizing' the coronavirus threat.... 'They tried the impeachment hoax. ... This is their new hoax,' Trump said of Democratic denunciations of his administration's coronavirus response. Trump said Saturday he was not trying to minimize the threat of the virus. 'Again, the hoax was used in respect to Democrats and what they were saying,' he said'" (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~

     ~~~ William Wan, et al., of the Washington Post: "At the hastily convened news conference, Trump described the patient who died as a 'wonderful woman' in her late 50s. CDC later issued a statement saying it had mistakenly described the patient's gender in a briefing to Trump and Vice President Pence, and local health officials clarified the deceased patient was a man." ~~~

It's complete chaos. Everyone is just trying to get a handle on what the [fuck] is going on. -- Senior Administration Official, on Trump admin's response to coronavirus crisis ~~~

~~~ Yasmeen Abutaleb, et al., of the Washington Post: "Minutes before President Trump was preparing Wednesday to reassure a skittish nation about the coronavirus threat, he received a piece of crucial information: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had identified in California the first U.S. case of the illness not tied to foreign travel, a sign that the virus's spread in the United States was likely to explode. But when Trump took to the lectern for a news conference intended to bring transparency to the spiraling global crisis, he made no explicit mention of the California case and its implications -- and falsely suggested the virus might soon be eradicated in the United States. Trump's playing down of the California patient at his news conference underscores the administration's slapdash and often misleading attempts to contain not just the virus, but also potential political damage from the outbreak.... By the time he landed at Joint Base Andrews [after his visit to India], Trump was already over what he considered an alarmist response by his administration and also thought he was being treated unfairly by the media."

Time Out for CPAC. Rachel Chason & Colby Itkowitz of the Washington Post: "President Trump sought to assure his supporters Saturday that the coronavirus is under control after earlier confirming the first U.S. death attributed to the infection and boasted of the country's great economic comeback after Wall Street's worst week since the 2008 financial crisis. Rallying conservatives eights months before the election, Trump mocked the height of Democratic candidate and former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg, crouching at the lectern for dramatic effect, called Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) a 'lowlife' for his vote to convict the president on an article of impeachment and described Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) as a 'crazy professor.' Against the backdrop of a growing global virus and the South Carolina Democratic primary, Trump delivered a 90-minute speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in which he crowed about his political success in 2016, lashed out at his preferred targets -- Democrats and the news media -- and polled the audience on which of his rivals would be easier to beat in November." ~~~

     ~~~ Tina Nguyen of Politico: "But Trump's remarks [at CPAC] were ... more subdued than his appearance the night before at a campaign event in South Carolina, where he whipped up the crowd by suggesting his political opponents were weaponizing the virus as a 'new hoax' against his presidency. Trump reassured supporters that those who had been infected were doing well, and that everything would turn out for the best, though he did not acknowledge the first death from the fast-spreading virus.... Trump didn't linger on the coronavirus, and he soon deployed a familiar arsenal against his enemies, hitting on several topics that he often mentions in campaign speeches."

American Oversight: "Senior members of the Trump administration, including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and then-National Security Adviser John Bolton had agreed that U.S. security assistance funding to Ukraine should 'continue as planned,' according to a new email from August released by the Department of Defense on Friday to American Oversight. The August 26, 2019, email from a senior career Pentagon official states that there was 'no ongoing interagency review process with respect to USAI [Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative],' and states clearly: 'Final decision rests with POTUS.'... Critically, the email appears to contradict the White House budget office's stated rationale for withholding the aid. In emails and formal apportionment 'footnotes' beginning on July 25, 2019, Office of Management and Budget officials repeatedly told the Defense Department that the Ukraine aid freeze was necessary to allow for an 'interagency process to determine the best use of such funds.' Administration officials had also been instructed to tell Congress that this was the reason for the delay of funding." (Also linked yesterday.)

Justin Wingerter of The Denver Post: "Three weeks after becoming the first U.S. senator in history to vote to convict a president of his own party, Republican Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah stopped in Denver on Friday night to discuss the state of democracies around the world. Romney was joined by Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the former prime minister of Denmark.... 'I am so honored to be on stage with what I would say is a true profile in courage,' Rasmussen said of Romney during his opening remarks, prompting a standing ovation from the crowd of about 300 people in a packed university auditorium." --s

Way Beyond the Beltway

BBC News: "Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his partner Carrie Symonds are engaged and are expecting a baby in early summer, the couple have announced.... Mr Johnson, 55, and Ms Symonds, 31, became the first unmarried couple to occupy Downing Street when they moved in last year. Ms Symonds is also the youngest partner of a prime minister in 174 years. In a post on her private Instagram account, she wrote: 'Many of you already know but for my friends that still don't, we got engaged at the end of last year... and we've got a baby hatching early summer. Feel incredibly blessed.'" Mrs. McC: I hope you're all ever-so-happy for the lucky couple.

News Ledes

New York Times: "Researchers who have examined the genomes of two coronavirus infections in Washington State say the similarities between the cases suggest that the virus may have been spreading in the state for weeks. Washington had the United States' first confirmed case of coronavirus, announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Jan. 20. Based on an analysis of the virus's genetic sequence, another case that surfaced in the state and was announced on Friday probably was descended from that first case. The two people live in the same county, but are not known to have had contact with one another, and the second case occurred well after the first would no longer be expected to be contagious. So the genetic findings suggest that the virus has been spreading through other people in the community for close to six weeks, according to one of the scientists who compared the sequences, Trevor Bedford, an associate professor at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center...."

The New York Times' live updates of developments in the coronavirus epidemic are here.

Comments

[PD Pepe]

And now there are five. Tommy is out, Biden beat Bernie, Pete holds his own, Amy isn't gaining and Lizzie is still gunning for Bloomberg whose wallet weighs a ton. But we still have miles to go and ya never know––could be at the end of it all Uncle Joe warms the hearts of all Mericans. Listening to part of his speech yesterday I was struck once again of how many times he connects himself with Obama–-we could say, as we did with LBJ, that he's riding in on the coat-tails of ...

Re: Chris Matthews: Have always found him infuriating–-a blowhard, and full of himself. And I, too, said after his mistaken identity, "And, uh, all black men look alike?"

The connection with orgasmic experiences and cancer proclaimed once upon a time by Sanders and obviously others is pure junk science. There was a study that connected women who developed cervical cancer who had had sex with uncircumcised men (bacteria build up under foreskin). As far as Nuns here is some info, on that from John Hopkins Med:

QUESTION: Why do nuns have a high rate of breast cancer?

ANSWER: We have known for hundreds of years that nuns have a higher incidence of breast cancer when compared to other groups of women. The link with reproduction was long suspected but not really proved until a British study evaluated data from more than 150,000 women in 30 countries. The connection is, in fact, hormonal and related to fluctuations in estrogen levels during pregnancy and breastfeeding. For a long time doctors wondered why it was only breast and not cervical cancer, which is rare in nuns. The answer, now obvious, is that cervical cancer is not the result of hormonal fluctuation. Rather, it develops from the sexually transmitted human papillomaviruses (HPVs)."

The more women breast feed the less chance of breast cancer. Given that females are responsible for the birth of the human (and other species) race, it stands to reason there should be great benefits. Reminding ourselves of our animal natures should keep us somewhat humble; yet there are those who would deny any connection with the monkeys in the Zoo––but can easily envision that GUY in the sky. It really is quite amazing.

Perhaps Victoria could weigh in on this.

Meanwhile the virus spreads.

[Ken Winkes]

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/president-ghani-rejects-peace-deal-prisoner-swap-taliban-200301082216180.html

So this landmark agreement to talk about coming to a possible agreement someday maybe, would seem to have even less substance than the original (before those darn Dems intervened to improve it) NAFTA 2.0.

Again, no surprise. We know the Pretender is always eager to give away other people's money, so why would we expect him to have a problem giving away human rights he doesn't have and even prisoners he doesn't hold.

Hell of a deal.

One would guess that any garment with so many loose strings is bound to unravel. May it do so in the months before November.

[Ken Winkes]

Substitute one word in this CNN headline and….well, you all know the rest.

"Netanyahu is fighting for power like his freedom depends on it -- and it might"

https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/01/middleeast/israel-election-feb-2020-netanyahu-intl/index.html

[Anonymous]

Since Biden's win in SC, the speculation on a VP is at fever pitch, with Harris at the top. Agree that the VP, regardless which old white guy gets the nod as the nominee, is really important. But...can you imagine the potential game over if Obama would agree to be Secretary of State for even the 1st two years of a Biden term. Sanders is stuck in adolescent rebellion and too egocentric to think about anything but being addressed as 46.

[Anonymous]

If you are interested, an Article in Science explains the technical basis of bungling the COVI -19 test in the US.

https://bit.ly/2TvyXhM

[unwashed]

I just called my local Chinese restaurant for dinner. I ordered the #C27 combination platter, Wuhan chicken, with an extra egg roll. They failed to see my humor.