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'DANCES ON CORPSES'

Trump Wants 1,000 West Point Grads to Return to a Coronavirus Hotspot Just to Hear Him Speak

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West Point Military Academy, America’s oldest military academy, changed its graduation this year because of the coronavirus epidemic. Instead of an in-person event, the academy decided to have a virtual commencement with Vice President Mike Pence as its speaker.

But the day before the virtual event, President Donald Trump “abruptly announced that he would, in fact, be speaking at West Point,” according to The New York Times. So now the academy is “summoning 1,000 cadets scattered across the country to return to campus in New York, the state that is the center of the outbreak.” to hear Trump speak there in-person on Saturday, June 13.

Keep in mind: West Point is located 60 miles north of New York City, and New York is the nation’s number one coronavirus hotspot with over 263,000 confirmed cases and 15,740 deaths so far.

While the seniors were going to have to return to campus at some point in order to “take final exams, pack up their belongings and out-process,” getting them back to campus will involve a lot of precautions and logistical planning.

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper has had to request waivers for the graduating cadets to allow them to fly despite a national ban on travel for military personnel that continues through June 30. It’s unclear whether the graduates’ parents will be allowed to attend.

West Point superintendent Lt. Gen. Darryl A. Williams says seniors will be tested for coronavirus off-campus beforehand, and negative seniors will report to campus for 14 more days of monitoring before the graduation. Each senior will have their own dorm room to avoid contact with others, will have to wear face masks in public, and will be segregated in the mess hall when they eat.

Although a White House spokesperson has said that Trump or the academy could always reschedule or reassess his decision as June 13 creeps closer, especially if the epidemic worsens, Trump has said that he “did not like the look of a socially distanced graduation and that he hoped the ‘look’ of the ceremony would be ‘nice and tight.'”

But in order to keep everyone as safe as possible (after traveling cross-country on airplanes), the 1,000 graduating cadets and their instructors will need to sit six-feet apart from one another. It’s much ado just to so the president can address a military academy.

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'DANCES ON CORPSES'

The White House Stopped the CDC From Requiring Face Masks on Public Transit

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3 years ago

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October 10, 2020

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Last month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) drafted an order that would’ve required passengers and employees to wear face masks on all buses, trains, subways, planes, stations and airports, but the White House blocked it, according to two anonymous federal health officials who spoke with The New York Times.

While Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Alex M. Azar II reportedly approved of the order, the White House Coronavirus Task Force, led by Vice President Mike Pence, said such an order should be left to states and cities to decide.

“Most public health officials believe that wearing masks is one of the most effective ways to protect against the spread of the virus,” the Times wrote, “particularly in crowded, poorly ventilated public places that attract people from all over, like transportation venues.”

Democratic Oregon Representative Peter A. DeFazio, chairman of the House committee on transportation and infrastructure, criticized the Trump Administration for declining the order and endangering the lives of transportation orders. The transportation trades department of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which represents millions of transit workers, said the White House rejected their petition asking for a transportation mask mandate as well.

While enforcing mask use has been the biggest challenge for workers operating under such mandates, the Trump administration’s repeated politicization of face masks was one of the numerous grievances mentioned this week by The New England Journal of Medicine in its first-ever editorial published in its 208-year history.

The editorial, entitled “Dying in a Leadership Vacuum”, called the Trump Administration “dangerously incompetent” and accused it of undermining governors, politicizing both face masks and the vaccine, believing in “charlatans” and sidelining the CDC, the FDA and the National Institutes of Health in important decision making.

“Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences,” the editorial stated.

Granted, this only marks the most recent time that the Trump administration has directly interfered with the CDC’s approach for controlling the ongoing pandemic which continues to infect over 40,000 Americans each day.

Three months ago, the Trump Administration forbade the head of the CDC from publicly discussing the danger of reopening schools, and last month it was revealed that Trump-appointed political officials in HHS had pressured the CDC to change its reports on COVID-19 to conform with Trump’s rosy public statements on the epidemic.

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'DANCES ON CORPSES'

Fox News Displays Chart Showing That Killing Black People Is Good For The Stock Market

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3 years ago

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June 6, 2020

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Fox News chart

On Friday evening, Fox News displayed a bar graph showing how well the stock market performed after historical instances of attacking and killing Black people. It’s a somewhat ghoulish graphic to release following the murders of George Floyd and Jamel Floyd (no relation) by police and the nationwide protests that have received even more police violence.

“Historically there has been a disconnect between what investors focus on and what happens in the rest of the country,” the Fox News anchorwoman said of the graphic. “For instance in 1968, the week after the tragedy of Martin Luther King, the S&P 500 rose over two percent. Also, up the week of the Rodney King ruling.”

The chart’s data seems to have been taken from a Fortune article entitled, “The stock market has a long history of ignoring social upheaval” in which investment research CEO David Trainer said, “Social unrest issues have very little long-term impact on markets.” The article went on to say that the stock markets tend to look ahead to fiscal responses to international trade conditions and support from the federal government rather than immediate civil unrest.

Other news networks also discussed this week how stock markets react to traumatic news, but none had a graphic such as this. And while Fox News didn’t say it, many Twitter users seemed horrified of the graph’s implication that the stock market thrives off of Black death and the network displaying the graphic in the first place.

 

 

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'DANCES ON CORPSES'

‘Who Takes a Victory Lap on Piles of Corpses?’: Trump Blasted as ‘Sociopathic Monster’ for Bragging About 65,000 Deaths

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4 years ago

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April 17, 2020

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President Donald Trump is being blasted for his apparent bragging about and celebrating “only” 60,000 to 65,000 coronavirus deaths. The actual number of Americans who have died so far is currently 37,095, but Trump is projecting a little less than twice that number will lose their lives to the virus he spent months ignoring until it was too late.

Friday evening Trump spent several minutes rattling off a long litany of numbers, comparing his projected coronavirus deaths to other possible horrific death projections, in a clear attempt to frame his disastrous mismanagement of the pandemic. As he did, many took to social media to slam the President’s callous lack of empathy.

“We’ve already built sufficient capacity nationwide so states can begin their re-openings. And I think you’ll be hearing a lot about re-openings in the coming weeks and months,” Trump told reporters during Friday’s coronavirus briefing.

“Most excitingly in the coming weeks I think you’re going to see some very, very dramatic steps taken – and very safely,” Trump bragged.

“When you look at the possible deaths at 2.2 million people – and it could have very well been that, it could have been more,” the president continued, as he continued to pat himself on the back. “Frankly I’ve been looking at numbers where it could have been higher than that. 2.2 million people dying. If you figure we lost 500,000, maybe 600,000 in the Civil War, 2.2 million people, a minimum if we did nothing would have been 1.6, if you cut that in half, you’re talking about 800,000 [to] 900,000 – a million people dying.”

“But we did a lot of work, and the people of this country were incredible, I have to say, I think we’re heading to the other category, that would be if we did work, and if it was successful they had between 100,000 and 220,000 to 240,000 on the upside, and I think we’ll be substantially, hopefully below the ‘100’ number, and I think right now we’re headed probably around ’60,’ maybe 65,000.”

Trump, amid all those numbers, was talking about human being dying from a virus he chose to ignore for months.

“I always say, ‘One is too many,'” Trump claimed. A Google search turns up no statement of Trump having ever said that.

“It’s a horrible thing that happened to our country,” he added, presumably referring to the coronavirus.

The President was immediately taken to task for praising himself and celebrating.

 

 

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