Man, a jam-packed Slog AM. It's somewhat reassuring (I guess) to see that Americans were just as ignorant in 1918 as we are now. I've been wondering lately, how did the 1918 flu pandemic come to an end? No doubt it did, and without a vaccine. I went to the Wikipedia page and the CDC site and couldn't quite find anything. Maybe somebody else out there knows.

Interesting. We've found that this blog's army of cranks and trolls have held fast to a sort of magical thinking that borders are porous and closing them makes no difference in the face of this pandemic.

And yet, look what's happened. There appears to be a correlation between a nation's willingness to close its borders and its success in combatting the virus. From Michelle Goldberg's NY Times column today (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/opinion/us-coronavirus-trump.html):
"If you’re lucky enough to live in New Zealand, the coronavirus nightmare has been mostly over since June. After more than two weeks with no new cases, the government lifted almost all restrictions that month. The borders are still shut, but inside the country, normal life returned."

And from an interesting comment on the same column (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/opinion/us-coronavirus-trump.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage#commentsContainer&permid=108117125) about how Vietnam has been a success story:
"Vietnam acted early in a coordinated and consistent manner by closing borders, implementing strict quarantine, closing schools, restaurants, bars, etc., and other public places for a couple of months."

And of course the coup de grace. Try finding an advanced nation that Americans are allowed to visit anymore.

That target is part of a shopping center, not a mall. It opens onto its own parking lot. and isn't within anything.

Speaking of not repeating past Mistakes:

Remarkable, aint it, how the fake prez’s hideously-failing administration hasn’t (yet) issued CV-IXX-infested masks to all low/moderate-income/off-White Citizens...

Repubs are off their Game.

Oh, wait:

It’s Back To SCHOOL, everyone!

Get tf OUT there
& MINGLE!

Like there’s No
fucking Tomorrow.

Repubs: you crack me Up!

Very concerning that Trump hasn't arrested the Clinton pedophile ring like Q promised. Strange how Hillary isn't in jail but all of the Presidents advisors are. Surely this Gislane Maxwell testimony will put all them in jail soon. Been taking hydroxycut to keep from getting carona and I can tell it's working since my heart rate is up. Just be burning that virus up.

Quit your whining about how the tear gas industry is built on tax breaks and low-wage temp workers because that's exactly what the protest industry is built upon.

I want an answer from the Stranger why Katie is still employed (Although thankfully gone right now)? I want to hear from any trans writers on staff (I assume you don't have any with Katie on staff and so supported). I want to know why you let her troll and hurt others for some flimsy devils advocate role. Why not hire her other Harpers letter signing TERF Jesse Signal? Is it because Katie isn't as directly cruel YET? Are you really waiting for your on-staff edgelord to level up and become a problem you have to beg forgiveness for? Can someone pin where on the white supremacy map this is? White management keeping on a white cis women who taunts trans people and has no value to your paper? When there are tons of trans voices? I know it's on there somewhere.

Speaking of insidiously chronic Republican insanity: from today’s NYT: Attention All Women: Trump Is Coming for Your Health Care

Even with a pandemic raging, the president wants the Supreme Court to strike down the Affordable Care Act.

By Kathleen Sebelius (Ms. Sebelius, a former governor of Kansas, was the secretary of health and human services in the Obama administration.)

Here’s the Top Comment on the (awesome) article:

“My first daughter was born by caesarean in a French hospital 40 years ago and after my (at the time) mandatory 10 day recovery period and wonderful care, I walked out of the hospital with my newborn and zero hospital bills. I had six weeks paid maternity leave before the birth and ten weeks after.

I will always remember a conversation with my sister in the US a short time afterward, when she told me that the private school where she taught was having to find a new health insurer because one of the women on the staff had given birth to twins and the company decided that was a “risk factor” they no longer wished to assume. As a woman I was horrified and disgusted at the idea that a pregnancy would be cause to lose health insurance.

Without wishing to sound maudlin I will be forever grateful, for the care and respect shown to me, not just as a woman but as a human being, by the French healthcare system throughout my reproductive life and later through successful treatment for breast cancer, and without ever having to spend one minute worrying about the financial implications for me and my family.

I can’t understand how Americans have not been able to put in place a healthcare system which does not treat them as either a cash cow or an unacceptable risk to the insurer’s bottom line. It is cruel and inhumane.”

--Susan, Paris July 13

Relax, Susan – it’s just how Repubs Prefer it.
If they cannot Farm the citizenry,
why even HAVE a 'Country'?
They sold their Souls
ages ago.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/opinion/obamacare-aca-trump-women.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/13/opinion/obamacare-aca-trump-women.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage#commentsContainer

@12 Why would you waste time arguing with The Stranger? The enormous strength of character required to succeed as a trans person is usually quite sufficient armor against the slings and arrows of malicious TERFs and fellow travelers like Katie Herzog. Chill.

Bari Weiss's resignation letter from the NYT deserves to be read in its entirety:

https://www.bariweiss.com/resignation-letter

Excerpt:

All this bodes ill, especially for independent-minded young writers and editors paying close attention to what they’ll have to do to advance in their careers. Rule One: Speak your mind at your own peril. Rule Two: Never risk commissioning a story that goes against the narrative. Rule Three: Never believe an editor or publisher who urges you to go against the grain. Eventually, the publisher will cave to the mob, the editor will get fired or reassigned, and you’ll be hung out to dry.

@11:

Yeah, I remember when Congress passed all those tax breaks after massive amounts of lobbying from the Protest Industry (I believe Protestitall, Inc. alone spent nearly $11 mm!) - I think it was just after the post-WTO upswing in the industry in the early aughts.

And yeah, the low-wage worker problem has been around for literally forever - I mean, when an industry practically has people BEGGING to work for them - many willing to volunteer their time, energy and occasionally even sacrifice their LIVES - it's difficult to enact the sort of regulation on the sector that would ensure living-wage jobs, particularly what with all the outsourcing to notoriously low-wage places like Hong Kong, France, and others.

@17 The only difference between today and any point in the whole of human history is who gets to decide what can and cannot be said in polite company - it has been democratized in a way that was never possible before. For better or for ill.

Alas for Bari Weiss - she kissed up to the wrong people.

"Biden Releases $2 Trillion Climate Plan

Mr. Biden’s plan links tackling climate change with economic recovery from the coronavirus and addressing racism, drawing praise from onetime critics."

Smokin' Fuckin' JOE:
He's got MY Votes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/biden-climate-plan.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

raindrop @17, thanks for sharing the sad news about Bari Weiss resigning from the NY Times. I was not aware of that. I'm curious where you came across that news.

It's shameful that The Times fired James Bennet. It says something that Weiss had the guts to resign as a result. When it comes to the right's toxic blend of serving the economic elites while serving identity politics to the masses and putting your fingers in your ears about any inconvenient facts and science, the answer is not to create the same toxic blend on the left.

@8, @13, & @20 kristofarian: What if Trumpty Dumpty's nefarious plot to kill off U.S. citizens by shrugging off the deadly seriousness of COVID-19 actually worked to reduce the interbreeding numbers of MAGA tools? Could there actually be a cure in 2020 for stupidity?
Meanwhile, I'm voting Democratic Blue, No Matter Who.

@21 Its all over the place. You should read her resignation letter - pure snowflake distillate. She's mad because the rabble are openly mocking her at the office.

She'll be happier in whatever Wingnut Welfare sinecure she lands in.

Hi cressona, it came from today's AM Slog (right below "old" cartoon), embellished with Rich's snarky scare quotes:

Also, FYI, NYT columnist Bari Weiss has resigned "with sadness:"

@25 I know, right? - lets see what Phil Donohue or the Dixie Chicks have to say about it.

For thousands of years, the parameters of discourse were set by decree from the Throne and Altar. But first the printing press disrupted that order and now the internet has blown it to smithereens.

Finally the administration admits that there is no way to bring your coal job and its time to #findsomethingelse. Cool that Ivanka want you to learn to code.

Free speech is when I'm winning the argument. Cancel culture is when you're winning.

@25: That's why a good editorial board accommodates assorted pundits from across the political spectrum to contribute their own "out-of-touch" angles to provide a rich and varied experience for its readers.

And from time to time the NYT does that, but not nearly enough.

Didn't Weiss work to get an outspoken Palestinian professor fired? People like her and her admiring Andy Ngo fan Herzog are master manipulators of information to fit their own narratives of victimhood that they use to avoid accountability.

I don't think Herzog's work on Evergreen ever even acknowledged that faculty of color were getting death threats after she and people bigger than her amplified the voices of the "poor me" whites on campus. She should have been fired for incompetence for that alone.

Kind of surprised @30 isn't celebrating the execution of a homicidal lawbreaker who killed an entire family.

Rich would be so much happier in Portland. Seattle is never going to change Rich; you're going to be perpetually angry and unhappy living here.

The anger over Herzog in not unlike the pearl clutching over Lenny Bruce in the 60's. Back then, libs were open minded.

@45: It is plausible that David has a subscription to the NYT. But to hang your hat on the possibility that David is lying is a childish retort. Same with every paranormal powers of observation schtick you bore us with.

@26 Let's see are you implying that screechers on Twitter deciding what can be stated publicly (and who gets to keep their job) is better than the 'throne and altar' deciding it? Anyone who was not born yesterday, is afflicted with severe amnesia or is an authoritarian thug should be disturbed about the current trend towards policy driven by histrionic mob. What is most troubling is far too many nitwits on the fringe left seem to be oblivious to the fact that if the pendulum of public opinion swings one way it will surely swing back the other way. When the reactionaries are back I expect the backlash will be severe (Tom Cotton for prez?).

@52 I got a sneaking suspicion you are a member of one or more of them as apparently you imagine a garden variety liberal like Katie Herzog is some sort of right-wing crank.

@58 'Policy' in terms of government policy might not be exactly the most appropriate term, although there are certainly plenty that have been the result of paroxysms of outrage from the easily outraged. Shrieking morally righteous banshees on social media are regularly getting people fired, forced to resign, 'de-platformed' what have you. This is as clear as the sun in the sky. Most of the people this is happening to I despise, nonetheless the assertion that censorship via fringe left mob is somehow an improvement over censorship via 'the throne and the altar' is dubious at best. The fact you seem to be applauding the 'de-platforming' of Katie Herzog seems to suggest you think it is. Don't see how pointing that out qualifies as an 'ad hominem' attack.

@61,

As long as there's a quiver of a heartbeat emanating from that woman's chest, she won't step down from the court. And even if you got your morbid wish and she passed sometime in the next couple months, congress would be hard pressed to confirm a nominee prior to November.

The next nomination is gonna be Biden's to make and the only real curiosity at this point is whether he'll give Garland his due or look elsewhere.

Its cool that the president has ordered the police to kill more white people than under Obama but couldn't we kill fewer white and black people to get the ratio down instead?

@2 one can make a deduction form the from the Wikipedia page where you "couldn't quite find anything [specific]"
" Lasting from February 1918 to April 1920, it infected 500 million people–about a third of the world's population at the time–in four successive waves. The death toll is typically estimated to have been somewhere between 17 million and 50 million,"

Look to me like it killed a fairly large proportion of those that were likely to die from it then "herd immunity" had a chance. A method some are advocating now. But consider that the worlds population is quite a bit larger now and the current world wide Covid-19 deaths are only about a thirtieth of the lower estimate of the 1918, pandemic. If there were even, say, a ten fold increase in deaths it would not be popular with most people, sure Dave and the other trolls will volunteer (someone else) but most people will not be so willing.

@61 you forget, there is a precedent for not allowing a supreme court nomination to be confirmed in the in the last year of a presidents term. Well, I suppose there is the fact that said precedent was set by shameless hypocrites.

@68 - I'm looking forward to him nominating Hillary, and after the right wing has their strokes, withdrawing her and installing Obama.

If Bari Weiss is a centrist I’m Karl Marx.

That's pretty fucking amusing, that lickspittle Scavino calling Fauci his "colleague."

Fun to see David in Shoreline drop the charade finally. Now if only raindrop would do the same. That might require too much honest self-reflection though, and finding something besides his public political masochism to tickle his kink.

Oh Knat, do elaborate, if you dare.

"This is the new normal. We're encouraging people to contact their city officials, because they're talking about defunding us by 50%...I'm about done with it myself."

I wish the "this is the new normal" shtick were true. Seattle police have always had endless excuses not to do their job and this is only the most recent iteration. The "I'm about done myself" line has been around for over 2 decades as well, but they have been little more than violent welfare queens feeding on the teet of government and offering the city no value for a long time.

Policing has not seen a single penny cut from their budget and are already using this new "we will stop doing the job we never did in the first place" excuse, but anyone who has called in a property crime, or violent crime like rape or murder over the past 5 years at a time when their budget was skyrocketing 50% has already head their bag of excuses why they should be highly paid to not do their job.

That's why we will see little to no increase in crime if we cut their budget 50% despite their most recent hysterics. For crime to go up you would need to presume they were ever doing their job before the cut, and they weren't.

What will change is that in CHOP like fashion, all the usual unsolved murders, rapes and theft will be blamed on the pay cut, as if they ever focused on solving such crimes in the first place.

No matter how much we cut their budget, they will remain hyper-focused on asset forfeiture, beating to a pulp anyone who challenges their childish authority and tax paid sex with sex workers in the name of "saving the women and girls." A thugs gotta thug and a 50% cut isn't going to slow their life of crime.

@77 Ah yes 'accountable'. Are all fringe left apologists for those who wish to eradicate everything that offends them comparing notes? It's funny that you bring up this term as I have been seeing it pop up everywhere twits are in a frenzy about that Harper's letter decrying the conspicuously escalating leftist illiberalism. When I read Billy Bragg in the Guardian engage in this semantic gobbledegook, admittedly a musician not a journalist, after starting out his wobbly apologia dinging George Orwell, what was brought to mind was this scene in the HBO series Chernobyl where the head of the head of the KGB tells Legasov that the KGB is all about 'accountability'. Uncanny similarities to how this euphemism for censorship is being employed presently.