Badge of Honor by Nancy OhanianThe Washington Post's Josh Dawson and Lena Sun reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suddenly and inexplicably removed specifics on choirs in its guidelines for houses of worship to reopen. Trump had been pestering them to do so for two weeks. After thousands of church-goers around the world contracted COVID-19 during services, the CDC had included "The act of singing may contribute to transmission of Covid-19, possibly through emission of aerosols" in their guidelines and Trump got that removed. That's just one of many examples of how the Republican Party Death Cult is trying every which way to politicize the pandemic and continue spiking the death rates.Yesterday, Bob Egelko reported for the San Francisco Chronicle on the surprise Supreme Court ruling against Trump and others rushing to open everything up too soon and without precautions. "With a deciding vote from Chief Justice John Roberts," wrote Egelko, "the Supreme Court late Friday allowed Gov. Gavin Newsom to restrict attendance at religious services in California to 25% of the capacity of a house of worship because of the coronavirus. The justices voted 5-4 to reject a challenge by a Pentecostal church in Chula Vista (San Diego County) and its bishop, who claimed the state was discriminating against religious institutions by setting undue limits on attendance."
In his first round of reopenings in early May, Newsom allowed some previously closed businesses to resume limited operations, such as curbside pickups, but refused to allow in-person religious services. After a divided federal appeals court upheld his decision on May 22, the governor announced new rules three days later allowing congregations to meet in person but limiting attendance to 25% of the building’s capacity, with a maximum gathering of 100.The standards, in effect for 21 days, discourage such activities as sharing prayer books and ritual items as well as personal contact and congregational singing, all of which can spread the coronavirus.President Trump has denounced such restrictions in California and elsewhere and ordered governors to rescind them, though he has not cited any federal law authorizing him to overrule state officials’ decisions on which institutions to reopen.Roberts joined the court’s more liberal justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor, in denying an injunction sought by the South Bay United Pentecostal Church. Writing only for himself, the chief justice said detailed decisions on health-related issues should generally be left to “politically accountable” state officials unless they clearly violate a constitutional right such as religious freedom.“Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time,” Roberts said. He said Newsom’s order “exempts or treats more leniently only dissimilar activities, such as operating grocery stores, banks, and laundromats, in which people neither congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for extended periods.”Dissenting Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected Roberts’ comparison and said Newsom was restricting houses of worship more severely than businesses, in violation of religious freedom.“Comparable secular businesses are not subject to a 25% occupancy cap, including factories, offices, supermarkets, restaurants, retail stores, pharmacies, shopping malls, pet grooming shops, bookstores, florists, hair salons, and cannabis dispensaries,” Kavanaugh said.Noting that the church had agreed to require social distancing and hygiene measures if allowed to fully open its doors, Kavanaugh asked, “Why can someone safely walk down a grocery store aisle but not a pew?” Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch joined his dissent, while Justice Samuel Alito dissented for unstated reasons.
Congressman Will Hurd (R-TX) was one of many people begging Trumpanzee to reverse his insane decision Friday to severe U.S. ties with the World Health Organization-- one of the scapegoats for his own incompetence and the dysfunction of his regime. Hurd wrote that "leaving the WHO sends the message that the world cannot count on the United States" and that while WHO made mistakes in its response to the coronavirus spread, walking away from the organization will make it much harder to prevent the spread of future disease across the globe. Hurd, who is leaving Congress primarily because he can't stand dealing with Trump any longer: "International coalitions are essential to fighting global challenges; we should be strengthening our alliances, not dismantling them... President Trump's recent decision to terminate America's role in the World Health Organization will have devastating effects on global health, and it will benefit the Chinese Communist Party."Meanwhile, the European Union also called on the swinish, pig-headed orange monstrosity to reconsider. Yesterday, in a joint statement, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell made it clear that, once again, the psychotic Trump is on his own:
As the world continues to fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the main task for everyone is to save lives and contain and mitigate this pandemic. The European Union continues to support the WHO in this regard and has already provided additional funding.In an EU-led resolution adopted by consensus on 19 May at the World Health Assembly, all WHO Member States agreed to initiate, at the earliest appropriate moment, an impartial, independent and comprehensive evaluation to review lessons learnt from the international health response to the coronavirus, notably with the objective of strengthening future global health security preparedness.Evaluating our global response is necessary as there are lessons to be learnt from this pandemic, its outbreak and response to it. The evaluation of our collective performance at international level is only a necessary process, aiming at strengthening health security.Global cooperation and solidarity through multilateral efforts are the only effective and viable avenues to win this battle the world is facing. The WHO needs to continue being able to lead the international response to pandemics, current and future. For this, the participation and support of all is required and very much needed. In the face of this global threat, now is the time for enhanced cooperation and common solutions. Actions that weaken international results must be avoided. In this context, we urge the US to reconsider its announced decision.
The Cure by Nancy OhanianAmerican public health officials have also reacted with alarm to Pig-Man's horrific decision-- another in a long list of wrong and catastrophic decisions he has made in regard to national security and the health of the American people. Dr. Thomas Frieden, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "We helped create the W.H.O. Turning our back on the W.H.O. makes us and the world less safe." That's a Trump specialty-- making us and the world less safe... and he's been doing it for decades, as if Satan had sent him up to do exactly that. CNN reported yesterday that the monster "has spent decades spreading and sowing dangerous misinformation about disease outbreaks-- from falsely suggesting AIDS can be transmitted through kissing to warning Americans not to get vaccinated and falsely suggesting vaccines can cause autism. Long before advising Americans to ingest disinfectant to treat the coronavirus as President, Trump demonstrated a pattern of spreading unsupported medical claims that preyed on the public's fears of getting sick, a CNN KFile review of the President's statements on past epidemics and pandemics found."On a Howard Stern radio show in 1993 Trump told the audience that "The problem is people that get the [HIV] test, that test positive, they go out on a rampage on purpose. There's anger, there's hatred. I know and what's happening is true. There's anger, there's hatred and it's really dangerous."
In 1993, Trump promoted the widely-debunked claims that AIDS could be spread by kissing and that AIDS patients intentionally spread the virus. As the swine flu pandemic began in 2009, he warned Americans against taking flu vaccines. When the Ebola virus outbreak devastated West Africa in 2014, he disputed guidance by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on how it spreads.Today as the nation's chief executive overseeing his own public health crisis, Trump continues to comprehensively misinform the public about the coronavirus, offering remarks riddled with false, misleading or scientifically questionable claims.
And malevolent lies. They forgot to mention Trump's trademark.