TBR News May 6, 2020

The Voice of the White House Washington, D.C. May 6, 2020: Working in the White House as a junior staffer is an interesting experience.
When I was younger, I worked as a summer-time job in a clinic for people who had moderate to severe mental problems and the current work closely, at times, echos the earlier one.
I am not an intimate of the President but I have encountered him from time to time and I daily see manifestations of his growing psychological problems.
He insults people, uses foul language, is frantic to see his name mentioned on main-line television and pays absolutely no attention to any advice from his staff that runs counter to his strange ideas.
He lies like a rug to everyone, eats like a hog, makes lewd remarks to female staffers and flies into rages if anyone dares to contradict him.
It is becoming more and more evident to even the least intelligent American voter that Trump is vicious, corrupt and amoral. He has stated often that even if he loses the
election in 2020, he will not leave the White House. I have news for Donald but this is not the place to discuss it. “
Comment for May 6, 2020:” Dealing with Trump, at a high level, is like trying to herd cats or pick up mercury. Not possible. He waffles, lies, erupts and generally behaves like the ero-centric they are. Here is a clear description of the narcissist. “In psychological terms, narcissism doesn’t mean self-love—at least not of a genuine sort. It’s more accurate to say that people with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) are in love with an idealized, grandiose image of themselves. And they’re in love with this inflated self-image precisely because it allows them to avoid deep feelings of insecurity. But propping up their delusions of grandeur takes a lot of work—and that’s where the dysfunctional attitudes and behaviors come in.
Narcissistic personality disorder involves a pattern of self-centered, arrogant thinking and behavior, a lack of empathy and consideration for other people, and an excessive need for admiration. Others often describe people with NPD as cocky, manipulative, selfish, patronizing, and demanding. This way of thinking and behaving surfaces in every area of the narcissist’s life: from work and friendships to family and love relationships.
People with narcissistic personality disorder are extremely resistant to changing their behavior, even when it’s causing them problems. Their tendency is to turn the blame on to others. What’s more, they are extremely sensitive and react badly to even the slightest criticisms, disagreements, or perceived slights, which they view as personal attacks. For the people in the narcissist’s life, it’s often easier just to go along with their demands to avoid the coldness and rages. However, by understanding more about narcissistic personality disorder, you can spot the narcissists in your life, protect yourself from their power plays, and establish healthier boundaries.
Signs and symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder
Grandiose sense of self-importance
Grandiosity is the defining characteristic of narcissism. More than just arrogance or vanity, grandiosity is an unrealistic sense of superiority. Narcissists believe they are unique or “special” and can only be understood by other special people. What’s more, they are too good for anything average or ordinary. They only want to associate and be associated with other high-status people, places, and things.
Narcissists also believe that they’re better than everyone else and expect recognition as such—even when they’ve done nothing to earn it. They will often exaggerate or outright lie about their achievements and talents. And when they talk about work or relationships, all you’ll hear is how much they contribute, how great they are, and how lucky the people in their lives are to have them. They are the undisputed star and everyone else is at best a bit player.
Lives in a fantasy world that supports their delusions of grandeur
Since reality doesn’t support their grandiose view of themselves, narcissists live in a fantasy world propped up by distortion, self-deception, and magical thinking. They spin self-glorifying fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, attractiveness, and ideal love that make them feel special and in control. These fantasies protect them from feelings of inner emptiness and shame, so facts and opinions that contradict them are ignored or rationalized away. Anything that threatens to burst the fantasy bubble is met with extreme defensiveness and even rage, so those around the narcissist learn to tread carefully around their denial of reality.
Needs constant praise and admiration
A narcissist’s sense of superiority is like a balloon that gradually loses air without a steady stream of applause and recognition to keep it inflated. The occasional compliment is not enough. Narcissists need constant food for their ego, so they surround themselves with people who are willing to cater to their obsessive craving for affirmation. These relationships are very one-sided. It’s all about what the admirer can do for the narcissist, never the other way around. And if there is ever an interruption or diminishment in the admirer’s attention and praise, the narcissist treats it as a betrayal.
Sense of entitlement
Because they consider themselves special, narcissists expect favorable treatment as their due. They truly believe that whatever they want, they should get. They also expect the people around them to automatically comply with their every wish and whim. That is their only value. If you don’t anticipate and meet their every need, then you’re useless. And if you have the nerve to defy their will or “selfishly” ask for something in return, prepare yourself for aggression, outrage, or the cold shoulder.
Exploits others without guilt or shame
Narcissists never develop the ability to identify with the feelings of others—to put themselves in other people’s shoes. In other words, they lack empathy. In many ways, they view the people in their lives as objects—there to serve their needs. As a consequence, they don’t think twice about taking advantage of others to achieve their own ends. Sometimes this interpersonal exploitation is malicious, but often it is simply oblivious. Narcissists simply don’t think about how their behavior affects others. And if you point it out, they still won’t truly get it. The only thing they understand is their own needs.
Frequently demeans, intimidates, bullies, or belittles others
Narcissists feel threatened whenever they encounter someone who appears to have something they lack—especially those who are confident and popular. They’re also threatened by people who don’t kowtow to them or who challenge them in any way. Their defense mechanism is contempt. The only way to neutralize the threat and prop up their own sagging ego is to put those people down. They may do it in a patronizing or dismissive way as if to demonstrate how little the other person means to them. Or they may go on the attack with insults, name-calling, bullying, and threats to force the other person back into line. (helpguide)

The Table of Contents
• Dishonest Don’s Lincoln backdrop highlights his monumental errors
• Raging at China over coronavirus won’t help – scrutinising our own governments might
• Austria says reopening shops has not accelerated coronavirus infections
• COVID-19 U.S.: Coronavirus outbreak came from Europe flights, not China, say researchers
• Internal Chinese report warns Beijing faces Tiananmen-like global backlash over virus
• Wisconsin Supreme Court justice questions whether stay-at-home orders are ‘definition of tyranny’
• U.S. private payrolls plunge by a record 20.2 million in April
• George W Bush paved the way for Trump – to rehabilitate him is appalling
• A Guide for State, Local, and Tribal Law Enforcement Agencies
• Encyclopedia of American Loons

Dishonest Don’s Lincoln backdrop highlights his monumental errors
Having Donald Trump conduct a TV interview in the Lincoln Memorial must have seemed like a good idea at the time
May 6, 2020
by Richard Wolffe
The Guardian
One of the most obvious problems with parking yourself in a chair next to a colossal statue of Abraham Lincoln is that you look so very small.
Not one of the political and communications brains behind Donald Trump bothered to point this out when they dreamt up the dingbat notion of a live TV interview inside the hallowed Lincoln Memorial.
Nobody thought it was anything other than genius to compare the two presidents. One of them saved the Union and created the model for the muscular federal government we know today; the other got impeached for corrupting that government for his personal profit.
One gave his life to unite the country and free it from slavery. The other wants tens of thousands of Americans to give up their lives to free the country from lockdown.
One was known as Honest Abe. The other lied about paying off porn stars with hush money. You can see how they confused the two.
To be fair, presidents in times of crisis often reach for the same analogy. It calms them in their hour of need to think that Lincoln was also misunderstood as he stood alone in the maelstrom of history.
rappled with his disastrous war in Iraq. Barack Obama all but wore a stovepipe hat as he quoted liberally from the Great Emancipator in a career of speeches ranging from his campaign announcement to his presidential inauguration to his final State of the Union.
To be less fair, Donald Trump somehow missed the entire point of Lincoln while sitting inside a secular temple to one of the greatest presidents of them all.
When asked by a fan if he couldn’t tone down his bullying – if only to help the world understand what a great leader he is – Trump sailed on by like a giant asteroid spinning on its thoughtless journey through the galaxy.
“I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen,” said the gas-filled lump of rock. “The closest would be that gentleman right up there. They always said Lincoln – nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.” Frankly Lincoln had it easy. Apart from that night at the theater, and that blood-drenched civil war. Not like the Trump presidency, where every hour brings another nasty word or two from a talking head on cable news.
Sitting at the feet of Honest Abe, Trump naturally lied about why he was even there. “You know, I didn’t know that it was creating criticism,” he innocently explained to his softball interviewers at Fox News. “But I thought it was your choice, not ours.”
This must have been news to Fox News, whose executives confirmed that it was the Trump White House that wanted him to be seated inside the Lincoln Memorial. In fact, they wanted it so badly they changed the federal rules to allow Trump to speak inside the inner sanctum.
Their official reason? It’s the pandemic, stupid: “Given the extraordinary crisis that the American people have endured, and the need for the president to exercise a core governmental function to address the nation about an ongoing public health crisis,” explained Trump’s interior secretary, David Bernhardt.
As it happens, the American people have endured only the start of this extraordinary crisis. If this president could exercise any core governmental function – or any core brain function – America’s ongoing public health crisis would look far less deadly.
nstead, Trump’s own experts – if that’s not a political paradox – are predicting 3,000 deaths a day by early June. According to a CDC document leaked to the New York Times, instead of flattening the curve, America is building a Trump Tower of new infections over the next month.
Those stunning numbers are in fact the middle range of the new projections, which could be as high as 10,000 deaths a day. Independent modeling by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation suggest the total American death toll is likely to be around 134,000 by early August – but could also reach double that figure.
Since we’re indulging in historical comparisons, that’s more than the number of Union soldiers Lincoln lost in combat. It’s more than America lost in the first world war. It’s the equivalent of a 9/11 massacre every day, just one month from now.
Why are the numbers rising so sharply? Not, as Trump likes to claim, because of China. Not because the experts are too pessimistic with their public health models. But because so many governors are following Trump’s toxic mix of arrogance and ignorance to relax their own lockdowns. This is a deadly pattern of dunce-like leadership. Instead of suppressing coronavirus spread in January and February, Trump obsessed about his own job survival. Instead of surging medical supplies in March, Trump claimed he was doing a great job on this whole pandemic thing. Instead of figuring out contact tracing in April, he encouraged armed protesters to pressure for an end to lockdown. Trump has brought a whole new meaning to the concept of killing time.
Soon the rock-solid Trump voters in previously Republican states will understand the true cost of Trump’s leadership. Trump’s partisan blame game will fall apart before Memorial Day. The most recent polling in Texas suggests Trump is now tied with Joe Biden in a state he won by nine points in 2016.
These are the kind of numbers – not the death toll – that keep Trump up at night. It was past one in the morning on Tuesday, when Dishonest Don rage-tweeted against a group of former Republican operatives who call themselves the Lincoln Project.
“They’re all LOSERS, but Abe Lincoln, Republican is all smiles,” our Lincoln expert tweeted, in a rhetorical flourish that evoked Gettysburg.
What peeved the great insomniac in the executive mansion where Lincoln once slept? The Lincoln Project crossed a bright red line by remaking the epic 1984 re-election ad about how Reagan had made America great again.
Like most Trumpian tales, it is a parody of the presidency. It tells the story of lives lost “from a virus Donald Trump ignored” and the economic decimation that followed. It tells the story of an American sunset, not a sunrise.
They called it, naturally, Mourning in America. But if the projections are correct, this nation’s mourning is only just beginning.

Raging at China over coronavirus won’t help – scrutinising our own governments might
There is a case for an inquiry into events in China, but it has nothing to do with a politically convenient dossier about a Wuhan lab
May 6, 2020
by Sam Geall
The Guardian
He was once fearful of endangering the country’s deep economic relationship with China, but the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has now begun to campaign for an international inquiry into the Covid-19 outbreak. The call comes amid claims from the Trump administration that China covered up a laboratory leak in Wuhan, or even released the novel coronavirus on purpose.
The tenor of debate in the United States gives an indication of the stakes. The Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson – a favourite of the president – has been drawing on reports in the Australian tabloid the Daily Telegraph of a supposed secret dossier linking the outbreak to the Wuhan lab. “We are squabbling about lockdowns … that is the debate in this country,” said Carlson. “That is not the debate in China, why? Because they have bigger plans. By the time this pandemic has played out, China plans to rule the world.”
The dossier has been contradicted by intelligence sources, who believe it was based on freely available material and was most likely to have come from the US to help Washington “[build] a counter-narrative and [apply] pressure to China”.
Meanwhile, the scientific community says there is no evidence for the claim that the virus originated in a Wuhan lab – even Morrison has poured cold water on that particular idea. And a US intelligence community statement on the origins of Covid-19 was agnostic. Whether they can resist pressure from the Trump administration to produce a politically convenient narrative, as reported in the New York Times, is an open question. But given that anti-Chinese sentiment so evidently plays into ramping election rhetoric in the US, a blame-shifting operation seems to be under way.
Even so, there is a good case for an inquiry. From the shameful cover-up of the initial outbreak, such as the silencing of the heroic doctor Li Wenliang, to the subsequent censorship, the disappearance of critics and sowing of disinformation, there’s still a lot to learn. China has seen a litany of food and agriculture scandals (amazingly, it is still not well understood why 16,000 pig carcasses floated down the Huangpu river in 2013); its citizens certainly deserve to know more about the role of intensified animal agriculture and environmental destruction in propelling new pathogens into human population centres. Greater understanding may help societies across the world to better rebuild economies and improve public health and preparedness systems.
But US and Australian demands get us no closer to solving these problems in China or anywhere else. International inquiries do happen (into Venezuela and Myanmar, most recently), but great powers don’t play by the same rules as small countries. China will not accept being singled out by such an inquiry, any more than the US would have accepted a China-led inquiry into its role in sowing the 2008 global financial crisis. And even if it went ahead, China would likely give an inquiry the same heed it gave a critical 2016 UN ruling on the South China Sea, calling it “nothing more than a piece of waste paper”.
Instead of spurring learning or action, this type of aggressive diplomacy will only lead to the further emboldening of hardline nationalist and protectionist narratives in Beijing, along with the escalating sabre-rattling that keeps us as far as ever from the cooperation required to handle the pandemic and its aftermath.
Chinese elites may indeed be fearful of international pressure, with one intelligence-linked thinktank warning of the global fallout from anti-Chinese opprobrium. But punishing China will not improve international cooperation, any more than it will bring freedom of speech, encourage China to share information on future health crises, or improve supply-chain coordination on medical supplies.
After the outbreak, China banned eating wildlife and stepped up efforts to disrupt the illegal wildlife trade. It can go much further, and next year it will rightly be under scrutiny when it hosts the UN Convention on Biological Diversity talks in Kunming – this aims to reduce the destruction of ecosystems and biodiversity, which helps pathogens to pass between animals and people. In many other negotiations – such as the Paris climate agreement, and debt relief for the world’s poorest – the sheer size of its economy means China plays a critical role.
And while many Chinese citizens were initially furious about the government cover-up, there is also a widespread assumption in the country that “accusations from western governments are in bad faith” – as the academic Chenchen Zhang put it. This has only grown in recent weeks, especially since these same “international actors were silent” about China’s plight in late January and early February.
Carlson may dislike Americans “squabbling about lockdowns”, but criticising one’s government’s response is the right of citizens in open societies. Of course, the Chinese government will silence its critics and engage in blame-shifting rhetoric. It took brave, independent journalists in China to break the story of the Covid-19 cover-up, despite fears of reprisals, and pressure from the authorities to spread “positive energy” that hews to the official government line.
But in countries like the US, Australia and the UK, citizens have a choice. We can scrutinise our governments and societies – for the glaring failures of the pandemic response; the debasement of scientific inquiry and media freedom; the politicisation of intelligence; attacks on the “dual loyalties” of ethnic Chinese – or we can fall into line, direct our ire at the foreign enemy, and jettison the possibility of progress into the grinding gears of a great power conflict.
• Sam Geall is executive director at China Dialogue and associate fellow at Chatham House, a thinktank in London

Austria says reopening shops has not accelerated coronavirus infections
May 5, 2020
Reuters
VIENNA (Reuters) – Austria’s first loosening of its coronavirus lockdown three weeks ago, in which thousands of shops reopened, has not led to a new spike in infections, though further vigilance is necessary, its health minister said on Tuesday.
The Alpine republic acted early to tackle the viral pandemic, closing bars, restaurants, schools, theatres, non-essential shops and other gathering places seven weeks ago. That helped cut the daily increase in infections to less than 1% and keep deaths relatively low – with just 606 reported so far.
Buoyed by those numbers, on April 14 Austria became one of the first countries in Europe to loosen its lockdown, reopening DIY and garden centres as well as shops of up to 400 square metres – twice the playing area of a singles tennis court.
“We can now examine and assess the effects of April 14 and the following days very, very well and they show that we managed this first opening step excellently,” Health Minister Rudolf Anschober told a news conference.
“We have no indication of a noticeable increase in individual areas. The situation is very, very constant, very, very stable and that is a really very, very positive, good situation,” he said.
The daily increase in infections, he added, is 0.2%.
Current data do not reflect the impact of a more recent loosening from May 1 when hairdressers, other service providers and shops of more than 400 square metres were allowed to reopen. More steps are planned, with restaurants, bars, museums and hotels all due to reopen this month.
Anschober and Interior Minister Karl Nehammer urged the public to keep implementing social-distancing rules and heed a requirement to wear face masks or a fabric equivalent in shops, on public transport and in some government buildings.
“Personal responsibility and discipline remain the most important thing because a possible second wave (of infections) must not become a tsunami,” Nehammer said.
Illustrating the uncertainty around the pandemic’s development, Finance Minister Gernot Bluemel said it would probably not be possible to assess the impact on the economy until autumn. He is in the process of getting his stopgap budget approved by parliament.
“Currently only one thing is clear: that nothing is clear and the situation must be reassessed daily. And no matter what numbers a budget is currently based on, they will not hold,” Bluemel said in a statement. He urged lawmakers to approve his already outdated budget to keep ministries properly funded.
Reporting by Francois Murphy; Editing by Mark Heinrich

COVID-19 U.S.: Coronavirus outbreak came from Europe flights, not China, say researchers
National Post
Two separate teams traced the virus genome in the States to flights arriving in New York from Europe
Two separate teams of researchers tracing the coronavirus outbreak in the States have concluded that the virus originated in travellers from Europe, not China, the New York Times reported Wednesday.
Studies found that the virus was entering the country via flights to New York from Europe, weeks before Trump implemented a ban on travellers from China on January 31. By the time he stopped travel from Europe in mid-March, thousands of people were already infected.
“People were just oblivious,” Adriana Heguy, who worked with a team at the N.Y.U Grossman School of Medicine, told the New York Times.
The NY.U. team, as well as a team at Mount Sinai hospital, New York, analyzed two different groups of genomes of the coronavirus taken from infected New Yorkers in mid-March. according to the Times. Through tracing the mutations within the genomes via compute testing, they were able to estimate how long the virus lived and track it back to its ancestors.
Researchers at Mount Sinai found similarities between the viruses brought to their hospital to those analyzed in Europe. While they can’t specify which flights might have brought the virus, they wrote that “the period of global transmission” was between late January to mid-February.
“The majority is clearly European,” Harm van Bakel, a geneticist at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, whose study is awaiting a peer review, told the New York Times.
Both teams separately concluded that the hidden spread of the virus could have been discovered had aggressive testing measured been put into place much earlier. “It was a disaster that we didn’t do testing,” Dr. Heguy said.
The day before Trump’s ban on Europe travel was set to take place, photos flooded social media of hordes of people standing in cramped, crowded lines for hours in the airports.
Currently, the country has reported close to half a million cases of the virus and over 14,000 deaths. Earlier this week, Trump accused the World Health Organization of being ‘China centric’ in its tackling of the pandemic and threatened to put a hold on U.S. funding to the organization.

Internal Chinese report warns Beijing faces Tiananmen-like global backlash over virus
May 4, 2020
Reuters
BEIJING (Reuters) – An internal Chinese report warns that Beijing faces a rising wave of hostility in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that could tip relations with the United States into confrontation, people familiar with the paper told Reuters.
The report, presented early last month by the Ministry of State Security to top Beijing leaders including President Xi Jinping, concluded that global anti-China sentiment is at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the sources said.
As a result, Beijing faces a wave of anti-China sentiment led by the United States in the aftermath of the pandemic and needs to be prepared in a worst-case scenario for armed confrontation between the two global powers, according to people familiar with the report’s content, who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.
The report was drawn up by the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a think tank affiliated with the Ministry of State Security, China’s top intelligence body.
Reuters has not seen the briefing paper, but it was described by people who had direct knowledge of its findings.
“I don’t have relevant information,” the Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson’s office said in a statement responding to questions from Reuters on the report.
China’s Ministry of State Security has no public contact details and could not be reached for comment.
CICIR, an influential think tank that until 1980 was within the Ministry of State Security and advises the Chinese government on foreign and security policy, did not reply to a request for comment.
Reuters couldn’t determine to what extent the stark assessment described in the paper reflects positions held by China’s state leaders, and to what extent, if at all, it would influence policy. But the presentation of the report shows how seriously Beijing takes the threat of a building backlash that could threaten what China sees as its strategic investments overseas and its view of its security standing.
Relations between China and the United States are widely seen to be at their worst point in decades, with deepening mistrust and friction points from U.S. allegations of unfair trade and technology practices to disputes over Hong Kong, Taiwan and contested territories in the South China Sea.
In recent days, U.S. President Donald Trump, facing a more difficult re-election campaign as the coronavirus has claimed tens of thousands of American lives and ravaged the U.S. economy, has been ramping up his criticism of Beijing and threatening new tariffs on China. His administration, meanwhile, is considering retaliatory measures against China over the outbreak, officials said.
It is widely believed in Beijing that the United States wants to contain a rising China, which has become more assertive globally as its economy has grown.
The paper concluded that Washington views China’s rise as an economic and national security threat and a challenge to Western democracies, the people said. The report also said the United States was aiming to undercut the ruling Communist Party by undermining public confidence.
Chinese officials had a “special responsibility” to inform their people and the world of the threat posed by the coronavirus “since they were the first to learn of it,” U.S. State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said in response to questions from Reuters.
Without directly addressing the assessment made in the Chinese report, Ortagus added: “Beijing’s efforts to silence scientists, journalists, and citizens and spread disinformation exacerbated the dangers of this health crisis.”
A spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council declined to comment.
REPERCUSSIONS
The report described to Reuters warned that anti-China sentiment sparked by the coronavirus could fuel resistance to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure investment projects, and that Washington could step up financial and military support for regional allies, making the security situation in Asia more volatile.
Three decades ago, in the aftermath of Tiananmen, the United States and many Western governments imposed sanctions against China including banning or restricting arms sales and technology transfers.
China is far more powerful nowadays.
Xi has revamped China’s military strategy to create a fighting force equipped to win modern wars. He is expanding China’s air and naval reach in a challenge to more than 70 years of U.S. military dominance in Asia.
In its statement, China’s foreign ministry called for cooperation, saying, “the sound and steady development of China-U.S. relations” serve the interests of both countries and the international community.
It added: “any words or actions that engage in political manipulation or stigmatization under the pretext of the pandemic, including taking the opportunity to sow discord between countries, are not conducive to international cooperation against the pandemic.”
COLD WAR ECHOES
One of those with knowledge of the report said it was regarded by some in the Chinese intelligence community as China’s version of the “Novikov Telegram”, a 1946 dispatch by the Soviet ambassador to Washington, Nikolai Novikov, that stressed the dangers of U.S. economic and military ambition in the wake of World War Two.
Novikov’s missive was a response to U.S. diplomat George Kennan’s “Long Telegram” from Moscow that said the Soviet Union did not see the possibility for peaceful coexistence with the West, and that containment was the best long-term strategy.
The two documents helped set the stage for the strategic thinking that defined both sides of the Cold War.
China has been accused by the United States of suppressing early information on the virus, which was first detected in the central city of Wuhan, and downplaying its risks.
Beijing has repeatedly denied that it covered up the extent or severity of the virus outbreak.
China has managed to contain domestic spread of the virus and has been trying to assert a leading role in the global battle against COVID-19. That has included a propaganda push around its donations and sale of medical supplies to the United States and other countries and sharing of expertise.
But China faces a growing backlash from critics who have called to hold Beijing accountable for its role in the pandemic.
Trump has said he will cut off funding for the World Health Organization (WHO), which he called “very China-centric,” something WHO officials have denied.
Australia’s government has called for an international investigation into the origins and spread of the virus.
Last month, France summoned China’s ambassador to protest a publication on the website of China’s embassy that criticized Western handling of coronavirus.
The virus has so far infected more than 3 million people globally and caused more than 200,000 deaths, according to a Reuters tally.
Editing by Peter Hirschberg

Wisconsin Supreme Court justice questions whether stay-at-home orders are ‘definition of tyranny’
May 5, 2020
by J. Edward Moreno
The Hill
A conservative justice on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is questioning whether Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’s stay-at-home orders are the “definition of tyranny.”
Evers issued his first stay-at-home order on March 24 and then extended it on April 16. It is currently set to expire on May 26, but a case brought by Republican legislative leaders could scale it back immediately.
“My question for you is, where in the constitution did the people of Wisconsin confer authority on a single, unelected Cabinet secretary to compel almost 6 million people to stay at home and close their businesses and face imprisonment if they don’t comply, with no input from the Legislature, without the consent of the people?” Justice Rebecca Bradley said during oral arguments heard via video conference, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.
“Isn’t it the very definition of tyranny for one person to order people to be imprisoned for going to work, among other ordinarily lawful activities?” she added.
Bradley offered the remark after Assistant Attorney General Colin Roth of Wisconsin said “people will die” if the order is repealed with nothing to replace it.
As of Thursday, the state has reported 8,566 confirmed cases and 353 deaths, some of which are believed to be linked to the election last month, which the state Supreme Court ruled not to postpone despite efforts by Evers.
In response to Bradley’s remarks, Roth insisted there are statutes in the state law that give the governor power to punish those who violate the order.
“If you look at the statute, it’s in there,” Roth told Bradley, according to the Journal.
Judge calls for investigation into whether McConnell pressured judge…
Texas salon owner sentenced to 7 days in jail for remaining open…
The litigation comes as states have begun to relax their stay-at-home orders even as cases across the country continue to rise. Federal and state Republican lawmakers typically have been quicker to call for reopening than their Democratic counterparts.
As tensions began growing in states under such orders, protesters began flooding statehouses, often referring to the actions of their governors as tyranny.
Republicans hold a 5-2 majority in the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

U.S. private payrolls plunge by a record 20.2 million in April
May 6, 2020
Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. private employers laid off a record 20.236 million workers in April as mandatory business closures in response to the novel coronavirus outbreak savaged the economy, setting up the overall labor market for historic job losses last month.
The plunge in private payrolls shown in the ADP National Employment Report on Wednesday suggested that national lockdowns to slow the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory illness caused by the virus, could leave lasting scars on the economy, even as large parts of the country reopen non-essential businesses.
Data for March was revised to show private payrolls decreasing by 149,000 jobs instead of the previously reported 27,000, which was the first decline since September 2017. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast private payrolls tumbling by 20.050 million jobs in April.
The ADP report showed the leisure/hospitality sector shed 8.61 million jobs last month, accounting for more than 40% of the private sector job losses. The staggering numbers were widely anticipated, since 30.3 million people had filed claims for unemployment benefits since March 21, equivalent to nearly one out of every five workers losing their job in just over a month.
The ADP report, jointly developed with Moody’s Analytics, was published ahead of the government’s more comprehensive employment report for April scheduled for release on Friday.
While it has a poor record predicting the private payrolls component of the government’s employment report because of methodology differences, economists said it offered some clues on the size of anticipated job losses in April.
According to a Reuters survey of economists, nonfarm payrolls are forecast to have tumbled by a historic 21.853 million in April, which would blow away the record 800,000 dive seen during the Great Recession. Employment dropped by 701,000 jobs in March, ending a record streak of gains dating to September 2010.
The unemployment rate is seen jumping to an all-time high of 16% in April, which would shatter the post-World War Two record of 10.8% touched in November 1982. In March the jobless rate shot up 0.9 percentage point, the largest monthly change since January 1975, to 4.4%.
Reporting By Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama

George W Bush paved the way for Trump – to rehabilitate him is appalling
We don’t have to rewrite the former president’s record just because the incumbent is unleashing his own campaign of shock and awfulness
May 6, 2020
by Arwa Mahdawi
The Guardian
It is 2040. Coronavirus is a distant memory. Boris Johnson has fathered his 19th child. Toy Story 12 and Fast & Furious 32 are playing in cinemas. Donald Trump is a cuddly nonagenarian who is cooed over by liberals. “Remember the good old days when Donny joked about injecting bleach?” people will reminisce fondly. “What a legend!”
Does that last prediction sound improbable? It shouldn’t: just look at the ongoing rehabilitation of George W Bush. It is only 11 years since Bush left office, but widespread amnesia regarding his regressive record appears to have set in. People have already giggled over his adorable struggle to put on a poncho during Trump’s inauguration and praised his unlikely friendship with Ellen DeGeneres. Now many liberals are fawning over Bush for the incredible achievement of being an iota more sane than Trump.
On Saturday, Bush put out a video calling for compassion and national unity during the coronavirus crisis. In it, he declared: “We are not partisan combatants; we are human beings.” This is a lovely message; really, it is. It is just a shame he wasn’t so invested in our shared humanity when he used the fabricated threat of weapons of mass destruction to bomb Iraq into oblivion. It is a pity he didn’t think about “how small our differences are” when he fought LGBTQ+ rights. It is unfortunate he wasn’t so concerned about compassion during his botched and heartless response to Hurricane Katrina.
If there were an Oscar for best use of cinematography to whitewash a bloody legacy, then Dubya has certainly earned it. His three-minute message – which was part of The Call to Unite, a project featuring videos from celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Julia Roberts – has been viewed more than 6m times and generated widespread praise. With Trump in office, suddenly Bush doesn’t seem so bad to many observers. At least Bush could reach across the political aisle now and again. “Bush handled post-Katrina by asking his father and Bill Clinton to help,” tweeted Maggie Haberman, the New York Times’ White House correspondent. “The current president has been uninterested in asking his predecessors to get involved as the country deals with Covid.”
We don’t have to do this. We don’t have to normalise Bush or rewrite his record just because Trump is unleashing his own campaign of shock and awfulness. We don’t have to minimise the enormous damage Bush did just because he didn’t tweet misspelled abuse at his political enemies. We don’t have to do any of this – but a lot of Americans seem desperately to want to. This is partly because the US has a deep-seated reverence for its heads of state, as illustrated by the fact they retain the honorific of president after they have left office. Perhaps because Britain is a monarchy with a longer history than the US, we don’t see our head of government as a national mother or father figure in quite the same way.
However, the bigger motivation behind the apparent desire to rehabilitate Bush is probably a desperation among liberals to see Trump as an anomaly who doesn’t reflect the “real” US. But Trump is not an aberration. He didn’t emerge from a vacuum. The lies, jingoism and anti-intellectualism of the Bush era helped pave the way for him – and the steady rehabilitation of Bush is paving the way for Trump to evade accountability in the future.
You don’t move forward by forgetting and forgiving the past; you move forward by learning from it. It seems we haven’t learned anything. Nevertheless, my greatest respect goes out to Bush’s PR people for their incredible work transforming him into a national treasure. Mission accomplished.

A Guide for State, Local, and Tribal Law Enforcement Agencies
U.S. Department of Justice
Preface
The world of law enforcement intelligence has changed dramatically since September 11, 2001. State, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies have been tasked with a variety of new responsibilities; intelligence is just one. In addition, the intelligence discipline has evolved significantly in recent years. As these various trends have merged, increasing numbers of American law enforcement agencies have begun to explore, and sometimes embrace, the intelligence function. This guide is intended to help them in this process.
The guide is directed primarily toward state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies of all sizes that need to develop or reinvigorate their intelligence function. Rather than being a manual to teach a person how to be an intelligence analyst, it is directed toward that manager, supervisor, or officer who is assigned to create an intelligence function. It is intended to provide ideas, definitions, concepts, policies, and resources. It is a primer-a place to start on a new managerial journey.
A Guide for State, Local, and Tribal Law Enforcement Agencies Not every agency has the staff or resources to create a formal intelligenceunit, nor is it necessary in smaller agencies. Even without an intelligence unit, a law enforcement organization must have the ability to effectively consume the information and intelligence products being shared by a widerange of organizations at all levels of government. State, local, and triballaw enforcement (SLTLE) will be its most effective when a single source inevery agency is the conduit of critical information, whether it is the Terrorist Intelligence Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department, the sole intelligence analyst of the Lansing, Michigan Police Department, or the patrol sergeant who understands the language of intelligence and is the information sharing contact point in the Mercedes, Texas Police Department. Hence, each law enforcement agency must have an understanding of its intelligence management capabilities regardless of its size or organizational structure.
This document will provide common language and processes to develop and employ an intelligence capacity in SLTLE agencies across the United States as well as articulate a uniform understanding of concepts, issues, and terminology for law enforcement intelligence (LEI). While terrorism issues are currently most pervasive in the current discussion of LEI, the principles of intelligence discussed in this document apply beyond terrorism and include organized crime and entrepreneurial crime of all forms. Drug trafficking and the associated crime of money laundering, for example, continue to be a significant challenge for law enforcement.
Transnational computer crime, particularly Internet fraud, identity theft cartels, and global black marketeering of stolen and counterfeit goods, are entrepreneurial crime problems that are increasingly being relegated to SLTLE agencies to investigate simply because of the volume of criminal incidents. Similarly, local law enforcement is being increasingly drawn into human trafficking and illegal immigration enterprises and the often-associated crimes related to counterfeiting of official documents, such as passports, visas, driver’s licenses, Social Security cards, and credit cards.
Even the trafficking of arts and antiquities has increased, often bringing a mnew profile of criminal into the realm of entrepreneurial crime. All require man intelligence capacity for SLTLE, as does the continuation of historical organized crime activities such as auto theft, cargo theft, and virtually any mother scheme that can produce profit for an organized criminal entity..3
To be effective, the law enforcement community must interpret intelligence-related language in a consistent manner. In addition, common standards, policies, and practices will help expedite intelligence sharing while at the same time protecting the privacy of citizens and preserving mhard-won community policing relationships.
Perspective
At the outset, law enforcement officers must understand the concept of LEI, its distinction from National Security Intelligence (NSI) and the potential problems an SLTLE agency can face when the two types of intelligence overlap. A law enforcement executive must understand what is meant by an “intelligence function” and how that function can be fulfilled through the use of different organizational models. Related executive decisions focus on staffing, particularly when there are fiscal limitations. What kinds of information does the law enforcement agency need (e.g., intelligence requirements) from the federal government to most effectively counter terrorism? How are those needs determined? How is the information requested? When and in what form will the information be received? Will a security clearance be needed to review the information that an executive requests? These are critical questions of a police executive.
…..to be continued

Encyclopedia of American Loons

Nancy du Tertre

Nancy du Tertre is an attorney and “psychic detective” who calls herself “The Skeptical Psychic™” (yes, she got it trademarked). In addition to private readings, workshops and personal appearances, du Tertre also offers free remote viewing to law enforcement agencies, and she has written a book that explains her “new approach to psychic ability that combines intuitive imaging with rational feedback” – she calls it “TSP”, a form of “tested ESP and clairvoyance” (what “TSP” is supposed to be an acronym for thus becomes a bit unclear). And yes, “tested” means whatever du Tertre wants it to mean, and certainly not tested, just like “skeptical” in “skeptical psychic.” “You don’t need to believe. You just need to trust,” says du Tertre. That is not how skeptical works.
Otherwise, her bio reveals a rather impressive level of gullibility. TSP is apparently a “new type of Remote Viewing” that “combines our sensory experiences with certain flexible protocols” (“flexible” seems to be a key term here). According to du Tertre, “tuning in to the supernatural” requires that “we ‘unlearn’ our logical processes and learn to trust the profoundly irrational processes of our mind.” According to herself, she “loves ‘evidence’ of the supernatural or paranormal, but doesn’t get stuck on the concept.” We never suspected otherwise. But she does emphasize the importance of trying to verify the information you gain from intuition: “you must exist in the very uncomfortable mental place of being both a believer and a skeptic at the same time! This process will lead you to the Truth.” There is, of course, no process described here, and no: this is not even remotely how you determine truth or accuracy.
She has also written the book How to Talk to an Alien, which asks such pertinent questions as “[d]o aliens speak in alien language?” and “[d]o they only communicate via telepathy and mental ESP?” An attempt to contribute to the New Age field of exolinguistics, du Tertre “is in a unique position as both a linguist and a psychic to engage in this brand new field of study” – she has no training in linguistics, of course, but “is fluent in French”. Besides, she “has also had her own UFO/ET contact experiences and has worked with abductees and contactees.”
She is apparently also a medium and energy healer, and her blog provides information and ample “evidence” of ghosts, orbs, rods and conehead skulls.
Diagnosis: Probably harmless, but good grief how silly (and sad) it is.

Susan Stevenson

Founder of the conspiracy theory, New Age quackery, anti-vaccine and anti-GMO site Gaia Health, homeopath Heidi Stevenson, has passed away. Susan Stevenson is probably not related, but she is at least just as crazy (though somewhat less influential). Stevenson is a hypnotherapist who practices past life regressive therapy, and a promoter of angel therapy, a type of New Age therapy based on the idea that communicating with angels is a key to healing. And Stevenson sees angels everywhere: “My life seems to be teeming with angelic connections, and the momentum is building. Have you noticed this in your own life? Angelic reminders that they are with us – ‘whispers’ in our ear, ‘taps’ on the shoulder, brushes of air across your skin or changes in air pressure, ‘flutters’ from deep inside, glints of light and color – all these gentle hints to pay closer attention to their presence. Think back – have you been paying attention, listening, responding? I know I certainly have been. Doreen Virtue, Ph.D. [her “degree” is from California Coast University and not worth the paper it is printed on], in her newest book Angel Therapy [the quote is some years old], says that this increased activity is directly related to the approaching millennium.” Some might suggest that the symptoms she describes would warrant an altogether different kind of response. Stevenson offers instructions on “contacting your personal angels” here.
Stevenson is apparently “a registered and certified clinical hypnotherapist in private practice”, where she offers “private sessions for adults and children,” as well as “workshops and audio tapes on a variety of life enhancing topics.” We do, admittedly, wonder a little bit how she squares her angels with her evident commitment to reincarnation (as per “past life regressive therapy”). More than that, we wonder who on Earth certified her – she doesn’t tell, and California does not recognize any separate licensing category called “hypnotherapist.”
Diagnosis: Yes, they seem warm and welcoming and enthusiastic and positive and harmless, but one cannot help but wonder why such fluffy New Age proponents always feel the need to dishonestly market their skills and qualifications. They are, perhaps, so post-truth that dishonesty doesn’t register any more. Stevenson probably needs serious help making other important distinctions, too.

John Stemberger

John Stemberger is president of the Florida Family Policy Council – closely aligned with the Family Research Council – and affiliated with a number of other, similar groups (like On My Honor). As you’d expect from the name of his group, Stemberger is a fundie, denialist and all-round bigot, and many of his efforts have, unsurprisingly, been directed at making life as hard as possible for gay people, but he has also initiated or contributed to a number of other fundie efforts, too, such as circumventing the law to distribute Bibles in public schools. He has also tried to contribute to discussions of race relations.
Gays in the Boy Scouts
Stemberger was very critical of proposals to end the ban of gay youths in the Boy Scouts, warning that doing so would “further public scandal to the BSA, not to mention the tragedy of countless boys who will experience sexual, physical and psychological abuse”. Also, according to Stemberger, a young gay man will only join the Scouts in order to begin “flaunting his sexuality and promoting a leftist political agenda” and “inject a sensitive and highly-charged political issue into the heart of the BSA”. Apparently these are among Stemberger’s “top ten reasons” to oppose ending the ban on gay youth in the organization. Wanna bet whether the others are any better? As Stemberger sees it, “anything that has the word ‘gay’ on it [is] inappropriate for kids,” and “that’s what we’re talking about; we talking about injecting hyper-sexuality and a leftist political agenda right into the veins of the Boy Scouts and it will utterly devastate it.” Of course, the Boy Scouts weren’t supposed to start using the word ‘gay’ – indeed, their policy change was more about ending the use ‘gay’ or similar expressions in their rules. What Stemberger is talking about is thus not what he thinks he is talking about. He also warned that the Boy Scouts would commit “suicide” if they allowed openly gay members, whom he said would be “segregated” and put “in separate tents” from the other boys. At least he tried his best to make that prediction come true.
In response to the end of the ban, a heartbroken Stemberger tried to help start an alternative, anti-gay version of the boy scouts, Trail Life USA, an initiative he compared to the death and resurrection of Jesus. Trail Life USA would ban anyone who is gay unless he is working to hide and banish his gay demons, in opposition to “society and schools and even parents”, which he blamed for affirming LGBT youth, something that, in Stemberger’s mind, is “tantamount to abuse.” Stemberger also said that gay people are “intolerant,” and indeed that this is why he will not “tolerate” them in Trail Life USA or any other youth group. No, he didn’t put two and two together. But he did express his outrage at Disney, who at the time (2014) was still not funding the BSA because the organization still barred gay people from leadership roles, calling Disney’s decision proof that gay rights advocates have a “vitriolic spirit” of “intolerance.” Disney is “completely a pro-gay agenda,” said Stemberger: “ I don’t trust Disney anymore with my kids. The Disney Channel can’t be trusted. If it has ‘Disney’ on it and says it’s for kids you better watch what it is parents because they can no longer be trusted as a family source for entertainment.” All in the spirit of fighting intolerance, of course.
And when a state judge in Florida overturned the state’s ban on same-sex marriage in 2014 Stemberger vowed to continue fighting: “This is an issue worth dying for,” he said, adding that “every domestic partnership, every single civil union, every couple that cohabitates, these arrangements dilute and devalue marriage.” It makes one wonder a bit how his own marriage works and what it’s based on.
After the 2016 massacre in an Orlando gay club, Stemberger complained about being “tired of seeing special interest rainbow flags”, and wishing instead to see greater “unity”. The statement itself – and Stemberger was not the only one to make statements of that kind – kinda suggests that Stemberger is not that fond of unity (hint: unity is not quite equivalent to everybody do as I want), but to emphasize he added that “Christians should be prepared to be attacked and persecuted if they do not bow down and pledge allegiance to the gay pride flag and all it supposedly represents,” and the strategy of LGBT rights advocates is to “manipulate and bully Christians into submission to the new orthodoxy of the moral revolution,” presumably by letting themselves be gunned down in an Orlando nightclub.
Among efforts to help people avoid homosexual temptations, Stemberger has suggested ending welfare: after all, people wouldn’t be gay if they could just be kept dirt poor. “People who are hard-working and have to be self-sufficient and are not going to be propped up by the government don’t have the luxury of doing stupid, immoral things,” argued Stemberger. So, one major reason for opposing welfare measures is because they make you gay.
Creationism
Stemberger is also an advocate of teaching creationism in public schools, usually by arguing that teachers should (be allowed to) do so under the “academic freedom” label. In response to discussion of Florida’s education standards in 2008, Stemberger objected to adding the phrase “scientific theory” to evolution, ostensibly because it would be a “meaningless and impotent change,” which is a peculiar choice of words.
As Stemberger saw the debates, the “Neanderthals” – i.e. the scientists and experts – were fighting hard to prevent exposure to denialist talking points (not his formulation) in public schools: “It’s apparent that evolution has become almost like one of the prongs of the Apostles’ Creed for the secular humanists. They guard it as if they were guarding a doctrinal truth,” said Stemberger, who would not be able to distinguish science from dogma if his life dependend on it (he interestingly didn’t liken the idea of gravity to the Apostles’ Creed). “They’re not open to discussion and debate and examination of evidence,” he concluded. Stemberger is not interested in the evidence, of course. He did, however, liken creationists to Galileo, “when he was trying to establish an order of the day and come against the Flat Earth Society.” That was not remotely what Galileo was doing.
Diagnosis: Yes, relatively standard fare for us, but still: John Stemberger is an insane, delusional conspiracy theorist with a tenuous grasp of reality. But he is certainly tireless, and still has the ability to cause real harm.