Today in Alternate Realities

Seriously:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Thursday defended Democratic efforts to change the chamber’s rules to allow remote voting during the coronavirus pandemic, arguing that the move is “not in opposition to the traditions of the House.”

The House will vote Friday on the proposed rule changes, which were drafted after bipartisan negotiations. The proposal would allow lawmakers to cast their votes from afar if they cannot be present in the Capitol for “reasons beyond our control” related to the virus. Those lawmakers would designate their proxy to another lawmaker who is present.

Earlier Thursday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) sharply criticized the move, arguing that Democrats “have checked out of this crisis and left governing up to the Senate.”

That's Mitch "The Senate's job is to pack the courts" McConnell, who, according to reports, has over 400 bills passed by the House sitting on his desk waiting for action from the Senate.

The contrast between McConnell and Pelosi in this crisis is breathtaking -- she is, in fact, working to keep the House running while not killing off the members, while he is -- well, what is he doing, exactly? Anything?

As of this wriring, the WaPo link in Joe's post goes to the national news headlines, not the story quoted.

Liar du Jour

It's so hard to choose, but today it's Moscow Mitch with a major whopper. First, a swipe at Obama for criticizing President Quid-Pro-Quo:

Now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has weighed in. And rather than focusing his comments on defending the current president, he took aim at the former one, stating that "President Obama should've kept his mouth shut."

"You know, generally, former presidents just don't do that," McConnell told President Trump's daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, during an interview streamed live by the Trump campaign Monday night. "I remember President George W. Bush and his father went right through eight years of Democratic administrations after they left office and kept their mouths shut because they didn't feel it was appropriate for former presidents to critique even the president of another party."

In W's case, it was because the only thing Obama did that deserved criticism was letting him and the other war criminals in his administration off the hook.

Strangely, the biggie is not in the CBS story. But, Twitter to the rescue (and I never thought I'd say that):

Sen. Mitch McConnell: "Clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this." pic.twitter.com/ntbCocJogJ

— The Hill (@thehill) May 12, 2020

And the riposte:

Former Ebola Czar: - Ronald Klain
“We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook.... that they ignored.

And an office called the Pandemic Preparedness Office... that they abolished.

And a global monitoring system called PREDICT .. that they cut by 75%” pic.twitter.com/wAmEDcMuIJ

— Al Wayward (@Wayward888) May 12, 2020

But then, McConnell has gotten more and more brazen since Trump took office -- he's not even making excuses any more. Apparently he's convinced that one-party rule is firmly established.

Via Joe.My.God.

Meanwhile, In the Real World

Aside from the Keystone Kops dog-and-pony show that President Quid-Pro-Quo is offering as a "response" to the CoVID-19 pandemic, real researchers are getting real results:

Scientists have identified an antibody in a lab that they say can prevent the novel coronavirus from infecting cells. The team hopes the antibody could be used to create treatments for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus. . . .

The team, whose research was published in the journal Nature Communications, have been exploring whether what are known as monoclonal antibodies could help patients with COVID-19. Currently there is no vaccine or specific treatment for the disease. Monoclonal antibodies are a type of protein created in a lab which can bind to a specific substance in the body. These types of antibodies mimic how the immune system responds to a threat, and are used to treat some forms of cancer.

An antibody named 47D11 was found to bind to the spike protein which the novel coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, uses to enter the body, and block it in a way that neutralizes the pathogen.

This is prelimninary, but it builds on a model that's been successful in the past -- but, as the saying goes, the devil's in the details. If it works inside a human body, it may be the breakthrough we've been hoping for.

Read the whole thing.

Via Joe.My.God.

(Footnote: For those of you who are not science nerds, a virus is, in basic terms, a little packet of either DNA or RNA enclosed in a protein coat; some also have a fatty envelope over that. Those spikes/knobs you see in pictures of the coronavirus are proteins that it uses to penetrate the cell membrane of a host cell. Like any other organism, it wants to reproduce, but since it's lacking most of the metabolic processes that make that possible, it needs a host cell to provide those. Unfortunately, this relationship doesn't do the host cell any good.)

You Know It's a Crisis

when your grocery store runs out of tortillas.

Today in Disgusting People

Needless to say, he's a Republican:

In the April 23 post, Antioch planning commissioner chair Ken Turnage II said that coronavirus is like a forest fire that burns “old trees, fallen brush and scrub-shrub sucklings” that drain resources, adding that society will “strengthen” when the pandemic “is all settled.”

“We would have significant loss of life, we would lose many elderly, that would reduce burdens in our defunct Social Security System, health care cost (once the wave subsided), make jobs available for others and it would also free up housing in which we are in dire need of,” Turnage wrote in the post that has since been deleted. “We would lose a large portion of the people with immune and other health complications. I know it would be loved ones as well. But that would once again reduce our impact on medical, jobs, and housing.”

Economy uber alles!

He's not the first to come out with comments like this, and I'm sure he won't be the last. Do I need to point out that we're not a forest? These are human lives he's talking about. If we stopped breeding like flies (yes, it turns out he's a forced-birther), our infrastructure wouldn't be under such a strain. (The only life forms that outnumber people on this planet are insects and bacteria. Good company we're keeping.)

Of course, his post (since deleted) was taken "out of context".

Another Empty Threat

Ladies and Gentlemen, the President of the United States:

President Donald Trump indicated he wouldn’t allow federal aid for states facing budget deficits from the coronavirus outbreak unless they take action against “sanctuary cities” — municipalities that prevent their police from cooperating with immigration authorities.

“We would want certain things” as part of a deal with House Democrats to aid states, he said at a White House event on Tuesday, “including sanctuary city adjustments, because we have so many people in sanctuary cities.”

“What’s happening is people are being protected that shouldn’t be protected and a lot of bad things are happening with sanctuary cities,” he added. Trump has long complained about the cities and has previously sought to cut off their federal funding unless they end the policies.

He's really good at making threats. Unfortunately for him, they generally amount to nothing -- but that's not the point: he assumes that those on the receiving end with fold. Unfortunately for him, as commenter ColoMtnWoman points out, this issue has been litigated, and he lost. (Actually, a quick google search shows that the Trump administration has lost cases on this issue in the Ninth, Seventh, and First Circuits, and won a case in the Second Circuit. It appears that the Supreme Court has yet to rule on this issue.)

There's also the fact that Congress has the authority to allocate funds, not the Executive: if Trump wants to withhold grants to states, he has to get Nancy Pelosi's permission. Good luck with that.

None of which alters the fact that our President is a mean-spirited, racist, petty, vengeful blowhard.

Today's Must-Read: Bad Publicity Helps

I'm sure you're aware that the small-business loan fund under the CARES Act ran out of money very quickly. Why? Because too much of it was going to companies that in no way could be considered "small busnesses".

The Treasury Department issued new guidance on Thursday encouraging publicly-traded companies to return their coronavirus stimulus loans by May 7 as Shake Shack and other public companies have faced backlash for receiving funds meant for small businesses.

While small business owners struggled to secure loans under the Paycheck Protection Program in the two weeks before the $350 billion fund ran dry, dozens of publicly traded companies secured hundreds of millions of dollars in funds, drawing criticism from watchdog groups and lawmakers.

How could these loans have gone to publicly traded companies to begin with? Well, for starters, Trump fired the inspector general who was supposed to be overseeing these programs -- probably to be sure his own companies (which are not publicly traded) could get their hands in the pot.

And then there's this:

Designed for businesses with 500 employees or less, the initiative also included exceptions for big restaurant and hotel chains, along with franchises, with less than 500 employees per location.

That opening allowed some publicly-traded restaurant and hospitality companies to seek and secure millions of low-interest loans from the government.

(Emphasis added.)

Gee, I wonder who wrote that into the bill? Hint: It wasn't Nancy Pelosi.

Via Joe.My.God. The comments on Joe's post are worth reading, particularly this article from NYT, courtesy of commenter corram nobis.

Today in Disgusting People

I know, I know, but they've been crawling out from under their rocks for the last three years. This one is choice:

In times of national crisis and fast-spreading tragedy like the novel coronavirus pandemic, you can always count on the people who promote sociopathic political worldviews to reveal their awful, deeply inhuman natures for all the world to see—and they don’t come much more sociopathic than immigrant-hating Nativists.

Sure enough, the leaders and spokesmen of key Nativist hate groups—notably the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), both designated hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center—have taken the lead in opposing any release of immigrants currently held in detention centers around the United States despite the spread of COVID-19 in these facilities, as Michael Edison Hayden reports at Hatewatch.

Some of the statement coming from these racist groups sound reasonable, until you stop to think about them. This is just one example:

Another writer at CIS’s website, Andrew Arthur, argued: “Releasing ICE detainees takes them out of a facility where sanitary protections are readily available, testing is accessible, quarantine can be accomplished, and treatment is guaranteed. If that is not joining forces with the current pestilence, I am not sure what is. Detention is the best resistance to pestilence.”

This is pure horsepucky. It's well documented that the conditions at these facilities are appalling -- overcrowded, unsanitary, inadequate food, and practically non-existent medical care.

If these "nativists" want America reserved for the real Americans, they should all go back to Europe.

Read the whole thing, and also the article linked to at Hatewatch.

Footnote: I can't help but wonder how many of these people consider themselves good Christians. How many times does their Bible tell them to welcome the stranger?