This makes me oddly happy.
Thursday, May 14, 2020
Wartime presidents
The term "wartime president" didn't really come up until WWII, when FDR rallied a nation, set about fighting an actual war, with an actual enemy, to produce ships, planes, equipment, and more. He acted in a way that would support the growing war effort.
So there is no clear definition for the term. However, it's been applied at times to presidents who rallied a nation to fight a common enemy.
Each had the courage to take personal responsibility for their actions – and, equally courageous, for their inaction. The courage to admit error and learn from it.
As I noted earlier the term was coined under FDR, and somewhat became a thing because of what Winston Churchill did in England in 1940. In short, he saw Germany as an aggressor and boosted production of aircraft, taking a risk in rallying a nation. He said of this: "To each there comes in their lifetime a special moment when they are figuratively tapped on the shoulder and offered the chance to do a very special thing, unique to them and fitted to their talents. What a tragedy if that moment finds them unprepared or unqualified for that which could have been their finest hour."
Roosevelt a short time later, likewise rallied our nation to achieve greater things. And this is how he became the war time president. He harnessed the power and prestige of the federal government to mobilize the national effort.
First he saw the threat.
First he saw the threat.
And the second thing he did was financial. He managed to get appropriations to support the effort.
After that, he directed companies to produce ships, equipment, aircraft, and equipment.
And he did this *before* Germany invaded France, because he saw the threat mounting and acted decisively to counter it.
FDR was well aware of the risks. And he proceeded in spite of them. He didn't shrink, rather he got bolder. There were many who preferred that America ignore foreign conflicts. Amusingly one was called "the America First Committee" which sounds like something trump might have made a slogan.
Roosevelt said of them: "Frankly and definitely there is danger ahead—danger against which we must prepare. But we well know that we cannot escape danger, or the fear of it, by crawling into bed and pulling the covers over our heads."
And I should note that the other president who you could say presided over a war in that sense was Lincoln.
It might very well be the most apt parallel to today. The nation was divided over something that seems almost silly. And as it happened, the Union sustained a long string of battlefield defeats in the first years of the Civil War. But Lincoln did not blame these losses on the generals, the Union governors or anyone else. Instead he made the hard and unpopular decision to pursue the war – fully expecting that it would cost him his reelection.
Because it was in the best interests of ultimately uniting a nation.
So trump thinks this will help him with re-election, even though he has done exactly the opposite of what FDR or Lincoln did.
Trump punted on responsibility for preparation and said early on that "We pretty much shut it down coming in from China" and later doubled down saying "It's going to disappear. One day—it's like a miracle—it will disappear."
And then when it did spread here, he had the audacity to say, "I don't take responsibility at all."
And as for the decisions Roosevelt made in gearing up production, trump didn’t and then said this "We're a backup. We're not an ordering clerk. We're a backup." Trump essentially told states to procure materials on their own, saying the federal government is "not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items and then shipping. You know, we're not a shipping clerk."
If you look at what it takes to be successful, it's four things. Let’s look at those and see how trump did. (1) accountability. He gave us the middle finger. (2) financial. He never asked for funds to do anything. (3) working at defeating an enemy. There isn't one. If you say it's the virus then what is he doing to try and defeat it? And (4) Gearing up production for a greater good. He didn't rally us to do anything. In fact if there’s an opposite, he’s doing that.
So for comparison, let's look through history and see presidents who were in office during a war, let's see how they did in their re-election bids.
War of 1812 - James Madison. Won re-election, though the war wasn't a huge factor.
Civil war - Lincoln, won re-election but died in office. Andrew johnson served afterward, as the war ended, and was not re-elected. .
World war 1 - Woodrow Wilson. Won re-election as the war was ongoing.
The depression - not so much a war but it was another big moment. Herbert Hoover was president. Lost his bid for re-election
WWII - FDR, won re-election several times. But he also took over and led us in rebounding from the depression; he may have been our nations greatest leader.
Korea - Harry Truman Lost his bid for re-election
Vietnam - this one swallowed up many presidents including Eisenhower (not re-elected), Kennedy (died in office), Johnson (He was re-elected but the kennedy assassination was a driving factor more than the war), and to a point Nixon (left office). Ford took over and led us to the end of the war but also wasn’t re-elected
Cold War - this was fairly complicated and spanned for many years. You could argue that that Reagan won re-election based at least in part because of his efforts in the Cold War.
Iraq - elder bush was not re-elected.
Iraq - elder bush was not re-elected.
9/11 - again not so much a war, but W won re-election
So as you can see, the bump that trump perceives as a benefit for his re-election isn't necessarily that. When the nation is in peril, the eyes turn to the leader. If they are good at their job and lead us through it, they get to remain in office. And if not, then the person behind the deli counter is saying "next!"
Trump is pretty much failing us on all fronts and should (hopefully) be relegated to the dust bin of history. The "Ineffective and incompetent presidents" wing of the museum.
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
I got issues...
But the issue I have is with the rhetoric that is being spilled by the dotard, by the gop on the whole, and by "conservative media outlets." They still are holding steadfast that it's not a threat to the general public and life should "return to normal"... that more people die from the flu, from car crashes, or from birdwatching.
They quote the numbers correctly (somewhat surprisingly; who knew? They can do math). But what they're missing is context.
I fell into a bit of a rabbit hole yesterday, following comments about school reopening. This group took umbrage with keeping schools closed, and called anyone who believed in science, who was exercising caution, a libtard, socialist, leftist, dem something or another. They told of personal experiences, and their braveness because they're unlikely to get it (even if they are in a vulnerable age group).
Because obviously bravery and name calling will prevent this virus from spreading.
The context they are missing is how virulent this is. How it can spread quickly among people. And how it is mutating in various ways, making it harder to really understand. So yes, the odds of dying from it remain relatively low - for the time being. And yeah, the odds of getting fairly sick from it are a little higher, but still low. But the number of people who have tested positive is still low *because we've taken steps to slow the spread*. With no immunity and no vaccine, we can't just go "okay, we're good, let's just go back to large gatherings."
It's not that simple.
A quick bit of math. Let's suppose 20% of the population gets it (say 66,000,000 people). And 2% of them die. That's 1,320,000 people who might die, just because we want to return to a previous state of being.
You may say 20% seems like a lot. A recent count says that 8.3 million tests have been done in the US. There have been 1.4 million confirmed cases. That's about 17% and excludes people who didn't get tested, but died of the virus anyway. And since this is a small percentage of the population who have access to (and in some cases can afford testing), I would posit the number is actually much higher, perhaps 30% instead of 20%.
You may also say (ignorantly) that it's less than 1% of the population on the whole. Then you really don't get this. There's a secondary issue that there don't appear to be any antibodies that last, and no immunity. So you could get it more than once. And we don't know how your body will react to a second (or third, or fourth) exposure. So keeping it running through society will just keep the death toll mounting. Maybe we develop an immunity over time. Maybe there's limited effect after a first exposure. We don't know enough yet to make a determination - and that's a scary notion. So it could be a continual, repeating 1% of the population that dies off.
But in any case, the rate of acceleration would probably increase, meaning it propagates faster. And that would overwhelm healthcare in every city.
So. No. The only viable option is to stay the course, and find new ways to conduct business. Sure, we could allow for takeout, or limited number of barber seats to be used. But maybe they have different hours to accommodate more people. But movies? Sports events? Large gatherings? Those don't seem like good ideas. And face masks should be worn at all times for now - at least until we know more.
Maybe we keep looking for ways to allow for less-risky travel and vacations. Maybe we just need to be smarter about how we approach it, rather than diving in headfirst or "throwing caution to the wind."
AP reports on antibody test, gets one fact as the headline, then reports speculate wildly
The test was a great start, checking antibody levels on most MLB players and people associated with the clubs. It was not the test for the virus, and it doesn't mean that no one had it - only that they don't have the antibody. As the researcher said "this is good and bad" because it's hard to draw any conclusions. And besides these are mostly young, healthy men who have been using masks and washing hands, and who have been in quarantine. So it's not necessarily conclusive, in itself.
The study goes off for peer review, and then we'll know more about It. But the follow up testing will also be interesting to see how it goes.
But of course the <1% having the antibody grabbed the attention, though the AP struggled to explain why it was meaningful. Of course "sports!" Latched onto it because that's what they do in the absence of games, and started positing that this means baseball can begin soon....because...again no one can quite explain why they think that (intelligently anyway).
But at least we're seeing some actual scientific studies being conducted. Here's to hoping there are a lot more, and soon!
Headline "Under 1% of MLB Employees Test Positive for Virus Antibodies | Sports News | US News"
Sent from my iPad
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Trump Has Lost the Plot - The Atlantic
Honestly a pet rock would be doing a better job and have higher ratings - just because it wouldn't be actively trying to undermine any sense of reality, undercutting science, or just blathering on about what a great job it's doing.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/trump-has-lost-plot/611548/
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