We're Number One!

Mother Jones

On the other hand:

Of course Germany will beat us---but even in Italy and the UK people are dying faster than people in the US! 

Trump of course is trying to fix this by botching the federal government's response to the pandemic so badly it's killing more Americans.

He's also taking a personal sacrifice on behalf of conservative ideology by taking hexachlorophene himself, calling up memories of Jim Jones and his Kool-Aid.

Will everyone in the West Wing be required to take it? Vice President Pence has already said his doctor doesn't think it's right for him, but surely he should take it because it's right for the Trump team! 

JIm Jones didn't allow doctors to interfere when he dispensed the Kool-Aid.

See also Jim Jones, Harvey Milk, and the left.

Doubts about the Biden allegation

Doubts on Tara Reade’s Allegation Against Joe Biden

Jonathan Chait:

When Tara Reade first made her assault allegation against Joe Biden, I thought the charge was more likely to be true than false. To be clear, I had no intention of changing my vote. The allegation came too late to reopen the nominating process without doing violence to the expressed will of the electorate. 

And I’ve always believed the primary criteria for voting on a candidate is their policy impact (which is why I wrote a column in 2018 defending Republicans who still supported Roy Moore over Doug Jones). But I did feel bad about voting for a candidate I suspected had done something terrible.

Since then, however, three detailed reports — by Vox’s Laura McGann, PBS NewsHour, and Politico’s Natasha Korecki — have delved into Reade’s allegations. Neither reaches a definitive conclusion. But all of them on balance add a lot of grounds for skepticism. 

At this point, Reade’s allegation seems to me to be more likely to be false than true...

democratic underground