Pillow Man

Product Placement:  We’ve moved into the White House’s daily virus new conference infomercial phase, not much in the way of facts beyond dire predictions and hopeful drug reports but lots of self-congratulatory corporate promotion.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that corporate America is stepping up to produce personal protective gear for hospital workers, we need all that, however it’s fair to question why a bunch of corporate executives flew to Washington, presumably in self-isolation on expensive corporate jets to stand in a distance guideline violating huddle with Trump to brag about turning diapers, underwear, pillows and other such products into masks and gowns.  The CEO set included executives from Honeywell, Jockey International, Procter & Gamble, United Technologies and that frequent FOX advertiser and Trump rally participant Mike Lindell of MyPillow.  The pillow man, who Trump affectionately introduced while expressing amazement, tinged with some envy, about his “unbelievable” pillow sales, because who doesn’t admire a guy who markets the hell out of an inferior product, finished off his scripted words about converting pillows into face masks by engaging in some idol worship and proselytizing saying “God gave us grace on November 8, 2016, to change the course we were on, God had been taken out of our schools and lives, a nation had turned its back on God. I encourage you to use this time at home to get back in the word, read our Bibles and spend time with our families.”  Makes one wonder how much you have to contribute to Trump’s campaign coffers to get the opportunity to do that?   Getting back to the few “facts” that were shared at the daily news conference, Trump continues to insist that adequate supplies of everything are being provided to state governors, even though many of them report they are only getting, at best, a fraction of what they’ve asked for.  For some inexplicable reason, despite assertions to the contrary by hospital administrators in NY and the state’s virus hero Governor Cuomo, Trump continued to stick to the assertion that NY doesn’t really need the quantity of face masks requested because one of his “friends” says that NY and the hospitals are wildly inflating their needs.  And because it was a Trump press conference we got a little of that hostile back and forth with the press and at least one of those off the wall crazy questions from another one of those fawning OAN “reporters.”  The hostile stuff came in response to questions from two of Trump’s favorite punching bags, PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor and CNN’s Jim Acosta.  To put it mildly, Trump wasn’t pleased with recitations of some of his prior remarks, the ones where he claimed that the coronavirus was a big nothing that was under control and would go away quickly.  Nor was he happy with a question asking why he keeps bragging about all the testing being done in the US when so much more on a per capital basis has been done in Korea.  As an aside, it’s not clear that Trump understands the meaning of the term “per capita,” but that didn’t stop him from asserting that it wasn’t fair to compare Korea to the US because he knows Korea better than anyone and Seoul has a population of 39 million squished together people so of course they had to test a lot.  For the record, he was only off by a multiple of four, Seoul has a population just short of 10 million but who’s counting?  Anyway, Trump called the two “hostiles” out as snarky, said that they should be spending their time congratulating him for all he does before going on to slam CNN for the zillionth time.  As to that OAN reporter, Chanel Rion, she more or less asked why everyone was so concerned about people dying from coronavirus when so many abortions are performed every year, going on to ask Trump whether he agreed with the governors who have been using the current crisis to ban abortions in their states.  Even Trump got a little tongue tied by that out of left field pro-life(?) question.  As to abortion procedures, five states, including Ohio, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Oklahoma  are trying to ban them right now as unnecessary elective procedures.  So far their strategy doesn’t appear to be working, a few judges have put the restrictions on hold, but it’s far from certain that the anti-abortion crowd won’t win this battle.  Not so coincidentally, many of the Attorneys General from those same “red” states are still trying to get Obamacare overturned, because, really who needs health insurance right now?    

  

Around the World:  Preliminary indications, or at least, hopes indicate that Italy is turning a corner, the UK’s COVID 19 positive Boris Johnson is still under quarantine as is Bibi Netanyahu, who has been exposed and is awaiting a test result, but weirdly enough Prince Charles is now out and about. Hungarian leader Victor Orban, has gotten his parliament to pass a coronavirus bill that essentially suspends democracy, or what was left of it, in Hungary.  He now gets to rule by decree. How very 1930s.  And Moscow is on strict lockdown, notable because until recently Putin denied that his country had any virus infected individuals.  On the domestic front more states are also on lock down including Virginia where people have been told to stay at home.  Unfortunately that order came after Jerry Falwell Jr ordered his students back to Liberty University, the consequences of that order will haunt Virginia for some time.      

And apparently, masks and alternative face covers are a thing.  Scott Gottlieb, Trump’s respected former FDA head has written a “roadmap” to recovery and one of the things he recommends is going the face protection route.  Notably when asked about that yesterday during his infomercial, Trump didn’t dismiss it out of hand.   Cover up and stay safe.