40,000+ US COVID-19 deaths in May; Swedish model looking ever worse

May brought no solace to the world, or to conservative claims about COVID-19. Another 40,000 deaths in the United States put the lie to Trump's claim that the country is doing great, while he simultaneously takes no responsibility for his weeks and weeks of denial and downplaying the pandemic. The U.S. death toll now stands at over 106,000. Sweden, for the first time in its modern history the darling of conservatives, shot up the chart in terms of its death rate. Conservative-run United Kingdom did almost as badly as Sweden in May.

Country	DPM May 1	DPM June 1	DPM Increase
Belgium	665	819	+ 154
Spain	531	580	+   49
United Kingdom	405	575	+ 170
Italy	467	554	+   87
France	377	442	+   65
Sweden	263	436	+ 173
Netherlands	286	348	+   62
Ireland	256	334	+   78
United States	199	323	+ 124
Switzerland	203	222	+   19
DPM = deaths per million
Worldometers.info

The 10* worst-performing countries by deaths per million have remained the same over the last month, but their ranking has changed. As noted in an update to my last post on the pandemic, the United States passed Switzerland on May 3. At current rates, it will pass Ireland and the Netherlands in coming weeks, and Ireland will also pass the Netherlands. Over the course of May, Sweden quickly passed the Netherlands and left it in the dust. It will pass France soon. The United Kingdom leapfrogged Italy and is set to take the #2 spot from Spain within a week.

As I mentioned last time (link above), while conservatives have lauded Sweden's refusal to go for a hard lockdown, we can see that Sweden had the highest increase in deaths per million people over the last month. Now, instead of having 64 more deaths per million than the United States, the gap has grown to 113 per million. That would equate to an extra 37,380 deaths if the United States were doing as poorly as Sweden.

The global toll is worse still. Not only are there now 377,000 deaths worldwide, but the number of new daily infections shows a fairly steady increase since April 1, rising from about 75,000 new cases globally per day then to about 100,000 new cases per day on June 1. In the same period, daily deaths have fallen from about 5,000 to 3,000. Unfortunately, deaths are a lagging indicator, and the epidemic is now revving up in developing countries such as Brazil, Peru, and Ecuador. The latter has already risen to #12 with 194 deaths per million officially, and a New York Times analysis on April 23 suggested that the true death toll was 15 times higher as hospitals had been overwhelmed and the dead were overflowing the country's emergency rooms and morgues.

As if all this isn't bad enough, Trump fiddles pours on the gasoline as the U.S. burns, in an attempt to consolidate his dictatorship now, before elections interfere with his project. I'll be writing about this very soon.


* Excluding microstates (San Marino, Andorra) and dependencies (Sint Maarten, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, Montserrat).

Department of "Justice" Moves to Drop Case Against Flynn

Talking Points Memo, and I'm sure every other news organization in the country, is reporting the bombshell move by the Bill Barr DOJ to drop the case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn for lying to FBI investigators, to which Flynn pleaded guilty over two years ago, in December 2017. According to the filing, the DOJ is now alleging that Flynn's statements were not "material even if untrue." It claims there was no legitimate reason for investigating Flynn, despite his making five phone calls to the Russian ambassador and lying about them.

The filing goes on to repeat all the rancid nonsense our so-called President has been making about the investigation, particularly targeting the FBI, then-Director James Comey, and of course FBI agents Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Jesus fucking Christ! There really is nothing so low this regime won't do. Barr and his minions have put an exclamation point on the complete perversion of justice I highlighted in February.

As you can tell by the fact that I am breaking my own commenting rules, I am gobsmacked, speechless, and enraged. The would-be dictator continues to trash the rule of law in this country, and there are still 180 days left until the November election.

Judge Emmet Sullivan, who has presided over this case, does not have to accept the DOJ recommendation. I pray that he does not. You know, it might be worthwhile if Special Counsel Robert Mueller said something about the methodical lying about, and undoing of his investigation. That he has been silent this long is disgraceful. He swore to uphold the Constitution and it's being violated in plain sight.

You can see the entire filing at TPM. You can read it if you're a masochist or more detail-oriented than I am. I'm not going to tempt my blood pressure any more than necessary.

I'm sorry I can't be any more coherent than this. This is Saturday Night Massacre level lawlessness now. We're in the fight of our lives to save America.

Did I say "dictatorship"?

Did I say "dictatorship"? Don't believe it's true? Here is some more evidence for those with open eyes.

The New York Times reports that Erik Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, has since 2016 been recruiting former spies in U.S. and U.K. intelligence to help spy on organizations that oppose the illegitimate Trump administration. If you remember my linked article, this counts as "rage-inducing." And color me not surprised. Trump's authoritarian tendencies have always been in evidence for anyone paying attention.

Apparently it's not enough, as I discussed last time, to turn the Department of Justice into an organization that absolves Trump's allies and persecutes his perceived enemies. Now it's time for conservatives (and probably Trump himself, though it has not been proven at this time) to send spies into Democratic political campaigns, unions, liberal organizations, etc., in order to discredit and harass them. This story is not new historically, of course. Government and/or powerful people with close ties to government spying on citizens is a hallmark of dictatorship.

One important vector for this spying is so-called Project Veritas (the Newspeak in the conservative movement has been visible to me since at least Gingrich's 1994 "Contract with America"), the organization that first made its name by using highly deceptive (to put it mildly) film editing to destroy the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), a group long vilified by conservatives for having the audacity to register voters in large numbers. The idea behind using Project Veritas is to combine its already-willing spies with technical competence in espionage.

The Times reports that the Trump Foundation made a $20,000 grant to Project Veritas in 2015. The organization's most recent budget, for 2018, was $8.7 million. Its ties to the conservative movement are deep.

This is what we are up against. The combined might of the Department of Justice and systematic spying are being deployed to ensure another four years of the illegitimate Trump regime. If we are to restore democracy in our country, we have to win big in November, with margins that make the election impossible to steal.

By the way, I am a proud former ACORN organizer myself. "The people shall rule."

The dictatorship is here

Under cover of the New Hampshire primary, on February 11, 2020, the illegitimate Trump regime's Attorney General, William Barr, put an exclamation point on the corruption of the Justice Department by throwing out the DOJ's sentencing recommendation for Roger Stone less than 24 hours after it had been filed. Meanwhile, Trump himself says out loud that there should be further retribution against Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman for testifying before the House impeachment inquiry and today claimed in a tweet that former Special Counsel Robert Mueller lied to Congress.

It was already clear this was happening when the Southern District of New York (the once "Sovereign District of New York") did not indict Rudy Giuliani despite all the evidence of his connections to the indicted Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, and an endless stream of leaks and speculation that his indictment was days away. Now it's crystal clear: Trump associates will have their crimes minimized and eventually erased, and the DOJ will harass Trump's many perceived enemies.

It's hard for me to say something coherent about all this. Since the 2016 election, politics for me has been alternately paralyzingly depressing and rage-inducing. Yesterday, fear was added to that equation. When I graduated from college almost 42 years ago, I envisioned our country becoming a better place to live 40 years hence, fairer and more democratic than ever. Instead, as I say in my tagline, things have gotten worse for the middle class over the entire time period, and I certainly never expected that democracy would be collapsing in this and so many other countries around the world. Only the 2018 blue wave gives me any hope.

But make no mistake about it. The rule of law has ceased to exist in the United States, and we are by no means guaranteed that we will have free and fair elections in November. Trump has already been impeached for his efforts to cheat in the election, and those efforts continue because Republican politicians have sold their souls to the devil. Or Putin. Thus, we face a very concentrated 9-month fight.

In an oddly appropriate line from Harry Potter, Sir Cadogan tells the trio, "Be of stout heart, the worst is yet to come!" There is no doubt in my mind that this is true for us today. There is no time for paralysis in the next nine months. We have to remember, with Greta Thunberg, "No one is too small to make a difference." My voice alone is small, but I still have to raise it. Everyone else, with voices small and large, must raise theirs, too. We don't know the extent of the dirty tricks coming, but we will have to fight them. Democracy is a precondition to improving the lives of everyday people, and we've got to fight for it now.