I’d like to thank everyone who sent kind words my way after I wrote about my mother’s illness last week. And I have some good news: over the weekend she started getting better and is now clearly on the upswing. We’ve moved her into a rehab facility, and as soon as she recovers enough strength to be able to walk we’ll finally be able to get her home. The rehab hospital doesn’t allow visitors, which is understandable if still maddening, but mom is well enough now that she can talk on the phone. Her main message is that she wants to go home to her cats.

We still have no idea what this was all about. We know a lot of things it’s not—not a stroke, not a heart attack, not the flu, not COVID-19, etc.—but still no idea what it is. In any case, she’s rapidly getting better.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through July 8. The holiday spike in the US is still spiking. Argentina is still at a low level, but its trendline sure doesn’t look good.

The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here. The Public Health Agency of Sweden is here.

Did Donald Trump’s rally in Tulsa cause the rate of COVID-19 cases to skyrocket? Here’s the raw data:

Maybe. But an eyeball look at this chart sure seems to suggest that Tulsa has followed the same trendline before and after the rally. The city has no mask requirement, nor does it have any ban on large gatherings, of which there have been quite a few in addition to Trump’s.

Holding an indoor rally while the case rate was increasing was surely a dumb thing to do, but based on the numbers alone it’s hard to say for sure what impact it had.

From the New York Times:

Boeing’s communications chief resigned last week after an employee complained about an article he wrote nearly 33 years ago that said women should not serve in combat. Niel Golightly announced his resignation in an email to Boeing’s staff on July 2. He said he regretted what he wrote in the article, which was published in 1987 when he was a 29-year-old Navy pilot.

Seriously?

Ladies and gentlemen, the president of the United States:

In Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and many other countries, SCHOOLS ARE OPEN WITH NO PROBLEMS. The Dems think it would be bad for them politically if U.S. schools open before the November Election, but is important for the children & families. May cut off funding if not open!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 8, 2020

I disagree with @CDCgov on their very tough & expensive guidelines for opening schools. While they want them open, they are asking schools to do very impractical things. I will be meeting with them!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 8, 2020

Trump disagrees with the CDC. Let that sink in. So he’s going to force them to change their expert guidance:

Hours after President Trump assailed guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for reopening schools, Vice President Mike Pence, appearing with the White House coronavirus task force, announced the agency would issue new recommendations next week, saying they don’t want the guidance to be a reason why schools don’t open. “Well, the president said today, we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough,” Mr. Pence said. “That’s the reason why next week, the C.D.C. is going to be issuing a new set of tools, five different documents that will be giving even more clarity on the guidance going forward.”

As you all know, I’m generally in favor of opening schools too. One reason for this is that European countries have done it successfully. But in case anyone has failed to notice, there’s a big difference between the US and Europe:

It’s one thing to open schools after you’ve successfully crushed the virus. This means that schools are relatively safe if reasonable precautions are taken, and that officials can react quickly to individual outbreaks here and there. It’s quite another thing to open schools while you’re still reporting 50,000 new cases per day with no end in sight and a president who can’t even bring himself to wear a mask, let alone do anything more serious to get the virus under control.

Plus there’s another thing. How can I put this delicately? As near as I can tell, European officials aren’t idiots and can generally be trusted to act reasonably. This is so obviously not the case in the US that I’m not sure I trust anyone here to reopen schools. It probably could be done in a conservative and sensible way, but there’s no reason to think that the people who run our country would act either conservatively or sensibly. Just the opposite: they would most likely come up with ridiculous plans in the first place and then abandon them in panic at the first sign of trouble.

This is all a little speculative. But one thing’s for sure: the last person in the world who should be making this decision is Donald Trump.

This is a coastal deer broom, aka common deerweed. It’s kind of pretty close up, but from a distance it’s just a meh looking bush. A quick search suggests that it has no real redeeming features other than being one of the first plants to move in after a fire. I guess that’s something.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through July 7. After finally questioning why the death rate wasn’t going up yesterday, today the death rate went up. This may be catch-up from the long weekend (similar to the mini-spike following Memorial Day), or it might genuinely be the first sign that our skyrocketing case rate is producing more deaths. The next week will tell.

The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here. The Public Health Agency of Sweden is here.

Stuart Palley/ZUMA

From the Los Angeles Times tonight:

An unsigned letter circulated among the Los Angeles Police Department rank and file last week, encouraging officers to call in sick to protect their own interests….“They succeeded in defunding the police; what do you think is next? Our pay? Our benefits? Our pensions? You’re God Damn right all those things are in jeopardy now,” read the letter, which was obtained by The Times. “We have to send the city a clear message that we are not expendable and we are not going to take this crap anymore.”

Now, LAPD commanders are investigating whether an unusual spike in officers calling in sick over the July 4 weekend was the result of an orchestrated protest or labor action, which would be illegal. Sources in the department told The Times up to 300 officers called in sick in what many in the department suspect was a “blue flu.”…In certain anti-gang units, everyone or nearly everyone called in sick at once, sources said.

I am so sick of this. Doctors get attacked all the time. Lawyers get attacked all the time. Journalists get attacked all the time. Politicians get attacked. Teachers get attacked. CEOs get attacked.

And every one of those groups manages to handle it like adults and continue working even as they defend themselves. But if you criticize cops a little too hard they get all weepy and start calling in sick, public safety be damned. This happens over and over and over, and it’s long past time for this juvenile crap to stop.

Mark Hertzberg/ZUMA

The Washington Post describes how the lunacy of the Trumpified Republican Party is playing out:

President Trump’s relentless attacks on the security of mail voting are driving suspicion among GOP voters toward absentee ballots — a dynamic alarming Republican strategists, who say it could undercut their own candidates, including Trump himself.

….The growing Republican antagonism toward voting by mail comes even as the Trump campaign is launching a major absentee-ballot program in every competitive state, according to multiple campaign advisers — a delicate balancing act, considering what one strategist described as the president’s “imprecision” on the subject. “It’s very concerning for Republicans,” said a top party operative, who like several others interviewed spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid drawing Trump’s ire. “I guarantee our Republican Senate candidates are having it drilled into them that they cannot accept this. They have to have sophisticated mail programs. If we don’t adapt, we won’t win.”

It’s hard to overstate just how crazy this is. For years, Republicans have been on a cynical rampage against (virtually nonexistent) voter fraud, but there’s always been one thing they didn’t attack: vote-by-mail. Why? Because absentee voting is used mostly by older, whiter voters who vote Republican. The voter fraud cops were interested only in making it harder to vote in person, which is used more by younger, non-white voters who are likely to vote for Democrats.

In other words, Republican strategists know perfectly well which kinds of voting favor which candidates. And the answer is that voting by mail favors Republicans. But Donald Trump didn’t know that because Donald Trump doesn’t know much of anything. So when he saw Democrats demanding vote-by-mail during the initial COVID-19 outbreak, he just naturally assumed it was because vote-by-mail must be good for Democrats. It never occurred to him that this might have been nothing more than a genuine concern for the health and safety of voters. After all, that kind of thing would never occur to him.

So now Republicans are stuck. It’s in their best interest to encourage vote-by-mail, but Trump—and therefore Fox News, talk radio, the Wall Street Journal, etc.—are busily undermining confidence in it. It’s hard to imagine a mess they deserve more.

Brian Cahn/ZUMA

According to Wikipedia, Judd Gregg is a “moderate Republican.” He served a couple of terms as governor of New Hampshire and three terms in the Senate. President Obama thought well enough of him to nominate Gregg to be his Secretary of Commerce.

Fast forward to 2020 and here is what Gregg is writing now about the upcoming election:

This is about power. All major elections are.

The socialist/progressives understand this as well as any political movement does. But the difference is that the socialist/progressive movers who now control the board in the game of Democratic Party politics have no ethical tether….They can proclaim sections of cities independent nations. They can proclaim America’s most important past political leaders evil. They can promote lawlessness in the name of the rightness of their cause.

….They will not tolerate for long not being in total control. They will have their vice president, but not their president. And they are a very impatient people and movement. Since their goal is power and their purpose pure, why should they wait? The path to total control is clearly there once they have the vice presidency. It is the 25th Amendment.

Within a few months of assuming the presidency, Biden may find himself being the next statue toppled as the socialist/progressive movement moves closer to power. Replacing him with his vice president could be deemed necessary to the cause. His colleagues could declare him too old to handle the presidency and remove him under the 25th Amendment.

Et tu, Brute? The Cause will have been completed. Power will be fully in the hands of the statue-removers, the social justice police and those who see America’s political history as basically evil. Socialist/progressive excess will govern.

The most obvious take on the nomination of Joe Biden is that mainstream Democrats won and progressives—even the Bernie fans, let alone the extreme lefties—lost. But Gregg plays 11-dimensional chess. Despite the fact that the socialist wing of the party has demonstrated precisely zero influence over much of anything, he alone understands that they have both the will and the power to force Biden out of office once he’s elected president. That will then pave the way for his vice president to take over. “That individual could be Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) or Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) or any number of lesser-known advocates for the far left.”

The far left! Kamala Harris is a former prosecutor and Elizabeth Warren is a US senator who calls herself a capitalist. No real socialist would see a dime’s worth of difference between them and Biden.

But then again, here is Roger Clegg writing at National Review:

It’s hard to take the long, speculative, and serene view on what’s often prescribed for the health of the Republican Party — namely a period without Trump even if it means a period out of power — if you reasonably believe the country is just one Democratic administration away from serious ruin.

This is a surprisingly common view in many precincts of the right. I wonder what they think Joe Biden might do? Raise their taxes a bit? Expand Obamacare somewhat? Get tougher on Russia? Actually do something to fight COVID-19? Do they really believe that Joe Biden, a mainstream Democrat if ever there was one, will be the ruin of America? What the hell are Republicans drinking these days?