Trumpian Pillow Talking | Mali-Whopped | How Bout Them Apples?
August 20, 2020
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“The world is now too small for anything but brotherhood.”
The nations may be divided in everything else, but they all share a single body of science.
(Stephen Maturen via Getty Images)
When President Trump suggested injections of disinfectants as a possible cure for COVID-19 last April, everyone understood that was a bad idea. When he touted the use of the immunosuppressive anti-malarial drug Hydroxychloroquine, most people understood it was ineffective against COVID-19, and that it could have long term negative side effects. Now that Trump’s friend Mike Lindell, the “MyPillow Guy,” is pushing a “dietary supplement” containing oleandrin as a treatment for COVID-19, will the word of its extreme toxicity reach enough people before someone dies from taking it?
Lindell appeared on Anderson Cooper’s show Tuesday night praising oleandrin as the “miracle cure of all time.” Lindell has no scientific background, and not only are there no published studies supporting his affirmation, what has been proven is that every part of the ornamental Nerium oleander plant is poisonous. Any amount ingested can cause acute cardiac toxicity. Just ask the woman on death row, who murdered her husband with a brew of oleander tea.
Lindell said oleandrin came into his life after he appeared at a press conference with the president on March 30. He was ostensibly there to talk about how his MyPillow factories had pivoted to making PPE for front-line workers. But he went off-script to praise Trump — saying “God gave us grace on November 8, 2016” — and to encourage people to read their Bibles and pray for a cure.
Afterward, someone from Phoenix Biotechnology contacted Lindell to say he “had an answer to the virus.” Lindell took the news directly to his friend, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson, who wrote the forward to Lindell’s self-published memoir What Are The Odds? The memoir, which details Lindell’s history as a crack cocaine and gambling addict, is his story of Christian redemption, beginning after his signature product MyPillow was launched.
Carson is said to have “embraced” oleandrin. He and Lindell then helped an executive with Phoenix Biotechnology — developers of the oleandrin compound — get an Oval Office meeting in July with the president. At that meeting, Lindell said Trump said the FDA should be approving oleandrin.
Lindell is a major advertiser on Fox News; he’s recently taken a financial stake in Phoenix Biotechnology, and is now a director. This chain of events is part of a pattern in which entrepreneurs, often without any rigorous vetting, push unproven products to Trump; if the sales pitch catches Trump’s attention, he then urges FDA commissioner Stephen Hahn to “look at” or speed up approval.
New Rule of Law in Jerusalem
- A three-judge panel of Israel’s Supreme Court made a rare ruling last week. It blocked the military from demolishing the family home of a Palestinian man accused of killing a soldier. The man was charged with dropping a block on an Israeli army unit from the roof of his third-floor apartment during a predawn clash in his village in the occupied West Bank.
- The panel ruled it would be “disproportional” to displace the accused man’s wife and eight children, who were apparently asleep and unaware of the unfolding events. Human rights activists said the decision showed an emerging discomfort in the courts about a policy that amounts to collective punishment. Judges have only occasionally blocked such home demolitions, but in several recent cases have limited demolition to only parts of structures.
- The head of a human rights group that brought the case to court on the defendant’s behalf said of the demolition policy: “It’s not just a violation of Israeli law but of ancient Jewish law. You don’t punish the son for the sins of the father.” The ruling against “punitive demolition” sparked outrage among conservative Israeli politicians.
- Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has railed against “liberal judges” in response to his indictment last year on corruption charges, immediately called for the high court to reopen the case after what would normally be the judges’ final word. On Saturday, protesters gathered outside the Tel Aviv home of the Supreme Court president to condemn what they viewed as a “judicial dictatorship.” (WaPo)
Corrupt Regime Gets Mali-Whopped
- For months, protesters in the West African nation of Mali rallied against President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, infuriated that he hadn’t done enough to address the corruption and bloodshed that has plagued the country since rebels and jihadists took control of the north in 2012.
- Even after French troops, American military advisers, and UN peacekeepers intervened, the unrest spread. Thousands of civilians and soldiers have died, and the economic suffering exacerbated by COVID-19 has only brought more frustration and uncertainty. The last straw came when the constitutional court overturned the provisional results of a long-delayed parliamentary election held in March.
- Protesters and their leaders believed Keita had stolen the election and installed his preferred candidates. In July, security forces killed at least 11 demonstrators in the capital city of Bamako, after which leaders called for mass civil disobedience until Keita stepped down.
- On Tuesday, military officers staged a coup and arrested the president, his prime minister and other government officials; jubilation broke out in the streets of Bamako. Around midnight, Keita went on state television to say he had resigned, and the government and national assembly would be dissolved. It was an ignominious end for the once-popular president, who had been elected in a landslide in 2013 after another military coup. (NYT)
Additional World News
- Local Officials in China Hid Coronavirus Dangers From Beijing, U.S. Agencies Find (NYT, $). More details emerge of what went wrong in early January.
- America closes the last loophole in its hounding of Huawei (Economist, $)
- The extreme weather of climate change: Heavy monsoon rains trigger flood chaos across India (BBC)
- Millions of women lose contraceptives, abortions in COVID-19 (AP)
- Venezuela Cracks Down Using Security Forces Amid Coronavirus Pandemic (NYT, $)
- Lukashenko steps up efforts to reassert control (BBC). This comes in response to a tightening of EU sanctions.
- UK-EU trade deal possible next month, says No 10 (BBC)
- WHO you gonna call? Germany, France want more funding, power for WHO as part of sweeping reforms (Reuters)
- Trudeau’s suspension of Parliament amid ethics controversy fuels cries of ‘coverup’ (WaPo, $)
COVID-19
- Pope: Rich can’t get priority for vaccine, poor need help (AP)
- Yep, Masks And Protective Gear Are Still Hard To Get — Especially For Small Buyers (NPR)
- Why getting a flu shot during the COVID-19 pandemic is so important (Vox)
- Why Pooled Testing for the Coronavirus Isn’t Working in America (NYT, $)
- Nine COVID-19 Myths That Just Won’t Go Away (Scientific American)
- American Indians, Alaska Natives hit harder by COVID-19, U.S. CDC says (Reuters)
- Misinformation about the coronavirus is thwarting Facebook’s best efforts to catch it (WaPo, $)
(VCG via Getty Images)
- On Wednesday, Apple became the first American company to hit a $2 trillion valuation when its shares climbed 1.2 percent to $467.78 in morning trading. The achievement cements its title as the world’s most valuable public company; it also illustrates how the pandemic has been a bonanza for the tech giants.
- It took the maker of iPhones, Mac computers, and Apple watches 42 years to reach its first trillion, and just two more years to reach another trillion. Even more stunning, all of Apple’s second trillion came in the past 21 weeks as the pandemic causes the global economy to shrink faster than ever before.
- In mid-March, when the stock market plunged over fears of COVID-19, Apple’s value dipped under a trillion. But on March 23, the Federal Reserve took aggressive new steps to calm investors. Since then the stock market — and particularly the stocks of Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet, and Facebook — has soared, with the S&P hitting a new high Tuesday.
- Together the value of those five companies has swelled by almost $3 trillion as investors poured in billions of dollars, apparently convinced, or hoping, the companies’ immense size and power would serve as a refuge from a recession. A finance expert who studies the stock market said of investors flocking to Big Tech: “It’s become the new flight to safety.” (NYT)
Dancing Around the Vote: Trump’s Ballot Ballet
- President Trump’s reelection campaign has sued the state of New Jersey after its Democratic governor Phil Murphy announced he would mail a ballot to every voter in the state as well as hold in-person voting for November’s elections. The suit, filed late Tuesday in the US District Court for New Jersey, describes the governor’s action as “illegal,” first, because he is attempting to change the state’s election laws — a power that belongs to the state legislature — and second, because the changes “will violate eligible citizens’ right to vote.”
- The complaint seeks “declaratory and injunctive relief.” Murphy said the state will use methods similar to what it employed for its primary vote in July, and that residents who opt to go to their local voting places on November 3 will use paper ballots instead of voting machines, so officials can guard against duplicate voting.
- Trump continues to insist, without evidence, that mail-in voting is subject to large-scale fraud. His reelection campaign and the National Republican Party also sued Nevada this month to block a law that will send a mail-in ballot to every voter before November’s election, on the grounds it will result in “inevitable” voter fraud. (Reuters)
Additional USA News
- Are Republicans Abandoning a Second Stimulus Check? (NY Mag)
- Expired Jobless Benefits Cost Economy Billions, But Some States Reject Trump’s Aid (NPR). A stunner out of South Dakota (and we don’t say that often).
- Trump’s presidential approval rating stays steady (NBC)
- White House declines to say whether Trump will accept election results if he loses (CBS). How do you air ball on this layup of a question?
- College freshmen face decisions on debt, coronavirus risks ahead of their first semester (WaPo, $)
- Just when you thought 2020 was out of ideas: California Blazes Are Burning Hot Enough to Spur Fire Tornadoes (Bloomberg)
- Companies Seek More Black Directors After Adding Women (Bloomberg)
- Biden Tries to Straddle a Deep Democratic Divide on Policing (NYT, $)
- The old guard vs MAGA: The Republican Case Against Trump’s GOP (Politico)
- ICE Guards “Systematically” Sexually Assault Detainees in an El Paso Detention Center, Lawyers Say (ProPublica)
- Is the way cattle are grazed the key to saving America’s threatened prairies? (Guardian)
Three Strikes, No Outs
- Facebook has fired a senior engineer who collected evidence proving the social media company gives preferential treatment to right wing accounts. The engineer recently posted internal information on Workplace showing that “Facebook was giving preferential treatment to prominent conservative accounts to help them remove fact-checks from their content.”
- Facebook later deleted the post, and on Wednesday, fired the poster. Last week, during an all-hands meeting, Facebook employees confronted CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg over preferential treatment for right wing sites. Zuckerberg was questioned about how “Breitbart News could remain a Facebook News partner after sharing a video that promoted unproven treatments and said masks were unnecessary to combat the novel coronavirus.”
- Zuckerberg reportedly said: “This was certainly one strike against them for misinformation, but they don’t have others in the last 90 days.” Facebook deleted the video six hours after Breitbart posted it to its page, but it had already racked up 14 million views, and other sites continued to share it. Normally, Facebook’s fact-checking teams give “strikes” to accounts posting misinformation.
- Yet documents given to reporters show that the company relaxed its rules for right wing accounts like “Breitbart, former Fox News personalities Diamond and Silk, the nonprofit media outlet PragerU, and the pundit Charlie Kirk.” The documents demonstrate that some employees “with direct oversight from company leadership, deleted strikes during the review process that were issued to some conservative partners for posting misinformation over the last six months.”
- Former employees, speaking anonymously, said they were concerned Facebook gave conservative outlets preferential treatment to avoid criticisms of anti-conservative bias. (CBS San Francisco)
Additional Reads
- Facebook bans some, but not all, QAnon groups, accounts (AP)
- Anti-vaccine group sues Facebook, claims fact-checking is “censorship” (Ars Technica)
- The YOLOers vs. Distancers Feud Is Tearing Us Apart (Wired)
- ‘You’ll have to die to get these texts’: Ocean Vuong’s next manuscript to be unveiled in 2114 (Guardian)
- The next challenge for plant-based meat: Winning the price war against animal meat (Vox)
- Time’s Arrow Flies through 500 Years of Classical Music, Physicists Say (Scientific American)