And nobody hears it, is it really running for President at all? First of all, a note about my absence lately: My wife got me to sign up for an account at Threads, which is sort of like X without the assholes. I've spent a little time establishing myself there, and I have to say, I do like the relatively immediate exchange of views, but I don't mean to give up my blog- there are still so many things that can't be dealt with in a couple hundred words, so, perhaps to your dismay, I am back. So, what motivated the above question is the fact that the Sunday New York Times today had seven articles about Trump, and absolutely zero about Kamala Harris. The Republicans have a problem with Harris, in that virtually everyone who sees her likes her and immediately understands how qualified she is to be President. They have tried mightily the last month to find some way to smear her, but have been spectacularly unsuccessful- the tactics of character assassination ...
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Conservative talk-radio host and recent Presidential Medal of Freedom honoree Rush Limbaugh on Thursday floated the theory that deaths from coronavirus have been inflated so that governments could further “the policies they have put in place.”
Citing the latest record-breaking unemployment claims numbers at the top of his radio show, Limbaugh groused that the 10 million jobless claims filed over the past two weeks aren’t “enough for people like Bill Gates” and others who “want to shut down the entire country.”
After referencing recent White House modeling projecting between 100,000 and 240,000 U.S. deaths if the country adheres to current social-distancing guidelines, the right-wing talker then cited an article written by a pathologist to bolster the claim that governments could be fudging their numbers.
“Now, folks, don’t misunderstand, look, I’m not trying to stir anything up here,” Limbaugh insisted. “There’s all kinds of people speculating about things out there. I’m just giving you facts.”
Limbaugh went on to express interest in the theory “that with this new arrival of COVID-19, that coronavirus is being listed as a cause of death for many people who are not dying because of it.”
“They’re dying because of other things,” he added. “But it’s speculation. It’s fascinating.”
Limbaugh declared that he was now going to use the piece as his “daily briefing” rather than listen to “whatever the modelers are saying here,” applauding the “fascinating points” it brought up.
“It’s admittedly speculation, but his point, what if we are recording a bunch of deaths to coronavirus which really should not be chalked up to coronavirus?” Limbaugh wondered aloud. “People die on this planet every day from a wide variety of things.” “But because the coronavirus is out there, got everybody paranoid, governments are eager, almost, to chalk up as many deaths to coronavirus as they can because then it furthers the policies they have put in place by virtue of their models,” he concluded.
Earlier this week, Limbaugh embraced a conspiracy theory that many right-wing figures have floated: that the number of coronavirus cases and their impact on hospitals was inflated. The evidence? Photographs and video showing some parking lots looking mostly empty.
“You have been led to believe that every hospital is overflowing,” he said at the time, adding, “So much of this has been politicized, folks, that it’s just impossible anymore to actually find factual truth.”
Incidentally, one of the most interesting uses of these statistical methods was the calculation by infectious disease experts from Johns Hopkins Medical School that the number of civilian casualties caused by the Bush administration's aggression against Iraq was in the neighborhood of a million. This analysis, published in the Lancet, the foremost medical journal in the world, was subject to vicious, groundless attacks from right wingers in the United States, with the result that it was virtually forgotten.