Could this ultimately be good for American support of the WHO?

This bit from the story about Trump's decision to withdraw the U.S. from the WHO jumped out at me:

“The United States’ notice of withdrawal, effective July 6, 2021, has been submitted to the U.N. secretary general, who is the depository for the W.H.O.,” a senior administration official said on Tuesday.

The departure would take effect sometime next year, should the United States meet established conditions of giving a one-year notice and fulfilling its current financial obligations, Stéphane Dujarric, a spokesman for the secretary general, António Guterres, said on Tuesday.

By withdrawing does that mean the U.S. will restore the WHO funding that Trump cut last April? Isn't that what he would need to do to fulfill the U.S.'s "current financial obligations"? And because the withdrawal isn't effective for a year, could President Biden just cancel the withdrawal in January?

So the net effect of this move could be to fully fund the WHO without following through with an actual withdrawal.

No, the statue shit will not work

Trump will not gain a single vote from his new "defend statues" effort. Trump has just noticed that a lot of his critics are advocating to take statues down, so that's why he is suddenly pro-statue. There is nothing more to it than that, indeed, other than xenophobia and racism, there really isn't anything more to his entire presidency.

It really is remarkable just how terrible Trump is at presidenting. Doing anything to stop the biggest threat to the U.S., the potentially disease that is infecting tens of thousands of Americans every day simply does not occur to him.

Make America an Utter Failure

This article is supposed to be a cautionary tale about how even countries that seem to get the Coronavirus under control might have moments when it pops up again.

But what stands out to me is that Australia has a comprehensive track and trace program. So that when the virus pops up again, the newly infected are identified, as is everyone those people came into contact with, so the scope of the new outbreak can be quickly defined and contained. The U.S. has nothing like that, at least not on a national scale. Some local governments are trying to track and trace, but that only works if they get their numbers low enough. Even if a locality is doing everything right, you can't get low numbers if the communities around you are letting things get out of control.

The U.S. has no national policy whatsoever. Hell, our federal government is led by someone who is in denial that the virus poses any serious problem. The American outbreak is now worse than it ever was before (higher numbers than we had when much of the country was locked down in April). Except now we are opening up. We have pissed away whatever progress we made between March and May. Despite the President's sinking poll numbers I do not think the scope of Trump's utter incompetence on this issue has fully sunk in.

Shittiest year ever

On the plus side, most of us are already social distancing and there are very few international flights these days.

Trump can't drop out

It hasn't been said that much, but recently there have been a few predictions that Trump will drop out of the reelection race before November, even someone on Fox News floated the theory.

Trump can't voluntarily stop being President because if he does, the barriers he has put up between his personal financial records, including his tax returns, and prosecutors will disappear. All of the arguments before various Courts trying to prevent those records from being released are based on the fact that Trump is President and fending off those legal challenges would distract him from watching Fox News and tweeting about it all day addressing the pressing concerns of the nation.

I don't know what is in these records. But it's gotta be bad given how strenuously he is fighting to keep them secret. Not running for reelection would be tantamount to just handing them over to the investigators and prosecutors who he has been fighting throughout his presidency.

"1619 riots"

It's hilarious how the far right is still hung up on the 1619 project.

Planting evidence and lying in official reports is the biggest threat to police, not protests or antifa

Can we have a rule that if a police officer is caught planting evidence, or falsifying a report of a crime, the officer should be fired and barred from ever being employed by law enforcement again? (If not prosecuted, as both of those things are also crimes). If any of these team-police people actually cared about law enforcement they should understand that credibility is really important. When they make shit up to go after the perceived enemies of police, it makes me wonder if they care at all about law enforcement. But if the police aren't about law enforcement, why do we need them?

Trump wages war against the U.S. economy for the cause of xenophobia

This has got to be my most updated post ever. I have probably updated it an average of once per month over the past two years. It is a handy list to have the next time some Trumpy claims that Trump is only restricting illegal immigration. (And I'm my list is probably not complete. The Trump Administration has been clamping down on legal immigration so much, I am sure I missed something.)

Honestly, this last restriction is a new level of crazy if you give any shit about the U.S. economy. What is the point of preventing foreign executives of multi-national corporations from transferring to the U.S.? Or barring the spouses of those foreigners who do get permission to work here? If I were an executive of a multinational corporation, that seems like a good excuse to close or downgrade the U.S. office. I mean if it is possible to have your entire executive team together in Berlin, but not New York, that New York office is not going to be as useful anymore.

Not that anyone is going to want to come to the United States of Corona anytime soon.