VP Mike Pence brings his 'Ignore the Adultery (and Other Sins)' tour to Arizona

HOISTED BY HIS OWN PETARD

Opinion: At least spare us the homily about moral leadership when backing Donald Trump?

OPINION
EJ Montini, Arizona Republic

In the 1990s, when Vice President Mike Pence was a radio talk show host in Indiana, he’d argue that religious faith and moral character were essential to leadership.

Of course, this was before his sold his soul to a serial adulterer who has gleefully violated just about all of the other commandments as well.

PENCE AS COVID TASKFORCE CZAR


Pence is in the Valley on Tuesday to drum up support for the philanderer in chief in the upcoming election, helping to launch what is being called a "Latter-day Saints for Trump" coalition.

I’m sure that Pence and the political sycophants accompanying him will somehow try to sell LDS voters on the "moral" leadership of Trump.


PENCE AS COVID TASKFORCE CZAR

A president for whom fact checkers at The Washington Post have documented 20,000 false and misleading statements. Including some about the coronavirus that no doubt have had deadly consequences.

A man who is more covetous of power, money and fame that perhaps anyone on earth.

A man caught up in a fraudulent schemes like his "university," which have harmed thousands and cost millions to settle lawsuits.

A man accused of sexual harassment or assault by more than a dozen women.

A man who cheated on his first wife with his second, and who, according to The Wall Street Journal, cheated on his third with a porn star only a few months after his youngest son was born.

Then paid the woman $130,000 to keep quiet.

PENCE AS COVID TASKFORCE CZAR

A few words from Pre-Trump Pence

What would Mike Pence have said about all that before making his deal with the devil?

Let’s review.

Pre-Trump Pence once wrote, "Throughout our history, we have seen the presidency as the repository of all of our highest hopes and ideals and values. To demand less is to do an injustice to the blood that bought our freedoms."


Pre-Trump Pence wanted Bill Clinton removed from office for an affair with an intern.

Pre-Trump Pence said on his radio show:

“I mean, is adultery no longer a big deal in Indiana and in America? I’d just love to know your thoughts because I for one believe that the seventh commandment contained in the Ten Commandments is still a big deal. I maintain that other than promises that we make of fidelity in our faith, the promises that we make to our spouses and to our children, the promises that we make in churches and in synagogues and marriage ceremonies around this, it's the most important promise you'll ever make. And holding people accountable to those promises and holding people accountable to respecting the promises that other people make, I, to me, what could possibly be a bigger deal than that in this country?”

For Post-Trump Pence, that would be keeping his job.

Jerry Falwell Jr is the true face of white evangelicals — and dumping him changes nothing

REAGAN & FALWELL SR.'S GOP FAMILY VALUES MORAL MAJORITY REVEALED

August 11, 2020 By Amanda Marcotte, Salon - Commentary


One has to imagine that for Jerry Falwell Jr., things feel very unfair right about now. For more than four years, the world of right-wing American Christianity has not only lined up behind Donald Trump — a thrice-married chronic adulterer who bragged on tape how he likes to “grab ’em by the pussy” — but has embraced him as if he were the second coming. White evangelicals’ devotion to Trump didn’t wane after he became president, even in the face of stories about Trump paying off a porn actress and a centerfold model to stay quiet about his compulsive cheating on his third wife. Nor was there any angst on the Christian right over Trump’s relentless grifting or his efforts to blackmail the Ukrainian president into bolstering lies about former Vice President Joe Biden.

On the contrary, the WHITE MALE Christian right’s worshipful attitude toward Trump has only increased over the years, with pastors comparing Trump to Jesus himself and calling Trump “God’s chosen one.” The president’s approval with white MALE evangelicals remains strong, at 72%, and 82% say they plan to vote for him.

With all this Christian love for a president who makes all ordinary sinners look like amateurs, it’s no wonder that Falwell — the president of Liberty University, which was founded by his dad, the legendary Southern Baptist pastor and televangelist — thought it was no big deal to unbutton his pants a little. But when Falwell posted a photo on social media of himself partying on a yacht with those literally unbuttoned pants, holding something that resembled an alcoholic beverage and with his arm around the waist of a pregnant female acquaintance with her shirt rolled up, he did not get the Trump treatment.

NOT MY WIFE, 

BUT SHE IS PREGNANT WINK WINK

SO AM I ALL LIFE IS SACRED 

Instead, Falwell was asked to take an indefinite leave of absence from his job at Liberty University, the right-wing evangelical institution in Lynchburg, Virginia, that his father, Jerry Falwell Sr., founded in 1971. On Tuesday, the school announced that Jerry Prevo, chairman of its board of trustees, would replace Falwell as acting president.

The photo itself, if we’re being honest, was hardly “racy,” as some outlets called it. It looked no different from any other photo of people at a social gathering acting goofy after a few drinks. Still, this was apparently the last straw, after a year of reports that Falwell was getting up to precisely the kind of antics for which Trump apparently gets a permanent pass.

Last summer, a series of titillating stories about the Liberty president, including a report that Falwell and his wife had lavished financial favors on a “pool boy” half their age they met while partying in Florida. Falwell also reportedly emailed photos of his wife in a French maid costume to an employee, later claiming that was an accident and he’d meant to send the photos to her personal trainer. This raised more eyebrows, however, since the personal trainer is another good-looking younger man whom the Falwells have helped financially. Other photos of the Falwells partying in a Miami nightclub in 2014 were published last year.

Giving Falwell the boot only after he embarrassed the evangelical community in public only reinforces the main takeaway from this story: The supposed morality of white evangelicals is largely a facade, propped up in order to justify the Christian right’s real purpose, which is to defend white supremacy and male dominance. It’s worth asking why anyone would bother to keep up the facade, now that Trump has proved right-wing America doesn’t need to hide behind the Bible and the cross to defend its true agenda.

Before Trump, it was actually a pretty good racket that white evangelicals had going. As Robert P. Jones of the Public Religion Research Institute writes in “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity,” his book on the racist history of much of American Christianity, “most white Christian churches have protected white supremacy by dressing it in theological garb, giving it a home in a respected institution, and calibrating it to local cultural sensibilities.”

Piety can give cover to racism by positioning white evangelicals as morally superior. By policing sex and prohibiting the pleasures of gambling, partying, drinking or even dancing, white evangelicals can craft a narrative where they are upright guardians of virtue, rather than mean-spirited racists who organize — in distinctly un-Christ-like fashion — to preserve their privileges at the expense of people of color. Indeed, the more white evangelicals defended a racist social order, the more effort they put into portraying themselves as “virtuous” by the way of strict rules governing individual behavior.




It’s the same story with white evangelicals and sexism. The prohibitions on premarital sex, contraception, abortion and divorce mainly serve to control girls and women, channeling them away from living independent lives and keeping them under the thumb of one man or another, first a father and then a husband, for their entire lives. Whenever feminists criticized evangelical misogyny, the Christian right defended itself by claiming that its sexist ideology flowed from “faith,” when in reality, it was the other way around: Male supremacy was the core belief, and religious faith was used to rationalize and justify it.

One of the remarkable developments in the age of Trump has the collapse of any meaningful need for all this Bible-hugging to defend bigotry against people of color, women and LGBTQ people.

Oh, Trump sometimes loves to wave a Bible around, though always with an awkwardness that suggests he’s afraid it may burn his fingers. But it’s unclear that anyone is fooled. With his ham-fisted and sloppy fake piety — and his obvious ignorance about all religious or theological questions — Trump illuminates a fundamental truth about right-wing Christianity, which is that it’s largely a cover story used to defend the otherwise indefensible.

As I argue in my book, “Troll Nation,” the true innovation of Trumpism is a kind of asshole pride, the collective conservative realization that there’s no longer any need to pretend to be moral or virtuous or even to care about other people. It’s become a time to embrace playing the role of the villain.

For the modern conservative, “triggering the liberals” by being a jerk is the highest calling, and “political correctness” is the slur directed at anyone who tries to harsh their vibe by suggesting that overt racism and sexism is uncool. Their president is a witless wannabe insult comic, and the more that Trump resorts to flinging childish insults, the more his supporters love him. Ours is an era where conservatives deliberately go to the grocery store without masks and film themselves harassing minimum-wage workers who are trying to enforce basic public health rules, so they can glory in what massive jerks they are. Their entertainment comes from crude right-wing shock jocks in the Rush Limbaugh tradition. Trolling liberals — for example, by awarding the odious Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom — has replaced pious posturing as the lingua franca of American conservatives.

In other words, the American right no longer feels any need to justify their will to power with over-the-top moralizing. Dominance has become its own justification.

So it’s not surprising that Falwell got a little lackadaisical about pretending to believe all that crap he’s been preaching about the virtues of sobriety and chastity. And more than a little dopey that the board of Liberty University is trying to act offended and going through the ritual of asking him to step aside. The notion that the religious right is motivated by “morality” and “faith” was blown to bits the second they bet their future on Donald Trump. Their massive hypocrisy has been permanently exposed, and dumping one prominent figure to save face won’t change that.

THE APPLE DOES NOT FALL FAR FROM THE TREE
TRIGGER WARNING

 / XENI JARDIN / 11:50 PM TUE MAY 15, 2007

Jerry Falwell talks about his first time.

Link to larger JPEG (1222 x 1608) of the historic parody ad for Campari liquor that once appeared in Hustler magazine. In the fake-interview text, Falwell recalls having lost his virginity to his own mother in a goat-filled outhouse. Wikipedia link to the history of "Hustler Magazine v. Falwell," a legal case that helped defined free speech rights in America, in relation to parodies of public figures. Larry Flynt must be having a pretty happy day today. (image via medialibel)

Here's a statement released today by Flynt on the occasion of Fallwell's death. (thanks to everyone who suggested this)

Previously:

Falwell's stupidest quotes, direct from hell.

Reader comment: BoingBoing reader says,

This is a clip from a series of sermons Jerry Falwell gave in 1998 about Y2K. He reminisces about goats, too.

CAMPARI ADS WERE POPULARLY IDENTIFIED WITH HUSTLER'S COMPETITION; PLAYBOY
EACH MONTH THE AD 
HAD A DIFFERENT PERSON
TALKING ABOUT THEIR FIRST  
TIME DRINKING CAMPARI
FALWELL OF COURSE WAS 
AN ABSTAINER IN A STATE FAMOUS
FOR ITS BOURBON NOT VERMOUTH

A science reporter explains how Trump’s ‘devastatingly inept response’ to COVID-19 humiliated the planet’s most powerful nation 

August 11, 2020 By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!

As the world passes a grim milestone of 20 million coronavirus cases, we look at how the pandemic humbled and humiliated the world’s most powerful country. Over a quarter of the confirmed infections and deaths have been in the United States, which has less than 5% of the world’s population. Ed Yong, a science writer at The Atlantic who has been covering the pandemic extensively since March, says existing gaps in the U.S. social safety net and the Trump administration’s “devastatingly inept response” made for a deadly combination.

Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

The world has passed a grim milestone: 20 million coronavirus cases. Over 5 million of the confirmed infections are here in the United States. Although the U.S. has just 5% of the world’s population, it has more than a quarter, more than 25%, of all the coronavirus infections and deaths, with a death toll of over 163,000, by far the world’s largest. The United States has recorded more than half a million new cases so far in August. That’s more cases than any European country has recorded since the pandemic began.

This comes as millions of parents are now deciding whether it’s safe to send their kids back to school. A new report by the American Academy of Pediatrics found nearly 100,000 children contracted COVID-19 in just the last two weeks of July alone. Meanwhile, the Centers for Disease Control reports children of color are disproportionately being hospitalized. Latinx kids are eight times more likely to be hospitalized than white children. Black children are five times as likely. Latinx and Black children also make up nearly three-quarters of the cases of the rare but deadly multisystem inflammatory syndrome, which has been associated with COVID-19.

We’re joined now by Ed Yong, science reporter at The Atlantic, his new article, “How the Pandemic Defeated America.” It’s the cover story of the new issue of The Atlantic.

Ed Yong begins his piece, “How did it come to this? A virus a thousand times smaller than a dust mote has humbled and humiliated the planet’s most powerful nation. America has failed to protect its people, leaving them with illness and financial ruin. It has lost its status as a global leader. It has careened between inaction and ineptitude. The breadth and magnitude of its errors are difficult, in the moment, to truly fathom.”

Ed Yong, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. OK, how did it happen? And how can it be fixed?

ED YONG: [inaudible] I wrote 8,000 words about it, but to try and summarize, I think there’s two main things we need to talk about. One is the devastatingly inept response to the pandemic over this year. The Trump administration has utterly failed the American people. It has failed to take the lead. It has failed to listen to experts. It has failed to roll out a workable plan to get testing in place, to steel the country, to ensure protective supplies are rolled out. It has failed in almost every conceivable way to deal with a pandemic that many other nations have brought to heel within a similar amount of time. And more importantly, I think it has failed to honor the sacrifices that Americans have made in spring, when everyone obeyed social restrictions, when they stayed at home, when they uprooted their lives at significant financial and emotional cost. That time was meant to be used to prepare the nation for what was to come, and it was squandered. So, that’s one aspect of it.

But I think the other that we really do need to grapple with is that the coronavirus exploited vulnerabilities that have been existing in American society for decades and centuries, well before the Trump administration. So, the underfunding of public health, the overpacked prisons, the understaffed nursing homes, the health inequalities that have been brewing for all of America’s history due to its legacy of colonialism and racism, all of those things contributed to how bad things are, the statistics that you read out at the start of this segment. And all of those vulnerabilities need to be addressed going forward, if we are going to be better able to deal with the pandemics of the future.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to ask you — the Trump administration is clearly betting a lot on being able to have a vaccine as soon as possible. The president has actually talked about the possibility of November for a vaccine. But the reality is that even the clinical trial now underway, the Moderna trial, has only registered 5,000 of 30,000 volunteers that it needs to enroll in this clinical trial. This emphasis on the vaccine as the key solution, I’m wondering your thoughts on that.

ED YONG: Yeah. Even if everything goes right in the vaccine development process — and there’s no guarantee that will happen — even if we do get a vaccine ahead of schedule, then there are all kinds of problems left. There are logistical problems. How do you deliver that vaccine into people’s arms? Could we trust a government that has utterly failed to provide things like protective equipment or to roll out a workable national plan to handle the logistics of getting millions of vaccine doses to an adult population who is typically not the group that is usually vaccinated? Are we confident that a program called Operation Warp Speed, which has trumpeted speed more than anything else, will do all the necessary steps required to make people comfortable about the efficacy and safety of a vaccine? That public trust, which is so diminished right now, is really important. And I think that’s going to be a problem that people who are banking on the vaccine are not really fully grappling with.

And finally, I think you’re hinting at something really important, that we always — and by “we,” I mean society, in general, and, I think, the Trump administration, in particular, is banking on a biomedical silver bullets, things that are just going to — you know, a shot in the arm that is going to fix everything. And I don’t think it’s going to be that simple. Even when a vaccine comes out, as I said, it’s going to take a long time for it to actually get to people. And there are things we can do now, right now, that will make a difference. Testing is still so important. Social interventions, like giving people paid sick leave or ensuring wider healthcare coverage, all of those things can make a difference to people’s health in the moment, without having to wait for the biomedical enterprise to save us.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And this whole issue of such a simple public health measure, like testing and tracking of those with positive results, why has there been such a colossal failure on the part of the U.S. government in dealing with the issue of testing?

ED YONG: It’s truly astonishing. I think, you know, at the start, some of the problems have been well documented. The CDC tried to roll out a test. It didn’t really work. Private labs tried to jump in and help out, but were strangled by FDA bureaucracy. And these problems rolled on and exacerbated, because the — because the U.S. fell behind in those early days, it then competed with basically the rest of the world for reagents and for swabs and all the equipment that you needed to test.

Why we are continuing to fail at testing is just utterly baffling. Many people have called for rapid diagnostic tests, that are a little less sensitive but can deliver results very, very quickly. That is incredibly important, because at the moment tests are taking weeks, you know, a week-plus, to return results, which is completely useless from the perspective of actually controlling the virus, working out where the pandemic is continuing to cause problems. We need a really coordinated testing plan. I think the real answer to your question, why this is still plaguing the country, is that there just has been no leadership. The logistical expertise to create a functioning testing plan across the country has not been marshaled. And that’s to the detriment of all of us.

AMY GOODMAN: On Monday, President Trump was questioned about his support for reopening in-person schools during the pandemic. This is what he said.

REPORTER: Ninety-seven thousand children tested positive for coronavirus in the last two weeks in July, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. Does that give you any pause about —

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No.

REPORTER: — schools reopening for in-person learning?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: No, because they may have, as you would call it, a case. It may be a case, but it’s also a case where there’s a tiny — it’s a tiny fraction of death. Tiny fraction. And they get better very quickly. Yeah, they have — they may have it for a short period of time, but, as you know, the — the seriousness of it, in terms of what it leads to, is — is extraordinarily small, very, very much less than 1%.

AMY GOODMAN: So, I want to ask you a multipart question on this, about misinformation and whether you think journalists should refuse to go to these daily coronavirus press briefings, unless President Trump has scientists at his side. Number two, this issue of the children, and particularly kids of color — Latinx kids eight times more likely to be hospitalized, Black children five times more likely, and 75% more chance of getting this multisystem disorder that can kill — how little these disparities are talked about, and do you think they weigh in to President Trump just disregarding them? By the way, his own kid won’t be going back in person to school, because their school is closed.

ED YONG: OK. So, to the first point, I don’t think that journalists should be airing these briefings live. I think they are among the most potent sources of misinformation and disinformation to the public right now. And, you know, maybe clips of them, along with the actual contextualizing information people need to make sense of it, but don’t ever, live. That just — yeah.

I think that in terms of your other question, the racial disparities, The Atlantic‘s Adam Serwer wrote a piece that Trump took the virus seriously, until he worked out who was actually dying from it. We see from reports from Katherine Eban from Vanity Fair that testing plans were — plans to control the pandemic were shelved when it became clear that it was disproportionately targeting blue states and minorities. You know, I think one should always stick to Hanlon’s razor, assuming incompetence instead of malice, but there is increasing evidence that malice was part of this. And I think that is deeply worrying for what’s to come.

And you’ve read out statistics about the way the virus infects children, the lower relative risk of infection or death. That’s important, sure, but we need to remember that this is a pandemic which is still raging wildly throughout America. And the problem is that if you have an uncontrolled pandemic, not only do you have like massive community spread, which is a problem if you open schools in those communities, but rare events then become hugely problematic. If you have millions of people being infected, something that only happens to 1% of them is still going to affect huge swaths of the population. So the fact that something is relatively rare doesn’t make it safe in the context of a pandemic that is raging out of control, which is exactly what we are still seeing.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ed Yong, I wanted to ask you — in your article for The Atlantic, “How the Pandemic Defeated America,” you also look into the role of social media platforms in spreading disinformation or misinformation to the American public. And you write, quote, “The same social-media platforms that sowed partisanship and misinformation during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa and the 2016 U.S. election became vectors for conspiracy theories during the 2020 pandemic.” Could you expound on that?

ED YONG: Yeah. We know that platforms like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube spread misinformation more quickly than they do information. And that’s because they are governed by algorithms that are designed to keep users engaged, to keep their attention on the site. And they do that by feeding them content that veers towards extreme, veers towards being very polarized and that stokes heavy emotion, regardless of whether that content is true and whether it is dangerous or not. And these problems have been well recognized.

This is the core theme of my Atlantic piece, that all of our problems in this pandemic were predictable and preventable. People were talking about social media platforms acting as radicalization engines. And that is exactly what we’re seeing now. They spread misinformation, and they contribute to this vortex of fear and uncertainty in which people are trapped. So, we are all worried. We are all concerned for our families, our friends. And we fill that, we sate that worry, by looking for more information. But we are looking for that information on channels that feed us falsehoods, that feed us polarizing information. And so that just worsens the feelings of fear and anxiety, which cause us to seek out even more information, which worsens the problem. And it just — it spirals. That is exactly what we are seeing now in this pandemic, and it’s contributing to the problems that we’re experiencing.

AMY GOODMAN: When you talk about a nontechnical fix — I mean, in terms of, for example, a vaccine, that we have to focus on now what many countries have gotten under control, the coronavirus pandemic, through masks, through testing, in both cases, something — it’s not just that the president has not invoked the Defense Production Act to the level of just ensuring everyone has it. In many places, it’s getting far worse. But I wanted to go to the issue of Medicare for All, Ed. We’re moving into the Democratic National Convention next week. And the executive committee, writing the platform — Joe Biden has made it very clear he’s against Medicare for All — amazingly, in the latest vote on the platform, against Medicare for All. How significant do you think — and do you think this pandemic and its disparate effects on the population of this country, especially communities of color — do you think that Medicare for All would make an enormous difference, and how it’s possible that the opposing party is saying “absolutely not” at this point, when many polls show it is the most popular answer to the health crisis we have in this country?

ED YONG: Yeah. America’s system of employer-tied insurance, which is unique in the world, is undoubtedly contributing to the disparities that we are seeing. It disadvantages poor communities. It disadvantages communities of color, Black and Latinx communities, that have been disproportionately hit by this virus. And we know that those disparities and this system of healthcare inequity is a legacy of the racism that America has always struggled with. Since the end of the Civil War, throughout the Jim Crow era, healthcare access was pushed away from Black communities and other communities of color. And that goes right up to the opposition to the expansion of Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act. And that has led to continuing gulfs in people being able to access healthcare, that is contributing to the disproportionate toll that this virus has taken upon communities of color.

Even before the pandemic started, America was rated by some global indices as being the most prepared nation in the world. That seems a bit ludicrous in hindsight. But even then, in terms of healthcare access, America was rated as 175th out of 195 different countries. This was always known to be a massive vulnerability that would cost the country dearly during a crisis of this kind. And, sure enough, it has, in a very preventable, very tragic way. And this has to be addressed. If this can’t — if we can’t use the lessons from this pandemic to realize that universal healthcare is a thing we have to fight for, I don’t know whether — I don’t know whether we’re going to do any better, not just for the future phases of this pandemic, but for future pandemics to come and all the other health problems that we still need to deal with.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ed Yong, I wanted to ask you about the Trump administration’s continued isolationism in terms of, for instance, the attempts to demonize China as the source of the pandemic, and constantly criticizing and attacking the World Health Organization. Yet China, even though the virus started there, has been able to contain it dramatically. What has the Chinese government done right, compared to what the U.S. government has done?

ED YONG: So, you know, China clearly made missteps earlier on. There were problems with transparency, of alerting the world to problems early on. These were issues that have been problems since the original SARS in 2003. But China did take steps to control the pandemic.

I think what we really need to remember now is that the pandemic shows how quickly diseases can spread around the world and that no country can stand alone. No country can wall itself off from the rest of the globe and expect to be fine. The world needs to work together to deal with threats like this. You know, the word “pandemic” comes from the Greek pan and demos, “all citizens,” “all people.” And that is what is required to deal with these problems.

The United States now, in seeking this isolationist stance, in pulling back from the WHO and other international alliances, is really shooting itself in the foot. You could argue that China made missteps early on and that we need new international norms to stop those lack of transparency from manifesting again, but it’s the international community that’s going to create the legal structures and the norms that will ensure that the entire world is better prepared for the next crisis. And if America withdraws, it is losing its seat at the table. It is losing positions of influence. And it is allowing those norms to be drawn without it. Now, maybe some people think that America doesn’t need the rest of the world. But they’re wrong. And by forfeiting that standing, that position of diplomatic power, it really is, I think, taking steps that will cost it in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, we just have 10 seconds, but I wanted to ask you about the highest-level U.S. delegation, led by Alex Azar, the head of Health and Human Services, to Taiwan. Clearly, Trump wants to stick a finger in the eye of China. But what would be very important here is if the U.S. learned the lesson of Taiwan in how it dealt with the pandemic, immediately going to testing, national responses to testing and protective gear and masks — a true lesson for the United States to learn.

ED YONG: Yeah, I think humility would be an amazing lesson to learn. Other countries have dealt with this pandemic well. And if America can actually shed this sense of exceptionalism and look to what other nations have done well, maybe we can learn lessons that will protect people in the future.

AMY GOODMAN: Ed Yong, we want to thank you so much for being with us, science writer at The Atlantic who’s been covering the pandemic extensively since March. His cover story, we will link to, is titled “How the Pandemic Defeated America.”

Kentuckians turn on McConnell as economy implodes: ‘Mitch better have my money’
 August 11, 2020 By Matthew Chapman


On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported (PAYWALL) that Kentucky workers and businesses are losing patience with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) as their economic prospect worsens.

“About five months after Kentucky reported its first loss of life from covid-19, its economy continues to sputter amid the coronavirus pandemic,” reported Tony Romm. “Many unemployed workers say their benefit checks aren’t enough to afford their bills, and some here simply have stopped looking for jobs. Businesses say they’re also hemorrhaging cash, and local governments fear they’re on the precipice of financial ruin, too.”

“The Kentucky representatives from the AFL-CIO, Teamsters and other labor groups had grown incensed with Mitch McConnell, their home state senator and the chamber’s most powerful lawmaker. For months, they said, he had been blocking much-needed congressional coronavirus aid, the kind of dollars that might help workers and businesses in the Bluegrass State struggling to survive financially,” continued the report. “So they hit the streets on Thursday, drove down to McConnell’s Louisville office and started to circle the block, their 30 or so vehicles plastered with not-so-subtle orange and gray signs featuring a family-friendly rewrite of a popular Rihanna tune.”

The slogan: “Mitch better have my money.”

Business owners, too, are running out of patience. The report quoted Kenny Saylor, a self-employed trucker and lifelong Republican who says that “everything went south for me” in April and “I’m scared to death of losing everything.” He blames McConnell for putting him in this situation.

McConnell has been a key obstacle in the negotiations for a new round of economic stimulus. He has opposed keeping unemployment benefits at their current level, and is threatening to kill any legislation that doesn’t include a near-total liability shield for corporations that negligently expose workers and consumers to the virus.

THIRD WORLD USA 
‘Just insane’: As pandemic rages and hunger soars, Trump USDA under fire for blocking access to food benefits

 August 11, 2020 By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams


“This is not the time for people who are already vulnerable to lose their benefits.”

With hunger on the rise across the nation as the pandemic-induced economic crisis continues, local officials and policy analysts are warning that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is leaving millions of Americans vulnerable to losing crucial food benefits by refusing to extend waivers allowing states to loosen eligibility requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP AKA FOOD STAMPS

Despite urgent demands from states to extend the federal waivers—which were authorized in March by the Families First Coronavirus Response Act—the USDA said late last month that it is “working with states to return to a new normal” even as Covid-19 cases spike and joblessness remains at a historic high. The USDA said it will not extend the waivers beyond the end of August.

“We thought they would just keep waiving the requirement until the end of the pandemic, but they’ve denied our requests for that. It looks like people will lose their benefits.”
—Dora Taylor-Lowe, D.C. Department of Human Services

“The Agriculture Department is restricting key flexibility in SNAP that the president and Congress gave states in the Families First Act of March to help them manage an applications influx due to Covid-19 and the recession—saying states must return to ‘normal operations,’ even though current circumstances are anything but normal,” Ed Bolen, senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, wrote in a blog post Monday.

Bolen noted that the national SNAP caseload jumped by six million between February and May as Covid-19 spread across the U.S., prompting mass economic shutdowns and widespread job losses.

“Policymakers gave USDA the tools to respond to the extraordinary circumstances that state SNAP agencies and millions of low-income households face,” Bolen added. “Now, USDA needs to continue giving states the flexibility to respond to the unprecedented increase in need until Covid-19 is under control and agency operations have returned to something like normal.”

Erin McAleer, president of anti-hunger advocacy group Project Bread, urged USDA in a tweet Monday to extend the waivers given that the “hunger crisis is far from over and SNAP is critical in the response.”

USDA should not roll back SNAP flexibilities. It is critical that SNAP be accessible for people to apply, and efficient for states to administer. The hunger crisis is far from over and SNAP is critical in the response. https://t.co/CE6q3C1Jzb
— Erin McAleer (@ErinMcAleer1) August 10, 2020

As the Washington Post reported late last month, the USDA has denied requests from the governments of Washington, D.C. and Maryland to extend the waivers, which suspended rules requiring individuals and families receiving SNAP benefits to periodically recertify their incomes to determine whether they are still eligible.

“When the coronavirus pandemic began, the USDA halted those visits and promised that everyone who gets federal funding to pay for groceries would keep receiving it during the crisis without needing to recertify,” the Post reported. “With that reprieve ending, state governments are scrambling to figure out how to make sure needy families keep getting grocery money during an economic downturn, without crowding them into waiting rooms where they could catch the virus.”

Dora Taylor-Lowe, spokeswoman for the Washington, D.C. Department of Human Services, told the Post that USDA’s refusal to extend the waivers amid surging hunger is “a big problem.”

“This is not the time for people who are already vulnerable to lose their benefits. It’s just insane,” said Taylor-Lowe. “We thought they would just keep waiving the requirement until the end of the pandemic, but they’ve denied our requests for that. It looks like people will lose their benefits.”

Late last month, Minnesota Human Services Commissioner Jodi Harpstead said in a statement that with the USDA waivers expiring at the end of August, her department is sending SNAP recipients notices informing them that they must reapply to continue receiving benefits.

“We appreciate that the process of re-certification will be a hardship for recipients who may be hard to locate or who may have barriers to producing their applications without technology and with county and tribal offices still partially closed,” said Harpstead. “We are sending notices now to make sure that people who are entitled to SNAP and [Minnesota Family Investment Program] benefits understand what they need to do to continue receiving them so they will not lose these vital supports.”

Where is Betsy DeVos?

US Education Secretary hiding in ‘sprawling’ Michigan mansion while demanding schools reopen: Report

 August 11, 2020 By David Badash, The New Civil Rights Movement


Where is Betsy DeVos? The Education Secretary is under fire for demanding schools reopen while not giving them the assistance they need to protect students, teachers, administrators, and staff, yet she is working remotely from her “sprawling” 22,000 square foot “waterfront estate with a round-the-clock security detail paid for by taxpayers,” NBC News reports. That security cost taxpayers $25 million over the past year

DeVos “insists that it isn’t her job to help localities determine how to [re-open] safely.”

The Education Secretary’s’ public schedule “has been mostly empty for the past several weeks, including no events on her public schedule for this week,” NBC’s Heidi Przybyla reveals.

Yet DeVos “has been holding events not listed on her public calendar, including several sponsored by the conservative Federalist Society, according to Federalist Society postings. She has also participated in a few events related to private schools and advocacy for vouchers, including a roundtable July 23 at a private Christian school in Ohio and two events in the Carolinas with Vice President Mike Pence.”

Przybyla says DeVos is “not touring those public schools that she’s demanding reopen.”

.@HeidiNBC: “Even as DeVos is following Trump in demanding that schools reopen, Mika, she has a public schedule that has been empty for weeks … She’s not touring those public schools that she’s demanding reopen.” pic.twitter.com/KFZxkpidXa
— DNC War Room (@DNCWarRoom) August 11, 2020

The Education Secretary also “declined to appear at a House coronavirus subcommittee hearing on safely reopening K-12 schools ‘so she could explain why she is pressuring schools to fully reopen, despite the risks,’ James Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 House Democrat, said Thursday.”

Here’s what some are saying:

Going AWOL during a national school crisis means another guaranteed grade of “F” for Secretary DeVos https://t.co/rqhaE4ZmqE
— Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi (@CongressmanRaja) August 11, 2020

Betsy DeVos has spent $25 million in tax dollars on her own security, but wants to send children back to school without spending anything to keep them safe?
Yep. Sounds like a Trump appointee to me.
— Annie Gabston-Howell- (@AnnieGabstonH) August 11, 2020

Sec. DeVos declined to appear at a House coronavirus subcommittee hearing on safely reopening K-12 schools, Rep. Clyburn says.
“I offered to accommodate her schedule. But she refused to appear.” (6/6)
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) August 11, 2020

While educators and families are contemplating putting their lives at risk for their students’ education, DeVos is relaxing in a taxpayer-funded cocoon of protection in her mansion. https://t.co/QzQyORF1rD
— NEA (@NEAToday) August 11, 2020

Trump-loving GOP candidate rushes to delete vacation pics at Hitler’s favorite retreat

 August 11, 2020 By Brad Reed


Madison Cawthorn, a Trump-loving candidate for Congress in North Carolina’s 11th District, has deleted vacation photos he posted on Instagram that he took while visiting German dictator Adolf Hitler’s favorite retreat.

In the photos, Cawthorn could be seen smiling at various locations at the Eagle’s Nest, the Nazi retreat located in the German state of Bavaria that was visited by Hitler over a dozen times.

As The Forward reports, Cawthorn described the Eagle’s Nest as “the vacation house of the Fuhrer,” which was the honorific title given to Hitler by the Nazis. He also described seeing Hitler’s vacation retreat as being on his “bucket list.”
Later in the post, Cawthorn described Hitler as a “supreme evil,” but then added he was happy to visit a place where Hitler “shared laughs and good times with his compatriots.”

The Forward notes that the deleted photos are not the only evidence of Cawthorn’s potential far-right sympathies, as he “also named his real estate company 

SPQR,  IT WAS CAESAR'S BANNER

 a term popular among white nationalists, and displays in his home an early American flag that the Anti-Defamation League says has been appropriated by far-right extremists.”

Ret. Col. Morris Davis, who is Cawthorn’s Democratic opponent in the NC-11 race, wrote on Twitter Monday that “Hitler’s vacation retreat is not on my bucket list.”
Cawthorn defeated Trump’s pick in North Carolina’s Republican primary. But after his victory, Cawthorn issued a statement proclaiming his support for Trump.

“I want to make something clear; I support our great president,” Cawthorn said. “I do not believe this election has been a referendum on the president’s influence. The people of western North Carolina are wise and discerning. You observed both candidates and simply made the choice you believed is best for our district. I look forward to fighting alongside our president after I’m elected in November.”

Scientists uneasy as Russia claims it has a vaccine
Putin says his daughter has received a dose of the coronavirus vaccine

CODE NAMED LYSENKO 

In this handout photo taken on Thursday, Aug. 6, 2020, and provided by Russian Direct Investment Fund, an employee shows a new vaccine at the Nikolai Gamaleya National Center of Epidemiology and Microbiology in Moscow, Russia. Russia on Tuesday, Aug. 11 became the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine for use in tens of thousands of its citizens despite international skepticism about injections that have not completed clinical trials and were studied in only dozens of people for less than two months. (Alexander Zemlianichenko Jr/ Russian Direct Investment Fund via AP)

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
PUBLISHED: August 11, 2020
By Vladimir Isachenkov and Daria Litvinova | Associated Press

MOSCOW — Russia on Tuesday became the first country to approve a coronavirus vaccine, a move that was met with international skepticism and unease because the shots have only been studied in dozens of people.

President Vladimir Putin announced the Health Ministry’s approval and said one of his two adult daughters already was inoculated. He said the vaccine underwent the necessary tests and was shown to provide lasting immunity to the coronavirus, although Russian authorities have offered no proof to back up claims of safety or effectiveness.

“I know it has proven efficient and forms a stable immunity,” Putin said. “We must be grateful to those who made that first step very important for our country and the entire world.”

However, scientists in Russia and other countries sounded an alarm, saying that rushing to offer the vaccine before final-stage testing could backfire. What’s called a Phase 3 trial — which involves tens of thousands of people and can take months — is the only way to prove if an experimental vaccine is safe and really works.

By comparison, vaccines entering final-stage testing in the U.S. require studies of 30,000 people each. Two vaccine candidates already have begun those huge studies, with three more set to get underway by fall.

“Fast-tracked approval will not make Russia the leader in the race, it will just expose consumers of the vaccine to unnecessary danger,” said Russia’s Association of Clinical Trials Organizations, in urging government officials to postpone approving the vaccine without completed advanced trials.

While Russian officials have said large-scale production of the vaccine wasn’t scheduled until September, Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said vaccination of doctors could start as early as this month. Officials say they will be closely monitored after the injections. Mass vaccination may begin as early as October.

“We expect tens of thousands of volunteers to be vaccinated within the next months,” Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund that bankrolled the vaccine, told reporters.

The vaccine developed by the Gamaleya Institute in Moscow with assistance from Russia’s Defense Ministry uses a different virus — the common cold-causing adenovirus — that’s been modified to carry genes for the “spike” protein that coats the coronavirus, as a way to prime the body to recognize if a real COVID-19 infection comes along.

That’s a similar technology as vaccines being developed by China’s CanSino Biologics and Britain’s Oxford University and AstraZeneca — but unlike those companies, Russian scientists haven’t published any scientific information about how the vaccine has performed in animal tests or in early-stage human studies.

Dmitriev said even as Russian doctors and teachers start getting vaccinated, advanced trials are set to start Wednesday that will involve “several thousand people” and span several countries, including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines and possibly Brazil.

The Associated Press couldn’t find documentation in the Russian Health Ministry’s records indicating that permission to start the advanced trials was granted. The ministry has not responded to a request for comment.

Putin said one of his daughters has received two doses, and had minor side effects such as slight fever, and is now “feeling well and has a high number of antibodies.” It wasn’t clear if she was one of the study volunteers.

The Health Ministry said in a statement Tuesday that the vaccine is expected to provide immunity from the coronavirus for up to two years, citing its experience with vaccines made with similar technology.

However, scientists around the world have been cautioning that even if vaccine candidates are proven to work, it will take even more time to tell how long the protection will last.

“The collateral damage from release of any vaccine that was less than safe and effective would exacerbate our current problems insurmountably,” Imperial College London immunology professor Danny Altmann said in a statement Tuesday.

The World Health Organization has urged that all vaccine candidates go through full stages of testing before being rolled out, and said Tuesday it is in touch with the Russian scientists and “looks forward to reviewing” Russia’s study data. Experts have warned that vaccines that are not properly tested can cause harm in many ways — from harming health to creating a false sense of security or undermining trust in vaccinations.

Becoming the first country in the world to approve a vaccine was a matter of national prestige for the Kremlin as it tries to assert the image of Russia as a global power. Putin repeatedly praised Russia’s effective response to the outbreak in televised addresses to the nation, while some of Moscow’s top officials – including the country’s prime minister and Putin’s own spokesperson – became infected.

And the U.S., Britain and Canada last month accused Russia of using hackers to steal vaccine research from Western labs. Russia has denied involvement.

Russia has so far registered 897,599 coronavirus cases, including 15,131 deaths.

The Gamaleya Institute’s director, Alexander Gintsburg, raised eyebrows in May when he said that he and other researchers tried the vaccine on themselves before the start of human studies.

Those trials started June 17 with 76 volunteers. Half were injected with a vaccine in liquid form and the other half with a vaccine that came as soluble powder. Some in the first group were recruited from the military, which raised concerns that servicemen may have been pressured to participate. The test was declared completed earlier this month.

 “It’s a too early stage to truly assess whether it’s going to be effective, whether it’s going to work or not,” said Dr. Michael Head, senior research fellow in global health at England’s University of Southampton.

It’s not Russia’s first controversial vaccine. Putin has bragged that Russian scientists delivered an Ebola vaccine that “proved to be the most effective in the world” and “made a real contribution to fighting the Ebola fever in Africa.” However, there is little evidence either of the two Ebola vaccines approved in Russia was widely used in Africa. As of 2019, both of those vaccines were listed by the WHO as “candidate vaccines.”

AP medical writers Maria Cheng in London and Lauran Neergaard in Alexandria, Virginia, contributed to this report.

Medical experts denounce ‘irresponsible’ rush to COVID-19 vaccine by Russia
 August 11, 2020  By Common Dreams

“The collateral damage from release of any vaccine that was less than safe and effective would exacerbate our current problems insurmountably.”

International medical experts expressed concern Tuesday after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced that his country registered a vaccine for Covid-19—a pronouncement that came before the drug has completed robust clinical trials.

“A vaccine against coronavirus has been registered for the first time in the world this morning,” Putin said on state TV.

The Russian leader further claimed that the vaccine developed by the Moscow-based Gamaleya Institute “works quite effectively” and “has passed all the needed checks.”

Multiple news reports and comments from experts in the field raised questions about Putin’s claims.

“Russia has released no scientific data on its testing and CNN is unable to verify the vaccine’s claimed safety or effectiveness,” the outlet reported.

According to Reuters:

The Russian vaccine’s approval by the Health Ministry comes before trials that would normally involve thousands of participants, commonly known as a Phase III trial. Such trials are usually considered essential precursors for a vaccine to secure regulatory approval

Additionally, as the Associated Press reported, injections “were studied in only dozens of people for less than two months,” though Russian officials said advanced trials would begin Wednesday. From the wire service:

In the meantime, the vaccine will be offered to tens of thousands of people. Deputy Prime Minister Tatyana Golikova said the vaccination of doctors could start as early as this month. Russian authorities have said that medical workers, teachers, and other risk groups will be the first to undergo vaccination.

Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, called Russia’s rollout of the vaccine ahead of Stage 3 trials “irresponsible.”

In a Twitter thread responding to the Washington Post‘s reporting on Russia’s vaccine announcement, Feigl-Ding explained that “phase 3’s larger sample size allows much better study of safety signals and in wider range of patients,” adding that waiting for that phase to complete would “allow greater confidence.”

But, he added, there are more issues at stake:

3) “weak vaccine might be worse than no vaccine at all. We do not want people who are only slightly protected to behave as if they are invulnerable, which could exacerbate transmission.”
— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) August 11, 2020

Those points were echoed by Dr. Ohid Yaqub, senior lecturer in the Science Policy Research Unit at the University of Sussex.

“In terms of safety,” Yaqub said in a statement, “skipping phase 3 means trust in this vaccine—and vaccines generally—could be undermined, and it could also give people a false sense of security, if it turns out the vaccine is not actually effective.”

“Another important implication is that, if there is widespread diffusion of this vaccine, it may interfere with the testing of future vaccines that are potentially better,” said Yaqub.

Feigl-Ding, in his Twitter thread, also stressed that development of a Covid-19 vaccine should be marked by global cooperation.

“Phase 3 gives not just confidence in safety in wider array of people, and hence picking up effects in more narrow subgroups of people, but also allow well it truly prevents infection in real world setting. And both of those are key. Let’s focus: Quality over warp speed,” he wrote.

Danny Altmann, Professor of Immunology at Imperial College London, expressed similar skepticism to Russia’s announcement, saying in a statement that the “bar is necessarily set very high for criteria that must be satisfied for approval after Phase 3 clinical trials” and warned that the “collateral damage from release of any vaccine that was less than safe and effective would exacerbate our current problems insurmountably.”

“I hope these criteria have been followed” with the Russian vaccine, said Altmann. “We are all in this together.”

’Why didn’t Putin take it?’: Biomedical doctor explains why Russia’s vaccine ‘is a dangerous thing for them to do’

August 11, 2020 By Sarah K. Burris

BECAUSE

Russian President Vladimir Putin bragged that his country has come up with the first coronavirus vaccine and that he has tested it on his daughter, who evidently was diagnosed with the deadly disease. It was eventually revealed that the vaccine is only in the first phase of testing, which is behind where other vaccines are in the testing phases.

Speaking to MSNBC’s Joshua Johnson, Dr. William Haseltine, an infectious diseases expert who founded two research departments on HIV/AIDS and cancer, questioned the viability of the so-called Russian vaccine.

“First, my comment on the Russian vaccine, they call it Sputnik 5, which is harkening back to their first satellite,” said the doctor. “I would recall it Afghanistan 2, remembering their deadly foray into the Middle East. This is a dangerous thing for them to do for their people and the rest of the world. I would rather have seen Putin take it than give it to his daughter, for example. Why didn’t he take it, if he thinks it’s so safe? We don’t know, and they can’t know that it’s safe and effective.

He said that’s why he’s concerned that President Donald Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” might also warp the process as it is rushed to give to Americans before it has truly been tested enough.

“We do not want to expose healthy people to a vaccine that we don’t know is safe, because we haven’t tested it in enough people, and we haven’t tested it long enough,” said Dr. Haseltine. “Do we want our own Afghanistan 2? I don’t think so. Not with this vaccine. It might be safe, and it might be effective. We just don’t know. And until, as Secretary of Health [Alex Azar] said, we’ve done the phase three trials, we have the data, you can’t know, and we don’t want our most precious asset, our young children and our older people, at risk for a vaccine that’s neither known to be safe nor effective. There are many examples of vaccines that have gone awry, so we have to be careful. ”

See his full comments below:

Stocks Turn Negative After Russia Claims To Have World’s First Coronavirus Vaccine

Sergei Klebnikov Forbes Staff
I cover breaking news, with a focus on money and markets.
Updated Aug 11, 2020

TOPLINE
The market finished lower on Tuesday as Big Tech stocks posted declines which offset an initial rally sparked by Russia's claims that it approved the world’s first coronavirus vaccine.

Russia’s rapid approval of a coronavirus vaccine has been met with skepticism.

 JAKUB PORZYCKI/NURPHOTO VIA GETTY IMAGES

Stocks initially rose following Russian President Vladimir Putin’s overnight announcement that his country was the first to grant regulatory approval for a coronavirus vaccine, after less than two months of human testing.

While Russia’s rapid approval of the vaccine has met with skepticism and raised concern among medical experts, the news did spark optimism among investors that a vaccine could be available in the U.S. sooner than expected.

Shares of companies that would benefit from a vaccine and a reopening of the economy—including airlines, cruise stocks and retailers—jumped on the news Tuesday.

“Although the timing is uncertain, the stock market is expressing confidence that the pandemic will end eventually with a vaccine—or multiple vaccines—and with help from better treatments in the interim,” says Jeff Buchbinder, equity strategist for LPL Financial.

WHAT TO WATCH FOR

Ongoing coronavirus stimulus talks, which ended in a stalemate last week. President Trump on Saturday issued several executive orders to extend economic relief programs, such as expanding federal unemployment benefits—at a reduced rate of $400 per week, deferring student loan payments through 2020, extending a federal moratorium on evictions and providing a payroll tax holiday. But Trump’s executive action was met with criticism from both parties and is likely to face legal challenges, since continuing the programs would require federal funding from Congress. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Monday that the White House is open to resuming coronavirus relief talks with Democrats and is willing to provide more relief money in order to make a compromise.


Goldman Predicts ‘At Least One’ Vaccine Approval Before The End Of 2020, Raises GDP Estimate (Forbes)
Russia Has Approved World’s First Covid-19 Vaccine, Putin Says (Forbes)

Sergei Klebnikov
I am a New York—based reporter for Forbes covering breaking news, with a focus on financial topics

Rolls-Royce discovers cracks inside another set of engines: Issues will cost up to £50m to put right

JITP; JUST IN TIME PRODUCTION, SPEED UP BY ANY OTHER NAME.....

By FRANCESCA WASHTELL FOR THE DAILY MAIL

PUBLISHED: 11 August 2020

Rolls-Royce's reputation has been dealt a further blow after it found cracks inside another set of engines.

It discovered the problems with a small number of its Trent XWB-84s, which power the Airbus A350 planes, during routine inspections carried out last month.

It is expected issues will cost Rolls up to £50million to put right.

Rolls-Royce discovered the problems with a small number of its Trent XWB-84s, which power the Airbus A350 planes (pictured), during routine inspections carried out last month

The company said the 'indications of wear' have not caused any in-flight issues and will not disrupt things for customers.

But the news has worrying echoes of problems with its Trent 1000 engines, which are used in Boeing's 787 Dreamliner that forced the planes using them to be grounded so that repairs could be carried out. The bill for that has ballooned to £2.4billion.

And it comes as Rolls has been hit hard by the coronavirus, which has grounded flights all over the world, starving it of income it usually makes from servicing plane engines. 

The company is axing 9,000 staff out of its 52,000-strong workforce, and mulling ways to raise more cash.

About 100 Trent XWBs have been in operation for four or more years and due for their first major service. Rolls is understood to have found cracks in 20 engines.

Around 650 Trent XWBs are in service on A350s, flown by airlines such as Qatar Airways, Cathay Pacific and Lufthansa.

Derby-based Rolls-Royce has been hammered by the pandemic and is undertaking its third major restructuring in six years.

Reports are rife that the company, whose shares have tumbled 60 per cent this year, is hoping to raise £1billion by selling its Spanish arm ITP Aero and £1.5billion by selling new shares.

It would find it hard to take out new loans because all three major credit ratings agencies – Moody's, S&P and Fitch – have downgraded its credit rating to 'junk' status.