This week the know-nothing-in-chief blamed his predecessor for the government's incompetent response to the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, COVID-19 did not exist when Obama was President, and his administration set up a Pandemic Response Team. During this 3 years as *president, #Individual1 has tried to cut funding to the CDC and has downsized White House national security staff which deals, in part, with threats like pandemics. In 2018 Trump fired Tom Bossert, whose job as homeland security adviser on the NSC included coordinating the response to global pandemics. Bossert was not replaced. Last year, Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer, the NSC's senior director for global health security and biodefense, left and was not replaced. Dr. Luciana Borio, the NSC's director for medical and biodefense preparedness, left in May 2018 and was also not replaced.

Meanwhile, the Fourth Estate has been failing miserably in their coverage of coronavirus. The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and Los Angeles Times have either ignored or buried the fact the the current administration went out of it's way to cripple U.S. ability to respond to just this type of crisis. Not surprisingly there has been a complete blackout on that news of criminal incompetence as evidenced by the 0 results returned in a search of FoxNews.com for the name Bossert.

In other news, after a week which saw tons of great submissions, this week we got a lot of soft rock drivel unworthy of even the dreaded malign "Yacht Rock" tag. Record after record of banal, inoffensive dreck featuring Fender Rhodes electric piano or some facsimile thereof. We did find a couple of worthwhile records, however.

Today's  show will be live-hosted from 9am-5pm Eastern U.S. Time and feature new music by Disq (Madison, WI, @NewPhoneWhoDisq),  Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals, @gruffingtonpost), and Stephen Malkmus (Pavement/Jicks, @stephen_malkmus).

Videos

The marathon 8-hour show is followed by 2 hours of uninterrupted music and is then rebroadcast in its entirety beginning at 7 p.m. Friday,  5 a.m. and 3 p.m. Saturday, and one final time at 1 a.m. on Sunday. That is followed by a rebroadcast of a  Fuzzy Road radio show at 11 a.m. and then a couple of old  480 Minutes episodes from this week in past years, making for hosted shows all weekend long.

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