I don’t know, man. It’s almost like poisoning the well for every other worthwhile candidate wasn’t the smartest strategy for furthering the progressive cause. https://t.co/WFqHzUHcqu
— Dennis DiClaudio (@dennisdiclaudio) March 11, 2020
Congratulations Berners!
You worked so hard to undermine Clinton in 2016 you put the country in a position where they wanted Trump out and were in absolutely no mood to fuck around with your "revolution." https://t.co/4SL6Ob7DCl
— Andy (@trtx84) March 11, 2020
Bernie should start firing people. Even if it’s too late to turn this thing around, it’d be for the long-term good of his movement if he starts cultivating a cadre of more competent people. https://t.co/W4uwvQjIVj
— Starfish Who Should Be Told To Get Back To Work (@IRHotTakes) March 11, 2020
Well, assuming that we have free and fair elections in the future (which alone is a reason to vote for Kooky Uncle Joe if it’s him or Donald,) then the left wing of the party would presumably like to win them, and they are more likely to do so with people who are competent.
— Starfish Who Should Be Told To Get Back To Work (@IRHotTakes) March 11, 2020
I know I keep banging on this but I genuinely do not understand how I, a primary voter who is on their 837th choice and whose electoral considerations fundamentally boil down to "pull lever to make bad mans go away" am madder about this than 99% of the die-hard Berners I follow. https://t.co/YorfY2Gzp1
— Starfish Who Should Be Told To Get Back To Work (@IRHotTakes) March 11, 2020
In one of his rare moments of wisdom, our idiot king noted that "winners aren't losers," and he was right. Find some winners! By all means reward the people who were smart and competent, but you don't owe the guys who fucked this up jack shit.
— Starfish Who Should Be Told To Get Back To Work (@IRHotTakes) March 11, 2020
Yeah, about that…
Just for the record. If you do this, you are either playing someone or being played https://t.co/EJHyXsI3Js
— penitent admirer (@loudpenitent) March 10, 2020
Just say No to a #demexit
all the people we like will still be there if Biden wins
He seems pretty easily swayed so let's not panic too too much
Let's just kick trump'ass— Console cowboy in cyber space (@Coolranch4lyfe) March 10, 2020
Post Oval Office Address Open Thread
guachi
“If I don’t vote for Clinton and things get shittier then by 2020 they’ll be desperate for the revolution!”
The Dangerman
Are we talking figuratively at the ballot box or literally with my steel toed boots? Because I’m down for either.
I saw a big ass truck today with a bumper sticker that read “Trump: Make Liberals Cry Again” and I considered going over and pissing on it, but then the Dude got out and he was way bigger than me. Well, Momma didn’t raise no fool…
smintheus
The “demexit” crap is coming first and foremost from Russian trolls. Just point out that they’re Russian trolls, don’t waste time reasoning with them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I wonder who those people are, and how many votes they have in Congress…
Kent
@guachi: Yes, exactly. The dumbfuckery of the Sanders revolution is beyond belief. The worse things get, the more people want safety, not some dumbass rag tag band of revolutionaries running things.
Tom Q
The fact that the guy in the first tweet labels Harris a centrist gives his game away.
The Democratic party now has more liberals than it has since the early 1970s, and lefties are trying to persuade the gullible that anyone two notches right of socialist is a centrist.
brendancalling
The brain pollution is strong in people like Mehdi Hasan, at least when it comes to what has ultimately been the failure of the Sanders campaign. Someone on the Twitter captured it perfectly last week, when some of Sanders’ more unpleasant supporters began demanding that Warren endorse their man. I’m paraphrasing but basically “explain to me how Warren is a backstabbing Republican snake whose endorsement is necessary to pull the progressive community together.”
I’ve been supportive of the Sanders campaign but a lot of his supporters believe shit that isn’t real
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@brendancalling: I always thought Hasan was the most reasonable of the Intercept crew, but he’s been kind of a dick the last couple of weeks. I guess he and Chris Hayes and a few others actually convinced themselves Himself could win
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@smintheus:
You beat me to it. Definitely mostly bots, I’m assuming
ThresherK
Missed it by
that muchone term: Actual, literal social media post by friend (for how long?) of mine:*”They” are unknown. Moderate Dems? Moderate R’s (sic)?
Jay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Warren for example. Few Wilmerites are Progressives, none of the rabid ones anyway.
ThresherK
“I have no trouble with my enemies. I can take care of my enemies in a fight. But my friends, my goddamned friends, they’re the ones who keep me walking the floor at nights!”
Bernie should take a lesson from Warren G. Harding, who nobody ever called The Sage of Marion, Ohio.
joel hanes
It’s time for that old adage :
Don’t argue with them. It only encourages them.
Ignoring people who are stuck in opposition leaves them punching the air.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent: But Kent, THE ONLY PROBLEM WE HAVE IN THE COUNTRY IS INCOME INEQUALITY, YOU UNICORN-HATING, ESTABLISHMENT WHORES!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@mrmoshpotato:
Why, thank you, I didn’t know you cared.
joel hanes
@joel hanes:
Replying to self :
Don’t argue with them.
Biden understands this, has pivoted to the general, has little to say to or about Sen. Sanders.
I wish the next debate was not gonna happen.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@joel hanes:
As it should be. Isn’t basically mathematically impossible for him to win the nom at this point after yesterday? He even lost WA and even Michigan. I almost can’t believe he’s not dropping out yet
GC
https://www.flattenthecurve.com/
Kent
@joel hanes: If Joe and Bernie wanted, they could turn the next debate into a 1.5 hour tag-team referendum on the Trump Administration and its handling of pretty much any damn issue from health care to the environment. Just pivot every question to Trump. It would be the more presidential thing for the both of them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Kent
None of the next 5 states are even as Bernie-friendly as Michigan and he just lost Michigan by 17 points and lost in every single county in MI. The longer he stays in the more he embarrasses himself and drives a bigger stake into his “revolution”
sukabi
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): magic math…just like last time. This time next week it will be lots of shouting about the rigged system.?
MoxieM
My newest nickname for WIlmer is St. Slanders. Because really, that’s what he’s good at . Slander. (eta: He & his malevolent cloud of Bots & Bros.)
Mnemosyne
I just found out that the Berners have managed to convince naive lefties that the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) is bad because it was “weaponized against POC,” so therefore there’s no need to renew it.
Excuse me, I’m going to go bang my head on the wall for a while. BRB.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Mnemosyne:
Just remember not to touch your face while you bash it into the wall :
BTW, did you see my post earlier today to you about having visitors to your mother wearing surgical masks?
NotMax
Whoever this Starfish person is needs to get out more. Smell the roses, even.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Not at all. Biden could catch coronavirus tomorrow.
Martin
Ok, kudos to U-Haul.
30 days free storage for students who need to move out of the dorms. Mind you, I think it’s shitty for colleges to force students out of the dorms – especially the ones sitting on $40B endowments in the event of an emergency like a global pandemic.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
Asshole Chris Hayes had asshole Hasan on tonight to savage Biden.
Kent
I don’t get it. Why would they need to move all their shit out of the dorms and into storage? What’s wrong with packing a bag and leaving the rest of your stuff where it sits in the dorm room?
NotMax
@Martin
Are they refunding room and board fees on a pro-rated basis?
Chetan Murthy
@Kent: Bet it’s to forestall theft. So the college doesn’t need to be responsible for lost belongings.
HumboldtBlue
We can still sing
Martin
@Kent: Because the schools don’t expect the students to return this academic year. So students at some privates <cough>Harvard</cough> need to have everything out of the dorms by Friday.
Now, I might give Harvard a bit of credit if they were going to then turn those dorms over for patient quarantine, because that could be legit useful, but I doubt we’ll see that.
different-church-lady
“If you don’t nominate the guy who isn’t part of the party I will leave the party he’s not part of” is some big-brain stuff right there.
Martin
@NotMax: Not sure. They probably haven’t gotten that far yet.
My work list of secondary effects from our campus’ decision will take me a few weeks to get through. Basically, we made these decisions knowing we could answer these questions, not knowing what the answer would be.
SWMBO
@Martin: Posted in a previous thread:
I live in South Florida, where there are LOTS of people in the bad age range (I could be one of them). While you’re crunching those numbers and possibilities, you’re giving us the immediate, short range possibilities. What are the long range possibilities? You keep saying if we can stretch it out, we can lower the fatality range from 6 million to 1.5 tops. How long are you talking about stretching it out? A month? Two months? Six months? A year?
mrmoshpotato
@different-church-lady: The bigliest brain!
NotMax
@SWMBO
Keep in mind that all postulations regarding the U.S. as a whole are currently based on incomplete or fragmentary data. Certainly some state by state data is not consistently reliable right now.
This is not to say extrapolations are not helpful, rather that one must always be aware they are subject to revision as the pool of data expands.
Fair Economist
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): To be precise, it’s still *mathematically* possible for Bernie to win (there are enough delegates out) but it’s politically impossible since his best states are behind him with a number of very Biden friendly states coming up, notably FL.
NotMax
@NotMax
No edit function. Amended for clarity.
Change “regarding the U.S. as a whole are currently based on incomplete or fragmentary data” to “regarding the U.S. as a whole currently include incomplete or fragmentary data.”
piratedan
@SWMBO: the general time frame for recovery looks to be 2-3 weeks, depending upon the severity and the ability of your own body to withstand the infection. As people recover, new cases get cycled in, the idea is that not everyone is sick at the same time allowing the hospitals to not have to put patients in hallways but that’s with the expectations that this will essentially burn itself out and while this has apparently worked in China (as much as you can trust their transparency) and South Korea, much smaller footprint of infection due to their rapid response and extensive testing and mandate to address this seriously; that does not mean that this will translate here…
What is encouraging is that some people appear to get it and are acting on their own without waiting on the Feds, the problem is, testing is behind and will stay behind because of the lack of kits. Unknown how quickly the amount of kits can be ramped up, and we have to remember that Trump has been “making friends” all over the world, so there might not be a willingness to help us out for any supplies that come from outside the US.
JoyceH
Hey, something I’ve been noticing that I wonder if anyone else has. When they talk about the medical facilities being overwhelmed, they talk as if the facilities and equipment are fixed quantities that nothing can be done about. For instance, they’ll say that there are ‘65,000 respirators nationwide’ – well, a respirator is a thing that was manufactured. So why is nobody saying ‘we CURRENTLY have 65,000 respirators, so we’re going to make a whole lot more as quickly as possible’?
Granted, things are moving so fast that new respirators won’t be made, shipped and put into use within a week or two, but geez, can’t they ORDER some?
Chetan Murthy
@JoyceH: IIUC, there are shortages of respirators, gloves, masks, PPE suits, everything you need to deal with this. Worldwide shortages. And …. we don’t make any of that stuff in America anymore. Heck, I was reading that there are shortages of generic meds, since those come from India and China now, and both countries are keeping what they need. And China, of course, is locked-down.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
President Wile E. Coyote
piratedan
@Chetan Murthy: that is correct, PPE equipment is already being rationed and re-used in facilities for the foreseeable future (at least the ones I am familiar with). To speak to Joyce’s point, why can’t we just make more or build some, Chet is on target with that as well, sure there’s still some niche manufacturing in the US, and a good bit of it is medical equipment but most of that market is on the molecular side where there is gene paired medications being developed for cancer patients that is where the market is at. The shortages are tied to everyone needing to be treated for the same thing…
Spider-Dan
Any time a Berner like Mehdi Hasan asks you “Why THIS centrist instead of any of the others?” just show them this tweet:
https://twitter.com/lukeisamazing/status/1200559941314056192
note: the first reply has aged better than the Mona Lisa
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
It’s gonna be another blood bath today
Currently:
Australia -7.23%
Hong Kong -4.10%
Shanghai -1.52%
Tokyo -4.41%
Dow futures -4.61%
Thank God Dump calmed the markets.
Martin
@SWMBO: Yeah, I’m trying to figure that out and running into a problem. I’m helping the hospital figure that part out so they can get a sense of ‘how overrun might we get’.
So, the basic models seem to be pretty well behaved. We have a fatality curve slightly better than Italy, and both our curve and Italy’s are improving slightly daily. That kind of surprised me for Italy – but that means their doctors are holding the line against being overwhelmed. Improvements because we get better at treatment even over short periods of time. There’s not a lot of data, so I can’t compare age ranges, etc. but despite that, we feel good about our models.
So, we have a model for the number of beds relative to projected fatalities. In our first models we’re assuming hospital beds and patients are equally distributed (they aren’t). In our final model we’re looking at only our service region, which is actually quite a bit worse than average because of the number of retirees here. Anyway, we’re working out the fatality number that should tip us over, and then on what day that happens.
That looks like around March 24 in some places. Later for our area because we have suspiciously few infected here. But later is maybe a week. Again, the data is pretty rough so all this is subject to change a LOT. Now, if we stick to the assumption that 50% of the population is affected and that we can’t protect seniors better than the rest of the population, then we need to slow down the rate of infection to not exceed the projection for 3/24, and we need to achieve that before 3/24. And we need to maintain that for around 1200 days – a little over 3 years.
Now, that’s not a real number for a few reasons:
Our guess (and we’re not the CDC, but then the CDC is doing exactly dick to help us answer these questions so we’re doing the best we can) is that we will tip over the capacity of the system because there’s no way we get the rate down by the 24th. Fatalities have spikes at 17 days and 22 days, so all the people dying on the 24th are already infected, and some already have symptoms. We will go catastrophically over capacity in some places. This will tear through some parts of the country at a pretty terrible rate.
We can’t identify a mechanism that government can implement to achieve what S Korea and China have. It may happen, but it won’t be through any administrative action. Sometimes diseases just burn out and we don’t know why. It could be through collective action – everyone just gets scared and stays home. Who knows.
We’re guessing we’ll have to sustain this stance for at least 6 months. The challenge with something like this is that you want to measure how effective your actions have been. But it takes at least 2 weeks to measure that, and in that time, at least 5x more people have it. There is nothing that humans do which can operate at the rate an epidemic can. So if you get behind by a certain amount it becomes impossible to get in front of it.
If the feds were pulling out the stops, I might have some optimism we still can get in front of this. I don’t think that’s possible now. 38 dead doesn’t seem like a point of no return number, but we will probably hit 1000 dead in a single day off of the folks currently infected.
Italy had 34 dead on 3/1. They had 200 die today, 11 days later. I expect they’ll cross 1000 per day within 6 days.
The one thing we’re uncertain of is that because the first outbreak was a nursing home, if our infected number might be much lower than the model predicts simply because we hit such a non-representative population at the outset. Only time will tell on that one.
NotMax
@JoyceH
Aside from the excellent points already made are the more prosaic questions of how any ordered are to be paid for, who is doing the paying and from which budget comes the funding.
206inKY
@JoyceH: Yes!!! This has been the most infuriating aspect of this. We had more advance notice than China, Korea, Iran, and Italy. I don’t understand why we aren’t making a WW2-level manufacturing push to pump out as many ventilators, tests, masks, soap, sanitizer, beds, and even field hospitals as possible. More capacity would give a buffer for places that fail to flatten the curve enough. Hospital beds are currently very unevenly distributed, so the curve needs more flattening in some parts of the country than others. This needn’t divert funding from research and subsidized sick leave; surely we can attack from more than one direction. Where are the democratic socialist voices who have spent the last 18 months arguing for large-scale costly projects? Demand has collapsed in other domains, but not for these materials. China built a hospital in 10 days!!!! Clearly we can do this. It’s a better way to juice the economy than bailouts for cruise lines and oil companies.
Martin
@JoyceH: So, the good news is that medical equipment is something the US makes. CA and NC and MA all have a fair bit of it. And a lot of it isn’t this kind of stuff, but they can adapt somewhat. It’s not clear that the supply chain is entirely inside the US, though.
The better news is that China is getting back to work, and if you need a factory tipped up and building something, there’s no better place on earth to do that than China. I would be willing to bet they can get a factory building ventilators up and running in under a week, assuming they are fully back to work. And faster than that for N95 masks, etc.
Do not be shocked if Chinese manufacturing turns out to be the hero in all of this.
Martin
@206inKY: We can. But our WWII push was predicated on a President going to industry leaders and telling them ‘build me x thousand planes and I’ll buy them’. And they did.
But this is an ‘industry-led response’. So, we have to wait for hospital x to order them from supplier y who needs to tell manufacturer z to build 100 more, and hospital x needs to figure out how to build insurers a, b, c, and d for all of this, because none of this shit has an IDT-10 code or a negotiated rate.
Martin
@JoyceH: The other part of the constraint is simply square feet. Beds take space, and when you run out of space, where do you go? You can’t build doctors quickly, and spreading them across multiple locations makes them less productive.
We’re going to have to do some eminent domain shit and start seizing office buildings and such adjacent to hospitals.
Martin
Boy, that’s a 48 point headline you don’t want to see at CNN
Trump address sparks chaos as coronavirus crisis deepens
opiejeanne
@Martin: We had 5 die today in WA, so that number is now 30, just for the state of Washington, unless it changed since the governor held his press conference.
He says there are probably at least 1000, and within 4 weeks it might be about 64,000. At Korea’s death rate of .7%, that’s 448 deaths, but our death rate is almost guaranteed to be higher.
opiejeanne
@Martin: Is that the current headline at CNN?
TS (the original)
Dumb question from a non-US person
Can trump reduce/remove the payroll tax without the approval of the House of Reps?
lol chikinburd
I guess I’m having a hard time figuring out what motivation this White House has to “succeed”, or rather to define “success” the way normal people would. Shock doctrine plus Stephen Miller is…one can imagine what it is.
opiejeanne
I am wide awake at 1:21 am because a carload of kids roared around the corner at high speed, took out a stretch of our fence and some of the landscaping, and ended up in the part of our lot that contains the septic hump. I’m really pissed off that four of the kids left, just passengers but one girl was bleeding profusely from the head and the kids with her didn’t make her stay to get help. She said she didn’t want to get the driver in trouble. Meanwhile, the driver and two other boys stayed and took the heat. I think the cops and the ambulance found her, just up the road a little ways. It must have been a slow night because they sent two rescue vehicles and the hook and ladder, plus 4 police cars.
The driver was so drunk that he took a leak in the middle of the intersection, under the street lamp.
It hurt me to hear the driver tell his mom not to be upset but he was getting arrested, but I’m worried about the girl. I guess since the district schools are all closed and they’re switching to online learning, their parents consider a Wednesday night to not be a school night.
The fence can be repaired, but I was very fond of the lilac that died tonight.
opiejeanne
@TS (the original): I don’t think so, and even some Republicans were dubious about the proposal. The House won’t approve it, and I don’t think the Senate will either.
The House has written a bill that addresses the needs of the “little people”, the ones who have no health insurance or sick leave, the ones with kids and no child care, the ones who will lose their jobs.
Trump wants to bail out businesses like the airlines, but not the employees of the airlines.
Martin
@opiejeanne: Yep.
Martin
@opiejeanne: Trump only wants to bail out the airlines because the hotels are part of the industry.
TS (the original)
@opiejeanne:
Thanks – I thought that was the case – but trump seems to break all the rules so I wondered if he could break this one.
Anne Laurie
I’m sorry you had to witness that hot mess. But here in New England, at least, lilacs have amazing recuperative powers — even ones that have been shorn off at the base send out shoots that grow back strong. Of course, that means several years of looking at the slowly recovering ‘stump’ in the interim…
opiejeanne
@Anne Laurie: It’s been hit before, a couple of months before we bought the place and some other idiot plowed through the fence. The neighbor propped it up and it lived. This time I don’t have much hope because it was torn out by the roots. They’re not considered pests here, like they are some places.
I’m trying to remember which one it is, but I think it’s the really dark purple one. We have a bunch of them around the property in various shades of lilac.
opiejeanne
@Martin: I am sure that’s his motivation, and he’ll try to add hotels to the group getting the bailout.
opiejeanne
What’s this about an exploding vape pen? I must have missed a story.
Anne Laurie
I was just riffing on the ‘exploding cigar’ comic trope, and the stereotype of hipster BernieBros.
(Although I seem to recall stories about vape pens catching fire in smokers’ pockets… )
Calouste
@Martin:
Also on the CNN front page: Donald Trump’s scapegoating coronavirus speech shows he just doesn’t get it
Which balloon-juice favorite wrote that?
Anne Laurie
@Calouste: A true sign of the End Times: Both McArgleBargle and ‘Mad Bitcher’ Cillizza are writing sensible articles!
eclare
@opiejeanne: How awful! What a shocking thing to deal with. I’m sorry about the lilac.
Baud
@Anne Laurie:
Now I’m frightened.
Bruce K
Just had a horrifying thought: they’re going to try to make this Trump’s Reichstag fire moment, aren’t they?
opiejeanne
@Anne Laurie: Ohhh. Thanks. .I did wonder if it was about the Berners having meltdowns on Wednesday.
opiejeanne
@eclare: I’ll go see if the lilac can be saved tomorrow.
We couldn’t figure out how they took out the fence the way they did, until we realized that one of the big landscape rocks* that we put between the road and the fence had traveled with the car about 30 feet and was lodged under it. They must have been moving really fast, maybe close to 100mph when they hit the curve.
The car was a VW hatchback. and there were at least 7 kids in it.
*We put some large rocks at the edge of the road, big enough to stop or slow down most cars before they hit the fence but not big enough to get anyone killed. They’ve helped a bit.
Gvg
@Kent: so the college can sterilize everything. They clean and repair between terms even in normal times. This will be more extensive.
When students come back, it won’t be to restart exactly where things left off. Circumstances will have changed and nobody can predict how.
i think they will have to allow some homeless and some international students to stay, widely spaced out but those haven’t been figured out yet and maybe I am wrong. It’s just hard for the administrators to figure out and decide and it doesn’t help that they know with inadequate testing, the real facts aren’t available.
Gvg
@opiejeanne: sounds like you need a bunch of sand barrels. That’s what they use to protect people from dying when hitting overpasses or between oncoming lanes of traffic. Plastic barrels of sand.
kindness
In 2016 one of my better friends was a full on BernieBro. He hated Clinton with a passion and wasn’t much friendlier to the rest of the Democratic Party. He actually said (many times) he wanted Trump to win so that people would see the error of their ways and vote for Bernie in ’20. I didn’t talk to him for almost a year after the election. He’s still a BernieBro and I haven’t given him the time to find out is he wants to toss it all in the garbage heap again if it isn’t going to be Bernie.
I don’t know what got into their heads. That isn’t how you shape a dynasty or a movement. But they did it anyhow. Go figure.
Dupe1970
@Kent: At this point, I kind of want him to stay in because the longer he is in especially with the next two batches of unfriendly states for him the weaker he will be and the less leverage he will over Joe and the party.
Dupe1970
@Mnemosyne: Wait are they pivoting? Because I thought VAWA was the “only reason” Wilmer voted for the 94 crime bill.
ET
Serious question,…. How much of this talk is bots?