Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

Hell hath no fury like a farmer bankrupted.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

When I was faster i was always behind.

I swear, each month of 2025 will have its own history degree.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

It’s pointless to bring up problems that can only be solved with a time machine.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / COVID-19 & National Security Part VI: America is Not Suffering From a Failure of Intelligence, It is Suffering From a Failure of, and an Absence of, Leadership

COVID-19 & National Security Part VI: America is Not Suffering From a Failure of Intelligence, It is Suffering From a Failure of, and an Absence of, Leadership

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There have now been several pieces written that describe the US’s failing and flailing response to the SARS-CoV2 outbreak and COVID-19 epidemic as a failure of intelligence. The simple reality is that these analyses are wrong. They are not a failure of intelligence. As a former senior advisor to a number of senior leaders, I can honestly say that you can present senior leaders and decision-makers with the timely, accurate information they need to know, but no one can make them think. No one can make them accept it, process it, and act on it accordingly. And I was fortunate in that the senior leaders and decision-makers I served wanted timely, accurate information, were willing to consider it, and used it to inform their decision making. This is unfortunately not the case with the President. And this is clearly not a failure of intelligence, because we have excellent reporting indicating that timely, accurate information about SARS-CoV2 was presented to the President beginning in January 2020.

What we actually have is a failure of leadership. The President’s, the sycophants he’s surrounded himself with, members of the Republican caucuses in the House and the Senate, among Republican governors who are afraid of mean tweets and the President’s base, and among the publishers, editors, and executives at conservative news media outlets – from Fox News to talk radio to conservative digital news. The leak of the letter sent yesterday by  Captain Crozier, the commander of The Theodore Roosevelt to his chain of command is just further evidence of what we’ve been observing since January in regard to the SARS-CoV2 outbreak and since January 2017 with this administration in general. With the exceptions of Director Wray at the FBI and Director Haspel at the CIA, there is not a single cabinet secretary or equivalent senior political appointee in this administration that would have even been nominated for, let alone confirmed to, their positions in any other administration with the possible exceptions of Secretary Chao and Attorney General Barr because of their previous senior cabinet appointee experience in previous administrations. You would not see any of these people in these positions in any other Republican administration. The few actually competent and qualified senior appointees, all of whom were generals (Mattis, Kelly, McMaster) with the exception of DNI Coats, are long gone. And the qualified subordinates they hired are long gone as well. What we’re left with is an incurious president who thinks he knows the price of everything, but really knows the value of nothing, as well as the price of nothing too and a bunch of senior appointees who would either never be considered for political appointments in any other administration or, at best, would be considered for deputy assistant positions at best. They, like their subordinates, have been selected for and/or retained because of professed and displayed loyalty to the President. These subordinates wouldn’t even be considered for the most junior positions in any other administration.

As an example, I honestly cannot think of a single good reason why the Acting Secretary of the Navy needed to do his media appearances today from NY City with the USNS Comfort as the backdrop except that someone explained to him that he was doing them for an audience of one, the President. And that audience wanted to see the USNS Comfort. It is this performative sycophancy that we are seeing revealed each and every day.

The United States is not just suffering through the SARS-CoV2 virus and COVID-19 epidemic. At the national level it is suffering from not just a lack of good leadership, but actual bad, self serving, and ultimately destructive leadership beginning with the President and throughout his administration. We are suffering from it in Senator Majority Leader McConnell and House Minority Leader McCarthy and their caucuses in each chamber of Congress. And we are suffering from it at the state level in a number of states with Republican governors, like FL, AZ, SC, GA, MS, and AL, who have decided that they would rather suck up to the President and demonstrate their fealty to him and his base of supporters rather than even attempt to aspire towards competency.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

193Comments

  1. 1.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    MI

    MS? what’s the deal in PA?

    DeSantis seems to be turning trump’s game of hot potato back on him, saying he hasn’t shut things down because trump hasn’t told him to.

    (Media criticism: Brian Williams had been getting pretty Brodery lately, both sides are bickering when we’re facing this crisis! Tonight he’s pushing back on the nonsense about trump having struck a new tone (again) during his mini-rally)

  2. 2.

    The Thin Black Duke

    People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they  watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

  5. 5.

    Mary G

    Good piece.
    One pedantic thing, I know you hate them, but in this line

    Republican governors, like FL, AZ, SC, GA, MI, and AL,

    maybe change the MI to MS, because I’m pretty sure you’re not referring to the lady who is rude to him, but Tate Potato from Mississippi.

    I have spent the day tweeting about the failures of the administration and assholes who use Instacart (or other delivery services that have gone to no-contact leave it on the porch services) and don’t tip because they don’t have to see the person’s face.

    This article in Forbes yesterday by a reporter who watched millions of American N95 masks be sold overseas to people who can pay immediately was particularly enraging.

    “If you are working with a seller who has masks but you can’t quickly show proof of funds, someone else is going to buy them,” he told me.

    And I watched that happen repeatedly throughout the day. Buyers from state procurement departments and hospital systems expressed desperate need for masks, but the deals bogged down when it came to providing proof that they could commit and follow through. In the meantime, another buyer provided proof of funds and the masks were gone, sometimes within the hour.

  6. 6.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    And we are suffering from it in a number of states with Republican governors, like FL, AZ, SC, GA, MI, and AL, who have decided that they would rather suck up to the President and demonstrate their fealty to him and his base of supporters rather than even attempt to aspire towards competency.

    Shouldn’t that be Mississippi instead of Michigan?

    Never mind.

  11. 11.

    Fair Economist

    You are much too forgiving. We are suffering from *evil* leadership. Trump actively suppressed testing, which is the primary cause of the magnitude of the NYC, NOLA, and Detroit outbreak. Now he’s trying to buy ventilators away from them.

  12. 12.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Adam L Silverman: in my time we had three or four letter abbreviations and they were clearer and god dammit we liked ’em

    Also, is Devin Nunes TV stuck on the news from two weeks ago or something? he tends to spout this crap after even trump has backed off

    Acyn Torabi @Acyn
    Devin Nunes calls the closure of schools in California “way overkill” shortly before he argues we need to send people back to work within 1-2 weeks while citing optimism over Hydroxychloroquine

    this was tonight, guess which network!

  13. 13.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    DeSantis wants to be reelected governor in 2022 and then run for president in 2024.

    I don’t see that working out too well for him given how many Floridians will probably die over the next few months due to his neglect, but I’m sure he has a plan to blame it all on the Democrats.

  14. 14.

    Mary G

    Even Matt Gaetz has figured out that the Republican brand is sinking fast and started agitating for Senator Burr to GTFO for his stock dumping, but this guy, no, still clueless:

    Devin Nunes calls the closure of schools in California “way overkill” shortly before he argues we need to send people back to work within 1-2 weeks while citing optimism over Hydroxychloroquine pic.twitter.com/3pBHWdwlK0— Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) April 1, 2020

  15. 15.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m waiting for a package from FedEx Ground and they’re late. I know it’s a bunch of non-essential stickers but, damn it, I want them!

    /FirstWorldProblems

  17. 17.

    Jay

    Patrick Jones is the first person in federal prison to die from COVID-19. Jones was convicted in 2017 of possession with intent to distribute crack cocaine w/in 1,000 feet of a junior college. For this, he was serving a 27-year sentence. Think about that. https://t.co/cVW6Q91Yq1— Vanita Gupta (@vanitaguptaCR) March 30, 2020

  19. 19.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @Mnemosyne:

    I ordered a replacement set of blades for my electric shaver from Amazon on the 26th with an estimated delivery date of April 23.

    I was pleasantly surprised when they came today.

  20. 20.

    Another Scott

    Good post. Thanks.

    More evidence that people were sounding the alarm many weeks ago was (repost) this memo from February 3 from the head of the OPM. Naturally, since she knew what she was doing, (Warning – Politico) she abruptly resigned on Tuesday March 17:

    Cabaniss stepped down because of, what two people familiar with the matter said, was poor treatment from the 29-year-old head of the Presidential Personnel Office, John McEntee, and a powerful appointee at OPM, Paul Dans, the new White House liaison and senior adviser to the director of OPM.

    OPM Deputy Director Michael Rigas is now acting director of OPM, according to an OPM spokesperson.

    Cabaniss had been at the agency only since September.

    The departure casts a cloud of uncertainty over the federal workforce as it struggles to decide how to handle the coronavirus outbreak, with growing questions about the Trump administration’s decision to keep most government offices open and how it is handling remote work.

    […]

    Some officials see the hiring of Dans — a lawyer who previously worked in New York and recently started at the agency, according to two people familiar with the matter — as yet another affront. The job of White House liaison generally entails matching qualified people with political vacancies at an agency and moving appointees in and out of positions when needed.

    Dans has “clearly come with some kind of agenda,” said a person familiar with his hiring, who noted Dans doesn’t appear to have much of a background in Title V of the U.S. code, which deals with how the government is organized and how the federal civil service operates. Dans didn’t respond to a request for comment.

    […]

    (Emphasis added.)

    He’s perfect for Donnie!!

    :-/

    More here – https://federalnewsnetwork.com/opm/2020/03/cabaniss-resigns-as-opm-director/

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  21. 21.

    debbie

    It’s time for a bunch of AGs to get together and sue the Trump administration for the way they’re doling out equipment to just the red states.

  22. 22.

    Mnemosyne

    I’m still on the friends list of a wingnut relative in Florida, and it has certainly been interesting to watch it slowly occur to her over the past couple of weeks that her state is in deep shit and there’s no way to blame it on anyone but DeSantis and Trump. She’s watching the freight train barrel towards her and shrieking that the Democrats need to stop fighting the Republicans and DO SOMETHING.

    Have I mentioned that she’s a cop? Yep, shit is about to get real for her as a first responder and there’s nothing she can do to stop it.

  23. 23.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    CNN was saying Trump seemed scared today his campaign rally/ briefing. Wonder what is that is about. Trump only thinks about him self, bad poll numbers? Or someone close to have the Virus?

  25. 25.

    Ruckus

    @The Thin Black Duke:

    This.

    I know we have to keep repeating this stuff because so many people in the US and the world think that everyone is lying to them because otherwise they’d have to admit they and the people they voted for are absolutely, completely FULL – OF – SHIT.

    This is not incompetence, this is 12 levels of total ignorance beyond incompetence, you can’t even see far enough in the rear view mirror to get to incompetence.

  26. 26.

    Mnemosyne

    @Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman):

    It has a tracking number and a delivery date of today. I just wish they hadn’t led me on to think it would arrive today. ?

    I’m also waiting for some homemade surgical-style masks to arrive from Etsy so I can take my asthmatic lungs out for a stroll without freaking myself out, but those are going to be arriving closer to Friday or Saturday.

  27. 27.

    J R in WV

    Adam, thanks for this post.

    The whole federal government is tied in a ball of sodden string by our current “leader” and so far it looks like he won’t do anything to help the rest of the country deal with this disaster. Hope history will be able to define this as the terrible event it really is, thanks be to Trump.

  31. 31.

    Calouste

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: There are those Brazilians that were at Mar-a-Corona and shortly afterwards tested positive. And Rand Paul, and someone on Pence’s staff. It’s certainly spreading in his circles. Come to think of it, had he visited Mar-a-Corona recently? Probably too scared.

  32. 32.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @stinger: Let me add my praise of Adam to yours.  The desperation of the vermin of the Village to not point the finger at Donald is palpable.  They’re a sold half of the problem, what with their stenographer attitudes toward this whole thing.

  33. 33.

    Lyrebird

    What we’re left with is an incurious president who thinks he knows the price of everything, but really knows the value of nothing, as well as the price of nothing too…

    Beautifully written.

    May the day come soon when there is less going on that calls for (calls forth?) your denunciation skills.

     

    ETA: I used to have a similar reaction, though I didn’t post anything much about it, when people would talk about the failures of different AI systems used by intelligence contractors before 9/11 when there was a bigger problem that the then-Prez did not read his daily briefings!

  34. 34.

    Mary G

    March came in like a lion, goes out like some apocalyptic dinosaur centaur fire breathing bird monster dragon that terrorizes everything in its path pic.twitter.com/IOS9ZhWNdZ— Jessica Taylor (@JessicaTaylor) April 1, 2020

    From two American deaths on the first of March to more than 3,900 through today, this has been some month.

  36. 36.

    Ruckus

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Devin is not real bright. He’s like 20 watt incandescent bulb bright in a house with no power because someone forgot that you have to actually pay the power company, which he also can’t do because he can’t find his check book, the bill or a pen, because it’s too dark and he also can’t figure out how to operate the drapes, although he has spread the towels apart on the bathroom rack hoping for something to happen.

  37. 37.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: The lunkhead responsible for this crap!

    https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/03/29/more-on-cloroquine-azithromycin-and-on-dr-raoult?utm_source=Nature+Briefing&utm_campaign=09c7da52c4-briefing-dy-20200331&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c9dfd39373-09c7da52c4-44431689

    Dr. Didier Raoult of Marseilles and his co-workers have published another preprint on clinical results with the chloroquine/azithromycin combination that their earlier work has made famous. And I still don’t know what to think of it.

    This is going to be a long post on the whole issue, so if you don’t feel like reading the whole thing, here’s the summary: these new results are still not from randomized patients and still do not have any sort of control group for comparison. The sample is larger, but it’s still not possible to judge what’s going on. And on further reading, I have doubts about Dr. Raoult’s general approach to science and doubts about Dr. Raoult himself. Despite this second publication, I am actually less hopeful than I was before. Now the details.

  39. 39.

    BR

    Adam, have you gamed this year out?  How might this end?  I understand the epi aspects but not the intersection with the political side, especially given the current media and political environment we’re in.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jay: Even worse: there was no evidence of the intent to distribute, the woman he was living with agreed to testify to that for a deal. And he was 1,000 feet from the community college because he was in his apartment, which happened to be in a complex that was within 1,000 feet of the community college.

  42. 42.

    CaseyL

    America’s Chernobyl.

    And the MSM is afraid to say so.  Damn them to Hell, too.

    There need to be tribunals for this.  Many, many people – from T* on down – need to lose everything they own and go to prison for a long, long time for this.

  44. 44.

    Feathers

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: On Fox News, fascinating twitter thread about how the channel of evil is financed. Basically, protests have cut off their advertisers. Ad dollars are way, way, down. But it doesn’t matter, because Fox has negotiated a much higher carry fee (what a cable company pays a channel per subscriber) than they really should be getting. Your cable company is paying Murdoch six times what they are paying NBC/Universal for MSNBC. So Fox doesn’t really need the advertisers to stay profitable. I’ve been wondering when Fox was going to start getting kicked off cable channels. This coronanonse should be the start. Anyway, the thread has activism calls. Basically, if you have cable, call and demand that they not carry Fox any more or at least not pay them to try to kill you.

    https://twitter.com/GoAngelo/status/1244819790650322944?s=20

  47. 47.

    Mnemosyne

    @Fair Economist:

    I really don’t want to get into it. She’s the last remaining Trump supporter I know and I feel like it’s good to have that window. Plus she’s a fairly distant relative who I’ve only met a few times, so I don’t have a huge emotional attachment to the idea of getting her to figure shit out. I would rather watch her flail.

  48. 48.

    smintheus

    The people who claim we had no clear evidence of the danger back in January are simply lying. On Jan. 1, I contemplated the possibility of having to shelter at home to avoid a pandemic of this novel, seemingly untreatable virus (as my wife and I toured Boccaccio’s house in Italy). And I remember again on Jan. 6 and on Jan. 12 that I took steps to avoid Chinese tour groups in Venice and Florence because I was afraid of contracting the contagion from one of them. And on Jan. 13 in two European airports we kept moving to unoccupied gates to avoid potentially being infected, as soon as any travelers showed up near where we were seated. A week later I was pressing for information from our college health service about what precautions were being taken with regard to students and faculty returning to campus from China. These seemed to us to be absolutely basic precautions in the face of the news coming out of China…which I was fully aware of no later than New Years Day.

  51. 51.

    Zelma

    Well, no place will escape this.  Cape May County has 26 COVID-19 cases.  Five days ago there were six. 5 have “recovered” which means our little hospital has 21 patients and, I believe, 12 ventilators.  Although I’ve also heard 16.

    We have had second home owners heading here from New York, North Jersey and Pennsylvania.  The governor has told them not to come.  My local mayor sent out an announcement talking about a $1000 fine.  (I assume that’s a state thing.). You should read the comments on the borough’s Facebook page: entitled whiners all.  I’ve heard that folks are renting cars locally so that the have NJ license plates.  That could be an urban legend but who knows.

    I haven’t seen my son since Christmas.  He was planning to come up for my April birthday.  I guess that’s not going to happen.  It’s kind of scary to be living alone at my age and wondering what I will do if I get sick.

    Our local homeless charity is desperate for donations as is our food bank.  I’d be happy to do something, but I’m not supposed to leave the house!  We are talking about a social calamity in the making.  Many of the kids off shore depend on school breakfasts and lunches.  The schools are trying to to provide food but transportation is always an issue in rural areas (which is what we sort of are except for the obscenely rich shore towns.)

    The virus was always going to come, but our incompetent, evil administration has made it worse than it should be.

  53. 53.

    Mary G

    @Adam L Silverman: I am not a masochist, so I didn’t watch it, but apparently “Acting” Secretary Esper had not even read Captain Crozier’s letter before going on TV to talk about it. Am I wrong to assume Capt. Crozier’s career is dead for snitching?

    Am a bit shocked at this interview. Esper hadn’t read the letter he went on the air to talk about. Friends we are not in good hands right now. https://t.co/5Hf5jEXvp0— Simon Rosenberg (@SimonWDC) April 1, 2020

  55. 55.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Lyrebird: I spent a lot of time consulting with folks trying to solve the “information” problem regarding violent extremism. I kept explaining to them that we didn’t have an information problem, in fact we had far too much information. What we had was everyone trying to do alchemy with modern technology. That the belief that if we could just bring the right information (base metal) and run it through the right analytical program (the philosopher’s stone) we’d get the right answer (gold). And it just doesn’t work that way.

  57. 57.

    smintheus

    @Zelma: We also have here in PA people coming in from NJ and NY. The infection rates in Monroe County – an easy drive from NYC – are going off the charts. Yesterday I walked past a rural campground near Allentown that had been nearly empty all winter, which was filling up with out of state campers.

  59. 59.

    Ruckus

    @Feathers:

    I’d bet some of it is that they sold the cable providers that faux news is on every TV so much that they have to pay more. So they do. You know they do research/polling to see what people are watching, as that goes down I’d bet the reimbursements will too. It just has to reach critical and that money will dry up (he says very, very hopefully!)

  60. 60.

    Amir Khalid

    i’ve always had the impression that the Trump administration is trying not to steer the car but to steal it — or, failing that, to go on the mother of all joyrides and then crash it.

  61. 61.

    Mnemosyne

    @smintheus:

    Your campgrounds are still open? Newsom closed our state campgrounds and the county is using some of them for trailers to house the homeless.

  64. 64.

    Adam L Silverman

    @BR: I’ve done some, but there’s a lot of really fluid, really variable stuff. For instance, will Pelosi be able to get an aid package through that bails out the US Postal Service? If not it is projected to have to shut down in July. If that happens, then even states that already have either optional or mandatory vote by mail are going to have serious problems conducting an election come November. Similarly, I don’t expect De Santis in Florida or Abbot in Texas to do anything until they absolutely have no choice and it is far, far too late. And the effects are hard to project out. So basically some combination of these.

    COVID-19 & National Security Part VI: America is Not Suffering From a Failure of Intelligence, It is Suffering From a Failure of, and an Absence of, Leadership

    COVID-19 & National Security Part VI: America is Not Suffering From a Failure of Intelligence, It is Suffering From a Failure of, and an Absence of, Leadership 1 COVID-19 & National Security Part VI: America is Not Suffering From a Failure of Intelligence, It is Suffering From a Failure of, and an Absence of, Leadership 2

  67. 67.

    Mary G

    @Zelma: If you need help, post to Balloon Juice. I fell in the bathroom and had only my tablet that I thought was without email on it and needed paramedics to help me get up. I put a plea for help in a Balloon Juice thread and Betty and John and who knows who else called the Fire Department here on the other side of the country and when the EMTs arrived they asked me to tell my friends I was OK and to stop calling already. Jackals are creative cusses and I’m sure we can find some type of help if you need it.

  68. 68.

    Omnes Omnibus

    I have been trying to use this situation to point out the difference between management and leadership – both of which are needed in a situation like this – but I realized that Trump, et al., are so shit at both that it becomes difficult to differentiate.  I really hate these people.

  69. 69.

    BR

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Thanks.  Yeah, I guess it’s an impossible question.  Now that our primary is effectively over, and nobody can go out, it feels like we’re powerless to stop whatever more terrible things might happen this year, including regarding the Nov election and I keep hoping there’s some clever plan for what ordinary folks can do to move to a positive outcome in Nov.

  70. 70.

    SFAW

    I can honestly say that you can present senior leaders and decision-makers with the timely, accurate information they need to know, but no one can make them think.

    You can lead those whores to info, but you cannot make them think?

  72. 72.

    Adam L Silverman

    @smintheus:

  74. 74.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Adam L Silverman: Based on the photo I saw of him, Dr. Raoult bears a striking physical resemblance to Dr. Harold Bornstein, the guy who wrote transcribed that weird over-the-top letter about Trump’s health during the 2016 campaign.

  75. 75.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Feathers: @Ruckus: Fox is able to get away with this because they threaten to withhold Fox sports broadcasts, which means 1/2 the NFL games and a third to a half of MLB games.

  76. 76.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Omnes Omnibus: Ayup.  They can’t lead, and they can’t manage.  DoD has been waiting for the clowns at HHS to tell them where to send needed medical supplies.  HHS doesn’t have a clue.

  79. 79.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @SFAW: Apologize right now.  Every whore, streetwalker, hooker, trollop, harlot, jade, concubine, and courtesan on earth is better than these fuckers.

  80. 80.

    Ruckus

    @Kattails:

    Yep.

    I’ll repeat. Back in the late 70s – 80s I would read dad’s Forbes and WSJ and it was obvious then that trump was a piece of shit and taking after his old man. Towards the end of that it was obvious that he was not learning very well even in the ways of being a shit. Of course that didn’t stop him from being worse than a pile of worthless shit. His dementia and his narcissism hasn’t made the situation better. In all my decades and I have to say that he is by any measure or standard the worst human being and by far the worst president ever. I thought that GWB was going to be named at some point but he’s been saved, trump is the 5 worst presidents, all rolled into one ugly pile of rotting shit.

    I don’t like wishing ill on any one but I hope that the shitgibbon has the virus and it kills him. We’d have to redefine irony if that happens.

  84. 84.

    Zelma

    @Mnemosyne:

    Oh yes.  I’ve got a number of good friends and we contact each other almost every day.  Of course, they are my age or older so I worry about them as well as myself.  And I have a good support system via my church.  But there is something scary about living alone in a time of social distancing.

  87. 87.

    Draco7

    Adam,

    Eric Boehlert over at Press Run has raised what is basically an open-ended question re Trumps’ responses to the pandemic. It’s a “clouds and shadows” sort of approach, but his premise is interesting. The CW on Trump/administration malfeasance is that it is all due to ignorance and incompetence, but he is proposing that getting every response wrong defies the odds. IOW, even monumental incompetence will still get it right occasionally if only by accident – implying that some of these destructive decisions are actually deliberate.

    I find this interesting. I’m not sensing a baseless conspiracy theory here, but there is no defined incentive in the article – only the thought that defying all 450 pages of (prior) CDC guidance is…peculiar. Any thoughts on this?

  88. 88.

    SFAW

    @smintheus:

    The people who claim we had no clear evidence of the danger back in January are simply lying.

    And, of course, the RWMF Gish Gallop has them onto “The DEMON-CRAPS caused this by their IMPEACHMENT HOAX which meant no one could do ANYTHING ARGLE-BARGLE!!!”

    I wish some deity would make me God-Emperor, just for one week. The amount of well-directed lightning strikes (or similar) would be something to behold.

    Just one fucking week, that’s all I’d need.

  89. 89.

    joel hanes

    Trump never intended to govern.

    He has never attempted to govern in any conventional sense.

    Every situation, every problem is considered in isolation, and only in the light of finding an “angle” : a way, to advantage Trump personally in the short term, or to punish or humiliate one of his perceived enemies.

    The good of the nation has never entered into it, because Trump is incapable of conceiving of anything but advantage to himself as something good.   Instead of appointing strong capable people, giving them assignments, and setting them to work, he deliberately weakens his courtiers, pitting them against each other, often overruling any plan they may have made with a tweet, and soon fires them.

    So, in a very real sense, there is currently no executive branch of the US government at all.    Instead we have a childish, self-absorbed solipsist who spends half his waking hours watching TV, a substantial fraction of his days golfing, and who has made sure that none of the departments of the executive branch can function properly.

  90. 90.

    Adam L Silverman

    @BR: Here you go:

  91. 91.

    Mary G

    Turkmenistan, which shares a border with Iran, has banned the use of the word ‘Coronavirus’ and is arresting people who discuss the pandemic in public. Plainclothes police officers are also arresting people who wear face masks in public. https://t.co/cAerhwn7Mi— Yashar Ali ? (@yashar) April 1, 2020

  92. 92.

    Feathers

    @Ruckus: Read the thread. It goes into detail. They get the money by being hardball negotiators and riling up their viewers saying that the evil libruls at their cable company are trying to take their Fox away.

    Basically, when you pay your cable bill, you are putting $2 a month into Rupert Murdoch’s pocket. MSNBC gets $ 0.33, CNN about 80 cents. This means Fox can have zero advertisers, but still be profitable. At this point, if you still have cable, you are supporting Fox. If that pisses you off, let your cable provider know you are willing to quit.

  93. 93.

    Zelma

    @Mnemosyne:

    As a former Pennsylvanian myself who thought that Governor Wolf was doing a surprisingly good job considering the Paleolithic Republicans in the legislature, I”ve been kind of disappointed in his response to the virus.  He has done the shut down county by county which doesn’t make much sense.

    The campgrounds around here (and there are dozens) usually open April 1.  They’ve been closed.

  95. 95.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Draco7: I have no doubt that some are deliberate. We have ample evidence in the reporting that that is the case.

  98. 98.

    Zelma

    @Mary G:

    Great story.  I don’t know what I would do without Balloon Juice.  I don’t post much but you guys are my people.

  99. 99.

    SFAW

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Fearless/clueless prediction: no Rethug will support helping the USPS, because voting-by-mail will/might help Demon-craps.

    “Nice little postal service you got there, be a shame if anything happened to it.”

  100. 100.

    smintheus

    @Adam L Silverman:  Some commenter over at LGM was assuring me a week or two ago that any and all such lawsuits would be tossed out because Fox is allowed to lie. I rather doubt that, but in any case the public shaming may destroy Fox finally.

  102. 102.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Isn’t NFL and MLB off the air now? And for the foreseeable future? That’s going to screw them right into the ground. And as I don’t watch faux, or either of those sports I forgot/didn’t know/didn’t care about their part in this. But I’ve known, through my job in pro sports and the VA, some NFL players and I could care less if it went away completely. The NFL destroys lives, is the simplest way I can say it. Two of the ex players I know are, to be specific, fucked up. Massively, and at early ages. They make me look like the poster boy for perfect health. And I’m not. Epilepsy, several joint replacements, which will have to be done a couple more times, and several other major ailments.

  103. 103.

    danielx

    This is from a nurse at a hospital about four miles down the highway from my home. It’s all one note, but block quoting is splitting it into sections for reasons I am at a loss to explain.

    This is fucking central Indiana; I don’t like to think about what it’s like in NYC and other places where (so far) it’s hitting harder.

    More updated truth from the front line:

    Marion County ( which is where I work) has more than half of the entire states death toll. We now have refrigerated trailers parked in back of the hospital because the morgues are full and people are dying at rapid rate. Our numbers of positive patients and death are projected to more than double by this Friday.

    Where I work, we have only 1 unit left to care for ‘regular’ sick people. (It’s an almost 350 bed hospital). We opened a 3rd ICU yesterday. We have bought and borrowed almost twice the numbers of vents that we normally have. We are expected to need double that by Friday. We don’t have them. No one has them. We have been told at this point, we have to think of ourselves first or there will be no one left to care for these patients. We are losing nurses and other healthcare workers left and right. Not every patient who crashes will be coded…yes that’s what I said. We are expected to see the peak and main surge of the virus by end of next week. The Indiana State Department of Health is calling on ANYONE who has ever had a nursing degree or medical degree…ever. If it’s expired, they will re-instate you and teach you the basics. We are asking people to practice like we’ve never practiced before. We are being pushed so far past our limits that we are burned out and exhausted in so many different forms…and the worse HAS NOT HIT YET!!

    We are literally throwing our hands up at this point and praying for the best. If patients are sick enough to be admitted and we can admit them before symptoms are ‘too’ severe, we are seeing some recovery. When patients digress to a PCU or ICU level of care…very few are recovering.

    If anyone has the hopes of bans or quarantine being lifted soon…forget about it. We haven’t seen the worse yet. Please…for the love of God, help us by STAYING HOME AND AWAY FROM PEOPLE! Re-think what your essential travel is and please give us a chance to survive…and to be able to be the nurses we are and save the lives of others.

  104. 104.

    cain

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m still on the friends list of a wingnut relative in Florida, and it has certainly been interesting to watch it slowly occur to her over the past couple of weeks that her state is in deep shit and there’s no way to blame it on anyone but DeSantis and Trump. She’s watching the freight train barrel towards her and shrieking that the Democrats need to stop fighting the Republicans and DO SOMETHING.

    Why is it always Democrats? She needs to go and tell her people to do something. The problem is that she knows that they have all drank the kool-aid and she’ll only be labeled as a turncoat.

    But yeah, shit’s about to get real, and there is no Democratic person they can blame this on. It’s on them.

  105. 105.

    Kattails

    @Zelma: Cape May county is way down there, and pretty isolated,  although I haven’t been down there in ages.  I lived on Long Beach Island for a couple of years, and then went to school in Pomona. Very familiar with the environment– the Pine Barrens and barrier islands.  Also the entitled summer people. They’ve ruined LBI, tore down all the cute summer cottages and built monstrosities right to the edges of the tiny properties. Fucking up the water table too, drawing too much from the aquifers with the recharge zone on the other side of the state getting paved over.

    But we’re dealing with the same thing up here, (NH), the summer lakeside homes are getting opened up way earlier and my midwife friend is dealing with an influx of pregnant women coming up to use the local facilities. And bringing all their baggage. Best of luck–do keep up with the newest protocols as they come out.  It looks like face masks might be more helpful than originally stated. Also the soap thing, it breaks up the fragile fat membrane around the virus. Is there anyone you can keep in touch with who would check on you if you get sick or don’t call in for a day?

  110. 110.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Adam L Silverman: Ruling also requires a skill set that he doesn’t have.  It turns out that being a third rate outer borough property scammer* has few skills that are transferable to any other job.

    *Not that he was good at that either.

  111. 111.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SFAW: Part of the problem is the legislation the GOP majority jammed through the 2006 lame duck session after they lost their majority, but before the next Congress and its Democratic majority in the House that requires the US Postal Service to fully fund, in advance, their total pension obligations for the next 70 years or so.

  113. 113.

    Mnemosyne

    @Draco7:

    We already knew that Trump’s plan was to destroy everything that Obama built. They may not be able to stop that process now even if they wanted to. Too many of the processes were interrelated. Plus old habits are hard to break.

  114. 114.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @?BillinGlendaleCA:

    With Sling, that’s exactly what they did.

    Last year Sling & Fox were in a contract dispute and after the dust settled, prices went up by $5/month and Sling added Fox News to the lineup.

    Before that, Sling was mercifully FNC-free.

  115. 115.

    Adam L Silverman

    @smintheus: It will be a heavy lift because of the 1st Amendment. But even skeptics like Ken White, aka PopeHat, think that if things go really badly regarding the effects of the virus, then it is more likely that a suit might be able to squeak through.

  116. 116.

    SFAW

    @cain:

    Why is it always Democrats?

    Murc’s Law. It’s as real as Cleek’s Law.

    But yeah, shit’s about to get real, and there is no Democratic person they can blame this on. It’s on them.

    If you truly believe that, then you haven’t been paying attention for the last NN years. Now, if you included some modifier, such as “they can honestly blame this on,” that would be different.

  117. 117.

    smintheus

    @Draco7:  I think he fails to take account of how much damage stupid, ignorant, and privileged people can do in the course of a given day.

  118. 118.

    smintheus

    @SFAW:  Republicans could have voted to convict Trump for his plain corruption, thus solving the lack of adequate leadership.

  122. 122.

    Brachiator

    When I worked for a certain great metropolitan newspaper in Southern California, I once noticed that even though there were people who played political games, indulged in back stabbing and other petty bullshit, they were careful to draw a very specific line. They never did anything that directly led to a production delay or that interfered with the basic task of producing the paper and getting it delivered.

    The few people who I saw didn’t understand this did not last long. I saw a senior executive make a serious blunder and brag about it in front of key management. He thought he had immunity, but he was actually gone by lunch time.

    I have never seen Trump rise to the occasion. He not only has failed the country in his mishandling of the pandemic, he plows ahead full speed with his third rate grift and his mismanagement of his executive office responsibilities.

    And just as bad, the GOP leadership continues with their harmful political games, and Fox News and their right wing buddies keep pushing out political propaganda. It’s as though they don’t know how to stop their machinations, no matter what crises the nation faces. Nor do they seem to even care about their own lives, or the lives of their families. They are in it to win it, even if it kills them. Problem is, they are willing to drag the country down with them.

  123. 123.

    Adam L Silverman

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: That’s the Ft. Riley Flu. And given his grandfather was a deserter from Germany and we were fighting the Germans, the Ft. Riley Flu effectively targeted at least one enemy combatant.

  124. 124.

    Mary G

    @Adam L Silverman: Laura Ingraham and Devin Nunes are still singing the same old tune today. I think a charge of depraved indifference could at the least cost them a fuckton of lawyers’ fees to fight.

  126. 126.

    Ruckus

    @Feathers:

    No cable, only internet. I’m not paying for commercials to watch TV. TV was bad enough when cable didn’t have them but now……

    If I want to see regular TV I have straight line to Mt Wilson, the LA area TV transmission location. That costs only my sanity.

    So, little loss.

  130. 130.

    SFAW

    @smintheus:

    Republicans could have voted to convict Trump for his plain corruption, thus solving the lack of adequate leadership.

    Yeah, and Emmylou Harris could have asked me to be her boy-toy, back when I was younger. Which is more likely, I wonder

    ETA: To be clear, she could still ask me, but now I’d be her “fat-old-bald-guy-toy.”

  131. 131.

    joel hanes

    @Adam L Silverman:

    He intended to rule.

    At best in the Caligula or Richard II sense.

    A functioning king vests fiefs, builds alliances and defenses, supports the rule of law,  judges wisely, empowers able deputies, looks to the future of the realm.

    Trump does the opposite of most of those.   He intended to control, literally in a mob-boss sense, by a mob-boss’s lawless tactics — no thought for the citizens, concerned only that his personal enemies get whacked and that he gets a slice of any action.

  136. 136.

    Mnemosyne

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    He always had Daddy to bail him out when he fucked up. I can completely believe that he would end up in hock to Putin because he would be in desperate need of a new Daddy to bail him out of his bad decisions.

  140. 140.

    Mary G

    I kind of hope that this is fake:

    Friends – this is worth reading – as many of you know, my comp is making parts for ventilators and PPE. We now have 57K face shields sitting on our docks and just received notice that we cannot supply them directly to hospitals – they MUST go thru FEMA after a "negotiation …— Lance ?? Stay Home. Save Lives. ?? (@LanceHoward70) March 31, 2020

    … period." WTF? That would mean late April or early May? PROUD OF US – our CEO literally said, "F that, donate them to whatever hospitals can use them and donate them TODAY. No cost to whoever needs them." But the gov was willing to let them just sit there? WTF? This is nuts.— Lance ?? Stay Home. Save Lives. ?? (@LanceHoward70) March 31, 2020

  141. 141.

    Mnemosyne

    @Brachiator:

    They’re one-trick ponies. Their one trick brought them pretty far, but it can’t get them out of a jam that’s beyond their control. Someone here said once that a narcissist’s trick is to cause a problem that they then “solve” by not doing whatever asshole thing it was that they did to cause the problem, and then they expect praise for it.

    Same process here. In 30 years, there hasn’t been a problem that the Republicans couldn’t “fix” because they had caused it themselves. Now they’re faced with a problem that’s outside of any human’s control and they don’t know what the fuck to do because all of their usual tricks aren’t working. You can’t threaten or coerce or blackmail a virus, so they’re stumped.

  142. 142.

    Cleardale

    @joel hanes: A tenet of good leadership is, “You can delegate authority, but not responsibility.” trump does the opposite, the people around him have no actual authority to accomplish anything, yet take all the blame.

    Deep down trump knows he’s an incompetant failure, his actions show this. He’s trying to grab as much as he can, before it all falls apart. To him it’s a given that it will all fall apart, he knows he can’t actually maintain or build anything.

  145. 145.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I can think of at least a dozen fashion companies that are already doing the same, but I guess they don’t get the big splashy platform to announce it because they’re, like, gay and/or minorities and shit. ?

  148. 148.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    This is why I bought a “flameless cooker” and a bunch of freeze-dried meals when this whole thing began. It will be just our luck that we’ll get hit with an earthquake in the middle of all of this shit.

  151. 151.

    Draco7

    @Adam L Silverman:  I should have been more explicit about the central thesis. It is that these screw ups are in service to something more than an electoral advantage or profit opportunity for Trump, and that’s what I find intriguing. The obviously deliberate actions are interpreted primarily as political moves, which of course they are. The question lies with the intended outcome. If it’s not actually to get a leg up on Biden, then there are some other possibilities. What can pushing the nation into a disaster accomplish? An emergency declaration has certainly changed Orbán’s position, and he’s not the only example of a politician leveraging the pandemic.

    I’m not looking under the bed for monsters, but we have been habituated to consider “the law” as a given, and I have lost that habit. I expect your position to be that the armed forces will step in if necessary in the case of election negation (for example), and you may be aware of things that I am not privy to, but I can’t believe that any planning wouldn’t take that into account as well. Maybe a completely amoral person would be content with just throwing the nation into chaos – per instructions.

    I don’t want to cause any anxiety, just want to stay flexible in my thinking as I follow events. I think the Constitution will stand as written – even the well regulated militia next door agrees with me on that.

  153. 153.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Draco7:

    I expect your position to be that the armed forces will step in if necessary in the case of election negation (for example)

    I have no expectation of that at all.

  154. 154.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Mnemosyne:

    It will be just our luck that we’ll get hit with an earthquake in the middle of all of this shit. 

    You’re in California, right?

  157. 157.

    Kattails

    @Mnemosyne: A screenshot of Adam’s I printed and kept, dated October 31, 2017: “…the GOP caucuses couldn’t fix a sandwich. Too many factions within each chamber’s caucuses. Too many of them in the House elected since 2010 (75%), which means they have absolutely no experience with, and therefore no ability to, actually do anything under regular order. …They know how to create crises by sabotaging the institution, then freaking out because of the crises they’ve created, then get mad when their leadership has to turn to either Pelosi or Schumer to deliver the votes to bail them out of the crises they just caused.”

    What’s gotten worse is that Trump doesn’t even see or care about the crises burning the place down around him, and it seems they’ve just followed him into mental/psychological oblivion.

  161. 161.

    Draco7

    @Adam L Silverman: Okey dokey – I thought I saw that expectation in something you wrote maybe 2-3 weeks ago. Nevermind – my memory isn’t as good as it used to be, and it never has been.

  162. 162.

    cain

    @Mary G:

    If he fucks this up, the Navy will be dead to him. The enlisted men will definitely not be looking at this administration in a good way.

    I hope there will be no casualties in this. These men should be at the peak of health for their age. (well except for the oldies)

  163. 163.

    cain

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Won’t gig economies like Amazon and others want to USPS around?

    Secondly, what about all those people stuck in rural areas that won’t be able to get mail, medication and all that other bits? I think this will be a huge problem.

  164. 164.

    mrmoshpotato

    @cain:

    Secondly, what about all those people stuck in rural areas that won’t be able to get mail, medication and all that other bits? I think this will be a huge problem. 

    Well, seeing as how they’re all about killing their own base…

  165. 165.

    Mary G

    Biden’s new ad: healthcare workers and first responders are our soldiers in the war we’re fighting right now and they need the proper equipment to do their jobs. Very calm, resolved, strong, and not-senile:

    this new @JoeBiden ad is what a president is supposed to sound like. pic.twitter.com/YhUxlpQQZg— Florida Chris (@chrislongview) March 31, 2020

    Devastating to Twitler without mentioning or showing him once.

  166. 166.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @SFAW: If you truly believe that, then you haven’t been paying attention for the last NN years. Now, if you included some modifier, such as “they can honestly blame this on,” that would be different.

    I’ve noticed the latest from the Conservatives is “I am disgusted with how the both the Republicans and Democrats are handling the virus”  Considering the amount of outright suicidal stuff coming from the Right on this virus this could be a watershed moment.

  168. 168.

    joel hanes

    @SFAW:

    The IRS does almost all its business by USPS.

    Social Security and other disbursements still go out at least partially via USPS.

    Other functions of government are dependent on it.

    In many rural areas, it cannot really be replaced by UPS or FedEX.

    I’m pretty confident that, once the Senate comes back, the post office will get rescued somehow.

  169. 169.

    Fair Economist

    @cain:

    I hope there will be no casualties in this. These men should be at the peak of health for their age. (well except for the oldies)

    Me too, but it looks grim. Guam has a population of only 160,000, and it’s not wealthy. There’s going to be hundreds of ill sailors, and Guam’s own epidemic is firing up. I doubt the naval hospital is set up for lots of respiratory care and I don’t think the local hospital facilities will be adequate.

  170. 170.

    cain

    @Mnemosyne:

    He always had Daddy to bail him out when he fucked up. I can completely believe that he would end up in hock to Putin because he would be in desperate need of a new Daddy to bail him out of his bad decisions.

    Daddy cool? ( I heard that song after a long while, and boy that song is not creepy at all.. shudder)+

  171. 171.

    mrmoshpotato

    @cain: Let’s not forget Hillary being “overprepared.”

    Oh Chuck Todd, hope you never get sliced open by an unprepared surgeon.

  172. 172.

    cain

    @Fair Economist:

    Me too, but it looks grim. Guam has a population of only 160,000, and it’s not wealthy. There’s going to be hundreds of ill sailors, and Guam’s own epidemic is firing up. I doubt the naval hospital is set up for lots of respiratory care and I don’t think the local hospital facilities will be adequate.

    Get the air force get a couple of large planes and get them out of there.

    Oh wait! Maybet that new space force will help! /snark

  173. 173.

    cain

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Well, I guess that means that we can start moving the senate away from Republicans. They’ll finally kill all the conservatives that don’t realize they use govt services all the time.

  174. 174.

    Draco7

    @mrmoshpotato: Am I “some people”? Some people say I am, but they’re wrong. What I do consider is that the stakes are very high for Trump/Repubs – not only being called to account, but being called to court. “Looking forward, not back” is not going to fly very well, but dealing with the sheer scope of the “looking back” process is going to be challenging for the nation – and that’s an understatement. I don’t think anybody here believes that there is any law the current crop of creeps (some Americans are still alliterate) couldn’t ignore. Money and power appear to be addicting – unfortunately I’ll never know, but there’s no 12 step program for the rich. DJT has already made clear that he’s not going quietly. If these considerations make for conspiracy mongering, so be it. I’m not convinced of anything – I’m just looking at potential outcomes. I hate being totally surprised.

  175. 175.

    NotMax

    @Fair Economist

    15 ICU beds on Guam, 6 more at the naval hospital.

    “Navy men are accustomed to close quarters, so three in a bed should be pose no problem for them.”

    //

  177. 177.

    eddie blake

    @Adam L Silverman:

    do we know if the silent service brass sent the SSBNs or the SSNs deep before the virus raged on the surface?

    without the reagan or the roosevelt and their battle groups, do we HAVE an active naval deterrent in the pacific?

  178. 178.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Draco7: Combing more closely through your and Adam’s back and forth, I apologize.  I misinterpreted what you said about the military stepping in in a case of election negation.

    I don’t see this happening either.

    Sorry for misunderstanding.

     

    ETA – regarding not looking back, I hope that doesn’t happen.  Otherwise, why can’t I rob a bank?  I mean, I won’t take ALL their money, so it’s cool, right?

  179. 179.

    Ruckus

    @Mary G:

    That is one of the best political ads I’ve ever seen or heard.

    He shouldn’t have had to make it but he does. And he did.

    Damn. DAMN

     

    I’ve got Phil Collins on doing Take Me Home, live.

  181. 181.

    Ruckus

    @eddie blake:

    We have a number of carriers 10 or 11 I think.

    But some are probably in for overhaul, service, dry dock.

    And crews are always tight these days, 10 carriers is 40,000-50,000 sailors. And that doesn’t account for all the other ships and port personnel. I’d bet this is an issue. Every square inch of those ships is contaminated and if those guys are showing signs, most everyone else is exposed, there’s just no way around that. I said the other day that any ship that’s exposed is going to have major problems, no navy ship has the space of a cruse ship, and how well have those done? It’s assholes and elbows every where.

  182. 182.

    lumpkin

    The title on the linked article doesn’t match the content. The article quite clearly points the finger of blame right squarely at the president. Maybe the title actually refers to a lack of intelligence in the person occupying the white house.

  183. 183.

    Dan B

    @Draco7:  You postulate that a crisis may be in the works and the addition of the fact that an increasing number of people would be in serious legal jeopardy if the GOP lost the White House and the Senate, courts might slow things down but nit much, is an interesting consideration.  Just how deep is the desire to remove liberals and liberal ideas from America?

  184. 184.

    Dan B

    @Dan B: To be clear I’m saying that a lot of people in the White House and the GOP would be in serious legal trouble if the DEMS win the White House and Senate.  So if they have gamed out that this pandemic could cause them to lose power would they conclude it would be better to burn it all down and let the virus spread.  Are they to that level of depravity?  Is it Jim Jones or Branch Davidian level?  I don’t understand how a cult works or if this crowd is heading in that direction.

  185. 185.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio

    @danielx:  According to the State of Indiana’s webpage, Marion County now has over 960 diagnosed cases of COVID-19: https://coronavirus.in.gov/2393.htm

    I don’t know how regularly they update, but that gives some notion of the problem. For comparison, here in Tennessee, Nashville/Davidson County was reporting 391 cases and Memphis/Shelby County was reporting 428. Shelby County & Marion County are similar in population; Davidson County has about two-thirds the population. Both states are being run by Republicans for Republicans, which I am sure will have no effect on outcome at all. /sarcasm

  186. 186.

    Sloane Ranger

    @Enhanced Voting Techniques: During the briefing he referred to a friend “big, strong guy. A little older, bit heavier. Went to the hospital with minor symptoms, now in a coma.”

    Either he has such an acquaintance and now realizes that even people like him can get the serious version of the disease or this individual is a figment of his imagination created to explain why he changed his mind about how this was really the flu and didn’t end the lockdown.

  187. 187.

    HeartlandLiberal

    Posted the entire post by Adam Silverman to both Indiana Senators Todd Young and Mike Braun, and House IN-09 Rep. Trey Hollingsworth, with this preface in my own words:

    The following reflects my thoughts on the complete failure of the President and members of the GOP in this time of national emergency. Please do not reply with a note on how Trump is taking action to fight this pandemic. Lying is a sin, as I am sure your mother taught you. This is all on Trump and GOP administrations total failure to address reality of this pandemic. And American citizens are dying, perhaps in hundreds of thousands, maybe in millions before this is over.

  188. 188.

    SFAW

    @joel hanes: 

    I’m pretty confident that, once the Senate comes back, the post office will get rescued somehow.

    Your key assumption(s) appear(s) to be that you’re confident a Republican Senate will act in a rational manner, and that Rethugs would not “blow shit up, just because they can,” and that they they will look farther ahead than the end of their noses. I am not quite as confident.

  189. 189.

    SFAW

    @Dan B:

    Just how deep is the desire to remove liberals and liberal ideas from America?

    In the Party of Traitors, bone-deep.

  191. 191.

    SFAW

    @Another Scott: 
    Thanks. Glad to see Speaker Pelosi’s guidance, as always. In a rational world, it would overcome Traitor Turtle’s treason.
    [NB: Yes, I realize his actions/inaction in this regard, and in general, might not technically qualify as “treason.” Still … ]

  192. 192.

    ljdramone

    @Barbara:  I’m reading the Decameron now (the 1930 Richard Aldington translation, with rather lurid illustrations by Jean de Boschere). The ten aristocrats who flee Florence to a luxurious villa in the Tuscan countryside successfully escape the plague and, after telling each other ten stories over each of ten days, return home.

    It’s not really a cautionary tale, everything turns out OK in the end.

  193. 193.

    Warren Lorente

    Contra Adam, this was a failure of intelligence, but of the kind measured by the Stanford-Binet.

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