Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Hi god, it’s us. Thanks a heap, you’re having a great week and it’s only Thursday!

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Don’t expect peaches from an apple tree.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

He really is that stupid.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

This year has been the longest three days of putin’s life.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 Coronavirus / Let’s Just Not Let Republicans Run Shit Anymore

Let’s Just Not Let Republicans Run Shit Anymore

by | 155 Comments

This post is in: ,

A friend from across the street texted me today to ask if my cable was out, and it was about 6 pm and I had not had the tv on all day, so I told him I would go downstairs and check. Went down, turned it on, and Mike Pence was yammering away. I immediately turned it off, texted my friend and said “I turned on my tv and Mike Pence was talking so first off, fuck you very much for that, and second, no, my cable is not out.”

If you think about it, that’s pretty insane, really. We’re in the midst of a global pandemic and on the downward slope to a global depression, and the people who matter the least to me in making informed decisions for my future are the President and Vice-President. I literally will not listen to anything they tell me to do, because A.) they are fucking idiots and B.) they are DANGEROUS idiots. It’s a helluva way to run the country.

And it’s not just them. It’s a majority of the Republicans. That idiot in Georgia who we know stole his election just yesterday admitted he had no idea that the virus could be transmitted by asymptomatic people, something we have known for MONTHS.

They just can’t be trusted with anything.

Reader Interactions

155Comments

  4. 4.

    dmsilev

    That idiot in Georgia who we know stole his election just yesterday admitted he had no idea that the virus could be transmitted by asymptomatic people

    Look, you think it’s easy to zoom to the top of the ‘stupidest Republican’ leaderboard? I mean, there’s some serious competition. We should be impressed.

  5. 5.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Yamiche Alcindor @Yamiche
    Jared Kushner says some governors don’t know how many ventilators they have & coronavirus outbreak is revealing manager skills. “What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody…think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis.”

    I think Dunning-Kruger has to be renamed

  6. 6.

    dmsilev

    @philpm: This is arguably worse, for the complete and total self-owning:

    Kushner: Many governors are bad managers, don’t just ask for things because you’re “scared”. “What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody … you’re trying think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis.”

    https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1245897958958215168

  7. 7.

    Adam L Silverman

    @philpm: Was just about to post it. They’ve broken the Union. According to this understanding, there is no Union. There are 50 states, plus DC and the territories (not sure the latter even register for these knuckleheads) and there is the Federal government, but these chucklefucks don’t understand that the Federal government is THE national government of the US for all Americans.

  8. 8.

    Amir Khalid

    From over here, sometimes the Republican handling of the pandemic looks like stupidity, incompetence, and/or laziness. Sometimes it looks more like deliberate sabotage.

  9. 9.

    TS (the original)

    I just got home from a run to the shop – not only tissues but TP – and the pharmacy had some masks. The first news I read was this

    US Navy fires captain who sought help for coronavirus-stricken ship

    The US Navy has fired the captain of an aircraft carrier who faced a growing outbreak of the new coronavirus on his ship, saying he created a panic by sending his memo pleading for help to too many people.

    In the age of trump don’t you dare ask for help. It might tell Americans exactly what is happening

    (Apologies if this is old news – it’s new down under)

  11. 11.

    Adam L Silverman

    @dmsilev: Actually, from the reporting, it appears that his people were supplying him with articles from The Federalist that were all claiming it was overblown, a hoax, a Democratic plot, etc.

  12. 12.

    dmsilev

    @Adam L Silverman:

    the territories (not sure the latter even register for these knuckleheads)

    Puerto Rico and hurricane response suggests strongly that the answer there is ‘no’.

    Edit: to your larger point, I would note that Florida and several other states have gotten what they ask for from the Federal stockpile. By odd coincidence, all of those states both voted for Trump in 2016 and have Republican governors who suck up to him now. The Union exists, in his view, for the benefit of him primarily and for his supporters to a lesser extent.

  14. 14.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I think of all the resentful rubes who voted for trump cause he was gonna stick to elites like me and Barack Obama, and then he turned the greatest national crisis in generations over to his son-in-law, the third generation trust-fund baby whose convicted felon pappy had to bribe him into Harvard, where he pretended to be an entrepreneur because he would call plumbers to fix toilets at the apartment building his family bought him so he could call himself an entrepreneur.

  16. 16.

    LeftCoastYankee

    IIRC George Carlin had a joke to the affect that the Republican message is “Government is bad, vote for us and we’ll prove it.”

  17. 17.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: Override my scheduled music post if you wanna — that’ll keep.

    You gonna post about the USS Theodore Roosevelt / the Parris Island cluster, or is that too close to your off-blog remit?

  19. 19.

    rikyrah

    You can’t believe that Muthaphucka in Georgia. He didn’t give a shyt until the hospitals in rural Georgia are being overrun. He knew.???

  20. 20.

    The Moar You Know

    That idiot in Georgia who we know stole his election just yesterday admitted he had no idea that the virus could be transmitted by asymptomatic people, something we have known for MONTHS.

    He’s not that stupid.  Nobody is. That is what is known as a “lie”.

     

    ETA:  damn, jinx, Rikyrah

  22. 22.

    cain

    Here is something to enrage y’all, OKeefe posted this to twitter – https://www.projectveritas.com/news/army-national-guard-says-covid-19-media-coverage-overblown-its-the-flu-im-in/ – basically giving misinformation about how all htis was overblown and it is just the flu. I don’t know how they found a national guardsman to say stupid shit, but yeah…

    He got pilloried on twitter even by the right wing noise machine. Both twitter and facebook removed the post.

    It’s stupid shit like this that will make the virus continue to hang around – I think literally they plan on killing their base. Pastors are defying the govt and holding in person church gatherings. It’s unbelievable. I guess they are going to keep doing this until there can be no more grift because their pool of folks are all dead.

  23. 23.

    Redshift

    @dmsilev: When you’ve surrounded yourself with yes-men your entire life, anyone who doesn’t tell you what you want to hear is “not a good manager.” Because it’s unpossible that they could actually know something that could contradict what you’ve decided in your beautiful mind, unimpeded by any actual evidence.

    Get ready for governors’ poor management blamed for all those people dying after their carefully constructed accurate projections and requests turn out to be right.

  24. 24.

    Calouste

    @The Moar You Know: Someone posted a link on one of the earlier threads proving that he was indeed lying today, as the link was from a week or two ago and he said then that the coronavirus was transmissible between humans.

    Anyway, just like all of the liars, I hope his stay in hospital if he catches it will be short.

  25. 25.

    cain

    @Redshift:

    Yeah, but what is Trump going to say to all the Red States? You know it will be kid gloves and he’ll even probably let it slip something about the election, because it will tell his base that the red states are going to be taken care of.

    But as I’ve said before, he won’t be able to help them..  that stockpiling by the feds is for the red states, you can bet. But it won’t be enough.

    I’m calling Kate our gov and basically telling her that she can’t count on the feds and that she better just start getting the local businesses to start making all the PPEs locally and out of reach of FEMA.

  28. 28.

    joel hanes

     

    If Chanel Rion was there, again, (and she was), all the other people not on the stage should have left.

    Permanently.

  30. 30.

    Brachiator

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Yamiche Alcindor @Yamiche
    Jared Kushner says some governors don’t know how many ventilators they have & coronavirus outbreak is revealing manager skills. “What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody…think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis.”

    I have not actually seen Young Jared speak at all during this crisis. It is probably best for my health that I don’t.

    It is ridiculous that some people now blandly expect that Trump will always insert a family member into a team responsible for something. And it is ridiculous that nobody calls bullshit on this.

    But like his Dear Leader, Young Jared is long on castigation and short on leadership. He also has mastered the art of asserting abilities despite the absence of any real accomplishment.

    So, the federal government is not responsible for anything, but the states are fucking up.

    What is anyone supposed to do with this?

    What a shitshow.

  33. 33.

    Uncle Omar

    Back in my youth the daily press briefing in Viet Nam during that particular cock-up was known as the “Five O’clock Follies.”   Trump’s daily “briefings” should be called “The Six O’clock Shit-Show.”

  34. 34.

    Quiltingfool

    @Amir Khalid: I’m beginning to wonder about sabotage, too.  So hard for me to wrap my mind around the vast amount of incompetence in the Executive Branch; then again, we are talking about Trump, so Occam’s Razor says go for incompetence.  I swear, Trump is the poster boy for the saying, “Better to be lucky than good,” because he is the luckiest m*therf***er in the universe.  I just hope his luck is fixing to run out and soon.

  36. 36.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    @dmsilev: I dunno about anyone else, but I hope the yiddish powers that be are replacing the canonical example of chutzpah, “begging for leniency, for the murder of one’s parents, due to one’s recent orphaned state” with “creating a disaster, and then claiming no one could have seen it coming, and none should be  critical, instead, praising the ‘war president’ because there’s a DISASTER going on, cf Donald Trump”.

    I feel so twisted up right now, you know? I don’t *want* scores of thousands of people to die. I want some magic wand to be waved and fix all this. And yet, that “poof, like  a miracle, it’s gone” resolution would only encourage the GOP to be even more feckless (which, I confess, doesn’t seem possible – the next step seems that it must be actual malice).

  38. 38.

    Geoboy

    John – you give the felon currently occupying the goveror’s mansion in Georgia too much credit.  He’s not an imbecile – he’s know for months that there’s asymptomatic transmission of coronavirus.  He’s just too cowardly chickenshit to do anything until Hair Orange Fuhrer gives it his seal of approval, the guy’s batshit insane campaign commercial threatening his daughter’s date with a shotgun nonwithstanding.  Oh, and in case it isn’t clear – fuck this guy.  Thousands of Georgians will pay with their lives for his cowardice.

  40. 40.

    TS (the original)

    @Brachiator:

    Jared Kushner …. & coronavirus outbreak is revealing manager skills.

    Not going to argue with that – Jarod & the F.I.L. revealing they have zero manager skills. Just saying that in public indicates their total  lack of anything resembling a skill.

  41. 41.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Anne Laurie: Not tonight. I’ve been discussing it with two retired general officers I consult for. And frankly I’m so disgusted I don’t even want to attempt it this evening. Maybe tomorrow.

  42. 42.

    joel hanes

    @Amir Khalid:

    At the White House, it’s a mob bust-out — they’re frantic to steal enough quickly enough to get through the collapse of their leveraged real-estate empire.

    There are a couple Republican governors who have surprised by their ability to hear, understand, and decide — e.g., DeWine, Hogan; but for the most part, the Republican Party long ago ejected anyone not blinded by their own ideological priors, religion, and bigotry.

  43. 43.

    Brachiator

    @cain:

    Yeah, but what is Trump going to say to all the Red States? You know it will be kid gloves and he’ll even probably let it slip something about the election, because it will tell his base that the red states are going to be taken care of.

    But it won’t matter, no matter how much stuff Trump stockpiles for the benefit of red states. The fundamental problem is his incompetence. Every action he takes that ignores the advice of the experts makes things worse.

    The governors of red states who follow Trump’s lead are in a world of hurt.

    ETA: I’m thinking about how Trump suggested that he might quarantine New York. To keep the virus away from other states.

    It would make more sense to track every college student who went to a crowded Spring Break party in Florida and then left the state.

  44. 44.

    Martin

    The gov of GA knew it could be transmitted asymptomatically weeks ago. He’s just lying.

  45. 45.

    Adam L Silverman

    @cain: That’s okay, I’ve forward it to a couple of general officers, who will make sure it gets to someone at the National Guard Bureau. That Soldier is done.

  46. 46.

    Amir Khalid

    @Quiltingfool:

    Someone, I think in a tweet that was posted here, noted that an incompetent will occasionally blunder into doing the right thing — but in four years the Trump administration has never made such a blunder. That does make one think, no?

  47. 47.

    Redshift

    @cain: I expect he’s thinking he’ll tell them he’s doing a great job and taking care of them, and he’s engaging in wishful thinking that everything will be fine, and that they were infected by the Chinese and Those People from the big cities. Usual hate-mongering, inability to think past the next news cycle or give a damn about anyone else even when it would be better for him if he did.

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    @cain: Those pastors are going to kill a lot of their congregants!

  51. 51.

    Elizabelle

    We need to have trials. And prison sentences — long ones — after we get through this.

    This is depraved indifference and malfeasance.  Thousands upon thousands of people would  not have died with a competent (and legitimate) president.

  52. 52.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    The gov of GA knew it could be transmitted asymptomatically weeks ago. He’s just lying.

    It’s just as bad, if not worse, if he were not lying. He’s the freaking governor. He is supposed to know these things.

    He is supposed to have competent advisors who give him the facts when asked.

  54. 54.

    Martin

    I’ll note, Trump can funnel all the ventilators he wants to Florida, unless young Jareds dabbling in necromancy has in fact given him the power to raise the dead, their failure regarding the red states is going to be all too clear. Florida had more fatalities the last 2 days than CA did, and they’re at least 2 weeks behind CA.

  55. 55.

    Duane

    @philpm: Kushner steps from behind the curtain to reveal he’s an idiot. What a waste of an education. Maybe he’s been pretending to be in charge of something, like you do a child so they don’t have a fit. His business going kablooey may distract him from all his big-brain work. HA!

  56. 56.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    @philpm: The Right has been building their alternative reality of theirs since the ’70s.  Quite possible Kemp until 24 hours ago was only listing to Wingnut news.  One of the basic thesis of Modern Conservationism is all science is fake as part of a liberal conspiracy to turn the country socialist as show by evolution.

  59. 59.

    Brachiator

    @Adam L Silverman:

    The pandemic is hurting lottery ticket sales.

    The California Lottery’s Mega Millions jackpot stood at $113 million Tuesday, and so far, the lottery has the money to pay up if someone wins.

    But the coronavirus is taking a toll on ticket sales. If sales remain in a slump, the lottery might not be able to pay advertised jackpots, its deputy director of finance told the State Lottery Commission during a special meeting Monday.

    “The … unprecedented impact the COVID-19 health crisis is having on sales means each game is in imminent danger of having sales be insufficient to support the advertised jackpot,” said Nicholas Buchen, the deputy finance director, according to a transcript of the call.

    I imagine that the order to shelter in place hurts some churches’ ability to collect tithes. But if you can get people to show up, and crowd them all in, you can pass the plate.

  60. 60.

    Martin

    @Adam L Silverman: One of the biggest outbreaks in CA is a church up near Sacramento.

    The reason I pushed so hard for the university to shut down is that universities are, by design, social places. We are antithetical to social distancing – every part of our design undermines the effort.

    Churches are no different. 60 asymptomatic church choir members in WA got together for a rehearsal, 45 contracted it, 2 died so far. A 75% transmission rate is wild.

  62. 62.

    philpm

    @Duane: That’s assuming that he ever got an education.  And sadly, he’s not pretending, his shrunken-brain FIL is allowing him to take charge of numerous situations that require actual knowledge, skill, experience and tact, factors of which he has none of the above.  Just imagine the outrage if Sasha or Malia had been of age and Obama allowed them to do this.  That’s the kind of outrage that should be exploding right now x 1000.

  63. 63.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Adam, ever heard of a Yasha Levine

    It’s a random question, I know, but I was just curious and I happened across this crank today. The dude thinks “Russiagate” and the reasonable suspicion of Putin’s Russia are “insane nativist conspiracies”

  64. 64.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Elizabelle: Other than going out for groceries every ten days to two weeks, I wouldn’t know. I’ve been self isolating since the middle of February.

  66. 66.

    Quiltingfool

    @Amir Khalid: 
    You do have a good point. There should be at least one decent outcome from all his crappy decisions in 3 years, and I can’t think of one. So, is this malignant narcissistic sociopath really able to take direction from, shall we say, a certain Russian President? Possibly, with the right inducements, I guess.

  67. 67.

    delk

    On the brighter side, we won’t have to witness the shit show Easter Lawn farce this year.

  68. 68.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mnemosyne: As Lincoln said at the Cooper Union in 1860:

    Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events.

    Other than changing political parties, they haven’t changed in 160 years.

  70. 70.

    oatler.

    I Saw a PBS doc on Henry XIII a couple weeks ago and was struck by the similarities to our current regime. Though with less beheadings. C’mon, Henry.

  71. 71.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Brachiator: While almost all the megachurches, especially the prosperity gospel grifters, take online and over the phone donations, passing the plate is a huge weekly haul for them. Especially because it creates a great deal of social and peer pressure on the congregants to put something in each week because the people sitting around them and near them can see whether they put anything in and how much.

  72. 72.

    Barbara

    @Martin: The lack of ventilators is awful, but in my view the PPE shortage is even worse. The fatality rate is high for ventilator dependent patients, it is a last ditch measure, but PPE is how you contain the spread, especially to HCW.

  74. 74.

    Mnemosyne

    @philpm:

    It’s okay if rich white men do it, because it’s natural for them to be in charge and they are automatically better at everything than everyone else.

    And they genuinely believe this. It’s not just big talk. They really think that any random high school dropout would be a better Supreme Court Justice than Sonia Sotomayor as long as he was white and male.

    White male supremacy can never fail, it can only be failed.

  75. 75.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Anne Laurie: It isn’t a problem that you asked. I just don’t have it in me to do a post on it tonight. It was a long, draining day.

  76. 76.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: Those pastors are going to kill a lot of their congregants!

    Yes, they are… and for many of them, it’s purely about asserting THEIR AUTHORITAH over the ‘flock’ (and/or running the con for every last penny).

    But it’s particularly tragic, because — as you know — Easter is the High Holidays of the Christian tradition, and a lot of genuine believers (even some of those pastors!) are gonna die for their faith.  Or, worse, unintentionally kill their loved ones.  It’s just been deeply, deeply internalized that you have to show up — and, of course, the communal celebration helps cement the ‘essential’ nature of attendance.

    I’ll give the Pope this credit, he tried to convince ‘his people’ that God would forgive them staying home just this once, worshipping from their homes… but he can’t even keep his own ‘administrators‘ from undercutting him there.

    Objective evidence against the strong-centralized-authority theory of political management, I guess…

  77. 77.

    dww44

    @rikyrah:  You are right.  Told my spouse this morning that Kemp wasn’t that stupid.  I don’t believe he actually believed what he said yesterday, he was just using what he thought was a credible rationale to do something he had been trying not to do,  declare a state wide stay at home edict.  He’s been well aware of what was going on in Albany Ga for several weeks.

    Then again, he could be that much of an ideologue.  This is what we have with Republican governance now.  I’m counting on having an election next November and hoping, planning on there being a critical mass of sane voters who will deliver a whomping defeat to the GOP.  Long overdue.

  82. 82.

    Brachiator

    @Adam L Silverman:

    While almost all the megachurches, especially the prosperity gospel grifters, take online and over the phone donations, passing the plate is a huge weekly haul for them. Especially because it creates a great deal of social and peer pressure on the congregants to put something in each week because the people sitting around them and near them can see whether they put anything in and how much.

    Pastor to parishoner: “Jed, I really appreciate your donating this week.  Why don’t you throw a little extra in the plate, ’cause you know, you might not make it through this virus thing.”

    However, for those who are religious and have religious institutions that are part of their lives, I would think that the ability to have online services, and to perhaps communicate online with people who are locked down can provide some comfort.

  85. 85.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Yup that’s him. He seems like a real fucking kook. He likens all of the anti-Russian state coverage to antisemitism/anti-Slav racism among Americans. He says this here:

    Respectable Racism

    I’ve been trying to write about the liberal xenophobia that undergirds so much of today’s elite panic about “Russia” and “the Russians.” Since Trump’s election, the usual stereotypes and tropes about Russians have morphed into an all-encompassing racist conspiracy. It’s become totally fine — and even respectable — in American liberal media circles to bombard viewers and readers with all sorts of fantastic plots that feature shadowy Russians infecting “our” society and lurking behind everything that’s going wrong in America and around the world.

    As a Soviet-born Jew who grew up in America, it’s been impossible for me not to notice just how similar these conspiracies are to old antisemitic fantasies about “Judeo-Bolsheviks” and the “Elders of Zion” — deadly fairytales about degenerate “easterners” wielding total power in secret, and plotting from the shadows to dominate and exploit white, Christian civilization. This bigoted paranoia also recalls the virulently racist campaigns of the 19th century that targeted Irish, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Mexican, as well as Russian and various Eastern European immigrants and laborers, and blamed them for infecting and degrading American society.

    The liberal journalists, academics, media personalities, Hollywood stars, intelligence officials, and New York Times documentary filmmakers who’ve been screeching about “the Russians” for the past three years may not be aware that they’re serving up reheated racist fantasies, but they are. And this bigotry isn’t coming from the “lower-classes” that liberals love to mock so much, but from very top — the crème de la crème of our media and political class. One day you get Rachael Maddow working herself into paranoid seizure about a supposed Russian plot to cut power lines and freeze millions of Americans in their sleep. On another, you can watch the screenwriter of Mrs. Doubtfire take to the Internet to theorize about how the Russians are plotting to take down Joe Biden (and I guess to covertly boost Bernie Sanders) by getting an American politician to highlight the creepy and demeaning way Biden treats women.

    It’s gross, and it goes to show that the respectable liberal opposition to Donald Trump is no less racist and paranoid than he is — it just operates in a different xenophobic market demographic.

    Anyway, I say that I’ve been “trying” to write about this because, well, it’s such a gross and unpleasant topic that it’s hard to find the words. So I’ve mostly been drawing. Well, at least for now.

    —Yasha Levine

    UPDATE (4/20/19): Following the release of the Mueller Report, our liberal political class has doubled down on its racist conspiracy mongering. The New York Times is still pushing the idea that meeting with “Russians” — not Russian officials, Russian agents or the Russian government, but just “Russians” — is suspicious and possibly treasonous. I guess that would include me. It’s nuts, and it’s only gonna get worse as we head to 2020.

    I discovered him by following a link from reddit’s r/coronavirus subreddit to The Gray Zone, a Naked Capitalist-esque site that seems to be chalk full of Lefty Purism, here

    The last linked article talks about the coronavirus outbreak where he links to his own blog apparently, and falsely equates “Russia hysteria” with the right’s racist scapegoating of China

    What really broke the camel’s back for me, is this fucking gem:

    China’s been trying to pin the virus on the American government, and so has Russia. A few weeks back, Russian state news broadcast a segment that tied the virus to an American plot against China. Channelling Brass Eye, the host of the news program laid out his logic like this: China is America’s greatest enemy. “Corona” means “crown.” And Donald Trump “crowned” the winners of his Miss Universe pageant. It all added up. Trump unleashed a bioweapon. The clue is in the etymology!

    And really, who knows? Maybe the virus is some shadowy American warfare program that backfired. It wouldn’t the first. See: lyme disease.

    Emphasis mine. Does he really fucking think that nobody could identify if a virus is man-made or not? He beclowned himself with that alone.

    Anyway, just wanted to share the Crazy and get your perspective since what this guy writes about overlaps a bit with what you have written about national security

  86. 86.

    Brachiator

    @oatler.:

    I Saw a PBS doc on Henry XIII a couple weeks ago and was struck by the similarities to our current regime. Though with less beheadings. C’mon, Henry.

    Henry XIII?

  87. 87.

    Anne Laurie

    @delk: On the brighter side, we won’t have to witness the shit show Easter Lawn farce this year.

    Yeah, I noticed that Melania (aka ‘the smarter half’) jumped at the chance to cancel the Lawn Roll early — late February, IIRC.

    One more counter-indication to the whole WH However could we ever have been expected to predict excuse-kabuki.

  88. 88.

    Flea, RN

    KUSHNER: "The notion of the federal stockpile was it's supposed to be our stockpile. It's not supposed to be states stockpiles that they then use."This is LITERALLY the front page of the Federal Strategic National Stockpile website… pic.twitter.com/WSqwgiPBD4— Mitchell Gore (@lestatdelc) April 3, 2020

  89. 89.

    philpm

    @Duane: Pretty soon they’ll figure out how to scan it while it’s still in your wallet as you walk through the door, and decide how much you can afford to “donate” that week.

  90. 90.

    Brachiator

    @Martin:

    The reason I pushed so hard for the university to shut down is that universities are, by design, social places. We are antithetical to social distancing – every part of our design undermines the effort.

    We have had to re-think the way we go about life and re-engineer society. Universities, schools, churches, workplaces. Prisons. Every place where we would usually send people to be together, we now have to do the opposite.

    Related to this, I was listening to the news this morning, and some official had to or wanted to cancel a directive to send elderly patients being treated for various ailments to nursing homes. Sadly, nursing homes are some of the worst places to be for these patients.

  92. 92.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @oatler.: listening to Wolf Hall, the parallels between trump and Mantel’s Henry are amazing: impulsive, at once arrogant and insecure, needy and imperious, short-term thinker, demanding gratification, brutal (by proxy)….

  93. 93.

    Brachiator

    @Flea, RN:

    KUSHNER: “The notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile.

    What the hell does this even mean? “Our stockpile?” To do what with?

    Why is anyone, including the freaking GOP leadership, continuing to let Trump appoint this idiot to anything?

  94. 94.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s because a significant number of his administrators have never accepted him as actually being the rightful pope.

    I’m just further confirmed in my choice to walk away from that faith community the day I graduated from parochial school.  Might’ve been harder if I hadn’t left for a college 12 hours away… but then, getting away from that community was one of the reasons I chose a distant college.

  95. 95.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Brachiator:

    What the hell does this even mean? “Our stockpile?” To do what with?

    Why is anyone, including the freaking GOP leadership, continuing to let Trump appoint this idiot to anything?

    That’s what I’d like to know! Is he referring to the federal government when he says “our”? The national stockpile is intended for the entire country because only the national government has the money and resources to maintain such a stockpile.

    Kushner is a fucking dweeb who thinks he’s smarter than he actually is and is getting innocent people killed

  97. 97.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Duane: I find the Kol Nidre appeal at synagogue on Yom Kippur distasteful, so you’re talking to the wrong guy.

  99. 99.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Anne Laurie:

    Ever noticed a tendency among some protestants that talk about Roman Catholicism as if it’s not just another branch of Christianity? And not even in an “those evil papists” way either, just out of ignorance? It’s really weird. I’ve had to correct somebody I know about this at least twice.

  100. 100.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The eXile crowd are strange. The accurate assessments of what Russia did in advance of the 2016 election, during it, since the 2016 election, and is still doing is in no way anti-Semitic. It is quite a stretch to make that accusation even if a significant number of the oligarchs, who are also Russian and post Soviet state organized crime leaders, who report to and support Putin and are, in turn, supported and protected by him are of Jewish descent.

    It is important to remember that the eXile reporters were into, by their own admission, a bunch of really wild and insane stuff when they worked their and lived in Moscow. As much as I appreciated Taibi’s writing about the 2008 financial crisis and the bailouts in 2009, the man has far too much in common with Roy Moore. And that was before he decided to go all in on “the Russia stuff is a hoax”.

  103. 103.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Anne Laurie: John Paul II did a lot of damage to the Church, especially in regard to rolling back John XXIII’s reforms. Which is why he was chosen to be pope.

  105. 105.

    CaseyL

    @Brachiator: To sell.  To give to cronies to sell.  To give, selectively, to people who “deserve” them.

    Of all the things that make me angry, this might be what makes me absolutely incandescent with rage:  they are sabotaging the emergency response in order to profiteer from supplies that were paid for with our money, for our benefit in an emergency.

  106. 106.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Strange is one way to describe them. It’s like reading something from a parallel universe, it’s so out there and wrong.

    This Levine guy doesn’t seem the type to trust American intelligence agencies (or western ones in general). He seems to view everything through a “The US is always bad no matter what any other country does” and an “Being anti-Russia is racist” lens that colors pretty much all of his writings.

    He reminds me a lot of Glenn Greenwald because he just comes across as being contrarian. He even seems to buy into Putin’s framing of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution

  107. 107.

    joel hanes

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    All kings are insane.

    The role is structured that way — it’s almost impossible for a king to be a well-adjusted person, or to stay so if he might have started out relatively sane.

    Some few managed better than most.

    This was first brought home to me by LeGuin’s _Left_Hand_Of_Darkness_, when the Envoy, Genly Ai, has an audience with the king of Karhide.

  108. 108.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Charles P. Pierce@CharlesPPierce 5h
    I’m thinking that daddy had to buy Jared into third grade.

  110. 110.

    joel hanes

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Is he referring to the federal government when he says “our”?

    The members of the Trump crime family believe they _are_ the federal government, or the only part of it that matters.   Kushner was explaining that the remaining stocks belong to the Trumps, to use for their own benefit, or to bestow on allies and syncophants at their pleasure.

  111. 111.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @joel hanes:

    The members of the Trump crime family believe they _are_ the federal government, or the only part of it that matters.   Kushner was explaining that the remaining stocks belong to the Trumps, to use for their own benefit, or to bestow on allies and syncophants at their pleasure.

    Well, fuck them. Do they honestly think that people aren’t going to want their heads after this is all over?

  113. 113.

    CaseyL

    Not sure if one of the other Washingtonian jackals has already mentioned this, but Governor Inslee has just extended the lockdown through May 4. Current data modeling suggests state cases will peak around April 11.

    Interesting press conference.  Inslee says the state expects “millions” of masks over the next couple of weeks, purchasing directly from manufacturers in the US and overseas.  The state is also looking into the possibility of sterilizing and re-using N95 masks.

  114. 114.

    Anne Laurie

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Ever noticed a tendency among some protestants that talk about Roman Catholicism as if it’s not just another branch of Christianity?

    Well, I grew up inside The Church (Catholic), so I heard it from the other side.  There’s a common theme in the three overarching ‘people of the Book’ faiths — Jewish, Catholic/Christian, Muslim — the older branches insist those latecomers are adolescent heresies, and the newer ones claim they’re ‘purified’ versions of the outdated primitive versions.

    So the Jews shake their heads at the johnny-come-lately ‘Christians’ chasing after a random Jewish prophet/terrorist (Yeshuah ben Joseph) with a great publicist (Paul of Damascus).  Catholics say there’s only a so-called Protestant faith because Martin Luther & Henry VIII wanted to have sex with people they weren’t supposed to be considering as partners (Luther was a supposed-to-be-celibate priest who ended up marrying a nun).  And the Jews say that Mohammad just got his knickers in a twist because he couldn’t, as a convert, be a real priest in the Temple, so he stomped off to start a ‘movement’ where he could be The Guy in Charge.

    From the other side, as you know, the Catholics say their messiah ‘replaced’ the primitive Old Testament with a new improved version; the Protestants say the corrupt Roman Church needed to be replaced by their better decentralized version.  And the Muslims say, diplomatically, that the Jewish prophets & the Christian saints were just precursors heralding the True Prophet, PBUH.

    I’m old and tired, so these days I just nod & change the subject.

  115. 115.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Kamala Harris @KamalaHarris  36m
    Fifty days ago I attended a Homeland Security committee meeting about the coronavirus—and no current Trump administration public health officials bothered to show up. Now more than 5,000 Americans are dead. Their failure to swiftly act cost lives.

  116. 116.

    Ruckus

    @Amir Khalid:

    It is deliberate sabotage. It’s just that the republican voters and vlad are the ones to blame. They elected people incapable of cognizant thought. Or any other kind for that matter.

  119. 119.

    joel hanes

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    In generations of fraud, grift, tax-evasion, and organized criminal schemes, in the combined Trump/Kushner axis, only Kushner Sr. has ever suffered any consequence that had a serious effect on his life.

    So they literally don’t much worry that people will want their heads — there’s always been someone they screwed over who wants their head, and they’ve always been able to make it go away.   They literally cannot conceive that their thieving incompetence will come to a bad end, because it never has.

    And they may be right.    I have no way of knowing if the nation will be into “look forward, not back” again if and when the Democrats again have control of the national government, or if we’ll do a truth and reconciliation thing, or if we’ll do trials and life imprisonment, or tumbrels and lampposts.    What happens in the next six months depends critically on too many unknowns, and on happenstance.

    It’s difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.

  121. 121.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @CaseyL:

    So has Ohio; until May 1st. We’re expecting the peak to happen by mid-April or late April in Ohio

    Battelle in Columbus, a non-profit org, has developed a machine that can sterilize N95 respirators and surgical masks up to 20 times. The process can sterilize up to 80,000 masks a day

  122. 122.

    Ruckus

    @cain:

    You actually are right.

    This is stupid shit of the highest order. However the problem is the people doing the stupidest shit believe everything the right wing stupid machine tells them, and are going to get us all killed trying to prove that they are right. If they’d just all lock themselves into one of those evangelical palaces and set themselves on fire we could get on with our lives, but no they have to attempt to prove all their bullshit is the absolute truth. And that will be the thing that kills a lot of innocent people.

  123. 123.

    joel hanes

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Ah.

    The internet is a superb vehicle for making a fool of oneself before a large audience.

    Thanks for the correction.

    And now to go read about John Paul II

  124. 124.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    stuart stevens @stuartpstevens
    People are going to die because an upper East Side socialite married a slumlord and not a doctor.

    Ivanka will probably retweet this because he called her and upper East Side socialite and not a jumped-up bridge-and-tunnel arriviste

  126. 126.

    Brachiator

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    Ever noticed a tendency among some protestants that talk about Roman Catholicism as if it’s not just another branch of Christianity?

    Tendency?

    That is quite an understatement.

    Growing up in Texas, I don’t think I even knew anyone who was Catholic until my family moved to California.

    Wait, that’s not really true. I went to Catholic school for one year, but my mother was adamant that I was not to be instructed in the faith. And I was mesmerized by portraits of Jesus with a “sacred heart” hovering outside his body. That’s about all I knew about the religion.

    Strangely enough, I was pretty much raised without religion, but I was aware of a weird Southern hostility to Catholicism.

    The natural presumption was that you were a Baptist.

  127. 127.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @joel hanes:

    Kusher et al live in such privilege that they cannot conceive that something bad might happen to them as a result of their own actions. Things tend to change when bodies start piling up

  130. 130.

    Ruckus

     

     

    @Duane:

    How do you know they don’t?

    But I doubt they do because that would have a cost of processing. Cash doesn’t have that. OK other than handling bills with a virus on them.

  131. 131.

    TS (the original)

    @Elizabelle:

    Thanks Elizabelle  – Probably while I was out and about – I’ll go back & read it all. Takes awhile for things to reach down under. I guess we are buried with our own coronavirus news.

  134. 134.

    Mnemosyne

    @Adam L Silverman:

    the man has far too much in common with Roy Moore. And that was before he decided to go all in on “the Russia stuff is a hoax”

    I’ve always assumed that the second thing was strongly related to kompromat collected on the first thing, but anyway … ?

  135. 135.

    Mnemosyne

    @joel hanes:

    And the major TBI that Henry VIII suffered in a jousting accident that left him unconscious for a full day didn’t help. Most historians think that he had a pretty big personality change after that injury.

  136. 136.

    Mrs. D. Ranged in AZ

    @Brachiator: The unluckiest Henry is me. According to genealogy I am descended from one of the Henry’s either the 2nd or the 4th, can’t remember at this point. One of their bastard sons produced me and here I am suffering under the narcissism of the Kushers and the Trumps. And I would hazard to guess that many of you are descended from many of those a****** Kings as well. Maybe the sins of the fathers do actually visit their descendants. As much as I would like to rage against the machine I know my ancestors and current family members played a part in bringing these stupid f****** to power. I have been rendered speechless by the blatant sociopathy of our current leaders. My children knew that asymptomatic people could transmit coronavirus months ago. I don’t even know how to begin to address this kind of triangulation by Gov. Kemp.

  139. 139.

    Craigie

    @LeftCoastYankee:

    Actually, that was PJ O’Rourke, and the quote is

    The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.

  140. 140.

    Yutsano

    @CaseyL:  Looks like I have my projected day to return to work. And I am so going to order dinner from a local business tomorrow.

  141. 141.

    MoCA Ace

    @Amir Khalid:

    Someone, I think in a tweet that was posted here, noted that an incompetent will occasionally blunder into doing the right thing — but in four years the Trump administration has never made such a blunder. That does make one think, no?

    In all fairness he is no garden variety incompetent.  The  combination of nuclear grade narcissism, aggressive ignorance, and lack of any shred of human compassion leads him to whole new levels of incompetence.  He is truly an incompetence savant,

  143. 143.

    Kattails

    Just stopping by before bedtime to mention that I scored 2 bags of artisanal bread flour at King Arthur, and that Jared Kushner has one of the most punchable faces I have ever seen in my life.

  145. 145.

    frosty

    @Adam L Silverman: I beg to differ. As dengre noted many years ago, there are three parties in America: Republicans, Democrats, Confederates. Rs and Ds have (until recently) remained the same. Nixon moved the Confederates from D to R. And I would say that the Rs have become mostly Confederates at this point, so maybe there’s only two parties left.

  147. 147.

    Kattails

    @JaySinWA: And I sincerely hope that every cowardly, toadying sycophantic Republican who failed to do their duty when “impeach and remove” was in front of their noses goes down in ignominy.

  148. 148.

    Brachiator

    Apparently, even the country of Georgia is a problem. From a BBC News story. The Orthodox Church there is still having public services, and uses a shared spoon for their version of Communion. A priest interviewed said that he believes that the blood of Christ sterilizes the spoon.

    We shall see.

  150. 150.

    joel hanes

    @frosty:

    Nixon moved the Confederates from D to R

    Johnson signing the Civil Rights Act made it possible for Nixon to do that.

  151. 151.

    cain

    @Brachiator:

    You are right it won’t matter, he’s incompetent – the people around him are also incompetent and ideologues as well. Those states are going to get fucked.

    They are still going to blame someone, anyone, but not them. They will likely even accuse blue states of malfeasance that somehow they knew stuff and didn’t share and very very anti-american. Fuckers.

  152. 152.

    cain

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Yeah, it’s going to be a shit show in those states.

    I’ve yet to hear any of these people say this plague is because of gay marriage, should be fun to explain when it is folks like these that are going to die.

    I sincerely believe we are going to kill off a generation.

  154. 154.

    artem1s

    @Brachiator:

    I imagine that the order to shelter in place hurts some churches’ ability to collect tithes. But if you can get people to show up, and crowd them all in, you can pass the plate.

    and you can collect on their estates that they no doubt have willed over to these grifters. I hate to say it, but I suspect that these cultists would declare this ‘boon’ a sign of god’s will if all their elderly members die and leave money to the ‘church’.  I also believe they are completely capable of the sin of omitting to tell their parishioners that they are planning on reaping the profits off their misery and death. Grift all the way down.

Comments are closed.