Trump’s no-show press secretary left that gig to return to her no-show chief of staff job for the no-show Third Lady. Nice work if you can get it! Could Trump find someone even worse to take over from a person who just didn’t do her job at all? Of course he could!
The new press secretary is Kayleigh McEnany. Here she is on February 25 saying that “we will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here,” more than a month after the U.S. had its first confirmed case:
On the same day Larry Kudlow said coronavirus was “contained” on Feb. 25th, Trump’s campaign spox made an even more bold claim.
“We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here..and isn't it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama." pic.twitter.com/O0DDH3Rvkw
— andrew kaczynski? (@KFILE) April 4, 2020
The Fox News blow-up doll pictured at right on the screen above was recently fired for an unhinged rant on Fox Business in which she called the coronavirus another “impeachment hoax.” Even Fox News has higher standards than the Trump administration, at least for female employees.
Trump retweeted the rant because of course he did. My guess is McEnany will be every bit as visible as the DUI lady was, which is to say, visible only to Fox News viewers.
Open thread.
schrodingers_cat
Is she wearing the orange concealer too. Her skin color looks unnatural. BTW did you guys see nepotism Josh defend nepotism Barbie.
One reason our WH press corp sucks is that many of them landed in their jobs because their parents are famous.
Can we make a list of the progeny of famous that make up our Beltway media besides Josh Barro and MAGA Haberman.
1. Cokie Roberts
ETA: Is it any wonder they aren’t tough on nepotism T, his daughter or Jared.
feebog
We’re going to need a bigger scorecard.
MattF
B-I-N-G-O. Who’s next?
A Ghost to Most
The more of these people that can cycle through Cortez T. Killer’s court, the better. They will all have the mark of the Beast on them, rendering them fit for future work only as salesman or clergy.
Nicole
@schrodingers_cat:
Or rich. One of the worst things to happen to society was rich people deciding it was acceptable, after all, for them to pursue celebrity.
WaterGirl
Where do they find these people? They are like the parasites who live on some creature that thrives in pond scum.
mrmoshpotato
Should I laugh during the even hours and cry during the odd hours? I don’t even know anymore!
I guess I’ll have to start setting an alarm. Gotta give even time to both.
And then, does one wake up laughing, or wake up crying?
Life would be so much simpler with a competent government!
NotMax
In need of a quick breather from the onrush of blech?
Randy ❤ Andy.
Nicole
@A Ghost to Most:
No. Rich people protect their own. We’ll be seeing fucking Sean Spicer’s face everywhere come 2021, telling us what we should think about the Democratic President.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl:
Fox News
mrmoshpotato
Wordsmith Betty Cracker, ladies and gentlemen!
scav
Hmmmmm let’s try and make this work . . . . “We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here . . . ” (because we will all be dead from the actual coronavirus!) . . . “and isn’t it refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama.” (when I was unemployed and had to buy my own dye job rather than expense it.”
NotMax
@WaterGirl
Retardigrades.
ThresherK
@mrmoshpotato: Yet another great line to go into my collection of “Who wrote it: Cole or Betty Cracker?”
A Ghost to Most
@Nicole: Not this time, not with Trumpers, not with talibangelicals.
I’m pretty sure the alliance between the greedos and the power-mad book bangers is OVER.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Brace for the tardigrade class action suit.
Elizabelle
If this was the first publicly revealed act by new chief of staff Mark Meadows (R-Freedom Caucus), hang on.
What ignoramouses. Drawing salaries paid by our tax dollars. For shame.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@A Ghost to Most:
The post Trump presidency autobiographical books will need to be boycotted.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
from my collection of phrases I rarely use: Good on Schumer
Mandalay
@schrodingers_cat:
Right. Josh Baro, son of the Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economics at Harvard University who is also “the fifth most influential economist in the world“, truly can’t believe that anyone would think that Haberman, daughter of a member of the NYT editorial board, didn’t get her job on her merits.
Kent
On the topic of Trump corruption, the NYT buried this lede:
In case you wondered why Trump has been so obsessed with hydroxychloroquine treatment? The simplest and most corrupt answer may be correct. He can’t fucking help himself.
and then regarding the original French “study” that started this mess?
LeftCoastYankee
@mrmoshpotato:
That one almost gave my sinuses a coffee rinse.
donnah
Well, Kayleigh has all of the required elements in a Trump hire: blonde, thin, enthusiastic cheerleader type. Also, she insults Obama, (big plus) and has the Trump ass-kiss down to a tee. Also, her obvious lack of smarts is the final bit of flair on her resumé.
MattF
@Kent: There’s also the ‘Giuliani effect’. Rudy has been promoting the drug, and Trump attempts to emulate and make use of Rudy’s absolute shamelessness.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kent: and noted epidemiologist Greg Abbott has decided to conduct an experiment…
cause that’s where you want to run an experiment with a drug of unproven effectiveness and (as I understand) risks of side effects to the heart and other organs
Cheryl Rofer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: In this thread, hilzoy explains why that’s a bad idea, probably unethical, and I’ll add probably illegal as well.
Mandalay
O/T, but defenders of Captain Crozier’s firing have consistently said that regardless of the situation he faced, he should have stayed in his lane.
Well fine I suppose, except now they (allegedly) plan to look at why Crozier ended up sending out a letter that got leaked to the media:
Perhaps the “investigation” will merely be a snow job, clearing everyone above Crozier, but I find it hard to believe the leaked plea for help was Crozier’s only effort to get a response from his betters.
Zzyzx
@MattF: I think it’s even simpler.
Fox news has been pushing it and Trump, despite having access to the best experts in the country, has decided that that is the best source of information for him.
JMG
He’s desperate for a quick fix. If the unpronounceable drug doesn’t work, it’ll be eye of newt next.
MattF
@Zzyzx: Hard to disentangle cause and effect there.
Kent
Wouldn’t you normally conduct the investigation first, before deciding on wrong-doing?
[I know, I’m being naive, this is the Trump Admin]
Betty Cracker
@Cheryl Rofer: Appalling.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Cheryl Rofer: Holy cow. Whatever happened to informed consent?
Duane
@donnah: I think Kayleigh’s last name is misspelled. It should be McInaney, emphasis on inane.
Kent
It appears they aren’t actually even running a legit study. Just “testing” it on a bunch of old people, which isn’t the same thing at all. It’s not a double-blind study and 30 patients is hardly a sufficient sample size.
If we are going to be flailing away with untested shit, the more logical thing would be to roll out accelerated vaccine tests.
Brachiator
What’s wrong with these people?
I was listening to a podcast of a local talk radio show while I went out for takeout breakfast. The show’s conservative host was desperate to find something good to say about Trump. So she totally avoided talking about Trump’s failure to provide leadership in fighting the pandemic, and instead credited him for being optimistic and helping the country cope with the crisis with his positive attitude.
Later, in talking to a news reporter, both of them tacitly agreed that the snake oil pills the president keeps touting might work.
Anyway, I guess Trump knows how to pick his lackeys. And there seems to be no shortage of people willing to kiss his butt, praise him to high heaven, or to deny reality in the name of fealty to stupid political ideology.
Amir Khalid
@JMG:
Newt will probably not be happy about that. Plus, one eye of his won’t go very far unless they figure out how to clone it.
Brachiator
@JMG:
And Gingrich will willingly give up his eye if it pleases his Dear Leader.
ETA: I see that Amir and I are on the same page.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mandalay: No shit, Sherlock. Of course it wasn’t his only attempt to raise the issue.
trollhattan
@Cheryl Rofer:
Texas. Consistent I suppose with their Lt. Gov who has bravely offered himself up to the Gods of Commerce as a senior sacrifice should that be required. Unsurprisingly, this seems to indicate he’s slipped to the back of the line, “No, please, you go right ahead. I’m fine back here.”
Mandalay
@Kent:
Being devil’s advocate, I guess the case could be made that Crozier was clearly in the wrong regardless of anything else, so he had to go, and quickly (though obviously the order came from Trump).
That said, of course the “extended investigation” is only occurring because Crozier’s dismissal has blown up in Trump’s face. Modly is now a dead man walking, but if the story fizzles my guess is that everyone else gets off.
Brachiator
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Or used as toilet paper during some future lockdown.
trollhattan
@Brachiator:
Kudlow making pronouncements on epidemiology is right up there with my standard lecture on dark energy. Either way you’ll end up stupider for listening.
JCJ
@Cheryl Rofer:
Wow. Every year I have to review The Belmont Report to maintain my ability to enroll patients in clinical trials. Perhaps these clowns can have a link forwarded to them.
https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/regulations-and-policy/belmont-report/read-the-belmont-report/index.html
The Belmont Report is one of the leading works concerning ethics and health care research. Its primary purpose is to protect subjects and participants in clinical trials or research studies. This report consists of 3 principles: beneficence, justice, and respect for persons
This could violate all three principles!
senyordave
Excellent read here, this is the New England Journal of Medicine’s first ever social commentary: the apology they want to hear from Trump. Good synopsis of why Trump and his people have blood on their hands.
HT: Juanita Jean’s
https://blogs.jwatch.org/hiv-id-observations/index.php/dear-nation-a-series-of-apologies-on-covid-19/2020/04/06/
Immanentize
@Cheryl Rofer: Texas City is a very sad place — it’s called Toxic City among those who know it. Oil and gas production and some chicken farms, IIRC. Poor. Majority minority — I think it was roughly 30% black, 30% Latinx, and 40 ish% white.
Sounds more like the Tuskegee experiments to me.
Jeffg
Her audition video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ol4oWChjzk
scav
Oh, never fear, Trumpy’s got backup snake oil to toss about to the deserving, equally untested, uncontaminated by science and verified by his all-knowing, uncle-related gut.
Donald Trump’s drugs ‘to help Boris Johnson’ not tested against coronavirus
Elizabelle
Trump is seizing on hydroxy … because without it he would have to face what a horror show this is and I suspect he knows he responded way too badly and way too late.
And it serves as a bright shiny object for the Fox set.
different-church-lady
The campaign commercials are practically making themselves at this point. Every time Trump steps in front of a mic, he’s handing raw material to the dems. If they don’t use it to pound him into sand we don’t deserve to win.
Jeffro
@ThresherK: I’d be up for a round of that (Cole or Cracker?) this evening ?
West of the Cascades
@Omnes Omnibus: Maybe they should have conducted an investigation before relieving Captain Crozier from command? This is looking more like a “sentence first – verdict afterward” Red Queen situation.
Bill Arnold
Of open-thread interest (sorry if already linked):
The inside story of Boris Johnson’s coronavirus battle – Prime Minister continued to work despite contracting Covid-19 but was taken into intensive care on Monday night (Robert Mendick, Harry Yorke, 6 April 2020)
This might be related (through a perhaps long chain of argument) to Leviticus 21 rules about physical defects and priesthood:
Which in turn is probably (this is non-normative) about bad luck being a sign of unholiness.
(Which is, to be clear, BS for us denizens of the chaos.) This is a common and loathsome attitude among “conservatives”, in my experience.
NotMax
As it is tagged Open Thread – a report from the outside world.
Finally was able to make a run to Home Depot to pick up the lumber and associated hardware for a necessary project. Was going to do this nearly a month ago but had to wait until landlady’s car came back from several weeks of being in the shop as hers is large enough to transport the materials needed. Highways into and roads in town very noticeably traffic-free.
Only a single entrance open, with a serpentine path laid out with stanchions and tape to get to it. Employee stationed at the door with a counter in order to limit customers allowed inside to X number. No line; got right in. Rough guesstimate 40% of people shopping were masked, none of the employees passed during the expedition were, save one.
Didn’t bother going by the housewares section where toilet paper, soaps and the like are to check their stock as I have more than enough from well before this mess began.
Of course the main item I settled upon getting after checking everything similar they had in stock was the only one on either side of that aisle without a price sign. The plastic pouch hanging from the shelf in which price and description cards are put was there but it was empty. No bar code stickers on the items either. Managed to rustle up an employee, who took close to 15 minutes to return to quote me a price.
Then had to call for a different employee to man the big saw at the rear of the lumber department to do some cutting of 4 × 8 panels of exterior siding (the uncut panels would never fit in her car, and the cutting is both accurate and free).
He accompanied me to the checkout (another serpentine pathway laid out to get to a register) to look up the unpriced items there and inform the cashier what number to ring up. Which turned out to be $13 per panel higher than what the first employee had quoted. Shrug on my part as was still well within anticipated budget.
Oh, and on the way to the big saw at rear of store passed a hanging display of washable (and attractive looking) heavy duty but not so thick as to be cumbersome work gloves so picked up a pair. If you’re looking for gloves but can’t find them and there’s a big box Home Depot or similar near you, a safari up and down the lumber and fencing aisles might prove fruitful.
BroD
Understand: this hydroxychloroquine flap is mostly misdirection (with graft potential an added bonus) .
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Biden 2020: Come with me if you want to live.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: It’s the kind of thing someone in middle school would yell at their parents after getting a bad grade. There is no way that Barro would accept that kind of excuse from, say, a plumber who failed to fix the leak, and what it tells you is that he has no basic concept of the proposition that journalists might be expected to meet certain standards.
germy
https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/tcm-for-covid-19/
The Thin Black Duke
“Stupidity is the same as evil if you judge by the results.”
― Margaret Atwood, Surfacing
germy
Barbara
@Baud: Biden 2020: I will put the American people first.
Biden 2020: I won’t lie to you.
Seriously, one issue that Trump is going to have no matter how hard he tries is that he is lying and he cares more about his own finances or the stock market than he does about ordinary people. He can’t even fake it well.
jc
The problem with the chain of command is at the top. NO criticism of Trump can be allowed, no matter what. The Foxes running the chicken coop just won’t have it … because they’d have to explain and make convincing arguments, so they’d rather shove chopsticks in their ears rather than acknowledge the truth, so much easier and lazier to just deny, dismiss and keep trying to create their own reality. It would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic.
Brachiator
@Kent:
And yet news reports note that Trump trade Peter Navarro got into a heated exchange with Anthony Fauci over the Trump administration’s decision to push snake oil pills.
The most chilling thing about this heated argument? Trump’s asswipe Young Jared smugly consoling Navarro.
We see what running the country like a business really means. Trump doesn’t give a shit about anything except how to make a buck out of a catastrophe and human suffering.
PenAndKey
@Cheryl Rofer: Oh, it gets worse. Not only did they not notify the families before administering an unapproved and unproved “treatment” to sick residents, they’re notifying them after the fact and one resident has already died.
If even so much as one of those residents was treated with this drug before a valid medical waiver was signed by either themselves (if they’re mentally competent) or their legal guardian every single member of the management staff needs to be facing charges and every single member of the medical staff needs to lose their license. Throw in negligence leading to death since one of the residents died while you’re at it.
MattF
Trump takes control of stimulus oversight.
rikyrah
Muthaphucka can’t close the beaches, but, can do this…..
<a href=”https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article241811906.html?utm_source=pushly&intcid=%7B__explicit:pushly_505018%7D“>Inside Florida’s frenzied, failed dash to dole out $600 million in no-bid mask deals</a>
BY MARY ELLEN KLAS AND
BEN WIEDER
APRIL 07, 2020 11:49 AM, UPDATED 5 MINUTES AGO
When Florida belatedly realized last week that its COVID-19 problem was going to cascade into a statewide crisis, the state Division of Emergency Management embarked on a frantic, frenzied attempt to buy N95 masks, the gold standard in hospital protective equipment, negotiating more than half a billion in purchase orders in just the past week.
The biggest deal by far was a $225 million purchase order — 30 million masks at $7.50 a piece — agreed to March 30. It was brokered through a Miami lobbyist, Manny Reyes, son of the Miami commissioner, Manolo Reyes. In normal times the masks might cost anywhere from 58 cents to $1.25 per unit.
Mandalay
@West of the Cascades:
Here’s a discussion of that very point: ‘It Doesn’t Add Up To Me’: Current and Former Navy Officials Question Captain’s Abrupt Dismissal
One interesting snippet:
I hope Modly is asked to explain why he explicitly invited Crozier to ignore the chain of command.
Omnes Omnibus
@West of the Cascades: Relieving someone of command is often done as an emergency measure. As a result, full investigations frequently happen after the fact.
mrmoshpotato
@germy:
I seriously doubt anyone’s selling the magic secret cure of just telling everyone to have more sex.
Brachiator
@Bill Arnold:
I don’t know. It’s more ignorance masquerading as common sense. And there is a long tradition of this nonsense in the UK that goes beyond political ideology, although it may be linked to social class.
And in California especially I’ve long known crunchy granola people who are not particularly religious who insist that vitamins, organic whatever, juices, cleanses, supplements, yoga, meditation, macrobiotic this or pureed that will render you immune to disease.
germy
@mrmoshpotato:
“Love Is Good For Anything That Ails You”
Brachiator
@mrmoshpotato:
Where do you put the mask?
germy
“You don’t need pills, you need thrills…”
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Lacks woo. Now, “having sex inside this copper infused, energy focusing capsule” would carry pizzazz.
:)
Bufflars
OT – Update from Milwaukee County. I’ve been bombarded with texts and calls from Wisconsin Dems over the last 3 days reminding me to submit my absentee ballot (I have) so they are definitely succeeding in getting the word out, to some folks at least.
MattF
@Bill Arnold: Susan Sontag wrote about ‘Illness as Metaphor’. It’s an error with a long history.
Brachiator
Another industry hit hard by the lockdown. From BBC News
Oh baby, let’s Zoom.
Mandalay
@Bill Arnold:
We see a similar attitude from Trump when he says that others can wear masks, but he’s not going to. Which is a real shame because if he wore a mask during his press conferences he could set a bold example, and truly save lives.
But wearing masks is for wimps and fairies.
Both Johnson and Trump are ridiculously overweight. They are physically weak, and unhealthy. But they both have to project this tough guy image. It’s absurd, yet so many folks seem to buy into it.
germy
@Brachiator:
Frankensteinbeck
@JMG:
This. Wherever Trump heard it first, he wants it to be true. He wants to be the one to recommend the cure to the disease, and have Saved America. See the jackass offer to the German company working on a vaccine. He knows he’s being blamed, and both for his ego and reelection chances, he is desperate for there to be a quick fix that he can take the credit for. Narcissists are like (and overlap with) teenage libertarians: They can only think in terms of easy solutions that only they’re smart enough to see.
Ruckus
Did anyone expect trump to chose anyone to work for him that in any way would show more competence than him?
He’s not in any way a normal human and looking for anyone with more competence, even specialty competence such as a doctor or pilot, would show him up at the only thing he can do, talk. OK, I know he can’t actually talk in any way, reasonably but can you imagine what he hears inside his head is not what comes out of his face? He thinks he’s brilliant. The world knows better. But the people he hires would never get anything like the jobs he gives them, on their actual merit.
Omnes Omnibus
@Bufflars: Everything I have seen so far indicates the people of Milwaukee do not intend to be disenfranchised.
trollhattan
@Immanentize:
Texas City is where my then employer lost several employees to BP’s negligence and lax Texas safety protocols. Reason the infinity why the industry was not shocked at Deepwater Horizon, so horrid is BP’s safety reputation.
“Texas, we open for bidnez, podner!”
Omnes Omnibus
@Brachiator: I am sure the cam girl business is booming.
Barbara
@Brachiator: This is a really durable element of the human experience, and it was exacerbated in Christian cultures by a belief that physical neglect was a sign of spiritual purity. Christian Scientists took it to the extreme. My great aunt was a Christian Scientist, and my husband’s uncle by marriage as well, and they both ignored escalating signs of ailments until they did themselves real, lasting harm. My great aunt had a stroke after ignoring many TIAs and eschewing medication for high blood pressure. My husband’s uncle ignored signs of skin cancer, and by the time he sought treatment, his normally treatable form of melanoma became incurable and he lived under a cloud of increasingly toxic experimental chemotherapy. Steve Jobs probably made his chances of survival much lower because he delayed surgery in favor of “clean living,” which is just a kind of distortion of the Christian idea that internal purity can conquer disease.
Brachiator
@Omnes Omnibus:
Yep. And according the the BBC story the countries that spent the most at Pornhub sites for this in March were Denmark, Israel, and Belgium, in that order.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus: I hope they can teach the Republicans a lesson up and down the ballot.
Baud
@Brachiator: WTF USA? What are people doing? Gaming????
NotMax
@Brachiator
Where’s the Captain when he’s needed?
Pilot movie for a proposed syndicated series was cheesy as all get out but a romp. Must have taken many hours during filming to repair all of Ron Perlman’s teeth marks from the scenery. Included in the cast is Nichelle Nichols.
:)
Similarities abound, however this came out four years prior to Galaxy Quest.
germy
@Omnes Omnibus:
Not so lucrative:
Matt McIrvin
@Brachiator: I am still seeing right-wingers insisting that COVID-19 is no worse than a seasonal flu, and whatabouting with Obama and H1N1, which was apparently far worse. I’m wondering how long they can keep it up.
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: Boning in a sensory deprivation chamber is the new craze.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
Until either someone they know and love dies from it or they themselves come down with it and have to be hospitalized. Living in rural areas won’t protect them forever. They still have to go to the store from time to time and the current stay-out-home orders won’t last forever either. Conservatives are notorious for not having empathy for others unless someone they know suffers from a given problem
NotMax
@Frankensteinbeck
Also too his known germophobia must compel him to latch onto nearly anything touted by his coterie of condemnables as a surefire remedy.
Cheryl Rofer
@JCJ: Yes. Hilzoy and Lindsay Beyerstein, who know more detail than I do, have been all over this on Twitter. It’s disgusting.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
Must have been misinformed that it’s electrical banana.
;)
h/t Donovan
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
I’ve been wondering about Trump’s germophobia. If he’s such a germophobe than why for the longest time during press briefings weren’t any of the assembled people on stage with him doing social distancing? Why did Trump insist on shaking people’s hands? Why is he refusing to wear a mask?
EthylEster
@PenAndKey: one resident has already died.
Well, that anecdata PROVES the drug is worthless!
Thankfully people on the left will not demonstrate this ignorance.
Or….at least I hope they will not.
Chyron HR
@EthylEster:
“You libs are DUMB! It works because Trump says so and he knows more than doctors!”
You sure showed us.
MattF
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’d guess that Trump uses his ‘germphobia’ as a way of controlling interactions.
Brachiator
@Ruckus:
I agree with you, but I want to dig into this a bit. As president, Trump has immediate access to the most informed and talented pool of people ever assembled.
And yet he totally squanders this resource. He fires people, hires incompetents. But as you note, he has to parade his own ignorance as knowledge, sometimes belittling his own designated experts.
And worst of all, even though he claims to be so smart, he insists on rummaging in the garbage bins of ignorant society, junk news, conspiracy sites, and “common sense” false analysis for what appeals to him.
He is strangely incompetent when it comes to weighing advice, and being able to sift out good advice from nonsense.
And of course he applies two filters: what will make him look good, and how can he possibly make a buck out of a situation.
It is just crazy to watch a human being so totally unqualified for the position that he somehow got elected to.
And crazy that he has not taken the slightest step to learn or do better, even though people suffer as s result of his stubborn commitment to his own stupidity.
Nicole
@A Ghost to Most:
I dearly hope you are right and I am wrong, but I don’t see it. Even today, the NYT, I think it is, has an oped piece up about how Biden really has an obligation to do what’s best for the country by choosing to have Republicans in his Cabinet.
Two words, NY Times: FUUUUUUUCCCCCCKKKKK & YOOOOOUUUUUUUU.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Co=exists with his delusion of being the one true and perfect, genius pinnacle of human evolution so perforce rules for lesser creatures don’t apply to him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Nicole: Tom Friedman. Among other ideas: Bill Gates or Sec of Education and AOC for UN ambassador. It’s a random list of offices and names he has heard. I haven’t read Friedman in a long time, and it really reads like a Villagey Grampa Simpson
Mandalay
@Brachiator:
Sorry, but you are (unintentionally) sounding like Trump with that hyperbole.
What on earth makes you know that is true?
Calouste
Btw, McEnany, just like Kushner and Modly, has a degree from Harvard.
Norman Ornstein was saying today that he is beginning to question the accreditation of said institution.
Betty
@donnah:  And a Harvard Law grad! Yikes.
Roger Moore
@JCJ:
I definitely makes me want to see their IRB approval.
NotMax
@Calouste
Reminder that its roots go back to being founded as an institution to train promoters of superstition.
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yep, the cabinet name-dropping was inane, even for Friedman, whose baseline in his prime was suffocating banality. I think he’s married to an impossibly rich woman, and he’s inexplicably respected by scads of people who should know better. He should have retired to rest on his imaginary laurels years ago.
lgerard
Kayleigh’s husband was a pitcher for my beloved Mets, among other teams.
He sucks too
Nicole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Ha!
I tell ya, though- the Accepted Media Wisdom of “Democrats really should have Republicans serving in their Administrations” that never, ever, ever goes the other way… ggrrrrrrrr.
MoCA Ace
That would require self awareness and self reflection. He has none of either. He truly is an amazing specimen… I try to think of any historical figure we can compare him too and I come up blank. Looking at modern times I would compare him to Kim Jong il but that would be an unforgivable insult to poor Kim.
Nicole
@Betty Cracker:
Ah, so it’s yet another media person worried about what will happen to all of their moneeeeeez if a Democrat gets in office.
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
RE: Trump has immediate access to the most informed and talented pool of people ever assembled
You’re joking, right?
Trump or any other president, not only has his own staff, the experts at various departments, but he obviously can invite outside experts as counsel.
He has unparalleled access.
This does not say that the best and the brightest will always jump at his call. Or that he would know how to use them.
How is this a matter of question or controversy?
We can also see that Trump has ignored advice which has turned out to be excellent, informed and accurate. But the thing is that it was offered or regularly available.
NotMax
@MoCA Ace
Caligula?
Yeah, close but no cigar. Maybe a cigarillo, though.
;)
Ohio Mom
Jim, Foolish: Friedman reads as a villagey Grandpa Simpson; Lol and perfect!
On another note, as someone who takes hydroxychloroquine and has read the fine print, it can cause irregular heart rhythms, and that’s just what a laid up old person needs, a bout of A-fib.
I can’t wait until this fad is over and I don’t have to worry about getting my prescription filled.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Betty Cracker: I didn’t know about Mrs Friedman
Old man Bucksbaum left an estate of $1.2B when he died in 2013
catclub
@schrodingers_cat: Tim Russert’s son
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@Matt McIrvin: Until the number of cases in their less populated, poor health care systems areas start going up, and their family, friends or neighbors start dying. There are areas of the country that are going to get absolutely slammed by this. Coal country comes to mind, East Tennessee and parts of Kentucky, West Virginia. You know what’s worse than Black lung, Black lung with a side of COVID-19:
Black Lung services clinics and COVID-19
catclub
@Mandalay: The writer means the experts in the employ of the US government. As well as others the US government can call on.
Brachiator
@Nicole:
I’m mildly curious as to who wrote this op-ed piece.
Totally agree with you that this is a bullshit idea.
The Democrats do not have to reach out.
The Republicans should atone and beg forgiveness.
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
You can always tell a Harvard man. You just can’t tell him very much.
The problem with places like Harvard is that their student body is very variable. It includes a lot of genuinely very smart people who got in the hard way. It also includes a lot of people who got in through legacy admissions or
briberycharitable donations to the university. The legacies and pay-to-play students don’t have the academic chops to earn their degrees, but the school feels obligated to graduate them anyway to keep the scam going.MattF
@Brachiator: Friedman.
catclub
Use Speaker Gingrich, rather than Newt, and the joke works better.
trollhattan
@Calouste:
Makes me think of Pompeo being 1 in his class at the Point. WTF guys, think you’re the Air Force or something?
NotMax
@Brachiator
Friedman’s an ass of the first water. That said, it could be read as treating, perhaps unconsciously, Biden’s election as a foregone conclusion.
catclub
also areas east, north, south and west of Baghdad.
trollhattan
@Roger Moore:
They didn’t accept my kid for fall, so they’re now Dead to Me.
Admittedly, the building I contributed was a Lego set, but still….
Ohio Mom
Brachiator: as discussed earlier in the thread, the idea that Biden should hire Republicans came from Thomas Friedman.
Surprised he didn’t credit a random Egyptian cab driver but then again, we all should be home, not galavanting about foreign countries.
g
bemused
@Bill Arnold:
They can’t handle the truth!
Reality is something they wish would magically go away.
Amir Khalid
@catclub:
I’ll remember that for next time.
NotMax
@catclub
Well played.
germy
Ladies and gentlemen, meet the new press secretary:
Brachiator
@Ohio Mom:
I’m at work, sneak reading the thread from the bottom up.
Friedman, eh? What a dumb idea.
MattF
A Fox News Special Report that I can believe in.
Omnes Omnibus
@germy: My guess is that it is a lot like Billy Bragg once said about pop music: It’s a mighty long way down rock n roll; From the Top of the Pops to drawing the dole.
Mandalay
@Brachiator:
Not at all. You said “access to the most informed and talented pool of people ever assembled“, and I’m saying that’s nonsense. For a start “access to” and “ever assembled” are two very different things, and your claim doesn’t even make sense.
But more importantly. there’s a shitload of informed and talented people in other countries all over the world that may well be far superior to ours, and Trump simply does not have access to them. Pushing the notion that Trump can snap his fingers and the best people in the world will come running is just silly, and best left to FoxNews.
Just One More Canuck
@Mandalay:
he has access to them but has made a deliberate choice to ignore them, choosing a wretched hive of scum and villainy instead
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
I knew a kid from an affluent background who got into an Ivy League school after attending Phillips Exeter Academy. He and his instructors had tailored his studies to look good to the schools to which he applied. I think he was a classics major, and he recycled his high school papers and used them again his freshman and sophomore years. Ultimately he was an average student who went to the Ivy because it was expected of him, and everything was done to make sure that he would get through.
germy
@Omnes Omnibus: I thought that was Mott The Hoople.
Ruckus
@Mandalay:
Might it be because a lot of them are overweight, physically weak and unhealthy. And yet they still made it to the top. They buy into it because it’s a successful vision of themselves.
joel hanes
@Mandalay:
But wearing masks is for wimps
I think that a major reason that Trump will never appear in a mask is that it would mess up his makeup and hair, which are very very important to him. His image is everything.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@MoCA Ace: Wilhelm II
Jinchi
Given the shelter-in-place order these days, I think he would have to go with a DoorDash delivery person, instead.
Brachiator
@Mandalay:
You waste your time trying to distort what I said.
But if it helps you, I never, ever, ever claimed that Trump or any other president has exclusive access to the best experts.
You also keep getting hung up on the idea that somehow I am praising Trump.
Other people seemed to understand what I was saying, so let’s just move on.
Subsole
@Matt McIrvin: Until they die.
They are committed. To back out now would be to face what they chose. These people chose a weak man because he reflects and excuses their weaknesses.
They can no more face facts than Trump. It would be just as deleterious to their sense of self as actual suicide.
Never forget – these folks believe, with all of their souls, that they are the good guys. The ONLY good guys. The only POSSIBLE good guys.
Even if they have to face it, they damn sure ain’t gonna live with it.
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The silly bastard might actually believe he’s invincible. Also, does he fear germs b/c illness, or because he obsesses over neatness/cleanness and germs are “dirty”?
germy
@Jinchi: That’s one thing I’ve noticed about conservative “intellectuals” – their use of sock puppets.
Is there any equivalent on the left? I’ve never heard of one.
NotMax
@joel hanes
Should he ever appear wearing one, place the high money chips on it having the presidential seal emblazoned on the front.
catclub
@Amir Khalid: And you can give me tips on idiomatic Malaysian when I try posting in your language.
You are great. Cheers!
jeffreyw
°
Omnes Omnibus
@germy: Don’t make me hurt you.
Calouste
@Roger Moore: And legacy admissions are basically institutional racism. It’s not like there are many minority students who get admitted as a legacy because one of their grandparents went to Harvard, because those grandparents were simply not allowed in.
joel hanes
@Matt McIrvin:
I’m wondering how long they can keep it up.
Until the moment that they themselves are intubated.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
Everything you say is true but look at trump and understand that is his disease, and as a disease, stops him from doing anything like take advice from anyone else and also from seeing his real place in the world. A lot of people do this, they have money and a lot don’t so that makes them powerful and wonderful. They have an education and someone else doesn’t so that makes them powerful. The world is full of people with narcissism, trump is just such an overwhelming example that it’s easier to see. I actually know a few people that are noticeably narcissistic, although not to trump’s level. I’ve had to deal with them in my job and it’s rather tiring. The guy with the highest level I had professional dealings with when I worked in pro sports although it’s been over 20 yrs ago that we last professionally crossed paths, I run into him on occasion and he still can’t admit that he fucked up and got caught even though he was tried by a board of his peers and lost every vote. It’s tiring at the least, dangerous at all times. I really do not want to get arrested for rendering him infertile with my knee.
joel hanes
@NotMax:
Caligula
The south end of Incitatus
Sister Golden Bear
@Kent: Simpler than that. He’s facing down the worst narcissistic injury of his life and is desperately seeking that one weird trick that will make it go away and make him look like a hero. As with a lot of narcs he’s got a circle of followers willing feed him things that’ll help feel better about himself.
Narcs live in the ever-present moment, there is no strategy, just whatever reassures them against the howling void inside right now. Which literally can be 180-degrees from whatever they were saying less than a minute ago. Hard to fully grok it unless you’ve lived it.
Although that’s not mutually exclusive with folks around him also trying to profiteer, and Trump demanding to wet his beak.
Ruckus
@Betty Cracker:
Tom writes glowingly about them and they return the favor.
Tit for tat. Wait, that sounds a bit naughty……
The FTFNYT keeps him on because he writes lovingly about people who wouldn’t normally have anything positive said about them and those people in return support the FTFNYT. Which makes the FTFNYT look far better than it really is. It’s the money power play. More commonly known as a circle jerk. Meant with all that implies.
Brachiator
@Calouste:
Less true as time goes by. I know a number of nonwhite Ivy graduates who went to college in the 60s and 70s who have children who subsequently were students there as well.
But I also recall years ago reading a candid letter in an alumni magazine from a graduate from the 1950s who complained that too many Jews were taking up places that should go to the good WASP children and grandchildren of his generation.
mad citizen
@germy: Cannot think of any left people who do this alias thing. This is really weird, it really is like peeling an onion. I’d like to see Ron Vara debate John Miller.
Barbara
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Almost certainly worth far less now. It’s one of the big mall real estate companies. I feel like Friedman should put a disclaimer at the end of every column that discusses the economy in any way.
Puddinhead
@mad citizen:
John Barron’s the master debater. Miller just works the phones. You could have Ron Mexico moderate.
dmsilev
TPM:
He tried to do what he thought the boss would want, but in so doing made the boss look bad. Therefore, gone.
SiubhanDuinne
Deleted. DMSilev got there first, with more.
Duane
@joel hanes: Trumpov is missing a tremendous chance to sell MAGAt masks. The marks are there for the taking. He might finally get rich.
PenAndKey
@dmsilev: Not only has he quit, but he did so after ensuring he can’t safely go to any bar in any navy town in the world for the rest of his life.
High quality hire right there…
dmsilev
@SiubhanDuinne: Hah!
It may be some consolation to Ex-Acting-Secretary Modly (or should that be Acting-Ex-Secretary?) that he will likely get cheered as he leaves just like Captain Crozier. OK, not quite “just like”, it’ll be more of a “thank God you’re gone” type of thing, but still.
Tony Jay
@Mandalay:
A lot of people who should know better, but choose not to, seem to confuse cynical cruelty with toughness, as though it displays some kind of strength of will to inflict pain or misfortune on others.
I want to say ‘Authoritarians’. I think that’s the right word.
dogwood
@Brachiator: The question we’ve heard over and over for years is “what is the bottom for him; how low can he go?” He’s lived his entire life as the lowest manifestation of his self. Every day since he descended from that escalator he has consistently shown us who he is. A broken, vulgar, vile empty, soulless man. He never changes, so he won’t actually get worse. But he sure can bring people down to his level. And the consequences of that don’t bode well for this nation.
evodevo
@Matt McIrvin: Yes…my son’s fundie religious florida in-laws are among ’em…and they aren’t stoopid people. Comes with the right winger territory, I guess…whatever Trumpy said two months ago, is still gospel with them…and the ironic thing is, both are elderly and one has several ongoing medical conditions that would result in a bad outcome if they were to contract covid…
WaterGirl
@dmsilev: Didn’t seem like he was there that long, but he certainly made an impression.
I wonder how many Scaramoochis his tenure was.
They damn well better accept his resignation.
pamelabrown53
@Duane:
Hah! Maybe the Biden campaign should sell masks: Logo, Biden 2020 and “Live Long and Prosper”?!
I’m always on the look out for campaign gear that’s also useful!
Roger Moore
@Calouste:
They’re really institutional classism. The goal is to protect the status of elites. They’re given easy admission and guaranteed graduation from an elite university. That protects their elite status and, at least as important, lets them pretend that being part of the elite is earned rather than inherited.
Of course this is to some extent a distinction without a difference. Race and class are inextricably linked in the USA, so classism is also racism by extension.
Jay
Ruckus
@mad citizen:
What’s the definition of a lefty/liberal? Does it involve other people who you probably don’t know and aren’t going to try to make a buck off of with nothing in return?
Gin & Tonic
@dmsilev: So you fly all the way to fucking Guam to give an assoleish speech berating an obviously beloved commanding officer before 5,000 mostly young guys with smartphones, then when it is completely predictably recorded and released try furiously tap-dancing for 48 hours to avoid the only obvious outcome. And he thinks *Crozier* was naive or stupid?
Uncle Cosmo
@MattF: This Baltimore Ravens fan finds it highly amusing that the one actual undisputed trustworthy bit of news on Fox yesterday came courtesy of their Cleveland affiliate. (My guess is that Cole & the rest of the Squealers fans here would find it equally droll.)
Jay
pamelabrown53
@dogwood:
I disagree with he couldn’t get worse part. As the naked emperor of his family held fiefdom he could break it over and over with minimal but still acute damage (stiffed subcontractors, etc.) but as president he can use every iota of his narcissistic personality to destroy our institutions and standing in the world.
Uncle Cosmo
At least not without an N95 mask to hide his face.
Jay
Duane
@pamelabrown53: Biden should use the Bee Gee’s “Stayin’ Alive” for his theme song.
Jay
Reminds me of the NHS bean counters threatening Doctors and Nurses careers for raising the issue of the absense of PPE.
Uncle Cosmo
@Tony Jay: FWIW I am at the moment working my way through a 1993 tome by one Peter Gay, The Cultivation of Hatred: Bourgeois Society from Victoria to Freud, vol. 3, which in many places alludes to this confusion. The section on capital punishment and its 19th-century detractors, which I just finished, in particular.
Jay
Subsole
@Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
Holy shit. That is exactly who he is.
Gin & Tonic
@Uncle Cosmo:
You must be a blast at parties.
pamelabrown53
@Duane:
OMG. Too funny and very apt! I’d wear a mask with Biden 2020 and “Staying Alive”!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@dmsilev: It is fascinating to find someone who is such a useless dudbro ass that even the Trump admin can’t stomach him.
pamelabrown53
@Jay:
Does this mean that these unproven drugs, maybe dangerous, drugs are taking priority over finding a vaccine?
Uncle Cosmo
@Jay: Schmidt’s surname is appropriate once even-numbered letters are struck out (Schmidt). “Architect” is not a verb, you cretin – try “designed” or “constructed,” which may be found in a standard middle-school dictionary.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Subsole: There’s a connection between being a germophobe and being xenophobic. He hates stuff outside him that corrupts him.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy:
Subsole
@Tony Jay: I was thinking of another word altogether. Mine also starts with an ‘A’, for what it’s worth.
Roger Moore
@Duane:
I don’t think any song that starts by bragging about being a woman’s man is a good look for Biden.
Subsole
@dogwood:
The people we elect are the people we give ourselves permission to be.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
meanwhile, under the why we can’t have nice things heading, this is trending on twitter
John Lewis has betrayed the Rose Revolution by endorsing Biden, Sherrod Brown too
catclub
One is reminded in the New testament that what corrupts us actually comes from inside.
pamelabrown53
@Roger Moore:
Oh, jeez. How many people have bothered to analyze that crappy song beyond the “Staying Alive” part?
Still, it’s got that ear-worm thing.
raven
@Roger Moore: Watch Rita Hayworth jam to it!
Subsole
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Lord, he goes around coughing on people to shower them with his benevolently superior germs, doesn’t he? Like some sort of awful bacterioviral reliquary.
lgerard
21 gun salute for Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly on his way out
(trump announces Baron as new Navy Secretary after seeing him play with boat)
How many Navy Secretarys have there been now?
Subsole
@pamelabrown53:
It took me forever to figure out he wasn’t saying ‘cowabunga’ during the first verse…
dogwood
@pamelabrown53: I didn’t say it wouldn’t get worse for this nation. I said he wouldn’t get worse; he’s always been the lowest of the low. He will destroy us by doing what he has always done.
Uncle Cosmo
Depends on the clientele. Something ove 30 years ago my dear friend Neil (RIP) persuaded me to come to a MENSA house party. Somehow I ended up in the kitchen & slipped into a low-rent Robin-Williamsish riff. I looked up & took a breath a few minutes later to note that about 3/4 of the attendees were crowded into the kitchen in complete silence with their mouths half-open.
Someone asked what chapter I was with; when I explained I was not a member, someone else shouted, Go get a copy of the test! Yeah, shouted a third, give it to him now!
I demurred, not interested in applying for the post of tummler to the high-IQ Asperger’s-spectrum set. (What was it Groucho said about joining clubs that would let him in?) ;^D
Kelly
Trump believes there is always a shortcut, an easy way out and his stable genius is he can see that sortcut better than anybody. Hydroxychloroquine is the easy way out of this mess.
pamelabrown53
@raven:
Dear raven,
You have cemented my esteem for you. As a Rita Hayworth mega-fan, I can’t thank you for sharing this…and at such an appropriate time.
raven
@pamelabrown53: Aw. . . I’ve always enjoyed it and her!
WaterGirl
@lgerard: So is the new guy that replaces Modly acting, also?
dogwood
@Subsole: So true.
Tony Jay
@Uncle Cosmo:
ISTM, and I say this out of boundless ignorance, the majority of these people – know – on a basic, emotional level, that what their high status avatars are doing is wrong, but for whatever reason they chose to cling onto, be it ideological, racial, financial or something else, they justify the cruelty to themselves as somehow a necessary evil that only the morally strong have the requisite fortitude to inflict without being corrupted by it.
In other words, it’s not really cruel because it’s necessary, and the people doing it are only cruel to the deserving, and not to the undeserving, like, for example, them.
Or they might just get off on the cruelty and enjoy it on that basis. I don’t understand these gobshites at all.
raven
Nouvelle Vague – Dance With Me [Bande à Part – Anna Karina
This isn’t as good but it’s still fun.
catclub
@Tony Jay: If you haven’t read “The Authoritarians”, it still sounds like you have, just with missing terminology.
raven
@WaterGirl: ”
By law, the Secretary of the Navy must be a civilian at least five years removed from active military service. The Secretary is appointed by the President and requires confirmation by the Senate.
Style: Mister Secretary; The Honor”
Chyron HR
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The John Lewis Bernie had his supporters send death threats to in 2016?
catclub
@WaterGirl: Of course, Senate Confirmation is required to become actual.
lgerard
@WaterGirl:
Evidently it is all an act.
When Mulvaney was wished away to the corn field a few weeks ago what happened to the other 2 jobs that he had, OMB director and head of the CFPB?
We need to bring back Glenn Beck to diagram the trump organizational chart
Jeffro
Friedman is trending on Twitter, and not in a good way. LOLOL
Elizabelle
Can we have a ” Bye Felecia” thread for that ridiculous Acting NavySec??
Good riddance
Maybe he can get a job at “My Pillow.”
Tony Jay
@Subsole:
Yours is pithier.
pamelabrown53
@Tony Jay:
Tony, for some reason what sprang to mind is the idolization of Margaret Thatcher as the “Iron Lady”?
dmsilev
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
Wrong way to look at it. They were fine with him until he became a public liability, and especially a liability with a demographic (military/former military) that Trump has at least some vague interest in keeping happy.
Jeffro
“Remember Milwaukee!” is not exactly the battle cry or slogan I thought would carry me to & through the 2020 election. But so be it. Everything we do from now ’til November has to be focused like crazy on making sure people can vote, and vote safely.
John Revolta
@dmsilev: HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Roger Moore
@Elizabelle:
He apologized. Unfortunately, it wasn’t a Captain Needa apology.
Rand Careaga
While we’re on the subject of Tom Friedman, he who gifted idiom with the “Friedman Unit,” let’s look at his “unity cabinet” proposal in context. Here is what he was proposing a dozen years ago:
The mind, it would boggle—were this not the Moustache of Understanding, from which we’ve grown to expect this sort of thing.
pamelabrown53
@Elizabelle:
LOL. One finger salute. Bye, bye Modley.
Just another example of how the low hires are getting lower and lower.
Is this an infinity barrel?
dmsilev
@Jeffro: Also trending is John Lewis. He endorsed Joe Biden today and Bernie Sanders’ online supporters are …reacting about the way that you would expect them to.
lgerard
@Elizabelle:
The My Pillow guy was saying that his website was “under attack by demons” a few days ago.
He has really left the planet
Tony Jay
@catclub:
It’s just that there’s too many of them for them – all – to be moderately functional sociopaths, so there must be ‘reasons’ behind the decision taken by tens of millions of individuals to applaud the performative bastardy of what are obviously cowardly bullies, and, like the reasons people do most things, they’re likely very banal and lacking in any meaningful depth.
Oh, that’s what they are, they’re Arendtians.
Uncle Cosmo
@Tony Jay: Gay’s thesis in The Cultivation of Hatred seems to me to be that European (including American) society post-Napoleon was struggling on many fronts with blunting human aggressiveness or bending it into socially useful directions. With occasional but very limited success – and the effort finally blew up (literally and authoritatively) in the orgy of violence starting in summer of 1914. Gay was a fanboi of Freud as cultural critic, and I am finding it interesting. YMMV
Elizabelle
@lgerard: Demons. Enough said.
Oy vey.
Jay
Elizabelle
@pamelabrown53: The press secretary none of us politics junkies could have named (cuz we never see or hear of her) and the trash talking Acting NavySec out on the same day.
Moar of this.
Ruckus
@catclub:
He’d then have to blame himself. It’s sort of a circular firing squad thing. He’s the problem and the solution, but he can’t admit he’s the problem so there can be no solution.
Jeffro
@dmsilev: no better way for the ‘Bros’ to remove any last shreds of doubt as to what they’re about than to go after John Lewis. Unbelievable.
Steeplejack (phone)
Comments are hilarious. “A nation thanks you for none of your efforts.”
Poe Larity
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Trump_administration_dismissals_and_resignations
Breaks my browser. Would that be Obama’s or Hillary’s fault?
Mike in NC
@Uncle Cosmo: Everybody needs to remember that it was Schmidt who ‘discovered’ the nightmare named Sarah Palin.
Jay
Tony Jay
@pamelabrown53:
Yes. Exactly. Excellent example. She had the ‘iron fortitude’ to destroy millions of lives in order to make a few hundred thousand people various levels of filthy rich, so let’s applaud and exalt her instead of listening to that nagging voice at the back of our soul telling us that, no, it’s not ‘creative destruction’ or ‘national restructuring’, it’s just greed and cruelty and the same old same old…. in a skirt.
Bill Arnold
@pamelabrown53:
There are a bunch of drugs being studied or trials.[1] If found viable, they would fill in while a vaccine is being developed/produced/deployed, is the idea.
If they want cheap, well, NPIs such as increased mask wearing are pretty helpful. And would buy more time for science. (related, antibody testing + PCR testing to find people who have had the disease and are(/might be) immune – science still to be done here.)
BCG (anti-TB) vaccine has some statistics papers suggesting it might help, though they’re kinda dubious [2]
An anti-parasite medication, FDA approved, seems to have an effect in vitro.[3]
And etc. (See the wikipedia page or other such lists of studies)
[1] A very active wikipedia page: COVID-19 drug repurposing research
[2] preprint, not peer reviewed: Association of BCG vaccination policy with prevalence and mortality of COVID-19 (Giovanni Sala, Tsuyoshi Miyakawa, April 06, 2020)
[3] The FDA-approved Drug Ivermectin inhibits the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro “We report here that Ivermectin, an FDA-approved anti-parasitic previously shown to have broad-spectrum anti-viral activity in vitro, is an inhibitor of the causative virus (SARS-CoV-2), with a single addition to Vero-hSLAM cells 2 hours post infection with SARS-CoV-2 able to effect ∼5000-fold reduction in viral RNA at 48 h. Ivermectin therefore warrants further investigation for possible benefits in humans.”
Jay
Tony Jay
@Uncle Cosmo:
Sigh. With Britain’s population housebound and starved of mental stimulation you’d think that the BBC might take advantage of the opportunity to stick a camera in front of a range of clever people and let them discuss theories just like that for hours on end. Cheap, educational and mentally stimulating.
But no. This is the modern ‘restyled to be privatised’ BBC, so instead all we get is the Lamentations of St Boris the Martyr and Top Gear.
This country is fucked. As soon as I win the lottery I’m off somewhere with a future, like the Asteroid Belt.
Duane
@Roger Moore: Oops. There’s probably a reason my career as a political consultant never worked out.
sdhays
@Rand Careaga: OMG – Is that for real? My dad forwarded Friedman’s “unity cabinet” nonsense a month or two ago (yes, Elizabeth Warren should announce that she’s going to install Michael Bloomberg as Treasury Secretary, because “Council of Rivals!11!!”). I went on a long rant of how awful and stupid a person Tom Friedman is and how stupid his idea was even if you rewrote it not be simply nonsense.
I didn’t realized that not only was it horseshit, it was RECYCLED horseshit! What stupid and lazy fucker! Seriously, fuck that guy!!! And fuck whoever let’s his lazy ass keep his job!
Jay
Jay
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@dmsilev: Consider it this way; Trump cardinal sin in the conservative mind is Trump says the bits that are supposed to be unspoken outloud. With Modly his sin was saying the things Trump says in private, out loud.
Trump is merely the next step in the Conservative Devolution, a missing link (no one wants found) if you will.
Jay
J R in WV
@JMG:
You really think Newt G will volunteer to donate his eye to the cauldron of witch’s brew? I doubt it!
MoCA Ace
I don’t know, I read his Wiki entry… seems like he could have leaned into it a little more. Piker!
Brachiator
@dogwood:
Can’t really add anything to what you say here.
I may be on record somewhere as voicing apprehension that there might be a military conflict and that Trump would fail not by being a warmonger, but by being an incompetent failure.
Instead of a war, we have a pandemic.
In this crisis, Trump has failed. The consequences are worse than I imagined.
Trump cannot even see his own failure and incompetence, and may drag us down further before this is done.
Subsole
@Tony Jay: Not the whole venn diagram by far, but I think a lot of people do take a “the world is hard and I don’t flinch at the hardness ergo I am hard and will therefore do well in life why no the existential dread did NOT come crawling in thru my bedroom window with a knife in its teeth again how absurd can you BE?” sort of pose.
Duane
@Jay: After this pandemic kicks the shit out of the USA, maybe we’ll become less arrogant and more humane. Getting knocked around by life tends to have a humbling effect.
Subsole
@Jeffro: I am afraid to ask but is there ANY pushback on the left? I read something by Gwen Snyder – loooong thread about how the dirtbag left is just basically a grifter boomtown that is very soon going to become a cryptofash recruiting camp. Has anyone seen any pushback? She seemed quite convinced the Movement was taking steps, but I am not in that circle, so cannot say? Anyone have eyes or ears?
stinger
@Tony Jay: Two words: Bobby Sands.
Subsole
@J R in WV: Hey, no one said anything about volunteering.
Brachiator
@Enhanced Voting Techniques:
I don’t think that Trump is a conservative (not that it matters much), even though he is a useful tool for them. He certainly has no convictions. I don’t even think you could say that he is a hypocrite who espouses conservative values.
He is an amoral petty criminal who somehow hit the big time. A lot of his venality overlaps nicely with some right wing thinking, but maybe only to the extent of total selfishness, a concern only for his own ego needs.
tybee
@J R in WV:
i don’t care if he offers the eye, it’s going in the caldron.
Jay
@Duane:
one would think so, but history says otherwise.
for that to happen the US would have to go through a period of honest retrospection, hold Truth and Reconciliation hearings, hold Nuremburg Trials for not just the living, but also the long dead so that actual history replaces mythology, etc.
Not gonna happen, instead January 3rd, 2021, the US will once again “look forward, not backwards”.
Roger Moore
@Brachiator:
Trump is absolutely a conservative. You’ve been fooled by the conservative con that conservatism is about some kind of high-minded philosophy of governance. It isn’t. Conservatism is about preserving society’s existing power relations, and Trump is all about that. The rest of what they say is a bunch of window dressing intended to help sell
the rest of it[corrected] that bedrock principle.Jay
pamelabrown53
@Roger Moore:
Trump is no conservative. In fact the only label applicable to Trump is chaos agent.
joel hanes
@Uncle Cosmo:
Verbing weirds nouns.
James E Powell
@Duane:
I’m expecting a massive pro-fascist movement to arise from this. I’d like to believe otherwise, but my post-9/11 memories won’t let me.
WaterGirl
@James E Powell: I’m sorry, I though we were already in a pro-fascist movement before this started.
Jay
@WaterGirl:
you went from plutocratic republic to a kaikistocracy. Pure facism either comes next or a social democracy and reformed capitalism.
BTW, if Corporations are people, how come they are not limited to only getting $1200 in Covid19 bailouts?
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
RE: I don’t think that Trump is a conservative
Nope. Over time Trump has claimed to be a Democrat, an Independent and a Republican. It just turned out that his own grievances fit with the GOP.
Trump cares about himself and maybe his family. I don’t get any sense that he cares about society or has any concept of existing power relations outside of his own ego.
The GOP and Trump are allies of convenience.
Otherwise, Trump is a small-minded insecure man with racist tendencies who has some degree of wealth and who has stumbled into great power. The only thing he is interested in is enriching himself and causing some damage before he bails.
Geminid
@James E Powell: I don’t worry about a mass fascist movement so much as guys in barns building truck bombs and backpack bombs. I will have my fingers crossed Nov. 3, and this is one of the reasons.
Another Scott
@Brachiator: Trump is:
Otherwise, I think you’re right, his politics are maleable.
Cheers,
Scott.