The gigantic lie this pair of clowns told at the afternoon yellicopter availability is interesting, only in the sense that it tells us what issue they’re most defensive about today, and that is pandemic preparedness:
Trump and Kayleigh McEnany are now trying to dismiss the pandemic response plan Obama left for Trump as a mere "paper packet" that paled in comparison to Trump's (nonexistent) plan pic.twitter.com/lsQ8UJUqK7
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 14, 2020
I didn’t watch Dr. Bright’s congressional testimony, but reports say he confirmed what we’ve guessed as eye-witnesses to the ongoing catastrophe: the Trump administration was caught flat-footed, downplayed the spreading virus and declined to stock up on supplies so as to avoid spooking the markets. As a result, COVID-19 spread unchecked, tens of thousands of people died and the economy cratered.
HHS Secretary Azar said of Bright’s testimony, “Everything he’s complaining about was achieved. Everything he talked about was done.” Well, yeah — half way through May, we’ve finally started to do a reasonable amount of testing, though there are huge open questions about where tests are being conducted and on which populations.
The point is, a competent administration would have taken these basic steps before the virus raged out of control — so that it wouldn’t! And I’m going to need to see the contents of those pandemic preparedness binders McEnany was waving around as she praised Trump. It’s probably blank paper.
We’ve seen this bullshit on stilts before. In January 2017, a couple of weeks before Trump was sworn in, he held a press conference with a personal lawyer to address the massive conflicts of interest that would arise when he assumed office. He stood around wearing a constipated expression as the lawyer spoke, pointing to stacks of folders that supposedly contained legal documents that would turn control of his businesses over to his adult male hell-spawn.
Sharp-eyed reporters noticed that the folders were unmarked and that the paper in the folders was the wrong size for legal documents and also appeared to be blank. The folders were props (and the emoluments train has been barreling down the tracks ever since). This is the same shit.
John Revolta
As soon as I saw “yellicopter” I knew this was a Cracker joint. Nice.
Van Buren
What intrepid reporter will ask to see both plans, so that we can compare for ourselves.
Baud
I don’t want to over-analyze Trump’s bullshit, but this isn’t the day after inauguration day. This is the fourth and final year of the Trump administration. Blaming Obama for lack of preparedness is well past its sell-by date, even if it had any merit, which it obviously does not.
NotMax
Liarside chats.
HumboldtBlue
FOX News is struggling to keep the story straight.
And seeing as though this thread is about preparedness or a lack thereof, the Pentagon’s point person for the DPA has been fired.
JAFD
@NotMax: Apologies for lateness of this message, but…
Happy Birthday, and many many more !
Quaker in a Basement
Yup. There ya go.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
Exactly. The RWNJ line I’ve encountered after the “blame Obama” angle failed is a bunch of whataboutism about the 12,500 people who died from H1N1 under Obama’s watch, completely ignoring the far more robust response from the Obama administration, the inherent differences between H1N1 and COVID-19, and the fact that those 12,500 deaths occured over a roughly 1 year period
What Trump and his idiot supporters don’t seem to get, is that you can’t blame your predecessor 3 years in when you’ve done nothing to solve the problem in the meantime. Worse, disease preparations in place were deliberately undermined
The worst are the people who try use the excuse that this isn’t just Trump’s fault, that previous administrations for decades have not taken public health very seriously. It doesn’t matter to me because Clinton, Bush, and Obama are no longer in charge.
Quaker in a Basement
@Van Buren: “Uh…no, ours is seekrit!”
dmsilev
@Baud: Republicans blamed the 2008 housing crisis on Jimmy Carter. Their concept of time is elastic.
Just Chuck
“Coronavirus Determined To Strike United States.”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@NotMax:
Belated Happy Birthday, NotMax!
James E Powell
@Baud:
No disrespect – you know I respect you – but Republicans convinced their supporters and about half the press/media that the 2008 financial crisis was Jimmy Carter’s fault.
The ignorant, hateful bigots who are the ~42% are never going to recover from the fact that a black man was president. Republicans will be able to blame him for whatever happens as long as those people are alive and a bit beyond that.
Baud
@dmsilev:
@James E Powell:
Yes, I know. They have a built-in echo chamber. I just think it’s useful to remember that the key point is that Trump failed, not whether or not Obama did or didn’t do enough over three years ago.
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: More to the point, the Trump administration was notified about the pandemic in January, and other than his people using that information to fatten their bank accounts, they did nothing for seven weeks. That inconvenient truth isn’t going away.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@James E Powell:
Even if it were somehow Carter’s fault (seriously, what’s their reasoning?), Carter hadn’t been president for nearly 30 years. There were 3 Republican presidents during that time. Why didn’t they do anything to alleviate the problem? You can’t just blame a predecessor for an issue that you’ve done nothing to address
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
As an aside, only retrograde jurisdictions with monsters for judges use 8X14 legal paper anymore. Sane places moved to lettersize eons ago.
sdhays
What really depresses me is how much this mimics the lead up to 9/11. We had terrorist attacks on our embassies in Africa and against a US Naval vessel by al Qaeda DURING the 2000 campaign, but that was not enough to recalibrate the W administration’s estimation of what are serious national security threats. They were certain that their Cold War-era perspective was the right one and that facts that contradicted that were simply wrong. They told us this, essentially, during the 2000 campaign, but the media was much more concerned about the advice Gore was getting on the shade of his suits. And then W was able to “Keep Us Safe”TM*.
Here, Dump and his people absolutely did not believe that public health is important. That’s why they trashed all of the Obama (and, to be fair, W) initiatives to prepare for a pandemic starting in China. They could have dumped the Obama manual in the trash and then released their own which was basically the same with different formatting and declared that they had “fixed” the stupid Obama manual, but instead they dumped it and walked away.
It’s more than just hating Obama; they fundamentally didn’t consider this type of thing to be possible or a threat. It’s colossal stupidity.
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It’s also ignoring that:
Ten Bears
The Trump Plague.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
They claimed it was the fault of the Community Reinvestment Act, because Those People are always at fault. He we continued to permit massive redlining, there would be no incentive for nice white bankers to make dumb decisions.
Redshift
It cannot be repeated enough: in any other job, someone who blames his predecessor for his failings after being on the job for three years would be fired.
The only response necessary is “so you’re admitting you voted for someone who’s incapable of doing the job unless he’s spoon-fed by more competent people?”
Baud
In theory, blaming past presidents can sometimes be justified. Reagan did things that have lingering effects to this day. But it’s not plausible to blame past administrations for a lack of preparedness three years into the current administration, outside of the right wing bubble.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Seriously? That’s pretty pathetic weak tea. W was in for 8 years before 2008, had a compliant Congress for the first 5 he was in office
gene108
Can we file lawsuits against Fox News, and other right-wing media outlets for deliberately spreading false information?
They need to pay a price for their lies. It has gotten people killed.
We will never be able to prepare for any future pandemic, unless the purveyors of lies know there will be a price to pay.
EDIT: If we file lawsuits, do they stand a chance of actually winning? Any crank can file a lawsuit.
sdhays
@Baud: Especially when the only action taken was to completely dismantle the preparations that had been put in place by successive, bi-partisan Presidents. They didn’t even invent their own (crappy) plan. They just stopped having one.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Roger Moore:
Yup.
Oh, they had an “answer” for that. We have a big population, that’s why there’s not enough testing and our response has sucked! Give Trump a break, man!
trollhattan
@Redshift:
It’s like a new college sportsball coach promising the team will be great! In four years, after he’s recruited the entire squad. “Until then I have to deal with these dudes, who all suck.”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@gene108:
I’ve wondered if it would be possible to buy Fox News out and run it into the ground
Omnes Omnibus
OT: Twitter seems to be indicating that Flynn is trying to throw his former counsel under the bus. Covington & Burling was entered as an interested party and has now had counsel make an appearance.
sdhays
@Omnes Omnibus: I hope Flynn eventually spends many years in prison. I know that’s not going to happen with these charges, but he deserves to have the rest of the book thrown at him when a non-treasonous/fascist AG is running the DOJ.
Hoodie
I am so sick of this malevolent shitbird, almost as much as I’m sick of the asshats who voted for him. One of the things that’s depressed me lately is there is now a class of commentary related to Covid that argues that we have to design any public policy in the US so that it indulges lunatics with moronic notions of risk and personal autonomy because, well, we can’t shoot them. This shit flared up with 9/11, and now seems to be getting worse. For example, I’ve been hearing lately that we have to give up on ever instituting rational measures like test and trace or temporary income support because Americans simply won’t put up with the slightest inconvenience or imagined infringement of their civil liberties, when selfsame Americans were ready to condone torture, warrantless wiretapping and other real infringements just because a rag tag group of terrorists got lucky and pulled a one-off attack that killed about the same number of people as are lost in couple of days to Covid.
gene108
@trollhattan:
That’s actually a fair position in college sports that a rebuild will take four years. You’d need at least two recruiting classes to build talent and depth, and another year to have them get experience.
If in year four, there’s no improvement, there’s really not a lot of room for excuses.
****************************
There are two main underlying issues with the Trump administration, which basically underpins everything they do: (1) they are a corrupt, and (2) they are lazy.
Having talks with Kim-Jun Un directly, without the usual lower level diplomacy to build up to world leaders meeting? Laziness, because being on top of those proceedings requires work, and limits the chances for a Trump hotel and beach resort in the DPRK.
Same thing with the coronavirus response. There’s no way to directly profit off of an actual, coordinated, response, and resolving issues that will occur in interdepartmental teams requires work and the patience to listen to the facts involved.
I just hope people will point out how corrupt and lazy this administration has been, from former HHS Secretary Price to Interior Secretary Zinske to the Trump campaign team that’s in jail, going to jail, have been convicted of violating the law, or have pleaded guilty to crimes.
I think we’ve grown numb to the corruption and laziness on display.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Redshift:
“I know exactly what he’d tell you, lies. He was no different from any other officer in the ward room, they were all disloyal. I tried to run the ship properly, by the book, but they fought me at every turn. The crew wanted to walk around with their shirt tails hanging out, that’s all right, let them. Take the tow line, defective equipment, no more, no less. But they encouraged the crew to go around scoffing at me, and spreading wild rumors about steaming in circles and then old yellow strain. I was to blame for Lt. Maryk’s incompetence and poor seamanship. Lt. Maryk was the perfect officer, but not Captain Queeg. Ah, but the strawberries, that’s, that’s where I had them, they laughed at me and made jokes, but I proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, and with geometric logic, that a duplicate key to the ward room icebox did exist, and I’ve had produced that key if they hadn’t pulled the Caine out of action. I, I know now they were only trying to protect some fellow officer. … Naturally, I can only cover these things from memory. If I left anything out, why, just ask me specific questions and I’ll be glad to answer them, one by one.”
Those gloomy, red-adjacent authors of the middle of the 20th century may have been shitlib misogynistical tools of the patriarchy and disdainful of the grievous hurtful sins done to adult wymynkynd, but they sure in shit knew when one of their kind and class was off the rails….
middlelee
I just started my Plague preparedness box with 100 pairs of gloves, 20 disposable masks, 4 cloth masks with slots for filters (I have 300 Melitta #4 filters I fold and use), and 200 alcohol wipes.
I’m following the same rules I’ve relied on since lockdown began which I’ve found from reading actual science articles and blogs. I will continue following these rules for the next 18 months or longer, depending on development of a reliable vaccine.
After a week of binge watching a nighttime soap (Grey’s Anatomy) to the exclusion of almost any other activity but bathing, eating, and sleeping I got out of bed Monday morning realizing I woke up in a new world, and that THE OLD WORLD IS NEVER COMING BACK. It felt liberating. I just shut the door on all the what ifs, if onlies, it’s not fairs, but-I-planned, and all the other whiny or magical thinking.
Of course I will backslide and revert sometimes, but the attitude change is permanent. I no longer live in that world, I live in this world. This morning for the first time in a week I read the news and found myself imagining revenge taken by machine gun and realized I have to give up the news, maybe permanently. I have BJ where I get regular COVID-19 news and the rest of it in digest, sort of. Surprisingly, one of the things that has helped is reading about the 1918 pandemic and seeing what so many people did right or not-so-right. “Onward and upward,” as Katharine White used to write.
eric
@Omnes Omnibus: the lord does not like me enough that he waives privilege. until then, his reputation vs C&B? even without facts, that is a loser for him before any judge in the US.
catclub
well you asked; the act that basically outlawed redlining, the CRA
Community Reinvestment Act meant that banks were FORCED to lend to all those melanin enhanced people who promptly broke the financial system 30 years later. was signed by history’s (greatest, second greatest) monster, Jimmy Carter. and this the rational sounding explanation.
MattF
I guess this is a new chapter of the ‘Blame Obama’ saga— that man was responsible for so much, it’s just amazing. And that woman, his wife, too.
gene108
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Me and you and every commenter on Balloon Juice combined couldn’t do it, but some billionaires theoretically could offer the Murdoch family enough money to sell.
Unfortunately there are no liberal billionaires, who are willing to blow money to take down the conservative status quo that gets them huge tax breaks, deregulation, etc.
Of course, if you pay the Murdochs billions to buy Fox News, they could take that money and start up a new TV network doing th4e same thing.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
You know the Patriarchy is a real thing, right?
sdhays
@gene108: I think you discount #3: very stupid. The laziest thing to do with regard to Kim Jong Un was to tweet mean things and then forget about it. But Dump is so incredibly stupid that he thought that he could meet with Kim and hammer out a deal in a couple hours. Also very lazy, but you don’t get even that far without being unbelievably stupid.
Gin & Tonic
@eric: Aren’t they like the most top-tier of the top-tier firms?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@gene108:
Good point. Probably why in this hypothetical it would a good idea to instead craft the network into a liberal Fox News
Villago Delenda Est
@Omnes Omnibus: What really needs to happen to Flynn is this, but DA is too chickenshit to make it so. Flynn has soiled the uniform. No mercy, no quarter for him.
sdhays
@gene108: And billionaires don’t seem to be interested in funding a left-wing answer to Fox. I wonder why….
Hoodie
@Baud: Particularly when they gave you plan that you threw away. I guess you felt the plan was inadequate, but did it not occur to you that you might need a replacement? Honestly, these people have brass balls, which is probably the result of being able to fleece the rubes with nonsense like this for decades.
gene108
@Omnes Omnibus:
Does this help or hurt Flynn?
eric
@Gin & Tonic: they are whatever the top tier of the top tier is. And, while i dont think that it makes the smartest monkeys in the jungle by default, when it comes to that kind of defense work, they are pretty effing competent. (I am never intimidated by big firms just because they are big firms, but these guys are legit)
catclub
Michael Lewis The Fifth Risk, about the Trump admin taking over the US government and ALL the things it does. More depressing every day.
rikyrah
The Obama PANDEMIC FOR DUMMIES was 69 pages long.
Coronavirus appears on PAGE NINE.
rp
@eric: Yes — easily one of the best firms in the country, and one of the top 2-3 in DC.
Ruckus
@dmsilev:
republican’s concept of time, money, reality is not really even a concept, it’s a series of loads of bullshit masquerading as lies and wishful wisps of some of their own farts.
sdhays
@rikyrah: I wonder if Obama had pasted pictures of Donny Dump on every page, someone would have actually read it.
rp
I’m surprised no one has pointed out what really distinguishes Trump’s pandemic plan: a binder! And you know he told his people to prepare it that way. “Show obama’s plan as a loose bunch of paper and ours in a neat and glossy binder.” It’s his standard bluff/marketing BS.
Omnes Omnibus
@Gin & Tonic: Yes.
jl
I always try to look on the bright side. So, I will entertain an optimistic hypothesis as a possibility: the more desperate flailing at attempts to distract from the Trumpsters’ catastrophic incompetence and malice, the worse their internal polling must look.
There must be at least some truth to this, though I don’t know how much. I’ve contacted media outlets complaining that they simply cannot responsibly report absurdities and just think that the public will be able to sort it out.
An example is national and media outlets blandly reported Trump’s insane, absurd and asinine statement that Trumpsters’ couldn’t respond to the pandemic properly because Obama administration didn’t leave them with covid-19 tests. That was probably just Trump’s desperate improvisation to get through the next hour or so, let alone the night. But that cannot be all of what we see. Somebody is desperately trying to come up with Big Lies that will work, and none seem to be working.
One reason is that people are believing their lying eyes, which becomes important when one’s health, life, income, home, etc. etc. are very obviously on the line every day.
How many ridiculous and risible reality show fantasies are they going they going to pump out per week? Hard to keep count. So chaotic and jumbled, doesn’t even work as a reality show anymore.
mrmoshpotato
OT – good on Evers in Wisconsin!
gene108
@sdhays:
Good point.
There’s also #4: Arrogant. This also applies to Bush, Jr’s administration. These fuckers are so arrogant, they do not think about the possibility that anything could go wrong or if it did go wrong, they figure they can bullshit their way out of it, without any repercussions.
CaseyL
Open Threat: Vote By Mail comment
With T*’s crony about to destroy the USPS, the impact on vote-by-mail will be to devastate it utterly.
So here is what states can do: set up ballot drop-boxes, the contents of which are collected by State Election Board workers.
Washington State set up its VBM like this from the start, to aid people who can’t afford stamps. I don’t know what kind of infrastructure is needed to do this – lots of secure, mail-box sized metal cans, very much modeled after mailboxes but generally more square and larger- but it’s worth doing and getting started on fast.
Anyone who is active in their state’s Election Board, or Democratic Party, might want to contact these entities and see if this is a project they can start and complete by November.
Ruckus
As if anyone should have expected different from every single moron in this maladministration.
HumboldtBlue
@gene108:
That works at the professional level as well.
Jurgen Klopp was hired as Liverpool manager in October 2015 and during his media introduction he was asked about winning and trophies and he said please give him some time and if they haven’t won anything in four years well something was wrong.
Liverpool went to the Champions League final in 2018 and lost to Real Madrid but returned to the final (soccer’s most prestigious club tournament) in 2019 and beat Tottenham Hotspur to win the club’s 6th CL trophy. The Reds also finished the 2019 season one point behind league champs Manchester City in what is considered the greatest title race in English football history.
Mary G
New cases reported today in Orange County – 229. The previous high was 156, reached yesterday and May 1. Third highest was 126 April 30. During March and the first half of April, while people obeyed the lockdown, we went over 100 per day only once. Thanks, protesters!
Omnes Omnibus
@gene108: At first glance, it says to me that Flynn is trying to blame the firm for his earlier pleas. As Eric mentioned above it would be to much to hope that Flynn waives his a/c privilege completely, but it is hard to weigh the advice the firm gave without knowing the facts they possessed. I don’t really see how this is good for Flynn.
John Revolta
@trollhattan:
I was once talking to a friend about a band we didn’t like and I said “Well, they were a potentially good band” and he said “Sure! All they needed was four new members!”
John Revolta
@gene108: Freeze peach. Why do Libs hate America?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@John Revolta: aw, come on! which band?
randy khan
I think it would be fun for a reporter to ask for that wonderful plan. Or for the relevant House committee to subpoena it.
Martin
Trump insisting that Obama testify before the senate. Good lord please make this happen.
Ruckus
@middlelee:
Sort of same version here.
Any plans you had? How do they look now? If you are an old, what does life look like in the future?
Yeah plans are never absolute but how can you plan much more than a day or two now?
evodevo
@catclub: Yes. This. I had this excuse repeated to me by a Teabagging relative back in 2010. She had a friend in banking, and was convinced that the CRA was at the base of all of it. She’s a religious fundie and a MAGAt today, and I speak to her all of once a year, if I can’t get out of it…their minds are set in concrete.
rikyrah
Three children are left orphaned as both their parents die from COVID-19 within weeks, eight years after they fled to the US to escape ISIS in Iraq
By LEAH SIMPSON FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
PUBLISHED: 16:14 EDT, 14 May 2020 | UPDATED: 16:15 EDT, 14 May 2020
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8320897/Three-children-Michigan-left-orphaned-parents-die-COVID-19-weeks.html?ito=push-notification&ci=15248&si=733427
sdhays
@Ruckus: Honestly, I expected more laziness. It doesn’t cost much to just follow the plan on these lower level things. The actual hatchet job to these previously non-partisan lower-level functions I thought would get by under the radar longer.
I mean, who goes on a hunt to destroy preparedness for a pandemic? Aren’t there more exciting things to destroy?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I never had kids, and don’t remember being a toddler, but I am given to understand that the belief that if one closes one’s eyes, one becomes invisible is common among two or three-year-olds
japa21
It’s been a weird couple of weeks. My grandchildren in MO go to a small private religious school. The oldest is graduating this year. Obviously, the ceremony was cancelled. However, we learned two weeks ago that there will be a ceremony after all. There are only 5 seniors and they were each allotted 15 guests so social distancing could be achieved.
Mrs. Japa in particular wanted to go. We figured we would drive the 6 hours there, attend the ceremony and then drive back. And yes, we were somewhat concerned but it is a milestone.
Anyway, two days later Mrs, Japa needed to see her primary for a BP checkup and Med review and she mentioned something else she had noticed. Two days later she was getting a diagnostic mammogram and ultrasound. The radiologists came in and did another ultrasound and told her to see a surgeon and get an MRI. One week after seeing the primary se was in the surgeon’s office, next day got an MRI and Monday is having surgery. The surgeon doesn’t think it is cancer but the only way to find out is to have the surgery done.
Tomorrow she gets her pre-surgical testing done and then has a COVID-19 test done. Then we are both totally quarantined in our house until the surgery.
The surgeon is used to having to create a rationale for a surgery with insurance companies but the new normal is to prepare paperwork to justify it to the hospital. The hospital did approve.
Anyway, that pretty much took care of any thought we had of going to the graduation. I don’t think we would have anyway.
NotMax
@JAFD — @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Muchisimas gracias.
Ruckus
@CaseyL:
CA already does this. They use the same locked dropboxes that have been used in polling locations for quite a while.
jl
@gene108: ” If we file lawsuits, do they stand a chance of actually winning? Any crank can file a lawsuit. ”
Needs to be the right kind of crank lawsuit that would find favor with the ruling junta and its Dear Leader. Might work if you can bury some legal time bomb down in the guts of it.
John Revolta
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Jeez, I don’t remember. It was the 70s y’know.
I know it was a four-piece band though.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Interesting ethical bit on AC privilege – it is waived to the extent that you force those lawyers to defend their actions and advice.
jl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Every parent knows that if you ignore your kid playing with matches under the living room drapes, there won’t be a fire.
jl
Heard on the news that Graham is nixing idea of forcing Obama to testify in a Star Chamber. Graham probably understands that Obama is one of the very few politicians actually popular in the country.
Probably a bad idea to drag him into some hearing and try to convict him of a non-existent crime that is made up as the hearings proceed. Plus, Obama is smart and the GOPers are dimwits at everything except swindles and reality show BS that can dupe their tribe of dupes.
CaseyL
@Ruckus: Yes! Many states already do this; I’m concerned about states that don’t – that are just setting up Vote-by-mail, or are thinking about doing so. They need an alternative to the USPS.
Nicole
@John Revolta: I desperately want the band to be Exile, but I think they were five members.
Hildebrand
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: My brother in law was a mortgage broker for Countrywide – Countrywide! -and to this day blames poor people for taking out those mortgages. I always ask him, ‘who sold the bloody things?’ He changes the subject or reminds me of the deep, technical intricacies of finance. I tell him greed is a hell of a drug.
CaseyL
@jl: A “star chamber” means in secret: no observers, no reporters, no nothing. I would not trust the GOP at this point to go into any secret meeting with them, and I hope Obama says no. If they want Obama to testify, it has to be in public.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@japa21:
Oh my goodness. I hope the surgery reassures you both that it’s not cancer, and whatever it is isn’t too worrisome.
Does she have to do that whole thing where you bathe in some sort of disinfectant and have special sheets and stuff?
Raven
@Ruckus: By having faith this shit will pass one way or the other.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@jl:
Graham also said Trump should be careful what he wishes for.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
We have a big population? Unlike China, they mean? (insert eye roll)
Nicole
@japa21: I’m sorry; that’s a lot of stress to be dealing with all at once. I will hope for good news on Monday; please let us know how she does?
Miss Bianca
@Hoodie: I’m there with you on the rage factor. I have started shaming people in my community who bitch by bringing up the Depression and WWII – “wow, how did our ancestors *handle* it? I mean, they only put up with scarcity, rationing, and sacrificing for the common good for YEARS – apparently, we can’t even go for EIGHT WEEKS!” And “Gee, isn’t it terrible that we put all that time and effort and blood and treasure into defeating the Nazis, when all along, apparently, they were actually the GOOD guys!”
japa21
@Dorothy A. Winsor: She does have a special solution to wash with.
Jackie
@CaseyL: I never mailed in my ballot. First, because I thought it was wrong to have to buy a stamp to mail my ballot. Secondly, I live in a very red part of WA, and all the voter brochures I got in the mail IDed me a libtard, so I didn’t trust my ballot would get processed. So, I always drop my ballot into a ballot box at the auditors office. Now, our ballots are postage-free, but, I still cut out the middlemen, and direct deliver. Then check online to make sure ballot was received and processed.
jl
@Miss Bianca: The choice between 8 weeks shut down while we set up amplified version of outbreak control that has worked for 100 years, versus of years of both plague and effective shut down, as people churn back and forth between excessive fear and excessive optimism, and consequent economic ruin should be a simple one.
But incompetent and malevolent oligarchs and national leadership has decided otherwise, and their dupes are all in on the catastrophic plan.
Taken4Granite
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You’re absolutely right that blaming the crisis on the CRA is weak tea. It doesn’t explain how the banksters were forced to underwrite negative amortization loans (i.e., the monthly payment does not even cover the interest) on houses not always located in neighborhoods with high percentages of melanin-endowed individuals, or how the crisis could be global in scope when the CRA did not apply outside the US.
In retrospect, it was a precursor of Trump. When things go wrong, it can’t possibly be the fault of the people in charge.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@japa21:
Good. We’ll be thinking of you and her.
jl
@Taken4Granite: The bankers’ lobbyist, Wallison, testified that evil government regulation introduced a mind virus that induced poor innocent bankers to follow insane unprofitable business practices across the board. The CRA wasn’t so bad in and of itself, but it caused an epidemic of stoooopid among the banksters. So, see, it was the governments fault. Whenever the oligarchs lose any money, it is not because they are clever risk takers and have to take the losses as well as the wins, it is the governments fault, and the government should fix it by giving them more money.
I heard this with my own ears while watching a video of the Congressional hearing.
Epidemic theory was popular with the oligarchs back then.
Anyway, the claim is so sadly ridiculous, it required a sadly ridiculous argument to defend.
debbie
@middlelee:
So you’re hoping the Plague will pass in, what, a week? //
raven
@Miss Bianca: I was poking around and found a book abut the ships on the “picket line” off of Okinawa in the last days of WW2. My old man was on a destroyer the day the war started and they had no idea what was going to happen. The closer we got to the Japanese mainland the harder they fought and rained down Kamikazes.
John Revolta
@Nicole:
What made it better was that I hadn’t thought this guy was particularly bright, so it kinda came out of nowhere. You never know!
randy khan
@Martin:
We could never be so lucky. I think there is exactly a 100% chance that McConnell would not allow that to happen. Not having it happen probably will be a condition he imposes on whoever replaces Burr.
debbie
@japa21:
I hope the surgery goes well for Mrs. Japa.
Kay
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
My daughter says lawyers “love office supplies”
True! :)
debbie
@randy khan:
Shouldn’t be too hard to find. The plan’s filed right next to his tax returns.
HumboldtBlue
What did Obama ever do to stop this pandemic?
Frankensteinbeck
@sdhays:
Someone who personally, viscerally hates the government telling him what he can’t do, and personally, viscerally hates helping people. That this was specifically an Obama program was only icing on the cake. Trump has done his damnedest to erase every executive branch process that actively helps anyone or stops anyone from hurting others. He’s a mean shit carrying decades old grudges against the federal government for it forcing him to house blacks in his properties and stopping building projects because of environmental concerns. When he took office and ordered everyone to look for programs he can axe, I’m sure pandemic preparedness was obviously useless garbage in his eyes.
Jinchi
Is that Trump’s word for “book”?
jl
Also in addition too. I am not so surprised that people get so panicked and freaked out by a serious and dangerous epidemic that they start to do silly and dangerous things. A famous TB epidemic in mid 19th century New England brought back the medieval idea that TB was caused by the restless malicious spirits of the dead, and that could be stopped by digging up the dead bodies of recent TB victims and burning their guts. It got the name ‘Vampire Epidemic’
The problem is that ignorant, greedy, incompetent, senseless, but also malicious and powerful economic groups, and a major political party, are stoking the irrationality for what they perceive as their own interest.
Might be in interest of Trumpsters, since they are desperate for any hope of surviving politically now. For the idiot oligarchs, they’ve been driven mad, rendered infinitely idiotic and malicious by surviving by ability to survive by asking for mass quantity of dollars handouts and getting them for decades. As for GOP, too much toxic dysfunction to list here, even if I could think it through.
debbie
Mary G
Medical supply manufacturer, who is a lifelong Republican, scathingly testifies in Congress about the admin’s lack of any preparation for the pandemic:
Frankensteinbeck
@jl:
The problem is that a black man was elected president, and 40% of the country is now stuck in a state of screaming “Fuck you!”
International Mikey
He’s such an asshole. Just a worthless asshole.
Mary G
@Mary G: Sorry, messed up and put the second tweet in then visual box and FYWP is not letting me edit.
He just hammers the Republican reps trying to discredit him:
Amir Khalid
@Frankensteinbeck:
@sdhays:
Also, and I believe this is significant here, someone who bears a fearsome grudge against him who made the preparations.
Just One More Canuck
@James E Powell:
I actually know people who blamed the 2008 crisis on Obama.
Bill Arnold
@Hoodie:
Even when they’re threatening the lives of others? How is it different from randomly pointing a gun (loaded or not) at people and mocking them, calling them cowards for worrying? I mean objectively, how the fuck is it different, particularly in an area with a high infection rate? In a zombie movie, it’d be head shots by the heroes. In a civilized zone, the gun wavers would be arrested (and guns confiscated, forever). In a civilized zone, people disobeying public health orders would be arrested and confined to their home.
The Thin Black Duke
@Jinchi: I’m sure that if Obama left him a 3X5 index card with the words, “Shut up and do what the smart people tell you to do”, Trump would have been confused anyway.
Miss Bianca
@Ruckus: I’m an old, and my plan, thanks to my new inspiration HRM Queen Liz, now consists of riding my horse every day and having dinner every night with my particular friend.
Aleta
It’d be true to form if they plagiarized their “entire 2018 pandemic preparedness report,” copy-pasted and printed in the last week or so. Why wasn’t it on file during the last 2 years for reporters to find? Why does she need to show us the glossy cover instead of distribute the pdf for everyone to read?
jl
@Frankensteinbeck: Arrival of pandemic put that into overdrive.
Miss Bianca
@Nicole: Exile was quite possibly the most laughable band I’ve ever heard live. One time when I went to hear Heart they were the opening band (this must have been right after the execrable “I Want to Kiss You All Over” came out) , and I just remember the lead singer had this shiny red jumpsuit on and he kept doing these weird deep knee-bends while he was singing so he looked like this large skinny scarlet frog. The only time the poor guy got *any* cheers was when he reminded the crowd that Heart was coming up.
Like “Spinal Tap”, that shit is funny till you actually start playing in bands yourself, and then you just find yourself nodding and wincing.
jl
@Aleta: They are too disorganized to even organize a good cover up. Bad form to do it on the podium during a presser.
We all need to strenuously complain if a lazy and cowardly media given them a millimeter of cover for this crap.
For some coverage (NYT) Trump could scrawl out cartoons with a sharpie on blank paper as he brags about it in front of reporters, and places like NYT would report out that ‘some say’ Trumpster pandemic plans are rushed.
Internal polling must be catastrophic for them to try these stunts that would embarrass a toddler caught stealing cookies out of cookie jar.
After said toddler knocked down the cookie jar and shattered it, then stepped on the dog’s paw, slipped and caught the kitchen table cloth and dragged lunch off and splatter it all over floor, then tripped and banged head against cupboard, knocking off all the china, crawled back to shattered cookie jar and caught gorging on cookies.
Edit: uh-oh, I put the word ‘china’ in my comment. I’m unmasked as a ChiCom Soros funded Deep State Obamagate unconstitutional coup plotter. Edit2: Living off of JoeHunter Biden Burisma blood money graft. Edit3: and Elizabeth Warren Chinagate and Native American invader horde loot.
Edit4: And Bobspongeshorts metrosexual violent insurrectionists
Rusty
@japa21: Keeping your wife and you in my prayers. What a difficult time.
Brachiator
I just got in and listened to a clip of Trump, in effect admitting that he had screwed up, and talking about how next time he would have tons more supplies in the federal stockpile ready and available.
He still doesn’t get it. He is incompetent, ignorant of science, and unable to put together a pandemic team. He was lucky that he had Fauci, and yet still insists on sparring with him and rejecting his advice.
Trump seems to think that dealing with a pandemic is just like buying the amount of concrete and supplies to build one of his tacky towers.
Cameron
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: And if we didn’t do any testing, they wouldn’t be dead anymore, either! Suck on that, libtard!
Brachiator
@Baud:
This is “dog ate my homework” level bullshit. And a reminder that Trump really doesn’t have much in his bag of malicious tricks.
There have been a number of good news stories fact-checking Trump, but we need more reporters simply asking Trump why he keeps bothering to lie about this.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Nicole:
Eh, the drummer was all right.
WaterGirl
@Mary G: Awhile back,when M4 hd trouble embedding tweets one day, I discovered that WordPress does not take kindly to 2 tweets in the same comment.
That may have been the source of the problem. In any case I removed the part that was borked.
Ruckus
@sdhays:
They are mentally the laziest assholes on the planet. That mental laziness gives them time to figure out how to destroy government. And no one before shitforbrains had the tiny
ballsbrain it takes to think that three hundred million+ people can live without laws and that he knows all, which he disproves every damn minute of every damn day. That he also feels that a bunch of citizens need to die, just because, isn’t helping.Cameron
@Just One More Canuck: And Hurricane Katrina! Why did President Obama do nothing – NOTHING – about destruction from Hurricane Katrina?
Brachiator
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Conservatives claim that liberals forced bankers to give loans to “the unworthy.” What I saw were greedy bankers throw loans at people whether or not they qualified, get fat on fat fees, and then beg for a government bailout when their schemes collapsed.
And this was international level banking fraud. The US government could not force Deutsche Bank to be one of the biggest lenders of bad loans in rust belt cities.
RedDirtGirl
@japa21: Ugh. I’m sorry. That is scary.
Viva BrisVegas
Liberals didn’t force the banks to turn those loans into securities and then misrepresent the true value of those securities.
Bad lending practices are less than half the story. The rest was straight up fraud.
rikyrah
@japa21:
???? for Mrs. Japa
rikyrah
@Ruckus:
can you only drop mail ballots off at that, or can mail them too.
Another Scott
@sdhays: Yes, but it’s more than that.
All he cares about is money, especially for himself.
WaPo:
He wanted to break everything, to concentrate power in his hands (to make it easier to demand tribute). He says he knows more than anyone, so he doesn’t need advisers.
And the fact that nobody else made mountains of money running for (and being) president shows that they’re all stupid looosers.
tl;dr – if there wasn’t a way for him to make money on it, he wasn’t interested. Of course he broke the national pandemic response. It’s who he is.
Cheers,
Scott.
middlelee
@Ruckus: I turned 80 years old in February and hadn’t really made any big plans for my future. At this point I just want to survive this pandemic. Since I have a lot of time on my hands I’m working on learning to write fiction. I’m not concerned with selling a manuscript and winning the Booker prize (I rarely even read novels that have won the Booker prize) I just want to learn how to write fiction.
Ruckus
@Mary G:
embarrassed he said? That’s the extent of it, embarrassed? It’s not like there wasn’t ample evidence that shitforbrains is exactly the person we thought he was and stated out loud and which he’s shown to be, the worst of the worst. Embarrassed? That doesn’t even come up the minimum level where he should be. Not even close.
Ruckus
@middlelee:
I’m not that far behind you, I turn 71 in a couple months. I’m still working, trying to recover from the last gop disaster, the recession they gave us because they can’t add and subtract. And I have health issues, last August was the first time in my life that I had to ride in an ambulance. So this disaster, that shitforbrains made far worse than it needed to be, and isn’t capable of doing anything approaching the realistic proper things to do, now this is one more thing on the list of life’s foibles and tribulations.
middlelee
@debbie: Jesus, didn’t I write 18 fucking months?
middlelee
@Ruckus: Oh that’s pretty crappy having health issues. Especially now and especially with this administration. I say, let’s just outlive them just to piss them off.
middlelee
@debbie: Sorry I overreacted. I missed the sarcasm code. I’m still trigger happy from reading the news and watching Trump and the press bitch waving around BS about their pandemic plan.
And now I have to leave for a Zoom sangha meeting. Which I obviously need to attend.
Ruckus
@middlelee:
That is absolutely what I’m going for. I’m hoping for another 25 yrs.
Ruckus
@Another Scott:
He really does not have one redeeming human value.
If you added up all his positives, your total would be zero.
Any drunk, oxy addict probably has a higher positives total than him.
I know a woman in jail for first degree murder and her positives total is higher.