Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It’s all just conspiracy shit beamed down from the mothership.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

The media handbook says “controversial” is the most negative description that can be used for a Republican.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Let there be snark.

The frogs are rarely mistaken.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

Maybe you would prefer that we take Joelle’s side in ALL CAPS?

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Come on, man.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

I have other things to bitch about but those will have to wait.

Somebody needs to explain to DeSantis that nobody needs to do anything to make him look bad.

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

This blog will pay for itself.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

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

The choice is between normal and crazy.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it’s not glory.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / This Fucking Guy

This Fucking Guy

by | 104 Comments

This post is in: 

In the first task force briefing since who cares when since they don’t do shit, Pence came out and told a bunch of lies while Fauci tried to keep from vomiting into his mask. The remarkable progress is that younger people are getting sick, not older ones! Jesus Christ on a cracker.

Meanwhile, a bunch of Republicans (Dick and Liz Cheney, fuck them I’m not linking, and some others) posted on social media encouraging mask wearing.

If those fuckers think they’re going to get a dispensation for being in the anti-mask death cult with a couple of tweets, they better have another thing coming from our so-called free press. Every one of these useless death eating Republican fucks should be getting hammered on the Sunday shows if they dare to show their faces there. Their party is killing people all over the nation. If Toddler, Snuffy and the rest can’t fucking ask them tough questions and keep drilling in, those overpaid, weak “reporters” ought to fly to Houston or Phoenix, head to the nearest bar, and take a few deep breaths.

I agree with what John said below about Republicans surrendering. For year, after year, after year we’ve had to listen to Republicans who read five pages of WW II history compare Democrats to Chamberlain at Munich, calling us surrender monkeys and wimps because we didn’t want to fight the war du jour. Now Democrats are the only ones who’ve shown any real grit and fight in this war against this shitty virus, and will we get any credit? Almost certainly not. Jesus, even this idiot knows the score:

I’m so god damned disgusted I can’t even write any more.

Open thread.

Reader Interactions

104Comments

  1. 1.

    hells littlest angel

    Remarkable progression, maybe.

     

    McArsle* would have said, “give Trump a mulligan,” but her dictionary was broken.

     

    I decided not to correct this mis-spelling.

  2. 2.

    different-church-lady

    Why on earth should Trump get a gimme on the first three months? Never mind the first month, THE FIRST FUCKIN’ WEEK WAS CRITICAL.

  4. 4.

    dmsilev

    @different-church-lady: Exactly what I was going to write. OK, I was going to start with “Why the fuck”, but close enough.

    OK, having subjected myself to McArbleGarble’s prose, her point is basically that for the first three months, the US did more or less about as poorly as a bunch of other countries. But that, while true, skirts around the fact that that was despite, not because of, Trump. What lockdowns and other measures we took were over his kicking and screaming objections.

  5. 5.

    kindness

    Evangelicals are an odd bunch.  They say they love Jesus yet they prefer the Old Testament to the New.

  7. 7.

    cope

    Aw, up pops Megan McArgle and her pink Himalayan salt crusted black little heart to weigh in on things.  How quaint.  I hope she doesn’t see her shadow and it’s another 6 to 8 months before puts in an appearance.

    Following suit:  spelling not corrected.

  10. 10.

    different-church-lady

    @cope: I don’t have the energy to drone on about it, but Brooks coming up right on 4 out of 5, and then completely copulating with a canine on #5 in today’s NYTs was quite a sight.

  12. 12.

    Gravenstone

    Forgive Trump for the first three months, when he actively denied any threat and derailed any response? Yeah, fuck that noise right in the ear.

  13. 13.

    Hunter Gathers

    I’m starting to think that Evangelicals believe that basic competence makes Baby Jeebus cry.

  15. 15.

    BruceFromOhio

    Sorry, Megan, no. No, I will not forgive him for enabling and emboldening the haters and the cultists to send death threats to the people trying to save us from ourselves. And that’s just one tiny example of the world of hurt Preznit Shitwhistle and his enablers have loosed on this world.

    We are where we are BECAUSE OF THEM. No forgiveness, no quarter.

  16. 16.

    Emma from FL

    I was reading through John’s thread below and now this and I.Can’t.Even. All of us sane folk forced to live through this disaster must really take care of our mental as well as our physical health.

    And on the coattails of Mr. Swift’s Proposal I suggest we triage the sick. If you’re one of the anti-vaxxers or one of the “conshtitutionah rights” people, you’re at the bottom of the list. Children, of course excepted

  17. 17.

    JPL

    So I assumed that trump canceled the trip to Bedminster cuz of weather, some pointed out that if he went, he would be asked to quarantine.   We were all wrong.   He’s staying in DC to protect confederate monuments.

  18. 18.

    lollipopguild

    @kindness: Evangelicals have always been about power, money and control of all the people that they do not like. That’s their actual trinity.

  19. 19.

    different-church-lady

    @JPL:

    He’s staying in DC to protect confederate monuments.

    I’m so glad Trump is the one running his own reelection campaign.

  20. 20.

    Kent

    @different-church-lady:Why on earth should Trump get a gimme on the first three months? Never mind the first month, THE FIRST FUCKIN’ WEEK WAS CRITICAL.

    Hell, I’m happy to give him a mulligan for the past three months and judge his entire presidency and legacy on the NEXT three months.  Fine.  That really what you want?

    They don’t really want a do-over because they know that he and they are utterly and criminally incompetent.  And will just fuck things up even worse the second time around.   What they really want is just a PASS.  Because judges and tax cuts and progressive cooties.

  21. 21.

    dr. bloor

    @cope: I hope she doesn’t see her shadow and it’s another 6 to 8 months before puts in an appearance.

    Kind of a shame the criterion isn’t “sees herself in a mirror.”  We’d never have to deal with her again.

  23. 23.

    Mary G

    It’s long past time Fauci turned in his resignation, then give interviews to every single news place that wants him, and tell the unvarnished truth about how screwed we are and whose fault it is. He’s starting to rival Susie Collins in the race for most furrowed brow.

  27. 27.

    Brachiator

    I want the Democrats to make note of Pence and this “remarkable progress” stuff and use it to crush him during any VP debate.

    And McArdle is largely wrong, but I want to see conservatives debate Trump’s culpability.

  29. 29.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Fuck Megan McArdle. I’m not forgiving Trump for a goddamned fucking thing. And I’m not going to read her stupid vapid blathering, either.

  33. 33.

    Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony

    So if those first 3 months are Dec, Jan, & Feb.. OK.  I can see that.  By the first of March, however, you’d have to be a complete idiot not to know this wasn’t going well.

  35. 35.

    Archon

    I can’t believe that after what’s happened the past 3 months, were functionally back to square one with the Coronovirus.

    This is a national catastrophe.

  37. 37.

    Fair Economist

    Unsurprisingly, we’ve already set yet another new record today according to Worldometer, at 41,302 cases, and not all the reporting is in. LA county isn’t in, and a number of other states are typically not complete yet (notably TX, GA, and WA).

    Numbers will drop over the weekend, from delayed reporting, then set even more new records early next week. After that depends on whether people take enough of the proper precautions starting now. I am not optimistic.

  43. 43.

    jl

    I’ll recommend again looking at the World Health Organization European Health Observatory on Health Systems and Policy. That has a whole section on detailed descriptions and timelines of different countries’ policies. Then play around with the cool graphics at the Our World in Data covid-19 section.

    Tell your friends and family what you see. Other countries doing an order of magnitude better than we are and opening up without disaster, and being able to continue being an order of magnitude better at handling the disease.

    Read a news  story about how Australia kept it’s schools more or less open, and teaching, all the way through the initial attack of the disease, and it is doing two orders of magnitude better.

    Ask why can’t we do something similar.

    As I noted in the previous thread, even from otherwise seemingly reasonable people, I hear excuses ‘well that will never work in the US’. It is some kind of dysfunctional American exceptionalism that holds that the US cannot do anything in the public sector anymore. It’s like a learned helplessness after decades of ruthless and successful attacks on the public sector in this country (all for the sake of stuffing more cash down the throats of the very rich) that has resulted in a deep sick defeatism and despair at solving any problem that requires public action.

    I tell them that every country has to adapt policies for its own setting, and other countries have their own problems that they have to solve. They can do it, and we could too, we need to figure out how to muster the resources to get the job done. But, sadly, the big resources probably have to wait until he current oligarchs and con people thrown out of office.

  44. 44.

    dmsilev

    It’s on a smaller scale, but still worth entering into the Annals of “That Fucking Guy”,

    Co-founder of ReOpen Maryland says he has tested positive for coronavirus

    A Maryland man who organized rallies to pressure Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to lift the state’s stay-home order says he has tested positive for the novel coronavirus and does not plan to provide names of people with whom he had contact to public health officials for contact tracing.
    Tim Walters, a co-founder of ReOpen Maryland, said on social media this week that he has had a dry cough for months but it recently worsened. He then began to experience an excruciating headache, a fever and the inability to focus with one of his eyes, which led to vertigo.

    Walters, 53, a diabetic who has had mini-strokes, said he went to a hospital emergency room Monday and was diagnosed with the virus.

    “Here I am months after not wearing a mask at rallies, churches and so on, and so it’s funny how capricious this thing is,” he said in a Facebook video.

    So, let’s count the “I am a shithead” items in just 4 short sentences.

    1. Organizer of a “reopen now group”
    2. Will not cooperate with contact tracing
    3. Went to an emergency room instead of something safe like a drive-through test site
    4. Not wearing mask at multiple crowd events. Including, presumably after being contagious.

    He did not respond to an interview request.

  45. 45.

    Calouste

    @Hunter Gathers: More or less, yes. I’ve run into a few who literally think that everything happens magically because of Jesus (and I can’t emphasize “magically” enough here). So I assume they think that admiring competence means that you are denying the glory to Jesus, who in their minds really is responsible for all successes. Therefore talking about competence is evil, because it denies faith.

  47. 47.

    different-church-lady

    Only when viewed both numerically and nationally. The early outbreaks have been contained. What’s wrong is not the national numbers: it’s that the later-breaking states utterly refused to learn from the early states. Instead of peaking now, they could have minimized their peaks.

    This is a big country, it’s going to take a long time to sweep all the way across.

  48. 48.

    different-church-lady

    @Baud: We should start a GoFundMe to buy out her contract with the condition that she never write anything ever again.

  49. 49.

    Jeffro

    @Gravenstone:  Seconded like all hell here. Screw that nonsense: he left us completely unprepared and then ignored every single warning and bit of scientific advice from Day 1.

    Even Kevin McCarthy is sounding the alarm about the GOP losing the Senate.
    Even McConnell and Dick Cheney(!) are promoting mask-wearing.

    Could be a blowout of historic proportions. Let’s ‘play’ like we’re four touchdowns behind.

  52. 52.

    Calouste

    @dmsilev: I hope Mr. Walters hospital stay will be short and that he won’t need any further care when he is no longer in the hospital.

  53. 53.

    Chief Oshkosh

    This seems important. Is this why Trump is skipping play golf at Bedminster?

     
    Russia reportedly paid Taliban-linked militants bounty money to kill American troops

  57. 57.

    Kay

    Bradley Beychok
    @beychok
    ·Reports coming in that
    @realDonaldTrump
    and his chess master
    @parscale
    are buying television in Georgia. I’m sure this is all part of the plan Brad but what does HQ look like today.

    It’s pure pleasure to think about how panicked they are.

  59. 59.

    cain

    @kindness:

    Racism has realy fucked them over.. they need teh punishment part of the old testment to fight the liberals because well the new testament is everything the liberal wanted.

  60. 60.

    jl

    @Jeffro: I mused in a recent thread that there is a possibility that Trump might just give up on working hard to get reelected. Doing that now would require focus and hard work, and since when has he been capable of mustering that? And if every time he faces a campaign disappointment he tries to solve it by firing people and then badmouthing them, even better.

    I’ve seen some news stories that he may do just that. Apparently musing in front of people about losing. Read that his new campaign pitch seems to be ‘I didn’t have any connections in DC, hardly ever went there, I didn’t know what I was doing. Maybe give me another shot…’

    What approach Trump will take is very unpredictable. But I hope just giving up on working for reelection is one possibility. I mean, if every single rally is not a world historical bigly ego blast for him, then why bother, right? I hope he feels that way.

  61. 61.

    Kent

    @Mary G:It’s long past time Fauci turned in his resignation, then give interviews to every single news place that wants him, and tell the unvarnished truth about how screwed we are and whose fault it is. He’s starting to rival Susie Collins in the race for most furrowed brow.

    CNN or MSNBC should give him a 1-hour show every evening just to comment on the criminal insanity of the day and interview guests who are actually public health experts.   I’m sure he would be well worth his existing salary x 2 and would get huge ratings.

  62. 62.

    hells littlest angel

    @dmsilev: He willfully exposes himself to a virus and gets infected, and he thinks it’s the virus that’s capricious.

  63. 63.

    Calouste

    @Kay: If the GOP has to fight in Georgia, they’ve already lost Florida, and winning without Florida is close to impossible. The only rational reason to spend money in Georgia is to prop up the Senate campaigns, but since when does the shitgibbon care for anyone else?

  64. 64.

    jl

    @hells littlest angel: Well, this guy, he plays on a railroad bridge, hears a few whistles getting closer, and he whiles away the time playing some more. Sooner or later the train will arrive and he’s on the bridge. It’s not the train that’s capricious. ‘Capricious’ is probably not the right word for it.

  66. 66.

    WaterGirl

    @Mary G: That’s where I’m at, too.  When I said that a few days ago, several people explained why they believe it’s best for Fauci to stay in place.

    If we say “he has to stay, he will pick someone worse” – to me that fells like the Generals AND EVERYONE ELSE all over again.

    “I had to stay to mitigate the damages”. Well, if what we’ve been seeing are the mitigated damages, then we are in some deep shit. Which we are.  It feels like Fauci and others are just like Anonymous who published that op ed.

    I think they should have all shown some dignity and stood up to Trump.  He silences all of them.

    They are all failing us, except for the few who have come forward.

  67. 67.

    lgerard

    @Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony:

    What a patriot, fighting to the very end!

    A Maryland man who organized rallies to pressure Gov. Larry Hogan (R) to lift the state’s stay-home order says he has tested positive for the novel coronavirus and does not plan to provide names of people with whom he had contact to public health officials for contact tracing.

  69. 69.

    MisterForkbeard

    @dmsilev: He also completely failed to prepare anything that might be needed after the lockdown, and lead the charge to re-open early that caused so many issues.

    And you know what? We could have done a lot better during those three months if he’d done any of his fucking job. But he didn’t, so literally every state and county had to pick up the slack for him.

  70. 70.

    scav

    @RepubAnon: But, Heaven Forfend! interfering with God’s Little Breathing System, let alone God’s Little Dying-19 (onky the flu) System!

  71. 71.

    Don K

    @Calouste:

    Mmmm, yeah, pretty much. After Capt. Sullenberger landed the plane on the Hudson, there were lots of people crediting it to Jesus holding the plane in his hand and placing it on the river, and not to years of training by the pilots.

  72. 72.

    mrmoshpotato

    Hooray, assholes! Europe has built a wall to keep US out!

    But Hillary’s not President, shitheads.

    As predicted here for months, America’s incompetent leadership has led to Americans being banned from Europe.Looks like somebody is building that wall – against us. Maybe the EU politicians can start lying Mexico will pay for it too.https://t.co/033T0o9tur— Kurt Eichenwald (@kurteichenwald) June 26, 2020

  74. 74.

    Don K

    @Calouste:

    Mmmm… not me. Considering the danger he’s put other people into, I wish him great suffering, followed by a slow and painful death alone, choking on the pieces of what once were his lungs. But that’s just how I roll.

  75. 75.

    Brachiator

    @dmsilev:

    Walters, 53, a diabetic who has had mini-strokes, said he went to a hospital emergency room Monday and was diagnosed with the virus.

    “Here I am months after not wearing a mask at rallies, churches and so on, and so it’s funny how capricious this thing is,” he said in a Facebook video.

    Capricious? I don’t think he is using the right word.

  76. 76.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    @jl:

    That “dysfunctional American exceptionalism” definitely exists. I was talking with my uncle last Christmas and it was something about education. I suggested looking at how other countries that perform better on universal measures and adapting their policies to the US. The first word out of his mouth was “why”. I couldn’t believe it, but then he and my aunt are both Trump supporters.

  78. 78.

    JustRuss

    @Don K: So if Jesus is responsible for saving Sully’s plane, isn’t he also responsible for all the planes that do crash?  Why do I even ask?

  82. 82.

    WaterGirl

    @Omnes Omnibus: Only as far down as it would take to get people to sit up and take notice.  I do agree with lower level people keeping their heads down.  But high level people should have stepped forward.

    Preet can’t have been the only person to see the writing on the wall.

  83. 83.

    prostratedragon

    @Chief Oshkosh:
    Arose just now from a nap to see this. Sheds some light on the reasons for the abysmal failure that’s the subject of this post. Chickenshitler he is.

  84. 84.

    TriassicSands

    I’ve lost all confidence in Fauci. Early on, Birx sold out completely, choosing Full Toady over honest professional. Fauci is a diplomat, but time and again he has chosen to avoid upsetting Trump over openly disagreeing with the complete garbage emanating from the Criminal-in-Chief. Yes, he’s worried about losing his job, but allowing Trump and Pence to feed the country dangerous nonsense is an abdication of Fauci’s responsibility. He serves no purpose if he allows the administration to serve up misleading and dangerous lies.

    There doesn’t seem to be any evidence that he’s doing any behind-the-scenes good. His response the other day about masks was half-baked. Yes, there was a legitimate reason to be concerned that the immature and ignorant American people would hoard masks. But they did anyway and weeks (months?) were lost in getting the American people a supply of homemade masks, while N-95s were allocated for medical professionals and first responders. Fauci and the CDC failed to think through the problem.

    If Fauci hoped to escape service to Trump with his reputation untarnished, I think he may be disappointed. He could have resigned and found his own national platform from which to offer real scientific information, rather than the Trump-filtered, administration-approved, job-protecting diplomatic dispatches he has provided.

  86. 86.

    Brachiator

    @TriassicSands:

    I’ve lost all confidence in Fauci. Early on, Birx sold out completely, choosing Full Toady over honest professional.

    Neither of these people can operate independent of the president. And given the political environment and Trump’s nastiness, if either of these two tried to be independent voices, they would be belittled as sour grape losers. And the official health advisors would always be given the most attention.

  88. 88.

    Calouste

    @Don K: You might want to parse my post again. Notice for example that I say “when he is no longer in the hospital” not “after he has been discharged from the hospital”.

  89. 89.

    TriassicSands

    @Brachiator: …if either of these two tried to be independent voices, they would be belittled as sour grape losers.

    I disagree. And maybe you’ve never seen Birx mindlessly praising the president’s grossly irresponsible behavior.

    And belittled by whom? The Republican Party? Wow, what a shock that would be.

    As others have pointed out, when the well-being of the country is at stake holding onto one’s job may not be the highest calling. Fauci is 79 years old. Retirement wouldn’t be the end of the world. COVID-19 is the end of the world for about 125,000 Americans and counting. I don’t think Fauci should have resigned immediately, but it’s been obvious for months that Trump represents a catastrophic threat to this country.

    What Fauci doesn’t say is often more important that what he does say.

  91. 91.

    Miss Bianca

    @Calouste: Evidently these people have either never heard, or having heard, never listened to, the wise old saw that goes: “God helps them that help themselves.”

    Or maybe they think that just refers to stealing from the collection plate.

  92. 92.

    sdhays

    @WaterGirl: Only as far down as it would take to get people to sit up and take notice.

    People seem to be noticing. What exactly are you looking for?

    I don’t know what Fauci is doing inside the government that makes him think that staying in his job is worth it, but I also don’t know exactly what his resignation would give us at this point.

    Of course, I’m pretty terrible at figuring out what may be a watershed moment.

  93. 93.

    Kent

    Early on I assumed that putting Pence in charge of the Federal Covid-19 task for was deliberately setting him up to fail so that he could be swapped out with someone like Nikki Haley.

    Apparently there was no strategic reason for it.  They really just wanted a dumbass in charge for no good reason.

  94. 94.

    sdhays

    @Kent: Looking for strategy is always a fools errand with these people. They don’t play 11-dimensional chess, or even 2-dimensional chess. They play 1-dimensional tic tac toe.

  96. 96.

    Martin

    @Archon: Don’t exaggerate. We’re not at square one. There’s now 120,000 Americans who can’t catch Covid. It’s slow progress, but it’s progress.

  97. 97.

    WaterGirl

    @sdhays:

    People seem to be noticing. What exactly are you looking for?

    I am looking for people to have started doing this 3 years ago when it was obvious that Trump was unfit for office and was doing major damage every single day.

  98. 98.

    Martin

    @Kent: Apparently there was no strategic reason for it.  They really just wanted a dumbass in charge for no good reason.

    And who else should they have chosen? It’s dumbasses all the way down. Their Crayola 64 box has orange and 63 dumbass in it.

  99. 99.

    Martin

    @sdhays: I don’t know what Fauci is doing inside the government that makes him think that staying in his job is worth it, but I also don’t know exactly what his resignation would give us at this point.

    Continuity. If Biden wins in November, he needs someone inside the WH who knows all of the fuckups and all of the opportunities so he can get on this ASAP. Without Fauci they’re going to wander into a big white box with shit smeared on the walls and not a scrap of paper or a plan in sight. Biden is going to have to run this government like he just invented it 10 minutes before.

  100. 100.

    slightly_peeved

    The problem with what Megan McArdle said (well apart from it being Megan McArdle saying it) is that the main actions that saved Australia and NZ were mandatory quarantine of everyone entering the country, and getting tests available quickly. The speed of response is probably more important than, say, the exact level of lockdown. NZ’s full lockdown has worked well for them, but Australia hasn’t done much worse so far and Vietnam’s done better than both.

  102. 102.

    chopper

    yeah three months from now that shitbird’ll be all “give trump the first six months, the rest is his fault”

  103. 103.

    Jinchi

    Wait, Megan gives Trump a waiver on the first 3 months of the pandemic?

    Nope. He wasn’t just caught flatfooted. He deliberately undermined the response across the country every step of the way.

  104. 104.

    glc

    ArgleBargle has known problems with decimal points, maybe she meant 0.3 months, or maybe 30, something with a 3 in it, it’s all the same ultimately. Anyway as I recall he got the word in November/December 2019 (or, technically, early 2017, and at least annually since then).

    Well, if he were more organized, his friends would be richer – he would be a lot richer, solvent even – and a lot more of us would be dead now, so there’s that. Just be glad he’s forgotten there’s a pandemic.

    You don’t really need to follow the news to spoil your mood, you can just reread

    https://www.justsecurity.org/69650/timeline-of-the-coronavirus-pandemic-and-u-s-response/

    from time to time.

    Anyway there was a wildcat video up there somewhere, that was nice.  And the Stonewall Inn is at least temporarily saved from bankruptcy.

Comments are closed.