The algorithm pushed this CNN report to me on YouTube and it is a ten minute glimpse into the bowels of hell at San Antonio Methodist Hospital. The physician in the thumbnail above explains that he doesn’t have enough beds in the specialized treatment ward to handle the young people knocking on heaven’s door. The amount of labor and equipment used to try to save lives on that floor, the neo-natal ICU charge nurse relating her projection that her COVID ward will soon be full of babies born to COVID moms (it doesn’t pass through the placenta, but the child can be infected during birth) and just the overall despair makes me so fucking angry.
Because Trump decided masks were unmanly, his ball lickers like Texas Governor Gregg Abbott still haven’t issued a mandatory mask order. Because Trump decided the economy was more important that lives, Texas and other states opened too soon, and now the hospitals are effectively full. (It doesn’t matter if they can stick you in a bed if they can’t fucking treat you.)
And this Saturday tomorrow, at Mt. Rushmore, Trump will be holding a non-socially-distanced, unmasked rally so he can watch some fucking fireworks, because another one of his asslickers, Dollar Store Sarah Palin aka Governor Kristi Noem, wants to please Daddy rather than protect her state.
What is it called when you go past rage? I think I’m going to find out.
Llelldorin
Is there a better word than apoplexy? Looking forward to this thread.
M31
And itās not like the āeconomy more important then livesā strategy worked ā the way they did it you end up with a fucked economy and death. Way to go, motherfuckers
Salty Sam
Iāve been so beyond rage for some time now. Ā Every time I think Iāve succumbed to rage fatigue, Ā some new atrocity surfaces and starts the cycle anew.
Today is one of those days. Ā I just received the news that a man I worked with in a service organization in Houston, a loving, kind man who I respected and enjoyed his presence in my life, died of COVID.
Jamie
I watched the back and forth between Abbott and Clay Jenkins here in Dallas and kept wondering, “What the hell is the endgame?” Like, do we think if we pretend the virus doesn’t exist, the economy will come roaring back?
The end result was painfully predictable to anybody who was paying attention, so I really don’t understand what they thought was going to happen here.
dexwood
president Asshole’s fireworks infection rally is tomorrow, the third.
Martin
Never forget that your life is less important to the GOP than Trump smudging his orange makeup.
Cermet
When your nation is founded upon slavery, writes its constitution to enshrine slavery, fights a war over slavery but after beating the slavers, enshrines their hero’s and passes laws to re-enact slavery (see chain gangs/workers that were 100% slavery visted upon all young black males) and keeps rinsing and repeating; then one gets the government that they (didn’t) vote for but the old slave constitution enables the stupid racist the ability to take power from the majority. Better still, with AGW, the world will be going into the shiter and things are at the best we have any right to hope. The future is fucked.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jamie:
I guess they thought it was a hoax or just a bad flu. Maybe they believed that it would only hurt big city Democrats in blue states.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@dexwood: Thanks, fixed.
Adam Lang
“What is it called when you go past rage? I think Iām going to find out.”
Heart attack.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
I hate her, Douchey, and Abbot more than Trump. I guess it because I think they should know better
Leto
I keep thinking about how my accident wouldāve played out during this. I think about all the resources used to save my life, and would those have been available during this? Which leads me to think about all the people who have serious accidents, but because most of the ICU beds are full… did we have people who didnāt live because all the resources were diverted away? How many deaths are Covid tangent?
@Salty Sam: Iām sorry for your loss.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Lapassionara
Right now, in Arizona, COVID 19 positive people in my age bracket and with my health history are being given palliative care only. Meanwhile, in France, life is on its way to almost normal, as long as masks are worn.
Redshift
And his entire party is too stupid to understand that “the economy” isn’t going to be fixed by telling people everything is fine and they shouldn’t believe their lying eyes, and forcing people who have no choice back to work. It would be bad enough if they were just sacrificing Americans to Trump’s reelection, but they’re sacrificing Americans and trashing the economy, because they’re know-nothing assholes who will only listen to people who tell them what they want to hear.
Ryan
You get out the vote!
Ryan
@download my app in the app store mistermix:
You’d be forgiven for thinking the Preznit loved America and was a patriot.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Yes, well a mask would smear is makeup, wouldn’t it?
Kineslaw
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): As a Texan, I hate Abbott and how he handled this with the passion of 1,000 suns. Ā However, I hate Lt. Gov. Patrick and his ilk with the passion of 1,000,000 suns.
Abbott is more scared of Patrick than of Drumpf and Patrick would be fine with every grandparent in Texas dying to keep the bars open
Of course this means lots of people die AND our economy crashes even harder.
cleek
oh look, conservative COVID-deniers have created health care rationing.
Joseph A Miller
@Ryan: HELL YES!
Nicole
I can’t figure out what the elected officials think the endgame of this is.Ā What did they think was going to happen?Ā What do they think is going to happen?Ā All I can assume, is what Michelle Obama said, when she was asked about whether it made her nervous to be seated at official dinners with so many powerful people and she basically said no, because after awhile you realize that most of them aren’t very smart.Ā We’re under the rule of fucking idiots.
There’s plenty about Cuomo I can criticize, but at least my governor is not a fucking idiot; he’s a pretty smart guy, and he seems to surround himself with people smarter than he is.Ā New York City got walloped at the start because it’s the site of two international airports and no one knew much of anything about the virus.Ā What’s the rest of the nation’s excuse?
Kropacetic
Implies a higher value for Sarah Palin which is not in evidence
jonas
That’s essentially what that asshole Lt. Gov. in TX said yesterday — we only have more positives because we’re testing more and anyway, NYC was way worse because Cuomo and Fauci suck, or something. A flailing farrago of lies. In a few weeks, they’re going to be *wishing* things were only as bad as NYC.
NotMax
A troika of cherce alternatives:
Dudgeon.
Livid.
Fury.
.
wvng
WV has a greater than 1.0 infection rate now, but the total cases in our state are still pretty low. I am doing all I can in my area to promote masks and physical distancing so the rate of infection can be controlled and our health departments will still be able to do the good job they have been doing of testing, contact tracing and quarantining. We are in a position to make that work, but only if the community as a whole masks up. It’s all up to individuals.
David ? āThe Establishmentā? Koch
CaseyL
I have been “beyond rage” for quite a while.Ā I am now in a steel-cold place where the more Republicans and Republican voters/supporters who die, the better.
Betty Cracker
@Salty Sam:
Same.
From The Tampa Bay Times:
Fucking idiots.
Llelldorin
My strong impression was that the Republicans collectively lost interest when it became clear that the poor were getting the worst of the pandemic, and are now startled to realize that the rest of the world isnāt impressed by that.
scav
Imagine them, the manly men, looking coyly over their shoulder and wondering (with a slight moue) if this mask made their Y chromosome look small.
How to break it to them that the lack of one makes their entire being look like an ass.
lee
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m pretty sure that was their ignorant thinking. I know several on my FB feed that was their exact thought. Nothing could persuade them otherwise.
Jamie
@Kineslaw: Yeah, that’s the thing: ignoring this just gets you the worst of both worlds: more sick people and a worse economy over the long run (where “the long run” means “a month or two after the little uptick from reopening”). I just don’t get it. There’s not even a plausible evil motive–it just looks like pure stupidity combined with an inability to think beyond three weeks ahead.
Capri
The GOP is stuck in a pattern of reflexive opposition to Dems and the mainstream media, i.e. reality.
So when the Dems said not to jump off a cliff, the GOP jumped off the cliff without a second thought. While they were on their way down they protested closed hair salons and mask wearing. The ground is now approaching really quickly and they are stuck.
Jamie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I tend to assume that most Republican politicians are cynical actors and don’t believe half the bullshit they feed to their base (like they all secretly understand that climate change is a thing, for example). This, though, looks a lot like getting high on their own supply.
OGLiberal
I’d say fuck South Dakota, all of them, but then I’m sure there are a few people there – maybe 1,000 folks – who aren’t lunatic Trump humpers and while they may not be at the event they may run into those humpers so, yeah, can’t just say “fuck all of them”.Ā Given the Tulsa experience I doubt many out of staters will be coming out for this – folks from the Villages (and I know a lot of them are from my dear “non-racist” Northeast region) won’t be making the trip…golf carts don’t get that kind of mileage.
I’d ask who the fuck still thinks this guy is the shit but then I know a 14-year old who is dying to wear a MAGA hat but his parents won’t let him because they are worried he’ll get attacked by some militant lefties, not because they think he’ll look like a white power idiot.Ā These fucking people.
David ? āThe Establishmentā? Koch
Baud
One does just obey Cleek’s Law. One gives one’s soul over to it completely.
OGLiberal
@David ? āThe Establishmentā? Koch: I’m a white man.Ā We suck.
Baud
@OGLiberal: College or no?
Kropacetic
Not too much credit to the MSM here, as they are in a pattern of giving undue credence to Republican alternative “facts.” Reality can only be gleaned from MSM produced news by understanding sourcing and consistent application of critical thinking.
low-tech cyclist
Been there.Ā For a couple months now.Ā You may have noticed.
Is it worth the Dems’ at least calling for Trump’s resignation now?Ā Can we finally say it would be a net positive if the Dems in Congress would do at least that much to make the point that this man has no business being President right now?
Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living.
japa21
OT. Hugh Downs dead at 99. I may not be able to concentrate now.
VOR
Yes, we almost certainly did. This is how CDC estimated deaths from the 2014 Swine Flu – they looked at the statistics and figured out how much higher actual deaths were than trend. Also how Puerto Rico came up with 3000 deaths for Hurricane Maria – actual deaths were much higher than statistical trend.
Not an epidemiologist, but the number of deaths currently being reported are IIRC only cases where there was a positive COVID test and possibly likely COVID deaths. In a couple years we are going to see the stats showing the people dying at home, having heart attacks and not making it to the hospital, accident victims not getting care, and everything else. I predict history will record much higher levels of death to COVID than we are currently seeing.
OGLiberal
@Baud: OK, yeah, I’m college.Ā We still suck.Ā I work with plenty of post-grad douchebag white men who will vote for Trump simply because he’s “good for the market”, whatever the fuck that means.
NotMax
@japa21
I see what you gamely did there.
;)
Avalune
My favorite thing about this is how PROUD the official (sorry I donāt know if she was the mayor or governor or what she was) was talking about how there was going to be none of that social distancing and masks at her party.
?
Martin
@Redshift:
What become much more clear under Trump is how much of conservatism is just ‘this is hard’ and making their whole theory of governance ‘someone else will fix it’, either states or the market or Jesus or whoever.
joel hanes
What is it called when you go past rage?
Rage is short-lived, red-hot or even white-hot.
Fury can be cold, implacable, and forever.
H.E.Wolf
It’s called being female, and/or non-white [ETA and of course there are plenty of white men joining them]; and what happens is a steel-cold (thank you CaseyL) determination to do the work to elect more and better Democrats instead of Republicans, at all levels of our government.
(I’m focused on legislatures, in particular: we need people in office with the power to make better laws and to allocate funds to implement them.)
I can see a steady ongoing increase (in our state, where I volunteer in database support) in the numbers of people who are volunteering as phonebankers. GOTV is where it’s at, and it takes many forms, so there’s lots of scope for participating.
Let’s show the Republicans what a real landslide looks like.
Leto
@VOR: This is at the top of the WaPo page:
Heart conditions drove spike in deaths beyond those attributed to covid-19, analysis shows; Fear of seeking care in hospitals overwhelmed by the pandemic may have caused thousands of deaths, experts say
Just another level of cruelty, as well as showing how everything was shit beforehand.
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
@Jamie:
I think that is true with GOP politicians who have been around a long time, like McConnell.Ā The folks who have come up as part of the Tea Party revolution are true believers.Ā They only accept information that comes from the conservative media bubble.Ā Those people are getting crazier.Ā This is what scares me the most.
dmsilev
@Martin: Triumph of ideology over expertise. Goes back a long way in the conservative movement, but a good signpost was Newt Gingrich getting rid of a lot of subject-matter experts in the House staff when he became Speaker in 1995.
Leto
@Martin: I’m currently reading Steve Bennen’s book, “Imposters”, and this is essentially his take. That they’ve shifted to a post policy agenda. The book sort of feels like I’m reading the past couple of years of Balloon Juice.
Leto
@dmsilev: when Mike Dense was in the House, he got rid of his policy people and replaced them with PR/media people. He’s another signpost of their failed governance.
Jamie
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: That’s terrifying. Though it is consistent with the rash of QAnon wackos winning Republican primaries just lately.
JPL
Has the president offered good wishes for his friend Herman Cain who is in the hospital with Covid?
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Capri: The conservatives are literally dying now from drinking bleach in order to POWN the Libertards.Ā We’re well beyond the Wingnut Event Horizon.
MisterForkbeard
@David ? āThe Establishmentā? Koch: Whoah. Biden’s leading with men?
That’s INSANE. I don’t think a Dem has done that nationally in decades.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@VOR: Also worth noting that Florida has been proven to fake their numbers; it’s only a COVID death in Florida if the patient tested positive and dies in a hospital.
Salty Sam
Exhibit A- Ā Louis Gohmert
Mary G
This is the culmination of 40+ years of the GOP project to deny science and embrace white victimhood. There was a picture in AL’s overnight covid19 post showing a couple dressed up in a restaurant watching two servers in face shields, masks, and gloves put food on a “landing stage” – another table next to theirs, and it was just gross. They are so pleased and happy to be eating out again and seeing the poors working again for their benefit. It’s gross. I’ve spent way too much of my life around people in PPE to find that appealing.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@JPL:
Cain is 74. Not a good age to have COVID
Steeplejack
@Salty Sam:
Sorry to hear about your acquaintance. Condolences. ?
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor: He’s fortunate because he has access to excellent hospitals.
balconesfault
Bexar County (where SA is) … like Travis County (Austin) and Harris County (Houston) … issued stay at home orders early in the game, and some were mandating facial protection.
Abbott issued an order that his word superceded local jurisdictions, and took away the County Judges and Mayors ability to limit business activity or require masking up.
This is squarely in his lap, which he keeps with him at all times.
lollipopguild
@Leto: I read an article back in April that in New York City they were having four times as many deaths as they did at the same time in 2019.Some people who had the virus dying at home but also people with strokes/heart problems, medical emergencies where people were never treated or treated too late. You can at least double the official death numbers and maybe go times 3.
Cheryl Rofer
Here’s another organization I haven’t heard of with campaign ads.
Jager
My niece is a neo-natal doc in Sioux Falls, during the surge there she went to work in the ER, one day after a 16-hour shift, the doc in charge invited the team out to the parking lot, he popped the trunk of his car and there was a cooler of beer, he told them to help themselves. They stood around in the lot drinking cold beers like high school kids. My niece said the topic of conversation was how many invasive tests they could order if Governor Noem showed up for treatment.
Jodi has Crohn’s disease andĀ was told she didn’t have to work the ER, her response, “Of course I will, I’m a god damned doctor, it’s my job.”
JPL
@Jager: Thank you for sharing that.
A Ghost to Most
Mistermix is raging. I smell a candlelight vigil coming on. Or an antifa sighting.
Rage without commitment is just noise. I do not think that word means what you think it means.
Uncle Cosmo
Patricia Kayden
Freaking hypocrite.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
Wild guess that 99.9 was his measured temperature.
/couldn’t resist
LongHairedWeirdo
Re: the title, it’s true. At the same time… geez.
We knew he was weak on Russia from the getgo. I don’t mean we had suspicions, the way the Republicans invented suspicions about the Bidens. I mean, we *knew* his son-in-law wanted a secret back channel to Russia, in the middle of a Russian intelligence operation (aka, the Russian embassy – not always the GRU, but part of an embassy’s job is to gather and filter intelligence).
A Democrat, giving security clearance, to a family member, that was so insanely stupid (even if he didn’t have any unlawful intentions, which I doubt), would have been more than sufficient to keep pounding the drum of “this President is a danger to national security!” forever. Here, that warning isn’t triggered when the clearance is given; when the President spills, then verifies, classified information to Russia; when the President believes Russia over the US intelligence community; when the President slow-walks sanctions; when the President falsely claims “no one has ever been tougher on Russia”; when the President gives a huge gift to Turkey and Russia by abandoning military allies; when the President impedes Ukraine’s ability to fight a Russian invasion (his extortion involved a full 10% of Ukraine’s military budget!); or even when it’s announced the Russians are encouraging the murder for hire of US servicefolk.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m angry about how Trump is Trump. Thing is, I’m so much more furious at the gaslighting normalization of his behavior, by the entire GOP. And while I’m not exactly furiously angry at The Lincoln Project – they are helping – where were they during the midterms, and during impeachment?
Plus, I may have mentioned this before, but the entire Republican caucus in the Senate swore to see impartial justice done. So, they’re saying that if a criminal is indicted, impartial justice means not reviewing *anything* during the trial but theĀ facts expressly listed in the indictment, and accepting arguments that “since Trump is being treated as a king, it’s okay if he acts that way, and treats actions against himself as actions against America.” (Remember: this is why treason is defined expressly as *only* acts of war/aid and comfort to enemies perpetrating acts of war – to keep a President from calling opposition to himself, to be opposition to the state.)
That isn’t impartial justice, and even Mitt Romney violated his oath, by saying “sure, it’s okay if the President uses his authority to prevent a criminal investigation into the acts of his administration.”
What can you do when an entire political party thinks that’s okay-enough, except for Romney’s vote to convict?
balconesfault
@Cheryl Rofer: Always makes me think of this …
https://time.com/4402823/glaude-hillary-clinton/
Origuy
Are we going to be able to reopen schools like this?
trollhattan
Newsom dropped the hammer in California–all bars ordered closed plus indoor dining and tasting/taprooms in certain counties (i.e., those comprising most of CA’s population). Abbott can ponder his dick all he wants, but lives are at stake not pleasing your freedom-lovin’ corporate overlords. You can act or you can be a killer. Your choice, governor.
Our county’s skyrocketing caseload has now skewed young. Bound to happen but still a shocker. Will be interested to see how hospitalization, ICU and death rates shift, if at all. CA still has bed and ICU capacity, but they’re filling up, and thankfully a ventilator surplus.
Roger Moore
@Redshift:
I think the core is that they simply don’t acknowledge the existence of objective reality outside their perceptions.Ā They really, truly believe everything is just a PR problem, and they can solve any problem by getting people to believe it isn’t a thing.Ā They’ve been fooled by getting away with this with problems where the negative consequences are far in the future, like smoking and cancer or CO2 and global warming, so they think they can get away with it for a pandemic where the number of sick people can double in a week.
Jager
@JPL:
She’s 5’3 and looks like she’s 14 years old, she is one tough, smart young woman. My sister is so proud of her, she’s either smiling or crying.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Cheryl Rofer:
That is an awesome ad. It gave me chills.
trollhattan
@JPL:
Herman must have followed his Nein, nein, nein plan.
Nein to the virus is dangerois
Nein to protection for you
Nein to prevention for me
.
Another Scott
https://is-roger-stone-in-prison.com/
Grrr….
(via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@NotMax:
I was trying to remember what that number was!
Roger Moore
@JPL:
What will happen when those hospitals are filled to overflowing with other COVID patients?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Senate Waters Down EARN IT At The Last Minute; Gives Civil Liberties Groups No Time To Point Out The Many Remaining Problems
trollhattan
@Jager:
Awesome! New nickname: Bones. “Damnit Jim, I’m a country doctor!”
Litlebritdifrnt
OT DH (an American remember) just said to me “why would we ever leave the UK?Ā There are so many places to see and we haven’t seen any of them yet.Ā Why would we holiday anywhere outside of the UK for the rest of our lives?” Right now planning our next holiday after lockdown to The Shetlands.
JoyceH
If I can’t help hoping that whoever breathed on Caine in Tulsa also breathed on Trump, does that make me a bad person?
Gravenstone
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The news report I saw failed to mention the Tulsa rally aspect of it. That’s kind of huge because it implies Trump and his entourage were potentially exposed as well. If so, expect to hear about members coming down with it within the next few days.
trollhattan
@Cheryl Rofer:
Very, very good.
debbie
@Cheryl Rofer:
I cried through the whole thing. Those two daughters are our hope for the future. Fierce voters!
Cameron
…and today’s chapter in The Purpose-Riven Life: bus filled up w/passengers at DeSoto Transfer, and most of them were wearing masks!Ā Which they promptly took off after we were all seated so that they could talk on their cell phones.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Roger Moore:
This. That’s also very plausible.
I really hope this isn’t going to be televised. Trump doesn’t deserve the attention, but I’m sure Fox News will provide live coverage. Because of course they would
Leto
@trollhattan: how much of the rise in infection is due to cross state travel? I’m thinking of the rise in AZ and how it might affect Southern Cali.
Surely you’re mistaken. I’ve been told, multiple times here, that this only affects middle aged/old people, that the yoots were Covid’s kryptonite. This is my totally shocked face.
cain
@Llelldorin:
Phoenix level burning – only you don’t get reborn.
Martin
@trollhattan: USC will be remote classes in Fall. I think all of the UCs and CSUs are there now as well.
I would really like to see a national attitude of ‘we will look at reopening businesses after it’s safe for kids to go back to school’.
Patricia Kayden
@Cheryl Rofer: How do you paste tweets in that format? Thanks in advance.
Eunicecycle
@JPL: I read he was at the Tulsa rally!
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
If enough jackals perform a rain dance….
:)
JPL
@JoyceH: Well the person that did that would be considered a hero, so it would all be good.
trump’s campaign is stating that Cain travels so it could have contacted it anywhere.
trollhattan
@Gravenstone:
That pic of Cain in the midst of the #BlackVotersForTrump group is chilling. How many now have it?
Leto
@Litlebritdifrnt: so the first ultramarathon I ran, a large portion of it was up/down Mam Tor, in the High Peaks district. If you get a chance to visit, I’d recommend it. Extremely pretty, some good food there, and if you don’t have to run any of it, you’ll probably be pretty happy you visited. :P
debbie
@Patricia Kayden:
Only the front pagers can post tweets like that.
Fraud Guy
I think the progression is:
Upset
Tiffed
Mad
Angry
Livid
Rage
Fury
Apopleptic
Beserk
Spare (h/t Sir Terry)
cain
@Redshift:
You’re talking about a group of ideologues who think they can fix everything with a tax cut. The next bill will be filled with tax cuts – they’ll keep cutting taxes till this pandemic goes away.. although at this rate it is just going to be an epidemic because everyone else flattened the damn curve.
We’re going to be that student in class who got the lowest grade on the test.
trollhattan
@JPL:
“could have” sure. I’m liking those odds and wouldn’t bother being tested, would you? [eyeroll]
Kropacetic
Good for the youth.Ā They are bringing us ever closer to herd immunity by selflessly exposing themselves.Ā This immunity is different than the immunity any theoretical vaccine would provide and will be conferred to their senior relatives by..
JPL
@Eunicecycle: Before going he tweeted that masks were not required and that people are fed up.
greenergood
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Oh please – am I supposed to be concerned? Let Senator Collins do that sh** – I will just laugh and hope the rest of his buddies climb into the same boat – i.e.
‘we don’t need no stinkin’ masks’
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
patroclus
I definitely agree that rage against Trump’s incompetent non-response to the pandemic is justified. Ā His gross negligence has probably led to the deaths of tens of thousands of people already and it doesn’t appear likely to stop.
But to make sure we’re not totally in a Ā bubble here, the right wing bloggers and tweeters are now celebrating the arrest of Jason Charter, who is the alleged ringleader of the tearing down and burning of the Pike statue and the attempted tearing down of the Jackson statue in Lafayette Square. Ā He was arrested a few hours ago and his twitter page is now full of taunts about how he’s going to “enjoy” prison. Ā My view is that of Biden, that Confederate statues and monuments should be taken down and moved to museums lawfully and by means of peaceful process. Ā But as to most other statues, they should be retained. Ā Pike was a Confederate General (briefly and incompetently) whose troops scalped Union soldiers – his statue should never have been put up and should have been removed lawfully. Ā The Jackson statue, though, Ā in my view, should not be destroyed but possibly moved to a more appropriate location. Ā (The Democrats, for over a century, used to have Jefferson-Jackson Days where Speakers would laud Old Hickory for beating the British at New Orleans in the War of 1812 and for his stance on the Union in the nullification crisis of the 1830’s as well as for vetoing the BUS extension bill and fighting Whig tariffs). Ā Of course, he’s also responsible for the genocidal Indian Removal Act and the Trail of Tears too.
I’m with Biden here; certainly not Trump. Ā But I’m not with Jason Charter. Ā He should get a fair trial, and if found guilty, convicted.
Eunicecycle
@Cheryl Rofer: very powerful. The music is haunting and the words so fitting.
japa21
@Fraud Guy: Where does Furrowed Brow come in. A Senator for Maine wants to know.
cain
it’s just their usual short term thinking – it satisfied a short term goal but they put no controls on it – and so it is spreading into their voting demographic which are older. They never thought it would spread into rural areas.. but it is and their rhetoric opened pandora’s box and boy is she mad :)
You can bet that if that demographic is gonna get hit – that suddenly vote by mail starts looking really good.
Poe Larity
We have to move to survival strategies. If itās cowardly for a Trump supporter to wear a mask, then itās cowardly to go to the hospital.
Kent
AND if they are a permanent Floridian and not a snow-bird.Ā All those northerners living in Florida condos don’t count either.Ā Florida insists that they go on the NY and NJ numbers even if dying in a FL hospital.
trollhattan
@Leto:
Right? Unpossible, says everybody who matters. Still, stuff like this…
Roll Tide.
Patricia Kayden
@debbie: Okay. Ā Got it. Thanks
debbie
Governor DeWine has published a county-by-county advisory map. My county is teetering toward purple (Level 4). I didn’t even know there was a purple in this system.
Barry
@Jamie: “I watched the back and forth between Abbott and Clay Jenkins here in Dallas and kept wondering, āWhat the hell is the endgame?ā Like, do we think if we pretend the virus doesnāt exist, the economy will come roaring back?”
The endgame will be the Democrats inheriting a devastated country in January.Ā The plague will be raging and equipment production will be trashed.Ā The economy will have crashed like the Great Depression.
balconesfault
@patroclus: Agreed.
If we leave it up to the mob to decide what to destroy and when … then a lot of even good stuff will get destroyed from time to time.
Because mobs are … mobs.
Jeffro
preach it.
starting at the top. Ā Or the bottom, really. Ā Doesn’t matter either way to me.
Leto
@trollhattan: I read that earlier today and just… idk, it’s just another marker for me to question the “the youth are alright” mantra.
balconesfault
@Barry: God help us if the Republicans hold the Senate … and make sure that 60% of any recovery spending goes straight into the pockets of their donor base before they allow any money to flow.
Patricia Kayden
Canāt find an ounce of sympathy for him.
LuciaMia
Finding it hard to whip up any tears over this…
Kropacetic
And from day one it will be all the Democrats’ fault, just like it was Obama’s fault we were losing hundreds of thousands of jobs every week before he even got inaugurated.Ā Naturally, under the same logic, the healthy economy Trump had before he did a single GD thing was entirely to his credit.
Subsole
@Salty Sam:
Very sorry for your loss.
Martin
I should add, that’s somewhat inevitable for two reasons:
This is what we’re worried about with reopening campuses – how does thrusting a large percentage of 17-23 year olds into a heightened risk of infection affect things more broadly? How many students on their parents insurance will go for treatment when so many are out of network? Do the group policies we have for the rest of the students which funnel students into a handful of providers cause those providers to collapse. Our student health services are sized for the occasional bout of the flu or maybe meningitis with a large side helping of alcohol poisoning (we’re Ā adding abortion services to that, btw) but nothing like this.
Gravenstone
@A Ghost to Most: You’ve basically ceased to provide any value here, aside from drive by potshots. Leave and good riddance.
Mary G
Kent
@patroclus: The thing about civil disobedience is that you break the law and are willing to accept the consequences for the greater good or because the cause is worth it.Ā Flooding the jails in the south during the civil rights’s movement, for example.Ā Committing unlawful acts and expecting a get out of a jail free card isn’t really part of the process.
As for all these statutes?Ā They aren’t worth building a museum for.Ā Ā Put them all in some statute garden dedicated to traitors and surround it by a chain link fence.Ā And then let them rot with neglect.Ā Make it into an off-leash doggie park so they can get peed on 30x per day.
FelonyGovt
My friendās 79 year old father is in the hospital in San Antonio (I donāt know which one) with COVID. He does not have a bed, is still in the ER because thereās no room for him.
JPL
@Mary G: They canceled.
Jager
@Mary G:
I thought he was selling real estate and flipping houses in FL?
Kropacetic
@Jager: Playing your one and a half hit songs to a crowd of thousands isn’t the worst side-gig.
Cheryl Rofer
@Patricia Kayden: Only front-pagers have the magic power to post full tweets. Jackals get a stripped-down version.
For all of us, get the code from “embed this tweet” on Twitter and past it into the Text box in comments.
Wyatt Salamanca
Kristi Noem does not rise to the level of a Dollar Store Sarah Palin, I’d say she’s more of a 99 Cent Store Sarah Palin.
Michael
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): “I guess they thought it was a hoax or just a bad flu. Maybe they believed that it would only hurt big city Democrats in blue states.”
The correct answer is D: All of the above
Noskilz
A burning coldness, I suspect, but we’ll all find out soon enough.
Brachiator
Coming a bit late to the thread. Busy work day.
I am a bit amazed that this shit is still scheduled to take place. But I guess Trump needs his fix of a public spectacle and adulation from his dumb ass base.
mrmoshpotato
This belongs here.
JPL
The top down message has been non-existent and until there is a vaccine we will continue with the virus hanging around.Ā Ā sucks!
Michael
@Wyatt Salamanca: South Dakota: The Dakota proudly without Medicaid expansion.
Haroldo
@Mary G:
And this phenomenon exists in all varieties of human endeavor these days, unfortunately.
This is the culmination of 40+ years of the GOP project to deny science.
JPL
@Brachiator: It can’t take place on the 4th because trump needs to be back at the White House for the big display there..Ā Ā Making em sick from coast to coast…
Kropacetic
It’s all a conspiracy by Gavin Newsom to ruin Trump’s economy.Ā The clues are all out there.Ā Consider:
At the Thanksgiving parade, the Black Eyed Peas played their new song “Ritmo.”Ā This song samples heavily from the song “Rhythm of the Night” by the band…Corona.Ā A month later the Coronavirus pandemic starts its spread across the world.
Black Eyed Peas are signed with Interscope records in Santa Monica, California.Ā Newsom is Governor of California.Ā Newsom is responsible for the spread of the Coronavirus.Ā QED.
Ella in New Mexico
@Betty Cracker: I really can’t wait to post the “Well aren’t you guys somethin you killed fucking Herman Cain” Tweets
Baud
I wonder if U.S. athletes will be the only ones barred from the 2021 Toyko Olympics.
Leto
@Martin:
Avalune’s campus decided last month that they weren’t going to have in-person on-campus classes for this summer/fall. With the exception of some labs, for science courses, everything else is online. They decided the risk wasn’t worth it. Not just to their students, but to the broader community.
joel hanes
@Origuy:
Are we going to be able to re-open schools
We will because so many think we must.
IMHO, it will go very badly because “in today’s US, there’s no actual way to do it acceptably safely for the teachers and families” is not an answer that many are willing to entertain.
Chip Daniels
I’m to the point of treating support for Republicans as the equivalent of supporting pedophilia; Something so awful that I can’t be on good terms with the person.
I can be on good terms with someone who thinks more capitalism would make a better world; Who thinks that more religiosity would make a better world; Who thinks that a larger defense budget would make a better world.
But not Republicans. In order to be a Republican today one must support a core worldview that has no desire to make the world better, but to inflict pain and suffering on the hated outgroups.
Martin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): The problem I think is jurisdiction. Our legal system is largely set up with the assumption that crime needs to happen in a particular physical place, that it is generally Ā an act between corporeal beings.
We added a bunch of wire fraud laws to federalize crimes that occurred over the phone, for instance, but that’s a pretty small category still that the feds were scaled to handle.
Internet just changes the game so much. You have no idea if the victim is in the US even, or if the video was uploaded from the US, or if it’s hosted in the US. And it requires law enforcement to be very technologically savvy (which they really, really are not Ā generally speaking). So they turn to the ISPs because they have the technical skills to do this, which law enforcement lacks, and the jurisdiction of the ISP is clear, where it’s much murkier (or completely unknown for others).
The internet breaks so many assumptions about how things should be done, and our laws and assignment of responsibility have not kept pace.
Kent
The only thing that has maintained my sanity during the Trump era was our move from Texas back to Washington in June 2016.Ā Ā When we moved to TX back in 2003 it was still a somewhat reasonable place.Ā In Waco we had a good Dem mayor and a good Dem congressman (Chet Edwards) and the state government wasn’t completely insane.Ā Even George Bush was a reasonable if hands-off governor compared to the horrors that came later.Ā The Tom DeLay driven mid-stream redistricting and 8-year long racist rage reaction to Obama made the state unrecognizable.Ā Ā Abetted by the laziness of local Democrats who couldn’t be bothered to show up in non-Presidential election years.Ā Chet Edwards defeat in the 2010 mid-terms was an eye-opening experience.Ā Waco turned into a sea of white racist anti-Obama tea party rage and one of the best Congressmen I have ever had went down to a 37-62 defeat to a tea party hack.
Living under a Democratic governor and state legislature is the only thing that has kept my sanity during the time of Trump.Ā I think I’d be a toxic mess of rage and fury if we still lived in Texas today and were watching first-hand what is happening.
patroclus
@Kent: There are plenty existing museums that can handle the traitor statues – no need to spend money on building new ones. Ā My Mom used to volunteer at a museum in my old hometown in Texas that never got any visitors – because their funding depended on visitor count, they would always (politely) ask me to sign the register every time I went to pick her up so as to juice the count. Ā A John Bell Hood statue there might actually draw some people (and they would benefit from the in context presentation of his traitorhood).
An example of a Confederate memorial that should not come down is the monument to the county’s Civil War dead on the courthouse lawn there. Ā It’s very small, but it lists the names of the county citizens who lost their lives. Ā There are similar (and larger) monuments for the war dead for the Spanish-American War, WWI, WWII, Korea, Vietnam and the recent Mid-east wars as well. Ā And if someone does want it taken down, they should do what Mississippi just did with their flag – listen to the SEC and do what they say lawfully.
joel hanes
@Wyatt Salamanca:
99 Cent Store
Five and dime — like the Woolworths and Ben Franklin chains.Ā Pretty much an extinct category in US retail, AFAICT.
I remember paying the enormous sum of $4.99 for the Who’s Tommy from the record rack at Woolworth’s when it first came out.
Redshift
@dexwood: He’s back in DC for the 4th to have another Dear Leader event and fireworks display that the local community doesn’t want. He’s trying to do a replay of last year, only for some mysterious reason he’s only going to “attend” via video. Yet another round of “come out and infect each other for my pleasure while I stay safe from the virus I’m denying!”
It’s also supposed to be “the biggest fireworks display ever,” which means like last year, there will be no artistry to it, they’ll just be firing off shells as fast as they can, to get “the most” (which will still be a lie.)
Subsole
@Leto: Nope. If you were critical, you would have been fucked. They would have stabilized you and rolled you out the door posthaste.
If you were NOT critical, you would have been IMMEDIATELY fucked. Triaged out. Do not pass go.
@Kineslaw:Ā I seriously wonder if him and Abbott aren’t getting off on this. Power of life and death ain’t much if you don’t get to kill every now and then…
D Gardner
@CaseyL: I second that emotion. I have lost any empathy now for these people, because for many of them, the ONLY thing that makes them STFU and listen is direct personal tragedy, and even then, they will resist the evidence that is lying in a coffin in front of them.
Kent
Well, to be fair he did walk into the hot zone voluntarily.Ā And I expect he refused to wear a mask in deference to his fuhrer.
joel hanes
@Kent:
Before the Rs drove down Gronstal and got the trifecta in Iowa, I had planned to move back to my Iowa hometown on retirement.Ā Ā Now some of the people with whom I’d envisioned haning out have proved to be Trumpists, and the Gov and Leg are flushing Iowa’s good-government and educational legacies.Ā Ā I’m staying in sane blue California for the foreseeable future.
D Gardner
@Patricia Kayden: Yep, fuck him and fuck every fucking asshole who thinks it’s a joke.
Subsole
@jonas: No, no they won’t.
They should, but they won’t.
I can think of some things that might change that, but I don’t want our gracious hosts to end up on a list.
LuciaMia
@Brachiator: The morons coming to this virus-party probably think, “But we’ll be outside, in the open air. Perfectly safe!”
mrmoshpotato
As I said earlier today, the nominee this year is bepenised.
Subsole
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Mostly this. These folks have been brainwashed.
NotMax
@patroclus
While not applicable to every case nor in every locale, as a concept for consideration it ain’t half bad:
A Lesson From Eastern Europe on How to Deal with Problematic Statues .
Kent
Honestly I think they are just cynically happy to use any means to hold power over the rubes in order to further enrich themselves and their cronies.Ā In oil, construction, real estate, and things like looting the state pension funds.Ā Always follow the money.
Brachiator
@Martin:
RE:
@trollhattan: Our countyās skyrocketing caseload has now skewed young.
Yep. You remove nursing home patients, particularly those with underlying health issues, and that leaves a whole ‘nuther chunk of the population to get infected. But dopes stupidly believed that once this group was eliminated, that meant that the virus might magically disappear.
This is only partly true. There are tons of businesses that require some face-to-face contact or which cannot easily be adapted to remote work. For example, I know a guy with a landscaping business that was shut down. Real estate agents, dentists, and huge chunks of the economy.
I guess the restaurant industry is a service industry in a broad sense, but not everyone in it is young.Ā Younger, maybe.
Having more people circulate through society, just doing what people do, is tricky to deal with.
A significant number of new cases, and deaths, are due to community spread. This includes young people hanging out together, ignoring social distance recommendations and not wearing masks, and also families and friends who previously stayed in their separate residences, now getting together.
In contradiction to Governor Newsom’s recent orders, I think that people might be somewhat safer going to the beach and to restaurants than staying at home over the holiday weekend, especially if they try to have parties or Fourth of July celebrations with families and friends.
Schools and colleges resuming present a somewhat similar challenge because it is difficult to enforce social distance rules or limit the number of people students interact with. I note that in the UK they keep trying to use discrete social bubbles to try to limit social contact. But it is difficult to test the effectiveness of these strategies.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Roger Moore: Well, there’s that, plus, a lot of people, in a lot of parts of the country, haven’t been too directly affected, so it’s easier to believe it’s not a big deal, except in cities.
Which is to say, in a lot of parts of the country, it’s still possible to hear “IT’S JUST THE FLU!!!” and not immediately reject it as “how could anyone be that stupid?”
There’s another factor in play, too, I believe. The Republican Party has been preaching that liberals are always wrong about everything, since at least Gingrich’s GOPAC memo. They’ve also been stewing in actually-fake news that supports that delusion, like “OMG, after 8 weeks of lockdown, people are going to get addicted to drugs, and die of overdoses, or commit suicide!” which, to me, sounds like they think America is a bunch of pansies.
Even if you’re not one of the rubes, who believe that Trump is doing grand and holy work, if you never get information that challenges your world view; or worse, if you do, andĀ reject it because it doesn’t fit your world view; it’s hard to realize just how wrong you’ve been, for how long.
And I bet winger media is still making claims that it’s no big deal. I see bunches of tweets to the effect of “hah! Quit whining about new *cases* because there are only *hundreds* of needless deaths per day, instead of *thousands*.” That type of stupidity doesn’t occur by accident.
joel hanes
@Redshift:
If we ever get out of this bad place, I’d invite anyone who loves good fireworks to plan to attend the once-every-four-years* convention of the Pyrotechnics Guild International at the North Iowa Event Center (formerly the fairgrounds).Ā Ā The final night, you sit in bleachers and watch three top-end choreographed commercial fireworks displays, back to back, right in front of you.Ā Ā Earplugs required.
The last one I saw, I laughed out loud in suprise and astonishment several times.
—
* They have a convention every year, but rotate through venues in four different states.
NotMax
@mrmoshpotato
I believe the more common usage is beschlonged.
:)
Brachiator
@LuciaMia:
No, these morons were probably doing everything they could to get the virus, including breathing directly into each other’s faces.
Leto
@Subsole:
Considering I had multiple pieces of my pelvis sticking through me, as well as my parts of my right leg poking through… not sure about rolling, but maybe a nice gentle gurney push…
Just Chuck
@D Gardner: “You made your bed, now die in it.”
trollhattan
@Mary G:
“…perform for thousands”?
As if.
Leto
@joel hanes: That sounds amazing, and def another thing I’d love to see.
Ohio Mom
My memory of Mt. Rushmore is a little hazy, my visit was almost thirty years ago.
I remember it is in the middle of nowhere, off a small mountain road. I assume Trump will be helicoptered in and out but everyone else is going to sit through a long, long traffic jam at the end of the festivities. It will take them longer to get to the main road than the fireworks lasted.
The viewing area is relatively small, which I guess will make the crowd (such as it is) look larger. Squished in, there will be no way to socially distance.
The viewing area is small because tourists donāt linger. They walk to the viewing platform from the parking lot, gawk momentarily, try to take a silly photo where their traveling companionās head is lined up with presidentsā, maybe stop to use the bathroom and buy a postcard, and thatās it.
Anyway, I like fireworks but this sounds like a dreadful event. Worthy of anyone who decides to attend.
Mike in NC
@Litlebritdifrnt: We had the good fortune to visit the Shetlands, the Orkneys, and a slew of other memorable places last August when we cruised the UK. Seems like 100 years have passed.
mad citizen
@joel hanes: “I remember paying the enormous sum of $4.99 for the Whoās Tommy from the record rack at Woolworthās when it first came out.”
Joel, I call that a “bargain, the best I ever had”.Ā Curiosity got the better of me: 4.99 in 1969 would be $34.86 in today’s dollars (usinflationcalculator.com).Ā Yet a new vinyl copy of Tommy can be purchased on amazon for $26.99.Ā Progress!
Cameron
@Mary G: Thousands of what?
Brachiator
@LongHairedWeirdo:
The crazy thing is how these idiots conflated “liberals are always wrong” with a disregard for science. I mentioned a while back reading a description of the episode of a conservative podcast mention how angry they were with “so-called” experts. I kept wondering what the alternative to experts were.
And, not having “God’s will” to fall back on, these people tried to substitute “free-dumb and the Constitution.”
Isolation is tough.Ā Read the 19th century diaries of pioneers in homesteads separated from other families, or shut in all winter.
They called it cabin fever for a reason. It is also tough to insist on an open-ended lockdown, especially in the summer.Ā And it’s not just America.Ā The UK has seen people defy rules and common sense and rush to the beach.
Ella in New Mexico
@Kent: True.
But you’d think that him being the 75 year-old co-chair of “Black Voices for Trump” at would mean they’d be smart enough to treat him like a friggin Faberge egg while dragging him to these COVID infested Trump events and make him wear a mask.
I mean, there really aren’t that many Black folks Trump’s team can afford to sacrifice for the economy right now.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Brachiator:
Luckily, Hamilton is streaming on Disney + tomorrow. I signed up for a month to see it.
raven
@joel hanes:
Nanci Griffith Love at the Five and Dime
”
Rita was sixteen years
Hazel eyes and chestnut hair
She made the Woolworth counter shine
And Eddie was a sweet romancer
And a darn good dancer
And they waltzed the aisles of the five and dime”
mrmoshpotato
@Uncle Cosmo: Wow.Ā Bravo!
debbie
@Ohio Mom:
I think they’re also worried about the possibility of wildfires
Brachiator
@Fraud Guy:
Looks about right.Ā Thanks for this.
NotMax
@mad citizen
What a rip-off – when it was $4.98 at the record store across town!
;)
Redshift
@patroclus:
And possibly pardoned, if he was only vigorously prosecuted because of political pressure from the president.
I don’t think the situation on the statues is quite that black and white, as it were. Jamelle Bouie had a good piece on the Confederate statue in Charlottesville. It was put up essentially to celebrate the victory of white supremacy. When it was put up in 1924, the city was 28% black, but only one percent voted, so
I’m not saying it’s right, but there’s a whole lot of things in this country where “you should really have done things the right way” means “accept this is probably never going to happen.”Ā Way more Confederate statues have come down quickly because the people who like them (and the people who don’t but don’t feel any urgency) are afraid they’re going to be destroyed than just because public opinion shifted.
raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Did you see his tweet where he gave two fucks so it could be on Disney?
Raoul
My partner’s father is scheduled to have not-really-all-that-‘elective’ hip replacement surgery in metro Milwaukee at the beginning of August. He’s had some health problems up to now, but this hip thing has rather rapidly put him in need of a wheel chair for most of the day each day.
It’s elective in the sense that it isn’t immediately life threatening to postpone it, and he won’t literally die of the pain and loss of mobility, though those factors may shorten his life if not addressed.
If all these maskless mfers mean that he has to reschedule, it will really, really suck. For him, for his wife, and for the circle of care that needs to help them manage in the interim.
And if he contracts Covid at the hospital, or while convalescing, it’ll almost certainly be fatal for him. But people feel the inalienable urge to drink alcohol indoors, so whadayagonnado?
cain
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Hey now, I’m only 51!
Martin
@Brachiator: That’s basically what I’m working on now. Turn the university from this giant spider web of interactions to between 1000-2000 small communities that are structurally isolated from each other, and we treat them like adults and tell them there are consequences to breaking social distance rules, and trust they will follow those rules as if they were at home.
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Oh, that should be a blast.
Some friends who got to see a performance in London still rave about it.
Ella in New Mexico
@Brachiator:
7500 people received tickets for this thing? Being held 30 miles from Rapid city out in the middle of Nowhere Fuck, South Dakota?
Ok, what are the odds that the Teens of TIc Tok have struck again? Please God, once again be the Happy Trickster we know and love…
Martin
@Brachiator: I Ā remind Ms. Martin that she did a combined 10 months of bed rest for the sake of the health of her children.
This is a cakewalk.
Ohio Mom
Mad Citizen @ 180:
In 1966, at ten years old, on my way home from the grocery store, I spent the change on a $4.99 Monkees album. Your inflation calculator result helps me understand why my single mom was so angry at me.
Itās Ohio Sonās now, so at least itās gotten a lot of use.
TriassicSands
I think that Trump, a universally known idiot, gets too much credit/blame for the recent surges in COVID-19 cases. He’s been a complete failure from the beginning, but his incompetence is so obvious that no sane person would pay any attention to him. Republicans are not sane people.
I’m afraid that the same people who are responsible for putting Trump in office, where he could wreck the world, are to blame for the spikes in the pandemic. The voters. They’re the ones who ignore the admittedly too weak guidance of the federal health experts (Fauci and Birx), but who also refuse to heed the warnings — often much stronger — of state and local public health officials. They whine about their “constitutional rights” while dispensing with common sense and basic human decency and knowingly threaten the health and lives of their fellow citizens.
hueyplong
@Ella in New Mexico: Current Republicans treating any dark-skinned person like a Faberge egg?Ā You owe me a new keyboard.
Current Republicans will use satellite technology to protect the sanctity of Confederate statues, but Herman F-ing Cain is as expendable as a found-on-the-floor mask at a Vanilla Ice concert in Texas.
NotMax
@Dorothy A. Winsor
Something to peruse afterward (if for no other reason than it contains spoilers).
Fact-checking āHamiltonā the musical
Sidebar: Noticed that Disney+ has already announced a subscription price increase.
germy
The Moar You Know
@LongHairedWeirdo:Ā Hoping that we would find the will to get down and fight like the only alternative was our deaths.Ā We didn’t.Ā And, well, now that’s where we are.Ā Having to rely on Republicans to do the messaging that we won’t, because at this point the alternative is that a lot of us die.
They got tired of waiting.Ā I am VERY tired of waiting.Ā Democrats need to rediscover a will to win at any cost.Ā I said any and meant ANY.Ā On my personal level, I can’t continue to back a party that won’t fight.Ā The stakes at this point are our lives.Ā And to put a point on it…my life.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Patricia Kayden: Of course, it goes without saying it would be the Black guy in Trump’s circle who gets it first.
Raoul
@Brachiator: I am well aware of my own isolation-induced crabbiness and more. And we have taken advantage of some of the opportunities of summer to have some physically distant socialization (outdoors only: On a friends long, skinny screen front porch, at another friends cabin dock, at our HOA pool, etc).
I think it’s been a bit misplaced to have so many people go off on beaches. Outdoors activity can be managed with low (not zero , of course) risk.
The key would have been to set guidelines that would be decently followable. Family groups only, or if with friends, maintain greater than 6 foot separation on the beach, take separate vehicles, etc. Do not go to a bar afterwards!
Plan your beach trips on days that are less likely to be busy, and/or at less busy times. WFH-ers in particular could take a weekday morning off to spend 2hrs on the beach and swimming.
In stead we got a government message of: Go for it! Beach blanket bingo! And we got concern trolling that beaches were deadly, when it’s the bars and restaurants of people doing daytrips or long weekends away that are much more of the risk.
I know a lot of people in this country are dumb. So three step style instructions are probably a pipe dream. But we should be talking about risk mitigation strategies that allow some level of activity, entertainment, and social connection, but that absolutely nuke the high-risk choices.
That requires leadership, belief in science and belief in people’s ability to comply. All three of those are, I still maintain, possible.
hueyplong
@germy: Not quite Instant Karma, but one day is a pretty quick turnaround.
Redshift
@Brachiator:
I think there was also an element of “science tells us that businesses doing whatever they want to make money can hurt us” that had to be rejected.
But yeah, once they got to defining “bias” in media and academia as “anything that contradicts conservative orthodoxy,” science was doomed. It’s a chicken-and-egg problem of exactly which part came first, though.
mad citizen
@Ohio Mom:Ā Ā “Itās Ohio Sonās now, so at least itās gotten a lot of use.”Ā I’ll say!Ā Using 54 years that’s 9.2 cents per year.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@patroclus:
That’s all fine and dandy if the government isn’t minority rule
JMG
The Covid-19 parties story smells like bullshit to me. Second-hand information attributed to unnamed fire officials. No quotes, not even anonymous ones, from college kids claiming or denying they’d been to such a party..
I went to Mt. Rushmore 50 years ago. I found it an intensely boring, if short, experience.
Brachiator
@Martin:
This has got to be a hell of a challenge. Good luck with it.
I have been looking at a BBC News story on UK plans for lower level schools. Central to their scheme is putting students into social bubbles.
But I can easily see younger students testing the limits of these bubbles, and college students quickly violating them.
Also, are you going to have regular testing?
And you also have to have a regime for teachers and service and support staff.
ETA: I was a little dismayed about a local news story about an outbreak of cases at a Trader Joe’s in Monrovia California. Five employees tested positive. This is not a huge number, but food markets have been trying to do a huge job in creating a safe environment for employees and customers. And still you get outbreaks.
Another Scott
@trollhattan: OTOH…
+1
Cheers,
Scott.
Wyatt Salamanca
@joel hanes:
To this day, it still remains my favorite album.
Last summer, WXPN aired the entire Woodstock Festival from start to finish, including all the stage announcements in as close to real time as was possible and listening to the Whoās set was a transcendent experience.
low-tech cyclist
@FelonyGovt: That’s truly awful.Ā I’m so sorry to hear that.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@germy:
W-was he in the hospital receiving treatment when he tweeted that out!?
Baud
@Another Scott:
I hate when Fuck Parties are portrayed as something sinister.
germy
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):Ā I think he found out after the first tweet.
Patricia Kayden
Twisted Sister has figured things out.
Martin
Contact tracers are issuing subpoenas to get compliance. $2000/day penalty for not complying.
That’s more like it.
Wyatt Salamanca
@hueyplong:
We all shine on.
Salty Sam
Re: many comments here about what conservatism has done to make Texas such a miserable place…
I mentioned in my āOn The Roadā piece this morning how, as a born ān bred lifelong Texan, I so enjoyed the two years we spent in Salem MA refitting our boat. My wife and I came up with the catch-phrase, āSo THIS is what itās like to live in a Liberal Hell-hole!ā
It breaks my heart to see what Texas has become in the last quarter century. I have friends and family there that I have no desire to maintain contact.
Subsole
@OGLiberal:Ā Good for which market? Like, what is their field?
Or does “good for market = bad for my preferred cultural boogeyman”?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@germy:
Well, that’s darkly funny, then.
I really do hope Cain pulls through and learns something from this
Subsole
@joel hanes:Ā I am posting that on my fucking wall.
Brachiator
@Raoul:
Yes! Yes! Yes!
Great practical observations.
We needed something that was not the either/or of “go to the beach and ignore the rules, dammit!” and California Governor Newsom’s “I am shutting down all the beaches again.”
Health authorities are doing the best they can, but I don’t think that they have been explaining community spread well to ordinary people or providing simple-to-understand guidance.
But some of the recent cases here in Southern California were the result of friends and families getting together and wrongly thinking that they could safely mix with each other and be inside in large family groups without masks or social distancing. This included being inside homes or going to restaurants and picnics.
Martin
Mask order for Texas. So much for ‘we’re better than California’.
Jager
@Ella in New Mexico:
I knew a girl from Rapid City in college, she said the only way to see Mt. Rushmore is at night when it’s closed and there’s a full moon.
Just Chuck
I remember going to Mt. Rushmore 30 years ago or so.Ā Viewing area was further away than I expected.Ā I was expecting to look up Washington’s nose.
dmsilev
Is our Texans learning?
Brachiator
@germy:
Oh man, Karma is working overtime, following right behind the virus.
Martin
@Brachiator:
You can’t have 3000 county authorities giving that advice. It doesn’t work. You need one person, authorized by the President, with a national stage, who can give clear consistent direction. And they have fucked that up so badly, I’m not sure it can be fixed.
I think a big part of why NY handled this well is that Cuomo did a good job at that. But the problem is that the confederacy is so committed to the idea that they aren’t New York that it has the opposite effect when they see it. The WH needed to do it.
Brachiator
@dmsilev:
RE: Is our Texans learning?
The good thing is that right wing nutjobs get their noses rubbed in their previous stupidity.
They will never admit that they were wrong, but as long as they do the right thing, I am happy.
Baud
@dmsilev: I guess it would be beneath Fauci to start trashing talking about this.
Martin
Right now I bet Florida is begging the WH to issue a national mask order so DeSantis doesn’t need to suck it up and do it himself.
dmsilev
@Martin: If Iāve done the math right, the per-capita new case rate in Texas is about 50% higher than in California. Fascinating definition of ‘better’ theyāre using.
NotMax
@Brachiator
Yeah, stayin’ healthy is like such a drag, man, ya dig?
//
Martin
@Brachiator: Any bets whether church is part of the exceptions?
Subsole
@Kropacetic: Does he play the old hit…s?
I thought he had morphed into a poor man’s discount bootleg Fred Durst…
Jeffro
@Patricia Kayden: Dee’s clearly not going to take it…anymore.
dmsilev
@Martin: But unfortunately Pelosi has already called for a national mask mandate, and under the long-established principal of ‘ewww, Democrat Lady Cooties’, it is unpossible for Trump to issue such an order.
MisterForkbeard
@Martin: Abbot can go fuck himself. HeĀ killed people over this ridiculous need to puff himself up and piss off liberals.
Subsole
@mrmoshpotato:
Two words:
Leper.
Colony.
trollhattan
Zuck is not concerned about your puny ad boycott, earthling.
Villago Delenda Est
@Another Scott: But it’s got the air of truthyness because Alabama.
Villago Delenda Est
@trollhattan: ZUCK SMASH!
trollhattan
@Martin:
I will say it’s all the odds. Devil, get out!
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax:
ROFLMAO!
dmsilev
@Martin: Wouldnāt surprise me at all, though none of the news stories I looked at specify.
germy
Martin
Boy, daring the advertisers to continue their campaign is not smart.
These are brand advertisers, not targeted advertisers. They have countless ways to get their brand out there. They don’t need Facebook.
Brachiator
@Martin:
RE: Health authorities are doing the best they can, but I donāt think that they have been explaining community spread well to ordinary people or providing simple-to-understand guidance.
Here I disagree. National officials need to set policy, but I have previously been happy with how Governor Newsom and local California officials have handled things, until recently.
They simply have not been explaining community spread well. And they are responsible for the local communication and the local web sites. The City of Los Angeles has tried to reduce things to a color coded Threat Level Indicator.
This is not sufficient.
This is not the same thing as saying, simply, families and friends should try not to hang out together, or should meet outside in small groups and wear masks and observe social distance rules.
I would think that the stuff that you are working on will include concrete examples and directives for students and faculties.
We need the same thing at the community, city and state level.
ETA: And of course, the Trump national briefings became nonsense to be avoided. But I would regularly listen to Governor Newsom’s briefing, which was followed here by the LA County health briefing.
germy
This photo:
The facial expression on the future “first lady”… how to describe it?
Martin
@germy: Once again, I can’t wait to see what’s in store for Stone Mountain.
Kropacetic
I have a good amount of respect for the Presidents depicted on Rushmore.Ā Perhaps the site could use a supplemental installation with history about the indigenous tribe that held that mountain sacred.
Leto
@Patricia Kayden: Iāve been thinking about that phrase recently, Better Dead than Red, and wondering if itāll make a comeback. I think it should.
NotMax
@trollhattan
Sort of related:
White YouTube creators struggle to address past use of racist characters
I do take issue with use of struggle in the headline, as if it’s some kind of “on the one hand, on the other hand” balancing act.
Brachiator
@trollhattan:
Karma is lacing up her footwear, going to put a boot up Zuck’s ass real soon.
@Martin:
Yep. Great point.
mrmoshpotato
@Martin: Haha, yeah.Ā It’s not like nationwide companies like Verizon can affordĀ billboards and TV ads!Ā They’ll never be able to get the word out without the mighty Fuckerberg!
trollhattan
@dmsilev:
This map was updated two days ago, and shows Texas in the next higher category than California. Arizona has dropped back below 400/million new cases, which is an improvement and Florida man has squeaked above 300.
Another Scott
@joel hanes: ICYMI – Eclectablog:
Kay’s right that of course schools are “essential” and it’s tragic and damaging that kids’ educations (in class and elsewhere) are being disrupted. But I’m reminded of Cuomo’s question – “Is it worse than death??”. And no, it’s not. I remember how disruptive the teacher strike was at the start of my high school senior year. It was instructive, in lots of ways. This cohort is going through a lot, but they (and the rest of us) need to be able to live through it.
Yes, the schools need to re-open. But if it cannot be done reasonably safely using systems and procedures that have adequate buy-in by teachers and staff and adequate funding, then that re-opening day must be delayed further.
Cheers,
Scott.
Raoul
@Just Chuck: The one time I’ve seen Rushmore was in the early aughts, ’03 maybe? At that time there were still armed military (not Nat’l Guard I think, but regular Army or maybe Marines?) in the parking lot, in the post 9/11 paranoia time.
I pulled into the parking lot. Got out of the car, looked at the carvings far off, for a minute or two, felt the eyes of the military boring holes on me, and hopped back in and drove away.
I then went to the Crazy Horse exhibit and stayed a couple hours, armed guard-free.
Strange day, but I found the latter to be interesting, even it that place isn’t exactly controversy-less either.
germy
KSinMA
@H.E.Wolf:Ā Well said.
The Moar You Know
@Leto:Ā We’re getting sick Zonies here in San Diego already.Ā Newsom needs to close the fucking state border.Ā Today.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@The Moar You Know:
Can a governor legally do that?
joel hanes
@Another Scott:
if it cannot be done reasonably safely using systems and procedures that have adequate buy-in by teachers and staff and adequate funding
There will be no national leadership, and fuck-all for state-level leadership in some of our states.Ā Ā And since the GOP are not about to allow the feds to provide adequate funding, almost all schools will smash their budgets trying to do the best they can.
So a few places will do quite well, and many will do less well, and lots of places will do abysmally — as in any measure of educational structures.
Another Scott
Go Jaime!! Lindsey is a disgrace.
(via LOLGOP)
Cheers,
Scott.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Barry: No, this “But what about the economy?” has been the problem since the Black Death in the 14th Century, the end result is mass death and an economic crash. The Republicans are just to pig ignorant and trapped by their own ideology to do different.
Cameron
I’m not feeling the hatred and fury and rage and whatnot.Ā The whole Trump/TeaParty/Republicwhosits shtick they pump out comes across to me as a not very funny ethnic joke – on them.Ā Interesting that they demonstrate all of the qualities they try to mock in others.Ā If I tossed out at you “violent,” “stupid,” “mouth breather,” “drooling,” “moronic,” “snowflake,” “knuckle dragger,” and so on and so forth – would you associate those words with anything or anybody not full of RW bullshit?Ā I certainly don’t feel sorry for them, but I don’t hate them.Ā I don’t hate alligators and rattlesnakes, either.Ā They’re a problem to be solved.Ā They might not like the solution, but that’s too bad.
Martin
@trollhattan: The real problem is that CAs positivity rate is 6%. Texas is 15%. So the true normalized cases in Texas is probably 3x what CA is? Arizona is 24%, so closer to 6x? Florida is 16%. (When positivity rates are low more people get tested for more mild symptoms because they respond to an abundance of testing capacity)
So, the confirmed cases data is very misleading here. If you extrapolate for the missing testing capacity, the situation in those states is dire. CA is slightly off of its trend, and we need to step up Ā testing to get that rate back below 5% (Ideally below 3%), but the new daily high for CA, while bad, generally looks fairly controllable still. From what I understand Riverside and San Bernardino are our problem areas right now – and they’re getting ready to start sending patients to neighboring counties which is why LA may be so concerned. LAs rate doesn’t seem to be problematic from any data I’ve seen or anecdotes I’ve heard, but none of these counties (include OC in that) are really isolated from one another.
If I had to guess why AZ has ‘dropped’ it’s because their testing capacity is starting to fall apart. 24% is NYC in April high.
Ascap_scab
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Herman Cain has Covid? Nine, nine, nine!!!
Archon
Add “pandemic” to the list of things American conservatives are the worst people in the world at handling.
Aleta
His enablers think they’re entitled to send people out to extinguish or fight fires set off by the fireworks. Ā (Super dry conditions and pinon pines and other brush make it likely.)Ā And workers have already been doing controlled burns in preparation.Ā Are they at increased risk of infection because they got hot and tired, and might be fighting fires tomorrow,Ā so less careful about symptom-free carriers or sharing water and tools in the heat of the moment? Ā Ā Who cares;Ā it’s the president’s right to put their lives at risk.Ā If two weeks from now there are fewer firefighters on call, it won’t be his problem.
Martin
I agree with this, but if we deem it’s unsafe to open a school and are unable to muster the resources to make it safe, then we shouldn’t be able to open restaurants and retail and bars. I am sympathetic to those jobs, but teachers are also jobs providing a public service. If we are deeming schools unsafe but bars safe, or beaches safe, or fireworks shows safe, we’re doing something very, very wrong.
Brachiator
@Another Scott:
I think that kid’s are more resilient than we give them credit for. And kids, and societies, have bounced back from absolutely devastating pandemics. We are fortunate that we have a level of undamaged resources to help us deal with this.
But we have also had stories of children without sufficient remote learning resources being left behind, and special needs children not being fully accounted for.
There are no easy answers, and I agree that if outbreaks continue to increase, then that has to be dealt with before returning to school is considered.
But long term open-ended lockdowns are not an answer. We have to find ways to gradually open things up again, with new adaptations to the pandemic.
I’ve read people say that everything should remain locked down until we get a vaccine. But this falsely assumes that a workable vaccine will definitely be available and administered before the end of the year.
Kropacetic
Best new flavor Godfather’s Pizza has introduced in years.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: I would be all for replacing Wilson and Jackson with King and Malcom X on Mt Rushmore. Balance out Washington’s and Jefferson’s slavery thing.
patrick Il
@mad citizen:
Yeah,Ā but that is in 1966 pennies.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Martin: A carving of the 54th Massachusetts Infantry Regiment.
Ksmiami
@Llelldorin: I like Incandescent rage
Martin
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Good choice.
Another Scott
Grrr…
Cheers,
Scott.
Subsole
I love my home. Probably more than I should. Because it is, after all, home.
The moment I heard the word Covid, I knew we were fucked. Terminally and categorically.
Because our state is run by the GOP.
For the folks in blue states, imagine the most useless, oxygen-thieving, slave-beating, forelock-tugging waste-of-a-good-bullet Confederate gentry you can. Imagine their demesne. Imagine the Reeve and Sherriff and Abbott who administer that demesne, and see their every action as both right and proper.
That’s Dan Patrick, Joel Osteen and Greg Abbott.
That’s who does the hiring.
And bad hires hire worse.
Even the best of us end up pretty goddamn apathetic after a while. Because they look at us like serfs. And they treat us like serfs. And what actually hurts is that a sizable chunk of us are perfectly content to behave like the most benighted goddamned serfs imaginable because we have been taught every waking moment to be so.
And the heartbreak of it all is we live through these things and force others to live through them with usĀ because 45% of us believe in giving a shit about each other, instead of 51%.
I don’t know what comes after Rage.
I think Nothing.
The kind of Nothing that comes from a soul tripping a circuit breaker so the wrath and agony and regret and contempt and loathing and pain coursing through it doesn’t burn out the person it is attached to.
I certainly feel Nothing when I look at Trump and his family and courtiers.
I am starting to feel Nothing when I look at the rest of them, too.
I don’t know much of anything anymore.
I do know this whole rotten fucking party is due a reckoning. Biblical in scale and scope. A reckoning some of them should not survive long enough to ever forget. I mean a Mojo that walks.
Everything that enables them is due that same reckoning.
I don’t know if they’ll ever get it. But it is due.
I think Americans are, generally speaking, too lazy to administer that reckoning at either the necessary intensity or duration.
Until that changes, the misery will continue.
In the meantime, we do what we can.
S’all I got.
Brachiator
@Martin:
Sorry, I don’t see the necessary connection here. I’ve gone to local restaurants that conform with every health directive. And so, I have to ask, if they conform, why have they been directed to limit themselves to takeout service?
Customers do not sit in restaurants for 6 hours a day, and return each day to sit with the same patrons.
And even some of the stories about wide-scale non-compliance among restaurants note that some of the violations have to do with signs and other trivial issues, not anything regarding physical set up of the businesses.
And it is unclear why some of the outbreaks in California and other places have been occurring. But some of the more significant outbreaks here in Southern California appear to be related to community spread among friends and families, not people going to restaurants and bars.
In addition to increased testing and tracking, there needs to be anonymous testing and other measures taken to try to see how the virus is moving through society as things open up again.
Some things are almost obvious. Some prisoners were moved from Chino prison to San Quentin. San Quentin then saw 600 new cases in 5 days, where they had very few previously.
Job sites where workers are close together for long stretches, more like schools, have been problem areas.
We have to think about how people move through society and inhabit social spaces, and then think about how this may affect the spread of the virus. This is deeper than just breaking things down into schools, home, businesses.
Citizen Alan
@Salty Sam: At the age of 50, I have become increasingly embittered towards my own family because in 2004, my mom used my dad’s health issues at the time to guilt trip me out moving to Canada. He lived another 10 years and would probably still be alive today if he hadn’t gotten into a dumb tractor accident. Meanwhile, I’m stuck in Mississippi quietly praying for a killer asteroid.
Citizen Alan
@Just Chuck:
Is there still an expensive house on top that’s owned by foreign spies?
*North by Northwest joke.
MagdaInBlack
@Cheryl Rofer:
Wow, that, is impressive.
Subsole
@Brachiator:Ā Tell her to work faster.
Subsole
@Martin:Ā Dare I hope Mr. Z’s pride goeth before…?
debbie
@germy:
“I must remember: Some day it will be all worth it.”
Sloane Ranger
Probably old news by now but just heard that Abbott of Texas has mandated that Texans wear masks. I suppose this comes under the more joy in heaven that one sinner has repented tag line but he’s already getting pushback from the give me freedom from masks and death crowd.
Martin
@Brachiator: Because there is no effort being made to reopen schools other than by the schools. We are pouring money into private businesses, and none into organizations that could, with some additional resources make this work. K-6 in particular, where students stay together all day can probably work provided you can get them there safely and keep them isolated at start/end/lunch. Ā That’s mostly some administrative support. And you get a well structured chokepoint for testing and contact tracing.
None of those things apply to restaurants.
I’m aware of the San Quentin outbreak. A friend of ours is a doctor who was called in last month to provide additional medical support there. My wifes mask group sent them a few hundred masks.
Brachiator
@Sloane Ranger:
Again, these people should wear bracelets agreeing to forego medical treatment if they, or their family, get sick from the virus.
I get so tired of these idiots.
Brachiator
@Martin:
I agree more resources need to be devoted to schools. And if people are not at least thinking about the things that the UK and other governments are considering, they have their heads up their asses.
So, two Covid cases and kids could be sent home. And from what I understand, Wales and Scotland have their own schemes for lower level schools.
And obviously, when you are dealing with younger students, you have to do more to make sure that they are protected.
True, but again, no reason to shut them down, or to connect their shutdown to what you do with schools.
Again, a good BBC News story on seating plans for movie theaters and restaurants.
Restaurants, movie theaters, museums, amusement parks, are all different social spaces than schools, and the requirements for each have to be thought through independently.
And movie theaters, amusement parks, sports venues and restaurants are a huge part of the California economy. We can’t just say, “oh well, we don’t need these anymore.”
Prisons and the military also have to be considered separately. And talk about “small world.”
I thought that this was an obscure little story.Ā Very interesting to note your connections here. Very cool.
Kent
And as a former Texan I can tell you that there are so many amazing cultural spaces in Texas.Ā Like San Antonio.Ā And there are more POC and Democrats in TX than the total populations of many states.Ā But they are overwhelmed politically by the white (red) suburbs and rural areas.
evodevo
@patroclus: I’m of the opinion that the Jackson statue should be given an appropriate plinth…i.e. one made up of piles of skulls, cast in bronze, one for every X number of Native Americans who died as a result of his indian wars and the Trail of Tears.Ā Ā Maybe surrounded by slave shackles, one link for every X slaves ….with, of course, an appropriate plaque detailing his record of genocide.Ā A history lesson for all who see it…
Jinchi
I was raised in the liberal Hell-hole and went to college in Texas and I remember laughingĀ hysterically when a couple of friends, discussing their upcoming trip to Boston, worried about interacting with hostile northerners, “I hear if you look them in the eye they’ll spit at you.”
It took me a while to realize they were being serious.
Kent
In fairness, the Confederates of the 1860s did have some level of evil competence.Ā They fought the US to a near standstill.Ā Ā The current crop of southern Confederates are the wastrel useless offspring that have resulted from 7 generations of southern inbreeding.Ā They still have all the evil.Ā But they have lost all competence.
WaterGirl
@germy: oh my god.
The Lodger
@Kent: What if the deceased voted for Al Gore? Do they get counted in Florida?
Medicine Man
Nothing to add except my heart goes out to my brothers and sisters south of 49.
WaterGirl
@Subsole: I am hours late, but I am very sad that you feel that way, and many others, too, no doubt. Ā My virtual hug will surely be no comfort, but I offer it anyway, just in case.
pluky
@dmsilev:
One big thing he killed was the Office of Technology Assessment.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Technology_Assessment
When I was working on a public policy masters in the early 80ās their issue briefs were goto references.
The Pale Scot
@Salty Sam: I’m from NJ. My BFF dad died, my sister’s BFF dad’s died, a woman that was a good friend back in the day died. I’m friends with families that have cops and FF in NYC, safe so far.
What’s the emotion after rage? Feeling murderous. Somehow here in FL the 6000 new infections report got changed to 10,000+ @ 5:30pm. That’s how I feel right now , murderous.
Another Scott
@Villago Delenda Est: Yeahbut, not enough.
(Points to Wired story. Via Popehat)
Cheers,
Scott.
Amir Khalid
@Brachiator:
My Malaysian two cents worth* on school reopening:
In the first place, any reopening plan is probably not going to be safe enough unless Covid-19 is reasonably well-controlled in the community. I don’t know if this prerequisite has quite been achieved in any of the United States.
You need to draw up a standard operating procedure for schools to mitigate contagion risk in every type of school situation. The SOP will need input from — and enforcement by — health and education authorities. It will also require weeks of preparation time by individual schools. In Malaysia, it helps that there’s one education ministry that regulates all schools, and one health ministry. I gather that in the US the relevant authority is geographically fragmented; this makes the needed coordination not impossible, but exponentially harder.
School reopenings here are being staggered: they started two weeks ago with the two grades of older students facing critical public exams (equivalent to grades 10 and 12 in the US) to get used to the new way. When that worked out well, the Education Ministry began planning to reopen school for younger kids. These other grades reopen on the 15th and 22nd of July.
It’s a lot of work, but it helps assure parents that their kids can safely go back to school. Parental buy-in is of course critical to the success of any school reopening plan.
*Two Malaysian cents is US 0.47Ā¢, for what that’s worth.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Brachiator: I don’t deny isolation is tough. I’m talking about saying “we have to end the lockdown, or there will be more deaths of despair than deaths by the virus” which takes a special kind of stupid to believe after 8 weeks.
It’s like an old Onion article: “people trapped in an elevator for 2 hours resort to cannibalism”Ā with a quote to the effect of “maybe we turned to cannibalism sooner than people expected, but you don’t know what it was like!”
Lockdowns are tough; but Americans are tough enough to handle some inconvenience without causing tens of thousands of deaths of despair in 8-12 weeks!
Amir Khalid
@LongHairedWeirdo:
Sarcasm, right?
LongHairedWeirdo
@The Moar You Know: I don’t deny what you say, but I want you to think about something.
The Republicans staked out the easy-answer, party-of-hate territory first. Since the 80s, they’ve been blowing smoke up the collective ass of the US; since they 90s, they’ve been willing to allow any lie to circulate, so long as it’s bad for Democrats, or good for Republicans.
What would happen if the Democrats did the same thing? The country would be far, far worse off, because no one in politics could be trusted at all, under any circumstances, for any reason.
Now, any real patriot, anyone who actually loved this country, could have told you that Trump is an idiot, a bigot, a liar, and had a criminal’s instinct, and should not be President for any one of those reasons.
There were some loyal “never Trump” folks, but were they campaigning against Trump? Were they excoriating the Republican congressional caucus for whitewashing everything Trump did? Were they pointing out that Fox News was betraying their viewers, by refusing to admit the simple truth about any number of things?
I don’t remember what was the last straw for John Cole, but remember, the entire Republican Party told a boatload of lies about the Terri Schiavo situation, so they could have days and days of discussions about “why do liberals want this woman to die?” and that should have disgusted anyone with a conscience, who didn’t engage in gross negligence in their research (i.e.: didn’t even bother to read the court decisions, which were available online).
I mean, seriously, think about it. If you don’t already *despise* liberals, how could you find it in you to join in such a vicious, nasty, and completely baseless, attack? What does it say about a person who thought it was okay to do such a thing? It says a lot, and a lot of it bad; the kindest thing is, they were a hateful sheep.
Democrats, and liberals, can’t look for such opportunities to savage Republicans like that; again, if both parties are barking mad, the country is doomed.
But “the party is barking mad, and you have to bark along, or you’ll lose your job” isn’t an excuse. Trump’s insistence that he’d have Hillary Clinton investigated should have been a bright red line. Hell, the lies that she was guilty of a crime should have been a bright red line, but at least I can kinda-handle that because they’ve been hating her for over 20 years at that point.
Any decent, honorable, informed, and mature Republican should have realized that, if the nation can elect Trump, the Republicans have gone way, way, way, too far. It shouldn’t have taken a hundred thousand dead to convince them.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Amir Khalid: I’m confused.
I said, essentially,
“a 12 week lockdown won’t cause tens of thousands of deaths of despair, and it takes a special kind of stupid to believe that it would”.
I was not being sarcastic.
Are you still thinking I might have been? Got any research showing a 12 week lockdown will have such a huge impact? If you have no research countering it, yet think it was stupid, the Republican Party is looking for people like you.
J R in WV
J R in WV
@Martin:
Back when I was still working in IT, we had a guy “working” in the GIS unit, in an office for two people. Come summer, a young woman intern was placed in the other space in that office.
She quickly determined that her office mate was making DVDs of porn, using state facilities, and selling them to co-workers. She immediately went to the GIS manager, who took appropriate action to confiscate criminal’s hardware. Eventually it was turned over to the city cops, because it looked like lots of the porn involved very young women being abused…
Eventually the cops brought the hardware back, no indictments were brought. At least criminal was fired, went away, became a contractor in Maryland, IIRC.
Lesson here is that many cops don’t care enough to lift a finger about child abuse and child porn! Personally, I was really disappointed, and glad I didn’t have anything to do with the GIS shop, or criminal who was fired. I forget his name, never worked with him. Was slimy, though. Probably a Republican…
Amir Khalid
@LongHairedWeirdo:
I took this as sarcasm because, from the reporting I’ve seen, a lot of Americans have hit lockdown fatigue after a few weeks and started disregarding good practice — leading to precisely those tens of thousands of needless deaths.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Amir Khalid: I’ll grant lockdowns were tough; and I’ll grant failure to follow best practices *did* lead to some deaths, no problem. So I’ll grant, you’re correct-enough, I was being a bit glib in making the lockdowns sound less harmful than they were.
The reason for that is how *so* many Republican mouths started insisting how they *cared* so *deeply* about deaths of despair, when they couldn’t be arsed to do a durn thing about despair issues until it served their political purposes.Ā (For example, I could be wrong, but I suspect the “Opioid crisis” was ignored until white people were dying in significant numbers. I’d *love* to be wrong, but at this point, it’d be a bit of a surprise, you know?)
Thanks for responding – I actually like holding deeper, more contentious, discussions with folks. One of the things I most despise about the GOP is how they don’t even bother to make arguments any longer.