Yesterday, after a busy day on Friday wiping his ass with the Constitution while commuting Stone’s sentence, Trump went to Walter Reed and (gasp!) wore a fucking mask. Incorrectly:
Then at least one White House reporter, representing the rest of them, was all like this:
She got ratioed into the earth, but no matter — you know in your heart that they’re so fucking ready to give Trump and all the red state governors a big old mulligan as long as they rise to a level of action that’s halfway close to what a leader should be doing in the face of a global pandemic.
Nope, nah, nuh-uh. The time for mulligans is long passed. It passed after Trump refused to build testing capacity in the US. It passed after he suggested drinking bleach and promoted a remedy that killed people. It passed after Abbott forbade towns in Texas to pass mask orders. It passed after Florida, Arizona and Texas re-opened willy-nilly. It passed after those states saw the cases coming and didn’t ask for retired medical personnel to come out and help, or for the armed forces to build and staff field hospitals. It passed after Trump threatened school funding if they didn’t re-open. It passed after these and hundreds of other moments of inaction, diversion and rank stupidity.
The only thing these death-eaters — these callous, careless, useless fucks — deserve is a seat in the bowels of hell after they gasp out their last breath while the infection they denied and refused to fight kills them. No fucking mulligans. None.
WereBear
Agreed.
SiubhanDuinne
?????????? to every single word of this post.
Josie
Spot on.
MattF
And so… the deaths are starting to increase. And so, the experts were right. And so, the effort to slow down the spread of the virus was wasted in red states. And so, lucky that I live in Maryland, where the situation appears to be stable.
Raoul Paste
What I don’t get is why some rich people are still supporting Trump?
Since we’re all isolated, can’t travel, can’t do activities, their money is pretty much worthless
debbie
He is so fucking stupid.
Dorothy A. Winsor
No more of this “let’s look forward” crap. People are dead and lives are ruined, and it’s on them. Not to mention the destruction of the rule of law. No forgiveness.
debbie
@Raoul Paste:
He’s promised a second tax cut.
germy
Remember the band Great White?
They played a concert In North Dakota with no restrictions in place: no social distancing, no masks.
They’re the same ones that set off fireworks at their indoor show, caused a fire and 100 deaths in 2003.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Raoul Paste: I think for some rich people, more money is a goal in itself. They have more money than they can spend right now, but they view running up the total as a version of running up a score. I’ve said before that they’re dragons sitting on their hoard.
debbie
I don’t think Florida ever closed. Individual businesses, yes, but did the state?
germy
Tim C.
@Raoul Paste: For that crew, money isn’t a gateway to entertainment or fun or happiness. It’s the scoring system for life that you worship and try to improve no matter what.
This is why they commit massive fraud to get money
This is why the Republicans *always* make tax cuts for the super-wealthy whenever they can
This is why they can’t imagine caring about climate change, justice or any issue beyond their own personal high-score in life.
waspuppet
Not only could Trump still win, but he could win BASED ON THE “STRENGTH” OF HIS RESPONSE TO THE VIRUS. That’s how “confused” these people are.
debbie
Speaking of Florida.
MattF
And, speaking of mulligans, Trump lies about everything. E.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g.
charluckles
I feel every word of this post in my bones. But, Trump as the leader of a cult has near-total control over his followers. Getting Trump to wear a mask could save the lives of tens of thousands of Americans including many non-cult members. And having the media fawn over his manly presidentialness in a mask may be the only way to make that happen.
marklar
@Raoul Paste:
Why do rich people still support Trump when they can’t spend their money on anything because of the virus?
Aside from racism, and hierarchism, there is another candidate. In 1961, Breland and Breland did an interesting study in which raccoons were trained to work for tokens, and then deposit tokens into a box to get food. When food became more sparse, you might expect that the raccoons would become more willing to ‘spend’ their tokens for food, but the opposite happened. The hungrier the raccoon, the less they wanted to exchange the token for actual food. Indeed, they started washing the tokens, nibbling on them, etc. In a way, the conditioned reinforcer (token) became a substitute for the primary reinforcer (food).
This phenomenon (the Brelands called it ‘instinctive drift’) might partially answer your question. Rather than money being used as a token to enjoy actual rewards, it has become the central reward, taking the place of the very things it is supposed to purchase.
P.S. The Brelands were students of B.F. Skinner. Behaviorism is still relevant!
debbie
@Tim C.:
“Why do libtards always want to penalize success?” //.
debbie
@charluckles:
Except that if they do start wearing masks, they won’t cover their noses…just like Trump.
MattF
@charluckles: But then, not cover your nose, to own the libtards. So fucking stupid.
ETA: Debbie says so too.
SFAW
For half a second, I thought “why stop there?” But then I realized that. if you included all his major transgressions (which is not a strong enough word) — never mind his (relatively) minor ones — would probably fill a 32 GB memory stick.
He is so fucking vile and evil, aided and abetted by Moscow Mitch and the rest of the Partei of Traitors, that I often wonder whether we can ever fix the country enough after he’s voted out. [That is, unless we deport all his moron voters to Dumbfuckistan, which might face some legal challenges.]
SW
At some point it is worth observing that Fox News has killed more Americans than has Islamic terrorism. Just a simple fact.
Raoul Paste
: “Dragons sitting on their hoard”
Yep, the type of values that didn’t serve King Midas very well
TS (the original)
@germy: Saw that earlier – do they not even know the symptoms for COVID-19. Are they really that stupid.
(Rhetorical questions)
OldDave
@debbie: Does this count? Link
RandomMonster
@MattF: We’re not doing enough testing here in Maryland. But that’s the case in most other states, too. Speaking of which, no mulligan for that, too!
WaterGirl
@waspuppet:
You spelled delusional wrong.
SFAW
Re: masks: he actually wore it properly for the photo op. Of course, then the MAGAts fellated him majorly for doing so; he looked “presidential,” “badass,” and so forth. Those fucking people are insane.
Patricia Kayden
MattF
@WaterGirl: Potato, potahto.
Patricia Kayden
SFAW
@SW:
Maybe AG Kamala Harris should investigate Fox for domestic terrorism. [Yeah, yeah, I understand about the First Amendment, and how it gives wide latitude, etc. I wasn’t being 100 percent serious, but Fox is actively trying to destroy a liberal democracy through its disinformation campaigns.]
SFAW
@Patricia Kayden:
Beautiful. Thanks for posting that,
SiubhanDuinne
@Raoul Paste:
Nor Fafner.
Punchy
@marklar: Bah gawd I learnt something awesome today! Thanks!
debbie
@OldDave:
I guess it does, even though it says the counties had already issued orders.
SFAW
@RandomMonster:
But the Murderer-in-Chief and Junior Murdererr Dense say that there’s enough testing, and anyone who wants a test can get one, ASAFP. So you must be worng or lying, libtard.
I think I saw that current testing rate is 600-plus K per day. Which means everyone in the country can be tested PDQ. [Where “PDQ” means “within approx 18 months.”]
germy
@SFAW: Murdoch’s been doing that all over the world.
germy
Who was trump going to sell Puerto Rico to?
A private individual or some other country?
SFAW
@germy:
Yeah, I know. For some reason, I don’t feel guilty wishing that he dies a slow, painful, agonizing death.
germy
MomSense
@SFAW:
I am praying to the photoshop/meme gods that someone will take that meme about wearing a mask under your nose is like wearing underpants under your penis and turn the penis into a wee mushroom cap and put a yellow trump hair on the guys head.
Also too fuck trump and everyone who didn’t vote for Hillary or who voted for Stein or Johnson-except for the disenfranchised voters. I’m actually more fucking disgusted by the lefties that voted third party than the trumpers.
There is a woman in my town who wrote an op ed before the election about why she was voting for Jill Stein and every time I see her I give her the stinkiest stink eye ever given.
SFAW
@germy:
His boss, probably. Which I guess is a two-fer. How does “Putin Rico” sound?
germy
@SFAW:
Almost happened!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yPH0mCQagY
Kay
Another deer in the headlights interview with DeVos. She isn’t any more prepared than she was the day they confirmed her. No reading, no researching, no real work of any kind. She goes out and recites ideological slogans every three months and this is no different.
I don’t think it matters that much as far as schools. The Trump Administration has been all but irrelevant there for years. The real battle is being waged in Congress, to get the funding. No actual school district is going to follow Betsy DeVos’ stammering sloganeering as a “plan” because it’s not real. They don’t do any work so they don’t have anything to say when they’re asked about it.
Part of the incompetence has to do with the nepotism and unearned promotions. One really can’t avoid that when analyzing the poor performance of the Trump hires. These people have never had to compete or work hard, and it shows. They’ve been coddled their whole lives, to the point where saying “the private sector” over and over “counts” as actual work. An assistant principal at a school wouldn’t get away with such a lazy effort, but in the Trump Administration it means they get the top jobs.
Poor quality. The bottom ten per cent of employees.
Baud
@marklar: Now I covet tokens.
SFAW
@MomSense:
It must take bigly willpower for you not to turn her into chum. I don’t recall if you live near the ocean, but if so, maybe you can convince her that robbing lobster traps is fun, and the lobstermen won’t mind. Problem solved!
WaterGirl
@germy: That’s an excellent question. The thought that he would sell it to an individual is horrifying. But of course he would!
Baud
@MomSense:
I was today years old when I learned this is the wrong way to wear underpants.
Baud
Trump is running to Biden’s left on masks!
SFAW
@germy:
That’s like a Farrelly brothers magnum opus.
PeakVT
Shrub got a mulligan for his failure on 9/11 so it would a WITCH HUNT if Trump didn’t receive one, also, too.
Kay
And of course if we beat them and also take the senate we can fund public schools like we bailed out airlines and maybe get kids back up to speed on what will be their “lost year” under Donald Trump.
The economy will still suck and tutoring actually works and is effective, so maybe we can hire some of the new college graduates who won’t have jobs to bring the younger cohort back up. I just do not want to harm young people permanently. They’ve gotten such a raw deal as it is- I can’t bear the thought of screwing them again.
It’s just exhausting to think about, how much repair will have to be done, and we’ll be doing it in a pandemic and with a bad economy. OTOH I think just getting rid of them will be a boost for the country, in attitude and outlook, so maybe we’ll rally. We better.
Baud
Via reddit
https://i.imgur.com/PF7WBNI.jpg
WaterGirl
@Baud: No one can blame you for that if this is your first time wearing them at all.
WaterGirl
@PeakVT:
Which is un-fucking-believable in the first place.
Tony Jay
@germy:
Just showed that to Significant Other and asked “What do you think he has?”.
To which my seven year old smartarse of a son replied “Trumpitis”
Can’t argue with that.
MomSense
@SFAW:
Even better, I could tell her to go to Friendship to rob lobster traps. It is the best example of false advertising in town naming.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I’m still trying to figure out why they sewed a hole in the front of it (or is that the backside?).
Aleta
Adrian Brandon https://www.adrianbrandon.com/stolen
Betty Cracker
Amen to every word of this post. As is obvious to everyone who isn’t a cultist, we can’t get this virus under control without a national strategy. Since we have no national leadership, looks like we’ll have to wait until late January to address it.
What we need is a historic beat-down of the Republican Party. Trump needs to be obliterated like a bug vs. the windshield of a Peterbilt. This is promising:
But the same polls show Cornyn beating a Dem challenger by double-digits. Could be a name recognition thing. They all need to get curb-stomped.
MomSense
@Baud:
I always figured you were both commando and not wearing pants.
germy
@Betty Cracker: Beltway media wants a tight horserace, though. More exciting for them that way.
Gravenstone
@Raoul Paste: To those that have money, it is never “worthless”. Even when not doing actual work, it still acts as a scorecard for that crowd. Hence the endless drive to acquire more, ever more. They are the embodiment of “he who dies with the most toys, wins”.
Sab
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Lol. I have a family member like that. It’s just so weird. The rest of us are just scratching our heads.
Gravenstone
@germy: A round of applause for my Rep, everyone!
I’ll be over here crouched in the corner, whimpering.
Kay
it just amazes me that this doesn’t bother people:
I don’t know- could there be a clearer example of how they’re ruining this country than the passport having less value? US Conservatives are choosing to ignore this? It’s like a flashing red light of decline.
The craziness of these vehemently anti-immigration nutjobs creating such chaos and degradation that Americans are now trapped inside the country is just mindblowing. It’s like a dystopian novel. “Then, Canada closed their borders to Americans”. Even in the Handmaid, an actual dystopian novel of conservative rule, Canada took us as refugees.
Betty Cracker
Did anyone see Betsy DeVos on CNN this morning? Jesus Christ, what a joke.
MattF
Trump’s campaign thinks he’s made a brilliant move.
Baud
@MomSense:
Most of the time but I still have to go food shopping.
SiubhanDuinne
@Aleta:
Wow. Beautiful artwork, and powerful. Thanks for the links.
OzarkHillbilly
I just found this via Sarah Cooper and wanted to pass it along before I got on with my day: Stolen/Adrian Brandon
Powerful.
Betty Cracker
@germy: Hope they end up focusing on the horse race in Texas and Georgia. Very exciting!
Baud
@MattF:
He’d have to keep wearing a mask for it to even have a chance to work. I don’t see it happening.
SFAW
@MomSense:
Sounds good to me. Please keep us updated on whether your plan succeeds.
Danielx
@Baud:
As will no doubt be claimed by Maggie Haberman and her ilk.
So let it be written, so let it be done.
trnc
I like presidents who get pandemics right the first time.
Currants
@SiubhanDuinne: Absolutely.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
It’s too bad Cruz isn’t running this year. We would have a better chance to taking the seat.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I did. Really bad. She’s always that bad and she hasn’t gotten one bit better since her confirmation hearing, which was a disaster. She was confirmed with fewer votes than any Sec of Ed in history. It’s not that controversial of a job. They still had to drag her over the finish line. It was that bad.
Ken
@MattF: Evolution in action. The people in Trump’s campaign have had three years of selection for those who never, never, never contradict or criticize Trump.
trnc
@germy:
I wonder what poor bastard had to use the podium next. I don’t suppose we’re lucky enough that he was introducing DT or any of his flying monkeys.
oatler.
As Norman Mailer said in another context, they are divorced from eternity.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
The Lincoln Project ad that went after Senstors who have enabled him included Cruz but not Cornyn. Count me as highly suspicious of Lincoln Project, but it does bother me they left him out especially since his stupid Corona beer post.
JPL
@germy: Good question. How would you go about selling it? Would he put a full page ad in the NYTimes? I remember the Panama Canal fiasco and that wasn’t even ours to begin with.
schrodingers_cat
The entire debate around opening schools is ridiculous. It is too dangerous with infection rates soaring across the country. The virus cares little for your wishful thinking.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: She’s terrible, and she’s a greedy crook too, just like her horrible Murder Inc. brother. Imagine a family that produced two people as awful as DeVos and Prince. My God. They might actually be worse than the Trumps.
trnc
Well, you know, what they don’t know won’t hurt them. What they do know and ignore will put them on a respirator or worse.
WereBear
@Aleta: Thanks, that was stunning.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I think they send her out exclusively for fundie religious, but that seems dumb to me. Fundie religious aren’t going anywhere- they’ll vote for Trump- every time she opens her mouth she alienates everyone else. This is a 70% Trump county and we polled parents on school reopening (by email, so response skews higher income). 25% will not send their children to school, unless it’s made safer. Nationally it’s about 1/3. About 1/3 want limited in-school. DeVos position is shared by only 30% of parents.
trnc
We probably aren’t this lucky, but …
https://www.nj.com/news/2020/07/coronavirus-question-is-a-mask-effective-when-you-wear-it-just-below-your-nose.html
JPL
@Betty Cracker: Yup. What did she say besides the schools need to be open? It was awful.
jc
Someone finally managed to pound it into Trump’s head about his dismissal of masks hurting his poll numbers. So he makes a big show of finally wearing one, too hard to breathe. He doesn’t even think about the fact that *everyone* finds it hard to breathe properly with a mask, he only thinks about himself.
He has the same problem with words, he only uses them as blunt force against those who oppose him, he doesn’t understand or respect their intellectual power.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s too dismissive. Democrats cannot respond to this by telling parents “it’s too dangerous” and walking away. There has been little or no attempt in these discussions to actually grapple with what this means for people. All of this “well, I wouldn’t send my kids to school”, or “they’ll stay home”. Really? The pan is they stay home? With who? Their parents have to go to work. What if you had to go to work or they’re homeless? What, exactly, are those parents supposed to do? We don’t have 4x day care/babysitter capacity and even if we did we’d still be putting children into large groups, they’d just be in daycares rather than school. That’s not an acceptable response to 100 million people.
They can’t put 55 million children on a shelf indefinitely. It isn’t going to work.
JPL
@Kay: I thought she was on to please trump and everyone else could die of the virus for all she cared.
BASH: “Yes or no: Can you assure students, teachers and parents that they will not get coronavirus because they’re going back to school?” DEVOS: “Well, the key is that kids have to get back to school.”
trnc
Biden doesn’t look like he’s having a problem with it.
Kay
If you tell parents they can’t send kids to school or can send kids to school 2 days a week, those parents then have to find childcare. How should they do that? Take the expense out of it, even, although we’re talking about quadrupling their expense, so we’ll have to return to that eventually. Tell me where the child care comes from. Who does it, and where? A babysitter in each house? Because if schools won’t work then surely daycares housing 25 million additional children also won’t work.
Telling them “it can’t be done, good luck” is not an answer to their question.
Kay
@JPL:
My problem with it right now is not DeVos, who is a useless piece of shit and mostly irrelevant to the real problem, my problem is Democrats are having trouble getting media attention paid to their approach, which while imperfect, is actually AN APPROACH.
Democrats have been working on it since April. They need to find a way to get on tv.
A Ghost to Most
Such brave words from an influencer in the Resistance Auxillary.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
My daughter has an infant in daycare. She’s essential so this daycare has remained open the whole time and they do distancing, the whole works. They are INUNDATED with frantic parents of school age children who are desperate to find child care if schools don’t open. They are at half capacity as it is, with distancing. They can’t simply magically add the entire under 12 population for the whole school day.
japa21
@Kay: That has always been a problem for them, getting their message out. The media always skews right. When Bush was President they justified having more Republicans because they were the party in power. When Obama was President they justified it by saying that they needed to let the minority speak.
VOR
@MomSense: Not much point in attacking Cruz since he’s not up for re-election until 2024. Better to focus on people with more near-term elections, like Mitch and Lindsey who are both on the 2020 ballot.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: Did you see that article on how the Y is providing daycare to 40K children of essential workers in NYC?
japa21
Three comments as to the Trump mask wearing. First, let’s see if he wears one more often. (Hint: He won’t)
Second, I still think the main reason he wore one was for self protection. He was in a place with sick people, FCS, and we know how he is with germs. Surprised he wasn’t wearing a full hazmat suit.
Third, he looked the way a petulant child would look when forced to wear a mask when he doesn’t want to. (I have a 3 year old grandson who has the same look) You can see the scowl in his eyes.
Kay
And daycares! The vast majority of daycares are nonprofits, but they can’t run at a loss. They ONLY break even because they charge what it costs to have X adults per Y children. If you distance you reduce capacity. Fewer children in each group, same or slightly fewer number of caregivers, same fixed facility costs. They can’t do that. They’ll go broke. They’re nonprofits. They’re not sitting on stacks of reserve cash.
PeakVT
@WaterGirl: Whocuddaknown that Bin Ladin Determined to Strike In US?
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Starting schools will send the infection rates skyrocketing. Starting schools right now is like accelerating a nuclear chain reaction. The problems you point out are real. But opening schools is going to result in more dead people. It is like adding fuel to fire.
It has happened in Australia and Israel and they were at a better starting point than some of our states are right now.
Steeplejack (phone)
japa21
Just noticed FL reporting 15,000 new cases today. Don’t know the positivity rate.
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
I did. I always used Y daycare because I think adults behave better when they’re among other adults, so I didn’t want home daycare. I want tattletales, whistleblowers, shaming, etc. :)
My daughter is in NY so the rules are strict. She can’t enter the building which makes her sad. I get it. She wants to snoop around in there.
I know what parents are going to do, particularly lower income parents. What they’re going to do is create unlicensed daycares with no infection controls whatever. I’ve already heard it discussed here. Because they’ll have to do something, or lose their jobs. Either provide something “good enough” for them, or get the same spread and infection in whatever they manage to cobble together. They can’t all hire nannies, even if “nannies” were available, and they aren’t.
debbie
@Baud:
I guess delivery wouldn’t work for you?
Starfish
A public affairs specialist in Arizona invited the governor to her father’s funeral, and her letter was brutal.
mad citizen
The mask was a diversion for him getting tests done. Is there any evidence at all that he met with soldiers? Also, any video evidence of him actually playing golf yesterday–not still shots? I put “trump with soldiers at walter reed” into google image search, limited to the last 24 hours–NOTHING. Only pics of him with the brass walking down the hall wearing masks. If he had consoled anyone, the WH would surely be putting that out there.
debbie
@schrodingers_cat:
And this from the party of family values!
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
But all you’re doing is sending them home with the same problem. They’ll have to solve it and how they’ll solve it is by creating unregulated and unsafe approximations of either schools or daycare centers, because they can’t afford individual care, even if it were available in these numbers, and it’s not.
You can close schools and say “now it’s safe” but all you’re doing is driving the problem underground.
55 million children, say half that are under 12. Their parents have to go back to work or they lose their jobs. Then what happens?
WaterGirl
@Baud: Perhaps you are secretly the hero of the Captain Underpants stories?
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: I have no solutions to the very real problems you pose but opening schools when a highly infectious pandemic is raging will make a bad problem several orders worse. That’s what all the available data is pointing to.
Starfish
@Raoul Paste: What I don’t get includes some stupid old Mississippians. My mom said that the person who mows her lawn cannot bring himself to vote for Biden. She also said that her white Trumper friends are super excited that Hillary is going to be investigated in September, and I really cannot with these fools.
debbie
@Kay:
The Democrates, with Nancy at the microphone, should announce a program dealing with opening schools safely. That would get the media’s attention.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
And, SC, you can obviously say this. It’s not your job to figure it out. But Democrats can’t, and they aren’t. I’m not demanding a plan from you. But Democrats have to have one.
Baud
@Starfish:
For a lot of people, Dems have cooties. It’s just a thing that’s out there.
Wapiti
@Raoul Paste: If you’re rich enough, you might have EU citizenship as well as US citizenship and be able to travel at will.
Dual citizenship is complete bullshit in my book, especially if you can buy citizenship (or permanent residence status) by investing in a high-dollar condo, but that’s how the world works.
Kay
@debbie:
Well, they have, several times and no one covered it. They got a total of one generic paragraph in the NYTimes piece on opening schools. No one even knows they’re fighting for funding and they have been doing it for months.
Baud
Probably the best thing we can do for our children is send them to a civilized country until we can Make America Safe Again.
schrodingers_cat
Social distancing and testing are the only two weapons we have. And the flattening of the curve shows that it does impede the spread of the virus. Your comment above makes little sense.
Barbara
@Kay: My district is giving us the option of 100% online or two days at school and three days online. We chose the latter. There will only be a percentage of students in school at any given time. This is for high school. I am not sure what is going on with lower grades. Daycare centers in Virginia have partially reopened, but not in DC, which is a sore point with DC childcare workers, who had a protest about the issue. There could be more strategic reopening — restaurants, not bars, for instance — except that idiot politicians can’t grasp the nuances around risk mitigation and control. It is either total lock down or everything open and no masks. Fucking malevolent morons.
Baud
@Kay:
Everyone loves those Lincoln Project ads, but this issue seems tailor made for a series of ads from Progressive PACs. Circumvent the NYT.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: They have to provide parents the means to take care of children if schools can’t open. We need more economic stimulus.
We need to get the pandemic under control first before we try to open schools or any businesses. The economy won’t recover if people keep dying at current rates due to COVID-19.
Barbara
@schrodingers_cat: In some places but not others. It may be safer for young children, and less safe for teenagers, but the latter can be expected to adhere to stricter guidelines for distancing. There has to be an effort.
The Moar You Know
@Raoul Paste: Rich people think they’re superior. That includes a belief that they possess a non-existent superior resistance to COVID. Witness the parties you keep hearing hints of in the press, like the one Don Jrs rented girlfriend got infected at. They don’t think they’ll get it, that the blacks, browns and poors will die and leave them with a brave new clean world where they can enjoy their money forever without all the ungrateful inferiors whining about how unfair it all is.
They may well be right. I’m not betting a dime on how all this ends.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Schools took the brunt of the cuts after the financial crash, because Democrats lost the 2010 midterms and the wingnut governors had a very good showing. They ALL slashed public school budgets to cover the loss in revenue due to the economic depression. We are, once again, screwing children due to our own incompetence and stupidity and recklessness. I don’t want that to happen again. It isn’t fair. We have to do better than “sorry, no school for you, good luck”.
Mousebumples
Very true from what I’ve heard. We’ve had a nanny for my 10mo old daughter since February when my husband’s FMLA ended. Such a godsend in this situation. And I’m so glad my daughter isn’t school-age yet , so I wouldn’t have to make the decision that’s facing so many parents for this fall. ?
Kay
@Baud:
I;m wary of the LP and I hope they aren’t pulling all our donors away from our candidates and PACS.
I just can’t help but think that these guys lost employment with the GOP so came over to us. I like the ads! They’re good admen. But honestly? I don’t trust Rick Wilson. I have a bad gut on him.
Baud
It seems that drowning government in the bathtub has worked out not necessarily to our advantage.
JPL
@Barbara: I thought that Bright Horizons opened in DC for health care workers.
Baud
@Kay:
Most of the ads are fun. I hate to so many people cite them to diss Democrats though.
debbie
@Kay:
Drop the focus on funding (temporarily) and instead introduce principles of safe school re-openings. Bring up money and all the GOP will do is condemn the spending and deficits.
rikyrah
130,000+ DEAD
NO DO-OVER
rikyrah
rikyrah
@rikyrah:
rikyrah
@rikyrah:
mrmoshpotato
Couldn’t have said it better myself.
Barbara
JPL: Essential workers only leaves out a lot of people.
Kay
@Mousebumples:
My youngest is 17 and although he’s more somber and sad than I’d like (he liked school and misses it) I feel grateful that he is almost done. His last year was for AP courses and electives and music. He can get by without them and he’s already taken the ACT and got the score he wanted.
But my heart goes out to the parents. I SO remember that panic, especially with a lower wage job and barely making it. There is NOTHING as stress producing as not being able to care for your kids properly. You feel insane with worry. It’s a kind of despair.
rikyrah
@rikyrah:
Elizabelle
@Baud: And yet Trump floats.
Perhaps not such a mystery.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Dorothy A. Winsor: From what I’ve seen Trump isn’t the only one who’se daddy is screaming in the back of their heads about what kind of loser they are.
Kay
@debbie:
I can link to it if you want (I have been following this for months, knowing it was coming) but Democrats have a safe schools plan and have had one for months. It won’t be national, because that’s not how schools work and “national” doesn’t make any sense. Democrats in the US House are really good on K-12 schools. They know a lot. Patty Murray in the Senate is the Democratic leader there on K 12 education and she is smart and hardworking. They can do this. They HAVE done it.
Barbara
@rikyrah: That is beyond obvious. No doubt someone informed Trump that the economy could not even begin to recover without schools reopening, so of course, that became the most important thing ever, with full support from DeVos and a helpful assist from Governor Bootlicker in Florida.
Still, getting kids back to school safely is a worthwhile endeavor and Dems should not be simply reacting to noxious Republican demands.
Kay
I cannot believe Biden is polling ahead in Texas. I knew Texas has never been as Trumpy as some other R states, a fact which makes me like them more, but, man. Texas?
rikyrah
She is telling TRUTH.
Stand up for the fight ?
https://twitter.com/Kalarigamerchic/status/1282329952088731648
schrodingers_cat
OT: I know that this is supposedly “my issue” and shows my privilege but here goes.
BTW most if not legal immigration and this includes long term non-immigrant visas like the student visas are completely stalled now at least until December.
Kay
My husband is furious that Ohio is more Trumpy than Florida at this point. Just disgusted.
Patricia Kayden
debbie
@Kay:
When you have a moment, I’d like to see the link. The only school-related plan I could find that is recent is this abomination. Don’t look at the comments, please.
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
Immigration is something Biden really can fix, and fast. Just clearing out the lunatic, low quality hires in there will be noticeable immediately. Undo some bullshit EO’s and pick a bill in Congress and he’s rolling. He knows how the senate works, which will be an advantage.
E.
If the new FL case numbers are not a typo then this thing is going due south in a hurry. 15,300.
Jinchi
Right. The base question shouldn’t be, ‘Should states re-open schools?’ It should be ‘What has to happen before we can re-open schools safely?’
Rightwingers don’t want to have that conversation, because the obvious conclusion would be: Shut down all the bars, gyms and meat packing plants and mandate masks everywhere that caseloads haven’t fallen rapidly over the last few weeks.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
The schools in this country cannot open safely. Period.
Jean
@Kay: yes, please provide the link to the Dem’s plan. I understand how it can’t be national, so does it include variations for different types of schools and localities?
Tim C.
@Kay: Urban/Rural Divide along with other demographic shifts. Texas has large huge cities. The only thing that made it different from other heavily urban states was the GOP advantage in Texas’ large suburbs. Also, the total disaster of the COVID response is all on Republicans there. You own the state, then it’s your responsibility. Florida and Arizona are exactly in the same place.
I think there’s a greater chance of a democratic blowout in November than people realize.
mrmoshpotato
@Kay:
And fuck Rick Wilson, etal.
Kay
@debbie:
Don’t obsess on a plan because that’s now how schools work in our system. Their plan is the CDC guidelines. The (real) plans will be state and then local. LA schools will not open. Houston schools will not open. Rural Ohio schools will open partially. Miami schools (despite the governors fake order) will offer online options and many students in that system will not attend FTF school.
Democrats want 350 billion in funding and Senate Republicans opened with 100 billion. That’s where they are.
That’s all that matters.
That’s why it’s counterproductive to say “we can’t”. Do you want 350 billion dollars for schools? Then stop saying “can’t”. Not trying at all is not an option.
Kay
@Jean:
They follow CDC guidance. Think of that as the floor. Houston will be more restrictive and Boise Idaho will be less, but the goal is to be at or above the floor.
To meet that they need 350 billion dollars.
Kirk Spencer
@Tim C.: Maybe.
I recently ran across info about voter registration. YOu know, the critical first step to getting people into the voting booths.
We’re doing a terrible job compared to past years, mainly because indirect pushes are so much worse than going door to door with clipboards and forms or setting up booths with forms and nice folk to help and all of that.
If they’re not registered they can’t vote. Who needs suppression, who cares about their opinions? (angry sarcasm there, folks.)
Kay
@Jean:
This is the Jill Biden and E. Warren roundtable on opening schools. From two days ago.
MattF
@Kay: I think Wilson really does passionately despise Trump, and he really is an expert in the mechanics of electoral politics. Details about his personal political views are hard to come by, however— and I think ‘once admired Giuliani’ is a bad sign.
eclare
@MomSense: That would be a great meme!
Kay
@mrmoshpotato:
There’s nothing anyone can do about it- Democrats love the ads. But me personally? They needed to bill for their political skills, correct? No Republican was hiring them. That doesn’t mean they do a bad job or it’s a bad value, but it does make me wary.
Jinchi
Fingers crossed, but after months of being the poster child during the pandemic, caseloads have started to skyrocket in Idaho. They’re now in the worst 10 per-capita.
Right now only the northeast is doing well, and the situation is tenuous.
MomSense
@Kay:
Have you read the CDC guidelines? Even if by some miracle the GOP Senate coughed up 350 billion dollars (spoiler alert: they won’t), the things children would be expected to do are not developmentally possible. The idea that installing the proposed shields on desks will help is laughable given what we know about the droplets and what happens when the HVAC systems are turned on. You know how many schools still have asbestos? Two of them just in my town. You think we will get the $$$ we need to install modern HVAC systems with adequate filtration.
This whole thing is a cruel joke.
Fleeting Expletive
As to Ashley Parker, the subject of the OP, I always thought she’s ironic, trying to be. She has the sensibility of the young whatevers, an ennui, sarcasm. It’s the hubris of kids these days. I saw her a few nights ago when she was asked a dumbass question about Trump’s responsibility for the US virus rates, her answer included just that few seconds where I heard her thinking “of course you dipshit but you know I can’t say that”. Other than tv snippets, has she published anything of note?
Or not, maybe she’s a goofball. No shortage of ninnies out there in media land. And McEnnanys too.
MattF
@Fleeting Expletive: Parker appears to be the lead reporter in WaPo Trump coverage, which is no small thing.
Elizabelle
@Fleeting Expletive: Brian Williams cannot fawn over Ashley Parker enough. He’s always bragging about their Pulitzer Prizes.
I think Ms. Parker is too cautious, and speaks so as not upset Trump and the White House with her demeanor, even as she describes terrible actions and behavior from them.
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Children have died, lives have been disrupted and the United States and its good name has been sullied. It will not be repaired that easily
Those who have a choice will think twice about choosing the United States as a destination to study, to do business and to live.
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: Thanks for making my point succinctly.
Kay
@MomSense:
You guys keep saying this but you propose absolutely no alternatives. Your position is not tenable. No one – not Democrats and not Republicans – is taking it because it’s not possible to just tell 100 million parents to store their children on a shelf for a year, or something.
They don’t have the legal authority to order every public school in the country to close (anymore than Trump has the authority to open them) and even if they did- what then?
There’s one alternative to pouring money into schools and letting them approach it on a district basis and it’s PAY one parent to stay at home with kids. That’s it. That’s the option. There are no other childcare options for 25 million kids flooding into the child care system over 4 weeks and even if there were all you’ve done is create a new infection location
If “pay a parent to stay home with younger children” is what you’re proposing say so, but “we can’t do anything” is not an option. Something will be done. They can’t stay home alone, let alone pretending they;re doing online education. The one and only question is if Democrats are leading that plan or following it. There’s not a “no plan” option.
piratedan
@Kay: also they need to rethink some things… like if we’re keeping kids and home schooling, are we looking ate giving families internet access as a right? Need for access to attend classes. With employers shunting the burdens of no longer needing a defined workplace onto the workers, how can the fed cope with turning our houses into workplaces, using our electricity to perform the jobs?
Kay
@MomSense:
It may or may not be a “cruel joke” but the only thing I have heard on Balloon Juice is “can’t”
Okay. But know this- either the schools or the parents are going to come up with something. We can choose to let each family just sort that catastrophe out themselves, knowing what they are going to do is create a simulation of either a school or a daycare, or we can help them.
You get the risk of transmission either way, so do you want it regulated and funded or not regulated and not funded? Because you’re giving parents no choice. No one- not schools, not parents, not teachers unions, not the CDC has the BJ “close and walk away” approach. That’s not on the table.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Kay: The excellent part of the issue in the UK is that parents are allowed so much free child care a week. They just have to top up the balance if they choose to. My Nieces, for instance are entitled to (I think) 19 hours of child care per week. This allows them to work and it doesn’t cost them an arm and a leg. When I was in the US our receptionist was basically working to pay for her child care, it didn’t make any sense. She quit, and got a work from home customer service job that cost her nothing.
Aleta
Trump’s the one who said not wearing a mask makes him a winner. In May, “I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it,” Trump said when asked by reporters (why he didn’t wear a mask during a factory tour in Michigan). (Post)
In April, “sitting in the Oval Office … I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens, I don’t know. Somehow, I don’t see it for myself.” (CNN)
Relying on symbols is even easier than winning by cheating. But now that Republican polling is shifting away from “masks signal weakness,” he has to prove he’s not a loser by invading a veterans’ facility and taking a photo of other imaginary tough men marching with him. Just like when Prezidunt “I Am Not a Coward” came out of the bunker. It’s easy to be a TV dictator when other people set up the shots and call in the cast.
Emma from FL
@schrodingers_cat: It’s not only your issue. I work at an University with a major contingent of foreign students and pre and post docs. Trust me. It’s a big issue to us too.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
What I want to know is with all of Trump’s virus idiocy and him banging any woman who can’t run fast enough from the 70s on, how has he managed to avoid herpes, the clap or aid?
Or did he, and this dumbassary is just the long term effects of Syphilis?
Aleta
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It’s a competitive sport. The “sport of kings.” The scores are reported by the media. (Some of the lesser goals along the way are set by advertisers.)
Imo politics has become the same, a competitive sport for some rich men.
Their focus is on the competition not on solving problems for citizens.
Emma from FL
@Kay: May I co-sign? Schools closed for a whole year is not a tenable concept!
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
You don’t think schools are “essential” infrastructure and I do. Put them in the essential category with grocery stores and meatpacking plants and a water treatment plant because for about 100 million people they are that essential. If I said I was closing grocery stores, which are obviously a danger, you would rightfully say “what am I going to do?” I can deliver food to your house. I got nothing else. They don’t have an alternative to school. If they create one, and they will, you’ve just created a much more dangerous simulation of a school, because any way you slice it’s a group of kids in a building. It has to be.
That’s why Democrats aren’t proposing closing all schools for the duration of the pandemic. Because they’re essential to tens of millions of people.
Kay
@Emma from FL:
Yes, and thanks. What we can do, you and I, is call our congressional representatives and tell them to get 350 billion to schools. They’re at 350 and the GOP is at 100. We’ll end with 200 billion and schools and communities can take it from there. I don’t care what they “do”. They’re the experts. In Houston they’re going to have to provide child care or everyone loses their job. But they have to do something and it’ll be easier to do something with 200 billion than w/out 200 billion.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@rikyrah: Wow, that’s so dumb, disgusting, toxic to our society that I can believe it is something a Trump official wants.
I mean even from the view point of the farmers it’s a revolting idea; they are telling these guys they have to ditched their experienced Latino workers they’ve had worked with for years for some intercity kids who know nothing about farming.
Gvg
@debbie: yes.
E.
@Kay: I agree, but closing the schools for the duration of the pandemic would make sense if we first had a plan to reduce the duration of the pandemic in some way. The reason we cannot fathom closing schools is because there is no end in sight thanks to our decision to not engage any meaningful efforts to contain this thing. I’d be all for closing grocery stores for two weeks if it would help, and if we could get everybody two weeks worth of food before the shutdown. The problem is, as everyone knows, there is no coordinated response. We’re just hanging out there waiting to be picked off, one by one.
Just One More Canuck
@Elizabelle: That’s because he’s a witch!! Burn him!
schrodingers_cat
@Kay: Please don’t put words in my mouth. You can call them by whatever designation you like, that does not change the reality of how this extremely contagious virus spreads.
When I gave the example of an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction I was not being metaphoric, they are governed by exactly the same exponential function.
Kay
@Litlebritdifrnt:
But recognize that “free daycare” won’t solve the problem at hand. Daycare is a group of kids in a building. In this situation daycare would be a group of kids in a building doing their zoom lessons – in other words, a shitty simulation of a school. The school down the block would be empty, so we succeeded in “closing schools” but we now have the absolute worst result. We have a group of kids in another building, but no school. Those are the ones who found a slot. The rest are locked in a room at home or something. You have to solve for the children- their physical existence.
Patricia Kayden
MomSense
@Kay: Yes, we should be paying at least one parent to stay home. We should also demand free high speed internet for every household. The viral spread is out of control because we tried to open economies without first controlling the virus. The same is true for schools and daycares. If you want to open schools, focus on controlling the virus. That means paying people to stay the fuck home.
We are not even through the first wave of this virus. We have never controlled the first wave.
The rest of your arguments are irrelevant until the virus is under control.
Also, WTF is up with the attitude? Of course I want regulated and well funded schools. I used to be a fucking public school teacher. Do you seriously think we will get anything remotely resembling adequate funding from the Trump Administration and Mitch McConnell’s Senate? Maybe some wealthy school districts will figure it out, but I doubt it. I used to teach in a wealthy school district and the wealthy people, even parents of school children, used to fight the school budgets every year because their taxes were “too high already”.
I compare mil rates in my state all the time. The wealthier towns have much lower mil rates. I recommend all jackals do this and then it becomes very clear where our values are when it comes to public education.
Patricia Kayden
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: He could have herpes or some other sexually transmitted disease. We just don’t know given how he has doctors who lie to us about his health. He doesn’t look all that healthy to me.
Fortunately for Trump, his health is a minor issue given his other deficiencies such as his lack of self control, outrageous lying and immaturity. Plus, his lack of ethics and sleaziness.
bluefoot
@rikyrah:
Yep. Anything that will take away public goods from those that think are “undeserving” (i.e. non-white people). That’s always been the game plan.
Aleta
@Kay: I’ve been wondering: Back over the years when pandemic planning and scenarios and predictions were actually attempted, what was in those reports about the operation of schools and colleges? And when financial impacts on businesses were projected, the effect on colleges losing their income must have been mentioned somewhere. Why can’t we read the work of previous administrations and non-gov organizations?
Kay
@schrodingers_cat:
If we designated schools as “essential” we would then be talking about what to do instead of talking about what we can’t do. They’re essential. That’s why there’s no party to this negotiation that is taking this position, anymore than they would for grocery stores or an electric plant.
Many will close for shorter or longer periods. Large urban systems are probably not opening. But they still need the funding! They’re still going to have to do something with all those children.
Drdavechemist
@Kay: Thank you, Kay, for continuing to drive this message home. People need to eat, so we figured out how to open grocery stores as safely as possible. Children, at least up through age 12, need to be in a community with peers and with trained adults to supervise them, so we need to figure out how to do that as safely as possible. And yes, given the circumstances that will involve some hardships and will cost a lot of money, but anything less would have serious consequences even for families that can afford to have one parent at home full time and would be an utter disaster for families on the edge.
Patricia Kayden
@japa21: I see MAGATs praising him to the heights in regard to his mask wearing so I assume he’ll continue to wear masks. He’s like a child. As long as he gets praise, he’ll continue to do whatever he needs to do to elicit more praise.
Steeplejack
@schrodingers_cat:
It affects a lot of people. My brother-in-law is a Brazilian immigrant (now a U.S. citizen). Lots of upheaval among his relatives and friends.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Untreated Syphilis causes brain lesions that can cause all that. That’s the source of Monty Pythons Upper Class twit character.
schrodingers_cat
@Emma from FL: I was told that by some regulars here. I think it is a pivotal issue.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: and making The Man Child Who Cried If It’s What You Say It Is I Love It! and “We get most of our funding from Russia” their point man on said message
schrodingers_cat
@MomSense: mil rates?
Kay
@Aleta:
I don’t know. I worry a lot about colleges and college students but the advantage with college students is they can be left alone. Physically. In their case we can buy some time. You don’t have any time if you’re a working class family with a 2nd grader. You don’t leave the house unless they’re cared for.
I think a lot of smaller colleges go under completely, which is sad. I just don’t know how they survive this. No one is going to pay 50k a year for zoom classes while paying rent or a mortgage or living with their parents, other than really elite schools, where the name is worth that.
Eolirin
@Kay: We could just give enough money to parents that at least one of them can stop working until we get numbers down enough to safely reopen schools…
James E Powell
@Kay:
Even when Democrats have the White House, the cable shows and Sunday shows are dominated by right wingers because their audience is older white people. Local news skews right wing, and not just on Sinclair-owned stations, for the same reason.
Matt
@MomSense:
Of course you are – the worst possible sin in the world to an authoritarian follower is when people don’t follow The Authority. You sympathize with Trumpkins because your moral compass is entirely a choice of which boot to lick.
When the time comes, you’ll turn in your “lefty” friends for execution without a second thought, while thinking “it’s their fault for voting third party”. You’ve started rationalizing that already.
Brachiator
@Patricia Kayden:
How are all the right wing nut jobs who previously opposed masks explaining this huge reversal?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
how do I make the laughing face emoji in threads? I need like a dozen
schrodingers_cat
Insistence on opening schools with the current infection rates is going to make the current death toll look like WWI in comparison with WWII.
We are headed for a repeat of the 1918 flu pandemic.
Kay
@Drdavechemist:
You’re welcome. I’m on a public school committee and it’s a really difficult problem. So far we have been decent to one another, people obviously feel strongly about it, but it’s a Trump 65-70% district and since big mouth butted in I imagine it will become a screamfest. Our school is doing a partial reopen with an online option- about 25% of our parents don’t want their kids there, and about 30% of our teachers don’t want to work FTF, so they will do the online and support roles. The online is junk though- we can do better there. I don’t blame them- they had about 20 minutes to move it all online but it has to get better than it is. With a quarter of our students opting for online that frees up SPACE. Now we just need money. Lots and lots of money. Airline level bailout :)
I wish like hell Trump had just left it alone. It’s catastrophic enough without these dopes yammering senselessly and we don’t need him at all. We need Congress. He doesn’t have any money, thank God.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: no less a respectable Villager than Karen Tumulty made the explicit comparison to a toddler who used the potty like a big boy
and I’ve seen about half a dozen tweets making the same point, some of them blue-check. some of them will make their way into his feed
Gvg
@Kay: No it’s not an acceptable response, but it’s all that we can get. Kay, with this administration, we trad water and try to stay alive until Biden. Nothing will make not just Trump, but the Republican fool governors competent and realistic. We are writing them off to help and acknowledging what is going to happen whether it’s acceptable or not. Even if you are in a blue state, what with interstate travel, you can’t actually get infection rates down enough that schools can open semi safely.
yes more people are going to lose jobs if schools aren’t open, yes people are going to los homes and businesses. It’s still what’s going to happen. Biden should put together plans for how to cover worse unemployment and bankruptcy recovery, cheap homes first to evicted by Covid when they have jobs again, renting cheap or housing free etc under the assumption he will be inaugurated in a worse disaster than currently. I know you are frantic to not accept this is going to happen, maybe it is affecting your own business…but Trump and the other republicans aren’t suddenly going to be different people.
how are we going to do schools online, better than last spring accepting it’s not ideal? How are various kinds of business going to adapt? Those are useful questions. Saying schools HAVE to reopen is delusional. I’m sorry. It’s causing all kinds of issues in my family and people I know but dying is worse.
The only plans democrats might publicize is recovery after the apocalypse types specifyign the financial carnage of republic non action. As those things start actually happening people will really look forward to November then January.
MomSense
@Matt:
GO TO FUCKING HELL, ASSHOLE. I feel no sympathy for people who support Trump. Guess what, people who voted for Stein or Johnson support Trump. They are just as sociopathic but less honest. They just couch it in terms they read while skimming political science theories they didn’t take the time to understand. Spare me your bullshit.
evodevo
@germy: I LOVE TRACEY…she is vastly underrated in my opinion…
WaterGirl
@E.: Holy fuck. 15,000 new cases in one day. Betty Cracker, you can come quarantine at my house
edit: with the Mister, and the pups, of course.
cope
@schrodingers_cat: Copied from a place: “The mill rate is the amount of tax payable per dollar of the assessed value of a property.” These taxes are often used to pay for school budgets so it is sometimes argued that asking your school board to raise their budget is akin to asking for your own taxes to be raised.
Gvg
@Kay: you know, I don’t think that would be as unsafe as school. Say 4 families and a couple of grandparents….maybe 8 kids in 1 house is better than schools. It would depend.
a lot of it’s going to be relatives and neighbors. Quality of school help will vary a lot. Infection though could be manageable. The key would be how the parents behave.
parents who work in bars or gyms or irresponsible churches will spread it to other kids parents…
WaterGirl
@Emma from FL: The University of Illinois is Champaign and University of Illinois is Chicago are both suing the government about this recent immigration decision. So are MIT and Harvard. And other schools. It’s a big issue.
MomSense
@schrodingers_cat:
It is the dollars/ cents per $1,000 value paid in property taxes.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
We are stuck. I don’t know what the answer might be.
Many parents have to return to work. They cannot keep their kids home.
And then there are parents with crappy Internet or no Internet and so cannot easily do remote learning.
What a mess.
Aleta
@Kay: Yes, for grade school kids and for teenagers and preschoolers it’s a catastrophic issue that’s not in the future. I worry about them and the kids I know, but haven’t made calls to politicians or written letters. Thanks for your repeated focus on how critical it is to address NOW — I really appreciate it because I get distracted by so many emergencies. I will make those calls.
cain
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
This is exactly what both the media and Republicans want us to do. They are going to pressure us to move forward and not look backward “for a united america” – that’s not going to happen this time.
I think it is now very important that we start engaging these reporters and start asking them questions like they are politicians about the thought process behind their questions and why they feel that we should look forward and not back.
While I have smacked around Dem politicians but I think their vacillation is a reflection of us and it’s important for them to realize that we have no fucks to give when it comes to holding the shenanigans that lead to 200k+ dead Americans.
We would hold people accountable if it was a war, this is also a war and we’ve failed 200k Americans and it cannot be forgotten and we will need to bring that pain to the media and ask them about 200k dead americans and the justice owed them.
Eolirin
One of the real problems with trying to reopen schools with the numbers being what they are, is not just that it’s a bad idea, but that it won’t work. They will end up getting so many people sick that they’ll have to close again, and the illnesses will force many people out of work, so you don’t even solve the issues you’re trying to solve by reopening.
The only way to make any of this work is to close things down in areas where there’s spread and backstop the lost wages with direct support until the numbers are low enough that you can rely on contact tracing and broad community testing to isolate smaller regions to put into lockdown when new hotspots emerge. Since that isn’t going to be possible without a coordinated national response, we can’t deal with this situation. There is no way to have a plan around schools that doesn’t involve a plan to crush the virus spread. We are not going to do that, so we’re going to, if we’re lucky, have waves of reopenings followed by massive upticks in spread followed by too short lockdowns that bring the numbers below a level we can tolerate, but still too high to reopen safely, until the economy and our health/education/etc infrastructure starts breaking down completely.
January is too far away. We can say what we want about the need to present things, and have plans, but there’s only one way to actually stop this, and it requires that everyone in effected areas stay in their houses, for at least a month. The numbers are too high for anything else to accomplish anything.
WaterGirl
@Matt:
Seriously? That’s uncalled for and over the line, at the very least.
Steeplejack
@MattF:
Wilson did the hatchet job on Max Cleland in 2002. That’s not a smoking gun, it’s a cannon!
Also, as @MomSense pointed out above, the Lincoln Project has omitted John Cornyn from its criticisms of quisling GOP senators. Cornyn is up for reëlection this year and would seem to be an obvious target. Hmm. ?
mrmoshpotato
@Brachiator:
“Dear Leader wears a mask now, so now we wear masks.”
It really is that simple. Also, it really is a cult.
Gvg
@Kay: and most of the schools will be online. That costs money too.
things are getting worse in infections. Schools need money even if they can’t reopen face to face. Office holders need to negotiate and it would sendrepublican officials tantruming away if they actually said out loud, in person isn’t going to happen except for a few weeks here and there in most of the country, so democratic office holders don’t say that. We are not office holders, we are parents, employees, employers and grandparents, so we need to be realistic, and make our own plans and help our friends and relatives make real plans.
What you want isn’t going to happen till after Biden has been in office for months. Get as many democrats elected in your state and district as you can and next year will be better.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Comment from your phone. ???
:)
Emma from FL
@Matt: OK. No. This is ridiculous. I get really irritated by MomSense at times but this attack is way over the line.
Kay
@Gvg:
They already have a name for them. They call them “pods”. It’s mostly a higher income family thing, though.
You could do it I suppose, although you’re going to run into the problem where the family with an adult at home does all of the work. Our two employees have school age children and we were able to accomodate them fairly easily for 3 months but we ended up hiring a displaced college student to do some of their work, and I don’t know how long replicating employees is workable. To pay anyone we have to actually make money. At the height of the financial crash we all took a pay cut, with higher income taking a higher percentage, because the two people who work here are valuable and can’t easily be replaced and I’m loyal to them so would not shove them out in 16% unemployment to look for a job, so we could do that again. It lasted two years.
I just want people to think about something, too. We can say we’ll take X numbers of parents out of the workforce for X period, but those people are doing work that has to be done. There is the actual WORK. I couldn’t hold a slot for them for a year, unless I make the fill in a temp, because they are contributing daily. It’s a REALLY hard problem. I’m not sure cottage-level “pod type” solutions even touch it. The scale is huge.
Gvg
@Kay: doing nothing may not be an option if you care but that’s what republicans in control will do. Haven’t you seen the proof before now? McConnel and Ryan’s shutdowns ove the debt foolishness damaging US credit were also the same thing. Also no idea how to really negotiate and no understanding in spite of decades of power how things really work. They are all stubborn non leaders who have repeatedly failed us, plus sabotaged those who did have good plans including former elected republicans who weren’t cult conservative.
find a way to survive till it’s over. Are democrats in charge of your state? No? Survive.
democrats elected and running can promise all kinds of thing but they can’t deliver yet. Fall classes are too soon.
real plans involve step one, get infection rates way down, then reopen schools. You say more people will lose their jobs and homes? I say I know, the republicans don’t care.
I won’t forgive.
Aleta
@WaterGirl: The GOP is indifferent to devastating the lives of those students and their families who fought to get here and adapt and are hanging on as it is. And in this state, international students pay a good portion of the money the state university depends on to survive. It varies by university and college, but there’s a reason many schools have dedicated major resources to attracting int’l students— their own self-interest and survival and “growth plan.”
Kay
@Gvg:
This is the scale: NYC school system has 1.1 million children. One city system.
Here’s Houston:
Be glad it’s state and local. It’s not manageable nationally, by anyone.
Gvg
@Kay: they are essential, but they can’t open all the way because they would spread the disease faster. When the base population already has a lot of infected people, opening something like schools to face to face in person explodes the infection rate.
Step 1 is get the infection rate down, then we can go back to traditional schools. We aren’t in a possible reopening standard school place now. It’s going to be worse soon.
internet and correspondence packets is going to be most of the country this fall. The consequences are going to be bad but not dead is better.
internet and correspondence are school and that is open, just not the way we prefer with the benefit of childcare and superior instruction.
Omnes Omnibus
You could have just stopped there.
Gvg
@Kay: most of the pods I expect are actually lower income and often involve family. Many sort of already exist, but in the past they were also socializing with whomever they pleased.
it would work better and be safer if people were getting clearer guidance in what the new social contract would be to do this in pulling in and ONLY contacting what work requires and specific family/agreed neighbors.
it’s not actually close to ideal, just what I think is going to be stumbled into due to lack of leadership right now.
RepubAnon
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I say let’s look forward to what happens if we continue ignoring criminal behavior. If the “broken windows” theory of law enforcement is good enough for poor neighborhoods, it’s good enough for the Trumpistas.
If there are never consequences, Republicans will continue their criminal activities.
eddie blake
@MomSense:
kay doesn’t listen. i’ve been saying variations on what you just elucidated for WEEKS in various threads. mostly in response to her.
dunno if she gets that if one kid is infected, they’ll have to quarantine every classmate and every teacher and then every class those quarantined teachers teach.
so yeah. she’s back with kids at home.
funny though, feels like two different people are writing her responses- one lauds the democratic plan and the idea of paying people to stay home, the other bitches and whines about the democrats not having a plan.
weird.
eddie blake
@MomSense:
kay doesn’t listen. i’ve been saying variations on what you just elucidated for WEEKS in various threads. mostly in response to her.
dunno if she gets that if one kid is infected, they’ll have to quarantine every classmate and every teacher and then every class those quarantined teachers teach.
so yeah. she’s back with kids at home.
funny though, feels like two different people are writing her responses- one lauds the democratic plan and the idea of paying people to stay home, the other bitches and whines about the democrats not having a plan.
weird.
@Eolirin:
or both
eddie blake
oops. double comment.
seefleur
@MomSense: Suggest that she go spend some time out on Vinalhaven…
chopper
@Matt:
say, matt, i hope you get eaten alive by red ants.
MomSense
@seefleur:
Ha! I can see Vinalhaven from
where I’m sitting right now!
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
I am right there with you s_cat! I was only able to produce the custom software we designed for enviro tracking by hiring brilliant educated software guys from India, Pakistan, Peru, China, etc, etc.
Of all the people we hired, dozens of them over 15 or 20 years, one guy had someone do his phone interview and wasn’t actually qualified. One guy. This is going to really hurt everyone, both here and abroad. I hate it.
And not just because of my personal history — it’s right straight up evil. Like so much of what Trump and his minions are doing!
I also hate it that Americans can’t travel anywhere, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant!!!
Aleta
@MomSense: oh man vinalhaven
Unsympathetic
Not only are there no mulligans, there had better not be any “We’re looking forward not back” afterwards.
J R in WV
@schrodingers_cat:
That’s a technical term for real estate tax rates. A mil is a fraction of a cent, and real estate taxes are so many mils/$1000 of real estate valuation.
An excess levy election allows a school district (here in WV those are counties) to boost the tax rate by a few extra mils per dollar of real estate value. Most public education is funded by real estate taxes.
Our farm was taxed $11.00 a year when we bought it in the 1970s — our county at the time was riding mostly on taxes on gas and oil producing property.
Wife went to the assessor’s office and loudly demanded that they raise our taxes to help the school system. Was a unique event in county history, usually that rant is the other direction!! They responded by lifting the valuation on our farm, which to be fair is pretty much valueless tree covered hillsides… except for the buildings we have built.
J R in WV
@Matt:
Dude, you are pie !!! Forever more!!! I don’t know how you aren’t pied already!?!?!?!!!!
J R in WV
@Gvg:
And in many places internet is not physically available at all~!!~
Sat dish internet service is slow and very weather dependent — we know because that’s what we have.
And installing dishes for poor households with kids who need remote learning, just can’t happen for 30,000,000 households by next month!!!
Can’t happen, no amount of money will cause that to become possible. Those installers can’t work 20 hours a day!
Kay
@Gvg:
Well admit you’re not offering them anything and “closing schools” just means “you are on your own”
They’re not “staying home”. They can’t. Their parents won’t be there. Nothing is not an option and that’s what you’re offering, so someone else will come up with something.
Kay
@MomSense:
You’re choosing the other option, which is offer people absolutely nothing and hope they figure it out.
But we’ll have “closed schools” and that’s the important part. No one ever gets past “close schools”.
To me it’s like saying “close grocery stores” and when people ask what they’re going to do for food I quote epidemiology at them. That’s not a response to the “close grocery stores” problem. It’s an explanation for why you closed grocery stores. I have that part. Where’s the remedy to the fact I cannot get groceries?
We’re not delusional. We (and by “we” I mean virtually everyone else outside this website) know the problem. We just don’t have a better solution for 20 million kids whose parents cannot stay home for a year that doesn’t involve the school systems that already exist. I guess we could replicate another system like that in 4 weeks and put them to the task but why would we?
Kay
@Gvg:
You can cobble together a new system of socially distanced childcare for 20 million kids in all 50 states or you can use school buildings- the systems that exist. They’re going somewhere if their parents have to work. The only question is where.
Before school let out I watched groups of children gather outside the public library to access internet. Their school building is two blocks away. They had parking lot school, in groups, with no adult supervision or infection control whatever. Because they have to BE somewhere and they don’t have internet at home.
It’s not even “safe” your solution. It’s arguably more dangerous. So we get neither “safe” nor anything approaching education, but we do get to say we closed schools.
ballerat
@Kay:
I think everything you say is true about this, the need to get kids in school. And I think everything schrodinger’s_cat and MomSense said is true also. We are not ready.
I’m all for funding the Dems proposal. Or CDC guidelines. Anything. Reduce class sizes, pay a parent who is willing to stay home, new HVAC, ppe. Try it all. What do we have to lose, other than our children’s future?
Good luck getting senate republicans to agree to fund it, though. Republicans can drop a pallet of cash into Iraq, no questions asked, why can’t they fund this? They’re OK with failure. How else to interpret this? They created this fucking trolley dilemma in the first place.
What I am confident of is, a whole lot more people will be dead by late January.
That, and schools will be closed again by Thanksgiving. We’ll have the Lost Kids and we’ll have more covid.
ballerat
@Kay: It doesn’t bother trumpists especially rural ones. You got a passport, you’re an elitist and probably a ‘globalist’ symp.
Besides, Real Americans don’t care because they don’t have one, have no interest in going to shithole countries or worse, to Europe, and don’t care what foreigners think anyways.
ballerat
Not just money, it’s time. No way this will be done in 6 weeks. And it very likely can’t be done with students in the building. It’s very invasive, and there won’t be any HVAC for the duration. It would’ve been best to have done this over the summer in an empty school.
ballerat
I didn’t want to say it, but worse case scenario is, we can lose our children. I have 2, middle and h.s. age. This virus can kill kids too. I don’t think like a republican: I don’t assume someone else’s will always get it, and I do care about other people’s children’s lives.
ballerat
@Kay: Thanks for the link, Kay. Ms. B and I are calling our senators this afternoon to urge them to fully fund this.