This is so rare I feel compelled to call attention to it: a media figure, Joe Nocera, admitted he was wrong to heap praise on Florida Governor Ron DeSantis for containing the coronavirus outbreak in Florida:
A little after 11 a.m. each weekday, I receive an email alert from the Miami Herald. It contains the latest Covid-19 numbers for Florida. And every day, I wince a little when I see them.
Florida is now the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. Since July 10, the number of new positive cases has averaged more than 10,000 a day. As of Wednesday, the total number of cases was nearly 380,000 according to the state’s health department. The positivity rate — the percentage of those tested who turn out to be infected — is well above 18%. Hospitals in Miami-Dade County are approaching capacity. “The residents here are terrified and I’m terrified,” Donna Shalala, Miami’s Democratic congresswoman, said over the weekend. She called for Governor Ron DeSantis to impose a lockdown.
And who claimed that Florida was doing a good job containing the pandemic? Oh, right. It was me.
It’s personal for Nocera now — he’s living in Boca Raton, having moved there from New York for his son’s sports camp, thinking that he and his family would escape the plague. Oops.
Nocera’s theory is that the governors who reopened too early made that decision in part by looking at death rates rather than the R-naught, a mistake Nocera owned up to as well. (R0 is currently 1.42 in FL, according to Nocera.) He says that despite the spread, death rates in the Sunbelt states are lower than they were in the Northeast for reasons we still don’t fully understand. I think that’s probably true; there’s a lot we don’t know about COVID-19.
But if commenters on an almost top-10K blog could access enough information from experts to figure out that the R0 was a key to containing the spread way back in March, there’s just no excuse for anyone in a decision-making role, including Trump and DeSantis, for not knowing that. The thing is, they did know it, but they decided to gamble with our lives anyway. Here’s hoping the virus kills both their political careers.
Open thread.
rikyrah
We are pushing Mail Voting.
I’m going to post this ever so often from now until the election:
I can’t stress enough to anyone considering a Mail Ballot for November (not just Cook County, Illinois folks)-
SEND IN A NEW VOTER REGISTRATION APPLICATION.
Unless something tragically happens to you physically in the next few months.
The freshest signature on file from you will be only a few months old in November.
cain
Be safe, Betty! This thing is going to get a lot worse before it gets better – it will take awhile to filtrate into these right wingers that they are in fact in deep shit. Even if you get it and not die, there can be residue issues that can fuck your life up.
You can bet that they will be blaming everyone but themselves but it would take some serious mental gymnastics to blame liberals.
Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)
Yes. Trump’s career in four months, and De Santis’s in two years. Along with Abbott’s, Kemp’s, Ducey’s and whole shitslew of other scumbags.
donnah
An apology from a Republican is so rare that we should bronze it and put it in a museum.
rikyrah
Maddow did a segment on Tuesday, where she pointed out instances of Democratic Mayors and Judges trying to do the right thing for their constituents, and Republican Governors trying to block them.
Pointed out Kemp in Georgia.
Pointed out that the head person of Hidalgo County, Texas requested a field hospital for his county, seeing as their hospitals are FULL – and Abbott denied the request.
Plus, another judge/head person in Texas, was trying to institute a stay at home order and Abbott blocked it too.
There was another one in IOWA.
Let’s not get into Arizona.
GOP Governors are dangerous for your health – LITERALLY
JIm, Foolish Literalist
Good on Nocera. I always had a more or less favorable opinion of him, as writers on that beat go, he’s one of the better ones– not as laughably worshipful of MoUs as Andrew Ross Sorkin, not as broad a perspective as Ali Velshi)– and I was surprised to see him go Covid-truther
I was listening to an NPR discussion of progress on the vaccine, and one of the doctors said they have made medically significant progress– therapies and medications that help improve results, shorten hospital stays and reduce mortality– considering that this disease was unknown less than a year ago, just not in the way that drives news.
namekarB
@rikyrah: Pretty much the same in California except:
In California you can hand deliver your mail in ballot to ANY polling place
Ken
Four months of practice, which has resulted in new treatment methods and repurposed drugs, seems like a pretty good explanation to me.
Or the depressing answer: Some people still haven’t learned how to factor in the delay between diagnosis and death, so they’re computing the rates by taking today’s deaths divided by today’s cases. That doesn’t work when the doubling rate is as high as it is in Florida.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: I actually had to re-sign my voting checkin form for in person voting last time. They didn’t like my signature so I said oh, you want my 1972 signature, I can do that!
Mai naem mobile
@rikyrah: call it safe voting not mail in voting. Words matter .
Also, kind of OT frame the Mask issue as maks being the stand in for vaccines currently . It kind of is the closest thing we have to vaccines right now.
Ruckus
Betty
Republicans have been, for my entire life, all about them and them alone. Every once in a while one of them will break into reality and become actually human. My rep, 50 some years ago was a republican, and John Burch Society member. Still managed to give a damn about his constituents. Today I can not think of or know of any republican politician who might be even that reasonable. They are not a political party any longer, they are a crime syndicate. Except one run by idiots and well, whores. That’s someone who sells themselves for the love of money.
namekarB
@rikyrah: Some of the northern states in Mexico are turning back American citizens at the border trying to cross from Arizona to Mexico
Jinchi
@rikyrah: That two weeks between November 3rd and November 17th are going to be fun – waiting for all the mail-in ballots to be counted. It seems like forever since the press melted down over the “failure” of the count in Iowa.
Snarki, child of Loki
” Trump and DeSantis, … decided to gamble with our lives anyway. Here’s hoping the virus kills both
their political careers“Jinchi
@WaterGirl: I had to double check my official signature because it varies so much depending on whether I sign on paper (like the ballot itself) or on a digital touch screen (like the one used obtaining a driver’s licence).
Baud
I can only assume more Sunbelters followed the advice about the salutary benefits of injecting Lysol.
namekarB
@Jinchi: My county in California starts running (electronic scanning and counting) the mail in ballots when the polls open so that by close of polls they have the counts for all the mail in ballots in hand and just need to wait for the late mailed ballots to dribble in. Prior to polling day they will have certified signatures and addressed any irregularities encountered on some of the mail in ballots.
BruceFromOhio
@Snarki, child of Loki: That was how I read it, too. Yes, I’m hoping someone falls ill and dies of this horrific disease. Some very specific someone’s. If that makes me a horrible person, I’ll own that, too.
piratedan
@rikyrah: not just Abbott the gov… Hidalgo County (San Antonio) asked the feds for help since they have one of the largest Army Hospitals in the nation for help, Trump denied them as well.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: Massachusetts has sent a vote-by-mail application to every registered voter in the state. I sent mine in and have been encouraging other people to do it. But many seem wary–they’re trying to calculate the odds of some catastrophe (second COVID wave + God knows what) preventing them from voting in person vs. something interfering with the mail. Not a calculation anyone should have to worry about, but here we are.
Villago Delenda Est
@namekarB: In Oregon there are drop boxes all over the place, and a list of them with addresses is included with your ballot.
Zinsky
It’s very clear to me that Donald Trump doesn’t understand even the most basic thing about viruses and especially, the concept of “chain of transmission “. It’s really simple actually – the virus needs a “host” to survive. It needs a new host approximately every 14 days. If it can’t find a new host, it dies. You break the chain of transmission and you beat the virus. Simple. But he doesn’t fucking GET IT!!
MoCA Ace
There was a fleeting moment, right before I read “political careers”, when I felt a slight tingle and a smirk emerged. Does that make me a bad person?
Villago Delenda Est
@Ruckus: One of the factors in killing the political career of “Young Gun” Eric Cantor was appallingly shitty constituent service.
Hoodie
@JIm, Foolish Literalist: Underscores how monstrous Trump and his crew were in letting the virus go basically unconstrained after the NYC crisis passed, rather than looking at NYC as a teaching moment. These monsters needlessly sacrificed thousands and wrecked the economy anyway in a vain attempt to pander to one part of their idiot base. Now they’re worried about deficits, pandering to the other part of their idiot base. We would all be speaking German if these guys had been in charge in 1941.
Matt McIrvin
@Ken: There are several things probably contributing to the seemingly lower death rate.
Ken
@Zinsky: You’d think a man who once bragged that he should get the Medal of Honor because of how many times he’d risked exposure to VD would understand more about diseases.
germy
Mary Trump on The View:
youtube.com/watch?v=hnVmDes3Hhg
Meghan McCain went after her, and was given lots of time to attack, but it didn’t quite work out. I think she sulked the rest of the interview.
bemused
@germy:
Meghan is a twisted into knots mess. I read she’s pregnant. Being so angry and stressed all the time can’t be good for the baby.
Parfigliano
What they did they did for their own benefit. Fuck them I hope they both die in agony from the virus. Bonus points for the virus if it takes a couple other Trumps with it.
Kay
@Zinsky:
I have struggled with it because some times it seems futile. I’m wearing my mask and then 75% of people aren’t wearing theirs and I just think “well. THIS isn’t going to work!”
My whole family has struggled with it. We have these ridiculous conversations : “what is ESSENTIAL, really?”
If you live in a house with a lot of people in and out you really could just throw up your hands. You can be pretty careful and then random people wander in from god knows where…. Doomed. Anyway :)
My approach has been “don’t overthink it” and I’m sticking with that. I’m on Team Anti Covid and that’s enough. I follow orders.
drdavechemist
At least in Rhode Island (and from what I understand, probably in much of the Northeast), nursing homes are a HUGE piece of the puzzle. Based on the RIDOH, more than 75% of our fatalities to date were nursing home residents. Eliminate those and our fatality rate would be somewhere between Florida and Texas, right around the current cumulative rate in California. There may be other pieces to the puzzle, but this one is painfully obvious, and a lot of the rest is statistical noise.
Roger Moore
I don’t know why, but I can think of a few possible reasons:
different-church-lady
@Zinsky: No no no, you don’t understand: the moment you breathe out the virus just travels through the air indefinitely until some other human being breathes in AND THEN WE ALL DIE!!1!
I know this is true because I read it on the internet.
trollhattan
“COVID’s Hidden Toll” on Frontline last night is an unrelenting look at Salinas Valley farmworkers during the pandemic. As if dodging the Trump administration weren’t stress enough.
Nicole
Speaking of the virus- while there is the occasional right-wing tweet from Herman Cain’s official Twitter account, the last tweet about his health is from July 15, when he was reported as still hospitalized.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Meghan McCain got rattled by someone who wrote a book analyzing the pathologies of an overgrown spoiled child, cosseted by privilege and a lack of self-awareness into a delusion of inflated self-worth and pathological and misplaced confidence? And said someone was unimpressed by Meghan McCain? Think of that.
JoyceH
@Kay: ” I’m wearing my mask and then 75% of people aren’t wearing theirs and I just think “well. THIS isn’t going to work!””
Add a face shield to your protective gear. The mask protects other people from you. The shield protects YOU from THEM.
Martin
Oh, bullshit. They opened because Trump told them to. DeSantis buried his own Covid data. And people were talking about the delay between R naught and death rates back in Feb and March.
This was approached as a liberal problem from day one.
mrmoshpotato
@Zinsky:
Fixed a minor error.
trollhattan
@drdavechemist:
The senior care industry in California has been conducting heavy obfuscation as to COVID infection and death rates, to the point we don’t have reliable data. IIUC they still comprise a big fraction of deaths but other cohorts more recently have displaced the elderly in infections, most notably 20-29, who are #1.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I want to marry that paragraph.
Kay
@Zinsky:
‘It is an easy choice, though, if you don’t understand the science. Maybe especially if you don’t understand the science. My choice was “trust these scientists and doctors OR trust Donald Trump and this collection of screeching kooks and oddballs on Fox News”.
Easy. Took 5 seconds.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Meghan who?
Lyrebird
@Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.):
I can’t wait for more mixes of “You ‘Bout to Lose Your Job” featuring Trump, the acting DHS leader and real-life criminal, Barr, and their enablers.
Actually I hope they license the song for campaign events, the young woman is talented & she’s putting her life back together. And if they’re not about to lose their jobs… Can’t think that way. They ARE about to lose their jobs!
Wag
@Villago Delenda Est:
Same thing here in Colorado, as well.
LongHairedWeirdo
I agree – this was a person who knew better, gambled with people’s lives, and was wrong for precisely the reason anyone who was even a tiny bit informed could have predicted.
And I just realized: isn’t that the entire Trump presidency in a nutshell?
People took a gamble with the future of the nation; it turned out wrong for *precisely* the reasons anyone who was even a tiny bit informed could have predicted.
Thing is, everyone had been told that it could kill one in a hundred, though concentrated among the elderly and those with preexisting conditions. Play with that all you want; you can’t be thinking that 20,000 cases a day is acceptable. If you decide it’s only half as fatal as people think, that’s still 100 deaths pending for those 20,000 cases. Nocera appears to have decided that was acceptable, because he didn’t see them, and know about them,which is precisely why he shouldn’t have stuck his nose into a question of public health.
Wag
@Hoodie: or Japanese…
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Meghan McCain is trash. Her “Why do liberals think it’s okay to attack the president’s children?” schtick conflicts somewhat with the legacy of her revered, straight-talking dad.
“Do you know why Chelsea Clinton is so ugly?” he told a handful of big Republican funders. “Because Janet Reno is her father.”
She should shut the hell up, essentially forever.
Kent
Coming late to the blog this morning. Have we talked about the fact that Cohen just got set free because the judge was not amused by the DOJ attempts to muzzle him and violate his first amendment rights?
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: I’ve gotten into some arguments because I’m much less inclined to bargain with the rules, so to speak, than almost all of my friends, family and associates. If the experts say not to do something, I don’t really want to argue fine points of semantics to bring in this or that behavior as okay; I want to go twice as hard so I don’t violate the rule by accident! Treat it like kashrut, where a bunch of the rules are the guardrails to keep you from violating the really important rules.
But that’s not how anyone else around me seems to see it, and if I push it, I come across as the irrational paranoid guy who won’t shut up about COVID-19 (and who thinks he’s so superior for following the rules). So I end up compromising a lot just so I don’t wreck all my human relationships.
Roger Moore
@drdavechemist:
The thing is that nursing homes have been a major source of fatalities everywhere. They’re a large fraction of the total here in California, too, so counting them here but not in RI would give a nonsensical comparison.
Kent
Who moves their entire family to Boca Raton for a month so that their youngest son can attend a tennis camp? I mean seriously, I move in upper middle class professional circles and I know no family who would do that. Even during a pandemic.
Betty Cracker
@Ken: To be fair to Nocera, he elaborated more than I did in my paraphrase about better treatment options, greater knowledge about how to manage the virus’s effects, etc., keeping the death rates down in the Sunbelt outbreaks. He’s saying they are lower even when you account for that, which may or may not be true. Sounds plausible to me, but I don’t know.
VeniceRiley
I check the Covid info on this page every day
covid19info.ocgov.com/
And I also go here and click through the tabs at the bottom
arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
germy
@Kent:
And twenty years from now, that youngest son will tell his friends how hard he had it growing up, but his hard work and devotion to tennis rescued him from a life of deprivation.
MisterForkbeard
@trollhattan: The other answer is that Trump’s kids are all part of his campaign and administration. They’re adult political actors.
Clinton and Obama’s kids were… kids. And Republicans built up hateful mythologies and attacked them both all the time when they were teenagers.
Despicable, and you can see why Meghan McCain doesn’t want to examine this too closely.
KnittyGal
@rikyrah: Good point, but let’s not leave off the other politicians that are trying to make our lives miserable. In KY, Guv Andy (D) is doing all he can and AG Cameron (R) is going behind him and suing over everything: masks – check; limiting group sizes – check, etc.
Danielx
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Another item in the long list of things that piss Trump off: his niece is making bank off his name and he doesn’t see a dime of it!
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’ve seen Mary Trump in a few interviews now, and she seems smart and focused. I’m sure she swatted McMeghan away like particularly dumb and self-important housefly.
It says a lot about the state of conservatism that someone like Meghan McCain is taken seriously as a representative of it. She’s the bottom of the barrel. There aren’t better people. She’s it.
drdavechemist
@Roger Moore:
I don’t disagree–my point was that if, either by chance or by policy, states outside the Northeast managed to avoid having the virus go wild in nursing homes, their fatality rates would be a lot lower. It was clearly a mistake to try to keep infected residents in nursing homes or (worse) send them back after they were discharged from the hospital, which is what I understand happened early in the pandemic both here and in NY.
Roger Moore
@different-church-lady:
Wait. I thought COVID-19 was spread by 5G.
germy
@Betty Cracker:
My wife enjoys watching the show, although she will often heckle Meghan.
I notice Whoopi came from a poor, single parent household and rose to the top through her talent. Sunny Hostin is a lawyer. Joy Behar worked her way up through show business, daughter of a truck driver.
Meghan is an heiress.
mrmoshpotato
@Kent:
Hehe. You make it sound like moving to a state with a raging, uncontained virus is a selling point.
“Come for the tennis! Stay for the deadly respiratory disease!”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
At Papa Hensley’s funeral, Cindy McCain delivered a eulogy centered on the close relationship she had with her father as her only child, only daughter. Sitting in the front row was Cindy’s elder half-sister, who was cut out of the will just like she was cut out of the eulogy. I’ll pay Joy Behar ten grand to ask Megs about her relationship with her Portalski cousins.
Getting way out of the boat and swimming around stagnant waters, I know, but I really hate that entitled little shriek-monster and all the attention she gets, with barely any pushback beyond Whoopi rolling her eyes. That show is, somehow, an important non-traditional outlet for politics, and ABC lets her use it to spew all kinds of misinformation, especially about abortion. Because she’s a “christian”.
germy
Here is a list of hand sanitizers to avoid:
fda.gov/drugs/drug-safety-and-availability/fda-advises-consumers-not-use-hand-sanitizer-products-man….
(contain methanol)
Mary G
I was reading an article in Tiger Beat on the Potomac framing the problem with the new coronavirus bill being a “dysfunctional Congress,” as steam was coming out of my ears, when they put up an afternoon update that lets the Republicans have it with both barrels under the headline “Fiasco”:
Wow. Even better than the WaPo’s GOP in disarray story. Abject disaster is my new band name.
tokyokie
@rikyrah
Sounds like it was a county judge. In Texas, county judges are basically the equivalent of county commissioners in other states. And that’s not going to change to a less confusing term because they like being called, “Judge,” even if they don’t hear any cases.
Zinsky
@mrmoshpotato: Yup, that covered it. LOL ?
Ken
No. COVID conspiracy theories are spread by 5G.
Roger Moore
@Betty Cracker:
The problem is that Meghan McCain is the perfect representative of conservatism. The whole point of conservatism is to keep power in the hands of the people who currently have it. Nepotism and cronyism are core conservative values; the rest of the stuff they talk about it is justification.
germy
Betty Cracker
@germy: & @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not a regular viewer, but isn’t Meghan McCain only the most recent nepotism hire to occupy the designated “conservative” seat? It’s almost as if they can’t find anyone who got there on her own merit. Hmm!
tokyokie
@piratedan:
San Antonio is in Bexar County. And although San Antonio is generally considered the northern end of South Texas, Hidalgo County is a lot further south, along the Rio Grande, and its biggest city is McAllen.
LongHairedWeirdo
@Matt McIrvin: One tactic is to claim you’re high risk (“I don’t want to go into details”) so you can assure people that your desire to distance from them isn’t personal.
If anyone thinks it’s cute to have fun with your apparent nervousness, that person probably enjoyed pulling the wings off of flies as a child. (Okay, big overgeneralization – but cruel fun about real danger *is* akin to pulling the wings off of flies, keeping in mind that it’s not the *flies*, it’s the lack of empathy. No one cares that you swat a fly!)
Seriously: if someone coughed in my general direction, with a big-ass smile on his (or her) unmasked face, I’d reconsider whether I was wrong to include that person in a circle of friendly acquaintances. In point of fact, XKCD once joked about using the word “ass” as a modifier, it can be interesting to move the hyphen over a word – i.e., if someone coughed, with a big ass-smile on their unmasked face….
rikyrah
@Matt McIrvin:
This will be happening for anyone in Illinois who voted in 2018, 2019 and March 2020 (if you voted in any of the past 4 elections). They just passed a law in June mandating it for this election.
I signed up for a Mail Ballot for the first time.
I have been Early Voting for the past 12-15 years. I can’t remember when I voted on Election Day.
Ken
@Mary G: Also from that Politico roundup, good news for those who had “War with China” in the October Surprise pool:
Betty Cracker
Holy moly…
Jesse
R0 was the standard metric for corona here in Germany, since the beginning of this back in late February/early March. The raw number of positive cases and deaths weren’t used that way. Those numbers were (and still are) just additional information, not a stand-in for R0.
Elizabelle
LOL. WaPost website “front page” right now, about middle down: Philip Bump story:
Seemingly.
Baud
@Betty Cracker: Don’t make me believe in Florida again, Betty.
Betty Cracker
Also, according to the Q poll cited above, 79% of Florida voters say people should be required to wear a mask in public. Man, did Trump and DeSantis fail to read the fucking room.
germy
@Ken:
Imagine how Pompeo would react if China declared it wanted to engage and empower the American people!
rikyrah
They don’t want to pass a bill. And, they never thought they’d have to. They believed in the fairy dust of the GOP States’ shyt don’t stink and COVID-19 is only in Blue States. They believed in the V recovery curve model. They are, as a collective, phucking delusional as Dolt45.
Nancy Smash for the win again.
‘Don’t come to me without YOUR OWN BILL’
Putting them on the spot
Great ads
The GOP plan?
Cut unemployment benefits for millions.
Get that shyt in writing, Nancy Smash
?BillinGlendaleCA
@piratedan:
Hidalgo County’s down near the border, San Antonio is in Bexar County.
Ken
@Betty Cracker: Who could have known that telling parents their children had to be put in danger for the economy was the stupidest political move since – well, since telling old people they had to die for the economy?
Mary G
@Betty Cracker: Wow. I love it, especially later in the summer.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elizabelle: oh snap
if headlines are really written by editors, the one who did this deserves a prize (but you clipped out the end)
Lacuna Synechdoche
I had something similar happen last time I voted. I didn’t have to re-sign, but the guy checking the signatures said something like, “It’s weird how it’s changed, but you can still tell it’s yours.”
I guess there are still certain swoops and loops that remained recognizable despite the passing of time – although, to be fair, the signature on my voting record is only from the mid-90’s.
Give it another twenty years and I might be re-doing my signature at check-in too.
Baud
It seems like “Trump 2020: More American Graves Added” wasn’t such a great reelection slogan.
sdhays
@Martin: Yeah, these guys don’t deserve the benefit of the doubt that they’re just incompetent and stupid. Brian Kemp claimed surprise that COVID-19 could be spread by asymptomatic people, months after this had been established. The only way for him not to be lying was that he had simply doing nothing but watch Gilligan’s Island reruns while the half the nation went into lockdown and the national economy fell off a cliff.
He wasn’t a watching that much Gilligan’s Island.
Elizabelle
And Alexandra Petri takes on Ted Yoho, who always finds himself the underdog. Except maybe against anesthetized household pets.
WaPost: Ted Yoho’s apology to AOC, offered as a masterclass
“I cannot apologize for my passion, or for loving my God, my family, and my country! I yield back!”
— Rep. Ted Yoho (R-Fla.), apologizing(?) to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)
catclub
@donnah: An apology from a Republican is so rare that we should bronze it
Joe Nocera is a journalist. I would be very surprised if he is registered with either party, but instead claims to be independent.
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I want a smoke after reading that.
Baud
C’mon, Ohio. You can’t let Florida show you up.
Kay
@Matt McIrvin:
I just listen to some of these people and I don’t know why I would decide to become a half-ass, speedy quick “expert” on this pandemic when there are people who do that for work already and know more.
I don’t want to understand R values. It’s, um, not my area. I have the ability to take direction.
I can’t do a lot of things. I just hire other people to do them. It works most of the time. I maintain this would work a lot better with a division of duties and everyone stays in their lane. My job is to follow the health orders. It’s an easy job and I’m grateful for that, because I have a whole other job.
Matt McIrvin
@LongHairedWeirdo: Honestly, they’re all better about dealing with COVID than 90% of the United States population. I don’t mean to say I associate with a bunch of unusually careless people.
It’s these marginal situations: is it OK to meet in the backyard, outside, 6+ feet apart? We’re all wearing masks–oops, time to eat lunch, better take the masks off. Now we’re all having a conversation without masks. Now it just seems silly to put them back on…
And, honestly, part of it is me being irrational, because I look at scary graphs every day and I try to go super hard on COVID rules as some way of asserting control, but of course I have no control because this disaster is all really being driven not so much by my friends having an outdoor meeting, but by people in faraway states where the governor said it was OK to open the bars.
Ocotillo
@piratedan: Hidalgo county is in the Rio Grande valley. San Antonio is 4 hours north in Bexar county.
rikyrah
Cermet
When you said (and the stupid reporter) :
“death rates in the Sunbelt states are lower than they were in the Northeast for reasons we still don’t fully understand.”
Really? We don’t fully understand that after nearly 140 k deaths and three months of study doctors might have figured out the best treatment steps that drastically lower mortality? Yes, that’s pretty much 100% of the reason. Oh, and a miracle occured and … last part added as bullshit for color.
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
That’s quote-worthy AF. 20 quatloos awarded!
Read that View ratings were in the doldrums since their last blonde trixie conservative left and adding McCain gives them a nice boost. People want to watch conflict, which is also why reality TV even exists. Conflict and somebody to feel superior to (even the Kardashians).
The problem is give your entertainment unit a platform, and you give their positions de facto credibility. In the real world the shriek-monster would simply be somebody people avoid at the country club.
nasruddin
@Zinsky: There’s a lot DJT doesn’t understand. One way that might define it is, “Anything that Mr Trump can’t run a con on.” Except – if he had any mental acuity at all, he’d find a way to use those 14 days of quarantine too.
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
Oh please, oh please, oh please….
rikyrah
And?
So??
piratedan
@?BillinGlendaleCA: ty for the geographic correction, still the fact remains that the county reached out to the Feds for help to shift some of the medical burden to Army Medical facilities and were told to go pound sand.
Matt McIrvin
@Kay: Part of my problem is that I’m not entirely convinced that, say, the civil authorities in Massachusetts really know what they’re doing. Charlie Baker did this tentative reopening of a bunch of marginal stuff, and a lot of people took advantage, and guess what–our case rate isn’t skyrocketing but it isn’t really dropping either. We’ve been kind of treading water for weeks, at this level that is low by US standards but is not nearly low enough for my comfort. So is he going to declare victory and open the schools now? I don’t trust him.
I’d have been much happier if we continued the super-hard lockdown for, say, just one more month, got it down to one tenth the level it’s at now.
Betty Cracker
Trump just tweeted this:
It’s linked to an ooga-booga NY Post garbage article by wingnut utility liar Betsy McCaughey. But that “Suburban Housewives of America” thing, whoa. Trump is living in the distant past, a time when he could still see his own dick without a mirror, one presumes…
Quiltingfool
Today was my shopping day, and I go to Walmart for groceries, etc. It was very different today, compared to last week! Only one entrance was open, and only 2 people did not have a mask. Lots of shoppers, too. All the other shoppers had masks on, wearing them properly. No one seemed to be irritated at wearing a mask – you wear one and go about your business.
Now how hard is that? If that simple step of wearing a mask reduces the virus transmission by whatever percent, we can do that. I was talking to the checker about all the different masks I saw, she said she’s seen lots of neat masks. Make it a fashion statement! But wear the damned mask, people!
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker: Like I’ve said before: the specter of imminent mortality has a rather clarifying effect on people’s viewpoints.
JPL
@rikyrah: Well at least Dersh has something else to whine about now, while as a guest on Fox and Friends. Last year he whined about how no one wanted him at their Martha Vineyard’s parties.
Jeffro
@Elizabelle: he sure is a genius, that trump-meister! “Hey everyone, let’s talk about cognitive issues while I’m already 15 points down in the polls!”
Whata maroon! =)
Elizabelle
WaPost: Catherine Rampell: Trump knows he’s going to lose. He’s already salting the earth behind him.
Mostly WRT the Senate committee approving Judy Shelton, a goldbug and crank.
He is a dumpster fire, par excellence.
=====
NPR: 173 dead of COVID in Florida in one day. Although authorities say the rate of new infections is declining.
rikyrah
???
different-church-lady
@Roger Moore: IT GETS INTO THE 5G WHEN SOMEONE BREATHES INTO THE PHONE AND THEN TRAVELS THROUGH THE NETWORK I AM NOT AT ALL A CRANK!!1!
trollhattan
@rikyrah:
She now ranks high enough to warrant a few atta-girls, even if I never once considered Mrs. David Koch previously. “When trophy wives rebel.” How’s Mrs. Charles Koch doing these days?
Such a family.
trollhattan
@different-church-lady:
Are there tubes? Please tell me there are 5G tubes. :-)
germy
rikyrah
Biden is up +3 over Dolt45 with 65+ in the Florida poll
I told you that I believed Biden’s numbers with the 65+ group.
Jeffro
Btw folks, a pretty good take on all the ways we kept believing in American exceptionalism…until Covid-19 came and stripped it all away.
EXCEPT
for this part, which takes “both sides” to a new extreme. See if you can see which presidents’ failings were perhaps a wee bit smaller (or not even a failing, in one case) compared to the others.
(hint: going by party ID helps! =)
different-church-lady
OT: one of the side effects of having double pneumonia is that even after you feel like you’re back to normal, oppressive humidity reminds you that your lungs are still a ways short of 100%.
catclub
Indeed. I never head what became of the 5-fold increase in pneumonia deaths in Florida in march- april – but no big spike in CV19 deaths…
hmmm. Didn’t DeSantis also try to take control of reporting from hospitals?
different-church-lady
@trollhattan: I hate to break this to you, but 5G is dump trucks.
Ken
@Betty Cracker: Right now, the “Suburban Housewives of America” are looking at who wants to send their kids back to school while the virus is still uncontrolled.
different-church-lady
@germy: “Vlad, you’re going to have to be a lot less subtle in Florida this year…”
Anotherlurker
@germy: Joy is also a former English teacher. She is very formidable and does not suffer fools lightly.
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: I think Joe and Jill Biden giggle every time they think about Trump and his person, woman, man, camera, TV.
NO ONE is talking about Biden’s unfitness for office, outside the TrumpMoron bubble.
Kudos to the Post for working Trump’s big words into a hilarious inside headline.
Brachiator
I have had some pointless conversations with people who still believe that Trump is right about the pandemic. Worse, they will adapt their view to whatever he says. It just doesn’t matter.
Also, Trump is clearly an idiot who is in too deep. He is incapable of making an intelligent decision about the pandemic. He doesn’t know how to digest the information he is given.
I don’t know what the other guy’s problem is, except to note that conservatives seem to believe that ideology trumps reality.
You see this last in the UK as well. Despite access to a deep bench of experts, Boris Johnson and his henchman Dominic Cummings made almost every bad decision possible.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: “Hey little laaaaadies! That genial guy who makes everyone smile and actually listens to people? He’s going to leave your suburb in flames, like with riot police and tear gas and everyth…er…um. Ahem.”
What are his numbers with women in general, again? Like 35% or something? This could be the first (of many?) demographics that hits the Crazification Factor before November…
different-church-lady
@Brachiator:
A death-cult-of-personality.
trollhattan
@different-church-lady:
D’oh!
WaterGirl
@Lacuna Synechdoche: My last name has 12 letters, and I no longer have patience to write them all out, so it’s mostly the first letter and then my signature squiggles. Until the day he died at 84, my dad’s signature was the same as his dad’s, with every letter meticulously written out. I was daddy’s girl for sure, but I did not get that gene.
Jeffro
@Elizabelle: Rampell gets exceptionally ticked off at the completely bonkers economics choices this maladministration makes and then lies about (tariffs, trade wars, Covid relief, trying to bring Stephen Moore onto the Fed, pressing on with Shelton’s nomination, etc)
She REALLY took a hammer and tongs to Moore – it was beautiful
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: Low hanging fruit, but deserving of destroying completely.
pamelabrown53
@Elizabelle:
Great story. One of the many hazards of a malignant narcissist: Trump can’t stop talking about himself long enough to slime Biden and make it stick.
Instead of the old I’m rubber and you’re glue, Trump’s version of the adage is more I’m glue and Biden is Teflon!
Jeffro
OT but this bears repeating and throwing in each and every trumpublicans’ face until the end of time
Per Keith Boykin on the twitters:
different-church-lady
@Jeffro: Y’know, it’s funny: every once in a while I take some kind of mental test for fun or for professional training, and the times when I ace the thing, I don’t think to myself, ‘I’m a genius!’. Instead I think, ‘That test was way too easy.’
Redshift
@Mai naem mobile:
And encourage people to vote as early as possible, to avoid overwhelming the postal service and early voting locations.
Good discussion at my (virtual) local Democrats meeting this week, pointing out that most voters have never done this before, so we really want to encourage them to get familiar with the procedures as soon as possible.
Redshift
@WaterGirl: My dad taught me to make my signature a scrawl when he was teaching me how to sign checks. That way someone can’t easily reproduce it just by knowing your name.
joel hanes
Open thread ?
We could all use a moment in a happy place.
Ducks annihilate fresh peas
germy
Dershowitz strikes back:
Edmund Dantes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: he will probably try to stiff the taxpayer, but unless it’s for a state dinner or other actual government business dinner, the first family and guests pay for their own food throughout their stay at the White House.
Roger Moore
@Quiltingfool:
I do wonder how many people who freaked about about mandatory mask requirements never even tried wearing one and were just assuming it was going to be awful. Now that they’re actually forced to wear one and find out it isn’t that bad, are they going to resist less?
Kelly
@rikyrah: Oregon Vote by mail ballots are sent out 2~3 weeks before election day and must arrive at county elections office on Election Day. Return envelopes are postage paid as of this year. Post marks don’t count. There are lots of drop boxes. Our nearby ones are at the city library and city hall. Ballots in the drop boxes by 8pm election day are counted. I’ve given my email address to county elections. They send a msg when the ballots go out and when the ballot is accepted. I’d get an email if they didn’t think the signature matched or some other problem. It’s never happened but I think I’d have to go to the county elections office in person to straighten it out. Folks without internet can call to check for problems.
jonas
If only Hidalgo County had had the good sense to be a white, wealthy Dallas or Houston suburb rather than a rural, mostly Hispanic county, they would have gotten their field hospital. Live and learn!
zhena gogolia
@germy:
This clip is great. She’s so much more intelligent than ANY Trump I’ve ever seen. I’m beginning to doubt she’s really part of the family!
thedailybeast.com/mary-trump-shuts-down-meghan-mccain-for-accusing-her-of-cashing-in-on-the-view
mrmoshpotato
@Zinsky: Just performing a public service for my fellow jackals. :)
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@trollhattan: Yup, Chelsea Clinton and Amy carter were both about 13 when their fathers were elected. The Obama girls were even younger. Did not stop asshole Republicans and some comedians and late night hosts from making fun of them. SO the fainting spells the press and the Republicans have at the mere MENTION of Barron’s name is laughable. Meghan McCain only has a job because of who her daddy is. She is a spoiled idiot of a brat. She can take a seat forever as far as I am concerned.
Gretchen
Nocera still thinks there is « scant evidence that children can transmit the virus » which is utterly untrue. He should have quit while he was ahead.
Ken
What, and admit that they were wrong? You must not have met many Real Americans.
Geminid
@Villago Delenda Est: The Republican challenger to first term Congresswoman Lauren Underwood (IL), State Senator Jim Oberweis, is in the Republican House “Young Guns” program. Oberweis is 73 years old.
JPL
@germy: Thank you for the link. The local ABC station carried the funeral of CT Vivian, so I had not seen the show. The funeral was a beautiful service for a beautiful human being
John Revolta
@different-church-lady: Being able to do something, and then right away wanting to do something harder- why that’s how people get better at stuff! And we can’t have THAT, now, can we?
germy
@JPL: My local affiliate switched to Gov. Cuomo, who told young people “this is not the time to fight for your right to party.”
I’m not joking.
Kay
What everyone in Ohio is about to find out is that each of us were paying $16.00 a month to corrupt Republicans in the statehouse. It’s an amazing scandal because they not only robbed us, they set it up so we made continuing monthly payments to the thieves.
Just BRAZEN corruption.
zhena gogolia
@rikyrah:
Oh, man.
what is wrong with these people?
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: Read the article; about to watch the video.
There is something deeply wrong with Megan McCain.
Her own mother would be a far more welcome addition to The View.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@different-church-lady:
Obviously you’re not Presidential timber.
WaterGirl
Illinois Peeps: I just got this in the mail. It tells you that you have to request a mail-in ballot, which is different from what rikyrah said. Also, when you go to the website on the flier, it tells you to vote yes on the fair tax for illinois. I am wondering if this group is legitimate.
illinoisvotes2020.com
Kay
This is what I think now when I read this “Oh, I hope he’s not corrupt too”
I feel victimized by the level of corruption- like a mark or a dupe. It enrages me, that they have put me in this position.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
My first thought was, “I bet there was an official Housewives For Nixon.” In 1960
WaterGirl
@Redshift: interesting!
Ruckus
@BruceFromOhio:
It’s not like there is any love in the other direction…….
Wishing for what they want and are trying to make happen to you really can’t be considered an issue now, can it?
JPL
@WaterGirl: Sure doesn’t sound like it. google fair tax group IL
Zinsky
I loved hearing Trump on FoxNews, going into great detail about the cognitive assessment test he was given! It’s so endearing and cute to listen to the village idiot babbling on about something that titillates their tiny brain! It was a window into how dull and uninformed this narcissistic man-child really is. I’ll bet Trump hasn’t been that excited since the last Stormy Daniels porn tape came out! Short changed by the Lord and dumb as a jackass!
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
I listened to Rick Wilson, Molly Jong Fast podcast interesting interview with Mary Trump. She seemed a lot more relaxed than the previous interviews I’ve watched.
JPL
@Elizabelle: She’s a mean girl. We’ve all met one or two in high school and she just never matured beyond that stage.
trollhattan
@Redshift:
I became a signatory at one job and having observed the giant piles of checks going around, each requiring two signatures, I crafted initials for the bank card that I could easily write a hundred times in a row.
It eventually affected my handwriting with time. I mostly blame taking notes in college for effing up my handwriting but still notice that my good handwriting emerges with certain pens. With most pens and pencils it’s a big ol’ mess.
Subsole
@rikyrah:
These people are the distilled essence of every filthy wastrel bastard that ever owned a plantation.
The judge was they blocked was up in Houston, if I recall.
@JIm, Foolish Literalist: Wishful thinking, maybe? He was trying to escape with his kid, right?
@Ken: Also too, the gov’t here and especially in Florida is just nakedly cooking the #s. So people don’t have good info to go off of.
@Zinsky: This is on the GOP. If even 2 of them gave a damn they could twist McConnell into circumventing Trump. They don’t.
These people have gone mad. Fractal brainworms.
I think they really do have a sublimated death wish they are inflicting on the rest of us. We get to be the wife and kids in their fucked-up little murder/suicide.
Ruckus
@Ken:
How many actual humans brag about VD? Very few actually. I’ve met one in my 71 yrs, and he was a shitty human being.
WaterGirl
@JPL: I’m stuck with only my iPad today because my computer is in the shop. Otherwise I would be researching it all myself. The iPad is much more cumbersome, to me.
Yutsano
@joel hanes: My duck enthusiasts on Twitter are enjoying this mightily.
japa21
@WaterGirl:
A couple things. The group is promoting the referendum to have a progressive income tax in Illinois and is using the vote by mail process to promote itself. Legitimate group.
Secondly, you can requess a mail in ballot application, but I do believe that they are sending out the application to those who voted in those elections automatically. It is probably safer to request one justm in case.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Elizabelle:
I’m guessing Mary Trump could write a sequel: “Too Much and Never Enough: The McCain Family”. Too much of the wrong kind of attention, not enough of the good. A family of privilege, rage, entitlement, secrets….
trollhattan
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Proper ladies joined by their shared conviction that “this JFK fellow is too good looking to be trustworthy. Also Catholic.”
SiubhanDuinne
@bemused:
I’ve watched, now, four MT interviews (Maddow, Stephanopoulos, Colbert, and The View). She seemed fairly tense during Rachel’s show last week, but seems to be getting more confident and self-assured each time I see her. Loved the way she swatted Meghan McCain away like an annoying housefly.
I find her very impressive.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@bemused:
I thought the same. She was pretty relaxed on Colbert last night, too. Would’ve made a great in-studio episode in normal times. And she was just starting on Fresh Air when I got out of my car a few minutes ago. The Beast must be chewing on the carpets and drapes and furniture with rage.
trollhattan
@joel hanes:
How is that video not sped up? Hungry ducks are hungry.
Subsole
@Elizabelle:
Do we have any remedy whatsoever for that problem?
Yutsano
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I find it odd she never mentions she has a sister. Unless the Bangladeshi authorities decided to rescind it for welfare reasons.
zhena gogolia
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
When she answers McCain, you can just see in her eyes, “I’ve got your number, little missy.”
Robert Sneddon
@different-church-lady: 5G is station wagons filled with 9-track tapes. Lots of station wagons, very small and very fast station wagons.
WaterGirl
@japa21: interesting!
right now the state of IL doesn’t tax state pensions. I wonder if that would change under this progressive tax. If so, I can’t imagine that anyone who worked for the state or any schools would be in favor.
I just googled progressive tax, and what comes up mostly tells you why a progressive tax is bad. So much for google being objective.
Calouste
@Ken: How many suburban (as opposed to exurban) housewives are there even left these days? It’s not like families can afford to live in most suburbs on a single salary.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Leave out the essentially.
Baud
Biden/(Mary) Trump 2020: Unity ticket!
JPL
@japa21: That is so interesting, because I live in GA and fair tax means sales tax. Most seniors and those on a fixed income don’t realize they’d pay a lot more with that system.
Patricia Kayden
catclub
@Robert Sneddon: Radio is like a very long cat. You pull his tail at one end and he meows at the other. Likewise radio, you pull one end in New York and the other end meows in Los Angeles. Except there is no cat.
H/T Einstein.
Ruckus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
She claims to be christian, it’s a claim like shitforbrains claiming he’s worth 13 billion. It’s bullshit like everything that comes out of either of their mouths.
different-church-lady
@Robert Sneddon: YOU CAN’T FIT A 4K MOVIE INTO A STATION WAGON! YOU NEED A DUMP TRUCK!!1!
bemused
@SiubhanDuinne:
It’s quite refreshing to learn that there is one close trump family member that is actually a normal human being.
different-church-lady
@bemused: …so far.
catclub
My wife’s experience with Mississippi vote by mail – a few years back. Was that virtually ALL the mail in ballots were disqualified due to missing signature on the outside envelope, or for other reasons.
Now, Mississippi never makes voting easy, but I wonder if it has gotten any better in the past 10 years. For all I know they required a notarized signature.
Motivated Seller
Nocera says:
Not much of a mea culpa, since, as he admits he was wrong to believe DeSantis, he then proceeds to believe DeSantis again. He reasons that closing schools would “inflict enormous societal harm.” But I guess when you spend enough time in front of a Bloomberg terminal instead of actual human beings, the social harm of dead teachers never occur to you.
And even if we were to indulge in this little hearty heart-felt heroism of getting a clue, could you imagine for moment being the 2nd grader who thinks they have the virus, and then their teacher drops dead the next week? Is that what he wants kids to learn at school? What death looks like??
Even a second grader doesn’t need a Bloomberg terminal–or a Bloomberg terminal’s mouthpiece–to know that is horrifying.
Ruckus
@Lacuna Synechdoche:
I signed my first voter registration in 1970 and how I write now is really not the same, nor do I use my middle name or suffix in like I was told I had to then.
SiubhanDuinne
@rikyrah:
Every time I think I can never be appalled again, I’m appalled again.
Captain C
@germy: In Dersh’s case, the “anti-semitic claims” were probably something along the lines of “Dersh is an asshole and a failure as a human being.” In other words, not anti-semitic at all, and in fact, factual.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: Mass. introduced early voting (and no-excuse mail voting) for the big statewide elections in 2016 and 2018. Until this year, they never had no-excuse mail voting for the smaller elections, but they do now thanks to emergency legislation.
I started doing early voting as soon as I could. That involved going to City Hall and basically filling out a mail ballot with envelope, but sticking it in a box. So I think I’ve done most of the mail-voting procedure already, but most people I know are less familiar.
Ken
@Robert Sneddon: @different-church-lady: Randall Munroe has updated the station-wagon-full-of-tapes calculation.
bemused
@rikyrah:
So many stories of these awful people every week. In one article I read, the author said the trump era has triggered people with mental health issues to act out more often, make scenes and vent loudly. My immediate reaction to that was there’s not much difference between a generic mentally ill person acting out more and a trumper being a trumper.
bemused
@different-church-lady:
True but in comparison with the rest of trump clan, Mary Trump appears exceptionally normal.
Mallard Filmore
@WaterGirl:
My former boss’s signature was only squiggles. There is no way what he drew had any letters from his name.
Elizabelle
Donald J. Trump and his administration. Did not care enough to protect the Felician sisters, who worked as teachers, librarians, nurses and nursing professors, spiritual counselors. Close quarters for the elderly [with insufficient testing and masking available 3-4 months in] were a death sentence, even as they tried to protect themselves.
NY Times: Convent in Michigan Loses 13 Sisters to Covid-19
NY Times has the photos, all 13 of the elderly white sisters. 12 gone from April 10-May 11; one more died June 27th. Livonia, MI.
1918. Whose lessons were there, plain to see, except we have a narcissistic sociopath in office.
I truly do not think the death toll would have been so high with better leadership, that hit the crisis running, using the Defense Production Act to gear up PPE and needed medical equipment and medicines, and that worked with scientists, instead of sabotaging them. Who kept the Pandemic Office in place, and worked with other nations to combat this worldwide pandemic.
More faces of Donald Trump’s death toll.
Bill Arnold
@Betty Cracker:
They aren’t reading the room. They believe that they are reading the room, but their minds are instead pickling in right-wing propaganda and spew from closed information feeds, much of it counterfactual. This is the proximate cause of many of the political mistakes that they are making. (The root cause is the various actors feeding those pickling vats with disinformation, some of which is carefully crafted.)
Patricia Kayden
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The Housewives tweet is still up and unexplained. I would’ve thought at least one Ramble trying to justify his Love for Our Great Stay At Home Moms!. I guess Kellyanne and Hopey are still workshopping i
ETA: is there an Episode of the All New Five O’Clock Follies: Totally Keepin’ It Sane! scheduled for today?
jl
I think way too much emphasis on the various reproduction numbers. For small outbreaks the generation time, or serial interval, the calendar time it takes for one infection to pass to another susceptible is just as important in estimating time you have to quash an outbreak. Also, the absolute level of cases in a society, and calendar time between them, and whether surveillance, contact tracking and isolation program in place is sufficient to quash an outbreak, and have time to get to the next one is really the only criteria for reopening.
What was missed with the reproduction numbers is that they operate in a kind of ‘epidemiologic time’, the period that an infected person can transmit the disease, not calendar time. Most of the models you see are operating in that epidemiological time, and there is a time scale transformation, that depends on uncertain parameters of time of infectiousness, needed to put the x-axis in terms of calendar time.
Edit: at least in Western countries, a covid-19 outbreak bubbles a lot longer than expected before it blows up into an exponential expansion explosive wave. A German epidemiologist calls it the ‘dark matter’ transmission problem. At least in Western countries, outbreaks are easier to control if you have planned your work, and lined up resources. US has absolutely no excuse for its disgraceful performance.
Patricia Kayden
@Elizabelle: That is devastatingly heartbreaking.
Cacti
Haven’t seen a front page post on this, but this a big effing deal.
Canadian courts have formally declared the U.S. a shithole country with regards to asylum seekers.
The Safe Third Country Agreement in place with the U.S. since 2004 is now unconstitutional in Canada. The U.S. is no longer considered a safe third country, and sending asylum applicants back to the U.S. is now considered a violation of Canada’s Charter of Rights.
bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53494561
The Banana Republican Party built that.
raven
rikyrah
@Geminid:
Oberweis is a milk/ice cream mogul
rikyrah
@Kay:
Dude said he wouldn’t resign.
I understood that. WHY would he resign, when everybody in his ledger is probably still serving with him.
misterpuff
@Geminid: Good Ice Cream, Shitty Politics.
Yutsano
@misterpuff: Unfortunately, that seems to be the norm.
Chetan Murthy
@Kay:
It’s “essential activity” if it isn’t sufficient for the Federal Government to provide economic support (payments) to the workers doing it, and that’s enough to allow the economy to keep going without that activity. In short, if you still need that particular work to be done, or people “not those workers” will suffer for the lack in real ways.
That’s why churches (all religious establishments)[1], entertainment, sports, restaurants (for onsite dining), bars, are all non-essential, while schools are essential.
[1] Yeah, churches too. There’s nothing a church does, that can’t be done remotely, except the “congregating” but. And that’s the bit that kills, while not having anything intrinsic to do with the religion. If that means the priests gotta work overtime doing Zoom calls, too bad. Their need for a Great Sky Father shouldn’t trump my mailman’s right to live.
Yutsano
@Chetan Murthy: Well guess what? There aren’t going to be any more mailmen soon so you won’t have to worry about protein them! Checkmate libtard!
raven
@WaterGirl: It’s been 10 years since this shot was taken at our friends house.
gwangung
@Chetan Murthy:
There is such a thing as drive-in services: congregants stay in their cars in the parking lot, pastor delivers sermon via wireless.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
And what I’m thinking is that I didn’t think it was DOJ officers involved in either case. At Lafayette Park, it was the park police, who are part of Interior, and in Portland they’re supposed to be from DHS. I’m sure the DOJ IG will find his department did nothing wrong, and this will be spun into a claim that the federal government did nothing wrong.
rikyrah
@WaterGirl:
THIS is from the most recent bill that the Governor signed:
misterpuff
@Mallard Filmore: Drumpf’s is a seismograph signal made with a Sharpie.
WaterGirl
@Mallard Filmore: That’s kind of a low bar – one letter out of twelve recognizable in my signature! But I’ll take it! Can’t be choosy in this time of COVID. :-)
Ken
By the way, about those suburban housewives: A Fox News poll has suburban women disapproving of Trump 67% to 33%, with 54% strongly disapproving. When asked for whom they would vote, 55% said Biden, 32% said Trump.
WaterGirl
@raven: I feel like I’ve been to that house for a party or something. I recognize some of the people besides you, but not a lot of them.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: thank you!
raven
@WaterGirl: Only three still live there. That was actually where the shooting took place.
Kay
raven
Nixing Jacksonville!
JPL
@raven: Local nbc doesn’t cover his bullshit. I switched here after he said he was canceling to protect people from China virus and the left wing democrats.
raven
@JPL: MSNBC does.
Brachiator
@Kay:
I’m trying real hard to care. Also, Rapid City is not a remote Martian colony.
Still, the callous indifference is typical of these goons. I guess they never expected to have to eat the shit they shovel out to others.
Aleta
businessinsider.com/trump-campaign-ad-police-officer-attacked-2014-ukraine-protests-2020-7
rikyrah
@Kay:
They are pure garbage, Kay.
Top to bottom.
Ken
@Aleta: Even if it were a picture of a US protest, I’m still not understanding the message “this happened under my watch, vote for me and I’ll fix it”.
Aleta
@Kay: Smallest of that article’s details, but revealing:
“it amounted to a small sum given that the events often net millions of dollars.” That would depend on truthfulness about the $ raised and on how much went to who else.
All I can picture is a giant drain with donor money washing down it.
Mike in NC
We just caught a preposterous TV ad for Fat Bastard, claiming that Uncle Joe will defund the police. We can only wish half of it was true.
Kay
@rikyrah:
It’s a good sign though. If the campaign were going well 15 of them wouldn’t be complaining to Politico.
James E Powell
@Brachiator:
My Trumpista sister recently remarked that sure, Trump made some mistakes with COVID-19, but everybody makes mistakes and anybody else would probably make even bigger mistakes.
I have no answer for this. There are times I cannot believe we are related.
Elizabelle
The WaPost, with a straight face, on
trump‘s announcement re Jacksonville:I think I can hear North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper and his officials laughing from here.
And that Jacksonville sheriff who warned the public safety planning was inadequate definitely saved some lives. Because you know Trump would have loved to dump the extra costs on Jville. Stiff them. During a pandemic. It’s what he does.
Aleta
@Ken: Good point. Too bad he’s a sadist.
I think the message is that ‘near-lethal’ force (lethal ‘collateral damage’) is needed to save police lives.
I also believe T assumes that others of his ilk enjoy as much as he does the TV footage of officers beating and flattening the weak (i.e., unarmed) enemy.
I imagine it giving him the same satisfaction he probably enjoyed in the 60s and 70s as he watched news films of firehoses, dogs and nightsticks in the South, air bombing in Vietnam and Kent State.
I also imagine him exhilarated by the power of ‘This time it’s me, Trump, myself who’s producing this. My show.’
The fake facebook ad could a small sign of worry that more of his audience are becoming even more horrified by police violence than they were in June.
frosty
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Good catch!!! LOL great headline writer.
Aleta
@Elizabelle:
Shorter: He wanted money for the event to materialize like magic without keeping records of where it would go. He didn’t want the Committee to make down payments to anyone except his ‘authorized’ contractors (shoddy but willing to kickback). And perhaps the millions the convention committee said would come from the DOJ as a “safety grant” were waylaid.
(Since the sheriff said they hadn’t committed to the advance money needed for logistics and safety: Could it be they were pressuring the city to accept any side income during the convention in exchange for its expenses? Could it be they were counting on the other cities in FLA to be honored to contribute their police officers for free?)
Villago Delenda Est
@Ken: Excuse me, knob Pompeo, but you’re working for an authoritarian (at least) regime right now. I suggest you resign at once.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Teppichfresser
prostratedragon
@rikyrah:
Saw that earlier today and wondered what was going on in August that kept me from processing that Koch had died. On reflection I’ve realized that I did remark it at the time, but there was a whole lot else happening, like using whatever steam power I could muster to help get somebody impeached.
Sounds like he reaped some of what he had been sowing.
Brachiator
@Elizabelle:
Just then, one of Trump’s generals stumbled into the room and said “Sir, I think you are probably the only American president who could have made such a bold decision. It is bigly, great.”
Then everyone went into the room next door and had hamberders.