So the White House made the explicit decision that it was a better political call to let people die in the blue states and blame the governors then try to fix the testing situation. https://t.co/1fKA5vhfWa
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 30, 2020
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 30, 2020
This excellent read has been getting a lot of social-media attention… but in case you haven’t seen it yet, it’s worth reading the whole thing! Katherine Eban, at Vanity Fair — “How Jared Kushner’s Secret Testing Plan “Went Poof Into Thin Air”:
On March 31, three weeks after the World Health Organization designated the coronavirus outbreak a global pandemic, a DHL truck rattled up to the gray stone embassy of the United Arab Emirates in Washington, D.C., delivering precious cargo: 1 million Chinese-made diagnostic tests for COVID-19, ordered at the behest of the Trump administration.
This purchase did not appear in any government database. Nor was there any contract officer involved. Instead, it was documented in an invoice obtained by Vanity Fair, from a company, Cogna Technology Solutions (its own name misspelled as “Tecnology” on the bill), which noted a total order of 3.5 million tests for an amount owed of $52 million. The “client name” simply noted “WH.”
Over the next three months, the tests’ mysterious provenance would spark confusion and finger-pointing. An Abu Dhabi–based artificial intelligence company, Group 42, with close ties to the UAE’s ruling family, identified itself as the seller of 3.5 million tests and demanded payment. Its requests were routed through various divisions within Health and Human Services, whose lawyers sought in vain for a bona fide contracting officer.
During that period, more than 2.4 million Americans contracted COVID-19 and 123,331 of them died of the illness. First in New York, and then in states around the country, governors, public health experts, and frightened citizens sounded the alarm that a critical shortage of tests, and the ballooning time to get results, were crippling the U.S. pandemic response.
But the million tests, some of which were distributed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to several states, were of no help. According to documents obtained by Vanity Fair, they were examined in two separate government laboratories and found to be “contaminated and unusable.”…
Though Kushner’s outsized role has been widely reported, the procurement of Chinese-made test kits is being disclosed here for the first time. So is an even more extraordinary effort that Kushner oversaw: a secret project to devise a comprehensive plan that would have massively ramped up and coordinated testing for COVID-19 at the federal level…
Countries that have successfully contained their outbreaks have empowered scientists to lead the response. But when Jared Kushner set out in March to solve the diagnostic-testing crisis, his efforts began not with public health experts but with bankers and billionaires. They saw themselves as the “A-team of people who get shit done,” as one participant proclaimed in a March Politico article…
The group’s collective lack of relevant experience was far from the only challenge it faced. The obstacles arrayed against any effective national testing effort included: limited laboratory capacity, supply shortages, huge discrepancies in employers’ abilities to cover testing costs for their employees, an enormous number of uninsured Americans, and a fragmented diagnostic-testing marketplace…
By early April, some who worked on the plan were given the strong impression that it would soon be shared with President Trump and announced by the White House. The plan, though imperfect, was a starting point. Simply working together as a nation on it “would have put us in a fundamentally different place,” said the participant.
But the effort ran headlong into shifting sentiment at the White House. Trusting his vaunted political instincts, President Trump had been downplaying concerns about the virus and spreading misinformation about it—efforts that were soon amplified by Republican elected officials and right-wing media figures. Worried about the stock market and his reelection prospects, Trump also feared that more testing would only lead to higher case counts and more bad publicity. Meanwhile, Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House’s coronavirus response coordinator, was reportedly sharing models with senior staff that optimistically—and erroneously, it would turn out—predicted the virus would soon fade away.
Against that background, the prospect of launching a large-scale national plan was losing favor, said one public health expert in frequent contact with the White House’s official coronavirus task force.
Most troubling of all, perhaps, was a sentiment the expert said a member of Kushner’s team expressed: that because the virus had hit blue states hardest, a national plan was unnecessary and would not make sense politically. “The political folks believed that because it was going to be relegated to Democratic states, that they could blame those governors, and that would be an effective political strategy,” said the expert.
That logic may have swayed Kushner. “It was very clear that Jared was ultimately the decision maker as to what [plan] was going to come out,” the expert said…
The gamble that son-in-law real estate developers, or Morgan Stanley bankers liaising with billionaires, could effectively stand in for a well-coordinated federal response has proven to be dead wrong. Even the smallest of Jared Kushner’s solutions to the pandemic have entangled government agencies in confusion and raised concerns about illegality…
Ms. Spiers was the editor of the NY Observer when Prince Jared decided to buy, and destroy, it:
Can confirm that Jared is both malicious and stupid. https://t.co/ePjGQrXnsq
— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers) July 31, 2020
If you're surprised by Jared Kushner's callousness re: people in blue states dying of covid-19, you should know it's not an aberration. Here's what I wrote in early May: https://t.co/Djmd6qF0SX pic.twitter.com/SBad1kaIts
— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers) July 31, 2020
I think people underestimate the extent to which both Jared and Trump are angry at blue state elites for never really accepting them. They both have massive inferiority complexes, even with all of their wealth and privilege. So of course they're happy to let, say, NYC die. https://t.co/U19DkzxPqR
— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers) July 31, 2020
They want validation from competent, smart people too, and the only way to get that is to be competent and smart themselves. Which would take work, and humility, neither of which they're up for. So not getting approval from those quarters makes them angry, too.
— Elizabeth Spiers (@espiers) July 31, 2020
maggie, who works at the new york times, did not consider it newsworthy that her friend (the authoritarian president) was intentionally murdering her state https://t.co/08oL1nG85J
— etaoin shrdlu (@Theophite) August 1, 2020
she uncritically covered trumps claims of wealth when she was at the ny post and politico and i think she still essentially sees him as a clownish, harmless, self-aggrandizing NYC real estate guy instead of 'what if a cable news channel had nuclear codes'
— le loup garou (@turdducken) August 1, 2020
they’re job shopping for the next era
— kilgore trout, new tone haver (@KT_So_It_Goes) July 30, 2020
WereBear
I’m glad this is exploding all over, because it should.
JPL
If it does receive the coverage that Hillary’s emails did, trump will have to do something worse to change the subject.
m.j.
The virus respects ideology and borders.
chopper
of course, all this ‘hey they actually came up with a decent plan’ should be rewritten as ‘they inherited a pandemic playbook from previous admins which included all this stuff’
Wag
@m.j.: Absolutely right. Just look at the difference in infection rates and deaths between the US and Canada.
Wag
@chopper: Absolutely true.
Cathie from Canada
Any “plan” developed by Kushner wouldn’t have worked anyway, so there’s that.
Wag
@m.j.: Actually, in thinking about it, the difference is that ideology and borders respect the virus.
JPL
@chopper: That was the day they closed the book.
Mike in NC
Read this article from Vanity Fair last night and am still shocked by the mendacity and cruelty, but I know I shouldn’t be.
We need to conduct a national lottery after November 3rd, where the winner will get to slip the noose over Fat Bastard’s neck.
JPL
@Mike in NC: I’d be fine with allowing him to have one last family gathering in a room filled with rats.
NotMax
But- but- permanent peace in the Middle East.
Never mind.
//
laura
That gormless wax faced shite-weasel should be investigated yesterday for this. He’s alleged to observe the sabbath and so I’m curious to know what awareness he has about being outed as a betrayer of his nation and fellow man. He is filth.
m.j.
@Wag:
Then I guess it just comes down to a matter of degree.
WereBear
I would think this is worthy of a Congressional investigation. Starting now, and running as long as necessary…
germy
Citizen_X
I hope Jared stays in good health and lives for many more years.
Most of them in prison.
Nora
I suppose it’s futile to play the “Imagine if Obama did this” game, but really, if there had been the slightest possible hint that anyone in a Democratic administration thought a plague hitting red states was good for their political future, impeachment would only be the beginning of the Republicans’ response.
ant
when i told my husband about this, he shrugged, and said we already knew this.
It was old news for him.
I’m still stunned by it. We still need that fed testing program. They still need to do it. But Trump is actively trying to block funding for it as we speak. He’s fucking killing his own people now. Hermain Cain’s wife was married to him for 52 fucking years. Can you just imagine the weight of grief that she is burdened with now? Trump is directly responsible for his death from my point of view. It doesn’t have to be this way. It’s crazy. What the fuck is wrong with these people?
Now, the political calculation is being made in the republican senate that economic pain should be maxed out for the incoming Biden administration. They are already looking to come back into power in 2022, following the 2010 midterm playbook: Obstruction, economic pain, blame Dems.
germy
I think that’s her reaction to anyone who scoops her:
“Sniff, we all knew that already”
Without realizing how it makes her look. She just doesn’t want to appear to have been “scooped”
Neldob
What are they saying on Fox neews? That Susan Collins, R-ME is concerned?Where’s mah pitchfork.
PsiFighter37
Jared’s just a dumber version of his father. Hopefully he gets to spend more time in the clink than daddy did.
Eunicecycle
I live in a red state (Ohio) and I can tell Kushner, people here have been dying, too. My daughter is a nurse who has had to help families make the goodbye call on an iPad. And yes, Jared, they are dying from Covid.
Another Scott
@chopper: +1
I’m not getting out of the boat to read this nonsense.
Grr…
Cheers,
Scott.
debbie
@WereBear:
As I said in the previous thread, this has yet to be covered in non-blue states. I look forward to that changing.
Meanwhile, Target now restricts sales of things like sanitizers and disinfectant wipes to 3 instead of 1. It seems someone thinks the supply chain is recovering.
debbie
@m.j.:
It’s the guns, silly.
debbie
@Eunicecycle:
Only in the blue counties. //
debbie
@WereBear:
Hope the Democrats fold in the huge supply of hydroxychloroquine they’re sitting on.
SiubhanDuinne
I hope Jared’s tumbrel number is 2.
senyordave
@laura: I always wonder about people who profess to to be observant of any faith and are so obviously amoral. i’m Jewish and I don’t consider Jared Kushner to be Jewish. He doesn’t adhere to any of the basic tenets of the Jewish faith.
But then again most self-professed evangelicals Christians support Donald Trump, and I have a nagging feeling that Jesus might have had a little problem with the shitgibbon (and I like to think that Jesus would have used the term shitgibbon to describe Trump).
p.a.
And at the current debacle-point, I can retrospect and say if they actually got it right from day 1, I wouldn’t care if they ‘wet their beaks’ a bit. Turns out, small price to pay…?
To quote Dennis Green, “they are who we thought they were!”
senyordave
@JPL: I’d be fine with allowing him to have one last family gathering in a room filled with rats.
I don’t think you could get rats in the same room with them. Even rats have standards.
Another Scott
@Another Scott: A better read – repost – Adam Serwer from May 18:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/americas-racial-contract-showing/611389/
Cheers,
Scott.
m.j.
@debbie:
I see they had a quieter night in Portland without them.
Ken
@SiubhanDuinne: There’s definitely arguments for that, but I’m of the “anticipation makes it worse for them” school.
Chief Oshkosh
@germy:
Maybe that’s why she didn’t report it, but I doubt it. She knows reporting it won’t move her career forward. She may have gone as far as pitching to her bosses, but they wouldn’t be interested in this. Sure it’s in the city that they live, but they know, deep down, that it’s really not affecting them.
mrmoshpotato
Wow. Bastards.
Vaunted, eh? “I’m tremendous bigly at the political instink! Lotsa Peoples says so! Isn’t that right, Lotsa?”
patrick II
I’m trying to think of another business plan that would kill more Democrats than Republicans so I can get rich. I am sure under this administration I would succeed at getting an SBA loan. Perhaps I could reopen a meatpacking plant on Chicago’s Westside and get rich and kill Democrats and immigrants at the same time.
Any other suggestions?
debbie
@m.j.:
Yep. I heard it was the protesters who stopped the vandalizing. You’d think the police might be impressed by that deescalation tactic. //
waspuppet
In addition to the basic inhumanity of letting people die for political benefit, I just want to point out that about 460,000 people in NYC proper voted for Trump, and about 34,000 in San Francisco. That’s more than AK and ID combined. More than the Dakotas combined. More than Nebraska. More than Wyoming. And Trump and his failson-in-law were happy to let them die, because they didn’t live within a political boundary that was going to benefit them.
If that doesn’t teach Trumpites what’s wrong with the Electoral College, then they really do want to die to own the liberals. If it could be limited to them, I’d say fine.
Ken
@patrick II: How about buying a private island, and organizing parties where the rich hunt the poor?
patrick II
@chopper:
No, they never looked at Obama’s plan because Kushner is a business management genius who could, with his business and real estate genius friends, come up with a better plan than all of those deep state infested doctors. They worked genius day and genius night to come up with a plan — but it saved too many Democrats. So, back to the drawing board.
Hey! Genius idea! Blame someone else! Now that’s a plan!
Kattails
Everything they do is so blatant. If the fucking useless “news media” were doing their jobs in any even moderately functional way, all but the most obtuse citizens of this country would be so sickened and repulsed by this family of reprehensible sociopaths that there would be lines outside every Congress and Senate offices screaming for their immediate prosecution. Hell, this should be the easiest, cherry-picking journalism at this point, there’s so much information floating around. It just boggles me that it hasn’t happened yet. People’s bubbles must be made of titanium.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Just Jared? it was obvious to anyone with a half a brain the Virus wouldn’t just stop at the Blue States .
Vaunted among whom? Trump eked out an electoral collage win threw foreign intervention, something no real politician would have done because all it would have done is undermine their power and for the last four years been singularly ineffective as a president. Trump’s pick for SCOTUS was so massively offensive it resulted in a Blue Wave in the midterms.
What is wrong with the Right they won’t tell Trump to his face in private he is being an idiot?
mrmoshpotato
Oh look! Trump trash actually named Trump!
What despicable, greedy, selfish shitstains.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kattails: Unfortunately that would make no difference if the MSM was more active on calling the Trumps on their uselessness. Remember Trump’s base are conspiracy believers and have their own information bubble.
Barbara
@Cathie from Canada: What you are missing is that the most important aspect of the “plan” was its national scope, an admission that anything other than a national effort would be inadequate. So of course, it would have been refined and altered, but a national effort would have been out there as the only goal that mattered.
As for why it didn’t happen — I loathe Jared Kushner with the heat of a thousand suns, a cruel, mendacious, incompetent nothing who doesn’t even have the imagination to understand just how incompetent he actually is — but Deborah Birx is or at least was supposed to be an esteemed infectious disease specialist who has been repeatedly and catastrophically wrong about this disease and this pandemic. She gave them the fig leaf of expertise that let them drop any plan as being unnecessary. She has a lot to answer for. I think Fauci does too but he has been much less of a booster than Birx.
mrmoshpotato
@mrmoshpotato: And incompetent like nobody’s fucking business! (Though that’s at least partially deliberate.)
m.j.
@debbie:
I would hope so.
patrick II
@ant:
There was much talk about this in comments right here in BJ at the time — although here we usually thought it was because they realized it mostly hurt people of color rather than Democrats when they stopped their effort. The surprise isn’t they decided to do nothing when they realized the virus was killing the right people — the surprise is that they made as much of an effort as they did before that insight.
Barbara
@waspuppet: San Francisco, for all the hand wringing of its public health experts, has fared better in this pandemic than any other major American city — the result of heeding public health hand wringing (it’s what they are there for) because of the willingness of both people and their employers to defer to science. New York City was very unlucky, and hit with basically a tidal wave but, like Italy, has largely turned itself around, as have Boston and other northeastern cities.
I still can’t imagine how stupid you have to be to think that a virus, basically the lowest life form you can think of (it can’t even sustain itself without a host), cares about the voting habits of the host.
West of the Rockies
@laura:
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes!
It is crystal clear now that Dull Prince Jared is a Trump in the making. He needs to be treated as such. Going forth he must be socially and politically and commercially neutered.
We must never forget who he is. Same goes for plastic pinhead who married him.
West of the Rockies
@Citizen_X:
I’m West of the Rockies, and I approve this message.
hells littlest angel
Portrait of Dr Evil as a young man.
OzarkHillbilly
@m.j.: Gee, it’s almost like trump sent the CPB/ICE troops in to provoke violence and sow chaos.
mrmoshpotato
@chopper:
Yup! Chuckles the Toddler should be yelling about this 25 hours a day (He won’t be. These aren’t Hillary’s email we’re talking about.)
These murderous motherfuckers were given the blueprints for a house and went “Fuck these!” and chucked them in the trash. And the shit they’ve been trying to put together with drinking straws and chewing gum…
Spanky
Sure hope the Kushner execution is televised. I’ll make all the popcorn!
Can we get on with it already?
mrmoshpotato
@NotMax: There’s no complaining about all of the fires that are raging out of control if everyone who’d complain is dead.
patrick II
If you live in California or New York or Washington State, Trump is killing you on purpose. If you live in the rest of the country — sorry, it was an accident.
West of the Rockies
@Barbara:
Isn’t Birx also a “deeply religious” person? Weird how their faith always proves to be such self-serving nonsense.
waspuppet
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I give Trump credit for a few things, political-instinct-wise:
Naturally, because he’s Donald Trump, he couldn’t conceive of using these political instincts for anything more than getting himself one more scoop of ice cream on his pie than anyone else, and he couldn’t conceive of the job he got himself into ever requiring any actual work (perhaps because it was his first real job and he got it at age 70), but still.
mrmoshpotato
@WereBear: This alone (“Fuck the blue states! Let them die!”) is worthy of American Nuremberg trials by itself. Not to mention all of the other atrocities committed over the past 3.5 years.
Just Chuck
I suspect we’ll next find they took active measures to infect blue states. Biological warfare on our own country. NPR will still phrase it as “Democrats and Republicans continue to bicker on capitol hill over Coronavirus relief.” Angry tweets will be made.
I don’t even feel outrage anymore. I wish it could get to where I felt nothing at all, but right now it’s pretty much all hopeless despair.
mrmoshpotato
@Nora: The Russthuglicans would’ve lynched Obama and burned DC to the ground, dumped gas on the ashes and burned it again.
Brachiator
Sometimes I wake up and pause for half a second, and wonder “how the hell is Trump president???”
Adding to this, I wonder what the hell kind of idiot would think that a virus, a goddam virus, would only affect “blue” states?
Young Jared really is… something.
Soprano2
This should be the top news story on every news program everywhere for the next week. They should shove a mic in the face of every Republican down to the county level to ask them about this story for the record. What they did is monstrous, it killed people, and if I were the governor in FL or AZ or TX or here in MO or any other state that’s exploding with COVID right now I’d be livid.
Nicole
@Brachiator:
Yeah- that’s what I keep shaking my head over. Harvard really takes in some pretty dumb people, and then graduates them with degrees and everything.
Just Chuck
@Nicole: They knew it would infect other states. Only their followers are so stupid as to think otherwise. They just didn’t _care_, not then and not now. They just wanted it first in the blue states so they could blame the spread on them. They want to rule over the rubble.
Honestly, I’m thinking that maybe they just want the maximum number of people to suffer. I always thought “evil” was a simplistic cop-out, but I don’t know what else to call this.
Ken
I misread that as “chemically neutered.”
Actually I think I like that better.
Mai naem mobile
@Spanky: I think if you made it pay per view you could probably make a dent in the national debt.
I don’t use the term hate lightly but I hate this whole family. They’re just such an amalgam of destructive racist corrupt hypocritical incompetent perverts. The sad part is they won’t be shunned because of celebrity and their $$$. The names Trump and Kushner should be looked at with such disgust that any person carrying the name should want to be running to court to legally change their name. They should all be paraded on the streets like the Nazi collaborators were in Europe post WW II. But ask me how I really feel about Donnie and Jared.
m.j.
@OzarkHillbilly:
It seems their view is rather limited. I’m not sure if it can be calculated in days or hours or even minutes, but they react in a way that ultimately will benefit no one.
@OzarkHillbilly:
Falling Diphthong
@JPL:
I’m confident he was going to do something worse regardless.
patrick II
@Barbara:
I am with you. Adding Birx’s authority to Donald’s macabre COVID ramblings acted as a political get home free card for his lies. Doctors are supposed to be better than this, but in the Trump administration everyone is turned into a liar, an incompetent, or an evacuee.
Eunicecycle
@waspuppet: I remember during the campaign he indicated he was going to keep running the Trump businesses while being president. He really thought it was a part time job. Of course he also said he would be too busy to golf, so there’s that.
Brachiator
Haberman must be saving this and similar revelations for the “End of All Human Life As We Know It Because of Trump” final special edition of the NY Times.
PA-KID
@JPL: I have faith that Trump can always find something worse to do. He is just that evil!
Eunicecycle
@patrick II: She even went on Fox or OAN or one of those networks and went on and on about how well he understood the data and the science. It was so disgustingly, transparently a lie that I never took anything else she said at face value.
catclub
best possible way to balance the budget.
MomSense
Jared Kushner is a murderer.
gratuitous
When the deficit peacocks emerge to tell us how horrible it is to just give people an extra $600 a week to blow on food and clothing, I just want to point out that the $52 million Jared wasted on useless tests could have funded 13 weeks of those $600 payments for 6,666 Americans. Contrast and compare what value the United States got from Jared’s wasted purchase from unknown foreign agents versus what po’ people could do for the United States with extra money in their pockets.
trnc
Got that right. Seems like it would already have been at least floated by someone. Which committee – Oversight?
catclub
heck I was thinking, “Finally, he will stop telling me how to make pizza.”
I am not a good person.
Elizabelle
This, and Mitch McConnell’s stalling on financial assistance to Americans.
These are people who treat the American people as pawns. They seem themselves as great lords, with vassals, and not much concern for the serfs.
Jared was not elected to anything, but McConnell was, and Trump might have been. They are all failing us, and I think each should face trial and a long prison sentence for undermining American institutions and crimes against the American people. They each have body counts. Lots and lots of bodies who suffered needless, unnecessary deaths. They should be punished, hard, and don’t let anyone even think of trying anything like this again.
laura
@MomSense: Concise, on point, true.
Major Major Major Major
Concerned that the excerpt from Vanity Fair is a big ol copyright violation… the three-paragraph rule of thumb is actually precedent iirc!
JMG
None of them will ever even see the inside of a courtroom, let alone a prison. America doesn’t work that way.
rikyrah
@ant:
I am with your husband. It was obvious as it was happening
dexwood
Traitors, monsters, ghouls, murders. All of them.
Thaddeu
Reducing Racist-in-Chief John Roberts to a bit player should be on top of the Democratic agenda
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/08/01/opinion/roberts-is-no-gop-villain-or-liberal-savior-hes-dyed-in-the-wool-conservative/
Pack the Court.
Ruckus
@Nicole:
They didn’t see dumb people, they saw money. Lots of money. You can afford to pay for the carnival you get all the rides you want for free. In many ways that makes them no different that their “customers.” Because it’s not about the education, it’s about the money, prestige, social standing, their place in the food chain. Sure there are actual smart, reasonable people who have attended Harvard, but they share degrees with people who couldn’t complete a degree in high school level wood shop, with all their fingers intact and without stomach aches from eating too much glue.
WereBear
@West of the Rockies: For decades the Catholic Church was the censorship body for Hollywood, and forbade any man of the cloth being a villain.
Elmer Gantry barely made it and required negotiation, including him being an unrepentant con man…
That sank in deep.
Kattails
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I appreciate that. But allowing for that demographic, there are still people who are just–naive? Don’t quite want to face it? Willing to make excuses because the Democrats…whatever? Both siderism? There’s a chunk out there that I absolutely believe would be swayed by the right info.
This was floated a month or two ago on a Twitter feed. Maybe when Mary Trump’s book came out. The discussion was about actual narcissists and how they con people for so long; but the follow up was that there was usually one thing that broke through. And that once people saw that one thing, they were forever immune from the narcissist’s cons. Quite a few personal anecdotes about spouses, bosses, etc. The whole context became clear to them. In one case it was someone who truly believed that a manager was super-supportive of her, until said manager accidentally included the worker in an email that clearly showed otherwise.
I think that the Trump cartel are stupid and monumentally arrogant and sooner or later will make enough of these mistakes, each one not turning a whole populace but hitting the light switch in some brains. And once that switch is on, it can’t be turned off. Not only that, but the effect as told in this thread seemed to suggest that the individual was then immunized against others’ cons.
MagdaInBlack
@Ruckus:
I have said of people that they are so stupid they couldnt find their way out of a paper bag, with a compass and a map. And here they are: they had both….and threw them away, because a virus that jumped an ocean isnt going to cross state lines?
How do they manage to breathe and walk at the same time?
West of the Rockies
@Ken:
Chemical neutering? Nah, rusty hacksaw.
Why, yes, I am in a bad mood.
Ruckus
@JMG:
A part of me thinks this is absolutely true.
And the other parts hope that it’s not.
Which side is winning changes at any particular moment. I expect that the money involved will buy them enough representation to stall long enough that shitforbrains will die on his own, although I also suspect that he will live far longer than most of his victims get to. Our system is supposed to stop this sort of bullshit, to have checks and balances, but I suspect that he’s gotten enough support because most of the republican party left fully agrees with his political views. We know it is a party of virulent racists, shitforbrains made it his only point of decision and concepts and they support him rabidly.
debbie
@MagdaInBlack:
What gets me is that there was no one in the room saying there’s a chance it might not work out the way they wanted.
MagdaInBlack
@debbie:
Oh, there probably was. They were laughed at, and ignored, and removed.
Jinchi
Good for you. Immediately after Trump’s victory, there were many people who laid out the fundamental rule for the resistance against the wanna-be dictator – Never stop being shocked by his actions.
FelonyGovt
@Kattails: Yes, it’s occurred to me that there are many instances of people who voted for Trump who now realize they made a mistake and won’t vote for him again, while I doubt many (if any) who voted for Hillary would now vote for Trump.
Brachiator
@Kattails:
Problem is, a lot of people are dying before they see “that one thing.”
Also, Trump has achieved a narcissist’s greatest dream. As president, he wields great power and can force people to do his bidding. He can lie, manipulate data, flat out deny reality and surround himself with willing lackeys and enablers.
And his base will never desert him. They will believe any lie, and deny what is plainly in front of them in order to keep the faith.
And then, there is the GOP leadership, who should have dumped Trump a long time ago, who have never wavered in their loyalty.
Now it’s up to the voters, most of whom appear to have seen the light and understand what is at stake.
trollhattan
I feel doubly sorry for the tens of thousands living in Kushner Co. rentals because when prince Jared get tossed from the WH come January he’ll have plenty of free time to concentrate on squeezing every last nickel from them while slashing maintenance and management expenses.
Have they begun the WH shredding yet?
trollhattan
@debbie:
If nothing else, Trump is adroit at weeding out anybody willing to openly disagree with him. Which must really tell us a lot about Mrs. Mitch, DeVos, Carson and any other survivors of his original cabinet (there can’t be many).
rikyrah
artem1s
she really did marry her father didn’t she? Jared is nothing more than a 21st century kapo to Trump. The Dolt family was never going to let him be anything except a bag man who got stuck cleaning up Uday and Qusay’s messes. He was always going to be the first ‘family’ member under the bus. And he’s now “most likely” to end up in prison and take the blame for their corruption. None of them deserve and empathy or pity. If they are very, very lucky they will get to retire to a nice safe prison cell somewhere and not end up like the Ceausescus.
artem1s
@Kattails:
once you see it, you can’t unsee it. the really frightening part is when you start to get a sense of just how many of them there are out there. it can send you back into that gaslighting place where you believe you must be the crazy one. why can’t anyone else ‘see’ it? but sooner or later the NPD fucks up in broad daylight. all your friends who told you that you were being paranoid are suddenly all ‘OMG I had no idea!’
Danielx
Going way out on a limb, I’m guessing there are going to be a fair number of private jets leaving the country with one way itineraries in November.
catclub
@FelonyGovt:
The lincoln project needs to get morticians stating that they voted for Hillary, but Trump has been great for business.
Calouste
@JMG: I’m fine with going straight to the executions.
Kelly
Need to stabilize him in a vise first
catclub
Many people were highly amused when some rich folks took their private jet to Italy .. AND GOT TURNED AWAY due to the US Covid19 fiasco. That will still be the case in November.
piratedan
have to admit to having very mixed emotions for this…
on one hand, I can’t wait to vote these people out off office and begin the hard work of dismantling all of their misdeeds and watching them see all of it come undone and in its place, something better, stronger and fairer be constructed. To watch them despair that with our collective will, we build a nation that really does respect and include minorities in the political process, we work towards repairing the damage in our society, that we strive to govern fairly with a remembrance of our past mistakes.
on another hand, there’s a part of me that is screaming with rage and wants to enact a terrible retribution upon them and those that aided and abetted this corruption… and I mean that in a Gary Oldman “Bring Everyone!!!!” scream from The Professional kind of way… the actual GOP politicians, the media that refused to see and portray this corruption for what it was, the print media, that to this day tries to offer this ongoing shit show as a “difference of opinion” to Putin himself and every dumbfuck ignorant racist piece of shit that is proud to stand on the tenets of “pwning the libtards” without really understanding that what they endorse is that they don’t give a fuck as to who the slaves are, they intend on being the slave owners.
Yutsano
@catclub: They can always go to Russia. They’ll just have to work out the visa details on the way.
patrick II
@Brachiator:
No, for her book, not an NYT special edition. Books are where the real money is made.
different-church-lady
@mrmoshpotato:
That’s more like it.
Matt
In a just world, this would result in Pennsylvania Avenue being lined with crucified assholes in business suits.
piratedan
@rikyrah: and while I’m sure that many will make the argument that you can’t directly, knowingly state that Gohmert is to blame, it sure as fuck is a helluva coinkidink isn’t it? Never mind that Grijalva is in his 70’s and is a heavy smoker, this is not good (he’s my Congressman ). He serves a mostly hispanic district and has been fighting the good fight against the wall idiocy. It also should be noted that where Trump decided to start his new construction was a direct Fuck YOU to Grijalva, considering he started it on a national wildlife preserve and you get three guesses which committee Grijalva chairs…(National Parks and Wildlife Preserves)
Sister Golden Bear
@Danielx: Likely, except that there’s very few countries that will let Americans in these days.
Oh wait… Turkey. It is a lovely country, with a friendly, corrupt dictatorship. Wonder what the going rate is for a beachside mansion in Antalya?
WereBear
@Sister Golden Bear: My money is on condos in Dubai as the hideout of choice.
germy
CaseyL
Anyone here know how to file a case with The Hague for crimes against humanity?
I tried, but all I came up with was sending an email to them, which is less than useless.
I really, really want all these human-shaped vomit piles to be tried for their crimes. All of them, Katie; including McConnell and his GOP enablers. They knew what was going on the whole time, and have done their best to make it worse.
germy
Too right wing or not right wing enough?
EDIT: Okay, I see that James is the more “moderate” RupertSon.
Ruckus
@MagdaInBlack:
How do they manage to breathe and walk at the same time?
Breathing is autonomic. Doesn’t depend on the intelligence of the particular organic unit. Until the systems that run that fail they will continue to breathe. Insures that idiots and savants alike can live.
Another Scott
@Kattails: There is good reporting being done, but you have to go look for it.
ProPublica/WNYC from April 22 – https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-kushner-coronavirus
Jared is Donnie’s gate-keeper and is doling out favors to those who kiss Donnie’s ring. They’re breaking the federal government so that they can turn it into the world’s largest grifting operation.
As we all know.
The information is out there, and has been for a long time.
Cheers,
Scott.
MagdaInBlack
@Ruckus: ???
Ken
@germy: I don’t care if it’s true or not, as long as Trump sees it.
germy
@Ken:
Yes, they’re poking at his soft underbelly. That seems to be their intent.
Ruckus
@MagdaInBlack:
I have gotten to the point that I actually have to pay attention so that I don’t fall down. Getting old can do that. I’ve known some who reach that a lot sooner than I did and a lot more costly to their physical being than my wake up call did to me. I’ve know some who didn’t reach this point a lot later than I did. But compass and map usage would be BS to a MOTU, they just know everything, didn’t you know that? I mean all you have to do is ask them, if there is one thing they know, it’s everything. Just ask them, they will prove it. Careful though, you may die laughing or have a stroke from the shear stupidity of the answer.
Ruckus
@Brachiator:
You think she might be that aware? I think she’s eaten the cornflakes and consumed the stupid. It eats the brain out from the inside and while it’s possible to recover from, that requires an awakening from the holder of the stupidity and at some point mootness will have arrived and taken over whatever cognitive skills might be left.
PPCLI
It should be emphasized that this was not just a strategy of “let the blue states die and blame their governors”, as if it were just malign neglect.
Trump, Jared et. al. were actively striving to harm the blue states, with acts like seizing PPE shipments that the state had already bought and paid for, and redirecting them to red state governors.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@waspuppet:
Trump has been lying about being rich and getting away with not being challenged by Media since the 80sn. That’s not politics, that’s just a life time of gifting.
The second point, I think it’s more actuate to say Trump is so dumb he thinks “If 5 million people are out of work, let’s throw 5 million undocumented people out of the country and then everyone will have a job” would work.
A lot of his success with the Hard Right is Trump believes the same dumb things they do. It’s kind of like it should be no surprise that the Pope is well versed in Catholic doctrine.
joel hanes
@debbie:
It seems someone thinks the supply chain is recovering.
I’ll believe it the day I can buy a full-sized bottle of ordinary Lysol liquid at my grocery store. Or a refill bottle of plain unscented Softsoap.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: The Trump admin motto “one hand stabs the other”
James E Powell
@Kattails:
As much as I tend to hate on Republican voters, I think you’re right. I’m not thinking it’s a large group, but convincing them to vote D or to stay home might swing a few states and – in our dreams – a few senate races.
Those voters need a narrative that lets them off the hook. Something like “He gave you his word and you gave him your vote. But he lied and he betrayed you.” Or a series of “In 2016 Trump promised you that he would . . . but what he really did was . . .”
And this where Biden is the ideal candidate because he is the only non-incumbent D that those people might vote for.
Let’s put some professionals to work on it and get those ads out.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
They never created a paper trail to destroy.
That’s one of shitforbrains trademarks, he never does any paperwork, that’s all lawyers and involves lots of NDAs because that of course takes out all the evidence. He’s known what he’s been and done for decades. You don’t make everyone do NDAs because you are sweet and innocent. You do them to hide your actions and words.
germy
Ruckus
@Kelly:
Rusty bandsaw. It would take too much work with a hacksaw. Sure it might seem like fun at first but it’s just too much effort. A guillotine would be more fun to operate and watch though. It could be dull and rusty just to liven it up a bit.
opiejeanne
@artem1s: I’ve gone through dealing with people like that twice in my life, one time personally and once as an observer after the fact.
I had a dear friend who had been swindled by this woman in my girls’ dance studio, a costumer and mom of two dancers, and my fried was still struggling with it months after she knew, after she saw. I told her she wasn’t crazy and that I had had a very similar experience with the choir director at my church. His goal wasn’t money but rather power and prestige, but their behavior was almost exactly the same. They both “bought” people with nice gifts and flattery, and they both lied outrageously as if no one would notice what they had or hadn’t done. Always one skip ahead of downfall until the con-woman got caught stealing about $250k from her employers and went to prison for several years.
It shocks you to your soul, the first time it’s up close and personal.
Ken
So set it up like the Saw movies. Then the executionee has to do all the work.
germy
Redshift
@piratedan: Porque no los dos?
Aziz, light!
Before he goes to prison, I’d like to see Jared locked up in stocks (the old-timey restraining device) in the public square so that anyone who wants to can walk up and give him a kick in the balls.
catclub
@joel hanes:
I want woven dental floss back.
catclub
Federal Troops Tear-Gas Yankees Off Field So Trump Can Throw Out First Pitch
The Onion.
J R in WV
@senyordave:
But, but, he doesn’t eat Trayf, and won’t travel on Friday evening, or flip the light switches, what more do you WANT FROM HIM!!!
//
;-)
You are also correct about the Evangelical Nut Jobs, they are NOT Christian, not at all.
Redshift
@Ruckus: Spending government money without a paper trail is also a crime. In the payment systems, it’s not possible for Trump’s low-quality hires to just delete the records.
brassmonkey
@Spanky: Patience is a virtue. And the truly egregious crimes have no statute of limitations.
And between the survivors of the pandemic, the survivors of the ICE border cages, and the surviving relatives of police killings, we will have a movement rivaling the post-WWII Nazi hunters.
And you know, none of it had to happen, but the Trump Administration managed it in only three years, and with great joy.
KSinMA
@Soprano2:
This.
Uncle Cosmo
@J R in WV: You misspelled evilangelical.
J R in WV
@joel hanes:
I haven’t seen Lysol in Kroger’s in years now. At the hardware store, sure. At Home Depot, yes. Adjust your shopping if you really need Lysol. Pine-sol on the other hand, must pay Kroger’s for shelf space.
Miss Bianca
@Citizen_X:
I didn’t think anyone or anything could get me to laugh at this horrible, horrible story and this horrible, horrible man.
…Bravo?…
Miss Bianca
@waspuppet: I keep wanting to make this point to my redneck neighbors: “Are you fucking insane, holding a fucking rally to re-elect the man who decided it was OK if people like you fucking DIE from corona? Just because you live in a state with a Democratic governor?”
But then I know that at some point I would lose it and start screaming, “WAKE UP, SHEEPLE!!” and then it will be all over.
J R in WV
@J R in WV:
On the other hand, there’s always plenty of toilet paper there now. And hand sanitizer, although it’s pretty low proof, just barely adequate according to the Feds.
Miss Bianca
@catclub: OK, that’s bad, but I laughed.
Actually, wait, it’s the fucking Yankees! OK, I don’t feel bad. I’ll never forget an old acquaintance back in the 80s saying, “Rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for Exxon.”
2liberal
@Soprano2:
I don’t see it on the front page at CNN
ballerat
@MomSense: A mass murderer.
Or to be specific, it’s genocide.
United Nations Genocide Convention defines genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such” including the killing of its members, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately imposing living conditions that seek to “bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”..
That is exactly what Kushner and Trump did. It is a genocide that already ranks among the deadliest genocides in history.