William Saletan at Slate published an important piece yesterday evening on Trump’s catastrophic handling of the pandemic. I posted a link in the morning coronavirus thread, but it deserves its own post, IMO. It’s not that there’s any new information in the article. It’s that Saletan puts it all together — in chronological order and in one place — with tons of links to publicly available statements from Trump and others as the crisis unfolded. The effect is absolutely devastating.
After Biden picks a not-Warren as VP, I wish Bloomberg would rifle through his sofa cushions and come up with the spare change he’d need to pay every fence-sitting voter in America $100 to read the Saletan piece. It’s entitled, “The Trump Pandemic: A blow-by-blow account of how the president killed thousands of Americans.” Here’s the conclusion:
It’s hard to believe a president could be this callous and corrupt. It’s hard to believe one person could get so many things wrong or do so much damage. But that’s what happened. Trump knew we weren’t ready for a pandemic, but he didn’t prepare. He knew China was hiding the extent of the crisis, but he joined in the cover-up. He knew the virus was spreading in the United States, but he said it was vanishing. He knew we wouldn’t find it without more tests, but he said we didn’t need them. He delayed mitigation. He derided masks. He tried to silence anyone who told the truth. And in the face of multiple warnings, he pushed the country back open, reigniting the spread of the disease.
Now Trump asks us to reelect him. “We had the greatest economy in the history of the world,” he told Fox News on Wednesday. “Then we got hit with the plague from China.” But now, he promised, “We’re building it again.” In Trump’s story, the virus is a foreign intrusion, an unpleasant interlude, a stroke of bad luck. But when you stand back and look at the full extent of his role in the catastrophe, it’s amazing how lucky we were. For three years, we survived the most ruthless, reckless, dishonest president in American history. Then our luck ran out.
The whole thing is well worth a read and worthy of bookmarking for future reference, IMO. I’ve never been a huge Saletan fan; he can be concern trolly on certain issues, most notably abortion. But this article was impressive. Open thread.
Elizabelle
Thanks, Betty. Pulled down the article from the COVID thread; reading it now.
Major Major Major Major
Yeah, the sheer cruelty and scale of the failure are breathtaking. And kind of make me think we won’t see real justice—“the public” won’t believe that so few people could do so much damage so intentionally.
waspuppet
In addition to promoting racism at home, which is always a bonus for Trump, this whole “China virus” trope reveals, unsurprisingly, that Trump is continually blindsided, in fact somewhat offended, by the notion that he has to do his job. Which a glance at his “work” history would easily confirm.
CaseyL
The Unraveling of America by Wade Davis in Rolling Stone is also worth a read. Again, nothing people here don’t already know, but all put together in one devastating piece.
debbie
I intend to read this later (and I will weep for sure), but I hope he includes the couple of weeks Trump wasted calling the pandemic a “Democrat hoax.”
Sure Lurkalot
I’m not sure our luck didn’t run out in 1980.
germy
@Sure Lurkalot:
That was my experience.
debbie
Grabbed the link and found the title references tens of thousands, not thousands.
chopper
speaking of bloomberg, whatever happened to all that money he promised to spend to support the democrat “no matter who wins the primary”? odd, innit.
rp
I would like some reporter to ask this question: “If a genie suddenly appeared in front of you and said he could instantly wipe out COVID-19 and turn the economy around, but in exchange you would lose the election, would you take that deal?”
Of course any decent human being AND any semi-competent politician would instantly say of course (after all, it’s just a hypothetical), but Trump isn’t capable of even pretending to put the country’s interests above his own.
PenAndKey
@debbie: I still have coworkers trying to use the “watch, it’ll disappear after November” line. These are the same guys who also claim that there’s an anti-Trump plot to dismiss the hydroxychloroquine wonder drug, so it’s not like I expect them to be consistent. Apparently COVID is like Schrödinger’s cat to them.
WaterGirl
@chopper: Betty already covered that, indirectly. Speculation is that Bloomberg is waiting to make sure Biden doesn’t choose Elizabeth Warren as VP. If she doesn’t, THEN he will open up his pockets.
Betty Cracker
@Major Major Major Major: I agree that’s a legit fear, as is the degree of polarization. That allowed tens of millions of people to shrug off a slam-dunk case of foreign policy corruption for political gain. This hits closer to home since virtually everyone has been directly affected in some way, but in a country where deliberate politicization of masks is a thing that is still killing people in August 2020, it’s fair to ask if we can ever reach broad consensus on anything.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: Just speculation! But would it surprise anyone?
Kay
Really disappointed in the cluster fuck media coverage of the Trump EO’s. How many times does he have to lie to them before they STOP parroting what he claims as “news”?
We would be better informed without them. This pattern they cannot seem to get out of, where they report the lie as “news” (fact) for 2 days and then correct it does not work. Try something else. I mean, Jesus Christ. How conventional are these people? Can they put some thought into doing this differently? The recipe doesn’t work. I’m not even asking that they succeed. I just want someone to try something else other than “repeat the lie for 48 hours and then correct it”.
JPL
@Sure Lurkalot: Yes!
Hoodie
After reading that article yesterday, you really get a sense of the breathtaking scope of Trump and the GOP’s corruption. It also brings home how we have been inured to the outrage by three years of daily malfeasance and lying. My only criticism is that “most ruthless, reckless, dishonest president in American history” does’t go far enough. The guy is a fucking criminal psychopath. It also might be more effective for Bloomberg to pay 10 grand to every “both sides” inculcated media type to read that article. Both sides don’t deliberately engage in a disinformation campaign that kills thousands of people.
Kay
@WaterGirl:
Bloomberg is a fraud. Even his claims that he supports gun regulation and climate change action don’t stand up to the slightest scrutiny. He regularly throws giant wads of money at Republicans who don’t support either of those things while collecting kudos for his supposedly principled stands. If Biden believes his bullshit he’s a fool. He won’t come thru. He’s a phony.
jonas
Word is, he conditioned that promise on Biden not picking Warren for VP. So he’s waiting to see who the veep pick is.
Baud
@PenAndKey:
And when it doesn’t, it’ll be Biden’s fault.
Jinchi
Did Bloomberg ever actually promise that. Or did he allow other people to promise it for him?
debbie
@PenAndKey:
Me too. One of them died from COVID back in April.
JPL
This is always worth a watch. https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1292595011348041729
Salty Sam
Quoted for truth…
Jinchi
Democrats have to stop dreaming of a billionaire patron. I’d much rather Bloomberg kept his pockets closed, and simply paid his taxes.
Sab
@Kay: I am an employer, and I am looking forward to scratching out lines on 3d quarter Form 941 to correct it for the withholding I supposedly won’t have to do. Maybe I don’t even have to file it?/
ETA: Poor ADP people will have a tough couple of weeks reprogramming their computers. Or file but don’t pay?//
cope
@Sure Lurkalot: I’m not sure our luck didn’t run out in 1968. Currently about half way through “Nixonland”, the resonance with our current situation is smacking my gob. If you took a photograph of Nixon and photocopied it and then photocopied the copy and repeated that process about 10 times, I think it would look strangely like Trump. Also, it’s not just Nixon himself. It’s the people he surrounded himself with, his relationship with the media and to a great extent, the lying and lying and lying. The media themselves don’t get off either. You can see the seeds of bothsiderism germinating in the quotes of articles and broadcasts author Rick Perlstein liberally sprinkles throughout the book.
Jinchi
@Sab: Trump will tell you just how to fill out those forms on November 4th.
The Thin Black Duke
@Jinchi: Truth. I’m tired of billionaires expecting to be rewarded for tossing pennies into tin cups.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: I guess we’ll know soon enough. I want to see Bloomberg pay off every fine/fees owed by ex-felons in Florida who won’t be able to vote unless those get paid off.
If he does that, he will be out of the doghouse with me.
HRA
@WaterGirl: Lebron James is paying off the fines in Florida.
catclub
and any actual human being, who is also a savvy politician would announce that he no longer cares about re-election, but only cares about solving the covid crisis, by doing whatever it takes – would get re-elected.
The Moar You Know
That was inevitable, which is why the 2016 election was the most important one we’ve ever had. First election of my life where someone in no way qualified for any political office not only ran but won. Another national test we failed in a now four-year long list of staggering failures that came not from the top down, but the bottom up. My fellow citizens have failed every test they’ve been put to. From voting for a competent human being to wearing a mask during a pandemic. Every test. Failed.
2020 is an election which will determine whether the US joins the ranks of the international “used to be great, now losers who still get pity invites to the unimportant parties” club, charter member UK, most recent addition Russia, or the “fast track to failed state” club, in such good company as the Philippines and Brazil.
Salty Sam
This is why we can’t have nice things.
ETA- one of the reasons, anyway.
Sab
@Jinchi: They are due in October.
Baud
@HRA: Nice. I hadn’t heard that.
Mary G
Two articles in my a.m. email from the LATimes that look interesting if I had the energy to read them:
As COVID-19 cases surge, patients in Los Angeles are dying at a lower rate. The coronavirus continues to kill hundreds of people every week in L.A. County, but the death toll has remained lower than expected. The trend is due in part to younger people falling sick, as well as better control over the disease’s spread in high-risk settings, such as nursing homes. But doctors say there’s another factor pushing up survival rates: better treatments.
When COVID-19 patients first began showing up in hospitals in the spring, doctors didn’t know which medicines or treatments would be effective. Little was understood about how the virus was transmitted or the best way to protect staff. But that has changed rapidly as doctors around the world study and treat COVID-19. Research findings in one country may within days become clinical guidelines in another. Los Angeles Times
Gov. Gavin Newsom’s director of the California Department of Public Health resigned on Sunday. Dr. Sonia Angell, who held the position for less than a year, announced her resignation in an email sent to department staff that was released by the California Health and Human Services Agency. Her abrupt departure came just days after the discovery of a computer system failure that resulted in the undercounting of COVID-19 cases in the state. Los Angeles Times
catclub
I am a federal employee. I bet the federal payroll system will allow you to opt out of the forced, temporary, loan. If they can re-program it that fast. I already wonder how long it will take.
The Thin Black Duke
@WaterGirl: No, I think Bloomberg should stay in the doghouse regardless of what he does because he’s not an ally. There’s a saying that goes “behind every great fortune is a great crime”, and oligarchs like Bloomberg become rich at our expense. Our relationships with billionaires should always be adversarial because they’re our enemies and they should never be trusted.
raven
@cope: I have a number of friends whose luck ran out in 1968.
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke:
Who can we trust these days? Everyone is flaky.
I'll be Frank
@Sure Lurkalot: who woulda that “winning” the cold war and seeing the end of an alternative to capitalism in the marketplace of ideas wasn’t in the best interest of the average American?
The Thin Black Duke
@Baud: Oh, but I trust you, Baud. Is there something I should know?
Baud
@The Thin Black Duke:
I was referring to people outside The Juice. But thanks!
Mike in NC
Anybody who caught even a little bit of Fat Bastard’s weekend performance at his NJ country club — with rich white ($350K initiation fee) pricks standing shoulder-to-shoulder and not wearing masks — needs to understand that he still believes the virus is simply a hoax to make him look bad, and nothing will ever change his feeble mind. He encouraged them to boo the media and applaud his unmasked macho manliness.
debbie
@WaterGirl:
Hey, can you fix the OP? The article’s title is about tens of thousands, not thousands. Thanks.
zhena gogolia
@Mike in NC:
If he truly believes it’s a hoax, then why does everyone around him have to be constantly tested?
He doesn’t think it’s a hoax.
terraformer
@Kay:
Sadly, I think that the recipe is indeed being consistently mixed as designed.
Like Josh Marshall’s noted take that “Washington is wired for Republican control”, I think that our big media orgs are similarly wired. That they continue this recipe, even now, points to this conclusion.
Bruce K
My prayers regarding Trump are simple: let me live long enough to make a pilgrimage to the prison cell where he died. I don’t care what ultimate fate awaits his enablers, although I’d much prefer it if they suffer in proportion to their complicity before they do our world the great service of leaving it forever.
tokyokie
@PenAndKey:
They think COVID is an Indian woman who posts here?
Amir Khalid
@tokyokie:
Indian-American.
Frankensteinbeck
@zhena gogolia:
Narcissists have a weird relationship with reality. It’s a hoax to make him look bad, which is why the solution is to cover it up. If people don’t know about it, it literally doesn’t exist, because how it directly affects him is the only thing that matters, the definition of reality. It can make him sick because the conspiracy to make him look bad is intruding on his presence. It seems inconsistent unless you start from the assumption that Trump’s feelings are the center of the universe.
tokyokie
@Amir Khalid: I sit corrected. Too much snark, not enough copy editing, but I’m long out of professional practice of the latter.
zhena gogolia
@Frankensteinbeck:
Yes. I meant to say that he can treat it as a hoax for everyone else, because he literally does not care about a single other person in the world, and I include Ivanka in that. But if it might affect him (and he realizes that it might, he realizes that thousands of people are dying of it), he’ll take all reasonable precautions to protect his own fat ass.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: The OP is accurate. Screen shot attached:
“Tens of thousands” is a better title, and I see it rendered that way at Memeorandum, but the OP accurately reflects the article’s title at Slate as of a few minutes ago, if you click through.
joel hanes
@Betty Cracker:
it’s fair to ask if we can ever reach broad consensus on anything.
Not as long as Fox News and Sinclair exist in their present form.
Captain C
@joel hanes: I still blame Obama for not giving an impassioned speech about the dangers of drinking bleach.
Chief Oshkosh
@jonas:
Possibly others have pointed this out, but when the VP choice is not Warren, Mikey B will have some other “precondition” that he will demand prior to showering his largesse on the great unwashed masses.
joel hanes
@Baud:
Who can we trust these days?
Teri Kanefield
debbie
@Betty Cracker:
I made a pdf of the article to save to iBooks, and it’s now saying tens of thousands. It must have been Slate’s mistake. ??♀️
(I wasn’t impugning you in any way.)
Sab
How many of us jackals have called our Republican Senator today about the USPS? I am a lifelong Democrat, but the other family members who aren’t Dems are also involved We need to massively shriek.
My Republican Dad is lockdown in a nursing home in OH. He is deaf as a post so we can’t call him. He can read but we write him and the mail doesn’t get through. I just called all of my siblings that Dad can’t get his mail. This is why. Post Office sabotaged. It was not the nursing home mail department. Call your Senator. Some of my siblings are Republicans. Their mail isn’t getting through either.
Call your Senators.
Repatriated
@PenAndKey:
Ebola. They’re remembering how right-wing captive media shrieked about Ebola in 2014 and dragged the mainstream media into similar coverage, then dropped it when it was no longer politically useful.
Every accusation is a confession.
trollhattan
@Sure Lurkalot:
“American Experience” ran an old piece on Reagan last week, taking it through his first couple years as president and the attempted assasination. For the life of me I can’t square his reputation as an excellent public speaker and charmer with the fumblebutt he is on film, particularly from the pre-shooting period. Maybe our expectations of folks on camera have shifted (just gaze in horror at the popular teevee shows from the era) but it’s evident there’s no there, there.
It’s worth emphasizing that his strategy of hiring the “right people” and authorizing them to do various parts of his job was badly flawed then and disastrous today, as taken to its extreme by Donny, Inc.
trollhattan
@Chief Oshkosh:
Selina Meyer is tanned, permed, rested and ready.
zhena gogolia
@trollhattan:
He was always awful. After his debate with Mondale, I was jubilant — how could anyone vote for such a mindless creature? I soon learned my lesson.
Betty Cracker
@debbie: I didn’t feel impugned! :) Just clarifying since I knew I’d copy-pasted the article title, so I knew the OP reflected Slate’s content.
trollhattan
@Mike in NC:
We all know the “right kind of people” don’t catch the pesky thing.
debbie
@Sab:
Thanks for the reminder. I just emailed Portman, about the USPS and SSA/Medicare. I’m too angry to phone.
LuciaMia
And all those little kids as well. Great planning, Mom & Dad
“Make sure you kiss Grandma, kids, when we visit her this week.”
Archon
@Repatriated:
Republicans and the media literally stopped talking about Ebola they day after the election.
I feel like Trump is so corrosive the media refuses to play the game this time around but, boy have they been played by the Republican Party throughout the years.
debbie
God help us all. They just canceled Big Ten football.
Adam Lang
Sure, Bloomberg would prefer Biden to Trump. But the thing he was really worried about was Warren getting elected. Once that was no longer a possibility, the election just wasn’t worth worrying about any more, to him. Certainly not enough for him to write any checks worth more than 0.001% of his wealth.
debbie
@Adam Lang:
Might be worth the expense just to fuck with Trump. Bezos does this all the time. It works.
JPL
@debbie: ACC and SEC are still playing. Give me football and give me death.
WaterGirl
@HRA: All the fines? For real?
That’s worth a dozen summersaults!
HRA
@WaterGirl: It just said fines. I hope they are all.
WaterGirl
@The Thin Black Duke: You’re right. If he steps up, give him a day filled with heartfelt THANK YOUs, and then he can go back in the doghouse.
He really is an arrogant prick, who almost screwed us royally, for years, with his primary stunt.
WaterGirl
@debbie: Oh, good!
If they cancel enough of the college sports, then maybe they will go to all on-line. I have to think that part of the decision-making process has been sports $$$$.
Chief Oshkosh
I’m reading the Saletan piece now. But remind me, do we love or hate him this week?
;)
The Moar You Know
@zhena gogolia: My first election. I was 18. Couple months out of high school. It was already obvious that something was off about the guy (aside from him being a lying racist sack of crap) which became obvious to the entire country around 1986-87 when he couldn’t get through a press conference anymore.
It almost was my last election. Didn’t see the point in voting if this was what you ended up with, in spite of clear evidence that one guy was competent but uninspiring, and the other was a lunatic who would happily burn the world to get rid of the commies as he’d been told him and his Hollywood asshole buddies would all live through WWIII. Thankfully, I got over my teenage snit quickly.
Apparently a lot of my age cohort never did.
trollhattan
@debbie: @JPL:
My hunch is NCAA fall sportsball will all be delayed/cancelled because at some point the house of cards has too few cards left to stand. It’s all shifting super-fast in nearly real time.
James E Powell
@Kay:
Agreed. It’s infuriating. I expected to hear Dana Bash & Co praise Trump for boldly taking charge.
Trump’s being mocked & called out for his bullshit all over the left side of the internet. Our problem is that the low-information voters in the Great Lakes states will only hear the headlines.
CarolDuhart2
@catclub: I wouldn’t be surprised if most employers just continue on the same program as before. After all, it is an election year, and there isn’t any reason to take chances with a change in policy on that. Excesses can simply be refunded next year.
catclub
@WaterGirl:
I seriously doubt. Part of the news on those fines and restituion was that the State of Florida doesn’t even know the proper amounts.
I also think the total will be in the billions.
Brachiator
The Slate piece was great and sobering. It answered a couple of questions I had about where Trump got some of his dopier theories about the virus.
One other item stood out.
This is what you get when you run a country like a business. Trump is a moron, and he is incapable of thinking about the long term or the country’s general welfare. He just can’t do it.
smintheus
It’s another measure of how extreme Trump is that even Saletan is unequivocally condemning him for his incompetence, malice, and lies. I remember corresponding with him before the Iraq invasion, after he published an idiotic “Colin Powell convinced me” piece at Slate. He was unaware of basic information (such as the fact that the aluminum tubes claim had been thoroughly debunked many times over). I pointed him to a thorough dismantling of Powell’s UN presentation, which he said he would read…and then he replied with another idiotic piece mocking those of us who weren’t convinced by Powell. And he cited as evidence that we had Bush derangement syndrome not the heavily documented piece I mentioned to him, but some random opinion column from the same website. He was, and is, the epitome of a both-sides intellectually lazy troll. And yet even Saletan can see that there’s no bullshitty on-the-other-hand take he can possibly sell the public on with regard to Trump.
debbie
@JPL:
I would be shocked if they don’t cancel soon.
Soprano2
I’m also hearing both “It’ll go away after the election, you just wait and see”, to which I always dryly reply “Disease doesn’t work that way”, and “It’s not that bad, the press is blowing it out of proportion to make Trump look bad”, as well as the conspiracy theory about hydrochloriquine. I mean, it’s exhausting how much energy they expend to deny reality. I hadn’t thought of them thinking it would be like Ebola, but maybe that’s what they think. If Ebola had been ravaging the U.S., the press wouldn’t have stopped talking about it after the election! What I do get sometimes is that the press will stop covering it, that they’re only covering the virus because it makes Trump look bad. Of course, if Trump hadn’t so completely fucked up the response, coverage would make him look good, but they never think about that.
I had an interesting discussion with a conservative (not a big Trump fan) Friday night. When I asked him what other office had the possibility of the person with the least votes winning, he could never answer. When I asked him why he wanted land mass to vote, he said but no, that’s not what he wants. He said he liked the EC because it gives the smaller states “a voice”, and otherwise they’d only notice Chicago and New York. I asked him if he noticed that they already ignore those cities, because they know how they’re going to vote too, and that right now they only pay attention to a few states. I told him getting rid of the EC might actually get the smaller states more attention, not less. He wasn’t buying it, because I’m pretty sure the real reason he likes the EC is because he thinks white conservatives should rule over everything, because the rest of us are too dumb to know what’s best for us. Pshaw……it was an interesting conversation, though, because he couldn’t actually answer the things I asked him about it.
debbie
@Brachiator:
Seconded emphatically. The MBAs will kill us all.
Betty Cracker
@WaterGirl: I think Bloomberg had a distorting effect on the race that probably did change the outcome of the primary. Depending on how happy you are with the outcome, that may or may not justify cursing his name forever more. :)
@smintheus: Well said!
HRA
@catclub:
https://www.abc57.com/news/lebron-james-voting-rights-group-to-help-floridas-ex-felons-who-owe-fines-and-fees-register-to-vote
Elizabelle
@Adam Lang: I like your blog! Dog of the day. I am there.
snoey
@Brachiator: Not even like I business. I last “worked” as an IBM mainframer for a WS back end institution that knew I could more than earn a years salary by actually working for the hour when it mattered.
opiejeanne
@debbie: I keep waiting for MLB to pull the plug on this baseball “season. Yesterday one of the Oakland A’s players took exception to being hit by a pitch for the third time in a 3 game series, and charged the Astros’ dugout, aiming at their batting coach. The Astros have not behaved well since their bad behavior was exposed, and the A’s just happen to have Fiers on their pitching staff, He’s the guy who blew the whistle on their sign-stealing (which really explains a lot about those particular seasons, and not just the playoffs and World Series). He didn’t pitch during this series, but the thought is that he is the reason the Oakland team was getting hit by pitches.
But anyway, COVID-19? Astros players storming out of their dugout and tunnel, and being joined on the field by the players on the field?
This needs to end. Just give the crown to Oakland because of how well they’ve played (I’m not a fan of Oakland) and call off the rest of the season.
trollhattan
@opiejeanne:
MLS mini-tournament will wrap Wednesday with the final, and the league will add a mini-season at the back end to be played later. Will be interested to see how well their protocols have worked, as the NWSL’s tournament finished with no infections among players, team and league staffs or facility crew. The women got it done.
PenAndKey
My response to that particular line is to ask what they think the Senate is for if not to give small states an equal voice. Or why Vermont (population 623,989) gets 1 House seat and California (population 39,510,000) only gets 53 when it actually has 111x Vermont’s population, not 53x. This country’s issue isn’t that the rural areas are underrepresented in government, but that they wield disproportionate minoritarian power.
NotMax
@PenAndKey
The House disproportionality is a function of its membership having been frozen at 435 since 1912 (except for the very short period it temporarily it went to 437 after the 49th and 50th states initially entered the Union).
Mike R
@raven: Yup, ain’t that the truth, Fuck LBJ and double fuck Nixon.
James E Powell
@PenAndKey:
The rural areas and small population states are not likely to acknowledge that they have a disproportionate share of the national government. And if any of them do, they will insist it is justified because they are morally superior, RealAmericans®.
dnfree
@snoey: I just had a Trump supporter family member send me an article about the military medical system (Tristar or something like that) sending an email to 600,000 people saying that since they had tested positive, they could donate plasma. The article is from a right-wing site, but nevertheless it explains that the email was supposed to be sent to people based on their location and test status, but was sent only based on location. And within hours it was retracted and apology sent. But to my relative, this “proves” that it’s easy to falsely report hundreds of thousands of positive tests.
As a programmer I know what happened, but said relative is convinced it proves that the number of cases has been exaggerated, for political reasons.
J.
Hard to believe? Hardly. Anyone who knew or followed Trump in the late 1980s or early 1990s, when everything he touched turned to sludge, was not in the least bit surprised. What surprised us is how many people believed that the person they saw on a faux reality TV show was for real.
Ken
The reporting I’ve seen is calling the payroll tax change a temporary loan to be repaid next year, so there wouldn’t be any “excess” to refund. On the other hand someone who does participate better be saving the money so they can pay the IRS next April.
Same, by the way, for businesses, since they have to pay the same amount as the employee.
Mike in NC
@dnfree: Tricare
hitchhiker
@LuciaMia:
I really want an annotated version of that rich people for trump photo. Who are these people? What is their net worth? How was their wealth accumulated?
debbie
@opiejeanne:
Brilliant move in this time of COVID. MLB already has more cases than the other sports.
Mike in NC
@J.: Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Magazine, Trump Institute, Trump Vodka, Trump Airlines, and a couple dozen other scams that people apparently were oblivious to. Plus the various schemes his criminal children and son-in-law have created over the years.
But White Supremacy rules supreme!
PenAndKey
@NotMax: That really is the major issue with the House, isn’t it. It’s why I’ve long argued that this all started being an issue every since the Reapportionment Act of 1929 locked those seats down precisely because the small states saw the writing on the wall and successfully triggered a constitutional crisis and Congress kicked the can down the road. We are all paying for it now, and as far as I’m concerned every conservative House majority since that event has been illegitimate.
EthylEster
A friend sent me this link today. I haven’t seen it referenced anywhere so:
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/covid-19-end-of-american-era-wade-davis-1038206/
It is a very good summary of…the hole we find ourselves in.
opiejeanne
@debbie: I understand his reaction, being repeatedly hit by different pitchers and then their idiot batting coach chirping at him when he got hit.
MLB and the owners are to blame for being greed heads. Oakland is playing the Angels in Anaheim this evening, and Mike Trout and his wife just had a baby on July 30. He should’ve stayed home with them.
If he or anyone else gets sick it will be because of the irresponsibility of MLB and the owners.
Bob
As a video editor, the other day I had to put together a montage of news’ greatest hits from the last two months. When you see it strung together like that, it really hits you. It’s just one bad decision after another after another after another piled on top of fifty more. It’s really shocking.
NotMax
@PenAndKey
Yup. It’s a problem which expanded sequentially with each succeeding census. No political will to address it in the marbled halls.
Elizabelle
@NotMax:
I think there is, and has been. I bet Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic Congressional reps and Senators have a lot of will, but we need to administer the whooping to the GOP/tyranny of the minority types at the polls in November.
We cannot have elections undermined by the Electoral College — has happened twice in less than 20 years, to Democrats’ loss — and have the rural areas with such an outsized political voice and veto power. The majority of Americans live in the cities and suburbs. Reform our political system to reflect that.
Acreage and cows. Should not be voting.
It really bothers me that North and South Dakota get 4 Senators. Foo on the Dakotas.
Chris Johnson
@The Thin Black Duke: You speak for me in every particular. Fuck appeasing Bloomberg. It is very likely that to do so means trading away our country for whatever personal interests he has.
evodevo
@PenAndKey: Yes. I just replied to a covidiot acquaintance on Facebook who keeps saying this over and over. It’s his answer everytime I bring up the latest covid stats….these people are immovable…AND unrepentant…
Bill Arnold
I wrote a script to count links, got rid of a few sidebar links and other links obviously not in the text, and counted 350 links. This article will be a serious nexus for crawlers and people looking for this sort of information. (Some serious, and I hope intentional, search engine results page optimization, for Good. :-)