A whopping 65% of Americans agree that “If President Trump had taken coronavirus/COVID-19 more seriously, he probably would not have been infected with the coronavirus/COVID-19” https://t.co/UDBUJEerU2
This was his own damn fault. https://t.co/GFJZV2TQQN pic.twitter.com/wJ2eKHPRXu
— Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org (@froomkin) October 4, 2020
Joe Biden leads by 10 points in the presidential race after President Trump tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. A majority of Americans think Trump could have avoided infection if he had taken the virus more seriously https://t.co/j4Iltpvncj pic.twitter.com/3ESEQFHfW9
— Reuters (@Reuters) October 5, 2020
A little schadenfreude, to start the week — from the Washington Post, “Trump’s illness halts campaign just when it needs an October boost”:
… The past seven days have dealt the incumbent one setback after another — the extraordinary revelation in the New York Times that he had paid little to no federal income taxes in recent years; a belligerent debate performance that risked turning off many voters; the arrest of his recently demoted campaign manager in Florida; and finally the president’s hospitalization for covid-19 because of an outbreak of the novel coronavirus in a White House that has made a mockery of public health guidelines and offered contradictory accounts of Trump’s health.
All the while, Biden’s sizable financial advantage has allowed the Democrat to dominate the television airwaves, and some recent polls show his lead over Trump holding steady or even growing.
Despite the rosy prognostications of his physician over the weekend, Trump’s illness has effectively stalled his campaign with just four weeks until Election Day and with voters already casting early ballots in many states…
Trump aides acknowledge that the president’s illness has been unhelpful because it draws national attention to his administration’s handling of the pandemic. They also say that the president being hospitalized undercuts what he views as his main attribute over Biden: That he appears stronger and tougher….
… Trump has a sizable deficit to make up, according to recent public polls. An NBC News-Wall Street Journal survey released Sunday had Biden leading Trump nationally by 14 percentage points among registered voters, 53 percent to 39 percent. The poll showed Biden’s lead nearly doubling after last week’s debate, with an overwhelming majority of voters saying Biden had the better temperament to be president.
Mike Murphy, a GOP strategist and critic of the president who advises Republican Voters Against Trump, said Trump’s electoral problems are compounding.
“He’s falling down the stairs going faster and faster, which makes it harder and harder to regain his footing,” Murphy said. “He really needed a September reset, but instead he was broke and incompetent, and his debate was a disaster. And now he’s in quicksand in October and unable to even work the politics of a serious presidential illness correctly while the clock mercilessly ticks.”…
“It’s like a bad television show, which in fact it is,” Tom Rath, a longtime Republican strategist and elected official in New Hampshire, said in assessing the past week for Trump. “The data suggest that the American people, the public, have just about had enough. Unless [the Trump campaign] significantly change the direction and dynamic of this race — and nothing they have done so far has been able to do it — we are headed towards a pretty significant change in government come November.”
this is just insane levels of karmic energy. the plan was to spend october mocking Biden for taking the pandemic seriously and not recklessly endangering himself and tens of thousands of others. pic.twitter.com/q11xmQT4I9
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) October 5, 2020
Choose Your Fighter pic.twitter.com/5HTTJkz0Ed
— Scott Lincicome (@scottlincicome) October 5, 2020
On The Road – Albatrossity – Summertime in Scotland – #3
p.a.
Putin is their only competent campaign associate. And the state level vote suppressors.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
Chief Oshkosh
Are the Secret Service allowed to publicly reveal if they are infected?
rikyrah
@p.a.:
No lie told
rikyrah
@Chief Oshkosh:
Only in a general sense
Kay
JPL
@Chief Oshkosh: To answer your question, I don’t know, but because of privacy reasons, there will no longer be updates on how staff members have been infected.
Baud
@rikyrah: Good morning.
Baud
@Kay:
Biden’s winning over Bernie supporters and the chronically fatigued!
rikyrah
The party of PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY
comes home to roost
SFAW
I refuse to give the Boston Glob clicks/money, but apparently Jeff “Not a Lying RWMF Moron, But I Play One in — No, Wait, I AM a Lying RWMF Moron” Jacoby had an op-ed yesterday, the headline/mini-synopsis telling his reader(s) that “voting for who you really like, even if a third-party candidate with no chance, is NOT squandering your vote.” [Disclaimer: I did NOT read the full op-ed, because it’s Jacoby, and it’s the Glob.]
It does my heart good to see that he’s reduced to being a “you libs should vote for Jill Stein [sic] because ‘Murica” shill.
He’s still a fucking asshole, of course
rikyrah
The ones who disagree with it being Dolt45’s fault?
Add it up…
Yep…
THE CRAZYFICATION FACTOR ??
debbie
@JPL:
Then we can only assume all of them have been infected.
debbie
@SFAW:
Does Jeff have a last name?
Kay
@Baud:
Most of Trump’s “energy” goes to lying or covering up lying. They missed the point of being energetic. It’s not necessarily a good thing all by itself. I can very energetically take a sledgehammer to your car and you probably won’t hire me over the less energetic candidate who doesn’t do that.
debbie
What horrifies me is that Pence is in Indiana and Jared is in charge and in the WH.
Baud
@Kay:
I don’t know, Kay. If you smash Republican cars even worse, I might still support you since you’d be hurting the right people.
JPL
@debbie: WUT Where’s Ivanka?
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie:Jeff “Not a Lying RWMF Moron, But I Play One in — No, Wait, I AM a Lying RWMF Moron” Jacoby
ETA: kinda easy to miss it at the end of the rant ;-)
Kay
@debbie:
Be happy. None of them do any real work. All it means is Jared and Ivanka are running the campaign unsupervised. That’s why we’re getting debacles like “trap the Secret Service agents in the covid car and ride around the block”.
Baud
@debbie: .
Maybe we’ll finally get peace in the Middle East.
Kay
@Baud:
True for “not being in the basement” too. Trump should have stayed in the basement for the last debate. What you do when you’re not in the basement matters.
Kay
I wonder if Barr is lying about his covid test. Probably.
Baud
@Kay: I can’t see him quarantining himself otherwise, unless he wants to drop off the radar to do nefarious things. I hope someone is tailing him.
satby
@JPL: Like most conservatives who’ve tried to use HIPAA to hide behind, they’re wrong. No privacy violation in disclosing statistics without identifying info like names. They’re just trying to hide the extent of their fuckups.
Baud
Haha. Melania won’t visit Trump in the hospital because of concern about the safety of her security detail.
Precious at so many levels.
ETA:
satby
@Baud: Well, Barr is unlikely to be asymptomatic if he is lying about getting a positive result. Both for his comorbidities and because their superspreader event seems to have provided a few of them with high viral loads.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Rant? You think THAT was a rant??!?!?! Don’t get me started!!! Why, I … etc etc
Kay
My daughter made Biden campaign calls into Florida night before last and the Democrats she spoke to complained that she was “reading from a script”
Most whiny Democratic complaint ever- this volunteer didn’t tailor her message to them individually and specifically. What about their concerns? Doesn’t she care about them?
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Thanks! My unawake eyes saw Jacobean and assumed that was a descriptor.
eclare
@Kay: Agreed about Barr.
Baud
@Kay:
I got one of those calls and thanked the person for everything she was doing. I think she was stunned.
debbie
@Kay:
Jared is stupider than his father-in-law and thinks he can solve the world’s problems better then his father-in-law. Stephen Miller is perched on Jared’s shoulder also. All this has me very worried.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: You are just so cute when your angry, I just wanna pinch your cheeks.
*said in the most sickening of singsong voices
SFAW
@debbie:
Ozark has, of course, already provided the answer.
Jeff Jacoby used to be the Glob‘s token RWMF/”conservative” op-ed writer. That was when the Boston Globe was a liberal rag. [They enticed him to jump over from the Boston Herald, an actual RW rag.] Since (billionaire) John Henry bought the Globe, he’s turned it into the Herald-lite. We ended our subscription a few years ago, but I still get the “daily headlines” e-mail.
Kay
@eclare:
I hope he’s out of commission. We’ll get a lot less interference in a free and fair election with him sidelined. I don’t care what happens to him other than that. The election cures the Bill Barr problem as far as I’m concerned.
Barbara
@satby: Not only that, but HIPAA doesn’t apply to employment relationships, outside of benefit plan administration. I do think non-political appointees should be able to maintain their individual privacy, but cabinet level officials should show greater transparency.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fixed.
debbie
@SFAW:
Sad to read of the changes there. When I lived in Boston a billion years ago, the Globe was a great paper. It was the Globe who kept me informed about the Saturday Night Massacre.
Kay
@Baud:
I always thank them too. I try to politely interject that I will definitely vote (or, usually, HAVE voted) because I think it saves them time, but if they want to do the 20 second spiel they can do that too.
debbie
@satby:
Even Trump’s physician lied about HIPAA during his Saturday press conference (or whatever that can be called).
SFAW
@Kay:
I’m more of a traditionalist: I think a 20-year stretch in prison for Barr cures the problem. [No, I have no idea what charge(s). A kid can dream, can’t I.]
Baud
@SFAW:
There’s no law against being Bill Barr?
Outrageous!
Baud
Today show coverage was ok, but no one is talking about Trump’s decision to put Biden at risk/try to kill Biden.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: I have lots of ideas for charges against him.
SFAW
@debbie:
Yeah, it used to be a reliably liberal paper, with a number of liberal op-ed writers. [I still miss David Nyhan, gone 15 years now.] But that’s all changed.
As far as I’m concerned, about the only good thing John Henry did for Boston was hiring Theo Epstein. [Although I guess one of the other Red Sox co-owners may have been the deciderer.] I realize that’s a big deal for Sox fans, as it should be. But for those of us who have real lives, Henry’s malign influence outweighs that.
SFAW
@Baud:
Not yet.
debbie
@Baud:
I think you’re giving too much credit to Trump’s critical thinking abilities. I think he was just being an asshole at the debate and trying to make Biden look bumbling and senile, not trying to get his cooties to travel over Biden’s way.
SFAW
@OzarkHillbilly:
Depth charges, Semtex charges, 1,000-volt charges, that kind of thing?
Baud
NYT has a story on Kamala.
Per policy, I didn’t click so I don’t know if it’s a hatchet job or a real story.
Kay
“Mismanagement” doesn’t really cover it. They’re so incredibly selfish that they’re insane and should be supervised by adults.
Tiny group of aides = Jared and Ivanka.
Kay
@Baud:
Their political coverage is horrible but locally Kamala is popular and Democrats here want to see and hear more from her. I think she’s good for turnout. They’re excited about her, especially women.
p.a.
Breaking: GM designing Super-Suburban (initial marque: Chevy Subdivision, (h/t Dave Barry)) to accommodate Secret Service demands to wear pressurized divers’ suits for next pResidential block-drive.
Baud
@Kay:
Good. If there’s a silver lining to what happened to Hillary, I hope it’s that our marginal voters will stop wringing their hands about women leaders.
OzarkHillbilly
@SFAW: Along those lines.
Baud
Baud
@p.a.:
They should be working on self driving cars so no one has to be in the car with Trump.
OzarkHillbilly
@Baud: It would have interfered with his FOX news viewing schedule.
SFAW
@Baud:
I’d like to suggest an alternative: have his limo driven by Toonces, the Cat Who Could Drive a Car.
Baud
Readership capture.
Baud
@SFAW: Heh. Memories.
Immanentize
@Kay: I said yesterday that if the virus could pick it’s victims, it would be knocking people down just to get to Bill Barr. Considering he first said, “screw you” to isolating because he was exposed, his turn around can only mean he is Covid positive.
I am not hoping I am wrong — which is not quite the same as wishing it is so.
Baud
This year, it’ll be an afterthought just like in past years.
WereBear
@rikyrah: I noticed that too. At last! The world makes sense again :)
Kay
@Baud:
Promising their base to jam thru the far Right judge could really backfire on them if they can’t get it done. They will have alienated the majority who don’t want Trump to pick the next justice and disappointed their base. If all that happens due to their throwing parties to celebrate RBG dying it will just be delicious. Hubris. They couldn’t be content with just grabbing the seat. They had to crow about it.
Alien Radio
16 Percent Strongly disagree + 11 Percent slightly disagree = 27 Percenters
trnc
Yeah, that’s a weird complaint. FWIW, I’m phone banking for our county, so I’ve taken the script and tailored it to feel more natural. I don’t mean that I actually wrote it out- I just paraphrase in my own way of speaking while still hitting on the main points of the call
The trainers encouraged us to make it our own. It took a few calls to really feel comfortable, but maybe your daughter would be able to start doing that.
I also can’t stress enough that old chestnut about the benefit of smiling during the phone call, even if she winds up talking to a republican.
Immanentize
@Baud: yeah! Where was Elon Musk when the country needed him?!
Kay
@Immanentize:
The implication in the story was other people in the DOJ objected to him possibly infecting them.
I’m glad some of the DOJ lawyers finally found a spine but I notice they only located it when their own asses were at risk. So disappointing. They can’t even defend their own institution. How can they defend anything else? We need to look at how we ended up with so many chickenshit government lawyers. They’re cowards and effective advocates can’t be cowards.
SiubhanDuinne
Guess the Covid patient-in-chief got over his boredom:
trnc
@Baud: That’s the reaction I’ve been getting from most people I’ve called who take the few minutes to talk. What has actually floored me is when people say, “I’m too busy to talk now,” they tell me a better time to call. I figured those would be blowoffs.
I took a federal survey on transportation a few years ago and profusely thanked the caller after 15 minutes of questions, and I’m pretty sure that made her day.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
LOL.
CliosFanboy
Question: If I took a COVID test today* would it show if I’d had an asymptomatic case earlier? Does it show if you’d been exposed and recovered?
Kay
@trnc:
I donated postcards to the county Dems and they’re filling them out when they’re sitting at the headquarters. We took the list from the public voter file. We have a younger member who took the data and assigned it numbers, 1 to 4 (1 is most loyal Democrat and most likely voter) -they’re sending them out to 3s and 4s, so D’s but “sporadic” D’s. They enjoy having something to do when they’re manning the headquarters and it might help. We only have a possible 8000 votes so the scale is small enough where you can try things.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Over on Twitter I brought up the possibility that Trump was intentionally trying to kill Biden, and got an angry lecture from one of my more centrist/temperamentally-conservative friends, that it doesn’t matter how much Trump lies, it’s disgraceful that Democrats would even entertain these kinds of paranoid ideas–we have to leave that sort of thing to the right.
But… does that mean Trump wasn’t trying to kill Biden? I mean, is this not an open possibility?
I think there’s a powerful disincentive for people who think of themselves as sober realists to consider these possibilities.
Baud
@CliosFanboy:
I think there’s a different test for antibodies that shows past infections.
trnc
Yeah, this is my biggest concern, too. Pence really is a “Please, sir, may I have another” kind of guy, so who knows if he’s getting the info he should at this time, especially while he’s traveling. My hope is that whatever crap those guys try to pull at this point on a policy level will crumble pretty fast when they’re out and there’s no one to fight for those actions.
satby
@debbie: No, physicians and health care providers are who is bound by HIPAA. Unless Trumptraitor gave permission to disclose the doctor could only disclose what the patient allows. Or nothing at all if that’s what the patient demands.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
He definitely put Biden at risk, if the timeline is what it appears to be. Whether it was first degree attempted murder is speculative at this point.
ETA: in fairness to your friend, a lot of people treat their speculations as rock solid facts. I can appreciate the reaction.
Immanentize
@Kay: I have an old and dear friend who is a lifer at DOJ. In voting. She is certainly no coward — testified against Reynolds and was critical in fighting off von Spakofsky during the Bush days. She is still there for her own reasons unknown to me. When Covid is contained, I will be able to see her in a place away from DC and find out what happened.
JPL
@CliosFanboy: There’s a blood test for that. My son took it and was notified 24 hrs later that there were no antibodies in his system.
Geminid
@Alien Radio: 29% was the number of people who responded they “liked trump personally” in an NBC/Wall St. Journal poll released September 2019. 69% said they disliked him. The previous high “dislike personally” was 43% for George Bush in 2005, after Katrina, in the middle of the Iraq war.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: Supposedly it’s not his phone, so someone else is trying to make him sound like a maniac.
hat tip to the hoarse whisperer
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: It appears that Trump didn’t actually receive a positive test result until after the debate, but he must have known he was exposed, and it looks like there was a conscious effort on the part of Trump’s whole entourage to dodge COVID testing before the debate. I suspect at this point that it was more reckless endangerment than anything else–he was going to do the debate and he didn’t give a shit.
Nina
The tweets I’ve seen so far this morning seem to emphasize the ‘meth’ part of dexamethasone.
Danielx
@OzarkHillbilly:
Fifty three counts of being an oleaginous lying sack of shit for starters?
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: There’s been some nutty stuff going around, like some people insisting that Joyride Trump was a fake–that because the SUV wasn’t the main “Beast” presidential limo, that means that the Trump who was riding around outside wasn’t the real Trump, it was some sort of body double. I *think* this was part of the larger theory that Trump’s whole illness is a hoax.
Geminid
@Nina: One could describe trump’s style as MethOdd Acting.
Immanentize
@Matt McIrvin: Occam’s razor says someone — maybe Melania? (She wore a mask) — knew they were positive, so they showed up late to avoid testing.
Alternative theory — they thought they were going to Studio 54 and one never gets there on time.
Chyron HR
@Kay:
Mitch McConnell said over the weekend that “our biggest enemy” in confirming Barrett before the election, and cementing a conservative 6-3 high court majority, is
“the coronavirus, keeping everybody healthy and well and in place to do our job.”Donald Trump forcing us to ignore basic public health guidelines.Immanentize
@Matt McIrvin: I certainly thought it was Trump, but his waiving was manic like nothing I’ve ever seen before. So needy.
Immanentize
@Geminid: NotMax substitute!
White & Gold Purgatorian
@SiubhanDuinne: Wow. The steroids have kicked in, bigly.
satby
@Matt McIrvin: As John said last night, we’re very much into the old Soviet mindset here: them trying to Potemkin village us, and us trying to parse pictures and public statements for clues to what’s really going on. He really is Putin’s
puppetstudent.Zinsky
I don’t think Trump is out of the woods yet. My daughter is a nurse and worked on a COVID unit for three months at the start of the pandemic. Trump is precisely the type of person who shows early troubling signs, is fine for several days and then the cytokine storm hits and they are gasping for breath, intubated and on a ventilator within hours – IF they are lucky enough to be close to an ICU and respiratory therapists who can save them. Of course, Trumpo already has three top-notch pulmonologists on his team, so he will probably live. But you watch – I bet he takes a really bad turn for the worse before this is over.
As far as Trump’s followers – I have concluded that you can only understand them in terms of professional wrestling. As you may or may not know, Donald Trump is an inductee into the WWE Hall of Fame: https://bleacherreport.com/articles/1544081-donald-trump-to-be-inducted-into-wwe-hall-of-fame
In pro wrestling, they have a concept called KAYFABE, which means the audience knows the action between the two wrestlers is phony, but they choose to suspend disbelief and cheer as if there really is a life and death grudge match playing out before their eyes! Trump’s minions are applying kayfabe to American politics. Deep inside, most of them know Donald Trump is a worthless, deviant layabout who hasn’t really ever done any real work in his life and is just a conman and a cheater. But they choose to imagine him as a gallant, virtuous and hard-working knight who is out slaying the evil dragons of liberalism on a daily basis. Trump sees himself as Captain America and most of his followers do too. I see him as a pathetic, weak Walter Mitty who is scared of his own shadow.
PST
@Baud: I read the NYT story about Harris’s high school years in Canada. It is thoroughly nice. It emphasizes how how much everyone liked her and how good her social skills were. It was a highly diverse school, where she identified as African-American but got along with everyone. It makes you wish you had a friend (or a girlfriend) like her in high school. There are several fun photos.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: As a Florida Democrat, I apologize for the whiny asshole your daughter talked to, who should have thanked her for volunteering. Florida Democrats are perpetually traumatized. Some of us get angry. Some of us get whiny. Most of us are both angry and whiny. :)
dww44
@SFAW: Until liberals can reclaim some parity in the media writ large we are always going to have to work twice as hard to get and maintain some sort of control of the levers of power
in the last year or so Sinclair has purchased both the Fox and ABC broadcast stations here and in the last couple of months Newsmax was added to the basic cable offering
JR
@Kay: a lot of people just don’t like talking on the phone, myself included. One of the overlooked aspects of canvassing. Of course, nagging works even if people hate it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@debbie: “Spotlight” was Globe reporters, right? I’m sorry to hear they’ve gone con.
Ken
I foresee a legal wrangle within a year, as the Biden administration tries to determine whether tweets setting US policy were actually sent by Trump or by his golf caddy, and the former Trumpists fight it because they were all riding on the account to enrich themselves somehow.
WereBear
@Immanentize: It suggests solitary confinement would break him within minutes.
Kay
@Immanentize:
I’m disappointed there haven’t been more whistleblowers. For them, given the duties and responsibilities they accepted with the license and the job, whistleblowing is part of the job. They have a duty to report.
I know it’s hard but that’s the deal. You can’t keep the job by agreeing not to do the job under pressure from corrupt superiors. That’s no longer serving the client, the United States, it’s serving yourself. Is it fair that they were put in a position where they had to choose? No. It’s not their fault but it is their problem.
PST
@Matt McIrvin:
It was Trump. I saw a still in which his hand was pressed against the window. No one else has fingers that short.
Baud
@PST:
I wish that every day.
Sloane Ranger
My worry about Barr is that he has tested negative but, as most of his peer group were either at the dance on RBG’s grave party or likely to interact regularly with those who were, he’s gone into quarantine to ensure he’s fit and healthy enough to fuck with the election.
Ken
@Baud: I just wish I had one I could see face-to-face.
Ken
That might be helpful to him after he retires to Russia. It won’t take the interrogators that long to decide that he really doesn’t know any national security secrets.
evodevo
@Baud: yeah…an antibody titer…requires a blood draw and no instant results…
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Immanentize: I do not want Trump to die of Coronavirus. It would be an easy out for him and would create a huge mess.
I find I don’t have the same qualms about Barr or McConnell.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@SiubhanDuinne: Space Force? Really? That’s one of their selling points?
Kay
@JR:
I don’t like phone calls either but she’s a really earnest and nice person and she’s following the directions she was given. She has kind of high standards so not doing the job as she was instructed would be to her not acceptable. Having sometimes fallen short of her high standards raising her I know this :)
I think phone calls are annoying too. I’d prefer a postcard, myself.
Betty Cracker
From CNN:
I hope this turns into Trump’s second “gassing protesters for a photo-op with a bible” moment: a political stunt that backfires horribly.
It’s helpful that the Third Lady has announced that she won’t go visit her awful spouse out of consideration for the agents who’d have to drive her. That’s not really why she won’t go, but it’s helpful to the narrative that she used that excuse.
NotMax
Gonna repeat this here as morning threads are very forgiving and not everyone is inclined or has the time to look at the late night pages.
Came away very impressed by a documentary series found on Prime, The Hitler Chronicles. Because of the sheer amount of relevant archival film presented (including well-preserved color footage) and the contemporaneous sources, both military and civilian and many previously untapped, dug up and extensively quoted which provide direct, timely context in a most effective manner. Oh, and it’s in English.
Trailer.
Baud
@NotMax: I’ve bookmarked it.
Betty Cracker
@Zinsky: My sister-in-law is an ER doc who has treated tons of COVID patients, and she said the same thing.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax:
Go fuck yourself.
Aleta
Before he announced his test results he must have been riding around in the limo with no mask. I wonder if he went maskless in the limo in the time between the 1st quick test (was positive, I read, but he went to the fundraiser bc he decided it wasn’t definitive) and the positive results of the 2nd longer one.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Oh you sweet talker, you.
:)
Dorothy A. Winsor
Since it’s a “relaxed” morning thread (h/t NotMax), Amazon is doing that thing where they discount paperbacks of some of my books without telling me. The price will probably continue dropping until someone buys, but if you’re looking for a Christmas present, my newest book The Wysman is currently $13.85 instead of $14.99. Deep as a Tomb is $14.37 instead of $17.99. They’re part of the same series.
Ken
@Nina: Maybe this morning’s series of ALLCAPS short tweets is the modern equivalent of solemn music on the radio.
Wapiti
I asked my wife why Trump didn’t hand off the Presidency to Pence and focus on healing. She actually laughed at me.
Seriously though, this guy is in a bad spot, and he’s responsible for the country. Does he think Pence is incompetent? Is he incompetent? Is he just so needy that he can’t risk Pence doing a better job? This seriously offends my sense of duty. I recognize they have none.
evodevo
@Wapiti: He considers Pence to be a minion, like staff…so, definitely NOT deserving of taking control, like say Javanka…
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Wapiti: He won’t hand it off because it’s his, dammit! His! Just like all the campaign money is his.
Immanentize
@Kay:
Whistleblowers need proof of illegality. Not just a whiny complaint that things aren’t going the way they want. Government attorneys serve the government and policy changes happen with each administration. Whistleblowing is not a stand in for a policy preference. Sure, people can quit. People choose to start new careers at 60 all the time, right?
But I am only willing to blame those who knew of actual wrong doing and did not act. Not all the thousands of line attorneys who did not.
Aleta
@Zinsky: The % of Tr voters who watch pro wrestling must be quite high.
Geminid
@NotMax: The Deadly Embrace (1988) by Anthony Read and David Fisher focuses on the Ribbentop-Molotov pact, and is gripping history. They authors have a lot of accounts of Hitler’s public and private behavior, and good material on Chamberlin, Daladier, Foreign Minister Beck of Poland, etc. The anecdotes of Stalin are illuminating but relatively few, as Stalin’s general practice was to stay behind the scenes. He actually stood just outside the room when Molotov and Ribbentrop were negotiating. I think the authors of The Deadly Embrace wrote the book in conjunction with a BBC documentary they produced. The book covers the period from the Checkoslovakian crisis to the June 1941 invasion of Russia. A fascinating read.
germy
germy
Jeff Del Papa
My wife got dexamethasone as part of chemo cocktails. Never mind avoid heavy machinery, the hospital written advice sheet said basically don’t make any serious decisions while taking it. It will impair critical thinking and judgement.
Certainly sent her moods on a rollervoaster. Didn’t see much of the mania, as the other drugs made up for it, but there were hours I kept busy elsewhere when the hair trigger crabby was dominant. And it always wound up with 26 hours later with her talking about giving up so I wasn’t stuck caring for her (scary the first two times until it became clear it was transient, repetitive and drug induced. In fact once we figured why it was happening, I could improve mood by looking at the clock and “right on schedule” and actually have it help)
The big thing was the brain fog. She was normally genius level (Dartmouth undergrad summa, MIT pure math PhD, public health degree, 80+ journal articles, 10,000 cites, wrote chunks of grad level textbooks, etc). She would have one to three novels going, etc. on a normal day, picking which one depending on mood. on the drug at full fog, watching one of those very formulaic HGTV house hunting shows was too much to keep up with. On those days, it was bird feeder cam, all motion, color and no dialog.
Oh yea, if you do take it while contagious, it can prolong the time you shed the virus. So apparently if they give you that, it’s supposed to be 20 days isolation, not the usual 14.
At one point Senator Cotton talked about wheeling in hospital beds when it’s time for a vote. If I were the minority leader, I would insist on a cognitive function check (that same one they gave trump, with a 1-5 scale and a potted plant can score a 2).
At least the senators that have the bad luck to wind up on a ventilator will be spared the indignity, as they keep you doped to the gills, so you don’t gag on the tube, or yank it out.
hueyplong
@Geminid: Sounds a liittle like the book Russia’s War, which came out in conjunction with a BBC or PBS series (can’t remember which).
Embrace sounds even more interesting.
Aleta
@Wapiti: This is MY Presidency, he can’t have it. MY White House. My AF1, my Presidential limo, my decor. MY desk.
Ken
@Wapiti: Besides, it’s not like what he normally does all day (sits and watches television) is all that different from what he’s doing in the hospital. I guess yesterday showed that the big problem is that, though the TV is talking about him, it’s saying worrying things.
germy
Chyron HR
@germy:
I know sneering contempt for Democrats is always in style, but isn’t it possible the campaign shifted their ad focus because it was determined to be electorally advantageous?
Jim Appleton
@Nina:
I’ve taken dexamethasone, as Decadron, for severe dental pain.
No adverse side effects.
iDJTs dosage may be higher.
Marcopolo
@Kay: From what Ive read recently, there is one more area where Barr is pursuing bad policy. Apparently, DOJ is about to cut a deal with the Sacklers (sp) in regards to Perdue Pharma & the opioid crisis that will wind up letting them keep most of their billions, only slap them on their wrists criminally, and provide them with a certain amount of immunity from other parties (like states) that are suing them.
Immanentize
@NotMax: I want to watch that. Almost 5 hours. Wow. I went to see “Our Hitler” when it reached the States in 78 or so. Very odd experimental work, but amazing. That clocked in at 442 minutes — just shy of “Chronicles.”
germy
@Chyron HR: You read that tweet as sneering contempt?
I interpreted it as “Biden is decent, Trump is not.”
Immanentize
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Spotlight still exists and they have done some good work on various issues. It’s not so much that the Globe has gone full on con (we have the Boston Herald for that). Rather, the Globe is not a great full service paper anymore. I actually put the downfall as starting with the takeover by the NYTimes, but Henry has certainly continued the slide.
germy
cain
What that an unelected sociopath is running the white house? You can bet that even if the 25th amendment was invoked, Jared would still take over and tell him what to do. Jared is the crown prince to the American royalty. The man who is never right about anything.
cain
@Kay:
He can lie all he wants.. but eventually, if he has it and it isn’t a mild case – we’ll be seeing him in the hospital.. the body won’t lie for you.
Shalimar
@Kay: The aides reportedly with Trump are Meadows and Scavino. I wonder if Jared or Ivanka have it. A lot of aides including them were at the Barrett celebration, yet no one the White House can control has been confirmed positive since Trump. All the announcements, senators, Conway, Christie, Notre Dame president, etc., are outside the Executive Branch unless I’m forgetting someone.
TS (the original)
No updates re Chris Christie. Seems the code of silence to protect the president*.
Can’t imagine he will recover easily. Wonder if this time around he will give up on trump or come back for yet more harm & humiliation.
germy
@Shalimar:
It’s very possible more people from his inner circle have tested positive, but are keeping it quiet. Kellyanne wanted to keep it a secret (her daughter revealed the news) and according to the WSJ, Trump told an infected aide not to tell anyone. (Maybe it was Conway he told.)
JPL
@germy: I blame the stunt on trump. His ego needed feeding. “feed me, feed me. “
JPL
@TS (the original): Hope and Chris are the abused mates of trump, and will continue to do as told.
germy
SFAW
@Immanentize:
Yeah, I guess I agree with that. Although I don’t think the FTFTFNYT would have gone full-bore Herald-lite, as Henry has done. When the FTFTFNYT owned them, they still had one or two (or more?) liberal columnists (some of whom got laid off when revenues started dropping, I think).
germy
But what are the optics of a man in a mask waving from the back seat of an armored car, being driven around by other men, also wearing masks? Strength?
And here’s pure conjecture on my part: I wonder if the Secret Service wanted to wear more protective gear but Trump wouldn’t allow it because of “optics” and so they only wore masks.
Kathleen
@NotMax: I want to see this film. Thank you for the rec.
Immanentize
@SFAW: But luckily, Charlie Savage got a new home at the Times.
JPL
@germy: Maggie @ the NYTimes
The president had wanted to be discharged from Walter Reed yesterday, but doctors weren’t okay with it. So the car ride became the compromise
Why not just give him a double scoop of Ice Cream
We really do live in the twilight zone
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@germy: There was widespread speculation that he was wearing a mask on Friday to cover up oxygen tubes. I suspect the mask in the limo is serving the same purpose, or he wouldn’t wear one.
Gin & Tonic
@germy:
The Lincoln Project people are saying this is way worse than Dukakis in the tank, and apparently plan to exploit it.
germy
@Gin & Tonic: Did you see their latest ad attacking the roundfaced Miller? They showed a quick montage of all the networks who’ve had him on. Why don’t they ask him about his personal life? is the theme.
Gin & Tonic
@JPL: I want to see them make him sign an AMA declaration.
cain
Agree. I’d like to see some actual punishment for some of these people. The IRS should be on this guys ass like skunk spray.
Gin & Tonic
@germy: I have not. Been largely off-line the last several days, traipsing around the Finger Lakes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Immanentize:
You are facing a bit of brick wall here. There are a number of commenters who believe that the whole DOJ is complicit.
cain
I wondered about that as well. How come nobody talked about that angle? You can bet if Obama had done this – there would be a ton of questions about it.
frosty
@SFAW: I had to drop the Baltimore Sun when the Chicago Tribune bought them. I haven’t checked back to see if they improved.
In better news, it seems the Atlantic has gotten over its foray into hedge fund conservative ownership. I subscribed since the 70s and dropped it in the early 2000s. Based on what I see these days I may sign up again and make James Fallows happy (“Subscribe!” in every blog post.)
Ken
@Gin & Tonic: They could print one on one of those blank sheets he was signing. Or a DNR, I’m not picky.
cain
@Baud:
I love this quote by Graham:
hahahaha!!! Does he not know the man? Tell the human story – fuck me.
Steeplejack (phone)
Trump’s car ride summed up in one picture.
CarolDuhart2
Front Pagers: please post this link:
https://twitter.com/joncoopertweets/status/1313113753995694080
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: I know. But I am trying to take a brick or two out.
I know how much people living in red states rightly hate it when others say something like:. “All the white voters in _______ State are stupid racist assholes.”. And folks are right to complain about such proclamations — such a broad brush is an embarrassment.
NotMax
@Immanentize
Altogether it’s a lotta minutes buy it’s presented as 13 episodes, each focused on specific years, so one doesn’t feel any compunction to sit through it all in one go.
TS (the original)
@germy:
The administration does not want to know the size of this covid-19 group. The last thing they want is any contact tracing to discover where it came from & where it is spreading.
This is the administration that the media has supported and laughed about for 4 years. This was who they wanted elected. What did they think would happen when they agreed to sit in cages and be abused by his followers.
I give Biden 6 weeks and the media will be screaming because he hasn’t cured covid, hasn’t revived the economy, fixed up NATO, the UN, Obamacare etc etc.
cain
@trnc:
When I’ve done phone calls I tend to turn the script into my own as I get more comfortable with the subject matter. I have yet to do any phone banking though.. strangely I am not being asked to and I’m on several lists. Maybe it is an oregon thing.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Gin & Tonic: Sounds lovely. I’ll bet the trees were turning.
TS (the original)
@germy:
Look closely at the videos – I think it was reported they were wearing full PPE. The driver certainly looks to be wearing it.
NotMax
@NotMax
but it’s, not buy it’s
Punchy
Technical Q for all you 25th experts….
Just how “incapacitated” does Donnie have to be to put Pence in charge? Conscious but unable to speak (ventilator)? Able to speak but on mind-altering steroids (perhaps at the moment)? More importantly, can Trump put Pence in charge for a few hours, have him issue blanket pardons for Trump and Associates, then reclaim his presidency and have those pardons still be in effect?
cain
@Immanentize:
Is it possible that a lot of them are older and they are protecting their retirement? Govt jobs don’t pay well, so it’s mostly in retirement benefits and other things. That can be a powerful leverage.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kay:
FTFY
chopper
and the “disagree” number is (wait for it)…27%
germy
@TS (the original): I must have missed that.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@SiubhanDuinne:
Wow.
They think this is a good look?
germy
So I see Eric Trump has taken the 5th and refused to appear at the NYC probe into the family finances.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
Side note: how did the brisket turn out? Hope you were able to salvage it.
TS (the original)
I do wonder if the “never trump” brigade would vote for Pence – but before that becomes relevant, Steve Schmidt sure has a way with words.
cain
@Betty Cracker:
yeah, there is definitely going to be a crash of some sort. He’s going to be out for the count for the rest of the election cycle. Which is good because he won’t be able to be in shape to contest the election.
I will say that the timing for all of this couldn’t be better – well maybe if it happened this week. :) The rona has done more to derail McConnell’s plans than anything else. The senate is filled with old white males who are definitely the main target for the virus and they now know it.
Shalimar
@NotMax: I’m trying to watch the first episode now, but it’s difficult. The foreboding music is so much louder than the narration that it’s torture to listen.
Gin & Tonic
@cain: I have a good friend, around 40, with very impressive legal bona fides, (yes, I actually have a lawyer friend) who took a job at the DOJ within the last year. Thing is, there is work to be done in his area of specialty – let’s just say he has spent time in both eastern Europe and in London – and he is almost painfully ethical. I don’t talk politics with him, and there is less than zero chance he’ll spill anything about what he is working on, but I have to assume there are other people there who are following the law and the ethics and doing work that needs to be done, regardless of who heads the dept.
germy
Meanwhile, in Iowa:
Gin & Tonic
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The foliage was very nice. The grapes were very nice too.
Omnes Omnibus
@cain: The majority of lawyers working for the Justice Department probably had very little change to their jobs with the change of administration. We are talking thousands of lawyers here and only a few would have had jobs with any kind of policy input.
FWIW the pay isn’t that bad either.
Danielx
Passing thought: if Biden wins, FSM willing, does his transition team have a plan in place for fumigating/disinfecting the White House? That’s going to be a major job, and the last thing on Trump’s mind is easing things for a successor. In fact, I’d not be surprised if instead of the usual letter, he took a large dump on the Resolute desk.
Immanentize
@cain: Some, yes, undoubtedly. But there is also a respectable position that “this too shall pass.” If you work at DOJ as a career attorney, Presidents come and go — the hard work is trying to maintain credibility and accountability in the work across widely diverging (these days) administrative policy priorities. In voting it’s “voter protections” versus “election integrity.” And that priority changes with each switch from Dem to Repub.
But many really excellent and respected attorneys believe that the best way to protect voters is to be there when a President who wants to protect them comes back into office. If Trump wins, so many will leave. But waiting four years to serve the country, with experience and knowledge, to put things right is not too long to suffer.
Walking away at such a moment really only helps the abuser
CarolDuhart2
@cain: And not only that, but anyone old enough to be in that position is probably over 55 and trying to make it to Social Security and retirement eligibility. Try getting another job equal to that at that age
Not only that, they may be paying off their kids student loans, a mortgage, or taking care of elderly parents. While the pay isn’t as high as in the private sector, it’s much more stable-vitually layoff proof most of the time (my situation excepted) and has paid health and personal leave, health insurance/life insurance, and often union representation as well.
Betty Cracker
The mister and I will be returning our damp* mail-in ballots to the county’s sole drop box today (the first day that option is available). This requires a 40+ mile roundtrip that includes miles of shitty, washed out roads.
I feel a little silly about that. Our mail carrier is a peach, and although the mail was markedly slower for a few weeks at the height of DeJoy’s antics, the delays were in the 7 day range, leaving plenty of time to mail the ballots. The supervisor of elections here has run a tight ship for decades, despite being a Republican.
But we figure the quicker we can bank those votes and start following the status online, the quicker we can request a cure in person if need be. So, we will drive them to the drop box today. Whew!
*The ballots — and everything else — are damp because we have all the windows open since the temperatures are perfect (mid-70s) but the humidity is 100%. I hope the dampness doesn’t booger up the Ivanka-branded (possibly!) scanning machine!
germy
Maybe he’d have Hope HIcks and Kimberly Guilfoyle pee on it instead?
JPL
@germy: Shocked! nah
cain
@Punchy:
Trump will never willingly give over power to anyone – especially Pence. He would argue that he would put Ivanka or Jared in charge first or make arrangements that Pence would take orders from them.
He will hold on to the power until he is forced to.
JPL
Well if trump is released, then I think Biden can once again run his negative ads. In fact he needs to make one showing how many folks tested positive for Covid, because of trump’s reckless behavior.
Punchy
@Danielx: No need to fumigate it; Trump will likely both figurately and literally burn it down a day or two before he leaves. If Trump’s going out, he’s taking everyone and everything with him, the WH offices and all the incriminatiing papers as well.
cain
@Omnes Omnibus:
I was just going by what I’ve heard from state employees and what I’ve read. But fair.
But it must suck to be working at a job where the people in charge are working at cross purposes.
cain
@CarolDuhart2:
That’s what my friend who works for county says as well. It’s stable and layoff proof. She struggles though and as a friend it is sometimes tough to see. Then again, she’s seen me suffer too, not sure who is suffering worse :)
Immanentize
Is raven around?
SCOTUS denied the final appeal in Spirit’s copyright claim against Led Zeppelin for ripping off Stairway to Heaven riff.
cain
@Punchy:
Who would be his fixer this time? It would be interesting if that asshole actually does take everyone down with him if he realizes it is a death sentence.
He has no sense of loyalty for others – so I think he will do whatever to fuck people over and protect his daughter.
Immanentize
@germy: As predicted — down to the timing.
prostratedragon
Can steroids cause delusion by proxy?
Brad Blakeman, GOP “strategist:”
Trump campaign aide Erin Perrine:
Immanentize
@Betty Cracker: OT but I loved the “your you’re” viddy you retweeted!
Gin & Tonic
@Immanentize: I’ve not seen current reporting to that effect. There was a story like that floating around last night, but it turned out to have been from August.
montanareddog
@Punchy:
What was it that was hidden on the hyper-secure server after the Trump-Zelensky call that got him impeached? Was it the full, unredacted call transcript? And once on that server is it “undeletable” meaning the incoming administration can review and release it?
Gin & Tonic
@prostratedragon: What is a strategist?
Immanentize
@Gin & Tonic: Thanks. Two days to go max
Omnes Omnibus
@cain: Most federal attorneys start at the GS-11 level. In any sized city, they are looking at $70,000. The majority who have been there for any length of time are over six figures. It’s not what they’d make in BIGLAW, but it ain’t peanuts either. Most attorneys don’t make the money that the people in the big firms make, so they are doing okay. This is the current DC area pay scale.
Shalimar
@JPL: They’re aware those ads are coming, which is why they have instructed employees to go to their personal doctors rather than White House medical staff. There won’t be a number for the people infected due to Trump. They intentionally aren’t compiling those statistics or doing contract tracing.
Chyron HR
Trump campaign aide Erin Perrine suggested that President Donald Trump is a better leader than Democratic candidate Joe Biden because
he has the “firsthand experience” of being infected with COVID-19.like Jesus, he died for our sins.Raven
@Immanentize: Hey, I’m sure my brother is on it. His case was Dazed and Confused. The suckitude continues down here. The weather has been awesome, fishing shitty and a hurricane cometh.
mrmoshpotato
I know from experience that that’s awesome – awesomely infuriating!
Aleta
@JPL: They can start those negative ads now after this morning’s all-caps tweet series from T attacking Biden and asking for votes.
NotMax
@Shalimar
Hm. Have no memory of music outside of the program intro.
mrmoshpotato
Seriously? Some sucker-of-orange-ass said Dump is awesome at leading because the dumb fuck got a deadly disease?
prostratedragon
@Gin & Tonic: In this case sounds like an old fashioned spin doctor, probably overpaid and jerky like a top just before it flops over.
Omnes Omnibus
@Chyron HR:
JesusTrump died for somebody’s sins, but not mine.Kilgore Trout
@Matt McIrvin: Yes, the $64,000 question is when was the last negative test Trump had. The fact that the White House is dodging the question means the answer is not good.
Immanentize
@Raven: Hang tight! I’m starting to think you are a hurricane magnet. Or maybe just Like a Hurricane.
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: Any Patti Smith is always most welcome.
mrmoshpotato
@Aleta:
And exactly how awesome is
Dear LeaderOrange Shitstain at the COVID? Is the COVID “a total loser”, yet? “SAD!”Immanentize
@mrmoshpotato: hey, you gotta go to war with the army you got. Ammirite?
Baud
@prostratedragon:
What’s next? We should have confidence in him because he stayed at a Holiday Inn Express.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@CliosFanboy: It would not detect a past infection unless you still had some dead virus in your system and it picked up the DNA, and you’d have to get a PCR test to find dead viral DNA. The antigen tests will not pick up a past infection you have recovered from.
There are antibody tests out there that will identify people that were infected and recovered. Not sure how easy it is to get those though. IMO we should be rolling them out to give to everyone…even asymptomatic cases are causing heart and lung issues (maybe brain too) and it would be best to identify people who have had the virus so they can be monitored for those complications. But we won’t have those nice things until January 2021 at the earliest.
Raven
@Immanentize: We were coming back Friday anyway so, aside from driving in the rain, it should be ok.
mrmoshpotato
@Kilgore Trout: And the $421,000,000 question is “What mobsters does Dump owe $421 million?”
Marcopolo
@TS (the original): Let’s just call Trump’s Covid joy ride what it was: the Trump version of the Michael Dukakis tank ride.
mrmoshpotato
@Immanentize: When it comes to Dump, you gotta get your rich daddy to help you dodge the draft 5 times.
Splitting Image
@prostratedragon:
The appalling thing is that this isn’t even a particularly new talking point for Republicans. Remember when Rudy Giuliani became a go-to expert on terrorism when some guys knocked down the World Trade Center on his watch?
prostratedragon
@Danielx:
I’d been wondering about that; that normally high-maintenance place is going to need an extra going over. The Chief Usher is the head of the household staff, and co-ordinates with GSA and the National Park Service on maintenance needs and issues. This person usually has stayed on from term to term, but of course the Fraud had to fire the Usher from Pres. Obama. The replacement might be perfectly fine, but I note that in the Wikipedia article on the Chief Usher he is the only one that does not have a link to some kind of bio.
In any case he’d have to be some kind of manager for me to keep him on if I were going to live there.
Gin & Tonic
@prostratedragon:
Phrasing!
Another Scott
re Josh Marshall’s tweet, and others – it’s no wonder that people are confused about the difference between quarantine (being isolated after being exposed) and isolation (being isolated after being infected). The press really should be clearer about this.
Anyone INFECTED (Donnie, etc.) are in (or should be in) ISOLATION.
Cheers,
Scott.
mrmoshpotato
@Splitting Image: Rudes truly is luxurious at the terrorism.
catclub
@Baud: I just amuse myself thinking Hope Hicks and trump got it, but melania is being told to say she got it.
Calouste
@Matt McIrvin: It’s not a body double in the car ride. C’mon, just look at the tiny fingers on that hand!
prostratedragon
@Splitting Image: Oh yes that is a precedent isn’t it? And his contribution consisted of locating the city’s emergency headquarters in one of the most obvious terrorist targets in the world, which had already been hit once, by people who one could expect would try again.
bemused
@Betty Cracker:
We brought our MN mail-in ballots to local post office on 9/26 and by 9/30 our ballots were collected according to MN SOS site.
prostratedragon
@Gin & Tonic: Almost intentional –relic of college humor.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@CliosFanboy You can order an antibody blood test to see if you had COVID-19 in the past, on the Quest direct website and make an appointment on their online website. costs about 100 dollars. You don’t need a doctors order for that. Some states will let you take a nasal swab test to see if you are currently infected, whether you have symptoms or not, Connecticut and NY for instance.
The Moar You Know
@Immanentize: Good. I’m a musician. That lawsuit was utterly ludicrous from start to finish, and if upheld would have set the stage for literally any piece of music to be the object of litigation.
Raven
@The Moar You Know: On the other hand, Dazed and Confused was clear as a bell theft.
Matt McIrvin
@Danielx: If the concern is COVID-19, that only remains remotely dangerous on surfaces for a few days at most. So they could render the White House safe to occupy by just staying out of it for, say, 3-4 days.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
I wouldn’t limit my concern to COVID.
Matt McIrvin
@CliosFanboy: There are many kinds of tests. Most of the ones they’re giving now just detect whether you’re currently infected. But there are also antibody tests that can detect whether you were infected at some point within the past few months. The antibodies fade, though, which makes it eventually impossible to tell; I don’t think they can detect T-cell immunity.
Baud
Finally, some good news.
Ken
@Calouste: They might have done plastic surgery on the body double. Who wouldn’t want to have the last joint of each finger cut off so they could be put in situations where they might take a bullet for Donald Trump?
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Steeplejack (phone):
It was magnificent – next time, though, I start the night before.
ballerat
@Baud: I refuse to subscribe but a hatchet job is likely.
It is the Vichy Times. They’re collaborators.
Ken
I’m pretty sure Trump will be flouncing off to Mar-A-Lago by November 5, and do no further “work” as “president”. Does the rest of the staff need to stay on after that?
Steeplejack
Kayleigh McEnany has tested positive (per MSNBC).
Fair Economist
@germy:
FTFY
montanareddog
@Raven: as is Whole Lotta Love
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Immanentize:
Nothing like timeliness on making your claim about a riff on one of the most played pieces of music over the past 50 years…
Citizen Alan
@Danielx: I’m certain the Resolute Desk will be defaced in some way. Shitgibbon’s name carved into it or some shit like that.
Jinchi
You’ve got to be careful about this, though. The concern is that people get a positive result (‘Yay I had asymptomatic Covid! Now I can run through the streets maskless without worry.’) But, as with all tests, there are false positives and false negatives. So you could end up putting yourself and others in peril. An individual isn’t supposed to change their actions at all based on the result.
My understanding is these are better used in large populations to get a statistical result: (‘25% of the staff at Smithsville hospital has had corona’, for example). That allows an organization or town to make pandemic related decisions.
Citizen Alan
@CarolDuhart2:
Preach. I’m 51, and my current clerkship ends July 31, 2021. I’m reasonably confident that I can get another job between now and then that will provide me with insurance to keep me alive.
But I’ve also updated my will and my health care directive.
ballerat
@Kay: The food is terrible. And the portions are so small!
Ken
@Steeplejack: @Fair Economist: Did you two coordinate that?
ballerat
@Baud: Not surprised. None of them wants to admit what Trump is doing with covid is a genocide either. It’s all right there in front of their faces, the orange elephant in the room, but they are pretending this is normal.
The inability to admit they had bad judgement isn’t restricted to die-hard trumpers.
James E Powell
@The Moar You Know:
No lie. Chuck Berry’s estate would own the Rolling Stones.
Uncle Cosmo
Good first step, Dread, but don’t stop there: Muscle up and choke the living shit out of them.
J R in WV
@Punchy:
“…Conscious but unable to speak (ventilator)?”
You are not ever conscious while on a vent, based upon my spending nearly a month with my sedated wife in ICU on a vent. No one can tolerate having the various bits of the vent machine down their throat while conscious, which makes weaning a person off their vent a tricky proposition. Just ask an ICU nurse.
Fair Economist
@Ken:
No! Karma has been busy, it seems.
Many of those infected in the current outbreak are the most connected of the connected – RNC chair, President, campaign chair, PR spokesperson, etc. They have spread it far and wide – their job is seeing lots of different people all day, and they haven’t been distancing or masking, at least until Friday. We’re going to be hearing “that Republican got infected too?” all the way up to the election now.
Jinchi
All of their own making.
Steeplejack
@Ken:
Everything is happening all at once—including the speculation!
Uncle Cosmo
@Kay: Just FYI, that 1-2-3-4 coding system has a venerable history that goes back at least as far as 1972, when it was used by Democratic campaigners (yerstruly amongst them) in the general election. Of course then it was with voter lists on bound sheafs of 144-column paper printed out by big-arsed printers hooked to even-bigger-arsed computers…
NotMax
@catclub
Her parents and child are also at risk and ought to be quarantining.
Just sayin’.
NotMax
@NotMax
Oh , shoot. Fix.
@catclub
Her parents and child are also at risk and ought to be quarantining.
Just sayin’.
Jinchi
I remember that George Bush kept us safe.
But Bush’s error was not paying attention to warning signs. Trump is more like the arsonist who gets caught in his own conflagration.
ballerat
@Kay: They will just have their exposed/quarantined and pos/isolating senators come in and vote.
Why would potentially infecting others stop them? It doesn’t stop Trump. It doesn’t stop his supporters. Who shall say them nay? Nobody. Only common decency and respect for others’ health, and they lack it.
Uncle Cosmo
@Matt McIrvin: You need evidence to back up three conjectures:
There are abundant reasons to suspect points 1 and 2; point 3 is debatable (how was Trumplthinskin’s behavior any more outrageous than his standard shtick?) but I suspect there was some extra encouragement from his “advisors”. (Krisp Krispie has all but admitted as much.)
Look for a couple of very heavy hobnail boots to drop soon.
ballerat
@SiubhanDuinne: These are from Trump’s twitter account?
It still doesn’t sound like Trump. It sounds like someone trying to sound like Trump. But still too careful with grammar, quotes and the attribution.
The Lodger
It’s the Jarvanka version of the Oprah maneuver:
“You get a Covid car, and you get a COVID car, and YOU get a COVID car!”
Uncle Cosmo
@Geminid: @hueyplong: If you’re interested in what that same period (Munich to Pearl Harbor) was like for Americans, I highly recommend The Borrowed Years, 1938-1941: America on the Way to War (1989) by Richard M. Ketchum. Chapters that are straight-up history alternate with reminiscences of a relatively privileged teenager growing up in Pittsburgh during that period (he was a freshman at Yale at the time of Pearl Harbor). Both are fascinating. One of a handful of tomes I think highly enough of that I keep two copies – the second for lending to trusted friends.
Uncle Cosmo
Raise a kerfluffle over that and the Thugs will make more noise over Woodrow Wilson’s wife running the country after his stroke. “Dummycrats are worse!” (A hundred years ago, but so what, libtards??)
trnc
@Kay: Cool. Our call database is supposed to be just registered dems. That’s mostly been the case, but I’ve talked to a few republicans. Maybe they reg’d dem for some primary. We also don’t get info about the level of involvement. One night, I saw some info about their district and state-level races, but last night I only saw names, so I’m guessing it depends on what server I get on the dialer system.
trnc
DT knew he had already been exposed by the time he walked into the debate hall, and his family wouldn’t wear their masks. He managed to dodge the allegedly required test (which was a failure on the part of the commission to not enforce that). There was malicious intent, even if he had not already tested positive.
H-Bob
@CliosFanboy: FYI, the local blood bank was performing the antibody test for blood donors (assuming you qualify as a donor).
Uncle Cosmo
I love love love how Laura Lippman (a former Sun reporter) tweaks them in her novels**, referring to the local fishwrap as the Baltimore Beacon-Light, or Blight to its employees past and present. (The Sun‘s masthead motto is “Light For All” which underscores the connection. “Blight For All” is about right.)
** Which BTW for all you mystery fans out there are def worth reading – among other things you will learn a lot about Charm City. I am still pissed off at David Simon (“Shock Trauma,” “Homicide,” “The Wire”) for winning her affections long before I could fall to my knees before her & offer her all my worldly goods to marry me.
Miss Bianca
@Uncle Cosmo: Huh. I think I’d like to read that book. My dad was a freshman at Yale at the same time (as was GHW Bush). My grandfather was in charge of the Marine barracks at Pearl Harbor, also at the same time. Fortunately, he was out on maneuvers at the time of the attack.
StringOnAStick
@Punchy: I’m pretty sure you aren’t conscious when on a ventilator, patients are heavily sedated so they aren’t choking on the tube in their trachea. If tRump ends up in a ventilator, he’ll be unconscious and the 25th will have to apply. They’ll try to hide it but that news would definitely leak from WR.
ballerat
@Matt McIrvin: From Woodward we know Trump knew the virus is dangerous, highly contagious, deadly and airborne. He knew he could infect and kill someone in that room.
Trump’s strategic need was to damage Biden in the first debate. But once he tested positive he was damaged. That was a disaster and his campaign knows it.
In short, Trump lost the covid russian roulette game he’d been playing and his campaign took a bullet, so he made Biden play too.
Hell, yes he tried to kill him.
Trump really doesn’t care about anyone else. He doesn’t care if he kills people to get what he wants.
This should be fucking obvious after 210,000 dead people.
Is it the semantics people have trouble with? Why is “Trump knowingly causes people to die” not the same as “Trump kills people”? Or do they still want to pretend he doesn’t know?
Hob
@Jim Appleton:
You’re right to add that last disclaimer about why your experience wasn’t relevant to this. I used to be an RN in a surgical specialty where patients were frequently being tapered off of IV dexamethasone. When you get that in order to counteract life-threatening inflammation, it’s a much higher dose than you would have taken for anything as an outpatient; it’s likely to make you pretty loopy, and it has to be tapered off gradually so you may be loopy for a while.
Hob
@StringOnAStick:
Unfortunately that’s not always the case. It is a horribly unpleasant experience, but when a patient is going to be on mechanical ventilation for an extended period of time and there isn’t any other reason for them to be unconscious, doctors will sometimes let them be awake with only mild sedation—sometimes alternating with brief intervals of no sedation at all. It’s a tradeoff between comfort and the medical impact of being comatose, plus being able to communicate with the patient can be helpful in treatment.
Matt McIrvin
@ballerat: It felt more like “nice people don’t speculate about such things.”