Andrew Cuomo stopped doing daily briefings last Friday, because New York is on the other side of the mountain, as he calls our curve, and the daily briefings were a lot of work. He and his staff did them for a little over 100 days, and during that time we went through hell. His next-to-last briefing on Thursday was a classic:
He’s addressing the the Trumpy governors who are currently screwing the pooch in Florida, Arizona, Texas and elsewhere. The difference between them and Cuomo is that his administration just didn’t have briefings. They marshaled resources and did unpopular things, like having prisoners make “NYS Clean” hand sanitizer, moving heaven and earth to boost our testing capacity to almost 70,000 per day, increasing and consolidating hospital resources, and creating a cautious re-opening plan that has, so far, kept our positive rate under 1%. At Thursday’s conference he announced an executive order that would let the state liquor commission immediately suspend licenses of bars and restaurants that weren’t enforcing masking and distancing.
This is grossly obvious, but it seems to escape Trump & Company: It isn’t just talk. Part of the reason New York’s economy is going to recover (slowly) is that people have confidence that if something goes wrong, the Cuomo administration will clamp down and do the hard work necessary to fix it.
It isn’t just Cuomo. Jacinda Ardern and her government have done an amazing job keeping COVID out of the general population in New Zealand by instituting a mandatory, supervised two-week quarantine for anyone entering the country. Again, this is hard work, and last week two women who were in quarantine were given compassionate leave to see a dying relative, and later tested positive. Those women had contact with other New Zealanders on their trip home. Ardern cracked down, putting the military in charge of the quarantine hotels, and suspending compassionate exemptions. Her announcement of the new measures features a stone face and clear anger:
What she’s done, like a lot of what Cuomo’s done, is unpopular (here’s a good round-up of the impact on migrant workers). But her government’s hard work saved lives.
One of the core characteristics of Trump and Trumpism is a fundamental laziness, both intellectual and physical. The MAGA promise is that a red hat and hating the right people is all it takes to make America great. Turns out that work is required, and no more evidence is needed than the abject failure on display in states run on Trumpist principles.
Jeffro
So true! And it looks like a large majority of the country – 70% or better – is still very much pro-lockdown, pro-mask, etc. But it won’t do us much good unless the lazy, oh, say 27% or so are made to do the right things as well.
We could flatten this thing into the ground and right out of existence if we really wanted to, and most of us do. It’s the slackers who will keep us bumping along for a long, long time.
MattF
Agree about Trump’s laziness. He won’t and he can’t do anything that requires effort, not to mention courage. It’s why I’m skeptical about Trump making an authoritarian coup when/if Biden is elected. Trump will bluster and threaten, for sure– but more than that seems unlikely.
Cheryl Rofer
I just wrote something similar on Twitter about arms control. They have no idea how much work it takes to develop a treaty. OTOH, it’s fine with them to have no treaties.
Cheryl Rofer
And I have to give a shout-out to New Mexico’s governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is doing a great job of keeping New Mexico from the horrors New York endured.
Green in a sea of red
BBA
He also ordered nursing homes to accept COVID patients released from hospitals, thereby worsening the spread. This is the main right wing talking point against Cuomo and it’s a doozy.
Personally I never cared much for Cuomo before this mess started and his Thin Blue Line leanings are a perfectly fine reason to go back to not caring much for him.
Dorothy A. Winsor
The laziness fits with their lack of respect for expertise. They think no knowledge or learning or practice is required to do anything. That’s one reason they hire friends and flunkies to do vital work. They think it doesn’t matter. All that stuff is easy peasy.
TS (the original)
May be unpopular but if an election was held any time in the next few months – both would win. Unpopular measures taken don’t always equate to unpopular at the polls – if those measures have the desired results.
Omnes Omnibus
@BBA: My god, you are tiresome.
Hoodie
Another core characteristic is cowardice. The source of complaining is almost invariably GOP men, who tend to be a bunch of whiny bitches.
Barbara
@BBA: There may be circumstances where that was not the right thing to do, but it’s hard to see how it was wrong in the context of exploding hospitalizations attributable COVID-19. The hospital only seemed like a safer place. Yeah, of course, nearly anything that happens could be done better. But it’s obvious that with the rate of the infection in NYC, spreading to nursing homes was just a matter of time. Here, in Virginia, no one was ordered to take hospital discharges but the plurality of deaths from COVID are in nursing homes. The same is true in nearly every other state that has been hit hard and more than a few that have not.
Cameron
I can’t say that DeSantis is a do-nothing governor. Florida has still not taken expanded Medicaid (which would save a load of $$, and – who knows? – maybe save some lives), so he swung into action – and is threatening to use his line-item veto to cut some of the health-care portion of the upcoming budget. Perfect timing as the number of COVID cases is exploding, and may go exponentially higher in the coming week. This is a very strange place.
dman
My Provincial Health Officer
(yes I know its the NYT)
Her leadership in these trying times has been so satisfying.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/world/canada/bonnie-henry-british-columbia-coronavirus.html
Suzanne
@BBA:
And where would you suggest they go?
Keeping in mind that US hospital capacity is intentionally kept low to reduce cost….
Or are you just someone with no expertise in healthcare or policy having a big sad because you have no feasible alternative?
I know! Let’s just build an entire healthcare infrastructure for these people in about six weeks!
TaMara (HFG)
Gotta give a shout out to Colorado Governor Polis – did all the hard things and now we are slowly opening back up. Got a spike here in Boulder county – contract tracing indicated it was big house/frat parties in Boulder (repeat offenders no less). Now we are on notice and asked to stay home more than other counties (thanks, kids) but with that kind of response, we can move forward with confidence that people are paying attention.
TaMara (HFG)
And before I leave, may I remind everyone that PIE is good and the PIE FILTER is even better.
Cheers!
Brachiator
It is supremely ironic that the New Zealand leader is firm and resolute while dealing with a real problem while Trump prefers to play at toughness when he persecutes immigrant children and Dreamers.
JPL
The New Yorker has an article about Fiona Hill. which shows what a remarkable being she is.
JPL
@Brachiator: He’s a horrible human being and just removing him from office is not enough.
jonas
This is the basis for their disdain for “elites” and “experts.” Some egghead had to go to school for 6-8 years to learn about vaccines? I learned all about them in five minutes on my aunt’s facebook feed! *And* signed up for a special investor newsletter about key opportunities I need to know about before Jesus returns in 2021.
Jo Jo las Orejas
@Cheryl Rofer:
Le doy a este comentario 4 patas y un movimiento de cola de 3 minutos. Mi mamá y yo extrañamos mi estado de nacimiento.
rikyrah
Uh huh?
Joe Falco
Hey, MAGA does work too! Asylum seekers and their children aren’t going to lock themselves up in cages by themselves, y’know!
different-church-lady
@Suzanne: To me it sounds like someone having a big sad because someone else told them they should be having a big sad.
rikyrah
I will not blame any country for not letting Americans in.
Protect yourself.
Amir Khalid
@Barbara:
Also too, if a hospital decides a Covid-19 patient can be discharged, that presumably means they have recovered from any symptoms and are no longer antigen-positive i.e. no longer contagious. At least, that’s the rule in Malaysia.
BBA
@Suzanne: We’ve got a whole lot of empty hotel rooms that can be used for quarantine upon release. The hotel owners are desperate for cash and will rent them out cheap. It worked very well in Israel (much as I hate to admit Israel does anything well).
rikyrah
@MattF:
He doesn’t want to take responsibility for anything
different-church-lady
@jonas:
Oh it’s much worse than that. They already know the experts are wrong about everything. They only need the Facebook feed to confirm the details of how they’re wrong.
Geminid
I think that the conduct of Andrew Cuomo throughout this crisis tends to undercut the political argument that we need “exciting” candidates. The same could be said of my governor, Ralph Northam. When the chips are down, its competence that counts.
Suzanne
@BBA: That is acceptable for people who are healthy enough to NOT NEED ONGOING NURSING CARE.
For people who actually continue to need sub-acute medical care, hotel rooms DO NOT WORK.
Brachiator
@JPL:
For now, I want to make sure Trump is defeated in November.
TS (the original)
@BBA:
Who on earth do you think is going to look after nursing home patients in a hotel? The manager, the desk clerk?
Suzanne
The bar is surprisingly low in the US for people to be discharged out of hospitals. You’d be surprised, or maybe you wouldn’t, considering how health insurance works. Many people leave a hospital still needing significant care, from a home health aide, or a family member, or yes, a sub-acute facility (a nursing home).
The “Corona hospitals” that the Chinese built really quickly and then took down were not hospitals in any sense that we would recognize. They were essentially dormitories to isolate people from one another and from the public, and nurses monitored patients and sent them to real hospitals if they actually needed care. Those patients in the US would be told to quarantine at home.
Tdjr
@rikyrah: Wow. Quite a story.
Suzanne
@TS (the original): This is the dumbest fucken idea EVER. And I keep seeing Cuomo-haters suggest it, as if it was in any way workable.
Barbara
@Suzanne: What is hard to forgive — and I don’t think Cuomo bears any particular responsibility — is the failure of the federal government to step in and impose a testing and PPE policy for nursing homes that included providing them with the capacity and wherewithal to carry it out. Even now, Seema Verma is bloviating about how the federal government was not responsible for carrying out infection control in nursing homes, just setting the standards. There is simply no way nursing homes could gear up for this properly, given the speed required, and the lack of anything like the buying power of the federal government. They operate on thin margins even when they are not in the midst of a crisis.
Barbara
@BBA: Maybe for people who don’t have complex needs, but the average hospital inpatient in the U.S. is not someone who can convalesce in a hotel setting, especially if their home is a long term care facility.
download my app in the app store mistermix
@BBA: You are a remarkably stupid person.
BBA
We’re really going to the mat for the guy who kept Republicans in control of the State Senate for eight damn years? Does nobody remember the IDC? Fuck me.
Elizabelle
Right. No more Cuomo O’Clock. I rather loved how he took aim at wingnut talking points, and dispatched them ably.
@Barbara: I think people should go to prison for the botched (actually, sabotaged) virus response, and particularly with respect to PPE and testing kits. No excuse for their ideas or the delay, and thousands of Americans died needlessly.
When I heard that Trump bragged about the slowing down of testing, I wondered if any international justice organization took notice and added that to their compilation of evidence.
Is it true that a president cannot pardon murder or manslaughter?
germy
@Elizabelle:
His team is going with the “Trump was just joking!” defense.
Barbara
@BBA: No one here routinely goes to the mat for Andrew Cuomo but FFS perspective and proportionality shouldn’t go out the window just because you don’t like someone for other reasons.
Emma from FL
@BBA: Pro tip: when you have good reasons to hate somebody you don’t need to invent spurious ones. It detracts from the message.
Ocotillo
@Geminid: A bit off topic, what did Northam (Dem Leg) do in Virginia? My brother is single issue, vote against my best interest gun nut that is always griping on the book of faces about him. I know some gun control legislation was passed and signed into law, what did it entail that is so egregious?
Barbara
@Elizabelle: Murder and manslaughter are by and large state offenses, though there are a few federal variants (see, e.g., Timothy McVeigh). Presidents can’t pardon anyone for state crimes.
Omnes Omnibus
@BBA: No one here is putting him up for sainthood. No one is endorsing him for president. Get a fucking grip.
Barbara
@Ocotillo: Short answer? Not enough. Or at least not enough for me! Wikipedia has a decent summary: Source
What they did not do was ban assault style weapons. They expanded criminal background checks, limited purchases of certain guns to one per month, require notification in the event a gun is stolen, and some other things that are less directly applicable to gun owners per se.
TS (the original)
@BBA:
NO – I’m supporting a guy who was given the worst of the worst when trump left the country wide open to infection from Europe and New York got hit with the worst of it. He was then given minimal support from trump’s administration (anything he had to virtually beg for) and he sourced his own supplies and his own solutions. Against so many odds, he flattened the curve. He listened to the experts, he did what they said. he kept everyone informed, he allowed the press to ask questions & he answered them.
Just to mention – as I have before – If trump had acted in the same way as Cuomo – he would probably be sailing towards re-election. People would have ignored the past 3 years & congratulated him on a fantastic job during COVID-19. Keeping people safe, keeping them from getting ill & limiting how many die is a positive to most people.
Brachiator
@BBA:
All right.
Fuck you.
ETA: earlier you mentioned right wing talking points? Are right wing pundits praising the efforts of red state governors where the pandemic is surging? This alone would pretty much invalidate anything that they had to say about the matter.
Apart from this, I have no idea what point you think you are making.
Barbara
@TS (the original):
Yep. It still amazes me that his grifter son in law and the other people he surrounds himself with could not grasp this themselves or if they did, get it through his thick skull. No one is blaming him for the virus, and he practically had a get out of jail free card for the ensuing economic dislocation.
Just One More Canuck
@Suzanne:
“C’mon whaddya you know? You only build hospitals. My feelings tell me that hotels would be just great”
Roger Moore
@Cheryl Rofer:
Unfortunately, it takes hardly any work at all to blow up an existing treaty.
Elizabelle
@BBA: You have reminded me, no catcake or seal chow in this thread so far. Which I rather smile at. So: you are it.
Everyone is a mixed bag, BBA. Although Trump comes closer than most to being pure unadulterated shit. Every politician, Democrat and otherwise, is going to do something that bothers you or that you disagree with.
That doesn’t mean that you have to judge and harangue people for their low points (in your opinion) while sliding right past what they’ve done that was positive or seriously important.
And, again, that paragraph does not apply to Trump, either, because no high points. Except maybe pardoning Black boxer Jack Johnson, who died in 1946. (I do not understand why President Obama never issued that pardon, but perhaps it was grace, because without it — no good actions by Trump.)
Ohio Mom
On Leadership being hard: My Governor, Mike DeWine.
He started out strong enough, earned some kudos, and then crumbled at the first pushback. No inner resolve.
Ohio’s numbers are going up. I’m glad Ohio Family got a few things taken care of during the short reprieve we had — some doctors appointments, haircuts, a couple of shopping trips for non-essentials.
It was nice while it lasted. I don’t expect DeWine to respond to the increase with any meaningful action. This next phase is going to be a bear.
HeleninEire
I do not understand people. Because of LaGuardia and Kennedy, NY’ers took it on the chin for the rest of the country. As we watched more than 30,000 of our neighbors die, we were the test kitchen as we made up the rules.
We now have gone from more than 800 deaths a day to ~25 and our positive rate is less than 1% as we do close to 70,000 tests a day.
Why won’t others learn from our mistakes and successes? It’s making me both angry and sad.
Elizabelle
@Barbara: Thank you. I knew you would know.
I hope Trump spends every day of the rest of his life dealing with serious criminal and civil charges. And he brought it all upon himself.
germy
Because I enjoy seeing old photos, I visit a website that features them. Today, they posted this:
“The Wall”
https://www.shorpy.com/node/25698
In the replies, readers often post modern photos of the same location. Just to see how they’ve changed or been updated.
Scroll down. A reader posted a modern-day photo of the wall.
Ocotillo
@Barbara: Thanks for the heads up. Apologies for being too lazy to google myself. That is an extremely modest list of sensible gun control legislation.
different-church-lady
@BBA:
Well, remember, it was your idea…
Omnes Omnibus
@different-church-lady: Use protection please. One never knows.
Sure Lurkalot
@Dorothy A. Winsor: A thousand times this. And also, if so and so can do it, of course, I can do it. So and so often meaning a person of color, a woman, a poorer, a less attractive, a subordinate. Being successful in one or even many disciplines means competency and ability to do anything that someone less “successful” can do, and better.
Roger Moore
@Suzanne:
Which is very likely a mistake. One of the common features of places that have been most successful in containing COVID is putting patients under quarantine in separate quarters so they don’t spread it to their whole family. Our approach of sending people home is penny wise and pound foolish, since crushing the epidemic saves a lot of money in the long term.
Ladyraxterinok
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Hey! If a black card be president, then anybody can!/
zhena gogolia
@BBA:
Who’s “going to the mat”?
Baud
@HeleninEire:
Do you feel pwned? Then you have your answer.
zhena gogolia
@Barbara:
Oh, he’s totally and utterly incapable of acting like Cuomo. Everyone knows it.
Baud
@zhena gogolia:
[[Puts away “Cuomo is God” bumper sticker]]
Not me.
Nicole
I’m in the “very pleased with how Cuomo handled the Covid-19 crisis” but the nursing home thing gives me pause- as best I can tell, March 25 Cuomo handed down a directive saying that nursing homes were not permitted to refuse admittance to a patient based on confirmed or suspected Covid-19 diagnosis, nor were nursing homes permitted to conduct Covid-19 tests on these patients, but at the same time, he did not free nursing homes or nursing aides from civil liability related to Covid-19, although he did hospitals, doctors, etc. He rescinded the order in May, and then, if I’m reading Google right, deleted the March nursing home stuff from the Governor’s website.
That said, I watched the briefings every day, and his answer to the questions about it was that a nursing home was permitted at any time to call up the state and say “We can’t care for this person” and they didn’t have to take them, but how that works with not being permitted to refuse admittance due to Covid status, I don’t know.
This is a law office summary of the March 25 order.
https://www.goldbergsegalla.com/news-and-knowledge/knowledge/nys-health-dept-releases-coronavirus-advisory
I went to the text of the order, but I couldn’t find anything about nursing homes in it. That said, it was really long and I well may have missed it (assuming the post I saw about it being removed wasn’t true and that it’s still findable somewhere).
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus: One knows I’m only doing this in the metaphorical sense, yes one does…
MisterForkbeard
@BBA: Noting that the “send released patients to nursing homes” was bad but that the alternatives were also bad is not “going to the mat”.
Get some perspective. Cuomo can be both a pretty good governor in a pandemic and also a governor we generally don’t like otherwise. He earned some goodwill here and has already blown some of it with his BLM responses. Just let it go.
john fremont
@TaMara (HFG): Yes, Polis took got some blowback a few months ago for closing a decent ski season down early but he made a good call.
MisterForkbeard
@germy: Yeah. Not to mention that Trump has said it before, and there have been numerous reports about it with both public and anonymous sources.
Trump told the truth here and his campaign is lying about it.
Ksmiami
@JPL: Brickbats. These guys deserve a beating in every sense of the word.
trollhattan
The phased reopenings in CA are blowing up in our faces and both positive tests and hospitalizations are up. And yet we have sheriffs and mayors defying the governor’s masks-for-everyone order last week.
The stupid will kill us all.
I ❤ Jacinda. Being an island nation they had achieved the ideal–ridding themselves of the virus–and preserving that requires a zero-defects system, which is a lot more work than curve-bending.
artem1s
@Ohio Mom:
agreed. Unfortunately DeWine has always been a weasel. I knew the minute there was any pushback from the wingnuts he would fold and throw the staff trying to follow science under the bus. There are far too many ‘reasonable’ GOPers in Ohio who have been riding on Raygun’s coattails for the last 30 years. Decent hair, manage to handle the PR stuff OK, can speak full sentences. But my are they a disaster when it comes to actual core values and ethics. Remember, these guys left over from the Voinovich days are not ever to be trusted. They have sold the state out over and over and over again to religious zealots, privatization, and special interests.
catclub
This, and this even includes that Cuomo made a bad start to the CV19 response… but fixed it.
Actually, there are so many things that trump is incapable of doing that would have assured re-election. Moderate a little on the border. for starters.
different-church-lady
The WaPo headline writers make a funny:
Trump preparing for something! Knee-slapper!
Xavier
@Cheryl Rofer: again, a shout out to us too. I had to go to Lowes and Home Depot this am, every single person in both stores wearing a mask.
different-church-lady
@TS (the original): If Trump was capable of acting the same way as Cuomo, Hillary would be president right now.
Marcopolo
@Elizabelle:
True. However, there are some folks who want to go into public service who have not yet done anything agreeable or disagreeable. They are the folks recruited by RunforSomething for this year’s elections, and I say let’s give them a chance to earn our favor/ire.
Here is a page listing the 350+ young, energetic, diverse, passionate, and progressive candidates they have recruited & are supporting. A few of them have already won office. When I want to feel better about our politics in the US I go and read up on two or three.
I encourage my fellow jackals with a few coins to spare to throw some their way. And if you particularly want to support local AA candidates this cycle, they came up with a special Juneteenth candidate list.
Everyone have a good day and play nice out there.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
Any evidence that this led to significant amounts of subsequent infections? Has any other country done this on a large scale?
I hear what you say, but the logistics and costs of setting up, staffing and maintaining separate treatment facilities would be staggering.
TheOBP
@jonas: Thank you for making this extremely frustrating point. Knowledge is acquired, plain and simple.
My partner is a doctor (animal side) and busted her ass each and every day to get her two masters and medical degree. Got her first B in her second year of veterinary because, in her telling, it was the year she turned 21. Because she went to university at 16.
It is remarkable how people who have made no effort to acquire knowledge about something feel wildly entitled to spout off as if they are God’s own physician
@jonas:
MattF
Lincoln Project does before and after.
ETA: I’m guessing they decided against the kazoo version.
Sab
@BBA: They have to somewhere. Ohio has designated specific nursing homes to accept Covid patients, and has given them the resources to do it safely. My dad’s nursing home accepts those patients and they have managed to keep Covid under control for the past two and a half months.
Geoboy
@Cheryl Rofer: re Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham doing a great job, I second that emotion!
Scout211
@trollhattan:
I agree. But there’s good news. In my rural Trump lovin’ county, I went to the local IGA grocery store (independently owned) last week and I was the only one in the store with a mask.
Yesterday, I popped in for one thing and to see if our locals complied with the mask order. The store was busy and as far as I could tell, EVERYONE in the store was wearing a mask.
So even in this part of the state, there is good compliance. I was surprised and shocked. The facts on the ground seem to contradict what the local television news stories seem to imply. They want a story full of controversy. Compliance with mask wearing would be kind of boring to them. Sigh.
Kathleen
@rikyrah: That MLB Doc about Junior was so awesome. He was a joy to watch. He also did so much for kids in Seattle and Cincy. Just a class act all the way. Love that guy.
Ladyraxterinok
@HeleninEire:
Because in places like OK it was drilled into usq for yrs that NY and esp NYC was a dangerous and scary place to be avoided at all costs. I was bit edgy and also in awe when I stayed a few days in NYC in summer of 61 with a friend from college (college was in Houston)
HeleninEire
@Baud: Fucking infuriating.
Kathleen
@Ohio Mom: And no Dr. Acton at the helm (though she will be performing other duties). I’m so angry about how Rethugs have treated her.
ETA: Is your zip code one of the hot spots by chance?
trollhattan
@MattF:
Hah! If it were somebody other than Trump they were battering, I might conjure a little compassion for the abused. But it’s Trump and I can’t help but love each and every pounding.
The ability to crank these out in near real time is very impressive.
Geminid
@Ocotillo: None of the gun safety measures that will go into effect July 1 are very onerous. I have a friend who, like your brother, dislikes Northam because of the new gun laws. But I tell my friend that his beef is with his fellow Virginians, who support universal background checks, a one handgun a month purchase, and so called “red flag” laws by 75% to 85% majorities. And he can also blame that notorious squish Antonin Scalia, whose majority opinion in Heller affirmed both the individual right to own firearms and the power of governments to impose reasonable regulation on that right.
Martin
So, a bit back I referred to the training we get regarding threat groups to the university. That training is organized by the Orange County Intelligence Assessment Center. It’s one of the nations terrorist centers set up after 9/11 and OC is one of the few counties in the nation to have it’s own. I’d say NYC is the other, but NYC is technically 5 counties inside one city which makes it both technically not a county, but also kind of awesome in its own right.
Anyway, one of the more recent groups brought to our attention was Fascist Forge which was a white supremacy website run locally and thought tied to the Atomwaffen murder of Blaze Bernstein. Because this appeared to be a targeted murder of a college student, there was real concern for our students. As it happens, members of the organization related to Fascist Forge were leaving white supremacy recruiting materials around campus – they usually went up over the weekend, and as I typically got to work before many of the buildings opened, I started a routine of going around Monday morning and tearing them down before anyone could see them and then notifying campus police.
It looks like Fascist Forge has been shut down and its operator doxxed, which is good. At a bare minimum, targeting and removing fascist material is what antifa does. I found out part of the way through doing my little cleanup routine that a number of students had also noticed the pattern of recruiting materials showing up over the weekend and would also go out and clean them up and so I started bumping into them doing it. At first they tried to shield what they were doing because tearing down posted materials is a bit of a no-no for students, but I told them it was fine and would cover for them so long as it was just this stuff and thanked them for helping me. I don’t have any authority to do that, mind you, as it’s a bit of a violation for me to tear it down as well, but I have enough clout that I can get away with it and also protect the students doing it. Anyway, these were self-described, self-organzied antifa students and they were also going around the campus at night trying to catch the person doing it. They weren’t going to beat them up or anything, just get pictures of the people to send to police – nobody knew if it was other students or someone from outside. It was potentially dangerous for them to attempt this – unlikely in reality – but they were out doing it.
Their goal was to simply disappear the recruiting materials, and try and report the people planting them. I wouldn’t peg these students as itching for a fight or looking to burn shit down, but I think if Milo or Richard Spencer came to campus, they’d have geared up to protect protestors. They were pretty motivated and appeared to be putting a fair bit of their time into this. But this is most of what antifa is – people willing to take action against a fascist group that they wouldn’t take against other groups. It’s a kind of discrimination – breaking minor rules for a purported greater good. It’s why I’m sympathetic toward antifa. I have no illusions that there are more extreme antifa individuals out there, and some of them I’m sure are throwing rocks and looting, but by and large these are people that saw Trump get elected, saw the rise in fascist activity, and stepped up because if nothing else, police aren’t exactly the agents you can rely on to push against fascism in this country.
Suzanne
@Roger Moore: I agree with you. But it is the system we have, and comparing Chinese Covid “hospitals” to US hospitals is not an especially illuminating comparison.
And saying, “Hey, let’s ship sick people to hotels!” is orders-of-magnitude dumb.
trollhattan
@Kathleen:
Best swing in baseball. If he’d been a little luckier healthwise I think Junior would hold the HR crown instead of a science experiment. And to your point, a solid human being.
Joey Maloney
And not for nothin’ but we’re actually not doing so great here in the Holy Land, Covid hotels notwithstanding. The goverment has pushed ahead with reopening the economy even as the case counts spiral. We had effectively crushed the curve but Bibi was desperate to get everyone back to work rather than continue to provide government support, and here we are.
Marcopolo
@Brachiator:
The reporting I have read about how familial spread was one of the major vectors for Covid infection was based on China’s experience. That is why they set up their “fever” centers–their contact tracing was showing that people who went back to their own dwellings gave it to the folks they were living with. I have not seen any reporting like this in the context of the US with the exception of just about every epidemiologist saying that due to our nation’s system of governance the idea that the government would be able to coerce 10s of thousands of folks to quarantine for a couple weeks with other infected people away from their families & communities just wouldn’t be politically feasible. Not to mention just building the facilities for folks to be quarantined within would be really difficult in the US vis a vis what they did in China.
dmsilev
Yes, they’re assholes who are not on our side in the long run, but for the time being, let’s enjoy.
JPL
SDNY had a favorable ruling in the case dealing with Parnas and Fruman. That’s the one that Rudy is involved with. Link
I think that trump and barr want to kill this case but it’s proceeding accordingly.
Ocotillo
Cuomo gets good marks for this response despite mistakes because he was aggressive and methodical about his response.
When the chaos of a crisis happens, despite the best laid plans, things go wrong, mistakes are made and hopefully when things slow down, you learn from those mistakes. It is so easy for those with the advantage of hindsight to lord over us mere mortals and tells us how things should have been done.
That is why combover caligula would have gotten a pass had he actually tried to do something beyond wishful thinking. Steve M writes about the influence on Trump of Norman Vincent Peale’s Power of Positive Thinking and he hits the nail of the head. Trump thinks positive thinking alone works but you need to actually do the work as well.
Cuomo did the work, mistakes be damned.
Marcopolo
@trollhattan: Agreed. Back then when I cared about shit like the HR title I was hoping he’d take it. He is by far and away my favorite player from that time. And then you consider how many of his fellow players were juicing back then while he played clean. Definitely a solid human being and role model.
Kathleen
@trollhattan: Broke my heart when he struggled so hard in Cincinnati (Reds fans/media can also be quite d**kish). I never thought he was malingering. He would have loved to have succeeded and played every game at 110%. They abused Larkin too, our other hometown hero. They were classy, good family men, superb ball players and team mates, and never juiced.
L85NJGT
@Baud:
Comic book politics. We need to retcon Cynthia Nixon into NY Gov STAT!
Ladyraxterinok
@Marcopolo:
Was Kenyatta name of a Mau Nau leader in Africa in 50s?
If so, might that hurt candidate in PA?
mrmoshpotato
A thread about Kentucky (Go up to the top)
Mike G
Trump, like most Republicans, has little interest in actual administration of the government.
It’s all about his ego and the performance, so everything is treated as a trivial PR issue in terms of how the optics affects his perceived greatness. All that’s left over is grift for him and his cronies, privatizing profits and socializing costs and losses.
SFAW
@Ladyraxterinok:
Jomo Kenyatta was also president of Kenya. I think he was the first, as (I think) it was a colony before that.
Marcopolo
@Ladyraxterinok:
Off the top of my head I’d say no since Kenyatta is actually the incumbent. Apparently he first won this Philly district in 2018. Also, it turns out there are some incumbent office holders on that list which I did not realize that the first time I looked at it.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Bolton did some sort of interview on TV last night. Does anyone have a sense of how it landed? Was there news? Did anyone care?
rikyrah
Ksmiami
@different-church-lady: Blinks…We are still in the first wave…
Cheryl Rofer
@Xavier: That’s good to know. I may have to go to Home Depot this week
Emma from FL
@Ladyraxterinok: Kenyatta is the last name of a very politically important family in Kenya. Jomo Kenyatta was a very controversial figure but his conviction during the Mau Mau uprisings is widely considered to have been a frameup. His son, Uhuru Kenyatta is the current president of Kenya.
sdhays
@Elizabelle: At least hundreds, if not thousands, of people are dead precisely due to the lack of PPE. The charges should be in the homicide code.
J R in WV
@Suzanne:
BBA may have never stayed in a hotel for several days. . .
Why does he hate hotel staff?
ETA: Thanks WaterGurl and everyone else who worked on the Pie Filter~!!~ cleek, and Major^4 for sure!
Marcopolo
I don’t necessarily keep an eye on every thread here so I don’t know if this has been talked about at all, but apparently the way to fight poverty in the US is make the money printers go brr brr and hand it out to poor people. Too bad it only took the worst pandemic & economic crises of this century to figure it out:
Also too bad the money printing machines are going to be turned off in July, with the caveat that an economy that is shitty & then suddenly gets even worse probably will not help the orange turd.
schrodingers_cat
Went to two grocery stores yesterday everyone was wearing a mask in both places.
rikyrah
Baud
@rikyrah: If Biden wants to win over the young progressive vote, he needs to let AOC secretly control him.
Barbara
@J R in WV: Very seriously, there are some things that will not work in the US even if they worked elsewhere. And I read accounts of people quarantined in hotels in Wuhan that were heartbreaking. Two things have to be kept in mind at all times. The first is that you will always make mistakes when you’re learning as you go, some of which will truly look indefensible in hindsight. The second is that there have been multiple reasonable responses to the pandemic but no response however theoretically reasonable can succeed without resources and willpower behind it.
Marcopolo
@rikyrah: This is all just projection. There are a lot a lot of Repub men who dream of having powerful women control them. Look at Vitter, the diaper wearing former R Louisiana Senator, who hired call girls to control him.
patrick Il
@Hoodie: The cowardice comes in part from the insecurity of not knowing what to do. Real life and real solutions are much scarier when you don’t know what you are doing (but must pretend you do).
MomSense
@Barbara:
To increase testing capacity in our state, our governor and CDC Director began negotiating in early January with IDEXX labs – they do veterinary testing. Now we have drive thru labs and mobile labs and adequate testing for congregate care facilities.
Everyone watch for a story out of Maine about an outbreak in Aroostook County which has lots of potatoes and few people. It also recently had a visit from the Maskless Mandarin Menace. This is the visit when he went to visit the swab factory and they had to dispose of all the swabs they manufactured that day.
planetjanet
@BBA: An elderly person recovering from a severe illness needs a lot more than a bed and meal. Where are the nurses coming from to stand up this new care facility?
bemused
I just talked to a relative and heard a common experience progressive/rational people have been having during terrible trump years. She keeps in contact with Wisconsin friends, assuming mostly on social media and was quite surprised, shocked how many are VERY outspoken about their very conservative views. Previously she had no idea what their political views might be, they didn’t talk politics.
I want to send a face mask cartoon on twitter to one of the few republican relatives I have a slight contact with but can’t find it quickly. It’s the risque sign No Masks, No Service with instructions face mask must cover nose like one wears underwear.
Cameron
@Marcopolo: Yes, Our Liberal Media seem to have just discovered the multiplier effect, which has long been one of the arguments for expanding the SNAP program – money is immediately pumped into the neighborhood, leading to more local sales of goods and services, and so on. I don’t know about now, but SNAP used to be the #1 multiplier. Of course, I wouldn’t expect OLM to know about it, since I only heard about it in 1996.
planetjanet
@Ocotillo: Background checks, red flag law, allow localities to set local policies. Pretty sane stuff.
JPL
@rikyrah: What’s the point of the article? Trump had already played golf with his buddy Clayton so Barr knew Berman was going to be removed. Since Berman stayed above the political fray he was bad.. I don’t know if the truth will come out or not, but his refusal to sign a political statement is not it.
WaterGirl
@bemused: You don’t mean this, do you?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@MomSense:
was that the one where he said he supported the Second Amendment because farmers had to guard their potatoes?
JPL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I thought that he was the VA potato growers.
trnc
If it were just about effort to stay in, he’d probably leave before January. If there’s a chance he would actually be prosecuted after Jan 20, he’ll do whatever he can to jam it up.
scav
@Marcopolo: Still, the key word there is he hired call girls. He still ultimately called the shots: the “strong” women aren’t free agents. Their strength is devoted to his pleasure (as it should be) and not flopping about doing terrible things like, having an outside career or interests or ambitions.
Kent
I lived through various coup attempts when I worked in the Peace Corps in Guatemala. Even in a small backward country like that, a real coup attempt requires massive planning and coordination over a long period of time. It isn’t something you just pull out of your ass at the last moment. And it also requires a deep network of loyalists embedded throughout the military and government.
I see no way how Trump or any other president could pull something like that off. Their veneer of control over the US government is very thin. What would happen, for example, if William Barr showed up to the Justice Department on January 21, 2021 to find his email accounts canceled his computer access canceled, his keycards canceled, his government cell phones bricked, as well as those of all his political appointees? Who is he going to call for help? How does he even give an order? Don’t think the IT guys at the Justice Department can’t make that happen. And they are all civil service folks, not Trump political appointees. Multiply that across every Federal agency.
They will do their very best to fuck with the election, deploying every known means of voter suppression and many we haven’t even thought of yet. But once the election is over and the results are definitive, there is really no way to overturn them. And there is nothing geographic-specific about the US government. Barricading yourself in the White House bunker, and other Federal office buildings doesn’t accomplish anything. Government authority derives from law, not geography. Biden could very easily operate as president from his Delaware basement. He doesn’t need to be sitting in the oval office to have presidential authority. All he needs is courts and the Federal bureaucracy to go along.
The election is the critical thing.
Ohio Mom
Kathleen @90: I’m in 45242, so I am relatively safe. For now. Knock on wood. God willing and the creek don’t rise. Crossing my fingers. Etc.
Barbara
@trnc: I would place a bet that he will be golfing nonstop as of the first day afterwards. Kushner, Barr and Pompeo are a different story.
Aleta
Speaking of nursing homes and Covid (but not about hospitals)
..
LuciaMia
Its amazing he makes it thru 18 holes of golf…or DOES he?!
Elizabelle
@Aleta: Saw that. It was public service reporting from the NY Times. They put it in the Business section. Reporters are Jessica Silver-Greenberg and Amy Julia Harris. (Here’s a bio for Amy, who joined the Times in 2019; Jessica previously reported for the Wall Street Journal until 2012.)
‘They Just Dumped Him Like Trash’: Nursing Homes Evict Vulnerable Residents
Nursing homes across the country are kicking out old and disabled residents and sending them to homeless shelters and rundown motels.
MomSense
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh god, did he say that? I know some ignoranuses showed up with the Loser Flag of the Confederacy.
germy
@LuciaMia:
Well, we know he cheats.
Several celebrities who played golf with him say he cheated shamelessly.
germy
I use a spud gun to protect my potatoes.
Geminid
@Aleta: As a matter of pragmatic electoral politics I’ve favored Public Option over Medicare for All. But among the many problems this epidemic has highlighted and exposed is the basic inhumanity- and inefficiency- of the for-profit health care industry. I think that in 2030 we will have either single payer, or a system with tightly regulated insurance like Germany. Germany started a national system of health insurance in the 1870’s, under conservative nationalist Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. He knew that a strong Germany required healthy Germans. It’s just common sense.
trollhattan
@schrodingers_cat:
Happy to note that the fancy schmancy supermarket friends and I stopped at last week in a tony Republican suburb had a pleasant gentleman at the door reminding shoppers to mask up. And inside everybody was complying.
This seems typical in the city but the further one goes out, the less it’s followed.
Roger Moore
@Marcopolo:
The point is not just that China found that family transmission was a problem. It’s that countries like South Korea and Taiwan that have been very successful at getting the pandemic under control have used the strategy of isolating people away from their families rather than sending them home. IMO, we should be doing our best to copy places that have been really successful at shutting down the pandemic, and that seems to be one area where they’ve done things very differently from us.
trollhattan
@germy:
“We must close this
missiletuber gap!”germy
@trollhattan: I ventured into my local supermarket this morning because we were out of cat litter.
A young man stationed at the door to make sure customers are masked.
But the people stocking shelves? Some wore masks, some wore them with noses uncovered. One wore mask over his neck, and then put it on when he saw me coming.
And an old man shopper wore a mask to enter, and then took it off once he got into the store. I saw him arguing with a cashier, but I didn’t stick around to see how it resolved.
Not much they can do about dumb maskless customers, but I wish employees would keep their damn masks on.
Roger Moore
@Kent:
It does give them a clear-cut crime to charge you with, so that would be one positive.
zzyzx
I’m not getting the reply button to show up but Momsense, re Aroostook County and their potatoes, I’m reminded of 1997. For some reason Phish decided that Limestone, Maine would be a perfectly sane place to throw a festival (for those who don’t know where Aroostook County is, basically drive up I-95 to the Canadian border and then drive another 50 miles north on US 1 or as they promoted it, “An easy drive from any direction!”). Now the community being sane and knowing where they were located and having never heard of Phish before, figured that maybe 4-5,000 people would show up and the estimates the band were presenting were insane. But sure enough, some 60k people showed up backing US 1 almost all the way to I-95. It was a bit of a pain getting there but it was fun seeing people sitting out on their lawn chairs, boggling over all of the people. But what sticks with me is this quote. This always amused me but also shows what happens when you plan for one set of events but another hits you.
https://downeast.com/arts-culture/phish-limestone-maine/
greenergood
@dman:
@Nicole: Late to the thread, but a shout-out to Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland, who followed the UK guidelines at first, until March and then realised that Westminster didn’t know what the F they were doing, and chose her own path, much to the outrage of the English tabloid press. She has been steady as a rock, a press conference every day, apologetic, firm, willing to admit to weakness and indecision, but honest. Her polling trust levels are massive. Google ‘Janey Godley on YouTube’ – she is a Scottish comedian, who voices Sturgeon’s press conferences every day in broad Glaswegian, like Sarah Cooper ripping Trump, but with total respect for her target, and she has augmented the message here in Scotland to ‘Stay at Home’ while making us laugh like hyenas.
Barbara
@Ocotillo: The traits that make Cuomo annoying and sometimes infuriating as a governor are qualities that probably helped him in responding to the virus. Not that they were necessary, but that desire to impose control from above and not worry about pissing people off while doing so were definitely easier to understand in dealing with a pandemic than, say, redistricting.
Roger Moore
@germy:
In a lot of cases the people stocking the shelves are employees of the company whose products they’re stocking, not the supermarket.
Emma from FL
@greenergood: I found her by chance and I near blew my sinuses out laughing. She is fantastic.
hueyplong
OT
Last fall, our old pals and Giuliani Ukraine hoodlums Lev Porgas and Igor Fruman were arrested at an airport as they were fleeing the country. Two other people were later arrested and charged.
One of them, a guy named David Correia, was out of he country but agreed to return to the US and turn himself in. Trying to be clever, he DHL-mailed 2 notebooks, a hard drive, a computer and a smart phone to his lawyer so he wouldn’t have them on him when he was arrested. But authorities intercepted the mailing and seized it.
This morning the US district court denied Correia’s motion to suppress the seized evidence.
You probably won’t be surprised to learn that the district court is in the SDNY.
Not saying it’s connected to the Barr-Berman mess. But not saying it ain’t.
sdhays
@LuciaMia: It’s not that hard when you’re sitting on your ass in the gold cart 90% of the time, and then cheat the other 10%.
Kelly
The value of positive thinking is keeping your spirits up while you do the work.
Kent
Same here. I have a very large extended family, lots of whom are rural conservative christians in places like PA, IN, and MI. Dairy farmers and folks in small town employment who grew up on farms. Pre-Trump I would get typical pablum from them on facebook about rural life and how farmers feed the world. Idyllic Currier and Ives style farm scene photographs with trite bible verse memes. Pics of cute grandkids holding baby ducks. That sort of thing. There is an endless supply of rural schtick with christian memes on Facebook being forwarded about.
Post 2016 a lot of them have gone full MAGA. I blame their churches more than say FOX news because a lot of them don’t really watch TV all that much and when they do it’s mostly sports. What they do get is a constant stream of evangelical Christian news and all kinds of slick Christian news magazines and online portals that feeds them this stuff. The conservative Christian evangelical world has gone full insane MAGA.
They get their news from sources like this: https://christiannewsjournal.com/
And a bunch of it also comes from Christian radio which seems to fly totally under the radar when it comes to sources for stirring up MAGA propaganda.
Roger Moore
@greenergood:
I think this is what people are really looking for. They understand the situation is fluid and we don’t know everything. That means mistakes are inevitable, and they’re willing to tolerate mistakes from their leaders just so long as they’re willing to own up to them and fix them when it’s apparent they are mistakes. The only things that are really unforgivable are dishonesty and lack of effort.
Zinsky
Great post by whatever-his-name-is! Conservatives do tend to be lazy slugs. Every one I have known either had family wealth and never had to do any serious work (Trump?) or they milked government programs for all they were worth and then turned around and bitched about the government!! Worthless hypocrites!
Kent
@hueyplong: Interesting. The House Judiciary Committee is apparently going to hold hearings on the Behrman firing. I hope they do a thorough job of digging all of this out into the open.
sdhays
@greenergood: How is the English tabloid press handling it now that it’s clear that their boy in Number 10 still doesn’t know the hell he’s doing?
Brachiator
@greenergood:
Oh, these are great. I enjoy various UK satirical programs, but had no idea about this stuff.
And totally agree about the great job the First Minister has done.
cain
If this pandemic could be solved by tax cuts, I’m sure it would have already been done. That’s really pretty much all Republicans care about. They aren’t into running the country other than from a fascist christian patriarchy model.
Kent
Just did that. OMG that woman is funny!
bemused
@WaterGirl:
Why yes, that’s it.
Brachiator
@sdhays:
Strangely enough, some of the criticism is coming from the far right press. The UK Daily Mail, for example. This is an odd game that they are playing.
There are also some hints that other Conservative MPs are unhappy with BoJo, but there does not yet seem to be any desire to topple him.
mad citizen
That new Lincoln Project ad might be my favorite one from them. Wordless–the music says it all.
trollhattan
@greenergood:
I would listen to Nicola Sturgeon read the Edinburgh phone book, so anybody doing a send-up must be checked out.
The mind wanders, considering we could have had a world lead by women like she, Ardern, Merkel and Hillary. Think we’d be in different shape today?
ETA just listened to a video with Sturgeon praising Godley’s voiceovers. Game respects game. :-)
bemused
@Kent:
I noticed the trend of rightwingers throwing off the shackles of “political correctness” really busted out when the teapartiers decided they weren’t going to take it anymore. Then trump came in throwing gasoline.
Kent
Yeah, but that was mostly just uncreative anti-Obama shit that was trite and boring and it quickly became anti-Hillary shit leading up to 2016. I lived in TX during that whole time. It was a lot of shrill anti-Obamacare rear guard action and babbling on incoherently about things like Death Panels and Benghazi and Fast and Furious. They were playing demoralized defense in a changing world.
Since 2016 it’s like a switch was flipped and they are all going full-on offense with stuff like Build the Wall and the anti-immigrant hatred and all the other MAGA Christian bullshit. Trump has completely unleashed the crazy.
greenergood
@trollhattan: Yes both women are just amazing – Mainstream press questioned Nicola about Janey Godley’s send-up, and she said she loved them, but can’t link to Janey on twitter because of bad language – other than that, she’s fine – and probably have a laugh of relief every night of this nightmare.
sdhays
@Brachiator: Have they started to give grudging respect to the First Minister? Or do they just ignore her on the principle of “if you can’t say anything nasty, don’t say anything at all”?
Miss Bianca
@greenergood: Broad Glaswegian is *broad*, Lord, I’d forgotten how much! Funny stuff, tho’!
joel hanes
@different-church-lady:
You misunderstand.
Trump’s entire response to the first wave was a public-relations campaign, because Trump views everything through the prism of “ratings”.
So, “Trump administration prepares for second wave” means that the Trumpies are working on the public-relations campaign, the propaganda and gaslighting and empty gestures and lies, that they believe will help Trump’s “ratings” during a second wave.
Jeffro
True fact: between my brother, mom, and dad (all variations of TCNJ at this point)…2 of them have been on unemployment benefits for extended periods of time, and the other was a long-time government worker (currently collecting a government pension AND social security!)
Meanwhile, the flaming liberal of the family (moi) has held down a steady job for over 30 years…
Geminid
@Geminid: And if Bismarck could ride a hot tub time machine to the modern United States, and see Rick Scott win two terms as Governor and one term as U.S. senator by spending well over $100 million earned as profit on Medicare payments, he’d say,”those Americans are crazy.” And we are.
joel hanes
@Marcopolo:
There are a lot a lot of Repub men who dream of having powerful women control them.
But not in public!
No one must know!
“Michael Cohen will be around with a bag of money if you keep your mouth shut about spanking me with a magazine, OK?”
raven
@Jeffro: You have a problem with someone having a pension and getting social security?
Just One More Canuck
@Barbara: hopefully, they will be choosing to spend a lot of time with their lawyers
mrmoshpotato
Don’t try to understand this. Just marvel at its utter stupidity.
bemused
@Kent:
Decades of listening to rightwing radio shows sucked them in. Yay, they are people telling it like it is! Even today, the rightwingers, usually the oldtimer, crabass white guys, listen to their favorite scratchy, barely audible AM radio shows.
Subsole
@Kent: Yeah, this is a really underreported part of the whole mess.
Pretty much every minority Trump voter I know did so because pastor said Trump would repent and turn America back to the path of the Lord – by which they meant crushing LGBTQ protections and restructing womens’ rights.
I also hear a lot of talk from family about Covid precautions being unnecessary and sometimes you just have to let nature take its course, real Social Darwinist euthanasia-type stuff.
What baffled me was it was coming from very sweet and kindhearted people who absolutely detest Fox and other right wing outlets. I couldn’t figure where they were getting it. Then it hit me – the common point is church. They listen to Sunday sermons from big local churches. That’s where they are getting it.
I don’t even know HOW to crack that nut…these places are institutions unto themselves.
catclub
@raven: exactly. If you are getting social security that means you paid into social security.
Bill Arnold
@Marcopolo:
Think about what Mike Pence’s kink(s) might be. (Kink shaming is bad, but righteous in his religious tradition.)
JCNZee
What a thread!
Every comment deserved a response.
raven
@catclub: No shit, and I worked for a very moderate salary and got teachers retirement.
Dorothy A. Winsor
We were talking about NASCAR earlier. The race was delayed until today. I just saw this tweet.
UncleEbeneezer
@zzyzx: I sat in that horrific traffic for several hours! They handled it much better the following year (Lemonwheel) but man, that traffic jam was absolutely bonkers (especially since we had driven up from Philly). I still remember the heartbreak when we hit Bangor and realized we still had 3 hours (not including a couple more due to traffic) to go.
raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor: They are just starting.
Miss Bianca
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Aww, that’s nice. Don’t even care for NASCAR, but sure am glad to see them stepping up the way they have been.
Now if they can catch the person who did that…
Chetan Murthy
@Omnes Omnibus: I certainly don’t agree with BBA about Cuomo’s -response- to Covid: hard choices had to be made, and none of them were going to be cost-free. But both Cuomo and deBlasio deserve scorn for what they did in the runup to the crisis: they both were a day late and a dollar short, telling people to continue about their lives when all the scientists were ringing alarm bells. An early response could have saved many lives, and they failed at that. And to be frank, *leadership* is also about taking the right decisions at the right time to *avert* disaster, not just to deal with a disaster-in-progress.
What this shows us, is that Cuomo’s competent recovery from his failures has completely overshadowed those failures. I’m not knocking his competence in steering NYS and the region: far, far from it. But lordy, we shouldn’t worship the man.
Roger Moore
@Subsole:
COVID is doing its part by making church services unsafe.
catclub
@Miss Bianca: One of these days someone will have already installed a doorcam.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@raven: @Miss Bianca: Yeah, the voice over was cheesy and the person who did it could be part of the crowd, but still, it’s better to make the effort than not. I also saw a note that the FBI is investigating.
raven
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Regular people can’t get anywhere near those cars or shops.
MattF
Yes. ‘Pastor says…’ is the reason that counts for many people. And I don’t know if there’s anything to be done about that.
Lulymay
@dman: Mine, too! We have been really fortunate that some very smart politicians saw the wisdom in hiring her. We also have a Premier who is wise enough to leave the communication of all matters related to this awful coronavirus to the competent Dr. Bonnie and a very knowledgeable Minister of Health if or when his input was required, but she definitely takes the lead.
Frankensteinbeck
@Subsole:
I think a shockwave is going through the evangelical community right now, and we can’t see it yet from outside. Trump’s Supreme Court was supposed to give them permission to violently shove every kind of queer back in the closet, with literal violence if that’s what they feel like. Instead, LGBT rights have been strengthened for a generation. Evangelicals care about this a lot. This decision is one of the major reasons they have supported Trump, and he failed them. I don’t know how they’re reacting, but I know it’s hitting them like a meteor strike. My best guess is that evangelical turnout will drop heavily in this election because why bother?
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
How much access do you have into their world? Any chance you could goose them with some “Trump is worse than Obama. He sold us out!” comments?
JMS
It hasn’t gotten as much attention but a shout-out to my local and state government in Pennsylvania. We are still on a downswing and have avoided both the massive case count of our neighbors in NY and NJ and the recent surges in other states. The main issue here in Montgomery County was an abysmal initial record in long term care facilities, but with experience that has improved remarkably. We will be entering our “green” phase of reopening (still with masks) on Friday, and things are looking pretty hopeful. There were a lot of skeptics and some villains (look up Joe Gale), but the state and local government stayed the course. Many houses in my area sport “Keep calm and trust Val [Arkoosh]. She’s a doctor” yard signs. Indeed.
MattF
@Baud: Also, pointing out that telling a con artist what’s most important to you may not be such a great idea.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Ohio Mom:
I’m honestly not surprised. He’s a Republican and he’s always struck me as a mediocre functionary. Only in a state like Ohio where there’s basically only 1 political party could someone like him get elected. I almost wish Richard Cordray was governor instead of DeWine, but then the R assholes in the legislature would’ve probably revolted even faster than they did with DeWine
patrick II
@catclub:
Take it from someone who knows, if you are getting a government pension your social security payments are severly curtailed.
trollhattan
@mrmoshpotato:
People bitch about Newsom telling us to wear masks and he’s trying to tell hospitals to withhold critcial data about their core operations? How does any governor have authority to make something like that mandatory? Did he say “pretty please”?
Subsole
@mrmoshpotato:
I…
He…
Whuh???
Does…does he not get what the INTENSIVE CARE UNIT does…?
I…
Buh…
Guh…
…
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Frankensteinbeck:
I can only hope. The evangelical movement has done a ton of damage to the US (and consequently the rest of the world) since the 80s
gbbalto
@Frankensteinbeck: Just so. “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be hurting.”
raven
@patrick II: well I don’t know if teacher retirement is a government pension but my bennies are not curtailed at all.
stinger
@Dorothy A. Winsor: And they don’t even know what “all that stuff” is. They have no idea what the job — any government job — entails. They think it’s who you know, not what you know — just make a couple of phone calls and go play a round of golf.
Candidate Trump had no idea what was involved in presidenting — even admitted as much after his first (only) briefing by Obama, and made no effort to find out either before or after he was elected.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@mrmoshpotato:
@trollhattan:
Beyond all that, doesn’t this basically give hospitals an out to report as they did before? If you’re in the ICU, you’re going to require an “intensive level of care.”
DeSantis: Only report ICU patients that require an intensive level of care
FL hospitals: *reports all ICU patients*
DeSantis: No, not like that!
Chetan Murthy
@trollhattan:
It’s a (grimly) funny thing: yeah, lotta folks bitching about this, and yet in my circle (in the Bay Area) we’re all horrified at the charnel house that is developing in SoCal, and wish that Newsom and Garcetti had gotten going weeks ago. I mean …. “guided by the science”, ffs. ffs. I read articles about rising case loads in LA, in which they also discuss “reopening”. Insanity. Lotta people gonna be maimed for life, lotta gonna die. And yeah, I’m glad Newsom got going finally, but shit, he could done more and sooner.
Subsole
@MattF: Church reform, like police reform, is gonna be brutal. I’m not from that world, so I don’t know how to address it. I’ve done my share of Evangelical hootenholler churches, but I was always an outsider. Done a few big slick Southern Baptist services, too. Never meshed there, either. The only church I ever felt comfortable in was Episcopalian, and it has been over two decades since I set foot in one. So I really am at a loss how to approach it.
Any churchgoers wanna chime in?
zzyzx
@UncleEbeneezer: And then It happened which made even Cypress look like driving through Montana.
…and of course my car never actually did make it into Coventry…
Subsole
@Roger Moore:
I assure you that will have zero effect. I never gelled with those places, but I have seen my share of them. I had kinfolks fairly high up in one or two as well. At its most benign it is a social circuit. At its worst it is straight-up Bronze Age altars-of-fire, Crom-Cruach shit. The same raw, euphoric emotionalism. I mean, I finally understood in my bones the old stories of Bacchanal and witch hunts after some of those services.
Some germ hasn’t got a prayer of denting that shit.
Subsole
@Frankensteinbeck: Possible. I really don’t know. Were I a gambler I would bet my left lung they will queue right up for the next gaybashing douchestain that runs with an R after his name, though.
Which is the true heart of the problem.
Miss Bianca
@Frankensteinbeck: Good. In the words of our late, great, favorite curmudgeon: fuckem.
Subsole
@raven:
Would it depend on what you taught, maybe?
VFX Lurker
@Chetan Murthy:
We have this good news in Los Angeles County: our percentage of people testing positive and our hospitalization/death rates are are holding steady or declining.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: The kid showed that one to me last night.
Geminid
@Subsole: The Virginia 5th congressional district will be a good test of the strength and limitations of conservative evangelical politics. A Liberty University official, Bob Good, knocked out first term republican congressman Riggleman in a convention. Good describes himself as a “bright red, Biblical and Constitutional conservative.” The 5th district runs from Warrenton to Danville, and voted for trump in 2016 by 10%, elected Riggleman in 2018 by 7%. The Democrats select one of 4 good candidates in a primary tomorrow. If I had to bet money I’d bet on a Democratic win this November. A lot of church goers don’t necessarily want to see the nation run on “biblical principles”, and I think a lot of independents will find the concept repellent. My impression is that some of these conservative evangelicals won’t mind losing. They have embraced the concept of “spiritual warfare” and see themselves fighting it out with Satan in this fallen world. Which is fine by me. They can make an electoral majority in parts of the Bible Belt south and west of here, but in Virginia I think these people are more a problem for the republicans now.
Geminid