A little more than a year ago, when Donald Trump was in the throes of a love affair with Kim Jong Un, I advanced a theory of his behavior. He wanted the photo-ops and signatures and the sense of a nuclear nonproliferation deal, but was incapable of making a deal, in his words. His incapacity lay in his ignorance about how treaties are negotiated.
How would he proceed from those photo-ops, as North Korea was continued to accumulate fissile material and build weapons, even test missiles? When North Korea issued statements insulting Trump and the people working for him? When there were no talks to develop a path towards Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Complete, Verified, and Irreversible Disarmament (CVID) and variants on that theme? When North Korea explicitly said that no way would that happen?
At some point, my North Korea watching colleagues maintained, Trump would have to recognize that his photo-ops had no effect whatsoever. Would he freak out against the unfaithful “Little Rocket Man”? Would he admit failure? No problem, I said. His continuing response would be “LALALALA I can’t hear you.”
And so it has been. North Korea continues to make nuclear weapons and missiles, and Americans have largely forgotten about it in the rush of continuing Trump malice.
The pattern now repeats itself with the covid epidemic. Trump has been in explicit denial since January, with no indication that he will face the problem.
He has been consistent in saying that the disease will just disappear – poof! – one day soon. It was to be soon in January, and it’s soon now. It will go away.
Politically, it would make sense for him to take hold of the response to the disease, but he doesn’t. As recently as this past Tuesday (August 4), a source familiar with the coronavirus task force meeting said “He still doesn’t get it. He does not get it.”
“He starts talking about something else.” LALALALA I can’t hear you.
The Guardian documents some of his starkest statements that the virus is no problem and will go away.
In his business life, Trump was able to practice this kind of denial because his assistants were willing to clean up his financial messes or lie to him about them. We now see, via Jonathan Swan’s interview, that he has assistants who are willing to lie to him about the covid epidemic, but unable to make it go away without the national effort that only a president could lead.
As with North Korea’s progress in building its nuclear arsenal, Trump will continue to lie to himself and to us about the epidemic. We don’t see North Korea’s bombs being produced, so that recedes into memory, but we do see people around us sickening and dying. Trump will continue with “LALALALA I can’t hear you.” It’s all he knows how to do.
Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner
VeniceRiley
This is exactly right. And frightening.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
other missing elements: (1) His daddy is dead, and even if he were alive and richer than Bezos, couldn’t bail him out of this; (2) Mark Burnett can’t come up with a game show premise that will stop people from noticing their relatives and neighbors are dying.
Just Chuck
What’s really frightening is a huge percentage of the population is perfectly fine with this.
Martin
I’m not kidding that when this administration is over, there needs to be some charge akin to crimes against humanity leveled against Trump and Jared, and possibly others. From what we understand the federal pandemic response hinged on the decision to allow Americans to die in blue states as a way to earn political capital, and the inability of Trump to reverse that decision when didn’t remained contained to the blue states.
They knowingly allowed Americans to die in large numbers, and there needs to be a consequence to that if only for the sake of ensuring it doesn’t happen again. I don’t know how the mechanics of such a thing would play out, but Congress needs to go down that route somehow.
VOR
Yep. He keeps saying it will go away and a big part of his base agrees, still not believing COVID is real despite nearly 160k dead in the US alone. And he simultaneously promises a magic fix, either Hydroxycloroquine or a promised vaccine. His base doesn’t notice the cognitive dissonance of a solution to an allegedly non-existent problem. All they know is the Great Leader is saving them.
trollhattan
@Martin:
We can call it “Truth and Reckoning.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Just Chuck: Hoover got nearly 40% of the vote in 1932.
Patricia Kayden
Just Chuck
@Omnes Omnibus: Hoover was at least not an imbecilic malicious mobbed-up traitor.
piratedan
@trollhattan: well that’s loads moar professional than my suggestion… “fuck those motherfuckers”…
catclub
i.e., anything above 0%
It was not that trump got 46% of the vote that shocked me, what shocked me was that he got more than 10%.
waspuppet
It’s not just that he can’t negotiate a treaty; it’s that he can’t negotiate anything.
I’m not the first person to point this out, but Donald Trump doesn’t actually know what a deal is. In the real world, both sides get something, and are willing to make deals with each other again in the future.
Trump doesn’t work that way. A deal to him is when you dangle some fraction of your dad’s money in front of someone, get them to do their part, and then leave without doing yours and without paying any of that money.
He could not have been clearer during the campaign that this is how he operates, and that instead of screwing people over for his own benefit he was going to screw people over for the benefit of the U.S. I’m pretty sure he actually used those words at least once.
He’s too stupid to realize North Korea doesn’t just cease to exist.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Patricia Kayden: I don’t follow basketball but I can say LeBron James is a pretty impressive individual off the court.
@Omnes Omnibus: I’ll be surprised if trump gets less the 45%. Pleasantly so, but surprised.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@VOR: Yes, you occasionally still see someone on FB or twitter asking is other people know anyone who died of it or even had it? The implication of the question is that maybe it’s not there or it’s being exaggerated.
patrick II
@Just Chuck:
Trump is extreme, but there is something about unearned wealth and never having anyone telling them no that breeds too many people with too much power and too little knowledge.
waspuppet
@VOR: They just believe the parts they want to. It doesn’t have to make up a coherent whole, because they don’t actually have a belief system, other than that they hate us. They don’t even talk about ISIS with the raw, visceral hatred they show when they talk about Nancy Pelosi or AOC.
MC
Mike DeWine has the roni!
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think I should probably walk away from the conversation at this point.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Just Chuck:
Yup. I don’t fucking get these people. 155,000 Americans are dead on Trump’s watch, he denied it was happening for the first 3 months and actively downplayed it.
It was within his power to invoke the DPA. To my knowledge he only ever did it once to punish Ford because the female CEO didn’t obey his every last word or something on an unrelated matter.
I don’t think he ever used it to increase production of PPE
And yet I still see fucking campaign yard signs in some people’s yards. “Keep America Great”.
And another thing! “MAGA”. “Make X Great Again” or “X First!” are clearly slogans that were used by authoritarian/fascist movements of the past, it’s so fucking obvious. And yet there they are in suburban America! I just want to scream and shake these people and ask them why they hate this country so much. Why they continue to support an incompetent, traitorous POS
I know the real reason why, but that just makes them even smaller. Asking a question earnestly can often put the other person on the defensive and make them look bad
Such as “Why is it ok for Trump to golf so much but it was bad when Obama did it? Sounds like a double standard to me.”
trollhattan
Sometimes I think small business owners may not turn out to be the most important people of all.
BTW, her “attorney” has called COVID restrictions “domestic terrorism.” IDK how these people find one another.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Omnes Omnibus:
What’s your opinion on Silverman’s post last night if you’d read it?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Omnes Omnibus: um, okay
zhena gogolia
Internet’s been out since yesterday morning. What’d I miss?
trollhattan
@waspuppet:
Such as a ramp. I’ll let myself out.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@trollhattan:
So if someone were to walk into her cafe actually naked but wearing a mask, that would be ok with her right?
opiejeanne
@catclub: And S. E. Cupp today says that she might vote for Biden, depending on his VP choice, and maybe not vote for a write-in.
*massive eyeroll
Ryan
“Complete, Verified, and Irreversible Disarmament (CVID) ”
The writing is a little on the nose this season.
Shalimar
@Omnes Omnibus: Trump is no Herbert “benign neglect” Hoover.
Litlebritdifrnt
Apparently Twitler just said that Biden would “hurt God”. So according to Twitler Biden, a devout Catholic, doesn’t love God as much as Twitler who has been to Church, what once in 3 years?
Elizabelle
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I see that a lot on some rightwing extended family’s pages.
It makes me sad that they have such influence on younger members of the family, whom I wish would be better critical thinkers.
Why yes. They are all white males. Imagine that.
mrmoshpotato
Beautiful letters! ?
japa21
@Omnes Omnibus: I actually chuckle each time you post that. The thing is, it actually is very easy to understand why Trump will get 40-45% of the vote.
Elizabelle
@zhena gogolia: Welcome back. Thread before has mucho info. Definitely the Leticia James press conference on the NRA. At this point, civil charges against 4 executives, prominently Wayne LaPierre, for looting the organization.
But. There will be more. Stay tuned.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@mrmoshpotato: I’m fascinated by the letters. As I recall he insists on showing them to people, he made a big fuss about showing them to Schumer is the anecdote I may be mis-remembering. But he won’t release them. I still think he was completely sucked in by being addressed as “Your Excellency
ETA: He also used to talk about a “beautiful gift” that Putin sent him when trump was chasing a meeting with him in the 20-teens, IIRC, but he would never say what it was.
Gin & Tonic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
He’s pretty impressive on the court too.
Ken
@VOR: @Dorothy A. Winsor: Over 50% of people in the US now know someone who’s had covid – see this morning’s covid update from Anne Laurie for the poll. That number will only go up, making it more and more likely that the denialists will know someone. Or get punched in their Backpfeifengesicht, I’m OK with that.
japa21
We have some extended family trumpistas who live in northern Wisconsin. They believe the virus is a hoax, they believe hydroxycloroquine is a cure and is being withheld by the Democrats, they believe mask wearing requirements are a form of control, etc. etc.
Sawyer County had a total of 3 cases reported when the WI SC overruled Evers’ restrictions. One week ago it was up to 31. As of today they are at 53. No deaths, thank goodness, and only 3 hospitalized, but thongs are going full speed ahead in terms of activities.
Roger Moore
I think a lot of us have been making variations on this theme. The key, in my mind, is that most of the crises Trump faced in the first 3 years of his term were largely of his own making. That meant they inherently got better when he got bored of them because he had only been exacerbating the problem. They didn’t get fixed, or if they did get fixed it was because somebody else was doing the hard work for him while he wasn’t watching, but at least they didn’t get any worse. What Trump has learned from this is that he can make problems go away by ignoring them.
COVID is the first big crisis Trump has had to deal with that’s truly external. The virus is still out there no matter what Trump thinks about it. He can’t make it go away by ignoring it, and his other usual trick of treating every crisis as a PR problem, has just made it worse. He’s completely unequipped to deal with something like COVID, and he isn’t even capable of turning the problem over to the people around him who might be able to do something about it.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I think Adam has been posting a series of descriptions of what could happen if we have a series of cascading failures. He is laying out worst case scenarios.
I don’t think that those scenarios are inevitable and I think it is incumbent on us to make sure they don’t come to pass. Think of him as the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.
Ken
I don’t think you can count the visit where he tear-gassed the pastor, held a Bible upside down, and didn’t set foot on consecrated ground.
Gin & Tonic
@Litlebritdifrnt:
trollhattan
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It’s Eldorado County so, flip a coin.
I can remember when “No shirt, no shoes, no service” signs were common in eateries I frequented. What ever happened to common decency?
A buddy I once worked with spied a “No spitting on the floor” sign, in Spanish, in a Mexican restaurant he went to. I never asked whether he stayed and ate.
evodevo
@Litlebritdifrnt: this will play just fine with Trumpian talibangelicals…Catholics are of the devil to a lot of them…
mrmoshpotato
@trollhattan:
MatchNutjobs dot come at me bro?Ken
Timeline’s wrong for wife 3. Could have been auditioning for number 4, I guess.
mrmoshpotato
@opiejeanne: Were those your eyes I heard rolling by?
Btw, have you seen mine?
trollhattan
@japa21:
Go on….
Calouste
@opiejeanne: Narrator: S.E. Cupp didn’t vote for Biden, and was never going to vote for him whoever he picked as VP.
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: All of the letters read “HAHA! YOU’RE A DUMBASS! WE STILL HAVE NUKES!”
catclub
Yeah, putting “No mask, no service” under that sign makes a lot of sense to me.
Geoduck
@Roger Moore: He pretty much let Puerto Rico die after the hurricane. COVID is the first nation-wide external issue he’s faced.
@Litlebritdifrnt: He’s been to church twice! He showed up unannounced at one still wearing his golf togs, and he stood in front of another holding up a bible! EDIT: I see Ken already covered the second one.
kitfoxer
I wish someone would do an art installation in Lafayette park. Life-size plastic skulls with COVID-19 emblazoned on them. One for each coronavirus death in the U.S. in a huge pyramid right in the middle of the park, and add more for each day accordingly. Maybe THAT would get someone’s attention but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Back to lurking!
catclub
@Roger Moore: I saw it as trump breaking something, then getting back to almost as good as before he broke something, and calling it a win.
NKorea, China, NAFTA, come to mind.
That is not possible with Coronavirus.
Nicole
@japa21:
I know it’s a typo, and I recognize what you meant, but it still makes me giggle. :)
Calouste
@Shalimar: Hoover had some very real accomplishments, specially working on relief in Europe post World War I. The presidency was a step to far though.
Baud
@japa21:
A cure for a hoax?
Gravenstone
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): She’d probably yell at them for wearing the damn mask.
catclub
I think there is tremendous motivation for Trump announcing and fast-tracking a vaccine and approval around October 25.
factual or research basis for such approval will not be needed.
Gravenstone
@japa21:
How does one get from here
To here?
Democrats are suppressing a cure for a hoax? I know it’s a lost cause to expect consistency and logical thought from morons, but really?
catclub
also 1927 Flood response. somewhat mixed bag if you were where they dynamited the levees to save wealthy New Orleans. The rich men who did that swore on their sacred honor that people who got flooded by this acted would be compensated. Do you know how much sacred honor is worth compared to actual money?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
he’s doing this again
I remember a King of the Hill episode, a cartoon, about low-flow toilets. And a Seinfeld about showers, that would’ve been about twenty-five years ago. Are a lot of people complaining about their plumbing?
O. Felix Culpa
@Omnes Omnibus:
I like that framing. In the meantime, everyone should check their voter registration and then fucking vote. Early. Get your friends, family and distant relations who aren’t crazed Trumpers to do the same.
opiejeanne
@mrmoshpotato: Might have been.
I left off part of her comment by mistake, that she might not vote write-in like she did in 2016.
Is she really that dumb that she doesn’t see what’s right in front of her face, or is she that rich that she doesn’t have to worry about another term with Trump in the WH?
opiejeanne
@kitfoxer: Isn’t Lafayette Park fenced off now?
Good idea, though.
Omnes Omnibus
@Shalimar: No , but I still think that it something to bear in mind. I think we are all a bit surprised that Trump is pollIng above 3%. Remembering that at the height of the Depression a shit ton of people voted for the GOP should help. It was ever thus.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
It’s a mistake to expect intellectual consistency from people who think like this. Yes, COVID is a hoax and the Democrats are keeping people from getting the treatment they need. It’s no crazier than the belief that Obama was simultaneously godless and a secret Muslim or both incompetent and a ruthlessly efficient dictator who would throw them all in prison. They can believe any bad thing about a person they hate even if it’s completely inconsistent with some of their other beliefs.
O. Felix Culpa
@opiejeanne:
Yes.
trollhattan
@Omnes Omnibus:
Supporters cheered Nixon on his way to the helicopter after his resignation. Ever thus.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
When do we get to beat Burnett to death with a wooden baseball bat?
sdhays
But how many people has Biden brutally swept out of his way in order to stand in front of a church he has never set foot in and hold a Bible upside down while looking like grandpa escaped from the nursing home? THAT’S devotion!! //
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
JFC! That cotton candy ratsnest? ???
And what’s this weird obsession with water pressure when we all know he’s a Soviet shitpile mobster conman who’s been sucking the Kremlin’s ass since 1987?
Gravenstone
This seems like a futile gesture – State Department is lifting their “Do Not Travel” advisory. Like any other country wants to let our shambolic populace into their borders right now?
“How was the vacation Bob?”
“The two week mandated quarantine was so relaxing. Five star service!”
piratedan
@sdhays: its readily apparent to any informed observer that Biden, a former Consiglieri in the Clinton Crime Syndicate, would do irreparable harm to our national institutions of racism, antipathy and greed. He’s a must to avoid….
Calouste
@catclub: Oh, Hoover is a mixed bag. But he made some positive contributions to humanity (which don’t outweigh his negative ones). The shitgibbon, and before him Bush II, didn’t make any positive contributions.
PPCLI
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Wow, that’s really something. High praise for Joe.
“OK, let’s be realistic. If Joe got into a fistfight with God, God would win. But I’m telling you, Joe would hurt him!”
Roger Moore
I posted this in the dying previous thread, but felt it was worth repeating here: apparently the DC AG is suing the NRA Foundation, the associated 503(c)3 charity. The allegation is that the charity loaned money to the NRA on unreasonably favorable terms and otherwise funneled money to the NRA for reasons that can’t be explained as part of its charitable mission. It doesn’t help that the charity had an overlapping board with the NRA, so it lacked sufficient management independence to say no.
patrick II
@opiejeanne:
Her list of appropriate vp’s for Biden — Mitt Romney.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: Oh, I am sure that this was purely coincidental. Amirite?
AliceBlue
@mrmoshpotato: A while back, someone said that his hair looked like cotton candy made from piss.
Baud
@piratedan: Former?
Ruckus
@Baud:
Lack of logical thinking is a requirement for conservatives.
Logic destroys all of their goals and ideals because eventually it leads to where we are today or to violent over throw of a useless government, depending on if the government is actively killing citizens or just gross incompetence which allows them to die.
We have reached extremely gross incompetence, what 3 yrs ago….
WereBear
@catclub: At best, it will do nothing. The time line is a complete fabrication.
mrmoshpotato
@AliceBlue: Probably smells like it too! I wonder if they installed a wind tunnel to dry the few strands growing out of the sides of his head. You can’t sculpt that monstrosity wet.
piratedan
@Baud: for the sake of plausible deniability :-)
japa21
@Nicole: Giggle away. Some typos are gifts from God.
@Baud: Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Or something like that. Logic was never their strong suit.
Kropacetic
Irreversible seems a little…impossible.
Ken
@Baud: @Gravenstone: No, they’re actually very consistent. In February, Dear Leader called the virus a hoax. In March, Dear Leader began promoting HQ as a cure. The followers are simply agreeing with everything he says.
Really, the failure here is with the Party, which has not built the necessary Minitrue apparatus to rectify the misquotes of Dear Leader’s earlier statements. I suggest a purge.
Llelldorin
@Gravenstone:
Yes, really. This is precisely doublethink as it was described in 1984:
sdhays
@patrick II: I’ll be willing to entertain that option as soon as Mitt is a woman.
Calouste
@Llelldorin: George Orwell wrote 1984 as a warning, the Republicans read it as an instruction manual.
Kropacetic
I’m taking a “wait and see” approach on this one.
Ken
@Calouste: Well, half of them. The other half are working from The Handmaid’s Tale.
bluehill
Here for the Thighland jokes. I think that’s one place he knows something about. Thighland: gateway to the …
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Calouste: isn’t SE Cupp not just a second-rate Meghan McArdle, but someone would take that as a compliment?
Salty Sam
…and had to use the National Guard to clear a path for him to get there…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@trollhattan:
Folk who hated his Tricky Dicky guts were happy to see the crook go.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@bluehill: to be fair: was Ivanka in the front row?
jonas
There a depressingly simple answer: most of the dead are “those” people and neither Trump nor his base give a fuck. They simply don’t see POC as their “fellow Americans”. Remember Puerto Rico? Same thing. Brown people? Meh. Here’s some paper towels.
Aziz, light!
I’ve been trying to move my consciousness to a point in the future in which the T word is not uttered 50,000 times a day.
So far it’s a failed effort.
Hoodie
Mary Trump confirmed that, saying she never saw him do any real work. Pathological narcissists avoid real work because there’s always a possibility of failure in doing real work, and they can’t deal with being perceived as a failure. But sometimes the work finds you.
catclub
@bluehill: hence the Scottish thighland games
Ken
@catclub: Suddenly kilts make sense.
joel hanes
@waspuppet:
With respect, no.
Trump’s idea of a deal is when he tells you that you must do something that benefits Trump, at some cost to yourself, vaguely implies a possible reward, less vaguely implies a threat if you don’t do him a favor.
If you do it, there’s no reward, and if you ask for the implied reward, he sues or seeks to damage you in other ways.
If you don’t do it, Trump forms a new grudge, and will repeatedly seek to damage you, in retaliation, for as long as he lives.
mrmoshpotato
@Calouste:
Same with Poe’s The Masque of the Red Death.
bluehill
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: LALALALA
mrmoshpotato
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I believe her proper name is Meghan McArghlbargle.
J R in WV
@catclub:
No, no, it was getting more than the 27% crazifacation total.
Back when Barack Obama first ran for the Senate in Illinois, the Republican’ts had a hard time finding someone to run against him — eventually Alan Keyes went for the opportunity.
Keyes turned out to be a raving lunatic, but he was a Republican, and Black to boot. In a race otherwise even, but for being a lunatic, Keyes got 27% of the state-wide total. Hence the invention of a new political science term.
I was somewhat shocked Trump got many more votes than the 27% crazification factor. But not really, as I had come to know that many Repubican’ts were crazy, way more than 27%. Sad but true.
Brachiator
@Roger Moore:
A cure for a hoax?
It works the other way as well. Trump’s supporters believe that he is the best president ever and has masterfully handled the pandemic. No matter what he says, no matter how often he shifts his public statements about the virus, his supporters take this as a sign of his brilliance.
I also consistently hear people say that his lack of any consistent plan with respect to North Korea, and his weird mixture of jokes, threats and expressions of love for the North Korean leader is deliberately meant to keep North Korea off guard and to insure that the US has the superior position. I guess like holds and throws in some idiot’s version of judo. And it doesn’t seem to matter to the people who spout this nonsense that our allies appear to be as confused about Trump’s intentions as our opponents.
And of course the killer is that the GOP leadership continue to support Trump and at best allow only designated patsies to even hint at disapproval.
Trump’s donors keep giving him money.
All these people seem to believe that no matter how badly Trump screws up, profits can be made, and right wing plutocrats will come out ahead.
Ian
@Baud: you are way overthinking this.
catclub
you probably think the guy on the apprentice who fired people was not a titan of industry and finance.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@evodevo: yep. My husband was raised in the South as a Catholic. He used to say that as a Catholic he would be number 3 on the Klans hit parade…the fact that his mom had converted to Catholicism from being a Protestant just pissed people off more. I had a hard time understanding it having been raised in Southern New England Catholic country.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Gravenstone: John Olvier was pointing out that Double Think is common to conspiracy believers. Like those who believe Princess Diana faked her own death at the same time hold the British government murdered her.
mrmoshpotato
Wait. Is that? Yup. These selfish fuckers are ghouls.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@mrmoshpotato: What the hell is wrong with people like that? The very micro second the state gets the current surge in the virus under control they want to do it again. I swear you can tell when the Virus is trending down because the asshole start crawling out from under the rocks their hiding under and talking shit about everyone else screwed up.
Juju
@patrick II: *cough* Jared *cough.
Calouste
@mrmoshpotato: Or just some poor sod in the St. Petersburg troll farm who’s phoning it in at the end of the night shift.
artem1s
I’ve been hoping for some employee forced to work at one of these fundraisers to capture a 47% moment and reveal his ‘real’ base for who they are. He’s helicoptering in right now to perform for a bunch of .001%ers at the most
exclusiveracist yacht clubs in Cleveland. I know what these old corpulent shitholes are going to be saying about those people while they pat each other on the backs about their plans to steal Ohio again. This is a room full of deplorables who never had to worry about saying the quiet stuff out loud. It’s all just normal locker room talk to them.Just Chuck
@trollhattan: Not sure why they don’t just chain the doors shut. The health dept has that kind of power even outside of a public emergency. We gotta stop gladhandling these fuckers.
Ken
@mrmoshpotato: Isn’t that the Ramsey girl? I would have long ago forgotten about that, except it seems every six weeks she’s on the cover of the Enquirer or the Star or one of the other ghoul papers.
Steeplejack (phone)
@mrmoshpotato:
It’s a snarky “joke” account with a bad sense of humor.
@Ken:
That’s the joke.
artem1s
@mrmoshpotato:
they also believe George Bailey was an anarchist who harbored illegal aliens and Mr. Potter is the hero of the story. He’s just making all those poor folks pull themselves up by the bootstraps donchaknow. And Zuzu petals was a secret message to all the dope fiends that they could get plenty of free weed if they sold their kids to some commie Hollywood producer.
Captain C
@Llelldorin: I can’t be the only one to think that The Culture’s Special Circumstances would have lots of grim fun with the 1984 hellworld, can I?
Roger Moore
@Just Chuck:
Because we still aren’t taking COVID seriously. We’re more worried about inconveniencing business owners than we are about protecting people’s lives.
WaterGirl
@joel hanes: That is all so very true.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@mrmoshpotato:
Apparently that’s a very well known picture of a little girl that was kidnapped and killed in the 1990s. It was all over the media at the time, as many replies note.
I love the ones pointing out that somebody from another country (Russia) might not be as familiar with the case…
WaterGirl
@mrmoshpotato: I don’t understand what that is. It’s a picture of a little girl, and part of a sentence. Does not compute.
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
Because they don’t believe that about him. They believe it about themselves. Trump is the voice of White America, and White America cannot be wrong. Especially if White America is wrong, fuck you n-loving liberals that elected a black president, they will force you to live with what White America says anyway. If people die, so much the better.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Roger Moore: The gym in my neighborhood is still open. Though in fairness they are doing a lot of group exercises outdoors, but I bet not all.
Omnes Omnibus
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Do Patricia Hearst next.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@WaterGirl: The only thing I got out of it, is it’s a picture of a girl that’s been dead for 25 years.
Ken
@Captain C: Orwell’s appendix on Newspeak implies that Ingsoc had failed by the time the essay was written. Maybe the Culture intervened.
Then again, Banks wrote a novella where the Culture encountered Earth but decided not to intervene, to see how a pathological world develops without their interference.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: The full tweet was someone posting a pic of her “daughter” and complaining that she couldn’t go to Benihana for her birthday. The photo is, of course, a stock photo of JonBenet Ramsey.
It was either dumb or more likely metadumb.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@catclub:
I think that person is full of shit
Frankensteinbeck
@Brachiator:
Let me add that it is critically important not just that Obama was elected, but that he was reelected. A black man as president was scary and angering, sure. Much worse was that White America declared that he would not be reelected, threw all their effort into it, and failed to stop him. It was the reelection that happened despite what they wanted, the ultimate slap in the face on top of the horror. Now justice demands that White America be the one slapping everyone else in the face, at least until we learn to praise them and beg for crumbs, and as long after that as they feel like.
mrmoshpotato
@Calouste: Still ghoulish.
Kirk Spencer
@Frankensteinbeck: I believe the meme is “My people, right or wrong.” Sub nation/flag/church/family/etc for people as circumstances dictate.
zhena gogolia
@mrmoshpotato:
Oh, my God.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Frankensteinbeck:
What’s your opinion on this take on a vaccine?
That the economy will “roar” when a vaccine is announced
Brachiator
@Frankensteinbeck:
RE: No matter what he says, no matter how often he shifts his public statements about the virus, his supporters take this as a sign of his brilliance.
Same thing really. Trump is exactly as resentful, atavistic, racist as his base. He is their champion. Funny thing, he probably despises them, but they still need each other for mutual benefit.
Yep. Trump’s belligerent insistence that he is right about everything positively thrills the “America, love it or leave it” yahoos.
Trump lost some people here, which is why he keeps peddling his noxious nostrums that “I am doing the best I can,” and “deaths cannot be helped.” And why he harps on crap like number of tests, instead of hospitalizations and deaths.
There is also something deeply wrong about Trump. He is incompetent. But he is also afraid to try to do anything about the pandemic. And so he keeps looking for reasons to ignore it, and talks about how children are practically immune, and how the virus will either magically go away by itself or be crushed by magic pills and a soon-arriving vaccine.
But here, even his most devoted supporters have to do a frantic dance of denial to make this even remotely believable.
prostratedragon
Just arriving to the blog late …
“https://ilovetheupperwestside.com/new-york-buddhist-church/”
Also, don’t forget that until the ’90s he had his father’s business and political connections in addition to money to bail him out and keep him going. Thinking as we were yesterday about how in hell he got through New York business so unscathed and whether what’s forming now against him could be real, it dawned on me that what’s finally running out on him –what he has finally wasted– are the last effects of Fred’s mojo. Mary Trump wrote about how Fred propped him up to avoid having to admit how poor the quality as a businessman, and that involved getting others, including banks in the earlier days, to join in. At no point I suspect would those banks have been available to D. at all without Fred’s implicit guarantee.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): There’s probably quite a bit of pent up demand at the top income levels, however there’s also been quite a bit of damage done to small businesses(like they’re no longer in business). I think roar is a vast overestimation of recovery. It’ll happen but it’ll be long and slow.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Thanks. The post just struck me as very arrogant
Ken
Only if it’s an absolutely unique vaccine that provides immunity six months before it’s administered.
Ascap_scab
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Oh, sure. It’s called Survivor. 330 million people are on an isolated “island” and have to form aliances to acquire medical supplies, figure out how to navigate disease infested spaces, and elimate other tribes.
Yoouge ratings winner!!!
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Thank you. Reading that makes me want to bang my head into the wall.
billcinsd
@catclub: If you look at the US as a whole, the voting rate was 55.7% so the total fraction of the voting population who voted for Trump was 55.7*46.1/100 = 25.7%, so basically 27%
Fair Economist
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
That’s a stock pumper, just talking his book. In the real world it will take months at least to vaccinate a large section of the population, plus a lot of businesses have been killed and it will take a while for replacements to develop.
Original Lee
@Dorothy A. Winsor: What’s depressing to me is that I am invariably the one with the highest totals in the comments and I have to add that I don’t live in New York and only one of the dead was over 60. (For the record, as of today, I know 5 people who have died from it and 17 who have tested positive. Of those 16, 10 were asymptomatic, one almost died, and one is having heart surgery tomorrow to fix the damage from having had the disease.)