Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Thursday Is New Jobless Day
Haha it's only Tuesday, I know (I think), but we're going to get another insane number on Thursday. And another insane number the following week, though maybe not quite as insane. And on and on.
Everybody in "Washington" thinks the Obama administration (just ask them!) did a great job getting us out of the Great Recession. Even leaving aside some of the particular horrors they inflicted on large numbers of individuals with their strategy of slowing, not stopping, foreclosures, they did a horrible job. Long timers might remember the Scariest Jobs Chart Ever, which just documented how long employment took to get back to pre-recession levels, compared to various other notable events, such as The Great Depression. And, folks, no malarkey, it was not good. It took a long fucking time! 75 months!
The "good guys" are the people who pat themselves on the back for that performance, and the bad guys are Trump and the other monsters in the Republican party.
Folks, no malarkey, it is not going to be good!
Everybody in "Washington" thinks the Obama administration (just ask them!) did a great job getting us out of the Great Recession. Even leaving aside some of the particular horrors they inflicted on large numbers of individuals with their strategy of slowing, not stopping, foreclosures, they did a horrible job. Long timers might remember the Scariest Jobs Chart Ever, which just documented how long employment took to get back to pre-recession levels, compared to various other notable events, such as The Great Depression. And, folks, no malarkey, it was not good. It took a long fucking time! 75 months!
The "good guys" are the people who pat themselves on the back for that performance, and the bad guys are Trump and the other monsters in the Republican party.
Folks, no malarkey, it is not going to be good!
Florida Man
Trump is, well, Trump, and certainly nobody deserves an A+ for their handling of all of this, but the governors around the country who are killing their citizens to Own The Libs...
FLA. CORONAVIRUS: DEATHS UP TO 77, CASES NEAR 6,400
TALLAHASSEE — As Gov. Ron DeSantis has resisted calls from health officials and elected leaders in coronavirus hotspots like South Florida to issue a statewide shelter-in-place order, a hodgepodge of rules has emerged from local governments, causing widespread confusion and conflicting messages from leaders within the same region.
Maybe Something To Ask About At The Daily Campaign Rally
"Mr. President, why is your extended family of con men and grifters stealing all of our money?"
On March 13, President Donald Trump promised Americans they would soon be able to access a new website that would ask them about their symptoms and direct them to nearby coronavirus testing sites. He said Google was helping.
That wasn’t true. But in the following days, Oscar Health—a health-insurance company closely connected to Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner—developed a government website with the features the president had described. A team of Oscar engineers, project managers, and executives spent about five days building a stand-alone website at the government’s request, an Oscar spokesperson told The Atlantic. The company even dispatched two employees from New York to meet in person with federal officials in Washington, D.C., the spokesperson said. Then the website was suddenly and mysteriously scrapped.
Monday, March 30, 2020
The Empty Hospitals All Have Granite Countertops
Now that Dear Leader has switched from denial, to "because of my brilliance only a couple hundred thousand will die," will they continue or will they all just move on.
Nobody Could Have Predicted
Democratic aides pushing need for more $ for Medicaid, food stamps, state aid -- but they may find themselves jammed.
— Jeffrey Stein (@JStein_WaPo) March 30, 2020
The odds of Republicans supporting that for now at least “are zero. No more spending. We did all the spending,” one WH economic adviser says
Maybe I should've sent a message in Hamilton, a language Democrats seem to understand:
I'm not throwing away my shotAh, well, nevertheless.
It's time to take a shot
One Does Wonder How Trump Would Have Fared If He Had Faced A Tough Political Press
Once again, wondering how Trump would have fared had he ever run for office in NY and had to face either the NYC or Albany press corp.
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 29, 2020
Good point made by [checks wikipedia] Maggie Haberman, who worked for the New York Post and the New York Daily News before eventually covering the 2016 presidential campaign for that 3rd New York City paper.
All The Bits Of Flung Poo Are Just Sliding Down The Wall
I'm pretty sure all of Trump's previous bullshit about the situation are, as they say, no longer operative, and right now we're at "doctors and nurses are stealing hospital masks" and "200,000 deaths is a very low number that would make me the best president ever."
Ok then.
Ok then.
You Know Them By Their Tweets
Deferential lickspittle journalists are getting a bit feistier now that the eating faces party is starting to eat their faces.
Trump, Thursday: “I don't believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators.”
— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) March 30, 2020
Reporter, today: “You’ve said repeatedly that you think some of the equipment that governors are requesting they don’t actually need.…”
Trump: “I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that. I didn’t say that.”
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Killing Your Students To Own The Libs
What did they think would happen.
A must read.
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) March 29, 2020
The decision by the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., to partly reopen his evangelical university enraged residents of Lynchburg, Va. Then students started getting sick. https://t.co/g9DZ1kbMJ9
Vultures
Gonna be a battle between those excited to steal everything that isn't nailed down and those who might want a bit of a country there tomorrow. I have been naive about how much the dragon treasure hoarders just love to sit in their mountains and sleep on their gold piles and don't really care what's going on outside.
Collapse
There isn't one comprehensive solution though "giving people (not corporations) lots of fucking money without any complications or strings attached" gets us a lot of the way. But even if my cunning plan isn't the right one (and as I said even my cunning plan isn't enough), there is no way our "lol gonna go on vacation for a month" Congress is going to do enough and the executive branch is just going to steal it all and give it to their friends so shruggy.
Yass Kween
No one has infinite power, of course, but there was a moment when Pelosi had the maximum power she was ever going to have and she threw it in the garbage.
The bad guys are responsible, but the good guys have responsibility. And, welp...
The bad guys are responsible, but the good guys have responsibility. And, welp...
Anecdotally, there are wide differences, and they do not appear to follow discernible political or geographic lines. Democratic-leaning Massachusetts, which has had a serious outbreak in Boston, has received 17 percent of the protective gear it requested, according to state leaders. Maine requested a half-million N95 specialized protective masks and received 25,558 — about 5 percent of what it sought. The shipment delivered to Colorado — 49,000 N95 masks, 115,000 surgical masks and other supplies — would be “enough for only one full day of statewide operations,” Rep. Scott R. Tipton (R-Colo.) told the White House in a letter several days ago.
...
Florida has been an exception in its dealings with the stockpile: The state submitted a request on March 11 for 430,000 surgical masks, 180,000 N95 respirators, 82,000 face shields and 238,000 gloves, among other supplies — and received a shipment with everything three days later, according to figures from the state’s Division of Emergency Management. It received an identical shipment on March 23, according to the division, and is awaiting a third.
“The governor has spoken to the president daily, and the entire congressional delegation has been working as one for the betterment of the state of Florida,” said Jared Moskowitz, the emergency management division’s director. “We are leaving no stone unturned.”
Saturday, March 28, 2020
What Matters Is Who Is To Blame
No one in charge has been perfect or prescient, but there are clearly some politicians, such as Misters Drumpf and DeSantis, who are 95% working on how to Blame The Libs and at best 5% working on actually trying to do anything (5% to DeSantis, I know Drumpf's "work" is watching his friends on the teevee and tweeting angry things).
It's A Really Funny Movie
Now that the residents of the horniest place on Earth, The Villages, are getting sick, the Florida governor is trying to blame NEW YORK, and not the fact that he refused to close the beaches to OWN THE LIBS, and so Trump is now talking about a QUARANTINE for NY, CT, and NJ, and though nobody has any idea what exactly that means, anyone who was thinking about leaving those places is going to soon!
100 Days From Now, Presidential ZOOM Press Conference
"Mr. President, where are the fucking 100,000 ventilators?"
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump said on Friday that he would meet advisers early next week to discuss the next steps in fighting the coronavirus and the possibility of opening the U.S. economy, and said the United States would produce 100,000 ventilators in 100 days.Haha, no, it'll be like "how can Nancy Pelosi make it up to you, sir?"
Friday, March 27, 2020
Governing Is Hard Work
Mayors who aren't very interested in their jobs make me angry, especially mayors of big cities. Especially mayors of New York City! I've heard all of the arguments, which basically boil down to them not having as much authority as they would like due to various constraints (city council, budgetary authority, state meddling, etc.) but boohoo you aren't a dictator of your city and mayoring is hard work. Maybe you can't control everything, but you can get up every day and go to work to do the things you are capable of doing.
Shortly thereafter, he declined to cancel St. Patrick’s Day parade and then did. He resisted calls to cancel regular street sweeping and then did. He had a photo op at a 311 call center, where he told a caller who had just returned from Italy that she did not need to self-quarantine, advice that forced 311 to actually call the woman back and tell her to stay inside for 14 days. The mayor touted the city’s new, wide-scale testing capacity, only to have his Health Department announce that only hospitalized patients should be tested. He tweeted at Elon Musk to supply the city with ventilators. When a New York Times reporter wrote of his own gut-wrenching story about contracting COVID-19 and being unable to get help, a top mayoral aide chastised him online for seeking help at all rather than just getting better at home. And the mayor himself told a radio host that people who don’t display symptoms can’t transmit the disease, an assertion that contradicts information from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.Well he tweeted Elon, so everything is fixed now.
This Sucky Blog Is My External Memory
And people who were horrified by Katrina (and other things), rightfully, now get nostalgic for George Bush. And while I am no longer strongly on the side of "actually, George Bush was worse than Trump" as Trump finally has his moment to shine, I am still mad that...everyone forgot. Even people who pay attention to politics barely remember things that happened 4 years ago. It should not be very surprising that people who are blessed with more entertaining hobbies don't remember things that happened a month ago.
Herd
The UK press has done their best to memory hole it - THAT DID NOT HAPPEN SHUTUPSHUTSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP - but it wasn't that long ago that the UK virus plan was to let everybody get it as quickly as possible. The product was being rolled out. The prime minister claiming to shake hands of coronavirus patients in hospitals. Journalists being told that their "herd immunity" plan was JUST SCIENCE, BRO and Proper British Science, unlike those dumb euro-weenies. Critics - including the opposition party - being given the LOL DUMMIE IT'S JUST SCIENCE WHY DO YOU HATE SCIENCE treatment by asskissing journalists.
Until suddenly they realized that letting a million of their core voters die was not necessarily the best plan.
The Herd is YOU.
Yep. I really need some hipster analysis to reassure me
— Ayesha Hazarika (@ayeshahazarika) March 13, 2020
Until suddenly they realized that letting a million of their core voters die was not necessarily the best plan.
This stance became increasingly hard to defend after it emerged that the government’s initial strategy — allowing the virus to infect the young and healthy in the hope of building “herd immunity” that would protect vulnerable groups — was, at least partly, based on faulty modeling. Specifically, scientists advising the government had used data for a different disease with a much lower hospitalization rate than had been observed in countries hit earlier by COVID-19.
Pro-government commentators quickly divided into two camps, with the first adopting a position that’s almost too absurd to engage with seriously. They claimed that nothing about the government’s approach had actually changed, the public had simply failed to understand it properly.
That footage you watched of the UK’s chief scientific adviser explaining why “herd immunity” through widespread infection was a desirable goal? Those words didn’t actually mean what you thought they did. The Newsnight segment where a Public Health England official told us to see our elderly relatives, go to the pub, and generally carry on as usual if we didn’t have symptoms, despite the evidence globally of asymptomatic transmission? It simply never happened. Who are you going to trust, your lying eyes or the 2017 winner of the Political Commentator of the Year award?
The Herd is YOU.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has tested positive for coronavirus.
Mr Johnson said he had developed mild symptoms over the past 24 hours, including a temperature and cough.
Their Fault
One thing too few remember about Katrina was it wasn't just incompetence, but extreme racism. I don't mean extreme racism of Fox News, or the Bush administration. I mean of basically the entire media. New Orleans was treated as *too dangerous for the national guard to enter safely* because there were black people there, and when they weren't looting big screen TVs (a sensible thing to do in several feet of water), they were killing whitey. News coverage was dominated by accounts of crime in the Superdome. It was just *too dangerous to help people.*
You couldn't blame people for a hurricane, precisely, but you could blame them for the fact that you just couldn't help them. It was, ultimately, their fault. Easy to do with the racism, as that's standard stuff in this country.
But a hurricane hits a location. The virus is going to go everywhere. So, good luck places the president likes! He doesn't like any place, actually, and he isn't going to like you, either, when you make his numbers look bad.
You couldn't blame people for a hurricane, precisely, but you could blame them for the fact that you just couldn't help them. It was, ultimately, their fault. Easy to do with the racism, as that's standard stuff in this country.
But a hurricane hits a location. The virus is going to go everywhere. So, good luck places the president likes! He doesn't like any place, actually, and he isn't going to like you, either, when you make his numbers look bad.
Death Cult
When people in the future try to explain what happened, one crazy person is going to try to explain that it was all because of the president's favorite television stories, and he will be correct but laughed out of the academy.
— John Whitehouse (@existentialfish) March 27, 2020
Thursday, March 26, 2020
And Then The Moment Passes
Well I still have a job and my stonks are up. Sure the help all wear masks now, and every now and then I have to swap one out because, well, you know, but otherwise things are pretty much as they were. For me. The news is a bit depressing, so I stopped watching, and, yes, I lost some "friends" but those quotation marks are there for a reason.
The new normal is going to feel pretty much like the old normal to the people who rule us, fairly quickly. They'll be back to talking about funemployment and lucky duckies who are too poor to pay federal income taxes and splashing stories of "looters" and how "we" deal with them in your local newspapers.
The new normal is going to feel pretty much like the old normal to the people who rule us, fairly quickly. They'll be back to talking about funemployment and lucky duckies who are too poor to pay federal income taxes and splashing stories of "looters" and how "we" deal with them in your local newspapers.
Pop Goes The Aughts
Right wingers and "centrists" spent the decade after the beginning of the Great Recession demonizing the unemployed and finding any excuse for it other than the obvious ones. Depending on the telling it was just The Great Shirk (young men would rather play video games than work) or some version of structural unemployment (the robots have taken all the jobs! stupid kids didn't get STEM degrees even though there are no STEM jobs either!). Mass unemployment had an obvious cause and just as obvious solutions, but the people who rule us and the lickspittles-to-billionaires in the press spent years blaming the victims of their views and policies.
Gonna be the same thing but even more insane.
Gonna be the same thing but even more insane.
Failed State
Not making any point that a million other people aren't making, but we spend absurd amounts of money on things which are supposedly there To Protect Us And Keep Us Safe. Military, cops, militarized cops, prisons, etc. And, welp...
Wednesday, March 25, 2020
Not Optimistic, Folks
Never was very optimistic that Our Galtian Overlords would manage to prevent widespread misery (because how else would they get their kicks?), but I'm not sure they're gonna stop the whole thing from collapsing.
Have a happy song!
Have a happy song!
They're Never Coming Back
Maybe, anyway.
Probably half of them have Rand Paul's cooties.
Expect senators to get of town quickly after today’s vote. The Senate is likely to adjourn until at least April 20, per senators.
— Manu Raju (@mkraju) March 25, 2020
This basically means they’re adding next week as a recess in addition to two-week recess on the books
It‘s unclear if the recess will be extended.
Probably half of them have Rand Paul's cooties.
That's Just PA
I guess we're going to have the triumphant return of Eschaton's popular feature, Thursday Is New Jobless Day.
HARRISBURG — More than half a million Pennsylvanians have filed new unemployment claims during the past week, a record number indicative of the sweeping economic fallout from Gov. Tom Wolf’s statewide shutdown in order to slow the coronavirus.
Remember The Good Republicans?
There's an ad going around which contrasts the supposed leadership of Reagan, Bush, Bush, and, yes, Obama, with Trump, and the usual suspects are very excited because there's no better way to win as a Democrat than to praise Republicans.
No Bill Clinton?
No Bill Clinton?
Welcome Back My Friends
So in 3 weeks either the governors have killed everyone or Trump has saved the country.
Glad we get to vote this guy out in 2022.
Glad we get to vote this guy out in 2022.
Tuesday, March 24, 2020
Rent Strike
Lol.
Things...are...re-negotiable... Interesting.
Major retail and restaurant chains, including Mattress Firm and Subway, are telling landlords they will withhold or slash rent in the coming months after closing stores to slow the coronavirus, according to people familiar with the situation.
In a brewing fight, chains are calling for rent reductions through lease amendments and other measures starting in April, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private.
Things...are...re-negotiable... Interesting.
Wow That Never Even Occurred To Me Before
Dumbasses.
Source close to Coronavirus task force said scenario that needs to be considered is possibility that US could be reopened too quickly only to be shut down again. That scenario could occur if illnesses spike during reopening. “That certainly would complicate things,” source said.
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) March 24, 2020
We Talk About Whatever The Right Wants To Talk About
Every damn day.
And today they want to talk about how many old people it's ok to kill on the off chance a million or so deaths would be good for the economy.
To be fair economists have been doing this for years. What if a bad thing... leads to good thing? Ok just assume it does and then accuse everyone who complains about the bad thing as being against the good thing.
And today they want to talk about how many old people it's ok to kill on the off chance a million or so deaths would be good for the economy.
To be fair economists have been doing this for years. What if a bad thing... leads to good thing? Ok just assume it does and then accuse everyone who complains about the bad thing as being against the good thing.
The Office Of The Preznit
One problem with coverage of Trump is that all journalists know he is a blithering idiot (at best) but feel the need to cover him "normally," which they have wrongly interpreted as "cover him as if he is normal" not "cover him as they would normally cover a president if he was a blithering idiot." When the president goes on the teevee and reporters pretend we are supposed to take him seriously even though wink wink nudge nudge ignore the lunatic, not everybody gets the secret message. If the president says it on the teevee and journalists repeat it and lots of other people in authority repeat it, it must be true.
The name "chloroquine" resonated with the man's wife, who asked that her name not be used to protect the family's privacy. She'd used it previously to treat her koi fish.
"I saw it sitting on the back shelf and thought, 'Hey, isn't that the stuff they're talking about on TV?'"
The couple — both in their 60s and potentially at higher risk for complications of the virus — decided to mix a small amount of the substance with a liquid and drink it as a way to prevent the coronavirus.
"We were afraid of getting sick," she said.
Policy Oversight
They forgot to establish tax advantaged savings accounts for pandemic expenditures.
You Have At Least 3 Grandchildren
(According to the internet).
Thank you for your sacrifice, sir.
Tx Lt Gov Dan Patrick says grandparents would be willing to die to save the economy for their grandchildren pic.twitter.com/wC3Ngvtsbj
— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) March 24, 2020
Thank you for your sacrifice, sir.
Monday, March 23, 2020
Shots Fired
.@KatieHill4CA gets run out of Congress for screwing a campaign staffer absent any complaint.@SenatorBurr stays as Intelligence Chairman after screwing all Americans by falsely reassuring us w opeds on #COVID while he dumped his stock portfolio early.— Matt Gaetz (@mattgaetz) March 23, 2020
This is not fair.
Other People Must Die For My Sins
I am all too aware that many people are not especially gifted with empathy, and those people tend to congregate on the right side of the political spectrum, but one would think a pandemic, where the likelihood of infection increases with the number of infected, would make the usual sociopaths understand that actually, in this case, it could be me.
Superfriends
I know this book is really stupid, but right now our best chance for survival is that the wacky cast of characters on My President's favorite television show, Fox and Friends, decide that maybe they should save the world. They're the only ones he listens to.
But they're also bad and dumb, so...
But they're also bad and dumb, so...
I, Wise Political Journalist, Have No Opinions, Unlike You, An Activist
Does it matter if millions die and the country is plunged into a Mad Maxian hellscape? Views differ.
Fracturing
I don't want to be too pessimistic, but the bits of glue holding our system together aren't exactly of the SUPER GLUE variety.
Apocalypse Now
Combine young people who believe they are immortal, old people who are at best indifferent to taking the world with them as they go, people with genocidal fantasies, rich people who imagine they will survive more than 2 days in their bunkers without someone to cook for them, gun nuts who dream of being the local warlord, and people who think a good culling every now and then is just what "we" need...
Happy Monday!
(#notalloldpeopleandyoungpeopleetc just some!)
Happy Monday!
(#notalloldpeopleandyoungpeopleetc just some!)
Sunday, March 22, 2020
wheee
St. Louis Fed Chief says 30% unemployment and Morgan Stanley says 30% GDP drop.
And the Senate is about to self-quarantine itself out of existence as they can't vote remotely because they haven't bothered to change the rules.
Do we get to buy stonks tomorrow?
And the Senate is about to self-quarantine itself out of existence as they can't vote remotely because they haven't bothered to change the rules.
Do we get to buy stonks tomorrow?
Senator Paul Tests Positive
But that's not the important story. The important story is that he went to the Senate gym and pool this morning. That he went is not really the important story, either. The important story is that the most noble of Americans, the US Senators, kept their goddamn pool and gym open.
Don't want to hear anymore complaints about people safely riding their bikes in the park.
Don't want to hear anymore complaints about people safely riding their bikes in the park.
The Resistance
I know I should be more specific, but a large industry has grown up around promising to gullible but well-meaning liberals on the internet that, essentially, The Marshal of the Supreme Court is about to arrest Trump. Mueller is coming. His latest gaffe will doom his presidency. Boy he really stepped in it now! It fits too well into the general favored strategy of Democrats to sit back and let the other side keep stepping on rakes and then the people will finally wise up. Somehow the problem will take care of itself. Committed Dems are distracted by the inevitable deus ex machina of this dumb play, and Dems think they can coast into election without actually having to do a damn thing.
Corpses might make the case that Trump is doing a bad job. Enough of them. But that isn't something to hope for. Maybe hurry up and figure out that lighting problem.
Corpses might make the case that Trump is doing a bad job. Enough of them. But that isn't something to hope for. Maybe hurry up and figure out that lighting problem.
Spreading The Plague To Own The Libs
For weeks all of the leading conservative lights - electeds and otherwise - weren't just claiming that the virus was being overhyped. They were claiming it was being overhyped to make Dear Leader look bad.
I See
Good that the campaign has a great messaging machine going.
A source with knowledge of the campaign said Biden's team is working on scaling up that infrastructure and dealing with the realities of Biden’s Wilmington Home, like the fact that there aren’t particularly high ceilings, which can make lighting a challenge.
Too Bad
“too bad.” Today’s Sunday Times. pic.twitter.com/NNMYunCvxb
— Ben Phillips (@benphillips76) March 22, 2020
👍
I dunno, man, seems like malarkey.
.@JoeBiden popped into @djdnice Instagram party tonight to show a little love. The party is now over 100k strong 💪🏾🙌🏾 Congrats D! pic.twitter.com/PnIszQPrOV
— Symone D. Sanders (@SymoneDSanders) March 22, 2020
Saturday, March 21, 2020
The People Are To Blame
Please resist the temptation to blame people for not fully engaging in what you believe to be appropriate distancing behavior. The powers that be were hardly quick to take this seriously, or at least to communicate that they were taking it seriously. There's nothing wrong with people being outside by themselves, or with groups of people they are regularly exposed to anyway (family, household members). Get mad at employers who are forcing their people to come to work in unsafe conditions, and government authorities who are not handling any part of this correctly, not people going for a jog. I'm tired of seeing random pictures of ZOMG PEOPLE OUTSIDE and yes people are going to go outside and not just to buy food but just to go outside. We are not actually under quarantine.
Clap Louder
I know I am old and cynical, but one thing that drives me insane is when politicians - or really anybody in power - and their fans expect you to clap loudly for them when really they do the absolute bare minimum, and likely not even that, we should expect from them.
It's almost never enough, and while yelling at them to do better might not help, cheering at them for doing not nearly enough certainly won't.
It's almost never enough, and while yelling at them to do better might not help, cheering at them for doing not nearly enough certainly won't.
OH FRABDABABAJABULOUS JOY!!!!
DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT DO IT
OH. MY. GOD. https://t.co/sCjKW7YjlI pic.twitter.com/W2QaDcLhTt
— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) March 21, 2020
The Hippies Tried To Tell You
Michael Bloomberg is a bad man, and bad in ways which would've betrayed almost any claim the Democrats had anything to offer other than "not Trump." The only thing he brought to the table was being not Trump and having a lot of dragon treasure, and some brain addled people convinced themselves that somehow we needed that dragon treasure, either to buy new boats from our Bloomberg 2020 campaign salaries, or to beat Trump. I don't know how "vote blue no matter who" (please stop saying that) morphed into GOTTA SUPPORT BLOOMBERG before he'd won a primary (congrats, guy, on American Samoa), but it made Amy Klobuchar want to throw staplers at Pete Buttigieg.
LOL he promised to pay his staff until November, fired them all, took away their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic, and is going back on his promise to NO MATTER WHAT spend huge sums of money supporting the Democratic candidate not named Bernie Sanders.
You don't collect and hide that much treasure under the mountain by being the kind of guy that actually pays his bills.
LOL he promised to pay his staff until November, fired them all, took away their health insurance in the middle of a pandemic, and is going back on his promise to NO MATTER WHAT spend huge sums of money supporting the Democratic candidate not named Bernie Sanders.
You don't collect and hide that much treasure under the mountain by being the kind of guy that actually pays his bills.
How To Stop A Pandemic
Sadly, not that, but while long timers might remember David Rees from Get Your War On, the historical documentary about the post-9/11 era, he later did a sweet, entertaining, and informative show called Going Deep. He's posting them on vimeo to keep us entertained.
Going Deep With David: How to Make An Ice Cube
Going Deep With David: How to Make An Ice Cube
GOING DEEP WITH DAVID REES: HOW TO MAKE AN ICE CUBE from Election Profit Makers on Vimeo.
Friday, March 20, 2020
wheee
Moving into "the least of our worries category," but another bad day for stonk index prices, the true pure measures of the performance of the Trump administration.
Can't Possibly Go Big Enough
Precisely because the US barely has any safety net at all, the need to engage in extraordinary measures at the moment is obvious. Well, to me anyway. Will be to increasingly more people every day, I hope. And I hope a few of them are in power. And a few of those aren't worried about how it will play with their imaginary friends on Long Island, or 2009 David Brooks, or whatever.
Whatever you think is enough, double it and then double it again...
Whatever you think is enough, double it and then double it again...
Anarchy In The UK
Getting closer to doing what is right/necessary/etc.
Read the whole thread.
Basically allowing companies to maintain their current payroll levels even if their employees are doing nothing by taking care of most of the bill.
Sunak is the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasury Secretary).
2/ For the first time in our history, the British government is going to step in and help pay people’s wages.
— Rishi Sunak (@RishiSunak) March 20, 2020
Government grants will cover 80% of the salary of retained workers, up to a total of £2,500 a month, that’s above UK median earnings level.
Read the whole thread.
Basically allowing companies to maintain their current payroll levels even if their employees are doing nothing by taking care of most of the bill.
Sunak is the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasury Secretary).
Sounds Bad. Is That Bad? I Think It's Bad.
Might be bad.
But next week's report is likely to be far worse, according to Goldman Sachs economists.Probably bad.
They predict the report will show 2.25 million Americans filed for their first week of unemployment benefits this week — eight times the number of people who filed last week and the highest level on record.
The Celestial Hall Monitors
Some things voters pick up on their own, but they also need some guidance. The hall monitors and their demerit cards don't exist.
Also people are gonna keep dying.
JUST IN: 55% of Americans approve of Pres. Trump's management of the coronavirus crisis, compared to 43% who disapprove, according to new @ABC News/Ipsos poll. https://t.co/oNg6ZipDN2 pic.twitter.com/yVcGO0CpbD
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) March 20, 2020
Also people are gonna keep dying.
Would You Burn Down The World For A Dollar
So Senator Burr told the world everything was fine, sold a bunch of stocks, then warned his rich buddies to sell all their stocks, then ran to a Politico reporter with this. And, of course, the Politico reporter just wrote it down.
"An aide said witnesses only saw the gun in his hand before the murder."
Give to Kyle, he'll print anything.
Burr’s office also rebutted a ProPublica story indicating he sold between $500k-$1.6m in stock in the weeks leading up to the market collapse. An aide said the sale happened before market volatility began. https://t.co/Zf4fUp0vd3
— Kyle Cheney (@kyledcheney) March 19, 2020
"An aide said witnesses only saw the gun in his hand before the murder."
Give to Kyle, he'll print anything.
Thursday, March 19, 2020
Sausage Being Made
Despite some noises that suggested maybe the response to this would be *slightly* better than pessimistic me assumed, it appears we're likely to... not get anything like that. Happy to be wrong!
Someone (sorry, internet brain, I forget) said this was the first "service led recession." As in, usually the job losses start in the sectors of people with slightly higher paying jobs, and those initial job losers have a bit more of a cushion (in general) for a variety of reasons including, but certainly not limited to, more straightforward eligibility for unemployment insurance compensation. Now we're having almost all the service sector and gig worker jobs destroyed overnight.
The best solution is complicated, and there is no complete "turn back the clock to two months ago" solution, but what social safety net we have and what "obvious" policies the lanyards in DC have been tweaking for decades are not going to be anywhere close to enough. And I'm just talking about the economy, not the mounting case and death counts.
Yes, journalists, we know "Washington" is broken. That guy Washington, not so good at his job! But the only thing that's gonna save your jobs, too, and perhaps your lives, are the craziest of the crazy ideas coming from the hippiest hippies in the House.
Over to you, Senator Graham, oh wise amigo.
Someone (sorry, internet brain, I forget) said this was the first "service led recession." As in, usually the job losses start in the sectors of people with slightly higher paying jobs, and those initial job losers have a bit more of a cushion (in general) for a variety of reasons including, but certainly not limited to, more straightforward eligibility for unemployment insurance compensation. Now we're having almost all the service sector and gig worker jobs destroyed overnight.
The best solution is complicated, and there is no complete "turn back the clock to two months ago" solution, but what social safety net we have and what "obvious" policies the lanyards in DC have been tweaking for decades are not going to be anywhere close to enough. And I'm just talking about the economy, not the mounting case and death counts.
Yes, journalists, we know "Washington" is broken. That guy Washington, not so good at his job! But the only thing that's gonna save your jobs, too, and perhaps your lives, are the craziest of the crazy ideas coming from the hippiest hippies in the House.
Over to you, Senator Graham, oh wise amigo.
LOL Nothing Matters
I'm surprised NPR even went with this story, though good for them, but it'll be forgotten by tomorrow, as Republican sins are washed away daily.
Crazy Talk
Now they're stepping up.
🚨🚨🚨 BREAKING: @SenateDems @chuckschumer @SenWarren @SenatorDurbin @PattyMurray announce plan to #CancelStudentDebt (AT *LEAST* $10K) have gov't cancel payments monthly, FREEZE all collections/seizures of wages for federal student loans https://t.co/DYgtjJ8C1b
— Alexis Goldstein 🏳️🌈 (@alexisgoldstein) March 19, 2020
THIS. IS. HUGE!!! pic.twitter.com/HoyyMWGWfL
Sparks Questions
One way to put it.
A secret recording taken of Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr shows him warning a private audience three weeks ago about how the Coronavirus would have dire effects on the U.S.
These People Are Going To Kill Us All
The important thing during a pandemic when people are being told to stay home is that people not have any disincentive to... go to work.
"One proposal being pushed around at the moment is the redundant idea of a Universal Basic Income," Mr Duncan Smith wrote in an article for the Telegraph newspaper.
"Let me say now, it’s unaffordable, impractical, produces massive disincentives for people to work and most importantly won’t make any difference to poverty in this country.
"And even if that weren’t enough, this would not be the moment for such a massive upheaval of our welfare system."
All The Other Ventilator Makers Are Pedo Guys
Elon can't stop bullshitting even now.
We will make ventilators if there is a shortage
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 19, 2020
Wednesday, March 18, 2020
Oh, Elon
He's homo correctus, the god damn man of the future!
Tesla, citing “conflicting guidance from different levels of government” on how to handle the coronavirus pandemic, on Wednesday ordered production employees at its Fremont, Calif., car-manufacturing plant to continue coming to work.Click through. From what's in the article I'd bet $420 this is what is known as a "lie."
In an email sent at 8:49 a.m., Tesla human resources head Valerie Capers Workman said, “There are no changes in your normal assignment and you should continue to report for work if you are in an essential function” which she said include “production, service, deliveries, testing and supporting groups.” Sick workers could stay home and use their accumulated paid time off, she said.
Yaas Kween
As Congress considers the next steps, the Speaker believes we should look at refundable tax credits, expanded UI & direct payments—but MUST be targeted.
— Drew Hammill (@Drew_Hammill) March 17, 2020
The part of any stimulus directed at "normal" people is going to be less than couch quarters to any actually rich people, who are going to, as a class, benefit so much by *every other part of any stimulus bill that goes through.* And even relatively well off people are going to find their current situation not necessarily well predicted by their tax year 2019 income. It's really easy to make rich people pay their fair share for anything, and that's to tax them. Make it taxable income for higher tax brackets. Easy. Done. Any hurdles created by means testing on the benefits side are just going to, as with everything else, make sure that many "deserving" people don't get the money.
But really at the moment even Eric Trump can have 2000 bucks. Who gives a shit?
OK maybe not Eric Trump. But just him.
Herd Immunity
The UK situation is quite amazing and despite everyone backtracking and denying very fast (including the roughly 80% of the news media - yes including the BBC - that exist only to put out Tory press releases). this is what happened.
Last week, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans to let up to 500,000 of his own citizens die. “I must level with the British public,” Johnson said in a statement following an emergency meeting over the coronavirus crisis last Thursday. As the virus continues to spread, he continued, “many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.”The "smart" rich people in the UK are just as dumb as all the "dumb" rich people in the US, except they were forced to read a few more books and memorize a few more Latin passages when they were young.
In large part, this was because Britain’s response, unlike that of basically every other nation, was designed around accepting that almost everyone in the country — up to 80 percent of the population, according to one leaked document — will at some point become infected with the virus. The idea, such as it was, was that this sort of stiff upper lip fatalism would allow Britain to generate a “herd immunity” other nations would not have, protecting the elderly and immunocompromised who are most at risk from the virus and allowing the British economy to ride out additional waves in future.
Clearly what all of this implies is that basically no one in the upper echelons of British government knows what they’re doing. The crisis which has emerged in the wake of this pandemic is rapidly leading to a post-Chernobyl style reckoning with/unraveling of an economic system which has already had its shortcomings brutally exposed, and they are treating it as one might do one of those Oxford seminars in which they all got their start, where it is perfectly fine just to say whatever you think might sound clever to see if it sticks."Laughing" at all the fretting about dishonesty by, for example, the Chinese government. These things are never precise competitions, but the lies and gaslighting in the anglosphere are absurd and ridiculous and dangerous, also, too.
The View From Above
The clueless indifference (charitable) of our rich ageing overlords damages large numbers of individuals regularly, but that they don't know what the price of bananas is might bring down the whole country right now. And you don't have to care about the peasants who can't pay their rent to understand that's a problem for the people who are supposed to receive the rent, and that starts to be a problem even for people who aren't filthy poors, but while our overlords might tell stories about their "middle class upbringing" (maybe even sometimes true) they've long lost any empathy for even such people.
Lipinski Loses
Some good news, at least. Marie Newman beats "pro-life" Dan Lipinski in Dem primary. Lipinski has forever highlighted the problem with the incumbency protection racket of the Democratic party (weirdly "everyone" seems ok with some Kennedy guy primarying Markey). The basic story was that he was pro-life, conscience, blah blah blah, but he was bad on basically everything and while you don't expect the party mechanisms to actively oppose him, they went above and beyond to protect him for years. Why? Who knows.
Owning The Libs
OK governor bragging about going to restaurants to Own The Libs to shutting down all restaurants in about 24 hours is the defining moment of this horrible stupid time.
Tuesday, March 17, 2020
Sounds Bad
Probably will either way.
Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told GOP senators that unemployment could reach 20% if Congress doesn’t enact the stimulus package sought by the White House.https://t.co/epXnaw3doe
— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) March 17, 2020
Some Good News
Take it where we can get it.
Former Rep. Duncan Hunter was sentenced to 11 months in federal prison Monday for conspiring with his wife to illegally use more than $150,000 of his campaign money for personal benefit.
The Good Guys
Too often Democrats hide behind Republicans. "Best we could get from them." And while it's true that negotiations are complicated...
And FWIW, former Obama adviser Jason Furman actually proposed similar idea (on cutting checks) during a private House Dem Caucus meeting last week and Pelosi got up after and essentially shot the idea down.
— Heather Caygle (@heatherscope) March 17, 2020
Everything's Moving
Possible things will be better than I expect? But also rich people are gonna be just fine.
We Can Hear You
We heard your complaints about your bill, and decided to make it worse.
The snark is going to run out soon because everything is going to get so much worse.
This is not getting enough attention.
— Heather Long (@byHeatherLong) March 17, 2020
The House scaled back its paid sick & family leave bill last night. 2 key changes:
1) paid family leave of up to 12 weeks now only applies to people taking care of kids who aren’t in school
2) a lot fewer people will get 2 week sick pay https://t.co/31fxUoO0Hk
The snark is going to run out soon because everything is going to get so much worse.
But Is It SOCIALISM???
They're gonna bail out casinos and hotels with the name Trump stamped on them and then Morning Joseph is going to debate whether giving a means tested thousand bucks to people is SOCIALISM.*
*Morning Joseph might not actually do this, I realize, but other people.
*Morning Joseph might not actually do this, I realize, but other people.
Monday, March 16, 2020
Silly Charlie
Look forwards, not backwards.
The most consequential—and logically inexplicable—decision taken by this administration* in response to the current pandemic occurred in January, when German scientists developed the first test for COVID-19 and the World Health Organization offered the test to countries around the world and 60 countries accepted. We were not one of them.
I Suspected He Wouldn't Take It
Not precisely sure why.
It's a deep swab.
Asked what it was like to take the test, Trump says, "Not, not uh - something I want to do everyday...you know, it's a little bit of a -- it's a little bit of -- good doctors in the White House, but it's a test. It's a test. It's a medical test. Nothing pleasant about it."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) March 16, 2020
It's a deep swab.
In Your Town
Taking a broad view, the consequences of 9/11 were immense, but this is, at the moment, a much bigger deal.
Laughing Through The Apocalypse
I get that humor during tragic moments can be offputting (it puts me off sometimes!) but sometimes it's cathartic and we don't all feel identically about when it is or isn't appropriate. Sometimes pointing and laughing at the absolute buffoons who rule us - and the supposedly Very Serious People who support them - is all I can do.
On Your Own
At least until Kushner-Trump Ventilators LLC is running.
“Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment — try getting it yourselves,” Mr. Trump told the governors during the conference call, a recording of which was shared with The New York Times.If.
“We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.”
Mittens To The Rescue
.@SenatorRomney proposes giving every adult American $1,000 a month during the coronavirus outbreak
— Thomas Burr (@thomaswburr) March 16, 2020
I don't think there's any chance of our noble rulers doing enough, but they are going to have to *do something* and lol Mittens is getting out in front.
Stonks
These things are above my pay grade, but big drops trigger margin calls and I bet there's a lot of leveraged stock buying out there..
Only Nixon Can Go To China
Trump is the exception because he's crazy and evil and has brain worms, but it is actually true that in a normal economics crisis moment, having Republicans in charge isn't necessarily all bad. Or at least maybe it used to be not all bad. They were never good, but they weren't always quite this dumb. Mostly this is because Democrats will let Republicans do things that Republicans won't let Democrats do (also there won't be endless media debates about ZOMG SOCIALISM), and it's somewhat because too many Democrats actually believe the bullshit many Republicans just pretend to believe.
In any case, unless "haha false alarm no one's getting sick actually" starts happening in a couple of days (not very likely), things being shut is going to persist for months not weeks. Goosing the banking system isn't really going to help, but it's all we know how to do.
In any case, unless "haha false alarm no one's getting sick actually" starts happening in a couple of days (not very likely), things being shut is going to persist for months not weeks. Goosing the banking system isn't really going to help, but it's all we know how to do.
Good Guys And Bad Guys
Maybe there are a couple of possible mechanisms, but the only thing to be done for the economic situation right now is to give a lot of free money to people. It would be at least mildly encouraging if we had one political party arguing for that and another political party arguing the other way and then who knows it might even happen. But that's mostly not what's going to happen (prove me wrong!) and we're at best going to get one side arguing for half measures that are complicated and get watered down and screwed up even more by the other side.
None of them have a clue.
None of them have a clue.
Sunday, March 15, 2020
Hope
I don’t support U.S. taxpayer money subsidizing corporations to provide benefits to workers that they should already be providing. House Democrats will continue to prioritize strong emergency leave policies as we fight to put #FamiliesFirst. https://t.co/GIoCJAKE1M
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) March 15, 2020
Halt
I am not optimistic that the geniuses who run the country have any sense of what is happening and how to at least ameliorate it.
Failsons
A problem with our Hapsburg elites thinking they are smarter than everyone is that they also think everyone is dumber than they are. These aren't precisely the same things. It's what leads Donald Trump to say "nobody knows this but.." every time he learns a new fact. He can't comprehend that other people actually have knowledge and expertise that he doesn't.
Trump just puts on display how most of them think.
Trump just puts on display how most of them think.
Saturday, March 14, 2020
Apocalypse Fiction
The writers of this dumb show making Mar-A-Lago the primary disease source is a bit too obvious.
Expert On Everything
It's amazing. There are online and broadcast commentators who one moment are go-to experts on cabinet reshuffles, HS2 and antisemitism and the next on pandemics and the symptoms of coronavirus. We are so lucky to have them. I hope they get well paid.
— Michael Rosen (@MichaelRosenYes) March 14, 2020
The couple times I have been asked to contribute myself to a possibly (possibly) lucrative career as a TV or radio pundit I have declined. I suppose it's hard to resolve the "no I am not an expert on everything" stance with what I do on this dumb blog, but I do my best here not to offer myself up as an expert on things I am not an expert about. When someone points the camera in your face you can't make that caveat clear.
I have opinions on everything like the rest of you, but this is just a dumb blog.
Apocalypse Now
I don't read a lot of apocalypse fiction. The two I have read recently are The Passage trilogy (vampire apocalypse) and Station 11 (virus apocalypse). I suppose the message of the latter is "sure things aren't perfect, but you'll miss it when it's gone."
Friday, March 13, 2020
I Have Opinions
The worst thing about blog culture is that everyone decided that with a google search they could be experts. I try to resist this but also...well... I got nothing except the obvious. Free at point of service medical care for all.
Message: I Am Competenet
My big wet beautiful boy is going to address the nation again.
Virus: You're fired!
Virus: You're fired!
Big Sweaty Mess
No not My Beautiful President. The gym. Occurred to me that maybe people should stop going? Occurred to me as the woman at the supermarket checkout started spraying her counter when I left after having gone there after going to the gym.
Thursday, March 12, 2020
Supposed To Be
Well then...
“The lack of testing in the United States is a debacle,” said Marc Lipsitch, professor of epidemiology at Harvard’s Chan School and director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics. “We’re supposed to be the best biomedical powerhouse in the world and we’ve been unable to do something that every other country has been able to do.”
Lessons Taught But Never Learned
I don't wish it but if this epidemic expands we are going to learn that we basically have a failed state. Those weird historical blurbs you read in museums about how the leeches didn't work will be funny because, well, that's us. We didn't even have a leech stockpile.
Everybody's Got Something To Hide But Me And My Monkey
Like everyone else, I have become a public health expert. I suppose totally random and arbitrary decisions to limit travel and contact might not be the worst thing, narrowly defined, but also probably not the smartest or cheapeset...
Wednesday, March 11, 2020
Gotta Hide The Grift
Some combination of "how can I make money off of this and how can we avoid making me look bad" because that's the story of everything.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion, according to four Trump administration officials.Plus racism, of course.
The One Thing I Truly Believe Even Though I Have No Evidence
Is that insurance companies flag people (and share this with providers) who are "influencers" who on paper don't have "better" insurance but in practice find their path through the system to be remarkably smooth. Journalists, academics, those kinds of people. Probably TWITTER BLUECHECKS because that's our world now.
Build That Wall
*TRUDEAU: U.S. A MAJOR SOURCE OF POTENTIAL VIRUS TRANSMISSION
— Sarah Rappaport (@SarahRapp) March 11, 2020
A not very improbable development is that the US, given our incompetence, becomes the world's pariah and effectively quarantined.
OK Boomers
"Call" "your" "doctor."
A quarter of the population is living on Earth-2.
So you think you COVID-19. Now what?
— NPR (@NPR) March 11, 2020
Don’t panic — it’s still cold and flu season. Call your doctor if your symptoms get worse. Stay home and self-isolate. But most importantly: stay informed about what’s happening. https://t.co/88RJuyfrc7
A quarter of the population is living on Earth-2.
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
We're In Our Base Killing Our Base
Fox anchor Ed Henry on coronavirus deaths in Florida: "There have been 18 cases of COVID-19, two people, sadly, have died, but both of those residents were elderly and had traveled internationally. So when you hear the context, it's not quite as scary" pic.twitter.com/5aRW09WP1S
— Lis Power (@LisPower1) March 10, 2020
The Power of Positive Thinking
Trump to reporters on Hill after meeting with GOP senators: “Stay calm. It will go away”
— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) March 10, 2020
Hope
Even the best fantasy version of technocratic genius President Obummer couldn't handle a full epidemic. What are we going to do, nationalize some hospitals? Nationalize all the hospitals? We've taken core public functions and thrown them to the wolves and clawing them back would be hard even if President Obummer was into it, and I'm not sure he would have been.
Fixing the Economy
The most important thing is bailing out the beleaguered hotel industry, and by that I mean Trump owned hotels.
Haha it's gonna happen.
Haha it's gonna happen.
Don't Talk About The War
Biden on MSNBC last night said of his vote for the Iraq War, "I didn't believe he had those nuclear weapons. I didn't believe he had those weapons of mass destruction."
— andrew kaczynski🤔 (@KFILE) March 10, 2020
He said his vote was for inspectors to prove they didn't have WMDs.
This isn't backed by our reporting. pic.twitter.com/O3Tq0Ihzxt
Lots of savvy people are going to spend the next several months telling us to ignore Biden when he lies (he lies a lot) or that he didn't mean what he plainly said and welp...
Hype Man
I suppose one can make (an incorrect) case that the virus story is being overhyped, but this is not it.
Monday, March 09, 2020
Patient Zero
My first impression was that the CPAC coronavirus person was some nobody and that's why they were keeping his/her identity secret, but then it seemed that they were *really* keeping the identity secret and so it was likely it was... not a nobody.
...oops, report says "him" so "his" not his/her.
New: The CPAC attendee w/ coronavirus didn't just have general admission, but a higher-level ticket which gave him special access. CPAC staff are in direct contact w/ the patient & are relying on his memories, as well as their own, to reconstruct his experience at the conference.
— Sarah Westwood (@sarahcwestwood) March 9, 2020
...oops, report says "him" so "his" not his/her.
WHEEE
-1772
A bit weird, as I thought the lesson of the last crisis was that the powers that be would never ever let the stock market crash (or stay crashed, at least).
A bit weird, as I thought the lesson of the last crisis was that the powers that be would never ever let the stock market crash (or stay crashed, at least).
Getting Closer
If this continues to get worse, it's gonna get into the Fox and Friends orbit. Then what?
"Move Through The Population"
The rich and not so old are not the most vulnerable populations, but they aren't exactly living in quarantine either.
On #COVID2019, @BorisJohnson said:
— Stefan Simanowitz (@StefSimanowitz) March 8, 2020
“One of the theories is perhaps you could take it on the chin, take it all in one go & allow #coronvirus to move through the population without really taking as many draconian measures.”
This is a CRAZY theory! #COVID19pic.twitter.com/usABMckLqf
Shitpost Your Way Through It
This works remarkably well, because the press loves shiny balls, but a potential pandemic is hard to distract from.
During the Bush era, @mikeallen told me every administration spin was either Nothing To See Here! or Look At The Shiny Ball! Feels like Nothing To See Here! has run its course, shiny balls are about to start appearing everywhere.
— Michael Grunwald (@MikeGrunwald) March 9, 2020
Stonks
Likely another round of immense ridiculous bailouts going to happen. You can give people money to spend in businesses to keep them afloat, or you can give the businesses money to keep them afloat even though no one has any money to spend in them. Guess which we will choose! Again. And Again. And Again.
Run Away
Do what is medically appropriate, of course, but the utter lack of interest by House Democrats in attempting any public leadership role whatsoever...
I think a recess is a good idea because politics is threating to break out and it must be contained before it does https://t.co/sOxM4buAQ1
— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) March 9, 2020
Sunday, March 08, 2020
Farce
What’s most worrying here is that many US energy companies are levered up to their necks in debt that’s been securitized.
— Jordan Weissmann (@JHWeissmann) March 8, 2020
The possibility that a COVID19-induced recession would cause those companies to default was a major danger. Now the Saudis are pushing them to the brink. https://t.co/X7Cm4wQ1Vp
Reality Bites
As much as I was an opponent of our Glorious Imperial Mission in Iraq, and as much as I thought it was likely to be a disaster even aside from all the dead people, it was also the case that... wow they fucked it up! This was their (Bush, the Neocons, the whole gang) initiative and they sent a bunch of Heritage interns to run the damn country. Sure there's dumb ideology and sure massive quantities of cash just disappeared into pockets, but even with those things you can still think "wow, maybe we should try to do a decent job here, I mean after our friends get billions of dollars of course, if only so we can do it again next year in Iran!" But they just couldn't do it.
How hard is it to just tell the CDC to "do whatever." They probably have some idea. And the problem isn't Trump, though he certainly isn't bringing even the conservative A game. They are unable to not fuck things up. It's just Republican governance.
How hard is it to just tell the CDC to "do whatever." They probably have some idea. And the problem isn't Trump, though he certainly isn't bringing even the conservative A game. They are unable to not fuck things up. It's just Republican governance.
We're In Our Base Killing Our Base
An odd plan for a guy concerned overall with re-election.
NEW YORK (AP) — The White House overruled health officials who wanted to recommend that elderly and physically fragile Americans be advised not to fly on commercial airlines because of the new coronavirus, a federal official told The Associated Press.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention submitted the plan this week as a way of trying to control the virus, but White House officials ordered the air travel recommendation be removed, said the official who had direct knowledge of the plan. Trump administration officials have since suggested certain people should consider not traveling, but they have stopped short of the stronger guidance sought by the CDC.
Great Moments In Real Genius
"Virality."
Virality of C19 is overstated due to conflating diagnosis date with contraction date & over-extrapolating exponential growth, which is never what happens in reality. Keep extrapolating & virus will exceed mass of known universe!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 8, 2020
Gotta Keep The Numbers Down
But how's this playing in Ohio diners?
A federal strike team of nurses and doctors arrived Saturday to support the staff at the long-term nursing home, Life Care Center of Kirkland, Wash., where officials have announced the deaths of 13 residents and a visitor who were infected with the virus. Tim Killian, a spokesman for the care center, praised the workers who continued to show up even as 70 of the nursing home’s 180 employees have developed symptoms.
“The amount of work and stress that these staff and employees and caregivers are under is tremendous,” Mr. Killian said. “They truly are heroes.”
Earlier on Saturday, Mr. Killian said that the center was still unable to get all of its staff members tested for coronavirus. The home had received 45 virus testing kits, Mr. Killian said, which was not enough for the 63 remaining residents and dozens of staff members.
Saturday, March 07, 2020
That's Kinda Serious
I have no idea what is right or wrong, but imagine the various dimensions of the US federal government closing the borders to a city or state.
The Italian government is to lockdown the northern region of Lombardy, as it battles to contain the spread of the coronavirus. A draft decree would extend the quarantined areas, so-called “red-zones”, ordering people not to enter or leave the region.
The country is grappling to contain Europe’s worst outbreak of Covid-19, which has claimed 233 lives and infected a total of 5,883 people.
Does This Reassure You
I still can't figure out how a bunch of 70-year-olds (our government) going on teevee and telling a bunch of other 70-year-olds (Fox News viewers) that the virus is no big deal because it only kills old people is a winning message. I, too, am conveniently readjusting my view of what is "old" as I age, but...
It Isn't Political If It Affects MEEEEEEE
No I am not wishing for an epidemic to hit Northern Virginia, but if the country is going to really be hit by one it is best it hits first where it might prod people into action.
Not like "anyone's" going to care if, I dunno, San Antonio is consumed by zombies.
Not like "anyone's" going to care if, I dunno, San Antonio is consumed by zombies.
Bullshit Your Way Through It
I'd like to think Trump can't bullshit his way through an epidemic, but Bush managed to bullshit his way through several years of war. Maybe the "over there" versus "over here" distinction matters, but he managed to bullshit his way through a lot of American body bags.
The tests are perfect! What about all the schools we are painting!*
*I get enraged whenever I remember that the political press ran with "our primary military mission is painting schools" thing for years.
The tests are perfect! What about all the schools we are painting!*
*I get enraged whenever I remember that the political press ran with "our primary military mission is painting schools" thing for years.
Friday, March 06, 2020
Conservatives Are Not Quite Right
Cunning plans.
If this virus turns out to be a major thing, we can be sure that Both Sides, but mostly the side out of power according to many sources feeding us text messages who we won't name, are to blame.
If this virus turns out to be a major thing, we can be sure that Both Sides, but mostly the side out of power according to many sources feeding us text messages who we won't name, are to blame.
Nothing Against The Fine People Of NoVa
The point is that official Washington is going to lose their shit as soon as one of elementary schools their kids are in has to close. As soon as theirs are threatened. Remember the DC sniper? That's when the pressure to take this seriously will be too much even for the Trumpkins.
Heroes
We should never forget the elites who actively worked for the 5th boats I mean the Michael Bloomberg campaign, but the lower level grifters are heroes.
Multiple people described elaborate schemes to undermine the campaign and help their favored candidates. As one staffer explained, “I would actively canvass for Bernie when I was supposed to be canvassing for Mike. I know of at least one team of ‘volunteers’ that was entirely fabricated by the organizers who had to hit their goals. It was easy enough to fudge the data to make it look like real people put in real volunteer work, when in reality Mike was getting nothing out of it.”
Heading To NoVa
Happy talk works until the virus makes it.
Larry Kudlow on coronavirus: ""I will still argue to you this is contained."
— Jeffrey S. Stein (@JStein_WaPo) March 6, 2020
Bullies
Around this time in 2016 I unsubscribed from various DC-related insidery (not important people, but people who work for important people, basically) email lists because of the bullying. My beautiful mind has been free of it all since! It wasn't Bernie Bros doing the bullying, and I wasn't even one myself (I planned to vote for Clinton all along and while I did actually vote for Bernie in my very late primary it was already over then and didn't matter).
You gotta have power to use it, and people in power do.
You gotta have power to use it, and people in power do.
NEARLY 17
There's a place for "almost 50" or "almost 1000" but NEARLY SEVENTEEN???
Missouri specific:
— Governor Mike Parson (@GovParsonMO) March 5, 2020
• ZERO confirmed cases
• Nearly 17 people have been tested
• Testing CAN be done in Missouri
• Prisons, nursing homes & mental health facilities are a concern
• Schools are always a concern, but young people to not appear to be as prone #COVID19
Thursday, March 05, 2020
They'll Be Back
Randomly occurs to me that while under Trump the CHRISTIAN Right has become more the christian Right. Just as powerful but a bit more quiet about Jesus for obvious reasons, but like Ralph Reed it'll rise from the ashes.
That Fucking Newspaper
If you want to know why Trump tells lies, this is why …
— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) March 5, 2020
… sometimes if you say something untrue you can get a headline, a dek, and a two-paragraph lede repeating your lie only to have it debunked further down. pic.twitter.com/MZyb4MnuIC
The Ultimate Victory
Too many people in this country secretly yearn for Armageddon because they believe they are best equipped to survive it (gun nuts, preppers, end times christians (they will survive in the afterlife), rich people with their moats and castles) and then, for many of them, live out their dream of being the local feudal lord. The ultimate win in the video game of life.
Warren's Out
The only campaign I gave money to. I'll spare you the Hot Takes About The Campaign and just say she'd be a good president.
The Good News
I know some people believe that ANYBODY BUT TRUMP is an improvement and I will submit that quite possibly Trump is literally the worst human being this country has ever produced. But letting one party - hopefully the good one - be taken over in the space of 3 weeks by a not very good billionaire (Bloomberg really is the competent, educated Trump) with a huge history of personal sexism and racist policies would have quite possibly been a worse development than electing Trump in the first place. If the choice really was "let Bloomberg do this or Trump 2 is inevitable" that would be one thing, but I don't think that is/was in any way the case. We didn't "need" Bloomberg to beat Trump, and the degree to which he was received favorably by people in the general Dem party (not universally, fortunately) was more than a little disturbing.
But I seriously believe that drumming Michael Bloomberg out of politics saved democracy. Don’t let it be said that progressive messaging doesn’t work. It took on $500 million and won. And despite what anyone feels today, that was important. It will discourage other billionaires from looking in the mirror and seeing a president. It shows that voters have a limit, a breaking point, a line they refuse to cross. Regardless of what happens in the nominating race, we didn’t get the worst option in the choose-your-own-adventure book. And we have progressives to thank for the near-miss.
Tit For Tat
Dems in the House have to be ready to immediately hit Don Jr., Ivanka and Jared with subpoenas if Senate revives the Hunter Biden B.S. if we’re going to have kids day on the Hill, let’s level the playing field
— Joe Lockhart (@joelockhart) March 4, 2020
DC brain, man. We're gonna make the point that going after the Bidens is politically motivated by doing the same things ourselves!!!
Of course the whole Trump crime family deserves to be thrown in the pokey, but this isn't to "level the playing field" or to be used as some sort of threat.
And none of these people are "kids." Stop it.
The press needs their "both sides" and we're going to give it to them and loudly announce it!!!
Get these people away from politics.
Wednesday, March 04, 2020
Brand Democrat
Democrats built up a brand over the past few years which involved increased minority inclusion/hostility to racism and racist policies, having a harder line against misogyny especially in the metoo era, being somewhat uncomfortable with big money in politics, and being at least slightly less inclined to crown a billionaire king than the other party. We can acknowledge "they" (there is no they, precisely) are a bit full of shit about all of this like everything, but being open to Bloomberg coming in and buying the whole thing just because he could would have shattered whatever brand they have. And for what? To line a bunch of people's pockets. Dems don't need that fortune to beat Trump and Bloomberg's hardly the obvious candidate America has been crying out for.
Did You Know That Trump Is Gross And Bad?
Happy to be wrong but pretty sure that's the campaign Democrats want to run and, well, yes, people know that (if there's any chance they will agree).
Brought To You By The People Who Brought You 2016
And they did such a good job. Huzzah.
8 months of Joe talking about his "good friends, the Republicans" as they're trying to put his son in jail and The Resistance wondering why their favorite newspaper, The New York Times, is running with bullshit on the front page every single day because nobody remembers that "but her emails" is a criticism of that newspaper.
Joe's gonna malaprop and gaffe every 5 minutes - mostly harmless, of course - and people are going to be very confused when this is more important than the 3 years of president brain worms barely speaking English.
Yes the media is going to be bullshit to any Democratic candidate, but some people understand this and some people think their best friend was somehow to blame.
No it isn't over.
8 months of Joe talking about his "good friends, the Republicans" as they're trying to put his son in jail and The Resistance wondering why their favorite newspaper, The New York Times, is running with bullshit on the front page every single day because nobody remembers that "but her emails" is a criticism of that newspaper.
Joe's gonna malaprop and gaffe every 5 minutes - mostly harmless, of course - and people are going to be very confused when this is more important than the 3 years of president brain worms barely speaking English.
Yes the media is going to be bullshit to any Democratic candidate, but some people understand this and some people think their best friend was somehow to blame.
No it isn't over.
Tuesday, March 03, 2020
Believing Their Own Bullshit
Obama believed he was charming (haha sorry mr. Kenyan Muslim you can't charm everyone) and popular (you basically disbanded your movement, dumbass, nobody cares what David Brooks thinks of you) and compromising (true!) enough that he could get Republicans to join him in a glorious bipartisan American empire. Biden thinks that because his good Republican friends never shivved him in the Senate locker room (and because he'll give them almost everything they want) that he'll succeed where his best friend, Barack Obama, failed, for reasons he never quite explains (clang).
I don't think the audience for bipartisan fetishism is what it was, but I will grant it did have an audience once upon a time. But if politicians spouting it didn't believe their own bullshit, it might be reasonable campaign rhetoric. Too many of them do believe it, and when the rhetoric fails (hi Claire!) to get them elected they believe, "oh, well, Republicans would vote for me but AOC and some mean people online turned them off." That excuse is hilarious, but even if it's *true* that it's hard to run a bipartisan fetish campaign when the entire rest of the country isn't precisely on message with you, then perhaps it just isn't a viable strategy. You can't shush the meanies on the internet. Just the way things are.
I don't think the audience for bipartisan fetishism is what it was, but I will grant it did have an audience once upon a time. But if politicians spouting it didn't believe their own bullshit, it might be reasonable campaign rhetoric. Too many of them do believe it, and when the rhetoric fails (hi Claire!) to get them elected they believe, "oh, well, Republicans would vote for me but AOC and some mean people online turned them off." That excuse is hilarious, but even if it's *true* that it's hard to run a bipartisan fetish campaign when the entire rest of the country isn't precisely on message with you, then perhaps it just isn't a viable strategy. You can't shush the meanies on the internet. Just the way things are.
Tweety
I don't really understand why "this" was the last straw for Chris Matthews, as he has been Chris Matthews forever.
Joe Biden, Reporting For Duty
The "establishment" has finally made their choice.
At least until they panic and make a different one next week. They are rich, fickle, and, dumb. Mostly.
At least until they panic and make a different one next week. They are rich, fickle, and, dumb. Mostly.
Monday, March 02, 2020
This Fucking Newspaper
Three years after liberals pinned their hopes on her as a bridge within the Trump White House, Ivanka Trump has registered as a Republican, defends her father over impeachment and goes on Hannity’s show. https://t.co/g8ikc8tGo0
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 2, 2020
THAT WAS YOU, MAGGIE!!!
Jesus fucking Christ.
In It To Win It
When there are many pieces on the board everyone gets a bit of a pass (except bloomberg's people), but now everyone with platform and power needs to own their choices. If you're getting behind someone who doesn't beat Trump, well... you built that!
Nothing to Worry About
The NoVa virus shield will keep all the important people, and their children, safe
BREAKING: The CDC has stopped disclosing the number of Americans tested for coronavirus.
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) March 2, 2020
On the left is how the website looked last night. On the right is what it looks like now, with the testing info removed.
The lack of testing is a scandal.
This is the coverup. pic.twitter.com/za5w9dkEKq
There's No Magical Virus Shield around NoVa
Also wealthy people are the ones who tend to travel.
(CNN)As new cases of coronavirus arise daily in the United States -- including several announced over the weekend and one death -- the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has failed to release crucial information physicians say could help save the lives of Americans diagnosed with the novel coronavirus.Too often I find myself thinking "LOL NOTHING'S GOING TO MATTER UNTIL AFFECTS RICH PEOPLE IN MEDIA OR THEIR FRIENDS" but LOL NOTHING's...
Several US patients have recovered from coronavirus, but so far, the CDC has shared detailed clinical information about only one of those patients. That information includes what treatments the patients received and how they fared.
American Oligarchs
Making Mike Bloomberg the Dem candidate would be... bad. Very bad. I honestly don't know how the country could recover from that, and yes I say that given Trump is president.
Morning Thread
Reading that there are now confirmed cases of the coronavirus in Florida and New York City. Genie is definitely out of the bottle.
Sunday, March 01, 2020
What Was That All About
Perhaps Pete's next move will answer the question, but pivoting from "doing amazingly well without people hating you" to "doing amazingly well with people hating you" was a strange primary strategy for a long shot campaign. Don't think going from fake liberal to vocal anti-liberal ("While better things aren't possible, the possible things are better" or some shit in petespeak) won him any votes but certainly made some people (me!) actively dislike him. The point of a long shot campaign is to lose well in preparation for the next round.
Bye, Mayo
New! BREAKING @PeteButtigieg to announce he is out of the presidential race, his staff now hearing the news in campaign call, sources tell us.
— Carla Marinucci (@cmarinucci) March 1, 2020
The Hottest Takes Of All
Blogging is extra sucky during primary season because (almost) every time I have a Primary-Related Hot Take I go bash my head into the wall for awhile until I forget to post it.
Shouldn't Take This
That someone can send you court enforceable random bills with completely made up numbers that they never have to justify should already be criminal fraud but...
America criminal health care system will be in full evidence when a lot of low level medical staffers get infected and put in ICU at their nearby hospitals and are then hit with massive bills for treating from their hospitals for an illness they got from the hospital.
— Jon Walker (@JonWalkerDC) March 1, 2020
JOEMENTUM
I had a dream that I was making this "a little funny in 2004" joke and people kept correcting me and telling me it was TOMMENTUM because Tom Steyer won the primary.
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