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
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
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