US Politics, April 2020 -- Where's the Vax Returns?

slow news day!

omg shame

Asking for the tax returns was his art, and this thread is his masterpiece.

Good afternoon!

lmao @ thread title

:-0

I didn't watch yesterday's Trump conference but CNN seemed to be painting it last night as some kind of pivotal moment where he was forced to face reality and lay out some serious shit for the US people (and he did a bad job, well duh). Anyone else get that sense?

Trump is going to wake up tomorrow and have forgotten everything that happened today beyond a vague sense that he did a great job. He'll turn on the TV and just start fresh from there, like he does every single day. Apparently he's not alone in this! https://t.co/ZR2muz8i1F

— David Roth (@david_j_roth) March 31, 2020

combo of thread title and poster is A+ :D

🧡 qualmsley

Forgot what month it was.

repost: I didn't watch yesterday's Trump conference but CNN seemed to be painting it last night as some kind of pivotal moment where he was forced to face reality and lay out some serious shit for the US people (and he did a bad job, well duh). Was that the sense anyone got who did watch it? Was this really some 'levelling with the american people" moment? doesn't everyone already know those numbers and probable stats?

Political thread title hall of fame.

DeSantis finally issues the stay-at-home Florida needed.

From Trump tweet yesterday: now is the time to push forward with a “VERY BIG & BOLD” infrastructure package

Translation: I have no idea what infrastructure is, but I like how leaderish I sound when I say that.

Upon information and belief, Iran or its proxies are planning a sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq. If this happens, Iran will pay a very heavy price, indeed!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 1, 2020

umm did he get out of his intelligence briefing and just.....tweet it out

information and belief

can i get a ratio of information to belief there, just for the record

looks like the likely death toll and economic fallout from this is likely to place Trump on track for Worst President Ever (finally surpassing Dubya)

Didn't even need the full 8 years

a huge crisis of some kind involving the massive loss of life and $$$ seemed inevitable from day 1, just took awhile

From: https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/04/inside-trumps-decision-to-back-off-of-his-easter-coronavirus-miracle

Trump’s latest tonal and tactical shift (and almost certainly not the last) was driven by several factors, both personal and political. Trump learned that his close friend, 78-year-old New York real estate mogul Stan Chera, had contracted COVID-19 and fallen into a coma at NewYork-Presbyterian. “Boy, did that hit home. Stan is like one of his best friends,” said prominent New York Trump donor Bill White. Trump also grew concerned as the virus spread to Trump country.

I fully assumed the bolded part, that he thought this was going to be an urban (hence blue state) problem and thus gaming his reelection odds in his favor but once the virus started to affect red states like Louisiana and now Texas, he would change his tune.

how has he not gotten it himself

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FneTLFfzRo2I%2Fhqdefault.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

oh man I just realized in 2 weeks there's gonna be stories about how the entire national stockpile of medical supplies is going to Alabama & Kentucky while 2000 New Yorkers die every day due to a lack of equipment

That’s why we all have to show appreciation for what a good job he is going! It is very normal and good for him to require appreciation from him!!

a huge crisis of some kind involving the massive loss of life and $$$

FDR had a bunch of these and yet kept getting reelected.

Current Trumper line is "a. Not his fault and b. Now that more is known, he is doing all the things. Hero!"

I mean if the US death toll really goes far beyond any other country and 95% of the country knows at least one person who died I feel like that might shatter the illusion somewhat

Not if a large chunk of Americans believe Russia and China are hiding their true numbers and/or American media and the deep state are overreporting American deaths.

(Yes, yes, people actually knowing people who have died would be a stopgap.)

At this point it's hard to imagine any possible scenario in which his cult drops their unwavering support if mass deaths and a crashed economy don't move the needle.

Not gonna happen. They'll vote for him while wheezing their last breaths from their ravaged lungs.

Concentrate on the defections from suburban men and women.

and of course OUR turnout.

FDR had a bunch of these and yet kept getting reelected.

I didn't say anything about reelection. I said this crisis put him on track to be the worst president ever, a title previously held by Dubya.

anyway, in other news

"Number one, I'm not interested in any more of Speaker Pelosi's spending porn — or any other member of Congress, for that matter," Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) said Wednesday on an interview with Fox News.

SPENDING PORN

ted cruz, otoh, is now interested

No, iirc he is more into soup porn

"Ooooh! Saving people's lives! Feeding hungry people! Keeping money flowing instead of frozen and inert! Oooooh! Do it to me, Nancy! Do it cuz it feels sooooo good!"

someone tell John Kennedy (R-La.) about findom

this is gonna get spun into NYC being the problem, not trump.

trump is from nyc, check and mate

Trump learned that his close friend

huh. hoax. i don’t believe trump has any close friends and i also believe his own belief system is that he has no real friends, only useful inferiors, useful contacts, and family.

Asshole turned the daily coronavirus briefing into some jabbering nonsense about drug cartels.

Hey guys, what better time than mid-pandemic to launch a war against the drug cartels? No better time, that's when.

infrastructure week vs. drug warz FITE!

trump: why not both etc

War on drugs and threat from the Middle East. Someone's feeling the pressure in an election year.

That drug cartel stuff was bizarre. Even if you are doing that right now, maybe just do it and not talk about it. Consulting the ghost of Nancy Reagan's astronomer or something.

Jesus just slap JUST SAY NO on the intro screen to arcade games

who was that woman that just asked a question? the one that editorializes during them? she asked a question about killing children (abortions :)) during the pandemic the other day.

nevermind, she works for One America News Network. (???????????)

the new fox news!

the self-oann i presume

her question was crazier than you can even imagine the other day. i don't want to quote it here but you can find it online because anti choice groups loved it.

i saw it in real time because i have been punishing myself by watching these things and i just

the lovely reporter you are thinking of is chanel rion xp

i think her questions are planted

this is one of her questions from last week:

“Is it alarming that major media players, just to oppose you, are siding with foreign state propaganda, Islamic radicals, and Latin gangs and cartels and they work right here out of the White House with direct access to you and your team?”

“It amazes me when I read the things that I read,” Trump replied with a grin, before going on a tirade about all the media outlets he feels have been critical of him.

"questions"

Mr. President, some people are saying you're the greatest president in a century. Others are saying you're the greatest of all time. So, which is it?

I almost posted about that abortion question a few days ago--it was so bizarre, it was like "Did I really just see that?" She's also the one that asked if Chinese food was a racist term.

Shit, that wasn't even a softball, she just handed the ball to him and let him toss it to himself

you could say these are t-ball questions

wow, i noticed one of her awful questions the other day and wondered what her deal is. this is just sad, even by missouri standards:

Chanel Rion might be an accomplished illustrator and Harvard graduate, but her husband-to-be is adamant she be home before six to prepare his dinner. Rion is the fiancee of Missouri outsider senatorial candidate Courtland Sykes. Sykes, a Republican in the mould of Donald Trump, released a bizarre statement on January 23. The press release said, in part, “I want to come home to a home cooked dinner every night at six. One that she fixes and one that I expect one day to have daughters learn to fix after they become traditional homemakers and family wives – think Norman Rockwell here and Gloria Steinem be damned.”

The statement began with Sykes saying that he favors women’s rights because his fiancee “has given him orders to” but adds “obedience comes with a small price that she loves to pay anyway.”

Sykes is vying to become the Republican nominee to face Democrat Claire McCaskill in November 2018’s U.S. Senate race. In the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a political science lecturer at St. Louis Community College, described Sykes’ campaign as “Trump-inspired populism on steroids.”

i'm sorry that i'm linking to heavy.com

https://heavy.com/news/2018/01/courtland-sykes-fiancee-chanel-rion/

Courtland and Chanel Show going to be lit

Rion writes on her website that she and her family fled the U.S. in 1996 after President Bill Clinton won re-election. The bio says that, “Clinton was the last straw, so dad picked up stakes and moved us out of the country. I think he wanted us to see what a debauched idea socialism was and that socialism was what the Clintons stood for. He wanted us to see what socialism did in the real world—how it destroyed people and human happiness in practice.”

🤪

honestly, i don't believe that quote from her husband -- that she needs to cook dinner by six every night -- and i also don't believe her parents went to south korea to flee the clinton.

i think that republicans are liars and self-mythologizers.

So........again, I don't want to yuck anybody's kink here but can we pleeeeeeeease acknowledge the BDSM roleplay in the room. Except for the incesty bit, we can yuck that.

follow me, my children. i will take you to my worst nightmare, so that you can understand the real world is going to be that bad someday.

xp sure, they might roleplay the honeymooners-style male tyranny. but it's fantasy, not reality. she is an ambitious washington media person.

I perfectly recall how Bill Clinton's ended "welfare as we knew it", just so he could destroy people and their happiness with heaps and heaps of socialism.

xp sure, they might roleplay the honeymooners-style male tyranny. but it's fantasy, not reality. she is an ambitious washington media person.

One who will never break kayfabe in front of the rubes, though.

Ms. Rion went to Harvard. She is smart, understands precisely what her career path in the 'news' media entails, knows what her talents are, what audience she plays to, and how to cast herself in the necessary role. There is no naivety there. She will make good money.

she's definitely a plant, the first time I saw her she was asking something about since the term "Chinese food" isn't racist why is the liberal media saying that "Chinese virus" is racist

Forget it Dan. It's Tiger King Town.

lol

"There exists no proof that Rion actually attended Harvard College, much less graduated from it."

I trust everyone filed their census.

welp. it’s finally come to this. i finally accidentally read a Haberman tweet so egregious I had to share it.

Listening to the WH briefings over the last two days, the portrait of how long the measures to stop the spread will last is growing starker, and longer. With so much focus on NY/NJ, folks lose sight of what happens if it rolls through the rest of the country.

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) April 1, 2020

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8a/Marvel%27s_What_If...%3F_logo.png

guilty lol

Imagine if there was a world beyond the asshole where my head is lodged, wow

there is a mountain above the mountain

Then there is

You must forgive Maggie. She was more than half in the bag when she wrote that.

Uh, you say she wasn't two sheets to the wind? Sober, or mostly?

WTF, Haberman, what hole have you been hiding in? Ain't no ifs ands or buts involved. This is going to roll through every city, town, village and hamlet in the US and the whole freaking world. Damn, girl, u out of your mind?

You know, it occurs to me that I've never seen a picture of Haberman. Does she slather on the full-bore Barnum & Bailey grease paint or is she one of those more minimalist commedia dell'arte clowns?

whoops bye chanel https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/01/oan-white-house-correspondents-coronavirus-160598

I'm not sure what was egregious about that tweet

she said "if" instead of "when"

ok

From harbl's linked story:

a representative for the WHCA who asked her to leave because she wasn’t in the rotation to cover that evening’s briefing. Rion refused, saying she was there “as a guest of Stephanie Grisham,” the White House press secretary, according to the Times.

things that make you go 'hmmmm'

WITCH HUNT!!!!

I'm not sure what was egregious about that tweet

with how much focus?

ok not much, sorry

I caught this part of this at the briefing yesterday, but I was doing something else and missed the context. That's terrible (the death threats, I mean, not the security detail).

http://www.cnn.com/2020/04/01/politics/anthony-fauci-security-detail/index.html

(Redundant "this"...every post I put up lately has a typo or three.)

she said "if" instead of "when"

― narcissistic sleighride (Neanderthal), Wednesday, April 1, 2020 10:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

ok

― Dan S, Wednesday, April 1, 2020 10:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

also it's buying into the annoying narrative that this doesn't really matter if it's only new york and new jersey. we're not part of the real america.

Good morning!

she might not realize she's reproducing this bias, but that's the whole thing. it's why fox news country is less worried about the virus.

The hell is this tweet supposed to mean?

enrollment periods seem like a bad idea propping up another bad idea lol https://t.co/0YPubOFL9f

— Elizabeth Bruenig (@ebruenig) March 31, 2020

that there should just be open enrollment on the healthcare exchanges all the time. or better yet, a national health service providing equitable care for everyone.

still a bad tweet. the point right now is that republicans won't even do the bare minimum of helping people in a crisis -- people they were elected to represent

"Should be," yes. Never gonna happen.

if it's only new york and new jersey. we're not part of the real america.

I guess that takes care of that commie Springsteen

I consider myself pretty far left and it’s discouraging to see so many of the thought leaders out here consistently fail to learn any lessons about coalition building.

My acquaintance with Breuning does not lead me to conclude she has thoughts.

*Bruenig

absolutely galling that the only person with a mainstream “legacy” media platform who even comes close to unapologetically socialist is also a prolife tradcath

about that polling bump in support for Trump

https://www.yahoo.com/news/ap-norc-poll-less-half-181322979.html

just curious - what are the approval ratings for pandemic responses in other countries? trump's at 43% (specifically for his Covid19 response) in the poll Shakey just posted, which seems embarrassing. A public crisis is a big easy softball for a leader, due to the Rallying effect. all you have to do is not be a complete fucking moron, which Trump is failing to do. but what about other leaders?

speaking of not being a complete fucking moron

Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
·
3h
Somebody please explain to Cryin’ Chuck Schumer that we do have a military man in charge of distributing goods, a very talented Admiral, in fact. New York has gotten far more than any other State, including hospitals & a hospital ship, but no matter what, always complaining.....
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
·
3h
...It wouldn’t matter if you got ten times what was needed, it would never be good enough. Unlike other states, New York unfortunately got off to a late start. You should have pushed harder. Stop complaining & find out where all of these supplies are going. Cuomo working hard!

Johnson, Merkel, Conte all at around 70% approval

Why is johnson getting any popularity out of the farcical response so far.
He wanted to sacrifice a lot of the public didn't he?
Is it the martyr bit?

Is it fair to suspect our feckless U.S. government has absolutely no recovery plan for when this is all over, whenever that is? (Answer: yes.)

This is actually the thing driving me nuts. There's not even an attempt to try to do anything creative or original for this specific moment. Congress can't even consider anything that isn't already part of an existing longstanding agenda. https://t.co/xRTwKuwlxV

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) April 2, 2020

P@reene should know you can't do "much of anything" when the Senate and executive branch are controlled by the opposite party. Come the fuck on. And it's not like Pelosi hasn't already done what she can to piss off McConnell and Trump:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/04/02/pelosi-trump-coronavirus-oversight/

I'm sure Pelosi wishes Trump would die of the virus from licking Jared Kushner's palms (Schumer may be disappointed, though).

P@reene should know you can't do "much of anything" when the Senate and executive branch are controlled by the opposite party. Come the fuck on.

Paste quote here about a man's paycheck depending on his not knowing things...

just curious - what are the approval ratings for pandemic responses in other countries?

80% total positive, 9% total negative in NZ.

Why is johnson getting any popularity out of the farcical response so far.
He wanted to sacrifice a lot of the public didn't he?
Is it the martyr bit?

― Stevolende, Thursday, April 2, 2020 12

this is what i mean by the degree to which trump is fucking up, to get a 43% rating on a massive public health crisis, this early on. even if you're a buffoon like Johnson, you get the rally bump. you have to be catastrophically antagonistic to doing the right thing, like trump, to do this poorly.

xp

NZ is this kind of magical place in my mind (not making a LOTR reference), where mass shootings happen and then steps are immediately taken to try to prevent them from happening again.

It wouldn’t matter if you got ten times what was needed, it would never be good enough.

spoken like a guy who's undergone multiple divorces

that there should just be open enrollment on the healthcare exchanges all the time. or better yet, a national health service providing equitable care for everyone.

1st part isn't feasible, 2nd part is

NZ is this kind of magical place in my mind ... steps are immediately taken to try to prevent them from happening again.

On 14th March they established 14-day quarantine for entry, and barred cruise ships from docking for nine weeks; on the 19th they closed borders to non-citizens and residents altogether. On the 22nd they launched a $56 million fund for health funding & business support for Māori. They also announced four levels of lockdown/restriction/alert in advance, so people would be familiar with the changes necessary before they were in effect, and gave a 48-hour warning for shelter in place so people could make accomodations for where they would be staying. On the 24th, they suspended Parliament after passing a six-month eviction ban and rent freeze.

a week or two ago the story was that Pelosi pushed against the GOP to renovate their original awful relief bill

now we're back to the 2011-16 baseline of "can't do much of anything"

President Trump’s campaign has asked his former attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to stop “misleadingly” promoting his connections to the president as he seeks to win back his old Senate seat in a race in which Trump has endorsed another Alabama Republican.

A letter sent this week to Sessions — whom Trump publicly humiliated in various ways even before his departure from the Justice Department — cites a Sessions fundraising solicitation in which Trump is mentioned 22 times.

“The letter even makes the delusional assertion that you are President ‘Trump’s #1 Supporter,’” wrote Michael S. Glassner, the chief operating officer of the Trump campaign. “We only assume your campaign is doing this to confuse President Trump’s loyal supporters in Alabama into believing the President supports your candidacy in the upcoming primary runoff election. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

It's a fate that basically everyone aligned with Trump can probably look forward to eventually, and I couldn't love it any more.

just show appreciation for his wise decisions, that's all you have to do

Johnson, Merkel, Conte all at around 70% approval

― Number None, Thursday, 2 April 2020 17:43 (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Why is johnson getting any popularity out of the farcical response so far.
He wanted to sacrifice a lot of the public didn't he?
Is it the martyr bit?

― Stevolende, Thursday, 2 April 2020 18:24 (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I think Johnson was at 90% a week ago so his approval is falling quickly. The media is now giving him a rough time over testing and we could hit 1000 deaths per day in the coming week.

Jared Kushner says some governors don't know how many ventilators they have & coronavirus outbreak is revealing manager skills.

"What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody...think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis."

— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 2, 2020

not-so-subtle dig at his FiL?

I don't know what you could possibly mean.

Kushner... OTM?

Glad to hear Johnson's popularity is dropping.

fuck kushner

not otm

he’s an idiot, he doesn’t even know he’s implicating his fil

blaming, whatever

Yeah, he has no idea. He probably means, like, the people doing a good job, they're the ones that should never have been elected.

'competent management' = bellow at irregular intervals, blame blame blame, avoid being held responsible for the things you've done by never actually doing anything, accrue a slavish death cult by hook or by crook

he's basically saying the governors should have thought ventilators into existence

By carefully omitting to name governors or even hint at who he meant, Kushner is just making an empty an statement upon which Trump supporters and detractors alike can project their own opinions. Fuck him, that's adding zero value to any part of the discussion.

can’t believe we’re actually debating the intent of this mildly amusing self-own

Every cloud: https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-costing-trump-properties-over-1-million-daily-in-lost-revenue-11585823401

will probably be credited $2.5m per day in the bailout though

Maybe, but you can see why he was so keen to downplay the pandemic and get everything open by Easter. Talk about a conflict of interest

Seriously. Plus, Trump used his losses at the Taj Majal to avoid paying paying taxes for years. taxes are bonkers. If you’re rich you’re basically covered no matter what happens to you

this is normal, this is fine

https://www.latimes.com/travel/story/2020-04-02/u-s-suspends-passport-services-except-for-emergencies

So there's a lot of speculation here, but this thread is worth reading. Very ugly if true.

Reporting tonight it’s clear that there are huge, huge fortunes being made now on the COVID Crisis. We keep hearing that states and cities are having to bid against each other to purchase lifesaving goods. But who are the counter parties? Those folks have a product ...

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 3, 2020

I saw a message being spread about a recall on a lot of Chinese masks so hoping that isn't a widespread thing.
Also hope it isn't just negative propaganda which is far from useful.

so apparently Shithead is finally using the Defense Production Act

Arguments like this miss the point. Asian Americans proving their "Americanness" isn't going to stop racism. Respectability politics isn't the solution. https://t.co/KPrnGzAEiW pic.twitter.com/9f3Kjz7UWm

— kat chow (@katchow) April 2, 2020

this is a remarkably bad take from Andrew Yang. like Candice Owens-level shit

theres a v good reason why he picked up 4chan trolls

yikes. pretty creepy to read after viewing The Plot Against America ep 2 last night

yeah that's weird. only racists blame asian or asian-american people for this crisis and you'll never prove anything to them.

Yang was shamefully model-minority-ing during his campaign, but that is an appalling step up

i want to know more about these profiteers.

why is the US giving the airlifted supplies from foreign countries to private contractors and not directly to states?

"run government like a business"?

i suppose the alternative idea is that private companies really could be more adept at distributing things than the federal government (like fedex vs usps, or whatever)? i don't know.

is this just a weird trump thing or is it what would be done? that's my question. i know that people here might not have the answer. then again, some ilxors know stuff.

My understanding is these are companies that have traditionally distributed this type of supply, but there's a lot of questions around how they are forcing the states to bid against each other, which runs up prices to ridiculous levels. At the very least, it is being coordinated badly, but there's some shady profiteering that appears to be happening too.

my chinese next door neighbors who run a laundromat have hung american flags out their windows. shades of 9/11.

State governments (the federal government too, actually) don’t have a bunch of logistics workers who hang around for years waiting for urgent DISTRIBUTE THE SUPPLIES contingencies. Hence the contractors.

if they're really smart they'd hang a confederate flag xp

The Trump administration just changed its language about the Strategic National Stockpile on an HHS website to jibe with Jared Kushner's claim that this isn't for the states.

(h/t @LEBassett)

Before vs. After: pic.twitter.com/yD4O2b1IEw

— Aaron Blake (@AaronBlake) April 3, 2020

lol Florida:

The staggering unemployment exploding on President Donald Trump’s watch would worry any incumbent running for reelection, but troubles in Florida are injecting an added dose of fear into a jittery GOP.

Already anxious about Trump’s chances in the nation’s biggest swing state, Republicans now are dealing with thousands of unemployed workers unable to navigate the Florida system to apply for help. And the blowback is directed straight at Trump’s top allies in the state, Gov. Ron DeSantis and Sen. Rick Scott.

Privately, Republicans admit that the $77.9 million system that is now failing Florida workers is doing exactly what Scott designed it to do — lower the state’s reported number of jobless claims after the great recession.

“It’s a sh-- sandwich, and it was designed that way by Scott,” said one DeSantis advisor. “It wasn’t about saving money. It was about making it harder for people to get benefits or keep benefits so that the unemployment numbers were low to give the governor something to brag about.”

https://www.politico.com/states/florida/story/2020/04/03/its-a-sh-sandwich-republicans-rage-as-florida-becomes-a-nightmare-for-trump-1271172

https://i.imgur.com/O1wN66k.jpg

Good thing Kushner has more spare time now that the whole Middle East thing got sorted out

Two Scoops negotiating w/Russia & Saudi to lower oil production because that's totally what we need right now.

Trump said Medicare for All apparently?

We don’t agree on much, but this isn’t the time for politics. We must come together to take bold action to prevent more people from getting sick & dying. Immediately expanding Medicare is the best way to do that. We're ready to work w/Trump & others to get it done. pic.twitter.com/kUqjw5IjKe

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) April 3, 2020

lol OUTFLANKED!!!

Trump did not say Medicare for All

this is getting v tiresome, what universe do you guys live in

President Donald Trump said he is considering using federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid to cover the rising ranks of the uninsured after his administration decided it would not reopen the Obamacare insurance markets to address the coronavirus crisis.

it's a good letter Brent

I mean I know he can't read but you never know when you might bamboozle him

even in the letter they note that he only referred to "expanding Medicare and Medicaid to include uninsured Americans, including those who have lost their employer-based coverage due to COVID-19."

This is not Medicare-for-All.

idk who Brent is

could be! Why not?

because Trump (and esp McConnell) will not hand the Dems a major legislative victory

it's 2020 and we're still not ready to lie and distort and take things out of context to score rhetorical points as much as the other side is, smh

idk also who is this karen i keep hearing about?

I could see some expansion getting through, one with a lot of caveats and poison-pills attached to it that limits the expansion well short of "All"

xps

I know Brent and Karen, but I have to admit I don't get who Rhonda is?

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/theyre-good-dogs-brent

"celebrated Twitter exchange"

i hope trump signs onto this medicare expansion

it was his idea!

to the extent he is capable of "having" "ideas"

Trump's Katrina will be a deadly pandemic. https://t.co/e4rMUQOAqs

— Steve Silberman (@stevesilberman) May 5, 2017

who could have foreseen this?

even in the letter they note that he only referred to "expanding Medicare and Medicaid to include uninsured Americans, including those who have lost their employer-based coverage due to COVID-19."

This is not Medicare-for-All.

It's what a lot of Americans who don't follow politics closely think Medicare-for-All is, though: a public option that works like Medicare and that's available to everyone alongside more expensive private competitors.

It's probably what Trump thinks Medicare-for-All is!

where does silby fall on that axis

I don't get who Rhonda is?

Help me

gonna steal it any way they can

This is good one: Trump campaign wants to send no request absentee ballots only to voters 65+. https://t.co/tF4d6SZHCb

— Richard Yeselson (@yeselson) April 3, 2020

Trump said he is considering... etc.

A few days ago he "considered" slapping a quarantine on NY, NJ and part of CT. He's just churning the news cycle again to keep himself in the center of it.

xp I'm reading that as an idea that Dems are pushing that Trump admin may be okay with?

jfc that huge closeup of fearless leader is terrifying.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/03/politics/trump-fires-inspector-general-michael-atkinson/index.html

this is fine. i'm sure this had nothing to do with his role in impeachment.

this isn't authoritarian or yet another instance of abuse of power.

fuck us all.

This has been Trump's M.O. since the day he took office. He fires anyone he sees as insufficiently protective of his interests, regardless of whether his 'interests' are opposed to the clear national interest or even legal, and he trusts so few people that 2/3 of the positions he fires people from are left unfilled. The whole executive branch is littered with temporary 'acting' officials or simply vacant positions.

It’s darkly hilarious that SOPDUS (Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Under Secretary) is an acronym I am well acquainted with thanks to this admin. We’re in the last year of his term and it’s still popping up

“I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in in voting,” he said. “It should be, you go to a booth and you proudly display yourself.”

gross

“I think a lot of people cheat with mail-in in voting,” he said, purely based not on evidence or facts, but out his abundant ignorance.

“It should be, you go to a booth and you proudly display yourself.”

Strongly reminding me of the Longmont Potion Castle bit where he called people and asked them if they were willing to vote on stilts, thirty feet high, loud and proud.

I mean, that's the party line though, just translated into Trump talk

xp

Like 160,000 other Palm Beach County voters, President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump have requested vote-by-mail ballots for Florida’s presidential primary.

The ballots were picked up for Trump on Monday, and as of Wednesday had not been submitted, according to the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections website.

During his visit to Palm Beach last weekend, Trump apparently chose to forgo an opportunity to go to an early voting site to cast a ballot in the Republican primary, for which he is a huge favorite to win.

people he's really serious about these public health measures, do you not see that?

The mail-in voting cheats are mostly Republican men forcing their cowed wives to vote for Trump afaik

"I don't think I'm going to be doing it," he said, going on to suggest it was hard to envision such a thing in the Oval Office: "Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens — I just don't see it."

First of all, nice job setting an example for your devoted followers. Now at least 40% of Americans will refuse to wear them, even as you half-heartedly roll out your new guidance recommending them.

Second of all, I love that dictators are way up there on his list of heads of state that he greets on the regular.

"where's my favorite little dictator?"

"I don't see what's so bad about dictatorships. I mean Charlie Chaplin even made a movie about, uh, how great dictators are!"

I feel like "kings, queens" is even more telling in its unreality

He won't wear a mask because it'll smudge his makeup.

He won't wear a mask because it'll efface his grandiose self-image.

that trumo mask in full

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/deadliestfiction/images/f/f4/Immortan_Joe.jpg/revision/latest/top-crop/width/360/height/450?cb=20150517025325

*reads approval ratings*

MEDIOCRE!

“You’re trying to jam in your preexisting support for Medicare for All & social democracy into the covid crisis” yes correct, the crisis violently & horrifically amplifying long-existing inequities can be solved w/ ideas that seek to mitigate those inequities. genius observation!

— Adam H. Johnson (@adamjohnsonNYC) April 3, 2020

every POTUS regularly greets dictators, just another example of the Potato's accidental honesty

Re masks: Trump even makes for a terrible germaphobe. May as well have elected David Puddy.

I agree with Morbius

(although the way Trump plays up his enjoyment of hanging out with authoritarian heads of state is pretty exceptional)

Feel like this belongs here instead of being dumped in the insane-cartoons thread where fewer people will see it:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUOTAOrXgAAHEjo.png

Can't wait til they inject me with that devil juice

#7: PROFIT

You got a preview of the upcoming campaign--whatever form that takes--today (paraphrase): "Joe isn't watching right now--and if he is, he doesn't understand what he's seeing."

“Hundreds of thousands of people are going to die... The professionals did the models. I was never involved in a model. At least not this kind of model."
He really did say that!

pic.twitter.com/UswZxWSCPe

— Simon Gosden. Esq. #fbpe 🕷🇪🇺🇬🇧🏴‍☠️ (@g_gosden) April 4, 2020

wtf

I am totally shocked by this dude, I don’t think he has the right temperament to be president, tbh!!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/01/i-think-president-struck-different-tone-today-then-again-i-am-goldfish/

honestly the sub-Borscht belt tangents are the only times he seems like an actual human being. a bad one obv, but

"Take my wife, I've just purchased a younger one"

It just galls me to no end that the president is such a selfish, self-centered fuck that he wouldn’t lift a finger to help a fellow human being without first asking if they were going to vote for him. Except when his handlers/advisors are making him do something “presidential”, in which case he always makes it clear that he is doing it unwillingly.

After a couple of days last week where he looked as mortified as he's capable of looking, based on yesterday I think he's found his comfort zone with this. Expect more stand-up and more fighting with reporters this week.

Good morning!

jesus christ: https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/whats-up-with-the-feds-seizing-ppe-shipments-to-states-and-hospitals

Happened in buffalo too, with a shipment that arrived in Pittsburgh, iirc

not sure where to put this, but great thread here re: private equity in general and specifically w/r/t current mess and Trump admin

During a 2007 trip to NYC, while taking long walks from one indie bookstore to the next, lugging increasingly heavy bags of pressed vegetable matter, I stumbled on Simon Lovell's HOW TO CHEAT AT EVERYTHING at the St Mark's Bookshop.https://t.co/yYGznIkWwp

1/ pic.twitter.com/jOaq4oJUMi

— Bernie Beats Trump (@doctorow) April 4, 2020

Read that thread and ordered the book. (I read a lot of books about cons, hoaxes, scams, etc. anyway.)

You might like this then--nonstop cons, hoaxes, and scams.

http://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/81OvZyNcbJL.jpg

(Roger Lowenstein's Origins of the Crash.)

whats-up-with-the-feds-seizing-ppe-shipments-to-states-and-hospitals

What, states just think they can BUY things? How cute. Don't they know that the right way to get things is to beg Trump for them in flattering tones?

everyone in private equity should be jailed

Here's a twist: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/05/magazine/navy-captain-crozier-positive-coronavirus.html

Knowing what we know about the virus, I'd imagine that everyone on the ship has contracted it? Especially after his send-off...

Captain Crozier Is a Hero
Theodore Roosevelt, my great-grandfather, would agree.

By Tweed Roosevelt
Mr. Roosevelt is a great-grandson of Theodore Roosevelt and the chairman of the Theodore Roosevelt Institute at Long Island University.

are you serious with that name

have u met his brother Seersucker

Willing to bet Tweed is a middle name.

Blue Suede Roosevelt

Henry has his uses but his great talent is taking the shape demanded by whoever is in charge. pic.twitter.com/UWY6dCP2VQ

— Richard M. Nixon (@dick_nixon) April 4, 2020

hahaha I just read that

and dear lord I don't want George W. Bush trending

It’s pretty amazing that Democrats are praising 15 year old statements from war criminal George W. Bush right now when we still have a presidential candidate who said this about how unprepared we are for a pandemic 15 years ago:

pic.twitter.com/tQwKSJrvIz

— Michael (@OmanReagan) April 5, 2020

Of course liberals are cooing over war criminal George W. Bush. Michelle gave them permission long ago. pic.twitter.com/FGisCCmRNs

— Dennis Perrin (@DennisThePerrin) April 5, 2020

Dennis Perrin doesn't know any liberals.

Yes. That's it. Liberals peruse every utterance of Michelle Obama like Kremlinologists, to find out when it is safe to approve of something GWB said or did. aiui, the official list now includes GWB's opening remarks at the WH Easter Egg Hunt in 2007, but not his Mission Accomplished speech, but that may have changed. I haven't read Michelle's memo this morning.

I do find it cute that you can follow Trump's public statements on Rona to pinpoint exactly when he finished learning his multiplication tables

Galaxy brains with their dying-from-covid last breaths: “Dubya...was... worse”

I had so much more respect for Dennis Perrin when I knew him only as the author of Mr Mike, and not the author of countless shitty and stupid tweets smugly added to this thread by Morbs for reasons that make no sense to me beyond masochism

I's standin' over there in the political thraid
And here he come
Postin links to Dennis Perrin's tweeters
As clear as th eye could see
And I hollered over t' Ethel
I said, "Don't look, Ethel!"
But it's too late

I haven’t seen any mention of this “liberals praising GWB” because who gives a fuck I’m not looking for news about that shit.

i feel like he's trying to ship Michelle and Dubya

like what the fuck who fucking cares

xp

there’s politics talk and then there’s this kind of shit which is sub-celebrity gossip

lol otm

Dubya started off an anti-Pandemic thing when he was pres after reading a book about the 1918 flu pandemic and being like, "Woah this happens every hundred years we should mobilise to make sure it never happens again". It's some broken-clock-tells-the-time ish but obviously a jaundiced eye will find some way to make it about the Obamas.

guys? fuck you.

oh come on dude

you all banned me when I called her what she is, so methinks thou dost protest too much

actually i'd amend her most famous task to a more managerial one

you're the only person itt who thinks about Michelle Obama, ever

everyone in private equity should be jailed

on a pike

post dumb shit, get called out. it happens to me all the time morbs, but I assume you’re smarter than me and know when to stop but you apparently like needling people so whatever. go ahead and say hurtful stuff to me I don’t care.

there's gotta be a way to ban Dennis Perrin tweets

autoreplace the word Perrin with jigglypanda

Replace it with Clinton and they'd be gone in two seconds

I will defend Morbs’ right to post all the Perrin tweets he wants, they always liven it up around here

for every Perrin tweet, we post a Jeff Foxworthy stand up clip

Trump says a friend of his was amazed to discover during this that there were 182 countries in the world. I wonder who the friend could be...

John Barron

I narrowed it down to either him or John Miller.

he has been saying that in every single press conference, but last week it was 150 countries

there are 195 countries

Along those lines, all 50 states have at least 200 known cases, 40 state governors have issued official "stay at home" orders, Kentucky has a "stay at home advisory".

Nine states have yet to give any official order to limit the spread of the virus: South Carolina, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, Wyoming and Utah. It's a roll call of crimson shame, but there no surprising names among them.

do those crimson governors offer a consistent explanation for their position? Are they STILL trying to downplay the threat of the virus?

George Takei’s comment that it’s like a peeing section in the pool is right

"there’s politics talk and then there’s this kind of shit which is sub-celebrity gossip"

Ugh yes make it stop plz

White House economic adviser Peter Navarro confirmed Monday that he and Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading infectious-disease expert, engaged in a heated dispute in the White House Situation Room about how enthusiastically the administration should tout the prospects of using an anti-malaria drug to treat the coronavirus.

Appearing on CNN, Navarro was asked to respond to an Axios report that he arrived on Saturday with studies promoting the potential of hydroxychloroquine, a drug that President Trump has said could be a “game-changer” but that Fauci has repeatedly cautioned is unproven to combat covid-19.

“There was that discussion on Saturday,” Navarro said. “If we didn’t have disagreement and debate in the Trump administration, this administration would not be as strong as it is.”

After being shown a clip in which Fauci said the data on treating coronavirus with hydroxychloroquine is “at best suggestive,” Navarro suggested seeking advice from doctors besides Fauci.

“I’ll let him speak for himself, but I would have two words for you: second opinion,” said Navarro, whose work for Trump has largely focused on trade.

Pressed on why he is more qualified to weigh in on treating the novel coronavirus than Fauci, Navarro said he was competent to read the literature.
“Doctors disagree about things all the time. My qualifications in terms of looking at the science is that I’m a social scientist. I have a PhD, and I understand how to read statistical studies,” he said. “You could be a plumber and read that and come to the same conclusion.”

Not only has Asshole surrounded himself with the worst people, he's also surrounded himself with the worst people.

Only because I just finished watching Ozark, Omar Navarro would probably do just as well.

http://cheesecake.articleassets.meaww.com/423714/uploads/47b0ab70-6fd1-11ea-af5a-d97c2a479119_800_420.jpeg

Last night, John Oliver had his main segment on One America News. That thing is even shittier than I thought.

icymi

A review of federal purchasing contracts by The Associated Press shows federal agencies waited until mid-March to begin placing bulk orders of N95 respirator masks, mechanical ventilators and other equipment needed by front-line health care workers.

https://apnews.com/090600c299a8cf07f5b44d92534856bc

Under our merciless form of government, COVID-19 will exact a cascading sequence of miseries: first your job, then your health insurance, then your life… https://t.co/ebz4deZmbr

— CounterPunch (@NatCounterPunch) April 5, 2020

Good morning!

! Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly told the crew of the USS Theodore Roosevelt that their former commander Capt. Brett Crozier -- who warned of dangerous conditions on the ship -- was either "too naive or too stupid" to be in command. https://t.co/R7P7qSqGnE

— Natasha Bertrand (@NatashaBertrand) April 6, 2020

Fire Modly

Modly said he was incensed that Crozier wrote in his memo that the United States is not at war. In fact, China is to blame for the current coronavirus pandemic because it hid the scope of the problem, said Modly, who also accused the Chinese of not being as transparent as the Navy.

you know who else hid the scope of the problem?

the rats feel their backs against the wall

Seriously the worst line of defense for that dickrubber to take rn

the modly speeches

China, what, physically prevented you from reading several months of news stories about the epidemic they were suffering? Those bastards.

is it normal to end a speech like that with "Go Navy"?

'Every time I tried to read the newspaper, a Chinese official would rush over and pull the newspaper from my hand while softly saying 'no'. It was literally out of my hands.'

Modly & Creme

Dastardly and Modly

Mödly: Crüde

ban all modlys

Modly!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25x3aIWs76E

moldy

Fired IC IG Atkinson has released a statement on his severance, including “It is hard not to think that the President’s loss of confidence in me derived from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations as an independent and impartial Inspector General” and "...I have spent my entire seventeen-year career as a public servant acting without regard to partisan favor or political fear," and concluding with a plea to all gov't employees and contractors who see unethical or illegal behaviour in the federal government “Please do not allow recent events to silence your voices.”

Infrastructure week rescheduled, date TBA:

Asked about Pelosi's call for additional money for Americans in a Phase 4 bill, Trump says, "I like the concept of it. I think it's good. We're talking about a different way of doing it, but I like the concept." He says he'd also like an infrastructure bill.

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 6, 2020

zing

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EU8d6iUWsAEmrAu?format=png&name=small

ouch

Major Producer of Hydroxychloroquine Once Paid Michael Cohen Hefty Sum for Access to Trump

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/major-producer-of-hydroxychloroquine-once-paid-michael-cohen-hefty-sum-for-access-to-trump/ar-BB12eeHz

there is just no way the Trumps are not invested in this drug

holy shit @ this audio

The acting Navy secretary is unfit for office. He should resign or be removed immediately. https://t.co/6hfiIkFQfa

— Justin Amash (@justinamash) April 6, 2020

navy sec. 100% on board w/ "media is the enemy"

ah sorry I didn't see the audio was posted up there^

is there a branch of the military this admin had *not* pissed off yet?

space force

it's early still

Former vice president Joe Biden spoke with President Trump on Monday afternoon about the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a senior administration official and another person with knowledge of the conversation.

The conversation was “very cordial,” the administration official said. Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the exchange.

Biden’s campaign said last week it was working on setting up a call with the president after Trump told reporters that he would “absolutely” be willing to speak with Biden on the matter.

News of Monday’s conversation was first reported by NBC News.

I hope they discussed our nation's critical shortage of hen fap

And also whether there are too many kids on their respective lawns

Loefflet’s Senate seat is in play:

Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) holds a significant lead over Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) in the race for her Senate seat, a new poll found.

A Battleground Connect survey of likely voters in the upcoming special election first reported by Politico revealed that 36 percent support Collins, who has represented the 9th district in Georgia since 2013, for the Senate seat currently held by Loeffler.

Loeffler currently trails both Collins and a Democratic opponent, pastor Raphael Warnock of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, and sits at 13 percent in the poll. Warnock registered support from 16 percent of voters, indicating that Collins has a clear advantage in the race.

In the sense that she’ll lose, seems unlikely any of the Dem candidates will grab it. But who knows...

I think this'll be big, I don't know: Birx, with Trump standing right beside her in-shot, just said "You can see what happens when you come at this a little too late." I doubt she meant to put it that way, although Trump had just, in his special way, been rather callous about Birx's granddaughter, who'd been running a temperature of 105.

Xo Doug Collins is even worse

the main question with the Loeffler race is which two candidates will make it to the runoff on January 5

By the way, Trump made reference today to "an election the Democrats shouldn't be allowed to win." I'm sure he doesn't mean it.

Modly's a real piece of shit, huh
angry enlisted man yelling "WHAT THE FUCK"

Kelly Loeffler is awful, and after losing my retirement savings I can’t even stomach reading about her insider trading, but Doug Collins is a fascist and it does seem like he’s going to win

hours after ‘standing by every word’ he said, modly has issued an apology

Standing by his words from 6 ft away

hope he is standing at the bottom of the ocean soon

dunno if this is being discussed in the primary thread but what just happened in Wisconsin (the conservative majority state supreme court overturned the governor's order to postpone the election) is a fucking travesty and is going to get people killed

in the Nino thread

If there's one thing both parties can agree on it's that our votes and our lives aren't really that important.

I'm never gonna get to release my double rap album

Treating the events as breaking news updates, the briefings, where Trump lies and chats casually about a national health crisis, represent a Beltway news culture gripped by paralysis, unable to make the correct decision to unplug the misinformation happenings.

These are same TV networks that made a very different decision in 2014 when President Barack Obama wanted to address to nation for 10-15 minutes about immigration reform, and ABC, CBS, and NBC all told him they would not air his Oval Office speech because it wasn't worth covering. That followed up the networks' decision a year earlier to deny the Obama request to carry a primetime address regarding the seven million people who had signed up for healthcare under the Affordable Care Act.

The endless Trump coverage today, often featuring two-hour briefings each day, is all being done voluntarily. TV networks in the United States are under no obligation to carry the president live when he makes appearances or addresses the press.

There was never any reason given for why, after 20 years of not airing daily press briefings, the cable news channels all decided simultaneously to essentially air every Trump White House briefing live, and usually in its entirety. Early on, the cable news channels aired 93 percent of the Trump White House press briefings live, after having aired just three percent of Obama press briefings live, according to Media Matters.

https://pressrun.media/p/networks-will-air-trump-10-hours

https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMTkxNjYwMjA0NF5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMjgwODI0NDE@._V1_UY1200_CR85,0,630,1200_AL_.jpg

Ah, the days of grunge typography

what a shame we don't have a transcript of the Biden-Trump phone call, eh

it was "cordial" ie Beckettian facepalms galore

the beard the flames the tears the stones so blue so calm alas alas on on the skull the skull the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the labors abandoned left unfinished graver still abode of stones in a word I resume alas alas abandoned unfinished the skull the skull in Connemara in spite of the tennis the skull alas the stones Cunard (mêlée, final vociferations) tennis . . . the stones . . . so calm . . . Cunard . . . unfinished. . . .

Stephanie Grisham out as PressSec, going back to being Melania's chief of staff. Never had a press briefing.

the perfect tenure

Makes sense. In these difficult times, we need our nation's best minds to be focused on the operations of Melania's staff.

Stephanie Grisham out as PressSec, going back to being Melania's chief of staff. Never had a press briefing.

Clearing a path for Chanel Rion from OAN.

Good morning!

stephanie grisham, what a joke. imagine that feeling of imposter syndrome, like you totally don't know what you're doing and think everyone expects you to know how to do it. but then it's real, and you just decide to never do it. and your boss likes it

on her way back to melania's chambers they'll probably drop by the Imbosster's Club, where Stephanie's fob has now been modified to let her gain entry. there's a strong whiff of cigar smoke escaping from the keyhole, before she even enters

ah, hello there Stephanie! you've done a fine job! aaaaaaaahahahahahahahahahahahaha

dunno if this is being discussed in the primary thread but what just happened in Wisconsin (the conservative majority state supreme court overturned the governor's order to postpone the election) is a fucking travesty and is going to get people killed

― frogbs, Monday, April 6, 2020 9:34 PM (yesterday)

U.S. Supreme Court: Post-Nino Edition

some discussion ^here^. are you going to try to vote? what a bunch of bullshit.

what a shame we don't have a transcript of the Biden-Trump phone call, eh

I was hoping Karl Malone would script this for us.

Look folks
People are saying
tremendous
gonna beat you like a drum

here's the deal
I make the best deals
here's what you do, number one, that's number one
number one is the best number

dr casino does one of the best trumps, i think. i'm not sure who our best biden is, but it's not me! when i do my impersonation, he says "LOOKIT" a lot, and he also says "that's number. Number two is.."

xp shakey nailed it! haha

some discussion ^here^. are you going to try to vote? what a bunch of bullshit.

I voted absentee already

I know you're not supposed to talk about it publicly, but I voted for Bernie Sanders

"In late January, President Trump's economic adviser Peter Navarro warned his White House colleagues the novel coronavirus could take more than half a million American lives and cost close to $6 trillion, according to memos obtained by Axios." https://t.co/0Q0W88iZBV

— Jonathan Swan (@jonathanvswan) April 7, 2020

well i mean, he IS a social scientist

heh, this detail is not surprising:

One senior administration official who received Navarro's memos said at the time they were skeptical of his motives and thus his warnings: “The January travel memo struck me as an alarmist attempt to bring attention to Peter’s anti-China agenda while presenting an artificially limited range of policy options."

"The supplemental memo lacked any basis for its projections, which led some staff to worry that it could needlessly rattle markets and may not direct funding where it was truly needed."

one consequence of installing buffoons in every possible position is that it's tough for the buffoons to take each other seriously

"I see the red and the green/I see the yellow and the blue/I see one look like me/I see one look like you. Buffoon, buffoon, buffoon, buffoon, buffoon (buffoon)."

I read that memo as saying one to two million souls, not half a million as professional reader and writer of words Jonathan Swan says.

two memos

one in late january saying half a million, another in late february saying 1-2 million

ah, ok

there is just no way the Trumps are not invested in this drug

― Yanni Xenakis (Hadrian VIII), Monday, April 6, 2020 5:00 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

As of last year, Mr. Trump reported that his three family trusts each had investments in a Dodge & Cox mutual fund, whose largest holding was in Sanofi.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/06/us/politics/coronavirus-trump-malaria-drug.html

why would he need more money

money is a disease

his mind is diseased

because he's a winner and you're a loser

when I was in Delhi once a cabbie told me that we were on "sideview mirror road," at one end of which there were kids stealing sideview mirrors, and on the other a little sideview-mirror shop

that's p much our whole system

side view mirrors are useful though

oh I'm sure they'll have the inside lane on an actual vaccine too

oversight not lookin so good

Trump has removed independent coronavirus watchdog Glenn Fine, upending the oversight panel just days in https://t.co/FkjIV3eWrS by @kyledcheney @connorobrienNH

— Maggie Severns (@MaggieSeverns) April 7, 2020

jeeeeeeeeeeeezus fucking christ

everybody's fired.

why would he need more money

"The future, Mr Gittes!"

The scum also rises. They are going to need a new wing in hell for all these creeps.

"The January travel memo struck me as an alarmist attempt to bring attention to Peter’s anti-China agenda while presenting an artificially limited range of policy options."

Which is pretty much how I interpret Trump's relatively early suspension of air travel from China, which he mentions eight times during every daily briefing: that it had less to do with coronavirus than simply being an anti-Chinese/beautiful-wall measure.

It's been parroted as such by the chuds: "It shows travel bans and closed borders work! Also: Bill Gates & 5G did Corona!"

A lot of these same people are eating up this recent stuff about going after the cartels...they need their scary foreigners fix.

If you lived through Kayleigh McEnany on CNN every day during the 2016 election, this is some kind of bad flashback.

http://wwl.radio.com/articles/radiocom/kayleigh-mcenany-named-new-white-house-press-secretary

"I see the red and the green/I see the yellow and the blue/I see one look like me/I see one look like you. Buffoon, buffoon, buffoon, buffoon, buffoon (buffoon)."

Acting secretary of the Navy has submitted his resignation after calling ousted aircraft carrier captain 'stupid'

https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2020/04/07/politics/modly-resign-crozier-esper-trump/index.html

Wasn't sure whether to put this here or the outbreak thread.

http://media.newyorker.com/cartoons/5e8c8ed95749570008a1b2a6/master/w_2560%2Cc_limit/A24118-dailycartoon.jpeg

Also, he requisitioned that hose with federal dollars and gave it to one of his big donors' companies, which sold it to that firefighter for $7000

one consequence of installing buffoons in every possible position is that it's tough for the buffoons to take each other seriously

― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone), Tuesday, April 7, 2020

this is deeply OTM. painfully so given that to the extent that the playbook has been to maximize disfunction as an object demonstration that Government Doesn't Work, it's been treated as a feature not a bug by those responsible.

Rand Paul: hero is what’s going to make me go full on ____________

Clad in gloves, a mask and full-length gown, Wisconsin Speaker Robin Vos assured voters that it is “incredibly safe to go out” on Election Day despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Vos is one of the main reasons the in-person election went ahead Tuesday, as he and his fellow Republicans fought both delaying the election and Democrats’ attempts to provide voters with more mail-in options.

“Actually there is less exposure here than you would get if you went to the grocery store or Walmart,” Vos added in a video captured by the local Journal Times at a polling place in Burlington that he volunteered to help staff.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/wisconsin-speaker-robin-vos-2020-elections

Can only hope Wisconsin voters realize who forced them to vote in person today, and hold them accountable. It's not a high hope.

I think if there is a lesson to be taken from recent years it is that we must keep Republicans away from any sort of power at all costs because they just can’t help being blatant f*cking evildoers.

Clad in gloves, a mask and full-length gown, Wisconsin Speaker Robin Vos assured voters that it is “incredibly safe to go out” on Election Day despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

Okay, well, I guess after four years of complete fucking insanity that is what it ultimately took to melt the contents of my skull down into a protein-rich soup. RIP my brain!!!!!!

are there pinto beans in that soup

when it goes to soup, it's always U.S. Senate Bean Soup

Schumer & co proposing $25k in hazard pay for essential workers, including janitors and grocery clerks

Republicans should fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting. Democrats are clamoring for it. Tremendous potential for voter fraud, and for whatever reason, doesn’t work out well for Republicans.

Once we OPEN UP OUR GREAT COUNTRY, and it will be sooner rather than later, the horror of the Invisible Enemy, except for those that sadly lost a family member or friend, must be quickly forgotten. Our Economy will BOOM, perhaps like never before!!!

--

very on message this morning: the choice is between forcing everyone to vote in person or voter fraud, and also, whenever this is over, please forget what happened. thank you

Schumer & co proposing $25k in hazard pay for essential workers

is that per or total?

(in the spirit of Bob & Ray's paperclip factory sketch)

lol okay

BREAKING: Sen. Kelly Loeffler will liquidate individual stock shares after coronavirus trade furorhttps://t.co/l1aRGL7pUq

— CNBC Now (@CNBCnow) April 8, 2020

Good evening!

i was hoping maybe loeffler wasn't running for her seat in this year's election but apparently she is

is Schumer gonna cave again to Mnuchin on latest demand for 250 billion for small businesses but without all Dem priorities? McConnell wants to do it by unanimous vote. Dems could block that with just 1 person objecting (even though Repubs will spin it as Dems against small biz)

Chuck "The Human Cave-In" Schumer?!

Easter looming, Kansas Republican leaders on Wednesday revoked Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s order limiting religious gatherings to 10 people as the state’s coronavirus death toll jumped 40 percent.

https://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article241861126.html

Trump's approval ratings down again.

I would think that decline is still largely pandemic-related, and hasn't fully factored in the economic fallout yet.

just wondering, what is the appropriate thread to wonder (whine?) about what will or will not happen in these united states if the November election plays out as Trump, the GOP, and republican-appointed judges ally together to prevent Vote-by-Mail, suppressing Democratic votes from the top to the bottom of the ticket?

i know we'd all like to think that after stealing the election in 2000, stealing a supreme court seat in 2016/17, and a WI supreme court ordering people to Vote Dangerously or not vote at all earlier week, that it couldn't possibly happen during the national election. but it seems worth it to point out that it's a very real possibility, and if it happens - what do we do? what can we do?

Drink Campari and listen to Black Tie White Noise.

I'M IN HELL

actually, campari is great, this can't be hell

Jagermeister and Tin Machine, then. xp

peach schnapps and the laughing gnome or gtfo

you all do what you want. i'm going with everclear and carter tutti void

*carter tutti void plays at top volume*

Vice President Mike Pence is reportedly banning top health experts from appearing on CNN in an effort to pressure the network into airing the daily White House coronavirus task force briefings in full.

According to a CNN report Thursday morning, Pence’s office will only permit experts such as Dr. Deborah Birx and Dr. Anthony Fauci to appear on the network on the condition that it airs the portion of the briefings featuring the vice president and other coronavirus task force members.

CNN typically only broadcasts the first part of the briefing when President Trump takes questions from reporters in real-time, which sometimes includes responses from health experts. The network often ends its live broadcast of the briefing to air its analysis of Trump’s latest remarks.

A CNN executive cited the extensive length of the briefings, which have run past two hours, as a reason for why the network often cuts out of it after Trump leaves the podium.

if Obama was president they wouldn't air them at all. fuck him

referring to Pence. but also Obama, I guess, in his own way

Wait, they're literally broadcasting hours of random live unfiltered Trump content on CNN? Why.... are they doing that?

I'M IN HELL

― let me be your friend on the other end! (Karl Malone),

and there is no hell like an old hell iirc

https://www.instagram.com/p/B-sD9WWDT3A/

Wait, they're literally broadcasting hours of random live unfiltered Trump content on CNN? Why.... are they doing that?

same reason why they gave him $2,000,000,000 worth of free coverage, it gets good ratings

it's called showing appreciation

this is so fucking awesome

Incredible, take a second and listen to this https://t.co/2n6oRKPcDo

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) April 9, 2020

lol. hero. chamath has some strong opinions and and has surely popped up in the Silicon Valley thread but he’s putting the Facebook fu bucks to very good use there.

Trump had only days before prevented Colorado Gov. Jared Polis from securing 500 ventilators from a private company, instead, taking the ventilators for the federal government. Polis sent a formal letter pleading for medical equipment, but the president took the time to make clear he was responding to a request from Gardner. We are left to believe that if Colorado didn’t have a Republican senator in office, our state would not be getting these 100 ventilators. How many ventilators would we be getting if we had a Republican governor and a second Republican senator? Would that indicate we had more Republican lives in our state worth saving for Trump and resources would start flowing? Should Utah be concerned that Sen. Mitt Romney voted to remove the president from office?

This behavior comes, of course, weeks after Trump informed states they would have to compete against one another in the procurement of medical supplies at a time of global shortages due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The federal government should be procuring medicine, masks, and ventilators and distributing them to states on a set formula based on population, rate of infection and need. Instead, Trump’s messaging makes it feel as though he will watch with glee from the White House as people suffer in states being led by his enemies. If that’s not the case, then the president needs to act as though he’s working on behalf of all of us, not just those who voted for him or cow-towed to his corrupt administration.

https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2020/04/but-what-he-really-loved-to-do-was-steal-i-mean-he-actually-enjoyed-it

remember the ancient argument, a couple months ago, about how bad trump really was, compared to say, bush? it came down to how you felt about the body count (iraq and afghanistan) vs the potential for complete disaster (trump, facing any sort of emergency). welp, trump seems to be intent on evening up the score on the body count, while graduating at the head of his class in corruption all the while

tbh I don't get the Bush vs Trump arguments. Both men killed American citizens; we shouldn't need a calculator to add how many bodies they packed in mounds.

otm. i feel the same way, though that wasn't clear in my post.

Rightly or wrongly, is the argument meant as a response to people that say Trump is uniquely bad, something that hasn't been seen before?

what is ilx about, if not ranking things

I think trump is uniquely bad, something that hasn’t been seen before

He also emboldens his followers in more horrible ways.

let's do best song on the worst album!

i mean, best thing that trump has done

it's late, the wine in the bottle will be gone soon

he’s turned shameless self dealing into art

He refused the offer of installing a solid gold toilet in the White House. On loan, ofc. If they'd offered it to him as a personal gift he could take with him, he'd have accepted it.

CNBC reports: President Donald Trump said on Friday that he will not reopen the economy “until we know this country is going to be healthy.”

Someone told Dipshit that corpses will be bad for his polling.

good for his tv ratings, tho

Lady Lindsey and others are gettin' nervous

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/09/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-press-briefing.html

Meanwhile Nino's son is another dead-eyed asshole.

easy dude, that's the future replacement for Ruth Bader Ginsburg you're talking about

On Election Day in November, some polling places could be patrolled by off-duty police officers and veterans, according to a plan hatched by Republican operatives.

https://theintercept.com/2020/04/11/republican-poll-watchers-vote-by-mail-voter-fraud/

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) released a joint statement Saturday morning saying they would not agree to any compromise with Democrats that changed their proposal to add $250 billion to the Paycheck Protection Program, which is being run by the Small Business Administration.

Democrats don’t want to sign off on the $250 billion increase without also adding hundreds of billions for hospitals, cities, states and food stamp recipients. They also want to ensure that half of the increase goes through community banks, emergency grants and other programs aimed at underserved communities.

That’s from Washington Post. Dems originally wanted vote from home provision in this bill too I thought, but Schumer & Pelosi pushes that one off to later . The Post article hints that some Republicans like Md governor Hogan and even Rob Portman think some tinkering with McConnell bill should be done

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/04/11/gop-leaders-refuse-democrats-coronavirus-demands-wont-negotiate-over-small-business-lending-program/

pure speculation here, but: is trump thinking about buying or merging or working with OANN in the future, post-presidency (or god i hope post-presidency)?

it's so bad it makes even fox news seem relatively "serious", which is an unsettling fact. honestly, it's right in Trump University territory. i guess he thinks that more "competition" in the far-right media sphere would be good for him, since he can attempt to play them off each other. but OANN is soooooo fucking terrible that they seem like the kind of thing that a rich person could just outright purchase

(sorry, subtext there is just that trump is noticeably trying to hype up @OANN as an alternative to fox lately, all over the place. john oliver did an ok segment on it last week, and he's really stepped it up in the days since.

Occupation
Politician, show jumper

As the coronavirus emerged and headed toward the United States, an extraordinary conversation was hatched among an elite group of infectious disease doctors and medical experts in the federal government and academic institutions around the nation.

Red Dawn — a nod to the 1984 film with Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen — was the nickname for the email chain they built. Different threads in the chain were named Red Dawn Breaking, Red Dawn Rising, Red Dawn Breaking Bad and, as the situation grew more dire, Red Dawn Raging. It was hosted by the chief medical officer at the Department of Homeland Security, Dr. Duane C. Caneva, starting in January with a small core of medical experts and friends that gradually grew to dozens.

The “Red Dawn String,” Dr. Caneva said, was intended “to provide thoughts, concerns, raise issues, share information across various colleagues responding to Covid-19,” including medical experts and doctors from the Health and Human Services Department, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Homeland Security Department, the Veterans Affairs Department, the Pentagon and other federal agencies tracking the historic health emergency.

Here are key exchanges from the emails, with context and analysis, that show the experts’ rising sense of frustration and then anger as their advice seemingly failed to break through to the administration, raising the odds that more people would likely die.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/11/us/politics/coronavirus-red-dawn-emails-trump.html

Okay, I've been with USPS for several years now, so here's my big dumb #SaveThePostOffice thread. I don't know how many tweets it's gonna take for me to ramble through my thoughts, so stick with me. Or don't, whatever.

— Dingus J McGee, ESQ* (@lildipshit3) April 10, 2020

Re OANN, I guess one people, one America, one president has a certain snap to it

I think you're right Karl. OANN fits well into his portfolio: Trump U, XFL, Atlantic City, wine from Virginia, etc

ahem USFL

oh right, my bad. also add all his pageants to that list

Trump threatened to veto coronavirus stimulus package if it contained bailout money for USPS: reporthttps://t.co/k3Q80BGLaW pic.twitter.com/e77yX15E2O

— The Hill (@thehill) April 12, 2020

This isn’t related to his hatred of vote by mail is it?

It's incredible to me (which is to say, totally not incredible) that the republicans, even in the midst of a global pandemic, are still focusing their ire on their (least) favorite boogeymen, like the national menace that is the post office. I'm surprised they haven't proposed banning solar power yet.

their animus toward the postal service is fucking bewildering to me

this makes me want to re-read Crying of Lot 49

It is 100% about vote by mail

xxxp

hadn’t made that connection before but it makes sense

it’s not 100% about vote by mail. it’s also about privatizing a valuable service that is not currently lining anyone’s pockets.

mailmen/women have always been viewed upon with scorn re: the general public. hence "going postal" and other stereotypes.

but i'm sure VBM does have something to do with it in addition to that.

One that provided jobs and a path to the middle class for tens of thousands -- hundreds of thousands? -- of African Americans in the decades following WWII. There's a lot of racism baked into conservative USPS hatred. -- xp

I guess also the president's anger at USPS is tied to his hatred of Amazon, and the idea that they get special treatment from the post office.

re the USPS:

And this is how Republicans operate. Democrats have to use their leverage in the stimulus to save a basic function of government instead of fighting for better health care or more money going to the states or hospitals. And because Republicans simply don't care, it works.

— Erik Loomis (@ErikLoomis) April 12, 2020

yeah this is an old beef

https://www.cnet.com/news/trump-again-attacks-amazon-washington-post-alleging-post-office-scam/

The Republicans forced the Post Office to have that provision requiring payment of its pension fund in advance; long before voting by mail was ever an issue.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/04/11/coronavirus-economy-stimulus-democrats-leverage-trump-176783?emci=2e457973-d77c-ea11-a94c-00155d03b1e8&emdi=37b0b975-d97c-ea11-a94c-00155d03b1e8&ceid=3836941

Hardball would mean insisting on concessions that Republicans don’t want to make, like sweeping protections for the November election, or far more aggressive public health measures to contain the coronavirus. That doesn’t seem to be a game that Democrats are willing to play.

“The truth is, Democrats just aren’t as willing as Republicans to play severe hardball,” one Democratic leader said in an interview.

Democrats had similar power to shape the $2 trillion CARES Act that Congress overwhelmingly passed in March, and they didn’t drive a particularly hard bargain, getting some of what they wanted but just about nothing Trump didn’t want. Their bipartisan cooperation didn’t even get them invited to Trump’s signing ceremony, a GOP-only photo op.

And while they achieved their goals of increasing the legislation’s aid to hospitals, states and struggling families, Trump is already taking political credit for their work.

David Dayen of American Prospect says about the above Politico article by Grunwald:

I’ve no doubt that Democrats are as afraid as church mice, but let’s face it: setting the frame like there’s some fateful decision-making coming from Washington is misleading. Everyone knows how this game will end, because the die was cast when Democrats swallowed the giant corporate bailout bill with pretty much no resistance. Not only did Republicans get one thing they wanted out of any crisis response, and therefore see no need to give in on anything else, they learned from Democratic behavior that they will always cave in overwhelming numbers.

So Grunwald can list the escalating steps Democrats could conceivably take. And Pramila Jayapal can drop her nice bill to guarantee worker paychecks during the pandemic. And liberal media figures can print their list of “demands” for the next legislation. But it’s all fantasy football, relative to reality. Democrats showed their hand, and Republicans know they’re bluffing. That’s the end of the story.

If the Democrats held the presidency or the Senate, they would be in a much better position to play "severe hardball". Holding just one out of three, against two out of three is a clear disadvantage. Their other extreme disadvantage is the lack of a direct pipeline to voters for educating the public on the difference between their proposals and those of the opposition and the reasons for strategic line they are taking. Having an "official organ" to communicate with the rank and file is indispensable.

not that I don't want them to play hardball, but a shitload of the independent voting public were shitting on them for delaying the CARE act a single day last time.

they should still try it anyway but voters are often too stupid to know hwo to blame in sitches like this

Supreme Court will genuinely have blood on its hands by the end of the month.

— Peter Labuza (@labuzamovies) April 7, 2020

Good morning!

i know we don't watch these any more, but the "press conference" today is just absurd. right now he's playing a 10 minute+ (and counting) campaign video showing how he did a great, perfect job in the coronavirus response, and how all the governors love him

any network showing this (i'm watching a fox tv feed) is straight up just airing a really long trump commercial.

Amazing, huh? That little prepared film reel was absurd--four clips, two of them from Fox!

You can tell Fauci has no stomach for this--you could see real anger when he was asked if he was coerced into his statement.

I reported it on Youtube for disinformation... which most probably means nothing, but in the rare event someone at Google is not a complete spineless tool (slim chance ime) might relate?

this is one of the most pathetic, childish things i've ever seen from. amazing.

seen from (trump)

The CNN crawl ticker (or whatever it's called) says "Angry Trump Turns Briefing Into Propaganda Session."

I tuned in so very briefly while browsing the WaPo front page, and was just stunned. People are dying by the thousands and he's lying about how the US is awash with ventilators and hospital beds and Pence is using Trump's own catchphrases to call his approach to the disaster "a ten". What a lunatic egomaniac. He's a total supervillain, insane and deranged.

this is demented

it's still going strong. what a fucking imbecile

Karl read a book

i highly recommend these books:

https://michaelkelly.artofeurope.com/karl.htm

not watching it but a lot of people on my FB feed are commenting on how crazy this is. are the major networks still airing it?

Fake-news CNN, not sure if anyone else does.

beats me. after the 10 minute campaign video, he then went on an (of course) unhinged rant on how good he was and how perfect etc etc, for like 30-40 minutes straight. he really wants everyone to tell him how good he is doing

i checked in for a few seconds. hoo boy

He's now openly threatening governors who don't follow a federal open-up order.

"when someone is president of the united states, the authority is total"

I haven't watched CNN in years. MSNBC at least has decent commentators.

another case of him playing to his base, insisting on powers he knows he doesn't have

or should know he doesn't have

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/492503-trump-claims-he-not-governors-has-authority-on-opening-state

(xpost) Just came to post that remarkable Nixon-like statement. Not being American, I just assume the call to re-open (still an abstract concept as to what that exactly means) is up to the states, no? It's going to be so bizarre watching the political calculus on states' rights turned on its head. (Obviously, I'm all for the states here.)

yeah, he's full of shit

Wow. In so many words, he just clarified what he means by total authority: he has the ventilators, governors don't.

"when someone is president of the united states, the authority is total"

did he actually say that?

That's a direct quote.

GOP governors and state legislators aren’t dumb enough to give Trump the precedent here. They might be really dumb, but they like having power. Trump is suggesting he can nullify that at a whim.