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

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.