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

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.