— bb ?? (@beebigelow) April 11, 2020
President Trump at the White House just now: "This monster came and worked its horrible, horrible spell."
— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 10, 2020
He’s gonna keep right on pulling these stunts, because he’s having a good time. Also, he’s simply not capable of anything better. The onus falls on those with more intellectual autonomy — in this case, the very wealthy individuals who own & operate the news media — not to continue enabling the swollen tumor in the Oval Office.
Former NBC News Vice President @DeanLuk: "Putting people on live television who you know are going to lie, it seems to me, is journalistic malpractice." https://t.co/Hbh3AJmc6K
— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) April 10, 2020
God this is just so sad. He is mining random C-SPAN callers for praise. https://t.co/V2NUrzL7Bf
— Centrism Fan Acct ?? (@Wilson__Valdez) April 11, 2020
California networks are airing Governor Newsom’s press briefing instead of Trump. More Dem leaders need to start timing it like this.
— Mike Dorsey (@DorseyFilm) April 10, 2020
EXPERTS: we should maintain social distancing to stop the virus’ spread
LUNATIC: covid is a hoax created to stifle American prayer
NYTIMES: Some Urge Caution; Others Disagree
— Jake Maccoby (@jdmaccoby) April 11, 2020
Love the human interest angle of this Times hed. Hope the guy gets through this OK! pic.twitter.com/WqzBTIF7iW
— Chase Madar (@ChaseMadar) April 11, 2020
Don’t blame me, I voted for pic.twitter.com/X3Bpq65XEd
— Paul Musgrave?? (@profmusgrave) April 11, 2020
Sebastian
How long until “John Barron” calls into CSPAN?
I also think we should start taking a close look at the big networks in regards to public endangerment. NYS and CA could start.
The Dangerman
I have no idea what reopening the economy even means. No one is buying a car. No one is going to a theater or the restaurant for a sit down meal. No one is going to Disneyland or to a ballgame. Not until … I have no idea.
lamh36
is today April Fools Day, cause I swear I thought it was April 12!!!
What bizzaro dimension are we in right now!!!
p.a.
IANAL. There’s been talk of lawsuits against Fux News or Fux mouthpieces, but 1st Amendmant?
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
Yet another reminder of a necessary bit of clean up once/when we win in November. We already know the courtesan press will never release their cash
cowchicken, so let’s wire the carcass to their collective necks.MattF
I think ‘stunt’ is a correct and precise description of Trump’s actions. The concept that something real and serious is happening is beyond his capacity. I expect that he will ‘hereby declare’, yadda yadda, and demonstrate his irrelevance.
Jerzy Russian
I wonder if any of his enablers and supporters are embarrassed. If they are not going to stop the enabling and support, can they at least admit, out loud and in public, that they are embarrassed?
lollipopguild
@The Dangerman: You have to start somewhere…. baby steps. You can play games in empty stadiums. You can reopen Disney and universal and limit the number of people in the park at one time. You can reopen sit down restaurants and limit how close people sit to each other. You have to start somewhere somehow.
Llelldorin
@The Dangerman: I’m pretty sure it means that Repubican areas party like it’s February for a few months, until they’re where New York is now, except without all the hospitals, Cuomo, or the leverage of a large state. Then they all claim that their situation is somehow the fault of the Democrats and immigrants.
Llelldorin
@The Dangerman: I mean, in a sane universe it means increasing our testing capabilities until we can tun this into a normal quarantine with good contact tracing and let people with antibodies get back to work. That isn’t what Trump and the Trumpettes are talking about, though—they’re just saying “screw it, that’s it, enough social distancing—let’s all of you get back out there and just tough it out.”
dmsilev
@The Dangerman: You could, for instance, allow restaurants to reopen at half or one third of their nominal capacity. Allow events with ten or twenty people. That sort of thing.
for that to work, however, there needs to be a way to quickly identify hot spots, trace everyone who might have been exposed, confirm whether or not they’re carrying the virus, etc. A reliable mass-produced antibody test, combined with pervasive use of something like that smartphone based tracing system that Apple and Google announced a few days ago, would get most of the way there.
Baud
@Llelldorin:
Between the blue States and corporations, there’s going to be a lot of private demand for these capabilities even if the feds remain hamstring until January.
Kirk Spencer
@The Dangerman: But he doesn’t get that.
I think he believes (for now) that if he says “we made it, now lift those social distancing rules and open those businesses” that it will happen. That the market will soar, business (especially large corporation) profits will climb, and the disease will continue to fade away, an ugly but passed blot on his electability.
JPL
@lamh36: trump the one person who can unify the dems.
FelonyGovt
Even if places and events were “opened”, I would think most people are going to be reluctant to go for quite a while.
Keith P
Trump reportedly asked Dr Anthony Fauci whether it was possible to allow the coronavirus to ‘wash over’ the US
I kind of hope he was doing this *before* the news started running stories about how the virus is disproportionately affecting minorities, because otherwise, we’re in ethnic cleansing territory.
Geoduck
For the record, President Camacho realized he was facing a serious problem that he had no idea how to solve, found the smartest guy on the planet, and listened to his advice.
joel hanes
FTFNYT
That is all.
Renie
Just popping in to ask everyone to participate in the #buystamps campaign on twitter. I’m sure you all know how the GOP has been trying forever to privatize the Post Office and how they forced them to prefund 75 years of retiree pension & health benefits which is one of the main reasons they have no money. Now with the mail in vote campaign we need the post office more than ever and the GOP will desperately try to run it into the ground. So if you can, please go to usps.com and purchase a sheet of stamps and check out the other items they have if you can spare some dollars. Thanks.
Apologies if this has been posted about but just got online and haven’t read thru all old posts.
joel hanes
@p.a.:
<em>Lawsuits against Fox</em>
They’ve been shouting “no fire” in a theater that is on fire, and people died as a result.
The Moar You Know
@The Dangerman: Anecdata: “Talkbass”, forum for bass players. My main instrument. Someone asked if everyone was going to rush back to gigging as soon as the stay in place orders were lifted. I was surprised at the response. Overwhelming majority said “I’m not playing anywhere until there’s a vaccine and if that means I never play again, that’s fine.” These are guys who, in some cases, play for a living, and even if they’re not (me) I was still doing two four-hour gigs a week pretty much every week just because I love it that much. And the extra spending money didn’t hurt.
But there’s no fucking way I’m setting foot in any establishment that serves food or booze and has people in close contact for several hours until they’ve got a vaccine/cure. I don’t need the money and I damn sure don’t need a COVID-19 infection.
Playing with others in a tight outfit with a large audience, well, there’s nothing like it in the world and I got addicted to it back as a teenager. But again: not until there’s a vaccine/cure. No chance. It’s not worth my life.
Kent
@FelonyGovt:There are retail shops and restaurants which will probably take time to re-open. But there are also huge numbers of other businesses that do not come into direct contact with the public. Factories, food processing plants, construction firms, etc. etc.
One could imagine a regime in which say a food processing plant with 500 employees wants to re-open they are allowed to do so under strict “best practices” for sanitation and distancing in the plant itself as well as something like weekly universal testing for all employees, temperature monitoring of all employees at plant entry and exit. Isolation of employees inside the plant (no communal dining rooms etc.)
We have a huge testing regime in place for things like drug testing. Convert that to COVID testing. Make it a cost of doing business. And if you have employees properly segregated into small groups while on the job with no mixing then if you do run into an infected employee the damage is limited and controllable.
Even schools could be re-opened under those kinds of scenarios. Re-organize elementary schools so that students don’t mix in common areas and spend their entire time in one classroom (boxed lunches delivered to the classroom rather than 500 kids in the cafeteria, for example). That way if there is an outbreak it is limited to the 20 kids in one class rather than the 500 in the school. There are a LOT of possible intermediate steps.
Mass consumer businesses like bars, restaurants, sporting events, amusement parks, concerts, etc. are a whole different other problem that may take longer.
It is going to be a long slow process.
Jinchi
Seems like there might be some profiteering going on.
No points for guessing whose name keeps popping up all over this.
Sab
@Renie: There is a whole thread today on this. Who knew USPS sells stuff in addition to stamps? Totebags, backpacks, framed pictures, puzzles, t-shirts.
mrmoshpotato
@lamh36: Cenk: Oh shit! Trump really is a fucking disaster like Hillary’s supporters were saying! We can’t have four more years of sheltering in place!
mrmoshpotato
@Jerzy Russian:
No, because how do they answer, “Why the fuck did you vote for an embarrassment?”
PsiFighter37
@lamh36: Here’s what I think – perhaps Cenk is one of the few lefties online who might get the actual takeaway from 2016 and 2020…
…which is that there is zero broad groundswell in the Democratic Party, much less the general voting populace, for full-on democratic socialism. I am seeing epilogues for Bernie being written about how to fix, this, etc. etc. Honestly, it’s kind of sad, because it shows that a lot of these folks, once they are married to a position, refuse to recognize reality and say they are wrong. So I now get to see David Atkins, who I used to respect a lot (well, I liked his younger brother, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt) whinge about how things will be different next time. No – they won’t. Markos got this early on, when he was clear that electoral success, not ideological purity ponies, were the way to relevance. Unfortunately, the takeaway from 2016 was that, all of a sudden, there was actually this magical groundswell for social justice warriors and lefter and lefter policy. No – Bernie won because people hate Hillary for god knows how many reasons, and AOC getting lucky and knocking off a congressman asleep at the wheel meant little beyond that.
I’d be shocked if Cenk actually comes off his pedestal, because he and his crew have been assholes for so fucking long. But props if he actually sees the light and starts being a team player instead of pissing in the punch.
Sorry for the extended rant, but the rationalization for Wilmer failing basically is boiling down to ‘lefties can’t fail; they can only be failed’. Fuck that noise. Unfortunately, we live in America, where there is not as much appetite for liberalism, much less social democracy, sad as that may be.
PF37 +1.5
Gravenstone
Trump isn’t mining C-span for random support. He’s having it mined for him by staffers. It’s terrifying that his ego is so brittle that they have to pay people to sift through all available media just to find things to keep him propped up. I know he’s been like this a long time, but I’m sure it’s in an ever deepening downward spiral at this point. Yet, there probably is no true bottom in his need.
mrmoshpotato
@Llelldorin:
Fucking tough out a burning fever, persistent cough (getting the virus everywhere), and shortness of breath, you whimp!
hueyplong
We all knew Trump was full of shit, and that he’d FUBAR any real emergency. So it would have been difficult for him to underperform our expectations.
Yet he has. What gets me is the extent to which there appears to be no thought of saying/tweeting anything that is likely to look prescient or even reasonable two weeks later. He lives for that day’s episodes of Fox & Friends, Hannity and Carlson. Fox will clean up by omissions and flat out memory-holing things, but their audience isn’t enough people to re-elect.
Thousands and thousands of dead people kind of render Hunter Biden irrelevant.
It’s like:
“Are my methods unsound?”
“I don’t see any method at all, sir.”
Amir Khalid
@lamh36:
But when you see the howls of outrage in the comments, it’s obvious that we’re in Bernieland, where Himself is worshipped above all else. Cenk has spoken the ultimate blasphemy: praising Democratic competence above The One Who Should Be Our Leader.
mrmoshpotato
Great reply. Fuck the DSA.
Renie
@Sab: DIdn’t realize that. Sorry. Guess my post can be ‘a reminder’. You’re right I didn’t know the post office sells all that stuff either. Spent almost $100. LOL
mrmoshpotato
@FelonyGovt: Yup. Smart people would stay away like the place’s got the plague. (Too soon?)
Seriously, Dump can’t force governors to lift their Stay At Home orders.
mrmoshpotato
@Keith P: Regardless, it’s still letting-people-die territory. Highly irresponsible to say the least.
Baud
@PsiFighter37:
Bernie lost.
Another Scott
Elections have consequences.
Eyes on the prizes.
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
I was just about to post that.
The anti-Wisconsin.
Gravenstone
@Keith P: Possible? Absolutely. Advisable? Fuck no!
WTB actual President and not this insane carnival barker.
mrmoshpotato
@The Moar You Know:
All of your regular size clothes were in the wash?
Oh English, you’re fun.
mrmoshpotato
@Jinchi: Wrong answers only?
ThresherK
Tangent: My BernieBro and five of his friends declared that they weren’t lemmings and aren’t brainwashed into voting for Biden. All in the same minute.
This same BernieBro is already on their “writing in Bernie” schtick for November. And posting shit quoting Ralph (Thanks Ralph!) Nader from 2000. (This Bro was not in the military during the 20-aughts, nor were any of his family he has ever mentioned.)
Cheesy Pete, save
meus from these assholes.Ohio Mom
Renie: I’m all for buying stamps but everyone who can should call their Congresscritters too — particularly their Senators, since the roadblock will be McConnell (not sure but think he’s already sitting on a bill to help the Post Office).
SFAW
@The Moar You Know:
Helium might be a safer way to get the same effect, if you’re a singer.
Kirk Spencer
@Kent: I get and even agree with your point, but want to fix some of the details. Specifically the “food processing”, but quite an implication within.
If you are involved in producing or packaging or moving or distributing food, your business is “essential” and is probably doing excess hours. This doesn’t have to even be direct.
If your business makes boxes that food is packaged into, your business is open. If your business is a chain of convenience stores that provides gas and a little overpriced snack food, you’re essential and your business is open.
One of the things that’s extremely eye-opening is to take the list of “16 essential industries” and discover how many businesses meet the requirements. It’s a lot.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@PsiFighter37:
“Social justice warriors” (SJWs) is a right-wing snarl word, in case you’re not aware, used by the alt-right/reactionaries (though sometimes also used by brosoci*lists) to describe any moderately left social positions
mrmoshpotato
@ThresherK:
Delicious. ?
Baud
@mrmoshpotato:
Maybe they’re starlings.
Ohio Mom
Kent: Re: keeping each elementary classroom separate so if there is an outbreak, it only affects twenty kids, not five hundred: Isn’t there an adult teacher in the room, and possibly a classroom aide too? Can we please count them? Thanks.
Chyron HR
@lamh36:
This is where we find out which members of Bernie’s Revolution were true believers, and who was just in it for the grift.
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: I don’t follow.
Baud
@mrmoshpotato:
Another animal that moves in sync.
Lapassionara
@Kirk Spencer: Yes. There are a lot, but restaurants and bars, for example, are not essential and are closed. And they cannot open and just have a few people come to eat or drink and stay six feet apart. They need to be full or close to it to make money. So to do a premature declaration that “we are open” is to consign these types of businesses to failure. They won’t have enough customers to make the business go, and they won’t be eligible for the special emergency financial relief that we now have because of the emergency.
HumboldtBlue
@lollipopguild:
Fans are not going to return to stadiums until there is an effective vaccine.
And for the past four days, Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War has been my daily history lesson, a documentary I have assiduously avoided despite my keen and long love of military history.
Infuriating, gobsmackingly infuriating.
On a positive note, 65 years ago on this date, Dr. Salk introduced his polio vaccine.
Timely.
Ohio Mom
Kirk Spencer: It’s interesting to see the list of essential businesses.
Seems like most of them are not open to the general public, unlike the closed businesses we are all missing, like restaurants, gyms and rec centers, sports, concerts, movies, etc.
Calouste
@mrmoshpotato: The Democratic Socialist of America are as democratic as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. And only slightly less of a personality cult.
Ben Cisco
@Keith P:
Propublica has the first story on it I could find from 4/3. The meeting referenced in the article you quoted took place on 3/20.
Not that I would have put it past him…
mrmoshpotato
@Baud: Ah. Do starlings also want unicorn butlers?
mrmoshpotato
@Calouste: Yup.
Jeffro
@Another Scott:
@Baud:
Let’s hear it for the Old Dominion State! Although I like ‘anti-Wisconsin’ even better.
Democrats actually try to deliver on what’s good for their voters and for their states. Republicans try to deliver only on what’s good for their 1% donor class.
Btw folks, the ever-amazing Jane (“Dark Money”) Mayer has a new piece up in the New Yorker: “How Mitch McConnell Became trumpov’s Chief Enabler”
Nothing terribly new for BJ readers, but still worth a look (especially apropos of my comment about the GOP above
Jinchi
@mrmoshpotato: How about points for most creative guesses.
Jeffro
@Ohio Mom: plus, those kids are all in the same hallways multiple times a day, the same bathrooms, the same playground, and visit the same PE teacher, art teacher, etc multiple times a week.
It’s going to take some serious creativity to get the schools (K-12 or universities) open again this fall. I don’t see it, at least not with the current maladministration ignoring the need to basically test the whole country.
Ksmiami
@Llelldorin: Turn those machines back on…
J R in WV
@PsiFighter37:
“Bernie won because people hate Hillary” — SAT WHUT!?!?!?!?!
Bernie has NOT won anything but VT Senate races since, forever never !!!!!
Every time I click on the Toggle button to see what a currently pied commentor has to say, I usually see someone without two wits to rub together to spark a fire. This case is one of those cases… Bernie didn’t win anything, which is why Hillary ran against Trump. Sadly, people weren’t able to beat the Republican slant in that election. So Trump beat Hillary, and Bernie wasn’t in the race AT ALL!!!!!!
Poe Larity
My late night pleasures include pondering what addendum I will chisel into David Brooks’ gravestone.
I once bought a beer for a street guy in a east 6th Street dive who said he pissed on Bob Bullock’s gravestone in the State Cemetery as part of his trek home.
If only gofundme had existed then. So many enablers who need to be commemerated.
Mary G
@Renie: @Sab: I’ve been offline almost all day and haven’t read the post office thread yet, but I have been worried about it. I am shopping on Renie’s link and encouraged to see that they have a note up that due to a high volume of requests, items may take a little longer to ship.
@lamh36: Cenk got embarrassed in the congressional Democratic Party primary he tried to carpetbag. Lately he’s been getting a ton of shit for fighting the TYT employees’ efforts to unionize, so I think he’s trying to mend a few fences.
Jay
PsiFighter37
@J R in WV: Yep, that is my mistake – it’s not that Bernie won, but that he received as much of the vote as he did. If he ran against any other generic Democrat (which is basically what Biden is now), he doesn’t break 30-35%, tops…which is what this year is showing.
Jay
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@PsiFighter37:
Y’know, I wasn’t disagreeing with your overall message. I agree. I was just trying to tell you that term “SJW” has been used by the far-right to malign any social justice causes or moderate left social positions. It’s use should be avoided
Jay
Jay
Jay
Monala
@Ohio Mom: and what about middle and high school students, who attend much larger schools in general and have multiple classes?
eddie blake
@PsiFighter37:
cenk isn’t a lefty. he plays one on tv.
danielx
My, the Sandernistas are in a snit, aren’t they?
patrick II
@Kent:
Are you going to have a separate school bus for each of those 20 student classes?
The Pale Scot
@The Moar You Know:
Yo, Bass?
Bass-Rigged-System
Misterpuff
@Kent: The Food Processing plants never shut down. Those protocols were in place for food safety and now are overlaid with COVID-10 protocols.
The only shutdowns are plants that have a verified COVID-19 infection.
People in the agricultural/food industry have been working throughout this pandemic.
different-church-lady
So I see Briahna Joy Gray has gone completely scorched earth.
They are so bitter they are going to try to throw the election to Trump just to prove they’re right about their savior.
different-church-lady
@eddie blake: Cenk is a troll who trolls from the left. Nothing higher.
different-church-lady
@Baud: Didn’t you hear? By “any conventional metric*” Bernie did win.
(* conventional metrics must exclude actual votes)
different-church-lady
@J R in WV: Bernie won the most important thing: he prevented Hillary from becoming president. And that’s what really matters.
Fair Economist
@different-church-lady:
That was always the goal of most of Bernie’s top staff. BJG supported Russian asset Jill Stein in 2016. David Sirota wanted to destroy the federal government with Ron Paul. They’ve just changed tactics for their desire to re-elect Trump; rather than supporting a candidate (Bernie) they think will lose, they’ve switched to attacking the candidate they always thought was stronger.
SFAW
@different-church-lady:
Reading all those moronic “Biden raped Reade 300 times and has greater cognitive decline than anyone EVAH” BernBro comments is so depressing. Mainly because it looks like Bernie is going to pull the same shit all over again.
Maybe he’ll call up Gray and say “Will you cut the shit already? Do you REALLY want another four years of Trump? Just to prove your purity?” And maybe I won PowerBall this week.
different-church-lady
@SFAW:
Knee slapper!
SFAW
@different-church-lady:
I wish we could laugh about those idiots. I hope we’ll be able to on 11/4/20
SFAW
Random question: Does Bernie respect anyone’s opinion outside of his own? Amazingly enough, I’m being serious. I’m wondering if there’s anyone who could/would go to him and say “Will you grow the fuck UP already? Endorse Biden, tell your followers to support Biden as they would support you. You’ll get a lot more from a Biden Admin that way. You’ll NEVER get anything you want from Trump.”
I figure there is no such person, outside of Jane, maybe, and I doubt she would ever say that to him.
ziggy
@Jay: Wow, just awful.
Groucho48
@eddie blake:
He’s a grifter. Looks like he has decided being a BernieBro isn’t as profitable as it used to be.
James E Powell
@PsiFighter37:
It wasn’t just that people hated Hillary it was that the press/media hated (and still hate) Hillary. They ran with and blew up every claim made against her, while pretty much letting Sanders play the daring outsider, unexamined and unchallenged.
Chris Johnson
@The Moar You Know:
Moar in spandex. Now I know possibly TOO much ;)
Somehow I feel like I should have guessed you were a bass player! Entirely agree with your take on the matter, too. I have an open invitation to bring my modular synth to a local radio show dedicated to synthesis, and perform and promote my music: ain’t happening until there’s more resolution on all this. I’m game to live like I’m in a little spaceship for the foreseeable future, rather than be part of a plague that’s killing too much of America. Things are just going to be different now.
SFAW
@James E Powell:
Then again, before Traitor Turtle and his Party of Traitors began their multi-year Benghaziiii!!! charade, Hillary was THE most, or ONE of the most, admired woman/women in America. Proof that “going negative” can work on anyone. [No, I’m not ignoring the 25-year hatred the FTFTFNYT (especially Pinch, I assume) had for Hillary and Bill.]
SFAW
@Chris Johnson:
Moar heard it was much harder to tune a tuna, so he switched species.
brantl
@Ohio Mom: And then all the teachers run into each other, the lunchroom people, the janitors, the bus drivers, the crossing guards. The idea that only a few people have the chance to cross-contaminate, is pretty huge.