Jacksonville attorneys file a lawsuit to block the city from hosting the Republican National Convention amid the coronavirus pandemic https://t.co/nfvKqfw7Gt
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) July 9, 2020
… The complaint, filed in Duval County, lists many reasons against Jacksonville hosting the event, including that it would be “a nuisance injurious to the health (and) welfare” of the city’s community. The complaint has yet to be recorded by the court clerk in Duval County’s Circuit Court, according to attorney Jim Blecke.
The lawsuit comes days after Florida, now the nation’s No. 1 hot spot for the virus, set a record last Saturday for the most new coronavirus cases in a single day for any state during the pandemic, with a total of 11,458, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. The state currently has more than 223,000 confirmed cases, according to the university.
The complaint mentioned that, following a loosening of restrictions in the state, the number of coronavirus cases has spiked and that “to avoid community spread of COVID-19 and to protect the health and welfare of Plaintiffs and the community, it is necessary and essential that all super spreader events where large numbers of people congregate in close proximity indoors not occur.”…The complaint also said that, unless the court issues a restriction, “the congregation of thousands of people in close proximity for extended periods of time will constitute a nuisance and result in massive spread of COVID-19 among the persons in attendance and throughout the City of Jacksonville and Northeast Florida and interfere in Plaintiffs’ use and enjoyment of their property and right to be free of infliction of disease and death.”
Florida faces potential challenges in handling the outbreak that could come to a head during the convention. A CNN investigation on Monday found that health authorities in the state often fail to do contact tracing, long considered a key tool in containing an outbreak…
Does it matter?
No, seriously. Does it really matter to the President?
I don’t think it does. https://t.co/EqH0TMROVw— Patrick Chovanec (@prchovanec) July 5, 2020
Ed Kilgore, at NYMag, “Why the Convention Trump Wants to Have Is Worse Than Useless”:
With each passing day, it’s becoming more obvious that the old-school, packed-hall national political convention the president is forcing his party to undertake — despite the inconvenience, cost, and risk — may have to be canceled or scaled back, lest it become a supersize version of the Trump fiasco in Tulsa.
First of all, thanks to Trump’s decision to yank key parts of the convention from its original site in Charlotte, financing the event has become a struggle, as the New York Times reports…
The financial situation has been exacerbated by the second big problem: Trump has moved his convention from a coronavirus frying pan to a coronavirus wildfire…
It’s also possible, of course, that Trump is so enamored of the kind of convention he wants that he will push on with it despite the risk of delegates not showing up or, worse yet, attending a super-spreader event that makes a lot of people sick…
Beyond that, of course, the very idea of conventions as stage-managed infomercials that dominate the airwaves with positive messaging could be dead wrong this particular year. Unless the coronavirus really does miraculously vanish between now and late August (Trump’s big acceptance speech is scheduled for August 27), the risks the GOP is taking will get a lot of attention even if the worst doesn’t happen. And the pandemic and its economic impact will probably rob both conventions of the kind of obsessive media attention they typically get.
Republicans should have stuck with Charlotte and moved to a largely virtual convention that would have been far safer and likely more effective from the party’s point of view. As it is, the whole event may simply demonstrate how the president’s narcissism is the GOP’s real — if inadvertent — reelection message.
Houston Cancels Texas GOP Convention https://t.co/fHzf2uKdFz via @politicalwire
— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) July 8, 2020
Bracketing today’s Miami event for Ds was FL Sen @JoseJavierJJR, who said DeSantis was the president’s tool:
“Trump says jump and DeSantis says, ‘how high? I absolutely think he’s a sock puppet. A sock puppet in good times is embarrassing. A sock puppet in a pandemic is deadly”
— Marc Caputo (@MarcACaputo) July 7, 2020
Calouste
29 Mississippi lawmakers have caught the ‘rona. Well, 29 as far as we know at the moment.
West of the Rockies
Is the Texas GOP fighting the cancellation of their little plague event? Cancellation wasn’t their choice.
West of the Rockies
@Calouste:
I wonder how many are Repubs.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@West of the Rockies:
Given the numbers in the MS lege, probably most. Hopefully, several die by drowning in their own lung fluid.
Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]
Dear Conservatives,
Edgar Allen Poe’s short story “The Masque of the Red Death” was meant to be a horror story/warning. Not a FREAKING INSTRUCTION MANUAL!!!!!
Redshift
I’m glad someone has finally explicitly put this in terms of “your freedumb to not wear a mask does not override my freedom to go about my everyday life without suffering severe illness or death.”
One small consolation of this whole thing is that it has made it abundantly clear what those of us paying attention knew from the gun debate, that “freedom” to conservatives means “I get to do whatever I want no matter how much harm it does to other people.”
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Redshift:
“You’re not the boss of me”. We are dealing with children.
danielx
It just hit me with a resounding thud, and confess to some shame that it took this long: Trump really does not give a flying fuck how many people die of Covid-19, as long as he’s not one of them. I truly do not care about how he was deprived of love as a child, except insofar as its lack helped turn him into the sociopath he is today.
Other people are nothing more than life sized cardboard cutouts to him, to be retained or discarded according to whether they amuse or annoy him. Events have no significance to him except for how they affect him personally or how he can manipulate them to his own advantage. A lot of people have died unnecessarily and a lot more are going to, and he does not care aside from how he can turn the situation to his personal advantage. Which is key to his ongoing rage: as a lot of people have pointed out, a virus does not care about mean tweets, threats, flattery or bribes. One such is currently fucking with his political prospects and there is nothing he can do about it.
I will never forgive those who voted for him, nor his enablers in Congress. The first because they voted for a fraud, and the evidence was right there to be seen. It’s easy to say one understands the temptation to say “fuck you!” to the world in general by voting for a criminal fool, but, you know, resisting (most) temptations and thinking logically is part of being an adult. The latter because they knew exactly what he was like and let him get away with it, in full knowledge that he was and is intellectually and morally incapable of dealing with a crisis. Now, now when it’s too late to do anything effective, now Mitch McConnell urges people to wear masks – to name one example.
My rage runneth over, and it’s not good for me.
senyordave
I would be rooting for the convention to take place 100% except that two things would happen:
burnspbesq
@West of the Rockies:
For public consumption, you betcha. Their true feelings can be seen in the decisions by pretty much every statewide office-holder to pre-record their speeches and not be physically present.
They were hoping that Turner would bail them out, and he did.
Remember, “Republican hypocrisy” is redundant.
Anne Laurie
Every person not Donald Trump is a trading card to Donald Trump. And he’s not even sophisticated enough for something like Magic: the Gathering — or even Pokemon — we’re all baseball trading cards. He swallows the strip of gum, waves his ‘trophies’ around in hopes of impressing his fellow collectors, and puts the discards in the spokes of his tricycle.
Lacuna Synechdoche
Well, maybe Trump could move the convention to someplace like South Dakota. He already knows Noemi will let him pack a convention center full of maskless old white people with potential co-morbidities up the wazoo.
senyordave
@danielx: My rage runneth over, and it’s not good for me.
My wife says I should drop politics on the internet, I am too angry most of the time. She used to have a rule, no politics while we are in our bedroom, even if we were watching TV. Now the rule is no politics upstairs.
Nothing could happen to Trump or any of his defenders over the age of 17 that would bother me. They have demeaned this country.
The cardboard cutout analogy is perfect. I have never known a person who is even close to being as bad a person as Trump is. I truly believe that he is very close to a completely worthless human being, devoid of any redeeming characteristic.
TS (the original)
Like everything the GOP has done – wherever or in whatever form they have their convention – it will be a big fail. Democrats realised they would need a virtual convention & started planning for same. The GOP will realise this a week before the convention (as is happening in Texas) & there will be no plans & no people available with the skills to run it.
Everything trump touches turns to dust.
Mai naem mobile
Well we here in Phoenix are going to have a heat wave for the next few days(114-116 degrees) so COVID should be all gone from here just like Donnie said. Gov Ducey can invite him to have his little convention here. It would do wonders for Martha McSaĺlly’s senate race.
rikyrah
Just a Petri Dish of hate?
Ruckus
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
What could you expect, hell they hired a toddler as their leader.
rikyrah
@danielx:
Not good for me either ?
rikyrah
@Calouste:
Uh uh uh??
Ruckus
@TS (the original):
Every thing he touches turns to shit, and then the shit turns to dust, but not until every single person has had to live with the stench, the flies, the possible disease.
That intermediate step is always there in shitforbrains world.
Kent
The arena they picked for the convention in Jacksonville holds about 17,000 in convention mode with seating on the floor rather than having the floor space cleared out as for basketball.
Best case scenario they do go through with it and we get another Tulsa with a weak anemic crowd and the whole story becomes why Trump and the GOP can’t get more than 6000 people to turn out for their convention in the hot zone. I wonder how they spin it if they hold a convention and no one comes. Or at least no one important. I’m sure they could fill it with random MAGA rubes if they really wanted to. It is FL after all.
James E Powell
What are the plans for the DNC? The biggest internet event in history?
mrmoshpotato
Republican National COVID-19palooza?
NotMax
@Lacuna Synechdoche
South Dakota? On the one hand, the Corn Palace has gaudy onion domes reminiscent of the Kremlin.
On the other hand, it’s got those Mooslim-y minarets.
On the third hand, imagine the sheer unadulterated sweep of garish awfulness displayed by the bekerneled murals on the outside which the campaign would rush into existence. “No, no, no! Too yellow! We need more orange corn!”
:)
mrmoshpotato
@Hkedi [Kang T. Q.]:
LOL!
ColoradoGuy
I think he is not merely indifferent, but actively malign. And why not? If the rest of humanity are nothing more than cardboard dummies, trading cards of merely temporary utility to him, why not set the country on fire? From his perspective and life experience, where’s the downside? He’s never once had to face the consequences of his actions, no matter how outrageous, and he‘s not about to start now. Why would he start to act like a normal human being? And would anyone in the GOP do anything to stop him? How’s that worked out?
Worst case, he and his criminal family fly to Russia, never to return. He often speaks to Putin on an unsecured cell phone, and surely the matter has come up in the course of conversation. Going further, what stops Putin from waging unconventional warfare against the USA, using his preferred tool of the US far right, and the agent-in-place in the White House?
Ladyraxterinok
@Lacuna Synechdoche:
IIRC there were A LOT of young people to be seen at Trump’s Mt Rushmore rally, right?
TS (the original)
@ColoradoGuy:
He could hang out with Edward Snowden.
Trump could not survive in Russia – nothing good ever happens there to people who flee their country for whatever reason (British spies & all that). Trump is only useful to Putin while in the White House – there is no doubt Russia will be working for 4 more years.
cmorenc
@ColoradoGuy:
Once Trump is no longer POTUS, he’s of no further use to Putin. Donnie’s going to find out what it’s like being on the other end of a powerful sociopath who doesn’t give two shits about the people he uses once they stop being useful to him.
Gvg
@cmorenc: I think that may be wrong because Russia would find it detrimental to future manipulation of suckers if the whole world knew they abandon former tools. On the other hand they also aren’t really a powerful nation anymore and if the whole rest of the world imposed sanctions or even threatened military action, they’d be in a bad place. Their economy is hurt worse than our by the drop in oil demand and their crooks would not like it if the western world really tracked down their money here and confiscated it. There would be too much attention to any country that sheltered Trump. I don’t think he can flee anywhere but I doubt he realizes that. He’s bad at planning.
i don’t think Putin gamed out the end of this we’ll enough either. This is not going to go well for him.
Chris Johnson
What do you mean ‘what stops’? That’s literally what’s happening with one difference: Trump is not coherent enough to be an agent. Nor is he welcome in Russia. He’s meant to die here after doing as much damage as possible. I bet there are people who’ll end up in Russia as heroes, but I’m not convinced ANY Trump family qualify: though they all think they do.
Trump is increasingly in a frenzy of killing Americans to win the love of Putin. It’s not going to happen. Trump is being used, and has been this whole time, and is too narcissistic to understand it.
And all this is exactly Putin-style unconventional warfare, and it’s going about as well for Putin as it can: there are seriously limits on how far that can go, and one of the limits is this: the worse it gets, the more Trump is limited to killing only his own most loyal and brainwashed people. The rest of us better hunker down and devote effort to remembering how things are SUPPOSED to work, because sooner than you think we will be on deck and it’ll be time to rebound.
laura
a nuisance injurious to the health (and) welfare – that phrase really sums up the republican party and its policies and trump specifically.
Looking forward to the Supreme Court’s ruling on ill douche’s taxes later this morning.