Day 1179 – It’s Coming In Fast and Furious
Saturday April 11, 2020
204 Days until the election on November 3rd
284 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
There is so much going on that it’s hard to keep it all at bay. I feel I’m in a bar room* brawl with my back against my good buddy and the two of us are in the center of the room surrounded by the rest of the patrons. All of them want to get a piece of us and we are circling the room trying to keep them at bay – until reinforcements arrive.
Except there is no buddy and there are no reinforcements coming, so the best I can do is circle double fast and high kick whomever tries to take a swipe. So far I’ve been lucky and I’ve kicked them in the mouth when they are just thinking about swiping.
Where to begin? OMG.
There are the stories about Trump and his merry band of cockroaches trying to steal:
– Our election
– Our country
– Everything
Meanwhile, one asks, “What is the Federal government doing to fight the pandemic?”
Good question, Little Susie, the short answer is “Nothing.” Other than holding long rambling press conferences that demonstrate Trump’s inability to do anything other than grab the stage. He’s been on stage over 19 hours and what have you learned from him? Nothing that is true. Dr. Fauci is doing what he can, but their are reports that Trump is getting tired of the facts and wants to “reopen the country.” Whatever that means. He doesn’t have the power to do any such thing. That’s the governors’ call. But Donnie is doing what he can to muck things up in that department.
The latest is he had FEMA steal the order for 500 ventilators from Colorado then he graciously (tongue in cheek here) tweeted he was giving 100 ventilators to Colorado because Corey Gardner asked for them. The Denver Post has come right out and said this is emoluments. Remember the good olde days when Republicans were outraged by Hillary as Secretary of State having her photo taken with a head of state that gave money to the Clinton Foundation? Good times. Fond memories. Now? Now their boy is carrying out a governmental run extortion scheme that will kill people and they are good with it. I mean that governor is a Democrat right? Fuck him. (Trump never got the memo that when you become president you represent all the people.)
But Colorado is this week’s victim. Last week it was Massachusetts. There the orders just disappeared and FEMA took the equipment.
Nursing homes across the U.S. are being hit hard by the virus. How bad? Let’s go to the national statistics shall we? Oh, they aren’t keeping track of that? Oh, I see. Then how do we know that nursing homes have people dying? Oh, local news articles and reports? I see. And NBC is compiling data.
And there’s a statistics group that is tracking county by county the spread of the virus. Not the Federal Government! You’d think our Federal Government would be doing this, but not under Trump. Look, he’s busy blabbering away for hours each day at a podium. It’s hard to stand there hour after hour and make up stuff. But the ratings are so good.
Then there’s the whole thing about the malaria drug. The thinking being, “Maybe it can help?” Yeah, maybe it can. Is there any evidence that it can? No. NO. NO. No. But that doesn’t stop the Donald. So what if people on Lupus, who really need the drug can no longer get it? Hey, Donald has an investment in the company that makes the drug. I’ll bet the numbers are way up! Should we try anything we can to fight this pandemic? NO. We should use are brains. It’s the thing inside the skull. Trump pointed to the general area where it should reside inside his skull the other day. We should use science, not religion (because religion has a 0% success rate against disease and pandemic). We should look at anecdotal evidence, but then look for correlation and causation before jumping on the band wagon, Just ask Steve Jobs. Oh that’s right he went to Mexico for a miracle cure for a survivable form of cancer and ended up, “What do you call it?” DEAD.
This virus kills. It is highly contagious. It kills young. It kills old. It kills. If you go out and about you are helping it to spread, because it kills.
What are the Republicans doing to help? My God. They are fighting the Democratic governors, overriding executive orders. (Oh, you thought I meant, “What are the Republicans doing to stop the spread of the virus?” No, no, Little Susie, I meant “What are the Republicans doing to HELP SPREAD THE VIRUS.”) They overturned the Governor of Kansas’ “Stay at Home” order. She has gone to court to try and stop that before Easter Sunday services. (Why? Oh, I dunno. Did you hear about the four cases in Chicago where they are tracking the spread of the disease? How about the one where the family that went to the funeral, the birthday party, and church – now 3 are dead and 17 are infected? Yeah, good times.)
The governor of Michigan has been real nice to Donnie. I think he even gave that ‘girl’ a few scrapes from the National Stockpile and she is ever so grateful. Even though she is a Democrat. Let’s remember when the Republicans were in charge of the state they poisoned the drinking water in Flint, and destroyed Detroit. Now? Now the Republicans are pissed because the governor has said you can only go out for essential stuff. No going back and forth to your rental properties, no going to the home improvement store. “Outrageous!” they say. I agree. It is outrageous. But it makes the point. Are ya gonna fight this thing as hard as you can or are you going to do what the president has done, which is ignore it as much as possible and then when it’s about to subsume you, then and only then, do as little as possible?
Meanwhile, did you know that Trump is paying people to work round the clock, night and day, to build his wall? Yeah, overtime. The whole bit. I guess so come November he can say he built the Wall. I expect we’ll see Sean Hannity proudly standing next to a “Promises Made, Promises Kept” banner. (On the backside of which is “Mission Accomplished”?)
The Republicans are doing everything they can to steal the upcoming election. Be it refusing to allow alternative ways of voting. (“Lord no, then everyone could vote and we would surely lose.”) To not putting people on voting roles, to restricting hours and places to vote (especially in Democratically strong areas. Look what they did in Milwaukee – cutting polling places from 180 to 5.)
But that’s not the worst of it, and it’s hard to know what is. But they are trying to scream “Pandemic! We must be given unquestioned power.” Trump is doing his part; firing Inspector Generals so we won’t know what he is doing or where our $2,000,000,000,000.00 is being spent. Appointing “acting” folks everywhere so they aren’t vetted by Congress, because God knows many of them wouldn’t stand a chance of passing. (Like that “acting” navy guy who went to Guam 6,000 miles away to tell the crew of the aircraft carrier that their commanding officer was a bad guy for trying to help during a pandemic on board their ship.)
Meanwhile, the thing that will end this pandemic is knowledge. Who has the disease, who’s had it (and are they now immune?). This requires testing. How are we doing on that? Last week, or earlier this week the Federal Government moved to shutdown the testing facilities they had in place. The ones that look at the swabs. They got caught and said, “Okay. We’ll keep them open – for now.” We’ve got ten military grade testing facilities across the country. We aren’t using them. Why not? No orders. I’ve got to wonder, “Is that on purpose or do Trump and Pense not know?” Hard to say. In the end it doesn’t matter. We are not using the labs that could do all the testing we need. Nope, not gonna use them – wouldn’t be prudent.
And Fox News? They are talking about “Let’s open up the country.” It’s no longer clear to me if they are following Trump or Trump is following them, Kind of reminds me of a tableau by Edward Kienholtz. In it politicians are poised in a circle. They have no pants on and each man is reaching behind himself to grab the penis of the person behind him. It is entitled it “My Country tis of Thee.”
Look up:
Edward Kienholtz “My Country tis of Thee”
(I can’t find an image that’s not copyrighted.)
But don’t be fooled by what the folks at Fox say on air. Off air they are wearing masks. Rupert Murdoch cancelled his birthday party. The guy is 89 years old. One whiff of the virus and he could be dead.
As far as we know, and this isn’t much, but the people who die from the virus tend to be people who were heavily exposed to it.
So …
Stay at Home
Shelter in Place
Don’t be Stupid
No Exceptions
(No Little Susie, No you can’t. Sorry.)
Trump is and will remain, the clueless, feckless, uncaring person he has always been.
Deal with it.
204 Days until the election on November 3rd
284 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
PS Angkor Wat, Southern Gallery, first level
PPS If Hillary Clinton had been President this pandemic would not have happened. Just Sayin’
PPPS The local lifelong learning center has gone to tele teaching. They had 120 signed up for a Vincent Van Gogh lecture. Their largest room holds fifty.
- ( Trying apostrophe footnotes at the bottom, rather than in-line. Please let me know your preference. ) Oh, the footnote? Okay. “Do you know the difference between a cocktail lounge and an elephant’s fart? ( One is pronounced “bar room” and the other is “BARUUM!” ) Ha ha ha, I’m a riot. ( I still remember who told me that joke. I was 17. )
