That is me 100% as well. I just don't have the words to say it like you did.

The thing that astounds me is how the Republican party is just falling in line with his bull shit. I stayed away from politics because I believe they are all dirty in some way and they all just want the power and wealth. Trump has confirmed that for me by a mile.

I just can't believe there are so many people falling in line behind this guy.

I have a lot of MAGA friends and family as well. There are people I care deeply about who believe some of this bull shit. With some of them, I ignore it and we don't talk about it because if we did it would ruin our relationship. I don't want that.

I recently reconnected with my father after 17 years. That's a long story.

Part of the problem with him is he's a racist and misogynist. I reconnected with him right at near the beginning of all of the lock downs, etc.

I realized while talk to him that he looks at liberals like he does African Americans and woman. He talks about them the same way. He thinks they are lesser human beings. He's just like most of these stereotypical MAGA idiots.

We can't really change the way they think. All we can really do it wait for them to die out before this shit really goes away.

"Hey, you look down."

"I am down. I have a problem."

"Oh, what's your problem?"

"I dislike our troops, and I want to make sure that they don't receive benefits. But I also love coronavirus and want to make sure that it spreads a lot. And I'm torn between which goal I should work toward. Do I hate the troops more? Or do I love coronavirus more? I can't choose."

"Ah. Turn that frown upside down! What if I told you that, thanks to the current GOP, you don't have to choose? You can do both! Just keep these guys in power come November, and you'll hurt the troops AND help the virus. It's a win/win!"

NEW: I obtained a recording of a recent call with top Trump admin officials discussing a June 24 "hard stop" for the 40k+ National Guard members who are the backbone of coronavirus testing/contact tracing/food delivery in many states https://t.co/xK3VRLXx0v

— Alice Miranda Ollstein (@AliceOllstein) May 19, 2020

lol, i do loves me some albionarratives...

"We like the numbers where they are..."

In other news... queue this up for three days of outrage, maybe timed to distract everyone from crimes or coverups or whatnot...

Trump will not be unveiling Barack Obama's official White House portrait, according to people familiar with the matter. The tradition will likely be skipped for the first time in decades. https://t.co/kzAaGfeef7

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) May 19, 2020

I didn't realize what the June 24th deadline signified. This makes it clearer: he wants to be a wartime President but not actually give the troops their benefits.

SI

June 24 will mark 89 days since thousands of Guard members first went on federal deployment in March. Guard members qualify for key retirement and education benefits after 90 days. ‘Hard stop’: States could lose National Guard virus workers - POLITICO
— Alice Miranda Ollstein (@AliceOllstein) May 19, 2020

He is such a heartless bastard. :banghead:

But taking a knee is insulting the troops

Like why do you even do that? There's no gain.

Sure, he doesn't care about the troops. But he also doesn't care about the deficit or VA or anything like that. So why do it?

There has to be something I'm missing here, right?

SI

I think that he does not care, but that some beancounters in the adminstration do. Less money for benefits means more money for contractors.

That said, I imagine that this is one of those instances where the media will have actually helped. Now that the story is out, people will complain, and the WH will keep these guys on and say that was always the plan and just look at that fake news saying that we were planning to cut them off after 89 days.

The DoT "reassigned" the acting IG that was investigating McConnell's wife and Trump has nominated one of the administration's attorneys from the Justice Department as his replacement.

Trump tries to soothe anxious GOP senators | TheHill

On the presidential race, the senator said Trump came to the meeting armed with his own numbers, which contradicted recent public polls showing him trailing Biden in key swing states.

“The president had polls showing how well he’s doing,” said the source.

Trump painted a rosier picture of Republican prospects than indicated by recent polls showing Biden leading Trump in states such as Arizona and Florida, which are crucial to his reelection.

Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Republicans are well aware of the polling ahead of this year’s election but noted that Trump doesn’t appear concerned.

“We all pretty much see the poll numbers,” Cornyn said, but added of Trump: “He actually was pretty proud of where his numbers were.”

Oh, child please. The President of our country is being fed Flintstones vitamins from a bottle with HYDROXIKLORINE written in magic marker on some masking tape, and jacking off to polls that some GOP page has tossed together in Excel.

I have a feeling that the standards for presidents going forward are going to be so low, because the argument will always be (to the GOP), "doesn't matter. trump did it and you didn't care, so whatever. "

And part of me feels disdain at that and the other part of me is like, "watch us show you how it's gonna be done now."

The real enemy is... checks notes...

State of Nevada “thinks” that they can send out illegal vote by mail ballots, creating a great Voter Fraud scenario for the State and the U.S. They can’t! If they do, “I think” I can hold up funds to the State. Sorry, but you must not cheat in elections. @RussVought45 @USTreasury

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 20, 2020

...a swing state.

https://www.cnbc.com/2020/05/20/coro...expansion.html


“He has peddled the idea that voting by mail leads to voter fraud, but there is no evidence that this is true. Earlier this year, Trump submitted an absentee ballot to vote for himself in Florida’s presidential primary. “

That's the kind of shit I am worried about. He is going to steal the election with some kind of bull shit.

He's going to lose his shit when he finds out how Washington state has been voting for the past decade.

Does he know Iowa and Georgia mailed out applications too?

He and Melania voted by mail for a Florida election

He just threatened Michigan too after they announced they would send out applications to vote by mail to all registered voters.

This is some 3rd world despot shit. Well done America.

I'm a public defender. And if I ask a co-worker about a trial he has upcoming, and his response is "Well, I've seen the evidence against our client. And I can say that our client is convinced that he's going to win" that I understand exactly what my co-worker is saying and not saying by that statement.

Also, why is Trump convinced that making it easier for older, less motivated, low information voters to vote will be bad for him? They probably lean GOP. And it seems like VBM would get them to vote in higher numbers than they would otherwise.

There was no quid pro quo

What info exists shows that there's no partisan advantage to vote by mail.

dola

Another Lincoln Project ad with an intended audience of one.

This is just another example that @realDonaldTrump is the worst manager America has ever seen. Don, you got conned … by your IT guy. pic.twitter.com/x5i7GRqEYb

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) May 20, 2020

Yes. But everyone (Dems and GOP) is acting like there is. I think that this is a place where the numbers just don't back up people's gut feelings.

Definitely. I've had some interesting conversations with people who are totally opposed to it on not-partisan grounds (these are generally apolitical people), but just that they are totally convinced it opens the floodgates to voter fraud. Point out that there's actually no evidence of that, and what a fool's errand wide-spread voter fraud is to begin with, and … crickets. It's just one of those things that's too different, a bridge too far, for some people to accept.

It's kind of like how the same people who love ATMs will hate on self check-out lines for 'taking away jobs'. It's more an ingrained cultural thing than any sort of reasoned objection.

Oh God, not to get too off topic, but I don't get the folks that are so adamantly anti self-checkout and say things like "I don't work for you". Like... ok... but let me use self-checkout so I can take my 4 things and go rather than stand for 20 minutes in line. Ok, I guess 'less' service while checking out. I've traded speed for full service.

We've now spent 800 pages talking about this jackhole. What a waste of time.

It certainly is a strange hill to die on

Anti-Lockdown Protests Originated With Tight-Knit Group Who Share Bigger Goal: Trump 2020

So, I guess this is the sort of thing that has the 45ers all abuzz that Snopes is a leftist fake news Soros propaganda jews thing, or whatever.

Is this media bias? I feel I lack the judgment to assess that fairly.

It's just following the model of the Tea Party.

Looking at current polling on re-opening and it would lead one to think that protests must be less than organic uprisings.

I'd like to go back to the era when we phased out elevator men. Were people all like, "Oh, they expect us to just push the button ourselves, now?"

A full-on Q supporter is the GOP nominee for Senate in Oregon.

dola

Remember the mask sanitizing machines Trump touted that would cost 1 mil each and allow masks to be reused 20 times?

Turns out they ended up costing 10 mil each and allow a mask to be reused 4 times.

Everything's a con.

They also got liability protection so doctors and nurses can't sue them if their product doesn't work.

when

I know it's just a cheapshot, but...

Trump: "When you say per capita, there's many per capitas. Is this like per capita relative to what?"
How did this guy made it through elementary school? pic.twitter.com/Y6F7NhXD8w

— Nico COVID Haircut XW (@Nicoxw1) May 20, 2020

He's just gleefully dumb about... things. And anyone who might have served in the role of saying afterward "by the way, sir, ummm..." has surely been fired by now, so they are all in full emperor clothes mode. It's... idano... admirable in its purity, the foulness of it all.

Seems to fit with the Times' story today:

Nearly Half Of The Twitter Accounts Discussing ‘Reopening America’ May Be Bots | Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science

This is one of those facts that is obvious when you look at the amount of attention "reopen!" is getting compared to the polls showing what people actually think.

...so if Carnegie can figure out which are bots then why are they still up and runnings?

SI

Glad we can finally stop pretending that Fox News is nothing more than a propaganda arm of the Republican party.

Donald J. Trump on Twitter: "Many will disagree, but @FoxNews is doing nothing to help Republicans, and me, get re-elected on November 3rd. Sure, there are some truly GREAT people on Fox, but you also have some real “garbage� littered all over the network, people like Dummy Juan Williams, Schumerite Chris..."

Because Facebook and Twitter want to put very little resources in fighting them.

Spot on:

The thing about Donald Trump is his SHEER IMPLAUSABILITY as a fictional villain. He’s cartoonishly always-maximally-wrong and in the dumbest and evilest possible way. It strains the willing suspension of disbelief: one looks for a plan, but there’s nothing there. @BrandesStoddard

— Charlie Stross (@cstross) May 21, 2020

How about we don't do something stupid like that?

That worked excellently for the Soviet Union. It's why we're Communists now, after all.

“I didn’t want to give the press the pleasure of seeing it,” Trump said.

Because the POTUS is a 5-year old child.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...35f_story.html

Watching Trump praise Henry Ford for good bloodlines is rather cringey.

Sean Hannity and some others are killing Bernie for his latest communist statement:

Trevor Noah is bringing it all together.

What a well thought out, and coherent plan. I don't mind saying that it's the sort of decision that will really bring this nation together, for the benefit of all of us really.

You know though. He wouldn't take any responsibility before Covid. He actively used the federal government to take supplies away from states when he wanted to. He has, at the same time, lead a process that has specific guidelines for opening, and railed against states that were following procedure AND railed against those that were throwing caution to the wind. He threatened governors with his 'absolute authority' and then say, no, you go do it. Just for the sake of equanimity, he really needs to come out and talk down to any churches that open up with little to no regard for public health. You know, just to keep everyone up front about his big plan.

It's this kind of thing that convinces me Trump and his team aren't geniuses. The whole weekend was set to be about Biden gaffes, but not anymore.

Does he even have the authority to override governors for something like that?

Nah

No, but...I can see churches using this to defy any state that does not allow them to open. If they arrest or fine them, the feds then can stand with them in court. It is a gesture that will be loved in the religious far-right.

Meh, let the churches open. Enclosed space, people close together singing. Generally older population. That will go well.

He's gonna wipe out his base, then be mad at them for dying.

No, just playing to evangelicals. They love nothing more than when you play to their persecution complex.

Except... so much of the panic language is based on this being Ebola. Like everybody just dies. It's not. 99%, or a lot more, are fine.

But a lot of his base are 65+. Church goers in particular are an older group (something we church leaders are trying to figure out how to stop and reverse)

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

I would say the mortality rate for Trump supporters would be considerably higher.

They tend to be older, slow to embrace science, and at the risk of generalizing come from areas where people are less healthy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/u...ary-check.html

Press Secretary shows off the check Trump donated to the Depy of Health and Human Services to help in the fight against the coronavirus. Only problem? The check also displayed the president's private bank account and routing numbers. Oops

Joe Biden: hold my beer

True. I was joking but there is a truth of what I said before that Trump is just going to Trump. If his supporters die, not his fault, if they are fine, he'll state he knew all along that it wasn't worth worrying over.

With the possible suppression of data, we don't really know the extent of the virus. It may be ebbing, it may be a second wave.

I do think that there isn't much faith in the administration handling it.

We should open the doors and let anyone from Hong Kong immigrate.

We won't. But we should.

History buffs will know who made that saying on the effigy famous. Always interesting see how certain demographics get more leeway than others.

Gun-toting anti-shutdown protesters hung Gov. Andy Beshear in effigy and then marched the short distance to his house, chanting for him to come out of his house. Don’t know if he and his wife and young children were home. https://t.co/is9A0xS6Ph

— Joe Sonka �� (@joesonka) May 24, 2020

Hong Kong is "lost". Sooner or later the "2 systems" will become "1 system".

I'd certainly want immigration to the US be easier for the well educated. The better answer may be to help Taiwan (and GB) take them in.

Don't know. They are in a bad position.

So the party of Lincoln, quotes his assassin, another stellar example of life at the bottom of the gene pool.

Yes, I can't believe they support Brutus assassinating Julius Caesar. Can't we let Caesar be dead in piece. I mean, why would....oh, wait...John Wilkes Booth. Oh, never mind.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/ar...sident/612031/

This article explores the subject that I struggle to wrap my head around.

Good article, thanks for linking it. This quote pulled from the last paragraph is what it really boils down to:

“I think that working men, the kind raised as I was, know what kind of “man” Trump is. And still, the gratification they get from seeing Trump enrage the rest of the country is enough to earn their indulgence.”

He’s not a loved figure, he’s just seen as their only champion against a hated enemy. Which begs the questions of why the other side is so hated.
I thought it was just Hillary, during the campaign I saw a lot of Facebook post saying essentially “Can you imagine four years of that woman telling you what to do?” My mistake was assuming “that woman” was the important part, when really it’s the “telling you what to do” that can’t be tolerated. And I get it. I’m a card carrying liberal at this point, but even I can’t listen to one of these woke activists for more than 30 seconds without wanting to jam sharp objects in my ears. If I listened to Fox and actually thought that’s what a Democratic administration would look like I might not vote for it either.

100K dead and the right still won't hold Trump even somewhat accountable. We are so lost as a nation.

I fear the only way things improve with the virus is if Biden wins in November and he's able to do something come January when he takes office.

Well the original death estimates were as high as 2,000,000.

So Trump and his decisive actions alone have saved 1,900,000 lives even while dealing with governors who just want to ruin him.

/sarcasm

Great article, I'm still digesting it. But I feel like my immediate reaction is that the men the author describes are an older generation. I don't think the masculine stereotypes of the 40-70 year olds match that of the "Greatest Generation." The answer probably lies somewhere in there.

I think this states it well, from that article:

"It should not be a surprise then, that Trump is a hero to a culture in which so many men are already trapped in perpetual adolescence. And especially for men who feel like life might have passed them by, whose fondest memories are rooted somewhere in their own personal Wonder Years from elementary school until high-school graduation, Trump is a walking permission slip to shrug off the responsibilities of manhood."

I think that the generation of men following after the WWII generation may say they respect the ideals of that generation, they don't generally follow it. Many are, just as this says, trapped in a perpetual adolescence rather than the sort of stoic manhood they say they adore. Trump does speak to that.

I think one of the most interesting things I've witnessed through Trump's time in the political spotlight is how much it highlights the way in which people assimilate into whatever they latch onto.

My wife's stepfather grew up in SoCal as a laid back surfer type. Since moving the Texas 15-20 years ago he's become a conservative and Trump's Presidency has pushed him to be far more conservative than he ever was. He's now a big gun nut and has fully embraced religion while also becoming what is essentially an alt-right facebook troll. He's a great guy and someone any one of us could sit and have a beer with while watching football, but his changes just over the past 3 years have really gotten my wife's attention. It's like he feels compelled to become part of that culture.

This is a good point. There are lots of folks (and not necessarily all boomers) that will claim they want to emulate the values of the silent generation....but the great majority of those folks are not-at-all silent.

I kindof want to create a poll and see where everyone will think the death toll will end up, kindof a snapshot of what all predict today. To me, we're not even halfway home and I think the final number will be closer to (above?) 500K than 100K. This will especially be true if we look at mortality rates across the board (i.e. the places that were reporting and will report 3-4x normal rates) and not just the ones that were tested and confirmed COVID-positive before death.

As with so much of this pandemic, I'd be very happy to be wrong.

SI

I feel like response under a Hillary presidency would have been worse. Likelihood she has a republican congress in both houses and austerity measures would have been in full effect in both houses.

And this is not over yet. The 2nd wave is coming.

Party on Garth

If you don't, I will :p

We haven't had a Covid poll in like a week!

I'm thinking the buckets would be something like
>200K
200K-300K
300K-400K
400K-500K
500K-1M
1M-2M
>2M

Maybe just squeeze the 200-300, 300-400, and 400-500 into 200-350, 350-500 (i.e. closer to 200k or closer to 500k).

And there'd have to be some ground rules. Like are we talking "official" numbers or what we'll be reading about in history books in 50 years (where we try to incorporate death rates for cities, etc).

Seems like it could be public with no issues.

SI

This whole Joe Scarbrough thing... in any other presidency the American Public would be in an uproar but of course, since DT has insinuated before that people may or may not have been involved in murders the society collectively yawns. The issue is that the bar has been lowered or dissolved in acid that we'll never be able to recover any semblance of the "high ground" ever again. I truly believe, 100% that DT and his cult of personality will begin to plant seeds (which he's already done) and put water on them and grow them about a rigged election, one in which the Democracy was subverted, and he will not leave office without the Secret service or Military escorting him out of the WH. He'll have taken some Republicans all the way to the precipice of actually helping a dictatorship attempt to take hold and actually have to think whether or not going against DT this time is the hill to die on when it has been excavated at every side until it's just a small node to put one leg of a stool on.

Feel bad for the woman's family. Some pretty shitty old wounds being opened by a really unwell person.

Most of them would also crap their pants if they had to storm the beach at Normandy. They want to play the part, and tell everyone how much they are the part, but they are just paper tigers

The problem with the death counts (and infection counts) is that most intelligent people (scientists and alike) are fairly certain that they are underestimated. Look at Florida's pneumonia death spike the month or two before we started tallying Covid deaths. Probably a large percentage of that delta can likely be attributed to Covid, but not with certainty. So about 40% of the country will listen to dear leader when he cries that revised death counts are just inflated to make him look bad.

Same with infection rates, it is likely that the death rate is not much higher than the flu if we tested as rigorously as that. But the death rate is more highly concentrated in the older bracket and the spread is much higher. All these things put together will mean any numbers are totally meaningless for a chunk of the population.

DoJ drops investigation into Sen. Loeffler.

The pool of corruption is bottomless.

Damn, where do I get my inside info?

What a coincidence.

Sen. Loeffler’s husband cuts $1 million check to pro-Trump super PAC - POLITICO

Only costs $1M? Damn - that's a bargain

SI

Trump going to war with Twitter on Twitter has so much potential (for chaos, entertainment & hopefully distracting him from a last-second nuclear arms race), don't fuck it up big guy!

Because I follow a bunch of law professors on Twitter, I saw a flood of the same reaction to President Trump's denouncement of Twitter's fact check--"Trump's understanding of the First Amendment is very wrong, and here's specifically why . . ."

And, three and a half years in, I think I am starting to get Trump's appeal. It isn't that Trump's take on the First Amendment leads to a result you like. It isn't that Trump's take on the First Amendment is grounded in principles in which you believe. It isn't that Trump's take on the First Amendment is one piece that fits in the mosaic of American conservative thought. It is that Trump's take on the First Amendment is your take on the First Amendment. He can say whatever he wants, and the people who disagree with him can't say anything. That's what he believes it says. And, critically, that's what most of us believe it says.

We all know vaguely what the First Amendment says. But, boy, it sure seems that when the law professors and judges get a hold of it, they fuck it up. Guys get to burn flags. Those weirdos get to protest at soldier's funerals. There's too much praying at school. Or there isn't enough praying at school. That guy has to bake that gay wedding cake. Or he does not have to bake it.

Whatever.

The First Amendment is easy. I get free speech. You shut the fuck up. And Trump gets the unwavering support of everyone who feels condescended to whenever some judge or law professor tries to correct them.

Wedding cakes and masks are all the proof you need.

I think it's all about cruelty. Growing up in a rural community, cruelty was how one expressed manhood. Cruelty to other men, by bullying and isolating, cruelty to women, by treating them as disposable objects for gratification and physically dominating them when necessary, cruelty to animals, by needlessly killing and abuse just to show who is boss, and cruelty to self, by not being allowed to express and ultimately feel pain and emotions associated with femininity. That's what I chased as a kid, but I was never able to do everything in the way that would make me respected. Sure it eventually fucks you up and leaves you isolated and full of rage, but that's what it means to be a man.

Trump is the ideal man of cruelty, and to people still living with that as an embodiment of manhood, I can see the appeal. Trump says cruelty is okay and a lack of cruelty makes you less of a man.

Yeah, along those same lines, I am continually amazed at how robust & self-sustaining 'do & say whatever you want' is as a lifestyle/model-of-corruption.

You would think that putting as little effort as possible into the planning and/or concealment of one's grift would be a recipe for disaster. Instead it's somehow a recipe for Teflon, and the endless layering of incompetence on top of incompetence sends the righteous, capable folks running away in frustration, rather than trying to confront or contain the slobbering beast.

...I want to say that anyone putting in even a fraction more effort or thought would probably have failed before placing the first card, let alone building the same kind of house as Donald Trump...but I also don't want to ignore how essential being born into money & power were to whatever makes up his unique formula. Practically from birth he's been able to throw mountains of money and influence at whatever realities he doesn't want to believe until they bend, one way or another.