…okay…so…full disclosure…I haven’t figured out what yet but there might need to be some sort of amusement available at the bottom of this because somewhere between there & here there’s a better than fair chance I may kinda go off on one
…we’ve all been steeping in this morass of inconceivable bullshit & outright connivance by people in positions of power for a while now…& maybe there’s a little of that frog-in-hot-water thing that’s gone on or whatever but for a lot of us that’s basically pretty exhausting simply because the instinctive reaction to so much of it is the sort of visceral rage that can leave you thinking the only thing keeping you upright is the seething tension created by a vast amount of righteous ire looking for a place to vent
…& yet
…& yet somehow apparently I simply can’t acclimatize to that…because day after day some fresh bit of bullshit bubbles up to the top of the fetid stinking mass that retains the capacity to be shocking because – despite being entirely certain that lower depths to plumb simply can not reasonably be supposed to be a credible possibility…lo & behold…down these assholes go
Mr. Trump told Fox News’ Sean Hannity in a Wednesday night phone interview that he doesn’t believe the death rate from the spreading virus is as high as 3.4% — the rate stated by World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus Wednesday — pointing out that many people might have mild symptoms and never report their cases and “get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work.” The president’s remarks highlight a frequent criticism of the administration’s stringent requirements for testing up to this point: that because the tests have been scarce, the number of those who have been infected is likely significantly higher than what has been reported.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-says-he-thinks-3-4-coronavirus-death-rate-is-a-false-number/
…that little gem fit right in with his “hunch” that the mortality rate was more like “1%…or even less than 1” rather than the 3-&-some% the CDC fucking told the asshole was the accurate number…or as accurate as they can make it given the circumstances…& with which a number of other nations agree…so he sure as shit wasn’t saying those people shouldn’t have been going to those jobs all full of a virus none of us have a shot at being immune to
Inside Trump Administration, Debate Raged Over What to Tell Public
…now I generally & genuinely think that the folks at the CDC do an amazing thing…so when I say assholes…I’m not talking about the folks out there trying to have people not die of shit that we can prevent them dying from
…& it may not be true that the grand gizzard of the ignorant-ass-whiter-shade-of-orange chapter of the too-fucking-stupid-to-live shitbag brigade has actually spent his term of office taking their funding away…but he sure as shit asked if he could in every damn budget he proposed…because
THE. MAN. IS. TOO. FUCKING. DUMB. TO. ADMIT. WHEN. HE. DOESN’T. FUCKING. KNOW. SHIT.
…which, yes, is all the damn time but we’re talking about shit where you can’t throw money at lawyers until what you say is true is “technically, for legal purposes, not a lie – in the sense of being able to present evidence to that effect to a jury”…because people are fucking dead
…I know I’m all bent out of shape because the unpalatable prospect of the marmalade mandarin actually gaming his sagging ass past the post in the electoral college for an encore thanks to people who’ve been drinking his sleepy-joe-biden kool aid for years now…most of whom think bernie sanders is the literal devil incarnate here to turn the US into the USSR…is…against all logic & reason…not a fucking impossibility
…& yes…if I’m entirely honest I think Bernie fucked up by running at all because even now the party itself would rather risk a repeat of literally every effort that backfired on them when trying to deny him the ticket in favor of Hillary in order to furnish Joe freaking Biden as the chosen one here to deliver us from the purgatory of this malignancy of a term of office
…& yes, I think that once past the insanity of the primary season a Warren ticket would have fucking crushed this quivering mass of grift & bottomless self-serving, vapid, incestuous bullshit in ways that neither of the remaining candidates has a shot at doing even on their best day
…& yes, I think there’s a better than fair chance that part of the reason the Sanders campaign has enjoyed greater traction than she did very likely has some of its roots in all the same definitively un-american places that were detailed in the Mueller report as having contributed to burning people on “Bernie Bros” last go around…because those chucklefucks with their fancybears & guccifer2.0s & that whole Internet Research Agency bullshit factory with their shitty little memes & their decades of practice in exactly this kind of shit never did let up
…& that’s just one state-level contributor to fucking with this shit…maybe a shit-load of the US couldn’t give a damn about the rest of the world but it oh-so-very-much does not go both ways
https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/DNI_NCSC_Elections_Brochure_Final.pdf
…& not a damn thing has been done to make it anything but easy for them by a president who needs every string he can pull if he’s got any kind of shot at riding out the statute of limitations for some of his crime-ing in office where he can hide behind the apron strings of the big bad GOP like the frightened child locked in the body of a desperately out of shape old man that he so very clearly is
…think about it…if they’re still showing up with instagram accounts to go along with all the sock puppet based astroturfing & twitter bot dogpile-ing & all the rest of it…which they very much fucking are
…then once again…while it may very well not be “the” reason that shit is shaking out the way it is…to deny that it contributed to current circumstances is, with apologies to anyone who feels otherwise, hopelessly naive
…now I’ll get over the whole Warren dropping out thing…eventually…say in about 20 years or so…& even before I do I will happily bang on from here to November about the approximately infinite number of ways that either Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders would make a better president than the inchoate incumbent…which they would…not least simply by being an actual fucking president…who knew what the term actually meant & the post actually requires
…but before I try to wind my neck in & stop banging on about what an actual fucking travesty it is that someone who literally did all the homework, talks the talk, walks the walk…& tore the everloving shit out of a smug-ass money-talks candidate with no business being on the same debate stage she occupied…could not gain traction in this race
…I gotta ask…why the fuck does she even have to fucking answer this?
“Gender in this race, you know, that is the trap question for every woman. If you say, ‘yeah, there was sexism in this race,’ everyone says ‘whiner,'” she said. “And if you say, ‘no, there was no sexism,’ about a bazillion women think, ‘what planet do you live on?'”
one smart lady answers one dumb question…
…like…if you didn’t know that answer before you asked that question what the fuck are you thinking claiming to be qualified for life as a journalist?
…& if you did & literally your only reason for asking it was exactly the cited attempt to trip the lady up while she’s in the middle of stepping aside…fuck you very much
germany screws the palestinians too (15 minutes):
People are gonna die due to Trump’s inaction and his fans are gonna cheer. I’m trying to emotionally prepare myself for this and not go on a multistate killing spree.
“Luckily” it’s the baby boomers at most risk – his constituents will literally be cheering on their peers’ deaths.
we’re running out of paracetamol…lol
out of all the side effects of corona i did not see that one coming
(tho i guess antibiotics could be a bigger problem)
haha….ted cruz is in quarantine
been a while since ive seen him in the news over here…lol
I know we entered the worst timeline in 2016 but at times it’s so incredibly inconceivable what life is like now.
The Surgeon General went on TV today to say that Trump, who doesn’t sleep and wears adult diapers, is “healthier than he (the Surgeon General) is.”
I really don’t know what type of person you have to be to think of these last four years as a triumph. Not even that you are a rich person protected from the fallout, just a regular person who can walk through this life and be okay with any of this.
In news that should surprise NO one, Trumpty-dumpty is looking to prop up his *own* industry, should Corona do what is expected,while shafting the poor,sick, and elderly:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tax-breaks-travel-industry-social-security-cuts_n_5e63274dc5b6055728054a6d
And, mind you, this is *on top of* the…. millions(? We can’t honestly be sure right now🤨), which have already been spent by our government at Trump-branded properties;
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-secret-service-golf-costs_n_5e625475c5b647a5bd30d7ea
And never forget that Trump’s constant whinging about “Intrest rates NEED to be Dropped!”
Because THAT is a self-serving thing, too. If interest rates drop, the amount Mango Mussolini owes Deutsche (and *any* other lenders he owes…. cough… oligarchs… cough…) cost Trump less;
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trump-puts-his-own-financial-interests-first-when-he-badgers-the-fed-to-cut-interest-rates-2019-09-12
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-company-could-save-millions-if-interest-rates-fall-as-he-demands/2019/08/24/5e5df684-c5a9-11e9-b5e4-54aa56d5b7ce_story.html
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-federal-reserve-interest-rates-zero-8-million_n_5d79530de4b0fc7153415d37
We are about to enter the phase we saw after the first part of the Iraq War. Anyone demanding explanations and fixes to a fiasco will be attacked as divisive and hurting what we are assured are good faith efforts to fix “errors” or “mistakes” or some other vague term designed to evade responsibility.
We’ll be told not to look back, not to get caught up in the blame game, not to divert resources from the “real” effort.
Eventually we’ll get to the point where we’ll be told it is too late to fix anything and the people who died won’t be coming back so we might as well just accept it.
The media will happily dodge its own responsibility for swallowing and regurgitating lies and misinformation. They’ll get diverted into trivia, and pretend that the track records of the stooges they quote and host don’t matter. They’ll engage in both sides false balancing and focus on politics over expertise. This will be an event which demands making choices and stating the obvious, and of course the media will run and hide from their duty.
I think that’s an apt description of the current climate right now.
The administration is stonewalling everyone on the facts and trying to assure us that they’ve got it all under control. Meanwhile, the media isn’t doing any investigation into the multiple accounts of people who tested positive after being refused a test. The media abdicated it’s responsibility for scrutiny once the black president left.
Truly, this is just the culmination of four years of Trump telling us not to believe what we see and the media agreeing that alternative facts are worth debating. And people will die, but they’ll be some combination of poor, sick, and old for which our society readily abandons in the best of times.
It’s much easier to do that when the propaganda wing of your party is deemed to be a “fair and balanced”, unimpeachable (irony intentional) authority. Lee Atwater’s Southern Strategy never would have gotten this much traction had Roger Ailes not been along for the ride every step of the way. Between him, Murdoch and Rush, they controlled the message on TV and the radio and helped breed the family tree that ensued – Beck, Hannity, Carlson, and so on.
Meanwhile, the left had… Air America and MSNBC. Good Gawd, there’s a lotta catchup to catch up here.
The mainstream press is in denial about how much Fox, Facebook and Sinclair are active participants in the right wing ecosystems, rather than just observers.
The mainstream press has convinced themselves that it’s OK as long as the rightwing media sticks to things like immigration. But at some point they may need to admit that retirement home residents are getting Coronavirus and dying or going on respirators because Fox is telling them that this is all a hoax. They don’t want to offend other members of the club, but they may have no choice.
Remember that the mainstream media are all owned by larger corporations. NBC is owned by Comcast. ABC by Disney and CBS by Viacom. Therefore, the news operations are not going to step too far out of line. They go just far enough to make it look like they’re trying to do their actual jobs, but whomever pays the piper calls the tune.
I’m very shocked to find out that Bernie was responsible for all of the problems the DNC has had for several decades. Especially after I have been assured by people that he isn’t even a Democrat!
When does this schtick start getting funny, because I’m not laughing yet.
…I don’t know about funny because the truth is I don’t think I’m laughing overmuch myself…hence the Blackadder link at the bottom…if you want some laughs about rigged elections that episode will deliver nicely
…& I don’t think the DNC’s problems are Bernie’s fault…forget where exactly around here I said it before but in a two horse race when one has to wear that team D label he’s clearly team D, even if the DNC takes a different view
…but he’s also failed in previous bids for the presidency, is actually older than the asshole pretending to do the job at present & espouses a platform likely to receive so much resistance on its way to being enacted that it would most likely make getting Obamacare passed look like a walk in the park
…I (like, I suspect, a lot of people) would be overjoyed to wake up in a world in which President Bernie Sanders followed through on all his good intentions & the results brought benefits all over & nothing detrimental came along for the ride…but I don’t think I’ll be holding my breath
…on top of that there exists (in no small part thanks the artificially toxic end of his spectrum of “support”) a notable antipathy &/or ambivalence to his campaign
…so, in defence of my claim that it was a mistake for him to run…or at least not to drop out to make way for Warren…she doesn’t have that baggage & in a choice between her & Biden maybe you actually have a shot at some of those folks KC talked about voting for Biden because they lack faith the alternative is viable in the face of prejudice maybe just start thinking the grass looked green enough to jump that fence?
…so when I say it was a mistake I think if he were to have really put his money where his mouth is about his goals for America’s future he would have been campaigning for her from the off
…which isn’t to say he’s not entitled to run…or to all the support required to let him win should he be the nominee…& surely if you’re even going to put yourself through running for president you have to start out thinking you’re the best person for it
…but in my case the honest truth is it’ll be grudgingly…because I can’t overstate the extent to which I think that the D side of the race just threw away a potential asset like a herb shuttering a news site in the dark of the night…& there doesn’t seem to me to be a way to explain that which wasn’t exacerbated by Bernie being in the race
…so I’m not looking to disagree with you or really any part of that comment…but it is what it is & I said what I said, so I figured I might as well get it out of my system?