Virus thread, the political one.

[davids]

Summed up perfectly by a friend in the middle of it all ..

Attachment 116324

I've always loved Charlie Pierce, but this takes it to another level:

unshirted fuck.jpg

"What in the unshirted fuck?" is my new favorite expression.

[j44ke]

I’ve been trying to figure out why Trump is arguing against mail-in ballots when that process has the potential to help him as much as harm him, at least in some swing states like Florida. And I think he is looking for a way to lower the total popular vote totals, not to win the popular vote but to decrease the chances that Biden may win the popular vote even if Trump wins the electoral college. If you think back to the 2016 election, the loss of the popular vote really ate (and still eats) at Trump, so I think he wants to win both. In a Trumpian way then, the focus on mail-in ballots makes more sense then. And in an epidemiological sense, refusing to focus on virus abatement fits nicely (and darkly) in that goal.

[guido]

Trump arguing against mail-in ballots sets up calling the vote a fraud. He knows he is going to loose big, but if it was a "foreign power" that put the thumb on the scale, he doesn't need to take ownership...

[robin3mj]

Trump arguing against mail-in ballots sets up calling the vote a fraud. He knows he is going to loose big, but if it was a "foreign power" that put the thumb on the scale, he doesn't need to take ownership...

He also just realized that most seniors in Florida are going to vote by mail this fall (and lean Repub), so his Twits on trying to reconcile that with his previous whines are fun to watch.

[johnmdesigner]

He also just realized that most seniors in Florida are going to vote by mail this fall (and lean Repub), so his Twits on trying to reconcile that with his previous whines are fun to watch.

In the land of the hanging chad no one will miss a few bags of mail.

[vertical_doug]

He has a lot of the same character faults as Trump- thin skin, arrogant, hates media etc etc.

BTW, I think Trump loses the popular vote by an even larger margin, but still wins the electoral college.

[theflashunc]

The bothism is mine, not the article. Democrats are still more centered, but go out far enough and you begin to get dumb too.. I use Bill Deblasio as exhibit A.
The current crop of Democrat politicians are still reasonable, but if they continue to shift left like the republicans shifted right, you will get crazy on both sides. My daughter is left of me, and reasonable. But she has friends which are farther left, and even she finds them unreasonable on issues.

Any political party will have it's fringe elements. But the GOPs fringe elements are the party and driving things to crazy town.

I'll start worrying about the "extreme" left when they nominate someone like Che Guevara for a prominent post within the party. Even the most extreme proposals from the progressive wing of the Democratic caucus are essentially what is stock and trade in Western European democracies.

The GOP and capital class have done an incredible job pulling the country's politics to the right since 1972. We've gone from Dr King and McGovern talking universal basic income and a very real redistribution of wealth and resources -- in a time of less wealth inequality than today -- to just getting back around to those topics nigh on 50 years later.

[defspace]

Posting this for everyone who hasn't seen it.

It's really hard to believe this is real.

[gregl]

Posting this for everyone who hasn't seen it.

It's really hard to believe this is real.

Trump's detractors have already seen it or are aware of its highlights. His supporters won't watch it or will dismiss it. Logic doesn't apply here. In the age of Trump, it's full-on tribalism. He and his supporters don't care how he comes across and don't care how he wins the 2020 election. They just want the win. How bad is it? In the "blue" state of NY, a sheriff flew a Trump flag on a department boat during official duties. He broke the law, yet will likely get off with nothing more than a warning.

Greg

[HorsCat]

BTW, I think Trump loses the popular vote by an even larger margin, but still wins the electoral college.

Winning the EC by approx 70k votes across three states was the equivalent of getting a royal flush. The odds of him doing it again - with all that is going on right now - are low. The question is how he tries to cheat (not "whether"; cheating is a given) and how efficacious it ends up being.

[sine]

In the land of the hanging chad no one will miss a few bags of mail.

In some states that's (missing or late) as high as 5% of the votes cast during this springs primaries. Then add ballots that are tossed because people can't/don't read instructions and......

I suspect that there are going to be a lot of pissed of people come Nov. 4th

[vertical_doug]

Winning the EC by approx 70k votes across three states was the equivalent of getting a royal flush. The odds of him doing it again - with all that is going on right now - are low. The question is how he tries to cheat (not "whether"; cheating is a given) and how efficacious it ends up being.

He has more levers of power to pull on this time. I would not underestimate target voter disenfranchisement and suppression. They have the data for gerrymandering, I am sure they already have polling stations targeted. My backup hope is they gum it up so bad, it is still being litigated in January and Nancy Pelosi becomes interim President.

[mzilliox]

this interview... people proudly voted for a fraud. wow. hes not bright. this is tragic

[Colinmclelland]

Scraping the bottom of the barrel for an upside, but it’s been a while (ever?) since the average person could honestly say “I’m smarter than the President of the United States”.

I don’t think I’ve ever known that before.

Leaving aside the cost of his golf habit, he doesn’t take a salary? You pay peanuts...

[BBB]

Scraping the bottom of the barrel for an upside, but it’s been a while (ever?) since the average person could honestly say “I’m smarter than the President of the United States”.

I don’t think I’ve ever known that before.

Leaving aside the cost of his golf habit, he doesn’t take a salary? You pay peanuts...

There's a couple of ways to think about this.

George W Bush was no Rhodes Scholar either. But, London to a brick he would have done a better job responding to a pandemic than Trump.

As you get older your view of politicians changes. What you thought of a political leader at 18 compared to your view 20 or more years later changes somewhat. I would have thought Hawke or Keating (in this country) were somewhat smarter than me at the time, but now, Scott Morrison? He's just a guy who came out on top of after a back stabbing contest with a bunch of other dead beats.

Which perhaps leads me to the next point. While Trump may not be a Rhodes Scholar he has a certain degree of rat cunning and guile (and shamelessness). This seems to count in politics. See the Scott Morrison example above.

Paying them peanuts...for sure they get paid well compared to the average wage, but paying someone just over $500,000 (in the Australian PM's case) to run the country is nothing compared to what, for argument's sake, the CEO of a bank gets paid. I'm pretty sure running a country if a bit more tricky than running a bank. But, if you doubled the wage to $1,000,000 the punters in the streets would be outraged. So, you're paying them more than peanuts, and you get more than monkeys, but you're not exactly getting brain surgeons.

[Sbti]

“My view is the schools should open. This thing is going away. It will go away like things go away and my view is that schools should be open.”

[guido]

There's a couple of ways to think about this.

George W Bush was no Rhodes Scholar either. But, London to a brick he would have done a better job responding to a pandemic than Trump.

As you get older your view of politicians changes. What you thought of a political leader at 18 compared to your view 20 or more years later changes somewhat. I would have thought Hawke or Keating (in this country) were somewhat smarter than me at the time, but now, Scott Morrison? He's just a guy who came out on top of after a back stabbing contest with a bunch of other dead beats.

Which perhaps leads me to the next point. While Trump may not be a Rhodes Scholar he has a certain degree of rat cunning and guile (and shamelessness). This seems to count in politics. See the Scott Morrison example above.

Paying them peanuts...for sure they get paid well compared to the average wage, but paying someone just over $500,000 (in the Australian PM's case) to run the country is nothing compared to what, for argument's sake, the CEO of a bank gets paid. I'm pretty sure running a country if a bit more tricky than running a bank. But, if you doubled the wage to $1,000,000 the punters in the streets would be outraged. So, you're paying them more than peanuts, and you get more than monkeys, but you're not exactly getting brain surgeons.

The job of bank ceo has a specific set of requirements and the cvs of applicants are generally scrutinized rather carefully. But for what could be described as the hardest and most complex job in the world? Not so much. We can't even get his bloody tax return, and his employment/business record would not have gotten him hired for anything but the family business (and then only if he was the majority share holder...)

[BBB]

Indeed. Well Trump has borked his own casinos, borked relationships and is now well on his way to repeating the same with your country, at the cost of 155,000 dead and counting. A very sad and sorry situation.

[suspectdevice]

A defeat for Donald Trump is not a defeat for autocracy
Voters are rejecting the president’s incompetence, not his authoritarianism

From the Editorial page of the FT. The implications of this is frightening. You have the MOB on the left, and fascists on the right. How do we get a middle again?

Pretending that a “middle” exists, or is desirable is what gave us Trump.
One thing 2020 has done has exposed just how badly neoliberal economic policy has hollowed out this country, and how the aggressive “conservative” war on learning has exacerbated the decline of civil society.
Not only can we not flatten the curve, we can no longer even pretend that the moral arc of history bends toward justice in America.
There is no going back to “normal” there is only the continued, unfulfilled struggle for Jobs and Justice.

The “middle” will not hold. Only struggle, prolonged, engaged down and dirty struggle will preserve the republic at this point.
The “middle” is not a place full of love or truth, it is dirty, conservative compromise.
Americans must move beyond compromise to places that are full of truth, action and struggle if we are to survive the next pandemic.
First, Trumpism must be defeated at the polls- subsequent election cycles(if we preserve our Union) must bring substantial social and economic change to this country.

[guido]

Trump’s Fox & Friends interview showed he’s learned nothing about Covid-19 - Vox

"Mere weeks after a number of outlets remarked on his “new tone” about the coronavirus, President Donald Trump fully reverted to form during a lengthy interview on Wednesday’s installment of Fox & Friends.

Echoing widely derided, unscientific comments he made during the early days of the outbreak in January and February, Trump insisted schools should open for in-person instruction because the pandemic “is going to go away.”

“My view is the schools should open,” Trump said. “This thing is going away. It will go away like things go away, and my view is that schools should be open.”

Suffice it to say that public health experts do not think wishful thinking will be enough to bring Covid-19 under control in the US. Nor is it the case that the virus is currently “going away” — the more than 51,000 new cases reported in the country on Tuesday represent a slight decline from some particularly grim days late last month, when daily new cases exceeded 70,000, but is still far above the daily case numbers in May and June.

Yet in his next breath, Trump made another stunningly irresponsible statement, claiming children are “almost immune” from Covid-19. (There’s a lot we still don’t know about how the disease affects children, but even if their symptoms are generally milder, they can certainly still catch and transmit the disease.)

Trump doesn’t seem to have many qualms about letting the pandemic rage on in hopes of boosting the economy ahead of November’s election, so perhaps it’s not surprising that he views school closures, mask mandates, and other measures taken by state and local officials in response to the pandemic as nothing more than conspiracies to damage him politically.

“We’re set to rock and roll, but the big problem we have is Democrats don’t want to open their schools, because they think it’s going to hurt the election for the Republicans,” said Trump — seemingly oblivious to the reality that the problem is the pandemic, not efforts to save lives while responding to it."