Tuesday, March 31, 2020

When the sucker is the American people.

Image result for images trump

"There's a sucker born every minute" ~ P.T. Barnum~

In keeping with my effort to educate you about trump's handling of this coronavirus, I give you the following article from S.V. Date writing for the Huffington Post.  

"Having sold himself as a great business and military leader despite bankrupt casinos and bone spurs, President Donald Trump faces his greatest challenge yet: making Americans forget the two months he dismissed concerns about a deadly pandemic as a “hoax.”

If recent polling showing a significant bump in his approval ratings is any indicator, though, Trump may well be succeeding ― setting himself on a path to reelection.

No question that the president’s job approval has increased as a result of his handling of the coronavirus crisis,” said GOP pollster Neil Newhouse. “Already about topped out among Republicans, President Trump has made gains among both Independents and Democrats.”
To make this work, Trump has been pushing the biggest lie of his adult life ― a revisionist history in which he did everything correctly, that nobody could have anticipated such an outbreak, and his leadership alone is saving millions of lives.

“It’s hard not to be happy with the job we’re doing. That, I can tell you,” he said last week.

“Nobody could have predicted something like this,” he told Fox News Monday morning.

“I can’t tell you what the unfortunate final toll is going to be, but it’s going to be a very small fraction of that,” he said Tuesday afternoon of expert estimates of 2.2 million dead if the country had done nothing to stop the virus. “So we’re doing an awfully good job, I think, with what we’re doing.”
Each of his claims is false. Trump scrapped the pandemic response team that President Barack Obama created after the 2014 Ebola outbreak, part of an overall effort to undo everything that his predecessor had accomplished. Trump ignored warnings from his own intelligence community that China was covering up the severity of the coronavirus epidemic in the city and province where it originated. Trump even ignored a step-by-step pandemic “playbook” the Obama administration had written.

Instead, Trump discounted the threat the virus posed from Jan. 22, when he told CNBC that “we have it totally under control,” straight through until March 15, when he called it “a very contagious virus” but again claimed it was one “that we have tremendous control over.”

Trump had based his re-election campaign on the strength of the economy, and feared that worries about a pandemic would hurt the stock market. “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA,” he wrote in a Feb. 24 tweet. “Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

Nevertheless, thanks in part to his ability to command a nationwide audience in press briefings broadcast live each day, Trump has been able push his new message to replace the old one.

“History shows that it takes a personal experience of catastrophe to see that the leader has been telling lies,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, an authoritarianism expert and history professor at New York University. “In this case, Trump has artfully ‘dosed out’ reality, telling people everything is fine, then gradually telling them it’s not, with lackey medical professionals to back him up. So he may weather even this crisis.”

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham did not respond to a query about Trump’s new messaging. Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh cited China travel restrictions that Trump imposed at the very end of January as showing he took“decisive action” from the start.
“Throughout this crisis, the president has always sought to keep the public calm, but has listened to his medical and scientific advisors in making firm decisions about keeping the country safe,” Murtaugh said.

Key to turning Trump’s actual performance in those critical early weeks into electoral success likely hinges on two efforts underway.

First is redefining success. Trump early on promised Americans that he had “stopped” the virus from spreading in the U.S. through his ban on foreigners who had recently been in China from entering this country. That morphed into claiming that those few cases here were rapidly shrinking to zero, and that the virus itself would disappear on its own with April’s warmer weather.
Those goalposts have now been moved clear across the planet. From the Feb. 26 boasts of having only 15 cases and zero deaths, Trump this week said success would mean hundreds of thousands of dead Americans.

“If we can hold that down, as we’re saying, to 100,000 — that’s a horrible number — maybe even less, but to 100,000; so we have between 100- and 200,000 — we all, together, have done a very good job,” he said Monday at a press briefing in the White House Rose Garden.

And if Trump’s past is a guide ― he has claimed that running his casinos into bankruptcy starting in the early 1990s somehow represented a business success ― he will keep claiming he handled the crisis well, regardless of how many Americans wind up dying.

“I think he can move the numbers as high as he needs to with his base because he has primed them to accept whatever he tells them and to disbelieve everyone else,” Ben-Ghiat said.
The other piece of Trump’s strategy is relentlessly attacking those who point out his previous statements. Trump has done this repeatedly in his daily briefings, attacking reporters when they read his earlier remarks back to him verbatim.

“Instead of asking a nasty, snarky question like that, you should ask a real question,” he said to a journalist Monday.

His campaign, meanwhile, had set upon the mission of trying to block Trump’s most egregious downplaying of the pandemic: His Feb. 28 description of the coronavirus fears as “a hoax” ― the most recent in a line of Democratic attempts to hurt his presidency.

Campaign officials, realizing the seriousness of Trump’s riff at a rally in South Carolina that evening, soon afterward began attacking journalists who described Trump’s use of “hoax” as misrepresenting what he said.

“Will she apologize for lying?” wrote a Trump campaign staffer on March 23 after Washington Post reporter Ashley Parker accurately described Trump’s use of the word in an NBC News report.
The campaign has even threatened to sue TV stations that were running an ad by the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA that used the audio clip of Trump saying “hoax” in a montage of his statements downplaying the virus.

“We will not stand idly by and allow you to broadcast false, deceptive, and misleading information concerning President’s Trump’s healthcare positions without consequence,” the campaign said in a letter.

Of course, the response to that letter may foreshadow the steep hill Trump faces more broadly in re-writing the history of his coronavirus response. According to Priorities USA, not a single TV station complied with the campaign request to pull the ad, and the super PAC recently released a revised one, using the much higher number of coronavirus cases.

Indeed, while Trump may be enjoying a bump right now in the public support, that newfound popularity could fade as his repeated lies about his performance come up against the reality of the coronavirus’ lethality.

Trump confounded the political class in both parties in 2016, seeming to suffer little consequence for repeated and readily disproven lies about himself, his opponents and the world at large.
Trump falsely claimed he had built “a massive empire,” a “phenomenal company,” starting with just a “very small loan” from his father. He boasted that he knew more about war than “the generals.”
In fact, Trump lost millions of dollars running an airline, vastly overpaid for a midtown hotel he wound up losing and bankrupted his casinos ― a near impossibility, given their business model ― nearly squandering the fortune his father had left him of nearly $1 billion in today’s dollars.

And when the prospect of serving in the Vietnam War presented itself, Trump claimed the ailment of “bone spurs” to avoid the military ― even though he later could not recall which heel had suffered the malady.

Trump countered endless media “fact checks” of his dishonesties by attacking the media instead ― a strategy he openly admitted to in an interview with Lesley Stahl of CBS News in 2016. “You know why I do it? I do it to discredit you all and demean you all so when you write negative stories about me, no one will believe you,” he said.

Yet Trump was able to get away with all those lies, as well as a torrent of fresh lies since becoming president, because they did not directly affect the lives of most Americans, NYU’s Ben-Ghiat said.
That will not be the case with the pandemic. In a span of just 30 days, 3,440 Americans had died by Tuesday afternoon, with 1,000 of those happening in the past two days. Which means that even Trump’s most loyal supporters, who crave his professional wrestling-style attacks on Democrats and the news media regardless of their accuracy, are likely to wind up personally knowing someone who has become gravely ill or died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

“The ‘Big Lie’ is not applicable in this case,” Ben-Ghiat said, referring to the maxim that people are more prone to believe a massive falsehood than a smaller one, because they do not want to accept that their leaders are capable of telling consequential lies. “For example, saying the virus was a hoax, because people will personally get sick and communities will be devastated.”

She said she believes Trump can continue to hold his base supporters by gradually increasing his assessment of the pain and loss it will cause ― but she and others doubt that his message will fly with anyone beyond that group.

“At some point, reality intrudes on the ‘Big Lie.’ But at this point we don’t know when,” said Norman Ornstein, a scholar with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute think tank. “One interesting part of this is that the people who bought into the hoax idea, who are still resisting social distancing, are in the red states and in red areas in other states. They may be the ones who will really catch a wave that overwhelms them, especially in rural areas, with the virus a little bit later on.”

If that happens, Trump could quickly lose the “rally around the president” lift he has seen in recent polling. That boost has helped other presidents ― from Jimmy Carter in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 taking of American hostages in Iran, through Obama in 2012 with the landfall of Superstorm Sandy in the northeast. But it can fade away if the president is seen as failing to rise to the challenge.

“Read these polls with a most careful, cautious eye. They reflect the present in a time of crisis,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart about Trump’s higher numbers, pointing out that Carter wound up losing in his reelection bid in a landslide. “The election is far ahead of us, but the challenges facing Donald Trump are as formidable as those that faced Jimmy Carter in 1980.”

Newhouse, the Republican pollster, agreed that Trump’s improved numbers now do not guarantee anything. “As others have said, we are in the early stages of this fight against coronavirus, and the president’s approval score will continue to reflect his handling of this crisis,” he said. “Unlike the recent impeachment inquiry, this crisis is likely to have a significant impact on the November election.”[Article]


*Image from WBUR





  

97 comments:

Anonymous said...

...thanks Field

This is why the American people are thought of as the "Dumb Americans" all over the world.

dinthebeast said...

The Republican political and media classes have been busy building lifeboats to escape the consequences of flaming wreckage of the Fergus administration for some time now.

Fergus is merely making a feeble attempt at boarding the first one.

Burn those motherfuckers. Make them all own this shit.

The chief conceit of Fergus' political philosophy (if one can call it that) is that the details of the workings of the government are useless relics used only by inferior (to him) men to hold on to undeserved power.

Now that the dead bodies are piling up in a grisly final refutation of the two bit con he used to get where he is, it is time to get serious about making damn sure that he and his Republican enablers are driven far enough from the levers of power to allow sufficient time for a normal, flawed, Democratic administration to make some headway in repairing the awful damage that they have done.

Obama inherited an economy shedding jobs at the rate of 700,000 per month from the last disastrous Republican administration, and we don't know what the long term numbers are, but unemployment applications rose by nearly three million last week. With much more to come.

If we can't grok the obvious pattern emerging here, we probably deserve what we get, but even so, millions of us do, and we're not going down without a fight.

Now they have a whole new platform from which to cheat, and they are already trying to exploit the pandemic to sneak their far-right wish list past us, but we have some tricks up our sleeves for trying to hold a fair election in November in which we can rid ourselves of not just Fergus and McConnell, but of Republican control of dozens of state legislatures who will decide district boundaries next year.

A lot like 2010, but now the shoe is on the other foot, and for the sake of the Republic and the lives of all of its citizens, it's time to kick the fuck out of them with it.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

dinthebeast said...

From Twitter:

Dean Baker
@DeanBaker13
·
19h
The reason Trump is asserting, with zero evidence, that health care workers are stealing masks to resell is because that is what he would do in this situaton

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Anonymous said...

Quote from the Chernobyl miniseries I recommended a few days ago:

“When the truth offends, we lie and lie until we can no longer remember it is even there. But it is...still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.”

Anonymous said...

"Trump scrapped the pandemic response team that President Barack Obama created after the 2014 Ebola outbreak"

Barack Obola failed to impose a travel ban from Africa even after the epidemic went public.  He allowed Thomas Eric Duncan to fly to Dallas, where he infected TWO nurses with Ebola.  The reckless behavior of one of the (black) nurses, who flew after she knew she was sick, only failed to become a US epidemic by pure luck.

Trump imposed a travel ban in January.  That wasn't December, but it was far earlier than Barack Obola dealt with the African virus crisis.  The only thing that saved the USA from Ebola was its far lower infectivity under first-world sanitary conditions.  Trump is by far the better president.

It takes much more than first-world sanitation to stop COVID-19.  That's not Trump's fault, no matter how much you want to blame it on him.  And (((Ruth Ben-Ghiat))) needs to make aliyah yesterday.  She is part and parcel of an earlier plague which continues to afflict America.  (((Ben-Ghiat's))) own "community" is likely to be seriously affected because it WILL NOT respect "social distancing" directives and leaves its schools and synagogues open.  (((Ben-Ghiat))) is the enemy inside the gates.

"said (((Norman Ornstein)))"

Another enemy.

"-Doug in Sugar Pine"

So ironic that Dougie runs from Oakland to the hinterlands, leaving his pet Africans behind when it counts.

PilotX said...

The trump cult is just amazing. Normally smart level headed individuals are downright worshipping the guy and excusing all his faults. Crazy times.

PilotX said...

"but it was far earlier than Barack Obola dealt with the African virus crisis."

And yet under Barack the stock market and economy didn't crash, the entire nation wasn't quarantined and the airline industry wasn't completely shut down. Yeah, heck of a job Brownie.😂😂

mike from iowa said...

Obama's failed ebola response resulted in exactly 12 cases in America and only 2 cases occurred here, And there were only 2 deaths in the States. That is just gawd awful leadership according to the stoopid fucking drumpf dumbfucks.

Meanwhile the drumpfuck body count continues to rise, like yeasty bread in a warm place.

Last updated: April 01, 2020, 11:50 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
188,647
Deaths:
4,059

mike from iowa said...

China starting to report asymptomatic corona virus cases. Probably a hoax to make drumpf look worse than he alredy is.

drumpf admits he downplayed risk of Covid-19. Probably should have saved those words for the firing squad.

Last week high level military leaders locked themselves in Cheyenne Mountain.
FWIW

Wesley R said...

Chairman Trump's press conferences are all about feeding his ego ie. "We're breaking all of the records", "No one has ever seen anything like this before", "The Governors need to show appreciation" etc.. He tries to bully the reporters, especially the sister, and you never hear him mention the victims of this pandemic or their families. It's all about him and his little ego.

PilotX said...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/30/us/politics/trump-women-coronavirus.html

PilotX said...

"And there were only 2 deaths in the States."

He was a blah person so you have to exaggerate his faults to extreme levels while ignoring trump's because, well you know.

Anonymous said...

“The only thing that saved the USA from Ebola was its far lower infectivity under first-world sanitary conditions.”

“The only thing.”

That’s like saying the only thing that is different between a pizza and a frisbee is that one is made of plastic. The only thing is kind of a major thing!

Obama’s response to Ebola was based on the fact that it could not cause an epidemic under first-world sanitary conditions. His response wasn’t luck.

Trump’s response to COVID-19 should have been based on the knowledge that it could cause a huge epidemic inside the US, based on the characteristics of the disease.

He will now pretend that nobody could have known. But lots of people — medical experts and intelligence officers — did know and told Trump and he ignored them. He decided he could just keep the virus out.

Anonymous said...

CTA bus driver beaten by negroes, robbed by negroes; crashes on sidewalk in Brainerd on South Side: police:

https://abc7chicago.com/cta-bus-driver-attacked;-crashes-on-sidewalk-in-brainerd-on-south-side-police/6067617/

Anonymous said...

Imagine how bad it would be if Democrats were in charge???? Millions would die.

Anonymous said...

"There's a sucker born every minute" ~ P.T. Barnum~

Democrats live by this.

Anonymous said...

Mathew 5:45 'He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.'

Anonymous said...

Isaiah 45:23 - That unto me every knee shall bow, every tongue ...

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...

Anonymous said...

Imagine how bad it would be if Democrats were in charge???? Millions would die.

10:57 AM
---------
Yeah, like they did from Ebola when Obama was president? LOL. You, sir, are and idiot.

Anonymous said...

Job 1:20-22, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

mike from iowa said...

Last updated: April 01, 2020, 16:32 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
199,425
Deaths:
4,383

US Intel says China hid real death stats from the world. If drumpf believes this, why ? He never believed the intel agencies about Putin hacking the election or his campaign staff meeting with Russians. He didn't believe Putin invaded Crimea. drumpf is a fucking moron living in an alternative fantasy where white guy only good guy.

mike from iowa said...

https://the-immoral-minority.com/diamond-and-silk-two-of-donald-trumps-favorite-black-people-believe-people-are-dying-just-to-make-their-president-look-bad/

drumpf looks bad when everything is hunky dory.

2nd Covid 19 case in Obrien co iowa. Wonder how fast it will spread?

mike from iowa said...

Last updated: April 01, 2020, 17:18 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
205,035
Deaths:
4,516

Americans are dropping like flies. Someone in the drumpf cluster-maladministration claimed the US was best able to handle pandemic. I guess not.

mike from iowa said...

Anonymous said...
Imagine how bad it would be if Democrats were in charge???? Millions would die.

Prove it.

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...

Anonymous said...
Imagine how bad it would be if Democrats were in charge???? Millions would die.

In other words, Trump is doing great? Never mind that Trump's deliberate refusal to take the looming pandemic seriously has brought us to our current situation. Never mind that our national response is in shambles. Never mind that no one at the federal level is coordinating anything. FEMA his not doing their job; instead they are bidding against state governors to buy ventilators. FEMA should be buying them and dispensing them where needed. That's their job.

Never mind that Trump declared that the states should handle everything; that he refused to take a leadership role to call for people to stay at home. Instead he down played the serious of the threat. How you can ignore all Trump's failures and still support him is beyond the understanding of most intelligent people. Thousand of people are dying needlessly because of Trump's failures.
But you claim if Democrats were running the country it would be much worse? Fucking unbelievable!

Anonymous said...

“Imagine how bad it would be if Democrats were in charge???? Millions would die.”

Kinda doubt it.

Democrats are the party of big government, the folks who believe the state can do useful and necessary things in the domestic sphere.

Republicans are the party who say that “government is the problem” (Ronald Reagan), the party that say “my goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub” (Grover Norquist). They want to privatize everything and hand over all power to the “benevolent” rich.

Therefore, they are the party who, when crises arrive and only government can save us, inevitably let people die.

mike from iowa said...

Last updated: April 01, 2020, 19:43 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
209,105
Deaths:
4,658

mike from iowa said...

On Tuesday, the coronavirus stock market crash delivered the worst first quarter ever for the Dow Jones index. On Wednesday, the blue chip index picked right up where it left off.

All this under the stable genius, world's greatest businessman and negotiator, etc, etc.

Anonymous said...

Just when Amerika needs a 'hero', in steps Russia. Keep on topic and watch the 'distractions'. Russia is allowed to deliver the USA medical supplies? Wow.

I really hope the USDA got a heads up; the American public sure did not. This 'hoe' of a president is working for Russia's rise, and he's turning our country into "One of those shit hole Countries".

Clown, Joker, aka Con Man, but still 'Making Amerika Great'!

dinthebeast said...

Yeah, an airborne virus is much more contagious in situations like the US than a bodily fluids borne virus is.

That's why a competent government has a plan in place, funding, guidelines to follow, and equipment stockpiled to support the kind of action necessary to try and contain such an outbreak.

Like the plan, guidelines, funding and equipment the Fergus administration inherited from the Obama administration which they dismantled and disregarded out of spite.

Also, a president's job includes comforting and propping up the afflicted in a disaster, and when was the last time you heard Fergus even offering condolences to the families of the dead?

And one can only hope that some family member of a hospital staffer who died because of lack of PPE, after hearing Fergus accuse hospital staff of selling PPE on the black market, takes appropriate action and leads the charge to elect a Democrat in November.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

dinthebeast said...

"So ironic that Dougie runs from Oakland to the hinterlands, leaving his pet Africans behind when it counts."

What makes you think that there are no black people here?

I moved away from Oakland last year when the rent tripled and I could no longer afford to live there. If I had the money, I would move back in a second.

Also, knowing the rent increase was coming, I spent a year applying for subsidized housing. The results obtained from sending our information to over fifty properties were applications for inclusion in lotteries to get our names on two waiting lists, neither of which were accepted.

And fuck you in your goddamn nose with the "pet Africans" I hope your balls drop off in your shoe and you step on them.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

mike from iowa said...

https://the-immoral-minority.com/business-insider-lists-the-known-times-that-donald-trump-was-warned-about-threat-of-a-pandemic-and-the-times-he-made-things-worse/

You tell 'em, Doug. fuck them is right.

mike from iowa said...

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/gops-kelly-loeffler-dumped-retail-stocks-and-scooped-up-shares-in-company-that-makes-medical-garments/

Bitch will claim she and her hubby, the chairman of NYSE, knew nothing about this(these transactions) because she thinks everyone is as stoopid as stoopid fucking wingnuts.

mike from iowa said...

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/texas-company-says-they-have-2-million-n95-masks-for-sale-for-6-times-the-normal-price/

wingnut party and red states full of grifters.

mike from iowa said...

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/1/21201104/texas-pastors-religious-liberty-coronavirus-stay-at-home-hotze

Crackpot ministers want religious freedumb to infect parishioners in large groups. I say have at it, dumbfucks, but no healthcare for the criminally stoopid.

Anonymous said...

"All this under the stable genius, world's greatest businessman and negotiator, etc, etc."

Drumpf should have negotiated a settlement with the virus.

mike from iowa said...

If obama was a wasicu wastey he would never had a handle on Ebola.Because he is Black, affirmative action did all the work to make Obama look competent.

I'll bet it just burns drumpfuck and his follower's asses that Obama is competent and whole generations smarter than the stable genius and Obama doesn't have to lie to make himself look good.

mike from iowa said...

Negotiate with a hoax?

mike from iowa said...

drumpf body count now 4718.

D-Wil said...

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...
Anonymous said...

Imagine how bad it would be if Democrats were in charge???? Millions would die.

10:57 AM
---------
Yeah, like they did from Ebola when Obama was president? LOL. You, sir, are and idiot.

---------------------
Exactly.
And Ebola had a 70% death rate (WHO), so the stakes were much higher than with COVID-19/coronavirus, yet look at how many people have died due to someone's fear of the economy tanking & ruining yet another of his promises... and the economy still has tanked to Great Depression levels. Great job, Herr Drunph.

Anonymous said...

2-year-old found safe and black father in standoff with officers after Georgia triple homicide:


https://www.wrdw.com/content/news/2-year-old-child-abducted-by-father-after-triple-homicide-in-GA-authorities-say-569279201.html

Anonymous said...

Three black people dead, one injured in shooting in Bethany, police say

https://www.koco.com/article/three-people-dead-one-injured-in-shooting-in-bethany-police-say/32004132

Anonymous said...

“Drumpf should have negotiated a settlement with the virus.”

Are we sure he didn’t try?

I bet his advisors had to talk him out of imposing tariffs on China to make them withdraw their virus.

He is not the sharpest tool in the shed.

mike from iowa said...

Deaths:
4,773

Ace Freely said...

Fake Jake Tapper tries to get Gavin Newsome to criticize Trump by repeating the lie about the Federal Government withholding aid from states who complain:

Calif. Gov. Gavin Newsom: “Let me just be candid with you. I’d be lying to you to say that [Trump] hasn’t been responsive to our needs. He has. And so, as a question, as a sort of an offer of objectivity, I have to acknowledge that publicly."

https://twitter.com/i/status/1245453971239682048

Look at Fake Tapper's face. He's about to cry.

Sad.

Anonymous said...

How long before the residents of Sugar Pine run Doug out on a rail?

mike from iowa said...

Imagine this.... https://thehill.com/policy/energy-environment/490702-epa-finds-asbestos-poses-cancer-risks-for-workers-prompting-calls

We knew this decades ago.

pluky said...

I don't usually read the comment threads here because the troll fu is just too high, but was curious as to what drivel they'd be able to muster for this.

Hee-hee. Feeble, very feeble.

mike from iowa said...

A factual search reveals that Grabien has failed some fact checks.

Overall, we rate Grabien Right biased based on story selection and sourcing that significantly favors the right. We also rate them borderline Questionable for factual reporting due to failed checks and use of sources that have very poor track records with fact checkers. (10/26/2016) Updated (D. Van Zandt 1/11/2019)

mike from iowa said...

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/01/wall-street-titans-lobby-for-a-cut-of-small-business-bailout-160298

mike from iowa said...

Last call tonight..... drumpf body count hits a new record

Last updated: April 01, 2020, 23:53 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
214,639
Deaths:
5,099

Must be a thousand today.

Gmbler2 ASKA White Woman said...

Anonymous said...

How long before the residents of Sugar Pine run Doug out on a rail?

7:12 PM
---------------
When hell freezes over.

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...

From Today's Political Wire:

Drug Smugglers Tunnel Under Border Wall

April 1, 2020 at 3:56 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 134 Comments

“A large haul of drugs, including opioids, methamphetamine and cocaine, being smuggled from Mexico to California was seized from a cross-border tunnel equipped with ventilation, lighting and an underground rail system,” the AP reports.

“The tunnel was built near a vaunted double-layered border wall constructed under President Trump’s watch, illustrating the limitations of such barriers against sophisticated drug smuggling organizations.”
------------
So much for Trump's great wall - So effective - NOT! LOL!

dinthebeast said...

"How long before the residents of Sugar Pine run Doug out on a rail?"

We're getting along fine so far. Even the folks who run the Christian Camp across the river have been cool, and told me that it's OK if I want to walk across the dam to their old mill pond.

I'm pretty good at getting along with my neighbors, which is a survival skill in Oakland.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Anonymous said...

"Even the folks who run the Christian Camp across the river have been cool."

Funny that.

They are nice even to a guy who thinks they are Pig People worthy of extermination.

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...

Anonymous said...


They are nice even to a guy who thinks they are Pig People worthy of extermination.

9:32 PM
---------------
When did Doug say that? I guess I must have missed it.

dinthebeast said...

I have always been clear that Pig People are citizens and deserve to be represented in their government like everyone else, and far from calling for their extermination, I have been clear that what I really want for them is for them to have access to good healthcare.

None of the neighbors I have met so far have been Pig People, although I did run into a few vocal right wingers in Raley's one time.

You fuckers really misunderstand just how few of you there really are.

So 280 million masks from warehouses around the US had been purchased by foreign buyers and were earmarked to leave the country according to Forbes.

Fergus and his felons so far haven't said jack shit about that, while medical workers in US hospitals continue to sicken and die for lack of them.

I thought he said he was the "America First" guy. Well now we are first; in confirmed, reported cases, and in the acceleration rate of deaths from the pandemic.

And about that: four of the five counties with the highest per-capita infection rates are now in Trump country, two in Louisiana and two in Georgia.

Remember what I just said about wanting everyone to have access to good healthcare? That, and the fact that a shitload of rural hospitals in states that didn't expand Medicaid under the ACA have recently closed down is getting ready to become hella important to the people living in those states, Pig or otherwise.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

dinthebeast said...

Wise advice from Mr. Jackson:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUakLzaboMo

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Anonymous said...

Trump: "I Could Stand In the Middle Of Fifth Avenue And Shoot Somebody And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters"

New Slogan:
"I Could Let Millions of Americans Die,
Turn My Back On My City,
Turn Governors Against Governors,
Hoard Thousands of Masks,
Hoard Thousands of Ventilators For My Peeps,
Deny First Responders Life Saving Equipment For Themselves,
Disrespect Doctors and Nurses
Put My Own Wealth and Greed Before The Lives and Well Being Of The American People
Get Off On Watching City and State Leaders Beg Me For Aid
Only Pretend To Be Patriotic To Win Elections,
File Bankruptcy 5-Times
Tell Black Athletes That Kneeling Is Un Patriotic - While I DODGE THE DRAFT

..And I Still Wouldn't Lose Any Voters!







dinthebeast said...

There seems to be no end to the ways Fergus has fucked this up:

Trump Let Contract With Ventilator Firm Lapse

April 1, 2020 at 10:34 pm EDT By Taegan Goddard 120 Comments

“President Trump has repeatedly assured Americans that the federal government is holding 10,000 ventilators in reserve to ship to the hardest-hit hospitals around the nation as they struggle to keep the most critically ill patients alive,” the New York Times reports.

“But what federal officials have neglected to mention is that an additional 2,109 lifesaving devices are unavailable after the contract to maintain the government’s stockpile lapsed late last summer, and a contracting dispute meant that a new firm did not begin its work until late January. By then, the coronavirus crisis was already underway.”

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Anonymous said...

“But what federal officials have neglected to mention is that an additional 2,109 lifesaving devices are unavailable after the contract to maintain the government’s stockpile lapsed late last summer ...”

Ahem.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom Says Federal Government Sent '170 Broken Ventilators'

PilotX said...

Now trump is serious about the rona. Reminds me of The Wiz and the people of Oz. The color is green.😖

Anonymous said...

QUESTION:
What Empire do you know of in all of history that lasted FOREVER?

ANSWER:
None!

POINT TO PONDER:
America is on a DOWNWARD SPIRAL

911 was the first shoe to drop, this suspicious corona virus is shoe #2

Anonymous said...

AND IT'S CALLED THE "UNITED " STATES....REALLY??????

THE POTUS WON'T EVEN MAKE A SUGGESTION TO HAVE THE 50 "United States"
DO A MINIMUM OF A 2 WEEK SHELTER IN PLACE TO CURVE THIS SHIT.

...THIS SHOWS JUST HOW "UNITED" THE USA IS NOT.


THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT THE "WIZARD OF ODD" INTO OFFICE










Anonymous said...


STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES.

...If you believe that China is stupid enough to share their true numbers...I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn

...if you believe that China is stupid enough to share the antidote for the virus that was unleashed...I have another bridge to sell you in Brooklyn


Anonymous said...

Watching those national press conferences and updates reminds one of a scene from the

"THREE STOOGES" AND THE "KEYSTONE COPS"

but the biggest "SHIP OF FOOLS" are the ones that drank the Kool-aid.

YUP..JIM JONES has been ressurected.



mike from iowa said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
mike from iowa said...

Rats be running scared of easier voting.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/georgia-republican-it-would-be-extremely-devastating-for-the-gop-if-people-are-allowed-to-vote-by-mail/

Yes it would. Suppressing legal votes is a crime and wingnuts need to be held responsible.

mike from iowa said...

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/record-shattering-6-6-million-americans-filed-jobless-claims-last-week/

Now, before you stoopid fucking wingnuts go all bitch-kitty and claim I am rubbing it in, I'm not. I am not, however, gonna let you ignore what your worthless, incompetent POS potus has done to a once steadily growing economy that the black guy and Dems engineered.

You got it coming. Take it like men, if you can. No whining.

mike from iowa said...

Remember and never forget, the worst is yet to come. To try to save America, the first/best step is to get drumpf out of office and replace him with any Democrat. Get rid of McCTurtlefuckface and all the rest of the do nothing but obstruct wingnuts in both houses of congress.

mike from iowa said...

drumpf wuz warned. We wuz robbed.

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/army-warned-trump-administration-on-feb-3-that-up-to-150000-americans-could-die-from-covid-19/

Anonymous said...


Humpty Trumpty Sat On A Wall
Humpty Trumpty Had A Great Fall
All The King's Horses
And All The King's Men
Refused To Put America Back Together Again!

mike from iowa said...

Especially since wingnuts will assuredly tear America apart if they ever get power again. We must fight wingnuts better than wingnuts responded to pandemics.

Anonymous said...

Parasite from Sugar Pine says...

"And about that: four of the five counties with the highest per-capita infection rates are now in Trump country, two in Louisiana and two in Georgia."

Hey Dougster, The two counties in Georgia are predominately black. What happened is large funerals. Lots of people getting together to mourn and remember. I doubt you would classify these people as pigs. It's sad and unfortunate but it happened. So do a little research before making silly statements.

And please try not to sponge off the hard working people of Sugar Pine. Also; before someone asks, do your own google search.

Anonymous said...

I think I finally understand how Trump got elected. His supporters are goldfish.

(This is behind the WaPo paywall. If you can’t see it, try opening in private/incognito mode.)

Anonymous said...

“Hey Dougster, The two counties in Georgia are predominately black. What happened is large funerals.”

Hey, wingnut moron, it’s irrelevant that he two counties in Georgia are predominately black. What happened is that the governor of Georgia refused to issue a statewide stay-at-home order until YESTERDAY. He did this because he is a Republican, aka a great big dummy.

Wingnut Genius said...

I love how these idiots consistently own themselves by constantly citing statistics indicative of low-socioeconomic conditions in "red" states while completely missing the fact the driving correlation is the much higher percentage of black residents.

Anonymous said...

Trump is Great!!

Anonymous said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Humpty Trumpty Sat On A Wall
Humpty Trumpty Had A Great Fall
All The King's Horses
And All The King's Men
Refused To Put America Back Together Again!

9:46 AM


more delusional alt left babble....

Anonymous said...

Trump dropped the ball!

Anonymous said...

Some of the most callow, overprivileged people on earth are given the power to set the narrative. This is why defeating the press is the only revolutionary goal.

Paradoctor said...

To the tune of "We're Off To See The Wizard":

We’re off to mock the Dotard! The horrible Dotard of ours!
For there he was, a head full of fuzz, the bigliest dolt there was!
If ever, if ever, a dolt there was, the Dotard of ours is one because
Because, because, because, because, BECAUSE
Because of the horrible things he does!
We’re off to mock the Dotard! The horrible Dotard of ours!


This clocks in at 23 seconds; more than long enough to be a hand-washing song.

Anonymous said...

“I love how these idiots consistently own themselves by constantly citing statistics indicative of low-socioeconomic conditions in "red" states while completely missing the fact the driving correlation is the much higher percentage of black residents.”

I love how these idiots consistently own themselves by pretending all the white people in the red states are well-educated and prosperous, when half of them are Bubba Three-Teeth with a rusted pickup truck. Newsflash: Shitholes like Kentucky and West Virginia exist.

I love how these idiots consistently own themselves by pretending that black people in the red states are even poorer than the whites because they’re just naturally dysfunctional, when, in actuality, those white people’s ancestors MADE BLACK PEOPLE POORER through decades of racist policies.

mike from iowa said...

Last updated: April 02, 2020, 17:16 GMT
United States
Coronavirus Cases:
235,972
Deaths:
5,775

drumpf body count looking at a new record again. drumpf finally found a thing he is good at.

mike from iowa said...

From Snopes on drumpf's piss poor actions on corona virus.....

U.S. President Donald Trump and the federal government have been widely criticized for what detractors described as their slow response to the COVID-19 coronavirus disease pandemic. As of this writing, the U.S. is still facing shortages of critical medical supplies such as masks and personal protective equipment (PPE). On March 31, 2020, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell argued that the government might have been too distracted by impeachment proceedings to focus on the impending pandemic.

McConnell told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that the outbreak “came up while we were tied down on the impeachment trial. And I think it diverted the attention of the government, because everything every day was all about impeachment.”

Shortly after McConnell made these remarks, a number of op-eds were published refuting this claim. Trump even responded, saying, “I don’t think I would have done any better had I not been impeached.”

GrannyStandingforTruth said...

Today is Thursday. The post for this topic is dated Tuesday. I pray that Field is healthy and okay and doesn't have the coronavirus.

Trump is the worst said...

Trump aka "Lumpy," could be the first person to lose the popular vote twice and be re-elected after being impeached.

Grady said...

He's okay Granny. Black people can't get coronavirus.

dinthebeast said...

From driftglass this morning about the governor of Georgia waiting to impose a stay at home order because he didn't yet know that asymptomatic spread of the virus was possible:

"And so the lying and criminal negligence of yet another Republican governor (in this case, one who works just six miles from the CDC) is going to get hundreds or thousands of his state's citizens killed.

Y'all could have had Stacey Abrams, but noooo..."

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...

Grady said...

He's okay Granny. Black people can't get coronavirus.

2:49 PM
----------------
Who is "he"? I have no idea of whom you are speaking.

Anonymous said...

Super loser said...

"Y'all could have had Stacey Abrams, but noooo..."

You meant to type "Moooo…"

mike from iowa said...

Doug has never mooed in his life, Grody.

dinthebeast said...

Wait, when I was a little kid and had to help my dad raise cattle, I may have mooed at them once or twice, before I found out how much of a pain in the ass raising cattle is.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

dinthebeast said...

"911 was the first shoe to drop, this suspicious corona virus is shoe #2"

I'd say Nixon's "southern strategy" was one shoe among many, Watergate and Agnew's prosecution constitute another, Ronald Reagan's quest to tear down the government rates as one when bundled with Iran-Contra, and Newton Leroy Gingrich's GOPAC memo "Language: a key mechanism of control" rates as one all by itself.

Don't forget to add in Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, and while you're mentioning 9-11, don't forget the "Bin Laden determined to strike in America" PDB that Bush ignored allowing it to happen.

But really, and speaking of George W. Bush, and germane to what we see crashing around our feet right now, I would venture that 9-11 wasn't the most relevant Bush fuck up to the current unraveling of society, or even the invasion of Iraq, as much of a colossal blunder as it was, no, the thing Bush did that most foreshadowed our current problems has to be the financial crash.

That is, how he used his "Ownership Society" PR con to try and cover up the housing bubble that he hoped would last until after he left office and not further fuck up his already disastrous presidency, only to have it blow up in his (and our) face.

Why? Because his lying about and denial of simple reality that he was definitely aware of contributed to the incineration of trillions of dollars in ordinary citizens' wealth, mass homelessness and misery, and a broken economy that his minions worked their fool asses off to prolong in order to try and damage his Democratic replacement.

And where, pray tell, are those minions now that all of the same Keynesian economic tactics they inveighed would debase the currency and lead to runaway inflation (when the unemployment rate was above 9%) were all being lavishly employed by Fergus' administration when the unemployment rate was below 4%?

Basically it was the same old GOP con writ large, it just happened to explode before he could scuttle away from ownership of it.

And then the basic flaw in our attempts at having a representative government was in place: the basing of governing decisions on the denial of reality.

If we don't make it back from that, we are truly as doomed as you imply.

-Doug in Sugar Pine

Anonymous said...

his lying about and denial of simple reality

You mean like denying the reality of race and racial differences?

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...

TO -Doug in Sugar Pine

1:12 AM

-----------
Hey Doug, you are so right with this post. I have watched all of this develop since the 1960s. I have been on the "grass roots" lines fighting the good fight until my late husband's illness required my full energy and time at home. I Did a lot of volunteering for the Democratic Party over the years and one time was a delegate to the national convention.

Now I am appalled at the situation I see in our country. Trump is doing his best to see that our formerly great federal government does indeed drown in a bathtub.

My best wishes to you and your family. Stay safe, my friend.

Gambler2 ASKA White Woman said...

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Trump is Great!!

12:09 PM
----------------
Yes, Trump is great - great at killing Americans - thousands so far.