American Horror Stories

Rolling Stone:

While Americans died of the modern plague, President Trump sang happy birthday to a fading Fox News personality. On March 7th, a who’s who of the Republican establishment gathered at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s lavish retreat in Florida, for the 51st-birthday party of Kimberly Guilfoyle, one of the former co-hosts of The Five, and now the girlfriend of Donald J. Trump Jr. All the usual suspects were there, including Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani and Sen. Lindsey Graham; Tiffany Trump; Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner; and Trump’s younger son Eric and his wife, Lara. They sang happy birthday to Guilfoyle and lit a big sparkler. At the end, she pumped her fist and shouted “Four more years!” This is what passes for a cozy family celebration in Trumpland. But out in the real world, darkness was falling fast.

There were already 100,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, around the world, and 3,600 people had died. In the U.S., more than 100 new cases had been reported that day, a rate that was doubling every three days. Other nations knew how serious this was: By that time, China had shut down major cities, all but quarantining 760 million people. Singapore and Hong Kong and South Korea had put in aggressive travel restrictions and testing procedures. In the U.S., fear was rising. South By Southwest, the giant music/tech conference in Austin had just been canceled. Grocery stores were stripped in panic buying. On Wall Street, stocks were in free fall.

There's also an AUDM version embedded at their site - you can listen or download it.

Two of the big points:

• 45* is responsible for dismantling the pandemic response team that was in place in the NSC. He let Bolton scrub that whole fucking thing.
• The "China Travel Ban" was a Swiss cheese measure. He blocked travel, but only for Chinese nationals (which is why it was in fact a racist asshole thing to do). Everybody else was free to come and go as they pleased. And he didn't block any manufactured goods coming in from China. It could have given us a little lead time to get something in place before the thing took off, but he sat on his ass doing that stoopid fucking wishful thinking thing he always does.

This is on him, and I've not seen any good evidence that we're not being played - that this is not the standard Shock Doctrine bullshit that the plutocrats have been using to fuck people over for 50 years.

History is not a series of random independent events - and there's not such thing as mere;y coincidental, un-connected happenstance in politics.

If you've got about 9 hours, give a listen to Naomi Klein:

Today's Assignment

Remember your history.

Naomi Klein - Shock Doctrine

Res Ipsa Loquitor

"The occurrence of an accident implies neglect"

When something shitty happens - terrorists or a hurricane or whatever - remember that Cult45 has been awfully slow about getting people in place who oughta be working hard so we'll be ready for the shit when the shit happens.

It's not at all certain that we're being set up to accept Daddy State rule, but how do we dismiss the probability given our current "leadership"?

hat tip = Foreign Policy (pay wall)

Daddy State Illustrated

WeDon'tFuckin'Care 4.0 crapped out last night, partly because John McCain was conveniently unavailable for the scheduled vote, which made it easier for other Repubs to get their balls temporarily outa hock and acknowledge that the folks back home are close to being in open revolt.

But we ain't done, kids.

Why does McConnell now say he intends to go through with a stripped down version that does nothing but kill healthcare coverage, replacing it with (maybe) something else down the road? 

Daddy State rule 3:

Every warning about impending disaster, is a statement of intent.

They warned us that Obamacare is failing (or has failed), which is ridiculous knowing the Repubs have been working very hard to pour sugar in the gas tank for 7 years.

Imagine how well the thing would be working if the GOP would just listen to their constituents and help out a little.

Anyway, 45* all but said it straight out - when people really feel the pain, they'll come running to Daddy, begging him to do whatever it takes to make it stop hurting.

That's how the Daddy State works.

1. Create the disaster (or do nothing to prevent it)
2. Exploit the disaster

Here's A Tho't

Wondering why Congress is being so stealthy as they try to strip away everything the "conservatives" hate about this country instead of addressing the Trump/Russia thing?

Wonder no more:

1. Know what's coming
2. Get outside - disobey
3. Know your history
4. Follow the money
5. Have a Counter-Plan ready

This is not governance - this is a fucking robbery.

And BTW - what's the big hurry, Mitch?  Is 45* in greater jeopardy than you can admit?

Nobody Tells Us

I was in a running battle on FaceBook last week with an old high school buddy who insists that Gubmint Workers are greedy and that the real problem is that their retirement bennies are causing the states to go broke.

When I'm talking politics or anything else, my training tells me to listen, process, deconstruct, reconstruct and then rebut.  I'm learning (gradually) that the talking points from Right Radicals need to be dismissed loudly as soon as they fall outa their little pie holes - no matter what it is, I'm trying to retrain myself to demand verification and backup.

Unfortunately, as Mr Churchill said, "A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to gets its pants on."

From McClatchy:

A close look at state and local pension plans across the nation, and a comparison of them to those in the private sector, reveals a more complicated story. However, the short answer is that there's simply no evidence that state pensions are the current burden to public finances that their critics claim.