Today At The Cool Kids' Table

There is something very wrong with the president.

Seems like every few days we get a really good look at how supremely petty and grievance-driven 45* is.

We've all seen middle schoolers with more sense than what that asshat exhibits, and there're meth-addicted OCD serial killers with better impulse control.

COVID-19 Update

Growth Rate

Cases:
1.09 - World
1.13 - USA

Dead:
1.13 - World
1.18 - USA

From my handy dandy COVID-19 calculator:

 

Note - this is not a good model. This is only a look at what happens if nothing gets in its way and the growth rate remains constant.

Leadership

...and casualties of war.

Brett Crozier (Capt, USN), leaving the USS Teddy Roosevelt.

The send off for Captain Brett Crozier who was relieved from duty for TRYING TO SAVE THE LIVES OF HIS CREW pic.twitter.com/EEDG1U3rYE

— Danny Ocean (@The_UnSilent_) April 3, 2020

 

Newsweek:


Veterans Denounce 'Unforgivable' Decision to Remove U.S. Navy Captain Brett Crozier, Who Asked for Help With Ship's COVID-19 Outbreak

Veterans have spoken out against the decision to relieve the captain of the U.S.S. Theodore Roosevelt after he sent a letter to the Navy pleading for help after his ship was stricken with the coronavirus.

Thomas Modly, the acting secretary of the Navy, accused Capt. Brett Crozier of having "poor judgment" for using a "non-secure, unclassified" email address to write an email to his immediate chain of command which also included "20 or 30" additional recipients.

Crozier's letter, which was then leaked and published by the San Francisco Chronicle, asked officials for help in isolating more than 4,000 sailors onboard the aircraft carrier docked in Guam, after a COVID-19 outbreak was detected among its crew. A day after the letter was published, around 1,000 sailors were removed from the Theodore Roosevelt. A total of 114 crew have since tested positive for COVID-19.

Crozier said the move was necessary as the warship's "inherent limitations of space" meant the virus was spreading rapidly despite the other crew members distancing themselves.

"This will require a political solution but it is the right thing to do," Crozier wrote. "We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die. If we do not act now, we are failing to properly take care of our most trusted asset — our Sailors."

There are regulations against doing what Crozier is accused of doing, and we have to pay heed to the rule of law at all times and in all instances - and sometimes you have to say, "Fuck the regs. This is what I have to do to honor my oath - to serve the best interests of my command."

There's no real difference here between what Crozier has done and the kind of civil disobedience in the 60s that led to some positive changes in the way society functions.

A leader is required to serve the greater good no matter the consequences for himself.

Crozier has to stand before the man and account for his actions, but the Navy has to get its head out of its ass and find a way to honor the actions of a sailor who put himself at risk to do his duty as he saw it.

More GOP Fuckery

The latest in a lengthening parade of Republicans admitting to their attempts to suppress the vote.

Brad Reed, Raw Story:

Calls to expand mail-in voting have grown as the COVID-19 pandemic has made waiting in long lines at polling places a potential health hazard.

Many Republicans, including President Donald Trump, have rejected the idea because they fear making it easier for people to vote will harm the GOP.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that Georgia State House Speaker David Ralston became the latest GOP official to warn about the perils that vote-by-mail initiatives would have on his party.

“This will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia,” he said. “Every registered voter is going to get one of these. … This will certainly drive up turnout.”

Trump earlier this week similarly told “Fox & Friends” that Democrats were pushing for initiatives that would generate “levels of voting that if you ever agreed to it you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

Remember this the next time some Republican starts to crow about how "the GOP is the party lookin' out for minority rights": They are actually, because they intend to rule as a minority, and to use us as fodder to protect their rights at the expense of ours.

A Big Takeaway

WaPo ran a short interview with Scott Burns - the guy who wrote the screenplay for "Contagion".

Michelle Norris: Many people are turning to you because your “Contagion” screenplay seemed to predict the global pandemic. What do people want to know when they reach out?

Scott Burns: It is sad, and it is frustrating. Sad because so many people are dying and getting sick. Frustrating because people still don’t seem to grasp the situation we are now in and how it could have been avoided by properly funding the science around all of this. It is also surreal to me that people from all over the world write to me asking how I knew it would involve a bat or how I knew the term “social distancing.” I didn’t have a crystal ball — I had access to great expertise. So, if people find the movie to be accurate, it should give them confidence in the public health experts who are out there right now trying to guide us.

Cult45 devotees spend at least a fair part of the day repeating the propaganda bits about how Trump "inherited a broken system from Obama, and it's amazing what a wonderful job we're doing in spite of it yada yada yada."

So we have to repeat constantly that that's a load of 2nd rate bullshit.


We've seen this kinda thing play out three times now - each time leading to "Once-In-A-Lifetime Events" that are happening every 6 years or so.


Bush43 was warned by Clinton's guys that there's probably some bad shit coming our way, but The Shrub assumed it was some kind of lefties-being-pussies-and-trying-to-scare-the-big-strong-Republicans, so he blew 'em off and we got 3,000 dead on 9/11.

We were also warned about how all that De-Regulation Fever in the 90s was going to lead us back to the bad old days of banks and Wall Street fucking around - gambling with money that doesn't fucking belong to them. But all that was ignored, the Bushies cheered and took it even further, with the coin-operated politicians playing right along, and we got the worst economic implosion since the 1930s.


45* was warned about pandemics, and how we'd already gamed it out several different ways, and we need to stay vigilant and keep the system in place that's geared to give us a heads-up, but he's absolutely blinded by his resentments, none of which is greater than the one that drives his burning intention to dismantle every bit of Obama's legacy, so they blew it off, and now we've got 5,000 dead Americans so far, and we're faced with the very real probability of 100,000 - 300,000 more.


Seems like the first thing we need to do is stop putting these asshole Republicans in charge.

COVID-19 Update

USA now accounts for 22% of the world's COVID-19 cases.

Growth Factors

Cases:
1.09 - World
1.14 - USA

Deaths:
1.12 - World
1.26 - USA

BTW, I won't be accepting any bullshit about how the Dems are just using this pandemic thing to go against the president and blah blah blah.

This is another perfect example of what the law dogs said in the House impeachment hearings - (paraphrasing):

"If this isn't reason enough to remove a president (or any government official) from office, then those reasons don't exist."

What's going on now - and the fact that it's going to get a shitload worse - is exactly why we change political leadership.

This fucked up "response" would have to improve by orders of magnitude to meet the qualifying criteria for a cluster fuck in a rolling dumpster fire.

A Shift

Not everybody who was on the Trump band wagon is still four-square behind him.

It's a little weird to think Spring-like thoughts of green shoots and little rays of hope as we descend into the depths of a COVID-19 Winter.

Today's Brian

Brian Tyler Cohen

And Yamiche Alcindor deserves every accolade possible.

Today's Tweet

Its population is just under 10 million, but Trump said Seoul had 38 million people. He’s confusing the number of people in Seoul with the number of Mexicans who voted for Hillary.

— Rocky Mountain Mike (@RockyMntnMike) April 1, 2020

COVID-19 Update

So President Stoopid finally gets up there at the press briefing and admits he's had his head up his ass for 3 months, and that, golly gee willikers it looks like maybe 100,000 of us may die because of it.

And that's after Deb Birx and Tony Fauci told us the death toll could be as low as 100,000 if we do everything perfectly for the next month or so, but don't be too surprised if it pops up over 2 or 3 hundred thousand.

Cuz guess what - Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and Greg Abbott (R-TX) still won't issue orders to tell people they need to do what President Stoopid's Task Force is telling us we have to do perfectly if we're going to have a chance to salvage something decent from this fucked up mess.

Growth Factors

Cases:
1.09 - World
1.15 - USA

Deaths:
1.11 - World
1.29 - USA

Case Fatality Rate (CFR) for The US right now is at 2.2%, which is lagging behind a World CFR of close to 5%. Which is another one of those things that seems weird because either they just don't know enough yet, or Cult45 is still trying to keep a lid on the bad news.

Or maybe that lag is why the briefing yesterday was so dark and ominous. When we look at the USA numbers on this thing, it doesn't seem all that bad, but there's a definite "We ain't seen nuthin' yet" vibe to it that's pretty fucking scary, so maybe they're just owning up to it now.

Wouldn't it be nice if 45* hadn't spent this whole time lying to us about everything.