Unclear On the Concept; Fox News Ed.

When things can begin to get back to normal should depend solely on where we are in getting the pandemic into a manageable state. It has to be in a place where people who continue to get sick aren't overwhelming the hospitals and continuing to burn through the medical staff. If the country relaxes its guard too soon, people are going to die needlessly.

The virus is immune to wishful scheduling, though four-starred idiots such as Ms. Ingraham and Donald Trump may think otherwise.

Also, this from RobertaX.

And this:

Found here

Pandemic Profiteers: Bankster Ed.

As millions of Americans get thrown out of work during the pandemic, one group stand ready to make a killing: The Banksters.

This is why: When it comes time to making decisions on buying stuff during this crisis, more and more people are going to turn to their credit cards. The landlord isn't going to take plastic, but the grocery stores and the pharmacies will. Millions, if not tens of millions of people who would routinely pay off their credit card each month are now going to, out of necessity, run balances on them, The banks stand ready to reap massive profits from the pandemic.

Credit card rates are averaging 17-20%, with some cards into the mid-30s. During a time of crisis, this is nothing short of usury and profiteering.

I am not against the banks making a profit. but I am opposed to them making a killing on the backs of people during a global pandemic and its ensuing economic crisis.

So please, Gentle Readers, sit down at your keyboards and send off emails to your Senators and Congressmen. Ask them, for the love of Your Dear and Fluffy Lord, to step up and do something.

(Feel free to repost.)

A Song For Today

Pandemic Humor

Your Sunday Morning Big Prop Noise

How to fly a Grumman TBF:

Trump's Catastrophic Mistake

Back when Trump thought the COVID-19 pandemic was a hoax:

Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, says that Trump administration officials declined an offer of early congressional funding assistance that he and other senators made on Feb. 5 during a meeting to discuss the coronavirus.

The officials, including Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, said they “didn’t need emergency funding, that they would be able to handle it within existing appropriations,” Murphy recalled in an interview with Yahoo News’ “Skullduggery” podcast.

“What an awful, horrible catastrophic mistake that was,” Murphy said.

It was, indeed. Trump wasted weeks, trying to jawbone a virus as well as the stock market.

The virus is relentless. It does not respond to hopes, prayers or rage-tweeting. Insults spewed at a MAGA rally only served to delay American preparedness. Trump slept and said it was all a hoax while the virus sank its prongs into this nation.

Trump was not the only politician to dismantle preparations for a pandemic in the moronic belief that one would never happen. Gov. Brown in California did even worse than Trump. The state had three 200-bed mobile hospitals, 50 million N95 masks and 2,400 ventilators. Jerry Brown scrapped all of that. So Californians who lose loved ones to this pandemic should feel free to look up Jerry Brown and inform him that he has the blood of maybe thousands of people on his hands.

Heckuvajob, Jerry.

They Have Some Greedy Companies in Texas

While Congress was working out the details on a bill that would provide Americans with stimulus checks, at least one Austin company was looking for ways to save payroll.
...
The agreement would put workers under a “temporary compensation reduction that is in line with the assistance that it receives from the federal government related to the COVID-19 pandemic.” By signing the agreement, the company’s employees would have their paychecks between April 6 and April 20 cut by 100% of any money received under the stimulus bill.

The company would also take half of the $500 stipend allotted for dependents under the bill.

That's American capaitalism for you: Rob the workers whenever you can.

Eventually, the name of this greedy company and the assholes who own it will become public.

Pandemic Humor

Trump to Governors: Don't Forget to Kiss My Ass!

After days of desperate pleas from the nation’s governors, President Donald Trump took a round of steps to expand the federal government’s role in helping produce critically needed supplies to fight the coronavirus pandemic even as he warned the leaders of hard-hit states not to cross him.

“I want them to be appreciative,” Trump said Friday after the White House announced that he would be using the powers granted to him under the Korean War-era Defense Production Act to try to compel auto giant General Motors to produce ventilators.

"Appreciative", yeah, Trump wants them to suck up to him as though they were wearing Mike Pence's kneepads.

Face it, Gentle Reader, in this time of global crisis, the United States has a president who is both petulant and has the attention span of a gnat. Everybody constantly has to be telling the World's Oldest Toddler what a good boy he is.

And if you don't suck the microscopic and diseased dick of King Donald, then you're going to be punished.

After President Donald Trump issued scathing comments about Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, saying she's "not stepping up," and "doesn't know what's going on," she told WWJ 950 the state is having trouble getting the equipment they need to fight the novel coronavirus.

"What I've gotten back is that vendors with whom we've procured contracts -- They're being told not to send stuff to Michigan," Whitmer said live on air.

Because, in a global pandemic, the most important thing to Trump is to hear people telling him what a good job he's doing.

Heckuva job, Trumpie. Heckuva job. Whose a good boy, Donald, whose a good boy? You are! Heckuva job.

Caturday

Chip is sticking his neck out to try and see around the corner.

Trump: I Don't Know What Goes On In the White House, I Just Work Here

Cruise Lines Aren't Getting Bailed Out

... major cruise operators don’t locate their headquarters in the United States, so they will not have access to $500 billion in aid for large employers in the massive stimulus bill, the industry’s trade group said Thursday.

Language in the 883-page bill passed by the Senate says that to be eligible for aid from the $500 billion fund, companies must be certified as “created or organized in the United States or under the laws of the United States” as well as having “significant operations in” and a majority of employees based in the United States.

Major cruise companies have located their primary headquarters overseas, which for years has allowed them to pay almost no federal taxes and avoid some U.S. regulations. To staff their ships, the companies rely heavily on foreign workers from the Philippines, Indonesia and India.

They wanted the benefits of being bailed out without having assumed any of the burdens or responsibilities of operating as American companies. It's standard Republican corporate socialism: Don't pay any taxes but line up to get bailouts.

Carnival Corp., owner of the Princess cruise lines, is incorporated in Panama. Royal Caribbean is incorporated in Liberia, and Norwegian Cruise Lines in Bermuda.

As I said before, they can go ask those governments for loans. Fuck those guys.

Pandemic Humor

Because It's Friday

Durango & Silverton #493:

It's Hard to Keep Up With Trump's Stupid Shit

Trump offered no clear explanation when asked about [stationing troops on the Canadian border] Thursday. He first said he would look into it, then said troops were already present at the border, saying it was a matter of “equal justice” given the force on the southern border.

He then claimed the troop presence was a reaction to illegal trade. “In Canada, we do have troops along the border. We have a lot of things coming in from Canada, some illegal trade we don’t like ... dumping steel,” Trump said.

That's exactly right. I was sort-of-listing to Trump spewing his word salad yesterday when I thought: "What the fuck? did he just say that he wanted to put soldiers on the border to keep out smuggled steel?"

Yes, he did.

That man is not right in the head.

Trump Keeps on Lying and Trumpanzees Keep Sucking It Up

At almost every one of his daily pressers since the COVID-19 virus took hold, Trump says some variant of this line:

“Nobody knew there would be a pandemic or epidemic of this proportion. So there’s never been anything like this in history. There’s never been. And nobody’s ever seen anything like this.”

That is a bald-faced lie. Everyone who paid attention to such things knew that there could be a bad pandemic. That's why both Presidents G.W. Bush and Obama had planning staffs to come up with plans for a pandemic and watch out for one. That's why, before Trump took office, the Obama administration ran a pandemic planning exercise for Trump and his staff. The Trump team was bored shitless.

As has been reported ad nauseum, Trump disbanded the pandemic planning staffs. Trump gutted the U.S. staff in China who would have looked for signs of a pandemic.

So everyone who knew anything about pandemics well understood that another one would happen one day. But not Trump, nosiree.

And, as far as his claim that there has never been anything like this in history, that's just laughable. Anyone who buys that is a certified Trumpanzee Kool-Aid Drinker.

Karma Can Be a Motherfucker; COVID-19 Ed.

Yesterday, one of the first deaths of a Virginia resident from COVID-19 was a Christian musical evangelist who, believing the pandemic response to be anti-Trump “mass hysteria,” took his family to New Orleans to “wash it from its Sin and debauchery.”

Hopefully, Terrorism Charges Will Be Forthcoming

At a time when grocery store workers and truck drivers are putting in long hours and selflessly risking COVID-19 exposure to keep the shelves in our communities stocked, a "very twisted prank" just forced a supermarket in Pennsylvania to throw away practically their entire inventory of fresh produce.
...
The supermarket is now working with their local health inspector to ensure that they have identified and properly disinfected each of the areas that the woman potentially contaminated. They say, as a result, they have had to throw out more than $35,000 worth of food — a devastating thought at a time when many Americans are lining up to shop for necessities.

In this particular time, such "pranks" should be considered to be domestic terrorism and prosecuted as such.

Pandemic Humor

Billionaire Suggests That Workers Should Just Get Sick

Miami Beach Commissioner Ricky Arriola on Friday at an emergency city meeting asked if there were doctors in the audience. Nobody answered. He suggested that if people who survive the coronavirus then have immunity — like the chicken pox — then the city can take steps to help others.

“Assuming you make it through,” Arriola said, before describing what he called a “dangerous but bold” idea: “First responders voluntarily taking one for the team” and then developing immunity.

Arriola is one of those billionaires who mucks around in government as a hobby because he's bored or some shit.

It's about what one would expect from a mini-Trump.

Meanwhile, the moronic bint who licked a toilet seat in a "coronavirus challenge" should be strapped to a luggage cart and flogged through the terminals at KATL.

An Extra

I have several days's worth in the queue, but this one is too good to wait for its turn:

The Pro-Life Party

Dan Patrick, Texas’ Republican lieutenant governor, on Monday night suggested that he and other grandparents would be willing to risk their health and even lives in order for the United States to “get back to work” amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Once again, the GOP is showing that when it comes to human life, they don't care about anyone (other than the top 0.1%) once they exit the birth canal.

It's also interesting how, when there is a crisis, Republicans eagerly jettison their embrace of Ayn Randian capitalism and embrace socialist-type measures.

Who knew that, when we reset the clocks this month, that we went from Standard Time to the Twilight Zone.

Speaking of the Twilight Zone:

Golden Earring is a long-lived Dutch band that, as far as the American market is concerned, is a two-hit wonder. This was one of them.

Pandemic Humor

The last one makes a valid point. I know that some people are going snakeshit from not being able to go out to eat or drink at their local watering holes or go clubbing or whatever.

Well, suck it up, snowflake. Imagine, if you will, that the virus is a Quisling cop or a SS man or a Gestapo agent, lurking around in the hopes that someone like you will show themselves so they can be arrested and sent to the concentration camps.

The virus is like that, only millions times smaller. It is no less capricious.

Triage

Please go read Roberta X's post on this. It explains why the social-distancing measures are a serious thing.

I've been reading her blog for over a decade. She is not given to hyperbole.

The 2021 Olympics

The IOC gave up fighting reality today and postponed the Tokyo Olympics.

The International Olympic Committee said the Tokyo Games “must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020, but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community.”

About time.

Pandemic Humor

Continuing on:

Question du Jour

How much money will Trump's companies get from Mnuchin's slush fund? (How much money is Trump losing at his properties?)

The fight, right now, is over transparency. It should come as no surprise that the Trump Administration wants to be able to hand out a half-a-billion, in cash, to companies with no requirement to account for who gets it. The Trump Administration wants to hand it out with no strings, companies would only have to promise that they'll try to retain workers. (But no money would be available to help nursing homes and hospitals from the Mnuchin slush fund.)

In short, as Trump envisions it, he gets to loot the treasury to benefit his cronies.

Teapot Dome had nothing on these birds.

The Word of a Billionaire Politician is Worth Nothing

Former field organizers for Michael R. Bloomberg filed two proposed class-action lawsuits against his presidential campaign Monday, arguing that they and thousands of others laid off this month had been tricked into taking jobs they were told would last until November.

The lawsuits, both filed in federal court in New York City, argued that the campaign had recruited staff members to work on Mr. Bloomberg’s bid under false pretenses, preventing them from pursuing other opportunities. One of the suits, brought by a former field organizer in Florida, also alleged the campaign had breached its contract with its organizers and failed to pay them necessary overtime.

In short, Bloomberg hired all of those people and told them, whatever happens, that they would have jobs through November. But then Elizabeth Warren eviscerated him in a debate and he, not his staff, not the people producing his slick ads, fell apart.

Nearly a dozen other former campaign workers expressed frustration in interviews on Friday, saying the pay and promises of job security through November had been key reasons they joined Mr. Bloomberg’s long-shot campaign. They requested anonymity to speak because of nondisclosure agreements they had signed with the campaign and a desire not to jeopardize the remaining pay the campaign had promised them.

Bloomberg, like almost every other billionaire, treats people like disposable widgets or interchangeable parts.

His word, like the guy he was trying to replace, is as worthless as a guarantee of safe-conduct from Maj. Strasser.

Bail Out the Cruise Industry?

President Donald Trump on [March 9th] said he has plans to help the cruise and airline industries that have been “hard hit” by an outbreak of the coronavirus, as his administration sent mixed signals over whether Americans should proceed with holiday cruise plans.

“We’re working with them very, very strongly,” Trump told reporters, referring to airline and cruise line executives who have met with White House officials in recent days.

I sure as hell hope that this is off the table. Most of the cruise lines are companies that are registered in other companies and their ships are foreign-flagged, crewed largely by third-world crews.

If the cruise lines want a bailout, they should go ask the Bahamians, the Filipinos, the Panamanians, the Belizeans, or the Hondurans. Not us.

Fuck those guys.

Shorter Trump: What's a Million Dead People As Long as the Stock Market Goes Back Up?

President Trump on Sunday night said that the government would reassess the recommended period for keeping businesses shut and millions of workers at home after this week, amid millions of job losses caused by the efforts to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus.

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” Mr. Trump tweeted in all capital letters shortly before midnight. “AT THE END OF THE 15 DAY PERIOD, WE WILL MAKE A DECISION AS TO WHICH WAY WE WANT TO GO!”

That's Trump's priority, which comes down to protecting his own hide above everything else. He's losing a ton of cash at his properties every day they are closed. So opening them is in his self-interest.

Allowing business interests to rule over epidemiology is a recipe for a lot more dead people, as in six figures' worth. This is a national public health emergency. The people who should be driving it are those who have expertise in such matters. The states where there are not a lot of cases are the states where the virus has not taken a firm hold. Hoping that it won't is not any sort of a rational plan.

But Trump has never cared about anyone other than himself. He has all of the empathy of an I-beam.

On another note, Congress should make sure that there are firm controls on bailouts and loans for businesses. If there is a lot of discretion left to the Treasury, you can bet your last roll of toilet paper that Trump, through Mnuchin, will make sure that the money only goes to businesses that have pledged fealty to King Donald the Nutter.

This Is Some Bad Shit

From New Orleans:

“It first struck me how different it was when I saw my first coronavirus patient go bad. I was like, Holy shit, this is not the flu. Watching this relatively young guy, gasping for air, pink frothy secretions coming out of his tube and out of his mouth. The ventilator should have been doing the work of breathing but he was still gasping for air, moving his mouth, moving his body, struggling. We had to restrain him.
...
“When someone has an infection, I’m used to seeing the normal colors you’d associate with it: greens and yellows. The coronavirus patients with ARDS have been having a lot of secretions that are actually pink because they’re filled with blood cells that are leaking into their airways. They are essentially drowning in their own blood and fluids because their lungs are so full."

The people who are saying that "oh, this is just another flu" should be beaten with fireplace tools.

Pandemic Humor

Never Forget This One Tweet

That was fifteen days ago.

Jackboots to be Worn by Trump's Task Force

Trump is seeking to use the COVID-19 pandemic to get closer to having an authoritarian state.

The proposal would also grant those top judges broad authority to pause court proceedings during emergencies. It would apply to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil process and proceedings,” according to draft legislative language the department shared with Congress.

That basically means that someone could be arrested and held without bail, without arraignment, until such time as Trump decides that the Coronavirus emergency is over.

Which, judging by the history of authoritarian states, would be never.

Given that we have already seen one Trumpist governor use the Coronavirus as a tool to mess with the process of selecting a nominee for the Democratic party, it may not be beyond the realm of possibility that the Party of Trump will try to find a way of postponing the election this Fall.

That would be a severe degradation of our democracy, and one that I wager that most of the Trumpanzees will loudly applaud.

We should not let Trump do what we let Bush do after 9-11: Use a national crisis as a way to strip us of more of our liberties and freedoms.

COVID-19 and H1N1

A physician was asked whether COVID-19 was reallly no worse than H1N1. This is a screenshot of his response:

There was a cohort of people who were largely immune to H1N1 in 2009. That's not true this time. Nobody seems to be immune.

Pandemic Humor

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

Pre-flighting a F-104:

The F-104 probably killed almost as many Luftwaffe pilots as did the RAF.

Tracking The Pandemic

The world-o-meter.

Heater du Jour

One of the guns that I bought from an estate in a private sale:

A nickel-plated S&W 19-4. The nickel is damaged in two places on the barrel, but not in huge chunks. The timing is soft; two of the chambers lock up just as the hammer falls. On the other side of the coin, short-barrel Model 19s are sweet guns. This one shoots as well as one would expect from a classic Smith.

So it was a good deal. Not a great deal, considering that I'm going to need to dump some money into it.

Pandemic Humor

I have more, I'm spacing them out.

Heckuva Job, Trumpie

When tested by the fire of crisis, Trump showed us what he's always been: a weak, spoiled, intellectually vacant conman who has stumbled through a life of betrayal and failure papered over by bullshit and public relations. The media image from The Apprentice that hypnotized so many Trump voters was always the product of Mark Burnett's writers' room, not reality. The bold leader was a teleprompter confection, a D-grade celebrity playing a C-grade CEO in a reality show.

Sorry, MAGAs, but Trump must face blame for the viral Chernobyl that is rolling over our population now; the one thing you never get back when fighting an epidemic is time. He spent weeks spinning that Coronavirus/COVID-10 was no big deal, and that there was no crisis about to scythe through our nation.
...
He soft-pedaled the crisis even as it grew in scope and risk. His minions and minders repeatedly said that this crisis was contained. He promised a vaccine that is, at best, a year away. He promised testing, without the intention or ability to deliver. He compared it to the common flu, which left disease specialists and epidemiologists heads exploding worldwide. He failed as a leader, from the very start.

Read the entire thing. Trump is his own Brownie. That's why Trump keeps telling everyone that he's been doing a heckuvajob.

But there will be no penetrating the armor of faith of the Trumpanzees.

Caturday

Chip is blurry because he is kicking the ever loving shit out of a catnip pillows

"Failed to Act"

A brutal takedown of King Nutter:

It's Horrifying to Watch

The latest daily soap opera: As the Asshole Bloviates, otherwise known as Trump's coronavirus press conferences.

He just gets up there and lies his fucking ass off about anything and everything, with Pence providing Trump with hummers on demand.

Senators Who Should Resign (and/or be locked up)

Soon after he offered public assurances that the government was ready to battle the coronavirus, the powerful chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Richard Burr, sold off a significant percentage of his stocks, unloading between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings on Feb. 13 in 33 separate transactions.

Tucker Carlson was not amused.

You may recall that, when legislation was enacted to criminalize legislators using nonpublic information to trade on stocks, Burr was one of the few to vote against it.

He was not the only one using his privileged position to make money.

The Senate’s newest member sold off seven figures’ worth of stock holdings in the days and weeks after a private, all-senators meeting on the novel coronavirus that subsequently hammered U.S. equities.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) reported the first sale of stock jointly owned by her and her husband on Jan. 24, the very day that her committee, the Senate Health Committee, hosted a private, all-senators briefing from administration officials, including the CDC director and Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, on the coronavirus.
...
“Concerned about #coronavirus?” she tweeted on March 10. “Remember this: The consumer is strong, the economy is strong, & jobs are growing, which puts us in the best economic position to tackle #COVID19 & keep Americans safe.”

Other senators to sell off a lot of stock before it became apparent to the general public what we faced were James Inhofe and Dianne Feinstein.

They're pretty much all claiming that either their spouse did it or their "blind trust" did it. Funny how their spouses and trust managers all seem to figure out that bad shit is going to happen before everyone else.

They all need to go and, if the evidence supports it, Lock Them Up!
--------------------
Changing gears:

On Thursday, police in Purcellville, Virginia posted a bulletin which said “juveniles” had been observed coughing on produce at a grocery store while filming the stunt — presumably for social media.

Long prison terms and/or beatings are called for.

Because It's Friday

Three Brit locomotives, which were built in the USA during the war.

Being Young and Stupid During a Pandemic

“If I get corona, I get corona. At the end of the day, I'm not gonna let it stop me from partying”: Spring breakers are still flocking to Miami, despite coronavirus warnings. https://t.co/KoYKI8zNDH pic.twitter.com/rfPfea1LrC

— CBS News (@CBSNews) March 18, 2020

More here.

Being young isn't a complete shield against COVID-19. Even if they don't get seriously sick or die, they may bring the virus to someone who is more susceptible.

Their names are going to be written down, they won't be forgotten. Their stupidity will follow them.