I fucking hate wearing a mask. Every single time I have to put it on - when entering a supermarket or walking through a park nearby - I get irrationally angry - no, correct that - I get rationally angry at our leaders, our mayors and governors and, of course, our goddamn president, for not having done something when they knew this was coming. Every single time I wash my hands to the point of cracking my skin, I can feel my blood pressure rise in rage at how badly the whole response to this pandemic was fucked up.
I went to my office for the first time in two months last week and I honestly felt whole again. I could only stay long enough to pick up a few things, but, damn, I missed being there. I like my job as a professor. And I fucking despise having to teach online classes, as I have this spring semester and as I will during the summer and as I almost certainly will in the fall. I fucking despise Zoom meetings and I'm motherfucking sick of motherfucking discussion boards.
I want to go out and sit at a dive bar and listen to the rantings of the guy who's just a little drunker than I am. I want to go to a small-venue concert with a bunch of sweaty people who are all jostling each other to get closer to the stage. I want to go see insane theatre in tiny spaces and I want to go see blockbuster movies in giant spaces. I want to go eat at my favorite Indian joints, where the takeout is fine, but, goddamn, it's just so much better right out of the kitchen.
In other words, I want the economy to open up. I don't give a fuck if it gives Donald Trump a boost in the polls. I want to do the shit I like doing.
But I know that if I wanna do the shit I like doing, then I better do the shit I don't like doing first and for long enough. You stop taking your antibiotics before you're supposed to and that fuckin' sinus infection is coming right back.
Yet President Donald Trump, who is actually three short, fat, child-molesting clowns standing on top of each other in a terrible-fitting suit, thinks that Democrats and people on the left don't want shit to open up: "If it was up to some people, let's keep it closed for a long time. OK? A long time. And watch the United States go down the tubes," he said in an interview. And when he was prancing around Michigan, shitting on the state's governor and Secretary of State, he proclaimed, "You have a lot of — unfortunately, in this case, Democrat governors — I think they think it’s good politics to keep it closed." He tweeted, "The Democrats are moving slowly, all over the USA, for political purposes. They would wait until November 3rd if it were up to them."
It's become another article of Trumpian faith on the right that Democrats don't give a fuck about the economy or jobs, that we don't want everything to open back up because a bad economy hurts Trump or because we want to use the shutdown to convert everything over to socialism or the metric system or to let Hillary run more child sex dungeons or whatever crazy shit Republicans toss out there. One Republican official in Texas went so far as to say coronavirus is a hoax made up by Democrats because we hate Trump so much.
We don't want that, you poor, deluded motherfuckers. We wanna do the shit we like doing, just like you. We're tired of old baseball games and Netflix's latest "Let's exploit mental illness for shits and giggles and subscribers" documentaries. The difference is simple. We don't want to have to open it all up just to shut it all down in the winter when we bumblefuck into a second wave that we should have been preparing for but haven't because President Hydroxy Glow won't do what needs to be done. We want more testing - not just tests available, but more actual testing - and some kind of way to do contact tracing. Except dumbass conservatives start screaming about freedom because Walmart wants them to wear a mask and, oh, shit, you may as well open a concentration camp now.
So, yeah, Democrats don't want to pretend it's all okay when it fucking well isn't. The problem isn't that we want to hurt Trump. It's that Trump is afraid of getting hurt.
Lemme tell you something I said on Twitter a couple of weeks ago: I tested positive for the COVID-19 antibody. That means I had it, probably in mid-March when I had a low-grade fever and a cough that went away within a week or so. I had quarantined myself because I'm not a dick, and I got better with virtually no effects beyond being a little tired. My doctor wanted me to get tested back then, but that was during the time when the utter clusterfuck of failures by the Trump administration made it pretty much impossible to get one unless I was hacking up a lung at death's door. But when I went to my doctor for something else at the end of April, she said she had the antibody test and that I should take it. I was first patient of hers to test positive, and I immediately asked about donating plasma because, again, I'm generally not a dick.
Now, acknowledging that the tests produce false-positives (and hopefully the New York Blood Center will confirm the test) and acknowledging that there is scant evidence whether or not having the antibody protects you from future infection, there is at least a chance that I'm better off than perhaps 90% of the population (acknowledging also that we simply don't know how many people had coronavirus and recovered because of the aforementioned and ongoing clusterfuck).
So let's say they discover, holy shit, I'm immune, as is everyone who tests positive for the antibody. If I were a dick, I'd say, "Fuck everyone else. I'm goin' to the movies." But I don't want that. I want a government that does this shit right. I want a society that opens up and accepts the reality of the virus-fucked world we're in. I want to get to the the new normal.
And that's taking everyone into consideration, every stupid shitheel who goes nutzoid when the Piggly-Wiggly manager says to wear a mask, everyone who is healthy and everyone who is not, everyone's grandma and grandpa and everyone's child. It's not about politics. It's about getting shit right by acknowledging shit has to change and then opening back up.
To me, it's utter madness that everyone doesn't believe this. To me, it's that Trump and his MAGA cretins want to open everything in order to help his reelection chances, death and long-term effects of this virus be damned.
5/18/2020
The Trump Administration Didn't Say a Single Negative Word About the Strategic National Stockpile Until This Year
Newest, shiniest White House spokesstooge Kayleigh McEnany is such a fucking liar and a loyal lapdog to whoever has power that it's not surprising when she tells another whopper while leaping into Donald Trump's soft but greasy-smelling thigh cushions. On Saturday, McEnany, whose job seems to be to make Kellyanne Conway seem rational, was asked about President Barack Obama's mild swipe at the "folks in charge" who "aren’t even pretending to be in charge."
In that perpetual huff of someone who just found out that black people are allowed to barbecue in the park, McEnany said, "President Trump’s unprecedented coronavirus response has saved lives...President Trump directed the greatest mobilization of the private sector since World War II to fill the stockpile left depleted by his predecessor."
It's something that Trump and his squad of pricks, prostitutes, and panderers have said repeatedly, and it's taken as an article of faith in Trumpistan that Obama left the shelves of the Strategic National Stockpile of supplies for a national medical emergency bereft, as if he looted them himself. "The cupboard was bare," Trump says all the time, like a deranged child with "Old Mother Hubbard" stuck in his Adderall-fried brain.
As many people have pointed out, not only is this not true, but, well, shit, Trump's been president for over three years. If the cupboard's bare, that shit's his fault. Fill the fuckin' cupboard, motherfucker. Of course, of course, of course, we know that Donald Trump avoids blame and responsibility like Alex Jones avoids sanity, and we know that all the MAGA geeks and cretins will blame the black guy for everything because, well, of course they do. This is another of those infinite occasions where you'd think something in the realm of reason would creep into their deluded fantasy world of white victimization and class self-loathing to think that if they owned their fuckin' house for three years and the hot water heater breaks, that shit's on them. It might suck, but that's how it goes.
Still, if you need even more evidence about how much bullshit this allegation about the SNS is, you can look at the fuckin' record. In the first three years of the Trump administration, no one from the White House said a single word about the supposedly bare shelves. You'd think you might have wanna looked into that, huh? But not the Trumpistas. They couldn't have given a single shit about it.
The only thing that White House did was to move the SNS from being controlled by the Centers for Disease Control and to being more directly controlled by the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response at HHS. Like so much in Trump world, this meant it moved from a place of science with fewer political appointees to someone who is more in line with Trump's vision of government as a place for profit and graft.
At a House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee Hearing on Public Health and Biopreparedness in July 2018, which was ostensibly about reauthorizing the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, testimony came from both Anthony Fauci and Rick Bright, along with others. While the focus was obviously not on the novel coronavirus (which, you know, wasn't identified until late in 2019), no one talked about empty shelves, bare cupboards, or anything of the like at the SNS. Indeed, that would have been the place to do it because the hearing was partially about funding the SNS. The only substantive questions were about that move of control. (And before you ask about Bright's whistleblower statement, the masks and ventilators that were needed were in addition to what was in the stockpile already. He wanted to ramp up procurement as soon as COVID-19 was starting to crash down on the human world.)
Indeed, so unconcerned was the Trump administration with the tumbleweeds blowing through the empty Strategic National Stockpile's warehouses that Congress has approved more funding for it than Trump has requested every year. Trump didn't give a single shit. The ASPR, Robert Kadlec, saw the stockpile as an opportunity to get contracts to his friends and halted an effort from the Obama administration to work with a company to develop a mechanized way to rapidly turn out a bunch of masks, to, you know, fill the shelves with even more stuff.
There are so many lies from Trump that are repeated over and over until they become a mantra that obliterates facts and reality that sometimes it's hard to parry them all back. It's not just about fact-checking and truth-telling. It's showing that within each lie is another piece of Trump's incompetence and apathy, just another way that he's fucking us over while pretending that he's a hero. Goddamn, when will that bloated myth be punctured like a bazooka hitting a hot-air balloon?
In that perpetual huff of someone who just found out that black people are allowed to barbecue in the park, McEnany said, "President Trump’s unprecedented coronavirus response has saved lives...President Trump directed the greatest mobilization of the private sector since World War II to fill the stockpile left depleted by his predecessor."
It's something that Trump and his squad of pricks, prostitutes, and panderers have said repeatedly, and it's taken as an article of faith in Trumpistan that Obama left the shelves of the Strategic National Stockpile of supplies for a national medical emergency bereft, as if he looted them himself. "The cupboard was bare," Trump says all the time, like a deranged child with "Old Mother Hubbard" stuck in his Adderall-fried brain.
As many people have pointed out, not only is this not true, but, well, shit, Trump's been president for over three years. If the cupboard's bare, that shit's his fault. Fill the fuckin' cupboard, motherfucker. Of course, of course, of course, we know that Donald Trump avoids blame and responsibility like Alex Jones avoids sanity, and we know that all the MAGA geeks and cretins will blame the black guy for everything because, well, of course they do. This is another of those infinite occasions where you'd think something in the realm of reason would creep into their deluded fantasy world of white victimization and class self-loathing to think that if they owned their fuckin' house for three years and the hot water heater breaks, that shit's on them. It might suck, but that's how it goes.
Still, if you need even more evidence about how much bullshit this allegation about the SNS is, you can look at the fuckin' record. In the first three years of the Trump administration, no one from the White House said a single word about the supposedly bare shelves. You'd think you might have wanna looked into that, huh? But not the Trumpistas. They couldn't have given a single shit about it.
The only thing that White House did was to move the SNS from being controlled by the Centers for Disease Control and to being more directly controlled by the Assistant Secretary of Preparedness and Response at HHS. Like so much in Trump world, this meant it moved from a place of science with fewer political appointees to someone who is more in line with Trump's vision of government as a place for profit and graft.
At a House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee Hearing on Public Health and Biopreparedness in July 2018, which was ostensibly about reauthorizing the Pandemic and All-Hazards Preparedness Act, testimony came from both Anthony Fauci and Rick Bright, along with others. While the focus was obviously not on the novel coronavirus (which, you know, wasn't identified until late in 2019), no one talked about empty shelves, bare cupboards, or anything of the like at the SNS. Indeed, that would have been the place to do it because the hearing was partially about funding the SNS. The only substantive questions were about that move of control. (And before you ask about Bright's whistleblower statement, the masks and ventilators that were needed were in addition to what was in the stockpile already. He wanted to ramp up procurement as soon as COVID-19 was starting to crash down on the human world.)
Indeed, so unconcerned was the Trump administration with the tumbleweeds blowing through the empty Strategic National Stockpile's warehouses that Congress has approved more funding for it than Trump has requested every year. Trump didn't give a single shit. The ASPR, Robert Kadlec, saw the stockpile as an opportunity to get contracts to his friends and halted an effort from the Obama administration to work with a company to develop a mechanized way to rapidly turn out a bunch of masks, to, you know, fill the shelves with even more stuff.
There are so many lies from Trump that are repeated over and over until they become a mantra that obliterates facts and reality that sometimes it's hard to parry them all back. It's not just about fact-checking and truth-telling. It's showing that within each lie is another piece of Trump's incompetence and apathy, just another way that he's fucking us over while pretending that he's a hero. Goddamn, when will that bloated myth be punctured like a bazooka hitting a hot-air balloon?
5/14/2020
At the Bright Hearing, Republicans Tell Scientists: You May Have Your Fancy Studies, But We Have Anecdotes
Dr. Rick Bright, who has spent his adult life working to make vaccines to prevent terrible diseases and who desperately tried to get the louche, evil frauds in the Trump administration to do something about the goddamn coronavirus that was about to fuck our shit up and then got fired for his efforts, was the star witness at the hearing of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce's health subcommittee today. And you gotta pity Bright as he faced down the goobers, goons, crackers, and crazies in the Republican Party who either wanted to peddle some batshit ideas about how to treat COVID-19 or prop up the saggy tits of President Trump by discrediting Bright.
The look on Bright's face every time he had to answer GOP questions was one of "Jesus, these delusional fucks are getting people killed."
Honestly, it was like the Republican Party has invested in stock in the company that makes hydroxychloroquine (and, you know, many of its members probably have). They asked repeatedly about the drug that Trump and the entire right-wing media machine touted as the miracle to end the plague. Right out of the gate, GOP Rep. Michael Burgess, who represents the Walmarts and malls of the north Dallas suburbs, and is an honest-to-fuck physician, went all in on hydroxychloroquine: "I’m hearing from a lot of doctors in my state, around the country, who have experience using hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine coupled with as erythromycin and zinc, and they’re reporting significant benefit if it is used early enough in the course and may eliminate the need for hospitalization." He heard some stories. I've had people tell me they saw Bigfoot. They didn't fuckin' see Bigfoot. They saw something and decided it was Bigfoot because they wanted to fuckin' see Bigfoot. That's not how medical research works. Hell, that's not even how genuine Bigfoot research works.
Bright answered, essentially, "Are you fucking serious with this shit?" but much more even-handedly: "I’ve heard those anecdotal stories, as well, and they were not conducted in the context of a randomized, controlled clinical study. It’s very difficult to understand data from those types of observational studies or anecdotal stories." In other words, if you want to state a scientific conclusion, do some fucking science.
When it came to the drug that Trump pimped like "MAGA" means "Make Americans Get Arrhythmia," Burgess's questions were the scientific peak of the GOP's effort to get Bright to admit that hydroxychloroquine is awesome and he just hates the president.
Here's Rep. Morgan Griffith, representing the dumbass part of Virginia, after Bright had explained how COVID can fuck you up and how the drug can fuck you up worse: "You said [with] the hydroxychloroquine that one of the problems was you might have a irregular heartbeat. If you’re worrying about not having a heartbeat at all, you’re not worried about irregular, if you don’t have one at all, am I not correct about that?" No, motherfucker. You're not correct. How does that even make fucking sense? Essentially, Griffith and other hydroxy-humpers think that you should just pump sick people with random drugs and hope something sticks.
On it fucking went.
Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida wanted to make sure Bright knew he heard some motherfuckin' badass anecdotes: "I’ve heard from experts, and I’m certainly not an expert in this area, that the drug or the one that we’re talking about in this case, hydroxychloroquine, if it’s used, first of all, timely, because I know I understand there’s a window there. As far as the efficacy of the drug. Have you heard this, that if it’s administered properly, there’s a small window there for the patients as far as risk is concerned?" Yeah, he was saying, brandishing his erect tiny penis, check out this dick.
Bright smacked Bilirakis's hard-on, countering, "We have seen anecdotal, heard of anecdotal data from different positions that they believe they’ve seen benefit or patient improvement from use of this drug in either combination with an antibiotic, azithromycin, or a combination with zinc or vitamin C or other things, but there was never sufficient evidence from a randomized controlled study to show its benefit would actually outweigh the potential risk." Why the fuck does this even need to be said?
Bilirakis sulked away with his tiny, now-flaccid prick and murmured the equivalent of a tearful "Oh, yeah?" by adding, "It’s my understanding that not my constituent, but a US citizen, a veteran, was cured, again, this is just from what I’ve heard, from the drug and that was a late stage case, but I’ve also heard of early stage cases as well." And I've heard that if you drink rancid goat semen, it'll give you the strength of twenty men. Who wants to try it?
As Democrats had Bright explain just how unprepared the United States was for the pandemic and how the Trump White House refused to listen to those who were waving their hands and screaming, "Fucking do something," the GOP members continued their romance with hydroxy-fuckin'-chloroquine.
Rep. Buddy Carter, who is a pharmacist named Earl from Georgia, pressed Bright on why he first went along with hydroxychloroquine under strict supervision from a doctor but wasn't supportive of people taking it willy-nilly, as if the answer wasn't ludicrously obvious. It was like Carter found some great scandal, to the point where he wouldn't end his questioning, even after his time ran out. Trying to corner Bright, Carter asserted, "So was it because the president was encouraged by the use of this drug that you became discouraged by it?"
Now, Bright could have responded, "You ignorant shitheel, of course I'm not gonna want someone who doesn't know his asshole from his elbow to give medical advice. If Donald Trump told everyone to shoot up heroin to stop coronavirus and I said that was fuckin' dumb, would that be political? Jesus fuck, some things are just not open to everyone's motherfuckin' opinion, Earl. Shove it up your mother's cooter next time you're fuckin' her."
But, alas, he just said, "It had nothing to do with politics sir. I wanted to make sure that Americans were aware of the risk of this drug."
Yes, Republicans asked about other things, insinuating that Bright was a showboater who didn't need to be a whistleblower, that he wasn't up to the job as head of BARDA, which is the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and which I didn't even know existed until Bright's complaint came up, and other assorted attempts to demean him.
Bright was not the firebrand they were hoping for. Instead, he was a goddamned authority, someone who knows so clearly what the fuck they're talking about that they don't need to yell or preen or pretend. As Bright said, "We need to unleash the voices of the scientists in our public health system in the United States so they can be heard and their guidances need to be listened to, and we need to be able to convey that information to the American public so they have the truth about the real risk and dire consequences of this virus, and they have the truth about the consequences of their actions if they don’t follow those guidances."
Listen to the man. He knows what he's talking about.
The look on Bright's face every time he had to answer GOP questions was one of "Jesus, these delusional fucks are getting people killed."
Honestly, it was like the Republican Party has invested in stock in the company that makes hydroxychloroquine (and, you know, many of its members probably have). They asked repeatedly about the drug that Trump and the entire right-wing media machine touted as the miracle to end the plague. Right out of the gate, GOP Rep. Michael Burgess, who represents the Walmarts and malls of the north Dallas suburbs, and is an honest-to-fuck physician, went all in on hydroxychloroquine: "I’m hearing from a lot of doctors in my state, around the country, who have experience using hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine coupled with as erythromycin and zinc, and they’re reporting significant benefit if it is used early enough in the course and may eliminate the need for hospitalization." He heard some stories. I've had people tell me they saw Bigfoot. They didn't fuckin' see Bigfoot. They saw something and decided it was Bigfoot because they wanted to fuckin' see Bigfoot. That's not how medical research works. Hell, that's not even how genuine Bigfoot research works.
Bright answered, essentially, "Are you fucking serious with this shit?" but much more even-handedly: "I’ve heard those anecdotal stories, as well, and they were not conducted in the context of a randomized, controlled clinical study. It’s very difficult to understand data from those types of observational studies or anecdotal stories." In other words, if you want to state a scientific conclusion, do some fucking science.
When it came to the drug that Trump pimped like "MAGA" means "Make Americans Get Arrhythmia," Burgess's questions were the scientific peak of the GOP's effort to get Bright to admit that hydroxychloroquine is awesome and he just hates the president.
Here's Rep. Morgan Griffith, representing the dumbass part of Virginia, after Bright had explained how COVID can fuck you up and how the drug can fuck you up worse: "You said [with] the hydroxychloroquine that one of the problems was you might have a irregular heartbeat. If you’re worrying about not having a heartbeat at all, you’re not worried about irregular, if you don’t have one at all, am I not correct about that?" No, motherfucker. You're not correct. How does that even make fucking sense? Essentially, Griffith and other hydroxy-humpers think that you should just pump sick people with random drugs and hope something sticks.
On it fucking went.
Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida wanted to make sure Bright knew he heard some motherfuckin' badass anecdotes: "I’ve heard from experts, and I’m certainly not an expert in this area, that the drug or the one that we’re talking about in this case, hydroxychloroquine, if it’s used, first of all, timely, because I know I understand there’s a window there. As far as the efficacy of the drug. Have you heard this, that if it’s administered properly, there’s a small window there for the patients as far as risk is concerned?" Yeah, he was saying, brandishing his erect tiny penis, check out this dick.
Bright smacked Bilirakis's hard-on, countering, "We have seen anecdotal, heard of anecdotal data from different positions that they believe they’ve seen benefit or patient improvement from use of this drug in either combination with an antibiotic, azithromycin, or a combination with zinc or vitamin C or other things, but there was never sufficient evidence from a randomized controlled study to show its benefit would actually outweigh the potential risk." Why the fuck does this even need to be said?
Bilirakis sulked away with his tiny, now-flaccid prick and murmured the equivalent of a tearful "Oh, yeah?" by adding, "It’s my understanding that not my constituent, but a US citizen, a veteran, was cured, again, this is just from what I’ve heard, from the drug and that was a late stage case, but I’ve also heard of early stage cases as well." And I've heard that if you drink rancid goat semen, it'll give you the strength of twenty men. Who wants to try it?
As Democrats had Bright explain just how unprepared the United States was for the pandemic and how the Trump White House refused to listen to those who were waving their hands and screaming, "Fucking do something," the GOP members continued their romance with hydroxy-fuckin'-chloroquine.
Rep. Buddy Carter, who is a pharmacist named Earl from Georgia, pressed Bright on why he first went along with hydroxychloroquine under strict supervision from a doctor but wasn't supportive of people taking it willy-nilly, as if the answer wasn't ludicrously obvious. It was like Carter found some great scandal, to the point where he wouldn't end his questioning, even after his time ran out. Trying to corner Bright, Carter asserted, "So was it because the president was encouraged by the use of this drug that you became discouraged by it?"
Now, Bright could have responded, "You ignorant shitheel, of course I'm not gonna want someone who doesn't know his asshole from his elbow to give medical advice. If Donald Trump told everyone to shoot up heroin to stop coronavirus and I said that was fuckin' dumb, would that be political? Jesus fuck, some things are just not open to everyone's motherfuckin' opinion, Earl. Shove it up your mother's cooter next time you're fuckin' her."
But, alas, he just said, "It had nothing to do with politics sir. I wanted to make sure that Americans were aware of the risk of this drug."
Yes, Republicans asked about other things, insinuating that Bright was a showboater who didn't need to be a whistleblower, that he wasn't up to the job as head of BARDA, which is the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and which I didn't even know existed until Bright's complaint came up, and other assorted attempts to demean him.
Bright was not the firebrand they were hoping for. Instead, he was a goddamned authority, someone who knows so clearly what the fuck they're talking about that they don't need to yell or preen or pretend. As Bright said, "We need to unleash the voices of the scientists in our public health system in the United States so they can be heard and their guidances need to be listened to, and we need to be able to convey that information to the American public so they have the truth about the real risk and dire consequences of this virus, and they have the truth about the consequences of their actions if they don’t follow those guidances."
Listen to the man. He knows what he's talking about.
5/10/2020
Oh, Fuck You, Trump Voters. Just Fuck You
Do you think they realize how fucking stupid they look, these man-children (and the occasional woman-child) playing soldier dress-up except with real guns who show up at these rallies to try to force states to open up while we're deep in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic? It's just pathetic that they believe they seem strong when they just look like a bunch of people who have been rendered brainless from a toxic stew of oxy, Facebook conspiracy madness, and One America News. And when I say they look fucking stupid, I mean objectively stupid, as in anyone looking at them from outside the whole bullshit zeitgeist we're damned to live through would think, "That's hilarious and absurd, and, c'mon, they can't be serious."
Think about that for a second. Think of someone arriving here with no understanding of American gun culture or the fetishizing of militia chic or the condemnation of science and education or the really warped ideas of "liberty" and "tyranny," and then they see the protest yesterday in California or last week in Michigan. Think about informing that outside someone that the costume cavalry was protesting for the right to gather in large groups and go to stores and salons and they don't care if those actions end up causing mass death. Oh, and, by the way, the president of the whole goddamn country thinks they're awesome for doing it. Oh, and, by the way, that same president has refused to do anything to make the nation safer for supermarkets and salons during the two months the country was shut down.
Everything that Trump has done and is doing is fuckin' owned by his voters, and their utter refusal to believe that Trump has fucked up just about every aspect of the response to the COVID-19 crisis is on each and every one of them. They fucked up this country worse than it was already fucked up, and they will stand on a pile of corpses to bray their devotion to Trump while popping hydroxycholoroquine with bleach shooters. If that corpse pile happens to contain their family members, well, fuck, they died so the rest of us could go eat at the Longhorn Steakhouse by the highway because freedom or some such shit.
Story after story about what went wrong and what continues to go wrong with the federal coronavirus response shows that the Trump administration has screwed the pooch on it. Fuck, they screwed the pooch then turned the pooch over and screwed it again and then when that pooch was dead from all the screwing, they tossed it aside and took another pooch from the Strategic Pooch Reserve and screwed that one, going through all the pooches they could screw and then they imported pooches from China which were flawed but screwable so they screwed those. Alas, pooches. Alas, America.
See, it’s not just that you’ve been fooled, Trump voters. It’s that you stick by your foolishness. You listen to bloviating assholes loudly farting from their home studios about how you need to get out there for the good of the “economy.” You insist that everything Trump says is real, on the useless drugs, on the bullshit cures, on the supposedly fake death toll, on the masks, on the drive-thru testing centers, on the number of tests, on every fucking thing, despite the absolute proof, in a factual way, as in indisputably, that he's totally fucking lying or just making shit up.
Most contempt-worthy is the fact that you think we who haven’t drunk the tainted Diet Coke straight from Trump’s dangly nipples actually want to be in quarantine, that we want tens of millions of people out of work, that we want schools closed and restaurants closed and supermarket shelves bereft of toilet paper. No, you poor, dumb motherfuckers. We’ve lost jobs, too, and we’re sick of having nothing to do but post memes about how fucking stupid you look. But we know that the price of reopening is the likelihood of all the gains we’ve made being erased and far more death, and, well, I guess we’re just pro-life.
And it pains us, really, it pains us deep in our souls that you can’t be reasoned with. That Trump, by any measure, has failed and continues to fail at this monumental task and that the reason he has failed so enormously and tragically is because he thought the virus was just there to spoil his chances at reelection. He is going to toss out truth and reality and replace it with everything filtered through his selfishness, his avarice, and his unending, crazed belief in his own superiority. Yet you'll just go the fuck along with it. It's fucking sad, man. The deepest wells of Obama worship never even came close to the cultish, mindless Trump veneration. I mean, c'mon, Trump refuses to wear a mask, but his campaign is going to start selling official MAGA masks. That's how stupid he thinks you are. That's how cynical this whole thing is.
And you know what else pains us? It’s that it would have been so ludicrously easy for Trump to have been the big shot hero, ordering companies to produce swabs and masks, amping up testing far exceeding any other country (for real, not in his fantasy world), demanding Congress pass funding for salaries so everyone could keep their jobs, and telling people to stay home. He could have led a genuinely positive national reawakening of community and patriotic service. He's not actually capable of that, but he could have faked it, like he's faked being a successful businessman.
And what pains us even more? You credulous simpletons would have bought into it whole hog. And you would derided anyone telling you to go back to work as an unpatriotic dick who just wants Trump supporters to die. Your media would have said that Trump was the greatest man who cares so much about us that he's willing to sacrifice the economy for your lives. In other words, you have no beliefs. You only have Trump. Goddamn, how empty you must be to think that's all you need.
Trump has wrecked our alliances and degraded our country to the point that the world thinks we’re just a pathetic vestige of our former selves, worthy of pity and derision, and that’s because of you, and you’re so full up with gobbling his shit that you don’t even think that matters as long as he lets you be openly racist and keeps owning the libtards, which means “anyone who doesn’t gobble shit from the MAGA trough in Donald Trump’s pig pen." It’s too bad. We could have used the help of the world, which, even in good times, we do need to buy our goods or your job is in permanent jeopardy. (Which, to be fair, it already is.)
You just don't believe in what the country ever aspired to be, to the world and to itself. Instead of believing scientists and doctors, you believe TV bullshit artists like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity and Rush “How the fuck is he still a thing?” Limbaugh, agreeing with Trump that popularity somehow equals depth and knowledge. Instead of people qualified to lead an effort, you think that feckless pricks like Jared fuckin’ Kushner are true polymath visionaries and not just vile charlatans and egomaniacs. Instead of seeking those who have earned the right to lead you, you turn to Donald Trump and Donald Trump, Jr., a devolved version of his devolved father, a pile of shit that has dried out.
This is all on you. You’re fucking adults, for fuck’s sake, and I just won’t treat you like children who need to be forgiven and hope you learned your lesson. You decided to overlook Trump’s blatant greed and corruption. You decided that someone accused of more than a dozen rapes and sexual assaults, including multiple under oath allegations, is just a jocular party guy you wanna hang with. You decided that it was better to spend money on his trips to golf and on tax cuts for the wealthy than on roads and health care and fucking pandemic preparation.
I know that we’re supposed to feel some kind of pity for you, that you’ve spent decades being inundated with talk radio and Fox “news” and YouTube videos and conspiracy mongers and politicians and preachers who either believe this shit or fake it because they know how easily you’re manipulated. You have been hit hard by the wealth disparity in the nation, with shitty jobs for shitty pay and shitty people telling you that your shitty job for shitty pay is somehow honorable and that it’s better that you suffer than government take care of your medical needs. You would rather walk around with your guns and your camo and pretend you're free than admit how much Trump has fucked you over. And when he's no longer president, you'll whine about how it's all rigged and unfair, echoes of his miserable voice. Yet we're supposed to feel sorry for you.
Fuck that. And fuck you. You are to blame for this madness and this death. You did this to our country. You made this decision. You won't see what's right before your eyes. You proudly refuse to take off your orange-tinted glasses with the sphincter-shaped lenses. So you're into it. You're good with it. You don't care how many people are hurt, how many people die, how many people suffer. You're good with it. As long as you can blame anyone but the wealthy in this country for every fucking misery, you're good with it. As long as the racism continues, you're good with it.
You decided that Trump isn’t evil. Or else you decided that he is evil and you just fuckin’ like being evil.
Think about that for a second. Think of someone arriving here with no understanding of American gun culture or the fetishizing of militia chic or the condemnation of science and education or the really warped ideas of "liberty" and "tyranny," and then they see the protest yesterday in California or last week in Michigan. Think about informing that outside someone that the costume cavalry was protesting for the right to gather in large groups and go to stores and salons and they don't care if those actions end up causing mass death. Oh, and, by the way, the president of the whole goddamn country thinks they're awesome for doing it. Oh, and, by the way, that same president has refused to do anything to make the nation safer for supermarkets and salons during the two months the country was shut down.
Everything that Trump has done and is doing is fuckin' owned by his voters, and their utter refusal to believe that Trump has fucked up just about every aspect of the response to the COVID-19 crisis is on each and every one of them. They fucked up this country worse than it was already fucked up, and they will stand on a pile of corpses to bray their devotion to Trump while popping hydroxycholoroquine with bleach shooters. If that corpse pile happens to contain their family members, well, fuck, they died so the rest of us could go eat at the Longhorn Steakhouse by the highway because freedom or some such shit.
Story after story about what went wrong and what continues to go wrong with the federal coronavirus response shows that the Trump administration has screwed the pooch on it. Fuck, they screwed the pooch then turned the pooch over and screwed it again and then when that pooch was dead from all the screwing, they tossed it aside and took another pooch from the Strategic Pooch Reserve and screwed that one, going through all the pooches they could screw and then they imported pooches from China which were flawed but screwable so they screwed those. Alas, pooches. Alas, America.
See, it’s not just that you’ve been fooled, Trump voters. It’s that you stick by your foolishness. You listen to bloviating assholes loudly farting from their home studios about how you need to get out there for the good of the “economy.” You insist that everything Trump says is real, on the useless drugs, on the bullshit cures, on the supposedly fake death toll, on the masks, on the drive-thru testing centers, on the number of tests, on every fucking thing, despite the absolute proof, in a factual way, as in indisputably, that he's totally fucking lying or just making shit up.
Most contempt-worthy is the fact that you think we who haven’t drunk the tainted Diet Coke straight from Trump’s dangly nipples actually want to be in quarantine, that we want tens of millions of people out of work, that we want schools closed and restaurants closed and supermarket shelves bereft of toilet paper. No, you poor, dumb motherfuckers. We’ve lost jobs, too, and we’re sick of having nothing to do but post memes about how fucking stupid you look. But we know that the price of reopening is the likelihood of all the gains we’ve made being erased and far more death, and, well, I guess we’re just pro-life.
And it pains us, really, it pains us deep in our souls that you can’t be reasoned with. That Trump, by any measure, has failed and continues to fail at this monumental task and that the reason he has failed so enormously and tragically is because he thought the virus was just there to spoil his chances at reelection. He is going to toss out truth and reality and replace it with everything filtered through his selfishness, his avarice, and his unending, crazed belief in his own superiority. Yet you'll just go the fuck along with it. It's fucking sad, man. The deepest wells of Obama worship never even came close to the cultish, mindless Trump veneration. I mean, c'mon, Trump refuses to wear a mask, but his campaign is going to start selling official MAGA masks. That's how stupid he thinks you are. That's how cynical this whole thing is.
And you know what else pains us? It’s that it would have been so ludicrously easy for Trump to have been the big shot hero, ordering companies to produce swabs and masks, amping up testing far exceeding any other country (for real, not in his fantasy world), demanding Congress pass funding for salaries so everyone could keep their jobs, and telling people to stay home. He could have led a genuinely positive national reawakening of community and patriotic service. He's not actually capable of that, but he could have faked it, like he's faked being a successful businessman.
And what pains us even more? You credulous simpletons would have bought into it whole hog. And you would derided anyone telling you to go back to work as an unpatriotic dick who just wants Trump supporters to die. Your media would have said that Trump was the greatest man who cares so much about us that he's willing to sacrifice the economy for your lives. In other words, you have no beliefs. You only have Trump. Goddamn, how empty you must be to think that's all you need.
Trump has wrecked our alliances and degraded our country to the point that the world thinks we’re just a pathetic vestige of our former selves, worthy of pity and derision, and that’s because of you, and you’re so full up with gobbling his shit that you don’t even think that matters as long as he lets you be openly racist and keeps owning the libtards, which means “anyone who doesn’t gobble shit from the MAGA trough in Donald Trump’s pig pen." It’s too bad. We could have used the help of the world, which, even in good times, we do need to buy our goods or your job is in permanent jeopardy. (Which, to be fair, it already is.)
You just don't believe in what the country ever aspired to be, to the world and to itself. Instead of believing scientists and doctors, you believe TV bullshit artists like Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity and Rush “How the fuck is he still a thing?” Limbaugh, agreeing with Trump that popularity somehow equals depth and knowledge. Instead of people qualified to lead an effort, you think that feckless pricks like Jared fuckin’ Kushner are true polymath visionaries and not just vile charlatans and egomaniacs. Instead of seeking those who have earned the right to lead you, you turn to Donald Trump and Donald Trump, Jr., a devolved version of his devolved father, a pile of shit that has dried out.
This is all on you. You’re fucking adults, for fuck’s sake, and I just won’t treat you like children who need to be forgiven and hope you learned your lesson. You decided to overlook Trump’s blatant greed and corruption. You decided that someone accused of more than a dozen rapes and sexual assaults, including multiple under oath allegations, is just a jocular party guy you wanna hang with. You decided that it was better to spend money on his trips to golf and on tax cuts for the wealthy than on roads and health care and fucking pandemic preparation.
I know that we’re supposed to feel some kind of pity for you, that you’ve spent decades being inundated with talk radio and Fox “news” and YouTube videos and conspiracy mongers and politicians and preachers who either believe this shit or fake it because they know how easily you’re manipulated. You have been hit hard by the wealth disparity in the nation, with shitty jobs for shitty pay and shitty people telling you that your shitty job for shitty pay is somehow honorable and that it’s better that you suffer than government take care of your medical needs. You would rather walk around with your guns and your camo and pretend you're free than admit how much Trump has fucked you over. And when he's no longer president, you'll whine about how it's all rigged and unfair, echoes of his miserable voice. Yet we're supposed to feel sorry for you.
Fuck that. And fuck you. You are to blame for this madness and this death. You did this to our country. You made this decision. You won't see what's right before your eyes. You proudly refuse to take off your orange-tinted glasses with the sphincter-shaped lenses. So you're into it. You're good with it. You don't care how many people are hurt, how many people die, how many people suffer. You're good with it. As long as you can blame anyone but the wealthy in this country for every fucking misery, you're good with it. As long as the racism continues, you're good with it.
You decided that Trump isn’t evil. Or else you decided that he is evil and you just fuckin’ like being evil.
5/06/2020
Directions to Damnation: Donald Trump's Deranged Interview with ABC
How fucking weird and disconcerting and downright disturbing was the interview President Donald Trump did with ABC anchor David Muir? The fact that they were propped awkwardly on tall chairs over 10 feet from each other on the factory floor of the Honeywell plant that makes masks for COVID-19 protection (and which Trump had toured without wearing a mask) was the least weird part of the whole thing.
I mean, of course, the entire thing was filled to the brim with lies and then more lies were thrown in until it was overflowing with lies and then a dam of lies broke which flooded the entire valley with lies and, since the valley was filled with Trump voters, they were happy to drown in his lies.
Like here's what Trump said when he was asked if the pandemic in the U.S. was an intelligence failure. After blathering on for a bit about how awesome his useless limits on travel from China were, he explained, "They said I called it a hoax. No, I called the Democrats a hoax because of what they were saying because when I did the ban they're out there saying -- they call me a racist because I did the ban." That's a fucking lie. On February 28, Trump called Democrats' criticism of his failure to do anything about the pandemic a "their new hoax." And after he said that, he bragged about there only being 15 cases in the U.S. Then, at a press conference the next day, Trump said he meant that it was about Democrats who "try and pin this on somebody, because we’ve done such a good job. The hoax is on them." So Trump just changes the story to fit the situation.
And, of course, there was the blithering, willful, arrogant ignorance of history. For instance, here's a couple of sentences from midway through that were part of a rambling non-answer regarding the possibility of a second wave of coronavirus in the fall: "Frankly, I've read about and heard about, in 1917, the Great Flu. They call that the Flu, right? The Spanish flu, and it might have killed 100 million people. Probably stopped the First World War ‘cause all the soldiers were getting sick." Ok, you ready? The Spanish flu started in the U.S. in 1918; it was called "the Great Flu Pandemic;" it killed at most 50 million people around the world; and it didn't stop World War I - in fact, the war helped spread the disease among the soldiers who then brought it home.
And, of course, he brought up how he won in 2016 because time essentially stopped then for him: "I have a media that's extremely hostile. And they have been from before I got elected, you know that, that's why it was called a miracle because I had a hostile media." Muir had asked him if it was difficult to be optimistic and hopeful during a pandemic. What he got was an incoherent shit stew of ventilators, Democrats suck, and the media is mean.
But the strange and disturbing shit was laced throughout. Asked about reopening businesses and society too early, causing more deaths, Trump essentially said, "Fuck it. Let's roll those dice and see which motherfuckers are gonna die. Russian money won't launder itself." More precisely, he was asked, "Do you believe that's the reality we're facing that -- that lives will be lost to reopen the country?" and he responded, "It's possible there will be some because you won't be locked into an apartment or a house or whatever it is." Then, later, he acknowledged, "There'll be more death." And he wanted us to know that people die in other ways: "You know, people are dying the other way too. When you look at what's happened with drugs. It goes up, when you look at suicides, I mean take a look at what's going on." And fewer people are dying in auto accidents and from other activities we used to do. So that doesn't make any goddamn sense.
However, for the pinnacle of batshit, the acme of assholishness, you gotta go to when Muir tried to get Trump to offer compassion to the families of people who died. "What do you want to say to those families tonight?" he asked.
And Trump really responded, "I want to say: 'I love you.'" That's some creepy fuckery right there. He reiterated, "We love you," and then, no shit, added, "And we want them -- you can never really come close to replacing, when you've lost some -- no matter how well we do next year, I think our economy is going to be raging. It's going to be so good. No matter how well, those people can never ever replace somebody they love. But we're going to have something that they're going to be very proud of."
Do you get what he's saying? "You lost your dad to this disease I did pretty much jackshit to try to slow down, but, hey, aren't you proud of how the economy is just raging along?" Do you get how devoid of humanity that is? How fucking sociopathic? It's like a thief saying, "I stole all your shit and fucked up your life and sense of safety in the world, but, man, you got a cool new TV out of the deal. So we're good, right?"
Trump is frantically trying to talk himself out of any blame for this goddamned disaster. Muir asked him good questions but bumblefucked the follows ups (Jesus, stop letting him get away with shitting on Obama about coronavirus tests that didn't exist). The whole thing just feels like we're on an increasingly short road to national damnation, a sense that if Trump's going down, he's gonna take the rest of us with him.
I mean, of course, the entire thing was filled to the brim with lies and then more lies were thrown in until it was overflowing with lies and then a dam of lies broke which flooded the entire valley with lies and, since the valley was filled with Trump voters, they were happy to drown in his lies.
Like here's what Trump said when he was asked if the pandemic in the U.S. was an intelligence failure. After blathering on for a bit about how awesome his useless limits on travel from China were, he explained, "They said I called it a hoax. No, I called the Democrats a hoax because of what they were saying because when I did the ban they're out there saying -- they call me a racist because I did the ban." That's a fucking lie. On February 28, Trump called Democrats' criticism of his failure to do anything about the pandemic a "their new hoax." And after he said that, he bragged about there only being 15 cases in the U.S. Then, at a press conference the next day, Trump said he meant that it was about Democrats who "try and pin this on somebody, because we’ve done such a good job. The hoax is on them." So Trump just changes the story to fit the situation.
And, of course, there was the blithering, willful, arrogant ignorance of history. For instance, here's a couple of sentences from midway through that were part of a rambling non-answer regarding the possibility of a second wave of coronavirus in the fall: "Frankly, I've read about and heard about, in 1917, the Great Flu. They call that the Flu, right? The Spanish flu, and it might have killed 100 million people. Probably stopped the First World War ‘cause all the soldiers were getting sick." Ok, you ready? The Spanish flu started in the U.S. in 1918; it was called "the Great Flu Pandemic;" it killed at most 50 million people around the world; and it didn't stop World War I - in fact, the war helped spread the disease among the soldiers who then brought it home.
And, of course, he brought up how he won in 2016 because time essentially stopped then for him: "I have a media that's extremely hostile. And they have been from before I got elected, you know that, that's why it was called a miracle because I had a hostile media." Muir had asked him if it was difficult to be optimistic and hopeful during a pandemic. What he got was an incoherent shit stew of ventilators, Democrats suck, and the media is mean.
But the strange and disturbing shit was laced throughout. Asked about reopening businesses and society too early, causing more deaths, Trump essentially said, "Fuck it. Let's roll those dice and see which motherfuckers are gonna die. Russian money won't launder itself." More precisely, he was asked, "Do you believe that's the reality we're facing that -- that lives will be lost to reopen the country?" and he responded, "It's possible there will be some because you won't be locked into an apartment or a house or whatever it is." Then, later, he acknowledged, "There'll be more death." And he wanted us to know that people die in other ways: "You know, people are dying the other way too. When you look at what's happened with drugs. It goes up, when you look at suicides, I mean take a look at what's going on." And fewer people are dying in auto accidents and from other activities we used to do. So that doesn't make any goddamn sense.
However, for the pinnacle of batshit, the acme of assholishness, you gotta go to when Muir tried to get Trump to offer compassion to the families of people who died. "What do you want to say to those families tonight?" he asked.
And Trump really responded, "I want to say: 'I love you.'" That's some creepy fuckery right there. He reiterated, "We love you," and then, no shit, added, "And we want them -- you can never really come close to replacing, when you've lost some -- no matter how well we do next year, I think our economy is going to be raging. It's going to be so good. No matter how well, those people can never ever replace somebody they love. But we're going to have something that they're going to be very proud of."
Do you get what he's saying? "You lost your dad to this disease I did pretty much jackshit to try to slow down, but, hey, aren't you proud of how the economy is just raging along?" Do you get how devoid of humanity that is? How fucking sociopathic? It's like a thief saying, "I stole all your shit and fucked up your life and sense of safety in the world, but, man, you got a cool new TV out of the deal. So we're good, right?"
Trump is frantically trying to talk himself out of any blame for this goddamned disaster. Muir asked him good questions but bumblefucked the follows ups (Jesus, stop letting him get away with shitting on Obama about coronavirus tests that didn't exist). The whole thing just feels like we're on an increasingly short road to national damnation, a sense that if Trump's going down, he's gonna take the rest of us with him.
5/02/2020
Things to Keep in Mind About the Tara Reade Allegations
As Democrats grapple with how to handle the accusation by former staff member Tara Reade that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her in a hallway in the Senate office building in 1993, let's remember that as much as we want it to be about finding out the truth, it's never just that. And let's remember that not every purported rape victim is telling the truth and that every victim doesn't have to act like you think she should act.
1. It's possible that Reade supported Bernie Sanders and wrote lovingly about Vladimir Putin and still was raped by Biden. The opposite is also possible.
2. It's possible that Joe Biden could have introduced the Violence Against Women Act and been an advocate for women's issues and still have raped Reade. The opposite is also possible.
3. If it's hypocritical to say that you don't believe Reade but you believe Christine Blasey Ford's allegations against Brett Kavanaugh, then it's hypocritical to say you don't believe Blasey Ford but you believe Reade. Hypocrisy doesn't just go one way.
4. But it's really weird to ask Biden if he's being a hypocrite about "believing women" when it comes to Reade, as Mika Brzezinki did repeatedly on Morning Joe. Biden presumably knows the truth. It's madness to ask him to say, "I know it didn't happen, but I believe her."
5. As many women have said, "believe women" doesn't mean "all women are always right." It means assume that an allegation is made in good faith and investigate from there. And, yes, sometimes women lie about rape, assault, and harassment (and often men lie about being the perpetrators). But the vast majority of women aren't lying. And a much larger number of victims simply never come forward.
6. The real hypocrisy is to demand Joe Biden release the archive of his Senate and Vice Presidential papers now held at the University of Delaware and not demand an equal accounting from Donald Trump for all of the sexual assault and rape allegations against him, as well as everything else (like his income taxes).
7. Biden should allow the archives to be searched and Trump should have to give up all the documents related to his business and personal dealings, as well as allow members of his administration to testify before Congress. You want transparency? Let's do it, then.
8. However, no search of Biden's papers is going to satisfy the "But her emails" crowd. They will believe until the end of days that the Rosetta Stone of Reade's accusations exists and anyone telling them otherwise is lying.
9. It will take months to go through Biden's papers even in a cursory way. That's the way archival research works.
10. Some people demanding more information are acting out of a genuine desire to find the truth. But too many only want to drag this out and drag Biden down. Those people exist on the left and the right.
11. We probably are never going to know the truth, so all we'll have is belief.
12. I don't know what I believe about Reade. I kind of think she's lying, but I'm not 100% convinced. Sorry. I wish I could clearly come down on one side or the other.
13. Biden saying unequivocally that the assault did not happen was strong. It essentially puts all his credibility on the line should it turn out that hard evidence exists that it happened.
14. I wish someone else were the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, for many reasons. But that's not gonna happen.
15. And I've heard nothing so far that makes me believe that it would be better to have Donald Trump win a second term. Nothing has dissuaded me from voting for Biden. That doesn't make me an anti-progressive, anti-feminist neoliberal tool of the Democratic establishment. It means I'm so scared about what might happen when Trump is no longer accountable to voters that I'm gonna swallow a whole lot to stop that from occurring.
(Note: I'll probably update this list as more of this is tossed around in my brain.)
4/30/2020
Trump Believes That People Who Die of Coronavirus Are Losers
As it usually is in these situations, it was the simplest of questions, a potential slamdunk for an ordinary politician, hell, for an ordinary human being. But we are talking about President Donald Trump, who is a hollowed-out pumpkin filled with a slurry of toxic waste, so the most ludicrous softball questions become moments of torment and confusion because he just doesn't get how being a person works.
On Tuesday, at an event where he brayed about the small business loan program that's become a money trough for corporate pigs to feed at, Trump got a question from a reporter. "You’ve spoken about your friend who passed away," the intrepid journalist asked, tossing a soft, underhand pitch. "I was wondering if you have spoken to the families of anyone else who has lost a loved one to COVID-19. If there’s any particular stories that have affected you."
Right now, you, sitting there as a semi-normal human being, you could toss out a couple of examples about stories that affected you. Maybe you could talk about Sklyar Herbert, the 5 year-old girl in Detroit, who passed away a week before. Maybe you could mention one of the doctors or other first responders who have been taken out by the disease they were fighting. Maybe you could talk about someone else you know, like the elderly retired professor I knew who I just found out died of coronavirus. It might be emotional. But you could do it, though.
But Trump couldn't. He answered, "Well, I have — I have many people. I know many stories. I’ve spoken to three, maybe, I guess, four families unrelated to me. I did — I lost a very good friend. I also lost three other friends — two of whom I didn’t know as well, but they were friends and people I did business with, and probably almost everybody in the room did. And it’s a — it’s a bad death. It’s not a — it’s — it’s a bad thing. It grips onto some people. Now, we found out that young people do extraordinarily well." And then that was it. The brain worms then made him pivot to schools that are opening up which led him to criticize distance learning because of course he did.
We know that whenever Trump is called upon to offer some kind of sympathy for the dead and sick, he either quickly reads a rote script or he changes the subject, often to how "horrendous" or "brilliant" COVID-19 is, as if it has to be the worst illness in the history of the world because that's the only virus that can be an opponent worthy of Donald Trump.
Trump has made a big show about how he refuses to wear a mask because he's been tested and doesn't have coronavirus. At the event Tuesday, in Oval Office gatherings, neither Trump nor the people there, including Drs. Birx and Fauci, wear masks. You know that he sees wearing a mask as a sign of weakness. You know that he's demanded that no one be allowed to wear masks. No one is gonna make him look like a disease-fearing pussy. He is the uber-mensch. All others cower beneath his exceedingly healthy orange glow.
Essentially, that's his attitude towards the dead. If you get sick, you are weak and you are preventing the economy from "roaring back," so he'll order you back to work or have governors force you back so you lose your unemployment benefits. If you die, you're a loser because it makes him look bad. Here's what he managed to say yesterday: "We mourn — and I have to say this so strongly — we mourn every life tragically lost to the invisible enemy, and we’re heartened that the worst of the pain and suffering is going to be behind us." The worst is not "behind us." We're in the worst right now, with cases rising in some states, falling in others, and staying steady in the others.
The sick and the dead are inconvenient because they prevent him from gallivanting around the country and prancing like a coked-out baboon in front of his adoring, cretinous crowds. He talked about how tragic it would be to have social distancing at his rallies of the damned: "I can’t imagine a rally where you have every fourth seat full. Every — every six seats are empty for every one that you have full. That wouldn’t look too good." Your fever and cough are keeping the president from having good-looking campaign events, you selfish fucks.
Note: Of course, as long as it's the poors, immigrants, prisoners, and the weak old people (not strong like his wheezing ass) that die, well, that's just thinning the herd until we get to immunity or something.
But I keep coming back to that fuckin' question. Trump admitted that he has not reached out to a single family of someone who died. He didn't take any time to ring up some widow in Alabama or Texas or Kansas, the states that he won. That's just fucked up. He can't because to do so would be to concede that the deaths mean something beyond lower approval ratings. He can't because he's incapable of exuding the kind of empathy that's necessary to come across as anything other than the popularity-driven, praise-thirsty, narcissistic monster that he is.
Instead, he pretends that 60,000 deaths are bad, but, hey, a million deaths is worse and China must be lying; he's petulantly defensive, pissed off that all these weak losers are dying and that he's supposed to pretend to care. Fuck that. Not when it's more fun to shitpost about Brian Williams or CNN.
He says the disease is going to disappear "like a miracle," except it's not. It's going to slowly peter out, the bodies stacking up, becoming to him like a wall preventing his reelection. Your death means nothing more and nothing less.
On Tuesday, at an event where he brayed about the small business loan program that's become a money trough for corporate pigs to feed at, Trump got a question from a reporter. "You’ve spoken about your friend who passed away," the intrepid journalist asked, tossing a soft, underhand pitch. "I was wondering if you have spoken to the families of anyone else who has lost a loved one to COVID-19. If there’s any particular stories that have affected you."
Right now, you, sitting there as a semi-normal human being, you could toss out a couple of examples about stories that affected you. Maybe you could talk about Sklyar Herbert, the 5 year-old girl in Detroit, who passed away a week before. Maybe you could mention one of the doctors or other first responders who have been taken out by the disease they were fighting. Maybe you could talk about someone else you know, like the elderly retired professor I knew who I just found out died of coronavirus. It might be emotional. But you could do it, though.
But Trump couldn't. He answered, "Well, I have — I have many people. I know many stories. I’ve spoken to three, maybe, I guess, four families unrelated to me. I did — I lost a very good friend. I also lost three other friends — two of whom I didn’t know as well, but they were friends and people I did business with, and probably almost everybody in the room did. And it’s a — it’s a bad death. It’s not a — it’s — it’s a bad thing. It grips onto some people. Now, we found out that young people do extraordinarily well." And then that was it. The brain worms then made him pivot to schools that are opening up which led him to criticize distance learning because of course he did.
We know that whenever Trump is called upon to offer some kind of sympathy for the dead and sick, he either quickly reads a rote script or he changes the subject, often to how "horrendous" or "brilliant" COVID-19 is, as if it has to be the worst illness in the history of the world because that's the only virus that can be an opponent worthy of Donald Trump.
Trump has made a big show about how he refuses to wear a mask because he's been tested and doesn't have coronavirus. At the event Tuesday, in Oval Office gatherings, neither Trump nor the people there, including Drs. Birx and Fauci, wear masks. You know that he sees wearing a mask as a sign of weakness. You know that he's demanded that no one be allowed to wear masks. No one is gonna make him look like a disease-fearing pussy. He is the uber-mensch. All others cower beneath his exceedingly healthy orange glow.
Essentially, that's his attitude towards the dead. If you get sick, you are weak and you are preventing the economy from "roaring back," so he'll order you back to work or have governors force you back so you lose your unemployment benefits. If you die, you're a loser because it makes him look bad. Here's what he managed to say yesterday: "We mourn — and I have to say this so strongly — we mourn every life tragically lost to the invisible enemy, and we’re heartened that the worst of the pain and suffering is going to be behind us." The worst is not "behind us." We're in the worst right now, with cases rising in some states, falling in others, and staying steady in the others.
The sick and the dead are inconvenient because they prevent him from gallivanting around the country and prancing like a coked-out baboon in front of his adoring, cretinous crowds. He talked about how tragic it would be to have social distancing at his rallies of the damned: "I can’t imagine a rally where you have every fourth seat full. Every — every six seats are empty for every one that you have full. That wouldn’t look too good." Your fever and cough are keeping the president from having good-looking campaign events, you selfish fucks.
Note: Of course, as long as it's the poors, immigrants, prisoners, and the weak old people (not strong like his wheezing ass) that die, well, that's just thinning the herd until we get to immunity or something.
But I keep coming back to that fuckin' question. Trump admitted that he has not reached out to a single family of someone who died. He didn't take any time to ring up some widow in Alabama or Texas or Kansas, the states that he won. That's just fucked up. He can't because to do so would be to concede that the deaths mean something beyond lower approval ratings. He can't because he's incapable of exuding the kind of empathy that's necessary to come across as anything other than the popularity-driven, praise-thirsty, narcissistic monster that he is.
Instead, he pretends that 60,000 deaths are bad, but, hey, a million deaths is worse and China must be lying; he's petulantly defensive, pissed off that all these weak losers are dying and that he's supposed to pretend to care. Fuck that. Not when it's more fun to shitpost about Brian Williams or CNN.
He says the disease is going to disappear "like a miracle," except it's not. It's going to slowly peter out, the bodies stacking up, becoming to him like a wall preventing his reelection. Your death means nothing more and nothing less.
4/25/2020
Andrew Cuomo Fucks Mitch McConnell's Shit Up
It's something that doesn't get said much, but all those red states, all those states with their MAGA citizens looking down at the northeastern libtards who want immigrants but not guns, whose schools teach science and actual history, who elect Democrats, fer chrissakes, yeah, those states pretty much fucking stay in existence because of the northeast. New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, and Massachusetts are carrying your asses because of the tax revenue generated up here. You should be kissing our feet and thanking God or whatever that we live in a nation that includes our states and you're not on your own.
But it took New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to remind us of that fact this past week in another of his moments where he looked at his bucket of fucks and found it completely empty. Unprompted, Cuomo responded to Senate Majority Leader and Man Who Perpetually Looks Like a Little Boy Who Saw a Vagina for the First Time Mitch McConnell saying that the states should be able to declare bankruptcy and that any help to states during this coronavirus crisis is "a blue-state bailout." Cuomo went after that bespectacled, evil tortoise/human hybrid like a street fighter who decided to make an example out of the wannabe tough guy who pinched his girl's ass.
By name, Cuomo called out McConnell at his Thursday press briefing, saying, "Senator Mitch McConnell goes out and he says, 'Maybe the states should declare bankruptcy.' Okay. This is one of the really dumb ideas of all time." He compared the willingness to help fund airlines to the unwillingness to fund state and local governments, before threatening, "And then to suggest we’re concerned about the economy, states should declare bankruptcy. That’s how you’re going to bring this national economy back? By states declaring bankruptcy? You want to see that market fall through the cellar? Let New York state declare bankruptcy. Let Michigan declare bankruptcy. Let Illinois declare bankruptcy. Let California declare bankruptcy. You will see a collapse of this national economy. So just dumb."
Cuomo was just getting wound up when he went after McConnell's blatant, even joyous cruelty: "Vicious is saying, when Senator McConnell said, this is a 'blue state bailout,' what he’s saying is if you look at the states that have coronavirus problems, they tend to be Democratic states...So if you fund states that are suffering from the coronavirus, the Democratic states, don’t help New York state because it is a Democratic state. How ugly a thought."
He seemed to have moved on, but in the middle of answering another question, Cuomo decided he wasn't done with McConnell. It was like Cuomo had put McConnell on the ground in the filthy alley behind the bar, but that wasn't enough. Now it was time for stomping his ass: "Let me just go back to my self-proclaimed Grim Reaper, Senator McConnell, for another second. He represents the state of Kentucky. Okay? When it comes to fairness, New York state puts much more money into the federal pot than it takes out. Okay? At the end of the year, we put into that federal pot $116 billion more than we take out. Okay? His state, the state of Kentucky, takes out 148 billion more than they put in. Okay? So he’s a federal legislator. He’s distributing the federal pot of money. New York puts in more money to the federal pot than it takes out. His state takes out more than it puts in. Senator McConnell, who’s getting bailed out here? It’s your state that is living on the money that we generate. Your state is getting bailed out. Not my state." Facts fuck shit up. Ask anyone who tries to defy facts. They will fuck your shit up every time, so much so that you just have to pretend that facts don't exist and hope no one finds out. Cuomo put it out there: red states like Kentucky are getting by only because of the blue state largesse.
Honestly, though, even more cutting was when a reporter asked Cuomo if he had been in touch with McConnell. "No," Cuomo answered. Was he planning on calling McConnell? "No," Cuomo answered and moved on. That's a "Fuck me? No, fuck you" moment.
Cuomo was sick of this shit, of all the shit, and he went at McConnell again on Friday, except this time he tossed the entire GOP in DC into the toilet. Talking about how a federal law would be needed to allow states to declare bankruptcy, Cuomo said, "It’s your suggestion, Senator McConnell. Pass the law. I dare you. And then go to the President and say, 'Sign this bill allowing states to declare bankruptcy.' You want to send a signal to the markets that this nation is in real trouble? You want to send an international message that the economy is in turmoil? Do that. Allow states to declare bankruptcy legally, because you passed the bill. It’ll be the first time in our nation’s history that that happened. I dare you to do that...if you believe what you said and you have the courage of conviction because you’re a man of your word, pass that bill, if you weren’t just playing politics." He may as well have punctuated that with "you pussy."
After reiterating that McConnell and Kentucky are "takers" while New York is a "giver" when it comes to federal funding, Cuomo showed the senator the back of his pimp hand: "We were putting money into the pot, they were taking our dollars out of the pot and now he wants to look at New York and say, 'We’re bailing you out.' You’re bailing us out? Just give me my money back, Senator. Just give me my money back." And then he ended it by mocking Trump talking about the economy coming back while McConnell blathers about bankruptcy: "Pass a bill allowing states to be bankrupt and then let’s watch how the stock market takes off at that great news about our economic resilience."
Look, let's be honest here. McConnell doesn't give single lettuce-filled shit about Cuomo or blue states or the average Kentuckian or much of anything. He just cares about making sure that he keeps power and that rich people get richer. But there's a fucking reality here in that a shit-ton of Republicans come from states that are essentially living on welfare, and they behave as if they are the fiscally-responsible ones. It's a lie that has worked repeatedly.
But we can say that it's just fuckin' thrilling in this despairing age to hear a politician speak the truth about this shit, to call out the rhetoric and lies for what they are. Can we not just enjoy for what it is, an ass-kicking?
It's also a threat in many ways. What if New York decides to explore how to hold back some of that funding if, say, Trump is reelected? What if New Jersey says, "Okay, you want us to fuckin' buy all the testing and equipment and everything for another crisis like this but you won't give us funds? Then we're gonna keep some of that extra cash you hand over to Alabama and Kentucky." You think that sounds outlandish and impossible. Motherfuckers, we are well past impossible.
McConnell seeks to divide the nation, as does Trump. Cuomo wants them to know that there is a literal price for doing it.
(Note: Usual Cuomo caveats apply. See last week.)
But it took New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to remind us of that fact this past week in another of his moments where he looked at his bucket of fucks and found it completely empty. Unprompted, Cuomo responded to Senate Majority Leader and Man Who Perpetually Looks Like a Little Boy Who Saw a Vagina for the First Time Mitch McConnell saying that the states should be able to declare bankruptcy and that any help to states during this coronavirus crisis is "a blue-state bailout." Cuomo went after that bespectacled, evil tortoise/human hybrid like a street fighter who decided to make an example out of the wannabe tough guy who pinched his girl's ass.
By name, Cuomo called out McConnell at his Thursday press briefing, saying, "Senator Mitch McConnell goes out and he says, 'Maybe the states should declare bankruptcy.' Okay. This is one of the really dumb ideas of all time." He compared the willingness to help fund airlines to the unwillingness to fund state and local governments, before threatening, "And then to suggest we’re concerned about the economy, states should declare bankruptcy. That’s how you’re going to bring this national economy back? By states declaring bankruptcy? You want to see that market fall through the cellar? Let New York state declare bankruptcy. Let Michigan declare bankruptcy. Let Illinois declare bankruptcy. Let California declare bankruptcy. You will see a collapse of this national economy. So just dumb."
Cuomo was just getting wound up when he went after McConnell's blatant, even joyous cruelty: "Vicious is saying, when Senator McConnell said, this is a 'blue state bailout,' what he’s saying is if you look at the states that have coronavirus problems, they tend to be Democratic states...So if you fund states that are suffering from the coronavirus, the Democratic states, don’t help New York state because it is a Democratic state. How ugly a thought."
He seemed to have moved on, but in the middle of answering another question, Cuomo decided he wasn't done with McConnell. It was like Cuomo had put McConnell on the ground in the filthy alley behind the bar, but that wasn't enough. Now it was time for stomping his ass: "Let me just go back to my self-proclaimed Grim Reaper, Senator McConnell, for another second. He represents the state of Kentucky. Okay? When it comes to fairness, New York state puts much more money into the federal pot than it takes out. Okay? At the end of the year, we put into that federal pot $116 billion more than we take out. Okay? His state, the state of Kentucky, takes out 148 billion more than they put in. Okay? So he’s a federal legislator. He’s distributing the federal pot of money. New York puts in more money to the federal pot than it takes out. His state takes out more than it puts in. Senator McConnell, who’s getting bailed out here? It’s your state that is living on the money that we generate. Your state is getting bailed out. Not my state." Facts fuck shit up. Ask anyone who tries to defy facts. They will fuck your shit up every time, so much so that you just have to pretend that facts don't exist and hope no one finds out. Cuomo put it out there: red states like Kentucky are getting by only because of the blue state largesse.
Honestly, though, even more cutting was when a reporter asked Cuomo if he had been in touch with McConnell. "No," Cuomo answered. Was he planning on calling McConnell? "No," Cuomo answered and moved on. That's a "Fuck me? No, fuck you" moment.
Cuomo was sick of this shit, of all the shit, and he went at McConnell again on Friday, except this time he tossed the entire GOP in DC into the toilet. Talking about how a federal law would be needed to allow states to declare bankruptcy, Cuomo said, "It’s your suggestion, Senator McConnell. Pass the law. I dare you. And then go to the President and say, 'Sign this bill allowing states to declare bankruptcy.' You want to send a signal to the markets that this nation is in real trouble? You want to send an international message that the economy is in turmoil? Do that. Allow states to declare bankruptcy legally, because you passed the bill. It’ll be the first time in our nation’s history that that happened. I dare you to do that...if you believe what you said and you have the courage of conviction because you’re a man of your word, pass that bill, if you weren’t just playing politics." He may as well have punctuated that with "you pussy."
After reiterating that McConnell and Kentucky are "takers" while New York is a "giver" when it comes to federal funding, Cuomo showed the senator the back of his pimp hand: "We were putting money into the pot, they were taking our dollars out of the pot and now he wants to look at New York and say, 'We’re bailing you out.' You’re bailing us out? Just give me my money back, Senator. Just give me my money back." And then he ended it by mocking Trump talking about the economy coming back while McConnell blathers about bankruptcy: "Pass a bill allowing states to be bankrupt and then let’s watch how the stock market takes off at that great news about our economic resilience."
Look, let's be honest here. McConnell doesn't give single lettuce-filled shit about Cuomo or blue states or the average Kentuckian or much of anything. He just cares about making sure that he keeps power and that rich people get richer. But there's a fucking reality here in that a shit-ton of Republicans come from states that are essentially living on welfare, and they behave as if they are the fiscally-responsible ones. It's a lie that has worked repeatedly.
But we can say that it's just fuckin' thrilling in this despairing age to hear a politician speak the truth about this shit, to call out the rhetoric and lies for what they are. Can we not just enjoy for what it is, an ass-kicking?
It's also a threat in many ways. What if New York decides to explore how to hold back some of that funding if, say, Trump is reelected? What if New Jersey says, "Okay, you want us to fuckin' buy all the testing and equipment and everything for another crisis like this but you won't give us funds? Then we're gonna keep some of that extra cash you hand over to Alabama and Kentucky." You think that sounds outlandish and impossible. Motherfuckers, we are well past impossible.
McConnell seeks to divide the nation, as does Trump. Cuomo wants them to know that there is a literal price for doing it.
(Note: Usual Cuomo caveats apply. See last week.)
4/22/2020
Donald Trump Visits His Mass Graves (A Fantasia)
The helicopter landing was a bit bumpy, not bad for such a large chopper coming down on flat earth and not a landing pad, but it was enough to send President Donald Trump into a sarcastic spiel at the poor Air Force pilot who had pulled the short straw. "You call that a landing?" Trump said. "Where the hell did you learn to fly? At Bozo the Clown's school of helicoptering?" He glanced over at the Flat Stanley of a man sitting next to him, Jared Kushner, who gave a wan smile, which, in the realm of Jared facial expressions, is equivalent to being doubled over with laughter.
They had come to Hart Island, just off the Bronx, near Long Island. Trump saw a report on CNN, which he never watches, about mass graves being dug there to accommodate all the victims of COVID-19 in New York City. The President demanded that he be brought there in secret, no media, no photographers, no one to come along but his son-in-law and several Secret Service agents. He didn't want anyone to know. At first, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, tears in his eyes, stared in wonder at how moving a gesture it was and said so to Trump. Trump harumphed, "Stop being such a pussy. I wanna see those big, beautiful graves for myself. All the best leaders in history had mass graves. Your Hitlers and your Stalins and your Kims, and a few of your Chinamen, too. I've never seen one, and, lemme tell you, these look like the best mass graves anywhere."
Trump had wanted his daughter, Ivanka, to go with him, but she claimed exhaustion from her day spent making sure that her father knew what room he was in and what event he was attending, as well as dodging his pinching fingers, grabby hands, and overly-wet lips. She wanted to spend a little time watching the nanny play with her children because motherhood is so important to her. "I was too busy creating jobs," she said. Trump winked at her and said he understood. "Looks like you're up, Skinny Jared. I call him 'Skinny Jared' because he's so skinny, you know." Jared smiled wanly. Truly, it's his only expression beyond staring straight ahead wanly.
And they were off right after his daily press briefing. The whole journey, from the White House to Marine One to the smaller helicopter they took from LaGuardia Airport to Hart Island, Trump regaled Kushner and the Secret Service with a recap of the briefing. "Did you see how I called out that one bitch reporter? She thought she was so tough. I put her in her place, didn't I?" he asked more than once. "They keep saying these things are a bad thing. They aren't a bad thing. They're a good thing. Not a bad thing. Everyone tweets how much they love it when I make those Democrats crazy." It went on like that except when he asked Kushner to read him a complimentary tweet and then retweet it. "News cycle set. Reporters eating out of my hands," he said.
On the island, a golf cart pulled up to the helicopter because no one expected Trump to walk to several hundred yards to the area of the mass graves. "Should have brought some clubs," he said as they made their way across the short distance. "Could have gotten in a few drives. I'm getting rusty." Finally, they arrived at the site, a trench in the earth with wooden caskets stacked like buildings in a Queens housing project. Two rough-looking men in coveralls stood there, ready to help.
Trump stepped out of the golf cart and over to the top of the trench. "Look at that," he exclaimed. And then to the men, "Did you dig this?" They said they had helped. "Good job, fellas. Such strong, tough, tough men." He was already imagining using them in a story where they cried and called him "sir." God, he loved that. He turned back to the ditch of the dead. "Look at it. It's like a gash, a slit in the ground." The President looked at Kushner's wanly pensive face. "I'm saying it's like they made a pussy in the dirt and now they're putting bodies into it."
"It's like birth in reverse," Kushner said, striving for some kind of sense.
Trump rolled his eyes. "No, dummy. It looks like a pussy. That's pretty funny." He lumbered up and down the grave, walking with that Sasquatch gait that demonstrates that he's struggling to keep his upper body from collapsing. "I want a closer look."
The gravediggers found a ladder and they helped Trump work his way down until he was standing on top of the wooden boxes. "All of these. Because of me. Imagine," he said. And a casual viewer of this might have thought that Trump was having a moment of self-reflection. But what he was really thinking was how proud he was, how amazing it was to have that kind of control over life and death. "I act one way, people live," he said. "I act another, they die. I'm like God. Except a real one. Not that phony loser who let himself be crucified."
He gestured to the gravediggers. "You know who's in which one?"
They tentatively nodded. "There's a marker on the box."
Trump nodded. "Find me a woman. A young one. Not too young. But, you know, young." The men paused for a second at the oddness of the request. But this was the President of the United States. They figured he must have his reasons. They moved a couple of the boxes until they found one. With hammers, they pried it open. Trump looked at the corpse and recoiled. "No, no," he said. "Not some black girl. A white one. You know, pretty."
After opening three more caskets, they called Trump over. "How about her?" one of the men said through the bandana around his face. "She's 22." He stood next to the body of a young woman with long blonde hair. Trump thought that she was hot. He nodded.
"I need a moment," he said and waved them out of the grave. When he was alone, Trump unbuckled his oddly-fitting trousers and dropped them. He pulled down his still-dry diaper and tried to reach for his half-erect penis, but he could just graze it with his finger tips. Frustrated, he called out, "Jared, get your ass down here."
Kushner climbed down to see his father-in-law, grandfather to his children, and the Most Powerful Man on Earth with pants around his ankles, standing at the foot of a crappy casket with a dead woman in it. "I need some help," Trump said.
He hoped it wasn't what he thought it was. He hoped it was just that Trump had shit himself "Do you need changing? I can get--"
Trump interrupted, "Just come over here." Kushner walked over. "You know what to do."
Kushner paused, wanly, and offered, "Right...here?"
Trump, eyes on the corpse, said, "Look at her. Prime of her life. Tits to die for. And she's dead because of me." Kushner saw that Trump was attaining something close to a full erection. "It was hard to get it aroused, and it is hard to get it aroused," Trump leered, "but we got it aroused. Now do it. While I've got a chubby."
Kusher sighed, got down on one knee, and started to jerk off Trump. He knew the routine. Start gently, get rougher, then rougher, then, maybe, with any luck, he'll cum quickly. Kushner just didn't want to vomit at the smell of death around him. He was proud of what he had done with the coronavirus, but he had no need to see the results in person. Or smell them. He worked Trump's little dick, holding in his gagging.
As he was getting masturbated, Trump thought about how much power he has, he thought about how fucking hot that bitch in the coffin was, he thought about how Roy Cohn made Trump finger his prostate when the old bastard was dying, he thought about loyalty and how he learned that you prize loyalty above all else while never being loyal to anyone. "Faster," he said. "Don't get tired now." He thought about Ivanka, oh, Ivanka, and then he saw her in the coffin and that made him think about how a dead daughter would make his approval ratings soar from sympathy, yes, how could it not but then he decided that if he's going to have a dead daughter, he'd rather it be Tina or Tammy or whatever the other one was named. "Harder. Squeeze harder. You're as weak as a dog." Then he looked back at the coffin and thought about how the woman must have suffered, how she must have gasped for breath at the end, how she may have cursed his name, and, oh, god, yes, how she hated him, just like MSNBC and CNN and the New York Times and...and just... like... those... traitor... Democrats!
Trump gasped as the orgasm sputtered through his little penis and he dribbled out a tiny bit of semen. "Oh, thank you. That's a good boy, Jared. That's a good boy. Help me get dressed," he huffed and puffed, pulling an American flag from his jacket and handing it to Jared to wipe his dick off.
Making his way out of the grave, Trump saw that the gravediggers were on their knees with their hands behind their heads. "Thank you for your service to our country," he said and then nodded at the Secret Service, who shot them to death and tossed them into an open box. "Time to go home, men. We've all had a long day. And a new one tomorrow. Just think about all we can do for the American people and this beautiful nation that we love." Jared nodded wanly. The agents betrayed no emotion at all. This really wasn't the worst they had seen on this particular detail.
Then they got into the golf cart to start the journey back. There were tweets to compose and so much news coverage to catch up on and only so many hours in a day. He gleefully hummed the theme to The Apprentice as they rode away from the piles of bodies.
They had come to Hart Island, just off the Bronx, near Long Island. Trump saw a report on CNN, which he never watches, about mass graves being dug there to accommodate all the victims of COVID-19 in New York City. The President demanded that he be brought there in secret, no media, no photographers, no one to come along but his son-in-law and several Secret Service agents. He didn't want anyone to know. At first, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, tears in his eyes, stared in wonder at how moving a gesture it was and said so to Trump. Trump harumphed, "Stop being such a pussy. I wanna see those big, beautiful graves for myself. All the best leaders in history had mass graves. Your Hitlers and your Stalins and your Kims, and a few of your Chinamen, too. I've never seen one, and, lemme tell you, these look like the best mass graves anywhere."
Trump had wanted his daughter, Ivanka, to go with him, but she claimed exhaustion from her day spent making sure that her father knew what room he was in and what event he was attending, as well as dodging his pinching fingers, grabby hands, and overly-wet lips. She wanted to spend a little time watching the nanny play with her children because motherhood is so important to her. "I was too busy creating jobs," she said. Trump winked at her and said he understood. "Looks like you're up, Skinny Jared. I call him 'Skinny Jared' because he's so skinny, you know." Jared smiled wanly. Truly, it's his only expression beyond staring straight ahead wanly.
And they were off right after his daily press briefing. The whole journey, from the White House to Marine One to the smaller helicopter they took from LaGuardia Airport to Hart Island, Trump regaled Kushner and the Secret Service with a recap of the briefing. "Did you see how I called out that one bitch reporter? She thought she was so tough. I put her in her place, didn't I?" he asked more than once. "They keep saying these things are a bad thing. They aren't a bad thing. They're a good thing. Not a bad thing. Everyone tweets how much they love it when I make those Democrats crazy." It went on like that except when he asked Kushner to read him a complimentary tweet and then retweet it. "News cycle set. Reporters eating out of my hands," he said.
On the island, a golf cart pulled up to the helicopter because no one expected Trump to walk to several hundred yards to the area of the mass graves. "Should have brought some clubs," he said as they made their way across the short distance. "Could have gotten in a few drives. I'm getting rusty." Finally, they arrived at the site, a trench in the earth with wooden caskets stacked like buildings in a Queens housing project. Two rough-looking men in coveralls stood there, ready to help.
Trump stepped out of the golf cart and over to the top of the trench. "Look at that," he exclaimed. And then to the men, "Did you dig this?" They said they had helped. "Good job, fellas. Such strong, tough, tough men." He was already imagining using them in a story where they cried and called him "sir." God, he loved that. He turned back to the ditch of the dead. "Look at it. It's like a gash, a slit in the ground." The President looked at Kushner's wanly pensive face. "I'm saying it's like they made a pussy in the dirt and now they're putting bodies into it."
"It's like birth in reverse," Kushner said, striving for some kind of sense.
Trump rolled his eyes. "No, dummy. It looks like a pussy. That's pretty funny." He lumbered up and down the grave, walking with that Sasquatch gait that demonstrates that he's struggling to keep his upper body from collapsing. "I want a closer look."
The gravediggers found a ladder and they helped Trump work his way down until he was standing on top of the wooden boxes. "All of these. Because of me. Imagine," he said. And a casual viewer of this might have thought that Trump was having a moment of self-reflection. But what he was really thinking was how proud he was, how amazing it was to have that kind of control over life and death. "I act one way, people live," he said. "I act another, they die. I'm like God. Except a real one. Not that phony loser who let himself be crucified."
He gestured to the gravediggers. "You know who's in which one?"
They tentatively nodded. "There's a marker on the box."
Trump nodded. "Find me a woman. A young one. Not too young. But, you know, young." The men paused for a second at the oddness of the request. But this was the President of the United States. They figured he must have his reasons. They moved a couple of the boxes until they found one. With hammers, they pried it open. Trump looked at the corpse and recoiled. "No, no," he said. "Not some black girl. A white one. You know, pretty."
After opening three more caskets, they called Trump over. "How about her?" one of the men said through the bandana around his face. "She's 22." He stood next to the body of a young woman with long blonde hair. Trump thought that she was hot. He nodded.
"I need a moment," he said and waved them out of the grave. When he was alone, Trump unbuckled his oddly-fitting trousers and dropped them. He pulled down his still-dry diaper and tried to reach for his half-erect penis, but he could just graze it with his finger tips. Frustrated, he called out, "Jared, get your ass down here."
Kushner climbed down to see his father-in-law, grandfather to his children, and the Most Powerful Man on Earth with pants around his ankles, standing at the foot of a crappy casket with a dead woman in it. "I need some help," Trump said.
He hoped it wasn't what he thought it was. He hoped it was just that Trump had shit himself "Do you need changing? I can get--"
Trump interrupted, "Just come over here." Kushner walked over. "You know what to do."
Kushner paused, wanly, and offered, "Right...here?"
Trump, eyes on the corpse, said, "Look at her. Prime of her life. Tits to die for. And she's dead because of me." Kushner saw that Trump was attaining something close to a full erection. "It was hard to get it aroused, and it is hard to get it aroused," Trump leered, "but we got it aroused. Now do it. While I've got a chubby."
Kusher sighed, got down on one knee, and started to jerk off Trump. He knew the routine. Start gently, get rougher, then rougher, then, maybe, with any luck, he'll cum quickly. Kushner just didn't want to vomit at the smell of death around him. He was proud of what he had done with the coronavirus, but he had no need to see the results in person. Or smell them. He worked Trump's little dick, holding in his gagging.
As he was getting masturbated, Trump thought about how much power he has, he thought about how fucking hot that bitch in the coffin was, he thought about how Roy Cohn made Trump finger his prostate when the old bastard was dying, he thought about loyalty and how he learned that you prize loyalty above all else while never being loyal to anyone. "Faster," he said. "Don't get tired now." He thought about Ivanka, oh, Ivanka, and then he saw her in the coffin and that made him think about how a dead daughter would make his approval ratings soar from sympathy, yes, how could it not but then he decided that if he's going to have a dead daughter, he'd rather it be Tina or Tammy or whatever the other one was named. "Harder. Squeeze harder. You're as weak as a dog." Then he looked back at the coffin and thought about how the woman must have suffered, how she must have gasped for breath at the end, how she may have cursed his name, and, oh, god, yes, how she hated him, just like MSNBC and CNN and the New York Times and...and just... like... those... traitor... Democrats!
Trump gasped as the orgasm sputtered through his little penis and he dribbled out a tiny bit of semen. "Oh, thank you. That's a good boy, Jared. That's a good boy. Help me get dressed," he huffed and puffed, pulling an American flag from his jacket and handing it to Jared to wipe his dick off.
Making his way out of the grave, Trump saw that the gravediggers were on their knees with their hands behind their heads. "Thank you for your service to our country," he said and then nodded at the Secret Service, who shot them to death and tossed them into an open box. "Time to go home, men. We've all had a long day. And a new one tomorrow. Just think about all we can do for the American people and this beautiful nation that we love." Jared nodded wanly. The agents betrayed no emotion at all. This really wasn't the worst they had seen on this particular detail.
Then they got into the golf cart to start the journey back. There were tweets to compose and so much news coverage to catch up on and only so many hours in a day. He gleefully hummed the theme to The Apprentice as they rode away from the piles of bodies.
4/18/2020
Andrew Cuomo Finally Gets Rid of His Last Fuck
(Note: Before I get all slobbery on Andrew Cuomo's knob, lemme preface this by saying I agree with all the things you dislike about him. I've got lots of grievances, too, since I fuckin' work for the state of New York. This ain't about any of that. Are we good? Yeah, shut up. I don't really care. Here we go.)
You gotta give New York Governor Andrew Cuomo credit. For weeks now, he has pretty much held his fire when it came to the vast amounts of fuckery being done during this COVID-19 pandemic by Donald Trump and the federal government he has deformed to fit his grotesque image. For the most part, he has thanked the president for various kinds of assistance, and he has avoided going after Trump by name or even office. Indeed, the few times that he has criticized the federal government's response to the crisis, they have been mild reproaches about Trump palming things off on the states that DC should be taking care of. Still, even those exceedingly light comments would draw the typically snide tweets or comments from Trump. But Cuomo insisted he was staying above the fray.
Until yesterday, that is.
See, in the middle of his daily press briefing, a reporter informed Cuomo that Trump had tweeted an attack on the governor, accusing Cuomo of not doing enough, insisting that he had been extra generous with New York, and saying that Cuomo needs to thank people more.
That was the moment you could actually see Andrew Cuomo toss his last fuck in the garbage. Without missing a beat, he said, "Good. Good. Let’s respond to the president." And then he went for over 9 minutes with a calm, fact-filled, skillful, coherent answer that was the equivalent of ripping out Trump's spine and beating him with it as the orange blob sank to the ground.
In answer to Trump accusing Cuomo and other governors of asking for too much, Cuomo stated plainly that they were using the estimates of deaths and hospitalizations given to them by the "CDC, Coronavirus White House Task Force," adding, "that’s you. White House. That’s you. We relied on your projections." Then he eviscerated Trump on his refusal to help the states with testing like a skilled murderer with a razor-sharp stiletto. That was followed by Cuomo giving Trump a lesson in history and the Constitution when it comes to the powers that rest with the states:
"'Well, it’s up to the states to do reopen.' By the way, it was always up to the states. What, are you going to grant me what the Constitution gave me before you were born? It’s called the 10th Amendment. [Note: I love how Cuomo phrased that in a way that mocks Trump saying, "It's called Article II"] I didn’t need the President of the United States to tell me that I’m governor. I didn’t need the President of the United States to tell me the powers of a state...People did that. Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. They are the ones who gave me the power and I don’t need the President of the United States to read the constitution for me. Maybe he should have read the constitution before he said he had the power to open the states."
Then Cuomo mocked Trump on not even listening to his own projections when it came to the national stockpile before my favorite moment. It was when he went right at Trump's hoggish vanity: "So, thank you again Mr. President for the Javits. Thank you for the US Navy ship Comfort, which by the way, it’s just doing your job as president. It’s not really thank you like you wrote a check yourself, but thank you for that." Goddamn, that was pretty much the moment that I jizzed my jeans because Cuomo is dead-on right there. Trump always wants to thanked for doing shit that's just his fuckin' job.
He's like the student who asks if he can get extra credit because he showed up in class. No, motherfucker, you did the bare fuckin' minimum.
Cuomo was asked if he had talked to Trump about the president's desire to "reopen" the country on May 1st, and that led Cuomo to another 6 minute calm, direct tirade about how much of a bullshit fake leader Trump is. Before restating that what the states need from the government is help with testing and personal protection equipment for hospitals, the governor went again for Trump's narcissistic jugular, saying, "All he’s doing is walking in front of the parade, but he has nothing to do with the timing of the parade, right? The governors are going to open when they think they should open."
And just read this part of Cuomo's purging of everything he's obviously been wanting to say to our bloated garbage bag of a president: "How many times do you want me to say thank you? But I’m saying thank you for doing your job. This was your role as president, okay? So that’s the honest statement of fact, without politics, I’m not running for anything, I have no agenda but delivering for the people of this state and without ego. You want me to say thank you. Thank you for doing your job in helping build Javits and sending the US Navy Ship Comfort. Thank you for participating in a modicum of federal responsibility in a national crisis. Which you know is a national crisis because he declared a federal emergency. So, thank you for having the federal government participate in a federal emergency."
Holy shit, that's beautiful. Lemme say that again: Holy shit, that's so fuckin' beautiful. Because, believe it or not, a virus doesn't give a shit about state lines. So maybe you need a federal government to fuckin' coordinate a response and resources to stop it all over the country.
Read the whole thing. It starts at around the one-hour mark in the transcript. And keep reading. Read how he says Trump should fire his own people if he thinks they got things so wrong. Read him saying that the states desperately need funding. And read this:
"Our only mistake was then believing your numbers and believing your projections. If that was a mistake, then I’m guilty. But, I thought New York State, relying on what you said would have been a safe assumption. I won’t make that mistake again."
This was the cathartic moment some of us have been waiting for from Cuomo, the moment when the lie of comity was cast aside and the complete and utter contempt and disgust real leaders have with this feckless fuck of a president was finally articulated.
Cuomo is acting like there are lives at stake. Trump is acting like this whole thing is an inconvenience to holding another rally before going golfing.
You gotta give New York Governor Andrew Cuomo credit. For weeks now, he has pretty much held his fire when it came to the vast amounts of fuckery being done during this COVID-19 pandemic by Donald Trump and the federal government he has deformed to fit his grotesque image. For the most part, he has thanked the president for various kinds of assistance, and he has avoided going after Trump by name or even office. Indeed, the few times that he has criticized the federal government's response to the crisis, they have been mild reproaches about Trump palming things off on the states that DC should be taking care of. Still, even those exceedingly light comments would draw the typically snide tweets or comments from Trump. But Cuomo insisted he was staying above the fray.
Until yesterday, that is.
See, in the middle of his daily press briefing, a reporter informed Cuomo that Trump had tweeted an attack on the governor, accusing Cuomo of not doing enough, insisting that he had been extra generous with New York, and saying that Cuomo needs to thank people more.
That was the moment you could actually see Andrew Cuomo toss his last fuck in the garbage. Without missing a beat, he said, "Good. Good. Let’s respond to the president." And then he went for over 9 minutes with a calm, fact-filled, skillful, coherent answer that was the equivalent of ripping out Trump's spine and beating him with it as the orange blob sank to the ground.
In answer to Trump accusing Cuomo and other governors of asking for too much, Cuomo stated plainly that they were using the estimates of deaths and hospitalizations given to them by the "CDC, Coronavirus White House Task Force," adding, "that’s you. White House. That’s you. We relied on your projections." Then he eviscerated Trump on his refusal to help the states with testing like a skilled murderer with a razor-sharp stiletto. That was followed by Cuomo giving Trump a lesson in history and the Constitution when it comes to the powers that rest with the states:
"'Well, it’s up to the states to do reopen.' By the way, it was always up to the states. What, are you going to grant me what the Constitution gave me before you were born? It’s called the 10th Amendment. [Note: I love how Cuomo phrased that in a way that mocks Trump saying, "It's called Article II"] I didn’t need the President of the United States to tell me that I’m governor. I didn’t need the President of the United States to tell me the powers of a state...People did that. Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison. They are the ones who gave me the power and I don’t need the President of the United States to read the constitution for me. Maybe he should have read the constitution before he said he had the power to open the states."
Then Cuomo mocked Trump on not even listening to his own projections when it came to the national stockpile before my favorite moment. It was when he went right at Trump's hoggish vanity: "So, thank you again Mr. President for the Javits. Thank you for the US Navy ship Comfort, which by the way, it’s just doing your job as president. It’s not really thank you like you wrote a check yourself, but thank you for that." Goddamn, that was pretty much the moment that I jizzed my jeans because Cuomo is dead-on right there. Trump always wants to thanked for doing shit that's just his fuckin' job.
He's like the student who asks if he can get extra credit because he showed up in class. No, motherfucker, you did the bare fuckin' minimum.
Cuomo was asked if he had talked to Trump about the president's desire to "reopen" the country on May 1st, and that led Cuomo to another 6 minute calm, direct tirade about how much of a bullshit fake leader Trump is. Before restating that what the states need from the government is help with testing and personal protection equipment for hospitals, the governor went again for Trump's narcissistic jugular, saying, "All he’s doing is walking in front of the parade, but he has nothing to do with the timing of the parade, right? The governors are going to open when they think they should open."
And just read this part of Cuomo's purging of everything he's obviously been wanting to say to our bloated garbage bag of a president: "How many times do you want me to say thank you? But I’m saying thank you for doing your job. This was your role as president, okay? So that’s the honest statement of fact, without politics, I’m not running for anything, I have no agenda but delivering for the people of this state and without ego. You want me to say thank you. Thank you for doing your job in helping build Javits and sending the US Navy Ship Comfort. Thank you for participating in a modicum of federal responsibility in a national crisis. Which you know is a national crisis because he declared a federal emergency. So, thank you for having the federal government participate in a federal emergency."
Holy shit, that's beautiful. Lemme say that again: Holy shit, that's so fuckin' beautiful. Because, believe it or not, a virus doesn't give a shit about state lines. So maybe you need a federal government to fuckin' coordinate a response and resources to stop it all over the country.
Read the whole thing. It starts at around the one-hour mark in the transcript. And keep reading. Read how he says Trump should fire his own people if he thinks they got things so wrong. Read him saying that the states desperately need funding. And read this:
"Our only mistake was then believing your numbers and believing your projections. If that was a mistake, then I’m guilty. But, I thought New York State, relying on what you said would have been a safe assumption. I won’t make that mistake again."
This was the cathartic moment some of us have been waiting for from Cuomo, the moment when the lie of comity was cast aside and the complete and utter contempt and disgust real leaders have with this feckless fuck of a president was finally articulated.
Cuomo is acting like there are lives at stake. Trump is acting like this whole thing is an inconvenience to holding another rally before going golfing.
4/15/2020
The Divine Right of Trumps
Something Donald Trump said last week has just stuck in my craw. Well, to be fair, every goddamn word out of that shit-ogre's mouth sticks in my craw. My craw is fuckin' full. But this is a little snippet that got no attention whatsoever, but just seems to me to indicate exactly how perverse this entire depressing situation has always been.
Last Tuesday, on April 7, prior to jacking off for the media at his Coronavirus Task Force presser, Trump held the "Small Business Relief Update Meeting," another session where he gets his balls massaged by having everyone tell him how awesome his awesomeness is. In his introductory remarks, prior to lying again about the number of jobs his daughter/genetic spank bank Ivanka has created, Trump said this: "My daughter, Ivanka Trump, who just wants to have people working. That’s what — I gave her lots of options, and - 'What do you like?'" And then he went on to lie-brag, "She started off with a goal of 500,000 jobs, and now she’s up to over 15 million."
Look at what he's admitting there. The motherfuckin' president of the United States, who is elected and doesn't inherit the position, said that he asked his daughter, "What do you want to do in my administration?" Not what was she qualified for. And, honestly, all she's qualified to do is be the mascot for a company of cheap knock-offs of other designers' work and putting her stupid name it. A person with any self-awareness would have said, "Oh, that's okay. I'm just gonna keep on abusing sweatshop workers." But, no, in this telling, Ivanka said, "Daddy, I wish to work on getting Americans jobs." It's not just that the whole story is a lie (really, Ivanka's there to make sure Donald doesn't shit himself and keel over). It's that the lie is disturbing as fuck: The president let his daughter choose her job in the White House, like a toy at FAO Schwarz.
It's of a piece of Trump believing himself the equal to a king, the imperial presidency on Adderall, snorted off his daughter's tits.
Back in the quaint times of the Mueller investigation, when Trump was just a filthy traitor selling out the nation to Russia and not outright murdering Americans, he used to say repeatedly that he had the power to do all the treason he wanted: "Then, I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president. But I don’t even talk about that," he said at some godforsaken conservative conference of the damned. Of course, he talked about it all the fuckin' time.
And now, over the last few days, Trump has gone even further, asserting that he has the power to decide when individual states are ready to open up for business post-pandemic. On Monday, he asserted, "When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be." And, as he does when he knows he's fucking wrong, he insisted that others knew what he was saying. Usually, it's "you know what I'm talking about," but here it was "And the governors know that." Except the governors don't "know" that because it's just not fucking true. I just wanted one governor to say, "Motherfucker, you were too much of a pussy to close anything. Don't fuckin' get in my face about when to open it, you anus-lipped, jiggly-jowled prick."
At today's pressturbation session, he didn't just say that he has control over the economies of individual states. He said that he can use his emergency powers to adjourn the Congress so he can recess appoint a bunch of harmful fucks to positions of power. You know, so they can ensure that government for Trump and by Trump continues unabated. He went full batshit: "If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress. The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam what they do. It's a scam." By the way, that "scam" was used to prevent President Obama from recess-appointing anyone.
What was pissing off Trump so much that he needs to provoke another constitutional crisis? The Voice of America news outlet, funded by taxpayers, wasn't sucking his dick. Yeah, VOA reported China's number of coronavirus deaths, and because they didn't say, "Oh, and China eats shit," Trump and Trumpinistas are losing their goddamn minds. Trump wants to put in his own propagandist at the VOA. The VOA asserted independence and freedoms, like press and speech, and that was the greatest sin you can commit when you are dealing with a king.
The pathetic reality is that Trump doesn't have the power of a king (yet) is that he can't make the truth go away. Oh, sure, the fucking idiot hordes, who will suckle at his saggy teats until it kills them, will believe his story.
But the real truth is that Trump had the power to do something to prepare for the coronavirus pandemic and he didn't. He could have waved his hand (in the form of a signature or two) and unleashed the manufacturing power of the United States. He could have coordinated national social distancing early on. He could have taken the WHO's tests and vastly expanded our ability to do them. He had that power: the power to have saved thousands of lives. It was in his tiny hands. And he didn't use it because he couldn't see past his own bloated reflection. How fucking sad is that.
What we're really seeing is the flailing of a pitiful failure, a sad old man screaming at the TV for disagreeing with him. He's going to keep saying this kind of shit and the threat is that he really acts on this. Because then it will once again be up to Republicans to join Democrats in reining in his desire to reign. And if they don't, it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide. And we know how that goes.
It's not even a surprise anymore when Trump escalates to cover up his incompetence and bad decisions. He's like every terrorist: he gets off on seeing shit blow up.
Last Tuesday, on April 7, prior to jacking off for the media at his Coronavirus Task Force presser, Trump held the "Small Business Relief Update Meeting," another session where he gets his balls massaged by having everyone tell him how awesome his awesomeness is. In his introductory remarks, prior to lying again about the number of jobs his daughter/genetic spank bank Ivanka has created, Trump said this: "My daughter, Ivanka Trump, who just wants to have people working. That’s what — I gave her lots of options, and - 'What do you like?'" And then he went on to lie-brag, "She started off with a goal of 500,000 jobs, and now she’s up to over 15 million."
Look at what he's admitting there. The motherfuckin' president of the United States, who is elected and doesn't inherit the position, said that he asked his daughter, "What do you want to do in my administration?" Not what was she qualified for. And, honestly, all she's qualified to do is be the mascot for a company of cheap knock-offs of other designers' work and putting her stupid name it. A person with any self-awareness would have said, "Oh, that's okay. I'm just gonna keep on abusing sweatshop workers." But, no, in this telling, Ivanka said, "Daddy, I wish to work on getting Americans jobs." It's not just that the whole story is a lie (really, Ivanka's there to make sure Donald doesn't shit himself and keel over). It's that the lie is disturbing as fuck: The president let his daughter choose her job in the White House, like a toy at FAO Schwarz.
It's of a piece of Trump believing himself the equal to a king, the imperial presidency on Adderall, snorted off his daughter's tits.
Back in the quaint times of the Mueller investigation, when Trump was just a filthy traitor selling out the nation to Russia and not outright murdering Americans, he used to say repeatedly that he had the power to do all the treason he wanted: "Then, I have an Article II, where I have to the right to do whatever I want as president. But I don’t even talk about that," he said at some godforsaken conservative conference of the damned. Of course, he talked about it all the fuckin' time.
And now, over the last few days, Trump has gone even further, asserting that he has the power to decide when individual states are ready to open up for business post-pandemic. On Monday, he asserted, "When somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be." And, as he does when he knows he's fucking wrong, he insisted that others knew what he was saying. Usually, it's "you know what I'm talking about," but here it was "And the governors know that." Except the governors don't "know" that because it's just not fucking true. I just wanted one governor to say, "Motherfucker, you were too much of a pussy to close anything. Don't fuckin' get in my face about when to open it, you anus-lipped, jiggly-jowled prick."
At today's pressturbation session, he didn't just say that he has control over the economies of individual states. He said that he can use his emergency powers to adjourn the Congress so he can recess appoint a bunch of harmful fucks to positions of power. You know, so they can ensure that government for Trump and by Trump continues unabated. He went full batshit: "If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both chambers of Congress. The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam what they do. It's a scam." By the way, that "scam" was used to prevent President Obama from recess-appointing anyone.
What was pissing off Trump so much that he needs to provoke another constitutional crisis? The Voice of America news outlet, funded by taxpayers, wasn't sucking his dick. Yeah, VOA reported China's number of coronavirus deaths, and because they didn't say, "Oh, and China eats shit," Trump and Trumpinistas are losing their goddamn minds. Trump wants to put in his own propagandist at the VOA. The VOA asserted independence and freedoms, like press and speech, and that was the greatest sin you can commit when you are dealing with a king.
The pathetic reality is that Trump doesn't have the power of a king (yet) is that he can't make the truth go away. Oh, sure, the fucking idiot hordes, who will suckle at his saggy teats until it kills them, will believe his story.
But the real truth is that Trump had the power to do something to prepare for the coronavirus pandemic and he didn't. He could have waved his hand (in the form of a signature or two) and unleashed the manufacturing power of the United States. He could have coordinated national social distancing early on. He could have taken the WHO's tests and vastly expanded our ability to do them. He had that power: the power to have saved thousands of lives. It was in his tiny hands. And he didn't use it because he couldn't see past his own bloated reflection. How fucking sad is that.
What we're really seeing is the flailing of a pitiful failure, a sad old man screaming at the TV for disagreeing with him. He's going to keep saying this kind of shit and the threat is that he really acts on this. Because then it will once again be up to Republicans to join Democrats in reining in his desire to reign. And if they don't, it will be up to the Supreme Court to decide. And we know how that goes.
It's not even a surprise anymore when Trump escalates to cover up his incompetence and bad decisions. He's like every terrorist: he gets off on seeing shit blow up.
4/10/2020
Trump Stupidly Self-Owns on Pandemic Deaths
Ever since the first death from COVID-19, President Donald Trump has brayed like a howler monkey getting a tree branch stuck up its ass about how allegedly terrible President Obama handled the H1N1 outbreak in 2009-10. On a daily basis, we have heard about how the incompetent fuck-ups in the Obama administration personally went out and murdered, depending on the day, between 12,000 and 18,000 people with the swine flu. (The 12,000 is roughly the number the CDC came up with; the 18,000 is the upper estimate of U.S. deaths from H1N1.)
On March 5, Trump tweeted, "Gallup just gave us the highest rating ever for the way we are handling the CoronaVirus situation. The April 2009-10 Swine Flu, where nearly 13,000 people died in the U.S., was poorly handled." Watch what happens with that number as the weeks go on.
On March 12, he decided to make it as political as possible, tweeting, "Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people. The response was one of the worst on record." For the record, Joe Biden was not in charge of the response to the swine flu.
Praising himself (as he has done over 100 times on the coronavirus response) on March 13, Trump said, "Interestingly, if you go back — please — if you go back to the swine flu, it was nothing like this. They didn’t do testing like this. And actually, they lost approximately 14,000 people. And they didn’t do the testing. They started thinking about testing when it was far too late." Reminded that the Obama administration had tested over a million people by the same point during the H1N1 crisis, Trump retorted pissily, "Ask them how they did with the swine flu. It was a disaster."
On March 17, Trump once again offered a middle finger to the previous administration: "If you look at swine flu — the whole thing in, I guess it was 2009, and what they did and the mistakes they’ve made, they were terrible. They were horrific mistakes. Seventeen thousand people died. And I’ll be honest, they shouldn’t be criticizing because we’ve done a fantastic job."
This very week, on April 7, he seemed to sense what was coming and moved the goal posts: "Take a look at the swine flu. Right? That’s H1N1. Take a look at that. And it’s not the other way around, by the way. It’s H1N1. Take a look — you know what I mean by that. Take a look at the swine flu. It was a disaster; 17,000 people died. The other administra- — they didn’t even know — it was like they didn’t even know it was here. And that was peanuts compared to what we have, in terms of the power, the magnitude of what we’re going through. This is attacking 182 countries, simultaneously." For the record, according to the CDC, 214 countries had H1N1 cases simultaneously.
Still, even as he hiked the death stat, from 13k to 14k to 17k now, it's like Trump understood that the metric he had been using as an indicator of the "disaster" of Obama's response was about to be lapped by COVID-19.
And guess what, motherfucker? Today, the number of deaths in the United States has topped 18,000, the upper number in the estimates of H1N1 deaths. That's a goddamn self-own right there, bitch. If this cockzit had any shame at all, he'd be out there flogging himself, weeping and blubbering, "I'm the disaster. I'm the debacle. I'm the mistake. I'm the worst." But he won't.
And fuckin' no one will hold him to account for his constant slanderous debasement of the Obama record. In a just world, Barack Obama would get to punch Trump in the dick every time the bloated tangerine of hate talked shit. But, no, no, we have to pretend to be dignified when dick-punching would be more appropriate.
This is the shit that Trump's been allowed to skate on. He repeats a lie so fucking often that it's the only thing even semi-rational people believe. Like the one that's gotten in my craw and plunged in its nails. Trump says over and over that he "shut down" travel from China early in the coronavirus outbreak. He says he "closed the border" and shit like that. Except he fucking well didn't. Read his own fuckin' proclamation on it. It applied to "all aliens who were physically present within the People’s Republic of China...during the 14-day period preceding their entry." And there were a shit-ton of exceptions, including Americans and people with green cards, spouses and children of Americans and people with green cards, and many other categories. It's like saying, "I've decided to be celibate. I'm not gonna do anal anymore, but blow jobs and firm handies are always welcome." And when those 40,000 or so exceptions to the ban came back into the U.S. from China, they faced almost no health checks.
On top of the general lie about the "ban," the date it started, which was on February 2 in the U.S., was two weeks after the first confirmed case in Washington state. The fucking virus was already here. So the sieve of a shutdown of Chinese travel had virtually no effect, despite Trump constantly saying that he himself saved "millions of lives." No, that was the social distancing and hospitalizations. Oh, and one more thing: Trump didn't issue the "ban" until the day after the WHO declared COVID-19 an international health emergency. That's right. Mr. Blame-the-WHO took his cues from the organization.
Look, this motherfucker, this loser of a president, this despicable, soul-free, degraded carcass of something that appears human, he's trying to spin shit every which way so that he escapes blame, again, for something that is his and solely his responsibility. He'll blame the WHO, Democrats and impeachment, governors, Obama, fuck, I'm sure Hillary will get in there at some point.
But it should never take away from the truth: He failed. He is failing. He is a failure. He will be a failure. He needs to wear his failure like a hair shirt for the rest of his miserable and hopefully imprisoned life. If Trump can slip away from any kind of comeuppance for this murderous ruin and wreckage, this country is even more fucked than it seems.
4/08/2020
Random Observations on the End of the Democratic Primaries
1. I gotta be honest with you. I never really got over Elizabeth Warren's drubbing once voting started. She was, to these weary eyes and ears, clearly the best fucking candidate in the field, intellectually head and shoulders above everyone else, with an understanding of how to take apart an opponent and how to make a deal and when those things are appropriate. Yeah, I'm still pissed off that I never got to vote for her. And I'm pissed that I didn't get to vote for Bernie Sanders this time, as I did in 2016, now that Sanders has suspended his campaign. But Warren got a raw ass deal from the media, which erased her repeatedly after her brief momentum slowed. However...
2. My causes, the things I have been fighting for over the decades like universal health care, civil rights for people who have been traditionally oppressed, environmentalism and climate change (seriously, I wrote a letter to Gerald Ford asking him to make recycling into national policy when I was like 8), and so much more, that shit, all of it, do not fade when my preferred candidate is out of the picture. Otherwise, why have beliefs if I'll allow everything I love to be further harmed because I didn't get Jesse Jackson or Jerry Brown or John Edwards ('04, not '08) or Elizabeth Warren or, you know, Bernie Sanders? That's not how it works. Most of the time, you hit the bar and you end up heading home not with Mr. Perfect, but with Mr. Ok, Fine, but that doesn't mean the sex can't be a blast. You just gotta give up the ideal fuck for the fuck you get to have. Or you're just never gonna get laid.
3. While I supported him as Obama's veep and cheered him on for taking apart Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan at debates, I have long had issues with Joe Biden, going back to his treatment of Anita Hill (which I wrote about at the time in a college paper - I think I even made fun of his teeth). As I wrote back in December, I didn't want him to be the nominee because "Joe Biden wants to make nice with Republicans" when, really, we should want to bury them in their political graves and then dig up their corpses and piss on them. Biden was probably sixth or seventh on my list of Democrats. But none of that matters. None of it. The Democratic primary season is over. This is where we're heading, to a Biden nomination, and there is nothing you or I can do to stop it. So you may as well get your head around it. I did after Super Tuesday. It isn't fun, it isn't what I wanted, but this is the hand we've been dealt in this shitty poker game. I figure my ante is my life and the rest of pot is everyone else's lives. You can't fuckin' fold if you see it that way. I can't let the bloated bastard in the orange hat win.
3a. Yeah, the sexual assault allegations made by Tara Reade against Biden are disturbing. And they should be investigated fully. No question. In fact, while denying Reade's story, that's what Biden's campaign has said it wants reporters to do. One further thing on this, though: I have to think that Sanders and his staff weighed how legitimate Reade's claims are. I have to think they vetted the story and found it wanting. If they thought it was all valid and provable, Sanders would have been a fool to drop out. In fact, do you really think Bernie advisor and intense attack dog David Sirota would have just let that go?
4. The job of progressives now is to influence Biden as much as possible, to get progressive candidates elected to the House and Senate, to get progressive governors and state legislatures and motherfuckin' school boards into office. You wanna make all this shit happen? Then you have to build it into the political fabric of the nation, not just in the White House. Republicans spent the last forty years making everyone believe that they had to kowtow to the religious right and nutzoid conservatives. That's the narrative that runs the nation: What Republicans and the right want is American; what Democrats and the left want isn't. It's the narrative that has to be overcome every fucking time a Democrat runs for president. Bill Clinton overcame it by taking Republican issues as his own. Obama did it by sheer force of personality and then by being pretty damn good at his job (as well as running against the poisonous W. Bush legacy both times). I've written for years about how Democrats, especially ones that have any progressive inclinations, need to create a new narrative, one that says the United States is the inclusive, liberatory place we've believe it could be, even if it fails sometimes to live up that ideal. You have to get that narrative into the political DNA of the country, and the way you do that is by embedding it at the local level, as well as the national.
5. Look, I could be a dick about this (I have been and I probably will be again, but, hey, this is the mood I'm in now) and say that if you're a Sanders voter who refuses to vote for Biden, you're giving the election to Trump and all that that means, especially when it comes to the Supreme Court. Instead, let me put it another way: Trump and his administration and his voters just fucking suck. They are just fucking terrible human beings who are actively harming people in the USA, who are accelerating climate change, who are savagely anti-immigrant, who want to get rid of women's rights and LGBTQ rights and civil rights, who have no problem with the country becoming a white nationalist Christian theocracy, who love guns and hate things like food inspections, who are corporatists at a level that would make even the most craven corporate teat-sucking Democrat look like an amateur, and who hate you, like hate you for existing and hate everything you stand for and would probably like to arrest you, eject you from the country, send you to a Trump reeducation camp or worse. Don't you wanna fuck up their world? I do. Very, very badly. I want their world shattered. The way to start to do that is to get rid of Trump. That's why I will have no problem voting for Biden. It's a step away from this path of damnation. I'll do it without any hesitation. You should, too. However...
5a. If you're a Sanders voter who now says they'll vote for Trump, you never supported Sanders's causes. You're just a fucking twatcrab who gets off on seeing things fucked up. Fuck off all the way out of here.
2. My causes, the things I have been fighting for over the decades like universal health care, civil rights for people who have been traditionally oppressed, environmentalism and climate change (seriously, I wrote a letter to Gerald Ford asking him to make recycling into national policy when I was like 8), and so much more, that shit, all of it, do not fade when my preferred candidate is out of the picture. Otherwise, why have beliefs if I'll allow everything I love to be further harmed because I didn't get Jesse Jackson or Jerry Brown or John Edwards ('04, not '08) or Elizabeth Warren or, you know, Bernie Sanders? That's not how it works. Most of the time, you hit the bar and you end up heading home not with Mr. Perfect, but with Mr. Ok, Fine, but that doesn't mean the sex can't be a blast. You just gotta give up the ideal fuck for the fuck you get to have. Or you're just never gonna get laid.
3. While I supported him as Obama's veep and cheered him on for taking apart Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan at debates, I have long had issues with Joe Biden, going back to his treatment of Anita Hill (which I wrote about at the time in a college paper - I think I even made fun of his teeth). As I wrote back in December, I didn't want him to be the nominee because "Joe Biden wants to make nice with Republicans" when, really, we should want to bury them in their political graves and then dig up their corpses and piss on them. Biden was probably sixth or seventh on my list of Democrats. But none of that matters. None of it. The Democratic primary season is over. This is where we're heading, to a Biden nomination, and there is nothing you or I can do to stop it. So you may as well get your head around it. I did after Super Tuesday. It isn't fun, it isn't what I wanted, but this is the hand we've been dealt in this shitty poker game. I figure my ante is my life and the rest of pot is everyone else's lives. You can't fuckin' fold if you see it that way. I can't let the bloated bastard in the orange hat win.
3a. Yeah, the sexual assault allegations made by Tara Reade against Biden are disturbing. And they should be investigated fully. No question. In fact, while denying Reade's story, that's what Biden's campaign has said it wants reporters to do. One further thing on this, though: I have to think that Sanders and his staff weighed how legitimate Reade's claims are. I have to think they vetted the story and found it wanting. If they thought it was all valid and provable, Sanders would have been a fool to drop out. In fact, do you really think Bernie advisor and intense attack dog David Sirota would have just let that go?
4. The job of progressives now is to influence Biden as much as possible, to get progressive candidates elected to the House and Senate, to get progressive governors and state legislatures and motherfuckin' school boards into office. You wanna make all this shit happen? Then you have to build it into the political fabric of the nation, not just in the White House. Republicans spent the last forty years making everyone believe that they had to kowtow to the religious right and nutzoid conservatives. That's the narrative that runs the nation: What Republicans and the right want is American; what Democrats and the left want isn't. It's the narrative that has to be overcome every fucking time a Democrat runs for president. Bill Clinton overcame it by taking Republican issues as his own. Obama did it by sheer force of personality and then by being pretty damn good at his job (as well as running against the poisonous W. Bush legacy both times). I've written for years about how Democrats, especially ones that have any progressive inclinations, need to create a new narrative, one that says the United States is the inclusive, liberatory place we've believe it could be, even if it fails sometimes to live up that ideal. You have to get that narrative into the political DNA of the country, and the way you do that is by embedding it at the local level, as well as the national.
5. Look, I could be a dick about this (I have been and I probably will be again, but, hey, this is the mood I'm in now) and say that if you're a Sanders voter who refuses to vote for Biden, you're giving the election to Trump and all that that means, especially when it comes to the Supreme Court. Instead, let me put it another way: Trump and his administration and his voters just fucking suck. They are just fucking terrible human beings who are actively harming people in the USA, who are accelerating climate change, who are savagely anti-immigrant, who want to get rid of women's rights and LGBTQ rights and civil rights, who have no problem with the country becoming a white nationalist Christian theocracy, who love guns and hate things like food inspections, who are corporatists at a level that would make even the most craven corporate teat-sucking Democrat look like an amateur, and who hate you, like hate you for existing and hate everything you stand for and would probably like to arrest you, eject you from the country, send you to a Trump reeducation camp or worse. Don't you wanna fuck up their world? I do. Very, very badly. I want their world shattered. The way to start to do that is to get rid of Trump. That's why I will have no problem voting for Biden. It's a step away from this path of damnation. I'll do it without any hesitation. You should, too. However...
5a. If you're a Sanders voter who now says they'll vote for Trump, you never supported Sanders's causes. You're just a fucking twatcrab who gets off on seeing things fucked up. Fuck off all the way out of here.
4/03/2020
Fuck Jared Kushner
There's a certain kind of Ivy League college graduate who is just a total wad of fuck. Usually, they come from inherited wealth, are legacy admissions, and barely had to do any work the entire time they were in school because they have never had to any kind of work. I've had my run-ins with these louche fucks who believe that every word out of their inbred idiot mouths is a gold coin of wisdom and not a dingleberry of nonsense.
I'm remembering a Princeton microbiology major at an Atlanta pool hall telling me how the way I was doing archival research was wrong. I asked him if he had ever crawled around an attic at a local library, opening boxes that hadn't been opened in decades. That didn't matter, he said, because it was much easier than his work so my problems were easy to solve and I should just listen to him. It wasn't worth arguing with the cockflea, whose advice was worth a cockflea's piss. I ignored him until he tried to convince my date to leave with him and then there was a fistfight and then we got kicked out of the pool hall and when someone told me he died of a brain aneurysm a few years later, I said, "Guess his work was too hard for him."
This is a long way of saying, "Fuck Jared Kushner. Fuck him hard. Fuck him with his Harvard degree. Fuck him with every implement available to fuck him with and then invent a few more and fuck him with those."
Donald Trump's wan, soft-voiced, soft-skinned, creepy-as-fuck and evil-as-hell son-in-law, who probably describes boning Ivanka in detail for Trump, either gets tossed into whatever issue Trump is too paranoid to actually ask an expert to get involved in - Israel/Palestine peace negotiations, the opioid crisis- or, more likely, he's gotten a whim about something and thinks he can solve it. More than probably, he's figured out an angle on how to profit from it.
So when this ghost of a serial killer showed up at yesterday's daily Trump circle jerk in front of the media, it was to get tons of shit wrong, belittle people who know better than him, and actually drain whatever remained of hope in this hopeless age. By the time he was finished with his brief spiel, you could sense the coronavirus itself licking its lips at all the Americans it was going to get to kill.
Here's what Kushner said about his job on the coronavirus task force: "What the President asked is that all of the recommendations that we make be based on data." That seems like as innocuous a statement as one could make, but think about it. Were they not making recommendations based on data? What the fuck were they making recommendations based on? I think they are actually this stupid, all of them, everyone remotely fucking associated with the Trump family, all mutated by privilege and a false sense of their own intelligence and general worth as human being.
Why are we putting up with this? Why are Democrats not shrieking with outrage, "What the fuck does a shitty real estate developer know about epidemiology?" The reaction to Jared Kushner being trotted out to throw in some corporate bullshit-speak should have been for Benjamin Franklin's skeletal corpse to show up and beat him with a femur right when he said, "The President also wanted us to make sure we think outside the box." Motherfucker, we're dying here. The box is a goddamn coffin.
Kushner blathered on with cliches about "innovative solutions" and, really, "leave no stone unturned," and he turned to the real villains in the alibi the Trump administration is coming up with for its criminally-cruel abandonment of its basic duties to protect Americans: It's those motherfucking governors' fault. They're out of their league. They don't understand their jobs. He said that some governors "don’t know what’s in their state" when it comes to medical supplies and ventilators, an accusation that he offered no support for.
Then he tossed in, "What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody to be a mayor or a governor or a president, you’re trying to think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis. This is a time of crisis, and you’re seeing certain people are better managers than others." This brainless dipshit has no idea how much he was talking about his hulking, moronic father-in-law who still thinks people give a single rat fuck about his popularity.
Then he accused governors of "asking for things that they don’t necessarily need at the moment," which, no shit, bitch. That's called "planning ahead," something the Trump administration didn't fucking do at all. And Kushner said about the Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies: "the notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile; it’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use." Or "Fuck you. Buy your own shit, blue states."
So, just to get this straight, it's up to the states to solve the problems, but if the states want materials from the National Stockpile, they shouldn't get it because that's "our stockpile." Putting aside that it sounds like Trump is hoarding shit for him and his awful family, it seems like Kushner is saying that the federal government will decide who gets it, but that would seem to require that the states have a say, except that they don't, although they are on their own. Or something.
By the way, the website for the SNS used to say, "When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency." After yesterday, it was Jared-ized to say the stockpile "is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well."
Every time it seems like Trump couldn't make things worse, he makes them worse. He has the worst, most incompetent fucknuts around. And they all believe that they are smarter and better than they are. Their failure to see what failures they all are is literally killing us now.
And fucking Jared is now in the middle of it. Jared Kushner is a pile of shit who thinks it's a man, and until someone steps on him and wipes him off their shoes, he'll always think he's more than a foul lump of excrement.
I'm remembering a Princeton microbiology major at an Atlanta pool hall telling me how the way I was doing archival research was wrong. I asked him if he had ever crawled around an attic at a local library, opening boxes that hadn't been opened in decades. That didn't matter, he said, because it was much easier than his work so my problems were easy to solve and I should just listen to him. It wasn't worth arguing with the cockflea, whose advice was worth a cockflea's piss. I ignored him until he tried to convince my date to leave with him and then there was a fistfight and then we got kicked out of the pool hall and when someone told me he died of a brain aneurysm a few years later, I said, "Guess his work was too hard for him."
This is a long way of saying, "Fuck Jared Kushner. Fuck him hard. Fuck him with his Harvard degree. Fuck him with every implement available to fuck him with and then invent a few more and fuck him with those."
Donald Trump's wan, soft-voiced, soft-skinned, creepy-as-fuck and evil-as-hell son-in-law, who probably describes boning Ivanka in detail for Trump, either gets tossed into whatever issue Trump is too paranoid to actually ask an expert to get involved in - Israel/Palestine peace negotiations, the opioid crisis- or, more likely, he's gotten a whim about something and thinks he can solve it. More than probably, he's figured out an angle on how to profit from it.
So when this ghost of a serial killer showed up at yesterday's daily Trump circle jerk in front of the media, it was to get tons of shit wrong, belittle people who know better than him, and actually drain whatever remained of hope in this hopeless age. By the time he was finished with his brief spiel, you could sense the coronavirus itself licking its lips at all the Americans it was going to get to kill.
Here's what Kushner said about his job on the coronavirus task force: "What the President asked is that all of the recommendations that we make be based on data." That seems like as innocuous a statement as one could make, but think about it. Were they not making recommendations based on data? What the fuck were they making recommendations based on? I think they are actually this stupid, all of them, everyone remotely fucking associated with the Trump family, all mutated by privilege and a false sense of their own intelligence and general worth as human being.
Why are we putting up with this? Why are Democrats not shrieking with outrage, "What the fuck does a shitty real estate developer know about epidemiology?" The reaction to Jared Kushner being trotted out to throw in some corporate bullshit-speak should have been for Benjamin Franklin's skeletal corpse to show up and beat him with a femur right when he said, "The President also wanted us to make sure we think outside the box." Motherfucker, we're dying here. The box is a goddamn coffin.
Kushner blathered on with cliches about "innovative solutions" and, really, "leave no stone unturned," and he turned to the real villains in the alibi the Trump administration is coming up with for its criminally-cruel abandonment of its basic duties to protect Americans: It's those motherfucking governors' fault. They're out of their league. They don't understand their jobs. He said that some governors "don’t know what’s in their state" when it comes to medical supplies and ventilators, an accusation that he offered no support for.
Then he tossed in, "What a lot of the voters are seeing now is that when you elect somebody to be a mayor or a governor or a president, you’re trying to think about who will be a competent manager during the time of crisis. This is a time of crisis, and you’re seeing certain people are better managers than others." This brainless dipshit has no idea how much he was talking about his hulking, moronic father-in-law who still thinks people give a single rat fuck about his popularity.
Then he accused governors of "asking for things that they don’t necessarily need at the moment," which, no shit, bitch. That's called "planning ahead," something the Trump administration didn't fucking do at all. And Kushner said about the Strategic National Stockpile of medical supplies: "the notion of the federal stockpile was it’s supposed to be our stockpile; it’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use." Or "Fuck you. Buy your own shit, blue states."
So, just to get this straight, it's up to the states to solve the problems, but if the states want materials from the National Stockpile, they shouldn't get it because that's "our stockpile." Putting aside that it sounds like Trump is hoarding shit for him and his awful family, it seems like Kushner is saying that the federal government will decide who gets it, but that would seem to require that the states have a say, except that they don't, although they are on their own. Or something.
By the way, the website for the SNS used to say, "When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency." After yesterday, it was Jared-ized to say the stockpile "is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well."
Every time it seems like Trump couldn't make things worse, he makes them worse. He has the worst, most incompetent fucknuts around. And they all believe that they are smarter and better than they are. Their failure to see what failures they all are is literally killing us now.
And fucking Jared is now in the middle of it. Jared Kushner is a pile of shit who thinks it's a man, and until someone steps on him and wipes him off their shoes, he'll always think he's more than a foul lump of excrement.
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