Cuomo v McConnell

Courtesy of The Rude Pundit

Andrew Cuomo Fucks Mitch McConnell's Shit Up

April 25, 2020

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.

Original.

Republicans vs Trump

Surely there must be SOME Republicans who have not swallowed Trump's Kool-Aid. So many, so quickly, so easily turned their backs on their history and principles? Trump is doing what he does best: sow chaos.

We've never backed a Democrat for president. But Trump must be defeated.

The authors are on the advisory board of the Lincoln Project

This November, Americans will cast their most consequential votes since Abraham Lincoln’s reelection in 1864. We confront a constellation of crises: a public health emergency not seen in a century, an economic collapse set to rival the Great Depression, and a world where American leadership is absent and dangers rise in the vacuum.

Today, the United States is beset with a president who was unprepared for the burden of the presidency and who has made plain his deficits in leadership, management, intelligence and morality.

When we founded the Lincoln Project, we did so with a clear mission: to defeat President Trump in November. Publicly supporting a Democratic nominee for president is a first for all of us. We are in extraordinary times, and we have chosen to put country over party — and former vice president Joe Biden is the candidate who we believe will do the same.

Biden is now the presumptive Democratic nominee and he has our support. Biden has the experience, the attributes and the character to defeat Trump this fall. Unlike Trump, for whom the presidency is just one more opportunity to perfect his narcissism and self-aggrandizement, Biden sees public service as an opportunity to do right by the American people and a privilege to do so.

Biden is a reflection of the United States. Born into a middle-class family in coal-country Pennsylvania, he has known the hardship and heartbreak that so many Americans themselves know and that millions more are about to experience.

Biden’s personal tragedies and losses tested his strength, his faith and his determination. They were enough to crush most people’s spirit, but Biden emerged more compassionate toward the suffering of others and the burdens that life imposes on his fellow Americans.

Biden did what Americans have always done: picked himself up, dusted himself off and made the best of a bad situation. In the years since he first entered office, Biden has consistently demonstrated decency, empathy and humanity.

Biden’s life has been marked by triumphs that didn’t change the goodness in him, and he is a man for whom public service never went to his head. His long record of bipartisan friendship and cross-partisan legislative efforts commends him to this moment. He is an imperfect man, but a man who loves his country and its people with a broad smile and an open heart.

In this way, Trump is a photonegative of Joe Biden. While Trump has innumerable flaws and a lifetime of blaming others for them, Biden has long admitted his imperfections and in doing so has further illustrated his inherent goodness and his willingness to do the work necessary to help put the United States back on a path of health and prosperity.

Unlike Trump, Biden is not an international embarrassment, nor does he demonstrate malignant narcissism. A President Biden will steady the ship of state and begin binding up the wounds of a fractured country. We have faith that Biden will surround himself by advisers of competence, expertise and wisdom, not an endless parade of disposable lackeys.

For Trump, the presidency has been the biggest stage, under the hottest klieg lights in a reality show of his making. Every episode leaves the audience more shocked and divided. Trump’s only barometer is his own ego. The country, our values and its people do not factor into Trump’s equation.

Biden understands a tenet of leadership that far too few leaders today grasp: The presidency is a life-and-death business, that the consequences of elections have real-world effects on individual Americans, and that all of this — all of the struggle, toil and work — is not a zero-sum game.

The coronavirus crisis is a terrifying example of why real leadership looks outward. This crisis, the deaths and economic destruction are immeasurably worse because Trump and his administration were unwilling to do what was necessary to mitigate its worst effects and bring the country back as quickly as possible.

We asked ourselves: How would a Biden presidency handle this crisis? Would he spend weeks lying about the risk? Would he look to cable news, the stock market and his ratings before taking the steps to make us safer? The answer is obvious: Biden will be the superior leader during the crisis of our generation.

We’ve seen the damage three years of corruption and cultish amateurism can do. This country cannot afford to be torn apart for sport and profit for another term, as Trump will surely do. If Biden takes office next January, he won’t need on-the-job training.

We are in a transcendent and transformative period of American history. The nation cannot afford another four years of chaos, duplicity and Trump’s reality distortion. This country is crying out for a president with a spine stiffened by tragedy, a worldview shaped by experience and a heart whose compass points to decency.

It is our hope that when the next president takes the oath of office in January, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. will be the president for a truly united America. The stakes are too high to do anything less.

Original.

Drop the Curtain

Haven't we seen enough, and heard enough, from this orange narcissistic blowhard? If there is any ONE thing that could spell Trump's doom at the November ballot, it's his pathetic handling of the worst crisis to hit this nation since the Great Depression. Still, not one drop of empathy from this heartless bastard. Oh, but he is still full of bile and venom, and we see it whenever any reporter asks a question that he perceives to be an attack. Can't even handle a simple adversarial question without blowing his top and accusing the questioner of being a horrible reporter or worse. 

From the NY Times.

Drop the Curtain on the Trump Follies

Why does the nation need to be subjected to the president’s daily carnival of misinformation, preening and political venom?

by Michelle Cottle

Even as the Trump administration slowly finds its footing in the war against Covid-19, one high-profile element of its response remains stubbornly awful: President Trump’s performance in the daily news briefings on the pandemic.

Early on, Mr. Trump discovered that he could use the briefings to satisfy his need for everything to be all about him. As the death toll rises, that imperative has not changed. Most nights, he comes before an uneasy public, typically for an hour or more, to spew a thick fog of self-congratulation, political attacks, misinformation and nonsense.

Since Mr. Trump took office, a debate has raged among the news media about how to cover a man-child apparently untethered from reality. But with a lethal pandemic on the prowl, the president’s insistence on grabbing center stage and deceiving the public isn’t merely endangering the metaphorical health of the Republic. It is risking the health — and lives — of millions of Americans. A better leader would curb his baser instincts in the face of this crisis. Since Mr. Trump is not wired that way, it falls to the media to serve the public interest by no longer airing his briefings live.

For those who have managed to avoid these nightly spectacles, it is hard to convey their tragic absurdity. Mr. Trump typically starts by reading a somber statement that he seems to have never seen before. Next come remarks from other administration officials or corporate executives involved in the relief effort, generally laden with praise for the president’s peerless leadership. Vice President Mike Pence is particularly gifted at this.

After the testimonials comes the Q. and A., which is where the president lets his id off the leash. His constant goal seems to be to stress that he is in no way responsible for this nightmare — including any glitches in his administration’s response. All failures he assigns to past administrations, Democrats, governors, the media and so on.

Some of Mr. Trump’s misleading claims are fairy tales about his perfect response to this crisis. On March 15, he reassured the public that his administration had “tremendous control over” the virus. (No.) On March 17, he claimed to have “felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.” (Really?)

Other fabrications are more specific. On April 1, he assured people that safeguards were in place for travelers. “They’re doing tests on airlines — very strong tests — for getting on, getting off. They’re doing tests on trains — getting on, getting off,” he said. (No.)

Testing is a particularly touchy issue. Mr. Trump has claimed that, starting out, his team was burdened by “old, obsolete” tests inherited from the Obama administration. (No.) In ducking a question about the United States’ rate of per capita testing, he asserted that Seoul, South Korea, has a population of 38 million. (Try less than 10 million.) He continues to deny reports of testing problems in hard-hit states.

At Monday’s briefing, two journalists asked about a new report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services indicating that many hospitals were still grappling with testing delays. Mr. Trump first dismissed anyone with the job of inspector general. “Did I hear the word ‘inspector general’? Really?” Suggesting the report was politically motivated, he demanded to know the official’s name (Christi Grimm), when she had been appointed (this January) and how long she had served in government. When told she had served in the inspector general’s office since 1999, he erupted as if he’d uncovered a coup.

“You’re a third-rate reporter, and what you just said is a disgrace!” he ranted at Jonathan Karl of ABC News, pronouncing, “You will never make it!”

The closest the president came to addressing the original question was to assert that testing isn’t really his problem: “We’re the federal government! We’re not supposed to stand on street corners testing!”

He then lectured Fox News’s Kristin Fisher for being so negative. “You should say, ‘Congratulations! Great job!’ Instead of being so horrid in the way you ask the question!”

Such scoldings are a staple of the briefings, with Mr. Trump denouncing inquiries he dislikes as “gotcha,” “nasty,” “threatening” or “snarky.” He tells reporters they should be “ashamed” for not taking a more positive approach — as if they were on hand to flatter.

Public officials critical of the administration are mocked as ungrateful whiners with “insatiable appetites.” At one briefing, Mr. Trump said he’d told the vice president not to call Washington State’s Jay Inslee or “the woman in Michigan,” Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call,” he said. He has made sneering reference to one Republican-in-name-only malcontent (presumably Maryland’s Gov. Larry Hogan); called Senator Chuck Schumer of New York “a disgrace”; and accused Illinois’s governor, J.B. Pritzker, of “always complaining.” He has also repeatedly claimed that New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo “had a chance to get 16,000 ventilators a few years ago, and they turned it down.” (No.)

Critics of the president may be appalled to witness such behavior. But those inclined to trust him — and to view the media as illegitimate — may well wind up believing his spin.

Mr. Trump basically acknowledged as much on Monday. The public is “starting to find out” what an amazing job we’re doing, he bragged. “One of the reasons I do these news conferences, because, if I didn’t, they would believe Fake News. And we can’t let them believe Fake News.”

The president has a captive audience, and he has no intention of missing an opportunity to preen. On March 29, he boasted on Twitter about the terrific TV ratings his briefings were enjoying.

If the cameras were taken away, perhaps Mr. Trump would worry less about putting on a show. Better still, perhaps he would leave the briefings to the officials who have useful information to impart. The daily briefings should be covered — consistently, aggressively and accurately. But coverage is not the same as running a live, raw feed of Mr. Trump disgorging whatever he feels in the moment. The events could continue to air on a public service channel, such as C-SPAN, to alleviate concerns about censorship or transparency.

In using his platform to mislead the public, the president is not serving any interest but his own. In facilitating this farce, neither is the media.

Original.

religious freedom?

So, in the name of practicing their religion, we are going to allow giant crowds to gather to a church, or megachurch and risk spreading the virus faster? Where do their rights end and ours begin, and vice versa? Is it their right to make the pandemic worse than it otherwise would be? From the Guardian.

The rightwing Christian preachers in deep denial over Covid-19's danger

The closely packed audience spent hours together taking in hymns and Howard-Browne’s extended sermon, even as the state implemented quarantine for New Yorkers, and projections estimated that Florida’s coronavirus death toll would rise into the thousands.

But Howard-Browne is just one of the most prominent religious leaders on the Christian right who are endangering their flocks and the rest of America by claiming the virus is a hoax, or that it can only be defeated by supernatural means, rather than solid healthcare policy.

A sometime guest on Infowars and at the White House; a multi-level marketing kingpin who has alleged that Hollywood celebrities sacrifice children and that New Zealand’s Christchurch mosque attack was a so-called false flag event; Howard-Browne described Covid-19 as a “phantom plague” on 15 March.

In the same sermon, he claimed the public health response to the virus was part of a plot involving the Rockefeller Foundation and World Health Organization, whose goals were forced vaccinations and mass murder.

Howard-Browne has repeatedly refused to call off services in the interests of social distancing. In fact, in recent weeks he has insisted that his congregants embrace and shake hands, exhorting them that they were “revivalists, not pansies”.

On Monday, he was finally arrested for violating Florida’s rules on social distancing.

There are other American religious leaders and preachers who are in equally deep denial about the potentially deadly virus which will almost certainly infect a significant proportion of evangelicals, along with all other Americans.

Roy Moore, a pastor, former Alabama supreme court judge and failed Trump-backed Alabama Senate candidate who lost amid allegations of sexual misconduct with underage girls, told Facebook followers he would write a letter to his fellow pastors on what he called their “duty to continue church assemblies, even in the midst of these trying times”.

Moore added: “Our faith requires it, our duty demands it, and no law or government can prohibit it.”

Kenneth Copeland, a Texas-based “prosperity gospel” preacher who once defended his ownership of three private jets on the grounds that commercial flights would require him to “get in a long tube with a bunch of demons”, told viewers of his Victory Channel in early March that coronavirus was a “weak” strain of the flu, and that fearing the pandemic was a sin.

“Fear is a spiritual force. Fear is not OK. It is sin. It is a magnet for sickness and disease … You are giving the devil a pathway to your body,” Copeland said.

He also criticized pastors who had suspended in-person services and moved to online streaming.

Self-described prophet Lance Walnau wrote in a blogpost that “this virus will touch just a fraction of the population”, adding that it was less dangerous than seasonal flu.

He turned to conspiracy theory for an explanation of the public health response and associated media coverage. “The left wants the economy distressed because crisis improves their chances of taking office,” Walnau wrote.

He then counseled readers to ignore the information being published by media outlets.

“There is a spirit on media that will exaggerate this virus so badly that you will need to insulate your head in order to keep yourself free from paranoia,” Walnau wrote.

In the rightwing Catholic-aligned religious journal First Things, meanwhile, editor RR Reno castigated the widespread closure of Catholic churches and the suspension of public masses in Rome.

Reno wrote: “It is imperative that Christian leaders not succumb to the contagious panic, which is a weapon of the enemy to enslave us to our fears.”

From Montana, Chuck Baldwin – a pastor, former politician and purveyor of conspiracy theories about “Zionist influence” in the media – left the question of whether the virus was a hoax open in an online sermon.

But he added: “If it’s not a hoax, the virus is being used as a completely exaggerated, super-hyped, super-inflated psychological ops campaign against the American people – a coordinated full-court press of intimidation and fear-mongering by government, the mass media and the CDC.”

That message was dutifully amplified by the Idaho state representative Heather Scott on her Facebook page.

Others on the Christian right acknowledge the reality of the virus, but proffer supernatural causes or remedies.

In a blogpost last week, Ralph Drollinger, who has led Bible study for Trump cabinet members, suggested the virus was an instrument of divine judgment, and appeared to blame LGBTQ people. Drollinger later claimed that this was a misinterpretation.

Many of these preachers believe Christians shouldn’t be controlled by a ‘spirit of fear’

Another would-be prophet, Jeremiah Johnson, claimed last week to have had a prophetic dream in which God had spoken to him.

In a baseball stadium where Trump, at bat, outwitted a demonic pitcher, Johnson said God had told him: “The enemy has intended to strike out Donald Trump at a very critical hour in history. But behold, supernatural help is on the way, for I will slow down the advancement of the enemy and allow him to knock this out of the park.”

André Gagne, an associate professor of theological studies at Concordia University, and a researcher of the Christian right, recently published on the phenomenon of coronavirus denialism among evangelicals. Asked why evangelical leaders are committed to taking such a risk in denying the reality of the infection, or even assisting its spread, Gagne said it was rooted in their theology.

“Many of these preachers believe Christians shouldn’t be controlled by a ‘spirit of fear’,” Gagne said. “They often quote biblical texts which promise God’s healing and protection to those who have faith. They are confident that God is in control; that this is part of his overall plan before a great end-times spiritual revival.”

He said: “There are those who also understand this in terms of ‘spiritual warfare’, and that Jesus gave Christians authority over every demon and sickness. And if a Christian dies, no worries: he or she will ‘be with the Lord’.”

Meanwhile, even where they disagree about the virus, religious leaders have found common ground on one subject: the importance of fundraising.

While Trump’s spiritual adviser Paula White-Cain has now recommended social distancing to her audience, she and Kenneth Copeland both encouraged their listeners to keep the donations rolling into their churches.

Original.

The Last Straw

I recently signed up for Al Franken's irregular emails to subscribers, and this item below is the first thing I saw. I understand Al has a podcast too. And he's been, well, was going on tour. Everything is pretty much cancelled, for now.

Hunker down everybody. This could be the biggest test to see if we can survive this orange parasite called Trump or not. What an irresponsible, self-centered bastard we have in the White House. I'll let Al say it....

The Last Straw

March 19,2020

Well, it finally isn’t funny anymore – the grandiosity, the ignorance, the cruelty, the bullying, the racism, the petty insults and incessant stupidity. But especially the non-stop lying.

The greatest asset that a president can bring to a crisis is credibility.

On Day One of his presidency, Donald Trump chose to pick a fight with the media about the size of his inaugural crowd. On the morning of January 21, 2017, after fewer than 24 hours in office, Trump sent out Sean Spicer to tell the press corps a laughable and easily disprovable lie – that Trump’s crowd was the largest in history ever to attend a presidential inaugural.

The very next day, Kellyanne Conway let Americans know of the existence of something called “alternative facts.” Oh. So, that’s how it’s going to be, huh?

Since then, the lies have come so fast and furious that keeping track has been impossible. How do you remember the last one when three or four equally ridiculous lies are almost certain to follow that day?

“Don’t take him literally,” his supporters insisted. “Take him seriously.” Really?

Well, no. What they really were saying was how happy they were that he would be appointing pro-life, pro-corporate Federalist Society judges, cutting taxes to benefit the wealthy, undoing regulations to help corporations exploit their employees and destroy our environment, and pulling us out of the Paris Agreement and the Iran Nuclear Deal.

That the President of the United States is a malignant narcissist who could allow no fact to stand that contradicted his insatiable need for self-aggrandizement has been of little concern to establishment Republicans. The stock market was climbing. They were getting richer. And they had cover from the right-wing media to fool enough of his base into believing his limitless dishonesty.

At this year’s State of the Union, the First Lady bestowed upon Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom, an honor he now shares with Mother Teresa, Cesar Chavez, and the crew of Apollo 13. In 1995, I wrote a book entitled Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations for a reason – the same reason that I wrote Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them – A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right a few years later. Without Rush, without O’Reilly, without Hannity, without Newsmax, Breitbart, and InfoWars there would be no Trump.

Until this crisis, Trump has paid no real price for his constant, pathological mendacity. Before politics, the man had spent his entire career in a business where, evidently, there was no accountability for inveterate lying.

But for this crisis there is accountability. And instead of leading, Donald Trump’s focus has been where it always has been – on Donald Trump. “I give myself a ten out of ten.” “We are very close to a vaccine.” “I don’t take responsibility at all.” “Anybody who needs a test can get a test. And the tests are perfect. Like the letter was perfect. The transcript was perfect.”

Of course, no leader could have prevented the devastation that this virus has and will continue to exact. But because Trump’s focus has been on himself, his reelection, and his fragile self-image, our federal government squandered our most valuable commodity.  And the amount of suffering which that lost time will cost our nation is as tragic as it is unknowable.

Trump will not step away. He will continue to take the stage and our focus – but he will not be able to claim the credibility he never earned. We are left to proceed despite our president and find the leadership we need elsewhere. From governors and mayors and other civil servants. From health care professionals and scientists and economists. From community leaders and each other.

It is time for each of us to step up and fill the vacuum at the top – first by staying home. And for those fortunate enough to weather this storm financially – to help those who cannot.

Lest we forget Trump’s Houdini-like ability to escape the traps he’s set for himself, it is also time for us to commit to his defeat in November. For now, find a way to do that from home. But when it’s time to come out into the light, it must be our collective mission to make this godawful human being pay the price for every lie he has ever uttered.

Original.

Groundhog Day

So, didn't the groundhog "predict" that we would have an early spring? Another liar! Speaking of liars, how about that GOP? Here's a good one from Bob Cesca, published in Salon.

GOP Groundhog Day: Why do we keep electing Republicans? They're no good at this

If you're starting to get that special "George W. Bush feeling," you're not alone. Will America learn its lesson?

by Bob Cesca

If the slow-on-the-uptake response to COVID-19 by the White House seems a little familiar to you, you're definitely not imagining it. As if we're caught in some sort of "Groundhog Day" loop in the time-space continuum, we've absolutely been here before. Cue "I Got You Babe" on the alarm clock.

I realize too many Americans have gnat-like attention spans and even shorter memories, so I'll be specific. Beyond several details, the Trump presidency is looking an awful lot like the second term of the George W. Bush presidency. To his credit, Mike Pence hasn't shot anyone in the face, but we're seeing a traffic jam of similar events: a crisis with a growing death toll, a painfully tone-deaf, slow and inept government response, a financial meltdown and an out-of-control budget deficit. (Trump promised to eliminate the deficit.) Only now, it's all happening at the same time.

The Republican-led geyser of insanity that landed in our laps between 2005 and 2009 is back for an encore, and it's horrifying.

• Trump's latest Hurricane Katrina-type blunder comes in the form of his reaction to the COVID-19 outbreak, of course, which has been exacerbated by the president's lackadaisical whatevsattitude for the first several months. (The first case emerged in November.) By the way, I would argue his flaccid reaction to the 2018 California wildfires and 2017's Hurricane Maria easily qualify as his other Katrina events.
• Trump's version of the Great Recession also lurks around the corner — in fact, Trump agreed this week that a recession will likely happen soon. Likewise, the Dow collapsed another 3,000 points on Monday, closing at 20,188, a wafer-thin margin above the 19,827 average on inauguration day 2017, erasing all of the Trump gains. For the sake of comparison, Barack Obama presided over a 65.1 percent increase in the Dow during his first three years, while Trump has presided over a 1.6 percent gain and falling — my hunch is that Trump's record on the Dow will be in the negative territory before the end of the week. Hell, Larry Kudlow, Trump's chief economic adviser, even repeated on Monday, "The fundamentals of the economy are strong." John McCain said the exact same words in August 2008, just before the crash. Around and around we go.
• Trump and the Republican Senate are also responsible for a $1 trillion budget deficit, adding nearly half a trillion to the deficit in a little more than three years after the Obama administration cut the deficit by nearly a trillion dollars, from $1.4 trillion to $439 billion. The aforementioned $1.4 trillion deficit was courtesy of George W. Bush. So much for "fiscal conservatism." We can expect Trump's deficits to skyrocket even further now that the government and the Federal Reserve are bailing out businesses and extending liquidity to the banks. Another TARP could be in the works before this is all over.

Do we see a pattern here yet? 

We'd have to be blind not to. For reasons that will forever confound historians, 62 million Americans, many of whom were still tangled in the nets of the previous Republican catastrophes, decided it'd be a great idea to "own the libs" by giving the Republican Party another chance at running the federal government, not to mention Congress. This time, however, they landed on a candidate with zero experience, zero aptitude for government work, zero regard for anything other than his own popularity and, as a bonus, a history of personal financial disasters including bankrupted casinos, a fraudulent university and an even more fraudulent charitable foundation.

Trump voters justified this choice by suggesting that an obnoxious, undisciplined "businessman" who sold steaks in Sharper Image mall stores was fully qualified to run the world's most powerful government (which isn't at all like a business). This was like shoving a carnie who runs the Tilt-a-Whirl into the cockpit of a Space-X rocket. Maybe he'll stir things up, they thought, choosing to experiment with the presidency by handing an erratic weirdo the nuclear codes. What could possibly go wrong? For starters, the rocket is nosediving, and we're all passengers, including the voters who put us here.

We tried to warn the Red Hats. We tried to remind them what happened the last time around. But rather than employing basic common sense or, at the very least, a Google search for what went down during the previous, slightly less moronic Republican administration, they decided to jam their faces into the GOP propeller blades once again, and here we are. Ned "The Head" Ryerson should be along any second now, refusing to abide social distancing.

Whether it was refusing to acknowledge the onset of the virus or closing down the pandemic response unit a couple of years ago, the Trump White House bungled this from the beginning, likely worsening the death toll and precipitating the collapse of the financial markets. Meanwhile, Trump's tax cuts ended up benefiting Trump's wealthy Mar-a-Lago guests far more than the "forgotten" men and women of America — and there was no way to pay for them, adding still more billions to the deficit. We've also seen this dynamic play out at the state level, for example with former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback and his tax cut "experiment," which nearly bankrupted the state rather than creating the explosive economic growth he promised. 

Say what you will about the Democratic Party, but history has illustrated that Democratic presidents are infinitely better at governing than any recent Republican. I mean, it's shocking that the party that wants to drown government in the bathtub doesn't know how to govern, nor is interested in learning. But notice how Trump and Bush each eagerly embraced "big government" when their asses and legacies were on the line. 

Trump arrived in Washington believing he could tweet, blurt foul nicknames and show off his executive orders like a big boy, and everything would work out great. It turns out that being president requires more vision, discipline and actual knowledge than he thought, and that's just the very basic skill set.

Much to Trump's surprise, when the disasters stacked up, he couldn't bullshit his way through like he's done so many times before. If it weren't for his life support system at Fox News Channel, not to mention his loyalists on Capitol Hill, Trump would've been forced to resign after Charlottesville — if he had even been elected in the first place, which would have been doubtful without the late Roger Ailes, Mitch McConnell and, yes, Vladimir Putin. They'll all try like hell now, but I wonder whether they can put President Humpty back together again.

During his inaugural address, Trump referred to the Obama years as "American carnage," and promised to make America great again. It turns out, a "no drama" competent family man who kicked off the heretofore longest economic expansion in history wasn't anything close to being American carnage — that was another Trump lie, eagerly swallowed by his own people. It turns out that while there's always room for improvement, economic growth, job creation and other indicators were equal to or more robust during the so-called "carnage" under Obama. 

Indeed, carnage is what we're seeing now as we wake up to our shocking new normal for the foreseeable future. But even before the COVID-19 crisis, even before the financial crisis, there was the "Trump Crisis" — the daily institution-crushing mayhem erupting from Trump's phone, from federal investigators and from the fast-moving process of turning the executive branch into a subsidiary of the Trump Organization. It was only a matter of time before Trump's flimsy, brittle presidency, built on make-believe and held together with masking tape and spit by Fox News, fell apart. Sadly, we're all getting hit by the debris from the crash.

This November, and probably four years after that, I suspect millions of Americans will make the same dumb error in judgment all over again, voting for this incapable poseur despite the madness, even while they themselves are impacted more than most by Trump's amateurish blundering. And the endless loop will continue: A Republican president craps his cage, a Democrat cleans up the mess, short-attention-span voters elect another Republican, and we repeat. 

The only way to break this cycle is to take a step back, turn off the Fox News fairy tales about big hands and perfect hair, and reprioritize the question of who ought to be leading the country. As we covered last week, those leaders should never again be slack-jawed morons you hypothetically want to "have a beer with," and they definitely shouldn't be loudmouth wannabe mobsters turned game-show hosts. We're dangerously close to fighting the next pandemic with Brawndo unless this ridiculousness is finally shocked out of our system.

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dead and buried

The GOP, that is, according to NYTimes columnist Thomas Friedman:

Dems, You Can Defeat Trump in a Landslide

You can promise voters something our narrow-minded president won't.

by Thomas Friedman

If this election turns out to be just between a self-proclaimed socialist and an undiagnosed sociopath, we will be in a terrible, terrible place as a country. How do we prevent that?

That’s all I am thinking about right now. My short answer is that the Democrats have to do something extraordinary — forge a national unity ticket the likes of which they have never forged before. And that’s true even if Democrats nominate someone other than Bernie Sanders.

What would this super ticket look like? Well, I suggest Sanders — and Michael Bloomberg, who seems to be his most viable long-term challenger — lay it out this way:

“I want people to know that if I am the Democratic nominee these will be my cabinet choices — my team of rivals. I want Amy Klobuchar as my vice president. Her decency, experience and moderation will be greatly appreciated across America and particularly in the Midwest. I want Mike Bloomberg (or Bernie Sanders) as my secretary of the Treasury. Our plans for addressing income inequality are actually not that far apart, and if we can blend them together it will be great for the country and reassure markets. I want Joe Biden as my secretary of state. No one in our party knows the world better or has more credibility with our allies than Joe. I will ask Elizabeth Warren to serve as health and human services secretary. No one could bring more energy and intellect to the task of expanding health care for more Americans than Senator Warren.

“I want Kamala Harris for attorney general. She has the toughness and integrity needed to clean up the corrupt mess Donald Trump has created in our Justice Department. I would like Mayor Pete as homeland security secretary; his intelligence and military background would make him a quick study in that job. I would like Tom Steyer to head a new cabinet position: secretary of national infrastructure. We’re going to rebuild America, not just build a wall on the border with Mexico. And I am asking Cory Booker, the former mayor of Newark, to become secretary of housing and urban development. Who would bring more passion to the task of revitalizing our inner cities than Cory?“I am asking Mitt Romney to be my commerce secretary. He is the best person to promote American business and technology abroad — and it is vital that the public understands that my government will be representing all Americans, including Republicans. I would like Andrew Yang to be energy secretary, overseeing our nuclear stockpile and renewable energy innovation. He’d be awesome.

“I am asking Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to serve as our U.N. ambassador. Can you imagine how our international standing would improve with youth worldwide with her representing next-gen America? And I want Senator Michael Bennet, the former superintendent of the Denver Public Schools, to be my secretary of education. No one understands education reform better than he does. Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna would be an ideal secretary of labor, balancing robots and workers to create “new collar” jobs.

“Finally, I am asking William H. McRaven, the retired Navy admiral who commanded the U.S. Special Operations Command from 2011 to 2014 and oversaw the 2011 Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, to be my defense secretary. Admiral McRaven, more than any other retired military officer, has had the courage and integrity to speak out against the way President Trump has politicized our intelligence agencies.

Only last week, McRaven wrote an essay in The Washington Postdecrying Trump’s firing of Joe Maguire as acting director of national intelligence — the nation’s top intelligence officer — for doing his job when he had an aide brief a bipartisan committee of Congress on Russia’s renewed efforts to tilt our election toward Trump.

“Edmund Burke,” wrote McRaven, “the Irish statesman and philosopher, once said: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’”

If Bernie or Bloomberg or whoever emerges to head the Democratic ticket brings together such a team of rivals, I am confident it will defeat Trump in a landslide. But if progressives think they can win without the moderates — or the moderates without the progressives — they are crazy. And they’d be taking a huge risk with the future of the country by trying.

And I mean a huge risk. Back in May 2018, the former House speaker John Boehner declared: “There is no Republican Party. There’s a Trump party. The Republican Party is kind of taking a nap somewhere.”

It’s actually not napping anymore. It’s dead.

And I will tell you the day it died. It was just last week, when Trump sacked Maguire for advancing the truth and replaced him with a loyalist, an incompetent political hack, Richard Grenell. Grenell is the widely disliked U.S. ambassador to Germany, a post for which he is also unfit. Grenell is now purging the intelligence service of Trump critics. How are we going to get unvarnished, nonpolitical intelligence analysis when the message goes out that if your expert conclusions disagree with Trump’s wishes, you’re gone?

I don’t accept, but can vaguely understand, Republicans’ rallying around Trump on impeachment. But when Republicans, the self-proclaimed national security party — folks like Lindsey Graham, Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton — don’t lift a finger to stop Trump’s politicization of our first line of defense — the national intelligence directorate set up after 9/11 — then the Republican Party is not asleep. It’s dead and buried.

And that is why a respected, nonpartisan military intelligence professional like Bill McRaven felt compelled to warn what happens when good people are silent in the face of evil. Our retired generals don’t go public like that very often. But he was practically screaming, “This is a four-alarm fire, a category 5 hurricane.” And the G.O.P. response? Silence.

Veteran political analyst E.J. Dionne, in his valuable new book, “Code Red: How Progressives and Moderates Can Unite to Save Our Country,” got this exactly right: We have no responsible Republican Party anymore. It is a deformed Trump personality cult. If the country is going to be governed responsibly, that leadership can come only from Democrats and disaffected Republicans courageous enough to stand up to Trump. It is crucial, therefore, argues Dionne, that moderate and progressive Democrats find a way to build a governing coalition together.

Neither can defeat the other. Neither can win without the other. Neither can govern without the other.

If they don’t join together — if the Democrats opt for a circular firing squad — you can kiss the America you grew up in goodbye.

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