Unfortunately, watching the frantic back-pedaling and sudden about face of loud conservatives is only good for entertainment value.
After mocking the coronavirus panic, Jerry Falwell Jr. has closed Liberty University.
Paula White, the venal “spiritual advisor” to Donald Trump, used a prayer meeting to beg for cash, and plugged a big evangelical event that would have “spiritual protections” against the coronavirus. The event has since been cancelled.
The Museum of the Bible spent a lot of money looting artifacts from the Middle East illegally. Now it’s been discovered that many of them are fakes.
After doing their best to downplay the pandemic, Fox News is now changing their tune and pretending they knew it all along.
It’s a sick sad world when we are watching everything crash and burn but can take some pleasure in seeing the assholes in flames, too.
It all sucks so much right now, but on the bright side. We have at least one month without a stupid fucking Trump Rally. If I were slightly more vindictive than I am, I would encourage the MAGA morons to keep rallying, but even I’m not that evil. I’m just glad for a break from the constant deluge of jingoism and hate.
My schadenfreude is ruined by the cynical desicion by the Democratic leadership to have primary elections today -despite the obvious risk of infection- because they do not want the Medicare for all narrativeto get the time to have an impact and improve Bernie Sanders’ chances.
As usual, the choice in November will be between the corrupt center-right party and the insanely super-corrupt extreme right dung beetle baby-eating party.
And here is some cause for some cautious optimism about COVID19 .
” Japanese flu drug ‘clearly effective’ in treating coronavirus, says China” https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/japanese-flu-drug-clearly-effective-in-treating-coronavirus-says-china
@Ray Ceeya:
Me, too. (I don’t even live in the U.S. of Eh?, but the poison seeps in anyway).
My hope – I suppose “fantasy” would be a better word for it – is that, starved of his only source of emotioal support (i.e. the adoration of his Minions) the President (sic) will shrivel up like the Wicked Witch in Wizard of Oz.
“To dreeeeeam, the impossible dreeeeeeam”
/bork “emotional”
And some genuine freude, vs schadenfreude: progressive Marie Newman managed to knock off odious DINO Dan Lipinski in the Illinois 3rd district primary last night. I’ll take good news where I can find it.
Reproduced in full from the Grauniad’s current live pandemic blog (with minor unmarked changes for formatting / stylistic reasons):
I fink the fact that the dead sea scrolls were written in Biro might have given the game away earlier .
“Have you got the scrolls ?”
“No ,i always walk this way”
Morecambe and Wise
And joy of joys ,the Eurovision song contest has been cancelled ,not that i ever watch it .
“We have always been alarmed by the Eastasia virus”
My favorite bit of schadenfreude right now is that, after denying the seriousness of the virus, Newt Gingrich is now trapped in Italy.
“Your chocolate rations have gone up from 25 grams to 15 grams.”
And Fox Nuisance viewers will repeat it.
brucegee1962@#10:
Newt Gingrich is now trapped in Italy.
I wonder if there’s any way to get them to keep him.
Re Newt Gingrich: They probably don’t want him; but as old as he is he might come home in a box.
coldhardrealist @ 14
Considering the results of the last primary elections, that’s not going to happen regardless of which party wins.
I would remind you that this dismantling was accomplished with the willing help of Democrats. Who was it who said “The era of Big Government is over…” and he’d “end welfare as we know it?” I’ll give you a hint: He’s HRC’s trophy husband.
Akira MacKenzie:
Seriously.
While everybody’s ranting about idiots on Fox or obsessed with curing their boredom from having to live like an introvert for the next several months, your corporate party’s overlords are working around the clock to determine the best way to self-immolate and take the maximum number of you with them.
Got a lot of time on your hands all of a sudden? Don’t let them do it, and don’t act like you’re oblivious, because we certainly get more than enough of that bullshit from the fuckers on Fox.
@14 The UK used to have a safety net ,now after ten fucking years of tory rule it is lying on the ground ,the people who used to hold it have all been sacked ,and there is footage of bojo on tv scratching his fat arse .
Like the closure of the foolish “ark” wouldn’t it be great if the evolution of a new virus killed off “Liberty” “University” and assorted evangelical scams as well?
@#16, coldhardrealist
Obama used a Republican plan, deliberately told Senators who tried to add a public option to shut up, and twice made the party water down the bill further when they already had enough votes to pass it in hopes of getting Republican votes which never happened (and the bill was not stiffened back up). The bill was basically a profit guarantee for insurance companies, containing a limit on their take by percentage but no provision to prevent them from simply upscaling their totals — which was unforgivable because the whole thing had already been implemented once before, in Massachusetts, and that was exactly the problem which happened then.
And then he let the DNC run fantastically bad campaigns for 6 years until the party lost control of a majority of everything, so it looks like it’s all going to go away anyway.
Oh, and he also was one of the people who whipped up support for the scum-of-the-earth Joe Biden out of panic that Sanders might win this time.
Screw Obama, screw anybody who defends Obama, and screw the party for being the way it is.
“Now it’s been discovered that many of them are fakes.”
How do you mean now? I’ve known for about 2½ years. And to spoil your schadenfreude: secular scholars also have willingly become victims of similar frauds (the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, “newly discovered” fragments of Sappho poetry).
Vicar#20, please start your new pie-in-the-sky political party somewhere else. I and all other realists knew Obama didn’t have the votes for a public option at the time the ACA was being pushed through. The US President is not a dictator like Putin and can’t through intimidation get many votes in Congress, although you want him/her to be one. They must persuade with argument and compromise. As the Founders expected.
Try something new. For week, if you can’t say anything good about the democrats, don’t post. We can be your allies, but the constant criticism of them is turning many of us off, and we only see you as just a ideological crank. You offer no viable (realistic) means to achieve your goals. So you are just so much noise.
Seconding Nerd@20:
me@23, Obviously I meant “Seconding Nerd@22″ about Vicar@most‘s continuous unconstructive swivel-eyed ranting.
What a farce. If you expect Congressional Dems to compromise on the pandemic and economic legislation on the table now, that would entail moving many of them to the “left,” with the likes of Mitt Romney, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Steve Mnuchin, Donald Trump…..
And yes, “left” up above is bullshit just as much as your delusional sense that they are in the business of “argument and compromise.” What we’ll get from their neoliberal wankery is just more fascists and more dead/bankrupt/unemployed/homeless people while the economy is in freefall and the rich are bailed out once again with no strings attached. Go bury your own head in the fucking sand if you want to, but don’t ask the rest of us to do it.
There they go. Raging against the machine instead of putting on some gloves and doing their part to help. Just…raging. Again. Nothing but.
Also nvm that that machine is now responsoble for saving the lives of tens of thousands who didnt have healthcare before and badly needed it. Millions more that do now. It wasnt perfect from the get go so it doesnt count.
I wish Sanders supporters were as smart as Sanders himself who already knows hes lost and shifted his focus on driving Biden to the left as much as possible. Its like his supporters dont even care about what hes fighting for. They just want to play antiestablishmentarian.
CR#25. Legislation must be passed to help those in dire need, like some of my neighbor. It simply cannot get through the Senate without a few Rethug votes. What do YOU propose the House democrats to do to get those votes? Absolutism will get your measure defeated.
And even if we were that evil (which we aren’t) this would just bite us in the back, because allowing the virus to infect more people at once will only help it spread even more to everyone else.
(Cross-posted from poopyhead’s current [Pandemic and] Political Madness All The Time thread.)
Native American tribe takes trailblazing steps to fight Covid-19 outbreak:
Learn to read. The Republicans I just listed above are among the people saying we need to immediately send checks to everyone. Pelosi, Schumer, Harris, etc., have been casting that sort of idea aside, because they want a means-tested bureaucratic mess which will hurt those in dire need.
@31
that is kind of weird and topsy-turvy
the republicans are offering money to everyone which sounds kind of socialist and the dem are wanting to control or reduce it to some kind of deserving group.
well on second thought I guess that is consistent with how they fixed the last economic collapse by giving money to the banks and not to the people who lost their houses.
I don’t know anything any more! or maybe that’s less then I thought I knew before?
uncle frogy
Exactly. See, you do know what’s what, unclefrogy (like usual). It just happens to be absurd, that’s all.
A good article from Common Dreams, with a bunch more links to sources there.
Another one: ‘Literally Weaponizing Coronavirus’: Despite One of World’s Worst Outbreaks of Deadly Virus, US Hits Iran With ‘Brutal’ New Sanctions
That needs to end now. But where’s the Democratic leadership when we need them?
Also, in case it needs to be highlighted for Nerd of Redhead, this is not “compromise”:
The fact that congressional Republicans are actively running to the left of the Democrats on disaster relief, even as a cynical attempt to swing voters right before a major election season, just shows how morally bankrupt and defeatist the Democrats are, and how silly the blank eyed “Blue no matter who” folks are.
Dem leaders are so opposed to actually achieving anything that their pie in the sky emergency legislation is even more ineffectual means tested garbage, while their republican counterparts push actual helpful legislation.
Maybe running a dementia-ridden segregationist and pushing policies that are to the right of Tom fucking Cotton isn’t a winning strategy, but who knows. Maybe people will decide they really like means tested garbage legislation.
(They won’t, by the by. Biden will get routed, hard.)
Your schadenfreude at seeing the far-right burn on their own petards hurts no-one. Feel free to wallow in it.
In fact, it occurs to me that one of the key differences between progressives and conservatives at the moment is that progressives might enjoy schadenfreude when it crops up naturally, but conservatives actively seek to harm vulnerable people for the purpose of enjoying schadenfreude.
Porivil Sorrens,
Yeah, it’s going to be an easy popular vote victory for Trump.
Conservatives keep ranting about “acts have consequences”. Let them keep their MAGA rallys.
And since Trump is a germophobe, we should spread a rumor that if you think you are infected with the virus, you can scramble its genome by a sharp electric shock, for instance by sticking a fork into an electric outlet.
It’s official: Joe Biden is a Russian asset. Tulsi Gabbard ends presidential run, endorses Biden
A graph somebody put together. Rise of covid19 cases as president dribbles.
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/fl2rg2/oc_a_plot_of_covid19_cases_with_quotes_from_the/
@35
The blue no matter who thing has nothing to do with this. Absolutely vote for Biden. Its a strategy to minimize further harm. It was not a strategy to get Biden elected. He is winning because progressives dont actually give a shit to vote and change the status quo.
Bernie could have improved his black and hispanic coalitions and gained their support. He didnt. In fact he made things worse by opening his stupid mouth about Castro. When Biden loses everyone will give him shit for being a bad candidate but Sanders gets a pass? His errors are what? Not important I guess. So much is riding on his winning the campaign but when he fucks up its democrats fault somehow. Naw son, its ours.
Anyone who claims that Biden and the orange shit gibbon are indistinguishable is simply too stupid to merit attention. Biden was far from my first choice for many reasons. However, he’s the choice we have.
Keep in mind that no one would have thought that LBJ could have been the President who passed civil rights legislation. If you want to push the country to the left, you need to get Joe elected and push the Senate and House to the left. Maybe we’ll be surprised.
He has. Young people of every race overwhelmingly support him, and even when we put it that way, we have to be so generous with the term “young” that it includes those under 45-50 years old.
And the fact is, most of Biden’s votes have come from white folks who fit into the older, wealthier, more conservative, suburbanite mold — the sort of people who were just peachy in the Obama years and think not much needs to change.
If by that you mean 60 Minutes, and not Sanders, dredged up an old recording of him talking about Cuba’s education system (and not Castro) in the 1980s.
No telling how much it hurt Obama when he did the same thing. And who can say how much it will hurt Biden that his wife went there in 2016 to praise Cuba’s educational system?
Why don’t you leave this to the corporatist hacks on MSNBC, CNN, in the NYT, etc.? They’re the experts.
“Bullshit scare-tactics conjured up by neoliberals.” That’s what I’d call them. They’re certainly not “unimportant,” because look at who is controlling the mainstream media narrative, so much so that ordinary people like you can’t help but to buy into the nonsense even now.
It may be yours, if you’re finally starting to own up to it, but it won’t be mine.
The White House archives haves this October 6, 2016 press release, straight from the Office of the Vice President: Dr. Jill Biden Travels to Cuba
@42
Nah, it is in fact the democrats fault for running dementria-ridden zombies and DINO’s, and then voting against their own material interests for absolutely idiotic reasons. Sanders’ “errors” are running as a principled socialist in a system that has gone out of its way to ensure principled socialists don’t get into office. That he has managed to be a senator at all is an immense achievement against the odds.
@43
Literally nobody is claiming that Biden and Trump (once again ignoring your babytalk attempts at insulting nicknames) are indistinguishable. In fact, at the moment, Trump is far to the left of Biden on disaster relief. Oops.
“Just keep hoping Biden will suddenly pull a complete 180 after years of political conservatism despite there being zero evidence to support such a turn, and his own statements saying literally that he will not change his positions” is a lovely example of religious thinking, by the by.
If you believe Biden will be anything but the same conservative hack he’s been for his entire career, I have several bridges to sell you.
@46
Oh look. Somebody hasn’t read any history…ever.
Yawn. I suppose the pandemic must have left preteens with a lot more free time, if the playground insults and content-free posting is any indication.
it lookss to me that the country as a whole is deathly afraid of the future, both parties are running old candidates who are promising to make it like it was and the people are voting for that.
yes it is short sighted and rhe past is gone for ever. They ignore what is really happening now, ignore issues and fall for images instead, it is the reason fox news is a thing. there are many dark and dangerous things happening, this pandemic is just another data point. I long list could be made by anyone who reads this blog regularly so i wont.
It will be Biden vs Trump probably and it is perfectly clear that the president alone can not do much but with the help of a willing congress can do many things.
OK Biden then but look at the rest of the ballot as well.
no one is saying we should have courage they are every where to be afraid of the bad guys.
so we are afraid.
uncle frogy
@16 coldhardrealist
Obama could have obtained single payer when he was elected. Instead he chose to hand health to insurance companies. I vividly recall his betrayal of his voters “its time to move on”: in short the crooks could continue.
jack16
Jack16#50 According to Wiki, the Senate votes for the public option wasn’t there:
Blame the Senate.
Link