Trump: We’re opening everything back up!
Experts: It’s not safe…
Trump: Fuck you!  Back to work!

Trump: We’re sending your kids back to school!
Experts: It’s not safe…
Trump: Fuck you!  We’re sending your kids back to school!

Experts: Trump is behind in the polls.
Trump: Let’s postpone the election.  You know…for SAFETY!
America: Fuck you!

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The conservatives are pretending that Covid-19 isn’t that dangerous.  A great proponent of the position is Mr. Herman Cain, a man who knows a thing or two about virus and contagion because of things he read on the internet.  Let’s ask HIM about the…what?  Killed by the not dangerous virus?  Hmm…

Why, it’s almost as if it doesn’t matter if you believe in the virus – the virus believes in you!

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I see the GOP allowed the disaster relief (please stop pretending it’s “stimulus”) in the unemployment payments to expire.  That’s likely to go as well as their choice to pretend the virus isn’t dangerous.  I don’t know if they’ll replace it or not, though I DID see there’s at least a possibility.  Usually, one can count on the GOP to do exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time.  Why should THIS time be any different?

It turns out, one can tell story after story.  But if the story is fiction, so is the outcome.  (See ‘Atlas Shrugged.’)  The GOP decided that the $600/a week disaster relief was “paying people not to go back to work.”  All they had to do was pretend there was work to go back to (there isn’t), child care is still readily available (it isn’t), anyone who got sick could just go to the doctor (they can’t), and demand was just the same as it had always been (it’s not).

(Is NOW a good time to mention that if an “extra” $2400/month is paying people more than they can earn at work we need to reevaluate how workers are paid in this country?)

WITH the payments, people DID keep buying things – that was the point.  It was only a trickle but it kept some things going.  It was better than nothing.  Now, maybe, we get to see what “nothing” looks like because one can always count on the GOP to do the wrong thing.  Fantasy “solutions” to real-life problems will have real-life consequences no matter how many stories are told.  We’ve got countless thousands out of work.  We KNOW the airlines are chomping at the bit to lay off tens of thousands more on October 1.  There’s no telling how many more will be idled between now and then…and the GOP is just whistling past the graveyard…

When one looks forward, the road ahead looks dark and troubled.  In history, poverty leads to desperation.  Desperation leads to crime and violence.  Violence often turns into revolution.  The closest I can come to a silver lining?  Trump is desperately trying to do everything – anything – he can think of to salvage his failed maladministration.  As it happens, he seems truly incapable of doing the things that might actually do the job.  It was actually simple…well, straight-forward.  Controlling the virus would have protected the economy but the cons couldn’t control the virus without demonstrating a proper role for the Federal government and that violates their ideology.  So?  People are going to die who didn’t need to and the economy will crash despite the stories proffered by the “think tanks.”  I (think? suspect? hope?) that by November 3, even conservatives are going to want this guy gone…the smart ones already do…

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Every election of my lifetime has been described by someone as the most important election of my lifetime.  THIS one truly is – and nobody had to tell me.  The United States has become a failed state and a pariah among civilized nations.  The economy is crumbling and promises only to get worse as long as the virus is rampaging.  As it stands, the US isn’t even going to START fighting this virus until January 21, 2021 and THEN only if Biden wins.  Trump’s got the deplorables and the Russians.  Are decent Americans going to be enough?

I’ll tell you this: You need to vote like your life depends upon it.  Because your life depends upon it…