US Politics, May 2020 — I will never lie to you. You have my word on that.

like obv his words have the power to make like hell or outright end it for tens to thousands of people, which is kinda why we're in this mess in the first place given the shithead he put in charge of the CDC or the limited role he has him playing.

just enjoy needling Trump when he makes pronouncements that 20+ governors are going to just ignore anyway

easiest way for him to save tens of thousands of lives is to die and have Pence die along w/ him

The Black Death could roll through and 3/4 of the country wouldn’t shut down again.

It does still exist technically

we are unfortunately governed by Magic Spell for the foreseeable future

3/4 of the country might not shut down again by order of their governors, but if it's bad enough, it will shut down anyway, because between the sick, the dead, and those who voluntarily isolate, it will ensure that most everything will function as badly as a car with water in the fuel line.

We have a plague zone right here in the US of A, don't even need a foreign plague.

the maddening thing abt WE HAVE TO SAVE THE ECONOMY is how this premature opening up is more likely to tank it for good

“Not closing down again” for a second wave = sorry no more help for you or yr business

what’s going to happen to the restaurant that limps along for three months with 10 diners in its 50 capacity space and then has to close down *again*?

what’s going to happen to the restaurant that limps along for three months with 10 diners in its 50 capacity space and then has to close down *again*?

A nation of Amazon Eats, modern automats serviced from a central kitchen with food prepared by robots

You'll be able to buy food with the credits you earn working the fields around Zuckerberg Manor.

Jesus will provide

"I tested very positively in a — in another sense. So this morning, yeah — I tested positively toward negative, right? So, no, I tested perfectly this morning. Meaning — meaning I tested negative. But that’s a way of saying it: Positively toward the negative."

"Positively toward negative, right?" for June thread title.

lol

Good morning!

Qanon is so goddamned stupid it actually fills me with rage. I'm embarrassed to be a human.

same. and now according to the QAnon Anonymous pod guys it’s apparently bleeding over into heretofore apolitical new agey soc media influencers. so that’s cool.

May they go full Heaven's Gate as soon as humanly possible.

When I was younger, like high school and early college, I was super into learning about conspiracy theories. Not believing them, mind you, just learning about them. Because back then they all seemed so fringe and laughably stupid that is was sorta fascinating to read about them as some sort of societal study or something. But watching brains melt in real time and how the goalposts for the QAn0n believers just keep constantly shifting to new lows, I realize how terrifying they actually are.

It's like this never-ending cycle of:

1) Ridiculous claim easily debunked
2) "Oh that's what they want you to think because..." another easily debunked batshit claim
3) "Well they had to cover up that because..." yet another easily debunked batshit claim
and on and on and on

Like is Hilary in prison? Already executed and replaced with a clone? But that clone was kidnapped by Trump's secret police so a second clone is actually making her public appearances?

Every once in a while in the 80s-90s you might find yourself next to a LaRoucher on an airplane or encounter someone with a card table on a street corner imploring the sheeple to WAKE UP.

The difference is now these things travel around the world in an instant, and are endorsed by a very weird, very dumb person who (through a perfect storm of demographic flukes) has blundered into immense power.

I think it was reading The Illuminatus Trilogy at an impressionable young age, but I used to always approach people like that with a detached bemusement, someone with a funny story. But, somewhere around the jet fuel melts steel it stopped being funny and just keeps getting worse with each passing year.

There's a line in Neil Simon's "Rumors" where one of the characters is trying to explain to a cop why two gunshots were heard and where the party host and his wife are. And he makes up this fantastical bullshit story in a long monologue.

The cop then says "I buy it. I buy it because I like it.", accepting the horseshit story while also indicating he doesn't actually believe it happened.

That's conspiracy theory folk in a nutshell.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/499128-biden-tells-charlamagne-tha-god-if-you-dont-support-me-then-you-aint-black

Break or change whatever rules you have to, get us another nominee

mentioned in the Biden thread. Astounding that it was necessary (as it often is itt) that he had to clarify he wasn't talking about Trump, he was talking about his own community

just gonna get a toothy smile and "I'm not Trump" for the next five months

Might as well be if he's gonna say things like that.

At this point I think the DNC is just trolling us to see how low they can go while still getting our vote. Like some twisted experiment in how close to the line of actually losing mass amounts of votes they can get without crossing it.

that was kind of a typical dumb thing for biden to say (and I didn't listen to the interview) but reading the interview this seems like the kind of interview that is frankly...good for Biden. like someone actually asking him directly about shit and letting him answer. Most of his answers here don't seem completely shitty.

xpost

I hate to say this but shit like that is probably a net vote winner. Just like his whole "You don't agree with me? Don't vote for me" thing. It's very easy to sell stuff like that as "Joe's not pandering - he's for what he's for, and if you don't like it you can kick rocks!" to the fabled "low-information voter."

terrific if it didn't somehow also speak to problems with his worldview, but you know, who cares about that

Also that shit doesn’t work for Democrats like it does for Republicans. The rules are different.

Democrats can’t win without turning out constituencies that are maybe not comfortable with an old white man yelling at them.

He’s one missed pull from telling people to pull up their pants.

Pill.

If we know one thing about Joe Biden, it is that he will say or do something jaw-droppingly embarrassing at irregular intervals, but averaging more than once a month. That is Joe. If he becomes president, this pattern will not change.

i mean, look at his record

Oh yay

https://www.wcax.com/content/news/China-focus-on-jobs-fighting-virus-as-layoffs-sweep-globe-570686091.html

Obviously he has no legal authority to do it, but we know what will happen.

1) Trump-friendly Governors, most will do what he says

2) Those who refuse, he'll threaten to withhold Federal funds

3) Lawsuits will probably filed in reaction to this Quid Pro sequel, to block withholding of funds

4) Hundreds of churches if not more reopen.

I fucking hate this man, this country. If only these assholes would just be killing themselves and not other people

One thing I did on this beautiful #EarthDay is read Ed Markey's seminal climate legislation, Waxman-Markey.

(JK it is 185302598475 pages)

But here is a fun fact. One word NOT included in said seminal climate legislation:

Justice.

— Emily Kaufman (@emilybrowne) April 22, 2020

Reincarnate Lee Harvey Oswald

"I tested very positively in a — in another sense. So this morning, yeah — I tested positively toward negative, right? So, no, I tested perfectly this morning. Meaning — meaning I tested negative. But that’s a way of saying it: Positively toward the negative."

https://youtu.be/Vah-601KJzg

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/22/opinion/coronavirus-senate-unemployment.html

Lawmakers need to start thinking beyond the near term. One obvious way to drive economic recovery while looking to the future: a major infrastructure package.

Shoring up roads and bridges, updating lead-riddled water systems, investing in broadband and renewable energy — the United States has a nearly limitless number of projects that need to be addressed. (Parts of Central Michigan are underwater right now, and 10,000 people have been evacuated, following two catastrophic dam failures.) Interest rates are low, and workers are readily available. The government can ease the nation’s pain by spending while the private sector is convalescing.

President Trump has long expressed an openness to infrastructure investment. Some Republican lawmakers are sounding similarly inclined. “I want to do infrastructure,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina told CNN this week, noting that he’d told the president this “really is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to give a face-lift to the country.”

what America needs right now more than anything is infrastructure week

not sure what to make of comparing fixing vital infrastructure to cosmetic surgery, feels telling

give our highways some breast implants while you're at it

Give unemployment a little lipo

Unfortunately, the way that metaphor would actually work is trimming the fat from entitlements to give the military a bigger butt

Kayleigh McEnany, who provided this thread title--caught the tail end of the briefing yesterday (I thought they'd stopped doing them altogether). She is totally Sean Spicer Part II. Besides goading the room, she's condescending as fuck.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnAbeCGNPe4

"Perhaps if I write them out in a slide format--maybe we're visual learners."

you could write it in cuneiform and it wouldn't change the stupidity of what yr saying, Kayleigh

i can't fucking deal with that, had to turn off at 5 minutes, she enrages me