Government Response to Coronavirus 5: We're On Our Own

[smittykins]

Speaking of stimulus, I got my letter from the Orange Fuckopotamus.  Straight into the trash it went.

(I would have liked to use it for TP, but ink and lady bits...not a good combo.)

Edited May 27, 2020 by smittykins

[JMarie]

39 minutes ago, smittykins said:

Speaking of stimulus, I got my letter from the Orange Fuckopotamus.  Straight into the trash it went.

(I would have liked to use it for TP, but ink and lady bits...not a good combo.)

And it might clog your toilet ☹️

[GreyhoundFan]

So, the official death count in the US has hit 100,000. I'm sure it's much higher. "For a numbers-obsessed Trump, there’s one he has tried to ignore: 100,000 dead"

Quote

President Trump has spent his life in thrall to numbers — his wealth, his ratings, his polls. Even during the deadly coronavirus pandemic, he has remained fixated on certain metrics — peppering aides about infection statistics, favoring rosy projections and obsessing over the gyrating stock market.

But as the nation reached a bleak milestone this week — 100,000 Americans dead from the novel coronavirus — Trump has been uncharacteristically silent. His public schedule this week contains no special commemoration, no moment of silence, no collective sharing of grief.

Instead, Trump’s most direct comments so far on the number came in a pair of tweets Tuesday, amounting to a preemptive rebuttal. “For all of the political hacks out there, if I hadn’t done my job well, & early, we would have lost 1 1/2 to 2 Million People, as opposed to the 100,000 plus that looks like will be the number,” he wrote. “That’s 15 to 20 times more than we will lose.”

Throughout the crisis, Trump has alternately touted or ignored the numbers, boasting about figures he views as politically beneficial, while casting doubt on projections and statistics that undermine his message that the country is in the midst of a “transition to greatness.”

In late February, he dismissed the threat of the virus, noting there were only 15 confirmed cases in the United States and promising that those would soon “be down to close to zero.” In early March, he publicly toyed with leaving people on a cruise ship where an outbreak had occurred, in part because he didn’t want the U.S. case count to increase as passengers disembarked.

“I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship,” he said.

And as he did in his Tuesday tweet, he has sought to portray as a victory the fact that the nation is not on track to hit a worst-case scenario of as many as 2 million dead, a toll one study said could occur if no mitigation measures were implemented.

But Trump so far has been nearly mute about the count surpassing 100,000, something that has not gone unnoticed by his critics.

“You would think a normal human being endowed with normal amounts of decency and empathy would take a moment when 100,000 people who are the citizens of the country of which he is president have died,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama. “But that is not something that has crossed Trump’s mind, as far as I can tell.”

Trump’s refusal to grapple with the milestone is emblematic of his broader struggle to deal with the cascading global crisis. The president has fashioned himself as the nation’s cheerleader, without also taking on the traditional leadership role of consoler in chief.

Michael Wear, who did faith outreach for the Obama administration, said that in some ways, the numbers are beside the point; what the nation craves is simply a president to acknowledge the depth of the crisis.

“I’m not sure we need a Rose Garden ceremony around 100,000,” Wear said. “What we need is presidential leadership that recognizes that, increasingly, everyone is one or two degrees removed from someone who has been directly affected by this pandemic through the loss of a loved one.”

Wear added that having a president offer public sympathy is especially important during this pandemic, when many of the smaller, community-based rituals of mourning are banned because of health restrictions.

“We’re in a time now when people don’t have the outlets for their grief that they normally have, and this is a time when you really need a president to step up because people can’t have memorial services, people can’t be with their loved ones as they’re dying,” Wear said.

Trump last week ordered flags flown at half-staff through Memorial Day weekend to commemorate the nearly 100,000 Americans who have died of the coronavirus. But during a briefing with reporters Tuesday, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany declined to provide any additional specifics on how the president planned to honor those Americans.

“One death is too many,” McEnany said. “These 100,000 individuals have a face.” But she also tried to cast the rising death toll as a victory, noting the same worst-case modeling the president has pointed to.

“We never want to see a single individual lose their life, but that being said, to be under significantly that high mark shows that the president did everything in his power and helped to make this number as low as humanly possible,” she said.

Internally, there are no substantive plans for any additional event to mark the 100,000 milestone, said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to share candid details of private conversations. White House officials are hesitant to plan anything that could be perceived as Trump declaring “mission accomplished,” this official said.

But, this person added, there are preliminary discussions about a larger commemoration, perhaps with both somber and celebratory undertones, once the nation is through the worst of the crisis. One option under consideration: A big event at a major hospital, which could include applause for first responders and health professionals.

“President Trump’s prayers for comfort and strength are with all of those grieving the loss of a loved one or friend as a result of this unprecedented plague, and his message to this great nation remains one of resilience, hope and optimism,” White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement responding to questions about Trump’s plans to commemorate the 100,000 victims.

Trump pointed to a different number in a tweet on Wednesday, boasting about the number of coronavirus tests carried out in the United States after widespread criticism for a lagging response: “We pass 15,000,000 Tests Today, by far the most in the World. Open Safely!”

The president has focused much of his time in recent days on matters other than the coronavirus. He spent the Memorial Day weekend golfing Saturday and Sunday — the first time he has done so since early in the pandemic — and attacking rivals in deeply personal and at times sexist terms.

In tweets and retweets, Trump ridiculed the weight of former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, a possible running mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, and retweeted a message calling Hillary Clinton, his 2016 Democratic presidential rival, a “skank.”

He also promoted an unfounded conspiracy theory that Joe Scarborough, an MSNBC host and former Republican congressman from Florida, may have had an affair with a married staffer from his congressional days and possibly killed her.

The Democratic National Committee was quick to criticize Trump’s handling of the pandemic. “As the country approaches the grim milestone of 100,000 deaths, Trump spent his weekend golfing, tweeting wild conspiracy theories, downplaying the virus, and promoting unproven treatments,” the committee wrote in an email blast Tuesday. “Now, instead of mourning the deaths, Trump is praising himself and declaring ‘100,000 plus’ deaths a job well done.”

Michael Gerson, who served as head of speechwriting for President George W. Bush and has been a frequent Trump critic as a longtime Washington Post op-ed columnist, recounted Bush choking up in the Oval Office shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Afterward, when Bush worried about breaking down in public, Gerson recalled reassuring the president that “Americans needed to see the intensity of his own beliefs and it was an important moment in the response to the crisis — this unvarnished emotion.”

Yet with Trump, Gerson said, “I never see that emotional authenticity.”

“There’s maybe a fundamental problem here in the ability to feel and express empathy, and that’s a serious problem in the aftermath of loss of life and a kind of crisis that involves the loss of American lives,” Gerson concluded.

Randall Balmer, a Dartmouth religion professor who had taught and written for decades about American religion and the presidency, said Trump stands out compared with other presidents who faced dramatic loss of American life — Franklin D. Roosevelt on D-Day in 1944, Bill Clinton after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Bush after 9/11 and Obama after the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012.

“Where is the expression of sorrow that we all feel?” Balmer said. “No one is articulating that for the nation. Other presidents have simply understood that as part of their job.”

Balmer cited Roosevelt’s famous radio address to America on D-Day as soldiers invaded Normandy, France, which took the form of a prayer.

“For it to work, you’d have to draw on some internal reservoir of, if not piety, at least empathy,” he said.

“I’m not trying to be political,” Balmer said, “but I just don’t see it in the current president.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Too bad Twitler couldn't care less:

 

[Ozlsn]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

And as he did in his Tuesday tweet, he has sought to portray as a victory the fact that the nation is not on track to hit a worst-case scenario of as many as 2 million dead, a toll one study said could occur if no mitigation measures were implemented.

At the moment I suspect that might end up closer to the final number. 

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Trump stands out compared with other presidents who faced dramatic loss of American life — Franklin D. Roosevelt on D-Day in 1944, Bill Clinton after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Bush after 9/11 and Obama after the Sandy Hook school shooting in 2012.

Out of those I remember the three most recent, and yes the lack of empathy or acknowledgement from the top is disturbing.

[Becky]

100,000.  I honestly thought it would not come to this, my mind simply did not want to accept it, but here we are, and more will die.  How could anyone not be griefstricken at that number?  The current occupant of the White House is a profoundly damaged individual.  His enablers sicken me.  

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Republican lawmakers in PA are just as repugnant as their brothers and sisters in the US Congress: "‘Callous liars’: Pennsylvania Democrats say GOP put them at risk by hiding member’s positive covid-19 test"

Spoiler

Democratic state legislators in Pennsylvania accused their Republican counterparts Wednesday of keeping a GOP lawmaker’s positive coronavirus diagnosis under wraps for days, arguing that the lack of transparency may have increased their risk of contracting the potentially deadly infection.

Republican state Rep. Andrew Lewis released a statement Wednesday revealing that he received his positive test result on May 20 — a jarring announcement that rattled House Democrats who said they had no idea he had been sick or that other GOP members had been told to self-quarantine due to possible exposure.

Lewis, whose last appearance at the state Capitol was on May 14, said he immediately went into isolation after testing positive and informed House officials about his condition. He stressed that “every member or staff member who met the criteria for exposure” was contacted and told to isolate. One of Lewis’s GOP colleagues confirmed on social media Wednesday that he had been asked to self-quarantine, but Democrats said they are aware of at least two other Republicans who were also instructed to stay home.

On Wednesday, outraged Democratic lawmakers condemned House Republicans for not disclosing that the novel coronavirus had infiltrated Pennsylvania’s state Capitol, with some demanding resignations and formal investigations into why details about Lewis’s diagnosis were withheld.

“While we are pleased to learn that this House member seems to have recovered, it is simply unacceptable that some House Republicans knew about this for more than a week and sat on that knowledge,” Pennsylvania House Democratic Leader Frank Dermody said in a statement. “Knowing how House members and staff work closely together at the Capitol, we should have been made aware of this much sooner.”

Mike Straub, a spokesman for House Republicans, told The Washington Post in an emailed statement that GOP officials implemented guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

“Anyone who met those guidelines was notified and quarantined,” Straub said.

Straub declined to specify which legislators were notified or how many, citing medical privacy laws, but he noted that tracing the people Lewis had come into contact with at the Capitol in the days before the lawmaker tested positive was “easily verified.”

In a Facebook live stream Wednesday night, Lewis said he was at the Capitol for a couple hours on May 14 and only interacted with a handful of people.

“I had no idea that I may have been exposed. I had no symptoms,” Lewis said. “I wore a mask. I did not shake any hands.”

But that weekend, Lewis started to feel unwell, displaying symptoms that included a fever, fatigue and a slight cough. Within days, he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19.

Lewis said he waited until Wednesday to go public with his diagnosis because he felt that the people he might have exposed “deserved a little window of time to get tested, do their isolation and those types of things.”

One such person was GOP state Rep. Russ Diamond, who disclosed Wednesday in a lengthy Facebook post that he had been self-quarantining since May 21. Earlier that day, Diamond, a vocal opponent of wearing masks, had addressed a Pennsylvania House committee in person barefaced, Spotlight PA reported.

“Upon receiving that notice, I voluntarily cancelled every in-person meeting or other engagement I had on my schedule through today,” wrote Diamond, noting that he did not know the identity of the person who tested positive. Diamond told Spotlight PA that he does not have any symptoms and did not get tested.

“I am not ill. In fact, I feel like a million bucks,” he wrote on Facebook, later adding: “I’m done. My self-quarantine ends today. Tomorrow, I will be back in Harrisburg.”

Similarly, Lewis said in his Wednesday statement that he had “fully recovered” and now feels “completely fine.”

Meanwhile, state Democrats were appalled that their Republican colleagues did not promptly inform them of Lewis’s positive test result or the subsequent self-quarantines of other GOP members, instead allowing them to potentially risk exposure by continuing to participate in person in voting sessions and House committee meetings. Several Democrats said Wednesday that they only became aware of Lewis’s diagnosis after being approached by a reporter.

“I just spent the better part of the last 11 weeks sitting across a room from people who would eventually test positive and decided not to tell us,” state Democratic Rep. Brian K. Sims said in a video live-streamed on Facebook. “They did do some kind of quarantine. They did do some kind of contact tracing. They, I guess, being Republican leadership.”

Sims, who at times grew visibly angry and repeatedly used expletives, attacked House Republicans for being “callous liars” and accused them of recklessly endangering lives in pursuit of partisan goals.

“Every single day that our gerrymandered Republican leadership has been calling us up into this building so they could pass these ridiculous bills pretending that it was safe to be out there, they were covering up that it wasn’t safe,” he said, referencing efforts from GOP lawmakers pushing to reopen Pennsylvania. “You have no idea how the people around you are impacted.”

State Rep. Dan B. Frankel, minority chairman of the House Health Committee, said in a statement that he was “horrified to learn that members of the General Assembly failed to do the right thing.” Frankel said Democrats only discovered Wednesday that four Republican legislators were self-quarantining.

“The failure of these Republican members and their leadership to follow basic safety protocols makes plain their disregard for those around them, but worse: it reveals a total abdication of their responsibility to act as leaders during this confusing time,” Frankel said.

“The virus doesn’t care about someone’s ideology,” he added. “The virus doesn’t care if you believe in it.”

According to most recent figures, Pennsylvania now has more than 69,000 cases of coronavirus and roughly 5,200 reported deaths.

Wednesday’s revelation prompted a number of Democrats to call for the resignation of Republican leaders, including Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai, a demand that was supported by U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.).

“The utter indifference to peoples’ lives” shown by House Republicans “proves that they are incapable, unqualified, and unwilling to faithfully discharge the duties of their office,” state Rep. Leanne Krueger (D) said in a statement.

Others urged the state attorney general to launch an investigation into the incident.

“We should know if any criminal or ethical laws were broken,” tweeted state Rep. Kevin J. Boyle, a Democrat who chairs a House committee on which both Lewis and Diamond sit.

But for Democratic Rep. Jennifer O’Mara, the decision whether to disclose details of Lewis’s test results to all House members should not have had anything to do with politics.

“This isn’t a Republican or Democrat issue. This is a human being issue,” O’Mara said. “My colleagues decided to keep information about public health from us, putting all of us at an unnecessary risk.”

 

 

[Ozlsn]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Republican lawmakers in PA are just as repugnant as their brothers and sisters in the US Congress: "‘Callous liars’: Pennsylvania Democrats say GOP put them at risk by hiding member’s positive covid-19 test"

  Hide contents

Democratic state legislators in Pennsylvania accused their Republican counterparts Wednesday of keeping a GOP lawmaker’s positive coronavirus diagnosis under wraps for days, arguing that the lack of transparency may have increased their risk of contracting the potentially deadly infection.

Republican state Rep. Andrew Lewis released a statement Wednesday revealing that he received his positive test result on May 20 — a jarring announcement that rattled House Democrats who said they had no idea he had been sick or that other GOP members had been told to self-quarantine due to possible exposure.

Lewis, whose last appearance at the state Capitol was on May 14, said he immediately went into isolation after testing positive and informed House officials about his condition. He stressed that “every member or staff member who met the criteria for exposure” was contacted and told to isolate. One of Lewis’s GOP colleagues confirmed on social media Wednesday that he had been asked to self-quarantine, but Democrats said they are aware of at least two other Republicans who were also instructed to stay home.

On Wednesday, outraged Democratic lawmakers condemned House Republicans for not disclosing that the novel coronavirus had infiltrated Pennsylvania’s state Capitol, with some demanding resignations and formal investigations into why details about Lewis’s diagnosis were withheld.

“While we are pleased to learn that this House member seems to have recovered, it is simply unacceptable that some House Republicans knew about this for more than a week and sat on that knowledge,” Pennsylvania House Democratic Leader Frank Dermody said in a statement. “Knowing how House members and staff work closely together at the Capitol, we should have been made aware of this much sooner.”

Mike Straub, a spokesman for House Republicans, told The Washington Post in an emailed statement that GOP officials implemented guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as the Pennsylvania Department of Health.

“Anyone who met those guidelines was notified and quarantined,” Straub said.

Straub declined to specify which legislators were notified or how many, citing medical privacy laws, but he noted that tracing the people Lewis had come into contact with at the Capitol in the days before the lawmaker tested positive was “easily verified.”

In a Facebook live stream Wednesday night, Lewis said he was at the Capitol for a couple hours on May 14 and only interacted with a handful of people.

“I had no idea that I may have been exposed. I had no symptoms,” Lewis said. “I wore a mask. I did not shake any hands.”

But that weekend, Lewis started to feel unwell, displaying symptoms that included a fever, fatigue and a slight cough. Within days, he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, which causes the disease covid-19.

Lewis said he waited until Wednesday to go public with his diagnosis because he felt that the people he might have exposed “deserved a little window of time to get tested, do their isolation and those types of things.”

One such person was GOP state Rep. Russ Diamond, who disclosed Wednesday in a lengthy Facebook post that he had been self-quarantining since May 21. Earlier that day, Diamond, a vocal opponent of wearing masks, had addressed a Pennsylvania House committee in person barefaced, Spotlight PA reported.

“Upon receiving that notice, I voluntarily cancelled every in-person meeting or other engagement I had on my schedule through today,” wrote Diamond, noting that he did not know the identity of the person who tested positive. Diamond told Spotlight PA that he does not have any symptoms and did not get tested.

“I am not ill. In fact, I feel like a million bucks,” he wrote on Facebook, later adding: “I’m done. My self-quarantine ends today. Tomorrow, I will be back in Harrisburg.”

Similarly, Lewis said in his Wednesday statement that he had “fully recovered” and now feels “completely fine.”

Meanwhile, state Democrats were appalled that their Republican colleagues did not promptly inform them of Lewis’s positive test result or the subsequent self-quarantines of other GOP members, instead allowing them to potentially risk exposure by continuing to participate in person in voting sessions and House committee meetings. Several Democrats said Wednesday that they only became aware of Lewis’s diagnosis after being approached by a reporter.

“I just spent the better part of the last 11 weeks sitting across a room from people who would eventually test positive and decided not to tell us,” state Democratic Rep. Brian K. Sims said in a video live-streamed on Facebook. “They did do some kind of quarantine. They did do some kind of contact tracing. They, I guess, being Republican leadership.”

Sims, who at times grew visibly angry and repeatedly used expletives, attacked House Republicans for being “callous liars” and accused them of recklessly endangering lives in pursuit of partisan goals.

“Every single day that our gerrymandered Republican leadership has been calling us up into this building so they could pass these ridiculous bills pretending that it was safe to be out there, they were covering up that it wasn’t safe,” he said, referencing efforts from GOP lawmakers pushing to reopen Pennsylvania. “You have no idea how the people around you are impacted.”

State Rep. Dan B. Frankel, minority chairman of the House Health Committee, said in a statement that he was “horrified to learn that members of the General Assembly failed to do the right thing.” Frankel said Democrats only discovered Wednesday that four Republican legislators were self-quarantining.

“The failure of these Republican members and their leadership to follow basic safety protocols makes plain their disregard for those around them, but worse: it reveals a total abdication of their responsibility to act as leaders during this confusing time,” Frankel said.

“The virus doesn’t care about someone’s ideology,” he added. “The virus doesn’t care if you believe in it.”

According to most recent figures, Pennsylvania now has more than 69,000 cases of coronavirus and roughly 5,200 reported deaths.

Wednesday’s revelation prompted a number of Democrats to call for the resignation of Republican leaders, including Pennsylvania House Speaker Mike Turzai, a demand that was supported by U.S. Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.).

“The utter indifference to peoples’ lives” shown by House Republicans “proves that they are incapable, unqualified, and unwilling to faithfully discharge the duties of their office,” state Rep. Leanne Krueger (D) said in a statement.

Others urged the state attorney general to launch an investigation into the incident.

“We should know if any criminal or ethical laws were broken,” tweeted state Rep. Kevin J. Boyle, a Democrat who chairs a House committee on which both Lewis and Diamond sit.

But for Democratic Rep. Jennifer O’Mara, the decision whether to disclose details of Lewis’s test results to all House members should not have had anything to do with politics.

“This isn’t a Republican or Democrat issue. This is a human being issue,” O’Mara said. “My colleagues decided to keep information about public health from us, putting all of us at an unnecessary risk.”

 

 

He should have notified people when he was tested, and certainly when the result was positive.  What an absolute tool. If anyone becomes sick or worse as a result of him not notifying people I hope they sue him.

[GreyhoundFan]

Sigh. I just can't...

 

[Ozlsn]

4 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Sigh. I just can't...

 

Can he do that unilaterally? Wouldn't that need to be passed by Congress and the Senate?

[GreyhoundFan]

3 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

Can he do that unilaterally? Wouldn't that need to be passed by Congress and the Senate?

With the repugs in charge in the senate, he knows nobody is going to stop him. Even if the house takes action, the senate never will.

[Dandruff]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

With the repugs in charge in the senate, he knows nobody is going to stop him. Even if the house takes action, the senate never will.

Can we (in the US) be any more screwed?  Not entirely a rhetorical question.

[Ozlsn]

2 hours ago, Dandruff said:

Can we (in the US) be any more screwed?  Not entirely a rhetorical question.

At this point I'm expecting the US will be out of NATO before the election. Trump's main talent is destroying things to distract from his own incompetence - why let 70+ years of mostly productive diplomacy get in the way of his ego?

[Smee]

45 minutes ago, Ozlsn said:

At this point I'm expecting the US will be out of NATO before the election. Trump's main talent is destroying things to distract from his own incompetence - why let 70+ years of mostly productive diplomacy get in the way of his ego?

I think they’ll be out of everything they can be, so when Trump refuses to leave the White House, it’ll be up to people within his own country to try to stop him.

[47of74]

On 5/26/2020 at 7:56 PM, JMarie said:

And it might clog your toilet ☹️

Yeah it took multiple flushes in my case to get rid of it. If i get any more letters from Fuckopotomus I’m going to ritually burn them instead. 

[47of74]

Justice Beer Bong Weenie Waver got spanked today by the CJ

Quote

Friday at midnight, the Supreme Court rejected a church’s challenge to California’s COVID-19 restrictions by a 5–4 vote, with Chief Justice John Roberts joining the liberals. In a pointed opinion, Roberts indicated that he will not join conservative judges’ escalating efforts to override public health measures in the name of religious freedom. Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s dissent, by contrast, falsely accused the state of religious discrimination in an extremely misleading opinion that omits the most important facts of the case. Roberts went out of his way to scold Kavanaugh’s dishonest vilification of the state.

SCOTUS’ late-night order in South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom divided the justices into two camps: those who acknowledge reality, and those who ignore it to score ideological points. The case began when a California church accused Gov. Gavin Newsom of violating its religious freedom. Newsom’s current COVID-19 policy limits attendance at houses of worship to 25 percent of building capacity or a maximum of 100 attendees, whichever is lower. At the same time, it allows certain secular businesses, like grocery stores, to operate under looser guidelines, allowing more people to enter. The church claimed this disparate treatment between churches and commercial establishments runs afoul of the First Amendment.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Who else is not surprised that DeSantis and his minions would lie on their numbers?

 

[clueliss]

Remember when the Giant Man Baby decided that Westpoint needed to bring folks back so he could give a speech?

 

[Ozlsn]

5 hours ago, clueliss said:

Remember when the Giant Man Baby decided that Westpoint needed to bring folks back so he could give a speech?

 

At this point I'm starting to wonder if Trump is an asymptomatic super spreader.

[Dandruff]

I realize some people may disagree, but:

I expect coronavirus cases to spike shortly around cities where protests are being held.  When the spikes occur Trump can easily start to blame them on the protesters and continue doing so until November, at least.  AFAIC, they're handing him a defense which means that they're probably handing him votes.  What is being gained in return?

I fully understand and support the reason for the protests but also believe that the protesters are wrong to endanger lives like this.  There has to be a better way to get the point across during a pandemic.  I live in the DC area.  I'm older, at risk, have been trying my best to stay safe 24/7, and it still may not be enough.  People who are less at risk and/or willing to die to deliver the message in person have chosen to put me and others like me at additional risk of getting sick and dying.  No way I can support that.

To be clear - my opinion of Trump and his ilk hasn't changed.  I hope the cop who killed George Floyd gets the maximum.  I wish that the cops who stood by would be charged.  I want there to be genuine, positive change in this country so that nothing like what happened to George Floyd can happen again.  But I believe that protesting in this manner, along with the predictable riots/looting/violence that are going along with it, are wrong.

[GreyhoundFan]

3 hours ago, Ozlsn said:

At this point I'm starting to wonder if Trump is an asymptomatic super spreader.

Well, he is a super spreader of something...

[thoughtful]

6 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Well, he is a super spreader of something...

Spoiler

It's big, it's orange . . .

 

 

[ADoyle90815]

I also got that brag letter from the Toddler in Chief, a few weeks after I got the paper stimulus check. The check has already been deposited into my bank account, but the letter got torn when I saw  "White House" at the top, and thrown in the outside trash can. I then washed my hands for longer than the recommended 20 seconds, and sanitized them.

[JMarie]

6 hours ago, ADoyle90815 said:

I also got that brag letter from the Toddler in Chief, a few weeks after I got the paper stimulus check. The check has already been deposited into my bank account, but the letter got torn when I saw  "White House" at the top, and thrown in the outside trash can. I then washed my hands for longer than the recommended 20 seconds, and sanitized them.

I got my letter yesterday.  I thought it would look more impressive than it did. After seeing his signature up close, I give a lot of credit to his teachers for interpreting his massive chicken scratch.

[GreyhoundFan]

16 hours ago, JMarie said:

I got my letter yesterday.  I thought it would look more impressive than it did. After seeing his signature up close, I give a lot of credit to his teachers for interpreting his massive chicken scratch.

Daddy Drumpf probably hired a stenographer to take dictation from the marmalade moron for class assignments. Who am I kidding? Daddy probably hired a team to do the actual assignments as well.