Trump is supposed to address the nation tonight, 9 pm eastern time. I’m sure I can find something else to watch on Netflix. Let us know if you watch and he says anything significant.
The Dow officially entered a bear market today, and coronavirus officially became a pandemic. The New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade may or may not be cancelled; there are contradicting reports. This may be getting serious.
Jordan Weissman writes at Slate that nobody likes Trump’s ideas for dealing with the financial meltdown being caused by the pandemic. For example, Trump is pushing for a payroll tax cut that would last past the November election. Lawmakers of both parties shot that down, although for different reasons. Republicans want something more “surgical.” Democrats slammed Republicans for thinking tax cuts fix everything.
Senate Democrats put forward a bill to require employers pay up to fourteen days of sick leave during the pandemic. Republicans shot that down because, you know, it’s not fair to employers. So the food service workers will show up to work sick.
Complicating matters, the toddler-in-chief is throwing tantrums over having to work with Nancy Pelosi.
President Donald Trump can’t stand the idea of negotiating one-on-one with his chief counterpart, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Indeed, he suspects that she would use the moment to try to humiliate him.
She doesn’t need to humiliate him; he’s doing that job just fine, all by himself.
Two senior Trump administration officials described a president who, out of an intense bitterness toward the House Speaker, has shuddered at the prospect of being in the same room with her during the ongoing public-health crisis and economic reverberations.
So juvenile.
The White House has ordered federal health officials to treat top-level coronavirus meetings as classified, an unusual step that has restricted information and hampered the U.S. government’s response to the contagion, according to four Trump administration officials.
Did they think no one would notice the pandemic?
The officials said that dozens of classified discussions about such topics as the scope of infections, quarantines and travel restrictions have been held since mid-January in a high-security meeting room at the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), a key player in the fight against the coronavirus.
Staffers without security clearances, including government experts, were excluded from the interagency meetings, which included video conference calls, the sources said.
“We had some very critical people who did not have security clearances who could not go,” one official said. “These should not be classified meetings. It was unnecessary.”
See also Max Boot, The right-wing media’s contempt for truth has never been more dangerous. Yeah, tell us about it, Max.
With PresiDUNCE tRUMPleTHINSKIN in "charge", this isn't just a pandemic, but a panDUMBic!
He looks SOOOOOOOOOO incompetent, that some naive people might suspect he's trying to lose November's election!
Of course, nothing could be further from the truth! He desperately needs to get reelected – lest his lucrative grift end, and he ends up in jail until he's taken out on a gurney, with a toe-tag on, covered by a sheet!
Instead of watching tonight's tRUMPleTHINSKIN's idiotic address to the nation from The White (Supremacist's) House's Offal Office, I'm going to watch the HORRIBLE Knicks game!
I've been listening to Rush afternoons for a while. (It's a long story.) Today he was working at heart-attack intensity. At different times in today's show Rush emphasized that the common flu kills 70K Americans per year (and we accept that.) Then he went on a tear that Dr. Fauci testified that Trump Flu was 10 times more lethal than the regular flu. Rush felt the statement was a huge triumph because if it's only ten times more lethal than the regular flu you can downgrade the possible death toll. Anyone capable of arithmetic can figure that 70,000 times 10 is 700,000 deaths to the pandemic. Maybe I'm an old softie but fatalities in the neighborhood of three-quarters of a million are significant to me especially when most will occur in the age category I occupy.
My read of Rush is that he feels the wheels coming off. They planned on running against communism and Biden's success is a problem to the narrative they've been building for a year. (IMO, Trump was trying to line up Bernie as the nominee and Ukraine was part of an attempt to manipulate the outcome of the Dem primary.)
The collapse of the stock market is a disaster to Trump's re-election. All efforts to prop up stock prices before the winter are under consideration. The US Constitution says all money bills have to originate in the House. Pelosi will want Trump Flu relief to be for the people, not the corporations and Nancy will want to be sure Democrats get credit for protecting workers. I expect Trump to try to declare "emergency" powers and ignore Congress as he tries to save the cruise, airline and hospitality industries while Americans die.
Trump is just a big bag of shit. I watched his address to the nation and I couldn't hear a word he said. I was mesmerized by disgust, and all I could see was a big fraudulent bag of shit with lies spilling out of his mouth. There is no truth in him and everything he says is said with the intention of portraying himself as being in control of a situation that is out of his control.
He's now incorporated the "we" pronoun in his vernacular. Isn't that strange? For the guy who claimed that I alone can fix it, he's now pitching a team effort to defeat a foreign virus while we simultaneously end the partisanship of the democrat's latest hoax.
One thing we can be sure of is that when Trump switched his pitch from I to we,we can deduce that he's on the ropes.
I watched Trump's address last night. It was like something right out of a 1950's "B" grade sci- fi movie. The hoax just got real. After the address, I turned to FOX, where Hannity was singing Donald Trump's praises for being a "true leader". We are now truly through "the looking glass", in a REALLY dangerous time. I would not be surprised to see the elections suspended and martial law imposed. I was on the thresh hold of retirement, now thinking my savings have evaporated kinda like on that South Park episode. I hate to be Cassandra, but it looks pretty grim.
Erinyes…Long time no see. Hope things are going well for you.
Hi Swamy ! I lurk in the shadows mostly these days. I'm doing ok, thanks for asking. Hoping my retirement recovers from this insanity.
I am a lifelong Democrat and own a liquor store with 5 part time employees. Extending sick leave to these employees is an excellent idea but would put a serious hole in my modest gross profits, which don't just go into my pocket but are used for unexpected repairs, winter heating bills, etc. Small business loans are a joke. We will need grants, instead, if we have to quarantine. If I can't pay rent, landlord cannot pay mortgage, everyone loses job. repeat.
Senator Alexander is right, if you want to pay these people, we should all pay for these people right now, through the government. Later, we can discuss sick days for all, which would give me time to re do my business plan and perhaps raise the margin on beer, but to spring it on small business people now is not going to be popular.
This is going to be a bumpy ride. I hope our elected representatives do the right things.
Yes! The Democrats' proposed bill is a perfect example of "centrist" pap. Forcing employers to provide – and pay for – paid sick leave might be a good idea in the long run, but it won't help RIGHT NOW, when we really need to make sure that EVERYBODY (1) gets tested, and (2) gets isolated if they test positive. Sen Alexander is "right" – the way to do that is for the Federal Government to just pay for it. Of course, Alexander is "right" (GOP), so he will then claim that we can't do that because it's "too expensive" (all while the Fed tries to prop up the Stock Market by giving a few Trillion Dollars to the TBTF banksters).
I stopped paying attention to Trump's statements about 3 years ago. All there is to learn is what he's currently lying about. With past pols that might have had some value, but Trump lies about everything, so his statements are completely without direct or implied value.
The media, whose dismal job it is to listen to the freak, reported he has followed his tried and true blaming of foreigners for the spread of Covid-19 and has cut off travel from most of Europe, excepting the UK. That might be because he wants the nationalist weasels Nigel Farage And The Gang to campaign with him again.
The punch line, though, is that Americans can still travel to the US from anywhere in Europe, including Italy and other hot spots. Trump is supernaturally clueless and narrow minded.
Isn't this proposed payroll tax cut just going to fuck up my withholding and make me owe next April? Also, it's not going to be big enough to mean anything. Like the last one, these payroll tax cuts are dreamed up by rich fucks who notice when their, I think SS deduction, maxes out and stops. That ain't reality for most of us.
"Isn't this proposed payroll tax cut just going to fuck up my withholding and make me owe next April?" That would be my guess, yes.
Trump's proposal for a payroll tax cut is akin to watching an old movie where a woman is about to deliver a baby in a home birth and the husband is told by the doctor to go boil some water. Boiling water serves two purposes. It takes the husband out of the doctor's way so he can do his job and it gives the husband a sense of participation in the delivery of the baby. But in reality, it has no effect on the actual delivery.
That's the same dynamic that Trump is using. Making himself look like he's doing something and getting himself out of they way so Pence and other professionals can take the blame when things go south.
He's a bag of shit…was, is, and always will be. Forever and ever, amen!
WTF will a payroll tax cut do? It won't help any one sick with the virus get tested and be cared for. It certainly won't help the millions losing or about to lose their jobs. And for those that are still working, having a few extra dollars in their paycheck that the IRS will claw back come tax time, won't amount to much economic impact, especially since many of the businesses or events they might be spent at are suspending or have shut down. Business isn't slowing down for lack of spending, its the impact of the virus on business operations. No amount of money can change that, from either the supply or demand side.
If other countries are testing their citizens, there is no reason we can't test ours. The WHO offered test kits to the feds, but Trump said no. We could be testing more people right now, but accepting those kits and doing more testing wasn't in Trump's political interests. More testing means more cases, and he doesn't want "the numbers" to go up.
What a time to be saddled with such a clueless, incompetent fool. Not sure how bad this is going to get, but America is paying a heavy price for electing, and then not getting rid, of when it had the chance, this worthless sack o'shit. (hat tip to Swami!)
All public schools in Florida have just been shut down until March 31st. Looks like the nation is moving on without Trump. It's good to see that somebody is taking the bull by the horns, and not trying to characterize the Corona virus as being a Democratic hoax.