in which I respond to billy’s questions

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The fact that we’re in the early stages of a pandemic makes re-litigating Comrade Trump’s impeachment seem like a waste of time and energy. But I made a promise to respond to comments made in the preceding post.

It was a promise made to a guy who disagrees with almost everything I believe in, whose views are almost universally the opposite of my own, and who has over the years repeatedly challenged the stuff I write. But here’s the thing: this guy has absolutely no reason to read this blog — yet he does. Not consistently; there have been long stretches in which I haven’t heard from him. But I respect the fact that he occasionally reads stuff he dislikes and disagrees with, because getting out of the bubble of agreement is always important — for everybody, conservative and liberal alike.  Since he made the effort to read and disagree with me, I feel an obligation to make the effort to respond. So here we go.

1. Where is the law that says it is illegal to ask another nation to investigate someone you think it corrupt and possibly doing something illegal in said nation?

It’s not illegal. In fact, it’s fairly routine when done through official channels. If there’s information that a US citizen is or has been engaged in a crime in another nation, the Department of Justice contacts that nation’s law enforcement agency and they conduct a joint investigation. It’s treated as a matter of law and it’s handled by law professional prosecutors and policing agencies.

But that isn’t what happened. Trump personally called Zelensky and in the course of their conversation asked him to launch an investigation of the son of a political opponent as a favor. He also suggested Ukraine to coordinate that investigation with his own personal private attorney. That’s wildly inappropriate. Making that request in the same phone call that included Zelensky’s plea for promised military support from the US only emphasizes how inappropriate it was.

2. No again, not a single aide who “expressed concern” had first hand knowledge of the call, not a single one.Each and every one was at best 2nd hand knowledge or even 3rd. Plus the call transcript was released and there was nothing there even close to something that looked like a crime.

That’s just not accurate. We only know the names of seven officials who listened in on the call between Trump and Zelensky, although there are probably at least half a dozen other aides who were on the call. Of those seven, we know that three voiced concerns about Trump’s request: Col. Vindman, Jennifer Williams, and Charles Kupperman.  Vindman and Williams testified after being issued a subpoena — despite being told NOT to cooperate by the White House; Kupperman asked a federal court to determine which order (the subpoena or the president’s) he should follow.

Was there anything ‘even close to something that looked like a crime’? Yes. This is directly from the transcript:

Zelensky: “We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps, specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.”
Trump: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.”

Trump responded to Zelensky’s comment about buying Javelin missiles with a request for a ‘favor’. That makes it sound like the sale of the missiles was dependent on the favor. Since those missiles were authorized by Congress (the legislative branch), it would be illegal for POTUS (the executive branch) to withhold them — for ANY reason, let alone in exchange for a personal favor.

3. This impeachment was most certainly a coup attempt and was done in secret. Do you know remember the secret meetings that republicans were not allowed to attend? Do you now remember how this imaginary whistleblower’s name was not allowed to be told to anyone and how Schiff lied that he never met the man? Now you are just bending yourself into a pretzel to defend this farce.

There were no ‘secret meetings’ that excluded Republicans. There were classified meetings held in a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF). Only members of the House Intelligence Committee were allowed to attend because the material discussed was classified. But GOP members of the committee did, in fact, attend. Republicans (and Democrats) who were NOT on the committee were NOT allowed to attend.

The whistleblower remained anonymous because that’s the law — the Whistleblower Protection Act of 1989, a law which was passed unanimously by both the House and the Senate, and signed into law by President George Bush, a Republican. It’s designed to protect employees who become aware of possible improprieties in gov’t agencies, but fear for their jobs if they speak out.

Schiff wouldn’t have met the whistleblower, because that violates the Act. There’s a process that takes place: the whistleblower files a complaint with the appropriate Inspector General (in this case, the Intelligence Community IG), who determines if the complaint is credible. If it is, the IG notifies the chair of the appropriate Congressional committee. The chair (Schiff, in this case) assigns a staff member to communicate with the whistleblower in order to protect his/her identity. So somebody on Schiff’s staff knows the identity of the whistleblower, but that person would be prohibited by law from telling Schiff.

4.Bloodless coup not ring a bell to you at all? Not all coups need to be grounded in violence. A violent coup would almost never take place in this nation in this day and age, it would have to be a bloodless coup like the one attempted by the dems. I already told you that Pense most certainly would be next to be impeached if Trump was removed because of course Pense was privy to this call and also defended the president so he would not be fit to serve and would be removed in favor of teh Speak of the House, thus a full removal of the party in power.

You don’t get to change the definition of coup d’état because it’s inconvenient. By definition, a coup d’état is an illegal and violent attempt to overthrow an existing government. Impeachment, on the other hand, is a legal process outlined in the US Constitution. It doesn’t overthrow the government; it’s a process by which a high ranking official can, after a public trial, be removed from office IF CONVICTED by two-thirds of the Senate. A public multi-day trial that’s resolved by open voting isn’t anything like a coup.

Speculating that Vice President Pence would also be impeached in the event Trump was removed is just that — speculation. But even if Congress DID decide to impeach Pence as well, it would still involve a slow, public, legal, Constitutional process in which at least two-thirds of the Senate would have to vote to convict him.

Dude, that’s just not a coup.

5.Threats of violence only by supporters of the president… oh that is rich and lovely re-write of history.

During the impeachment process, credible threats of violence were made against the Democratic staff and against the witnesses who testified against the president. They had to be assigned protective services. To my knowledge, no such threats were made toward Republican staff or witnesses who testified for the president.

6. Why was biden’s quid pro quo not illegal?

I assume you’re talking about then-Vice President Biden warning Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that if he didn’t fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, the Obama administration would withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees. That wasn’t illegal because it was official public US policy made with the support of Congress.

Viktor Shokin was universally seen as a corrupt official. As Prosecutor General, Shokin blocked investigations into other corrupt officials and corrupt organizations. He also blocked prosecutions against police officers accused of shooting civilian protesters. The European Union, a number of international financial institutions, and the citizenry of Ukraine (there were street protests against Shokin) all agreed that Shokin should be removed from office.

Again, Trump was impeached because there was convincing evidence that he used the Office of the President of the United States to illegally and unethically pressure the president of Ukraine to initiate an investigation of a political opponent by suggesting monies and aid appropriated by Congress — and necessary in Ukraine’s war against Russia — might be dependent on Ukraine doing that investigation as a ‘favor’.

It’s true a LOT of us actively dislike Trump. It’s true a LOT of us would like to see him (and Pence) removed from office. Just as it was true that a LOT of conservatives would like to have seen President Obama (and Biden) removed from office. Just as it was true that a LOT of us would have liked to see George W. Bush (and yes yes yes Cheney) removed from office. The only difference is that Trump engaged in behavior that was egregious enough legally to warrant impeachment proceedings.

but not unexpected

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…but not unexpected. That phrase gets a lot of exercise when we’re talking about the behavior of Comrade Donald Trump. The president’s response was irregular, but not unexpected. The president’s comments were undiplomatic, but not unexpected. It’s a nice way of saying ‘Yeah, as usual, Trump is being an asshole’.

Friday evening, Trump announced he was firing Michael Atkinson, the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community. In his letter, Trump stated, “[I]t is vital that I have the fullest confidence in the appointees serving as Inspectors General. That is no longer the case with regard to this Inspector General.”

What’s actually vital to Trump is that everybody in his administration MUST be willing to publicly support whatever crazy-ass thing Trump wants to do. Anybody who disagrees or challenges him has to go. When it comes to following the law or following Trump, the law has to step aside.

Comrade Trump signing the two-trillion-dollar covid-19 stimulus package.

Atkinson followed the law. When he received a complaint from a whistleblower in the intelligence community about Trump’s communications with the president of Ukraine, he had an obligation to determine if the complaint was credible and urgent. He decided it was, so he notified Congress — which is exactly what he was legally required to do.

From that moment on, Atkinson’s career in federal government was doomed. He followed the law instead of ‘protecting’ Trump. Same thing happened to James Comey, to Andrew McCabe, to Jeff Sessions (who actually deserved to be fired, but for other reasons), to Col. Alexander Vindman (and even his brother, for fuck’s sake, whose only sin was to be born a twin). Trump attempted to fire Robert Mueller, but couldn’t. All of that was wildly inappropriate. But not unexpected.

Trump didn’t fire Atkinson just to be vindictive. He’s also sending a message to other Inspectors General — including the newest one. That new two-trillion dollar stimulus package? One reason it was delayed was Democrats insisted the bill include a Special Inspector General for Pandemic Recovery — somebody to monitor how the Treasury Department hands out the loans and loan guarantees to businesses. Somebody whose job was to keep Trump corruption to a minimum. The bill also states the new IG MUST notify Congress IMMEDIATELY if the Trump administration withholds information requested by investigators. Because if there’s one thing we know for certain about Trump, it’s that he’s going to pull some sort of nasty-ass scam and then refuse to answer any questions about it.

Trump really really didn’t want a new IG to oversee the stimulus loans, but eventually he had to give in. At least in theory. But this is Comrade Donald Trump (remember in the last paragraph we said he’d pull some nasty-ass scam? Here we go.). In addition to signing the bill, Trump also issued a signing statement…you know, to ‘clarify’ how he interprets the bill. He told Congress he intended to treat the “requirement to consult with the Congress regarding executive decision-making” as “hortatory but not mandatory.” Yeah, I know…there’s no way Trump knows what ‘hortatory’ means. But basically Trump is saying he’s going to consider that ‘requirement’ to just be an earnest suggestion, which he can ignore if he wants to. He also said he won’t “treat spending decisions as dependent on prior consultation with or the approval of congressional committees,” which is a nice way of saying he intends to hand out the money to whoever the fuck he wants to and Congress can kiss his ass. He ends his signing statement by saying, “my Administration will continue the practice of treating provisions like these as advisory and non-binding.” This, in essence, is Trump making farting noises in the direction of Congress.

Comrade Trump signing a statement saying he’ll do whatever the fuck he wants regardless of the law and Congress can pull his finger.

With that signing statement and the firing of Atkinson, Trump is basically telling the new stimulus IG, “Dude, you’re just there for show. Stay quiet, don’t ask too many questions, don’t interfere, just sit in your office, look out the window, and continue to cash those sweet sweet government checks. Or say goodbye to your career and your pension, because, dude, you know I will fire your ass in a skinny minute.”

What Comrade Trump is doing is borderline illegal, immoral, pathologically unethical, utterly reprehensible, and corrupt as fuck. But not unexpected.

and yet this is perfectly on-brand for trump

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Jesus suffering fuck. We’re at the very beginning of a national health care disaster; we  just had approximately six and a half MILLION citizens put out of work and apply for unemployment benefits, people are looking at massive hospital bills while being unable to pay their rent or mortgages, and Comrade Donald J. Trump is bragging about talking his friend — Mohammed bin Salman, who had a Washington Post reporter murdered and dismembered — into working with the dictator of Russia — who interfered with the 2016 U.S. election in order to drop Trump into the White House — to raise the price of gasoline in order to increase profits for the oil and gas industry, which supports his bid for re-election.

There are SO MANY THINGS WRONG WITH THIS that you’d need a quantum computer to enumerate them. The only thing NOT wrong with this tweet is he spelled everything correctly.

It’s not just that Trump is tone deaf to the suffering of…well, everybody other than himself — it’s that he thinks there’s nothing wrong with associating with murderous dictators in order to aid industries that destroy the climate and the ecology for profit while his constituents are being killed by a pandemic he didn’t bother to mitigate.

I’ll say it again. Jesus suffering fuck.

ventilate, from the latin ‘ventulus’ meaning ‘a breeze’.

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Comrade President Donald Trump is, of course, the worst possible leader in any sort of crisis. Because he views everything through a transactional lens, he’s singularly inept when it comes to a medical crisis. I mean, I understand he dislikes criticism, even (or especially) when it’s deserved. But to delay or withhold critical medical equipment from a state because that state’s governor was mean to you? Jesus suffering fuck, what a petty-minded, vindictive thing to do.

But here’s Trump:

I don’t believe you need 40,000 or 30,000 ventilators. You go into major hospitals sometimes, and they’ll have two ventilators. And now all of a sudden they’re saying, ‘Can we order 30,000 ventilators?’

I have some experience with ventilators. This is how old I am: I was a medic when the military first began developing specialized respiratory therapy units. I was assigned to the first RT unit at the medical center where I was stationed. There were only six medics in the unit, two of whom were senior NCOs whose duties were largely supervisory. The other four of us did the actual work — which meant we worked 24 hour shifts. One day on, two or three days off.

Sometimes we were busy, sometimes we spent most of a 24 hour shift sitting around waiting for an emergency. For the most part, we spent our shifts giving positive pressure breathing treatments, nebulizing patients with asthma, checking on patients getting oxygen through nasal O2 tubes. For critically ill or ICU patients, we also set up and managed the ventilators.

The Bennett PR2, our primary volume ventilator back in the day.

There are basically two types of mechanical ventilators — pressure ventilators and volume ventilators. The ventilators you hear about on the news are volume ventilators, which allow patients with incapacitated lungs to breathe. It’s that simple. Without the aid of a ventilator, patients with badly damaged lungs will probably die.

We had a total of six volume ventilators. We rarely needed more than three. But ‘rarely’ means we sometimes needed more. And there were times during my career when we needed seven.

Bird Mk7 — this is what it used to look like.

You can see the problem. When you have six volume ventilators and seven patients who need them to breathe, somebody has to go without. Somebody dies. The doctors make that decision. They decide that Patient A has a better chance of survival than Patient B.

But it’s the technicians who do the work.

Nobody tells you how do that. Remember, this was a new unit. There was no written process — no manual detailing what to do about unhooking a living person from a ventilator. And the first time we got the order, we didn’t have time to consider how to do it. Patient A needed the ventilator. So we winged it.

I unhooked the ventilator from Patient A, the supervisor moved the ventilator to Patient B, and I stayed with Patient A. Until his damaged lungs stopped working. Until his body stopped struggling to draw air. Until he stopped gasping and making sucking noises. Until his heart stopped. Until he died.

After the first time, that became the process. We felt somebody needed to stay with the patient until the patient became a body. We felt the person who unhooked the patient was the person who should stay. If you’re going to kill somebody, you have some sort of an obligation to stay with them until they’re dead.

I’ve had to do that five times.

Patients die. Sometimes even with the assistance of a volume ventilator, the patient dies. That’s part of the job and you accept that. But it’s one thing to have a patient die; it’s another thing to kill them. Even if you’re following a doctor’s orders, even if there’s logic and reason behind the decision, the fact remains that you’re killing somebody.

What it looks like now.

I’m sure things are different now. That was a long time ago in a military hospital and military hospitals operate under slightly different rules than civilian hospitals. As a medic I was allowed — and sometimes even required — to do stuff that wouldn’t be allowed in a civilian hospital. I’m sure now there are medical ethicists who get involved in the process, and there are detailed written procedures outlining the circumstances under which a patient can be removed from a ventilator. I’m sure it’s a lot more regimented and orderly and lawyerly now.

But when it happens, there still going to be some poor bastard doing the ugly work.

Like I said, it was a long time ago and I haven’t thought about this very often over the last few years. I mean, you see something in a hospital scene on television or in a movie and it comes immediately back. But the sad fact is that killing those five people isn’t even in the top five of my most common ugly memories.

At least it wasn’t until recently. Now, because of the news, I remember those five people a few times every day. I remember sitting or standing by their beds, holding their hands, watching and waiting for their bodies to give up and die. And when I hear Trump say nobody needs thirty thousand ventilators, I think about that thirty thousand and first patient. And I think about the poor bastard who’s going to have to kill somebody in order to try to save somebody else.

relax guys, trump is dealing with the pandemic by bringing in carnival cruise ships

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Legit question: why are news media still covering Comrade Trump’s Covid-19 briefings? They know he’s going to spread misinformation; they know he’s going to lie. It’s bad enough that Trump misinforms and lies about political stuff, but when it comes to public health his misinformation and lies actually endanger lives.

Another legit question: IF the news media feel the MUST cover Trump (because he’s the president, after all), why do they have to clean up the nonsense he spouts? When he says something incomprehensible, which he does all the time, they edit it so that it appears to make sense. Why?

“I’m hearing good things on the ground.”

Here’s an example. Yesterday the network evening news accurately reported this part of Trump’s statement: “I also just invoked the Defense Production Act to help facilitate distribution of essential supplies if necessary.” That makes Trump sound reasonable, proactive, presidential — none of which is true. They did NOT report his responses to some of the questions asked about the Defense Production Act.

Q: You “enabled” — I guess, is probably the best way to put it — the Defense Production Act yesterday, but you didn’t pull the trigger on it.

A: No, because we hope we’re not going to need that.

So he invoked the DPA, but he hasn’t actually used it. The entire point of invoking the act is to require manufacturers to produce material needed in a national emergency. Like a pandemic.

Here’s another question.

Q: Under what conditions would you put the Defense Production Act into action?

A: Well, if we were desperately in need of something — and we, frankly, will know about that very shortly. We want to be ahead of — we don’t want to do it as it happens but before it happens. We’re going to know a lot over the next two or three days. We’ll know a lot.

“We don’t want to do it AS it happens, but BEFORE it happens.” We’re going to wait a few days to see if we’re really as desperate as every doctor and every nurse in every hospital and clinic in every state claims we are. Then we’ll act before it happens. Trump fails to comprehend simple causality. He doesn’t understand you can’t wait until AFTER an event to act BEFORE the event.

“No, really, I’m the president. I’m NOT a shipping clerk.”

But wait, there’s more:

Q: I wanted to just follow up on John and Kaitlan’s question. So it’s not just masks. Doctors are saying now that they are desperate for other personal protective gear — gloves, other equipment. Governors are saying that they don’t have access to respirators, and they’re terrified. What is your reticence about invoking the Defense Production Act?

A:  Governors are supposed to get it. The states are supposed to get it. But we’re helping the states.

Q: But people are saying there’s nowhere to buy them, that there aren’t enough in the country.

A: Well — look, for years, they bought them, and now, all of a sudden, they’re coming to the federal government.

Q: They need more now.

A: We are working with the states. We’re working with the governors. We’re working with everybody. The relationships are great. One of the things that happened this morning: I spoke with Micky Arison of Carnival Cruise Lines, and he’s going to make ships available.

He’s invoked the Defense Protection Act because it’s a national emergency, but it’s up to the governors of the individual states to get the equipment — the equipment that isn’t being rushed into production by the DPA. Besides why do they need this stuff ‘all of a sudden’? Why aren’t they prepared? Good news, though. Micky is going to provide cruise ships — I guess because of their stellar record public health record.

“Yeah, I don’t know where the buck stops. It’s got to stop someplace. But it’s not stopping here. We’ll see how it goes.”

But wait again, there’s still more.

Q: But, Mr. President, what is your reticence about invoking the Defense Production Act?

A: I’ve done it. I’ve done it.

Q: But you said that you don’t want to invoke it yet.

A: Yeah, if we find that we need something, that we will do that. And you don’t know what we’ve done. You don’t know whether or not we’ve ordered. You don’t know if we’ve invoked it. You don’t know what’s been ordered, what’s not been ordered.

Did you wash behind your ears? Yes, I did. But your ears are still dirty. I’ll wash them if they need washing and you weren’t there so you don’t know if I washed them or not stop picking on me.

None of that was seen on the evening news. None of the wildly contradictory claims, none of the childish tantrums. Just ‘Trump said something that sounded presidential’.

But wait one more time, there’s still more.

Q: Could you explain the gap in — for the American people — in what you’re saying here today about there being tens of thousands of tests available, about how there being a huge amount of masks available and what we’re seeing on the ground, which is really the opposite of that? People are — people are saying that they can’t get tested even when they have symptoms. People are saying that they — doctors are telling us they don’t have access to vital equipment. Can you explain that gap?

A: Well, I can’t. I cannot explain the gap. I’m hearing very good things on the ground, and we’re dealing with — look, they had to ramp up. They had an obsolete system, and they had a system, simultaneously, that was not meant for this. It wasn’t meant for this. Nobody knew there’d be a pandemic or an epidemic of this proportion.

He can’t explain why people are saying they don’t have necessary equipment because he’s hearing very good things about people having equipment, but whatever the problem is, it’s not his fault. Who knew there might be a pandemic?

“Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. Nobody knows my sorrow. Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen. I blame it on Obama.”

I know the evening network news doesn’t have the time to include news segments that take more than a couple of minutes. They can’t show six or seven minutes of the president blathering like a nincompoop; they have advertisers to please, and there’s a sports team scandal, and there was severe weather someplace, and of course they need to have final feel-good segment about a high school play that got canceled but the kids did it anyway on Skype and boy you just can’t hold back American spirit, can you, no sir.

But Jesus suffering fuck, surely the American people need to know their president is a bonehead without a gram of compassion and entirely lacking in the skills necessary to deal with an interoffice squabble let alone a national crisis. Don’t they? Shouldn’t that be newsworthy? Shouldn’t the news media report the actual news?

trump, burr, and the missing worldwide threat assessment

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Here’s a curious thing. Last month Senator Richard Burr (R-North Carolina) spoke at a luncheon sponsored by the Tar Heel Circle (which is more formally known as The North Carolina State Society of Washington DC). That’s not the curious thing; members of Congress routinely meet with ‘important’ people from their home state — business owners, social leaders, local politicians.

This smarmy fucker knew.

The curious thing is what Burr told those ‘important’ people. He warned them about a virus coming to the U.S. He told them it was “much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history. It is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.” You know, the pandemic that killed millions of people worldwide. He talked about travel restrictions and schools closing. He talked about how the military might need to be mobilized.

Here’s another curious thing. At the same time Burr was giving his speech, Comrade Trump was assuring the public that “the coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.” He acknowledged a small number of US citizens had become ill, but “they’ve gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered.” We know, of course, that wasn’t true.

Had we been told the truth, the butcher’s bill wouldn’t be so high.

Here’s yet another curious thing. Every year in January or February, the US intelligence community provides the House and Senate intelligence committees with a briefing on global threats. That briefing is usually accompanied by a public hearing and the publication of an unclassified report called the Worldwide Threat Assessment. This year, the public hearing for the 2020 Worldwide Threat Assessment was canceled. It hasn’t been rescheduled. The report, which is usually unclassified, was suddenly classified.

One more curious thing: Senator Richard Burr, who issued that dire warning to the ‘important’ people of the Tar Heel Circle, is the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. The committee that first learns the details of the Worldwide Threat Assessment.

More curious things. In 2017, the Worldwide Threat Assessment said this about the threat to public health:

“A novel or reemerging microbe that is easily transmissible between humans and is highly pathogenic remains a major threat because such an organism has the potential to spread rapidly and kill millions.”

The 2018 WTA:

“A novel strain of a virulent microbe that is easily transmissible between humans continues to be a major threat, with pathogens such as H5N1 and H7N9 influenza and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus having pandemic potential if they were to acquire efficient human-to-human transmissibility… a severe global influenza pandemic could cost the equivalent of 4.8 percent of global GDP—more than $3 trillion—and cause more than 100 million deaths.”

The 2019 WTA:

“We assess that the United States and the world will remain vulnerable to the next flu pandemic or largescale outbreak of a contagious disease that could lead to massive rates of death and disability, severely affect the world economy, strain international resources, and increase calls on the United States for support.”

We can, I think, safely assume the now-classified 2020 Worldwide Threat Assessment repeated what the last three WTAs said. We can, I think, assume that what Senator Burr reported to the ‘important’ people of North Carolina came directly from the 2020 WTA. We don’t have to assume that information was kept from the general public for at least six weeks; we know that’s true. Six weeks during which the US government failed to respond to a health threat they knew was coming. Six weeks in which the Trump administration could have prevented needless sickness and death.

We can’t blame every Covid-19 death on folks like Trump and Burr. But we can hold them responsible for a lot of them.

They knew. They knew it was coming. These fuckers deliberately downplayed the threat to the public while warning the ‘important’ people.

We need to see the 2020 Worldwide Threat Assessment report. We need to know what they knew. We need to hold all of these fuckers accountable. We need to toss them out of office. We need to publicly name them and shame them. We need to hang the scope of this pandemic around their necks and make them wear their shame every day for the rest of their miserable lives.

we’re talking the fomite, y’all

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Okay, there are facts and there are suppositions based on facts. It’s a fact that the Renaissance painter Titian (who actual name was Tiziano Vecelli, which takes a lot longer to say) made a portrait (seen below) of Girolamo Fracastoro. It’s also a fact that Fracastoro was a poet, an astronomer, a physician, a geographer, and a mathematician (because back during the Renaissance everybody seemed to do everything). But it’s just supposition that Titian painted this portrait in exchange for Fracastoro (in physician mode) treating him for syphilis.

Girolamo Fracastoro (also known as Hieronymus Fracastorius because everybody in the Renaissance had like half a dozen different names).

You guys, Fracastoro invented syphilis. Not the disease (which apparently came from the Americas, brought back by a crewman on one of Columbus’ ships — I know, irony, right?), but the name of the disease. In 1530 he wrote an epic poem (we’re talking a trilogy — seriously, a three-book poem written (and I am NOT making this up) in dactylic hexameter; when these guys decided to do something, they didn’t fuck around) about a shepherd boy who insulted the god Apollo, who responded the way gods always seem to respond: he gave the boy a horrible disease. That unlucky boy in the poem was named…wait for it, wait for it…Syphilus.

The foul Infection o’er his Body spread
Prophanes his Bosome, and deforms his Head;
His wretched Limbs with filth and stench o’er flow,
While Flesh divides, and shews the Bones below.
Dire Ulcers (can the Gods permit them) prey
On his fair Eye-balls, and devour their Day.

Yikes, right? Three books of this. So many different forms of torture. Anyway, our boy Fracastoro made his bones (so to speak) by treating communicable diseases. He came up with the concept of fomes, which is the plural of fomite.

Syphilus being warned against yielding to temptation (temptation in the form of that chick with the lute — I mean, just look at those ankles).

So you’re probably thinking “Hey, Greg, old sock, what the fuck is a fomite?” Well, I’m going to tell you. And stop calling me ‘old sock’. Actually, I’m going to let Fracastoro his ownself tell you.

“I call fomites such things as clothes, linen, etc., which although not themselves corrupt, can nevertheless foster the essential seeds of the contagion and thus cause infection.”

In other words, he’s talking about the way disease can be spread. Fracastoro was a proponent of the notion that epidemics were caused by “spores” — transferable tiny particles — that could infect people (or animals) by direct or indirect contact, and that was how diseases moved over long distances. This was 300 years or so before folks came up with the idea of germs.

Oh, and fomes? That’s the Latin term for kindling or tinder — the material you gather together in order to start a fire.

Makes sense now, doesn’t it. Now you’re thinking of Covid-19, right? Now you’re thinking of all those anti-bacterial wipes you can’t find on the store shelves. Now you’re thinking about all those doorknobs you touch every day, and about the handrails on stairways and escalators, and about the handle of the coffee pot at work. Now you’re thinking about the table at the diner where you put your cell phone while you eat your salad, and how maybe the person who sat there before you touched an infected doorknob before sitting at that table and left ‘spores’ on the table that are now transferred to the back of your cell phone case, which means it’s now on your hands. And you’re thinking “Lawdy, my cell phone is a goddamned fomite! And that table, a goddamned fomite. And I’m surrounded by goddamned fomes!”

Which is exactly what you should be thinking. All those things you touch during the day? That’s kindling. You spread that kindling, you create a forest fire.

That’s fact, no supposition. Keep Girolamo Fracastoro in mind everywhere you go. I’d suggest you get a tattoo of Fracastoro on your forearm, except the tattoo gun is a goddamned fomite.

Wash your damn hands, people.

joe biden = comfort food

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Like a lot of folks, I went to bed last night (and woke up this morning) thinking this: Joe Biden? How did we end up with Joe Biden? I mean, almost every Democrat over the age of thirty was running for POTUS, and several of them were really good candidates. And here we are with Joe Biden? Joe Biden?

But I think I understand it now. Joe Biden is comfort food. You know — a dish that holds some nostalgic and maybe cultural significance for you. We’ve all got at least one comfort food. It’s not necessarily good food, not necessarily food that’s good for you, not something you’d likely order at a decent restaurant, and certainly not anything that’s complex. It’s what you want to eat when you’re feeling down, or anxious, or needy, or sentimental.

Joe Biden

My comfort foods are mostly what some folks would call ‘Southern white trash’ food. I love a simple perlow, or something from a box with a Little Debbie label, or a peanut butter and mayo sandwich on white bread. If the weather is chilly, I’ll go with grilled cheese and a bowl of tomato basil soup. Comfort food.

For you maybe it’s poutine, or mashed potatoes and gravy, or chocolate mint ice cream, or pierogi, or a green bean casserole with those french-fried onion things on top, or udon, or chicken and waffles. It doesn’t matter what your comfort foods are; what matter is that they’re safe and put you at ease and don’t require a lot of thought.

Joe Biden

That’s Joe Biden. He’s safe, he can put you at ease, and he doesn’t require much thought. Biden is pretty predictable; we know who is and what he is. Yeah, we’re all a wee bit creeped out by his weird habit of touching folks, but nobody suspects him of paying off hookers and porn stars. He doesn’t require us to think a lot, because we’ve already dealt with him for eight years.

Joe Biden

He’s not somebody you’d order off the menu of a good restaurant. But after three years of eating rancid garbage and flaming hate, it seems a LOT of people just want some mashed potatoes with butter. Or a Hostess Twinkie.

Anyway, that’s my current thinking on the unexpected success of Joe Mac and Cheese Biden.