Strangely enough, the Posse Comitatus crowd....

..the black helicopter crowd, the Cliven Bundy types, are quite silent about Trump threatening to use the U.S. military in the streets of America. And literally using military helicopters over D.C.

It's almost like they're...what's the word? Oh yeah, hypocritical assholes.


The NYT describing a scene in Washington DC:

"Later in the evening, an Army Black Hawk helicopter descended to rooftop level in the city’s Chinatown district, kicking up dirt and debris and snapping trees that narrowly missed several people.

Military helicopters also performed a “show of force” maneuver that is often used in combat zones to scare away insurgents. The crowd quickly dispersed into surrounding blocks. Minutes later, the Black Hawk returned for another pass."

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/us/george-floyd-protests.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage

Can we not lose track that 105,000 Americans are dead from COVID, many due to Trump's incompetence

Just about every thread on this page is about the protests. The cable news nets are 24/7 riots and protests, they don't even have the updated death count on the screen any more.

Trump is being given a pass on his disastrous handling of the virus, and he can't be allowed to skate.

His poll numbers were cratering, and the only way the hemorrhaging was going to stop was to change the subject. Don't let coverage of the protests - which have to be covered - be allowed to be that game changer.

I hate to say it, but Trump is probably loving the unrest

First, it has taken media attention away from his criminally incompetent handling of the pandemic. The cable news nets were 24/7 on the crisis, 100,000 deaths, Trump urging people to inject themselves with disinfectant, etc. now they are overwhelmingly about the protests and unrest. (God forbid the media walk and chew gum at the same time.)

Second, it gives him a chance to play the tough guy, law and order, I'll send in the military, looting/shooting, etc. which his base eats up. And it may attract back a few wavering suburbanites who were sickened by his pandemic response, but are scared seeing cities go up in flames on their TV screens.

He can't respond to a pandemic, but he is a genius at demonizing and playing to the worst fears of a big patch of America.

Interesting Jennifer Rubin piece about the future of Never Trumpers

The conservative WP columnist is done with the Republican party. She says it's not worth saving, even after Trump.

"There once was a friendly debate among those who used the NeverTrump moniker about whether the GOP could be “saved” or was worth “saving.” Early in the Trump presidency (if not before), I answered no; many who once spoke of reforming or reviving the party now have come around to the view it is hopeless."

(snip)

"Sadly, my feelings toward the spineless Republicans who blindly supported Trump, opposed impeachment, enabled his lies and attacks on institutions, and have not found the nerve — even in a pandemic — to take issue with his lies, impulsive reactions and dangerous preferences can be summed up in a single word: contempt."

Brian Williams show openings on MSNBC

Have you noticed how Brian Williams starts his 11 pm show now every night?

Tonight:

"Good evening, it's day 1203 of the Trump administration. 181 days to go to our next presidential election."

(Numbers are updated daily, of course.)

It's like the old "America held Hostage" open on Nightline during the Iran hostage crisis.

The world is pitying us.

From The Irish Times


THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT


"Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.

However bad things are for most other rich democracies, it is hard not to feel sorry for Americans. Most of them did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016. Yet they are locked down with a malignant narcissist who, instead of protecting his people from Covid-19, has amplified its lethality.

The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful."

snip


"It is one thing to be powerless in the face of a natural disaster, quite another to watch vast power being squandered in real time – wilfully, malevolently, vindictively. It is one thing for governments to fail (as, in one degree or another, most governments did), quite another to watch a ruler and his supporters actively spread a deadly virus.

Trump, his party and Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News became vectors of the pestilence.

The grotesque spectacle of the president openly inciting people (some of them armed) to take to the streets to oppose the restrictions that save lives is the manifestation of a political death wish. What are supposed to be daily briefings on the crisis, demonstrative of national unity in the face of a shared challenge, have been used by Trump merely to sow confusion and division. They provide a recurring horror show in which all the neuroses that haunt the American subconscious dance naked on live TV.

If the plague is a test, its ruling political nexus ensured that the US would fail it at a terrible cost in human lives. In the process, the idea of the US as the world’s leading nation – an idea that has shaped the past century – has all but evaporated
.
Other than the Trump impersonator Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, who is now looking to the US as the exemplar of anything other than what not to do? How many people in Düsseldorf or Dublin are wishing they lived in Detroit or Dallas?"

snip

"And this will get worse before it gets better. Trump has at least eight more months in power. In his inaugural address in 2017, he evoked “American carnage” and promised to make it stop. But now that the real carnage has arrived, he is revelling in it. He is in his element.

As things get worse, he will pump more hatred and falsehood, more death-wish defiance of reason and decency, into the groundwater. If a new administration succeeds him in 2021, it will have to clean up the toxic dump he leaves behind. If he is re-elected, toxicity will have become the lifeblood of American politics.

Either way, it will be a long time before the rest of the world can imagine America being great again."

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/fintan-o-toole-donald-trump-has-destroyed-the-country-he-promised-to-make-great-again-1.4235928?mode=sample&auth-failed=1&pw-origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.irishtimes.com%2Fopinion%2Ffintan-o-toole-donald-trump-has-destroyed-the-country-he-promised-to-make-great-again-1.4235928

Anonymous Cuomo daughter

I always enjoy when Gov. Cuomo has a funny little line in his press conferences, after all the fact and figures are presented. Today. in the part when he gets a little philosophical, he noted someone said to him, "I can't do this any more" complaining about the shut down.

He said, it's not important who said it, then the graphic came up "Anonymous Cuomo daughter."

I get the feeling he does a lot of bad "dad jokes" with his kids.

Usually the NYT "Sunday Routines" column are fun features...

..about how folks in NY spend a lazy Sunday, going to flea markets in Brooklyn, or brunching in Manhattan. Lately, they've been featuring heroes like this guy...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/nyregion/coronavirus-respiratory-therapist.html

"He watched Fox, and believed it was under control,'' Kristen told me.

Heartbreaking story in the Times today about a Brooklyn bar owner, seemed like a basically decent guy, but he watched Fox and believed their bullshit about the virus. How the Murdoch family isn't being arrested for accessory to murder is beyond me.


"Seven days before he was admitted to the hospital, Joe and Kristen had an argument about the emerging public health crisis, which Kristen described as the only dispute she ever had with her father that she wished she hadn’t won. “He said, ‘Don’t you think this is fishy? Do you know anyone who has it? Do you know anyone who has died from it?’ And I said, ‘Dad, I don’t anyone now, but give me a week and I bet I will.’”


https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/nyregion/coronavirus-jjbubbles-joe-joyce.html

Does Nicolle Wallace start at 3 pm now?

The last several days when I've turned on MSNBC a few minutes before 4 pm (ET) to watch her show, she's already been on the air. The on-screen TV Guide still has the 3-4 hour listed as Ali Velshi. Is she just filling in for him?