In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, Democrats have desperately tried to get vote by mail passed in states that don’t have it in time for the November presidential election.  It’s a non-starter with Republicans lead by Trump.  At the same time, the Postal Service is losing $2 billion per month with reduced volumes of mail.  Democrats tried to put a $15 billion bailout in the relief bill, but Trump threatened to veto the entire multi-trillion dollar bill if it included any money for the Post Office.  The bill finally got passed with a $10 billion loan, by Mnuchin is holding it up in Treasury, and Trump fired the IG assigned to oversee the distribution of funds from the relief bill last week.

Republicans have been trying to kill the US Postal Service for decades, trying to privatize it and hand it over to some of their largest donors.  In 2006, the Republican controlled Congress passed a law that required the Postal Service prefund 75 YEARS of anticipated pensions, totaling $72 billion.  They then diverted that money to paying down federal debt caused by GWB’s slashing tax cuts.  Even though the Postal Service is no longer a full federal agency the Congress still controls its budget, continuously starving it for funding.

Even as the COVID-19 pandemic has caused mail volume to plummet,  Republicans, lead by Trump, have stonewalled any support to keep the service alive, and without funding, it will run out of cash in September.  At the same time, Democrats are trying to introduce voting reforms that allow vote by mail for the November elections.  Of course, Republicans are also stonewalling that.  About 20 states already allow voting by mail.  Why in the world would Republicans want to kill the Postal Service?  That answer is now crystal clear – no Post Office?  No voting by mail.  Trump’s plummet in the polls can be offset by making it almost impossible to vote during the pandemic.

Yep, Republicans figured out many years ago that reducing turnout through voter suppression, as well as radical gerrymandering, improves their chances of hanging on to power.  This effort is that strategy on steroids actually taking away Americans’ Constitutional right to vote.

You knew it would happen.  Trump’s incompetent response to the COVID-19 outbreak is one of the few crises in the last three years that is not of his own making, and his sycophants have come to realize that he can’t lie or tweet his way out of this one.  The response?  Gen up the Noise Machine, WhatAbout Version.  One of the loudest blowhards in the Machine is PJ Media formerly called Pajamas Media, one of the biggest manure shovelers on the web.

The WhatAbout target this time?  Barack Obama, of course, and this time it was his response to the H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009, days after he had taken office.  H1N1 became apparent in January 2009 and being researched by the WHO then.  The first case of H1N1 was discovered on April 15, 2009, the WHO declared a medical emergency on April 25, and the CDC began releasing anti-viral drugs to fight the disease. Obama declared a US medical emergency on April 30.  He requested $1.9 billion then and as the pandemic grew, requested another $9 billion for response and vaccines.  In October of 2009 Obama did declare a national emergency, but only after multiple efforts to control the virus.  Today, H1N1 continues as a recurring flu virus and has killed an estimated 75,000 Americans since 2009.  It’s part of the annual flu vaccine today that many Americans still refuse to receive.

Let’s talk about how Republicans responded to the virus back in 2009 versus what they are saying now.  During the funding debates of 2009, Republicans opposed Obama’s request because, well, they’re Republicans.  Also, the noise machine cranked up led by Gleen Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Rush Limbaugh.  Glenn Beck, who at that time had a big show on Fox Noise said, “…you don’t know if this is going to cause neurological damage like it did in the 1970s,” adding that he would do “the exact opposite” of what the federal government recommended and might even attend a swine flu party to deliberately infect himself before the virus could mutate.  Rush Limbaugh said, “I am not going to take it [the H1N1 vaccine], precisely because you are now telling me I must. . . . I don’t want to take your vaccine. I don’t get flu shots.” He added that if “you have some idiot government official demanding, telling me I must take this vaccine, I’ll never take it.”  In Congress Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-GA) commented, “We can’t let all of our spending and our reaction be media-driven in responding to a panic so that we don’t get Katrina-ed. . . . It’s important because what we are talking about as we discuss the appropriateness of spending $2 billion to produce a vaccine that may never be used—that is a very important decision that our country has to make.”  Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA) added, “I don’t think we need to spend $1.5 billion on flu vaccine when . . . the research shows that it’s not going to be very virulent. . . . We are stealing our grandchildren’s future by borrowing and spending. . . . This hysteria over the flu is driving the media, and it’s driving the administration, driving the leadership here. We’ve got to stop that.”

The funding was passed, but after intense anti-vaxxer misinformation and loud Republican opposition, the distribution of the vaccine was greatly suppressed and even THAT was affected by party.  Democrats outnumbered Republicans by almost 50% in saying they would take the vaccine.

The Repubs are singing the same song this time, too, calling the outbreak of COVID-19 a hoax and supporting Trump’s idiotic and incoherent blabbering and tweeting about it.  Even as they try to cover for Trump, they’re attacking Obama for doing exactly the opposite of what he actually did.

Same song, different pandemic.

In Harris County yesterday, lines of voters were long and the wait was up to 5 hours.  Why?  There are two primary reasons:

• Since the 2013 Supreme Court decision that gutted the Voting Rights Act Texas has closed 542 polling places, most in historically black and Latino areas.  If you include 2012 closings, that number rises to 750.
• In Harris County at least, the Republican party refused to allow a joint primary with Dems.  What that meant was that the voting machines were divided in 2, half for Repubs, half for Dems.  Since Trump essentially had no opponent, turnout in the GOP primary was very low so HALF of voting machines remained essentially unused.

Both of these moves by Republicans made it harder for Texans to vote, which has been their goal for over 20 years as demographics started moving against them.  I got to experience their strategy yesterday since my polling place was one of those closed.  It took me three attempts at two different polling places to finally cast my vote, and I had to drive 15 minutes from one polling place to another to accomplish that.  After discovering my polling place was closed, I drove to my old polling place only to find the line out the door and down the block. I went to have some lunch and returned about an hour later to find the line almost as long.  A nice young poll worker for Ben Rose had information on other polling places, so I drove all the way out to Buffalo Speedway to vote at a church there.  The line there was about half an hour (and it was air-conditioned) so I waited it out.  When I got into the polling place, HALF of the voting machines were being unused while Republican poll workers twiddled their thumbs.  On the other side, Dems were forced to wait in multiple lines to access the other half.  Total time not including lunch was about two hours of waiting and a lot of driving just to vote in a goddam primary.

It’s shameful that the Republican party has been allowed to continuously and increasingly restrict access to the Constitutional right to vote.  Their rationale, of course, is based on lies since their actual goal is voter suppression not “election integrity” which is one of their standard lies.  Texas Republicans are perfectly happy to make the lives of their fellow Texans miserable simply for political gain.  This reason alone should be enough to vote the bastards out.

I thought I had seen the lowest of the lows, but Republicans continue to shatter the floor for dishonesty.  Today, while North Carolina Democrats were at a 9/11 memorial ceremony,  Republicans pulled a fast one and held a rush vote to override Democratic Governor Roy Cooper’s veto of the Republican budget bill.  The Repubs have been trying to override the veto for 2 months, but couldn’t get the 3/5 majority.  Earlier, Republican chairman of the rules committee, David Lewis, lied to Democratic leader Darren Lewis that there would be no votes while the Democratic caucus was at the 9/11 ceremony.  As soon as they left, he held the vote and rammed through the vote, overriding Cooper’s veto.  Democratic Rep. Deb Butler shouted her objection and Repub Speaker Tim Moore tried to have her arrested.

They can’t win by the rules anymore, so they just break them.

Just like in the Robin Williams’ movie, Awakenings, comatose patients in the Senate came out of their Trumpist comas long enough to speak out against Trump’s latest power grab that would destroy hundreds of billions of dollars of economic growth for no good reason.  His idiotic tariff against Mexican imports over illegal immigration is one of Stephen Miller’s (Trump’s resident white supremacist) worst yet, so bad, in fact, that the comatose have risen to finally say no.  It will be interesting now if Trump is dumb enough to push it to a vote.

I’m popping popcorn and pulling a few beers out of the fridge for this one.

As JJ pointed out this morning, Trump’s Rump Nosers are going after Adam Schiff with a vengeance, especially after His Orangeness demanded that he should somehow be forced to resign over the Mueller report that no one outside of the Justice Department has seen.  Fortunately, Schiff is having none of it, and dropped the hammer on said Nosers during the House Intelligence Committee meeting today.  It’s worth the time watching the whole thing: