Just In Case
Just in case you were wondering what our country would look like if Trump had been reelected, just look at India and Brazil. That’s exactly what would be happening.
The state of Telangana reported 10,122 new COVID-19 cases on Monday and it was the fifth consecutive day where the state saw over 6,000 cases in 24 hours. At such a time, when the health mechanism is grappling with the crisis, political parties in the state are contributing to the swelling number of cases by holding election campaign rallies and road shows.
Yeah, Trump would be doing that.
And this sounds familiar.
Dr Navjot Dahiya, the national vice president of the Indian Medical Association, on Monday called Prime Minister Narendra Modi a “super spreader” of the coronavirus for holding political rallies in poll-bound states and allowing Kumbh Mela to take place amid the second wave of the pandemic, reported The Tribune.
So, that would be us.
Thank the good lord we’re Trump-less!
Or in French (because EVERYTHING sounds better in French!)
1“Merci le bon seigneur, nous sommes sans Trump!”
Glad to see you posting again Juanita! You have been missed, and you have been in my thoughts so often over these last couple of weeks.
2That all sounds painfully familiar, and about where we would be if Trump had actually won the last election. I’m so incredibly glad that his efforts to steal it failed, and we have Joe Biden as president. Now, if only we could get the other half of the country to believe that. . . .
3Too bad his caustic, callous, corrupt term left a pustule pock marked landscape with assorted microbial actors still in office. E.G.; Baby Food containing heavy metals going out Gerber’s loading dock. While the FDA looked askance .
Lead tainted water in large tracts of the Country still affecting children’s learning capacity.
4How many deaths from a dawdling emperor spending vast sums while spending “7 or more” hours a day out of reach in “Executive Time” watching Fox, TV, twitter and golf.
Word!
5I try my best never to imagine what our country would look like if Trump had been reelected, because I hate waking up screaming.
6He already did that. The last time, IIRC, was the massive, largely maskless gather on the Ellipse on Jan. 6. Idiots as far as the eye could see.
7Welcome back Juanita!
8And kind of related, Politico has a fantastic piece about the lead up to and execution of the Bin Laden raid.
9It’s a long read, but seems almost like you’re sitting around with a bunch of regular folks just talking.
Except some of them were defense Secretary and head of all American special forces.
You know, just folks.
And as far as relating to this post, read Hillary’s quote and imagine if 2016 had gone the other way.
Comparatively speaking.
Would Y’All Care For some Dept of Justice Pie and cold milk To finish your evening?
Allen Weisselberg granted immunity in the Michael Cohen investigation ~ a day after reports reveal longtime friend of Trump and Publisher of the National Enquirer, David Pecker, was also granted immunity in the same investigation.
others trump once trusted would mean tides could receive even more evidence including new tapes in the hands of Feds tonight!
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Trump Biographer: Trump Jr, Eric Trump Should Be 100% Worried | The Beat With Ari Melber | MSNBC
Interviews with former prosecutor: Seth Waxman
10Shelby Holliday from the WSJ
and Gwenda Blair: author of The Trumps
In NV if you want to be vaccinated, you have received your 2nd dose way ahead of all scheduled projections thanks to the Biden administration, Gov Sisolak, the National Guard, and business owners, mostly casino, who have made their events centers available for thousands of shots daily. We’re rocking the vax here, yet due to covidiot surrounding states and some within our own state, the decline in infections is not what we’d hope. It’s still a too high “plateau” rate.
Government can do so much as the Biden administration has proven. But for a serious vaccination/herd immunity acceptable rate to happen, covidiot gubs like D’oh Santis and A-Butt need to be hauled kicking and screaming or otherwise hauled into reality before Congress. Also needed are sane employers who demand that employees are vaccinated. Federal, state, Amazon, Walmart and a few other large employers can and should do everything legally possible to up the vaccination rate among the recalcitrant.
WTF? Shots “optional” in the military? Lordy 4 years of Donnie turned the grunts into a bunch of mindless conspiracy snowflakes.
11Trump took preventative medicine for COVID.
Trump contracted COVID and almost died.
Trump gladly got himself the CODID vaccine.
Melania too.
Yet Trump supporters won’t take the vaccine, because…?
12Just realized I didn’t post the link.https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/04/30/osama-bin-laden-death-white-house-oral-history-484793
13It’s not covid related, but besides being a great read, to me at least, it’s a really good illustration of what we had before 2016, could’ve had for the last 4 years, and have now.
14As they say in Scotland, “Tha a h-uile dad nas fheàrr às aonais Trump.”
Google Translate, gotta love it!
15Many of our prescription medicines come from India as well as clothing. As India struggles with this pandemic, will their industries suffer and bring those jobs to other countries? This is dangerous because politics in India have always been iffy.
16Indeed, Grandma Ada, the chaos in India disturbs me, too. A lot of our vaccine production is actually done in India, which has threatened, for obvious reasons, to nationalize it and keep it for their own people. Even if they don’t, many thousands of people are dying there every day, and at least one variant has appeared there, and spread to other countries. We need to help get their situation under control, as quickly as possible.
17I have always been impressed by the number of people immigrating from India to our shores. They all seem to be exceptionally talented, especially in the most rigorous career paths. I am aware that India went through a really dark patch of hindu v. moslem wars and such. I also knew it was overcrowded and is actually a very poor country with only a small crowd of wealthy folks. After experiencing Trump, I now actually realize what is going on in India when I read the newspapers. If that country dissolves into warfare again, it cold be super bad for the rest of the planet.
18Lovely to have you back, JJ.
19Oh the horrors, I still have nightmares of the first election. We must never forget, it didn’t have to be this bad.
Sen. Sherrod Brown on the Senate floor, ‘Trump dismantled our infectious Disease infrastructure 3 years ago.’
20https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6o7SffOCaxg
Jane & PKM wonder why the military can refuse vaccines.
Back when the anthrax vaccine was first rolled out, that non-working but very dangerous vaccine was forced on active duty military, some of whom sued because it was not approved for use by the FDA.
The military has a long history of doing medical experiments on military personnel, who frequently are not informed of risks, consent is not obtained, &c. The Supreme Court had enough of that and ruled against the military forcing active duty to take unapproved vaccines.
The current vaccines are unapproved (emergency use authorisations only), thus military personnel can refuse them.
The moment one reaches final approval, that will be added to the host of vaccines you get when you enter boot camp, and personnel will not be able to refuse that vaccine (disobeying a lawful order).
Interestingly, the horned douchecanoe who was part of the insurrection mob in the Capitol was thrown out of the Navy for refusing the anthrax vaccine on a bad conduct discharge.
The man is obviously an idiot (for storming the Capitol), but the character of his discharge should be changed in light of the Supreme Court decision.
21As a contrast to the Rufous Ratbastard:
Saw a news clip of President Joe and Dr. Jill Biden walking across the White House lawn yesterday.
Joe spotted a dandelion flower in the grass and spryly bent down, picked it, and limberly stood up, hardly breaking his stride, and gifted the humblest of flowers to his love.
Now can anyone imagine Komrade Donnei physically capable of such a gesture, let alone even first thinking of presenting it to Malaria?
[Guess what? The RWNJ media slime-o-sphere is having a meltdown over this earthshaking event…]
We are so fortunate to have a good guy like Joe Biden leading us forward.
22India chose to spend its limited resources on a nuclear arsenal and a space program instead of public health. Millions are paying the price now.
23India was taken over years ago by fundamentalist Hindus, the same fine folks who assassinated Gandhi way back when. Their Republican Party is the BJP, and their Trump is Modi. Muslims increasingly are treated as second class citizens, and the BJP has passed laws that deny citizenship to Muslims, including many who were born in India. Technically, it’s a “National Registration of Citizens” act, but it was defined to make it hard if not impossible for many Muslims to be registered.
It’s the exact thing that Trump would have loved to inflict on the U.S. His henchmen wanted to circumvent the 14-th amendment, and you can bet that anyone with a Hispanic, Chinese, or Middle Eastern sounding surname would have been first up for depriving of citizenship and deportation – even if they and their parents were born and reared in the U.S. Fortunately the jackass supermajority in the Supreme Court was only rammed through the week before the election, so they have not had a chance to overturn it. Yet.
In any case, Modi is just as evil as Trump, but not quite as stupid. Trump loved Modi and had him as one of his best buddies in the Wannabe Dictators Club. Not at the same tier as Putin, because, hey, Modi is not white.
My wife is from south India, from a heavily Hindu state. She has relatives that could fit right in with the Trumpistas, Proud Boys, and Quack-Anons. I tried to stop her from getting a Facebook account, but now she spends hours each week arguing with the BJP idjits. And it’s just as useless and pointless as arguing with someone wearing a MAGAT hat.
24Buttermilk Sky: So did WE spend much of the national budget on the military rather than on public health. We have a large segment of our population that would rather spend taxpayer money on arms and show-off science (including Mars rovers, which personally I love to watch, but are not dealing with our real emergencies: infrastructure, housing, health, etc.) than anything called public health.
25Where I get crosswise with every single political position that starts with “never before X” or “without Y the world would be all peaceful and plentiful” is that history makes liars of all that. Science makes liars of all that. All or nothing, black and white, binary thinking…whatever term you use for it…is just plain wrong. (The same thing applies to horses, but I promise not to wander into that set of rabbit-or-horse holes.)
As a species, and as individuals, we run the gamut of behaviors in the human repertoire. We are selfish AND generous (selectively); we are cruel AND kind, we make war AND peace, we are the best AND the worst. Solzhenitsyn said it the best for me–it’s stuck in my mind & heart better than anything else: “The line between good and evil runs right down the middle of every human heart” and moves back and forth in reaction to circumstances (that part I can’t remember the exact wording off but the meaning stuck.) The man in a prison camp who steals your morsel of bread one week may be the same man who gives you half his bread another week, because of stuff. His stuff, your stuff, the outside circumstances.
No culture has ever been perfectly peaceful, perfectly kind, perfectly generous. The evidence of past violence across thousands, tens of thousands of years, is right there in archeology. Bones with healed wounds, bones with unhealed wounds, the ones that killed the person. Stories of conflict in every culture, from their creation myths on up. Modern weaponry can kill more faster, injure more faster…but with no less malice than Cain used on Abel, and for no better reason. The problem isn’t “western civilization” or “colonialism”…the problem is every single human heart with that line running down its middle, that fragile, so-easily-shifted line. (And no, this isn’t a defense of western civilization or colonialism or racism or sexism or ageism or any other way that humans figure out to make someone a target.) You could kill off every white person in the world and there would still be conflicts, wars, private and public murders. You could try to drag everyone back to a presumed golden age of anti-tech (there are SF books about that, some very well thought out) and there would still be assassinations and poisonings and stabbings and crushing with weights and bashing with clubs and raping of women.. It’s not Hindus, it’s not Muslims, it’s not Buddhists, it’s not Voudon, it’s not even Christianity…it’s the heart-set of humans, which swings both ways, from the extreme of generosity, patience, kindness, love…to the extreme of selfishness, intolerance, cruelty, hatred.
I saw a wonderful tweetstram this morning, a guy in EMS who had reason to be very angry with people partying unmasked right across from the EMS station. “Anger is fuel…it can give you energy to confront, but if it takes over, it destroys.” It’s now, hours later, somewhere so far downstream I can’t find it, His anger, restrained thoughtfully, let him find the words to talk to the party-goers in a way that got through to them how painful it was was to be working to save lives and then have people deliberately making each other sick. ‘It hurts,” he told them. And to Twitter “We need to understand that we’re all angry, we’re all afraid, and we need to care for each other.”
Yes.
26From the Guardian:
Political chaos and poverty leave South America at virus’s mercy
President Jair Bolsonaro’s prediction that the crisis was nearing an end was misguided in Brazil and many of its neighbors
(We already had and have the political chaos- my comment)
https://apple.news/AJXuJFsBdRQyiDK1Uy9_dmA
27Elizabeth Moon, well said, as usual.
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