A whole lot of hurt

 

"A group of Stanford University economists who created a statistical model estimate that there have been at least 30,000 coronavirus infections and 700 deaths as a result of eighteen campaign rallies President Trump held from June to September."  (The New York Times)

Having freed the country from the tyranny of doctors and scientists, are they ready to listen to economists?  Maybe if they were in Texas instead of California?

Ah, Texas.  Where an excretion of Trumpanzees (it's like a murder of crows) tried to drive a Biden campaign bus off the road yesterday.  The Biden people say the same twelve idiots have followed them all over the country.  Younger staffers will now have some idea what the Freedom Rides of the 1960s were like.  "I LOVE TEXAS!" tweeted President Lawnorder.  More than 9 million Texans have already voted, and unless Gov. Abbott can come up with a creative means of disallowing their ballots, we all may love Texas in a few days.  

 Anthony Fauci has stayed out of politics since being appointed by Ronald Reagan.  He is not registered as a member of either party.  Dr. Fauci is so disturbed by what he sees coming that he's talking like an astrologer:  "All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season," he told the Washington Post.  The record-keepers at Johns Hopkins report 81,000 new cases yesterday.  For stating the obvious Fauci was accused of "playing politics," while Trump's Fauci, Scott Atlas, was giving interviews to RT, Putin's Fox News, and tweeting about "lockdowns, facts, frauds."  The radiologist says he had "no idea" RT is a Russian disinformation machine and registered foreign agent.  Trump is so enraged that he can't fire Fauci, he's -- let's just say the White House cleaning staff deserve a raise when this nightmare ends.  

In a touching tribute to loyal, sad Trumpite Chris Christie, some Trumpanzees made their point, whatever it is, by shutting down a section of the Garden State Parkway   Since the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville it has been clear that a car in the hands of a MAGAt is just as bad as a gun.  I wish they would hold more boat parades like the one on Lake Travis.   Why not bungee jump for Trump?  

Where's Donzo?  I'm glad you asked.  Donzo is in Montoursville, Pennsylvania, exposing the awesome power of a former vice president.  It's Biden who's preventing a vaccine because -- strap in -- "our opponents do not believe in science."  Nobody laughed but Twitter.  Everybody else was re-charging their iron-o-meters.

To be clear, a vaccine does not yet exist, and hardly does Plasma Technologies LLC, a South Carolina company whose address is its owner's condo.  Nevertheless, Plasma Technologies is getting $65 million from the administration to develop "a possible COVID-19-fighting blood plasma technology," as soon as they get that Bunsen burner set up on the terrace.  Their fairy godfather is Rick Santorum, who was voted out by Pennsylvanians in 2006 but continues to dwell in the swamp Republicans promise to drain any time now.  As far as our researchers can tell, Santorum has never held a real job, but his name is an amusing neologism.  (Neolojism?)

From Freedom Riders in Texas to Freedom Marchers Redux in North Carolina:  two hundred people marched from their church to the polls in Alamance County, including small children and the mayor of Burlington.  They knelt in the street for eight minutes to commemorate the murder of George Floyd, whereupon police and sheriff's deputies tear-gassed them.  Their sound system was also dismantled.  The attorney general Josh Stein tweeted, "All eligible voters in North Carolina have a constitutional right to cast their vote safely and securely, without threats or intimidation."  Which is nice, but as Jim Malone says with his dying breath, "What are you prepared to do?"

Sean Connery died yesterday, and while I have mixed feelings about him and especially about The Untouchables, it's a line I can't stop hearing.  Do we have to adopt "the Chicago way" and fight dirty to defeat the smirking gangster?   In the current New York Review of Books David W. Blight says Trumpism has "brought us almost to a new 1860" and concludes, "We cannot imagine the same violent result this time...but a preservation of our Union will not come from merely calling out moral hypocrisy, or wringing our hands over cynicism, or even from the power of numbers.  Democracy has to be sustained by the same will to power that can destroy it."  (My italics)  

Aware on some reptilian level that he is widely detested, Trump has signaled for months that he will not accept the final tally, no matter how gerrymandered and jury-rigged.  What are we prepared to do?  Some unions have suggested strikes, but a minority of Americans now belong to unions.  We have organized mass demonstrations for years, beginning with the Women's March, and all we got was Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Barrett.  When Democrats control the Congress we can impeach and remove, but he won't accept that, either, and the Trumpanzees have demonstrated their willingness, if not eagerness, to use violence.  Since the divisions are ideological rather than regional this time, maybe it's not "a new 1860" so much as "a new 1933," and the concentration camps are already up and running.

What are we prepared to do?  We don't have long to decide.