New GOP campaign slogan: "Your money or your life"

The COVID canary just dropped off it's perch in Iowa:

"Iowa Workforce Development said Monday that failing to return to work out of fear of catching the virus will be considered a voluntary quit, which disqualifies workers from receiving unemployment benefits.

The department urged employers to report workers who don’t return to their jobs for a good reason “as soon as possible.” It warned that the federal law providing an additional $600 weekly in benefits contains “serious consequences” for fraudulent claims.

Workers who do not return can collect benefits only under certain circumstances, such as being sick due to the virus or living with an infected family member."

I told you this was coming.

I fucking told you.

These people have absolutely NO interest in the lives of you worthless proles. You're an "economic unit", and if you value that worthless life more than the value of their 401K? Heh. Too bad for you, dead man.

We really are ruled by the worse among us.

And that's because far too many of us ARE the worst among us. They will revel in this, and cheer as the bodies pile up. They'll glory in "taking the punch".

They are a death cult.

And if we cannot stop them. If we cannot destroy them this November they will destroy us all.

Just so we understand each other here

It's becoming increasingly obvious that:

1. The Trump Administration has no "plan" for dealing with The Plague. There has been no serious work put in on increasing the volume of testing, there is no interest in any form of contact tracing. There is not even a pretense of the sort of WW2-level fiscal mobilization we'd need to "freeze" the country in place to preserve people's lives and fortunes until there is, at least, a promising form of treatment for this pathogen.
2. Trump and the GOP are terrified of arriving in November with the country still locked down. They will force open the gates to the city regardless of the Mongols because they see the alternative as electoral suicide.

So the inescapable conclusion is that the GOP "plan", such as it is, is to "take the punch"; force people out into contact with each other, spread the disease, and let the corpses pile up until those who are going to die are dead and the survivors are, hopefully, immune. Paul Campos sums it up:

The coronavirus is obviously highly infectious, and in addition many people are contagious when they’re completely asymptomatic. As Frum says, testing lots of people — and we’re not even doing that yet, not really — is just a first step toward doing a bunch of other things. But those other things are really hard and expensive and unpleasant, and we (meaning the American ruling class) don’t do hard and expensive and unpleasant.

So you get lots of stuff like this article from the president of Brown, about how colleges and universities have to open in the fall because otherwise there will be no money to pay for things, so they have to do X Y and Z, except even doing X Y and Z in the context of a university campus almost certainly wouldn’t be adequate, and in any case there is as far as I can tell no actual movement toward doing X Y and Z.

The real “plan,” such as it is, is to let a lot of people die.

And that's it.

We are ruled by men who, faced with a pandemic disease, are eager to benefit themselves at the cost of other people's lives.

Not because there's no alternative.

But because the alternative is "really hard and expensive and unpleasant" and they'd rather us proles die than they have to do that.

Are we clear on that?

We're going to be sacrificed on the altar of political and economic power. Primarily - though, infuriatingly, not exclusively - Republican political power.

I don't know about you, but that makes me furiously, incandescently, ragingly angry. Angry as in "hang every fucking MAGAt traitor I can lay my hands on" angry. Angry as in "take you bastards with me" angry.

And yet, here I am, stuck in my little house in Portland with only 100 rounds of .303 British and fucking Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump are all the way across the continent. I'm a decent shot, with my old Lee-Enfield. But not THAT good a shot.

To hit even Trump's ginormous lardass would take a lot of windage and elevation at that range, more's the pity.

Well.

Fuck.

That's how sieges work, Phil

How the hell did they deal with these people in the past?

Phil: "That's it. I can't take it any more. We gotta get out. Open the gates."

Dave: "We've been through this, Phil. The Mongols are still outside. We can't open the gates yet."

Phil: "But...freedom! I gotta get out. I can't take it. I gotta...I gotta weed the turnips! I left the lights on in the cow byre! I gotta buy another dozen swords!"

Dave:...

Dave: "Mongols, Phil."

Phil: "Uuuugh. I can't staaand it. We've been in here for...weeks!"

Dave: "That's how sieges work, Phil."

Phil: "But...the Mongols have barely killed anyone for days!"

Dave: "That's because of the walls."

Phil: "Are you sure? Maybe the Mongols aren't as dangerous as you said they were!"

Dave:

Phil: "I'm just saying, how bad could it be? They can't kill all of us!"

Dave: "That is literally the thing they do, Phil."

Phil: "Aaarrrggh! My turnips!"

Friday Jukebox: Life Ain't Fair Edition

"Welcome home, my child
Your home is a checkpoint now
Your home is a border town
Welcome to the brawl
Life ain't fair, my child
Put your hands in the air, my child
Slowly now, single file, now
Up against the wall."

I hope you and yours are safe and well and hopeful.

For sometimes hope is all we have.

Director of National Stupidity

Per Pierce:

"On Monday, Richard Grenell, acting director of the Office of National Intelligence and the U.S. ambassador to Germany, posted a photo of the Bill of Rights on Instagram with a title “Signed Permission Slip to Leave Your House.” Below the post, in the caption, Grenell wrote “Love this!” A reporter tweeted the post after its publishing saying: “Seems the top US intelligence chief ADNI ⁦@RichardGrenell⁩ isn’t a fan of the stay at home orders.” Grenell responded: “‘Seems’ Grenell is a fan of the Constitution to me.”

No.

No. No. No. No. No. Fucking no.

Just no.

Neither the Constitution nor the Bill of Rights constitute a "permission slip" for you to scream "FIRE!" in a crowded theater, or bear nuclear arms, you goddamn stupid fucking chucklefuck.

You don't get to use your "right" to endanger me.

That's why your Ferrari has to follow the speed limit and you can't just bust a cap into the air anytime you want to.

Jesus Fucking Christ. And you're the fucking DNI?

Seriously?

Based on this I'm betting you don't have the actual intelligence to open a jar of mayonnaise unaided, you fucking idiot. This isn't abortion or gun-grabbing or liberalism where you can show up and stand around in a bunch waving your metal dicks at, you numbskull. It's a fucking disease that kills people, you dope, and you get it from other people like...umm...numbskulls standing around in a bunch waving their metal dicks.

It's not so much that I'm furious that I'm being ruled by greedy, careless, plutocratic, God-pestering sonsofbitches.

I am.

But it's the fucking stupid that really chaps my ass.

Ceterum autem censeo GOPinem esse delendam.

COVID Blues

I was sitting at the kitchen table in the pre-dawn dark - as I do more often than not; my workday starts early and I can't reset my body clock on the weekend - when I realized that I was not just in the dark but in the Dark. My thoughts were unrelentingly grim.

I am living in the Plague Year, and there is literally nothing I can do about that except hide and hope to survive until a vaccine.

I also realized that my work is, frankly, a dreary grind of shitty development projects and doesn't look to be any different anytime soon...assuming that we're not decimated by the coming depression and I am jobless.

And I am living under the rule of greedy, stupid fools who are determined to ensure that the notional rules of the republic we are supposed to be living in don't allow me to defenestrate them, who are bound and determined to deal with this Plague Year in the worst, most dangerous and risky way possible. They will kill me if they can, and the political structures of my country don't let me give them the fucking conge' they deserve.

That's just...well, grim. I cannot sweeten it and I cannot lighten it. All I can do is grind on, doing what I can to make things better around me.

But what I want...well, that's another thing entirely. I'm furiously, incandescently angry at the way that 40 years of Republican malfeasance and liberal cringing have brought us to this. I want to lead the mob up the capitol steps, break down the doors to the congressional chambers and hang Moscow Mitch and Tom Cotton and every other treacherous Republican fuckstick from the Visitors' Gallery, and then on down Pennsylvania Avenue to drag the orange shitgibbon and his slimy pal Miller out into the Rose Garden for a picnic and auto-de-fe, with the two guests of dishonor as the barbecued main course.

But how can that help. We all can see what these bastards are doing. But it's not them. It's that four out of ten other Americans love it, and that just makes me loathe and despise THEM, too. And hating 40% of my "fellow Americans"? That's...not healthy.

So here we are.

Sometimes we just have to bend into the shitstorm and slog on forward. It sucks. It always has. But we just have to hope for better days ahead, and the chance to lay our burden down.

Update 4/14: And here's the really infuriating part.

It SO didn't have to be this way.

What's most appalling is that in this horrific disease Donald Trump and his GOP pals were effectively gifted the chance to be fucking heroes.

I mean that sincerely. They could have gone down in American history with the pantheon of men (and, unfortunately, they ARE all men...) who have saved the Republic. Washington. Lincoln. FDR.

All Trump had to do was what any sane, decent person would have done. Shut his piehole. Listened to people who knew better. Taken their advice to act quickly and competently. Spoken the words of comfort and care. Acted as Lincoln did in 1861 and FDR did in 1941. Mobilized the nation. Produced the tests, provided the ventilators, coordinated the response.

I know I keep saying this, but this was a fucking no-brainer. We've done this before, only it was Japanese, not viruses; we kick the federal money machine into action, start paying people to stay home instead of build bombers, businesses to stay shut instead of make tanks and helmets.

Freeze the nation in place until treatment, and then vaccine, came on-line.

That's it.

That's ALL.

He does that, and he's flying up there with the Greats. Twenty years after his enormous orange ass gets kicked into the hole his meatface is up there on Rushmore right next to Teddy.

But this goddamn fuckstick and his worthless fucking GOP pals couldn't do that to save their (and our) lives.

HE couldn't do it because he's a fucking rodent, and all his pizza-rat brain can manage is his own cravings; his craving for money, for power, to sate his ginormous ego.

THEY couldn't do it because they're fucking slaves, slaves to their bloated ideology where it's a Hobbesean war of all against all, where cash is king, C.R.E.A.M., baby, and it's all about punishing the darks and the bitches and the libs. They could no more act heroically than a dog could resist licking its ass.

That's just...sad.

Here these sorry bastards like to fap to their image of themselves as the latter-day Three Percent, the heroic fighting rebels who would be the first to jump to pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the nation in time of trial.

And yet...when the trial arrived, all they could do was snivel, whine, try and grift the pandemic, punish the libs, and then celebrate by dipping their balls in the chocolate to enjoy the creamy texture.

And so here we are, ruled by the very worst among us, without any hope for reprieve.

Dr. Donald J. Trump on the subject of viral intelligence, April 10, 2020

“This is a very brilliant enemy. You know, it’s a brilliant enemy. They develop drugs like the antibiotics. You see it. Antibiotics used to solve every problem. Now one of the biggest problems the world has is the germ has gotten so brilliant that the antibiotic can’t keep up with it.

We’re fighting…not only is it hidden, but it’s very smart. Okay? It’s invisible and it’s hidden but it’s…it’s very smart.”



Something is intelligent...but I'm not sure it's anything (or anyone) involved in this statement.


And this is the head of state of the most powerful nation on Earth.


We are so, so, so, so, so, so, SO fucked.

Naval Gazing

Good discussion here about what the USS Theodore Roosevelt fiasco shows us about the internal mess that is a now an integral part of "the world's most powerful armed force":

"The response to Crozier’s memo, after it was public, was incoherent. Everybody was saying different things. Modly got on the news and told CNN, We’re working on it, we have a plan in place, which was true because he was in communication with Crozier and his staff at that point. That same afternoon, Modly’s boss, Secretary Defense Mark Esper, got on the evening news and said, I haven’t made any decision and I haven’t read the letter in full. They were nowhere near on the same page. It was the beginning of this massive schism that’s happening right now between civilian and military leadership."

"You see a real difference between how the admirals and the political appointees are dealing with this. The admirals are looking for how to get the sailors off and investigate what happened. But the political appointees, specifically Modly and Esper, seemed like they were completely foundering and looking for a political mitigation tactic that might save them face."

And let's not kid ourselves; it wasn't just the flunkies - this clusterfuck goes all the way up to Head of Grifting:

"Last year, the Navy was roiled by Trump’s call for clemency for Eddie Gallagher, a Navy SEAL who was convicted of keeping war trophy photographs of himself with a dead Iraqi captive. So there was already this sense, when Modly came to the job, that you need to anticipate what the White House wants and carry it out. I think that’s an understanding most administration hopefuls have reached. It could be seen as a bit of a proximate factor for what happened with Crozier."

So as far as "most powerful" goes, while I do not question the sheer weight of metal that the U.S. military has and will continue to bring in the near future, it's worth noting that the track record of military organizations that are beaten into a sort of permanent cringe...

...by being forced to suck up to the whims of their dictators...

...is not a good one.

United Failed State(s)

The Republican Party no longer even pretends to adhere to, or even respect, republican principles.

It's increasingly clear that:
1) The current GOP - aside from being a fairly open cult of Trumpism - has absolutely no interest in anything but holding on to it's power to further its plutocratic and theocratic and neoimperial creed.
2) The actual demographics suggest that fewer than about 40% of the people in the United States want that.
3) Therefore the GOP must depend on destroying actual republican governance and the means and methods of popular voting.
4) If one faction will not accept political defeat and go into opposition (actual opposition, instead of simply destroying the functions of governance if those functions will not produce the results the opposition wants) then the political mechanism of a republic is broken.
5) Therefore the United States is effectively no longer a functioning republic.
6) And yet, it is not officially something else; it exists in a sort of free-fall, with the notional trappings of republicanism intact but nonfunctional. With no actual working replacement for this nullity the statutory "government" of the United States is not, in fact, "governing" in any way other than as a gimmick to benefit the predatory minority.
7) That is the definition of a failed state.

I cannot imagine anything more depressing than that, other than it's happening in the Plague Year. Which is, in turn, exposing every one of the most vicious aspects of the GOP Project.

And the solution?

How do you reject something that's adored by four of ten of your countrymen? How does that not break the nation?

We are, in fact, in the midst of a Cold Civil War.

And there is no solution...other than even worse options, like turning it into a HOT Civil War...other than reaching some sort of compromise that both sides can live with.

But how do you "compromise" with a faction that will destroy the social, political, and economic fabric of a nation rather than give up low tax rates for the Kardashians, be willing to listen to Drag Queen Story Hour, consider the possibility that someone, somewhere, for some reason may terminate a pregnancy, or accept a national co-existence with the refugee cleaning their swimming pool or the immigrant cleaning chicken at poverty wages?

How do you "compromise" with someone that considers your ideas and ideals not just undesirable but unacceptably toxic and treasonous?

Tell me.

How?

Update 4/10: It's worth noting here that in Wisconsin the "republic" canary just plummeted headfirst off its perch. Despite the fact that something like 60% of the subjects citizens voted some sort of blue the gerrymandering and court-lock ensure that the red faction is now the ruler of America's Dairyland, and the SCOTUS is juuuuust fine with that.

I know it's hard for the Damn U.S. Public to wrap its head around the reality that about two-fifths of their neighbors want a hard-right dictatorship...but that's what they want.

This isn't simple, like the first Civil War was, simply because it's not geographic. The Confederates aren't all bunched up in the southeastern part of the continent. They're all over; here in ORegon they're out in Clackamas County and down outside of Burns. They're scattered about in the hustings of the Tualatin Valley.

There's no way to "win" that war.

And yet...the alternative is to let this band of red-capped jackals devour the Republic to slake their appetite for tax cuts and knuckling the liberals.

And I see no way out other than bloody-handed war.

The Plague Ship Meets The Ship of Fools

The facts seem pretty plain.

Over the last several weeks the COVID-19 showed up aboard the USS Theodore Roosevelt, CVN-71. Ships, and especially warships, are hothouses for infectious disease; cramped quarters, packed with juicy sailors, little or no opportunity for separation or sterility. Unsurprisingly, the ship's officers' were concerned for the epidemic spread of the disease.

It seems highly likely that the ship's captain requested that his higher permit the carrier to go into port and offload much or most of it's crew to prevent such spread. It's also likely, given the equally-hothouse "wartime" mindset of the current U.S. armed forces, that the higher at whatever level, refused permission.

The captain then mass-mailed a letter spamming his chain of command to, effectively, shame them into allowing him to debark his crew. I have no idea whether the captain knew his message would get out to the general public but I have to think it was at least in his mind, given that presumably he had already gone through his superior and been refused.

The resulting furor allowed the TR to port in Guam and the sailors to be debarked.

The captain was then relieved with cause.

Several days later the Acting Secretary of the Navy made a speech to the crew of the Roosevelt justifying his decision to relieve their captain.

Those are what we know of the facts.

So.

First, the SECNAV was entirely within his rights to relieve the ship's captain. Regardless of the urgency of his request, he did it in such a way as to embarrass his superiors and his service and that, any GI will tell you, is Death for a professional officer. The captain must have known this when he sent his mass e-mail and, I hope, also knew what the likely consequence would be.

Now, that said, the captain's request for evacuation was, to my mind, sound. As he pointed out, despite the ridiculous war footing We the People have allowed our nation to be set on since 2001, we are not, in fact, "at war". There is no mission that must be accomplished that requires the sacrifice of the welfare of the troops. There is no reason to assume that this warship could not have been docked, cleared, her crew tested and the infected quarantined, the vessel scoured clean, and then re-crewed and returned to duty. There is not need to have conducted some sort of amateur biology experiment by allowing an epidemic disease to infect the entire ship's company in pursuit of "herd immunity" or some such notion as was apparently the Navy's intent.

And then there's this.

It's kind of difficult to way what's the slimiest about this little screed that the Acting SECNAV pumped over the ship's intercom system to the crew of the TR. Is it the SECNAV whining about all the hate he's gotten for relieving their captain? Is it the ridiculous boilerplate about how the evil Chinks were tricksy and deceptive but the Navy is always truthful and you can trust us, really, I swear, truly, I-shit-you-not, to care about you? Was it where he called the O-6 "stupid" and "naive"? Or where he claims that he gave his personal word that no sailor would have to die unnecessarily? Or the part where he brings Joe Biden (WTF? Seriously?) into this totally-not-political oration?

Or was it later, when he claimed that he hadn't talked to the POTUS and wasn't ordered to relieve the TR's captain but was, rather, so shit-scared of getting Trumpenrage about the bad press that he shitcanned the captain before Comrade Stalin could drop by and joke with him about how cold it was in the gulags this time of year..?

Or is it now? Now, after the dumb fucking cluck has been beaten over the head with his idiotic blabber and realizes what a goddamn ass he's made of himself:

Jesus fucking wept.

When I was in the active service us grunts would talk about our officers and which ones we'd be the first to shoot in the back if it came to wart. Because although we realized that war meant some of us would die, we also knew that some of our "leaders" were dumber than a bag of fucking hammers and were likely to, if given the opportunity, get us killed not to accomplish the mission or for the good of the country but for some damn, dumb mistake or some ridiculous fuckup they were too goddamn stupid or egotistic to recognize as such. And that getting a better replacement for a dead lieutenant or captain was easier than trying to get the thimblewit relieved.

Well.

Secretary Modly has done his work, as he sees it. And I won't pretend that he didn't have grounds for relieving the captain of the Roosevelt. Every professional soldier or sailor knows what happens when you expose your superiors to public ridicule or wrath.

He did what he felt he had to do and fell on his sword for his crew. Fine.

The real question now is...what should We the People do about a meeching little shitweasel like Acting Secretary Modly?

What should his fate be?

What does he deserve?

And what will become of us if we are not infuriated if he does not - as he will not - receive it?

Update 4/7: The slimy little bastard resigned after being a lightning rod for anger at his sliming an officer who was willing to burn his career to protect his crew and hectoring a crew who are already infested with the Plague.

I'd call it a "happy ending" except Trump will replace him with another sycophantic GOP oxygen-thief. That's what we've got, here in the Plague Year.

Today and yesterday.

My Bride and I love our little PDXStrength gym. She's a committed gym rat, and I love what it does for her, and we both love our Sunday morning yoga class. And at 62, lemme tellya - yoga once a week (with the occasional sun salutation every other day or so..) makes a difference between "stiff" and "petrified".

But here's the State of the Union, starting with a typical class from a year ago:

The Bride is in there, but I won't dime her off and you can pick and choose. But this was pretty much standard for the class up until this winter.

The the Plague Year arrived.

Here's the very last in-person class, from February. Notice the social distancing!

This time I can't hide her - that's the Bride in the foreground.

Well.

This was yoga class today; our awesome instructor Jessica led us over "Zoom" through vinyasa in our living rooms.

I'm glad I'm still safe and healthy and able to do this.

But this is our lives now.

I compared it to Russian roulette last time. But the more I think about it, as a military history buff I can't help comparing the Plague Year to the accounts you read by defenders and inhabitants of cities under siege.

The primary sense is of a slogging progression of days that combine the worst of human conditions; boredom, mild (or severe) deprivation, and lingering fear. All you could do is watch as the besiegers sapped towards the walls. Every new set of parallels, every new battery, meant you were one day closer to the moment when the storming parties broke in. You scanned the horizon in hopes of seeing the signs of a relieving army just as we read the stories of treatments and vaccines...but every unrelieved day is a slow trickle of dead and wounded, sick and weakened.

At least Vienna had Rudi Starhemberg. What have we got? Fucking Jared Kushner? The guy who couldn't lead four privates to a whorehouse?

Well.

Fuck.

Click. Click. Click.

Here's the thing.

I have to go outside to work. It's not optional, it's inherent in the job.

Sometimes that's fine; yesterday I worked alone and didn't come within a dozen yards of anyone.

But mostly it involves others; drillers, contractors, random people. Any of whom could be asymptomatic carriers.

So. Every day, every person I meet, is like...is this it? Is this the person who is the carrier? Is this where I begin to get sick? And how sick? Am I the lucky one who gets a low fever and a headache and that's it? Or..?

It's a little...well, weird. Like a low-grade sort of Russian roulette, only with pathogens and people instead of a revolver.

So if I seem a little testy when I read people saying that we need to just suck it up and get this disease to save the economy? Yeah, well, spin the chamber, fuckstick. Put the muzzle to your temple. Take up the slack on the trigger.

Nice and easy.

How'ya doin' now..?.