The Most Horrible People in America

US Tests: 141,663,533

US Cases: 25,697,888

US Deaths: 430,120

Worldwide Cases: 102,741,314

Worldwide Deaths: 2,223,750

I really wish these people would finally get the #TrumpVirus case they so richly deserve, and die, so that the rest of us could continue doing the hard work of rebuilding the country from the disaster of the last four years:

Dodger Stadium’s mass COVID-19 vaccination site was temporarily shut down Saturday afternoon when anti-vaccine and far-right groups descended upon one of the largest vaccination sites in the country, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The LA Times reported that some of the anti-vaccine and far-right groups who showed up at the Dodger Stadium carried signs discrediting the COVID-19 vaccine and shouted at people at urge against getting vaccinated. There were no incidents of violence.

As a precaution, the Los Angeles Fire Department closed the entrance to the stadium for about an hour starting just before 2 p.m. Additionally, several LAPD officers responded to the scene. A spokeswoman for the LAPD told the LA Times that no arrests were made.

A fire department official told the LA Times that the Dodger Stadium vaccination site reopened a few minutes before 3 p.m.

Andrea Garcia, a spokeswoman for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, told the LA Times that no appointments were canceled even with the 55-minute interruption.

German Jaquez, who had been waiting an hour to receive his vaccination when the stadium’s gates were closed, told the LA Times that some of the protesters were spouting false claims of COVID-19 being a myth and unfounded claims that vaccination is dangerous to people in line.

GOP Grifters Love Cameo

Today --- because reasons --- I learned about the web site Cameo.  Apparently, the deal there is that, for a fee, a famous person (or more often, a 'famous' person) will record a personalized video message for you.

Obviously, not ALL famous people (or even 'famous' people) are available through this service.  But they have Hollywood celebrities, athletes --- and even political commentators!

Now, I haven't researched the list of available political commentators thoroughly.  And some of them are political satirists (and number of Trump impersonators, and even one Obama impersonator!).  But of the people on there who I recognize as *actual* political figures --- they are all Republicans.

Tomi Lahren, Corey Lewandowski, Sarah Palin, Gretchen Carlson, OMAROSA (hey, she's the one who chose to put her name ALL CAPS), Jeanine Pirro, Joe Arpaio, Scaramucci, Sebastian Gorka, Sean Spicer and Michael Cohen.

I guess Rod Blagoevich is nominally a Democrat --- but given his epic corruption, and the fact that Trump went out of his way to pardon him, he's really a Republican in spirit.

I view this as anecdotal evidence of something which should be painfully clear after 4 years of Trump --- that Republican politicians are just out for money, and will do almost anything to get it.

COVID19 Update --- Hope is Finally on the Way

US Tests: 246,383,689

US Cases: 24,483,676

US Deaths: 404,695

Worldwide Cases: 98,119,590

Worldwide Deaths: 2,104,927

It will be years before we fully understand how badly the Trump administration mishandled the U.S. response to the #TrumpVirus:

Millions of Americans would be getting vaccinated by early 2021, bringing the COVID-19 pandemic to its final end, the Operation Warp Speed official promised.

“We’re on track to deliver hundreds of millions of doses by January 2021,” Paul Mango, the official, told reporters on an Aug. 13 press call. 

The Trump administration, we now know, would fail spectacularly to meet that goal.

Repeatedly, officials passed up chances to use the federal government to get vaccines into the arms of Americans, or to help the states responsible for disseminating the shots finish the so-called “last mile” of distribution — the critical final steps before the vaccines are injected into patients’ arms.

The Biden administration is now confronted with a serious problem: how to pick up the pieces and build a new, federally managed vaccination effort starting, virtually, from scratch.

And since the death total in the U.S. just passed the 400,000 mark recently, it's worth --- once again --- recalling that the U.S. Army estimated that the death total would be 150,000 at most.  And if it did get that bad, it would be a rare 'black swan' event: 

An unclassified briefing document on the novel coronavirus prepared on Feb. 3 by U.S. Army-North projected that “between 80,000 and 150,000 could die.” It framed the projection as a “Black Swan” analysis, meaning an outlier event of extreme consequence but often understood as an unlikely one.

Add to this the MAGA effort to overthrow the government on January 6, and the only logical conclusion is that anyone who still supports Donald Trump or his movement should be forever shunned from polite society, if not imprisoned. 

 

Trump and the Big Lie

 Just leaving this here, since it will probably be worth revisiting in a year or two:

Trump’s coup attempt of 2020-21, like other failed coup attempts, is a warning for those who care about the rule of law and a lesson for those who do not. His pre-fascism revealed a possibility for American politics. For a coup to work in 2024, the breakers will require something that Trump never quite had: an angry minority, organized for nationwide violence, ready to add intimidation to an election. Four years of amplifying a big lie just might get them this. To claim that the other side stole an election is to promise to steal one yourself. It is also to claim that the other side deserves to be punished.

Informed observers inside and outside government agree that right-wing white supremacism is the greatest terrorist threat to the United States. Gun sales in 2020 hit an astonishing high. History shows that political violence follows when prominent leaders of major political parties openly embrace paranoia.

Our big lie is typically American, wrapped in our odd electoral system, depending upon our particular traditions of racism. Yet our big lie is also structurally fascist, with its extreme mendacity, its conspiratorial thinking, its reversal of perpetrators and victims and its implication that the world is divided into us and them. To keep it going for four years courts terrorism and assassination.

COVID19 Update - Day 298

US Tests: 214,286,448*

US Cases: 19,888,285*

US Deaths: 339,313*

Worldwide Cases: 84,177,874*

Worldwide Deaths: 1,830,612*

* - Numbers are a lower bound.  True numbers are being suppressed by the Trump administration

Happy New Year!  I hope everyone had an enjoyable New Year's Eve/New Year's Day.  Mine was fine, thanks for asking.

I hadn't planned to post anything again this soon --- but then I saw this story in the Times, detailing how Trump saw the pandemic purely as a political problem, rather than giving a damn whether Americans live or die:

Efforts by his aides to persuade him to promote mask wearing, among the simplest and most effective ways to curb the spread of the disease, were derailed by his conviction that his political base would rebel against anything that would smack of limiting their personal freedom. Even his own campaign’s polling data to the contrary could not sway him.

His explicit demand for a vaccine by Election Day — a push that came to a head in a contentious Oval Office meeting with top health aides in late September — became a misguided substitute for warning the nation that failure to adhere to social distancing and other mitigation efforts would contribute to a slow-rolling disaster this winter.

His concern? That the man he called “Sleepy Joe” Biden, who was leading him in the polls, would get credit for a vaccine, not him.

The government’s public health experts were all but silenced by the arrival in August of Dr. Scott W. Atlas, the Stanford professor of neuroradiology recruited after appearances on Fox News.

With Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the coordinator of the White House virus task force, losing influence and often on the road, Dr. Atlas became the sole doctor Mr. Trump listened to. His theories, some of which scientists viewed as bordering on the crackpot, were exactly what the president wanted to hear: The virus is overblown, the number of deaths is exaggerated, testing is overrated, lockdowns do more harm than good.

Trump is the single person most responsible for the devastation the #TrumpVirus has done to more than 340,000 Americans (and counting).  We must never forget the depths of his depravity and failed leadership --- nor can we let his supporters forget it, either.