As The Next Wave Of Covid Hits

The second wave was predicated on the return to school in August and then colder weather, both forcing people more indoors into enclosed spaces. Trump, the CDC, the Federal government, many state and local governments, and many corporations have blown their response to the first wave and in re-opening or never having closed down, and what we are seeing is a second surge in that first wave. And we still have unaddressed the big motors of the second wave out there.

I would also add the extortionate nature of much of this re-opening. People are being with faced with the choice of: go back to possibly dangerous jobs or don’t and lose your unemployment insurance.

Ah-yup. That about covers it.

OK, some quibbles.

“the (mostly) blue states which got hid hard”

That would be New York. Which had a catastrophic experience, not paralleled elsewhere. And, let us note that leadership there was horribly incompetent, but still widely praised in the press. The governor sent COVID-19 patients into nursing homes! Even Trump never managed a blunder that huge.

My state of California fumbled about, as you say. There’s no second wave — this is still the first wave. The numbers have risen steadily right along. No explosion as in NYC, but also not under control. Not crushed.

California missed its chance at the beginning, because it could not test. There was no test, then there was no permission to test, and finally no effective effort to ramp up testing in a timely way. Part of competence is recognizing what is required and doing what is necessary. Testing had to happen early enough that test-and-trace could be carried out on a doable scale. Now it is too late. I do not think very many people get that this is at the core of the failure. “Opening beaches” — not really a problem. Capacity to test-and-trace — that was a problem. Corruption of the numbers is another sure sign of political and institutional incompetence.

I think Ian is right about the essentially uncaring sociopathy among the super-wealthy. But, there’s another layer in society — the professional and managerial elites that make up the political classes in the Media and supply the politicians and staff the institutions. That’s a lot of people. And, they really do not have it together. They want to preach, “respect expertise” but there is no expertise to respect. They are falling all over themselves to “stand with BLM”. Like they care! That is where the gangrene has set in, in the American body politic.

On the topic,

The re-opening is part of a closing down process for businesses, it’s not a relaunch.
Think “final liquidation sale” not “open for business” when you see companies re-open.
Just ignore the happy “back to business” narrative, it won’t help you or your community.

Be ready for state level austerity once the tax base is squared with the planned budgets.

Canada should keep its borders closed from Americans indefinitely. I don’t see states closing their borders. My state has done a good job of handling the virus but we have plenty of MAGA types who refuse to wear masks and we are next to red states that loosened restrictions before we did. I expect all of this was for nothing because there will be a surge in cases in the fall right when everyone including white collar workers have returned to the office and school begins. It’s going to be a disaster and it will be amusing to watch how long our government officials will ignore the thousands of deaths and hospitalizations before several of them suggest another lockdown.

People like to make fun of the MAGA hicks who have posed a danger to their communities by not wearing masks and social distancing, but it’s the rich and professional class who will pose a greater danger with their frequent traveling. The rich like flouting rules whenever possible and many of them have also refused to wear a mask after discovering that they have COVID-19 (See Representative Andrew Lewis and Senator Rand Paul as two examples).

Off the top of my head, I can think of three ways that these protests can lead to positive economic change:

1. Bring it to the Fed! Come up with a list of demands, find a leader whose heart beats with the masses (Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor comes to mind) and knock on the Fed’s door by the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, and millions and get that man behind the curtain of inequality to get off his printing press and answer to you. They’ve printed up over $20T to bail out the rich through “supporting”, aka inflating, the markets over the past two crises while leaving the working class and poor to pay the full brunt for our rulers’ corruption and financial schemes. Now demand that they divvy that out to the people via paying off all student and medical debt and putting everyone on UBI for the next six months, among other economic demands. If the Fed says that he can’t do that, laugh in his face. He’s a liar. He’d invent six ways to Sunday to bail out the rich, which includes himself. If he explains that he can only lend money out, explain back to him that the money the rich have made off his “generosities” haven’t been paid back to the Fed when they cash out on their stock holdings that he inflated for them. That’s been money in their pocket and power in their wallet.

It’s way past time for the Fed to invest in the U.S. worker and poor rather than fuel the engine of inequality. They have broken the economic ties, the alignments, between capital and the working class by funding a rigged casino, a wealth multiplier for the rich, instead of keeping our rulers’ financial fate mostly dependent on the bread-and-butter, nut-and-bolts economy that we depend upon for a living. It’s a big reason why the U.S. was practically left begging our purported enemy China for medical equipment and supplies to fight this pandemic. It has also led to a corrupt political culture because the economic interests between the rich and the rest of us are continually in direct conflict so all we get is crumbs and circuses from our government.

2. A large nationwide strike that essentially shuts this country down.

3. If a politician or one of these rich people who funds them gets murdered and it brings about a huge public celebration. The loud cheer that will likely resonate through large swaths of the populace may finally bring about a healthy fear to our rulers and get them to act before the bloodlust in the masses gains more traction.

Z

“lie to public countless times, do not be surprised that a sizeable portion of the public won’t believe you” – ProNewerDeal

The disinformation didn’t help but much of the discontent stemmed from the fact that most Americans simply lacked the resources to handle the shutdown. Having no income, no job, no assets, no savings, and tons of debt means you can’t handle any disruption in your life.

Sadly, my countrymen often have less than nothing to their name.

Life here is just an absurd race to get debt and pay it off.

Also, they didn’t have AC in 1918/19, putting the virus on life support for the summer.

Some points —

[1] What everyone says — this is still the first wave surging.

[2] Z wrote: ‘They’ve printed up over $20T to bail out the rich through “supporting”, aka inflating, the markets over the past two crises ….”

In fact, this vastly *underrates* how much money was printed. In the 2008 GFC’s wake it was $28-32 trillion. So far for the 2020 COV19 crisis it’s at least $6 trillion, as far as I can tell.

[3] From Z also, calls for the Fed to release money to recipients other than banks, financial markets, and Forbes 500 corporations. Actually, they’ve just started to do that for the first time, though how long it will last and how deep it will be is anyone’s guess. See —

https://wolfstreet.com/2020/06/18/fed-ends-qe-total-assets-drop-liquidity-injection-ends/

‘The Big Shift: Fed shifts to propping up consumption rather than asset prices.

‘…And there is a big shift happening: The Fed has started lending to entities, including states and banks, under programs that channel funds into spending by states, municipalities, and businesses, rather than into the financial markets. These types of programs are propping up consumption – not asset prices. That’s a new thing. I don’t think the hyper-inflated markets, which have soared only because the Fed poured $3 trillion into them, are ready for this shift.
The $74 billion in total assets that the Fed shed during the week brought the Fed’s total assets down to a still breath-taking $7.095 trillion.’

[4] GlassHammer wrote: ‘…most Americans simply lacked the resources to handle the shutdown. Having no income, no job, no assets, no savings, and tons of debt means you can’t handle any disruption.’

True not only of Americans as individuals, but to a surprising extent of American businesses generally which are dead if they can’t roll over their debt regularly.

[5] Ian wrote: “Once your lords and masters realized they were mostly safe, they stopped caring about the crisis.’

They’re stupid. This is a pattern with elites all through history, assuming that the status quo of a abused, repressed untermenschen will just continue indefinitely and that ‘this time won’t be any different.’

Here’s what’s absolutely predictable —

(a) The real unrest will come at the summer’s end when the mass evictions, and business failures and bankruptcies begin, while COV19 surges higher as the colder weather returns.

(b)Not incidentally, things have already kicked off early with the George Floyd-triggered protests — which have been far more widespread, across far more American cities and towns than anything in 1968 — so the cops have already learned that they don’t have impunity to break heads and fuck the populace at will, and they too may be sacrificed by elites.

(c) In November the election will happen. Whichever candidate wins, they’re probably unacceptable to half the country. Whichever candidate wins, they and their faction are incompetent to govern.

For the last part of 2020, the U.S. looks more unstable than it’s looked for a long time

Kunstler has been off the deep end for years. You just noticed?

Glasshamer “Having no income, no job, no assets, no savings, and tons of debt means you can’t handle any disruption in your life”

IMHO there are 2 different categorizations 1 individual responisibility on COVID mitigation & 2 having no savings & thus must work & Essential worker role is the only option available, in the context that many Millions of US unemployed would desire event that option.

From grocery shopping I observe presumably category #2 within the grocery store workers. They vary on category #1: some seem conscientious & responsible. They can’t eliminate COVID risk but they are courageously trying to stock shelves, cashier the transactions, etc while minimizing risk. In contrast there seems to be a minority that is careless & oblivious. I would guess people fall on a spectrum between these 2 ends, whether they are Essential workers (like grocery workers) or the US population in general.

“Whichever candidate wins, they and their faction are incompetent to govern.” – Mark Pontin

Well at the state level the austerity process is locked in and mostly automatic. (I think 40+ states have balanced budget laws on the books right now.)

On the commercial side contraction and consolidation is also going to just happen automatically.

They could create demand at the federal level but since that would have only been affordable right now (because things get exponentially worse and exponentially more expensive as time passes) that’s not likely to occur.

With most of the gears already in motion it’s probably not going to matter who is in charge.

You keep saying people got peanuts, but as the NYT documents today: because of the expanded unemployment benefits of $600/week, the poverty rate went down:
“ Though she immediately applied for unemployment insurance, Ms. Bedico got no help for two months. Multiple calls a day to the Washington state unemployment office went unanswered. Someone once put her on hold for two hours, then cut her off. (She cried.) When food ran short, Ms. Bedico limited herself to two meals a day to feed her 12-year-old daughter. She fell three months behind on her mortgage.

“My whole body really ached with stress, from my head to my toes,” she said.

Then $7,600 suddenly arrived for eight weeks of back benefits, including a $600 weekly bonus. Counting a stimulus payment, Ms. Bedico’s income, $15,500 for three months, is nearly 60 percent more than she would have earned at the hotel.

“I was so happy — I really needed that money,” she said.”

@Mallam, the unemployment program is the only reason the revolts aren’t a lot worse right now. It’s been an absolute lifesaver to several friends of mine.

“Rich people have a lot of social contacts and travel a lot, BUT…if they do get sick they receive the best care.”

Meaning they do not have to accept the bullshit everybody is told:

“go home, rest, drink plenty of fluids…and don’t ask for medical help until you are having trouble breathing”

Nope, the .1% are tested for vitamin/mineral deficiencies, which are rectified through an IV, they’re started on anti-viral medications immediately while they wait for their test results.

And while it’s popular and…misleading to blame Trump, the truth is:

Covid-19/[SARS II], like SARS I and MERS are a byproduct of globalism or, if you prefer neoliberalism/neocolonialism, the difference in these other outbreaks is the scale of globalism has increased many fold and the number of contacts using air travel is many factors higher. As somebody noted above “it’s the rich and professional class who will pose a greater danger with their frequent traveling”. Blaming it on the victims of the “rich and professional class[es]” predation is the height of misdirection.

And speaking of misinformation, did anybody catch Mr. @$$hole himself laughingly tell an interviewer that he purposely lied about face masks not being useful?

That’s right, Fauci said the American public would have started using face-masks if he had told the truth and that he needed to prevent Americans from taking steps to halt the spread of Covid-19 until he was sure that medical staff and VIPs had enough stockpiles. And yet, the only thing I hear on masks is that Trump voters refuse to wear them, I don’t know people have arrived at this conclusion but, in my town that certainly isn’t true.

“Also, they didn’t have AC in 1918/19, putting the virus on life support for the summer.”

Try again, there was AC power in the late 1800s.

https://xkcd.com/2323/

I don’t mind Kuntsler so much. It is true that he no longer has anything interesting to say. But, that is partly because what was interesting was his insight into an incipient degeneration toward collapse, which collapse is now nearly fully realized. “Oh, look, collapse!” Not interesting.

Kunstler has been doing Rachel Maddow in reverse in following the unravelling of Russiagate, anticipating perp walks that will never happen. Again, boring. Just as the Russiagate narrative required breathless admiration of Mueller or Comey, his bizarre-world mirror requires high praise of Barr and Trump. Maddow’s rendition helped make her millions. I hope Kunstler at least realizes thousands. The audience for either is pitiable, which I suppose accounts for his comments section.

Trump is such a sad, weak character. But, the other day in Tony Wikrent’s weekly summary, there was Masha Gessen — the Russian “Pat” — imagining Trump making himself an autocrat, czar of several Americas or something.

It seems like most people want a drama connected to as few verified facts as possible. Maybe to avoid judging the judgment of people around them. I avoid much discussion of politics in meatspace by leading with high scorn for people who would propose Biden as an alternative. If I lived among a different social class, I would do as well scorning the brand management focus of the BLM mcRevolution.

It is not just Trump or his supporters. Political judgment is a lost art, policy judgment a forgotten skill. Everyone on teevee or the internets has an opinion. But, the brilliant leadership of the public health establishment could not figure out diagnostic tests or face masks? They staged a moral panic over a supposed shortage of ventilators, apparently unaware that any humane system would want to avoid using ventilators. Cuomo, the man who made the trains barely run at all, sent 5000 covid19 patients to nursing homes, triggering a mass die-off, but he was widely admired on Democratic teevee.

” But, what does it mean when Rod Dreher is linking with approval to Taibbi?”

That it’s 2020 — and only just halfway through it. Wait till summer’s end, then November.

“And speaking of misinformation, did anybody catch Mr. @$$hole himself laughingly tell an interviewer that he purposely lied about face masks not being useful?”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq8iQ65p9B0

“As someone said, don’t follow leaders.”

And watch your parking meters. Er, cell phones.

Bruce W: “Rising number of new cases is very common across states, while steady or declining numbers of deaths seems also to be the general rule.What will the zeitgeist make of that?”

I don’t know know about the zeitgeist, nor am I convinced we have a definite trend there yet.

Still, if your guess is that one thing going on with COV19 is a lot of fast-mutating variant strains with varying fatality rates, that also seems to be the emerging consensus among folks I know with virology, epidemiology, or similar expertise.

Additionally, the tendency of a successful pathogen is to decline in virulence over time, as it doesn’t serve a bug to kill large numbers of its reservoir animal. But while coronaviruses are fast-mutating, I wouldn’t have expected that to happen this quickly.

I suspect part of this is that we’re experiencing such seasonal prophylactic effects as warm temperatures and UV sunlight provide against coronaviruses. In other words, COV19 may be less fatal than we’ve feared but even more infectious, so infections are going up up now but they could go up even more when Summer ends.

Let’s wait and see what Autumn’s ratio of infection rates to fatality rates looks like, shall we?

https://www.history.com/news/spanish-flu-second-wave-resurgence
“Over the summer of 1918 … there was hope at the beginning of August that the virus had run its course. In retrospect, it was only the calm before the storm. Somewhere in Europe, a mutated strain of the Spanish flu virus had emerged that had the power to kill a perfectly healthy young man or woman within 24 hours. That Fall ….”

I think the zeitgeist matters because, as I have been observing for several years, the U.S. and indeed the global political order is undergoing a profound legitimacy crisis, and everything will tend to feed the narratives of that legitimacy crisis. There are deep, structural reasons to doubt the legitimacy of the global political order — the apparent inability to comprehend and respond to on-going ecological collapse brought on by accelerating technological change and massive overuse of fossil fuels being chief among them — but the superficial attachment to story means the focus of attention and mass conviction may shift and twist in the winds of the moment quite chaotically.

The integrity of U.S. elections have been brought into question, for example, by an illustrative combination of developments: partisan opportunism morphing into factional sniping over narratives of “voter fraud” combined with a stubborn “technology” fascination among the general public and officialdom and the unwillingness of minor officials to acknowledge that their choices of balloting and counting methods matter. A common opinion is that the Electoral College is at fault, because of its defeat of 50% + 1 vote majoritarianism, which reflects an almost insane level of magical thinking.

Uniting the threads of a legitimacy crisis is the inability of a body politic to think thru and solve problems or arrive at a functionally efficient social construction of reality. As I pointed out above, we have seen this with the public health response to the novel coronavirus: minor officialdom unable to work out what to do — recommending against masks! failing to create a test early! failing to organize and mandate mass testing early! sending COVID19 patients to nursing homes! having a moral panic over ventilators, one of the worst treatment options imaginable! failing to organize sensible “early treatment” strategies as S Brennan has pointed out.

The U.S. lied itself into an aggressive war, found out there were no WMD, and there were no consequences for politicians or institutions. Ditto for a global financial crisis brought on by massive frauds. Kunstler thinks the late “revelation” that Russiagate was a crock from beginning to end will have consequences. Not likely. We’re “outraged” that the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations has “Plantations” in its name.

We are rapidly giving up or rejecting ideas about the economics of money and monetary policy that have been ridiculous and known to be self-destructive for nearly a hundred years, and we are throwing them over for MMT, an increasingly simplified popular set of notions with Dunning-Krueger Effect branded on its forehead.

We are coming out of an era in which the shared and dominating idea seemed to be that nothing really mattered: politics was a reality teevee show. Now, a panicked and fumbled response to a global pandemic has wrecked the economy, the consequences of which will be spilling out alongside an unfolding health crisis that will surely not look like the various scripts proposed for it. What stories will we tell?

We’re definitely in another period of shifting paradigms, and I for one have no earthly idea where it’s headed.

From appearances, our rulers — the elite of the elites — are essentially withdrawing from further participation in society, even among themselves, and are leaving the rest of us to puzzle and fight out the future as we will. They don’t care. Do as we will, it’s nothing to them.

The fight on the streets between police and protesters ostensibly over racial justice — but it’s much broader — appears inconclusive, but police are very much on the defensive. Many departments have chosen to stand down, to ‘reform’, to desist in their worst behavior for now, but others have only increased their brutality and murderous intent. The protesters succumb to passions — whether it’s pulling down statues or declaring autonomous zones — but that’s what happens when there’s a lack of clear headed leadership. The protesters don’t know where they’re going with this phase of the rebellion, they aren’t sure what they want apart from a better future, and nobody knows how the uprisings will play out.

Giving up isn’t an option, not this time. There are too many critical institutional failings to simply let it go. Start with the presidency, an office with way too much unilateral power, occupied by someone who’s so addled he can’t fathom how to use that power for the “good of all.” The “all” doesn’t exist in his thinking, only “our” and “us” apart from “all.” He’s very much a creature of his class though, and as bumbling, fumbling and inchoate as he may be, he’s a fair reflection of many of those in high places who shouldn’t be. Failures who rise because of course they do.

Maybe not any more, though.

We can’t afford more failure. More of the same will kill us all.

Ché Pasa wrote: “We can’t afford more failure. More of the same will kill us all.”

Estragon: I can’t go on like this.

Vladimir: That’s what you think.

Also, who is “us all”? It’s a big world outside the U.S. and it wouldn’t hurt — might in fact help — a lot of people out there if the U.S. went away. You know?

In any case, the visible collapse phase of the U.S. empire is just kicking off. How protracted it’s going to be and exactly what comes next — well, as you say, we have no “no earthly idea.”

The US hegemony was always going to end due to the twin existential crises of overpopulation and climate change. It should have been about how to manage that ending to give the peoples of the world the best shots at dealing with these crises. But any country that can elect a Trump is way past any hope of managing itself, let alone anyone or anything else.

I have never subscribed to the notion that if only the US did not exist, the rest of the world would somehow be better off. I have always seen this as just a Chomskyan restatement of American exceptionalism.

The rest of the world has histories, ambitions, and hatreds that go back a couple thousand years before our entrance on the world stage about a century ago. An American absence would not result in any kumbaya moments. As American hegemony wanes, old, absurd competitions and conflicts are re-asserting themselves. While we bemoan the erosion of American civil institutions and civil society, in much of the world the situation is much worse. Civil institutions are extremely weak and civil society is virtually non-existent. With or without us, things are going to fall apart. Numbers (overpopulation) and Nature (climate change) don’t care about our finger-pointing. They do not care about anything. They simply are.

This post has brought forth many interesting comments. I have said before and will say it again that what we are witnessing is the end of the Greco-Roman world. If this is a good thing or a bad thing depends solely on one’s point of view. But it is a fact. What comes after is anyone’s guess. If one visits the really crackpot rightwing sites (one of my favorites is LifeSite, far right Catholic) one will find that any reasonable discussion of the issues is not to be found. Instead one finds stories and comments that deal more with mythology of a very limited variety. Of course, the writers do not believe it is mythology but hardcore fact. Now, I love mythology and believe it is an important way to study humanity, but it is not science. And should not be used in. . .for example, a discussion of Covid-19. But that is what one finds. So, I ask, how can we move forward. Well, we can’t. And therein lies the problem. Apparently, millions of people have been left behind.

But maybe it’s not all their fault. I’m 65 years old. A baby boomer. For thirty-two years I work as a photojournalist in the Chicago area. For awhile I was very successful. Award winning. Not that that means anything in the long run. But one day I realized that my photos of ‘stories that must be told’, as many an editor said, weren’t really accomplishing much. At that point it became a job. And most of the time a very easy way to collect a paycheck. My point is, how many other things have failed to produce what was promised?

The New Hollywood of the 60s and 70s was going to entertain, but also educate. Most of the movies from that era are like what movies have always been. Some hold up extremely well; most don’t. It’s always been that way. Science is wonderful when it gives one a 55″ TV and a car that doesn’t fall apart in three years. Not so good when each new discovery shows us just how small we are in the universe.

I could go on. But the bottom line is this: there are millions of people who see their world changing in ways they don’t understand. They cling to ideas and modes of living that will lead them to destruction, and apparently they have no problem taking everyone else with them.
So, here we are. The end of 2500 year experiment. In the scheme of things hardly a big deal. Something will come after. What I don’t know. New religions based on the old. New mythologies that may work very well for those who encounter them.

I wonder if this is how a late age Roman thought of things?

Previous civilizations involved much better human-to-nature ratios, places to hide, way less degraded life-support systems, and didn’t have nukes, nuke waste, chemical waste, and military operations in 150+ countries.

The Romans left salted fields. We’ll be leaving a boiling, overpopulated planet with 100k year half-live poisons.

That’s the difference.

Any sort of half-humane future involves a controlled landing/de-escalation of our war on nature and ourselves, not a full crash and burn.

Before becoming too engaged with the “next wave” of Covid, recall a monumental screwup of the first one. From the Hullabaloo site regarding the lies about masks:

They weren’t straight with the American people. They could have told the truth and said that they needed the good masks for health care workers and the president could have evoked the Defense Protection Act in the very beginning to procure them. ( In any case, I can testify to the fact that they were almost impossible to get online even right at the beginning because I tried.) And at the same time they could have told everyone to cover their mouths and faces with cloth coverings,

Instead they lied and said masks would actually cause us to catch the virus because we’d all be touching our faces constantly and give it to ourselves.

Bloggers can have their ups and downs, and the former insight made this next one painful to read:

John Bolton said he will not vote for Trump but also won’t vote for Biden. He’ll do one of those chickenshit write-in votes instead of biting the bullet and actually trying to defeat Trump. It’s better than nothing but it’s lame.

In this regard Digby is just as messed up as she says Fauci was with his lousy mask advice. John Bolton is an ass for many, many reasons, but refusing to make a choice between a pair of worthless Presidential Candidates isn’t one of them.

Apparently there was some UFO-type activity in Miami tonight.

Maybe they’re just polite neighbors stopping by to let us know our Arctic is on fire.

Z

-The only way that Kamala Harris will ever become a viable presidential candidate is if they get her off the Adderall and onto the Modafinil. The Head PR Man for the Point Zero One Percent himself Obama and YR Pete could give her recommendations on dosage. Kamala’s handlers can market this transition in their political puppet as a maturation phase when all it is is a calm hollowing out from a change in ingredients.

-That being said, if she gets picked as Sloppy Joe’s running mate, it won’t be as if she’ll be out of place standing next to Sloppy Joe with the complicated drug cocktail his handlers are carefully administering him and the Adderall hoovering Tin Pot Mussolini on the other side of the stage in the dementia-ridden U.S. presidential clown theater.

-There’s a problem with having people politically represent you when:

a. They don’t live in your world
b. They can pop a pill everyday and immediately feel great

Don’t expect these folks to sustain a political fight for your interests when they’re not theirs and everything is A-OK with them everyday.

Z

Idiots and Mask Fanatics in 1918

In 1918, there was an anti-mask league in San Francisco, which objected to wearing masks to prevent the spread of influenza. They held meetings of thousands of maskless people. San Francisco was ultimately was one of the cities that suffered most from the Spanish Influenza pandemic

The breakup of the United States continues. People traveling to New York, New Jersey and Connecticut from viral hotspots required to quarantine for 14 days.

“Cuomo said visitors from a state with an infection rate of “10 per 100,000 on a seven-day rolling average, or 10 percent of the total population positive on a seven-day rolling average” would be subject to the quarantine. As of Wednesday, that includes people coming from Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Washington, Utah, and Texas. The list of states will change as the circumstances in those states change, he said.”

It’s not there yet, but very blue California is going to make that list if it keeps going, and won’t that be embarrassing. Thank you Gavin “rush-to-open-it-all-up” Newsom. Oh and who can forget all the badly run county governments as well.

The breakup of the U.S. makes sense in some ways. I can’t say there are really any common values in this country to go around anymore. And I don’t think they can be rebuilt at this point.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/govs-quarantine-on-visitors-from-coronavirus-hotspots.html

If America could be anthropomorphized it would be a pure bimbo. We\’re so fucking stupid it beggar\’s belief. \\