03.19.2020 04:52 PM

We must defeat this lying bastard

36 Comments

  1. Peter says:

    Everyone, particularly we seniors, is faced with staying psychologically and spiritually healthy in the face of prolonged isolation attended by major worries about basic provisioning, family welfare, financial stress and even challenges to the civil order. I’m just starting to try to figure out how to do this, but I’m pretty sure the path not to take is to spend my days practicing amateur epidemiology on social media, fueling the partisan divisions that have blighted our politics for too long and generally sounding as if I think the pandemic would be brought to a halt if only I were in charge. Every country has been slow off the mark to grasp the severity of the threat, but it can hardly be said Trudeau and Trump haven’t taken dramatic remedial steps in the past ten days. Of course they aren’t beyond criticism, but for my part I’ve had my fill with pundits and talking heads furthering their careers by moving seamlessly from Middle East peace and climate change to how to stop a pandemic and casting contemptuous aspersions on their every move .

    JT would hardly be my first choice for leader in a national emergency, but that is exactly what he is and, absent egregious blunders or dereliction, he’s got my cooperation and support. Americans would be wise the think similarly regardless of who they intend to vote for, not to give succor to Trump, but to promote the social cohesion and collective will we are going to need so badly. If someone as unlikely as Ilhan Omar can laud him, I suggest what a privileged professional bien pensant like Kristol thinks is and is not the truth about the virus could profitably be ignored in favour of a good mystery on Netflix.

    • Peter,

      I’m probably not fully up to speed but thus far, I’m more satisfied with the Canadian than American response. (The PM can consider this as a late-arriving Christmas present.) LOL.

    • Peter says:

      C’mon, how do you know what news they watch? It’s not surprising that rural and small town folks are less engaged so far. At this point, the virus is heavily concentrated in dense, Democrat-controlled urban areas with high incidences of travelling populations. That may or may not change, but it’s obviously grounded in some time-tested scientific realities about the spread of disease. Here’s a good article about it.

      I’m not shilling for Trump or Trudeau. Surely it’s one thing to criticize a specific measure or lack of one based on solid knowledge and another for a political wonk who has dedicated his life to searching for new countries to bomb to vent for the gazillionth time about Trump lying, etc with respect to a matter he knows nothing about. There are all kinds of different measures being taken in different countries by different governments. Not all Governors are pissed at Trump by any means. Self-isolation in Canada and the U.S. is both voluntary and very selective. Both Trump and Trudeau are reassuring us they have a handle on it, which is what political leaders do. Would you prefer they said they haven’t a clue what to do? Does the fact they haven’t shut us down like China or even Spain mean they are lying to us?

      Slightly OT, I assume we can all agree that food security will be a priority if this goes on for a long time. Canadian farmers rely on 50,000 migrant workers mainly from the Caribbean and Central America to bring in the annual harvest. Apparently the work is more skilled that we may think and they can’t just be replaced by locals. Any ideas what we should do about that?

      • Peter says:

        Don’t tell me, tell this guy. It seems to me the biggest criticism you can make is that Trump was about five or six days behind Trudeau, who was similarly behind several other countries. I’d bet you and I were both in comparative denial as recently as ten days ago.

      • Quo Vadis says:

        Good response.

      • Peter says:

        For someone isolating himself in the countryside, Mike, you sure seem to know what’s going on in everyone else’s heads. 🙂 Best wishes.

    • lyn says:

      Peter: EXACTLY!! Both have their faults but are now doing what needs to be done!

  2. Pipes says:

    Good Luck!

    They are fighting two plagues and the same time

  3. The Doctor says:

    Meanwhile over on Breitbart, Trump supporters are claiming that the coronavirus is a bioweapon manufactured by the Chinese, in cahoots with the DNC and George Soros to sabotage Trump’s re-election.

    • John says:

      Seems as useful as any other theory. It seems no one knows right now.

    • Fred from BC says:

      Wow, Doc…those same six or eight people over there just trigger you every time, don’t they? Try Global Research Organization, Reddit or Rabble.ca, where a suspiciously similar number of people are fervently claiming that the US engineered the virus and planted it in China (no, really…that’s what they believe) as part of their ongoing trade war.

      Go looking for nutjobs, and you’ll find them. So what?

      • The Doctor says:

        Those places hardly have the takeup or wide readership that Breitbart has. Way to compare apples to rocks.

        • Fred from BC says:

          “Those places hardly have the takeup or wide readership that Breitbart has. Way to compare apples to rocks.”

          Their relative size is meaningless. The point is, Breitbart *isn’t responsible* for making those comments any more than Reddit or Rabble are. Breitbart is a large international news agency that just happens to believe in free speech. Those comments don’t reflect the opinions of Breitbart itself (and gee, they even say so in the standard disclaimers, just like every other news source or aggregator does). You have a habit of bringing up their name here as if they are part of some vast right-wing Trump-inspired conspiracy. They aren’t, sorry.

  4. Mike,

    Kristol like Will, Frum and a host of others is a reasonably long-term anti-Trumper. Nice to see some people with personal integrity that trumps blind ideology and obedience.

  5. Doc,

    Kinda disappointed that it’s not Trump’s Russian BFF.

    (As an aside, foolish me, I thought that continuous Breitbart reading was like masturbation — making you go blind. LOL.)

  6. Wes W says:

    I think Trump is doing a pretty decent job of this.

    • Fred from BC says:

      I guess you’re not alone. Trumps personal popularity is up 4 points (meaning more Americans now support his presidency than oppose it) and his handling of this crisis itself is up 5 points.

      • Lawrence Barry says:

        Fred – that pretty much says it all doesn’t it? We’re fucked.

        • Fred from BC says:

          “Fred – that pretty much says it all doesn’t it? We’re fucked.”

          I wish I could disagree. 🙁

      • The Doctor says:

        Umm Fred, at 538.com today, Trump’s net disapproval rating is -9.

        • The Doctor says:

          And over at realclearpolitics, Trump’s net disapproval rating today is -7.7.

          • Fred from BC says:

            Keep hanging around only the sites that tell you what you want to hear, Doc…I’ll keep visiting both sides of the spectrum. We’ll see which one of us turns out to be better informed…

          • The Doctor says:

            Fred, 538 and RCP are both respected poll aggregators. Note the word “aggregator”. That is the antithesis of cherry-picking a poll.

          • Fred from BC says:

            “And over at realclearpolitics, Trump’s net disapproval rating today is -7.7.”

            Thanks for sharing that one, Doc. I have no time at all for Nate Silver, but RealClearPolitics I had been ignoring because it sounded too much like RealClimate.org (which is anything *but* real). Great site, anyway…I bookmarked it and will add it to my list.

            Oh, and today’s Gallup on Trump: 49% approval, 45% disapproval overall. 60% approval on his handling of the coronavirus (interesting) and probably the same on the economy (predictable).

        • The Doctor says:

          Trump’s numbers seem to pretty clearly be going up in the last couple of days, after that initial drop a couple of weeks ago. My first guess is that it’s the very common rally-around-the-flag effect that Presidents typically benefit from in times of national crisis. Chris Cillizza, of all people, has a fairly good piece about in on the CNN website today. Even though Cillizza is usually to blinded by his anti-Trump stance to be objective.

  7. Douglas W says:

    November elections, every Republican for him/herself. GOP will turn on Trump.
    A goner by mid-August.

    • lyn says:

      Douglas W. Do you have anyone in mind to replace Trump by the way Nicki Haley, Pennce, Mark Meadows, Ted Cruz there are a few good people out there but I do like Trump and the deplorable people like him as well.

  8. Al in Cranbrook says:

    Two cents worth…
    Couple months ago I dropped all the “News” channels from my cable pack…save for Fox. I get CBC whether I want it or not…not! CNN, MSNBC, etc., pretty much are now in the business of insulting people’s intelligence by spewing anti-Trump venom into their living rooms, while pretending they’re in the “news” business.
    Anyone want to trade places with either Trump or Trudeau? I thought not. A tad tricky trying to reassure people while at the same time preparing them for the worst. Six of one, half a dozen of the other, it’s a fine line to walk.
    That said…
    The best the Dems have come up with is down to Sanders…pretty much a quasi-communist Marxist…and Biden…who never seems too sure of what day it is, or for that matter, what year. The likes of Roosevelt and Kennedy must be spinning in their graves.
    Being a Rubio kinda guy, I didn’t start out as a Trump fan.
    But by God, he’s turned me into one.
    Anyway…stay healthy everyone.

  9. Fred Pertanson says:

    We have our own lying bastards. Bill Blair and the airport screenings is the most recent.

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