SOCIOPATHOGEN

As it turns out, having unerring faith in your own talents and intelligence without ever having put in the work to buttress such faith can have disastrous consequences. And not just for yourself. Who knew?!?

Meanwhile, at Sunday’s presser Trump was informed that Senator Mitt Romney, the lone Republican to vote in favor of his impeachment two months ago, was in isolation. “Gee, that’s too bad,” Trump said sarcastically.

Looking forward to the robust debate over whether it's worse to be poor or dead.

— Kyle Koster (@KyleKoster) March 23, 2020

Then, after midnight, Trump tweeted something about not wanting the “cure” to be worse than the problem itself. In other words, he’ll only let the stock market dip so far before he says the hell with it, let’s let people die.

aMErica FIRST

https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1241485175915048961?s=20

Actually love that this woman cries “Donald Trump! Donald Trump!” because we always have known what “America First” really means: “ME FIRST!” She’ll probably get home and unpack all of this material and then she and husband will head off to their ultra-white Christian evangelical church.

In the Coen Brothers version of this movie, someone will carelessly toss a cigarette butt near this stash and all of it will go up in flames, their home included.

There’s a Curb Your Enthusiasm episode this season where the term “golden-ruling it” comes in to play. We should all be golden-ruling it. If there’s one thing I know about Trump fanatics, it’s that they don’t. The “Me First” it. Always.

In The Weeds

We wrote about this a week or two ago, but it’s time to reiterate. A week ago in the U.S.A. on Monday morning we were still dealing with a death count in the dozens, somewhere between 50 and 75. This morning, according to The New York Times, we’re at 428. By week’s end we’ll easily be over 1,000, perhaps closer to 2,000. Even Dr. Jerome Adams, the sycophantic Surgeon General, warned this morning that this week it’s going to get “very bad.”

Which means that doctors and nurses and physician’s assistants and the like are America’s new heroes. They deserve the same praise and meaningful support that America’s been giving to soldiers since 9/11. Perhaps more.

Every day hospital workers are not only treating the infected, but risking their own health to do so. They absolutely need masks and garments to wear to protect them. Before one dollar is sent to a cruise ship company (Donald thinks they’re essential because they have so many employees in south Florida and Donald feels much more strongly about south Florida than he actually does about America), this needs to happen.

And not just for their welfare. For ours. As illnesses spike up ten-fold in the next two weeks, America will be in dire straits if these docs and nurses go down in significant numbers. The system will backlog just the way a restaurant does when it’s a busy, busy night and staffers call in sick. The situation becomes mayhem and beyond saving. But this time it’s not your veal Oscar arriving late to the table (note: I’ve never had veal Oscar) but maybe it’s one of your parents perishing. Or you.

In New York City, Mayor Bill DeBlasio says that the city’s 11 public hospitals will run out of supplies within a week. Which probably means even sooner than that.

The amplification of more illnesses coupled with the declining numbers of docs and nurses due to having to self-isolate will be what causes the pandemic to become catastrophic. Never mind just treating the patients with COVID-19 or its symptoms. People are still suffering from all the old diseases they always have. And now hospitals won’t be able to care for them, either.

Total triage, just like Italy. The real tragedy is still to come.

Sorry to be “fear-mongering.” I’ve been called out for doing that this past week by Trump supporters, the same people who never had a problem with him or Fox News doing that about caravans of refugees coming up from Mexico. What ever happened to those people?

Things That Makes Us Toss Our Hands In The Air And Ask, ‘What The F*ck!?!”

The president calling the cruise lines an essential industry… Rand Paul using the Senate gym and the Senate pool after being tested for the coronavirus (and he’s positive)… the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange even being allowed to own stock (it’s like giving Roger Goodell part ownership in the Dallas Cowboys)… Vice President Mike Pence telling Americans they don’t need to be tested if they’re asymptomatic but then revealing that he and his wife have been tested… the column in the Boston Globe imploring us to bring back the NBA season… the very idea of gas lighting the world by blaming everyone but Donald Trump… the idea that maybe, just maybe, if we’d have been on top of this coronavirus early enough and canceled events early enough that Mamba would still be here… and all those celebs convening together at Staples on 2/24 to honor him when obviously the virus had already arrived… Floridians and Texns, in general.

Welfare: Queens

Let’s imagine there’s a baby mama in the Bronx. Maybe she hasn’t made all of the best life choices to this point. She’s unemployed, she has a mouth or two to feed, and she is on government assistance. Her welfare check arrives and she heads directly the corner bodega to buy scratch-offs or, if she’s more industrious, up to the Yonkers Raceway casino.

Many of us would have very little pity for her and in fact, more than a few would demand our government stop subsidizing these people’s irresponsible lives.

https://twitter.com/mikefarb1/status/1241980312135106560?s=20

Now, let’s say it’s not a baby mama but the CEO of a company. The U.S. government, under an act signed by the president, gives major corporations the biggest tax breaks they’ve ever seen. This isn’t exactly a check, but it may as well be since it’s money the corporation will no longer have to pay the government and the exponential difference between tens or hundreds of millions back in a company’s coffers versus baby mama’s few Benjamins a week is difficult to fathom.

Now, let’s say that company pours a ton of that money into buying back its own stock. It’s basically doubling down on the bet. It’s no different than buying scratch-offs in the sense that the company isn’t using that money to buy food or diapers or anything the baby(yes) or she needs, but it’s simply trying to turn that money into mo’ money.

And the buy-back comes up bust. This unforeseen pandemic hits and it turns out men (almost exclusively men) who are paid eight figures to make very big decisions never had a rainy day account because they were too busy buying back company stock (in order to create an artificial scarcity of stock on the open market to make the price of the stock go up as opposed to doing it the right way, by making a superior product and selling it well). So now they’re in trouble again.

And guess what? They’ve got their hand out again.

In fact, one of those people may be… Donald Trump. Who has refused thus far to say that he will not allow his resorts to accept any sort of federal hand out. Maybe we should have put this last note up in the previous item?