Doug's Darkworld

OK, debate night. At least it’s on so far. First though, a correction. Turns out the Ratcliffe FBI stuff yesterday was team Trump nonsense, trying to once again cast doubt on the integrity of the upcoming election. My bad. Like I said, the crap is flying so fast now I can’t keep up. And internationally too. Protestors shot in Nigeria, not looking good. The fighting in Nagorno-Karabakh continues, thousands dead. Covid is making a big comeback in Europe. 2020 is not going out with a whisper, that’s for sure.

Still seeing people online who aren’t really getting how terrible the pandemic is, either out of simple denial, or a more complicated effort to rationalize away Trump’s failure to fight Covid-19 effectively. Met a guy who thinks Covid-19 will all go away after the election, because it’s mostly liberal media hype just to make Trump look bad. I really don’t even know what to say to such people anymore, I’m with Bill Murray. For the people that can read, this is one of the best overviews of the whole pandemic I’ve seen yet: America and the Virus: ‘A Colossal Failure of Leadership’

A brief summary for those who can’t get past the paywall. It’s a sad and infuriating story. Before Trump America was the best prepared nation on Earth for a pandemic. Started with Bush 42 actually. He read a book about the 1918 flu pandemic, was alarmed, called together some experts and asked how prepared America was? Not very was the answer. So he set up a pandemic response team and crafted a pandemic response plan. Obama expanded on it. And Trump dismantled it over three years, and when the pandemic hit, he threw the plan out the window in favor of winging it.

To be fair the article goes into the failures of China and other players, and the scientific missteps made along the way. Science is self-correcting though, realizing they were wrong and issuing new guidelines shows that science works. Since Trump can never admit he was wrong, his response to Covid-19 is still basically just winging it. The article also mentions that if the US had handled Covid as well as most other developed countries, only about 50,000 people would be dead. Trump’s claim he prevented millions of deaths is, well, bullshit. The last point, the point that isn’t being talked about at all as people envision it’s all going to go away when we get a vaccine. Right now the economic price tag is about 16 trillion dollars. That’s about 125 thousand for every household in America. Not the flu morans.

So covid-19 is as serious as a heart attack. And I guess it won’t be covered in the debate tonight. (I was wrong.)  I’m about to watch it. I’ll post some impressions tonight, more tomorrow if it ends up being something to blog about. I’m betting Trump has a fit and storms off the stage at some point.

And Biden has walked into a trap. Normalizing the idea that Russian can influence the election is playing right into Trump’s hand.

Screaming.

Biden’s doing OK, but I want to see Trump staked in the heart.

I just wish Biden was a great debater, a Lincoln or Roosevelt or even Obama would have eviscerated Trump.

“The preexisting condition plan at the same time we get the infrastructure plan.” Point for Biden.

Surreal.

Trump is a master of the gish-gallop argument. Except he believes what he is saying.

Had to mute Trump as he went into a horrific racist victim blaming rant about illegal immigrants.

I know a DACA kid. She came into the country at 2 years old in the trunk of a car. She’s a fantastic American.

Possible exception of Abraham Lincoln! No Mr Trump, just no.

“All talk, no action!” That’s Olympic class rich coming from Trump.

OK, I watched almost all of the debate. Trump is brilliant at what he does, he didn’t lose. That most of what he said was irrelevant (cherry picked) or untrue will be lost on a huge number of Americans. He didn’t storm off the stage, I lost a bet. Biden, well, he could have done worse. I’ll call it a draw at this point.

Stay safe everyone. #StaytheFHome #WearaDamnMask #FelesRegula

Copyright © 2020 Doug Stych. All rights reserved.

(image: Found on Facebook, attribution unknown, used without permission, claimed as Fair Use under US copyright law.)