We are so screwed

by liberal japonicus

Maybe I should be more optimisitc, but the title is my thoughts after reading this paper.

Comments

[JanieM]

Disclaimers:

1. I clicked over to the linked article but haven't read it. (May or may not get through the whole thing, depending on busy-ness.)

2. lj, you didn't say this was an open thread, and what I'm going to link isn't on the topic of racism, so you can delete this whole thing if you want. But it is on the title topic, otherwise WASF.

Adam Silverman did a post on BJ last night (responding to an earlier-in-the-evening post by Tom Levenson about hiking) that started out with hilarity (a song called "Jews Don't Camp" by Rocky Mountain Jewgrass) but didn't stay funny for long. See comment 81, by Adam, on election shenanigans.

I don't know what ordinary people can do about this prospect, but I think it somewhat explains what a lot of folks seem to think is counterproductive for Clickbait, and that is his persistent pounding on the "law and order" theme even when it seems to be hurting him in the polls.

He keeps pounding on it because it's the excuse he's going to use when he grinds everyone he doesn't like even harder into the dirt after, one way or another, he doesn't leave the White House in January. He doesn't think he has to care about the polls, because actual votes aren't going to matter.

There was discussion here a couple of days ago about whether Clickbait is stupid, or a mastermind, or what. My son and I have been arguing about this for four years, with me saying Clickbait is basically an idiot.

I've pretty much abandoned that belief at this point. I do think he's as unutterably stupid in most ways as it's possible to be and still be breathing (and even more unutterably vicious than he is stupid). But he's like a savant (what I grew up knowing as an idiot savant, but I guess that term isn't used anymore) in being brilliant at knowing how to play people, how to gaslight, how to break things to his own advantage. (That's not to say he hasn't been enabled by a further bunch of traitorous trash, as I think CaseyL put it a while back.)

I read an opinion piece recently and am kicking myself because I didn't bookmark it (maybe it was linked here, in fact) about how the lies aren't stupid lies, they're grooming lies. E.g. the size of the inauguration crowd: in this view, the narrative that said his fragile narcissist's ego had to be stroked with lies about the size of the crowd was off the mark. His dwelling on lies about it was at bottom a test for his cult followers, as to whether they'd swallow and amplify the lie, cover for him, worship him regardless, and in the process cement themselves into a corner they would never come out of......and that's how fascist dictators operate. (Anyone remember that link? I'd love to have it, if it was from someone here.)

[wj]

I thought comment 23 of that BJ post was telling:

I get the strong impression that Trump took for granted that the troops wanted to shoot civilians. He thinks shooting civilians is cool and demonstrates real strength, and if they’re brown is being responsible and restoring the natural order. He figured naturally everyone else would think so, too. He’s still going “Come on, it must just be the generals in the way and the troops have to agree with me.”

Apparently he also thinks the troops will agree with him that if they, or their brothets and sisters in arms, are wounded, that makes them losers. Perhaps he should check the stats on Purple Hearts.

[JanieM]

wj, the fact that maybe the troops won't actually shoot civilians for Clickbait seems comforting until you remember that there's significant # of other armed thugs, both official and unofficial, who will. And that's another thing about the themes he's pounding on: he can sh!t on the military as much as he wants if he thinks they won't help him *and* he doesn't need them.

Silverman's analysis of Tilley I think was taken by some in that thread to mean the comforting idea that the military won't come in on Clickbait's side if he attempts a coup. I think Silverman meant it to suggest that they won't life a finger to stop him, either. But I don't comment over there so I wasn't going to ask. And anyhow, by the time I saw the thread it was mostly dead.

[JanieM]

*lift* a finger

[wj]

Janie, you can read the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs' statement either way. But the safe bet is that they won't lift a finger for Trump after 20 January if he isn't reelected. And if a President Biden orders them to stop Trump's thugs from elsewhere in the government, they will.

[Cleek]

There is no scenario where Trump remains in office, after a clear electoral loss, and the US continues to exist.

And the only people who could keep him from being forcibly removed from the WH know this.

[JanieM]

after a clear electoral loss

Silverman's point is that Clickbait and crew are working to ensure that there is no clear electoral outcome.

If I knew, I had forgotten it, but if the election goes to the House, each state gets one vote, or if the state delegation can't agree, no vote. (Though this latter bit could be changed by the House.) Also, a candidate needs an absolute majority (26 votes) to win.

[wj]

To return to the OT, only consider that the same things have applied all along. And yet substantial progress has been made. So perhaps the situation is not entirely hopeless. (Even if, perhaps, a complete solution is not in the cards.)

[John Thullen]

There is no scenario where trump remains in office, after a clear electoral WIN, and the US continues to exist.

Let us not forget the required proprieties of "both sides do it" that we are constantly charged with upholding.

Although, it steams me that conservative Christian scum are "doing it" and having more fun "doing it" than we libertine leftists, as we have been called for a thousand years.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/cohen-falwell-pictures-trump-endorsement

Make America the Hell they burn in.

Cancel American Christian cuckold culture for the cucks who have been calling us cucks since 2015.

And, well, it seems trump did not really have his mechanical heart in those "big, beautiful bombs" and those "big, beautiful missiles" and those "big beautiful military parades" in his filthy (dis)honor, except to exempt rich conservative scum from paying for the hardware by letting them get away with paying no f*cking taxes.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/army-chief-of-staff-mcconville-trump-pentagon-leaders-defense-contractors

Biden should alert the entire US military to be on standby to clean out that terrorist republican conservative hidey hole in the White House and the US government with savage prejudicial force if trump and his anti-American filth refuse to leave.

If Trump wins by whatever cheating, lying, thieving maneuvering these republican filth are planning and executing for the theft of the election, then the military should take it upon themselves to savagely wipe them off the face of the Earth.

If clickbait and crew are working to ensure no clear electoral outcome, then there will be no clear American future ... win or lose.

What does the Constitution say?

Not a goddamned thing except what the conservative movement says with its corrupt, contemptuous, self-dealing, fascist thrown voice.

When Trump hired the Generals to serve in his administration he called them "his killers".

Our only hope is if they live up to the label.

[John Thullen]

I have two bills this month that have not yet arrived at their destination .. they are past their late dates ... which I mailed 10 days ago, and on which I will probably have to pay a fucking fee.

This has NEVER happened to me as long as I've been paying bills, which is 50 goddamned years!

Exceptional pigf*cking conservative America making the trains run late.

[John Thullen]

Murderous fascist conservative America:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-13-year-old-boy-with-autism-was-shot-by-police-after-his-mother-called-for-help-managing-a-mental-breakdown/ar-BB18Psj6?ocid=uxbndlbing

Obviously, autistic children need more guns.

[John Thullen]

https://www.statnews.com/2020/09/08/astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-study-put-on-hold-due-to-suspected-adverse-reaction-in-participant-in-the-u-k/

Trump has backup orders into Putin's Russia to ship 100 million doses of injectable Novichok two weeks before the election for distribution only in blue states.

[John Thullen]

Life expectancy by country:

https://www.worldometers.info/demographics/life-expectancy/

Keep scrolling.

More. No, lower, much lower.

Try the limbo.

Did you get to Cuba yet?

You're almost there.

Because we are ruled by subhuman murderous conservative republicans.

In two years under this murderous rule, Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid will be deliberately bankrupted and any attempts to revive them by raising revenue will be ruled unconstitutional by five, maybe six hired killers on the Supreme Court.

Then, American life expectancy will go into free fall as savage gun violence takes out the half of the population that is killing the rest of us.

[liberal japonicus]

It's open, everything is open. Though I'm fighting the urge to curl up into the fetal position after reading Silverman over at BJ.

[JanieM]

I'm fighting the urge to curl up into the fetal position after reading Silverman over at BJ.

Me too.

I do wish he'd had some suggestions about practical things any old citizen might do beyond what everyone is already talking about (make sure to vote, vote early if you can, give $, vote, phone bank, vote, help other people make sure to vote, etc.)

I guess I'm going to start by hoping Adam is wrong. Then I'm going to hope that someone in a position to intervene effectively is aware of this stuff. Then -- pray? (Except there's no one to pray to.)

[John Thullen]

https://www.balloon-juice.com/2020/09/08/destroying-the-justice-department-one-step-at-a-time/

It will never stop until.

[Marty]

Oddly, the only years life expectancy went down in the US in the last 50 were the first 5 years of ACA

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-states/life-expectancy

[sapient]

Oddly, the only years life expectancy went down in the US in the last 50 were the first 5 years of ACA

Yet the ACA still exists, and life expectancy is going up again. Maybe, in fact, it's going up because people like me are determined to live long enough to vote Trump out.

[John Thullen]

Well, once you get doctors involved in more people's medical care, they'll find something that'll kill ya and it ruins the averages.

Some of those people denied insurance all those years because of pre-existing conditions finally got medical care, but it was too late and they died on the operating table from treatment, queering the numbers.

Plus, socialized medical care increases death rates, but only in America. In every other civilized first world country, death rates drop under socialized medical care.

The anxiety caused to Americans by asking them to share a little bit and take responsibility for their fellow citizens' well being can cause a series of tiny strokes, not that anyone had a series of tiny strokes, so ignore those emergency visits to the hospitals. That was nothing. Fake brain bleeds.

Also, it dawned on some older conservatives after Obamacare was instituted that Medicare and Medicaid were vaguely socialist programs that the government was messing with, so they decided to take up permanent residence in privately run cemeteries to avoid the paperwork.

Plus, didn't Obama raise estate taxes about the same time which caused codger conservatives to pull the plug on themselves before their time was up, seeing as how oblivion is a surefire tax shelter?

It's just like a guy carrying two guns on his person causes all around him to be twice as polite, in fact, everyone shuts up all together and nods in the affirmative to everything he demands.

Exactly like that.

Maybe it's like when a black person or an autistic kid moves toward a law enforcement officer and they end up suffocated but if they run away to avoid suffocation, they get shot in the back.

Bullshit gets you coming and going.

[russell]

life expectancy

Snopes sez meh .

No doubt the devil is in the details.

[CharlesWT]

Using the data from the link.

For Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Eswatini, Latvia, El Salvador, Georgia, Moldova, Mongolia, life expectancy for males, compared to females, is lower than expected. -5.8 to -3.8 years; -7.9% to -5.5%

For the United States, Cambodia, Taiwan, Djibouti, Slovenia, Aruba, Rwanda, Czech Republic (Czechia), Indonesia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Uzbekistan, Montenegro, Senegal, Bahamas, life expectancy for males is about as expected. -0.1 to 0.1 years; -0.1% to 0.1%

For Algeria, Guinea, Iceland, Barbados, Iran, Antigua and Barbuda, Kuwait, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Bhutan, life expectancy for males is higher than expected. 2.3 to 3.4 years; 3.1% to 5.0%

Iceland seems to be in odd company.

Overall, male life expectancy = 0.94 * female life expectancy.

The life expectancy numbers for a lot of countries in the link may not be close to reality.

[John Thullen]

Herman Cain's life expectancy dropped precipitously and no one knows why.

He had great healthcare coverage.

So great that he can tweet from the grave. He's as dead as dirt and won't shut up.

American life expectancy gets kicked in the nuts every time motorcycle afficianados go maskless up close in South Dakota, and America's fake Christian cuckolds are taking out folks in the prime of their lives with public maskless prayer sessions and whatever threesome canoodling they can manage back at the cheap motel.

One of trumps executive orders alone killed hundreds of meatpacking employees but their demises didn't count because they aren't counted among American death totals, just a bunch of foreign subhumans whose lives make no difference to carnivorous conservatives.

[wj]

What repeatedly bothers me about life expectancy numbers is that they are tossed around in complete ignorance of the details. Take the report that life expectancy for males is 76, and Biden is 77. Look just at that, and you gotta figure Biden's on short time. But no.

That 76 number is the life expectancy at birth. News flash: Biden's a bit beyond that. If you want to know Biden's actual prospects, you need the life expectancy at 76 number. (Actually probably what you'll get is the value at 75. Because it's too much hassle to generate more detailed values.) As of 2016 (the last year I found), a 75 year old white male could expect, on average, another 10+ years. Since than average includes people already in terminal decline, and people with terrible health care, the expectation for someone who's healthy and has top-notch health care is significantly longer.

[John Thullen]

Live expectancy for females in Belarus just took a hit.

"For Russia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus, Eswatini, Latvia, El Salvador, Georgia, Moldova, Mongolia, life expectancy for males, compared to females, is lower than expected. -5.8 to -3.8 years; -7.9% to -5.5%"

Probably because men begin embalming themselves with vodka in some of those places in preparation for an early death.

[Marty]

Also:

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/trumps-idea-on-changing-social-security-funding-has-the-potential-to-break-an-impasse-on-much-needed-reforms-2020-09-09?siteid=yhoof2

[John Thullen]

Expect a sharp decline in the life expectancy of conservative movement poll harassers who f*ck with my vote:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-orders-his-frenzied-crowd-to-act-as-poll-watchers-on-election-day?via=newsletter&source=CSAMedition

[John Thullen]

Never trust a Lincoln Project conservative, but thank them warily, with the safety off, for borrowing imagery from me to describe their subhuman brethren, for whom they worked for decades to keep in office and screwing America:

https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1303656587228114949%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailykos.com%2Fstory%2F2020%2F9%2F9%2F1976069%2F-Lincoln-Project-goes-hard-after-Lindsey-Graham

[John Thullen]

One wonders if the opioid addiction crisis, created by unregulated American capitalism, not that there is anything wrong with each of those three words unto themselves, until they combine for deadliness, might have had a hand in the reduction in alleged American life expectancy for those few years.

Which tangentially, brings me to this quote from Hullabaloo, which is spot on:

'The liberal charge that poor whites vote against their economic best interests is not only smug and condescending, it misunderstands them entirely. President Lyndon Johnson understood that when he told Bill Moyers, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you."'

Unite the white "deplorables" whom liberals are mistakenly accused of looking down on, and the black, Hispanic, immigrant and liberal Jewish "deplorables" the conservative movement has actively sought since time immemorial to divide and conquer by turning all of them against each other and there might be a chance of burning the conservative movement to the ground.

Charles recommended the book "Caste" by Isabel Wilkerson recently, and it's next on my reading stack.

[russell]

(men and women) begin embalming themselves with vodka in some of those places in preparation for an early death.

you beat me to it.

for vodka, read 'oxycodin', and you're talking about the US.

In Russia, Putin took all of the state-owned enterprises and handed them out to his buddies.

In the US, we're doing the same with the government itself.

Who knew that "American carnage" was a promise?

[John Thullen]

America's Stalinist fascist movement considers blockading the Nation's Capitol, Washington D.C. to keep the American people from entering the city that belongs to us.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumpkins-are-losing-their-mind-over-occupy-wall-streets-faux-plans-for-a-white-house-siege?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning

They want to surveil, ID, and track all DC residents and any visitors who get through the blockade, not to save lives from the pandemic, mind you, but to cancel the First Amendment for all of America, as well as canceling voting rights across the country.

Why, the CCP couldn't come with a more freedom-loving plan.

Trump is having the Lincoln Monument remade, chiseling Lincoln's face to more closely resemble Vlad Putin's in order to further chisel the American taxpayer.

Trump's foremost envy of Putin is that he runs the Russian government as his own reality show business empire.

Republicans have always wanted to run government like a profit-making business.

So have the Mafia.

Trump's and Putin's business interests will be burned to the ground and the proprietors and enablers and dupes across the country hunted down and executed.

F*ck off, conservatives.

[russell]

scary hippies in tents! how will the republic survive it?

[wj]

Trump is having the Lincoln Monument remade, chiseling Lincoln's face to more closely resemble Vlad Putin's in order to further chisel the American taxpayer.

More important is rebranding the Washington Monument as the Trump Monument. (Naturally he would want a phallic symbol for himself.)

[bobbyp]

I read an opinion piece recently and am kicking myself because I didn't bookmark it...

Might find it here.

[JanieM]

Thanks bobbyp, but that was a link to a Google search, not to a specific article. If you had a specific article in mind, can you link again?

I have asked Google using a bunch of variations of search terms, and I haven't found it. I believe it was by a woman, it wasn't just a casual op-ed by some recognizable (to me) pundit, and the link was very recent, though if I noted the date of the article itself it didn't stick in my head.

[John Thullen]

America is in the conservative republican deep state's secure hands:

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/9/1976190/-DHS-whistleblower-Wolf-ordered-intelligence-findings-altered-to-support-Trump-claims

[russell]

voter fraud. or not.

spoiler alert: not.

just documenting the atrocities in advance.

[John Thullen]

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-to-end-coronavirus-airport-screenings-for-international-travelers-report-2020-09-09?siteid=bigcharts&dist=bigcharts

David Frum has a column the other day about his trips to and fro Canada and marveled (quaked) at the fact that no border security on our side (do we have a side, now?) wore masks or gloves, and they forced him to remove HIS mask for questioning in close quarters, which did not include inquiries about possible Covid exposure while he was out of country.

I guess we'll get to see if the Chinese and those cosmopolitan foreigners entering the country are as evil as evil subhuman republicans make them out to be for purposes of ginning up a nuclear confrontation with China.

Germany, Italy, and Spain just clamped down on social distancing again because of further outbreaks and Brexit fuckers in England just made it mandatory that only six people may congregate together throughout the country, if I read that right.

Hopefully a lot of guns are getting thru customs too, because we don't have enough guns in America either.

I'm completely dispirited that federal employees in this country are just following orders and ignoring their and their own family's well-being without protest or push back, and purposefully endangering the public during a public health crisis, among the other atrocities Trump has dragooned them into.

Republicans are plague super-spreaders. CCP, my ass.

It'a difficult to tell which weapon is more god-given to filthy republican death cult members ... an AR-15 or their infected flumes of spittle released into my air space.

They murder and we wait to be murdered, while watching with a sort of aghast fascination. It's like the slo-mo part of the horror movie.

I expect in a few weeks, policy will move to allowing ONLY infected travelers into the country, carrying their pet pangolins and bats on the planes as emotional support animals.

Let's remember that Bob Woodward knew all along what trump's murderous republican genocidal plan was .. and is.

That memory will come in handy during the coming savagery.

Wasn't Woodward the Science Officer on the Nostromo in "Alien"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA8jv1M6Y2g

I think he's just been interrogated.

But maybe he knows how to kill the perfect organism, but I have a feeling he admires its purity.

[John Thullen]

Funny how all of the long-time professional republican ratfuckers, who laid the groundwork for the current atrocities are now knocking on our doors peddling extermination services.

They are like those scam gas station attendants who squirt a little oil or brake fluid under your car while filling the tank, usually in a remote area with many services, and then flash their gleaming Burt Lancaster chiclets at you and offer to put the car up on the lift for an expensive look see.

I think I may have a very recent comment stuck in purgatory.

[nous]

Reasons why we in the western US are screwed, via Pro Publica:

https://www.propublica.org/article/they-know-how-to-prevent-megafires-why-wont-anybody-listen

More quantitatively — and related — fire suppression in California is big business, with impressive year-over-year growth. Before 1999, Cal Fire never spent more than $100 million a year. In 2007-08, it spent $524 million. In 2017-18, $773 million. Could this be Cal Fire’s first $1 billion season? Too early to tell, but don’t count it out. On top of all the state money, federal disaster funds flow down from “the big bank in the sky,” said Ingalsbee. Studies have shown that over a quarter of U.S. Forest Service fire suppression spending goes to aviation — planes and helicopters used to put out fire. A lot of the “air show,” as he calls it, happens not on small fires in the morning, when retardant drops from planes are most effective, but on large fires in the afternoon. But nevermind. You can now call in a 747 to drop 19,200 gallons of retardant. Or a purpose-designed Lockheed Martin FireHerc, a cousin of the C-130. How cool is that? Still only 30% of retardant is dropped within 2,000 yards of a neighborhood, meaning that it stands little chance of saving a life or home. Instead the airdrop serves, at great expense, to save trees in the wilderness, where burning, not suppression, might well do more good.

This whole system is exacerbated by the fact that it’s not just contracts for privately owned aircraft. Much of the fire-suppression apparatus — the crews themselves, the infrastructure that supports them — is contracted out to private firms. “The Halliburton model from the Middle East is kind of in effect for all the infrastructure that comes into fire camps,” Beasley said, referencing the Iraq war. “The catering, the trucks that you can sleep in that are air-conditioned…”

Disaster capitalism industries are just as bad as the fossil fuel cabal. They just have a built in ticking bomb excuse for their greed.

[wj]

I think the lack of control burns is attributable mostly to good intentions gone wrong. Combined with the kind of false economies which politics can engender.

Originally, the assumption (based on experience in the eastern US, with its totally different climate) was that fires were bad. And so should be put out as quickly as possible. As the linked article notes, that led to a build-up of flammable material. So we started controlled burns.

But controlled burns cost money -- among other things, for fire fighters to keep them under control. And money for prevention, here as elsewhere, can get sacrificed to other urgent budget priorities.** (Or course, once a wildfire gets going, money ceases to be a concern.)

Unfortunately, a controlled burn can sometimes get out of control. As a result, those who live near a proposed control burn can resist (however foolishly) taking the risk. In addition, there are liability issues. A controlled burn which gets away leaves someone (typically the state) liable for the losses incurred. Whereas nobody can sue a lightning strike which starts a wildfire.

So yes, there is a lot of money spent fighting wildfires. But that's not why controlled burns do not happen more.

** This is exacerbated by the fact that most of the population, and thus most of the legislators' focus, is in cities. Whereas most of the wildfires occur in the countryside, well away (at least initially) from urban areas. It takes something like the current disasters to make people realize that a big fire several hundred miles away can make their lives miserable.

[nous]

You are in agreement with the article, wj. The fire chief they interview lays this all out clearly.

Instructive reading that puts the policy decisions in context.