Y’all, there were almost 2,500 new cases of COVID-19 in Mississippi yesterday. That’s more than the total number of kids in the Itawamba County School System when I graduated. Hell, there’s just a little over 3,600 kids in it now.
Across the country, we’ve had over 13.6 million cases and over 270,000 deaths. Those numbers are staggering. We’re heading into what looks to be a brutal winter and a lot of folks are bracing for possible eviction. The complete lack of common sense that seems to be as American as apple pie and insider trading saw far too many people decide their Thanksgiving gathering was okay, and thus the spike.
Of course, despite his electoral loss, President Trump is doing all he can to help the citizens he serves to prepare for the hit we’re going to get as we wait for a virus that hopefully comes by Spring. No, that’s not true. He’s still howling about how the election was a fraud out of one side of his mouth and preparing everyone for another run at the White House come 2024. That is when he’s not threatening to veto the defense bill unless Congress does some legislative hoodoo that means social media sites can’t ban racists and hatemongers. So there’s one thing to root for him on.
But help is on the way. Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer blinked and will apparently sign on to a $908 billion relief package to help folks during the COVID-19 pandemic. This includes a $300 boost to unemployment for 18 weeks and $288 billion for the Paycheck Protection program for small businesses that somehow got sucked dry by larger businesses and corporations last time around.
Not only is this a significant drop from the $2.2 trillion package passed by the House back in May which the living dead from Kentucky Mitch McConnell refused to even look at, but it also offers way more protections for businesses to screw over their workers with much less oversight. So thanks for the sour persimmons, cousin, I reckon. It should be noted this package is meatier than one Republicans circulated, which topped out at $500 billion and didn’t do near as much. In any event, McConnell is supposedly shopping around a third bill but the details on that are unknown.
And before you ask, we have over 600 billionaires in this country and that aforementioned defense bill Trump’s holding over Congress’ head because he knows Twitter is going to boot him off the site after January 21 is over $700 billion, so we’ve got the money. It should be noted this is the first snit he’s thrown about defense spending. Back in July, he threatened a veto if military bases kept changing their names so they no longer honored Confederate generals – which just makes sense, really – so it’s nice to know his priorities are in order.
In other goofy bastard news, Trump is actively trying to sabotage the GOP’s chances in the January runoff in Georgia. At a rally today in Alpharetta, outside of Atlanta, he told supporters to sit out the election as Republicans hadn’t “earned their vote.” He’s still sore that partly due to the efforts of Stacey Abrams and partly due to his assholery, Georgia flipped blue and lost him the election. He’s getting backing for this stance from the complete dingbats that are speaking for him in the courts, Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, and I say why not. We live in a country that already thinks not voting is accomplishes something and the old wisdom tells us to never smarten up a chump.
Amusingly – as the joke goes – the atmosphere around the White House has gotten more polite. According to Dan Rather, everyone’s saying “pardon me.” Ba-dump-bump. Anyhow, not only is court jester Rudy Giuliani asking for a broad pardon much like the one Michael Flynn got before calling for martial law to reject the election results, the president’s asking if it’s possible to pardon himself, his crotch spawn, and presumably their spouses (though there’s no guarantee there, Jared). It should be noted that none of the above have been charged or even officially accused of anything, so there’s some question about how this will play out.
How all this gels with Trump insisting he won the election and won’t concede, you tell me. He has raised almost $170 million from the rubes to “help the fight,” so you really can’t knock the hustle. Another part of that old wisdom says never give a sucker an even break. People keep saying Trump’s some sort of slick conman but the vast majority of his supporters may be marks of the highest order. You wonder who falls for those Nigerian prince email scams? Well, there you go.
Dear Y'all 