Zombie Republic

 

California... prophet on the burnin' shore... where Gavin Newsom is whipping the kids back to school so he can whip their parents back to work, where new cases of COVID-19 are up 165% in Los Angeles County at least partially due to brilliance like this:

"...Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva stated that the mandate will not be enforced as it is 'not backed by science' and contradicts the guidelines of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which recommends only that the unvaccinated wear masks."

— "COVID-19 cases rise by 165 percent in California since lifting of restrictions in June", wsws.org 07.22.2021

The reputation of the LAPD and the L.A. Sheriff's Department was already so deep in the toilet they couldn't possibly make it worse — until the goddamn sheriff of L.A. County decided he was going to be their goddamn doctor, too.

A hundred and sixty-five goddamn percent. 

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ZOMG Democracy!

We're hitting a record for COVID-19 deaths, unemployment is sky-high, another wave of evictions is hitting, the fascists are still running wild, the police are still mass-murdering Black people, but yeah — let's impeach Trump — and find some obtuse, other-worldly reason to blame Russia while we're at it, because what the hell. 

Cripes, how the hell does that even work? The guy's been out of office for nearly a week. If the Senate votes to convict, how do they punish him — revoke his Secret Service protection? Sieze his Federal pension? Prohibit him from running for office again? The "spanking machine"?

MSNBC commentators and guests this past week have been blurting out the word "democracy" so often you could play a drinking game; meanwhile QAnon, Patriot Prayer, the Proud Boys and the rest aren't just going to pack it in and go home because Trump's been bounced out of the White House...

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Congratulations, Mr. President

You know the thing... but first, the Democrats are going to take one more crack at impeaching Trump for a cheap-ass little crime which they themselves weren't complicit in, and give themselves a chance to bitch and moan on TV about the Chud Army "impeding democracy" n'shit — because even when they "win", the Democrats are a bunch of cryin' loser bitches.

You know the thing.

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Instant Karma!

So, aaaanyway... everybody and their cat have been speculating for months about what they think the "October Surprise" will be in this campaign, and wot'tha FUUUUU—

You're Helping Trump!

OK, just so we're clear on this: if I ask the Democratic Party what plans they have to deal with any of the major issues of this Presidential campaign — or question their previous record on any of these issues — I'm helping Trump, and I'm a Russian asset. Is that more or less where we're at, here? 16 x 18.5 inch medium-res color .jpg image, 2.1mb

It Is What It Is

This past week, in an interview on Axios, Trump had this to say about the 150,000+ deaths from coronavirus this year: "It is what it is". You actually have to take your hat off to something like that, something so sublimely, elegantly, ferociously tone-deaf — something even worse, in fact, than Biden's immortal "you ain't Black", and that's saying something.

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Back To School

Capital and the State are trying to whip the working class back to work during a pandemic, but it won't be entirely successful unless they can whip the kids back to school.

Unsurprisingly, Texas and Arizona — two states leading the nation in Covid-19 cases and stupidity — are whole-hog into it.

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Freedom Isn't Free

Getting up to date in our Thinning Out The Stupid Gene Department: Florida, gung-ho for reopening, beaches crowded as hell, has set a new one-day record for new COVID19 cases; even as one state after another begins mandating mask use, the governor of Georgia has stuck a blow for freedom by barring municipalities from mandating masks and, elsewhere in the Covidiot Universe, the co-founder of ReOpen Maryland — one of many groups standing up for our Constitutional right to manicures and ice cream — tested positive for COVID19 just a couple of weeks ago.

But as it's often said — Freedom Isn't Free.

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Covid Brunch

Here in Washington, DC, we're in Phase II of Pretending It's All Over And Everything's OK — that is, "reopening the economy". Right about now, some restaurants are re-opening for socially-distanced dine-in — meaning, of course, lots of waitstaff and bartenders working for crap wages plus tips, many threatened with firing, desperately trying to avoid infection by getting themselves up like dentists in order to serve maskless, feckless, blissfully ignorant bougie America.

Yet another one inspired by this classic tweet from Benjamin Dixon:

Bruh, if your waiter looks like this, that means you need to take your bourgeoisie ass home and learn to cook until this thing is over pic.twitter.com/rpcpi5inh6

— Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon) July 1, 2020

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So Over Quarantine

All across the US, the economy is "reopening". Despite new cases hitting a new record, cities all over the country are beginning to re-open bars and restaurants so that selfish, pasty-assed, whiny, non-mask-wearing America can go out and be served by people working with little or no adequate protection for crap wages and crap benefits — or often, no benefits at all. In my own hometown of Washington DC, we're currently in Phase II of Pretending It's Over And Everything Is OK.

Bruh, if your waiter looks like this, that means you need to take your bourgeoisie ass home and learn to cook until this thing is over pic.twitter.com/rpcpi5inh6

— Benjamin Dixon (@BenjaminPDixon) July 1, 2020

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Flyover

USAF F-16 "Fighting Falcon" as used by "Thunderbirds" aerobatic team:
Unit cost: $US29.1m; operational cost $US8k/hour

US War Budget FY 2021: $US934bn

US Total Deaths from COVID-19 (as of 05.20.2020): 90,340

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Hands Across The Sea

A quick quiz:
Name the two countries who currently lead the world in COVID-19 deaths.
Name the two countries whose public health services are the most ravaged by budget cuts and privatization.
Name the two countries whose leadership has been the most comically ignorant and incompetent in the face of this crisis.

Give up...?

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America Sends Death

Despite oppressive blockades and sanctions, Cuba has managed to dispatch brigades of doctors to coronavirus hotspots to help fight the pandemic — in keeping with a long-standing tradition of solidarity and mutual aid. Cuba is also reported to have produced promising results with interferon and other experimental drugs against COVID-19, despite the punishing economic warfare Cuba is suffering at the hands of the United States.

The US, in the meantime — still the epicenter of the pandemic — escalates its brutal program of sanctions against Cuba, Venezuela and Iran, commits acts of piracy against other nations and its own States, continues to crank up xenophobic and racist hysteria against China, deprives citizens and healthcare workers of vitally-needed PPE and other equipment, tries to whip its working class back to work under dangerous conditions for substandard wages, and its President goes on national TV to suggest that citizens combat the virus by injecting or drinking bleach.

I'll leave it to you to judge which nation is conducting itself better on the world stage.

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Capitalism Is The Pandemic

One in solidarity with the May Day strikes coming up, inspired by this graffiti in Chicago spotted about a week and a half ago.

Special thanks to @redfishstream on Twitter.

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Thankyuh, thankyuhvurymuch

These days, when I think of the Democratic Party, I think of Elvis — old, fat Elvis.

I think of old, fat, bloated, flop-sweating, Seconal and Dexedrine-addled, flying to Denver for a peanut butter and banana sandwich, dead-on-his-feet Elvis circa late 1976.

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At Last! The Left Rises!

It seems that everywhere you look around the world these days, the Left is gathering strength and taking the streets, often organizing and acting outside the constraints of standard-issue electoral politics. The issues they address are international, issues that the People can unite around worldwide: neoliberalism, austerity, fascism, militarism.

Everywhere except in the United States, that is. Here in the Evil Empire, what passes for even a merely "progressive" Left is turned inward, all about the "election", all about "beating Trump", pouring all of its available energy into getting one guy elected President. Said "sociailst" hero will, of course, once again — as in 2016 — cave at the Convention and endorse whatever vile-ass, useless centrist the Democrats want to serve up, and leave the Left with nothing.

Now, I didn't graduate PoliSci — I was just some hippie arts major — but it would seem to me their time and energy would be better spent breaking out of the prison of American electoral "democracy" and organizing and acting around the global issues and building international solidarity instead of pissing it all away on a process known to be compromised by capitalism, and rigged against the People.

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Blue No Matter What

So, it seems that the Democratic Party has insisted on holding primaries in Ohio and Illinois — even going to court — despite the fact that THERE'S A GODDAMN PANDEMIC GOING ON. Man, those bastards must really be in a hurry to shove Gropin' Joe down our throats, huh?

Perhaps the Democrats' strategy involves ramrodding Gropin' Joe through the primaries based on the idea that most of the people who'd vote for Sanders are younger, and taking advice to self-quarantine, choosing not to risk their lives to go to the polls — while the people most likely to turn out for Gropin' Joe are of a generation with one foot in the grave already. Instead of "Blue No Matter Who", maybe the new slogan of mouth-frothing Centrist partisans should be "Blue No Matter WHAT".

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