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From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

On “please, don’t touch me” days, the pain medications don’t work like they normally do. I am unsure as to the physical reason for this, but I know that I can double my pain medication on a “don’t touch me” day and it has little effect. I just have to tough it out, knowing that the next day will be maybe, I hope so, likely better.

This past Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I worked in the office, took care of some remodeling projects, cleaned house, and trimmed trees and bushes. I worked far longer and harder than I should have, but since I am unwilling or unable to stop doing so, I must live with the consequences. And, boy, oh boy, do the consequences roll in like a freight train! Today, and probably several more days thereafter, I will have to contened with pervasive, unrelenting nerve pain. I am definitely in a “don’t touch me” phase of life.

Why I am telling you this? Perhaps you know someone who lives with chronic pain. If so, perhaps this post will give you a little insight into what they might be going through. Perhaps you have seen them grimace when someone touches or bumps into them. They might be having a “please, don’t touch me” day. If they are anything like me, they will endure the pain for the sake of not appearing crabby or difficult. Chronic pain sufferers want to be seen as “normal”, and often they will silently endure the pain unintentionally inflicted on them by others.

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From Dave Dubya:

Socialized health care works great for “The Only One”. He’s feeling good about that, and tweeting his triumph of the will to the world.

“I will be leaving the great Walter Reed Medical Center today at 6:30 P.M. (No hydroxychloroquine prescribed.)Feeling really good! (Steroid effect.)Don’t be afraid of Covid.(With drugs nobody else gets.) Don’t let it dominate your life. (Tell “No Mask” Herman Cain.) We have developed, (“We”?) under the Trump Administration, (Oh, really?) some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!” (Steroid effect again.)

Dexamethasone has been used since 1957. Remdesivir was developed in 2009 to fight Ebola. The Regeneron antibody cocktail technology was developed in 2014 to fight Ebola.

Who was President from 2009-2014?

But don’t panic. Relax and live with it.

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From PZ Myers:

I thought I was pissed off when Trump took a joyride after being hospitalized with COVID-19. That was disgracefully irresponsible and exposed who knows how many people to his disease — at least his driver, that’s for sure — to accomplish nothing, other than to advertise his insensitivity. I mean, I had a few symptoms two weeks ago, and went in for a coronavirus test that turned out to be negative, and I was still told to quarantine myself for 10 days in case it was a false negative, and I did. That was ten days in which I didn’t even leave my house, and my spiders were hungry and I was desperate for escape, and I was scrupulous in following the recommendations of my doctor.

Trump was diagnosed with a positive case, the disease is spreading rapidly through the White House staff, and he decided to do a ridiculous publicity stunt? Fuck him, and all his little sycophants.

But my annoyance is nothing compared to this woman’s.

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From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

What have you seen over the past four years—and have you seen enough?

I have.

I’ve seen enough cruelty,
enough criminality,
enough divisiveness,
enough malevolence,
enough hatred,
enough ugliness,
enough needless suffering,
enough unnecessary death,
enough Constitutional crises,
enough manufactured emergencies,
enough condescending press briefings,
enough presidential tweet tantrums,
enough intentional chaos.

I’ve seen enough of this frenetic circus of incompetence over the past four years to last a thousand lifetimes. Have you?

And after you’ve thought about what you’ve seen over the past four years and of all the things you’ve had enough of—I want you to think about the next four years.

What do you dream of for this place?

What nation do you hope for?

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From Frances Langum:

Of course now that TRUMP has Covid, it’s all about hurting his feelings to bring up the pandemic that has killed over 200,000 Americans? Please.

Of course Trump and the entire party that enables him wants to use his getting the virus as an advantage and get the Biden campaign to “stop attacking.” Chris Wallace asked Amy Klobuchar Sunday about this gambit, and the Minnesota senator brought the discussion right back to where it belongs: The average Americans dealing with the onslaught, medical and economic, of this virus…

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From Jonathan Bernstein:

To begin with, we should all wish them the mildest of cases and the quickest of recoveries. I’ll say right away: Trump deserves credit for announcing the news himself after receiving the diagnosis, and it’s good that the White House put out a statement from the president’s doctor right away.

That said, there are plenty of questions, and if the administration is smart it will answer as openly as possible — and at the very least, make sure to avoid anything that’s even a little bit inaccurate. It’s essential that the nation and the world can trust the White House right now, and given this administration’s previous record (including about medical disclosures) it’s starting from a deficit. The White House physician, Sean P. Conley, said that the Trumps are “both well at this time.” That’s not going to be enough.

The public is entitled to detailed disclosure. And detailed disclosure is good for the president. It will build trust, tend to dissipate conspiracy theories and simply reassure everyone. It will likely go against every instinct Trump has to allow people to know about (much less see) any weakness, but he and those around him need to understand right now that if the White House is even once caught in a lie about this, it will mean that no one trusts anything they say again. And that’s not a position he wants to be in.

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From Hackwhackers:

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From Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American:

Reporter Chris Wallace of the Fox News Channel, who moderated Tuesday’s debate and so was one of those the Trumps’ entourage endangered, revealed today that Trump arrived too late on Tuesday for a COVID-19 test, as the venue required. Instead, there was an “honor system.” Organizers assumed the people associated with the campaigns would not come unless they had tested negative. Trump’s people arrived wearing masks, which they had to have to enter the auditorium, but then removed them shortly after sitting down, and refused to put them back on. During the debate, Trump mocked Biden for his habit of wearing a mask.

The campaign did not tell the Biden camp that Hicks, who attended the debate, had tested positive for coronavirus the day after the event. The Biden organization learned it from the newspapers. The White House did not even tell former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who spent four days in close quarters with Hicks and Trump, helping the president prepare for the debate. He, too, learned the news from the media.

This crisis shows how the administration’s refusal to share information and its insistence on its own version of reality creates confusion that leaves Americans vulnerable and anxious. Its history of secrecy and lies means that few people actually trust anything its spokespeople say. It was striking how many people did not believe the Trumps were actually sick when the news broke; we are so accustomed to Trump’s lies that many people thought he was simply looking for a way out of future debates.

The constant lies—about coronavirus and virtually everything else—destabilize the nation because we cannot know what the truth really is. And if we don’t know what is actually happening, we cannot make good decisions.

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This is where I should admit that I am a daily user of a drug I take to boost memory and alertness. Usually I take it with a little hazelnut creamer.

— Julian Sanchez (@normative) September 29, 2020

• National figures, including Trump critics, are wishing my president a successful recovery. Those of us of a religious bent are adding our prayers for him and the First Lady. At The Moderate Voice the cartoon Dr. Fauci tells us what the real Dr. Fauci must be thinking but refuses to articulate, and Brian Geiss carefully points out why folks born during the Truman administration (like Trump and me) must be really, really careful, especially those of us with additional health considerations.
   
• Dave Dubya proposes that when anti-masking militants, virus deniers, virus minimizers like my president, are themselves stricken, perhaps reality is sending us a precautionary message. We should listen.
   
• While many of us offer our prayers, Hackwhackers offers a reminder, that even this tragic COVID-19 episode is accompanied by an instance of vicious last second recklessness.
   
• Frances Langum watches Fox News as Brian Kilmeade thinks about Donald Trump, hospitalized with a non-trivial chance of non-survival, and suggests a bright side for my president. That’s …um… creative, Brian.
   
• Ant Farmer’s Almanac comes up with an appropriate headline to describe the so-so reaction of the White House medical advisor when told of Trump’s startling medical condition.
   
• In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson reviews the sordid side of how news of Trump’s condition had to be extracted from an unwilling White House.

Continue reading “Trump Stricken, Vicious Prelude, CDC, Shut Up, MAGA Christians, Comey”

 

From Tommy Christopher:

White Supremacist Daily Stormer Founder Heard Trump’s ‘Stand By’ Comment as Chilling Command: ‘Get Ready for War’

Andrew Anglin, founder of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, interpreted President Donald Trump’s “Stand back and stand by” remark as an unambiguous call to arms, writing on the site that the command “gave me shivers.”

Anglin wrote a lengthy, gushing commentary about Trump’s performance in Tuesday night’s presidential debate, and particularly the moment moderator Chris Wallace and former Vice President Joe Biden pressed Trump to explicitly condemn white supremacists and right-wing militia groups.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said, in a remark that prompted widespread outrage — and online celebration from that extremist group’s members. You can count Anglin in the latter category.

Halfway through his commentary — which included anti-Semitic bile directed at Wallace — Anglin described the exchange, then wrote “He didn’t condemn anyone, and he didn’t tell them to stand down – he told them to stand back and to stand by.”

Anglin wrote that he interpreted the remark as “wait until I give the signal,” then added “I got shivers. I still have shivers. He is telling the people to stand by. As in: get ready for war.”

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