Prickly City by Scott Stantis for May 01, 2020

“I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.”

Thomas Jefferson

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan is among the GOP governors who — unlike Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — has aggressively promoted social distancing in his state and pushed for comprehensive COVID-19 testing.

During an interview on Washington Post Live this week, Hogan described the lengths he has gone to in order to obtain coronavirus tests for Maryland — including use of the National Guard.

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Hogan was asked about tests that were imported from South Korea to be used in Maryland — and if he was “concerned” that the federal government would “try to take those tests out of your hands.”

Hogan responded that fighting to obtain the tests “was a very complicated process. We spent about 22 days and nights dealing with this whole transaction with Korea. We dealt with the Korean Embassy and folks at the State Department in Korea — eight different state agencies.”

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“We landed it there with a large contingent of Maryland National Guard and Maryland State Police because this was an enormously valuable payload,” Hogan told Washington Post Live.

“It was like Fort Knox to us because it was going to save the lives of thousands of our citizens…. We wanted to make sure that that plane took off from Korea safely, landed in America safely — and that we guarded that cargo from whoever might interfere with us getting that to our folks who needed it.”

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What the hell? In the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA – a (Republican, by the way) Governor feels he must have the state’s National Guard guard health care supplies b/c he fears the Federal Government will SEIZE them… after the President has told states they were “on their own” to procure such supplies?

— Ed Shields (@EdShields12) April 30, 2020

https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/gop-governor-feared-trump-would-steal-his-covid-19-tests-and-used-the-national-guard-to-protect-them/

Trump is blaming Obama for leaving him with “broken tests” for a virus that didn’t exist.

Yes, really.

Observers of American politics sometimes wonder why White House reporters don’t do a better job asking President Donald Trump questions that expose his obviously false claims for what they are. An exchange on Thursday showed why it isn’t so simple.

During a White House press availability on Thursday, CNN’s Jim Acosta asked Trump to explain how it makes sense to blame former President Barack Obama for testing problems pertaining to a virus that didn’t even exist until nearly thee years after he left office.

“The last administration left us nothing. We started off with bad, broken tests, and obsolete tests,” Trump asserted,

…prompting Acosta to jump in and ask: “You say ‘broken tests’ — it’s a new virus, so how could the tests be broken?”

Acosta’s question succinctly revealed the fundamental absurdity of Trump’s ongoing efforts to pin blame for coronavirus testing problems on his predecessor.

Trump, however, just plowed forward with variations of the same false claim over and over again.

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/30/21243117/trump-blames-obama-coronavirus-broken-tests-jim-acosta

A sweeping survey of more than 22,000 voters in all 50 states found that most say their governor is doing a better job than President Trump in handling the coronavirus outbreak.

The poll, conducted by researchers at Harvard, Northeastern University and Rutgers, found voters are more likely to have high levels of trust in their state and local governments than in the White House or Congress.

But on a state-by-state basis, respondents said they approve of the job their governors are doing to respond to the outbreak more than they approve of the job Trump is doing in every state and the District of Columbia.

The broadest gaps between a governor’s approval ratings and Trump’s were in two liberal states where Republican governors have won high marks.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan each have approval ratings of 80 percent, while just 38 percent of people in those states approve of Trump’s response.

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/495504-governors-in-all-50-states-get-better-marks-than-trump-for-covid

Day 8 of the Georgia Economic Recovery.

#EndtheLockdown

“But yeah, that’s right, I forgot, with Republicans, the right to life dies at birth!”

- As poster @Cheapskate0 put it so elegantly here a couple of days ago…

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(I hope he doesn’t mind my borrowing it in response to the Trumpian Death Cultists here today.)

I want to break free

I want to break free

I want to break free from your lies

You’re so self satisfied I don’t need you

I’ve got to break free

God knows, God knows I want to break free

John Deacon

Sure made the poppies bloom in the Mojave Desert.

Lucky for you comic characters so rarely get sick and die of horrific diseases. (Does Arizona really require you to stay inside your one-room shack in the middle of uninhabited desert land? Golly.)

Areas where the numbers of cases are still rising, hot-spots still breaking out…so I guess you’d be happy with increasing that situation, too? Why don’t you quit your whining, buck up and find something productive to do at home or for others and help the situation instead of moaning about how inconvenienced and bummed out you are. At least you aren’t getting the crap bombed out of your home and country by the Nazis. Keep calm and carry on!

Give you liberty and give me death… Nobody’s really locked up, you can go out and spread germs if you want. Comparing a microscopic clump of dividing cells to someone else’s loved ones is incomprehensible. If you want to insist a woman sacrifice her life for the fetus, that’s another debate for another day.