FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

 

Billy was the real thing. 

•   They say Tubby got the virus but since they're completely untrustworthy we have to consider alternatives: 1.) It's the truth; there were too many leaks and loose ends to keep it quiet; like what would they tell his next audience of virus-targets if he's too sick to show up? 2.) They're just plain lying, using a get-well-soon story as a distraction from his disastrous campaign week; 3.) They're mixing truth with lies -- like maybe he just hit a serious cognitive drop and they're calling it COVID as a cover. Well, whatever it is, the guy will be low-key for a little while his goons do the talking. Byron York at the Washington Examiner:

Then there is Trump's role as candidate. Remember that the president, and a lot of Republicans, too, have mocked rival Joe Biden for "hiding in his basement" and appearing mostly in virtual events. Well, it now appears that coronavirus will force President Trump to adopt a Biden-style campaign, at least for the next 10 to 14 days. The Trump campaign can still gather big crowds, which he can address via video. But there will be an undeniably different dynamic to those events, because the president always feeds off the energy from a big crowd, and he can't get the same effect sitting in front of a camera.

LOL yeah, let's schedule big rallies where Trump's loyalists can watch him on TV! How heartwarming. It'll be like the GOP Death Cult version of Spartacus, or Stone Soup: The President can't give you the King's Virus himself, but several of you are probably teeming with COVID-19, so you can give each other coronavirus in his name! It's a Trumpmas miracle! 

If you prefer your idiocy mainstream, here you go:

Does Biden suspend his campaign as Trump is quarantined? Is the White House failure to observe protocols a reason for Biden to continue his campaigning?

— Jeff Greenfield (@greenfield64) October 2, 2020

•  Meanwhile, from slightly before Corona Don time, here's Rod Dreher:

Here’s why Donald Trump is not out of the game yet. It’s a ruling from two months ago, by the federal 11th Circuit, brought to my attention just now by a reader:

A Florida school board’s refusal to allow a transgender boy to use the bathroom matching his gender identity was unconstitutional, the 11th Circuit ruled Friday...

Dreher actually thinks his frothing hatred of trans people is shared by normal people and will be a game-changer in the election.

Like I said earlier, Trump was a crazy man in last night’s debate, and was a disgrace. It says something terrible about our country that this is how our president behaves. But we should also keep in mind that the kindly, respectable Joe Biden represents something truly barbaric — in fact, believes that there can be no compromise on the issue.

This is about what it means to be a male, a female, a human being. And Joe Biden is on the wrong side of the issue. 

[Hysteria Bold in the original.] This reminds me of this previous bit of Dreher electoral analysis:

UPDATE: New CBS News poll finds no Kenosha bump for Trump, even in Wisconsin. People who want the situation calmed trust Biden more.

UPDATE 2: A friend who read this told me on the phone, as we were talking, that he finds it impossible to believe that there was no Trump bump from the rioting — but easy to believe that people who intend to vote for Trump would not admit it to a pollster. He’s probably right. I wouldn’t tell a pollster if I was going to vote for Trump. Is that paranoid? Maybe. But I don’t think people are wrong to fear that this information is being recorded, and might be used against them one day.

Not too paranoid, huh? Then he added one of his Letters to Repenthouse "from" someone who feels exactly the same way. I have my own feel-good ideas about how this election could go right, but it seems weird to me to watch the guy say over and over again that maybe fear and hatred will pull it out for the Party of God. Well, I guess it's better than admitting that voter suppression is their only real hope. 

•  Sorry, I can't let the subject alone -- it's too rich. I see the Washington Times is trying to stir shit by sending out a Breaking News alert about this:

It's very obvious UUURGK BAD BROWN LADY TALK BAD ABOUT LEADER stuff, but stop and think: Why would an appeal to sympathy toward Trump work on his fans? They always talk and think about him as superhuman -- an impression supported by his pointed cruelty and brutality, which proves his disdain for human weakness. He doesn't get coronavirus, he gives it! Think about those crazy Ben Garrison cartoons (and the weird Trump-as-Rocky Photoshop sent out by Trump himself) portraying this flabby tub-o-guts as a buff he-man. Can they even imagine Trump suffering from a mere disease? Maybe if it were cancer, that would work -- people "fight" cancer, so the image of a Swole Trump battering the Grim Reaper might play. But a flu virus? That's like a Rocky movie in which the boxer plans a comeback against Guillain-Barre Syndrome. Boring! I expect that when and if Trump pulls through his factota will tell the rubes thrilling stories of how he refused the wheelchair as he lumbered heroically to the snack machine in the lobby.