“Okay, for all you students out there, kids doing class on Zoom, tell your teachers you can take the test but you just can’t complete the test, and the vice president says so, but you still want full credit for it.”
— Mika Brzezinski, ‘Blithering idiocy’: MSNBC’s Morning Joe rains hell on Mike Pence’s ‘ridiculous’ claims about COVID-19 testing
*****
“If you’re an employer and you offer to bring your employee back to work and they decide not to, that’s a voluntary quit. Therefore, they would not be eligible for the unemployment money.”
— Gov. Kim Reynolds, Republican Iowa governor.
*****
“The four top “giver” states– New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and Connecticut—tend to vote Democratic, while three of the four biggest “taker” states—Kentucky, Mississippi, and West Virginia—lean Republican. For every dollar New York puts into the federal government in taxes, it gets back $0.91. For every dollar Kentucky puts in, it takes out $2.41.”
— Heather Cox Richardson, Letter From America (4/28/20)
*****
“We are not in the worst of all possible timelines. And yet, our hopes for the pandemic’s quick resolution should clearly be shelved. Taken together, the three major developments of the past few days paint a bleak picture of the months that lie ahead: COVID-19 is too deadly to let it rip through the population. An effective cure is not in sight. And the federal government is incapable of formulating a coherent pandemic response. After weeks in which it made sense to hope that something would happen to end this nightmare, the prospects for deliverance are more remote than ever.”
— Yascha Mounk, No Testing, No Treatment, No Herd Immunity, No Easy Way Out
*****
“The lack of a safety net has been unnecessarily ruinous, both in terms of health care and economically. For a society and its people to be truly resilient, resources must be available for everyone—the lessons of history are clear.”
— Katherine Van Wormer, Building Resilience in the Days of the Coronavirus: Lessons from the Great Depression
*****
“There is but one thing you have to be concerned about, and that is that you keep foursquare with the principles of the international Socialist movement. It is only when you begin to compromise that trouble begins. So far as I am concerned, it does not matter what others may say, or think, or do, as long as I am sure that I am right with myself and the cause. There are so many who seek refuge in the popular side of a great question. As a Socialist, I have long since learned how to stand alone.”
— Eugene Debs, June 16, 1918, speech in Canton, Ohio, that led to his being sentenced to 10 years in prison on a charge of violating the Espionage Act, Et Tu, Bernie?
*****
“Don’t talk to me about patriotism or democracy. America’s not a country. It’s a business. Now fucking pay me!”
— Brad Pitt, movie Killing Them Softly (2012)