There once was a man, LaPierre,

Who only would say, “I don’t care!”

“Because of your money affairs,

We’re shutting you down, LaPierre.”

LaPierre only said, “I don ‘t care.”

“The IRS has assembled a squad

To look into possible fraud.

So all we can say is Beware!“

LaPierre only said, “I don’t care.”

Grave. Get it?

Take heart. You’re not the only one. About three hundred million of us have been hammering that point home.

When meeting with journalists daily

She handles them firmly but gaily.

Her briefing’s now viral

She’s entered the spiral:

Corona has caught up to Kayleigh.

Just… read it. Just work your way through it. I promise it will bring a smile – and maybe even laughter! – to your face.

Excerpts:

‘Merchants Hospitality has filed an explosive lawsuit against former partner Adam Hochfelder, accusing him of running a Ponzi scheme, embezzling investor money and retaliating against his former associates after he was fired in June.

In a complaint filed in New York State Supreme Court last week, Merchants claims it went out on a limb to help Hochfelder get back on his feet after a two-year prison stint, only to catch him stealing from the firm and using its name and assets to defraud unsuspecting investors and partners…

Hochfelder went to prison in 2010 after pleading guilty to 15 counts of grand larceny and three counts of scheming to defraud his uncle, in-laws and other investors out of more than $18 million. He left prison and was hired by Merchants in 2012.

Now, eight years later, Merchants accuses Hochfelder of embezzling funds from its West 42nd Street hotel project — the site of a failed effort to run a high-priced Playboy Club in New York — and using his affiliation with the firm to run a $400,000 Ponzi scheme through his company email…

[Hochfelder] accused Merchants of fabricating the scheme by breaking into his computer and creating false documents…

Merchants brought Hochfelder on board during his prison stint to spearhead acquisitions and development for the firm…

In 2014, Merchant, the firm’s CEO, called hiring Hochfelder “one of the best decisions we ever made.” And in 2017, after allegations of sexual harassment against Hochfelder surfaced, [the CEO] defended Hochfelder, saying, “It’s easy for him to be a pinata because of his past. But I think everybody deserves a second chance.”…

Merchants claims it conducted an investigation into [one particular] embezzlement … and Hochfelder ultimately admitted to the scheme and begged his partners to let him repay the money, citing “his own psychological issues and problems with drugs,” according to the September lawsuit…

Hochfelder [allegedly] collected $125,000 for an investment in the Bryant Park Hotel, which Merchants does not own. The complaint also alleges that Hochfelder offered an interest in Merchants’ Z Hotel in Long Island City but had the investor wire $75,000 to an LLC owned by his wife.

On top of those accusations and the alleged $4 million payment withheld by Roche, Merchants says Hochfelder has left the firm with months of overdue car payments, traffic violations and an ongoing eviction proceeding at his Midtown apartment…’

[Israel’s] coronavirus czar… carved the country into red, yellow or green zones depending on their virus rates. He intended to enforce lockdowns in the hardest-hit places.

But his plan, which became known as the “traffic light plan,” turned into political dynamite: The red cities were found to be overwhelmingly ultra-Orthodox or Arab, attesting to the crowded conditions in which these communities live. Mr. Netanyahu, for whom the ultra-Orthodox parties are a crucial coalition partner, balked. We became the country with the highest rate of new coronavirus cases per capita in the world.

Nice summary. UD likes the addition of stupid. UD feels stupid is insufficiently referenced in this matter.

On Wednesday, it becomes official: The city’s viral hot spots will be locked down. Life can only go back to normal when these communities are able to bring their shockingly high infection rates (8 percent positivity in some neighborhoods) down; but this is unlikely. More likely are riots, and even more brazen (because now enraged) flouting of masking and distancing. As in Israel, struggling with the same catastrophe on a vaster scale, there’s nothing admirably tolerant about letting populations fail to educate themselves and their children in the germ theory of disease, or fail to grasp basic civic life and social responsibility.

Local leaders said that [the] surge was driven by denialism, wishful thinking around herd immunity and misinformation spread by President Trump, who in 2016 carried some precincts in these neighborhoods with more than 80 percent of the vote.

Should be 140 but I’ll take it. Settle in to watch DJT do a superduper extended version of the Black Knight.

How weird we are, my fellow Americans. We are witnessing the playing out of our version of Greek tragedy, the downfall of the hero, the revelation that one of our most gifted envied potent figures has been corrupted, has degenerated, has been brought low by hubris or some other fatal character flaw, leaving us to regard with pity and fear his appalling end.

Unlike Trump, however, the traditional tragic hero (Oedipus, Hamlet, Faustus, Kurtz, the Consul) starts off dramatically better than the rest of us – morally and intellectually superior. His fall is thus from a very high height, and this is the horror and the pity of it – that even the very best among us will be shot down by the gods, or by some long-latent intrinsic defect. Although the hero soars above the rest of us, his eventual all-too-human fall instructs us in (and, Aristotle argues, helps reconcile us to) the limitations of our human nature, and the universal extinction that awaits us all, high and low.

The model of the tragic reversal, the hero’s sudden turn from high to low, from glory to catastrophe, doesn’t fit the president, who, as many have noted, has from the start played out a strikingly low-life narrative. This American tragic hero seems simply to have brazenly gotten away with a lot of things, and now time and circumstance have caught up with him. No one watching his effort, during the debate with Biden, also to brazen that event out, can have missed the desperation of a man coming to the bottom of his bag of tricks.

And, well, I guess we can reference tragic irony, of a sort. As Maureen Dowd’s comment in my headline suggests, we certainly have here that old dramatic chestnut whereby the thing the hero dreads the most – in this case, losing – over-abundantly, maximally painfully, with the whole world watching, comes to pass.

Sing it, brother.

Sing it.

FEVER

Never know how much I love you

Never know how much I care

When we do debate preparation

I get a fever that’s so hard to bear

You give me fever at the rallies

Fever when you hold me tight

Fever in the mornin’

Fever all through the night

Sun lights up the day time

Moon lights up the night
I light up when you call my name
And you know I’m gonna treat you right
You give me fever at your golf club
Fever when you’re raising cash
Fever in the mornin’
My toes have got a nasty rash

Everybody’s got the fever
That is somethin’ you all know
Fever isn’t such a new thing
You knew about it long ago

Donald he loved Melania
Melania she felt the same

When he put his arms around her

He said Melania baby you’re my fame
He gave her fever

When they cuddled
Fever with his flaming kiss
Fever I’m on fire

Fever yeah I burn and hiss

Captain Smith and Pocohantas

Had a very mad affair

When her daddy tried to kill him

She said daddy oh don’t you dare
He gives me fever with his kisses

Fever when he holds me tight

Fever I’m his missus

Daddy won’t you treat him right

Now you’ve listened to my story
Here is the point that I have made

Trump was born to give you fever

Be it fahrenheit or centigrade
He gives you fever

When you meet him
Fever if you live you learn

Fever till you sizzle

What a lovely way to burn

What a lovely way to burn

Entire Top of the Republican Party has been Exposed to Covid

‘President Trump’s campaign schedule has insured that that the top tier of the Republican party either has contracted or has been exposed to covid-19.‘

What is due in the way of kindness and sympathy to people who have no kindness and sympathy for anyone else? Should we repay horrifying cruelty in equal measure? Then we reduce ourselves to their level. But if we return indecency with the decency due any other person in need, don’t we encourage appalling behavior? …

The pandemic was not Trump’s fault, but at every turn, he made things worse than they had to be—because at every turn, he cared only for himself, never for the country. And now he will care only for himself again.

Trump should never have been allowed anywhere near any public office. Wish him well, but recognize that his deformed spirit will never be well—and that nothing can be well for the country under his leadership.

*************

The shriveling of Trump makes UD think of that Philip Roth title — The Dying Animal. Or the Yeats poem from which the title comes – for Yeats too knew how nightmarish it was to be merely an animal.

What is due to this self-sickened man? The pity we feel for a dying animal.

But would she listen?

********

“Wear your masks. Don’t listen to our idiot fucking president.”