The Don did not renew the federal government’s shelter-in-place order that expired on April 30^th. States like Georgia, Florida and Texas celebrated with a shout of “hot diggity dog.”

Hey, let’s get this shit back to normal. America needs to get its ass back to work. After all “are you a man or a mouse?”

As for me, I am a damn mouse. I get that people need to get back to work and that the economy needs to get going, but are we really going to encourage Russian Roulette?

For the record, Covid-19 hates mice, but it just love, loves, loves an idiotic man (or woman). If you look closely at each store awning, there is a subtle flashing sign with a smiling virus saying “Enter at your own peril.”

This comment by Kim Rinehart, a worker at a transmission plant in Toledo Ohio, says it best: “If you had a murderer in the plant, and you didn’t know where, but you knew he was there, would you go back into that plant?”

Um?

By not renewing the order and understanding the calamity that potentially awaits those who return to work or feel it is safe to patronize businesses, The Don and his out of touch governors, put more American lives at risk.

The Don’s utter incompetence in handling the pandemic has already cost tens of thousands of lives, but there is a presidential election to be won and without a robust economy, The Don is in bigly trouble. All the experts concur that it is too soon to open things up and by doing so, we will increase fatalities and allow the virus to wreak further havoc.

We are now at 65,000 deaths and many feel this may underestimate the total by 15%. The death toll has already reached where it was expected to be in August, more than three months from now, according to projections accepted by the White House. The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation now estimates that 73,000 will die by August. We’ve reached our numbers faster than expected. We are even greater than expected!

And true to form, Florida Governor, Rick De-Satan-santis is not releasing the number of dead from his state.

“Live free or die” is being replaced by “Die going to work or lose your job,” as Americans are faced with the fear of losing their job if they don’t report to work. Some states are even asking employers to report workers who do not show up so they can cancel unemployment benefits. “Hot diggity dog,” the essential part of this phrase being “dig it,” for digging your own grave. And by the way, Mr. Empathy has decided there should be no money for the dead.

The dangerously delusional world of The Don climbed to another level this week. “We think we really have crossed a big boundary and much better days are ahead.” Yes, Don, with no end in sight to people dying, happy days are almost here again. What fucking planet is this man living on?

He went on to say: “I often say I see the light at the end of the tunnel very strongly.” (For more of the Don’s brilliant use of the English language see Trevor Noah’s tribute.)

The most disappointing part of that sentence is that it didn’t end in bigly.

And Don, how many times is “often’? How bright is that light; how long is that tunnel?

And three cheers for the useless boy wonder Jared Kushner who should be on Time Magazine’s cover for its “Evil Man of The Year” edition. (And aren’t you just burning to know what Ivanka thinks of her daddy’s doings? Actually, I couldn’t give a shit, but you might.)

Here’s Kushner:

“If we didn’t do what we did, you would have had a million people die, maybe more, maybe two million people die.”

  “We’re on the other side of the medical aspect of this, and I think that we’ve achieved all the different milestones that are needed”…“The federal government rose to the challenge, and this is a great success story. And I think that that’s really, you know, what needs to be told.”

This is a success story like the shuttle “Challenger” that burst in to flames and killed all members of the crew.

“This is going away,” he said, “and when it’s gone, we’re going to be doing a lot of things.”

Mr. Kushner said May “will be a transition month” as states began reopening. “I think you’ll see by June a lot of the country should be back to normal.”

 A transition period? Is that like when the spirit of the dead hangs around a while in a Bardo* before it makes its journey to wherever it is going?

 “And the hope is that by July, the country’s really rocking again.”

 Rocking?  Can we please tie a mask around this know-nothing’s mouth in such a way that nothing he says can ever be heard again? Actually, tying his hands behind his back and shoving a sock in his mouth would do the trick, and be better optics.

 In a new scene in “Survivor,” The Don declared meat processing plants “critical infrastructure,” in an effort to ensure that facilities around the country remained open as the government tried to prevent looming shortages of pork, chicken and other products as a result of the coronavirus.

Hey, we all love a good burger or pork chop, but should people die doing that kind of work. Tyson, one of the largest chicken producing companies, only just recently started to provide protective gear to its workers and try to create safer working conditions. And are you surprised that a disproportionate number of meatpackers are people of color and immigrants — 44 percent are Latino and 25 percent are African American, according to an analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, said, “We only wish that this administration cared as much about the lives of working people as it does about meat, pork and poultry products.”

The crazy thing is that if you kill off the workers there won’t be anyone to do the work necessary to keep those burgers coming. Taking Applebaum’s concerns one step further: one could venture that if you are a pig, your odds of survival may be higher than the people that process it.

But go forth workers. The Don needs his burgers. And why settle for a cheeseburger when you can have a Covid Burger?

**Bardo– In Tibetan Buddhism a state of existence between death and rebirth, varying in  length according to a person’s conduct in life and manner of, or age at, death.