The Bullshit Artist

It's a great puzzle to those of us who are sane how a rabid cult of personality formed around such a repulsive, stupid person as the ex-president. This puzzle sent reporters on innumerable safaris to Midwestern diners, although that was really the wrong place to look. Cultists actually skew moderately affluent, although they are mostly not college-educated. Yeah, we get that his boorish behavior, exhortation of violence, racism and misogyny were a feature, not a bug. They gave the cultists permission to express their own true feelings.

But there's more to it. Those people are hopeless. Their affinity for him is truly felt. They adore him because they are like him. However, there is another group who simply fell for his lies, and the lies of Faux News and the Vulgar Pigboy, amplified by the soulless algorithms of Facebook and Google. Some of them fell down rabbit holes into the Q insanity and other fantasies, which have been shattered by the mere fact of the Biden inauguration. But others simply fell for the false representation of the man, created by his unreality TV show and pumped up by his sycophants and his own boasting. People actually perceived him as competent and strong.

Of course he's an incompetent idiot and a sniveling coward. He's left the federal government a wreckage that it will take most of Biden's first term to repair. And his incompetence and indifference has killed a couple of hundred thousand of us, at least. But it isn't done killing us yet. There is no -- repeat no -- vaccine distribution plan.The Biden administration is going to have to create it from scratch. Quoth CNN:

The Biden administration has promised to try to turn the Covid-19 pandemic around and drastically speed up the pace of vaccinating Americans against the virus. But in the immediate hours following Biden being sworn into office on Wednesday, sources with direct knowledge of the new administration's Covid-related work told CNN one of the biggest shocks that the Biden team had to digest during the transition period was what they saw as a complete lack of a vaccine distribution strategy under former President Donald Trump, even weeks after multiple vaccines were approved for use in the United States.

"There is nothing for us to rework. We are going to have to build everything from scratch," one source said. Another source described the moment that it became clear the Biden administration would have to essentially start from "square one" because there simply was no plan as: "Wow, just further affirmation of complete incompetence."

 

A hollow man without a soul. 

Update: Well duhh. Of course the Administration claimed to have a vaccine distribution policy and they even had a document. The point is, it was totally inadequate and such as it was, it wasn't being implemented effectively. The states were pretty much on their own. This is because he spurned expertise and put unqualified sycophants in key positions. A bullshit artist, like I said.

Further update: If you watch Faux News, you will be disinformed. You might be better off reading the Wall Street Journal (yeah, it's Communist):

President Joe Biden has promised a more forceful U.S. government response to the coronavirus pandemic, and on his second day in office released a national strategy and signed 10 executive orders and other directives as part of the plan. Here is what we know about his plans to speed the vaccine rollout and beat back Covid-19 . . . To accelerate vaccinations, he said his administration will work with federal, state and local officials to set up thousands of community vaccination centers across the country and deploy mobile units to rural and underserved areas. Mr. Biden promised 100 federally supported centers by the end of his first month in office. The Federal Emergency Management Agency will help set them up, and the federal government will increase reimbursements to states deploying the National Guard to help with vaccinations. Mr. Biden also said he aims to increase the pace of vaccinations by making shots available at independent and chain pharmacies beginning in February.

 

Or Politico:

Biden officials complained during the transition that their efforts to gather information on the coronavirus response were stymied at times by Trump administration political appointees. Biden aides for weeks were unable to access Tiberius, the central government database used to monitor vaccine distributions, according to one transition official. They were also denied access to certain standing meetings related to the government’s response until a few days before Biden was sworn in.

Yet while few disputed the transition was rocky, officials working on the transition or familiar with its work said it was patently obvious that the Trump administration response was severely lacking, and it should have been no surprise to Biden’s team.

That is particularly the case with the vaccine pipeline, which has been at the center of weeks of finger-pointing between states and the federal government over the slow pace of vaccinations.

 Or The Hill:

States, counties and cities say they are running out of coronavirus vaccines, leading to canceled or postponed appointments for thousands of people even as the country tries to ramp up the pace of vaccinations. Health officials are desperate for clarity from the federal government on vaccine shipments, saying they need accurate numbers for planning weeks in advance. Instead, the figures have been coming in only a week at a time and have not been consistent.

The Biden administration has pledged to work with states to improve communication but for now is scrambling to figure out just how much vaccine is available. "Allocation and supply are critical areas that we did not unfortunately have much visibility into," Jeff Zients, President Biden's COVID-19 coordinator, told reporters. "We will work to provide projections on supply. We hear over and over from governors and local leaders that they just don't know what supply is coming and can't plan. We will absolutely, across the next few days, as we get our arms around what's going on, make sure that we are communicating with states and localities so they can prepare effectively," Zients added.