Archives for March 2020

Day 1155 That’s a Nasty Question

Wednesday March 18, 20120

228 Days until the election on November 3rd

308 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I keep thinking about Trump’s response to NPR reporter Yamiche Alcindor’s question. She asked how it was Obama’s fault (e.g. the slow response of the Trump administration to the corona virus) when he Trump had disbanded the US Pandemic Response Team.

This is classic Trump. When he is asked to explain one of his lies he attacks the person for asking. He then goes on to deny he was responsible. Someone else possibly in the administration did it but not him. What BS!

The day before that at the press briefing the reporters were handed a one and half page memo. I guess it was a memo. It wasn’t marked as such. It was some bullet points and paragraphs about what to do to stop the spread of the Corona Virus. Some of its suggestions were different than the CDC’s. Naturally, reporters were confused. What is this? The truth? You want the truth? We don’t know. It was some random ideas, handed out at a White House briefing. Why? We don’t know. 

I think I know. It was Jared’s “research.” What allegedly held up the White House response to the Corona Virus. This supposed memo looks like a high school student’s searches on google to find out what to do about the Corona Virus. I think the big hold up was trying to figure out how to change half of the bullets from little round dots to shields. But I’m just guessing. We will probably never know.

Also the other day Trump decided this was a health crisis. I don’t know if this precludes him from thinking it’s a plot by the deep state to get him. It doesn’t stop him from tweeting racist views on the subject that we know because after giving his semi-heartfelt Oval Office teleprompter reading (where he allegedly stuck to the script most of the time and only told two lies, and that was attributed to his inability to read) he then took to twitter to call it the China Virus or the Hunan Flu. Nice. Just what we need.

Andrew Cuomo has tried to make nice and gave a real heartfelt speech about the virus and the effect on family. Something Trump can not do because he has no idea what that is. I’m not being funny. Trump is incapable of either humor or remorse or empathy because it is absent from his psyche. It ain’t there. I refer you to an interview NPR had with Seth Myers talking about Trump on SNL. They did a skit where they were selling Trump chicken wings. The skit ended with them singing to the Pointer Sisters’ song “Jump” but instead said, “Trump.” He didn’t get it. He didn’t understand the humor. He had to watch other people laugh and then he saw they thought it was funny, but he did not get it. It wasn’t just that bit. He doesn’t understand humor – period. His idea of humor is to put someone down. That’s his idea of funny, and it isn’t really funny to him. It’s just “look at that poor slob” kind of bullying. 

It’s sad but true.

The Corona Virus? Well, he doesn’t get that either. He is flailing about. First he tried to say it wasn’t happening here. Then it wasn’t his fault. Then it was “we are doing a fabulous job.” 

This is all predictable. There is nothing new here. Hopefully, people like Cuomo will jolly and cajole Trump into doing something helpful. They will have to treat him like the fat sergeant in Zorro, or Colonel Clink in Hogan’s Heroes. They will have to praise Trump for the great job he is doing and for the terrific ideas he has had, all the while knowing that they manipulated him into doing it. 

We need more Putinesque handling of him. Maybe with a little Mao praise thrown in:

“The Corona Virus was due to wipe us all out had it not been for the brave and valiant leadership of our glorious president Donald J. Trump. For it was he, and he alone, that wiped it from our shores … “

228 Days until the election on November 3rd

308 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS “We Are F*cked” by Edward Hopper (Okay, I renamed the painting.)

Day 1153 H1N1 Lies and More Lies

Sunday March 15, 2020 

231 Days until the election on November 3rd

311 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

First a little catch up (katsup? Whatever) Yesterday was 3.14 – HappyPi Day!

Today is the Ides of March – Beware.

Okay now down to business. I am once again flabbergasted to learn that what Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Republicans in Congress are saying about Obama and H1N1 is not true. None of it. It’s all lies or at best misrepresentations. I am shocked. Shocked I tell you.

Here’s a handy little fill in the blank conspiracy theory generator:

“Hey, did you know [ enter falsehood here ]? It’s true, and it’s Obama’s fault.”

Okay, that’s the modified version. I got bored and I forgot where I was going with it.

Did you see the press conference where the president was asked about how it was that it was Obama’s fault on Trump’s not being prepared and he said it was a nasty question? Fucking A it was nasty! You bet. Imagine asking the president to account for something? My god.

It seems we are now incubating Covad-19 at airports. Good job Donnie and Mikey! I mean the airports here are a mess with people trying to get home.(Gee, kind of like the Christmas story. Going home to get counted. Census is coming. Provided you aren’t an immigrant – don’t want to count them, which of course they don’t have to do, just as long as they get the change to the Constitution.)

How else can they screw this up? Oh boy. Apparently, Trump is trying to buy a vaccine. (Jim Bakker has one. Buy his.) Trump’s even trying to steal a company from Germany. That’s the spirit. Remember when we led the world? That was like, three years ago. Now? Now we are left to grovel. But we don’t grovel, Oh no, not us. We refuse. We build walls. We do nothing.

Why hasn’t Trump signed an Executive Order saying Covid-19 can only affect his political enemies?

I understand Hope Hicks is back at the White House, thus giving hicks hope! (Get it? Ha ha ha. It’s not my joke – btw. So if you don’t like it…)

Spring seems to be here. A little early. Gee, wonder why? 

231 Days until the election on November 3rd

311 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Where is Fifi when we need her? She probably wouldn’t be of much use. No opposable thumb.

(I may have used this photo before, If so laugh anyway. LAUGH!)

Better.

o-o

Day 1152 I was wrong about Trump

Saturday March 14, 2020 

232 Days until the election on November 3rd

312 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Yes, boys and girls I was wrong about president Trump. I thought there was nothing else he could do to piss me off, but I was wrong!

That lying sack of excrement and his bamboozlers have managed to do it to me again.

If you’re a Trump supporter you can stop reading because I’m going to quote some facts, and seeing as how you don’t – 

( what? believe in? understand? accept? I don’t know what the right word is here. I’ll use accept.) 

– accept facts. There really is no point in your reading further.

The president and his team of bozos knew that this virus was coming for months. Since January 20^th (oh I’m sorry. you want to argue if it’s months? Screw you.) What did he do? Nothing. What had he done to prepare for such an event? He cut the funding to our scientific agencies. Carried out a war against scientists in the government and specifically got rid of the very team Obama had created to take care of such pandemics. What was it called? Let me think. Oh yeah – The Pandemic Response Team.

Now he and his group of flunkies, which include Lindsey Graham and Sean Hannity, are saying that it’s Obama’s fault because they inherited a mess and the economy was in shambles and they revived it and our health care system wasn’t set up for this and it’s Obama’s fault.

Let’s be clear. Obama set up the things we would need to deal with a pandemic and Trump dismantled them. Obama pulled us out of a terrible recession left by the last Republican president and Trump only rode the coattails of that economic recovery until he screwed it up and now he’s leaving it in a worse position than when Obama came into office. 

Joe Biden laid out a what we should be doing right now to deal with this pandemic. Remember he was Obama’s point person on a lot of the health problems we had when Barrack was in office. So he knows of what he speaks. Unlike that lap dog Mike Pence. Remember too, when Ebola hit Africa Obama sent teams over there to stem the outbreak while Fox News and Sean Hannity and Tom Cotton screamed we should hide behind our borders. 

Now Tom Cotton and lots of the Republicans are trying to make this a race issue calling it the Wuhan Virus. Hey. if we did what China did we could whip this thing. Instead our president is dithering and thinking he can have a couple of tweets blaming someone else, march out a few scientists have them say something then he can tell a few more lies to go with the 16,000 he has already told while in office and everything will be hunky dorey.

A real leader would be firing up the troops, getting prepared, but not these idiots.

Wash your hands. Stay home. This is going to get worse. A lot worse.

Then we’ll have – hopefully – a new president, who will be tasked with cleaning up this mess and the Republicans can then go back to yelling about the deficit they caused and the other problems they created and blame it on someone else. Hopefully, we’ll get rid of enough of them that we can get something done. But I am not hopeful.

However, the president flanked by Mike Pence was seen standing next to an aid to the Brazilian president who tested positive for the Corona virus. We don’t know if any of them got the virus. Trump turned down getting test kits from WHO, so we don’t know. It’s okay. Maybe, they all got it. Maybe not. Who knows? Gosh, maybe they’re all sick? What would happen then? Jim Bakker is selling a cure.

232 Days until the election on November 3rd

312 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS No toilet paper and it isn’t even snowing. WTF?   

Day 1151 Katie Porter and the CDC man

Friday March 13, 2020 

233 Days until the election on November 3rd

313 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Congresswoman Katie Porter asked a question of the man heading up the CDC. He tried to avoid answering the question. She reclaimed her time and asked again. He deflected. She reclaimed her time and asked again. He gave an answer. She said no good enough and asked again. Finally, he said Yes. 

Wow. But wait. There’s more.

Not only had she told his office she was going to ask him this question she gave him the answer! And yet, he seemed to not know what she was talking about. He didn’t seem to know the law. The law that pertained to him as head of the CDC.

This didn’t seem to be a case of trying to avoid answering. This seemed to be a case of avoiding because he had no idea if what she was talking about. Yet, she and two of her fellow Congresspeople had sent them a letter a week before. She had told his staff the day before and reminded them the night before. Yet, he seemed totally unprepared for the question. She even told him the answer in the hearing, and yet he tried to deflect.

Moving on. In an interview with the science reporter for The New York Times, he outlined the steps China went to in order to break the cycle of contamination. Apparently, one of the worst places to get contaminated is if someone goes home with it. Therefore, self-quarantine at home doesn’t work. In order to break the spread of the virus China was checking the temperature of everyone coming into a building, any building, if you had a temperature you went to a special treatment center to get checked. You didn’t go to a hospital waiting room or your doctor’s office because that would just cause everyone there to get it. In these special facilities you went through several tests to determine if you had the virus. If you had it you went to a special facility for treatment.

What are we doing? Basically nothing. The president won’t even declare a state of emergency so funds can be released to let agencies and governments deal with this.

The stock market went down over 10% yesterday, that on top of several other drops in the preceding days. The Fed pumped one and a half trillion into the market, which put things on hold for a moment and then it started to go down again, like nothing happened. This after Trump’s Oval Office speech the night before to reassure the country.

Some say he seemed to have trouble reading the teleprompter. I disagree. I think that is giving him too much credit. I think, and I’ve thought this for a long time, he has trouble reading – period. He’s not stupid. Just uneducated, incurious, and unable to read.

233 Days until the election on November 3rd

313 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Got this in the mail the other day. Seems she’s the only person willing to tell the president the truth. No wonder he doesn’t want to meet with her.