Day 1171 – The Sad Reality, Part II: Pieces and Bits
Friday April 3, 2020
212 Days until the election on November 3rd
292 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021
After writing Part I, which I stopped after making my major point I read a facebook post by one of my conservative friends. She had reposted an opinion piece by Don Henninger, and wrote “An Excellent Column in the WSJ.”
I read it. Like many of these pieces, they sound good until you think about what they said, and what they left out. I didn’t know who Don was so I looked him up. He’s described as a conservative American commentator. Aside from The Wall street Journal he also contributes to Fox News.
So what does the article say?
He starts off with an anecdote about a 100 year old woman who was a nurse in WWII whom he quoted as saying back then they knew exactly what they were doing and why.
(OMG, I doubt he sees the irony of this set up anecdote.)
Then he goes to anecdote #2 about a guy who survived the1918 Pandemic and didn’t really start living until the Roaring Twenties.
(Double OMG, double irony, What happened after The Roaring Twenties? Clue Black Friday, The Great Depression.)
He then goes on to say that one thing is clear – the polarization of American politics.
(Time to start waving the flag.)
Which he says is exactly what the Founding Fathers feared.
(Spoiler Alert: He won’t give any suggestions of what to do to fix this situation. He’ll only attack one side, thus adding to the factionalism. What’s that Triple Irony?)
He then compares the Corona virus to the daily back and forth between citizens and the administration and says nothing will turn off the bile.
(He seems to miss the point that the reason people are screaming is the administration is not doing the job, if they were the screaming would stop.)
He then goes on to compare the fact that Trump doesn’t like the Governor of Washington* and the fact that Adam Schiff said he’s putting together a bill to do a postmortem of how well we as a nation did in response to the pandemic. (Of course, he accuses Nancy Pelosi, not Schiff, of wanting to impeach the president again.)
* (I guess because he’s a Democrat and because he got so feed up with Trump’s comment that the Federal government is only a backup and the governor said, “We don’t need a back up quarterback. We need Tom Brady.”)
Now we move into the meat. We attack Bernie and AOC. Why? Well, AOC said in regards to health care plans that it’s never been about how “we” pay for it. OMG! The friggin’ liberals, tax and spend, blah blah blah. Okay, let’s go through this carefully. It’s not been about how you pay for the health care, but that everyone gets covered. Bernie has made this point over and over again. i.e. Do you want everyone to have health care or not? That’s the question Don. Do you? I know, you’re concerned (no your not) how we are going to pay for it. Okay. Were you concerned when the president cut taxes and put us a trillion dollars in debt for every year he’s been in office. I’m guessing no. So stop with your phony concern about how you are going to pay for it. But to answer the question, which has been answered many times. The overall good to the economy will take care of a lot of it, and we can argue how much. The rest will be done in some form of taxation. The taxation can be like insurance is supposed to be, spread over the whole group (ie all Americans.) Now, I know this is not a conservative principle. The conservative principle being “I got mine. You get yours.” And the variant being what I call the Handicap Sticker routine. “Yeah, you can apply for a handicap sticker and get one of those good parking spaces. No, I’m not handicapped, but no one uses those spaces anyway…”
Then, this is where it gets really good, he goes on to quote economic theory and explain how the left is so off the rails while Trump and the conservatives are hewing to the right and just.
He says that the Democratic progressives and moderates (and says there is no difference thus lumping them all together) are subscribing to something he calls MMT “Modern Monetary Theory” which he defines as the government can spend without limit.
That’s pretty funny, and very ballsy to say when it has been “conservative’ economic theory that has always outspent any liberal political agenda. I remind you, and Don, that it is Republicans that always outspend Democrats. Trump is the one spending money without limit, not them there liberals.
He then goes on to boast that we have had three years of thriving economic activity under Trump. Talk about irony! He seems to ignore the fact that Trump has spent without limit, put the country deeper in debt, and that it had little to no effect on the economy, and that the economy under Trump is really what Obama put in place after the disaster of the previous Republican administration under W.
Oh, oh, time to wave the flag again. He then goes on to boast about how wonderfully business is adapting to Cavad 19, coming up with innovations etc. He also points to “a federally led” response.
But the point is – THERE IS NO FEDERALLY LED RESPONSE!!!!
That’s why people and local leaders are screaming. That’s why we are having to spend all this money (because we didn’t jump on this early. We didn’t prepare – and that is on the Republicans, because Obama put the apparatus in place. And we didn’t listen to smart people like Bill Gates or Robert Gallo. Instead Trump ignored them. Poo-pooed the whole thing and did nothing for far too long. He’s still doing nothing. He’s holding daily press briefings because he likes the number of viewers who are tuning in. But afterwards? I guess he goes back to his bedroom, eats some cheeseburgers and calls up Sean Hannity or watches Fox & Friends. But lead? He’s incapable. I wish that wasn’t true, but that’s the reality. Now we also know that his flunkies, often called “The Administration”, have no intention of helping.
Sorry Don Henninger. Your “outstanding” opinion piece is just another right wing carefully crafted hit piece.
I’ve got a boffo idea. Try doing something positive. Maybe, get out a sewing machine and make a few masks to make up for the 230,000,000 that were given away to a foreign company while our doctors, nurses, and EMTs are screaming for them?
PS The dark hole we are going to have to climb out of. (Inside the Black Pyramid. The staircase up to the burial chamber.)
Leave a Reply