Archives for June 2020

Thursday June 18, 2020

136 Days until the election on November 3^rd

216 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Okay we have two models of how to treat the pandemic. We can do what Italy, China, Spain, and South Korea did or we can do what the governors in Florida, South Carolina, Oklahoma and seven other states have done. Let’s not listen to the rhetoric, let’s look at the results. In the countries I mentioned after a rapid rise the number of cases came down, way down. In the states I mentioned the number of cases rose and continue to rise with no end in sight. 

Put on your thinking caps and ask yourself which model would you think would make sense to follow? If you said what the countries did you’d be right. So what has the Trump administration done? Well, nothing – really, and they’ve encouraged the states to keep doing what they are doing. What exactly is that? Well, mainly telling people to get out there, and to hide the data from the public. If this seems like a recipe for disaster let the data speak for itself. 

How did we get to this point?

That’s a question Fiona Hill has been asking as well. She has been looking at Britain, Russia, and the U.S. And asking when it comes to the corona virus how did they end up in the same place? Hill has an especially good eye for this type of analysis having grown up in Northern England, educated there and in the U.S. and her specialty is Russia and Putin. 

Her conclusion is that all three are populist politicians and populism lends itself to simple slogans and fixes to complicated problems. 

Here’s the article and thanks to my friend Frank for showing this to me.

‘Trump thought I was a secretary’: Fiona Hill on the president, Putin and populism

She was the White House’s top Russia expert catapulted to fame by Trump’s impeachment. She reflects on her journey from County Durham to Washington

Read in The Guardian: https://apple.news/APjUjngoXRqO7HtgPIo7Ntw

136 Days until the election on November 3^rd

216 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Big Bird

Wednesday June 17, 2010

137 Days until the election on November 3^rd

217 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I feel like I am writing a nineteenth century chapter of a novel where you go to the Table of Contents and there laid out over several lines is a brief summary of the whole chapter. I have wondered if the authors did that to keep track of what they were doing or did the editors do it for that purpose.

Let’s get to it. I went to Barnes and Noble yesterday to pick up the book I mentioned yesterday entitled Impostors, which talks about how the Republican Party no longer cares to govern but rather put out press releases and call it a day. They no longer have policies only BS. You can go to their website to verify what I’m saying, as the author did. Compare that to Joe Biden’s campaign website where he has over seventy action items. Go to Donald Trump’s website, there is nothing. No policies, no prescriptions, no action items – just bull.

When I walked around Barnes and Noble I saw several books that made me spin around and say to myself, “What the ???” One was a book that reported to have discovered the crimes that Devin Nunes uncovered. Either that book or another one was written by the guy who wrote “Clinton Cash.” Another book featured an ominous looking photo of Chelsea Clinton revealing, supposedly, her cozy criminal fiddling up to power. You have to really go aways to make Chelsea look sinister but a green filter with a blue one and a dash of purple kind of did the job. It was so dark however that I wasn’t sure who it was at first.

But here’s the thing – all those books are crap. Lies. Now, we could argue that there might be some shreds of truth in them; much like one can argue that most of what Hitler said was sort of true, but that misses the point. The purpose of these books is to foster a false narrative, an overall lie. It is an attempt to gas light, to try and convince you and me that something happened that really didn’t. We’ve come to accept this in political campaigns, but in governing? That’s a different story. 

If when you govern you try to do it by lying you will find yourself in a world of trouble, as Donald Trump has. Not that he’s discovered that fact. But this is the way the Republican Party has acted for decades. They don’t have ideas or principles by which to govern. They have animosities and scores to settle and lies to foster. There are no solutions, just press releases. 

On leaving the book store I got a call from Shelby, “Where’s the sausage? Did you do something with it? I can’t find it.” I reassured her I didn’t do anything with the sausage and that the last time I saw it, it was on the middle shelf in the frig, in the front, right in the middle.

“It’s not there. I’ve looked everywhere. I’m afraid I might have taken it out, put it somewhere and we’ll discover it smelling weeks from now.”

The hunt was on. I came home. Confirmed it wasn’t on the middle shelf. Not in the freezer, or any other shelf in the refrigerator, not in the trash or the other refrigerator, or the pantry, or the front hall table, or the bathroom, or next to the magazine stack by her chair, or in the car. It had disappeared. No, it wasn’t in the other bathroom. It was gone. Disappeared.

Robert Gates has written a book I’ve gotten tired by former government officials who have written books. Many of them are the same format. The first 7/8 is the history of their rise within the ranks and the last part mentions the stuff you really want to know. 

Gates has served in government for forty or fifty years. He’s been Secretary of Defense under Obama and W. He’s run the CIA, been on the National Security whatever. He’s seen threats and dealt with them. He knows his way around Washington and Presidents. He has respect for the President and the office of the President.

Gates said several things in an interview last night that I think are worth repeating:

The army is trained to kill our enemies. The National Guard is trained to protect our communities and to assist when disaster strikes them. (This puts it in pretty stark terms. This all made me think about the policing problem we have. We’ve put all sorts of problems on the police’s shoulders that aren’t what they are trained to do. Then we started giving them military weapons and military (kill ‘em!) training. Now, some are surprised by the outcome?)

The other really big point Gates made was that we have hollowed out and defunded many of the tools that we have had for spreading our influence around the world that are of a non-military nature. He pointed to Voice of America and other radio type operations. He said most presidents didn’t always like what VOA was saying about them. But the programs were trusted around the world not only for telling people what was going on in America but what was going on in their own countries. “Why aren’t we telling the Iranians how their leaders are stealing from them? Or the Russians what Putin and his thugs are doing?” he asked. Why indeed.

Gates went on to say that China has been buying up media and communication outlets around the world so they can tell their story and we have nothing to counter that. I can’t remember why we stopped such programs but I’m willing to bet it was due to administrations and Senators who didn’t like what was being said about them and their party. 

Another point Gates made was that it appears that we can no longer solve our own problems and this makes people around the world wonder if our system of government is right for them.

How though, I ask myself, can we solve any problem when we aren’t willing to face the truth? We need to go no further than the current pandemic and the administrations actions around this crisis. Mike Pence has just praised Tulsa for their outstanding work in fighting the pandemic. What is he drinking? Oklahoma has just had their biggest rise in cases this week and Tulsa leads the way. 

One person on the front lines in Alabama was asked about a second wave of the pandemic. She scoffed and said we never got over the first wave. The results in other countries versus our own is startling. Italy, Spain, and other countries have graphs with a huge rise at the beginning that has been brought down to low levels. Us? We have a huge rise and it’s leveled off at a high plateau. Remember that football coach who ESPN keeps replaying saying, “Playoffs? Don’t talk to me about playoffs.” 

Like “Are you crazy? We’d like to win a game.”

Yeah, well. “Second Wave? Ha. We haven’t dealt with the first wave.”

I have really enjoyed Vivian Howard’s new show “Somewhere South.” It’s on PBS, like her other show, “A Chef’s Life.” In her original show she told the story of going back home to eastern North Carolina to open a restaurant in the town she grew up in. There’s not much in Kingston except for her restaurant and a replica of a Confederate ironclad ship, which sits on pilings on the side street opposite her restaurant. 

In this new show she’s traveling around the south to see how various people in their corners of the south do southern cooking. One show was about greens and another about barbecue. She talked, cooked, prepped, and ate with black people, rednecks, Asian Americans, American Indians and Indian Indians. One thing they had in common – they were from the south. They lived worked cooked and ate in the south. It became clear to me that this was not a show about cooking but about people and their food. (Well, duh. She said that at the beginning. I know, but it takes awhile for me to catch on.) She has a big beautiful book out. Many would call it a cookbook. It’s that, but it’s more than that. It’s the story of food. Her food. 

Shelby took one of Howard’s recipes for cooking greens. One of the things Vivian Howard spoke about in her show about greens was “Pot Liquor,” The juice made from the greens cooking. I wanted to know what that was like. I guess Shelby wanted to let me experience it too. This brings me back to the missing sausage package. It was for that recipe. 

She found and defrosted some other sausage and let me tell you – the greens, the sausage, and the pot liquor were tasty. That should be a capital “T”.

I had not experienced greens like that before. Now I understand.

Later that evening I went to have some yogurt and blueberries. There were two large flat square packs of blueberries.  I picked up the first pack. Nearly empty, but enough for my yogurt. And will you lookey-here. Both blueberry packs had lips on them and just enough to hide the sausage package from view that was sandwiched in-between. Even when you got down and peered straight on. Where were those pesky sausages hiding? Second shelf right in the middle of the shelf, where I had first descried them to be located.

Moral of the story – Sometimes things are as they seem.

137 Days until the election on November 3^rd

217 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Go back and look at the second to last photo. See the white edge of the sausage package? It’s between the two blueberry containers.

PPS I’m glad I didn’t find it right away. ( Then I would have done a superiorty dance. Pissed her off. And I’d be sleeping on the couch – so to speak. )

Tuesday June 16, 2020 

138 Days until the election on November 3^rd

218 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Have you ever had one of those experiences where you finally put into words or hears someone say it and it clarifies everything? 

Then you go tell a friend your amazing revelation and they say, “Of course, everybody knows that?”

Okay, we’ve all had those moments. Maybe you’ve been describing something endlessly and although you’ve described it you haven’t quite comprehended the totality of the significance. I had one of those moments last night.

The Impostors a new book by Steve Benen details the modern Republican Party. In this book he not only details how the party has lost its soul but any meaning. It no longer tries to govern, just to cling to power. They have no agenda, no meaning, no purpose. Benen claims the reason is that governing is hard. It requires detail and desire, none of which the modern Republican party has. There is no desire to govern, only to hold onto power. 

I have said this in so many words and so many ways, but hearing someone else say it in such a succinct cogent way was more than gratifying. It helped me reach a new level of understanding. No wonder the Republican party hasn’t proposed any health care initiative. No wonder they haven’t done anything about the pandemic, the president’s behavior, Black Lives Matter or anything else. It would require work. It would require effort.

Benen said that to verify what he is saying look at Mike Pence. Pence replaced all his people that did policy and governance with PR and media people. The message was important, not the action.

Btw in the article on Melania on the Sunday show and quoting the new book about her, she was the one that told Donald to pick Mike for VP. Why? Because he’d be happy being second banana. The others under consideration would not. Wise woman.

This morning we moved on to new tragedies befalling our country. It seems that in the last six months countries both friend and foe realize that they only have a few months left perhaps to take advantage of the U.S. not being a player on the world stage and they are grabbing everything they can. “It’s like a fire sale,” one diplomat was quoted as saying. The damage done to our reputation as a nation is enormous and it’s impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. It will take decades to get back to any semblance of our reputation. In the meantime the grabbing continues and the president and his staff don’t know or don’t care.

Speaking of not caring, Tulsa cares. Apparently, they’ve told the Donald that it’s not a good idea to come. He even pushed out the date so it wouldn’t coincide with the anniversary of a tragic time in the life of black people in Tulsa. What a guy! 

And the stock market continues to hang in there. How long is anyone’s guess. However there are a few factors to consider that might mean August is the big crash. The Fed had dumped trillions into the economy and the economy is hanging on. This has fundamentally changed the relationship of the Federal Reserve to anything you learned in college economics. And like other genies, once out of the bottle it’s hard to put it back in. But that’s just econ talk, let’s ask ourselves what is going to happen when those $1200 stimulus checks are spent and the landlords are allowed to evict people once again? When will that happen? August.

So if I’m correct: the pandemic will be on steroids by August, the economy will be crashing, the BLM will be raging and there will be more outrageous police examples, our enemies will be gobbling up influence and power where we have abandoned our stations around the world, our allies will have by and large given up on us, the Republicans will have had a giant spit session and many of their delegates will be showing up at hospitals already overcrowded for which many of the doctors and nurses will be laid off because the for profit hospital system won’t be making any money in a pandemic. Did I miss anything?

Let’s review the latest political ads. Everyone lost their minds because Trump took a second hand to guide a glass of water to his face, then he seemed to have trouble walking down a ramp. He claimed the ramp was slippery and had no handrails. He looked like a bent over morbidly obese out of shape older person to me. The glass of water? I dunno. Maybe, he’s had health issues, maybe not. However, there was a great ad put out by the Biden folks showing him and Obama running around the White House, and Joe drinking water. The tag line was “Joe can run and Joe can drink water.” Love it. This makes him infinitely more qualified to be President than the current guy. 

There’s also a Biden ad quoting Lindsey Graham. Wherein Lindsey was saying things about Trump back inn 2015 and 2016, before he drank the Kool-Aid.

Speaking of drinking Kool Aid. People are agog at Larry Kudlow. Apparently, he used to be a rather rational person. Not anymore. No racism Larry. Really? Yeah.

Back to the ads. The Trump ads are playing up that he’s created all these jobs in the last few months. They don’t mention that before that the economy cratered and under his watch we lost 20-30 million jobs. They then say Biden had been in Congress 40 years and that’s too long. Too Long? Three years of Trump was too long. But at least Trump can reuse the Make America Great Again stickers from last time. 

138 Days until the election on November 3^rd

218 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Mondrian, Cezanne, Gauguin

Some need sports. I need art.

Monday June 15, 2020 

139 Days until the election on November 3^rd

219 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

A new book is coming out. This one on Melania. It seems she’s a pretty strategic negotiator, unlike her husband. There seems to be some sort of affection between the two, which I find surprising. It turns our Melania’s parents live in the White Hose and her dad has formed quite a bond with Baron. I worried about the kid. Can you imagine having to go to school and face the harsh reality of the other kids?

Turns out young Baron has learned to speak Slovenian. The four of them: Melania, her mom and dad, and Baron converse in that language leaving old Donald out of the loop. It annoys him, but what can he do?

I have been made aware of a psychological term that applies to Donald Trump – The Dark Triad. These are three antisocial personality traits: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. They tend to be overlapping and are indicative of a callous manipulative person. Sound familiar? You bet. This is nothing new when it comes to Donald. Anyone who had studied the man at all knows this about him. This just gives it a name. The sad part is that these people don’t understand some characteristics that the rest of us in humanity enjoy. Trump doesn’t understand humor. He watches others to see if they think it is funny and then concludes, based on the others’ behavior whether to classify it as humorous. I have to wonder what other parts of what I consider the basic human personality he doesn’t understand? Sadness? Empathy? (Well duh. He has no idea there.) Teamed up with another psychologically damaged individual who has decided to be racist to make up for his deficiencies this is a dangerous combination for the rest of us to endure. (Oh, yes, I’m talking about Stephen Miller.)

Two studies I have been made aware of are also interesting. What I find most interesting is that the studies were made internationally and that regardless of country the conclusions were the same. One was a study of personality types that hoard toilet paper in the face of a pandemic. The other was a study of those who successfully got into Stanford and other top notch schools. 

The hoarders were more fearful and regimented. The folks who got into the good schools were good test takers and did not necessarily know the subject matter better than others.

Lastly, there seems to be a growing sense that the economy might crater in August. This is when people will be out of stimulus money and when landlords can evict people again. Couple this with the fact that the Fed has pumped trillions of dollars into the economy and taken on debt in places it never has before. A good idea for this economic time, but maybe not good long term. Once done, it’s hard to take it back. How this pays out, along with an ongoing pandemic remains to be seen. But it ain’t good.

139 Days until the election on November 3^rd

219 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Time for a drink.

Sunday June 14, 2020 

140 Days until the election on November 3^rd

220 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Here we are in the middle of June. We’ve known about this virus for how long? Five, six months? And yet we can’t make little sticks with cotton on the ends? Or masks? Or gowns? Six months and we can’t make enough of this stuff? Really? 

Meanwhile the Republican Convention has moved to Jacksonville and because they don’t have enough hotel space they are going to do like they did for the Super Bowl. They are bringing in cruise ships to house everybody and Trump doesn’t want to see anyone wearing a mask. However, for his rally in Tulsa he want folks to sign a waver releasing him from any harm if they get sick and die. 

What happened to the “I’ll take care of you legal bills?”

How many more need to die? 

Well, I seem to remember a projected number of 2,000 a day. My latest googling says 326 per day. There are 220 days until someone else might be in charge so I guessing somewhere between 440,000 and 71,720 more need to die before we get someone in the White House who will deal with this pandemic.

I have a wacky idea. Why not use the Presidential powers to enact the War Powers act to make enough swabs, masks, and gowns? Wow, why hasn’t anyone in the White House thought of that? 

Oh, they have? But it’s not important?

Oh it is important, but they don’t give a what? Speak up.

I wonder if Jacksonville is going to set up a covid hospital? Probably not. I mean it takes awhile for symtoms to show. Most people should be back home before they die. No problem. Or should I say, “Problem solved.” ?

Yeah that’s the ticket.

Besides in Florida they fired the scientist who was tracking the number of cases of Covid. That’s what you get for telling the truth. 

140 Days until the election on November 3^rd

220 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Sunrise – Borobudur