Archives for July 2020

Friday July 31, 2020

93 Days until the election on November 3^rd

173 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Yesterday, oh what a day. So much. So much. Winning? Losing? Idiocy? Landmarks.

Yesterday John Lewis was put to rest and three Presidents spoke at his funeral. Thankfully, president Trump did not show up. He didn’t even wander into the Rotuda when Lewis was there to pay his disrespects. I guess that makes sense, being the showman he is, even he, probably thought the usual flash grenades and tear gas (excuse me – pepper spray canisters) that accompany his entrances these days was too much. Do you remember when he accepted the nomination he used smoke and, not mirrors but a white curtain backlit to show his shadow so he’d appear larger than life. Might have looked inspirational had his posture not looked like a slumped over paunchy old man.

Then there was the news that we had passed 150,000 dead from Coronavirus and we were dying at the rate of 1,000 a day. That figure was updated later in the day to say no it was more like 1,400 a day and that we’d hit 240,000 by Labor Day. The day before a bunch of doctors signed a letter begging that we do a reset. Stupid. The president doesn’t read. (I’m sorry. He’s an excellent reader. He reads a lot. You’d be surprised how much reading he does. …) 

When it comes to the coronavirus it’s the same old stuff, nothing changes. There is no plan, no guidance, just denial and PR. Trump can’t figure out why he isn’t as popular as Fauci. OMG. BTW, Fauci had a baseball card made and they sold over fifty thousand, making it one of the most popular baseball cards of all time. Gee, let’s do one of the Donald, throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. (Well, yeah he’s not really going to do that. He lied. But we ought to be able to photoshop him in, put a bald eagle on the card with a giant USA and a flag … come on. ) Ya know I never thought of this before but if you look closely at the word Russia what do you see? ( rUSsiA ) OMG, it’s sooo obvious.

Also, yesterday the president tweeted that maybe we should delay the election. That got some push back from Mitch McConnell and other Republicans. Wow. Way to go boys.

The president is against mail-in ballots but for absentee ballots. Another wow. Two points here: one) the terms are synonymous, 2) Republicans win close elections by mail in ballot. 

But hey, he ain’t done yet. He’s appointed a guy to head the post office that’s a bud of his, DeJoy by name. Mr. DeJoy has put in place measures on July 15 to screw up the post office. You can’t work overtime. You can’t do other things to get the mail out. It’s all to screw up mail-in voting before the election. Way to go. Slit your throat and let it bleed slowly.

Btw He also has a bud of his collecting the coronavirus

But we aren’t done with the winning. Oh no. Here’s the real news: The economy took its biggest nose dive in history this past quarter. Worse than any time in history:

That’s the official graph from out government. Our Gross Domestic Product went down 32.9% last quarter. Coronavirus you say? You bet, but let’s not forget the sterling lack of leadership in the White House, and the Republican led Senate.

And I’ve got news for you, it’s going to get worse, a lot worse.

Consider this: Mark Meadows, former head of the Tea Party and person who with Mic Mulvaney stood in the way of every proposal by John Boehner and later Paul Ryan is chief of staff. Their philosophy, taken from Grover Norquist and Steve Bannon, was to shrink the government to the size of a pea and flush it down the toilet is running things.

Yesterday, Mark Meadows even suggested gosh golly maybe, maybe, we ought to do a four month extension on giving folks on unemployment that $600 a week. Of course, the Senate, Fox News, and the rest are saying people are not going back to work because they are making soooo much money on unemployment. Like $600 a week is a lot. I’d like to see them survive on six hundred a week. But no that’s not the reason people aren’t going back to work. There is no work to go back to. And the work that there is can get these people sick and they’d have a good chance of dying. Hum. Maybe that’s it? I dunno.

The 600 dollar checks run out today and the Republicans have gone home. So there is little chance that anything will happen in the near term. Of course they will try to sell the idea that they proposed something and the do nothing democrats wouldn’t go along with it. 

The Republicans wanted to slash the $600 to $200. Steny Hoyer explained that would destroy the economy and they weren’t going to agree to be a party to it. So the Republicans went home. 

On May 15, Mitch McConnell said, “We’ll pause.” He saw no reason to do anything. Apparently, he still doesn’t. He did suggest that the best idea was for the states and cities should go bankrupt. Well, it looks like we’ll see how the “We’ll pause; Let ‘em go bankrupt” plane of the Republicans will play out. 

I’m guessing people are going to start to be evicted.

So we’ll have more people out on the street. This time it will be young mothers with their children.

States and cities will have to but back on services. Like trash pick up and hospital staff.

I wonder what America will look like with trash bags piled up on the corners. Rats running around bothering the homeless mothers, and people sitting in cars outside hospitals dying?

It’s also being reported that the foreign affairs people in our government have isolated themselves from the president as he screws things up so badly it’s better if he’s not involved.

Okay so while the Republicans have “Paused” ( ie done nothing ) what have the Democrats done? I mean, let’s be fair. What have you done?

Steny Hoyer this morning said that the House under Speaker Pelosi has done the following (in the last 15 days):

– Passed a Justice & Policing Bill;

– Passed a DC Statehood bill;

– Strengthened the ACA (Affordable Care Act);

– Passed a Rent & Mortgage Relief bill;

– Passed a major Infrastructure bill;

– Passed ten Appropriation bills;

– Passed Land and Water Conservation bills;

– Passed two Childcare bills;

And what has the Republican led Senate done sine May 15^th?

– Nothing.

On a positive note: NASA launched Perseverance on from an Atlas 5 rocket. It didn’t even make the major headlines. Wow. What a launch. Set your calendars for February 18, 2021 when the mission arrives at Mars.

93 Days until the election on November 3^rd

173 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Here’s another way to look at the Winning job Trump has done on the economy.

This graph looks at the GDP as compared to the previous quarter.

Wednesday July 29, 2020

95 Days until the election on November 3^rd

175 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

The title of this screed sounds like a game of chess strategy, but in fact it was the Attorney General’s reasoning for not looking into the president commuting the sentence of Roger Stone. Eric Swalwell in questioning the AG at yesterday’s House hearings laid out a compelling case for investigating Donald Trump’s commuting Roger Stone’s sentence. After all it was Barr at his confirmation hearing that said that if a president commuted the sentence of an associate for keeping their mouth shut about a president’s crimes that would be a crime. William Barr said in response to Swalwell, “Why should I?” He then went on to say that Swalwell’s case, based on the words of Barr, Trump, and Stone was a Rube Goldberg case. This from a guy who went to the Ukraine to try and dig up stuff on Joe Biden and his son based on conspiracy theories promulgated be Britbart, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Info Wars, and the Russian GRU.

The AG seems to have a keen sense of when to know something and when not to. He didn’t know about the militia men with their AR-15s standing in front of the state house in Michigan or in front of the governor’s home demanding that she be shot, hung, and beheaded, but he did know that someone sprayed paint on a Federal courthouse in Portland and ordered unmarked Federal agents to the scene. He defended the snatching of protestors who were doing nothing at the time they were grabbed by saying they might have done something earlier in the evening or maybe they were standing next to someone doing something. The something in question was pointing a laser pointer at the troops. This of course required the unleashing of tear gas and rubber bullets.

Those rubber bullets by the way have steel in them and can kill and maim.

Speaking of tear gas the AG said that tear gas was not used in the clearing of Lafayette Square. Apparently, the narrative in the chamber was it was pepper gas, which has the same effect, but hey – technically he’s correct, if that is true.

What we didn’t know until the nightly news was that a National Guardsman who was there on the ground in Lafayette Square said he saw no aggressive behavior from the protestors. They were being peaceful. He said that tear gas was used and he saw the canisters marked as such. Who ya gonna believe? Toss up? Or is one person lying?

Either the Attorney General is lying or he is sadly misinformed.

Speaking of sadly misinformed, according to the president the information about the Russians putting bounties on the heads of our servicemen in Afghanistan is “fake news,” because “a lot of people are saying it.” Not the people in his intelligence community mind you, but a lot of people, you know like the Russian disinformation folks who feed the right wing media. 

We’ve reached another milestone, 150,000 dead. No one wants us to come see them anymore. We are banned. 

I’m tired of winning.

Speaking of winning, eleven states are now added to the list of “red zone” states for corona virus bringing the total to twenty one. One state is declared safe, maybe two, the rest are yellow. What does the president have to say about this? States aren’t opening fast enough. 

Some folks have pointed to baseball and how they started to play games and had to stop due to a corona virus outbreak on one team. How people are asking can we expect schools to open if major league baseball can’t?

Now the administration is threatening schools with withholding funds unless the open up. Most of these schools didn’t have enough money to buy school supplies to begin with. Funny thing Betsy DeVos got a huge “loan” that she won’t have to pay back. Hey, maybe we should start with that money? 

But I digress, the CDC says you can’t open your schools safely unless you have the virus under control in your community.  Currently, nowhere has it under control, but don’t worry, only 2% may get it or die from it or something like that says DeVos. Good odds, right?

Oh and in a stunning announcement the president lied. Yeah, I know who thought they’d ever say those words three and a half years ago? Apparently, Trump made up the whole thing about throwing out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium in August. Imagine that? Yeah, he didn’t like Anthony Fauci stealing the limelight by having the honor to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals’ first game, so Trump made it up! This threw his staff into a tizzy because he was already committed that day. Not to worry; he lied. He not going. Ha ha, next?

Okay, how about the video, now taken down showing people in white lab coats? The claim is they are doctors. The video say hydroxychloroquine works and masks don’t. Yeah, who was behind that? I haven’t seen or heard yet – stay tuned.

But we do know that the guy in black with the umbrella who was filmed breaking window in Minneapolis has been identified as having ties to White Supremacist groups and in Richmond a similar thing happened with protestors pointing out the perpetrators and they too had ties to white supremacist groups. 

William Barr had said at his House hearing yesterday that anarchists had snuck into the protests and disturbed them. Naturally, the word “antifa” came up. I have yet to see a person who claims to be antifa engaged in any of this stuff. It seems to always be racists. Hum, maybe there’s something here the AG could do? Naw, fake news, Rube Goldberg.

Oh and I love this, William Barr doesn’t read and isn’t aware of the president’s tweets. It was just coincidence that within the hour of the president’s tweet that he cleared Lafayette Square. I mean calling a Rose Garden press conference so all the news cameras would be there instead of in Lafayette Square, and having the square cleared with tear gas or pepper spray and federal troops in riot gear, and having the president walk across for a photo op were all just coincidental. 

Oh I got it. Okay. Nothing to see hear. Move along. These are not the droids you are looking for.

I have a fantasy and that is that a protestor keeps backing up as these unmarked federalists troops advance. That said protestor warns them to back off, that he (or she) will have to arrest them (ie a citizen’s arrest) if they lay a hand on them. Agents lay a hand, and they get the shit beaten out of them, they are cuffed with their own gear and city police arrive to haul off the perpetrators (ie the purported Federal agents.) 

I have another fantasy too. This one involves someone standing up at a public hearing where they are debating whether to rename a school that has been named after a confederate general. Someone has just spoken about “remembering our heritage” etc. The person stands up and says yes let’s remember our heritage. Why not name the school after Goering, or Goebbels, or Hitler, or Mussolini? I mean if you want to remember our heritage what’s wrong with them? Maybe Tokyo Rose? 

This leads me to my Final Fantasy (three?) and that is what Nazi do the Trump administration officials most resemble? I know. It’s so disrespectful. But Stephen Miller? Come on. Himmler right? Am I right? And Barr? Goering? When he was fat and before he became obese. What about the little cutie who heads up the press conferences? Eva Braun? Okay. That’s a stretch. 

Can I get a “Bet you won’t repost this?” Yeah.

PS The Pumpkin Patch

Tuesday July 28, 2020

96 Days until the election on November 3^rd

176 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

There is speculation as to whether Trump will leave office. I say no, and I hope he won’t, because then we get to see Federal agents go in, haul him out whining and puelling. 

Just watched a little of William Barr in front of Congress. Let’s call his testimony “the innocent lamb defense.” Pick one: “I don’t know about that”, “You mischaracterize.”, “That’s not what they did.”, “You have to (or don’t) understand.”

Now, some have asked why hasn’t Trump done anything about the coronavirus? It’s simple. He doesn’t give a shit about you.

Moving on.

He just learned that some of “his people” may be sick. Does he care? Absolutely, they might die before they can vote for him. Other than that – no, he doesn’t care.

See, he never got the memo that said when you become president you represent all the people.

Why has it gotten so bad?

Simple.

The framers of the Constitution guarded against the kind of despotic rule they had seen in Europe. They had not envisioned a compliant Vice-President and Senate.

BTW – The Senate has had a bill from the House for ten weeks to deal with the pandemic and the economic problems. They have done nothing. They say they are going to work on their own bill, but it isn’t ready. Ten weeks. Checks have run out. Evictions start in three days.

How many months and we still don’t have a national plan for dealing with this pandemic? It’s not like the president doesn’t know how to take action. He did so against the meat packing workers. He’s doing it against the protestors in cities. So why hasn’t he done it for testing and PPE?

I reiterate.

He doesn’t give a shit about you.

96 Days until the election on November 3^rd

176 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS You know I can’t hear you with a two inch wooden rod through my skull.