Archives for August 2020

Friday August 7, 2020

86 Days until the election on November 3^rd

166 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

There have been three instances this week of what happens when BS meets reality.

The funniest and most glaring was the Senate led by the Republicans that decided to question Sally Yates. She was the Assistant Attorney General that went to the White House to warn the president that Michael Flynn was compromised by the Russians. For that she was forced out of her job and Flynn was kept on until it be came so bad and he got arrested and pled guilty to exactly what Yates had said he was doing.

The Republican Senators are looking more and more like the fools and stooges they have become. That not lovable trio of Graham, Cruz, and that idiot from Louisiana named Kennedy* asked Sally questions. They had a problem. They had been listening to right wing media that had made Yates out to be some sort of demon. The reality is that she is a well trained lawyer and polite woman. Kennedy was the worst. He asked her if there wasn’t in fact a group of people within the Justice Department that hated Trump and tried to do everything they could to make sure he wasn’t elected. She said she was unaware of any such group or people. Undeterred Kennedy went on to ask if she in fact wasn’t part of that group and didn’t she hate Trump. She very politely said she didn’t hate anyone and elaborated on her concerns about the president’s actions. 

See, this is what I love about Kennedy.* He is undeterred by facts, or answers to his own questions. 

*Note: I use the asterisk to be able to make sure we know that this Kennedy has nothing to do with the Kennedys from Massachusetts.

Okay, so the Three Amidiots (my clever new name for them) kept asking questions based on what they understood from right wing media. Here’s the problem they had – What the right wing media says has little or nothing to do with reality. 

So what happened? Well, they got very politely told that what they were saying was not true. And here is where Pogo comes in, I quoteth “We have seen the enemy and they is us!”

Or to put it another way, and I forget who said this, “Having faced the problem we moved on.”

Or as Ron White said of the police department that engaged in a gun battle with bank robbers at point blank range and managed not to hit any of them.  “We engaged the robbers at Point Blank Range.” “Then what happened?” “We went home.”

Okay, so that is the first of three instances of when BS meets reality. Next up – the NRA. The AG of New York is bringing charges and saying that the NRA must dissolve. Why? Oh, good question. It seems that those in charge have been looting the organization, which is – get this – against the law. Imagine that? I mean Wayne La Pierre and the rest of the board have managed to take $64,000,000.00 over a few years. The organization is essentially bankrupt. Oh man I wonder what all those guys in their jacked up pick up trucks with their “Don’t Tread on Me” license plates and “Protect My Second Amendment Rights” bumper stickers with their little round NRA patch are thinking now? I know. They are no doubt being told that the AG of NY is a terrible person, which would be obvious to them because 1) She’s a woman, and 2) She’s black. Hey, how about 3) She don’t take no shit like you boys did from Wayne? 

I mean it’s not like you guys weren’t told. This would have required you paid attention and that you stopped listening to Rush. But let me remind you that – moi – had told you a long time ago. I wrote about how the NRA leaders have to file if they give over $250 to the NRA or any of its funds, etc. Guess how many hot shots running the NRA gave over two fifty? I mean it was desperately important. Wayne made videos saying if they didn’t get enough money everything was going to go to hell. Actually, he needed the money to pay for his jetting to the Bahamas and hanging out on a 108 foot yacht, but so what? Oh, the answer? How many gave money to help this desperate cause that the NRA was warning its loyal members about? Zero. None. Nada. Zilch.

You loyal members were played for suckers. But you knew that – if. If you had paid attention. John Oliver did a whole show telling you that Wayne had spent $300,000 to buy suits. Oliver wouldn’t have minded I don’t think if the suits had been sharp looking but they were all that dull blue La Pierre always wore. 

And this is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of warnings. So while Wayne was cruising the Bahamas and buying expensive suits and the rest of the upper echelons of the NRA were siphoning off whatever money they could La Pierre was pushing such ideas as idiots should be allowed to carry firearms. I’m not talking idiots like “You’re an idiot” idiot. I’m talking mentally impaired people. When he wasn’t doing that he was forcing legislation through that wouldn’t allow the ATF to use computers to trace arms, thus allowing criminals to acquire guns because the time limit on tracing would run out. He also was for high capacity gun clips, silencers on weapons, night scopes, and bump stocks. 

Me? I’m for life. And those measure aren’t helping us live.

Then there is the classic of the week Johnathan Swan of Axios got to interview Trump one on one. How he got that interview I don’t know. Bet the White House staff won’t allow another one. Even though Swan was very deferential to the president, and I guess you have to be with a narcissist, he exposed the president as uninformed, unprepared, and clueless. Swann wasn’t even trying to do that, but the discussion was so egregious that it couldn’t be helped. Somehow Trump had convinced himself that he was doing a really good job with the corona virus and he showed Johnathan some prepared graph he had been given. He managed to take a graph that showed he was doing a terrible job and interpret it that he was doing so much better than any other country.

This gets to the heart of what Trump does. He talks to himself. Doesn’t let anyone else have time to talk. Rarely listens when they do talk, and convinces himself of the efficacy of what he just said to himself. Some might call this behavior delusional, I don’t. I call it standard operating procedure for him.

Now we get to the ultimate BS meets reality. Beirut. Six years ago a bunch of fertilizer was seized and put in a warehouse in the port of Beirut. It blew yesterday. Timothey McVeigh would be so proud. When the stuff was seized the port authorities didn’t want it there. They protested. They warned. No one cared. It blew. 

Moving on. Hey, now we get to the latest criminal activity started by the president. I mean does a day go by that we don’t learn of a new crime?

This one involves his ambassador to Britain. Trump asked him to get the British Open for his golf course in Scotland. Okay, is that a crime? I don’t think so. Unethical – yes. Hopefully, my legal friends can let me know.

But here’s where a crime could have been committed. If our ambassador went to someone in Britain and asked them to move the British Open to Trump’s crappy golf course in Scotland and if the ambassador suggested or threatened to do something dastardly in the name of the U.S. if they didn’t move the game to Donnie’s course. Or he could threaten not to do something. Either case would be bribery.

I think this comes down to if it was unethical for Trump to ask his ambassador to do this, and it would be potentially illegal if the ambassador asked someone in Britain to do it. If the ambassador threatened them with withholding some U.S. Aid etc. then it would be illegal.

Ah me, but that’s just the start of it. All this was known and written up in a report that the IG (Inspector General) of the State Department investigated and submitted. What happened next? Oh the report was marked “classified” and never saw the light of day and the IG got fired. He has no idea why he got fired. They got a new guy in and after three months he quit with no explanation. Oh wait, Mike Pompeo says that the fellow wanted to go back to Indiana and that “this happens all the time.” No, it doesn’t Mike – you lying sack of excrement.

Americans are dying at over 1,000 a day. Actually, one every 80 seconds, that’s a change from one every 90 seconds just a few days ago.

How long can the Republicans and the right wing media hold out against reality? It’s hard to say. I think one thing will be when and if the millions of people get thrown out of their apartments and they don’t have any money, because the Republican Senate failed to act.

Then there’s the right wing argument that we shouldn’t give people $600 a week or they won’t go back to work, let’s give ‘em $200 instead. Yeah. Someone tried this line on Chris Jansing and she stopped them right there with a whoa-whoa wait a minute where are the jobs that you are talking about? And like Trump and his graphs, they guy had nothing.

Reality is a cold place as some on the right are now learning. Well, I’m being optimistic aren’t I?

86 Days until the election on November 3^rd

166 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS The Temple of Artemis, Jerash, Jordan.

Thursday August 6, 2020

87 Days until the election on November 3^rd

167 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I was sitting in bed thinking about focus, specifically political focus. I was wondering what it is that Trump wants, that the Republicans want, and I can’t figure it out, and yet I can. As I see it, the problem is that they really don’t want anything and therein lies the answer and the problem.

Yes, he and they want to stay in power, but beyond that they have little or no interest in governing, and by that I mean they have no plan to make the lives of the people they govern better. They aren’t interested in improving the conditions of the general population. If anything they would argue against doing that under the guise of someone getting something for nothing. 

I am struck by two comments I have heard in the last few years. One was Bill Clinton’s statement when Hillary was running. He said that the Republicans biggest complaint about the Democrats was that, “We didn’t clean up their messes fast enough.” The other was a much more recent comment. It concerned the report that the reason that the Trump administration decided against doing any nationwide about a corona virus response was that Jared Kushner (and I’m sure Trump too) saw the virus as affecting Democratic states only and that they were not “our people.”

The Republican Party has for as long as I’ve been aware always taken an us versus them attitude. Tip O’Neil in his book, “Speaker of the House,” talked about politics in Massachusetts. This before he moved on to national prominence. He talked about the head of the house in Massachusetts, who was a Republican, who was cordial to Tip, but wouldn’t pass anything or do anything that the Democrats wanted. Not that he didn’t like or agree with a lot of what Tip and his fellow Democrats wanted, but simply because it was proposed by Democrats, ie “the other side.” 

I have seen no change in this attitude at a state or Federal level. Okay, so then I have to ask myself, “What do they want?” What do Republicans want? One of the presidential historians summed it up best when they spoke about George H. W. Bush becoming President. When he got to the office he really had no clear idea of what he wanted to do. 

There was another anecdote that Tip O’Neil spoke about that illustrates this. Someone on George H. W. Bush’s staff was having a crisis at home. I forget exactly but George felt bad for him so they literally “passed the hat” and gave this guy whatever was in the hat. While a nice if not a condescending gesture, Tip thought to himself that Bush had vetoed a measure that would have similarly given the same kind of help to thousands of people in a similar situation. But there you have what I see as the fundamental difference between the governing philosophies. 

The Democratic philosophy seems to be to help as many people as possible while the Republican one seems to be more of a concern that someone may get away with something and they don’t want that to happen so they try and prevent it. Or to put it another way, when I’ve tried to have conversations with people who hew to that sort of philosophy I mention the idea of a rising tide lifting all boats. What I get in response is some concern that someone may be doing something they don’t like or I get what I’ll call the “rugged individual” argument, which can best be summed up as, “Screw you, I got my yacht in the water. Good luck.”

So what does Trump want? I have an image of a blimp right in front of my face. I’m nose to nose with it and I’m trying to figure out what it is. It’s so close that it’s hard to know what it is. But like a helium balloon that you hold close to your ear you can feel something. You know it feels different. You can sense it, but you can’t quite identify what it is. The thing with Trump is that it’s so obvious and convoluted that it’s hard to believe. 

I remember recently he said, he had done “more for the blacks” than anyone else. Okay, here’s the first thing to know – whenever Trump claims something outrageous it’s a lie. It’s easy to know when he’s doing so because he precedes the lie with a statement like “no one has done more.” Secondly, what does he really believe? To the extent he believes anything you can find it in Mary Trump’s book. She mentions the casual racism and the attitude of cheating as a way of life. 

Trump has cheated his whole life. He knows it, because he tries so hard to hide the fact. He paid someone to take his college entrance exams. His sister did his homework. What he was doing during that time is hard to say. He is incurious about everything it seems. He is constantly fighting a rearguard action to stop people from knowing who he is.

How does this differ from the Republican Party? Not much, if at all. Trump is the logical outcome of this screwed up way of looking at the world. Whenever I have tried to understand a Republican viewpoint it is always held up by magical thinking somewhere along the way. The right wing media outlets and their people either outright lie or they quote some wacky obscure study, article, or person. None of it is mainstream and by that I mean generally accepted. 

When I was a kid I remember studying about President Grant. Following the Civil War he had one of the most corrupt administrations in our history (present day excepted.) He used to go across the street and sit in the lobby of The Willard Hotel and read the newspaper. People learned this and used to hang out in the hotel’s lobby to ask favors and hence the term “lobbyist” was born. 

I always thought that we would repeat that history of corruption again, one hundred years later, and that what would follow would be another depression. Maybe, I was off a bit in my timeline. I also forgot about the 1918 Flu epidemic. But here’s the thing I’m really struck by, the times that we as a nation have had the biggest problems a Republican has been President and their reaction has been to ignore the problem.

It is not until a Democrat gets in office that things get addressed. Once the Dems have cleaned things up a Republican gets back in and things start to slide downhill again. You have only to look at the charts of middleclass wealth since Reagan to see that. Ie Things have gone down hill for the average person since Reagan. This is not an accident.

However, you can actually go back further. Nixon was trying to figure out how to stop inflation and what to do about healthcare. He changed healthcare with his allowing his buddy, Edgar Kaiser, to set up an HMO. Not that there weren’t those kinds of things before but Nixon kind of set it up like a super highway to try and fix the healthcare system in our country. A problem that was caused during the Truman administration, when he couldn’t get Republican support for universal health care and went instead for an employee mandate. (How’s that working out btw? Oh what? You get fired and then you’ve got no health insurance? Hum, Republican response would be “too bad, so sad.”) 

So Nixon couldn’t solve health care. Ford didn’t try; he worked on inflation. Carter came in and fixed the inflation issue. It cost him the Presidency. Reagan made things worse for the middle class. He gutted unions and made a deal with the Pope that killed off the zero population movement. Those two things meant that the average person no longer had a way to negotiate with big business for a decent wage and that poor women would be forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

And the cycle of screwing over the middle class and Dems trying to fix things has continued until the present day. 

Now, with Trump, it is plainly clear to a majority of the people what Trump and the Republicans are up to. However, to quote Lincoln, “You can fool some of the people all of the time.” We now have a pretty good handle on that as a percentage, somewhere in the high thirty to low forty percent.

Oh, I’m sorry. Did I offend someone? 

When will this pandemic end? That’s easy. There are two solutions: The Trump/Republican solution or the Scientific/Democratic solution. 

The Trump/Republican solution is that it will magically go away. Well, they are right. It will go away. When? Under their plan when enough people die that the virus can no longer spread. You can look at the 1918 Flu epidemic to see what that would take, about 3% of the world’s population.

Or we can try another way, Andrew Cuomo showed how to do it, because he did it in New York. Other countries have done it too. We could try that.

Me? I think the Republicans should have a big convention, have some giant beach parties and the rest of us can hunker down and let them pass. (Hey, nice term huh?)

Okay, I’m kidding. But some of the reddest states are having this minor minor problem – where to put the bodies? Maybe, those states will have to do like they did int he 1918 Flu Pandemic? Let folks bury their own.

BTW We still aren’t sure where that pandemic started. It was attributed to Spain, but that is because Spain did not have as much censorship on its news as other countries. It appears that the flu was spread by returning soldiers from WWI. It may have come from Kansas of all places, but we aren’t sure. Turns out that what made this virus so deadly was three genes that allowed the bronchial tubes to get infected. 

Okay, so until we get some real leadership we’ll go with the Trump “lot of death” plan, okay?

Then we’ll get a real leader in there – hopefully – if Trump and the Republicans don’t figure out a way to steal this election and we can shut this virus down in a couple of months here and then in a year or two around the world.

Have a nice day!

Thank-you.

I’m here to help.

You’re welcome.

PS What I need is a bigger Pumpkin Patch!