Trump

Day 1215 – General Bitching, A Weekly Roundup

Sunday May 17, 2020 

168 Days until the election on November 3^rd

248 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

It’s hard to know where to start, but here goes:

To the General Populace:

1. You do understand that when “They” say “They” want to get the economy going again “They” are talking about “You,” don’t you?

2. They aren’t saying it’s safe. They are saying that they know some of You will die, but that’s okay, as long as They make a few bucks. You understand that, right?

General Observation:

3. I went to the grocery store and was shocked to see about half the people wandering around without masks. This is in sharp contrast to before “They” started to open up the economy. What are “You” thinking? See 2. Above.

Political observation:

4. Trump has fired four Inspector Generals in the last week. One was overseeing the State Department. Trump “lost confidence” in the IG when it was rumored that he was looking into Pompeo.

Legal:

5. The case to have Trump reveal his financial records is going to the Supreme Court. The betting is slightly in favor of the court doing the right thing.

Basic Math and The Pandemic:

6. It has been reported that we have plateaued at 2,000 dead a day. I’m not sure what plateaued means in this case. Not increasing? I guess. Let me say this. It’s going to get worse. A lot worse. But let’s be optimistic shall we? Let’s stick with 2,000 dead a day.

Total U.S. Dead as of today – 89,785

By the end of June add         + 44,000

July, Aug, Sept add               +184,000

Oct, Nov, Dec                        +184,000

Total                           501,785 dead by the end of the year, and I’m being optimistic 

Add another 40,000 when the next president takes over.

Total by Inauguration Day 541,785 dead.

Are you tired of winning?

168 Days until the election on November 3^rd

248 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Skull Rack, Chichen Itzá 

Day 1214 – The Two Forbidden Cities

Saturday May 16, 2020 

169 Days until the election on November 3^rd

249 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

When I was in China in 1983 someone offered me a little guide to the Forbidden City. It was two yuan, about fifty cents. I bought it. It was pretty standard stuff when you quickly thumbed through the pages. There were pictures of all the regular places within the city, but without anyone standing in front of them. 

The first paragraph was your standard historical introduction:

“The Forbidden City was built …”

It was the second paragraph that really got my attention:

“But our great chairman Mao …”

The third paragraph went back to the standard history:

“Built by the Emperor …”

And the fourth reverted to the political PR:

“… Throwing out the running lackies and their yellow dog …”

I love that pamphlet.

When I heard the stories about the CDC and how far it has fallen on the world stage I wondered if they needed to take a similar methodology to survive?

There really is no question about what Donald Trump is doing to our government and our way of life. The parallels to Hitler are honing closer and closer to the reality of what is happening in our country. Does the CDC have to adopt a way of reporting like that pamphlet? Do they have to write in one paragraph: “Our glorious president has declared we must get the economy going and all do our part…” and in the next say, “According to the rate of infection the following states have a rising percentage of …”?

I wonder how long they can hold out. Donald is trying to knock of the heads of the beast wherever it surfaces. Vaccine doctor says can’t approve an unproven drug – Swoosh. Gone. Report says you must follow these steps to be safe, but that won’t let the economy open by next week. Twack, Hidden. 

And so it goes.

Commentators and pundits are no longer hiding their distain, calling him an idiot and the worst president of all time. For those who wanted Washington shook up, I’m wondering if this is what they wanted? Did they want to see someone come in and rip apart the very foundations of our democracy?

History is replete with examples of great confusion and chaos followed by a strong man. Usually, that strong man becomes obsessed with the power he wields and the country falls under an oppressive rule. Democracy is not the norm. Feasance and fidelity to the great one is more common.

For the first time in our history Doctors Without Borders has come to our country to help out. This is an organization that typically goes to third world countries.

Here we are months into this pandemic and we are still talking about testing and getting enough Personal Protective Equipment. There is talk about what is the normal way we have handled such things in the past. The president and his cronies have been begged and pleaded with to do what is the obvious, but they refuse.

The esteemed journal The Lancet, a British based international magazine has called for a change in leadership here. They are a public health and medical magazine. They are calling for it not as a political solution, but a public health solution.

The president has said that he doesn’t want to do more testing because that drives up the number of cases and he doesn’t want the number of cases to go up. This reveals, once again, his fundamental misunderstanding of reality. Not of truth – reality. It has been explained over and over again since he said that statement that no testing and getting a result does not drive up the number of cases. The cases are still out there. If you don’t test you don’t know where they are. 

There are two ways to fight a virus: find everyone who is infected and separate them from everyone else and keep them separated until they get well or live with the virus in our midst and come up with treatments to help people who are infected survive and get better.

The first strategy is called “containment.” That is what we have always managed to do in the past. That is what the CDC and WHO are designed to do. 

The second strategy is what a society does after containment doesn’t work. After the virus is so numerous and spread out that we can’t stop it. In that case, all one can do is muddle along, and hope for a vaccine. But vaccines take a long time to develop and in some cases like AIDS we still don’t have a vaccine. We have medicine that allows people to survive with the AIDS virus but they aren’t cured. They are coping.

Our president is neither following a strategy of containment or of coping.

I am reminded of a joke about a woman who has gone to bed with three different men. The third man is an ad man. (Okay, that’s very 1950s. It’s an old joke.) One of the women’s girlfriend asks what the adman was like in bed. She replied, “he sat at the end of the bed the whole night and told me how great it was going to be.”

That’s pretty much where we are. However, while Trump sits at the end of the bed he is also busy deploying his henchmen throughout the government decapitating the agencies and turning them against themselves and us.

I keep waiting for an adult to enter the room, turn on the light, and all the cockroaches scatter. 

It’s up to us in November to make that happen.

169 Days until the election on November 3^rd

249 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Worry Dolls, Guatemala. Put all your worries into one of these dolls before you go to bed. Place it under your pillow. Go to sleep. In the morning all your worries will be gone.

Day 1213 – Preparing for The Long Dark Winter

Friday May 15, 2020 

170 Days until the election on November 3^rd

250 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

There are all sorts of bits lying about. Most of it is excrement.

Some of it is outrageous. Are you surprised? Of course not, it is what we have come to expect.

– There was the Republican congressman during the hearing of Dr. Bright who used his time to say this was all a political stunt and no one is giving Trump credit.

– There was another Republican congressman who during that same hearing questioned Dr. Bright about who was paying him: his old job at BARDA or the new job he was being offered at NIH? This congressman went on to question how it was that Dr. Bright was able to be at this hearing if he had been out on medical leave and now vacation if in fact as Dr. Bright had claimed he had high blood pressure? How was the doctor able to function here and not on his new job that he had to take “medical leave”? The congressman “just wanted to understand.” Bull Shit. 

But as Dr. Bright explained several times to the congressman, because the congressman by his own admission had trouble understanding, he – Dr. Bright – had been forced out of his job on short notice and this caused hyper-tension, which he was being treated for.

– Then there was the young look-a-like Kelly-Ann Conway who was on the White House lawn with Trump (I think she’s a former Fox News whatever) who explained that the Obama administration had left a playbook and it was inadequate and didn’t do the job, but the Trump administration had written a new playbook which did. Bull Shit.

Holding up a marked up not good looking report and a cute good-looking report does not make it true. Why haven’t you, The White House, followed any playbook?

Oh yeah, and at one point the White House denied the Obama administration had left them a playbook. That ended when Ron Klain, who headed up the Ebola response team under Obama, showed a copy of the front of the playbook that was left. It was marked “PLAYBOOK …” Read it? They claimed not to know about it! He also published the table of contents so folks would see for themselves the detail they went into.

We are still waiting to see the Trump playbook. Maybe because it really has nothing in it?

In that hearing Dr. Bright laid out what he had done to try and get the administration to pay attention to the coming pandemic. He had done everything he could think of. He repeatedly warned people at the highest levels. He pulled every lever, warned every person – repeatedly. They blew him off. Trump says Dr. Bright is a disgruntled employee. Disgruntled? Why would he be disgruntled? Just because he did his job and got fired? He says he’s not disgruntled, but frustrated.

So then there was the interview with Andrew Cuomo on Rachel. Man, what a breath of fresh air. New York is going to reopen. The Governor has put in place rules as to when a county can reopen. What? Rules and guidelines? Get out to here.

The Governor has said that nursing homes must test their staff and if they don’t they risk having their licenses pulled. He has sent out 100,000 test kits to start this process. Compare this to the White House “plan” which says that there should be testing. No money, no help, just a suggestion.

Then we get to the Michael Flynn case. The Justice Department has withdrawn from the case. That is they don’t want to prosecute Flynn. This has so outraged the lead prosecutor on the case that he withdrew from the case. Another disgruntled employee? 

The judge has now asked a retired judge to step in and argue the old Justice Department case. 

Meanwhile, Wisconsin and several other states have “opened up.” In the case of Wisconsin it is over the objection of the Governor of that state, who was overruled by the state Supreme Court. I’ve seen the charts on the infection rates of those states: Wisconsin, South Dakota, Texas are opening up, while their charts of the rates of infection are going up. This is not smart. This is stupid. I have to wonder what will happen when lots of those places are overwhelmed with sick patients?

There was a piece about a guy who thought this whole corona virus thing was fake, overblown, a hoax. He thought God would protect him. Then he got sick. He’s now preaching that it isn’t fake, not overblown, not a hoax. It’s real. Protect yourself. Don’t get this thing. Wow. Amazing huh?

How many more will have to undergo this miracle transformation? I suggest that they believe. Believe the scientists.

Then there’s Obamagate. This is the latest fabrication by Trump. What’s up with that? Well, the president has finally gotten the intelligence community cowed at the top levels and his plan is to use that and Justice and law enforcement to go after Joe Biden and the Democratic party that’s what.

Then there’s ballot harvesting. The practice of someone collecting mail-in ballots from others and submitting them en mass. Devin Nunes was seen on Fox News saying that was the only way that a Republican could win a  particular seat in California. This practice has been ruled illegal in the other 49 states. Why? Oh I dunno. Maybe after that guy in North Carolina deceived people about what they were voting for, took their blank ballots and filled them in, and threw out  the ballots that voted for the opponent? Just guessing.

So, come the fall when we are in the worst outbreaks of this virus we will have ever seen and rural states have people dying and they have no ventilators or places to store the bodies and the economy is in the deepest recession this country has ever seen, including 1929, then what?

170 Days until the election on November 3^rd

250 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Dead Fish, Seattle Farmer’s Market

Day 1212 – The Political Pandemic

Thursday May 14, 2020 

171 Days until the election on November 3^rd

251 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Let me introduce two ideas to begin. Actually, I’m going to call them idea/images, because I want you to not only grasp the idea but also what it looks like. 

The first is the phrase “by thought, word, and deed.” It’s part of the communion ceremony I grew up with. (Episcopal Church – Rite I) 

The other is the idea of a foreign agent embedded in our country, but with a twist. What if there was no external country directing the actions of this agent, but this agent was a product of our own making? Kind of a variant on Pogo’s famous line, “We have seen the enemy and them is us.” 

In all the foreign agent movies, books, and themes the idea is that the person or entity is bent on doing our country harm, of destroying it, or remaking it. Be it “AmeriKa”, “The Manchurian Candidate,” “The Man in the High Castle,” or “The 39 Steps.”

What if that enemy is within? What if it is us, or a big portion of us? What then?

America is a dream. It is an ideal. Something to aspire towards, “The Shining City on the Hill.” We celebrate this notion in many of our Hollywood films. A subgenera is the honest cop fighting against the corrupt system. It doesn’t have to be a cop, sometimes it’s a politician, or an average person. In the end good triumphs over evil. 

Let us consider where we are today.

In the latest round of news. 

– Two of the people the president likes are being released from prison early because of the coronavirus and one, who is not liked, is not being released.

– The White House has squashed the CDC paper that would tell people how to safely re-enter the world. There are two version of this report: the 17 page, and the 69 page one. The White House has told some of the CDC folks that the 17 page report will never see the light of day. Forget the longer report. 

– The Justice Department is trying to drop a case against an individual who basically pled guilty to treason. 

– In Wisconsin the governor of the state issued a “stay at home” order. The state’s supreme court has overturned that order saying it is unconstitutional. (Michigan will be up next.)

– The president is asking people to go back out into the world and get the economy going. Yet, the key to doing this is testing. We don’t have adequate testing and the president refuses to marshall resources so that we could. 

– Workers in meat processing plants are being told to go back to work, despite the huge outbreaks of the virus at their work location. They are not being given adequate protection or testing. If they refuse to go back they are being threatened with no unemployment checks. (They have a job. They refuse to go back!) Additionally, many of the workers are illegally here so they have the additional threat of being deported. (Why don’t we use the word “exported”? I don’t know.)

– Many red state, rural, Republican governors are opening up their economies despite warnings from health officials. One such official is the man who was in charge of developing vaccines for our country, now fired, now a whistleblower, who testified to Congress yesterday. He said this winter will be very dark unless we get a nation wide response to this virus. (Ha! Good Luck with that.)

So that is the state of the union as I see it. Actually, those are the facts that I will use to draw conclusions about the state of the union. 

We do not have adequate testing and it does not look like we will anytime soon.

We do not have any contact tracing program in place or on the horizon.

We do not have any national response to this virus and the president and those around him seem unable or unwilling to do so.

All this has been known, but what is new for me is the recognition that the president, along with the White House, the Attorney General, and many governors and now conservative court justices at the state level are actively working to let this virus physically destroy us, while at the same time those same individuals and entities are doing everything they can to destroy America. At least the America I knew, and grew up with. 

By the time November rolls around I’m not sure what will be left. By January and inauguration we will be in the midst of the worst economic disaster and pandemic this country has ever faced. 

The sad thing is – it didn’t have to happen. That’s another thing to know.

Oh yeah, the first idea I mentioned. It’s not until one gets their thoughts, actions, and act they are saying all in alignment that one can be effective. Think of our president, his administration, and where we are. “Thought, word, and deed” or as we used to say, “Get your sh*t together.”

We are a long way from that and there’s an active movement to make sure it doesn’t happen. This is a disease far worse than the virus we are facing. It has infected so many.

171 Days until the election on November 3^rd

251 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Between a rock and a rock.

Day 1211 – Two Tiny Truths

Wednesday May 13, 2020 

172 Days until the election on November 3^rd

252 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Truth 1: If Hillary, or Obama, or Joe Biden had been President there would be no pandemic. 

Truth 2: Any thoughts you have of the White House or the Republicans in office doing the right thing are delusional.

You want to argue Truth 1? Yes? No? 

How many people died in the U.S.A. From the HUGE Ebola Pandemic? You know the one Trump says Obama made a mess of? How many? Two. That’s right – TWO.

How about worldwide? How many would have died if one of the three I mentioned was in charge? It would be a damn sight lower. In fact, there probably wouldn’t have been a pandemic because as Joe Biden pointed out he would have sent people to China right away to figure out what was going on. What’s that called? Oh yeah, “Trust but Verify.” Who said that? Some guy named Reagan? Remember him? He started the real downhill slide of this country.

Remember when Obama was sending teams of people and supplies to west Africa to fight the Ebola crisis the Republicans were clamoring for shuttering our country. Well, we did that as our first attempt with this pandemic. How’d it work out?

Remember too that South Korea got its first case the same day we did. How’s it working out for them? According to just released data they have 256 dead from the virus. Oh but they’re a smaller country. Yeah, their population is 51M. Ours is 320M or six times. 

Lemme see 6 * 256 is like 1536. Hum, which is better 1536 dead or 81,000? 

The news and the president are talking about opening up the country and the economy. However, the health experts say you gotta do some basic stuff. It all begins with testing and we aren’t doing that. 

So what’s going to happen? More people will die – needlessly. We won’t do the testing. The economy won’t come back.

The president is incapable of doing the job. 

172 Days until the election on November 3^rd

252 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Can you guess where this picture was taken?