Trump

Day 1205 – The Devil’s Choice for The Poor

Thursday May 7, 2020 

178 Days until the election on November 3^rd

258 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I have to wonder, and am continually amazed, by the arrogance, stupidity, and callousness of many in power.

The use of The War Powers Act to try and force people working in meat packing plants back to work while their employers are making little attempt to arrest the outbreaks of Covid-19 means, for the workers, “Work and Die or Don’t and Starve.” 

The meatpacking companies have made sure to insulate themselves from liability. Even if people die at their facilities from this virus they can’t be sued.

What kind of country have we become?

The answer has been staring me in the face for decades. This is not a mistake. This is what the Republican Party is and has been for as long as I have been alive. They’ve just, up until now, done a better job of hiding it. Yes, there have been some truly empathetic representatives of the party, and some have done some good things, but on the whole their purpose has been to serve the rich and powerful – public be damned. 

They wrap themselves in the flag, or in the 2^nd amendment, or the pro-choice movement but those are all chimeras for their real intent – to enrich themselves and to stay in power. Nothing else seems to matter. They will and they have embraced many nutty economic and social ideas. They will accuse their opponents of terrible things all the while doing exactly that which they claim is so awful.

They delude themselves with false stories, with quack theorists. It is now to the point that when faced with the truth they don’t recognize it. If the truth doesn’t fit their narrative they ignore it; they bury it; they attack it.

The virus doesn’t care.

The virus is here and it will stay here until we deal with it. 

I fear we will need to see a lot more of the reality that this virus can bring before we are done with it.

In the meantime, let’s have another press conference.

178 Days until the election on November 3^rd

258 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS “One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small…”

Day 1204 – We Are Being Stalked

Wednesday May 6, 2020 

179 Days until the election on November 3^rd

259 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

There was that really bad movie about some creature that would kill you if you made a sound. So the couple decides to have a baby. Really stupid. Who knew, in a weird way, that it would be a harbinger of what we are now to experience?

The virus is out there. Waiting. Lurking. And our government is going to pretend it’s all over.

Last night’s Rachel Maddow Show and Laurence O’Donnell’s “Last Word” Show were jam-packed with facts and warnings. I could call it overwhelming, but I won’t. Instead I’ll try to list what Rachel brought up and some of what Laurence brought up. At first viewing I didn’t understand the reasoning, but in reviewing The Last Word, I got it. I understood the motivation behind what Trump is doing in one area. In the other areas he and his administration are doing nothing to help. If anything disparaging is getting out, like factual information that they believe reflects badly on them, they squash it if they can.

Let’s start at the beginning with Rachel’s Show. I’m not going to comment much, just present the facts, Sergeant Joe Friday style. (Look him up.)

1. Ruth Ginsburg hospitalized with infection

2. NYT headline “Coronavirus in the U.S.: An Unrelenting Crush of Cases and Deaths”

3. Almost 25,000 new cases of coronavirus are identified, that the U.S. has the highest number of cases in the world with more than a million – is expanding at 2% – 4% daily.

4. Trump goes to Arizona to visit a mask making facility. Doesn’t wear a mask. This on the day that Arizona reports the highest number of cases it has ever had in a day.

5. The nationwide graph of cases looks like the U.S. Is doing well. However, if you drop out New York it shows that the cases are rising in the rest of the country. (Probably if you drop out California and Ohio it would be even worse.)

6. Trousdale, Tennessee has a prison. In ten day this county of 11,000 saw its number of cases rise from 27 to 1,344.

7. What is Trousdale, Tennessee going to do? They are opening up their businesses.

8. Trump cheers on governors that are opening up their states. While none of those states have met the White House guidelines on coronavirus.

9. White House guidelines – don’t open up until you’ve seen a two week decline in new cases. This is being ignored. (The result is obvious.)

10. The Smithfield plant in South Dakota opened up on Monday.11. The Governor of South Dakota said all businesses had to wear masks except Smithfield.

11. The Governor of South Dakota said one of the most effective things they could do was to test employees at the Smithfield plant. She then said that this was “optional” and “not a requirement to return back to work.”

12. When the Governor of South Dakota was asked why she turned the question over to her health person who said Smithfield decided not to do it.

(It should be noted that the Governor went on Fox in mid April when Rachel first pointed out the plant’s problems and told Fox that the believed in “freedom and liberty” and therefore wouldn’t issue stay-at-home orders.

I have to wonder, “If you are dead how much do you care about freedom and liberty?”)

13. A judge ruled that they can’t overrule the presidential executive order forcing worker to go back to work at meat packing plants despite not following OSHA guidelines. 

14. The FDA reversed itself and now says that the 100 antibody tests it allowed onto the open market without testing their effectiveness, must now must meet emergency guidelines. (Apparently, there was a hew and cry that maybe the FDA should take a look and see if the tests actually worked.)

15. Pork supply may be down 50%.

16. Perry, Iowa’s Tyson’s plant has a 58% infection rate.

17. Rachel – There aren’t that many meat packing plants in the U.S. Fix the problem. If you don’t you’ll have to shut down because the workers will all be sick.

18. Trump replaced the HHS acting deputy who reported that there were severe shortages of PPE.

19. Jared Kushner’s team of volunteers to help get needed supplies to hospitals had “little success” due to the fact that “none of the team members had significant experience in health care, procurement or supply chain operations.”

“Additionally, none of the volunteers had relationships with manufacturers or a clear understanding of customs requirements or Food and Drug Administration rules.”

20. Trump is winding down the pandemic task force.

21. William Barr is working to get rid of Obamacare, which will leave millions without health insurance.

22. The Federal guideline for nursing homes are having their rules on infection “relaxed.”

23. Trump’s pick to oversee the national stockpile killed off an initiative to create a machine that could make 1.5 million N95 masks a day and instead put the money into buying smallpox vaccine from a company that used to pay him. And, oh yes, sold at a significant markup. (to be fair, this was before the great need for masks.)

24. Dr. Rick Brice head of developing vaccines for the U.S. And who has trained his whole life for this job was removed from that post because he would not approve chloroquine for use without any data to backup its effectiveness. 

25. Despite Dr. Brice’s objections the White House went ahead with a plan to distribute chloroquine. In their own reports there was mention that this drug could have negative consequences. (Like death.)

26. Dr. Brice has filed a whistle-blower complaint alleging among other things – incompetence and corruption at the highest levels within the administration.

27. When Dr. Brice was silenced he felt he had no other choice but to go to the press to warn of the dangers of chloroquine. For this he was relieved of his duties. 

28. From the whistle-blower complaint filed by Dr. Brice:

“Dr. Brice hoped that by shining a light on HHS’s reckless and dangerous push to make this drug available, Human lives would be saved.”

“Brice was removed … because his efforts to prioritize science and safety over political expediency and to expose practices that posed a substantial risk to public health and safety, especially as it applied to chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine…”

“Time after time, I was pressured to ignore or dismiss expert and scientific recommendations…”

“I was pressured to let politics and cronyism drive decisions over the opinions of the best scientists we have…”

“Ultimately, I was removed…”

29. Detroit has 9400+ cases, 1,100+ deaths. It was one of the highest rates in the country. They were hit hard in a two week period of time, but their mayor Mike Duggan got busy with Rapid Testing. He first tested the police department and found a 26% infections rate. Quarantining those infected and putting the others back to work he then started testing nursing homes: all of them, every resident and their staffs. One quarter of those infected showed no signs. He is now testing workers that work in grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations. He has brought the infection rate down so that half the hospital beds are empty.

He was able to do all this because he got a private donor to give money and Quicken Loans turned over 40 people in their call center to take calls to arrange appointments to get tested.

The mayor says he spends no time on politics and all his time on tracking down tests, testing equipment, and results. He has a background in working at a large hospital (the Detroit Medical Center) for nine years. In 2009 he was working on the H1N1 crisis. Many of the people who worked with him at the hospital he brought over to the mayor’s office.

30, And in a fitting piece of irony, it was pointed out that while Trump was touring the mask manufacturer Guns ’n Roses “Live and Let Die” was blaring.

Here endeth Rachel’s show and Laurence’s begins.

31. There is a theme with two stories. The theme is “The Suppression of Information by the Trump Administration.”

32. Story 1) is the turning down of funding for a surge in medical supplies for the coming pandemic. This was in January.

33. Story 2) The pandemic task force is being disbanded. 

34. A new task force is being set up to get the country back to work. Shockingly, there is no strategy. (Surprised? No? I thought so. What did you expect?)

35. Trump says Dr. Fauci can testify – once – to the Senate. Because they are Republicans, but no to the House because it is filled with “Trump Haters,” (ie Democrats?)

36. Laurence made the astute observation that the task force was really done when Trump asked Dr. Birx did not tell Trump that ingesting disinfectant would kill you but rather said she had never heard of that as a treatment.

By the next day Trump realized what a catastrophe he had created with his comment and he stopped the press briefings.

37. What I hadn’t understood, and what Laurence O’Donnell explained was that once the TV show briefings were ended, Trump no longer needed the cast. Hence, the experts are faded to the background.

Please note:

The virus hasn’t stopped.

It is still out there.

Nothing has changed.

Stay home, Wash your hands.

The death toll has passed the number killed in Vietnam and there is no end in sight.

179 Days until the election on November 3^rd

259 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2020

PS It’s out there. Waiting for you.

Day 1203 The End of The Battle of Cannae, The End

Tuesday May 5, 2020 

180 Days until the election on November 3^rd

260 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

If you are familiar with Roman history you know of The Battle of Cannae. It is where Hannibal defeated the Romans. Hannibal left Carthage marched across the north of Africa through Spain and Gaul down into Italy. Hannibal had a diverse army. They didn’t speak the same language. I think there were four different language spoken within his army. He also had elephants. This may seem like a great idea until you realize that in battle elephants get scared and run. Usually, they turn and run, stomping whomever is in their way. 

The Romans on the other hand had a disciplined well trained fighting force. The Roman army practiced their advancement formations and fighting strategies in huge covered thatched roof spaces. When they fought the Greeks they were ready. The Greeks saw battle as a glorious thing in which each army met on a one another on a huge open field. The Greeks had 21 foot spears. They would join their shields together forming little notches where the shield butted together. They would line up six deep and this massive block of men would march forward. The Romans learned early on that in battle you want a short sword so that you can stand closer together. The Greeks advanced and the Romans crouched down and chopped at their ankles. It is said that Rome “shortened it sword and gained an empire.” 

When the Romans went to meet Hannibal they had their army. They had numbers on their side 86,000 to 50,000. They were confident. They were ready. Cannae is a flat plain by the sea. Mountains on one side, ocean on the other. It’s narrower than the usual field of battle that the Romans had fought on before. They lined up deeper than usual. Hannibal, his army arrayed across the plain waited. The Romans advanced. The center gave and the Romans pushed on. Then the center no longer gave it stopped. The sides had held and they swooped in from the back to seal the Romans in a box. There was no escape.

Then the slaughter began.

The Romans were so tightly packed that they could not swing their swords, short as they were. 

Bodies were piled high. Blood was ankle deep. Every once in awhile the Carthaginian rank opened up and a few got out. That was only because the Carthaginians couldn’t get in any closer to kill without letting a few out.

Those few and the ones who had stayed guarding the camp survived.

It is one of the most studied battles in history. It was the largest defeat Rome ever faced. It wasn’t until WWI and the Battle of the Somme that numbers like that were seen again.

That’s over two thousand years.

We are getting ready to see it again. In this country. 

The modeling on the number of dead from Covid-19 in this country was 60,000 to 78,000 by August 1, 2020. Not any more.

It’s now 148,000.

Why?

The modeling was based on self quarantining. We’ve decided not to do that. We will die. Maybe not you, but your fellow countryman or woman or child.

88,000 more will die.

By August 1.

With no end in sight.

I wish Jim Morrison’s words were true in this case …

“This is the end, My only friend. The End.”

But it’s not. Many more will now die. 

Meanwhile the president and his son-in-law play Good Ship Lollipop. Swinging their wooden swords and holding their paper hats on their heads. 

It’s out there. It’s waiting and we are marching out to meet it. Totally unprepared and defenseless. We will lose more to Covid than the Romans lost at Cannae, and that’s just in the increase between now and August 1 due to our not staying home.

180 Days until the election on November 3^rd

260 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Me and Covid (or am I at Ben and Jerry’s HQ?)

Day 1202 Michael Jordan, Donald Trump, and the Path to Greatness

Monday May 4, 2020 

181 Days until the election on November 3^rd

261 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I have an ability. It’s not one I ever thought of as being anything special. That is until someone said they wanted me to help them if they ever had to move. They didn’t want me for my muscle or my stamina or anything like that. They wanted me for my ability to pack a truck. I never realized it was anything special until that person mentioned, indirectly, that they hoped I’d be available if they ever had to move. 

I can look at a space and know if something is going to fit. I’m not always right, but I’ve watched other people struggle with this kind of situation. I can also look at how much is left in a pot and pick out the right sized container to put the leftovers in. I can go to the bulk food aisle, fill up a bag with whatever is on the list to get and buy just enough to fill up the container back home to the rim. I don’t always get it right, but in each of those situations I’ve watched others who seem to have no idea. Like I said, I never thought it was a special ability.

This brings me to Michael Jordan and me. No, I’ve never met him. But I’ve picked up little stories about him. It’s one of my abilities – the ability to pick up and amalgamate stuff, to find connections in disparate things. 

ESPN is showing “The Last Dance.” The story of Michael Joran and The Chicago Bulls run at a 6^th NBA World Championship. 

Michael Jordan wasn’t always Michael Jordan. He used to be “Mike.” One of 15 kids from a town in North Carolina where racism was a thing, like it was all over the south when he was growing up. It still is, but hopefully not as bad as when he was growing up. His grandmother had a hoop in her backyard. It was dirt and no net. Mike and his brother played out there a lot. His brother was better than him. If his brother lost to Mike he beat him up. Yeah, Mike’s brother would beat him up. His father would tell Mike that he didn’t know what he was doing around tools and tell him so and tell him to go back in the house. 

For whatever reason this motivated Michael to do better. To develop an “I’ll show you attitude.”

It’s funny (funny, odd) how we develop our talents. Some are conscious, some are not. I’m not sure how much of what someone displays is “God given talent,” or ability, and how much is something that started being developed at an early age unconsciously. Malcolm Gladwell has asked the question, “Why are all NHL hockey players born in January?” Okay, maybe I got the question not quite right. Gladwell makes the point that an unusually high percentage of professional hockey players are born in the early part of the year. Why? Because the cutoff for playing in the junior leagues is December 31^st. A person born on January 1^st will be a year older than a person born on December 31^st of the previous year when they go to sign up for hockey. That twelve months makes all the difference in how much playing time and coaching they get. They’re just a little bit better at first, but over the years, due to the extra attention they get better – a lot better than the kids born in December of the previous year. It’s shown by the fact that most professional hockey players are born in the first few months of any year. (Therefore, it makes sense for parents to not push kids to higher levels of sport but to try and hold them back.)

Gladwell has also said that to be good at something takes 10,000 hours of practice. Jimi Hendrix wasn’t born a guitar god overnight. He carried a guitar everywhere he went. He played it; he slept with it. 

In the Michael Jordan story there’s a tidbit from Roy Williams. Michael told Roy he wanted to be the best. Roy said okay. Then Michael said something else, and Roy stopped him and said, “Wait a minute, you said you wanted to be the best?” Implying that whatever it was Michael had said would not make him the best. It would make him good, like 10,000 hours makes you good enough to qualify, but to be the best? That takes something more. 

One of the tidbits I know about Michael Jordan is that at North Carolina they worked on him to be a great defensive player. When he left he was great at both ends of the court. It’s because his defensive talents were developed at North Carolina.

Of all the things I know about Michael Jordan the one that is most memorable comes from the Richmond Science Museum. They have a display in the basement where you can test your abilities. One of their displays is to test your vertical leap. You can do this at home. 

Find a spot that’s two stories tall. Stand next to the wall and stretch your arm out reaching as far as you can up the wall. At that point tape a yard stick running up the wall from the end of your fingertips. Now, standing in the spot below the yardstick jump up and see how high you can touch on the yard stick.

How did you do? Seven inches? Ten? Maybe fifteen. Seventeen? That’s known as your vertical leap. Vertical jump they call it. 

The note one the sign at the Science Museum said that Jordan had a 48 inch vertical leap. In other words, you’d need to tape a foot long ruler on top of that yard stick to see where Michael can jump to. (I just checked Google and they said 46” at NC.)

Michal Jordan is 6’ 7” tall. That’s a beginning height in the NBA. That’s what you need to be to qualify. But that leap? He had to work at that. He had to develop that.

Donald Trump also developed abilities. He learned the art of the con. He had to develop that skill, and it is a skill, an ability. It has worked well for him. He went from apathetic student to failing real estate developer to prime time TV personality to president of the Untied States. How did he do that?

By conning and bullying people. By developing a skill to deceive and to lie. He’s done it for so long, that it seems normal and okay. He’s very good at it and it has served him well. Until now.

Can he pull one more rabbit out of the bag?

Could the Bulls win a sixth championship?

Yeah. But as The Last Dance shows – You Gotta Step Up. And it didn’t happen over night. Michael Jordan had ingrained in himself, from an early age, a determination to get better and not to lose.

Donald? Well, he had things ingrained in him too. They worked for him, until he got to the presidency. Kind of like Herbert Hoover. Could Trump pull it out? Legitimately? (Yes, and yes.)

What could Trump do to win? (Besides cheat with the help of the Russians, the right wing, and the his slimy Republicans pseudo buddies.) I’ll tell you.

It was made clear to me on a weekend interview with the former head of The World Bank. This man pointed out two very significant set of facts. One was that when it came to investment in public health it was almost nothing. 

He backed this up by mentioning the fact that although we’ve spent trillions on the economy we’ve spent next to nothing on public health. It works out to $11,000 per person on the economy and $125 on public health – something like that. He said we needed to spend a massive amount on public health. He sited the recent call for folks to help with contact tracing in Massachusetts and something like 100,000 people applied for less that 10,000 slots. Yes, people wanted a job, he said, but he thought it was more than that. People wanted to defeat this virus. They wanted to take action, not sit hiding in their living rooms.

And therein lies Trump’s path to victory in the fall. If he were to call for a national mobilization to defeat this virus and if he were to actually back it up with action and resources he could win. Will He?

No.

181 Days until the election on November 3^rd

261 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Sloppy Joe’s

Day 1201 The One Reality

Sunday May 3, 2020 

182 Days until the election on November 3^rd

262 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

The president says he wants to open the country back up again. Some governors are starting to do that. Some never shut down.

The one thing that people agree on is that the first step to stopping a pandemic is to test. Yet, this administration has done little to bring that about. Why? What is Trump scared of? I think it’s three things that cause his lack of action: 1) he’s never had to really do anything, 2) he’s always been able to wiggle out of it, or someone has come and bailed him out, 3) he’s doing what he’s always done (see 1 & 2) and it’s always worked; he therefore does not know how to do anything else, and he’s lazy and doesn’t want to learn how to do anything else. 

To restate what I said above in more highbrow terms: Trump is incurious, lazy and apathetic.

We are now seeing the Republican conservative right wing playbook play out. If you like what has happened to our country then you are no doubt happy with the state of the nation and the world. If you are one who calls themself a Republican, or a conservative and you aren’t happy with the state of the nation or the world then I suggest you take a deep breath and a serious look around and see what your party’s ideology and actions have wrought. (Please don’t preach “this isn’t what I stand for”, “this is what true blah blah blah is”… No MFer this is exactly what it is.) The funny thing about conservatives is that they say they don’t like socialism and they don’t like folks getting hand outs, yet they are the ones taking the biggest handouts and wrangling for the best socialist policies for themselves possible. (Oh, I’m sorry. We’ve given Steve Mnuchin, the foreclosure king of California, $500,000,000,000.00 to spend anyway he wants without any oversight and YOU want to say what?)

Don’t try and blame this on Hillary or Obama or Nancy or Chuck or anyone else.

Your president said he’s done a spectacular job. Has he?

The fact that he is using: the FBI to investigate whether hospital workers are stealing masks to sell on the black market, FEMA to seize orders of PPE from states, the AG to argue that god knows, I forget, all I read is that Barr is taking the wrong side on whatever case is coming up. The fact that Trump fired or reassigned ( take your pick ): the guy who was heading up the development of vaccines for the government,  the inspector generals who make sure money is being spent the way it is supposed to be, and the list goes on and on. The fact that when people have been begging at him, screaming at him, arguing with him, pleading with him, to invoke the War Powers Act to galvanize this nation to produce the stuff we need to fight this pandemic and he hasn’t, but instead used it to force meat packers back into infected work conditions, says something. I’m not sure what, but it’s not good. 

The fact that he was given intelligence briefings in early January and repeatedly through every month of this year and did nothing has been called: a failure of leadership, dereliction of duty, and other things far worse.

What Trump’s inactions and actions have shown us is how fragile our experiment in democracy really is. He and the virus have exposed deep flaws and problems in our systems. We are left with fundamental questions to examine and choose.

Do we like the way he and his advisors and political appointees and sycophants are running things? Do we like the way he and the gang are handling the economy? What about our health care system? Do we like having hospitals that aren’t really equipped or set up to take care of the sick?

So what’s going to happen? I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen. Do I have a crystal ball? No. You don’t need one. You don’t need common sense. You don’t need nothing, because it will happen right before your eyes.

Some governors will open up their states. More people will get sick and die. There will be spikes in those places and those governors will say, “Huh.” Trump will say, “I disagreed with them doing it.” The economy will get worse. More people will lose their jobs. More businesses will go bankrupt and out of business, and the president will say, “Not my fault.”

Any questions?

PS The Pyramid of Kinich Kakmo, Izamal, Mexico