Trump

Day 1172 – The Three ISMs

Saturday April 4, 2020 

211 Days until the election on November 3rd

291 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I don’t like to use the word socialism or pretty much any word ending in ‘ism” because it has to be defined by whomever is using it, and it is misdefined, or defined very differently by those opposed to the person or group using it originally. That’s how you get to terms like antidisestablishmentarianism ( but not Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch* which is the name of a former town in Wales of which only the abandoned train station remains )

*And yes, I know how to pronounce it.**
** “Slan-Fair-Postwingus-gullgerah-drobwith-santasillio-go-go-go-goch”

There are three ISMs I would like to talk about today:

Capitalism – Individuals (and corporations) helping themselves.

Socialism – Individuals and corporations being helped by their government

Marxism – Individuals banding together to form an economic unit (and perhaps run the government)

All three suffer from some sort of drawback. All three have advantages. All three are used by their proponents to bludgeon the other two with the drawbacks of the system being bludgeoned.

In our political discourse Marxism rarely comes up other than a quote here or there. e.g. “Religion is the opiate of the people.”

What most people forget (but not you my brilliant readers because you are – well, brilliant) is that Marx was a good newspaper man and he reported on the political goings on in Europe during the time of our Civil War. It is believed that Lincoln read his columns and that informed our President of how to handle various European situations. (I also wonder how Marx living in a one room apartment with his wife and maid managed to get the maid pregnant.)

So let’s look at capitalism. One can say we are a capitalist society and not get stoned; don’t try that with the word socialism as Bernie keeps demonstrating. Yes, we have to point out that the socialism Bernis is talking about is what is going on in Europe, not the socialism that was going on in Europe. Blah, blah, blah. 

Michale Lewis, in his book “The Fifth Risk,” points out that in the midwest where they grow wheat and corn, Senators out there are opposed to socialism, but try and take away their grain subsidies and they become socialist real quick.

And lots of Republican politicians like to talk about freedom and capitalism and letting people be free to make as much money as they can via their own initiative and hard work. Blah, blah, blah. In every example I’ve ever heard of them pointing to someone being successful, there has been some form of government regulation, assistance, intervention. 

Unfettered capitalism leads to a concentration of power into the hands of a few and they take advantage of that power to the detriment of others. The same is true, more abstractly of socialism. Some folks like the idea of a strongman coming in “to clean things up.” The problem with that scenario is they don’t leave. Mussolini, Castro, Billy Jack ( Okay. he never got his chance. He was a fictional character, but his real life star ran for President with the idea that he’d become President “clean things up,” then hand it over to the VP to run things after that. See the movie! I would like to see a President call a bunch of fools into a meeting, say, “I’m sorry but now I’m going to have to take care of this,” take off his shoes and socks and run in a circle kicking them all in the mouth. [That btw is the whole premise of the Billy Jack movie.] )

Or as Tocqueville said (it was him wasn’t it) “Power corrupts, Complete power corrupts completely.”

Of these systems, these ISMs, when taken to extreme don’t work very well. And any of these systems can find cases that fail at any given point in their trajectory. 

There is also the role of the government in helping the people they govern and the economy of their country. Governments have two ways to help (or hurt) an economy. They can buy stuff (called fiscal policy.) And they can print money (called monetary policy). PS – They can also take money out of the economy via selling bonds to decrease the amount of available cash in the system and thus tamp down inflation (also called monetary policy.)

I am not an ISM guy. I am a “What works” guy. To be specific I’m a “what works now” guy. I don’t want it called Capitalism, or Socialism, or Marxism, or Catholicism (Wait? How’d that get in here? Never mind.)

If you want to see the failure of capitalism look at The Great Depression, The Great Recession, or any modern Republican administration since WWII (except Eisenhower, who was lucky enough to inherit the great programs of Roosevelt and have no industrial competition because the rest of the world was in shambles.)

The failure of the Republican administrations has gotten more and more pronounced, and more strident, as their administrations have moved along. Thus their motives have become more obvious, and their real benefactors more revealed. They are in it for themselves. They are controlled by the very rich. The feed at the trough and now they make no bones about it. 

The worst part of that is that now, with the Trump administration they don’t even understand the basic concepts or premises of the Federal government. 

We are in the worst pandemic that perhaps this country has ever seen, and one of the worst economic downturns ever, and we have the people in the administration throwing masks into the public square for the governors of the states to fight over like starving dogs. This is not the America I knew as a kid, or as an adult. 

Hoover did a lot of good things as an individual, before becoming President. However, his approach and concept of what the country needed in the time of economic crisis did not help the country. It was the bold actions of a New York governor that pulled the country through the hard times. This man inspired a generation. He tried things. Not all of them were successful. But he tried things, he got the country moving. He understood the pain and suffering of people and he worked to alleviate it. 

Many of the programs we take for granted today are due to his efforts. 

Call them socialist, capitalist, marxist, or The New Deal.

It is time to try things. Bold things. Things that might work (You do that to discover what will work.)

Unfortunately, we have an administration that is weak, timid, and uneducated. There will be no help coming from them. We are left on our own. We can fight in the town square or we can band together to fight for all, and suffer some, but for the greater good.

It is not clear as of this writing where we will come out.

211 Days until the election on November 3rd

291 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS In the Tunnel 

 

Day 1171 – The Sad Reality, Part II: Pieces and Bits

Friday April 3, 2020 

212 Days until the election on November 3rd

292 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

After writing Part I, which I stopped after making my major point I read a facebook post by one of my conservative friends. She had reposted an opinion piece by Don Henninger, and wrote “An Excellent Column in the WSJ.” 

I read it. Like many of these pieces, they sound good until you think about what they said, and what they left out. I didn’t know who Don was so I looked him up. He’s described as a conservative American commentator. Aside from The Wall street Journal he also contributes to Fox News.

So what does the article say?

He starts off with an anecdote about a 100 year old woman who was a nurse in WWII whom he quoted as saying back then they knew exactly what they were doing and why.

(OMG, I doubt he sees the irony of this set up anecdote.)

Then he goes to anecdote #2 about a guy who survived the1918 Pandemic and didn’t really start living until the Roaring Twenties.

(Double OMG, double irony, What happened after The Roaring Twenties? Clue Black Friday, The Great Depression.)

He then goes on to say that one thing is clear – the polarization of American politics.

(Time to start waving the flag.)

Which he says is exactly what the Founding Fathers feared.

(Spoiler Alert: He won’t give any suggestions of what to do to fix this situation. He’ll only attack one side, thus adding to the factionalism. What’s that Triple Irony?)

He then compares the Corona virus to the daily back and forth between citizens and the administration and says nothing will turn off the bile.

(He seems to miss the point that the reason people are screaming is the administration is not doing the job, if they were the screaming would stop.)

He then goes on to compare the fact that Trump doesn’t like the Governor of Washington* and the fact that Adam Schiff said he’s putting together a bill to do a postmortem of how well we as a nation did in response to the pandemic. (Of course, he accuses Nancy Pelosi, not Schiff, of wanting to impeach the president again.) 

* (I guess because he’s a Democrat and because he got so feed up with Trump’s comment that the Federal government is only a backup and the governor said, “We don’t need a back up quarterback. We need Tom Brady.”) 

Now we move into the meat. We attack Bernie and AOC. Why? Well, AOC said in regards to health care plans that it’s never been about how “we” pay for it. OMG! The friggin’ liberals, tax and spend, blah blah blah. Okay, let’s go through this carefully. It’s not been about how you pay for the health care, but that everyone gets covered. Bernie has made this point over and over again. i.e. Do you want everyone to have health care or not? That’s the question Don. Do you? I know, you’re concerned (no your not) how we are going to pay for it. Okay. Were you concerned when the president cut taxes and put us a trillion dollars in debt for every year he’s been in office. I’m guessing no. So stop with your phony concern about how you are going to pay for it. But to answer the question, which has been answered many times. The overall good to the economy will take care of a lot of it, and we can argue how much. The rest will be done in some form of taxation. The taxation can be like insurance is supposed to be, spread over the whole group (ie all Americans.) Now, I know this is not a conservative principle. The conservative principle being “I got mine. You get yours.” And the variant being what I call the Handicap Sticker routine. “Yeah, you can apply for a handicap sticker and get one of those good parking spaces. No, I’m not handicapped, but no one uses those spaces anyway…”

Then, this is where it gets really good, he goes on to quote economic theory and explain how the left is so off the rails while Trump and the conservatives are hewing to the right and just. 

He says that the Democratic progressives and moderates (and says there is no difference thus lumping them all together) are subscribing to something he calls MMT “Modern Monetary Theory” which he defines as the government can spend without limit.

That’s pretty funny, and very ballsy to say when it has been “conservative’ economic theory that has always outspent any liberal political agenda. I remind you, and Don, that it is Republicans that always outspend Democrats. Trump is the one spending money without limit, not them there liberals. 

He then goes on to boast that we have had three years of thriving economic activity under Trump. Talk about irony! He seems to ignore the fact that Trump has spent without limit, put the country deeper in debt, and that it had little to no effect on the economy, and that the economy under Trump is really what Obama put in place after the disaster of the previous Republican administration under W.

Oh, oh, time to wave the flag again. He then goes on to boast about how wonderfully business is adapting to Cavad 19, coming up with innovations etc. He also points to “a federally led” response. 

But the point is – THERE IS NO FEDERALLY LED RESPONSE!!!!

That’s why people and local leaders are screaming. That’s why we are having to spend all this money (because we didn’t jump on this early. We didn’t prepare – and that is on the Republicans, because Obama put the apparatus in place. And we didn’t listen to smart people like Bill Gates or Robert Gallo. Instead Trump ignored them. Poo-pooed the whole thing and did nothing for far too long. He’s still doing nothing. He’s holding daily press briefings because he likes the number of viewers who are tuning in. But afterwards? I guess he goes back to his bedroom, eats some cheeseburgers and calls up Sean Hannity or watches Fox & Friends. But lead? He’s incapable. I wish that wasn’t true, but that’s the reality. Now we also know that his flunkies, often called “The Administration”, have no intention of helping.

Sorry Don Henninger. Your “outstanding” opinion piece is just another right wing carefully crafted hit piece.

I’ve got a boffo idea. Try doing something positive. Maybe, get out a sewing machine and make a few masks to make up for the 230,000,000 that were given away to a foreign company while our doctors, nurses, and EMTs are screaming for them?

PS The dark hole we are going to have to climb out of. (Inside the Black Pyramid. The staircase up to the burial chamber.)

Day 1171 – The Sad Reality

Friday April 3, 2020 

212 Days until the election on November 3rd

292 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Have you ever tried to focus something: a camera, a telescope; and it just won’t focus?

Maybe, it’s an auto-focus and it keeps making that errr-errr noise as it goes back and forth trying to find something to focus on – never succeeding. Yeah, that’s how I felt thinking about today’s screed, then it hit me as I walked up the stairs to my office; coffee cup in hand – The Sad Reality.

It’s like that tidal wave I told you about a few days ago. The one that wiped out Crete and launched the mythical Atlantis. When something that big is coming at you there’s no point in running. It’s way too late for that. You just turn open mouthed and wait. There are only a few split seconds before you are wiped away forever.

There are all these little bits that I saw, read, or heard since my last writing. Bits, vignettes, statements, visuals, emails, facebook posts, tweets – whatever. How to make sense of it? And then it hit me – The Sad Reality. I don’t want it to be true, but as Pogo would say, “There it is.” Or rather “We have met the enemy and they is us.” (If you don’t know who Pogo is look it the F up.)

The final focusing moments for me were these two tidbits:

One – Jared Kushner wandered into the White House briefing room and said the Federal stockpile of stuff was not for the states but “for us.”

Two – Some guy in a uniform with lots of medals (probably like a surgeon general second in command) said the masks were delivered. Delivered to commercial suppliers to sell on the open market.
Think about those two statements. Who is us? The first family? The Federal Government and if so what does that mean? The army? The Federal workers? Who is us?

The masks in the open market guy went on to say they weren’t there to interfere with the supply and demand marketplace.

Okay, I’m going to let that sit for a bit while I give you a few other “bits and pieces” (Hey, someone should make that a song. Dave Clark who? No no not the Who, Dave Clark. Who? No, Dave Clark. Never mind.)

Okay, we’ve know for awhile, ever since this guy came into office at least, that there is an alternate universe. It is made up of “alternate facts.” “Spin,” lies,  disinformation, phony stories, all with a mean political objective. We used to laugh it off, ignore it, say to ourselves “no one in their right mind would believe this garbage,” but we are way beyond that now. 42% or some such steadfastly believe it. They post mean stupid things, they yell and belittle (“No, no. You don’t understand. You’re wrong.” Etc.) Now we see that world and ours collide.

The governors and local politicians thought that if they appealed to the Federal government that the Federal government would come to their aid. That when they, the local government, was overwhelmed they could get help from a larger resource. The truth is they can’t. That’s sad because that’s not the world we grew up in. 

212 Days until the election on November 3rd
292 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS The Black Pyramid

Day 1170 – Part II – Hey Guess What?

Thursday April 2, 2020 – Part II

213 Days until the election on November 3rd

293 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Last night I wrote “A Tale of Two Idiots” while watching the presidential virtual rally for his re-election called “The Corona Virus Update.”

I was not prepared for what I learned afterwards and feel I need “to stay ahead of the curve” and get this out there before too much more putrid idiocy overtakes me. (What? Unemployment at over 6 million last week? Doubling from 3 million the week before! Way to go! We’re #1. Remember when the right was upset at 635,000 and blamed Obama for W’s screwups that led to that unemployment figure? Yeah, good times.)

First off, there is the tape of Bill Gates from 2015, warning of the possibility of a global pandemic. He pretty much nailed it. (Hey, maybe that was part of what led Obama to create that Global Pandemic Response Team? Oh wait that was probably already in place. Nevermind.)

Then there was the news that the Department of Defense has ten labs that could process the Corona Virus tests, but haven’t been asked. (This I mentioned in Part I, but it was made achingly clear later in the evening.) Not only that but folks mentioned that we have the greatest logistical folks in the world. It’s called The U.S. Military. Why not use them? Nah. Haven’t been asked.

Why not use the War Powers Act to get equipment and have the stuff we need made? Other than a tweet at GM to make respirators there hasn’t been any movement.

Speaking of respirators, it was reported last night that many of those in the National Stockpile don’t work. Apparently, the Trump administration let the contract to maintain them run out and never renewed it.

Speaking of the national stockpile, it’s apparently almost depleted of masks.

Speaking of masks it was reported that on Monday of this week a warehouse got an order from overseas to ship out 230,000,000 masks. WTF? There are 230 million masks somewhere in this country and we are getting ready to ship them out? (Probably to be resold back to us at a higher price.) The supplier said no one told him not to take the order. How did we not know about all these masks? “We” being the public, the governors scrambling to find masks, the Federal Government?

In Massachusetts there’s a 4^th grade girl making masks on her sewing machine. Phenomenal. So far she’s made 820 masks. Let’s see if she could make a thousand by this weekend and if a thousand others joined in we could have a million, and if there were 230 groups of a thousand all at their sewing machines making masks we could have the number of masks sitting in a warehouse right now getting ready to leave our country.

Speaking of Massachusetts, it turns out the Federal Government can be very effective. Very effective at snatching orders out from under the nose of that state. Meanwhile states like Florida and Kentucky get everything they want and more. Huh? Some wonder if it’s political. There’s no wonder. Massachusetts has Elizabeth Warren (a truly “nasty woman” I’m sure in Trump’s eyes.) Florida has Ron DeSantis, a man with his head so far up Trump’s ass it’s doubtful he’ll ever see sunlight.

But this is all back drop to the truly stunning news. Oh wait, one more bit of idiocy, it was the Governor of Georgia (you know he and who outright stole the election from Stacy Abrams by running it and not registering 50,000 voter applications, and closing polling places in Democratic strongholds, not having enough ballots in those places, and throwing people off of voting rolls ) yeah that guy, he learned yesterday that some people can have the virus and not show any signs of being sick. Amazing. (What’s amazing you ask? Me too. Is it that he didn’t know until yesterday? Or is it that he obviously can’t read or hadn’t read or been informed by his health staff? Or is it that he’s so outright lying? Hard to say.)

Okay, the most stunning bit of news, to me, came late at night. It was an interview with Robert Gallo. He was one of two doctors to figure out that AIDS was caused by HIV and he’s done lots in the field of virus research. He mentioned, just casually, almost in passing that a research journal had published an article over a year ago that stated that a corona virus could be passed to humans via a bat. Over a year ago! Think about how long it takes to get published. That means some folks knew about this one or two years ago. 

Hum, Trump got rid of the Pandemic Response Team because he didn’t like the idea of people sitting around doing nothing (you know like worrying about viruses and germs, and what to do about them.) Turns out Dr. Gallo is connected internationally to virologists around the world who are part of a series of labs that study this stuff. Here’s some idle speculation for you: what do you think the chances of someone on the Pandemic Response Team sitting in on those calls? Or reading about that friggin’ bat a year ago? Or having heard Bill Gates’ 2015 warning?

One of the scientists interviewed last night said that when it comes to pandemics timing is everything. Getting out in front and jumping on this kind of thing is critically important. How has Trump’s timing been? Sucky.

The doctor who went to Africa during the Ebola epidemic, came back infected, and got better. You know the doctor that Trump criticized Obama for letting back into the country? Yeah, that doc. He’s in the middle of this pandemic in New York. He said that we missed an opportunity to get people trained. If we had sent people over to help (and not been stopped from doing so) then they would have real world training. They would be used to wearing hot protective gear all day. They would be used to seeing a person well one day and dead the next.

Well, don’t worry. They’ll get that training now. 

Did you see the shot of the four (or was it five?) long refrigerator trailers parked side by side outside a hospital? Guess what they are for? Hope we don’t run out of them.

Have a nice day.

213 Days until the election on November 3rd

293 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Pyramid! (Many people don’t know this but pyramids are just a pile of rocks. Did you know that? Amazing, huh? – OMG save me!)

Day 1170 A Tale of Two Idiots

Thursday April 2, 2020 – Part I

213 Days until the election on November 3rd

293 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

OMG! It’s Wednesday evening and I’m watching the president’s new remote rally called the Daily Corona Virus Update.

Mike Pence was asked why the administration didn’t open up the Obamacare exchanges so folks could get covered. This was after Donnie did what I’m now calling The Trump Turn. (“I don’t know, maybe someone else in my administration did it? Lemme see who’s here? [turns to one side to seee who is there.] Oh Mike do you want to answer that?”)

So Mike took the podium and he did his standard routine: thanking the president for his great leadership, and telling everyone why we are so far out in front of this thing. This went on for five minutes. He said nothing and didn’t answer the question.

So he stumbled on two questions: “What happened to the testing?”

And

“Why not open up the exchanges so people can get covered?”

“The testing? Oh we delivered all the test kits. We just can’t get them analyzed quick enough.” (What’s that clanging sound I hear? Oh it’s the BS detector going off.)

“People getting covered? You mean like the ones losing their jobs and therefore their health insurance? Hey, no problem, The American People have nothing to worry about.” ( CLANG CLANG CLANG ) (Now with a Grecian chorus of slightly stained virgins crying, “Bull Shit, Bull Shit, Bull Shit.”  

– Insert five minutes of wandering around talk and saying words like “Medicare” and “Medicaid.” –

(I wonder how the reporters sit there with a straight face, having to accept this silliness?)

“What? You ask about the people who don’t qualify for those programs. You mean like the people who were working and lost their jobs and therefore their health insurance? You mean the question you asked in the first place? Let me assure the American People that everyone will be covered. I will personally wander around verbally some more and by the way the president has been absolutely clear in his BS. No one can throw it more than he? But I’m right in there too!”

We went to the experts who said we have to shut down everywhere.

Afterwards, there was a Defense Department scientist who said we have the capacity in the Defense Department with ten labs that could process the tests. They haven’t been asked!

The Defense Department labs that could do hundreds of thousands of tests a day are not doing squat, because no one has told them what to do. That’s our federal leadership.

And then there’s Ron DeSantis, the Governor of Florida. He won the election by stealing the election via shutting down polling places in Democratic strongholds and eliminating people on voter rolls. Oh well. He said the other day he was waiting for an order from the Federal government. The Surgeon General stood up holding a piece of paper and read their guidelines and said, “Consider this an order.” Did he shut it down? Nah. Finally, a few hours ago he shut down the state. Yipee. What’s that you say? Oh, it’s okay to have mega-church meetings. WTF? The guy is an idiot. 

The lack of leadership is staggering.

Hey, quiz time. What was the first city to lockdown?

San Francisco. Yup. Hum, who is their rep in Congress? Oh. Nancy Pelosi. 

Interesting.

There was a person complaining on Facebook about all the people complaining about Trump. This person said he was sick and tired of it and why didn’t they just let Trump do his job?

But that’s the point isn’t it? If he was doing his job, or had done his job, people wouldn’t be complaining. The fact is he hasn’t been doing the job, and therein lies the problem. 

Not only that but Trump has surrounded himself with people who fail to do their jobs or any job at all. The only job that seems to be going well is the raking in of cash for his re-election and the micro-targeting of people to vote for him (or not for the other person.)

213 Days until the election on November 3rd

293 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS The Observatory at Yaxha (“Yash – Ha”). It is identified by the sign in front of it. Fortunately, I speak some Spanish and can translate what it says.