Trump

Day 1157 – The Wave is Coming

Friday March 20, 2020

226 Days until the election on November 3rd

306 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

If you are at an ocean beach and you see all the water leave, you should know one thing, a big wave is coming and you better race to high ground.

The water has left the beach here in the U.S. and our national leaders are dithering in the sand. They were forewarned. They were told repeatedly. They have been questioned as to why they are not acting, and yet they continue to do nothing. Oh they hold press conferences, they tweet, and in the case of Richard Burr he took action weeks ago, selling out his stocks on insider information, but for the rest of us? Screw ‘em. 

For the last few nights people have come on the air tell us what the president could do, should do, can do; yet he doesn’t. Why not? It seems he doesn’t know how and the folks around him either don’t know or are too afraid to tell him, but I suspect they don’t know either. Trump claims he doesn’t know who dismantled the Pandemic Response Team office. The former head of that office made it clear today; it was Trump. Trump seems to have a faulty memory around things he has done that turn our badly. 

Factories in Michigan are ready to turn out much needed protective gear, yet they can’t get specs and direction. Hospitals are running out of this sort of gear and we are woefully behind the curve on testing equipment. 

But the wave is coming. You can watch it grow day by day. The people on the front line are screaming for help, yet the administration is saying they are doing everything and the situation is in hand. It’s not. 

We should be leading the world and we aren’t we aren’t even close. We are lagging behind the rest of the world.

What else do we know? (We the people, not the administration.) There have been two places where everyone has been tested for Covid-19: Vo, Italy and Iceland. In both places half the people who tested positive had no symptoms. Also, in both places they have stopped the spread of the virus. I especially like Iceland, the PM is a lesbian (ie a woman!) and she stopped their financial crisis by locking up the bankers who caused it. 

We need the war powers act to get us fighting this pandemic. So far the president sees no reason to use it. I mean, none of his friends have the virus so why bother? He says the Federal government is not a shipping clerk. Yes, it is. Figure out what you’ve got and where it is needed and get it there. Crank up our factories to start making masks, ventilators and test kits for the world. build field hospitals everywhere. What is wrong with you? (Forget the last question. Step aside and let a competent adult run things.)

Yesterday a buddy of mine sent me a bat signal with the name OBAMA on it. (or Hillary, how about that. You think she’d have let this get this bad?)

And finally, a racist Trumpist put up the argument that it was no big deal to call the Covid-19 virus by the place it was first detected. This ignores that it is viewed as racist and hateful and has already resulted in many Chinese restaurants being threatened and of Corona beer sales being way down. But hey, so what? (oh yeah he also made the point that there are German Measles, not knowing that it was so named because German scientists were the first to identify it, and not that it started there. He got all huffy. Facts. Tough stuff.) There is no point in explaining this to people who think this way because they are racist idiots. 

As far as the whole “we didn’t know this was coming or that it would be this bad” argument goes, one of the people let go by Trump who headed up the National Security Pandemic Response team said, “We’ve known about this since 1918 and done table top exercises ever since then.” The latest was done last year and one was done when the Obama team was leaving and the Trump team was coming in. Wilbur Mills slept through it and 2/3 of the people are no longer with the White House. Seems that maybe having some institutional memory would be a good thing. OMG! Deep State! 

Well, Steve Bannon, Grover Norquist, and Rand Paul you’ve gotten your wish. The Federal government has shrunk under Trump, at least, the parts that actually help people. How’s that working out?

Remember, waves come in sets and the big set hasn’t hit yet. What we are going to get in the next few weeks is only a precursor of what we will see in the coming fall and winter. That’s when the big wave hits.

226 Days until the election on November 3rd

306 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Argh, Argh. I’m coming!

Day 1156 Impeach – One Word – Incompetent

Thursday March 19, 2020

227 Days until the election on November 3rd

307 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Article of Impeachment – Donald J. Trump – Incompetent

Article of Impeachment – Michael R. Pence – Incompetent

What else needs to be said?

The other day one of my right wing friends posted an article entitled “Let’s Listen to Scientists.”

Whoa. I thought the right had lost its mind. (or found it. It’s a matter of perspective.)

But then cracks in the bubble started to appear. First it was Bannon peddling conspiracy theories about how the Corona Virus was a plot to bring down the president. Then it was Devin Nunes and the Governor of Oklahoma encouraging people to go out to restaurants to show their opposition (I guess?) to the virus. Then there was the whispering back and forth between my right wing pals how the media was overplaying this and it was the Dems fault.

Whew. Close one. Like when a comet comes within 150 million miles of Earth.

The president has had another press conference. Mike Pence has switched from standing behind Trump’s right side to his left and he has even shown a sign of life by tilting his head slightly. So big changes. The president has said he is now a war time president, at was with the corona virus! Ha, a new opponent to slay. He’s mustering the troops, He’s got his best people on it. etc. etc. etc. Except, except, except. He doesn’t, and he hasn’t.

It was pointed out last night that we have a number of back up and emergency systems that the president can invoke. None of them have been called on. They have no orders. No mission. 

I have to ask myself, “Why?” 

The conclusion I come to is that he has no idea what these emergency powers are or how to exercise them. (I mean if he did wouldn’t ne have a big signing ceremony where he’d hold up the order?) But he hasn’t. I’ve got to believe the reason for this is he and his staff don’t know.

But, I think, help is on the way. I think it will go like this:

(At a press conference)

Reporter: Mr. president, why haven’t you ordered up the National Guard to start building hospital capacity?

Trump: That’s a nasty question. I don’t know, Have we? We have. We’ve done that.

Reporter: No you haven’t.

Trump; Fake news. Next.

Reporter #2: Mr. president, why haven’t you ordered the veterans hospitals to prepare for citizen overflow.

Trump: That’s a nasty question. I don’t know, Have we? We have. We’ve done that.

Reporter #2: No you haven’t.

Trump; Fake news. Next.

. . .

Later, “Jared!”

Jared: I’m already on it. According to Google you have the power to call up the National Guard.

Trump: Do it.

Jared: Do what?

Trump: Call up the National Guard.

Staffer #1: To do what sir?

Trump: To do whatever it is they do. Build hospitals. Find a cure. Help the economy.

All Staffers (in chorus): Yes Sir! (Exeunt, except Jared)

Trump : Well?

Jared: Yes?

Trump: Anything else?

Jared: I don’t think so.

Trump: Good. I’m tired. That was grueling. Where’s the remote.

Jared: There are the hospital ships…

Trump: There are?

Jared: Yes.

Trump: Send them.

Jared: Where?

Trump: Wherever. What is this?

Jared: Fox and Friends.

Trump: Yes, I know, but they are saying mean things about me.

Jared: No they aren’t they are just reporting the stock market is at it’s lowest since you took office.

Trump: That’s what I mean! How could they do that. They hate me.

Butler (enters with tray of tomato juice.): They are reporting the facts sir. Tomato juice.

Trump: You’re fired. Get that stuff away from me.

Butler: Yes sir. Have a nice day.

Let me ask you this. Who would you rather have in this time of crisis?

Trump, Pence, Pompeo, Kushner?

or

Obama, Biden, Hillary Clinton, Kerry?

or 

Biden, woman VP, whomever, whomever?

or 

Nancy Pelosi (if Pence and Trump were to simultaneously impeached or die from the virus)?

227 Days until the election on November 3rd

307 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Give me back my vi. (Ha ha ha, semi-super geeky joke. vi is the “visual editor” in Unix, which took over from “ed” the real programmer’s editor. No wusi-wig* for us!)

*WYSIWYG – What You See Is What You Get 

Which is fine until you have a really big editing job – like 10 million lines of code.

Day 1155 That’s a Nasty Question

Wednesday March 18, 20120

228 Days until the election on November 3rd

308 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I keep thinking about Trump’s response to NPR reporter Yamiche Alcindor’s question. She asked how it was Obama’s fault (e.g. the slow response of the Trump administration to the corona virus) when he Trump had disbanded the US Pandemic Response Team.

This is classic Trump. When he is asked to explain one of his lies he attacks the person for asking. He then goes on to deny he was responsible. Someone else possibly in the administration did it but not him. What BS!

The day before that at the press briefing the reporters were handed a one and half page memo. I guess it was a memo. It wasn’t marked as such. It was some bullet points and paragraphs about what to do to stop the spread of the Corona Virus. Some of its suggestions were different than the CDC’s. Naturally, reporters were confused. What is this? The truth? You want the truth? We don’t know. It was some random ideas, handed out at a White House briefing. Why? We don’t know. 

I think I know. It was Jared’s “research.” What allegedly held up the White House response to the Corona Virus. This supposed memo looks like a high school student’s searches on google to find out what to do about the Corona Virus. I think the big hold up was trying to figure out how to change half of the bullets from little round dots to shields. But I’m just guessing. We will probably never know.

Also the other day Trump decided this was a health crisis. I don’t know if this precludes him from thinking it’s a plot by the deep state to get him. It doesn’t stop him from tweeting racist views on the subject that we know because after giving his semi-heartfelt Oval Office teleprompter reading (where he allegedly stuck to the script most of the time and only told two lies, and that was attributed to his inability to read) he then took to twitter to call it the China Virus or the Hunan Flu. Nice. Just what we need.

Andrew Cuomo has tried to make nice and gave a real heartfelt speech about the virus and the effect on family. Something Trump can not do because he has no idea what that is. I’m not being funny. Trump is incapable of either humor or remorse or empathy because it is absent from his psyche. It ain’t there. I refer you to an interview NPR had with Seth Myers talking about Trump on SNL. They did a skit where they were selling Trump chicken wings. The skit ended with them singing to the Pointer Sisters’ song “Jump” but instead said, “Trump.” He didn’t get it. He didn’t understand the humor. He had to watch other people laugh and then he saw they thought it was funny, but he did not get it. It wasn’t just that bit. He doesn’t understand humor – period. His idea of humor is to put someone down. That’s his idea of funny, and it isn’t really funny to him. It’s just “look at that poor slob” kind of bullying. 

It’s sad but true.

The Corona Virus? Well, he doesn’t get that either. He is flailing about. First he tried to say it wasn’t happening here. Then it wasn’t his fault. Then it was “we are doing a fabulous job.” 

This is all predictable. There is nothing new here. Hopefully, people like Cuomo will jolly and cajole Trump into doing something helpful. They will have to treat him like the fat sergeant in Zorro, or Colonel Clink in Hogan’s Heroes. They will have to praise Trump for the great job he is doing and for the terrific ideas he has had, all the while knowing that they manipulated him into doing it. 

We need more Putinesque handling of him. Maybe with a little Mao praise thrown in:

“The Corona Virus was due to wipe us all out had it not been for the brave and valiant leadership of our glorious president Donald J. Trump. For it was he, and he alone, that wiped it from our shores … “

228 Days until the election on November 3rd

308 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS “We Are F*cked” by Edward Hopper (Okay, I renamed the painting.)

Day 1153 H1N1 Lies and More Lies

Sunday March 15, 2020 

231 Days until the election on November 3rd

311 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

First a little catch up (katsup? Whatever) Yesterday was 3.14 – HappyPi Day!

Today is the Ides of March – Beware.

Okay now down to business. I am once again flabbergasted to learn that what Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Republicans in Congress are saying about Obama and H1N1 is not true. None of it. It’s all lies or at best misrepresentations. I am shocked. Shocked I tell you.

Here’s a handy little fill in the blank conspiracy theory generator:

“Hey, did you know [ enter falsehood here ]? It’s true, and it’s Obama’s fault.”

Okay, that’s the modified version. I got bored and I forgot where I was going with it.

Did you see the press conference where the president was asked about how it was that it was Obama’s fault on Trump’s not being prepared and he said it was a nasty question? Fucking A it was nasty! You bet. Imagine asking the president to account for something? My god.

It seems we are now incubating Covad-19 at airports. Good job Donnie and Mikey! I mean the airports here are a mess with people trying to get home.(Gee, kind of like the Christmas story. Going home to get counted. Census is coming. Provided you aren’t an immigrant – don’t want to count them, which of course they don’t have to do, just as long as they get the change to the Constitution.)

How else can they screw this up? Oh boy. Apparently, Trump is trying to buy a vaccine. (Jim Bakker has one. Buy his.) Trump’s even trying to steal a company from Germany. That’s the spirit. Remember when we led the world? That was like, three years ago. Now? Now we are left to grovel. But we don’t grovel, Oh no, not us. We refuse. We build walls. We do nothing.

Why hasn’t Trump signed an Executive Order saying Covid-19 can only affect his political enemies?

I understand Hope Hicks is back at the White House, thus giving hicks hope! (Get it? Ha ha ha. It’s not my joke – btw. So if you don’t like it…)

Spring seems to be here. A little early. Gee, wonder why? 

231 Days until the election on November 3rd

311 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Where is Fifi when we need her? She probably wouldn’t be of much use. No opposable thumb.

(I may have used this photo before, If so laugh anyway. LAUGH!)

Better.

o-o

 

Day 1152 I was wrong about Trump

Saturday March 14, 2020 

232 Days until the election on November 3rd

312 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Yes, boys and girls I was wrong about president Trump. I thought there was nothing else he could do to piss me off, but I was wrong!

That lying sack of excrement and his bamboozlers have managed to do it to me again.

If you’re a Trump supporter you can stop reading because I’m going to quote some facts, and seeing as how you don’t – 

( what? believe in? understand? accept? I don’t know what the right word is here. I’ll use accept.) 

– accept facts. There really is no point in your reading further.

The president and his team of bozos knew that this virus was coming for months. Since January 20^th (oh I’m sorry. you want to argue if it’s months? Screw you.) What did he do? Nothing. What had he done to prepare for such an event? He cut the funding to our scientific agencies. Carried out a war against scientists in the government and specifically got rid of the very team Obama had created to take care of such pandemics. What was it called? Let me think. Oh yeah – The Pandemic Response Team.

Now he and his group of flunkies, which include Lindsey Graham and Sean Hannity, are saying that it’s Obama’s fault because they inherited a mess and the economy was in shambles and they revived it and our health care system wasn’t set up for this and it’s Obama’s fault.

Let’s be clear. Obama set up the things we would need to deal with a pandemic and Trump dismantled them. Obama pulled us out of a terrible recession left by the last Republican president and Trump only rode the coattails of that economic recovery until he screwed it up and now he’s leaving it in a worse position than when Obama came into office. 

Joe Biden laid out a what we should be doing right now to deal with this pandemic. Remember he was Obama’s point person on a lot of the health problems we had when Barrack was in office. So he knows of what he speaks. Unlike that lap dog Mike Pence. Remember too, when Ebola hit Africa Obama sent teams over there to stem the outbreak while Fox News and Sean Hannity and Tom Cotton screamed we should hide behind our borders. 

Now Tom Cotton and lots of the Republicans are trying to make this a race issue calling it the Wuhan Virus. Hey. if we did what China did we could whip this thing. Instead our president is dithering and thinking he can have a couple of tweets blaming someone else, march out a few scientists have them say something then he can tell a few more lies to go with the 16,000 he has already told while in office and everything will be hunky dorey.

A real leader would be firing up the troops, getting prepared, but not these idiots.

Wash your hands. Stay home. This is going to get worse. A lot worse.

Then we’ll have – hopefully – a new president, who will be tasked with cleaning up this mess and the Republicans can then go back to yelling about the deficit they caused and the other problems they created and blame it on someone else. Hopefully, we’ll get rid of enough of them that we can get something done. But I am not hopeful.

However, the president flanked by Mike Pence was seen standing next to an aid to the Brazilian president who tested positive for the Corona virus. We don’t know if any of them got the virus. Trump turned down getting test kits from WHO, so we don’t know. It’s okay. Maybe, they all got it. Maybe not. Who knows? Gosh, maybe they’re all sick? What would happen then? Jim Bakker is selling a cure.

232 Days until the election on November 3rd

312 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS No toilet paper and it isn’t even snowing. WTF?