Do As I Do, Not As I Say: Vaccine Edition

Endorsed by Steve Doocey. What could be better?

Ben Shapiro, Mitch McConnell, Sean Hannity, Steve Scalise, Steve Doocey all have one thing in common (besides being horrible people) they've suddenly all come out and admitted they were (or are about to be) vaccinated and are encouraging others to get the shots.  

This is after several of them, and the organizations they work for and with, have been spreading mass disinformation about the vaccines. Some are now even praising Biden's vaccine rollout. Color me stunned. You even get Bill Hemmer on Fox News dragging out Marc Siegel, one of their top medical contributors, and allowing, practically begging him, to rhapsodize about the efficacy of the vaccine.

“The vaccine works, right? We haven’t budged on that, have we, doc?” Hemmer asked.

“The vaccine works extremely well even against the delta variant, preventing infection in 90 percent of cases,” Siegel reported.

He had been set free to tell the truth without hedging around it, or Trump’s precious feelings, or insulting politics. Free at last! Of course, Fox has a vaccine mandate for their staff, but they don’t tell you about that.

What is going on? They could have been doing this months ago, helping their viewers and followers get the protection they needed. But they didn’t. Why now?

It's like the bat signal went up, and the word went out. It reminds me of the threats of lawsuits that made the networks change their tune on the Dominion voting machines, issuing awkward apologies read on air. Are they covering their asses against class actions? Are they spooked by the Dow crashing as it did this week? Worried about voters blaming the GOP for more deaths, more shutdowns and more economic pain to the country? 

Or maybe they're just trying to do the right thing.

Nah.

It's probably a combination of the money and the votes, and fear of being held even more accountable than they already are. The GOP has a lot of blood and violence that can be directly attributed to it; the mismanagement of the pandemic that resulted in hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths, the stupid and selfish misinformation designed to politicize the virus which is still adding to the death toll, the encouraging of  far right violent groups and militias which have led to hate crimes against people of color and the deaths of protestors and law enforcement, bringing us the January 6th insurrection, where this has all been leading for the past several decades.

Up to now (and I doubt the right’s new community spirit will last before being shouted down by their own brain-scrubbed supporters) the right has been like people trying to kill safety inspections after major crashes, like someone decrying the use of life boats after a cruise ship sinks, or mocking the installation of fire alarms after a school burns. At every point in this pandemic they have mocked precautions, complained about the least of them, refused to cooperate when that cooperation would help save lives, and refused to acknowledge the danger their behavior was not only to themselves, but to everyone around them.

And they were proud of it, even as bodies piled up in refrigerated trucks in parking lots.

But hey! That’s in the past!

The problem, of course, is that no one will believe this nervous about-face. The people who can, who have been following the science and keeping up with the news have already gotten the vaccine. There are some who can’t because of medical reasons, and some communities who have a justified mistrust of a mostly White medical community who have not always acted in their interests in the past. Hopefully that can be overcome.

But the people these Republican leaders are talking to are the same ones who they’ve been working on hard to spread their own viral pandemic of lies since February of 2020. And it worked. Too well it worked. The GOP realized they’re losing the voters they need to keep sticking it to America. Now they’re trying to undo the done.

At this point, they've got people so worked up that only God coming down out of heaven and telling them to take it would work.

Of course, several would ask who God thinks he is to trod on their rights. Their God-given rights.

I wish it was only them that they were screwing, but we’re all on this planet together.

We’re all stuck in the Eagle’s Hotel California, on pandemic lockdown:

Welcome to Feb, 2020, we didn’t miss you but we’re not allowed to leave.

Trump Gives Up

Trump walks away, just like he’s walked away from everything worthwhile that didn’t have something in it for him.

296,637+ dead from covid as of today, 15,817,962 infected. Numbers spiking all over the country, the so-called 'red' states are getting slammed. Nearly every day we’re beating Pearl Harbor numbers. Every day setting new records, and the man who actually wants to handle the virus relief, Joe Biden, is being denied the information he needs to start helping the country on his first day. Why, because of pure, unadulterated, pettiness.

The guy whose response to the threat has put us at nearly 300,00 dead, put us into the vast and deep hole of despair, what’s he doing? Holding ‘vaccine conferences’ that the vaccine makers refuse to participate in (feeling it’s just another political grandstand, it was), where he takes laps for a vaccine he had little, if any, involvement in, and playing golf.

He’s walked away from everything important and worth caring about, shrugging his shoulders at the cratered job reports, the surge of unemployment, at the deaths. He’s done. He’ll keep working and milking the election grift for everything he can get, but he’s done.

He doesn’t care, and never will. Now that the election is over, he can just drop all pretense, bitch about the election and play golf. Screw the virus, and screw you.

Rudy Giuliani’s positive COVID-19 diagnosis has now led to a shutdown in the Arizona legislature. Doctors are saying since he had to be hospitalized now, he's probably be sick for days and had the chance to infect hundreds of people. His co-counsel, Jenna Ellis, has also tested positive and, like Rudy, has been attending White House staff parties, meetings, hearings. Both have exposed probably hundreds in their failed quest to overthrow a fair election.

This administration is irresponsible and utterly incompetent, they can't keep us safe, or even their own people. Covid has burned though the White House staff twice now, both because of arrogant maskless 'events' held at the WH, infecting everyone from the First Family, to members of congress, their staffs, the WH staff, insanity.

Because, of course... of course. What else should we expect?

They even had a plan. Back in the spring, a national plan was formulated but Trump and Kushner refused to go forward with the comprehensive plan to battle the virus because 'it only affects 'blue' states. Idiots. It's like passengers on the Titanic not worrying about abandoning the ship because their cabins are dry.

So, Trump just did little to actually help, taking over his task force briefings and treating them as if they were ‘The Trump Show’, contradicting his own experts, dispensing complete lies

This is utter cruelty, psychopathic indifference to the pain, deaths, and grieving of others. This is also typical of Trump's approach to everything; what's in it for me. He ignored the pandemic, as to fight it (he thought) it would hurt his reelection. He was wrong. To fight it, hard and public, would have been seen as heroic, to ignore and downplay it was seen as callous and cruel. It's probably the biggest reason for his loss. 

Since his electoral drubbing, he has completely given up caring about either the virus or the economy, or anything but trying to erase the label 'loser' from his name.

He doesn't care, he never cared.

And 296,637+ Americans are dead.

The Soft Coup in the Time of Covid

245,557+ dead Americans.

We set four new records for infections, that's worldwide. Over 100,000 new cases a day.

We are on track to have 400,000 dead by inauguration.

Trump is busy desperately defending bogus claims of 'voter fraud' rather than trying to save the lives of Americans. Prominent Republicans are backing him in this. He is refusing to concede, refusing to allow Biden his transition budget, offices and access to the materials, and to people he needs to be ready on January 20th. Trump is not allowing Biden to be briefed on the security issues he will need to know for the safety of this country. It’s a slow-motion, soft coup, happening right in front of us. No one seems to be in charge; those who want to do something aren’t allowed, those who are supposed to be doing something want to burn things to the ground. And around a thousand people are dying from covid every day.

In Texas, El Paso has had so many deaths, they had to order more refrigerated ‘morgue’ trucks just to store the dead. Utah announced they will have to shut down due to mass outbreaks of the virus. There are huge spikes all across the Midwest. We are setting the wrong kinds of records.

So much winning.

All this death, all this pain, all this grieving, and we have no stimulus package, no help is coming, and probably will NOT be coming as long at Mitch McConnell is in charge of the senate. He's always more interested in power than people, if screwing Americans allows him to keep that power, so be it. He did it before in whacking the American economy and slowing recovery under Obama. He will cite the debt that he and Trump ran up (adding over two trillion from their tax cuts with more to come) and will stand in the way of any help to people that desperately need it. That’s the playbook he worked from before, that’s what he’ll do again. They don't care, unless it's about them. Hell, they all have get free health care, they’re good!  

Who is in charge of the covid-19 program, why has is been a disaster? Trump and Pence, and Jared (sometimes, kinda, sorta, but yeah). They turned it political, made it an act of defiance to go to Walmart without a mask and film yourself swearing at the clerks. Very brave. And once Biden is in charge, how much will his polices be blocked by spite and McConnell’s power plays? President-Elect Biden announced on Monday the members of his new coronavirus task force, a shadow-cabinet that will take on the task that Trump never really bothered to do. That’s the good news, finally an adult is on the room and making decisions. But how much will he be allowed to do, and now much will the GOP try and stop him from doing antything?

I celebrate having decent leadership once again, but worry the GOP will stymie that leadership as much as possible, letting Americans die to keep their power. They are signaling just that right now.

McConnell said he wanted to make Obama a 'one-term president' and he undercut the country to try and do that. He will do it again, and people will die. Again, it’s all about power. They are a minority party, running a minority government, unrepresentative of the country as a whole, and they know it. That’s what installing all the judges has been about; if they get voted out, their policies won’t die, not with the far-right judges keeping them alive, like zombies. If people have to die to keep power, to ‘own the libs’, then so be it.

Trump is pulling a soft coup right now, covid be dammed. We can’t let him.

We must watch, we must keep on this, we must help the Georgia senate run-off races, we must help Biden/Harris fight, because this isn't just their fight, it's ours.

We have to fight for us, and for the 445,557.

To the Trump Voters

Trump supporters. Yep.

Okay. I know, I spend a lot of time, talking to people who do not like Trump. There’s a lot of them out there. I mean, this is a president who has never cracked 50% in the polls, never. The majority of the country can’t stand the guy, but he could still be reelected. Really. If not outright, he could try and throw the election into a very friendly Supreme Court and have them basically appoint him president (happened in 2000, I remember it very well). As we’ve seen, over and over, he is not above undermining confidence in the election, in the ballots, in the counting of the ballots, or even demanding they stop counting any votes after midnight, somehow giving TV networks calling of an election the power and imprimatur of an official government agency. 

But now, let me put all that aside, ever so briefly, to talk to the Trump supporters.

No, really. 

There is around 40% of America that supports Trump. You are out there, ready and willing to give this man another four years, proud of your support and assured that another four years, just like the last four, will be a good and needed thing for this country. We don’t deserve a man as good, honest, forbearing, and true as Donald J. Trump, but you’re going to give him to us anyway.

Do me a favor.

Don’t.

I don’t mean, ‘Don’t vote’, I would never say that. Just don’t vote for him. If you can’t bring yourself to vote for Biden, write in ‘Ronald Reagan’, your grandmother (she was nice), a favorite uncle (not that one, the other one) anyone but Trump. Vote like your life depends on it, but it kinda does.

Be truthful, are things better now than they were four years ago? There are 235,000 dead people and hundreds of thousands of their families, friends, and loved ones who don’t think so. There are over one thousand parents and thousands of their relatives who had their children stolen by the Trump administration who don’t think so. I’d say most countries of the world, looking at the state of the once admired America, would not think so either.

My friend, please. What are you actually voting for? Healthcare? Trump has been promising a plan for four years, the GOP now for a decade and have never delivered, and never will. Not really in their interest to do so. This is a transactional party headed by a transactional leader; if they can’t get something out of it, they won’t do it, end of story.

Jobs? Contrary to what Trump says, ‘his’ economy was not the greatest ‘ever’, heck, Bill Clinton had him beat by a mile. Jobs are down, the actual economy has tanked because Trump doesn’t understand he has to get the virus under control before the economy can fully come back, but he’s so far in denial about this he can never admit it. You want jobs to come back you have to vote for someone who can get the virus under control. That’s not Trump.

Are you fighting for cultural issues? Because that’s what they want you to do. They want you to be distracted, vote on the cultural issues they really can’t do anything about (The LGBTQ community are people, they are here, and deserve the same rights you do, get over it, same with BLM) as they enact their tax cuts for wealthy donors, strike down regulations that affect their donors’ businesses, and destroy any controls that stand in the way of complete power. Have they enacted those promises they made you? Do you have that great new manufacturing job that Trump brought back? Has Mexico paid for the wall that isn’t built?

Friend, you need to open your eyes as to what you're supporting. Trump and the GOP are poised to go down in a huge Blue tsunami and there's only one reason for it: the embrace of Trump and 'Trumpism'. As I said, 235,000+ people are dead due to his ego and inaction, over 500 children parentless because of his policies, the economy cratered, businesses, entire industries on the brink of disaster, and all of this because Trump is too stubborn, too egotistical to admit he screwed up and too afraid of showing ‘weakness’ try to fix things. While infections have surpassed the summer rates, he's holding infection spreading rallies and denying there's a problem. He doesn’t care about anything or anyone not stamped or named ‘Trump’.

It didn’t have to be this way, it really didn’t. 

In 2012, after getting their butts handed to them a second time by Obama, the RNC did an 'autopsy' trying to outline the future of the GOP. It recommended abandoning hard Reaganism, try to open themselves up to new ideas, to appeal to People of Color, and move into the 21st Century. But no, that was too hard, sounded too much like Communism (oh dread!). Better to just double down on White grievance, use as your nominee someone who was pushing a racist 'theory' (birtherism, WTF with that?) and hope for the best. They got lucky that time with the Electoral College, it saved them when they lost of the popular vote by nearly three million votes (In over 30 years, the GOP has won the popular vote exactly once). If the movement to get rid of the EC succeeds, I bet it'll be a long time before that happens again.

This Tuesday, the Democrats are probably going to win the WH, the Senate and keep the House (and might flip a few state legislatures as well). Yes, this is my prediction. Why such a huge wave election? It’s all because of the behavior of Trump and the Trumpers. Going forward, if the Democrats are smart, they'll get rid of the filibuster, and that'll be it for the GOP. Fix a few laws and they won't be able to cheat their way back into power for a while (they'll find new ways to cheat, they always do). Minority status for the Republicans while the Democrats fix (again and again) the damage wrought by an out of control GOP, an incompetent president, and his enablers.

So, you, proud Trump voter, take a look around you. Trump talked of ‘American carnage’ at his inauguration, and then he went out and created it. America is in near ruins, gun sales up 91% over last year, so bad that Walmart took them off sale until after the election.

That’s enough.

235,000+ dead Americans, 500+ purposely created orphans. I'd say that’s legacy enough for Donny, don't you?

Vote for the Human Middle Finger

Donny, innocently ‘scratching’ himself. Yeah, subtle as ever.

It is now blatantly clear: Trump has no plan to deal with the coronavirus. None. The closest he came to a plan was to cross his fingers and hope he could lie it away. 231,000 dead Americans later, we see just how well this has worked. He rails about his great economy, and if everyone would just stop worrying about the virus that has killed hundreds of thousands of people, ignore all precautions and open everything up again, the economy would come ‘roaring’ back. He’s never understood that to save the economy, you have to control the virus. It’s like selling an old car; ‘two dented fenders, seized motor, broken windshield, otherwise mint’. You can’t ignore what’s in front of you and skip to what you want it to be. Everyone knows this.

But to around 40% of voters, that doesn’t matter. They don’t care about the Trump administration’s display of utter incompetence, doesn’t bother them at all. Some will support him no matter what, believing him to be the most sinned-against president in history (he’s not), dragged down and plotted against by the evil cabal of liberal elites (no to that as well), others seems to think his ‘policies’ (racism, misogyny, fewer taxes on the rich and large corporations, snuggling up to murderous dictators, kidnapping children, I could go on and on…) are great for Americans, or at least for them as an individual. Then there are those who just want to see the world burn, who see Trump as a human ‘middle finger’, a ‘fuck you’ to all they and he, hates.

Trump hates all the things that they hate. Fuck you! 

They don’t care that Trump has no plan for the next four years, that he can’t articulate even a vague plan. They just care about ‘owning the libs’ and ‘liberal tears’, the fact that another Trump term will finish his campaign of tearing apart democracy is something they don’t care about, just as long as those ‘libs’ keep crying. The world burns and they’ll go down with it, as long as the evil liberals go first.

Four More Years?

Just what are they torching democracy for? They can’t say, but then neither can the GOP or Trump himself. The Republican platform was literally thrown out for the first time since… the founding of the party? The new plan was ‘Whatever Trump Wants to Do”.

Here’s what Donny told the ace, tough interviewer, Sean Hannity, when he asked what Trump was planning in a second term:

"Well, one of the things that will be really great -- you know, the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience, I've always said that. But the word experience is a very important word. It's a very important meaning. I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington, I think, 17 times, all of a sudden, I'm president of the United States. You know the story, I'm riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady and I say, this is great. But I didn't know very many people in Washington. It wasn't my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York. Now, I know everybody and I have great people in the administration. You make some mistakes like, you know, an idiot like Bolton. All he wanted to do was drop bombs on everybody. You don't have to drop bombs on everybody. You don't have to kill people." 

And when he was thoughtfully given a do-over chance at the question again:

“I think I’d be similar.”

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe four more years of an out-of-control pandemic, hundreds of thousands of more deaths, economic free-fall, more Nazis killing people, more racial protests, more of the decline of America’s position in the world is exactly what they want, I mean beyond drinking all those sweet, sweet liberal tears. Maybe that’s exactly what they want to happen. Bring on the new civil war, as they were itching to go ‘elite’ hunting anyway, a zombie apocalypse, with liberals as the zombies and Trumpers as Rick and Chuck.

Vote for the Human Middle Finger, bring it on faster.

And watch the world burn.

Trump’s Presidency is Sick

Trump has killed his own presidency, and he used the coronavirus to do it.

The facts are he ignored a deadly virus, which went on to kill more than 220,000 Americans, caught it himself, spread it throughout the White House, and has yet to be fully honest about it.

Most voters, I think, don’t see his battle with the coronavirus as a show of strength, but one of weakness and stupidity. One that could have been completely avoided but for Trump’s own carelessness. In 2016, he counted on a lot of swing voters and people ‘feed up with the system’. This time Trump is the system. Many who voted for him last time are now fed up with him. He learned nothing from his sickness. Trump has learned only one thing since the last election; his ‘base’ got him elected and it will be his ‘base’ that will get him re-elected.

There’s a problem with that; he’s driven off the independent and swing voters in order to keep that supposed base happy. He’s losing college educated Whites, seniors (seniors!), and women, lots of women. And everything he’s doing, or not doing, is driving them ever farther away.

Those that are not enough to see him win the election. This is why he’s losing; in the states were Trump, most show either he’s flat-out behind or within the margin of error. In the 2020 election, Texas and Florida could be swing states! The latest stunt Trump is pulling with Covid-19 shows that he still doesn’t understand, care or empathize with anyone not named ‘Donald Trump’.

This the covid infection that is really hurting him, both physically and electorally. As I said, he refuses to be fully honest about it. What we know about the timeline is; he and Hope Hicks spent time traveling around to RNC chair Ronna Romney McDaniel. McDaniel tests positive for the virus, which means both Trump and Hicks have been exposed. Ignoring this, continue to attend fundraisers, hold and event at the White House Rose Garden, hold meetings, attend rallies, all this, like I said, after being exposed. Trump knew he’d been exposed when he went to the debate, arriving too late to be tested as the rules he agreed to said. He probably figured he wasn’t showing signs, so he was fine.

Wednesday, Hope Hicks starts showing signs, and tests positive. Trump has been in close contact with her for days, protocols say he should quarantine and get tested. He does neither, he goes to a fundraiser instead. No masks, no distancing, potentially infecting everyone there. He doesn’t care. Then (the timeline here is murky because the WH won’t release the information or keeps giving out different stories) Trump takes a test Thursday, comes back positive, and then takes another later in the day, also positive.

So now nearly 40 people in the Republican leadership have tested positive, most coming from the Rose Garden event, most of them had in contact with the president. Trump was probably the super spreader at the event, infecting dozens of people. Seeing how stupid and dismissive of the virus this administration has been, something like this was inevitable. Trump himself insists on spreading misinformation to the public about the virus, somewhat delighting in downplaying it. And in the devastating response of the government to the coronavirus and it’s no wonder he’s shedding support, especially among seniors; they think he going to get them killed.

Women see how dismissive he is of their concerns (choice, healthcare) seniors see the GOP trying to kill Social Security and Medicare, collage educated and people of color look at his racism and response to protests and turn from him, but it’s the virus that’s scared many supporters away. It’s dragged all the selfish incompetence into the daylight. He’s still got angry White guys, so there’s that.

Trump and his response to the virus has killed 220,000 Americans, killed the economy, and has nearly taken down the country. The USA’s reputation has taken a hit it will not likely recover from for decades. I change in leadership will help, but the world’s confidence is shaken.

His base will never leave him, but he needs more than just his base. Those votes he’s driven off. 

Vote.

Never Promised You a Rose Garden

The Covid-19 Class of 2020

How sick is the president?

What treatments are being used?

What is Pence doing and who has the power?

Has a transfer of Presidential power been drawn up and readied to sign, just in case?  

Answer to all the above?

We don’t know.

We don’t really know the status of the President. We had his doctor, an osteopath (not a virologist) perform a very misleading and evasive press conference where he refused to state whether Trump had been on oxygen (basically, ‘not today’). He spoke more like a lawyer with a guilty client than a doctor informing the world (as the world has a stake in this as well) about the health status of the leader of the United States. Then he gave some ‘alternate facts’ about the timeline of the President’s infection and treatment (placing his diagnosis as last mid-day Wednesday (it was announced Friday morning) and his treatments starting on Thursday (previously announced as Friday). And then walked them back in a rushed press relase (with misspellings).

Does anyone here know what the hell they’re doing?

Of course, I’ve been asking that for nearly four years.  

And how did the most protected man in the US get Covid-19? Really, Trump lives a viral bubble, you’re not supposed to get coronavirus anywhere near him or he’ll cry.

Again, does anyone here know what they’re doing?

And now we are finding out, almost by the hour, that the exposure most likely came from the nomination announcement/party thrown at the White House Rose Garden by the Republicans to celebrate their latest power grab at the Supreme Court. So far, we have President Trump, Melania Trump, Sens. Lee and Tillis, the President of Notre Dame University, Kellyanne Conway, campaign manager Bill Stepien, RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel, Sen. Ron Johnson and now Former Gov. of New Jersey Chris Christie, all testing positive from either direct attendance of this little shindig, or from contact with someone who was there. The pictures from the gathering are eerie, like a people posing on the Titanic before it sailed. You look at them, mostly maskless, hugging, leaning in to talk over the noise and think, ‘this is not going to end well’.

And they were warned, many, many times. Blinded by arrogance and political opportunity, they just sailed on, disregarding all precautions and safety measures, secure in their virus-free world. But corona don’t care.

It doesn’t care. If you’re aggressively stupid, if you politicize the basic measures available to you, mock them, make a show of flaunting them, it will find you, it will sicken you, it will kill you. It is the Liam Neeson of viruses. It doesn’t care.

I feel no sympathy for them. They showed no sympathy for those trying to stay safe, those with underlying conditions, those who wore masks, who stayed home, who cared enough to try to even keep them safe. They didn’t care, they showed their contempt daily, eagerly, gleefully. Now, many of them are paying a price. No sympathy. We’ll likely hear about more infections as those who have announced have probably infected others. They will probably infect others who have been working to keep safe, who have been playing by the rules. Drivers, aids, maids, servers…

Those people deserve some sympathy, (and the same healthcare) as do others across the world who depend on a strong America, and now see the weakness of a man so caught up in his power fever he refused the science and help that were offered, smacked it to the ground and dug his heel in it.

Trump and the GOP have failed America, on purpose is seems, to benefit their personal political desires. They’ve taken every opportunity to lie and downplay the threat to this nation, and now their arrogance has come back on them. Trump has endangered everyone near him: staff, Secret Service, supporters, other members of the GOP leadership, donors, hundreds of people he's personally responsible for exposing to this killer. The GOP leadership is taking a huge hit. And they only have to look in the mirror to see who is at fault.

Trump and the GOP are a complete and utter disgrace. to this country. Frankly, it was inevitable Trump would get this with his defiance of commonsense and science. He deserved it. 

And we still don’t know how he is. Like nearly everything this administration does, they’re not giving us the complete truth.

We all hope he pulls though, as that is one more thing in this disaster-movie-without-end year of 2020 we do not need. We all hope he’s learned something on the other side, maybe empathy and compassion.

But I doubt it.

It Was Inevitable

Donald and Melania, both taken ill.

My mother had this thing; if there was a problem she didn’t want to deal with, she just ignored it. She did it with everything; a bill needed paying? She ignored it until the power was literally turned off. Bathtub leaked? Ignore it until the floor rotted so much under it, it had to be replaced. Over and over she tried to gaslight her problems, until they grew so huge it couldn’t be ignored anymore and others had to step in to fix them.  

Then she went right back to ignoring them again.

This is Trump with the pandemic (with many things really).  

He tried to ignore it, he “downplayed” it, he flat-out lied about it. And now, surprise of surprises, he has it. Of course he does. It was inevitable. I’ll say it: with his behavior, he had it coming.

No, he's not faking it. As I said, he's been trying desperately for months to get people to look away from the pandemic. He’s not about to do anything to call people's attention to the virus. And he’s not trying to duck another debate, he thought he was great Tuesday night! He won, just ask him and the non-existent polls he quotes.

I hope he gets better, but I can't say I have a lot of sympathy for him personally. He has rigorously and purposely avoided taking precautions, not just for himself but for his staff: not wearing a mask, holding huge rallies with no care to his supporter’s health, and mocked those who actually worried about the health of others. Mask wearing in Trump’s White House is taken not as a sign of care, but of weakness. He downplayed and ignored the seriousness of the coronavirus, even just outright lying about it to the American people, while bragging in private to reporters about how deadly it was. It was inevitable he would get it.

Even after finding out he had been exposed (probably from Hope Hicks, whose infection we learned about in a leak, not an announcement) he went to a fundraiser in New Jersey while showing symptoms, without a mask and exposing over a hundred other people. To say nothing of the big rally in Michigan the night before. Selfish and stupid. Now we find Republican Senator Mike Lee has tested positive, and had been attending rallies and fundraisers as well, not taking any precautions, the head of the RNC is ill, and dozens have been exposed. How many prominent Democrats v Republicans have been infected? Why aren’t they taking this seriously, even after Herman Cain? To do so would be admitting the fact that they hadn’t been before, that they have been running a political sham operation to cover up their own negligence and incompetence. They would have to ‘self own’.

Can’t do that.

Now I see Fox is using pics from weeks ago of Trump wearing a mask he mostly, stupidly, refused to wear. Shamelessness is their brand, after all.

From the Trump down, the GOP is rotten. Proud, aggressive and purposeful ignorance. Insanity as a matter of course. 211,000 dead Americans, and they're still brushing this off, still trying to ‘own the libs’ and will continue to do so.

Until they die.

He Won’t be Happy Until We’re all Dead.

Smug, smug, smug.

He won’t be happy until we’re all dead.

In the last two days, reports have come out that the Trump administration had interfered extensively at the Center for Disease Control, changing guidelines for political purposes, bending and breaking the scientific facts that didn’t fit the Trump reelection campaign, muzzling and contradicting career scientists and doctors, and continuing to deny the seriousness of the pandemic affecting every country, even continent on earth.

For reelection. That’s the only, incredibly selfish reason. Petty. But that’s Trump brand, and if people have to die to achieve that reelection?

So be it.

Then we have the Director of the CDC, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, testify that a vaccine will not be widely available until sometime in the third quarter of next year. Most experts agree with this, but one self-appointed ‘expert’ does not. The President does not, can not agree with this because he wants to hold the hope of a vaccine over the heads of Americans until the election is over, even if one doesn’t how up, he wants that out there as an excuse to ‘reopen’, to get kids back in school, to shove people back into their jobs, to give some voters an excuse to overlook his disastrous handling of the virus that got us here in the first place.

Open now, because next month the vaccine will be here!

Dr. Redfield then veered off the topic of vaccines, held up the facemask he’d worn into the hearing and said that ‘this, this mask is even more important than a vaccine’, that it offered more protection than a vaccine will the first few months one will be available. He’s stated in the past that if everyone in the US just wore a mask in public for 6-8 weeks we could be out of this. We could, maybe, if we had leaders that supported public health, that cared about safely ending this pandemic nightmare or at least tamping it down, if…

… But we don’t. After Dr. Redfield’s testimony, Trump immediately announced a press conference with the sole aim of contradicting own director of the CDC. And he did; the vaccine was coming, soon, maybe end of October, maybe sooner, and masks aren’t that great (he continually doesn’t wear one himself and mocks those who do), and went back to his unproven talking point ‘lots of people say masks aren’t all that great…’

You would think he has a funeral parlor franchise.

Today, we have the news that a $150 million in prescription drug cost relief program that would have helped thousands was killed. Why? Because Donald Trump’s demanded that $100 “Trump Cards” be mailed to seniors before the election. 

From the New York Times:

“Then the agreement collapsed. The breaking point, according to four people familiar with the discussions: Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, insisted the drug makers pay for $100 cash cards that would be mailed to seniors before November — ‘Trump Cards,’ some in the industry called them,” the newspaper reported. “Some of the drugmakers bridled at being party to what they feared would be seen as an 11th-hour political boost for Mr. Trump, the people familiar with the matter said.”

So, the needed program was killed. Because Trump wanted ‘gift cards’ to go to seniors with his name on them. Now no one will get that benefit, as Trump has crossed his arms, stamped his foot, and walked off.

For his reelection.

He won’t be happy until we’re all dead…

…and he can sign the death certificate.

In sharpie.

With Blood on His Hands

Donald Trump, lying about his lies, while blaming his lies on the person who recorded him lying and published his lies. Wednesday in TrumpLand.

200,000 Americans are dead.

Probably more really.  

And today, we find out that Trump was not ignorant of the facts, Trump was not just putting out happy talk of what he wanted in that crucial time from the end of January through April. He knew, he always knew just how deadly the coronavirus was, he knew it was worse than the flu, knew it was highly contagious, spreading through the air like dirt in the duststorm, knew it could/would kill tens of thousands of Americans. He knew all this and more.

He just didn’t care.

He didn’t care. He let it happen to protect his glorious stock market, his ‘amazing’ economy, (not his really, that’s another article), he let it happen to save his reelection. That’s what he cared about. Not your grandparents, not your husband, wife, partner, lover, friends, not your children. No. His reelection.

That’s all he cared about. Screw the rest.

How do we know? Because it’s an election year and Washington Post editor Bob Woodward has another damn book out, ‘Rage’, (I have it on pre-order), and he sat down with Trump 18 times, 18 TIMES! For interviews. And Bob records his stuff so people can’t come back later and claim, “I never said that!” And Bob will play the tape. Nixon taught him much. Trump? Trump never learns anything.

What did he tell Woodward?

“I wanted to always play it down,” Trump told Woodward on March 19, even as he had declared a national emergency over the virus days earlier. “I still like playing it down, because I don’t want to create a panic.”

He said “You just breathe the air and that’s how it’s passed…It’s also more deadly than even your strenuous flu.” This is while he was telling the American public they didn’t have to worry, that it was the flu, it was just going to go away….

Go away, no more dangerous than the flu, play it down, always down, that’s what he likes to do. How many people believed him? How many ignored doctors, ignored loved ones and didn’t take even minimal precautions because they believed the man they voted for, the man they trusted.

How many do you know believed Trump, believed him when he said it was nothing, it was a hoax, that it would blow over.

How many of those people are sick?

How many of those people are no longer here to praise the man who they believed, the man that helped get them killed.

200,000 dead, how many because they believed a man who never gave a damn about them?

Why would Trump admit to depraved indifference to human life? Why would he sit down and talk with one of the most notorious outers of presidential secrets? My guess it’s the same ego that makes him proclaim himself a genius, expert in all things, and the only one who can fix (fill in the blank). He thought he could beat Bob Woodward at the game Woodward has honed to a sharp point. Bob is just a member of the ‘fake news’ and He is ‘The Donald’. He lost. The proof is hours of stupid things on tape, and soon in print.

Trump now says it was a ‘political hit job’ and that his lying to the people ‘showed leadership’:

“We have to show leadership, and leadership is all about confidence. Confidence is all about confidence in our country.”

“I’m a cheerleader for this country. We want to show confidence. We don’t want to instill panic,” He now says.

All of this is the opposite of leadership, the opposite of what was needed. He lied for his own petty needs, showing how small a man he truly is… as if we needed more examples.

And thousands have died needlessly.

There is blood on his hands, the blood of people who put him in that office, blood that will not wash off.

Dancing at the Grifter’s Ball

Pam Bondi’s anti-Biden nepotism speech is nestled into a night of Trump grifters living off their father’s/husband’s name. And The Trump Party sees no irony, can see no irony, in this.

He dirties everything he touches.

Everything. Trump spares no reputation, no tradition left clean, no ‘norm’ left unsoiled, any laws in his way are trampled into the dirt. His every touch is like a child with mud on their hands; filth is strewn over all. And like a child, he grins at the destruction in his wake. Last night Trump smeared his hands over the White House, the naturalization ceremony, the pardon, and used them all as petty, political tools to boost an election campaign that is already dirty with corruption and brimming with lies. He sullies them all not for any noble purpose or sense of justice, but to squeeze out just one more vote from those white, ‘suburban housewives’ that he keeps throwing hypothetical Black people at. 

Our government is reduced from a constitutional republic/democracy to no more than a political prop, the People’s White House as a stage for reelection, the employees using their office and power as campaign tools, and the taxpayer’s money blatantly being used to elect the most undemocratic leader the United States of America has ever seen. Nothing is sacred, nothing cannot be used to wrench what is supposed to be a government of the people, for all the people, to a thing to serve the power not of a small political base, but just one man, Donald J. Trump.

Last night RNC was a self-servering parade of corruption and lies, a weaponizing the American government for the benefit an amoral man at the head of a party ready and eager to serve that amorality. And, as usual with the entire Trump administration, the law breaking is right out in the open, proudly displayed, (“Russia, if you’re listening”) bragged about, passed around like a good joint at a frat party. This isn’t bending rules, this is snapping and breaking laws, flagrantly.

I said in a previous post that this convention was going to be a sort of ‘Woodstock’ for the Trump Party, ‘Four Days of Fear & Hate”. I feel I underplayed it. Speaker after speaker got up, lied and smiled about it. Pam Bondi of Florida spewed forth a much-debunked conspiracy theory of Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukraine, railing against ‘nepotism’ on a night where an array of Trumps (all benefiting off their father/husband’s office) overwhelmed the so-called ‘real’ people. And all the grifters danced in joy.

Through the looking glass, while denying you are actually in wonderland.

It was an evening of breaking laws, nepotism, lying, making bizarre claims (My father will put people on Mars!) and celebrating it all. All in an America, damaged, grieving, wondering how they will make rent and feed themselves, or as Trump calls 'it, '“Biden’s America.”

And an estimated 200,000 Americans are dead, with another 1,200 Americans died of the coronavirus on the Tuesday of this shitshow. One mention of the dead, in passing, from the First Lady, while everyone else acted like the virus was over, past tense, like it isn’t still burning, threatening, killing. A complete unreality show, with Trump and the Trump family the most unreal part of it.

Good lord, these fucking people. I can’t do anything more but shake my head at Trump’s American Carnage and wonder where it will end. Or if it ever will.

Trump says he alone can fix it; turns out only he alone could have brought it on.

If Only We Had a Leader, Not a Whiner

Pouty McPouterson, pouting.

“Oh, you libtards! You blame Trump for the pandemic!”

No. The pandemic is not his fault (not the fault of China either, but that’s another post), no, we blame him for his response to the pandemic.  The fact he wasn’t ready hasn’t helped much. I mean, firing the people responsible for dealing with a global pandemic, cutting funds and eliminating the programs that were set up to deal with a major health crisis didn’t help when one actually hit (as he was warned it might) all pretty damn stupid, and thoughtless.

Now, 165,000+ dead. Virus is burning though the country uncontrolled. Double digit unemployment, economy cratered and not coming back any time soon. Ugliness reigns.

No matter how you look it (unless you just want to lie about it), Trump has screwed this up, big time.

Simply no other way to look at it. He didn’t act fast enough; almost all of his actions have been reluctant, half-hearted, like a kid told to clean their room and after an hour they’ve picked up one sock. He ignored his own experts, he undermined their advice and when guidelines were actually put out, he immediately ignored them, recommending the opposite. Trump is so focused on his reelection that he just doesn’t care about anything, or anyone, else. And this is for a job he didn’t want in the first place….

He just doesn’t give a damn.

I was making this very argument on the Book of Face yesterday while deep in the enemy territory of a Trumper’s post, and I got one of those smarmy replies; ‘well, what would you do, it you were President? With the laws and powers available and not overstepping them.”

You see the trick here is that he would consider anything Trump did within the ‘law’ and anything done by a Democratic president to be far, far outside it (see Obama, Barack). I see this smug little game all the time, if we talk facts to Trump supporters we all see it. But, we’re in lockdown, I ain’t doin’ nutin’, so why not?

The First Week of the Tom Stewart Presidency,: (What I would do if I ran the zoo)

I would put out national guidelines based on science AND FOLLOW THEM. Weird, huh? I do this because Trump immediately undermined his own recommendations, and his doctors. He never took it seriously, at all. It was like he was trying to 'will' the pandemic away, hoping if he ignored it, it would all just ‘blow over’. My mom used to try this with the light bill. She was soon sitting in darkness.

I would have a national testing and tracing plan in place, relieving some of the burden on the states, and I would work with the affected states, making sure they had what they needed, you know, instead of pissing, moaning and complaining about them, as Trump did. Trumpy’s way really worked well for all involved, especially the 165,000+ dead.

I would also use my power to order more ventilators and PPE manufactured (Trump threatened this, but didn't do it, because of many, many reasons… I’m sure) and then I would ensure the equipment got where it was needed through FEMA and the CDC. This is instead of walking away and letting all 50 states fight it out like a pack of hungry dogs over a bone.

I would reach out to our allies, ask for assistance and offer ours in return. I would learn from them (look at S Korea and New Zealand, they could have told us a lot, if we had leadership prepared to listen). I would have used my national platform to inform the people, stepping back to let the doctors give real, unvarnished information, (not get up, lie about the efforts, undermine what they just said, push phony cures, whine about how mean people are to me, etc…)

…and I would talk about the lives lost. The people, the friends, family, husbands, wives, sons, and daughters lost to the awful pandemic, and offer my empathy and prayers to the ones left behind.

No finger pointing, no crying about the election, no name calling other countries, none of that bullshit. There’s no time for nonsense while people are suffering, and people are dying. I would try my best to be a leader. 

We don't any of that right now. In case you haven’t noticed.

Now I’m going to sort my comic book collection and pray for better times, better leaders, and better hope than the tattered one I have left in my broken heart.

They Had a Plan, But Decided People Should Just Die Instead

Not even Jared can believe this nonsense. Stolen from Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post

They actually had a plan. They did. It would have been massive; testing, contact tracing, the whole thing.

They tossed it.

Why? Because they thought the virus was only affecting 'blue' states, so who cares? No, really. It wasn't spreading to the 'red' states yet, so it's just not 'politically advantageous' to, you know, give a damn and try to save people.

Everyday, every-damn-day I think this administration can't get any more heartless, reckless, stupid, and cruel. Every-damn-day they grin and say '"Hold my beer."The Trump administration decided it would be politically expedient to just let people die.

Seriously.

He is not, and has never been, the president for all America, just for the ones that voted for him, that cheer him at his rallies, that deck their boats with 'Trump 2020' signs.

The rest of us can just die. And please, do it before November, if you can.

And now, after scrapping the plan, they find themselves in trouble pretty much of their own making.

Shoocking.

So Trump paused, for a week, their advertising. They ‘couldn’t find a message’.

In the midst of a ruined economy, 155,000+ dead, a pandemic raging uncontrolled, and protestors in the streets, Trump can't find a 'message'.

Huh.

The 'Biden is corrupt' didn't work, 'Biden loves China' didn't work. 'Biden had dementia' didn't work, 'Biden will bring on the Mad Max apocalypse' (with pics from Trump's America), didn't work. He can't run on his record (see above, or the last three years), so he still looking for the magic bullet to save him.

Donny, buddy, chum, you want to improve your chances?

My friends will hate this, but hey! Here's how you do it:

Stop acting like a teenager told to clean their room. The covid IS the economy, fix the virus, you fix the economy. Take the pandemic seriously. Go on TV with a mask, tell people they need to wear them, tell them they need to follow CDC guidelines, and then follow them yourself. Work with the states to make sure they impose the guidelines as well. Tell your followers to suck it up and follow them. Get the GOP senate to take this seriously and pass a bill that will actually help people and not hedge fund managers. Stop whining and be serious.

That's basically it: BE SERIOUS.

Maybe go back to the plan you tossed because it might have helped someone who might not have voted for it.

Insane…

I give you this very good advice for one reason; I know you won't do it. You can't, you just can't. You can't admit to a mistake, you can't reverse yourself because you think that would be 'weak'. I know this is pretty much the same advice some of those around you (not Jared) are pushing, and THEY know you won't take it. We'll find out from the books they will publish to blamer others. You can't find a 'message' because the actual message should be 'Vote for Biden because I'm in over my head'.

And that is the message you will never, CAN never, acknowledge.

Worse Than Watergate, Nixon, and Vietnam

Former White House aide John Dean III is sworn in by Senate Watergate Committee Chairman Sam Ervin, in this June 25, 1973, file photo. About to drop serious dime on Nixon. (AP)

I am not the only person fascinated by Watergate. We are a hardy band of brothers, sisters and others who want the truth. We read it all, the doorstop books, the Sunday magazine retrospectives, the documentaries that have fewer and fewer original participants each time. We devour it, and then regurgitate it to devour again. Burt back in 1973, I was a resentful kid when the original hearings were going on (they took off reruns of Gilligan's Isle to play the hearings, yes, I'm old) the hearings occupying a bewildering space of my childhood. Hated them. I wanted to watch Dawn Welles, dammit!

Later, I got heavily involved, reading everything I could on the break-in, the cover-up, the immense crap that had gone on for years before, (oh yes, it started years before the actual break-in, with Vietnam and the Pentagon papers), the 'enemies lists', the people to watch (Carol Channing!), and the people to be paid off with CREEP funds. Amazing. The GOP has tired hard to hide and degrade this part of their history ever since, but it’s kinda hard to do. Anyone interested in the truth can find it in books and those documentaries. They need only look past their own prejudices.

I now watch what is going on in the Trump White House, the corruption, the incompetence, the arrogance, the lying that they know no one believes, but they know the MSM will report anyway without bothering to call it what it actually is (you know, lies) which gives it the impression of truth (the problem isn't 'bias' which is BS, but false 'objectivity'), and the grotesque, cynical attitude that the MAGA 'suckers' will believe and stand by them no matter what. This is not me saying this, it was Trump himself (''I can shoot someone in the middle of 5th Ave...”) Yeah...

Nixon was a traitor. He undermined the Paris peace talks as a private citizen (in 1968, during the presidential election), this led to thousands of Americans dying (not to mention the Vietnamese, Laotians, and Cambodians) just so the Republicans could win an election. That's kinda it, isn't it? As long as the GOP wins, anything is okay, anything is justified.

The Trump administration is criminal, it's as simple as that. Trump has committed several impeachable offenses (simply the truth) and if he were anyone else, he'd be gone (especially if he was a democrat), and would probably in prison for years. Anyone who values this country, and its laws and norms could not in good conscience vote for someone who ignores laws in pursuit his own enrichment, and his own power.

Nixon had his Watergate, but Trump has had several. Nixon had a GOP that still cared, to a certain degree, about the law and running an effective government, Trump... has neither. Trump need to go, but so does the institution that has supported him, encouraged him, who looked the other way and stood watch while he filled his pocked and smashed things. He's not an aberration, he's the he's the end of the long road the GOP has been traveling since they decided to go all in with the racists abandoned by the Democrats, go all in with the grievances of the far right Christians, so far in that both of these factions were not absorbed by the party, the party absorbed them. They became the GOP.

Nixon learned nothing from Watergate, he just made his lies more subtle, and in book form. He gave expensive speeches to people who thought he was poorly treated and became a 'grand of man of foreign policy', writing his books and giving advice to power. The GOP itself learned little, and worked hard to overturn the limits that Watergate had imposed on them, to shore up their base, gathering as many angry white people who remembered the 'good old days' as they could and making sure those who weren't pissed and white couldn't (or wouldn't) vote. The GOP became the gatekeepers to white power, and all that entails.

Trump is Destiny, the messiah the GOP has longed for, has deserved. He was come to save/ruin the party, they deserve it… and him. Nixon was never really punished for his crimes, and the GOP lost power for four years, but they were back in the 80s, using the power of White anger to fuel them until today, to get them to their shining 'Trump' on a hill. And here we are; criminals in the government, 155,000+ Americans dead, the economy in a shamble, people in the streets, a party in power that refuses to do anything that might effect that power... and the whole world watching in horror.

We need to tear the whole thing out, and throw it away. We had the chance with Nixon, and took the easy way out. This time, they all need to go to jail, they need the most public, transparent trials possible, before the entire world, and then fairly sentenced and punished. We need this, but so does the world. Otherwise we will never regain the credibility we have lost over the past four years.

We missed our chance with Watergate, we now have another chance in November. Trumpism must be finally rooted out and thrown in the dustbin of history. Vote, just vote.