Travel in Trumpistan (9/21/20 to 11/2/20)

UPDATED 2/19/23

 

9/21/20: The blogger and Anne, his most excellent wife, drive north. Tomorrow we plan to hike the Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore.

 

Apparently, by lunchtime we may have a new Supreme Court justice. Rush Limbaugh wants Republicans to skip the confirmation process and just vote “yes,” for whoever Dictator Don nominates.

 

Maybe Stormy Daniels?

 

Republicans are in a rush to vote before the American people realize what sleazebags they are. Ol’ Milksop swore way back before Trump made America great again, that YOU COULD NOT LET OBAMA deny the people of this great nation a chance to say which president would get to fill a seat. Obama!!! That rat bastard!!!!! He wanted to nominate Merrick Garland to take the place of Anton Scalia!

 

The nerve....with only ten months left in his term!!!!!!!!!!!

 

No way said Milksop. “Here I stand.” Or was it, “They shall not pass,” or “I have not yet begun to fight?” Anyway, Mitch insisted, the Founding Fathers always wanted the people to choose the judges! That was exactly why they agreed the president should pick them for the next 227 years (1789-2016).

 

Now Mitch has re-read the U.S. Constitution. Egg on his face. It turns out a president can pick the next judge! Who knew? I mean, other than me – since I taught middle school American history. 

 

All the GOP senators who misread the Constitution are now red-faced. My own Sen. Rob Portman was all for letting me and my wife have a say. Now he looks at what the Founding Fathers wrote. How embarrassing. Portman 2020 realizes Portman 2016 was a clown. So was Sen. Ted Cruz, the guy who, in 2016, called Trump a “sniveling coward,” after he insulted Cruz’s wife.

 

Now Milksop and all the enablers are having trouble reading...calendars.

 

Um...September, October, November, December, January? Yes. Trump has 13 months left in his first term. So, that is way longer than Obama had when he nominated Garland.

 

Milksop does the math on a napkin. 13, minus 10. Yes! Trump has 20 more months than Obama did.

 

The Founding Fathers would not be amused.

___

 

 

*

 

PROOF THAT WE NEED THAT BORDER WALL – with Canada! We learn that a Canadian national, who overstayed her visit to this country, and also got arrested carrying an unlicensed firearm, allegedly sent ricin to President Trump.

 

Two people sent ricin to Obama, and both are now serving lengthy terms in prison. The Canadian lady is likely to join them.

 

Anyway, build that wall!

___

 

 

9/22/20: Did Trump nominate a Russian for the open seat on the Supreme Court? And did Mitch McConnell get excited and agree to hold a vote tomorrow?

 

You know they might.

 

The blogger is on vacation and out of the news loop, which is good for his mental health.

 

We did hit 200,000 dead from the coronavirus, however. Heard it on the car radio. Trump gives himself an A+ for his handling of the crisis, even though we lead the world in deaths.

 

My wife and I go hiking at Sleeping Bear Dunes; at night, I check Worldometers. Germany has one-fourth the population of the USA. They have less than 10,000 dead. Canada had 875 new cases on September 20, the last day they have reported. We had 39,127 on September 21. Even when we adjust for population, we have four times as many cases as our neighbors to the north.

 

*

 

CURRENT AND FORMER CDC officials told reporters for The Hill, that they have never seen morale so low.

 

“It’s just, people are beaten down. People are beaten down partially by a public who not only distrusts us but who actually think we want to infringe on their civil liberties,” said one current CDC employee. “The other factor is the active undermining by senior members of our own administration.”

 

“As I talk to former colleagues at CDC, the feeling I get is just an overwhelming sense of despair. People are working incredibly hard to reduce the impact of the pandemic and the sense that they’re being blocked by people at the political level, and that the work that they’re doing is not being appreciated by the American public,” said Rich Besser, a former CDC director who now runs the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

 

“The feeling right now is that public health is not being allowed to lead and to demonstrate the path forward to reduce transmission and increase economic activity,” he said.

The man in the blue shirt had trouble making it to the top.

___

9/23/20: Gen. H. R. McMaster, Trump’s second National Security Adviser, said yesterday that Dictator Don (my term) is “making it easy” for Russia to interfere in the November election. 

“It’s just wrong...it’s just really important for our leaders to be responsible about this.” Putin, he said, is our enemy and wants to sow division. 

Okay. We need responsible leadership...annnnnnnnnnnd…….we are screwed. 

For the third election in a row Trump is screaming it’s rigged, and all his patriotic fans should be prepared to rise up and slaughter anyone who votes against him, or refuses to wear a MAGA hat while taking a dump. 

Here’s the score. Trump has had four National Security Advisors. The first lied about meeting with Russians and got slapped with a felony. H.R. McMaster, the second, says the president is making it easy for Russia to interfere again. His third National Security Advisor, John Bolton, wrote an entire book about how Trump put U.S. national security at risk in an effort to ensure his reelection. 

And my conservative friends think I’m not a patriot, because I keep posting evidence that their Orange God is a menace. 

Trump's own Secretary of Defense learned to distrust him.

FUN WITH FASCISTS: Today, Mr. Trump was asked, if he lost the election, would he commit to a peaceful transfer of power. 

His answer: 

“Well, we’re going to have to see what happens,” Trump said. “You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots, and the ballots are a disaster.”

 

Pressed further, Trump said: “We’ll want to have — get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer, frankly. There’ll be a continuation.”

 That’s a “no.” 

EVEN MORE FASCIST FUN: Today, a judge sentenced Brandon Higgs to up to 25 years in prison. 

Anti-fascists had uncovered evidence that Higgs was busy posting on white supremacist websites, before the day he yelled, “Go back to Africa,” and then shot Elvis Smith, his African American neighbor.

Some percentage of Trump fans have fascist leanings.

 

FUN WITH BOOKS: It is well-known that President Trump has wanted to stop publication of John Bolton’s book, The Room Where It Happened. Ellen Knight, a longtime National Security Council official, reviewed the former National Security Advisor’s work. She found there was no classified material included. Publication could go forward. 

Ah, not so fast. “Political appointees,” she now says through her lawyers, took charge of her review for “political purposes.” 

Suddenly, the review said there was classified information in the book. So no publication allowed. 

Knight has now gone to court to fight for her right to tell the truth.

___

9/24/20: Dictator Don said yesterday that he couldn’t commit to a peaceful transfer of power on January 20. This is because Dictator Don has fascist instincts. If he wins, the election will be fair! If he loses, all MAGA forces should lock and load! Make America Great Again, 1861 style. 

Now you can understand why Dictator Don doesn’t want those Confederate statues coming down.

 

____________________ 

Not “up to the enormous responsibilities of his office.” 

489 former U.S. intelligence leaders

____________________ 

 

Did we also notice that 489 former U.S. intelligence leaders, including nearly two dozen retired four-star officers, signed a letter endorsing Joe Biden for president? This is because they realize Trump is a crazy person. 

They are polite former intelligence officials, however, and do not refer to Trump as a lunatic. They merely state that our “current president” is not “up to the enormous responsibilities of his office.” 

Signatories include Gen. Peter Chiarelli, who served as the Army’s second-ranking officer before retiring in 2012. Until now, he tells NPR, he has never been involved in politics; but this election is different. 

“I believe the current administration is a real threat to the republic.” He cites the president’s “attacks on institutions” and his “failure to lead,” especially on a coronavirus response. It “makes me ill,” he adds, to see that the president has politicized the wearing of masks to prevent the spread of virus. “I believed I had to stand up and be counted,” he gives as a reason for signing the letter. 

Others who added their names: Trump’s former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired Air Force General Paul J. Selva, retired Navy SEAL Vice Admiral P. Gardner Howe, III, who served as CIA’s director of military affairs, and retired Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Paul Zukunft. 

Miles Taylor, who served as Gen. John Kelly’s chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, is perhaps the bluntest of all. The young Republican says he’ll vote for Biden in November and gives his reasons. “I’ll take him – and left-leaning policies – over Donald Trump – and the republic-breaking danger he poses – any day of the week.”  

Naturally, Trump calls Taylor a “lowlife.” 

Reporters for Time magazine also note: 

One former senior official who regularly briefed the President is considering speaking out against his former boss, too. “Everything, every decision, was made based on his re-election as opposed to what’s good for the country,” the official says of Trump. “There is no bottom to this guy … There is no level so low that he will not stoop to. And his sycophants will support him every step of the way.”

 

That official, however, is afraid that if he speaks out, Trump supporters might endanger his family.

 

*

TODAY, a wide variety of Republican lawmakers had to come out and say, sure, we will have a peaceful transfer of power. Even Milksop Mitch McConnell agreed that civil war is a poor option. 

Well done, Milksop!

___

 

  

9/25/20: The happy blogger and his equally happy spouse are no longer traveling in Trumpistan. They are hunkered down in Dickinson, North Dakota, awaiting results from their COVID-19 tests.

 

Bad day for vacation. 

The blogger gets swabbed by a nurse from the 82nd Airborne.

 

Not as bad as Mr. Tenpenny’s day, however. Tony Tenpenny, a big Trump fan, and a big foe of masks has passed on to a better place. The former Nashville Counsel member was hospitalized for a month after contracting the coronavirus. He was placed on a ventilator earlier this month and leaves his bereaved loved ones with a hefty pile of medical bills to remember him by.

 

A check with CDC shows the USA racking up 301,923 new cases of COVID-19 in the last week. We should hit seven million this weekend. Trump fans don’t care, because 51% of Republicans believe Trump more than they believe the CDC. If Dictator Don says Obama caused COVID-19, smallpox, and leprosy, they will gnash their teeth and say, “I never trusted that Muslim fella.”

 

Cogitation is not their strong suit.

 

Did we mention that the National Academy of Scientists and the National Academy of Medicine both warned, “We find ongoing reports and incidents of the politicization of science, particularly the overriding of evidence and advice from public health officials and the derision of government scientists to be alarming.”

 

Currently, Trump is mad at the Food and Drug Administration, most of the scientists on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, and everyone who works at CDC, including the night watchman.

 

He still has the MyPillow guy he can talk to for advice, though.

 

As for Trump’s level of trustworthy-ness, earlier this week, at a rally in Michigan, he insisted:

 

o   Every nomination for a seat on the Supreme Court during an election year has gone forward. 

o   Voters in Michigan should pour out onto the presidential gridiron and tear down the goalposts of a Trump victory, come November, because in one day ...  yes, one day ... he convinced the Japanese prime minister to build FIVE new auto plants in their state!

 

The only problem with that claim of five new plants is that four are like “imaginary friends” of the president and don’t exist. And the fifth is like the X-ray of Trump’s bone spurs, which has never been seen.

 

No new plants have been built.

 

As for the Supreme Court claim, surely even a Trump fan could Google “Merrick Garland” by name.

Judge Merrick Garland never had a chance.

___

 

 

9/26/20: Still waiting to hear if we test positive for COVID. Spent the day at Theodore Roosevelt National Park. In case you don’t know, Teddy was deeply interested in protecting the environment, unlike Trump. He took on the “malefactors of great wealth,” as he called the superrich. Trump wouldn’t know what “malefactors” meant. Also, Teddy fought for this country.

 

Trump is a blustering sissy-boy.

 

And, since we’re on the topic of the environment, we should note that a federal judge has ousted William Perry Pendley from his job. President Trump appointed Pendley to be the acting head of the Bureau of Land Management more than a year ago. He just never bothered to get Pendley okayed by the U.S. Senate. A mere formality – as in the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law require it.

 

Not to mention, that the Bureau of Land Management under a Trump presidency has been pretty much a rubber stamp for whatever Big Business wants to do. As NPR explains, “Pendley has long been polarizing. Prior to coming to the bureau, he called for the sale or transfer of federal public lands to the states. He also spent much of his career as an attorney challenging the agency he now leads.”

 

There was no way Pendley would ever have been confirmed; and so there was no way to go forward except to do what Trump did.

 

Ignore the Senate.

 

Also the Constitution.

 

Not for nothing, have the leading environmental groups backed Mr. Biden in the coming election. (See: 9/8/20.)

 

*

 

MEANWHILE, Dictator Don is trying to buy a second term. Three years after Puerto Rico was smashed by a hurricane, he finally wants to send $13 billion to the island. He also wants to send every senior citizen a $200 debit card to use in purchasing prescription drugs. The only problem with that idea is that Congress hasn’t allocated the money and we have a massive federal deficit for the year. Trump would spend ten trillion to win a second term if that’s what it took.

 

R.I.P., Tea Party folks. Your ship has been torpedoed and sunk by your own navy.

Upside down flag: a sign of distress. 

R.I.P. Tea Party.

 

Teddy Roosevelt's old lands, North Dakota.

 

 

Olivia Troye, who worked for VP Pence until recently, says White House officials often discussed what would have to be done if Trump lost in November and refused to leave office. 

 

(I, for one, would suggest luring him out with cheeseburgers and a couple of scantily-clad porn stars.)

___

 

 

9/27/20: The New York Times is reporting that they have documents to show that the year Trump ran for president, he paid a measly $750 in federal income taxes.

 

Did you pay more, MAGA-hatted truck driver? Did you, Antifa Starbucks barista? Did you, retired speech therapist? Did you chip in more to pay for that border wall, Tea Party loyalist?

 

Mr. Blogger, did you cough up more in taxes to support the U.S. military????

 

Yes, you did!

 

And guess how much Trump paid in 2017! 

 

Again: $750.

 

As Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, notes, she paid thousands more, as a bartender, before winning a stunning upset for a seat in Congress. An undocumented worker in construction, down Texas way (where the undocumented often find work in the building trades), would pay more than Dictator Don.

Did this guy pay more taxes than the president?

___

  

9/28/20: Back in 2012, when Citizen Trump hated everything that President Obama ever did or said, it angered Trump to learn that in a year when the president earned “$790k salary,” he paid only “20.5%” in taxes. 

“Do as I say not as I do,” Donald tweeted, on April 13, just two days before the filing deadline that year. 

By that standard, the humble blogger will claim $70k, like our current president, for hair care in one year. The blogger will call it a business expense because a blogger has got to look good for the readers! I will pay no more than $750 in federal income taxes this year, and the next. Then I will pay ZERO for ten of the next fifteen years, should I live so long. I will do as Trump do. 

And I promise my hair will look better. 

Any other news? The head of the Centers for Disease Control, Dr. Robert Redfield, was overheard on an airplane saying, “Everything he says is false,” in reference to COVID-19. Dr. Redfield has admitted he made the comment. Fortunately, Trump fans, he was not talking about your president! 

He was talking about Dr. Scott Atlas, now your president’s favorite person to get terrible advice from on defeating the coronavirus. 

First, Trump listened to Rush Limbaugh, who said the virus was no worse than the flu and we should all get out there and build some herd immunity. 

Then Trump had the MyPillow guy give advice. 

Then came the Demon Sperm Lady. (See: 7/28/20.)

 

Now he’s listening to Dr. Atlas, who, as a radiologist, knows about as much about infectious diseases as a radiologist would about installing a sewer line to your home. Different field of expertise. But Trump saw Atlas on Fox News, where he kept showing up to say we had nothing to fear from this disease and Trump was doing A++ work handling the crisis. 

Meanwhile, the blogger is on his way to Portland, Oregon to visit his daughter Sarah and husband Logan. Both work in healthcare. Both believe this virus is serious. At age 71, for example, the blogger could find himself in a world of hurt if he were infected. And I am happy to say, my test...taken in North Dakota a few days ago…came back negative. (I was exposed, I feared, by way of my granddaughter, by way of her mother, who did have an infection.) 

So: On to Portland, where I will either be killed by Antifa (according to Trump) or massacred by white supremacists who hanker after a race war. I love my friends and relatives who support Trump, but I wish they would consider why it is that our current president has almost 100% support from the white supremacist clan/Klan. Also big in his base: believe-anything QAnon fools, people bad at math, and billionaire advocates of pussy-grabbing and paying no federal income taxes. 

Paying taxes is for suckers, kind of like when Trump said only “suckers” went to fight in Vietnam. 

Roosevelt saved the buffalo from extinction. Photo from his North Dakota ranch.

POSTSCRIPT: Out here, where the buffalo roam, and masks are for sissies and bandits, the coronavirus is spreading. Last week, North Dakota had 30% of its tests come back positive. South Dakota had 26%. This past Sunday, Montana had a 20% positivity rate. 

As has been true all along, COVID-19 doesn’t care who you vote for or if you never vote at all. It just wants to infect you, and anyone else you may know or love.

___

 

 

9/29/20: President Trump is warming up for tonight’s debate by practice-lying. For example, he just told reporters that the IRS “does not treat me well. They treat me very badly.” 

Yes. He really said that.

Mt. Rainier, Washington.

 

I am going to see if I can pay no taxes next year, like Trump, ten of the last fifteen years.

 

Then I will pretend to be a Trump fan. I will bitch about how the U.S. military has no money. I will howl about how awful the deficit was when Obama was in charge and how Congress should give President “No Taxes for Me” Trump more dough to slap up his big, beautiful border wall.

 

*

 

“Mere bloviating.”

 

IN OTHER LIAR NEWS: Tucker Carlson triumphed in court today, in a slander case, but not in the way a real news person would hope to triumph. His lawyers defended him against slander by saying no reasonable viewer would ever believe the “facts” Carlson was sharing nightly.

 

U.S. District Court Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil issued an opinion in line with that argument. The “‘general tenor’ of the show,” she wrote, “should then inform a viewer that [Carlson] is not ‘stating actual facts’ about the topics he discusses and is instead engaging in ‘exaggeration’ and ‘non-literal commentary.’”

 

Otherwise known as slinging shit.

 

Vyskocil continued: “Fox persuasively argues, that given Mr. Carlson’s reputation, any reasonable viewer ‘arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism’ about the statement he makes.”

 

She suggests that the court might have even called what Carlson does “mere bloviating.” But whatever it was she called it you couldn’t really take Carlson seriously. Karen McDougal, the Playboy bunny with whom Donald J. Trump had an affair, had sued after Carlson said she and Stormy Daniels, with whom Trump had also slept, despite being married to Melania at the time, were extorting Candidate Trump in the summer of 2016, when their stories broke.

 

In introducing a story on the topic, Carlson told viewers, “Remember the facts of the story. These are undisputed.”

 

Then he set the scene: “Two women approach Donald Trump and threaten to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn’t give them money. Now that sounds like a classic case of extortion.”

 

Although we do know Trump had his personal lawyer pay hush money to both women, and then his lawyer lied about paying. Then lied about whether Trump knew he paid. And then went to jail for lying.

 

Anyway, now we know. For Tucker Carlson, star of Fox News, facts are malleable and not facts at all.

___

 

 

9/30/20: What did I miss while driving south from Mt. Rainier, to Underwood, Wash., over the worst road I’ve ever been on?

 

*

 

“Stand down but stand by.”

 

ACCORDING TO MOST PUNDITS, the Trump-Biden debate was the worst presidential debate in history. Naturally, Trump insists he won. The debate commission is so appalled, they plan to change the rules and may include a mute button when a candidate interrupts the other during any future debates.

 

Naturally, Trump objects to changing the rules, unless he’s picking a Supreme Court judge. (See: 9/20/20.)

 

A writer for Time described the televised contest as “like nothing I’d ever seen or imagined” and said the president had “shattered” debate norms.

 

Asked about the disaster, moderator Chris Wallace said the president “bears the primary responsibility for what happened.” Speaking to colleague Bill Hemmer, Wallace cited a Fox News analysis, that Trump interrupted Biden 71 times, and Wallace 74. That would be 145 interruptions in 130 minutes.

 

Did I mention Trump thought he won? Well, there were those who agreed. Sean Hannity, for one. And the Proud Boys, for sure. Asked to denounce white supremacists during the debate, Trump couldn’t do it. He insisted the real threat in America is Antifa, then fumed, that the Proud Boys “should stand down but stand by.” You know. In case he lost the election.

 

Then: gunfire, maybe?

 

His former National Security Adviser, H.R. McMaster, said the president’s failure to condemn white supremacy was like blowing a wide open layup in basketball. Or, to use a sports metaphor of my own: It was as if Trump were cheering for the racists who tried to keep Jackie Robinson from playing for the Dodgers. You know. In 1947. When America was “great.”

 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (1/20/21): On this last day of Trump’s tenure, I am editing my blog for clarity, and polishing punctuation. My joke about the Proud Boys, above, has turned out not to be a joke, as authorities begin arresting individuals responsible for the mayhem on January 6, 2021.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (6/27/21): Chris Wallace later tells students participating in a George Washington University webinar, that in his earpiece he could hear his director admonishing him to get the debate under control. “And I’m thinking, what does he expect me to do? Does he expect me to hit a trap door and have the president of the United States go down? You know, there’s not much you can do in that situation.”

___

 

 

October 1, 2020: The economy has a long way to go before we see a full recovery. That doesn’t stop President Trump from claiming we’ve turned the economic corner (not to be confused with turning the coronavirus corner). We’re going to come roaring back if we vote for him and not Joe Biden. 

Hope Hicks in healthier times.

 

In the latest weekly reporting period, 1,487,000 Americans filed for unemployment under various government programs. Now that Paycheck Protection Loans are running out, Disney has announced it will cut 28,000 jobs at its amusement parks. United Airlines and American Airlines will cut 32,000.

You may still be in good hands with Allstate; but the company is cutting 7,600 hands, or 3,800 workers.

 

*

 

ALSO: White House Babe Hope Hicks has tested positive for COVID-19. Nevertheless, the president decides he will still go to a fundraiser in Bedminster, New Jersey. The president and his wife will be tested after they get back to the White House. (See: 10/2/21.)

 

*

 

FORMER MONTANA GOVERNOR and former head of the Republican National Committee, Mark Racicot, announces that he is not crazy.  

“Even as a Republican, I will not be supporting Donald Trump for president,” he says, “and I will not be voting for him. That means that I’ll be voting for Joe Biden for president.” A chief executive, at any level, he notes, must have “a sense of decency, a sense of respect, a sense of hard work.” 

None of which describes Trump.  

Racicot added that he did not expect to agree with many of Biden’s policies. But he suggested that “the content of a man’s character” trumped “any other issue.” 

Amen. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: White House Press Banshee Kayleigh McEnany tries to explain away Trump’s call for the Proud Boys to “stand back, but stand by,” and his failure during Tuesday’s debate to unequivocally condemn white supremacists. 

(It’s like blowing your chance to condemn Hitler or Stalin. Or Putin. Or Kim-Jong un. In other words, Trump has blown this question many times before.) 

Even John Roberts, on Fox News, has had enough. After McEnany blames the media for exaggerating the story, he fumes, “So stop deflecting. Stop blaming the media. I’m tired of it.”

___

 

10/2/20: Rise and shine, America and...what the hell...President Trump and the First Lady have tested positive for the coronavirus. 

At 1:00 a.m., he tweeted out the news: “Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19. We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately. We will get through this TOGETHER!” 

Just last night, Trump told a dinner audience that “the end of the pandemic is in sight.” The president and his wife now join 298,000 Americans diagnosed this week. The good news? The Trumps have good health insurance.

 

And Donald can’t be laid off until January. 

 

Toll so far: 7.2 million Americans infected, 206,402 dead. But the president and his fans should have no worries. This virus is no worse than the flu! Ignore any scientists who say it is!

 

In perhaps the cruelest blow of all, the most narcissistic man in America is in an even higher risk category than most: because Donald Trump is not only old. He’s obese.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: We won’t know this till December 2021. At that point, former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows will say that Trump first tested positive for COVID on September 26.

 

That was three days before he stepped out on a stage to debate Joe Biden. Trump has no choice other than to accuse Meadows of peddling “Fake News.” He even capitalizes it – a “tell,” in poker terms, that he’s really lying.

 

* 

“A never-ending summer.” 

STRANGE WEATHER PATTERNS in the Southwest hint, once more, at the damage climate change will wreak. The “monsoon season” which brings much needed rain to the region is a dud, for the second year in a row. 

Flagstaff, Arizona has never had a drier season, down more than 6.5 inches of rain from its normal of 8.31 inches. Las Vegas tied a record set in 1944 for least rain, with just a trace. Las Vegas also shattered a record set in 1959 for consecutive days with no measurable precipitation: 164. 

Phoenix had its hottest monsoon season ever, with an average temperature of 96 degrees. That was one degree above the record set in 2011. So far this year, the city has had 132 days when temperatures topped 100. Albuquerque, New Mexico had less than half the normal rain. As ABC noted, “Residents around the Southwest bemoaned what seemed like a never-ending summer. The heat and scarce rain mean people spend more time indoors, hiking trails are dusty, the risk for wildfires increases, reservoirs are less full and thirsty wildlife go in search of water.” 

Drought sets in.

 

*

 

IN OTHER NEWS, the Proud Boys are selling t-shirts with their logo and Trump’s words: “Stand Down” and “Stand By.”

 

Now I think they should add, “Stand Back, I’m about to Cough.”

You wear a mask for many reasons.

 

 

 

FUN WITH TAXES: Time magazine tracks down Sandra Diaz, a former housekeeper at Trump’s Bedminster, New Jersey golf resort. In 2011, Diaz was paid $26,792.90 for her work, with $413.14 withheld in federal income taxes.

 

This was $413.14 more than the self-confessed billionaire, Donald J. Trump paid the same year.

 

 

FUN WITH RACISM: The president knows he’s not popular with suburban voters. So he figures a dollop of racist talk might improve his chances for reelection. Speaking to a mostly white crowd in Duluth, Minn., he suggests that certain people want to “ruin the American Dream” for certain other people.

 

He wants voters to know he’s against fair housing rules, which allow low-income families to escape low-income neighborhoods. 

“By the way, just so we can get this straight, 30 percent of the people in the suburbs are low-income people. Thirty percent of the people in the suburbs are minorities. And so we’re ruining this American dream for everybody,” Trump grumbles. 

“They zone you out, they build low-income housing next to your house,” Trump added. “And then I hear I’m not doing well in the suburbs. I’m not doing well in the suburbs – are you people crazy?” 

Not really. This isn’t 1954, or 1968 anymore. And not all suburbanites in 2020 are ugly racists.

 

FUN WITH TRUMP LOVERS: Politico gathers reactions to the news that Mr. Trump has the coronavirus. There was the guy talking about god-tiered genetics, for example: 

“You’ve never seen him sick. You’ve never seen him without energy,” Brenden Dilley, a self-described “MAGA life coach,” told his viewers on his radio show Friday. “[He’s] not walking around with weak-ass, p---- f------ genetics. He ain’t got those liberal genes. These are, like, god-tier genetics; top 1-percentile genetics.”

 

And the other guy, who thought the doughball golfer in the White House really had the physical prowess of someone as young as twenty: 

Wishful thinking abounded, as well: Dr. David Samadi, a urologist and commentator for Fox News and the conservative Newsmax outlet, set the goal posts by pointing out that while Covid-19 patients over the age of 70 had a 94.6 percent recovery rate, patients ages 24 to 49 had a 99.8 percent recovery rate. “I would put POTUS in the 20-49 category due to his strength and stamina,” he tweeted.

 

And, of course, the complete and utter idiot: 

“Does anyone else find it odd that no prominent Democrats have had the virus but the list of Republicans goes on and on?” tweeted DeAnna Lorraine, a former congressional candidate who has backed baseless theories from the QAnon conspiracy movement, going on to blast masks as a Democrat-backed lie and questioning whether China had technically made an “assassination attempt” on the first family.

 

So, let’s help Ms. Lorraine with her query. Is it odd that Democrats who wear masks and stress precautions don’t get infected by a disease that can be spread by coughing and sneezing? 

Nope. 

 

FUN WITH RAND PAUL: Sen. Paul spent time recently attacking Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Senate committee hearing. He was mad at Dr. Fauci for saying we should wear masks (see above), or socially distance, or shut down schools or businesses, or limit attendance at large events. 

Paul insists that countries that have done little in the way of such safety measures, have done great. He cites Sweden, which tried for “herd immunity.”   

“If you look at the data, the countries that did very little have a lower death rate than the U.S.,” Paul, an ophthalmologist by training, insisted. “It’s important that we the people not simply acquiesce to authoritarian mandates on our behavior without first making the nanny state prove their hypothesis.” 

The senator suggested that in some states, like New York, herd immunity had been achieved. Usually, something like 70% of a population has to have been infected/ vaccinated before herd immunity can be reached. 

Dr. Fauci responds, “You are not listening to what the director of the CDC said. In New York, it’s 22 percent,” referring to state’s infection rate. “If you believe 22 percent in New York is herd immunity, you are alone in that.” 

Dr. Fauci is an unfailingly polite man, but you know he wants to call Sen. Paul a nincompoop. 

If you really want to understand the question of “herd mentality,” as Trump once called it, and can the U.S. achieve it, a good place to start would be an article in Nature magazine. Most scientists call it a “dangerous fallacy” to believe we can achieve herd immunity without catastrophic loss of life. As for Sweden, authors note that the death rate there from COVID-19 is eleven times higher than in neighboring Norway. (In Sweden: 58.12 deaths per 100,000; in Norway, 5.23.) 

“There’s no magic wand we can use here,” says Kristian Andersen, an immunologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. “We have to face reality — never before have we reached herd immunity via natural infection with a novel virus, and SARS-CoV-2 is unfortunately no different.” 

BLOGGER’S NOTE #2: In hindsight, we can still watch Sen. Paul’s rant about the nanny state and flush toilets that no longer worked. 

That was once his focus in life. 

The need to save water, however, was clear – even to the most clueless Americans – by February 2022. At that point, large swaths of the Western United States were suffering through the worst drought the region had experienced in 1,200 years. 

It might be nice, in other words, if our toilets used less water.

___

 

10/3/20: The coronavirus continues not to go away. And mask-wearing looks smarter by the hour.

 

Don’t wear one and risk an expensive trip to the hospital or a less expensive, one-way trip to the morgue. 

 

President Trump has learned the hard way that denying science doesn’t mean science isn’t true. Saturday finds him in the sick ward at Walter Reed Medical Center, while the First Lady recovers at the White House. Other members of Team Trump who are COVID-positive include: White House Babe Hope Hicks, Trump Whisperer Kellyanne Conway (whose teenage daughter is “furious” with mom for exposing their family), former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, and GOP senators Thom Tillis, Mike Lee, and Ron Johnson. Christie has checked into the hospital.

 

Also infected at various White House/Trump campaign events: University of Notre Dame President John Jenkins, RNC chair Rona McDaniel, Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, and Nicholas Luna, “body man” to Mr. Trump. Emails have gone out, ordering all White House staff to wear masks in all common areas.

 

Previously, masks were mocked. 

 

Expect more positive results in coming days. Also expect idiotic comments to multiply. One Republican hinted darkly that a plot was afoot...because only top Republicans around the president were getting sick.

 

Yet, top Democrats were safe!!!!

 

This is what happens when the man in the White House sets an anti-mask tone, whereas leading Democrats don them proudly.

 

Medical experts have been reminding us since March that masks and social distancing are key to stopping the spread of disease. If Team Trump ignored sound advice, they have no one to blame but themselves if the president dies. (See: 10/26/20 and 11/7/20 for even more positive results.)

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: Governor Christie tests positive for COVID on October 3, after spending time at the White House, where President Trump and several aides have tested positive. He ends up in the ICU unit for seven days and admits he was wrong not to wear a mask. In a book written in 2021, Christie reveals that he was worried for his survival. A priest arrived at one point and rubbed oils on his forehead in the sign of the cross, and prayed over him.

At that point, Trump was hospitalized himself. He gave Christie a call. The president, Christie would later write, had one main concern: “Are you gonna say you got it from me?” he asked. 

During an interview in December 2021, Christie said it was “undeniable” he contracted the virus from the president. After learning that White House Chief of Staff now says Trump first tested positive on September 26, Gov. Christie said it was “inexcusable” that he and others prepping the president were not warned.

“I would have worn a mask if I knew that,” Christie said. “We knew everybody in that room, except for the president, was getting tested every day. We didn’t know what the president’s testing regimen was.

“So if Mark Meadows knew that somebody that I was sitting across from for four days had popped the positive test, [he] should have told us.

“He didn’t tell us,” Christie said. “I went into the hospital in the intensive care unit. He didn’t call and tell me. So I think that’s inexcusable.”

___

 

 

10/4/20: What have we learned in the last 24 hours? For starters, we know that President Trump needed supplemental oxygen Friday. We also know, when first asked, that his doctor had refused to say his boss had been on oxygen before he was carried to Walter Reed by helicopter. 

We already knew that Team Trump tried to keep the news of Hope Hicks’s COVID-positive test secret.

 

____________________ 

I think Trump should have had crayons.

____________________ 

 

Today, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany announced that she too had tested positive. 

This is no surprise, since White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows has been reluctant to have staff members wear masks; and the president has mostly refused himself. And Trump has no idea how masks even work. (See: 10/16/20.) 

Best of all, we got to see a picture of the President of the United States, hard at work, despite his bout with the virus. Even at Walter Reed, you could not stop Trump from working to make America Great Again. In fact, someone came up with the perfect job for Donald Dimwit. A close look at a picture the White House put out appears to show Mr. Trump signing his name to a blank sheet of paper. 

I think he should have had crayons. 

We also learned that Sean Hannity was stuffed with goose poop when he said Trump won the first debate. Two new polls have Biden leading Trump nationally by +14 and +10 among registered voters. Let’s all pray for the president’s recovery, so he can watch himself lose on November 3.

 

Catholic mission to the Native Americans, Cataldo, Idaho, founded 1853.

Religion will play some role in the 2020 election, too.

 

* 

CLEARLY, what this country needs are more guns in more hands (and even more feet) if we want to be safe. 

In Mississippi, a man has been convicted of murder after wounding his brother and killing a woman, after they botched his McDonalds order. According to one witness, the shooter complained, “Bitch, you know I don’t like mayonnaise on my hamburger,” before opening fire. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Merriam-Webster reports a 30,500% spike in searches for the definition of “schadenfreude” after news leaks out that President Trump has COVID-19. That definition: “enjoyment obtained from the troubles of others.”

___

 

 

10/5/20: President Trump is out of the hospital and resting comfortably at the White House. Now he says he “gets it.” He has learned about the coronavirus. And not by reading about it in a book.

 

We assume as much. Trump is no reader.

 

____________________

 

“We should no longer fear the virus because he’s fine.”

____________________

 

 

In any case, he gets it! He has been saved. So, screw it! We can all go back to living our normal lives. And we should all vote for him in November. 

 

True, he had to spend several days in the hospital even though he has repeatedly claimed this disease is “no worse than the flu.”

 

Also, we have to ignore the fact that millions of ordinary Americans wouldn’t have health insurance if they contracted the virus. In the same situation as the president, even when they recovered, they would face financial ruin.

 

Finally, we have to pretend that the CDC did not report Monday that 209,199 Americans have died from COVID-19. 

 

See. Trump is okay! Trump gets it now. 

 

As soon as he made it back to the White House yesterday, he whipped off his mask to show what a virile stud muffin he is. Cameras caught the moment. Anyone standing nearby caught a few germs.

 

Trump doesn’t care. He has the best medical team in the world. He says we should no longer fear the virus because he’s fine. Masks? Forget it. In his mind, if he’s okay, no one needs masks.

 

“I feel better than I have in 20 years,” he boasts via Twitter. And if he’s good, in his mind, the country is good too.

 

Even the fact his evil henchman, Stephen “Lock Kids in Cages” Miller, tested positive today won’t dent the president’s thinking.

* 

 

THE PRESIDENT may be feeling better; but people who work for Regal Theaters, or own stock in the company are definitely feeling sicker. With COVID-19 still spreading, the company announced today it would be temporarily closing all 663 of its movie houses in Britain and the USA. An estimated 40,000 workers in this country will be out of work until further notice.

 

Mt. Rainier lake, clear enough to see the stones on the bottom.

___

10/6/20: President Trump might not care if Americans are still getting sick and dying in droves. He does care if he thinks his prospects for winning in November are on life support.

Today, he complained about a decision by the FDA to tighten up rules for approving any new COVID-19 vaccination. It was, he whined, “another political hit job.” This struck many rational humans as odd, since Commissioner Stephen Hahn, head of the FDA, was appointed by the Whiner-in-Chief, himself.

 

In a recent poll, respondents were asked, “Would you get a vaccination if…

 

…your doctor said it was safe?”

 

More than 6 in 10 (62%) said it was “very/somewhat likely” they would.

 

…the cost were completely covered by insurance?

 

(56% said they would.)

 

…you were paid $100 to receive the vaccine?

 

(44%)

 

And coming up in last place, eighth out of eight choices on the list,

 

…President Trump said it was safe?

 

Only 19% of Americans said they would take the Orange Buffoon’s word.

 

In fact, fresh out of the hospital, the president proves he is just as clueless as ever, and apparently incapable of learning. He knows, if the country can’t open up, he’s likely to go down to defeat in November. That means, if thousands more have to die, he’s willing. It won’t be him.

 

Like a fish taking to water, Trump took to Twitter, and with about as much brainpower. “Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu,” he tweeted. “Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!”

 

Trump is so far off you wonder if the coronavirus fried what few brain cells he ever devoted to the study of complex problems.

 

CDC says that in the last ten years, the worst flu season (2017-2018) saw 45 million Americans infected, with 61,000 deaths. We have done this before on this blog. Whereas Mr. Trump is too lazy to do even the simplest math. You don’t have to use a calculator, either. Just knock off three zeroes from 61,000 and three off 45,000,000. That means you had 61 deaths for every 45,000 persons infected.

 

That means 1 in every 736 patients died. And we all know how much Trump likes to brag. I’m surprised he didn’t brag about how he lowered the death rate in 2019-2020: only 1 death per 1,727 flu infections.

 

This virus is far more deadly.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: On October 21 the same White House Idiot will claim that his swift actions saved two million American lives.

 

Fifteen days prior, as seen above, the president is insisting that ordinary flu was, “in most populations, far more lethal” than the coronavirus. This is what we refer to as “Trump Math” at this blog. It’s mathematically impossible that both statements can be true. The claims are false on their face. Yet his fans still believe him.

 

*

 

STILL, TRUMP WILL always have Hogan Gidley! Today, the White House aide responded to a question about the president and masks. Would Trump now wear a mask regularly, Gidley was asked.

 

“This president has led on the issue at every single turn and right now is no different,” Gidley said on Fox News. “He pulled out a mask at the [most recent] debate and said, ‘Here, I have mine, I wear mine, we socially distance inside the White House.’”

 

Gidley then cast his eyes skyward, realizing lightning might strike him dead for uttering such a whopper. 

 

To get a true idea of Trump’s “leadership” on this question of masks, feel free to consult photos of the crowds at his most recent campaign rallies.

 

*

 

YOU COULD SAY the pressure is starting to get to Trump, who’s not all that stable even under ideal conditions. Joe Biden now leads nationally among voters, by an average of 9.7 points in the polls. Older voters, who went for Trump by seven points in 2016, prefer Biden by 20.

 

No doubt, much of their disgust comes from the fact that Trump keeps insisting it’s safe to go out and lead normal lives…because only geezers get sick and die from the coronavirus scourge.

 

Even Rasmussen, the poll Trump and looney Lou Dobbs love to cite, has Biden ahead by 12 points.

 

 

President Trump has another snit today and announces he will be pulling out of negotiations with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. There will be no new stimulus spending until after the election.

 

Naturally, Trump blames Democrats. He also makes it clear that as president he only likes to give money to red states. “Nancy Pelosi is asking for $2.4 Trillion Dollars to bailout poorly run, high crime, Democrat States, money that is in no way related to COVID-19,” he tweets. “We made a very generous offer of $1.6 Trillion Dollars and, as usual, she is not negotiating in good faith. I am rejecting their…request, and looking to the future of our Country.”

 

Yes. The future of our country. (See: 10/7/20.)

 

*

 

TODAY, we were treated to another dose of “Fake News,” when the president retweeted a story from a QAnon source. That source claimed the raid that killed Osama bin Laden was staged, and a “body double” was involved.

 

Former Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill, who helped kill the terrorist leader, responds with a tweet of his own: “Very brave men said [goodbye] to their kids to go kill Osama bin Laden. We were given the order by President Obama. It was not a body double. Thank you Mr. President. Happy birthday @USNavy.”

 

Add SEAL Team 6, who carried out the raid, to the men and women serving in uniform that the non-serving-bone-spurs-limping pussy in the White House has insulted in just the last four years.

 

*

 

THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY releases a report on domestic threats in this country, and “white supremacists” come in at #1 on the list.

 

If you are a Trump fan, you expected the list to read something like this:

 

#1. Antifa types

 

#2. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

 

#3. Hunter Biden

 

#4. Transgender people pee-peeing

 

 

Nope. Nope. Nope. And don’t be a dope.

 

“I am particularly concerned about white supremacist violent extremists who have been exceptionally lethal in their abhorrent, targeted attacks in recent years,” Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf writes. “I am proud of our work to prevent terrorizing tactics by domestic terrorists and violent extremists who seek to force ideological change in the United States through violence, death, and destruction.”

 

 

FUN FACT: You may recall that Trump has promised to get rid of all the bad trade deals, and slap the Chinese silly with tariffs, and wipe out our entire trade deficit with that country. According to the latest report by the Commerce Department, the U.S. trade deficit with China set a new record in August.

___

 

 

10/7/20: That didn’t last long. Yesterday, the president announced he was pulling out of negotiations for more stimulus money to prop up the U.S. economy.

 

The Dow Jones average sank four hundred points. Republican candidates running in tight races begged for mercy. Dictator Don noticed how bad his poll numbers were looking. (See: 10/6/20.)

 

Acting decisively, Dictator Don announced that the “Deep State” made him say there would be no more stimulus spending before the election. He now insists he has always dreamed of giving another check for $1,200 to every American, just in time to save him from getting evicted from the White House.

 

He is also pushing Congress to bail out the U.S. airline industry with an additional $25 billion in taxpayer-provided funding.

 

(Next time you fly you should tell attendants you own the plane, and you want free cocktails until you reach your destination, or pass out, whichever comes first.)

 

*

 

WHEN NOT FOCUSING on the stock market, the president found time to focus on political rivals, and pose a novel method to ensure he wins the election, now less than a month away. In a series of late-night tweets, Trump criticized Attorney General Bill Barr and demanded to know why former-Democratic President Barack Obama, former-Vice President and candidate-for-president Joe Biden, and former candidate Hillary Clinton weren’t all in jail.

 

Because you know, if Trump had the power, he’d jail all his opponents and critics and even comedians who mock him on television. “Where are all of the arrests?” Trump tweeted angrily. “Can you imagine if the roles were reversed? Long term sentences would have started two years ago. Shameful!”

 

In another, all-CAPS post, Trump howled at Barr: “DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN - GOT CAUGHT!!!”

 

The man residing at 1600 Pennsylvania is clearly a lunatic. 

 

___

10/8/20: There are some days, with Trump in the Oval Office, that you think the country is doomed to disaster and disgrace.

 

____________________

 

One in five could run out of cash by November.

____________________

 

 

Then there are other days when…okay…you still think the country is doomed to disaster and disgrace.

 

It’s Thursday, so the weekly jobs report is out. In the latest seven-day reporting period 1.3 million Americans filed for unemployment under traditional and pandemic-related coverage.

 

The damage continues to pile up. Experts at Credit Karma warn that 1 out of every 5 Americans will run out of cash by November. “People are going to be forced to make tough choices,” Credit Karma Chief People Officer Colleen McCreary says. “There are a lot of Americans who either haven’t been in this situation in a long time or have never had to face this reality. Many will have to sacrifice and prepare because it could get worse before it gets better.”

 

Second, we learned that the coronavirus spread is not abating. There were a few brief moments of hope in mid-September when cases fell briefly. Now we’re off to a terrible start for the month. On October 7, CDC tallied an additional 53,051 cases. Today, new cases hit 54,887.

 

The death toll is holding steady, but at an alarmingly high level: 900 dead on October 7, followed by 979 on October 8.

 

Yet, listening to right-wing talk radio today, on the final leg of a drive home from Oregon, my wife and I heard Bill Cunningham on 700 WLW out of Cincinnati, agreeing with guests who said, nah, this virus is no worse than the flu. Besides, the radio host said, he didn’t want to be a “subject” of a government, telling him what he could and could not do. Wear a mask! Don’t congregate in bars! Limited guests at weddings! Caps on how many persons can attend church!

 

Bah!!! Cunningham wanted to be free to infect you and me and get infected himself. It’s right there – in the Bill of Rights!

 

This health challenge would not be easy for any leader to meet. But the U.S. continues to pile up cases and deaths, where other nations have dramatically slowed the spread. As of now, the United States has suffered 658 deaths per million in population, according to Worldometers.

 

The top ten worst nations in the world:

 

San Marino:  1,237 per million (total deaths 42)

Peru:   1,000 per million

Belgium:  873

Andorra:  712

Spain:  704

Bolivia:  702

Brazil:  701

Chile:  690

Ecuador:  685

USA:  658

 

Several countries hard-hit at the start of the pandemic have been doing far better than the U.S., including France and Italy. Germany has lost 115 persons per million. Ireland, once tied with us in rates of death, has slowed the spread, although 368 persons per million have succumbed. South Korea has only 8 deaths per million. Finland, with its socialized medicine, has 62. Norway, another country with socialized medicine, has lost 51. Canada has had 253 deaths per million. Australia, with 35, and Japan, with only 13, put the Trump record to shame.

 

*

 

THE MORE you keep track of President Trump and his team of miscreants, the more you come away horrified by what you find.

 

Today, several hundred former judges, state and local bar leaders, and three past-presidents of the American Bar Association, promise “broad support in the legal community” for current members of the Department of Justice who wish to protest against the politicization of the DOJ, at the behest of the president and with the acquiescence of Attorney General Barr.

 

We support DOJ attorneys and personnel who stand by their oaths and the Department of Justice’s duty to do justice for the public by not participating in partisan misuse of the DOJ. They honor the rule of law, our profession, and the country as we face this crucial test for our democracy.

 

Mr. Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power – even if solely intended as another effort to discourage voters – heightens our concern about what actions the Attorney General might take that would undermine the vote and the rule of law.

 

The fact that 895 leaders in the field of American jurisprudence feel a need to warn us that democracy is at risk should tell you all you need to know before you vote.

 

In other court news, another woman, former model Amy Dorris, came forward today and alleged that Donald J. Trump once forcibly kissed and groped her at a golf tournament.

 

No one seems to have the same exact count. But Dorris is one of at least twenty-two women who have accused Mr. Trump of criminal behavior. “He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything,” she told British reporters. “I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it,” even though she told him to stop. She says she wanted to tell her story in 2016, but feared for her family. Now, she says, she was inspired by her twin daughters to give warning.

 

___

 

 

10/9/20: While my wife and I were driving across the United States, and back again, we missed several important stories.

 

____________________

 

The only law ever to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions.

____________________

 

 

We did see the Pence-Harris vice presidential debate. We thought both principals did well enough, but we were drinking wine in a motel room and couldn’t be sure. A fly landed on Vice President Pence’s head at one point, but neither of us noticed.

 

Wine, no doubt.

 

Sadly, in one recent poll, more Americans (62%) had heard about the fly than had heard about Sen. Kamala Harris’s response to a question on healthcare (60%).

 

It’s no secret that President Trump will orgasm if he can destroy Obamacare once and for all. It’s not because he cares about healthcare for Americans, whether they have it or not. It’s that he hates everything his predecessor did. Obamacare is the only law ever to protect Americans with pre-existing conditions from discrimination by insurance companies. Trump doesn’t care.

 

Many of his fans don’t even realize they’re benefitting from the law.

 

Sen. Harris was blunt. “If you have a preexisting condition, heart disease, diabetes, breast cancer, they’re coming for you,” she warned the debate audience. There’s a case already before the Supreme Court, as Republicans try to undo the law.

 

Now Trump and Mitch McConnell want to rush a confirmation vote for the seat left open by Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. They need just one more vote on the court to smash the law for good. “If you love someone who has a preexisting condition, they’re coming for you,” Harris reiterated. “If you are under the age of 26 on your parents’ coverage, they’re coming for you.”

 

In any case, I missed the fly, heard Harris, and noticed that Mr. Pence was wobbly when it came to admitting that climate change was real. Since my wife and I had just driven through thick clouds of smoke from forest fires burning in southern Wyoming, I thought he sounded clueless in that regard.

 

*

 

“Proof-point testament to climate change.”

 

IF YOU READ THIS BLOG, you realize I follow the news with maniacal zeal. For that reason, I can tell you this past September was the hottest on record. Scientists at the Copernicus Climate Change Service in Europe report that September 2020 replaces September 2019 in the top spot, and September 2016 is pushed to third. If you see a trend, you’ve got Trump and Pence beat.

 

“As we go into an even warmer world, certain extremes are likely to happen more often and be more intense,” Copernicus senior scientist Freja Vamborg noted. Think: California. Think California drying out as temperatures rise every year. Think massive forest fires. Consider what Gov. Gavin Newsom said a few days ago. One fire this year, the August Complex, has charred a million acres in his state. That’s more damage done than by all the California fires recorded from 1932 to 1999.

 

“If that’s not proof-point testament to climate change, then I don’t know what is,” he told reporters.

 

The scientists at Copernicus also warn that there will be more periods of intense rain and increasingly powerful storms, as the planet continues to warm. Think: Louisiana. That unfortunate state was battered again this week, when Hurricane Delta made landfall. It was the sixth hurricane to blast the Gulf Coast in 2020, an unenviable record for one year. Some areas had barely recovered from the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Laura which struck on August 27.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: It sounds like there will be no more presidential debates, after the two sides could not agree on changes to format for the third and fourth debates. But we should note, the president was positive that Vice President Pence won his debate against Sen. Harris. In a call to Fox Business, he warned host Maria Bartiromo that Harris not only lost, but she was a “monster.”

 

For good measure, he insisted she was also a “communist,” in case there were those among his fans who thought “monster” wasn’t sufficient reason to vote against the Biden/Harris ticket.

 

In fact, Sen. Harris is neither a monster nor a communist and polls show she won the debate, albeit narrowly.

 

Trump has also insisted that he banged on Biden like a tambourine in their first debate. Still, the president found a need to complain that the moderator was against him – and complain because someone had been messing with his microphone to make it sound like he was a boisterous boor.  

 

In terms of a winner, the polls seemed to indicate otherwise. A CBS survey found that 48% of those who watched, gave the “win” to Mr. Biden, 41% to Mr. Trump. In a second survey, only 32.9% of listeners rated Trump’s performance as “good.” The other two thirds ranked his efforts as “poor.” Biden had a “good” score of 59.7% and a “poor” score of 39.7%. A third poll found 53% of likely voters said Biden beat Trump. Only 29% felt Trump triumphed.

 

A whopping 77% agreed that the chaotic first debate, featuring 145 nutty interruptions by the President of the United States, did not make them proud to be Americans.

___ 

 

 

10/10/20: What else happened this week while my wife and I were driving home from Oregon?

 

Right-wing militia types in Michigan were arrested and charged with plotting to kidnap the governor and other state officials and attack the Michigan capital building. A group called the Wolverine Watchmen went so far as to stake out Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s family vacation home. Fortunately, the F.B.I. had a mole inside the group and the plot was thwarted.

 

In fact, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray said recently that the biggest domestic terror threat in the U.S. today was not Antifa – which Trump wants all of his supporters to believe.

 

Antifa, Wray said, was “an idea,” not even an organization.

 

The gravest danger, he told a congressional panel, was white supremacist groups like the Watchmen.

 

Naturally, Trump attacked…F.B.I. Director Wray…not the Watchmen.

 

Then he said Gov. Whitmer should be thankful for the fine work done by federal agents in exploding the plot, and she should pile credit on his head.

 

Whitmer insisted that Trump’s calls to right-wing groups like the Proud Boys, to “stand down, but stand by,” in case the vote in November went against him, his constant labeling of opponents as “traitors” and “scum,” and his less-than-subtle embrace of QAnon encouraged the nuts to come out and play.

 

With guns and bombs.

 

*

 

PRESIDENT TRUMP was toying with the guns and bombs idea too. He called in to Rush Limbaugh’s show, so he could sound tough and threaten Iran.

 

(He probably should have been reading the situation reports, instead.)

 

The two non-fighting, out-of-shape lard asses took turns talking tough for two hours. And Don offered this warning. They had better respect the good old U.S.A, with a Trump in the White House. “Iran knows that, and they’ve been put on notice: If you f**k around with us, if you do something bad to us, we are gonna do things to you that have never been done before,” he says.

 

It’s “Fire and Fury 2.0.” And Iran keeps right on doing what it was doing despite the hollow threat. They keep enhancing uranium to new high levels, now that Big Talking Don has torn up the treaty deal that we had. The more than a hundred U.S. personnel who received brain injuries in the most recent Iranian strike at their base were just thrilled to hear Trump talk tough.

___ 

 

10/11/20: What new and wacky developments are there in Trumpistan? First, a bit of good news. Sunday, another poll showed Joe Biden beating Donald Trump, nationally, in November, by 12 points.

 

An average of all polls shows Biden with a +9.8 lead.

 

At present, Biden is +3.7 in Florida, but one +11 poll looks to be an outlier. If Trump loses the state on Election Day, he’s cooked.

 

Biden can lose Florida, and win Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, which Hillary lost, and stroll into the Oval Office in January 2021. (Assuming, Secret Service agents have managed to drag Trump out.) In an average of all polls, Biden stands at +7.1 in Pennsylvania, +6.7 in Michigan, and +5.5 in Wisconsin. Trump’s chances in North Carolina are better; but Biden is at +1.4. The race is tight in a sixth battleground state, with Biden at +2.7 in Arizona.

 

Minnesota was once thought to be up for grabs if Trump ran a good race. Biden has a +9.4 lead.

 

Trump is also in danger of losing Iowa (Biden +1.2). Ohio is also nail-bitingly close, with only 22 days till the election. Biden is +0.6. Nevada may represent Trump’s best chance to take a state Hillary Clinton won in 2016; but even there, Biden is at +6. Texas should be safe for Trump, where he stands +4.4. But in Georgia, which he also has to win, his lead is a mere +0.4.

 

Several states considered “battlegrounds” in 2016, appear irrevocably lost to Mr. Trump. New Hampshire, which went narrowly for Clinton four years ago (+0.3), seems likely to go to Biden with ease, where he is +9 points. In Virginia Biden is +11. Maine is even worse, assuming you like the incumbent, with Trump standing at -12.8 in an average of all polls. Since Maine divides electoral votes, he still has a chance to pick up one. New Mexico seems solid for Biden, at +14.5.

 

RealClear Politics has only a single poll, and an old one, listed for Colorado, a battleground in 2016.

 

Biden is +10.

 

So, I do a little more checking.

 

The website FiveThirtyEight has even more polls; and they paint a similar picture. I check Colorado first, to see if there are more results, and there are. In Colorado, FiveThirtyEight (named for the total number of electoral votes available in any presidential election), Biden is +12.

 

Florida:                       Biden +4.5.

Pennsylvania:             Biden +7.3.

Michigan:                   Biden +8.

Wisconsin:                 Biden +7.2.

North Carolina:         Biden +2.9.

Arizona:                      Biden +3.9.

Minnesota:                 Biden +9.2.

Iowa:                          Biden +1.

Ohio:                          Biden +0.7.

Nevada:                      Biden +6.8.

Texas:                         Trump +1.5.

Georgia:                     Biden +0.9.

New Hampshire:       Biden +10.8.

Virginia:                     Biden +12.7.

Maine:                        Biden +15.2.

New Mexico:             Biden +14.

 

 

The news for Republicans is bad across nearly the entire board. FiveThirtyEight gives Biden a +10.4 lead. In the “Generic Ballot,” meaning which party voters want to control Congress, Democrats are at +6.9 in an average of all October surveys.

 

FiveThirtyEight also provides a ray of hope for Trump in Maine’s Second Congressional District, which he won in 2016. Since Maine divides electoral votes, he could pick up one here; but Biden still leads, narrowly, by +1.2. Biden also seems likely to steal one vote in Nebraska, where he leads in the Second Congressional District by +7.4. In fact, while only one poll has been done in Nebraska’s First Congressional District, where Trump was up only +2 in July, you had to wonder if Trump could lose even there. Two recent polls, however, seem to show Trump with an insurmountable lead in the Cornhusker State, at +15.5.

 

If you are a Trump fan, you may have heard your Orange God screaming about stolen votes in California four years ago and again in this run for reelection. Frankly, his only hope of winning the Golden State would be if it burned to the ground. He has often accused California Democrats of rigging the vote. No need to bother. Biden is favored to win 62.2% of the vote vs. 30.9% for the president.

 

(This jovial blogger has just as much chance of winning California as Mr. Trump does; and he’s not even running.)

 

Finally, if you hope to see Senate Majority Leader “Milksop” Mitch McConnell relegated to the trash heap of history, there’s hope. He’s not likely to lose his seat; but the GOP majority is teetering. Sara Gideon is +3.7 points in her race against incumbent Susan Collins. Cal Cunningham has a 5.2 point lead over Thom Tillis; but he may have thrown his chance away, after a series of text messages reveal he has been cheating on his wife. Then again, cheating on all three of his wives never hurt Trump. Mark Kelly has a +6.5 lead in Arizona, over Martha McSally. John Hickenlooper seems to have a solid +8 lead over Cory Gardner. If all four of these Republican incumbents (Collins, Tillis, McSally, and Gardner) are knocked out, and Biden is elected, Milksop Mitch suddenly finds himself in the minority – by virtue of a vice president’s ability to break tie votes. If Tillis wins…well, Mitch could rule again.

 

We know one Democratic senator, Doug Jones, who won a special election in Alabama in 2018, is likely to lose his seat. So, assuming Tillis holds on, Democrats need to knock off another incumbent Republican to be safe. Tommy Tuberville currently leads Jones by at least 12 points.

 

The bad news for those who love the GOP? RealClear Politics has Sen. Joni Ernst losing to challenger Theresa Greenfield, who stands at +4.8 in an average of polls. Gary Peters, a Democratic incumbent seems relatively safe in Michigan, at +4.8, although his race had been thought a difficult one. Sen. Diane Feinstein has a double-digit lead in California, even though at 87 years of age, she should probably step down rather than seek another six-year term.

 

Most senators up for reelection are popular in their states and almost certainly safe. But Republicans have several seats they might have to worry about. David Perdue may hold off Democratic challenger Jon Ossoff in Georgia, but polls appear to be tightening, with Perdue up 2.8 points. Rev. Raphael Warnock, another Georgia Democrat, is involved in a special election. He hopes to unhorse Kelly Loeffler, Georgia’s other GOP senator. Loeffler was appointed to fill a seat left open by illness, but has generally managed to make herself unpopular. Warnock must finish first or second in a divided field, with two Republicans vying for the seat, including Rep. Doug Collins, a man who has been an attack dog for Trump. Currently, Warnock sits in a solid first place; but unless he wins at least 50% of the vote, he’d face a runoff election later this year. For now he sits at +6.2 over his nearest rival.

 

Sparse polling in Alaska, since September, has the Republican, Dan Sullivan up 2.5 points over challenger Al Gross.

 

Barbara Bollier, a Kansas Democrat, seems to be making a run in a race against Republican Roger Marshall. One recent poll has her holding a +3.5 point lead. A second shows Marshall up +4. Kansas generally votes Republican, and not many people are ready to bet the sunflower patch on a Bollier win.

Kansas normally votes red.

 

Steve Bullock, former governor of Montana, appears to have a chance to take a senate seat away from the GOP, but his poll numbers are weakening. The Republican candidate, Steve Daines, will likely hang on for a win. His lead is +2.7.

 

In the most surprising development, what once seemed a safe seat for Sen. Lindsey Graham in South Carolina, is looking far from safe. All eight surveys taken in September or October show a tight race. When averaged, Graham is up +0.1 point over Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison.

 

So, to sum up: Democrats have good leads in five races against Republican incumbents (Collins, McSally, Gardner, Tillis, and Ernst) If they win four seats and hold all of their own, they take the Senate. If one of those five Republicans holds on to win, and Doug Jones loses, Democrats still take the gavel from Milksop Mitch. If Tillis and Collins, or Tillis and Ernst hold on, and Jones loses – and Biden wins – Democrats still win the Senate, because a 50-50 split would mean VP Kamala Harris would break tie votes. (This paragraph even confuses Mr. Blogger; but it’s correct.)

 

Republicans have a chance to unseat Sen. Peters in Michigan, but not a particularly strong one.

 

Democrats have a chance to knock off incumbent Sen. Graham and possibly defeat Marshall and Daines.

 

As far as Republicans recapturing the U.S. House of Representatives, this hard-working blogger would put their chances at zero.

___

10/12/20: If you haven’t noticed, on November 3, voters in four states will decide whether or not to legalize weed for personal use. Those states are Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota.

 

Voters in Mississippi and South Dakota (again) will have a chance to okay marijuana for medicinal purposes. 

Don’t ever say the vote doesn’t matter.

Legalize weed?

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (3/31/2022): Looking back, we know voters gave recreational use of marijuana the green light in Arizona, Montana, New Jersey, and South Dakota. The amendment to the South Dakota Constitution, which legalized recreational use of weed was struck down, on a technicality, by a 4-1 vote of the South Dakota Supreme Court. 

On February 23, 2022, the South Dakota Senate passed a bill, by an 18-17 vote, to legalize recreational use. 

Five days later, the South Dakota House of Representatives blocked the measure. So South Dakotans will have to wait to get high legally.

___ 

 

10/13/20: This blogger has been too busy to follow the confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett. 

She’s going to be confirmed by Mitch McConnell and the Republicans, no matter what she says or does or says. If she showed up naked for her hearing, and admitted, “Bitches, if you put me on the U.S. Supreme Court, I promise I will end abortion rights faster than you can say, ‘Roe v. Wade,’ and we will kill the Affordable Care Act before lunchtime,” she’d still get the votes. 

Judge Barrett may be quite talented; but I will have to sort out her story later. It’s like the Black Lives Matter saga. 

Too big to deal with for now. Historians will judge.

___ 

 

10/14/20: We know the president has been spooked by recent polls, showing him trailing Joe Biden.

 

____________________ 

A trillion trees and a problem Trump says doesn’t exist.

____________________ 

 

Tuesday, he signed an executive order – to set up an interagency board – to move forward with an environmental project that does not involve gutting clean air and water protections, drilling for oil in pristine wilderness, or attempting to hold back time by propping up the flagging coal industry. Essentially, Trump is hoping to stick a fig leaf over his anti-environmental nuts. Some months back, he reluctantly said he might participate in the One Trillion Tree Initiative. This program was announced at the World Economic Forum earlier this year and is intended to combat climate change 

Which, according to Trump, isn’t real. 

It’s a transparent move. The president doesn’t care about the environment. He’s only out to bamboozle undecided voters, who might not watch or listen to much news, but do vaguely care about a livable planet. His campaign is also hoping to pick up votes from citizens who have just awakened from comas after four years. Because no one who has been following even fragmentary news can think that Trump is not the worst president in history for the environment. 

The idea behind this Initiative is for governments of the world to plant a trillion trees in the coming decade. That is: to reforest the earth and start sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Most world leaders realize we need to act before it’s too late and the planet heats like a kiln. 

Which, again, Trump has said for four years is not happening.

 

* 

ALSO NOT HAPPENING, gaining control of the spreading coronavirus. We are, to be fair, not the only country having trouble. We are, however, one of the countries doing the worst. 

According to the Centers for Disease Control – which government agency Trump fans no longer believe – new cases are still trending high: 

October 8:     54,887

October 9:     58,302

October 10:   53,363

October 11:   46,069

October 12:   46,614

October 13:   47,459

October 14:   59,761

 

Meanwhile, the president is off to the races, holding super-spreader pep rallies in an attempt to rally the faithful and garner a second term. Then he can screw up democracy and get a third term, and later crown his oldest son King Donald Jr. I.

 

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci, once the voice of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, has been shunted aside and trampled. First, he complained because the Trump 2020 campaign had used his words in a misleading advertisement. He called the decision of the campaign to use a statement he made (but in a way designed to trick voters) “really unfortunate and really disappointing.” That was a polite way of saying the campaign was lying.

 

In an interview with CNN, Fauci made it plain that he has never been “a political person.” Still, the short phrase used in the ad: “I can’t imagine that anyone…could be doing more,” was not his true assessment of the president’s handling of this crisis. “And I have never – either directly or indirectly – endorsed a political candidate,” he says now. “And to take a completely out of context statement and put it in which is obviously a political campaign ad, I thought was really very disappointing.”

 

We know Dr. Fauci said just this week that Trump’s decision to start holding campaign rallies again, where the faithful almost universally refuse to wear masks and social distancing is impossible, was “asking for trouble.”

 

Yet, there was Trump, in Florida on Monday, boasting to a crowd and telling them all how “powerful” he felt, after recovering from COVID-19. Good for him. Irrelevant for the rest of us.

 

The virus continues to spread and by his words and deeds he undercuts our best hopes for gaining control. Tuesday night a group of a dozen or so young people, doubtless fans of the president, invaded a Ft. Lauderdale Target store. Marching proudly and stupidly down an aisle, they shouted, “Take your masks off!” and, “We’re not going to take it anymore.”

 

“We’re not in Saudi Arabia,” one geography expert was heard to shout, potentially spreading germs in all directions.

 

*

 

“Wait for my orders.”

 

WHAT ELSE should we worry about, besides idiots surrounding us while we shop for LOL dolls with our granddaughter at Target?

 

We also have video of a member of the Proud Boys, at a recent Trump rally in Staten Island, New York. The “Boy” tells an interviewer that if Trump is not reelected, he and his crew are ready for “civil war.” (I am hoping he doesn’t take the results of school board elections with the same degree of seriousness.)

 

He and his combat-ready wannabes don’t want to “start” the shooting, but he assures his questioner, “We’re like the Marines, we’re the first to come in.”

 

Asked how he interpreted the president’s statement during his debate with Joe Biden, to “stand back, but stand by,” he replies that he and his pals also take orders from “Q,” of QAnon fame. He said Trump was telling them to “wait for my orders. And that’s exactly what we’re waiting for.”

 

“If Trump doesn’t get reelected, there’s going to be a riot. If he doesn’t get elected, this is when you’re going to see a civil war. My recommendations to anyone stock up on ammo, get your guns.”

 

Like the Marines at Iwo Jima!

 

Assuming you were attacking fellow citizens for voting in a way you didn’t like, and not the Japanese on Mt. Suribachi.

 

*

 

WE ALSO LEARN that the Wolverine Watchmen, a right-wing extremist group that was planning to kidnap the governor of Michigan, had eyeballs on Gov. Ralph Northam of Virginia.

 

That means it’s time to check Trump’s Twitter feed. As expected, a word-search turns up 49 mentions of Antifa. Trump hates Antifa and blames them for all kinds of riots and even murders that local police say are not their handiwork. He even suggested that celebrating Lakers fans – and these people are chuckleheads – who threw bottles at police cars after LeBron James led the team to its first championship in a decade – were Black Lives Matter and Antifa people.

 

One “murder” in Denver, cited by Trump as Antifa’s work, seems, as far as an article in the Denver Post indicates, not to have anything to do with the group and may even have been a matter of self-defense.

 

As for Lakers supporters rioting, you can look at a few clips and see if you think it was anything but inebriated fans acting like fools. In one clip you can hear them chanting, “Kobe, Kobe, Kobe,” in memory of the late Lakers great. Another shows a man, dressed as one of the Mario Brothers, on a go-kart with a team pennant, zooming down the street. In other clips police cars back up to give revelers room…and then more cruisers show up and the fans disperse.

 

Regardless, we know the F.B.I. has clearly stated that right-wing extremists are the greatest domestic terror threat at this time.

 

Let’s check Trump’s Twitter feed again to be sure. There are two mentions of “right-wing extremists,” both retweets. One seems to indicate that the president is commending them; but it’s not clear. In a second retweet both right- and left-wing extremists are mentioned equally but what Trump really seems to like about the tweet is a chance to bash the mayor of Portland.

 

In a sense, you can “read the president’s mind” if you have the fortitude to follow him on Twitter.

 

On Monday, for example, he tweeted a film clip of protesters tearing down statues in Portland, and yowled, “These are Biden fools. ANTIFA RADICALS. Get them FBI, and get them now!”

 

Then a second yowl: “The FBI and Law Enforcement must focus their energy on ANTIFA and the Radical Left, those who have spent the summer trying to burn down poorly run Democrat Cities throughout the USA!”

 

I keep checking. “Proud Boys?” No mention. “Wolverine Watchmen?” No. The plot to kidnap Gov. Northam? Nada.

 

We’ve also said this many times before. Trump tweets and retweets a lot! Yesterday he pounded away at the buttons on his iPhone 95 times. Almost half of those tweets came before six a.m. Highlights included a dehumanizing retweet referring to the mayor of Denver as a “DemocRat.” There’s a false claim that Biden has promised to “abolish fracking.” There’s an absurd claim about how Trump will protect Americans with “pre-existing conditions” while Biden and the Democrats won’t. You have to be impervious to facts to believe that. Trump also attacked members of the free press, describing them as “very bad (and sick!) people.”

 

He retweeted a claim saying, “Barack Obama was the most corrupt President in US history,” and, most bizarrely of all, another claiming, “Biden and Obama may have had Seal Team 6 killed!”

 

Even by the normally low standards for conspiracy theories, this particular theory is lunacy.

___

 

 

10/15/20: The president’s economic “rocket ship” recovery has blown up on the launch pad.

 

____________________

 

“Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed ‘opinion leaders’ and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.”

 

The New England Journal of Medicine

____________________

 

 

The unemployment figures for the latest reporting period are grim. Initial claims this week were 898,000, an increase of 53,000 over the last reporting period. Last week’s numbers were revised slightly upward.

 

*

 

UNFORTUNATELY, the economy cannot recover fully until we get the virus under control. And the advice coming out of the White House seems to indicate that while the inmates are not running the asylum, which is good, no one is running the asylum. Which is bad.

 

According to President Trump, “we’re doing fine” in the battle to vanquish COVID-19. Lately, he has been suggesting that we simply open up everything, let everyone get infected, until we achieve “herd immunity,” and then survivors live happily ever after. Dr. Fauci has called the idea “ridiculous,” and “total nonsense.” Fauci also told CNN that with cases rising in 40 states it was time to “jolt the American public into a realization that we really can’t let this happen, because it’s on a trajectory of getting worse and worse.” (See: 11/5/20.)

 

Here’s how the latest Trump “plan” would work. When son Barron became infected, mom and dad would have sent him off to school regardless. If he hacked up a glob during first period, and his Algebra teacher caught COVID-19 and died, but all his classmates were exposed and developed only minor symptoms, well…success…one step closer to herd immunity!

 

The First Lady, who had contracted the virus, would still go over to see her parents. They would be exposed. So would any agents who traveled with her for her protection. They could stop at Starbucks for lattes and pass a few germs on to the baristas. Everyone is exposed and gets the virus and if they don’t get really sick or die…again...success! If Melania’s parents die, well, they lived long and fruitful lives! Viktor Knavs, her father, is 76. Her mother, Amilija, is 75. We know the president has stressed that most people who die are old.

 

So, no sweat.

 

Dr. Fauci isn’t the only health expert or scientist to call out the president for mishandling the crisis. He is merely the politest. The editor of Science magazine blasted Mr. Trump in an article titled “Trump Lied about Science.” The editors of Nature magazine decided to break tradition and endorse Biden for president. The most evocative line comes from the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine. Editors sum up the handiwork of Donald J. Trump this way: “Instead of relying on expertise, the administration has turned to uninformed ‘opinion leaders’ and charlatans who obscure the truth and facilitate the promulgation of outright lies.” 

 

The Journal almost never joins the political fray, but the experts have watched this president mishandle the pandemic, and have come away in shock and disgust:

 

Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences. Our leaders have largely claimed immunity for their actions. But this election gives us the power to render judgment. Reasonable people will certainly disagree about the many political positions taken by candidates. But truth is neither liberal nor conservative. When it comes to the response to the largest public health crisis of our time, our current political leaders have demonstrated that they are dangerously incompetent. We should not abet them and enable the deaths of thousands more Americans by allowing them to keep their jobs.

 

The editors add that the current administration has “taken a crisis and turned it into a tragedy.”

Trump has been getting COVID advice from Mike Lindell, the MyPillow guy.

 

 

So, where do we stand today? Trump has thrown Dr. Fauci under the bus, claiming he’s been a “Democrat” all his life. Dr. Deborah Birx, another expert on the White House Coronavirus Task Force, has been banished to the hinterlands. Young Barron Trump has recovered. That, at least, is good. The AMC movie chain is not recovering and faces bankruptcy. No one seems anxious to go into a dark place and eat buttered popcorn, while surrounded by strangers, who might have the bug. The U.S. airline industry is crippled. Passenger traffic was down 70% in August. Nick Saban, head coach of the University of Alabama football team, has caught the virus and been flagged by referees to spend two weeks in quarantine.

 

Florida Gators coach Dan Mullin called for 90,000 fans to “pack The Swamp,” as the university calls its football stadium, for a game with Louisiana State. Now, with the virus spreading among players and coaches from both teams, the game is canceled. Mullin, himself, soon tested positive.

 

The NFL has had to postpone several games and attendance has been drastically curtailed, if allowed. Billions have been lost to local economies.

 

Congress can’t agree on a second stimulus plan and Trump can’t convince his cult followers to take the simplest steps to halt the spread.

 

First, put on masks.

 

Second, social distancing. When possible, keep six feet away from people you love, and people you don’t. Don’t go to large gatherings if you can help it.

 

Wash your hands. 

None of this is hard to grasp. We all want the country to recover, even if we don’t agree on who should be running it once it does. We are currently averaging 52,000 new cases per day. “This is a very ominous sign. I think we’re in for a pretty bad fall and winter,” Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and dean of tropical medicine at the Baylor College of Medicine, tells reporters. 

“This is the time when we could be entering one of the worst periods of our epidemic and one of our worst periods in modern American public health,” he said. “I’m very worried for the nation.”

___

 

 

10/16/20: Today, let’s dig around in the garbage can that is the Trump administration and see what coffee grounds, moldy melon rinds, and soiled diapers of policy and behavior we discover.

 

____________________

 

“He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”

 

Former White House Chief of Staff, Gen. John Kelly

____________________

 

 

According to CNN, former White House Chief of Staff Gen. John Kelly has been telling friends what he really thinks of his old boss. “The depths of his dishonesty is just astounding to me,” Kelly has said. “The dishonesty, the transactional nature of every relationship, though it’s more pathetic than anything else. He is the most flawed person I have ever met in my life.”

 

Sen Ben Sasse (R-NE) is no more a fan of this president than Gen. Kelly. In a campaign call this week, a constituent asked why he had at times been critical of Mr. Trump. Sasse decided to unload. He said the man in the Oval Office “kisses dictator’s butts” and “sells out [our] allies.” He warned that the Republican Party could be facing a “blue tsunami” in the coming election.

 

Sasse wondered rhetorically why the GOP had signed on for four years of Donald Trump. “What the heck were any of us thinking that selling a TV-obsessed narcissistic individual to the American people was a good idea?” The president, he continued, “mocks evangelicals behind closed doors,” mistreats women and totally mishandled the coronavirus crisis. Trump spent federal dollars “like a drunken sailor” and “flirted with white supremacists.”

 

Sasse added that the American people were tired of the president’s “stupid political obsessions,” his “rage tweeting” and the fact “his family has treated the presidency like a business opportunity.”

 

Even Caroline Rose Giuliani, Rudy’s daughter gets involved. She has always been reluctant to advance herself based on her last name. Now she announces, “I’m Rudy Giuliani’s daughter,” and she’s voting for Joe Biden.

 

Why speak out?

 

“I’ve come to realize that none of us can afford to be silent right now,” she says. This public break with her father pains her, but she believes she has no choice. “I may not be able to change my father’s mind,” she adds, “but together, we can vote this toxic administration out of office.”

 

*

 

Crowd-surfing at a Trump rally!

 

AND WE STILL can’t get a grip on the coronavirus. On October 15, the U.S. had 63,486 new cases, the worst one-day total in months. Another 892 Americans died.

 

If it’s possible, Mr. Trump is even more delusional since recovering from his own bout of COVID-19. At another rally this week, he told fans, “The light at the end of the tunnel is near. We are rounding the turn,” on the disease.

 

One might have thought, considering his unfortunate battle with bone spurs during the Vietnam War, that he would have steered clear of such imagery. In the 60s, politicians and generals kept assuring us that they could see a light at the end of a different tunnel; and we just had to believe them, and we would soon win that war. It turned out that no one could ever drill through the last mile of rock in the Vietnamese mountain and achieve victory. And so, our side lost.

 

“Don’t listen to the cynics and angry partisans and pessimists,” Trump told a cheering throng. He had this under control; and we should elect him again, to run up an even higher body count in a second term.

 

To get a sense of the seriousness with which Trump fans are taking all the “mask wearing” and “social distancing” warnings, consider the case of Vernon Jones. Friday night the Georgia state lawmaker decided to go crowd-surfing at a Trump rally. Jones, a renegade Democrat – and your side is welcome to him – didn’t wear a mask. As for social distancing? Yeah, crowd surfing.

 

 

*

 

IN BUSINESS NEWS, this was a tough week for the giants of capitalism who run Pilgrim’s Pride. In a plea deal with the feds, executives agreed to admit they participated in a price-fixing conspiracy involving chicken breasts, thighs, drumsticks, and wings. The company will “fork over” (cheap pun) $110.5 million to settle the case and make up for the fact they were ripping off consumers.

 

Then again, it could have been worse. No executives will be going to jail, unlike, say, an ordinary black teenager, who was sentenced to five years in prison after he stole a pair of tennis shoes worth $180. He did have a gun, so he was charged with armed robbery.

 

The moral of this story: If you want to rob people, don’t bring a gun, bring some business acumen.

 

* 

SPEAKING OF GUNS, the U.S. economy may be staggering along. But with all the current talk of “civil war” among Trump supporters, should he be defeated at the ballot box, and all the calming words offered by Mr. Trump regarding the coming “rigged” election, two areas of business are booming. First, gun sales have skyrocketed. In June, a record 3.9 million background checks were conducted. That would be the most in a single month since the system was created in 1998. 

Second highest month: March 2020. 

Alcohol consumption has also risen steeply during the pandemic. Americans report that they are drinking more days per week (this blogger is up to eight), and drinking to excess more frequently (defined as five drinks for a man or four for a woman in the course of a few hours). According to a report by ABC, “Heavy drinking among women especially has soared.” In a May survey of businesses, alcohol sales were 34.2% higher versus the same period in 2019.

 

* 

CONFIRMATION HEARINGS for Judge Amy Coney Barrett wrapped up Friday, with Republican senators expressing undying love for the nominee. Yet, when Mr. Trump was asked during his town hall meeting on Wednesday if he hoped Barrett would be the deciding vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, he dodged answering like a coward dodging the draft, claiming tender feet. 

He said he had no idea how she might vote on the matter and didn’t want to know. He said he hadn’t asked, because that would be unethical and wrong and violate all his cherished standards. 

Barrett, herself, pretty much told senators she had no opinions on any cases that might come before her, should she be elevated to the highest court in the land. 

If she had been asked, “Would you agree, if you were seated on the Supreme Court, to allow cannibalism, if someone said it was essential to their religious ceremonies?” she would have demurred. She said, again and again and again, that she could not respond to questions about hypothetical cases. 

She did, however, venture an uneducated guess when pressed about her stance on climate change. At first, Judge Barrett said she really hadn’t studied the issue and could not offer an opinion. 

Sen. Kamala Harris, questioning her from COVID-19 quarantine, pressed her to give some sort of answer, posing several simple questions. Did she believe smoking caused cancer, for instance? Barrett did. Did she think the coronavirus was contagious? Barrett agreed it was. Then: Did the judge believe climate change was really happening, and was human activity the cause? 

Barrett, whose father is an oil executive, responded, “You asked me uncontroversial questions, like Covid-19 being infectious or if smoking causes cancer” to elicit “an opinion from me on a very contentious matter of public debate,” climate change. “I will not do that,” she added. “I will not express a view on a matter of public policy, especially one that is politically controversial.” 

On that note, 

 

A few examples from this week. 

Scientists in Australia say more than half the corals in the Great Barrier Reef have been killed since 1995. The culprit: hotter oceans, a direct result of climate change. 

The reef covers 133,000 square miles and can be seen from space. Now the whole reef may be dying. 

Protesters in Mexico have taken over the La Boquilla Dam on the Conchos River, a hundred miles south of the U.S. border. Under existing treaties, Mexico and the United States commit to sharing water from several rivers. Now, climate change means a hotter, drier region and less water on both sides of the border. Farmers in the State of Chihuahua fear that if they send water to Texas, they won’t have enough to raise their crops next season. 

According to Christopher Scott, a professor of water resources policy at the University of Arizona, tensions between the neighboring nations were already high. Now, “they’re just made so much worse by climate change.” The farmers in Mexico, he explained, “are in a fight for their lives, because no water, no agriculture; no agriculture, no rural communities.” 

The Cameron Peak Fire in Colorado has exploded and burned through 158,000 acres. That makes it the largest wildfire in state history. The Pine Gulch Fire, which was finally contained only last month, was the largest fire in the state until now, having burned through 139,000 acres of tinder-dry forest. That would be 464 square miles of America, gone up in smoke. 

Massive fires in California have reduced 4.1 million acres of the Golden State to blackened wasteland. That’s by far the largest area burned in any single year. Five of the six largest fires in state history have raged in 2020. The total area burned would be equal to 6,406 square miles, equivalent to torching Connecticut. 

Hotter, drier weather – climate change, in short – is turning the Western United States into a tinder box. 

Friday morning, regardless, President Trump denied a request from California for federal disaster funds because… 

...he’s a super-sized asshole. 

Like so many other decisions by the President of the United States, this one is quickly overturned by the mercurial man in the Oval Office. Facing blowback from people capable of human emotion and Republican lawmakers in Congress, Trump agrees Friday afternoon to release disaster relief funds.

Forest fires leave a haze of smoke over Wyoming:
4:30 p.m. near Rawlins.
Much of the West is bruning.

 

* 

Trump goes golfing with a kleptocrat. 

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION may soon be able to add another felon to the Wall of Dishonor. 

Former Republican National Committee deputy finance chair and presidential pal Elliott Broidy has been charged with conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Broidy hoped to finagle favorable treatment from the federal government for a variety of sleazy characters. One was Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak. (Razak has since been ousted from office, tried for embezzlement, and sent to prison after he and his cronies masterminded a massive fraud and got away, temporarily, with an estimated $4.5 billion that belonged to the Malaysian people.) Broidy’s efforts included setting up a round of golf between Razak and the president at Trump’s private club in Bedminster, N.J. Later, he tried to help gain protection for Razak’s accomplice, and current fugitive from justice, Jho Low. 

Broidy  (see below) was also involved in efforts to help the Chinese communist government get its mitts on a mysterious Chinese billionaire named Guo Wengui, at the time living in the United States. Broidy enlisted former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates in this effort. Prosecutors say Gates was paid $25,000 monthly for his work. (Gates has long been cooperating with investigators.) 

 

With Broidy, of course, the weird connections spread in all directions. When former Trump adviser Steve Bannon was arrested this summer, he was enjoying himself aboard Guo’s 151-ft. yacht, Lady May. Before that, Broidy reportedly impregnated a Playboy Bunny. Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer, helped arrange a $1.6 million payoff to keep the Bunny from spilling her story. And, of course, the Bunny went on to have an abortion. Broidy was also known for his “fine work” in tandem with George Nader. In 2018 the pair pushed President Trump to meet with the leader of the United Arab Emirates, who, along with the leaders of Saudi Arabia, hoped to convince the U.S. to take a strong stance against rival Qatar.Nader, who served as an adviser to the president during his first run for office, has also had his name added to the Wall of Dishonor. In his case, he plead guilty recently to a charge of child sex-trafficking. 

So, in just one story about Team Trump, we have: 

Bannon: charged with embezzlement. 

Broidy: now indicted. 

Cohen: pled guilty to nine felonies, two of which he committed at the urging of “Individual 1,” an unindicted co-conspirator. 

Gates: pled guilty to multiple felonies; became a cooperating witness in the Mueller investigation. 

Low: indicted on multiple charges; fugitive from justice. 

Nader: serving ten years in prison. 

Razak: found guilty of fraud and sentenced to pay a fine of $50 million and spend twelve years behind bars. 

– and – 

President Donald J. Trump: a.k.a. “Individual 1” in the Cohen indictment.

Nader (left), Buffoon (right).

 

POSTSCRIPT: No day is complete without the President of the United States making some absurd statement. Yesterday, during an evening town hall meeting on NBC, Trump cited a study by CDC that he claimed warned of the dangers of mask-wearing in a time of COVID-19. In fact, “just the other day, they came out with a statement that 85% of the people that wear masks, catch it.” 

Terrifying, if true. 

But…not true. 

The dummkopf president made the same claim during a morning appearance on Fox News, and again during a packed afternoon rally in Greenville, N.C. No one at either Fox or attending the rally saw the illogic in Trump’s claim; but on NBC, moderator Savannah Guthrie fact-checked the president as soon as the last crazy syllable spilled from his lips. 

“They didn’t say that,” she responded. “I know that study.” 

“Well, that’s what I heard. And that’s what I saw,” Trump replied defiantly. 

That meant today, CDC was forced to clarify the matter again – and basically explain that the boss had no clue. Even Trump’s former head of the FDA, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, felt the need to speak up. 

On CNBC, he explained: 

Masks are not a panacea, but they’re going to afford you a level of protection. In an environment where the alternative is having a raging epidemic that’s going to force some kind of economic dislocation, I’d rather try to get everyone in masks and I’d rather try to get them in high-quality masks because we know it’s going to slow down the transmission. It’s going to have an impact.

 

So, once again, where the pandemic is concerned, the president does more harm in a typical day than good. 

And that wasn’t the only lowlight of the evening, courtesy of the President of the United States. Guthrie also challenged him on the accuracy of a retweet he issued on Wednesday. In the original tweet, from a QAnon account, a novel conspiracy theory had been advanced. Supposedly, Joe Biden was behind a plot to take out the group of Navy SEALs who killed Osama bin Laden – despite the fact that every Navy SEAL involved in the bin Laden raid is still alive. 

Trump didn’t bother to defend the accuracy of the claim. He only suggested to Guthrie that because he read it on the internet it might be true! He called the original tweet “an opinion of somebody and that was a retweet. I’ll put it out there. People can decide for themselves. I don’t take a position.” 

Yeah, I’m just the president, putting out nonsense, and if my supporters fall for it, what are you gonna’ do?

___

 

 

10/17/20: With only seventeen days remaining till the election, you have wonder what kind of people believe Trump deserves a second term. 

Yesterday, at a rally in Michigan, the president stirred the hate again, pouring out vitriol on the governor of that state.

 

____________________ 

“It may be legal for the president to make those requests, but it is not legal for the attorney general to act on them.” 

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein

____________________ 

 

According to Mr. Trump, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s “crimes” included keeping schools closed during the pandemic, limiting seating in restaurants, and mandating masks to stop the spread of disease. But had Trump forgotten he had already stirred up groups like the Wolverine Watchmen and the Proud Boys (and even neo-Nazis) with this very same brand of hate? A plot hatched by the Watchmen, to kidnap and kill Whitmer, had been foiled by the F.B.I. just days before. In one text message, an alleged conspirator suggested an easy way to dispose of the governor. “Have one person go to her house, knock on the door and when she answers it just cap her.” 

Now these same groups are planning to show up armed and ready at polling places on November 3. It’s telling, of course, that neo-Nazi groups would also be rallying to the Trumpian cause. 

So, there was Trump, as warped a human being as ever graced the Oval Office, stirring fans to chant, “Lock her up! Lock her up!” in reference to the governor. It was the sound of fascism birthing in America. Trump told supporters his White House predecessor, his opponent in 2016, and his foe on November 3, should all be lodged behind bars. 

If you don’t realize how dangerous this man is, I’m not sure you can call yourself a good American. You certainly can’t call yourself an informed one. Recently, Trump attacked his own pick to head the F.B.I. Then he attacked his own pick to head the Department of Justice. Then he attacked former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Trump was furious to learn that a DOJ report on the roots of the Russia investigation would not be ready before the election. He had been counting on all of the men and women who had anything to do with looking into contacts between his campaign and Russians in 2016, to end up being indicted. 

As for what Trump wanted from an investigation, frustration with his party makes it clear. “The Republicans, they don’t play the tough game,” Trump assured Rush Limbaugh during a call to his show. “If this were the other side you would have had 25 people in jail for the rest of their lives with what they found.” 

Trump was obviously projecting. In accusing Democrats of a desire to lock up 25 people for “the rest of their lives,” he was tipping his orange hand. It was what he’d do if he had the power. Other Republicans, he groaned, didn’t want to “upset the apple cart.” They “don’t play it the same way [as the Democrats], it’s very disappointing.” 

Yes, what fun it would be if Trump could simply lock up 25 of his opponents and do it for life. 

Trump appeared next on Fox News to try out his proto-fascist line. “Unless Bill Barr indicts these people for crimes, the greatest political crime in the history of our country, then we’re going to get little satisfaction,” he grumbled. “This was the greatest political crime in the history of our country, and that includes Obama, and it includes Biden. These are people that spied on my campaign.”

 

* 

ANOTHER INVESTIGATION, into supposedly “unusual” requests by Obama officials in 2016-2017, to “unmask” a Trump adviser who was meeting with Russians, also came up empty this week. 

That adviser, Gen. Michael T. Flynn, was indeed meeting with Russians. And we’ve repeatedly listed all the Trump advisers who met with Russians during his first run for office. That list again: Michael Cohen, Flynn, Rick Gates, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, George Nader, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Felix Sater, Roger Stone, and Donald Trump Jr. 

 

“They’re guilty as hell.” 

You might even say that Trump summed up his theory of how the rule of law works this week. If you’re not able to see the danger, you probably need to read more about people like Robert Mugabe and Vladimir Putin. “Personally, I think it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. It’s a disgrace,” Trump said in one interview. He didn’t care what investigators found. “Personally,” he wanted his political opponents to pay. “They’re guilty as hell,” he told a reporter. 

No trial required. 

This simple blogger was not the only observer to sniff out danger in Trump’s words. “Many of us have criticized President Trump for these reckless comments,” said Jonathan Turley, a legal scholar at George Washington University. And before Trump fans start imagining Turley is a cog in the “Deep State” machine, they might think back. He was the only legal scholar called to testify during hearings in the U.S. House of Representatives, who argued that what Trump had suggested in his call to the President of Ukraine was not grounds for impeachment. Now, Turley was definitely worried. The president’s demands for retribution, “undermine not just the Justice Department but his administration.” 

Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was even more blunt. “The Department of Justice will ignore the president’s remarks about indicting political opponents just as the department has always done in the past,” he said. 

“It may be legal for the president to make those requests, but it is not legal for the attorney general to act on them.”

___ 

 

10/18/20: President Trump announced that Sunday would mark the start of “Character Counts Week.” 

Really. 

This is not a parody. 

If you’re an elementary school teacher, you can find ideas online to celebrate the “Six Pillars of Character.” You can do readings related to character too. For example: Is There Really a Human Race? You can look up what the pillars are, and discuss one each day in class. 

As a middle school or high school teacher, perhaps you could ask students to write an essay, “How Does President Trump Exemplify the Six Pillars of Character?” I think that might be fun. 

 

 

* 

“Inspiring and incentivizing and inciting…domestic terrorism.” 

One person who might argue that the president has zero pillars of character, would be Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. Having heard Trump stir a crowd on Saturday to lock her up, she was rightly upset. “It’s incredibly disturbing,” she said on Meet the Press Sunday, “that the president of the United States, ten days after a plot to kidnap, put me on trial and execute me – ten days after that was uncovered – the president is at it again and inspiring and incentivizing and inciting this kind of domestic terrorism.” 

If you follow the news closely, you might understand why Whitmer was spooked. In a separate but similar incident, Meredith Dowty, a retired firefighter in Wichita, Kansas, heard the president’s siren song. 

Dowty is alleged to have hatched a plan to fight “masks and tyranny” by kidnapping Mayor Brandon Whipple. 

Having seen some of the threatening messages Dowty allegedly sent, the mayor summed up his foe’s plan: “He said he was going to kidnap me and slash my throat and he needed my address because I needed to see the hangman – me and everyone who…” Whipple trailed off. 

“Something about tyranny.” 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Mr. Trump had a busy weekend campaigning and burnishing his fascist cred. On Friday, he told a Florida crowd that Rep. Ilhan Omar, another nemesis, had entered the country illegally at age 12, as a refugee. In an effort to stir the hate, he attacked her Muslim faith, saying – with zero proof – that she “married her brother or something [emphasis added].” 

At a rally in Wisconsin he brought her up again. He beamed, like Mussolini, when the crowd began chanting, “Lock her up! Lock her up!” 

Call me old-fashioned, I guess. Before we lock anyone up, I would prefer we observe all the protections guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, regarding the accused. (See: Amendments IV, VI, VII, VIII and XIV.)

___

 

 

10/19/20: Fifteen days till the election and we still suck as a nation in how we’re dealing with the virus. 

 

Nearly every state in the union is seeing rising caseloads. South Dakota, where Governor Kristi Noem has ripped a page from Trump’s knucklehead playbook, has been hit hard. This week she insisted the only reason her state was reporting more cases was that testing capacity had tripled. It had nothing to do with the fact that in the last seven days, 36.4 percent of the tests South Dakota administered had come back positive.

 

For purposes of comparison, Ohio’s positivity rate is 4%.

 

Two weeks ago, Noem’s state hit a record daily high for cases of COVID-19. (Noem is one governor who has eschewed mask mandates.) Last week, Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan all hit single-day highs. So did West Virginia and Kansas.

 

Yet, there was President Trump, stumping in Wisconsin and Michigan this weekend, insisting the nation had “turned the corner” on the coronavirus. This will be “good news” to the thousand people in Wisconsin and the thousand in Michigan currently hospitalized with the virus.

Wisconsin.

Michigan.

 

You can go digging for positive news regarding COVID-19 if you desire. You won’t find much. Florida has had just under 48,000 hospitalizations. That includes 2,005 sufferers currently under care. Montana’s trend line for hospitalizations is alarming. Based on state records, 1 in 13 people diagnosed with COVID-19 have required hospital stays, including 331 currently. The death rate for Montanans is 1.1% of 22,821 cases, with another 9,000 still in recovery. Kansas is typical of the current situation across the country: rising cases, rising hospitalizations, rising deaths. North Dakota, same.

Montana hospitalizations.

 

Ohio had seen a steady decline in hospitalizations during the summer, with a low at one point of 563 persons receiving care. Now, the upswing has begun, with 1,097 hospitalized on October 18. Generally, the picture is grim. Nebraska has seen hospitalizations nearly double since July. New cases per day have quadrupled in New Jersey since August. An average of 20 people are dying in Pennsylvania every day and more than 800 are lying in hospital beds, hoping not to join them.

 

If we are “turning the corner” as the president insists, it isn’t clear what we’re going to see around the corner, save for more deaths, more hospitalizations, and more economic distress. Texas made good progress slowing the spread, from nearly 11,000 cases daily in late August, to only 3,200 by mid-September. Now cases creep upward again, to 4,200 per day. Wyoming was one of the last states to be hit hard, with only six cases on June 4, now rising to more than 200 daily.

 

We can offer only brief glimpses of sunshine piercing the clouds. Daily cases numbers are falling in Georgia, Hawaii, California, and Washington D.C. They are holding steady or rising slightly in a handful of states. Vermont has only two people hospitalized as of October 18.

Even Team Trump is trying to show that his supporters are masking up.
In the wild, most aren't.

 

*

 

BUT WAIT! Did we say there were only brief glimpses of sunshine? In terms of disease, yes. In terms of curing ourselves of Donald Trump, polls indicate doctors have high hopes for ballot recovery.

 

The website FiveThirtyEight has Joe Biden with a commanding lead:

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (11/9/20): This prediction will prove far too rosy.

___

 

 

10/20/20: It’s Day #3 of Character Counts Week. Sadly, the oaf in the Oval Office is having trouble handling the pressure of a reelection campaign. In a call with top staff, Trump refuses to take responsibility (one of the Six Pillars of Character) for the hash he has made of handling the coronavirus.

 

____________________

 

“If more Americans paid attention to his advice, we’d have fewer cases of COVID-19, & it would be safer to go back to school & back to work & out to eat.”

 

Sen. Lamar Alexander, defending Dr. Anthony Fauci

____________________

 

 

Denying even the math, the president continues to insist that the nation is turning the corner in the fight against the virus, and he should get at least one more term in office, if not two or ten.

 

Since last we checked, the CDC has recorded the following new case numbers:

 

10/16:  70,078

10/17:  53,157

10/18:  47,035

10/19:  60,061

 

Total cases: 8,188,585.

 

Death toll: 219,499.

 

Tens of thousands more Americans have been, or are, currently hospitalized after being infected. Hospital bills, if nothing else, have been wrecking strained family finances across the land.

Dr. Birx (left) and Dr. Fauci (right) have been masking up for months.

 

*

 

THE OVERALL PICTURE looks like hell. That means Trump has to find someone else to blame.

 

(“Leadership” is another one of the Six Pillars of Character, which Trump is also going to knock over today.)

 

Trump’s latest fall guy turns out to be Dr. Fauci. According to the president it’s Dr. Fauci’s fault that idiotic claims have been spilling from presidential lips for months. Such as: the virus is no worse than flu. The virus is going away soon. It will disappear like magic, or could be cured if we inject disinfectant.

 

If that doesn’t work, crushed flower petals will.

 

Now, in a rambling phone conversation with top campaign people, he criticizes the doctor for providing bad advice. “People are tired of hearing Fauci and these idiots,” the president grumbles, “these, these people that have gotten it wrong.” 

(“Respect” is one of the Six Pillars – and down it goes.) 

Trump tells supporters that Fauci’s a Democrat, which in Trumpistan means he can’t be trusted at all. 

(He’s not a Democrat, by the way.) 

“Every time he goes on television, there’s always a bomb,” the president whines. “But there’s a bigger bomb if you fire him. But Fauci’s a disaster.” 

As for Trump – hey, hundreds of dead every day, no big deal – he’s ready to move on. “People are tired of COVID,” he insists. His campaign should ignore the virus and focus on the imaginary danger presented by Antifa. “I have the biggest rallies I’ve ever had,” Trump brags. “And we have COVID. People are saying: whatever. Just leave us alone. They are tired of it.”

 

As for the nation being tired, Biden’s campaign quickly responds: “Mr. President, you’re right about one thing: The American people are tired. They’re tired of your lies about this virus.”

 

The pettiness (“pettiness” is not one of the Six Pillars of Character) of the president was also on display in a batch of knucklehead tweets. In one he faulted Dr. Fauci for appearing more often on TV than “the late, great Bob Hope.” Then he mocked him for wearing a mask to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals’ Opening Day game. That game took place in July!

 

Now – on the eve of the World Series – the fool in the White House seemed to believe it was relevant that Dr. Fauci, 79, delivered what was “perhaps the worst first pitch in the history of Baseball!”

 

Yeah. That was Trump’s focus.

 

*

 

FEW REPUBLICANS spoke up, because in Trumpistan they’ve been neutered and know how to grovel. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, chair of the Senate Health Committee, did at least come to Dr. Fauci’s defense. Alexander, who retires at the end of his current term, offered an implicit denunciation of the president. Fauci, he said, is “one of our country’s most distinguished public servants. If more Americans paid attention to his advice,” he continued, “we’d have fewer cases of COVID-19, & it would be safer to go back to school & back to work & out to eat.”

 

(The Trump quotes, above, come from several sources: the Associated Press, Axios, The New York Times, Sen. Alexander’s Twitter feed and the blogger’s transcription of Trump’s words from tape.)

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Trump often cites Antifa as his latest Boogie Man, used to scare the totally uninformed.

 

According to detailed analysis, members of Antifa have been linked to one death in the U.S. in the last quarter century. In that incident the deceased was deemed the assailant.

 

Unless that case is adjudicated further, we can report that far-right extremists have a 329-0 lead in murders committed during that period.

___

 

 

10/21/20: Day #4 of Character Counts Week! Paul Krause, former president of Blue Bell Creameries, is definitely not going to be held up as an example to children by America’s schoolteachers.

 

____________________

 

Bloated capitalism has a bad day.

____________________

 

 

Rather, Krause proves a liberal maxim. Government regulations are often necessary to curb the excesses of bloated capitalism. Just weeks after his company agreed to pay a $17.5 million fine for price fixing – that is, cheating customers – Krause was indicted on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy.

 

Has “Law & Order” Trump ever talked about attacking white collar crime? Most of his family – but not Barron or Tiffany, and probably not the First Lady – and half his cabinet would go to jail.

 

* 

WE KNOW President Trump likes to lead cheers at almost every rally, where loyal fans chant about locking up Americans who have never been tried and convicted, let alone indicted. 

Has he ever laid out his feelings toward plea-deal accepting felons? If you missed it, Team Trump added another name to the “Wall of Dishonor.” But first, a little nuance and context. If you are a big fan of this president – and you love to chant, “Lock her up!” Or “Lock him up!” Or “Lock them all up!” you probably haven’t ever considered this point. Since it’s Character Counts Week, and our topic today is bloated capitalism, don’t forget that not so long ago the Chinese offered to bail out Jared Kushner and his family, who were carrying a massive debt on a property at 666 Fifth Avenue, in New York City. 

If it had been Obama who owned that building, QAnon supporters would have said, “Of course: ‘666,’ the sign of the beast.” 

Anyway, bad publicity ensued – the president’s son-in-law and family getting bailed out by commies. The deal was torpedoed.

 

Jared is always trying to bring peace to the Middle East. So, one day, he met with some folks from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. They really wanted the U.S. to support a blockade of rival Qatar. Jared said he’d talk to his father-in-law and see what he could do. Meanwhile, Elliott Broidy, pal of the president, snagged a lucrative contract (worth at least $200 million) from the Emiratis.

 

The Qataris heard the news and got antsy. Would they be odd-country out, in terms of deals with Americans? Suddenly, a Qatari sovereign fund bought up most of the debt on 666 and bailed out the Kushner clan.

 

When the free press broke that story, Qatari fund managers claimed all they saw was a really good investment opportunity. What???? You don’t mean 666 Fifth Avenue is owned by the Kushner family!

 

Boy, were they surprised!

 

Later, George Nader, an ally of President Trump and Mr. Broidy, gets busted for child sex trafficking. He pleads guilty and gets sentenced to ten years in the slammer. (Definitely not a good example during Character Counts Week!) Nader, who helped Broidy snag that $200 million deal with the Emiratis, agrees to cooperate with investigators. Broidy gets investigated next. The feds get the goods. Today he pleads guilty to one act of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Until he was caught, Broidy had been piling up the big bucks, selling access to the White House to sleazeball characters. Take for example, Najib Razak, former Prime Minister of Malaysia. Razak looted his country, got caught, and now finds himself sitting in jail.

 

In exchange for leniency, Broidy has also agreed to cooperate with investigators and forfeit $6.6 million. 

Prosecutors are clear: Broidy had been a walking, talking, money-grubbing threat to U.S. security. 

“Elliott Broidy sought to lobby the highest levels of the U.S. government [emphasis added on this blog, unless otherwise noted] to drop one of the largest fraud and money laundering prosecutions ever brought and to deport a critic of the Chinese Communist Party, all the while concealing the foreign interests whose bidding he was doing,” Assistant Attorney General John C. Demers said in a statement.

 

“Such conduct poses a serious threat to our national security and undermines the integrity of our democracy,” added acting assistant attorney general Brian C. Rabbitt. (See: 10/16/20 for more detail on Broidy.)

 

*

 

IN OTHER NEWS, Trump fans are bummed to learn that the “Deep State” has infiltrated the Trump campaign.

 

Members of the Satanic, pedophile, cannibal, liberal cabal convinced organizers of a Trump rally in North Carolina to ban anyone from wearing QAnon gear or waving patriotic, flag-themed “Q” signs. If followers of “Q,” who make up a sizeable lump of the Trump base, wanted to flash their secret sign at Trump rallies, they’d have to do it quick, and not get caught on TV.

 

Well, QAnon fans, take heart!  The “Deep State” can’t stop Marjorie Taylor Greene, GOP candidate for Congress.

 

Greene is a big believer in “Q” and his/her idiot theories and an equally big believer in owning all the guns you can afford. Because we all know, “Only a good guy with a gun can stop a cannibalistic liberal from gnawing off our legs.”

 

Behind the scenes, Trump lawyers have been helping her advance her campaign, which makes one wonder. Did Team Trump ban QAnon gear, because most Americans think the QAnon line is nuts, and they didn’t want to look bad with less than two weeks to go until the election?

 

Or was Team Trump tricking the cannibals?  Did Team Trump have a secret plan to defeat them once and for all?

___

 

 

10/22/20: No doubt you have been celebrating Character Counts Week by focusing daily on one of the “Six Pillars of Character.”

 

It’s Day #5, and President Trump is whining about how unfairly he was treated by Leslie Stahl during an interview for 60 Minutes.

 

____________________

 

No president has ever whined more.

____________________

 

 

This is not to be confused with his whining about how mean he says Kristen Welker, who will moderate the second presidential debate in the evening, is going to be. This was supposed to be the third debate, but the previous debate was canceled after Trump whined about the plan to include a mute button.

 

Whining is definitely not one of the “Six Pillars.”

 

*

 

IT COULD HAVE BEEN WORSE and there might have been no more debates at all. James Dale Reed, a Maryland genius, had hatched a plan to tip the scales of the election in Trump’s favor.

 

When neighbors placed a Biden/Harris sign in their yard, Mr. Reed got to thinking. Why not sneak over to their house and leave a threatening note, telling them, “I plan to kidnap and kill both Vice President Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris!” Be sure to include profanity and racist language.

 

Sadly, his John Wilkes Booth plan unraveled, when it turned out his neighbors had a Ring doorbell, which snapped his photo.

 

Reed is now in custody. And let’s hope he stays there long enough to miss a chance to cast a ballot.

 

A rash of right-wing nuts have made the news recently, with plots to kidnap and kill the governor of Michigan, to kidnap the governor of Virginia, and kill the mayor of Wichita, Kansas. Now authorities in North Carolina have another genius in custody. After Alexander Hillel Treisman posted threats to kill Mr. Biden on social media, he was hauled off to jail. A search of a van he owned, back in May, turned up a cannister of the explosive Tannerite, an AR-15, and other tools one might collect if one had mayhem in mind. As a bonus, Treisman is also being held on child pornography charges.

 

At the rate police are vacuuming up right-wing nuts, it could tip the balance of the coming election. Frank J. Caporusso, a New Yorker, may have watched too much Fox News, because it struck him that Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Trump’s first National Security Advisor, was the victim of judicial abuse.

 

On Tuesday, Mr. Caporusso made his own appearance in court and pleaded not guilty to two felony counts.

 

According to court documents, the defendant decided that if justice were to prevail, he would have to nudge it along with gunfire. He found the phone number for the judge’s chambers in the Flynn case, and left a voice mail:

 

We are professionals. We are trained military people. We will be on rooftops. You will not be safe. A hot piece of lead will cut through your skull. You bastard. You will be killed, and I don’t give a fuck who you are. Back out of this bullshit before it’s too late, or we’ll start cutting down your staff. This is not a threat. This is a promise.

 

Apparently, this is how we “Keep America Great.”

 

*

 

WITH THESE PLOTS FOILED, the presidential debate went off as scheduled Thursday evening without blood being spilled.

 

This blogger watched every minute, only muting Trump once near the end. Almost every pundit agreed when it was over that it was better than the first debate, in the sense that, unlike the first, the president was not throwing feces at Biden like an enraged chimp. We did learn a bit about both candidates. We learned that Mr. Trump is delusional and thinks the coronavirus is going away. We all wish that were true, but it’s demonstrably not. On Thursday, CDC reported there were 74,380 new cases and 1,009 additional deaths.

 

In the week just ended the country racked up nearly 429,000 new cases and 5,530 Americans died.

 

Yet, during the debate, the president said that 99.9% of young people recovered. You sensed he wanted to bust out and claim this virus is no big deal, and we should open everything back up and he should win the November election with 538 electoral votes. He went on to say that 99% of all those infected survive. Just look at him! But this blogger was dubious because this blogger grasps math. If we have 222,447 dead, as CDC reports, and 99% of those who are infected recover, we would have had to have 22,244,700 cases by now for that percentage to be correct.

 

We’ve had only 8.4 million, meaning, based on raw numbers, that 1 in every 38 patients infected dies.

 

Plus, the average American doesn’t want to go to the hospital like the president and pile up unwanted medical bills.

 

Trump also said, during the debate, that he hoped to kill the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare,” and replace it with a better plan. When pressed, he did admit he still didn’t technically have a plan he could share.

 

His plan, apparently, is all in his head, and involves a high percentage of pixie dust and free band aids.

 

Trump babbled on about how he had done a great job of handling the pandemic. He even claimed that he had been “congratulated by heads of many states” on the wonderful job he was doing. At that moment, we were still leading all nations in number of cases. We were also leading in total numbers of deaths, and made the Top Ten in most deaths per million in population.

 

I was hoping Biden would smack his forehead, demand to know which world leaders had told Trump he was doing great work, and announce to viewers that 40,000 Americans with COVID-19 were in hospitals that night.

 

That kind of math doesn’t bother Mr. Trump. He attacked Biden and his old boss, President Obama, for their “terrible” record on H1N1, a far less dangerous virus, which killed 12,469 Americans in 2009-2010.

 

Since only 1 in every 4,786 persons infected with H1N1 died, it was hard to see the president’s point.

 

 

“Crystal clear water and air.”

 

As a good liberal, I thought Mr. Biden’s performance was adequate. It was not great. He was vague with several answers, and I felt should have said something when the president kept talking – on almost every answer – well past his allotted time. Ms. Welker could often be heard saying, “Ten seconds more, Mr. President,” as Trump blathered on. Trump would sometimes continue for an extra minute.  

 

If I had been Biden, I would have started counting off seconds silently, and holding up fingers for viewers to see, till Trump passed ten, then folding them again, as he passed twenty. When it was his turn, I wish he would have said, “Apparently, the president doesn’t grasp the concept of time, any more than he understands the science of the virus or climate change.”

 

The two candidates were asked about their plans to address that issue. And I am not making this up. Trump started talking about how he was for “crystal clear water and air.” “Mr. President,” I wanted Biden to respond, “you are a pudding head! Crystal clear water has nothing to do with climate change. You might as well be talking about pogo stick jumping, for all the good your answer serves.”

 

Trump also tried to claim his administration had done a fabulous job of protecting the environment. Again, I knew from extensive reading that a coalition of 170 environmental groups had banded together and called Trump a “malignancy” and an active threat to the health of the planet. (See: 9/14/20.)

 

Ms. Welker did ask about a story that more than 500 children, separated from their parents in 2017, after their families tried to cross the U.S. border, had still not been returned to loved ones. The federal government didn’t seem to have any plan on how to get them returned.

 

Again, Mr. Trump tried to blame Obama and Biden, which made zero sense, because the separation policy involved was hatched by his administration. Neither Biden nor Obama was in office in the summer of 2017. You would have expected a man of any compassion to say, “We will be working overtime to find the parents and return these children; and my administration made a mistake.” This was Trump. At one point, he retorted, “These kids are so well taken care of,” as if being separated from parents for more than three years was no big deal.

 

As far as who won the debate, I felt Biden played it much too safe and Trump was his usual blustering self.

 

As far as changing voter’s minds, it was probably a wash.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Due to spreading forest fires, Rocky Mountain National Park is closed to visitors. Residents of Estes Park, a town of 6,000 were also told to evacuate. The fire is now eating up 6,000 acres of forest per hour, or a little more than nine square miles of Colorado real estate.

 

You could mention this to President Trump as additional evidence of the damage we’re all going to see as a result of climate change. But you might as well talk to your Golden Retriever for all the good it would do.

___

 

 

10/23/20: Day #6 of Character Counts Week and we have two more negative examples for teachers to share!

 

____________________

 

More capitalist crooks. A second stimulus plan in the works?

____________________

 

 

If you are a huge fan of President Trump, and you think Antifa and Hunter Biden are the biggest threat to our country right now, you probably haven’t been following these two stories.

 

First, Goldman Sachs, the company that brought you the 2008 financial meltdown, has agreed to pay fines and penalties totaling $5 billion for their role in a massive fraud, perpetrated by government officials in Malaysia. Executives with Goldman thought it would be good business to bribe officials in return for their investing money in a fund Goldman was supposedly creating to help the Malaysian people. This turned out to be a mistake when the bribed officials turned out not to have any scruples and looted the fund to the tune of $6.5 billion.

 

This is not to be confused with the $5 billion fine Goldman paid for touting “high quality” securities they were selling in 2005-2007. Those securities turned out to be worthless when the housing bubble burst. (See: 10/16/20.)

 

Second, if you missed it, Purdue Pharma, makers of oxycontin – guaranteed to end any pain you might be feeling – often forever – has agreed in federal court to pay a fine of $8.3 billion.

 

It’s the price you pay when your company claimed oxycontin was perfectly safe, even for babies, and contributed mightily to an epidemic of drug overdose deaths that has killed 450,000 Americans in twenty years.

 

The Sackler family, which owns Purdue, will now find it harder to hide billions of dollars from state officials suing their ass.

 

*

 

THURSDAY MORNING, it seemed like a second stimulus deal was in the works. The president’s economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, announced that an agreement was shaping up. This package would, according to President Trump, rescue all the people who weren’t part of the greatest economy this nation has ever seen, or will ever see, if the republic lasts for 10,000 years.

 

If Trump gets a second term it won’t even last four.

 

 

“A relatively sunny, optimistic morning.”

 

Ever the optimist (Kudlow predicted in 2007 that the housing bubble Goldman Sachs helped burst was not going to burst), and gazing at the proverbial glass, Kudlow decided it was not half full. It was brimming with fresh trillions Congress would spend, the spending of which Trump would love, love, love to see.

 

After all, once you run up a deficit of $3.1 trillion in Fiscal Year 2020, why not shoot for $4 trillion in FY 2021!

 

In an appearance on CNBC, Larry said it seemed to him like “a relatively sunny, optimistic morning in terms of the negotiations. Things are moving in a favorable direction. I can’t promise anything, but things are getting better, looking better for this.”

 

Friday morning, the situation was unchanged. Democrats had already passed a $2.2 trillion stimulus package and delivered it to the Senate, where Mitch McConnell has the votes to pass it if he wants.

 

President Trump looked at the glass, and told everyone he was in favor of an even bigger glass, filled with more deficit spending.

 

“Let me just explain,” Trump said during an interview on Fox & Friends. “I want to do it even bigger than the Democrats. Not every Republican agrees, but they will [emphasis added]. I want to do it even bigger, because this is money going to people who did not deserve what happened to them.”

 

“I would rather go bigger than that number, but we’ll see,” he added in his usual nonsensical fashion. (None of the three hosts seemed to notice the incongruity, which is part of their job.) Pelosi, he said, “doesn’t want to do anything until after the election, because she thinks it helps her. I actually think it helps us, because everyone knows she’s the one who’s breaking up the deal.”

 

Time for a reality check.

 

Dear Fox News viewers:

 

If you are watching Fox & Friends regularly, you probably can’t see past Ainsley Earhardt’s shapely legs.

 

Speaker Pelosi has already sent over a large package. The president says he wants to go larger, still!

 

How is it possible the fool in the Oval Office can’t work out a deal?

 

                                                                                    Your friend in patriotism,

                                                                                    The Blogger

 

(See below.)

 

*

 

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER Mitch McConnell looks at the same glass, grabs it, and pours the contents down the kitchen sink. He warns the White House not to push for a big bailout until after the election.

 

If a vote were held, a whole bunch of Republican senators would vote against it. Voters, millions of whom are hurting, would get mad.

 

So: Save the senators!

 

Blame Pelosi and move on.

 

In fact, “maybe never” would be the right time to pass a big stimulus bill, if McConnell has his way. Mitch had gazed upon the Democrats’ $2.2 trillion package, and labeled it “outlandish.”

 

Wednesday, we know Trump himself saw the glass, spit in the glass, and handed it back to the American people, via Twitter. “Just don’t see any way Nancy Pelosi and Cryin’ Chuck Schumer will be willing to do what is right for our great American workers, or our wonderful USA itself, on Stimulus,” he groaned. “Their primary focus is BAILING OUT poorly run (and high crime) Democrat cities and states.”

 

Apparently, when he was talking about “our wonderful USA,” he had in mind states and cities were most people voted for him.

 

Then Kudlow said it was a bright, shiny morning.

 

And then, today, a whole lot of nothing from either side. The president known for making deals, fails to get a deal done.

 

The sun sets on Washington, D.C., but Trump is not there to see it go down. He’s off to Mar-a-Lago for the first time in months.

 

Since taking office he has spent 406 days, more than a year’s worth of his first term in office, at properties he owns.

Who doesn't want a big stimulus package?
This guy.

___

 

 

10/24/20: Character Counts Week comes to an end with President Trump picking up a “coveted” endorsement, and still whining about how unfair everyone has been to him, regarding his handling of COVID. As mentioned at the start of the week, whining is not one of the Six Pillars of Character.

 

As for that endorsement, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil has announced that he is all in on the Trumpster, for four more years in the White House.

 

____________________

 

“With the help of a surgeon he might yet recover and prove himself an ass.”

 

William Shakespeare

____________________

 

 

The Bolsonaro shoutout makes perfect sense because the Brazilian leader has long been a virus denier. Like Trump he was careless. Like Trump, he got infected. He too recovered and proved the validity of Shakespeare’s jest.

 

Also, like Trump, his refusal to accept science cost his people dearly. Almost 157,000 Brazilians were not so fortune as their idiot leader and succumbed, placing Brazil second for most deaths from COVID-19.

 

The countries with the highest death rates, adjusted for population, are:

 

Peru (1,028 deaths per million)

Belgium (918)

Spain (743)

Brazil (737)

Bolivia (734)

Chile (725)

Ecuador (708)

United States (694)

Mexico (683)

United Kingdom (658).

 

Heretofore, we had been including tiny Andorra (893) and San Marino (1,237) in our list, but that now seems pointless.

 

On this Friday in fall, the U.S. hits a record high for cases in one day. President Trump may insist we’re “turning the corner,” but if we are, we just turned the corner on a dark night and ran smack dab into a mugger, who cracked us on the head with a club and stole our wallet.

 

According to the Centers for Disease Control, where some of the best scientists in the world work, the U.S. piled up

 

82,929 new cases in one day.

 

That means, we’re back where we were in July, at the previous high point of spread, with nothing to show for all our pain and sacrifice.

 

* 

MEANWHILE, the president is off on the campaign trail, and, where COVID-19 is concerned, as clueless as ever. This may have something to do with the fact that Dr. Fauci mentioned Friday that Mr. Trump has not met with the White House Coronavirus Task Force in months. 

This at least explains why Trump is telling fans at rallies in Ohio and elsewhere, and tweeting away, saying we’ve got this under control and there’s not the least reason to worry.

 

For example, in a tweet this morning, he laid out his “plan” to tame the virus. That is, blame someone else:

 

The Fake News is talking about CASES, CASES, CASES. This includes many low risk people. Media is doing everything possible to create fear prior to November 3^rd. The Cases are up because TESTING is way up, by far the most, and best, in the world. Mortality rate is DOWN 85% plus!

 

So, there you have it. Another 5,474 Americans died from the disease during Character Counts Week. The President of the United States ends the week weakly, blaming the free press for the mess he made.

___

 

 

10/25/20: The coronavirus continues to kick ass around the globe – except, mysteriously, in the U.S. – where Donald Trump swears that we’ve turned the corner on Gloom Street. Now we’re headed down Sunshine Avenue.

 

____________________

 

Was being president making Trump measurably stupider?

____________________

 

 

In reality, a place Trump rarely visits, Friday was the worst day since the pandemic began for new cases in the U.S.

 

Yet, there he was, at one of his rallies, predicting that on November 4, news coverage of the disease would go away if Biden won. The media was making up scary stories because they wanted to harm his campaign. If a plane carrying 500 people crashed Sunday, the media wouldn’t cover it, the president wailed. They’d only cover 500 deaths from COVID-19.

 

At that point you had to wonder. Was being president making Trump measurably stupider?

 

First, let’s see if all the U.S. airliners falling out of the sky were covered this year. Okay. There haven’t been any.

 

There was one death, when a man found his way onto a runway at an airport in Austin, Texas, and got hit by a Southwest Airlines jet that was landing. But that accident was covered.

 

R.I.P. wandering gentleman.

 

*

 

NOW, IF 11 U.S. PLANES, each carrying 500 men, women, and children, went down this week? Definitely, that would be covered. That would make headlines in every newspaper and lead on every cable news program in the land. Even Fox News would cover the story. Sean Hannity would do all five shows for the week, blaming planes falling from the sky on liberals.

 

You don’t need x-ray vision to see through Trump’s attacks on the media. The problem for an alarming percentage of Trump fans is that they are profoundly uninformed and so won’t see anything the president doesn’t want them to see. A glance at the CDC website shows that in the past seven days, the U.S. has averaged 782 deaths from the virus daily.

 

If you are someone who believes Trump’s claim, and you think the media is the problem, I will talk slowly. Multiply.

 

You know, the “x” button on the calculator.

 

Multiply “782” by the number of days in the week. Seven. In case you forgot. The number you see pop up instantly: “5,474.” That is the number of people who have died in this country from COVID-19 in the past week.

 

The media hasn’t killed a single one; but Trump’s poor leadership has greatly increased the toll.

Trump Airlines: We bring you 11 crashes per week.

 

*

 

IF YOU ARE READING REPORTS from Christopher Murray, director of the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, and I’m sure you hate to miss even one, you know that he is predicting a bad winter ahead for catching the virus. “We think the key point here is that there’s a huge winter surge coming,” he warned in a press briefing this week. Having blown our chance to tamp down the spread, a big wave isn’t fully preventable, but “expanding mask use is one of the easy wins for the United States.”

 

Murray and other scientists who worked on a recent report believe universal mask use could save 130,000 lives.

 

Or: 260 planeloads of 500 passengers and crew each.

 

*

 

IN OTHER NEWS, Vice President Pence’s chief of staff, Marc Short, a man who has scoffed at those who wore masks, has been infected. Two others who have been in close contact with Mr. Pence recently, have also contracted the disease, including a second member of his staff.

 

Mr. Pence has tested negative (so far) and will continue to travel the country spreading good Christian cheer, and maybe some virus.

___

 

 

10/26/20: The president declared victory in the fight to contain the coronavirus this weekend.

 

With eight days until the election, he and his minions will now focus on:

 

A)    Infecting each other (See: Mike Pence & Co., 10/25/20).

B)     Bragging about how Trump created the greatest economy in U.S. history, for which he gets every bit of credit.

C)    Whining because that economy is lagging, which is the entire fault of Joe Biden and Antifa.

D)   Insisting we’ve turned the corner on the coronavirus, we just don’t realize it, because the media keeps reporting on all the new cases and an alarming wave of hospitalizations.

E)     And deaths!

 

 

Meanwhile, we learned that on Saturday, we passed the same old corner, and the record for most new cases of coronavirus recorded in one day, in this country, was broken. That “old” record was set this past Friday.

 

The new record:

 

83,851.

 

Several of those new cases were people close to Vice President Pence. Over the weekend, Pence’s chief of staff, a top political advisor, and three other members of his inner circle fell ill. 

 

____________________ 

“We’re not going to control the pandemic.” 

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows

____________________

 

 

Sunday morning, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows appeared on Jake Tapper’s show on CNN. Tapper wanted to know – since VP Pence had been in close proximity to several people who were infected – why he wasn’t self-quarantining as CDC guidelines say he should.

 

Meadows defended the vice president’s decision to go off campaigning, saying, “actually, he’s working.”

 

For some reason, Meadows dropped Pence in his very next sentence. He switched to bucking up Mr. Trump. “We saw a Middle East peace agreement with Sudan in the Oval Office, that the president engaged in, and for anyone to suggest that the president has been campaigning and not getting things done, all you have to do is look at the facts.”

 

I myself was “looking at the facts” as I watched tape of the show. I wondered why Meadows decided to talk about the president campaigning, and not Pence, since Pence was the one who had just been exposed.

 

Meadows went on to say that CDC guidelines say “essential workers” can keep going to work.

 

So: Pence was at work. While off campaigning?

 

Tapper held a hand across the bottom part of his face, and responded, yes, they can go to work, “if they wear a mask.”

 

 

After all, I thought to myself…you could do both.

 

Meadows grew irate, blaming Tapper for putting information about the spread of the virus on his CNN website! Tapper’s website warned that the virus was spreading even through small family gatherings.

 

“We’re not going to control the pandemic,” Meadows fumed. “We are going to control the fact…”

 

I found myself watching Meadows’ lips move, but thinking that controlling “the fact” wasn’t going to stop the spread.

 

“…that we give vaccines, therapeutics, and other mitigation,” he continued.

 

“Why aren’t we going to control the pandemic? Tapper interjected.

 

“Because it is a contagious virus, just like the flu.” Meadows said animatedly. They went back and forth, with Meadows repeating “the vaccine, etc.,” and Tapper asking why the administration wasn’t doing more to contain it.

 

(After all, I thought to myself…you could do both.)

 

Meadows tried to shift blame to Tapper. And Vice President Biden! “To suggest that we’re going to quarantine all of America, lock down our economy…Joe Biden’s saying that, lock everybody down, we’re going to have, we’re going to have a dark winter, we’re going to have a dark winter…”

 

Tapper noted that that’s what health officials were saying.

 

Meadows retorted that even some CNN reporters who have worn masks “religiously” had contracted COVID-19.

 

In other words, Meadows couldn’t explain why Pence was out on the trail when health guidelines would have him quarantine. Nor did Meadows care to address the poor example Trump continued to set, with his masks-are-not-needed, social-distancing-is-for-sissies campaign rallies.

 

In Trumpistan, if a reporter wore a mask and got sick, that proved to followers of the Orange God, that masks did not work.

___

 

 

10/27/20: Team Trump keeps reminding us that we have rounded the corner and the pandemic is over. Today, the White House office of Science and Technology released a list of President Trump’s accomplishments since taking office. First on the list: “Ending the COVID-19 Pandemic.”

 

Meanwhile, CDC would seem to believe the pandemic has not ended. The seven-day average shows the U.S. racking up 70,289 new cases, nearly a half million more in the last week.

 

Each day, 797 Americans on average, have died.

 

Those 5,579 dead this week will be happy (in heaven) to hear the coronavirus has been conquered.

 

*

 

HOPEFULLY, we’re one week away from “turning the corner on Trump.” Reports are already circulating. If he wins he’s going to fire F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray. As Axios explains, “A win, no matter the margin, will embolden Trump to ax anyone he sees as constraining him from enacting desired policies or going after perceived enemies.”

 

Trump’s complaints regarding Wray are all political and help us understand his total disregard for the rule of law. First, the president is angry because the F.B.I. hasn’t launched an investigation into Hunter Biden’s foreign business connections in time to help him win the election. Second, he’s fuming because Wray testified in front of Congress and said the F.B.I. had not seen any evidence of widespread voter fraud, not even involving “dreaded” mail-in ballots. Third, Trump wanted Wray to fire anyone who had anything to do with the Russia investigation, including the janitor who took out the trash. And we already know, Trump has said he believes Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Joe and Hunter Biden should be in jail.

 

Trials optional.

 

*

 

HOW MUCH of a threat to democracy and the rule of law is this president, if unleashed for four more years?

 

We know GOP senators won’t stand in his path. Yesterday, they caved and voted to allow him to pack the U.S. Supreme Court. With eight days remaining until the election, they voted 52-48, with Sen. Susan Collins of Maine the lone Republican siding with Democrats and voting “no,” to advance Judge Amy Coney “Court Packing Dummy” Barrett to the highest court in the land.

 

This compares with almost all of those same 52 cowards insisting, in 2016, that with ten months left in President Obama’s second term, they dared not shirk their duty to protect the integrity of the Supreme Court. They could not in good conscience vote on his nominee to fill an empty seat.

 

Why?

 

Because they had to let the “people speak.” Let freedom ring!

 

Only now, they’ve removed the clapper from the bell. Expect Justice Barrett to get right down to business. She can vote to overturn Roe v. Wade and vote to blast the Affordable Care Act to flinders.

 

Let’s say you are pregnant because you were raped. With Justice Barrett casting the deciding vote, lawmakers in Alabama will soon be able to require you to have the baby. According to conservatives, this is as the Founding Fathers wanted it – even though the word “abortion” does not appear in the U.S. Constitution.

 

Ironically, Barrett is an “originalist,” who will rule only on what the Constitution says, and what the Founding Fathers said in 1787.

 

Being an “originalist” can be perplexing, because even the men who wrote the Constitution did not agree on what it meant. Sometimes they blazed away at each other in duels in order to determine whose interpretations were best.

 

We should also mention that none of the Founders had ever heard of insulin.

 

Or female judges.

 

So, can Congress pass a healthcare bill that tells insurance companies they can’t discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions? For example, a 24-year-old with type-1 diabetes, who needs insulin to survive? Or a 61-year-old who has already suffered a stroke? It’s not the insurance company’s fault if you have a three-year-old, and your child develops leukemia! You should pay all the bills, yourself. Didn’t James Madison or Caleb Strong say that?

 

(That’s right, I said it: Caleb Strong, Founding Father, bitches.)

 

Barrett will now bring serious conservative chops to Supreme Court deliberations. For instance, she might support the kind of thinking that held that “freedom of speech” means billionaires can donate millions of dollars to candidates and political causes and get tax codes passed that save them hundreds of millions. I think the conservative majority in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Committee ruled that, “Money talks.” Therefore, political spending is free speech.

 

As Ben Franklin once said, “A penny saved is a penny earned, and if multiplied enough times will allow you to buy a U.S. senator.”

 

It might make perfect sense that a man of strict religious principles – a baker in Colorado – should not have to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple. So ruled the Supreme Court in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case. That decision rested on the First Amendment right to free exercise of religion.

 

Now, with another originalist on the high court, we can get back to ruling the way the Founding Fathers always wanted.

 

The new conservative majority may overturn Obergefell v. Hodges and stop the practice of gays and lesbians marrying, which is how Justice Clarence Thomas ruled, as part of the then-conservative minority in that 5-4 decision. Perhaps Thomas, another originalist, Barrett, and the other conservative justices could revisit Loving v. Virginia. There was a time when most states had laws banning interracial marriage. Then along came a bunch of liberal, “activist justices,” who ruled, 9-0, that a right to privacy existed, and states could not determine who you chose to marry. This is ironic, in Justice Thomas’s case, because he’s married to a white woman. It took a landmark Supreme Court decision in 1967 to overrule laws that would have banned his marriage.

 

Not to put too fine a point on it, but if we were guided only by the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, we’d still be ruling that African Americans were property, and Dred Scott, a slave who came before the court in 1857, had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

 

Ah, 1857! It was a time when America was great. In those days, if two slaves married their bond had no legal standing. A master could end their union by selling one or both, to different owners. If he kept the couple and they had children, the master could sell them instead. He could whip the husband if he protested and force himself upon the wife for sex.

 

Property rights were sacred, just as the Founding Fathers (10 of our first 12 presidents being slave owners) intended.

 

So, welcome Judge Barrett. We “look forward” to the day when rape victims have babies. And if those babies are born with serious health problems, mom can’t get insurance. And dad is a rapist.

 

Because you will have cast the deciding vote to kill the only law that ever protected people with pre-existing conditions.

 

Just as Caleb Strong always wanted.

___

 

 

10/28/20: Six days until the election and more than 66 million Americans have voted early, in person, or by mailing ballots.

 

Polls indicate that President Trump has a narrow path to victory; but he may triumph again and have a chance to ruin the country.

 

____________________

 

“Joe Biden may not be the president we want, but in 2020 he is the president we desperately need.”

 

New Hampshire Union Leader, endorsing a Democrat for the first time in a hundred years.

____________________

 

 

*

 

THE APTLY NAMED James Blight, of Haines City, Florida, decides he might widen the president’s path, at least in his hometown. First step: Drink all afternoon. Second: Steal a front-end loader with a backhoe arm.

 

Third: Drive through town digging up people’s Biden/Harris signs and vandalizing their properties.

 

Bright’s foray into politics ends almost as suddenly as it began. As NBC News explained earlier this week:

 

James Blight, 26, was arrested and charged Saturday with grand theft auto and trespassing [emphasis added, unless otherwise noted], with additional charges possible, Mike Ferguson, public information officer for the Haines City Police, said in an email Monday.

 

“Blight told police that he had been drinking whiskey all day and did not remember most of the day,” Ferguson wrote. “He said that he couldn’t help but hit the Joe Biden signs and acknowledged to taking down a fence in the process. Blight said he did not know how to operate the equipment.”

 

Ferguson said that investigators learned that “Blight took out a private chain-link fence and several political signs” and a “city-owned speed limit sign.”

 

“It’s absurd that a grown man could think he had the right to destroy someone else’s property based on a difference in political opinion. The fact that he was driving this heavy equipment, that he did not know how to operate, down busy roads could have been disastrous. We’re thankful that no one was hurt in this matter,” Haines City police Chief Jim Elensky said.

 

One witness described the slow-motion front-end loader chase that ensued, with cars backed up behind the slow-moving getaway vehicle.

 

“I jumped into my truck and called 911 and followed him along, and the whole time he’s riding down the road, he’s yelling at people, cussing them out,” Marion continued, alleging that the suspect told one person at an intersection, “I’m going to run you over.”

 

*

 

BLIGHT’S EFFORTS to help the president were negated when, for the first time in more than a century, the conservative newspaper, the New Hampshire Union Leader, endorsed a Democrat for president.

 

Union Leader editors explained:

 

We were hopeful with Trump’s win that he might change, that the weight and responsibility of the Oval Office might mold a more respectful and presidential man. We have watched with the rest of the world as the mantle of the presidency has done very little to change Trump while the country and world have changed significantly.

 

President Trump is not always 100 percent wrong, but he is 100 percent wrong for America.

 

They cite, for example, the “7 TRILLION in new debt,” the president and his GOP enablers have rolled up in just four years. 

They go on: 

Donald Trump did not create the social-media-driven political landscape we now live in, but he has weaponized it. He is a consummate linguistic takedown artist, ripping apart all comers to the delight of his fanbase but at the expense of the nation. America faces many challenges and needs a president to build this country up. This appears to be outside of Mr. Trump’s skill set.

 

Building this country up sits squarely within the skill set of Joseph Biden. We have found Mr. Biden to be a caring, compassionate and professional public servant. He has repeatedly expressed his desire to be a president for all of America, and we take him at his word. Joe Biden may not be the president we want, but in 2020 he is the president we desperately need. He will be a president to bring people together and right the ship of state.

 

*

 

“A threat to the rule of law in our country.”

 

TWENTY FORMER U.S. ATTORNEYS, all Republicans, sign a letter Tuesday, warning, in a way, that this blogger has been right from day one of this blog. President Trump, they say, is “a threat to the rule of law in our country.”

 

“The President has clearly conveyed that he expects his Justice Department appointees and prosecutors to serve his personal and political interests,” said the former prosecutors in an open letter. They accused Trump of taking “action against those who have stood up for the interests of justice.”

 

“He has politicized the Justice Department, dictating its priorities along political lines and breaking down the barrier that prior administrations had maintained between political and prosecutorial decision-making,”

 

Greg Brower, a former U.S. attorney for Nevada, served during the first years of the Trump administration as the F.B.I.’s assistant director for congressional affairs. He explained why he added his signature to the letter. “I had a up-close view of how the President and the White House dealt with the Justice Department in recent years,” he told a reporter. “It’s clear that President Trump views the Justice Department and the FBI as his own personal law firm and investigative agency,” Brower added. “He made that clear privately – and publicly.” 

 

POSTSCRIPT: A federal judge has admonished the Department of Justice for a plan to defend Trump, in a defamation case filed against him in state courts by a woman named E. Jean Carroll.

 

Ms. Carroll has accused the president of raping her in a department store dressing room, in the mid-90s, long before he was elected.

 

Attorney General William Barr perused the case, and decided DOJ should protect Trump as a “federal employee,” even though, when the alleged crime occurred, he was a douchebag businessman in New York City. 

In a 61-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan rejected DOJ’s request for permission to defend the alleged rapist. “The president of the United States is not an ‘employee of the government’ within the meaning of the relevant statutes,” Kaplan ruled. “Even if he were such an ‘employee,’ President Trump’s allegedly defamatory statements concerning Ms. Carroll would not have been within the scope of his employment.” 

Trump’s comments, Kaplan explained, concerned an alleged sexual assault that predated his time in office, and the allegations against him had “no relationship to the official business of the United States.” 

In other words, the president could hire a lawyer his own damn self and not try to stick taxpayers with the cost of his defense.

___ 

 

10/29/20: Here, in Cincinnati, it’s raining steadily, as we catch the remnants of a tropical storm spawned by Hurricane Zeta.

 

That Category 2 hurricane, which churned ashore Wednesday and battered Louisiana, was the third of the year to strike our unlucky sister state. Two million people across the South are without power. Homes have lost roofs and walls. Businesses have been flooded. Cars have been smashed by falling trees.

 

____________________

 

The hold of the Trump cult is strong.

____________________

 

 

Climate scientists have said it again: We knew this was coming. We warned that hurricanes would be more common, that they would be more intense. That they would dump more rain as they passed.

 

President Trump has managed to convince the faithful in MAGA red that climate change is a fiction.

 

*

 

MEANWHILE, the coronavirus kicks back up across the country and Team Trump fights to save the president’s reelection. According to the president we have “turned the corner” on COVID-19! People who deal in stocks, and economic realities, are so excited to hear the news of a corner turned that they send the Dow Jones down 943 points on Wednesday. This follows a “rally” Tuesday when the Dow dropped 650 points, as brokers sensed more Trump disease-fighting magic was coming.

 

*

 

I’M SORRY to say this. But blogging about Trump, and fighting with conservative friends and relatives on Facebook, I have come to understand that the MAGA faithful will believe anything, no matter how absurd. It’s like those poor souls who still support Keith Raniere, founder of NXIVM, the abusive sex cult. Raniere was sentenced to spend the next 120 years in prison earlier this week, whereas most Americans can only hope that Donald J. Trump will be sentenced to live out his life as a “loser,” after he gets voted out of office on November 3.

 

But the hold of any cult is strong. Many Trump fans will keep believing, as their Orange God says, that new-fangled lightbulbs contain “dangerous gasses.” That masks don’t really work against the virus. Yet, injecting disinfectant does. They will keep believing Obama was born in Kenya because their prophet said he was. Then he admitted that Obama wasn’t, but they never noticed. They will believe NASA scientists lie about climate change, and health experts lie about how deadly the coronavirus is, but that their prophet tells the truth. Against all logic, in defiance of all math, they will argue that all patriotic Americans should cast ballots for Trump, because the president has been a mastermind when it comes to guiding the economy.

 

Let’s look at actual math and try not to cry.

 

Start by studying the “jobs boom” that predated the pandemic. What follows are facts that are easily verified, assuming you’re not a lazy slob, intellectually, like the president himself.

 

First, we know, because we can add on fingers and toes, that Trump added fewer jobs in his first 37 months in office than Obama did in his last 37.

 

 

Bureau of Labor Statistics Monthly Reports: Jobs Added or Lost

 

Jobs added under Obama in his last 37 months:

 

2013:        69,000 (December)

2014:   3,004,000

2015:   2,720,000

2016:   2,345,000

 

Total:  8,138,000, divided by 37 = 219,946 jobs per month. 

(For simplicity, we always skip January 2017, because that month was split between Obama and Trump.) 

 

Jobs added under Trump in his first 37 months: 

2017:   1,924,000 (February-December)

2018:   2,314,000

2019:   2,133,000

2020:      469,000 (January-February)

 

Total:  6,840,000, divided by 37 = 184,685 jobs per month.

 

That’s the math.

 

*

 

WE ALSO KNOW that the Orange God likes to brag about – and members of his cult like to believe –  that the stock market has soared to stratospheric heights since he was elected.

 

If we look at actual numbers, we see that at this point in Obama’s first term, after 45 months in office, the Dow Jones was up:

 

63.7 percent.

 

After 45 months of Trump “magic,” we find the Dow is up:

 

33.5 percent.

 

Again, for those of us not ensnared in the MAGA cult, those numbers are what we call math.

 

The hold of the cult is powerful. The cult leader mesmerizes fans. He tells them the markets will crash if Joe Biden and the Democrats take charge. The people in MAGA robes throw up their hands and chant. “Oh, Orange God, Lock him up! Lock them all up!!”

 

They chant. They don’t check. They don’t know that during Obama’s two terms in office the Dow rose 148.3%. They don’t remember that under Bill Clinton the stock market rose 228.9%.

 

If you told them that under the last Republican president, George W. Bush, markets fell 26.5% –  and then Obama inherited a mess –  their eyes would glaze over. They would wave their totems in your face. “Q,” they would mumble, “Q,” protect us from this liberal math, this satanic curse.

 

* 

PERHAPS, WITH PROFESSIONAL HELP, you could deprogram members of your family who belong to the Trump Cult. A skilled deprogrammer might point out that when Obama was in office, Candidate Trump, Republicans in Congress, and perhaps the member of the cult, him- or herself, all shouted that they despised federal red ink. They could be reminded that Trump promised, if elected, that he and the high GOP priests would lower taxes (on billionaires and themselves), but so manage the economy as to make the federal deficit disappear in eight years. 

Poof!

 

The member of the cult, as part of his or her therapy, could be made to count by billions, and trillions, adding, “Trump added this,” after each billion, in hopes a breakthrough might result. 

The deprogrammer could start with Fiscal Year 2018, since the Fiscal Year numbers for 2017 were mostly cooked into the books by the time the Orange God took charge. So, the cultist would chant, “One billion, Trump added this,” up to “779 billion, Trump added this,” for FY 2018. 

The chanting would continue on up through, “Three trillion, one hundred million, Trump added this,” for FY 2020. 

FY 2018:  $779 billion

FY 2019:  $984 billion

FY 2020:  $3.1 trillion

FY 2021:  $2.1 trillion (estimate) 

 

The experts might also ask cult members to express their feelings, to respond to certain prompts.

 

For example, “How did you feel, when in Mr. Obama’s final days in office, the Orange God and his priest, Sean Hannity, insisted that unemployment numbers were ‘rigged,’ and that there was no way unemployment was really 4.7 percent in January 2017?”

 

“How did you feel when Trump insisted that 93 million Americans were out of work?”

 

“And how did you feel when Hannity added a couple of million to the gospel, and said that Obama’s ‘legacy’ would be 95 million Americans eliminated from the workforce during his eight years in office?”

 

The deprogrammer could ask: “What did you think when a very confused Orange God claimed, variously, that the unemployment rate when Obama stepped down was 18% or 35% or 28% or even 42%, not 4.7%?”

 

Did they feel confused?

 

Or did they believe any numbers that spilled from Trump’s lips?

 

Let them express their feelings – their rage – their love of country – their fears – even their latent racism, if any.

 

Let them confront the truth.

 

Next, the deprogrammer should make them put pencil to paper and figure out the math.

 

If, in March 2017, when the first jobs report under President Trump came out, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed 188,000 jobs had been added in February, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.6%, what happened to those 93 or 95 million Americans, out of work under Obama?

 

Where did they go?

 

Poof?

 

Don’t let the member of the cult dodge the facts. Insist they keep doing the math with pencil and paper. If they resist, make them start counting down on their fingers. If 188,000 jobs were added in February 2017, and the Bureau said unemployment stood at 4.6%, how was that possible?

 

Did the Prophet and his priests lie?

 

Make the poor MAGA man or woman start at 93,000,000, and count down, “One job added, 92,999,999 Americans out of work remain.” Make them keep repeating the proper numbers until they reach, “188,000 jobs added, 92,812,000 Americans out of work still remaining.”

 

If they lose track, make them start again.

 

If the cult member resists, the deprogrammer should  try tactile experiments. The member of the cult could be asked to take off his or her MAGA hat and fill it with grains of rice. He or she should count them off, until they get to 6,840,000, the number of jobs added to the U.S. economy in President Trump’s first 37 months.

 

Then, if they still think all 93 million unemployed Americans are back at work, it might be necessary to force them to eat 86 million plus grains of dried rice.

 

Frankly, these poor folks are deserving of sympathy. They are in the grip of forces they do not comprehend and know not how to combat.

 

The pandemic hits. The Prophet tells them that coronavirus cases are “headed for zero” soon.

 

And they believe.

 

Yet, the virus does not go away. It explodes. The economy has to shut down to stop the spread. And in two months (March-April) 22,160,000 jobs are temporarily lost. COVID-19 doesn’t go away.

 

It spreads.

 

The Orange God tells them not to worry. The economy will come back like a “rocket ship.” May, June, July, August, and September – the Prophet’s “magic” returns!!! A total of 11,417,000 jobs are “added” to the U.S. economy. On the Fox News Business channel priests of the cult insist that Donald Trump is the greatest jobs creator in American history. If he is not chosen to lead the people in a second term, then socialists will block us from reaching the Promised Land.

 

Antifa devil worshippers will run amok in our streets!

 

Again, the members of the cult must be required to check their Prophet’s and priests’ math. These poor souls are going to be difficult to reach. The deprogrammer may have to resort to bringing in the cult member’s first grade teacher, to go over simple math. Worksheets with pictures might be beneficial. The cult member should have to practice cursive and write his or her name at the top of the paper. The first grade teacher can ask questions like, “Which number is larger, the 22,160,000 jobs lost early this year, or the 11,417,000 jobs regained since?”

 

The member of the MAGA cult should be forced to add the 6,840,000 jobs created in Trump’s first 37 months in office, and all the jobs added between May and September, and then subtract the jobs blown to bits in March and April. This is a harder question, so the answer can be multiple choice.

 

They might be asked, “Which statement is correct?”

 

A)    These jobs numbers show that people who believe in math secretly hate America.

B)     The Orange God has created 110 million jobs.

C)    The Orange God has created twice as many jobs as his predecessor and in only four years.

D)   Trump is nearly 4,000,000 jobs in the hole and will end his first term in office having created no jobs at all.

 

If the cultist gets the answer wrong, it may become necessary to resort to shock therapy, to help.

 

Make Math Great Again!

Which president is going to finish with zero jobs created?

___

 

 

10/30/20: President Trump has been campaigning hard in recent days, which means plenty of lying, insults, and threats.

 

_______________________

 

A desperate president comes up with someone new to blame for the coronavirus crisis.

_______________________

 

 

He’s sounding more than a little desperate. On Friday, he came up with someone new to blame for the coronavirus crisis.

 

America’s doctors!

Trump tries to throw doctors under the bus.

 

As he “explained” to a crowd attending a Michigan rally there was a reason Germany had a much lower death toll, adjusted for population, than the United States of America.

 

You know in Germany, if you have a bad heart and you’re ready to die or if you have cancer and you’re going to be dying soon, and you catch COVID, that happens we mark it down to COVID. You know our doctors get more money if somebody dies from COVID, you know that, right? I mean our doctors are very smart people. So what they do is they say is, “I’m sorry, but you know, everybody dies of COVID.” But in Germany and other places, if you have a heart attack or you have cancer, you’re terminally ill, you catch COVID, they say you died of cancer, you died of a heart attack. With us, when in doubt, choose COVID. It’s true, no it’s true.

 

Now, they’ll say [he points at reporters in the back of the crowd], “Oh it’s terrible what he said,” but it’s true. It’s like $2,000 more. So you get more money. This could only happen to us.”

 

It is true.

 

That is, it is true that this could only happen to us. Only a fabulist like Trump could stand before a crowd and insult frontline medical workers. And that, without offering any proof.

 

*

 

REPULSED by the president’s baseless attacks, the American Medical Association released the following statement:

 

Throughout this pandemic, physicians, nurses, and frontline health care workers have risked their health, their safety and their lives to treat their patients and defeat a deadly virus. They did it because duty called and because of the sacred oath they took. The suggestion that doctors – in the midst of a public health crisis – are overcounting COVID-19 patients or lying to line their pockets is a malicious, outrageous, and completely misguided charge. COVID-19 cases are at record highs today. Rather than attacking us and lobbing baseless charges at physicians, our leaders should be following the science and urging adherence to the public health steps we know work – wearing a mask, washing hands and practicing physical distancing.

 

As far as testing and the pandemic go, the Centers for Disease Control discounts the idea that we are turning the corner on COVID-19. The scientists and experts tally a growing cost. New cases:

 

10/27:            72,183.

10/28:            82,599

10/29:            90,155 (highest one day total recorded)

 

Latest seven-day average:  76,785 (highest since the pandemic began).

 

Death toll:

 

10/27:                 901.

10/28:              1,060. 

10/29:              1,055

 

Seven-day average deaths:  807.

 

Death rate, last seven days:  1 in every 95 patients.

 

Total deaths, so far: 228,100.

 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Friday, the president also clogged his Twitter feed with half-truths and frantic lying. Lowlights included:

 

“Watch the Great Red Wave!”

 

(Biden has an average lead in the national polls of 7.8 points.)

 

“More Testing equals more Cases. We have best testing. Deaths WAY DOWN. Hospitals have great additional capacity!” 

 

(Hospitalization rates are increasing.)

 

“The Election should END on November 3rd.”

 

(So, if he’s losing, he’s not going to go to court?)

 

“Joe Biden has vowed to abolish the entire U.S. Energy Industry.”

 

(Does this include the use of fire?)

 

“President Obama used to say that ‘if you wanted to see something really screwed up, give it to Joe Biden to do.’”

 

(When I try to find the source of this quote, I end up at Australia Online News, and when I checked the “story” it had one “like.” You figure that was Trump.)

 

 

FUN FACT- DIMWIT SON: “Like dimwit father, like dimwit son,” as the saying goes. Donald Trump Jr. shows up on Laura Ingraham’s show and claims that deaths from the coronavirus have dropped to “almost nothing.” So we should all be sure to vote for Dimwit Dad.

 

(Dimwit Laura immediately agrees.)

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE: On this same day, CDC reports that 980 Americans die from COVID-19. On 10/31 another 896 succumb. On 11/1 691 additional deaths are recorded, followed by 845 on 11/2 and 1,161 on Election Day, 11/3.

 

After a slight drop, on 11/9, the U.S. hits 1,079 deaths again, and on no other day, during Don Jr.’s dad’s time in office do we slip below a thousand deaths again.

 

On 11/24, we pass the 2,000-mark.

 

On 12/11, we blow past 3,000 dead in a day.

 

And on 1/6/21 we top 4,000 in a single day.

 

Or, as Don Jr. might say to the grieving families: “almost nothing.”

___

 

 

10/31/20: The question we must answer today, and voters must answer on November 3, is, “Is Donald Trump a monster?”

 

____________________

 

Trying to “teach an elephant ballet.”

____________________

 

 

The short answer is: “No.” Trump may dehumanize his foes. He has, for example, labeled Sen. Kamala Harris a “monster.”

 

Saturday, he said again that his political foes were guilty of “treason.” The penalty for such a crime is death.

 

But this blogger does not deal in dehumanizing language. He took an instant dislike to Mr. Trump the day he came down the escalator and labeled Mexicans, almost without exception, as “rapists” and “murderers.”

 

So, when the president labels Sen. Harris a “monster,” we have fresh proof that something is terribly wrong with this man. He’s not a monster. He is a fundamentally warped human being. He’s warped at his core.

 

Today, let’s clean up some of the wreckage from the last few days, and get ready to hunker down and watch as votes are cast and counted. Tens of millions of Americans have already made their choice, voting early in person, or filling out a mail-in ballot, signing it, adding proof of identity (like the last four digits of the voter’s Social Security number), sticking a stamp on the envelope and mailing it.

 

In other news, after Trump, lambasted CBS’s Leslie Stahl for conducting an “unfair” 60 Minutes interview, she has received death threats. Stahl is currently shielded by round-the-clock security.

 

If the president knows this, he doesn’t care; and if doesn’t know it, he should, and should care.

 

*

 

“All the stars are aligned in the wrong place.”

 

A NEW “CRITIC” of the president has also emerged, namely Dr. Anthony Fauci, who deals in scientific truth.

 

That makes him, ipso facto, a critic of this president. Friday, the U.S. piled up 99,750 cases of coronavirus.

 

Saturday, we had another 80,932.

 

That’s scientists reporting science. You can believe the experts, whose job it is to tame the spread. Or you can believe the president who said months ago we were headed for zero cases soon and who insists with the election looming, that we’ve “turned the corner” and should vote for him.

 

Dr. Fauci pulled no punches when he sat down Friday for an interview with the Washington Post. “We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation. All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”

 

As for Trump’s latest favorite doctor, Dr. Scott Atlas, Dr. Fauci was blunt. “I have real problems with that guy,” he admitted.

 

“He’s a smart guy who’s talking about things that I believe he doesn’t have any real insight or knowledge or experience in. He keeps talking about things that when you dissect it out and parse it out, it doesn’t make any sense.”

 

The Washington Post, doing due diligence, not only interviews Dr. Fauci, but includes a White House response. Basically: “How dare Dr. Fauci stab Trump in the back, when it was the doctor who gave the president such terrible advice?”

 

Like, when Dr. Fauci said that the average American – in February – did not need to wear a mask!

 

The Post, then published a list of 184 times the president downplayed the virus threat. We can also look at a list compiled by NPR, to see if there are any of the president’s “greatest hits” the Post might have missed.

 

 

Here’s a quick sampling:

 

January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”

 

February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. … Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”

 

(Note the poor man’s misplaced focus.)

 

February 26: “When you have 15 people [with the virus], and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”

 

February 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”

 

March 9: “So last year 37,000 Americans died from the common Flu. It averages between 27,000 and 70,000 per year. Nothing is shut down, life & the economy go on.”

 

(See: No worse that the flu!)

 

March 11: For “the vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low.”

 

March 30: “Stay calm, it will go away. You know it is going away.”

 

April 3: Responding to CDC guidelines urging people to wear masks, Trump says, “You can do it. You don’t have to do it. I’m choosing not to do it, but some people may want to do it, and that’s OK. It may be good. Probably will. They’re making a recommendation. It’s only a recommendation.”

 

(Dr. Fauci and just about every other doctor is by this time saying: wear a mask!)

 

May 14: “If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases.”

 

May 19: Referring to the fact that testing is ramping up: “When we have a lot of cases, I don’t look at that as a bad thing. I look at that in a certain respect as being a good thing, because it means our testing is much better. So, if we were testing a million people instead of 14 million people, we would have far few cases, right?”

 

(A few days later, we pass the 100,000-dead mark.)

 

June 15: “If we stopped testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.”

 

(We could stop testing for cancer, then no one would have cancer.)

 

June 18: The virus “is dying out. The numbers are starting to get very good.”

 

July 6: Why isn’t the Fake News reporting that Deaths are way down? It is only because they are, indeed, FAKE NEWS!”

 

July 19: Trump downplays the danger, as case numbers continue to rise. “Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day,” Trump says. “They have the sniffles, and we put it down as a test.” He adds that many of those sick “are going to get better very quickly.”

 

July 19: “It’s going to disappear and I’ll be right.”

 

August 3 (I added this example myself): Trump says in an interview with Jonathan Swan that he thinks the coronavirus is under control. Swan seems surprised and says, people are dying by the thousands every day. “They are dying. That’s true,” the president responds…It is what it is. But that doesn’t mean we aren’t doing everything we can. It’s under control as much as you can control it. This is a horrible plague.”

 

August 11: “Many people get it and they have – like kids, they get it, they have the sniffles – young kids, almost none have a serious problem with it.”

 

September 4: “And by the way, we’re rounding the corner. We’re rounding the corner on the virus.”

 

September 12: “I think the virus, hopefully, is rounding the turn, rounding the corner. The vaccines are going to be out soon.”

 

September 16: “I think by [the election], covid will be even lower, it’s going to be very low.”

 

September 21: Hey, this virus isn’t so bad, Trump tells fans at a rally. “It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems, if they have other problems, that’s what it really affects, that’s it. In some states thousands of people – nobody young – below the age of 18, like nobody – they have a strong immune system – who knows? Take your hat off to the young because they have a hell of an immune system. It affects virtually nobody. It’s an amazing thing – by the way, open your schools!”

 

(The next day the U.S. hits 200,000 dead.)

 

October 1: “The end of the pandemic is in sight.”

 

October 6: “Flu season is coming up! Many people every year, sometimes over 100,000, and despite the Vaccine, die from the Flu. Are we going to close down our Country? No, we have learned to live with it, just like we are learning to live with Covid, in most populations far less lethal!!!”

 

(Again! No worse than the flu! For some reason, he increases the number of flu deaths to 100,000. On March 9, he said 37,000 died from the common flu last year. Trump not only doesn’t get science he doesn’t get math.)

 

October 9: “In fact, we’re almost ready to hit a brand new stock market high in the middle of a pandemic, and I say rounding the corner of the pandemic.”

 

(Grandma just died,  but the Dow Jones is up!)

 

October 10: “A lot of flare-ups. But it’s going to disappear; it is disappearing.”

 

October 14: “We’re rounding the turn ... but most people – 99-point-something percent, if you get it, you get better.”

 

October 16: “The light at the end of the tunnel is near.”

 

October 19: “People are tired of covid. People are tired of hearing Fauci and all these idiots.”

 

(Did “Fauci and all these idiots” make all these idiotic predictions?)

 

October 26: “We are absolutely rounding the corner, other than the fake news wants to scare everybody.”

 

October 29: “Our vaccine will eradicate the virus. By the way, we have it, but whether we have it or not, it’s rounding the turn. It’s rounding the turn.”

 

(We have a vaccine…whether we have it or not?)

 

October 30: And finally, we have this, from a Trump rally in Michigan on Friday. Note the “seriousness” with which the president takes mask-wearing. He scans the crowd, looking for one of his favorite Fox News “journalists.” 

“I do believe Laura Ingraham is here someplace,” Trump says. He looks about. “Where is Laura? Where is she?”  

Suddenly, his eagle gaze falls upon her: “I can’t recognize you. Is that a mask? No way, are you wearing a mask? I’ve never seen her in a mask. Look at you. Laura, she’s being very politically correct. Whoa!” 

Look, at this point most Americans realize the president is a numbskull. As someone said, trying to teach Trump about the coronavirus has been like trying to “teach an elephant ballet.”

 

*

 

IF YOU MISSED this story, and you are a Trump fan, you must increase the number of felons surrounding your Orange God by one.

 

It turns out that Rudy Giuliani (not yet a felon!) was working with two alleged felons and one felon who just pled guilty, while gallivanting around Ukraine, looking for dirt on Hunter and Joe Biden. The two alleged felons, already indicted, are Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman. The felon who copped a plea and agreed to cooperate with investigators was David Corriea.

 

And this isn’t “Fake News.” It’s what happened in court. As the Washington Post explains, Corriea admitted to “defrauding investors in an insurance start-up that paid Giuliani for consulting work and to lying to federal regulators investigating suspected campaign finance violations.”

Correia and the president.

 

*

 

DEMOCRATS in the House of Representatives have also called into question the Trump administration’s planned $265 million “Defeat Despair” project, designed in part by Health and Human Services spokesman Michael Caputo. In terms of felonies, Caputo has none; but he did help set up a meeting with Trump advisor Roger Stone, a man with seven felonies himself, and a Russian, during the 2017 campaign.

 

The HHS plan was to line up a star-studded celebrity cast to talk about how the coronavirus wasn’t so bad – and how President Trump was handling it with aplomb – and how, after we taxpayers paid for the project, we should feel better about the future and reelect Donald Trump.

 

Documents indicate that the thinking behind this mega-MAGA-size waste of money was that “helping the president will help the country.”

 

The project ran into trouble when HHS officials tried to find celebrities who had not been critical of the President of the United States, and so, could pass the purity test and help us learn not to despair. Dennis Quaid made the cut. But after culling through the public records of 274 famous men and women, pickings were slim. Bryan Cranston, who starred in Breaking Bad, got nixed because he had “called out Trump’s attacks on journalists” during a 2019 speech. The actor Jack Black never had a chance. A disqualifying notation next to his name read that Black was “known to be a classic Hollywood liberal.” Also eliminated from participating in the fight to “Make America Feel Great Again,” were any celebrities, like the singers Christina Aguilera and Justin Timberlake, who supported gay rights. So, gay persons could just go ahead and despair. 

Even “better,” when a consulting contract for $15 million was awarded by HHS, to a company called Atlas Research, that company was informed it would need to hire three subcontractors. The first turned out to be a “one-person” company run by a Republican pollster. 

The second also appeared to be a “one-person” operation. 

Best of all, the third was a “platform owned by Den Tolmor, a Russian-born business associate of Caputo’s.” 

Unfortunately, the “Defeat Despair” initiative fell apart before all the money could be wasted. Mr. Quaid dropped out after reports began surfacing about the true intent behind the project. He admitted in an Instagram post that he was “feeling some outrage and a lot of disappointment” after having been duped. 

Caputo crumbled under the pressure of trying to defend an idiotic, boondoggle project. First, he posted a rant on Facebook. He said people were out to get him and the election was going to be rigged. He suggested Trump fans buy as many guns and as much ammo as possible – not your typical Health and Human Services message. Then he announced he would be taking a leave of absence, to fight cancer, and also – one might argue – because he was nuts.

Caputo.

 

* 

AS FAR AS DEFEATING DESPAIR GOES, the expensive HHS initiative has now proven to be a flop. 

But maybe if we all wore masks…. 

Dr. Fauci said this week that with cases rising rapidly, it might be time for a national mask mandate. 

Maybe someone can get the message to the president, since we know he hasn’t attended a meeting of his Coronavirus Task Force in months. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: The president is spending his last few hours before the election insisting that the pandemic is over, all thanks to him.

 

The Centers for Disease control reports that the crisis is not over. Since we checked last, the U.S. has had:

 

10/31: 80,932 new cases

11/1:  77,398.

 

A total of 230,383 Americans have died.

 

We know that President Trump likes to compare the current toll to the ordinary flu. Again, let’s check the facts. In 2010-2011, CDC reported 37,000 flu-related deaths, one for every 568 cases.

 

2011-2012      12,000 dead               1 death per every 750 cases

2012-2013      43,000                        1 death per 791

2013-2014      38,000                        1 per 789

2014-2015      51,000                        1 per 588

2015-2016      23,000                        1 per 1,043

2016-2017      38,000                        1 per 763

2017-2018      61,000                        1 per 738

2018-2019      34,200                        1 per 1,038           

 

CDC has also provided an estimate for the toll from H1N1 pandemic, which struck in 2009. That virus infected 60,800,000 Americans and 12,469 died. That would be a mortality rate of 1 death for every 4,876 cases.

 

According to the latest figures the U.S. has suffered 9,182,628 cases of COVID-19. A total of 230,383 Americans have died.

 

That works out to 1 death for every 40 known cases.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (7/27/22): In going back, and fixing minor errors in my posts, I return to this list of terrible predictions by President Trump. As of July 26, the last day reported, the U.S. was still averaging more than three hundred COVID-related deaths per day. A total of 1,023,382 Americans had died from the disease. President Biden had been infected, but was recovering. This blogger had been infected twice, as had his wife. On that date, 37,531 Americans were hospitalized with the latest variant of the disease.

 

It never went away – and may never go away – and it was never “just a flu.”

 

 

“That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.”

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE #2 (same date as above): We know that Trump lost the election three days later, and that going on nineteen months later, he still refuses to admit it – and hordes of Trump fans refuse to believe it. We know his last two attorney generals, Bill Barr and Jeffrey Rosen both told him there was no significant voter fraud in 2020. 

We also know, according to Steve Bannon, that Trump always had a plan for how to handle a defeat that most people knew was coming. In a call leaked, finally, in July 2022, Bannon could be heard explaining almost exactly what was going to happen, regardless of whether Trump won or lost. 

(Below, we provide more of the call than the Committee aired.)

 

Ironically, most of his listeners were Chinese immigrants – at least one of whom recorded what Bannon was saying. The recording was turned over to reporters for the left-leaning magazine, Mother Jones. 

Bannon seemed amused as he explained the plan for Election Night. “What Trump’s gonna do,” he laughed, “is just declare victory. Right? He’s gonna declare victory. But that doesn’t mean he’s a winner,” he told his listeners. “He’s just gonna say he’s a winner.” 

“As it sits here today,” Bannon said he expected Trump to build an early lead, as in-person votes were tallied. Biden’s strength would come later when mail-in ballots were counted. “And Trump’s going to take advantage of it. That’s our strategy. He’s gonna declare himself a winner.” So, “at 10 or 11 o’clock Trump’s gonna walk in the Oval, tweet out, ‘I’m the winner. Game over. Suck on that.’” 

In fact, Bannon said Trump had a plan, even if he was losing in the early hours of the night. “If Trump is losing by 10 or 11 o’clock,” Bannon said, “it’s going to be even crazier. No, because he’s gonna sit right there and say, ‘They stole it. I’m directing the attorney general to shut down all ballot places in all 50 states,’” he predicted. 

“He’s not going out easy. If Biden is winning, Trump is going to do some crazy shit.” 

At no point, of course, did Bannon suggest to his listeners that the president was actually going to win. 

He simply said that Trump was going to claim he did – and that that was the real victory plan. 

“So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it’s going to be a firestorm,” Bannon continued. “You’re going to have antifa, crazy. The media, crazy. The courts are crazy. And Trump’s gonna be sitting there mocking, tweeting shit out: ‘You lose. I’m the winner. I’m the king.’”

___

 

 

November 1, 2020: With only two days left until Election Day, the blogger must admit he has been poring over polling data for weeks. As a result, he’s drinking more and still not sure what to expect.

 

____________________

 

Trump won’t win the popular vote.

____________________

 

 

I have argued repeatedly that the polls, in aggregate, have rarely been wrong. Whenever I point this out, Trump fans respond with fury, and insist, because I believe in evidence, that I must be a commie.

 

So, let me start with one surefire prediction and offer a bet I’d be happy to take from any unwitting Trump fan. The Orange God can’t win the popular vote unless Joe Biden commits a “gaffe,” such as admitting that he really is a satanic pedophile, as the poor souls who follow “Q” insist.

 

As I mentioned recently, members of the Trump cult will believe virtually anything at this point. (See: 10/29/20.)

 

*

 

PUTTING FAITH in old-fashioned arithmetic, rather than conspiracy theories involving liberals who cannibalize babies, let’s turn to history for guidance. I was unable to find RealClear Politics (RCP) averages from 2000, except in a single line, on a 2004 chart. But that website, which combines all kinds of polls, had George W. Bush favored, barely, to win the presidency, two decades ago.

 

Four years later, the final polling averages at RCP had President Bush leading Sen. John Kerry.

 

In 2008, averages showed Mr. Obama with a comfortable lead. When he stood for a second term in 2012, the race was expected to be close, with the incumbent winning a second term.

 

 

“It took guts for Director Comey to make the move.”

 

In 2016 most experts thought Mrs. Clinton would win. We need to remember, however, how close the final polls were.

 

We also need to remember that ten days before the election, F.B.I. Director James Comey revealed that Hillary was still the subject of an investigation regarding her use of a private email server and thousands of missing emails.

 

Trump spent those last ten days battering the front runner, saying, “it took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they’re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. You know that. It took a lot of guts.”

 

He said he hoped Comey would “hang tough.”

 

“A lot of people want him to do the wrong thing,” Trump suggested. “What he did was the right thing.”

 

Later, Trump would insist that Comey had been working to blow up his campaign from the very start.

 

(Did I mention: Trump supporters will believe anything?)

 

*

 

AS FOR ME, I am a fan of verifiable facts. For example, was the Russian investigation a “witch hunt?”

 

Opinion.

 

Did all the members of Team Trump listed below eventually admit meeting with Russians during the 2016 campaign? They did.

 

Fact:

 

Michael Cohen

Gen. Michael T. Flynn

Rick Gates

Jared Kushner

Paul Manafort

George Nader

Carter Page

W. Samuel Patten

George Papadopoulos

Felix Sater

Roger Stone

Donald Trump Jr.

Alexander van der Zwaan

 

(Names in bold indicate persons convicted of at least one felony.)

 

We should also add the name of one man who helped Stone arrange to meet with a Russian, and then lied to Congress and said he didn’t:

 

Michael Caputo

 

Caputo avoided a felony charge at the last minute, by amending his testimony to Congress and claiming he forgot about helping Stone. (See: 10/31/20 for an update on his recent activities.)

 

*

 

AS I WAS SAYING, I’m a believer in facts. For that reason, I checked the polls as far back as the 2000 election. Here’s what I found. In the first column below we see who had the lead in the final average of polls. The second column is the actual margin of victory. The third shows the difference between prediction and the actual vote.

 

 

Final Presidential Polling Averages (2000-2020)

 

            Lead in the final polls                 Real margin             Difference

 

Bush                +0.6                                       0.5                                         1.1**

Bush                +1.5                                       2.4                                         0.9

Obama            +7.3                                       7.6                                         0.3

Obama            +0.7                                       3.9                                         3.2

Clinton           +3.2                                       2.1                                         1.1

 

Biden (with one day left):  +6.7.                                                                                                                

In the five presidential contests, previous to 2020, the national polling averages have never been off by more than 3.2 points.

 

*

 

STILL HAUNTED by the ghosts of 2016, I checked to see how accurate midterm election polling has been. RCP reports on what is called the “generic ballot.” That is, which party do voters prefer to control the next Congress?

 

 

Midterm Election Polls

 

                                         Average lead               Final result     Difference

 

2002    Republicans                +1.7                           +4.6                    +2.9

2006    Democrats                +11.5                           +7.9                    –3.6

2010    Republicans                +9.4                           +6.8                    –2.6

2014    Republicans                +2.4                           +5.7                   +3.3

2018    Democrats                  +7.3                           +8.4                   +1.1

2020    Democrats                  +6.8

 

 

In the last five midterms, the party leading in polling on the generic ballot went on to pile up more votes when people cast actual ballots. Again, the biggest margin of error was 3.6 points.

 

(We might note that in 2018, President Trump insisted a “red wave” was coming. When the waters receded, Democrats had outpolled Republicans by 8.8 million votes, largest midterm margin ever recorded.)

___

 

 

11/2/20: Sunday we explained why it will be impossible for Trump to win the popular vote, barring a miracle.

 

For instance: This blogger may be underestimating the strength of the “Neo-Nazi’s for Trump” movement.

 

____________________ 

“Three more years! Three more years!”

____________________

 

 

It would also appear that a huge turnout is coming, and pollsters may be in uncharted territory.

 

If nothing else, let’s give it up for the Nineteenth Amendment! That amendment granted women suffrage. We know that if Mr. Biden wins, it’s going to be because of women. I have always been fond of the women demographic, and would never grab any of them you know where, because I am not a classless jerk. Female Americans are going to go big for Joe Biden tomorrow.

 

In an average of 21 polls since the start of September, women prefer the Democrat over President Pussy Grabber by an average of 18.7 points.

 

Voter turnout among young people could also be huge, since, to cite one example, most young Americans believe climate change is real and a grave threat. If a blue wave is coming, it’s not going to be led by folks with walkers. Americans, age 18-29, voted at a rate of 36% in the 2018 midterms, almost double the rate from 2014. A Pew Research study puts the turnout figure in 2018 even higher, 42%, or 26 million millennials. At that point, this youthful cohort made up one-fifth of the vote. “By making our voices heard,” one told a reporter last week, “it will send a message to those in power: We’re not going anywhere, and we’ll continue raising hell.”

 

If you’re a Republican you have to sweat, because 63% of voters under 30 say they plan to vote this time around, vs. 47% during the last presidential election. According to a study by Harvard University, those young voters will break 63% to 25%, for Biden. A second study predicted a more modest 59% to 37% split. Still, the more the young show up, the worse it is for Trump.

 

Even worse, if you hope to enjoy “three more years” of President Trump (the man has spent more than a year of his first term, 409 days, at his private golf clubs and resorts), older voters have turned. In the past four presidential elections, voters over age 65 have gone for Republicans by an average of ten points. Trump won the nursing home demographic by seven his first time around.

 

This year, his plan appears to be to kill us all off, since he scoffs at the idea that anyone dies from the coronavirus except older folks. In early September a Monmouth University poll showed Americans age 65 and up, preferred Biden by eleven points, 54% to 43% for Trump. A CNN poll at the start of October, and another from NBC News and the Wall Street Journal, both showed Mr. Biden’s lead among senior citizens had grown to more than 20 points.

 

Where, exactly, is the incumbent faring best? Mr. Trump still has the support of 78% of white evangelicals, vs. 17% for Biden. On October 13, he had an eight-point lead among white Catholics, but trailed among Hispanic Catholics by 41 points. Trump enjoys a fat and happy lead among white voters who failed to finish high school, and a solid lead among whites who graduated from high school. The same poll shows Biden leading among college graduates by 20 points, and among voters who have completed postgraduate work by 68% to 28%.

 

Again, all the Trump supporters this blogger knows personally are good people. One of my former best friends is against abortion, and votes almost entirely in accord with his profoundly held belief. We’re not talking these days; but I know no better man.

 

Still, I’m sad to report, Trump has a 100% to 0% lead among the neo-Nazi crew. Richard Spencer and that warped bunch have been cheering Trump since before the votes were counted in 2016.

 

Because they understand their man.

 

 

FUN FACT: Four former communications directors for the Republican National Committee explain that they have cast early ballots for…

 

Joe Biden!

 

One, Ryan Mahoney, even posts this picture on Twitter:

 

Trevor  Francis and Lisa Miller join Mahoney in casting ballots for Biden. Doug Heye writes in the name of Sen. Mitt Romney.

 

The National Committee of Asian American Republicans also announces it will support the challenger.

 

The group explains:

 

We don’t need a smart-pants president who knows everything including the best medicine curing COVID-19, who empowers only his base to run over political opposition. We need a president with empathy, integrity, and broadness capable of bringing all sides to the table to find common ground, and work together overcoming serious challenges ahead.

 

Even leading disease experts on the White House Coronavirus Task Force appear to be turning on the boss. Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator warns in an email obtained by the Washington Post, that the country is “entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of the pandemic.” Whereas Trump has said repeatedly that the country is “rounding the corner.” Birx, by contrast, calls for “much more aggressive action” to battle the spread.

 

Meanwhile, Dr. Anthony Fauci has warned that the United States is “in for a whole lot of hurt” going into fall and winter.

 

This has prompted Dimwit Donald to suggest that he might fire Fauci. At a recent campaign rally, the president responded to a chant, “Fire Fauci!” in typical cowardly fashion. He didn’t say he’d fire him before voting begins, because most Americans trust the doctor way more than the president.

 

So Dimwit Don simply grinned, and responded, “Don't tell anybody, but let me wait until a little bit after the election.”

My wife, hiking at Mt. Rainier.