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.
 |
The blogger and his wife at Rocky Mountain National Park in better days. |
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