June 11, 2020: COVID and Confusion about What Makes a Good American

 

6/11/20: There’s more bad news for President Trump, and more importantly, for the nation. Jay Powell, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, announced yesterday he expects a slow economic recovery. Unemployment will likely remain at 9.3% through the end of the year. 

This exciting news caused the stock market to take a dive today. The Dow dropped 1,862 points. 

The idea that we are going to come out of this recession quickly seems like wishful thinking. You know we could be in for a long climb back to economic health when coffee juggernaut Starbucks announces it will close 400 retail locations. Hertz has laid off 16,000 employees, first made sure to pay the CEO $9 million, and then filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. J. Crew is now defunct. Workouts at Gold’s Gym are ended forever. The National Bureau of Economic Research says 3.3 million businesses, mostly smaller operations, have been wiped out since the virus took hold. That’s more than were lost during the Great Recession. During that bleak two-year stretch a total of 730,000 U.S. businesses were snuffed out. This past April, one in four U.S. renters, hit by job losses or lost revenue, were unable to pay rent. In May that figure rose to 31%. 

Those bills don’t disappear. They accumulate.

 

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STILL, Trump has plenty of fans! Two, one waving a Trump flag, showed up recently at a peaceful Black Lives Matter rally in Fallon, Nevada. Finally, people from different ends of the political spectrum coming together… 

…and the Trump fans were wearing KKK hoods. If you watch the video, one has a regulation KKK hood. The other sap appears to have crafted his own. It looks like a racist dunce cap.

 

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THINK COVID-19 is no more dangerous than flu? If you’re a Trump fan, possibly you do. (Did we mention dunce caps?) Doctors at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago announce that they have performed a double lung transplant on a woman who contracted the disease. The patient, in her 20s, spent six weeks in intensive care. A life support machine did the work of heart and lungs. “By early June, the patient’s lungs showed irreversible damage,” doctors explain.

“A lung transplant was her only chance for survival,” says Ankit Bharat, MD, chief of thoracic surgery and surgical director of the Northwestern Medicine Lung Transplant Program.

 And the virus isn’t going away! It was announced Thursday that 287 workers at the JBS beef packing plant in Hyrum, Utah, have tested positive for COVID-19. “It’s not safe to work right now,” an employee told the Salt Lake Tribune. He or she asked to remain anonymous. 

Ironically, two days earlier, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue issued the following statement. 

I want to thank the patriotic and heroic meatpacking facility workers [around the nation], the companies, and the local authorities for quickly getting their operations back up and running, and for providing a great meat selection once again to the millions of Americans who depend on them for food.

 

By the way, the nation’s 75,000 “patriotic and heroic meatpacking facility workers” earn an average of $13.68 per hour. That works out to $28,450 annually. Plus, they get the chance to contract a disease, spread it to loved ones and local communities, and maybe get double lung transplants.

 

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The elephant with the badge in the room. 

LESS LIKELY to catch the disease: Three top African American law enforcement officials in Dallas, Texas. The president was in town to give a speech on police and race this week, but they went uninvited. Trump gave his talk, then headed over to billionaire Kelcy Warren’s place for a $10 million fund-raising dinner. 

During his speech, Mr. Trump refused to address the elephant with the badge in the room. “You always have a bad apple,” he said of police officers who kneel on people’s necks until they die, or shoot them in the back when they’re running away. “No matter where you go you have bad apples, and there are not too many of them...in the police department,” he argued. 

Yeah, “bad apples.” Bad plumbers. Bad bus drivers. Bad furnace repairmen. Bad presidents. But what can you do! 

Trump explained that what he was advocating was “force with compassion.” Such as: Send in the U.S. military to quash protests. Then he went with his recipe for authoritarian success: We “have to dominate the streets.” 

Trump finished his chat and headed over to Mr. Warren’s place. Couples of all races were welcome, assuming they could afford to pay $580,600 to attend dinner. For that price, they got all the alcohol they could drink. And desert! Even seconds! Best of all, you and your significant other got a photo taken with Donald Trump. Standing next to him, at least you’d look thinner.

 

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SINCE we’re talking “bad apples,” we should note that President Trump continues to insist that a few “bad apples” among the ranks of the police make the other 99.9 percent look bad. This hard-working blogger agrees that most cops are good people, like most plumbers, most cake bakers, and most retired teachers, which he is. But we’re going to need 2,997 good cops to balance out one example from North Carolina.

 

Three officers were fired after a review of on-duty conversations revealed racist, violent comments. The three men talked about “slaughtering” African Americans in a coming race war. One officer told another that he was “ready” for war, and planned to purchase a new assault rifle. Naturally, one of the men referred to Black Lives Matter protesters as “n-----s.”

 

Interviewed separately, all three “bad apples” admitted the comments heard were their voices.

 

All three denied they were racists.

 

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IN MORE “bad apple” news, we’re going to need a few thousand more good apples to balance out this next rotten crew. An investigation has been ordered to look into a private Facebook group that talked about assassinating a Black Lives Matter leader, Shaun King.

 

At least a dozen former California law enforcement officers (and an unknown number of current officers) commented approvingly. Four San Jose officers, for example, are on paid leave, as their alleged participation in the dialogue is investigated. The conversation was supposedly started by former Long Beach Police Department employee, Laura Tartaglione.

 

 

Confused about what it means to be a good American.

 

Newsweek explains:

 

The conversation was reported to have started with Tartaglione, who wrote: “I think California needs to start putting a team together of retired military, police, and NRA. These criminals that the Democrats created need to be stopped.”

 

Facebook user John Houchens posted: “Shaun King needs to be put down.”

 

And with that, the racists were off and running! First, let me remind readers that one puts down an injured horse, or a pet dog with cancer. You “put down” animals. Someone named Roy Brokaw said he was with the plotters, “for justice.” He wanted to know if anyone knew where Mr. King could be found? “Toss this guy from a helicopter,” suggested Chris Sanford. “Need a sniper,” said Jerry De Rosa, thought to be a retired LAPD officer. Jeffrey Garcia, another former Long Beach officer said he was “ready to rock and roll.” Tartaglione called on him to “organize it.” Jeffrey expressed his readiness. Billy Dishman responded, “I’m in.” Henry Martinez, who, like all these others, seemed confused about what it means to be a good American, and to stand up for our most cherished ideals, posted: “Yes, some of us may be old, but we still have a sharp eye and a steady hand...and some of these Anti Americans need to be set straight!” 

(See also: Eric Trump’s comment about “animals” taking over American cities during the recent protests, 6/21/20.)

 

Finally, lets include the New Jersey corrections officer who participated in a stunt as Black Lives Protesters marched through his neighborhood. It isn’t clear from news stories yet, which role the officer performed, as he and a buddy reenacted the death of George Floyd. With a Trump campaign sign and an American flag as backdrop, one of two white men knelt on the neck of the other, shook his fist, and shouted at passing marchers. 

The corrections officer was quickly suspended. The other actor, a FedEx employee, has been fired.

 

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ALSO REPRESENTING the “bad apples” of humanity: Harry H. Rogers, 36, an “admitted leader of the Ku Klux Klan and a propagandist for Confederate ideology.” 

Rogers is accused of driving his pickup truck into a crowd of peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters.

 

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AND IN RELATED NEWS, Mary Elizabeth Taylor, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, has submitted her resignation. Reason given: Trump’s failure in the realm of race relations. 

The president’s actions, Ms. Taylor, herself an African American and a Trump appointee, says, “cut sharply against my core values and convictions.” 

The “Fake News” Washington Post reports this story. Those people should be executed! (See: 6/17/20.) 

How dare they quote her resignation letter! And run her picture!! And do an article about what she said!!! 

Ah, well, Trump still has Diamond and Silk on his team, two African American buffoons, in service to a white buffoon president.

BLOGGER’S NOTE: We do strive for accuracy and do our best to support all our points with solid evidence. 

We note, however, that in this original post we misidentified Mr. Warren as “Kelcy Warner.” This mistake was not caught until 12/6/20, during a light editing of this blog. During that process we also found that we had named the reporter Kaitlan Collins, “Kaitlyn Collins.” A good number of typos and missing words also required correction. Otherwise, the information provided herein has held up well over the last, nearly four years.