October 4, 2017: Secretary of State Tillerson Calls President "A Moron," or "A F--king Moron."

 

10/4/17: The cringe-worthy moments keep coming. Various sources report that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has called Trump “a moron.” It may have been “a fucking moron.” No one is sure. 

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“Those people that help separate our country from chaos.” 

Sen. Bob Corker

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Tillerson is forced to explain during a press conference. Put on the spot, he praises Trump, because anyone who doesn’t praise Trump effusively gets canned. When asked if he did call the leader of the Free World a “moron,” he doesn’t deny it.

 

Senator Bob Corker decides it’s time to defend Tillerson. He tweets: “I think Sec. Tillerson, Sec. Mattis and Chief of Staff Kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos.” 

Speaking of cringe-worthy, Trump’s petulance is on full-blown display all week, regarding Puerto Rico. At a press conference he praises the governor and says the governor isn’t “playing politics.” And what leads the president to this happy discovery? The governor praised Mr. Trump. 

Anyway, isn’t Puerto Rico lucky and isn’t America even luckier to have Donald J. Trump at the helm! Trump riffs on the death toll in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Wow! Only 16 killed. 

In Trump’s warped worldview this proves his administration is fantastic! By comparison, his leadership is way better than President George W. Bush’s, when “hundreds and hundreds” died after Hurricane Katrina. 

Most Puerto Ricans might be without electricity (95%) or cell service (88%). Almost half (45%) might lack access to clean drinking water. In some communities 80-90% of homes were destroyed. But aren’t they blessed to have Orange Leader on the job! Also: they have paper towels! 

In the most cringe-worthy moment of all, the president, who is visiting the island, stands in front of a gathering of first responders, local officials, and ordinary Puerto Ricans. These people have been displaced from businesses, schools, and homes. Gleefully, he tosses rolls of paper towels to the throng. All that is lacking is one of those t-shirt guns they use at sporting events.

 

(The official toll in Puerto Rico was soon raised to 64. An even later study placed it closer to 1,000. Trump only cared, not because people died, but because the higher death toll, he thought, made him look bad.)

May 3, 2020: Donald J. Trump - Maestro of Misinformation

 

5/3/20: The Trump administration continues to write a “glorious record,” as the nation reopens for business. 

Sunday afternoon, a check of the John Hopkins University website indicates the U.S. has 1,154,621 confirmed cases of COVID-19. 

Th death toll stands at 67,451.

 

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Maestro of Misinformation.

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Sadly, your favorite blogger has fallen behind in his posts. That means we’re catching up today. Last week, Trump, the Maestro of Misinformation, was busy bragging that under his guiding hand the United States was killing it when it came to testing. He claimed that people in every other country dreamed of having a bold orange leader like him. He insisted the U.S. had done more tests for the virus than all other countries combined. 

If we went to Worldometers, we found that the Maestro was off a tad. The U.S. had done more tests than any other nation. 

We’d done 7.2 million. Spain had done 1.9 million, Italy 2.2 million, and the United Kingdom 1.2 million tests. If we added in France, 1.1 million, Germany, 2.6 million – okay, that’s already more than we’ve done – and then tossed in Russia, 4.1 million – and we started totaling numbers for the rest of the world in our head and got 17.5 million more… 

Okay, the Maestro is full of poo.

 

* 

WE DO KNOW that many states are opening back up. We hope, whether we like Trump or don’t, that the country recovers with speed. 

We also know that as of this morning, the Trump toadies were out in force, insisting that when the story of this time is written, historians will credit this president for a great success. “When history looks back on this,” Jared Kushner claimed, “they’ll say, man, the federal government acted really quickly and creatively, they threw a lot at the problem and saved a lot of lives.” 

(Wait, didn’t these very same guys spend weeks telling us, “Don’t worry, this virus is just the flu?”)

 

Here, it might be worth offering this chart, to show what happened when South Korea and the U.S. discovered the same day, they had their first case of the virus. The South started immediate testing. 

Trump kept denying there was reason for concern.

 

Total cases. 

                                    South Korea                           United States 

January 20                            1                                        1

March 2                         3,276                                    104     

March 5                         6,284                                    225

March 7                         7,000+                                              401

March 17                       8,320                                   4,661

 

By March 21, South Korea had already done 300,000 tests for the coronavirus. The U.S., with six times the population, had done 170,000. The cost of delay was soon evident. 

March 29                       9,661                                 137,294

April 6                          10,331                                337,971

April 24                        10,708                                887,622

May 3                           10,793                              1,186,073    

 

South Korea had contained the spread, at a cost of only 250 lives. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Speaking of South Korea, troops recently traded fire with enemy forces across the border in North Korea. 

Kim Jong-un, who some reports said was dead, has resurfaced. Three years and four months into Trump’s first term in office (hopefully, his only one) the North Korean dictator still has all the nuclear weapons he had when our president told us he was no longer a nuclear threat.

One easy way to tell: This was never the flu.

 

July 31, 2020: We Want Crooks in Government Exposed, Regardless of Party

 

7/31/20: Trump spent the last day of the month complaining because the coming election was going to be rigged. It would be a hoax, a fraud, a calamity, a con, a debacle, a fiasco, and a five-alarm fire. 

He did not spend the day talking to health officials about how best to address the COVID-19 crisis. 

Because: Trump is an idiot. 

He did find time to fly to Florida and squeeze in a campaign fundraiser, and then fly back to Washington D.C.

 

On this, the final day of a brutal month, the U.S. recorded 68,605 cases of COVID-19. That brought the July total to: 

1,916,706. 

Trump likes to say he has done more than any other president in his first three-and-a-half years in office. 

You could say he has singlehandedly rejuvenated the mortuary business.

 

According to the CDC, on July 31, another 1,371 Americans succumbed from COVID-19. The death toll stood at: 

152,870. 

One final bit of Trumpian imbecility. On this last day of July, the president tells the American people he has the coronavirus on the run, or soon will. “We’ll get rid of it, we’ll beat it, and it will be soon.” 

*

Sen. Katrina Robinaon, right.

Unlike the President of the United States, this blogger has no trouble condemning lawmakers who are alleged to be crooks, no matter what side they’re on (see post for 9/1/20). When Fox News reports on a Tennessee state senator, Katrina Robinson, a Democrat, who has been charged with stealing $600,000 from a company she owns, Mr. Blogger does not start shouting that Robinson is being persecuting – as Trump always says when his pals get arrested and charged. 

The senator is accused of using the cash to pay for her own wedding, to buy  her daughter a Jeep Renegade, and to fund an extravagant lifestyle. 

So, if she gets convicted? Yeah. Lock her dumb ass up.

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (3/18/22): Robinson is eventually convicted on two counts, but a judge sentences her to “time served,” and one year of probation. She had previously been expelled from her seat in the Tennessee Senate, but called the 27-5 vote a “procedural lynching.” 

Appeals and additional sentencing seem likely.

March 17, 2021: Be Glad Your Ancestors Were Allowed to Come to America

 

3/17/21: Happy St. Patrick’s Day, especially to those 31.5 million Americans who have Irish roots to the family tree.

 

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“There was but one hope: America.” 

Irish immigrant, 1848

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Be grateful that rules of immigration were lax in the 1840s, when your ancestors fled starvation, hoping to find a better life in this country. As one immigrant explained, “There was but one hope: America.” 

Be glad your ancestors weren’t turned away to starve. In Ireland, in those bleak days, observers noted dead and dying people scattered by the roadsides. Many of their faces were stained green from eating grass in vain attempt to stay alive. 

When you hear about the 4,200 children, unaccompanied by adults, currently piling up on our southern border, and hoping to gain refuge, call it something besides a crisis “on the border.” We’ve rescued people from around the globe before. We took in nearly four million Irish. They were feared because of their religion. 

We took in three million Italians. They were feared because they supposedly all belonged to the Mafia. 

We took Russian Jews, who spoke no English on arrival. 

We took in Cubans, Iranians, and Vietnamese, fleeing brutal oppression. 

We enticed millions of undocumented workers to breech our borders, with a promise of jobs, low-paying as they might be.

 

Don’t forget your ancestry when you think about the “crisis” on the border. It’s almost certain that someone in your family fled poor conditions in distant lands and risked all to reach the land of the free.

 

* 

ALSO, IF YOU ARE A TRUMP FAN worried about dangerous criminals traipsing across the border and killing you in your sleep, don’t forget Rejected-President Don’s prediction. He insisted that if Biden took office the media would quit talking about COVID-19. He said all the media really wanted to do was talk about the virus to make him look terrible. 

What a whiner that guy is! 

Even now, loyal, science-averse Trumpophiles tell pollsters they are reluctant to get the vaccine. In one recent poll, 56% of white Republicans said they were either unsure about or opposed to being vaccinated.

 

So here is where we stand. The U.S. continues to lead all the nations of the world in total deaths. 

Second place in a contest no one wants to win goes to Brazil, led by another virus denier, Jair Bolsonaro. According to Worldometers, as of March 17, Brazil had suffered 285,136 deaths from the virus. 

That meant President Bolsonaro was looking hard for scapegoats to explain his nation’s problems, having fired his third healthcare minister and appointed his fourth since the pandemic began.

 

According to Worldometers, the United States has suffered 1,656 deaths per million population. To our north, Canada has managed the crisis much better: 594 deaths per million. To our south, Mexico, with its less advanced medical system, has also fared better: 1,502 deaths per million. 

Almost every other country in the world has done better – because they have not been led by virus-deniers, and fans of the virus-deniers have not been fed a diet of medical bulls***, by idiots like Rush Limbaugh. France, hit hard by the first wave of disease, has rallied, and held losses to 1,399 per million. At one point, we were tied with Ireland at 350 dead per million. Ireland has lost 917 per million as of today. South Korea took the coronavirus threat seriously from the first. That nation has lost 33 per million. Finland, a socialist country, has lost 145. Germany, with a trained scientist as president, has lost 889. The death toll in Israel is 659 per million. Sweden, another country where medicine is socialized, first tried for “herd immunity.” They soon realized that was a mistake. Still, their losses are lower than ours, at 1,304 per million. No leader in Japan claimed COVID-19 was “just a flu,” as did Trump. 

The death toll in Japan: 69 per million.

 

The bottom line is clear. The U.S. has some of the most expensive healthcare in the world. Virus-denier Trump downplayed the threat; and hundreds of thousands of Americans died needlessly, as a result. 

Worst-performing nations in the world, measuring deaths per million: 

Gibraltar:                   2,791 (94 total deaths)

San Marino:               2,266 (77 total deaths)

Czechia:                      2,229

Belgium:                     1,942

Slovenia:                     1,899

Montenegro:              1,861

United Kingdom:       1,847

Hungary:                    1,807

Bosnia

  and Herzegovina:    1,739

Italy:                           1,712

Bulgaria:                     1,695

United States:      1,656

March 20, 2021: Sen. Mike Lee Thinks a Mesh Mask is Funny

 

3/20/21: Did you know Sen. Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, wears a mesh mask to show his disdain for science and the safety of others? 

Now you do. 

Sen. Lee, show earlier, breathing germs on others.

I bet the 1,517 Americans who died on Thursday are getting a good laugh in heaven. Also, I bet their loved ones can see the humor of Sen. Lee’s stance. 

Also getting a chuckle: the people who died on: 

3/11:                          1,538

3/12:                          1,387             

3/13:                          1,040

3/14:                             586

3/15:                             706

3/16:                             995

3/17:                          1,118

 

Lee has already had the virus and survived. So he doesn’t believe he needs a mask and he’s happy to sow confusion.

 

Then we have Sen. Rand Paul, who also survived a bout of COVID-19, and likes to argue about mask wearing with Dr. Anthony Fauci. Dr. Fauci is the nation’s leading expert in infectious diseases. 

Sen. Paul used to be an ophthalmologist. 

Now his specialty is buffoonery. 

I bet all those dead Americans are up in heaven right now, saying, “Well, we don’t need masks here now that we’ve passed through the Pearly Gates. And thank god, Sen. Paul and other leaders of the Republican Party are focused on what really matters in the land where we once lived.”

 

Such as: Saving Mr. Potato Head! (See: 3/5/21.)

October 26, 2021: Covid-19 Deaths vs. Deaths in All U.S. Wars

10/26/21: your humble blogger enjoys another day of retired bliss here in Southern Ohio, although admittedly keeping a wary eye on the stock market. He’s waiting to see if it will crash, as Trump predicted, should Joe Biden be elected.

 

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Obama had two terms to work and outperformed Trump in both.

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We would, he warned, be looking at 1929 all over again were he defeated. And I definitely don’t want to end up on the street, selling apples. 

That meant it was time to check the numbers again. After a serious slump in September, the Dow Jones is rocking again. Monday, the Dow closed at 35,741, a new record. 

(Start of an epic slide toward 1929???)

 

In fact, while reading about current market trends, I stumbled upon a report from Kiplinger. Presidents back to 1883 were rated according to annual stock market losses and gains during their terms. The story, published in April, came too soon to fairly rate Biden, though at the time he stood first. Since we know Trump constantly praised himself for the market mojo he brought to Washington D.C., including three separate times he bragged about the Dow hitting the same 25,000 high, we have no choice but to mention that Kiplinger has Calvin Coolidge in first place for market gains. Bill Clinton is second. Barack Obama is in third. Yes, Loser Donald. Obama did better than you. And never got impeached even once. We might also be cruel and note that Mr. Obama had two terms to work and outperformed Mr. Trump in both. 

True, Trump comes in fourth and edges out William McKinley in fifth; but he can’t really brag all that much. 

As of Monday morning, he trailed Biden, as well. At this point in their presidencies Trump had the markets up 17.7% and bragged about it every time the Dow hit a new high. By comparison, the Dow is up 19% under Joe Biden, and Obama had seen the market rise by 21.4%. 

So, no Great Crash yet.

 

*

The Battle of San Juan Hill.

MORE BLEAK NUMBERS from the pandemic front, although vaccinated Americans are feeling surprisingly good and getting out and eating in restaurants, and going to sporting events. So are some of the unvaccinated. 

Generally speaking, it’s the unvaxxed who are currently doing almost all the unfortunate dying. Since we last checked, the CDC has reported the following numbers. First, the good: 77/7% of Americans, ages 12+ have had at least one shot to guard against the coronavirus. 

Then the bad numbers. The daily death toll: 

10/16:               777  

10/17:               629

10/18:               914

10/19:            1,763

10/20:            1,554

10/21:            1,362

10/22:            1,701

10/23:               397

10/24:               167

10/25:            1,064

10/26:            1,612 

Cumulative death toll: 737,990

 

Comparison: All U.S. Combat Deaths (1775-2021) 

American Revolution                8,000

War of 1812                              2,260

Mexican War                             1,733

Civil War                               214,938

Spanish-American War                 385

Philippine fighting                     1,020

World War I                            53,402

World War II                         291,557

Korean War                             33,686

Vietnam War                           47,434

Gulf War                                       149

War in Afghanistan                    1,833

Iraq War                                     3,836 

Indian wars, other combat        5,000 (roughly)

 

Total:     664,733.