Showing posts with label windmills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label windmills. Show all posts

Thursday, April 30, 2026

No Two Kings the Same: Charles III and Donald Dumpling II

 

 

No Two Kings the Same:

Charles III and Donald Dumpling II

 

AS APRIL FADES into history, we should take note of a recent uproar, fueled by angry dopes on X. These dopes demand to know how Democrats in Congress could stand and applaud Charles III during his recent address, when those same Democrats, and people like me, use the phrase, “No Kings,” in protest.

I doubt anyone has ever said, “I go to X to get the latest carefully crafted analysis,” on any topic, but holy shit. 

If one were to read what the real King of Great Britain said, you would understand why people on our side applauded. 

But that would require reading, and “influencers” on X don’t go in much for reading (or introspection).


Charles III addresses Congress.


"No Kings" protesters. Donald Trump deals in hate.

 

* 

POLICY-WISE, here are Charles’ main points (in bold) that those of us left of center can applaud.   

(Interpretation for the MAGA faithful is added in orange, as needed.) 

(King Charles III and Donald Dumpling II are not the same.) 

(Orange being The Dumpling’s favorite skin toner color.)

 

On the Founding Fathers, for example, Charles had this to say: 

They carried with them, and carried forward, the great inheritance of the British Enlightenment – as well as the ideals which had an even deeper history in English common law and Magna Carta.

 

These roots run deep, and they are still vital. Our Declaration of Rights of 1689 was not only the foundation of our constitutional monarchy, but also provided the source of so many of the principles reiterated, often verbatim, in the American Bill of Rights of 1791.

 

And those roots go even further back in our history: the U.S. Supreme Court Historical Society has calculated that Magna Carta is cited in at least 160 Supreme Court cases since 1789, not least as the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances. 

No American, now or in the future, will ever be well-served if one man or woman grasps too much power in his or her hands. Note that Charles specifically mentions the need to check and balance executive power. 

He’s talking about Donald …


A reference to the Magna Carta is a reminder to check the power of any king.

Got it?
 

 

What animates our great nation? Charles mused: 

Distinguished members of the 119th Congress, it is here in these very halls that this spirit of liberty and the promise of America’s founders is present in every session and every vote cast.

 

Not by the will of one, but by the deliberation of many, representing the living mosaic of the United States. In both of our countries, it is the very fact of our vibrant, diverse and free societies that gives us our collective strength, including to support victims of some of the ills that, so tragically, exist in both our societies today. 

We’re not ruled by a king. He’s still talking about Donald Dumpling II. 

 

On faith, he points out that while Christianity is his rock, he also believes in building a broad understanding: 

Through it I am inspired by the profound respect that develops as people of different faiths grow in their understanding of each other. It is why it is my hope – my prayer – that, in these turbulent times, working together and with our international partners, we can stem the beating of plowshares into swords.

 

I am mindful that we are still in the season of Easter, the season [as a Christian] that most strengthens my hope. It is why I believe, with all my heart, that the essence of our two nations is a generosity of spirit and a duty to foster compassion, to promote peace, to deepen mutual understanding and to value all people, of all faiths, and of none. 

For lawmakers like Rep. Andy Ogles and Rep. Randy Fine, who love to hate on Muslims, it must have been painful to listen to Charles. King Dumpling, of course, has preferred to call Somali immigrants “garbage,” and has said he doesn’t want any more immigrants from places where, frankly, they’d be non-white.

Compassion, promoting peace – we have a fool in the White House talking about “ending a civilization” in Iran. 

We who speak out and say, “No Kings,” find almost no overlap in the words Charles III uttered, and the words of hate that so regularly spill from Donald Trump’s mouth. 

 

The king of Great Britain continued: 

The alliance that our two nations have built over the centuries, and for which we are profoundly grateful to the American people, is truly unique. And that alliance is part of what Henry Kissinger described as Kennedy’s ‘soaring vision’ of an Atlantic partnership based on twin pillars: Europe and America. That partnership, I believe Mr. Speaker, is more important today than it has ever been.

 

The challenges we face are too great for any one nation to bear alone. But in this unpredictable environment, our alliance cannot rest on past achievements, or assume that foundational principles simply endure. As my Prime Minister said last month: “ours is an indispensable partnership. We must not disregard everything that has sustained us for the last eighty years. Instead, we must build on it.” 

Great Britain and the United States have combined strength for a hundred years to defeat fascism, to curb Islamist forces, and more. If Trump wants to knock down one pillar, we’re all endangered. 

The king wants our nations to remain friends. It’s pretty stupid to have to listen to Donald threaten to take over Canada – which still, nominally, listens to the commands of Charles, himself.  



Mural from the Eisenhower Presidential Library,
celebrating our alliance with the British and many other allies.


This is not difficult to understand – though some loud mouths on X, want not to pretend they understand. Stirring up daily anger is their only real trick. Charles understands how alliances make all involved stronger, and he made clear his support for NATO, citing the response of allies after the attacks of 9/11: 

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when NATO invoked Article Five for the first time, and the United Nations Security Council was united in the face of terror, we answered the call together – as our people have done so for more than a century, shoulder to shoulder, through two World Wars, the Cold War, Afghanistan and moments that have defined our shared security.

 

Today, Mr. Speaker, that same, unyielding resolve is needed for the defense of Ukraine and her most courageous people. It is needed in order to secure a truly just and lasting peace. From the depths of the Atlantic to the disastrously melting icecaps of the Arctic, the commitment and expertise of the United States Armed Forces and its allies lie at the heart of NATO, pledged to each other’s defense, protecting our citizens and interests, keeping North Americans and Europeans safe from our common adversaries. 

As we all know, if we don’t have our heads stuck in jack-o-lanterns, Donald continues to trash NATO, and our NATO allies. He has gone so far as to denigrate the sacrifice of NATO troops in the fight against the Taliban, though more than a thousand gave their lives. 

Note also the “melting icecaps,” a clear reference to the damage being done by climate change. Trump thinks climate change is a “hoax,” and wants to block efforts to expand renewable energy sources. 

The icecaps aren’t melting by chance. 

Meanwhile, The Dumpling truly believes that windmills cause cancer. Charles III and Donald J. Trump are not the same.


Melting ice in Greenland: A warning sign to all humanity.
 

 

The real king adds: 

Our common ideals were not only crucial for liberty and equality, they are also the foundation of our shared prosperity. The rule of law: the certainty of stable and accessible rules, an independent judiciary resolving disputes and delivering impartial justice.  

No individual ever to have been seated in the Oval Office has so continuously attacked the judiciary as the Dumpling King, including members of the U.S. Supreme Court, chosen by is dumpling self. He has called judges who oppose his will “disgraces,” and much worse. 

 

Then Charles III addresses the dangers of climate change – without using the term “climate change,” which otherwise might send Trump over the edge into full fear-the-windmills meltdown. 

No pun intended.

 

“So as we look toward the next 250 years, we must also reflect on our shared responsibility to safeguard nature, our most precious and irreplaceable asset.

 

… The natural wonders of the United States of America are indeed a unique asset, and generations of Americans have risen to this calling: indigenous, political and civic leaders, people in rural communities and cities alike, have all helped to protect and nurture what President Theodore Roosevelt called ‘the glorious heritage’ of this land’s extraordinary natural splendor, on which so much of its prosperity has always depended.

 

Yet even as we celebrate the beauty that surrounds us, our generation must decide how to address the collapse of critical natural systems which threatens far more than the harmony and essential diversity of nature. We ignore at our peril the fact that these natural systems, in other words, nature’s own economy, provide the foundation for our prosperity and our national security. 

Look, if you don’t know that Donald has been the worst guardian of the environment of any modern American leader, I feel sorry for you. You’re almost too clueless to be allowed to handle scissors.

There’s a reason almost every major environmental organization in this country has opposed electing Trump – three elections in a row. 

 

Charles continued: 

I pray with all my heart that our alliance will continue to defend our shared values, with our partners in Europe and the Commonwealth, and across the world, and that we ignore the clarion calls to become ever more inward-looking. 

Politely speaking, “America First” doesn’t cut it. The same idea failed in the 1930s and early 40s, when the fascist powers, and a militaristic Japan rose to power, and then came close to winning World War II. 

The Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians, and the North Koreans would love to see the United States falter; and if they work together (and they are doing so), we will need strong alliances, as always. 


 

POSTSCRIPT: If you love Donald Trump, you don’t have to like this analysis. But if you are too obtuse to understand why our side does, you need to read more and scream less. On climate change, for example, if we get this threat wrong all our children and grandchildren will be screwed. 

And do we really want the Chinese – the communists the MAGA folks insist we on the left love, but don’t – do we really want them to dominate the rest of this century, with Russian help? 

Wednesday, April 13, 2022

April 23, 2020: The Windmill Party and the "Four Corners of Deceit."

 

4/23/20: Time to face a simple truth. Trump is now the leader of the newly formed Windmill Party. The GOP is extinct. He can tell the rank and file anything and they will swallow his sentences whole. If he says windmill noise causes cancer, they won’t blink. If he says climate change is a “hoax,” they will nod. If scientists at NASA and NOAA are sounding alarms, they tune them out. If they believe wholeheartedly in Donald J. Trump, there’s no need to think for themselves.



Rush Limbaugh taught the ill-informed to trust science.

(He will later receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.)


 

____________________ 

“Rushing blindly towards unproven drugs can be disastrous and result in countless more deaths. Science, in service to the health and safety of the American people, must always trump politics.” 

Dr. Rick Bright, head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority

____________________

  

Not to deny that the Windmill Party includes many fine folks. Some of this blogger’s friends, neighbors, and even favorite relatives have been known to vote the Windmill Party line. 

That doesn’t mean this party isn’t chock full of nuts. Unfortunately, those nuts usually drive party policy. You have Alex Jones, peddler of both absurd conspiracy theories and expensive coronavirus-curing toothpaste, for one. In this alternative denier universe, Barack Obama was never born in America. The slaughter at Sandy Hook was a “false flag.” The massacre of first graders and teachers wasn’t the work of a screwed up 15-year-old armed with his mother’s AR-15. It was pulled off by the government, so Obama could have an excuse to seize all of our guns. 

Now we find ourselves swamped by trouble, in large part due to President Trump’s ability to ignore science. The Windmill faithful believed him when he claimed COVID-19 was like the flu. Their hero promised when it got warmer in April the virus would go away. They believed Trump and the other loudest deniers. They listened when Rush Limbaugh said the coronavirus was “the common cold, folks.” They believed because Rush had warned them about the “four corners of deceit” for years. Those four: government, academia, science, and media.

 

On an almost daily basis, Limbaugh and others worked to fire up the Windmill base. And the base believed. They listened when Laura Ingraham and Ainsley Earhardt and that whole goofy Fox News crew said there was no need to be alarmed. They took comfort knowing the virus was no threat. The president was nonchalant about taking action to address the spread. Party members assumed the nation was in good hands because they didn’t believe the media if they said we were not. The nation wasn’t in good hands. The president was a bumbling buffoon. 

The four corners of “truth” for Trump and the Windmill Party turned out to be superstition, simplification, bullsh*t, and lies.

 

* 

Fired for refusing to bend science to fit the president’s whims. 

NOTHING this president or any other did could have kept our country from suffering serious pain. But there was a chance to blunt the spread and limit that pain in the first weeks of the crisis. 

That chance was thrown away. 

The science was ignored. Now we pay an astronomical price. Today, we learned that 4.4 million more Americans had filed for unemployment. That brings the total for five weeks to 26.5 million. 

That is what happens when you compare a virus with some of the characteristics of SARS and MERS (my daughter, who works in infectious diseases at the CDC, just explained the similarities in a phone conversation) to “the common cold, folks.” You don’t act with the urgency you should. 

And you pay and pay and pay.


Frontline nurses aren't messing around with this "flu."

 

WE HAD fresh evidence again yesterday of the damage that can result when deniers lead us in reverse. 

Dr. Rick Bright, the director of the federal agency working on a vaccine to fight the virus, released a letter, announcing he had been fired. He said he refused to bend science to fit the president’s whims. 

If you haven’t been paying attention, because you’ve been busy trying to figure out how to pay last month’s bills, let alone the bills for this month, you may not realize the president has been touting an almost magical cure for COVID-19. The drug has never been tested for the purpose, but Trump says hydroxychloroquine could be “a gift from god.” He had “a hunch,” he has said, it could work to fight off the virus and he has been pushing hard for its use.

 

The problem was that the Windmill Party folks were sold. Ingraham made it clear on her nightly show that the drug would be a “game changer” and we could all thank Donald J. Trump. Hannity touted the drug. Tucker Carlson invited a guest on his show who swore that hydroxychloroquine had a “100 percent” cure rate in a clinical trial conducted by Stanford University. (See: 4/19/20.) 

Behind the scenes, Dr. Bright was making it clear he believed the drug would not work and might well do harm. 

What, then, was the sin for which he was fired? Dr. Bright says he was shunted aside because of his “insistence that the government invest the billions of dollars allocated by Congress to address the COVID-19 pandemic into safe and scientifically vetted solutions, and not in drugs, vaccines and other technologies that lack scientific merit [emphasis added].” 

Bah! The Windmill crowd doesn’t trust science! Science is one of the “four corners” of deceit. 

In his statement, delivered by his lawyers, Bright said he was “speaking out because to combat this deadly virus, science not politics or cronyism has to lead the way. Rushing blindly towards unproven drugs can be disastrous and result in countless more deaths,” he added. “Science, in service to the health and safety of the American people, must always trump politics.”

 

* 

FOR NOW, we live in a free country, where Dr. Bright can publish his statement and employ the word “trump” in unsubtle fashion. We still enjoy free speech. The New York Times can pick up the story. We still have freedom of the press. Trump might not like it, nor his most avid fans. We don’t live in China. (Yet.) In China they silenced whistleblowers who warned COVID-19 was a threat. 

In this country, a reporter a person President Trump would tell his followers was an “Enemy of the People” inquired  during the daily press conference: Was Dr. Bright fired for taking a stand? 

In this country, the leader of the Windmill Party could only respond, “Maybe he was and maybe he wasn’t; I don’t know who he is.”

April 25, 2020: "Disinfectant Donald" Has Brilliant New Plan to Defeat COVID!

 

4/25/20: At some point in the Trump presidency, I expect my jaw to drop so far, so suddenly, it dislocates, and I end up in the hospital for a week. 

Once again, “Disinfectant Don” has been revealed for what he is: an egocentric, ill-informed liar.

 

____________________ 

You’d never know anyone was suffering except him.

____________________

  

First, however, a look at Sunday’s stark numbers. A check, a little before one p.m., shows that the U.S. has 943,865 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. A total of 54,480 Americans is dead.

 


 

Given these brutal figures, you might assume it would be easy for President Trump to go before the American people in his daily press conferences and offer up comfort and compassion. If you have been watching, you know he can’t. He might read a few formulaic sentences off a sheet provided by aides. There’s never a glimmer of genuine empathy. The president reads in a monotone, citing cold, hard statistics to show how much help his administration is passing on to states, his voice rising only when he turns defensive. He never mentions individual suffering. He never talks about painful loss. If you watched all of Trump’s press conference, all the way through, you’d never know anyone was suffering except him. 

Trump’s troubles exploded again on Thursday when he suggested people with COVID-19 could be cured by injecting them with disinfectant. That comment sounded so stupid that I had a hard time believing the president made it. Anyone who follows my blog knows I don’t like Trump. I can hardly bear to listen to him talk and had not seen the press conference. That meant I needed to see what he said in context.

 

I had to know. Could a U.S. president really say something so profoundly clueless and dumb? It turns out he did. 

Even worse, when it was revealed how clueless and dumb Trump sounded, he tried to lie about what he meant. He said he wasn’t seriously suggesting injecting disinfectant. He was being “sarcastic.” He was directing his comments toward reporters, who we all know he hates. 

By the way, if you’re keeping track, that makes Trump: a) clueless; b) dumb; c) a liar; and d) a threat to the free press. 

 

Still a loyal member of the Windmill Party. 

If you’re still a loyal member of the Windmill Party (that is: you believe everything the Orange Moron says), you can see the president’s comments in context, if you watch the briefing, start to end. You can watch it through a fixed White House camera, which focuses on the person at the podium. Since you doubtless have better ways to spend your time, such as picking lint from between your toes, start around the 25:00 minute mark. The pertinent comments last about two minutes. 

When Trump turns to pose his question to some person or persons off camera, you can’t see who it might be. It could be a reporter or reporters as Trump will later claim. It could be the First Lady, stopping by to listen to her main squeeze. For all we know, from this angle, it could be a porn queen. 

For proper perspective, you have to view Trump’s comments from another angle, which C-Span2 provides. At the 6:37 mark of their tape, the president suggests that we “hit the body” of a patient suffering from the coronavirus with a powerful dose of ultra-violet light. Maybe internally! He has a hunch this might knock out the virus. He turns to his right and clearly directs his words to Dr. Deborah Birx, seated in a chair along the briefing room wall. “And I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it,” he says. He’s obviously directing his comments to her. “And then I see the disinfectant, which knocks it out, in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside, or almost a cleaning?” He even waves his hand in a circular motion, as if cleaning an Oval Office window. 

“Because you see it gets in the lungs, and does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that. So that you’re going to have to use medical doctors. But it sounds interesting to me [emphasis added].” 

Trump ends with a shrug.

 

If that’s sarcasm directed at reporters, I’m the Princess of York. You can see where Trump is looking (screenshot at 7:02). It’s clear to Dr. Birx who he’s talking to, as well, because she answers his questions.  

If you still have your doubts about the veracity of this blogger, you can go to a third tape and watch Dr. Birx respond. 

 

POSTSCRIPT: I mentioned the president’s lack of empathy at the start of today’s post. To my knowledge, I have never heard him use the word in any speech, although I have trouble listening to him for long. 

I do know, if you check the archive for his Twitter feed, that you can search by word. You have, for starters, nearly 48,000 tweets. Punch in “losers” and you find Trump has called his foes “losers” hundreds of times. He has called those he doesn’t like “psychos” and “sick” and “lowlifes” too. 

I had never searched to see how often the word “empathy” is used. It turned up in two tweets. That included Trump retweeting Dan Bongino, of Fox News, who had this to say: “I don’t feel an ounce of empathy for all of the imbeciles who bought into the Russian collusion hoax now that it’s been entirely debunked.” 

The second time the word appeared it had nothing to do with Trump thinking about others. All he really did was quote a White House Proclamation on Doctors Day, and provide a link. 

So: I would argue that the word “empathy” has never been a part of Trump’s vocabulary. Nor does he display this quality in daily life.