Author: Peter David

FREAK OUT FRIDAY – May 1, 2020

I am so freaking sick of the hypocrisy on the right that it’s making me ill.  My stomach turns as these blathering blowhards put forth their idiotic, self-contradicting opinions as if they have any worth.  I am tired of these inconsistent blowhards rallying behind Trump in order to march this country straight over a cliff.  

And boy, am I fed up with them attempting to label the left as hypocrites when they continue to kiss Trump’s butt while spewing philosophies that are in constant conflict.

And the icing on the cake is Tara Reade, a woman whose accusations are so sketchy that EVEN TRUMP isn’t getting behind it.  He shrugs, he says he doesn’t know anything about her accusations, which is absolute bull.  “I don’t know about it or about him or about her” is his default position (a close second behind “fake news!”) whenever he’s confronted with something he doesn’t want to face.  I swear, if Jared Kushner was arrested while having sex with a twelve year old, Trump would swear he doesn’t really associate with him.  

What fractures me is that the Trumpies are seizing upon Democrats’ lack of support for Reade as some sort of hypocrisy on our own side because, hey, we made a big deal out of Christine Ford and her accusations of Brett Kavanaugh.  So let me see if I’ve got this straight:  the same people who dismissed Ford out of hand are now turning around and saying that WE are hypocrites because we’re regarding Reade with suspicion.  Even though they are the ones embracing her while having rejected Ford.  

Well, hëll, let’s examine Reade, shall we?

Tara Reade claims that Biden molested her back in 1993.  Curiously, she never brought it up when he was made vice president.  That would certainly have been the time, yes?

Then again, it’s not like she repeatedly praised Biden for his attitude toward abused women.

Oh, wait.  She did.  Often.  In the intervening years she extolled Biden’s virtues while lambasting Vladimir Putin.  She did that all the way to 2018, when Biden first started making noise about running for President.  Then amazingly, she did a 180.  She proceeded to trash Biden while simultaneously extolling Putin’s manliness and virtues.  

But that’s probably coincidence.  I mean, it’s not like she’s ever done anything criminal…

Oh, wait.  She did.  Back in the 90s, she stole $1400 from a charity dedicated to helping horses.  Hëll, that would certainly make her an apt mate for Trump, since stealing from charity is kind of his thing.

Then there’s her brother, who told an interviewer that Biden had touched her shoulders in a way that made her uncomfortable…and then, several days later, texted the reporter that Biden had also shoved his finger into her vágìņá.  Because…he FORGOT that when he first did the interview?  If some guy physically manhandled your sister’s genitals and then you were later asked about that man, wouldn’t you kick off your recollection with that?  How in God’s name could he have omitted that?  That’s not just burying the lead; that’s tying a granite block to it and shoving it into the Marianas trench.  

And yet these same right wing blockheads who do not hesitate to believe that two dozen women are all lying about Trump doing everything from manhandling them to raping them…they firmly embrace Reade’s dubious claims while calling us hypocrites because any examination of her story doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

We’re the same party who gave the bum’s rush to Al Franken for doing things that wouldn’t even register on Trump’s radar of abuse, and they dare accuse us of being hypocrites? 

The Reade complaint is the absolute proof that Trump’s followers do not care about the truth, about consistency, about reality, about anything except clinging to power and lying about anyone who disagrees with them.  And I am done with it.  

I am done with these bášŧárdš destroying Democratic candidates for the presidency.  These áššhølëš took war hero John Kerry and made people believe that he was a lying coward.  These schmucks convinced the world that Al Gore claimed he invented the internet, which HE NEVER SAID.  They are the living embodiment of what Joseph Goebbels said:  “If you tell a lie big  enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

This latest outing—their blind acceptance of Trump despite his sexual predations so numerous that there’s an entire book out about it called “All the President’s Women”—while simultaneously condemning Biden for a sole accusation by a woman whose word simply cannot be trusted, is the last figurative straw.  

Slap them down, people.  I mean it.  Wherever you go on Facebook or Twitter, when you see them ranting, throw their hypocrisy in their face.  You won’t convince them; their heads are buried so far up Trump’s ášš that they’ve forgotten what fresh air smells like.  But smack them down before they convince people who just don’t know any better.  

Enough sitting around and shaking our heads and tut-tutting about how awful they are.

Time to fight back.

PAD

There are arguments that have been made contending Donald Trump is the anti-Christ.  I must admit, that’s a little outside of my realm of expertise.  But based upon this past week…indeed, this past year…I can certainly see the reasons for the contention.

He’s certainly opposed to life.  That’s a given.  His constant ignoring of the early warnings which, had he heeded them could have prevented thousands of deaths.  His touting of unproven medicines which, as they are scientifically tested, are proving lethal.  His recent suggestion that injecting people with bleach might help, which he is now desperately trying to walk back as being “sarcastic” which is his typical response when called on his idiocy, even as we concern ourselves that some Branch Covidians (as Wil Wheaton has termed them) will embrace the concept.  His spending two hours every day taunting and baiting reporters (because he is a master baiter), insulting other politicians, or throwing them under the bus as he just did with Governor Brian Kemp.  Kemp was stupid enough to take Trump at his word and reopen Georgia.  When that resulted in a ton of negative backlash, Trump immediately turned around and said that Kemp should not do what Trump had been saying for two weeks he SHOULD do.  Basically he threw Kemp under the bus, drove the bus over him, then backed up and ran over him again for good measure.  

Honest to God, if Trump were Jesus, Judas would be the only one he would trust because he’d understand Judas’s motivation.  How can any reasonable person turn down thirty pieces of silver, after all?  Give Trump thirty pieces of silver, he’d betray all the disciples in a heartbeat and then kick back with some Kentucky Fried.

You think you’re bored sitting around in your studio apartment?  Trump, according to the New York Times, is going stir crazy trapped in the White House.  Even this numbskull knows that he can’t go golfing, short of playing eighteen holes in a mini golf course.  (Great, now I’ve got a mental image of Trump slamming a little windmill with his golf club while shouting, “Stupid giant!  Give me cancer, will you?!”)  

The solution to his problem is obvious:  Resign.  If he wants to get out of the White House, turn the presidency over to Pence, get the hëll out of Washington and go wander Mar-a-largo and spare us two hours of tortured syntax, taunting, misinformation and lies every day.  

Which he won’t do.  Instead he is going to continue to try and take whatever underhanded step he can to skew the election in his favor, even as his decisions turn swing states against him and the Coronavirus accelerates its gains in Red States.  He’s currently trying to dismantle the postal service to remove the threat of mail-in votes which would give greater access to people who the GOP is currently working on disenfranchising.  Can’t blame him for being concerned.    Remember when the right wing dismissed it as a Democratic problem because crowded Blue cities were the only ones suffering?  Not anymore.  More remote areas are getting hit now; all those rural folks who thought they were off the hook are suddenly having major problems breathing.  And you just know that Georgia and surrounding states are going to experience major spikes as Kemp invites the virus to have another go and wipe out people who were lucky enough to avoid it the first time.

But don’t worry, America, because Mitch McConnell has your back.  As the GOP continues to prove that even life and death situations are secondary to politicizing everything, McConnell suggested that if states are having financial problems, well heck, they should just declare bankruptcy.  Why should anything be done to help New York says the Senator of a state that ranks forty-six out of fifty states on the range of financial metrics, according to the Mercatus Center of George Mason University.  

Of course, there is a reason states can’t declare bankruptcy:  it’s against the law.  This was pointed out by Governor Cuomo who was so sick of McConnell’s BS that today he challenged McConnell to send a global message of financial distress by crafting a law that states can indeed declare bankruptcy.  “I dare him,” said Cuomo several times, although he stopped short of double dog daring him.  He dared McConnell to craft the law and Trump to sign it, asserting that they should if they had the courage of their convictions.

Which, naturally, they don’t.  They’re bullies and thus intrinsically cowards.  Of course, if they disagree, they can show Cuomo up and do exactly what he challenged them to do.

Betting they won’t.

PAD 

The GOP has traditionally stood for Grand Old Party.  

I think in the age of Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell, the initials should be changed.  The alteration should be made to reflect what the party has become.  Because the modern state of the Republicans would not be recognized by Ronald Reagan, although Richard Nixon would doubtless be envious of it.

GOP should henceforth be changed to Guardians of Power.

Thanks to everything from gerrymandering to voter suppression, the majority of representation in the government belongs to the minority of voters.  Hillary Clinton’s three million vote triumph, which to this day Trump absolutely refuses to acknowledge as legitimate, is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are states such as Wisconsin where Democrats vote in the majority but the Republicans rule thanks to disproportionate representation.

Indeed, let us focus briefly on Wisconsin.  The state where voters were forced to make a choice between fulfilling their civic responsibility and risking their lives.  Voting places in heavily Democratic areas disappeared, resulting in lines that were reportedly three miles long.  While the Democratic governor attempted to push back election day, the GOP united in overturning that ruling and pushing the matter all the way to the SCOTUS, where Trump’s majority insanely supported the notion that voters who had not yet received their absentee ballots had to have them postmarked by election day.  How nice that they were able to rush through that ruling in time to screw over tens of thousands of mostly Democratic voters while delaying the cases about Trump’s tax returns.

Meanwhile the GOP as a whole and Trump in particular continue to exploit the Coronavirus for all it’s worth.  While Republican governors outlaw abortion, dismissing an extremely time sensitive procedure as not being a medical necessity, Trump is busy declaring that mail in voting should not be allowed because—and for once he admitted the truth—you’ll never see a Republican win an election.  Yet again he said aloud the part that you’re only supposed to think.  For once, he was truthful, although not for the reason he supposed.  My assumption is that he believes that voting by mail will ensure cheating, even though there is no proof on record of mail-in voting being used fraudulently. It’s right up there with his ludicrous assertions that people would vote, then go out to their car, change clothing and walk back in to vote again.

Yes, the GOP aggressively does everything it can to block voting, particularly for the poor, students, Hispanics and people of color, since those groups all tend to vote Democratic.  Because they are no longer interested in governing; they’re interested in retaining power and will do everything they can to hold onto it.

Donald Trump is both a product of this mindset and also its leader.  In the past several weeks, he fired Michael Atkinson, the inspector general who did his job by bringing the whistle blower complaint to congress, and Glenn Fine, the inspector general who was tasked with overseeing the $2 trillion slush fund that Trump is undoubtedly going to steer toward people he likes and quite probably himself.  

So let’s see where we are in our democracy.

The GOP continues to rule the Senate with an iron fist, ignoring their oaths and letting Trump off in the impeachment trial while doing everything they can to stymie voters from removing either Trump or them from office.  Meanwhile the Supreme Court does whatever Trump wants, the four member minority helpless to convince their associates to attend to, or even remember, the rule of law.  The founders created our government to be three co-equal branches.  That is no longer the case.  The legislative and judicial branches are now completely subservient to the desires and whims of Donald Trump, a man who openly and aggressively courts and admires and envies dictators.

Let’s check the definition of a dictator, shall we

Dictator:  1) A ruler with total power over a country, typically one who has taken control by force.  2). A person who behaves in an autocratic way.

Autocrat:  Someone who insists on complete obedience from others; an imperious or domineering person.

That pretty much settles it, folks.  With his systematic dismissing of people from office whose job was to provide oversite and control, and with his party doing everything they can to steal the next election just as they stole the one in Wisconsin, Trump is no longer on his way to becoming a dictator.  By every demonstrable measure, he IS a dictator.

Welcome to North Korea.  Welcome to Russia. Welcome to Nazi Germany.

PAD

You know, it occurs to me that I need to spell out something to the right wing blowhards who are still howling about Obama and Hillary rather than face the facts of the President’s incessant failures when it comes to managing the Coronavirus.

When Trump was—well, not elected, but rather chosen by the Electoral college over the actual winner—I was rooting for him to succeed.  As opposed to, say, Mitch McConnell, who swore that his job was to make sure Obama would be a one-term president and spent eight years stonewalling dámņëd near everything that Obama wanted to accomplish.

Make no mistake:  I was certain Trump wouldn’t succeed.  I opened up betting on my website asking people to guess how long he’d last in office; few opined that he’d make it through all four years.  Meanwhile his supporters swore, without evidence, that he would grow into the office.  That his racist effrontery, his relentless insults, would dissipate.  That the responsibility of the position would elevate him, rather than that he would lower it.  They were sure of it.  I was not.

But I was hoping they were right.

Because I still remember 9/11.  Not in the current abstract, “let’s list all the people who died” manner, but from when it was actually happening.  Back when my panicked next door neighbor asked me, as the towers were smoking, whether we should send our kids to school or would the terrorists attack that building next?  Absurd, I know, but that’s what fear does to you.  It makes the ridiculous seem plausible.

At that time, we looked to our leaders to calm us down.  To provide guidance.  To tell us that everything was going to be okay.  To tell us what to do next.

Initially, George W. rose to that challenge.  His approvals skyrocketed because in times of crisis, there is an impulse to rally around the flag and support whoever is in charge.  And Bush did okay…until he then used that approval to guide us into decades of warfare in order to maintain that approval and not be a one-term president, repeating the “mistakes” of his father.  But at least he started off strong. 

I wanted Trump to rise to the occasion.  I wanted him to become the man his supporters swore he could be, because ultimately we are all in this together.  Despite the howls to the contrary from the right who claim that anyone with opposing opinions is a traitor who despises America, I love this country and what it stands for.  I want it to succeed, and a lot of how well it does rests on the shoulders of the man in the Oval Office.  I was certain he would fail, but very much wanted to be proven wrong.  

Unfortunately, the coronavirus has proven beyond all question that I was absolutely right.  

Bereft of his beloved mob gatherings, Trump has instead been holding press…I dunno, “briefings” doesn’t seem the right word.  “Praisings” seems more accurate.  Contradicting or ignoring the words of medical experts who have spent their lives studying and fighting pandemics, Trump has used these praisings as platforms to talk about the most important subject of all:  himself.  New York needs respirators?  Screw that:  do you know how much money the poor fellow is not making as president?  “It cost me billions of dollars to become president” says the man who has charged taxpayers millions upon millions to support him during his countless golf trips.  While medical expert Anthony Fauci vanishes into the woodwork, Trump stands there and asserts that the country will be up and running by Easter.  This despite the fact that the experts assert such a thing would be calamitous.  Trump still insists on likening the pandemic to the flu.  People die from the flu and we don’t shut down the country, he points out.

That’s correct.  That’s for two reasons.  First, the flu has a fatal rate of .1 percent while the coronavirus is anywhere from three to four percent.  Second, the flu doesn’t overload hospitals.  When you have to convert the massive Javits Center to a hospital, just to handle sick patients for whom there’s no room in the existing facilities, something is seriously out of whack.

And yet we are now seeing, on a daily basis, indisputable proof that Trump is completely and utterly bereft of empathy.  This is one of the classic definitions of narcissism that put it far beyond the simple fault of being an egomaniac.  Hëll, to some degree, I’m an egomaniac:  most writers are.  We believe that what we have to say is so important that it should be distributed to as many people as possible with our names attached, ideally in large letters at the top.  If you’re a writer and not an egomaniac, you’re in the wrong profession.

But I care about my wife, my children and grandchildren, my siblings, my friends and family.  I care about what happens to them, and typically will put their concerns above my own.  

A narcissist doesn’t do that.  He is incapable of it.  He cares only about himself, how others can serve him, and how he can use them until they are no longer of any use, at which point he can discard them and move on. 

That’s Trump.  At a time when we need someone who desperately cares about others, who values life above all other considerations, who wants only the best for everyone, we have a strutting narcissist who takes the time to point out the sacrifices he’s made in order to stand up there and promote himself and his brand.  He doesn’t care about the wife that he cheated on with a pørņ star.  He doesn’t care about the national health.  He cares only about the stock market and the economy, and that’s because he figures he needs it to be strong in order to be reelected.  So by all means, have everything be back to normal by Easter so that he can boast he managed to beat the coronavirus, restore the economy, and be the hero.

Do not let yourself be fooled as his supporters have been.

PAD

WHAT’S IN A NICKNAME?

By Peter David

What’s in a nickname?

Presidential eras are oftentimes defined by their nicknames.

Probably the most memorable one, off the top of my head, is that of John F. Kennedy.  After JFK was assassinated, his widow, Jackie Kennedy, commented in a Life magazine interview that he was particularly enamored of the then-current Broadway musical, “Camelot.”  Considering it was about a failed kingship that sank under the weight of a sex scandal, it was a rather odd comparison to make.  But it was the early sixties, the country was in mourning, and what the hëll, it was Richard Burton and Julie Andrews, so one kind of has to let it slide.

Richard Nixon was routinely referred to as Tricky Ðìçk, which was not exactly flattering.  Ronald Reagan’s reign was the years of the Gipper, a character that we were encouraged to win one for in “Knute Rockne, All American.”  Harry S. Truman was widely regarded as “Give ‘em Hëll Harry.”  Nicknames, as stated, define a presidency.  They tell you what it was about, how the president was regarded, what was expected of him.

But we don’t really have a consistent nickname for Donald Trump yet.  Yes, some refer to him as Teflon Don, but that was really the nickname for John Gotti.  It would certainly seem to apply considering the vast number of charges that just slide off him, but it just doesn’t seem right to tag him with someone else’s nickname.  Many call him Cadet Bonespurs to celebrate his specious excuse for avoiding the Vietnam draft.  You remember the Vietnam war:  the conflict that military men who risked their lives to serve in and were subsequently dismissed by Trump as being infants and cry babies.  Yet the bonespurs business occurred decades before the Electoral College placed him in the Oval Office (I find it easier to say that then “he was elected.”)

No, I think we need something that is more appropriate to his tenure, something that relates directly to his opinions and his methodology.  And his current conduct regarding the Coronavirus pretty much, I think, seals the deal.

I believe we should refer to Trump’s years in the White House as the Hoax Presidency.

It makes eminent sense.  Trump, during his patchy speech from the Oval Office on Wednesday, the reaction to which was best summarized by the man himself—“Ooookay”—claimed that partisan interests need to be put aside.  Yet barely a week ago he was claiming that the Democratic reaction to it, and their concerns that he was botching the handling of it which most experts agree he definitely was, was a hoax.  (This was a theory popularized  has currently seized by Rush Limbaugh, the man who singlehandedly devalued the Presidential Medal of Honor through the act of receiving it).  Up until now, all the serious work in trying to contain the coronavirus has been handled at the state level, while Joe Biden makes the kind of speech that we’d want to see a president making.  Meanwhile Trump was resisting declaring a national emergency because it ran counter to his dismissive attitude that the virus was merely a temporary thing, being amplified by the evil media and distorted by the Democrats.  Today, finally, he did indeed declare a national emergency, opening up funds to be used by the states in their efforts to combat it (although I assume that states which included sanctuary cities will be lowest on the list of priorities.  At least Trump has given up on the nonsense that  when the temperatures increase in the spring, because viruses die in warm temperatures.  Which is true:  temperatures in excess of 250 degrees Fahrenheit.  So when April rolls around, if  temperatures increase by two hundred degrees, yes, the virus will die.  Of course, so will humanity, but everything has a price.  Meanwhile Tom Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, can attest to the fact that it’s nonsense since they are currently down with the disease in Australia where they’re already enjoying spring weather.  And it’s lucky Hanks and Wilson were there, because if they were in the US there’s every chance they wouldn’t have had access to a test and could be infecting Hollywood right now.

Then again, according to Trump, climate change is also a hoax.  A Chinese hoax.  So that would be two Chinese hoaxes in three years.  Perhaps hoaxes are their new biggest export.

And the impeachment was also a hoax.  That’s one of his favorites:  the impeachment, which proved indisputably that Trump did exactly what he was accused of, was a hoax.  And the Robert Mueller report, which resulted in the indictment of thirty-four individuals and guilty verdicts or pleas from eight people, including five Trump associates, was a hoax.  And all the negative coverage by fake media outlets such as The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN, all hoaxes.

Let’s face it, if P.T. Barnum were still alive, he would be standing there and applauding in admiration at the vast array of hoaxes that Trump has been able to spot from his Fox & Friends bubble in the White House.  Of course, when Fox was trashing Barack Obama over the spread of Ebola, Trump had no dispute about that.  But when the press reports that the Democrats want to spend more money on combating the Coronavirus than Trump was asking for, and comment about how his budget desires to slash funding for the CDC, why, that’s all a hoax.  The press can’t be trusted.  The Democrats can’t be trusted.  Only Trump, who has lied by one count over sixteen thousand times in the past three years, can be trusted.

It’s really kind of a shame, because the Coronavirus is actually Trump’s chance to prove that he cares about something other than his reelection.  He could have reached across the aisle, said that people’s lives matter more than anything, taken the lead, stepped up, and tried to get the job done.

Instead he dismisses it and yells hoax.  

I’ve heard people say that if they ever get the Coronavirus, they won’t go to a hospital.  Instead they will attend as many Trump rallies as they can.  To spread the hoax virus Trumpies and perhaps even ideally to the man himself.  That’s where Trump’s incessant cries of “hoax” have gotten us.

So I think we should permanently associate the word “hoax” with Trump’s presidency so that when future generations look back on what the hëll has been going on in this country and say, “What was that Trump presidency all about?” we can smile and just say, “It was all a hoax.”

PAD

FREAK OUT FRIDAY – March 5, 2020

So now it’s Obama’s fault.

That is the latest claim from Trump and his team of sycophants, toadies and bootlickers.  The reason that the United States has fallen behind in the race to be able to test for the Coronavirus (or, as Trump refers to it, the Caronavirus) is because of a rule implemented during the Obama administration.  This reputed rule declares that any tests developed had to be approved by the FDA, and that process slowed the entire thing to a crawl.

What rule would that be?

No clue.

Subsequent authorities on the subject have said they have no idea what Trump was talking about or where he had gotten his information.  The obvious response is that he pulled it out of the same place whence he derived his information that windmills cause cancer or that the Coronavirus will vanish in spring, even though it’s doing just fine in Australia where the weather is already much warmer.  He would claim that it was from his gut.  That he has a hunch, just as he has a hunch that the death statistics of 3.2 percent from the World Health Organization are wrong and that it’s more around one percent.  But I’m reasonably sure that he in fact pulled it from his ášš.

It makes sense, because one of his lead ášš-kìššërš, Pence, indeed claimed several days later that he has rescinded the non-existent order.  How do you makes something that never existed in the first place go away?  

Meanwhile he continues to lampoon Elizabeth Warren, a woman who as a politician is worth a hundred Trumps.  He keeps referring to her as “Pocahantas,” accusing her of lying about having native American blood in her history.  You know what?  Someone who has lied over sixteen thousand times in three years doesn’t get to accuse someone else of being untruthful.

Indeed, his talent for falsehoods were on full display Thursday when he did a townhall meeting on Fox.  He claimed Hunter Biden had no job before winding up on the Ukraine board (he was a working lawyer), that Obama repeatedly tried to call Kim Jong un and was rebuffed (he never called him), that incoming presidents were typically not left any court vacancies upon taking office (Obama came in to 53, Bush had 80, Clinton had 103), and asserted that he was protecting coverage of pre-existing conditions (he has backed a number of bills that would weaken it and supports a government lawsuit determined to obliterate the entirety of Obamacare without offering any means of replacing it.). He also asserted that funding for social security, Medicare and other entitlement programs were not remotely protected, but were instead up for review and potential slicing. 

Because that’s what he does.  If you’re poor or elderly or sick or helpless, do not look for any support from Trump, because he backs winners and rich people.  His whole family is like that, which is why it’s amusing that the father of corrupt, greedy and pernicious offspring has the nerve to keep assailing Hunter Biden as if Biden is anywhere in the range of his own childrens’ activities.  

Meanwhile, in other parts of the world, the U.S. signed an ostensible peace accord with the Taliban that guarantees we will withdrew our troops within a year and a half.  The result is exactly what any reasoning person could have expected:  the Taliban has resumed attacks on the Afghani army.  The Taliban is doubtlessly anticipating that Trump will throw our Afghan allies under the bus, just as we did with the Kurds.  Indeed, just as Trump does with anyone when they have worn out their immediate use.

Indeed, just the other day he was asked if he would consider throwing Mike Pence off the ticket and replace him with Nikki Haley.  His response was that doing such a thing would be an act of great “disloyalty.”  Okay, yeah.  And?  I mean, Trump’s entire definition goes exactly one way:  he expect loyalty from others.  That is his first and oftentimes only requirement when filling positions.  If you’re loyal to him, you’re in; if you’re not, you’re disposable.  Many suspect that that was the main reason he put Pence in charge of the Coronavirus.  It’s a win/win for him.  Either the virus will be abated and Trump can then claim credit for having put Pence in the position to do it.  Or if it continues unconstrained and the body count piles up, Trump can state that obviously Pence didn’t get the job done and he should never have trusted him, and it would probably be wise to bring in someone else.  

God, let’s hope Biden or Bernie can get rid of him in September.

PAD

We’ve been through pandemic viruses before.  Most recently it was in 2014 when Fox News relentlessly beat the drums declaring that we were all going to die of the much more lethal Ebola virus.  And Fox & Friends regular guest Donald Trump was one of the loudest leaders of the opposition.  He declared without evidence that Barack Obama was “a psycho,” and one of his reasons for making this proclamation was because Obama designated Ronald Klain to be his Ebola czar to oversee the US endeavors to combat it.

Why Klain?  He wasn’t a doctor, so why make him czar?  Trump loudly proclaimed his lack of medical knowledge as being one of the main proofs of Obama’s psychotic break.  The reason was that Klain was an experienced political operative who Obama felt would have to skill to negotiate strategies with intransigent Republicans who saw the Ebola outbreak as something they could gain for political advantage.  The very same Republicans who are currently falling over each other to voice support for Trump’s incompetence and stupidity (the Coronavirus is going to go away in the spring when the weather warms up?  Seriously?) didn’t hesitate to trash Obama for every decision he made, despite the fact that under Obama’s watch the disease never made it to the United States to any major degree.  Furthermore Obama had Doctor Thomas Frieden heading up the CDC, a top doctor with indisputable credentials.  So Klain used his skills to coordinate everyone working together, and it all turned out fine.

And Trump, who apparently completely forgot about his remonstrating Obama in 2014 for putting a non-scientist in charge, didn’t hesitate to go Obama one better and put not only a non-scientist, but an anti-scientist in charge:  Mike Pence.

Pence certainly has experience with communicable diseases.  His sluggish response to the urge to institute a needle exchange program resulted in an HIV outbreak in Indiana in 2015.  He eventually signed off on it but if he’d acted earlier, far fewer people would have contracted it. It gets better.  Several years earlier when he was in Congress, he stripped funding from Planned Parenthood and consequently the last Planned Parenthood in Scott County, Indiana went out of business…and by interesting coincidence, they also provided free testing for HIV.  So when that went away, it spread the way for HIV.

He also joins Trump in believing that climate change isn’t real.  Furthermore he asserts that cigarette smoking doesn’t lead to cancer, that evolution isn’t real (God created everything, full stop), and that one’s tendency toward gayness can be pounded out of them by—I dunno—beating them repeatedly on a rock by the river.  So when it comes to matters of science, Pence actively flies in the face of people who have dedicated their entire lives to studying these things, not to mention things we know because common sense tells us so.  

Yet this yahoo was put in charge of the endeavors to try and curb a disease that experts say is only a matter of when, not if, it will come to the United States.  Why?  Because according to Trump, Pence has nothing better to do.

Apparently neither does Trump.  He doesn’t care about what the coronavirus is doing to average Americans.  He cares about one thing and one thing only:  what it’s doing to the stock market.  He firmly believes that if the economy tanks, it will jeopardize his chances for reelection.  And considering the only thing keeping him out of jail is the fact that he’s in the Oval Office, that’s certainly a matter of concern for him.  Figuring his only chance is to have the stock market problems reflect on his enemies, he was insane enough to state that the Democratic debate, which happened on Tuesday, was responsible for the first 1000 point drop in the Dow Jones that occurred on Monday.   

The Democrats really have to stop beating up on each other.  If things continue as they are, they could put a pet rock up for the office and it would beat Trump.  

PAD