2 V 2020: Campaign contribution from all of us to Trump

I received a form letter from the President that let me know that I too would receive my COVID-19 payout. It was sent from the Dept. of the Treasury, so the whole expense of paper, printing, and mailing will have been paid by tax dollars. My Spouse and I have sent the following letter to Mr. Trump:

Dear Mr. President,

We strongly disapprove of your using our money to finance your campaign. We received from the Dept. of the Treasury a form letter that we are supposed to believe originated at the White House and bears a facsimile of your signature. This letter informs us that we are to get some money that constitutes “fast and direct economic assistance to you.” I wonder if you sent a similar letter to accompany the big-money bailouts of which we have heard so much.

This letter is an attempt to claim credit for what others have done, and it is nothing but a political advertisement that is paid for by taxpayers’ dollars. This is a lowdown maneuver that is an abuse of the office of President of the United States.

29 IV 2020: Who is Tara Reade?

I find the Tara Reade business very puzzling. Unless the Biden supporters achieve some resolution of the issue, it may be that we will have to believe either Biden or Reade.  

There is, on the internet anyway, a dearth of information about Reade. I read that she began as an actress, performing in stage plays and commercials. She was an intern for Leon Panetta and worked for Joseph Biden. She served as General Manager of the Santa Cruz Chamber Players. She is married and has a daughter, though her husband is unknown. She earned a law degree but has never practiced. It is said that she describes herself as a domestic violence and animal rights activist and a couple of sources described her as a “controversialist.” No one has disclosed how she supports herself now. 

I have not found that any have investigated her and work experiences since the alleged abuse. 

A number of people have come forward to say “Oh, yes, now I remember, Tara told me about her troubles, in 1993, in 1995 or 1996, in 2008.” These statements are described by some as corroboration, but at best they corroborate only the fact that Reade talked about having been abused and fired from her work in Washington for that reason.

As I see it, a lot more must be done to establish Reade’s credibility. Her making a charge has gained her the right to be heard, but, contrary to what some seem to think, it does not give her the right to be believed. That must be earned.

23 IV 2020: Trump is full of it

I had been thinking of Trump as a weathervane, turning this way and that according to the breezes blowing from Jarrod, Dr. Oz, his employees at Fox News, Lindbaugh, Mitch, and unseen investors. My Sister has suggested a better alternative: Trump is a wind-sack, turning this way and that but always full of hot air.

20 IV 2020: The Economy may kill us

We are being told that the economy matters most. Various Republican figures seem to think that it would be better to let the old and infirm die, better than put the whole population at risk than have the Economy suffer. The Economy! We would be nothing without it, or, Trump would be nothing without it, for the “booming economy” is the solitary boast of Trump and his Republican minions.

But how booming is the economy? The national debt is $23.3 trillion as of February 2020, and we would now have to add the vast sums being paid out as a “stimulus package.” Closer to home, the average credit card debt for American households is $5,700; the average debt for households that carry a balance on their credit cards is $9,333, and the current average interest rate on credit card debt is 16.14%. Last year the total home mortgage debt was $9.4 trillion. The total auto debt was 1.3 trillion. Student-loan debt was $1.48 trillion.

We are all in debt up to our eyebrows. And the guidance we receive from politicians and from the advertising industry is: Don’t stop spending spending, support the economy! They tell us this because if Americans became frugal, stopped buying things they don’t truly need and started paying the entire price in cash at time of purchase, the Economy would collapse because it is built on hype and sand.

15 IV 2020: Trump can’t wait, nor can Hollingsworth

Well now I see that our King, Donald I Mendax, no longer content with throwing his signature tantrums at briefings, is insisting that his name appear on the welfare checks we are all to receive. It is said that he is not a slave to presidential traditions, and here is another instance of this behavior. Other presidents have been content to wait until they are dead to have their names and images appear on U.S. currency. Trump can’t wait until he is actually dead, but wants his name on the checks, as if to say: “A gift to you from King Trump.”

I read that a trump-cult congressman from (wouldn’t you know it?) Indiana, Trey Hollingsworth, asserts that we must sacrifice Americans’ lives in order to preserve “our way of life as Americans,” by which I suppose he means the economy and all that it enables and represents. I always shiver when reactionaries invoke “the American way of life,” for the expression is as meaningless as giving the flag a good wave. If they were to say what they really mean by the American Way of Life, their hypocrisy and ruthlessness would at once be revealed. Mr. Hollingsworth fits right in here, for to preserve “our” way of life, Americans have been killing other Americans for 300 years. 

10 IV 2020: Barrbie Doll; Burlesque of Royals in D.C,

I encountered today a headline that “Barr defends Trump’s firing of intel community watchdog as the ‘right thing’ to do.” Who bothered to ask Mr. Barr’s opinion about this? If ever he had a mind of his own, it has long ago withered away. He has become like one of those dolls with a string at the back of its neck. Pull the string and, instead of “Mama,” it says “Trumpi ha sempre ragione. // Trump is always right.”

The Trump family is working together on their

corona virus

con. Trump is staging a burlesque of the royal family, with roles for himself, the King, for Queen Melania the Model, for Princess Ivanka the Mannequin, and for the Duke of 666 Fifth Avenue. No public role has been assigned to the Crown Prince who works best backstage anyway, and it’s a matter of wait-and-see where Prince Eric might be most effective.

6 IV 2020: Trump’s public psychoanalysis

So I see that Trump had another meltdown at his daily corona virus briefing.

1) Why do the media continue to report on these so-called briefings. If Trump needs a psychiastrist (and he does), he should get one and not do his free-associating and re-living boyhood traumas before the American people. What set him off? Oh, it was the truth again.

2) Dr. Christi Grimm is the Assistant Inspector General for HHS, and Trump, we recall, has had trouble with inspectors general. She deserves the nation’s gratitude for her honest report. That it reflected badly on the Trump regime is only to be expected as should we also expect that Trump would blow his top and abuse his office by playing the bully and unchallenged liar. His ass was not wholly without kisses, however, because the asst secy of HHS, an Admiral Brett Giroir, also read the report as a criticism of HHS and lost his temper. When you screw up really badly it’s only natural to regard any statement as a criticism.

3) Someone has to but a bridle or a face mask on Trump. I don’t care who Trump is or what he is, the nation should not tolerate his contemptible behavior. The Republican senators are, of course, complicit perjurers, and there will be no help from them. Won’t some credible figure from the right speak out against this national disgrace?

6 IV 2020: Knows more than all the experts put together …

We elected a fundamentally insecure man of invincible ignorance. He has surrounded himself with yes-men and flatterers most of whom are every bit as ignorant as he. So we are facing this Plague guided by people who were chosen for the job precisely because they don’t know what they’re doing. 

So a common characteristic of Trump and all his “best people” is an abject fear and, hence, hostility to anyone who is truly informed, and especially to anyone who is well informed and disagrees with them. We have seen a scandalous instance of this fear/hostility this week in the apoplexy of Peter Navarro at a recent meeting. Navarro is a trade adviser to Trump and chief instigator of our trade war with China. At a meeting of informed and responsible experts he tried to pitch hydroxychloroquine as a cure for corona virus and then threw a tantrum when the experts wouldn’t buy it.

All this carrying on about hydroxychloroquine, Trump’s drug of choice! I suppose he “feels” it would be effective or was told so by someone he respects, like Dr. Oz. Of course, the President has a natural gift for science and does not really need advice. But I am waiting to hear what Rudy Giulliani has to say, for his real area of expertise is snake oil.

P.S. Didn’t Mr. Modly, the Acting Secretary of the Navy, make an Acting Fool of himself in his denunciation of Captain Brett Crozier. However, I do think that in this case we were hearing his Master’s voice, for both content and style of his rant were Trumpian.

2 IV 2020: Wartime leader? Guns for everybody! The South is so predictable.

Trump has been trying to market himself as a “war-time president.” Thank heaven we are not at war! Trump has been behaving like a wind-up toy, reeling all over the place, bouncing off this, rebounding from that. How do you think he would manage a nuclear attack? or a really successful terrorist attack? 

He has made the crisis significantly worse by spreading misinformation (seems he can’t stop doing this) and by setting a pernicious example for the ignorant and Republican politicians by his intermittent breezy optimism about the pandemic.

Purchase of firearms and ammunition is booming. Does anyone know why? Is it a survivalist instinct that is leading people to buy guns to protect their toilet paper? Or are we going to have a civil war between the sane and those who “do not believe” in the corona virus? I rather think that, at least right now, people are purchasing these heaps of guns to dispel their fear of the corona virus. In these days of insecurity, lack of leadership, and uncertainty about the future Americans are turning to their favorite fetish, the gun. What a comfort to have guns in the house, keeping us safe from burglars, wild animals, poverty, and the corona virus! Or is this binge in gun purchases the response to a conspiracy theory that the feds, the deep state, anarchists, or semipelagians will enact emergency measures that will enable them to come and take away our penises — oops, I mean pistols.

Much of the South is acting right in character in this public health crisis. I read a piece on Politico that identified one set of governors who are doing a good job in the corona virus pandemic and another who are screwing up as badly as Trump. And where are the screwups? Why in Dixie! Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, West Virginia, all homes of ignorant voters and bad government.