July 27, 2020

Is there any doubt that Trump will be announcing a vaccine for the coronavirus as early as October, just in time for the November 3rd election? It will be rushed to market, test results be damned. Trump will say something like “What do you have to lose. Try it.” He will brag about his administration’s success in dealing with the pandemic, and its ability to come up with a vaccine. Dr. Anthony Fauci will be in witness protection.

The only problem is that a majority of the American people have no interest in taking the vaccine. Some are anti-vaxxers, who won’t take any vaccine regardless of the circumstances. They have been goaded on by Trump, who has made the claim that vaccines can lead to autism. Some people don’t trust the drug companies, who may be benefitting financially from a vaccine. The majority of the people, however, who won’t be taking the vaccine right away just don’t trust Trump to do the right thing. How can you trust the person, after all, who brought you hydroxychloroquine, injected light, and bleach to cure the coronavirus? The tragedy is that a vaccine may be available by October, which I seriously doubt, but many people may not be interested in taking it. By the time you read this, over 150,000 Americans will have died, and many more will as we wait for a vaccine contaminated by politics.

July 23, 2020

On November 3rd, we are having an historic election. The question becomes who is left to vote for Donald Trump? Over his three plus years in power and well before that, he has criticized, demonized, and minimized almost every group in America. In one way or another, he has attacked and/or threatened blacks, Latinos, Asians, women, Muslims, Puerto Ricans, Democrats, authentic Conservatives, immigrants, medical professionals, senior citizens, students, teachers, the military, cities, suburbs, professional athletes, mistresses, contractors, his own people, his family, people from shit hole countries, peaceful protesters, COVID patients, and the LGBTQ community. I apologize if I have left anyone out.

So, who is left to vote for Donald Trump? The Republican Party supports Trump, but it is a shadow of its former self. Angry, old white men without a college education still support him, but only barely. He still has support in rural America despite his destructive tariffs and his attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. White supremacists are firmly in his corner. Some members of the top 1% support him. In total, this does not strike me as a winning coalition. The left left a long time ago. Is there anyone left?

July 27, 2020

Now that Major League Baseball is back, it’s appropriate to draw an analogy between a great baseball rivalry and the coronavirus pandemic. In his book, “1949,” the great historian, David Halberstam, discusses in detail the pennant race that year between the Red Sox and the Yankees. In the spirit of full disclosure, the book ends in tragedy. He credits the Yankees’s DNA for much of their success. In the Red Sox dugout, players would get high fives and pats on the back for going out and giving it a good effort. Not so in the Yankee dugout. The only thing that was important was success. It didn’t matter how you moved the runner to second. It just mattered that you did your job.

We should judge the President’s response to the coronavirus in the same way. The President and the people around him are constantly giving themselves kudos for the job they are doing. When there are obvious errors, the Scorekeeper-in-Chief rules it a hit. We are leading the league, but, unfortunately, it’s in the the number of cases and deaths. Donald Trump, the former New Yorker, may find himself in a line-up and wearing stripes after November, but it won’t be the Yankee line-up, and it won’t be Yankee pinstripes. In the fall, we will hopefully crown two new champions.

July 21, 2020

Stream of Consciousness is a person’s thoughts and conscious reactions to events, perceived as a continuous flow. The term was introduced by William James in his Principles of Psychology. It also describes Donald Trump’s handling of interviews and press briefings. He is unencumbered by facts, science, or history, which must be very liberating. In his interview with Chris Wallace of Fox, he riffed on Joe Biden with no mooring in reality. His latest press briefing allowed him to send his best wishes to an alleged sexual predator of underage girls, Ghislaine Maxwell, twice. We never knew how conciliatory he could be towards women. And what about the coronavirus? We are here because of Trump’s Silent Spring. Now, the polluted stream of unconsciousness from the man with no conscience tells us that the virus is going to get worse before it gets better. In the words of Bart Simpson, “D’oh.”

July 18, 2020

“Watching (President Trump) could not explain his power of bewitching large audiences. The (President) was vulgar, almost illiterate, a public liar easily detected, and in his “ideas” almost idiotic, while his celebrated piety was that of a traveling salesman for church furniture.” This is a passage from Sinclair Lewis’ 1935 book, “It Can’t Happen Here.” Trump’s name has been substituted for the protagonist. Politicians like Trump have come before, but it took Trump to remind us that they can come again if we are not vigilant.

Trump has been an epic failure. The military band should play “Fail to the Chief” when he walks in. He has failed us, but will never admit it. He would rather have us die than admit he is a carnival con man, who is ready to pull up stakes as soon as the stakes get too high. We are all waiting for a coronavirus vaccine, but a majority of the people are saying that they will not take it if Trump has anything to with it. He lies about everything so how can we trust him about anything he might say regarding a vaccine. We may come up with a safe vaccine ahead of schedule, but if we could only find a vaccine for Trump.

July 20, 2020

Donald Trump once again claimed to have a very big brain in his recent interview with Chris Wallace on Fox as he bragged about acing a cognitive test for Alzheimer’s patients. He was able to identify an elephant, and state accurately where he was sitting. Here is another cognitive test that you may want to take. The answers are below. Good luck.

1. Name the President of the United States.

2. Name a general who supports Trump. Attorney Generals don’t count.

3. Which racist was the Edmund Pettus Bridge named after?

4. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican. True or False.

5. The Confederate Flag is a symbol of (1) the South, (2) freedom of speech, (3) slavery.

6. More testing yields more cases. True or False.

7. Circle the picture of the elephant. For extra credit, which political party does it represent?

8. Count backwards from 100.

9. Without hesitating, name all your wives and the children you had with each and whether there is NDA in place.

10. Name a book (not including The Bible)

Answers:

1. Don’t know. The current President is AWOL.

2. There aren’t any.

3. Edmund Pettuce

4. Republican. Who knew?

5. Trump says freedom of speech. Racists say The South. The answer is slavery.

6. Batshit crazy. False.

7. Once upon a time, the elephant was the symbol of something called Republican Party.

8. No credit if you turn around when answering the question.

9. Ivana, Ivanka, two boys, (pause) the second one…oh, crap

10. “I’ll get back to you” is not an acceptable answer.

July 16, 2020

Captain Trump hit the coronavirus iceberg, and decided to do what failed captains are wont to do. He rearranged the deck chairs on his sinking ship. Blaming campaign manager Brad Parscale for the Tulsa fiasco, he moved him aside for another unwitting dupe. Parscale was just the entertainment director, who tried to keep the band playing while the electorate was abandoning ship. Trump thought there was no way he could sink the American ship, but, when he was warned that there was a pandemic coming, he shouted “full speed ahead.” He said their was nothing to see here, and that the iceberg would melt as soon as the weather got warmer.

The only question now is will Captain Trump jump into a lifeboat before women and children. Based on what we know about his attitudes towards groping women, caging children, and his willingness to send both into harms way, Trump will abandon ship and leave his followers to save themselves.