June 11, 2020

19,000 lies and counting. Reasonable estimates have Donald Trump going over 20,000 by the end of the summer. 113,000 deaths and counting. Reasonable estimates have the coronavirus death count doubling in 60 days. Is there any relationship? Reasonable people say absolutely. Donald Trump lies every day about his success in dealing with the pandemic. He has scheduled a campaign rally in Oklahoma. He is willing to put his own supporters at risk to further his political ambitions. He has declared “Mission Accomplished,” and moved on. He has spiked the ball despite the number of cases in many areas spiking. He lies, and people die.

Three things are certain this Fall. The pandemic will have a second wave. Dr. Fauci amongst others says so. The stock market will hit a roadblock once the Fed runs out of weapons, and investors discover we are in a recession with a long recovery ahead. Finally, Donald Trump’s candidacy will die, and that is no lie.

June 9, 2020

Twitter had the audacity to fact check the President, who spews lies every day all day long, 18,000 and counting according to The Washington Post. Trump immediately responded, claiming that the technology sector has a liberal bias. He has threatened to use executive powers that he does not have in retaliation.

He wants to go after Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft among others. That is a lot of well-educated, young people from all over the world, who are apparently conspiring on their social media accounts to undermine the President. We already know about the biased media, which is populated by a lot of highly-educated, progressive young people from all over the world. We might as well throw in the liberally-biased universities, which are populated by, you guessed it, the most educated people from all over the world. Hollywood and the entertainment industry, known for its liberal bias, is populated by smart, creative people from all over the world. Well-educated doctors and nurses on the front lines of the pandemic must think he is less than useful idiot.

Is this liberal bias, or is it just possible that some of the most educated people in the world with a modern, progressive, international perspective, might be correct? I know that sounds like the worst form of elitism, but it is not a liberal bias if you are, in fact, correct. People go to school not to be indoctrinated in a liberal conspiracy. They go to school to develop a wider perspective, to be exposed to alternative thinking, and to develop the skills to be able tell fact from fiction. The march of history has a liberal bias. Conservatives are constantly fighting the inevitable. That’s conservative bias. Conservatives today are just now figuring out what progressives figured out fifty years ago.

June 3, 2020

Ironically, golfer Donald Trump found himself in a bunker while protestors, peaceful and otherwise, were demonstrating in D.C. Stung by the criticism of being a wuss, he lashed out at peaceful protestors with tear gas and mounted police to clear a path for his iconic photo opportunity in front of an historic church holding a bible. As criticism poured in about the self-styled tough guy cowering in a bunker like another former tough guy, he lashed out in the only way he knows. He lied about it, but the whole world was watching. As a golf rules official, Donald Trump gets an immediate disqualification for lying about his position in the bunker, playing from a wrong place, not correcting his error, and thus creating a significant advantage. That kind of behavior may work when he is playing in the Mar-a-Lago club championship, but it does not work when you are the leader of the free world.

June 2, 2020

Fifty years ago, I was smoking dope in my college dorm room never thinking that it would have taken this long to legalize marijuana. For me, it came fifty years too late. Fifty years ago, I was on the Cambridge Common celebrating the first Earth Day. Never in a million years did I or anyone else think that we would have a President in the White House today, who would be a climate change denier.

More than fifty years ago, we had the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. We had Tommy Smith and John Carlos give the Black Power salute at the 1968 Summer Olympic Games. I could go on, but I never thought that, in fifty years, we would have thousands of people from all over the country and the world protesting the killing of a black man by police as a man in the White House shouted law and order and tweeted about the Silent Majority. Fifty years is a long time, but it’s as if nothing has changed. Change has been glacial except for the glaciers. How can this be?

June 2, 2020

I did read Ron Chernow’s book, “Grant; I visited Grant’s Tomb; and I just finished watching the three part docudrama about Grant on The History Channel so feel as as if I kind of know him. Mr. Trump, you are no Ulysses S. Grant. Grant was a war hero. He defeated the Confederacy, and made the Emancipation Proclamation possible. He was fearless. He led from the front, often at personal peril. He led his troops from upon his horse, giving his troops hope and courage. He never flinched. He was a great President, who fought against real racial terrorism in the South.

Now we have the made for TV President, who feigns courage and toughness. When the going got tough, he went to his bunker. When it was safe to come out, he ordered the military police to breakup a peaceful demonstration in D.C. with horses and tear gas. He blamed the Governors again. If history is any guide, protests die out naturally. When they do die out, Trump will take credit as he usually does. Trump would take credit for the sun rising in the east if he could.

We need someone on that horse right now. We need someone, who is willing to fight for the rights of all people. We don’t need George Wallace, Richard Nixon, or Bull Connor. “Law and order” are code words for those of us, who grew up in the sixties. “When they loot, we shoot” are code words for blacks, who grew up in the sixties. Mr. Trump, you should obey the code of omerta, and just shut up.

June 1, 2020

Antifa is a political protest movement comprising autonomous groups affiliated by their militant opposition to fascism and other forms of extreme right-wing ideology. Donald Trump wants to declare it a domestic terror organization. I don’t know much about them, but, from what I have seen after the last few days, they are brilliant and we are in deep trouble.

It bided its time until an innocent black man in Minneapolis, George Floyd, was murdered by a cop on the beat. The brilliance was that they didn’t take the bait right away after Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Sean Reed, and Breonna Taylor had been killed. They waited to spring their uprising. Then, in a New York nanosecond, this well-oiled, anarchic machine organized protests all over the country. They sent their lieutenants to 75 major cities to organize violent and destructive protests designed to destroy the businesses and neighborhoods of their followers. Then they had the audacity to taunt the police and the National Guard by not brandishing AK-47’s. In another sign of their brilliant tactics, they didn’t wear masks so that everyone would know who they were, and they would infect each other. To demonstrate that they are playing the long game, they waited until there were record death and unemployment rates in the black community. If history is any guide, they will soon recede into the shadows only to strike again when another innocent black person gets murdered. Brilliant.

None of us will be safe until they are dealt with. We should militarize white supremacists, who know how to deal with these people. After all, they account for most U.S. domestic terrorism.

May 31, 2020

Michael Flynn got into hot water because he had private conversations with Russians about sanctions before the Trumps took over from Obama, and then he lied about it to the FBI. Several other, wannabe administration officials also had conversations with the Russians, effectively forming what could be called a shadow government. Now may be the time for Biden to stop biding his time, and create his own shadow government .

Biden does not need to talk to the Russians, but he does need to lead from his basement. There have been several op-ed’s written about naming a shadow cabinet. Let’s put competent and experienced people in place, who will tell us the truth. Every time Trump lies or makes an ill-advised move, like withdrawing from the WHO, we need a shadow Secretary of State to say why this is stupid and self-defeating. When Trump threatens protesters with violence or commits libel via Twitter, we need a shadow Attorney General to say why this is unprecedented. When Trump suggests that he will use the military to quell the Minneapolis riots, we need a shadow Secretary of Defense to push back. We need shadow Secretaries of Labor and Commerce to insist on safe working conditions for essential workers. We need a shadow Secretary of Health and Human Resources to inform the public that drinking Lysol is not a good idea. We need a shadow Secretary of Education to speak out about sending children back to unsafe schools. We need a shadow Treasury Secretary to make sure our money is going to the people who need it. After all, “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows.”

May 20, 2020

“And, indeed, as he listened to the cries of joy rising from the town, Rieux remembered that such joy is always imperiled. He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen- chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.”

Excerpt From

The Plague

Albert Camus

https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-plague/id1509449627

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