Outsiders bringing violence

It’s looking like left wing anarchists and right wing anarchists are the one bringing violence to Minneapolis. I see the hand of Russia in this - turn Americans against each other. 

Too bad we don’t have a president who can deal with this. 

We need transformative purges

The cold blooded murder of George Floyd by racist police officers has sparked protests, and eventually riots, across the nation. 


Riots are the natural expression of the powerless. Most of the protest is legal, and some is just criminal, so by all means prosecute the criminals.  BUT, don't try to dismiss these actions as anything other than the rage of the powerless who see, time and time and time and time and time again, police killing unarmed and helpless black men. 


How are blacks supposed to respond?  Peacefully?  How about Colin Kaepernick?  He lost his job for protesting peacefully.


When star football players took a knee prior to a football game to protest police killings of unarmed black men, the racist reaction was vicious.  They changed the story from an attempt to call attention to a terrible injustice to a story of blacks disrespecting the flag and the military who gave their lives for the freedoms that the flag represents.  Their protest had nothing to do with disrespecting the flag and had nothing to do with disrespecting the military. It was calling attention to a system that allowed police to kill blacks with little consequence.


It is time for a transformative purge of police departments across America.  I am encouraged that so many police chiefs are outraged by the actions of the killers of George Floyd.  And I hope that many police departments have already made good strides in cleaning up their act.


But, I have no doubt that every officer in every police department knows exactly who the racist and violent officers are.  And, I have no doubt that every police chief knows that same information.  My deepest wish is that every police department uses this event as permission to cleanse themselves of these poisons. 


It is time for a transformative purge of racist and violent officers from every police and sheriff department in the country.

If a police chief isn't sure who the bad cops are, you can be sure the black and brown residents who suffer from them do know.  Just ask.....

The virus is opening our hearts to a new "normal"

This world wide virus is making the world slow down, pause, stop.  This has never happened before.  Contrary to some who are trying to diminish the impact of this gigantic event, I see this as the most disruptive and world changing event since WWII. 


I don't know the answers, but I can certainly see the problems - the two main structural defects in America and the world are an economy that produces huge economic disparities in the country, and that produces world wide environmental destruction.


I don't know the solutions, but I am sure that we are not going to return to "normal" - a "normal" that continues these structural deformities. 


This gigantic world wide event shows us that we are all connected, whether we like it or not.  The virus spreads, first among the poor who can't protect themselves as the wealthy can, and then to all  It connects us also, through our seeing the suffering and devastation - it connects us through compassion.


My vision is that this world wide crisis helps us all to open your hearts to care about each other. Which will diminish the greed of the predatory business models. Which will diminish the greed of environmentally destructive business models. Which will create supportive business models that nurture and care for workers. Which will create business models that nurture and restore the environment.


I don’t know what these emerging business models are. But I can dream them.  And I can expect them.  And I can sincerely hope and pray that the smartest young minds turn from previous generations' focus on getting rich into a focus on taking care of each other, economically and environmentally.  Turn to a true prosperity for themselves and for the world and for humanity. 


In the '60s the smartest minds went into science and engineering to create the miracle of getting to the moon.  And they succeeded.


Then, the smartest minds turned to making huge fortunes, and the Harvard and MIT geniuses went to Wall Street.  That has not been a wonderful thing for the country, as it ended up in the financial crash of 2008, ended up in too much economic inequality, ended up in a planet becoming inhospitable for human habitation. 


It is time for a fundamental change in goals, in dreams, in destinies, in deciding what matters.  I have great faith in today's youth who are facing these realities in ways that we Boomers can't really imagine.  I have every expectation that the new world they create will be an answer to the current deformities.


I am not talking about some kind of left wing politics.   I am talking about each of us opening our hearts to care about others and the world.  And out of that, the predatory destructions of the economics of greed just fade away.


I can dream.....

Is Trump trying to kill his cult?

The president has just demanded that churches open up "right now".  I guess he thinks that is what his evangelical cult followers want, so he thinks this is going to boost his ratings.  And, of course, the only thing (other than money) that he cares about is his ratings.


Of course, we know that if you ignore social distancing and ignore sheltering in place you dramatically increase the spread of the virus.  But, maybe he is actually too dense to accept that obvious fact.


So, he seems to be on a campaign to get his evangelical followers, his Fox News followers, his white supremacist followers killed off.  Very strange.


And, of course, the spread will go well beyond his cult and increase the spread of the virus geometrically to all of us.


There hasn't  been a more blatant example of the damage that an out of control ego can do since WWI and WWII.  This is really hard  to believe.

Trump claims he is taking hydroxichloriquine.

I don’t believe him.


He wants people to think that if you get the disease there is a miracle cure. The drug doesn’t work. 



He pretends that it does so that the economy speeds up. And the stock market goes up. And his ratings go up. Which is all that he thinks about. So he is pretending to take the drug to prove that it is not harmful and works. No way Is he actually taking the drug. 



The drug will have no negative effects on him because he won’t be taking it.



Always remember that he is a con man. 

It's not over

Everyone is really tired of this COVID-19 pandemic.  Everyone is really tired of sheltering in place.  So, lots and lots of people want to come out and go back to work and back to the way it was.  But....


It is true that the collapse of the economy is forcing us to open businesses back up.  It is true that the economic toll is so dire that we can't just shelter in place forever.  But we have to do it with what we have learned so far - social distancing and masks are absolutely needed, please.


And we desperately need tests, tests, tests, tests...


Because we don't have a national strategy from the Trump administration we don't have the two mandatory things we need to actually go back into the world - millions and millions of tests to give to people as a condition of being in public, and an effective drug or other remedy to help people come back from the disease easier and quicker.  These are massive failings on the part of our national government.  It is literally unimaginable to me that we don't have a national strategy and funding to work our way through this plague. 


I wrote on April 1 that there are two huge structural problems in our economy - first, an ever increasing inequality of income between the rich and the poor.  The Middle Class has been hollowed out for four decades.  Huge percentages of people cannot go two paychecks without going hungry or lose their homes.  When the poor are forced into an unbearable suffering, revolutions happen.


Second, our economy is destroying the environment - e.g. ocean warming is wiping out the coral reefs which generate a food chain that goes all the way up to us.


So, during the Democratic Primaries I wanted a moderate like Biden because I was certain that Sanders or Yang would be too socialist and lose to a man who is pathologically cruel, arrogantly ignorant, and grandiosely unable to deal with reality.  His latest delusion is that the virus will go away by itself without vaccines.  Hard to believe that anyone voted for him.


But, how does Yang's UBI, Universal Basic Income, look now?  He was talking about jobs and careers disappearing to computers and automation, but what will our economy look like in two years?  How many industries just won't come back?


And, how does Medicare for All sound now?   How many millions have lost not only their job but have lost their health coverage?  Can we live in a country where so many millions are left to the cruelties of this terrible pandemic?  or the next health catastrophe?


It's not over.  The next big wave of COVID-19 cases will be the rural areas of Trump's red states.  And the second wave in the cities is also likely to come. 


It's not over.  It's just starting. 

Don't drink the Kool Aid, er no, the Lysol or Clorox

A terrible but iconic moment in history is when the followers of Jim Jones all committed collective suicide by drinking the poisoned Kool Aid to die with their worshiped leader, Jim Jones.  Astonishingly, some Trump worshipers seem to have taken Donald Trump's advice to get disinfectants inside their bodies and there are reports of people ingesting Lysol and Clorox.  

I expect this is a very few number of people, but if your only source of info is to listen to and believe Donald Trump, you put yourself in a very vulnerable situation, because our president seems to have a very wobbly grasp on reality.  Thus he speculates that something that can actually kill you might be good for you.

He lies endlessly and compulsively.  And it seems to be worse than that, he seems to literally inhabit a fantasy world of his own ego driven make believe that can be remarkably dangerous to all of us, but especially to those who seem to worship him uncritically.

Don’t drink the Kool Aid. 

Is fracking dead in the U.S.?

I didn't realize it but apparently the huge fracking industry providing oil from the U.S. has long been built upon a shaky financial foundation.   Financial reporter, Bethany McLean, writes:




"...the dream was always an illusion, and its collapse was already underway. That’s because oil fracking has never been financially viable. America’s energy independence was built on an industry that is the very definition of dependent — dependent on investors to keeping pouring billions upon billions in capital into money-losing companies to fund their drilling. Investors were willing to do this only as long as oil prices, which are not under America’s control, were high — and when they believed that one day, profits would materialize.

Even before the coronavirus crisis, the spigot was drying up. Now, it has been shut off."

Today, the price of oil dropped to less than a dollar a barrel.  No demand during the coronavirus pandemic, so the bottom literally dropped out of the oil market. 


Someday, the demand will return and oil prices will go up.  But, if fracking was not truly economical before the virus, why would it become economical later?  How many frackers will be able to sustain the crisis and hope for a better future?


I can't say I am unhappy about the possibility of the end of fracking in America.  It seems very environmentally suspect.  And there are many other sources of oil to be had.  Who knows, this oil crisis may end up being an economical spur to non-hydrocarbon energy and transportation.  I have long thought that the smartest kids in MIT, Stanford, Cal Tech, etc, were hard at work developing green energy.  Maybe there can be a real influx of moneys to help that along.

Test - Trace - Isolate - to buy time to develop the vaccines

As best as I can tell in my readings, the best path forward is to test, trace, and isolate. 


Tests.  We need millions of tests.  If we can go back to work, and be tested as we enter our workplaces, we can know who is safe to enter the workplace.  And the testing would have to be given on a regular basis since we can become infected and spread the virus for up to 14 days even if we don't exhibit any symptoms.


If we are found to be carrying the virus then we isolate - go back to our homes and ride out the disease, working with the doctors and health system.


Once we know we are infected we can work with the professionals to contact all that we have come into contact with so that they can be tested.  Those who are not infected have a clean bill of health to work and circulate.  Those who discover they are infected become isolated themselves.


It is not like we don't know how to deal with a pandemic.  We did so successfully in the past - from HIV to SARS to Swine Flu to Ebola, and in the more distant past - polio, measles, mumps, etc. 


What we don't have is a Federal Government that knows what to do.  Correction, we used to have a Federal Government that knew what to do but this Federal Government fired and forced out the scientists and experts because this government is run by the "instincts" of a profoundly ignorant president who simply cannot rely on experts or anyone that knows more than he does because his astonishingly idiotic ego thinks he knows more than the experts.  And this president is supported by a Republican Party that has spent half a century disdaining, disempowering, and dismissing as much of the government expertise as they could get away with.  (Taxed Enough Already - right?) Well, how is that working out?


Plus, of course, this president is literally incapable of thinking about anybody other than himself, and is someone who is literally incapable of caring or compassion. 

But, there are others, mostly outside of the Federal Government who so know what to do and I expect them to do it. 


What we need to do is test, trace, and isolate while the most vital work of all, creating an effective vaccine, can put this disease on the ash heap of history along with so many highly contagious diseases have been with good vaccines in the past, such as polio, measles, mumps, whooping cough, pneumococcal disease, tetanus, menengoccal disease, hepatitis B, chicken pox, diptheria, etc.  It is hard for us to imagine how deadly airborne and waterborne diseases where before vaccinations because they are mostly gone from the world. The Coronavirus can join that list of defeated diseases as well, but we need time to develop that vaccines.

An Easter message

Although I am no longer a Christian, I am deeply moved by the message of Easter.  It is the message of Rising from the Dead - rising from the ashes and being born anew.  This is the ancient story of the Phoenix.  And is seems so appropriate to our current story of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.  May this pandemic, which has the country and the world in the grips of tragedy, be a story of rising from the ashes, stronger, healed, casting off those parts of ourselves and our societies that don't work, and stepping into a newer and better and more spiritually evolved version of ourselves, our nation, and our world. 

Let today be a turning point.  Let the rising from the ashes begin.


Happy Easter......

Thank you Queen Elizabeth

Britain's 93 year old monarch gave an address to her country that I found very inspiring.


"....“I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge. And those who come after us will say the Britons of this generation were as strong as any. That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow-feeling still characterise this country. The pride in who we are is not a part of our past, it defines our present and our future. .... We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.  But for now, I send my thanks and warmest good wishes to you all."


Dignity, resolve, character.  Did I mention Dignity?  


May we all be able to "take pride in how we are responding" to this challenge. 


Thank you Queen Elizabeth....

Is Fox News killing its followers?

Tragically, many right wingers are acting as if the COVID-19 pandemic isn't much of a threat.  This is contrary to the news around the country and around the world.  Why?  Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, right wing radio, evangelical preachers, etc. are telling the Trump faithful that it is all an over-hyped story designed to unseat their hero, Trump.  So, Trump Country is has not been staying home as a show of solidarity for how much they love Trump and how much they dismiss actual news.

I am lucky to be in California where our Democratic governor called for us to shelter in place over two weeks ago.  The happy result is that we are flattening the curve of the spread of the virus and we have a decent chance of not overwhelming our medical system.  Still a long, long way to go but we are on the right track.

The red states are not so lucky.  Most of their governors have been downplaying this pandemic.  Too many of their people are not social distancing nor sheltering in place.  Why?  They aren't getting the actual news. They decided long ago that the actual news was fake and they are in a right wing media bubble that feeds them ideology rather than news. And they are in even more trouble than the rest of us, I fear.  

The New York Times shows a map of who has not been staying home - Trump County has not been staying home.  I am sorry for that. 

I can't figure out how to paste that map into this post, but you can click through to see it here 

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/02/us/coronavirus-social-distancing.html

Large structural issues in America and the world

The COVID-19 virus is exacerbating two fundamental structural problems in America and the world.


First, we are facing an increasingly alarming inequality of income between the upper and lower levels of society.  The Middle Class has been in the process of being hollowed out for decades now, and is getting worse.  This is being shown in tragic relief by the viral pandemic we are all going though.  We have known for a few years now that 40% of Americans don't have $400 for an emergency without having to borrow it or sell something.  Well, we are in that emergency now for many of them.


Andrew Yang, failed candidate for the Democratic nomination for president, highlighted a major contributing factor to this dangerous inequality spread - the relentless progression of technology that is eliminating jobs, and could end up eliminating the very idea of jobs and careers themselves.  Artificial Intelligence is exploding exponentially and could eliminate everything from truck drivers to doctors in a time frame much shorter than we can imagine.  If so, how do we survive?  What new paradigm is needed for humanity to continue in relative harmony?


The problem is that when the poverty becomes too widespread, very painful things can happen.  When the economic inequality became too extreme in France, the French Revolution of 1789 ended up with the French aristocracy having their heads chopped off by the guillotine.  And when the economic inequality in Russia became too extreme in 1917 the Russian Revolution ended up with the Tsar and his family being shot.  I don't expect bloody revolution in America, but some big changes can happen here and around the world if we are unable to flatten the curve of the spread of the virus and are not able to give needed financial and health aid to all Americans.

The second major structural problem we face is the inability to effectively respond to the ever more alarming climate change being caused by our economies.  California and Australia are seeing terrible fire storm seasons.  The rest of the country is seeing floods, blizzards, hurricanes etc. that are far outside of normal.  And time is only making these things worse.  I have real hopes that the smartest young scientists and engineers are working on coming up with new technologies of producing energy and transportation that are environmentally friendly, but political forces are entrenched and destructive.


These are structural issues and I don't have an answer, but answers are coming, and my hope and vision is that those answers are not violent.  A dear friend has suggested that the future will have the emergence of those qualities that only humans can contribute - creativity.  I would add to that - the human touch and compassion. This is where my hopes and dreams go for now.

The lives of us all depend on conservatives' courage

Let's face it, Trump is mentally ill, and the fate of the nation rests on the shoulders of conservatives that he listens to having the courage to tell him what he must do for the nation.  Here is his latest evidence of his profound mental disease:


"“I say, ‘Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington; you’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan. It doesn’t make any difference what happens.’ You know what I say: ‘If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”


Conservatives on Fox News and in the right wing media bubble need to tell him that he needs to use his powers to send help where it is needed, not where people "treat him right".  Republicans in the Senate and House need to tell him face to face what he needs to do. And if he won't listen they need to go public, en masse.


We need conservatives to show courage and do the right thing for the nation.  It is blue states with high population densities being hardest hit now by COVID-19, but rural areas with marginal health care systems are at very great risk as well, and this virus is coming for them.


Trump's mental illness - pathological psychotic narcissistic self centeredness - makes him incapable of compassion or caring for other people.  He can only see people as worshipers who "treat him right" or as enemies to be destroyed. It is sad for him as a person, and extraordinarily dangerous for the rest of us as long as he has any power at all over our lives.  He literally is threatening to kill people who don't "treat him right."  (It is an understatement to say that this is an unconstitutional abuse of power)


Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, the Fox morning show folks,  Mitch McConnell, Devin Nunes, all Republican Senate and House members, Republican governors - we need you to show courage.  Once you start, all can join, and you will be protected by your numbers if all join in.  And then Trump will decide, ON HIS OWN, that he was right all along that he said he was sending help to every state according to need rather than according to their political leadership, because he is the greatest president in American history.


The fate of America rests on the shoulders of a very few conservative.  I know this seems like a foolish dream right now, but it is one I need to have. And so I dream it.....

Is Trump profiting from the virus?

Why did it take Trump two months to issue a Defense Production Authorization to build ventilators?  Can we please see the finances of him, his family, and his cronies?  Is he a pandemic profiteer?  Why hasn’t he issues DPAs for testing kits and Personal Protective Equipment??  What investments are they making?  

One explanation is simply that he has been trying to convince people that the virus is no big deal and is trying to keep the stock market up so he gets re-elected. It might be even more disgusting. 

Why does Trump call the Corona Virus the Chinese Virus?

Conservatives seem to be rushing to defend Trump for calling the coronavirus the Chinese virus. After all, they say, the virus started in China. Correct? So what’s the problem and calling it the Chinese virus?



Well, the swine flu in 2009 originated in America. What is it called the American flu?  No.



 The corona virus the sweeping through the world because the world is so deeply interconnected. It is not the Chinese virus.



It is true that the dictatorial authoritarian of Communist China did his best to downplay the effect and scope of the  coronavirus. That authoritarian leader was more interested in protecting the reputation and business of China than protecting its people or protecting the world. Sound familiar?



It is deeply and sadly true that the Wanabee dictatorial authoritarian leader in the White House did his best to downplay the effect and scope of the Corona Virus in America. He was more interested in protecting his reputation and protecting business in America than he was in protecting the people in America.


So, the time to contain the virus has passed and we are now in the mitigation phase - trying to spread out the curve of infection in order to keep from overwhelming our health care system.


Donald Trump calls it the  Chinese virus for two reasons.

• First he gets to blame somebody else for his own delayed responses to protect America from this virus.
• Second, he gets to play to his racist base, and proudly display his own racism.  That seems to be his primary campaign strategy  - last time and this time as well.
  

What I really want to know is what Trump and his family and his associates sold and bought on the stock market while he was oddly telling everybody that the virus was under control and that the virus was nothing more than a cold or a flu. Two Republican senators were caught selling hundreds of thousands of dollars of stock after getting briefings about what was about to happen. Did trump and those close to him do the same? Was Trump's message that we should not worry just a ploy for him to make millions?



Is Trump a pandemic profiteer?  It certainly would not be out of character for him, would it?

Trump and the Tea Party prepared the country to be unprepared for the Corona Virus

Trump and his Tea Party comrades - dedicated to destroying the Federal Government -  are being exposed by how deliberately unprepared they were for this Corona Virus pandemic.  (By the way, it is not what Trump racistly calls the "Chinese Virus" it is the Corona Virus - a world wide virus).  Amber Phillips writes:

The New York Times reported that last year, the Health and Human Services Department performed startling government simulations to show how underprepared the United States was for such a pandemic. Nothing was done in response.

As Trump was coming into office, the Times reports, “outgoing Obama administration officials ran an extensive exercise on responding to a pandemic for incoming senior officials of the Trump administration.” A year later, Trump disbanded the government’s pandemic-response team.

NPR got an audio recording of the top senator on the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), privately warning businesses in February that the virus, which was already in America, was going to be “aggressive” and “akin to the 1918 pandemic.” At the time, Trump was still comparing it to the flu.

We are lucky that the entire world is working to combat this pandemic, because this White House and these Tea Party Republicans certainly weren't prepared.

Why Trump and UK's Boris Johnson suddenly stopped calling the virus a hoax

Here is a quote about a very qualified report that got the UK's Boris Johnson, and probably Donald Trump as well, to stop telling people to go out and have a good time at restaurants and bars - from the WAPO's Daily 202:


3) Research from Imperial College London, endorsed by the U.K. government, suggests that 2.2 million would die in the United States and 510,000 would die in Britain if nothing is done by governments and individuals to stop the pandemic. The new forecasts, by Neil Ferguson and his colleagues, show that more-ambitious measures to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus, to slow but not necessarily stop the epidemic over the coming few months, could reduce mortality by half, to 260,000 people in the United Kingdom and 1.1 million in the United States. The new report concludes that the British government might be able to keep the number of dead below 20,000 by enforcing social distancing for the entire population, isolating all cases, demanding quarantines of entire households where anyone is sick and closing all schools and universities — for 12 to 18 months, until a vaccine is available. The modelers did not give numbers for the United States for these most intense suppression efforts.Seeing these numbers from some of Britain’s top modelers of infectious disease inspired Prime Minister Boris Johnson to take a much more severe approach to suppress the spread. “The report is also influencing planning by the Trump administration,” William Booth reports. “Deborah Birx, who serves as the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, cited the British analysis at a news conference Monday, saying her response team was especially focused on the report’s conclusion that an entire household should self-quarantine for 14 days if one of its members is stricken by the virus.”


The administration and the right wing news organizations who have been telling everyone that this virus is just some kind of plot to damage Trump have proven themselves to be totally unreliable sources of news - you could more properly call them "Fake News". 


I hope my conservative friends hear this wake up call to get out of their propaganda bubbles and have the courage to just listen to the actual news, rather than be continuously assured by the right wing media bubble telling them that the world is being run by liberals trying to hurt them in some way.


Please, just read, watch, and listen to actual news.  It may save your life.

Former CDC Director Dr. Tom Frieden clarifies info on the virus

I claimed yesterday that Trump and the Tea Party cut the CDC.  But Former CDC Director, Dr Tom Frieden, assured us on the Fareed Zacharia Sunday morning show that the experts and expert managers of the CDC are still in place.  That is good news.


It is true that Trump's budgets have and do try to cut funding to the CDC but Congress apparently has stopped that from happening.  Good for them!


It is also unfortunately true that Rear Admiral Timothy Zeimer and his team left the White House on the National Security Council after Bolton cut their budget and influence.  That White House team was in charge of executive leadership to respond to pandemics and was never replaced. We pay a big price for that now.


Dr. Freiden agreed that critical early responses to the pandemic were not taken, and that in the past America had taken the lead in fighting other outbreaks of pandemic potential diseases.  In the past, those were stopped.


Also, I was apparently wrong about China's response, as Dr Friedan said China slowed the spread by isolating millions in their homes for a month to increase the social distancing and reduce the spread of the virus.


He repeated that science does not know if this virus is seasonal, or can re-emerge violently after a pause.  This is a new virus. And it is not known. What we think we know are mostly just pretty good guesses for now.

It's the Tea Party too

This president's amazingly incompetent response to the Covid-19 virus pandemic was to be expected because he is simply an ignorant and incompetent con artist who conned conservatives into making him their leader.  Why is still quite a mystery to me, but it has something to do with his ability to speak to their rage at liberals.  More about that rage in later posts, not here today.


But, it is very clear to me that America's slow response to the pandemic is caused by the stripping of the Center for Disease Control of budget and expertise. (He ridiculously blames Obama of course, he always blames, blames, blames, not a mark of a leader is it?)  That gutting of the CDC is part of the systematic passions of the Tea Party - to shrink the government and make it disappear.  Sounds nice to some of my conservative friends, but once you find out what shrinking the government means you find out that it means stripping away the expertise that makes America safe and makes America great. 


Trump and the Tea Party have gleefully driven scientists and experts of all form out of the government. In Trump's case it is a matter of his own ignorance and stupidity.  In the Tea Party's case it is a matter of wrong headed ideology.


One of the terrible outcomes of this tragic pandemic is that we can all see how needed expertise of doctors, scientists, and other experts are for our safety and well being. 


I deeply hope and pray that America is able to spread out the incidences of severe virus diseases so that our hospitals and emergency care centers are able to handle the influx that is about to happen - slowly and manageably, I hope.  Italy was not able to do that and they are having to Triage patients - i.e. choosing which will have to die and which will be able to live.  We do this with plenty of warning ahead of time to inconvenience our normal lives and keep our social distance to try to slow the spread of this disease. 


As best as I can read at this point, one of five infected by this disease will need to be hospitalized.  I hope that is an alarmist exaggeration, but the countries in the grips of the pandemic now are seeing these kinds of numbers, as I understand it. 


The Left Wing authoritarian country of China tried to tell everybody that the disease wasn't all that bad, and then the pandemic hit and proved them tragically wrong.


The Right Wing authoritarian country of Italy tried to tell everybody that the disease wasn't all that bad, and then the pandemic hit and proved them tragically wrong.


The Theocratic authoritarian country of Iran probably did much the same and satellite photos show that they have dug two massive trenches about the size of football fields to dump the bodies taken by this pandemic.


This pandemic has not seemed very real to me, and I think to most Americans, up to now because we just aren't seeing it here, and because this president and his sycophantic right wing media bubble have tried to tell their followers that there is nothing really that bad about this virus.  They lie.  I hope that about four out of five who get this disease will have fairly mild and manageable symptoms.  But one in five will have a real problem.  And about 3% or so die. 


Back before Trump and the Tea Party, America would have been the leader of the world in responding to this pandemic.  Now we have a Chinese billionaire donating a million masks and half a million testing kits to America.  Thank you, very gratefully for the help.


It is not just Trump.  It is the Tea Party too.  They have and are continuing to strip the government of needed expertise.  Why?  They want lower taxes?  Really?  Not a lot of foresight, wisdom, or compassion in that ideology, it seems to me. 

Decency please

Joe Biden increased his lead over Bernie Sanders last night.  Here is an excerpt from his speech acknowledging his victory in Michigan and elsewhere.


"Winning means uniting America, not sowing more division and anger.  Means having a president who not only knows how to fight but how to heal....We are a decent, brave, resilient people.  We are better than this moment we are in.  We just need to remember who we are.


He was calm, adult, competent, sane.  Such a contrast to Trump. 


My long held opinion is that each new president is an answer to what didn't work in the previous president.  There is much about Trump that does not work, but his lack of being calm, adult, competent, and sane are right toward the top  of that list.


Please, let's just go back to decency in the Oval Office.  Please, let America be a place that we can be proud to be from again.  Please, let us finally say no to childish, rageful, incompetent, insanity that has taken over this country.


Looks like Biden will be the nominee.  That is fine with me.  I suggest Klobachar as his running mate, but let the story unfold.

Why did southern African American voters vote for Biden on Super Tuesday?

African Americans, especially in the South, are seeing a re-emergence of JimCrowe.  They see Trump as appealing directly to racists around the country, and they are seeing people who are now proudly racist and spewing their bigotry as a badge of honor.  They are seeing the Republican Party shutting down polls in their neighborhoods in order to make voting more difficult.  We saw plenty of evidence of this on Super Tuesday as we saw extraordinarily long lines in Texas that people were waiting for hours to vote.  They are seeing voter ID laws as a way to suppress votes from African Americans who do not have driver’s licenses, and see that getting IDs is made deliberately difficult by the Republican Party.  They are seeing a Republican Party that is dangerous to them.  They are seeing the clock turned back to very dark times that they thought were gone.  They aren’t gone.  They are coming back.

 

And they saw Joe Biden as the one who they connected to in an emotional way.

 

So they voted for Biden.  And the other moderates – Buttigieg and Klobachar understood the message and withdrew prior to Super Tuesday so Democrats could unite behind one centrist Democrat – Biden – against the radical candidate calling for The Revolution wished for in his youth – Sanders.

 

Good for them.  They led the way.

 

Be clear, I am not saying that my conservative friends are Jim Crowe racists.  But it is very clear also that Jim Crowe racists are making very strong moves to go back in time. And they are Trumpsters.   And that is pretty disturbing.

The 15% solution

How did Biden suddenly become the front runner?  The 15% solution. 


It was explained to me that in the California Primary Tuesday, the only candidates who would get delegates were those who scored at least 15% of the vote.  So, I looked at the CA polls and saw that the most likely candidate to get to 15% - the only one who was not Sanders, who I am convinced has no chance of beating Trump - was Biden.  I regret that Klobachar and Buttigieg had no chance of getting 15% because I would have voted for either of them instead.  I also didn't think the Bloomberg would get to the 15% even though I think he would be an excellent president. 


So, the only person that I could vote for as a vote for moderate liberalism, and as a vote against Sanders, was Joe Biden.


So, I did.


I think the entire Democratic Party in the rest of the Super Tuesday states did essentially the same thing - they saw Biden as the only way to stop Sanders, and thus the only way to oust Trump.


Let the Force be with him.....

Voted for Biden

For what it’s worth, I mailed in my primary vote for Biden this am. I’m afraid Bloomberg doesn’t connect to women nor African Americans. And they will be the difference in November. 

Trump is afraid of Bloomberg

 Some reasons to vote for Bloomberg:

1.  Trump’s only campaign issue is running against a socialist. He can’t do that against Bloomberg

2.  Bloomberg is the only one Trump fears.

3.  Bloomberg best knows how to reestablish and re-populated with expertise government agencies that have been destroyed by Trump.

4.  He is very tough.

5.  He has many years of donating to and helping liberal causes and candidates.

6. He can defeat Trump.

7.  He already has the money and expert infrastructure to finish the campaign.

Sanders would be disaster and would lose decisively to the worst president in US history.

The Coronavirus exposes Trump's incompetence

Trump and the Trumpsters are trying to have us believe that the Coronavirus isn't that big a deal, it's just a bad cold.  They are telling themselves that this is just some kind of evil media campaign to hurt Trump. Good grief!  Japan has closed schools, the World Health Organization has raised the level of alert to global spread to "very high".  People die at ten times the rate of influenza deaths, and those numbers are assuming that the totalitarian police state of China is sharing honest statistics about this disease.  I believe the death rate in China is probably higher than they are admitting.

The world wide reaction to the coronavirus has absolutely nothing to do with Donald Trump.  But of course Donald Trump is pathologically narcissistic, meaning he can only view the world in terms of how it affects him.  And he is afraid that since this virus is causing the stock market to drop it is some kind of evil plot of to hurt his re-election.  So, he does what he always does when he doesn't like the news, he attacks the news-people who report what is going on in the world.


Very, very sadly, we find out that Trump has stripped the government of the expertise needed to combat the rapid spread of a dangerous disease by cutting budgets and forcing scientists out of the government, forcing out those who have actual knowledge and expertise in handling these kinds of contagions. 

Michael Bloomberg was asked if he would appoint a Czar to address this kind of outbreak if he were president.  He gave the smartest answer I have heard.  He said "no" he would not appoint a Czar, he would have a Czar and an organization already in place with policies, practices, and training to be able to respond on a dime to these kinds of events.  He said you can't start from nearly nothing and have an effective response.

Trump appointed VP Pence to head up the emergency response, and it looks like his primary function will be to control the messaging of the government - i.e. downplay the news so the stock market doesn't tank.  Lovely.



America and the world have been exceptionally lucky for the three years of the Trump presidency in that there have been no major emergencies that this incompetent and ignorant president has had to deal with.  He has devastated nearly every governmental department, especially by driving out scientists and experts in almost every field - from the Energy Department dealing with radioactive nuclear weapons and waste, to the Agriculture Department making us safe with highly sophisticated science forwarning us of extreme weather events, to health scientists and experts keeping us safe from outbreaks of diseases. 

 Well, we now have an emergency coming at us that was not just one of the many, many, many self made emergencies created by Trump's bullying, ignorance, and authoritarian violations of law and the constitution.  And Mr. Trump is so far looking like he is incapable of handling it.

And, also by the way, people seem to be comforted by the notion that “only” 2% of the people who contract the disease die.  Are you kidding?  If you catch the disease you are supposed to feel good that your chances of dying is “only” one in fifty?  People are saying that many thousands die of the flu worldwide every year and so far only a handful have died from this disease.  Well, it turns out that that chances of dying from the flu is about .2 to .4 percent. That is, your chances of dying from the flu is about one in 500, not one in 50.  And those who die of flu are likely those who are already compromised, the aged, the very young, those with other health issues.  The coronavirus killed the Chinese doctor who blew the whistle on its danger, and killed the head of the hospital where the outbreak started. These were healthy adults, not people at risk.

All you need to know about the seriousness of this disease is to look at the photos and videos of the Chinese people taking the temperature of people who might be at risk – they are completely covered in Hazmat garb with taped ankles and wrists, masks, goggles, etc.  Why are they so protected? Because they know what this disease looks like and they very, very much do not want to catch it.

 I hope that this disease is not as serious as it could be, and that it fades away and vaccines are developed quickly to combat it.  But, the way the country, and the world, must respond is to prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Too bad our Federal Government is run by an idiot, and has surrounded himself with idiots, and has a right wing media bubble that protects him at all costs – in this case the costs could become way too many lives lost.

Good grief!

The Russians are helping Sanders win the nomination, and Trump win the election

Russia want Donald Trump to win the election in 2020.  And they are actively working to help him.  Just as they did in 2016. 


Trump exploded in a fury when his intelligence folks told him that they have detected Russian help for his re-election, and he stopped his director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire from becoming his permanent intelligence chief for telling him that truth, and says he will appoint a completely unqualified man, Richard Grenell, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, to head the intelligence services.  Grenell's only qualification is total obeisance to Trump.  


Nitwit.


And, wouldn't you know it, Sanders has been informed that Russia has been detected helping Sanders win the Democratic nomination.  The reason is obvious - Russia knows, as we all do, that Trump can beat the Socialist Sanders. 


Sorry to disappoint some of my liberal friends who think it is time for the Socialist Revolution in America.  It's not.  A Sanders nomination re-elects Trump, easily, overwhelmingly, obviously.


Russia knows it, and now my liberal friends do too.


Please do not put a socialist on the ticket. Trump is too dangerous to our democracy and to the world to re-elect him by making such an obviously poor choice.

Bernie Sanders got trump elected last time, will Democrats let him do it again?

One of the reasons Trump is the president of the United States is that Bernie Sanders put him there.  That is, his avid left wing base put Trump in the White House, by either refusing to vote, or by voting for Trump in 2016.  Trump won by a hair in the electoral college in three states - Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - by only a total of 77,744.

I know I have avid Berniecrat friends, but it is obvious to me that if Sanders is nominated he will lose in a landslide not seen since McGovern lost  60.7 percent to 37.5 percent and won only one state - Massachusetts.  Britain just went through this when the liberals put up a hard core socialist, Jeremy Corbyn, and elected an obnoxious lout named Boris Johnson by a landslide.

The Sanders people said that they know that Sanders is pretty extreme but his base is young and Sanders will make a dramatic boost in their turnout.  Wrong. Iowa and New Hampshire just voted and the turnout was disappointing. The youth are not flooding to support Sanders.  He almost won Iowa and barely won New Hampshire (where he had a big home field advantage being from next door Vermont), but the anti-socialist candidates won the biggest total by far against him.

Klobachar, Bloomberg, or Buttigieg are my choices.  I will vote for any Democrat against the infantile and ignorant authoritarian in training, but I think any but Sanders will beat him, and Sanders won't.

Another of many steps toward authoritarian rule by Trump

Trump's Department of Justice, under the direction of Attorney General William Barr, overturned the 7 - 9 year sentence of convicted criminal Roger Stone yesterday.  We'll see what Barr's Department of Justice mandates instead.  This is what happens in authoritarian regimes around the world.  Now the U.S. is one of those authoritarian regimes.  This is just the latest of this president's authoritarian moves, and his minions support his authoritarianism.

"Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. (D-N.J.) said the move amounted to “obstruction of justice.”

“We are seeing a full-frontal assault on the rule of law in America,” Pascrell said. “Direct political interference in our justice system is a hallmark of a banana republic. Despite whatever Trump, William Barr, and their helpers think, the United States is a nation of laws and not an authoritarian’s paradise.”

One of the characteristics of authoritarian governments is their undermining their own judicial institutions.  The four prosecutors of this case resigned in protest.  This is the president over-riding his own Justice Department with a political mandate.  Stone is a Trump supporter, so Trump interferes, and by so doing he sends a very loud message to all Trump supporters that he will defend their illegal actions on his behalf - that he will condone their illegal actions - htat he intends to continue breaking American laws - and that he and his corrupt followers are above the law.


The United States of America is in trouble.  This authoritarian child is undermining the institutions of democracy - this authoritarian takeover of the Justice Department is just the latest example of a man who is convinced that he is above the law.  Looks like Republicans agree.


This is not acceptable, if democracy is to survive.

Two right wing extremist triumphs yesterday

Yesterday saw two victories for right wing extremists - it was the official Brexit day in England, and the Senate Republicans voted to deny any witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial. 


Trial? without witnesses?  Just a sham.  Of course if eye witness accounts of those who were directed by Trump to withhold military aid to Ukraine to force Ukraine to announce and investigation into a political opponent were allowed, it would have made no difference since the proof of Trump's crime was detailed and deep already with House witnesses.  But eye witnesses of Trump doing his abuse of presidential power would have taken away the sham Republican defense that all the testimony was "hearsay". 


Brexit?  Right wing whackos were videoed in England waving their little English flags and whooping it up in celebration. Celebrating what?  the demise of Britain and the reverting to little England. 


So, authoritarianism in America took another step forward - it was never a doubt that the Republican Senate would acquit  Trump, and it was never a doubt that they would disallow witnesses, and it was never a doubt that the defense lawyers would trot out labored and twisted defenses of the indefensible.  Almost the entire Republican Party is now blatantly on record supporting unconstitutional cheating by a president to win a presidential election.  My hope is this will be the death knell of the party that I once was a member of.


The xenophobia of England has now diminished and damaged what was once Great Britain. 


And the xenophobic fears of brown and black people by too many of my conservative friends is diminishing and damaging what was once the Leader of the Free World - the United States of America.  An ignorant and stupid leader of the Republican Party has conquered the Republican Party and is leading them into oblivion.  Oh, they may be able to cheat their way to some victories in 2020, but the political victory for a party is more than votes in the next election.  The Whigs disappeared by defending the indefensible - white supremacist defense of slavery - and the Republicans are about to disappear by defending the indefensible - a white supremacist defense of a white supremacist president.


Oh well.  Let it play out.....

The two words that condemn Trump - “though” and “announce”

The two words that condemn Trump are “though” and “announce”. He said I need a favor “though”. That means he won’t release the aid until he gets his favor.  What is the favor?  That the president of Ukraine “announce” an investigation into Biden corruption. If you want an investigation you ask for an investigation.  If you want to damage Biden you ask for an ANNOUNCEMENT of an investigation. The last thing you do to investigate someone is to announce that you will investigate. That forewarns the target to cover their tracks.



The Trump lawyers are smart folks and are doing a pretty good job of defending a HYPOTHETICAL TRUMP who Could have had policy reasons to investigate corruption in Ukraine. But they aren’t defending the actual Trump, who did it, and did it as an abuse of presidential power to cheat in the 2020 election.

Isn’t jury intimidation an impeachable offense?

Isn’t jury intimidation a crime?  Isn’t intimidation of the Senate jury in the president’s impeachment trial by the president an impeachable offense?  When the president threatens the Senators of his party isn’t that further evidence of obstruction of Congress?  The president made this threat:

According to a report from CBS News, Republicans even entertaining the idea of giving Democrats the necessary votes to call witnesses have been told, “Vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike.“

Every day this president abuses the power of his office. The more he gets away with the worse he gets. Is there any chance that Republicans will fight back?  I suppose not. 

When do Republicans say "ENOUGH!"

When will some Republican Senators finally get pissed off?  Trump just threatened them not to vote against him in the impeachment trial:


"According to a report from CBS News, Republicans even entertaining the idea of giving Democrats the necessary votes to call witnesses have been told, “Vote against the president, and your head will be on a pike.”


Trump continues to prove that Adam Schiff's brilliant and heartfelt closing speech from last night is all too true;


""If 'Right' doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter how good the constitution is," Rep. Schiff told the Senate. "The framers could not protect us from ourselves if right and truth don’t matter. And you know what (Trump) did was not right."


Not only is what Trump does "not right", what Trump does is profoundly wrong.  There is just something wrong with him.


I think it is about time that about half a dozen Republican Senators break the wall of fear, get pissed off, and vote to impeach this pathetic little man.  Probably won't happen, but what is it going to take?


How is what Trump is doing any different than an authoritarian tyrant would do?  This is what the Republican Party stands for today - blind and fearful obeisance to an authoritarian despot. 


They don't have to do this.  They can take their party back.  But it will take more than one, but only one is probably needed to crack open the wall.  Romney, Collins, Murkowski?  I would wager that it will be a woman who is most likely to have the courage to finally say "ENOUGH!"

What the world looks like when America doesn't lead

America has been the necessary nation ever since WWII.  It provided, imperfectly, the moral leadership of the post war world - it was the international stabilizer - it was the bulwark against the tyrannies of the Soviet and Chinese Communist dictatorships. 


But that is gone now.  Trump's America is not in any way a moral leader in the world.  Trump's America is in no way a stabilizer of the international order.  Trump's America is a imitator of Putin's Oligarchy, and Saudi Arabia's oligarchy, and the authoritarian rules in Hungary, Turkey, the Philippines, etc. 


Trump admires authoritarianism, not democracy.  Trump admires and promotes oligarchy.  Trump admires, promotes, and is saturated with political and financial corruption.


One of the latest examples is Saudi Arabia Crown Prince MBS hacking the phone of Jeff Bezos as part of MBS campaign against his perceived opponents.  Why wouldn't MBS do whatever authoritarian thing he wants?  He has Trump as an admirer rather than a constraint.


One of the many ways our president is diminishing and weakening America.

Trump's inability to comprehend anything complex - please read the book

This is a much longer than normal post.  Rather than get involved in the prelude to the impeachment trial in the Senate, I wanted to show an episode that illustrates who it is that my conservative friends are wanting to protect and keep in office.


It is excerpts from an book by Phillip Rucker and Carol Leonnig "A Very Stable Genius" being released on January 21, 2020.  It tells a story that I have read before, but this tells it in terrifying detail.  It shows the level of Trump's inability to comprehend complex issues and shows his deeply ingrained corrupt instincts. 

"...six months into his administration, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had grown alarmed by gaping holes in Trump’s knowledge of history, especially the key alliances forged following World War II. Trump had dismissed allies as worthless, cozied up to authoritarian regimes in Russia and elsewhere, and advocated withdrawing troops from strategic outposts and active theaters alike

...felt that many of Trump’s impulsive ideas stemmed from his lack of familiarity with U.S. history and, even, where countries were located. To have a useful discussion with him, the trio agreed, they had to create a basic knowledge, a shared language.

...The episode has been documented numerous times, but subsequent reporting reveals a more complete picture of the moment and the chilling effect Trump’s comments and hostility had on the nation’s military and national security leadership.

...Just before 10 a.m. on a scorching summer Thursday, Trump arrived at the Pentagon. He stepped out of his motorcade, walked along a corridor with portraits honoring former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs, and stepped inside the Tank. The uniformed officers greeted their commander in chief. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. sat in the seat of honor midway down the table, because this was his room, and Trump sat at the head of the table facing a projection screen. Mattis and the newly confirmed deputy defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, sat to the president’s left, with Vice President Pence and Tillerson to his right. Down the table sat the leaders of the military branches, along with Cohn and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon was in the outer ring of chairs with other staff, taking his seat just behind Mattis and directly in Trump’s line of sight.

Mattis, Cohn, and Tillerson and their aides decided to use maps, graphics, and charts to tutor the president, figuring they would help keep him from getting bored. Mattis opened with a slide show punctuated with lots of dollar signs.  Mattis devised a strategy to use terms the impatient president, schooled in real estate, would appreciate to impress upon him the value of U.S. investments abroad. He sought to explain why U.S. troops were deployed in so many regions and why America’s safety hinged on a complex web of trade deals, alliances, and bases across the globe.

An opening line flashed on the screen, setting the tone: “The post-war international rules-based order is the greatest gift of the greatest generation.” Mattis then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe. Bannon thought to himself, “Not good. Trump is not going to like that one bit.” The internationalist language Mattis was using was a trigger for Trump.

“Oh, baby, this is going to be f---ing wild,” Bannon thought. “If you stood up and threatened to shoot [Trump], he couldn’t say ‘postwar rules-based international order.’ It’s just not the way he thinks.”

For the next 90 minutes, Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn took turns trying to emphasize their points, pointing to their charts and diagrams. They showed where U.S. personnel were positioned, at military bases, CIA stations, and embassies, and how U.S. deployments fended off the threats of terror cells, nuclear blasts, and destabilizing enemies in places including Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, the Korea Peninsula, and Syria. Cohn spoke for about 20 minutes about the value of free trade with America’s allies, emphasizing how he saw each trade agreement working together as part of an overall structure to solidify U.S. economic and national security.

Trump’s first complaint was to repeat what he had vented about to his national security adviser months earlier: South Korea should pay for a $10 billion missile defense system that the United States built for it. The system was designed to shoot down any short- and medium-range ballistic missiles from North Korea to protect South Korea and American troops stationed there. But Trump argued that the South Koreans should pay for it, proposing that the administration pull U.S. troops out of the region or bill the South Koreans for their protection.

“We should charge them rent,” Trump said of South Korea. “We should make them pay for our soldiers. We should make money off of everything.”

Trump proceeded to explain that NATO, too, was worthless. U.S. generals were letting the allied member countries get away with murder, he said, and they owed the United States a lot of money after not living up to their promise of paying their dues.

(Penguin Press)

More broadly, Mattis argued, the NATO alliance was not serving only to protect western Europe. It protected America, too. “This is what keeps us safe,” Mattis said. Cohn tried to explain to Trump that he needed to see the value of the trade deals. “These are commitments that help keep us safe,” Cohn said.

...Trump then repeated a threat he’d made countless times before. He wanted out of the Iran nuclear deal that President Obama had struck in 2015, which called for Iran to reduce its uranium stockpile and cut its nuclear program.

“It’s the worst deal in history!” Trump declared.

“Well, actually . . .,” Tillerson interjected.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Trump said, cutting off the secretary of state before he could explain some of the benefits of the agreement. “They’re cheating. They’re building. We’re getting out of it. I keep telling you, I keep giving you time, and you keep delaying me. I want out of it.”

Before they could debate the Iran deal, Trump erupted to revive another frequent complaint: the war in Afghanistan, which was now America’s longest war. He demanded an explanation for why the United States hadn’t won in Afghanistan yet, now 16 years after the nation began fighting there in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Trump unleashed his disdain, calling Afghanistan a “loser war.” That phrase hung in the air and disgusted not only the military leaders at the table but also the men and women in uniform sitting along the back wall behind their principals. They all were sworn to obey their commander in chief’s commands, and here he was calling the war they had been fighting a loser war.

“You’re all losers,” Trump said. “You don’t know how to win anymore.”

Trump questioned why the United States couldn’t get some oil as payment for the troops stationed in the Persian Gulf. “We spent $7 trillion; they’re ripping us off,” Trump boomed. “Where is the f---ing oil?”

...“I want to win,” he said. “We don’t win any wars anymore . . . We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we’re not winning anymore.”

Trump by now was in one of his rages. ...

“I wouldn’t go to war with you people,” Trump told the assembled brass.

Addressing the room, the commander in chief barked, “You’re a bunch of dopes and babies.”

For a president known for verbiage he euphemistically called “locker room talk,” this was the gravest insult he could have delivered to these people, in this sacred space. The flag officers in the room were shocked. Some staff began looking down at their papers, rearranging folders, almost wishing themselves out of the room. A few considered walking out. They tried not to reveal their revulsion on their faces, but questions raced through their minds. “How does the commander in chief say that?” one thought. “What would our worst adversaries think if they knew he said this?”

This was a president who had been labeled a “draft dodger” for avoiding service in the Vietnam War under questionable circumstances. Trump was a young man born of privilege and in seemingly perfect health: six feet two inches with a muscular build and a flawless medical record. He played several sports, including football. Then, in 1968 at age 22, he obtained a diagnosis of bone spurs in his heels that exempted him from military service just as the United States was drafting men his age to fulfill massive troop deployments to Vietnam.

Tillerson in particular was stunned by Trump’s diatribe and began visibly seething. For too many minutes, others in the room noticed, he had been staring straight, dumbfounded, at Mattis, who was speechless, his head bowed down toward the table. Tillerson thought to himself, “Gosh darn it, Jim, say something. Why aren’t you saying something?”

But, as he would later tell close aides, Tillerson realized in that moment that Mattis was genetically a Marine, unable to talk back to his commander in chief, no matter what nonsense came out of his mouth.

The more perplexing silence was from Pence, a leader who should have been able to stand up to Trump. Instead, one attendee thought, “He’s sitting there frozen like a statue.

...Others at the table noticed Trump’s stream of venom had taken an emotional toll. So many people in that room had gone to war and risked their lives for their country, and now they were being dressed down by a president who had not. They felt sick to their stomachs. Tillerson told others he thought he saw a woman in the room silently crying. He was furious and decided he couldn’t stand it another minute. His voice broke into Trump’s tirade, this one about trying to make money off U.S. troops.

“No, that’s just wrong,” the secretary of state said. “Mr. President, you’re totally wrong. None of that is true.”

Tillerson’s father and uncle had both been combat veterans, and he was deeply proud of their service.

“The men and women who put on a uniform don’t do it to become soldiers of fortune,” Tillerson said. “That’s not why they put on a uniform and go out and die . . . They do it to protect our freedom.”

There was silence in the Tank. Several military officers in the room were grateful to the secretary of state for defending them when no one else would. The meeting soon ended and Trump walked out, saying goodbye to a group of servicemen lining the corridor as he made his way to his motorcade waiting outside. Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn were deflated. Standing in the hall with a small cluster of people he trusted, Tillerson finally let down his guard.

“He’s a f---ing moron,” the secretary of state said of the president.

...

Trump once again gathered his generals and top diplomats in December 2017 for a meeting as part of the administration’s ongoing strategy talks about troop deployments in Afghanistan in the Situation Room, a secure meeting room on the ground floor of the West Wing. Trump didn’t like the Situation Room as much as the Pentagon’s Tank, because he didn’t think it had enough gravitas. It just wasn’t impressive. But there Trump was, struggling to come up with a new Afghanistan policy and frustrated that so many U.S. forces were deployed in so many places around the world. The conversation began to tilt in the same direction as it had in the Tank back in July.

“All these countries need to start paying us for the troops we are sending to their countries. We need to be making a profit,” Trump said. “We could turn a profit on this.”

Dunford tried to explain to the president once again, gently, that troops deployed in these regions provided stability there, which helped make America safer. Another officer chimed in that charging other countries for U.S. soldiers would be against the law.

“But it just wasn’t working,” one former Trump aide recalled. “Nothing worked.”

Following the Tank meeting, Tillerson had told his aides that he would never silently tolerate such demeaning talk from Trump about making money off the deployments of U.S. soldiers. Tillerson’s father, at the age of 17, had committed to enlist in the Navy on his next birthday, wanting so much to serve his country in World War II. His great-uncle was a career officer in the Navy as well. Both men had been on his mind, Tillerson told aides, when Trump unleashed his tirade in the Tank and again when he repeated those points in the Situation Room in December.

“We need to get our money back,” Trump told his assembled advisers.

That was it. Tillerson stood up. But when he did so, he turned his back to the president and faced the flag officers and the rest of the aides in the room. He didn’t want a repeat of the scene in the Tank.

“I’ve never put on a uniform, but I know this,” Tillerson said. “Every person who has put on a uniform, the people in this room, they don’t do it to make a buck. They did it for their country, to protect us. I want everyone to be clear about how much we as a country value their service.”

Tillerson’s rebuke made Trump angry. He got a little red in the face. But the president decided not to engage Tillerson at that moment. He would wait to take him on another day.

In March 2018, Trump abruptly fired Tillerson while the secretary of state was halfway across the globe on a sensitive diplomatic mission to Africa to ease tensions caused by Trump’s demeaning insults about African countries. Trump gave Tillerson no rationale for his firing, and afterward acted as if they were buddies, inviting him to come by the Oval Office to take a picture and have the president sign it. Tillerson never went."end of excerpt...


But, isn't Trump actually smart but just different?  Didn't he go to a great school, Wharton?  I don't think so.  He got into Wharton because his brother was a friend of a man who vetted candidates and recommended Donald as a favor to Donald's brother.  Plus, long ago, before Trump ran for president, a retire Wharton professor said very publically and often that Trump was the dumbest student he ever had, you couldn't teach him anything.


But, wasn't Trump a very successful businessman?  Not really.  He took over $400 million from his father and blew it, ending up in multiple bankruptcies and business failures.  As best I can tell his money is from money laundering billions from Russian oligarchs who needed to find criminals like themselves with real estate, casino, resort and golf courses that could take in dirty cash and give them back clean cash in return.


Trump is good at conning people, good at building a brand, an illusion of success that evaporates under scrutiny.


Trump's impeachment is the least of his problems.  His real problem will be to stay out of prison on money laundering, tax fraud, and bank fraud.  That is why his real passion is to keep his finances secret.


It will all come out eventually, and those who so loudly defend him now will try to quietly slink away when it becomes undeniable.