Archives for April 2020

In A Sane World, Trump’s Reelection Would Be Considered Unthinkable

April 28, 2020 By John DeProspo 4 Comments

After one of the biggest governmental screw-ups in the American history, the president overseeing such a fiasco would be run out of office on a rail. He certainly would have no chance at reelection … right?

But of course, we do not live in a sane world, do we?

That Trump could so mishandle the national response to the coronavirus pandemic and set the stage for an economic downturn possibly not seen since the Great Depression, and still win reelection, is mind-boggling.

Then again, in a sane world a pathological liar would never be elected to the most powerful office on Earth in the first place. In a functioning American democracy, a corrupt, incompetent leader would be removed from office as the Constitution prescribes.

Yet here we are, seven months away from the next presidential election and Donald Trump is only marginally trailing Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, in some battleground states. Marginally … as within the margin of error.

Yes, the latest USA Today/Suffolk national poll has Biden with a commanding lead over Trump (50-40 percent) but national polling strength does not necessarily equate to Electoral College strength, as we so well know.

With an unemployment rate increasing by the day; with so many families unable to pay their bills; with so many of our fellow citizens needlessly stricken by the coronavirus, how could a good chunk of Americans still want four more years of Trump at the helm?

As Chauncey DeVega writes in Salon:

A culture of distraction and spectacle has rendered many Americans incapable of being responsible engaged citizens. Our public educational system does not teach critical thinking skills.

Add to that a right-wing propaganda network, Fox News, ranked the most-watched cable news network 18 years in a row; throw in the Republican Party’s efforts to limit access to voting among predominantly Democratic folk and you have Trump with a good chance of stealing another election, pandemic or no pandemic… depression or no depression.

In politics, seven months is a lifetime. But for current polling to still have Trump with anywhere near a shot at reelection while we are in the middle of one of the worst health and economic crises in the nation’s history should scare the daylights out of us.

Photo | cnn.com

Don’t Blame Trump For Being Trump … Blame Senate Republicans for Keeping Him In Office

April 24, 2020 By John DeProspo 3 Comments

Our country is facing a health and economic crisis like never before. Nearly 900,000 Americans have been infected by the coronavirus, with over 50,000 deaths. The U.S. economy has now wiped out all the job gains since the Great Recession. In the last month and a half, over 26 million workers have applied for unemployment insurance. Congress has approved a massive $2 trillion coronavirus relief package … with more money to go out the door.

It didn’t have to be this way. The situation didn’t have to be this bad.

The fact that Donald Trump is a total incompetent who is mishandling the pandemic response, which is on pace to be the deadliest since the 1918 Spanish flu, comes as no surprise. Could we have expected anything else?

The man has demonstrated his ineptitude … and complete lack of respect for science, facts, expert opinion … from the moment he stepped into the White House.

Remember when candidate Trump boasted he knew more than the generals? Now he stands in front of the White House press corps claiming to know more than the scientists and doctors.

That we find ourselves in this mess is a direct result of Republican senators failing to do their Constitutional duty by removing Trump from office when they had the opportunity.

So, lest we forget, and in order to highlight their shame, here is a list of the 53 Senate Republicans who voted to acquit Trump on Impeachment Article 2, Obstruction of Congress (52 Republicans voted to acquit Trump on Impeachment Article 1, Abuse of Power, with only Mitt Romney voting guilty):

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Blackburn (R-TN)
Blunt (R-MO)
Boozman (R-AR)
Braun (R-IN)
Burr (R-NC)
Capito (R-WV)
Cassidy (R-LA)
Collins (R-ME)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Cotton (R-AR)
Cramer (R-ND)
Crapo (R-ID)
Cruz (R-TX)
Daines (R-MT)
Enzi (R-WY)
Ernst (R-IA)
Fischer (R-NE)
Gardner (R-CO)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Hawley (R-MO)
Hoeven (R-ND)
Hyde-Smith (R-MS)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Johnson (R-WI)
Kennedy (R-LA)
Lankford (R-OK)
Lee (R-UT)
Loeffler (R-GA)
McConnell (R-KY)
McSally (R-AZ)
Moran (R-KS)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Paul (R-KY)
Perdue (R-GA)
Portman (R-OH)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)

Romney (R-UT)

Rounds (R-SD)
Rubio (R-FL)
Sasse (R-NE)
Scott (R-FL)
Scott (R-SC)
Shelby (R-AL)
Sullivan (R-AK)
Thune (R-SD)
Tillis (R-NC)
Toomey (R-PA)
Wicker (R-MS)
Young (R-IN)

No, we did not have to been stuck with the worst possible leader at the worst possible time.

It’s not Trump’s fault. Blame those 53 Senate Republicans who voted to keep the most incompetent president in American history in charge of the federal response to one of the most serious crises the country has ever faced.

Photo | alternet.org

Coronavirus Reminds Us Once Again … There Is No Cure For Stupid

April 19, 2020 By John DeProspo 3 Comments

Remember the anti-Obama Tea Party movement, when thousands of crazies hit the streets protesting that communist plot … Obamacare?

It seems we are now in the midst of a relapse of that decade-old anti-government activism. Demonstrations are popping up in many places protesting the stay-at-home orders issued by state governors because of the coronavirus.

“They have a very Tea Party feel,” said Tea Party Express co-founder Sal Russo of the demonstrations.

So far, however, the protests have not been as big as the ones from the Tea Party days. But that could change rapidly as Trump and his favorite network, Fox News, support and encourage the demonstrators.

And just like with the Tea Party protests, we are witnessing stupidity, and illogic, at its highest level through signs the protestors are displaying.

Perhaps the most iconic, and dumbest, anti-Obamacare sign during the Tea Party days was the “Keep Government Out Of My Medicare! You Damn Socialists!”

Now we’re seeing signs such as “Give Me Liberty … Or Give Me Covid-19”

We have “Social Distancing = Communism.”

Then you have “That Face Mask You Were Duped Into Wearing Symbolizes You Losing Your Freedom Of Speech.”

Yet, among these wacky signs, you occasionally see one that actually hits on the real hardships brought about by the coronavirus lockdown orders.

My favorite one of these? “I need a haircut.”

Photo: pbs.twimg.com

Come Nov. 3, We Are Either Going To Have A New President … Or Our First King

April 17, 2020 By John DeProspo 7 Comments

The Founding Fathers knew enough about the evils of monarchy to not want one for the new American republic. Prior to Washington’s election, they seriously debated what to call the new chief executive of the United States of America.

As Lorraine Boissoneault writes in Smithsonianmag.com:

Some delegates to the Constitutional Convention suggested “His Exalted Highness,” with others chiming in with the more democratic “His Elective Highness.” Other suggestions included the formal “Chief Magistrate” and the lengthy “His Highness the President of the United States of America, and Protector of Their Liberties.” The debate went on for multiple weeks, according to historian Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, because the House of Representatives worried that too grand a title might puff Washington up with power, while the Senate feared Washington would be derided by foreign powers if saddled with something as feeble as “president” (the title originally meant, simply, one who presides over a body of people‑‑similar to “foreman”).

Of course, “president” won out.

Article 1, Section 9 of the Constitution states that “No Title of Nobility shall be granted by the United States.” Alexander Hamilton called the clause a “cornerstone of republican government,” saying that without titles of nobility, “there can never be serious danger that the government will be anything other than that of the people.”

And now it seems we’ve come full circle. We have a president who wants nothing more than to be a monarch … if not in name, then in deed.

During a press briefing earlier this week, Trump declared, “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total, and that’s the way it’s got to be.” On Wednesday, Trump threatened to adjourn both houses of Congress.

By now it should be clear that Donald J. Trump does not understand (or respect) the meaning of constitutional democracy. He does not see himself so much as the head of one branch of government, the executive, but as the supreme authority in the land.

And if he is reelected in November, you can be sure his thirst for autocratic power will only increase.

What’s there to stop Trump from issuing an executive order naming himself “El Exigente” (Wait, maybe not. Too Mexican)? The Constitution? Yeah right!

With the other two “co-equal” branches of government asleep at the wheel, failing in their constitutional duty to check a wannabe dictator like Trump, four more years of the corrupt Trump regime would effectively end that great experiment in constitutional self-governance envisioned by the Founding Fathers. And it would bring about what they feared most for the new nation … that it would collapse into tyranny.

You’ve heard it all too often … the next presidential election is the most important of our lifetimes. It’s become an election year cliché.

But here’s the thing … the upcoming presidential election will not just be the most important of our lifetimes. It will also be the most consequential election in the 243-year-old lifespan of our nation. You think that’s hyperbole?

On November 3, 2020, we are either going to elect a new president or have our first king (though some might argue, and happily I might add, that Trump has already secured that distinction).

Photo | businessinsider.com

Wuhan Virus? Chinese Virus? How About “The Trump Virus?”

April 13, 2020 By John DeProspo 4 Comments

Donald Trump and his toadies love calling the coronavirus the “Wuhan Virus” or the “Chinese Virus.” The sad fact remains that foreign ministers of the G7 countries failed to agree on a joint statement on the pandemic, in part, because the Trump administration insisted on calling it the “Wuhan virus.”

I suggest it’s about time we start calling the coronavirus, or COVID-19, “The Trump Virus.”

Am I being unfair? Too harsh? Is it too early to go there? Should we just leave all this to the history books?

Let’s get one thing straight … Donald Trump is not responsible for the coronavirus. He did not cause it to become a global pandemic.

But Trump’s actions, or inactions, did make the situation in the United States much worse than it needed to be. A Boston Globe editorial even went so far as to say, “Much of the suffering and death coming was predictable. The president has blood on his hands,”

David Frum recently wrote in The Atlantic:

That the pandemic occurred is not Trump’s fault. The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the pre-crisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.

Frum did not stop there:

The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him. The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time. The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities. The firing of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus’s threat to his crew? Trump’s fault. The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault. The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.

Trump needs to forever be linked to what he has wrought … “The Trump Virus.”

In his “fight” against the coronavirus, Trump has likened himself to a “wartime president.” Unfortunately for the United States, and the world, we have been saddled with the worst possible leader at the worst possible time.

To paraphrase an old Donald Rumsfeld quote, “You go to war with the president you have, not the president you might want.” God help us.

November 3, 2020 can’t come soon enough.

Photo | politico.com

In Trump’s Defense, Nobody Could Have Known Fighting A Pandemic Could Be So Complicated!

April 8, 2020 By John DeProspo 5 Comments

Donald Trump is a very smart man. Some people (namely, Donald Trump) have gone so far as to call him a “stable genius.”

Yet even this modern-day Einstein, who some people (namely, Donald Trump) keep telling us graduated at the top of his class at Wharton, was ambushed by the coronavirus.

The man who said recently he “should have been a doctor” due to his natural ability for science and because his “genius uncle” taught at MIT, now finds himself surrounded by a vicious virus that has attacked the country, and the world.

That such a brilliant leader, who some people (namely, Donald Trump) have praised for his “great and unmatched wisdom,” should find himself in such a difficult position is sobering.

As Trump said on Fox & Friends a little over one week ago, “Nobody could have predicted something like this.”

After all, the man is a da Vinci, not a Nostradamus!

Yet some critics are attacking Trump for his botched response to combating the virus once it hit the U.S. They say things might not have been so complicated if he just paid closer attention to the people around him.

They point to Trump’s trade advisor, Peter Navarro, who warned him in January the coronavirus crisis could cost the United States trillions of dollars and put millions of Americans at risk of illness or death.

They mention that U.S. Intelligence agencies, both in January and February, warned Trump of the nature and scope of the virus, and China’s apparent downplaying of its severity, as well as the potential need for the government to take measures to contain it.

They even bring up Dr. Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious disease specialist, who warned in early 2017 that a “surprise outbreak” would occur during Trump’s time in office, and that more needed to be done to prepare for a pandemic.

What Trump’s critics fail to understand, however, is that Donald Trump, who some people say has the “highest IQ” (namely, Donald Trump), has a plan for stopping the spread of the deadly virus. And someday, in his abundant wisdom, he will tell it to the American people.

Photo | insider.com/ Shealah Craighead/White House

Washington Post’s Max Boot … Trump Worst President. Ever.

April 5, 2020 By John DeProspo 4 Comments

On a day when conservative columnist Max Boot makes a persuasive case in the Washington Post for why Donald Trump is the worst president … ever, another writer, Becket Adams, in the Washington Examiner, writes how George W. Bush is gaining a “strange new respect.”

“The man who is held personally responsible for the state and local failures of Hurricane Katrina,” writes Adams, “ is enjoying some positive press this weekend following the publication of a report detailing his efforts as president to prepare the United States for a viral outbreak.”

Adams notes that, in 2005, Bush uttered, “If we wait for a pandemic to appear, it will be too late to prepare. And one day many lives could be needlessly lost because we failed to act today.”

If only the current occupant of the White House shared such respect for preparedness.

In the movie Airplane!, Lloyd Bridges plays the stressed-out air traffic controller who laments he picked the wrong week to give up amphetamines.

Unfortunately for the nation, in 2016, we picked the wrong time to elect the worst president. Ever.

Photo | chron.com

Is America’s Love Affair With Stupidity Waning?

April 3, 2020 By John DeProspo 4 Comments

Americans, particularly Republicans, have a long, rich history of electing dimwits as their leaders.

Of course, there is the former representative from Minnesota, Michele Bachmann, who once said, “But we also know that the very founders that wrote those documents worked tirelessly until slavery was no more in the United States. … I think it is high time that we recognize the contribution of our forbearers who worked tirelessly — men like John Quincy Adams, who would not rest until slavery was extinguished in the country.”

You have the senior senator from Oklahoma, James Inhofe, who brought a snowball to the Senate floor in order to disprove global warming.

Then there’s the former vice president, Dan Quayle, who could not correctly spell potato.

And how can one forget the former Governor of Alaska, and self-proclaimed Mama Grizzly, Sarah Palin, who once said, “Mr. President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke.”

Just yesterday you had the governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, claiming he only recently learned the coronavirus could be spread by asymptomatic carriers. “But we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours and as Dr. Toomey told me, she goes, ‘this is a game-changer for us.'”

But here’s the thing, some of the comments on Foxnews.com, that reported the Kemp story, were downright un-Foxlike!

Here’s a sampling:

I’m a Repub, but this guy is an idiot.

Stacey Abrams had a degree in Public Policy which would have prepared her for this. And then got her law degree from Yale. Kemp majored in Agriculture and was basically a farmer before he became governor Good choice Georgians

Really??? Did I just read that insanity correctly??? If so, this guy and his entire staff are absolute failures.

This clown seriously can’t be that much of an IDIOT? How fast can he be recalled?

Wow, not the kind of comments you’d expect from Fox News consumers!

Writing for the Washington Post, conservative columnist, Jennifer Rubin wrote:

At a more fundamental level, the coronavirus pandemic should stanch the urge to elect political leaders who disparage expertise, deny widely accepted scientific findings and do not read. The right’s anti-intellectual bent and its hostility toward independent sources of information (e.g., media, universities, scientific associations) is dangerous and, indeed, life-threatening.

Maybe, just, maybe, Republicans have had it with electing incompetent numbskulls to high office?

Photo | ecowatch.com