Rod Serling was the master of the macabre and creator of the Twilight Zone. Even he would be shocked by the bizarre goings-on these days!
Photo | metv.com
We Have Entered Another Dimension – One Of Sound, One Of Sight, One Of Complete Asininity
Don’t Blame Trump For Being Trump … Blame Senate Republicans for Keeping Him In Office
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
In Trump’s Defense, Nobody Could Have Known Fighting A Pandemic Could Be So Complicated!
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.
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
Coronavirus Proves Highly Resistant To Political Spin
Donald Trump knows only one way of handling a vexing problem … to knowingly downplay the situation and offer an alternative, biased interpretation of the “facts” in order to sway public opinion in his direction.
And so it was with the outbreak of the coronavirus.
Trump went from claiming the Democrats were making the coronavirus “their new hoax” to saying “it will go away.”
As the outbreak was worsening, Trump kept downplaying the potential for the virus to spread throughout the U.S., even suggesting without scientific evidence, that the number of cases would soon decrease.
At a news conference only 10 days ago, Trump said the number of cases “within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero. That’s a pretty good job we’ve done.”
“We’re going very substantially down, not up,” Trump added.
Of course, this couldn’t have been further from the truth. The number of confirmed infections, and deaths, only continues to increase.
As one might expect, and surveys bear out, Democrats take the gravity of this pandemic more seriously than do Republicans.
And, according to Jennifer Rubin, Republicans are doing so at their own peril.
Appearing on MSNBC’s “AM Joy”, the Washington Post conservative columnist said the daily drumbeat of misinformation coming from the White House and Fox News that has downplayed the coronavirus pandemic will likely lead to more deaths among Republicans than Democrats.
Taking aim at the Fox News propaganda machine, Rubin offered, “Here is a particular cruelty/irony that it is their core viewers, the Republican older viewers, who are the most at risk. And when you think about it, which party immediately canceled all of their rallies? Which party immediately started having their political figures really portray and use their lies as an example? It was the Democrats.”
Some may cynically wonder if this isn’t just another example of Darwin’s theory of evolution (survival of the fittest).
No matter how much Trump and his sycophants wish otherwise, the coronavirus pandemic is here; it is spreading. And like gravity, it’s a fact that can not be politically spun.
Photo | Evan Vucci/AP Photo