Various parts of the country are opening and there is a great deal of controversy over what is more important, the health and safety of the people, or the economy? The obvious answer, at least to anyone that can think, is both are of primary importance but you can’t earn if you’re dead. So what to do?
Well, I think that those who are relatively careful about exposure to the virus must move ahead and reopen the economy, but they must do it with a hard eye to safety. It can be done. I see huge protest marches in which almost everyone is wearing a mask and then I see parks and beaches where almost no one is, and this makes absolutely no sense to me. Yes if you’re in good health and of a younger age you should definitely take advantage of what recreation is available to you, but be smart, wear a mask and social distance yourselves from strangers. If you are going to the beach with your family, who are normally in the same home as you, social distancing isn’t necessary or practical, but stay away from everybody else.
Understand that wearing a mask and social distancing isn’t the government trying to take away your freedom, it’s intelligent people trying to keep you alive to enjoy that freedom when the virus is gone.
Workers who are going back to work must demand safe working conditions and those for whom it is possible should continue to work from home until a vaccine is available.
Informed estimates say that even if we get most business back on track there will still be an 8% unemployment rate by the end of the year. That’s certainly not acceptable but it will be the reality because of the many businesses that do not survive the virus. That does not mean that such a condition will have to continue. With new leadership in Washington and the continued growth of renewable energy, which will add hundreds of thousands of jobs to the economy, and with the establishment of a real infrastructure policy, which could add millions more jobs, the unemployment problem could be all but solved by the early fall of 2021.
Yes, it will take a different President and new leadership in congress but that’s up to us. Nothing will change if we don’t change it. We proved we could do that in 2016 when we put an inexperienced criminal psychotic in the Presidency. Why don’t we try it again but this time pay attention and get it right.
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Donald Trump has said a lot of stupid things since he has been in the public eye and we have gotten pretty used to having him make an ass of himself, but in the last couple of days he has been discussing testing for the virus and he keeps repeating the same idiotic nonsense. He insists that if we didn’t have COVID 19 tests we wouldn’t have people with the virus, implying that the tests are causing the virus. His “logical” conclusion is that we still have the virus because we are getting positive tests so we should stop testing and we’ll get rid of the virus. That’s like saying if Rand Paul isn’t standing in your sightline, he doesn’t exist. We may wish for that but it isn’t factual.
We all know that Trump is an unbelievably stupid liar but even for him this is over the top.
Almost 118,000 people have died from the virus. Does Trump really think that if we hadn’t tested anyone, those people would all be alive today? It seems he does. This is the second time he’s said it. Once might be a mistake. Twice is verification.
Sure we all know he wants the virus to go away but why doesn’t he get rid of it the simple effective scientific way; spit twice over his left shoulder and bite the head off a frog?
We are all watching a grown man melt down and turn into a gibbering idiot before our eyes. For those of us who do not wish to see him re-elected this may be a good thing, but it’s also a dangerous thing. He is so out of control that if the idea entered his damaged brain he would surely move to start a war just to help his election plans. Dick Cheney did it just to gain a little power; Trump would surely do it to hold the whole ball of wax.
It’s reassuring that every move Trump makes alienates our military and drives them further from any concept of his awful leadership. Now they have to keep him a significant distance from the guy with the football.
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The inability of the Major League baseball owners and players to get together on how to have some kind of abbreviated season is a disgrace and a clear illustration of the selfish greed of both sides. No, major league baseball isn’t very important in the broad scheme of things but it could work as a balm to the tensions brought about by the isolation of the Coronavirus. It would be a very calming source of escape for those who are sports fans.
Everybody understands that stadiums will not be full; could even be empty, so that’s the reality. Also real will be TV revenues which could spike and go a long way to keeping both players and owners financially sound.
Owners are being asked to take a small profit on investments that have come to be worth billions. These are rich guys living in a world where millions go to bed hungry every night. Surely they can survive on slightly less than normal profits given the abnormal nature of the times.
The players are being asked to take a few less million bucks for playing half a season of a child’s game. If they can’t accept this, players should quit the sport and take up what they are otherwise suited for, manual labor, while owners should give up the game and go back to renting their stadiums to Trump rallies.
These guys all seem to forget that baseball is no longer America’s game; that title went to pro football a long time ago. Pro baseball can easily be replaced by college baseball and softball. The pro stars that aren’t satisfied to make millions, like that idiot pitcher, should go back to flipping burgers at the Golden Arches.
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Can there be a more despised man in the United States right now than John Bolton? I’m talking about the John Bolton that refused to testify before the impeachment hearings, the same John Bolton who could have told congress the things that would have removed Trump from office. That Bolton didn’t appear because he was already counting the royalties from the book he was writing about all the stuff that Trump did that was illegal.
Well that John Bolton’s book is about to be published and Bolton’s mouth is watering in anticipation of his huge haul. Everyone who has any sense of right or wrong is telling friends not to buy the book.
The problem is that this isn’t even his first shot at being a shit-heel. He was one of Dirty Dick Cheney’s warmongers who lied us into Iraq. He should have already been tried as a war criminal. But that only made him perfect for Trump, the man who hires criminals and then fires them when they aren’t crooked enough to make his criminal plans work.
But now it’s Trump leading the charge against Bolton, blabbering about how Bolton can’t reveal all he knows about Trump’s criminal activities while trying to torpedo Joe Biden. Trump, who likes to think everything he says is classified just because he says it, has as usual no idea what he’s talking about. Of course that never stopped him before, but this time he’s looking to the other big crook Bill Barr, to find some phony excuse or made up law with which to silence Bolton. I actually hope they find it just so they can force Bolton to spend all his sleazy royalties on lawyers. This is one of those wonderful scenarios where everyone is wrong, everybody is a piece of shit and one hopes that they all go down in flames.
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On Tuesday this week there were 17 deaths from the Coronavirus in New York State. The state that led the nation in infection and death from this virus was down to 17. Meanwhile all across the south and southwest, in 20 states the infection rate is going up. Even as those states are opening up and people are mixing without distancing or masks their rates are going through the roof.
Why is this happening? Principally because the Federal Government led my Donald Trump, is giving false information to the people of this country. Trump, Pence and their lackeys have been giving false information to the American people for their own political gain and then telling the people that American media is lying to them and creating fake news. Right now those same liars in the White House are pointing to crowds of demonstrators and crowds of people drinking and partying in the streets of New York and other cities and saying they are all the same, that they all create the same risks. That’s just not true. Look at the protestors where almost all of them are wearing masks and then look at the revelers where almost none of them are wearing masks. If you think they both create the same risk factors then you are as dumb as Trump and as dishonest as Pence.
New York is now leading the country in the fewest infections and deaths because; led by Andrew Cuomo they have done the correct thing for the last 100 days. Those twenty states in the south and southwest are now exploding with new cases because for that same time period they listened to Trump and ignored the threat, ignored the reality, ignored the virus and did as they pleased.
But why has Trump been giving the American people the wrong advice? Did he want them to die? No, of course not, at least not those in his base, but when it came to a choice between thousands dying and advancing his political ambitions he chose his political ambitions. It was no contest because Trump is a sociopath and he cares only for himself. He is about to prove that this Saturday in an arena in Tulsa when he convenes a gathering of around 20,000 people to listen to him babble nonsense. True he moved it from Friday because his advisors informed him of the potential of having thousands of black protestors outside the arena, screaming about his ignorance of Juneteenth and the real possibility of black on Klan riots. But once again that is only a political move. He doesn’t even address the fact that they want to pack 20,000 people into an indoor space with no distancing and no masks because that is a specific crowd that ignores masks and the safety they provide, just so they can prove they are macho.
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This Friday morning the Fat Liar in the White House moved firmly into the realm of psychotic invention when he announced that he was taking credit for the emergence of Juneteenth as a potential national holiday. He claimed no one had heard of it until his incompetent rally planning brought it to the surface. Here he was planning a rally filled with racists and white supremacists that would insult the concept of Juneteenth without even knowing what or when it was, and now it was all over the media and he wanted to get credit for reviving it on the national scene. I laughed my ass off.