We are in the middle of a pandemic that is being complicated by a market crash and the fact that we have to separate people and drag them from their work, just to protect them. It is the perfect storm and it’s nowhere near conclusion. If there ever was a time for all Americans to check their political and economic goals and pull together to help their fellow Americans this is it. So will someone please tell this to Trump and the Retrumplicans.
At a time when everyone should be trying to help each other and look to the singular goal that will protect the American people, the Retrumplican Party, led by the President and shored up by the likes of Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell and Bill Barr are ignoring the real victims of this catastrophe and trying to line their own pockets and those of their already monstrously rich friends.
What am I talking about? I’m talking about a President who takes ten minutes out of a press conference to tell us how rich he is and how much it cost him to get to be an illegitimate President. Who gives a shit how rich Trump is or actually whether he lives or breaths? All we care about is that he should get off his fat ass and function. But he can’t do that because he doesn’t want to be blamed for anything going wrong when he is already responsible tor everything that has already gone wrong.
We are in the middle of a pandemic and the government has done nothing but get in the way of those trying to save lives. (I refer to them turning down ventilators offered by the World Health Organization.) Instead of empowering the Wartime Production Act that might help get desperately needed supplies to hospitals, he refused to do so because he was terrified that, down the line, someone might interpret that as an admission that we really are in terrible trouble and that could cause the Market to crash and hurt his chances when we get to the election. All this despite the fact that the Market is already crashing and that we desperately need masks, gowns, ventilators and rubber gloves that aren’t being delivered by FEMA simply because FEMA is being led by Trump appointees who can’t get out of their own way.
Meanwhile in the Senate where desperately needed legislation that would allocate monies to keep Americans whose work has disappeared, able to feed their families, Mitch McConnell is more worried about getting money for cruise ships and airlines than he is about supplementing the lost salaries that will keep Americans alive.
Meanwhile the Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer are trying to keep the GOP led Senate from repeating the same mistake that the Obama administration made by baling out industry after the Bush crash of 2007. At that chaotic time the government shelled out tax dollars to keep banks, the auto industry and other businesses from going into the toilet. What did they do with that money? Did they create more employment building plant? They did not. Instead they used the money to buy back their own stock and pay their CEOs huge bonuses, even as they were cutting payroll and replacing workers with robots. Even now the clown in the Oval Office talks about bailing out cruise lines that aren’t even American companies. They register their ships in foreign countries so they can avoid American taxes even as they provide petri dishes in which to generate disease on their overpriced cruises that have turned charming ports all over the world into swarming, horrific tourist traps.
The Democrats are trying to keep McConnell and his rich buddies from stealing the money that American taxpayers will be giving to help their needy fellow citizens. Even as they do, McConnell screams and rages on the tube about how the Dems are holding up a bill that is desperately needed to alleviate the financial crisis. What he never mentions is that those who will benefit most by the bill, are the already rich, not the working stiff, trying to save his family. As I am writing this, the bill has passed but it still contains help for the already too rich at the expense of the working stiffs who make up the backbone of America.
And while this is happening, assholes like Governor DeSantis from Florida encourage brain dead teenagers to flock to the beaches in South Florida where they can improve on the venereal diseases they traditionally exchange by now cultivating this deadly virus. If there is anything in South Florida more prevalent than dumb teenagers, it’s old farts that are most at risk from this deadly disease. Then DeSantis closed the beaches; aftereveryone was infected.
For decades there has been a segment of the American people that has promoted the concept of small government. It has been definitely Republican and particularly rural. It has always held that the Federal government should have no place in the making of decisions that reflect on our daily lives. It has promoted States Rights and whined against the exact same things that the federal Government has provided to the people of this country that has often kept those in need from going under.
Now we are in a situation that demands more than states or cities can provide. Now we are involved in a worldwide plague that needs larger elements to control it. This is exactly the situation that terrified intelligent observers from the moment Trump took office. They knew that there was no way that either Trump or the deconstructed government machine he had done his best to destroy could ever handle anything like this. All their fears have come to fruition.
From the time he stepped into the White House, everyone with an intelligent view of the world understood that there was no way either Donald Trump or his deconstructed government were equipped to handle anything like a war, a financial crash or a plague. Now we have two of those elements threatening to destroy the country. When the virus emerged the President ignored it, when the virus turned into a plague he mocked it and poo pooed its potential despite the fact that the rest of the world had already pushed the panic button. When the stock market recognized the chaotic potential of the plague and went over the edge of the cliff, Trump finally opened his eyes if not his mind. He knew that his only hold on power was tied directly to the false notion that the Market equaled financial success. So as the Market plummeted Trump sent out a jumble of mixed messaging, filled with half-truths and outright lies. Along with attacking the media for its truthful reporting of the crisis he outright lied about whether or not we had much needed medical supplies, PPEs, ventilators, beds and just about everything else doctors needed to hold off the plague. He did this even as he was hinting that we did have to deal with the crisis but never doing anything to actually accomplish anything. He has sloughed off every responsibility to the states. Yesterday Trump lambasted GM for not doing anything. Then he invoked The Defense Production Act and now he’s bragging about how many ventilators that GM is making. They haven’t even started, but that means nothing to the great liar.
We know that Donald Trump is like a fat four-year-old that wants his lollipop and will cry and stamp his feet until he gets it, but what about the rest of the administration? Aren’t there even a few of them that know how to function? Yes, there are a few of the career bureaucrats left that normally make up the backbone of every government, but most of those he inherited are gone, fired and never replaced by a President who wanted only to surround himself with yes men and ass kissers; a man so insecure that he had to get rid of everyone who might possibly disagree with any of the stupid lies he told to the pubic on a daily basis. Of course most of them were never replaced, mainly because Donald Trump never bothered to figure out what they did and so he had no basis for hiring replacements. Now we are fighting a war with a squad of troops to do the work when we need at least a division.
Trump had run a failed, insignificant business by himself and that, plus his monstrous ego, made him think he could run the most important government in the world by himself. We’re talking here about a jerk that never learned to read, who was too lazy to sit still and listen to those who had informed advice for him, that thought bankruptcy was a successful business strategy. So now he’s fighting a war with a water pistol and his own pathetic inabilities.
Because of his lack of organization, lack of forethought and lack of leadership, the Federal government has done almost nothing for the nation in this crisis. Governors and Mayors, who have had to fight the administration every step of the way to get the assistance that the Feds should be supplying to those in need of help, are the only functioning players in this game. Half the people who would be doing this job no longer work for the Federal Government, Trump fired them or got rid of the agencies they worked for.
This is a disaster. The job of our government in Washington is to help the states in a disaster. Bullshitting lies to the American people, saying that the government has shipped millions of masks and having none of them in stock to ship isn’t helping anyone, not even Trump. It’s just a destructive lie like most of what he does and says.
And yet there is so much fear out there now, fear generated by Trump’s actions and lack of function, that a terrified percentage of the public is willing to say they support his policies, some though ignorance, some because they have been deceived by Trump and the likes of Pence and Fox news and some because they are terrified and are putting all their hope in the only place they know to put it, the Presidency of the United States.
And, of course, there stands our Putz in the Oval Office, lying to them, deceiving them, placing blame for his mistakes and inaction on everyone but the real perpetrator, himself. We’re up to our eyeballs sinking in the swamp and the only one with a rope is using it to walk his dog.
Our President was very busy being who he is yesterday. When asked about how come NYC hospitals still don’t have all the medical supplies they need from the federal government he countered that the things those hospitals need are probably walking out he back doors.
Of course he would say some thing like that. Dishonesty is the first thing that crosses the mind of a thief. He was just letting his mouth revert to where he was when he was a contractor.