Trump keeps babbling about Sleepy Joe Biden but considering how Biden is tromping him in the polls and killing him in the money raising business maybe the Fat Liar should consider a few days of shut-eye himself.
h*****
So they had another presidential debate on Thursday night and the more things change, the more they remain the same. Yes, Donald Trump acted a lot less like a stoned baboon on reds than he did the last time out but the Quaaludes’ started to wear off after about the first hour and he slowly became more obstreperous as the night went on.
The problem with Trump is that no matter how much closer to civilized he gets, he never stops lying and the fantasies he builds never get closer to reality. That means that there can never be any serious, logical, reasonable discussion because we are never dealing with a serious person.
I have been on this planet a long time and I have never seen a president or for that matter, any high government official, put himself in a position where everything he/she states is either ridiculous or an outright lie. The fact checker at this debate must have been near suicide. Everything was either a lie or so muddled that the truth or falsehood of every statement couldn’t be unscrambled.
What was really unbelievable was when Trump spoke about the Biden family. It was clear that he was throwing out accusations that he didn’t even understand. The numbers that Joe and his family were supposed to have taken from foreign countries changed from sentence to sentence, as did the origins and the recipients. It was complete chaos, which is, of course, the Trump strategy about everything.
When they got to the children who have been separated from their parents Trump started babbling about coyotes and gangsters when everyone knows that those children came here with their parents, which is the reason they are now all but orphans.
But it was when Trump began shouting about who built the cages that that discussion went off the rails. Who built them has no significance because they were originally built to contain the criminal element that might cross the border. There could be no argument that it was Trump’s Gestapo, otherwise known as ICE, that had first used the cages to hold children, some nothing more than infants.
Trump’s job at these debates was to add to his supporters. It has been quite clear that the result has been the opposite and just as important that Trump realizes that. Who knows what they gave him at the debates to keep him from shitting the stage but it worked pretty well. The question is what will they give him in the coming nine days to keep him from jumping out a window at the White House?
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It was announced on Sunday morning that members of VP Mike Pence’s retinue have contracted the Coronavirus. So what did Pence do? Did he quarantine himself and all those who had been in contact with those who had tested positive? Were their first thoughts for those to whom they might transmit the disease? Fat chance. Pence announced that he would continue to do his job. Of course he wasn’t speaking about his job as Vice President. He was talking about continuing to campaign for re-election, which is not his job, but just his way of hanging onto a fat paycheck.
For all his phony piety and all his religious bullshit, Pence may in fact be even more of an evil hypocrite than Trump. Yes, he tested negative but having been in contact with those who tested positive he may now be a carrier and that makes him a potential danger to all those who come in contact with him. Pandemic protocol, set up by the President’s Council on the Virus, of which Pence is the head, demands that he not be out here spreading the virus to plane personnel, Secret Service, location managers, fans or just crazy supporters, all of which he will be in contact with. It’s pretty clear he is okay with killing you and your whole family if it means one vote for him. That’s what you may want in the VP chair but not me.
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There has been a great deal of talk since the debates about Joe Biden’s comments on fracking and the fossil fuel business. A number of pundits have said his mentioning this was a mistake, especially in Pennsylvania where this gave the GOP an opening with which to attack Biden. But there is perception and there is reality. The GOP has decided that the perception of Biden looking ahead to the end of the fossil fuel era is good for them but they seem to have refused to consider the reality that fossil fuels are already on a swiftly moving downhill track, are an imminent danger to the planet and have already surrendered to renewables in the cost per kilowatt competition.
For those who are worried about voter reaction in Pennsylvania to the recognition that we have to stop using fossil fuels if we want the planet to survive, let me point to Texas where more workers are already employed in the renewable field than in fossil fuels.
But not only are coal, oil and gas killing us, they are also costing us huge amounts of money that must be used in more important places. Subsidies to the coal, oil and gas industries currently amount to $20 billion a year. Get your attention did it? 20% of that still goes to coal and the rest to gas and oil. Why the hell are we subsidizing businesses that are poisoning the planet and not competing, even with the help of those subsidies, with wind and solar? $20 billion dollars? Think what that could do in areas that desperately need it. How much free education could it supply, how far could it go in medical research and development? Think of the infrastructure it could build and the jobs that such a program would create. Understand that it is now going into the pockets of the super rich to continue to support an industry that is already failing and is only draining the blood from our nation’s veins.
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Watched yet another debate among citizens about the virus and the responsibility for its spread. It becomes immediately apparent that most people who are not engaged with the government or the media know nothing about what went on or what is going on now. I watched six people discuss this and none of them had a clear picture of what has been the principle item in the news for the last nine months. It is truly frightening because it clearly illustrated that the population is voting in almost complete ignorance. Maybe it’s because our principle source of information has become the Internet. You watch people being interviewed and far too many will tell you that they get their information and therefore develop their opinions from Social Media. There seems to be no awareness that what they are getting on the Internet are the opinions of ill informed people just like or even less informed then themselves.
Why is this? It’s probably because the Internet has no constraints. The Media is protected from government regulation because almost from its inception it has created its own sense of self-control. That is not to say that newspapers and TV stations don’t have their own political leanings. They do. But in the best of all possible worlds they restrain themselves to a degree that makes them at least reasonably reliable reporters of the events of our time. The Internet has no such incentive. It is purely about individual opinion, mostly without facts.
I can go on the Internet, as I am now, and say almost anything I want, true or false and face no consequences as long as I know how to phrase it. Just look at Trump’s Tweets. It’s because of this wide-open, unregulated position that Social Media has run amok and precisely why it is desperately in need of some kind of veracity regulation, at the very least in the field of politics.
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Ronna McDaniel, head of the Republican Party and a woman who has never allowed a true statement to escape from her tainted lips, was on Chris Wallace’s show this Sunday and she kept her record in tact. In one short span she lied about the virus and what Trump has said about it, she lied about a vaccine that is not yet a reality and may never come to be one. She lied about what Trump has and has not done to stem the virus and she lied about how Joe Biden and his family are criminals. Then she went on to accuse Biden of being ready to fill the government with people who have no political accountability. She said that, ignoring the fact that half the people Trump appointed are now in jail and the rest have no affinity for the jobs they were appointed to because Trump’s only criteria is that you can kiss his ass with the right attitude.
I think McDaniel was miffed as she waddled off the set. She had been on Fox News so she had expected better treatment than Wallace afforded her. She never thought she might run into a man of conscience on the Fox Network.