Bits & Pieces #142

 

Let’s talk about the election. Specifically let’s talk about voting. It seems Donald Trump wanted to change the date of the election, thereby giving him more time in office to hang onto a desperate hope that some miracle will happen to save him from the deluge. When that failed he fell back on the even more depraved idea that absentee voting was good but mail-in voting was bad. It’s hard to believe he is so stupid that he doesn’t understand they are the same thing. Yes, he’s nuts! Yes he’s stupid, but no one except maybe Trump, is that nuts or that stupid.

Now he has decided that mail-in voting is okay in Florida because they have a Governor who is a Republican and in his withered mind that somehow equates with competence.  Of course the reality is, Florida’s Governor DeSantis is the most incompetent bumbling clown ever to infect that state.  And he is able to prove it by his handling of COVID-19, but that is not to say there are no problems with mail-in voting. The difference is, the problems are not, as Trump charges, with the voting process but with the mail. That’s right, the US Postal Service is a mess. The Trump administration has withheld funding, put an ass-kissing moron in charge, and is doing everything it can to force congress to turn the whole system over to a private contractor with no government oversight. But that’s just how Trump operates.

******

Nancy Pelosi is a great politician but she really can’t bullshit her way out of the $600 supplement that has been paid in addition to unemployment insurance in the last pandemic support bill. I’m all for helping the working poor as much as possible but I don’t think and never have thought it was a good idea to incentivize making it more attractive to stay at home on the dole than it is to work for a living but that is exactly the result from giving people more money to stay on unemployment than they made working.

We all understand that the Democrats are the party of the people and that they should continue to fight to level the economic playing field. I just don’t think giving people more money to stay home then they got as a salary is the way to do it.

How about limiting the millions that are being given to large corporations to support their profit margins? I know they have better connected lobbyists than the workers but how about a little backbone from the legislators. How about giving large corporations money only after they actually create jobs? Right now it’s being given in the hope they will do that. How about only giving large corporations money if they bring their wages up to an acceptable minimum or above.  That will do a hell of a lot more for leveling the economic playing field than any temporary addition to unemployment insurance.

And how about someone explains to our idiot president that cutting the payroll tax doesn’t help the unemployed. There is no payroll tax when you don’t get a paycheck.

And while we are talking about handouts to big corporations, let’s look at the billions being given to the big drug companies which already have profit lines in the billions, to develop new testing and vaccines. Why is this necessary? If any of the crap they are creating actually works, they stand to make billions. If that isn’t enough incentive what is?  Well, maybe the National Defense Production Act is. If we had anyone but that incompetent boob in the White House it would already be in full bloom, forcing these enormously profitable drug companies to spend some of their profits to develop the processes and vaccines necessary to save hundreds of thousands of lives. The greedy drug companies have already shown in other drug emergency situations that they will not help without a serious push. Well, they didn’t help and we didn’t push and now we’re using money to enrich them that should be used for PPE, food, housing, schools and other medicine.

It’s all just another example of Trump’s inability do anything but play golf and bitch about anyone who has anything bad to say about him.

*****

Donald Trump keeps harping on the supposition that the election will be rigged. `“This is going to be the greatest election disaster in history.”

“Do I want to see a date change, no, but I don’t want to see a crooked election. This will be the most rigged election in history if that happens.”

Now if there’s anyone who should know about rigging anything it’s Trump. The crook and con man who infects the Oval Office has a history of so much twisted dealing that there is a list of indictments as long as a football field, just waiting for him to be kicked out of office.

Just to be clear, if he were really worried about the election being rigged, he would as president, be in the ideal position to do something about it. Of course, that would mean it would be his fault if we get a dishonest election. Don’t forget, all the rigging that went on in the last election was done in his favor.

We all know that all this fixed election noise is simply because he is so far behind in the polls. It’s pure terror on his part. Trump is very aware that as soon as he isn’t protected by the presidency, he will be fair game for every prosecutor who has ever looked at any of his business or personal activities. The “delay the election” ploy he tried this week was at least partially driven by the need to buy time so that certain statutes of limitation would run out.

Even as I’m writing this, the Southern District of NY’s AG office is overflowing with activity in preparation of the upcoming election and the unseating of Trump. They already have a court ruling, instructing Trump to turn over 8 years of his tax returns and they are avidly watching an investigation being run by Deutsche Bank.

It seems that Trump has defaulted on so many loans that no bank except Deutsche Bank would lend him money and they have done it to the tune of billions.  Interestingly enough, all that money appears to have come from Mike Offit and a woman named Rosemary Vrablic who worked in their private banking department. Along with loaning Trump and Jared Kushner and their companies many millions of, so far, unaccounted for dollars, Vrablic also bought a number of high-end co-ops from both Trump and Kushner. Naturally the question that needs to be answered is; did she pay market value for them? If she didn’t, something’s rotten in Manhattan. So now Vrablic is under investigation by Deutsche Bank and the NY DA. This is only the beginning. Wait until Trump loses the election and all that presidential privilege starts to disappear.

*****

The White House staff and the Trump campaign managers have decided that if Trump doesn’t move now to adjust his campaign strategies, it will be too late.  The existence of early voting has made the possibility of an October surprise being in any way significant, less likely. So they have begun planning all sorts of changes in Trump’s campaign itinerary but they are barking up the wrong tree. They are planning all kinds of day trips, changes to the convention plan, more and different advertising but they have completely missed the point of why Trump is getting killed in the polls. It isn’t about logistics; it’s about his decision-making and incompetence just as it’s about his character or lack thereof. Trump has no answer for any of that because his ego won’t let him say he has ever made a mistake or failed to be the greatest at everything.

That’s why GOP leaders are beginning to abandon him. That’s why a number of significant Republicans led by the sleaze giant, Moscow Mitch McConnell stated publicly that the election would go ahead on schedule when Trump tried to put it off. Actually, none of them had the stones to attack Trump, but even this small disloyalty did not go unnoticed by the fat Liar in the Oval Office.