Category: Domestic Affairs

The April Fool – A President Divorced from Reality

Quest Diagnostics had about 160,000 coronavirus test orders waiting to be processed on March 25, which amounted to about half of the 320,000 total orders for the tests the company had received up to that date, according to Quest internal materials obtained by CNN.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) on Tuesday rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that there’s no longer a shortage of coronavirus tests, calling the assertion “just not true” and warning that no state has enough tests.

New Orleans Mayor appearing on MTP Daily said they needed 5,000 ventilators but have received about 150.

CBS News obtained audio of a call Monday between Pres. Trump and rural state governors about coronavirus. After Montana Gov. Steve Bullock discusses difficulty getting testing equipment, Trump says, “I haven’t heard anything about testing being a problem.”

At Tuesday’s coronavirus briefing President Trump said that there are almost 10,000 ventilators being “held back” from distribution because “the surge is coming.” Why would the government hold back ventilators that are needed now?

What is the first order of business in today’s briefing is an issue warning of deploying naval vessels searching for drug cartels trying to bring drugs into the United States. It was at that point that I turned off the press briefing and so did MSNBC.

The Blame Game – The Buck Does Not Stop Here

Donald Trump in the East Room discussing health care

The sign “The Buck Stops Here” was on President Truman’s desk in his White House office. In his farewell address to the American people given in January 1953, President Truman referred to this concept very specifically in asserting that, “The President–whoever he is–has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.

Sadly our current president takes no responsibility. It’s always someone else’s fault. That is strange considering he repeatedly refuses to listen to the specialists in intelligence, health care, and every other department.

As president, Trump blamed “liberal judges” for rejecting his initial travel ban on predominantly Muslim countries. He blamed Obama for his own policy of separating families seeking asylum. He blamed the media and Democrats for perpetrating a hoax about the dangers of the coronavirus. He then blamed China for failing to apprise us about the pandemic, even though he was briefed on it before he took remedial action. He blamed a nonexistent Obama era regulation for his own failure to provide medical professionals with adequate testing kits for the coronavirus. He blamed governors for the lack of protective equipment for health care workers.

March 13: “I don’t take responsibility at all,” Trump said defiantly, pointing to an unspecified “set of circumstances” and “rules, regulations and specifications from a different time.”

March 27: The president blamed General Motors and its CEO, Mary Barra, for not manufacturing more ventilators to treat patients.

What’s next for our very “stable genius?” Or perhaps the question should be Mr. President, When will you take responsibility?

Census 2020 – An Invasion of Privacy

My life is not the government’s business!

I object to the 2020 census questionnaire. I have no intention of answering their list of questions other than telling the government how many people live in my house and their names. They actually already know that information since it is required information on annual income tax filings. Actually the filing provides some information that is not included in the census questionnaire like social security number and birth date.

The questionnaire asks my race or national origin (White/Irish, White/Lebanese, White/your family’s origin. Black/your family’s origin, American Indian/your tribe, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Chamorro (the indigenous people of the Mariana Islands), Latin American/your family’s country of origin.

What is your relationship with the people living in your house? Are you married and is the person of the same sex or opposite sex?

Who owns your house? If is not your house do you live rent free? Is there a mortgage?

The problem is that the government already knows the answer to many of these questions because you most likely file an income tax return where you provide your social security number and the numbers for your children and spouse. If they want to know who owns your home and if there is a mortgage they can find the answers at the hall of records.

This census questionnaire is really an effort to obtain information about your personal life. For what purpose? I believe we have a government that wants to control our lives and our behavior.

The constitution of the United States directed a census every ten years to allocate members of the House of Representatives. That is the only purpose stated.

I went on-line to fill out the census form. I provided the names of the people living in the house and my phone number. The next on-line question was the inquiry about the ownership of my house. I tried to skip the question. The program would not permit me to do that. I exited the program.

On my census form it says, ‘Your response is required by law. … if you’re over 18 and refuse to answer all or part of the census, you can be fined up to $100. In practice, though, no one has been prosecuted for not filling out the census since 1970, according to a 2014 PolitiFact article.

If they knock on my door I will not tell them anything.

Movie Predictions of a Pandemic

 

Were the fonts on this posting affected by a virus?  Is your computer infected by a virus?

The Last Ship

The 56 episode series appeared on TNT.  At the helm of the USS Nathan James en-route to the Arctic, Capt. Tom Chandler learns that the destroyer will be in the best possible place — a circumstance his crew must utilize — to save humanity from extinction.  A virus has wiped out more than half the population since the ship embarked, and despite orders from the U.S. government to return, Chandler — believing home is now a shadow of itself — decides the safest place to develop a vaccine is at sea.  That task falls mainly to virologist Dr. Rachel Scott, a civilian originally assigned to the Nathan James to study birds.  In that fiction the epidemic marched around the world and governments collapsed. Hulu has acquired exclusive streaming video-on-demand rights to all episodes.

 

Contagion

A 2011 movie about a pandemic with potentially eerie similarities to recent events.   The tag line on Netflix movie poster are the words “Nothing spreads like fear.” The movie has been climbing up the iTunes rental charts, reflecting how people often use fiction as a means to process reality.

 

Outbreak

An airborne virus gets inadvertently smuggled into the US from Africa, requiring a team of doctors (led by Dustin Hoffman) to race against time trying to save a town where the infection is spreading.

 

Of course you may not want to watch any of these stories while the world is under siege from the coronavirus.

A Failure of Government

We’ve been to three super markets and Costco in the past seven days.  People are in panic mode as they buy bulk quantities of water, paper goods, fruits and vegetables, meat and many other items as if there are or will be shortages.  The lines are long as their shopping carts are filled to the brim.

Today we called three markets to find ground beef.

The government has failed to assure the public that there should be no fear that the things they need will not be in short supply.

President Trump addresses the nation on coronavirus

Are you reassured?

I’m not. This was not a speech of reassurance like George W. Bush’s speech after 9-11 nor was this a speech of the kind given by Winston Churchill as England was under attack by the Germans nor FDR after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Nothing up lifting at all. It was a speech read from a teleprompter in which Trump seemed more concerned with the economics of this country than the health of its citizens.

There was not a word about the development of a medicine to cure the disease nor was there any words about the development of a vaccine. The President did not mention, for example, the shortage of testing kits, which means officials cannot even get a strong read on how far the disease has spread across the nation.  Instead the government will close travel from Europe for 30 days.

Well maybe I am wrong. Here is the YouTube posting of his speech.

Coronavirus panic – the Media is to Blame

Cable news channels have been running talk about the coronavirus continuously. This is the best example of “yellow journalism.” It was William Randolph Hearst who propelled America into the Spanish American War.

Blind panic has definitely taken control Southern California. Costco warehouses have had a run on their water and toilet paper supplies. My local store had no bottles water, no toilet paper and no paper towels. NONE! It was not just my local outlet. News media reported that Costco’s stores throughout the Los Angeles area were experiencing the same phenomena.

There is no doubt that corona virus is a frightening disease but Americans are becoming paranoid. As of the latest information the national deaths from this disease is 17. Of course every life matters but the numbers are too small to call this situation anything more than a serious problem.

The sky is not falling. Reasonable precautions will probably contain this disease. There is no doubt that Donald Trump has added to the confusion. Trump calling the governor of Washington State a snake, accusing the World Health Organization of dispensing inaccurate facts about the outbreak, and suggesting that those with the disease could be safe going to work only adds to the chaos.

What is needed today is a calming voice.  Too bad the president has not taken on the assignment. Neither of the leading Democratic candidates have not taken on the opportunity for one reason. They don’t want to help the president. They want him to drown in the panic.