I have a friend who recently lost his father to COVID.
His dad followed all the government guidance. He wore a mask, socially distanced, washed his hands, stayed inside his family pod. Yet, he caught the virus obviously from someone who didn’t follow the guidance and who went about his or her carefree way denying the science and ignoring that part of the guidance is to wear a mask, etc., to protect others from you giving them the virus. As with hundreds of thousands of others, his dad died for no good reason. Government leaders and many fellow citizens have mishandled the virus. And, his dad is dead.
My friend then went through the horrible things you have to do after the unexpected death of a loved one. Plan the funeral, draft a heartfelt and pained eulogy, place an obit he was paying for into a Florida paper that was refusing to run certain lines that criticized the Florida governor for his mishandling the virus. He said to me in a text:
“What’s happened to our country?”
Indeed. Consider:
An innocent air conditioner repairman recently was run off the road on his way to work, the target of a vigilante who was surveilling him for days, paid for by the recently founded Liberty Center for God and Country, funded by a supporter of President Trump and seeking to find the “millions” of votes the President said were missing, costing him the election. Thinking the repairman’s van contained millions of fake ballots, the vigilante crashed his car into the repairman’s truck, got him on the ground, pushed his foot into the man’s back, holding him at gunpoint until a real cop passed by and righted the dangerous and wrong-headed operation.
What was found in the van? Air conditioner repair equipment.
Republican Congressmen (plural) are making noise about objecting to the certification of the Electoral College count by the Congress. They are claiming certain states, some led by Republicans, rigged the election and the Democratic votes should be tossed out, awarding the election to Trump. Normal certification of the electoral vote is routine and mundane. Not this time around. Trump meets with conspiracy theorists to find ways to block the vote. And his vice president, Mike Pence who will chair the session where Congress will certify the votes, has been part of the planning.
The President is bitching that he won an election that he’s lost by seven or eight million votes and, in his own description, a landslide vote in the electoral college.
The President stayed out of negotiations with the Hill over legislation aimed at giving money to millions who need it to pay the rent, buy food, buy medicine and more but who are basically financially wiped out by the virus.
As soon as those negotiations were completed, with the involvement of Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Trump said it wasn’t enough and the payments should be $2,000 a person rather than the $600 negotiated. Personally, I’m fine with the $2,000 but the president rejected that offer months ago.
Now, in an effort to pretend he is the outsider who doesn’t think (his) government is doing enough, he creates a situation where help to those fellow citizens (many of whom are his voters) won’t see any money until a new president is sworn in. Because Trump wants to be seen as the generous man. Instead the self-proclaimed master negotiator stayed out the negotiations and then announced what he wants.
Trump supporters are rallying in states that went for Biden that Trump is imagining went for him. They parade, they chant "Stop the Steal." Meantime where is that majority of voters who elected Biden? Why aren't they marching because President Trump is the one trying to steal the election?
The President completes his term as he started it, refusing to criticize Russia's Vladimir Putin whose government hacked into the computer system of many businesses and the U.S. Government. These hacks are very serious could do long-lasting damage to our country and so far among those who have pointed the finger at the Russians are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Wililiam Barr, and the Intelligence Community. Trump though says it was China, China, China.
And that's just a brief list.
Meantime, the virus has gotten worse than ever and Trump doesn't mentioned it at all. Thousands of Americans are dying every day. Our hospitals are pushed to the maximum.
Except for telling reporters they better not give credit for the approved vaccines to President-elect Biden, that is. Trump, as his spokesman said, “oversaw” development of the vaccines as if he was in the lab searching himself for the solution.
Fact is, the rapid discovery of vaccines is partly due to President Trump’s administration putting Operation Warp Speed into place. He should be spending his last few weeks in office promoting that as one of his positive legacies along with other accomplishments (many I disagree with) such as appointing hundreds of conservative judges and three Supreme Court associate justices.
Instead he rails against some of those judges because they are among about 50 who threw out his campaign’s election-rigging lawsuits. Judges said there was no proof introduced into evidence proving the claim.
Alas, that is because there is no proof that the election was rigged. Anywhere.
The President of the United States has attacked every democratic institution we have – the Congress, the Courts, the military leadership, the intelligence community, a free press and more – because he sees himself as a victim of those institutions.
In fact Trump is the proof that the founders of cur country did a good job of drafting our Constitution. The Constitution created institutions that protect the country from someone who tries to rule as the tyrants they ran from in England.
The institutions held as they were intended.
His dad followed all the government guidance. He wore a mask, socially distanced, washed his hands, stayed inside his family pod. Yet, he caught the virus obviously from someone who didn’t follow the guidance and who went about his or her carefree way denying the science and ignoring that part of the guidance is to wear a mask, etc., to protect others from you giving them the virus. As with hundreds of thousands of others, his dad died for no good reason. Government leaders and many fellow citizens have mishandled the virus. And, his dad is dead.
My friend then went through the horrible things you have to do after the unexpected death of a loved one. Plan the funeral, draft a heartfelt and pained eulogy, place an obit he was paying for into a Florida paper that was refusing to run certain lines that criticized the Florida governor for his mishandling the virus. He said to me in a text:
“What’s happened to our country?”
Indeed. Consider:
An innocent air conditioner repairman recently was run off the road on his way to work, the target of a vigilante who was surveilling him for days, paid for by the recently founded Liberty Center for God and Country, funded by a supporter of President Trump and seeking to find the “millions” of votes the President said were missing, costing him the election. Thinking the repairman’s van contained millions of fake ballots, the vigilante crashed his car into the repairman’s truck, got him on the ground, pushed his foot into the man’s back, holding him at gunpoint until a real cop passed by and righted the dangerous and wrong-headed operation.
What was found in the van? Air conditioner repair equipment.
Republican Congressmen (plural) are making noise about objecting to the certification of the Electoral College count by the Congress. They are claiming certain states, some led by Republicans, rigged the election and the Democratic votes should be tossed out, awarding the election to Trump. Normal certification of the electoral vote is routine and mundane. Not this time around. Trump meets with conspiracy theorists to find ways to block the vote. And his vice president, Mike Pence who will chair the session where Congress will certify the votes, has been part of the planning.
The President is bitching that he won an election that he’s lost by seven or eight million votes and, in his own description, a landslide vote in the electoral college.
The President stayed out of negotiations with the Hill over legislation aimed at giving money to millions who need it to pay the rent, buy food, buy medicine and more but who are basically financially wiped out by the virus.
As soon as those negotiations were completed, with the involvement of Trump’s Treasury Secretary, Trump said it wasn’t enough and the payments should be $2,000 a person rather than the $600 negotiated. Personally, I’m fine with the $2,000 but the president rejected that offer months ago.
Now, in an effort to pretend he is the outsider who doesn’t think (his) government is doing enough, he creates a situation where help to those fellow citizens (many of whom are his voters) won’t see any money until a new president is sworn in. Because Trump wants to be seen as the generous man. Instead the self-proclaimed master negotiator stayed out the negotiations and then announced what he wants.
Trump supporters are rallying in states that went for Biden that Trump is imagining went for him. They parade, they chant "Stop the Steal." Meantime where is that majority of voters who elected Biden? Why aren't they marching because President Trump is the one trying to steal the election?
The President completes his term as he started it, refusing to criticize Russia's Vladimir Putin whose government hacked into the computer system of many businesses and the U.S. Government. These hacks are very serious could do long-lasting damage to our country and so far among those who have pointed the finger at the Russians are Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General Wililiam Barr, and the Intelligence Community. Trump though says it was China, China, China.
And that's just a brief list.
Meantime, the virus has gotten worse than ever and Trump doesn't mentioned it at all. Thousands of Americans are dying every day. Our hospitals are pushed to the maximum.
Except for telling reporters they better not give credit for the approved vaccines to President-elect Biden, that is. Trump, as his spokesman said, “oversaw” development of the vaccines as if he was in the lab searching himself for the solution.
Fact is, the rapid discovery of vaccines is partly due to President Trump’s administration putting Operation Warp Speed into place. He should be spending his last few weeks in office promoting that as one of his positive legacies along with other accomplishments (many I disagree with) such as appointing hundreds of conservative judges and three Supreme Court associate justices.
Instead he rails against some of those judges because they are among about 50 who threw out his campaign’s election-rigging lawsuits. Judges said there was no proof introduced into evidence proving the claim.
Alas, that is because there is no proof that the election was rigged. Anywhere.
The President of the United States has attacked every democratic institution we have – the Congress, the Courts, the military leadership, the intelligence community, a free press and more – because he sees himself as a victim of those institutions.
In fact Trump is the proof that the founders of cur country did a good job of drafting our Constitution. The Constitution created institutions that protect the country from someone who tries to rule as the tyrants they ran from in England.
The institutions held as they were intended.
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