More Death in Texas – The Blood Red State

Should Texas Be Accountable For The Deaths Caused By Their Abortion Laws?

Reading this morning’s article in ProPublica’s daily email story regarding the death of another pregnant young girl in Texas, I was confounded by the lack of action or comment by the cretins running the state. According to the article:

“It took three ER visits and 20 hours before a hospital admitted Nevaeh Crain, 18, as her condition worsened. Doctors insisted on two ultrasounds to confirm “fetal demise.” She’s one of at least two Texas women who died under the state’s abortion ban.” [Alexandra Zayas, Deputy Managing Editor, ProPublica]. Needless to say, as a result of this barbarous and cruel act of “legislation”, the doctors were fiercely panicked in their approach to this patient, now having to worry not only over the health and well-being of the patient, but would could potentially happen to them as a result of their treating her!

If she were my daughter or niece or granddaughter, I would be looking for justice and that would have to come from the state that implemented these odious laws without even the concomitant medical knowledge necessary to make such crucial, life-altering, even life-ending, decisions. An act so obviously bereft of even a modicum responsibility to anyone other than their mindless religious fanatics, in fact, seemingly doing everything they can to obfuscate, deny, avoid disseminating such vital information to the public as to allow for informed debate. No, the Texas governor and legislation went ahead and passed actual laws that deny medical services and attention to their own constituents, even when their very lives are in danger!

For me the answer is clear: Yes! The State of Texas and the scum that currently occupy their governing offices and legislation are indeed responsible for the deaths that are directly caused by their incompetence and their complete intransigence regarding a matter of such elevated urgency and importance.

Ms. Crain’s family and survivors should initiate legal action against the State of Texas, the Governor, and the entire GOP legislation, holding them legally responsible for the death of their family member.

Trump & The Christian Nationalists

Jesus once said: “ ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” ~ Matthew 22:37-40

Is there anything that calls out Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians for their phony piety and maligned morality than their support for Donald Trump? Do they really believe that god – any god, pick one – would have anything to do with the four-time-indicted, 34-time-convicted felon, adjudicated sexual predator and the most mendacious individual to ever occupy the Oval Office of the United States? If you’d like to see an example of the piety crowd at their most delusional, then look no further than their slavish devotion to Trump and their obvious excitement at the prospects of him occupying the office again. If they have achieved anything with this misplaced support it is to further reinforce the impression that their religion and their motivations are nothing more than a politically-motivated pretense to move the country further towards their goal of a Christian nation.

The demonic forces they claim lay behind the campaigns of Joe Biden, now out of the race since handing the baton to VP Kamala Harris, can only be defeated by, of all people, Donald Trump! Yes, according to these purveyors of religious delirium only Donald Trump can save our country from the depravity and debauchery into which it has been led by the “godless” Democratic party! Christian political activists are putting millions of dollars on the very man convicted of 34 felony crimes (and counting), multi-million-dollar business tax fraud in New York State, and an adjudicated sexual assault predator! This is the man that the phony piety crowd is putting their money on to save the country and bring us back to the god-fearing nation we once were, even though we have never been a Christian nation in any real respect. The very same man that can no longer participate in a charity in the state of New York due to his fraudulent mishandling of funds AND who sold phony university degrees to armed services veterans not worth the paper upon which they were written has been sent by god to save the United States. Yeah. And I’m the Easter Bunny.

Only the most seriously deluded and cognitively dissonant can rationalize such nonsense and, as it happens, that’s the very target audience many Christian organizations have focused their efforts. Those that believe in the invisible man in the sky, a 6,000-year-old planet Earth, (an Earth where dinosaurs and humans cohabitated) humans that literally “popped” into existence in our current, “unevolved” state, a worldwide flood that wiped-out humanity save a single family, talking serpents and asses, (although as “talking asses” go I believe Trump has proven this conclusively) and dead people rising from their graves and parading around city! The most adroit snake-oil salesmen in the country are focused on convincing their delirious sheeples of the truthfulness of their claims, even while their candidate demonstrates the very opposite of virtually everything and anything that Jesus ever said and taught. (See Matthew quote above; remind you of Donald Trump? I didn’t think so, me either!)

We now know about the vast and various Christian power bases behind this most despicable candidate and the dystopic society they would have us living in given their ability to do so. Consider the so-called Ziklag organization, a Christian organization supported by wealthy Christians such as the owners of Hobby Lobby and described by investigative journalists ProPublica as: “A network of ultrawealthy Christian donors is spending nearly $12 million to mobilize Republican-leaning voters and purge more than a million people from the rolls in key swing states, aiming to tilt the 2024 election in favor of former President Donald Trump.” Christians collaborating to steal the election as I assume they would have us believe Jesus would as well.

Another Christian organization dedicated to the election of Trump is the Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based Christian conservative legal nonprofit. According to the Washington Post: “The organization has had nine successful cases before the court in the past seven years, including Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, which allowed corporations to opt out of covering contraceptives based on religious beliefs. And it was ADF that created model legislation for “bathroom bills,” which bar students from using restrooms that don’t correlate to their sex at birth.”

There are many, many more. Christian organizations across the country are working diligently to re-craft our society into the white-washed and white-dominated country they contend their imaginary savior endorses and represents a real and present danger to the democratic life that our relatives and ancestors fought and died for, and of which the rest of the world looks upon with envy. These groups are not community volunteers nor are they motivated by altruism. These are people of power for whom money and power are virtually everything and they want control, complete and boundless; of the government and the rules of our society, and they see Donald Trump as the vehicle to their ends.

As it has become painfully obvious, the self-designated “Freedom Party” and “Freedom Caucus” in Congress, AKA the GOP, which includes the likes of such political standouts as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, has been the party that takes your freedoms from you while telling you it is in your best interests and those of society at large. Yes, it is in our collective best interests not to be able to decide what we or our children can read which is why the repugnant red states are purging our libraries of such radical tomes as “Animal Farm” and “Anne Frank’s Diary”. We simply cannot be responsible to choose reading material on our own, it must be done for us and by those that claim to know better and, therefore, will make these decisions for us. Similarly, women cannot be trusted to make their own decisions about their health, particularly their maternal health. We need the government to intercede on behalf of woman, even as some women cling to their very lives for lack of medical care while the government dawdles in the courts. Hopefully, they’ll still be alive when the government finally arrives at its’ decision about their healthcare. The party that has been extolling the virtues of getting government off our proverbial backs would now like for the government to, not just share in the most intimate decisions of our lives but will actually have the last word over these matters.

And these kinds of behaviors go on and on and into all areas of life. Consider the solutions to “voter fraud” legislated by red states that always seem to include making it more difficult to vote and overwhelmingly in areas of black or brown people. Texas has closed over 700 polling places since 2022 exclusively in areas where minorities vote while positioning the changes as solving some colossal threat to democracy from non-whites and/or “illegal aliens”, undocumented workers that already have no lawful right to vote.

There is much more to reveal about this, we haven’t even begun to discuss the introduction of the Bible into our public schools complete with morning prayer and Creationism being taught as a legitimate alternative to evolution, as if there is any legitimacy at all to the Judeo-Christian mythology that warrants such special status over both the Constitution as well as other religions. They don’t seem to have any anticipation of the obvious battle over which of the 12,000 variations of Christianity in the U.S. will be the universally accepted version. We’ll wait with bated breath, I am sure.

When Kamala Harris wins the presidency and, with a lot of effort and hard work, the Democrats take the House and retain the Senate, they will need to pass new legislation aimed at securing the secular nature of the government complete with a new and vigorous reinforcing of the Johnson Amendment. The Johnson Amendment is a provision in the U.S. Tax Code that prohibits all 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations from endorsing or opposing political candidates. Section 501(c)(3) organizations are the most common type of nonprofit organization in the United States, ranging from charitable foundations to universities and churches. The amendment is named for then-Senator Lyndon B. Johnson of Texas, (of all places!) who introduced it in a preliminary draft of the law in July 1954. With a new emphasis placed on the Johnson Amendment and a reform of the Supreme Court including term limits and an ethics code with teeth, we can make tremendous progress towards a more compassionate and representative government for all Americans regardless of race, sexual identity, or any other discriminating factor.

We have less than 97 days; let’s stay focused and vigilant. Kamala Karma is Koming!

Thank You Sam Alito & SCOTUS!

You Did What No One Else Has Done; United the Democrats!

As I have often said, the Supreme Court of the United States isn’t populated with judges on the Conservative side; it’s populated with political operatives. When John Roberts is the moderate you know you’re in deep doo-doo when it comes to rights. Remember Roberts, (along with Ted Cruz), was one of the crooks in Florida in 2000 trying to shut down the vote so George W. Bush could steal the election which, of course, he did. This SCOTUS has taken away any sense of safety we once had because of their abhorrent and false interpretation of the Second Amendment, scraped the Voting Rights Act giving license to the GOP to pass laws almost exclusively aimed at keeping minorities from the polls, and stripped a woman’s right to manage her own body and healthcare. This seems to be the “final straw” for many if not most American voters, repeatedly certified by the voters in states where abortion is now actually baked into the state constitutions by referendum. It appears that the “Freedom Party” is the party that actually strips our rights away, and in a way that the people of United States adamantly oppose. Under their egregious oversight the government will decide what you can and cannot read, what can and cannot be taught in our schools, and whether a woman would be granted rights to decide their own healthcare. For a political party that’s been decrying “small government” and working to minimize the effect of big government on our personal lives, this seems to be the very opposite of their political rhetoric. I cannot think of a more oppressive big government idea than having the state decide what we can read or how a woman manages her own body. Thankfully the repeal of the Roe v Wade by the “best Supreme Court that money can buy” seems to have been the move that awakened the “Sleeping Giant” that is the US voter.

The problem with this court is their fanatical belief in their religious dogma which they now seem hell-bent on imposing upon the rest of us whether we like it or not and a plurality of Americans are saying they do not like it at all. They seem to be genuine theocrats looking to impose the Bible into our laws. For all their screaming about the “impending“ imposition of Sharia law during the Obama administrations, it seems as though it’s quite another story as long as it’s the Judeo-Christian law being imposed.

But let’s give the devil his due, Samuel Alito and the Conservative Theocrats on the court have done what no one else has been able to do, i.e., unite the herd of cats that is the Democratic Party. This, coupled with the myriad clips of Donald Trump gloating over his single-handedly overturning Roe v Wade, should all but put the cherry on Joe Biden’s second presidential run. You should be prepared to see those clips over and over again in 2024.

Thank you, Samuel Alito, et al. We’ll see you all next November.

Listen To The Crickets From The Religious Right

Not A Sound Concerning The Killing Of Our Children At Schools!

I recently called into a Christian radio station show (which shall remain unnamed, at least for now) and listened while hosts couldn’t stop gloating over the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning Roe v. Wade by the lying religious zealots on the court. They were simply over the top with enthusiastic praise to the “Lord” for his intervention – finally! Of course, no one mentioned the fact that it took some FIFTY YEARS before the “Lord” saw fit to take up the argument and finally settle the matter but I guess that’s par for the course since it took him FOUR HUNDRED YEARS to finally intervene and help the Israelites escape slavery in Egypt! (Gee. Thanks.) Apparently he’s got a major backload of prayers to answer! (Let’s not bother to mention that abortion is mentioned NOWHERE AT ALL in either Hebrew or Christian scripture, but moving on…..) The phone was answered by someone appointed to screen their calls and when asked the nature of my question I said I wanted to know how the Religious Rights’ overwhelming support of the GOP comports with their absolute resistance to gun control, in light of the extraordinary amount of school shootings and student deaths. I was extremely interested in how they were going to substantiate their position on this seemingly stark dichotomy in the value of life? I wonder if you, Dear Reader, can wager a guess as to how they reacted?

Those of you that guessed that they immediately proceeded to engage me in an on-the-air sensible debate about how they see the issues and their future plans of taking on the gun lobby can return to your seats; I’m afraid they did nothing of the kind. In fact, what they did do was hang up after telling me they were putting me on hold, at which point I called two or three more times and they continued to pick up the phone and hang up without speaking a word! Apparently they wanted absolutely nothing to do with this obvious and blatant hypocrisy on this most urgent, lethal issue.

As a kid growing up on Long Island in New York I can’t remember a single time when we had to practice an Active Shooter drill in my entire school career. In fact, before the “Texas Tower Shooting” in 1966 we had never even heard of such a thing and even afterwards we never engaged in such a drill or even thought about it again. Of course now, after corrupting the original meaning behind the Second Amendment and essentially giving the gun and firearms industry complete carte blanche on the manufacture and distribution of even the most lethal weapons available – including assault weapons that are manufactured for no other use than to kill people – the problem has become unsolvable and all we can get from our Republican “representatives” and their phony-baloney supporters in the Religious Right are “thoughts and prayers” and a lot of lip service about how no law enacted would have prevented the mass murder of our students. Keep in mind that after the Sandy Hook mass-massacre of kindergarten and first and second grade students – babies, really – and six heroic teachers, the entire GOP refused to lift a finger to do anything to prohibit this from happening again. Not a single thing. Again, nothing but their vacuous and useless thoughts and prayers, as if their mythological creator had no ideas about how to circumvent such egregious, pointless violence aimed at the most innocent of our population. Even more reprehensible is the fact that they hide behind “god” in order to facilitate their slavish, obsequious, bootlicking of the gun manufacturing industry.

The fact is we can no longer send our children to school and be 100% certain of their returning home alive. That’s where we are today a direct result of the efforts of our corrupt representatives falling over themselves for the blood-soaked dollars stuffed into their pockets from the gun industry! The GOP provide the thoughts and prayers, the rest of us provide the grief, anguish, and despair. Not a fair trade at all.

Who among us would believe that, had it happened in a school where the children of our elected officials attended, that we wouldn’t see some form of action or immediate response from the very same demented hypocrites in the GOP? Is the money they receive worth the lives of our children? And where exactly is the response from the Religious Right about the blatant murder of our children by individuals that should never have been allowed to even consider owning a firearm? Would the same miscreants selling Jesus everyday to their mindless assemblies have us believe the fiction that we are completely and utterly helpless to protect our children in any way?

The Religious Right MUST be called out on this outrageous hypocrisy. As I’ve often said, the GOP and the Religious Right are adamant that a woman must have a child when impregnated regardless of the circumstances however, once the baby is born, that’s where their concern ends. Women, you are on your own from that point on up to and including the murder of the very same children while attending school. Does multi-zillionaire Joel Osteen, John Hagee, Franklin Graham, Jimmy Swaggart, T.D. Jakes, Jim Bakker, and, my personal favorite, Kenneth “Four Jets” Copeland think that Jesus would approve of their sycophantish subservience to the gun industry?

Where are their voices? Where is the outrage at the complete absence of action to protect the children of this country? It amounts to nothing less than their complicity; they are, for all practical purposes, accomplices after the fact.

? , . .

Prepare for more ”Thoughts & Prayers” as Abbott, Cruz & GOP Look to Cover for the Gun Manufacturers, Again!

When Will the American People Finally Wake Up to the Blood on their Hands?

It is beyond time – well beyond time really – for the America people to wake up and take responsibility for the senseless carnage perpetrated against the people and CHILDREN – for goodness sake, CHILDREN – in the United States by gun violence! Specifically I call on the Religious Right, the Fundamentalist Christians of Amerika that financially support, vote for, and are complicit with, the GOP and their immoral policies that ultimately result in the senseless deaths of our people and our children. Amerikans can no longer send their children to school each day and even reasonably expect that they will return home ALIVE!! Our children can’t even attend school and expect that they are protected by us; their parents, teachers, elected officials, and all for the efforts of the Republican party and their selling out of the Amerikan people in order to preserve the cash flowing into their pockets from gun manufacturers, the NRA, Conservative politicians, and the Religious Right. Yes, the Religious “Right.” You phony snake-oil salesmen! You don’t get to support these scum and then exonerate yourselves from the horrors of their policies. You have the blood of these children on YOUR HANDS TOO! Let me hear you say it you phony sycophants: What Would Jesus Do? You fucking hypocrites! You fucking Philistines! I curse you and your families and your houses! Joel Osteen, Ken Ham, Jerry Falwell, Franklyn Graham, and the purveyors of the man-made scripture you preach to the helpless for which they get NOTHING and all the rest of you pernicious hypocrites, you will not – YOU CAN NOT – wash their blood off of your hands! You care so much for the lives of the unborn but not at all for the lives of the born! You purveyors of vacuous, religious nonsense! You false prophets! You have been exposed for the egregious villains you are! Now we can truly see you for who you are! Empty vessels of inequity! Jesus WOULD NOT know you – DOES NOT know you! You are the very Anti-Christs you have forseen!

I can just hear Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Chuck Grassley, Majorie Taylor Green, Donald Trump and the miscreants that support and follow them saying ”Unfortunately todays gun laws wouldn’t have done anything to stop this.” Yes, Ted, you lying piece of shit, but you have had the opportunity the CHANGE the GUN LAWS and you willfully decided not to! You have had the power to CHANGE the gun laws for YEARS and you and your immoral party have refused to do so time and time again knowing that it is only a matter of TIME before this happens again and you’ll be sending out your useless and vacuous ”thoughts and prayers” to yet even more grieving, heart-sick, and broken families. I can only hope that someone will send those same reprehensibly phony thoughts to your family some day. And You, John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Cavanagh, Amy Barrett, et al. You fucking phony ”Judges”! You are not JUDGES!! YOU ARE POLITICAL OPERATIVES in black robes. Nothing more! You are responsible for perpetrating more violence and injustice in this country than any ten of the most debased criminals!

I call on ALL Amerikans to rise up and throw these so-called ”CHRISTIAN” hypocrites out of office and take control of our country and re-establish laws of safety, morality, and compassion which we lived with for so long before our government was overtaken by corporate and phony religious fanaticism!!

WE MUST FINALLY ACT!!!!

Good Morning, America!

Wake Up and Smell the Racism!

In trying to parcel out yet another school shooting where four more American children are murdered in their school, I began to anticipate Congress’ response, i.e., their total lack of a response. Sure the standard ”thoughts and prayers” are a given and, to be sure, that has provided some badly needed relief (in the minds of the gun manufacturers) especially those from Ted Cruz, Jeff Pawley, and the other Christian Republicans. However in considering these publicly-elected miscreants I began to ask myself: If one votes for someone that allows the murder of our children to persist without so much as lifting a finger, do I also have their blood on my hands? Projecting that out to other issues, I began to ask myself more questions. The next natural conundrum seemed to be racism. I thought: if I vote for a Senator or Congress person that enacts legislature that makes it harder for people of color to get to the polls and vote, does that make me a racists as well? Furthermore, should I prioritize my own personal issues according to my needs or according to the more important civil needs of, in these cases, pblic safety or equal rights for all?

And so, I put these questions to you: when you vote for someone that supports or legislates laws or policies that are harmful or detrimental to all or a particular class of Americans, do you share in the culpability of these policies and laws. In other words, do you have blood on your hands? what do you think?

Where Are All The Holy Rollers On Mass Shootings?

Where is their level of outrage they seem to conjure up over LGBTQ or abortion rights?

This will be one of my shortest blogs since I don’t believe that there needs to be very much substantiation for this point. It is completely self-evident as we have experienced over and over again. As The Onion headlines put it after almost every mass shooting, “‘No Way To Prevent This’ Says The Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”. This is about all we need to know since we are truly the only country where mass shootings are more frequent than Congress passing a bill or a Trump telling the truth.

The fact of the matter is our government is owned by corporate lobbies; lock, stock and smoking barrel. And there is no more powerful lobby than the gun manufacturers and the NRA. In fact there are entire departments of the government that are actually run by the very same corporations and industries they are supposed to be regulating. If that makes any sense to you then you’re probably a Repugnantcan or a “conservative” and also find gun violence unsolvable, climate change to be a liberal conspiracy, and Donald Trump to be an honorable, good man removed from office by rampant voter fraud. If you are anything like the upwards of 80% of Americans that find it the absolute nonsense that it truly is, then you can help do something about it.

Paradoxically perhaps, the only portion of the electorate that we most certainly can’t rely on for any help at all is the phony baloney snake oil salesmen and holy roller crowd of evangelicals and Christian Repugnantcans. For some strange reason all they seem to be able to conjure up (no pun intended) are their “thoughts and prayers”; a gesture of such specious uselessness it has become a joke among the general public. This is the same crowd that would lobby to remove the constitutional rights from entire subsets of the population given the opportunity but couldn’t conjure up the righteous indignation to rally around 20 murdered 1^st graders and 6 grammar school teachers. Unfortunately most of their geographic areas of influence are specifically the places where the most fervent gun-crazy, “Second Amendment” fanatics reside and this must be one of the primary reasons for their complicit silence. As I have said before there is no one more full of shit than an evangelical Christian.

Well, except maybe an evangelical Christian politician, that is.

Will The Ignorant Red State Governors Pay A Price for Their Lies & Incompetence?

Will the voters of DeSantis, Abbott, Kemp, et al hold them accountable for the deaths of their constituents?

In their rush to follow their “Dear Leader’s” request to reopen their states in order to try and save his election, it is abundantly clear that the science-denying Red State Governors Coalition unleashed the deadly virus in an even more devastating manner, greatly spiking both the rates of cases as well as deaths in their states. And all just to try and get their economies going in order to turn around Pseudo-President Trump’s disastrous campaign. Again; lives lost, deaths of men, women, and children, mothers, fathers, sons, and daughters, all to prop up the campaign of the most incompetent and narcissistic – and dangerous – Pseudo-President Russia ever elected. Never mind the fact that Trump’s campaign is in the very state in which it finds itself solely as a result of his own, inept and incompetent management of the worst pandemic the U.S. has seen since the Spanish Flu of 1918, culminating in the deaths of upwards of 150,000 Americans.

The question is: will the voters of these mean-spirited and heartless sycophant remember to repay their incompetence at the polls? Anyone?

Is Donald Trump Really A Traitor?

*Is Donald J. Trump a Benedict Arnold?* Many question his obsequiousness to Vladimir Putin.

It’s been called treasonous by a U.S. Congressman and veteran of Iraq. A former Navy Seal and now a emergency room doctor lables Trump either a coward or Putin’s puppet in an ad by the Lincoln Project, a political action committee started by prominent Republicans including George Conway, the husband of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway. Former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul calls Trump’s anemic response to any of Putin’s emboldened moves against US interests “a sign of worsening things to come.” Former National Security Advisor for President Barack Obama Susan Rice is equally suspicious of and puzzled by Trump’s obsequious behavior towards Vladimir Putin. I’m sure the rest of the world is puzzled as well, especially our Nato allies. Puzzled and concerned.

The question puzzling all these people & entities is: why is it that the Pseudo-President, Donald J. Drumpf (I like to use his real name before his grandfather changed it; it seems so much more fitting somehow) always seems to defer to Vladimir Putin and Russian interests? Drumpf contradicted U.S. intelligence reports of Russian interference in the 2016 election in front of the world in Helsinki when he declared that Putin told him Russia did not interfere in the 2016 U.S. election and so, there it is, no interference. Everyone in the entire world already knew that the Russians did, in fact, interfere in the election and to Drumph’s advantage. In fact, I would go so far as to surmise that the blitzkrieg-style hacking campaign conducted by the GRU out of St. Petersburg was a total and complete success for Putin; he actually succeeded in getting Drumpf elected. Granted, this is speculation however I have no doubts that repeatedly putting 15,000 or so false or misleading messages in front of 150,000,000 Americans on FaceBook more than likely did actually have an effect on people’s voting. Keep in mind that Drumpf won the election on the smallest of margins with Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan going to Drumpf with a total of about 106,000 votes between the three states giving him all 46 Electoral College votes and putting him over the top. In fact, he actually won Michigan with a margin of just around 11,000 votes or 3/10 of one percent! And Drumpf actually lost the popular vote by margin of approximately 2,000,000 votes, not exactly a mandate from the people. Is it really so outlandish to conceive that the Russians could have changed or influenced the votes of just 106,000 people across three states out of a vote tally of 123,724,157 total votes? We’re talking an infinitesimal difference approaching one-millionth of one percentage point in a country where approximately 28% of the people – over a quarter of the population – believe the Bible as literal truth? I think not. In my opinion, Drumpf is in office entirely through the efforts of both Russia and FaceBook. We would do well to remember this as we approach the next election.

Now we learn that the Pseudo-President was told perhaps as long as a year ago that Russia was paying a bounty to Taliban forces to kill American and American Allied soldiers! Or perhaps, and I’m not sure which is worse, he doesn’t bother to read his Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) so he wouldn’t have known about it! Even worse, his advisors seem completely unwilling or unable to bring it up to him or make sure he is aware of this most egregious violation of international law. What do you call a president that doesn’t even bother to read the PDB, the single most important daily document in the country while he sits in the residence watching cable news and Tweeting to his followers? For me incompetent comes to mind fairly quickly, and dereliction of duty, sure, that passed through the grey matter as well. But why, many are asking, would the so-called President of the United States of America, the most powerful country ever to grace the Earth, fold like a cheap suit to a country that President Barack Obama labled a “regional power” and one that has the total gross domestic product of Texas? When asked these questions the administration chooses to kill the messenger and has started a vitriolic campaign against both the New York Times for reporting it and the unidentified leakers that gave the information to the Times. And what, you ask, was the Pseudo-President’s response? Do you really need to ask? Fake news. A hoax. All started by the “disgraced” NewYork Times, as Drumpf commonly characterizes the paper of record for the last 150 years. My reaction? Anytime Drumpf characterizes anything as a hoax or fake news I immediately know it’s probably true and this time is no exception. My “Spidey-senses” are off the charts on this one; I just know it’s true somehow just like I know in my heart that the Mueller Report didn’t exonerate him and found complicity between his campaign and Russia and that, somewhere, out in the ether, there’s a pee-pee tape. But it gets worse, much worse.

During this same period of time, while either in full understanding that Russia was putting a bounty on the heads of American soldiers or in ignorance of it because he was derelict in his duties and didn’t bother to read the PDB – and his advisors were too incompetent or too afraid to point it out – Drumpf has repeatedly tried to get Russia back into the Group of 7 over the objections of the other members. Putin is desperately trying to get Russia back onto the world stage after losing miserably in Afghanistan and after the complete decaying of the Soviet Union, and Drumpf seems to be doing everything he can to assist him. Furthermore, he has pulled U.S. troops out of Syria against the advice of “his generals” as he refers to them, leaving a void that was, of course, filled by Russia. He has also recently announced his intention to draw down U.S. Troop levels in Germany as well, again much to the chagrin of his military advisors, Germany, much of Eastern Europe, and Nato. And who is simply delighted at this prospect? Survey says: Vladimir Putin!

We have never had a president that defers to Russia the way Drumpf does, never. And the most enigmatic question is: why? As as a former KGB agent, Putin is well aware of and certainly an absolute expert in the use compromat, the use of compromising information against an adversary. Knowing Drumpf’s less-than-stellar career in business (he bankrupted casino(s), for goodness sakes. I’ve coached Cub Scouts that can run a casino profitably), his credit record with the major banks (not too pretty good. Not a single U.S. bank will lend him money), and his record of womanizing and divorce is it really beyond the pale to conceive that Putin has information about him that Drumpf would definitely want to keep from the public that he has so completely and totally bamboozled? If he is the business Svengali that he professes to be why does he so desperately want to keep his financial records from the public? Why is he so averse to releasing his education records to the public? He says he went to Wharton but refuses to allow any disclosure of his records there. Even though he knows “all the good words” and has “a really good brain?” Doesn’t add up. Doesn’t seem to make sense.

One thing I can tell you this: if the Dumocrats think they’re going to bury this after Drumpf is out of office, they’d better think again. One of my greatest complaints about Obama is that he dropped any further investigations about the start of the Iraq war even though anyone with a brain knows that Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, et al., lied us into the war and it should have been investigated and, more than likely, prosecuted. Unfortunately, Obama had his “let’s look forward to the future and not backward” hands-off approach and so no investigation and there are a lot of progressives that were – and still are – incensed about it. Their frustration was made even worse – maddeningly so – by the way the Dems blew the entire impeachment hearings and the Mueller Report. There is a huge resurgence of progressiveness in the country right now and they are not in the mood for letting a potential political criminal walk, and I am at the top of that list. If the Dumos think we’re going to just move on, they are gravely mistaken. Drumpf must be investigated just as any other American would expect to be. If he is the first president to be incriminated and convicted, then let the chis fall where they may.

Remembering 1918

I had a little birdie, his name was Enza; I opened up my bedroom window, and in flew Enza

Children’s play song from the 1918 Spanish Influenza Pandemic

One of the great mysteries of history is why we continue to wipe it from our memories, both individual and collective. In no instance is this more apparent than during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic which killed more Americans than all the wars of the 20th century combined and upwards of 100 million people world wide. And, almost as quickly as it sprang itself onto the world’s population, the world – and America in particular – seems to have forgotten all about it. I don’t recall much if any publicity during 2018, the 100th anniversary of the event though I was diligent in keeping an eye out for it. It never came. I wondered, why?

Consider the implications of a military transport ship bringing troops to the European theater in 1918. If even one man is carrying the influenza virus, then upwards of 30-40% will have it by the time they arrive in France.

The actual or exact source of the virus is not really known to researchers or epidemiologists, although it is widely thought to have had its synthesis among Kansas military personnel. On the morning of March 11th, after an initial soldier reported to sick bay with a temperature, aches, and respiratory symptoms, within minutes another reported to sick bay with the same symptoms. By that same evening there were over 100 patients in the ward and within one week the entire ward was filled with over 500 patients all having the same symptoms. Sending soldiers over to Europe – on a military transport barge no less, literally packed with soldiers (see photo above) – only served to accelerate the rate of infection further and spread it out geographically. It is estimated that some 650-675,000 Americas alone died during the pandemic and to make matters worse, this strain of flu was killing young men in the prime of their lives, aged 21 – 29. Unlike many other strains of influenza, this one was killing the most fit and seemingly strongest among us.

The pandemic made a its deadly run from March of 1918 to December of that same year and it was around that time that it began to run its course. After a dip in diagnoses in late spring, early summer, it came back with a terrible vengeance in September and October; especially October. While people all over the country began to mill about again, Philadelphia a standout at this time, they weren’t prepared for what was about to hit them.

The virus had mutated over the summer and became much more successful at penetrating the respiratory membranes; the trachea, lungs, and alveoli, and turning them into blue masses of mush, as one doctor described it. Their bodies were so oxygen deficient their lungs literally scrub the entire body for O2. Their skin turned blue, cyanotic actually, as the system tries to extrude some oxygen, any oxygen, from the facial skin while their lungs are incapacitated, completely incapable of respiring, literally drowning in their own body fluids. And, even more frightening, it might all happen in just one day, 12 hours or even less in some cases. Before a doctor even began to think about what was ailing his patient, they would be dead. It had become a much more competent killer.

The virus began its resurgence in September, the first wave of the newly mutated Spanish Influenza, when 12,000 Americans died that month alone. But it would get even more deadly the following month, October. October would prove to be more deadly than any singular month with 195-200,000 Americans dying in that month alone. The country would literally run out of caskets; funeral homes had to hire armed guards to provide security for their casket inventory. Pine boxes were provided to households with sick relatives in their homes. They were to put the boxes out on their porches after the person finally gave up the ghost and, reminiscent of the “bring out yer dead” episodes of the Black Death of the 1340’s and 50’s, a flatbed truck would come and pick them up each day. Young boys would call on their friends to find out they “weren’t home” and they should go home and ask their parents where Johnny or Frankie were.

So with all this tragedy and calamity happening all over the country and the world, why are we as a society so quick to drive it from our memories? Listening to the news and hearing the actions being taken by mayors, governors, businesses, etc. and listening to the reports of new cases and new deaths caused by this new Covid-19 virus is very reminiscent of the 1918 Pandemic. One would think that we would know at least some of the steps society should be taking in order to stave off the worst of the epidemic. Moreover, one might think that we should have been much better prepared for such an event; adequate emergency medical supplies, medicines, equipment, doctors, nurses, etc. Instead we seem to much less prepared for even a “routine” epidemic of seasonal influenza. It is said that Trump disbanded the Infectious Disease & Global Health personnel from his National Security Team, writing it off as unnecessary. Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told House lawmakers, “It would be nice if the office was still there.” In fact, Trump was not even aware that the flu kills people in the US at all; he commented on this during his visit to the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, GA last week. “Who would believe it? Trump was quoted as saying. Still even more puzzling was the fact that his own paternal grandfather died from the influenza in Nov 1918 and Trump seemed completely unaware of it. This is not a suitable characteristic of a successful society.

With scientists, biologists, epidemiologists, and many other professions focused on a “not if, but when” scenario in search of a cure for viral infections for decades now we should be able to expect our leaders to be much better prepared for an outbreak. The recent scrambling and hand-wringing in Washington was a tragic example of the limited vision and reactive nature of our government and their inability to foresee and prepare for such a national and global crisis. In fact, they knew months ago that there was a great possibility of a new strain of virus coming from China and they completely failed to act, at least in the interest of the nation. Some US senators such as Sen Richard Burr did find the time to sell off their stocks and investment instruments that might be negatively affected by such a crises. However, there were no systems in place to bring to bear against a new healthcare crises; no military-style deployment of emergency health services, equipment or medicine anywhere in the country. This can only be seen as a complete failure of leadership, from the top down.

If we couldn’t remember to learn from similar pandemics of the past, we should at least try and learn something from this one. America needs new leaders with new ideas about her needs and logical, rational plans to meet those needs. No where is that more evident than this new Covid-19 crisis.