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What has happened to this country…
This is from Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The whole episode is worth your time, but the last 40 seconds is amazingly powerful. We all need to be thinking about what she is saying and why she is so angry.
Again language alert, but these times call for such language
Tissues are your responsibility…
Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain’s 2008 campaign for president, said this in an interview on MSNBC, succinct and damning.
“Donald Trump has been the worst president this country has ever had. And I don’t say that hyperbolically. He is. But he is a consequential president. And he has brought this country in three short years to a place of weakness that is simply unimaginable if you were pondering where we are today from the day where Barack Obama left office. And there were a lot of us on that day who were deeply skeptical and very worried about what a Trump presidency would be. But this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation, of weakness.
“When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile. An idiot. And I don’t use those words to name call. I use them because they are the precise words of the English language to describe his behavior. His comportment. His actions. We’ve never seen a level of incompetence, a level of ineptitude so staggering on a daily basis by anybody in the history of the country whose ever been charged with substantial responsibilities.
“It’s just astonishing that this man is president of the United States. The man, the con man, from New York City. Many bankruptcies, failed businesses, a reality show, that branded him as something that he never was. A successful businessman. Well, he’s the President of the United States now, and the man who said he would make the country great again. And he’s brought death, suffering, and economic collapse on truly an epic scale. And let’s be clear. This isn’t happening in every country around the world. This place. Our place. Our home. Our country. The United States. We are the epicenter. We are the place where you’re the most likely to die from this disease. We’re the ones with the most shattered economy. And we are because of the fool that sits in the Oval Office behind the Resolute Desk.”
No need for me to comment.
Keep well.
I have a correspondent, a fellow reprobate like myself, from the northern hinterlands of Chicago. He sent me the following musings that struck a note with me.
While watching the riot news last night I had a moment of conspiratorial déjà vu. I’ve seen this stuff before. I immediately put my Tin Foil Hat on and began to think back in history. I remember the Civil Rights riots in the 60’s in Watts, Detroit, Newark, Chicago, Philadelphia, and a whole lot of other cities. Those riots and demonstrations, including the Anti-War protests, the Women’s Rights and Gay Rights protests, usually had an element of police crackdown and brutality. They also resulted in a strong push back by whites. In 1968 Richard Nixon used that push back to help him win the White House. Continue reading “Tin Foil Hat Conspiracy”
I just read (maybe reread) H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon. I sometimes think that in a previous life I must have lived either either Great Britain or Russia during the 1800s. For some reason that literature talks to me. Anyhoo…
The narrator, the companion of the scientist protagonist of Well’s novel, finding themselves in a pickle on the moon, delivers the following commentary:
“It’s this accursed science,” I cried. “It’s the very Devil. The mediæval priests and persecutors were right and the Moderns are all wrong. You tamper with it—and it offers you gifts. And directly you take them it knocks you to pieces in some unexpected way. Old passions and new weapons—now it upsets your religion, now it upsets your social ideas, now it whirls you off to desolation and misery!”
As I read that it dawned on me that the Republican Party must have lifted that line verbatim to put into their party’s platform.
Just in case inquiring minds wanted to know.
Keep well.
Note: For the most part, even though I am the home of “The Little Known Blogger” with a minimal readership, I try to honor intellectual property rights. A friend sent me this opinion piece from the Irish Times. I could not find a link to it that was not behind a pay wall. Because I found this oped so spot on until such time…
Irish Times
April 25, 2020
By Fintan O’Toole
Editorial
THE WORLD HAS LOVED, HATED AND ENVIED THE U.S. NOW, FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE PITY IT
Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity. Continue reading “USA is pitied”
I’ve been saying for 2 or 3 weeks now that not wearing masks and gloves in public was a political statement by many of those folks.
Here is an article that says the same thing: Wearing a mask is for smug liberals. Refusing to is for reckless Republicans.
From the article:
For progressives, masks have become a sign that you take the pandemic seriously and are willing to make a personal sacrifice to save lives. Prominent people who don’t wear them are shamed and dragged on Twitter by lefty accounts. On the right, where the mask is often seen as the symbol of a purported overreaction to the coronavirus, mask promotion is a target of ridicule, a sign that in a deeply polarized America almost anything can be politicized and turned into a token of tribal affiliation.
Missouri is opening for business May 4th. Whether this is a good idea or not , will be seen. I am not sure what St. Louis County will do as we have been the worst hit county and city in the state. I’m unclear if they even have the option of going against what our wonderful Republican governor dictates.
I received an advertising email this morning from Costco. Maybe they have been sending them out during the quarantine, but this is the first one I remember receiving in a while. In it they detailed their guidelines Continue reading “God Bless Costco”
I’m not really a big fan of Bill Maher, but here is an interesting point of view on the lock down from a public health doctor.