Why don’t they like you? Let me explain

Hey, Mr. President, I am sure you heard from your second- or third-grade teacher that “there’s no such thing as a dumb question.”

I think, though, that you’ve asked one. It’s the question wondering why Dr. Anthony Fauci is held in such high esteem while the rest of the country “doesn’t like” you.

I’m going to take a stab at that one for you. My answer is simple. It’s because you act like an a**hole. In fact, many of us think you are an a**hole.

Good grief. Your response to the pandemic has been pitiful to the max. Yet you blame everyone on Earth except yourself. You said once that “I, alone” can solve the nation’s problems. Then we get hit with a doozy in that pandemic. Your response was that you don’t take “any responsibility” for the failure of the administration.

You chide the nation’s governors — the Democrats, of course — for not doing enough, then you say that as president you call the shots. Medical experts say we should wear masks to protect ourselves and others from the virus but you decline to wear one; then you change your mind and wear a mask in certain locations.

You hire “the best people” and when they don’t do what you demand you fire them and toss epithets at them as they clear our their offices.

Mr. POTUS, that’s the behavior of a certifiable a**hole. Pure and simple. Full stop.

So, cease asking dumb questions.

Oh, Louie … how did the mask avoidance work out?

I am no fan of Louie Gohmert.

In fact, I am embarrassed that he is a member of the Texas congressional delegation. Gohmert, a Republican from Tyler, happens to have been an obnoxious opponent of mask-wearing in light of the coronavirus pandemic. That is just one of the things that angers me about this guy’s presence in Congress.

Well, this just came in: Gohmert, who represents the Loony Bin Wing of the GOP, has tested positive for COVID-19.

Karma is a bitch, man … you know?

Now, I do not wish him ill. I do not want him to suffer the kind of agony that has befallen hundreds of thousands of our fellow Americans, about 150,000 of whom have died from the virus. However, just maybe this startling news about this outspoken critic of a known effective measure that helps stem the tide of infection will awaken this clown to the obvious need to do what the doctors keep telling us.

It is that we should wear masks; we should practice “social distancing”; we should wash our hands frequently.

Gohmert took part in a U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing this week in which he yelled and bellowed his support for Attorney General William Barr. He obviously ignored warnings about how infection spores spread more rapidly when we raise our voices. And, of course, he did all this without wearing a mask.

Get well, Louie. When you do and when you are to return to work, then shut your skeptical-sounding pie hole and follow the doctors’ orders. While you’re at it, you should advise your fellow GOP lunatics to do the same.

Stop lying about mail-in voting, Mr. POTUS

Donald Trump wants to suppress the vote in the November presidential election.

To do so he is lying about mail-in voting. He says it is too fraught with voting fraud. It’s corrupt. He insists people get ballots who shouldn’t have them.

The Liar in Chief is filling me with rage. He doesn’t want to lose his fight for re-election, so he’s doing whatever he can to sow seeds of fear and doubt in an all-mail election.

Flash to The Donald: We’ve got a pandemic out there that’s infecting and killing Americans. I prefer to cast my vote in person on Election Day, but if I can vote by mail and prevent potential exposure to a killer virus, I am more than willing to do precisely that.

Joe Biden is leading Trump in every public opinion poll out there. The range goes from about 7 percent to 15 percent. More ballots being cast reportedly bodes well for Biden. That is why Trump is seeking to suppress that vote.

The fraudulent voting canard is a made up issue. It’s as phony as Trump University.

Trump keeps yammering about the lie. He cannot be allowed to get away with peddling “fake news.”

Shut … up, Mr. POTUS!

I cannot stand the sound of Donald J. Trump’s voice, or the sight of his face on my TV, which I know is no big flash to readers of this blog.

I especially cannot stand the sound and sight of him when he discusses things about which he knows nothing. Hmm. By my figuring, that’s just about anything under the sun.

So, when Donald Trump strides to the podium in the White House briefing room and declares that the coronavirus pandemic isn’t quite as serious as docs keep saying, or when he declares that wearing face masks is an overrated measure to fight the infection rate, I tend to want to pull my hair out by the roots.

Trump was in his usual bloviating form today when he dismissed mask-wearing and talked — yet again — about the benefits of that anti-malaria drug he keeps touting as a potential cure for the killer virus. You know, the drug that doctors and researchers say could kill you if ingest it.

My version of a perfect pandemic world would be for Donald Trump to stand down, to leave the communication solely to the doctors he enlisted ostensibly to conduct the federal government’s response to the pandemic. Then he steps all over their message, seeking to downplay the grim news they deliver, which is that we’re still not even halfway through the first round of infections.

What does it take to shut this guy up, to keep him off our TV screens, or to push him to the sidelines, leaving the real analysis of this crisis up to the experts who have all those MDs behind their name?

Oh, wait! I know! We have an election coming up in November! That’ll do it! Right?

Back the Blue = dog whistle

A bit of a tempest might be brewing up yonder in the Texas Panhandle, in a publicly owned county complex and I am trying to connect a few dots to make some sense of it.

Some Carson County employees have plastered “We Back the Blue” signs in the courthouse complex in Panhandle, the Carson County seat. I don’t know what “We Back the Blue” means to you, but to me it’s a dog whistle, one of those thinly disguised messages that carry a double or possibly triple entendre. The signs are hard to read in the picture attached to this blog post.

Thus, I am concerned that a publicly owned structure is being used as a forum for a partisan political message. What is the message as I see it being portrayed?

It is that suggesting that you “back the blue,” you support the police that have become rhetorical targets of the Black Lives Matter movement. You know the history, yes? BLM comes from the deaths of African-Americans at the hands of cops, some of whom have been charged with felonies in connection with those deaths.

If you “back the blue,” do you dismiss the BLM movement? Or do you support both the Black Lives Matter and the We Back the Blue movements?

Why am I even talking about this? Well, Carson County sits in the heart of Trump Country. Carson County voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump in 2016 and is likely to do so again in 2020. Donald Trump, as you no doubt understand, has been highly critical of the BLM, calling it a movement based on “hate” for the cops.

Can you connect those dots with me on this?

“We Back the Blue” is a political statement that presents enough of a concern to me over whether it’s intended to denigrate another political movement. Therefore, it doesn’t belong in windows of a publicly owned government structure that must — under law — serve all the residents of that jurisdiction regardless of political leaning.

Waiting on the vaccine

I have concluded something about this pandemic and to be honest it doesn’t make me feel all too comfy.

It is that I now believe that the only “end” to this crisis will arrive when a vaccine becomes available to every human being on Earth. Prior to that, we had all better get used to wearing masks, to keeping our “social distance” from friends and even loved ones, to a decided lack of recreational activities such as arena sports with fans jammed shoulder to shoulder, and with our children studying “virtually” at home.

Why the wait? Two reasons: a lack of discipline among billions of us who don’t follow the rules and a lack of leadership from the highest levels of government in the United States of America.

I am dismayed at the sight of all those morons who cannot or will not keep their distance from others. Or those who refuse to wear a mask because, they contend stupidly, that they infringe on their civil liberties. Those dipsh**s are taking their cue from — dare I say it — the White House or from right-wing media that continue to insist that the coronavirus pandemic is a hoax, a conspiracy cooked up by people with some sort of nefarious political agenda.

Sinclair Corp., a right-wing media company that owns a chain of TV stations around the country, is fomenting that hoax with a fake “documentary” that accuses Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, of being at the center of that conspiracy. What’s shocking is that so many Americans believe that BS.

So I am going to wait on big pharma researchers’ work on their fast-track search for a vaccine. It’s going to take time to ascertain its effectiveness; then it will take more time to get it certified by drug regulators and then kick into massive production.

I am willing to wait.

No honor for Lewis from Trump … and no salute to his greatness

Donald Trump won’t pay his respects to the late U.S. Rep. John Lewis.

The president detested the civil rights icon. I suppose it’s fair to point out that Lewis felt likewise toward Trump.

However, it boggles my noggin that Donald Trump cannot even muster up any semblance of decency to make a statement saluting the sacrifice Lewis made in the fight for equality and justice for all Americans.

Lewis bled in Selma, Ala., while marching for voting rights for African-Americans. Alabama police beat Lewis to a pulp, cracking his skull. He fought a valiant — and ultimately successful — battle to obtain equal rights for African-American citizens. He engaged in “good trouble, responsible trouble.”

The president of the United States cannot offer a statement to salute this good man’s history-changing legacy?

Reprehensible!

What will happen when that time comes?

REUTERS/Sarah Silbiger

I have a number of clever, astute and erudite Facebook friends who are unafraid to comment on political matters.

Les is one of them. He writes today:

President Trump declared today that he was not going to pay respects to John Lewis, lying in state at the Capitol, and then left for a tour of a North Carolina factory and another COVID briefing. I hope he understands that he has set a no-show precedent for when he is on display in the Rotunda and no one visits.

There you go. Donald Trump will not physically honor the life and contributions of one of the final great civil rights titans to pass from the scene.

The late John Lewis is lying in state in the Capitol Rotunda, the first African-American lawmaker ever to receive the honor.

Trump won’t stand before Lewis’s flag-draped casket. He won’t pretend to say a prayer in Lewis’s memory. He won’t pose for pictures that no doubt would be snapped by photographers gathered to watch the symbolic act.

I know that Trump and Lewis were enemies. Indeed, Trump sees every political foe as an enemy. They aren’t just opponents in this clown’s view. When someone makes a critical remark on the way Trump is doing his job as the nation’s top elected public official, he takes it personally. Lewis certainly offered his share of critical remarks. Therefore, Trump won’t do what is right.

What’s more — and this cannot be ignored in this political season — Trump is sticking a proverbial political dagger in his own heart by enraging black voters who expect the president to pay his respects to a man of such heroic stature. Then again, Trump the Politician likely figures, to borrow a phrase: What do I have to lose?

My friend, though, makes note of what might lie ahead when Donald Trump no longer is with us. He would be a former president of the United States. He would be entitled to lie in state as many former presidents have been honored since the founding of the republic.

Surely, a former president such as Trump would be able to attract someone — anyone — who would pay their respects to him once he has departed this good Earth?

Susan Rice for VP? Sure!

I love the conjecture about Susan Rice that is emerging as Joe Biden prepares to announce his selection as a running mate for the 2020 presidential campaign.

Some pundits are wondering whether Rice is “qualified,” given that she’s never run for elective office.

I laugh out loud. I guffaw. I roar my amusement! Why?

Look at who Americans elected as president in 2016! Yep, we elected a phony, fraudulent business tycoon who became known to millions of Americans as the host of a reality TV show. Donald Trump had never run for public office, either.

But … by golly, the dude won enough Electoral College votes to squeak by an eminently more qualified opponent, Democratic nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Now we might get to see whether Susan Rice has the chops to run for the vice presidency. She most certainly does!

She served in two posts in the Barack Obama administration: as United Nations ambassador and then as national security adviser. Let there be no doubt that Susan Rice brings credibility as a foreign policy expert.

So what, then, if she hasn’t sought elective public office? She has served the pubic in high-powered, highly sensitive positions.

As for the selection process that is under way, I am going to place my trust in the former vice president’s wisdom in finding the right person to run with him.

Biden has been through the vetting process already, with President Obama’s team looking high and low for the correct individual to work with the new president who had to cope with a financial collapse that was second in recent times in severity only to what is occurring at this time on Donald Trump’s watch.

Biden, who would be the oldest man ever elected president, has said publicly that he wants someone who can succeed him after a single term if he determines he is unable to seek re-election in 2024. He also is looking for someone who is “simpatico” with the presidential nominee, a trait that proved invaluable during the eight years Biden served as vice president in the Obama administration.

Does that individual happen to be Susan Rice? Or one of the other dozen or so women being considered by Biden?

The presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee knows what he’s doing. I will keep the faith that he selects someone with whom he can campaign successfully against Donald Trump.

Would DJT actually resist leaving the White House if he loses?

I cannot possibly be the only red-blooded American patriot who thinks this is plausible, so I will offer this notion to you to ponder.

I wouldn’t put anything past Donald John Trump to do whatever he can to resist accepting the results of the 2020 presidential election even if he loses bigly to Joseph R. Biden Jr.

By that I am willing to suggest that Trump might not accept the results, might not concede the election to Biden and might try some sort of legal jiu-jitsu to stay in office. The result might be that the next president would be forced to drag the Sore Loser in Chief kicking and screaming.

Truth be told, I would pay real American money to see such a spectacle unfold before our very eyes.

There’s a deep segment in my gut that tells me it’s a plausible end to the presidency of Donald John Trump.