HBO

The Five Words Which Will Sink Donald Trump In November: “It Is What It Is”, Regarding CoronaVirus Pandemic Deaths!

Ronald 6 Comments

When the history of the Presidential Election of 2020 is written in the future, it will be clear that the ultimate turning point of the election, of so many controversial moments and statements, will be the five word utterance of President Donald Trump to Jonathan Swan, the young Australian journalist who works for Axios, revealed to the world on HBO two days ago:

“It is what it is”, which regards the CoronaVirus Pandemic Deaths, a total of 157,000 and rising rapidly, as I write this.

It is clear this number will be likely double what it is now by November 3, Election Day, so a total of 300,000 or more deaths!

This will mean in nine months, more than combat deaths in World War II!

Or it will mean more than total combat deaths in World War I, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Persian Gulf War, the War in Afghanistan, and the War in Iraq combined!

Or it will be 100 September 11ths!

And while Donald Trump played politics and ignored science and medicine, Americans died in tragic numbers, with Trump vilifying and ridiculing Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx and other health experts!

This is the greatest bumbling and failure to react to a major crisis since World War II, far greater than any of the wars waged by the United States since then, and will doom Donald Trump in history to last place among rankings of Presidents, where he will stay for all time, below James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Warren G. Harding, and Franklin Pierce, who all, by comparison, look better!

It is now sadly clear that until Joe Biden is sworn in, nothing substantial will be done to deal with the CoronaVirus Pandemic, and there is no magical solution that can take place in a few months, so even with active utilization of science and new strategies and different personnel engaged in the crisis, the likely number of deaths will continue to grow throughout 2021.

Likely, the number of deaths by January 20 will hit 400,000, and with the hope that a vaccine will be created and be available during 2021, hopefully by the end of the first year of the new administration, we will see real progress on ending the pandemic.

But the number of deaths meanwhile will likely likely rise, at best estimate, to 750,000, and could reach one million at the most pessimistic levels!

And the one thing that stands out as worse than any of this, is that Donald Trump has demonstrated that he has no ability to show or express compassion or empathy, and is only concerned about himself!

“It is what it is” will reverberate throughout history as the judgment of the horror of the Presidency of Donald Trump!

Iowa Freshman Republican Senator Joni Ernst To Give Response To Obama State Of The Union Address: What A Comedy Routine It Will Likely Be!

Ronald 2 Comments

One of the nuttiest, wackiest new Republicans in the new 114th Congress has been compared to former Minnesota Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and former Alaska Governor Saran Palin.

That is Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst, who, like Bachmann and Palin, has a great personal appearance, but it is clear that she, like Bachmann and Palin, has very little brain matter upstairs.

This woman acted in a goofy way when she accepted victory in the Iowa Senate race against Congressman Bruce Braley in November. She has spouted Tea Party values, which promote taking us backward and are narrow minded and intolerant. It will be interesting to see how she presents herself tonight, as the Republican response to the State of the Union address of President Obama.

She is an extremely poor replacement for Iowa’s distinguished former Senator Tom Harkin, who was one of the bright lights in the Senate, and sought the Presidency on the Democratic side in the 1992 Presidential race, with this blogger being in support of his candidacy, as the best person in that race.

Despite losing that competition, Harkin served for 30 exceptional years in the US Senate, and Iowa has made a mistake in electing this lightweight woman to be his replacement.

Watching her deliver the response to the State of The Union Address on Tuesday night will, likely, be entertaining, a comedy routine that will likely be repeated on Saturday Night Live, and joked about on Bill Maher’s show on HBO.

It is great to have more women in the Senate and House of Representatives, but somehow, the GOP seems incapable of getting bright, intelligent women to run for public office, as compared to those women who run on the Democratic line. This is a tragedy of major proportions!

Presidents, Supreme Court Justices, And First Term Nominations: All But Monroe, FDR, George W. Bush!

Ronald 12 Comments

This blogger heard the statement of Ralph Nader, a guest on Bill Maher’s “Real Time” HBO show recently, that if only the Democrats had won the 2004 Presidential Election, the Supreme Court would have been dramatically different than it is today!

Present Secretary of State John Kerry lost to George W. Bush, who became only the third President to have to wait until his second term of office to nominate and confirm a Supreme Court Justice! Bush proceeded to select Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who have together had a dramatic effect on Court decisions in a very right wing manner!

Only James Monroe and Franklin D. Roosevelt failed to have a Supreme Court nominee in their first term, and only William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor, and Jimmy Carter were unable to make any appointments to the high Court, due to lack of vacancies. Even President James A. Garfield, shot after four months in office, had an appointee to the Supreme Court after two months in office! And FDR may not have had appointments in his first term, but he ended up having a total of nine appointments between 1937 and 1943 over six and a half years!

This is something to keep in mind, the power of the President to affect the Supreme Court’s future, and with the certainty that there will be vacancies on the high Court in the next Presidential term, making the election of a Democrat to the White House, and a Democratic Senate after 2016, ever more urgent!

40th Anniversary Of Richard Nixon Resignation, Due To Watergate Scandal

Ronald 1 Comment

It is hard to believe, but it is now 40 years since Richard Nixon was forced out of the Presidency, due to the Watergate Scandal.

It was stunning that a President, who had won 49 of the 50 states, and all but 17 electoral votes, would be the only President to resign after only one year and almost seven months of his second term.

It was also amazing that Nixon was the only President facing impeachment, and resigning after the House Judiciary Committee, in a bipartisan vote, adopted three articles of impeachment, who truly deserved impeachment.

Andrew Johnson was wrongfully impeached and found not guilty in 1868, and Bill Clinton was to face the same circumstances and results in 1998-1999. And now, there is a threat of Barack Obama facing the same scenario next year, but with the same results assured.

The point was that Richard Nixon had actually been abusive of his powers as President, and had led a lawless administration unmatched before or since.

It is also a tragic story as, in reality, Richard Nixon had many accomplishments in foreign and domestic policy, many of which remain part of American life 40 years later, particularly so in domestic affairs, including the Environmental Protection Agency, Consumer Product Safety Commission, and Occupational Safety and Health Administration, among others.

The evaluation and interpretation of Richard Nixon will continue to be controversial, and a new HBO special, “Nixon on Nixon,” has been unveiled this week, demonstrating the man’s illegalities and prejudices and biases, straight from the Watergate tapes themselves. Additionally, a new book has been published with the revelation of these tapes, authored by historian Douglas Brinkley of Rice University, with the assistance of Professor Luke Nichter of Texas A & M University.

So Nixon will be written about for generations, both for the good he did, as well as the bad!

Chris Matthews On Bill Maher Show Asks Why Money Is The Only Measure Of Success!

Ronald 3 Comments

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews was on Bill Maher’s show on HBO last night, and got into a debate with conservative right wing talk show host Roger Hedgecock, formerly Mayor of San Diego, regarding how to measure “success”.

Matthews asked why we worship money so much, that only if one earns a lot of money is he or she considered a “success”.

Matthews asked about the high school teacher who is a “success” in educating the future generation, but makes only $70,000 a year at the end of his career; or the soldier in Afghanistan who sacrifices his safety to help protect America and is paid even less. Is he not a “success”?

What Matthews is saying is so true! “Success” should not be how much money you earn; how much money you avoid paying in taxes; how big your home is, or how fancy your car is; how much you cheat your workers in benefits and work conditions; how much you exploit consumers because of greed of a business owner to trick consumers into paying top price while claiming to have a “sale”; spending one’s money to gain an advantage from a politician, so as to avoid regulation in the public interest; and other examples of the worship of money for its own sake!

“Success” is not only the teacher and the soldier, but also the nurse, the police officer, the firefighter, the librarian, the social worker, and the many other occupations and fields of work where workers make our lives better. This also includes the so called ‘little people”, such as the server at a restaurant, a bartender, a maid, a sanitation worker, and numerous other fields of work, where often rich people look down on these people as the scum of the earth, because they do not earn a lot of money!

This new “Gilded Age” we are in, which makes one “worship” people whose job is to enrich themselves at the expense of “average” people, and brag about it; and have parties in Boca Raton, where they disparage half the citizenry; and pay as much for seeing a politician speak as the average annual salary of a family of four, who pays more tax percentage wise they they do, must be made out to be what it is—a white collar crime which should be exposed and prosecuted under the laws, and condemned as unpatriotic and selfish!

The Fourth Of July, American “Exceptionalism”, And “The Newsroom” Rant Of Will McAvoy!

Ronald 1 Comment

The new HBO series, “The Newsroom”, is a brilliant series, with its main star being actor Jeff Daniels, who portrays an anchorman gone amuck, named Will McAvoy.

The first few minutes of the first episode of this wonderful series is priceless for what it says, and shows the genius of producer Aaron Sorkin, who also was responsible for the “West Wing” series on the Presidency in the past decade.

Will McAvoy is disgusted, in the opening scene, at the “bull” going on during a panel discussion about American “exceptionalism”, and goes berserk in his response, what could best be called a rant!

Frustrated by the constant shouting match between left and right that has existed for what seems like forever, at this college presentation of views he participates in, he goes ballistic!

Saying America is NOT the greatest country in the world, Will McAvoy tells conservatives that we are not the only country in the world with freedom, with 180 having freedom out of 207 nations!

Also, he says that proof that America is NOT the greatest nation includes the facts that we are:

7th in literacy
27th in math
22nd in science
49th in life expectancy
178th in infant mortality
3rd in median household income
4th in labor force
4th in exports

McAvoy goes on to say further that we lead the world in only three categories:

Number of incarcerated citizens per capita
Number of adults who believe angels are real
Expenditures on defense, more than the next 26 nations combined, 25 whom are friends and allies

McAvoy goes on to say that we used to stand up for what was right, including:

Fighting wars for moral reasons
Passing and striking down laws for moral reasons
Waging wars on poverty, not poor people
Sacrificing and caring about our neighbors
Willingness to pay taxes, rather than evading them
Never bragging how great we were,. better than the rest of the world
Creating great technological advancements
Exploring the universe
Curing diseases
Cultivating the world’s greatest artists and the world’s greatest economy
Aspiring to intelligence, instead of belittling it
Being a well informed country, led by great men who were revered

If ONLY we had politicians like Will McAvoy, but there are very few, with one coming to mind, and not even a Democrat or Republican, but instead a SOCIALIST, oh my god!

And that is Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who says it as it is!

This is something to reflect upon on Independence Day, the 236th Anniversary!

Remembering the Bicentennial in 1976 under President Gerald Ford, we were much more optimistic back then, but now with the present Republican Party tooting our horns how great we are, but doing everything to set us back to the 19th century Gilded Age, we have a lot of work to do, including ranting like Will McAvoy, and espousing in more realistic terms, like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont!

Sarah Palin Challenges Barack Obama To A Debate, Claiming Obama Was Not Vetted In 2008!

Ronald 1 Comment

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who quit the Governorship in midterm in mid 2009, and was NEVER vetted before being chosen as Vice Presidential running mate by John McCain in the Presidential Election of 2008, is obviously feeling that she is not getting enough attention lately.

So she is now claiming that Barack Obama was not properly vetted when he ran for President in 2008, even though he most CERTAINLY was, while she was not investigated before being made the VP nominee, well depicted in the HBO movie GAME CHANGE, which debuted this past weekend.

Palin has made it clear that she is “not closing any door” in the future, and it is clear that she is hoping that the Republican National Convention in Tampa in late August will be deadlocked, and that some miracle will occur, and that she will be drafted to be the Republican Presidential nominee, without having had to work at all, as the nine GOP candidates had to do, including 20 debates for those who stayed in the race.

This is the perfect scenario for a lazy, ignorant, totally dumb person such as Sarah Palin, who should be ashamed of herself for her lack of basic knowledge, but is too stupid and arrogant to recognize her own limitations!

The nerve of this woman to even consider that she is qualified to lead the strongest nation on earth!

So her proposal to debate Barack Obama is laughable, in that, under no circumstances, will the President dignify this moron by giving her the time of day!

But just imagine IF she were the GOP Presidential nominee!

She would make a total fool of herself, embarrass every Republican, and would lose the election by such a one sided vote, that it might be worse than Barry Goldwater’s 38.9 percent of the vote in a two person race against Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and to put her in the same sentence as Barry Goldwater would be a slight to his memory!

Barry Goldwater may have been radical and reckiess in many ways, but he was not a stupid, ignorant man with the gall to think, as she does, that a “quitter” governor who was a disaster for the Republican ticket in 2008, would even THINK of challenging the President of the United States, and claim she is qualified to be on the same stage as him!

This author and blogger has said many times in the past, and will repeat now: SARAH, BE GONE. GOOD RIDDANCE!