The Badger Travesty

Fixer in Chief:  Remember when Trump said “I alone can fix it.”  He wasn’t totally lying.  While it’s true that his response to the coronavirus pandemic has been, and continues to be, a total sh*tshow, he is doing a remarkable job of dismantling government guardrails.  Yesterday, while virus related death rates were hitting stratospheric levels, he found the time to relieve the Pentagon Inspector General Glenn Fine of his duties.  Fine wasn’t just any ordinary inspector general, he was the chairman of the newly created Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, the panel of inspectors general charged with overseeing the allocation of the $2 trillion in coronavirus relief funding that Congress recently approved.  Trump’s move shouldn’t have been all that surprising since right after the funding bill was passed he signed a statement indicating that he intended to ignore a provision in the bill that required inspector general reports to Congress on the handling of the funds, still that he acted so quickly provides a clear indication of what really concerns him.  Death and dying, inconvenient; oversight of how “his” money gets spent, far more concerning. IG Fine has now been replaced by the EPA’s watchdog Sean O’Donnell who will serve as the interim IG until a permanent replacement can be confirmed.  Given that he was recently appointed to his EPA position by Trump, it’s more than fair to assume that he will be a cooperative or should I say co-opted overseer, willing to ignore any Trump misappropriations which has got to be the whole point of his appointment. Needless to say Democrats are outraged, but this time around, for what it’s worth, so are a few of the usual Republican suspects including Senators Grassley and Collins.  Trump however, doesn’t seem to care, reports are that he plans to continue replacing IGs until he gets rid of all the holdovers from prior administrations.  Fine wasn’t the only person pushed aside yesterday.  Stephanie Grisham, the press secretary who failed to hold a single press conference during her reign is out too, she’s going back to working for that Be Best, anti-bullying champion/tennis pavilion supervisor Melania Trump.  Grisham is being replaced by Kayleigh McEnany, a former CNN “both sides” have merits, correspondent who had been serving as Trump’s campaign spokesperson.  McEnany is perfect for the job, as recently as last month, she’d been out on the stomp, and by stomp think Fox News, calling the coronavirus pandemic just another Democratic hoax invented to disparage Trump.  And that Acting Navy Secretary Thomas Modly, who flew all the way to Guam to besmirch former Navy Captain Crozier as stupid for writing that letter about the COVID 19 breakout on his carrier, he resigned yesterday, apparently firing Crozier was acceptable but publicly calling him stupid, not so much.  By the way, as of yesterday 200 sailors on Crozier’s former ship had been diagnosed with the virus.    

Rally Highlights: During yesterday’s virus rally/update, Trump continued to brag about all those coronavirus tests that aren’t being done.  He keeps on throwing out a big number, now up to around 1.8 million but fails to mention that on a per capita basis the number is meaningless.  He’s also found a new scapegoat, he’s now blaming the World Health Organization for failing to jump up and down enough about what was happening in China, because if they had, he surely would have acted sooner?  Anyway, in one breadth he said that he was going to hold back WHO’s future funding,  but then just a few breaths later said that he was only considering doing so.  Like WHO or not, it’s probably not the time to defund a world health group.  As to early warnings about the impending pandemic, when asked about the memos he had received from economic/trade advisor Peter Navarro warning that the deadly virus was looming, Trump said that Peter was smart and had written those memos but that he had never seen them, adding that if someone would provide them to him now he would consider reading them.  That’s false on two fronts, there’s no question that Trump was copied on the memos, he probably chose not to read them and wouldn’t read them now because, let’s face it, he doesn’t read.  Trump is still pushing hydroxychloroquine as a cure all for all things virus.  It’s not clear why he’s so pro h-chloroquine, some think it’s because some of his funds are invested in trusts with significant positions in the drug’s manufacturer, others think he is just desperate for a cure all to save “his” economy and still others pin his belief in the drug’s powers on such medical advisors as Fox’s Laura Ingraham who visited the White House to advocate for the drug’s effectiveness.  During yesterday’s press conference Trump recounted how a certain African American Democratic Congresswoman in Michigan has been a beneficiary of h-chloroquine’s astonishing curative affects and how she thanked him for his advocacy and for making the drug available.  Not only did he cite her “testimonial” but he seemed amazed that a black women could be articulate and eloquent, really, he mentioned several times that she “spoke well.”  That probably explains why when asked about the disproportionate impact that COVID 19 is having on black communities, Trump shifted the mic to one of his medical experts, even he knows that when speaking about African Americans he suffers from extreme foot in the mouth syndrome.              

Wisconsin:  The primary travesty/election went forward yesterday in Wisconsin.  Republican Assembly leader Robin Vos announced that it was totally safe for people to show up to vote, he did that while dressed in head to toe protective garb.  Hundreds of polling places were closed because lots of poll workers knew better, lines were long at the open polling places, and it’s fair to assume that despite social distancing lots more Wisconsinites will be sick in a week or so.  The results won’t be in for a few more days because a number of people did manage to vote by absentee ballot and it will take some time to count those votes.  For his part, Trump defended the decision to move forward with the election during the pandemic, claiming that the only reason that the state’s Democratic Governor Tony Evers had tried to push the election off till later in the Spring was to counter Trump’s recent endorsement of Justice Daniel Kelly, a conservative Republican running for a seat on the state’s Supreme Court.  Trump, who votes by absentee ballot and who has already applied for one for November’s elections, dissed absentee ballots, saying that allowing people to vote by mail was just another one of those efforts by Democrats to encourage election fraud. Of course, except for that North Carolina Republican who committed absentee ballot fraud in the last election, there’s no indication that the problem is widespread or that it is “routinely” committed by Democrats but then again eliminating early voting and voting by mail  is an effective way to suppress Democratic voter turnout and high Democratic turnout scares Republicans, apparently even more than the virus.  The Wisconsin debacle could be a test case for what the Republican’s plan to do in November. Speaking of November,  Bernie Sanders is still running for the Democratic nomination though it’s highly likely that he was trounced by Joe Biden in yesterday’s primary, however given the diminished voter turnout, who knows.