Losers and Suckers?

Military Slams:  Joe and Jill Biden went to Kenosha, Wisconsin where they met with shooting victim Jacob Blake’s family, spoke with Blake over the phone and attended a community event.  Biden’s visit was relatively low key especially when compared to Trump’s earlier sojourn, that’s the one where Trump met with law enforcement and staged a faux meeting with the “owner” of a store destroyed during the violence that followed Blake’s shooting. Apparently the so-called owner who appeared with him had long ago sold the store to its current owner who had declined the opportunity to appear with Trump. Apparently staged events are a Trump thing these days: the NYC housing authority residents whose interview with former Trump wedding planner/HUD official Lynn Patton  was turned into a NYC mayor bashing/Trump supporting video were not told that their interview would be used at the RNC, they are not Trump supporters; likewise the immigrants whose citizenship ceremony was shown during the convention didn’t know it was a publicity stunt, even Acting Homeland Secretary Chad Wolf says that he didn’t known that the ceremony he presided over was a set up. On the deception front  Attorney General Barr’s Justice Department walked back one of the claims that he made during his now infamous interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.  Apparently the case that Barr cited about a man falsifying 1700 absentee ballots involved only one falsified ballot.  Barr’s “error” is being blamed on misinformation provided to him by a Justice Department lowling. As to Trump’s advice to North Carolina voters that they ensure that their vote gets counted by submitting both an absentee ballot and voting in person, after officials in North Carolina issued a statement reminding residents that voting twice is a felony, Trump modified his suggestion, telling people that they should show up and check to see if their absentee ballot has been received and only vote “again” if it hasn’t.  North Carolina officials responded to that as well, telling voters that showing up at the polls to check on their absentee ballot will just expose more people to COVID while slowing down what will already be a slower than normal fraught process.  Of course, last night at his Pennsylvania rally Trump who was performing his usual routine in front of a largely mask-less audience, was back to trashing mail-in voting.  He also went after Joe Biden for wearing a mask, suggesting that it shows that he is weak and has insecurities, something that should be evaluated by a psychiatrist.  That’s the same Trump who, according to a scathing article in The Atlantic, thinks that people who join the military are stupid because why else would they join the military, that soldiers who die in combat are losers and suckers and who doesn’t want any wounded soldiers, particularly those with missing limbs, at his military parades because they are scary to look at. Apparently Trump also turned to former Chief of Staff/Homeland Security Secretary General Kelly, a grieving father whose son died in Afghanistan, during a ceremony at Arlington next to Kelly’s son’s grave and said about dead soldiers ““I don’t get it—what’s in it for them?”   Also, that time in 2018 when Trump cancelled his planned visit to the French cemetery where 2,289 US Troops who died during WW I’s Battle of Belleau Woods are buried, it had nothing to do with the danger of his helicopter flying in bad weather but had a lot to do with him not wanting to get his hair wet.  The article also repeats much of what we already know about Trump’s disdain for John McCain, the departed Senator and Viet Nam era veteran/prisoner of war. Immediately after The Atlantic posted the article, the White House went on the attack, forcefully  denying that any of it was accurate, even though Trump who doesn’t really have bone spurs in his heels has been vocal about his feelings about McCain and is so very proud and protective of his hair that he brags about it constantly and keeps his umbrella to himself even when that means that Melania gets soaked. Those soldiers that Trump calls suckers, apparently they are on to him.  A recent poll indicates that his favorability among members of the military has sunk into the thirties. Getting back to hair, while more than 1000 people died of COVID yesterday, Fox spent a good portion of the day attacking Nancy Pelosi for “violating” rules by having her hair done during a private appointment at a San Francisco salon. Pelosi’s stylist has the papers to prove that the salon owner, who apparently set Pelosi up to look bad, had given him permission to use her facility. The administration is so desperate for something to divert attention from their coronavirus failings that Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany actually ran a continuous loop of Pelosi’s appointment during her daily press conference. That’s the same Kayleigh whose perfectly blonde hair has stayed perfectly blonde during the whole pandemic. 187,000 dead and that’s the best they’ve got.

 

In Other News: Marc Zuckerberg plans to ban political ads from Facebook the week before the election.  That’s a good thing, but it would be even better if he’d do it sooner and if he’d aggressively take down those postings calling for armed militias to travel far and wide to defend the country from Black Lives Matter and other demonstrators. As to those ninja thugs who both Trump and AG Barr assert were seen boarding planes to hit cities across the country, it appears that the source of that story is California Congressman/Intelligence Committee Ranking Member/Trump collaborator Devon Nunes, the man who is still trying to sue a cow for mocking him on Twitter. And that Antifa member Michael Forest Reinoehl  who shot a right wing/pro Trump counter protester in Portland last week, he was pursued and shot dead by law enforcement officials over night. He may have been armed, we’ll have to wait for more details to be sure.  And one last thing, no one with any real medical creds believes that a safe and effective vaccine will be ready by election time, claims to the contrary are just more smoke and mirrors from the man who calls himself “your favorite president.” Experienced medical professionals are so alarmed by the efforts to rush out a not ready for prime time shot, or what is likely to be a series of two shots, that they are recounting the story of the swine flu vaccine that was rushed out by Gerald Ford in 1976 to prevent a pandemic and maybe even help his reelection chances.  Fortunately the swine flu pandemic never materialized.  That vaccine, which was pulled off the market days after I got jabbed, raised the incidence of paralyzing Guillain Barre syndrome. “Only” 450 of the millions inoculated got the disease, but that “only” means little if you are among the affected particularly if the reason that you’re permanently out of commission is because a desperate politician rushed a shot out to save his skin and stay president until the statute of limitations on all his crimes runs out.  And to be clear I’m talking Trump, not Ford, who aside from pardoning Nixon was fairly benign.