Trump now admits that "China took down the U.S. economy in 30 days" Wow.

So, I got about a minute and a half into the first Sunday morning pundit/anchor/lying Republican politician/ineffectual Democrat show, This Week with Clinton's old staffer, George Stephanopolous. George led off his show with the clip from Obama's addresses to 2020 graduates last night (he did two, one to high schoolers, one to graduates of HBCU's- black colleges and universities) in which Obama said:

"More than anything, this pandemic has fully, finally torn back the curtain on the idea that so many of the folks in charge know what they're doing. A lot of them aren't even pretending to be in charge."

Then, he brought on Peter Navarro to respond. Navarro is Trump's trade representative and a spectacular failure in his role as economic analyst- Navarro famously has fed Trump's infantile belief that trade deficits with other countries are zero sum win-lose games, where if we have a trade imbalance with, say, Canada- i.e., we buy more from them than they buy from us, then we are "losing." (Truth is that it's virtually the opposite: we give them intrinsically worthless paper money and they give us valuable stuff we can use- food to eat, raw materials to put in our manufacturing plants, hockey sticks we can use for games.)

Navarro responded with a line that he uttered so unselfconsciously, yet revealingly, that Joe Biden should make it the centerpoice of his response to Trump's attempts to deflect blame for his horrendous response to the Trump Coronavirus on China:and to link Joe Biden to China.

[NAVARRO] "... I'm happy to report that this president, Donald J. Trump, in three and a half years, built the most beautiful economy in modern history, and the Chinese did take it down in about 30 days.... "

George asked him if Navarro is saying that the Chinese did it deliberately.

Navarro said: "I did not say that."

Well, he just did.

But more to the point: Navarro has just admitted that the economy that Trump allegedly "built" (no, he did not "build" the American economy any more than a surfer built the ocean's waves the surfer rides on) could be completely dismantled by a hostile foreign power in only 30 days, taking America to levels of unemployment and falls in gross domestic product unseen since the Great Depression.

Think about it: Navarro has just admitted that Trump is "owned" by China in the same way that a hapless guard was "owned" by Michael Jordan when Jordan blew by him and dunked on him in his heyday.

And this is their argument for re-election?

To George's credit, he immediately responded to Navarro, telling him that his position simply wasn't true when it came to Trump's attempts to now deflect blame to China, how they simply don't square with Trump's previous public positions on China:

TRUMP on January 24th on Twitter:

“China has been working very hard to contain the Coronavirus. The United States greatly appreciates their efforts and transparency. It will all work out well. In particular, on behalf of the American People, I want to thank President Xi!”



So, Trump's official position is that China took us down in 30 days? Without firing a shot? That's the house of cards built by Trump? He is the "loser" and China is the "winner?"

Imagine a campaign commercial with video from that current Trump effort to link Biden with China and blame China for knee-capping the American economy, admitting that Trump couldn't prevent the Chinese from destroying our economy in 30 days, coupled with Trump's effusive, fawning praise for China and it's president Xi.

C'mon Democrats. Time to get it together and be the master of the obvious. Even Homer Simpson could figure this stuff out

Winning. Democrats can do it, too.

There are a few things that bother me every day. One is that the Democratic Party, in spite of the supposed help Mike Bloomberg was going to provide even if he did not win the nomination, in spite of the fund raising all of the candidates did, has not run a single ad that will decrease Donald John Trump's popularity.

And the ads that I want them to run are simple: they include video of Donald Trump, blurting out the insane things that he does, then asking a simple question: do you want four more years of THAT?

Here's one easy ad that writes itself:

[VOICE OVER ANNOUNCER:]

Donald Trump suggested to the American people in a televised press briefing that they should consider ingesting or injecting disinfectant to kill the Coronavirus. Mr. Trump thinks that if putting bleach on a countertop or a toilet seat will kill germs, then having people swallow bleach will kill the virus in the lungs. And he said so. Out loud. On television, watched by millions.

[RUN THE VIDEO]

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search…

[THE COPY FROM THE VIDEO:

".... supposing we hit the body with a tremendous whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light and I think you said that hasn't been checked but you are going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body which you can do either through the skin or in some other way and I think you said you were going to test that too. It sounds interesting.

Right. And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number (INAUDIBLE) interesting to check that so that you are going to have to use medical doctors with but it sounds interesting to me so we will see but the whole concept of the light the way it kills it in one minute that's--that's pretty powerful."

This statement by the President of the United States was so dangerous, so appalling, that companies like the manufacturers of disinfectants like Lysol had to immediately put out public service ads warning the public against ingesting their products into a human body. Because it would kill them.

Is that the person you want in the White House for the next four years?"

Here's a second ad, aimed to all voters and telling them why it's important for them to register then actually vote:

Start with a voice over announcer asking the question:

"Donald Trump does not want to make it easier and safer for you to vote this November. He opposes any measure that could save your life while allowing you to cast the ballot that is your Constitutional right. And why not? Here is his explanation:

Republicans wouldn’t win if voting was made easier and readily available.

When discussing the first stimulus package, Trump asserted how he and the GOP made sure to gut any measures proposed by the Democrats to help voters exercise their rights. This included a severe decrease in the amount of money Democrats requested for states to help them run elections.

Mr. Trump torpedoed Democratic proposals for vote-by-mail, same-day registration and early voting:

[RUN THE VIDEO CLIP FROM FOX & FRIENDS on MARCH 30, 2020]

“The things they had in there were crazy. They had things, levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again,”

https://www.peoplesworld.org/…/voter-suppression-and-covid…/

Yeah, Mr. Bloomberg. How about running those ads, or shortened versions of them, and hundreds of others. The material is there and Mr. Trump keeps adding to the stockpile every day. Run them over and over, and drag his poll ratings down below 40%. Then below 35. Then below 30. At which point, the rats- the Republicans- will be diving off that sinking ship. And maybe, just maybe, the Democratis can prove that they can run a campaign as well as they can run a government once they actually win office and control a house- or both houses- of Congress.

I'd like that. Very much.

Building a better world- starting January 20, 2021...

I was challenged by a right wing "conservative" to elucidate (not his word, of course) my proposals for a Democratic platform, to tell him what our platform is, actually. Here was my response:

I'll just give you mine, since we don't have a nominee yet or a platform. Perhaps you've read or heard some of these in news reports or during Democratic debates:

(1) Protect elections and The People's right to vote. Require every State to provide the opportunity to every voter to vote by absentee ballot (referred to as "vote by mail") with no excuse required-- the way five Sates currently do and the way every State has allowed- including Georgia- for decades, but the voter has to have a valid excuse, like disability, age, or being away on business or being in the military. Require every State to provide a paper ballot backup of every vote cast (Georgia finally switched to this system this year). Prevent voter purges without strict safeguards to protect against striking legitimate voters. Require every State to provide enough precincts and enough voting machines so that when in-person voting does occur, no one will have to wait in a long line. Bring back Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, and require every State in the country to have to abide by it. And my simple, yet elegant solution to the voter photo id requirement is to allow everyone to vote- with or without a photo, and those without a photo will be photographed with a digital camera on site by the poll worker, so that if anyone ever challenges that vote, the registrar can simply pull up the record of that voter and that photograph and verify that he/she is who he/she says he/she is. Which will never happen of course, because this was an imaginary and completely fabricated problem foisted on us by Karl Rove and designed solely to depress votes cast by poor voters, most of whom were minorities, the majority of whom typically voted Democratic.

(2) Bring back the rule of law. Establish by legislation that no person, including the President, is above the law. Remove Presidential judicially created immunity from civil suit, including the emoluments clause. Put a federal equivalent of 42 U.S.C. §1983 on the books, which allows any person whose civil rights have been violated by a governmental action to sue for redress, and eliminate all of the bullshit judicially related immunity roadblocks. Allow every person kidnapped, tortured, or family members of those killed to bring a civil lawsuit against the federal government, no immunity allowed, the statute of limitations extended to 50 years to cover all of the misdeeds done under Reagan and Bush II.

(3) Expand the Medicare system and allow any person under 65 to sign up for Medicare and pay a monthly premium equal to the incremental cost to the system. In other words, a revenue neutral system. But for this occasion, give a 12 month premium waiver to all persons put out of work during the Trump Coronavirus Pandemic to allow them to get back on their feet.

(4) Free tuition for all persons unable to afford public college, universities, or technical schools. That means it will be means tested. And allow any person with crushing student debt to eliminate it by dedicating a certain number of years to public service.

(5) Raise the minimum wage from $7.25 an hour (which is only $1,256.67 per month, gross). We can gradually increase it to $15.00 an hour.

(6) Rejoin the Paris Climate Accords. Take every action possible for enacting a "Green New Deal" that will provide millions of jobs while saving the planet. Fire every person in every regulatory agency who came from the companies being regulated- i.e., the foxes were guarding the henhouses. Bring back all of the environmental regulations designed to safeguard our water, our air, our soil, our food, our health.

(7) Public financing of all federal elections. Prohibit all private contributions and solicitations for federal elections, as they are nothing more than bribes. To solve the Super PAC dark money problem, require that every political advertisement that targets a candidate or promotes another candidate be first previewed by the candidate targeted or opposed, and allow him or her to run a free ad, same length as the first, immediately following the attack ad, every time the attack ad runs.

(8) The Senate should end the filibuster and all Senatorial "courtesy" rules that allow a single member to block or delay a nomination or legislation. The House and Senate should each change their rules to allow every member, at least once every four years, to propose a bill that will be reviewed by a committee and evaluated, but will still be sent to the floor of that house for an up or down, yea or nay, vote, no amendments allowed. Also, allow minority members of every committee to have subpoena power. These rule changes will protect the rights of the minority party in Congress without allowing a minority to block necessary legislation.

(9) Require all judiical nominations to receive at least 60 votes in the Senate. No more Clarence Thomas's or Justice Kavenaugh's passing by the skin of their teeth.

(10) Require every authoritztion for the use of military force to be re-enacted every two years to remain in effect.

(11) Repeal the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) and the USA Patriot Act. Bring a little Sunshine into our judicial system. No more secret hearings. No more secret warrants. No more secret prisons.

(12) Gun safety- instant background checks on every sale. Red flag laws everywhere to protect us from the violent and the insane. And enact a ban on any magazines holding more than six shots for civilians, and any muzzle velocities in excess of 100 feet per second for civilians. Also, require every firearm to have the same safeguards as cell phones- code or fingerprint locks keyed to the owner and GPS in all of them. Require every firearm manufacturer to replace every gun sold by that company free of charge with a firearm that comports with the new regulations. Any manufacturer which fails to do so loses all immunity from lawsuits and faces strict liability for any harm which was caused by any firearm manufactured by it which does not have those safeguards.

If anyone has any suggestions to add to the Democratic platform and actual legislation starting next January 21st, when, hopefully, we will have restored legitimacy and sanity to the presidency and the Senate, I'd like to see them.

Ten Reasons Why my Toaster would be a better President than Donald Trump

(better at presidenting than Donald Trump)

The Republicans are desperately seeking ways to stave off a Biden victory in November. Biden is not only leading Trump in every national poll, he's leading in every swing state that Trump won in 2016- he's even beating him in Florida. They have jumped on the Tara Reade sexual assault allegations, as if the disgusting Trump revelations of the Access Hollywood tape ("you can grab them by the pussy, when you're a celebrity, they let you do it") never happened, or two dozen women didn't accuse Trump of various forms of sexual assault, up to and including rape, including two who alleged that Trump did exactly what he bragged he could do to them without consent and get away with it- because he was a celebrity. And Trump's defense of "she wouldn't be my first choice" was probably not the "first choice" of any criminal defense lawyer defending an accused rapist- that the victim wasn't attractive enough to rape, "but boy, that hottie over there, I'd definitely rape her!"

So then they have an alternative, which is to portray Biden as losing his intellectual grasp (which is, sadly, true), but again, this appears to be tone deaf coming from a president who gave a speech on July 4th about the Continental Army attacking the British airports and winning the air war and who most recently has suggested that people should ingest or inject cleaning products to kill the coronavirus (which would, of course, literally be a case of "letting the cure being worse than the disease" because injecting or ingesting bleach would kill the patient).

My response to the allegation that people should vote for Trump over Biden because Joe's mental acuity is slipping is simple: my toaster- even unplugged- would do a better job of presidenting than Donald Trump. Here's ten reasons why:

(1) My toaster would not have disbanded the Global Pandemic Response Team in the National Security Council in 2018, as Trump did.

(2) My toaster would not have fired (reassigned) the head of the vaccine response team, Dr. Bright, during the pandemic.

(3) My toaster would not have suggested deep cuts to the budgets of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) every year of its presidency.

(4) My toaster would not have cut all money flowing to the World Health Organization (WHO) during the pandemic. The only global organization currently organizing a world wide response to the pandemic.

(5) My toaster would not have frozen all military aid to the Ukraine while it was being attacked by the Russian military until the Ukrainian president promised a live press briefing on CNN with Fareed Zakariah in which the Ukrainian president would announce an investigation of alleged (but a false allegation) corruption by the toaster's chief political rival in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

(6) My toaster would not have fired an Army Lt. Colonel from the National Security Council (NSC) because the Lt. Colonel testified truthfully under oath before a House committee. And my toaster would not have fired the twin brother of the same Lt. Colonel from the NSC because.... he was a twin?

(7) My toaster would not have fired the Inspector General of the CIA for following the law and referring a whistleblower complaint to the Congressional committee responsible for receiving that whistleblower complaint.

(8) My toaster would not have colluded with Russian operatives, had a campaign manager with ties to Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, who committed felonies and went to prison, and who gave internal campaign polling data to Russian operatives to use to spread fake news stories about its opponent in a presidential election. Nor does my toaster have any progeny who, when being presented with an opportunity by the Russians to provide dirt on an opponent for the upcoming presidential election, would have responded in an e-mail "I love it! How about later this Summer?"

(9) My toaster would not have had affairs with a porn star and a Playboy Playmate just weeks after its infant toaster was born

and finally, (10) My toaster would not have suggested on national television that people inject or ingest cleaning products into their bodies to kill the coronavirus, prompting numerous calls to poison control centers and causing the manufacturers of cleaning products like Lysol to put out national advisories to consumers that "under no circumstances should our products by taken internally by humans."