Pandemic wake up call to America?

We watch in horror as new infections and new deaths reveal how horribly unprepared the US was for the pandemic. Not just unprepared, but mis-managed by a government that in three years was largely unconcerned about public health; indeed, dedicated to separating tens of millions from adequate health care. The result? Our 245,000 infections represent 24% of the world's total. Our 6,100 deaths, 11%. This from a land with only 4.4% of world population but a quarter of its wealth.

How can this be? For the past forty years we've been concentrating that great wealth in the coffers of a largely heartless elite with little empathy for the commons. They've used vast political, economic and media power to maintain and increase their status to the detriment of commons. While enlightened countries like China and South Korea are already beginning a return to some normalcy, America's dysfunctioning federal and state response continues to send the virus' lethal arc upward.

The virus is taking more than the nation's health and lives. It's now taking our vast wealth with hundreds of thousands of businesses shuttered, millions unemployed, and trillions of stock value evaporated.

During and after the recovery which will be long and devastating, we should use this catastrophe to examine our national conscience. Are we to remain a nation dedicated to seeing the 21st century become a new Gilded Age? Or will we will refocus our energy and will into making it the Age of the Common Man.

Pompeo lies…and Iranians die

Pompeo lies…and Iranians die

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo went on Sean Hannity’s show last night to tout US willingness to help Iran deal with its coronavirus outbreak. Iran has 1% of the world’s population but a disproportionate 7% of worldwide coronavirus deaths. One major reason is US economic sanctions which for years have been crippling Iran’s access to proper medicine and medical supplies. Both Human Rights Watch and The Lancet Medical Journal have documented the devastating effect of US sanctions on Iranian health. We are literally killing Iranians, hoping our sanctions will inspire them to overthrow the Iranian government so we don’t need a shooting war to do it. Iran remains No. 1 on Uncle Sam’s Hit List of nations to be bent to the will of the world’s only superpower, regardless how many die.

Pompeo claimed Iran has refused our offer to help with the coronavirus crisis. Iran rightfully refuses US help short of ending the sanctions which greatly exacerbated the virus outbreak there to begin with. Pompeo never even mentioned the sanctions nor Iran’s call for their end, simply stating the US is doing everything in its power to save lives there.

Bunk.

US calls for worldwide cooperation on coronavirus ring hollow when we ignore and lie endlessly on how perpetual war, whether waged by bombs or medical embargo, add to the mounting catastrophe.

Trump: ‘Suppress the vote or Republicans will never win again’

Every so often a mendacious leader slips up and tells the unvarnished truth about his mendacity. Trump did that after the pandemic stimulus package passed. He told Fox News, when asked about the Democratic election proposals that were stripped out, “They had levels of voting that were crazy. You’d never have a Republican elected again.” Trump was referring to efforts to protect the vote in the time of pandemic. We’ve seen Republican efforts to suppress the vote for decades. Now the guy who was possibly elected with the help of voter suppression in 2016, like George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, says it outright. Case closed.

Billion more tons of carbon dioxide just fine to Trump deregulators

President Trump wasn’t just fiddling like Nero those two months while the world burned with coronavirus fever. He was busy completing the weakening of nearly 100 rules and regulations limiting industrial pollution. Tuesday, Trump unveiled the capstone to this war on our future with his final rule rolling back President Obama’s 2012 rule mandating US car fleets average 54 miles per gallon by 2025. Trump’s rollback, which he touts as saving US jobs, money, and get this…lives, scales back mileage requirements to 40 miles per gallon. May not sound all that ominous but consider it will add a billion tons of carbon dioxide to our decaying atmosphere from the additional 800 billion more gallons of gas burned by cars covered by the rule.

Trump’s trumping of Obama’s sensible car mileage mandate completes Trump’s Grand Slam of Environmental Destruction, following his dumping the Paris climate change accord, weakening greenhouse gas emissions of coal-fired electric plants and undermining the basic science that underpins environmental regulation.

That grand slam may bring a roar from Trump’s delusional crowd, but it merely gets him one step closer to America and the world’s Environmental Hall of Shame.