Red state govs flunk Trump's pandemic Jerk Test

It takes two to tango....and also to have the worst country response to pandemic in the world. In America those two are the president the governor in red states leading the pack on covid infections. Eighteen of the twenty states with the worst infection rate are red. Only purple Nevada and blue California make the top twenty.

It’s bad enough to have a president acting as a jerk on pandemic. The lack of a unified federal response has been catastrophic, from lack of testing, lack of PPE, lack of ventilators, to cheerleading the early and misguided re-opening of the economy while pandemic rages. But even a jerk at the top would not have worsened pandemic had every governor refused to follow the lead of a president determined to bring jerkiness to a new level of mendacity.

One governor who refused to take the Trump pandemic Jerk Test was our own Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker. Illinois’ infection rate ranks 37 of 50, allowing Illinois to re-open in a sensible, orderly fashion; proving a jerk in the White House can’t overcome a wise governor whose Jerk Test came up negative.

400,000 opioid deaths sad legacy for Sackler

Never heard of Jonathon Sackler till his death at 65 announced today. Turns out the Sackler family holds position 19 in America's billionaire elite, worth a cool $13 billion. But that wealth in money mad America sometimes comes at a cost; in this case over 400,000 opioid deaths since 2000 from the morphine pill trademarked Oxycontin Sackler peddled as co-owner of Perdue Pharma. Jonathon's Poppa Sackler and his brothers founded it in 1952. For many years it avoided scrutiny selling harmless pharmaceuticals such as earwax remover and laxatives. But pain management from wildly addictive and deadly Oxycontin propelled the Sackler clan to billionaire status, the hundreds of thousands killed by it be damned. Most of us live out our lives doing little or no damage to mankind. Jonathon Sackler's epitaph? 'Lived large as hundreds of thousands died'.

Red state govs flunk Trump's pandemic Jerk Test

It takes two to tango....and also to have the worst country response to pandemic in the world. In America those two are the president the governor in red states leading the pack on covid infections. Eighteen of the twenty states with the worst infection rate are red. Only purple Nevada and blue California make the top twenty.

It’s bad enough to have a president acting as a jerk on pandemic. The lack of a unified federal response has been catastrophic, from lack of testing, lack of PPE, lack of ventilators, to cheerleading the early and misguided re-opening of the economy while pandemic rages. But even a jerk at the top would not have worsened pandemic had every governor refused to follow the lead of a president determined to bring jerkiness to a new level of mendacity.

One governor who refused to take the Trump pandemic Jerk Test was our own Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker. Illinois’ infection rate ranks 37 of 50, allowing Illinois to re-open in a sensible, orderly fashion; proving a jerk in the White House can’t overcome a wise governor whose Jerk Test came up negative.

Sad anniversary approaching...and even sadder approaching test

We’re approaching 75 years next week to mark one of the worst days in human existence, the July 16, 1945 explosion of the first atomic bomb at Trinity Site, New Mexico. Since then there were 2,055 more such explosions, two of which killed hundreds of thousands in Japan. The U.S. has led the way, detonating 1,030 of those blasts, including the two lethal ones over Japan. Eight other countries accounted for the other 1,025. But the U.S. has not detonated a nuke since 1992, an enviable record now under threat from the Trump administration. Two months ago administration officials crafting strategy for a new nuclear arms control agreement with Russia (current one expires February, 2021), proposed a U.S. nuclear test to exert leverage over Russia and China in the talks. Such a test would put the U.S. in bad company this century with….North Korea.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) even inserted a Republican sponsored amendment authorizing $10 million for such a test if requested by Trump. Fortunately, the Democratically controlled House inserted a measure in its draft of the Energy Department’s appropriation bill forbidding the use of any funds for nuclear tests. Administration arms control envoy Marshall Billingslea said the U.S. is ready to spend Russia and China “into oblivion” to win a new arms race. Neither Billingslea or his boss Trump seem to comprehend such ‘oblivion’ includes all mankind.

Fed mendacity: From involuntary manslaughter to premeditated murder

In a just world, President Trump and his top enablers would be indicted for involuntary manslaughter. Anyone who studies this pandemic understands that some of the 3,179,597 infections, and 135,208 U.S. deaths were caused by ongoing criminal negligence by the Trump administration. Involuntary manslaughter does not involve the intent to kill. It stems from negligent failure to perform a legal duty required to safeguard human life. The president has no higher priority than to protect life. When we needed presidential leadership to unify the country against pandemic, we got instead, denial, delay, division, even demands states reopen against medical advice. Those states are now suffering a new wave of infections and deaths. Need specific negligent conduct? Dr. Bruce Dart, head of the Tulsa City-County Health Department has charged the record spike in Tulsa infections, including some deaths, resulted, in part, from Trump’s reckless indoor rally several weeks earlier.

As bad as involuntary manslaughter is, premeditated murder is worse. Yep, the Fed determined to do just that, gearing up to execute three men in Indiana next week that it has decided must die for heinous behavior. Executions are a remnant of our medieval past. They don’t bring back victims. They don’t deter heinous crimes. They don’t enable society; they debase society. And just as the president won't be indicted for involuntary manslaughter, no one will be indicted for the premeditated murder of three hapless souls next week in Indiana.

Involuntary manslaughter or premeditated murder. The Fed has got both covered.

Duckworth should ditch war party

My senator Tammy Duckworth penned a 1,155 word op ed defending herself from atrocious name calling spewed at her by Fox News superstar Tucker Carlson. The new right wing darling called her a “fraud, moron and a callous hack who hates America” simply for implying we should have a national discussion on possibly re-evaluating the records and monuments dedicated to early American leaders such as George Washington. Carlson is simply the latest charismatic Fox bomb thrower, making millions coarsening U.S. discourse.

But the Carlson-Duckworth brouhaha was totally irrelevant to the real issue we should raise with Duckworth’s leadership: her near total support of U.S. interventionism around the world. Having fought and been grievously wounded in the murderous and criminal Iraq war, one would hope she’d abandon the glorification of wartime service and U.S. exceptionalism that enables the U.S. war party to continue its deadly warfare in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Niger and others of which we’re kept in the dark. Instead we get Duckworth saying to us “Even knowing how my tour in Iraq would turn out, even knowing that I’d lose both my legs in a battlefield just north of Baghdad in late 2004, I would do it all over again. Because if there’s anything that my ancestors’ service taught me, it’s the importance of protecting our founding values”. Duckworth somehow confuses criminal war that killed hundreds of thousands, forced out millions and squandered trillions as protecting our founding values.

Last December 7, the 79th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, Duckworth warned of the growing peace movement pushing back against endless U.S. wars saying, “We don’t want to go back to where we were on Pearl Harbor day, with an isolationist policy and being dragged into foreign conflicts. We have to oppose those tendencies”. That is straight out of the U.S. war party’s talking points promoting perpetual war.

Sadly, Senator Duckworth learned the wrong lesson in Iraq.

Dems beat war drums to beat Trump

There may 101 reasons for Dems to defeat Trump November 3. But promoting perpetual U.S. warfare around the Middle East and Africa should not be among them. Trump gained a fair number of his 63,000,000 votes in 2016 charging our forever wars were stupid and should be ended. Instead of leading on ending such murderous wars, Dems ceded that worthy goal to Trump. While his overall foreign policy has been dreadful, even garnering him a House impeachment, he did two things deserving notice: didn’t start a new US military incursion (Obama disastrously intervened in Libya and Syria) and began troop withdrawals in Syria, Germany and most importantly in Afghanistan, scheduled for completion next May.

But that most worthy of foreign policy goals won’t happen, thanks to presidential politics. Dems figure, if Trump wants to end a 19 year long failed and immoral war, our campaign strategy must be to oppose it. A number of House Dems, led by Jason Crow (D-CO), joined hands with virulent Republican warmonger Liz Cheney (R-WY) to put up a wall stopping the Afghan troop pullout; indeed, ensuring that war goes on forever. Crow’s amendment to the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) consigns Trump’s pullout to the ashcan of failed Trump policies, albeit this one saving thousands of Afghan lives and a few Americans as well.

Dems could focus on those aforementioned Trump foreign policy failures to ensure his defeat. Let us count the ways.

1. Trump’s dropped over 20,000 bombs on Afghanistan in 41 months, more than Bush Jr. or Obama in their first 48 months. Trump killed untold thousands of civilians, making good on his promise to “bomb the shit out of Islamic State”.

2. Trump ratcheted up endless war secrecy, hiding actual troop deployments for three years and dropping the monthly Air Power Summary last February. When it comes to endless war, we’re on a ‘need to know’ basis.

3. Trump has vetoed several Congressional measures to end our support of Saudi Arabia’s catastrophic destruction of Yemen and its 24,000,000 souls. His reasoning? We need Saudi Arabia’s weapons purchases.

4. Trump backed a coup in Bolivia and several in Venezuela.

5. Trump kills thousands in Venezuela, North Korea, Iran and Cuba, among others, with dastardly economic sanctions.

6. Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear agreement, likely the most war saving measure of this century, and came within minutes of bombing Iran over a frivolity downing of a U.S. drone.

The Dems are AWOL on all these Trump failures begging to be addressed. Nope, they’d rather stow fear that ending endless war is the mark of an unfit president. That is a tragedy that ensures the downward spiral of the American Experiment.