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Donald Trump

If Mike Pence Were President, How Many More Americans Would Be Alive Today?

April 27, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Are we living in an alternate reality? (amazon.com)

If Mike Pence were President, how many more Americans would be alive today? The “what if” counterfactual has a special niche within historical thinking. It may be best known from science fiction for history scholars also engage in it. The time travel stories are a way to “fix” a wrong which had occurred. The result is a better timeline. In practice, such stories typically end with failure in that the past cannot be changed…or if it is changed, it is for the worse due to the Law of Unintended Consequences.

Still, it can be fun to stretch one’s mind and consider a different future. In the very popular podcast Ben Franklin’s World about early American history, host Liz Covart ends her interviews with guest scholars with what she calls the “fun part” of the show: she asks the interviewee to comment on what if something had happened differently in the topic they are discussing. It is not unusual for the guest to conclude that the change proposed by Covart might have made a difference in the short run, but in long term, the greater momentum of history would have prevailed. I wonder.

During the Covid-19 crisis, BBC has been posing such questions to scholars. The most recent one (April 24) asks an eminent Cambridge classical scholar: “What if Alexander the Great had lived longer?”

In America, two counterfactuals loom large. First, suppose John Kennedy had not been assassinated, what would have happened specifically in Vietnam? Would Kennedy have followed the route Lyndon Johnson took? Less frequently is it asked, “Would the Civil Rights Bill have passed?”

The second one involves Abraham Lincoln. I grew up on the Twilight Zone episode Back There and Superboy’s attempt to prevent the assassination of Lincoln through time travel. Those efforts failed. If Lincoln had lived, sooner or later would the Confederacy have returned to power as in some ways it still is today? After all, after World War II, wasn’t the great hero whose words we keep hearing during the present crisis dumped from office in England?

Assassinations make for better “what ifs” than more general questions. An assassination may fail as it did with Ronald Reagan. So it is easy to contemplate a different scenario with Lincoln and Kennedy. The possibility of failed assassination attempt is very believable. Similarly, it is just as believable with Reagan to imagine a successful one. Very little needs to change for those moments to have ended up differently.

Bigger events are more problematical. For example, during the Covid-19 crisis, The Plot Against America by Philip Roth has been shown as a TV series on HBO. It is about an alternate America where Charles Lindbergh defeats Franklin Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election. He then steers America towards a more accommodating relationship with Hitler than Roosevelt pursued. This counterfactual is less convincing. Here the change is not a matter of a bullet being moved a fraction of inch. Instead it requires a change in the American populace whereby such a person could have first become a viable national candidate and then triumph. That change moves the alternate reality to not totally farfetched but not quite believable either. It’s a really big change.

So it would be if the Senate had voted a President out of office and made Mike Pence the new President. Still, given all that has happened since February –– ONLY FEBRUARY? REMEMBER WHEN WHAT JOHN BOLTON WOULD SAY WAS IMPORTANT? THAT WAS IN FEBRUARY….OF THIS YEAR?! FEBRUARY! WAS IT REALLY ONLY FEBRUARY! HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE!?

If only there weren’t a Trumpican majority in the Senate, think how different America would be today.

If only Mitt Romney hadn’t been the one Republican in the Senate, think how different America would be today.

If only the Senate hadn’t gambled that what harm could the ignorant inept immature President do, think how different America would be today.

Did we lose that gamble or would the events have been the same if Mike Pence had become President then?

This time we have hard-based scientific evidence that the situation could have been different. We know that social distancing and lock-downs work. It is possible to examine the dates of when cities in the United States (like New York) and cities throughout the world commenced a lock down. The numbers aren’t hidden figures. They are visible in plain sight. We know that the earlier these actions were taken, the fewer deaths there would have been and would be.  The same applies to the states. It is possible to examine the numbers from the 50 states and observe how many lives would have been saved if a state had acted a day earlier, two days earlier, a week earlier, or two weeks earlier. We know with different national leadership fewer Americans would have died and the economy wouldn’t have collapsed as much.

Would Mike Pence have acted faster to implement what we know to be the successful way to curtail the spread of Covid-19?

Would Mike Pence have ignored all the warnings about the pending crisis?

Would Mike Pence have prevented a cruise ship from docking in order to keep the number of infections down in his country?

Would Mike Pence have claimed there were only 15 infected people and the number would soon be zero?

Would Mike Pence have said everything was under control?

Would Mike Pence have promoted hydroxychloroquine as a “game changer”?

Would Mike Pence have targeted Easter Sunday and then May 1 as dates when the country could be reopened?

Would Mike Pence have asserted his royal powers to do what he wants because the President calls the shots even if he is not responsible because the buck does not stop with him unless you are staying at one of his properties?

Would Mike Pence have conducted disorganized press conferences full of dishonesty and ignorance?

Would Mike Pence have used the press conferences as political rallies where he exults in insulting people?

Would Mike Pence have contradicted the scientific evidence about the possible return of Covid-19 in the fall or next year (assuming it ever disappears in the first place)?

Would Mike Pence have banished scientists who contradicted him or who have better ratings than he has? Ratings for honesty. Ratings for competence. Ratings for trustworthiness.

Would Mike Pence have suggested the ingestion of disinfectants should be investigated?

It is really not so difficult to imagine a different scenario being played out. The evidence is right there before us. We have the numbers. We have the multiple examples from the different cities, states, and countries. When the Unpresidential Library is built, an entire room will be dedicated to the failure of Donny Disinfectant to guide the ship of state through the turbulent wave of infection that washed over our country. Students of all ages and scholars, too, will debate the issue of the price America has paid because Mike Pence did not become President in February 2020. We the People will wonder what if we had had an adult in the White House instead of Donald Trump, the singularly most incompetent, inept, ignorant, and immature president in American history. How many more tens of thousands of Americans might be alive today if only Mike Pence had been President? On Election Day, we will have the opportunity to vote on whether we would have been off if Mike Pence had been President.

 

P.S. The previous post on Post-Trumpatic Stress Disorder: Is There A Cure? needs to be amended. If the Senate had voted to remove the President, would he have complied? Based on his words, he would have brought the matter to HIS Supreme Court to squash this hoax. Therefore additional requirements to prevent a re-occurrence of Trumpatic Stress Disorder are needed.

Congress shall have the authority to enforce subpoenas through the Sergeant at Arms seizing people who choose not to comply.

Congress shall have the authority to hold subpoenaed people in custody during their testimony.

Congress shall have the authority to indict people who are in violation of their subpoena or who fail to cooperate with the investigation.

Congress shall have authority over the Secret Service in cases where the President has been voted out of office by the Senate.

Post-Trumpatic Stress Disorder: Is There A Cure?

April 23, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Honest Donald denying he chopped down the cherry tree. He never tells the truth except by accident.

Is there a cure for post-trumpatic stress disorder? Technically the designation “post” is in error since we are still living through trumpatic stress disorder. So far there has been no treatment for it. No one has invoked the 25th Amendment. The Mueller Report turned into a dud. And the impeachment resulted in a decision of “Of course he attempted to extort Ukraine for his own benefit. So what? That’s the way the game is played. Ask the OJ lawyer.”

The 22nd Amendment seems to provide surefire treatment for curing post-trumpatic stress disorder, but who knows what might happen. After all, the king might simply crown his daughter the first female president and remain in the White House until he dies…that way he will forever be immune to the law, the true immunity that matters to him.

But what about preventive medicine? What about a vaccine? What about acting to prevent a recurrence of the disorder. After all, the very stable genius, the smartest person in a room as long as it is a morgue or a nursery school with no adults, already has informed us that unlike the flu, corvid-19 will not be annual illness: IT WILL NOT RETURN. THE LORD AND SAVIOR, THE CHOSEN ONE, BLESSED BE HIS NAME HAS SAID SO.

Below are some items for consideration that can vaccinate the American society from a recurrence of trumpatic stress disorder. I am sure there are others which can be included. I am sure that my vaccination attempts won’t all work. But we have to start somewhere.

CANDIDATES FOR THE OFFICE OF PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

Candidates would have to do the following.

1. Release tax returns – I am open as to how many years back should be required.

2. Have a real medical exam

3. Disclose all pending legal actions in which the candidate directly or the organization/company with which he is connected is involved either as a defendant or plaintiff – I am open as to how many years back should be required

4. Disclose a plan for complete divestiture of investments and assets in event the candidate is elected

5. Deliver two 30-minute speeches over two weeks in a non-political rally setting on domestic and foreign affairs. In a two-person race, each candidate would have the opportunity to be the first speaker on the topic and each would have the opportunity to include a rebuttal by being the second speaker.

The foreign speech would address such issues as the candidate’s vision of America’s place in the international arena, attitudes towards specific alliances and international organizations, trade issues, and specific issues relevant to the election period.

The domestic speech would address such issues as the candidate’s view of the powers of the President, the meaning of Article 2, the meaning of checks and balances, the attitude towards freedom of the press, the distinction between loyalty to the Constitution and loyalty to the individual President, and the commitment to the role of whistle blowers in the government.

PRESIDENT

The following apply to the office of the President. The individual who holds that position will be legally obligated to follow these rules.

1. For a newly elected President, candidates for appointed positions will be selected within six months of taking office. In positions where no one has been selected, the authority to select a person to an appointed position will pass to the Congress. The choice made by Congress will not be subject to presidential approval. If Congress cannot agree on a candidate within one month, then there will be a coin flip to determine the winning candidate from the two proposed by the two leading parties in the Congress.

2. When openings to appointed positions occur during a presidency, the President shall have one month to select person to fill the position. If no one is selected then the choice is transferred to Congress following the rules described above in #1.

3. There shall be a limit as the number of positions that can be filled on an “Acting” basis. I am open to suggestions as to what this number should be. To some extent the issue here may be moot given the adoption of #1 and #2.

4. There shall be a limit as the length of time an individual may hold an “Acting” position.    I am open to suggestions as to what this number should be. To some extent the issue here may be moot given the adoption of #1 and #2.

5. The President shall refer to American citizens individually and collectively in a manner appropriate to the office and shall not degenerate to the language of a seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb aleck.

6. Neither the President not any member of the government shall call an American citizen a traitor unless they are prepared to take legal action against that individual on that charge.

7. The following rules apply to Presidential addresses, Presidential press conferences, Presidential communications via social media, Presidential interviews in person or by phone, Presidential political rallies, and White House lawn gatherings with and without a helicopter in the background. These rules also will apply to someone speaking on behalf of the President such as a Press Secretary.

Members of the White House Press corps will have the authority to file a public notice of inquiry to the White House Communications Department on any Presidential communication made in these formats. These inquiries can be on statements of “alleged” fact(s)

1. When the President stated the following [provide the details] did the President know the alleged fact was incorrect?

2. When the President stated the following [provide the details] was the President relying on information that had been provided to the President and if so by whom?

3. When the President stated the following [provide the details] was the President simply making it up the way a child does when playing imaginary games?

The Communications Department shall have one week to publicly reply to the questions raised. If the number of incorrect statements for whatever reasons reaches a certain threshold to be determined, then live coverage of Presidential addresses, Presidential press conferences, Presidential political rallies, and White House lawn gathering shall not be permitted.

Admittedly, there are a lot of issues with these last requirements. What will the protocols be to determine who is an official White House correspondent or not? What are the checks and balances to prevent an abuse of power by the White House correspondents in filing these inquiries?

Obviously the current President who only tells the truth by accident will not accept these restrictions on his ability to make up facts, blame nameless others, and simply not tell the truth. Still, they offer a framework for discussion during the campaign and possible questions to be asked by the White House Correspondents or during Presidential debates in the event there should be any.

Trumpatic stress disorder is a serious condition which has wreaked havoc with America for far longer than has corvid-19. If left unchecked, trumpatic stress disorder has the potential to destroy the United States. It is urgent that efforts begin to design a cure for the current trumpatic stress disorder and to minimize the chance of it ever reoccurring. The points made in this blog are a contribution but hardly the last word to designing a remedy.

 Since some of you reading this are far more politically and legally knowledgeable than I am, what should the vaccination be to prevent the return of trumpatic stress disorder?

Live Like the Donald Economic Recovery Acts

April 21, 2020
by Peter Feinman
To succeed, chose your parents well (https://miro.medium.com)

The “Live Like the Donald Economic Recovery Acts” are designed to provide every adult American citizen the opportunity to be a successful self-made person just like the current President of the United States. Results are not guaranteed.

The specific measures listed below have a proven record of success. They worked in the case of the present President and they can work for you. All we need is a courageous leader to make the “Live Like the Donald Economic Recovery Acts” a campaign issue for the 2020 elections. The challenge will be to see which candidate claims ownership first. You can’t argue with the success.

So what are the recovery items which need to be made into law?

THE FRED TRUMP $413 MILLION LINE OF CREDIT ACT

The Fred Trump $413 Million Line of Credit Act will do exactly what its name states. Every adult American citizen who registers for the Fred Trump $413 Million Line of Credit will receive a $413 million dollar line of credit. There is no registration fee. There is no interest charge. There is no payback required. Instead there is a $413 million line of credit that any registered adult American citizen can use for business purposes.

Please note, this is a line of credit and not a cash payment. Participants must lose the money in a business endeavor before any funds will be disbursed. For example, suppose the applicant loses $100,000 in a restaurant or any small business operation you can think of. Normally a debt of this magnitude would concern the business owner. But not now because this debtor is a registered participant in the Fred Trump $413 million line of credit act.

To draw on the line of credit is simple. The participant simply goes to the bank or financial organization to which one is in debt, presents the Fred Trump Double 0 License to Borrow card and that debt will be taken care of. The financial officer runs the Fred Trump card through the Fred Trump database. Once it is confirmed that the borrower is a registered participant who has not yet drawn the entire $413 million line of credit, the funds are transferred, the debt is paid off, and the line of credit is reduced accordingly.

These funds can only be used to pay off debts to legitimate financial institutions who hold title to the applicants. The credit line cannot be for loans from family, friends, or the Russian mob. They must be legitimate business expenses.

The Fred Trump $413 Million Line of Credit Act will spur business. Suppose you now want to try your hand at a $1,000,000 restaurant. Would the bank lend you the money? Sure! After checking that you still have $412,900,000 left on your line of credit, lending you the money is no risk. So when you lose the $1,000,000, again there is no problem. How many restaurants would you have to own to lose $413,000,000? It is not easy to lose that much money. It can be done though. We have a successful self-made man who is the biggest individual financial loser in American history. Now you can be successful too…and without having to pay money to Trump University to learn the secret to success. All you have to is enroll.

THE DONALD TRUMP DEBT CANCELLATION ACT  

What about personal debt? What about debt for car loans, student loans, home loans, or credit cards? These debts are not covered under the Fred Trump $413 Million Line of Credit. Instead with the Donald Trump Debt Cancellation Act, you can do just what THE DONALD did: walk away from the loan. I don’t know how many times he did this or what amount in total is. Once those numbers are determined they will be built into the legislation the same way the $413 million was into the business line of credit.

This act also will be open to all adult Americans for no fee. By registering under this act, adult Americans will be able to cancel debts to schools, credit card companies, or financial institutions (banks) just as THE DONALD did. Care may be needed to determine which loans should be cancelled depending on what the limits are.

THE DONALD TRUMP EMPLOYMENT SECURITY ACT

People often are concerned about losing their jobs even in good times. This act does not address losing one’s job because a business went out of business. With the Fred Trump $413 Million Line of Credit Act, no business should go out of business anyway. This act has to do with firing people for cause. This act is for people who are fired for poor job performance or for harassing someone on the job. All that would cease with the application of the Donald Trump Employment Security Act because you can no longer be fired for cause. No matter how inept you are, no matter how incompetent you are, no matter how many people you have groped or harassed, you can’t be fired. This is providing you are adult American citizen registered for no fee under this act.

For example, suppose you are in charge of a project and say everything is under control, everything is fine, when in fact, they are not. Nothing can be done now no matter how inept and incompetent you are because you are protected.

Suppose you tell your boss there are 15 problems on the project but in a day or two they will go down to zero and instead there are over 40,000 problems and counting. No problem. You are registered under the Donald Trump Employment Security Act. You can’t be fired. Amazingly, some people will even praise you for doing a good job worthy of a 10!

Thanks to this act no one will ever be fired again for cause even if they are dumber than a dead pet rock and as inept and incompetent as is humanly possible.

THE FRED TRUMP COLLEGE EDUCATION ACT

Normally colleges brag when one of their own lands an exalted job like becoming President of the United States. That hasn’t happened so much with the University of Pennsylvania and its renowned Wharton School. Quite the contrary. It almost seems as if it is ashamed that someone so ignorant and lacking in economic knowledge graduated from it.

The question to be asked is how did a person who can’t read a book and who writes at the elementary school level get into Wharton in the first place. For the father to pay the tuition is common. But the question is how much did Fred Trump have to pay to get his son accepted? Obviously, the University of Pennsylvania will never disclose that information nor should it. Obviously also the father never told the son how much he paid either. The answer is probably in either the tax returns of Fred Trump as a donation or in the business records of the Trump Organization as an expense. Of course, even if the amount the father had to pay to get his son in is revealed, that still raises the question of how the son managed to stay in. After all, he is not a very stable genius and practically everyone in the room is smarter than he is unless he is at a morgue or a nursery school with no adults present.

But suppose you don’t have a rich father or mother. And suppose you actually have the credentials and intelligence to qualify on merit to matriculate but can’t for financial reasons. Then what? Under the Fred Trump College Education Act, public college including community college would be free to all qualifying students. This means if you are an adult American and registered in the program and do not require remedial classes to do college level work, you can attend for free the community college in your community or the public college in your state.

The Fred Trump College Education Act does not apply to private schools. If you do not want to use the public swimming pools and prefer a private club instead, you do so on your money and not the taxpayers. If you do not want to use the public tennis courts and prefer a private club instead, you do so on your own money and not the taxpayers. If you do not want to use the public schools and prefer a private school instead, you do so on your own money and not the taxpayers. Everyone knows how important college is to having a successful life provided you are free of student loans. The Fred Trump College Education Act will give all qualifying Americans a chance at a public school college education in their community or state.

In conclusion, the Live Like The Donald Economic Recovery Acts will provide all Americans with the opportunity to live successful lives as self-made people just as they did for THE DONALD even if you don’t have a rich father. We also need to increase our funding for special education so people like Donald Trump can qualify for college on merit.

 

P.S. The Donald Trump Above the Law Act will give every adult American citizen who registers the right to ignore subpoenas or other legal actions. Why should the President of the United States be the only one who is above law? Individuals will never have to be worried about being sued again.

The China Hannitys versus the American Hannitys: The 2020 Olympics

April 20, 2020
by Peter Feinman
The First Laura Ingraham and Rush Limbaugh Expose a Hoax

The China Hannitys versus the American Hannitys: The battle is engaged. Right now the Hannitys of both countries are battling each other for world supremacy. Who is #1? The Middle Kingdom or the City on a Hill? To some extent, they are not in direct conflict with each other, since each appeals primarily to a domestic audience. In this regard the Chinese probably have the advantage. They are aware of the criticisms of China in the international arena and are responding to it. They also know that the United States is dependent on China for medical supplies and that the President continually praises the Chinese leader.

The United States

Turning to the American position, it doesn’t look so good at the moment. During World War II, the United States was an arsenal for democracy. It initiated the Lend Lease program including aiding China. It was the go to country for world leadership. The United Nations was headquartered in New York, the center of the universe. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States became the world’s only superpower. So how did America do during the era of baby boom Presidents?

When the history of the era of baby boom Presidents is written, it doesn’t seem likely that the United States or that generation will fare too well. It is unlikely that after the first Iraq war that anyone predicted that less than 30 years later the United States would have self-destructed its world leadership position from internally caused actions (second Iraq war, Afghanistan, 2016 elections). We are no longer an arsenal for democracy. We cannot provide material assistance to others. We abandon global organizations instead of creating and/or leading them. We only have transactional relationships where every other country is a foe in a zero-sum relationship with us. There is no more win-win. Our simple-minded immature child President lacks the mental necessities to even understand yet alone propose a global identity for the country.

The COVID-19 crisis has exposed America’s abandonment of being a City on a Hill. “Disease in a World without a Leader” was the headline of an article in Time (Yuval Noah Harari, 3/21/20).

“(W)e are now facing this crisis bereft of global leaders who can inspire, organize and finance a coordinated global response.”

 The Ebola crisis of 2014 and the financial crisis of 2008 were two recent examples where the United States took a leadership role.

 “But in recent years the U.S. has resigned its role as global leader…(T)he U.S. no longer has only real friends, only interests.. The void left by the U.S. has not been filled by anyone else.

Our former friends laugh at the ignorant and immature American President to his face at the U.N. and behind his back at international meetings.

The NYT headline, “In This Crisis, U.S. Sheds Its Role as Global Leader” (3/22/20) delivers the same message. The World War II era is over. There is no Franklin Delano Roosevelt to lead the world. Instead the American President seeks to liberate Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia and has withdrawn from the WHO. He cannot rise to the occasion. His followers are perfectly willing to cheer “We’re #2. We’re #2. We’re #2.” They have no interest in the United States being a City on a Hill that the eyes of the world are upon.

Still hope springs eternal. In an op-ed piece, Samantha Power, former American representative to the United Nations, put her heart on the line in the hope that one day the United States will be #1 again (NYT 4/9/20). Despite the actions of the American President to withdraw from the international arena and weaken America influence throughout the world, that world still looks to the United States for leadership. She decries the zero-sum approach the simple-minded President brought to the efforts to obtain necessary medical equipment. She dismisses the idea that China can create a global crisis coalition, a goal that China has not yet attained. She yeans for America to take a leadership role in the COVID-19 crisis, but that can’t happen until January, 2021, at the earliest.

China

So America and the COVID-19 crisis have handed the Middle Kingdom an opportunity on a silver platter. While the United States is still the financial capital of the world, China has replaced it as the manufacturing capital of the world. It makes what the world wants. It binds the countries through purchases of the natural resources needed do manufacture goods. China has become a leading trade partner practically everywhere. Its Belt and Road Initiative works to bind the countries of the world to it as vassals, not colonies. Hollywood would not dare defy it. There is no more Taiwan on American airlines. Who would criticize China’s handling of the CORVID-19 crisis?

Now we have the competing stories. The China Hannitys praise the great leadership of Xi Jinping. He acted swiftly, boldly, and decisively. First he rescued China with his lockdowns. Now he stands ready to aid the world. He will save the world from the scourge unleashed by American military personnel when they visited China. What America has wrought, China will repair. All we have to do is put our trust in China, its superior system, its superior leader, its rightful place as the Middle Kingdom in the cosmic center as the world leader.

The American Hannitys take issue with China’s position. China is the source of the scourge. China is the one who acted dishonestly. It did not reveal the truth of the extent of the virus and that it could be transferred from person to person even when there was no sign of the infection. It is China who owes the world for the damage and destruction it has inflicted on it. It is the American President who acted swiftly, boldly, and decisively as he learned the truth that China tried to hide.

The American Hannitys have a track record of success it can draw on to convict China of its guilt in the court of world opinion. Remember how they uncovered Seth Rich at the center of the Russian contacts. The American Hannitys exposed the Russian collusion as a hoax. The American Hannitys exposed the Ukranian extortion as a hoax. The American Hannitys exposed the CORVID-19 as a hoax. With all these successes behind it, exposing the China fraud should be easy.

And the Winner Is….

So here were are. America on its own has abandoned its position as world leader. China is rushing to fill the void but is falling short. Its restrictive currency and racist xenophobic society make it an unlikely choice for world leader. It can dominate vassals by economic force but there will never be a line of people seeking to emigrate there. When people vote with their feet, they still vote America.

While we are no longer #1, we could regain that position. We can do so partly because there still is no alternative to American leadership: either it is us [post WWII] or no one [now]. In my last blog on the topic of World War IV, I wrote of America’s ace in the hole, its soft power. The blog was written after the unexpected death of Kobe Bryant (Kobe and Coronavirus: Meaning for World War IV 2/4/20). It wasn’t that long ago and it was a global event when it occurred.

Now we are witnessing another example of American leadership: the free press. The China Hannitys operate as the propaganda arm of the government with no alternative voice. By contrast, the American Hannitys have to face domestic competition. Try as he might to turn his press conferences into political rallies, our Dear Leader still has to face the press. Now he can’t hide behind the noise of a helicopter. In fact, with social spacing, he faces fewer reporters. It has become harder to escape questions from people who know he is full of bull trump and just playing make believe with the facts.

The net result is neither the American nor Chinese Hannitys can prevail. While we may not know the truth of what happened in China for years to come, we already know the truth of what happened it America. If We the People decide we want an adult in the White House, we can regain our position of world leadership and with the thanks of countries who have been waiting for it.

 

We Are Not the UNITED States: Covid-19, Confederates, and the Union

April 17, 2020
by Peter Feinman
The Third Civil War (New York Times Magazine)

We are not the UNITED States. We are the DISUNITED STATES. We were when we were constituted. We were when we fought the Civil War. We were when we celebrated the Civil War Sesquicentennial. And we are now as celebrate the American Revolution 250th. One can make the case that during World War II we were a united people but beyond that specific time period, the issue is more problematic.

Lincoln’s advice that a “house divided can not stand” is correct but inappropriate. We are not a house but two houses. The recent and ongoing developments with COVID-19 illustrate what was known beforehand but is now more obvious. The battle to re-open states versus social distancing in states is an expression of that divide.

DECEPTIVE MAPS

The maps used on the news shows to show the spread of COVID-19 and the resulting deaths are deceptive. It is not that they are wrong [although the numbers infected and dead due to COVID-19 are likely to be higher]. They are deceptive because the virus does not occur at a state level. State maps are fine for state events – Electoral College vote, Senate and Governor elections, lockdowns and Medicaid expansion. They paint a deceptive picture for the virus.

WE WOULD BE BETTER SERVED POLITICALLY IF THE COVID-19 MAPS WERE AT THE CONGRESSIONAL LEVEL RATHER THAN AT THE STATE LEVEL.

To understand how the virus is playing out politically, we need to look at maps that better reflect the political reality. As best as I can tell simply by observing the maps and without any detailed analysis, I suspect there is a high correlation between high COVID-19 outbreak and the congressional districts that voted Democratic and low COVID-19 outbreak and the congressional districts that voted Trumpican in 2016. Similarly, this correlation would match the congressional districts that want to re-open the economy now and those that don’t.

THE EXPERTS WERE WRONG

Remember when Angela Merkel predicted a 70% infection in Germany? Remember when America was going to hit with a 75% infection rate? You don’t hear numbers like that anymore. Even a 1% rate of infection or approximately 3.3 million [less if children are excluded] is still significantly higher than the current infection rate although still attainable.

So what happened? How did the rate drop so precipitously? To a non-medical person like me the decline of such magnitude suggests the early models were incorrect. Rather than attribute the substantial decline to stay at home and social distancing, it may also be that the ease of infection was not what was originally forecast. Certainly if you are in close proximity to an infected person for an extended period of time – prison, nursing home, Spring Break, Mardi Gras, family event, conference – then the infection rate is high; less so than if you pass someone on a sidewalk or supermarket aisle for only a moment. Regardless of the reason, I think the American people are entitled to an explanation of why the original epidemic infection rates seem to have been so wrong.

There are unexpected consequences to the projected numbers being reduced so substantially. It undermines the credibility of the experts who originally predicted such catastrophic numbers. At the moment, the number dead due to CORVID-19 is roughly comparable to the annual dead due to the flu. That number will increase and doesn’t take into account the mitigation actions. Still it enables people of certain mindset to compare the death totals from human-based actions – suicide, murder, car accidents, drug overdoses/opioid-deaths – none of which required the closing down the country – to a contagion like CORVID-19. The result strengthens the views of the anti-vaccine/no climate change/anti-science/anti-expert/anti-elitist sector of the American population (see Darwin and COVID-19: Science in America).

AIDS

The disease to which COVID-19 should be compared is not the annual flu or the Spanish flu of 1918 but AIDS (see The Coronavirus Is Not AIDS: Do Trumpicans Know That?). I mention this again not in a medical sense but a political one. Who are the people who are dying as a result of COVID-19? We now have a population sample of over 30,000 people from which to draw conclusions.

Real Americans in a Trumpian world are not dying in droves or even in significant numbers at this time As with AIDS, COVID-19 seems targeted in whom it strikes. But whereas AIDS required specific actions for the disease to be transmitted, COVID-19 can strike anyone anywhere. However in practice, it only seems to strike some people in some locations.

Prior conditions weakens the body and makes it more susceptible to infections. In and of itself, that observation is not new or surprising. People in a weakened condition are by definition more at risk. People with hypertension or diabetes are different from people who don’t have these conditions. People who have less adequate to medical care and who are in poorer health are more at risk. That means poor people concentrated in urban areas are more at risk…even more at risk than poor people in rural areas who live further apart. In general terms that means black people and immigrants say in Elmont, Queens, the neighborhood epicenter in the borough epicenter or the city epicenter of the state epicenter of COVID-19 in the DISUNITED STATES.

Politically, people who are not being infected in significant numbers after six weeks are being asked to care about people who are. They have lost their jobs, their savings, their businesses, their way of life even though so far they are no more at risk for being infected COVID-19 than they are by the annual flu. And they are being asked to care about people they did not care about even before the epidemic.

Think of the difference in the attitude towards New York. 9/11 was an attack on the whole country; COVID-19 isn’t. As mentioned above, World War II was a time of national unity; now the World War II generation is collateral damage – old people die. Why not play Russian roulette with the lives of people you don’t care about? After all, what happens in New York stays in New York.

Not quite.

THE QUEENS BROS

The examples of the two Queens bros reflects this divide in the DISUNITED STATES. Andy Cuomo, Governor of New York State, has become the national face and voice of the people who have been infected by COVID-19. With his daughter having been self-quarantined and his brother now infected, Cuomo presents a personal side to the epidemic in addition to his responsibilities as the chief executive of the hardest hit state in the country. His ratings are high and it is quite reasonable to speculate that if the presidential election was next year, he would be the Democratic nominee.

How popular do you think Cuomo is with Trumpicans?

The other Queens bro abandoned Queens and New York for Florida where he now makes his legal residence. Ignorant as he is, he sensed that the United States was and is a divided country. He sensed that many Americans felt the same snub and putdown by elitists that he had when the Manhattan elite refused to recognize him as anything more than a narcissistic sleazeball real estate promoter who failed repeatedly.. He sensed that there was a political opportunity that he could exploit for his own advantage. He sensed that there was no benefit to trying to be the President of all America, of We the People America, of e pluribus unum America. Instead he picked a side and strove only to reach out to his people and not to those people.

It worked. As long as he is defending real Americans from those people, Trumpicans don’t care what else he might do…even if it is to make rich people richer and undermine America’s position in the world. All the shortcomings of his leadership in January to March in the COVID-19 epidemic (see New York Times Investigates the Brain of Donald Trump: President Has a Hissy Fit) are irrelevant as long as he sticks with his primary responsibility. He is their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name. But Trumpicans did not vote for him so they could lose their jobs, their businesses, their savings, and their way of life so he could help those people.

The issue of re-opening versus safety first is part of the culture wars, it is part of the Third Civil War. What may be a 9/11 or 12/7 in Democratic congressional districts is Fort Sumter in Trumpican congressional districts. We have seen Trumpican/Confederates marching in Michigan. We have heard Laura and Rush and Fox call for putting real Americans first now. We have heard sheriffs vowing civil disobedience rather than enforce restrictions on the right of American people to be free (see the Twilight Zone episode The Old Man in the Cave). As the weather improves and summer is upon us, the call to be able to move freely about the country and with each other will rise.

COVID-19 may do what collusion with Russia, attempted extortion in the Ukraine, and the sheer incompetence of the ignorant and immature President did not accomplish. It may turn Trumpicans against their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name. The bully has backed down to the governors and his feeble efforts at the bully pulpit are laughable. The more Trumpicans protest the restriction and the less their leader does to remove them despite the daily calls from Rush and Fox, the more Trumpicans may abandoned their savior who failed them in their moment of need. This is the first time in this administration when the desires of the Trumpicans and their savior may widely diverge. If he tells them to obey their governors, will they? If he doesn’t eliminate the restrictions and save their jobs, businesses, and way of life, will they still vote for him? If they start dying in droves because no area is safe and no state immune, will they see the light?

America’s Third Civil War (The Atlantic)

I have just learned that the wartime general has called for the liberation of Minnesota and Michigan. How far he will pursue this war remains to be determined. Fox will continually push him to assert his royal powers under Article 2. It is reasonable to predict that as the weather heats up so will the culture wars. COVID-19 will change the way America’s third Civil War will be fought.

When Esau and Jacob emerged from the womb there already was a struggle just as there was between the two houses of America at its birth. Whether the bros will follow the path of Isaac and Ishmael or Cain and Abel is now being determined. It will be the basis, often unstated, of the 2020 elections. Bonespur Boy will not be able to satisfy both the Trumpicans and the governors nor can the world’s worst negotiator mediate a settlement. What will he do? What will the American people do on Election Day (and by mail before then)?

New York Times Investigates the Brain of Donald Trump: President Has a Hissy Fit

April 15, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Presidential Press Conference

The New York Times has investigated the brain of Donald Trump. That was not its intention when it published above the fold on the front page “Despite Timely Alerts, Trump was Slow to Act” (April 12, 2020, print). Its intention was to document the failures and shortcomings of the impeached wartime President in his handling of the coronavirus crisis. In that effort it appears to have succeeded.

Somehow the subject of the article became aware of it. Obviously he did not read it. Obviously also no staff member briefed him on the contents of the article. He may have seen the headline on a print copy. (I don’t know if the White House still receives print copies.) He may have seen and heard it discussed on a news show other than on Fox. However it happened he did become aware that he had been taken to task for his failures and shortcomings. Naturally he responded as he would be expected to respond.

He is even more reliable than Old Faithful in his eruptions.

But the article did more than simply document his failure and shortcomings in managing the coronavirus crisis. It also provided a window into how his mind operates and on what level.

Example #1 [from the front page]

The president, though, was slow to absorb the scale of the risk and to act accordingly, focusing instead on controlling the message, and protecting gains in the economy and batting away warnings from senior officials.

CONFEDERATES FIRE ON FORT SUMTER. ABRAHAM LINCOLN SLOW TO ABSORB THE SCALE OF RISK

What can we learn from this passage?

1 Adults in the White House understood the scale of the risk. Their brains had the mental necessities to understand the situation, to recognize the full gravity of the pending crisis; he did not, his brain does not function at that level.

He provided a demonstration of the smallness of his mind at the news conference the following day. During the Q&A, he got into an exchange with a reporter about what he had done. He kept answering that in January there were no deaths and no infections. Other people in the White House were capable of projecting into the next weeks and months when there would be infections and deaths on an epidemic scale. He was not able to do so. His analytical skills were limited to DOW JONES DOWN. ELECTION LOST. Beyond that he was out of his league. His inability to grasp the magnitude of the risk matches the silliness of his forbidding a cruise ship to dock to keep the number of cases down on his watch. After all, he declared the virus would not strike here so the ship had to be kept a sea. We have contained the threat.

2. It’s all about him. Obviously.

3. Every day is like another episode on TV and he has to control the narrative. Obviously.

The takeaway from this passage is not about his failure to act. The takeaway is not about his choosing Option A instead of Option B. The takeaway is his lacking the cognitive skill to grasp the situation. He didn’t understand what adults in the White House could understand.

Example #2 [page 14]

These final days of February, perhaps more than any other moment during his tenure in the White House, illustrated Mr. Trump’s inability or unwillingness to absorb warnings coming at him. He instead reverted to his traditional political playbook…squandering vital time as the coronavirus spread silently across the country.

GERMANY BOMBS LONDON. WINSTON CHURCHILL UNABLE OR UNWILLING TO ABSORB THE SITUATION

What can we learn from this passage?

1. He still had not grasped the situation. He lacks the ability to do so.

2. He reverted to form, in this case being the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck that is his true self.

At the infamous press conference Monday, he got into an exchange with a reporter about China.

The discussion went back and forth. He was having problems since he was trying to defend his world of make believe in which he is most comfortable against real world questioning. Finally he could fake it as an adult no longer. He had exhausted himself and reverted to his old standby: FAKE NEWS.

There are limits as to how long he can do the penguin walk and fake being an adult. He can maintain that façade for brief intervals like a child going to grandma’s funeral or delivering a State of the Union address. A two-hour press conference exceeds his mental capacity to keep it up. At some point he inevitably will go off script and revert to being the person he truly is.

Example #3 [page 15]

Mr. Trump took a conciliatory approach [towards China] through the middle of March, praising the job Mr. Xi was doing.

That changed abruptly when aides informed Mr. Trump that a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman had publicly spun a new conspiracy about the origins of Covid-19: that it was brought to China by U.S. Army personnel who visited the country last October.

Mr. Trump was furious. [He responded on Twitter, “Oh Yeah! Oh Yeah! Oh Yeah! I’LL SHOW YOU!] The China Virus.  

CORONAVIRUS WREAKS GLOBAL HAVOC. IMMATURE CHILD PRESIDENTS BOASTS OF HIS SOCIAL MEDIA PRESENCE

What can we learn from this passage?

CHINA HAS HANNITYS TOO! CHINA HAS HANNITYS TOO! CHINA HAS HANNITYS TOO!
SO DOES RUSSIA!

No one has a monopoly on bull-trump. China is just as capable of slinging it as Fox, the Presidential spokespeople, or the impeached wartime President himself. He has been lucky so far that the Democrats have not given him a taste of his own medicine. Perhaps they should observe how the Chinese, Russian, and Iranian Hannitys act.

How then after weeks of failure did he finally grasp the situation?

Example #4 [page 15]

But in the end, aides said, it was Dr. Deborah L. Birx, the veteran AIDS researcher…who helped to persuade Mr. Trump. Soft-spoken and fond of the kind of charts and graphs Mr. Trump prefers, Dr. Birx did not have the rough edges that could irritate the president. He often told people he thought she was elegant. 

What can we learn from this passage?

1. Mad Dog tried the same technique. Do you think he was soft-spoken without rough edges? Do you think he successfully hid the fact that he was dumbing down his presentation to the level a person with limited cognitive skills and of great ignorance could understand? Do you think he threatened the masculinity of Bonespur Boy?

2. The key to leading him to knowledge appears to be the proverbial old-fashioned school marm. For all we know, Dr. Birx reminds him of teachers he had in elementary school, teachers before his father put in him military school in the vain hope that he would man up.

3. If he were in elementary school today, he would be classified as “special.” He proves the need for special-ed teachers who can give students the 1:1 time they need to be able to learn despite certain challenges.

As Jill Filipovic wrote (A day after claiming ‘total’ power, Trump caves in, CNN, April 15, 2020):

This is an important moment to reemphasize that Donald Trump is not a learned man. Yes, he has a business degree, but he shows no interest in learning, no curiosity about the world around him, and little apparent ability to ingest much in the way of new information that is not presented in simple pictures or on TV. Comprehending complex material seems far beyond his grasp.

His intelligence briefings have to be pared down to child-like levels, and he still barely reads them, and resists receiving them regularly. Some believe he’s indifferent to the printed word. Does anyone really think this man has even read, let alone understood, the US Constitution?

In conclusion, The New York Times article written to expose the failures and shortcomings of the impeached wartime President also reveals that those failures and shortcomings are not his fault. When you are a child living in the land of make believe, you make up the rules. If you want to be king, then you are king. The problem occurs when you try to live in the adult world and even Kellyanne Alternate Reality Conway can’t save you. Our president genuinely lacks the mental necessities or cognitive skills required to function as an adult, a deficiency that cannot be hidden during a crisis unless you only watch Fox. Unfortunately mental limitations are not a high crime or misdemeanor or removable under the 25th Amendment. At present there is no legal remedy for removing a President during a crisis because he can’t grasp the situation.

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! Saving America

April 13, 2020
by Peter Feinman
COVID-19 Has Been Around for a Long Time (Photo by Egyptologist Kara Cooney)

Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! The impeached wartime President needs to be the savior of America. Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! All hands on deck. This is not a drill.

The number 1 issue in America today is the need for the housebound impeached wartime President to stand before the American people and proclaim that only he can save America and he has done so.

Let’s consider some of the numbers that contributed to the Trump crisis that is about to apex on May 1.

First there are the hidden figures. These are the known unknowns.

How many Americans have the coronavirus? If a coronavirus infects a tree in the woods and it is not tested, has anything happened? This philosophical adage on the issue of human observation – who will tell our story? If no one does, do we have a story? – has been revised in the current situation. If we don’t have national testing or testing of a valid representation of the American population, then how do we know how many people have been infected?

How many people have died die to the coronavirus? By this time we are all used to seeing very specific numbers tracking the number of deaths by state due to the coronavirus. Are all coroners able to test for the virus to determine the cause of death? Are there standards on what is reported? What about the vast-right conspiracy of helicoptering dead people to maximize the death rate in certain areas?

Second there are the known knowns. These are the numbers that are known and which have contributed to the current situation.

20

These are the infected people on the Grand Princess Cruise Ship that was denied docking to minimize the number of infected cases in America during this administration. When future historians and school children study the COVID-19 crisis, this action will become one of the defining moments of it. It will be known as the “King Canute Embarrassment.”  It refers to the effort of the impeached wartime President to secure the borders of the realm by forbidding the waves of the virus to come ashore. His actions follow on his success in preventing drugs from entering the country illegally and his success in preventing people from entering the country illegally.

In the future, school children will laugh at the silliness of this tactic. It will become proof positive that the impeached wartime President was out of his league. In mock trials of his ineptitude, his deploying of the King Canute maneuver will be deemed sufficient in its own to justify the activation of the 25th Amendment on the grounds of mental incapacity.

15 to 0

No, this is not a baseball score. Instead it is the number of people the impeached wartime president claimed were infected with COVID-19. It is a prediction that the number will very soon drop to zero with a 100% recovery rate and no fatalities. In fact, very soon the virus will suddenly disappear like a miracle.

Historians will ask, “Who were these 15 people? Do we know what happened to them? What was the source of the information? What does “soon” mean when translated into adult English?” Here again students will laugh in sheer amazement at the brazen stupidity of the comment. It easily could be fact-checked and would expose him as someone out of his league and living in the land of make believe where he loves to play. As James D. Zirin, author of Plaintiff in Chief: Portrait of Donald Trump in 3500 Lawsuits just said in an interview on HNN, “I think he enjoys lying. I think it’s part of his DNA. I don’t think he has any grasp of the facts at all, so he says whatever he thinks will help him and whatever comes into his head.”

430,000

Only the impeached wartime President can save America. He said so himself in the 2016 campaign. Then in January, 2020, he proved it by severing airlinks with China. He acted boldly and decisively when he became aware of the seriousness of the crisis. He demonstrated that he had the right stuff to go into the area and provide the leadership America needed in this time of trouble.

JAPAN BOMBS PEARL HARBOR. FDR BOASTS OF HIS RADIO RATINGS.

If you ask the impeached wartime President about the 430, 000 people who arrived after his severing of the link, he will tell you that you are a third-rate nasty cutie pie from a Fake News organization.

If you ask the impeached wartime President about Europe being the source of the virus that struck America, he will tell you that you are a third-rate nasty cutie pie from a Fake News organization.

10

If you ask the impeached wartime President how he would grade his performance, then perhaps you are a third-rate reporter. In the land of make believe where this President lives, what other grade is possible? Here is an example of where there is a disagreement that will be crucial to understanding what is about to happen on May 1.

Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union” when asked if social distancing and stay-at-home measures could have prevented deaths had they been put in place in February, instead of mid-March.

I mean, obviously, you could logically say that if you had a process that was ongoing and you started mitigation earlier, you could have saved lives. Obviously, no one is going to deny that. But what goes into those decisions is complicated.

Exactly wrong. One person is going to deny that. How could lives have been saved if the person making the decision to save those lives earned a grade of 10? Mitigation began exactly when it should have begun under the leadership of our impeached wartime President. Fauci’s days are numbered.

AL-QUEDA ATTACKS WORLD TRADE TOWERS. MAYOR GIULIANI BOASTS OF HIS TV RATINGS

5/1

In ancient times, before making the biggest decision of his life, kings thinking of going into battle would inquire of the divine what they should do. Normally, prophets know to tell the king exactly what he wants to hear. But sometimes prophets were not quite as accommodating to the king. Consider the less well-known biblical example involving the prophet Micaiah.

 1 Kings 22:4 And he said to Jehoshaphat [the king of Judah], “Will you go with me to battle at Ramothgilead?”… 5 And Jehoshaphat said to the king of Israel, “Inquire first for the word of the LORD.” 6 Then the king of Israel gathered the prophets together, about four hundred men, and said to them, “Shall I go to battle against Ramothgilead, or shall I forbear?” And they said, “Go up; for the Lord will give it into the hand of the king.” 7 But Jehoshaphat said, “Is there not here another prophet of the LORD of whom we may inquire?” 8 And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, “There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the LORD, Micaiah the son of Imlah; but I hate him, for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil [Fake News].” And Jehoshaphat said, “Let not the king say so.” 9 Then the king of Israel summoned an officer and said, “Bring quickly Micaiah the son of Imlah.”

Beginning with Moses before Pharaoh, Nathan before David [“Thou art the man!’], Elijah before Ahab and the prophets of Baal, and Micaiah here, the Israelite prophets speak truth to power and defy what the king wants.

COVID-19 STRIKES AMERICA. DONALD TRUMP BRAGS OF HIS TV AND FACEBOOK RATINGS

The fix is in for the Opening our Country Council. The members know what the king wants and will be loyal to him. They are not traitors. However, even after he is fired for disloyalty, Prophet Fauci and the medical community will speak the truth in the real world. If it matches what the king wants to do on May 1, then there is no issue. But suppose it doesn’t match. What happens when the impeached wartime President’s need to be the savior of America in a big way trumps the facts on the ground?

Trumpican governors like that man in Florida are chomping at the bit to play Russian roulette with the lives of the residents of their states. They just are waiting for their Lord and Savior, the Chosen one, Blessed Be his Name, to grant them their 007 license to kill, the same license he used throughout January, February, and into March.

By contrast, Democratic governors and Republican governors (MA, MD, NH, OH) who have better ratings than the impeached wartime President will defy the call to reopen American until there is an opportunity to conduct proper testing, contact tracing, and can be done in a responsible way. After all, the reopening is a state matter since the Federal Government only provides backup and waiting-in-the-wings VP candidate Nikki Haley has just touted the role of the individual states. In fact, since I wrote the first draft of this blog some of the states have already started organizing. When the governors stand simultaneously on the steps of their capitols to read a prepared statement declaring their independence from guidelines of impeached wartime president, what will he do in response? This moment will be the biggest decision he has ever had to make. How will he answer the following question:

How do you ask a person to be the last person to die in the Trump crisis? How do you ask a person to be the last person to die for a mistake?

Could Nancy Pelosi Become the First Female President?: A Constitutional Crisis

April 3, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Trumpican Governor Analysis of the Coronavirus

Could Nancy Pelosi become the first female President? Right now such a scenario seems unlikely. Now think about what used to be impossible and no one ever thought of and now is the New Normal.

Inaugural Day Vacuum

What would have to happen for Nancy Pelosi to become the first female President?

First, there has to be an election in November. Then the Democrats have to maintain the majority in the House of Representatives. Next, the Democrats have to elect her Speaker of the House. Finally, on Inaugural Day, there has to be no President or Vice President of the United States.

Is it possible that as of January 20, 2021, that the Electoral College will not have elected anyone to the two highest offices in the land?

Contested Election

Is there any doubt that the presidential election will be a contested one? In the 2016 election, the candidate who expected to lose already had his legal justification for denying that the winner was duly elected. The issue was illegal voters. 3 million of them. No. Wait! 5 million of them. Whatever number he needed to win the popular vote, that’s how many people voted illegally. If he had filed suit to void the election, it wouldn’t have worked. A Trumpican commission created by the newly elected President failed to find illegal voters. It was a dismal failure.

In the 2020 election, the now incumbent President can’t risk repeating the half ass effort he undertook in 2016. There is no point in finding or wasting time trying to find illegal voters in California. The effort needs to be more strategic. It needs to be well-thought out. It means that even prior to the election, there need to be teams in place to question the results in states that would reverse the election results if the charges prove true. This means in places like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona and then perhaps places like Georgia, North Carolina, and dare it be said, Texas.

How much time would it reasonably take to collect the required evidence to support such a claim in each of the states with contested results?

How many legal challenges would there be to that effort?

How many rulings and at how many judicial levels would it take to resolve all the claims so it can be determined just who the valid Electors are?

Is it possible that it would take until January 20, 2021?

I have no idea. However with a President having the full weight of the Attorney General and FBI at his personal disposal, it could take quite a while. Now try to imagine the furor Fox would stoke daily. Consider the death threats to Fauci for daring to tell the truth. Fauci telling the truth even when it means contradicting the President equates to attacking the Trumpican Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name.

Meanwhile the clock to resolve the voting disputes would be ticking.

Could Inauguration Day be postponed? The Mayor of New York City floated that idea after 9/11 that he would remain in office temporarily until the dust settled both literally and figuratively. That suggestion didn’t fly. The election was held on schedule and a new mayor was installed on schedule as well.

There is no provision for extending the presidential term of an incumbent if the Electoral College cannot elect a President. If there is no President and no Vice President than the Speaker becomes President. Say hello to Nancy Pelosi, the first female President of the United States of America.

Governors

But it probably won’t come to that. As part of that effort to contest the election, both sides would be working with the states. That means also working with the governors of those states. That also also means working in an unprecedented situation of massive mail in ballots that would increase the number of disputed votes exponentially. Even just to count them under normal circumstances would be a challenge. Under these circumstances the chad counters in Florida will seem calm by comparison.

So who are these governors who would manage this count at the state level? Keep in mind, the federal government is just there for backup purposes, will take no leadership role, and will not accept any responsibility.

Many of these governors are extremely popular now. If the election were next year Andrew Cuomo would win both the Democratic nomination and the election in landslides. His poll numbers have skyrocketed compared to the teeny-weeny bump of the Impeached President who never tells the truth except by accident, has limited cognitive skills, and is self-centered. It would be embarrassing to watch the two Queen bros bash it out, the adult and the immature child.

But Cuomo isn’t the only governor with improved ratings. Many Democratic governors have increased their popularity.  Any challenge to the vote totals in a state led by a Democratic governor who is more popular and who has been demeaned and who has not received federal support for the coronavirus then would have the last laugh. Oh, you want to dispute the votes in Michigan. LOL.

Even Republican governors in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Ohio have fared better than the President. These are the people who would be the basis for the Republicans taking back their party after the 2020 elections or who would start a new Republican Party.

Now name a Trumpican governor whose stature has increased as a result of the coronavirus. Texas? Florida? Georgia? Oklahoma? Trumpicans have the analytic skills of a person who jumps off the Empire State Building and at the 42nd floor says “so far so good.” No Trumpican looks better now than before while Democrats are producing a whole new group of people with national reputations for getting the job done.

Meanwhile the Trumpicans are only likely to look more and more foolish and inept, completely incapable of handling the real world but unable to escape the presidential game of make-believe. We are watching the governors of Georgia and Florida play “Simon Says.” They can act to protect their residents until they are given permission to do so. Truly he sucks all the oxygen out of the Trumpican tent until no one is left with any credibility.

Trumpican Behavior

Now consider the Presidential letter to Chuck Schumer. Keep in mind the perfect third-grade letter to Erdogan which is going to figure prominently in the Unpresidential Library. This time we have another unsolicited public example of his cognitive skills. Chris Cillizza, CNN Editor-at-large, refers to it as an “utterly childish letter.” He writes the letter “reads like a sort of Mad Libs you might fill out and leave in the locker of your 7th grade enemy.” Sounds exactly like something I would write about the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck. In fact, it is what I have been writing in blog after blog! He is not childish, he is a child. He has the brain of one.

And let’s not forget Nunes, the crooked clown’s performance on Fox.

The Trumpican Party performance from Pence on down has been pathetic. Nikki Haley is reconsidering her desire to become the Vice Presidential candidate after Pence is dumped when Biden names a female candidate. Is she really prepared to debase herself to the Trumpican level? Will she have more of a political future as a Republican or a Trumpican? Too early to tell.

In the meantime, consider what is happening at the ground level now that adult children have returned home due to the coronavirus. [NYT, 4/1/20] In this one example, a son is trying to convince his parents of the seriousness of the coronavirus. He also is trying to convince them of how the government completely trumped-up its handling of the crisis. Shouting matches were the result.

The parents resisted. “How could this happen [here]? It must be fake,” the son reported the parents as saying. The government couldn’t have attempted to cover it up and downplay it at first. Maybe a foreign government is responsible.

But over time, the real world began to sink it. The son said, “Things just got out of control. You could see people dying at home.”

The son in this example is Chinese, not Chinese-American, but Chinese. China has its own equivalents of Trumpicans, its own Hannitys.

Here is an example of an American Trumpican. In a phone call to Rush Limbaugh on March 13, Brian from Richmond, Va., said he wanted the President to say: “[D]on’t believe the fake news and the media hype. It’s not that serious.” [NYT, 4/2/20]

Perhaps all this talk about the end of days makes sense for Trumpicans. Perhaps they are willing to face the truth about their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed be his Name. I doubt it. Unless Trumpicans die in droves, Trumpicans aren’t going to take the coronavirus seriously. Eventually, however, the real world trumps the world of make-believe. The more the Trumpican governors show they are not up to handling this crisis, the more people die on their watch, the more they will be held accountable. The more We the People pull back the curtain and see there is nothing there, the less chance there is of a contested election and Nancy Pelosi becoming the first female President. On the other hand, Biden not Cuomo is the candidate.

He Really Could Stand in the Middle of 5th Avenue, Shoot Somebody, and Not Lose Voters

April 1, 2020
by Peter Feinman
The Cuomo-Trump Debates in America's Third Civil War (Granger Collection, New York)

On January 23, 2016, the future president of the United States speaking at a campaign rally in Sioux Center, Iowa, said:

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,”

This comment was an impromptu, unscripted, off-the-cuff remark. Prior to the rally, he had no idea that he would make such a comment. He was just showing off to the crowd about how loyal they were to him. He was expressing that loyalty in the strongest terms possible. After he made it, he had no idea of the implications of the comment or its consequences. His brain simply is not configured to think in those terms.

He didn’t even believe it. How own actions reveal that he did not think his assertion was true. It was and is true but because he didn’t believe it, he has done things he never needed to do.

For example, he had no need to pay hush money to the porn start and the playmate. Trumpicans couldn’t care less about family values, adultery, and campaign finance laws. It would be different if Barack Obama had done those things. It would be different if the previously impeached President had done those things. But it was a matter of complete indifference if their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed be his Name did them. Their ire was directed only against Michael Cohen, the fixer, for daring to tell the truth.

Similarly, there was no need to fire Jim Comey. Suppose Comey had launched a full investigation and discovered that the candidate had colluded with the Russians and laundered money for the Russian mob, so what? With Trumpican control of both houses of Congress nothing would have happened. New York at the federal and/or state level might have pursued criminal actions against him. He would not have cooperated with any such investigations and the district attorneys would have had to wait until he was no longer in office to get anywhere. But he wouldn’t have lost any votes.

We know that because a Special Prosecutor was appointed. And what happened? Despite finding 10 examples of obstruction, no action was taken. Did he lose any support? This example illustrates the importance of controlling the narrative. Imagine How Fox would report the shooting on 5th Avenue. First it would be hoax by the media mob and the Deep State intended to reverse the 2016 election. Its goal was to remove from office the duly elected by 63 million real American voters president. Then when Fox learned he really had shot someone, Fox would identify the person as Deep-State agent, Seth Rich, and he would be portrayed as a hero.

The same situation occurred with the Ukrainian extortion attempt and cover-up. In this instance Mick Mulvaney got it exactly right: “Sure we attempted to extort the Ukraine for our political benefit. That’s the way the game is played. Get over it.” This time an impeachment did occur. The Trumpican majority in the Senate said, “So what if he did everything of which he is accused?” If it been Obama that would have been a different story. Now it was “so what” with the official legal blessing of the OJ lawyer as well. And once again, he did not lose any support.

When the coronavirus first broke in China, China deployed the Trump Playbook. The Chinese Hannitys denied that anything had happened. They suppressed the whistleblowers who dared to tell the truth. Then when China seemingly had things under control, China bragged about the superb job they had done all along, worthy of a world leader.

Then in this country, the American Hannity went ballistic. He was livid in his denunciation of the Chinese. He directly blamed them for the unnecessary deaths that were occurring in Italy and elsewhere. He was furious at China for the deaths they had caused by not telling the truth and allowing the coronavirus to spread. He wanted China held accountable.

Now the American leader has done exactly what Hannity denounced the Chinese leader for doing. Now the death toll is rising in this country at an almost Italian-like rate. Under the watch of our President, we have become the world leader in the number of cases and will be in the number of deaths. Our leadership position will only increase in days and weeks to come.

The Speaker of the House has denounced the President of the United States for fiddling while Rome burned. That accusation is not fair since Nero was an adult. The Speaker now has asserted that the President of the United States is responsible for the deaths of Americans. Death has come to 5th Avenue. Death has come to Manhattan. Death has come to the five boroughs. Death has come to New York State. Death has come to America. Our Dear Leader did not cause the coronavirus, but he has maximized its deadly impact in the United States with his ineptitude, incompetence, ignorance, dishonesty, self-centeredness and simplemindedness.

Trumpicans deny the charges. It is the disloyal traitors scum who bear responsibility with their cutie pie nasty questions who are making things worse. And the coronavirus like AIDS is targeting people who aren’t real Americans anyway. Real Americans don’t have to fear the coronavirus. Many governors do not. A map of the United States showing which governors have acted and which haven’t looks like a map of the Union states and the Confederate states and like the 2016 elections.

From time to time, I have been writing about our third civil war (Battle Report from America’s Third Civil War: Trumpicans versus Democrats Since July 14, 2019). The lines are drawn in this fight but so far there only have been skirmishes. My expectation was that our Battle of Saratoga, our Battle of Gettysburg, our showdown at high noon would occur after the presidential election. I stand by that prediction.

If Joe Biden wins, the full force of the United States government will be unleashed to undermine that victory. There will be for all practical purposes no limits to what the Attorney General will do to reverse the results since the Democratic victor will not have been duly elected. If the polls showing a 9% lead for Biden persist throughout the campaign, the intensity of the attacks against him will ramp up. How violent the battle becomes remains to be seen.

If Joe Biden loses, tens of millions of people will have a meltdown. How could it be happening again? How could it be happening to when the victor is directly responsible for the deaths of Americans?

Whatever happened before the coronavirus will be forgotten. Who cares what John Bolton has to say? He missed his moment. The election will focus on the coronavirus. In part this means, we won’t know until the fall what the facts on the ground will be. We won’t know what the impact on the voters will be. The intensity of the struggle will ratchet up. After all, the conversation will be about death. Americans will become even more divided.

Here are the two competing campaign strategies.

Trumpicans will claim it is not by chance that our Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be his Name, is here at the precise moment the United States needed him to defeat the Chinese invasion and save the country. Truly he is our greatest president and the only one who could have saved us. Look at how few people died. Since there is no more room at Mount Rushmore, we need to find a new mountain to be named Mount Trump where his image can be carved.

Democrats will claim that the inept, incompetent, ignorant, immature, simpleminded, self-centered child is directly responsible for an increased number of deaths and a bigger decrease in the economy. They will want to hold the former President of the United States responsible.  A commission would be created after the new President takes office to prosecute him to the hilt. Perhaps Adam Schiff will lead that effort.

How this will play out is not certain. So far the coronavirus has not cooperated with the happy-talk of our immature child president playing make believe.  It just keeps infecting and killing people. Even he finally has learned to live somewhat in the real world. There is no more talk about just 15 people total and they are recovering. There is no more talk about the coronavirus just disappearing one day. There is no more talk about a miracle. And he has not lost any support for his mismanagement of the crisis. Instead, his poll numbers are up.

The coronavirus has been weaponized.

Florida gets it requests filled because it has a Trumpican governor and he needs that state to win.

Michigan is insulted because it is led by a nasty female Democrat. That woman has been banished to the cornfields (MAD DOG BANISHED TO THE CORNFIELDS: TWILIGHT ZONE EPISODE BECOMES REAL).

Does that mean he has abandoned any hope of winning Michigan this time even though it was important to him in 2016? Quite possibly.

But what about Florida? What if the virus continues to spread there? What happens if he can no longer meet the needs of the state? Is it possible Trumpicans will finally open their eyes to the truth of their savior’s shortcomings? It is possible but I wouldn’t hold my breath. Trumpicans would have to die in droves before they would even consider that possibility.

Let’s end with another campaign rally about killing people. There was a raucous professional political wrestling arena rally in the Panhandle in Florida. When he raised the subject of what should be done about people crossing in the United States illegally, a voice from the audience rang out, “Shoot them!” Everyone laughed. That person is a true Trumpican. That audience consisted of true Trumpicans. Are they still laughing now? Will they still be laughing in the weeks and months ahead if not only New Yorkers die but they do too? Too early to tell.

One safe prediction: expect to see Andrew Cuomo on the campaign trail all the time especially in Florida with its former New Yorkers. Those campaign exchanges will be heated. Move over Lincoln-Douglas debates, there is a new civil war brewing.

The Coronavirus Is Not AIDS: Do Trumpicans Know That?

March 27, 2020
by Peter Feinman
The Hollywood cast anti-vaccine successor to Fauci

The coronavirus is not AIDS. There is more to a disease than simply the disease itself. Another factor is the human reaction to the disease, the cultural perception of it. For example, lung cancer tends not to generate much sympathy except perhaps from the immediate family. Lung cancer often is viewed as a preventable occurrence if the afflicted did not engage in the disgusting habit of smoking. By contrast, breast cancer generates waves of sympathy for the innocent victim. There are walks for finding a cure, runs for finding one, and ribbons. The vibe is quite different. A celebrity can affect how a medical condition is perceived from Lou Gehrig to Michael Fox who have the condition to Jerry Lewis who did not.

The same circumstances applied to AIDS when it appeared back in the 1980s. There was a lot of fear about who could get and how it was transmitted. Eventually it was determined that three groups were most at risk:

male homosexuals
needle-using drug addicts
innocent victims of infected blood transfusions.

It was the third group which generated the most sympathy. The first two were victims of their own actions. These actions were considered to be disreputable if not outright sinful by sections of the American public. Real, that is, decent Americans had nothing to fear from this non-contagious disease. Celebrities who had the condition and celebrities who befriend those who had it helped change public opinion. Tom Hanks was connected to that condition too. Still, there was no denying that the perception of a disease affected the reaction to it and therefore the action We the People should take collectively through our government and with our tax dollars.

I was reminded of this scenario when I heard the President of the United States announce that so far no one in West Virginia has tested positive for coronavirus (a status that is no longer true). What was the purpose in making such a statement?

If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there, has it made a sound?

If a person is infected with the coronavirus and has not been tested, is there an epidemic?

So on one hand, there is a simple explanation for the comment by our inept, incompetent, ignorant, immature child President. He lacks the mental necessities to understand the correlation between testing and the number of people infected. He was not capable of understanding that in part due to his failed leadership that wasted weeks into months of time, we simply had not conducted enough tests to know what the actual infection exposure was in the country.

But I also realized that there was more to this comment than to dismiss it as something said in passing. The context of the comment was that real Americans like the people in West Virginia who voted overwhelming for him were less likely to be infected by the Chinese invasion than were the Democrats = disloyal people in New York who had not voted for him. My general comment is that Trumpicans would not take the coronavirus seriously unless they started dying in droves, something that so far has not happened.

This insight seemed to be substantiated by subsequent actions. Polls indicate that Trumpicans were less likely to take the coronavirus seriously than non-Trumpicans. Take for example, the gas-mask photo-op by House frat boy Maculate Conception Gaetz (see his Chris Cuomo interview to understand this nickname). His action expressed the sentiment being championed both by multiple Fox talk show hosts save Tucker Carlson and the Very-Stable-Genius whose uncle was a super-genius. The coronavirus was something that was happening in Washington State, California, and New York as if it were targeting “those” people and bypassing the real Americans who were immune.

This attitude continues to this day. Trumpican governors and Lt. Governors in Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas have belittled the need to take action against the coronavirus. By contrast, Democratic governors, most famously in New York, and Republican governors in Massachusetts, Maryland, and Ohio, have acted.

Here we may observe a continuation of actions in other areas. It would be interesting to compare the governors who have not acted against the coronavirus with those who have not chosen to extend Medicaid. It would be interesting to compare the people who reject the idea of climate change with those who reject the idea of a coronavirus in their state. Finally, it would be interesting to compare the people who are anti-vaccine with the people who would decline to take a coronavirus vaccine should one be invented.

FAUCI’S SUCCESSOR SELECTED

The internet is really amazing. I knew I wanted an image for this blog of photogenic Hollywood-cast Jenny “anti-vaccine” McCarthy as the successor science advisor to 79-year old Anthony Fauci. Even if she doesn’t replace him when he is shoved aside, there is an excellent chance that the replacement will be an unqualified loyalist just as we have seen with the two individuals appointed and nominated to be director of national intelligence. Professionalism is never a factor in appointments compared to loyalty.

But during the search for a photograph, I came across unexpected information. The famously germophobic President had a previous connection with the anti-vaccine movement in the United States. In fact, he donated $10,000, which is real money, to an anti-vaccine charity operated by Jenny McCarthy. He had observed her success in spreading her conspiracy theory just as he had had about the foreign-born Moslem president. The newly elected President in November 2016, even met with leaders of the anti-vaccination movement.

McCarthy has had real success in convincing people not to vaccinate their children. It became a problem in multiple school districts. The concept of the right of people to play Russian roulette with the lives of others was spreading. It had not reached the point of allowing people to drink and drive but it had reached the point of allowing unvaccinated kids to mingle with vaccinated ones. Despite the herd immunity theory, the number measles cases rose.  That reality convinced even the President of make-believe to support vaccinations.

One presumes then that when the now-past due miracle for the discovery occurs, he will support its usage. There are two caveats.

Suppose the vaccine is discovered in China.

Suppose he is no longer president.

LET THE PEOPLE GO

There is a legitimate discussion to be had about when we will be free to move about the cabin. It is quite reasonable to suggest the proportion of infected Americans will remain much lower than initially expected. Here in New York, the epidemic epicenter, it is hard to imagine even 10% of the population, approximately 2,000,000 people, becoming infected in the next few weeks. But we should wait and see.

Unfortunately, no such discussion about high, medium, and low infection rates at the county level will be held. The decision already was made probably by Tuesday when he mentioned earlier this week in a Fox town hall. From that point it was only a matter of waiting for it to become official. Trumpican governors will be encouraged to free their people as long as they don’t travel to states that are under lockdown. How exactly that will work out remains to be seen but it will back to normal for real Americans.

Why the fixation on Easter and churches full of people? He is not a religious person and does not attend church. I was thinking about why he so admires Queen Elizabeth. As it turns out his mother did and she passed that admiration on to her son. I wonder what Easter was like in the Trump family when he was growing up and what it meant to her mother. Just a thought about why the Easter date is so important to him.