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Donald Trump

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.

Trump Fires Fauci and Cuomo by Twitter: “Only I Can Save America”

March 24, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Abraham at Sodom: How Many? (reformedfellowship.net)

Donald Trump, our Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Bless be His Name, has tweeted that director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci and Governor Andrew Cuomo have been fired under his powers of Article 2 where he can do anything. The Very Stable Genius, the smartest person in the room as long as it is a morgue or a nursery school with no adults present, thanked them for their work and then sent them on their way.

Did anyone think that when the Vice President of the United States was put in charge of the crisis team that it meant that he would be in charge? That he would be making the presentations to the American people? If you thought that then you shouldn’t be a reporter and probably not a voter either. Vice President Brown Nose knows his place and it is not center stage. That position is reserved. Your job is to genuflect and sing my praises at least once every five sentences.

Obviously Fauci did not get the memo. He thought that as the professional in the field, the American people should hear from him. He did not realize that the uncle of our Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed Be His Name, was a supergenius and that the medical people were amazed at much the President absorbed and understood what they were saying.  Therefore Fauci was superfluous. He was retained only by the kindness of our sympathetic, empathetic and pathetic President.

And how did Fauci replay this kindness? By hogging the center stage, by continually correcting the false information communicated by the Very Stable Genius, and even boasting of these actions to the media. Such disloyal actions cannot be tolerated. Remember what happened to Mick Mulvaney when he said “Of course we tried to extort the Ukrainian president. That’s how the game’s played. Get over it.” He’s I Ireland now. The 79-year old Fauci is even older than Biden, older than Sanders, as old as I will be when I start my third term. It’s time for Fauci to spend some time with his family and stop complaining about only getting three hours of sleep each night.

As for Cuomo, what can be said about the Queens bro. We grew up together as longtime Democrats and Clinton supporters with very successful fathers. Now look at you. Holding daily press briefings on your own. Displaying a command of the data instead of rambling all over the map with disjointed thoughts. Having an organized presentation using PowerPoint. Sticking to a planned performance while also speaking without a script. Showing sympathy. Showing empathy. Not making it all about you. These characteristics are unforgivable. If you were the Democratic nominee for President, I would be in big trouble now. You are too visible!

Now it is time for the Very Stable Genius to show who is boss. Now it is time for the smartest person in the room to save America. Now it is time to show that I should not be added to Mount Rushmore but should have my own mountain. Now I will reveal to the world my plan to save it. It will be so brilliant and so great that people will be in awe of it.

What are the prime factors in making such a plan?

First, it is all about me.
Second, it is all about me.
Third, it is all about me.

That means I must be re-elected as America’s greatest president and keep my immunity. Look at what happens when all your life you are pond-scum slime and it finally catches up with you. Did you see what happened to Epstein? Suicide? Did you see what is happening to Weinstein? A medically broken man who can barely hold himself up even with assistance! I can’t let that happen to me. Got to be re-elected. Got to get the Dow Jones back up where it should be.

Why not just let everyone go back to normal and America rise from the dead by Easter? Let’s see what happens and focus on the bad spots like New York City.

Suppose Americans die? How many?  Worst case scenario: If every American got the coronavirus and 1% died that would be about 3.3 million people? But suppose the economy was saved. Is that acceptable? They keep saying you can’t put a price on human life but we do that all the time. Ever hear of life insurance? How about the 9/11 commission that distributed the money after I had the tallest building in Lower Manhattan? Of course, we can put a price on human life and as the president with no empathy and no sympathy I am the best qualified person to do it.

Suppose instead of 100% of the people getting the coronavirus only 50% do based on common predictions, only 1.65 million people died, and the economy was saved. Is that acceptable?

Suppose the doctors who predict 20% of the people getting the coronavirus are right, only 660,000 people died, and the economy was saved? That’s less than he people who died in the Civil War. Is that acceptable?

Suppose we have mitigated the curve and continue to do so in the bad spots? Is that acceptable?

And how many people have died so far anyway> How does that compare with the number of people murdered annually? The number who commit suicide? The number in car accidents? The number from drug overdoses? We don’t close the country because of those actions do we? And the number of coronavirus deaths is less than any of those yet alone all of them.

We know how Abraham’s bargaining with the Lord over the destruction of Sodom worked out. We don’t know how it will play out in the mind of our immature child president who is not capable of having such a discussion and instead relied his gut and Fox.

And whatever decision I make, how am I going to explain it to the American people? In my usual baby talk? By making it all about me? By calling the dead “collateral damage”? In another disastrous Oval Office address written by idiots and delivered by a moron? Trumpicans will believe anything I say, college-educated women won’t. But in times of trouble, people want a leader. Regardless of what I do as long as I am doing something as the leader my poll numbers will go up. But suppose my plan doesn’t work, can I talk my way out of it even with Putin’s and Fox’s help?

The countdown has started. Invisible Joe Biden has until just before Easter to become relevant.

Would You Blame a Dead Pet Rock for Mismanaging the Coronavirus Crisis?

March 22, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Is It Smarter than a President? (Amazon.com)

Would you blame a dead pet rock for mismanaging the coronavirus crisis? Of course not. The question is absurd. A dead pet rock isn’t capable of managing a crisis yet alone mismanaging one. The fault is in you for asking it to do something that is inherently impossible for it to do.

Why blame Donald Trump for his failure to manage the coronavirus crisis? He is inherently incapable of being an adult. HE IS NOT RESPONSIBLE!

Why blame Donald Trump for the additional deaths due to his failure to manage the coronavirus crisis? IT’S CHINA!

Why blame Donald Trump for the accelerated economic collapse due to his failure to manage the coronavirus? IT’S THE DEEP STATE!

There is no constructive purpose served in affixing responsibility now on the person who is even more out of his league as president than a dead pet rock would be. At least the dead pet rock would not exclaim the ignorant absurdities this President dishes out daily. It’s not fair to judge him by adult standards since he isn’t one.

There will come a time when the next administration conducts an investigation through an appropriately named commission to document all the shortcomings of THE GREATEST FAILURE IN AMERICAN HISTORY. So not only won’t he be THE BIGGEST FINANCIAL LOSER IN AMERICAN HISTORY, he will become THE WORST PRESIDENT IN AMERICAN HISTORY.

Right now the press is making a big fuss about overlooked intelligence service reports and mock simulations. On paper they both warned of a virus crisis and declared that one was now upon us. What makes you think this President has the cognitive skills to read, understand, and act upon these reports? Everything we have learned from former and sometimes current White House employees consistently states that this individual simply cannot process such reports. They would have to be dumbed down and simplified to an elementary school level so in 15-30 seconds they could be digested. In addition, every third line would have to tell him how great he is. Think of the failed effort of HHS Secretary Alex Azar even to inform the President of the seriousness of the coronavirus crisis. By background he is a successful lobbyist for the drug industry. While there are grounds for questioning his qualifications, it should be noted that he is an adult and he has some expertise with viruses precisely because he had to have some knowledge to be a successful lobbyist. Still, he could not get through to this president.

Nothing could until the stock market collapsed. At last there was something that he could understand!

Now let’s examine his thinking skills.

Mitt Romney ran the worst campaign ever.

Crooked Hillary was the worst Secretary of State ever.

Nancy Pelosi is the worst Speaker of the House ever.

NAFTA is the worst trade treaty ever.

I give myself a 10.

I am the smartest person in the room.

I was the best baseball player in New York (but couldn’t play professionally because of business).

I would have been a great soldier (except for the bonespurs that I know were on one of my feet).

Greatest first year/two years of a President ever.

Notice a pattern here? At the level of his brain functions, there are only two possibilities: the best and the worst. There is nothing else. Is this the management level thinking needed during a crisis? Is this the judgement we need in a leader?

Consider his recent exchange with NBC reporter Peter Alexander. When I first heard the question I groaned. Why oh why is this reporter giving the Narcissist in Chief another opportunity to brag about how he is a ten? And why is the network choosing to replay this scene? Doesn’t that qualify as cruel and unusual punishment? Couldn’t you spare us a rerun of this self-centered person telling America how great he is? Then I heard the answer. I was stunned. I could not understand the connection between the puff piece question and the vitriol of the answer.

Then I realized why.

There are two principles to remember when seeking to understand this person:

1 He will always be an immature child
2 He will be the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb every opportunity he has even when you think he doesn’t have one.

The phrase I have used is “playtime is over.” Now he has to function in the real world.

Let’s try to determine his mental state. Imagine a room of worried, concerned, upset adults. The child in that room senses the mood. So does a dog for that matter. The cause in this case is Grandma has cancer. The child may never have heard the word cancer before and have no idea what it means. The child can say the word “cancer” but has yet to develop the mental necessities to understand what it is and why people are so upset. Similarly, that child would be incapable of understanding the medical, emotional, and psychological meaning of a pandemic.

Now it is becoming harder and harder for Little Donnee Waney to play make-believe. He is trying as best he can to ignore, bad-mouth, and trash-talk his way out of this situation but it is just not working. What we witnessed with the NBC reporter is a moment when the President of the United States cracked under pressure. The real world is getting to him. He can’t fix the stock market. He can’t make the coronavirus go away. He can’t even hold professional political wrestling rallies where he can mock, demean and insult people all he wants. Imagine how he will react if he sees a poll with Sleepy Creepy Joe Biden beating him. Imagine how he will react if he sees such a poll on Fox. Imagine how he will react if he thinks he is about to lose his presidential immunity. The Alexander exchange is just a preview. We can anticipate more and more moments where the real world overwhelms the immature child playing adult make believe.

Right now, the only check and balance on this President is Anthony Fauci.

FAUCI IS THE NUMBER ONE CORRECTION OFFICER IN THE UNITED STATES TODAY.

His job is to correct the President and protect the people from the nonsense that spews forth on a daily basis. It is a wonder he has any time to do actual scientific work.

So where can We the People turn?

The Governor of New York is trying to fill the gap. The Governor of New York is trying to be what the Mayor of New York was after 9/11. But the Governor is well aware that more is needed. The governor of a state cannot be the national voice for an epidemic that is affecting every state. Who can be?

Joe Biden.

Imagine if we had a parliamentary system. Imagine if we had an opposition leader who could offer an alternative voice to the person in charge. Imagine if we had an opposition leader who could call the person in charge to task. Imagine if we had an opposition leader who could command media attention. We do not have a parliamentary system but we do have a presidential election year. We do know who the Democratic candidate is going to be.

We do not have the luxury of waiting until late January, 2021, to find out what he would do.

We do not have the luxury of waiting until the fall campaign to hear what he would do?

We do not have the luxury of waiting for the summer party platforms to read what he would do?

Fauci is not enough, we need Biden to speak out and correct the President. We need Biden to offer comfort, to show empathy, to express sympathy. And we need Joe Biden to identify the team who will lead the country out of the crisis that the current President helped create. Who will be your Vice President? Who will be your medical people? Who will be your economic people? Who will be your people who can elevate Cuomo’s message to the national level and provide America with a path forwards. What is your plan? The time has come to end the Democratic primary campaign and begin the national campaign with a full team. In this crisis we need to act as if we were a parliamentary system even though we aren’t.

Can China Leverage the Coronavirus to World Leadership?

March 19, 2020
by Peter Feinman
Putin's strawberries (Reuters / Centers for Disease Control)

When the coronavirus first erupted in Wuhan, China, the Chinese government deployed the Trump playbook. It denied that there was a problem. It repressed those who sought to tell the truth. It questioned the whistleblowers. It unleashed the China Hannitys. There was no coronavirsus. There was no coverup. Fake News.

The real situation was illuminated in the title of an article by Li Yuan, the Hong Kong based reporter for The New York Times “China’s Rifts Laid Bare by Outbreak” (January, 29, 2020, print). She quoted a Chinese newspaper editor who wrote:

The local government’s tolerance level of different online voices is way too low…Government agencies have weakened he checks-and-balance function of the Chinese news media.  

She cited two online comments made in response to the coronavirus:

“The current system looks so vibrant, yet it’s shattered completely by a governance crisis,” one user wrote on the social media site Weibo.

“We gave up our rights in exchange for protection,” the user wrote. “But what kind of protection is it? Where will our long-lasting political apathy lead us?”

Comments like this led her to conclude:

From the outside, China’s Communist Party appears powerful and effective. It has tightened its control over Chinese politics and culture, the economy and everyday life, projecting the image of a gradually unifying society.

The coronavirus outbreak has blown up that facade.

My own blog February 4, Kobe and Coronavirus: Meaning for World War IV expressed a similar negative perspective on the Middle Kingdom’s outlook. At the point, the conditions. The coronavirus was rampant with no end in sight. In addition to the medical emergency, there were the economic consequences which were impossible to gauge not only for China but for the rest of the world increasingly dependent on China.

Following the thread of Li Yuan’s articles, she subsequently wrote:

China Targets the Coronavirus, and Farmers Pay a Price (Jan. 31, 2020, online)

Coronavirus Crisis Shows China’s Governance Failure (Feb. 4, 2020, online)

Widespread Outcry in China Over Death of Coronavirus Doctor (Feb. 7, 2020, online)

In Coronavirus Fight, China Sidelines an Ally: Its Own People (Feb. 19, 2020, print)

The coronavirus outbreak has exposed the jarring absence in China of a vibrant civil society — the civic associations like business groups, nonprofit organizations, charities and churches that bring people together without involving the government.

Think of it as the nervous system that helps a society move smoothly and briskly — something Benjamin Franklin recognized over 200 years ago when he organized Philadelphia’s first volunteer fire department, first public library and first charity hospital. “It is prodigious the quantity of good that may be done by one man, if he will make a business of it,” he wrote in 1783.

Score one for America!

Coronavirus Weakens China’s Powerful Propaganda Machine (Feb. 27, 2020, print)

Beijing is tapping its old propaganda playbook as it battles the relentless coronavirus outbreak, the biggest challenge to its legitimacy in decades.

The problem for China’s leaders: This time, it isn’t working so well.

Online, people are openly criticizing state media.

Could the China Hannitys be failing? Are the mainland Chinese (not Hong Kong Chinese) failing to be good little obedient national Communists? What is the Chinese government to do?

Evidently, the Chinese government did something. A different New York Times reporter, Javier Hernandez, provided an entirely different perspective than the continual negative drumbeat of Yuan.

China, in Propaganda Push, Boasts of Response to Crisis (February 29, 2020, print)

According to this article, the Communist Party “is trying to rehabilitate its image as a model for the world.

SOME COUNTRIES SLOW TO RESPOND TO VIRUS read one headline. Gosh, I wonder what country the Chinese meant. As of February 29, in the United States, the corona virus was still a hoax, round three of the media-mob/Deep-State attack in the attempt to undermine the duly elected President of the United States. So claimed the American President and his propaganda outlet.

Hernandez reports that the Party officials were now trying to spin the coronavirus crisis as a testament to the strength of China’s authoritarian system and, of course, to its leader, Xi Jinping.

Mr. Xi has appears eager to reframe the crisis as a triumph for the party and for a vindication of his efforts to strengthen its control over everyday life in China.  

Can you imagine an American President trying to rewrite history as the Chinese leader has to show he is the hero and savior who knew all along it was a pandemic?

The China Hannitys claim that it is the United States political system that is not capable of dealing effectively with an outbreak. Whether or not they could make that claim in we had an adult in the White House is undetermined.

In March, the tide seems to be turning from the failure of China in January to a position of world leadership. The slowing of new cases of the coronavirus to zero in China matches the claim the American President made weeks ago about the 15 cases in America also soon to disappear like a miracle. The number now exceeds 10,000, no, now 11,000, no, now 11,600 and rising. The miracle is nowhere in sight. We still have to spike.

It is easy to understand why China thinks it is in a position not only to gloat but to magnanimously offer assistance to countries in need. Remember the Marshall Plan? Now it is the Chinese who have the masks and testing kits the rest of the world needs including the United States. It is not only in 5G where the United States is second and not really competing, it is on the coronavirus battlefield as well.

Xi Jinping’s victory appearance in Wuhan on March 9 was that of leader strutting his stuff. While other nations (Iran and Italy) and rival America are just beginning to gear up to confront the coronavirus, China is looking back on its triumph, looking ahead on its desire to move forward, and looking around at its willingness to help the less fortunate among the world. Other countries make talk about 40-70% of its population becoming infected – not in China.

There is no talk of 500 million Chinese being infected by the coronavirus.
There is no talk of 75-100 million Chinese requiring hospitalization.
There is no talk of 10-20 million Chinese requiring ventilators.
There is no talk of 5 million Chinese dead from the coronavirus.

True, there is no vaccine so there always is the problem of resurgence.

As prophecies go the infamous article China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia by Walter Russell Mead (Wall Street Journal, February 3, 2020, online) seems to have missed the mark.

The mighty Chinese juggernaut has been humbled this week, apparently by a species-hopping bat virus.

At present, the Chinese juggernaut has survived the virus and is ready to revive its economy…which will be a challenge give the dire straits of its customers. By contrast, it is the United States which has been exposed as the sick man of the world. It was in denial for two months and is poorly prepared to even test yet alone treat those infected and it is only beginning to prepare for the economic challenge and changes to daily life which will ensue.

These changes have led to an extraordinarily surreal moment in coverage by the government propaganda network in the United States. Suddenly the American Hannity is woke to the reality of the crisis. Suddenly he is aware of the consequences when a leader fails to act during that critical first month. Suddenly he has berated and castigated the Chinese Hannitys for their deceptive and dishonest coverage of the coronavirus as propaganda arms of the government. The American Hannity has taken the Chinese government to task for its cover-up and lies. He identified China as contributing to the current medical emergencies in Iran and Italy visited by Chinese because the government failed to tell the truth. People were dying as a result and the American Hannity blamed the Chinese Hannitys and the government for them.

In effect, the American Hannity’s message was:

If a drug manufacturer similarly had covered up the truth, it would be criminally negligent.
If an airline manufacturer similarly had covered up the truth, it would be criminally negligent.
If a car manufacturer similarly had covered up the truth, it would be criminally negligent.

Shouldn’t a government be held to the same standard? How many people have died and will die because the leader of a country was in denial and sought to repress the truth? How many people still don’t recognize a crisis exists because for months that is what their Lord and Savior, the Chosen One, Blessed be his Name and his propaganda apostles have told them? How many jobs will be lost due this criminal negligence?

The American President has said the United States is in war, that we will triumph over the invasion, the invaders from China. He is right to recognize that it is a war but he has failed to identify the enemy. The coronavirus like 5G and the newspaper reporters is a battlefield but the war is with China.

For three years our immature child President got to play at being President. Now he has to face three crises at once:

1. the national medical emergency unprecedented save perhaps for the flu epidemic of 1918
2. the economic collapse unprecedented save perhaps for the Depression
3. the battle between the City on a Hill with China for world leadership  – Who Will Win World War IV?

In a blog only a week ago, I commented on how much fun our Dear Leader has doing the penguin walk at professional political wrestling arenas (One Small Step for the Penguin-Walk President or One Giant Leap for the Fox President?). It reflects his idea of what adults expect a president to be. Do you think once such rallies are possible again, he still will perform the penguin walk? Do you think he is starting to realize that there is more to being president than he knew? Do you think he understands that even though he is not an adult, Americans want a president who acts like one?

World War II marked the emergence of the United States as the center of the world. It had supplanted England as world leader symbolized by the United Nations headquartering in New York. Now that city struggles with its increasing number of coronavirus cases and Times Square, the crossroads of the universe is empty. Instead the coronavirus witnesses the emergence of a new world order where all roads lead to China. Does Bonespur Boy have the right stuff to go into the arena and triumph in America’s moment of need?

Tom Hanks and Donald Trump, Round II

March 16, 2020
by Peter Feinman
"It's going to be just fine." (Opinion Weekly)

Tom Hanks and Donald Trump were the subject of the blog Tom Hanks versus Our Immature Child-President (August 8, 2017). The blog compared the characteristics of the two 13-year olds in the bodies of adults, one in the REEL world and one in the REAL world. It was easy to contrast the two (one could read a book the other couldn’t). The primary basis for the difference was that the Tom Hanks adult was based on a level-headed child while the Donald Trump adult was based on an immature child as father Fred Trump well knew when at age 13, he shipped Little Donee Waney off to military school in the vain hope that he would grow up.

Without knowing it, that blog anticipated the issue we are now facing with the coronavirus. Here is what I wrote about the Tom Hanks character:

Tom Hanks’s job was to play. His job was to utilize what appeared to adults to be his child-like sensibilities to play with toys. He job was to maximize their economic value by designing toys that better appealed to actual children. The joke was that no one realized he really was a child. Still, no one ever considered putting him in charge of the manufacture of toys. No one ever considered putting him in an administrative position. He had the perfect job that matched his abilities: being a child.

As an intelligent level-headed child in the body of an adult, Tom Hanks knew the difference between work and play. He had no objections to fun and chaos but no one would ever put him in a position where he had to managed adults or function in an organized manner. He hadn’t yet reached the maturity where he could do such things. That time was still off to the future. By contrast, the ignorant immature child in the body of man now in the White House when he isn’t out playing golf, never reached that level of maturity. He is only capable of chaos. It is not a management-style choice by adult, it is the limit of his mental capabilities as an immature child.

Children are not prosecuted as adults because they lack the capacity to know right from wrong and to recognize that actions have consequences. They simply lack the mental necessities to function as adults and are not expected to (excluding the stories of the parentless children where the oldest now has to act as the parent to the younger siblings).  Children have imaginary friends. Children make up stories. Eventually they outgrow them except for those who become novelists, comic book writers, or who write screen plays in Hollywood who can tap into that childhood sensibility.

Now We the People are dealing in the real world with a President of the United States who does not have the mental necessities to function as an adult in the real world. He still lives not in an alternate reality, an adult term, but the make-believe world of childhood.

A group of children with the Sunrise Movement, a climate advocacy group, went into Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s office to sway her vote on the Green New Deal. The California Democrat fired back. (USA TODAY 2/22/19)

Take for example the incident where a group of young girls ganged up on Senator Dianne Feinstein. Regardless of the specific topic and regardless of whether you agreed with those children or not, would you consider putting them in charge in the adult world? Obviously not.

Now think of young voters in the 20s. They may live at home with a parent or parents. They may be covered by the insurance of a parent…or maybe they aren’t anymore. They may have student loans. They may not have a 9-5 job with pension and medical benefits and instead have a random schedule of “shifts” in a gig economy. Is that the traditional image of young adulthood?

Think of Friends. In the pilot, Rachel Green abandons her wedding in her wedding dress, a traditional path to adulthood for women. Instead she runs off to the city. The next day she goes looking for the “job thing.” She returns to the apartment which is a steal due to rent control and announces that she is qualified for nothing. Yet she is surprisingly happy. She displays the source of her happiness: some expensive boots she just bought on sale. Wouldn’t you be happy?

Donald Trump refusing to take $413 million from his father so he can be a self-made man (Friends Pilot)

She is asked how she paid for the boots. The answer mumbled under her breath is that her father pays for the credit card. Her friends then encourage her to cut the cord. CUT! CUT! CUT! She cuts the cards. “Welcome to the real world. It sucks.” Rachel did not have a rich daddy who could give her $413 million on her way to becoming the biggest financial loser in American history. The principle is the same. There is a transition from being the child dependent on the parent to being able to take care of oneself. That does not mean cutting all ties with parents. It refers to the American Dream of being able to make something of your life. In Friends and the Big Bang Theory, these twenty-somethings venture out into the adult world and through many trials and tribulations (so the shows can keep going year after year!) they finally reach the cusp of adulthood, married with child and maybe a house, the starting point for Father Knows Best, Leave it to Beaver, and The Dick Van Dyke Show from the old days.

By contrast, Little Donnee Waney remained trapped, through no fault of his own, as an immature child in the body of an adult who never grew up. Consider these comments.

Would an adult liar claim there are only 15 cases of coronavirus in the United States? No, because an adult would know that claim would be too easy to fact check and he would be exposed as a liar, idiot or both in a few days.

Would an adult liar claim those cases would go down to zero in a few days? No, because an adult would know that claim would be too easy to fact check and he would be exposed as a liar, idiot or both in a few days.

Would an adult liar claim that a vaccine would be ready and available shortly? No, because an adult would know that claim would be too easy to fact check and he would be exposed as a liar, idiot or both in a few days.

Would an adult liar claim that one day soon the coronavirus would disappear like a miracle? No, because an adult would know that claim would be too easy to fact check and he would be exposed as a liar, idiot or both in a few days.

These assertions are not the words of an adult liar but an immature child playing make-believe. Tallying his lies serves no constructive purpose since he frequently is too ignorant to know the truth and too busy playing make-believe.

If you are serious about wanting to understand how the mind of Little Donnee Waney works, don’t consult an adult psychiatrist, ask a child psychiatrist. They can explain how the brain develops and did not it this case.

If you are serious about wanting to understand how the mind of the seventh-grade-smart-aleck-dumb-aleck works, ask the people most familiar with them people: a seventh-grade guidance counselor or seventh-grade teacher. Or go to a high school or college reunion where there is bound to be at least person who never fully grew up.

In 1986, after the Challenger disaster, Ronald Reagan said:

We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them this morning as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of earth to touch the face of God.

People can rise to the occasion in a crisis.  Can you imagine if the person who just delivered the worst presidential address ever even tried to say something inspiring? By contrast our immature child president is limited to

LOCK HER UP!
BUILD A WALL!
FAKE NEWS HOAX!

No. I don’t take responsibility at all.
I don’t know anything about it.
It’s a nasty question.

That’s the limit of leadership We the People can expect from our immature child-president whose natural venue is the professional political wrestling arena. Unfortunately We need more.