Update from the Sunland
No.952
6.4.20 – 12.4.20
Blog version: http://heartlandupdate.blogspot.com/
To all,
Now, on Tuesday, true to his moniker, the Bully-in-Chief (BIC) threatened the World Health Organization (WHO), claiming the WHO failed to alert the world regarding the pandemic threat out of some misguided preference for the PRC. [NOTE: The threatening words were the BIC’s spoken words, not anything generated by the Press.] This particular episode is precisely why he deserves the moniker Bully-in-Chief, because that is exactly what he is and how he acts. He emphatically does NOT act like a proper POTUS or even a smidgen of a leader in a free society, and thus he does not deserve the title of president. He blames everyone else except himself. He is simply not worthy to hold that office on behalf of We, the People.
Further, I am beginning to see signs of his direct attempts to negate the constitutional election process in November of this year.
Then, we have Doctor BIC who persists in pushing Hydroxychloroquine, an anti-malarial drug, against the counsel of the medical experts just because someone told him that some obscure doctor somewhere thought it was having anecdotal positive effects with a few suspected COVID19 patients. Sadly, the first question that persistently comes to me in these discussions is, what is in it for him? Does he have some hidden deal to profit from pushing Hydroxychloroquine? These are the depth we are brought to in the BIC’s character flaws.
The BIC goes on to publicly state:
“You have to understand I am a cheerleader for this country. I don’t want to create havoc and shock and everything else. I’m not going to go out and start screaming this could happen, this could happen.”
I have said this before, and I must say it again; if only the BIC had studied just a little bit of history, he might have been a little better prepared to lead us through this episode. Prime Minister Winston Churchill led his nation, and arguably the free world, through the darkest of days, weeks and months during the summer of 1940 with his words and actions. The BIC is a very long way from Churchill’s stature as a leader, but the BIC could have learned from studying Churchill. When the BIC says he is a cheerleader, he is abdicating his role as the quarterback or coach to winning the game. Sure, the cheerleader is important, but the cheerleader cannot win the game. Churchill chose the facts he needed to inform the people of what they faced and offered words of resolute defiance of the enemy the British faced in the summer of 1940. The BIC’s situation is different, and yet it is quite similar.
Especially on this specific issue, I do not care a hoot what the BIC thinks or feels. I only care about the scientists and medical professionals. The BIC is NOT one of those. The pharmaceutical approval process is there for a reason—to protect We, the People. He seeks to shortcut the tried and true methodical process because he has a hunch—a gut feel. His conduct may be acceptable for his personal life, but it is categorically unacceptable to a nation he was elected to lead.
The worst part of all this . . . he will use his usual chaos, confusion, obfuscation, and subterfuge in his desperate attempt to mask the truth . . . even if he knows the truth. This is what the BIC does and does so well. Some of us may not like how the BIC acts or what the BIC does, but some people do, and others look the other way because they think they are getting something they want from this despicable man. God help us all.
Despite the BIC’s insults to the Press and incessant, blatantly false claims to the contrary, the testing and supply of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) are not in ample quantities for the states. The Office of the Inspector General, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), issued a report of “pulse surveys” conducted March 23–27, 2020, with hospital administrators from 323 hospitals across 46 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The report concluded, “Hospitals described specific challenges, mitigation strategies, and needs for assistance related to personal protective equipment (PPE), testing, staffing, supplies, and durable equipment; maintaining or expanding facility capacity; and financial concerns”—quite the opposite of what the BIC has been persistently telling us. Numerous spot reports from a wide variety of Press outlets report exactly the same thing as the IG.
The difficulty in accusing anyone, including the BIC, of lying is that of intention. He perpetrator must “know” he is saying (or writing) something that is false. The BIC may be clinically incapable of knowing or understanding the truth. Regardless of his intentions, the words he is speaking in public before the nation and the world are FALSE! As we have known for many years, long before he became president, the BIC is incapable of telling the truth.
This week, we witnessed what I suspect will be a preview of what is likely to come in November. On Tuesday the 7th, Wisconsin held its primary election . . . but not without considerable controversy. We still do not have the results since a week’s wait was part of a deal that did not happen.
Governor Anthony Steven Evers of Wisconsin faced quite the conundrum in the weeks prior to the election. POTUS declared a national emergency on 13.March in the rapidly spreading COVID19 crisis. On that day, Governor Evers declared a statewide public health emergency and initiated shelter-in-place orders on the 24th. He also decided to not postpone the primary election, but with requests for absentee ballots overwhelming the state’s election system, the Governor extended the counting of absentee, mail-in ballots by one week (thus the week noted above). Republicans objected, and the legal challenges quickly escalated. On Monday, the 6th, the Supreme Court issued an odd Per Curiamruling that was most definitely NOT a unanimous opinion of the court. The ruling upheld a lower court stay on the governor’s order to extend counting of absentee ballots—Republican National Committee v. Democratic National Committee (RNC v. DNC) [589 U. S. ____ (2020)]. Associate Justice Ginsburg wrote for the four dissenting justices and concluded, “Now, under this Court’s order, tens of thousands of absentee voters, unlikely to receive their ballots in time to cast them, will be left quite literally without a vote.” So, the day before the election, Wisconsin voters were left with a choice—violate the lockdown to vote at their designated polling station, or not vote, or at least not have their vote counted. In essence, Associate Justice Kavanaugh, writing for the majority of the Supremes, said . . . sorry folks, rules are rules, regardless of the circumstances.
On Tuesday, many Wisconsin residents stood in long lines, six feet apart, for a very long time in the chilly springtime air. We are supposed to get the results this coming Tuesday.
I fear the RNC v. DNC ruling portends a very rocky road ahead as we grapple with the consequences of the COVID19 pandemic and the constitutionally mandated election on Tuesday, November 3rd. Desperate times lead desperate people to do desperate things. Republicans are desperate to retain Executive power in the persona of the BIC—it is their only choice. So, Republicans in various states will do anything and everything to reduce vote counts, which in turn favors Republicans. As I have written before, the BIC is quite capable of creating sufficient chaos and uncertainty to postpone the election or negate the results of the election to retain power. The electoral process has already been disrupted. The questions before us over the next seven months will be how far will this disruption go, and how will it affect or alter the outcome?
Comments and contributions from Update no.951:
Comment to the Blog:
“As the excellent statistics-and-predictions blog fivethirtyeight (.com) has pointed out, useful numbers around the panic/pandemic don’t exist. In their post on the subject, they point out the lack of standards for data gathering, differing choices around who’s tested, and the ignoring of collateral damage due to the response. Deaths and damage due to mental health/domestic violence/addiction issues, lack of available medical resources for other needs, and the collapse of the economy will be counted later. For now, no sound numbers are available for any aspect of the panic.
“My guess is that we’re near the peak of new novel coronavirus cases, at least here in Ohio. Flu season continues, but that should ebb soon also.
“I want to give credit where credit is due. Governor Inslee (D) of Washington and Governor DeWine (R) of Ohio have acted as effectively as possible given the situation without the showboating of Governor Cuomo.
“The next sentence is mostly not about Trump. Simply trying to scare people into carrying out your orders is dreadfully poor communication. Outside the military, the backfires typically overwhelm the result you sought. Angry blame gets even worse results. We do indeed need to discuss our national resilience, but I’ll wait until calm returns.
“We have discussed the FISA ‘courts’ and the PATRIOT Act before. We need to dispose of that entire error and find saner ways to function as a nation.
“We shall see whether the state of emergency ends as the danger of the virus ebbs.
“I don’t address conspiracy theories.
“Your other comment had a good idea, although I don’t know how to carry it out. Does the Chump even play on golf courses he doesn’t own? He wouldn’t be much good as a groundskeeper, but maybe the PGA would give him a job.”
My response:
You raise numerous good points regarding “the numbers.” I would add, the failure of the USG to have established standards gives us false numbers, but they are better than nothing, but cannot be considered accurate. The number of deaths is pretty close to a hard number, but that would only be true if every death is tested for COVID19 infection. For example, death by pneumonia occurs for many reasons, not just COVID19. The number of infections is suspicious because of general testing failure. The BIC loves to claim the USG has performed 1.6M tests and that is the best in the world; what he thinks we are too stupid to recognize is, 1.6M (even if true & accurate) is a spit in the ocean with a population of 330M (0.5%)—hardly statistically significant. He is desperate to erase his failures in the first two months of this event.
I sincerely hope Ohio is near the peak. The only ones who appear to have peaked are RoK and PRC (if we could believe their reporting). This too shall pass . . . in time.
I would add Governor Newsom of California. I’m not quite so hard on Governor Cuomo. His daily briefings are a little quirky for me, but I give him credit for his concerted efforts to accurately report the situation in New York. I have far more faith in his reporting than I do in the BIC’s reporting. He also handles himself in front of the Press infinitely better than the BIC does. The BIC’s abysmal performance in Monday’s briefing was a demonstration of his shallowness, egocentricity, and incompetence. His persistent attacks on the Press for doing their job is impeachable, IMHO.
Just one comment on national resilience: we have endured the BIC’s persistent misconduct and incompetence for nearly four years. That is resilience.
We need something better to replace the FISA & PATRIOT Act. Until we do, they are the best we have, and we must make them work as efficiently as possible. Much like the PPACA; it is far from perfect, but it is better than what we had.
Do you suspect the current national emergency would not end when the COVID19 crisis ebbs, as it inevitably will? To be candid, I truly fear the BIC might try to use this situation to suspend the Nov’2020, or worse to invalidate any results not in his favor.
Re: conspiracy theories: neither do I! They are a waste of my precious time. And, any effort I expend, as I did in the TWA 800 event 25 years ago, serves no purpose, since people wish to believe what they want to believe, not what is true.
It is well past time for him to be gone. He should confine himself to being a doting grandfather, but he probably fails at that as well.
. . . Round two:
“A couple of short notes. The form of ‘resilience’ that concerns me today is specifically disaster preparedness. The early analysis attributes much of our failure in this specific event to corporations and governments using the ‘just in time’ production and logistics methods developed during the 1960s and 1970s in Japan. My courses on this referred to it as ‘just in time rather than just in case,’ and allowed a certain level of risk. It saves money. Essentially what many current sources agree on is that now, the ‘just in case’ risk has materialized--as it always will at some time in some form. Given the course of this event outside of South Korea, I agree. While we're focused on the lock-down, the best practice for meeting type of event includes having large amounts of skilled people, test kits, personal protective equipment (PPE) and household supplies available ‘just in case.’
“We shall see what we shall see, but states of emergency don't have a good percentage of being ended promptly in other places.”
. . . my response to round two:
I am quite reticent to lay this unpreparedness on the doorstep of corporations. They are NOT public welfare entities. They are businesses for profit and return to the shareholders. “Just in time” is precisely a means to minimize sunk or overhead costs (e.g., inventory retention costs) and optimize profit. No, preparedness for a national emergency is the clear and emphatic province of the USG. The BIC’s effort to deny history and his attempt to write his own history instead will fail. As he always does, he blames his failures on President Obama. He has been POTUS for nearly four years; any unpreparedness we encountered in the COVID19 pandemic is his and his alone. He must bear the consequences. “Just in case” belongs to the USG, not the states, not corporations—the USG.
Yes, we shall see what we shall see. I do not put anything past the realm of possibility for the BIC. He is desperate . . . desperate times lead desperate people to do desperate things. With this fellow, anything is possible to shore-up his image of himself and keep the leaking balloon inflated.
. . . Round three:
“I think I detect a blame tone in your response. I'm not really interested in blame, but in preventing future events from getting as dramatically out of hand as this one has. I partly agree with your assessment of where responsibility lies but be aware that the outcome of our approach will be called socialism. If we're looking at how we got here, we need to go back at least 35 years, because the government's failures of preparation coincide with the corporate takeover of politics. Deregulation of production and logistics is the specific reason we don't have the equipment and supplies we need, and deregulation of the medical industry is why we don't have the people. ‘Smaller government’ has given us this day.
. . . my response to round three:
Apparently, I failed in my attempt to communicate. I am not a fan or proponent of the blame game—serves no purpose. I am an advocate for understanding our mistakes to improve for the future. As a former military man, we called the process after-action reports. As an engineer, we called it forensic examination—what failed and why? We are both after the same objective; how do we learn from the mistakes of this event to improve future performance?
I do not and cannot agree that the outcome is socialism. Further, I do not agree with your assessment that deregulation of business brought us to this consequence. Both President Roosevelt and President Truman faced daunting challenges as they struggled to prepare the nation for war that was thrust upon them. The administrations of neither president were ready for war, and businesses of the day were certainly not as regulated as they are today. With a staunchly and heavily isolationist country, President Roosevelt faced powerful enemies rapidly overrunning the free world. He coaxed, prodded and coached Congress and the nation to pass several key laws to mobilize the industrial capacity of the country for war before Pearl Harbor. President Truman faced the hegemonic aspirations of Stalin’s Soviet Union rapidly spreading its tentacles into free countries struggling with recovery from the devastation of global war. He convinced Congress to pass the Defense Production Act of 1950 [PL 81-774; 64 Stat. 798; 8.9.1950] a couple months after the Soviets convinced the DPRK to invade the South. President Bush (43) failed miserably in mobilizing the nation for the war we faced, and we still bear the burden of that failure to this day. This president publicly and proudly states he is “not responsible.” We have never heard any of his 44 predecessors makes such foolish, misinformed, ignorant statements. This president failed to prepare or mobilize the nation for this fight. He has finally made lame gestures toward that end, but he still does not understand his job in this crisis. I cannot agree that we see the consequences of smaller government; I believe we see the effects of misapplied government. For the BIC and his son-in-law to claim and publicly state that the federal government’s stockpile of medical supplies belongs to them to dole out as they see fit is nothing short of an insult to We, the People. The USG had the capacity, the assignment, and the moral obligation to mobilize the nation when the first signs of potential pandemic appeared in Wuhan, PRC. As always, We, the People, bear the burden and consequences of the USG’s lack of preparedness, and the burden is made worse by an administration that does not see, understand or appreciate its responsibility in such situations. The BIC persists to this moment to pit the states against each other like this is some kind of national game of Monopoly. As the Italians say, Basta! And so it goes.
. . . Round four:
“It's not a war.
“It's a failure of planning for disasters. While disasters are unlikely to happen in a given week, they are a certainty over time. Requiring corporations to manufacture and store sufficient supplies will be seen as socialism. If the government does the work itself, the cry will be ‘communism.’”
. . . my response to round four:
True! The COVID19 crisis is not armed conflict . . . yet. War in this context is a figure of speech.
I understand and appreciate the observation, and I agree with your assessment. However, to any intellectually informed citizen, neither is accurate. I see and define socialism and communism as state control of the economy. We are a long way from that condition. We have had slivers of socialism in our society for nearly a century and still do. The debate for us is the degree or extent. I am far closer to Bernie Sanders’ “democratic socialism” than I am the Marx/Engels variant.
I have no problem with USG preparedness with designated operations, e.g., given xxx conditions, corporation A will stop producing automobiles and begin manufacturing aircraft. Those are called contingency plans. Our current problem is I have seen no (zero) evidence that the USG held any contingency plans for a pandemic medical situation; thus, the USG has been solely reactionary AND LATE! We saw a micro-view of the paucity of contingency plans in the Puerto Rico debacle (Hurricane Irma, 6.9.2017 & sub). To be fair, the BIC is not the first and presumably will not be the last to fail in that task, but that does not absolve him for his failure. The military is far better at contingency planning—not perfect but better, e.g., the military had plans for a potential attack on Pearl Harbor, but they ignored the intelligence and failed to activate the plans; further, they held several exercise drills in the years ahead for such an attack, but failed to listen to the intelligence community.
Another contribution:
“The FBI has made way too many mistakes .. see Judicial Watch YouTubes .. Under James Comey they were not a government entity to be trusted .. Am positive you don’t agree but that’s fine considering the sources you read and believe.. just think of how flippant he was over HRCs emails .. wow
“Border security is needed to also prevent more COVID-19 cases from slipping into the country and the drug crisis is far from over.
“At least Trump responded faster than China did to the virus situation.. If we had known about it being in China sooner we could have stopped travel sooner and/or tested people coming in ..
“I see you STILL published the UNTRUTH about Trump disbanding the response team (in true CNN style .. publish a lie, then no one ever sees the truth because all they remember is the lie) even though I showed you what actually took place .. two organizations with cost impacted duplicate responsibilities were combined.. and how did that impact response ??”
My reply:
Unfortunately, Tom Fitton is not a reliable news source. Yes, the FBI made more mistakes than I would expect for a top-line law enforcement organization. The mistakes illuminated in these reports are largely administrative rather than substantive, and they pale in comparison to the transgressions of J. Edgar Hoover, e.g., VENONA Project. I do not see Comey’s handling of the HRC fiasco as flippant, but I certainly agree with you that she was shown far too much deference. I still believe she committed multiple crimes with respect to her private server, unilaterally deleting “personal” eMails, and destroying the server, and she should be tried in a court of law and punished for those crimes.
Yes, agreed, border security and immigration control are forever, 24/7/365 tasks of the federal government. My point on the incident was the imagery. It looked like a direct attempt by the BIC to deflect attention from the previous day’s rather dark report. It had no (well, very little) relevance to the medical crisis we are in. As such, it appeared to be yet one more of an infinite number of actions the BIC takes to protect his vaunted image—me, me, me. Yes, the drug crisis is far from over, but the drug crisis has been going on for 50+ years; the COVID19 only four months.
[BTW, on a personal note: my current writing project is a novel (pure fiction) about a notional new approach to drug addiction. I have been progressively more critical of Nixon’s war on drugs, and what he and subsequent administrations {including the current one} have done to corrode our freedom of choice and fundamental right to privacy in the name of the war on drugs. It is one thing to criticize; it is altogether another thing to offer a better way to deal with drug addiction and protect our rights. At least I have been searching for a better way. You might find it interesting, and perhaps even entertaining.]
In the COVID19 crisis, the POTUS did the right thing is restricting travel to and from the PRC. However, I do believe you are wrong regarding the PRC’s response to COVID19 when compared to the USA. They quarantined the entire area of Wuhan and enforced it with the PLA. They literally built large hospitals from the ground up in days. They have done things we are highly unlikely to do in this country. The POTUS deserves credit; he had the balls to declare a national emergency to recommend self-isolation to break the chain of infection. However, he will be condemned for denying the problem even existed for at least six weeks. He was way too late to get religion regarding this crisis, and now we have the largest infection rate (which I believe is way under reported) in the world. The BIC failed on multiple levels, and I will argue he made this crisis far worse than it needed to be, but at least he finally felt the problem—better late than never. On sum, his negatives vastly over-shadow his positives. When he vehemently attacks the Press for doing their job, as he did yesterday (Monday), he evaporates any goodwill that might or should be due him. He is his own worst enemy.
Sorry, too many independent reliable sources. Further, whether true or not, we see the consequence of the USG’s gross ill-preparedness for this pandemic. If they had an office, that office (the BIC’s office) failed, period, full stop. I do not care what the BIC claims. He cannot be trusted to tell the truth.
My very best wishes to all. Take care of yourselves and each other.
Cheers,
Cap :-)
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