A Collection Of Bushisms

Remember W? The guy who used to be the worst U.S. president in history? Here's a good list of his verbal stumbles, copied from Özkan Altay on Quora:

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.”—Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

“I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family.”—Greater Nashua, N.H., Chamber of Commerce, Jan. 27, 2000

“Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?”—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000

“Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB/GYNs aren’t able to practice their love with women all across the country.”—Poplar Bluff, Mo., Sept. 6, 2004

“Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican.”—declining to answer reporters’ questions at the Summit of the Americas, Quebec City, Canada, April 21, 2001

“You teach a child to read, and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test.”—Townsend, Tenn., Feb. 21, 2001

“I’m the decider, and I decide what is best. And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.”—Washington, D.C., April 18, 2006

“See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”—Greece, N.Y., May 24, 2005

“I’ve heard he’s been called Bush’s poodle. He’s bigger than that.”—discussing former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, as quoted by the Sun newspaper, June 27, 2007

“And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq.”—meeting with Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Washington, D.C., March 3, 2008

“We ought to make the pie higher.”—South Carolina Republican debate, Feb. 15, 2000

“There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, fool me once, shame on—shame on you. Fool me—you can’t get fooled again.”—Nashville, Tenn., Sept. 17, 2002

“And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I’m sorry it’s the case, and I’ll work hard to try to elevate it.”—speaking on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007

“We’ll let our friends be the peacekeepers and the great country called America will be the pacemakers.”—Houston, Sept. 6, 2000

“It’s important for us to explain to our nation that life is important. It’s not only life of babies, but it’s life of children living in, you know, the dark dungeons of the Internet.”—Arlington Heights, Ill., Oct. 24, 2000

“One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.”—U.S. News & World Report, Jan. 3, 2000

“People say, ‘How can I help on this war against terror? How can I fight evil?’ You can do so by mentoring a child; by going into a shut-in’s house and say I love you.”—Washington, D.C., Sept. 19, 2002

“Well, I think if you say you’re going to do something and don’t do it, that’s trustworthiness.”—CNN online chat, Aug. 30, 2000

“I’m looking forward to a good night’s sleep on the soil of a friend.”—on the prospect of visiting Denmark, Washington, D.C., June 29, 2005

“I think it’s really important for this great state of baseball to reach out to people of all walks of life to make sure that the sport is inclusive. The best way to do it is to convince little kids how to—the beauty of playing baseball.”—Washington, D.C., Feb. 13, 2006

“Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.”—LaCrosse, Wis., Oct. 18, 2000

“You know, when I campaigned here in 2000, I said, I want to be a war president. No president wants to be a war president, but I am one.”—Des Moines, Iowa, Oct. 26, 2006

“There’s a huge trust. I see it all the time when people come up to me and say, ‘I don’t want you to let me down again.’ “—Boston, Oct. 3, 2000

“They misunderestimated me.”—Bentonville, Ark., Nov. 6, 2000

“I’ll be long gone before some smart person ever figures out what happened inside this Oval Office.”—Washington, D.C., May 12, 2008

“The people in Louisiana must know that all across our country there’s a lot of prayer — prayer for those whose lives have been turned upside down. And I’m one of them. It’s good to come down here.” — Sept. 3, 2008, at an emergency operations center in Baton Rouge, La., after Hurricane Gustav hit the Gulf Coast.

“I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace."

“Well, I mean that a defeat in Iraq will embolden the enemy and will provide the enemy – more opportunity to train, plan, to attack us. That's what I mean. There – it's – you know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."

“More and more of our imports come from overseas”.

"I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers. Thank you. Now watch this drive." (Swings)

“The future will be better tomorrow”

“Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child."

“We have a firm commitment to NATO, we are a part of NATO. We have a firm commitment to Europe. We are a part of Europe.”

“For NASA, space is still a high priority."

“It's time for the human race to enter the solar system”

Shockingly Inhumane Treatment Of Prisoners In El Salvador

Click here for an article at hrw.org (Human Rights Watch) entitled "El Salvador: Inhumane Prison Lockdown Treatment."



This is not a photo that was taken undercover and sneaked out of a San Salvador prison; President Nayib Bukele publicized the photo, bragging about his harsh treatment of "criminals and gang members."

The crackdown on gangs came less than two weeks after Bukele dismissed multiple Supreme Court rulings that said that security forces couldn’t lawfully arrest people for breaking quarantine. Since he mandated a nationwide lockdown on March 21, hundreds of violators have been arrested and sent to “containment centers” where healthy individuals have been reportedly held with COVID-19 positive detainees in poor conditions. In the first month of the lockdown, El Salvador’s human rights ombudsmen received 778 complaints.

More Disgrace Heaped On Mitch McConnell

Click here for an article in The Washington Post by Colbert I. King entitled "McConnell bringing the Senate back is an irresponsible act of partisan selfishness."

McConnell is bringing the Senate into session next Monday, May 4. Nancy Pelosi, on the other hand, is not convening the House. As King says, "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), based upon guidance received from attending Capitol physician Brian Monahan, announced that House lawmakers will not return to Washington next week."

McConnell won't say whether he even consulted Dr. Monahan.

What is so important that the Senate must convene next week? Senate confirmation of more of Trump's nominees for federal judgeships, including 37-year-old Justin Walker.

A Kentucky native and McConnell protege, Walker was confirmed for a federal judgeship in western Kentucky in a party-line vote only last October, despite having been judged “not qualified” by the American Bar Association, which cited his insufficient legal experience. Undeterred, Trump then nominated Walker to the second-most powerful court in the land, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. McConnell’s mission is to make it happen.

McConnell, who denied even a hearing for Merrick Garland, Obama's nominee for SCOTUS following the death of Antonin Scalia with 11 months remaining in Obama's term of office, sees appointing partisan Republican judges -- especially young ones like Walker, who will conceivably be exercising their right-wing political views for the next 40 years -- as his legacy issue. Good luck to minorities and labor unions with their court decisions for the next 40 years.

What Does Your Cat Do While You Sleep?

Are you sure you want to know? Okay . . .

Trump Snapshots

Here's a tweet by The Washington Post's Philip Rucker on April 30, 2020:

Since the U.S. death toll surpassed 60,000 yesterday, Trump has tweeted about:
-Michael Flynn
-CNN
-MSNBC
-Brian Williams
-Don Lemon
-Joe Scarborough
-Sweden
-Roger Stone
-His poll numbers
-Jim Comey
-Hillary Clinton’s campaign
-Rep. Jim Ryun’s birthday

And here's a quote from an article dated May 1 by NewsHound Ellen at Crooks & Liars, entitled "Trump Boasts: ‘Our Death Totals … Are Really Very, Very Strong’":

On the day that the U.S. death total from the coronavirus pandemic topped 60,000 and remains the highest in the world, Donald Trump boasted that nobody’s done a better job than he.

TRUMP: I don’t think anybody’s done a better job -- with testing, with ventilators, with all of the things that we’ve done. And our death totals — our numbers per million people — are really very, very strong. We’re very proud of the job we’ve done.”

From an interview with Steve Holland of Reuters:

"I don't believe the polls," Trump said. "I believe the people of this country are smart. And I don't think that they will put a man in who's incompetent."

Sorry, Donald. That ship has sailed. Or, as Stephen Colbert put it:

"You're right; the people of this country wouldn't. The Electoral College, on the other hand -- they're fine with it."

Trump Has The Best Words

Trump mangles the language, from Trevor Noah:

Ezra Klein Sums Up The Trump Presidency

A tweet from Ezra Klein:

Donald Trump does not want to be in charge of any of this. He wants to play president on TV. He doesn't want responsibility for governance in a time of crisis, and in every way he can, he's refusing to do that job, and lashing out at those who ask him to do it.

The Onion Nailed Trump A Month Ago

Click here for an article by Ed Scarce at Crooks & Liars entitled "The Onion's Prescient Column On Trump Promoting Ingesting Cleaning Products."

Here's the article from The Onion, dated March 25, 2020, subtitled "Man Just Buying One Of Every Cleaning Product In Case Trump Announces It’s Coronavirus Cure":

EVANSTON, WY—Throwing bottles of bleach, ammonia, and Drano into a cart at his local grocery store, area man Troy Mitchell was reportedly stocking up on one of every cleaning product he could find Wednesday in case President Donald Trump announces it is a coronavirus cure. “I got toilet bowl cleaner, carpet cleaner, Swiffer WetJet refills—you name it—just so me and my family will be ready if the president announces one of these things can treat Chinese virus,” said Mitchell, indiscriminately throwing containers of laundry detergent, Scrubbing Bubbles, grout whitener, steel wool, Febreze, Tilex mold and mildew remover, and laptop screen wipes into the cart, the contents of which rang up to $2,513.67 at checkout. “I’m not getting caught without some oven degreaser should Trump say it’s going to save us, so I better go ahead and grab me a bottle. After this, I’m hitting the hardware store to pick up a 5-gallon bucket of roof sealant to make sure I’m prepared in the event that turns out to be what gets rid of the Wuhan. Could just be 10 or 20 squirts of Windex into each nostril. You never know what might work in a pinch!” At press time, neighbors confirmed Mitchell had been found unresponsive on the floor of his bathroom with several empty aerosol cans of Rust-Oleum wax-and-tar-removing solvent by his head.

Trump (Republicans) v. Post Office

Click here for an article at The Plum Line in The Washington Post by Paul Waldman and Greg Sargent entitled "Trump’s new rage attack on the post office could hurt his voters most." Read the whole article to see what Trump and the Republicans are trying to do to the Post Office. Here are some excerpts:

President Trump is trying to kill the U.S. Postal Service — or at least make it submit to his will.

The Postal Service is a joke,” Trump said, launching into a sneering list of complaints, including his common and false contention that it loses money by delivering for Amazon.com.

It’s true that the agency has a financial problem. In 2006, Congress passed a law requiring the USPS — unlike any other government agency or private company — to prepay 75 years’ worth of employee retirement benefits, which costs billions every year. Without this, its operating losses would be a fraction.

Not only that, the Postal Service is the only government agency that we demand turn a profit.

But despite its losses, the Postal Service remains America’s most beloved federal agency, with overwhelming majorities viewing it favorably and believing it does a good or excellent job.

Whether you live in Manhattan or in a remote stretch of North Dakota, the Postal Service will deliver your mail — not for the $25 or $30 UPS or FedEx will charge for a letter, but for 55 cents.

This is crucial, because the Postal Service is structured precisely so that it can do things like treat people in rural areas (where mail is more expensive to deliver) equally to people who are closer to metropolitan areas and/or who benefit from more options such as UPS or FedEx.

"Grassroot" Protests? Not So Much

Click here for an article in The Washington Post, by By Isaac Stanley-Becker and Tony Romm, entitled "The anti-quarantine protests seem spontaneous. But behind the scenes, a powerful network is helping."

Surprise, surprise. Behind these "spontaneous" demonstrations are a network of right-wing organizations undermining restrictions that medical experts say are necessary to contain the coronavirus, many headed by people who were prominent in the equally well-organized and well-funded Tea Party movement.

A network of right-leaning individuals and groups, aided by nimble online outfits, has helped incubate the fervor erupting in state capitals across the country. The activism is often organic and the frustration deeply felt, but it is also being amplified, and in some cases coordinated, by longtime conservative activists, whose robust operations were initially set up with help from Republican megadonors.

One such organization, "Convention of States," was "launched in 2015 with a high-dollar donation from the family foundation of Robert Mercer, a billionaire hedge fund manager and Republican patron. It boasts past support from two members of the Trump administration — Ken Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and Ben Carson, secretary of housing and urban development."

Brulle [a sociological researcher] said the blowback against the coronavirus precautions carries echoes of efforts to deny climate change, both of which rely on hostility toward government action.

“These are extreme right-wing efforts to delegitimize government,” he said. “It’s an anti-government crusade.”

On Behalf Of All Us Potted Plants!

Patricia Nilsen posted this on Facebook by Amy Wojkowski, a court reporter from Huntington Beach, California:



Here are the lyrics:

I want to lug my equipment up five narrow flights of stairs
Into a room with no outlet in sight
And sit down in the planet’s most uncomfortable armchair
Then skip the breaks and work into the night

And I won’t care as long as it means that I have pages to turn in
No, I won’t care, I want to be a potted plant again

I’m ready for a fight with six attorneys
Even if it’s only O and One
Let’s do nine hours of expert testimony
A fast-talking Brazilian would be fun

I’m looking forward to a hostile witness
It’s more fun than the one that always cries
(I’ll keep) hoping the deponent doesn’t notice
When I struggle not to laugh at all their lies

Then if I’m packing up my gear to grab a bite to eat
Before I scope tomorrow’s expedite
I will not bat an eye when plaintiff’s counsel comes to me
And says they’ll need a rough draft by tonight

It’s crazy all the little things I never thought I’d miss
I’d even spend a day in a courtroom
But if this pandemic taught me anything it’s this
Depos just don’t work the same on Zoom

And I won’t care as long as it means that I have pages to turn in
No, I won’t care, I want to be a potted plant again
Talk over each other while you rattle off some numbers
If it means this court reporter will finally get some orders
I just can’t wait to begin, to be a potted plant again

Trump's Shameful Performance Is Costing American Lives

It remains to be seen, but it looks as though Trump's incompetence may end up making America's response the worst in the world.

The following is a complete comment made by pgerlings, in reply to an article in the Boston Globe by Michael A. Cohen (not Trump's lawyer, but a regular Globe columnist) entitled "The incredible shrinking president":

It cannot be overstated just how bad of a job the trump administration is doing at keeping Americans safe from this virus. Relative to the rest of the world, both the case rate and the fatality rates are growing at far higher levels, and consistently so.

Through this morning, here are the cumulative growth rates in total cases from March 23 through this morning according to the data at the Johns Hopkins Covid-19 website:

US: 1215%
Belgium: 771%
Japan: 720%
France: 630%
Netherlands: 449%
Spain: 378%
Germany: 329%
Iran: 220%
Italy: 149%
South Korea: 18%
China: 3%

World: 440%

The growth rate in new cases in the US is so much higher than the rest of the world, to the point where more than 30% of new cases is identified worldwide have occurred in the United States, even through the US makes up only 4% of the world's population. Worse, our growth rate is almost 3 times higher than the world total, even though we make up an ever increasing portion of that total.apan: 720%

When we look at the growth rate in fatalities, it's even worse. Again, these data are current through this morning and represent the growth rates seen since March 23.

US: 5152%
Belgium: 4370%
Germany: 2672%
France: 1745%
Netherlands: 1149%
Spain: 612%
Japan: 342%
Italy: 234%
Iran: 156%
South Korea: 93%
China: 2%

World: 731%

These numbers are mind boggling. While there are other countries having similar challenges (Belgium, for example), the US again leads the world and is growing at a much faster rate! Back on March 24, the US made up about 12% of the world's fatalities; yesterday it was at 42%.

The most striking comparison is against South Korea.

On January 20th, both the US and Korea reported their first local cases of the virus. Today, the US total case load is a staggering 700,000 versus "just" 10,600 in South Korea, a nearly 70-1 ratio.

Both countries have had the same amount of time to prepare for this. Both countries relied on the same data from the WHO. And yet the US has suffered 70 times more disease than South Korea, and it's still early days! Worse yet, the growth differential keeps getting worse. Every single day since March 23 has seen the US case load growing faster than the world as a whole. We still lag most of these countries as it relates to testing as a percent of the total population, as well as those who show symptoms (a great many Americans are dying and not being counted in the totals).

It is simply astonishing how many Americans will tragically, needlessly perish because of Trump's stunning mismanagement of this. Sure there is blame to go around, but none more than the White House, whose track record is the bottom of the barrel compared to just about every other country out there.

It is because of this that trump is trying so hard to distract Americans. He knows he is failing Americans, and that many of his own constituents are at risk. So he is trying to change the subject.

Don't let him.

Wisconsin Election Abomination

Wisconsin held a Democratic primary election (Biden v. Sanders, with Biden a heavy favorite and the result not really in doubt) on April 7, 2020, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Ten other states that were scheduled to hold primaries in early April had pushed the dates until later in the year, when the worst of the pandemic was expected to have passed, but the Republican House and Senate in Wisconsin refused to change the date -- in the face of heavy Democratic opposition.

The Democratic governor of the state took executive action at the last minute -- Saturday, April 4, in a special session -- to order the election postponed. The Republicans controlling the House and Senate immediately appealed to the Republican Supreme Court of Wisconsin to overturn the action, and were successful; it was ordered on Monday, April 6, that the election proceed the next day.

To top it off, also on Monday, April 6, the day before the election, the Supreme Court of the U.S. (that is, the Kavanaugh Court) ruled to overturn a Wisconsin move that mail-in absentee ballots be accepted beyond the 8 p.m. Tuesday closing of the polls, although by that time the election staff, overwhelmed by unprecedented requests for 1.2 million mail-in ballots, had not even finished sending them out.

All this was naked partisanship on the part of Wisconsin Republicans to force the election to be held during the height of the pandemic and therefore to suppress large numbers of votes. The reason they were so desperate to suppress the vote as much as possible was that on the same ballot as the Democratic primary, another choice on the ticket was between a Democratic challenger and an extreme conservative Republican incumbent for a seat on the State Supreme Court (thereby hoping to maintain the conservative Republican 5-2 majority). Republicans feared that under normal circumstances, hundreds of thousands of voters would turn out to vote for their Democratic presidential candidate -- and while they were there would pull the lever for the Democratic Supreme Court candidate.

The election went ahead, and it was a disgrace -- particularly in Milwaukee, the largest city in the state, where the electorate is only 35% white, but 40% black and 20% Hispanic or Latino. In the previous state election, Milwaukee, with a population of about 600,000, had 180 polling places; this time there were 5. Madison, Wisconsin, with a population of about 260,000, had 92 polling sites during the last election; this time, it had 66.

66 polling sites for a city of 260,000 and 5 for a city of 600,000? What's going on here? Republican election officials claimed that they could not find enough poll workers willing to risk their health to man the polling sites, but that was a lie; there were a great number of emails and tweets from people expressing their outrage at the decision and a willingness to serve as poll workers.

The election in Wisconsin on April 7 was a travesty, a shameful episode in the history of the state. The Republican majority in the House and Senate deserve to be overwhelmingly defeated in the next election.

Kushner Shenanigans, Colorado

Jared Kusher rarely speaks, but he did so at the daily Trump Show on April 2. First, he said, "Very early this morning, I got a call from the president. He told me he was hearing from friends of his in New York that the New York public hospital system was running low on critical supply." As a result, he said, New York was receiving 4,000 respirators from the national stockpile.

Ooookaaay, so that's how the national stockpile of respirators is distributed? When the president hears from his friends that respirators are needed? Trump is surrounded by medical experts who can tell him where equipment needs to be allocated, but it takes calls from his friends to get him to act?

But Kushner continued, and he mystified people by saying: ""You also have a situation where in some states, FEMA allocated ventilators to the states and you have instances where in cities they’re running out, but the state still has a stockpile and the notion of the federal stockpile was, it’s supposed to be our stockpile. It’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use."

WTF? Kushner left the press conference without facing questions about his statement, so he left reporters and pundits scratching their heads: The federal stockpile is supposed to be "their" stockpile? Who the hell is "they"? It's not for the states to use? How can that possibly make any sense?

The generally accepted purpose of a national stockpile of devices such as respirators is that such a stockpile is maintained by the federal government for the purpose of distributing to states as they are needed -- but not under the Trump administration, which refuses to take responsibility for the distribution of respirators, probably in an attempt to dodge negative press resulting from poor management of the process, shoving the blame, if blame there is to be, to the individual governors.

The way it is now, Trump's administration stays out of the process, and governors of states that need respirators are expected to go out into the public marketplace and bid against other states, hospitals, or other entities in the market for respirators. That's what Jared Polis, Democratic governor of Colorado, did. He was able to find a company willing to provide Colorado with 500 respirators that would be available soon. A contract was signed. So all will be well -- right?

Well, maybe not. At that point, FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) jumped into action. I'm used to thinking of FEMA as a good guy, but now that it's under Kushner's direction, not so much. FEMA proceeded to exercise force majeure and override Governor Polis's signed contract on the grounds that this was a federal emergency and FEMA took precedence. Which is true; FEMA was acting within its authority, and Polis had no recourse. He could only fume in anger as FEMA stole his respirators.

It soon became clearer what Kushner meant when he was talking about "our stockpile." On April 8, Trump tweeted, "Will be immediately sending 100 Ventilators to Colorado at the request of Senator Gardner!" [exclamation point emphasis Trump's, not mine.}

So to considerable fanfare, Trump grandly dispensed 100 (not 500) respirators to hard-hit Colorado, loudly crediting a Republican senator, Cory Gardner. Respirators taken from the 500 Polis ordered and FEMA hijacked.

Thanks so much to our wonderful President Trump and far-seeing Republican Senator Gardner!

Click here for an article from the editorial board of The Denver Post entitled "Trump is playing a disgusting political game with our lives." According to the article:

President Donald Trump is treating life-saving medical equipment as emoluments he can dole out as favors to loyalists. It’s the worst imaginable form of corruption — playing political games with lives. For the good of this nation during what should be a time of unity, he must stop.

Trump Dilemma: Goose Economy Or Maintain Shutdown?

If he gooses the economy by getting people back to work, Covid-19 will surely come roaring back and he'll be accused of killing people to improve things economically and increase his election chances; if he maintains the lockdown (the course recommended by the medical experts), unemployment could exceed 30% and he'll face the election with the economy devastated. What to do, what to do? Poor Donald. As president, he is believed to be protected from indictment for criminal conduct; if he loses the election, what are the chances of an indictment? Excellent, says Michael J. Stern, a federal prosecutor for 24 years.

Click here for an article by Stern in The Hill, entitled "Trump's self-interest is at odds with safe coronavirus policy."

While the immediate danger of Trump’s wish for “packed” public events has passed, it is a mistake to think he finally respects the health risk posed by this virus and is committed to doing all he can to mitigate it. It should not be long before Trump redirects his effort to resume the course he previously charted: people back to work and a growing economy, despite the human toll.

With any other president, we could default to the belief that he has the country’s best interests at heart. But if a Trump presidency has taught us anything, it is that Donald Trump’s first allegiance is — and always will be — to himself. Instead of using this existential crisis to bring people together, Trump has tried to take down anyone who criticizes his botched response to the pandemic, while simultaneously heaping undeserved praise on himself.

Trump absolved his failure to supply hospitals with adequate medical supplies by repeatedly implying that exhausted healthcare workers were stealing surgical masks (and apparently selling them on the black market).

And always looking to leverage a quid pro quo — in deed if not in word — Trump suggested that governors should withhold any criticism and instead be publicly “appreciative” in order to get life-saving federal medical supplies for their hospitalized citizens.

Tsunami

Trump Administration Report On Hospital Readiness: Chaos

Click here for an article at Crooks & Liars by Susie Madrak entitled "Inspector General Report: Our Health Care System in a State of Chaos." Bear in mind, this is a report by Ann Maxwell, Health and Human Services Assistant Inspector General in Trump's administration (nowadays known as "Dead Man Walking," her government career almost certainly at an end). Maxwell is being interviewed by reporter Ken Dilanian for a segment on Stephanie Ruhle's program on MSNBC.

Stephanie Ruhle introduced a segment with Ken Dilanian on a new internal assessment of how the Trump administration has done in helping the country's health care workers.

"Explain what is this all about. Day in and day out, we hear from the administration saying the hospitals have all that they need. At the same time, hospital workers and state governors are saying that's not the case," she said.

"Stephanie, this is a report by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services. So a watchdog but within the Trump administration," Delanian said.

"And what they did was, they interviewed 324 hospital administrators in 46 states. And what they found was a health care system in a state of chaos. Totally refuting the comments by President Trump on Saturday that he said hospital administrators were thrilled with the level of supplies. This report creates a picture of dire shortages, confirming what NBC News and other outlets have reported about shortages of ventilators and masks.

"Also going further and saying in some cases, shortages of cleaning supplies and even thermometers. One case they talked about a hospital, 700 staff and two thermometers. The hospital officials are worried about the health and safety of their own workers. They're concerned about their finances. We interviewed Ann Maxwell, the assistant inspector general. She seemed genuinely stunned with some of what her team found. Let's take a listen." ANN MAXWELL: I think one moment that stands out for me is when I was talking to a hospital administrator, and he told me he had staff in the hospital out trying to procure masks and gloves from auto part shops, from home supply stores, from beauty salons, art supply stores. And I was just taken aback by how in that one example you could see both the desperation, the challenges they're facing, and ingenuity they were putting forward in trying to solve these problems to provide good patient care and save lives.

"In some cases, Stephanie, what this report found is -- federal and state stockpiles were defective. They got a shipment of masks for children and 1,000 had dry rot. So big problems with the federal response and hospital administrators are begging the federal government to do more," Delanian said.

Click above to watch a short (2:07) video clip of that portion of the interview.

UPDATE: At today's "press briefing" (a.k.a. Trump's daily dose of self-congratulation), a reporter tried to question Trump about the report, but he blew it off. His response, according to an article at CNN: "'Give me the name of the inspector general. Could politics be entered into that?' Trump said, indulging another troubling trait, the singling out of public officials that he deems insufficiently loyal to him personally." Here's another reference, at CNN.com, to that question by the reporter:

Trump also dismissed the reporter, Fox News correspondent Kristin Fisher. "Testing is still a big issue in this country," she said as he sighed. "When can hospitals expect to receive a quick turnaround of these test results?" Trump, agitated, said hospitals and states "are supposed to be doing the testing," sidestepping her question and shifting blame away from the federal government. After making some false claims, Trump told Fisher, "You should say 'congratulations, great job,' instead of being so horrid in the way you ask a question."

And although the segment above was an interview of Maxwell, the CNN article goes on to say "The report was written by the principal deputy inspector general for the department, Christi Grimm. According to her official biography, Grimm, who has worked for multiple administrations, is an award-winning public servant with "two decades of leadership and expertise in health and human services programs." So Grimm's career may well be on the line as well. Watch this space.

Max Boot: "The worst president. Ever."

Click here for an article in The Washington Post By Yasmeen Abutaleb, Josh Dawsey, Ellen Nakashima and Greg Miller, entitled "The U.S. was beset by denial and dysfunction as the coronavirus raged," subtitled "From the Oval Office to the CDC, political and institutional failures cascaded through the system and opportunities to mitigate the pandemic were lost."

Click here for another article in WaPo by Max Boot, entitled "The worst president. Ever," in which Boot says, "The Post article [above] is the most thorough dissection of Trump’s failure to prepare for the gathering storm."

It didn't have to happen this way, says the WsPo article: "Though not perfectly prepared, the United States had more expertise, resources, plans and epidemiological experience than dozens of countries that ultimately fared far better in fending off the virus"; "Warnings were sounded, including at the highest levels of government, but the president was deaf to them until the enemy had already struck."

The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief.

And yet, it took 70 days from that initial notification for Trump to treat the coronavirus not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens. That more-than-two-month stretch now stands as critical time that was squandered.

Republicans, many believing the story that the whole thing was a "Democrat hoax" to bring down the president after impeachment had failed, were influenced by "scornful coverage on Fox News and other conservative networks. As a result, Republicans were in distressingly large numbers refusing to change travel plans, follow “social distancing” guidelines, stock up on supplies or otherwise take the coronavirus threat seriously."

The article concluded:

In reality, many of the failures to stem the coronavirus outbreak in the United States were either a result of, or exacerbated by, his leadership.

For weeks, he had barely uttered a word about the crisis that didn’t downplay its severity or propagate demonstrably false information. He dismissed the warnings of intelligence officials and top public health officials in his administration.

I've only scratched the surface. The article, "which retraces the failures over the first 70 days of the coronavirus crisis, is based on 47 interviews with administration officials, public health experts, intelligence officers and others involved in fighting the pandemic. Many spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information and decisions." The whole article is well worth reading.

Flatten The Curve - South Korea

The U.S. and South Korea diagnosed the first case of Covid-19 on the same day. Their governments reacted a little differently. Here's the graph of the spread of the virus in South Korea:



On April 5, Max Boot wrote, in a WaPo article entitled "The Worst President. Ever," wrote:

South Korea and the United States discovered their first cases on the same day. South Korea now has 183 dead — or 4 deaths per 1 million people. The U.S. death ratio (25 per 1 million) is six times worse — and rising quickly.

Zoom video

Click here for an article at CNBC by Jordan Novet entitled "How to Host a Zoom Call Like a Pro."

How To Access Your Wi-Fi Router's Settings

Type ipconfig in the command prompt and press Enter to run the command. Scroll until you see a setting for Default Gateway under Ethernet or Wi-Fi. That's your router, and the number next to it is your router's IP address. Now type your router's IP address in your browser's address field and press Enter.

Windows 10 Product Key - Asus; Creating A Recovery Drive

Here is my 25-digit product key for Windows 10 on my Asus notebook:

B2QNW-7XXXJ-8W9PM-WRDB6-4M47F

This key is needed to create a Windows 10 system recovery drive; if I ever need to re-install Windows, I will likely need to enter a product key.

CREATING A RECOVERY DRIVE

Booting from a recovery USB drive allows you to perform basic troubleshooting and repairs, and to use Windows’ automatic troubleshooter utility. If you include the Windows 10 system files on your recovery drive, you can boot from that drive and re-install Windows 10 if necessary.

A basic recovery drive needs only 512 MB of space, but if you plan to copy the system files to the recovery drive it should have at least 16 GB of total space. The USB drive will be formatted during creation of the recovery drive, so move any data you wish to preserve.

Enter “Create a recovery drive” in the Search box to find the shortcut that leads to the recovery media creator tool. When the tool starts, the option “Back up system files to the recovery drive” will be checked. Uncheck it if you want just a basic recovery drive. Then insert a USB drive in a port and click Next in the tool’s window. Follow the prompts and soon you will have a recovery drive. Label the flash drive and keep it in a safe place.

If you don't have an OEM (vendor-supplied) recovery partition, you can add Windows 10 installation files to the recovery drive by downloading the Windows 10 Media Creation tool, using it to create an ISO file, double-clicking to mount the ISO file in Explorer, and then dragging the complete contents of the mounted drive to your recovery drive.

You won’t miss your recovery drive until it’s desperately needed, and then it will be too late. So take the time to make one while you don’t need it. If your Windows 10 system somehow gets borked, insert your recovery drive, reboot your computer, and follow the prompts to recover.

How Boeing Lost Its Way

Here is a 20-minute clip entitled "How Boeing Lost Its Way."

Presidential Gaslighting

Click here for an article by Ian Schwartz at Real Clear Politics on March 19 entitled "Don Lemon: Trump Is Gaslighting You On Coronavirus, Has Politicized The Pandemic Since The Beginning." He quotes Don Lemon from his program on CNN. Lemon says:

"The President of the United States is gaslighting you, and you deserve to know."

Later on, the article says:

LEMON: Like I said, this is gaslighting pure and simple. The President of the United States has been making demonstrably false statements from the beginning of all of this at a time when real leadership could have saved lives.

He caused a lot of people to think that this virus wasn't a serious threat. We now know it is. He suggested that it was less dangerous than the flu, not true. He claimed it was a hoax by Democrats, not true. He claimed it was well under control, not true.

He made fun of it at rallies. He went to CPAC, there was a person there who had it. Caused Republican lawmakers and others to have to self-quarantine. They made fun of it. They wore gas masks.

Causing all kinds of people to believe that it was a media hoax and not take it seriously. All of that caused a lot of people to think the virus wasn't a serious threat. Caused us to lose a lot of precious time while our government wasn't taking the threat seriously.

The sad fact is the president is the one who has been politicizing this. Don't get it twisted, and don't fall for that whole thing about everyone is politicizing this. Don't politicize this, Don. Stop politicizing this.

That is why I get so angry because the president is the one who's politicizing this, and then trying to do that whole okey-doke blaming the media and saying the media is politicizing it. No, we're just giving you the information, and he doesn't like it so he's politicizing it. That is dangerous.

Here's omething from the article that I found shocking:

The latest NPR/PBS/Marist poll show the partisan divide is growing. Seventy-six percent of Democrats say coronavirus is a real threat. Fifty percent of independents feel the same way, but only 40 percent of Republicans agree.

This can have disastrous consequences. An article in The Washington Post by Dana Milbank entitled "Trump’s late conversion to reality leaves out his supporters" says:

Naturally, they’re not so inclined to cooperate with efforts to slow the virus’s spread. Only 30 percent of Republicans plan to avoid large gatherings (vs. 61 percent of Democrats), a Wall Street Journal/NBC poll found just before Trump proposed such limits. Republicans were half as likely to say they were rescheduling travel and a third as likely to stop eating out at restaurants.

Key Trump allies aren’t cooperating, either. West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice (R) recommended on Monday: “If you want to go to Bob Evans and eat, go to Bob Evans and eat.”

Also Monday, Ron Paul, the former presidential candidate and father of Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), said, “People should ask themselves whether this coronavirus ‘pandemic’ could be a big hoax, with the actual danger of the disease massively exaggerated.”

On Sunday, former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik — recently pardoned by Trump — speculated that “this hysteria is being created” to “destroy” Trump’s economic success. And Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), a key Trump ally, said “it’s a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant. … Go to your local pub.” (He later tried awkwardly to recant that advice.)

Then there’s Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R), who tweeted (and later deleted) a photo of him and his children at a “packed” food hall (Trump expressed his disagreement); Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), tweeting a photo of a freshly poured Corona beer at a restaurant and the message “Be smart. Don’t Panic”; and former Milwaukee County, Wis., sheriff David Clarke, once considered for a senior Trump administration job, who speculated that George Soros may be behind the virus panic and suggested: “GO INTO THE STREETS FOLKS. Visit bars, restaurants, shopping malls … ”

Trump Propaganda

Trump is spreading propaganda by means of his (for now) daily press briefing. He babbles about generalities, touts "new medical breakthroughs" that are completely bogus (like chloroquine, which is effective against malaria, a parasite-based disease and in no way related to disease spread by viruses), and glosses over the failure to provide protective equipment for health care personnel like gloves, masks, and respirators. But as Charlie Pierce says, in an article at Esquire entitled "It's Time to Quarantine the Crazy Coming Out of the White House":

"But the presser didn’t go zooming off the rails until a “reporter” named Chanel Rion from One America News, the outlet that the president* watches when Fox News gets too Chomsky for him, chimed in from the izonkosphere.

On that note, major left-wing media, including some in this room, have teamed up with Chinese Communist Party narratives and they're claiming you’re a racist for making these claims about Chinese virus. Is it alarming that major media who just oppose you are consistently siding with foreign state propaganda, Islamic radicals, and Latin gangs and cartels, and they work right here in the White House with direct access to you and your team?"

Charlie points out that the problem is that someone insists on telling Trump the place and time the briefing is to be held.

Republican Stragegist: It Was All A Lie

Click here for an article in The Washington Post by Stuart Stevens, Republican strategist for dozens of congressmen, senators, and governors, and chief strategist for Mitt Romney in his 2012 presidential campaign. the article is titled "Republicans like me built this moment. Then we looked the other way." Stevens is publishing a book next month titled "It Was All A Lie."

Don’t just blame President Trump. Blame me — and all the other Republicans who aided and abetted and, yes, benefited from protecting a political party that has become dangerous to America. Some of us knew better.

But we built this moment. And then we looked the other way.

Many of us heard a warning sound we chose to ignore, like that rattle in your car you hear but figure will go away. Now we’re broken down, with plenty of time to think about what should have been done.

The failures of the government’s response to the coronavirus crisis can be traced directly to some of the toxic fantasies now dear to the Republican Party.

Stevens says the Republican party has become anti-intellectual:

"... somehow, the party of idealistic Teddy Roosevelt, pragmatic Bob Dole and heroic John McCain became anti-intellectual, by which I mean, almost reflexively opposed to knowledge and expertise. We began to distrust the experts and put faith in, well, quackery. It was 2013 when former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal said the Republican Party 'must stop being the stupid party.' By 2016, the party had embraced as its nominee a reality-TV host who later suggested that perhaps the noise from windmills causes cancer."

Anti-education:

The Republican Party has gone from admiring William F. Buckley Jr., an Ivy League intellectual, to viewing higher education as a left-wing conspiracy to indoctrinate the young. In retribution, we started defunding education. Never mind that Republican leaders are among the most highly educated on the planet; it’s just that they now feel compelled to embrace ignorance as a cost of doing business. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, as an example, denounces “coastal elites” while holding degrees from Princeton University and Harvard Law School and having served as a Supreme Court clerk.

Anti-science:

The GOP’s relationship with science has resembled some kind of Frankenstein experiment: Let’s see what happens when we play with the chemistry set! Conservatives have spent years trying to cut funds for basic science and research, lamenting government seed money for nearly every budding technology and then hoping for the best. In the weeks ahead, it’s not some fiery, anti-Washington populist with an XM radio gig who is going to save folks’ lives; it is more likely to be someone who has been studying this stuff for decades, almost certainly at some point with federal help or outright patronage.

So what's happened?

What is happening now is the inevitable result of a party that embraced fear, weaponized xenophobia and regarded facts as dangerous, left-wing landmines that must be avoided.

Trump Failure in the Department of Homeland Security

Excerpt from an article in The Washington Post:

“The Department of Homeland Security’s internal watchdog division has been so weakened under the Trump administration that it is failing to provide basic oversight of the government’s third-largest federal agency, according to whistleblowers and lawmakers from both parties,” Nick Miroff reports. “DHS’s Office of the Inspector General is on pace to publish fewer than 40 audits and reports this fiscal year, the smallest number since 2003 and one-quarter of the agency’s output in 2016, when it published 143 … The audits and reports cover everything from contracts and spending to allegations of waste and misconduct. …

“Inspector General Joseph Cuffari ducked requests to appear on Capitol Hill for routine testimony, a decision congressional staffers describe as unprecedented. Adding to the turmoil, the office’s second-in-command and former acting director, Jennifer Costello, was placed on administrative leave last month for alleged ethical violations, three current DHS officials said. An attorney for Costello said her client was not given a reason for her removal, but Costello believes she has been retaliated against for trying to denounce Cuffari’s mismanagement and wrongdoing.”

Trump Official Resigns In Frustration

Excerpt from an article in The Washington Post:

The director of the Office of Personnel Management resigned in protest with no notice after five months on the job, leaving the agency that oversees workplace policy for 2.1 million civil servants with no leader. “Dale Cabaniss resigned in frustration following months of tension with the White House budget office and more recently with its newly configured staffing office and a political appointee the office installed at OPM in the last month,” Lisa Rein reports. “Cabaniss thought that she was being micromanaged and that her authority was not respected … As human resources manager of the federal workforce, Cabaniss was unable to communicate clear, timely messages to agency managers on how they should respond to the growing public health threat … Guidance to managers on when they should send their staffs home to telework was often vague and came weeks after U.S. health officials urged Americans to work from home and minimize contact with others. Even now, managers say privately they have not received clear instruction from the Trump administration on how to manage their workforce during the crisis."

Skydiving Without A Parachute

Here's a video of a guy who jumped out of an airplane without a parachute. It's been done before -- a long, long time ago -- but that guy wore a parachute harness, and he was passed a front-mounted reserve in freefall which clipped onto his harness and was deployed in the regular manner. Nothing really dangerous about that, if the skydivers are skilled. I understand there was a second guy also carrying a spare reserve parachute in case something went wrong with the first transfer. They had plenty of altitude and accomplished the transfer with thousands of feet to spare, and the guy deployed at 2,000 feet as normal. (When I say "nothing dangerous," the only dangerous part is you've only got one parachute and no backup in case the first one malfunctions, so that's dangerous.)

This one's different. The guy isn't wearing a harness -- nothing but shorts and sneakers. The guy he's jumping with takes an alarmingly long time messing around with what must be some harness-like piece of equipment our hero is wearing around his waist, so that the two guys are holding onto each other as the single parachute is deployed. (Poor explanation, but watch for yourself):



Here's another web page, entitled "How To Survive Falling From A Plane Without A Parachute! DEBUNKED":

Museums: A Virtual Tour

Click here for an article at USA Today entitled "Take a virtual tour of these 12 amazing museums closed because of coronavirus," by Maria Puente.

Included are National Gallery of Art: Washington, D.C.; Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C.; Museum of Modern Art, New York City; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; American Museum of Natural History, New York City; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; High Museum of Art, Atlanta; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, Santa Fe, N.M.

Boost Your Laptop WiFi Reception

Click here for a Bob Rankin article entitled "Here's How to Boost Laptop Wifi Reception." There are inexpensive boosters available for your laptop and for your router that significantly increase your wireless range.

Windows Keyboard Shortcuts

These are copied from an article by Bob Rankin:

Shortcuts for Cursor Positioning

Press the Ctrl key all by itself (once or several times) and a circular indicator will appear on the screen where the mouse cursor is positioned. I use this ALL THE TIME, because I'm always losing track of the mouse curcor. If this doesn't work, see this page to enable this feature.

Ctrl+right-arrow moves the cursor to the beginning of the next word in a document
Ctrl+left-arrow moves the cursor to the beginning of the previous word in a document
Ctrl+down-arrow moves the cursor to the beginning of the next paragraph
Ctrl+up-arrow moves the cursor to the beginning of the previous paragraph

Shortcuts for Selecting Items

Ctrl+Shift with an arrow key selects a block of text one word at a time
Shift with an arrow key lets you select individual items at random
Delete key or Ctrl+D deletes the selected item(s) to the Recycle Bin
Shift+Delete deletes the selected item(s) without moving them to the Recycle Bin

Shortcuts for Undo and Redo

Ctrl+Z: undoes the last action
Ctrl+Y: redoes the last undone action


Shortcuts for Function Keys

F1: displays context-sensitive Help files and opens the Search Help dialogue box.
F2: renames the current item
F3: opens the Search dialogue to find a file or folder


Miscellaneous Useful Shortcuts

Alt+Tab: cycles through the open applications
Alt+Enter: displays the Properties of a selected item
Alt+F4: closes the current application or window
Alt+Spacebar: opens the shortcut menu for the active window, i. e., Restore, Minimize, Close...
Ctrl+Shift+Esc: opens the Windows Task Manager
Ctrl+Mouse Wheel: changes the zoom level


Windows Logo Key Shortcuts

Few users know the function of the Windows Logo key (also called the Start button), which bears the four-part Windows logo. It actually activates a whole new set of keyboard shortcuts:

Windows key opens the Start menu
Windows key + A: open the Action Center.
Windows key + D: displays the desktop
Windows key + E: opens File Explorer
Windows key + I: Open the Settings menu.
Windows key + L: locks your computer or lets you switch users
Windows key + M: minimizes all open windows
Windows key + Shift + M: restores all minimized windows
Windows key + Ctrl + M: open the Magnifier app
Windows key + R: open the Run dialogue box
Windows key + U: open the Ease Of Access Center
Windows key + V: open the Clipboard app
Windows key + X: open the secret Start menu. (Try it!)
Windows key + .: open the Emojis window
Windows key + Up Arrow: maximize selected window.
Windows key + Down Arrow: minimize selected window.
Windows key + Pause key: display the System Properties dialogue box
Windows key + PrtScn: take a screenshot
Windows key + Shift + S: open the Snip and Sketch tool

Pandumbic!

Copy this into your address bar, and play a 1.5-minute clip from Trevor Noah's "The Daily Show" ("The deadly coronavirus is spreading -- and the man in charge is the dumbest person alive.")

https://twitter.com/i/status/1237519854204342273

Right-Wing Federal Courts

Click here for an article at Slate by By Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern, entitled "A Federal Judge Condemned the 'Roberts Court’s Assault on Democracy.’ It’s About Time."

U.S. District Court Judge Lynn Adelman criticizes the five conservative justices on the Roberts Supreme Court in an upcoming Harvard Law & Policy review article. The article begins, brutally:

By now, it is a truism that Chief Justice John Roberts’ statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee that a Supreme Court justice’s role is the passive one of a neutral baseball “umpire who [merely] calls the balls and strikes” was a masterpiece of disingenuousness. Roberts’ misleading testimony inevitably comes to mind when one considers the course of decision-making by the Court over which he presides. This is so because the Roberts Court has been anything but passive. Rather, the Court’s hard right majority is actively participating in undermining American democracy. Indeed, the Roberts Court has contributed to insuring that the political system in the United States pays little attention to ordinary Americans and responds only to the wishes of a relatively small number of powerful corporations and individuals.

The article says:

[Adelman's] article brings into clear relief the court’s systemic attack on voting rights for minority and other marginalized communities, by way of striking down a key section of the Voting Rights Act, as well as repeated blessing of voter suppression and decisions not to adjudicate political gerrymandering. He notes that the court privileges the wealthy and corporate interests at the expense of the public. He lays out in detail the rise of the conservative legal movement, starting with the infamous 1971 Lewis Powell memo that served as a right-wing call to arms and tracing its progress through the current well-funded effort to reverse the New Deal in the courts. The article ultimately portrays the slow movement of the Supreme Court to the right—and then the far right—through a long line of cases that reversed the Warren court’s protections for minority groups and poor and working-class Americans. It shows how the court has undermined unions and boosted corporate interests. The court, he notes, has greatly contributed to income inequality, health care inequality, and the hollowing out of the American middle class.

Adelman says:

We are thus in a new and arguably dangerous phase in American history. Democracy is inherently fragile, and it is even more so when government eschews policies that benefit all classes of Americans. We desperately need public officials who will work to revitalize our democratic republic. Unfortunately, the conservative Justices on the Roberts Court are not among them.

The article continues:

Judge James Ho, a Trump appointee to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, has assumed the role of robed Fox News commentator. He disparages women who get abortions, as well as judges who uphold their right to do so. He claims that we can stop mass shootings by shielding police from lawsuits when they accidentally murder innocent people. He intentionally misgenders transgender litigants—as does his colleague, Kyle Duncan, a fellow Trump appointee. Another judge on the 5th Circuit, Edith Brown Clement (a George W. Bush appointee), penned a partisan attack on her colleagues. And, under the influence of Trump’s judges, the 5th Circuit as a whole has begun defying Supreme Court precedent in a series of blatantly political decisions.

A startling number of Trump judges appear to believe that, like Ho, their job is mainly to own the libs in print. Neomi Rao, a Trump judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, has created a cottage industry out of writing preposterous Trump-friendly polemics. On the same morning that South Texas College of Law Houston professor Josh Blackman expressed his outrage at Adelman’s article, Rao issued yet another dissent that would protect Trump, this time by denying the House of Representatives access to the unredacted Mueller report. Rao’s position is so extreme that Thomas Griffith, a conservative George W. Bush appointee, penned a separate concurrence just to shred it. It is impossible to ignore the fact that Rao keeps running interference for the Trump administration, making arguments that are promptly shunned. And it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that her lengthy, contorted dissents begin with the proposition that Trump must triumph and work backward from there.

The U.S. courts have been steadily drifting to the right since Lewis Powell's memo in 1971, and in recent years the drift has become much stronger. The nightmare scenario is Trump somehow being reelected; it's possible, if that were to happen, that Trump would get to replace a couple of liberal Supreme Court justices, presenting the country with a 7-2 conservative majority: disaster.

One-Liners

Copied from a post on Quora:

The first computer dates back to Adam and Eve. It was an Apple with limited memory, just one byte. And then everything crashed.

I find it ironic that the colors red, white, and blue stand for freedom until they are flashing behind you.

Alcohol is a perfect solvent: It dissolves marriages, families and careers.

What is the best thing about living in Switzerland? Well, the flag is a big plus.

My therapist says I have a preoccupation with vengeance. We'll see about that.

A recent study has found that women who carry a little extra weight live longer than the men who mention it.

I was born to be a pessimist - my blood type is B Negative.

Louie Gohmert + Steve King = Stupidity Magnified

Here we go again: another vicious and baseless right-wing conspiracy.

On February 21, sheriff's deputies discovered the body of DHS (Department of Homeland Security) employee in a roadside pull-over area. Cause of death was determined to be a gunshot wound that was "self-inflicted." Unsurprisingly, deranged right-wing conspiracy theorists pounced on this incident as being a murder committed by "Deep State operatives" in order to silence explosive information Haney had been about to reveal about the Obama administration. It's been alleged that Haney wore a thumb drive around his neck that was filled with incriminating information.

Basis for these allegations? Zero. It's just a poisonous idea, another diseased product of the right-wing fever swamps that target the dead, who are unable to confirm or deny allegations about them (do a Google search for "Seth Rich").

In speeches on the floor of the House of Representatives on February 28, speeches by Louie Gohmert (R-IA, the stupidest member of Congress) and racist Steve King (R-TX) brought these dark and unsupported allegations into the mainstream of political thought.

“I’m standing on the floor here saying, Madame Speaker, I don’t believe that Phil Haney committed suicide,” King said. “I expect that we’re going to get a thorough investigation. The evidence that is coming to me indicates that he was murdered.”

Haney had briefly become a right-wing personality in the last years of the Obama administration, appearing on Fox News and Glenn Beck’s radio show to push his allegations that the government was ignoring radical Muslim groups. More recently, he’d claimed to be on a mysterious “special covert assignment” against Muslim-American politician Keith Ellison, now Minnesota’s attorney general.

In a nearly 30-minute speech, Gohmert claimed he had a pact with Haney to reveal unspecified secrets about the government in case either of them was murdered in a crime posed as a suicide. Gohmert claimed Haney was working on a book that would “name names of people that put this country at risk.”

I like a tweet on the subject from commenter Paula Duffy:

"Gohmert claimed Haney was working on a book that would “name names of people that put this country at risk.”

We already have that. It's called the Mueller Report.

Erik Prince + Project Veritas = Dirty Tricks Magnified

Click here for a story at The New York Times by Mark Mazzetti and Adam Goldman entitled "Erik Prince Recruits Ex-Spies to Help Infiltrate Liberal Groups."

Erik Prince [of Blackwater fame], the security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration, has in recent years helped recruit former American and British spies for secretive intelligence-gathering operations that included infiltrating Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda, according to interviews and documents.

For example:

One of the former spies, an ex-MI6 officer named Richard Seddon, helped run a 2017 operation to copy files and record conversations in a Michigan office of the American Federation of Teachers, one of the largest teachers’ unions in the nation. Mr. Seddon directed an undercover operative to secretly tape the union’s local leaders and try to gather information that could be made public to damage the organization, documents show.

Using a different alias the next year, the same undercover operative infiltrated the congressional campaign of Abigail Spanberger, then a former C.I.A. officer who went on to win an important House seat in Virginia as a Democrat. The campaign discovered the operative and fired her.

Both operations were run by Project Veritas, a conservative group that has gained attention using hidden cameras and microphones for sting operations on news organizations, Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groups. Mr. Seddon’s role in the teachers’ union operation — detailed in internal Project Veritas emails that have emerged from the discovery process of a court battle between the group and the union — has not previously been reported, nor has Mr. Prince’s role in recruiting Mr. Seddon for the group’s activities.

Democratic Candidates' "Debate"?

Conan O'Brien parodied the closed captioning of the tumultuous Democratic debate:

Frightening Video Graphic: Coronavirus vs. Other Epidemics

I can't seem to save this video graphic. You'll have to copy and paste the following into your address bar:

https://twitter.com/WelshGasDoc/status/1232208118899257344

I'd recommend when you play it that you stop it, make it full screen, mute the sound (it's just annoying music), and restart it to play from the beginning. Keep your eye on the turquoise Coronavirus line.

The graphic starts with Day 4 Since Outbreak, and tracks the spread of Coronavirus compared to SARS (Asia, 2003), Swine Flu (Mexico, 2009), MERS (Middle East, 2012), and Ebola (West Africa, 2014.

Skydive! Seoul Olympics, 1988

Opening ceremonies, Seoul, Korea, 1988 (an old friend of mine, Mike Zahar, is one of the jumpers):

Trump: Copied From The Young Turks

People with empathy and humane values are disgusted by trump. And here’s why...

Direct Quotes from trump...

”Part of the problem is nobody wants to hurt anybody anymore."

“If you don't support me, you're going to be so god-damn poor.”

"Knock the crap out of them."

"Maybe he should have been roughed up."

"He should be carried out on a stretcher."

“Any guy that can do a body slam...he’s my guy.”

"The audience should hit people. That's what we need a little bit more of."

"I'd like to punch them in the face."

"In the good old days this doesn't happen because they used to treat them very, very rough."

"If you hurt him, I'll defend you in court. Don't worry about it."

"I don’t know if I’ll do the fighting myself or if other people will."

“Hundreds and hundreds of buses full of illegal immigrants were shipped up from Massachusetts to New Hampshire.” (to skew the election)

“They are going to take away everything. They are going to take away your guns. They are going to take away your wealth. They are going to take away everything.”

Trump said that “Jewish people who vote for democrats are either ignorant or disloyal.” (note: approximately 79% of Jews vote Democratic)

Trump has used the words ‘predator,’ ‘invasion,’ ‘alien,’ and ‘animal’ at his rallies while discussing immigration more than 500 times. -USA Today

“The Baltimore house of Elijah Cummings was robbed. Too Bad!”

"I did try to f*ck her. She was married. And I moved on her very heavily...like a bitch. She’s got the big phony tits and everything. I’ve gotta use some tic tacs, just in case I start kissing her. I just start kissing them. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything. Grab them by the p*ssy. You can do anything.”

While speaking to a crowd in Florida, Trump asked how to stop migrants from coming to America. A woman in the crowd yelled “Shoot them!” Trump laughed...then said, “Only in the Panhandle, you can get away with that. Only in the Panhandle!”

“I don’t do coverups.” But he is on tape impersonating at least 3 different people to inflate his wealth to newspapers: John Barron, John Miller, and David Dennison (all fakes)

“I have the support of bikers and the tough people...but they don’t play it tough until they get pushed to a certain point...and then it gets bad...very bad."

“I’m an extremely stable genius.” 05/23/19

“I know words, I have the best words.” 12/30/15

“I have great and unmatched wisdom." 09/10/19

“I am The Chosen One.” 08/21/19

“Justin Trudeau (prime minister of Canada) is two-faced.”

“Emmanuel Macron (prime minister of France) is very nasty.”

“The mayor of London reminds me of our very dumb Mayor of NYC...but he’s only half his height. He’s a stone cold loser.”

Trump said that four black congresswomen should "go back to the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." However, the Congresswomen are Americans and all but one were born in America.

“Where’s My African American.”

“I am very rich. I’m funding my own campaign.” (His campaign was funded by several billionaire donors)

His Disgraceful Rhetoric:

Lyin Ted, Low Energy Jeb, Low-Life Amarosa, Little Rocket Man, Psycho Joe, Little Marco, Low IQ Maxine, Dumb As A Rock Mika, Pocahontas, Sloppy Steve, Crazy Megyn, Al Frankenstein, Wacky Wilson, Jeff Flakey, Dicky Durbin, Liddle Bob, Da Nang Dick, Moonbeam Brown, Slimeball Comey, Puppet Jones, Lamb the Sham, Deranged Omarosa, McMuffin McMullin, Fat Jerry, Wacky Jackie, Mr Peepers, Pencil Neck Schiff, Shifty Schiff, Mr Magoo Sessions, Dumb Southerner, Dumb As A Rock Tillerson, No Talent Samantha, Flunky Begala, Sloppy Carl, Marbles Brokaw, Nut Job Coulter, Sour Lemon, The Dumbest Man On TV, Shorty Bloomberg, Minnie Mike, and dozens more...

Donald inherited $413 Million in cash, assets, and an established business from his father...plus rental income from his father’s buildings. All Donald had to do was slap his gold-plated name on buildings and pretend he earned it...and low-info #Foxwashed consumers would believe it. Meanwhile, he piled up 6 bankruptcies...but he still collects rental income from his father’s business...while no other banks (except Deutsche) will loan him a penny. He owes Deutsche Bank over $300 Million.

“Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the emails that are missing."

“The media is the enemy of the people.”

“I prefer soldiers who don’t get captured.” (Referring to John McCain)

“I love the poorly educated.”

Flopping and flailing around, mocking a disabled person: “Uhh, I don’t know what I said. Uhh, I don’t remember. I don’t remember.”

He called a woman “Horseface” after it was revealed that he paid her hush-money (for sex after his 5th child was born from his 3rd wife) 3 weeks before the election...AND...after the election...AND...as ‘president’.

“She had blood coming out of her eyes....and blood coming out of her whatever.” (Assuming a woman on television was menstruating)

“What you are hearing and seeing is not what’s happening.”

“She wants to essentially abolish the Second Amendment. By the way, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although, for the Second Amendment people, maybe there is.”

He sent a violent tweet (video) with one of his golf balls hitting the former Secretary of State in the back.

"If we have so many nuclear weapons, why can't we use them?"

“She is a fat ugly slob.” (Referring to a successful actor)

When accused by the 22nd woman of sexual assault or rape, he said “She’s not my type".

“We have a representative in Congress who has been here a long time. I call her Pocahontas.” (Referring to a Senator who has some proof-positive Native American heritage)

“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?”

“3,000 people did not die by the two hurricanes that hit Puerto Rico.” [they did]

“I call her Maxine ‘Low-IQ’ Waters’.

“Be prepared for violence in the streets, if we don’t win the midterms.”

"If the Democrats are successful in removing me from office, it will cause a Civil War in this Nation from which our Country will never heal."

“I don’t like people who say ‘I pray for you.’”

Since she spoke out about corruption, “Marie Yovanovitch (American Ambassador to the Ukraine) is going to go through some things.”

He denied knowing Lev Parnas. Then an audio surfaced with Trump telling Parnas to "take her out"...in reference to former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch.

🚩”I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody...and I wouldn't lose voters."

ps...trump said EVERY SINGLE ONE of these vulgar rotten comments...verbatim🤦🏻‍♂️ ps...An amoral leader has a way of revealing the character of his supporters while dragging them into the deepest furrow of the inferno

Flynn's New MAGA Lawyer - Sidney Powell

Click here for an article at Politico by Keith Kloor entitled "The #MAGA Lawyer Behind Michael Flynn's Scorched-Earth Legal Strategy."

"Flynn fired his team at Covington & Burling [a well-respected world-class law firm] and hired Powell as his lead attorney. It was a striking turnabout: Flynn went from seeming to take the high road, by cooperating with the Mueller investigation, to seeking legal counsel from a Fox News pundit who thought Mueller was the perpetrator and Flynn the victim."

Flynn seemed to be meekly cooperating, and Mueller recommended that he receive no prison time because of the substantial help he had provided to the prosecutors.

"In August, she moved to have Flynn’s case dismissed for what she called “pernicious” prosecutorial misconduct, and requested that Emmet Sullivan, the presiding District Court judge, hold prosecutors in contempt for allegedly hiding FBI documents and communications that she said proved Flynn was pressured to plead guilty. In a court brief filed in October, she asserted that Flynn had been “deliberately targeted for destruction” by the intelligence community. The government countered that it had already relinquished any relevant material and that Powell was advancing “conspiracy theories” to fish for evidence that did not exist."

“'I don’t know how, but I can read the way these particular government lawyers say things to know that they are lying and hiding things,' she explained, referring to the prosecutors in the Flynn case. 'And I knew as soon as I started hearing and seeing what was going on with General Flynn that he had been set up'"

She wasn't initially successful: "Sullivan unequivocally rejected Powell’s requests for additional government documents and for the case to be dismissed. He also spurned her argument that Flynn had been framed, writing in an icy 92-page opinion that the retired general’s false statements to the FBI were 'undisputed.' Sullivan set January 28 as Flynn’s new sentencing date. Shortly afterward, government prosecutors recommended that Flynn receive up to six months in prison -- a reversal of the earlier recommendation that he not be incarcerated. 'Maybe Hiring Sidney Powell Was a Huge, Monstrous Mistake for Michael Flynn,' one headline suggested."

Powell is more than just a right-wing crank: She was a successful federal prosecutor for years, working in the Western District of Texas at the height of the drug wars, when judges were being assassinated and federal prosecutors wore bullet-proof vests, accompanied by armed guards. She went on her own and had good success as a defense lawyer, culminating in nearly a decade of work on the Enron case. She felt that Enron had been victimized:

"Powell, for her part, came away from the experience believing the prosecutors had bent the law to unfairly prosecute her clients and were never held to account for their actions. She became convinced that “prosecutorial misconduct,” in the form of suppression of evidence favorable to the defense, was a widespread problem in the judicial system."

She started crusading against prosecutorial overreach, and in 2014 she self-published a book entitled "License to Lie -- Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice." The book, Powell says, "'reveals the strong-arm, illegal, and unethical tactics used by headline-grabbing federal prosecutors in their narcissistic pursuit of power to the highest halls of our government.'"

Largely apolitical, she eagerly jumped on the Trump train in 2016. Her book, which had received very little attention, caught fire in sales when the Mueller team appointed to his prosecutorial team a number of people Powell had mentioned in her book. She tweeted that Mueller was "hiring out of my book!" Conservatives like Lou Dobbs and Sean Hannity started to take notice, and "Powell rode her sudden wave of celebrity to political relevance and began appearing on the shows that had previously ignored her, embracing Trumpian talking points about not only the Mueller report but other issues, too. On Dobbs’ show, to take one example, Powell suggested that 'the continued invasion of this country' by immigrants might be the cause of 'diseases spreading across the country that are causing polio-like paralysis of our children.'”

One of her supporters and fundraisers, John B. Wells, "... appeared on Alex Jones’ show, 'Infowars,' in 2013 and talked about how 'it’s been pretty much established that the CIA and al Qaeda are almost one.' In his opening remarks at 'Operation Classified [a fundraising event he put on],' he spoke of the 'criminal cabal we refer to as government,' and he praised QAnon, the conspiracy movement that seems to believe a global gang of Satan-worshipping pedophiles in the media, Hollywood and the political establishment is secretly running the world. 'Q is a real thing,' Wells said to cheers in the audience."

She thought she had found a kindred spirit in the judge on the case: "Sullivan actually is known for bringing the hammer down on overreaching prosecutors, as in the trial of former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens. 'Emmet G. Sullivan is one judge who knows a cover-up when he sees one,' she wrote in a 2014 Observer column. 'I love this man!' Powell has exclaimed in some of her public talks."

"Her conviction was bolstered by the release, in early December, of the long-awaited report by the inspector general for the Justice Department, which found that the FBI’s initial investigation into possible ties between Russia and Trump campaign officials (the precursor to the Mueller probe) was marred by sloppy and improper methods. Powell felt that the IG findings lent weight to a key component of her argument: that FBI agents manipulated the notes from their interview with Flynn to make him look guilty.

But in mid-December, Sullivan rejected the idea that the original FBI counterintelligence investigation of former Trump officials—Flynn included—was a deep state plot against Trump, and that Flynn had been tricked into his perjury by unscrupulous FBI agents. At the close of his ruling, Sullivan wrote: 'the Court summarily disposes of Mr. Flynn’s arguments that the FBI conducted an ambush interview for the purpose of trapping him into making false statements and that the government pressured him to enter a guilty plea. The record proves otherwise.'”

Yes, They Really Were Watching You

Click here for an article at The Washington Post by Greg Miller, entitled "The intelligence coup of the century," subtitled "For decades, the CIA read the encrypted communications of allies and adversaries."

The CIA, in partnership with the BND (West German spy agency), ran a company called Crypto AG which had its roots in programs similar to Enigma. Crypto got its start encoding transmissions by U.S. troops in WWII. Secretly taken over by the CIA, it spent decades selling encryption hardware, software, and techniques to foreign governments and businesses. Then the CIA and the BND sat back and read what everybody was saying -- secretly, they thought. "... the United States and its allies exploited other nations’ gullibility for years, taking their money and stealing their secrets."

“It was the intelligence coup of the century,” the CIA report concludes. “Foreign governments were paying good money to the U.S. and West Germany for the privilege of having their most secret communications read by at least two (and possibly as many as five or six) foreign countries.”

"They monitored Iran’s mullahs during the 1979 hostage crisis, fed intelligence about Argentina’s military to Britain during the Falklands War, tracked the assassination campaigns of South American dictators and caught Libyan officials congratulating themselves on the 1986 bombing of a Berlin disco."

Consider Trump's bumbling release of intelligence secrets: "Foreign targets were tipped off by the careless statements of public officials including President Ronald Reagan."

"The German spy agency, the BND, came to believe the risk of exposure was too great and left the operation in the early 1990s. But the CIA bought the Germans’ stake and simply kept going, wringing Crypto for all its espionage worth until 2018, when the agency sold off the company’s assets, according to current and former officials."

"The company’s importance to the global security market had fallen by then, squeezed by the spread of online encryption technology. Once the province of governments and major corporations, strong encryption is now as ubiquitous as apps on cellphones."

Who Are You, And What Have You Done With Marco Rubio?

Excerpts from an interview of Marco Rubio by Jake Tapper, Mar 13, 2016:

Look, I think people have to make up their minds -- I can tell you this, no matter what happens in this election for years to come there are many people on the right, in the media, and voters at large that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump because this is not going to end well one way or the other. He's going to be the nominee and he's going to lose. Or he'll have thrown this party into its most chaotic and divisive period of and that's unfortunate because the Republican Party is the home of the limited government, free enterprise movement in America. And if it crumbles or divide or it splits apart, it will be very difficult to elect candidates that hold those views at any level of the government until we can bring the party back together.

*****

You see images of Americans now at -- literally at each other's throats, pointing fingers in each other's face. Look, some of these protesters that you saw in Chicago apparently, obviously, were organized, maybe even paid to disrupt an event, so I'm not excusing their behavior.

But this not just the protesters in Chicago. These is now multiple rallies where people are assaulted and beat up, where a guy gets sucker-punched by one of the Trump supporters. And then, instead of condemning it, Trump is silent. When the guy is released from jail, he says, the next time, we -- maybe we should kill the protester against -- again, there is silence.

Then he goes on stage and makes -- just makes things up. He keeps telling the story about general -- a general who dipped bullets in the pig blood and shot a bunch of prisoners of -- Muslim prisoners up. Not only is it outrageous. It's a lie. And then he claims that the guy that stormed the stage was linked to ISIS.

He has turned the most important election in a generation into a circus, into a complete fiasco and a carnival. And it's -- this country deserves better. I mean, we -- at some point, people have to wake up here. This is really going to do damage to America.

*****

Here is the bottom line. He has said to people, why don't we basically beat up the protesters and beat up the hecklers, and I will pay your legal bills?

And here is what people have to understand. Maybe you think it's a joke, but there are people out there that are not balanced. There are people out there that -- that are not completely in control of themselves. And they hear something like this from a leader, you don't know what they're going to do next.

And when someone is seeking a position of leadership and is already in a position of influence, you speak responsibly. This notion that a president can just say anything they want, or even a presidential candidate can say anything they want, whatever comes to mind, it's just not true, and it's reckless, and it's dangerous.

And I -- look, I hope people wake up on time and realize what's happening here, because, if we reach a point in this country where we can't have a debate about politics without it getting to levels of violence and anger, where people think that just because you're angry, you can say and almost do anything you want, we're going to lose our republic.

*****

But, look, this is an ongoing thing, OK? So, every day, something new comes up, and I try not to escalate things, because you don't want to exaggerate them, and you don't want to make something bigger than it really is.

But just in the last, you know, five days, we he have had stories about the guy getting sucker-punched at the Trump rally. You have supporters basically -- you have a campaign employee now allegedly assaulted a reporter at an event.

So, every day, it's something new. And so there comes a point here where there's a tipping point, right? And you look at it and say enough is enough. So, I think, at the end of the day, we should all examine our behavior moving -- over the last year on this issue. We should all examine whether we have been quick enough.

*****

I'm very concerned. We don't know what's going to happen next here. I know that we have reached the point now where people in American politics have decided that, if they don't agree with you, that they can get angry at you, that you're a bad and evil person, that they can say anything they want about you.

I think that the -- all the gates of civility have been blown apart, and we have now reached a point where, on both sides, everyone is just saying or doing whatever they want. And, you know, you can't just say or do whatever you want. This is not about political correctness. This is about rules of civility and a way a society talks to each other.

And let me ask everybody this. Do we really want to live a -- in a country where everybody hates each other, where everybody is at each other's throat, where, because we disagree on the role of government or the tax rate or Obamacare or foreign policy, we now in this nation cannot have a discourse or agree on any other issue and end up hating each other?

Because that's what it feels like. It feels like we're reaching a point now where, in America, everyone hates each other. I'm so tired of arguing and fighting with other Americans.

Yes, we have serious disagreements, and let's debate those through our republic, but we have reached a point now where, if I don't agree with you on something, it's not just that you're wrong, but you're a bad person, you're an evil person, you deserve nothing.

I mean, we -- all the gates of -- all the rules that once governed our discourse have been blown away. And we're headed in a very dangerous direction. And, yes, there are people out there that are unbalanced. There are people out there that do not have control of themselves. We don't know what they will do.

*****

You know, he's running for president so no matter what he won't be a dictator unless our republic completely crumbles which I don't anticipate it will. But yes, here's what happens in many countries around the world. You have a leader that emerges and basically says, don't put your faith in yourselves. Don't put your faith in society. Put your faith in me, I'm a strong leader, and I'm going to make things better all by myself.

This is very typical. You see it in the third world. You see it a lot in Latin America for decades. It's basically the argument that he's making that he single handedly is going to turn the country around. We've never been that kind of country. We have a president.

The president is an American citizen who serves for a period of time, constrained by the constitutions and the powers vested in that office. The president works for the people. Not the people for the president.

And if you listen to the way he describes himself of what he's going to do he's going to single handedly do this and do that without regard for whether it's legal or not. Ah, poor little Marco. When Romney lost in 2012 and Reince Preibus led the Republicans in thsir inward-gazing, self-described "autopsy" which determined that to win the presidency in the future, the Republican party would have to be more inclusive -- more friendly to women and minorities -- poor little Marco thught he had a good thing going, and as a fresh new Latino face, he would ride the wave to the presidency by championing and spearheading a drive to liberalize the Republican approach to immigration. He sponsored such a bill in the Senate which won widespread bipartisan approval -- and then it went to the House, which had been captured by the Tea Party, and defeated the liberal bill in a humiliating defeat for young Marco, who has never really recovered his rising-star status with Republicans. *****

Character And Decency? No: Trump.

Click here for another article by Dana Milbank in The Washington Post, entitled "This vulgar man has squandered our decency."

“Character is the only secure foundation of the state.”

— President Calvin Coolidge, addressing the National Republican Club in New York, 1924.

“It was all bullshit.”

— President Trump, addressing Republicans in the White House and a national television audience on Thursday after his acquittal.

Trump Speaks, Post Impeachment

Click here for an article in The Washington Post by Dana Milbank entitled "Trump learned his lesson. He’s going to be even more vulgar."

The morning after his acquittal in the Senate, Trump attended the National Prayer Breakfast, where political opponents have always set aside their differences. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) urged the assembled to “raise our voices in prayer as one.” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) prayed for his colleagues, including Pelosi, and said God couldn’t have “picked a better day to bring us all together.”

And then there was Trump. He complained that he was “put through a terrible ordeal by some very dishonest and corrupt people.”

Referring to Mitt Romney, the lone Republican to support impeachment, Trump said, “I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong.” Referring to Pelosi, just a few feet away, he added: “Nor do I like people who say, ‘I pray for you’ when they know that’s not so.”

Later, in a gathering of his strongest supporters at the White House:

He described his political opponents and government bureaucrats as “bad,” “dirty,” “horrible,” “evil,” “sick,” “corrupt,” “scum,” “leakers,” “liars,” “vicious,” “mean,” “lowlifes,” “non-people,” “stone-cold crazy” and “the crookedest, most dishonest, dirtiest people I’ve ever seen.”

In what was billed as an address to the nation, Trump declared to every American man, woman and child: “It was all bullshit.”

The Republicans laughed.