A Dance of Death

 Last night about 1500 fools gathered, sat together unmasked and shouted in each other's naked faces on the White House lawn. They met there to celebrate the crumbling ego of El Supremo, the head case in charge of the United States, and to deny the truth of the coronavirus, which they believe to be a hoax.

The plague is killing about 1,000 Americans a day.

Most Americans comprehend the danger. I hope most can see the weird defiance of reality in the actions of our ponderously loony President and his contagious cult, engaged in a robotic dance of death.

American Institutions

 A question raised over the last four years is will American institutions stand up in the face of a Fascist Presidency?

Our institutions have not done as well as we might like. In this pandemic, the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has made a series of decisions designed to placate El Supremo, even though the decisions will be killing American voters.

Today, for example, the CDC changed its recommendations on virus testing and social isolation for people who have been in contact with someone contagious. The CDC now recommends less testing and more socializing. So far they have given no medical reasons for the changes. Now more Americans will die; but tRump, who wants to end testing because the pandemic makes him look like himself, will smile on CDC leadership.

The problem with institutions is that they may be led by sociopaths who made their way to power in cold blood.  

Democracy

 "American democracy itself is at stake," said an MSNBC professional centrist. Centrist-talking is a good living, pro or con. You may have noticed that the purpose of Fox News is to attack centrist Democrats, and the purpose of MSNBC is to defend centrist Democrats. 

“Do not let them take away your power,” Obama said to voters. “Don’t let them take away your democracy.”

If the USA were a democracy, we'd have universal health care by now.  

Extinction

Greed is part of us, and one outcome of our economic system is that it can become greed-gone-wild. For example, the Democratic National Committee recently dropped the ending of fossil fuel subsidies from the agreed-on party platform. That is a step toward extinction for humans.

Scientists have stated that our use of fossil fuels is already leading to losses of oxygen--followed by our own extinction in about 80 years. 

Science and life on earth don't seem to matter to the DNC or to the fossil fuel industry. They don't intend to make us extinct, but they are blinded by greed.

What matters to the DNC is that some voters work for oil, coal and natural gas corporations. The DNC doesn't intend to lose those votes. Also the fossil fuel tycoons donate towering bribes of cash to political campaigns. 

For tRump and the DNC, raking in cash and votes is more important that maintaining enough oxygen to keep our grandchildren and the super-rich's grandchildren alive. This is primitive stuff. The big cats eat everything now, and their kittens can starve.

Biden and Harris are pledged to cut subsidies to Big Oil, so the DNC is attempting to reassure the super-rich that Biden and Harris don't mean it. We will find out who means what next year. 

I yield back my time.

Testing Vaccines

 Our vaccine testing program has run into a hitch. The people being tested need to be representative. That means about a third of them should be people of color. But so far only about 10% of those tested are black, Hispanic, etc. Medical authorities can't locate the rest. Here is a hint.

More than 60% of all American prisoners are people of color. If we freed some of them, maybe we'd get the balance we need for testing vaccines. 

Fifteen Cents

AMC is planning to open some of its movie theaters now and charge only fifteen cents for a ticket. There is no cheaper way to get the coronavirus.

Meanwhile I am wearing a mask because I want to save my life. Also I am trying to save the lives of tRump morons. 

Kamala Harris

 Is Kamala Harris the future of the Democratic Party?  She has a new role, one where she represents decent people of every color. She's unusually sharp and a talented speaker. The role is huge, overshadowing the empty suits around her. Can she do it?

Harris will face massive problems, including global warming v. the fossil fuel industries, which has the potential to end human life on this planet in the next  80 years.

To succeed Harris will have to grow and change and be firmer than those who came before. There is more at stake than breaking the sex and color barrier. 

The Eating of Hats

Some time back when I told my wife that Biden would pick Kamala Harris as his VP, my wife said that if he did, she would eat her hat.

Violence and Civil Rights

From what I have read recently, white people left something out of our history of how black people won civil rights in the 1960s. 

MLK and John Lewis and the people with them were braver than I can understand; they were peaceful and effective to a point. But in the South protest marches were sometimes made by people of color carrying concealed weapons, ready to defend their community. No one beat them or stopped them. The KKK stood aside.

How do a suppressed people get the attention of rich community bosses? Bosses like the status quo. That works fine for them, until unknown citizens set fire to their warehouses at night and boycott their stores (cancel culture) in daylight. Then it's finally time for a change. 

If people are treated badly enough, they will respond with destruction and boycott, something to remember the next time it happens.

Sturgis

 Many years ago Susan and I decided to visit Deadwood, where Wild Bill Hickok had been murdered. I intended to buy a Wild Bill T-shirt. 

We drove into the rustic western town in a suitable Ford 3/4 ton pickup and found no souvenir shirts and no bathrooms. The three of us looked around. In those days we had a pet wolf, and he rode on the bench seat between us. 

It turned out that the entire town had a plumbing problem, and everyone had to hold it for a day or two while something got fixed.

Soon we were leaving town, heading for the nearest place that had toilets, a hamlet called Sturgis. I think the drive took about an hour, and we stopped at the first service station we came to and ran inside. The station was like something from the Twilight Zone. Half  the main room was dedicated to the sale of leather jackets. This gas station had stocked hundreds of black jackets. It was eerie. We did our business fast, tried to look friendly and left as quickly as we could. 

Diversity Among Black People

Yesterday Joe Biden told the TV cameras that black people don't have the diversity of Hispanics. It was never his intention, I am sure, to insult black people or to toot a racist dog-whistle. It's just that he can't talk sensibly off the cuff. He's aged out. He needs a script to read.

Some black people, as you know, are Hispanic.

The problem is that Biden's cognitive gears are jamming, and he is about to be elected President during a pandemic and a huge economic downturn. Or Biden might even lose the election because his cognitive deficits during debates turn off voters. 

What the Harvard lads currently dominating the Democratic Party ought to do is get Biden to withdraw and free his delegates. Then nominate a trustworthy DNC employee who is young and competent--perhaps a woman of color. But that won't happen this time around. Maybe in four years.

Death by Voter Suppression

When the translucent eel known as Jerrod Kushner, son of a felon, brainlessly surmised that the coronavirus would have a more deadly impact on blue states than red states, he decided not to help anyone.  That's what has been reported. Let hundreds of thousands die, just another method of voter suppression.   

 tRump decided not to try to help during the pandemic. He abandoned the Republicans of California to their fate.

There are 4,700,000 Republicans registered in California, the most of any state. Florida is second. In California, Republicans are the third largest group of voters (behind the Democrats and the independents). In the end, California is blue.

The President and his mob don't mind who dies, really.  But they prefer the dying be concentrated in states don't support tRump. I look at it this way: I don't vote Republican, and Kushner and tRump are trying, indirectly, to kill me before November.