Religion and politics… two topics one should never discuss in polite company. And I consider you, dear reader, to be quite polite company. But I’m gonna break the rule today. I can’t hold my tongue any longer (it’s part of the “don’t touch your face” rule). Feel free to bail out now if you’d like. I’ll be back to my usual Chuckles the Clown routine on this blog in 24 hours.

If you’re still with me, please spend 82 seconds watching this lil’ video:

Let’s review, shall we? It’s no longer one person, or 15. It didn’t “disappear, like a miracle” in April. it isn’t “totally under control.” We don’t have a vaccine.

Want more?

As of this morning, there are 713,503 confirmed cases, with 59,672 deaths. Think about that!

I could go on citing chapter and verse about the many ways our country’s president has failed the American people in a time of crisis. We needed a leader. We’re stuck with a liar.

Trump was warned about the looming pandemic in mid-January, if not sooner. On January 31st, he imposed a travel ban on foreign nationals who had been in China, because that move was right in his xenophobic wheelhouse. Then, for six crucial weeks, he did nothing other than to parrot lies.

This article from The Atlantic sums things up nicely:

The utter unpreparedness of the United States for a pandemic is Trump’s fault. The loss of stockpiled respirators to breakage because the federal government let maintenance contracts lapse in 2018 is Trump’s fault. The failure to store sufficient protective medical gear in the national arsenal is Trump’s fault. That states are bidding against other states for equipment, paying many multiples of the precrisis price for ventilators, is Trump’s fault. Air travelers summoned home and forced to stand for hours in dense airport crowds alongside infected people? That was Trump’s fault too. Ten weeks of insisting that the coronavirus is a harmless flu that would miraculously go away on its own? Trump’s fault again. The refusal of red-state governors to act promptly, the failure to close Florida and Gulf Coast beaches until late March? That fault is more widely shared, but again, responsibility rests with Trump: He could have stopped it, and he did not.

The lying about the coronavirus by hosts on Fox News and conservative talk radio is Trump’s fault: They did it to protect him. The false hope of instant cures and nonexistent vaccines is Trump’s fault, because he told those lies to cover up his failure to act in time. The severity of the economic crisis is Trump’s fault; things would have been less bad if he had acted faster instead of sending out his chief economic adviser and his son Eric to assure Americans that the first stock-market dips were buying opportunities. The firing of a Navy captain for speaking truthfully about the virus’s threat to his crew? Trump’s fault. The fact that so many key government jobs were either empty or filled by mediocrities? Trump’s fault. The insertion of Trump’s arrogant and incompetent son-in-law as commander in chief of the national medical supply chain? Trump’s fault.

For three years, Trump has blathered and bluffed and bullied his way through an office for which he is utterly inadequate. But sooner or later, every president must face a supreme test, a test that cannot be evaded by blather and bluff and bullying. That test has overwhelmed Trump. Trump failed. He is failing. He will continue to fail. And Americans are paying for his failures.

all text in Italics above from this article in The Atlantic by David Frum

Want more? I’ve got more. Here’s an excerpt from another piece in The Atlantic, written by a lifelong Republican, Peter Wehner, who worked in the three previous GOP administrations.

And when a reporter tries to call him out on the do-nothing gap, he resorts to his usual ad hominem attacks.

Peter Wehner actually wrote something very prescient in January of 2016… he recounts it in the article above. Here’s the passage:

I hope and pray that this crisis will be “totally under control.” That can start on November 3rd of this year, and maybe by January 20th of 2021, it’ll “disappear, like a miracle.”

In case you need it, here’s a video that shows you how to unsubscribe from a WordPress blog.