Green Eagle

An account of Joe Biden's "sexual assault" on Tara Reade?  No, a quote from a novel written by (get ready for it) Tara Reade's father. Just a coincidence, like I said.  Because the Republicans would never stoop to fabricating accusations against their opponents which mirror their own disgusting behavior. While you are thinking about it, you might like to read this article on the subject, from USA Today.

So we all know there are troubles with the story of Joe Biden's alleged abuse of a woman in the early nineties.  She is a rabid partisan Putin supporter, and let's face it, this is just the kind of dirty lie the Republicans are going to tell from now to November, like Hillary's e-mails, Benghazi, the Swift Boat smear and on and on.  We all have good historical reasons to doubt whatever smear the Republicans (and possibly the Berniebots) cook up.  For a good treatment of the problems with the accusations, I suggest you look to Daily Kos. But that is not enough of an answer.  As people desperate to be done with a massively criminal President, we have to know the truth, before we are unalterably committed to his candidacy. It is absolutely critical that Biden find a way to resolve this issue before he becomes the official candidate.  If Republicans were allowed by the press to savage Hillary over the totally phony e-mail scandal, they will tear Biden apart over...

“One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic" -Joseph Stalin "Sixty thousand deaths is a tremendous victory for me" -Donald Trump I always like it when I get a chance to say something that I haven't seen anyone else say, at least straight out.  Usually, this is just something I've managed to dig up that nobody else has noticed.  But once in a while, there is something that is so shocking to our sensibility that no one seems to be able to just say it, even though I suspect a lot of people have thought about it.  This is one of those things. We have heard endless stories in the news the last two months about the inadequacy of testing for the Coronavirus in the United States.  So far, it has been written off as just a typical example of incompetence or of Republican disinterest in actually using the power they fought so hard to get into their hands to benefit anyone but themselves.  That is not what I think is really going on here. In my opinion,...

I saw this picture at Daily Kos, where they were commenting on the size of Trump's pupils in a brightly lit room, and wondering just how wasted on drugs he really is.  Well, I buy that, but I have another question.  This guy is the President of the United States, and claims to be worth ten billion dollars.  The whole idea of a President wearing makeup every day is revolting to me, but really, why can't he get someone that can apply it properly?  I mean, Melania would never go out with makeup that crude.  Couldn't he at least get her to do it? The area around his eyes looks like he was sunning himself in a Lone Ranger mask, and can't they ever get that sickening orange glop to go up to his hairline on the sides?  Really, what is the deal with this?

Dr. Deborah Birx: "Later in the day, Deborah Birx, a physician and the White House coronavirus response coordinator, defended the president’s comments about ingesting disinfectant — not as sarcasm, but as part of a deliberate, if unorthodox, thought process. “When he gets new information he likes to talk that through out loud and really have that dialogue, and so that’s what dialogue he was having,” Birx said on Fox News Channel." What dialogue, Deborah?  I thought he already knew everything better than anyone else in the world.

I am not in any way suggesting that this mentally challenged, ignorant idiot did what he did for this reason- he is not capable of thinking that far ahead- but let me point out a negative effect of the tremendous coverage of Trump's insane rant about injecting disinfectant into people: Today, we passed 50,000 deaths from Coronavirus.  And as you can see from this chart, from Daily Kos, the death rate, far from diminishing, is increasing. And that horrible milestone is receiving very little attention in the mainstream press, blotted out by their disgust at his jackass behavior in the face of tragedy.  Remember when, a couple of months ago, Trump said the number of Coronavirus cases in America was 15, and that it would soon be zero?  Remember him blaring for the last month that "experts" said the death toll would top out at 60,000, a number that would be a tremendous victory for him?  Well, at the present rate, we will hit the 60,000 mark sometime this coming ...

And for some reason it's Kennedy day in wingnut world.  Let's start with a bit of an interview with someone named Ivo: "Me: Right. One of course being Marilyn Monroe. Me: Who’s side was she on? I heard she was an MK Ultra sex kitten? Ivo: She was with Kennedy to gain information for the deep state. Me: Wow! We always think of her as so innocent and frankly, pretty fluffy. Ivo: She was a spy for the deep state." The deep state.  In 1962.  And they had Marilyn Monroe screw Kennedy.  She was a spy. And dig this: Humberto Fontova, Town Hall:  "Kennedy Family 'Matriarch' Ethel Kennedy 'Loves Che Guevara, Named Her Dog Che' It's vital to have things like this pointed out to us so we can make decisions about our lives. Incidentally, I checked and I could find not a single reference to this story that was older than six days ago, and every one of the dozens of these tales are on wingnut websites, many of them familiar to my readers. __...

No matter how stupid the things Trump says, there is just no way that you should ever think he has hit bottom.  There's always farther for him to sink.  Today's example: "And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute. One minute.   And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number in the lungs. It would be interesting to check that. You're going have to use medical doctors with that, but it sounds interesting to me. And so we'll see." Curing Covid19 by injecting disinfectant into people.  Well, I guess it beats hydrochloroquine, which only kills people some of the time.  You know, hydrochloric acid kills viruses too- maybe we should inject people with that.  And don't worry- there will be something even stupider tomorrow or the next day.

I was originally going to title this post "Are they trying to kill us?  but at this point, I don't think there is really any question.  Most of us have heard this abominable news : "Director Of Key Federal Vaccine Agency Files Whistleblower Complaint... Dr. Rick Bright was abruptly removed from his position as head of BARDA after he questioned the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine, "a drug promoted by the administration as a panacea, but which clearly lacks scientific merit...Bright had been in charge of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, known as BARDA, which recently received more than $3 billion in federal funds to help ramp up production capacity so that any discovery of a coronavirus vaccine can be quickly manufactured and distributed to hundreds of millions of Americans. His removal from the post stunned lawmakers who had been pushing for a more robust vaccine effort." But maybe you haven't heard this: "HH...

We've heard it over and over again from the GOP- what this country needs is a CEO President- a guy who has proven he has what it takes by running a company. Well, of course, we have a CEO President now- how has that worked out for us?  Of course, maybe they didn't mean a CEO whose business strategy was to start out rich and then drive six of his own companies into bankruptcy after looting them of every penny he could.  Yeah, maybe a CEO like the only Republican who dared to stand up to Trump in the Senate, and last Republican Presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.  See, Romney was a much better businessman, at least in Republican terms.  He also started out rich, and was the CEO of a company called Bain Capital, a "venture capital" company that specialized in buying up sound companies, stripping them of every cent of wealth, and leaving them to go bankrupt, costing tens of thousands of jobs*.  Romney was a much better businessman than Trump; he drove other peopl...

Social distancing, right wing style This is sort of a special edition of Wingnut Wrapup, concentrating solely on the utterly insane demonstrations against social distancing that seem to be popping up all over the country.  Of course we know that a lot of these demonstrations are artificially generated by sociopathic right wing rich people (including a member of Trump's cabinet,) but still, how are they motivating thousands of these people to cast their own safety to the winds to support Trump's position? At least part of the answer can be found (as you might expect) in the "information" that these people are being force-fed.  I've assembled a few of them here; and I do mean a few; I stopped when I couldn't take it any more.  There could be hundreds more entries here, but enough is enough.  Well, here we go: Guy Benson, Town Hall:  "Analysis: NYT Exploits Man's Coronavirus Death With Shoddy, Hypocritical Hit Piece on Fox News" Fox...

 Perhaps you have seen this map showing the Trump Administration's distribution of the hundreds of billions of dollars in small business loans that were appropriated by Congress: I need hardly point out that the vast majority of this money has been directed to Republican States, even though at this point Democratic States have been hit hardest by the pandemic.  This is a criminal misuse of his power to advance his own electoral interests and those of his party, with absolutely no regard for the good of the country. While this is going on, Trump is inciting right wing violence against the country.  After the insane gathering at the Michigan State Capitol on Wednesday, financed by a member of Trump's cabinet, Trump today posted the following three tweets: "LIBERATE VIRGINIA, and save your great 2nd Amendment. It is under siege!" "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" "LIBERATE MINNESOTA!" And this is what he is promoting: Heavily armed right wing fana...

Absent in all the discussions of who has the right to open up the economy is this seemingly obvious fact:  A President, or a Governor, can, in the right circumstances, order a businessman to shut his business down.  But I can't see that there is any precedent or legal justification allowing them to order someone to start up a business again. Am I missing something here?

The Reichstag on Fire, February 27, 1933 From the Constitution, Article II, Section 3:  "...he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such  Time as he shall think proper..." This section of the Constitution has never, in the entire history of our country, been used.  Now, however, we have a threat by the President of the United States to "adjourn" Congress and govern without them. It is certainly not without precedent for a nation's leader, frustrated by his inability to wield complete power, to dissolve its legislature: "After being appointed Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933, Hitler asked President von Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag. ... Hitler used the decree to have the Communist Party's offices raided and its representatives arrested, effectively eliminating them as a political force...

From the Washington Post today, this helpful bit of analysis from Kathleen Parker*: "Amid all this, one thing is certain: BS is dead. Which is to say, politics as we know it is dead.   That’s a (small) reason to celebrate. The endless and often pointless art of pitting one side against another is unhelpful in a world on fire. Democrats in both the House and Senate are holding up legislation aimed at saving small businesses — the core of the U.S. economy — because they want to attach their own policy priorities." The Democrats!  The Democrats are responsible for "pitting one side against another."  Not one word about the Republicans, with their packing of the courts with corrupt right wingers, their refusal to even consider any legislation authored by Democrats, their using their majority to push through trillion dollar giveaways for their backers, their President, who openly sabotages blue States while rewarding red States, their cheating every way th...

Here we are again!  I want to start out with a general comment.  I pointed out a while ago the lunatic variety of explanations that right wingers have been giving to explain away the Trump administration's coronavirus failings, and the economic disaster they created.  Lately, a lot of them seem to be coming together around one explanation:  This is a plot by Bill Gates, China and the WHO to let a virus loose, then create a vaccine for it which will be forcibly administered to everyone on earth, at the same time injecting tracking or mind control devices to control the entire human race for the deep state.  Who knows, could be... Anyway, on we go: Paris Dennard, Town Hall:  "President Trump And His Task Force Are Providing Daily Hope for the American People" Hope that he will shut up and go away? Humberto Fontova, Town Hall:  Trump Denounces the Communist-linked WHO, Threatens to Cut US Funding" "Communist linked," in this case meaning that ...

And now the good news:  Linda Tripp, one of the most disgusting right wing leeches in the history of American government died today. It isn't much but at least this isn't one more article about how Trump can't open his mouth without telling a self-serving lie.

This tremendous news just out:  Donald Trump is now reporting that he has solved the mask shortage in the United States.  "The fake news is lying as usual about the availability of face masks.  I have discovered that there is a huge supply of face masks available all over the country in costume stores." And, Trump adds, these masks have the additional utility of being usable to view a solar eclipse: Well, it is April 1st.

Here's a headline today from CNBC, after the market started the new quarter with a nearly thousand point drop: "Dow falls 900 points as Wall Street fears coronavirus will shut down economy longer than expected" Longer than expected, based on Donald Trump's prediction a week ago that the country could end its state of siege as early as Easter, a week and a half ago. Well, that claim only lasted a few days, but it certainly accomplished one thing: it stopped the slide of the stock market into a depression...at least for a week or so.  And that is all that Trump wanted- to end the bad press.  So he got a couple thousand points up in the market, and then, convinced that he had once again saved the world, he admitted that he was not going to come through on his promise.  The result? The market is on its way into the garbage again. Naturally, the mainstream press has pretended to fall for his trick again, and when he went back on his clearly undeliverable promise, t...