POLTERGEIST

Donald Trump repeatedly makes the following statement: I won a landslide victory in the 2020 election, and everybody in this country knows it.

Lets take this notion apart and see how it holds up.

First, did he win a victory, landslide or otherwise, in the election?

Not apparently. At least, not according to election officials in the various states. Votes have been tallied and re-tallied (sometimes more than once) in several swing states, and nothing has come close to affecting the outcome.

All states have now certified their elections. Electors have voted, awarding Joe Biden 306 votes—the same number Donald Trump won in 2016, which at the time he labeled a landslide victory. A man with Trump's gigantic ego can never succeed by a hair; he can only win bigly.

It seems clear the election went for Biden this time, the man winning the popular contest by some seven million votes.

Yet Trump persists in saying he won, claiming he has uncovered massive fraud at the polls, enough egregious and disgraceful malfeasance by Democratic governors (and others) that the needle has indeed swung the other way, putting him firmly in the winner's column.

Unfortunately, the evidence of this rampant and fraudulent voting has proven impossible to haul into any court, including the Supreme Court. Perhaps it's too big to fit through the doors.

Trump claims the judges all lack the courage to do what is right.

Others would say the judges (including those put on the bench by Trump) are simply doing their jobs and facing reality, something Trump is unwilling or unable to do.

Despite the made-up controversy, the first part of Trump's statement is clearly false: He did not win re-election.

The second part is full-on delusional.

Do the 80 million folks who voted for Biden think Trump won? I doubt that.

Trump might say those 80 million voters thought they had voted to re-elect the president, and can't imagine how their candidate managed to lose, as reported by all those Deep State Democrats.

Or are Biden's voters starting to think they actually voted for Trump by accident (or satanic intercession), and corrupt Dems somehow managed to made it look like they voted for Biden after all?

The second part of Trump's statement is paranoid fantasy. The way he sees it, people are deliberately harming him when they claim he lost the election. And they know it. They celebrate that harm, gleefully.

Trump portrays himself as a victim of election abuse. It would probably take a trained psychologist to evaluate how a man with such an enormous ego could take on the role of victim-hood. But it's all he has.

Of course, Trump is actively trying to rise above his unfortunate circumstances. He told folks at a rally he is working harder now than at any time in his life.

And making a great deal of money in the process.

Seventy-five million Americans voted for the man, and they want the fellow to remain president. Many of them are putting their money where their vote was, attempting to fund the insatiable "Stop the Steal" campaign. No doubt most of them see the "official" election results as Fake News.

As they have been trained to do.

Trump is back in Mar-a-Lago. He has the long-awaited Covid relief bill on his desk but is threatening to veto it. He can now delay doing anything long enough to cause a pocket veto, which would put any veto-overturning attempt in the hands of the next Congress. (If fact, the new Congress would probably have to start all over again to pass an omnibus bill.)

As is often the case, Trump has placed himself in the spotlight. We're stuck in a cliffhanger episode at the end of the Season One of Trump's presidential reality show.

Millions of Americans cringe in their Covid shelters with bated breath, wondering if their blighted lives will get even worse. End of unemployment insurance? Eviction? Foreclosure? Starvation? (Not to mention death on a ventilator, alone in a drafty hospital tent.)

Beyond that, a full or partial government shutdown. It's all possible, thanks to our clueless leader.

How can we avoid this kind of foreseeable calamity in the future? We'll take that subject up next time, here at What's Wrong With Us.



 

PARDON THE KRAKEN

A few days ago the Dow closed above 30,000 for the first time. Donald Trump held a brief press conference to celebrate that event. He thanked everybody (those in his administration, at least) for making it happen.

The "sacred" number (as he called it) had been achieved. Nobody knew anything like that was even possible! Amazing stuff, right?

(Trump is adept at telling folks what they know, even when they don't really know it.)

During the last part of the 2020 campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly declared that if Joe Biden won the election, the market would crash. For some reason, he failed to mention this during his 64-second press conference.

Not that he's especially adverse to admitting mistakes. But since it's literally impossible for him to make a mistake (being a genius and everything), admitting he made a mistake is not just difficult, it's forever off the table.

Given his astonishing mental prowess, I'm surprised he didn't make the connection. Not only did the market not crash, it did the exact opposite of crashing—which is proof he'd been right all along.

That position might need some explaining.

Here's how the gears of logic mesh to squeeze out the finest of alternate realities: The stock market didn't crash for the simple reason that Joe Biden didn't win the election.

Get it? The market was weighing in on the hoax election controversy, landing squarely on Trump's side. The surging market backed his oft-stated position that the election was rigged against him by the Dems.

That 30,000 Dow close was proof Trump won the election! You might even say it's the best proof the man has. At least, the best he's produced so far.

In reality, of course, the market was reacting favorably to two bits of news: 1) despite the fact Donald Trump had yet to concede defeat, the transition to the Biden administration had finally begun, and 2) the medical community would be in a position to start inoculations of healthcare workers, first responders, and old folks within the next few weeks.

The medicos have multiple anti-covid vaccines of 95% effectiveness—the best possible outcome at the most desperate of pandemic times. Turns out, that flickering glow at the end of the tunnel was not the headlight of Nick Cage's Ghost Rider motorcycle after all.

This doesn't mean the president is done calling fraud on the election. Despite a great many embarrassing failures in various courtrooms, and the falling away of his legal team (mostly leaving Rudy Giuliani, he of the streaming hair dye), Trump maintains the position there was massive and systematic corruption that led to Biden becoming the apparent winner—but not the real winner (though time will tell).

He says they have proof tens of thousands—maybe millions—of fake votes.

Sidney Powell, one of Trump's previous lawyers (she also represents ex-security adviser Michael Flynn; his recent pardon proves she's good, right?), says she's about to release the Kraken, says she'll be going all Biblical on the election fraud evil-doers. Starting in Georgia, probably. Starting soon. Real soon. Any friggin' moment now...

(Even Fox News has trouble believing this stuff.)

Meanwhile, Trump's own voluminous proof of massive fraud is apparently wedged into the same Resolution Desk drawer as his tax returns and the Republican health plan bill. Unfortunately, he can't get at it just now because the drawer is stuck.

No doubt another damnable plot perpetrated by the Dems!

RUNAWAY EGO

Well, the election is over and it's not clear if we have a new president or not. Or at least, it's unclear to Donald Trump.

Some say the man will never concede, that he'll just fade away to Mar-a-Lago and blister his fingers in maximum-rage Twitter mode, spending the rest of his life in the grievous complaint zone.

Or worse: The 2020 presidential campaign will blend seamlessly into the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump trying another path to achieve his second helping of sickly-sweet political pudding.

And success there might not be a major problem for him.

More people voted for Trump this time than in 2016. A lot more. Not only did the last four years change few minds, a deeper dredging of the American outback pried even more folks out of the muck with whatever it takes to vote for the demonstrably worst president ever.

Unfortunately, we're dealing with human beings here, arguably the stupidest and meanest creatures in the universe. We're the people who think we know things. But this only works because we make up for being stupid by being delusional.

Our first delusion is that we're not stupid at all. We're convinced we're really quite smart. We know lots of stuff, okay? In fact, we're so good at knowing things, we know the Unknowable. With the devastating result that billions of humans around the globe think they know all about God.

(In reality, nobody knows anything about God. Toss your Bibles and your Qurans into that ocean of blood we've been contributing to for thousands of years. We're on our own out here. I did say stupid and mean, right?)

Our second fatal delusion is that everything in our heads is true. Everywhere we look, we see proof. Or so it seems to us. But for that process to pay off, we need to be terminally stupid. Lucky for us, we actually are that stupid, so we're able to set the bar for proof right down there in the gutter. And jump over it with ease. Just don't try to explain how it is you know what you know. That way lies madness.

If few people changed their minds about Donald Trump, the previous few paragraphs suggest the reason: To a close approximation, human beings don't have minds. Instead, we have imaginary minds, where we do imaginary thinking.

Donald Trump's search for non-existent voter fraud is another of his Bizarro World attempts to save the country by destroying it. I understand the Lt. Governor of Texas has offered a million dollar reward for proof of election fraud. Good going!

With a million bucks at stake, I'm pretty sure we'll get some sort of proof of some level of fraud. But not enough to change the the results of the election. Folks would need a much bigger payday to manufacture that amount of "proof." Would you be willing to spend a couple years in prison for $10,000,000?

Stand back for a flood of skeezy applicants.

But it's not all fun and games out here in Endless Election Land. Joe Biden may be substantially hamstrung in his ability to govern this country when millions of Americans are convinced he isn't the legitimate president. And if it turns out he's prevented from performing his job effectively, those same idiots will champion that fact as proof he shouldn't be president.

And maybe they're right.

When all is said and done, we may find we'd have been better off to give the red-faced baby another four years and get it over with. The longer Trump remains a corrosive force in American politics, the worse for us all.

Including Republicans. Especially Republicans.

A recent poll reports three percent of Americans think Donald Trump actually won the election. That may not sound like much, but it comes out to nearly ten million people. You think a collection of pumped-up zealots that size can't cripple this country? Half of them are probably armed. If so, they would represent a population three and a half times the number of active duty US military personnel. (And only a relative handful of those folks hump a long gun to work every morning. Somebody has to push all that paper around.)

Proud Boys, stand by the phone and wait for a robocall from destiny.

Trump is a charismatic sociopath powered by a diseased and over-inflated ego. If that thing ever left his body, there'd be nothing in his footprints but a puddle of hairspray and bronzer.

Some folks find that irresistible.

Update (Friday, noon): Now that all the states have been called in this election, with Biden (unnecessarily) winning both Arizona and Georgia, and Republican legal challenges are fast petering out, Donald Trump has little chance of reelection. Now we just have to hope he doesn't sell the nuclear launch codes to Putin and "accidentally" burn down the White House on his way out the door.

AMERICAN SATAN

Donald Trump repeatedly says the country is rounding the corner on Covid-19. Based on skyrocketing numbers of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, I think we need to agree with the man.

If rounding the corner brings us to the edge of the pit of hell.

As we approach the last days of the election cycle, Trump is busy with large rallies full of committed followers, folks packed shoulder to shoulder, not wearing masks.

It's true, many of the people behind him, the guys in camera range, wear MAGA masks, and so forth, but I've noticed more and more of those enthusiastic critters are now going without. Perhaps to prove their undying (or dying) loyalty to the miraculously healed president.

Trump says he hands out masks to all his rabid supporters, but points out it's up to them to decide whether or not to wear them. He could make them wear masks or leave the arena, but he won't.

I think mostly the masks are considered souvenirs of the event. Sort of like, "A memento of the night I killed Grandma!" You could staple it right to her plywood coffin before handing the whole thing off to the hogs.

Meanwhile, folks champion personal liberty.

And I agree, people have the right to put themselves in jeopardy. If you don't mind dying, great. Crowd in close to the sweaty president. Bareback the porn star. Skydive without a chute. Wear plaid with stripes.

I'm on board with all of that.

But where do you get the right to kill strangers? Don't you know the people you infect go on to infect others? And those guys infect still others, etc., until hundreds or thousands have reluctantly stepped up to fill the ranks of inadvertent "personal liberty" Covid cases.

There is no cure for Covid, Bubba. Some of those people will undoubtedly die. Where'd that particular chunk of liberty come from? Out of your butt?

That would I guess be consistent with your hero. Donald Trump's own butt has proven to be a densely packed bazaar of nasty things to spring upon the American people.

At a rally today Trump said all this talk about Covid will be gone on November fourth, implying it's all a hoax slapped together by Democrats (and fake news media) to vex his reelection bid.

Seriously? Is the man merely stupid? Or is he evil?

If Trump wins reelection, that'll be on us. If we let that happen, we need to own it. And if the country dies as a result of four more years of Trump, that will be on us, too.

The world can end with a bang, and a whimper.

And a whiner with a bad comb-over.

IDIOT ON STEROIDS

In a miracle from God, Donald Trump was given Covid-19. Then medical science stepped in and cured him. He thinks.

Now you too can get this miracle—first the disease, then the cure, both free of charge. He says.

Screw waiting on a vaccine. We have a cure!

I've heard the president's treatment cost around $100,000. Scaling it up would undoubtedly reduce this by at least half. Let's say $50,000 per patient, going forward.

Fifty thousand times 328 million ...

But wait, we only need enough to reach what the president calls herd mentality, say seventy percent of the US population, or about 230 million folks.

Times $50k, say eleven and a half trillion dollars.

Roughly 880 of the most expensive aircraft carriers in the world (we currently have eleven).

I'm thinking the country might have to take out a second mortgage.

But it's a small price to pay for not having to wear a mask for another six months, right?

(Or, check out my post HALF AND HALF: put half the population in isolation for two weeks, then swap with the other half. Get the virus under control in just one month, with only a half shut-down.)

Donald Trump, as might be expected from his track record, had learned exactly the wrong message from getting Covid. He feels so good now (he's on steroids, which has that effect) I wouldn't be surprised if he recommended his experience for everybody just for that benefit.

(Of course, it would be a lot cheaper to give everybody Dexamethasone, see how they like it.)

He's ignoring the possibility many people would still die from Covid, despite duplicating his treatment. In fact, he's ignoring the possibility he may still die from Covid, despite his past treatment and any future treatment his doctors might try to keep that from happening.

(It's thought George Washington's doctors killed him by over aggressive treatment of his cold [they bled him repeatedly].)

And Trump is ignoring that fact many survivors of Covid experience life-altering effects months after their recovery, the so-called "long haulers."

And he's ignoring the possibility that five years down the road nearly everybody who got through Covid could suffer complications that kill them. Think super-duper shingles, like the follow-up to chicken pox.

Folks on Dex report feeling of invincibility and manic creativity. Unfortunately, it's all crap. Folks on Dex should refrain from making important decisions.

And operating heavy equipment. Like aircraft carriers.

HERD MENTALITY

It would appear Donald Trump can't keep track of the implications of his various positions.

Last week, on a virtual Town Hall meeting featuring questions from typical voters (not reporters, and certainly not Fox News sycophants), Trump played up—as he often does—the importance of his very decisive action in closing the US border to China.

He maintains he saved two million lives by doing that.

The statement is in dispute (as are the majority of his utterances). By the time he took this heroic action, community spread had already begun in this country. It's likely very few lives were actually saved.

Also, closing borders is not always the best idea. Having potential disease vectors report through customs makes them a lot easier to track. Not to mention, people escaping from China might be more cooperative with authorities than locals who don't know they're infected and may even doubt the reality of the disease.
 
But Trump is obsessed with this number: two million lives. He takes full credit for having saved these folks. You might even say he thinks the country owes him a couple of million lives, to do with as he pleases.

We know now what he has in store for them: They will be sacrificed on the altar of the Covid god.

During that same Town Hall meeting, Trump again put forward his theory that the virus would disappear on its own. No vaccine necessary.

This notion is leftover from the early days of the pandemic, but has undergone a series of makeovers.

At first, when there were only fifteen cases in the US, Trump said those cases would, in a few days, go to zero. I presume he meant the sick folks would get better very soon, thus absolutely ending this threat to his reelection.

Later, he suggested "some people" thought the virus would die out as the weather got warmer in April. You know, just like seasonal flu seems to evaporate as time marches on.

Trump seems to think the virus literally dies as the temperature warms. What really happens is that when the weather improves, folks get the hell out of that heated room where everybody shares whatever viral load they happen to possess.

Viruses don't so much die as lose their hosts. Individual particles of virus are protected from outside weather (hot or cold) by the internal "weather" of the human bodies they're lounging around in.

And the insides of humans are typically warmer than April all year round.

Trump also used to say the virus would sweep across the country like a wave—and vanish. What he failed to mention was that the wave in question would also wash a vast number of dead bodies out to sea.

"Sweeping across" a country is a benign way of saying a population has reached herd immunity. If a virus can't find new meat, it fails to move forward. When the last guy with the disease recovers—or succumbs—the virus gets dumped into the sewers, one way or another.

Numbers vary, but herd immunity is thought to kick in when something like 65-70% of the population has endured the disease—and therefore can't be reinfected.

There are two problems with using this model for a solution to the current pandemic:

Not enough is known about the virus to say for sure if herd immunity is even possible. There is some evidence that simple immunity—protection from reinfection—is not as predictable for covid as it is for seasonal flu. Folks may be getting sick with Covid-19 weeks or months after their initial recovery from the disease.

(The immunity provided by vaccines might also have a limited lifespan. It's too early to know.)

Herd immunity may not be possible, but trying to achieve it is very expensive, in terms of the lives of the country making that attempt.

Death rates vary from place to place. Some health systems are better than others. Plus there are varieties of the virus in circulation.

But figuring an overall death rate of one percent, the number of Americans that need to die for the country to reach herd immunity is well over two million.

Subtracting the number already killed, call it two million even.

Exactly the number of dead this country owes Donald Trump!

The notion of herd immunity (or "herd mentality," as Trump referred to it at the Town Meeting) is likely to have come from Dr. Scott Atlas, a new medical advisor brought into the White House by Trump in mid August.

Dr. Atlas is not an epidemiologist, but he was a frequent contributor to Fox News, where he played up herd immunity as a worthy goal.

The man is clearly catnip to the president. Not only does his proposed solution require Trump to do nothing, but the guy comes fully vetted by Fox News, the only variety of news supported by the president.

One might even say Fox News rules the country, via their faithful puppet Donald Trump: the puppet that never became a boy. And as a result never had to grow up.

I wonder if Donald Trump is old enough to be president.

WALKING IN THE PARK

According to the Web site Statista, American police shot and killed 370 white people in 2019. The number for blacks was 235. You could overlay the total numbers of whites and blacks in the country and compare the overall rate of police killings by race, but that would not be accurate or useful.

The population that needs to be studied is not the total number of people, but the number of people who fight the police in hopes of avoiding arrest. Fighting the police is the event that leads to shootings in virtually all known cases.

(One glaring exception: the white cop in Chicago who shot the black guy with the knife. But we have no way of knowing if this shooting was racially motivated.)

I don't know what those numbers are, or if they have ever been compiled. But those are the only numbers that count, especially if you're trying to make the case that cops kill more black folks than whites, proportionately. And then speculate about why that is.

When asked by a reporter why blacks are still being shot and killed by police in this country, Donald Trump said, "They shoot white people, too. They shoot white people, too."

But even if we had the relevant numbers, I'm not sure it would mean that much. Individual circumstances have to be taken into consideration.

Here is one of the latest cases: Jacob Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

We have scant video of this event, but we can see that Blake was on the ground, wrestling with police, before breaking away and walking quickly around the front of his SUV and attempting to get into the driver's seat.

It is likely he had in mind driving away.

One of the cops was walking right behind the man. (Probably should have been running.) The cop had his service weapon in his right hand. He took hold of Blake's T-shirt with his left and pulled back, in an apparent attempt to prevent Blake from leaving the scene. The shirt was stretchy, and not likely to prove a reliable grip point.

One hand on the shirt, one hand on his pistol, one second to make a decision. Let's consider his options.

The long shot: The officer holsters his weapon and grabs Blake around the neck, beginning what might turn out to be a choke hold, and pulls him backwards away from the vehicle. By then, perhaps another officer could be in a position to assist.

Would that have worked? Hard to say. The cops had already fought with the man, rolled around on the ground with him. They lost that fight, even though Tasers were deployed. They might well have lost another physical struggle with the man. People trying to avoid arrest are highly motivated, especially when they sense victory.

Also, there might not have been enough time for the officer to try this move. Things were progressing rapidly. Blake might have taken that second or so to move out of range, to climb all the way into the car, to begin driving off in what cops often describe as a deadly weapon.

It's likely the officer concluded, in his half second of decision-making time, that using the weapon he already had in his hand was the only reasonable option going forward.

Of course, might still have avoided the action he's in trouble for today. He could theoretically have used the gun like a baton to knock the man out. But we generally don't see that technique employed in modern times.

(Remember TV's Wyatt Earp, clubbing ne'er-do-wells and drunks with the super-long barrel of his Buntline Special sixshooter?)

Still, if you're going to end up shooting the guy, why shoot him seven times in the back?

"In the back" is the easiest to answer. The guy's back was the only target available. The geometry of the situation prevented the cop from spinning the guy around, especially if he had to do it one handed with a grip on the guy's stretchy T-shirt. Also, there was a knife involved (found on the scene). Turning the man around might have brought that thing into play.

OK, but why shoot him seven times?

Perhaps the officer was pumped up by the recent physical action and simply overreacted. Or maybe his trigger finger operated in a kind of spasm, firing multiple times before it was possible to assess the results. (TV news organizations tend to omit this part of the video, so I don't know how quickly or slowly those seven shots were made.)

Or maybe the shooting was controlled. Maybe the firing of each additional round was based on the efficacy of the previous round(s). Maybe it took seven bullets before Blake stopped moving forward. It would hardly make sense to shoot the man fewer times than was needed to keep him from driving off in his car. Maybe seven was the necessary number of shots to get the job done.

(TV news folks often make the point that Blake's children were in the car. So what? Are cops supposed to let a suspect go if the guy's got his children handy? If so, expect to see a lot more crime committed by guys in carpools, their vehicle loaded up with young'uns.)

Donald Trump says the cop "choked," like missing a three-foot putt in a championship golf game. He says the cop should have done something else. He doesn't say what.

We come now to potential changes in police procedure. Could policy tweaks prevent future shootings of this nature? Maybe.

When a car chase becomes too dangerous to bystanders, cops are often expected to abandon the chase. Especially if they know who the guy is and can pick him up at home in a day or two.

Currently, though, police on foot are expected to follow through with their arrests. Once initiated, the arrest must come to its proper conclusion: the subject in custody.

I've written earlier about the possibly of forgoing arrest in favor of issuing a citation, to eliminate the most stressful portion of any encounter with the authorities. Obviously, folks have to know in advance there will be no attempt to arrest them, lest they preempt what they fear is coming by beginning an unnecessary fight.

And clearly, an escalation to physical confrontation takes the giving of a citation off the table.

But perhaps police reformers will consider another, more radical, deescalation policy: Just like in dangerous car chases, if an attempted arrest proceeds to the point where deadly force is becoming likely, police officers might be authorized (or required) to back off and let the subject walk away.

Maybe individual criminals could be apprehended later at home or at work. Or maybe the police could hope to encounter the fellow again sometime, on the occasion of his next crime, perhaps, and have better luck arresting him.

Not exactly textbook "law and order," but it might be necessary.

So, have we come to this place in history? Maybe. When the killing of every single black man becomes an incitement to riot, society might literally be safer if more bad guys are let go without harm.

(Providing the police with better containment tools would be another way of preventing deaths, but such solutions may be years away, and something needs to be done sooner than that if we're going to hold this country together.)

Naturally, a policy change that allows bad guys to get away would cause a furor in the ranks of the police. Loss of morale, and so forth. They would likely see it as an abdication of their duties.

No doubt many cops would quit in protest. Replacements would have to be hired and trained for this new, more forgiving police force.

The next question: Would it even work?

Some folks, especially those in the black community, might object to letting predators go, since black criminals mostly victimize other black folks in their area. Of course, even more white guys would presumably catch a break, free to resume their chosen profession. Unless the new policy only applied to minorities. (And that wouldn't cause any problems, right?)

But in 2019, reducing to zero the number of black men killed by police (they're almost always men) would only have resulted in letting 235 criminals loose in communities all across the US. Not much of a crime wave possible there. Plus, the majority of those guys would probably be grabbed up shortly, when they committed more crimes. (Unless this near-arrest [or near-death] experience scared them straight.)

All of this policy wrangling is designed to assuage the demonstrators in the street. Fewer peaceful demonstrations reduces the number of opportunities for more radical elements (or outside agitators) to escalate events into destructive riots.

However, it would arguably be better (and more honest) to convince folks that not every incident where the police shoot a black citizen is a racially motivated murder in the tradition of lynching.

(The Black Lives Matter movement has a perception problem: Those folks can neither see nor hear anything that takes place before the trigger is pulled. They are forced to conclude that nothing happened before the trigger was pulled. Which leads to the conclusion there was no reason for the trigger to be pulled. Hence their stated position: White cops kill black guys for no reason.)

But changing the minds of human beings is a messy business, and likely to fail. Humans are the people who think they know things (though they are often wrong). Everything we see is proof that the ridiculous crap in our heads is literally true. It doesn't matter that this is delusional thinking. Humans know what they know and they can't be wrong (as far as they can tell).

People who study conspiracy theories will tell you any attempt to replace misinformation with real information is prone to failure. Giving them the "facts" tends to make believers argumentative; they often end up more entrenched than ever in their aberrant world view.

So, are we doomed? Why, yes. Yes, we are.

But maybe we'll get lucky. Maybe our problems will just disappear, like magic. Unfortunately, luck always runs out. Usually when you can least afford to deal with that failure.

On the other hand, nobody told you life would be a walk in the park.

HALF AND HALF

Here's a radical notion to solve the Coronavirus Pandemic in this (or any other) country:

Half the population goes into a strict 14-day isolation. Folks prepare by buying food, stockpiling medicine, toilet paper, and so forth, then they hunker down for two weeks. Watch some more Netflix or something.

The other half goes about life as best it can: wearing masks, socially distancing, and so forth. The New Normal.

At the end of 14 days, the isolated half of the population comes out of hibernation, blinking in the sunlight, ready to get back to life.

At the same time, the second half goes into isolation for their 14-day ordeal.

Theoretically, except for stragglers, cheaters, non-conformists, dedicated a-holes, and whatnot—the folks who refuse to participate, some of which might be Covid positive—everybody in this reduced population will be Covid negative. Everybody!

That means they could go back to regular life with confidence: bars, restaurants, movie theaters, ball games, everything. Schools and jobs. Regular life. Just like before the thing came to be.

When the second half of the population comes out of its isolation, those folks too would be Covid negative, and should be able to join their brothers in happy, happy normal life.

To be safe, though, it would probably be necessary to run the program twice in a row: half of America in isolation, the other half not. Rinse and repeat. And to deal with live viruses lingering in the air or on surfaces, it might make sense to have a day or two of overlap.

The devil, as usual, is in the details.

Many people would probably be exempt: health workers, cops, fire fighters, and so forth. Or maybe just half of them. With fewer people out there, it might only take half the cops, etc., to deal with them.

Here's a bonus: With half the population in hiding, the demand for Covid tests would almost certainly decline. Also, with only half the nation available to get Covid, that should take some of the burden off harried hospital workers.

Putting half the population into isolation for two weeks is like testing half the nation for Covid all at once—and finding them all negative.

(Okay, most of them—some folks may come down with Covid from exposures to the virus that occurred just prior to beginning the lock-down. Those who come down with Covid while in isolation would have to spend more time there.)

But in the next two weeks, you'd be testing the other half of the country—all at once.

The cheapest and most effective test ever! Don't have somebody stick a cotton swab up your nose and into your brain, then wait two weeks for the results. Go home for two weeks and it's over without a test.

Congratulations, you're negative!

Could something as bizarre as this be put into operation?

GEORGE FLOYD III

Okay, one more session with Mr. George Floyd.

You may recall last time I suggested the man was having some sort of panic attack, and that was why the cops took him out of the squad car and called an ambulance.

I speculated he might have been saying "I can't breathe" before anybody put a knee to his neck.

Now we have transcripts of body cam audio from two of the officers involved in the arrest (Keung and Lane). And if the transcripts are accurate, we now know Floyd did say "I can't breathe" early in the procedure.

In fact, he said "I can't breathe" seven times during the process of getting into and out of the squad car.

The transcripts have occasional time codes embedded in them, but no description of what is happening. The only available video is from civilian cell phones, not police body cams.

According to police reports, Mr. Floyd became agitated in the squad car, kicked at the officers, and bashed his face into window glass. He was bleeding from the mouth while they waited on the ambulance.

(Technically, the ambulance was called for a man bleeding from the mouth; nobody speculated about panic or anxiety attack. This is probably why the ambulance was requested code two [non-emergency]. Much later, Officer Lane wondered if Floyd needed to be rolled on his side, suggesting the man may be experiencing "excited delirium." The veteran officer on scene [Chauvin] said, "That's why we got the ambulance coming." Excited delirium is a diagnosis beset by controversy; it's often cited by police when a suspect dies in custody.)

Before getting into the squad car, Floyd told officers he was claustrophobic. He said it thirteen times. He said he had anxiety. He said, "Y'all, I'm going to die in here! I'm going to die, man!"

He also said he was scared, that he'd been shot by police before, that his mom had just died, that he'd had COVID. ("I don't want to go back to that.")

Even before getting into the car he wanted the officers to roll down a window. He asked to be put in the front seat. He said he wanted to lie on the ground.

Throughout, he protested his innocence, saying, "I'm not that kind of guy." (six times)

The veteran officer, Derek Chauvin, first shows up about eleven minutes into the transcript. He's informed Floyd is under arrest. Officer Lane says: "Let's take him out and just MRE."

(Mobile Report Entry—a booking entry in lieu of going to the station and booking a suspect there [?])

Twice more (of the seven) the man says he can't breathe, then thanks the officers when they haul him out of the car. Chauvin presumably heard at least the last two times Floyd said he couldn't breathe.

Throughout the encounter, Floyd gave the police trouble. It took many commands to get him to show both hands when his car was approached. Getting him out of the car was difficult. Getting him to walk to the squad car was difficult. (His gait was unsteady, and he kept falling down.) Getting him to take a seat in the squad car took forever, and he didn't stay in there very long.

The police speculated among themselves what drugs the man was on. When Floyd was told he was foaming at the mouth, he said: "Yes, yes, I was hooping earlier."

(This may or may not be a reference to taking drugs anally; the autopsy turned up evidence of fentanyl intoxication and recent methamphetamine use.)

Only friends of George Floyd can testify if his behavior in front of the police was normal for him, or if he was "altered" in some way.

In my spectacularly unqualified opinion, the man was suffering from some sort of panic or anxiety attack. According to my research, difficulty breathing is a defining condition.

Although the police discussed hobbling Floyd, nothing was done. If the man was in fact suffering from the stress of finding himself literally in the hands of the police, hog-tying the guy and standing back might have saved him.

We'll never know.

The state will maintain the police caused Floyd's death by weighing down his body and neck. Maybe all the cops had to do was touch the man. One thing for sure, being in the presence of law officers was doing him no good.

Seven times Floyd said he couldn't breathe before Chauvin put his knee on the man's neck. That may well constitute reasonable doubt in a court of law.

At the very least, it complicates the prosecution's case enormously.

Derek Chauvin heard the man say he couldn't breathe before placing him on the ground, where the phrase was repeated many, many times. Since he is the only one who actually knows how hard he was pressing on the man's neck (the autopsy showed no evidence of asphyxiation), he may have reasonably concluded he was causing no particular harm by doing so.

(That the optics were massively damaging to Chauvin, there can be no doubt.
Any cop who uses this technique in the future, even just for a few seconds while a suspect is being cuffed, is asking for major trouble.)

If the ambulance had been requested code three instead of code two, the matter would probably not have reached this level of notoriety. (The code was bumped to three near the end.)

On the other hand, maybe Chauvin knew exactly what he was doing. Maybe he was willing to murder Floyd under color of authority and take his chances in an environment of muddied legal water. Maybe the man is pure, unrepentant evil, an imp from hell, etc. (Or so crazy he shouldn't even be tried.)

At some point, a dozen unlucky citizens are going to be asked to make a decision as to which version of reality applies.

If we're all lucky, the judgment of those guys will not be just a minor footnote in the history of the Second American Civil War.

TRUST IN SHAMASH

Some states are on the verge of reinstating "stay at home" mode. But in many cases, folks are still allowed to attend church services. With or without masks. I suppose they're operating on the theory that God will keep those citizens safe.

Turns out that's a difficult calculation to make. One early covid-19 outbreak occurred after a church's choir practice. Many got infected and several died.

Stuff like that happens all the time.

Of course, it might just be part of God's mysterious plan: He's taking the opportunity to grab up folks for some face-time in heaven.

I have a neighbor who is confident God will protect him from whatever bad actors are roaming the planet. And I have to admit, it's worked so far...

On the other hand, Charles Darwin once pointed out that confidence comes more from ignorance than from knowledge. Idiots are cock-sure, while smart people are filled with doubts.

The thing is, folks generally know what they know. And they can't be wrong, as far as they can tell. It's the glory of being human!

One thing humans have seemingly always known is that supernatural gods are responsible for all good things. Throughout our history, we appear to be convinced that a well-stocked menagerie of improbably named gods has the power to manipulate our daily lives, each according to their unfathomable talents.

Here's the testimony of Assurbanipal, who ruled Assyria in days of old:
 
After Assur, Sin, Shamash, Adad, Bel, Nabu, Ishtar of Nineveh, queen of Kidmuri, Ishtar of Arbela, Urta, Netgal and Nusku, had caused me to take my seat, joyfully, upon the throne of the father who begot me, Adad sent his rains, Ea opened his fountains, the grain grew 5 cubits tall in the stalk, the ear was 5/6 of a cubit long, heavy crops and a plenteous yield made the fields continuously luxuriant, the orchards yielded a rich harvest, the cattle successfully brought forth their young.
  
Fat bounty from the gods! You just had to make sure to thank them all.

Matters have simplified over the years. We mostly pray to one, semi-unnamed god—a god named God. (Or "Allah," but that's just Arabic for "the god.")

So how'd we get here? Gradually, I would imagine.

But perhaps you've wondered if folks really believed in all those other gods. Answer: Of course they did, and for exactly the same reason we believe in the current Guy.

And to keep the belief machine running smoothly, we pack the sacred information into the blissfully empty skulls of our children, who are biologically helpless to keep it out. By nature, the shorties have to believe anything we put in there: facts, fancies, prejudices, "holy" truths, or murderous political agendas, along with the latest internet-approved conspiracy theories. And once that crap lands in there, it's good to go for the life of the child.

Because we humans have a secret weapon to protect us from legitimate knowledge: Once we're grown, literally everything we see proves us right about whatever unlikely nonsense happens to have been jammed into our brains.

Is it a miracle from God? Beats me. But here's how we do it:

After casual scrutiny of the world, we simply cherry-pick the data in favor of our psycho-content, flip-flopping the meaning of anything that might tend to prove us wrong—should suspect data make it through the tightly-woven mesh of our nearly perfect confirmation bias.

We then present this load of dreck to the part of our brain that is designed to say but one thing in response: "You're right!"

Armed with that happy conclusion we're off to our children's brain-press portal to jam the entire pre-vetted mess into their soft-topped data emporiums.

And the beat goes on. Hooray!

TAKE OFF THE CUFFS

Here are a couple more thoughts on the death of George Floyd, along with a semi-useful partial solution.

First, although we can see the policeman's knee on Floyd's neck, we have no way of knowing how hard he's pressing down. But some people think they do know.

Why? Because they are adding the audio from the scene, where they can hear Mr. Floyd saying he can't breathe. It's possible to combine these two facts—one visual, one audible—and reach a logical conclusion that might nevertheless be false.

We know the cops arrested the man for his alleged $20 crime. And we know the man was placed in the backseat of a police SUV with his hands cuffed behind his back.

Then, something happens. Based only on the video, we can't see what is happening. We just know the police are agitated. One of them races around the back of the car to the passenger side.

A (presumably) short time later, we arrive at the damning image: the cop with his knee on Floyd's neck. From another angle we can see two other cops kneeling along the length of Floyd's body, holding him down.

Something happened, and as a result the cops pulled the man out of the car and put him face down on the ground. Some sort of medical distress, is what we've been told. (The word "claustrophobia" has been bandied about.) Whatever happened, it was so severe the cops couldn't just sit the fellow down on the curb. Something else had to be done to maintain control.

So there's the situation: An ambulance has been called, and the police are holding the man down, waiting. If the ambulance had arrived in five minutes, Mr. Floyd would just be a footnote on the subject of how police restrain suspects.

If those guys had followed the pattern I've seen on the TV show Cops, they would have hauled the man out of the car, hogtied him, and put him back into the car for transport.

But they didn't do that. They got him out of the car and weighed him down with their bodies until the ambulance arrived. Maybe they thought they were doing him a favor, by not hogtying him. (Ironic, right?)

So, what happened in the backseat of the car?

Perhaps it was some sort of panic attack, triggered by the stress of being arrested. That would not be unusual. Black men especially have to worry about finding themselves in the hands of the police. (More about that later.)

So, a panic attack, perhaps.

I need to point out that difficulty breathing is a well-known symptom of panic attacks. Was George Floyd saying "I can't breathe" when he was in the backseat of the squad car, long before that cop put his knee on his neck?

Was that why the cop calmly held his position despite what Floyd was saying? Not because he's Satan and intent on murdering the man. But because he knew he wasn't the (direct) cause of Floyd's inability to breathe?

What if he knew (the way the rest of us specifically don't know) that the pressure on the man's neck was little more than symbolic, just enough to remind the guy: You're still in custody.

(And by the way, a knee on the side of the neck is not a chokehold.)

If the cop knew he wasn't the cause of the problem, he could simply wait for the ambulance. He would have to: There was literally nothing further he could do to help Mr. Floyd.

If George Floyd was saying he couldn't breathe in the backseat of the cop car, it would be a classic post hoc fallacy to conclude the cop's knee was the literal cause of the breathing problem Floyd complained of while lying on the ground outside the car.

And if there's no assault, there's no felony murder. In fact, if my scenario is correct, I doubt you can even show manslaughter.

Despite the video evidence, we have no fully defensible reason to land on the conclusion so many people have so firmly established. But jumping to conclusions is, as they say, the most exercise some of us get.

And once a thought pops into a human brain, it's there for the duration. You can't get it out of there with dynamite. In our defective heads, thinking we know something is virtually the same as knowing.

And we can't be wrong. Just ask us.

Of course, having a trio of cops weigh a guy down might still lead to death—indirectly. The stress of being arrested is enormous. Just being "in the hands" of the cops causes stress.

And let's not forget the Black Lives Matter folks make this one point, over and over again: White cops murder black men for no reason.

You think that doesn't add to a black man's stress level when he sees cops headed his way?

Despite the annoying fact that 99% of the videos offered in evidence simply do not support the claims BLM makes, those guys are not going away any time soon. We can only hope some good can come from this.

But I would be happy to see BLM fade away, replaced by a more general interest in reforming the police.

(And in addressing very real societal racism, another conclusion not actually supported by BLM video of police interactions with black folk.)

Let's start with the concept of arrest itself. Let's see if we might replace a great many arrests with the issuance of citations.

No arrest, no massive existential crisis.

Might cut down on panic attacks, too. As well as the need to run from the cops, or fight them when handcuffs are pulled out.

From what I understand of the George Floyd case, the man should never have been arrested. Or, to be precise, cases like his should not in a "reformed" future lead to an arrest.

Same thing with Rayshard Brooks (the Wendy's guy in Atlanta). Issue a citation and arrange for a family member to pick up the car and give the guy a ride home. Where he will catch appropriate hell.

If he'd blown a much higher blood alcohol number, issue a citation and have the car towed. And get him a ride home.

It doesn't make sense to put people in custody just so they can enter the "system." Let a citation be their gateway to the legal system.

Also, maybe we could create some sort of criminal arbitration system, which would run parallel to the legal system. You screw up, you get a citation that lands you in arbitration, where you (and your lawyer) can try to make things right with the aggrieved party (and their lawyer). Keep the whole thing out of the dreaded legal system.

On the other hand, if weapons are involved, an arrest would probably be called for. But if you're packing heat in front of the police, you might already be experiencing a high level of stress.

Maybe a little more won't do that much damage.

TORCHING THE TRUTH

It would be great if the uproar over the death of George Floyd could result in real changes to make the lives of minorities safer and more worth living.

I guess we'll have to wait and see if that is the case.

But if the past is any indication of what might happen in the future, I wouldn't expect sweeping changes. Maybe something incremental that can be built upon, though. That would also be welcome.

My beef—and you know I always have one—is that whatever progress is made may come at the expense of the truth.

Here's the thing: Human beings find thinking difficult and annoying, which is why we tend to avoid it whenever possible. In its place, we pursue a procedure called rationalization, a kind of second cousin to actual thinking.

Rationalization prods the brain to come up with (semi) plausible reasons why it's okay to do whatever it is we've already decided to do. We also use rationalization to justify our opinions on various subjects.

Now, don't get me wrong. Rationalization may lead to real improvements in human life, though I doubt it would ever make things so good we could abandon the very process that got us there.

Rationalization is here to stay. We like it, it works, and it's easy.

It's also pretty much all we're capable of.

Example: Demonstrations over the death of Mr. Floyd have led to a number of buildings burned to the ground. One protester recently stated on TV that it took a bunch of burned buildings to get the other three officers charged.

That sounds like a logical fallacy referred to as a "post hoc" argument.

(Post hoc, ergo propter hoc: "After this, therefore because of this." If Event B takes place after Event A, some folks conclude that Event A is the cause of Event B. That may or may not be the case.)

It is very likely that charging the other three officers—including the guy who just stood around with his hands in his pockets—might take a bit of legal wrangling behind the scenes. And that just naturally takes time to arrange. Meanwhile—and unrelated—buildings burn.

(Frankly, I'm amazed all four were fired so quickly after the incident.)

But there is a much bigger problem left to deal with, a problem which may lead to an even more damaging eruption of anger than we have seen so far.

Believe it or not, there is simply no evidence, visual or auditory, that proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the officer with his knee on Floyd's neck had any intention of harming the man, let alone killing him—for racial or any other reason.

(Saying you can't breathe may be taken as proof you can breathe. Besides, why would cops listen to perps? They're natural enemies.)

That said, virtually all the enraged people in the streets of our nation—and in selected foreign streets—take it as a fact that the officer deliberately murdered George Floyd because the man was black.

They know that's what happened. Period.

(Human beings always know what they know and they can't be wrong, far as they can see. Reality needs not raise its bumpy head to comment on this unfortunate process.)

The problem is, when this entirely unjustified notion of murder is tested in a court of law, the result may prove disastrous to whatever flammable structures remain in this country.

And the reaction of the white majority to that violent explosion might utterly erase whatever willingness to make progress in race relations that group of worthies may have tentatively agreed to.

And things could get worse. A lot worse.

I think the best we can hope for now is that the trial of the officers not take place before the election. Reactions to the outcome might just sweep Donald Trump into a second term.

And beyond...

GET ABOARD THE COVID TRAIN

Donald Trump is threatening to move the Republican National Convention out of Charlotte, North Carolina unless he can get a guarantee from the governor the event will take place in the extravagant manner Trump craves.

It doesn't look like the guarantee can be made, since the folks overseeing the venue want contingency plans submitted by the RNC to demonstrate the Republicans can organize a safe convention in whatever conditions may exist at the end of August.

I doubt that's going to fly with the president.

He wants the big boy, the Full Monty, lots of red, white, and blue balloons, etc., not to mention throngs of loud, adoring people. He wants to cram 50,000 Republican lunatics into the Spectrum Center so he can hear their heartfelt chant: "Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!"

The state's opening-up rules currently allow 10 souls to congregate inside a building. I wonder if balloons count, for or against.

(Probably against. Folks dodging a barrage of balloons might collide with one another, creating a greater chance of infection.)

Maybe the president is hoping to wedge the convention into what may be a very small gap between the first and second waves of the pandemic. Or maybe just between surges of the first wave, the second wave not due for several more months, when it can join forces with seasonal flu.

Consider the timing. A little more than two months between the convention and the election. The Republican wave caused by their enthusiastic rally will have died out by then, along with a substantial number of high GOP mucky-mucks. The next wave, gathered up out of the crush at those well-attended funerals, would just be starting up.

The real death rush will crest as secondary and tertiary infections run their courses, along with their funerals, and so on.

Turns out a couple of traditional political conventions might just be the impetus to kick off the Second Wave.

(Crowded celebrations marking the Armistice at the end of the Great War may have ushered in the second wave of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic. Of the three waves of infections that hit the US in 18 months, the second was by far the worst.)

Is Trump trying to wipe out the Republican elite? Along with his entire base? The man is pushing for full-on open country ASAP: schools, churches, retail businesses, bars and restaurants, you name it.

Give the people what they want, right?

(Well, the minority of the people, the folks who think wearing a mask in public is a case of political correctness and a sign of weakness. The majority of Americans have children and parents to worry about it. They want to go slow.)

As far as he can see, President Trump sets the tone for us all. Let the call go forth: The Pandemic is behind us! (VP Pence already predicted this for Memorial Day.) Now it's time to get your party on! Howl at the moon! Fire off all your guns at once!

We're back, baby!

Maybe we ought to think of it as a pre-Second Wave celebration. Get the ball rolling on the end of the world.

Remember when we used to think Kim Jong-un would be needed for that?

OVERRATED

Yesterday, when Donald Trump visited a medical supply company in Allentown, PA, he made some interesting comments about testing. One thing we learned is that the president is ambivalent about testing.

He catches, he thinks, way too much flak over the failure of the federal government to produce enough tests. In fact, he says (quite often), this country tests more people than anybody else in the world.

(This is true, but misleading, because the real standard for testing is not the total number but the number of tests per capita.)

Trump says he doesn't get enough credit for all the testing, that folks are always clamoring for more and more tests. But it's a bit like he showed up at a house fire with a glass of water. It's nice to have some water to throw on the fire, but his contribution is simply not enough.

Oddly, though, in one sense he's right: Testing may not always be that valuable.

If a person finds himself in severe respiratory distress, it's time to visit a hospital. But since there is no specific treatment for covid-19, it doesn't matter if that person is given a test or not.

Except this: Because medical professionals are not protected by vaccines, they must take special precautions with folks who might have covid. For their own safety and the safety of others in the hospital.

The only way around this is to designate certain hospitals to treat pandemic-possible people. That way, you just assume everybody has covid and act accordingly. Let other hospitals deal with heart-attack patients and such.

The main drawback: Seasonal flu patients would find themselves lumped in with covid folks, increasing the chance they would contract that virus along with the others.

And die more often as a result.

But all of this is about testing potential covid patients when they come to the hospital short of breath. We're not out of those woods yet, but the new clamor for testing is not about this. It's about making it safe for folks to go back to work, to hit the mall, to resume normal life.

People want to know they are walking onto a factory floor populated by virus-negative workers. They want to know they won't get covid that day from work and bring it home to their children, their spouses, their parents and grandparents.

For that, you'll need to test everybody every morning and get the results before workers head to their stations to begin the day. And that will take a great deal more tests than can be administered today.

Which is why Trump is still getting flak for not producing enough tests.

Yesterday he said he thought tests were "overrated."

"When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases."

This is magical thinking at best.

But it's true: If we tested nobody for covid-19, we'd have no cases in this country. Sure, the virus would be everywhere, tearing things up, but we'd have no known covid cases.

Under these conditions, there might be no "stay-at-home" orders. The economy might not have taken a great hit. There would be no debate over when and how to re-open the country. It would still be open. And Donald Trump would be sailing along toward re-election.

(Maybe. The stock market might still have tanked, based on oil-price disputes between Russia and Saudi Arabia. Not to mention the covid mess all around the rest of the world.)

And while there would be none of that mess in the US (not officially), there would still be mountains of dead bodies stacked up all over the place. With no social distancing, we might get the one or two million deaths first predicted.

The good news: Trump would get what he described in the beginning—an invisible wave of "something" that would wash over the country ...pushing the corpses of our elderly (and others) out into the ocean.

Just get 'er done and move on!

Unless he's gone to the dark side of the conspiracy zone, suggesting the covid test literally causes covid-19.

Then he'd be faced with the most difficult decision of his presidency: Was covid-19 created by China or Barack Obama?

On the other hand, maybe it will turn out his "no tests, no cases" rhetoric was just one of his little jokes.

Ha, ha, very funny, Mr. President. Not at all tasteless.

But is this really the hill you want to die on?

MISSION IMPROBABLE

Donald Trump desperately wants to reopen the nation to business. He acknowledges there will be additional deaths directly related to this reopening, but says Americans are up for the challenge.

"We have to get back to work!"

In a recent podcast, Chris Christie points out this is war, and Americans know how to sacrifice in wartime.

Okay, fine.

But I find it unseemly for an American president to exhort his people to "fight and die" in a war with an invisible enemy if he stands to benefit personally from those deaths.

Trump says he expects to win in a landslide in 2020, because—as he has often said—everybody loves Trump. Far as he knows, he did a terrific job battling the coronavirus, and now that the war is all but over, he plans to reap the reward.

But his re-election trump card has always been the booming economy he's willing to take full credit for creating. (I'm pretty sure it would not go over very well with him to point out the economy was moving in that direction like a runaway freight train by the end of the Obama presidency.)

Realistically, after botching the covid-19 response so badly, Trump needs that wonderful economy to be on the rebound—big time—by November 3rd. And that can't happen unless folks crawl out of their holes and start to buy stuff at an unprecedented rate.

Trump needs a blindingly fast reopening and no second wave of the virus. And since he has no control of the second element, he has to push the first.

And maybe it is good for the country, despite an increase in deaths. Maybe it is worth it for folks to make that sacrifice.

But Donald Trump needs to take his personal payday off the table. He needs to make the so-called Shermanesque Statement.

Lyndon Johnson did it on March 31, 1968: "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president."

Mike Pence should make a similar statement.

In fact, I'd like to see the entire Republican party excuse itself from the 2020 presidential election. Think of it as atonement for the acquittal hoax.

Let Democrat Biden battle it out with Independent Sanders.

Yeah, right. Look, I'm not holding my breath waiting for Trump or any Republican to do the right thing.

The reopening of America will probably fizzle. The vast majority of folks don't want to risk infecting their children or losing whatever parent or grandparent they're still holding onto.

And Trump can't send troops into houses to drag reluctant citizens out and plop their butts down in a movie theater to see Mission Impossible 99: Bite the Big One.

Until there's a working vaccine—or herd immunity—nobody's going back to business as usual any time soon.

LIKE MAGIC

In a movie called The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Steve Carell's character gets roped into an after-hours poker game with his co-workers. The conversation turns to women, and Carell blurts out how much he likes ladies' boobs. He enjoys how they feel just like a bag of sand.

The other guys immediately conclude the man knows nothing of boobs and sharply question his sexual history, soon discovering his secret: a total lack of sexual history.

Had Carell been on his toes, however, he might have said he was just kidding! Boobs are not at all like bags of sand! But he was forced to stand by his statement and endure the consequences that came after.

Last Thursday, at the White House Coronavirus press conference, Donald Trump put out some theories on how the virus might be conquered by blasting the body with UV light (or just very bright light). Or perhaps by using the same stuff that kills the virus on surfaces. Disinfectants and the like, if they could be introduced into the body.

Trump addressed his speculations to Dr. Deborah Birx, the woman obviously becoming more and more uncomfortable. In the end, she stopped looking at Trump at all and just stared off into the distance, her legs moving restlessly beneath her chair—like a sleeping dog that dreams of running through the woods. She clearly wanted out of that room.

In his defense (I suppose), Trump had just attended a briefing about how long the virus lives on various surfaces and how it can be killed. He was just spit-balling from there, apparently.

Did he know he was wandering off into uncharted territory, that he was taking the risk of looking foolish?

The backlash was swift, of course, condemning the president for endangering a gullible public. Lysol even issued a press release reminding folks not to take their products internally.

The president's press secretary said he'd been quoted out of context.

Trump himself came up with a different story, telling reporters his remarks were sarcasm aimed at the press. Naturally, the corrupt media reported his words as if they were meant to be taken seriously, rising to the bait like the fake-news trout they were.

The next day, Friday, Trump was out of the briefing room in a hurry. He took no questions. There were no White House Coronavirus press conferences Saturday and Sunday—the first quiet weekend since the briefings began.

Donald Trump has always been a font of knowledge on a variety of subjects. Just not a very reliable font.

Early on, he expected the virus to succumb to the growing heat of April. It would just "wash-through" the country and be gone, disappearing in a kind of miracle.

He was also very fond of an anti-malaria drug called Hydroxychloroquine, saying, "What do you have to lose?" Your life, apparently, since it can cause fatal heartbeat irregularities. The FDA recently announced it should not be used outside of hospital trials. (Folks at a VA test were dying faster than those not given the drug.)

Trump clearly wants to be the nation's savior—in fact, his re-election may depend on his filling that role. As a consequence, he's willing to sound like a dunce in public to be the first to name a potential solution. He needs to get that credit.

Wishful thinking never put so many lives at risk.

At the press conference in the White House Rose Garden this afternoon, Trump was asked about an uptick in poison information call centers by folks using or asking if they should use disinfectants to treat covid-19, he said: "I can't imagine why."

I have a feeling he doesn't mean he can't imagine why anyone would listen to a word he says on any subject.

But it sounds like the way to go.

OK, BOOMER: DIE!

Folks are getting antsy to get back to work, and the president is sympathetic, tweeting out support for "liberating" a number of states.

One of the facts underscored by the coronavirus is how many Americans are living paycheck to paycheck with virtually no economic cushion to soften unexpected hits. Like buying basic food ...when you feel brave enough to slip into Walmart and rub elbows with whatever threat to your life you might find there.

Unemployment insurance has been enhanced, but good luck getting signed up. And then good luck sweating out when any of the money will land in your grubby hands.

As for the "covid relief" payment, that's probably only going to happen once, if you manage to get it at all.

So desperate people take to the streets, fueled by compulsion and emboldened by the nonsense being broadcast into their fragile brains.

(Don't think the Russian disinformation crew is taking a holiday.)

More than forty thousand dead in this country so far, which represents a very bad year of "seasonal flu." And it's not remotely over yet.

If New York, our hardest-hit state, has reached its peak, that only means the death toll will likely double before falling off completely. Assuming there is such a thing as "falling off completely."

Other states are probably weeks from hitting their peaks. And the virus is just starting up in rural America.

Social distancing is flattening the curve. But the idea there is that we spread out the demand on our hospital system, to avoid turning folks away to die at home. A flat curve could easily have just as many fatalities tucked under its squished-out form.

Nevertheless, many folks (though not nearly a majority) are willing to take the risk of infection to get back to work. And it's true, getting the disease might have very little impact on them.

Judging from news coverage, these guys also don't mind putting each other at risk to make their views heard. And they're apparently willing to drag their children to the protests too, maybe because they've been told youngsters can't get covid. (Kids get colds every few months, right? It means nothing.)

On the other hand, some folks have a very hard time with the disease, up to and including death. Don't forget, you can spread the virus without even knowing you're sick. And what if you actually are sick? Who hasn't gone to work sick? There's stuff to do and if you're not going to do it, you can bet they'll find somebody else to take that paycheck.

No doubt about it, going back to work will cost lives. As the governor of Washington put it, you "might be killing your granddad" if you don't take covid seriously.

And it's true: Nursing home deaths are ramping up everywhere.

But I get it. A lot of those guys are already half dead. And life is for the living, right? Granddad's had a pretty good run. And he's going to a better place, far as you know. (Nobody can prove there's no heaven.)

Maybe it's time to email the old goat and cut him loose.

No question, Donald Trump wants this whole mess to go away. For the purposes of getting re-elected, he really needs the economy to bounce back in a big, big way ...and soon.

Figuring out when to end restrictions was supposed to be the hardest decision of his life. But then he made that decision, and it was easy! Make the governors decide for him! Got his ass off the hook completely!

Genius, right?

But now he's effing it up, big time.

Everybody says testing is the key to reopening, but Trump is putting all that in the laps of the governors. That's a huge mistake. He needs to sound all empathetic and so forth (or at least pretend) and offer to supply millions of test, all the tests the states could ever want.

For free and quickly ramped up!

He needs to make sure everybody can see he is removing all impediments to reopening the country, so the governors can have no excuses.

But if he digs in his heels and refuses to help, and tweets support for "liberating" states from the sideline, he's setting up the states to reopen too early.

Cases will blossom, deaths with skyrocket, and states will turn turtle, yanking their heads back in.

Not only will Trump catch at least some of the blame for that (and maybe most of the blame), the whole thing will drag on for many more months, ruining any chance for a miraculous recovery of the economy in time for November 3rd.

Reap what you sow, right? How can it be otherwise?

PRESIDENT-FOR-LIFE

Check this out:

Given my experience working for Mr. Trump, I fear that if he loses the election in 2020 that there will never be a peaceful transition of power.
   —Michael Cohen, testifying before Congress, 27 February 2019

If Cohen's assessment of his ex-boss is at all accurate, we may be in for a number of entertaining months following the election this November.

As Covid-19 guts the economy (Trump's sure-fire calling card for re-election), the man is likely to become more and more desperate. Fortunately for him, there is a catch-all solution, one he has used repeatedly during his presidency.

Calling stuff a hoax.

The Russia Hoax, the Ukraine Hoax, the Impeachment Hoax, the Global Warming Hoax, the Collusion Hoax, and so forth.

If it makes Donald Trump look bad, all he has to do is label it a hoax.

When an employee brings problems to the bosses, tells them the company is doing something wrong, something dangerous, something illegal, they fire his ass, right? Then, when he goes public with his complaint, they always say the same thing: "The man is a disgruntled ex-employee."

Which, they maintain, thoroughly answers the question: "Is the company doing what the guy says you're doing?"

That statement, so prevalent in corporate press releases, takes not one step toward answering the question. But for the company, the issue has now been laid to rest for all time.

Nothing more to say.

(Except later, when the company's wrong-doing lands them in court. Then they say they can't comment on matters under current litigation.)

It's a press secretary's wet dream. Nothing to see here, move along.

(These are not the droids you're looking for.)

This hoax thing started with the so-called Steele Dossier. Remember the Pee-pee Tape? Fake news, says the president.

Case closed. Nothing to see here.

If the election doesn't go his way, what are the chances he declares it a hoax? Pretty damn good, I'm thinking.

(Remember Citizen Kane? In covering Kane's bid to be governor, they had two front pages ready to roll after the election: KANE ELECTED and FRAUD AT POLLS!)

Keep in mind, according to the president, caravans of Mexicans are on their way to the US, and each of those energetic criminals vote many, many times.

Not to mention there are millions of illegals in the country already, just itching to vote the man out of office.

If Trump contests the election, the matter will undoubtedly go to the Supreme Court. He's already filled two of the seats there. I think we better hope Ruth Bader Ginsburg stays in good shape.

Because if the Court gets any more conservative, Trump may hope for victory.

Then it's on to the legality of the 22nd Amendment. Get that out of the way (It's a violation of free speech to say a guy can't have more than two terms as president, right?), and Trump can realize his dream: President-for-Life.

The man can lord it over us until he's just a brain in a bucket.

DEATH RACE 2020

There has always been controversy concerning the deadliness of covid-19. Originally, China reported 2.3%. Later, the World Health Organization reported 3.3%. President Trump suggests the fatality rate is significantly lower, but he has political and personal reasons for minimizing that number.

This morning I tuned into MSNBC, where they were discussing the coronavirus. They had numbers on the big board: cases and deaths from around the world. The totals: 113,702 cases, 4012 deaths.

An easy calculation reveals a death rate of 3.578%.

But these numbers need to be examined. As they stand, they are probably pretty accurate. I doubt there have been many covid-19 deaths attributed to other causes. Some, but not many.

As for the number of positive tests, I would imagine governments are pretty much on top of things there. When a test is administered, results are recorded. And reported to the world.

(Mostly. Some governments have a natural inclination to sit on bad news.)

Of course, a positive test doesn't instantly lead to the ultimate outcome. Many of those folks testing positive have not had enough time to die from their infection. That would mean the death rate could be higher than 3.578%.

The wild card in this calculation is all the people running around the world infected but not yet tested. If your symptoms are mild, you might not drag yourself into a facility and demand a test. Why bother?

And if you've just been infected, and are showing no symptoms as yet, you're still going to be out there doing whatever it is you normally do, coming into whatever close contact with people as your typical day dictates.

These are the people most dangerous, because there may be several days between getting infected and showing symptoms where one can nevertheless spread the virus to the unsuspecting.

If you're positive, and you know it, it's up to you to modify your behavior to mitigate the risk to others, especially to those in the most vulnerable category: old folks with already compromised health. Visit Grandma in the home next month, okay?

We absolutely need the positive crowd to slink away and lie low for a bit. If only the infected were allowed to wear masks, a wary public could keep their distance. And that might help. Forewarned is forearmed.

But that still leaves a cohort of happy infectors dashing about, spreading their good news to all and sundry.

Many countries are testing widely, so they can know the scope of the problem. The US is not one of those countries.

The paradoxical good news is that widespread testing in this country would undoubtedly reveal a great deal more positive cases. That's scary on the face of it, but a larger number of cases would cause the death rate to plummet, perhaps reducing the level of anxiety.

In South Korea, where many are tested, the fatality rate is 0.7%. About seven times the rate of seasonal flu.

Here's a little perspective from history: In the so-called Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, the fatality rate is variously listed from 2.5% to 10%, even to a high of 20%, depending on the wide range of deaths estimated. One-third of the world's population is thought to have been infected (about 500 million people), with total deaths from 12.5 million to a high of 100 million.

Very potent numbers in a world with virtually no air travel.

In contrast, Chancellor Angela Merkel just estimated 60 to 70 percent of the German population might eventually be infected with covid-19. If that percentage held for the current population of the world (7.8 billion), we could see five and a half billion infected.

Using the WHO rate of 3.3%, figure 180 million dead. But that's probably the worst-case scenario. If the South Korea death rate is more accurate, the total drops to thirty-eight million dead. Best case?

Either way, expect to give the Spanish flu a run for its money in the category of total deaths.

GHOST SHIP CRUISES

Last Friday, at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, Donald Trump blasted away about the Grand Princess, the cruise ship that was currently circling a geographical point off the coast of San Francisco. Twenty-one of forty-six covid-19 tests had come back positive, and Trump was seriously reluctant to let the cruise ship dock in America. (It has since docked in Oakland.)

It was all about the numbers.

Taking these people off the ship and putting them in quarantine for two weeks would necessarily inflate the number of cases in the US, and Trump was against it.

He didn't like the way it looked.

Why should we have to take the PR hit? It wasn't our fault those people were at risk. We didn't make them sick. Or even potentially sick. (Thousands of those folks, passengers and crew, have not even been tested.)

The president was clearly afraid that letting them into the country, even directly into quarantine, would make the stock market spin further out of control. In the worst case, something like this might catapult the country into a recession.

And that would almost certainly hurt his reelection chances.

Because he's running, largely, on a great economy. And zillions of dollars of paper losses could prove fatal to his fantasy of being a two-term president.

In the meantime, Trump blames the Dems and the Fake News Media for blowing the coronavirus pandemic out of proportion. They're the ones who spooked the market, see? Perhaps they are also the folks who made Saudi Arabia cut oil prices, further driving stocks down.

At the CDC, our president made the point that anyone who wanted a covid-19 test could get one, a very shaky statement that Mike Pence will be striving mightily to convert into truth over the next week or so.

Bizarrely, Trump pronounced the virus test "perfect", just like the "letter" and the "transcript" (a reference, one imagines, to his impeachment-triggering Ukraine call). Really? Did the man think he was at a campaign rally? (To be fair, he was wearing a red Keep America Great cap.)

One of the men with Trump smiled with apparent embarrassment. Another guy just slowly turned away from the president, as if hoping to distance himself from that hyper-political idiot.

A day or so later, down in Florida, the president reached out to shake hands with adoring citizens, grabbing up in his sweaty meathooks whatever micro-fauna the first guy hosted on his flesh and delivering it to all the others down the line.

I want to wish everybody the best of luck...

DRAWING BLOOD WITH HANLON'S RAZOR

It's all done but the crowing. The Greatest American Witch Hunt (2.0) is over... and again, the witches have won.

Without the need for witnesses or documentary evidence, the Republican Senators have acquitted the president of crimes against the nation.

As expected, Trump moved quickly to claim total vindication and exoneration. Republicans leaped to back him up, excoriating Democrats for perpetrating this hoax on the American people.

Some of the Senators who acknowledged his guilt, but voted to acquit anyway, think Trump will be chastened, put "on notice" to rein in his criminal tendencies.

There's no evidence of that happening.

At the national prayer breakfast Thursday morning Trump accused Senator Romney of hiding behind his religion, voting guilty even though that Mormon scumbag knows the president is innocent.

This is pure Trump. People not only behave very badly when they attack him. For some inexplicable reason, they go against what they know to be true. What is wrong with those idiots?

Don't they realize Trump is privy to all the secret nooks and crannies of the heart? That guy is in a perfect position to call you out on your dishonesty.

And where does he get this wonderful knowledge? Probably the same place any human being gets knowledge: out of his ample ass.

Trump is an exaggerated example of the standard human being, the creatures who know what they know and can't be wrong (as far as they can tell).

Trump appears to believe the nonsense he vomits out, and he gets volumes of support in his paranoiac position from politicians who depend on him to deliver votes for their reelections.

Trump must recognize the power he holds over those people, yet he seems to revel in their acclamation as if it were nothing but sincere. Who is conning whom here?

Trump gleefully extols his exoneration by the Senate, as if that result was not a corrupt vote along partisan lines. But unrecognized corruption can still rot the heart. Question is, are those not-guilty voting senators truly tainted?

Perhaps we should be generous and apply Hanlon's Razor here:

"Never ascribe to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity."

Maybe the majority of Republican senators really did think Trump not guilty. The president believes in his innocence (or at least, repeatedly asserts his innocence). Maybe the senators concur. And their votes to acquit, though idiotic, were heartfelt.

My problem with Hanlon's Razor is that the word "never" goes too far. It suggests that stupidity and incompetence are far more prevalent than malice.

In my estimation, stupidity often leads directly to malice.

Idiotic thinking engenders pumped-up rage in weak individuals. And when you know you're right (and human beings almost always know they're right), going forward to fix a perceived wrong is simply what you do next.

Lock and load, baby, you have to act on what you know!

Donald Trump knows the Democrat-pursued charges stemming from the Ukraine phone call was nothing less than an attempt to overthrow the legitimate government of the United States.

In this case, the president is simply employing Trump's Razor: Forget incompetence; all actions come from malice.

This is what he knows to be true.

And he knows it because there is something seriously wrong with the man. He is either profoundly stupid, or grievously mentally ill, or powered by an astonishingly potent combination of the two.

Trump's words and actions provide an abundance of examples of his mental defects, new outrages coming every day or so.

But we need to be careful. Sometimes the evidence is too good to be true.

Recent statements about Thomas Edison were waved about by talk-show hosts to suggest the man thinks Edison is still alive. Is that stupid or crazy? Personally, I think neither. It's just the loose way the man talks. He sounds goofy most of the time. He just doesn't know it.

Other comments about stealth aircraft are interpreted to mean he thinks they are literally invisible. But it was probably just a joke. He sometimes jokes, throwing overheated goofball detectors all cock-a-hoop.

His rally-based rants about the inconvenience of low water pressure sound erratic, but they may be the sharp edge of a future attempt to shut down the Environmental Protection Agency, the folks behind low-flow toilets and water-saving showerheads.

(Trump knows the environment is a hoax, that no one will ever run out of clean water to drink. God would not allow that to happen, right?)

But when he rails about vicious attempts to railroad him out of office, he's not joking. When he says the press is the enemy of the people, he's not goofing around. When he says Democrats hate America and seek to destroy the country, he means it.

Wholeheartedly.

Or not...

Because there is a fourth choice beyond stupid, crazy, and stupi-crazy:

Donald Trump might just be pure evil.

What if he is the genius he keeps telling us he is? What if he's hiding his real agenda in a whirlwind of nonsense? What if he's working ten moves ahead of us? What if he's like a serial killer who offs thirty people to hide the murder of his wife?

Okay, probably not.

So, I guess it's back to the Big Three: stupid, crazy, or stupi-crazy.

Does his increasingly obvious disability disqualify him from office? Maybe, but can anything be done about it? Probably not, because the 25th Amendment requires a two-thirds vote of both houses to kick the president to the curb.

And I think we all know how the Senate would vote.

Besides, the vice president is pretty important in 25th Amendment proceedings, and Mike Pence knows Trump would eviscerate him for even thinking about it.

DINNER PARTY TALK

The newly-released audio tape of Donald Trump and Lev Parnas is troubling for several reasons. It was purportedly recorded in April of 2018 at a dinner party at Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C.

Talking to Trump about Ukraine, Parnas suggests there's a problem with the ambassador. He says she's telling folks they shouldn't bother talking to Trump about anything because he's going to get impeached.

You should wait, she reportedly said, and talk to the next guy.

After clearing up the point about who Parnas is referring to (Marie Yovanovich, the US ambassador to Ukraine), Trump can be heard ordering some flunky to get rid of the woman.

"Get her out tomorrow. I don’t care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it."

(Oddly, it takes a year to make it happen, but that's another, twisted story.)

The first question, of course, concerns the authenticity of the tape. Is that really Trump talking? I have to say, it sure sounds like him, both in voice and in his habit of repeating himself.

Asked about the tape, Vice President Mike Pence says it just shows the president making a decision. Implied by his comment is his acceptance that it is Trump on the tape, so maybe we can call that a kind of authentication.

But now we need to look deeper.

Yes, the tape reveals the President of the United States making a decision. But a decision based on what information?

Trump appears to order the firing of our ambassador to Ukraine because a guy he didn't know (and repeatedly claims he still doesn't know) made a comment at a dinner party.

Does that make sense?

I think a more reasonable response to Parnas might be: "Wow, really? She said that? Sounds like something my people ought to look into."

You know, kind of ease into the situation, maybe check it out, see if there's anything to it. Get the ambassador's input, and so forth. Then act, if action is warranted.

But Trump goes from zero to sixty in nothing flat, calling for the woman's ouster on the spot. How come?

Here's a weird idea: Is it possible he mistook Parnas for Vladimir Putin? I mean, I guess they sort of resemble one another.

And no question, if Putin had said those words to Trump, Yovanovich would have found herself headed for a yak ranch in Siberia within the hour.

Putin definitely has that man's ear in all matters.

(In the "perfect" phone call with Ukrainian president Zelensky, Trump said she'd be going through some things. But yak ranching?)

Or was Trump just goofing around to impress his dinner guests? Show them how decisive he can be. Give 'em a demonstration of his awesome presidential powers.

And meant not a word of it.

(Did the woman have to go just to back up his reckless words? Is that why it took a year, folks pushing back?)

Another possibility: Trump had already decided to ditch the ambassador, and used Parnas's words as an excuse.

If that's the case, the tape is not the origin story of the Yovanovich firing. Stuff was already in the works, for reasons unrelated to anything Parnas said.

The problem with that, this dinner party occurred a year before Joe Biden entered the presidential race against Trump.

That messes with the Democrats' impeachment story, which is that Yovanovich was dumped to make possible the quid pro quo with Zelensky, a "favor" that is all about getting dirt on Biden.

So was the Trump/Giuliani plot hatched before or after the dinner party?

The hand grenade in the room is Rudy Giuliani. Did his personal machinations in Ukraine predate Trump's reelection bid? Was this all about his attempt to make money in a country known for corruption?

Which brings up this: Was Trump involved in Giuliani's self-enrichment plan? The Donald certainly likes making money. And his one-time campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was already consulting for the previous government of Ukraine, and apparently making a mint at it, too.

Did Trump hope to get a piece of that oozing pie for himself?

Parnas says he no longer believes the rumor about the ambassador that he passed on to Trump. He says he's sorry for what happened to her. But what was his purpose in telling the president?

Was he just trying to sound important, to sound like an insider, to make himself out to be a wheeler-dealer, a man worthy of rubbing elbows with rich and powerful presidents?

I haven't heard the whole tape, but sources say Parnas was involved (or hoped to be involved) in a deal to sell liquid natural gas to Ukraine. Was that on his mind? Did he think Yovanovich would be an impediment to that deal?

His attorney says the rumor originated in Ukraine. It was not something Parnas made up. If true, his words were not part of something cooked up by Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani.

More questions rise out of the abyss:

Was Rudy also involved in the LNG deal? Was there an LNG deal? If so, how did it relate to Burisma Holdings, an energy company in Ukraine that produces five percent of the natural gas used in that country. (And also happened to have Joe Biden's son Hunter on the board [from April 2014 until his term expired in April 2019, according to Wikipedia.])

I fear we may have stumbled into quicksand here.

Motives that seemed to make sense are now morphing into something far more complicated. At the very least, folks start off with one plan and slip-slide into another, all the while moving in the same direction toward what looks like the same goal.

Getting Yovanovich out of Ukraine seemed to solve a multitude of problems for a crapload of people, related or unrelated, you pick 'em.

Several things remain clear, however: Donald Trump is a lying sleazeball who is a threat to our country. He needs to go.

He also appears to be a paranoid lunatic who can be set off by some rando's words at a dinner party, a fact that stands without a discussion of the rando's motives for saying those words.

And here's a bonus: We've got a brown-nosing vice president who seems not the least bit alarmed by that fact.