Orange of the White House got into one of his shit storms on Twitter yesterday and raved that Noble Journalism Prize recipients should return their journalism prizes to the Noble Committee. Upon being told by one of his caretakers that there was no such thing as a Noble Prize he deleted the tweet but not fast enough. The Internet works much faster than Trump and his latest stupidity was found out.
A learned person would know that there is the Nobel Prize and it has nothing to do with journalism. The journalism prize is the Pulitzer Prize. There are a variety of Nobel Prizes in various areas of science and literature and a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism. Trump will never possess either to hang on his wall next to that Purple Heart he will never have.
Who knew, until Orange of the White House told us, that for most of us the cure to COVID-19 is no further than the cabinets under our kitchen sinks or maybe on the floor in our laundry room. But then again, Orange, “is no doctor.”
I was watching some news earlier and one of the subjects was the anti stay at home policy of the Michigan governor. Seems the right-wing doesn’t give a shit about science or viral death if it gets in the way of them scratching their asses in someone else’s space. Their motto seems to be, One for None, or some other selfish nonsense.
Of the many photos I saw, two caught my attention. One was of a sixty-something man dressed in a red MAGA cap and armed with a video camera. He had his face into about every group shooting
The first American Coronavirus patient was confirmed on January 20th. What happened afterward, regarding the response of Trump and his government, is the subject of a major job of investigative reporting by a team of the best the New York Times has to offer. This morning’s Morning Joe program on MSNBC spent the entirety of its 90-minutes covering the Trump reactions and the approximately 70-days before Trump decided the pandemic was real and demand something from him other than simply calling it a Democratic hoax.
I watched Rachel Maddow last night (April 10, 202) and nearly screamed out loud. She did several segments in which she just permitted exhausted medical personal to speak uninterrupted about their day, worries, fears, frustrations, etc. Most all mentioned the frustration and fearfulness of working without the proper equipment and protective clothing.
Here’s what angers me so much. Since 1950 every American president has had at their call the Defense Production Act that gives them the power to order companies to manufacture goods or provide services necessary for the national defense and protection of the American people.
Donald Trump didn’t bring the first Coronavirus patient to America’s shores, he didn’t start this pandemic. But what he did was make light of it, called it a hoax, declared it would be over in no time, blamed it on others, and so much more. He ignored his intelligence services and his closest advisors about the seriousness of it and took zero actions to begin preparing for what the experts told him was coming.
Who would you rather take CoronaVirus advice from, a comedian who speaks with four-letter words in half of his diatribe, or, a self-proclaimed stable genius who can’t spell virus because it has more than four letters?
Everyone should know that the costs of pharmaceutical medicines in America are out of control. I’ve used this example several times and it is nothing special, just what millions of Americans experience every time they go to the drug store. A friend found himself suddenly facing a needed life-altering drug that runs him over $1,900 a month.
While I don’t know any of the manufacturer’s arguments for that drug costing so much I can easily assume, and likely be correct, that a degree of excessive profiteering is somewhere in the formula.
If you’ve been around Greenfield for very long you’re sure to have heard that Greenfield is known as “Little Chicago”, a small town with a questionable reputation. All the years I grew up here I’d occasionally hear that claim. However, I must not have taken it seriously because I never felt insecure or scared while running the streets and allies as a young boy, which I did lots of.
As an adult, I’ve come to realize that there is nothing unique about Greenfield and its people. Like every other community, we have our problems and our problems are pretty much related, to the population size, educational level, and economic opportunity and income. Large cities with bad schools, high levels of ignorance, low incomes, and poor chances for advancement have the same difficulties as small rural communities. The difference is mainly the number of people. The more people the more problems. Even places that have none of these problems have problems.
The population of the US Territory of Puerto Rico is 3.195 million US citizens. In 2017 the island was struck by two major hurricanes that inflicted horrible and long-lasting damage. Congress authorized $20 billion in relief aid but so far only $1.5 billion has been released; the balance being held back by Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development headed up by the always insensitive and incompetent, Ben Carson.
We all know how Republicans love to charge the Democrats in Congress with never doing anything. It’s the easiest and most convenient means of throwing or diverting the heat off their backs. After all, it takes two to tango and while the House is one of the necessary partners in the dance, the GOP and Moscow Mitch controlled Senate is the other.
Actually, American lawmaking is not a dance for two. Instead, it is, as the French would say, a “danser pour trois.” Before anyone
Some years ago I had a ham radio acquaintance who lived in West Virginia and worked in a Radio Shack. Anytime someone asked him what he did he very proudly said, “I work in retail.”
I never really understood how someone who sold capacitors and 7-transistor portable radios could swell up with such pride as he displayed. Maybe jobs that didn’t require working underground and breathing bad air were just that rare in the Mountain State.
Over the holidays I watched the Netflix documentary, The American Factory. It’s about the closure of a GM factory in Dayton and its subsequent purchase by a Chines billionaire. His company invested lots of money, got lots of tax abatements, and created hundreds of jobs. They brought in an army of Chinese managers and tried to convince American workers they should succumb to Chinese work ethics and blind loyalty to the company.
It wasn’t long before an attempt to organize arose and not much longer before that attempt was crushed and those responsible were shown the door. When it was a GM plant the wage was $29 an hour plus benefits. After a couple of years, the starting wage under the Chinese was still only $14 an hour with far fewer benefits. The workers are mostly overworked, under-paid, underrepresented, and safety-wise, under-protected.
Yesterday or today Trump tweeted that the House of Representatives didn’t have the power to impeach him. Instantly I thought of the standard triangular graphic that appears in absolutely every high school government or civics textbook.
There has never been a public school student who sat in one of the aforementioned classes and didn’t see something that closely resembled the attached graph. And, as they saw the graphic,
