Let's address a few issues about Resident Donald Trump.
The US Congress building was besieged and invaded by intimidating Trump supporters yesterday to disrupt the certification of Biden as the next US president.
The rioting mob was directly incited and encouraged by Trump and Rudolph Giuliani. Giuliani called for "trial by combat" which I understand is what knights in armour in medieval times got up to so he's certainly somewhat divorced from reality.
I have some difficulty blaming the rampaging mob actually. The problem is that they have been wound up by Trump, Giuliani & Co for months on end. The deluded rampaging mob probably truly believed that they were defending democracy while those truly responsible will likely avoid being held to account due to their privileged positions.
What of Trump himself? While he quite possible believes that he is a very stable genius he is in reality a very maladjusted megalomaniacal and narcissistic fekking moron. You have to be extremely fekking moronic to fail to understand that he lost the election fair and square, that he's a luser sacked by the US electorate. His latest tantrum may be about him losing attention.
We've leaned that he's a racist misogynist and Fascist. A Fascist evidenced by his disregard for democracy and the rule of law and his authoritarianism. We've seen this in his actions abroad before his latest spree in the US.
We also know that he was associated with Jeffrey Epstein, wished Epstein's accomplice Ghislaine Maxwell well, promised his 17-year-old daughter that he would not date anyone younger than her - although we also know that he's a prolific liar or otherwise a total stranger to the truth - and that he would inspect semi-naked teenagers in beauty pageant changing-rooms.
Oh, and a tax evader. I'm sure that I've missed more.
Trump is such a moron that he's shat on the very people he's going to depend on. Such people might take more of an interest in his affairs, security may be less inclined to provide a fully attentive service after he endangered capitol police, he may have alienated himself from many circles
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1. Environment. This is the biggest single issue. Trump is a real-life world-destroying Thanos from the Avengers, and is trying his best to commit planeticide. His policies will kill the earth. The human race has a window of about 20 years to avoid the worst impacts of the climate emergency. We should have swung into action years ago to vastly reduce our use of coal, gasoline and natural gas. Trump has presided over an increase in our annual carbon dioxide emissions rather than, as he should have, greatly reducing them. If Americans give him another four years to wreak this kind of destruction, it will be game over for normal human life on the planet. We will see gargantuan disruptions, with turbocharged hurricanes, massive wildfires, raging sea level rise, coastal flooding, and mass extinctions. These disasters can be light or heavy. Trump is doing his best to ensure they are heavy.
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2. Trump’s second biggest failure was in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic. For the most part, he adopted an ostrich policy of burying his head in the ground and pretending that it wasn’t there, or would abruptly disappear “like a miracle,” or that its consequences were not grave.
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3. Trump’s failure on the coronavirus is also a failure on the economy. China dealt with the pandemic in a scientific way, and is now past the crisis. It will grow 1.2 percent this year, whereas US GDP will be in negative territory. Trump blames governors’ shutdown orders for harming businesses.
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4. Health Care. Trump has tried to kneecap Obamacare, which had allowed an extra 22 million Americans to afford health care insurance. Trump has undermined the program at every turn. He is presently in court attempting get rid of the Affordable Care Act entirely. He has also consistently challenged the requirement that insurers insure people with pre-existing conditions. Trump brazenly lies about his opposition to health care for people and his attempt to get rid of the provision about pre-existing conditions. But you have to look at what he does, not what he says. What he has done is to sue to get rid of them and to get rid of the ACA. He lies and says he has a better plan in mind, but the Republicans have had a decade to produce an alternative and they never have given us a bill to examine.
5. Under Trump, the US trade deficit has climbed 14% from where it was in Obama’s last year. It skyrocketed with China, but then Trump used tariffs (paid for by Americans) to wrestle it back down to just about where it was in 2016. It then just grew with other countries.
“Trump’s lies and his rejection of science have cost us tens of thousands of lives. We need a new president,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders. by Jake Johnson, staff writer
President Donald Trump speaks during his campaign event on October 23, 2020 in The Villages, Florida. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump late Friday repeated his lie that the United States is on its way to defeating the coronavirus pandemic just before the country reported a single-day record of more than 85,000 new Covid-19 infections, nearly 10,000 more cases than were tallied at the height of the devastating surge in mid-July.
But the president’s remarks during a campaign rally Friday at The Villages, a Florida retirement community, conveyed zero indication that the U.S. is entering what could be the worst phase of the pandemic yet.
“It’s true that country is rounding the turn of the pandemic. We are spiraling out of control.” —Dr. Zoë McLaren,School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County
“I mean, you look at what’s going on and we’re rounding the turn. We’re rounding the corner. We’re rounding the corner beautifully,” Trump said, recycling an egregious falsehood that has become a staple of his stump speech even as infections and hospitalizations surge nationwide.
The New York Timesreported late Friday that “since the start of October, the rise in cases has been steady and inexorable, with no plateau in sight… By that measure, Friday was the worst day of the pandemic, and health experts warned of a further surge as cold weather sets in. The number of people hospitalized with Covid-19 has already risen 40 percent in the past month.”
Consistent with his reckless downplaying of the pandemic from the very start, Trump once again peddled the lie that the U.S. is “rounding the turn” during a late Friday rally in Pensacola, one of many largely maskless and closely packed in-person campaign events the president has held in recent days against the warnings of public health officials.
Watch:
Just hours after news broke that the US set a single-day record today for new coronavirus cases, Trump absurdly claims in Pensacola that the country is “rounding the turn” of the pandemic pic.twitter.com/fG0uXxluPu
“It’s true that country is rounding the turn of the pandemic,” responded Dr. Zoë McLaren, associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “We are spiraling out of control.”
In addition to the record number of cases, the U.S. also reported more than 940 coronavirus deaths on Friday, bringing the nation’s death toll to nearly 224,000—the highest in the world.
“This is only getting worse,” tweeted epidemiologist Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, warning that the U.S. could soon reach 100,000 new cases per day as the winter months approach.
With the November 3 election less than two weeks away, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) tweeted Friday that “Trump’s lies and his rejection of science have cost us tens of thousands of lives.”
“We need a new president,” Sanders said.
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This is the world we live in. This is the world we cover.
A quiz for you today. You may notice that there is a trap for blonde-haired global leaders of the very stable genius variety.
Please identify the items in the images. Answers are at the end.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Thanks to wikimedia for all the images.
The answers are:
Giraffe
Elephant
Cow
Windmill
Not a windmill. A wind generator or wind turbine are also acceptable answers.
Ace it? Did you notice the trap for blonde-haired World leaders of the very stable genius variety? That’s right both current US Resident Donald Trump and current UK Prime Mister Boris ‘rice pudding’ Johnson mistake wind generators or turbines for windmills.
Boris was using the phrase windmills in his speech to the Conservative Party conference yesterday. By misusing the phrase windmills he is associating himself with the World’s most prominent climate crisis denier and climate destroyer, Donald Trump. Is the message that his speech should be regarded as donkey doo?
Here are some extra images which are not part of the quiz.
A floating wind turbine. Windmills generally don’t float Boris.
Skin on rice pudding.
A donkey. This one is for my friends at Led by Boriss.
