What are we going to do?

 

We are now 100 days into a new Administration. As promised, a pandemic response bill has been passed getting money out to the states and to people who desperately need it. The vaccines that are proving to stop Covid 19 dead in its tracks

 are available to anyone over age 16. (Fact – over 88 million people fully vaccinated and 6,000 cases of Covid among those people and not one death. That’s 99.9932% effective!) President Joe Biden has an approval rating of >59%, something his predecessor never even got close to achieving.

Countries around the world are excited that America is back and are welcoming us back to negotiating tables, looking to us for leadership, and are hopeful again after one of the darkest years in the past 100.

Vaccines save lives!

And yet…

Almost 25% of Americans have stated that they “won’t get the vaccine.” Despite its success and its effectiveness, they’ve decided that having to get it violates their rights. That it will “change their DNA.” That they “don’t know what’s in it.” That it’s a “government project to plant a chip so we can be tracked.” That it “hasn’t been proven to be safe, yet.” That “vaccines take years to create, how could this one be ready in months?” That “the pandemic is a hoax, so I don’t need it.”

I wish I were making these up. I’ve personally heard people say these things.

For the world to rid itself of this virus, we need to reach herd immunity and the percentages I’ve seen for how many people must be vaccinated go from 70%-90%. In other words, we’re likely to be dealing with this virus for years instead of months, because some people believe their rights trump the rights of everyone else. (Pun intended.)

Vaccines work, they’re incredibly safe and remarkably effective. They’re the reason we don’t have polio, diphtheria, whooping cough, and a host of other diseases today. They’re one of the reasons that the life expectancy in the world has doubled in the last century. Doubled as in gone from mid-40s to upper-80s.

I guess we should be thankful that more people are educated than ever before or we’d really have some issues on this, huh? (I wish I had an answer for these people but I struggle to cure stupidity.)

And still…

Police kill, on average, three people per day. An inordinate percentage of them are people of color. Rarely does the officer that fired the shot face any kind of charges as, more frequently, the killing is “justified” in the course of duty.

Stop killing people!

(Yes, I know that Derek Chauvin was found guilty in the killing of George Floyd last week. There was video shot by a bystander showing him kneeling on the dead man’s neck for over nine minutes, even after he’d stopped breathing. When the jury came back with a verdict, the country was holding its collective breath for a conviction. Why? Because that’s what happens, nearly every time! When the ratio flips the other way, come back and talk to me about how police are being unfairly treated.)

I’m not advocating “defunding” the police. I’m advocating better training, money spent on mental health services, and a culture change for those who serve. Think it shouldn’t?

Policing began in this country shortly after slavery stopped, during Jim Crow. Well-armed people were hired to “bring back” workers who had skipped out of their jobs. They were unfairly treated and “tried” and essentially put right back into slavery in many cases. These groups of “arrestors” eventually formed police forces after being “deputized” by the local sheriffs who were unable to keep up with the population growth. To this day, America ensures that its police forces are armed with the best weapons available while most other countries don’t. Google it. France, Germany, England, Australia, Austria, Iceland, Denmark, and Finland are all among the Top 10 police forces in the world and none of them carry guns. (Oddly enough, citizens of those countries have tougher access to guns, too. Wonder if there is a correlation?)

And somehow…

There is a percentage of the population of this country that believes this new administration, with all the things it’s working to bring us – health and healthcare, financial security, improved and repaired infrastructure, a safer climate – is heading in the wrong direction.

This is not a small percentage, either. It’s nearly 50% of the population and far more than that in some states and areas. In other words, it’s large enough to elect some people to positions of power in our country that can have a deleterious impact to all the good that’s being done.

In fact, they elected that last guy President and, to this day, a good many of them think he’s the greatest we’ve ever had and that the election was stolen from him. Why? Because HE said so. There is no science or logic that can change their minds, at least none that I’ve been able to find.

So, what are we going to do to keep our country headed in the right direction?

It's up to all of us!

Ninety Days In – BP 120/80

 

Deep Breath!

If you’re like me, the four years of the Trump administration put a bit of blip in your health statistics. My blood pressure was up, my blood glucose was as well, thanks to daily self-medication in the form of cocktails, and I was constantly angry and/or frustrated with just about everything and nearly everyone.

And why not? Science had been suspended, truth telling became an anomaly, and a goodly number of rituals and processes had been tossed into the dustbin of history. You know things like, Presidents who release their income tax returns, Presidents that treat people with respect to the point of respectfully disagreeing on things. Members of Congress making a stand for the Country instead of solely for their party or personal checkbook.

Ah, how quaint those days seemed.

Those last couple of weeks were a test all their own. Who would have guessed His Orangeness would have the temerity to enrage his base enough to actually storm the Capitol in an insurrection effort to stop the rightful certification of the legal Federal election of a President? As of this moment, the Justice Department hasn’t brought charges against many people but the wheels of justice turn slowly. There are efforts underway.

I do find it interesting that even now, there is a substantial percentage of Republicans who claim that election was stolen and their candidate won – in a landslide! In other words, they’re saying that not only was there fraud at the ballot box but that it was on a scale of millions of ballots! Millions! I mean, there are certainly people whose word I trust implicitly but if they were to call me and say something completely outrageous and I know to be false like, “All the money in your paycheck was deposited by Russians this week; you’ll have to give it back to them!” I’d be getting an Uber to take them to the nervous hospital. I damn sure wouldn’t be storming the Russian Embassy to hand them a check!

This is the same group, by the way, that is refusing to be vaccinated against Covid-19 because they don’t trust what’s in it or how quickly it was created. Never mind that in the next breath, they’ll point out that it was “developed under Trump and he gets no credit for it.” And right after that, they'll knock back a chili dog with extra chili and fries – having no idea what’s in the hot dog. Oh, then take something for acid reflux without knowing what’s in that or how it works. But, no, they’re not hypnotized zombies! They’re free-thinking adults who refuse to let those Commie-Socialists ruin their country.

Uh huh.

Thankfully, there is less stress since the inauguration of President Biden. He almost never Tweets, he’s having daily meetings with his Cabinet and Congressional leaders in an effort to get the country past the pandemic and back on its feet. It appears that 200 million people will have gotten at least partially vaccinated by his 100^th day in office, twice as many as he set out to do on Inauguration Day.

President Joe Biden

He’s acting so presidential, that I realized I forgot what that used to look like!

We’re coming up on the first ninety days of this administration and things are looking up and yet, there are people who desperately want Biden to fail. Why? Because he’s not Trump and “we” all wanted him to fail.

I don’t know about you but I desperately wanted him to succeed and prove me wrong. I mean, I can’t stand the guy – he’s skeevy, underhanded, has the morals of a ¾ rat, and brought in people who were worse than him to help him run the country. But he had been duly elected and been given the chance to run the country as he saw fit. Those are rules in this country. I had a suspicion that he’d be in over his head and that proved to be correct almost immediately. But I still wanted success because when the President is successful, America and Americans are successful.

(Was I successful during the Trump Administration? I was and that's been true during every single administration since I became an adult - going all the way back to Carter. Why? Well, I work hard, I'm privileged in this country as a white male, and I've also been lucky on a number of occasions. I enjoy helping others, too, so maybe my luck is actually karma. But I digress.)

Instead Trump showed that someone focused only on himself in that role, and surrounding himself with people just like him, winds up in trouble. His biggest accomplishment was to appoint far more judges (conservative to be sure) than his predecessors but that had less to do with him and far more to do with then Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whose legacy is still be written. But the number of unqualified judges he ramrodded through the system are going to make for some painful swings to our country in the areas of individual rights, abortion, and fairness of the application of the law. (Think I’m wrong? Google Trump appointed judges qualifications and enjoy the read. 85% male, 76% white, and only 5% black, please.)

Here’s the good news: We’re ninety days in and my blood pressure is under control. We’re slowly digging out of the pandemic (and would more quickly if everyone would get vaccinated and wear a damn mask!) and the economy is showing signs of strengthening.

Let’s keep it going, Joe!

Elections and Consequences

 

It’s time

Seventeen days ago, the United States of America held election day. It was preceded by several weeks of early voting in a number of states (Virginia included) and expanded absentee / mail in voting. A majority of the voting population, about 60%, took advantage of these alternatives voting methods to avoid exposure to the Corona virus. This change to the way we vote in national elections caused results to be delayed longer than we’re used to but it also provided us with, according to bi-partisan officials, “the most transparent and unencumbered election in history.”

President-Elect Biden

As of this writing, the Electoral College vote count shows Biden leading incumbent Trump, 306 to 232. This is a clear victory for Biden and the margin of votes in key “battleground” states is far higher than Trump managed in his 2016 win over Hilary Clinton. The total popular vote shows Biden with a 6 million+ vote lead with about .5% of votes left to be counted.

In other words, Biden is the President-elect of the United States.

And yet…

Transition as planned

Our nation has always prided itself on a peaceful transfer of power from the incumbent President to the new one. Even in 2016, arguably one of the most contentious presidential elections that I can recall, Clinton conceded the race within 24 hours and President Obama welcomed President-elect Trump to the White House to begin the transition within a week’s time. The Trump transition team was given
everything it desired and needed to begin the process of setting up a new government. (There are well documented reports of how the Trump transition team had little to no clue how to do this thus beginning a culture of incompetence that has lasted for four years but that’s for a different post.)

Here we are, 16 days after election, and Trump hasn’t conceded the race to Biden. He has Tweeted dozens of times that he “won the election” and in some claimed to win in a landslide. He has made so many false claims about the election up to this point (including vast conspiracies that have been disproven) that Twitter has placed more declarations of inaccuracy on his tweets than not!

It gets worse…

Over the past week or so, lawyers for Trump have filed lawsuits in multiple states across the country claiming various forms of election fraud. None of these have been filed in states that Trump was declared victor, mind you. Thus far, 28 of 31 have been thrown out for lack of evidence and the remaining 3 have been waiting for proof or evidence to investigate. (There isn’t any, they’re simply waiting for it to be presented.)

Yesterday the lead attorney for the President, Rudy Giuliani, held a news conference

Lying may cause sweating

where one of the other attorneys presented the notion that the President had won “in a landslide” and the reason the results weren’t showing that is because of a vast and dark conspiracy that involved voting machines created by Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to undermine their elections. These same types of machines are being used in swing states to undermine the President and his re-election.

Election Disrupter

(For those of you without access to Google, Hugo Chavez died in 2013. Trump hadn’t declared his intention to run for President in 2016 by then. And why on earth would the machines be set to elect Biden while allowing the loss of seats in the House And not flip the Senate? I mean, how far does one have to reach to believe this stuff???)

After watching parts of this press conference, I’m left to wonder, “What the hell?”

Time to move on

Our current President appears to be doing everything in his power to remain in power. He has always been unique in his approach to the job, sometimes bordering on the fringes of legal and often stomping all over what has been considered moral and right.

While this is hardly new, I think he’s overreaching. What he’s doing crosses the line into the area of treason. Yes, treason.

Treason is defined as “the crime of betraying one's country, especially by attempting to kill the sovereign or overthrow the government.”

As I stated before, the US has always had a process in place for the peaceful transfer of power. As the US rose to the most powerful country in the world, doing so became critical to the stability and safety of the free world. This peaceful transfer has been called out, time and time again, as an example of how democracy should, and did, work.

By taking the tack that he has, President Donald J. Trump has chosen to betray our country by attempting to overthrow the government, the part of government being the effective and fair manner of holding an election. And this election has been called by bi-partisan officials as transparent and unencumbered.

What am I asking?

I’m asking for the President to concede the race and begin the transition process. If he continues in his current fashion, I’m asking for the Cabinet to remove him under the 25^th Amendment (because he’s become unable and unwilling to govern effectively).

After the new administration is inaugurated, I’m calling on the Justice Department to follow the law and prosecute anyone in the administration who has violated the Federal statutes. I also include anyone in the Republican caucus that has enabled the illegal behavior that we’re seeing.

Why would I ask this, when everyone is saying it would divide the country further? Because we need to ensure this isn’t going to happen, ever again.

Because in the end…

The Great American Experiment has taken 240 years to get to this point and almost fall apart. We must get a head start on the next two centuries. A fresh start. A clean start.

Time to take out the trash. 

This is the Trash.