Monthly Archives: April 2020

Dictators Abound

29 Wednesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Dictators, Uncategorized

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The news media has not done a great job of showing the American people what has been occurring in the rest of the world’s leaderships. The pandemic has not only absorbed our media but also most other countries.

We have watched President Recep Endogen change Turkey from an army protected secular government to one tilting heavily towards a Muslim one. He fired the secular generals and put loyalists in control. He changed the constitution to allow him greater power and a longer term in office. He has picked the Kurds as his bogeyman (see 1930’s Germany and Jews) to focus his supporters against a common enemy. Disagree and you are fired and/or imprisoned.

Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán was an early protester against totalitarian government, but after coming into power ten years ago, he has ramped up his power. His first bogeyman was the Syrian refugees. The pandemic has allowed him to increase his authoritarian rule by taking almost open-ended control of all government functions. The European Union has tried to slow his growth but Poland’s President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki have his back. Both are able to protect each other since EU Rules require consensus.

Nationalism breeds dictators. Brazil and Philippines are just two of a growing number of countries being led by want-to-be dictators. All have either taken over the opposing media like Russia or denigrated it like Trump. A dictator requires one friendly media outlet to disseminate their propaganda. Fox news is the outlet for people who want to control America. Trump’s use of the Defense Production Act (part of the War Powers Act) is similar to what other dictators have used.

Open Letter to the President

26 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in President Trump

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This is an open letter to Donald J. Trump, President of Fifty United States and several Island Territories.

You have shown your greatest desires are to pump up your ego, be re-elected at any cost, and leave a legacy. Just as you have denigrated your predecessors and tried to destroy their legacies, the next President, Democrat or Republican, will immediately start to undo the damage you have caused. This will make your time in the White House a mere blip in our country’s history.

However, you can make a real and long lasting decision to reverse your course from destroying life on our planet to making it possible to save it. Everyone knows your inability to absorb any scientific facts and to dream up your own facts. If you would immerse yourself with facts about climate change from the science agencies in your administration, you would recognize how your previous decisions will negatively affect your descendants’ lives. If you don’t change course, it is easy to see those descendants may decide to change their name.

Mr. President, you have only five months to make a difference in how the future views your time in office. The Coronavirus should not have any bearing on this change in your policies to save not only Americans but almost eight billion people. An immediate change can start to save billions of future humans and the destruction of our coastal cities.

Your legacy will be made during the next few months. It can be one of your successors to build on or eliminate. It is your choice.

Corporate Responsibility

21 Tuesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Coronavirus, President Trump

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The 3-M Company is a major manufacturer of the highly sought after N95 face masks. Why it is called N95, what is it made of, how does the wearer still get sick, and many other questions.

The mask is composed of a mesh of plastic fibers blown together, not woven together. It is supposed to prevent any particle larger than 0.3 microns from going through it. Unfortunately the virus is half that size. That size will prevent droplets from a sneeze or from normal breathing from passing through it. The 95 means it is 95% effective.

It is designed to fit tight so the air the wearer inhales has to go through the mask, not around it. This causes the droplets to stay inside or outside as designed. However, 5% means one person in twenty could be infected or every twentieth breath allow the wearer to breath the virus in or out to others. Depending on that mask and goggles to keep healthy is gutsy and having to use the less effective cloth masks is purely insane.

3-M bought additional equipment to make the masks after the H1N1 virus and left it set up but unused waiting for another disaster. That is what pandemic planning is all about. It isn’t denying it is happening and blaming others who had been planning for it for several years.

3-M has gone from under 50 million masks to over 100 million a week in a few weeks to planning for a billion in the fall. They charge less than a dollar to distributers. Since Trump has reversed policy and told states to buy their own, New York recently had to out-bid other states to get emergency supplies and pay ten times 3-M’s price!

Pass the Buck

17 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by in Leadership

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I don’t know when I first saw a picture of President Harry Truman sitting at his desk with the desk sign in front of him. It said “The Buck Stops Here” because he said he was responsible for what people did who worked under him. He had no ego and he was fair in his working relationships. Truman worked hard, abhorred publicity and listened to his advisers.

Today we have a President who adores the limelight and, far too often, doesn’t have a clue about what he spouts. He never accepts the blame for his mistakes and either denies he said it or blames somebody else. When everyone saw the tsunami virus coming Trump took a long weekend to his Florida resort to celebrate his son’s girlfriend’s birthday and golf, all the while, getting in front of the camera and tweeting about the hoax virus. Since he had fired all the Obama Pandemic people without replacing them, it took many precious days to find some experts to put in charge of coordination. The major problem the experts have is his saying things that aren’t true and then having to try to get the correct information out. His only desire is to make himself great and get re-elected.

He personally wouldn’t allow European virus tests to be used here and demanded they be American made! The first ones were bad delaying the issuance by more precious days and saying “my administration” will give out the first million by Friday, when it was weeks before that happened. He said he would send out respirators and ventilators so the states wouldn’t compete. A week later he said states were responsible, and the next week he said the states were causing prices to sky-rocket. Where is a Truman when we need him?

Try Thinking Before Believing

17 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by in Hoaxes

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I just watched one of the greatest hoaxes or conspiracies of the twentieth century. It was a PBS documentary on the Lunar Landing. Doesn’t everybody know it was all done in a warehouse in Area 57? That’s another hoax where the Air Force says they don’t have any aliens in the freezers.

The biggest conspiracy is that FDR not only knew the Japanese would attack our base at Pearl Harbor, he knew weeks in advance. He wanted us in the war so we could fight with England so he got tough with sanctions against Japan.

Of course, the 1962 conspiracy theories were the Grassy Knoll and Cuba’s training of Oswald. The biggest ones for this century is Obama wasn’t born in America and he is a Muslim. Many hoaxes and conspiracies are put out by people who want to gain publicity for themselves or their cause.

Perhaps the greatest believer of hoaxes and promoter of his own hoaxes and conspiracy theories is Donald Trump. He still believes in the ones about Obama and has spawned hundreds of other hoaxes which his adherents believe and pass along. The media tries to show the hoaxes and conspiracies to just be more lies but Trump is leading a crusade to destroy honest media and promote dishonest media. Common sense should cause people to question some of his most outlandish statements but “The Big Lie” strategy seems to be working here as well as it did in Nazi Germany.

Oh yes, let’s not forget the Russians, Chinese, and other dominating the internet with their own strategies to divide and disrupt our country. Why are so many so gullible? P.T. Barnum couldn’t come up with what Americans believe today.

Lying Without Consequence

17 Friday Apr 2020

Posted by in Leadership

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According to my mother, when I was a little boy I used to blame all my faults and errors on my imaginary friend. Many adults still blame others for their mistakes. I have made a great many small and large ones and I have taken responsibility for my own screw-ups. I changed when Mom explained to me what the sign of President Truman’s desk meant. “The Buck Stops Here” is what is required of a leader, not blaming everyone else for my own mistakes. When the people I supervised made an error, I took the blame because I must not have trained them properly. That is leadership.

Today we have a President who accepts no blame for his actions and statements. Just like a little child he often says “I didn’t say that.”, “The crooked media is lying”, and of course “It’s a hoax.” The documented number of lies and half-truths he has said is over 17,000 and rapidly increasing.

Why didn’t his mother teach him morals? Are his children taught to lie to get ahead and to avoid responsibility? How can 40% of Americans believe a liar? In November we will see how many people can accept having a liar as our country’s moral leader.

Big Decisions Required

14 Tuesday Apr 2020

Posted by in Coronavirus, Leadership

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Here is the problem facing the governors. Just over a hundred years ago we had the Spanish Flu killing tens of thousands of us. Medicine and treatment wasn’t as advanced as today. Entire towns quarantined themselves by blocking roads into town. The virus died out after several months and didn’t come back. No vaccines were made to protect people. It just didn’t return. Why? We don’t know. Will COVID 19 be the same?

The hope is COVID 19 will do the same but the virologists don’t know if the immunity occurs at all with all levels of contracting the virus and how long it lasts. The Chinese have just announced they are starting to have a second wave of people getting sick. Does that mean it will stay with us until we all get it or a vaccine is widely distributed?

How does a Governor decide what to do? Does Pritzker open the state up in a few weeks and the virus comes back killing hundreds more requiring another shutdown? A negative test for an individual doesn’t confer immunity or mean that a person can’t get it the next day and spread it to others. Should a Governor make it mandatory for people to wear masks for months or years?

When should restaurants and other “non-essential” businesses re-open? When do non-emergency surgeries start again? What about debt and how do governments return to some kind of fiscal responsibility? Illinois wasn’t stable before so what does Pritzker do now?

One thing I know for sure, whatever decisions are made, most people will not be happy!

Wade Today, Swim Tomorrow

12 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in Climate Change

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This letter is to those extremely few people who have decided that they know more than a fifth grader. (It was a TV show about first to fifth grade questions.)

When I “go shopping” with my wife, I usually stay in the vehicle reading or talking on my flip-phone. Most days I end up rolling down the windows to cool off. Even a fifth grader knows that the sun’s rays come into the vehicle’s cabin and warms the seats and trim. The air gets hot because the sun’s rays can come through the glass but the heat rays can’t go back out.

Why? In the nineteenth century, a physicist discovered that extremely minute amount of carbon dioxide will block infra-red heat rays from escaping a confined area. We live in a confined area called Earth.

Earth is surrounded by an atmosphere with a very small amount of carbon dioxide. For life to survive on this planet we need a tiny amount. Just a few parts in a million less means Joliet is under thousands of feet of ice or a few more gives us Venus’ atmosphere. Glacial ice in Greenland indicates the air in 1744 had 277 parts per million. That period was before the industrial age started. The amount in 2017 was 407 ppm. Major volcanic activity can have a temporary cooling period such as the Little Ice Age but as CO2 has increased so has the temperature.

Now almost every year is hotter than the previous one, the world’s glaciers and ice caps are melting, oceans are expanding from heat, and the world is changing fast. For a week last winter Antarctica was warmer than Disney World!

Even fools can realize the truth by wading coastal cities’ streets during king tides each month. It is stupid and foolish to deny facts you can see.

 

To Buy or Not To Buy

12 Sunday Apr 2020

Posted by in Coronavirus, Uncategorized

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To buy or not to buy, that is the question. Is it better for a state to buy emergency medical equipment by bidding against other states or for the Federal Government to purchase them at a lower price? The obvious answer is for the Federal Government to maintain price control by being sole buyer and having used Presidential powers to create new manufacturers.

As a news junkie I watch Trump as much as I can tolerate. I have heard him say he would use the Government’s reserves to give to the states and buy more when needed. They should not complicate things by trying to buy supplies themselves. Then a few weeks later he says it is the states’ responsibility and not his. Then later, he says the states are running up the cost by bidding against each other and he will buy for them.

Then his president-in-waiting son-in-law says the Federal Reserve is for the federal governments use only. That is why the Illinois treasurer had to pay 3.5 million for items at a Dwight McDonalds which would have been much less if FEMA had been buying all the supplies. Other states weren’t willing to pay that much.

How can people think President Trump is doing a good job when he constantly is shown to be mismanaging the effort and contradicting his own expert team? He pushes an unproven drug because Rudy Giuliani tells him it will stop the virus. The question I want to know – is Giuliani lobbying for the drug company and how does Trump benefit from selling it?

Is the Federal Government supposed to buy and distribute fairly or create total confusion?

 

Thirty Trillion Debt

06 Monday Apr 2020

Posted by in National Debt

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That is 30 followed by twelve zeros. By the end of the year we will probably owe at least that amount and if the Congressional Budget Office is right, the virus will still be affecting Americans in 2021. They see at least 10% unemployment and a recession still in progress. At least two more give-aways are on-line for May and July. More will be later this year and into next year.

Regular readers know I have railed against the yearly budget deficits and exploding National Debt for years. Bush II put us back into the red with his tax cuts. When the Great Recession hit we were already running a deficit during a growing economy. Obama couldn’t raise taxes so he tried to cut expenditures. It was pretty much a bi-partisan effort to keep spending. Sequestration was proposed by the White House and finally accepted by Congress.

Trump’s increase in spending and tax cuts has sped up the flood of red ink. During a growing economy we have been growing the yearly deficit and National Debt. Before the virus hit we were on schedule for 1.2 trillion deficits. This year’s will now probably be around eight to ten trillion. Our future yearly budget payment on the debt may be a third of the government’s income! And yet Trump is looking at another tax cut!

We must have a sizable tax increase to pay down the debt. America can’t go on long before we are literally drowning in red ink. The Bible says to save during the seven good years for use in the seven bad years. We did not! Now we will see a “winter of discontent.” Oh, so many zeros!