Category Archives: Politics

A Terrible Price

The battle against COVID-19 required competent and steady leadership. To stop the spread of the disease, we needed our President to be honest, intelligent, and humble.

Honest, because we needed to trust him. We needed to know that what he told us about the disease was factual so that we could make well-informed decisions to keep ourselves and our families safe.

Intelligent because infectious disease epidemiology is complicated and heady stuff. We needed a president who could read briefings, synthesize and extrapolate the relevant data, sit down with scientists, listen to what they were telling him, and effectively make sense of it so that he could communicate what he learned to the public clearly and concisely. Being able to do this would result in public confidence.

Humble because COVID-19 was an unknown and ruthless disease. What we learned early on was subject to change as new data became available. We needed a president who was humble enough to admit the challenge would be tough and require Americans to work together in a coordinated and unified manner.

We needed our President’s honesty, intelligence, and humility, and he was glaringly 0 for 3.

COVID-19 has killed more than a quarter million Americans. Tens of thousands of those deaths can be blamed on the incompetency of our President. It has wrecked our economy, devastated small businesses, and decimated families. It also shined a light on an immoral and criminally incompetent leader and, in all likelihood, ended the Trump presidency. In a weird twist of fate, if not for the virus and incompetent leadership that ensued, we might have lost our democracy.

What a devastating price to pay for electing a con artist and reality TV celebrity to the Presidency. I hope we learned a lesson as a nation – that cheap populism makes for a dangerously shaky and ineffectual national platform and that honesty, intelligence, and humility matter in a President.

Bye Bye Motherfucker

We the people had our say

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

We dumped you on election day

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Clear your desk, be on your way

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

YOU DON’T GET TO FUCKING STAY!

The way you act is a disgrace

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Can’t accept you lost the race

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

We’re tired of your orange face

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

SO, GRAB YOUR SHIT AND PACK A CASE!

So long orange, hello blue

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

You bit off more than you could chew

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Let this be your Waterloo

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

TAKE JARED AND IVANKA TOO!

You’re a traitor and a louse

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

We don’t wanna to hear you grouse

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Be quiet as a fucking mouse

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

AND GET OUT OF OUR FUCKING HOUSE!

Trump, Lindsey, and Tortoise Mitch

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Drove the bus into a ditch

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Helped their buddies all get rich

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

AND GAVE US ALL A NERVOUS TWITCH!

You’re nothing but a pussy grabber

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Full of shit and constant blabber

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Your twitter feed is full of lies

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

YOUR BANK ACCOUNT HAS RUSSIAN TIES!

Your Christian views are fake as fuck

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

We’re tired of the “Rudy Tuck”

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Load your shit on to the truck

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

AND MOVE ALONG, YOU FASCIST FUCK!

You played the Christians like a fiddle

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

A simple folk, without a middle

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Save the fetus, cage the kids

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

YOU PUT OUR NATION ON THE SKIDS!

Ignored the data and the science

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Said fuck the mask with great defiance

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Got RONA from your noncompliance

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

AND STILL RELY ON PSEUDOSCIENCE!

Inject the bleach insert the light

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

Don’t stop until you get it right

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

You plunged our nation into the night

(Bye-Bye Motherfucker)

NOW GET OUT OF OUR FUCKING SIGHT!

2020 Presidential Election Postmortem

Republicans gerrymandered districts, closed polling places, and appointed a crooked pro-Trump Postmaster General, who, in the middle of a pandemic, ripped sorting machines out of postal facilities and removed drop-boxes to hinder the ability to handle an increase in mail-in ballots. And after all of that politically-motivated and strategic malevolence, Trump still got his ass handed to him in a big blue box, beautifully adorned with 306 electoral bows, in what the Department of Homeland Security called the most secure Presidential election in history.

And ever since that stinging rebuke of America’s one-term orange menace, we’ve had to listen to republicans’ bitch and moan (without evidence) about voter fraud — 0 for 13 in lawsuits at the time of this writing – laughed out of courtrooms across battleground states.

We watched in bemusement at the more than eleven thousand pathetically lost souls at the “Million MAGA March” with their “Stop the Steal” signs, and thought to ourselves how easy it is in America to sway the masses. All you need is a website, a lie, and a human desire to be part of something “big and just” and its down the wallpapered-with-Q-conspiracy-theory-rabbit-hole they go, screaming and yelling like snowflakes on steroids, like zombies on crack, like lemmings on Led Zeppelin.

Shut the fuck up already. You lost. Despite all the slimy underhanded efforts to suppress the vote and misinform citizens, YOU STILL FUCKING LOST.

Instead of bitching and moaning without merit, start thinking about putting up a better candidate in 2024, and while your at it, you might want to consider the fact that America is changing. We’re becoming more diverse, less religious, and more concerned about our planet – deal with that by backing candidates who will hustle for new voters, who will reach out to the people who live and work in their state and look to genuinely understand their needs and concerns.

And for the love of Mike, don’t blindly back a shallow and vacuous megalomaniac like Trump, who for 4 years padded the wallets of rich people, lowered the tax burden for multi-billion dollar corporations, ratcheted up fear, racism, and xenophobia, tried really really hard to limit access to healthcare, rolled back environmental regulations, diminished the integrity of the Presidency by lying at an astronomical rate, withheld lifesaving information about the dangers of COVID-19, tongue-kissed authoritarians across the globe, and wrecked America’s reputation around the world.

If you can’t elect a candidate better than Trump next time around, you deserve to lose again. Biggly.

And quit being that single-issue-ban-the-fetal-tissue-voter, because all that does is make you a target for manipulative vote-grubbing slugs like Trump, who, let’s be honest, would mandate abortion if it meant overturning the 2020 election results. If you want to reduce the number of abortions in America, let’s start with improved health education, reinforced by frank and honest discussions with children about sex, sexuality, and the importance of acting responsibly, and combine that with easy access to birth control. Then, implement these measures nationally, so  everyone gets the same message at the same age, regardless of their background or where they live – that would do more to reduce abortions than 9 Amy Coney Barrets.

And finally, can we please get back to the core human values that actually have made America great – kindness, empathy, honesty, and integrity and get off the dangerous, religiously-fueled-patriarchal-cult-of-personality path we’ve been on for the last 4 years, because that shit is rotting this country from the inside out.

The Mad King and the Undeniability of Math

There’s something poetic about how the last few days of the 2020 presidential election played out.

As batches of counted ballots were released, I envisioned the President, alone in the White House, at the mercy of math. This muttering mad king, a slave to his television, forced to listen to the American press he so fervently hates, report on the facts, which he refuses to accept.

The harsh and austere undeniability of math.

The steadfast and steady march of the count.

To a person whose been married to the denial of facts for his entire life, it must have felt like death by a thousand cuts.

Hopefully, the people of this country can put down their blue and red tribal flags and start the hard work of talking with one another, instead of at one another.

We got this!

Time to take our country back

Knock the Trump Train from the track

Wear a mask and get to work

Control the virus, end the jerk

Flick the fly from Pence’s head

Sweep them both into the shed

End the tweets and stop the lies

Clear the darkness from the skies

Let’s put an end to our disgrace

The divisive talk on god and race

Vote for competence, vote for peace

Fuck it, just vote for the guy

who lies the least

Create a wave that’s long and blue

Save democracy from you know who

Put an end to the Orange Schmoe

And pull that lever for BlueNami Joe!

Values and the personalization of politics

America succeeds and prospers when its citizens get along with one another. And in a country where politics often ignites passion, getting along means not digging too deeply into each other’s political views.

So, Americans consciously work at not letting how we vote affect our relationships. It’s not always easy, but one thing that helps us keep the peace (and the republic) is a shared set of values that transcend politics.

We might have divergent views on taxation, education, healthcare, and foreign policy. Still, we unite around core values rooted in our humanity – honesty, decency, kindness, integrity, and empathy. It’s these shared values that allow you to tolerate my politics and me to tolerate yours.

So, what’s changed in America? Why are we so quick to disregard the unspoken rule that separates the personal and political? 

I suspect Trump supporters are saying, “I’m not acting any different than I’ve acted in the past; I’m simply voting for the Republican candidate – why all this outrage?” And I agree with them; they’re not acting any differently than they have in the past.

What’s changed this time is not you or me – it’s the leader of the Republican party.

Trump openly derides anyone who opposes him, he mocks and puts down people, he constantly pits Americans against one another, and he’s been a human wrecking ball to the long-held American values of “welcoming the stranger, dignity for all human beings, equality under the law, respect for dissent, and love of the truth.”

Donald Trump is demonstrably mean, dishonest, and apathetic. He is the antithesis of the values we assumed transcended politics and united us as Americans.

So, when I hear a colleague, a neighbor, or a friend vociferously support the former President, I process that support as an indifference to the personal (not political) values that I hold firmly — honesty, decency, kindness, integrity, and empathy.

America has never had to deal collectively with a leader like Trump.

The personalization of politics we see in our country today comes from the jarring realization that honesty, decency, kindness, integrity, and empathy do not transcend politics for Trump supporters. 

President Trump tests positive for Karma

The man who lied to the American people about the dangers of a deadly virus, putting millions at risk, and undoubtedly contributing to the death of thousands of Americans, has contracted that very same virus – forcing many of us to balance decorum and our capacity for empathy, against a genuine contempt for the President.

We humans have an innate capacity for empathy, which can be developed further though our shared experience with others, and the moral guidance of loving and nurturing parents — neither of which Donald Trump had.

Donald Trump grew up in an insular environment, where he was taught and praised for cutthroat behavior – he was raised in an environment that put a stranglehold on cultivating that innate capacity for empathy. Under such conditions, the result is usually disastrous and tragic on a “localized” level. Meaning, those who find themselves directly involved in business with Donald Trump, or those who are part of his inner circle because of familial ties, end up being hurt or damaged by his abject apathy and malignant narcissism.

Unfortunately for America (and the world), when Trump became president, the collateral damage borne from his apathy grew exponentially, metastasizing from a localized problem to a global catastrophe. Because of this, our democracy and the health of our planet are threatened.

We’ve witnessed Trump’s apathy in both behavior and policy — from his denial of climate change science, to his willingness to snatch and cage children, to callous paper towel tossing to hurricane victims, to labeling killed or wounded soldiers as “suckers and losers”, to his weak and feckless response to racial injustice.

When the traitorous and narcissistic fool who is dismantling democracy and destroying America from within, contracts a deadly virus, how do we draw upon the “better angels of our nature” and wish him well? (especially when we know in our hearts, that the President wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if the shoe were on the other foot).

Feeling empathy towards the deeply apathetic, is perhaps the truest empathy test of all. We owe it ourselves and our country to give it a try.

Please drop the personality argument

Here is an actual response to a statement about the morality of Trump supporters versus those who oppose him:

“I’m not sure how if one thinks the president is doing a good job, it automatically means our morals are opposing?

I think you may be over simplifying what is a fairly involved subject. For example, while I often cringe while listening to him conduct briefs, and there are other facets of his personality that turn me off, I agree with the majority of the things he is doing (his policies).”

When someone makes “personality” and a poor use of language the main shortfalls of the President, then of course they’re going to overlook them in favor what the president is “doing (his policies).”  

Trump supporters use this logic all the time, and I suppose it helps them sleep at night. And actually, in the past, such logic made sense, because the person occupying the oval office usually possessed a base-line of morality, empathy, and decency.

But that’s not the case today.

What Trump supporters refuse to do is delve deeper than “personality”. They refuse to look at the role a person’s character plays in decision making.

Statements about not liking Trump’s personality, but liking his policies, is akin to saying:

 “Sure, Hitler’s spastic speeches make me cringe, but at least he’s putting Germany first.”

Relying on the “policy vs personality” argument, while ignoring an egregious lack of normative behavior, combined with the demonstrable fact that the president has no moral compass, is a faulty and dangerous thinking. 

When a selfish and immoral man gains access to political power, he’ll use that power for selfish and immoral purpose. He’ll always put his own well-being and thirst for power above the needs of people he pledged to serve. Expecting righteousness and sound governance from a man who’s lived a shallow and self-serving life, and who labels those who serve the greater good as “suckers and losers,” is absurd.

Those who refused to look at the Trump’s character in 2016 (because of a blind hatred of Hillary Clinton), have had have 4 years’ worth of examples that show President Trump puts himself above the country — and a blind hatred of Hillary Clinton is not on that ballot this time around.

What will you do come November 3rd?

Tired

TIRED

Tired of lies and daily fact fucking

Tired of America totally sucking

Tired of word salads

and moronic statements

Tired of tweet-storms

with no sign of abatement

Tired of tariffs and your tawdry affair

Tired of the jacket that says I don’t care

Tired of deflection and blaming the press

Tired of you not owning your mess

Tired of Flynn, Manafort and Page

Tired of the kids you stuck in a cage

Tired of the jealous Obama obsession

Tired of your cabinet’s lack of discretion

Tired of distractions

to save your own ass

The FBI, DOJ,

The Kaepernick morass

Tired of the endless egotistical bragging

Pussy grabbing and adulterous shagging

Tired of grandiose self-absorption and vanity

Tired of faux news

and meatheads like Hannity

Tired of your childish defiant arm crossing

Tired of disgraceful paper towel tossing

Tired of you acting like a dictator thug

Tired of the comb-over

on your fat ugly mug

Tired of your petty and child-like spats

Tired of your ignorance of science and stats

Tired of the cronies and the rich getting more

Tired of policies that don’t help the poor

Tired of how you downplayed the pandemic

Tired of denials that racism’s systemic

Tired of your desperate need to self-flatter

Tired that you think so many don’t matter

Tired of those who think you’re a savior

Tired of conspiracies and moronic behavior

TIRED

America’s well placed disdain

We all know people who rub us the wrong way simply by their appearance or the sound of their voice.

After Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi ripped up her copy of the President’s State of the Union speech, I saw many criticisms leveled at her on social media. Most of the criticism ripped Pelosi for her mannerisms, her “insincere” smile, her “loose dentures,” blah blah blah.

Personally, I become agitated whenever I see or hear Ted Cruz (I just want to punch him in the face) — so I somewhat relate to this kind of shallow knee-jerk visceral response to someone’s personality or looks.

But my disdain for Donald Trump has nothing to do with his looks, or the way he talks, or how he mangles the English language nearly every time he opens his pie hole. No, my disdain for Trump is based mainly on his behavior. My disdain is based on a public record of what he’s done and said for the last 40 years.

I ask myself, would I ever point to this man as an example to my children? That’s my barometer. Is this man a decent, high-character individual, one that I can say without hesitation that I am proud is representing our country?

This has nothing to do with an economy humming along — or whether unemployment is at an all-time low.

No. Instead, I ask myself:

If I had a 13-year-old daughter, would I feel comfortable letting her ride the elevator alone with Mr. Trump?

Would I feel uncomfortable sitting in front of a television with my 13-year-old daughter listening to Donald Trump equate a woman’s value with her looks or degrading a woman because she is overweight? 

If my 13-year old daughter was sitting next to me during one of several interviews where the President sexualized his own daughter, would I wince, or would I laugh along with it?

How would I explain the post-presidential debate comment from Donald Trump insinuating that the tough questions from a female reporter were somehow tied to her menstrual cycle? How would I justify it? 

If I had a handicapped child and we were watching the news report and video of the President mocking a handicapped reporter, how would I explain that away?

In the lead-up to his run for the Presidency, Donald Trump continuously spread the birtherism rumor about Barack Obama. This was not because Trump believed the lie – he simply wanted to discredit the first African American President. He just wanted to knock the first African American President down a peg by spreading lies and misinformation.

How does that jibe with the integrity we should expect from our commander in chief?

How do I put aside the fact that the person who sits in the Oval Office is the same man who created a fake university to scam money from working-class people who were simply looking to better themselves?

How do I disregard the fact that the President ran a charity as a criminal enterprise?

I could cite a dozen more examples that demonstrate Donald Trump is not simply a flawed man but rather a shitty, self-absorbed, vindictive, and intellectually vapid douche bag.

So many of this man’s actions are part of the public record; there is nothing really to dispute.

But what’s so frustrating is that none of these facts are show stoppers for people that I know (or thought I knew) – and that baffles the fuck out of me.