Does This Look Familiar?

 

Not only does the Great Grifter have a new scheme to fleece his followers, but he is doing it in a way that will appeal to their basest, most racist instincts.

While other designs are also being considered, the above clearly will have great appeal to the greatest number of people who want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, only this grift  will offer Trump fealty cards for this reason:

"The card you select will be carried by Patriots all around the Country. They will be a sign of your dedicated support to our movement to SAVE AMERICA, and I'm putting my full trust in you," one email from Trump's Save America PAC said.

"We're about to launch our Official Trump Cards, which will be reserved for President Trump's STRONGEST supporters," the PAC said in a followup email, according to Business Insider.

 It's unclear what the cards will cost or what they will be used for aside from showing the user's devotion to Trump.

Oh, I can think of a couple of things to do with this card, but since I try to practise a certain level of decorum on this blog, I will leave it to the imagination of readers as to its best use. 

 

The Dismantling Of Democracy

I'm not writing much in the way of commentary these days, partly because other matters require my attention and partly because I feel almost anything I say may simply be stating the obvious, especially at it pertains to our benighted neighbours to the south. Nonetheless, when I see items that others might have missed, I like to post them on this blog.

The following is one such item; the story is essentially another in an ongoing series of efforts by Donald Trump and his enablers (in this case Louis DeJoy, the new Postmaster General) to disrupt and dismantle what is left of American democracy. The images are disturbing, the implications frightening.

Please start at about the 13:15 mark:

From Beyond The Grave

It's been 12 years since George Carlin left us, yet the ensuing years have made him even more relevant than he was in his day. The following video uses his profanity-laced upbraiding of the system to good effect, I think you will agree.

This video is completely devastating for Trump. George Carlin gives him the finger from the grave. Whatever you do don’t make it go viral! #AmericaWakeUp pic.twitter.com/vy2zz0j8DB

— Mrs. Krassenstein (@HKrassenstein) July 26, 2020

Just Wear A Mask

That is the message, simple and direct, delivered by CNN's Becky Anderson:


Somehow, I doubt her message will resonate with the unhinged who have emerged from their lairs during the pandemic. This recent delegation at a Palm Beach County hearing into masks should provide more than ample incentive to avoid the Sunshine State for the foreseeable future:



Lest we be complacent as Canadians, however, Emma Teitel writes:

Yes, Americans can be wacky. But so can we. In fact, we’ve got our own version of the God’s-wonderful-breathing-system brigade right here in Ontario. Last week, anti-mask protesters broke mandatory mask regulations when they rode the TTC barefaced, and this week reports emerged about anti-lockdown activists printing phoney official looking cards claiming to give people medical exemptions from wearing masks in public.

According to a survey by Policy Options, Canadians are not immune from believing conspiracy theories about the virus. From the think tank’s survey, “Almost one in 10 Canadians believes that the COVID-19 pandemic is a way for billionaire Bill Gates to microchip people.”

She ends with this simple but powerful advice:

Stage 3 is days away. Now is not the time to be cocky, or bored. Now is the time to be vigilant. And though not much fun, a big part of being vigilant in a pandemic is listening to public health experts. Wear a mask where distancing isn’t possible.

Or to put it even more succinctly: Time for everyone to grow up a bit. Maybe this report from the CDC will help in the maturation process.

A Sad Decline

I recently completed The Splendid and The Vile, a book by Erik Larson exploring the first year of Winston Churchill's prime ministership. He assumed the leadership in 1940, at which point Britain had already been at war with Germany for one year. With the U.S. following an isolationist policy, things did not look very hopeful for the island nation.

Despite facing fierce odds against their survival, and despite repeated and brutal air attacks by the Luftwaffe, both the population and its political leadership soldiered on, finding within themselves the character to resist despair and defeat. They truly were The Greatest Generation.

I do wonder whether that kind of national character is as much on display today as we battle Covid-19.

Ninety-three year-old Toronto Star letter-writer Syd Bosloy of Thornhill also wonders along similar lines:

I am 93 years old, but I have never seen anything like what is happening in America today. The U.S. is in a crisis. They are harbouring and ignoring those “covidiots,” who refuse to obey simple precautions such as wearing a mask. As a result, the U.S. is responsible for a quarter of all the world’s cases and deaths due to the pandemic. It’s indicative of what’s wrong with America. I believe it is because their citizens lack a sense of personal responsibility for the good of others, when you compare them with the British in London during the Second World War, for example. Is it because they have never had their country under sustained military attack or occupied during their lifetime? Are Americans satisfied with the “dog eat dog” attitude of their citizens, politicians and police?

Sadly, however, the kind of idiocy Mr. Bosly describes is not confined to the United States. We have our own special breed right at home:

A week after anti-mask groups rode the TTC without face coverings to protest against new city bylaws requiring them, the same groups are now making "exemption cards" that claim they are medically exempt from wearing face coverings.

CBC Toronto is not naming the groups, nor the people involved with them, so as to not publicize false information.

The Canadian Red Cross says the cards contain a version of the organization's emblem that is being used without permission.

Despite dire potential consequences, some are treating these fake cards as a joke:

Posts about the cards can be found on many social media platforms. In one such video, a man smiles and laughs while holding the card and saying, "Mandatory mask? Not with this."

The account that shared the video is run by a man and woman who are leading one of Toronto's anti-mask groups. It has also shared a host of debunked material and conspiracy theories in recent days.

In another online video shared by the same account, a man visits Toronto Western Hospital, where he is told by an employee he has to wear a mask to seek care. He responds that he has a medical condition, and shows the card. Later, he smiles at the camera and says "the card definitely helped."

Dave Watson is one person who isn't laughing.

"It's a load of crap," said Watson, who has cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition that causes severe respiratory disease, making patients more susceptible to lung infections.

"If anyone couldn't wear one, it would be me."

Watson says that depending on the day, he is typically running at between 34 and 42 per cent lung capacity. Breathing can be tough, especially in high heat and humidity.

Still, he hasn't thought twice about wearing a mask in public.

"It makes sense to wear a mask, and for people to make these cards, it's pretty insulting," he said.

"I've done my part. The least you can do is do yours."

Increasingly, my patience wears thin with the idiots around me quite blithely endangering others. They represent some of the worst aspects of humanity and as a Canadian they make me feel deeply ashamed.

Time to start imposing severe sanctions.

He Speaks For The Majority, I Suspect

That would be The Star's Patrick Corrigan:


Meanwhile The Star's editorial board offers some insights into why Canada has fared so, so much better in dealing with Covid-19 than the United States:

It’s a terrible thing for an old, dear friend to watch America — as a result of its wilful blindness, contempt for science and gross mishandling of the pandemic — descend to the status of a pariah state.

The Atlantic’s George Packer described in one searing paragraph recently just how pitiful the former promised land of the planet had become.

“When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills — a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public — had gone untreated for years.”

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational and collective, Packer said.

Instead, it got Donald Trump’s singular ignorance, delusion and pathological instinct to see everything, even matters of life and death, in political terms.

Canada is an entirely different story for a number of reasons:

Part values, part experience, part humility of people and their leadership, part consistency of government messaging.

At core, our national DNA favours the collective during a crisis that has demanded collective action, mutual sacrifice, looking out for the other rather than insistence on personal liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Many of the characteristics frequently cited as negatives in comparing Canada to the U.S. — our smaller size, our humility, our greater trust in government, our commitment to community and social services, no sense of our own mythic exceptionalism — have become assets in this crisis.

We have also shown ourselves capable of learning some hard lessons:

After SARS, Canada redesigned the federal-provincial relationship on public health and infectious diseases. Our public systems are more amenable to coherent reaction to widespread crisis than the private institutions in the U.S.

As well, not having the same level of poisonous political partisanship as does the U.S. also helped:

In Canada, unlike the United States, the partisan cudgels were put aside — mercifully avoiding the vexation of states forced to deal with what Washington wouldn’t, and governors putting political affiliation and loyalty to the president ahead of science and medical expertise.

As recent events have demonstrated, our leadership is far from perfect. But compared to the Americans, we do have things to be proud of as this first wave of Covid-19 wanes.

And, of course, we must keep that border closed for the foreseeable future.

A Much-Needed Perspective

I don't know about you, but I have always felt deeply uneasy about fervid professions of patriotism, especially the kind that Americans are given to. Their earnest hands over their hearts, their shedding of tears upon hearing the national anthem, their stout professions of "My country, right or wrong," have always made me wonder about their capacity for critical thinking, self-reflection and humility.

In the following, 'the greatest country in the world' gets a much-needed reality check from Colin Kapernick:

Black ppl have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized + terrorized by America for centuries, & are expected to join your commemoration of “independence”, while you enslaved our ancestors. We reject your celebration of white supremacy & look forward to liberation for all. ✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/YCD2SYlgv4

— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) July 4, 2020

An Unwanted Visit, But Something Heartening Was Revealed

Since the pandemic began, my wife and I have been very cautious. Because she has an underlying lung condition, we limit our exposure to outside influences as much as possible. For example, I shop for groceries once every two weeks at the seniors' hour, and even that, when I first started, was nerve-wracking, especially fearful was I of the contagion I might inadvertently bring home to her. And quite honestly, as we learned more about the horrible ravages this virus can inflict, I have also worried about my own safety.

Our purchase of masks have gone a long way toward assuaging anxiety, and I shall return to their use in a moment. But first, I'd like to recount a trip we had to take yesterday to Toronto, a city about an hour from where we live, and a place I have never enjoyed visiting. My wife had to see her respirologist at Toronto Western Hospital for an appointment we thought had been cancelled. Getting ready for it took on an aura of military planning and precision.

Hand sanitizers: check

Masks: Check

A list of washrooms open to the public (because I would not e permitted into the hospital with her): check

Lunches: check

My initial plan was to find the nearby washroom, have lunch at the adjacent park, and then just read until her chest x-ray and appointment were over, which we anticipated would take over two hours. However, despite the heat, after having lunch I decided to go for a walk.

Now where we live, wearing a mask outside is unnecessary, as crowding is almost non-existent. But by the time I got to Kensington Market, I donned the mask because the area was fairly busy, and I wore it for the rest of my peregrinations, which saw me go as far as Queen Street West, well past Spadina. What I saw on my walk heartened me. The vast majority of people wore masks, even though it was quite hot and humid, but I think everyone felt that the moderate discomfort of wearing one was nothing to what it must be like to experience Covid-induced shortness of breath or intubation.

It made me proud as a Canadian to see so many acting responsibly.

Which brings me to the report below. While there is undoubtedly some wistful exaggeration in it, I think it captures the Canadian spirit and ethos rather well:



Quite unlike this nonsense, eh?

The Ugly American

Probably first coined in a 1958 novel, The Ugly American is a term that, unfortunately, has clear and immediate relevance:

The US has bought up virtually all the stocks for the next three months of one of the two drugs proven to work against Covid-19, leaving none for the UK, Europe or most of the rest of the world.

Experts and campaigners are alarmed both by the US unilateral action on remdesivir and the wider implications, for instance in the event of a vaccine becoming available. The Trump administration has already shown that it is prepared to outbid and outmanoeuvre all other countries to secure the medical supplies it needs for the US.

“They’ve got access to most of the drug supply [of remdesivir], so there’s nothing for Europe,” said Dr Andrew Hill, senior visiting research fellow at Liverpool University.

That this rapacious and selfish ethos should come to the fore now is really not surprising. While doubtlessly quite happy to exploit an ethnocentric orientation that seems to define so many Americans, the Infant-in-Chief is reacting in a typically craven manner to some unpleasant truths that may cost him his re-election:

The deal was announced as it became clear that the pandemic in the US is spiralling out of control. Anthony Fauci, the country’s leading public health expert and director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the Senate the US was sliding backwards.

“We are going in the wrong direction,” said Fauci. Last week the US saw a new daily record of 40,000 new coronavirus cases in one day. “I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around,” he said. He could not provide an estimated death toll, but said: “It is going to be very disturbing, I guarantee you that.”

Even though he has proven by his abysmally inept handling of the pandemic to be quite willing to sacrifice his fellow Americans, I doubt that Donald Trump, even in his most delusional state, believes that kind of statistic will serve him well during his campaign.

Hence, a reappearance of The Ugly American in full selfish splendour who, if Trump's disciples remain true to form, will be lustily cheered.

Not a sentiment, I suspect, that will be shared by those with a conscience and a recognition of their obligation to the larger world, i.e., real human beings.

UPDATED: With Age Comes Wisdom

But clearly, only for some:



UPDATE: Trump tweeted out the above video, despite the 'white power" proclamation at its beginning. He later withdrew it, claiming he hadn't heard the offending phrase.

Hmm, about as believable as his Sgt. Shultz-like assertion that he 'knew nothing' about Russia offering the Taliban a bounty on the lives of American soldiers in Afghanistan, eh?

A Modern-Day Prophet

If you know anything about Old Testament traditions (and I confess to knowing only a little about them), you may be aware of the role played by the prophets. Contrary to popular belief, their main function was not to predict the future but rather to serve as a conduit for God's messages. And those messages were often rebukes of the people of Israel.

As with the prophets of old, people like Cornel West and Chris Hedges today offer up critical mirrors to society; their messages are harsh, unsparing, and uncompromising. The following indictment of the U.S. by West, the link to which was sent to me by my dear friend Dom, amply demonstrates this:

As thousands across the country and around the world took to the streets this weekend to protest the state-sanctioned killing of Black community members, professor Cornel West says it signals the implosion of U.S. empire, "its foundations being shaken with uprising from below." He says the U.S. is a “predatory capitalist civilization obsessed with money, money, money,” and says the uprisings are a direct result of a system that prioritizes profits over people both domestically and abroad. While the nation faces its largest public health crisis in generations and the highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression, protesters came out in droves to verbalize their discontent. "What we need is … a fundamental transformation of this American Empire," says West.

As in days of old, modern-day prophets are often ignored, ridiculed and despised. Now more than ever, however, we ignore them at our collective peril.

Obvious? Perhaps

But apt nonetheless.

H/t Theo Moudakis

"The System Can't Reform Itself"

So says the always fearless and indefatigable Cornel West. As I watched the following, I couldn't help but think that if one feels dismissive of, threatened or outraged by what he has to say, a long and unsparing look in the mirror is likely in order.

A Tale Of Two Countries

Each night I allow myself a half-hour dose of news from an American perspective, usually NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt. And every night I emerge from the experience immensely thankful that I live in Canada rather than the Benighted States of America. The chasm between our two countries is ever-widening.

In Canada, we have a variety of programs in place supporting a wide swath of Canadians. While none of the supports are perfect and can never replace the income provided by jobs, they have allowed the federal government and the provinces to prioritize public health and safety over the economy. Indeed, the expenditures to date open up a myriad of possibilities for post-pandemic Canada as citizens ponder the possibilities of a newer, better Canada.

Not so south of the border. There, the ugliness of Darwinian neoliberalism is in full view.

When watching the news from there, one sees the ever-strident demands of increasingly desperate people to re-open the economy. Indeed, by Monday more than 30 states, despite the fact that they are nowhere near flattening the curve of Covid-19 spread, will be open. In all the cases, posing as champions of the people, politicians are showing their willingness to sacrifice people to the demands of the economy.

Nowhere is this more clear than in the meat-packing industry. Despite their being repositories of Covid-19 disease and death, that master narcissist, Donald Trump, has mandated they remain open through executive order. Had Americans the capacity for critical thinking, they would realize that they are mere fodder for the economy worshiped and extolled by their neoliberal masters.

The Guardian reports:

The president invoked the Defense Production Act (DPA) to mandate meat processing plants stay open during the pandemic.

The move, which essentially labels meat production an essential service, also offers further measures to protect the industry from legal liability should more workers contract the virus.

If one reads the link, one sees that U.S. Labor Department refers to "guidance," not requirements, as to the safe operation of the plants during this pandemic. In other words, there are no penalties if that guidance isn't followed.

Those penalties instead will be borne by the workers by the requirement that they work in life-threatening situations for wages that are not even living ones.

The Tyson company itself seems to have played a major role in Trump's executive order:

The order came within hours of Tyson, a $22bn company and the world’s second largest meat processor, taking out paid adverts in major US newspapers, including the New York Times, to warn that recent closures of a handful of plants due to the virus could lead to “limited supply of our products”.

Prior to Trump's Hail-Mary pass to win votes, (after all, 'Muricans got to have their meat), death was already stalking meat-packing firms, in many ways making them slaughter houses within slaughter houses:

News of the first Covid-19 death at the Tyson Foods poultry plant in Camilla, south-west Georgia, spread slowly.

“It was like they were keeping a secret,” said Tara Williams, a 47-year-old worker at the plant, as she described her account of management’s response to the death of her colleague Elose Willis. “It took them about two weeks to just put a picture up, to acknowledge she had died.”

Williams had worked alongside Willis in the “de-boning” section of the plant until she died on 1 April, aged 56. She had spent 35 years at the facility – five days a week, 10 hours a day, 100,000 slaughtered chickens a shift.

Willis was the first Tyson employee to succumb to Covid-19 at the Camilla plant, but two others would follow in short succession, a marker of the precarity faced by thousands of meat processing workers pushed to toil, closely packed, on the frontlines throughout the pandemic in plants that have quickly become coronavirus hotspots. At least 20 meat packing workers have died from the virus nationwide and 5,000 have become infected, according to union officials, as close to two dozen facilities closed – some temporarily – over past few weeks.

As per the corporate agenda, it is the worker who is obliged to make sacrifices, including the ultimate one.

For Tara Williams, who has worked at the Camilla plant on the overnight shift as a packing scanner for five years earning $13.55 an hour, Trump’s executive order and her company’s adverts were another blow in her fight for workers’ rights.

“I was devastated and I was hurt. Because now, to be truthful – and excuse my language – Tyson really aren’t going to give a fuck about us at all,” she said. “For us employees that work in production, we are treated like modern day slaves.”

Although there is much more to the Guardian article, which I would encourage everyone to read, it somehow seems apt to end this post with that stinging rebuke and indictment from Ms. Williams.

No Comfort From Chris Hedges

Reading Chris Hedges is never a fell-good experience. His unflinching assessments, his unsparingly bleak prognostications, offer no comfort. During the very trying times we are currently living through, why subject yourself to his analyses?

For a very simple reason: better a bitter truth than a sweet lie.

An interview in Salon shows that Hedges has little hope for any kind of renaissance in the United States after the Covid-19 crisis abates. There is a deep underlying rot:

The country's infrastructure is rotting. Trump presides over a plutocratic, corrupt, cruel, authoritarian, pathological kakistocracy. [I had to look that word up.] The commons is being reduced to rubble while the ultra-rich extract ever more wealth and other resources from the American people. Excessive military spending has left the United States incapable of attending to the basic needs of its people. A culture of distraction and spectacle has rendered many Americans incapable of being responsible engaged citizens. Our public educational system does not teach critical thinking skills. Radical right-wing Christians, white terrorist organizations and other neofascist paramilitaries and extremists are engaging in a campaign of thuggery, intimidation and violence against multiracial American democracy.

As handled by Trump, the coronona virus is but a foretaste of things to come,

as social inequality and political failure combine to create a full collapse of the country's already declining standard of living, as well as its ailing democracy.

And those who think the Democratic Party in general, and Joe Biden in particular, are capable of reviving the U.S. are deluding themselves:

Why? Because the Democrats are also part of the plutocratic establishment that has failed the American people.

Twelve hundred dollars to individuals suffering during this crisis is not sufficient. The Democrats were only really trying to block the equivalent of a $500 billion slush fund that is going into Mnuchin's hands, a man who acts like a criminal. That $1,200 is going to get vacuumed right up by the credit card companies and the banks who hold the mortgages.

The belief that Americans have a real electoral choice is an error in thinking.

America's current political system is a corporate political duopoly. A person can either vote for nativists and racists and climate deniers and creationists on one end, or a person can vote for people who speak in the language of tolerance and are willing to put gay people or women or people of color into positions of power as long as they serve the system.

In voting for Joe Biden, Americans will be voting for more of the same.

What is Biden's record? What is a person voting for if they back Biden on Election Day 2020?

The humiliation of courageous women like Anita Hill who confronted her abuser. You vote for the architects of endless war. You vote for the apartheid state in Israel. Biden supports those things. With Biden you are voting for wholesale surveillance by the government, including the abolition of due process and habeas corpus. You vote for austerity programs. You vote for the destruction of welfare. That was Biden. You vote for cuts to Social Security, which he has repeatedly called for cutting, along with Medicaid. You vote for NAFTA, you vote for "free trade" deals. If you vote for Biden, you are voting for a real decline in wages and the loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs.

With Biden you are also voting for the assault on public education and the transfer of federal funds to Christian "charter schools." With Biden you are voting for more than a doubling of the prison population. With Biden you are voting for the militarized police and against the Green New Deal.

You are also voting to limit a woman's right to abortion and reproductive rights. You are voting for a segregated public school system. With Biden you are voting for punitive levels of student debt and the inability of people to free themselves of that debt through bankruptcy. A vote for Biden is a vote for deregulating banking and finance. Biden also supports for-profit insurance and pharmaceutical corporations.

A vote for Biden is also a vote against the possibility of universal health care. You vote for Biden and you are supporting huge, wasteful and bloated defense budgets. Biden also supports unlimited oligarchic and corporate money to buy the elections.

That's what you're voting for.

Things are very hard for all of us these days. If you accept Chris Hedges' dour outlook, there is much worse to come for the Benighted States of America.

Barbra Streisand's Searingly Accurate Assessment Of Trump

My friend Steve sent me this.

Mike Pence's Very Bad Day

Speaking at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Vice- President Mike Pence quickly realized that things were not going as planned. The rest of the world can, I hope, rejoice at the strong message he receives in the following:

Speaking to a security conference in Munich, Pence tells his audience he brings greetings from President Trump... and not a single person claps. #awkward pic.twitter.com/JkFpsKqfgk

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 16, 2019

But wait! There's more! Note the juxtaposition of the following, where only one person in the room withholds her applause for Angela Merkel.

OMG -- Pence was visibly shook in Poland when he received absolutely no reaction to what was clearly supposed to be an applause line about how "the time has come for our European partners to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal." pic.twitter.com/biRxARZkcM

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 16, 2019

It would seem that actions, or the absence thereof, do indeed speak louder than words.

A Powerful, Impassioned Message From Ellen Page

One that needs no comment from me:

Thank you Ellen Page. pic.twitter.com/Ykdn2z7J1W

— Red T Raccoon (@RedTRaccoon) February 1, 2019

A Further Descent Into Banana Republicanism

While the Toddller-in-Chief continues with his temper tantrum, and the American government shutdown is now in its third week, it is good to know that unpaid federal workers are not being forgotten. Indeed, the U.S. Coastguard has offered a plethora of suggestions as to how its employees can get through these difficult times.

I'm sure they will make all the difference in the world:

- Have a garage sale - clean out your attic, basement and closets at the same time.

- Sell unwanted, larger ticket items through the newspaper or online.

- Offer to watch children, walk pets or house-sit.

- Turn you hobby nto income

-Have untapped teaching skills and expertise? Tutor students, give music or sports lessons.

- Become a mystery shoppers. Retailers are desperate to check how their in-store customer service is and will employ you to shop and rate their
service.

It must be comforting to all that in this time of crisis, good old American know-how and stick-to-it-ness will win the day.

A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Waste

Not to mention a once-proud country.

This is what your brain looks like on right-wing propaganda. #MAGA 🤪pic.twitter.com/fm54QWEFA6

— Ryan Knight 🇺🇸 (@ProudResister) December 7, 2018