Life, such as it is, with the Trumpandemic

Our Dear Leader

With the coronavirus not going away anytime soon and with the economy cratering to Great Depression levels, we might as well call this age the Trumpandemic era.

Since Trump and FOX News have blamed President Obama for COVID-19, it's quite obvious that their deception by projection has failed spectacularly.

Most Americans agree with Obama that the Trump administration's response to the pandemic is an "absolute chaotic disaster."

Well said.

Under Trump's "leadership," many Americans won't wear protective masks because Trump won't don one.

Well, two men attacked a Target security worker and broke his arm because he asked them to wear a mask. 

There are stories across the country where people wearing a mask in public are harassed by others not wearing masks.

So much for a national calamity to bring us together. We can thank Trump for that.

He thrives on divisiveness no matter the cost to anyone or anything but his bottom line.

So far, on the evening of May 13, 2020, there are more than 85,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the U.S. and nearly 1.5 million cases. We're No. 1 by a mile.

The unemployment rate is nearly 15 percent.

Schools may not re-open until late autumn.

Sheltering-in-place orders could last through summer.

From the beginning, the U.S. acted like a Third World nation unable to provide personal protective equipment to nurses and doctors dealing with COVID-19 patients.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration rejected an offer to manufacture millions of N95 masks in America.

That's because they never believed what was happening in China or Italy would ever affect the U.S.

This is what we get when Americans elect anti-government Republicans to run the government. They run it into the ground.

Trump dismissed COVID-19 well into March. 

In January he said: "we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”

On February 27 he said, “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”

Trump referred to the coronavirus as the Democrats' "new hoax," after he was acquitted in the Senate of being a traitor to his country.

And, who could forget the classic Trump musing about injecting disinfectant into humans to combat the virus.

But, he has so many unforgettable lines.

With his administration failing to ramp up testing for COVID-19, Trump said, "I don't take responsibility at all."

To be fair, Trump did say in late March, "I'm a cheerleader for the country."

Trump won't wear a mask, but he apparently will wave pom-poms at the sick and dying.

Rah-rah, it's the Trumpandemic.

Hey COVIDiots, vote by mail

LA Times

Wisconsin voters in the time of COVID-19

That includes you, Wisconsin, you Trump-loving cheese-heads.

And, every other shit-hole state practicing voter suppression to maintain Republican control of the country.

In this pandemic age, it makes zero sense to force voters to stand in line for hours to possibly infect scores of other citizens with the dreaded COVID-19 virus.

That's exactly what you get from Republicans: no sense.

They continually throw up roadblocks to enfranchisement because they know that when more people vote the less they like Republican ideas or candidates.

In Oregon, the first state to enact statewide vote-by-mail more than 20 years ago, the results rock the vote. We have more citizens participating in democracy and consistently have some of the highest voter turnout numbers in the country. Also, there is nearly zero voter fraud, which is a canard conjured up by the GOP. In fact, the only widespread voter fraud occurred in 2018 with absentee ballots in North Carolina by Republicans.

Washington, Colorado, Hawaii and Utah eventually followed Oregon's lead in statewide vote-by-mail. At least another 21 states have a hodgepodge of absentee balloting.

This confusing patchwork of voting options demands a federal response to provide guidance and consistency in voting for president.

Yet, we have Oregon's lone Republican representative, Greg Walden - 2nd Dist., claiming that it would be "a recipe for disaster" to have all states vote by mail.

What a goddamn liar.

He knows that in the 1990s, Oregon struggled to get out timely results because about half of voters requested absentee ballots while the other half voted in person. (Wisconsin won't know its results from Tuesday's primary until next week because of this type of setup.)

Naturally, Republicans still had some clout in the Oregon Legislature last millennium and resisted attempts to allow statewide vote-by-mail. Thankfully, voters overwhelmingly (69 percent to 31 percent) approved vote-by-mail in 1998, which ended the absentee/vote-in-person ballot chaos.

Since then, Democrats have won super-majorities in the state Legislature and only two Republicans have won statewide office because voters know they're out of touch with reality.

In that time, Oregon moved away from its longtime timber-based economy to a more diversified one that yielded its lowest unemployment rate ever during President Obama's era. That rate improved marginally under Trump, but those numbers are now gone with the broken wind thanks to the Mango Mussolini's initial dismissal of the coronavirus.

If we ever expect this country to rise above its white-supremacist origins and its current representation by a minority of racists, we must expand voting access to all citizens old enough to vote.

Hey, America, vote by mail. You'll be glad you did.