Author: Burr Deming

 

If he had paid more attention to a couple of memos, he would have been in politics a whole lot longer.

Harry Hughes broke what was becoming a tradition in Maryland. It undoubtedly had been going on long before Spiro Agnew was caught. It probably ended with a man whom I regarded as a political hero, a couple of Governors before Harry Hughes.

There was no apparent political benefit, and a whole lot of political cost, when that courageous Governor fought against doctors and hospitals, when he worked to overcome legislative indifference, to establish the nation’s first shock trauma unit. Lives have been saved everywhere you look since then.

And that was not all.

Marvin Mandel stood tall against the tide that was running strong in those days. He had become governor when Governor Spiro Agnew became Vice President Spiro Agnew. Mandel defended legislators as they were attacked by the former governor who had come just before him. Spiro Agnew waged a scorched-earth political war against anyone who criticized him or his boss, Richard Nixon.

Agnew attacked critics like Maryland Senator Joe Tidings as RadicLibs a clever combination of Radical and Liberal. So Senator Tidings couldn’t just be wrong on policy issues, he was in league with dirty hippies: unpatriotic, long-haired protestors against the war in Vietnam.

Mandel campaigned for re-election as Governor as Tidings campaigned for re-election to the Senate. Joe Tidings, Mandel said, was an important member of his team. Tidings lost while Marvin Mandel won in a landslide.

When Spiro Agnew turned out to be a crook, it was blatant as all hell. When he had been governor of Maryland, he literally was getting literal envelopes stuffed with literal cash in exchange for state contracts. When he became Vice President, he still got envelopes stuffed with cash, right there in the White House, right up until he was caught. He resigned as Vice President and pleaded no-contest to being a crook.

I didn’t cry when my political hero, Governor Mandel, also turned out to be a crook. I was born and raised a boomer and men just didn’t cry. But it hit me hard.
Continue reading “Harry Hughes from Decades Ago, and Lessons We Should Apply to Trump”

• Okay, calling the pandemic “Chinese Virus” is pretty much racist by not-so-subtle implication. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors brings us the writings of new Health and Human Services spokesperson Michael Caputo. They bring anti-Asian racism to a much more explicit level.
   
• So here’s the new narrative: My president wasn’t really suggesting everyone try injecting themselves with household cleaning products. He merely wanted the idea carefully researched. You know… set up a control group, and another group into whose veins you inject Clorox. Then see what happens. News Corpse speculates what might be behind this and other presidential suggestions.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post offers his take: President Trump has met a very small opponent impervious to bloviating and bully-boy tactics.
   
• At The Onion, in spite of presidential indignation, a potentially promising COVID-19 vaccine hits a roadblock after testing reveals it’s just a shotgun.
   
• PZ Myers is a little ticked off at the wheedling coverage by the NY Times of the Lysol-Gate presidential briefing. He compares Times headlines with those of Fox News, and cannot tell the difference.
   
• The news conference that produced Lysol-Gate will always be remembered for … well … you know. But Tommy Christopher points to another reason involving shameful performance by most of the press corps.
   
• In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson notices an under-reported, and illegal, cover-up of the treatment of federal workers. Seems a purge is going on in violation of federal law.
   
• At The Moderate Voice, Joe Gandelman summarizes another scandal. Seems billions intended to help small businesses were hijacked and redirected to huge hotel and restaurant chains.
   
• We’ve all heard random Republican officials propose that folks my age have a duty to sacrifice their lives to COVID-19 for the sake of the economy. Ant Farmer’s Almanac offers its own Swiftian Modest Proposal, and why it won’t work. Stealing the headline – Shortage of Ice Floes Sinks Proposal to Send Seniors Adrift at Sea. I can hardly wait.

Continue reading “Anti-Asian Appt, Lysol, Press Shame, Trump IQ, Election Non-Prediction”

Really?

Manufacturers are issuing urgent warnings. Despite President Trump’s suggestion, people concerned about the COVID-19 virus should not inject household cleaning products into themselves.

Lysol maker refutes Trump’s suggestion that disinfectants may treat coronavirus

Reckitt Benckiser, the maker of disinfectants Lysol and Dettol, released a statement Friday that its products cannot be injected or ingested to combat coronavirus after President Trump suggested the possibility during Thursday’s task force briefing.

What Trump said: “I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets inside the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it would be interesting to check that.”

A friend reacts to my recent spectacular expressway accident:

• nojo experiences how one week can change the nature of coronashopping.
   
• Vincent, at A Wayfarer’s Notes, and his wife are members of an endangered species by reason of age and pre-existing medical condition.
   
• Green Eagle seems unimpressed with press fawning after my President managed to appear rational about the virus for a whole half-hour.
   
• News Corpse watches and finds what President Trump has to say to Americans who are scared about coronavirus. It is that the reporter asking what he has to say to those who are scared is a bad reporter for asking the question.
   
• Tommy Christopher sees CNN’s John King moved to mild profanity as he defends his colleague from that Trumpian attack. Kaitlan Collins joins in, contrasting the Trump attack with the Pence response to a similar question.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz suggests how a compassionate and understanding leader might have answered that question.
   
• In the midst of crisis, Jonathan Bernstein contrasts the public utterances of our current president with those of another. A frightened nation responded those decades ago.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post compares my president to another mass-killer, this one with a better excuse.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit does not quite buy my president’s 10 out of 10 self evaluation: Heckuva Job, Trumpie.
   
• How did we get to this point? Bill Kristol offers his thoughts and driftglass notices Bill’s omission of one key word.
   
• Sometimes a headline says it all. Ant Farmer’s Almanac looks at the list of airlines about to receive a corona related massive financial bailout. You’ll never guess who happens to be on it. Okay, maybe you will.
   
• In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson investigates reports that 5 US Senators used advance knowledge of coronastocks to benefit. She clears three off them – blind trusts or documented unrelated trading. The other two are actual crooks.
   
• PZ Myers documents how, years ago, Senator Susan Collins was able, all by herself, to kill just-in-case funding of pandemic flu preparedness – including medical masks. Even Joe Lieberman couldn’t talk her out of her extreme position. So it turns out Susan Collins is more evil than Joe Lieberman. That’s pole vaulting over a very high bar.
   
• Not really a good sport: M. Bouffant at Web of Evil declines to give thoughts and prayers to Lou Dobbs as the coronavirus minimizer is exposed to the virus and self-quarantines.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony finds that, in the midst of the Corona scare, some house confined ordinary folks in Italy have a sense of humor.
   
• At Margaret and Helen Helen writes to her friend to express ,umm, skepticism as Trump, Fox, and followers turn their tune at the pandemic. You mean it’s real after all? Carefully documented.
   
• Dave Dubya makes the same point in six lines with less documentation. Just as right, though.
   
• In Nan’s Notebook, there is something wrong with Trump beyond what we’ve known from the start.
   
• JoAnn Williams at Biased Unbalanced and Politically Incorrect reveals how her cat, Maxwell, has discovered White House briefings.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson attacks Governor Tony Evers for applying the ban on gatherings of 50 or more to churches. After all, what right does he have to close churches?
   
• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, helps us take a look at a few worship services whose congregants won’t let fake germs, or state government, or society at large intimidate. I especially like the Arkansas parishioners who are “ready to lick the floor to prove there’s no actual virus.” Personal note: Like many responsible houses of worship, ours will offer services only on-line until further notice.
   
• In MadMikesAmerica, Glenn Geist reviews past plagues back to 428 BC and finds some common links.
   
• Vagabond Scholar remembered St. Patrick’s Day with a beautiful ballad about bravery in a lost battle for Irish freedom.
   

Personal note: I have begun investing time in physical therapy after a spectacular expressway accident. Seems the human body is not properly constructed for hanging from a seat belt while traveling upside down on the freeway. My thanks to the passersby who extracted me.

She was a civil rights activist when activism was physically dangerous. When human bodies were decorating poplar trees. When they were being found in earthen dams. She was a major participant in the history of central Illinois. She was a founding member of the NAACP in Sparta. Picket lines were often her part-time home, and the after school home of her children.

I was privileged to speak with her many times over the years. When my loved one and I occasionally visited over weekends, I would rise before sunrise for coffee and conversation. She told me of the world of her youth.

Each time we left for home, I would kiss her forehead and ask her to take care of herself. That she was the only mama I had now. And she would smile and tell me she was proud of me. Proud of me.

My wife, her daughter, pretty much moved into her mom’s house, caring for her 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, during her final months of suffering.

She was laid to rest yesterday. Hundreds attended the funeral. The ceremony went a little long – people personally touched by this compassionate woman briefly spoke. The number was impressive.

It is hard for me to imagine a world without Margaret Anderson in it.
In my heart, there is, for the moment, a huge crater where Sparta used to be.

• Green Eagle gets irritated at mainstream media for straining so hard for balance at the expense of truth.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony goes to some detail to show how Rudy Giuliani, in addition to being kind of a crazed jerk, has, through sheer technical incompetence, become a national security risk.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post counts the ways William Barr is ruining our Justice system. I suspect Jack doesn’t much care for the Attorney General, judging by wimpy, gutless, subserviant.
   
• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged takes a close look at sentencing in the Roger Stone case, including Presidential interference, and concludes that truth still matters.
   
• Frances Langum considers, then disposes of, Tucker Carlson’s claim that the prosecution of Roger Stone proves Democrats will arrest Trump supporters. Any and all they want.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors reports what the madcap world of Trump regards as running government like a business.
   
• At The Onion, there is some concern that the pale Russian mystic Trump has been keeping at his side may try to influence the 2020 election. Ras‑Putin?
   
• News Corpse presents the evidence: the Russian plot to “help” Bernie Sanders is being led by… Wait! Who?
   
• In Scotties Toy Box, Scottie contrasts my president with three others and comes to a conclusion few would have thought possible during their terms.
   
• In MadMikesAmerica, Michael John Scott doesn’t much like Warren’s attack on Bloomberg.
   
• Max’s Dad doesn’t much mind Warren’s war part of the debate, but doesn’t much like the debate itself and how the moderates most likely to beat Trump are aiming at each other.
   
• nojo is losing hope. We should have already learned this lesson from elections past. When confronted with a choice between uncomfortable and evil, voters choose evil every time. And Democrats seem to be choosing uncomfortable ‑ ‑ ‑ again.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz says that, when it comes to saving our country, it is not enough to trust in God. God demands more.
   
• Oh the humanity! Oh the side-effects! PZ Myers has a reaction to televangelist Jim Bakker’s miracle silver solution: guaranteed to kill the coronavirus.
   

 

From The Miami Herald:

But during the national anthem at his own Super Bowl watch party Sunday night, a brief video posted to Instagram shows Trump greeting guests, adjusting his chair, and straightening his suit jacket as other attendees — including first lady Melania Trump and their teenage son — stand with their hands over their hearts. As “The Star Spangled Banner” crescendoes, Trump raises both of his hands in the air, and twirls them around as if conducting the music.

The video was included in an Instagram story by a real estate agent for a Russian-American firm who frequents Mar-a-Lago and other Trump properties and events.

– More –

• In MadMikesAmerica, Peni Delina Petard explains to insulted Trump supporters why calling them stupid avoids less flattering judgments.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger posts two sentences that prove impeachment was never about overturning the will of the people.
   
• Jon Perr at PERRspectives goes to alternate history as new President Barack Obama entices Israel to smear Mitt Romney with a phony investigation then obstructs congressional oversight.
   
• The great Nan Yielding takes the Trump claims of Presidential power and applies them to past presidents.
   
• In Scotties Toy Box, Scottie takes a look at the overarching Trump argument that the Senate is about to confirm, that the president can order his opponent arrested as long as he thinks it’s in the national interest. That principle lets one individual, by the end of this year, turn us into a banana republic. Turns out that person does not even have to be my president.
   
• Green Eagle notes one of the more scary things about Bolton revelations.
   
• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged is less than impressed with the courage and reasoning of Senators Lamar Alexander and Lisa Murkowski as they figure out how they will refuse to allow witnesses and still call it a trial.
   
• Those interested in the abuse of presidential power, the national interest, and the future of democracy are not alone. Andy Borowitz reports that El Chapo has been following impeachment procedings and is outraged that his trial included witnesses.

Continue reading “Dumb Trumpsters? Impeach, Alternate World Obama, Power, Bolton, El Chapo”