Public Policy | FJY.US

Profiles in Cowardice

By Frank Yacenda | September 17, 2020 | Comments 2 comments

In 1956, John F. Kennedy, while still a U.S. Senator, published a book titled Profiles in Courage. It presented the stories of eight former U.S. senators, mostly in antebellum America, who demonstrated courage in standing up for their beliefs in contrast to prevailing and more politically convenient views. If you are of a certain age, you may well have been assigned the book on a summer reading list. I’d like to think contemporary students still are being assigned the book, though a cursory look at the current knowledge base seems to end roughly around the debut of SpongeBob SquarePants, and even that falls under the rubric of Ancient History.

What we see all around us today is not courage, but rampant cowardice. The country is not threatened by strength but by the weakness exhibited across the board, from the so-called news media, to politicians ranging from minor to not-so-minor mayors to state governors and Congressional leadership, to the destructive rabble in the streets. It is this weakness that will be our undoing. And it is cowardice fostering and standing, for all to see, behind it.

There is so much cowardice in evidence at this time in our history – a time that demands courage and strength as few periods have – it’s hard to single out just eight manifestations of it for inclusion in this Profiles in Cowardice. You’d have to be imprisoned in a Uyghur internment camp in western China not to know that this all has to do with Trump as the radical left, the Democrats and their toadies in the media, and the other anti-Trumpers do their utmost to discredit him and undermine his re-election chances, the country be damned, but that is the orchestrated backdrop for the wave of cowardice we’re suffering under.

The list that follows is far from comprehensive. Like JFK, I could write a book on contemporary American cowardice. I selected a range of examples to illustrate how pervasive this cowardice is. It may not be comprehensive, but it gives some of the better examples of it. Today I’m giving you Profiles in Cowardice 8 – 5. Tomorrow you’ll get Profiles in Cowardice 4-1. Stay tuned and check back in.

8. The Mass Media and Social Media

In putting together this list, it was hard to assign rank order to the cowards, and in terms of impact on the country and our democracy, media cowardice and complicity with the other cowards bringing down the country might be the most dangerous manifestation of it of all. It is what allows lies to be told, coverups to be conducted, and creates a picture of things that is actually a negative image (in the photographic sense, i.e., inversed) of reality.

Looting, rioting, arson, and murder? “Fiery but mostly peaceful protests.”

A travel ban to try to stop entry of a deadly virus? “Xenophobic and racist.”

Historic peace breakthroughs in the Middle East? “Shameless.” And – do we even need to mention it? – “They’re not wearing masks.”

Possible treatments shown to be beneficial in treating the coronavirus? “False news”

I’d need more space than available to me to list all the examples of media cowardice.

The one mitigating factor is that surveys show most Americans are skeptical of what they hear and read in the media, and confidence in what passes for contemporary journalism has sunk almost as low as confidence in Congress, which would be a hard bar to clear but that is where the trend is headed.

It seems the pimple-faced wunderkind who keep the gates at Twitter and Facebook and other social media care more for the views of the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party than for free expression or the right of a free people in a democracy to make their views known, even unpopular views, and to make their own decisions about what is true or correct and what isn’t.

Thomas Jefferson said, “A properly functioning democracy depends on an informed electorate.” But what did Jefferson know? After all, he was a slave owner, right? Of course, unlike the cowards and toadies in much of our media organizations, he also had courage and spoke the truth.

7. Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and the Common Criminals Creating Chaos in the Streets

What kind of coward needs to hide behind a mask? The kind who make up Antifa, BLM, and the common criminals hiding among them and under their cover who are out to take and destroy, to loot, burn, and murder. Employing the tactics of fascism, Antifa pretends to oppose fascism. As blacks die at the hands of other blacks by the dozens and hundreds and thousands in Chicago and in other cities all across America, BLM pretends it is only the police who are the problem.

Based in Marxist ideology, these groups have as their sole objective the destruction of capitalism and our democratic system. Funded by a range of left-leaning donors, including George Soros and members of the Democratic nomenklatura, they move from city to city, staging “peaceful protests” that somehow seem to degrade into violent insurrection in case after case. And if you want to see who is behind those masks, the mug shots of arrested Antifa members in the image below will tell you: It’s almost entirely rich, white, indoctrinated, bored college kids. Like recently arrested members of the so-called New Afrikan Black Panther Party, a largely prison-based Maoist group terrorizing New York City, many are disaffected white kids playing revolutionary. Shades of the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army, of Patty Hearst fame, of the 1970s. Or Germany’s terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang and Red Army Faction – from which Antifa grew – or the Red Brigades of Italy.

It’s not just me who says these violent hooligans are cowards. None other than German historian Bettina Röhl, daughter of terrorist Ulrike Meinhof, says it.

“Out of cowardice, it [Antifa] practices covering its [members’] faces and keeping their names secret,” says Röhl. Take off the masks, and this is what you find:

6. Incompetent, Spineless Democratic Mayors and Governors

The current wave of unrest in the country began in Minneapolis on May 25. Had the Democratic boy mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, taken a stand and put a stop to the violence that broke out in his city that day, much of the destruction and mayhem the country has suffered in the months since might have been avoided. But this spineless wonder decided to abandon the 3^rd Precinct police station in the city to “de-escalate” the situation, sending a clear signal that violence and looting was acceptable. Police said that the mayor was “content to let the city be overrun,” and that’s exactly what happened. And continues to happen.

Minnesota’s Democratic Governor Tim Walz’s response was equally feckless, delaying for days sending in the National Guard, and then holding troops back from a full response to the violence. But when Walz, like the child who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds he is an orphan, asked for $500 million – that’s half a billion dollars – in federal emergency relief to pay for the damage done to the city and the 1,500 buildings destroyed by the “peaceful” demonstrators, President Trump had the good sense to deny the request.

The violence quickly spread across the nation, from Atlanta to Los Angeles, from New York to Seattle, from Washington to Portland, from Chicago to Albuquerque, as city after city fell victim to the national tantrum released in Minneapolis. And one cowardly Democratic mayor and governor after another allowed the thugs and anarchists to take control of their cities, or major parts of them. There was the idiotic response of Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, who said the take over of a chunk of her city’s downtown area and a police precinct might turn into “a summer of love.” Love, until people began being killed. Equally cowardly, yellow-bellied Washington Governor Jay Inslee, more concerned about the polar bears than the people of his state, claimed ignorance of the whole affair. Ignorance with impudence.

And then there is the cowardly mayor of Portland, Ted Wheeler, who perhaps deserves a special award for his spineless ineptitude. Taking an award for her supporting role in this cowardice is Oregon Governor Kate Brown. If you’ve been held captive by drug cartels in Mexico the past several months, or you get your news from CNN or MSNBC or most of the other so-called national news outlets, you might have missed the fact that rioting has been going on in Stumptown continuously for (as of this writing) 116 days and nights, with just minimal response from city and state officials.

One thing that marks all these cowardly mayors – and if I didn’t name all of them, it’s because the list would be unduly long and unwieldy, not because they didn’t qualify to be named – is that, when they go down in the street to talk with the natives storming their cities, they are universally jeered and belittled. They’re lucky to get away with their lives. And those unruly natives have the audacity to terrorize even the residences of these boy and girl wonders. Old Ted Wheeler has had to abandon his condo to spare his neighbors from harm when the “peaceful protestors” came and vandalized and tried to burn down the building. If there is one lesson none of these inept officials ever learned it is that you can’t appease a bully.

The brilliant answer they and their equally cowardly and senseless city councils come up with is to defund the police. Okay for them, with their private security details, and then when the mobs come after them anyway they wonder where the police are.

Somehow all these Democrats must have pooled their meager brain cells and come up with the astounding conclusion that all the violence and unrest would be bad for the re-election prospects of the detested Orange Man in the White House. Picture their surprise to learn that most Americans aren’t ready to turn the country over to the rabble and their strategy appears to be backfiring. Some of them are too dim-witted to even figure that out, though once released it’s damned hard to get the tiger back into the cage.

5. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot

Some mayors deserve to be singled out for their own Profile in Cowardice. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is one of them. Like the other mayors cited in these profiles, one has to wonder what kind of voters would put people like this in office. I understand that Democratic Party loyalty and the myths that hold them in thrall are powerful things, keeping people down on the Democratic Plantation. Still, you’d think people would see through the scam and at least not put people like Lightfoot into office. You’d think.

You might remember Lightfoot as the little martinet who defended getting her own hair done while ordering hairstyists and barbers to close their businesses across the city. She could get her hair done, but not you, because she’s mayor, and you’re not. After all, she has to be in the public limelight, she said. The rest of you can go to hell, bad hair and all.

That would have been disgraceful enough, and then when violence broke out in Chicago, with widespread looting and destruction across the (formerly) Magnificent Mile and other parts of the city, Lightfoot looked the other way and let it go on. Her own Democratic aldermen pleaded for assistance to protect residences and businesses and public safety, and she told them they were full of excrement. Lightfoot is another clear case of what I call ignorance with impudence.

Meanwhile, children, teens, and adults, mostly black, continue to be shot and murdered at record and near-record levels in Chicago. While people die, while residents are afraid to venture out on the street, as Chicagoans (and the city’s already tenuous tax base) flee, Lightfoot gets her hair done.

Do black lives matter? Not in Chicago, apparently.

Tomorrow: Profiles in Cowardice 4-1. Find out who is the biggest coward of all.

Photo credits: White feather featured image, Isaque Pereira, Pexels, used with permission. The following used under Fair Use: Fiery peace, CNN; Antifa, conservativenews.com; Antifa mug shots, unknown; Minneapolis burns, Carlos Gonzalez, Star Tribune/Getty Images; Lori Lightfoot, Rich Hein, Chicago Sun-Times

Back to the Plantation

By Frank Yacenda | June 20, 2020 | Comments 4 comments

One of the vestiges of the plantation system which depended on slavery for its existence was the racial divisiveness perpetrated by economic elites to maintain their power and control over both blacks and whites. In simplest terms, this translates to “divide and rule.”

“You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings,” Georgia populist leader Tom Watson told a gathering of white and black laborers in 1892. ““You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both.”

Lyndon Baines Johnson, who rose through the ranks of Texas racist politics to become the president who, after decades of helping block civil rights legislation in the House and the Senate, fostered passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, once related essentially the same theory to Bill Moyers. In classic LBJ style, Johnson told Moyers, a Johnson staffer before he became White House Press Secretary and, later, a journalist, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”

Women March on Washington, August 28, 1963. Library of Congress.

This was a theory I first learned in the aftermath of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It made sense to me then, and it still makes sense to me, though the nature of those elites have changed during the intervening half century, as have their tools. And it wasn’t just white populists who laid out the theory, plain as day for anyone who cared to look.

The white liberal and the new plantation

“The white liberal is the worst enemy to America and the worse enemy to the black man.”

That’s not a quote from Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh. It’s a quote from Malcolm X, the black liberation theology leader and firebrand, who said it about the same time LBJ was getting the civil rights theology and launching his War on Poverty, and not long before Malcolm X’s assassination on February 21, 1965.

“The white liberal aren’t white people who are for independence, who are moral and ethical in their thinking. They are just a faction of white people that are jockeying for power,” he said. “The same as the white conservative is a faction of white people that are jockeying for power. They are fighting each other for power and prestige, and the one that is the football in the game is the Negro, 20 million black people. A political football, a political pawn, an economic football, and economic pawn. A social football, a social pawn.”

Malcolm X’s message – it’s worth reading the full quote, which is quite long – was that blacks need to solve their own problems and not depend on whites of either persuasion, liberal or conservative, Democrat or Republican, since for either of them it’s just a game of power and control.

“The worst enemy that the Negro have is this white man that runs around here drooling at the mouth professing to love Negros, and calling himself a liberal, and it is following these white liberals that has perpetuated problems that Negros have. If the Negro wasn’t taken, tricked, or deceived by the white liberal then Negros would get together and solve our own problems.”

Now, 55 years later, Malcolm X’s message still hasn’t gotten through to many African Americans, much less to both white and black people who continue to pursue and support policies that effectively keep blacks, and all people of the underclass, down on the new plantation. I’m reminded of his message watching the multi-millionaire Nancy Pelosi and her hypocritical House Democrats kneeling in Kente cloths draped around their necks, and as trendy young white people proclaim on social media that they “stand against racism,” as if any right-thinking person doesn’t stand against racism, any less than someone might stand against kicking puppies or drowning babies. Or as politicians, lacking as much in balls as brains, call for disbanding the police, when it is black people who will be the main victims of the lawlessness, violence, and vigilantism that inevitably would ensue.

Look at what people do, not what they say

By way of disclosure, I’ve never considered myself a liberal, even during my radical phase (aspects of which persist). Like Malcolm X, I’ve never trusted self-proclaimed liberals who always have struck me as having ulterior motives or who operate under some sort of misplaced guilt or, at best, a Pollyannish view of the world. I tend to discount what people say in favor of what they do and, even more, the results they obtain through their actions and policies. This is highly relevant if you want to see the principle of “divide and rule” at work in contemporary liberal politics.

Consider this crucially important fact: While the U.S. has spent somewhere north of $22 trillion – that’s trillion, as in a thousand billion or a million million dollars, 22 times over (by some estimates, depending on how you count it, it’s closer to $27 trillion) – since LBJ declared the War on Poverty in his 1964 State of the Union address, the percentage of the population living in poverty has hardly changed at all in the past half century. Given that in the most recent normal year total U.S. GDP was just over $21 trillion, that’s a powerful lot of money to garner zero real reduction in the poverty rate. How can this be, you ask?

Look at the charts, below, to get a visual picture of the reality. What we see is that poverty was in major decline beginning in 1959, five years before Johnson’s declaration of his war on it. That decline continued for another five years, running through 1969. Beginning in 1970, a full 50 years ago, there has been essentially no long-term change in the poverty rate even as the country threw trillions of dollars of the national treasure at it.

As is visible, there have been blips up and down through both Democratic and Republican administrations and congresses, but the same overall reality persists across the span of a half century. As the third chart demonstrates, the African-American poverty rate has shown, marginally, the most improvement, especially when compared with the Hispanic and general poverty rates. But an interesting and undeniable reality emerges when you look at the first and third charts: The highest recent poverty levels in all three key categories – African-American, Hispanic, and the general population – peaked during the Obama administration, and all three reached historic lows during the Trump administration. How can this be, you might ask, given that Obama is painted as a friend of the poor and minorities and Trump is portrayed not only as their enemy, but as an out-and-out racist?

Like I said, get below the rhetoric and the reality emerges. Clearly taking the brakes off the economy and creating jobs that lower the unemployment rate and empower individuals and families, as Trump did in stark contrast to the effect his predecessor’s policies had on the economy, provides a road map for reducing poverty. Jobs are a key factor, if not the only one, in poverty reduction. There are other factors at work, too, and we’ll look at them toward the end of this piece.

Follow the money

“Follow the money” is a phrase that we learned from Deep Throat during the Watergate scandal of the early 1970s. It’s salient to our discussion here.

I had a sociology professor when I was an undergrad at Rutgers University sometime in the late 1960s. I don’t recall his name, but he was a black man, and I always looked forward to his classes. One thing about him was that he was straightforward and honest in his discussion of social issues and didn’t try to promote any ideology, something that seems to have become a hallmark of more recent sociological education (I can say this having since been a professor of sociology myself and seeing the ideological blather in the text books, and ostensibly believed by other professors, that is fed to students in the field).

In any case, my professor had previously worked with an anti-poverty agency on Long Island in New York. He told us how this agency had spun its wheels “studying” how to provide low-income housing to people, how much money passed through it, how it debated one approach and another approach, and in the end, not a single unit of housing was built. My professor said that, had the money the agency spent been given to the people it ostensibly had been set up to help, every one of those families could have gone out and bought their own house.

Sadly, my professor’s example is far from a unique case, given the trillions of dollars spent on “helping” poor people over the intervening five decades without any real effect (a similar calculation was made for FEMA’s spending after Hurricane Katrina when it was determined that the money the agency spent bureaucratically could have paid for a new house and two new cars for everyone who lost their home in the storm, and that, too, is far from unique).

If you still have any doubt that the vast bulk of the money spent fighting poverty doesn’t go to the people in poverty, the chart below should dispel that doubt. As per-person spending has climbed inexorably over the past six decades, it certainly hasn’t gotten to those in need of the funds. As per-person spending approaches $20,000, the poverty level this year for a family of four is set at $26,200. If the preponderance of the money went to that same theoretical family, they’d be receiving nearly $80,000, a long, long way from the poverty level. Needless to say, that’s not where most of the money goes.

When you look at the sheer volume of money involved, is it any wonder that those into whose hands, and pockets, it passes want to be sure to keep their constituents in poverty? In this context, what is said about one party in particular, the Democratic Party, that it depends on the existence of a permanent underclass for its very existence, begins to make sense and takes on credibility. Looking strictly at the numbers, the existence of poverty, maintaining as many people as possible dependent on the largesse of what passes for anti-poverty spending, bolsters its electoral power and, more, furthers the interests of its power brokers while favoring their influence and their wealth. They are the new plantation masters.

Down on the urban plantation

It’s a clever ploy, a revival of “divide and rule” for more than half a century, and the Democratic Party continues to rely on this strategy, keeping its black constituents down on the urban plantation, well into the 21^st Century. Consider for a moment these facts:

Democrats run 35 of the nation’s 50 largest cities (37 if you count the “Independent” mayors of San Antonio and Las Vegas, both of whom ran with Democratic support).
Democrats run 15 of the 16 cities ranked the worst-run cities in America in 2019 by WalletHub, including Washington, D.C., which came in 150^th out of 150 cities ranked. Other cities in the bottom 16 include Los Angeles (ranked 135^th) , Philadelphia (137^th), St. Louis (139^th), Chicago (140^th), Cleveland (141^st), Oakland (144^th), Detroit (145^th), New York (146^th), Chattanooga (147^th), and San Francisco (148^th). Gulfport, Miss., ranked 149^th, is the only one of the worst-run cities with a Republican mayor. The only big city to rank in the top 10 of best-run cities was Oklahoma City, also with a Republican mayor.
Detroit decay. Pixabay.
All of the top 10 most dangerous cities in the country, including Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, Memphis, Birmingham, Atlanta, Baltimore, Stockton, Cleveland, and Buffalo, have Democratic mayors. Of the top 25 most dangerous cities, most are controlled by Dems, and have poverty rates between 18 and 39 percent, compared with a 2019 national average of 12.3 percent. As gun violence runs rampant in these cities, most have strict gun control laws, giving meaning to the phrase, when guns are outlawed only outlaws will have guns.
All but two of the 10 cities rated “least healthy” on two different lists are run by Democrats.
All 10 cities with the highest numbers of homeless residents, led by Los Angeles with an estimated 58,000 homeless people, are Democratic-run sanctuary cities which provide refuge to illegal immigrants, disadvantaging lower-income legal residents of those cities and creating unsafe and unhealthy conditions for all residents.
The Democratic virtual one-party state of California, with one of the largest and most prosperous economies in the world, has the highest poverty rate of any state in the union, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Supplemental Poverty Measure.
Six of the 10 least educated cities in America are in the same Democratic one-party state of California. In Democratic stronghold Baltimore, which ranks fourth in per-student educational spending in the nation, not a single student in 13 public high schools is proficient at math, and nine of 10 black boys in the city’s schools can’t read at grade level. Meanwhile, thousands of consultants, contractors, and administrators are paid salaries in excess of $100,000 a year by the city’s school system.
Many of the cities run by Democrats haven’t elected a Republican mayor in more than 100 years. That’s the case in Newark, N.J., ranked the fifth worst city in the nation to live in. Detroit, once the wealthiest city in America and the one LBJ planned to be the “Model City” of his Great Society, and which today is ranked the country’s worst city, hasn’t elected a Republican mayor since 1957, about the
Decay of Detroit, the “Model City.” Daniel Lincoln/Unsplash.
time its golden era began its swan song. Chicago, one of the country’s most segregated and violent cities, elected its last Republican mayor in 1927. St. Louis, one of the nation’s most dangerous and poverty-stricken cities, has been electing Democrats as mayor for 71 years. Philadelphia, for 68 years. Baltimore and Oakland for more than half a century. In Flint, Mich., Dems have been mayors for 88 years. In New Orleans, mayors have been Democrats since 1872 – 148 years, longer than most countries have been in existence. What do all these cities have in common, besides being Democratic fiefdoms? They’re all wracked by poverty, crime, corruption, and urban decay. If anyone cares to argue that the Democratic Party, the party that in its history supported slavery and Jim Crow, has changed over all those decades, if anything the change has been for the worse where these cities’ residents are concerned and as their condition has continued to deteriorate over the decades.

So where have all those trillions of anti-poverty dollars gone? That would be a good question to ask these mayors, city councils, state governments, their Congressional backers, and those running the various anti-poverty agencies and failed school systems, spread from coast to coast to coast. And maybe their bankers and investment brokers and real estate agents, too.

And don’t buy into the argument that other developed countries spend more on anti-poverty programs than the U.S. (for the most part, they don’t), or on healthcare (they don’t), or education (they don’t). Money, at least not its lack, isn’t the problem. Misguided programs, corrupt officials and politicians, and just plain bad policies are. Given the dismal results of those policies over such a long period of time, one has to assume that malice of intent more than just bad judgment lies at the heart of their failure. Divide and rule: Keep those poor folk down on the plantation and rake in the big bucks. Follow the money.

Martin Luther King Jr. march on Washington — Martin Luther King, Jr., leads the march on Washington, August 28, 1963. Library of Congress.

What things work and how the plantation masters work against them

There are some things that are known, at least empirically, to help people get out of poverty. The plantation masters know this, and they work against them methodically, often under cover of some sort of politico-babble. We’ll look, briefly, at them here.

Education

Getting a decent education and at least a high school diploma – and, better, a college degree — is one of the known routes out of poverty. Educational choice, through vouchers and charter schools, in many cases have been shown to offer low-income people a better education than often available in the normal public school system. Even Barack Obama said “The best anti-poverty program is a world-class education.” So why do he and so many of the urban plantation masters oppose both vouchers and charter schools (while putting their own kids in private schools)?

Two-parent families

Two-parent families are another antidote to poverty. The overall child poverty rate is 17.5 percent. For children in homes headed by a single mother, it’s 50 percent. In 2015, 77.3 percent of non-immigrant black births were to unmarried mothers. For Hispanic immigrants, it was 48.9 percent. For whites, it was 30 percent. In 1965, the rate was 24 percent for black babies and 3.1 percent for white babies. There are many factors involved in this differential, the role of welfare rules that favor single mothers, households without a man or father, being just one of them. Whatever the reasons, the economic impact is significant.

Helping black men improve their situation

A better educational environment, improved employment opportunities, and staying out of trouble with the law help black men improve their situation, which overall has a positive impact on reducing poverty among African-Americans. Trump’s answers have been improving employment prospects, economic opportunity zones in under-privileged communities, and criminal justice reform. The answer of at least one Democratic candidate, Bernie Sanders, is to help African American, Latino, and Native American communities “start businesses selling legal marijuana.” Yup, keep those poor folks in the drug culture. After all, it’s been such a big help to their communities over many years.

Full-time employment

Finding and keeping full-time employment Is another of those elements that are basic to getting out of poverty. Rather than depending on public assistance, becoming self-sufficient is a critical step in upward mobility, and its efficacy is evidenced by the relation between a declining unemployment rate and declining poverty rate. But the new plantation masters would rather depress employment, shutter whole industries and send jobs to China, thus increasing dependency on them.

These are not the only things that impact on poverty, but they are some of the bigger ones. By now, 56 years on, it’s time to declare America’s longest war – the War on Poverty – a lost cause, and to begin to empower all people in poverty, and most especially African-Americans, as Malcolm X said, to solve their own problems, and to send the new plantation masters packing. All the signs are that they won’t go easily, and they’re already figuring out new ways of fleecing the populace and keeping folks down on the plantation. Divide and rule is as relevant today as it was in 1892, and as long as people buy into it, its impact will be as pernicious and long-lasting.

Featured image: Sugar Cane Plantation. North Wind Picture Archives/Alamy Stock. Used under Fair Use.

Back to the Future

By Frank Yacenda | June 4, 2020 | Comments 3 comments

It had been 3,249 days – nearly nine years – since Americans went to space aboard an American launch vehicle and from American soil, when the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, bearing the Crew Dragon capsule with two astronauts aboard, lifted off from Kennedy Space Center at 3:22 p.m. EDT on Saturday, May 30. The launch broke a hiatus that existed since the last U.S. manned launch, that of the Space Shuttle Atlantis on July 8, 2011, and during which only Russian vehicles, launched from the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, brought Americans to space.

The occasion was so momentous I decided I needed to be there, near the launch site, to see America’s return to manned spaceflight. For several years, in the 1980s, I covered the space program as a journalist and saw many launches, manned and unmanned, from KSC and adjoining Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. In the intervening 35 years my interest in space and America’s place in it drifted, as it did for much of the country. All that changed Saturday.

Astronauts Douglas Hurley and Robert Behnken during a dress rehearsal at Kennedy Space Center on May 23. Photo by NASA/Kim Shiflett.

As impressive as the launch was, the tens of thousands of people who had come from all over the state of Florida, from all over the country, and even from abroad, to see the launch, was incredibly gratifying. To me, that was a big part of the story Saturday, just as it was three days earlier when similar crowds turned out, only to suffer disappointment when weather caused the launch to be scrubbed about 15 minutes before the planned liftoff.

Despite nine years during which no manned launches originated on American soil, people clearly are still interested in space exploration, and that interest is now passing to new generations of young people and children, generations which are likely to see people again set foot on the moon, and then going on to other planets, maybe even doing those things themselves.

Crowds watch SpaceX Falcon 9 launch from shore of Indian River in Titusville, Fla., Saturday. Photo by the author.

As I’ve said before, to me perhaps the biggest tragedy of the cut-backs to the space program that happened after the last moon voyage occurred in the 1970s was that there were generations, billions of people, billions of children who were born and lived on this planet, but who were not alive as humans walked on the moon. All they could do was what people did for eons before American astronauts set foot on our nearest natural satellite, which was look toward the heavens, toward the moon, toward the planets and stars, and wonder what it would be like to go there, to dream about doing so. And now that dream once more is coming close to becoming a reality.

It could be as early as 2024 when we go back to the moon. And not many years after that when we send a manned mission to Mars, departing from the moon, which would serve as a stepping stone to reduce the cost and difficulty of breaking free from earth’s gravity.

Saturday’s launch marked another first: It was the first time that a launch vehicle and capsule built by a private company, SpaceX, carried astronauts into orbit. This is the new direction of spaceflight, a partnership between NASA and private enterprise, not just for private contractors to assemble parts and systems designed by NASA, but to design, build, and operate complete launch systems. Hot on SpaceX’s contrail is another private space venture, United Space Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, two aerospace giants, which also is hoping to carry astronauts into orbit.

We clearly have come a long way since the early days of the space program. Tuesday marked 55 years since, on June 3, 1965, astronaut Ed White made the first American spacewalk, remaining outside the Gemini 4 capsule, which he shared with Command Pilot James McDivitt, for 23 minutes. More recently, we have come up from what was probably the absolute nadir for the country’s space program when, 10 years ago, then-NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden – himself a former astronaut – told Al Jazeera television that he had been charged by President Barack Obama with the “perhaps foremost” task for the agency: “ . . . to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.”

SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket heads to orbit over the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Canaveral. Photo by the author.

There was no thought of that Saturday as the Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule rose from Pad 39A into the blue Florida sky, carrying Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken to the International Space Station (ISS), 263 statute miles above the earth’s surface. Even as riots and violence was tearing apart cities across the country, and the nation was still reeling under months of lock-downs occasioned by an invading virus, the feeling of pride and happiness among those gathered along the shores of the Indian River or on the beaches and bridges and in the parks of Brevard County – people of all races, genders, nationalities, and ages – was evident.

Perhaps reflective of the feeling of those present would be the words of SpaceX founder and its self-styled Chief Technology Officer, Elon Musk. Himself born in South Africa and a citizen of three countries, including this one, Musk has described the U.S. as “[inarguably] the greatest country that has ever existed on Earth,” calling it “the greatest force for good of any country that’s ever been.” I think few present Saturday would have argued with those words.

From left to right, Second Lady Karen Pence, Vice President Mike Pence, and President Donald Trump, watch as Falcon 9 and Crew Dragon lifts off from Kenneday Space Center on Saturday. To the right out of the image is First Lady Melania Trump. The last time a president came to KSC to witness a launch was in October 1998 when President Bill Clinton came to watch the launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Photo by NASA/Bill Ingalls.

The Ride Up and Docking

The next crucial part of the mission came Sunday morning, 19 hours after launch, when the Crew Dragon capsule docked with the ISS. The docking went flawlessly, too, almost eerily smoothly, and it was enthralling watching it unfold on C-Span back in the confines of my living room. One wishes that terrestrial television transmission of sports and other events went as smoothly as the video being beamed down from space.

Behnken and Hurley, both Air Force test pilots, even got to pilot the capsule manually for awhile as they sped around the earth at 17,500 MPH in pursuit of the ISS, catching up with it at 10:16 a.m. EDT Sunday. The only apparent mishap was when Behnken bumped his head on the hatchway, causing some bleeding he mopped up with a handkerchief, as the astronauts came across from the Crew Dragon into the vestibule of the space station.

Welcoming Hurley and Behnken aboard the ISS were American astronaut Chris Cassidy and Russian cosmonauts Antoly Ivanishin and Ivan Vagner. Vagner on Saturday had captured a rare image of the launch of the Falcon 9 as the ISS passed east of Cape Canaveral.

Cassidy later told reporters that the Crew Dragon emitted a new car smell.

“In fact, there was a little bit of space smell in the vestibule, Cassidy said. “When we got that hatch open, you could tell it was a brand new vehicle, with smiley faces on the other side, [a] smiley face on mine — just as if you had bought a new car, the same kind of reaction. Wonderful to see my friends and wonderful to see a brand new vehicle.”

Comparing the ride up with his previous ascent on the Space Shuttle, Behnken said the liftoff was smoother, largely due to the Shuttle’s twin and powerful solid rocket boosters, though other parts of the ascent were rougher.

“But Dragon was huffing and puffing all the way into orbit, and we were definitely driving or riding a dragon all the way up,” he said. “It was not quite the same ride, the smooth ride, as the Space Shuttle was up to MECO [main engine cutoff] — a little bit less g’s but a little bit more alive is probably the best way I would describe it.”

The next manned SpaceX launch is projected to be around Aug. 30. But even given the successes of the SpaceX launch system, there will be at least one more American astronaut, Kate Rubins, to be launched on a Russian rocket in October. The U.S. pays the Russians $90 million per seat for those launches, but that probably will soon turn around and the Russians will begin paying the U.S. to launch their cosmonauts on our vehicles, at a more economical cost of $55 million per seat. A big part of the cost saving results from SpaceX’s use of recoverable and refurbishable first-stage boosters, unlike the Russians’ non-recoverable launch system.

After Saturday’s successful launch, Musk couldn’t help but get in a dig at the Russians during the post-launch news conference. In a jab at Russian space agency Roscosmos chief Dmitry Rogozin who, in 2014, had said the U.S. might as well “deliver its astronauts to the ISS by using a trampoline,” Musk, sitting in a panel chaired by NASA Administrator James Bridenstine, quipped, “The trampoline is working.” Musk quickly added, “It’s an inside joke,” as he and Bridenstine both laughed.

While Rogozin’s spokesman was less than gracious, saying what happened Saturday should have happened a long time ago, Rogozin himself took Musk’s comment in stride.

Tweeted the Russian space chief to his American counterpart, “Please convey my sincere greetings to @elonmusk (I loved his joke) and @SpaceX team. Looking forward to further cooperation!”

A rivalry that has gone on for more than six decades isn’t likely to abate any time soon, cooperation aboard the ISS or not. For now, Americans have a lot to be proud about, and they showed it at the Cape on Saturday.

BONUS: Polaroid images from the moon contributed by reader Gary Green. See them here.

Featured Image: SpaceX Falcon 9 with Crew Dragon capsule lifts off from Pad 39A at Kennedy Space Center Saturday. Photo by NASA/Bill Ingalls.

The Cards Are Falling Faster Now

By Frank Yacenda | May 20, 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

It’s always nice to be right. It’s especially nice to be right about developments of great import and which have been the subject of machination and obfuscation at the highest levels. In all modesty, I can’t think of a single key point I’ve made on the conspiracy to undo the results of the 2016 elections on which I’ve been wrong, but I’ll resist the urge to spike the ball. But now we’re finally seeing so many of the underpinnings of what has gone on for the past three-plus years peeled bare so that there can’t be any further doubt about the intent by one side of the political spectrum, utilizing the levers of power of the nation, to deprive Donald Trump of the fruits of his electoral victory.

It’s just under 14 months since I described a secret attempt by those in power, aided and abetted by many in the mainstream media, to undermine the nation’s electoral process and to thwart the election of a single person – Donald J. Trump – to the presidency, and to stymie his ability to govern once elected. I called for the identification, investigation, and prosecution of those involved in what amounts to the greatest and most far-reaching conspiracy in U.S. history. At the time I called it a ‶silent coup attempt.″ I think now we can dispense with the word ‶silent″ and just call it what it is – a coup attempt.

If you look up the definition of coup d’état in a range of dictionaries, you’ll see that common elements of definitions say it is a sudden and decisive change of government, often by illegal or violent means, and usually by a small group already having a power base within the government. The attempt to remove Trump from office meets all the elements of those definitions.

Now, thanks to the actions of Attorney General Bill Barr and acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, we get to see the actual words, actions, and sworn testimony of those involved in this attempted coup. Through these revelations, we also get to see the lies told, the possible sources of the leaks made to the media, and the motivations of the key actors. And more clearly than ever, we see how the attempt to undermine Trump leads directly back to his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

Seeing Behind the Cover-Up

Most clearly we see how top officials in the FBI deliberately baited National Security Advisor Lt., Gen. Michael Flynn, a Trump confidante, into a perjury trap in an attempt to use him to get at Trump. There is evidence that this was done, if not with the knowledge of the former Chief Executive, with his tacit approval. Like a Mafia boss, Obama surrounded himself with plausible deniability while his henchmen carried out the hit.

You can read the words in the memos and recovered text messages yourself. But it’s not just me, or numerous other commentators, saying Flynn was deliberately railroaded into pleading guilty to a charge of perjury. Read what former FBI Special Agent James C. Gagliano says about it and how he lays out how it was done and how those involved deviated from standard FBI procedure to achieve their ends.

When you’re done reading that, there is Mollie Hemingway’s detailed timeline on the Federalist on how the railroading of Flynn, whom Obama despised since he had the temerity to oppose several of Obama’s key initiatives, began on Jan. 4 at the FBI and then was brought to the White House the next day. At the Jan. 5 meeting with Obama were most of the key players – FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and Vice President Joe Biden. Also present was Sally Yates, Deputy Attorney General at the time who briefly became Acting Attorney General under Trump.

Yates later told the Mueller investigation that Obama opened the conversation that day by saying he had learned about Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and, “It was not clear … where the President first received the information.” Yates told the Mueller team that she was so surprised by what she was hearing that she was having “a hard time processing it and listening to the conversation at the same time.”

Yates also believed the information the FBI had supposedly developed on Flynn should be shared with the incoming administration, which Comey resisted, making up his own rule book in defiance of DOJ hierarchy and procedure and even of law.

Part of what shocked Yates was the extent to which Flynn’s identify and conversations, which as a U.S. citizen were not meant to be revealed in counter-intelligence activities conducted against non-U.S. actors, had been unmasked by so many people within the administration. That list includes more than 30 names, including all those at the Jan. 5 meeting, except Obama himself, as well as then Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Obama Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, and some U.S. ambassadors and lower level government officials. Whether any of these unmaskings, hundreds of them, as unsettling as they are, had a political intent or were illegal is a matter of debate and conjecture at this point. But what seems to be clear is the leak of supposedly derogatory but classified information concerning Flynn to David Ignatius of The Washington Post, and which formed the basis of Ignatius’s column on Jan. 12, 2017, clearly is illegal. The question is, who within the cast of characters leaked it?

Lest there be any doubt that all this subterfuge traces back to Obama, there is Susan Rice’s email to herself, drafted as Trump’s inauguration was under way on Jan. 20, 2017. It is so obviously a “CYA” move by Rice, herself confirmed as a bold-faced liar by her untrue statements made repeatedly to the American public following the Benghazi fiasco of Sept. 2012, to write this on the morning the administration was to change, and two weeks after the Jan. 5 meeting:

“President Obama began the conversation by stressing his continued commitment to ensuring that every aspect of this issue is handled by the Intelligence and law enforcement communities ‘by the book’. The President stressed that he is not asking about, initiating or instructing anything from a law enforcement perspective. He reiterated that our law enforcement team needs to proceed as it normally would by the book.”

By the book. Right. And Rice, like so many other of the miscreants in the conspiracy, revealed her own perjury when she previously claimed that she knew of no surveillance of incoming Trump administration officials. She is now saying that she wrote the email at the direction of Obama White House Counsel Neil Eggleston.

Applying Occam’s Razor

There is one thing about the whole Russia hoax (as it has been revealed to be from the Mueller investigation through these latest releases of names and messages) that never made sense to me. I’m a big believer in Occam’s Razor which, in simplest terms, says the most logical explanation for something is usually the correct answer.

The question that has occurred to me all along, a question I’ve asked both as a former diplomat and also as just someone who applies common logic to issues, is why the Russians would prefer Trump over Hillary Clinton. It was Hillary who presented her Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, with the stupid “reset button” (which looked disturbingly like the red button to trigger nuclear missiles and which misspelled the Russian word for “reset” so it read “overcharge”) on March 6, 2009. And Obama himself who, on an open microphone on March 26, 2012, told outgoing Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to convey to returning Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would have more flexibility after his re-election.

Obama: “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

Medvedev: “I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir.”

It’s also clear that Obama knew of Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 elections (nothing unusual since they’ve been doing it for nearly a century now) by at least late summer 2016, and the entire sum of his efforts to get them to stop it was telling Putin, “Vladimir, cut it out.” Meanwhile, he chose not to inform Trump of what was suspected about Russian meddling.

If all that is not enough to raise questions, there is the whole saga of the hacking of the DNC computer servers in the lead-up to the 2016 elections, and how the FBI never was allowed access to those servers by the DNC, which turned forensic analysis of the hack over to CrowdStrike, a company tightly within the Democratic Party orbit. Without going into all the gory details of that saga, you can learn more than you want to know about it here. Among other suspicious developments, which point more to an inside job, U.S. security surveillance, or a third-party hacker than clandestine Russian government hacking, is that intel and forensics experts concluded the data likely was taken off the DNC computers faster than could have been possible by remote hacking. In other words, the data likely was pulled off onto a fast local device, like a flash drive or CD-ROM.

Occam’s Razor tells me that either the Russians were screwing around in general – it’s long been the intent of Russia and the Soviet Union that preceded the current federation – or that they were more likely to be supportive of Hillary than of Trump. Now Occam wasn’t a partisan of any major political party, but his logic sure makes sense to me.

No More Hearings or Reports

I think at this point we’re past settling for more hearings or reports. It’s time for prosecutions of the guilty parties in this conspiracy. While Sen. Lindsey Graham, as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has scheduled hearings covering the FBI investigation into alleged Russian electoral interference and the Trump campaign to begin June 1, a criminal investigation into these same issues has been under way for some months by U.S. Attorney John Durham, appointed to the case by AG William Barr. Numerous commentators supposedly in the know keep telling us that indictments are likely to be forthcoming soon, and other reports point toward the end of this summer.

On thing is clear: Time is running short. Admittedly, criminal investigations and prosecutions can take time. That’s understood. But with just months remaining before the November elections, it’s essential that prosecutions begin sooner rather than later. Not only is it inevitable that there will be charges that the DOJ is attempting to skew the elections – by the same people who have worked hard for more than three years now to cripple the Trump administration – but if by chance Trump fails to win reelection, the entire legal drive to convict the guilty parties in this most sordid and unsavory chapter in U.S. political history will be ditched, and we’ll never learn of the true depth of corruption within the FBI, the intelligence community, and the Obama White House. This would be a tragedy for the country.

Assuming there will the indictments, how high will they go? Certainly there is indication that some mid-level officials, such as former FBI Counterintelligence Chief Peter Strzok and former FBI Deputy Director and Mueller Deputy Andrew McCabe, might be included in them. If there is to be any semblance of justice, higher ups, including Comey, Brennan, and Clapper, should be included, too. If you’re still naive enough to believe in an even-handed application of justice, the perjuries, abuse of power, and leaks of classified and official information that have gone on involving these parties are certainly sufficient to charge them.

But what about above that level? A prosecution of Hillary, for her security violations and mishandling of classified material and her obstrucion of justice? Of Obama, for being the source of so many of the misdeeds that went on and for looking the other way as violations racked up? Of Biden, for his deceits in trying to cover up his involvement in the political pogrom carried on against Trump, or for allowing his influence to benefit his son’s enrichment in Ukraine and in China? If you’re expecting justice to reach that high, I have a bridge to sell you. As I’ve said all along, it’s not going to happen. Barr has already said he doesn’t plan to charge Hillary or Obama with anything criminal, and that certainly extends to Biden as well.

As many and as fast as the cards have fallen, the top actors are going to be allowed to skate. And they’ll do so under full cover of the media umbrella that most of the mass media offer them, that political-media complex I’ve described. Some of us know that, had we done even a fraction of what these people have done, we would be behind bars. But that application of justice apparently doesn’t extend to the top levels of political actors in the country.

I’ve been right about the other key facts of the matters that have dogged the country the past three-plus years, and as much as I’d prefer to be wrong about this last one, I just don’t see it. But it would be gratifying to see even some of the key bad actors where they truly belong.

Photo credits: Featured image: Rob Carr, AFP, Getty Images, used under Fair Use

Fragging the Commander in Chief

By Frank Yacenda | April 18, 2020 | Comments 3 comments

If you’re old enough to remember the Vietnam War, or if you’ve done some research on it, you probably know the term ‶fragging.″ While the practice predates the Vietnam War, it became an all-too-common practice during that conflict, and the word ‶fragging″ came into the vernacular during the Vietnam War years.

The term comes from the fragmentary grenades that often were used by American soldiers to kill their own platoon and company commanders who were deemed (rightly or wrongly) to be incompetent or abusive, or who ordered their commands (often acting on orders from above) into situations considered especially dangerous. Estimates of successful and attempted fraggings during the war run from 800 to more than 1,000.

If you’ve been watching or listening to what much of the national media has had to say about Donald Trump during the ongoing coronavirus drama, things amplified by the rank-and-file never-Trumpers in the country and so-called ‶leaders″ of the Democractic Party, you might agree that it is not an exaggeration to call what is going on ‶fragging.″ The President could leave the Rose Garden and walk across the surface of the Potomac River, or declare a cure for cancer, and the media would still pillory him. And it’s not just the President who is being hit by the virtual fragmentary grenades being hurled (and who, to his credit, has generally shrugged them off), but the general U.S. populace and, of graver concern, our very democracy.

At the more mundane level, as a former journalist I am embarrassed by the moronic nature of some of the questions members of the media ask at the daily White House coronavirus news conferences. Many of these alleged reporters are simply uninformed and unprepared, while others are clearly out to pose ‶got’cha″ questions that neither illuminate nor add to public knowledge. These questions clearly are part of a larger campaign to discredit the President who, again to his credit, is quick to bat them back and call out their not-so-hidden agenda.

No accident

With the 2020 elections approaching, this campaign is no accident. It’s the last-ditch attempt by the Democratic Party and its supporters in the anti-Trump media (which, in all fairness, is most of the media) to block the reelection of Donald Trump. To them, this is less a health crisis then a political opportunity, as dodgy as it might be. In the aftermath of one failed attempt after another at undoing the results of the 2016 election, this is their last shot.

As I’ve recounted on this blog, they watched their Russia hoax and the Mueller investigation, the Ukraine non-event, and their crown jewel, the impeachment fiasco, blow up in their faces. Along the way there were the Kavanagh confirmation and border stonewalling sideshows. The closest they’ve come to stymieing the President’s program, if not actually unseating him, was tipping the House of Representatives blue in 2018. But without gaining the Senate, it wasn’t enough for them to accomplish their goals, which was to unseat a duly elected President – just one they didn’t like.

Now picture their dilemma. Faced with the unnerving prospect of nominating a Socialist as their party’s candidate to stand off against Trump – architect of the best economy in anyone’s memory – in November, the party nomenklatura huddled, called in every chit in sight and some that hadn’t yet materialized, threatened, cajoled, and bought off every other candidate in the race, threw their compliant media machinery into high gear, and voila!, engineered the primary victories of the only logical choice they had left: A doddering soon-to-be-78-year-old (17 days after election day, to be precise) former vice president who thinks kids still listen to record players and who has a hard time remembering what state he’s in or what day of the week it is. Or, for that matter, even what office he’s running for.

Jill Biden jumps to defend husband Joe Biden from animal rights activist at Biden campaign rally in Los Angeles, March 3

In pushing Joe Biden to the forefront of the race, the party poobahs were counting on the power of reminiscence for a guy who, despite his paucity of any real accomplishments and being tinged with corruption throughout his career, was enough of a milquetoast that he could provide contrast with the brash Trump. What they probably weren’t counting on was how quickly Biden’s mental acuity was fading and how the man was virtually evaporating right before our eyes. Or that their chosen ‶pro woman″ candidate would be accused of rape.

Meanwhile, as the coronavirus drama accelerated, putting Trump front and center before the nation on a daily basis, Biden has retreated to his basement in Wilmington, issuing intermittent, sputtering, semi-coherent blasts, generating doubts (including by this writer) that he will make it to the convention, much less the election.

Even the usual useful idiots in the media have shown, through their facial expressions, their doubts about Biden as he babbles his way through on-air interviews. Don’t believe me. Listen yourself to the clip on that page. Be sure not to miss the part that begins at minute 1:00. It’s hard to decide whether it’s more amusing or frightening. If nothing else, it might make you feel sorry for this guy and question why his handlers are pushing him (often under the protective shield of his wife, Jill Biden) to make these appearances. Listening to these rambles, can you picture him leading a Scout outing, much less a national response to the coronavirus? The phrase that comes to my mind is, ‶We’re all going to die.″

Setting the record straight

It would be an impossible task to address every lie and every distortion put out daily by the media, but let’s look at just some of the biggies.

Myth: Trump didn’t listen to his medical advisers early on which allowed the virus to spread.

Truth: Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has led the country’s medical response to every viral epidemic since the early 1980s, said on multiple occasions in January and February that no one needed to be concerned about this virus. On at least two occasions, on Jan. 21 and Jan. 26, he told media interviewers that the risk to the U.S. was low.

On Jan. 21 Fauci told Newsmax interviewer Greg Kelly, “Obviously, you need to take it seriously, and do the kinds of things that the CDC and the Department of Homeland Security are doing. But, this not a major threat for the people of the United States, and this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.” Then on Jan. 26 he told radio show host John Catsimatidis, ‶It’s a very, very low risk to the United States,″ adding, ‶It isn’t something the American public needs to worry about or be frightened about. Because we have ways of preparing and screening of people coming in [from China].″ Further, CDC Director Robert Redfield has said he agreed with Fauci’s statements at the time.

Fauci continued to make similar statements all the way until late February, including saying on Feb. 29 that Americans didn’t have to make any lifestyle changes due to the virus. Meanwhile, Trump announced the travel ban from China on Jan. 31 and it went into effect on Feb. 2, credited with avoiding many cases and attendant deaths being brought into the country from China. The kudos the media gave him for that? They called the travel ban ‶racist″ and ‶xenophobic.″ and Biden, without specifically referring to the travel ban, also called the President ‶xenophobic.″ On March 11 Trump announced a ban on travel from Europe, and on March 20 the EU, Canada, and other countries finally got around to announcing their own travel bans. By then Italy and Spain were on countrywide lockdowns as deaths already were piling up in those countries.

Myth: Trump was in denial about the danger the virus posed.

Truth: On Feb. 24, Nancy Pelosi, one of the President’s biggest critics, was urging people to attend Chinese New Year festivities in San Francisco’s China Town. “It’s exciting to be here, especially at this time to be able to be unified with our community,” Pelosi gushed at the time. “We want to be vigilant about what is out there in other places. We want to be careful about how we deal with it, but we do want to say to people ‘Come to Chinatown. Here we are, careful, safe, and come join us.’” On the other coast, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, another Trump critic, and New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot were urging city residents to go about their normal lives. Now who, exactly, was more in denial?

Myth: Trump has gutted the CDC and NIH and eliminated the pandemic task force that was attached to the National Security Council.

Truth: There is so much to be said about all his and the truth is so convoluted I’m not even going to try to detail it, except to say that funding for both CDC and NIH actually increased in recent years, mostly because Congress increased their funding against Administration requests to cut unnecessary positions. There has been no gutting. Read the details here.

Myth: Trump has muzzled Fauci and the other medical people on the coronavirus task force.

Truth: You’d have to be totally gullible and listening only to the media distortions rather than watching the actual daily White House news conferences (which the major networks and some cable networks have stopped carrying, either in full or in part) to believe this one. As in any major crisis-control environment, there is an attempt to coordinate public statements, which is just good management, but Fauci has made it clear that he has never been muzzled. In response to New York Times claims that he had been, Fauci responded, ‶I’ve never been muzzled and I’ve been doing this since Reagan.That was a real misrepresentation of what happened.”

Myth: The Democrats in Congress want to help working people and small business and it’s the Republicans who don’t care about them.

Nancy “Let Them Eat Ice Cream” Pelosi fat and happy while America suffers. What passes for “leadership” in today’s Democratic Party.

Truth: With Democrats claiming, under media cover, that it was Republican desire to turn the multi-trillion dollar stimulus package into a corporate slush fund, the main reason why Congress couldn’t quickly agree to get aid to millions of laid off American workers and closing small businesses was very different. It was because House Speaker and Democratic leader Nancy ‶Let Them Eat Ice Cream″ Pelosi drew up a competing 1,119-page bill stuffed with a Democrat wish-list that had nothing to do with the coronavirus or assistance to people, businesses, or hospitals. On the list were provisions to mandate ‶diversity″ on the boards of companies receiving stumulus funds, same-day voter registration and early voting requirements, collective bargaining for federal employees, carbon-offset requirements for airlines receiving assistance, a bail out of the U.S. Postal Service, paying off student debt, resurrecting the Obamaphone program and, of course, funding for the Kennedy Center in Washington. As House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (the same Jim Clyburn who was single-handedly responsible for putting Joe Biden back on the political map) put it in a conference call with his Dem colleagues, ‶This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision.” Never mind that people across the country were unable to pay their rent or feed their families. This was politics at its abysmal worse (which is really saying something).

Now that the funds earmarked for small business have already been depleted, Pelosi is again holed up in her San Francisco mansion gloating about her chocolates and $13 a pint ice cream stashed in her $24,000 refrigerator, holding up adding more funds to the program while Americans suffer through the biggest financial crisis to strike the country in 90 years. If there was ever more proof of her true priorities, this is it.

The misinformation spills over to hatred

Have no doubt: This campaign of misinformation by the media and the Dems is spilling over to generate further division and outright hatred among what is already a polarized country. You don’t have to look far to see it. To illustrate this consequence, intended or not, here is a random sampling of just a few of the hateful postings I’ve seen online in the past few days (never mind the factual lapses, these quotes weren’t selected for their credibility):

‶Trump is a mass murderer, period, and any person even considering voting for him should lose their voting rights forever.″

‶Trump’s response to the pandemic has been an unmitigated disaster, his press briefings are all about him telling lies about how great he is. His approval ratings have dropped. He will only help states get vital supplies if they suck up to him, while they compete against each other for protective clothing, ventilators, etc. He knew from the 20th of January about the risks, yet he did nothing until near the end of March in terms of social distancing. Even his own party wish he would STFU.″

‶The only political turds in this country are WR0NGIST G0P/C0NS. And only WR0NGIST G0P/C0N turds refuse to see it. You know almost nothing about politics, bro.″

‶the choice is between evil and the Devil Incarnate. the choice is between a lousy crook who has NO vision whatsoever and a racist criminal who is set on destroying our entire way of government, our entire way of economy and our entire planetary environment. I will vote for Biden because not voting or voting for a 3rd party candidate is to give a vote to the Rump in the White House…″

Nice stuff, huh?

Finally, on a personal note, I myself, your not-so-humble correspondent, have been the target of some of this hate in the past two weeks, in what might be the unlikeliest (but isn’t) of places. We have this neighborhood online thing, part of the nationwide NextDoor network, ostensibly to promote neighborliness among, well, neighbors. Along with the usual lost-dog postings and pictures of Bambi in peoples’ yards, some in the neighborhood have had the temerity to post things about the coronavirus, understandingly being a subject for conversation, and within a short time the Trump haters have jumped on and do their best to take over the threads and shut down everyone else. Not to exclusively defend the other side, since both sides put up their fair share of misinformation, but in a couple of cases, when I couldn’t stand the verbal fisticuffs any more, I’ve posted something intended to stop the politicization of what should, I think, be considered a national crisis and suggesting that people consider pulling together instead of apart

Some positive comments were posted in response to my postings, and then the anti-Trump haters jumped back on to spew their venom. They just can’t let anyone who disagrees with them or even has another view of things have the last word. In one case the whole thread shortly thereafter disappeared. But in another case one of my efforts was rewarded by having my post, intended to be conciliatory, deleted and my account disabled. Questioning NextDoor why this occurred garnered the fairly predictable blather about ‶neighborliness,″ blah, blah, blah (and, while it wasn’t applicable to my posting, there was boilerplate blather about not referring to the virus as a ‶Chinese virus″ even though we all know where it originated).

While I was being lectured about ‶neighborliness,″ what about its lack in those who got me blocked? I have little doubt but that the haters are probably still there. I haven’t bothered to go back even though my NextDoor-imposed exile has lapsed. I lived perfectly well before discovering NextDoor and I imagine I can live perfectly well without it going forward. And I don’t need more hatred and venom in my life.

I can survive without NextDoor, but can the country and our democracy survive this continual wave of hatred and misinformation? That remains to be seen.

Photo credits: Featured image: Peter Linford/Pixabay, used with permission; Jill defends Joe, Bloomberg/Bloomberg/Getty Images, used under Fair Use; Nancy tells the people to eat ice cream, CBS, used under Fair Use

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: