May 22, 2020

Just a couple of quick thoughts.

When November comes and goes, and we hopefully have a bunch of newly elected people who actually want to run the country instead of tearing it apart like Trump has done, we're all going to have to pull together.

The soul of this country is built on vigorous debate and compromise to move forward. But the Republican party decided back in Reagan's day that winning was more important than governing, and we have to get rid of that cancer.

A conservative party is necessary, as is a liberal one, because most progress happens within the middle two-thirds of the Bell curve. Our system cannot work without compromise. When one party decides never to compromise, as the GOP has, it rips at the very fabric that holds the republic together. If there's imbalance, we can go the wrong direction very quickly, and our founders set it up to require vigorous debate and compromise to move forward. I suspect that is part of what Biden means when he speaks of the soul of this republic.

Remember Grover Norquist saying we need to starve the federal government until it is small enough to drown in a bathtub, and that ideally the Republicans could get America to elect a stupid president that will merely sign laws that come to him from a Republican Congress? That is what we have now, at least in the Senate. These are mean-spirited, hard-hearted, greedy people who are intent on stealing as much from the treasury as they can to give to the billionaires and corporations that have bought them.

Thank God the House is Democratic Party controlled, or we'd really be screwed. Nonetheless, we are on our knees with 95,000 Americans dead and the solid economy Trump inherited from the Democrats who laid the foundations of recovery in 2009 in utter shambles, the laughingstock of the world. Do you know I read an editorial in the Irish times that expresses pity for us?

I supported Warren in the primary and Biden was my last choice, but you know what? When we elect Biden, he's actually going to go to DC with the intent to do his best to govern this nation, and that's exactly what we need. Some say he may pick Klobuchar to carry independent votes in the mid-west, and if he does that, fine. Klobuchar wasn't my first choice either but like Biden, she does care about this country and its people, and will go to DC with the intent to do her best to govern the country as well.

I'm deeply concerned about this republic. Just saw a Harris poll on the Hill that gives Trump a 51% approval rate for how he's handling the pandemic. Fifty-one percent? Really? 538 has him at 43% at this writing, which to my mind is unbelievably high. He's a simpering imbecile.

Well...now I'm going outside, in the sun, to help my daughter build a sandbox for my grandkids. I'm going to forget about the news for the next few hours and dip my feet into the blessed, pure, cool waters of sanity. Regards to all of you.

May 21, 2020

More than 1,200 pastors say they'll defy California's state order and resume in-person services

Source: CNN

President Donald Trump, speaking more broadly on Thursday, said one of the things he wants to do to "normalize" life in the US is "get the churches open."

"The churches are not being treated with respect by a lot of the Democrat governors," Trump said. "I want to get our churches open, and we're going to take a very strong position on that soon."

It also comes one day after the Department of Justice sent Newsom a letter warning him that the state's plan to reopen amid the coronavirus pandemic discriminated against churches.

In a letter to Newsom, the head of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division wrote that the reopening plan, which allows for a return to restaurants and shopping malls ahead of religious services, contained "pronounced unequal treatment of faith communities" that could run afoul of the First Amendment.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/21/us/california-church-pastors-coronavirus-trnd/index.html

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So, there you have it: Donald Trump doing what he does best, stirring up the Crazy Christian Evangelicals to spread Christ-COVID to a community near you!