The U.S has a long history of good general, mediocre generals, and bad generals. Abraham Lincoln went through several generals before he finally found Ulysses Grant. Many of these incompetent generals tried to blame Abraham Lincoln for all the problems. One of them, General McClellan, was so sure of this he ran for President trying to defeat Lincoln.

Being a general, particularly a high ranking general, has always been very political. It is the nature of the beast.  If you want to see an example of how this works, watch “Once An Eagle.” That was an NBC miniseries that ran in 1972-77. Or you could read the book upon which it was based, Once An Eagle by Anton Myrer. The story is about two army officers, Sam Damon who puts courage, honesty, and selflessness first, and Courtney Massengale who is only interested in his own career. Massengale, despite a lack of talent, honor and character knows how to make the right connections in the Washington corridors of power. He is the one who makes rank and gets the posh assignments, Damon is too busy fighting the enemy.  The book was a warning of the power of politically motivated generals. Always remember that Eisenhower warned us about the dangers of the military industrial complex.

Keep this in mind when you hear about anonymous sources, assumed to be high ranking officers, meaning generals or admirals, slamming President Trump. In addition to realizing that none of these guys had the courage to say this on the record, it is important to understand when and how they were promoted in the first place. It was brutal during the Obama administration. Many strong commanders ended their careers because they could not tolerate the Obama administration rules of engagement. For example, Obama demanded that troops wait until the enemy opened fire first. That resulted in a lot of unnecessary U.S. deaths. Soaring to the top as a military commander, when the Commander in Chief is someone like Obama, is not necessarily a compliment.

Unfortunately, our best commanders are seldom recognized unless there is a war. Then, and only then, does the politically elite stop playing games and start letting the military make decisions purely on talent and results. During peace time, someone like George Patton was considered a nuisance. When there was a desperate need for a general who could defeat the German Army, he became priceless.

Those of us who served in combat treasure a Commander in Chief like Donald Trump. When I first went to Vietnam, the Commander in Chief was LBJ. Like JFK, he tried to micromanage the war from Washington D.C. Decisions were often made for pollical purposes, not to win the war. It was horrible. When Richard Nixon took office, he changed that immediately. All the game playing stopped, perhaps because the Washington elite despised Nixon. He just focused on winning the war, despite idiotic restrictions put on him by a Democratic congress. Incredibly, he succeeded in doing exactly that. The North Vietnamese signed a peace treaty. The war was over. I thank God daily that Richard Nixon, not Hubert Humphrey was elected president in 1968. Richard Nixon, for all his faults, was the president who brought me home.

Democrats removed Nixon from office, for doing the same thing Democratic Presidents had done. When Nixon was replaced by Gerald Ford, Democrats immediately took action that ultimately resulted in the loss of South Vietnam. Under the provisions of the 1973 War Powers Act, no American combat troops could be reintroduced in Indochina without Congressional Approval. As soon as the North Vietnamese heard about this, they began their plans for invasion. Few things are more harmful to a country than telling an enemy we will not fight back.

Then, to make it worse, that Democratic congress cut off all military and financial support to South Vietnam. The results were inevitable. The North Vietnamese seized the day and invaded South Vietnam. The U.S. did absolutely nothing to even slow them down. It was disgraceful. Democrats literally snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

The point is those unnamed sources were all political senior officers who rose through the ranks during the Obama administration. They saw us leave Iraq in disgrace. Under their watch ISIS took control of huge swaths of territory. They focused on Afghanistan and made everything worse. Thousands of American troops died fighting a war for which these senior officers could not even define victory. Now they are lecturing us, with anonymous statements supported by no facts and we are supposed to believe them. Perhaps the best advice is to always do the opposite of what they recommend. Trump figured that out. That is why ISIS is defeated, Israel is signing peace treaties and he is ending the war in Afghanistan. A place foreign army have tried, and failed to control since Alexander the Great.

Trump allegedly said Vietnam veterans were suckers. There is no actual quote and certainly no context. Trump is often quoted, out of context, when what he actually said was very different.

I am a Vietnam combat veteran and yes at times I do feel like a sucker. Not because of how we performed in combat, we were the best military combat force in the world at the time. I feel like a sucker because feckless Democrats in Congress threw it all away without a shred of concern for the sacrifices made by so many. President Trump has a simple philosophy that every soldier understands. Don’t get into a war unnecessarily, but if you do fight, fight to win. Abraham Lincoln talked about that in the Gettysburg address:

“But, in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate — we cannot consecrate — we cannot hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Every combat veteran will tell you the same thing. The only real way to honor us is to do whatever it takes to win. Anything else is meaningless.

Joe Biden, on the other hand told the world that it was Seal Team Six that killed Bid Laden. That irresponsible act, for purely political purposes resulted in the death of sixteen members of that team. It was despicable  Biden and Obama pounded their own chests taking credit for killing Bin Laden, when Biden actually opposed the raid and Obama only approved it only because it he was informed about it when it was too late to stop it.

The choice is clear. The consequence of getting this wrong, unsurmountable. Trump is not perfect, but his opponents are perfectly awful. Generally speaking, the incompetent generals who oppose him are instead giving him the ultimate endorsement. If you are opposed by people like this, then you must be doing something right.

TDM

The Atlantic published a clearly false article today claiming Trump bad mouthed dead U.S. military veterans. This story was so obviously false that no credible news organization should have even reported it. Joe Biden said he didn’t know if it was true and then slammed Trump anyway. The story has been completely debunked by everyone. Even John Bolton who hated President Trump, said it was BS.

That begs the question: “why would the Atlantic do this?” Better yes, why would Biden take the bait? The answer is they are beyond desperate. Even the guy writing the article had to know this was BS. He clearly didn’t even attempt to get clarification from numerous people who were obvious witnesses. I really can’t remember a story that was so thoroughly discredited in such a short period of time.

But don’t be surprised if the Biden campaign continues to bring this up as possibly true. They will say the problem is that this was so easy to believe. Utter nonsense. We can expect CNN and the rest of the MSM to run with this as long as they can. Some will even sigh and say the problem is that this is believable. But even that won’t last long. We can be certain that none of them will have the character to admit they were wrong. They will never admit they should not have reported on the story in the first place. They will never admit the obvious, that nothing Trump has ever done supported this nonsense. They won’t even consider pointing out the depravity of a political campaign that would stoop this low.

But the real story here is the level of panic in the DNC and the establishment media. They don’t believe the polls showing Biden ahead. They recognize the significance when thousands of people show up, in the rain, to wait for Trump, in an overflow area in Pennsylvania. They saw the thousands of people who showed up to see Trump in Kenosha, a city that is 65% democratic. They also saw Biden greeted in Kenosha by one blue haired lady wearing DNC buttons.

Biden looked feeble and frail. His staff even gave written questions for people to ask. He still got confused. The same thing happened today in Delaware. When he was asked about the Atlantic article. He should have said: “has that been verified.” Instead he read his teleprompter attack on Donald Trump as if this were straight from the lips of God. This had no chance of working. Granted, some Trump haters will buy this, but they will buy anything. Anyone with an ounce of objectivity will be appalled. Appalled that any political campaign would stoop this low to try and gain an advantage.

The rest of us should smile. If they are this desperate, it is because they have run out of options. This had deteriorated from grasping at straws to grasping at imaginary straws. It is how people act when they are losing, they know they are losing, and they are willing to try anything in a desperate attempt to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It did not work. Instead, it just showcased the level of panic and desperation.

Happy Labor Day.

TDM

I don’t remember who exactly told me this story but do know it was based on a real incident. (It may have been Ron Luciano) A major league baseball player was trying to score from second base on a base hit. When he went into his slide, he ended up about a foot short of home plate. The umpire called him out, then whispered: “pretend you’re hurt.” The player caught on and did exactly that, which saved him a lot of embarrassment.

I believe Joe Biden is about to develop an illness or injury, non-life threatening and not related to his mental health, which will prevent him from campaigning.  Sadly, he will not be able to participate in debates. They must do something because he is botching every public appearance. This is going to become more obvious and more serious. The only chance Democrats have is to keep Joe in his basement with some excuse for him being there. They tried to use COVID 19, but that isn’t working anymore. Partly because Joe has ventured out on occasion. It is too late to replace him on the ticket. Kamala Harris is an even worse campaigner than him. She is on the record with so many radical left positions that the campaign needs to hide her too. So, a desperate campaign must do something, well, desperate.

Incredibly many people in the MSM, including Fox, believe that Biden is ahead in the polls. However, these same polls show Trump getting more than 25% of the black vote. If that is true, Biden is far behind and we are looking at a potential Trump landslide. The good news is that liberals suffer from a mental disorder resulting in them believing things that are obviously not true. They simply ignore any facts that conflict with what they “know” to be true.  This makes them vulnerable to gigantic mistakes. The Biden campaign may even believe that he is ahead and if they can hide him and spend enough money, they can beat Trump.

The good news for us is that those who are wrong about everything else, are wrong about this too.

TDM

If you listen to liberals, the DNC and the MSM, you probably believe there is a serious problem with systemic racism demonstrated by cops shooting black men without just cause. There are many people who truly believe this happens on a regular basis. They are making decisions based on this. The NBA has gone all in assuming their support of Black Lives Matter will be a huge success. The NFL, MLB and other sports have kneeled in protest, during the National Anthem, because they believe this.

But the real question is whether this is even true? So far, I have seen no examples of where a black man was shot because he was black. George Floyd was intoxicated on alcohol, methamphetamines, cocaine, and fentanyl. The autopsy suggest he had taken a fatal dose of fentanyl and likely would have died with or without the police doing anything. But few people know this, they just saw the video and said: “look at the cops picking on the black guy.”  Even Fox News missed the point. Yes, the cops may have handled this poorly, but there was nothing racist about this.

Then Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times. The news media constantly talks about him being shot in the back, in front of his children, but never mention that he had been charged with sexual assault. They ignore the part where his ex-girlfriend called the police, begging for help, because he wouldn’t leave, and he apparently stole her car keys. They ignore the fact that he resisted arrest, may have put a headlock on a police officer, was tasered twice and finally shot when he may have been diving into his car in search of a weapon. The police may not have acted properly, but, again, there appears to be nothing racist about this.

Both events resulted in wide-spread, loud screams protesting systemic racism. They were screaming far too loud to listen. They repeat distorted facts accompanied by loud demands. They scream “No Justice, No Peace.” But they don’t really want justice. They want the police convicted of a crime without regard to the facts and the evidence.

What is racist is the public outcry based on the suspects skin color. In October, 2019, Isaiah Murrietta Golding was shot in the back by Fresno police. He was 16 years old. He was unarmed. But, he was also white. So there were no protests. There were no riots. There was a lawsuit, but no public outcry. If this kid had been black, we would still be rebuilding downtown Fresno. So, who are the racists here? The police or those who rush to the defense of any black man with little or no regard to the facts.

Far too many politicians are too intimidated to do their job and have allowed the angry mob to overcome their duty to act responsibly. These people have a duty to evaluate these cases on the facts and the merits, but instead they have made decisions solely for political purposes. No one has acted more irresponsibly than the Mayor of Portland, Oregon. The results are beyond obvious. He, of course, is too busy blaming Donald Trump to look in a mirror.

Every smart parent learns this quickly. Sometimes you need to let your child cry themselves to sleep, because if you pick them up every time they cry, they will just cry more. The same is true is your child throws a temper tantrum. Smart parents never reward bad behavior. Failure to do that results in serious problems. We have all seen examples of this with a child throwing a temper tantrum in a store with an embarrassed parent trying and failing to bribe them into stopping. It seldom works.

We, as a country, are on the verge of rewarding people for bad behavior. Fortunately, the person who understands this best is Donald Trump. His trip to Kenosha focused primarily on helping repair the damage and supporting the police. He suggested we investigate and let the facts decide. That, of course, is unacceptable to those who want a quick response, regardless of facts, that suits their pollical agenda. But it is music in the ears of people who welcome someone strong enough to push back against the insanity.

Seriously!

TDM

Joe Biden came out of his basement. He spoke to a small crowd, made ridiculous false claims about Donald Trump, got confused, and went home. This is consistent with what I wrote about in WHIRLED WITHOUT END.  Although CNN failed to notice any of this, a lot of other people saw this very clearly. We can guarantee that the double secret probation committee is working overtime in desperate search of a solution. We do not know what they will do, but we can be pretty sure that Joe Biden will be put on the shortest possible leash. They will try to blame this on COVID and Donald Trump, in a desperate attempt to justify Biden continuing to hide out in his basement. It has zero chance of working.

If you watched the Democratic spin doctors on the news shows lately you could literally see the panic in their eyes. They have well-rehearsed spin arguments, based on obvious falsehoods, that are presented at the speed of light. They never answer any questions. While both parties are guilty of this, the RNC has a lot more facts and a far more convincing argument.

Today Kayleigh McEnany destroyed the Democrats logic by saying: “That’s like the arsonist blaming the firefighter.”  

Democrats have a losing candidate and a losing argument, and they know it. Lawyers are taught that when they have the facts, pound the facts. If they don’t have the facts, pound the opponent. If they can’t pound the facts or the opponent, just pound. If you watch Democrats on TV, you are going to see more and more pounding.

This cannot continue long. Remember that the Democratic primary ended in about 24 hours once the establishment realized Bernie was likely to win. If you think they were panicked then, well they probably consider those the good ole days now. I do not know what they will do, but I know disaster is imminent, they know it is imminent and they are running out of time. Almost anything is possible.

TDM

The incompetence of the Democratic establishment is unbelievable. There could be few things more important than choosing a nominee for President of the United States. That used to be done in smoke filled rooms and while the result was often a poor candidate, it was usually someone competent to be President of the United States.

The Republican establishment is equally incompetent. They would have chosen anyone but Donald Trump in 2016. But anyone but Donald Trump probably would have lost to Hillary Clinton.

This year, Democrats kept digging deeper and literally ended up with a candidate hiding in his basement. Anyone who has watched “live” interviews of Joe Biden notices that the problem is far more than mere gaffs. Sadly, most of us have seen relatives showing similar signs of senility and dementia. The DNC, with the help of the MSM is desperately trying to cover this up, but that is proving to be impossible. Even liberal reporters have noticed that while Trump is out there literally traveling coast to coast, Joe Biden is STILL hiding in his basement. Kamala Harris is not much better and her rebuttal to the Trump’s acceptance speech was beyond pathetic.

The result is that the election is about two months away and the DNC does not have a candidate remotely capable of being President of the United States. To add fuel to the fire, there are “rumors” that Joe Biden’s dementia is getting worse on a daily basis.  That may explain why both Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi have publicly said Joe Biden should not debate Donald Trump. If they thought there was any chance Biden could hold his own with Trump, they would be demanding debates.

This is also why the DNC Convention was focused 90% on demonizing Trump and 10% on praising Joe Biden. In many cases the primary praise for Joe Biden is that he is not Donald Trump. They let Hollywood put on the show forgetting that actors are primarily good at pretending to be something they are not. There are many actors who are very good at portraying action heroes but I shudder at the thought of any of these people flying on a combat mission with me when I was serving in Vietnam.

There is a price to be paid for incompetence. Democrats now have a candidate increasingly incapable of appearing in public. His carefully chosen VP candidate is a horrible campaigner. She was one of the first to drop out of the DNC race for the nomination because her support had dropped to around 2%. Tulsi Gabbard, who was not even invited to the DNC, ate her lunch at one of the debates and Harris never recovered. The result is that the DNC is apparently planning on campaigning without an actual candidate. They are spending a fortune on advertising apparently in a desperate hope to save the campaign, while hiding both Biden and Harris from the American public.

But what if Joe get worse, much worse, before the election. That is clearly possible. But it is already far too late for the DNC to make a change. They can hardly parachute someone in to take over for Joe. Even if he died, this would be an insurmountable challenge. But perhaps the question that should really terrify Democrats is what will happen if Biden wins the election, but is obviously incapable of even pretending to be president? Talk about a constitutional crisis. They couldn’t legally replace him with Kamala Harris or anyone else. No serious constitutional scholar believes the country would accept Nancy Pelosi as Temporary President of the United States. That would literally result in a civil war, with real guns.

There must be at least some smart Democrats who realize this. They know the polls are crap and that Biden is trailing badly in every swing state. They see the crowds that turn out every place Trump goes. They see the violence in Portland, Seattle, New York and now Kenosha. They know the Biden campaign is in serious trouble, which is why they are pushing mail-in-voting. But Joe Biden losing this election may not be the worse case scenario for Democrats, the worse case scenario may be if he wins.

Even the DNC establishment must realize that the radical left has taken over the party. No one is even pretending that these people represent mainstream America, in either party. If they truly take power and try to implement these insane proposals, there will be wide-spread resistance and it won’t be limited to disappointed Republicans.

Donald Trump will be gone in four years and by 2024 a lot of people will be sick of him. Almost everyone president is increasingly unpopular by the time they leave office. Donald Trump will be that on steroids. Democrats would have four years to find a real candidate, someone capable of leading a national ticket.

The Democratic old guard will have aged out by 2024. We don’t know who will be running the show in 2024, but we know who will not. It won’t be Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, or Dianne Feinstein. It also won’t be AOC or any of her squad. It won’t be Bernie Sanders and it won’t be people like Chris Cuomo or Gavin Newsom. When you are rebuilding a team the first step is to fire the coach, the general manager and recruit new players. .

In the meantime, the DNC has mucked things up beyond recovery. It is literally whirled without end and is now so bad that the best chance for the Democratic Party to even survive is to get trounced in November. That would also spare the country from being destroyed by people too incompetent to run their own party.

TDM

Have you noticed something? Every time a black man is shot by the police, someone is there with a camera. News of the shooting, often greatly distorted and inflammatory, goes viral. Smart police start gearing up for riots. The story is reported on immediately, by every media outlet. Some are more objective than others, but all run with the story. Many of these men are elevated as heroic symbols. But not everyone who gets shot by policy is black. A lot of people shot by police are white. In fact, more white people are shot then black people. The facts are not really disputed..

Number of people show by police:  https://medium.com/retention/police-kill-more-whites-than-blacks-is-true-and-it-isnt-55102f5206b3

White: 457 (2017) | 399 (2018) | 370 (2019) | 172 (2020*)

Black: 223 (2017) | 209 (2018) | 235 (2019) | 88 (2020*)

Now many will argue that this is unfair, because 60.4% of people are white and 13.4% are black. This shows that the odds of an individual black man getting shot by police is much higher than the odds of an individual white man getting shot by police.  That is obviously true. I will not get into other statistics showing that black men are also more likely to commit a felony. That is not the point. That is a topic for another occasion. The point is that white men are getting shot by police and you probably know nothing about any of these shootings. That is because when a white man gets shot by the police, there are no cameras, there are no protests, there are no riots.

The argument is that black men are treated differently than white men when confronted by police. But we can’t know if that is true because we don’t know how white men are treated. We know what happened to George Floyd. But we don’t know what would happened to a white guy who got tanked up on alcohol, methamphetamines and cocaine and was found sitting in a car obviously planning on driving away. We don’t know what happens when that white man decides to resist arrest and gets in a fight with police. Perhaps they are treated differently than black men, but we don’t know that because no one is covering these deaths. We know nothing about these men. They are invisible. No one is protesting on their behalf. No one even knows their name. They are often no more than a statistic

Most black men do not have criminal records, if they have an encounter with police they usually cooperate, and no one gets shot. Perhaps police stop them more often, because they are black, but I have not seen any reports of these people getting shot. Angry, embarrassed, disgusted; yet. Shot, no.

If we are to fix this, we need to have facts. If we want to address racism and police brutality, this requires a comparison with how people with criminal records, of different races, are treated when arrested by police, If anyone has ever watched police reality shows, like PD Online or the Sheriffs of El Dorado County, one quickly realizes that arresting criminals, regardless of race, can be a dangerous and challenging situation for the police. Most of the people arrested in Sheriffs of El Dorado County are white. But that does not mean they don’t challenge police and it sure doesn’t mean police don’t realize they are a threat.

We should demand equal coverage when an unarmed white guy is shot by police. We need to tell the story of white men shot by cops too. Then an only then can we determine whether the actions of police are truly based on race. We also need to point out something obvious. Almost every shooting is the result of people resisting arrest. Yes, we need to train police how to deal with people. But perhaps, we need to train people how to deal with police. If this man had cooperated with police, he almost certainly would not have been shot. The same is true of George Floyd. Blaming everything on police is obviously popular, but will not necessarily fix the problem.

In the meantime, I think we would all benefit from a missing man formation. The missing man being white men shot by police. At a minimum we need to understand what happens to them too. We need to learn from those stories.

TDM

It does not get any better than this. Joe Biden practically wept during his acceptance speech while lying about Donald Trump praising white supremacists at Charlottesville. To give Biden some credit, he was just repeating the lie told by CNN on an hourly basis.  He may even have believed it, assuming he never actually read a transcript of what Trump said or watched a video of the event. It really didn’t matter, because accusing a Republican of being a racist and a white supremacist is just too delicious to ignore.

Well Glory be, Richard Spencer, the white supremacists who organized that rally in Charlottesville, endorsed Joe Biden for President.

Richard 

Spencer

@RichardBSpencer

Aug 23

I plan to vote for Biden and a straight democratic ticket. It’s not based on “accelerationism” or anything like that; the liberals are clearly more competent people.

The Biden campaign quickly repudiated the endorsement, but the damage was done. Whether you accept it or not, the white supremacists have made it clear who they support. In addition, if their leadership really thinks Biden is remotely competent, we have little to fear from them.

The Biden campaign is desperately trying to do a “diss spencery” but my guess is that they won’t even try to mention Charlottesville again.

TDM

If you live in California, the skies are filled with smoke. At last count there are about 370 wildfires raging. Governor Gavin Newsom considers this, as expected, proof of global warming. He apparently missed the part about breaking records set in 1913, long before the dreaded creep of CO2 in our environment. This time it is the Independent Service Operator, ISO, shutting down power. Previously, PG&E shut down power to stop wildfires, but this time power was shut down because California was running out of power. It is such a pleasure to get your electricity cut off when it is about 110 degrees out. Air conditioning is so over-rated. Odds are astronomical that Newsom will propose adding solar and wind power, guaranteed to be inadequate, while banning fracking because who needs natural gas-powered power plants anyway? It is so much better for the environment if we buy electricity at exorbitant rates from coal-fueled plants located in less enlightened states.

But the real smoke is coming from the DNC. This morning one of the local news anchors described Biden’s speech as mostly accurate. He missed the part where Biden, like most of the Media, deliberately distorted what Trump actually said in Charlottesville. Sometimes the facts are just too inconvenient. I also have some doubt that Biden was speaking live. If you think about it, no one was in the audience. Even the news crews were not in the audience. He was talking to an empty screen. Everyone was watching a “live stream” of the speech. It would have been easy to tape this earlier, perhaps with multiple takes. That would reduce the risk of, well, Biden being Biden. It is hard if not impossible to compare the Biden we saw last night to the Bumbling Biden we have come to adore.

However, the real problem for the DNC is that all its speakers were spewing hate speech filled with lies and distortions. That plays well on CNN; they were standing up and applauding. It may even have played well in certain households where Donald Trump is considered the spawn of Satan. The RNC now has several days to prepare a rebuttal and it is likely to be devastating. There are already reports that most of the speakers at the RNC will be live, in front of a real audience. They may be social distancing and wearing masks, but they will be there, and it will obviously be live. The speakers will also come armed with facts. Sometimes the trial doesn’t really begin until opposing counsel has a chance to cross examine witnesses. Anyone can get away with lying if no one does any serious fact checking.

The entire DNC show was a smoke screen. Even the fake audiences were on zoom screens. In the case of Kamala Harris, the staff was too excited to realize they were showing the same people in several difference boxes. Then Kamala waved enthusiastically to people who clearly couldn’t see her.  It was pathetic. The convention ended with the Bidens and the Harris’s social distancing, wearing masks, watching fireworks in front of a half empty parking lot with cars using their emergency flashers. Thank you, COVID.

In addition, there was almost no reporting on the real convention, where far left radicals tried to verbally nudge each other even further left. When people learn about what these geniuses have in store for the rest of us, it is not going to play well in Peoria or anywhere else.

The RNC convention has close to a week to prepare. They will learn from the DNC mistakes. They will also develop a world class rebuttal. Donald Trump will speak live, every day. He may also bring some surprises. But the biggest contrast will be with the Republican speakers. Few of them will bother with hate speech. One doesn’t need people to hate Biden, it is only necessary to point out the obvious: that he is not up to the job and let him retire gracefully. But a bigger problem is that the real Donald Trump will be more than obvious, and the mythical monster created by the DNC and their supporters in the MSM will fade into oblivion. Love him or hate him, Donald J. Trump is very real, indeed.

Most candidate get a bump from their convention. So far, it is Trump who has been getting a bump from the DNC convention. Some people will naively think that the “live” speech by Biden will put the senility issue to rest. It will, for those who desperately need to believe that. But for other people, they saw a very old man, standing in one place, reading a teleprompter and occasionally moving his hands. The contrast between that and Donald Trump, who fills any stage with his soaring personality, will be beyond obvious. There is a reason Donald Trump was a media star of Celebrity Apprentice. There is a reason those managing Joe Biden are keeping him hidden in his basement.

Biden’s performance reminded me of Punxsutawney Phil, the ground hog trotted out on Ground Hog day in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, to look for his shadow. This supposedly predicts when winter will end. But, in reality, after the show Punxsutawney Phil just goes back to sleep, because that is what ground hogs do when it’s cold outside.

TDM

A Fox News correspondent interviewed people on the streets of New York. He asked them about the DNC convention, Joe Biden, and Donald Trump. After watching this for about two seconds, I knew what they were going to say before they were asked any questions. It was amazingly simple. If you had someone walking outside, on the largely deserted streets of New York, not near anyone, wearing a face mask, they loved the DNC, they hated Donald Trump and they said they would probably vote for Biden. If the person wasn’t wearing a mask, because wearing a mask outdoors when you are not near anyone is stupid, they hated the DNC, laughed at Biden, and supported Trump.

I also notice that most of the masks were a joke. My favorite is the fancy expensive masks, with vent holes, that defeat the purpose of the mask. In a close second is the cute cloth mask someone has been wearing for weeks, proud to be protecting humankind from disease. In many cases when these people talk, you can see the mask move in and out. That, of course, is evidence the mask is not working.

Anyone who has done five minutes of real research knows this. Surgical masks, worn in hospitals do a great job of screening out particles. But they must be changed about once every 15 minutes. After that they become contaminated and do more harm than good.

Some has heard about the n95 masks or perhaps the kn95 masks. They sound great, until you realize they are never intended to be worn repeatedly. You should change them every time to go someplace new or if you touch the mask. I did some research and these types of masks cost at least $2, if you buy in bulk. So, if you go shopping and you visit five stores, you probably need about $10 in masks. For these to work, you need a huge supply. They will protect you, but only for a while. They don’t protect anyone else. And, by the way, you are making it harder and more expensive for people who need these kinds of masks to get them. That is why Saint Fauci said not to wear a mask in the first place.

No one pretends cloth masks work. It is simple, if you can breathe through the mask, it doesn’t work. There has never been a study, anywhere, anytime, that showed that asking the entire population to wear masks has any impact on the spread of disease. There is a reason for that. Real doctors already know this doesn’t work. When this first started, Saint Fauci said that masks don’t work. So did the surgeon general of the United States. The science didn’t change, the only thing that changed was political pressure. So now people, who know better, are using non-existent science to encourage people to do things they know don’t work. Washing your hands works. So, does keeping away from other people. Avoid large crowds, avoid touching things that may be contaminated. If you need a mask, you shouldn’t be there. If you are sick stay home. The mask is the illusion of protection.

Now we have a candidate for President of the United States who wants to require everyone in the country to wear a mask every time they go outdoors.  Here’s the good news. Most of the COVID 19 mask Nazis understand that this is stupid.  If you to a store, you will see most people wearing a mask, but when they get out of the store, they quickly whip it off. Anyone wearing a mask, while driving alone in their car, should be given a psyche exam. Most people walking their dog in your neighborhood are not wearing a mask. Avoid those who are because they are either stupid or mentally unstable. They are almost certain to vote for Joe Biden.

The biggest lie is that we all should be terrified of COVID 19. If you are over 65 and have underlying conditions, like a heart condition, there is reason for concern. But for most people COVID 19 doesn’t even make them very sick. There are exceptions. There are always exceptions. Most people love peanuts. Peanuts taste great and they are very safe. But, if you are allergic to peanuts, they can be deadly.  The solution to this is to train people who are allergic to peanuts to avoid them, it is not to stop selling peanuts. Everything has the potential to be a serious problem for somebody. But we can’t put everyone in a bubble trying to protect them from the world. That would just increase the risk for people allergic to bubbles.

History taught us this. Europeans have been getting contagious diseases for centuries. Sometimes these diseases killed a lot of people. But they did something else. People exposed to these diseases developed some level of immunity. Sometimes this prevented them even getting the disease. If they did get the disease, their bodies would recognize it and fight back. To most Europeans, measles is a two-week inconvenience. But American Indians, who were social distanced from the world, had never been exposed to the measles. When they got the measles, it could wipe out the entire tribe.

That begs the question. Was the solution to this to permanently isolate native Americans from the world? Some would say yes, but those would be people who despise civilization itself. Most of us grew up before there was a vaccine for measles. Our mothers knew what to do. When they learned about someone your age that had the measles, they would take you over to visit. They wanted you to get the measles. That is because they knew if you got the measles when you were eight, you didn’t have to worry about it when you were 38. But if you never had the measles as a child and you got them as an adult, that could be a serious problem.

Bingo. Those moms got it right. Sometimes, letting a disease spread among people who don’t get very sick protects everyone. You only isolate those people who are at high risk. The sooner the disease spreads among everyone else, the sooner it goes away. This has happened many times throughout world history. Even the worst plagues don’t last forever. Eventually, these diseases run out of potential victims and they die. We just need to distinguish between a disease that is extremely lethal and one that isn’t. Vaccinate against polio, but not necessarily every disease on the planet. If you are under age 40, COVID 19 is not very lethal. Over 99% of people in this age group recover with no long-term effects. If you are under 20, odds are very high you won’t even get sick. And guess what, if you don’t get very sick, you are unlikely to spread it. Oh, we have all seen the commercials where it says even if you aren’t sick you can spread it to grandma. That is true, if you are getting drunk at a pool party on spring break. Walking down the street, not breathing down other people’s necks, not so much. Even the loudest voices on TV preaching this nonsense know it is nonsense. That is why Chris Cuomo, who had tested positive for COVID 19 and claimed to have severe symptoms while hiding in his basement, was caught out in public without a mask. He then got into a screaming match with a neighbor who pointed this out.

I firmly believe that most of the things we have done to slow down or stop the spread of COVID 19 have made it worse. They have certainly destroyed our economy and ruined many small business owners. We should have isolated our nursing homes, reminded people to wash their hands and advised people to stay home if they are sick.  When someone did get COVID 19, we should have isolated them until they were no longer a risk. We did that with cruise ship passengers, and it worked brilliantly. But the truth is COVID 19 is contagious, it was always going to spread and that was going to continue until it ran out of victims.  A vaccine sounds great, until you realize it is impossible to really test these vaccines in a short period of time. For at least some people, the vaccine may be more dangerous than the disease. And sometimes we don’t learn the real side effects of something like a vaccine for years. That is why you see all those TV commercials featuring lawyers who are suing drug companies because of the alleged harm done by drugs previously considered safe.

Perhaps we can all learn from a headstone in the Boot Hill Cemetery, Tombstone Arizona:  “Here lies Lester Moore. Four slugs from a 44, no Les, no more.” No one knows who is buried there. There is no record of a Lester Moore getting killed in Tombstone, although legends have been created about this. But there is still truth here. Sometimes, less is more.

TDM