The Guard Rails Are Gone

September 18: Greetings, fellow Travelers. I hope we will not be traveling with Trump much longer. I have missed sharing with you and had hoped by this time to give lots of useful information to help everyone secure their vote in the General Election, and also to help everyone get on board with the campaign for Joe Biden so we can all rid this country of the scourge that is Donald Trump. But fate had other plans for me.

Starting in May I began to have painful attacks that caused my health to deteriorate. I had all the symptoms of food poisoning. By August I'd lost 15 pounds. I feared the worst. Telehealth visits no longer cut it. It was time for a real visit with my doctor. An ultrasound confirmed I'm suffering from gallbladder disease, so out it must come. I'm scheduled for an operation at the end of the month. I'm distressed about the timing of this because it has put me off my game when Joe needs me---needs all of us---the most. And it hit me at a tough time, as Ron and I are still grieving the sudden loss of our beloved cat Peepers this summer.

In case you're not familiar with a gallbladder attack, I described it to the residents at the hospital as sort of a cross between being in labor during child birth and a heart attack. Today, as I await my surgery, reasonably comfortable, I watch with horror as the Jersey barriers - guard rails continue to be trucked away from this, the most lawless and corrupt government in U.S. history. When Trump was elected in 2016 even I didn't expect this greedy self-serving narcissist to tear up and shred the Constitution with such alacrity.

Presently, I have two chief concerns: One has been the utter lack of regard for human life in Trump's mishandling of the pandemic. The other is that this "most dangerous man alive," as Trump's own niece calls him will put an end to the 240 year experiment that has been our American democracy. When Bob Woodward's tape's emerged I was gripped with anger and hope all at once. I choked back tears thinking of the nearly 200,000 people Trump has willfully allowed to die in an effort to protect his re-election. My own family had gotten sick. They could have died because of this lying lawless con-artist who calls himself our "wartime President." Now we are learning that White House officials have, in effect, hijacked the CDC website and published "Covid" guidelines that are not in accordance with the CDC scientists'. Even CDC Director Robert Redfield has finally spoken out in opposition to Trump's lies about the pandemic. Trump had no problem with immediately disputing Redfield's statements about the true dateline for a vaccine (fall 2021) and the necessity of the use of masks. Trump lied about converstions with the CDC Director in order to appease the Kool-Aid Drinkers who still cling to their Q-Annon theories and belief that what they insist on calling the "plannedemic" is a hoax. 

The hope I felt in my heart was that finally someone of credibility might break through to the American people and expose Trump for the liar and criminal he is. I love that the media is using Trump's own poison against him during this election cycle. The drip-drip-drip of the Woodward tapes are hopefully eviscerating the cash-strapped Trump campaign and slowly erasing any hope that fence-sitters will pull the lever for Trump on November 3rd. Woodward's tapes are the equivelent of the Wikileaks' stolen Podesta emails that got dripped in 2016, inflicting major damage to the Clinton campaign, but with one giant difference: The source of the 2016 Wikileaks was questionable. Bob Woodward, on the otherhand, has undeniable credibility. He is, after all, one half of the Woodward-Bernstein team that brought down the crook Richard Nixon, who until Trump, was previously the most morally bereft President in U.S. history. 

Woodward's journalistic integrity is peerless. He was open and honest with Trump during his eighteen hours of interviews, but Trump, in his arrogant belief that he could turn Woodward into a believer, gave away the worst truths lurking at the bottom of the swamp that passes for Trump's wretched mind. I hope that young people have studied their American history and realize who Bob Woodward is. He changed the course of history once before, helping our nation rid itself of the threat to our democracy that was Richard Nixon. The difference then was that we still had a Republican party and they were able to convince Nixon to resign because if he didn't, they warned him, he would be impeached. Today we have the Party of Trump---a cult of personality, the GOP now fully converted into a pack of complicit sycophants. Not even the so-called RINOS can be counted on to save us. 

The Senate had their chance to save our republic from disaster back in February but chose the selfish path of Trump Party over Country and patriotism. During final arguments at Trump's impeachment trial an angry Adam Schiff asks the full Senate to consider the danger of by-passing impeachment as a means to stop the one man crime spree that is Trump by instead, waiting to let the people decide in November. "How much damage could he do in just six months?!" Schiff thunders at the chamber with fire in his eyes. "A lot! A lot of damage!" His prophetic words will be remembered down through the ages. Although the Senate Intel Committee had been briefed on what was coming at us from Wuhan, China, as we now know from Woodward's tapes, they could never have known just how badly Trump would go on to damage our nation, killing hundreds of thousands through his negligence and stubborn selfishness, and how his "economic prowess" would finally be exposed as what we had suspected all along---simply dumb luck. 

Trump has been riding the tailwinds of a successful Obama-Biden administration for three years. He juiced up an already recovering economy by squandering the nation's rainy-day funds and piled 3T onto the deficit with a tax giveaway that involved the largest transfer of wealth to the rich and donor class in U.S. history. He did this, of course, to enrich his own family for all posterity. It was not a "tax cut." It was a scam that ate up funds we could be using right now to fight the pandemic. Faced with the need for something he was a complete failure at---true economic skills and the ability to secure a competent staff---Trump's economy quickly collapsed. We are now facing the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Trump is lost and clueless, flailing about with idiots like Peter Navarro and Larry Kudlow attempting to advise him. The stock market is not the economy! Only 50% of Americans own stock, which is based on speculation.  But Trump is so ill-informed, uneducated and illiterate he's unable to grasp this vital fact. McConnell's immoral Senate dithers and delays in passing a solid economic relief package for starving Americans because the greedy selfish Party of Trump wants to protect the tax break they've secured. 

The guard rails have been removed, fellow Americans. The White House has attempted to sabbotage our Federal mail service in an attempt to allow Trump to cheat in the General Election. Thank God a Federal judge on September 17 has ordered a stay and wants all the crooked measures instituted by Postmaster Louis DeJoy (no doubt at the direction of DJT) reversed. But will it be in time? Young immigrant women are being sterilized against their will while in detention---their bodies allegedly being used for medical experiments. This, a horror right out of Joseph Mengele's playbook during the Nazi's reign of terror. William Barr is dismantling the Justice Department, piece by piece, and now proposes to hunt down, prosecute and imprison political protestors. Whoever laughs at the notion that we are inching ever closer to a quasi-fascist government the likes of Hungary and the Philippines laughs at their own peril.

Remember: If you vote for no one November 3rd, you are voting for Trump. If you write in someone, you are voting for Trump. If you vote for Kanye West, you're voting for Trump. Even if you don't love Joe Biden you MUST vote for him if we are to have any chance to save our republic from this deadly downward spiral and economic freefall. It's the right thing to do. Think of it this way: We are hurtling down a highway in a hurricane on a rattle-trap of a bus loaded with sick children on their way to the hospital. We've got bald tires and bad brakes and we're being driven by an aging bus driver. But it's all we've got. Ahead of us Trump's convoy of military tanks rolls on, "Trump 2020" flags ablaze, dumping mailboxes onto the highway and plowing down all the Jersey barriers. Vote for Biden-Harris as if your life depended on it. Because it does.