You Really Can’t Say Trump Is Thinking Rationally!

Any impartial observer would be forced  to admit that Trump’s first concern is himself. Doesn’t that make you proud of him? Come on now you can’t deny it with his recent absurdity demanding that his name appear on the checks that are being sent out to the American people as if he was the one who was giving out the money rather than the people having their money returned to them. What is it about the guy that he demands this?

It was reported:The decision to have the paper checks bear Trump’s name, in the works for weeks, according to a Treasury official, was announced early Tuesday to the IRS’s information technology team. The team, working from home, is now racing to implement a programming change that two senior IRS officials said will probably lead to a delay in issuing the first batch of paper checks.”

I suppose it goes along with the stunt he pulled when he was signing the two trillion-dollar stimulus bill. The bill originated in the House of Representatives controlled by the Democrats; it passed through the Senate with almost all the senators, both Democratic and Republican voting for it. One would expect as a sign of appreciation he would make the barely magnanimous gesture of giving credit to all those who brought it about. Yet you can’t even expect that from him. He only had Republican lawmakers at the signing. Such a pity during a time of a national emergency he is still playing politics.

Then there were the news conferences on Monday and Tuesday. Or Monday he indicated that he was some sort of king. Is this what you want from a president? “The president of the United States calls the shots. [The states] can’t do anything without the approval of the president of the United States.”  Since when?

That a pretty looney-tunes statement, I’m sure you’ll agree.  But it gets worse. Trump goes on to say, “When somebody is president of the United States, the authority is total and that’s the way it’s got to be. … It’s total. The governors know that.” He sounds like Putin, or Mohammed Bin Laden but not like any other president in the United States who served in that office.

But it gets worse. The following day after seeing how wrong he was in his assertion of total power he backed down. He tries to cover up his retreat with a lot of babble saying something to the effect that he is giving his permission to the governors to open their states to business when they see it appropriate to do so. So you’d think from that Trump had imposed the stay at home order in the first place. If you thought that you would be wrong.

Earlier this same guy said he had no authority to order all the states to issue stay at home orders under the Constitution and it was a governor’s decision. If that was the case he certainly has no authority to tell them open. So how in the matter of a couple of weeks does he do a 180 degree turn; or even worse on one day tell us he has total authority and the next indicate he doesn’t have any.

He’s trying to get the economy back up and running so he’s pushing the governors to do that. Of course there are some who never shut their states down. Aside from those he will first get the cooperation from some of the toady Republican governors but as the health experts tell us they are walking into coronavirus minefields.

As if that’s not bad enough we now see he’s like a fire chief who gets a call that there’s a fire at Charlie’s Clever Cuts Hair Salon but won’t send out the fired engines to fight it because he’s in a dispute with Charlie over the haircut he got the last time he was there. So, Trump got a beef with the World Health Organization. The time to address it is not when the fire is raging but later. Only a total moron would cut off funding to the WHO when it’s in one of the biggest fights of its life against the worldwide spread of coronavirus.

Yes – he’s doing a banged up job –

11 Comments

  1. How’s the Camu book coming, Bill? Would you let Albert march in your Paddy’s Day parade? He was a gay man, and, a committed communist. Does that disqualify him?

  2. William M. Connolly

    Free men are entitled to their opinions. Journalists have a duty to be objective. The MSM has failed miserably in that duty, becoming a lap dog for liberal democratic views, and an attack dog against President Trump’s administration.

    As for objectivity: I strive to present my views objectively, with objective data. If you disagree with my data, present countervailing data. Cite your sources. Quote whom you will. We all can learn together.

    You cannot sing all songs at once. You cannot present all sides at once.

    I find the need to defend myself. I got the MVP in football for being a good defensive linebacker in high school. I was a good defender in basketball, and six of us from Savin Hill won the City of Boston Championship, age 16 and under. We got trophies to prove it. I was a pretty good counter puncher, not a knock-out artist like Bob Mancini, but my high school boxing coaches Mr. Mitchell (Army Ranger, New England Light Heavy Weight Intercollegiate Boxing Champion from Boston College and Mr. Murphy, lightweight boxing champion at Notre Dame) taught me and Arthur Bradley and other football, hockey players (mostly) very well, the fundamentals. On the streets, in the dance halls and clubs, we honed those skills as teenagers and young men.

    Having formally studied the biologic-medical-public-health sciences for nine years and worked in those fields for a lifetime, I know how to present objective data. Having spent four years nights studying the law, I know how to present persuasive arguments for the positions I espouse. I had the high honor of appearing as co-counsel before the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) and winning a 9-0 unanimous decision on that case. Chester Darling was the lead counsel. Paul Walkowski a brilliant researcher and writer, assisted Chester and all of us throughout; Paul wrote the definitive book on that case, “From Trial Court to the United States Supreme Court: Anatomy of a Free Speech Case” (Branden, 1995) of which I was co-author.

    Everyone is entitled to their opinions. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution gives us the Freedom of Speech and Association; those freedoms include the right to gather in expressive associations, to parade, to display signs and symbols, to burn the American Flag, and the individual right to artistic, literary, symbolic speech.

    The Freedom of the Press means every individual, like Thomas Paine, can write and blog and print and distribute his own pamphlets, his own ideas, his own opinions.

    So, those are some of mine. I’m going for a daily walk.

    • William M. Connolly

      One final point for this morning-early afternoon.
      Lies are intentionally false statements.
      Pufferies, exaggerations, predictions, aspirational statements, hopeful statements, misstatements, understatements, approximations are not lies. Generally speaking is not a lie. When you say 500 billion and the exact number is 385 billion, that’s not a lie; that’s an approximation.
      Statements taken out of context can seem to be lies, but usually are not.
      For example, Trump said yesterday: Some states have no problems; some have few deaths, few cases. Don Lemon played his exact quote. He then asked his panel what they thought: The very first panelist said, “Trump is a serial liar. Look at what he said: “Some states have no problems.”

      I’ve read many of NYT and CNN purported lies, and find the ones lying to us are the leftist MSM, NYT, Washington Post, et cetera.

      P.S. I’ve got to go to work. I’m essential.

      Signed, Billy C., just another Savin Hill Billy, a conservative.

  3. William M. Connolly

    “Sticks and Stones . . . .” Liar, Liar pants on fire. I don’t see how the use of ad hominem attacks advances any thought, ( I understand we all do it to blow off steam.) You say I stink, I say you stink, how does that advance anything?
    I’ll make these milder observations, based on a lifetime of living:
    Liberals favor Big Government; Conservative favor Private Ingenuity and Private Initiative.
    Liberals Throw Stones,
    Conservatives use Stones as building blocks.
    Teddy Roosevelt:, “Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick”
    Joe Biden, “I can assure you, Obama has a big stick.”
    Rather than take the cane to someone who disagrees with me, I prefer the pen.
    The pen is mightier than the sword.
    Liberals have trouble with opposing views, it’s a remnant of Stalinist-Marxist thinking, like the Soviet Psychiatrists’ labelling dissidents “Sluggish Schizophrenics” and sentencing them to the Gulag or the Hillarians labeling Trumpians “deplorables.” Many liberals actually think conservatives are inferiors. I always preferred Bill Buckley, Bill Bulger, Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, Justices Scalia and Thomas, Pat Buchanan, Albert Schweitzer (Reverence for Life), Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul II, Golda Meier, et cetera, conservative views to liberal views. Or I should say, since I was a liberal as a youth, what Churchill said, “If you’re not a liberal when you’re young, you haven’t got a heart; if you’re still a liberal when you’re old, you haven’t got a brain.”
    It’s a Hegelian dialectical thing: Thesis, Anti-Thesis, Synthesis, or in Hegel’s words: “abstract-negative-concrete” derived from Kant and going back to Plato and Aristotle. It’s a proposition, followed by a counter proposition, followed by a new synthetic proposition, ad infinitum. No need for throwing spitballs at the teacher. Ask him questions; present opposing views. Liberals find this hard to do. They, like the Marxist-Leninist-Stalinists-Maoists before them, oftentimes resort to labeling, name-calling, identity politics, stigmatizing those with opposing views. (Pelosi compares Trump to Nero.)
    Simply put: I liked Ike; I liked Ronald; I like Donald. Trump in 2020; the Right View for America.
    Recommended Reading. Albert Camus, The Plague (how human beings react during a plague, just like they’re reacting today). Albert Camus: the Myth of Sisyphus: (about the indomitable human spirit: Sisyphus smiled when he saw that rock rolling back down the hill, and knew he’d keep on pushing it upward, undauntedly.

  4. How would you describe China’s and the WHO;s conduct in this epidemic? Would it be gross negligence or more like Comey’s extreme carelessness? How many countries are going to join China’s Belt and Covid19 initiative? Who holds China blameless? The Wuhan virus started in the PRC but they intentionally let it spread to Europe and America. Or were they just reckless? Dean Rusk always warned us about Asian Communism.

    • William M. Connolly

      Great questions, NC. Notice know one on this blog has responded to your rightful criticisms and questions regarding China’s role in all of this, it’s failure to promptly to disclose, and neither did the WHO. Italian and British doctors have said the 95% of the world’s infections could have been prevented if China was fully transparent, as I’ve heard. I’ve also heard some ask, Why are some Americans, many in the MSM, apparently covering up for China and the WHO, echoing the Communist Chinese line?
      N.B. China revised its death toll for Wuhan, increasing by 50% or more, as I’ve read today, the total number of deaths in that city. Will it revise its national death tolls, too?

  5. Matt, keep posting. It gives me something to research every day. Signed, WMC, witness for the defense. “Every person deserves a defense, even a president.”

    • William M. Connolly

      1. You forget that the President Declared a National Health Emergency on March 13. (See below)
      2. The President did state his power was “total” pursuant to that; the Vice President, Mike Pence, at the same conference said, the President’s Power was “plenary.”
      3. What are the limits on a President’s Power during a declared war, ex. WWII? What are the limits after a declaration of a National Health Emergency? I’ll await scholars’ briefs on that before dismissing it.
      4. There’s no contradiction in saying “I have the plenary power to draft” and “I’ve decided not to exercise that power” or “I’ll modify that power” or “I’ll only draft if I can’t get enough volunteers.” Just as he has throughout, President Trump has mainly used THE POWER OF PERSUASION to get governors to cooperate and THE POWER OF PERSUASION (not the WPA) to get the private sector to cooperate. He has the plenary power under the War Production Act to force private companies to act; he has used that sparingly.
      5. As for withholding for 60 days money from the World Health Organization while the U.S. investigates whether or not it has or is acting in our best interests and the world’s, I support this. President Trump did say the U.S. will decide where best to spend that money, and pointed out the billions the U.S. spends annually in helping foreign countries with medical needs, including, for example, the billions we give to Africa annually to treat AIDs. Trump said he’d continue cooperating with and helping other nations.
      6. MOST IMPORTANTLY, as to acting rationally, I remember that as soon as Trump was elected, one-thousand American psychiatrists (out of 28,000 psychiatrists and 20,000 psychologists in the U.S.) signed a letter saying Trump was unfit and a danger to the world: the man who kept us out of wars for 3.5 years, who brought the best economy to America in its history, who appointed conservative constitutionalists to the Supreme Court (not leftist activists) and who has done more for minority families (lowest unemployment, increased spending power; lower taxes; double tax credits for children; increased support for Historically Black Colleges) same for women in general (lower unemployment, less taxes) than any President in History. Yes, he’s acted rationally and in the best interests of the American people in these ways and many others, e.g.,in negotiating trade deals and in speaking out on behalf of unborn human beings, et cetera, et cetera.
      7. Now, I quote from the President’s Declaration of a National Health Emergency on March 13, retroactive to March 1. NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 201 and 301 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.) and consistent with section 1135 of the Social Security Act (SSA), as amended (42 U.S.C. 1320b-5), do hereby find and proclaim that the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States constitutes a national emergency, beginning March 1, 2020.”
      8. He preface that Declaration with these remarks:
      9. “In December 2019, a novel (new) coronavirus known as SARS-CoV-2 (“the virus”) was first detected in Wuhan, Hubei Province, People’s Republic of China, causing outbreaks of the coronavirus disease COVID-19 that has now spread globally. The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) declared a public health emergency on January 31, 2020, under section 319 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 247d), in response to COVID-19. I have taken sweeping action to control the spread of the virus in the United States, including by suspending entry of foreign nationals seeking entry who had been physically present within the prior 14 days in certain jurisdictions where COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred, including the People’s Republic of China, the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the Schengen Area of Europe. The Federal Government, along with State and local governments, has taken preventive and proactive measures to slow the spread of the virus and treat those affected, including by instituting Federal quarantines for individuals evacuated from foreign nations, issuing a declaration pursuant to section 319F 3 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 247d 6d), and releasing policies to accelerate the acquisition of personal protective equipment and streamline bringing new diagnostic capabilities to laboratories. On March 11, 2020, the World Health Organization announced that the COVID-19 outbreak can be characterized as a pandemic, as the rates of infection continue to rise in many locations around the world and across the United States. The spread of COVID-19 within our Nation’s communities threatens to strain our Nation’s healthcare systems. As of March 12, 2020, 1,645 people from 47 States have been infected with the virus that causes COVID-19. It is incumbent on hospitals and medical facilities throughout the country to assess their preparedness posture and be prepared to surge capacity and capability. Additional measures, however, are needed to successfully contain and combat the virus in the United States.”

      • William M. Connolly

        P.S.Few deny that it was Nancy Pelosi’s theatrics, flying in at the last minute with funding for the ARTs and NPR, et cetera, that needlessly held up that two trillion dollar emergency funding for a week. No wonder, she (the state of the union mad ripper-upper) and other leftist dems were uninvited to the bill’s signing.

        • No attempt at stock buy backs and CEO $$. Republicans had no selfish, greed=driven requests. Only the Dems. Your purported objectivity is a myth.

          Liar asserts an executive power nobody heard of and backs off; tries to look magnanimous, wants to remind everybody that it is his money, by signing the checks. Now this is a man of destiny.! (Some may be fearful of cashing a Trump check given the workers he stiffed in his bankruptsy-of-month heydey.)

      • Amazing. I admire every word you type, Bill. I don’t agree with a lot of it and I think some of it is bad data, but your stamina is admirable.

        This is not a declared war. Its a war, but the difference is huge.