First responder's lives matter.

Thanks to COVD45 and the incompetent administration whose job it is to protect the American people, we have now lost almost 86,000 Americans (as of 8:08 AM on 05/05/20). That's kind of a big deal. But we still have a president who is downplaying the seriousness of this virus, and who is doing more to protect his friends on Wall Street and making sure that the DOW does well, than prioritizing the lives of the American people.

Anyway, speaking of lives, I am posting about a black one that was lost because she was murdered by police officers. This case is  particularly tragic because the woman was a first responder.  

 "A woman was shot and killed in her Louisville, Kentucky, home by police executing a "botched" search warrant who forced their way in, surprising the woman and her boyfriend who thought the officers were burglars, her family says in a lawsuit.

The lawsuit — filed by the family of the woman, Breonna Taylor, an EMT worker — says she and her boyfriend thought they were being burglarized and he fired at the officers in self-defense. The lawsuit accuses the three officers of "blindly firing" more than 20 shots into the apartment.

After the March 13 incident, the Louisville Metro Police Department said the officers had knocked on the door several times and “announced their presence as police who were there with a search warrant.” After forcing their way in, they “were immediately met by gunfire,” Lt. Ted Eidem said at a news conference.

Taylor, 26, was shot eight times by police. Kenneth Walker, 27, was arrested and charged with assault and attempted murder on a police officer. An attorney for Walker could not immediately be reached.

Crump called Taylor's death a "senseless killing."

"We stand with the family of this young woman in demanding answers from the Louisville Police Department," he said in a statement Monday on Twitter.

The attorney called out the police department for not providing "any answers regarding the facts and circumstances of how this tragedy occurred."

"Breonna Taylor was sleeping while black in the sanctity of our own home," Crump said at a Wednesday press conference, adding, "we cannot continue to allow them to unnecessarily and justifiably kill our black women and escape any accountability."

"The defendants then proceeded to spray gunfire into the residence with a total disregard for the value of human life," the lawsuit alleges. "Shots were blindly fired by the officers all throughout Breonna's home."

The suit states that Walker had a license to carry and kept firearms in the home, and that Taylor was unarmed.

Taylor and Walker had no criminal history or drug convictions. No drugs were found in the apartment.

Her address was listed on the search warrant based on police's belief that a drug suspect had used her home to receive mail, keep drugs or stash money. The warrant also states that a car registered to Taylor was seen parked on several occasions in front of a "drug house" known to the suspect.

Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, filed the lawsuit in April in Jefferson Circuit Court alleging wrongful death, excessive force and gross negligence.

Crump said during an interview on MSNBC that Taylor was "completely innocent" and went on to say that "black women's lives matter too." The attorney also called for the charges against Walker to be immediately dropped.

A police spokesperson had no comment this week because the investigation was still ongoing.

The officers, identified as Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison and Myles Cosgrove, were reassigned pending the outcome of the investigation.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer said on Twitter Tuesday, "As always, my priority is that the truth comes out, and for justice to follow the path of truth."[Source] 

Wow! How do you botch a "no knock" warrant in such a manner? The address was at least ten miles off and the person they were looking for was already in custody. 

And now all the 2nd Amendment and NRA enthusiasts will come out in support of Mr. Walker and his right to protect himself within his own home with a legally owned and licensed forearm. 

That was a joke. They will not come out and support Mr. Walker. One of the dirty little secrets about the NRA is that they do not support the rights of people of color to legally own firearms like they do certain other folks. It's been crickets from them so far. 

Let's hope that justice will be served for this woman and her family. She was on the front lines of the fight against COVD45. She deserved more. 

Above the law.

Paul Manafort is being released to house  arrest today , in order to serve out the next four years of his sentence. The reason given is that there is a COVD19 outbreak at his prison.

This, like everything else in trump world, is a lie. Make no mistake, folks, he is being released because Donald trump wants him released.

This early release to house arrest for Manafort was orchestrated by no other than William Barr, one of the leaders of the trump crime cabal. Mr. Barr instructed the Bureau of Prisons to let him go. This is the same William Barr who had his Justice Department refuse to prosecute former trump national security advisor, Michael Flynn. The same Mr. Flynn who pled guilty  (after being properly colloquyed I might add) to lying to federal agents. Mr. trump himself fired the guy, but now he is trying to claim that he (Flynn) was railroaded.

Mr. Barr's conduct has been so outrageous that sixteen former Watergate prosecutors and two thousand former federal prosecutors (democrats and republicans) have urged the Judge in the case to disregard the actions of Mr. Barr.

I learned today that the Judge in the case has taken the extraordinary measure of delaying the justice department's request to drop the Flynn case.   I say good for him. It's nice to see that there is someone trying to stand up to the rule of law in this country.

This is where we are in America with a lawless president and the people around him who are buying into his lawlessness.

We will soon find out if the highest court in the land has also been compromised by trump. They are deciding if his tax returns and business records should be released, and by all accounts it would take an incredible amount of pretzel logic to find for Mr. trump.

Frankly, I expect them to find for him. Given the makeup of the court and their willingness to protect trump at any cost, I am sure that they will find a reason to allow him to keep his tax returns and business records from Congress and the Manhattan district attorney. I hope that they surprise me and find that the president is not above the law, but I am not holding my breath.

It's actually crazy that this issue has made it all the way to the Supreme Court, when Mr. trump promised the American people years ago that he would release his tax returns. Clearly he has something to hide. Now we are left asking ourselves, what is it?

I have an idea what it is, and let's just say that it ain't pretty. 

A killing in Georgia.

The vigilante style killing of an unarmed black man in Georgia has stirred all kinds of ugly memories for black folks.

From Emmett Till to Travon Martin, we have seen this movie before. Sadly, it doesn't make the ending any less painful.

This is what Charles Blow wrote about the latest case in Georgia for the New York Times.

"The video is short and shocking.

It’s taken from the perspective of a vehicle following a young black man running at a jogger’s pace. The jogger is 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery. Arbery approaches a pickup truck parked in the street. There are two white men, one outside the vehicle with a shotgun, 34-year-old Travis McMichael, and the other, his father, 64-year-old Gregory McMichael, standing aloft in the flatbed.

The McMichaels had reportedly chased Arbery, blocking his path at another location, at which point he had turned around and jogged another way to avoid them.

In the video, when the men encounter each other, there’s immediately an altercation. Arbery and the younger McMichael fight for control of the shotgun.

Shots are fired. Arbery tries to run away, but he is clearly wounded and his knees buckle. He collapses to the ground. The video ends.

After Arbery fell, the younger McMichael rolled over the limp body “to see if the male had a weapon,” according to a police report. There was blood on McMichael’s hands when the police arrived.

Arbery died of his wounds.

This is how the police report detailed the father’s explanation for why he and his son chased Arbery:

“McMichael stated he was in his front yard and saw the suspect from the break-ins ‘hauling ass’ down Satilla Drive toward Burford Drive. McMichael stated he then ran inside his house and called to Travis (McMichael) and said, ‘Travis, the guy is running down the street, let’s go.’ McMichael stated he went to his bedroom and grabbed his .357 Magnum and Travis grabbed his shotgun because they ‘didn’t know if the male was armed or not.’”

Arbery was not armed, and he was not the “suspect” in any break-ins. He was a former high school football player who liked to stay active and was jogging in the small city of Brunswick, Glynn County, Ga., near his home.

Neither of the McMichaels was arrested or charged. From the time this happened in late February, they have had the luxury of sleeping in their own beds, free men, while Arbery’s body is confined to a coffin, deep in a grave at New Springfield Baptist Church in Alexander, Ga.

According to The New York Times, “Gregory McMichael is a former Glynn County police officer and a former investigator with the local district attorney’s office who retired last May.” The local prosecutor recused herself from the case because Gregory McMichael had worked in her office. The next prosecutor, a district attorney, also recused himself because his son worked for the district attorney for whom Gregory McMichael had worked.

But, before the second prosecutor’s recusal, he said in a letter obtained by The Times:

“It appears Travis McMichael, Greg McMichael and Bryan Williams were following in ‘hot pursuit,’ a burglary suspect, with solid first hand probable cause, in their neighborhood, and asking/telling him to stop. It appears their intent was to stop and hold this criminal suspect until law enforcement arrived. Under Georgia law this is perfectly legal.”

The third and current prosecutor on the case said Tuesday that the case should be heard by a grand jury.

He cites the statute: “A private person may arrest an offender if the offense is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge.”

But there is a clear problem here: Arbery had committed no offense. His only offense, the thing that drew suspicion, was that he was black and male and running through these white men's neighborhood.

The recused prosecutor’s letter states: “Given the fact Arbery initiated the fight, at the point Arbery grabbed the shotgun, under Georgia law, McMichael was allowed to use deadly force to protect himself.”

The similarities here to the Trayvon Martin case are uncanny. These men stalked Arbery, projecting onto him a criminality of which he was not guilty, then used self-defense as justification to gun him down in an altercation that they provoked. Arbery was killed eight years to the month after Martin was killed, just about three hours north.

The Black Lives Matter movement that peaked a few years ago focused activism and protests largely around police killings of black people, but the moment was born of another phenomenon, one present in the Martin case and again here: anti-black vigilantism.

This form of anti-blackness marks black masculinity as menacing, and state laws protect the vigilantes’ rights to involve their weapons and their power to end lives.

The most infuriating part of most of the cases in which unarmed black men are killed, either by the police or vigilantes, is the lack of arrest, prosecution or conviction. It is not any suggestion that the killers were right, morally, but rather that in most cases it could be reasonably argued that the killings were legal.

As has too often been the case in this country, the law works to black people’s detriment and sometimes their demise.

Slavery was legal. The Black Codes were legal. Sundown towns were legal. Sharecropping was legal. Jim Crow was legal. Racial covenants were legal. Mass incarceration is legal. Chasing a black man or boy with your gun because you suspect him a criminal is legal. Using lethal force as an act of self-defense in a physical dispute that you provoke and could easily have avoided is, often, legal.

It is men like these, with hot heads and cold steel, these with yearnings of heroism, the vigilantes who mask vengeance as valor, who ­cross their social anxiety with racial anxiety and the two spark like battery cables.

Arbery was enjoying a nice run on a beautiful day when he began to be stalked by armed men.

What must that have felt like?

What must he have felt when he approached the truck and saw that one of the stalkers was brandishing a shotgun?

What must he have thought when he fought for the gun?

What must he have thought when he took the first bullet?

Or the second?

What must he have thought as he collapsed to the ground and could feel the life leaving his body?

Ahmaud Arbery was a human being, a person, a man with a family and a future, who loved and was loved. The McMichaels took all of that away on a glorious Sunday afternoon in February. Who knows what Arbery could have become. He was young, his life a buffet of possibilities. Friday would have been his 26th birthday."

Now for an update: Two of the alleged perps have been arrested. Why it took so long only speaks to the way the judicial system works in some places in America. Two career prosecutors now have some explaining to do. 

Black folks are celebrating the arrest, but I would urge caution. There still has to be a trial, and there is already a narrative is being painted about the victim being a criminal who deserved what he got. Shades of Trayvon Martin.

Just remember what happened in that trial. Somewhere in America George Zimmerman still roams free.    

No post.

Hey field hands, I've been out of pocket for a few. (Not to worry, no COVD45)

I'll be back soon.

Caption this.

The perfect team.

 *
 So the NFL draft is behind us.

 As an Eagles fan I am not a happy camper. I am still trying t figure out what our GM was doing with the picks for my birds. Still, it could have been worse, we could have been like the Cheatriots and selected an alleged white supremacist (kicker of all things) to our squad.

"After getting selected by the New England Patriots on Saturday (April 25), their new kicker Justin Rohrwasser said he would cover a controversial tattoo on his left arm – a logo of a right-wing organization.

Rohrwasser said he got the tat back when he was a teenager, USA Today reported.

"Obviously, it evolved into something that I do not want to represent and when I look back at it, I should have done way more research before I put any mark or symbol on my body," Rohrwasser stated in a conference call with reporters. "It is not something I ever want to represent, so it will be covered.”

Rohrwasser’s  tattoo is described as showing the Roman numeral III surrounded by stars, which is a symbol of the Three Percenters."  [*The "Three Percenters". Hmm, weren't they the ones who worked security for the Nazis in Charlottesville?*]  

"I wonder why (not really) ESPN failed to mention that Patriot draft pick Justin Rohrwasser has 3 percenter tattoo prominently displayed on his forearm. Don't you think it is relevant to fans & players to know if their new teammate is a member of white supremacist militia? 

— Great House (@xspotsdamark) April 25, 2020

Sports personality and columnist Jemele Hill took to social media to call out the player’s tattoo, posting: “Patriots kicker is a white supremacist. My bad, he tends to like white supremacist things. Carry on, nothing to see here.”

Patriots kicker is a white supremacist. My bad, he tends to like white supremacist things. Carry on, nothing to see here. https://t.co/CQE0S7LKO8

— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) April 26, 2020

Hill also shared a thread outlining Rohrwasser’s social media history of supporting other white supremacist content and extreme right wing personalities.
Rohrwasser, who announced he plans to cover the tattoo, has since shut down his Twitter account. 

Hill’s second tweet sums up the controversy perfectly, “For those scoring at home, a white supremacist found a job in the NFL, but Colin Kaepernick isn’t welcome.”' [Source] 

Here is the thing, the Cheatriots are free to draft who they want, and this young man is free to sport whatever tattoo he wants to on his arm. This is America. But watch all the comments you will see from certain folks about his right to wear what he wants, his freedom of choice, blah blah blah.
These are the same clowns who vilified the aforementioned Colin Kaepernick for taking a knee during the playing of the national anthem. You see how this works?

The hypocrisy in this country when it comes to racism is so funny to watch and sad at the same time.

Now, of course, this alleged supremacist will pretend that he didn't know what he was representing all this time, and he will now cover his tattoos and be a good teammate with all those Negro players the league. The right- wing writers  and media will blame it on the "woke" crowd and liberal hysteria, and some will chalk it all up to youthful indiscretion and a lack of personal growth. It started already.

The problem is, of course, that you can cover or even remove your tattoos, but that doesn't necessarily change what's in your heart. 

Go Eagles!

*Image from The Daily Mail. 

This "genius" is very unstable.

The following is an essay from the New York Times by Matt Flegenheir.  

"President Trump’s self-assessment has been consistent.

“I’m, like, a very smart person,” he assured voters in 2016.
“A very stable genius,” he ruled two years later.

“I’m not a doctor,” he allowed on Thursday, pointing to his skull inside the White House briefing room, “but I’m, like, a person that has a good you-know-what.”

Mr. Trump’s performance that evening, when he suggested that injections of disinfectants into the human body could help combat the coronavirus, did not sound like the work of a doctor, a genius, or a person with a good you-know-what.

Even by the turbulent standards of this president, his musings on virus remedies have landed with uncommon force, drawing widespread condemnation as dangerous to the health of Americans and inspiring a near-universal alarm that many of his past remarks — whether offensive or fear-mongering or simply untrue — did not.

Mr. Trump’s typical name-calling can be recast to receptive audiences as mere “counterpunching.” His impeachment was explained away as the dastardly opus of overreaching Democrats. It is more difficult to insist that the man floating disinfectant injection knows what he’s doing.

The reaction has so rattled the president’s allies and advisers that he was compelled over the weekend to remove himself from the pandemic briefings entirely, at least temporarily accepting two fates he loathes: giving in to advice (from Republicans who said the appearances did far more harm than good to his political standing) and surrendering the mass viewership he relishes.

Some at the White House have expressed frustration that the issue has lingered. “It bothers me that this is still in the news cycle,” Dr. Deborah Birx, the coronavirus response coordinator, told CNN on Sunday, adding, “I worry that we don’t get the information to the American people that they need, when we continue to bring up something that was from Thursday night.”

Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a Republican who has been willing to speak skeptically about Mr. Trump’s virus leadership, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that it “does send a wrong message” when misinformation spreads from a public official or “you just say something that pops in your head.” Asked to explain the president’s words, Mr. Hogan said, “You know, I can’t really explain it.”

No modern American politician can match Mr. Trump’s record of false or illogical statements, which has invited questions about his intelligence. Insinuations and gaffes have trailed former President George W. Bush, former Vice President Dan Quayle and Joseph R. Biden Jr., now the presumptive Democratic nominee, among many others. But Mr. Trump’s stark pronouncement — on live television, amid a grave public health crisis, and leaving little room for interpretation — was at once in a class of its own and wholly consistent with a reputation for carelessness in speech.
Still, for weeks, the president’s political team has been strikingly explicit about its intended messaging against Mr. Biden: presenting him as a doddering 77-year-old not up to the rigors of the office — and setting off on the kind of whisper campaign that does not bother with whispers.
A Trump campaign Twitter account on Saturday celebrated the anniversary of Mr. Biden’s 2020 bid by highlighting all that he had “forgotten” as a candidate, with corresponding video clips of momentary flubs and verbal stumbles: “Joe Biden forgot the name of the coronavirus.” “Joe Biden forgot the G7 was not the G8.” “Joe Biden forgot Super Tuesday was on a Tuesday.”

On Sunday, the Trump campaign made clear that the disinfectant affair would not disrupt its plans. “Joe Biden is often lost,” said Tim Murtaugh, a Trump campaign spokesman, “losing his train of thought during friendly interviews, even when he relies on written notes in front of him.”

T.J. Ducklo, a Biden spokesman, called this approach “a distraction tactic — as if anything could erase the memory of the president suggesting people drink disinfectant on national television.”
Carlos Curbelo, a Republican former Florida congressman who clashed at times with Mr. Trump and did not vote for him, said the president’s comments on disinfectants were likely to resonate precisely because he was running a race premised largely on Mr. Biden’s mental capacity.

“Given Joe Biden’s gaffes and mistakes, I think the Trump campaign had a strong narrative there,” he said. “At the very least, that advantage was completely erased.”
Mr. Curbelo said a friend had suggested recently that Mr. Trump’s toxic virus idea was “the craziest thing he ever said.”

“I said, ‘I don’t know,’” Mr. Curbelo recalled. “‘Maybe. I’d have to look back and check.’”

This history, of course, is the argument for Democratic caution. The list of episodes that were supposed to end Mr. Trump — the “Access Hollywood” tape, the “very fine people” on both sides of a white supremacist rally, insulting John McCain’s service as a prisoner of war — is longer than most voters’ memories.

The president can register as more time-bending than Teflon. Plenty sticks to him; it just tends to be buried quickly enough by the next stack of outrages, limiting the exposure of any single one.
But if most Trump admirers have long since made up their minds about him, recent polling on his handling of the crisis does suggest some measure of electoral risk. Governors and public health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci are viewed as far more trustworthy on the pandemic, according to surveys.

Lily Adams, a former aide on the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, who is now advising Unite the Country, a pro-Biden super PAC, said that swing voters in focus groups were especially dismayed at Mr. Trump’s refusal to listen to experts.
“Any person who has ever done a load of laundry, or installed a childproof lock on a cleaning supplies cabinet, or just looked at one of those skulls on the label, knows it’s an idiotic idea,” she said.

Even some of the president’s reliable cheerleaders at Fox News have not tried to defend him. And recent visitors to the Drudge Report — the powerful conservative news aggregation site whose proprietor, Matt Drudge, has increasingly ridiculed Mr. Trump of late — were greeted with a doctored image of “Clorox Chewables.” “Trump Recommended,” the tagline read. “Don’t Die Maybe!”

For Mr. Trump, such mockery tends to singe. Since long before his 2016 campaign, few subjects have been as meaningful to him as appraisals of his intellect.

It is a source of perpetual obsession and manifest insecurity, former aides say, so much so that Mr. Trump has felt the need to allude to his brainpower regularly: tales of his academic credentials at the University of Pennsylvania; his “natural ability” in complicated disciplines; his connection to a “super genius” uncle, an engineer who taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
When Rex Tillerson, the president’s first secretary of state, was reported to have called Mr. Trump a “moron” in private — one of several former senior administration officials said to have rendered equivalent verdicts — Mr. Trump challenged him to “compare I.Q. tests.” A favorite Trump insult on Twitter, reserved for Mr. Biden among others, is “low I.Q. individual.”

“He doesn’t want to feel like anybody is better than he is,” said Barbara A. Res, a former executive vice president of the Trump Organization, who recalled Mr. Trump bragging about his college grades. “He can’t deal with that. I can see it now with the doctors, and that’s why he dismisses them. He used to be intimidated by lawyers. Anyone who knows more than he does makes him feel less than he is.”
Steve Schmidt, a former Republican strategist and prominent Trump critic, said the president’s meditation on disinfectants stood apart from a trope that Mr. Schmidt came to recognize as an adviser to conservatives like Mr. Bush: “that the conservative candidate in the race was also always portrayed as the dumb candidate.”

“But a caricature is distinct from a narrative,” Mr. Schmidt said. And Mr. Trump’s reckless medical fare, he reasoned, had given adversaries a narrative by confirming a caricature.

The president’s own attempts at damage control have been scattershot. First, his new press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, accused the news media of taking Mr. Trump out of context. Shortly afterward, he undercut her case by saying his comments had in fact been a sarcastic prank on reporters, an explanation even some supporters found implausible.

He left his Friday briefing on the coronavirus without taking questions. By Saturday, when Mr. Trump tweeted that the events were “not worth the time & effort,” his opponents conceded this much:
The president had probably done something smart." [Source]

"I'm like a very smart person"

Mr. trump, how smart can you be if you don't know that the prestigious Swedish prize awarded annually to outstanding individuals in various fields is spelled, Nobel, after the person for which it is named, and not Noble? 

He will never get one ( a Nobel prize) now for sure. Not that they were going to give him one in the first place.

Just another reason to hate Obama.   

*Image from dcreport.org.

Caption Saturday.

Dallas Labradoodles, disinfectants, heat, and almost 50,000 dead.

While a deadly pandemic was heading to the Unites States, the trump administration wanted to fire one of the leading officials at the CDC, because her sounding the alarm about the pandemic was causing the stock market to tank. As it turns out, he did later on force out Dr. Rick Bright, who was a deputy assistant for preparedness and response, because Dr. Bright would not endorse an unproven drug that Mr. trump was peddling to the American people. 

As if all that isn't bad enough, we are now learning about the actions of the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, who hired a man whose job it was to....well...I will quote a portion of an article from The Independent here.

"Azar is a Republican lawyer who once clerked for the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and counts current Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh as a friend. Under George W. Bush, Azar worked for HHS as general counsel and deputy secretary. During the Obama years, he cycled through the private sector as a pharmaceutical company lobbyist and executive for Eli Lilly. After Trump’s first HHS secretary was forced out in a travel corruption scandal, Azar stepped in, in January 2018.

Two years later, at the dawn of the coronavirus crisis, Azar appointed his most trusted aide and chief of staff, Harrison, as HHS’s main coordinator for the government’s response to the virus.
Harrison, 37, was an unusual choice, with no formal education in public health, management, or medicine and with only limited experience in the fields. In 2006, he joined HHS in a one-year stint as a “Confidential Assistant” to Azar, who was then deputy secretary. He also had posts working for Vice President Dick Cheney, the Department of Defense and a Washington public relations company.
Before joining the Trump Administration in January 2018, Harrison’s official HHS biography says, he “ran a small business in Texas.” The biography does not disclose the name or nature of that business, but his personal financial disclosure forms show that from 2012 until 2018 he ran a company called Dallas Labradoodles.

The company sells Australian Labradoodles, a breed that is a cross between a Labrador Retriever and a Poodle. He sold it in April 2018, his financial disclosure form said. HHS emailed Reuters that the sale price was $225,000.

At HHS, Harrison was initially deputy chief of staff before being promoted, in the summer of 2019, to replace Azar’s first chief of staff, Peter Urbanowicz, an experienced hospital executive with decades of experience in public health.

This January, Harrison became a key manager of the HHS virus response. “Everyone had to report up through him,” said one HHS official.

One questionable decision, three sources say, came that month, after the White House announced it was convening a coronavirus task force. The HHS role was to muster resources from key public health agencies: the CDC, FDA, National Institutes of Health, Office of Global Affairs and the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. "

This would be funny if almost 50,000 Americans have not already lost their lives. If you have been watching trump's nightly coronavirus briefings you have got to be terrified. Rather than let medical professionals take the lead, Mr. trump has made himself the center of attention, and has told lie after lie while promoting himself and treating each briefing like it was a reelection rally.

Tonight, incredibly, Mr. trump seemed to suggest that we could kill the virus by simply treating it with heat or light, or, just as astonishingly, inject the human body with disinfectant to kill the virus. (Yes, he really did that.)You now have to wonder how many of his not too bright supporters will now start scooping up Clorox bleach and needles to start shooting up themselves. He also brought out one of his sycophants to try to sell the American people on the fact that warm weather will kill the virus.  It was all so bad that when he asked the Scarf Lady to back him, she could not. She had to protect whatever shred of dignity she had left.

It's a sad thing when a megalomaniac's need for loyalty extends to scientists and those who are charged with saving our lives. Sadly, this is where we are with Mr. trump, and this is the last thing that we need right now.

*Image from wjtv.com