Good news, the vaccines are here, bad news, Covid-19 is never going away, good news, its danger could lessen…

Those promising Covid-19 vaccines should be available soon, although I wonder if soon enough.

I think it was fairly early on in this pandemic of the past year that I opined that it would eventually fade away and that we would not in the future be able to pinpoint at exactly what point it all ended.

Maybe I don’t read enough. I see that experts have been trying to tell us all along that we will likely never get rid of this thing. The best that we can hope for is to control it or that some time in the future, with the vaccines, it will evolve into something like the flu and we will have to get Covid-19 shots each year, or that it might even evolve into something like the common cold (which I guess could be deadly to some).

I don’t know where that leaves the anti-vaxxers. They not only endanger themselves and their loved ones but all of us. Their obstinance reduces our ability to achieve herd immunity.

But still, am I ready to be the first to get a Covid-19 innoculation? A guinea pig? We’ll see. I imagine I am not in the priority group anyway. That buys me time.

I hope that a President Biden can do and will do what the denier-in-chief Trump did not. He should mobilize all forces available and necessary to fight Covid-19 and to distribute the vaccines (the latter being a crucial method of fighting the bug). To me that would include the military, primarily the medical branch of it of course, but all available resources in the armed forces. I often wonder why we don’t make better peacetime use of our military, such a waste of manpower (that includes womanpower — the pronoun man is gender neutral in this context).

And testing, testing. Why is it that all available forces, civilian and military, cannot be mobilized and used for mass testing of us all? Early on some countries were providing drive-through testing for everyone — not the U.S. It worked, well until it did not. Testing of course is just a tool to determine what further steps need to be taken. It does not in and of itself kill the virus or change human behavior.

And I have no understanding nor sympathy for the anti-maskers and those who refuse to adhere to social distancing guidelines. No I realize we are not all perfect and there can be times when even we believers violate the rules by accident or necessity or lapes in judgment.

That leads me to comment on the fact that some of our leaders do us all a disfavor by saying one thing and doing another. My own state’s (California) governor, Gavin Newsom, one day declares all should wear masks and social distance and the next has dinner with friends and family at an exclusive high-priced restaurant, and this while he and others have taken actions that have led to the closure of so many restaurants and other small businesses. He’s not the only one. Even Dr. Fauci was caught with his mask down sitting between and close to two others in the stands at a baseball game.

How do you convince folks to take extreme measures when you don’t yourself?

And to those who claim the pandemic is all a hoax: well the earth is really flat. We never landed a man of the moon (that was filmed in the desert of New Mexico), the Holocaust never happened (even though the Nazi’s were so proud of their vile work that they filmed it themselves), and one more thing: you were never born — it’s all a hoax.

To meet or not to meet, the Covid dilemma

Before and during Thanksgiving day I was driving my semi truck down the road. Lots of folks out there. Apparently the stay-at-home advice was not heeded by many — and I am not criticizing. One has to make one’s own decisions (even if that might affect others).

Hey, I don’t stay at home. Of course my job is to drive up and down the highways and byways. Do I worry about getting or spreading Covid-19? Only in the recesses of my mind. Kind of like I think of my ultimate demise.

Do I take precautions? Not much more than I always have since I began trucking 25 years ago. The big difference is that I wear a face covering — but usually just a bandana, and I only put that on when I go inside, unless otherwise required, and so far it only seems to be required when I go inside a place.

But I have always washed my hands a lot, even before I got into trucking (kind of compulsive that way). But once I got into trucking and had to go to so many dirty places, especially restrooms on the road, yeah, I wash them a lot. I’ve been using hand sanitizer like crazy these past 25 years. When the pandemic hit almost a year ago now I was caught with only a little left in a small bottle. For several weeks I could not find any to replace it. Somehow I managed to squeeze by, so to speak. The irony of that to me, the need for hand sanitizer and the run on it and the constant advice to use it, was that before all that I was reading that overuse of hand sanitizer was causing bad germs to become immune to it and thereby causing a public health hazard. You don’t hear that from the experts now.

At the beginning of the pandemic I wondered if I ought to get off the road, maybe even retire (71 and still working). By age and the fact maybe that I have a somewhat dormant but incurable cancer would seem to put me in a high-risk category for Covid. But the security of having that every two-weeks paycheck kept me in it. Besides, I live alone. What would I do? Like so many of us foolhearty folks I did not put back enough money each month during my regular working years so that I would be a millionaire by now. If I had I would find things to do. I would live in Spain. That is another story. I have alluded to it in previous posts. I can’t go there now because of the Covid travel restrictions and the pandemic there. But I have faith it will all be over in the not-so-distant future. But I hope it is not so distant because at my age the future is running out. My mom lived to 103, but my chances are not good.

But back to the original theme here. Life in the pandemic. While so many have lost their jobs, I retain mine as an essential worker, and while I thought the working conditions out on the road might get worse with the pandemic, for me for the most part they have improved. And I attribute most of that to the pandemic. Before I go into that, I will give you the downside. They have closed most of the truck stop restaurants. I’m forced to live on fast food (very unhealthy and boring) and store-bought ready-made sandwiches. I mean I always did for the most part but every few days or so I would have a real sit-down meal and try to have a balanced one, often going for the buffet so that I could have some veggies with my slabs of meat. A lot of drivers carry their own food. I only carry an emergecy stash of dry food. I don’t have a refrigerator and carrying a cooler with ice is a nuisance I have no time for. Also, even if I had a refrigerator, that would mean I’d have to spend time preparing meals. Don’t have a lot of time for that. Perhaps a microwave would work.

But back to how things have improved. For some reason waiting times at docks seem to be less (there are exeptions of course; I’m just talking overall). I think this is because demand for freight has increased (why, I don’t know for sure, it just has) but truck capacity (availability) has decreased somwhat, thus the need for efficiency. Lots of drivers have retired or gottten off the road because of the pandemic. Also in the last few years we in trucking have been forced by law to keep electronic logs and the hours of service rules have been tightened somewhat (although they have also been loosened somewhat with changes recently — figure that one). No more cheating so you can drive farther. Cheating on logs was once just an accepted part of the game (wink, wink, nod, nod). I got a kick out of how the phenomenon used to be referred to by dispatchers and trucking publications as using your hours to your best advantage. But when the e-logs were forced upon us, everyone just admitted — we can’t cheat anymore! “We’ll all go broke”, they screamed. Most long haul truckers are paid by the mile, whether they are employees or owner operators (owner-ops may be paid by the load but that is usually calculated by mileage). Anyway, with some drivers dropping out the pay was raised for us who stuck with it. Hey, if you have a license to drive a truck you can’t be out of a job. You might have to settle for one you don’t like (for a time) due to personal circumstances, but there are a lot of jobs out there. But like my mom used to say: “not everyone wants to do that job”.

I haul a lot of produce (but I haul everything, almost). I used to have to stand around in warehouses or coolers for hours on end, doing nothing more than watching my truck being loaded (or unloaded). Some places actually required me to do so rather than waiting in my truck. Now most places I go don’t even allow me on the dock. Hooray for that! I can catch some sleep, do my paper work, eat a sandwhich, write a blog post, watch a movie. We work long days out here, like 14 hours (we used to work 18 or 24).

But the elephant in the room is that there is an ongoing pandemic and the vaccine we hope that will erase it can’t come soon enough.

(I have one good truck driving friend who continues to call the pandemic a hoax. Denial is one way to deal with it.)

And then there is the question: who want’s to go first taking the vaccine?Besides the anti-vaxxers, there are a lot of us who believe in vaccines but who at the same time realize that there are risks from them. Most everyone I ask says they want to see how it works on others first. Well if we all do that then how effective will the vaccine be? Can’t reach herd immunity if not enough folks take it.

And there is reason for concern. Read the following excerpt from the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine:

“In April 1955 more than 200 000 children in five Western and mid-Western USA states received a polio vaccine in which the process of inactivating the live virus proved to be defective. Within days there were reports of paralysis and within a month the first mass vaccination programme against polio had to be abandoned. Subsequent investigations revealed that the vaccine, manufactured by the California-based family firm of Cutter Laboratories, had caused 40,000 cases of polio, leaving 200 children with varying degrees of paralysis and killing 10.” (The Royal Society was my internet source. I first heard this on NPR — gee I got my first polio shot in that era, fortunately not in that batch)

So anyway, now I am debating on whether to meet my two daughters for an after-Thanksgiving informal get together, and whether we should try to do this inside or outside. It’s been since my birthday in August since I have seen them. We are all still healthy. Here I go everywhere, I mean like even th local supermarket when I am home. And I worry about this.

These are weird and perplexing and scary times.

 

You really have to be your own censor of the news

The controversy on internet platforms censoring content seems to have begun when Twitter, the favorite vehicle of President Trump to spew anything off the top of his head, truth be damned, decided to put disclaimers on his material.

Well, off the top of my head I have to think that Twitter and Facebook and other such internet platforms may have a right to censor content, even a moral duty, but the ultimate censor has to be the public.

If you and I as the content consumer don’t have the good sense to be skeptical and compare information from diverse sources, we are either intellectually lazy or lacking in brain power (the latter which may not be our fault).

A democracy such as ours that lets everyone vote as long as they possess the requisite qualifications, primarily citizenship and age, without regard to social status, general curiosity or intelligence, takes somewhat of a gamble. The masses may too willingly follow those who are up to no good, and /or some power-hungry charismatic.

Intellectually lazy or ignorant people or, perhaps, disillusioned ones, can be susceptible to propaganda, slanted reporting or out and out lies, repeated over and over.

But one of our most sacred rights is freedom of speech. It’s in the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, the first ten known as the Bill of Rights.

Without freedom of speech there really is no individual freedom.

We certainly don’t want a government having control over our thoughts, be they in our head or transmitted privately or publicly to others.

But neither do we want Facebook or Twitter to censor us, the latter ironically being legitimized by the president using it as his de facto official message medium, even if he does complain if it censors or puts fact warnings on some of his messages.

Through our national history there have been attempts at governmental censorship, such as alien and sedition acts, but eventually they were struck down as being contrary to free speech. A non-democratic tyrannical government is quick to control speech.

Back to Facebook and Twitter, or other such platforms. In one way I could see them as like a private publication or a news organization who can edit and control its own content.

On the other hand, these internet platforms are somewhat like a public utility. They have become a prime purveyor of information (not necessarily good or correct) to the whole world. People walk around staring at their phones, probably checking up on Facebook and Twitter and the like.

Dating back to early radio days the Federal Communications Commision enforced something called the “Fairness Doctrine”, which by law required stations to provide blanced content on public issues. That Fairness Doctrine went by the wayside with complaints that it was actually a hindrance to free speech. But something that is still in effect today is the “Equal Time” rule, but it, as I understand it, only applies to political candidates. It basically says that whether free or paid, candidates must have equal access to air time. You’d have to get a lawyer to explain the ins and outs of that. But the whole idea of the government regulating content regarding public issues on the airwaves is explained I think in this paragaph from a 1959 U.S. Senate report on the issue of the fairness (keeping in mind the actual “Fairness Doctrine” is no longer in effect).

“Broadcast frequencies are limited, and, therefore, they have been necessarily considered a public trust. Every licensee who is fortunate in obtaining a license is mandated to operate in the public interest, and has assumed the obligation of presenting important public questions fairly and without bias.”

But back to the issue of all of us sorting out the veracity of the news: when fact and opinion are blended, you really have just opinion, in my way of thinking. Of course there is that area of unknown. It is sometimes stated that you have a right to your own opinion but not your own facts. But what to do or think when facts are not readily known?

It seems to me that the main sources of fact for our presidential election, including traditional news media, election officials, and even most of the official voices of our two main political parties, have acknowledged directly or indirectly that Joe Biden is the president-elect. Even President Trump has, except with the caveat that somehow the election was unfair (his charge, minus specific facts). Meanwhile election officials, including one he just fired, report all appears to have been on the up and up.

Some Republican Party folks not wanting to incur the rath of Trump or his faithful and potential voters who might oust them, hang on to recount all votes, that is all “legal” votes, as if it is assumed there were likely to be a ton of illegal votes.

So the presidential transition is in a state of flux, wasting time and energy that could go into fighting the pandemic and securing the nation against enemies who would take advantage of a power vacuum.

This weird and dangerous turn of events in the transition of power in what at least has been the world’s leading democracy and still is, for the time, has come to pass by the arrogance of a narcissist and demagogue, Donald Trump, aided and abetted by unverified information and malicious propaganda on the internet, as well as by the power of ignorance.

Usually there would be some requirement that there at least be an indication of widespread skullduggery to force a do-over in counting on any scale or investigations. But election officials and the courts have not seen any.

Still, we keep hearing charges from Trump and his enablers that the election was rigged and yet no hard evidence has been presented, just assertions. Anyone can make a claim but backing it up is a different matter.

No one can argue that Trump did not present the electorate with something different than the same old, same old in politics.

Trump I suppose deserved a chance. Well he had it. He had four years of it.

He and others claim he did a lot of good things. It appears that a substantial part of the electorate, measured by both the popular and Electoral College vote (albeit not yet all certified), decided he needed to be replaced. In the past we would have proceeded on the realistic assumption with an orderly transition.

Anyway, whether Trump did a good job (or not) seems obvious to me. NOT. But by what measure? Now maybe we are into opinion.

But he lost the election, one in which no serious irregularities were indicated or found. And if the Democrats were as crafty and clever as the Trump enablers charge, why didn’t they just make the election a landslide up and down the ballot?

There was either widespread and game-changing cheating or there was not. To pursue the idea that there was we need substantial evidence, otherwise the whole integrity of free and democratic elections is gone.

I began this as an essay on internet censorship. But I close it by suggesting we all sort out the garbage and move on, that we do our own censorship, that we block the obviously bogus stuff out of our serious consideration.

I did not mean that we can’t be open to different points of view or honest interpretation — but I stress “honest” interpretation.

The less you know the more you know about Covid-19…

Along with a companion he came waltzing into the drug store and before anyone could challenge him he declared he could not wear a mask because he had COPD. A clerk cheerfully said that was OK.

And then he proceeded to announce that there were only two types of masks that were of any use anyway (I did not catch which ones) and that all others were useless. I was wearing my trusty bandana (which I have read may not be of much use). With his female companion nodding in approval all the way, he also declared “it was on Good Morning America”.

I don’t want to appear to make judgments based on one’s appearance or dress or manner (except doesn’t eveyone? weren’t we taught that?), but he did not look like a real expert in these things to me. Well, at least he was not declaring that the wearing of masks in general was silly or useless, even if he did consider himself exempt (I have trouble breathing with them myself — I have wore other types other than my bandana).

We do have a lot of experts out there. I have noticed that those who appear less educated by dress and more so by manner seem to know more about Covid-19 than the doctors and scientists with all their studying and experience.

What I am trying to say is that smarter people know enough to know what they do not know. Those down the ladder know it all.

Currently 1 in each 400 Americans have tested positive for Covid-19. And of course not everyone is tested. We know some are asymptomatic, some suffer as they might with the normal cold or flu, and others get deathly sick, thousands die, here in the U.S. There is a huge upsurge in cases and deaths now, although the death rate is said to be lower than last spring. Even so the current daily death toll is 1,120. (Figures from the New York Times)

From USA TODAY: “the U.S. has reported almost 11 million cases and more than 245,000 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University.

For you it’s-no-worse-than-the-flu-fans, according to Health Magazine, the 2019-2020 flu season is estimated to result in 24,000 to 62,000 deaths.

And as we have all been informed, the symptoms from Covid can be excruciating and there can be residual or permanent side effects and in some cases the disease returns to individual patients.

If you are looking for an intelligent and informative article about the Covid-19 pandemic you may not get it here today, more like just random, and hopefully, intelligent observations. Too much math for one thing, too much for me. Hard to make sense of the plethora of statistics and avoid mixing apples and organges. More people tested = higher numbers, higher rates? (maybe not necessarily. I do need to study all this and make better sense of it).

Are there still those out there who think this pandemic is a hoax? Yes, probably. An elaborate one I must say. No I did not suggest I believe that. If I did then nothing in the world would make sense.

Yes, in this resurgence of the pandemic, as hospitals and funeral parlors fill up, there are those who seem oblivious and insensitive. I read a story in the New York Times that included remarks from a man in El Paso, Texas whose family member, a 49-year-old mechanic, died. I steal a portion of that story below:

— Mr. Alvarado said it was difficult to contend with such loss even as people around him seemed not to be taking the virus seriously, believing it was being overhyped or thinking, somehow, that it was not dangerous. —

(The above paragraph from the New York Times, 11-13-20)

There has been a lot of inconsistency in messaging from the experts on what precautions we should take, including at first that masks for the common folks were not necessary, until they were. The top infectious disease doctor admitted he and others initially discouraged the wearing of masks because they did not want a run on them, thus depleting the supply for the medical community.

Since then it has been declared that indeed we all should be wearing masks — and most places I go people are. And then there was the issue of whether the mask protects others from you or you from others. We got mixed messaging. But now the line is it goes both ways — this probably because people are more liable to wear a mask if they think numero uno is being protected (but common sense dictates that wearing a mask would at least protect the wearer somewhat if it could stop some of those airborne particles that spread the Corona virus — oops, I sound like I know more than the experts).

By most accounts we are in the midst of a major resurgence of Covid-19, and for some reason, at present, especially in the central and rural parts of the country — coincidentally? in you know who country where folks believe it is all overblown and they do not have to wear masks and they can mingle close at parties and events, and church, and by God it is their right.

So anyway, to me it seems that our federal government under the leadership or lack thereof from you know who (I am not mentioning his name; hopefully he is history) totally mismanged this thing by not managing it.

But Hillary Clinton should probably thank her lucky stars (of which she has few maybe) that she did not win the presidency four years ago after all.

There is the great conundrum facing us now, as it did in the beginning of this pandemic:

Do you shut nearly everything down and pay people to stay home? How long can that last? We’ll all go broke, including our government, or crazy or both. Or do you try a piecemeal approach and let local entities or states decide what fits them? We saw how the latter worked. We’re getting a super resurgence.

I’m running out of time here — my real job awaits. I am an official “essential worker”. I haul freight, everything from beer to wood, both equally essential commodities I would say.

But the cheerful (?) news I heard the other day from a leading expert is that even with the promise of a vaccine soon we are in this thing probably till 2024 and when we reach herd immunity — about 50 percent of us get the virus.

On the positive side, we do have better treatments now and vaccines are due to come on line within the year or next several months (not all at once I am sure — it may be some time before they are commontly available — not sure).

I hope to write a more thoughtful essay on this when I can piece more of it together — too much math and science. I like both subjects, just wish I was better at them…

p.s.

The most terrifying thing about Covid-19, especially for someone who lives alone as I do, and is in his old age, is about people in hospital wards who are dying from it and cannot see their families before they pass — so gruesome for the patient and the family.

And this I heard on NPR from a nurse: where she lives people give her weird looks because she wears a mask — and there are people dying all around her. She must live in you know who country.

Some people just want to be mad and consider facts to be whatever fits their belief…

NOTE: So far all the challenges to Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election appear frivolous. Some Republicans are beginning to admit it but key leaders hold out for their own political purposes. As I understand it the Electoral College meets Dec. 14 to cast the votes for which we already know the outcome and congress is set to certify Jan. 6. President Trump’s term ends Jan. 20. Unofficially, Joe Biden has 306 electoral votes (270 were needed to win), Donald Trump 232 (updated). Unofficially, still, out of nearly 150 million votes by actual voters cast, Biden is I think 5 million ahead and with recounting he likely only stands to gain. I guess we have no choice but to let the challenges work their course (not much time). But would you or I be able to challenge something in the courts without substantive evidence? No, and we could even be sanctioned for filing a frivolous lawsuit.

---

Saw a pickup truck flying flags on each side of its bed. There was a sign on it that read: F… Biden and F… you (the F word was spelled out).

Two things come to mind from that: first, now there is someone with issues. Second: now you know how I felt these past four years (well not the second part of the expletive).

Apparently a lot of people in this nation do not accept news or have much use for it if things do not go their way. Facts mean nothing. And I am not necessarily referring to the driver of the pickup. That person may have accepted the news and was just making a personal statement. Even so, it may be representative of the attitude I address here.

That defiance is the only way to explain both President Trump’s refusal to accept the fact he has not been re-elected to serve a second term and concede and the proliferation of false reports on the internet about election fraud. Trump knows better but he also knows a lot of folks don’t. And he uses them. It did help get him into the White House. He’d love to use them again. It’s been fun and profitable.

I wonder about folks who do not trust mainstream news (called “lamestream news” by those who make a living pandering to the masses of people who never quite picked up on the concept of objectivity, at least not in public policy issues or politics).

They don’t like what they hear on, say CNN, so they listen to Fox and Hannity and Ingraham, and they listen to Rush Limbugh and the like, who spew their snarky unconstrutive vile venom. These news consumers pick up stray things on the web that seem to match their suspicions about the latest conspiracy.

But here is what puzzles me. I’ll bet in other matters they are more objective, discerning, and careful.

An example: an independent truck driver might have no use for that mainsteam thing — heck, they’re all liars. I go for what I hear on Fox. It’s more to my liking. But that same truck driver wants the truth, whether he or she likes it or not, when checking the weather up the road. Now the driver would like to read or hear that the weather is fine and the roads are dry and dusty. But that information is going to be of no use and could even cause a problem if he or she did not plan for bad weather ahead and that is what’s ahead, contrary to the erroneous report.

But maybe it is because a lot of people feel disconnected and in fact are disconnected — due largely to their own willful ignorance — from the real world of politics and national and world affairs and are just willing to deal with it as fodder for conversation and gossip, with facts just something one can twist and turn to suit one’s self.

(While most of us are not insiders in the game of politics — a serious game with real consequences — we keep apprised of current events on a more neutral basis to the extent we can.)

But some folks just like to be mad or combative, like my pickup driver.

Myself, I like to listen to opinion and argument, but only if it is based on fact and evidence.

But the mainstream, to my dismay, and its offshoots, such as Fox, have mixed it all up and have blended straight news reporting with opinion and have tried to turn it into some entertaining format where viewership, hits, readership are more important than accuracy or full presention of fact.

I think the mainstream goes after the populace as a whole for its audience while the offshoots go for a demographic — a segment of the population that wants its information laced with doses of anti-establishment zingers.

News has always been a commercial commodity.

But even with that fact, there have been times and places where people with integrity and the public good at heart saw to it that news was presented in a balanced way, with a premium on accuracy and a thorough as possible presentation of facts.

I still stick with the mainstream.

I am also thankful for public television and radio, which has the advantage of being free of pressure of profit (although it is dependent upon philathropy and and the good will investments of corporate donors). The fact it exists is testimony that there still is a sense of civic duty and public responsibility out there.

(And I always feel that I have to insert here that public broadcasting has a slightly left-leaning or progressive tint to it — but if I am correct in that assertion I think it is because it wants to appeal to all, not just a status quo power structure of the haves, the powerful, over the have nots and powerless. On the whole, however, public broadcasting is neutral. But some of its stations broadcast something called “Democracy Now” that to me seems like the Fox News of the left, defintiely not neutral. I don’t know its current status but my local PBS station at one time refused to broadcast it.)

Except for the out and out false news purveyors (ironically Trump may have coined the term “fake news” and he is its inspiration) we need all the actors: the mainstream, the not-so-mainstream, even the ideological press. In a way they are all a check on each other or they broaden the conversation.

To the extent that something like Fox News does not go completely off the boards, it serves as I stated, a check to keep CNN and the New York Times and such a little more careful. No news outlet is perfect or without fault. There are errors, poor judgment, sloppy reporting perhaps at times, and occasionally out and out fabrications (which hopefully are discovered before they do too much harm), even from top-rate sources.

I could only wish that the news consuming public was a little more creful.

But I will stick to the mainstream. I want facts. I am also a truck driver. I want to know: is there snow and ice over the mountains? I want to believe it is sunshine all the way. But that belief won’t get me through.

p.s.

And about conspiracy theories: one thing that keeps them going is that sometimes they are correct or we discover there were conspiracies we never would have imagined, such as our own government intentionally poisoning people in experiments decades ago — hey I heard this on NPR; I trust NPR.

Also, Mr. Limbaugh has announced that he has terminal lung cancer. He often talked of his enjoyment of smoking cigars, and he mocked what he saw as an over-protecting nanny state that discouraged smoking. He has been highly influential in U.S. politics with his daily radio ultra right-wing screeds aimed at an wider than one might expect alienated demographic.

Still more: Even Fox News is reportedly moving on past the era of Trump. Market forces may dictate…

A Trump concession almost would seem worthless; we need a unified election process…

Nixon did it in 1960, Al Gore in 2000, John McCain in 2008, and even Hillary Clinton in 2016 — that is gave gracious concession speeches after hard-fought campaigns, some of them bitter.

Will President Donald Trump do so now in 2020?

So far, no. But the loss is not official yet. But it looks like Trump’s lease on the White House is up Jan. 20, by law the last day of his term, and I believe congress will officially accept the votes by the electors and declare the winner by early January.

Actually, the final word should be Dec. 14 when the Electoral College meets to cast votes dictated by majorities of voters in each state.

That buys him some time. But if he thinks he is going to win a second term via the courts, I think he may find he has gone to the well one time too many on that in his life.

I’m not sure a concession speech by Trump would have much meaning. I mean it would be good for purposes of clarity in the body politic, sending a clear message to anyone, here and overseas, that a transition is in the works. But Trump never seems sincere about anything. His penchant for just telling bald face lies, as opposed to the normal political exaggeration or parsing of words, ruins any credibility he might otherwise have.

He and some of his supporters may be clinging to the notion that there was enough hanky panky in the voting process that if identified and presented in court would change the outcome of the election.

There is no there there in the charges it seems — I mean in this high stakes game Trump’s legal team would have presented clear evidence, not just wild accusations, by now.

Now I will admit here, I think it a strange process we go through in these presidential elections when it is the TV networks and the Associated Press wire service who seem to be the quasi official callers of the contest, even though they have no legal or constitutional authority to make that determination. But hold on here — I realize that they are not trying to interfere, that they are just in competition to be first with the news and to provide information the public demands and does need. I once worked in journalism, and let me tell you, there is no point is holding back to be second (accuracy notwithstanding). As a news consumer I try to go to where the latest word is, rather than read or watch old news.

But I imagine there are some Trump supporters who think there was a conspiracy — a well organized and crafty one — to flood the vote count locations with phony or extra last-minute or otherwise fraudulent ballots to change the election (the old story of dead people voting). Such things have been done in American elections.

One of the most famous, not in a presidential election but a congressional one, was when the late president Lyndon Johnson as a U.S. Senate candidate “found” some ballots at a rural Texas outpost at the last minute, just barely enough to put him over the top. He was known derisively as “Landslide Lyndon” by many for a long time.

It will always be rumored that John F. Kennedy won the squeaker of an election for president in 1960 due to some suspicious ballots in Chicago thanks to old-time Democratic Party boss Mayor Richard Daley and even mafia connections of JFK’s father.

So, if there is a real case Mr. Trump, present it. There is some recounting going on now. Biden may lose some votes, but so could Trump. Biden could even gain more votes.

So far, several lower courts have rejected Trump claims of fraud for lack of evidence.

I am fairly sure Trump himself does not believe his accusations or claims that he really won. He’s just being a sore loser. He’s also trying to stay relevant and preserve his political brand for his personal economic interests and mischief.

But we need to revise the whole presidential election process by making it uniform in rules and procedures among the states for the sake of transparency and clarity and assurance of integrity and to make it possible to more quickly determne the winner and have the official word, not just the journalists’ word.

Also, for the I don’t how many times, I wish the news presenters acted a little more neutral and news and opinion were separated like I was taught it was supposed to be in journalism class. It would do a lot to up the credibility of what most people call “the media”. I do not like that term because it is so often used in a pejorative or derogatory way. But “press” is outdated and journalists or journalism does not always serve as the proper alternate.

And one footnote:

While Richard Nixon was gracious in defeat in 1960, he was definitely not a few years later when he lost the governor’s race in California and made his bitter “you-won’t-have-Dick Nixon-to-kick-around-anymore speech,” essentially blaming the press (the correct term then) for his loss.

Maybe Trump will give one of those.

But like I suggested earlier, even if Trump turns gracious would you believe it? No. Even so, it might be helpful. It might actually work for his legacy too.

Nixon was reviled for many years — and still is by many — after winning two terms in the White House but then being forced to resign (the first and only president of the U.S. to do so). But he was gracious upon leaving and over the later years of his life managed to somewhat repair his image.

Not that I care, but Trump can take solace in that people soon forget and future generations won’t be able to feel what these times were like, so if he can play nice and let the history books tell of his great powers of strengthening the economy which were degredated by a pandemic no one could have foreseen or helped (this could be the story, truth notwithstanding), he might go down as not the greatest of presidents but a consequencial and able one.

Even if he disparages folks who do not have the same skin tone of himself (orange?) he helped them more than anyone by his work in the economy — a high tide lifts all boats. It could be told that way.

(Don’t believe or take with a grain of salt everything you read in the history books.)

And, ironically, even though Trump offered poor or no leadership in most of the efforts to fight the pandemic, he did direct the warp speed operation to develop a Covid-19 vaccine. There has been promising news on that front.

On a right-wing radio talk show I heard the other day, the host and some callers agreed Trump lost among women who had initially supported him and that lost him the election.

All I can say is “thanks ladies”.

But you know what The Donald will say about you ladies: you are very nasty.

p.s.

I did not list some of the other presidents in recent times who made consession speeches — just noting that.

Trump had a unique, if scary, style that worked for him until it didn’t…

There is a certain irony about Donald Trump’s methodology. He probably could not have accomplished anything if he had not acted in the way he did but acting the way he did is what ultimately lost him a second term as president of the United States.

I’m not one to judge on what his accomplishments, that is ones in a positive sense, are and it may depend upon your point of view, so I am partially going by the judgment of others:

His administraton with the help of the Republican-controlled senate has reshaped the whole federal judiciary, making it more conservative than ever. The Supreme Court now has a 6-3 conservative majority (we like to think our august jurists are non-partisan and non ideological, debatable on the former, near impossible on the latter). For many of us that is not an accomplishment but that was the goal of the Republican Party and millions of voters who think liberal rulings through the years have taken away their rights to enact and uphold laws via their elected legislators. And they think some of the rulings have eroded what they see as important social values.

He created a new branch of the armed services, the Space Force. We have been in the space age for several decades, perhaps it was time.

Trump got a major tax bill passed that while criticized as being a boon for rich people and corporations and not so much for the little guy seemed to result in a booming economy — right up until the pandemic hit.

While he failed to take on the pandemic like the bombing of Pearl Harbor, mobilizing the full force of the federal government and calling for sacrifice among the populace, he did enact a warp-speed program to develop a vaccine. It may yet prove successful and is moving along faster than ever thought possible, with assurances that safeguards are being followed nonetheless.

Trump has a unique foreign policy that is hard to discern, other than he prefers dictators over western-style democracies and our long-valued allies. But he has managed to wind down a lot of our fighting in the Middle East, and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has not launched a missile on us yet. And some of the Eurpean NATO nations who had lagged in paying their rightful share of the dues for their own defense have agreed to put a little more into the collection plate. He has also managed to get some more Middle East nations to recognize Israel.

While he has been a terror on environmentalism, opening up wilderness areas to oil or mineral exploration and cancelling protections on various endangered species, at the same time without any fanfare he forced some major corporations to pay up for the damage to some so-called Super Fund pollution sites.

On illegal immigration his methodology has been far too brutal, too inhumane, and he has used unecessarily foul discourse in talking about undocumented immigrants — but he has helped stem the tide of people who cost our own citizens jobs and hopefully made it somewhat more diffcult for bad actors to enter. We are often talking about Hispanics when we discuss illegal immigration and some would think Hispanic immigrants already legally in the U.S. would resent his policies. In fact, many support his polciies. They did it the legal way and have their own interest or livelihoods to protect just as do all other legal citizens, native born and otherwise.

Some black or people of color, often thought to be among a block who would automatically oppose Trump, actually supported him. If the reports are correct, often his supporters are male. And I think some of that has to do with a macho image. Even so, the color of one’s skin or ethnicity does not necessarily dictate one’s feelings on what we commonly refer to as law and order and the work ethic.

Ok, I’m going to stop reaching here for possible Trump accomplishments. But what I am suggesting is that whatever he has done that could be considered good or reasonable, your own personal politics notwithstanding, he, because who he is, because the way he has navigated his own life, could not have done it without his outlandish bullying, insulting methods. It is not pretty but it has always worked for him, that is until it did not.

Trump built up a lot of resentment and fear in the way he conducted himself, like the ruthless dictator who had no use for the norms of democracy and civilized governance. That resentment and fear was enough to awaken a sleeping giant among the ranks of eligible voters. More than 4 million voted against him in the highest election turnout in history.

The president turned a deaf ear to the protests by the Black Lives Matter movement and instead of even taking middle ground seemed to suggest by at least clear implication that he sided with white supremecists.

And to top it off, beyond his bully tactics and racism, Trump made a major blunder (easy to do when you never admit to making mistakes). He just blew away any suggesttion that Covid-19 was as dangerous as it was and might require unusual sacrifice and precautions among the public — he was more concerned about losing his image as a miracle worker in the economy.

Trump even rejected modern science, trying to discredit doctors and scientists, using denial and his own hocus-pocus.

And that, folks, is what defeated Donald Trump.

He was his own worst enemy.

p.s.

As of this writing, Friday evening, the reporting is that Trump still vows to fight it out in the courts and to not concede. I think the bell has already rung and cannot be unrung.

Well scrap my original lead: now it’s BIDEN WINS!

And I wrote most of what is below before re-cheking my phone to discover Joe Biden has been delared the winner of the presidential race.

Is it over? Please tell me it is.

Will it still go to court? I have not read it all yet.

My original writing below that is kind of outdated within the past hour:

The election was Tuesday. It’s Saturday morning and we still don’t have the final word (well this just in, we do) on who won the presidential election, and this despite the fact that challenger Joe Biden has garnered some 4 million more votes than President Trump. Yes, I know, we all know, especially from last time around, the person with fewer votes can win because it is decided by the Electoral Collge vote (and in 2000 by the Supreme Court).

Yeah I know now, Biden won, but still:

What a time for an enemy to attack us or pull something that affects us in another part of the world — and what a time for the pandemic of Covid-19 to continue on its rampage (oh, that’s right non-believers, it does not exist if you don’t have it or don’t know you have but are spreading it to others who may die from it) and there continue to be indecision and half measures to do anything about it.

While some in the Republican Party are trying to back away from their man in the White House who spews baseless claims of widespread voter fraud but offers no proof, others hang on because they are too embarrassed to admit that they backed a totally dishonest and dangerous man who would forsake our democracy for his own power. Some business interests and the folks who write opinion pieces in support of them try to carve out some nugget to suggest fraud. In other words there probably is always something somewhere that looks suspicious or something that is wrong — but at what scale? and would it be a game changer?

Also, I agree with the main editorial in the Wall Street Journal today that says Trump has every right to challenge the contest in court but that he needs to display evidience — not just claims. The piece says former vice president Biden should patiently wait — uh, that is what he seems to be doing. He has made several on-camera appearances these past few days calling for calm.

Trump has done the opposite, even at least attempting to incite violence. It’s your guy WSJ editorial people who is not patient. Trump made accusations of voter fraud before the election even got under way. According to Trump the whole process is fraudulent it if does not make him the winner. Can he make that reasoning fly in court? If he can, we might as well all give up.

As most everyone else, I am not on the scene. But the WSJ opinion piece claims that in one instance Trump observers were not allowed in at a polling place in Philadelphia. But officials there have said observers from both sides have been allowed in at all polling places. There was a dispute about how close they could get to the action, and the Republican watchers got a court order for them to move in a little closer. As a rule, Republicans reject social distancing I think — I add a little snarkily.

And the GOP is claiming the crucial swing state of Nevada has let people who reside outside the state vote. But a court there rejected the challenge over lack of evidence.

I and everyone else I suppose just need to be patient. However I kind of resent that we have to wait because a dishonest businessman, huskster, with a long history of misuising the legal system, filing nusisance suits with the aim of delaying or forcing the other party to settle, can hold up the American election process.

It seems highly doubtful to me there is anything out there that would prove that some limited amount of irregularities so changed the vote counting that Trump has won.

My own local Republican congressmen, according to account in my local newspaper’s digital site, has bought into the possible fraud thing. He provides no proof just a statement on twitter to the effect of I’ve seen things… The actual quote was supposedly from a twitter post that said “reports we’ve seen”, but did not offer anything further. I mean that is like me saying I heard that Trump says it’s a fraud — good enough for me. Don’t need to see anything beyond that (and Trump’s credibility rating is?).

And that is the MO of the Trump/Republican spin machine. Start with a baseless rumor and let it go viral on the internet.

And I had always shook my head at the messy change of power process in other parts of the world. We’re not spreading a very good example here.

If the Electoral College ever made sense I don’t see it now. At least four million more voters want Biden to be president than those who want Trump. While the Electoral College is supposed to protect the interests of smaller population states, why is everyone so worried? It looks like Biden may well be kept in check with a continued Republican majority in the senate and a slimmer majority in the house.

A huge majority of the American electorate has rejected Trump because of his penchant for simply lying, for failing to take the pandemic seriously enough, for promoting division among society as a whole with his racist and xenophobic remarks and for conducting the government in the manner of an autocrat — he holds autocrats around the world in high esteem, sees democratic ones as weak.

However, if Trump and company can win in court, then he wins.

It is my understanding, though, that the courts, especially the Supreme Court, which would have to be the final abiter, has a history of not wanting to get directly involved with the political process. The Gore v Bush decision in 2000, not withstanding, this gives me some comfort. Even there, as I recall Gore made the poor decison not to simply demand a recount in all of Florida, not just the supposedly Democratic Party strongholds. And he did not even win his own home state of Tennessee — yikes!, that didn’t look good. He did win the popular vote, though.

Finally, with our modern technology we should be able to count votes much faster, and like some, I agree we need a unified system of voting for the presidential election rather than the hodgepodge of rules among the 50 states.

Will Trump go down mumbling ‘but I won, strongly’ or will the rest of us be reduced to babbling to ourselves?

Will the men in the white coats have to haul Donald Trump out of the White House as he mumbles “but I won, I won strongly”?

Or will a majority of voters be mumbling: “but we won” as we are told by the U.S. Supreme Court that Trump won?

As I write this on a Friday morning two days and counting after the election the Electoral College vote count stands at either 253 for Biden and 214 for Trump or Biden leading 264 to 214, depending on the two unofficial vote tallies being reported. Takes 270 to win.

Biden is ahead in Pennsylvania this morning and picked up Georgia last night. A win in Pennsylvania would make Biden president, a court challenge nothwithstanding.

(Despite some sources calling Arizona a Biden win, it is still being reported as up in the air although favoring Biden.)

While Trump the so-called former reality TV star seldom if ever talks in reality, his bizarre rant to reporters I caught last evening was a little scary. He sounded like he really went off to la la land and was taking our democracy with it by trashing the legitimacy of our election process. He basically charged that he had more votes and had won, except that thanks to Democratic Party shenanigans piles of votes were showing up mysteriously and that all the mail-in votes were a fraud (this despite the fact a lot are for him and could even in the end put him in for four more years — interestingly the Republicans do not challenge mail-in or other than election day in-person votes in states where they hold the majority).

Trump made it plain last evening that he intends to fight this all the way to his hand-picked Supreme Court.

If by some bizarre circumstance the high court decides this one giving the presidency to the Republican candidate who got fewer votes, as it did in 2000 with Al Gore, that body would lose all credibility and respect, it seems to me.

A lot could happen. All the votes have not been counted. But as I write this it seems down to the count in Pennsylvania that could put former vice president Joe Biden over the top.

I actually don’t see the high court intervening, but I guess there is still the remote chance Trump and Biden tie in the Electoral College, thus sending it to congress where delegations from each state, not just the congress itself, decide, making it possible for Trump to hold on — this seems almost impossible now.

As I understand it, the congress as a whole does not decide but rather it is done by state delegations and would be done by a new congress and to wrap this up the Republicans would likely prevail, and the senate chooses the vice president by simply voting and that would likely set it up that Trump and vice president Mike Pence get four more years. I don’t see it going down that way, but Trump is going to try every maneuver he can to subvert the vote, even as he claims without presenting evidence that the other side is.

I read that as Trump was making his remarks last evening some networks cut away as he seemed to go off the deep end. Reminds me of the time an aging Frank Sinatra went into some kind of grumble mumble during an appearance on a TV show and they went to a commercial. They cut off the chairman of the board, as the once super star was called, probably to save embarassment as much for him as themselves.

And about voter fraud and irregularities: there are always reports of such incidents and there have been some this time. They need to be investigated. So far as I can tell there has been no credible report of anything that would even come close to changing the election. There have been totally bogus reports that have taken a life of their own in the internet — such as ballots being dumped in a ditch and then the discovery that although some mail may have been dumped, no ballots were included. That is not to say some ballots could not have been trashed somewhere — yes it all has to be investigated. But you have to have more than an accusation gone viral on the conspiracy websites. You have to have credible evidence to back it up.

Time is of the essence of course. I can see Trump and others who support him would not want to be left stranded investigating while it all slips out of their hands. But, you know, the transition of power legally would not take place for some time — there is time to investigate.

Trump has a long history in his private life of using the courts in an unethical and malicious way. That says something about our legal system that would not allow you or me to do so but someone with money to back him up to do so.

Biden could have won by the time I finish this, so I’ll cut it off here.

Trump rambles…

4:24 pm (Pacific standard time), 11-5-20

This is incredible, even for Trump. I just listened to a complete ramble.

President Donald Trump is making unsubstantiated, as far as I know, allegations of widespread voter fraud, claiming Republican poll watchers have been banned from oberserving and that windows have been papered over.

He just said the issue will likely go to the Supreme Court.

I am of course not there but news reports have indicated that poll watchers from both sides are on hand at all polling places.

There is an ongoing controversy, which may be decided in the court, over how some late-arriving ballots will be handled. Some states require that they must at least have been postmarked by the election deadline. I think in at least one state a new law extended the deadline.

Trump is claiming that loads of ballots have shown up mysteriously. But as of now there seems to be no such evidence. He appears to simply be making allegations off the cuff, in desperation.

He of course is setting the scene for controversy, to cause doubt in the integrity of the process

Disturbingly he seemed to urge angry demonstrations by simply suggesting they are going on and not calling for calm.

If he really believed what he was saying he would huddle with his legal team and perhaps give a detailed explanation to the public with actual evidence.

His almost monotone ramble sounded a bit like someone gone off the deep end

Hard to judge with Trump.