“There are people who will slap you on the back with one hand, and pick your pocket with the other.” That was the catchphrase of Racket Squad a syndicated TV series from the early 50’s. The show exposed how con men run their rackets. “Captain Braddock, Captain Braddock… ready.”
https://youtu.be/s_i5XdOnowU
Scams still abound, of course. I get calls every day on the landline with fake caller ID’s. Most don’t leave voice messages, but every so often there is one saying the IRS is investigating me and I must return the call immediately. Another trick is a fake Microsoft security alert message embedded in a Web page. The scammers are in India, with their English being, I suppose, a legacy of British colonial rule.
Back in May I posted John Oliver’s explanation of how a 2006 law not only clobbered the USPS financially, it hobbled its ability to cope with it. Now that Trump has one of his rich enablers appointed as Postmaster General, the situation is getting worse, and it’s happening fast.
I recently mailed in my application form to vote by mail in the primary and general election. The one thing about it that I’m hoping will keep Trump from interfering with the process is that everything will be, or it should be, local. All the ballots go to the post office, and from there to the town hall or city hall for counting.
Yesterday, Trump doubled-down yet again on dismissing Dr. Fauci’s facts and promoting hydroxychloroquine. Today he’s with Fauci and wearing a mask. The pandemic has Donald reversing himself but only briefly, because reality is forcing him to make occasional nods in its direction. He always returns, without fail, to his make-believe world of conspiracy theories, because he knows that’s what his loyal followers love. His latest false narrative is that voting by mail will lead to a massively fraudulent election.
I know a few people who continue to believe in Trump wholeheartedly, and honestly I just don’t understand why. As I have pointed out before, I spotted him as a con man and called him a freak 30 years ago. He hasn’t changed since then, and his election in 2016 is proof of how much everything else has changed. At this point there’s no turning Trump’s hardcore followers, with many of them brought into the fold by the king of insane conspiracy theories, Alex Jones.
Today isn’t quite as hot as yesterday’s scorching heat, when I decided to use the 13′ ladder and replace the coaxial cable on the antenna for the porch TV. The old cable is white, and after four years it’s covered in spots of black mold. I’m not sure how much shielding it has, so I replaced it with a black, quad-shielded RG6 cable. Look carefully, and you’ll see there are actually two antennas in this picture.
With that latest frivolous project out of the way — the house has many other, much bigger, ones that need attention — my thoughts are returning to these unprecedented times. There seems to be an underlying expectation by Trump’s hardcore supporters that everything will return to normal, if we would only let the coronavirus play itself out. Doing that would crush hospitals and result in an even more significant culling of the elderly population, along with people suffering from a compromised medical condition. The same crowd that claimed Obamacare would have death panels and “kill grandma,” are now saying “let grandma die.”
In yet another bizarre bit of irony, Trump is touting the promise of a vaccine to his anti-vax followers! America has yet to get a grip on the pandemic, and the ongoing anti-science nonsense is one reason why. William G. Kaelin Jr., 2019 Nobel laureate in Medicine, expresses his opinion on the need for facts in The Boston Globe. These are his concluding remarks:
I saw an Internet meme that said, “Having some states locked down and others not locked down is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.” It’s true. We are all in this together, and the current coronavirus case spikes in other parts of the country will eventually harm both our health and the economic recovery.
Our fragmented and uneven response to COVID-19 is an unintended consequence of the war on science. We must make decisions based on the best scientific advice available, not on wishful thinking and hunches. It is our best hope for dealing with this crisis.
Sam Wanamaker, portrayed by Nicholas Hammond in Once Upon A Time… in Hollywood, provides an explanation of what’s really going on with the pandemic… and, if you believe him, what we can do about it.
