Day 202…
Quarantine - Day 2.
It is a hazy cloudy day that looks like it is going to devolve into some thunderstorms later on. Not, of course, that I am going to go out into it.
The news is on, for the moment. Today, everyone seems to be somewhat focused on the upcoming Presidential debate this evening.
By all accounts, the President has spent very little time preparing. Not so, former Vice President Biden who, reportedly has been preparing a lot. Biden needs the prep to help him keep on topic and avoid engaging in the personal attacks that are sure to be launched his way. The President, as we all experienced in the 2016 debates is going to go with his gut and wing it. That tactic makes him unpredictable and extremely dangerous.
As much as he would like to avoid it, the topic of the moment, even though it isn’t on the debate agenda, is the President’s seeming avoidance of paying his fair share of personal federal income tax.
Yesterday, Poppy Harlow, a CNN anchor, interviewed White House Deputy Press Secretary Brian Morgenstern and this morning, Jim Sciutto, another CNN anchor, interviewed Tim Murtaugh, the President’s Campaign Communications Director. Both anchors pressed the President’s reps on questions about the President’s personal federal tax returns.
Both representatives deflected the questions in exactly the same way. Both tried to switch the discussion to Hunter Biden, and both claimed that the President has paid millions of dollars in federal taxes. Neither would go anywhere near the actual question.
It may be true that the President has paid millions of dollars in federal payroll taxes, but those payments would be connected with his businesses. The documents that the New York Times have discovered all relate to his personal taxes. Reading between the lines, the two representatives through their unified relentlessly vehement non-answers pretty much answered the questions anyway.
The topic of the coronavirus has a new wrinkle with recent reporting revealing that the White House pressured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to downplay the very real risks associated with our kids returning to school.
They also tried to find alternate scientific data to support their desire to get schools reopened.
Olivia Troye went public on what has actually been going on in the White House. As a top aide on the vice president’s virus task force, said that she was repeatedly pressed by the vice president’s Chief of Staff, Marc Short, to get the CDC to produce reports and graphs that showed a decline in COVID cases in the young. She also says that Short was getting his junior aides to develop charts for White House briefings on their own.
Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the President’s experts on the White House task force, is apparently complicit in all of this. She seems to have pressured the CDC to include and emphasize data from an office in the Department of Health and Human Services called the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration that talks about the negative mental health consequences of staying home.
This is a very real thing. I can see it in my own family. The psychological effects of kids staying at home and engaging only in online education can be somewhat dire.
The way to try and address those issues, however, is not to downplay the very real threat of virus transmission in relation to them. Problems don’t compartmentalize that easily. They pile on.
The CDC found errors and inaccuracies in the document from the office that Dr. Birx wanted them to include. Nonetheless, the gist of the argument was included in the introduction to the published CDC guidelines.
Recent data put together by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that the rate of infections, hospitalizations and deaths among children and teenagers has actually increased at a faster pace than have the rates for adults.
It’s clear when you look at the facts that the White House is not exerting this pressure on the CDC based on anything other than politics.
As for the unfortunately titled topic ‘Race and Violence in Our Cities’, the Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has announced that he will release recordings from the Breonna Taylor grand jury hearings. He is doing this because one of the jurors filed a motion criticizing his recent statements. The juror asked that the tape be released “so the truth will prevail”.
Neither of the two Louisville officers who shot and killed Ms. Taylor were indicted by Mr. Cameron, while a third whose shots went into a neighboring apartment was. That decision has been in question ever since it was announced.
The juror’s motion states, “Attorney General Cameron attempted to make it very clear that the grand jury alone made the decision on who and what to charge based solely on the evidence presented to them. The only exception to the responsibility he foisted upon the grand jurors was in his statement that they ‘agreed’ with his team’s investigation that [two officers] were justified in their actions.”
The foreperson of a grand jury needs to announce the results of a vote on whether or not to indict and there was no mention at all on the results of a vote to indict the other two officers. It looks like Cameron never gave them that option and, in his statement to the jurors, was trying to deflect away any personal responsibility.
Attorney General Cameron who is, himself, African American, was rumored to have married Senator Mitch McConnell’s granddaughter last month. That isn’t true. It is true, however, that the Senator did attend his wedding.
From 2015 to 2017, Cameron served as legal counsel to the Kentucky Senator. He was responsible for spearheading the confirmation processes for many of the conservative judges the Administration installed including Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
Again, all of this seems to be more about politics than it does about the matter at hand - which is justice.
Climate change isn’t on the agenda tonight, but it is hard to ignore.
Wildfires are still raging in California. The so-called Glass Fire is tearing through wine country in Napa. Homes and vineyards are being destroyed. Tens of thousands of people have been evacuated from both Napa and Sonoma counties. The fire is reportedly consuming an acre of land every five seconds. It is moving FAST.
The economy, however, is on the agenda.
The Democrats in Congress have proposed a new $2.2 trillion stimulus package. Speaker Pelosi and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin are reportedly trying to work it out. Both sides want a deal. The Democrats are under pressure to take care of their constituents and the Republicans want a ‘win’ before the election.
At the moment, though, the cost is too high for the Republicans. They tried to push through a $500 billion bill last month that Democrats blocked because it simply didn’t go far enough. We NEED this package to pass.
Throughout all of this, the President continues to try and undercut and demonize mail-in voting. He is trailing his challenger in almost every poll and is getting desperate. The Integrity of the Election, the last item on the agenda, will be a major debate topic tonight.
There is a LOT going on as these debates get underway. It all seems incredibly overwhelming. How can we possibly fix all of this?
We can fix it all, by actually addressing the issues full on. This Administration has, more often than not, chosen to ignore all of these issues.
The virus? It’s a hoax and will all just go away someday.
The racial divide? It’s all a product of the Antifa movement and the radical left. There is no real issue here.
Climate change? Doesn’t exist.
The economy? Take care of the rich and everyone else can fend for themselves.
The election? If the Dems win, it’s a fraud.
Thunderstorms are coming. They should start to abate before the debate begins, but there’s likely to be a lot of rumbling anyway.
What is going on in our country would be challenging to anybody in the top position of leadership. All of these issues are dire and all of them are, in some way, intertwined. We need somebody who will actively try and lead us out of this.
Novembers coming. We can actually choose somebody else to give it a shot.
Whatever is going on, I am going to cast my vote in person. I am willing to take that risk to make sure that I am counted.
I count.
We all count.
And we have all been given the opportunity to be accounted for in November.
❤️ “ We All Count”
and Thunderstorms are coming 🙏