I you love or even just like the world, the United States, the Constitution, your family, your friends, your neighbors, people of our country who are suffering, and/or your children and the generations that will come after we're gone...
Please vote against Trump
Why? Because he's actively working to destroy all of those things in favor of profit for himself and his super-rich allies. This blog post is a collection of what I can find reliable information for about how Trump is awful. If you already are aware of Trump being awful, and you're already going to vote for Biden, you probably don't need to keep reading. To be clear though, I dislike Biden too. He seems to be just another institutional politician that wants to maintain the status quo of our broken system that keeps the politicians and super-rich in power. I really wanted a progressive politician like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren to be our next president, but we don't have that option. Remember, the system is broken. It's a specific control device that makes it so we only have two options that could win. Third party voting is a bad idea. Maybe it fits your principles to cast your vote for someone you actually line up with better, but until we have ranked choice voting, the only strategy for voting that works is to chip away at moving things in a better direction. If you vote third party in this election, that's one less vote that is helping get Trump out of office. Everyone needs to come together to vote for Biden, not to suggest that Biden is a good choice, but to make absolutely sure that we are not punished with another four years of that evil, lying, selfish, greedy, delusional, piece of crap Trump. I'm under no illusion that Biden will bring this country to where it should be, but I understand that Biden won't do even 10% of the damage that Trump has already done.
If you're reading this and thinking that I'm a "libtard" or an idiot for hating Trump... whether you keep reading or not depends on whether you are intelligent enough to listen to new information. If you've already decided Trump is good and you are voting for him and no one can convince you he's a horrid person that is actively hurting you, then don't bother reading more I guess. I just hope there aren't many people like you because this country can't survive another four years of the damage he's doing to us. If you have an open enough mind to consider that you might be wrong to support Trump, then I'll happily provide you with more to think about.
It's pretty easy to figure which side of this debate is correct. On one side we have all of the genuine climate science experts saying things are changing too fast because of our pollution. On the other side we have an orange idiot and the marketing experts for the fossil fuel industry. What makes more sense? That the people studying the phenomnon know what they're talking about after decades of education, hard work, experimentation and observation, and incredible amounts of peer review? Or that people who profit by the pollution and destruction of the environment that we depend on actually know something the experts don't know and their fossil fuels are totally okay? It's super simple logic. The fossil fuel industry and Donald are lying to us so they can keep making huge profits on the destruction of the environment we all depend on to survive.
Another logic exercise you can do to understand which side is correct is to think about human history. Thousands of years ago, there was no industry and the population was tiny compared to now. Fast forward to more recent times and the advent of burning fossil fuels for electricity and to make cars go, and realize that we've been running millions of cars every second of every day for decades. Before we did that, Nature was just trucking along with its normal processes. Then we added ridiculous amounts of pollution. Does that seem like it would have no effect?
The same is true of our food production. Most notably we go through a lot of beef and pork. I'm working my way toward being a vegetarian, but I'm NOT suggesting we stop eating meat all-together. I'm suggesting we eat too much meat and should eat less. It has an environmental impact. Here's the heavily cited wikipedia article about that. You can think about this in the same way you thought about cars in the previous paragraph. Before there were billions of humans eating meat, there weren't huge meat-mills breeding animals as fast as they could to bring them to slaughter. The animals consume food of their own and produce waste and pollution of their own. Just now it's in way bigger numbers than it ever was naturally. It just makes sense that our meat consumption is too much.
And of course to understand that human influenced climate change is real and dangerous you could just educate yourself on the topic. There are many sources of good information online if you want to learn more. NASA is has been providing reliable climate information for a long time. You can spend a long time reading their site about Climate Change and more specifically the effects of climate change. You can read the article on the Union of Concerned Scientists site about the impacts which are already happening. Why am I harping on the reality of Human Influenced Climate Change and its dangers?
Because Trump has worked his ass off to deny it and force government science agencies to hide their data. Why would he do that? So no one would push to find cleaner sources of energy... so his buddies in the fossil fuel industry could keep making huge profits on destroying the world's ability to sustain human life. Trump is actively choosing harming the population of the world to help his buddies make more profit. It's disgusting and offensive. You should be outraged that Trump is doing this. Now... I'm not suggesting other politicians don't do this same thing. They're getting money from fossil fuel organizations and pushing through legislation that favors those awful companies. It's awful and we should all be pushing our politicians to represent us instead of those selfish rich pieces of garbage. But Trump has made this problem worse than normal...
Trump is forcing government scientists to shut up about problems he can make a profit from and he's actively lying to contradict the scientifically obtained and reliable information. What's so bad about that? His supporters who choose to get their information from him won't trust factual information. They stop trusting anything with the word science associated with it. When the scientists engrossed in the study of our climate and how humans are affecting it tell us there's a danger and Trump says they're part of some kind of conspiracy or that there's such a thing as Clean Coal and he spouted off nonsense about how coal should be fought for (YouTube video of FOX News showing Trump speech, about 2.5 minutes), and Trump's followers believe him there's a real problem. It's astounding that anyone believes the stupid lies coming out of his mouth. And if you point out that the coal indsutry has lots of jobs tied to it, I'll counter with a proposal. I'm happy for my tax money to go to help keep coal companies affloat if they use that money to keep paying their employees while the employees are trained in work related to clean power production and while the company shifts from producing coal to producing clean energy technology. Heck, if it's the manufacture of clean energy machinery and we keep the manufacturing jobs here in the states, we keep jobs here AND improve our situation with pollution. The rich people at the top get to keep making money, people get education and moved to jobs that aren't so dangerous, and it's environmentally friendly.
So, to sum this up, Trump is destroying trust in scientifically obtained knowledge and is actively making things worse by favoring profit instead of being the guy that is making the world a better place that is capable of supporting human life.
I'm not sure where to begin on this one. I mean... Trump is ruining our relationship with our allies and fostering relationships with our enemies. It's like Trump admires the dictators of the world who are abusing their people and living the high life on their suffering. And it's like Trump has no respect for democratic world leaders that are beholden to their people. Trump is the opposite of what he should be as the primary representative of the United States of America in the world. Maybe you think it's okay that Trump won't say anything bad about Putin? Maybe you think our soldiers should keep getting targeted so people can collect the bounty on them that Putin put out? Maybe you think it's okay that the United States is a shameful joke to people around the world because of Trump? Here are some articles to read if you're interested...
- The U.S. is still okay but Trump sucks
- Veterans realize Trump sucks
- Trump is shitty with Gold Star families (families of those who have died in military service)
- Trump wants Putin to love him back
I'm sure you can find hundreds more articles if you're interested. I might add more later. I'm just tired of reading about the awful things Trump does on this topic for the moment. If I'm going to make it through this whole blog post I better move on to the next section...
Trump loves to point to a chart and say our country is doing the best in the world. He goes on to say that because we test more, we're going to have more cases. The chart he points out includes only a couple other countries and they are cherry picked. Here's a video that includes a section of an interview about Covid-19. He's not looking at the charts that compare death toll compared to population. Here's a lovely website that gives us a chart of the twenty worst affected countries in the world. The U.S. is definitely on the chart. The chart has two modes. In the default mode it's telling you how many deaths per 100 confirmed cases of Covid-19. If you click on the tab above the chart for death per 100,000 population you see that the U.S. goes way up the list. The U.S. is definitely not worst on the first chart, but remeber that the U.S. is on the chart at all. Also remember that if you tested more people, and found more of the stay at home cases, the death rate per 100 cases would go down. So, your position on that first chart is largely dependent on how wide spread the testing is and a higher position might just indicate you're not doing much testing. I don't think the first chart is super valuable.
If you go to that second chart that is about death by population, the U.S. ranks as the fourth worst country in the world for number of deaths per population. I don't know what Peru is doing but holy crap. I feel terrible for the people there. Peru has 81 deaths per 100,000 people. That's a small percentage if you do that math, but the country in 20th place (Bangladesh) only has 2 people per 100,000 die. Every country on the list is failing to respond well to the pandemic. So, when we point out that the supposedly first-world country of the U.S.A. has 52 people per 100,000 dying to Covid-19, keep in mind that it means we're doing 26 times worse than Bangladesh. We are handling this far worse than a country with far less in the way of resources. How is that Trump's fault?
Here's an article with the timeline of events. Trump started out by proclaiming it was a under control and not to worry about it. He called for money to be spent to find a vaccine or cure, but continued to say it was under control and not to worry about it... a month after experts said to worry about it. Then Trump called it a political hoax that the democrats were pushing to attack him. What a moron Trump is. Businesses had to shut down, and Trump continued to say it was fine and not to worry, and he even made a big deal out of opening everything back up for Easter. Apparently, Trump is also the first (or at least a very early person) to have compared it to the Flu publicly. Hooray for that stupidity. That comparison had already been debunked prior to Trump saying it. Then comes the Hydroxychloroquine business... and I mean business. Trump had stock in a company that produces that anti-malarial drug, and he claimed it was effective. There was a run on the drug and drug companies rejoiced at making more profit on something that distinctly does not work against Covid-19. What an irresponsible abuse of his position. Not only is that drug needed for its intended purpose, but it apparently has side effects including the possibility of killing you. How many people died taking that drug needlessly? Profit over lives.
It continues of course. Trump starts to blame China and calls his response and handling good despite having botched it horribly. He just doesn't seem to want to accept blame or admit he did anything wrong. How do you rationalize refusing to wear a mask and stoking the anti-mask thinking and also saying you're doing a good job? Trump is a horrible person who responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people. Yes... some people would have died no matter how good our response was. But between 1 and 160,000 so far... how many tens of thousands didn't have to die? How can anyone support a leader that doesn't care about their well-being and doesn't admit when they're wrong? Why would anyone want that as a president?
3 October 2020 update: The president is in the hospital with Covid-19. I hope he survives so that he can shut the hell up about it "not affecting many people" and finally acknowledge that it's real. And then I want him to serve his prison time for tax fraud and live out the rest of his days miserable in a jail cell.
It's getting hard to keep focus to make this blog post. This section is about the Emoluments clause of the Constitution and about all the tax money that he's funneling into his businesses. The emoluments clause basically says you're not supposed to use your position as president to make profit. For example, if the president owns golf courses and the adjoining hotels and frequently brings his secret service retinue along with him, tax money is going to the president's coffers. And if the president just happens to charge drastically increased rates... he's giving far too much tax money to himself. Or, if the president owns or has stock in a company that does international trade, he might use his position to make deals favorable to his company but not favorable to the American people. The emoluments clause is supposed to protect us from that so that the president would represent the people instead of his business interests. It's meant to avoid conflicts of interest. Trump has been doing that golf course thing (and spending way more time golfing than Obama did which is funny because Trump blasted Obama for golfing). Here's a site dedicated to tracking his golf time and the cost to us. And here's an article about the golf trips and cost that says the cost might be much higher. And another article about how we're paying way too much directly into Trump's pocket.
Trump made a big show of donating his presidential salary to some charity or another. And he apparently does that, but it's a drop in the bucket next to the tax money he's stealing. So, when you try to stand up for Trump saying he's working for no money to help the country, you're being ignorant. Here's an article about that. Trump is scamming us with a little distraction and a big prize. He's a piece of crap. You should be furious with him for stealing millions of our tax dollars.
My first example is Betsy DeVos. He made her the secretary of education. She has never been a teacher or worked in a school. She is completely unqualified for the job. That's just for starters. Next is her religious zealotry. She wants to destroy the first amendment to the constitution and force her religion into schools. All those people who support the Constitution but think religion should be in schools are hypocrits and flat out wrong about the idea that putting religion in school would be a good thing. They're hypocrits because the first amendment says that government can't favor any religion. A tax funded institution like school has to stay out of it. So, from the get go, the Constitution means we can't have religion pushed by school. But really, YOU should want schools to not have religion in them. Why? Because of how you would feel if you found out that the religion schools were pushing was Islam. Would you be furious if your kid came home and said he was made to pray to a Hindu god? Or how about being made to give an offering to the Native American Indian nature spirits? I would be angry about all of that just as much as I'd be angry if my kids were forced to listen to brainwashing about the Christian faith. I'm an atheist. I see no reason to believe there's any after-life or any divine being doing anything anywhere. I prefer there being evidence of something. So, if someone tries to gaslight my kids into thinking there's a magic sky-fairy that listens telepathically to their wishes and they get to be rewared when they die if they're good and show blind faith, or be punished for eternity if they "sin", I'm going to get really angry. Religion has no place in school. Really it should go away altogether, but the first amendment protects the individual's right to follow whatever religion they want as long as it doesn't infringe on anyone else's rights. So yeah... DeVos is disgusting.
Mnuchin
Pruitt (and whoever is in charge now)
Carson
