Ron Ecker

History repeats itself. (What did Santayana say?) Refusal to wear masks, reopening the economy too soon, etc., during a pandemic. The year: 1918. They even had something called the Anti-Mask League. IOW I guess there's nothing necessarily wrong with a lot of Americans today. A percentage of them have always been this way. Selfish and/or moronic. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kionasmith/2020/04/29/protesting-during-a-pandemic-isnt-new-meet-the-anti-mask-league/#7983ff9312f9

Isn't social media grand?

It's true that this president has blood on his hands, American blood, American lives by the thousands, and over a third of Americans are okay with that. What brotherhood from sea to shining sea (virus hotbeds California and Florida and places in between).

I'm sure there are secret Trump voters. If I was going to vote for Trump, I would damn sure keep it a secret too. I've kept worse things secret, though right offhand I can't think what they are.

Donald Trump Is Sorry From the article by Rod Dreher of The American Conservative: “My dad did not live to vote in the 2016 election. I’m sure he would have voted for Donald Trump, or an old yellow dog so long as it was Republican. But boy, I bet if he were alive today, he would have nothing but contempt for Trump. I can hear the words my dad used to describe men like Trump: “That’s a sorry sapsucker right there.” Sorry — the word has such deep resonance among Southern people like us. It carries with it a sense of shiftlessness, of weakness, and of being thoroughly contemptible. A man who is sorry doesn’t merit respect, even the kind of respect you would give to a bad man who was at least brave. A thief who had honor would still be no damn good, but he wouldn’t be sorry, if you follow me. It implies a lack of character that is near total.” https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/donald-trump-chris-wallace-sorry/

If we wind up with a dictatorship, I suppose the JFK assassination will lose some significance. At least the republic survived Dallas. If it doesn't survive Trump, the end of the American republic will be a lot more historically significant than the death of a president.

Trump is giving us a foretaste of what comes with a second term (and beyond). And 39 percent of Americans are said to approve. That's what the country has come to.

You should stop ascribing traits to people you don't know on a personal level. Tell that to Mary Trump, or any number of psychiatrists including one here. It's a common flaw among liberals. I'm not a "liberal." I'd call myself a middle-of-the-roader. Stop ascribing traits to people you don't know on a personal level. It comes across as an assumption of superior intelligence because of the perception those that challenge your views are, by nature, your intellectual inferiors. I make you feel inferior I can't help it.

What would be in it for Trump? Trump doesn't do anything that doesn't benefit Trump. Just like he's been ignoring the pandemic, after the virus failed to disappear like he said it would (and he still says it will), because there's no way he can benefit from it (other than to exercise some leadership, of which he's incapable). Oh, today he's going to give a briefing on the virus, but without the task force present. Boy, that should be really informative. More lies, anyone? Disinfectant, despite his brilliant suggestion, won't cure anyone of the coronavirus, but I would suggest using it in the briefing room after he leaves it.

It shouldn't take a book to hurt Trump's chances for reelection. The fact that he has any chance is a sad commentary on America, never mind that he got elected in the first place. The last I recall his approval rating was 39 percent. The idea that 39 percent of the people approve of this sorry excuse for a human being tells me that this country morally and politically is in very bad shape. If he gets reelected (or loses but of course claims fraud and refuses to leave and we have fighting in the streets), all I can say is that America deserves what it gets.

Mark Meadows. It's amazing how the Republicans on the Hill are willing not only to be bullied and silenced by Trump but will even lower themselves to work for him. Isn't there a line in one of Shakespeare's plays, "The Donald doth make cowards of us all"?

Didn't you see that big crowd on TV two or three years ago when Trump pointed to a black person in the crowd and said, "Look at my African American!"?

I haven't seen her book, and I've seen part of one interview, with Chris Cuomo. I thought it was pretty well established, based on what everyone can see and what I've read by psychologists and psychiatrists (including our resident psychiatrist here) that Trump suffers from narcissistic personality disorder (with America suffering as a result). But in the part of the interview I saw, Cuomo brought up the word "narcissist" (saying that others have used the word), but she did nothing with it. She blames Trump's father for psychological damage to her son, but I wasn't able to discern exactly what damage she's talking about. But she didn't seem to be talking about narcissistic personality disorder at all. Of course it could have been discussed earlier in the interview and I just missed it.

Yes, I had seen that. I had never heard of the guy before Trump retweeted his conspiracy theory, but he's living proof that you don't have to be very intelligent to be a game show host. Or to be president.

I was too, but I dumped her for Teri. Madeline was a fabulous comedian. She was at her best in Young Frankenstein. ("Oh, I think I love him.")

I was unambiguously in love with Teri Garr.

And the Republican Party is old with underlying conditions.

Trump Administration Strips C.D.C. of Control of Coronavirus Data Hospitals have been ordered to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and send all patient information to a central database in Washington, raising questions about transparency. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-cdc-coronavirus.html

He said "maybe not the last one" has been audited. So the excuse still stands. But as I understand it an audit doesn't prevent you from releasing your tax returns. Everyone knows why he won't release them. He has something to hide, though of course like everything else that doesn't matter to his supporters.

Interesting, but does anyone need Trump's niece to tell us he's dangerous? Over 130,000 Americans have found out the hard way.

Thanks. The only TAMI show I could think of was Tammy Faye Bakker. I used to enjoy watching her and Jim's show. My favorite was when she told about how God healed her washing machine. The TAMI Show has to be good if Chuck Berry is in it. My favorite scene in "Pulp Fiction" is the twist contest where they dance to "You Never Can Tell," a Chuck Berry song that I had never even heard before. I wonder if it was even a hit in its time.

I don't even know what the TAMI Show is. (Somewhere in this 66-page thread I guess I missed it.)

Trump's retweet of Chuck Woolery is no surprise. Trump is constantly trying to pull the Woolery over our eyes.

It's a shame that so many American presidents of the past didn't have the advantage of Twitter, the ability not only to tweet and to retweet the tweets of Chuck Woolery and other sages, to help govern this country. But now we have Twitter and Trump. How tweet it is!

I know there are extremists out there. I'm saying (or hoping) that there aren't any such extremists high enough in the military to set off an atomic explosion in an American city. I can see rednecks with fertilizer bombs blowing up buildings, but an atomic bomb?