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Support Gun Rights? Get Lost.

August 3, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , 1 Comment

Until recently (yesterday, in fact) I prided myself on being perhaps the only gun blogger who made a point of wanting to give equal time and space in the gun debate to both sides. In fact, I often went out of my way to write comments about my friends in Gun-control Nation which were not necessarily all that negative, but certainly weren’t to be taken as a carte-blanche endorsement for what they say.

As of today, I’m throwing all that compassionate, liberal nonsense about how everyone ‘deserves a chance to be heard’ into the kitchen sink. Going forward, Mike the Gun Guy (yes, just like MAGA it’s copyrighted) is taking a hard turn Left and will only put content on his website that doesn’t allow for compromise at all.

Why do I say that? Because the other night I was watching a TV report (CNN I think) about people resisting the vaccinations and a woman in some red state said she wasn’t going to be ‘pushed’ into getting vaccinated by government. “If they push me,” she intoned, “I push right back.”

She also then added that she hadn’t yet had time to do ‘research’ on the vaccine’s long-term effects.  Did this idiot ever consider the possibility that if she didn’t get vaccinated the long-term effects wouldn’t matter because she’d already be dead?

As of this morning, U.S. deaths from Covid-19 have risen to 618,407. Most of these fatalities could have been avoided had we taken proven social distancing and protective clothing steps seriously right from the gitgo instead of waiting for a vaccine. Why didn’t we do that? Because we had a President who was not about to mandate any kind of public health response at all, and his successor seems unwilling and/or unable to change the basic tune.

And why do we suffer from this terrible disease every day when we always have know what was needed to be done? Would a mandate hurt the economy? Sure – for a couple of months. Would a mandate force us to change our behavior and do without such important things as sitting in the back yard yakking with our friends? Yep.

But the real reason we continue to avoid effective, comprehensive social protective and distancing mandates is exactly what that moron woman said – I ain’t gonna’ let the government tell me what to do.

Know what? I’ve been hearing the same crap about gun laws from Gun-nut Nation for a long time before anyone ever heard of Covid-19.  Why should I be able to buy a rifle made for the military and carry it around with three extra, 40-round mags?  Because nobody’s going to tell me I can’t. Why should I be able to walk around in the street with a Glock in my pocket even though I have never actually shot the gun even once? Because I’m not about to let the government tell me what I can and cannot do with my guns.

I have the God-given right to defend myself, and no damn government, particularly a government run by some liberals in the Deep State are going to take those ‘rights’ away from me.

And by the way,  this is the same damn government that wants to control my life by telling me that I can’t leave my house if I haven’t been vaccinated or I’m not wearing a mask.

Here’s my answer to every, single one of those bogus claims. Want to live in a country where your ‘rights’ are given to you by God?  Move to Iran. Want the government to stop enforcing common-sense and proven measures to keep us from all getting killed? Next time you drive down the Interstate, ask yourself how come you just passed a sign which told you how fast you can drive.

Enough with the talk about gun ‘rights.’ Enough with the talk about how you won’t let government tell you what you can and cannot do.

Don’t like what I just said? I don’t care. Either get yourself vaccinated and wear a mask at all times or stay in your house and shut the fu*k up.

As Grandpa used to say: “Shain zeit!” Enough is enough.

Is Trump To Blame For Covid-19?

March 17, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 1 Comment

All of a sudden, Mister Orange Head is behaving like a former President – calm, reasonable, trying to do and say the right thing. Last night he called into Fox and didn’t rant about ‘election fraud,’ or the ‘Chinese flu,’ or the ‘border invasion.’ Instead, he actually promoted the idea that Americans should get vaccinated because vaccines are ‘safe.’ 

Oh well, oh well. I guess the MAGA movement’s time has passed. I guess that attacking RINOS just isn’t helping Orange Head’s strategy to remain in charge of the GOP. I guess he just can’t raise enough money to start a new media network because he’ll need his cash to pay his legal fees.

Be that as it may, I was hoping to write a column today about how much we should blame Orange Head for Covid-19. After all, this is a guy who could only respond to the virus threat in partisan, political terms.  The virus was a Democratic ‘hoax.’ Dr. Fauci was just another member of the Deep State. Orange Head was a true ‘wartime leader’ who was out there fighting against the ‘Chinese flu’ enemy from Day One.

I was going to attack Orange Head because I wanted to throw out my own little conspiracy theory that Trump’s refusal to do anything serious about the virus was because he believed the virus was basically an inner-city disease, and since inner-city (read: minority) residents just sit around and gobble up welfare, plus always vote blue, who cares if they die off in large numbers or not?

Part of my theory wasn’t just based on the fact that Orange Head is an out-and-out racist and real piece of sh*t. It was also based on what I have been hearing again and again over the last year, namely, that Covid-19 has disproportionately hit inner-city neighborhoods and caused all kinds of untold suffering among minority populations and groups.

How can this not be the case? After all, even the most respected and authoritative medical organization, like the American Academy of Pediatrics, has stated in no uncertain terms that the virus has been particularly deadly when it comes to the health of inner-city children. Never mind inner-city adults.

There’s only one little problem. The idea that minorities have been harder hit by this pandemic than the population at large happens not to be true. If anything, the data appears to indicate that this virus makes absolutely no class or racial distinctions at all in terms of how and where it spreads.

The Kaiser Family Foundation publishes a weekly update which tracks, among other things, the percentage of Covid deaths by the percentage of each racial group in every state. He most recent data is through February 28. As of that date, the percentage of Covid deaths suffered by Whites was the same or higher than the percentage of Whites in that state’s population as a whole.

So, for example, Colorado’s White Covid death rate is 68%, the proportion of White residents of the state’s total population is also 68%. In Georgia, Whites account for 58% of all Covid fatalities and Whites are 52% of the state’s total population. In Minnesota, the percentages are 85% to 79%, in New Jersey it’s 56% to 54%.

The two states which are both very large and have disproportionate numbers of minority Covid deaths are – where else? – California and New York. In California, Blacks and Hispanics are 52% of the Covid deaths but count 45% of the state’s total residents. In New York, where the numbers do not count New York City, Blacks are 14% of the population but 23% of Covid deaths. God only knows what the numbers for anything are in New York City.

So, my little conspiracy theory about Trump ignoring the virus because it wasn’t a ‘problem’ for Whites doesn’t really hold up. That doesn’t change the fact that Mister Orange Head should go f*ck himself, the horse he rode in on and the whole cavalry behind him as well.

Even though Orange Head is pretending to be such a thoughtful and reasonable kind of guy, to quote Grandpa, he’s nothing but pure, unadulterated drek.

Are Republicans That Dumb?

March 10, 2021

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 2 Comments

              Back in the 1950’s, when I was a kid, Republicans were Protestants, Democrats were Catholics and Jews. Republicans were also from England and they were White, Democrats were ‘ethnics’ or they were Black.  I don’t remember any Hispanics and the only Chinese was the family that owned the laundry or the little take-out that we referred to as ‘the Chinks.’

              Friday night was pizza night because you could order a big, family-size pie which didn’t have any meat. And if you lived in any New York City neighborhood outside of Manhattan, which is where all the Protestants lived, you didn’t eat meat on Friday whether you were Catholic or not.

              Obviously, the world has changed. Jews can now get executive positions in finance, banking and insurance, Italian Americans aren’t assumed to be members of the Mafia, we even have elected another Catholic as President of the United States, and we are well on our way (hope, hope) to electing a woman as President who will not only be a woman but will also be a woman of color as well!

              But there’s one thing that hasn’t changed, or at least it seems to be no different today than it was when I was a kid. And what hasn’t changed is that, generally speaking, Republicans also tend to be dumb. How else do you explain the fact that after leading the single worst, most corrupt and ineffective political administration of all time for the last four years, that Donald Trump in 2020 still received more than 74 million votes?

              I’m not saying that everyone who voted for Trump has an IQ located somewhere on the left side of the bell curve. Exceptions can always be found for every rule. But a recent poll on whether people will get themselves vaccinated against Covid-19 needs to be taken seriously in terms of what it says about the relative intelligence of the Left versus the Right.

              Back in December, when vaccines first started rolling out, a national poll found that Republicans were four times more likely than Democrats to resist getting the vaccine, The poll found that vaccine resistance was 26% among GOP voters versus only 6% among Democrats who responded to the poll.

              Now we’re in March and enough people have gotten vaccinated for us to have a pretty good idea about whether the vaccinations are dangerous health-wise or not. Has vaccine resistance among Republicans gone down? No. In fact, it’s gone up.  A recent poll found that 44% of individuals who claimed to be GOP voters are saying they will ‘never’ get the shots.

              Recently we have seen a spate of articles in the right-wing press which claim that red states like West Virginia and South Dakota, are outpacing blue states like New York and California in terms of the rate in which the state’s residents are getting immunized against Covid-19. The per-100K vaccination rates in West Virginia and South Dakota are 13%, in New York and California, the rates are 9%.

              How many people have been vaccinated in West Virginia and South Dakota? Try 550,000, give, or take a few. How many vaccinations have been delivered in New York and California? Try 11 million, okay?  Want to compare how much work is involved getting the populations of states like West Virginia and South Dakota vaccinated as opposed to doing a comprehensive vaccination rollout in New York or the Golden State?

              There are now 18 states which have yet to administer at least one vaccine dose to 18% of the residents in that state. Of those states, 16 were carried by Trump both in 2020 and 2016.  To quote Al Franken back in 2000, these are truly the ‘dumb states.’

              If the dumb states receive enough vaccines to give everyone a dose, they’ll have plenty of medicine left over when the vaccination lines disappear. How can anyone actually believe that vaccines don’t work? Something tells me that none of those dopes who stormed the Capitol on January 6th are going to get their Covid-19 shots.

So What Do We Do With All Those People Buying Guns?

October 14, 2020

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 1 Comment

              So last night I turn on the local TV news and the show leads off with a story about the huge spike in gun sales in Massachusetts, the state where I happen to live. And this tremendous surge in gun ownership, we are told, is a result of Covid-19 and people getting worried about protecting themselves. But it’s not the virus they want to ward off with a gun; it’s all those riots and property destruction caused by the Black Lives Matter mob who are running amok in the streets of every American city and town.

              I didn’t make up that last sentence. The local TV station actually went down to Connecticut and got someone from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) who said exactly that. And after all, the NSSF is the trade group that represents the gun industry, so they must know what they’re talking about, right?

              So I took a look at the monthly data for background checks posted by the FBI and yep, year-to-year gun transfers in Massachusetts went up from 6,511 background checks in September, 2019 to 11,807 FBI-NICS checks in September of this year. Just my luck. I stopped doing retail sales in my gun shop a couple of years ago and now everyone in Massachusetts wants to own a gun. Oh well, oh well.

              Of course, there’s also been all kinds of violent demonstrations in Massachusetts since the cops stomped the shit out of George Floyd and shot a few other Black folks. So much violence has occurred, in fact, that Governor Baker has called out the National Guard. And now not only do we have the Black Lives Matter bunch marching through downtown Boston, the ISIS terrorists have also flown in.

              Actually, the only demonstration I have seen in Massachusetts this year was a small group of fat, middle-aged bikers who were standing around on a street corner in Greenfield last weekend waving their MAGA hats at passing motorists, most of whom responded with the middle finger salute, or a ‘fuck yourself’ shout, or both.

              Know what the real problem is going to be because of the purchase of all those guns? It’s not going to result in more gun violence, despite what my friends in Gun-control Nation contend. The real problem is that next year when we finally get a vaccine and the virus disappears, most of those guns purchased last month will wind up back in those gun shops because the guys who bought them will need to pay for a new set of tires for themselves or a new washing machine for ‘the wife.’

You may not know this, but the most popular first name for a woman married to a gun nut isn’t Tina, or Marge, or Melinda or Sue. It’s ‘the wife.’ That’s her real name. And I can prove this because every time some guy ever bought a gun in my gun shop, he would tell me that he had to figure out how to get it past ‘the wife’ and sneak it into the house. Because if ‘the wife’ sees that he’s bought another gun, she’s going to ask him in a not-so-pleasant voice, “Why did you just buy another friggin’ gun?”

If you think for one second that any of those guns purchased last month in Massachusetts or anywhere else for that matter will wind up anywhere except in the same drawer, or closet, or gun safe with all the other guns, think again. Yea, yea, I know how the NSSF keeps saying that 40% of all the guns recently purchased represent customers who never previously bought a gun. This is the selfsame organization which includes the sales of kayaks when it calculates how much revenue the gun industry contributes to the gross domestic product every year.

Oh, and let’s not forget that the first thing Joe will do if he’s elected President next month (hope, hope) is to defund the police, which will give me a reason to buy another gun.

Now where’d I stick the last gun I bought? Oh, right! Under the bed.

The Medical Community Responds To Trump.

October 8, 2020

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              When Mike Pence got off the plane at Salt Lake City, the first thing he said to the reporters was that this debate was very important because the election meant so much. Evidently, the American people have already decided what the election means, because the polls clearly indicate that the Trump campaign is falling further and further behind, debate or no debate.

              The aggregate national spread between Joe and what’s-his-name is now almost 10 points.  For the first time, Joe is over the 50% mark in the 5 states (MI, NH, PA MN, WI) which gives him all the EV’s he needs, and the Sedaris dog-shit number continues to hover around 6% or less.

              Meanwhile, the Trump campaign appears to be reduced to the 15 or 20 tweets that what’s-his-name does each day. Which nobody cares about since the only issue resonating among the voters is Covid-19, which was the subject of two editorials yesterday.

              The first was a story in Medscape, in which an infectious disease expert, Rochelle Walensky, MD, stated that Mike Pence shouldn’t have even been at the debate. Pence was seen sitting without a mask close by other non-mask wearers at last Saturday’s Rose Garden event. According to CDC guidelines, he should now be at home in self-quarantine.

              But what does Dr. Walensky know?  She’s only Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, specializing in internal medicine and infectious disease. And in fact, Pence told reporters that Trump told him to go to Utah at the end of the Rose Garden event, so off he went.

              The United States is being led by a former real-estate developer who seems to believe that he knows more about infectious disease than scientists who study the problem, or doctors who have treated endless patients infected and sometimes killed by Covid-19. But why trust the medical community when we know for a fact that all physicians belong to the Deep State which promotes this nonsense about the virulence of the virus in order to get rid of Trump.

              Talking about how doctors are part of the liberal alliance out to get Trump, the other media piece that caught my attention yesterday was an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) which you can access right here. You can also download it here and I really hope you’ll read it carefully and spread it around.

              Although I’m not a physician, I have been reading the NEJM since the journal published fundamental research on gun risk back in 1993 and 1994. The journal is considered one of the premier scientific journals in the entire world and every weekly issue contains important news and notes about medical treatment and scientific research.

              On the other hand, I don’t recall any previous NEJM issue which contained such a direct and clear message about how readers should vote. This editorial was truly one of a kind.

              The editorial first compares infection and mortality rates between the United States and other advanced countries, and notes that the U.S. is far ahead of just about every other developed, nation-state. In her opening statement last night, Kamala mentioned this data as well.

              The article then makes a very salient point when it talks about judging the amount of testing not from the absolute number of tests, but by the number of test performed per infected person, a number that puts us down around Zimbabwe and Ethiopia.  That’s our competition for health outcomes? Zimbabwe and Ethiopia? Give me a friggin’ break.

              Reading the rest of this text is a very depressing exercise, if only because it is clear how from the very beginning, Trump and his minions viewed the virus as a ‘political’ problem which needed to be treated in political, as opposed to scientific terms. And after detailing the degree to which the political leadership responded to the pandemic in such a miserable and inadequate way, the following sentence hit me right between the eyes: “Anyone else who recklessly squandered lives and money in this way would be suffering legal consequences.”

              So we can’t indict what’s-his-name for reckless endangerment or homicidal intent, but we can get rid of him in less than 4 weeks. Enough of that jerkoff is enough.

Trump Doesn’t Have The Virus!

October 5, 2020

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              Here’s what’s really going on. Trump doesn’t have any infection at all. Trump is using the sickness thing to create a new campaign narrative because what he has been saying so far in this campaign has only made his numbers worse. Plus, the campaign is dead broke and nobody even knows where the money has gone.

              Tuesday night Trump debated Joe. He made a complete mess of the debate, most of all the moment when he mocked Joe for always wearing the ‘biggest mask’ he had ever seen.

              Trump did a rally in Duluth, MN on Wednesday before 3,000 folks. During the debate, he claimed his rallies were drawing 35,000 fans.

              On Thursday he went to his golf club in New Jersey for a fundraiser. Nobody’s giving him any money. Joe’s fundraising right after the debate set a new, one-day record for how much he has taken in.

              On Friday Trump stayed at the White House and looked at the polls, which show his campaign cratering like never before. He’s trailing Joe by double digits in the national polls. The NBC/WSJ poll has him down by 14 points! The situation in the battlegrounds is just as bad or worse:

              Note that Joe is now ahead in every swing state except Texas. Note that he’s at the 50-point mark in Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and New Hampshire. He wins those 4 states, he wins. Overall, Joe is the choice of 48.77% of all voters in the swing states, Trump’s at 44.9%. A week ago, Joe was at 48.2%, Trump was at 45.2%.

              And most important, the Sedaris dog-shit number was 6.6% last week, this week it’s 6.3%. In other words, more and more voters have made up their minds and they’re not making up their minds in favor of Trump.

No matter how you slice it and dice it, Joe’s numbers are going up and Trump’s numbers are going down. Wasn’t it supposed to be the other way around?

              Trump and his gang have exactly four weeks to pull this one out. You don’t have any more money and you’re not about to collect any more dough. The whole idea of the election as ‘fraud’ has gone over like a lead balloon. And worst of all, not only hasn’t the virus disappeared, as Trump claimed it would several months ago, but in a majority of states, particularly red states, it’s getting worse.

              So here’s what you do. You stop ignoring the corona virus and you stop saying it’s something that was cooked up by the Chinese government and the Deep State. You also stop denying the importance of social distancing to distinguish yourself from the other side.

              You’re the tough guy, remember? You’re the guy who GETS THINGS DONE! So you’ll defeat the virus and you’ll also defeat Joe. And after those two problems disappear, you’ll really bring the country back to being great again!

              What’s the most effective way to hammer home this message and make everyone forget that you spent the last nine months saying exactly the reverse?  You get infected by the virus and to make sure that everyone knows how tough you are, you recover, check out of the hospital, and go back to the White House in just two days.

              How do we know that any of those videos allegedly made at Walter Reed weren’t made in a video studio somewhere else? We don’t. How do we know that the doctors who all happen to be military guys and thus have to follow orders from the Commander in Chief are telling the truth? We don’t.

              Trump’s video message before he drove outside for that stupidly obvious photo op included a comment about how his campaign is generating more enthusiasm than ever before. And he also is now saying that he ‘learned’ about the virus by becoming infected himself. So now he’s ready to attack the problem on all fronts.

              The reason that more than 210,000 Americans have died from this pandemic is because Trump refused to learn anything about the virus when it first appeared. He was too busy blaming the Chinese and disagreeing with health experts to learn anything at all.

              I give this new reality-TV campaign a week before the script changes again. Meanwhile, I believe he’s still testing positive the way he’s been testing positive all along.

Use An ‘Abundance Of Caution’ To Protect Yourself From Covid-19.

October 4, 2020

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 2 Comments

              Now that everyone is trying to figure out how and when the Commander in Chief has become the Infector in Chief, I have to contribute my two cents to the conversation and tell you what I think went on.

              What we know is that on Wednesday, the day after the debate, Trump flew out to Minnesota for a rally with a crowd of roughly 3,000, even though he stated at the debate that his rallies were drawing 35,000 people or more. On the way back to DC from the rally, Hope Hicks began to experience viral symptoms to the point that she had to be isolated on Air Force One.

              Allegedly, Trump wasn’t tested again until after he returned from a fundraiser at his Bedminster club on Thursday evening, even though he had been in close, unprotected contact to Hope Hicks both before and after the Minnesota event. The Thursday evening test allegedly showed that Trump had contracted the virus at some point in time.

              By Friday morning, Trump was experiencing fever, hoarseness, fatigue and was already receiving ‘supplementary oxygen’ which means he was clearly in harm’s way. He managed to walk from the White House to the helicopter, but this was the last time that he moved under his own steam in full public view.

              On Saturday, the whole made-for-TV drama began to unwind. Trump’s personal physician made a brief statement about his patient’s condition, stating that he was ‘feeling better’ and was ‘doing well.’ Then Trump’s staff chief, Mark Meadows, walked over to the reporters and told them that, contrary to the rosy picture painted by the doctor, Trump’s condition was “concerning’ and the next 48 hours would be “critical’ in terms of evaluating the course and outcome of the disease.

              But the moment which really threw the whole phony script into the wastebasket was when Trump’s doctor, Sean Conley, stated that Trump had tested positive “72 hours” prior to the time when the press conference took place. Which means that Trump was infected on Wednesday but still met with a group of donors at Bedminster the following day.

              Who knows what’s going on? Numerous media reports are now circulating that Trump’s video showing him working at Walter Reed might have been made at the White House before he left. And the fact that more people who attended the White House ceremony introducing Amy Barrett – the count is now at least 9 including 3 Senators – have tested positive only adds to the messaging mess.

              The picture above is how Senator Mike Lee (R-UT) behaved at the White House event. Which is how most of the people who were at Trump’s Minnesota rally were protecting themselves from the virus; i.e., not wearing masks.

              But here’s the real kicker to all this: After the rally in Duluth, a local GOP politician, Jason Lewis, announced that he was going to self-quarantine for 14 days because he had stood next to Trump and shaken his hands during the event. He didn’t have any symptoms, but “out of an abundance of caution” he was going to stay at home.

              I heard the phrase, ‘an abundance of caution’ from four different members of Trump’s staff, including Barbie McEnany who trotted out the phrase when she first announced Trump’s trip to Walter Reed but somehow neglected to mention that he was already finding it difficult to breathe.

              Here’s what I think is going on. We have no idea when Trump first tested positive for Covid-19. But I’m willing to take the short odds that the White House wasn’t going to mention the infection until and unless Trump exhibited symptoms that couldn’t be overlooked.

              Remember – many people test positive and then become active carriers and spreaders of this virus even though they don’t necessarily become ‘ill’ themselves. The whole point of doing a self-quarantine is to make sure that you don’t transmit the germs to someone else even though you feel fine.

              In the interests of full disclosure, I will admit that right around the same time I figured out this scenario, David Axelrod said the same thing last night on CNN. Oh well, sometimes great minds…

              The good news is that a majority of Americans believe that Trump wouldn’t be sitting in Walter Reed today if he had worn a mask. Let’s just hope that all those folks remember to vote.

What Can We Learn From Trump Getting Sick?

October 3, 2020

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Last night I was watching Fox News  (I always watch/listen to the enemy just to keep them closer than my friends) and the banner message that kept running across the bottom of the screen said, “Liberal media cheers that President Trump is sick.”

So this morning, to check out the extent of the liberal cheers being directed at Trump, I read the op-ed that will be posted in tomorrow’s edition of The (‘failing’) New York Times written by our friend Nick Kristof which says exactly the opposite of what Fox News believes the liberal media is saying about Trump and Covid-19.

Nick’s op-ed begins by telling us that we shouldn’t be nasty or snarky just because President Trump is sick. Instead, “Let’s learn from the president’s infection. Let’s make this a wake-up call that leads to mask-wearing and social distancing, saving lives.”

He then concludes his homily in the following way: “So as the Trumps battle the virus, let’s learn lessons, sharpen our wits — and commit ourselves to a lifesaving norm of social distancing and wearing masks.”

This may come as something of a shock to Nick, but maybe because he’s been sitting on the family farm in Oregon perhaps he’s missed a few things. The truth is that I don’t need to learn anything about the virus from Trump falling ill. The only thing I’ll learn if he recovers is that he will receive a level of medical care which most Americans who contract the illness won’t receive thanks to how one, single person has behaved.

Several months ago I came driving home to find my street being repaved. In order to drive down the street, I had to tell the cop who was standing there that I was a resident. So I stopped next to him and because I was alone in my car my mask was on the seat next to me.

I dropped my window and but before I realized anything the cop was leaning over, not wearing a mask, and his face was about a foot away from me. I yelled at him to back off which he didn’t, by the way. I then shot the window closed and drove towards my house.

This incident occurred just before my state’s Governor, Charlie Baker, imposed social distancing statewide. But I had been wearing a mask and staying away from people for at least three or four previous months. And I knew lots of people who were doing the same thing.

But I also saw a lot of people like this cop who weren’t behaving the way they should have behaved. And the reason they weren’t doing what we all need to do is because one fat, stupid and egregious narcissist sitting in the Oval Office has been telling everyone that they don’t have to behave the way they should behave.

I’m not surprised that Trump’s dwindling collection of media allies are going all out to keep him somehow from taking responsibility for the fact that nearly one thousand Americans are still dying from the virus every day. In the entire history of this country, there has never (read: never) been such irresponsible behavior by the guy who sits behind the Resolute desk.

I think it’s not only disingenuous but somewhat alarming when intelligent and well-meaning liberal editorialists like Nick Kristof imply that ‘we’ are somehow all at fault because ‘we’ need to see this virus as some kind of “wake-up call.”

Since early February I have gotten up every morning knowing that I can’t leave my house without a mask. I have also not visited with any of my children or my grandchildren because I know that such visits represent an unacceptable risk. And I’m hardly the only American who has put off seeing their kids.

Sorry Nick, but I don’t need a wake-up call and neither do any of my friends. What we need is a Chief Executive who should be modest and honest enough to accept the blame for pretending that we can just ignore the ‘Chinese flu’ because it will soon ‘go away.’

Who Says Trump Has The Virus?

October 2, 2020

mikethegunguy Blogs , 1 Comment

              This morning the AM shock jocks started off by saying that Biden should ‘suspend’ his campaign as a sign of respect to Trump. After the way Trump behaved during the debate, these guys have the balls to ask Joe to show respect? 

              I’m still willing to take the short odds that maybe, just maybe, Trump’s faking the whole infection thing. Why shouldn’t he? After all, the way things are going right now, the only votes he may get are sympathy votes.

In the national aggregate poll, the gap is now 8.2% in Joe’s favor, the widest it has been since August 29. As far as the way people reacted to Tuesday night’s debate, Joe hauled in more than $21 million in the 24 hours following the debate, a one-day record. I didn’t notice the Trump campaign releasing their fundraising numbers yet.

Of the 30 states that ended up in Trump’s W column the last time around, Joe now leads in 10. Some of the margins are razor-thin in states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio. In other states like Michigan and Wisconsin, the lead is 7 points.

In all the ‘battleground’ states, the Sedaris dog-shit vote is now around 6%. So if every, single voter who hasn’t yet made up their minds decides to vote for Trump because they feel so bad that he has contracted Covid-19, he still can’t win but at least it will be close and then he can screw around and challenge the vote.

Trump’s bigger problem is that the guy who proclaimed that his 2016 victory marked the beginning of a new ‘movement,’ is actually having trouble convincing the same people who voted for him last time to vote for him again. In fact, the dismal state of Trump’s campaign in what has always been reliable red states is probably the most interesting and unspoken story of the 2020 campaign.

              While it’s true that Trump’s final Electoral College margin reflected the outcome of very close contests in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, he couldn’t have been competitive without piling up huge numbers in states like Alabama, where he won by 28%, or Arkansas, where he won by 27%, or Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Tennessee, where his winning margins were 20%, 30%, 20% and 26%.

              That was then, this is now. Of the 17 pro-Trump states for which we have current polls, Trump’s lead this year is half of what it was in 2016. In Montana, an 18.5% gap four years ago is now 7.8%. In Kansas, a 20-point margin last time is now 8.7%. The South Carolina gap has gone from 14% to 5.8%. Taken together, the 17 most reliable red states gave Trump a victory amounting to 20.4% of all votes cast in those states in 2016.  Right now, that number is 10.4%

              I’m not saying that Joe can win any of those states. But if Trump can’t keep the support he got last time in the states that have always voted for the GOP, what chance does he have to overcome Biden’s lead in any of the battleground states? And by the way, the Sedaris dog-shit number in those 17 red states is also around 6%.

              Two other points of note. ‘Well-placed sources’ told the Daily Mail that Brad Parscale is “under investigation” for allegedly stealing $40 million from the campaign. And now we have another story floating around that Eric Trump’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, didn’t ‘resign’ from Fox News as she claimed, but was bounced out after management received numerous complaints about inappropriate sexual behavior.

              When these kinds of stories start coming out, you know that a campaign or any kind of organizational situation is in deep shit. But as far as I’m concerned, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of folks. And frankly, Frank Bruni should be ashamed of himself for his op-ed today in The (failing) New York Times, where he says that he feels ‘petty’ for thinking that maybe Trump’s infection is just another hoax.

              Want a proper perspective on Trump and his campaign?  Think about how he accused Biden of wanting to turn Minnesota into a “refugee camp.”

              If you want, go right ahead and feel sorry for Trump. I’m going to send Joe and Kammie $200 bucks so that I can attend their grass-roots fundraiser tonight.

All Of A Sudden, There’s A New Trump On The Campaign Trail.

September 26, 2020

mikethegunguy Blogs , , 1 Comment

Yesterday I talked about how Joe’s 7-pojnt lead both in the national, as well as most state-wide polls, hasn’t really changed since the end of June. The size of the Sedaris dog-shit vote also keeps going down.

So Trump has been behind in this campaign from the day that Biden became his chief opponent, and typical of Trump, he immediately started off by attacking Joe. After all, calling Hillary a ‘crook’ worked in 2016. Why not try it again?

So Trump started saying that Biden was also a crook because he set up his son, Hunter, for all kinds of illegal payoffs in the Ukraine.

When that didn’t work, Trump then began saying that ‘sleepy Joe’ was to demented or senile to be President. That didn’t work.

By now, in late July, the corona virus was beginning to take a toll in red states. So Trump started telling everyone that his Administration deserved an A+ for their efforts to protect us from the virus, and by the way, we would shortly have a vaccine.

When that didn’t work, Trump decided to ‘get tough’ on crime, a message that Republican Presidents have more or less copyrighted since Nixon invented his ‘silent majority’ in 1968.

Trump even began using the phrase ‘silent majority’ in his tweets. But it didn’t work. The polls didn’t change. In fact, after he did some photo ops in Racine, Wisconsin where protestors had burned some commercial properties, his state-level numbers in Wisconsin went down.

When the ‘tough on crime’ messaging didn’t help, Trump started pushing the idea that the election would be a ‘scam’ and he wouldn’t accept the results. This one also went over like a lead balloon, even though the mainstream media is trying their best to keep this nonsense alive.

So then he pivoted to another message, which basically said that things were tough but he would lead us back to things being even better than they were before. This was a riff on Make America Great Again, but the words Make America Great Again Redux don’t fit on the front of a baseball cap.

Want my prediction for the messaging that Trump will trot out next? Believe it or not, he’s going to come out with some kind of spiel that moves him slightly towards the political center and puts just a little distance between him and the beloved alt-right. Why is he going to do this? Because the latest polls don’t give him any other choice.

On Thursday, Fox News published a poll which showed that Joe was now leading in Ohio – that’s Ohio – for the first time since August 16th. Now this isn’t a poll conducted by The (failing) New York Times, or CNN, or one of those other liberal media operations. It was conducted by Fox News which, by the way, is a highly-rated polling operation, according to Nate Simon and his 538 team.

It’s not just that Joe has jumped out to a small lead in Ohio that’s important to understand. It’s that the Sedaris dog-shit vote is down to 3 percent and worse, eight percent of the voters who voted for Trump in 2016 have decided to pull the paper lever for Joe. In other words, Joe’s lead in Ohio is based on bleeding votes away from Trump!

So here’s what Trump is going to do. Mark my words, he’s going to start describing himself as some kind of nice, compassionate, understanding guy who just wants the best for everyone in America, even if he has been running a campaign which until now has appealed to the absolute worst.

Why do I say this? Because Trump not only went to pay his respects to Ruthie although he was too busy to show up at Elijah Cummings’s funeral, but he also then appeared in public – ready? – wearing a mask!

You wait and see. Trump is going to try this new script for a couple of weeks. And he’ll receive nothing but unquestioned plaudits from the ‘enemy of the people,’ i.e., the liberal media and the ‘lamestream’ now mainstream press.

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