Today is the day that our income taxes normally would be due, or at least due to be filed. This year that is changed due to the coronavirus. However, life under Trump is still very taxing and along with one shout out to a group of American patriots I will ramble about that for a few hundred words. Let’s explore.

Tuesday’s Washington Post informed us that they have Trump’s documented lies in office now totaling over 18,000. Come on Mr. President, you can reach the 20,000 mark with ease.

A dirty little secret coming out about the $2.2 trillion economic relief bill is that it contained a tax benefit for wealthy real estate investors that will cost us $170 billion over the next decade. This was a late “slip in” by the Republican Senate. You knew Trump and Kushner wouldn’t support something they didn’t profit from.

With his incompetent handling (or should I say ignoring?) of the coronavirus Trump has turned America into the old Soviet Union. To understand my reasoning I will have to relay an old joke.

A Russian economist comes to America during the Soviet era to study capitalism. He is amazed by the job of the salesman (it was sexist back then and they were almost all males.) When asked for the aspect of the American economy that was most different from the Soviet economy he said the salesman. He was asked to explain to which he replied, “In America the hardest job is to sell somebody something; in Russia it is to buy anything”. Shopped for toilet paper lately?

One of the Republicans favorite industries is the petroleum industry. Remember this is the Party that always talks about jobs. Obamacare was a, “Job killing bill”. The big right wing push now is to reopen the country to protect jobs. Oil and natural gas extraction combines for only 150,000 jobs in America. Try to square that with 17 million new unemployment claims in the last three weeks.

I hear Monday’s episode of the Trump Comedy Hour was a classic. Trump proclaimed that he has absolute authority. (The scary part is that I think he actually believes he does and with the current Senate, Attorney General and Supreme Court majority de facto he may.) I’m not alone in my thinking that in addition to attempting to control the message, Trump is doing the daily shows to satisfy his ego in the absence of rallies. He is obsessed with the high ratings he is receiving. There is a simple solution to that: stop watching. I have done so and I still am able to stay well informed. If the ratings slip the show may not be cancelled but Trump will be disappointed and one of his goals will not be achieved.

I picked up an interesting tidbit recently. It appears that Justin Amash is considering a presidential run as a third party candidate. Couple this with Tulsi Gabbard’s endorsement of Joe Biden. I was among those who felt Gabbard would make a third party run ala Jill Stein in 2016 and chip away a few votes from the Democratic nominee. Stein’s presence albeit small proved significant in a couple of key battleground states in 2016.

Amash is a Tea Party Republican recently turned independent. If Amash were to run on a third party ticket he could syphon just enough votes away from Trump to hurt him in a battleground state or two. Michigan, where Amash hails from, is one of those states. That could be enough to give Joe Biden the Electoral College.

As an interesting aside, I have noticed that as Democratic groups put out their lists of Biden endorsers they do not include Gabbard. She is definitely persona non grata in the Party and I don’t think most Democrats trust her.

I’d like to end on a good note and salute a group of American patriots – the voters of Wisconsin. They literally risked their lives last week Tuesday to vote. In the process they defeated a Republican plot to “steal” a Wisconsin Supreme Court seat. Some will undoubtedly pay with their lives but so did my father’s generation when America and democracy was threatened by fascism in World War II.

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