I found a top-secret document hermetically sealed in a mayonnaise jar on Funk & Wagnall’s front porch. It is evidently a memo from the Trump campaign manager to the staff. I think it explains a lot.
DEAR STAFF:
Frank Cagle
The American people are letting the chief down so we are going to have to redouble our efforts in order to win the Nov. 3 election.
Senior citizens are the most reliable and desirable voting bloc for Republicans. They are conservative, and unlike mouthy college students, they vote. But internal polls show that seniors are deserting the chief in droves. A 12-point swing to the Democrats since 2016. Many seniors vote absentee for health reasons and even more of them want to do it this time because of the “alleged” pandemic. When the chief screams, er, discusses discouraging voting by mail because it means you are a Democrat. They seem unable to distinguish between mail-in ballots and mail-in absentee ballots. I think it may be caused by senility.
Seniors simply cannot follow the chief’s example, and they wear masks. Polling shows they are fearful of going to the polls because the Trump supporters at the polls won’t be wearing masks and they are afraid it will kill them. Whatever happened to the Greatest Generation? We are dealing with wussies here, people. We are going to have to get the vans out and round them up and haul them to the polls.
Speaking of deserters. In 2016 the women were OK with the rich and famous people being allowed to grab lady parts and have sex with strippers and porn stars. But now they are giving Joe Biden a boost just because the chief nailed him in the first debate. It seems that being obnoxious, talking over people and being a bully are suddenly considered “impolite” and demeaning to the office of president. Well, la-de-dah, we’re talking about electing a chief executive here. Somebody who can stand up even to our friends like Putin and Kim Jong-un in the unlikely event it should be necessary.
People are fickle. The chief got sick and over 30 members of the White House staff and three senators got infected. But people got really upset just because he locked two Secret Service agents in a hermetically sealed SUV with him and had them drive him around so he could wave to the cameras. Look, if the Secret Service is trained to take a bullet for the president then they ought to be able to take some germs. I don’t know what’s gotten into people. It doesn’t look good when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refuses to set foot in the White House.
People are mad because the chief got special treatment when he got sick. Well, there have been at least 10 people who have gotten the new drugs that got him back home in three days.
People are whining about the chief paying only $750 in taxes for a couple of years. He did not do anything illegal. If you and your colleagues hire lobbyists to design tax loopholes for you and you have 12 accountants, you won’t have to pay taxes either.
Biden is playing rope-a-dope like Ali against Foreman. He gets points for just being able to stand up for an hour-and-a-half debate. His only assets are that he’s not Hillary Clinton and he doesn’t know how to use email.
Finally, people are looking for a fall guy. California’s burning, Portland is the scene of a civil war, and over 210,000 people have died from the so-called COVID-19 virus. Next thing you know they’ll blame him for killer wasps, when we all know they were sent here by China.
Forget the polls, but just to be on the safe side, update your resumes.
serious stuff here
Just saying: Various business journals report that the nation’s 643 billionaires saw their wealth increase almost 30 percent during the pandemic. These folks had their wealth increase by $845 billion, the total going from $2.9 trillion to $3.8 trillion.
While 50 million Americans lost their jobs, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos increased his wealth by $73 billion to a total of $186 billion. His wealth increased $10 billion in one day. To put that in perspective, if he gave every Amazon employee $100,000, he would still be as wealthy as before the pandemic started.
Anybody remember the guy down in Chattanooga who went around and bought up all the hand sanitizer when the pandemic started? They called him a price gouger, threatened to put him in jail and he gave the sanitizer to various hospitals.
Are you kidding? The Cato Institute gave Gov. Bill Lee and the General Assembly a “D” grade, the lowest score of any Republican-controlled state in the nation. That’s about the most stupid thing I’ve seen lately. It is based on Lee’s first year in office when the state budget increased by 10 percent and the think tank thinks the big revenue increase should have bolstered the Rainy-Day Fund. The report card mistakenly said the state had to use Rainy-Day funds to fight the recession, which is not true.
The Tennessee legislature has cut taxes every year since the Republicans took over. The economy has boomed, new large employers have been lured to the state and, contrary to the Cato allegation, the state has put millions of dollars into the Rainy-Day Fund every year.
I’m no fan of Lee and I’m often critical of some moronic legislators. But in this case the Cato Institute used what we will charitably call “flawed methodology.” That’s academic talk for pulling numbers out of your you-know-what.
Frank Cagle is a veteran newspaper editor and columnist.