Facing Virus, Trump Is Third-World Tinhorn
In the failure of federal government, volunteer patriots sew masks. Photo: San Diego Union
“Call a person over in Venezuela,” blustered the man with the orange goo slathered on his face.
“Ask them how did nationalization of their businesses work out? Not too well."
The Dear Leader was responding to questions about why the American government was not mobilizing businesses to make the masks and respirators needed for endangered health-care people to care for endangered patients.
He’s all for Congress supplementing his friends in big business in this crisis. He just doesn’t want to tell them what to do with the money.
This in a country that mobilized auto plants to produce airplanes during World War Two, as David Leonhardt recalled in the NYT on Monday.
This in a country where hospitals are begging people to donate masks and other medical goods they are “storing” in their homes, in order to save the actual sick, until The Orange Guy thinks of something.
Ordinary citizens are sewing masks in their homes, patriots in the old style, because the federal government cannot get a handle on this.
I immediately thought of an entitled woman I met in Cuba, making soap in her own kitchen. I said “soap,” not “soup.”
I met the woman when I covered the Pan-American Games in Havana in 1991. A friend in New York had told me about her, a talented woman who had gone to school in the States, had a medical background, whose husband, a high-ranking officer, had fought and died for his country.
She was eager to be my guide to the complicated world of Cuba, when I was not directly covering sports issues during the Games. She was loyal to the country and she knew how things worked, and did not work.
She had a car, one of those classic 50s cars, in good shape, and took me around Havana as well as the Bay of Pigs, where her husband had served.
For a sense of how people lived, she took me to her building, in a genteel if fading neighborhood. The lights were out on the stairway. The apartment was roomy, if dated. They had raised their family there, and now some members were doctors, working in the state hospital.
She pointed at the stove, at a pot of soap slivers in water, waiting for her children and their spouses to bring home more soap remainders from the hospital, so she would boil them down, sanitize them, turn them into something approximating soap bars.
“I’ve become my own grandmother,” she said.
I think of her remark and those soap scraps now that Americans are begging the federal government to supply the goods to keep them alive. I think of our portly poseur, who has fooled some Americans into thinking he has business sense, any sense at all.
He wants American money in the hands of Mnuchin and other gunnysack cabinet members rather than in the hands of the people who do the work.
He’s not going to induce American enterprises into making make goods needed by endangered people. Medical people are begging for equipment, but this is not his department.
He has his principles. He rolls over and plays nice for Putin and Kim but he talks big about Venezuela. His instincts are toward one-man rule.
On Monday it seemed he had disappeared Dr. Anthony Fauci, an authority on the virus who lately has been verbalizing some of his concerns.
Fauci was missing from the press conference Monday, like some Politburo big shot who had been airbrushed out of a group photo.
Maybe Fauci would return on Tuesday. To be continued.
In the meantime, thank goodness we are not a third-world country like Cuba, like Venezuela.
Trump’s Venezuela babble:
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/23/819926854/fact-check-trump-compares-defense-production-act-to-nationalization
David Leonhardt’s riff on mobilization before World War Two:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html?searchResultPosition=4
QUESTION: A friend asked me yesterday if he could be put on my email list for my occasional rant. I said there is no such mailing list; I put my precious little ramblings out there on the Web like a message in a bottle, tossed out to sea, and hope people find it. Only rarely do I send something directly to a friend.
​Could I get a show of hands from anybody who would like to be on a totally-anonymous and confidential list for these occasional pieces? Thanks.
​My email is: georgevecsey@gmail.com
NB: Comments here are welcome. Nay, beseeched. GV.
3/24/2020 01:58:11 pm
Spot on! Thank you once again.
I am reminded of an old song by Randy Newman. He says,
“ It's money that matters
Now you know that it's true
Whatever you do.”
Trumpty Dumpty, the Great Orange Blob of Toxic Waste lives by that mantra.
The world is flat once again, burn the scientists at the stake, pile up the dead bodies...... it is money that matters.
The good news is that we are still breathing and we are being responsible in the face of the White House weirdness. Keep writing George........
3/24/2020 02:24:49 pm
trump's playing into the well known american weirdness about socialism equaling god knows what.
i imagine he's more worried about how the virus is affecting his hotels which--as you're well aware--he knows nothing about; is not involved in any way, shape or form.
his golf courses too.
the lunkheads from his first marriage are completely in charge.
as for the good doctor disappearing...his base don't give no damn about the fancy schmancy scientific stuff.
the world is 6000 years old, gay marriage is an abomination, abortions are illegal in any circumstance--unless they or their loved ones need one (or more) and big guvmint should just be available when they need it.
what was the latest poll? 55% of the 'folks' think he's doing a fine job with this virus.
don't forget this virus is no different from tens of thousands of americans dying in car accidents or the flu carrying off people.
and, apparently, trump has kidnapped biden and is holding him in a dungeon somewhere.
Alan Rubin link
3/26/2020 02:19:27 pm
It was refreshing to watch Gov. Cuomo this morning on TV. He very clearly defined the situation, where the state of NY is and where it needs to go.
The more than 2 Trillion (I cannot get my head around this number) is set to be passed by congress if the Senate can live with restrictions on how the wealthy corporations, etc. can spend their money. None of the money can go to Trump owned properties (we will see).
Gov. Cuomo indicated that the federal money will help with the state’s medical needs, but there was no money to help the State of NY cover its increased expenses and loss of revenue.
There is never a good time for a crisis, but it would have been interesting if it came early enough for Gov. Cuomo to have been a factor in the Democratic primaries.
I still no not believe that it is too late for him to enter, but that also will not happen.
It is interesting that all the reasons previously mentioned as to why Gov. Cuomo would not have been a good presidential candidate seem to have evaporated.
Now if we con only get the "brilliant dummy in-chief" to evaporate.
3/27/2020 12:00:29 am
George, You asked, "Could I get a show of hands from anybody who would like to be on a totally-anonymous and confidential list for these occasional pieces?" Not sure I understand why that would be necessary, or what advance it would represent. We all check your blog often, so we know when there's been a new post. Then again, maybe we all have times when we're so busy that we simply don't check in for a week or so, and maybe, on such occasions, it would be nice to get an email from you midweek saying, hey, folks, there's a new post.
3/27/2020 12:33:36 am
perhaps george is gathering addresses for a biden fundraising campaign, eh.
3/28/2020 07:53:16 am
A Cuomo fund-raiser.
With Dalai Lama, 1979
​Loyal Reader
Hansen Alexander
has filed an interview with, of all people, me.
It's on his blog. (Just past photo of rat!) My thanks for his interest. GV
​notesfromnewratcity.wordpress.com/blog/
David Vecsey's sweet tale of distant love before the Web, now NYT Podcast, narrated by Griffin Dunne. Please see:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/fashion/before-the-web-hearts-grew-silent.html?referer=
Facing Virus, Trump Is Third-World Tinhorn
In the failure of federal government, volunteer patriots sew masks. Photo: San Diego Union
“Call a person over in Venezuela,” blustered the man with the orange goo slathered on his face.
“Ask them how did nationalization of their businesses work out? Not too well."
The Dear Leader was responding to questions about why the American government was not mobilizing businesses to make the masks and respirators needed for endangered health-care people to care for endangered patients.
He’s all for Congress supplementing his friends in big business in this crisis. He just doesn’t want to tell them what to do with the money.
This in a country that mobilized auto plants to produce airplanes during World War Two, as David Leonhardt recalled in the NYT on Monday.
This in a country where hospitals are begging people to donate masks and other medical goods they are “storing” in their homes, in order to save the actual sick, until The Orange Guy thinks of something.
Ordinary citizens are sewing masks in their homes, patriots in the old style, because the federal government cannot get a handle on this.
I immediately thought of an entitled woman I met in Cuba, making soap in her own kitchen. I said “soap,” not “soup.”
I met the woman when I covered the Pan-American Games in Havana in 1991. A friend in New York had told me about her, a talented woman who had gone to school in the States, had a medical background, whose husband, a high-ranking officer, had fought and died for his country.
She was eager to be my guide to the complicated world of Cuba, when I was not directly covering sports issues during the Games. She was loyal to the country and she knew how things worked, and did not work.
She had a car, one of those classic 50s cars, in good shape, and took me around Havana as well as the Bay of Pigs, where her husband had served.
For a sense of how people lived, she took me to her building, in a genteel if fading neighborhood. The lights were out on the stairway. The apartment was roomy, if dated. They had raised their family there, and now some members were doctors, working in the state hospital.
She pointed at the stove, at a pot of soap slivers in water, waiting for her children and their spouses to bring home more soap remainders from the hospital, so she would boil them down, sanitize them, turn them into something approximating soap bars.
“I’ve become my own grandmother,” she said.
I think of her remark and those soap scraps now that Americans are begging the federal government to supply the goods to keep them alive. I think of our portly poseur, who has fooled some Americans into thinking he has business sense, any sense at all.
He wants American money in the hands of Mnuchin and other gunnysack cabinet members rather than in the hands of the people who do the work.
He’s not going to induce American enterprises into making make goods needed by endangered people. Medical people are begging for equipment, but this is not his department.
He has his principles. He rolls over and plays nice for Putin and Kim but he talks big about Venezuela. His instincts are toward one-man rule.
On Monday it seemed he had disappeared Dr. Anthony Fauci, an authority on the virus who lately has been verbalizing some of his concerns.
Fauci was missing from the press conference Monday, like some Politburo big shot who had been airbrushed out of a group photo.
Maybe Fauci would return on Tuesday. To be continued.
In the meantime, thank goodness we are not a third-world country like Cuba, like Venezuela.
Trump’s Venezuela babble:
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/03/23/819926854/fact-check-trump-compares-defense-production-act-to-nationalization
David Leonhardt’s riff on mobilization before World War Two:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html?searchResultPosition=4
QUESTION: A friend asked me yesterday if he could be put on my email list for my occasional rant. I said there is no such mailing list; I put my precious little ramblings out there on the Web like a message in 
a bottle, tossed out to sea, and hope people find it. Only rarely do I send something directly to a friend.
​Could I get a show of hands from anybody who would like to be on a totally-anonymous and confidential list for these occasional pieces? Thanks.
​My email is: georgevecsey@gmail.com
NB: Comments here are welcome. Nay, beseeched. GV.
3/24/2020 01:58:11 pm
Spot on! Thank you once again.
I am reminded of an old song by Randy Newman. He says,
“ It's money that matters
Now you know that it's true
Whatever you do.”
Trumpty Dumpty, the Great Orange Blob of Toxic Waste lives by that mantra.
The world is flat once again, burn the scientists at the stake, pile up the dead bodies...... it is money that matters.
The good news is that we are still breathing and we are being responsible in the face of the White House weirdness. Keep writing George........
3/24/2020 02:24:49 pm
trump's playing into the well known american weirdness about socialism equaling god knows what.
i imagine he's more worried about how the virus is affecting his hotels which--as you're well aware--he knows nothing about; is not involved in any way, shape or form.
his golf courses too.
the lunkheads from his first marriage are completely in charge.
as for the good doctor disappearing...his base don't give no damn about the fancy schmancy scientific stuff.
the world is 6000 years old, gay marriage is an abomination, abortions are illegal in any circumstance--unless they or their loved ones need one (or more) and big guvmint should just be available when they need it.
what was the latest poll? 55% of the 'folks' think he's doing a fine job with this virus.
don't forget this virus is no different from tens of thousands of americans dying in car accidents or the flu carrying off people.
and, apparently, trump has kidnapped biden and is holding him in a dungeon somewhere.
Alan Rubin link
3/26/2020 02:19:27 pm
It was refreshing to watch Gov. Cuomo this morning on TV. He very clearly defined the situation, where the state of NY is and where it needs to go.
The more than 2 Trillion (I cannot get my head around this number) is set to be passed by congress if the Senate can live with restrictions on how the wealthy corporations, etc. can spend their money. None of the money can go to Trump owned properties (we will see).
Gov. Cuomo indicated that the federal money will help with the state’s medical needs, but there was no money to help the State of NY cover its increased expenses and loss of revenue.
There is never a good time for a crisis, but it would have been interesting if it came early enough for Gov. Cuomo to have been a factor in the Democratic primaries.
I still no not believe that it is too late for him to enter, but that also will not happen.
It is interesting that all the reasons previously mentioned as to why Gov. Cuomo would not have been a good presidential candidate seem to have evaporated.
Now if we con only get the "brilliant dummy in-chief" to evaporate.
3/27/2020 12:00:29 am
George, You asked, "Could I get a show of hands from anybody who would like to be on a totally-anonymous and confidential list for these occasional pieces?" Not sure I understand why that would be necessary, or what advance it would represent. We all check your blog often, so we know when there's been a new post. Then again, maybe we all have times when we're so busy that we simply don't check in for a week or so, and maybe, on such occasions, it would be nice to get an email from you midweek saying, hey, folks, there's a new post.
3/27/2020 12:33:36 am
perhaps george is gathering addresses for a biden fundraising campaign, eh.
3/28/2020 07:53:16 am
A Cuomo fund-raiser.
With Dalai Lama, 1979
​Loyal Reader
Hansen Alexander
has filed an interview with, of all people, me.
It's on his blog. (Just past photo of rat!) My thanks for his interest. GV
​notesfromnewratcity.wordpress.com/blog/
David Vecsey's sweet tale of distant love before the Web, now NYT Podcast, narrated by Griffin Dunne. Please see:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/12/15/fashion/before-the-web-hearts-grew-silent.html?referer=