The Staggering Cost Of Donald Trump's Incompetence

The United States and South Korea both discovered their first case of Coronavirus on the same day -- January 20th.

South Korea immediately sprang into action. They began testing, contact tracing, and social distancing. Those actions allowed them to get control of the pandemic in their country. To date, they have only had about 267 deaths (or about 5.21 deaths per million people).

The United States did none of that. In fact, the Trump administration delayed a full two months before it recognized the need for testing, and it still hasn't distributed enough tests to allow us to get a full picture of the viral spread in the country. To date, nearly 100,000 deaths have occurred from the virus (or about 295.22 deaths per million people).

It did not have to be that way. If the Trump administration had acted quickly (like South Korea did), they could have contained the virus and prevented many thousands of deaths. In other words, Donald Trump's has cost the lives of many thousands of Americans -- and his demand for the economy to reopen insures that many more thousands will die. This nation is paying a heavy price for Trump's incompetence!

Here is part of what Peter Baker (The New York Times) has to say about the number of Coronavirus deaths in this country:

This was a death toll that Mr. Trump once predicted would never be reached. In late February, he said there were only 15 coronavirus cases in the United States, understating even then the actual number, and declared that “the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.” In the annals of the American presidency, it would be hard to recall a more catastrophically wrong prediction. Even after he later acknowledged that it would not be zero, he insisted the death toll would fall “substantially below the 100,000” mark.

As it stands now, the coronavirus has infected 1.6 million and taken so many lives it is as if an entire midsize American city — say Boca Raton, Fla., just to pick an example — simply disappeared. The toll is about to match the 100,000 killed in the United States by the pandemic of 1968 and is closing in on the outbreak of 1957-58, which killed 116,000. At this pace, it will stand as the country’s deadliest public health disaster since the great influenza of 1918-20 — all at the same time the nation confronts the most severe economic collapse since the Great Depression.

The historical comparisons are breathtaking. More Americans have died of the coronavirus in the last 12 weeks than died in the Vietnam and Korean Wars combined and nearly twice as many as died of battle wounds during World War I. The death toll has nearly matched the number of people killed by the initial blasts of the world’s first atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In terms of American deaths, it is the equivalent of 22 Iraq wars, 33 Sept. 11 attacks, 41 Afghanistan wars, 42 Pearl Harbors or 25,000 Benghazis.

American Workers Take Another Hit From Congress

American workers just took another hit from the politicians in Congress. These politicians (Republicans and blue dog Democrats) won't do anything to create jobs in the United States, but they don't seem to mind passing bills that stand a real good chance of costing this country even more jobs.

This latest action came in the form of three "free trade agreements" -- to Columbia, Panama, and South Korea. And sadly, the president has said he will sign the three agreements. He has swallowed the corporate lies that this is a good thing for America. If these new trade agreements work like the previous ones, like NAFTA and CAFTA, it will be a big boon for the international corporations and a disaster for American workers. Those corporations will be able to export jobs and then not worry about any kind of tariffs when they ship their goods back to America to sell.

A clue to how bad these agreements will probably be can be seen from one of the major supporters of the three agreements -- the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Don't be fooled, this organization is not like the chamber in your hometown (that supports small local businesses). This national organization could care less about small businesses. They are wholly owned and subsidized by the giant corporations, and everything they do is to promote those giant corporations.

The Republicans (and their blue dog Democratic buddies) are slapping themselves on the back today because they have provided their corporate buddies with another victory. They are claiming that these bills will be job creators, and they are probably right. The problem is that those jobs will be created in Columbia, Panama, and South Korea -- not the United States.

U.S. Government Is Victim Of Cyber Attack

The United States in general, and it's government in particular, are heavily dependent on computers. Even our military and most of our weapons are computerized. If you want to attack or damage the United States, the smartest and safest way to do it would be with a cyber attack. And that's just what happened on July 4th.

The BBC is reporting that several government agencies and other entities in the United States were the victim of a computer attack starting on July 4th. The known victims of this attack are the White House, the Defense Department, New York Stock Exchange, the National Security Agency, Nasdaq Stock market and the Washington Post.

The government is not talking, but Ben Rushlo of Keynote Systems describes the attack as a "massive outage". Some systems were just slowed, while others were knocked out for several hours.

Who did it? Perhaps a clue can be gleaned from the only other country that was targeted in this cyber attack -- South Korea. In South Korea, the presidential Blue House, the Defense Ministry and the National Assembly were all victimized by the attack. The South Korean National Intelligence Service believes North Korea is responsible for the attacks on both countries.

For several years now, North Korea has been acting like they are bullet-proof. In defiance of world opinion, they have developed nuclear weapons. They are also testing missle delivery systems in spite of being warned not to do it. A cyber attack is just as serious as these other violations of international peace. In fact, it could be considered an act of war.

If it is verified that North Korea is the origin of the cyber attacks, perhaps it is time to take some action against them -- something more serious than begging them to be good. They have shown they are a dangerous outlaw nation.