Energy Blog

Thank God I did not try to predict what the last night and Trump’s speech would be like.  Again, I am mainly commenting on the Coronavirus leadership, or lack thereof.  Not to mention the misuse of the White House as a campaign backdrop.  But who could have imagined using the Washington Monument and the National Mall for his fireworks show.  Of course, all things Trump have to have his name on top of them in the largest possible lettering, so we have the TRUMP in fireworks, followed by 2020.  Twice.

There were 2000 people sitting next to each other on the White House South lawn, with no spacing between.  Masks were optional, and very few were in evidence.  A slight saving grace was that they were outside, and a slight breeze played with Trump’s combover.

Yet, they yelled (four more years and USA), and exhaled deep breaths when getting up and applauding, then sitting down, many times.  They also sat through Ivanka’s speech, then Trump’s 70 minute self-praise, then the fireworks, then the Opera, and who knows how long before the speeches started.  I’m sure that the city of Washington, D.C., has a limit on the number of people who can gather together.  The only family or Cabinet member masking was Alex Azar, head of Health and Human Services.

Then they played Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen, who fortunately died four years ago, or he would have been very upset.  Hallelujah is a song about a lost love, not a religious song of worship.  

Later, tenor Christopher Macchio sang Nessun Dorma, where the hero claims that he will be victorious.   However, the First Family acted like it was a religious song.  Then we have Ave Maria, to actually mix in religion.  One thing that has always bothered me about the Trump administration is that he held no musical events nor honored American musicians.  Except for Kanye West advising them, and now being used as a faux candidate in Wisconsin to draw away Democratic voters.  After further reflection, the Opera belied the speakers who tried to portray the billionaire Trump New York family as just common folk, and not elites.  Why was it included?  The Italian American vote, as they had included all other ethnic groups in their convention.

Out of boredom, I was trying to count the flags.  There were at least 60.  Typically, it just takes one flag to prove that you are a patriot.

Do I really have to spend time reading the fact checking articles tomorrow?  No, nor at any other time during the next 68 days.  Oh yes, he also mentioned something about hiring liberal professors.  I taught Physics, not politics.  Not even liberal Physics, whatever that might be.

Will I be able to sleep tonight, after the Scarathon?  It’s still 65 days to Halloween.

Of course, one could write a book about the Trump Praise Convention, previously called the Republican National Convention.  That is not my intention.  I am more concerned about the pandemic, and its lack of influence on that.  The so-called law and order stance, in the absence of anything else, pales in hazards to the loss of a Thousand lives a Day to the Coronavirus!  This is never really mentioned as an unsolved challenge.  The handful of lives saved by Trump, presented in the convention, doesn’t compare at all.  Nor do the few people involved in robberies and arson.

The emergency approval of convalescent plasma by the FDA, despite debate with professionals, one day before the convention, is appalling.  The senseless change of the CDC policy of testing of people contacting Covid infected people, overruled by HHS, is ridiculous and has to be reversed.  It was suspicious that after Trump said that he wanted testing slowed down a few weeks ago, that suddenly there developed a shortage of testing reagents, and tests took a week or more to be reported.  The tracking was taken away from the CDC and suddenly given to an unknown and unqualified company, run by a real estate dealer, probably a friend of Kushner’s.  True to predictions, that failed, and tracking of data has been given back to the CDC again.

We can’t fail to mention that one speaker talked about the “elite experts” who we were in danger of letting run things.  These people are the scientists.  The speaker said we should just follow common sense.  I suspect that every word in the speaker’s talks was either composed or filtered through the Trump White House.  Oddly, no speaker ever said “we may not agree on everything”.  Only one of the Republican Senators who are in tight races have spoken.

Fortunately, the closely spaced cheering events for First Lady Melania and VP Pence were outdoors.  Almost nobody wore masks, except the extra tall secret service agents, photographers, and possibly the press.  In the Democratic Convention, Everybody wore a mask.  At the end of Pence’s talk, people crowded close to him and Trump, and yelled in their faces.  That is maximum risk for aerosols.  Six feet means nothing then.  We know in the White House that everybody getting close to the President has to be tested negative.  It wasn’t clear that was the case with the donor crowds here.  The first and second ladies were also put at risk.

Lately, outside transmission is supposed to be 18 times less risky than indoors.  Aerosols have been found to have a range of 29 feet instead of 6 feet, and can last for hours.  All of these exact figures are of course nonsense.  15 minutes is now in the CDC testing advice.  Less than that of exposure, and you don’t have to be tested.

Four Trump convention days of three hours of continuous praise and worship of Trump each, is 12 hours that the already mask-resistant Republican audience could have been guided to mask up and social distance.  That would allow kids to go back to school, Universities and colleges to reopen, and businesses to reopen.  As Trump’s campaign would put it:  opportunities made, opportunities not kept.  Trump even once called masking “patriotic”.  In 12 solid hours of flags and patriotism, that never seems to come up.

Normally, the convention is all about the delegates.  That was reduced to a one minute flash video, and at a separate venue from all the talks.

While I started pointing out somewhat subtle instances of Trump abusing his executive branch power to boost his campaign, like slowing the mail,  the misuse of the White House, and Pompeo’s official trip, are just blatant.  Only Trump and Barr can sanction or prosecute those that violate the Hatch act, and that is not going to happen.

I was shocked by Trump’s forceful inclusion in the talks of the couple who threatened peaceful demonstrators with guns.  One day later, someone heard the dog whistle and killed two innocent demonstrators.

I appreciated Melania’s speech showing some empathy.  But we were misled in 2016 by believing that Ivanka could have some humanitarian influence over Trump.  This proved to be false.

The conveniently timed establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel by the UAE, for which Trump mysteriously took credit, is really a continuation of foreign influence in our elections.  It now turns out that Trump promised F-35s to the UAE.  This is probably why Trump mysteriously said that we no longer have to safeguard the Strait of Hormuz.  Leaving the control of that crucial strait to a non-Democratic country, the UAE, is a really poor strategy.  The other parts of the agreement, as well as otherS that Trump said would follow, have not yet materialized.

The Washington Post and NY Times are fact checking the statements made by Republicans.  The key ones seem to be labeled false or misleading. What do you expect from a President with 20,000 lies to his record, while in office?

The smooth video coverage is to be expected from an administration that is intimately embedded with Fox News.  What puzzles me, is that the words coming from most speakers sound like they are written by the same speech writing team.  But, as usual, we will never find out who writes this stuff.  The continuous demonization of Biden and of Democrats is really a new low in politics.  But how many times have we said that.

Just one more day to go of maskless anxiety for me about those at risk.  Unfortunately, Trump is inviting a thousand to 1500 to attend his speech Thursday night.