{"id":52228,"date":"2020-10-26T11:25:24","date_gmt":"2020-10-26T15:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=52228"},"modified":"2020-10-26T11:25:24","modified_gmt":"2020-10-26T15:25:24","slug":"please-vote-for-joe-biden-and-kamala-harris-heres-my-one-overarching-reason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/?p=52228","title":{"rendered":"Please vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Here’s my one overarching reason."},"content":{"rendered":"

My overarching reason for not<\/strong> voting for President Trump is his egregious handling of the virus.<\/p>\n

He didn’t want to panic the American people, he said. But by not telling us the truth about this virus, misleading us about its seriousness and not organizing a serious, effective, national plan to deal with it, he has cost thousands of Americans their lives.<\/p>\n

The latest stats show America has 8,890,481 infections and\u00a0230,512 deaths. By contrast, Australia (where I was born) has 905 deaths.<\/p>\n

Even today Trump has no national plan for combatting Covid-19. He keep downplaying its severity. And the virus is spiking all over the country, killing more and more of us. And causing many of us, who “recovered” to have serious long-term health consequences. (See below.)<\/p>\n

Some are calling it a third wave.<\/p>\n

The New York Times<\/em>\u00a0wrote:<\/p>\n

America and the Virus: \u2018A Colossal Failure of Leadership\u2019<\/strong>
\nIn its destruction of American lives, treasure and well-being, this pandemic marks the greatest failure of U.S. governance since Vietnam.<\/p>\n

You can read the Times<\/em> piece here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

In words that are far better than what I could write, (but which I agree 100% with), the Atlantic Magazine<\/em> on October 22 explained<\/p>\n

The Case Against Donald Trump<\/strong>
\nThe president of the United States poses a threat to our collective existence. The choice voters face is spectacularly obvious.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In 1973<\/span>, a United States Air Force officer, Major Harold Hering, asked a question that the Air Force did not want asked. Hering, a decorated Vietnam War veteran, was then in training to become a Minuteman-missile crewman. The question he asked one of his instructors was this: \u201cHow can I know that an order I receive to launch my missiles came from a sane president?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
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The writer Ron Rosenbaum would later call this the \u201cforbidden question.\u201d Missile officers are allowed to ask certain sorts of questions\u2014about the various fail-safe systems built to prevent the accidental launching of nuclear weapons, for instance. But the Air Force would not answer Hering\u2019s question, and it moved to discharge him after determining that officers responsible for launching nuclear weapons did not \u201cneed to know\u201d the answer. \u201cI have to say I feel I do have a need to know because I am a human being,\u201d Hering said in response.<\/p>\n

Hering\u2019s question was taboo because the national defense strategy of the United States is built on the unstated assumption that the American people will not allow a lunatic to become president. If that assumption is wrong, then no procedural, legal, or technological mechanisms exist that are able to fully protect the human race from such a lunatic. Hering discovered a catastrophic flaw in U.S. nuclear doctrine, and for this he was driven from the Air Force.<\/p>\n

In most matters related to the governance and defense of the United States, the president is constrained by competing branches of government and by an intricate web of laws and customs. Only in one crucial area does the president resemble, in the words of the former missile officer and scholar Bruce Blair, an absolute monarch\u2014his control of nuclear weapons. Richard Nixon, who was president when Major Hering asked his question, was reported to have told members of Congress at a White House dinner party, \u201cI could leave this room and in 25 minutes, 70 million people would be dead.\u201d This was an alarming but accurate statement.<\/p>\n

When contemplating their ballots, Americans should ask which candidate in a presidential contest is better equipped to guide the United States through a national-security crisis without triggering a nuclear exchange, and which candidate is better equipped to interpret\u2014within five or seven minutes\u2014the ambiguous, complicated, and contradictory signals that could suggest an imminent nuclear attack. These are certainly not questions that large numbers of voters asked themselves in 2016, when a transparently unqualified candidate for president won the support of 63 million Americans.<\/p>\n

At the time, Donald Trump had not yet served in public office, so concerns about his ability to protect the United States from harm were hypothetical, though grounded in his long and terrible record as a human being. As\u00a0The Atlantic\u00a0stated in\u00a0its October 2016 endorsement\u00a0of his opponent, Hillary Clinton, Trump \u201ctraffics in conspiracy theories and racist invective; he is appallingly sexist; he is erratic, secretive, and xenophobic; he expresses admiration for authoritarian rulers, and evinces authoritarian tendencies himself \u2026 He is an enemy of fact-based discourse; he is ignorant of, and indifferent to, the Constitution; he appears not to read.\u201d<\/p>\n

What we have learned since we published that editorial is that we understated our case. Donald Trump is the worst president this country has seen since Andrew Johnson, or perhaps James Buchanan, or perhaps ever. Trump has brought our country low; he has divided our people; he has pitted race against race; he has corrupted our democracy; he has shown contempt for American ideals; he has made cruelty a sacrament; he has provided comfort to propagators of hate; he has abandoned America\u2019s allies; he has aligned himself with dictators; he has encouraged terrorism and mob violence; he has undermined the agencies and departments of government; he has despoiled the environment; he has opposed free speech; he has lied frenetically and evangelized for conspiracism; he has stolen children from their parents; he has made himself an advocate of a hostile foreign power; and he has failed to protect America from a ravaging virus. Trump is not responsible for all of the 220,000 COVID-19-related deaths in America. But through his avarice and ignorance and negligence and titanic incompetence, he has allowed tens of thousands of Americans to suffer and die, many alone, all needlessly. With each passing day, his presidency reaps more death.<\/p>\n

But let us lay all of this aside for the moment. Let us even lay aside the extraordinary fact that Donald Trump has been credibly accused of rape. Compelling evidence suggests that his countless sins and defects are rooted in mental instability, pathological narcissism, and profound moral and cognitive impairment. Which returns us to the subject of Major Hering.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s opponent, Joe Biden, is in many ways a typically imperfect candidate, but if we judge these men on two questions alone\u2014Who is a more trustworthy steward of America\u2019s nuclear arsenal? Which man poses less of a threat to our collective existence?\u2014the answer is spectacularly obvious.<\/p>\n

The Atlantic\u00a0has endorsed only three candidates in its 163-year history: Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Hillary Clinton. The latter two endorsements had more to do with the qualities of Barry Goldwater and Donald Trump than with those of Johnson and Clinton. The same holds true in the case of Joe Biden. Biden is a man of experience, maturity, and obvious humanity, but had the Republican Party put forward a credible candidate for president, we would have felt no compulsion to state a preference. Donald Trump, however, is a clear and continuing danger to the United States, and it does not seem likely that our country would be able to emerge whole from four more years of his misrule. Two men are running for president. One is a terrible man; the other is a decent man. Vote for the decent man.<\/p>\n

\u2014\u00a0Jeffrey Goldberg,<\/em> on behalf of the editors of\u00a0The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n

The Atlantic piece is here<\/a>, <\/strong>though I’ve reproduced it in full above.<\/p>\n

If you’re worried about covid’s long term effects (and you should be) read this piece from Australia:<\/p>\n

COVID-19 effects can be persistent and serious say doctors suffering ‘long COVID’<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

Click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Last week President Obama gave a brilliant speech in Philadelphia:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Describing the speech, CNN wrote:<\/p>\n

Barack Obama delivers scathing takedown of Donald Trump<\/strong>
\nDuring a speech in Philadelphia, former President Barack Obama\u00a0delivered a blistering account of his successor’s first four years in office, arguing that President Donald Trump has proved he is “incapable of taking the job seriously” and has shown no interest in “helping anybody but himself and his friends.”<\/p>\n

You can watch the speech here.<\/strong> <\/a>Or read the transcript\u00a0here.<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0I’d watch it. It’s really good.<\/p>\n

I watched Pete Souza’s The Way I See It<\/em> documentary for the third time on the weekend. That was a record for me. I’ve never watched anything three times. You may be able to catch it on MSNBC for free or you can rent it from Amazon for $6. Click here.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Today the market is cratering. The consensus is because the virus is spiking and we have no national plan — not even a mandatory national\u00a0“Wear A Mask”<\/em> program. The President is still in denial. Watch his ghastly 60 Minutes<\/em> interview from Sunday. And worse, there’s another outbreak of covid in the White House, this time amongst Pence staffers.<\/p>\n

I suspect the market will be weak until we hear the election results, and hopefully, Biden wins. I believe that his tax increases (negative for the market) will be more than offset by his positive moves to bring science, order, intelligence and action to dealing with this virus.<\/p>\n

Please vote for Biden and Harris.<\/p>\n

The Fall in Columbia County is still beautiful. Here’s a shot of the pond next door to Mark Johnson’s tennis court.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

If yo can no longer speak with lifelong friends, so be it.\u00a0 I’m in the same boat. Maybe you can still convince them with the words above?<\/p>\n

See you tomorrow with financial information. — Harry Newton<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My overarching reason for not voting for President Trump is his egregious handling of the virus. He didn’t want to panic the American people, he said. But by not telling us the truth about this virus, misleading us about its seriousness and not organizing a serious, effective, national plan to deal with it, he has […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-52228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=52228"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52243,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52228\/revisions\/52243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}