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SELECTIVE ANMESIA [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-06-09  

Let's roll out our favorite campaign clip, courtesy of Ronald Regan during his 1980 run for President:

Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?

I am absolutely gobsmacked by how many people only focus on gas prices and inflation. How in the world did they forget we were in a global pandemic?

You know were I was 4 years ago? I was on lockdown, in my home working remotely - which was the only GOOD thing to come out of this, shelves at the stores were bare, I couldn't buy milk, toilet paper, paper towels, or cleaning products, while the grocery and other food service workers were being hailed has "heroes" because they stayed on the job despite the risk. Oh, and lots and lots and lots of people were dying every day. Kind of hard to forget that one, at least for me.

Thanks to the Trump Administration, they had absolutely no game plan to combat this crisis. The Obama Administration had actually left a handbook they put together for just such an emergency, but Trump had it thrown out because it came from Obama. The neophyte president did not know the procedures to call for a national emergency, which agencies to put in place to help, and the administration had basically abandoned the procedures for maintaining our National Stockpile, although I admit that personal protective equipment (PPE) like masks and face shields weren't a priority even in previous years. The administration's dereliction of duty was so bad that individual states began taking on leadership roles in combatting the virus.

This is exactly why experience matters when choosing a president. The government is NOT run like a business and people outside of government don't understand the interconnectedness of committees, agencies, standard operating procedures, allocating funds to different entities, and most importantly the oversight. A CEO of a company can do whatever they want as long as shareholders are happy; employees can pound sand and most executive hate them because they cost money. Payroll is the biggest part of the budget, so less employees to pay the better for profit. And contrary to popular belief, Donald Trump was not a great businessman; he had many bankruptcies.

At its height, COVID-19 was killing up to 3,000 people per day. Because of their ignorance, and their refusal to accept help from more knowledgeable people, the Trump Administration gaslit Americans by playing down the seriousness of the pandemic and the president himself offering quack remedies. Doctor Anthony Fauci did his best to right the ship, but he had to suffer the insults directly from Trump who refused to believe in science - even when the president caught COVID and was hospitalized. And after recovering he still refused to believe in medical procedures, continued to be maskless at the White House, and generally set a very poor example for the country. When the final numbers were counted, over 1 million Americans were dead, with many not believing they had the virus.

That said, I will credit the Trump Administration for getting the vaccine produced under Operation Warp Speed however that is tempered by the fact that there was no distribution plan in place to get it to the American people. Guess who was responsible for that? President Biden, of course. He set in motion all of the agencies that had been overlooked by the previous administration and made it a goal to get 1 million shots into Americans before his 100th day as president. That's what knowledgeable people can do when they understand the system they are operating in. Joe Biden is our most experienced president EVER.

And not only did he accomplish that goal, his administration made a plan to get schools and businesses back open while attending to our stalled supply lines. Biden knows how to make the government work for people and he got it done, despite the backlash from the deplorables.

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