Here in California, we're about 75 percent closed for the holiday weekend. The Bay Area remains relatively open, but most of the populous Los Angeles Basin is supposed to stay locked down. Will people comply with Governor Gavin Newsom's directive?
It's become clear that bars, inside dining, large gatherings and similar events will help the virus spread rapidly through the part of the population that so far remains uninfected. We're sitting ducks if our fellow citizens decide to break the rules.
With the Covid-10 exploding not only here but in Texas, Florida and elsewhere, another thing that is now clear is that summer has brought us no relief. Rather, the pandemic rages almost unchecked, so God help us when cooler weather returns.
The economy has shown some signs of renewal, particularly in job growth, but that is mainly due to ill-advised re-openings around the country, which will not be sustainable if infection rates continue to explode. Young people are having a very hard time finding jobs, which is a very bad sign.
If it's me reading the signs, the economy is screwed for a long time to come.
Anyway, you know these are unusual times when a national correspondent appears on camera in her hotel room in front of her bed. At least the bed was made. We've gotten used to watching reporters whipped by the wind and rain as they brave the conditions to show us the front line of an advancing hurricane or the aftermath of a horrific bombing.
But in front of their bed?
And where is Trump? Mount Rushmore. The only way he will ever end up there is as a tourist, of course, but there is one characteristic he shares with the Presidential likenesses carved there. His heart is made of stone.
The problem for a people with a heartless president is we all get dragged down with him in the eyes of the world. Everyone's heard the expression "sink like a stone." That's what the U.S. is doing right now in terms of international esteem.
Unless voting patterns change, one group of voters will prove key to the outcome of November's election -- seniors. It is revealing that in Florida, where seniors account for a large percentage of the electorate, Biden is tied or even with Trump in the recent polls.
Elderly people have been around long enough to remember a lot of Presidents; my conscious memory of politics started with Eisenhower's re-election in 1956. So I remember him, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Bush Sr., Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, and Trump.
That is basically a quarter of all he men who have served in that office. I voted for some of them and against the others, and as a journalist, I got involved with the coverage of some of those electoral contests when they got elected or lost.
Whatever I thought of them at the time or since, none of them are remotely as troubling in any way as this occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
When I worked in Washington, D.C., I could see the White House lit up at night in my rear-view mirror as I drove out 16th Street to the Maryland suburbs and my family. It's a beautiful sight that inspires patriotic thoughts.
We hope that we've got it right in this nation, that representative democracy is the best system for running a society, and that our votes matter.
But big money has corrupted our politics and now distorts the wishes of people in favor of corporate interests and corrupt interests here and overseas. The wishes of the rich, the powerful and the corrupt rise to the top and can even push an incompetent into the Whte House.
Meanwhile, what of our hopes and dreams?
They sink like a stone.
"I am the fatherless child you pass on your way to church and
I am a sinner in your eye
I am a mother showing strength when things are all but certain
But I'm a quitter in your eye
Ain't giving up my tears of hope
Got my two feet off the ground
No one should treat you like a joke
Don't you let them tear you down
We all leave this place on our own
Throw me in the river I sink like a stone"
-- Naomi Pilgrim
-30-
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