In Case You Missed it (v33)

How was last week for you? Did it go by in a minute, or did it take a month or two?

Mine flew by, trying to figure out what the heck the pols are doing and why, researching and drafting posts, and actually publishing a few.

I spent Sunday morning listening to Mike Pence not answering questions in two Sunday School classrooms - Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday. I actually thought he might participate fully with Chris Wallace, but I was sorely mistaken.

The first question was related to the protests around the country where some of the protesters are ignoring social distancing, and what Pence thinks, specifically, of their protests and how they're being carried out. It took the VP 321 words to not answer this one. 

And that wasn't even his best effort - one impressive nonresponse on MTP was over 500 words...

I promised that I'd have House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in our Extra Credit post, and I threw in a dose of Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, too. The Speaker was not as kind as Pence when referring to the president - no surprise there.

George started by asking House Speaker Nancy Pelosi what she thought of Trump's negative tweets about her, including that she's holding up the next round of relief funding.

Frankly I don't pay that much attention to the president's tweets against me. As I have said, he's a poor leader. He's always trying to avoid responsibility and assign blame.

Schumer talked with Jake Tapper on CNN's State of the Union, and while most of the conversation related to the pandemic, there was a curveball, too.

The last question? AOC, the pesky representative from Queens, "did not rule out" primarying Schumer in 2022, and Tapper wondered if the senator was confident he could beat her.

You'll have to check the post to see how the senator feels about that.

Next up was a Sidebar on small business funding and the Payroll Protection Plan; this post was in response to a comment Tapper made when talking with Schumer

...about the Payroll Protection Program, or PPP, having "run out of funding, as you know, because of provisions Democrats wanted to add" (emphasis mine) 

After doing some research and sharing some information on what happened with the PPP money, as well as some info on the CARES Act more generally, I said

In the back of my mind, I can hear someone saying "If you like your small business, you can keep your small business" and in the front of my mind, I remember this comment from the president at one of his rallies press conferences, responding to a question about restaurants.

I’ve heard 3 percent could be lost, and you could go as high as 10 or 11 percent, but they’ll all come back in one form of another. Might be a different restaurant. But it’s gonna be a great business for a lot of people. We’re making it easy for people — look, what we’re doing in terms of loans, what we’re doing in terms of salaries, they’ll all come back. It may not be the same restaurant, it may not be the same ownership, but they’ll all be back.

That very presidential comment will stick in my head for a long time. I hope it sticks in everyone else's too.

I did some wondering, but no typing, on Wednesday - to much to get my arms around.

Thursday brought us another entry in the Email of the Week series, which started when there were 20-some-odd Dems in the presidential race. Now that it's down to one, it's harder to maintain interest, but I dove in to Joe Biden emails anyway. Interestingly, that was the least-appreciated post of the week...

I'm thinking I'm not the only one who didn't know what Papa Joe's up to these days. I mean, did you know he's doing Facebook live things, and that he's got a podcast?

It’s called “Here’s the Deal” and the podcast gives listeners a voice of clarity during these uncertain times. You know that Vice President Biden is a leader with a calm and steady demeanor. And his podcast shines a light on those qualities, reminding us why he would make a great Commander-in-Chief.

Friday was a two-fer day. First up? I had a Quick Take on what passes for "full transparency" in the age of Trump and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who was asked some question on that subject at one of pressers last week. Mnuchin assured us that "we have independent oversight. We supported it in the last legislation," not mentioning that Trump chose to ignore some of those requirements, reassigned the Inspector General who was to oversee the stimulus effort, and wants to install one of his impeachment lawyers in the role, but hey? No concerns there, right?

It's good that Mnuchin understands the importance of being open with us, though, and he even provided an example of his understanding for us to, you know, understand.

And let me just say, we put up last week, for full transparency — we had no obligation to do this.  We put up — you can go to Treasury.gov — full transparency on the money that had been sent out on the PPP across states, showing all the big lenders, how it was distributed.  No one lender did more than 4 percent.  Showed the businesses.

I went to the website, so you don't have to, and shared some of the "fully transparent" data in the post.

Later, it was time for our TGIF post, and it was a doozy, you see, because Trump's friend Piers Morgan unloaded on the president - and there's a transcript, so we know it's not fake news. Here's a sampling.

Donald Trump, if he's listening to this or watching, you will win the election in November if you get this right. If you stop making it about yourself and make it about the American people and show that you care about them over yourself, you will win. And, conversely, you will lose the election in November if you continue to make it about yourself, you continue playing silly politics, continue targeting Democrat governors because that suits you for your electoral purposes. None of that matters.

And of course, I covered disinfectants and lights - and I can assure you, while it was clear the president was serious, it's equally clear that I was not, in this little bit of Trump-speak I wrote, which started out

See, you go into the spray tan booth, but instead of spraying you gently with that orange dye, they'll turn up the pressure and blast you at the SAME time with both the UV light AND the disinfectant - at the same time, can you believe it?

You'll have to see how things end up - and be sure to read it in your best Trump voice - that really helps!

So - it was quite a veritable pastiche this week. Hope you enjoyed the week in review, and that you'll stop back later for Sunday School.