Unbridgeable differences push U.S. to the brink

Right about now, a lot of Republican senators who refused to convict Donald Trump and remove him from office ought to be very worried.

Why?

Because yes, he really did suggest at his press briefing Friday that an instant cure for COVID-19 might be ingesting some sort of home disinfectants.

Of course he swears he was being sarcastic, but no one who saw him saw any trace of sarcasm. As he floundered for an excuse, he even said it was a prank and that he said it just to see how people would react.

Fake news?

No, fake president.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                       

Pandemic might force meaningful change in U.S.

Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential race Wednesday.

If that unifies the Democratic Party and makes it easier to defeat Donald Trump in November, it's all for the best. To primary voters this year, Sanders was just a bridge too far. I always felt his proud use of the word "socialist" was a mistake. I'd have gone with Social Democrat.

I feel like Sanders saw this election as one for revolutionary change, while most Democrats -- myself included -- wanted more than anything just to get rid of Trump.

The great irony is that the Coronavirus pandemic may have transformed circumstances enough that it ought to be a true change election. Particularly in the area of health insurance.

Americans dying due to Trump's horrific priorities

NYC

"I want to wake up in the city that never sleeps ..."

The last time I visited New York City was a little less than two and a half years ago.

It was the first time I had been in Manhattan since the mid 1990s, when my middle sister got married.

In October 2017, Nicole and I stayed in a hotel near the Empire State Building. We only had two days and three nights, and it was raining hard one of those days.

Mostly, we visited Ground Zero and the museum that honored the events of Sept. 11, 2001. It was sort of overwhelming, but as I look at pictures of present-day New York, I find myself thinking that not even Osama bin Laden could shut New York down the way the Coronavirus has.

I imagine we'll go back at some point. I know my wife wants to. NYC is one of my three favorite American cities I have visited numerous times but never lived there. The other two are on the West Coast, San Francisco and Seattle.

When we visited NYC in the fall of 2017, the streets were as crowded -- even on the rainy night -- as anywhere I've ever been. I cannot even comprehend streets as empty as in the picture above.

Where the other day's quotes came from

Casablanca

There are so many great movie quotes.

Most fans would recognize the true classics right away.

"Gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."

"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."

"Here's looking at you, kid."

Of course, there's always my personal favorite.

Animal House

"You f**ked up. You trusted us."

The 15 quotes I posted yesterday don't rise to that level of specialness, but they're all interesting and they all demonstrate what made their movies interesting.

Sometimes the great quotes aren't the famous ones

No. 14

It's always fun to remember the great quotes from our favorite movies. Some of those quotes become so well known to us that we throw them around a lot.

I picked these in response to a challenge on Facebook a few years back, and I took sort of a different twist. In most cases here, the quote I used is not the one everyone thinks of when they think of that particular movie.

It a secondary one that still resonates.

One great irony. One of the quotes -- No. 6, to be exact -- is one I can't remember the movie. Help me out of you can.

Anyway, here they are. I'll post the movies tomorrow.

1. I never did one thing right in my life, you know that? Not one. That takes skill.

2. Zero ... point ... zero.

'No responsibility' a far cry from 'buck stops here'

"The buck stops here ..."

"I take no responsibility at all ..."

Two presidents of the United States. The same country, but very different at different times.

Two years before either of them became president, very few people could have imagined either of them in the Oval Office.

Harry Truman was your average senator, product of the Pendergast political machine in Kansas City.  He became vice president as a compromise choice when FDR needed to dump Henry Wallace from the ticket.

Nobody expected much of him, but he combined intelligence, honesty and empathy and his eight years as president were successful enough that historians regard him as an outstanding president.

Even self-quarantining can have a good side to it

A hotbed of Coronavirus exposure

Seattle is a long way away from most parts of this country.

I have lived in 10 different states from coast to coast, and only once have I lived less than 1,100 miles from there.

I have been there three times, first in 1989 to cover a basketball game at UW, then for three weeks in 2009 for a summer vacation with Pauline and her family at Snoqualmie Pass and 10 days in December 2011 to meet our new grandson.


I also have a friend who lives there, although the only time we knew each other was in 1977, half a world away in Vienna, Austria. She had a summer internship at the American Embassy and I was over there for two years with my first wife.