“The way I see it, you are ambivalent or need to process all that I have told you.
“Would you like to know how Benjamin Franklin came to a tough decision when he was doing all the great things he did?”
Something I remember from sales training – the Benjamin Franklin Balance Sheet Close. A swarthy-skinned gentleman with slicked-back hair and a sharkskin suit which gleamed green in the Orlando sun taught me that at an insurance convention.
You simply list the pros & the cons. Draw a chart, which is basically the sign of the cross. Put the pros on one side and the cons on the other. Think I got that right. I like insurance salesmen about as much as I like prosecutors. Anyway, you put “Pros” where Jesus’ right hand would be and you put “Cons” where His left hand would be.
Here’s an example.
So, I came up with, well, that’s easy, Melania and Manafort.
She said, yes, I was completely correct, but that’s not what she meant.
Pardon me while I spit.
What you need to do is put down a list of all the things you like about Trump and all the things you don’t like.
Then compare the two lists.
Where to start?
Children in cages. Truly my first thought. Even if I was fine with splitting up families and caging kids like mongrels you found by the roadside, I am definitely not okay with paying private companies $700 a day to abuse them.
Putting that down as a Con.
His gang? Oh, my God, I am an old man who’s been married three times and these guys scare me all to hell and back again. Every time I see Bill Barr, I have to wonder, how many babies has he eaten today?
Destroying the United States Postal Service. After Social Security and Medicare, the USPS is about the best thing the government does. The mail is like the capillary system of America. Yeah, it could be better but it’s still a treasure. And it belongs to us and he’s killing it.
Definite Con.
Fighting the Trump Virus. He promised it was under control in January. Month after month, he shirked responsibility and promised a miracle disappearance and all that disappeared were 150,000 Americans who didn’t need to die. Promises made, promises bullshit.
Gotta go with a Con here. Haven’t been anywhere but the grocery and the doctor’s in over five months.
Hernando County has 2,200 cases and 61 deaths. Sparsely-populated Trump country.
Solid Con. You can now stop shining a light up your ass.
Civil Unrest. At insurance sales training, they teach you to probe for weak spots, create fear and then, lo and behold, offer the solution to the problem which your prospect didn’t even know he had, up until you created that fear in their minds.
When you attempt to politicize the military while waving somebody else’s Bible upside down and then argue about the chemical composition of the tear gas you used on peaceful protesters, you are doing a great job fanning the flames, but where’s your policy to protect me?
I like that my generals apologized for being there. But the entire show was four kinds of stupid, which I don’t have space on this chart to go into. Should really give extra points for this.
Sending anonymous non-camouflaged stormtroopers to Portland probably gave Putin a boner.
Con certainly.
The Economy. We surfed the Obama wave as long as we could. I’ll give it that. Letting the rich back up the truck to the side door of the United States Treasury was a bad idea. Okay, I’m over it. But the virus is the problem, not the stock market. The jobless, the homeless, the sick, that’s the problem. The dead.
Shut down everything in February for four or six weeks and mandate masks outside the home, we would’ve been watching football this fall. But no.
No football? That’s a Con.
Pro. Having a helluvalot of trouble with the pros. Let’s see, he hasn’t been accused of pussy-grabbing lately.
We are no more at war than we usually are.
I wish him well. I really do. I hope they let him have a Bible where he’s going.
But, let’s be honest, everything he’s done “right” has been wrong.
No, really, if he’s not working for Putin, what’s his plan?
You ever notice these people who believe in past lives always were like princesses and shit?
I’d be the guy shoveling it. No doubt.
That’s why I’m on the fence. I am not a prince.
Suspect my present past life is now and I’d like to see my grandchildren again.
Safely.
And now this.
This is from Jack Cluth.
While stitching a cut on the hand of a 75-year-old farmer, the doctor struck up a conversation with the old man.
Eventually the topic got around to Donald Trump and his role as the Republican Nominee for President.
The old farmer said, ” Well, as I see it, Donald Trump is like a ‘Post Tortoise’.”
Not being familiar with the term, the doctor asked him what a ‘post tortoise’ was.
The old farmer said, “When you’re driving down a country road and you come across a fence post with a tortoise balanced on top, that’s a post tortoise.”
The old farmer saw the puzzled look on the doctor’s face so he continued to explain.
“You know he didn’t get up there by himself, he doesn’t belong up there, he doesn’t know what to do while he’s up there, he’s elevated beyond his ability to function, and you just wonder what kind of dumbass put him up there to begin with.”
Just so you know, I will be voting. May be early, may be by mail. If I have to, I will line up in the rain for hours, risking death from the Trump Virus, to vote in person.
Bringing a chair and a mask and a good book.
Maybe Mary Trump’s tale of the Trump clan. Many, many people – demon seed doctors even – have told me – bigly – that’s a great book.
It is what it is.