SODDI ...

It stands for Some Other Dude Did It. 

Cops hear this all the time. It’s never the suspect’s crime.  It’s always someone else’s.

It’s also what I am so tired of hearing a version of every time some punks go on a rampage of looting and burning in a major American city. 

How many times have we heard some city or state official claim the ones doing all the damage are not representative of “our” community? Or that “all of those we’ve arrested are from out of state” or someplace other than the city they are destroying.

Oh, it’s not “our” folks smashing windows, attacking police, and looting – in effect, SODDI.  And they always add that it’s a “small group of agitators” causing all the damage and destruction. A mere handful of people, always from the outside, are making their entire community look bad. Their community is just as appalled as everyone else at the violence and destruction, again, perpetrated by outsiders.   

When they start this, I want to puke.  It’s just utter bullshit.

They should be ashamed of themselves for spouting such obvious crap. All anyone needs to do is watch the videos and see that once the riots start, “their community” is an active and gleeful participant in the chaos.  Their precious community is right there, burning, looting and destroying local businesses and laughing about it while they take selfies to post online.

If all the damage and destruction is done by a mere handful of outsiders – always described as a “small group” of agitators – then wouldn’t they be vastly outnumbered by the “peaceful protestors” who are from the community under assault? Wouldn’t it be obvious to the much, much larger number of peaceful protestors that they could easily stop the much smaller group?

Of course it would.  And of course they could.  But they don’t.  They never do. That’s because their community enjoys a good riot as much as the next anarchist. Plus, there’s always the possibility of looting – free stuff for the taking – once the store windows are smashed. 

And who doesn’t like a good fire? 

Equally revolting to me are the apologist talking heads online who claim the riots are because of a sense of hopelessness, or in response to police brutality against minorities, or social injustice, or pent up anger against income inequality, or whatever, that finally boiled over. 

Every time I hear one of these bozos say “it’s understandable” why these thugs are stealing from and then burning local businesses, I’m disgusted at their brazen pandering.  Like it’s “understandable” that if you’re mad at the police, or are disappointed in your life or have a crappy job, then Target, AutoZone, and Wendy’s should pay the price for your despair.

You deserve a stolen TV or cellphone, or liquor, or maybe a nice watch, from a store you loot before setting it aflame.  You’re entitled.

No you’re not.  You’re not entitled to steal and burn. Nobody is. You’re a criminal. That’s all.  Not some social-justice warrior. Not some champion for civil rights. Not some hero for the cause, whatever that cause is.  You’re a thief. An arsonist. A vandal. 

In short, just a common criminal.  You deserve to be arrested and locked up.  Why you’re not is a constant source of amazement to me. 

Given the footage I’ve seen, there are a lot of criminals – black, white, Hispanic, young, old – in the riots this time.  The ostensible cause is rage over the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, although it could have been anything.   

The Antifa types have been waiting for something, anything to go nuts again.  The brainwashed millennials, BLM clowns, perpetual race-baiters, along with the wannabe socialists and those with terminal TDS, have also been hoping for a cause to justify rioting.

They got it: some jerk cop in Minneapolis who should have been kicked off the force years ago manhandled and possibly contributed to the death of a black man. Now it’s a free for all. 

And all those on the left who praised Antifa in the past – like a lot of Democrats in the House and Senate, including such nitwits as Pelosi, AOC, Omar, Hirono, and too many others to name – are suddenly nowhere to be found.

What’s the matter, folks? Don’t you like what you see? Didn’t see this coming, did you?

Well, the rest of us did. Antifa has always been violent.  But the left and most Democrats ignored or downplayed this because Antifa was attacking people and causes they hated, too. Yet now that it's attacking and destroying everything regardless of race or ideology – predictable because they are and always have been nihilistic anarchists, the silence from the left is deafening.      

Truthfully, poor Mr. Floyd is irrelevant to what’s been happening now.  The riots have a life of their own.   If it weren’t him, it would be something else that set them, off, because all these communities needed was an excuse, any excuse.  He gave it to them.  The rest was organic.

We’re in the blame stage. It didn’t take long for the media to try to pin this on Trump. That’s truly pathetic; there’s no way he has any role in this. That hasn’t stopped the jerks on CNN and MSNBC from blaming his “racist rhetoric” for fanning the flames. 

Nor has it stopped protestors from gathering outside the White House to chant “I can’t breathe!”; supposedly George Floyd’s last words before he became unconscious from a cop keeping his knee on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes.     

Equally pathetic – and frankly laughable – is Minnesota officials like race-baiter and looney leftist Keith Ellison, the Minnesota AG, blaming white supremacists and drug cartels for the riots.

Don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t see any Confederate flags, white supremacists making white power signs, swastika flags, or anyone doing “Heil Hitler salutes, nor did I see any indication that drug cartels were involved in the hours of video I viewed.

The people I saw setting fire to cars, smashing windows and looting, attacking police, and burning businesses didn’t look like white supremacists or drug cartel types; they looked like the types you usually see at riots these days. 

A lot of Antifa types and a lot of middle-class lily-white out-of-shape Antifa wannabes apparently still saving up for their official Antifa black hoodie and mask. 

Thugs. And gutless white kids who wanted to feel like tough guys for a little while.  And goofballs preening and posing for the media.

It's actually escalating. They are now shooting at people, particularly law enforcement, and are also physically attacking business owners just trying to protect their property.      

This will not end well. There’s only so much cops and business owners being attacked by the rioters will take.  Being shot at clearly crosses the final line. 

Someone soon will start shooting back.  They won’t use rubber bullets this time.   

Why yes, they are thugs ...

What else do you call them?

How else do you describe looters?  Arsonists burning cars and businesses for fun?  Those who shoot out the front of a jewelry store to grab merchandise? Those who burn a police station – after they attack police in cars by breaking out their windows with rocks and claw hammers?   

How about those who then mug for the cameras with the car they burned or the stuff they stole? Or proudly in front of a cart loaded with flat-screen TVs they looted?  Or standing with arms held high in front of some business they just torched? 

What do you think is the right word to describe them?  Protestors?  Activists? People expressing their righteous rage against injustice? Or discrimination against people of color?   

Really?  How does expressing your rage involve stealing TVs and cellphones?  Or burning down businesses?  What about – in the case of the Minneapolis riots – burning down a low-income housing project under construction? 

How is any of that that sending a message about racial injustice?  About discrimination?  Or police brutality toward people of color? Or the death of George Floyd by the police? 

The riots aren’t about any of that.  Not even the senseless death of George Floyd apparently by some nutjob cops while he was already handcuffed and subdued.  His death, however awful and clearly the result of misconduct by two or more Minneapolis cops, was just a spark to those who wanted an excuse to run wild anyway. 

They mixed with otherwise peaceful, if angry, protestors. Most protestors generally, I suspect, didn’t want a riot; they probably wanted to have the media see that blacks and whites in Minneapolis wanted justice for George Floyd. 

They wanted those cops arrested and charged with murder. Which, if you look at the video of his arrest and actions of the police, seems appropriate. 

But the others? The ones who started breaking windows and looting and burning cars and businesses; the ones attacking police with rocks, bottles and Molotov cocktails – they never intended to do anything else but riot and loot.  They came to the protest with only that in mind. 

So what would you call them?  I think thugs is the right word.

Spare me the PC interpretation of thugs as a racist term.  Thugs is only a racist term if you believe thugs are always black. Thugs come in all colors and ethnicities. 

Just like gangs and gang members.    

Are there white thugs? Of course.  If you doubt that I invite you to take a stroll through predominantly white and Italian South Philly – or just go to an Eagles game – and see the “tough guys” there.   Especially the wannabe wise guys or neighborhood punks with an “atty-tude.”

Are they thugs? Why yes some of them are.  They use the threat of violence to intimidate. They aren’t afraid to use actual violence to get their way.  Some are also small-time criminals for now, dabbling in burglary, shakedowns, and whatever they can get away with. 

Some are always spoiling for a fight.  Some think being a thug now is training to become a real wise guy down the road. 

A thug is by definition “a violent person, especially a criminal.”  That’s race neutral. 

When Trump calls the rioters and looters in Minneapolis thugs, he’s dead on accurate. 

Only a complete nut case like Nancy Pelosi and the ignorant buffoon Maxine Waters – both of whom see racism everywhere except among their own kind – think he’s sending a dog whistle to white supremacists that it's okay to kill blacks by calling the rioters thugs.  Honestly, I don’t even know how either of them, or the brain-dead media, sees that. 

I guess none of them bothered to look at the footage from the riots which showed blacks, whites, Hispanics and who knows who else of all ages looting the stores in Minneapolis … or maybe they just conveniently ignored that it wasn’t just blacks.

It was an equal-opportunity looting. By thugs.        

Because a thug is a thug.  Regardless of race or ethnicity.  Period. 

Maybe they are talking about his promise to bring in the military to stop the out-of-control violence. Maybe it’s when he said when the looting starts, the shooting starts – an idea I think would find a lot of support among perhaps a majority of Americans. 

Or maybe it’s because calling someone a looter is also racist.  Just like calling them thugs. 

How about we just settle on the race-neutral term criminals?   

Because that’s what the rioters really are.  

Testing stops viruses ... who knew?

First it was ventilators and PPE. Then it was hospital beds.

Now it’s testing. And of course, a tried and true vaccine.

If it were up to the Democrats, we’d never reopen the country.  I truly believe that. 

The idea of waiting for a proven vaccine is absolutely ridiculous. I won’t even waste my time addressing that, beyond saying there isn’t a proven vaccine for the seasonal flu after years of trying.  What makes anyone think there’s suddenly going to be one for Covid-19? 

The real answer is, they don’t. No one with the brains God gave a sweet potato thinks we’re going to have a proven vaccine for Covid-19 anytime soon.  That’s why Democrats are demanding it – they’re asking for something they know won’t happen before the next election.   

It's an idiotic demand.  From idiots who think the rest of us are idiots. Promoted by idiots in the media who think we’re all idiots, too. 

I feel the same about their demand for more testing. We’re testing millions every week.  But Democrats want everyone in the country, not just citizens, to be tested. 

For what purpose, someone should ask. That seems to me to be a logical question. What’s the point of testing everyone?  So we know how many people have been exposed to the virus? And then what?  What’s the next step, Nancy and Chuck?

This may be the dumbest recent demand from those nincompoops.  Of course, the media is on this latest demand like white on rice.  Again, more nincompoops in the mix. 

Nancy just said in a press conference that Trump’s plan for testing is inadequate.  And we need more testing to stop the spread of the virus.  Now, on most days Nancy is as dumb as a bag of rocks in my opinion. Maybe this time she’s on to something all the scientists have overlooked.

Tests stop disease. Who knew?  Did Fauci? Birx?  

Maybe a “journalist” out there should ask her how a test can prevent the spread of a disease. And if so, shouldn’t we drop all the effort on a vaccine and just put all our money on testing?

What a jackass. Even St. Fauci – at least this week – would probably remind her and Chuck and the rest of her merry band of brain-dead bozos in the House that because someone tests negative today doesn’t mean they can’t get infected tomorrow, or even later that same day.

Next week, St. Fauci might change his mind, but for now I suspect he’d hold the line on the need to only test people who show symptoms.

Remember, only a tiny, tiny percentage of people without symptoms test positive, anyway.  And there are studies that now show the actual rate of infection and development of symptoms from the virus to be so miniscule as to be almost negligible.  In fact, some scientists believe perhaps 20-50% of the population has already been exposed to the virus and either didn’t get sick or had symptoms so mild they recovered without ever knowing they had the virus.  

People do die from Covid-19. Mainly the old and those with serious comorbidities. But among the general population of about 330 million we’ve had less than 2 million confirmed cases and of those only about 100,000 deaths.

For the math challenged – like Nancy, Chuck, and the media – that’s confirmed cases of 0.6% of our population, and deaths of about a half percent of those confirmed cases. 

More testing is likely to uncover more people exposed to the virus, and perhaps more confirmed cases.  To what end, however. We already know even those with a confirmed case are unlikely to die unless they have other serious health issues, or are an advanced age; in short, the same groups most susceptible to succumbing to the seasonal flu or pneumonia.   

Net/net, while every death matters, and the number of infections and deaths is cause for concern, the Covid-19 virus is not particularly deadly – highly contagious, yes; highly lethal to anyone who gets infected, no.  And for the most part it seems to be winding down. 

But there’s an election coming. 

Democrats – after first accusing Trump of overreacting in January with his travel ban – are now also claiming more than 50,000 lives could have been saved if Trump had only acted sooner. 

Sooner than when they attacked him for overreacting? How would that work? 

Today it’s testing.  Tomorrow it will be something else.  Democrats are desperate to pin this disaster on Trump no matter what.  Oh, and to keep the economy from coming back too soon. So they can blame Trump for the economic collapse, too. 

This is the weirdest political strategy I’ve ever seen.  Terrify the population, keep people out of work, shut down businesses, and destroy the economy to win an election. 

I guess if you’ve only got Joe Biden to work with, what else can you do? 

The fruitless search for attention and relevance ...

Nobody is really paying attention anymore. 

That's driving Democrats and the bureaucrats in DC stark raving mad. The mainstream media can’t help them because the American public has largely tuned them out, too.  The propaganda is falling on deaf ears. 

Much of the reason is that the public is focused on other things. Like being unemployed. Like being forced by power-mad state officials to put their normal lives on indefinite hold.

The public is worried about their health, their family’s health, and whether they’ll ever be able to go back to school or back to work.  Or whether their school or workplace will even exist when or if this ever ends.  They’ve endured this shutdown for months and they’ve listened to the various “experts” telling them they should expect it to last for a long time to come. 

They’ve heard so many different things from the experts they don’t know what or who to believe.  Every day brings new and often conflicting information.  The virus wasn’t a big deal, said health experts initially. No need to panic, said talking head doctors on the news – it’s no more dangerous than the seasonal flu.  Just wash your hands a lot and don’t get near sick people.

You’ll be fine. Go and celebrate the Chinese New Year by going to the parade in San Francisco, said Nancy Pelosi. Go out to dinner and a play, said the Mayor of NYC; his heath official also suggested everybody go out to their Chinese New Year parade – nothing to be afraid of.  

They said this even as the deaths from the virus started to mount. 

Dr. Tony Fauci agreed, and as one of the most “respected” experts on contagious diseases in the world, his word was like the voice of God to the media.  We had nothing to fear, we were safe.      

And then we weren’t. They were all – all of the so-called experts and public officials – completely wrong about everything.  Everything. Their advice was useless.  More people died. 

Rather than admit they’d blown it, they decided to blame Trump.  I know, it doesn’t make any sense to do that, but that’s what many governors, state and local officials, and the media did. They denied having any responsibility for what was happening. It had to be Trump’s fault. 

Except it wasn’t. That was crystal clear from the beginning. The public recognized that.

The public knew the virus came from China. That the Chinese hid the severity of the outbreak there. That the Chinese destroyed records and disappeared doctors to cover their tracks. That the Chinese withheld critical data from the world that could have largely prevented the spread of the virus worldwide.  That the WHO allowed China to lie to the world and covered for China. 

None of that was Trump’s fault.  Never was. 

But … wasn’t he at fault for not being prepared? For not acting quicker?  Isn’t he at fault for not listening to the science, and to the experts? 

That’s all complete bullshit.  

Trump made decisions – such as shutting down air travel from China – for which he was widely criticized for being a racist, while everyone else dithered. That was about the only time he didn’t listen to the experts: they didn’t want him to do that. They thought he was overreacting. In 20/20 hindsight, which seems to be what everyone claims to have today, it was a great decision.  He took a lot of heat for it, nonetheless. But he never backed away from what he did. 

Unlike almost all the other weasels among the media and the Democrats now constantly questioning his every move.  We know what they did.  We know exactly what they said and when. We have the video clips showing the bad advice they. not Trump, gave that cost so many lives unnecessarily. They actually caused more people to die. He didn’t.   

Perhaps the most disingenuous thing Democrats and the media claim is that Trump ignores the experts.  He ignores the science, they say. 

But of course he doesn’t.  There’s ample proof. 

For weeks he went on live TV virtually every day and briefed the public about what the administration and his coronavirus task force was doing, and what progress was being made against the virus. He gave over the mic to Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx to explain their plans. He accepted their recommendations almost entirely without reservation. The media and the Democrats ignored all this.             

 Drs. Fauci and Birx said he listened to them and took their advice.  That wasn’t good enough. 

The media and Democrats wanted those doctors to answer whether they’d been intimidated and strong armed into saying what they did. When they both denied any pressure from Trump, the media and Democrats tried to pull them aside individually and trick them into saying they were afraid to go against Trump – that Trump somehow bullied them into agreeing with him.   

Reporters at the briefings asked Trump – on the rare occasion Dr. Fauci wasn’t present – why Dr. Fauci he wasn’t there.  When Dr. Fauci did show up in a subsequent briefing, they asked him why he had missed that earlier briefing – was he having issues with Trump? Was there a problem between Trump and Dr. Fauci? Was Trump hiding something? 

The American public saw all this.  Despite the media’s best efforts, and the constant attacks by Democrats on his response to virus, Trump’s approval ratings are the highest they've ever been since he took office.  Imagine that.  The midst of a pandemic and his approval ratings are up.

Trump does something Democrats and the media can’t: he talks directly to the public in words they understand, about things that are important to them. Not climate change, not the plight of illegal immigrants, not racism or any other isms right now.  He’s focused on overcoming the virus, safely reopening schools and businesses, and getting people back to work and the economy back roaring again.  The rest, as a friend of mine would say, is mouse nuts.   

When the media are clearly harassing him and trying to trip him up in briefings, the public sees it for what it is.  When Nancy Pelosi dismisses Trump as out of touch with the American workers and their families, the public knows that if anyone is out of touch it’s her.  

When Democrats put forth bills to address the effects of the coronavirus on the economy, but hide millions in those bills for the Kennedy Center, PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, Planned Parenthood, and other liberal favorites, the public sees what’s really going on. 

And when Democrat governors shut down practically everything they deem nonessential in their states, throwing millions of people out of work, but not public employees, their priorities are obvious. When those same governors ensure that marijuana dispensaries and liquor stores – but not bars or restaurants – remain open, order police to arrest groups attending church services, but keep Planned Parenthood open to perform abortions, the public knows what’s up.

The public is not that stupid.  There’s an election coming up.  The public knows why the Democrats and the media are so worried right now.  Why every day brings new attacks on Trump.  Even over crap they tried before and couldn’t gain traction with, like the new attack for possibly violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution.

The public doesn’t care about the freaking Emoluments Clause. They don’t care about what a horndog Trump may have been, or may still be.  Or who or how much he paid to keep quiet about consensual sex.  They don’t care that he’s rude. They don’t care that he makes fun of his adversaries.  That he considers the media mostly jerks and bozos.  Or that he hasn’t any fear whatsoever of the media. 

They didn’t vote for him because they wanted a nice guy in office to look up to.  They voted him in because they wanted him to do a job.

Right now, he’s doing that. Nothing else matters. The rest is all background noise.           

Someone needs to start saying no ...

Somebody needs to stop this insanity.  It’s long past time to start saying “no.”

It’s time for Trump and Republicans to hold their ground. 

In short, don’t do any more bargains with the devil. Don’t do foolish, short-sighted tradeoffs in the false hope Democrats won’t screw you in the end, or the media will like you.  Neither is ever going to happen no matter what you do; to do otherwise is not in their nature.   

And for God’s sake, don’t give away any more of our money.  Zero.  You’ve already agreed to pop more than $3 trillion out to buy a bunch of broken promises and fuel almost unimaginable fraud.

Yet Democrats want more. They want to bail out the mismanaged state and local governments they run which were billions in debt, mostly from extravagant public employee pension promises, before this coronavirus outbreak. Democrat leaders say if we don’t provide billions to these states now, they may have to cut some of their (grossly bloated) public employee payrolls.

Of course, they say this would mean laying off first responders, healthcare workers, and teachers, because these are most likely to get sympathy. Note they never include administrative drones and politically appointed hacks who probably make up the majority of public employees. Nope, it’s always about the first responders, healthcare workers and teachers.    

What they also won’t tell you is that in Illinois alone more than 19,000 former public employees get over $100,000 a year in pensions.  Some are well over $300,000 a year; a lot of those seem to be former school district administrators.  One study put the annual drain at about $14 billion. 

And that’s just Illinois. But here’s another kicker – over 71,000 of the retired Illinois government employees drawing fat pensions now live in Florida, probably to escape Illinois’ exceptionally high taxes.  Which are high because – you guessed it – overpaid and bloated public employee payrolls, and overly generous pensions and benefits when these public employees retire. 

Given states like Illinois’ and other deeply in debt states’ history, there’s no reason to believe that if we bailed them out now they’d suddenly become fiscally responsible.     

Democrats aren’t the only ones hoping to feast more on our dollars.  It’s an outright feeding frenzy since Senate Majority Leader McConnell signaled the gravy train might halt for as bit pretty soon. That’s spurred a rush to get everything on the table ASAP.  

Lobbyists want to change the rules for the stupid Payroll Protection Program to allow much larger businesses to get money. Others want to let recipients of the loans use the money for overhead instead of mostly for payroll. Businesses in high-rent districts – like a hair salon in NYC featured in a recent WSJ story, paying rent of $30,000 a month – want to use the money to pay rents, and some also want up to two years to qualify for loan forgiveness. 

Until the Feds finally pushed back, the LA Lakers and huge publicly-traded companies like Ruth Chris and Steak n’ Shake were also pillaging the PPP.  Now Saks, teetering on bankruptcy anyway, is trying to get bucks from PPP and is holding off on selling assets simply to qualify.

Then there’s the constant bitching and whining from people and businesses who should be thankful they are getting any money for free. It’s taking too long. It’s not enough. The application was too hard. There are too many rules. The dog ate my tax records. Blah blah blah …

Haven’t we all seen enough? It needs to end now.     

The first step is to order Mnuchin to stop negotiating. Period. Stop negotiating with anyone in Congress.  Stop negotiating with governors. Stop listening to everybody with their hand out.     

Especially don’t negotiate with Nancy and Chuck anymore. They have absolutely nothing to offer. All they want is to take, take, take, and embarrass Trump and Republicans whenever possible. The very act of negotiating with them simply encourages them.   

They will just keep pushing for ever more outrageous things in return.  A guaranteed monthly payment of $2,000 to every working or non-working resident (not citizen, but resident). Forgiveness of all college loans. Amnesty and full benefits – including the stimulus checks and unemployment bonus – for all illegals.  Up to a trillion bucks in new grants to bail out state and local governments. Billions more to bail out hospitals that couldn't do highly profitable elective procedures while the virus outbreak raged.   

Right now Nancy and Chuck believe they have the upper hand and they are taking full advantage of their perceived greater power.  It’s hard to disagree with them on this since no matter what happens the media will always give Nancy and Chuck the win.    

Even in those rare instances they lose a legislative battle, the media still give them full credit for whatever legislation got passed.  It’s astounding to see Nancy and Chuck stand in front of the mics claiming they won a great victory when they had little or nothing to do with the final legislation except hold it up and delay its ultimate passage for essentially nothing in return. 

According to Nancy and Chuck, whatever that legislation was before, it was terrible; that is, until they made it so much better. Just ask them.    

Negotiating with them is begging for a sucker punch.  That’s the only guarantee.   

At the same time Trump and Republicans should not negotiate with any lobbyists, either.  They should ignore threats from big-business and U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbyists that without blanket immunity, businesses won’t reopen for fear of frivolous virus-related lawsuits.

That’s utter nonsense. Let me be more direct: it’s complete bullshit. 

I can tell you from experience that every business is always under threat of frivolous lawsuits, from some slip-and-fall shyster, a disgruntled employee, or someone else trying to squeeze a big settlement on questionable grounds. That’s why businesses buy insurance for stuff like this.

So take blanket immunity off the table. It’s an unworkable idea and a non-starter. It’s a red herring that reinforces the Democrat and media narrative that Republicans worry more about protecting rich corporations and business owners than protecting workers.   

You also don’t need to listen to the lobbyists from the theme parks, the airlines, the cruise industry, universities, the PGA (yep, they want a bailout, too), NASCAR, the restaurant industry, the hotel industry, ski resorts, and anybody else that essentially wants free money.  

Just about everybody has taken a hit from the virus-inspired lockdown.  But it’s not the job of Congress or the President to make every person, every business, whole, as if this never happened. That's an unrealistic expectation.  

Nor is it time for either political party to jump on this crisis to get policies and programs they’ve always wanted. That goes for Republicans as well as Democrats.  Both sides are increasingly guilty of stuffing extraneous crap into legislation, such as the funding for PBS and the Kennedy Center, or de facto tort reform, in trade for something else.  

The country is on fire. People are dying. And yet politicians are still negotiating on a wide range of other stuff that one side or the other thinks will appease their base.  

That’s why nothing is getting done.  Just a lot of posturing. 

To break the impasse, Republicans and Trump need to take everything off the table, especially giving away more money “to help in the recovery.” The rationale for this is obvious: let’s see if what we’ve done already makes any difference, first. 

Most importantly, don’t give Nancy and Chuck the impression there’s anything you want so badly you’ll do a deal with them to get it. In essence, when they offer a trade for something they think you desperately want, tell them you already have everything you need right now, thank you.  

But let them know if they feel strongly enough about what they want, they should bring it to the floor of the full House and Senate by itself, not hidden in another piece of legislation, for a roll-call vote putting every Representative and Senator on record.

See how they react to that.  And while we’re at it, apply the same rule to all the special interest requests made by Republicans, too. 

I bet that would leave a mark, for the better.