Anyone "tired of all the winning" yet? Just asking....

In the same week America passed the grim milestone of 100,000 dead from the coronavirus pandemic, a black man was suffocated by a white police officer while three other cops stood by and either helped him commit this crime or did absolutely nothing to prevent it. Since then, there have been sometimes-violent protests in the streets of not only Minneapolis but in several other cities across the country. The dead man was accused of the crime of trying to use a fake $20 bill at a convenience store. The cops, acting as judge, jury, and executioner, provided him with a death sentence -- for the transgression of trying to pass a fake twenty.

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On a lonely hill outside the small town of Cobh, Ireland (pronounced: "cove"), is a mass grave marked by three somber headstones. As mass graves go, it's a fairly small one; holding not tens of thousands or even thousands, but merely a few hundred bodies. But the relative size of the grave on the scale of human misery is beside the point -- because while few, their deaths had monumental consequences for America. The dead were civilians, not soldiers (more on them in a minute). But their deaths deserve memorializing today just as much as those we remember who wore the uniform of our country. Because this is the final resting place of the people onboard the Lusitania.

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For the first time since the coronavirus pandemic began in the United States, things seem to be getting slightly better, at least on the national level. This is welcome news for everyone, of course, although it still may be too early to tell whether the positive trends now slowly developing will be sustained over the next month or so. But at any rate, things do seem to finally be headed in a more positive direction. So it's time for some very cautious optimism.

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President Donald Trump seems unclear on a few basic scientific and medical concepts. This isn't really news, of course, since Trump seems unclear on a whole host of things each and every day. But this week's comments on coronavirus testing were more than just a little bit astonishing.

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It's been quite a while since we did a "three-dot Thursday" here, but it seemed like the thing to do now that we've got a flood of news coming in that all seems to be variations on a similar theme. The media has woven together all the strands of incompetence from the Trump White House into a cohesive whole, showing how woefully inadequate President Donald Trump has been -- and continues to be -- throughout the coronavirus pandemic. Or, to put it more bluntly, the chickens are coming home to roost...

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Donald Trump's re-election campaign has hit upon what they consider a winning attack line against Joe Biden: "China, China, China!" Truly, that's about as sophisticated as their effort has been, to date, and the new ad they just unveiled doesn't really move that needle much at all. Their political equation rests on the fact that many Americans don't have a favorable opinion of China in general, and in specific Team Trump is trying to explain away his own massive coronavirus response failings by saying everything was China's fault, for lying to the world in January. Which adds up to (according to the Trump campaign): Joe Biden has said some polite things about China, therefore he is obviously some sort of pinko agent of the Chinese Communist Party. As I said, not exactly sophisticated campaign rhetoric or anything. But the problem with trying to paint with such a large brush is that the paint can slop back all over you.

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President Donald Trump would much prefer to live inside his own self-constructed bubble, where everything he does is the right thing to do and he gets nothing but praise for his stable genius and masterful leadership. But since it's an election year, he's not going to get that luxury. In particular, the reality of his ongoing incompetent and disastrous response to the coronavirus pandemic is now beginning to invade his own personal safe space. Because more and more people are pointing out the vast difference between Trump's "reality" and the actual facts on the ground, with increasing bluntness. After all, people are dying out there -- a lot of them. Nothing could be more serious.

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Today is a notable day for a number of disjointed reasons. Fifty years ago today, Ohio National Guardsmen killed four Kent State students who were protesting the Vietnam War. For those more future-minded, it's Star Wars Day ("May the fourth be with you!"). However, I'd be willing to bet that one of today's usual yearly traditions has been especially hard-hit, because Corona beer sales are likely not spiking right now as they normally do (in preparation for Cinco de Mayo). It's a bad time for your brand to be "corona," in other words, in this time of the virus. But for most of us, it is a time of waiting. This waiting period will become notable eventually, because whatever happens next -- over the course of the next month, roughly -- may actually determine the outcome of the November election.

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When it comes to predicting presidential elections before the fact, however, there is one clear leader in the prediction business -- Allan Lichtman, a professor of political history at American University. He's got a system (which he outlines in "The Keys To The White House") which has an unbelievable track record, because by using his 13 "keys," he has successfully predicted the last nine presidential elections (including Trump's win). So his system is certainly worth a look, in presidential election years.

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What's a good Republican governor to do, these days? It's hard not to feel at least a little sorry for them as they try to navigate the minefield that is Donald Trump's ego. They think they're doing exactly what Trump has told them to do and then -- BOOM! -- they step on a landmine of blowback, because Trump has either changed his mind or decided to hedge his bets by taking every possible side of an issue (in the hopes that he won't be held responsible, no matter what happens). It's gotten to the point where calling Trump "mercurial" is now actually insulting to the element mercury.

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