Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs)… Aren’t they a blast from the past, so to speak?
ICBMs were – to borrow from a book title, and from the names of some computer games – “weapons of choice” for our nation and Russia, back in the Cold War era.
But, all of a sudden on Saturday, there they were, on giant big rigs, in one of those military parades… in North Korea.
Actually, oddly enough, the big rigs seemed more interesting than North Korea’s new, old weapons of war. I’ve never seen so many wheels, maybe 11, or so, per side? Imagine the tread wear, during that parade. If standard car and truck tires cost $70, and up, North Korea must be paying a pretty penny – or is it ‘lots of won’? – in North Korean pocket change?
At least soldiers driving those lumbering trucks can’t burn rubber or do wheelies. In authoritarian North Korea, they’d pay a steep price, if they did.
So, there was that folly, of sorts, over the weekend.
And, there were more.
Senator Lindsay Graham, who’s in a tight reelection race, said — actually shortly before the weekend — that he “cares about everybody. If you’re a young African American, an immigrant, you can go anywhere in this state. You just need to be conservative, not liberal,” he mentioned in a Business Insider article.
What was that, again, Lindsay? A threat? Or an attempt at humor?
Then, there was the nation’s president, saying he “could have been one of the diers,” according to a report from New York Magazine.
He was discussing his recent COVID checkup at Walter Reed Hospital. The president, oftentimes, has strange ways of saying things. But, was he really that nervous? Because, according to a New York Times report, over the weekend, Mr. Trump “floated an idea to surprise observers by ripping open his button-down shirt to reveal a Superman t-shirt underneath.” He “made several calls during his stay at the Walter Reed National Medical Center… in which he proposed the idea of first appearing physically weak to observers, people familiar with the matter reportedly said. Upon leaving the hospital, he would rip open his dress shirt to reveal a shirt with the infamous Superman logo.”
But, getting back to POTUS’s speaking style, during a chat on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, a listener asked Mr. Trump if he could clarify what he’s been saying about the GOP’s pending health care plan. She wasn’t entirely sure that pre-existing conditions would be covered.
Here’s what the president had to say, in a Raw Story article about the Limbaugh show:
“Now pre-existing conditions, I’m totally for, but I’m against Obamacare because Obamacare is too expensive. I already got rid of the individual mandate, which is the worst part of Obamacare, that we had to pay a fortune for the privilege of not paying for bad health insurance. You understand that… I got rid of it under our tax decrease, the biggest tax decrease in the history of our country. We would have never been able to build up the economy if we didn’t get that, but one of the things I got in, I got rid of the individual mandate and what I want to do is, and we’re fighting to terminate, I sort of have terminated Obamacare, because once you get rid of the individual mandate it’s no longer Obamacare, but I had a choice to make… Do I maintain Obamacare, the remnants of Obamacare, after that the, you know, the mandate. Do I maintain it well, or do I run it badly? I could have done it either way.”
Do you get it, now?
Like I said… weekend follies!
Harvey Radin is former senior vice president in charge of corporate communications and media relations, Bank of America Western Region. He makes his home in Redwood City, CA.