PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19^TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon, as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.

I published a blog this morning including some Good Quotes Worth Remembering including one about Donald Trump, the quack, touting the benefits of ingesting household cleaners as a way to oppose coronavirus.

Well, I feel compelled to post this additional piece, given two comments I just read in the Washington Post – one by Kathleen Parker and another by Dana Milbank.

FROM PARKER: “Given Trump’s keen interest in pursuing new cures, perhaps he would consider participating in an experiment to determine the effectiveness of cleansers in eradicating covid-19 in the human body. Of course, he’d first have to willingly expose himself to infection, as he seems to think other Americans should by encouraging governors to reopen their states. Or, rather than take the risky path of injecting bleach, he might just take a warm bath in the stuff.

“The living need to be told how to avoid getting sick, not some quackery from a reality-TV-star-cum-president.”

FROM MILBANK: “My study hasn’t been peer reviewed yet, but my evidence — based on a hunch that originated in my gut — is very strong: President Trump has overdosed on hydroxychloroquine.

“Trump, who claims a “natural instinct for science” not from formal training but because his late uncle was a scientist, once used this innate ability to determine that climate change was a hoax and that windmills cause cancer. More recently he mobilized the U.S. government to make sure thousands of covid-19 patients were treated with the antimalarial hydroxychloroquine and the antibiotic azithromycin — because Trump’s instinct told him the drug cocktail would be a “phenomenal” “game changer.”

“Sadly, evidence from all over suggests that the drugs cause heart problems and worsen death rates.

“No matter! The stable genius dropped his hydroxychloroquine hypothesis faster than you can say “snake oil” and is now touting a new miracle cure for the virus: injecting the lungs with bleach, alcohol or other common disinfectants, possibly along with massive doses of heat and ultraviolet light.

“As it happens, I, too, have a natural instinct for science (my brother is a urologist) and I have used it to conclude that hydroxychloroquine abuse has caused Trump and some top aides and allies to suffer a condition we experts refer to as acute nuttiness.”

Nothing more needs to be written…at least this morning