Archives for April 2020

Day 1183 – When Magical Thinking Meets Cold Reality

Wednesday April 15, 2020 

200 Days until the election on November 3^rd

280 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Apparently, the president had what is being described as a meltdown at his Monday rally and Coronavirus update. A reporter had the temerity to ask him a question that he didn’t like and stuck to the question even after he did his little shuck and duck. Even after he called the reporter his usual set of names. The question asked dealt with the gap in time between when the White House knew about the virus and when they reacted. The reporter wanted to know specifically what the White House was doing in a time gap of many weeks. The White House was doing “a lot” according to the president. He couldn’t seem to be able to dredge up any details.

Meanwhile, a pork producing plant in South Dakota has had to shut down because hundreds of their works have the virus. The state is under no restrictions. The governor has steadfastly refused to take such actions, but she has spent a lot of time on Fox News of late, and she is committing her state to a trial of the malaria medicine that the president keeps touting that has shown little or no effect on the virus, but his touting has cleaned out the supply for people who really need it.

Four states have no shutdown orders. All four are run by Republican governors. Nebraska is looking to open up one of its malls. 

W.H.O. has issued guidelines for what a country should do before considering opening up anything. There are six steps. The first step is figuring out who has the virus. After all this time we still don’t have test kits available. But that’s okay, because the president has blamed WHO for his failure to react sooner. 

So – to be clear – you don’t want to open up anything until you know who has the virus.

We don’t know who has the virus.

What’s going to happen when that mall is opened up? Well, if anyone shows up there’s a good probability that they will get infected. That they will infect others, and we’ll have another hot spot on our hands. 

A virus doesn’t seem to care about what you say on Fox News. A virus doesn’t care if you know that it’s there or not. It invades your body, takes over your cells’ DNA/RNA and starts replicating. It might kill you or you might survive. If you survive we don’t know if you are immune or not, because there hasn’t been enough research to tell us.

A virus does what it does. 

It’s up to us to figure out how to stop it. We know how. We just aren’t doing it. 

Stay home.

Wash your hands.

Put protocols in place for bringing anything into your home. This should include mail, groceries, and packages. We stage those things in the garage for several days. If we need the stuff in immediately we wipe it down with disinfectant. We wear gloves and masks.

Every day now I’m seeing doctors and nurses begging us not to go out. They show us how they are overwhelmed with the patients they already have. 

Our president is not going to help us. It is up to each of us to help ourselves. If you get this virus there is a good chance you will infect others around you. If you don’t die others you infected may die. If you infect 100 people, three of them will be dead from this virus.

That’s the reality. The governors that aren’t shutting down their states, that aren’t taking precautions, are killing the citizens they swore to protect. They will have blood on their hands, just like the president.

200 Days until the election on November 3^rd

280 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS The pyramid at Dzibilchaltun, near Merida, Mexico

Day 1182 – Are You Bored?

Tuesday April 14, 2020 

201 Days until the election on November 3^rd

281 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Well, I’m not. I’m a lot of things, but bored isn’t one of them. Why? I remember that annoying thing people say to that question, “Boredom is something you do to yourself.” 

(Yeah, shut up. It’s as bad as when you lose something and someone asks you, “Where was the last place you had it?” Listen, if I knew the answer to that I’d know where the lost item is, wouldn’t I? Don’t say it. Don’t say, “Well, not necessarily …” Oh, you want to get punched in the mouth, do you?”)

Where was I? Oh, yes. Boredom. Hum. No. I’m having to confront the reality of possibly doing all those projects I said I was going to do once I got the time. 

Moving on. 

I’ve had a broad sweep of emotions over the last few days. None more profound than the realization that we are in for a long haul. Like one to two years. Anyone who thinks that this is going to be over soon had better re-check their assumptions because as Ayn Rand would say, “One of them is wrong.”

The most stark coming to realize this was brought about by a guy from Minnesota. He’s one of those folks with a PhD or MD who has an alphabet soup description of what he does, but he spoke with something we rarely see these days – knowledge. Yeah, he seemed to really know what he was talking about. 

He said that their predictive models are saying that before this pandemic is done half the people in this country will have had the virus. He said that based on that we are looking at a death rate of between 800,000 and 1,600,000. We are currently at 20,000. He quoted Churchill and said we aren’t at the end or the beginning but the end of the beginning, or something like that.

If this guy is right that 50% of the population will get this disease than his death rate is way off. The current projected death rate is 3.2%. Let’s assume the population of the U.S. Is 300 million. (I think it’s more like 320, but 300 is easier to work with.)

If 50% of 300 million get the virus that’s 150 million. If the death rate is 3.2% well lemme see – for 100 million that would be 3.2 million so for 150 million I’d have to add on another 1.6 million for a total of 4.8 million. That last 20 million in the population I didn’t put in before? Hum, half of 20 is 10, so 10 million more would get the virus and 1% of ten million is 100,000 so that times 3.2 is 320,000. If we add that to the 4.8 million dead of 300 million we get 5.12 million or 5,120,000 dead from the Corona Virus.

If this is the outcome we won’t recognize this country or this world. We haven’t even looked at what will happen to Africa or places that don’t have the infrastructure we have.

Is there hope? Yeah, of course. Maybe we’ll get a vaccine quicker than normal. But we are looking at some pretty terrifying numbers. 

Moving on.

I was brought to tears – twice yesterday. One was when they showed the Christ in Rio lit up like a medical professional, and then with the flag of the U.S. They were showing the countries effected. (Btw Have you noticed how many of the doctors, nurses, and health care workers aren’t white? How about Boris? He attributes the care he got to two immigrants to his country.)

The other bring-to-tears moment was Andrea Bocelli singing “Amazing Grace” in front of the Milan Cathedral. (That cathedral is one of the premier structures in the world. When we got there I was too tired to go on the tour. I was twelve. The roof is incredible. Damn.)

Seeing the light show in Brazil made me feel both thankful and ashamed. Ashamed for what we as a country have become. Yesterday, I wrote that we had been a world leader. We had been the ones to send the extra troops and supplies to hot spots around the world. We stopped ebola, and swine flu, and H1N1, and SARS, and MERS. Now?

Now FEMA is restocking our national stockpile by stealing orders from the states.

Now we are months into this crisis and we still don’t have testing or protective equipment.

It’s chaotic. It’s shameful. It’s disgusting. 

Disgusting because our president is so petty, so mean, so clueless. You’ve heard the term “the banality of evil”? Look no further than Donald J. Trump.

Well, you can look further – like to Jared.

You don’t get to a cunning little runt until you get to Stephen Miller. 

But don’t worry we’ve got a new task force made up of Jared, Ivanka, Mark Meadows and a few others. They’re going to do something. But god knows what. What’s the committee for? Who cares.

This got me to thinking about intelligence and the Bell Curve.

Quick, where do you put yourself? Hillary? Barack? Bill Gates?

Now what about Donald? Jared? Ivanka?

If you’re like me, you put yourself somewhere in the middle. (Okay, maybe “above average” thank you Garrison Keller.) Hillary, Barack, and Bill? I put them to the right – I.e. Smarter than me.

Donald? Jared? Ivanka? Not as smart as me. Maybe, more cunning.

We could argue about where on the curve each of these folk go, but that’s the general lay of the land I think.

What about Joe Biden? I think he’s in there with us. And that’s okay.

The thing about Joe is you feel his compassion, his empathy right away. Yeah, he could have done things better in his life, but he did the best he could and his heart was generally in the right place. Can anyone say that about Trump? Has anyone ever said, “Oh yeah, but his heart was in the right place?” I don’t think so. I think you might ask, “Does he have a heart?”

Yeah, it’s going to be a long slog. Many of the folks we know are not going to make it.

If you haven’t set up a staging area for stuff you bring into your home to let it sit for several days then do so immediately. Put a protocol in place to wash or wipe down those items and if you don’t need them right away. Let them sit. 

That’s what our garage is for now.

Moving on. 

Hey, guess what? It’s now coming out that Trump’s own medical experts were trying to get Donnie to see the light back in January and February. 

Donald wants to not help the post office. Why? Oh, he doesn’t like Jeff Bezos, because Jeff owns the Washington Post and the Post writes factual things about Trump that he thinks are nasty. (Well, they are, because he is. – Next.) Amazon uses the Post Office to ship stuff. So if Donnie can shut them down, big win. Plus there’s the added bonus of no mail-in ballots. “I win! I win! Look at the numbers!”

Oh god, save me, save us.

Save us all.

201 Days until the election on November 3^rd

281 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS “You want some of that? Huh? Do ya? Come on. I’m ready.”

Day 1181 – We Used to be a World Leader

Monday April 13, 2020 

202 Days until the election on November 3^rd

282 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

In grief therapy they talk about the various stages of grief. I think there’s denial, anger, acceptance, and probably a few others.

I’m pissed. I’m angry. I’ve accepted.

We used to be a world leader.

What does that mean? To me?

It means we used to be comforted that someone, somewhere, knew.

Someone, somewhere knew what was going on, knew what to do.

We had knowledge. We had leaders.

Now?

Most of that is gone and we are reaping the result of that loss.

I’m pissed because it didn’t have to be this way.

We used to be on top of pandemics.

We used to have leaders that took action, that would have stopped this thing early.

Now?

Now we got a guy who measures his success by his ratings. 

We knew this. We knew this about Trump early. We were told. Over and over again we were told. If you say, “Gee, I didn’t know.” Or if you are sitting there saying to yourself, “That’s not true.” Then you need to change where you are getting your information.

There was the Steele Dossier. There were the people in New York who had worked for Trump, been stiffed by him, saw how he operated and told us. There were the shady dealings with his university, with the state prosecutor in Florida, with the contractors stiffed by him, there was the pussy grabbing tape. There was the stuff about him and Russia, the pissing on the bed, the probable money laundering, the shady characters close to him. 

There was Seth Myers recounting how Trump didn’t understand funny. How he would pull out a review of the numbers when he was on SNL. He’s still doing it. He thinks that being a war time president is about having good ratings. He’s told you that.

Now we are seeing reporting from Italy, from Great Britain, from the Bronx about the swamped and over run hospitals, about the shortages of equipment, and of staff. It didn’t have to be this way. 

I hear the reports of how Trump ignored the experts – for months. 

How he declared he wanted to be a wartime president and then did nothing but hold press conferences. What does he talk about? His numbers. His ratings. No one should be surprised. This is who he is. Maybe, you didn’t know it back then, back when Seth Meyers was telling you. But you know it now. 

Is it going to change? No. You know that too. He’s used the same playbook throughout his life. It isn’t going to change.

Several years ago there was a story about the Governor of North Carolina needing something from the Federal Government. He didn’t get it. Trump tweeted that he was going to do whatever it was because Tom Tillis, the Republican Senator from North Carolina, had asked him.

This behavior hasn’t changed. The Governor of Colorado ordered 500 ventilators. Why? Because the president has said – you’re on your own. Guess what? FEMA stepped in and took those ventilators. Then the president tweeted out that he was sending 100 ventilators to Colorado because Cory Gardener, the Republican Senator from that state, had asked Trump. 

Somehow, and this is no longer surprising to me, but when Trump got elected he missed the part that said you now represent all the people.

I heard Obama’s former United Nations ambassador speaking this past week. She was saying that Africa is just starting to get hit with this virus. South Sudan has four ventilators – in the whole country. What’s going to happen when the virus gets there? I quote our president, “a lot of death.” She also pointed out that in our country we have 26 doctors for every 10,000 people. In Africa? Three. Three people for ten thousand, and they don’t have the infra-structure we have. 

We used to go to Africa and help. Remember Ebola? Remember how Obama sent a huge army of people and supplies over there? Remember how the Republicans puffed out their chests and said we shouldn’t go over there? That we should lock our doors and not let those folks in? Well, now you can see the effects of that kind of policy with Trump. How’s it working our?

I am pissed. I am ashamed. I am worried, I am sad.

We used to be a world leader.

202 Days until the election on November 3^rd

282 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS The staircase at Ek Balam

Day 1180 – Uncle Rick’s Buck-Up Speech (and weekly review)

Sunday April 12, 2020 

203 Days until the election on November 3^rd

283 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

When I woke up this morning I thought it was Saturday. Now? I discover it’s Sunday, which just goes to show that time-travel is possible.

I’ve watched part of the latest Bill Maher and part of SNL’s latest. I fell asleep on both shows. If I drink wine, I fall asleep faster.

I was stunned to listen to the interview Bill had with Nikki Glazer to find that they both are “coping” and going stir crazy. WTF? Okay, so it is time for an intervention, and I’m just the guy to do the intervening. So here goes. Buckle Up Buttercup.

First off, this virus is going to be with us for a long time. Like 12 to 18 months – best guess. You can go out, you can get it, and maybe you’ll survive. Maybe, you won’t. Maybe after that, you’ll be immune, maybe not. We don’t really know. However, if you pursue that path and you get sick you are taxing our health care systems, which are already straining. You may also be spreading the virus, You don’t know. So if you want to go this route please do it with a bunch of like minded people. Go to a mega church meeting where they are going to stand up to the virus. Or go to a Trump rally. Or go to Fox News HQ and do some laughing and slapping.

Or go the Samuel L. Jackson route and Stay the Fuck Inside. 

Why? Let’s examine Option 1 versus Option 2. If you think Option 1 is a good idea than consider how well it worked out for the native Americans once folks from Europe showed up. It is calculated that 80-90% of the native population was wiped out. Diaz in his account of the Conquest* recounts going into villages and there was no one there. They hadn’t left. They had all died. 

The native Americans did not have the 400,000 years of intermingling with the Neanderthals that the now European stock had, which had allowed that population to build up an immunity to Smallpox and measles. 

Option 2 means stay inside until “we” come up with a vaccine. There are promising signs that this may be sooner rather than later, but we don’t know. Yet. Until there is a vaccine we are screwed. Unless, of course, by getting it and surviving one builds up an immunity, but again we don’t know if that is true. We also don’t know why some survive and some die. It seems that maybe those that survive have only been mildly infected, but we don’t know.

There are, at least, two hopeful medicines that I know of. One is from Gilead Science and its drug may help one get better by limiting the virus’ ability to reproduce once it is in your body. Gilead came up with the cure for Hep-C so, yeah, that will help if it proves to work.

The other is a vaccine from researchers from the U of Pitt. It is administered via a small bandaid that has 400 little needles on it. It is based on twenty years of research that they’ve been doing on these kind of viruses. They may have something. They aren’t sure until they’ve done more testing. TWENTY YEARS OF RESEARCH! That’s the key. Trump has been slashing the research budgets of these sort of efforts. He thinks he can go out and buy what he wants. He tried to do that with a German company. To quote Mick Jagger, “You can’t alway get what you want,” and you can’t alway buy it. Especially, if it’s not available. (Maybe, a childhood cautionary tale would be better? If you’re a piggie that built his (or her) house of straw and the big bad virus came around you’re gonna get it. Likewise with brick. If you had invested in an R&D lab then maybe you’ll come up with an answer before it kills you. Wait that doesn’t really make any sense. The point I was trying to make was that if you don’t plan ahead you’re leaving yourself open to the vagaries of whatever comes your way. Yeah, that’s what I meant.)

Some might try to argue that “We didn’t know it was coming.” To which I say to thee, “Verily, I say unto you Bull Shit.” We knew it was coming. We had teams in place to deal with such things. We had a playbook. It was all in place. There were scenarios that described in detail exactly how a pandemic like this could happen. 

What happened?

We elected an idiot. That’s what happened. 

But.

That’s (as they like to say) “The Tip of The Spear.”

We’ve been building up to this since 1980 when Reagan, the first stupid President, was elected.

However, Reagan, Bush, Bush II, and Trump were only the frontmen for an ideological movement that has shown itself to be bereft of good thinking. By good here I mean helpful to most people. All of these “thinkers” and politicians depended on magic. 

“When the Iraqis stand up; we’ll stand down.”

“A thousand points of light.”

“I believe in the American people.”

Yeah, right. They all had half baked plans and dreams. Behind this was a wall of greedy folks that were madly feeding at the trough. Ayn Rand had outlined this sort of behavior in her two classic books. Some thought it was the Soviet System, some thought it capitalism aided by government corrupted. Both were right. Like Marx, they were good at describing the problem, but not a solution.

Reagan was supposedly the new conservatism, but he was really being manipulated by his wife and her astrologer and a band of folks who were in it for themselves. Many of these folks had gone to business school and not learned how to do anything. The guy who wrote “Up With Business” said it best – people who went to the Harvard School of Business sit around waiting for the job of CEO to open up. He seems to be right. I haven’t heard of anyone coming out of business school who has done anything helpful to the country, the world, the economy, or people in those categories. Yes, they may have made a ton of money for themselves, but for others? Naw. 

Let’s look at Mitt Romney. His dad build a huge car business. Mitt is like Richard Gere in Pretty Woman before he was beguiled by Julia Roberts. He bought up a company, stripped it of its assets, loaded it up with junk bond debt, charged it high fees and then off loaded it. He and Mitt either sold it off as a repackaged stock offering or he let it go into some sort of receivership that the government had to take care of. This is not a guy who built anything, improved the lives of others, far from it. He destroyed companies and with it people’s hopes, dreams, and promises made to them.

See, there’s this underlying contract that the Republicans and those like them keep ignoring. That contract is “you work for me and I’ll take care of you.” Yeah, you can laugh and say, “BS.” But aren’t all the company ads you see either selling you something based on that idea? Either the product will or the people associated with the product will – take care of you. They’ll take care of a need or a want. 

But for the guys at the top, is that true? Do they believe that? The founders of the company usually did, but once the MBAs come in – naw. But even the founders were sons of bitches. Ford had to pay double to get people to do the stinking’ jobs. Walton got sued and forced to pay for overtime. Do you know what he said? “I have to pay, but if you cash the check you will be fired.” Let’s roll the Wal-Mart people ad please. Dupont, what about Dupont? It’s big in Richmond. Many folks got nice pensions from the company, including my father-in-law. Do you think old man DuPont did that out of the goodness of his heart? F no. He was forced by the government to do so. He hated and fought it the whole way. Who was running the government at the time? Hint: Not a Republican.

So let’s move on to some of the “new conservative thinkers” like Grover Norquist. He’s smart. He’s funny. He has an idea that the smaller government is the better. Is that true? When you get down to it he’ll tell you that he believes something or other is true, but is it? Ah, there’s the magical thinking. Then they move into the Constitutional argument that other than a standing army and the post office (and the Census) there is nothing the government should be doing. Private business is better. Really? Why then did Teddy Roosevelt have to break up the trusts?

Whose going to build the roads, bridges, etc. that this country depends on other than the government? Private enterprise likes to skim the cream, but not take care of everyone. Rural electrification took place not because the electric companies wanted to do it. The government made it a priority. It is said, and this seems to be accurate, if the Department of Agriculture didn’t exist with its loan programs to rural America our farms and rural areas would look like rural China. (Which ain’t pretty, but ya know what? Maybe, we should let the jackals in to feast on that big loan portfolio? Let ‘em jack up the price on those loans and let more small farms go out of business. Then maybe all those Senators from those states that control the Senate would start voting to help the people? What am I talking about? Then they’d be completely bought and sold by powerful interests. Never mind.)

Remember David Stockman and Alan Laffer and the Laffer Curve? Yeah. Well, turns out that the theory didn’t really work out in practice. Yes, there’s a relationship between revenue and taxation, and yes there is some point at which if you tax more you’ll get less revenue, but whatever Laffer was pushing as the rate he was way off. Stockman? Yeah, cut this then that. Turns out you can cut this, but that? Forget it.

Then there’s Rand and Ron Paul. Ron had the “Revolution” the idea being that you could diddle the monetary rates (ie the rate at which the government lends money) and this would cure the economy. It’s called the Austrian School of Economics. No one had really ever heard of it until Rand. Well, that’s not true. Economists had heard of it and shrugged it off as quackery. But when it comes to economics there are a lot of quacks. Milton Friedman for instance. He was big when I was in college. He was the tough guy University of Chicago school of economics. Recently, a youtube video was going around showing how a socialist (democratic type) took him down with a simple explanation. 

What happens when these guys get in power? Well, they don’t really know what to do, so they fumble around, resist doing anything that looks like it will help a lot of people, give handouts to their friends, and then get preachy about guns and abortion. Abortion in this case is really the idea of trampling on women’s rights. They are the “barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen” crowd. Now they’ve united with the devil, in this case the Christian devil, and they are zealously going after abortion, which is really a disguised way of dominating women. 

But that’s what they do.

This isn’t what I meant to be talking about.

What I meant to say was that this virus situation has led some people to claim to be stir crazy and all that. To which I say – Buck Up.

You said you wanted more time at home. You said you wanted more time with the family. You said you wanted more time to read. (Oh, you didn’t say that? You don’t have anything to read? Don’t you own books? No. OMG. What is wrong with you?)

Make a list of all those projects you claimed you were going to do. Either say you’ll never get to it and move on or do it!

Okay. Solved that problem.

Next?

Oh. Yeah. Predictions. How long is this virus going to be with us?

There are three possible scenarios:

1 – Once we get a vaccine.

2 – We don’t get a vaccine.

3 – I forgot.

Outcome 1 – is 18 months away. Maybe. Maybe longer. Maybe we get lucky and we get it sooner. Then we have to get everyone vaccinated. This getting everyone vaccinated would take effort and leadership. I’ll talk more about that in a second. No I won’t. We don’t have leaders running the show right now. Until a new president comes in we are screwed.

Option 2 – is a scenario like the Black Plague, only worse. With the plague they finally figured it out – kind of. If we don’t figure it out then we are hoping that a) those who got it and survived have built up an immunity and b) a high enough percentage of people die that the herd is thinned and by that very action social distancing comes into effect. Think of it like Lord of the Flies meets Hunger Games and all those other dystopian fantasies combined. 

What to do?

I already told you – Buck Up.

What does that mean? Think for yourself. 

Are you bored? Tell yourself the following (in a whiney wishy-washy voice is best) “Well, boredom is something you do to yourself.”

Put it another way, (try your Sam Kinison/Leslie Jones voice) “STOP IT!” Okay?

Wait? What? You didn’t get it. Oh okay:

“STOP IT!” “STOP IT!” “STOP IT!” “STOP IT!” “STOP IT!” “STOP IT!” “STOP IT!” 

And Buck Up.

Now, will there be anything else?

Oh maybe you want some thoughtful analysis and suggestions. Okay.

Give me your palm. Let me look at it. Rather you look at it. (Get that thing away from me.) Do you see there are lines in your palm? Yeah, they are trying to tell you something. What is it? How should I know? It’s your palm. But, I can tell you this. Your life will be different from now on. 

What worked before. May not work now. You may have to think. Did you hear me?

“YOU MAY HAVE TO THINK!”

(As a helpful exercise: stare at your palm, open your mouth, slap that palm onto your face.

Why open your mouth?I dunno. Sounds kind of funny.)

BTW – Some of your thoughts will be really fucked up.

And that’s okay. 

Because you are … well never mind.

You will need to try new things, if …

If you want to succeed.

What does success look like?

How in the heck should I know? Look at your palm. What is it telling you?

(See what I mean? You gotta figure it out.)

I mean success is different for each person. What would success feel like to you?

What would it mean?

Did something immediately come to mind?

Yes? Write it down. That’s it. That’s what success means to you. Everything you think of after what you just wrote down is BS. That BS is trying to talk you out of whatever it is you wrote down. What you meant; what you want. You now know what it is. (All those that wrote down “Astronaut”, “Super Model,” and “billionaire” and are over the age of 7, 17, and 63 respectively – try again because what you want ain’t gonna happen.)

Will it be hard? Yeah, if you ignore it. Not if you don’t.

Okay. Get to work.

Oh yeah several little things I meant to say right at the beginning.

The part of Bill’s show I stayed awake for. He went on about diseases have often been named for the places they came from and why is everyone getting bent out of shape about calling this one Chinese?

Why? Because it strikes some people as racist and why go there if you don’t have to? I notice he didn’t mention German Measles, which didn’t come from Germany. (Look it up.)

Then he had some interviews, which were really good. He did an interesting thing. He shut up. Let people talk and didn’t interrupt. Wow. You could actually hear and understand what they were saying.

Bill suggested to Al Gore that he thought Joe Biden should appoint Barack Obama to head up his team to fight this virus, and he should do it right now. Al suggested have testing at polling places in November. Both brilliant ideas.

Then there was SNL. The cast members did their bits from their homes. The ZOOM skit was brilliant. 

But in all these stay at home videos shot on an iPhone, none compare to the Apple ads that say they were shot on an iPhone. Maybe, Apple will give some lessons on how to be awesome?

Oh, and Chris Martin of Cold Play. He sang a song while playing an acoustic guitar. He was really good! I’m surprised because I think Cold Play is one of the worst bands around. Some people don’t like Nickelback, which I don’t get. Yeah, the songs all sound about the same but they aren’t bad for what they are. Cold Play, like my other group I don’t understand Arcade Fire, never seem to have their microphone levels set right. There’s just this random stuff going on, disconnected from one another. But Martin playing guitar and singing was spectacular. (Well, good and understandable – at least.)

Speaking of spectacular, we watched the Country Music Awards show, which was various country singers, at home, singing. They were all good performances. But I was blown away by Trish Underwood. I hadn’t liked how they got rid of Faith Hill for Trish on Monday Night Football, but man Trish can Sang! I’d throw my shoe for her. (How’d JH** get in here?)

Okay, gotta go work on my master plan.

Remember:

STFAH! ***

BUCK UP.

Wash your hands.

203 Days until the election on November 3^rd

283 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

*Bernal Diaz “Discovery and Conquest of Mexico”

**Jennifer Hudson

*** Stay The Fuck At Home (or STFI) ****

**** Stay The Fuck Inside

Okay where was I?

PS “Don’t Worry, I got this boss.” 

Demon on the Elephant Wall, Angkor Wat

Day 1179 – It’s Coming In Fast and Furious

Saturday April 11, 2020 

204 Days until the election on November 3^rd

284 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

There is so much going on that it’s hard to keep it all at bay. I feel I’m in a bar room* brawl with my back against my good buddy and the two of us are in the center of the room surrounded by the rest of the patrons. All of them want to get a piece of us and we are circling the room trying to keep them at bay – until reinforcements arrive. 

Except there is no buddy and there are no reinforcements coming, so the best I can do is circle double fast and high kick whomever tries to take a swipe. So far I’ve been lucky and I’ve kicked them in the mouth when they are just thinking about swiping.

Where to begin? OMG.

There are the stories about Trump and his merry band of cockroaches trying to steal:

– Our election

– Our country 

– Everything

Meanwhile, one asks, “What is the Federal government doing to fight the pandemic?”

Good question, Little Susie, the short answer is “Nothing.” Other than holding long rambling press conferences that demonstrate Trump’s inability to do anything other than grab the stage. He’s been on stage over 19 hours and what have you learned from him? Nothing that is true. Dr. Fauci is doing what he can, but their are reports that Trump is getting tired of the facts and wants to “reopen the country.” Whatever that means. He doesn’t have the power to do any such thing. That’s the governors’ call. But Donnie is doing what he can to muck things up in that department. 

The latest is he had FEMA steal the order for 500 ventilators from Colorado then he graciously (tongue in cheek here) tweeted he was giving 100 ventilators to Colorado because Corey Gardner asked for them. The Denver Post has come right out and said this is emoluments. Remember the good olde days when Republicans were outraged by Hillary as Secretary of State having her photo taken with a head of state that gave money to the Clinton Foundation? Good times. Fond memories. Now? Now their boy is carrying out a governmental run extortion scheme that will kill people and they are good with it. I mean that governor is a Democrat right? Fuck him. (Trump never got the memo that when you become president you represent all the people.)

But Colorado is this week’s victim. Last week it was Massachusetts. There the orders just disappeared and FEMA took the equipment.

Nursing homes across the U.S. are being hit hard by the virus. How bad? Let’s go to the national statistics shall we? Oh, they aren’t keeping track of that? Oh, I see. Then how do we know that nursing homes have people dying? Oh, local news articles and reports? I see. And NBC is compiling data. 

And there’s a statistics group that is tracking county by county the spread of the virus. Not the Federal Government! You’d think our Federal Government would be doing this, but not under Trump. Look, he’s busy blabbering away for hours each day at a podium. It’s hard to stand there hour after hour and make up stuff. But the ratings are so good.

Then there’s the whole thing about the malaria drug. The thinking being, “Maybe it can help?” Yeah, maybe it can. Is there any evidence that it can? No. NO. NO. No. But that doesn’t stop the Donald. So what if people on Lupus, who really need the drug can no longer get it? Hey, Donald has an investment in the company that makes the drug. I’ll bet the numbers are way up! Should we try anything we can to fight this pandemic? NO. We should use are brains. It’s the thing inside the skull. Trump pointed to the general area where it should reside inside his skull the other day. We should use science, not religion (because religion has a 0% success rate against disease and pandemic). We should look at anecdotal evidence, but then look for correlation and causation before jumping on the band wagon, Just ask Steve Jobs. Oh that’s right he went to Mexico for a miracle cure for a survivable form of cancer and ended up, “What do you call it?” DEAD.

This virus kills. It is highly contagious. It kills young. It kills old. It kills. If you go out and about you are helping it to spread, because it kills.

What are the Republicans doing to help? My God. They are fighting the Democratic governors, overriding executive orders. (Oh, you thought I meant, “What are the Republicans doing to stop the spread of the virus?” No, no, Little Susie, I meant “What are the Republicans doing to HELP SPREAD THE VIRUS.”) They overturned the Governor of Kansas’ “Stay at Home” order. She has gone to court to try and stop that before Easter Sunday services. (Why? Oh, I dunno. Did you hear about the four cases in Chicago where they are tracking the spread of the disease? How about the one where the family that went to the funeral, the birthday party, and church – now 3 are dead and 17 are infected? Yeah, good times.) 

The governor of Michigan has been real nice to Donnie. I think he even gave that ‘girl’ a few scrapes from the National Stockpile and she is ever so grateful. Even though she is a Democrat. Let’s remember when the Republicans were in charge of the state they poisoned the drinking water in Flint, and destroyed Detroit. Now? Now the Republicans are pissed because the governor has said you can only go out for essential stuff. No going back and forth to your rental properties, no going to the home improvement store. “Outrageous!” they say. I agree. It is outrageous. But it makes the point. Are ya gonna fight this thing as hard as you can or are you going to do what the president has done, which is ignore it as much as possible and then when it’s about to subsume you, then and only then, do as little as possible?

Meanwhile, did you know that Trump is paying people to work round the clock, night and day, to build his wall? Yeah, overtime. The whole bit. I guess so come November he can say he built the Wall. I expect we’ll see Sean Hannity proudly standing next to a “Promises Made, Promises Kept” banner. (On the backside of which is “Mission Accomplished”?)

The Republicans are doing everything they can to steal the upcoming election. Be it refusing to allow alternative ways of voting. (“Lord no, then everyone could vote and we would surely lose.”) To not putting people on voting roles, to restricting hours and places to vote (especially in Democratically strong areas. Look what they did in Milwaukee – cutting polling places from 180 to 5.)

But that’s not the worst of it, and it’s hard to know what is. But they are trying to scream “Pandemic! We must be given unquestioned power.” Trump is doing his part; firing Inspector Generals so we won’t know what he is doing or where our $2,000,000,000,000.00 is being spent. Appointing “acting” folks everywhere so they aren’t vetted by Congress, because God knows many of them wouldn’t stand a chance of passing. (Like that “acting” navy guy who went to Guam 6,000 miles away to tell the crew of the aircraft carrier that their commanding officer was a bad guy for trying to help during a pandemic on board their ship.)

Meanwhile, the thing that will end this pandemic is knowledge. Who has the disease, who’s had it (and are they now immune?). This requires testing. How are we doing on that? Last week, or earlier this week the Federal Government moved to shutdown the testing facilities they had in place. The ones that look at the swabs. They got caught and said, “Okay. We’ll keep them open – for now.” We’ve got ten military grade testing facilities across the country. We aren’t using them. Why not? No orders. I’ve got to wonder, “Is that on purpose or do Trump and Pense not know?” Hard to say. In the end it doesn’t matter. We are not using the labs that could do all the testing we need. Nope, not gonna use them – wouldn’t be prudent.

And Fox News? They are talking about “Let’s open up the country.” It’s no longer clear to me if they are following Trump or Trump is following them, Kind of reminds me of a tableau by Edward Kienholtz. In it politicians are poised in a circle. They have no pants on and each man is reaching behind himself to grab the penis of the person behind him. It is entitled it “My Country tis of Thee.”

Look up:

Edward Kienholtz “My Country tis of Thee”

(I can’t find an image that’s not copyrighted.)

But don’t be fooled by what the folks at Fox say on air. Off air they are wearing masks. Rupert Murdoch cancelled his birthday party. The guy is 89 years old. One whiff of the virus and he could be dead. 

As far as we know, and this isn’t much, but the people who die from the virus tend to be people who were heavily exposed to it.

So …

Stay at Home

Shelter in Place

Don’t be Stupid

No Exceptions

(No Little Susie, No you can’t. Sorry.)

Trump is and will remain, the clueless, feckless, uncaring person he has always been.

Deal with it.

204 Days until the election on November 3^rd

284 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Angkor Wat, Southern Gallery, first level

PPS If Hillary Clinton had been President this pandemic would not have happened. Just Sayin’

PPPS The local lifelong learning center has gone to tele teaching. They had 120 signed up for a Vincent Van Gogh lecture. Their largest room holds fifty.

• ( Trying apostrophe footnotes at the bottom, rather than in-line. Please let me know your preference. ) Oh, the footnote? Okay. “Do you know the difference between a cocktail lounge and an elephant’s fart? ( One is pronounced “bar room” and the other is “BARUUM!” ) Ha ha ha, I’m a riot. ( I still remember who told me that joke. I was 17. )