Don't Get Me Started with Linda Sharp

Coming To A City Near You

Pay attention.

We have a horrible track record in this country of giving little more than a lingering gaze to what happens in other states, in other cities. 

Honestly, goldfish look at us these days and think, WTF?

School shooting?  We clutch our pearls, say a prayer, vent on social media, then the place it happened is left alone as the klieg lights move on. 

Hurricane?  Oh, how terrible for those people!  Something, something judgement about where they choose to live.  Throw a few dollars at the Red Cross, and on we move.

Bigot caught on video bigoting?  Share the shit out of it, laugh at the 400th viewing of the "You about to lose your job" remix video, then on we go.  Next!  (Full disclosure - 401 and I am still not tired of it.)

In the best of times we have a short attention span.  It's human nature and we are all guilty of it.  But in times like these, the worst, with so much taking place daily - hell, hourly sometimes - a lot slips by or we just hit critical mass and tune it out.  Don't.

Last month, Seattle was the target city in all of Trumpworld's fire and brimstone talking points.  Literally.  To listen to them, the city was on fire, brimstone raining down everywhere, carnage aplenty.  One conversation with my daughter who lives mere blocks from the Seattle protest encampment told a completely different story.  Peaceful, songs, dancing, food sharing, some people in need of showers, but nothing like what they wanted us to believe.

Suddenly, we don't hear about Seattle anymore.  I guess it went the way of those impending caravans of MS-13 villians.

Now, Portland has taken center stage in Trump's attempt to brand himself as the Law & Order president.  I will give him this - considering his history of sexual abuse of women, he is a walking SVU three parter all on his own.

FOX fills the screen with fires, graffiti, carefully edited footage to make it appear to anyone not paying enough attention that the city is an apocalyptic nightmare.  A hellscape.  Press Sickretary McEnany stood flanked by screens filled with flames and horror today. 

In reality, like any protest, there are agitators who are not there for the protest but the damage.  But the vast majority are you and me - just citizens - Wall of Moms, dads with leaf blowers, veterans - concerned about police brutality, supportive of Black Lives Matter, and intent on not allowing Gomer Fivewords to run rampant in their city.

Here are five words for Donald:  FUCK. YOU. WEAK. TRAITOROUS. SHITBAG.

What has been concerning for weeks now has been the presence of unidentified, gun laden, camo wearing "soldiers".  We saw them in DC, a menacing, repulsive site amassed on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.  No badges, no nametags, no insignia indicating to whom they belonged.  Honestly,  given the glut of over-the-hill dad bods in their rank ranks, they looked pretty much like the cosplaying Liberate Our State buffoons who crashed the state capital in Michigan.

Now they have been unleashed on Portland.  And they have no business there.  A week ago film showed them grabbing peaceful protesters, shuffling them into unmarked rental minivans, and driving off.  Seriously, just grabbing and disappearing people off the streets.

There's a word for that:  KIDNAPPING.

They appear nightly now because the darkness makes for much scarier, effective propaganda footage for FOX and its easily scared viewers at home.  The streets of Portland are bare of them during the daylight.  They come out spoiling for a fight.  Like the onesided one they had with the retired Naval vet whose arm they broke.

Still no IDs, they do not answer questions, they have no official insignia identifiable as local, state, or federal police/troops.  As such, the ACLU has been busy helping mayors and citizens file against the occupiers as fast as possible.

Enter retired badass Lt. General Russell Honore', he of Katrina clean up fame.  In the years that have passed since New Orleans drowned, Honore' has been a pundit staple weighing in on natural disaster efforts, etc.  Listening to him is etouffee for the ears. He is sober, observant, and has a complete lack of tolerance for bullshit.  From any corner. 

In an interview earlier this week, he was asked for his input after watching the scenes coming out of Portland.

“General, what made you the angriest looking at these pictures out of Portland, Oregon?” Brian Williams asked.  Honore' was not shy in his assessment.

“Number one, they were wearing military uniforms,” the general angrily noted. “That uniform represents the cloth of our nation, for people who don’t draw overtime, who serve around the world at the direction of the national command authority, and it’s not to be used as an instrument of protest suppression. That uniform is designed to blend into terrain, not to make you look like a warrior. They’re wearing these uniforms as a function of intimidation, to look like warriors.  Real soldiers just don’t walk up to people and start beating on ’em. Real police don’t do that. The police have the authority to detain you, and then somebody else will decide whether you get charged or whether you go to jail for whatever offense you might have violated. They are acting like an uncontrolled mob on the street with uniforms and badges that they don’t show. You shouldn’t — police don’t do this. Watch this, what kind of bullshit is this?!”

What kind of bullshit is this?  Our feelings exactly, sir.

As journalists have been taking photo after photo of these G I Jokes, he has been, like everyone else, scanning the uniforms for any identifiers.  Trying to suss out who they are with, where they are from, to whom they have allegiance.  Today he sounded the alarm that some of the patches appeared to be those of mercenaries with *shock* Erik Prince's company.

Yes, mercenaries.  And yes, Erik Prince, as if either of those is surprising.  Just as his sister Betsy DeVos suckles at the power teat as Education Secretary, he is just one tit over devouring those delicious tax dollars as fast as possible.

DHS is farming out to contractors like Prince's Blackwater descendant Triple Canopy the job of harassing, hurting, and endangering protesters, regardless of how peaceful they happen to be.  Our tax dollars are being used against us.  Our money is being used to force confrontations, to agitate, to push a Reichstag Fire for Trump.

Again, pay attention.  It was Seattle.  Now it is Portland.  Chickenshit von Babyfingers has already targeted New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Detroit, Baltimore and Oakland for the next invasions.  Notice anything?  Yes, that's right, Trump openly, gleefully attacks them for having "liberal Democrats" as their mayors.  You know, people who think he, his ragtag regime, and his cultists are completely full of shit.  And these are places unlikely to be supportive of him in his re-election bid.

He is now on the record as saying Portland is full of anarchists.  Not even remotely.  A #WallOfMoms?  Yes.  Anarchists?  NO.  But that is what he must have you believe for the slide into fascism to continue happening.  And we are sliding.

This is how it happens.  I have written before that each outrage, each pushing of the envelope is the metaphorical frog in the pot of water.  We are the frog.  And with each step he takes and  gets away with, the temperature goes up a degree.  We are being boiled alive.

Lest you think it cannot happen near you, think again.  In terms of law and order, he has proven he has no regard for either.  The law is what he wants it to be, with Barr manipulating it like origami, and order is what he he has in his sights - martial law is on the other side of these cities and these cosplaying losers in our streets.

Portland is absorbing the impact this week.  Pay attention.  Like the invaders in War of the Worlds, they are going to keep on moving, devouring our rights and freedoms one town at a time.  (Ironic considering the latest Pentagon news about UFOs.)

Get ready for the fight of our lives.  (As if COVID is not enough of a threat.  148,283, by the way.)

Make It Make Sense

Like many, I suffered through Peter Pandemic's briefing again today.  (You can lie, you can lie, you can lie!!!!) Against every impulse to throw a hammer through the TV screen, I persevered.  And what I came away with for my efforts?

There is a disinterested, illiterate, beta at the helm of this country. 

There is nothing remotely strong about him.  He is repulsive to look at.  He can barely read a script even with the words LARGE and social distancing on the page so he doesn't get lost.  And nothing he or his minions says makes sense.  Honestly, do they hear themselves? 

He started today's campaign rally by again using the slur "China Virus.  Seriously, they were the 16th and 17th words he spoke.  Racist pig.

He then began making a huge deal about the "beautiful" designs he had been shown for the Republican convention in Jacksonville.  Droned on about how many people were making travel plans, "thousands of people" "desperately" wanting to "be there."  <insert vomit>

Then, President Humblebrag Von Biggerperson declared that the timing isn't right.  He had the balls to stand there, keep a straight (albeit drugged) face and say, "I have to protect the American people.  That's what I have always done, that's what I always will do."

This cancerous tumor on the body politic graciously eschewing his convention for the safety of the people.  No, no, I shall leave your pancreas alone and just devour your liver and lungs.

I guess he wasn't talking about the 147,297 who have died because of his incompetence.

He waxed on about how Florida is just not safe.  How he could not risk the well being of the throngs of people who would be flocking from inside this country and from around the world (not shitting you) to be at his biggest, bestest clan rally.

Oh, and he managed to work in "China virus" again and "radical left mob" as well.  Call me crazy but I'm pretty sure he would be fine with all of we radical left mobsters getting the "China Virus" and dying.  Quite frankly, that's probably a better election strategy than his current one of racism, graft, and tear gassing moms in Portland.

He then segued into the importance of getting all our kids back into their schools as soon as possible.

I am not kidding.

If his words about the convention were a fart, they were still heady in the air as he quickly championed how safe it is to stuff millions of children back into classrooms.

Convention of adults - not safe AT ALL.  Children in the classrooms?  Line up the buses!

Someone please make it make sense.

The bottom line is there is no sense making of this collection of idiots.  They deny, deny, deny.  They spin, spin, spin.  They deflect, deflect, deflect.  And they contradict themselves at every turn.

Even when the truth is found in black and white.  When it is presented to them.  In their faces.  They still lie.  Case in point, resident gargoyle, Stephen Miller, his grandmother passed away earlier this month.  Cause of death?  COVID-19. His uncle, a retired neuropsychologist and outspoken Trump critic blames the complete indifference and shitshow of the Trump administration's response to the virus.  When reached for comment on his grandmother's cause of death, Miller replied: This is categorically false.

IT IS LISTED ON HER DEATH CERTIFICATE, but ok, Gaslight Gus.  

Lying is literally all they know how to do.  It is like being governed by a group of toddlers perpetually caught with their hands in the Goldfish box after being told No More.  Don't believe what you see.  No, we didn't say THAT.  We did not DO that.

I have long said that the GOP has a fundamental problem with the concept of RECORD > PLAY.

There are currently 130,930 schools in the United States that cover K-12.  They are run by roughly 13,598 school districts.  And just as there is no cohesive, national approach to combatting COVID, neither is there a cohesive, national approach to reopening our schools.  It is down to the school districts and the schools themselves.  That means money comes into play.  That means that what is done in one school district is not going to be the same as what is implemented five miles over in the neighboring school district.

Feel safe?

You might be lucky and your child attends a private school of some sort.  Or is in an open minded, science minded school district.  But for most of the country, children's lives are held hostage to the whims, conspiracy theories, and politics that people their school boards.

Children are contracting COVID.  And as opposed to what Sitting Bullshit preaches around the campfire, they do not "get over it in a day."  They can carry it home to parents, grandparents.  They can carry it back to school to their teachers.  They may show zero symptoms, light symptoms, or their small bodies may crash and burn.

The problem is you have zero idea how coronavirus will play out in YOU, let alone in your child.  And we simply do not have it contained or controlled in most states.

"The country is in very good shape, other than if you look south and west."  HE. SAID. THAT. TODAY.

I don't know if you have looked at a map lately, but there are a helluva lot of states south and west of DC. 

Floriduh, led by a terminally perplexed looking dullard, lost a record number of citizens overnight - 173.  That comes out to roughly 1 death every 8 minutes.  They also added 10,249 new cases.

In Starr County in Texas, the hospital has an 8 bed COVID unit.  It is currently crammed with 28 people.  And they are now having to decide who is most viable and who will simply be left to die.  Paging Sarah Palin - THESE are death panels.  They have no choice.  And this is all on the heads of the GOPers in that state and in charge in the White House.

California has added over 10,000 new cases and 155 new deaths since last night.  Arizona is still filling up hospital beds.  There literally is not a single state that has not been touched by COVID.  The problem is instead of a national system, we have 50 different systems, 50 different approaches, 50 very varied governors leading their states.  Some have been led towards better days, and some have been lied to and led to the graveyard.

He canceled the Republican convention in Jacksonville today.  Because it is so unsafe to gather.  But he is full speed ahead shoving your children back into their schools.  Let that sink in for moment.

And if you can make it make sense, get back to me.  But don't think for one minute I will be staying up waiting.

50 Shades of Cray

I am 54 years old.  I have paid attention to the news and events for most of my adult life.  I am engaged.  I have stared open mouthed at my television when breaking news hit.  I have raged at stories online about corruption, graft, abuse of power.  Highs, lows, criminality and excess, the inane and the profane, as well as joy and the triumph of the human spirit - I have endeavored to stay on top of it all. 

But the really big stories, the ones that sweep up a nation, the globe, always seemed to come in infrequent waves. Something massive would happen - Jonestown, the death of Elvis, Ruby Ridge, Waco, an airliner crashed, Oklahoma City, a tsunami, 9/11 - these things would sweep through and we watched, railed, mourned as a unit.  In between, news was what happened in our isolated cities and towns, but nothing big enough to percolate to the top of the nightly national news.

And that was fine.  A rhythm of carnage if you will.  It gave us all time to process, reflect, take a breath.

But not now.  Not in the age of Trump.

Since he slithered down his escalator in 2015, the news, the excess, the horrors, the jawdroppers, the crimes, the abominations have been relentless.  Never in my life have I seen such an endless procession of breaking news stories, so fast and furious that we can never fully process one thing before Trump and his minions have crossed yet another line.

It is like the nation, the world is hooked up to an IV bag of adrenaline.  We are constantly furious, gobsmacked, overwhelmed, speechless, speechful, screaming at our TVs daily, wearing out our keyboards, losing sleep, and can never find relief from the incessant gnawing in the pit of our stomachs. 

We are trapped in a hell of Trump's 50 Shades of Cray.  And the stories grow crazier and crazier with each passing day.

We are trapped inside a pandemic that threatens each and every one of our lives.  145,887 of our fellow citizens have been sacrificed on the altar of Trump's ineptitude, gross neglect, and ego. 

The latest projections by University of Washington researchers show that if we started now and had a 95% compliance rate on what we should have done months ago - national mask policy, handwashing, distancing - then our dead may only number between 175,160 and 223,377 by year's end.  Remove mandatory mask wearing and only adhere to some social distancing and we will have between 233,885 and 398,397 dead by Christmas.  And if we just continue on our selfish, backass, freedumb bastardizing way?  Between 288,046 and 649,582 people will never see 2021.

Crazy.  Currently 441 out of every million Americans is dying.  Are you willing to keep playing this game?  Because you are in it whether or not you bought a ticket.

Our election is again in jeopardy not only from outside interests, but from the incumbent candidate as well.  The push against mail-in ballots?  That's because it won't benefit him to make it easier for more people to participate in their democracy - or in this case, democrazy.  He, his staff, his children, his enablers - all have proven records of voting by mail, yet they now wish to undermine the process, call it suspect, corrupt.  Because with it, he won't win.

Remember a year ago when children in cages at the border had our hearts in a vice and every decent person seeing red?  What happened to them?  They are still there.  Kids in cages, separated from their parents, living in unsafe conditions, exposed to contracting COVID and a myriad of diseases, in danger of being molested and raped by those put in charge of their "care."  And today we learn that several Hampton Inns in Arizona and Texas have been used by this racist administration as weigh stations of sorts to traffic these children - some as young as 1 - out of the country, as our asylum system has essentially been canceled.  Unaccompanied, at the hands of people hired as “bilingual travel youth care workers” based in Phoenix and McAllen who provide “humble care and service to unaccompanied children and teens,” these children spend upwards of weeks in these hotels.

They are not with childcare experts, doctors, or people with experience in protective services.  They are with people hired through help wanted ads by a contractor.

Crazy.  And it is happening daily, only we are too swept up by a million other shiny outrages that vie for our attention. 

Portland, if one was to believe Trump and FOX, is a warzone.  And let's be honest, if all you caught were the pictures of stormtroopers and copious tear gas canisters expelling their contents in the streets, you could believe that.  But just like Seattle a few weeks ago - a city they wanted you to believe was an raging hotzone of murder, vandalism, and dangerous rebels - ALL LIES - Portland is not an apocalyptic hellscape either.  Well, at least it wasn't until the human festival outhouse and his biggest piece of shit (Barr) decided that sending in unidentified "troops" was a good idea.

Feds are out in force now after a fire on the facade of the building pic.twitter.com/SGLdWlZV88

— Mike Baker (@ByMikeBaker) July 22, 2020

In the past week we have seen protesters disappeared into unmarked rental vans, moms out in force teargassed, and nonviolent citizens grabbed and beaten.  And today, Colonel Chickenshit VonBonespurs stood at a podium and declared he was sending the same type troops into Albuquerque, Chicago...

“Today I’m announcing a surge of federal law enforcement into American communities plagued by violent crime. We’ll work every single day to restore public safety.”

That is not what he is doing.  Even a cursory student of history understands the slow slide into fascism we are experiencing.  This deranged kumquat desperately needs a distraction, a way to hold onto power.  He needs a Reichstag Fire.  He is sending in troops to provoke confrontation.  He wants citizens to rise up so he can beat them back down and declare martial law.  The clock is ticking towards an election in which he is set to lose BADLY, and for him losing means more than finding a new place to live.  The law, his crimes, prosecution, and prison are on the other side of losing for him.

But we are allowed to protest.  We are allowed to assemble.  We are allowed to call him a feckless c*nt because that's what he is.

Crazy.  We are watching in real time as the Constitution and Bill of Rights are shown the door.

As if the goon squad is not enough, last night we learned he is still playing FUCK YOU with the executive office, making every attempt to enrich himself.  Using his office to force an ambassador to try to sway the  British government to move the British Open to his golf resort in Scotland.  

AND. NOTHING. WILL. HAPPEN.

Crazy.  Any other president would be impeached before sunrise, but not this slippery eel of a conman.  He has so eroded our norms, our laws, our protocols, our patience, out outrage, that literally nothing will be done.  And he knows it.  He counts on it.

Think not?  Whatever happened to the story that he knew Russians had placed bounties on our soldier's heads?  This has been PROVEN.  Yet, not a single journalist is asking about it.  It has vanished like a fart in the wind.  Lost  in the wake of so many other scandals, trespasses, and breaking news.

A new campaign ad for the pleather skinned president shows a disturbing photo of a police officer being attacked by a crowd.  The ad talks about "public safety vs chaos and violence" - his new theme - BUT THAT PHOTO IS FROM 2014 FROM A PROTEST IN UKRAINE. 

Crazy, but his followers won't ever know that.  It's not like FOX is going to call him out for using a visual lie to bolster his chances.  And the ad will continue to play because, hell, who actually has time to do a damned thing about it?

He says he wishes a pedophilic procurer "well" yesterday.  Ghislaine Maxwell has now had it telegraphed to her that he is on her side, yet that vile vignette was quickly overtaken by the golf tournament extortion news last night.

It's crazy.  And it's driving us crazy.  How many of us sit stunned in our homes as one outrage after another cascades over us?  The feeling of drowning in it is palpable.  The gutwrenching knowledge of what is happening to our country is there for all to see, yet no one in charge is stepping in to stop it.  We can protest, yes.  And millions of us are ready to take to the streets and risk our safety in order to protect our rights, but what about Congress?  At the very least, they control the purse strings of this nation, yet what we see so far is impotence.  Yes, a few are pulled forward to express their outrage on the nightly news shows, but nothing is happening to defend our Constitution, this land, our place in this world.

What is craziest is how fast this has all happened.  Enabled by a pack of craven power whores in the GOP, surrounded by ignorant relatives and venal opportunists in the White House, that orange cauldron of criminality has been allowed to pour his fascist, grifting, jackbooted, cruelty-laden brew over this nation.  We are burning under its poison, we are drowning in its sewage.

And we are actively dying from a virus that is unchecked, basically encouraged to flourish by this affront of decency.  We are on track to see 25,000 more deaths in the next month alone.  That is 30 deaths per hour, 1 every 2 minutes.  Will you be one?  Take a good hard look at yourself in the mirror.  Even if you are taking every possible precaution, are you overweight?  Get chest colds easily?  Are you Black?  Brown?  Do you have asthma? One of a billion underlying conditions that make you compromised?  Perhaps you're one of the fun ones who think they are healthy, but don't yet know they have a problem under the surface.  Do you have co-workers who say fuck masks?  Do you go to the grocery store?  Do you breathe?

That last one.  It is that simple.  If you breathe, you are taking part in this viral Russian Roulette, and a week from now you could be vying for hospital space, two weeks from now you could be dead.  Or your child could be dead.  Or your spouse, parent, sibling, friend.  For every death I report to you, think about the lives rocked by the loss.  We are all George Bailey - our lives touching so many others, even if we do not realize it.  And when we go, we leave a hole, a gap, a painful spot where we should still be.  Think of the holes being left in the wake of this virus.  Dan Rather said it best today: Each represents a web of human connections that will never be the same.  So much sadness.  Preventable sadness.

It is crazy how much we are shouldering, bearing, trying to process.  I know that.  But I beg each and every one of you to stay the course.  We cannot afford to disengage, to look away even for a moment.  That is what he and they want.  They want us to give up, to become overwhelmed, too weary, just throw our hands up and accept what is happening.

The preamble to our Constitution sets out what was intended, the dream, the vision, the hope of the document that followed.  It is the light that was supposed to guide us in dark, uncertain, crazy times.

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

We the people... that is us.  Whether or not you ever thought you would have to fight for the ideals of this nation and the rights we are all guilty of just assuming were safe and sacrosanct - the time is upon us.  Our liberties, our laws, our freedoms, our rights, our entire ethos as a beacon for the world is under attack from within.

This Hamilton musical's line is where we find ourselves this evening.  "I may not live to see our glory.  But I will gladly join the fight.  And when our children tell our story, they'll tell the story of tonight."

For you, for me, for our children, and their children still to come - the time is now.  No one is coming to do this for us. We are the ones we have been waiting for.  Those who came before us fought too hard for this grand experiment of red, white, and blue to come to an end in an era of 50 shades of orange cray.  

Rancid Food For Thought - from 7/22/19

The school lunchroom.  We all have memories of mystery meat, grey hamburgers, and feeling a reason to live when the calendar showed PIZZA - that rectangular wonder of the plastic tray.

We all also have memories of watching classmates worry about having enough money to buy even the most basic items offered, or hoping their account still had funds left in it because they were hungry.  Perhaps you were one of those children.

Even as a young child, I understood what I was seeing.  The fear, the embarrassment, the desperate looks as classmates would indulge in lunchboxes laden with sandwiches, Twinkies, a thermos full of Kool Aid.  The pained expressions as they just took a seat and drank milk slowly because a tiny carton was all they could afford.  I routinely shared what I had in my Holly Hobby padded lunchbox, even taking to sneaking extra food in at home for them.

I was 8 years old and those memories stay with me to this day.

It was not their fault.  They had zero control over their parents' finances.  Yet they paid the price in hunger pangs, mocking, and an inability to focus throughout the day. 

Fast forward 45 years and nothing has changed.  My own kids saw this dynamic play out during their school years.  In college they knew kids who showed up for any campus event simply because there might be free food.  Studies have shown that a full 20% of students at a four year college are food insecure.  Community college students?  A full 25%.

Younger children stats are equally heartbreaking - 1 in 6 children in this country live with hunger daily.  A full 12 million children - 17.9% - are in food insecure homes.  In the summer that number shoots up to 6 out of 7 children endure hunger because the free or reduced price school lunch they may receive vaporizes.  And before anyone starts with the oh-so-compassionate "Well, their parents shouldn't have had them." or "Well, their parents should get an extra job." - STOP.  Children cannot eat bootstraps.  And they sure as hell did not ask to be born (yet you demanded they were, you proud pro-lifer, you.)

While there are some children who are caught in homes where their parent or parents are irresponsible and neglectful, that is the exception, not the rule of poverty.  Most of these children DO have parents who kill themselves in two or three jobs to try to provide even the most basic of needs - a roof over their head, a couple pieces of clothing, and some food.  Those parents often going without themselves in order that their child receive a little bit more to eat.

As for the whole "They shouldn't have had the kids" mindset?  One, that fetus you screamed about being born is here and needs cared for, and two, who the hell are you to judge?  This notion so firmly rooted in the black souls and vile maws of people who think nothing bad can ever befall them.  How about you, with your three kids, two cars, and McMansion in the burbs?  What happens to you when you lose your job, cannot find another, and suddenly are selling a car, moving to an apartment, and having to wear sunglasses into your community food bank so no one sees you.  It happens.  Should we scoff at you, say you shouldn't have had those three kids?

NO.

More and more we see stories make national headlines when schools threaten their students and parents because of struggling to pay a lunch bill.  We see strangers step up and anonymously pay off an entire school district's roster of delinquent payments because there are decent souls who understand all of this - especially the part where IT IS NOT THE CHILD'S FAULT.

The most recent story to come up this past week, however, is about the ugliest tactic yet employed by a school district.

In Pennsylvania, the Wyoming West School District has sent letters to parents threatening their children will be removed from their homes.

"Your child has been sent to school every day without money and without breakfast and/or lunch. This is a failure to provide your child with proper nutrition and you can be sent to Dependency Court for neglecting your child's right to food," the July 9 letter reads.  "Please remit payment as soon as possible to avoid being reported to the proper authorities."

What in the actual hell?

Yes, the school district currently has roughly $20,000 in delinquent payments.  Which to be honest, spread out over the number of schools it oversees, breaks down to far smaller numbers.  But threatening a parent with having their child removed to foster care because they have $75.25 outstanding?

The letters were signed by Joseph Muth, director of federal programs for the Wyoming Valley West School District, an obviously stellar human being.

The callousness, the recklessness, the abject cruelty involved here is unforgivable.  This is the equivalent of feeding the already hungry parents a bowl of emotional ebola.

These are their children.  As if the parents don't already suffer enough struggling to take care of them, to have school authorities threaten to tear apart their families?  Look, many families may not have the resources of a lot of us, but they they do not exist in some emotionless vacuum.  They love their children as passionately as do I.  They lose sleep worrying about their children.  They are proud of their children, want the best for them, and are willing to do anything to protect them.  Flat out stating that they are bad parents, worthy of being reported to CPS to have them taken from them because of a small lunch balance?  Inexcusable.

They live with enough fear without insensitive pricks piling on.

Those who actually understand this and work within the system have been very vocal in their condemnations.

"Foster care is to be utilized only when absolutely needed — when a child has been abused, is in need or has suffered a tragedy," said Luzerne County Manager David Petri. "Our foster care system is NOT to be utilized to scare parents into paying school lunch bills."

And Joanne Van Saun, Luzerne County Children and Youth Services Executive Director, stated, "It’s a total misrepresentation, a gross misrepresentation of what our agency does.  It’s just not true. We do not remove children from families for unpaid bills."

After being publicly outed for this heinous act, the school district has planned to send a "softer" letter out to those parents.  Softer, huh?  What?  Just going to threaten them with their children being tarred and feathered out on the playground?  Put in stocks out by the school flagpole? 

This kind of crap is why hunger remains such an embarrassing thing for so many.  Because those with full bellies who never lay head to pillow with a growling stomach or worrying about how they will feed their children in the morning, have zero idea or interest in understanding the plight of those who do.

It reeks of privilege.  Anytime you carelessly write off the concerns or treatment of someone, it is because it does not touch you, so it must not be a real thing.  Not trans?  Why should you care about bathroom safety for THEM?  Not black?  Why let you heart beat faster when you get pulled over for speeding?  Not hungry?  Why concern yourself with the fact that so many are?  They are obviously doing something wrong to deserve to be hungry.

Quite frankly, school lunches should be free.  If we can constantly build new football cathedrals for high school students, we can certainly provide a hot meal for the kids.  To hell with Friday Night Lights.  How about Fare Over Football?  It all comes down to what people with privilege view as important for the tax dollars they have to spend.

I have no doubt that someone will again step forward to pay the $20,000.  And that will be wonderful.  But it will not fix the problem that 1 in 6 children go to school hungry every single day. 

Just some rancid food for thought as you sit down to your Sunday brunch and bottomless mimosa.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It truly does take a village.  You may not be able to afford $20,000 to wipe a slate clean, but consider donating what you can to No Kid Hungry

In a country as prosperous as ours, 1 in 6 is shameful.

President Mad Libs Holds A Press Conference

In the history of this country we have had presidents who shock and presidents who delightfully surprise. 

We have had those who work for the common good, leading a nation through war, crisis, shortages, and strife. 

We have had those who abuse the power of office, drunk on their inflated egos, completely forgetting how they got to that coveted office space to begin with. 

We have had funny presidents, foul presidents, good presidents, bad presidents. 

We have had presidents who lead with brains and those who lead with brawn.

We have had presidents who are such gifted orators that, to pull a quote from Footloose, "lift a congregation up so high they have to look down to see Heaven."  

 

And then we have what we have now - a president who is the fleshy equivalent of a Mad Libs sheet crossed with a BINGO machine that has words on the balls instead of numbers.  He is what one would get with an infinite number of monkeys and typewriters.  Yes, Bob Newhart, they eventually would get to writing all the great books, but first they would be speech writing what we get from Donald J. Trump.

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Crapsac Aderrall Shitferbrains, starving for an audience, was back at the podium this afternoon.  In the wake of his cringe inducing performance with Chris Wallace in which his meltdown was as much figurative as it was literal (HE demanded the interview take place outdoors.), his zookeepers decided to put him back on display for purported Coronavirus Briefings - you know, the ones he got bored with back in April? 

And it went just as well as one would imagine.

With all the intellect and enthusiasm of a 7th grader having to give a report in front of the class on a subject on which he knows fuck all, the stupidest man alive held court.

He stuck to his racism by continuing to call it the China Virus.  He lied about our stats vs the world's.  For the record, we currently have charted over 4,000,000 positive cases, have lost 144,815 lives, have only 4% of the world's population, but 24% of the deaths, and 27% of the cases.

Yes, we are doing a bang up job of holding onto that #1 spot in government malfeasance in the face of a pandemic.  We are still killing our citizens almost 2 to 1 compared to the next closest country, Brazil.

When asked if we have a problem with testing in this country, he again stuck to his lie about have "massive numbers" of tests.  We don't.  We are still only averaging 150,000 tests per million citizens in this country, and those who are lucky enough to get one, are waiting for up to two weeks to get their results.  We still have no national testing strategy, apparatus, or centralized system.  And he and his cronies are trying to push through a stimulus bill that cuts money for testing and supplies and support.

But no matter, according to the basted turkey's spokesperson, he gets tested "multiple times a day."

He continued to stick to his assertion that "The virus will disappear.  It will just disappear."  That's literally his strategy, the reality show Survivor.  He thinks he can Outwit, Outplay, and Outlast a deadly virus.  Just how many contestants will get permanently voted off this island before then?

Earlier today, his Press Barbie, Kayleigh McEnany, had the gall to say he has always urged people to wear masks.  A big assed lie.  This came in the wake of his tweet yesterday in which the Lone Derangeder referred to mask wearing as patriotic and literally typed the words, "There is nobody more Patriotic than me, your favorite President!"

<Insert Larfing - Laughing + barfing at the same time.>

This racist chickenshit has refused to wear a mask, refused to advocate for mask wearing, is on the record saying it would make him look weak, "Send the wrong message."  He is completely to blame for the constant batshittery taking place in stores across the nation as his equally ignorant cultists grandstand about not wearing one, intentionally cough on other people, destroy items in stores when confronted, and have taken lives over being asked to don one.

Only now, as his poll numbers flow down the shitter like his diet of cola and chicken fat, is he now acting like he has been a proponent all along.  Only today, as he stood there and warbled that coronavirus will "get worse before it gets better" is he pretending to advocate for mask wearing.

Yes, pretending.  Hours after his tweet yesterday, he was filmed last night at his DC hotel at a fundraiser glad handing and NOT wearing a mask. 

Honestly, think about where we could be if this monument to the seven deadly sins had urged mask wearing from the beginning.  Hell, slap flags on them and sell them from his website - I don't care.  Just think of where that kind of messaging to his pack of rats could have us now if they had been told this from March on?

And watch - his network of nincompoops will start wearing them, and acting like they have been for them all along.  Because Coward Von Maybelline has now appeared in one and has attached the word patriotic to the act of donning one.

Whatever, just wear the damned thing.  Because it is going to get worse before it gets better.

A reporter asked a question regarding Ghislaine Maxwell, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime procurer of underage girls to rape, and a long time buddy of Trump's.  His reply?  First, feigned ignorance of the case.  "I haven't really been following it too much."

Um, riiiiiiiiight. 

He then added, "I just wish her well."

He barely musters a tweet and halfstaff flags for half a day for an icon of justice and civil rights - John Lewis - yet sends a verbal Hallmark card for a venal, conniving, molesting accomplice of Jeffrey Epstein, who he is pictured with repeatedly through the years.

He continued to pull non sequiters and half thoughts from his BINGO machine and then abruptly ended the briefing.  The zookeepers must have rung the dinner bell.

Then, as sure as night follows day, news anchors began referring to Trump's "new tone."  He rambles through a prepared script like a Real Housewife half way through a bottle of Prosecco, wishes an international sex trafficker well, and is awarded  with "new tone."

I just fucking can't anymore.

This man is the reason we have 50 million people out of work.  This man is the reason we have ICUs at capacity and refrigerated semi trucks full of dead bodies outside hospitals.  This man is the reason a pandemic continues to rage (we have added over 58,000 cases since midnight).  This man is the reason scores of mothers were teargassed in Portland.  This man is the reason a retired Naval officer has two broken bones and bruises across his body.  This man is the reason 229 more people have died while I have been typing.

This dim, self centered, clay colored garden gnome is the reason this country is in crisis.  And he has been aided and abetted right down the line by his coterie of cowards in the GOP.  Our survival matters not.  Their survival is the only thing they are concerned with.

And right now, he is a shithouse rat, trapped and spinning crazily to escape any responsibility.  Throwing all manner of spaghetti at the wall to get the focus off the utter and complete failure he has been all his life, and especially the past 3 1/2 years.

We do not have more time to give to President Mad Libs von Scrabblebag.  He cannot comfort as he does not know empathy.  He cannot lead, as he is nothing that inspires.  He cannot follow those who know more, as his ego is far more important than our safety.  This grand experiment called the United States of America cannot take much more.  And our lives literally hang in the balance. He thinks it is all a game.  Fine.  Let's channel one then.  Mortal Kombat.

And come November 3rd:  FINISH HIM.

 

The Elephant In The Test Room

Sssshhhh, hear it?  That high pitched keening that has had you thinking you developed tinutus in the night.  Fear not, dear reader, it's not you, it's not me.  It's them.

In the wake of the broadcast of Chris Wallace's full FOX interview with Simpleton McAsshat, MAGAts everywhere have been rending their garments, wailing like they usually reserve for being faced with mask wearing at the 7-11.  They are in torment; they are furious; they are confused; they are experiencing cognitive dissonance on a level heretofore yet experienced by them.

Why, you ask?  Did the Lincoln Project make another mean video?  Yes, and it's brilliant, but no, it's not that.  Is it because Twitter pulled his campaign video down last night? Seems Linkin Park has a problem with copyright infringement and being used by a decomposing cantalope without permission.  Yes, they went all first-amendment-scholar in the night over that one.  But no, not even that has set them to screeching like alley cats encountering unrequited love.

Seriously, not since Ruben Studdard bested Clay Aiken on American Idol, season 2, May 21, 2003, has so much umbrage and disbelief enveloped them so. 

What has this morning left them bereft, agog, and at looser ends than usual is this:  Chris Wallace called out their emperor and told him to his face that he is naked and it makes everyone pukey.

Whoever on der Furiouser's end set this interview up apparently did not reckon with anything beyond the letters F-O-X.  They did not factor in that if FOX has anyone even passably familiar with journalism, it is Chris Wallace.  And that he may even ask the dreaded follow up question.  And as we have all seen, that is where Trump unspools like a bad skein of yarn.

Much has been made (not near enough, but much) of Trump's obvious decline in cognition.  It is deserved, it should be discussed, and as we have already had a President who was in the early stages of Alzheimer's and it was covered up (Reagan), it should be concerning to all.  But as the drum has been beaten louder and louder, of course, the Stable Genius has had to weigh in.

A bit over a week ago he was Tweeting away and bragging to Hannity about passing a recent cognitive exam. Doctors “were very surprised. They said, 'That's an unbelievable thing. Rarely does anybody do what you just did.'"

Uh huh...  we're not talking about the entrance exam for MIT here.

Forward to today's broadcast and he started up again.  The lead in was a question posed about Joe Biden's fitness to lead.  Fair, considering that is Trump's most recent attempt to attack him.

“Is Joe Biden senile?” asked Wallace.

Mushmouth VonRamblinman launched into a screed that included Biden is “not competent to be president” and that “he doesn’t know he’s alive.”

It then took a turn when Wallace pushed him.

“Well, I’ll tell you what, let’s take a test. Let’s take a test right now. Let’s go down, Joe and I will take a test. Let him take the same test that I took,” Trump muttered.

Wallace then calmly said that, ahead of the interview, he took the test, too, and it was not the “hardest test.”

“They have a picture and it says ‘what’s that and it’s an elephant,” Wallace said.

Cue heads exploding viscera near and far.

How dare he?!?!

Well, gentle MAGAts, here's the thing - the test is NOT hard, and it DOES include identifying an elephant.

It also includes such softballs as "What is today's date?"  "Who is the president?" and repeating the phrase “I only know that John is the one to help today.”

These tests are routinely given to older patients who are exhibiting memory and cognition issues - my father has Parkinson's and regularly is given this to monitor where he is in terms of advancement, decline, and medication needs.

Again, it's not the SAT or ACT.  Hell, it's not even a 6th grade spelling test.  Although that would be a hoot to watch Trump be bested by 12 year olds Putnam County Spelling Bee style.

Now, while this portion of the interview was hilarious to watch as Trump sputtered and spat, trying to convince Wallace the test was much harder, especially the last five questions (name his kids?), when it got to the subject of COVID, it became even more obvious how little he gives a shit, and how completely stupid he is in the face of a raging pandemic.

Wallace challenged Trump's current narrative about testing (how if we didn't test, our numbers would be better - yes, and if I had never taken that third pregnancy test, I would only have two kids.  Idiot.)  He told him that "testing is up 37%" and that "cases are up 194%."

Trump's retort?  "Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day.  They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test."

Sweet Jesus on a jelly donut...

Sniffles?  A deadly virus, that IS killing young people, is written off by the man who should be leading the country, if not the world, in this crisis, as sniffles.  Tell that to the parents of the 85 INFANTS who have tested positive in ONE Texas county.

Or how about you tell that to the researchers who just released a large subject study from South Korea that shows Children younger than 10 transmit to others much less often than adults do, but the risk is not zero. And those between the ages of 10 and 19 can spread the virus at least as well as adults do.

“Young children may show higher attack rates when the school closure ends, contributing to community transmission of Covid-19.”

Just as Trump and his coven are forcing our schools to reopen.

This Wallace trumpster fire interview also goes to underscore the devastating, yet not even remotely surprising article in WaPo from last night.  One of Drumpf's advisors told the newspaper that Trump is “not really working this anymore. He doesn’t want to be distracted by it. He’s not calling and asking about data. He’s not worried about cases.”

Let me make something clear - when I sat down and started typing, we were at 142,928 people dead and 8,619 new cases since midnight.  I just hit refresh.  143,059 dead and 29,568 new cases.  We have broken single day records for cases 11 times in the past month - it is only the 19th.

But hey, not worrisome enough to distract the, you know, PRESIDENT or anything.

When pressed by Wallace it turned blathering and ugly.

Wallace told him that the United States had the seventh highest mortality rate in the world.  Trump got agitated, disputed it and said he thinks “we have one of the lowest mortality rates in the world.”

“That’s not true, sir. We had 900 deaths on a single day,” Wallace said.

What happened next is the equivalent of a toddler sticking his fingers in his ears, shitting his diaper, and screaming NANANANANANANANANANA. He literally blew off our death count with "It is what it is."

Trump doesn't want to know the truth about how this virus is ravaging our country.  BECAUSE. HE. DOES. NOT. CARE.

Thomas R. Frieden, a former CDC director and president of Resolve to Save Lives, summed it up well.  “The virus doesn’t read talking points. The virus doesn’t watch news shows. The virus just waits for us to make mistakes. And when we make mistakes, as Texas and Florida and South Carolina and Arizona did, the virus wins. When we ignore science, the virus wins.”

The interview did nothing to bolster Trump's poll numbers versus Biden or make a case for why the people of this country should trust him with his handling of this virus. 

We shouldn't.

From the beginning, he has done everything in his power to ignore it, spin it, and extort governors to be nice to him in exchange for much needed supplies.  Gavin Newsom, governor of California was told by the White House that he had to personally call Trump, ask him for the swabs himself, and thank him, which he did.

A governor had to bend a knee to get help for his citizens.  It is unconscionable.  But it is also Trump's life long M.O.  Publicly prostrate yourself to him, make him feel the "big man", lick his balls, and then maybe he will help you.  It's all just a game to him - this virus, the presidency, your life, your children's lives.  All that matters to Trump is TRUMP.

The revelations, the data, the dismissiveness and ignorance shown in this interview would have buried any other president.  And maybe if we just let him keep talking, the avalanche will eventually happen, but for now?

Cover your ears to protect them from the call of the wild MAGAt as it violently vomits its bile and flings its shit over the exposure of their pack's alpha beta.  (Yes, cultists, you elevate a man who is only #1 at being weak.) 

And wear a goddamned mask.  Your president doesn't care about you, but you should.

John Lewis: Crossing That Final Bridge

Last night, the world went to bed knowing that the stars were brighter but that the coming daylight was going to be dim.

John Lewis, the lion of this country's civil rights movement has passed away at age 80.

For a country in turmoil, panic, crisis - this feels like another 2020 body blow.  People like Lewis, like Elijah Cummings, like Reverend CT Vivian, like Martin Luther King, even like flamboyant singer/songwriter Little Richard have always been voices for the voiceless.  People who have used their reach, their access to microphones, their personal histories, to speak for us, to lead us, to take the first steps for us.  They are brave that we may be emboldened.

Yes, speak for US.  Black civil rights leaders speak as much for and to white people as they do for and to Black.  Because civil rights should be universal rights.  Because someone like John Lewis understood that until we all stand on the same level ground, this country and everyone in it, lives a lie.  That it has never been about taking away my white rights, but distributing rights to all, preserving rights for all.  And more than that, he understood that getting my white ass to join the fray with my privilege had to be a part of the change.

I am certain that John Lewis looked out across the current landscape of this nation and saw that while his torch was beginning to die out, millions of others, especially our youths, were picking up their own and holding them fearlessly aloft.

I have always been humbled by the pictures of those, like Lewis, who knew the risks of their actions, yet took them anyway.  To see him, frozen in the photos of time, being beaten for being a Freedom Rider, for daring to be a proud Black man in a time when this country still actively lynched them - they are haunting, they are enraging, and they always make me ask myself - could I ever be that brave?

The answer inevitably comes back to this - I am a white woman, and I have never had to be.  And while there are still miles of road to walk in terms of my equal rights, I have always been, and will forever be, cloaked, wrapped, drenched in a privilege John Lewis fought decades for, yet still died without. 

Yes, John Lewis was the son of a sharecropper who died as a man of power and influence in the House of Representatives of this country, but he served and died knowing he was there alongside closeted cowards, and open racists who had also risen to power.  He died a Black man in America.  And as a Black man in America, the struggle is far from over, regardless of what money, stature, or influence he may attain.

At the tender age of 16, well, tender for those of us who never knew the privilege that we moved in, Lewis was already championing civil rights for Black people.  He was attempting to petition to have the whites-only library desegregated.  He never stopped and was soon the head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, organizing voter drives, sit-ins.  He was an original Freedom Rider at the age of 21, testing the dangerous racial segregation of the South.

He spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the age of 23.

He was only 25 when he marched across the bridge in Selma, in a peaceful protest for voting rights.  March 7, 1965, a year before I was born, he was enduring tear gas, water cannons, attack dogs, and being beaten to unconsciousness.  It became known as Bloody Sunday.

“You saw these men putting on their gas masks and behind the state troopers are a group of men, part of the sheriff’s posse, on horses. They came toward us, beating us with nightsticks, trampling us with horses, and releasing their tear gas. I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a nightstick. My legs went from under me. I don’t know how I made it back across the bridge but apparently a group just literally took me back.” - John Lewis

As his approach to civil rights began to include his own entrance into politics, he always remembered the words of Martin Luther King - "get into trouble, good trouble."  He gave a commencement address at Bates College in 2016 and passed on that wisdom, “you must find a way to get in the way and get in good trouble, necessary trouble … You have a moral obligation, a mission, and a mandate, when you leave here, to go out and seek justice for all. You can do it. You must do it.”

That the fight still goes on is a shameful reflection on what has been allowed to go unchecked in this nation since its founding.  We built this nation on the backs of stolen human beings.  White people enriched themselves while those considered 3/5s toiled for them.  Our founding documents were written in a time when they were not even remotely included in the words "all men are created equal."

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Declaration of Independence was written by white men who owned Black men and women and children.  And we sit in 2020 seeing the grim reminders daily that far too many in this country have never moved beyond that mindset where the color of one's skin dictates they are lesser.

Quite frankly, I would posit that I am lesser for every moment I have let go by without thinking of my privilege; that I am lesser for every opportunity I have allowed to slide past to demand more for those who have less; that I am lesser for knowing, loving, adoring so many Black people in my life, yet standing in 2020 and watching them still fighting for rights, for respect, for breath.

John Lewis was not lesser.  John Lewis represented everything one should aspire to in a march to be more, do more, see more, change more.  John Lewis was the better angel of our natures.

John Lewis died watching protests still taking place nightly across this country.  He died watching the words Black Lives Matter be prominently painted onto streets.  He died watching young people of all shades, economics, religions, and regions take to the streets TOGETHER.  Young people who are sickened by the inaction of their elders, repulsed by what passes for leaders at our highest levels.  Young people who are actively being brave because people like Lewis went before them, showing them the way, leaving footsteps in which to march.

Young people getting into good trouble.

On February 15, 2011, John Lewis received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, bestowed by President Barack Obama.  A fitting honor for a man who had dedicated his entire life and being to the singular cause of equality, to civil rights for all.  Contrast that with Trump giving it to Rush Limbaugh and you can be forgiven for seeing red and feeling the bile rise in your throat.

One of my favorite quotes of his is this:  "When you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have to speak up.  You have to say something, you have to do something."

It is what I feel in my gut, what I have always felt.  It is how I raised my children.  Passivity in the face of inequity is simply agreement, whether you actually agree or not.  It is why my inbox is regularly filled with the most vile screeds, and even threats against me.  It is why my child knows what tear gas feels like in his eyes, what rubber bullets feel like hitting his body. 

More people should not have to bleed and cry, be broken or die trying to make things right in 2020.  Yet here we are.  Protesters facing secret police in Portland.  More videos of Black people being knelt on by police as visions of George Floyd go through their frantic minds.  Racism is in its death throes and it will not go quietly.  Nor will those who cling to it, its emblems, its false sense of superiority.

Good trouble will win out in the end. 

That John Lewis has crossed his final bridge before that could happen is heartbreaking.  But he left us the roadmap, the footsteps to follow as we approach the biggest bridge still left for us to cross.

"If you're not hopeful and optimistic, then you just give up.  You have to take the long hard look and just believe that if you're consistent you will succeed."

We will not give up.  We are finally marching together and we will get to the other side, Mr. Lewis.  We promise.  Rest in power.

Just The Facts, Ma'am

We human beings are complicated creatures (well, most of us). We want to know everything (well, most of us).  We seek out knowledge (well, most of us).  And when we have questions with no answers, we are insanely creative at filling in the blanks.  (Pretty much all of us.) And never to our own benefit.

Think not?  When was the last time you were awaiting test results?  Scanning WebMD trying to diagnose a simple skin rash on your arm that inevitably leads you to believe you have some exotic disease you cannot even sound out - too many vowels.

We like the reassurance of knowing.  Even if it's bad news, results, relationship fallout, we are stronger when we have just the facts, ma'am.

That is what has been so completing bamboozling about our nation's run in with a deadly pandemic.  We have answers.  We have data.  We have charts, graphs, predictions.  We have experts, doctors, researchers working around the clock to gather more information, steer us through this maelstrom and safely to shore. 

Most importantly, we have FACTS.

That so many have turned their backs on them is confounding.  Yes, a good conspiracy theory is always more exciting than most truths, but in this case, our truths are laden with death, disease, proven incompetence, and every expert's warnings about what is still to come our way.

Here is a new fact - we are now finding 1,000 people testing positive every 15 minutes in this country, with 5 more dying in that same time frame.

Another fact, we set a new record last night - nearly 77,000 new cases in a single day.  Quantifiable actual numbers.

Our dead now populate a town the size of Syracuse, New York.  We have lost 141,801 people so far.  THAT. WE. KNOW. OF.

Yet somehow, in the face of those truly frightening, "exciting" facts, there are entire swaths of people who opt to believe that the entire world is involved in a massive conspiracy against Donald Trump.  That COVID is actually a cover for rounding up and executing celebrity pedophiles like Tom Hanks, Ellen Degeneres, Oprah Winfrey.  Yesterday’s latest from the low IQanon set is that Bill and Hillary have already been executed and soon there will be - wait for it, wait for it, Burr - a PAY-PER-VIEW special to watch the video.

That last one is as much a jaw dropper as it is an absurd knee slapper, yet there are huge numbers of people who believe it.

Dr. Fauci predicted that without proper precautions, we could see the states charting 100,000 new cases per day.  77,000 is getting uncomfortably close, wouldn't you say?

Three days ago, former game show host turned Trump lover, Chuck Woolery was continuing his Twitter rants about it all being a lie, a hoax, a media driven hysteria.  Oops. Literally, within hours of his last post jeering at the experts, his own son turned up positive.  Instead of sticking around to say, Hey, I was wrong, take this seriously, he admonished all to be gentle with those suffering from it, and then removed himself from Twitter.

Chuck showed the trademark move of the conservative set - Don't give a damn about something until it affects them personally.

It is crucially important that everyone wrap their minds - large and small - around the fact that COVID-19 is real, it is here, it does not discriminate, and it is deadly.  And that the least we can do for one another is to mask up and distance whenever possible.

No, it's not sexy.  It's not titillating.  It doesn't give you that tingle of believing you know something everyone else doesn't.  But it just may keep you alive long enough to find out just how full of shit you are.

A recent study by Oxford found that a full 25% of people lean towards conspiracy theories in the face of this pandemic.  Somehow the science is too "big" to understand so they gravitate to online scripts that would never be made into movies because they are far too far fetched.

Masks?  A contingent actually believes that the metal strip at the nose portion is an antenna controlled by 5G cellular networks that 1. track your movements and/or 2. Infect you with the virus.

That sure is sexier than the alternative that a mask is just a mask and that thin metal bendy bit is to insure a closer fit to your face.

Bill Gates is another favorite target.  Instead of accepting the fact that he and his wife are two of the biggest medical philanthropists on the planet, it is far more exciting to believe that they are behind a vaccine development that will insert a chip into your body.

I have found it deeply disturbing from the beginning how many people are willing to blindly follow a reality TV host instead of a world renowned virologist.  Donald Trump is not a learned man, he never has been.  He is a trust fund baby who lucked into money and went on to bankrupt and defraud everything he touched.  He has zero intellectual curiosity.  Yet there are still 30% who trust him instead of experts who have dedicated their lives to study.

Donald Trump does not deal in facts.  He never has.  He makes up dangerous, fast approaching caravans when they are politically convenient - caravans that magically disappear (flat tires?) when they no longer fit the narrative of his day.  He has been found to have lied nearly 20,000 times since taking office.  He is not a man of science.  Science fiction?  Absolutely.  But not science.

Still his gathering of gullibles cling to his every word.  And for that, they are losing their lives.  This virus is not just killing democrats.  Every day there is another news story about a MAGAt who did not believe until too late, and now they are dead.  Donald Trump is not coming to their funerals.  He is not paying the exorbitant hospital bills left behind for loved ones.  He will never know your lost husband's/wive's/son's/daughter's/parent's/friend's name.

We now have refrigerated semis filling with our dead, morgues overflowing.  Miami Dade county ICUs are cramming people in and now operating over 100% capacity.  But we still have people violently opposed to having to don a mask to enter a store.

One last time for the hard of hearing - NO ONE LIKES HAVING TO WEAR ONE.  THEY ARE HOT.  THEY FEEL CONFINING.  THEY MAY EVEN GIVE YOU A PIMPLE OR THREE.  BUT THEY ARE OUR CURRENT BEST DEFENSE AGAINST SHARING OR INHALING THE AEROSOLIZED DROPLETS WE HUMANS NATURALLY EMIT AND TAKE IN.

A mask is not a tracking device.  Can you hear me now?  A mask is not connected to a 5G system at Sprint.  A mask will not pollute your body with carbon dioxide.  A mask will not kill you.  And being asked to wear one infringes on your freedumb no more than does a seatbelt law, or law against drunk driving.  We are required to have auto insurance.  Think of a mask as cheap insurance against dying too early.

All the facts are available to us.  We are blessed to have people like Dr. Fauci who do not care whether you like the science or not, just that you heed its warnings. 

The fact is our government failed us when we needed it most.  Months ago they could have taken swift, decisive, coherent action.  Months ago, Donald Trump could have actually been PRESIDENTIAL and led this nation.  Instead he chose ignorance, obtuseness, obstreperousness.

And because of that, we are faced with the fact that 148 more people have died while I have been typing.

COVID is not titillating, but it is dangerous and deadly.  And that should be enough to get you out of your own ass and paying attention.  Potential death is the ultimate in provocation.  That you could succumb is pretty exciting, isn't it?  I mean, not in a Chrissy Teigen buys kidnapped children in Wayfair storage cabinets way (yes, a real thing that is out there), but still.

The bottom line is that you do not need conspiracy theories from some rabbit hole 4Chan thread.  All you need is "Just the facts, ma'am."  They are scary enough on their own.

Since Yesterday

Since yesterday we have lost another 1,000 people to COVID.

Since yesterday, the CDC Hospital capacity dashboard has stopped reporting numbers to the public.  We can no longer access the information.

Since yesterday, the abomination of our nation has posted thumbs up pics of himself at the Resolute Desk hawking Goya products.  #BBM - Black Beans Matter

Since yesterday, Florida has added over 15,000 new cases.

Since yesterday, Arizona, Texas, Florida have added refrigerated truck capacity to handle morgue overflow.

Since yesterday, we have 20 states at their highest daily cases, and cases across the United Stated are up 23%.

Since yesterday, the United States set a record of over 67,000 new cases in 24 hours.

Since yesterday, 54 hospitals in Florida have zero available ICU beds, 40 have less than 10% available.

Since yesterday, Florida now has 12 times more COVID cases than the entire country of Australia.

Since yesterday the Florida Emergency Operations Center has closed until Monday due to COVID cases among its staff.  No big deal - they're just the ones working around the clock on the pandemic response.

Since  yesterday, Michigan police have released bodycam footage (along with footage caught on a nearby home's camera) showing an officer's self defense shooting of an assailant who had stabbed an elderly man in a store who dared to ask him to comply with the mask requirement inside.  He fled, was pursued, then stopped and approached the officer.  He came at her with a screwdriver and at least two knives in his hands.  ALL. OVER. A. MASK.

Since yesterday, Trump has actually said, “There’s virtually no impact on children." when asked about reopening schools while COVID is surging.  All evidence and dead children to the contrary.

Since yesterday, teachers have held sit ins across the country, begging legislators to hear their concerns, their fears.  One summed it up well, “Schools can’t even control lice, so how the hell do you expect them to be able to control this?” 

Since yesterday, Georgia's Republican governor, Brian Kemp, within hours of fellating Trump in person, issued an executive order that suspends ALL local mask ordinances.  This as national chain stores are all announcing requirements; as more governors are finally putting mandates in place; as Georgia adds another 3,441 positive cases and 13 new deaths.

Since yesterday, Russian hackers have been found to be targeting vaccine research at academic and pharmaceutical institutions around the world, including the United States.  Cue <crickets> from White House.

Since yesterday, the White House Press Secretary, Kayleigh McInsanity, when asked about schools being forced to reopen, responded, "The science should not stand in the way of this."  WHAT. And I cannot stress this enough... THE. FUCK?  I want a flying pony, laser beams that shoot from my eyes, and the ability to breathe underwater.  The science should not stand in the way of this...

There have been bright spots...

Since yesterday, RBG was released from the hospital and is on the mend.

Since yesterday, Brad Parscale TikTok McStankbeard was demoted as Trump campaign manager.  Between the revelations of his grifting the campaign and his dating Trump's favorite Oval eye candy, Hope Hicks, he fell out of favor.  Hard.

And since yesterday, another simple, powerful, and to the point video targeting Syphilis Von Pieplatepupils has been released.   

Since yesterday...

Teach Your Children Hell

Teach Your Children the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young song from 1969 has always resonated with me.  Musically is it light listening, lyrically, it hits hard.  The meaning behind the words, as explained by Graham Nash in his biography, hits even harder.

"The origin of the song came from my recent infatuation with art. I had begun collecting photographs around that time, powerful images that had an emotional effect on me. One, in particular, was a Diane Arbus image of a boy in Central Park. It spoke volumes to me. The kid was only about nine or ten years old, but his expression bristled with intense anger. He had a plastic grenade clenched in a fist, but it seemed to me that if it were real the kid would have thrown it. The consequences it implied startled me. I thought, ‘If we don’t start teaching our kids a better way of dealing with each other, humanity will never succeed."

This song echos in my mind every time we face another school shooting, or another avoidable crisis of our own making - like climate change.  What are we teaching our children?

You, who are on the road
Must have a code
That you can live by

In the age of Trumpism, it is evident what "code" so many are teaching them.  Studies have been done showing the quantifiable uptick in racial aggression in schoolchildren since he slithered down his escalator, was embraced by their bigoted parents, and was elevated to office.  They are not only being taught to hate "the other", they are being taught that it is acceptable to strike out at them.

And you of tender years
Can't know the fears
That your elders grew by
And so please help
Them with your youth
They seek the truth
Before they can die

Fear is hate, hate is fear - one cannot exist without the other.  They feed off one another, and they are handed down generation to generation like some badly fitting, out of style pair of pants. So what the children know is the irrational fears their parents were taught by their parents and on and on.  As youth, they are submerged in it daily, and as such, are ill equipped to help their parents out of such an entrenched and abhorrent mindset.  The only hope is that many of them break off from their parents as they begin to grow; that many of them will be exposed to the very people they have been taught to loathe and realize that the truth they have been taught has been a lie all along.

We are seeing that as young people have led the way on LGBTQIA rights, March For Our Lives, and Black Lives Matter.  And while it is still the exception, not the rule, some are able to teach a new truth to their entrenched parents before those parents pass.

It should not be up to the youngest among us to act in the most mature and enlightened of ways.  It just shouldn't.  In a perfect world, the elders would be teaching our youth the value of one another, the equality, the differences that make us beautiful, not dangerous.  In a perfect world they would all feel protected, cherished, loved.  In a perfect world.

Sadly the latest lesson they are about to learn is just how expendable they are to the adults charged with their futures, with their country, with their well being.

It's not as if our older children are not aware of how little their safety matters to those who regulate our country.  That children of all ages have been slaughtered in their classrooms and school hallways to little legislative effect is unconscionable.  Blood is mopped up, buildings revamped, psychiatrists brought in for a period to "help" with the trauma, then what happens?  We send them right back in.

And we wait.  Parents hold their breath as they drop them off each morning and only exhale when they embrace them at the end of the day.  Students endure active shooter drills that only serve to grind the fear and trauma into their psyches even deeper.  They flinch when a book is dropped on the floor.  They panic when an alarm goes off.

I raised three kids.  I lived these fears for years and years and years, my heart constantly in a vice.  I received the text messages when they were evacuated for bomb scares.  I felt my heart drop to my feet when I got school emails about a possible shooter.  And I know the extended trauma and guilt endured when a friend is lost to gun violence - even when it is self inflicted.  My son still carries that day and the memories of those last minutes of his friend with him; he always will.

So our children, especially the older ones, already know we are an inept, powerless constituency that repeatedly rolls over and plays Russian Roulette with their lives each school day in terms of gun violence.  Now they are about to see that acceptance, that impotence again roll the dice with their lives in the face of a still rampaging, deadly virus.

Schools reopening in a month.  Even as Florida currently has a 31% positive rate of infection in children, while the entire population of Florida has only a ~11% positivity rate.  Even as young people in Missouri are testing positive at higher and higher rates.  Even as children lie in ICUs across the country.  Even as CDC Director Robert Redfield said, "I do think the fall and the winter of 2020 and 2021 are going to probably be one of the most difficult times that we have experienced in American public health."  Even as not a single legislator supporting this insanity can answer even the most basic of questions like:

Will schools provide PPE for children/faculty?

What happens when a child tests positive? 

Will the entire class(es) he/she attends be tested?  Who will pay for it?

What if a teacher tests positive?  Will they all be quarantined for 14 days?  Will the teacher be paid during this time? 

What if a teacher or student dies from COVID contracted by mandatory school attendance?  Who will pay for their expenses?

What enhanced cleaning regimen will be employed to insure everything is sanitized daily?  Who will pay for this?

No one can answer these basic questions, yet the push is on to get schools back open and kids in the classrooms as fast as possible.  Because the economy.

Make no mistake, in person learning is far preferable.  Interaction with the teacher, socialization with the student body, special education teachers and students simply cannot thrive in an online only approach.  So I completely understand the value of our schools.  What I hate, however, is how our economy is dependent on our school system.  That so many parents must view the school attendance of their children as a form of "free" childcare so they may work to support their families is just another indictment of our society, and how we prioritize, well, anything.

That we have no national approach to how we will reopen our schools also speaks to just how disjointed is our system, how much of an afterthought are our kids.  Each school district is scrambling to slap together the guidelines their schools will follow which will be wholly different than the process one school district over.  The CDC has provided guidelines, but Betsy Devoidofcompassionethicsintelligence, our Secretary of Education, has openly advocated for schools ignoring them.

Schools boards are voting down mask requirements for students.  Some will make them mandatory.  Some will leave it up to the parents, the kids.  School districts are already requiring parents sign liability waivers.  NOT. KIDDING.

And teachers are actively preparing wills in advance of being forced back into the classrooms.  In Texas, where the governor has mandated a return to the classroom beginning in August, teachers are frightened.  While parents of students may opt for them to do long distance learning, teachers are required to be in the classroom five days a week.

Steven Poole, Executive Director of the United Educators Association addressed this inequity.  "Many of our teachers, staff, or their family members have underlying health conditions that would place them at severe risk of the contract COVID-19.  While parents are given options to send their children to school or stay home for virtual instruction, teachers and staff do not have that option."

The Houston Federation of Teachers released a statement Monday, "It leaves the details up to the school districts, provides no additional funding, and does not even meet the low Threshold set by the White House in April.  Houston educators are calling for a delay of in-person classes until other criteria are met, including the closure of non-essential businesses "to flatten the curve so that children have a chance of in-person instruction sooner rather than later."

In the face of this legislative indifference to their health and safety, teachers are writing wills, completing advanced directives, and acquiring additional life insurance. 

Because they are considered as expendable as they are essential.  And our children are just considered expendable.

Globally 1.5 BILLION students were affected when schools closed months ago.  And I completely agree with UNICEF's observation that The potential losses that may accrue in learning for today’s young generation, and for the development of their human capital, are hard to fathom. 

Many countries have successfully flattened their curve, reduced cases, and have low to no death count right now, but that's not us.  We are the country that has now been banned from other countries.  We are an incubus of viral plague that the rest of the world is shunning to protect its own citizens.  That there are literal border closures against us at Canadian and Mexican crossings is irony at its finest.  And even some of those places (Hong Kong, Beijing, etc) that reopened their schools with stringent guidelines for distancing, mask wearing, and sanitary protocols are finding themselves having to reclose as cases began to climb again.

Again, these are places where the virus was taken seriously, where shutdowns were fast and hard, where mask wearing was not turned into some bullshit political football, where public sanitization was/is carried out daily for months.

And then there's us.  Bitching about haircuts and chicken wings, stewing in our own juices together over Memorial Day and 4th of July - our freedumb more important than our existence.

139,705 people dead.  We account for 24% of the global death toll.  422 of every million of our citizens dead.  1 out of every 100 testing positive.  Our hospitals on overload, ICU beds filled to capacity.  Only now are we seeing mask requirements take hold - Walmart has finally announced you may not enter their stores without one.  (Conservative heads exploding in 3...2...1...)

Our numbers are horrid and we know they are not accurate.  That the Baboon Ass in chief has now ordered hospitals to bypass the CDC and send all COVID stats directly to him?  Well, one could be forgiven for thinking that he is out to make his assertion that "One day it will just disappear" come true.  Not because it has disappeared, but because our ability to track it has.

And right in the crosshairs of this attack on information are our children.  Just as we are forced to send them back into the halls where they will now face down two deadly possibilities daily - gun violence and COVID -  the confidence in any data will be nil.  In the hands of a narcissist whose only concern is self preservation, the lies about our COVID numbers will be added to the pile of 19,000 other lies he has told since taking office.

Nash was so right.  "If we don’t start teaching our kids a better way of dealing with each other, humanity will never succeed."  Sadly, too many children will never grow up to help humanity succeed because far too many adults in charge were never taught a better way of dealing with each other, caring for each other, valuing each other.

There are school aged kids who will not make it to Christmas, hell, to Halloween because of this capricious view of their lives.  They will contract COVID, some will never show a symptom yet transmit it to teachers and janitors and their families.  Some will suffer horribly as multi-system inflammatory syndrome takes hold of their organs.  And yes, some will die.  As they take their last breaths on a ventilator, know that right up to the end they trusted the grown ups in their lives to protect them.  But...

Don't you ever ask them why
If they told you, you would cry
So just look at them and sigh
And know they loved you.