Monthly Archives: April 2020
The usual MO
It seems that whenever the “liberals” gather for a protest either against some suppressing of people’s rights or in favor of recognizing those of a group of people whose rights have been denied them, the conservative right, often in the form of the GOP, attempts to minimize or completely dismiss the validity of those gathering by claiming they are actors hired to perform.
Parents who lost children at Sandy Hook Elementary school were actors pretending that the non existing school shooting had taken place would be one example.
Another time that reality took a back seat to this claim was when the people who attended the Women’s March, the March for Our Lives, and the Climate March were supposed to be paid actors. Considering the hundreds of thousands who attended these events in a number of cities, that is a lot of hired actors.
I am still waiting for my paycheck.
Another unrelated, but interesting piece of irony, is that, while the GOP supports both subtle and clumsy attempts at voter suppression claiming their actions regarding this is because of the amount of voter fraud, there are actually few cases of voter fraud, but the most glaring examples of it when it is found are done by members of the GOP.
Without evidence, but obviously based on a vast degree of hope or outright lies, those who support the “re-open America” movement have claimed that those healthcare workers who have blocked the drive around demonstrations near hospitals, actually were, obviously, hired actors.
Now true to form, Dr. Kelli Ward, chairwoman of the Arizona Republican Party, has called for re-open demonstrators to dress in scrubs and masks to confuse reporters.
She tweeted,
“Planning protest to #ReOpenAmerica? EVERYONE wear scrubs and masks — the media doesn’t care if you are really in healthcare or not — it’s the ‘message’ that matters!”
That way, her actors can cause disruptions from mild to dangerous that can be blamed on real healthcare workers, or it will appear healthcare workers actually support unlimited re-opening contrary to the media’s message.
It also could create a problem when someone, hoping to get medical help for themselves or someone else, might lose valuable time going first to the wrong person.
At the time of her tweet, the pandemic had killed more than 55,000 Americans and sickened nearly 1 million with 6,000 affected people in her state, Arizona, among them.
Although she may be a doctor of osteopathic medicine, she is best known as a conspiracy-mongering former state senator.
She supports the Patriot Movement having tweeted her support of Patriot Movement AZ.
Her state party chair election efforts were aided by Jake Hoffman and Tyler Bowyer of Turning Point USA which has ties to white nationalists, and she brought in Shialee Grooman, also from Turning Point and who has often posted homophobic and racist comments online, to work with her.
These are usually generic viagra order secretworldchronicle.com completed by using special imaging techniques. sildenafil 50mg price Mengiste’s new book named “Beneath the Lions Gaze” is centered on, which she read a few excerpts from. If shifting the diet plan is just not doing work quick generico cialis on line sufficient, a health supplement must be applied. Mistake 3: Failure to use a penis vitamin creme Just like the skin of the face and hands, the penis skin may seem minor, and in most cases, doctors don’t recommend free sildenafil samples etc.When she ran for the senate in 2018, she claimed that when John McCain’s family announced he would stop cancer treatments, it was done to negatively affect her campaign. She later played the innocent, misunderstood victim by claiming,
“I do understand how many could have misconstrued my comments as insensitive, and for this I apologize. The intention of my comments were in no way directed at Senator McCain or his family.”
It wasn’t the McCains who hurt her campaign it was her insensitive remark.
She also believes that “Political correctness is like a cancer” and that her style is to “talk directly to the people.”
“I’m not a robot. I’m not an automaton. I’m not somebody who’s programmed with talking points. I don’t mean to offend people, I just mean to speak directly to people, and I think that’s why people want me in this race.”
While some governors issued some restrictions and some full lockdown measures to combat the corona virus, as some are reviewing the best and safest way to reopen, Alaska, Georgia, Oklahoma, and South Carolina have lifted restrictions, Texas is about to, and Arizona’s stay-at-home order is set to expire on April 30.
Polling shows that 60% of Americans oppose the protests, with just 22% supporting them. Polls also found that 71% of respondents were concerned about opening things up too quickly as opposed a slower, more careful approach.
While the re-open demonstrations have the appearance of spontaneous, grassroots gatherings of patriotic citizens of like mind, in reality the Michigan protest was organized by the Michigan Conservative Coalition, co-founded by a GOP state representative and his wife, who is on the advisory board of Women for Trump and the co-founder of Michigan Trump Republicans, and Greg McNeilly, a longtime political adviser to the DeVos family which includes Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos.
Other demonstrations were instigated by the Dorr family. Ben Dorr is the leader of Minnesota Gun Rights who also started Pennsylvanians Against Excessive Quarantine and Ohioans Against Excessive Quarantine. His brother, Aaron, created New Yorkers Against Excessive Quarantine.
InfoWars promoted demonstrations in Texas. Its founder, Alex Jones, has been banned from a number of internet platforms and claimed Sandy Hook never happened which resulted in his having to pay $100,000 in legal fees for the parents of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting who were suing him. The Food and Drug Administration directed him to stop promoting his snake oil cure for COVID-19..
InfoWars planned a second grassroots rally to
“Show the globalists, including eugenicist Bill Gates, the World Health Organization, and the CDC, that they can’t suspend freedom in America at a mere whim, and that they can’t force us to wear face masks like the people in Communist China, from whence the Wuhan corona virus originated.”
So it is not really all that surprising that Ward would encourage demonstrators to misrepresent the people who are caring for those already affected by COVID-19, and could very well end up caring for the demonstrators who do not wear masks, stand close together, and carry firearms as if they can ward off the virus with the threat of using them.
On the couch
Sheriff Ooga-Booga
As I wrote before, perhaps more than once, the favorite tactic of the sheriff of Bristol County, Massachusetts, Thomas Hodgson, is to claim that all he does both wise and foolish is to protect the people of Bristol county.
But as sheriffs in Massachusetts are pretty much administrators of the county jails, their job is running their jails, not doing the job of local law enforcement who are the ones who actually keep the people safe.
And, to justify his actions and biases, he throws out fictitious claims about the amount of crime he protects us from with no facts to back those claims, and, surprise, in keeping with his hero, Trump, his biggest target is all the crimes committed by “criminal illegal aliens” who seem to be rampaging through the county’s streets while being clever enough not to be noticed by most of us while they are doing it.
As it is, although ICE may pick up the occasional someone committing a crime or having someone arrested for allegedly committing crime delivered to them, most of their big raids are done at places where people are working.
He conflates people who have been arrested and/or adjudicated because of serious crimes with people who simply could not meet bail or are awaiting their hearing on a minor crime like driving without a license or missing a probation appointment.
He does not differentiate or even mention this distinction when he speaks about who is in his jails.
He implies everyone in his jails is a criminal and a threat to the county without indicating whether any of the crimes he wants us to believe the incarcerated have committed are anything more than allegations.
And, although he paints ICE detainees as hardened criminals, as civil detainees for ICE, they are not there for any criminal purpose.
As one of the few county jails in the state having a contract with ICE to retain those without the proper papers to be in the country legally, he conveniently omits any mention of where in the states they are from. Rhode Island’s ICE detainees are also kept in the Bristol County House of Corrections. If they are released because of COVID-19 and returned to their communities, they are actually not a threat to the people of Bristol County as they are no longer in the county or even the state..
He also conveniently omits the number of those in his ICE detention whose only crime is just being here.
By order of U.S. District Court Judge William Young in response to a federal lawsuit alleging that crowded conditions in the jail could lead to massive rates of infection and death among inmates and staff and a ruling by the state’s Supreme Judicial Court, the sheriff released 43 ICE detainees, 6 into house arrest, and 10 criminal and pre-trial detainees from the general population.
This was not a dripping of one or two a day as some might have thought, but a case of getting it done.
The sheriff does not like what the Judge and SJC have determined would be for the best, but he cannot really speak against them. So, his reaction was to foment fear among the general population, and, as has been his practice, leave it up to people’s imagination and biases to come up with what his half truths mean to them.
He released a public information tool he has named the “Prisoner Release Alert System” on Facebook and his website. It lists the groups of criminal charges and convictions against individual immigration detainees, but without any names attached or any indication even if these are actual crimes committed by actual people, or just a list of the scariest crimes he could compile. He justifies this because of laws governing the way criminal records are publicized in Massachusetts.
Entries include drug trafficking, operating under the influence, larceny, and at least one charge of rape with no distinction between criminal charges, which have yet to be tried in court, which means some in his jails are truly innocent while all are innocent until proven guilty, and convictions. Many have no convictions or criminal charges.
But the sheriff insists, “Some of them also had final removal orders from an immigration judge to be deported to their country of origin, but are instead free to roam the neighborhoods of our communities,” so the list of crimes was released “to help protect the people of Bristol County from potential victimization.”
But deportation is not necessarily connected to a person’s having committed any of the crimes he has on his list.
If you have the time to wade through it, this is the list of crimes that have allegedly been committed, according to the sheriff himself, by somewhere around 30 extremely busy people.
• Trafficking Of Fentanyl • Rape-Elderly; Aggravated Assault-Family Strongarm; Assault (2 counts); Domestic Violence (2 counts); Burglary; Burglary-No Forced Entry-Residence; Trespassing; Intimidation; Violation Of Conditions Of Supervision • Drug Possession; Property Damage; Disorderly Conduct (3); Conditional Release Violations (5); Aggravated Assault With Weapon; Domestic Violence (5); Aggravated Assault Family Member With A Strong Arm; Obstruct Police; Resisting Officer; Assault (2); Traffic Offense • Risk of Injury to a Child (3); 2nd Degree Assault • Resisting Officer; Assault (2) • Larceny • Heroin Distribution; Fraud; Oui; Possession Of Stolen Vehicle (2) • Aggravated Assault With Weapon; Aggravated Assault Family Strong Arm; Extortion; Threat Injury To Person; Marijuana Possession (3); Assault To Kill; Rape; Kidnapping; Arm Robbery; Statutory Rape; Operating Without A License • Fraud; False Citizenship; Fraud For False Statements; Illegal Uses Of Credit Cards (2); Embezzle Banking Type Institution • Aggravated Assault Non Family; Aggravated Assault With Weapon/ Knife; Public Order Crimes; Traffic Offense • Fraud False Statement; Fraud Impersonating; Made False Statements On A Passport Application; Stole The Identity Of Another Person While At A Refugee Camp In Africa • OUI; Assault (2); Obstructing Justice; Dangerous Drugs Possession • Child Neglect; Drug Trafficking; Synthetic Narcotic Possession • OUI-Liquor (2) • Operating With Suspended License; Leaving The Scene of an Accident; OUI • OUI-Liquor (2) • OUI-Liquor; Unauth. Use Of Vehicle • Drug Trafficking; Aggravated Assault; Trespassing; Intimidation; Resisting Officer; Larceny • B&E Dwelling When Resident Home; Manufacture/Possess/Deliver Schedule I and II Drugs • Traffic Offense; Disorderly Conduct; Forgery; OUI Liquor (3) • Operating After Revoke License; Carrying Dangerous Weapon; Operating After; Leaving Scene of Accident (2): Property Damage; OUI-Liquor; Operating After Suspend License; Possession Of Firearm W/O Permit (4); Larceny Of A Motor Vehicle; Assault To Kill; A&B Dangerous Weapon • Distribution of Cocaine; Probation Violation; Larceny • Drug Trafficking • Drug Possession; Drug Trafficking • OUI-Liquor (2); Hit And Run; Traffic Offense (2) • OUI-Liquor; Traffic Offense • Traffic Offense (2); Failure To Appear; Rape; Visa Fraud • Kidnap Adult; Risk Of Injury To Child; Unlawful Restraint; Disorderly Conduct • Making False Report; OUI-Liquor • Entice A Child Under 16; Assault And Battery; Carrying A Dangerous Weapon; A&B Dangerous Weapon (2); Oper. After License Suspended Resisting Arrest; OUI; • Domestic Violence; Assault; Child Neglect • OUI-Liquor; Operating Recklessly • Aggravated Assault –Family (2) • Larceny (6) • Larceny (4); Probation Violation (2); Resisting Officer • OUI; Violation Of Probation • OUI.
Or, it is just a big scary list for the purpose of just being scary so he can exaggerate his actual role in keeping us safe.
He is usually protecting us from that thing under the bed and the monster in the closet that for some reason we just have never seen but are expected to accept are there because he said so.
tHE GOREY CURE
Although when he was asked about the meaning, Edward Gorey would explain that Q.R.V. was the “Universal Solvent” and was easy to fit into a poem as it was easy to rhyme and had a rhythm that facilitated its inclusion, but would decline to explain what the letters actually stood for.
Gorey was known to answer questions if he deigned to, for not answering a question if he would rather not, and for giving an answer that may or may not be true, but sounded good enough to be acceptable, if it was obvious a person really wanted or really needed an answer.
In any case, the answer would have to be accepted as given since if you already knew the answer, you would not have asked the question, and, having nothing to go on but his word, it could not be argued.
Although we have no idea what the letters stand for, these are examples of Q.R.V.’s uses:
This product is called Provestra and it is the only generic pill that does not disappoint anyone. cialis usa online The problem is related to sexual tadalafil 20mg generic organ that doesn’t get full erection, when needed. You are not alone, however getting rid of the problem is important else it might lead to an inflammation of viagra 100mg the bowels. Doctor will test both male and female and then diagnose the problem of infertility. robertrobb.com buy cialis australia“If you are wheezing, coughing, sneezing, can barely hear or see ,If you are creaking, aching, leaking you should take Q.R.V.”
“Should you feel faint, or wish to paint your toenails prettily, It’s quickly made, and does not fade. Depend on Q.R.V.”
“It pickles beets and bleaches sheets ,Promotes gentility; It ices cakes and deadens aches It’s splendid Q.R.V.”
And for those who want a religious approach, Q.R.V. has a religious connection.
“She lacked in faith until a wraith Of Saint Hermione Appeared to her and said, ‘You err Not taking Q.R.V.’”
The reason I bring this up is, being a good American, I want to help the president in this time of COVID-19, and as it is the “universal solvent”, I suggest Q.R.V. as it may be a better option to cure the virus than Hydrochloroyquine or bleach.
The doctor is in
Not my brother’s keeper
I understand and accept the right to peaceably assemble for the purpose of getting the government to redress a wrong. I have been part of quite a few assemblages like that. However, when did it become acceptable for people to gather at state capitols brandishing firearms to make their point, especially when guns are not the issue, but health is?
Obviously the show of arms is meant as an unspoken threat.
In California, when the Black Panthers showed up in Sacramento with rifles to defend their Second Amendment right to bear arms, after they handed over their rifles to security when asked to do and retrieving them after the legislative session they had gone to attend, the governor at the time, Ronald Reagan the god of the GOP and the NRA, enacted a strong gun control law in that state.
Obviously, unless it was a racial thing, the idea of bringing firearms to the state capital for whatever reason was not an acceptable one.
At least, the reason why the Black Panthers had brought their rifles was germane to the topic being discussed that day.
But the people doing this recently did so to protest the rules that have us all watching out for the health of us all.
Besides the irrelevant presence of the Confederate flag at the state capitals of Northern states where it is not part of the cultural heritage as it was the South, not the North, who had taken up arms against the United States, there were signs defending the Second Amendment and protesting abortion, neither of which has anything to do with social distancing, not gathering in large groups, wearing face masks, or making sure none of us do anything that could overtly or covertly negatively affect the health of others.
Among the signs being held and in recorded interviews of those in attendance there was evidence that, in spite of traditional claims, there is support for hypocrisy when it comes to race and gender.
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All lives, obviously, do not matter especially as shown by the automobile demonstrations that blocked the entrances to hospitals and the progress of the ambulances trying to get to them.
Men and women who support the idea that the government has a right to defund Plan Parenthood and pass laws that control women’s bodies held signs and made comments that the stay in place rules in their states were wrong because, even if they were exposing themselves to possibly getting the corona virus, it was their body and, therefore, their choice, one that the government should keep its hands off.
“My body, my choice” is acceptable now.
At least when it is convenient.
There were some who, when asked about endangering the lives of those to whom they may return when the event was over and were reminded of the virus death count, brought up the number of abortions as if spreading the virus to other people and having them die was some sort of balancing act. However, it would seem with some of the deaths among ministers and their flocks, some who opposed abortion have been on the acceptable list of those who must die to offset them.
And as further indication that life is not something that actually does matter, states with rising numbers of those showing signs of having the virus and those dying from it are opening hair salons, tattoo parlors, and bowling alleys.
While watching various news reports about COVID-19 and those that are covering all the gun toting rallies, one man stood out when he admitted that he was there to defend his right to do as he chose even if he may expose others to something that could kill them because he was under no obligation to watch out for the welfare of his neighbor.
Nice guy.
This won’t stay in vegas
Where do people go from all over the world, hang out in large groups, touch a lot of objects, and then go home bringing with them more than their winnings or regrets?
Las Vegas, of course, where what happens there stays there, except when it comes to viruses.
But during this virus pandemic and with the proscriptions to doing what is done in Vegas, it, like other places, has been closed.
The mayor of the city part of what is collectively called Las Vegas, Carolyn Goodman, has decided that if a business there feels like it should reopen, by all means it should, and if there is any further outbreak, it can be closed down again.
As the mayor has explained the idea is to
“Assume everybody is a carrier. And then you start from an even slate. And tell the people what to do. And let the businesses open and competition will destroy that business if, in fact, they become evident that they have disease, they’re closed down. It’s that simple.”
Because, we all know when people go there, they stay and don’t return home.
The city of Las Vegas is not the same as The Strip as that is on county land, so the mayor has no control over it, and Stephen Cloobeck, the CEO of Diamond Resorts International wanted to make this clear when he explained,
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I have been to Vegas. Most people wander from casino to casino, restaurant to restaurant, and, often, hotel to hotel. It is an escape from home standards, after all.
Another form of gambling in Vegas that we all get to share in, even from our home towns without having to be there.
Although his organization would like to open for business in mid-May as opposed to Mayor Goodman’s plan to reopen at the end of April, the CEO of Wynn Resorts, ‘Matt’ Maddox, said
“that opinion has no basis in science or data and should be ignored.”
Goodman, like most people who are not medical people or scientists, explained why reopening is possible.
“We’ve survived the West Nile and SARS, Bird Flu, E. coli, swine flu, the Zika virus.”
These were not as contagious and did not spread as far as this disease has.
In Las Vegas’s home state, Nevada, there have been nearly 4,000 cases and 163 deaths.
And the small business bailout money went to……..
Family values
It is important that the country opens back up, and there are legitimate reasons for large crowds to gather at state capitals in close quarters without masks to demand it.