At least I
had the Internet and TV and long walks around Green Lake wherein there are
hundreds of signs directing people how to walk while 6 feet apart. The funniest
one says that congested parks will be closed parks. So they are telling people
who are walking on the trail to not walk on the trail or they
will close the whole park. Hmm…sounds like a Catch 22 to me. If no one walks, then the park is already closed. Right?
The world is
full of quirks these days. The same people who wear really cool masks are the
ones who don’t bother to read the many signs at Green Lake asking people to walk in the same direction. Walking the same direction is supposed to
reduce the incidence of people apparently coming too close to each other and
swapping spit. These people care enough to wear a mask but they don’t care
enough to follow rules that prevent virus spread? Weird.
Back to
Internet and TV. Both went out on me a few days ago. A tech person is supposed
to come today to fix it but since I just took over a new lease the other day, they are probably going to be corresponding with a guy who had the lease before
me and who lives in Colorado.
Given all
the trouble I had arranging the tech visit, I am guessing things will not go
well today. You may scoff at my situation but keep in mind I moved to Seattle
recently and don’t have a ton of friends who would risk death to come and sit
6 feet away and talk to me. Not having TV/Internet essentially assigns me to
Larry Davidson hell.
What else? I
have been reading about Covid or Corona or whatever the hell they call this
thing. Correct me if I am wrong, but after all this time and all these experts, we still do not know squat about why or when it started, how it spread, or how you stop
it from spreading. The key word is still don’t know. That implies we never
knew. Some of you might disagree because you are persuaded by one side of one
or more of the issues more than the other side. But let’s be honest. You don’t
know squat and if we follow whatever it is you want to do about it – the
probability of huge negative impacts is huge.
Some of you
want to let us go to Target and buy cool stuff, and you are willing to let us
infect each other and kill off another x thousand or so. You feel cooped up and
miss shopping at your favorite stores and of course, many of you are running out
of hair dye.
The rest of
you love turtles and salmon and people and want even sterner signs and laws
that tell us we have to stay home with our "former" loved ones who will no longer
speak to us. Doing so will not only raise the murder rate within families but it
will also pretty much kill off the economy. Amazon can only process so many
orders.
My last
point is the one some of you are going to hate. Too many of you could not
avoid the temptation to blame politicians for saying or doing things wrong from
the get-go. Yes, I mean Trump. Given what
I said above, do you really believe Biden or Pelosi would have said perfect and
brilliant things three months ago? Two months ago? Two minutes ago?
Get on your
high horse if you must. But this menace is new and none of these bozos we call
politicians had or have a clue about what to do. No, I don’t love Trump any
more than most of you. He/we would be better off if someone taped his mouth
shut and asked him to play golf all day.
Taking a strong ideological stance now
is simply wrong in my humble estimation. We need folks who are capable of
dealing with facts, figures, and who can do a risk analysis of what to do with
a problem whose solutions involve horrible trade-offs. We aren’t getting out of
this without scars. We need real leaders who will help us decide which scars we can tolerate.
Agree that Trump's actions are no worse or better than what the dems would have done. While there is a lot we don't know what we do know is it will be a lot worse before it gets better. Not just worse in terms of peeps getting sick but in terms of the hit the economy will take. I am scared shittless about what is gonna happen down the road.
ReplyDeleteThanks Rage! This is surely the most terrifying time any of us have lived through. This tests our mettle. If our philosophies and spiritual orientations cannot pull us through this then I guess they weren't worth much to begin with. My high school football coach used to say, when the going gets rough, the tough get going....or something like that.
DeleteDear LSD. Sowry to learn of your broken TV ‘n Internet. I, too, wouldn’t be happy not being able to binge watch reruns of Beaver, Lucy, Hazel, Gilligan’s Island, Ozzie ‘n Harriet, Rin Tin Tin, Ft. Apache, Mickey Mouse Club, and Jim Dooley’s Fishing Club ‘n surf’n the I-net for lonely hearts. Guess the amusement of last resort is navel gaz’n ‘n mak’n funny faces in the mirror that doesn’t lie.
ReplyDeleteThough you say we may never know squat I think there’s enough to know Chi-coms are responsible for lying/covering up that it originated in China and are responsible for the spread of the pandemic. Since you mention Trump, Biden, and Pelosi IMHO—though I imagine you won’t care about MHO—hav’n the last two bimbos in charge rather than the former would amount to primates trying to have sex with a football. The situation is unprecedented and any person in charge could not bat a thousand in dealing with it.
Let’s hope your TV ‘n I-net are restored soon to avoid you cauz’n cracks in the mirror that lies.
Yep my TV and Internet are humming. Thank you! You have now given many of my readers a new thought -- sex with a football. Your creativity is appreciated though this is not an r-rated blog. Yes, unprecedented is the right word. We will most likely have some sort of set of policies to get through this but it ain't gonna be pretty.
DeleteMark Cuban made the same point-- no government in the world could handle this problem. Agreeing with this doesn't mean that I agree with any plan. If you look at www.ft.com/coronavirus and page down to "excess deaths" the US is doing better than 8 countries and worse than 7. The data this morning was from 5/1 so our ranking might change but the fact is we look ok in the new world of horrible trade-offs. There is no way we get out of this without some luck with a vaccine or a treatment. We will have year after year of opening, hot spots, overwhelmed hospitals, closing,...
ReplyDeleteThanks CY, I agree that this challenge is not going away. It's face will change but much of the good stuff I read believes that the world of the future will always include covid, just like it includes the flu and CNN (sorry I had to say that. :-) )
DeleteLets just get one thing clear. Anyone who thinks that other politicians would be doing just as badly as Trump please drink some Lysol, and post again tomorrow to tell us how that's going for you.
ReplyDeleteHonestly the ability of people to make excuses for the Buffon in Chief makes me think of Trump as a millennial kid and those excusing him as his parents. Little Donny can do no wrong in their eyes..."and really he didn't mean it, he was only joking." White House Coronavirus Taskforce Briefing, this is where I go to get my jokes for the day?
Dear Bliz. The only thing crystal clear is your symptoms of Trump Derangement Syndrome. Your comment “ . . . . thinks that other politicians would be doing just as badly as Trump . . . . Lysol” suggests you think other pols would do better. If true, that’s a mighty silly, clownish, irrational statement that belies your TDS. Try setting aside your TDS for a moment, take off your bulbous clown nose, suspenders, and floppy feet, and identify other pols that would do better and what they would do differently.
DeleteBTW, one symptom of TDS—among numerous instances of irrationality and ludicrousness—is inability to spell correctly simple, easy words such as ‘buffoon.’ Let us know how your TDS is going for you. If/when it becomes unbearable you might try rubbing/stroking/fondling/engaging with a football.
Want jokes for the day??. Tune in to the Loony Tunes channel . . . better material for your clown entertainment.
Dear blizzard,
ReplyDeleteFirst, my point is not about other politicians doing just as badly as Trump. The specific point is about Covid and what you do about it. It's about how no one knew what to do and still don't. Also, I did not make excuses for Trump. Again -- the point is that no one knew or knows what to do. EVERYTHING is not about Trump. Putting politics ahead of a real solution for our problems today is just going to made things worse.
I agree with Blizzard. No everything is not about Trump but his constant bad information makes it much worse. Really, do you think the Dems would come out with shooting up disinfectant?
ReplyDeleteEveryone talks about making the sacrifice for the economy. So I ask, is anyone willing to sacrifice their child or grand child for the economy? I sure am NOT!
You guys are free to hold whatever opinions might have. If you read my blog you know that I don't like Trump anymore than you do. But I hold fast to my opinion that Covid issues will not be resolved by ideological bickering or finger pointing. We will have to work together to make progress.
DeleteDoober: Based upon conversations that we have had, I question your statement that (you) don't like Trump anymore than (I) do. In any event, stay safe.
DeleteJesse
So dear Jesse, do you dislike him 50% more than I do? 75% more? Let's get quantitative about this!
DeleteI think it is quite likely that either party, and either party's incumbent, would have made some serious mistakes around this pandemic. What I do believe is different is that the residual influence of the Tea Party types has fostered an unbelievable ( at least by me) rejection of science and the importance of relying on data and expert driven analysis in favor of the false equivalence value of "my right to have an opinion". I don't think that the gun-toting, maskless,flag wavers out there demonstrating are positing an alternative scientific theory. I actually do not believe most of them have a coherent political posture, nor that such a posture might even be desirable. It is all about "me", about the ability to have "me" covered by the media, and a new form of "herd immunity" which replaces reason with the incorrectly perceived opportunity to be important. As has been noted in many places, Trump is a symptom of a larger virus that has been spreading for some time. Many of the underlying concerns fostering the spread of his form of contagion are valid societal issues that D.C. is not addressing. The fact that he is an inept communicator of those underlying concerns will produce a worse outcome for those originally concerned with wage, education, job, etc. inequity. His core constituency seems to continue being supportive of decisions against their own self interest while believing that Trump is the representative capable of "putting down the other guy".
ReplyDeleteSince I have never participated in such rallies I can only speculate on the motives of those people but I would say that it is wrong to think they represent much of America. To identify anyone else through the actions of those protesters is to minimize what are very real differences of opinion about how we should handle this crisis. Just as a broken clock is right twice a day, these protesters might have something in common with Americans who have valid policy interests based on real science. As for the broader issues about Trump, it was not my intention to write bout Trump. It was to emphasize that political bickering wastes precious time as Rome burns.
DeleteI agree that the demonstrators are largely a fringe element and would not be there but for the media featuring their antics. Most State leaders are correctly ignoring them. I also agree that a blog on Trump is not something I want to be a part of--other than when he is the architect or prime mover of an issue that is worth debating. The disconnect for me is to continually watch the so called "base" vocally support so many initiatives which are so clearly against their self-interest. This, along with the continuously low voter turn-out records, says volumes about the growing willingness of the American electorate to rely on the cryptic opinion beliefs fostered through social media rather than to really understand issues of import to themselves. I think I would start in the 3rd grade with a reintroduction of that old course entitled, "Civics" to raise awareness of the need to consider both rights and responsibilities to self and others as a core belief in our Society.
DeleteI doubt it will help much to teach civics in the third grade or in any grade. That ship has sailed. No one believes that stuff. This country has turned into two or more countries. The reds battle the blues. That's all that's important. The media, the teachers, the government, and the rest of us should all be forced to wear the T shirt of their choice. Quit pretending we are thoughtful, objective, prepared analysts of what is needed.
Delete