Food lickers

Get to the bottom.

    At the end of this post I explain why I’m using the term food licker.

Good News for a Day.

    I do want to jump on some good news before things nosedive. It’s sad that on a day that 85,000 Americans have died the good news is that fewer of us have died. And I think that we’ll have 3 to 4 days of good news in some select areas. New York has had 2 days of fewer than 200 people dying from COVID-19. That’s good news compared to where they had been. Other states have been dropping as well. That means that the number of deaths could have been reduced overall. Sorry I have to say could have been.

    There was also a slight drop in the number of active cases. It was slight but it was there.

    Doctors also have better treatment options now that there is more world wide experience in dealing with the virus. Some treatments have been ruled out as being ineffective while others have proved more beneficial. What that means is that they are figuring out how to save more lives. That’s a plus.

    But the day had good news in regards to COVID-19 so that’s something.

 Right to kill you people.

    The people that believe they have the Constitutional right to kill people and endanger others have had their dreams come true as many states open back up. In EVERY country where this has been done there has been a resurgence of the disease. So the I-want-to-be-able-to-cough-and-sneeze-on-you food-lickers with the support and encouragement of President Trump have carried the day. Good job food lickers! Good job!

What have you got to lose?

    Remember when the President said that in regards to taking the anti-malarial drug? Well, as it turned out people had their lives to lose. Using the drug has been ruled out because the toxic side effects were killing more people than were helped. So a great big thank you to President Trump. Another success story. He may be up to saving 3 million lives by now. I mean after all he was patting himself on the back for doing an incredible job at zero deaths and containing the virus so at 85,000 deaths he may be eligible for the Noble prize.

 Liberate the White House!

    When it came to Herr Twittler’s safety he immediately had all those around him start wearing masks. Didn’t hesitate to exercise his absolute authority. He required masks. No talk about the Constitution. Mandatory. He understands the virus when it comes to his safety. Keeps the Vice President away from his sacred presence as well. This would be the Vice President that still doesn’t wear a mask. I guess absolute authority doesn’t go as far as it used to.

 Doctor Visit

    This was not a good day to visit the doc but I really didn’t have a choice. It is what it is.

    The nurses, docs and staff were all wearing masks. Chairs were spaced out. Only two people at a time on elevators. I wish that I could say the same for my fellow patients.

 ‘Voluntary, out of concern for others’ just doesn’t work.

    One old guy really thought that the mask-wearing was funny. He was quite the jokester with the nurses. He carried his mask in his hand. Sometimes he would hold it up to cover his eyes laughing about how are you supposed to wear this thing. I couldn’t tell what the people behind the reception desks thought of his show. They were wearing masks.

    Even with the President’s actions taken to protect his safety Conservatives still won’t comply. The President won’t do what he did for others; he still won’t wear a mask. He did what he did to protect himself. He comes before everyone. That’s his operating system. That’s the operating system of his followers. It’s hysteria caused by the media.

 Then the President must be hysterical.

Wannabe Food lickers.

    This is the perfect time to talk about food lickers.

    There have been videos circulating of humans in real life licking food in stores and then putting it back. It’s funny to them. It’s very direct. When the armed insurrectionists stormed state Capitols there were quite a few videos taken of them and by them. One guy was asking people to come and cough on him to show what a hoax that he thought the virus is. And people obliged him. I’ve seen non-mask wearers coughing and sneezing in public. It’s a big joke. People wearing masks are a source of amusement to them. We’re their entertainment.

    Food licking provides a graphic image. People that do such a thing are gross! I should probably mention here that there isn’t any Constitutional right to lick food. I say this because the food lickers might be the same folks that would inject disinfectant. They are the same kind of people that think spitting in someone else’s food is also funny. Most normal people are repulsed by the idea of licking food that someone else might eat.

    Coughing, sneezing or breathing out virus accomplishes exactly the same thing. They just aren’t licking the food. That would be gross. Contaminating the food from six feet away is a lot more sanitary.

    Here’s what we’ve learned about the President and his followers including the rabid Evangelical pro-lifers—the lives of others are meaningless to them. It’s only a concern when they are affected. They can have COVID-19, never be symptomatic and pass it along to people who end up dying and not give it a second’s thought. Their President encourages them.

 They are food lickers.

CONspiracies Feedback Loop

Y2K

    The Millennium Bug, a.k.a. as y2k, was supposed to cause a disaster. It had to do with digital file storage, computers and more. Supposedly when we rolled over from the year 1999 to 2000 systems would crash, chaos would ensue and society as we knew it would collapse. In case you missed it or think that it did collapse and everything was covered up, there was no collapse. The world didn’t come to an end. Hardly anything at all happened.

 HLS

    This family story will have a very direct tie in to what we are seeing in our culture today. In some ways it won’t be flattering to my father-in-law but I feel it important enough to delve into it. I was after all his favorite son-in-law. Dad bought into the whole y2k disaster scenario hook, line and sinker. He went down the rabbit hole and made it a bunker.

    I should tell you a bit about Dad. He was well educated but he was also smart. The two don’t always necessarily go together. He was an aerospace engineer. He was sharp right up until the very end. He had Parkinson’s disease and spent 12 years in our care. He was a great guy and I loved him very much. In my mind he would not have been a good candidate for being someone caught up in the panic surrounding the Millennium Bug.

    He along with a couple of friends ending up full blown survivalists holed up in the barren lands at the edge of civilization in Arizona. I didn’t realize the extent to which he had gone down the rabbit hole until we moved him back to live with us in Kansas.

The run up.

    During the run up to the turn of the century Dad would have me read or check out certain things to show me what he was concerned about in regards to life as we knew it coming to an end. I would read or check out whatever he referred to me. But I would check out other things as well. Use different sources in addition to the sources that he was following. The more that I read and researched the more comfortable I was that there really wasn’t going to be much in the way of difficulties.

    Then I realized that Dad and I could read the same thing and reach entirely different conclusions. He would see confirmation of what he thought and I would see the same for what I thought. This is called “confirmation bias”. The main difference is that I didn’t restrict my information from reliable sources. I went with the science much more than he did. The deeper he went into believing the imminent demise of our culture was at hand the more he sought out reinforcement of his original premise.

 Critical errors.

    The errors that Dad made were critical. For one he left the science of the experts of those dealing with y2k possibilities. He shifted his inquiries to only those that believed as he did. He ignored what was being reported. They reinforced each other and their knowledge wasn’t sound. The information that they were used was not based upon reality. He wasn’t willing to accept reality until it walked right up to him. Nothing happened. There was no disaster in the physical world.

    Initially I checked out everything. In order to understand the layout of crazy town sometimes you have to visit. You just don’t have to stop and take up residence. So yes for a little while I checked out the crazy stuff. Eventually I reached the point where I realized it was just too time consuming checking out one ridiculous postulation after another.

Come to Jesus time.

    There was a real hard date for failure built into the y2k theorists. It was going to happen on one day at the stroke of midnight. At the stroke of midnight nothing happened other than news that it didn’t happen. It was all over. From his bunker in Arizona Dad thanked everyone for not rubbing it in. He got over it. We got over it.

    (It wasn’t a bunker. It was a little two room cinder block apartment where he was living. His friends and prepper stores were in another more defendable area close by. It was a gated community.)

    But it wasn’t until I moved Dad back to Kansas that I got the full realization of how far he had gone all in on y2k. Weapons. Lots of weapons. Thousands of rounds of ammunition. Solar powered chargers. Books on survival. Rations. One side of our garage was full of survival rations. Home distiller. Canning supplies. I should mention here that Dad didn’t cook. He was ready. Except he wasn’t.

 Enough for one.

    Prior to y2k he was totally dependent upon medication to control his Parkinson’s disease. I’m not sure that he ever fired a weapon. He just spent thousands getting ready. In the end it was just stuff to get rid of. Fortunately he only bought enough for one. He didn’t plan on the rest of us surviving. His losses weren’t as bad as they could have been. It was an expensive lesson. Going off the deep end often can be.

 Aliens

    I would really like to believe that we aren’t alone in the vastness of the universe. Such thought doesn’t compromise my religious beliefs. Now it’s quite possible that there is other life in the universe. It can’t be proven that there isn’t any other life besides our own.

    Just the matter of sheer statistics given the size and scope of the universe it seems that life should have happened in other places. Given the age of the universe just random events should have provide that intelligent life should have evolved in other places.

    The problem is that science isn’t pointing in the direction of what I would like to believe. The science that’s available indicates that we should have been able to detect indications of intelligent life by now. Something.

    Now I can go to plenty of whack-a-doodle sites if I want to find plenty of “proof” of the existence of aliens. They have plenty of conclusive beyond any shadow of a doubt irrefutable proof. Not only that but there’s all of those movies and television shows.

    It’s the same kind of proof that Flat Earth believers have. It’s the same kind of science rejectors proof that is being offered up about the pandemic and global warming. It’s the same kind of proof offered by people that believe the whole moon landing was a hoax.

    I’ll wait for the science.

 The feedback loop.

    Dad entered into a loop. It was self-sustaining. The more he believed the more he wanted to believe. The more he sought out information that only supported those beliefs. He already had the answers. He just needed the right question/s. This has application to what we’re seeing currently. Only this loop has been self-sustaining for decades.

    Let’s take just one element of the anti-government movement. Before we get into that they aren’t anti-government. They are anti-government that doesn’t support their beliefs; the truths that they hold sacred. Trust no one from outside the group and keep the group pure. And keep a wary eye on those in the group to make sure they adhere to the correct ideals and messaging.

 The Deep State.

    Try to prove to someone that something doesn’t exist that never existed. Like the “Deep State”.*  The answer is that it can’t be proved that it doesn’t exist. Yet it sprang into being and moved into every facet of government undetected when Trump was elected. Fully functional. Fully operational. It was the same Deep State that kept President Obama from accomplishing his goals. Oops. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense does it?

    Then throw in a conspiracy of some kind and just plug in whatever elements are needed to support the conspiracy. The beauty of this is they just make stuff up. This was done to the Clintons for decades so it isn’t like it’s anything new. They did it and are doing it with President Obama. It isn’t even new to the political system in general and has been done since the very beginning.

    Another element is that media, a.k.a. as a free press, is biased and corrupt. Media is not to be believed except when it supports the correct messaging of the true believers. The solution was to create media that supported their beliefs. Media outside of the approved media that is not to be trusted or believed.

They said. We said.

    Are we ‘they’ or ‘we’ in this?

    Paranoia runs deep within the Evangelical Party Conservative Republican crowd both in religion and politics! They don’t trust government. They don’t trust traditional media. They don’t trust Democrats. They don’t trust socialists. They don’t trust science. They don’t trust education. They don’t trust immigrants. They don’t trust Muslims. They don’t trust liberals. Plots are everywhere. Hidden agendas are everywhere. God is on their side. Conspiracies abound. There’s a “Deep State” working against them.

    They have created an infrastructure that supports all their foundational beliefs listed above. Taken in total they don’t believe in our form of government or Democracy. This government is NOT their government as defined by them. The Jesus of the bible was wrong. They are busily creating a God and Government in their own crazed and craven image.

 Don’t like it? Don’t believe it!

    I learned growing up that if a person isn’t prepared for the answer then they shouldn’t ask the question. I’ve received answers to questions in life that I didn’t like. That didn’t mean that they weren’t true. Acknowledging hard truths allows us to continue or not as the case may be. I didn’t get to make up a new answer that made me feel better. Well, perhaps a little better. As in I broke up with you first!

 No fat generals.

    In the service I was present when our battalion commander asked my sergeant if he thought that he would make general. There were just 3 of us in the room and I was a Private. The Sergeant told him no because he was fat and there weren’t any fat generals. Based upon the reaction of the officer I could tell that he didn’t like the answer. He did go on a diet. He checked out the information that he was given and found it to be the truth. He had to acknowledge that he was overweight and do something about it if he wanted to achieve his goal.

 Strange bedfellows?

    President Trump has an interesting base. Some of the very first groups to throw in with him were the Alt Right et al people. By et al I mean the rest of the core group of Evangelicals, White Nationalists, White Supremacists, racists, Nazis, Confederates, KKK, anti-vaxxers, militias, secessionists, cough on people food lickers and then the Republican Party that had campaigned against him. They were all in. Still are. They recognize Trump for what he is and he is them. These are the very good armed citizens that stormed state capitols to answer the call of their leader. Now not all of his supporters fit into the above categories. Some of them are very good people.

 Messaging.

It’s the Dems. It’s Obama. It’s the Liberals. It’s the socialists. It’s the globalists. It’s the media. It’s hysteria. It’s a plot. The Dems want the economy to fail. It’s the Deep State. It’s the Chinese. It’s the immigrants. It’s the Muslims. They aren’t in charge. It’s the Governors.

They aren’t responsible. Everything great is them. They were doing an incredible job at complete containment. They’re doing a great job with 85,000 deaths and COVID-19 in the White House.

 Their messaging has nothing to do with the truth. Nothing.

Pa' lante

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez a.k.a. AOC. President Trump doesn’t like her. The Republican Jesters don’t like her. The Democratic Old Guard doesn’t like her because she unseated one of their good old boys in the House. The Evangelical Party doesn’t support her. Even fellow Democrat Nancy Pelosi doesn’t care for her politics. Corporations are funding her opposition. Racists don’t like her because she’s….well….brown. She has dangerous ideas!

    I like her! She’s a breath of fresh air! She’s hope!

    What’s not to like! Oh yes, OMG! She’s a democratic socialist! Boo! Hiiissss! Socialists are too much like Jesus when it comes to taking care of the poor. Jesus thought that the rich should give up their wealth to help those with less. That Jesus! He cray!

    Yes, from what I can see she is 100% dedicated to taking care of people; putting people first! What madness is this?! It gets worse. In addition to being a woman…she’s smart! She’s articulate! She speaks her mind! In complete sentences! She’s not a corporate shill! She isn’t an empty shirt. She’s progressive! She believes in science! Get this. She thinks that affordable housing is a basic human right. What next? Health care for everyone? Madness! It’s little wonder that Republicans are afraid of her. She has the crazy idea of believing in, “an America that works for all of us, not just a wealthy few.” Really. Cray!

    Did I mention that she’s young? (I’m not sure whether that’s good or not any more. This is no country for old people these days. The President along with Conservatives and Evangelicals in general have decided we’re expendable.) Anyway, AOC advocates for people of any age, any color, any race, any….you get the drift. I’m an old white guy and she doesn’t hold that against me. She hasn’t written me off as expendable either. She puts people first. What a concept. That might be a good principle to implement on a national level!

Comrades!

    It’s funny that the Head of the Republican Party, President Trump, the guy that not only asked for help from the Russians during his campaign, met with Russians, received help from the Russians, has loans from the Bank of China, admires Vladimir Putin, launders money for Russian Oligarchs through his real estate dealings and after giving a couple of trillion dollars in tax breaks to his rich friends is calling others socialists. Oh yes, one more, Senator McConnell got the sobriquet “Moscow Mitch” by taking care of his Russian benefactors. Seriously, these people should start calling each other comrade. President Trump should ask Putin if that would be okay the next time they meet up or chat late at night. After all the President loves Kim Jong Un. Yes he said that. Really. He’s quite the jokester. Unless he isn’t. Love can be fickle. I wonder if that made Putin jealous?

    Why do conservatives in general hate socialists so much? Well, in theory at least, for socialists the people come first. Gasp! That’s a dangerous thought for corporate hugging conservatives guided by the love of money. Even in the middle of a pandemic money comes first. Money before death because money is more important than death. The Evangelical Party is on board that agenda train as well. The average citizens of this nation are so much cannon fodder to them.

    Why provide rent and mortgage relief when trillions can be given to the wealthy?

    Fortunately we’re a supposedly freedom loving Republic and democratic socialists can run for office! Cray! I know, amiright? What next? A philandering lawsuit loving cheating multiple married lying TV reality star as President? Oh yeah. Well, at least he isn’t a socialist. Ask any of his rich friends.

 Free to live. Free to die. Free to be poor.

    Why don’t the poor participate more in the political process? The simple answer is that it hasn’t worked for them. Capitalism has NOT worked for them. With each passing year the difference between the haves and the have nots grows greater.

    I’ve mentioned this before but it bears repeating. We have 40 million people in this country living in poverty. Year after year. Decade after decade. Generational poverty. Occasionally the poverty line or how poverty is determined changes but the number of people living in poverty continues. Tens of millions more live just above the poverty demarcation line. The homeless population grows larger with each passing year. Getting sick and dying is a way of life. Subsistence living is a way of life.

    A lot of us, not just AOC, believe that all Americans should have health care NOT just the wealthy. Why are we the only major industrialized nation that doesn’t have health care for everyone? Now the right wing Evangelical Conservative Republican Jesters that have health care don’t believe that all Americans should have health care. Trump was just joking when he said that he had something even better to replace the Affordable Care Act. That jokester!

    Whether we have Republicans or Democrats in charge the numbers stay relatively unchanged; their status just changed by degrees that are barely noticeable in the day to day grind of life. Perhaps Democrats should consider being best by being more than just a little different in objectives. Their compromises keep making the wealthy more powerful.

    With each passing year life becomes harder for what’s left of what we call the middle class. It gets harder to make ends meet. Both members of a household usually have to work. Single citizens have a harder time living on one income. Two people making minimum wage jobs struggle just to pay for a place to live.

 Back in the day.

    I come from a time when the head of the household was often the only wage earner. My mom did take in laundry to do for other people. In later years Dad worked a part time job too for extra cash and to get ahead. That changed when he had one heart attack too many and could no longer work in the factory.

    Dad had worked all his life. He started out in the coal fields. He had to do something. So he and mom took what little money they could scrape together and bought a small laundry. Dad was a mechanic and learned how to work on all the machines in there. He could work at his own speed and when his heart would act up he would stop until it passed and then go back to work. I would open up the place when I delivered papers at around four in the morning. We would also help clean the place. Eventually I got a better job working in a factory. Like AOC I pitched in and helped support my mom and dad until I joined the Army. Having your parents cry simply because you give them money is a truly humbling experience.

    Their way of life slowly went away. Too many working people started living long enough to retire so the suits running government raised the retirement age. People spend their lives paying into Social Security and then die either before they retire or shortly thereafter. When I retired the average number of retirement checks paid out by the company that I worked for was 18. On average people only lived 18 months after they retired. Now companies don’t even offer pensions. Pensions cut into profits.

 Entitled rich.

    The government of the rich, by the rich and for the rich has become the new company store. They control the jobs. They control the market. They pay off both sides of the government. They own the expensive lawyers. They are the banks. They are the health care industry. They are the insurance companies. They are the owners. Their wealth entitles them.

    If you’ve listened to AOC she disagrees with their world view that the rich come first. She has the outrageous idea that working people and the poor should come first. It’s almost as if socialist ideas are Christian.

 We the wealthy of the United States…

    In theory we live in a Republic NOT a democracy. Or rather vestiges of democracy remain. Democracy is an element of our Republic. The President isn’t elected by a popular vote of the people by Constitutional design. The President is elected by the Electoral College. This is how 2 Republicans have become President in spite of the popular vote. See a pattern?

 The rich won.

    In practicality what we have now more closely resembles an Oligarchy. We have a President that made millions servicing Russian Oligarchs.

Ω  The majority of wealth is concentrated in the top few percentage points of the nation’s population.

Ω  Half of Congress are millionaires or multi-millionaires. Half.

Ω  The President is a Billionaire.

Ω  Another billionaire is on his cabinet or is it two?

    Millionaires, multi-millionaires and billionaires are doing great! Well, I have to amend that statement. They were doing great right up until the pandemic. Pandemics cut into profit. Pandemics cut into everything. Pandemics make people die. Who’s dying? Predominantly old people followed by people of color and then a statistical spread from there. There will be additional numbers and breakdowns after this is finally over in a year or so. Could be even longer. The rich never stopped being rich. They may be less rich but they’ll still be rich. They’ll have access to tests. They have health insurance. They have people to test others to ensure that they can be catered to safely.

 Take one for the rich.

    They need the poor. They need the working class. They need the service industry. That’s why it’s real important for them to get us back to work whether it’s safe or not. Instead of giving trillions to the rich Congress could have made sure that the poor and working class had food and relief from rent and mortgage payments. Republicans were outraged at that thought. They want people desperate for money. They want people with no choice other than to go back to work.

    The number of people living in poverty will increase. That’s right. There is no cushion for them. Millions more will find themselves closer to the financial precipice. A lot of working people won’t recover from this.

    When there gets to be too much wealth disparity; too great a difference between the haves and the have nots revolution becomes an all too real possibility. The Republican Russians would like that as long as they end up being the ones in charge. Silly Russian Republicans.

 Make a difference.

    Those who are supposed to represent us could make a difference. A real difference.

    Let’s try and get back to making this a government of the people.

    Living is better than being dead. If a person goes back to work and dies is their family better off? Dead people don’t pay rent, buy gas or buy anything.

    There’s hope. In this life. In this time.

 There’s hope for the living.

pa' lante