Assault Weapons and Covid-19

I have had the experience of firing a fully-automatic M-16 assault rifle on a military rifle range. It was fun, and not a bit scary. I have also had an M-16 pointed directly at my stomach at point-blank range, by a combat soldier with full intent to pull the trigger. It was NOT fun, and I pissed my pants. In both cases, the weapon was armed and ready to fire. The difference in my reaction was due entirely to which end of the weapon I was on.

A member of my family who had a very light case of Covid-19 has urged me not to be afraid of the disease, saying it’s no worse than a mild case of the flu. I’m quite sure he’s telling the truth--for him. A long-time friend of my wife sent her husband to the hospital for elective surgery, where he caught Covid-19 and died. She urges great caution for the disease. The fear factor, as with assault rifles, depends entirely on which end you are on.

President Trump caught the Corona Virus, received (and is still receiving) the best and most expensive treatment in the world, and is feeling fine. “Don’t be afraid of the virus,” he says. But for people like me, without access to Walter Reed Army Hospital and the White House Medical Unit, and with pre-existing conditions like high blood pressure and vein problems, fear is the only rational response to the pandemic. Like an assault rifle, it depends entirely on whether it’s pointed at you.

What does the Bible say?

 Proverbs 14 tells us how to vote in the coming election:

5 A faithful witness will not lie: but a false witness will utter lies. [In the last four years, President Trump has been caught in 18,000 false or misleading public statements, some repeated hundreds of times. No other public figure in American history even comes close.]

12 There is a way which seemeth right unto a man, but the end thereof are the ways of death. [More Americans have been killed by the Coronavirus in the last six months than in The Revolutionary War, The War of 1812, The Spanish-American War, The War With Mexico, All the Wars Against the Native Americans (including the Native Americans killed), The Korean War, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq. Together. It happened on President Trump’s watch.]

7 Go from the presence of a foolish man, when thou perceivest not in him the lips of knowledge. [President Trump has pretended to know more about epidemiology, pharmacology, medicine, meteorology, diplomacy, and Constitutional law than experts who have spent their lives studying these fields. Events have proven him wrong every single time.]

Setting the Fox to Guard the Hen House

Two years ago, Social Security was funded by an “untouchable” fund paid for by Social Security taxes levied on 100 million American workers, every year of their working lives. The fund was solvent. At midnight on the last day of the Congressional session, Congress voted to dump the fund into General Revenues, with bilateral support, thus stealing ALL the funds from Social Security, with a promise to repay the money “someday.” Unless it is repaid in the next six years, Social Security is going to run out of money.

The overwhelming majority of the Senators and Representatives who did this are still in office. The Senators you elect on November 3 will be the ones who have to fix the system they deliberately broke. Unless you vote them out of office, they will be the very same people who stole the money in the first place. Do you trust them with your retirement?

Senators serve for six years, with one third of them standing for re-election every two years. Representatives serve for only two years, and must face re-election at the end of every two year term. Theoretically, this makes them answerable to the will of the people for their recent actions. 

Seventy-nine percent of the current House members and sixty-six percent of the Senate are the very same people who took part in the theft of Social Security. In other words, if you re-elect them, you are literally setting the fox to guard the hen house.

Don’t re-elect the crooks who stole your money! While twenty percent of the Congress are actually new to the job, NONE of them are senators up for re-election this year. And the new Representatives HAVE DONE NOTHING to try to repair the damage. This November 3, SEND NO ONE BACK! They are all either part of the problem, or unwilling and unable to fix it. Send a message to America’s politicians that stealing from the people will not be tolerated. Speak out against corruption and incompetence. Send No One Back!

More than 20 million unemployed Americans are about to lose $600 a week. They need the money. They can’t find jobs. The  House passed a relief bill. But the Senate is leaving Washington for vacation. They could fix the problem, but they just don't care. This November, vote them ALL out of office! SEND NO ONE BACK!

Donald J. Trump--the all-time champion!

I don’t know if President Trump is the worst president in US history, but he’s certainly the worst in my lifetime. I’ve been following presidential politics since the Eisenhower/Stevenson election of 1956--sixteen elections. In the last week alone:

★ A “highly placed White House official” admitted that federal officers were sent to Portland  deliberately to stir up confrontation, in order to generate conservative click-bait.
★ The Department of Homeland Security announced it will not process DACA applications, in direct defiance of a federal court order, persuant to last month’s Supreme Court decision.
★ At the president’s insistence, funding for upgrades to the FBI headquarters building was included in the COVID-19 relief bill. This will prevent the building from being sold to a hotel chain that competes directly with Trump Hotels in Washington, DC.
To prevent such conflicts of interest, Presidential finances are handled by a “blind trust”. President Trump’s trust has only one trustee--President Donald J. Trump.
★ To back up his baseless COVID-19 claims, the president quoted a “noted doctor” who believes STDs are caused by dream sex with demons and witches, that vaccines make people lose their religion, and that many national leaders are reptilian space aliens in disguise.
★ In a news conference, the president admitted that he did not bring up the issue of Russian-paid bounties on dead US troops, when he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Before Trump, any of these actions would have been grounds for impeachment. Donald Trump committed all five in one week, and no one minds. Perhaps this is due to the deadening effect of his continual barrage of misinformation. Wikipedia, in the article, “Veracity of statements by Donald Trump,” quotes several scholars who state (in peer-reviewed journals!) that he has made over 20,000 false or misleading public statements in four years. If he knew they were false, he is the world champion liar of all time. If not, he’s the champion ignoramus. If he knew some were lies, but believed the rest, he is both the champion liar AND the champion ignoramus of all time. No other world leader in history has even come close.

Racism

“Every night in Basic Training, I got beat up by a big, Black bully.” is considered to be a racist statement, although it is the literal truth.
“Every night in Basic Training, I got to beat up a privileged little White boy. Black Power!” is not considered a racist statement.
Any statement involving race made by a white person is considered racist, regardless of the content, but no statement involving race made by a black person is racist, no matter how egregious.
“There were no Black students in my high school,” is racist, but, “There were no White students in my high school,” is not racist, because both statements are seen as expressions of White privilege. But the fact is, not all Whites are privileged, and not all Blacks are victims.
Black actors portraying historically White people are progressive, while White actors portraying Blacks, even fictional ones, are racists. Blacks who “passed” as White are commended for coming out, but Whites, who appear in blackface once, are damned for the rest of their lives.
We live in a profoundly racist society. If you are White, you are a racist by definition, but if you are Black, you cannot be a racist, no matter what you do or say. This is bullshit. The two most racist organizations in America today are the KKK and the NAACP. The differences between them are great. The KKK is criminal, violent, and secretive, while the NAACP is legal, open, and political. I greatly prefer the NAACP, even though I am White, because I detest violent, criminal bullies. But both organizations were specifically formed to advance the cause and power of one race over all others. In other words, they are racist.
There are NO neutral statements. “Every night in Basic Training I got beat up by a bully” seems to be neutral, since no race is involved. But when it is learned that the bully was Black and I am White, the statement becomes racist in retrospect, even though I was careful to exclude all such references, because Blacks have been beat up by Whites with impunity for centuries, and have not even been allowed to complain. So my statement of plain fact, with no judgement and no indication of race, becomes an historically racist statement. There is no way to describe or refer to race neutrally.
This limits my options for dialog with Black people. I can listen to them. That’s fine. But the moment I open my mouth, anything I say can and will be held against me. It is very hard to find a Black person who is willing to have an equal dialog with a White man. If I once had a Black girlfriend (which I did), it’s assumed it was I who broke up with her, and that I did it because she was Black. If I have a Black friend, it’s assumed I am acting out of White guilt. Jews, Chinese, and Native Americans can have friends of different races, and they’re just friends. Why not Blacks?
Please don’t bring up slavery. Jews (like me) were slaves long before Blacks, longer than Blacks, and much more recently than Blacks, and are still objects of racial persecution today, even by Blacks. The first slaves imported into America were NOT Black. They were Irish. Really. By the thousands. You don’t even hear about it today. Chinese and Native Americans were also enslaved, and even subjected to genocide, which is arguably worse than mere slavery. Yet neither the Irish, the Jews, the Chinese, nor the Native Americans see everything in light of their race. Only Blacks make neutral dialog with other races impossible. Why is that? Can someone please tell me?

The Holocaust of the Americans

“Over all, in a bit more than two months, the United States lost more Americans to the coronavirus than died over seven decades in the Korean, Vietnam, Persian Gulf, Afghanistan and Iraq Wars.”  --New York Times, May 13, 2020

Over the course of seventy years, the armies of four countries have been trying to kill Americans, but have not succeeded in killing as many as a simple virus killed in 68 days. Put another way, the virus has killed Americans 365 times faster than modern warfare.

Even in World War Two, over our six year involvement, we lost 416,800 troops, for an average of 11,600 in a 70 day period. Using the most conservative Coronavirus death statistics, the virus is still five times better at killing Americans than the Axis was.

Our most deadly war by far was the Civil War, which lasted four years, and killed, by the latest estimate, 750,000 Americans on both sides. Dividing this figure by 21, the number of 68 day periods in four years, we get an average of 35,714. Even using the most conservative figure of 80,000 Covid-19 deaths reported as of May 11, 2020, the virus is still almost three times better at killing Americans than we are at killing each other.

So, isn’t there a war or something that comes closer to the deadliness of Covid-19? Actually, there is. In 1941, with no fanfare, the Nazi government of Germany opened a big, new “concentration camp” at Auschwitz. Its purpose: the extermination of Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and others the Nazis deemed “undesirables”. Over the next four years, at least 1.1 million prisoners died there. During the camp’s operation, there were 21 periods of 68 days. Dividing 1,100,000 by 21, we get the camp’s average death rate for the same length of time that Americans have been dying of Covid-19.

If you do the math, you may be as surprised as I was. In the same time that Covid-19 has killed 80,000 Americans, the Nazis were only able to murder 52,381 people at Auschwitz. That’s right: the virus is 1.5 times deadlier than Auschwitz. The Holocaust of the Americans.

Is There an ADULT in the House?

To get COVID-19 tests to market as quickly as possible, FDA has waived  requirements for checking tests’ accuracy. As of April 13, only two have been checked:

20/20 BioResponse imports Chinese tests but has confirmed their performance in only sixty of ten thousand tests shipped.

FDA has authorized one COVID-19 antibody test, from US company Cellex, under emergency powers. A formal review is still pending.

That’s the good news. The bad news is, thousands of Internet test sellers are completely unregulated by any government agency.
Some falsely claim FDA approval.
Some don’t mention that they are NOT approved.
Some are counterfeits of legitimate tests. Laredo, TX received 2,500 likely counterfeits.
Some are completely worthless frauds.
And some are outright scams, where you don’t get anything for your money. Probably better than getting wrong results, though.

There’s no longer any way to distinguish the good, the bad, and the ugly.
Is there an ADULT in the house?

"I have a little list; they never will be missed!"

My apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan for the title of this post. Although we really need to get rid of ALL incumbents, here is my bipartisan list of politicians who most need to be voted out of office. They will NOT be missed! VOTE 'EM OUT!

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) Successfully blocked Federal support for election security despite known foreign election interference in the last election.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) Went back to work at the senate for ten days while awaiting results of his Coronavirus test (it was positive), thus exposing dozens of Senators needlessly.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) Single-handedly held up funds for Flint MI water purification. The architect of the Sequester.
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) Tried to oppose the Coronavirus support bill.
Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) Held up the Coronavirus support bill, while thousands died, by trying to include partisan projects like mandating emissions standards for airplanes--emissions standards which NASA scientists have not yet been able to meet, even experimentally.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) Led attempt to end US aid to Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. Known for repeated, public Anti-Semitic remarks.
Sen Bernie Sanders (D-VT) Proposed a package of socialist programs that if enacted would cost more than the entire US Gross National Product. Every. Single. Year. Forever.
Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NYC) Threatened to permanently close any churches or synagogues (but not mosques!) defying his temporary shut-down order, clearly violating First Amendment.
President Donald Trump. Sent a shipload of PPEs and ventilators to China, then accused New York’s governor of lying about needing them. Accused the nurses of America of black marketing face masks, while they were risking their lives every day re-using one-use masks! The only man, woman, or child in history ever caught in 1500 documented lies. In one three-month period.

Watch Out for Spin!

Why “spin” is important: here are two soldiers’ descriptions of their military service.

1. To avoid the draft during the Vietnam War, I enlisted for the easiest job in the US Army. I failed many tests in Basic Training, but passed my training to be a radar operator. I spent a year and a half in an air-conditioned building on Okinawa, never saw combat, then returned to the United States, where I finished my enlistment as a clerk and was twice cited for efficiency.

2. I did not wait to be drafted, but enlisted in the US Army during the Vietnam War. I volunteered for Special Forces, but despite high scores, I did not qualify. I passed my AIT with a perfect score, the first ever to do so. I spent eighteen months in southeast Asia. I cannot tell the details of what I did there, but I survived four suicide missions. I finished my enlistment as the best recruiter in the Army. I have received two Presidential Citations.

Would you believe BOTH statements are TRUE descriptions of MY military career? Only the spin is different. Here is a spin-free description:

3. I enlisted to avoid the draft. In Basic, I volunteered for many tests, in order to buy snacks from the snack truck, but deliberately failed them. One  was for Special Forces. In AIT, I “maxed” my radar course and was sent to Okinawa, an island near Vietnam, for eighteen months. My job there was classified. Four times, we stood off Russian bombers, using nukes that would have killed us too, if we had fired them. Fortunately, the Russians backed down. Back in the US, I became a re-enlistment clerk, and twice received the Presidential Citation for best recruiter in the US Army.

So, am I a hero? Or a wimp? Or both? You decide.