I’ll vote for Biden – somewhat begrudgingly, but at least I know he has the experience, intelligence, and courage to surround himself with good people, good legislators, good policy writers, and people who will tell him where he might be going wrong. I trust his VP pick, Harris, and look forward to her stepping in when the time comes that she needs to. Honestly, I’d prefer her for President. I don’t think Biden will be in the seat for long.
So often fortunes inside of fortune cookies actually come across as advice, proverbs, or idioms. Not fortunes at all.
This was an actual fortune. And in reflection, it was accurate!
See, it was only 10 days after posting this that I photographed Cortney one-on-one for the first time. New headshots. But from there our relationship grew quickly. Five years later, and she is still the refreshing change I was seeking, and that apparently the fortune cooking sent my way?
Maybe? Whatever – I’m not sure I ever had a fortune cookie that was this accurate, and timely.
Right now there are 861,266 confirmed cases of COVID in the United States. The death toll was just updated to 48,240. Taking into account, recovered, and deaths, currently there are 733,540 open cases. With the US current fatality rate of 5.55%, that’s another 40,345 deaths pending. Unfortunately we’re still seeing about 30,000 new cases per day with a slight decline from the peak of just over 31,000 per day. That means in a weeks time, if we have simply flattened the curve, there will be another 210,000 cases.
Meanwhile the numbers in Europe have been on a steady decline. Since April 12th, France has only seen an increase of 7,000 deaths. Spain 5,000, Italy 6,000 and Germany less than 2,500. The Unites States: over 20,000.
So here is your lesson n reading data: The numbers themselves only tell you a fraction of the story. Over 20,000 deaths in the last 10 days, with the potential pace of another 40,000 over the next week is NOT handling this well, and a WHOLE LOT of that responsibility falls on Trump, his decisions, and his administration.
Oh, and one other factor for you especially dimwitted Trump supporting morons; one of the biggest factors for the quick spread of a pandemic is population density. That is why in the United States you see the highest case rates in major urban areas.
The total land area of the United States is 3,797,000 square miles. The combines land area of Italy, France, Spain, Germany and the UK: 791,900 square miles. So 4 million fewer people in 3,000,000 fewer square miles of land to live in. But please, ignore the factors that don’t fit with your narrative, or just keep failing to understand science while you wave your confederate flags, Nazi emblems, and protest signs with six misspellings because you’ve been inconvenienced temporarily.
Yes, indeed, you can SEE this fucking virus. We don’t need to suspend all disbelief to pretend it is real. Unlike your god who you need to pretend he is in every sunset (but just the pretty ones, not the cloudy day sunsets where it just goes dark), or every baby’s smile (we know how babies are made now too – it’s a fucking biochemical reaction). So if that’s your response to being able to see your god, you’re fucking grasping at straws.
This is the same stupid joke as the “you can’t see your brain either.” Well, you could. MRI, CAT Scan, they’ll show you your brain. The illogical religious arguments are based on the same level of being illogical that has given rise to criminal religions such as christianity. After all, the ONLY difference between a religion, and a cult is how many people follow it. The concepts, and tenants are no less batshit crazy whether you believe in Jesus, Alien Spirits from Volcanoes, or that guy who plays guitar, and fucks all the women is the messiah.
When all this is over, and there’s thousands of surplus ventilators are being sold off, I’m buying one. As long as stupid people keep voting republican our taxes are never going to be used to provide services to the population, so I might as well be prepared for the next pandemic. Because you know, as long as stupid people keep voting republican, we’re not going to be prepared as a nation for the next one.
“nobody knew what they were getting when we the people elected blah blah blah…”
Yeah, no one knew. Unless you actually paid attention to how scummy he’s always been. Unless you noticed his attempts to buy an NFL franchise, and the league completely shunning him. Unless you realized he took every chance he could get to be on TV, in interviews, and in as much of the spotlight as possible – like that stint with the WWF? Should have changed their name to WTF during that time. Or how about his bankruptcies, all the lawsuits for fraud against him; fuck, he was settling a $75M fraud lawsuit for his fake university WHEN a minority of voters voted for him. That wasn’t a “we the people” election. “We the people” were looking elsewhere, en mass. Read the goddamn fucking data if you don’t get this yet, and keep having to throw out this “We the people” bullshit like it’s going to change the fact he lost the popular vote by millions. I knew what we would be getting, and that’s why I didn’t vote for this huckster.
Yesterday was fun. Since everything is cancelled we continued our home improvement projects, obviously, but on Saturday mornings I have my kids with me, so we took a jaunt to Tifft Farms Nature Preserve for a little social distancing hike around, and to have a little self-initiated cleanup of nature. It was quiet, and peaceful. There were others out there, but sparse enough of visitors that distancing wasn’t an issue. We started in the open fields, picking up wind blown plastic bags, wrappers, and packaging materials, but as we hiked further into the park, we reached an area that was obviously build up on land fill. The trash became a whole lot of broken bottles, antiques often. We found many shoe soles, a stack of marketing signs on thin aluminum, apparently for a product called Car Stairs. Industrial waste, construction waste, even huge chunks of old industrial slag. We threw out what we figured was appropriate, and filled a bag with about 15 pounds of waste.
Next week, we’ll choose a different park. Hopefully it will also be devoid of people. Honestly, I usually hope for that every time I go hiking; having a shutdown is never needed for me to want to distance myself from others in nature.
“HOW CAN I EXPECT MY KIDS TO RESPECT WOMEN IF THIS IS WHAT THEY’RE EXPOSED TO DURING THE SUPERBOWL?!?!?”
Here’s a thought: grow a pair, and actually be a parent. You think this was bad? What do you think images of wars, mass shootings, police brutality, domestic abuse, kids in cages, and all the rest of the violence, and inhumanity they’re exposed to do? Better yet, examine your own fucking behavior, and state honestly if YOU are setting the best example for them as a parent? When is the last time you sat down, and truly discussed the good, and bad going on in THEIR lives? Probably never for the majority of parents, right? How about the football game itself? Think they’re learning solid life lessons while watching a safety targeting the head of a wide receiver over the middle, and being congratulated for a great hit while his opponent lies on the turf barely conscious? Let’s throw all of this into perspective, and put a magnifying glass to everything you allow into their lives as you cast your judging eye on a female performer because she’s dancing, and you can see her midsection.
And as I said to someone else, my kids are exposed to the fraudulent, deceitful, and abusive fantasy world of organized religions on a daily basis. Everything from the “pray for” memes, to people on TV, like Paula White yelling for satanic pregnancies to miscarry, and news coverage of preachers shouting about how every other person but themselves are going to go to hell, and of course the shouldn’t be legislative debates but still somehow are because we STILL let christianity put their devious little stubby fingers into government. Debates such as abortion legislation, or women’s healthcare rights, or religion in school, or somehow now, our taxes going to fund private, untaxed religion (but only christian) based schools?
Despite this, they’re still atheists. WHOA! Whaddaya know, good parenting done right leads the way even if they’re exposed to all that bullshit.
Yes, indeed, my little snowflake. No one is saying “free.” The majority of Americans want these things – it’s isn’t just small radicalized pockets of progressives. We realize these programs cost money; the government collects plenty from us to cover the programs, we just keep hearing about how they’re not affordable, while wars, tax-cuts for the wealthy, and bail-outs to covers shitty (Republican!) economic policies are never questioned as to their cost. Spend our taxes on the things that will benefit the tax payers. I’m sorry your feeble, simple mind can’t understand that people want their taxes to benefit them.
By far, the people who complain the most, and about the most trivial, nonsensical things are Conservatives/Republicans/The Religious Right.
While they sit back, and call others “snowflakes” for things like, not wanting to be shot while in school, or not wanting the police to kill you during a routine arrest (often a BS arrest), or things like justice, and civil rights, those on the other side worry about coffee cups not being Christmassy enough, religious symbols not being allowed on public (tax funded) buildings, and scream about their faux persecution in the face of others demanding equal rights. They live on socialist ideals, and taxes, yet complain the policies they don’t want are all socialist, and therefore evil. They stump over free-market ideals, but when the free-market puts them in their place they complain they’re being discriminated against.
It’s a shopping list covering every aisle of hypocrisy, and irony when you think about it.