This
post was originally published on April 7. In light of the attention
recently given to masks and Americans' responses to using them, we have
updated it.
In
his 1982 novel "The White Plague" Frank Herbert writes about a mad
scientist who develops a pathogen that kills women. Men are asymptomatic
carriers. His intended target is Ireland, because his wife and children
were killed by an IRA bomb. But viruses don't observe borders, and the
virus spreads rapidly and easily, passing through filters with ease. The
result is global gendercide.
COVID-19
is far less selective. Its victims include the rich and the poor, the
intelligent and the moronic, the religious and the atheistic, the royal
and the commoner. It is an equal opportunity pathogen, making no
distinction of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation. No one is
immune.
But
there is one class of Americans who choose to put themselves at
increased risk by willfully and deliberately ignoring the best medical
advice: There is no word for such behavior other than stupid.
In
a White House press briefing on April 3, the Great Pretender discussed
the CDC advisory that all Americans wear face masks when around others
to help stop the spread of the virus.
That was when a true leader would have pulled out a mask and put it on.
But
after repeatedly assuring Americans that wearing a mask is voluntary
because he doesn't want us to think the CDC has any authority, he went
on to say that he would not be wearing a mask because "I think wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers,
dictators, kings, queens. I don’t know, somehow I don’t see it for
myself."¹
Excuse me? There hasn't been a state visit to
the White House since before COVID-19 appeared. His excuses range from
silly to petty, like saying he "didn't want to give the press the
pleasure of seeing it"² during a visit to a Ford plant in Michigan.
As
Biden aide TJ Ducklo noted, "Presidents lead by example, and wearing a
mask helps protect others, . . . Donald Trump should try it, because his
failure to act early on
producing [personal protective equipment], on ramping up testing, and
implementing a coherent national response to this crisis has cost
thousands of Americans their lives."As if the Unspeakable Unmasked
cared.
Unfortunately, the Chucklehead-in-Chief's "do as
I say, not as I do" attitude will no doubt be adopted by those who
accept him as a role model, needlessly increasing the death toll. His
followers, who seem to tend to blind allegiance, either to the GOP or to
Trump, as opposed to independent thought and decision making, may well
be hit the hardest.
With COVID-19 we might finally have a cure for stupidity--dare we hope it begins at the top?
---Diogenes, 4/7/20; republished 5/28/20
¹https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-coronavirus-briefing-transcript-april-3-new-cdc-face-mask-recommendation
²https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-mocks-joe-biden-wear-face-mask-public/
³https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-mocks-joe-biden-wear-face-mask-public/
U.S. Constitution
The voice of the people
28 May 2020
26 May 2020
Gimme Shelter
We live in a county which the board of supervisors has declared a "Second Amendment Sanctuary."
What's happened to the Second Amendment that it needs sanctuary? Does it fear editing? Has it tired of being abused by Boobus Americanus Militante and gone into hiding? What on earth could have made a short paragraph seek shelter?
If I were the Second, I just might have taken it on the lam after all the misuse I had suffered at the hands of the gun lobby. And this nonsense about Second Amendment "sanctuaries" might have been the last straw.
Of all the subspecies of Boobus Americanus, the gun-toters who think they should be able to carry openly any firearm they can lift are by far the least evolved. Unable to make their case to most legislatures, they have brought their scare campaign to local and county governments, urging them to adopt a "sanctuary" measure to ensure the safety--or as they would probably say, the sanctity--of the Second Amendment.
This is without doubt one of the most ludicrous, absurd, harebrained, risible, ridiculous, foolish, silly, puerile, goofy, and preposterous schemes ever foisted on the American people. It's appalling that anyone, let alone elected officials, who are supposed to have some semblance of intelligence, could fall for it. As P. T. Barnum may have said, "There's a sucker born every minute."
First, the Second Amendment doesn't need a sanctuary. It is safely embedded in the root and base of our legal system, the Constitution. If it needs sanctuary from anyone, it is the leadership of the NRA, who have the gall to call themselves a civil rights organization, and have somehow brainwashed hundreds of thousands of Americans into the idea that their rights--well, specifically their rights to gun ownership--are in danger. Hogwash.
The NRA claims their rights are endangered because there is a move afoot to repeal the Second Amendment. No, there isn't. I have to seriously doubt that any of them have ever read the Constitution. If they had, they would have an idea just how difficult it is to repeal an amendment.
Since the first ten amendments were published in 1791, only one amendment has been repealed. That was the 18th, which established Prohibition, and getting it out of the way was a cakewalk. It wouldn't be so for any others, and especially not for those first ten, enshrined as the Bill of Rights.
The portion of the Second that the NRA sometimes speaks of as God-given is the sentence fragment that goes " . . . the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," written by James Madison, not the Almighty.
Rehearsing all the reasons why the NRA is wrong on this issue will be the content of another blog when I can get it down to manageable size. I started on the idea of sanctuary and got carried away.
Should your local government look into the idea of becoming a "sanctuary", please bring them to their senses and remind them that anything they pass in opposition to any existing state law will be quickly overturned.
The United States of America is the home and sanctuary of the Constitution and its Amendments, and it's all that is needed.
--- Diogenes, 5/26/20
What's happened to the Second Amendment that it needs sanctuary? Does it fear editing? Has it tired of being abused by Boobus Americanus Militante and gone into hiding? What on earth could have made a short paragraph seek shelter?
If I were the Second, I just might have taken it on the lam after all the misuse I had suffered at the hands of the gun lobby. And this nonsense about Second Amendment "sanctuaries" might have been the last straw.
Of all the subspecies of Boobus Americanus, the gun-toters who think they should be able to carry openly any firearm they can lift are by far the least evolved. Unable to make their case to most legislatures, they have brought their scare campaign to local and county governments, urging them to adopt a "sanctuary" measure to ensure the safety--or as they would probably say, the sanctity--of the Second Amendment.
This is without doubt one of the most ludicrous, absurd, harebrained, risible, ridiculous, foolish, silly, puerile, goofy, and preposterous schemes ever foisted on the American people. It's appalling that anyone, let alone elected officials, who are supposed to have some semblance of intelligence, could fall for it. As P. T. Barnum may have said, "There's a sucker born every minute."
First, the Second Amendment doesn't need a sanctuary. It is safely embedded in the root and base of our legal system, the Constitution. If it needs sanctuary from anyone, it is the leadership of the NRA, who have the gall to call themselves a civil rights organization, and have somehow brainwashed hundreds of thousands of Americans into the idea that their rights--well, specifically their rights to gun ownership--are in danger. Hogwash.
The NRA claims their rights are endangered because there is a move afoot to repeal the Second Amendment. No, there isn't. I have to seriously doubt that any of them have ever read the Constitution. If they had, they would have an idea just how difficult it is to repeal an amendment.
Since the first ten amendments were published in 1791, only one amendment has been repealed. That was the 18th, which established Prohibition, and getting it out of the way was a cakewalk. It wouldn't be so for any others, and especially not for those first ten, enshrined as the Bill of Rights.
The portion of the Second that the NRA sometimes speaks of as God-given is the sentence fragment that goes " . . . the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed," written by James Madison, not the Almighty.
Rehearsing all the reasons why the NRA is wrong on this issue will be the content of another blog when I can get it down to manageable size. I started on the idea of sanctuary and got carried away.
Should your local government look into the idea of becoming a "sanctuary", please bring them to their senses and remind them that anything they pass in opposition to any existing state law will be quickly overturned.
The United States of America is the home and sanctuary of the Constitution and its Amendments, and it's all that is needed.
--- Diogenes, 5/26/20
25 May 2020
Too Stupid To Live?
"Some people are too stupid to live" was a favorite saying of a former coworker.
It was the first thing that came to mind when I saw a photo this morning of people crowded into a swimming pool at a Lake of the Ozarks venue.
It's true that COVID-19 doesn't spread in water, as far as anyone yet knows. But in a pool environment people pop up snorting, spitting and blowing. That's a lot of potentially infected air moving around, and the chlorine in the water will have no effect on it.
"Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die" has been another phrase running around my head since the well-publicized opening of bars in Wisconsin on May 14. Just about a week later, Wisconsin saw a spike in new COVID-19 cases almost doubling the number before the opening, and the state's numbers remain high.¹
This Memorial Day weekend will be another key date to watch. The traditional opening day of summer is bringing Americans out in droves where weather permits. One can hardly blame them after months of isolation, but one can at least hope they wear masks and keep their social distance. But we know they won't.
People who seek out beaches, bars, and other crowd-oriented venues tend to be gregarious. It is not in their nature to stand apart. They like to congregate, mix, and mingle. That isn't a judgment, just a statement of fact. They can do so masked, but it's hard to drink wearing a mask, and dancing wouldn't be much fun, either. They also enjoy physical contact--the "rubbing elbows" effect. Despite best intentions, after trying to sip a drink around a mask, almost anyone would ditch the mask.
It's difficult not to have some sympathy for governors who are doing their best to manage this mess. Absent any guidance--indeed, with contrariness--from the alleged chief executive they have to rely on the best teams they can put together.
We're Americans, and we don't like being told we can't carry on as usual. As the saying goes, this is a free country. But we are not free to shout "Fire!" in a crowded auditorium or to bring a valise labeled "BOMB" onto an airliner, which I have actually seen.
We should be savvy enough to know that endangering public health is tantamount to endangering public safety. Adapting to a new status quo isn't easy. It's inconvenient and uncomfortable and weird in some cases, but we have to get it through our heads that there is a potentially deadly pathogen floating around everywhere, and it's easy to catch.
COVID-19 kills about 6% of the people who get it.² By contrast, the annual flu that the Pretender-in-Chief likes to compare it to kills only about 2/10 of one percent of its victims.³ That makes COVID-19 about 54 times more deadly than any garden variety flu.
If we can keep those numbers in mind, maybe we can be smart enough to live.
--- Diogenes, 5/25/20
¹ Disclaimer: The numbers in this paragraph are based on a New York Times database of Wisconsin cases. Other sources differ in the actual numbers but not in the shape of the curve. The spike may be coincidental and/or may be the result of factors other than tavern attendance.
² https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?
³ https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
It was the first thing that came to mind when I saw a photo this morning of people crowded into a swimming pool at a Lake of the Ozarks venue.
It's true that COVID-19 doesn't spread in water, as far as anyone yet knows. But in a pool environment people pop up snorting, spitting and blowing. That's a lot of potentially infected air moving around, and the chlorine in the water will have no effect on it.
"Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die" has been another phrase running around my head since the well-publicized opening of bars in Wisconsin on May 14. Just about a week later, Wisconsin saw a spike in new COVID-19 cases almost doubling the number before the opening, and the state's numbers remain high.¹
This Memorial Day weekend will be another key date to watch. The traditional opening day of summer is bringing Americans out in droves where weather permits. One can hardly blame them after months of isolation, but one can at least hope they wear masks and keep their social distance. But we know they won't.
People who seek out beaches, bars, and other crowd-oriented venues tend to be gregarious. It is not in their nature to stand apart. They like to congregate, mix, and mingle. That isn't a judgment, just a statement of fact. They can do so masked, but it's hard to drink wearing a mask, and dancing wouldn't be much fun, either. They also enjoy physical contact--the "rubbing elbows" effect. Despite best intentions, after trying to sip a drink around a mask, almost anyone would ditch the mask.
It's difficult not to have some sympathy for governors who are doing their best to manage this mess. Absent any guidance--indeed, with contrariness--from the alleged chief executive they have to rely on the best teams they can put together.
We're Americans, and we don't like being told we can't carry on as usual. As the saying goes, this is a free country. But we are not free to shout "Fire!" in a crowded auditorium or to bring a valise labeled "BOMB" onto an airliner, which I have actually seen.
We should be savvy enough to know that endangering public health is tantamount to endangering public safety. Adapting to a new status quo isn't easy. It's inconvenient and uncomfortable and weird in some cases, but we have to get it through our heads that there is a potentially deadly pathogen floating around everywhere, and it's easy to catch.
COVID-19 kills about 6% of the people who get it.² By contrast, the annual flu that the Pretender-in-Chief likes to compare it to kills only about 2/10 of one percent of its victims.³ That makes COVID-19 about 54 times more deadly than any garden variety flu.
If we can keep those numbers in mind, maybe we can be smart enough to live.
--- Diogenes, 5/25/20
¹ Disclaimer: The numbers in this paragraph are based on a New York Times database of Wisconsin cases. Other sources differ in the actual numbers but not in the shape of the curve. The spike may be coincidental and/or may be the result of factors other than tavern attendance.
² https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/?utm_campaign=homeAdvegas1?
³ https://www.cdc.gov/flu/about/burden/preliminary-in-season-estimates.htm
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