700,000 AND COUNTING
It is hard to believe that less than 10 months has elapsed since I wrote about this and now 300,000 more people have died of COVID-19.
Although the vaccine is available for everyone who wishes it in the United States, we continue to lag behind 77 other countries in the rates of vaccination per capita. The rate for fully vaccinated people in the US is 55%. We have seen and read, and possibly participated in programs that pay to get vaccinated but even being the richest nation in the world, money doesn’t keep us safe from COVID-19 deaths.
Where I live some teachers and health care workers are protesting the mandates their workplace or public officials have placed on them to receive vaccines. When I was hospitalized in August there were health care workers on the floor bad-mouthing the vaccines. There were patients who heard them and spoke among themselves that these health care workers must know something the public does not. I found it disturbing that a person trained in the science of health, would not believe the science that blessed the vaccines. The emergency approvals that existed to deliver the vaccine to the public early have been made permanent by the FDA.
As protestors continue to bring their concerns for personal freedom to the courts, they have lost the battle to eliminate the mandates. A civilized educated populace demands that we put public health concerns over the individual freedom that protestors are claiming. You are certainly free not to get the vaccine, but you might have to change your job, be refused service inside a restaurant, be banned from the gym and other places where you might want to go. Some have called this segregation; it is not. This is a democracy taking care of its citizens.
400,000 AND COUNTING
Every so often the world turns upside down. Most of the time you survive the “upside” down. Unfortunately the upside down that happened in 2016 didn’t work out that way for many.
The Joe Biden Presidential Inaugural Committee invited cities and towns across the nation to participate in a lighting ceremony on Tuesday January 19 at 5:30 p.m. to memorialize those who have died from Covid-19. Although the dying is not over, President-Elect Biden understands the need to remember the immensity of what has happened in this country during the pandemic of 2020. Unfortunately this probably will not be the last memorial.
Also fitting is that this memorial happens on the last full day of the presidency of Donald Trump. The pandemic was not caused by Trump. The pandemic was caused by a virus and they are found wherever there is life. Virus events though, are rare–we were unlucky to have an incompetent, arrogant man as president during this time.
A man with no experience in governing was elected in 2016 because people wanted to shake the system up. Little did they know that his incompetence would cause the United States to have the largest number of deaths in the world from Covid-19. Beginning in January 2020 the president played the odds. His driving focus was keeping the economy purring and the stock market up so that he could win re-election. He told us many times how everything was under control and this virus would go away. He used the word hoax and magic; he embraced theories of madness like disinfectants could play a role in tackling an infection caused by the virus. But still the virus spread. He started using his daily Covid-19 public addresses to talk about outlandish conspiracy theories and his “I heard from someone” methods to keep the virus away. What he didn’t do was vigorously support a testing strategy, mandate masks, use the Defense Production Act to manufacture PPE, stop all travel into this country or take heed from the scientists at the Center for Disease Control [CDC] or the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)–although he did manage to soil their reputations. He did not distance; he held political rallies calling thousands of his supporters to join him, not once requiring them to wear masks. He derided state governors who enacted mandates and shut down their economies. He even called for the “liberation of Michigan” from mandates put in by their governor to curb the spread in that state. Trump promoted no federal action to mandate any safety measures that would have greatly curtailed the spread of the virus. He always sent mixed messages by his action, or in most cases his inaction.
We are the richest most powerful country in the world but have tallied more deaths than any other country. That is gross incompetence in a country with esteemed scientific centers built to help in such situations. The most powerful man in the world decided his chance for re-election might be harmed by the pandemic or actions taken to stem its spread, but never for a moment caring about the lives being lost. He ignored it.
I heard Vice President Pence mention that this administration did not get us involved in a war, but for sure the Trump legacy will always be draped in the cloak of death–400,000 and counting. I pray for those souls to rest in peace and for this country to heal from the stain of his ignorance.
KENOSHA, WI
There were 170 people arrested only 140 lived in the state of Wisconsin.
There was BLM protest in Kenosha because the police shot a black man 7 times in the back while he was getting in his car to check on his children.
People are protesting his assault. They are demanding accountability for this man’s injury. He is paralyzed from the waist down.
Kyle Rittenhouse who is sitting in the neighboring state of Illinois decides he will go to Kenosha. Why does he go? To protest the shooting of the black man–no, he goes to protest the protesters. He gets a gun. He shoots a protestor in the street. Another man runs after him. He tackles him to the ground {after all this man just killed another man for no apparent reason other than he was a protester]. At that point his gun goes off again and kills a second person. Kyle Rittenhouse is an agitator–he has no reason to go to Kenosha other than cause chaos. He chooses violence in something that has nothing to do with him.
BAD APPLES AND EVIL MEN
We’ve been told by every police commissioner in the US that there are only a few bad apples on our police force. They don’t represent the men in blue who protect you every day. Well sure they protect me, I am a white middle class woman with privilege. They were trained to protect me. But how were they trained to treat persons of color.
Cops carry arrogance and violence to communities of color. Bad cops are not like bad apples — they are men — evil men. They are arrogant and violent; they thrive on the power of their position; they are not fearful. When the sun shines on them they still have no fear. They do not go dark. An evil man puts you in a chokehold and you will beg for your breath. The evil man will have groupies who watch [only with very slight intimidation]. The evil man will hear your cries “I can’t breathe”; the groupies will hear you, but they will do nothing. They will watch you choking until your last breathe.
We are not talking about fucking bad apples here. Bad apples are rotten; but bad cops are evil.
Violence is reprehensible for a police force. Monsters with guns and bats and tasers and handcuffs. The evil man knows he might not need any of those tools [those tools don’t protect me; they protect him.] A simple chokehold will do and possibly a knee on your neck–it is easy.
Bad rotten apples don’t indicate a systemic problem in our society–black people being killed by the police in this country indicate the systemic problem. Accountability is approached with great hesitation–oh, we don’t want to offend all police officers. There are only a few bad apples.
what trump did for kim jong un
“I was really tough and so was he, and we went back and forth . . . And then we fell in love, OK? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.” –Donald Trump, September 2018
Trump applauded Kim Jong Un and said he was “very smart” for calling former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden “a low IQ individual.” –Donald Trump May 2019
We have a President who stands on foreign soil and, as he cavorts with dictators, praises them for insulting American politicians and our democratic systems.
Kim Jong Un is a vicious dictator who has
- starved and tortured millions of his own people
- committed crimes against humanity
- tortured and jailed an American student Otto Warmbier who died a week after being released from North Korean with massive brain trauma
Donald Trump has provided Kim Jong Un with cover and has legitimized him by his comments. Kim now travels freely to other countries with little fear of paying for his crimes.
“I was really tough and so was he, and we went back and forth . . . And then we fell in love, OK? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.” –Donald Trump, September 2018
Trump applauded Kim Jong Un and said he was “very smart” for calling former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden “a low IQ individual.” –Donald Trump May 2019
We have a President who stands on foreign soil and, as he cavorts with dictators, praises them for insulting American politicians and our democratic systems.
Kim Jong Un is a vicious dictator who has
- starved and tortured millions of his own people
- committed crimes against humanity
- tortured and jailed an American student Otto Warmbier who died a week after being released from North Korean with massive brain trauma
Donald Trump has provided Kim Jong Un with cover and has legitimized him by his comments. Kim now travels freely to other countries with little fear of paying for his crimes.
“I was really tough and so was he, and we went back and forth . . . And then we fell in love, OK? No, really, he wrote me beautiful letters, and they’re great letters. We fell in love.” –Donald Trump, September 2018
Trump applauded Kim Jong Un and said he was “very smart” for calling former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden “a low IQ individual.” –Donald Trump May 2019
We have a President who stands on foreign soil and, as he cavorts with dictators, praises them for insulting American politicians and our democratic systems.
Kim Jong Un is a vicious dictator who has
- starved and tortured millions of his own people
- committed crimes against humanity
- tortured and jailed an American student Otto Warmbier who died a week after being released from North Korean with massive brain trauma
Donald Trump has provided Kim Jong Un with cover and has legitimized him by his comments. Kim now travels freely to other countries with little fear of paying for his crimes.
GANGSTERS IN THE WHITE HOUSE
I listened to Rudy Giuliano in an interview and I wondered if I were watching The Godfather or President Trump’s lawyer. Giuliano’s explanation of what he does for his clients and what Cohen did for Trump was absolutely surreal. It gave new meaning to the word “retainer” that you might pay your lawyer monthly to keep your “dirty” tales secret. Giuliano stated that he did this for his clients many times—“this” being hush money. By Giuliano’s words “he [Cohen] made it go away, he did his job.” Gangster stuff in addition to incompetence.
THE RIGHT TO CHOOSE
I detest when people say to me “just get over it.” Trump is president and there is nothing you can do about it now. Some say “don’t worry they can’t accomplish anything in four years. There is not enough time.”
Well 10 months in and I’m here to say the current administration has been working furiously to change the landscape of the country. The landscape is the religious right’s landscape. It is the narrow slice of America that thinks Christians are discriminated against. It is the narrow slice of Americans who think immigrants are our enemy. It is the narrow slice of America that are racists out of fear of being the minority. Their world has been turned upside down by the laws passed in the 70s 80s and 90s. The right to choice, the right to marry, the right to be the gender that distinguishes you as male, female or neither. Although I would think these laws are our unalienable rights as humans, the Right believes they have some higher calling from God to align everyone to their world view.
I was raised a Catholic and still practice my faith. I have quandaries at times with messaging of the Church, but overall I would rather be a Catholic than an atheist or other. It is my spiritual comfort zone and I haven’t found any of Jesus’ teachings to be offensive. I might find the Church interpretation offensive, but not His words. I think the Pope Francis has been a remarkable spokesperson for Jesus. I think he has revolutionized Jesus’ words and brought the basic message of love of neighbor to the masses. Whether the Church’s hierarchy can understand Pope Francis’ faith and mission is unknown yet. I do see some differences in the churches as the struggle through the changes of the times and the messaging.
I have not had an abortion—and I am grateful that I have not had to make that decision. I simply believe that the issue has nothing to do with the government and should not be legislated in any way. We have a Supreme Court decision that upholds a women’s right to make that decision. I am hard pressed to believe that any woman making a decision about abortion takes it lightly. Every person carrying a fetus understands the biological context of the event. It is not about killing fetuses, it is about the living of life. It is the different paths that everyone takes to provide solace for themselves. We all have a brain and a soul; we all have the ability to make decisions for ourselves. We have the right to choose our path. Ultimately, we are responsible for our actions. We are not responsible to make choices for others. My God gave me free will to make those decisions and I am ultimately responsible for all my decisions—even if there had been one about having an abortion.
Fun and Other Serious Matters 