Honor the Innocent Victims of the War

And the people who fight it honorably

Appetizers


Maybe Skip this Appetizer Platter. It’s very unappetizing. It’s what got served to a Texas prison last week.

>>“Reality told me that the toilets stopped working because there wasn’t any water and things got disgusting really fast,” said Brittany Winner, who spoke with her sister Reality by video chat. “Some inmates put on rubber gloves to scoop out the shit and throw it away to get rid of it because of the smell. <<

Really, you need to read the report. You already got the disgusting part. I agree with the article’s main point: Reality Winner should be pardoned right away. She intended no harm to the country. But I also think that every woman in the unit where that occured should have their cases reviewed by the president’s staff. There may be others deserving of a pardon too. And the third thing: there’s at least two ICE facilities in Texas.Remember where families remain separated and kids were in cages?

How did they fare in the massive energy grid screwup? Are they okay? Has any journalist or elected official checked on them? All detainees have human rights recognized globally and we have to insist that they’re protected properly. If ICE officials can’t guarantee that, we should release them all. That same standard applies to VA facilities, military barracks and prisons. Because this is America. $0

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Unlimited Margarine Nuggets, braised to Imperfection. By the end of tomorrow or early Tuesday, US Covid fatalities will officially surpass 500,000. More have died than in World War 1, World War 2, and Vietnam. COMBINED.

More than 28 million Americans have been officially defined as infected over the past year. Far more than the only two countries with populations far, far bigger than ours. China and India have 2.82 billion people. We have 331,000. We have One-Ninth as many people as those two together have. We have three times as many deaths as those two COMBINED.

This isn’t a math exercise. This is the stark reality of what happens when useful and effective pandemic responses get weaponized and turned into a partisan fight. It took the results of multiple governors’ and a president’s refusals to do the right things for American citizens. Covid didn’t care who was Republican, Democrat or Independent. It took the lives of all political groups. Some states never mandated the wearing of masks. Some shutdown too late or reopened early, basing their decisions on what Trump advised instead of the scientists.

And Trump even admitted he was deliberately downplaying the risks in the first two months. He admitted he lied. After that, he continually underestimated the deadly results. Only the scientists were close. Along with people steadily reporting on the pandemic like myself. Deliberate dishonesty combined with deliberate division and unintended incompetence had more influence than the experts and dedicated observers & reporters did. Our war was with the virus, not against each other. Too many Americans appear to have difficulty understanding what a war is. There’s clearly a need for remedial education on that.

Nobody ‘owned’ the liberals. Nobody owned the conservatives or even tried to. Some folks just surrendered to Covid. Florida’s governor fired the programmer who built the state web site tracking those numbers. At times, it appeared their numbers of infected and dead were being delayed or manipulated after she was fired. That governor was among the last to close down and first to reopen his state. Florida has the third most infected people in the country, more than New York.

In violation of federal flag rules he’s ordered the flags to be at half mast for an unelected civilian who’s not in the armed forces nor served as a first responder.

There have been no flags lowered nor memorial services for the nearly 30,000 Floridians who lost their lives in the War Against Covid. Governor DeSantis continues to fight a one-sided war and all Floridians are paying for his deadly choices. What did Rush Limbaugh ever contribute to the country that spared a single life?

It doesn’t take medical science to demonstrate how wrong that is. It takes common sense and ordinary old fashioned decency. It takes respect for human lives, for things like honesty, courtesy and kindness. Governor DeSantis thinks 30,000 dead Floridian lives are the ante for some sort of political game.

That game’s over. For the six weeks since President Trump went quiet, since two days after the Capitol riot, the Covid numbers have gone down further and faster than at any other point in the past year. Why?

After holiday weekends of Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day and finally, Thanksgiving, where the shocking numbers were just too evident for people to ignore any more, more Americans masked up and followed the protocols at Christmas. Almost all GOP political rallies and superspreader events ceased in December.

And after the Capitol riots, where at least 30,000 of Trump’s most ardent supporters showed up, many of them are even masked up now.

Not to protect fellow Americans but to avoid being identified and turned in to the FBI.

Meanwhile, because Trump refused to acknowledge his defeat, has had no contact with the new president, with the shared information of a normal transition denied till the last minute, Biden’s still busy getting his cabinet and key officials approved by Congress. Trump never faced these obstacles and extra burdens. He inherited a roaring economy and though he’s long complained that Obama and Biden and Hillary and liberals and the Deep State and Black Women and the FBI and the CIA and Muslims and Mexicans and Hollywood and a porn star and the IRS and a kneeling Black quarterback were picking on him, and President Obama met with him to begin that transition on November 10, 2016, just two days after the election.

Biden’s team will still be getting confirmed in March. And he inherited an economy in trouble, a terribly high unemployment rate, a pandemic whose peak daily death rate occurred just 8 days before he was inaugurated, and a nation reeling in shock because of the riot. For nearly 5 weeks, President Biden has built out a national rollout of the vaccines on top of a barebones skeleton of a plan he inherited. He’s accelerated the decline of covid to a record setting rate purchased double the amounts of vaccine that Trump purchased, coordinated with governors and mayors to get the vaccine in Americans arms and didn’t play party favorites in doing so.

Congressional GOP resistance continues even though polls keep showing increasing support from voting Americans for Biden’s rescue plan features. Parts of his plan even have majority approval from Republican voters, now. Support that wasn’t there a month ago at his inauguration.

Biden has largely tried to remain above the political fray, only issuing a couple of criticisms in a month. Trump typically had issued more criticisms than that by 9 am on nearly every day over 4 years. Americans are readjusting to a President who works steadily instead of playing games.

Biden doesn’t require praise or deification. He seems pretty low drama and doesn’t compulsively attack people who disagree with him. His adult children aren’t tossing out attacks either. I don’t agree with every choice Biden makes and I don’t fear publicizing my critiques. I remain committed to pushing for a more equal and just country, no matter who holds the power reins.

If an elected official flies to places where travel advisories tell us to avoid due to the pandemic risks, I’ll criticize any Democrat or any Republican for that That’s not playing games. I’m not trying to own anyone. I fully expect some Republicans will get some things right, that I’ll make an occasional mistake and I don’t fear admitting and correcting my mistakes. I don’t buy into the claim that admitting an error makes you weaker or makes you seem weaker. I have to be able to live with my own conscience, not yours.

Rush Limbaugh was not a good person nor did he improve this country in any way ever. I’m sure many of the 30,000 dead Floridians deserved greater honor and respect than Governor DeSantis did or will ever do.

Texans deserved better than they got last week, too. Even Republican Texans deserved better than that mess. I think more Republicans in both states are tiring of dishonesty, deceit, endless games and excuses, just as they did in Arizona and Georgia.

I hope everyone can sort through the noise and sometimes confusion about vaccines. They are incredibly safe and useful and effective. I’ll wait my turn but I’m super eager to get mine. The 1918 flu pandemic killed more people in a year because it was just as deadly for young children as it was for seniors. Americans didn’t have this level of incompetence driving it. They didn’t have advanced medical and technology to get a vaccine out so rapidly. Our numbers reached half a million this time despite numerous advantages.

I mourn every single one of those losses and the people and families suffering still. But I feel great relief at how steep and swift this chart is displaying. For us survivors, there’s finally a sense that we can and will win this war. Without starting an unnecessary one.

Political fights are inevitable, but they should never play deadly games with people’s lives.

Graph from NY Times with a green box and one obvious note added by me (3 days etc). We appear to be headed for October levels by next week.

I’ve cancelled this menu. The messages are more important than any commitment to a specific presentation structure. There’s no appetizers, entrees or desserts today, just a few ideas and reports of progress to chew on.

But if you’d like a little good music or a reminder of what YOU can do, try this one on for size.