POST #914: Random Observations

Thank you, ma'am. The check is in the mail.

Out of razors

Well, here we are, folks! The last day of the month. Is it my imagination or did April of 2020 last for slightly over a decade-and-a-half? I was just wondering.

 

The following are a handful of unconnected and random thoughts that I've been brooding about (bitching about) in recent days.

 

1. He is trying to get us killed Part One

 

Donald Trump is talking about traveling to Arizona next week in order to hold one of his Nuremberg-style political rallies. How might I put this as gently and politely as possible....That is a mind-fuckingly stupid and irrational idea. Why would he openly suggest such an irresponsible thing at such a time as this. Why is he urging the states to open? He said the other day that he is ordering meat packing plants to reopen. Ordering??? Does this asshole think he's Adolf Hitler? I believe that he consciously wants large parts of the American public to die. Why? To create chaos at the behest of Vladimir Putin? To be able to declare a "state of emergency" in order to cancel the national election in November? Maybe I'm paranoid, but something smells rotten here.

 

2. He's Trying to get us killed Part Two

 

A couple of weeks ago, the super attendant of the West Point Military Academy (which is just down the road from where I live) ordered all of the cadets in the place to return to their homes across the land. Trump has just ordered all of them to be returned to the school so he can address their graduation in June. Again, this is a reckless and stupid idea during the worse pandemic in one-hundred and two years. Again, the question is screaming to be posed: why wound he encourage such dangerous behavior toward such large numbers of human beings? He doesn't have the power to order cities to reopen, but he can order military cadets to assemble in one place. WHY???

3. Bad Numbers

A few days ago the number of Americans killed since February by the coronavirus surpassed the number of Americans killed in Vietnam between the years 1956 and 1975. This is a depressing statistic any way you look at it. Just yesterday I was talking to a local funeral director who's been operating in the area since 1989. In fact my father's funeral in February of that year was one of his first. He told me that in the last twenty-four days he's provided twenty-one different funerals - a record, he told me. And bear in mind, he lives in a small town.
 
4. What is wrong with Mike Pence?

Had Trump been impeached earlier in the year, I was not relishing the dim possibility of a President Mike Pence. My one consolation was that, although a complete imbecile, at least he isn't certifiably insane. He cheerfully reminded the nation and the world of his complete imbecility the other day when he visited the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota and walked into a coronavirus unit without a face mask which is required by that (and every) hospital. He was the only person in the entire joint who wasn't wearing one. He looked like a complete idiot. What was the vice-president thinking? His excuse was that he is constantly being tested for the virus and that there was no danger of his transmitting to anyone. Really? When was the last time he was tested before entering that facility? Was it inside the limo on the way to the place? He said he wanted to look the staff and the patients in the eye to thank them. It was a completely idiotic response. Facemasks don't cover the eyes.

His reasoning, I'm sure, is the fact that Donald Trump said he wasn't going to wear one So perhaps donning a face mask is somehow "unmanly"? This is the complete idiocy we're dealing with.

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So there you have it, folks. I have no doubt that we'll get through this but it's going to take a bit of time and a lot of intelligence. We'll have to wait for the intelligence. Eight months and twenty days. Hang in there!

Tom Degan
Goshen, NY

SUGGESTED VIEWING:

If you're in quarantine with your kids, here's a good chance to show them what cartoons were like before their grandparents were born. Here's a link to watch some classic Betty Boop cartoons on YouTube:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iTVaKNhIB0c&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR1F6yWqryygziO6mCNyO177O78tAZECKN9WK72OmSED3pCEEEtSKueGrX0

Courtesy of the great Max Fleischer!