Covid Takes Thanksgiving

 I wish that spending Thanksgiving with me (or any holiday, or weekend, or 5 damn minutes of any day really) mattered MORE than protesting against masks 😷 and other pandemic protocols.

Of course... me, and other disabled people like me, are a big reason for quarintening and such. Because someone like me needs to be protected. 😔 And my life isn't as valuable to people as not having to quarantine. 

100,000 dead

200,000 dead

500,000

1,000,000

The whole population of the United States could die and still not be as valuable as not having to quarantine, wear a mask, or whatever other protocol. 

Love thy neighbor.

Am I not a neighbor? Am I unworthy of love because my lungs aren't as strong as most people's?

Thou shall not kill.

Spreading Covid to me would result in my death. Is preventing that death not enough reason to protest the spread, instead of protesting the protocols? 

I'm just a broken human.

And half the country 🇺🇸 would prefer if I were dead. People like me, if we get Covid, we die. That makes the numbers go up. A rich, avid golfer gets Covid and survives. Proof that people like me are the problem.

Or proof that a caring society would do all it can to protect people, including those who need it most. 

Really, I just wish I were worth quarintening for, to spend a holiday with me safely. I wish I mattered that much. 

Meme from Facebook

Terrorists Plan Terrorism

 Edit of Yahoo News article.

I'm not changing the meaning of any content. I'm just editing. 

[Terrorists] training for violence in case Donald Trump loses election, says report

(Original by:

Graeme Massie

Tue, October 27, 2020, 8:43 PM) 

[Terrorists] are training for violence incase Donald Trump loses the election to Joe Biden.

[Terrorists] are preparing for civil conflict as they believe that the president’s defeat on election day is inevitable, according to the report from BuzzFeed.

[The terrorists were] reportedly created in the aftermath of [an event in America] and now have hundreds of members around the US.

[The terrorists'] preparations were revealed in a cache of hundreds of messages exchanged between [terrorists] in an encrypted messaging app, according to BuzzFeed.

“In logs of the chats, all from this year, around 280 [terrorists] discuss grandiose goals — creating a [minimum population] from the existing United States [population]," wrote Jane Lytvynenko.

"The group wants to expel [Americans], remaking the fabric of America.

“The messages reveal a sophisticated network of [terrorists] who are training for violence.

“[The terrorists], who believe the United States is a nation that belongs only to [some Americans], wear uniforms made up of bomber jackets, face coverings, and beige khakis, mandate weight loss and intense workouts, and regularly practice hand-to-hand combat.

“Some openly call themselves [types of terrorists] and revere [historically significant terrorists].”

The report reveals that the [terrorists] believe that it does not matter who wins the election in one week.

“It does not matter what people personally believe about it,” wrote the [terrorists'] leader Thomas Rousseau.

[Edited to improve accuracy.] 

(Feel free to track down the original. The bottom line is that terrorists are threatening terrorism because they support Trump.)

Opinion From the Weak

 

I love you.

But I disagree with this right down to my very core, to the depths of my soul. (And that's probably why a virus could become political.)

But I see how the idea exists. Survival of the fittest. As long as someone is part of the fittest, sacrificing members of the herd who aren't is acceptable. That is how animals do it, especially when there's a lot of predators and they're just struggling to not go extinct. That's the exact right mentality when the chips are down and there's no other way to keep the species going. Adopting that mentality is a sign of living near an apocalyptic event, being filled with a belief that the species as a whole is on the verge of extinction and needs extreme measures to survive. That's why only the healthier people would be given a chance, along with the hope they'd spawn more of the thinkers and artists later. Every writer who has penned a dystopian novel knows there needs to be fit characters to get to the end. 

😔

But I'm not the fittest.

And I thought we lived in a society well enough off to be able to protect those with weaker bodies. That we didn't need to sacrifice the old or sick. That we weren't in danger of extinction. (Nearly 8 billion people. Not 8👤👤👤👤👤👤👤👤. 8 billion. That's kind of a lot.) 

See, in that kind of scenario, one where the population has advanced enough to not have to sacrifice, one where thinking and art can be just as valued as health and strength, in that scenario it's HOPE, not fear, that gets the whole to act in the interest of mass preservation without sacrificing. Where the smallest numbers are lost because the focus is on keeping the current group alive. (The opposite of cutting the loss of all the weak and hoping enough will remain to regrow numbers later.) In that scenario, the virus is the predator and everyone fights it together. The strong and the weak. And they're GLAD. They like that they have evolved to the point of being able to support each other, to not have to sacrifice. It means longer lives. It means a society. It's what animals don't have. And it is THE mark of being a dominant species. It means you're not prey. Prey leaves the weak. Strong prey can say they're not scared, but they've left a chunk of their own to die, knowing that chunk cannot protect itself, because that's all they can do. That's fear. Bravery is protecting the whole group from the predator, from the virus. It's shielding the weakest members and saying, "it's okay, we won't let it harm you."

That's the society I want to live in. But as it vanished this year, and my health is weak, I will probably die wishing that society existed here. And that's why I disagree. Because the virus is riding on the strong to get to the weak. And the more of the weak it gets, the stronger of a predator it becomes. And eventually it will take down the strong too. And it will win. Because they called "hope" a "fear" and misused it. 

Sorry.

Long Shadow #WEP #WEPFF #essay #prochoice #crime or #PunxsutawneyPhil Pics

WriteEditPublishNow

My birthday is on August 21!

Picture from a birthday party in 2016.

There are two topics for my Long Shadow post. The first involves abortion (trigger warning). The second is just a collection of happy pictures from a place where a shadow matters once a year.

Long Shadow

(564-word essay)

Crime rates rise and fall from many factors, some that take decades to reveal themselves. There are ways to impact the crime rate immediately, such as altering laws, improving crime prevention measures, and giving law enforcement better training and resources. It has been postulated that permitting abortion and expanding birth control have a long-term impact on crime rates.

The reason behind it is that children who are wanted by someone with the means to properly care for them are less likely to fall into a life of crime. (The study may have focused on "blue-collar crimes" instead of "white-collar crimes.") Most notably, the odds of becoming a prostitute, drug dealer, or burglar decrease.

The idea is that someone who is prepared for the responsibility of parenthood is more likely to provide a good education, proper nutrition, a stable home, and the mental and emotional love a child requires. An excellent book to read on this topic is Freakonomics.

Some people are willing to trade a higher rate if it means abortions and birth control are more difficult to access. A fair amount of those people also do not view rape, child molestation, pedophilia, or sexual slavery as crimes. There are even some who wish to make human trafficking legal, particularly in regard to the sale of female children. Rather than as fellow humans, females are often seen as objects to them.

This type of thought may explain why so many "pro-life" protesters in America march outside of free or low-cost obstetrician clinics, intimidating women who are seeking pregnancy care as well as those considering abortions. The same protesters are less likely to stand outside of upper-class locations with obstetrics residency training, which is where the medical procedure is generally learned. Training tends to include the procedure because not all pregnancies are viable, and sometimes can result in the imminent death of both the mother and baby. However, some people strongly believe that life begins when cells can mimic a beat, but a woman of childbearing years should die if her pregnancy goes poorly, even when medicine makes that death avoidable.

Death as a predestined outcome. This means that, perhaps, some unwanted babies need to be born to grow up to become killers, sexual-assaulters, robbers, gang leaders, drug dealers, etc. Perhaps Americans need a certain amount of crime so that there are "bad guys" and thus the possibility of "good guys"?

Legal arguments as to which medical procedures a qualified medical professional should have the option of offering to a patient could be based on how it impacts society as a whole. Do religious morals have the same impact for people who do not believe in them? Should the religions and cultures of others be imposed upon people who do not share them? Where do laws come from, and do any exist for non-religious reasons?

If a law allowing abortion and expanded birth control were firmly in place, no longer teetering on the edge, would it cast a long shadow of reducing crime? If so, is that worth having some people sacrifice their moral or religious beliefs that what someone else does impacts their own afterlife?  If science could remove a fetus in the first trimester and grow it to term, would that be better? Would that help or hurt the hundreds of thousands of children in the US who are waiting to be adopted?

---

You want to talk about a LONG SHADOW?
Punxsutawney Phil is a groundhog in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania. I was in Punxsutawney a few years ago. (Not on Groundhog day. Sorry.) Here are a few pictures from the town where, for one day a year, a rodent's shadow is newsworthy.

"According to the tradition, if Phil sees his shadow and returns to his hole, he has predicted six more weeks of winter-like weather." ⛄❄

Tourist Phil

Tourist stuff in town.

Me with Liberty Phil

Me with a hand-carved Phil statue

Dentist Phil

USPS and the 2020 Election

$84,150,000 - Over eighty-four million dollars if each registered voter used a stamp in the election.
$1,683,000,000 - Over one and a half billion dollars if each registered voter bought a book of stamps.
$2,721,489,408 - Nearly three billion dollars if every adult in the US bought a book of stamps.
$141,517,449,216 - One hundred forty-one billion dollars if every adult bought 52 books of stamps (1 book a week for a year).
$160,567,875,072 - The one hundred sixty billion debt is solved if every adult in the US bought a book of stamps a week for 59 weeks.

In 2018, there were 153 million people registered to vote in the United States.
247,408,128 adults live in the US (estimation).
$160 billion debt of the USPS.
First-Class Mail Forever® stamps cost $0.55, $11 for a book of 20.

*IMPORTANT NOTE*
The USPS sells a lot more than stamps.
This is the scenario of how the USPS could be saved with ONLY stamp buying by people.
Businesses are not included.
Shipping packages with Amazon is not included.
This is how the American people could save the USPS in 14 months JUST by buying stamps.

100,000 Military members and Veterans work for the USPS
600,000 jobs exist because of the USPS

24,000 veterans are employed by UPS
28,200 veterans and military spouses estimated FedEx
The competition employs a quarter of the number of veterans that the USPS does.

The people of the United States do not HAVE to beg our elected officials to use our tax dollars to save the USPS. We could do it ourselves, if we wanted to, if we sacrificed eleven dollars a week to buy stamps.
(Not that everyone has $11 right now. But the reality is that stamps are not the most profitable product, and businesses like Amazon spend more with the USPS than people do. That isn't the point of the scenario.)
The point is that the American people are being told they are incapable of solving this mess. Get a calculator and check my math. Get a pencil and paper and check my math by hand. Put the numbers in your mind and check my math with your own mental powers. The proof is that American adults could, in fact, save the USPS if they all decided they wanted to do so. This is just one way.

$11/wk * 247,408,128 adults= $2,721,489,408
$2,721,489,408 * 59 weeks= $160,567,875,072
$160 billion debt solved.

Here's the next big issue:

If the USPS is saved, by this or another such plan, then voting by mail is back on the table. If you feel the USPS is safe enough to send government checks, taxes, and pretty much every form they ever created; but not safe enough for voting ballots (except for the ballots cast by elected officials who aren't in their home area on election day and thus do use mail-in ballots, despite being opposed to their existence), okay, double the stamp buying. Two books of stamps a week! Or a book a week for 118 weeks. There, an extra 160 billion dollars to enhance security. That ought to do it. Amazon made $34.6 billion during the pandemic. If they paid 5% tax on that profit, that's 1.73 billion to use to enhance security. There are WAYS it could be done is my point, there are ways to fund it, it's POSSIBLE.

On to the real reason for wanting the USPS to tank, and especially for the 2020 election to not be by mail:

Because it would make it easier for People of Color, Disabled people, Senior Citizens, people with Multiple jobs, and Poor people to vote.

So really, let us start asking the REAL question:

Would you rather-
A) Save six-hundred thousand jobs, one-hundred thousand of which belong to veterans, BUT it means voting will be easier for POC, disabled, elderly, multiple-job holders, and poor people to vote?
~OR~
B) Unemployment goes up by another six-hundred thousand, one-hundred thousand of which are people with a military service record, BUT you get to suppress voting! You'll spend a heck of a lot more to ever send a letter or card again, BUT there will be considerably fewer people able to vote. You have to increase unemployment during a recession and screw over veterans, BUT you can spread HATE and remind certain people that you'd do anything to silence their voice.

That's it. Just toss veterans into the groups of people hated by white terrorist groups (the klan, neo-nazis, skinheads, etc).

Do you LIKE and support vets MORE than you HATE POC and such? You have to stand up for a mail-in election. So sorry!

But if you hate POC and such MORE than you like and support veterans, congratulations, you can be opposed to mail-in ballots and favor increasing unemployment by 600k by ditching the USPS!

If you happen to value Veterans, and People of Color, Disabled people, Senior Citizens, people with Multiple jobs, and Poor people -- then you get to be in favor of a mail-in election and saving the USPS. (And you're probably a Democrat or Independent, and being told by others that you should commit suicide because you're evil. Fun🙄, isn't it? I'm in this group.🥺)

And there you have the real reason for tanking the USPS and for being opposed to a mail-in election.

Weigh your hate and feel free to post on your own wall because I am not in charge of giving a damn about haters. My health won't let me do much more than write long rants here and in the many letters I send to my elected officials. GOOD THING I BOUGHT MORE STAMPS.


** Copied from my Facebook post, just in case that mysteriously disappears.**

Facebook Humor

Some days I am annoyed by Facebook. The algorithm 😤 just drops me out of my comfort zone.  But once in a while it groups things together and cracks me up.  Here's today's:

Opinion

Should we protect statues of people who tried to destroy America? Who betrayed America with the intention of defeating America? If so, should we make more? Should we make statues of the people who made the planes crash on Sept 11? Why not? They wanted to overthrow America too. They felt the same way. Took more than 5 years to defeat them though. But they felt the same way as the Confederates and had many of the exact same goals. Should we name military bases to honor the Japanese kamikaze pilots who gave their lives to bomb Pearl Harbor? Same goal as the Confederates.

Should we force the police to do many different jobs without the equipment or training to do them and then do nothing when they fail? Much better than reallocating funds so they can focus on law enforcement and others qualified for the other jobs could do those. 911 could be improved to assist with that so the police are less overwhelmed, or meh, screw them make them multitask! Why should we give them more training and act like they matter? (Admittedly the word "defund" is misleading. We usually only hear it when talking about schools having to do more with less.)

Is the Bible important enough that people should get the first edition? Because there's a version from about a century ago and it made some SERIOUS changes and people have been basing their beliefs on those changes. But people who study ancient languages keep pointing out that the original versions say the opposite. Guttenberg Bibles still exist and are very different from the ones in print now because of a certain publisher. Is that okay? Do those Words matter?  Should we want those Words to be as intended?

No deal.
The Constitution has the First Amendment specifically to protect the rights to fix and improve the world.

We aren't alone. This is a society.

The world isn't a better place for Everyone yet, but some of us are working on it.