Ranting Rex

Today the governor of Tennessee said that the “One thing this vaccine will not solve or cure is selfishness.”  I agree.  You are being selfish.  The utter selfishness and complete childishness of the people who act like wearing masks, or working in service level jobs, or making the zero effort of getting sick should be immortalized is so duplicitous.  These are the same Karens who complain when someone uses the wrong color trash bag. So when Governor “I’m placating to the liberal vote” makes ridiculous statements, I get a little testy. 

Rant about to begin:

The current litany of stupidity to this crisis is astounding.  In fact it’s not Covid that’s the crisis here, it’s the reaction.  It’s like a kid who can’t go out in sunlight so every other child on the planet has to stay inside because Billy can’t just wear sunscreen.  It’s ridiculous.  “Mommy…I can’t go outside.”  “I know Billy…mommy will call the school and make sure no one else can have fun either.”  I’m being selfish?  Really?  Is it me, who thinks that the thousands of service workers, who need to feed their families should have the opportunity rather than sitting at home wondering where their next meal will come from, or is it you who thinks we should lock everyone up for a virus that has a 98% survival rate?  Am I being selfish or is it the rest of you whiny little bitches?  I guess next time you get the shits from eating deep fat fried whatever, we’ll make everyone take laxatives.  

I’ve had it up to my receding hairline with the propensity of the left wing inflicting their misguided sympathies to whatever group makes it into the news.  CNN today reported 17,000,000 Covid cases in the U.S.  OK…let’s forget the fact that it’s meant to be misleading.  The actual active cases are…wait for it…less than 7,000,000.  The rest have either recovered, and yes, a very small minority have died.  So of the 7,000,000, how many of those are serious?  Wait for it again…28,305.  That’s right.  28k are seriously ill.  We have shut down an entire country of 340,000,000 for 28,000 people.  That’s like shutting every road in the U.S. down because of car accidents.  

What’s most annoying about this is not that people are sick, but the fake martyrdom from people who think they need to control the lives of every…single…person…on…earth.  Never mind that millions upon millions upon millions more are hungry, abused, homeless, or ill from thousands of other far more dangerous diseases…nope…all that’s wrong with the world is Covid.  You all remind me of the upper middle-class white girl in college who all of a sudden adopts the real struggles of African Americans as her own.  It’s nauseating.

It is true that our health system is struggling.  Covid didn’t cause this, it just brought it to the forefront.  Now everyone can see how easily a minor crisis can completely crush it.  People who complain about the long ER lines, or not getting quick care, don’t seem to be paying attention as to why, however.  It’s not lack of available clinicians, it’s not lack of available beds, its because profit is the primary motivator of our worthless healthcare system. Beds are assigned based, not on need, but on income potential. Why do you think Texas puts minority Covid patients in the parking garage but the white ones get inside? In addition, the first point of contact for ANY patient is the business office.  No one gets to see a clinician until the facility gets to see their wallet.  Covid isn’t killing healthcare greed is.

The creation of the vaccine will eventually help.  At least Pfizer is getting rich.  OK, that’s not true.  Amazon, Costco, Walmart, CVS, and Walgreens are making a fuck ton as well.  The only ones not making a killing are medical facilities.  Why you ask?  I’ll tell ya.  Because they make their money off of surgeries, and clinical procedures, not actually providing care to sick people.  Also, most of these patients are extremely old, or extremely poor and Medicare and Medicaid don’t pay as well as private insurance.  That’s why clinicians are whining so loudly.  If this disease impacted the rich and powerful more than the poor and weak hospitals would be adding new wings to their buildings rather than pushing people to parking level B. Make no mistake, they’re not overloaded with patients.  They’re overloaded with patients who don’t pay.

So…Pot Meet Kettle.  We’re all a bunch of selfish fuckers. But at least I’m willing to admit it.

Rex

So way back in the old days when we had a President that wasn’t a national and international disgrace, we were entertained through the media by people like Kim Davis, the Kentucky bigot who refused to grant marriage licenses to gay couples, and eventually, through her antics was removed from office and eventually jailed for contempt.

Rather than going through all the details of this abomination of decency, let’s fast forward to the Supreme court who this week refused to hear her case, with an end result that all her penalties, lawsuits and jail sentences will remain in place.  This is a victory for civility for sure, yet don’t hold your breath just yet, Alito and Thomas chimed in complaining that the court should have heard the case.  Their opinion can be summed up in the following quote which states that the court’s decision “enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss.”

Well Sam and Clarence, guess what, those attitudes ARE bigoted and absolutely should be dismissed.  Most of us learned in grade school that your rights can only go so far until they inhibit the rights of others.  Guess what…her rights inhibited the rights of others.  The fact that you, and Ms. Davis distort, manipulate, destroy, and utterly bastardize the teachings of Christ is disgusting.  The fact that you use religious freedom as your reason for doing so is immoral. 

Christ himself is ashamed of your behavior.  Davis was a public figure, supposed to perform a public charge, and to defend the laws set forth by our government and Constitution.  She chose not to do that.  Well…guess what…she doesn’t get to do that based on the Constitution that you two bigots claim to defend.  You absolutely have a right to exclude people from your life, or your private organization.  However, you DO NOT have a right to exclude people you don’t like from public services.  The fact that I have to tell two Supreme Court justices that is frankly frightening.  The fact that one of you is a black man, is literally bewildering.

I don’t often talk about my own religious beliefs, or that lack there-of.  However, I do have them, having been raised in the Lutheran faith from the day I was born.  In fact I was baptized, confirmed, and married in the same church, and once my wife gets tired of me, will likely be buried there as well.  The thing I learned from childhood was that everyone is the same in the eyes of Christ.  There’s no one that is better, or less.  We all are children of God, and while you might think you have a superiority to others different from you, regardless of your religious faith, or sexual orientation, you are wrong.

I am so sick of the bigots and racists in this world cherry picking what they want from the Old Testament, using it as support for their hate, and claiming it as teachings from Christ.  It’s annoying.  It’s also silly.  You can go to the Bible and find support from everything from slavery to bigamy.  Think I’m joking?  I suggest you read the Ten Commandments directly from the Bible.  It will be very enlightening.  If Trump is elected again, with McConnell’s help we just might end up with bigamy and concubines again, not to mention 12-year-old brides. 

People in this country should never use religion to justify their actions, whether moral or immoral.  It’s not exactly a text that is completely moral in its own right.  This is why a group of founding fathers got together a couple of centuries ago and built their own playbook for governing a country.  Were they perfect individuals? Of course not.  However, they did have the forethought to understand that times change, and you need a framework that can grow with those changes.  Suffice it to say that these guys wouldn’t even recognize the country as it is today.  I’m sure Clarence would agree with me.  Since if they came back he would immediately be tied to a post and whipped to death for bewitching and raping a white woman (his wife is white), having the willingness to learn how to read, and the audacity to interpret the law.

The fact that the current Administration is in the process of placing another bigot on the court is disturbing. Based on her writings, she’s more than willing to ignore the tenets of her own faith to push forward her own prejudices and mask them as her religion or the law. Keep in mind that many of her own beliefs are not supported by her own Pope. While it is true that he would not support abortion, he would however, support public assistance, healthcare, housing, and a host of other things this court, and this nominee doesn’t. It’s a wonder she, and so many others like her can claim themselves Christian.

Rex

People have made a valid attempt to shame me. However, someone living on their mother’s couch in Iowa has little influence on my actions. I spend most of my time in the mountains hiking, or mountain biking and it is shocking, and I mean shocking to me how ignorant people are of the actual risk of contracting COVID-19. News media hype notwithstanding, the risk of contracting it is extremely low if you follow very simple rules. However, I’ve had people claim I’m killing their grandmother, and children by going out of my house into the mountains and taking in nature. Evidently they’re unaware that the places I go are so remote, that the likely-hood of my interacting with people, let alone infecting anyone, including grandma is more remote than my being attacked by a mountain lion.

I work from home. I also travel. When I do go out i wear a mask. When I get home I wash my hands. I don’t touch my face, and I certainly don’t put my hands in my mouth, or fingers in my nose. Ironically, other than the mask, all other actions were common for me. My mother was a good teacher. This disease has managed to take hold because people don’t follow basic hygiene. If you watch the produce isle at a grocery store for 5 minutes, you’ll never again eat an apple. The behavior of people is most disgusting. People scratching parts of their bodies, or inserting their hands into their mouths or other places even worse and then touching food. It’s a wonder we all haven’t died of some horrible gastrointestinal issue long before COVID attacked our lungs!

I travel to and from Colorado to California, having homes in both places. I also travel for work, although that has been curtailed greatly since the pandemic, but not completely. When not on a plane, I travel with a 35ft camper (or what one friend calls the taj mahauler). It’s easy to stay safe when you have your own rolling apartment. Again, the only change I’ve made to my life is I wear a mask when required by law. I also keep my distance when inside. Most of all, I’m clean. It’s surprising how many people are not.

It is also surprising how many people don’t actually research the numbers of sick, or put two and two together on how they are getting sick. It’s a surprise to them that sitting in a room full of people with little or no ventilation will be a risk, yet being on the beach is not. Governments and municipalities have ZERO clue how to manage the disease because they’re not responding to science, but to political pressure. Hundreds of people on a windy beach are a political risk and bad optics, not a health risk. Masses of unmasked people in a church are a health risk, not a political one. Telling a morbidly obese 55 year old to wear a mask is easy, but convincing them to take a walk, and take off 80 lbs requires effort. No one wants to make the real effort. They all want the easy way through life.

If you go to the CDC site, or Worldometers.info and check the numbers, you’ll find that the current rate of infection against the world population is just below 1%. If you are just looking at the U.S. it’s about .5%. That’s just the infection rate. That doesn’t mean that someone is sick, or has any serious reaction to the disease. That number is .005%. That’s right, you have a .005% chance of having a serious illness. Death is even a lower risk. Seriously, the risk is low even if you do nothing to mitigate your behavior. If you bother to wear a mask, or stop hanging out in crowds at the rave, your risk goes to almost nothing.

If you take the time to read this, you will make the assumption that I am a conservative. It even reads pretty conservative to me when I go back through it. However, I’m actually quite liberal. I’m pro-choice, believe in gun control, universal healthcare, women’s rights, minority rights, and think we should be funding education 2 to 1 over the military. What I don’t believe is that COVID-19 is the death of our world. The numbers don’t even come close to proving that out. However, until after November, COVID will be the major story. Well…unless Biden loses.

Rex

It’s interesting what sets off memories.  My father passed away on March 13^th 2019.  He didn’t have any long illness, no memory issues, and in reality was as sharp the day he died as he was when I was a wayward teenager.  In fact he scheduled his own room at hospice, settled all his affairs on his own, and pretty much took care of everything.  As he said to me, he was just done. He was tired, and dammit, at 82, outliving all his siblings and most of his friends he wanted a rest.   

After he passed, I went to his apartment and cleaned out his things.  Among all the papers, books, pictures, and clothes I found the set of dominos my grandfather had actually left me when he passed.  I would sit for hours and watch my father and grandfather play dominos.  My grandmother would be milling around the kitchen making breakfast, talking to me while I intently tried to understand the game.  They kept score with two abacuses my grandfather made.  At that age I couldn’t really follow the scoring, but I understood the rules and how they matched the numbers.  

My grandfather claimed that the dominos were made of ivory. They’re not of course. But it was a good story for a five year old. They brought back a flood of memories of spending the night with my grandparents on weekends, getting up to the smell of bacon and sounds from the kitchen, and knowing that that house was to this day the safest place I have ever been.

I packed the dominos with a smile, remembering the drives there, sometimes at 4 or 5 on a Sunday morning when I didn’t spend the weekend to have breakfast and watch two of my favorite people play a game of dominos. In fact, it is my father and grandmother that my wife can blame for me getting up at the crack of the day before when she wants to sleep.

Shortly after I got all these things home, I found I had lost one of the dominos.  I had no idea where it went.  It broke my heart.  My grandfather died when I was 11.  I was devastated that after all these decades I lost one of them from the set.  I know, it’s only a domino, but it meant something to me.  It was my childhood, a memory that is more important to me than so many other memories I carry.  

The dominos along with a few other keepsakes from my father, like his jewelry box, and his class ring, decks of cards, eyeglasses sit in the bookcase behind me with pictures of our family when we were all together…we were all so young.  Even my parents in that picture were likely 20 years younger than I am today. 

I’m moving in a few weeks, and have been ransacking my office, tossing old books, papers, and who knows what that’s been rolling around in my desk.  I’m a bit of a pack rat.  As I was pulling books from the shelves that sit behind me in my office, low and behold, there lay the number 3 domino.  A flood of memories came to me.  Sitting listening to my dad and grandfather talk, watching my grandmother, the kindest and most Christian person I’ve ever known, make me breakfast, and wishing, wishing with everything in my being that I could just sit and watch one more game.

Rex 

Irony and hypocrisy are rampant among the parties and the party faithful.  I have always touted myself as a card-carrying Democrat, but as of late have found myself on the outside looking in.  I am astonished by the reactions to the response to COVID-19.  If you’re on the Left you think that the only way to survive is to hide in your basement, having the government pay for your rent and groceries until this threat is gone, while you’re screaming at those who don’t.  If you’re on the right, then you think all is well, and you should just live your life as if “well…I’ve gotta die of something” and never mind if you risk the lives of anyone other than yourself.  As with all things the truth is in the middle, and I get to sit back and enjoy the spectacle. 

First, let’s look at the world back in 2001 when we were attacked by a terrorist organization who flew three planes full of passengers into three buildings full of people and one plane full of passengers directly into the ground.  After that happened, the conservative wing of the country decided that they needed to be protected.  The government needed to lock the entire country down, and we needed armed police searching our luggage and person, warrantless wiretaps for all our communications, and there was an idea that the loss of personal freedom and loss of personal liberties far outweighed the need for personal safety, and the conservative party was MORE than happy to give it all up.  All this from a government that gave every indication they had no idea of what they were doing.

When the Left saw how easily the Right was willing to give up their personal rights for personal safety, they went nuts!  I know.  I was one of them that went nuts.  The loss of personal liberty because of an attack on our country because they hated our personal liberties was a sign that the enemy has won.  The fact that we require a pat down every time we step on a plane, or enter a large event, or that the government can listen in on our personal conversations, or that we can be, without warrant, trial, or due process removed from our homes and taken to a non-disclosed location (Cuba) all in the name of public safety is appalling. 

Now let’s fast forward to 2020.  In just 19 short years, we’re in the exact same place, talking about the exact same issues, for the exact same reasons.  The only difference is that our enemy isn’t some unknown religious fanatic, but an unseen disease.  In addition, the roles have reversed.  Now the Left is more than willing to give up all their personal liberties for their personal safety.  No longer can you get on a plane, go to a restaurant, a movie, the beach, or even exit your own home without the express permission of a government organization who, frankly, has given every indication they have no idea what they’re doing. 

This time it’s the Right who are screaming about losing their personal liberties.  They argue that a few lives lost are more than an acceptable risk for their personal freedoms.  The government through their incompetence at the reaction to this pandemic has overstepped their authority, put even more lives at risk, and jeopardized the lives of hundreds of millions of people for the lives of a few hundred thousand.  There’s zero logic in the reaction from either the government or the supporters within the government for the decisions being made to put even more lives at risk of starvation, poor or no healthcare, lack of housing, personal safety or general well-being.

I love irony that the problems are exactly the same but the enemy is different.  It appears that a seen enemy gets the Right’s panties in a bunch and one you can’t see wads the ones on the Left.  Both groups however, are more than willing to give up all their personal rights if they get a little frightened.  I guess sending troops into battle to die for their rights doesn’t bother either of them but when it comes to ponying up their own lives they say , “Fuck it, I’ll stay inside.”  I personally find this so hilarious that I was literally up at 2 a.m. giggling thinking of writing about it. 

Now what I find most ironic is that during both these fucktastrophies was the complete incompetence of a single political party who were in charge.  In both cases that party completely ignored the warnings of the experts, and the previous Administrations on what they needed to look out for, and what plans should be followed in the event of the impending disaster.  Can you guess which party that is?  If you said Republican, give yourself a sucker.  In both cases it has been the complete and utter incompetence of the leader at the top of the Republican party that put us into these situations.  It has also been the leaders of the Democratic party that were both prepared, and ignored, when these things came to pass.  When we had George W. Bush people, including myself, thought “what the fuck have they done?  This guy’s a complete idiot!”  Then we had eight years of steady growth, leadership of an economic bailout, the death of Osama Bin Laden, and a booming economy that surpassed any reasonable person’s expectations, all brought to you by a black Democrat with a Muslim sounding name.  Then when all was well and good, and we thought there was no way on earth anyone could fuck it up as bad as George W. Bush, the Republicans came along and said “wait a minute.  Hold my Beer.

Everyone needs to make their own decisions on their own personal safety.  That doesn’t mean you get to make everyone else’s decisions on theirs.  Want to wear a mask? Wear one.  Want to hide in your basement?  Stay there.  Want to be in public?  Be considerate of others.  It isn’t that hard.  Everything you learned in this world to survive and be a good person you learned before first grade.  That doesn’t mean you get to act like six-year-old for the rest of your life. 

All of ya just need to grow the fuck up.

Rex