The Quarantine Project Vol. 1

The Quarantine Project, Vol. 1

Update:

On average, 45,744 people per day were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the US in July. 1,418,078 people total, in August.

30,003 people died. 1 out of every 55 Americans has caught this as of the end of August. In July it was 1 in 72.

Original post from Early August 2019:

On average, 61,136 people per day were diagnosed with COVID-19 in the US in July. That's 1 out of every 176 people. 1,895,207 people total, in July. 40% of all cases, just in the past month.

25,000 people died. 1 out of every 72 Americans has caught this. 1 month ago it was 1 in 176.

Anyone... anyone who thinks things have improved deserves a kick in the fucking teeth. Anyone who SAYS that things are improving deserves prison. I'm not fucking kidding. Anyone who thinks that things are going well after being presented with the facts is lying, has an agenda that doesn't involve things getting better for the country (and most likely has no interest in governing but instead enriching themselves), and deserves to be voted the fuck out of office. That means the White House and nearly every Republican in Congress, almost every Republican Governor, and their state houses.

In a civilized country the Democratic Party of our country would be the right wing, a new Progressive party would be the Left, and the Republican Party would be relegated to the same place as the Federalists and the Whigs.

I firmly believe that the absolute NEGLIGENCE of the US government is criminal. As in lengthy prison sentences for all of them. While I do believe that every administration deserves a chance to move on from what happened before, we've never had an experience like this. We've never had an openly racist, misogynistic, authoritarian, LYING administration like this one. We can't just let this go. The truth MUST WILL OUT.

Recovering from this will take a massive effort, unlike anything seen in generations. We need to invest in medicine, science, education, and rebuild relationships with a world that for the most part either pities us or feels sorry for us. In less than 4 years our reputation in the world has been destroyed, our economy is in tatters, and we've become the only nation on Earth where someone's opinion matters as much as FACTS. It will cost TRILLIONS. But the returns will be so much more.

We must change. We must acknowledge the mistakes, and hold the wrong-doers accountable. We must do it QUICKLY.

We must move our health care system away from being shackled to our employment system. We must STOP giving opinion, no matter how closely held to religious belief, the same weight as science and fact.

If we can't do that, then maybe we don't deserve to be saved.

In the meantime, think of the people on the front lines. Tip your delivery people generously. Wear a mask. Social Distance. Be kind, even when you don't want to be - and I admit this one is hard for me too. You are probably only a slice of someone's day - you have no idea at all where in that day you wandered into - the good part or the bad part.

Thank the Doctors and Nurses. They're all going to need some time off if we get through this. I know it's tooting my own horn because I participated in this project, but they deserve support and relief.

Fight the Good Fight

Practice Safe Sex.

And Never be Afraid to Sweat.

A Declaration

The news and imagery coming from Portland is horrific. Secret Police, without identification or name badges walking around the streets tear-gassing and sweeping people away to undisclosed locations, without being Mirandized (which is legally required, by the way, in all 50 states - there was a big Supreme Court decision about it a few DECADES ago). But just because you're not seeing it (yet) in other cities doesn't mean it isn't happening. 

It just means it isn't yet being filmed.

Welcome to the Fascist States of America. I don't want to live here - I was born and raised in a country very different from this one, and I will do what I can to get us back there as long as I live within the geographic confines of this nation. That said, I want a few things noted:

1) If anyone without proper identification attempts to pick me up and remove me from a city street, a public place, or a private one, I will resist. Forcefully. Lethally, if I must. There is no unmarked force of any kind that I will not resist. I will assume you do not have the power or authorization to detain me - and that qualifies as kidnapping. I will fight that until the very moment I cannot, and I promise you I will draw blood.

2) The same applies if this is something I witness. If I see this happening to anyone else, whether I know them or not, I will defend them with the same force, voice, and ferocity. I won't be filming - I will be fighting.

3) I do not carry a gun. In this setting most of us have the right to carry one but I choose not to. I have my wits, which will hopefully be swift. I have my fists, raised in solidarity with our Black brothers and sisters, as well as any human being whose skin tone isn't the same as mine. I have my back, which I will use to help burden the load. I have my voice, which is loud. I have my cane, which I will use to help me walk and to smack you down.

4) I will do my best not to raise a hand to someone that didn't raise a hand to me first. But a violent reaction must be seen as understandable against a government, or anyone else for that matter, that is intent on seeing violence happen. If I need to use violence, I will use a little as I must. That might be more than you want though.

5) Nazis get punched. I can live with the disconnect between this rule and the previous one. We sent over 100,000 men to their deaths in an effort to wipe Nazis off the face of the Earth, so you don't get to be one. Not today. Not ever.

If you cannot follow these 5 simple rules, your are complicit. You are part of the problem.

That is MY Declaration of Independence from the Fascist States of America.

Signed,

James Christopher Reed

There. Singed in big enough type so that King Donald can read it without his glasses.

Please sign on.

Peter Navarro can go fuck himself.

Peter Navarro, Trump’s economic adviser, had some thoughts: Comments in bold are my own observations and refutations.


Dr. Anthony Fauci has a good bedside manner with the public, but he has been wrong about everything I have interacted with him on. Except no.

In late January, when I was making the case on behalf of the president to take down the flights from China, Fauci fought against the president’s courageous decision — which might well have saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Fauci said, “Obviously, you need to take it seriously and do the kind of things the (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and the Department of Homeland Security is doing. But this is not a major threat to the people of the United States and this is not something that the citizens of the United States right now should be worried about.” In January, this was true. I should also note that flights were halted, and they did nothing to stop the spread of the disease.

When I warned in late January in a memo of a possibly deadly pandemic, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases was telling the news media not to worry.

Fauci reiterated that COVID-19 “isn’t something the American people need to worry about or be frightened about” because, at the time, it was centered in China and the U.S. could screen travelers from that nation. But Fauci also twice described the virus as “an evolving situation,” and said, “Every day, we have to look at it very carefully.”

I should also note at this point that Navarro was in fact saying that the situation was much worse than most people were saying. But you need to take Fauci's comments in context: when he said them flights were already being stopped from China.


When I was working feverishly on behalf of the president in February to help engineer the fastest industrial mobilization of the health care sector in our history, Fauci was still telling the public the China virus was low risk.

In a Feb. 29 interview, Fauci said that “right now at this moment” the risk was “low” and there was “no need” for people “to change anything that you’re doing on a day-by-day basis.” But he added that “this could change,” that people needed to be wary of “community spread,” and that it could develop into a “major outbreak.” Also, stop calling it the "China virus" you racist.

When we were building new mask capacity in record time, Fauci was flip-flopping on the use of masks. Except that we never built up this supposed mask capacity. We ran out. We're running out again.

"We have to admit it, that that mixed message in the beginning, even though it was well meant to allow masks to be available for health workers, that was detrimental in getting the message across," Fauci said in an interview with Mary Louise Kelly of NPR's All Things Considered. "No doubt about it."

The point here is that everyone was send out "mixed messages", including Navarro. Hell, the Surgeon General of the U.S. said masks shouldn't be required on July 15, 2020. TODAY.

And when Fauci was telling the White House Coronavirus Task Force that there was only anecdotal evidence in support of hydroxychloroquine to fight the virus, I confronted him with scientific studies providing evidence of safety and efficacy. A recent Detroit hospital study showed a 50% reduction in the mortality rate when the medicine is used in early treatment. Fauci was right about this. 100% correct. Navarro, Trump, and everyone else who supported this idea was wrong.

Now Fauci says a falling mortality rate doesn’t matter when it is the single most important statistic to help guide the pace of our economic reopening. The lower the mortality rate, the faster and more we can open. Except No.What Navarro is missing the point about and Dr. Fauci isn't the the long-term effect os a disease that 2 Million people who have caught the disease haven't recovered from. While the mortality rate is down, thankfully, for every 1 person who has died there are 20 who are still sick and potentially permanently disabled or will yet die. That is an economic catastrophe. But what do I know? I only handle money for a living.

So when you ask me whether I listen to Dr. Fauci’s advice, my answer is: only with skepticism and caution. That's because you're a fucking idiot.

Prison Camp America

The script:

To every member of the Republican Party, From Donald Trump all the way down to the smallest little Boogaloo voting for the first time, I have a question for you. WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

You want to send children back to school in the middle of a Pandemic that you seem to even fail to recognize exists!

300,000 thousand TIMES more people have caught COVID-19 than caught Ebola, and you think that Obama handled his crisis worse than Trump did!

You have called the police on everyone from a man jogging to a man mistakenly passing a counterfeit bill to a woman walking her dog to a man building a porch to a man on the phone simply because their skin tone is darker than yours!

You are claiming that the ravings of a Aderall addicted radio flunkie are of greater medical use than the Centers for Disease Control.

You are claiming that the wearing of a simple piece of fabric, which medical professionals have been wearing for over a century in order to protect people, is the equivalent of being choked to death, that it impinges upon your freedoms, and that you won’t wear it, won’t wear it, won’t wear it!

What are you, 6?

You decry the removal of statues that celebrate the existence of something that didn’t last as long as DISCO.

No one is trying to take away your goddamned freedoms. They’re trying to keep you alive! If you can’t see that then WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Actual plans exist to implement a recovery, from testing to getting people back to work and school, but because the best ideas come from the Democratic Party and not from your own succession of morons you won’t do it.

We have access to masks, social distancing, technology, vaccines, testing, and people who know how to do it but all of a sudden you’re fucking AMISH? Well, no – the Amish are wearing masks!

You insist on nicknames for people you disagree with. Bullies do that. Those and people with a desperate need to remain in control of their social hierarchies.

Your leader is a racist. He always has been. He called for the executions of five black men who had been wrongly convicted of rape – AFTER they were exonerated. He is a misogynist, and has admitted more than once to being attracted to his daughters and nieces. He is a tax cheat, a man who blasphemes regularly, and misquotes the bible, the constitution, and doesn’t know the lyrics to the Star Spangled Banner. Yet you look at his am pious, humble and patriotic. He is obviously none of these things, so I ask again, WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU?

And then there’s the man at number two – Mike Pence.  A man who can’t be alone in a room with another woman without his wife present. A man who believes that God will protect people from COVID-19 as long as they attend church – the bigger the better.  A man who says that CDC guidelines are unnecessary in order for kids to return to school this fall.

He had NEVER contradicted his boss, even when he is obviously lying, even though his particular version of religion says that lying is a sin.  He claims not to be a sinner but he’s lying. He treats Trump like he’s the second coming. A lot of people do, which mystifies me.

He has gold drapes, a gold watch, gold carpeting, golden dyed hair, and prefers gold toilets and everything else as well. Come on Christians, how many more damned clues do you need?

The crimes of the current administration are too numerous to list. Their lack of interest in governing las lead to the deaths of over 100,000 citizens – and yet you love them more and more each day. You were even okay with him claiming that a HURRICANE was going to go in a different direction than it did.

Trump has a philosophy – there must be winners and losers in everything. He must win. Everyone else must lose. That’s an actual quote – it’s in “art of the deal’. Yes, I’ve read it. It’s horseshit. Every successful businessman I’ve ever met – including a couple of billionaires - has done it differently.

He is WRONG.

America, at least the America we used to have, is about making everything better, for everyone. Everyone is supposed to win. We have differing philosophies of how to get that done and that’s FINE. We should debate these things. But we have to want to do these things. Trump and his administration, and the Republicans in both houses of Congress do not. They just want to win. They just want everyone else to lose. They’ve turned this amazing country into a Prison camp.

Which brings me all the way back to my original question: WHAT THE EVER LOVING FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

There is no such thing as Fake News. There is News, and there are lies. Trump, his handlers, his people, and those in government who support him are LYING.

It’s America or Trump, people. If you can’t see that, then what, the fuck, is WRONG, with you?

 

 

Deadnaming...

I know a lot more about trans people than I did a few years ago. A lot of that has been an effort to educate myself and discover what's important and what isn't. I've had to throw out some notions that I've held for decades and re-write my own personal code to simply gain some basic understanding of their wants, fears, hopes and dreams. I won't pretend that it's been easy, but I also won't pretend that it was anyone's problem but my own. There was no one trans to blame for how I had to change - I had to change.

And change I did. Because I cared enough to work at it. I don't think I'm all the way there, but I'd like to think I've made progress. I tell you all this because of a revelation I've had that I honestly wish I could have made many years ago.

If you understand what you're looking for, you can see J.K. Rowling's bias against the trans community right in the fucking books. Remember, she never said Dumbledore was gay until all of the books were published. It made her seem like a hero in retrospect. So retrospect is fair game.

In their final confrontation, Harry deadnames Voldemort. He's the only character in the whole series who does so, and he's the bloody hero of the books. Whatever you think of the book's main villain, he has transformed himself from Tom Riddle into Lord Voldemort. Every character respects this transition - except Harry Potter, and it is Harry who has the voice of the author.

I never would have noticed this a few years ago. But in the course of educating myself I have, from time to time, deadnamed people I know to be trans, and who have taken new names upon themselves. And every time it was like I had sucker-punched them. I didn't mean to, but I had. I've owned up to it every time. There is real trauma that can be caused by using the former name of a person who has transitioned. The problem wasn't the trans person - it was me.

Just as Dumbledore was J.K. Rowling's surrogate "gay", I think that Voldemort was her surrogate "trans". I'm not sure she consciously meant it, but as a writer myself I know how easily personal bias slips into what you do. It's something you must be constantly vigilant about.

It has become clear that Rowling understands nothing about the trans community. But in retrospect, it is also clear that having Harry call Voldemort by his former name is meant as a sign of disrespect to his own transition from mere wizard to villain.

Yes, Harry Potter is written as a teenager and what teenager isn't a jerk? She explores that in some detail and you can't dismiss that. The books are well written, but I have to admit that I will never be able to look at her books the same way again, not because she has changed, but because I have. I look at Orson Scott Card the same way.

This is in fact why I keep books and collect and re-read them. It's not that they have changed but that I have, and they will have a different impact on me now than they would when I first read them. If I ever re-read the Harry Potter books I will notice things in them that I didn't before, and I think I'd enjoy them less than before I knew that J.K. Rowling is a trans-phobic bigot - because I now see Harry in the same light, and he's been written as the hero, and the surrogate trans character as the stock villain.

And that's simply not acceptable to me any more.

The one statistic we're not seeing about COVID-19, and it's potentially terrible.

Every day I check and see how many new cases and deaths from COVID-19 we have in the U.S. It's easy to find, just Google it. It's not to be morbid or anything, but to me each new case, each new death is a new criminal charge against Donald Trump. Each new case is an assault. Each new death is another charge of manslaughter. But there's an underlying part of the statistics that truly worries me.

As of the end of yesterday there were 2,357,440 cases of COVID-19 diagnosed in the United States. That's 7 out of every 1,000 people in the country. 122,162 have died. 733,472 have recovered. So what's the missing statistic here? The number of people still going through the disease. 1,501,806 as of yesterday.

For all the talk of quarantining for 14 days the disease actually runs much longer than that. It can run months. You've seen the stories: person on a ventilator for 75 days. Person lost his leg. Person suffered from Kidney Failure and is now on dialysis. Grammy Award musician Christopher Cross was paralyzed for a time, and as of this writing still partially is although is expected to make a full recovery. (I follow him on twitter: @itsmrcross)

People who are ASYMPTOMATIC go through this faster. The disease has an INCUBATION PERIOD of 14 days. The progression of the disease itself can be months.

And so we have a staggering number of people still unrecovered. Some of them are going to die. 5.4% according to the CDC statistics. That's over 81,000 people.

If the statistics hold, we're already going to lose over 200,000 people, and the rate of infection grew 25% in the past WEEK.

As of this moment, if everything went right, 1 in 1,000 Americans would die from this. Everything is not going right.

What the ever loving FUCK is it going to take for the Republican party to say enough and just say "okay, you get Pence"?

I get so angry about this, not just all of the other, multitude of crimes so obviously committed by Trump and his cronies, but by the fact that he is negligently murdering people every day. I should never be in the same room with him - I would punch his fucking face in.

Reagan made me angry. Bush the first made me angry. W made me angry. Trump  makes me homicidal. I hate that he has that kind of hold in my mental real estate.

But whether or not this is how I feel, the cold, dispassionate facts are that Trump and his hand-picked team have allowed people to die, and have caused Americans to die. More people than the previous 11 previous Presidents COMBINED, and some of them oversaw Vietnam or Korea.

How many people do you think he'll get a chance to kill if he gets a second term?

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And because I love you, here's my most recent Spotify playlist, all new music

Listen

So, wanting to be articulate in the times of President Hoover the 2^nd can nearly make you an enemy of the state these days, but here I am anyway, shouting into the wind in hopes of getting at least one person – one of you – to listen.

These times have been difficult. I don’t think you’ll find a single soul who will deny that. Not the 90 thousand plus dead in our nation, not the million plus who have gotten sick so far, not the one person in four who has lost their jobs, not the rest of us still working under these new circumstances. We’ve lost a lot, whether it be the simple routine of going to work, having coffee or lunch with friends, hanging out for drinks with your best buds, or just travel – all the way to lost work and wages, lost homes, friends and loved ones sick or even dead.

It’s been a nightmare. Let no one doubt that. Leadership has failed us – but let’s set that aside for now. I want to talk to you about your rights as freedom loving members of The United States.

Lockdown has been terrible. Quarantine has been awful.  No one wants this – not even people like me who won’t be leaving it for a while. I am honest to god happy that you know  your constitutional rights. Freedom of expression. Freedom of assembly.  The right to say “Goddamn it I want a cheeseburger, and I can afford it even under these circumstances, so I have the right to go and get one!”

I’m happy that you know these rights. I happy that you have them. But I am unhappy that you only half-UNDERSTAND them.

America, when it works, it a beautiful thing. The things we can accomplish, the pride we can instill within ourselves – it’s an amazing thing. A great deal of it feeds from those very rights you celebrate. It’s simply awesome, and awe-inspiring. It’s why everyone in the world has, for so long, wanted to be just like us.

But those inalienable rights – freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly – nowhere is it written, not in the constitution, not in the Bible, not in the Koran or the Torah or any other religious or political text – nowhere is it written that you can exercise those rights at the expense of those same rights belonging to another person.

You may NOT express those rights while hurting the rights of another. One more time, you may NOT express those rights while hurting the rights of another and that’s what you’ve been doing. I’m sure many of you didn’t realize that, but you are hurting and damaging the rights of other people.

You see I too have those rights, and I can’t exercise those rights at the moment because I don’t want to die. I have work left undone. COVID-19 is a threat to my very ability to do the things you so desperately want to do. I’d like to do it too. But in addition to daringly exercising those rights you  so desperately want to exhibit and explore you are also spreading the virus. Perhaps not you specifically but you collectively. The more of you that go out in defiance of the science the more the disease will spread. And don’t let anyone lie to you – the disease is growing, spreading, and killing a LOT more people than the flu.

The number of people who can’t go out while you do is actually a rather astonishing number. The elderly – or even those just getting up there in years. The Baby Boomers, most of whom are now retirement age. The 1 in 10 people who have respiratory problems, of which I am one. The 1 in 10 who has diabetes. The HALF of the country who has some form of heart disease. And while this disease has done the most damage to these groups it also affects the fit, the healthy, the young and even infants and small children.

It has even infected and killed people who have led protests to “open up the country again”.

I don’t know how to tell you to be considerate to your fellow man. I don’t know how to tell you to be considerate of others at the expense of a slight diminishment in the expression of your freedoms. I don’t even know how to show you the truth in my words.

Except that I do.

LISTEN.

We listened to you. We listened to you express your desires. Express your wants of your total and complete freedoms. Now it’s your turn. Listen to us. Listen to the science of it all. Look at how easily it spreads.  Look at how easy it is to fight.

And look to your beliefs. Is there anything in there, anywhere, that says it’s okay to get ahead while hurting others? Or is there a LOT in there about helping yourself by helping and lifting up others? I haven’t read all of your books (I’ve read a couple) so I don’t know, but you keep telling me that this is the way it is – maybe you should live it for the moment, right when we need it most.

If we can all hang in there, together, for just a little while, then we can start to fix the damage this has done. Stop wishing for things to be the way they were. That’s simply not going to happen and anyone telling you so is lying or deluded. You keep hearing the words “Open the economy up”. It’s been open and it always was. It’s just DIFFERENT. It will be different again. We will get back to work – there’s plenty to do.

But in the meantime, let’s lift one another up, not be so selfish that we can’t live a few weeks without a haircut. This could be over in two months if we can ALL work together.

And if you can’t listen to these words or ones like them, if you can’t find it in your heart to make the sacrifices that it takes to be an American – to lift up your fellow Americans in times of hardship and not inflict any pain, no matter now unintentional it is done – if you can’t adapt, then I can’t understand you.

And THAT is how America dies.

Not just keeping up, but getting out ahead of it all

Hey everyone, I'm back! It's been a surreal few weeks and good lord it's been awful. Like many of you I'm working from home now and have never been so busy. And I'm lucky. I know many of you have lost your jobs or even worse are working around other people for money that is nowhere near enough.

And the list of lives we've lost is just punishing. More about that later.

But while we're all wallowing in our respective miseries over this whole situation I need to point out something. Summer is coming.

I got a rude reminder this morning that while we're doing very little to deal with COVID-19 as a nation (although individual states, cities and counties are doing a lot) we have problems coming that are going to need our attention, so we need to get this over with as not only our current dude in charge at the White House can't see past the next 10 minutes neither can the government he's put together - and that's going to be a HUGE problem.

You see, right this second, with everything shut down, the Gulf of Mexico is 3 degrees warmer than average. I don't give a fuck if you believe in global warming or not (even with all the evidence in front of you - including this) but a warmer gulf means a stronger Hurricane Season. That means damage to the gulf cities, flooding up the mid-west, and tornadoes just about everywhere.

And we're not coping with the current disaster, let alone the ones coming.

Ironically (well, not really) these impending issues will cut through the heart of the country that put these morons in charge in the first place. Where will they place the blame for the hardships to come? Truthfully, I have no fucking clue. These people don't make any damned sense to me.

Cheap Shots (drink whatever you've got in the house)

"What to you mean, you people?" pause. "What do YOU mean, 'you' people'?"

Watching the Detectives.

But no matter what they say, the Internet always remembers.

Thieveses!

Have you ever run into someone so stupid that you just want to slap them? Here's a list.

Someone's going golfing, I suspect.

If you want to get into a twitter fight with AOC, just don't.

A short list of things Trump has done to get you killed. Part 472.

Just how bad this week's unemployment numbers are, in animated graphic form. It's really worth a look

How to make a...

Purple Haze

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 ounces ​vodka
• 1/2 ounce​ black raspberry liqueur
• 2​ ounces cranberry juice (more or less)

Steps to Make It

1. Gather the ingredients.

   
2. Pour the vodka and black raspberry liqueur into a cocktail shaker with ice.
3. Shake well.
4. Strain into an old-fashioned glass filled with fresh ice.

   
5. Top with cranberry juice.

   
6. Serve and enjoy!

And because I love you, Vulfpeck featuring Antwaun Stanley:

And some Cory Wong for Good Measure:

Some of our Losses

Adam Schlesinger, Fountains of Wayne and songwriter for That Thing you Do and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

Alan Merrill, who wrote "I Love Rock and Roll"

Mark Blum, Character actor who often played Judges on various "Law and Order" shows

Terrence McNally, playwright, wrote "Kiss of the Spider Woman", "Ragtime" and "The Full Monty"

Manu Dibango, Jazz Saxophonist, best known for "Soul Makossa" 

Floyd CArdoz, chef and winner of Season 3 of Top Chef Masters, and founder of Hunger Inc.

Joe Diffie, Country Singer who wrote "Honky Tonk Attitude"

Ken Shimura, Comedian. You'd recognize his face - he was called the "Robin Williams of Japan".

Andrew Jack, Voice coach (LOTR, Sherlock Holmes and so on) and actor (General Calaun Ematt in the Star Wars movies)

Wallace Roney, Jazz Trumpeter

Eddie Large, British Comedian

Juan Gimenez, artist whose works were featured in Heavy Metal

Elis Marsalis Jr., Jazz Pianist and yes, father to Branford and Wayland.

Julie Bennett, voice actress who can be heard in various episodes of Rocky and Bullwinkle, and was Cindy Bear in the Yogi Bear cartoons.

Joachim Yhombi-Opango, former President of the Republic of Congo

Orlando McDaniel, former wide receiver for the Denver Broncos

Henri Richolet - French Surrealistic painter

Nasser Shabani, leader of Iran's Revolutionary Guard

...and far too many more...

Also, Bill Withers, who died of Heart Disease in the middle of all this, who wrote the classics "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Lean on Me" as well as lending his voice and songwriting skills to "Just the Two of Us".

Karma's a bitch and she wishes you a "speedy" recovery

Rand Paul tests Positive for COVID-19. Karma's a bitch and she wishes you a "speedy" recovery.

Dan Rather says, "pay less attention to Trump until he starts telling the truth."

The masks and tests he keeps touting don't exist. Those emergency powers he say's he's invoked he hasn't, that Google website doesn't exist, those medical ships he proposed don't have medical staffs and the ones that do haven't been called in, that Malaria drug has NOTHING to do with COVID-19, there is no cure on the horizon, the DID know this could happen as the previous administration warned them it could, and Peter Alexander is an excellent reporter.

Michael Moated, running as the Republican in the race for the Congressional TX-26 seat, is a creeper on underage girls on social media.

Bill Barr, the most recent "adult in the room" in the Trump administration, has petitioned Trump to suspend the Constitution. Remember, this is the head of the Department of Justice.

Finally, if you do the long math and the election in November is suspended, Nancy Pelosi doesn't become President. Patrick Leahy does. The terms of members of the House expire January 3rd, so there will be no Speaker of the house. The terms of the President and Vice President expire on the 20th. 33 Senators will have their terms expire on the 3rd. That leave 67 Senators with a clear Democratic Party Majority. Patrick Leahey, whose terms doesn't expire thanks to the staggered terms of Senators becomes Majority Leader, as he is Minority Leader now. He becomes President.

Unless the Senate elects a NEW Minority Leader, Like Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren or Cory Booker or Kamala Harris or some other Democrat who isn't running for re-election this year.

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I have one of those rare jobs that I can do from home, and I have been since before the shelter in place orders were given. But lots of people can't and I notice that many of them still working do so for minimum wage. Help THEM, you congressional motherfuckers. The bill the Senate is discussing today is welfare for corporations. The corporations have stayed home and we're mostly fine. If the minimum wage workers go home the country collapses in a week.

Tip your delivery person healthily. They deserve it. Tip the guy working the counter at 7-11 too.

And because I love you, the Late Kenny Rodgers

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