New Contender for Worst Governor title

Living in Georgia, I have felt pretty confident that we have the absolute worst governor in the Union. But we have a new contender.  This is what the Governor of Missouri Mike Parson had to say about sending kids back to school during a pandemic:

 

“These kids have got to get back to school,” Parson told Cox. “They’re at the lowest risk possible. And if they do get COVID-19, which they will — and they will when they go to school — they’re not going to the hospitals. They’re not going to have to sit in doctor’s offices. They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.”

Oh my GOD!
He's not just willing to risk the possibility that kids will contact this horrible disease, he's willing to send kids out there KNOWING that they are going to contract this virus.  And yes, children who get Covid are likely to survive, but for one thing, we really have no idea what the long-term effects of this virus are. I just read something the other day about viruses with long-term effects. Like chicken pox. Chicken pox is somethiing that is fairly mild if you get it as a kid, but the virus stays in your body forever. You won't get chicken pox again, but the virus will always be there, just waiting to manifest itself as shingles in times of high stress. Or the herpes virus. If you've ever had a cold sore, that virus stays in your system forever, just bifing its time until it can produce another cold sore once a year on school picture day. So we have no idea what sort of lifelong effect this new virus might inflict on these kids who get it now.

Secondly, here's what he says will happen when (not if, but WHEN) children get the Coronoa Virus from their little classmates:

". . .they’re not going to the hospitals. They’re not going to have to sit in doctor’s offices. They’re going to go home and they’re going to get over it.”

Oh, home! They're going to go HOME! Oh, why didn't you say so?  Oh, that's perfectly fine, then. Home, where they can be cared for by their middle-aged parents. Or, if both parents are fortunate enough to be employed, their elderly grandparents. . . . oh, wait. I think I see a flaw in your "plan," Governor.

Oh, and also, remember a minute ago when we were talking about how we're still learning a lot about this virus? Well, yesterday we learned this:

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• 00:40
  COVID-19 fatalities reported among infants, young children in Brazil

And sure, one's natural instinct is to think "thank God our babies and small children aren't Brazilian, so they're safe," but. . .

Chicago infant dies after testing positive for coronavirus, governor says

Oh, and also too, you know that there aren't just children at schools, right? Youy know the teachers are grown-ups, right? The teachers, the custodians, the librarians, the administrators, the coaches, all grown-ups who, if they catch Covid from one of their students, are much more likely to die from it. I mean, you do know that, right?


Sp why the urgency to re-open the schools? What circumstance justifies this callous indifference to the health and safety of children and adults?

The closest thing to an explanation from the governor that I could find was this:

“We gotta move on,” he said. “We can’t just let this thing stop us in our tracks.”

Which, you know, yes we can. We can shut everything down for a while until it is actually safe to re-open. We actually do not need to plow ahead as if nothing were wrong to prove how tough we are or whatever it is you think you're proving. These are children! You're willing to sacrifice children, teachers and parents on the altar of, what exactly? American exceptionalism? Toxic masculinity? Your deep-seated fear of ever appearing weak?

This pandemic will never end in the U.S. Because evrything that defines us as a nation at this point in history just enables the spread of this virus. Americans' distrust of science, and of expertise in general, ensured that a large swath of the population would never take the threat seriously. The right-wing libertarianism so prevalent these days (libertarianism for me, police state for thee) made it inevitable that a not-insignificant portion of the population would refuse to endure the mild inconvenience of wearing a mask to avoid infecting other people because FREEDOMMMMM!!!! Our propensity to twist every event into some grand conspiracy theory made it inevitable that others would refuse to wear masks because they some sort of mind-control device, or a test to see how compliant citizens would be with governement orders restricting their liberties or something to do with 5-G and pizzagate, I don't even know, but the list goes on.

Oh shit! I just heard that Micheal Brooks passed away! I have to go now.

This man gets paid to write things.

Brett Stephens is a professional opinion-haver. He gets paid to have opinions and he gets paid to type up those opinions for publication. And he is paid really well for typing up his opinions. And his opinions are published in the number one newspaper in America and syndicated all over the country. This would be the equivalent of me getting paid to play basketball in the NBA. And everyone in the NBA and the TV announcers and the fans all agreeing to pretend that I am a very very good basketball player (which I am NOT).

Anyway, this is Brett Stephens' expert professional opinion about. . . somehting.

Opinion

Reading Orwell for the Fourth of July

Ah, yes. Orwell. Every dumb guy who wants to have an opinion on politics defaults to having read Orwell and pretending to have understood the message.

As we celebrate freedom, speaking freely is in danger.

Mmmmm, yeah. . .no. No it isn't.

I can already pretty much guess where this is going. "People criticizing me on-line is a level of censorship and oppression not seen since the heyday of the Soviet Union," right?

This Fourth of July, it’s worth taking stock of the state of freedom — and of our attitudes toward it — at home and around the world.
In Russia, Vladimir Putin just won a “plebiscite” ratifying his right to stay in power until the year 2036. In Hong Kong, a new security law came into effect effectively putting an end to the right of peaceful protest. In Poland, a runoff election will decide if the country continues its slide toward illiberalism.

Okay. No argument here.but what has this to do with America and how is it the Democrats' fault?

In the United States, these stories barely make a dent on public consciousness. Conservatives and liberals alike have ceased to care very much about the denial of freedom to others.

What? When the Hell did conservatives ever care about other people's freedom? Other than as something they could use as a pretext to invade or bomb a foreign country or sponsor a coup?

We also have our own problems with freedom.
For once, the main problem isn’t Donald Trump. 

Well, you may have a point. At the moment, the main threat to freedom seems to be coming from local police departments.

For once, the main problem isn’t Donald Trump. The president may be an instinctual fascist, a wannabe autocrat. But, after nearly four years in power, he’s been unmasked as an incompetent one.

Okay, first of all, "unmasked?" Was there anyone other than the MAGA cult who didn't already know Trump was incompetent long before he took office? It took you almost four years to realize that "oh, maybe the guy who ran every business he's ever had into the ground, who can barely string a sentence together and makes everything about himself and his petty grievances doesn't actually know what the fuck he's doing?"


Secondly, you think that makes it okay? You think the fact that the fascist occupying the Oval Office is not very good at being a fascist = nothing to worry about here?

The more serious problem today comes from the left

Of course it does. Of course. I was wondering what was taking you so long to get there.

The more serious problem today comes from the left: from liberal elites who, when tested, lack the courage of their liberal convictions; from so-called progressives whose core convictions were never liberal to begin with; from administrative types at nonprofits and corporations who, with only vague convictions of their own, don’t want to be on the wrong side of a P.R. headache.

Stop, you're going to give me nightmares! Liberals who lack the courage of their convictions? So much scarier than Proud Boys, gun freaks and Boogaloo Bois!

This has been the great cultural story of the last few years. It is typified by incidents such as The New Yorker’s David Remnick thinking it would be a good idea to interview Steve Bannon for the magazine’s annual festival — until a Twitter mob and some members of his own staff decided otherwise.

Okay, honestly, I've read this paragraph about a half-dozen times now and I'm still not sure whether you're saying the problem was that the New Yorker decided to interview a white supremacist fascist or that people on Twitter and some New Yorker staff objected to publishing an interview with a white nationalist.

 Or by The Washington Post devoting 3,000 words to destroying the life of a private person of no particular note because in 2018 she wore blackface, with ironic intent, at a Halloween party. 

Okay, I read the article you linked to and I see that the lady got fired, but the Post article is only reporting that she got fired. They didn't get her fired. She had already been fired long before the article was written. So I'm not sure how you can say that the Washington Post "devot[ed] 3,000 words to ruining [her] life." I mean, it's not like you're some kind of disingenuous shitweasel, are you?

Or by big corporations pulling ads from Facebook while demanding the company do more to censor forms of speech they deem impermissible.

So. . . companies decide that they don't want to advertise on a platform that allows hate speech, and that's a problem because. . . ?

These stories matter because an idea is at risk. That’s the idea that people who cannot speak freely will not be able to think clearly, and that no society can long flourish when contrarians are treated as heretics.

Yeah, but by "contrarians," you mean "Nazis." You mean "prople who spread dangerous medical misinformation." You mean "incels."  The "idea" that you claim is at risk is racism.

If someone says "I think the Senate's proposed bill is a bad idea and someone else says "No, I think it's good," then yes. Both points opf view deserve a hearing. But when one person is saying "Black Lives Matter," and the other is saying "No they don't," there is no legitimate reason to hear out the "contrarion." He's just a racist piece of shit.

That idea, old as Socrates, formerly had powerful institutional defenders, especially in the form of universities, news media, book publishers, free-speech groups and major philanthropies.But those defenders are, on account of one excuse or another, capitulating to people who claim free speech for themselves (but not for others)

Oh my God.





Do we really have to go over this again?
Freedom of speech means that the government can not prevent you from speaking or punish you for your speech. It does not mean that no matter what you say people aren't allowed to criticize you, to call you out, to condemn you. And it doesn't mean that your employer can't decide that you've become an embarassment to the organization and fire you.

. . .  and who demand cringing public apologies from those who have sinned against an ever-more radical ideological standard (while those apologies won’t save them from being fired).

This would be the radical ideological standard of . . . don't say racist, misogynistic or homophobic shit in public and expect to not get any pushback? That honestly doesn't sound that difficult. I'm 53 years old and I'm pretty sure I haven't done that. And I'm just some normal average guy.

As in so much else, George Orwell was here before us. . . 
“What is sinister,” he wrote, “is that the conscious enemies of liberty are those to whom liberty ought to mean most.” He was particularly calling out Western scientists who admired the Soviet Union for its technical prowess and were utterly indifferent to Stalin’s persecution of writers and artists. “They do not see that any attack on intellectual liberty, and on the concept of objective truth, threatens in the long run every department of thought.”

Yeah, that's certainly analagous to the current situation. The Soviets were an authoritarian dictatorship who had the power to restrict writing and speech and brutally punish anyone who violated their strictures. Being sent to the gulag for voicing an opinion is really, when you think about it, the equivalent of being told on Twitter that you've been "cancelled."


So to sum up, Trump - who recently demanded that protestors be given long prison terms, who has encouraged groups of heavily-armed thugs and whire supremacisits and who has threatened to unleash the military on American cities if governors do not heed his calls to utilize the National Guard, is not the problem.

Police who beat, knock down, pepper spray and tear-gas people exercising their First Amendment rights are not the problem.

Gangs of conspiracxy-theory-addled rage-fueled agreived white racists with sub-machine guns are not the problem.

The problem is that sometimes when someone gets racist on Twitter, people get angry and then sometimes that person gets fired. That's the problem. If you can type up some version of this opinion twice a week for the foreseeable future, you too can be a professional opinion-haver and writer. Apparently, that's all there us to it.

Shit you couldn't make up

Lately I've been seeing way more than the usual amount of news stories that, were a writer to include them in a movie script, would be considered too unrealistic.

Take this for example:






Okay, first of all, there is no such thing as "Cancel Culture." Cancelled is just an expression, a slang term if you will. When you find out that someone you used to be a fan of has done something awful and tou can no longer watch or enjoy their work, it's just easier to say "Loius CK is cancelled" than to say "I always enjoyed Louis CK's stand-up comedy and I liked his TV show and he's very talented, but now that I know he's a sex creep, I can't watch him anymore."



Anyway, I get why the revanchists at FOXwould be annoyed by people "cancelling" a cartoon about puppy cops, or a very good but very racist movie, but the Confederacy?
First of all, the Confederacy was cancelled 150 years ago by Ulysses S. Grant

You're Goddamm right!

Secondly, The Confederacxy?
Were you under the impression that before Milenials got on Twitter everyone was pretty okay with the fucking Confederacy?

Or look at this story:

• Politics

NYC detectives union to file lawsuit against George Floyd protesters

What? How. . . I mean. . . WHAT?

The head of the NYPD detectives’ union said that they plan to sue protestors who injure police officers.
“If you assault a New York City Detective and there are no consequences from the criminal justice system, we have to have other means to protect our detectives,” said Paul DiGiacomo, president of the Detectives Endowment Association.

Oh my God. First of all, if a civilian injures a New York City Detective, there are absolutely going to be consequences from the criminal justice system. Of course there will be. I know cops are really wedded to this whole "everyone's against us" narrative, but what do you think happens when someone injures a cop? Do you think that the DA just shrugs and says "boys will be boys?" Do you think they get a half-assed grand jury procedure that miraculously results in no charges being filed? It's ridiculous and disingenuous and frankly a bit dangerous to imply that people get away with assaulting police officers. There are always consequences for assaulting a cop. There are also consequences for being rude to a cop, being in the way of a cop, or walking on the sidewalk too close to a cop.

And with or without the backing of the criminal justice system, y'all don't seem to have any trouble finding "other means" of dealing with people who piss you off.



But the irony that seems to escape the NYPD is that it is the police who, time and time again, have killed, beaten, and injured civilians with "no consequences from the criminal justice system." That's the whole problem. That's how we got here. If it were even a little bit true that civilians were injurung cops with impunity, I would have to say "now you know how every black person probably feels." But it isn't. It's not true. Not even a little nit. If you wrote an episode of Law and Order with a cop character who was this big a crybaby, the producers would tell you it was too unrealistic. Yet here we are.

Also, no TV show or movie would let a writer get away with a character as batshit crazy as Michael Flynn:

Exclusive from Gen. Flynn: Forces of Evil Want To Steal Our Freedom in the Dark of Night, But God Stands with Us

The idea or notion of a heaven on Earth is the very real sense of being free. Freedom is oxygen. Like the air we breathe that keeps our lungs full and our hearts beating, the celestial feeling of freedom brings a sense of peace to our souls.

Freedom is oxygen. Which is why every citizen of the Soviet Union suffocated in the 1950's.

Freedom must never be taken for granted. Securing our freedom demands a high price — and that price requires hard work and sacrifice. Both will bind us all by the value they produce, but only if we are willing to seek new opportunities and new ideas.

Jesus Christ, this is gibberish!

I don't think I can read any more of this drivel. It's not even funny.

What else has been in the news lately? Oh, this:

NYPD lieutenant apologizes

Well, good. That's a start at least.
Oh wait. There's more?

NYPD lieutenant apologizes for kneeling alongside George Floyd protesters

Of course. I should've known. Of course he's apologizing for the one decent thing he did.

A Manhattan NYPD lieutenant has apologized to his fellow department members for taking a knee alongside George Floyd protesters — telling them that “the cop in me wants to kick my own ass.”

Of course. Because that's the natural cop reaction to anything he doesn't like. Kick someone's ass.

In a June 3 email obtained by The Post, Lt. Robert Cattani of the Midtown South Precinct wrote that he lost sleep over the “horrible decision to give into a crowd of protesters’ demands.”

Right, why should you give into the demands of the crowd? I mean, it's not like you're some kind of public servant or something. You certainly wouldn't want the ordinary people of New York to think that the police are on their side.

Police sources expressed relief that Cattani had apologized — but questioned what he was thinking in the first place.
“I’m glad he took it back, because your officers are out here battling with these guys and that’s what you do to show appreciation? Never show your weakness,” one insider said.

Right, The citizenry is the enemy. You are at war with the people of your city. Do you people listen to yourselves? You're not in Fallujah.

I swear to God, you couldn't make this shit up!

The Democrats are not coming to save us.

Let me begin by stating for the record that I, Professor Chaos, will be voting for Joe Biden or for whomever they replace him with at the convention because no matter how many problems I have with Biden, the alternative is much much worse.


That being said, Joe Biden and the Democratic leadership are not coming to save us.

Yes, they are better than the Republicans. Much better. Or much less awful, if you prefer. But no positive change is going to come from these people.

At a time in our hiustory when the people are demanding radical change to way our citizenry is ploiced, the Democratic leadership gives us performative posturing.

The people cried out "Defund the Police!" and Pelosi and the Dems respomded "Got it!  Kneel for 8 minutes! While wearing African cloth for some reason no one can really explain."

"No, seriously" the people said. "We rreally want to defund the police!" And Biden gave us this headline:

Biden Walks a Cautious Line as He Opposes Defunding the Police

In the face of continuing protest marches calling to “defund the police” nationwide in the aftermath of George Floyd’s killing, Mr. Biden’s campaign said in a statement that he “hears and shares the deep grief and frustration of those calling out for change” and that he “supports the urgent need for reform.” But a campaign spokesman, Andrew Bates, said flatly that Mr. Biden was opposed to cutting police funding and believed more spending was necessary to help improve law enforcement and community policing.

Seriously? How is Biden's strategy always to come out in opposition to whatever Democratic voters want? Medicare For All polls at around 65-70% among all voters and obviously higher among the Democratic base.






So what does Biden have to say?


Biden says he'll veto Medicare For All. Says he always knew Iraq had no WMDs, was bamboozled by Bush
Tuesday March 10, 2020

Oh that's great.
You know, if you're going to come out against a highly popular policy proposal, it helps to toss in the fact that you knew the bloody quagmire you supported was begun on false pretenses and that you were outsmarted by a dimwit.



So now the Dems have come out with their police "reform" proposal.

Al Jazeera English

@AJEnglish

Democrats to unveil sweeping US police reform plan. Proposal expected to ban: • chokeholds • racial profiling • require nationwide body cameras



Oh,, they're going to ban chokeholds! Like we don't know that chokeholds are already banned in a lot of jurisdictions but somehow still keep being applied. For instance, the chokehold was banned in New York in 1993, but somehow still managed to kill Eric Garner and the officer apoplying that chokehold was never charged with a crime or faced any actual consequnences. But the Democrats have a solution! They're going to. . . ban the chokehold even more, I guess?

And ban racial profiling. How is that going to work? Racial profiling is such a stupid term. It sounds like it's some kind of academic formula that police departments ude to identify suspects, something really complex whose use could be discontinued, when it's really just the cops saying "hey, look. A black guy. Let's stop-and-frisk him!" How are you going to end the use of "racial profiling?" No cop is ever going to admit that he pulled ovewr a driver or stopped a pedestrian because of his race. He's going to say that the car was speeding, or the black guy walking down the street was behaving suspiciously, or the black guy he killed was "resisiting arrest." And how would you prove that he's lying? You can't.So your ban is meaningless. It's like if my wife says I'm not allowed to choose movies on Netflix on the basis of how much nudity they have. And then I choose some movie with lots of naked boobies in it. And she says "hey, I thought we agreed that you wouldn't choose boobie movies," and I say "Gosh, I didn't know that 9-1/2 Weeks had nudity! How was I to know?" She can't really prove that I knew. I can claim that I heard it was a thought-provoking relationship drama and she can't really say for sure that I'm NOT dumb enough to have thought that. In fact, after 25 years of marriage, she probably assumes that I am.

And they're going to require nationwide bidy cams? You mean like the ones that are already required by departments all over the country? That always seem to malfunction right at the time when something bad happens? . Isn't it always the way that the time you forget to turn your body cam on is the one time that you have to fire your weapon to defend yourself against an unarmed black teenager? Murphy's law, I guess

So they're going to push these aesthetic "reforms," the bill will die in the Senate, and cops will continue to run roughshod over the rights of minority communities, but the Dems will pat themselves on the back for being "woke" and continue to not understand why more people don't show up to vote for them.

And eventually Trump will leave office and everyone will want to pretend that the problem is solved. I can't tell you hoiw many Tweets I've seen these last few weeks with video clips of cops beating, teargassing and firing at protestors with some line about "this is Trump's America!" As if police brutality was something that began in January 2017.
As if Philandro Castile, Alton Sterling, Keith Lamont Scott, Terence Crutcher and many more unarmed black men weren't killed by cops just in the last year of the Obama administration.


Or as if the militarization of police departments was some new development spurred by Cheeto Mussolini. Police departments have been militarizing since at least the 1980's in response to the crack epidemic. And at first it was just big cities with lots of gang activity like Los Angeles and Miami, but over the last several administrations it has spread to small and medium-sized towns across the country. It's not like this wasn't happening under Barack Obama and it's not like it's going to stop under Joe Biden.
Don't forget,this was Biden's response to the Rodney King beating in 1991:

Biden proposed 'Police Officer's Bill of Rights' two months after Rodney King beating

by Joseph Simonson

 | June 03, 2020

Sensing upcoming unrest, lawmakers in Washington began to act. In May 1991, Biden authored a Senate bill that would have provided greater protections to cops accused of misconduct. The " Police Officer's Bill of Rights Act" aimed at strengthening protections when law enforcement officers were accused of misconduct. 

And his response to the current unrest:

“Instead of standing there and teaching a cop, when there’s an unarmed person coming at them with a knife or something, you shoot them in the leg instead of in the heart is a very different thing. There’s a lot of different things that could change,” 

You know, I used to jokingly make the analogy about voting blue as the lesser of two evils that it was like if you are offered a choice between a slap in the face and a kick to the crotch, you would be crazy not to opt for the slap. Now it seems voters are being offered a choice between one party that wants to shoot you in the heart and one that just wants to shoot you in the leg. So of course, you gotta choose the leg. But it's hard to generatemuch enthusiasm for that choice.

But no, the Democrats are not coming to save us. Joe Biden is not coming to save us.
 Nancy Pelosi is not coming to save us. They will rip up a speech or give a sarcastic clap, then turn around and authorize billions of dollars to put children in concentration camps. They aren't going to make anything better. But the alternative is worse.

Do not look away from this. #DefundThePolice #WhichSideAreYouOn pic.twitter.com/5Gi7I8ngOF

— Drop The MIC (@DROPTHEMIC2020) June 5, 2020