May 26, 2020

Are you better off today than you were 4 years ago?

I'll let you know when I am allowed to leave my house without a face mask, disinfectant wipes, hand sanitizer, when I don't have to stand 6-feet away from everyone I meet in public, when I can see my family again, when I don't have to wash my hands 50 times a day, and when I actually have a job to leave the house for.

The one thing I can tell you is that I will leave my house on Tuesday, November 3rd come hell or high water to make sure the next 4 years don't resemble that last 4 years.

May 17, 2020

Who wants to bet we'll see Trump come out with some crappy graduation message?

I give it a day or two and Trump will try to take a wildly miscalculated swing at Obama.

May 11, 2020

Paul Field's Facebook Post

Source: Paul Field

Paul Field
April 17 at 5:09 PM

Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but you need to know how silly you look if you post some variation of, "Welcome to Socialism..."
You are not seeing Socialism. What you are seeing is one of the wealthiest, geographically advantaged, productive capitalist societies in the world flounder and fail at its most basic test. Taking care of its people.
This crisis is not about the virus.

This crisis is about the massive failure of our, "Booming economy," to survive even modest challenges. It is about the market dissonance of shortages in stores, even as farmers/producers destroy unused crops and products. This crisis is about huge corporations needing an emergency bailout within days of the longest Bull Market in our history ending and despite the ability to borrow with zero percent interest rates.

This crisis is about corporatized healthcare systems being unable and ill equipped to provide basic healthcare, at the same time they post record profits. It is about crisis response depending on antiquated systems nobody remembers how to operate.
But most of all, this crisis is a direct result of the politicization of every aspect of our society for the benefit of a privileged few. The vilification of education, science, media, natural rights, rural lifestyles, urban lifestyles, charity, compassion, and virtually everything else for brief political gain has gutted our society.

What you are seeing is a quarter century of technological brilliance being reduced to a narcissistic popularity contest. You're seeing the folly of basing the health and welfare of an entire society on personal greed. You're seeing all the necessary tools, for us to shrug off this crisis, go unused while people argue over who should get the credit and profit. Even worse, you're seeing vital help withheld because recipients might not, "deserve it..."

You're seeing a lot of things nobody thought they'd ever see, but you're not seeing Socialism...

"Doing nothing for others is the undoing of ourselves."
-- Horace Mann

Read more: https://www.facebook.com/paul.field.39

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Definitely follow this man's posts.

May 8, 2020

It is time to ACT!

This is a tough, tough situation by any standard. The sad part is that we probably haven't seen the worst of it yet. If we ever needed the government to step up and take care of their citizens, the time is now. People are facing the prospect of catching a deadly disease and possibly spreading it to their families by gong to a job that isn't safe or staying home and running out of resources to even meet their most basic needs, or relying on help from both state and federal governments.

We are a wealthy country. The wealthiest country in fact. We could help the neediest people. Those left with no other choices if we only decided to open up the pharaoh's grain bins and feed the least fortunate. We should institute a massive tax on the wealthiest Americans as a temporary emergency measure and save this country from the terrible choices we have to make. Life or death isn't an exaggeration at this point. This is no time to debate economic principles or scream Socialism. It is time to act for the good of the country or admit that we don't give a damn about the least among us.

April 2, 2020

UPDATE::::Can I Make Something Perfectly Clear About Blood Donations During The COVID-19 Crisis?

**********THEY DO NOT PERFORM FREE COVID-19 TESTS WHEN YOU DONATE BLOOD!!! PERIOD!!!!****************

My son works for a blood donation center and apparently has had to tell large numbers of people that giving blood does not provide you with a COVID-19 test to see if you are infected. This myth was the same myth that went around during the AIDS Crisis. If someone walks in with a potential COVID-19 symptom, the center is closed down and all employees have to shelter in place for two weeks further reducing the country's blood supply.

If someone in your family is sick and untested, or you have symptoms, stay away from blood donation centers entirely. They will simply throw your blood away anyway and you will never know. My son has already had 3 potential exposures and half of their centers have been closed down. People that want to donate in order to be tested for COVID-19 are only making the problems worse for everyone.

PLEASE! Don't be reckless and endanger everyone else.

March 24, 2020

Are we watching Darwin's Natural Selection in real time?

I keep hearing Right-wing pundits, politicians, and Trump lemmings say that this virus is no big deal. It will pass quickly. I see churches filled with people on Easter Trump opines in a Fox interview How many people will actually listen to these idiots and end up gasping for breath in an overcrowed hospital ward?

These happy talkers have already used the economy as the excuse du jour to scare people back into the shops and restaurants. We have not seen the peak and we have no idea when the cases will begin dropping off. SendIng everyone back into group settings will likely only result in a second spike. This week may determine what the path of this virus takes in this country.

My feeling is that this is going to turn out to be a biology lesson our decendents will be reading about in schools for years to come like the 1918 Spanish Flu? I guess we're all about to find out. Having conversed with some of these Trump sycophants, I have to conclude that many, many of them will follow the Trump Adminstration right over that cliff. Like a mass suicide for dumb people.

March 21, 2020

My son got married today

My first born, my first to marry, my son got married today. I wasn’t there. My wife wasn’t there. My other sons were not there. No grandparents, No aunts. No uncles. No cousins. No life-long friends. Just one person they asked to perform the ceremony and one witness.

The guest list was never grand. They only invited the people that were closest to them. The beautiful conservatory was reserved. The honeymoon was planned. A week in China, a week in South Korea, and a week in Japan seeing all the sights. A trip of a lifetime to celebrate their union.

Slowly, all the plans they had made began to unravel like a slow-moving catastrophe. With the COVID-19 outbreak in China, they had to alter their plans and decided to only visit South Korea and Japan. It just gave them more time to see the other two countries they noted.

Once the virus spread crossed the borders, South Korea and eventually Japan were also off the table. Undaunted, they planned to take a trip to New Orleans and then Las Vegas as a substitute for their grand Asia honeymoon. Even those plans were peeled away. The dinners venues, the hotels, the airlines all regretted the inconvenience and refunded little if any real money.

The venue they had carefully chosen announced that they were closing under orders from the State. The wedding was a matter of weeks away. Every single plan they had carefully made was peeled away like a sticky band aid on a large gash and just as painful. It was as if the world didn’t want they to get married.

Today, they said the hell with all of that and got married anyway. Proof that we will persevere and get through this but only if we do it together. I am so proud of them.

March 21, 2020

People scoffed at Trump declaring a national emergency and cancelling the 2020 elections

I certainly wouldn't put anything past this megalomaniac and I too found this to be a ridiculous scenario until recently but with the Covid-19 virus a reality, Trump may just see an opportunity to stay in power even if he loses the election bigly.

After what we have witnessed this week, I am not sure what this idiot will do next fall. He obviously has no empathy no compassion and only sees an opportunity for himself and you know that the GOP will happily follow him right over that cliff. They always do.

What do you think Trump will do given the current pandemic? Will he gracefully walk away in an inevitable defeat or will he declare some type of emergency and try to stay in power like his best buddy Putin has done all these years? After all, Putin is his role model.

March 12, 2020

List of DU members, family, and friends lost to COVID-19

Thank God this list is still at zero. Keep it that way please.

March 4, 2020

The Coronavirus is tracking like the Spanish Flu of 1918 - Beware the Autumn of 2020

At the end of WWI, soldiers on both sides returned home already infected with the Spanish Flu. The trench warfare had spawned more than a new way to fight a war, it had also spawned a deadly virus that would kill between 50 and 100 million people world-wide. But that didn't happen the spring of 1918 when the war ended, it took until the following fall for the pandemic to really ramp up.

----snip------

The first wave wasn’t that bad. In the spring of 1918, a new strain of influenza hit military camps in Europe on both sides of World War I. Soldiers were affected, but not nearly as severely as they would be later.

Even so, Britain, France, Germany and other European governments kept it secret. They didn’t want to hand the other side a potential advantage.

Spain, on the other hand, was a neutral country in the war. When the disease hit there, the government and newspapers reported it accurately. Even the king got sick.

So months later, when a bigger, deadlier wave swept across the globe, it seemed like it had started in Spain, even though it hadn’t. Simply because the Spanish told the truth, the virus was dubbed the “Spanish flu.”

Now, as fears about the coronavirus spread, at least one historian is worried the Trump administration is failing to heed the lesson of one of the world’s worst pandemics: Don’t hide the truth.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/02/29/1918-flu-coronavirus-trump/