I am the extremist your Government warned you about....
Remember: "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch".....But you can help when you buy your AMAZON purchases through my links at no cost to you.
They are even happening near me (more or less peacefully)...less than 20 miles away, in a fairly affluent area where the cops generally don't hassle anyone unless they REALLY try to get the attention of the Po-Po...Not even in the areas where there are a lot of Section 8 folks that have been relocated in an attempt to integrate them into a more affluent mindset in a fairly decent neighborhood.
But the protest near me is about 2/3 white, 1/3 black. And they are protesting .....because......Whites must have, at some point "Put the black man down" or something.
Nevermind that the facts of the George Floyd case are not what the Media chose to show us. To quote one of my local protesters: “Yelling facts at people doesn’t change feelings,” he said.
And that is what this is all about. Feelings. Just because someone got crossways with the police, it must be because he was black. Just because someone dies while struggling with police while being restrained for arrest, it must be the police that killed him. 'Cause cops are racist because they investigate, detain, and sometimes arrest black people.
Of course, if anyone thinks that this round of protests" spontaneously erupted across the country then they must be stupid as well as blind , gullible, and a fool.
Of course, they don't really want "justice", They want revenge.
Immediate.
No investigation, no trial, just revenge. Right now.
They call that a Lynching. If it were whites insisting on revenge for perceived crimes by a black person, and summary justice rather than a trial, they'd call that a lynching.
But that is what they want. Instant "Justice".
Should the cop get off without an investigation and a trial? Absolutely not. Should he be lynched? Also absolutely not.
Just because a 30 second video with no context was shown on TV, and a report that it happened over 7 minutes is no reason to demand a lynching. Of course, it is a white cop and a black man so there is no presumption of guilt on the cop's part.
But I doubt that the protesters care enough to be logical or rational. They want revenge.
Sadly, they don't realize that this is scripted. Designed to keep them angry.
And another thing: I can understand the protest (not the riots) in Minneapolis. That is where the incident occurred. But everywhere else? Sorry, no excuse.
And burning your own neighborhood is the process? Just a bunch of people demonstrating why we have stereotypes for them. Sad.
So masks work, except they don't but everyone should wear them, except most people don't need to wear them, unless you do.
And the WHO is the authority on the Covid, unless the CDC is the ruling authority, except when it contradicts the WHO then ....?
So George Floyd is dead in Minneapolis. Cops killed him.
True.
He was a nice guy and didn't deserve it.
Maybe. I don't know.
It is odd that black men nearly never surrender when being arrested. That is one thing that the media never notes when they are doing what they can to fire the race wars.
"If he was white this wouldn't have happened"
Probably true. If he was white, or hispanic, or chinese or Irish or lithuanian or south american or nearly any other race, he probably would have stopped struggling once he was arrested.
Ask any cop, they'll agree with the above statement.
Did he deserve to die? No. Did he deserve to be arrested? I don't know. Chances are if he had stopped struggling such that it took several men to hold him down he might be alive. Did his behavior lead to his death? Probably, but the media hasn't shown us any video from earlier in the incident. All we get is the dramatic parts. Probably because they really don't want us to see it since it might damage their meme.
How you end up after the arrest mostly depends on your behavior. Choose wisely.
Should the cops be disciplined and charged with murder? I don't know enough about the whole incident to judge. Hell, I don't know enough to be sure that he WAS struggling, but it is likely.
I'd like to see the whole video, and if he submitted without a struggle, then I'd expect the cops should be charged with murder.
ETA: If his trachea was crushed, or if the cop was pressing his neck to the ground so hard that his airway was restricted, then why can we hear him telling the cops "Officer, I can't breathe"?
No, seriously, they will keep honest people out, and (maybe) undermotivated thieves.
Man, I got the Rigid Tools cordless grinder ...couple this tool with a decent cutting disc and you can cut through a grade 8 half inch bolt in less than 30 seconds.
Effectively, except for armored locks, this makes locks easy simply cut.
(yeah, I had to try it on a tungsten carbide shackle....3/8 inch shackle with a carbide core)
Like butter.
And as this is a handheld cordless unit, one can walk up to ANY lock (pr damned close to any)and simply cut the shackle with a minimal amount of noise... and at speeds which a corded grinder would be hard to beat. Yes, the battery power is limited , but not by as much as you think.
Effectively, you padlocks and steel storage containers are not gonna stop anyone who is serious about getting inside wherever you think you have locked them out of.
Farm gates? Gone is 20 seconds....Barn doors? Heh. Locks pretty much anywhere can be cut in less than a minute....and a 4 AH battery is good for about 50 minutes of actual cutting time. Yep, nearly an hour.
Best defense is an alarm system and some cameras. If someone wants to get nto your stuff, they don't need a key. While a torch or a sawzall type cutter will work, they don't like harder steel. Tends to eat the teeth off of the blade, even carbide ones
A grinder (to a certain extend) simply doesn't care what you put in front of it. A thin abrasive wheel and you are all set.....And now we have cordless tools with Lithium batteries.....
So now that the "lockdown" (That wasn't a lockdown, really) is lifted here in Indiana, since more or less May 1, we should be seeing an uptick in the number of deaths ...right? I mean, it has been three weeks, so we should be seeing an increase in deaths or at least symptomatic cases....Or so the "experts" tell us....
And yet, we haven't. The number of deaths is still decreasing, and the number of symptomatic cases has also decreased...(the number of cases has increased, but so has the number of tested people...we are testing more people every day)...
One would expect that if the "lockdown" would have done anything that there would be an uptick in deaths and symptomatic cases by now. It has been over three weeks..I find it hard to believe that this "Pandemic" has burnt itself out already.
I think that the "Lockdown" didn't do much at all, really. If it had, we'd be seeing the results of ending it by now.
What a colossal failure the CDC and Dr. Anthony Fauci have engineered....
Unless, of course, it was a failure and not a plan to damage our economy.
And shame on the Medical Profession for buying into this farce with no reason to believe the bullshit they were fed.
I mean, they found that most people don't even know what we celebrate on Memorial Day, among other revelations. This sort of ignorance is more common among Urban folks (of all races, so don't go there) than among rural folk. Most urban dwellers just think it an extra day off...
5 inches in 16 minutes. Northwest Indiana.
At one point the electronic rain gauge showed a rain rate of 24 inches per hour.
Total was a bit over 6 inches. Plus tornadoes to the north a few miles.
My bother got two storm cells an hour apart....about 8 inches total. He's done with rain for a while.
Despite the reporting though, the land here is too flat to give us "Flash Floods".... Water does rise when that amount of rain falls in such a short time, but it isn't true Flash Flooding. Not even in the city at the underpasses.
And a hint for folks: "Turn Around, Don't Drown"
If the water is moving, never go deeper than 1/4 of your tire...in other words when the water is deep enough that 1/4 of your tie is underwater, stop, turn around.
If it touches the bottom of your door, then stop, turn around.
Failure to do so can (and often will) lead to massive damage to your car, and can leave you stranded in a low area where the water will continue to rise.
I fully expect the ABCBSNBCSN/CNN group to start bleating this mistruth to us shortly.
So it began a week ago on Ms. Misfit's "Orange Man Bad" blog.
The meme that all these people died because, (of course) Trump somehow failed to act quickly enough....Despite the fact that when he began to act, the (ahem) "loyal opposition" decried every step he took as too much, too soon, worthless or ineffective, etc.
And the number she used, which she apparently got from the New York Times (who "estimated that using some pretty sketchy data) was 50,000 dead.
Then, yesterday, I got 4 robocalls from liberal and/or Democratic politicians claiming. that Trump's inaction caused many deaths and we should do something about it.
Today, 6 calls (so far) also doing the same bleating that Trump, through his inaction, had caused many deaths. and this whole coronavirus debacle is his (and his alone) fault.
2 issues:
I am not even in the district for these politicians.....I am on the Do Not Call list, which oddly enough, the politicians carved out an exemption for themselves on when they did that legislation....
Second, all of the above politicians have chosen to ignore the slew of deaths (around 36 thousand, BTW....40% of the total) that were nursing home residents in both New York and in Michigan where their (very) blue, Democrat, governors forced nursing homes to admit (or re-admit) patients that had tested positive for coronavirus, spreading that disease to a most vulnerable population...the elderly. Odd, innit, how that is ignored. 36,000 deaths that can be laid at the feet of Cuomo and Whitmer...but they don't mention that
This must, of course, just be coincidence...couldn't be a planned misinformation campaign. Never happen.
I mean, there is partisan, there is twisted presentation, then there is mistruths and outright lies.
You figure out which this meme is, or what it will morph into.
It used to be "gluten intolerant" wher folks had never been tested for Celiac's disease, but foloowed the trend...
Now the big words people seem to use to feel special atre "immune compromised".
Which means nothing, really.
Except it is another excuse not to do something and to feel special.
I've asked several folks what they mean when they say "immune compromised" and they all get pissy 'cause they don't really know. It's just a phrase they use to feel part of the herd, only moreso than the rest of us....
The above pretty much describes the entire response to the Covid-19 "Pandemic" by those we pay to keep us safe.....Making shit up as they went along, and following what others did with no science whatsoever.
And I still want to know how a 2 week "Flatten the Curve" became 2 or more moths of "lockdown" (that wasn't a lockdown)...and why Target and Wal-Mart and car dealerships are "safe" when other places (like barbershops, and restaurants) are not....
Plus from comments a few posts down, there is THIS...all based on a high school paper done by a 14 year old girl.
So, again, pretty much no science nor logic involved in the decisionmaking process.
So where, exactly did the whole 6 foot distancing thing come from?
Was it determined by a study? Did that study take into account air currents?
I'd like to see the science behind the choice of 6 foot as the appropriate distance....especially indoors and at restaurants and such.
Or was that just something else that the CDC made up on the fly?
The Chicago Media is pushing the fact that attending churches exposes the attendees to an easy vector for Coronavirus. They are actively discouraging the public from attending church services.
Yet, oddly, there is no such discouragement of mosque attendance. Never has been all through this "crisis". Either it was (and is) a political "third rail" or the city administration doesn't care if the muslims pass Covid-19 to each other.
Or they know that the risk is low, and they simply don't think the political fallout is worth the hassle they would get from Muslims and their organizations....whereas the Christians won't threaten to do scary things or scream loudly about "discrimination" and garner bad press.
(It would be interesting to see what the infection rate is for the mosque attendees, compared to those folks who did not attend church)
Seems that Second Lt. Mohammed Saeed Alshamrani, the gunman in the Pensacola Naval station shooting in December of 2019 was, communicating with terrorist groups.
Seems that the CPD is blocking parking lots to churches to prevent these folks from exercising their right to worship. The CPD cops KNOW that they are violating Constitutional rights (and private property rights) and are doing so illegally because a Mayor tells them to do so.
"Just Following Orders".
Of course, in doing so to Christian worshipers they know that it is relatively safe....The City has NOT shut down any mosques where worship takes place daily, nor are they shutting down the street parties and the party houses on the south and west sides that happen every weekend....Only the predominantly white, christian folks get this treatment.
So how can police officers, knowing that they are following illegal orders, still do what their bosses tell them? Aren't they violating their oaths?
It is a short step (figuratively) from this to herding folks into boxcars, really.
In other words, we have changed our way of life and spent a whole shitload of money (and in this case, damaged our economy) for a bunch of predictions that just aren't panning out, and probably never will.
Yes, I am talking about Mr. Mann's "Hockey Stick" predictions for our worldwide temperature...based on a computer program that no one can fully follow because it is crap programming done in a crappy way then inputted crap data....which resulted in crap for predictions.
And we (the western world and other countries as well), did it again. We listened to another doomsayer who pointed to his computer program and people listened without investigating....
I'm talking about he computer models that were used to do the predictions for Covid-19...those were also crap programs with crappy programming done in a crappy way that were fed crappy data and therefore gave us crappy predictions....
The models, as we all know, were terribly off. They overestimated the number of deaths by a factor of more than 60. Yep, they estimated (here is the US) more than 6 MILLION deaths due to Covid-19 by now. We have had less than (as of 5/17/2020) 90 thousand. Pretty big difference, Huge error factor.
One has to wonder if Ferguson, who has been caught not following the basic rules he suggested to prevent person to person contact (especially not being able to stay away from his mistress) has invested in the fall of the world's economy ....perhaps in futures markets or other financial vehicles because of his protective measures implemented because of his faulty predictions based on his crappy programming...that he knew was greatly overestimating the impact of Covid-19.
We do know that his behavior is shady since the lockdowns began in response to his predictions.
Through eight years, I accepted the rules of the game. Obama was president. He won fair and square because the Republicans serially put up two milquetoast opponents who were incapable of offering a vision or articulating a message that inspired. I accepted Obama. I never articulated his first name, and I never called him “president,” but I accepted the results and accepted that this Pretender was our country’s lawfully elected chief executive.
Click over to read the rest.
they will have 50,000 ventilators in the next 100 days.
Which is a great thing, except for the fact that we haven't yet needed all the ventilators we already have.
The reason to make more is.......why? (perhaps just to show off?....part of a propaganda media campaign for "We are all in this together"?)
And if one can bring workers together to make ventilators, then why cant those same workers, properly masked and separated safely make cars in all those shut down plants?
Of course, it could be that no one is buying cars.
So I would expect the new meme to be "Use a BankCard or your Phone" in order to reduce the use of (untraceable) cash.
The IRS and other taxing agencies will LOVE this, They've been trying to get rid of cash for years. I fully expect the new meme to soon emerge that you should not use cash for fear of getting "The Covid"
Having said that, I would expect that your plastic bank card would provide a better surface for germs to live, short term,, but would be easier to disinfect than a banknote.
But since folks have gone apeshit for masks (which don't work/maybe work/only work for professionals/might work for normal people/are mandatory...) you can expect "cashless" to become the next bit of Social Conditioning.
"This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" ....will that phrase soon disappear?
'tis interesting how the media is against "reopening" the country, and is pulling all the stops to stir public opinion against it.
I think the best (if mostly misleading) argument:
"Cases are increasing". Yes, TESTED cases are, indeed, increasing. A month ago we were testing nearly nobody. Now counties are testing thousands of people a day. Of course "Cases are increasing". Hospitalizations are not, nor are deaths in most areas.... Inflate the Fear Balloon!
Plus there is this whole disease that is striking some children (they fail, mostly, to point out that it is EXTREMELY rare) called "Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome".... if one bothers to read the data on it, it may or may not (probably not) be related to Covid-19. But keep Ratcheting up the Fear!
And then the new fear-word:
"Superspreaders"...seems that some people, in some conditions, can spread the disease farther than normal...say if one sings in a choir or other activities where one comes in contact with a large number of people while breathing hard or otherwise having the opportunity to spread droplets of spit or mucous. Duh. This is not news. But it strikes Fear into the hearts of weenies and sheep-like people.
I cannot help but wonder every day, why the attempt to control and corral the United States Population in this manner. Not only does it appear to be unneeded (the expected rise in cases never happened and a vaccine is still months, if not years away and if you have not been exposed, you will be....simply by buying groceries or doing other "essential" activities over the next few months) when the evidence shows that the "experts" were very, very, wrong in their estimates and predictions about this disease, (and, really, if it hiding from it even works) and why the attempts to keep the US population corralled and only let some businesses and activities happen and leave others wither. Why the attempt to keep people afraid and to continue to keep people at home and our economy throttled....
Why are the media and the "Authorities" in general trying to keep the country shut down? If one looks at the chart, you can see that things aren't as bad in most parts of the country .
(Click to biggify)
Yeah, green is 1/3 of the deaths blamed on Covid-19, yellow is another third, red is the rest. Not quite what the media is telling you, izzit?
And I still cannot fully understand the attempted hero-ification of our Nurses and Doctors. Yes, it is a (somewhat) dangerous job, hut it always has been. It is a job that deserves respect. But actually, very few of our medical personnel are actually in contact with ANY Covid related people. Yet the media and some parts of our society seem to think they should be venerated as heroes.
(There are days when, after donning my aluminum fedora, that I wonder if this is not some further attempt to make people (or a segment of our population) more dependent on our government...round after round of "government assistance".
Plus there is the whole "Cloward-Piven" strategy that is rearing it's ugly head in the near future if we still have 25% or more of our people out of work a month from now.......But that is a different discussion for another day).
Airspeed, and the groundspeed was pretty close to that, average.
See, I got 6 cylinders on my 182 redone. And the conventional wisdom is that they need to be run hard for "Break-In"...
For 10 hours. at 75% power.
75% at 5500 feet works out to be 142 knots. a knot is 1.15 statute miles per hour. You can do the math.
Now, I am not sure why the "Break-In" time is a magical 10 hours....It would seem to me that after an hour or so the rings and cylinders would be worn together...I mean, I have rebuilt hundreds of other types of air cooled engines and they are considered "Broken-In" after 30-45 minutes....the rings and the cylinders have worn together and at that point oil consumption goes to whatever is "normal". I mean, I am talking from 5 hp mower engines to high compression multi cylinder air cooled diesels. All had the same break-in characteristics and roughly the same timing. the general wisdom was an hour under a half or better load to seat the rings and wear the cylinder finish to properly hold the oil for compression.
But I don't get a warranty unless I do (and log) the break in time as per recommendations. So I am doing the break in per the specs.
Today, 3:19 ....450 miles more or less. One landing. About half flown by hand, the rest I let the autopilot ("George") fly. Got the engine nice and warm burnt a lot of fuel.
I gotta say that central Indiana and Illinois are still having lots of traffic on the roads. Aaron says that his area is way down in traffic, but I did not see that on the roads over which I flew. Larger state highways, Interstates, US highways...all fairly normal. Even Indianapolis roads were not terribly empty, at least not on the north side.
It appears that the 2 idiots who shot Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick Georgia when they accused him of being a thief, despite their stupidity, may have had a reason to follow him.
Note: NOT detain him, nor to confront him, nor shoot him. Once they went beyond following him, they were in the wrong.
However, I cannot help but wonder. Much like the photos of Trayvon Martin depicted him as a cerub faced child, the current photos of Mr Arberry show him about 5 years younger than he was when he was shot, and this makes me wonder if we are again being subjected to a bit of race baiting, using Mr. Arbery as a pawn.
I have no knowledge of his innocence or guilt, and it does appear that the two idiots involved in his shooting were in the wrong. (and I would support them being charged, tried, and, if convicted, being put in prison for murder.
But it makes me wonder....if the press and the black community can't show him as he was at the time of his death, but rather are attempting to depict him as a much younger, much more innocent man, a kid even....are they trying to hide something???, much as they attempted to hide the fact that Trayvon Martin was a serious thug. It would seem so. At least they are trying to depict him as something he is not....and I gotta ask why that is? Are they ashamed of what he was?
Yet every politician and nearly every "HealthCare" provider jumped on the bandwagon...with absolutely ZERO evidence that it did anything, or was effective.
(Health Care and other medical folks are very much trend followers, they do medicine like women do fashion, just blindly following with absolutely zero reasons to believe that which they repeat and preach......and the whole "social distancing" thing is just one example.
Much like the difference between the ideals of the founders of the United Nations and the actuality, we now see the reality of the WHO (World Health Organization) and how they failed the world over politics.
So for nearly a MONTH the world failed to plan for, or take measures against, the outbreak of Covid 19. How many folks died because of the delay, especially in Europe?
(Now, I think we and most of western Europe overreacted, but we did so too late. Really, China should have told us back in early December, but....)
Remember the US pays approximately 40% of the WHO costs. Why are we paying for this sort of failure?
The best answer to ANY question when asked by Law Enforcement of any kind, or anyone connected to them, (or, sadly, to ANY government official, be they a dogcatcher, a Code Enforcement person, a tax official, a boiler inspector, or a clerk at the tax office:
"Attorney"...That is the best (and for me, the only) answer.
Don't believe me? Read this for inspiration. He's correct, and not just because our philosophies happen to parallel in this. There is seldom an upside to talking to Federal, state, or local officials,....Especially, but not limited to, Law Enforcement types.
It isn't just Flynn and Jewell...It's also Weaver and Koresh and lots of others. It is the attitude of those with that type of power and training. Once you get caught up in their gears, you are screwed.
The Freeholder said... (in a comment to a post down below) Actually, masks do work to help reduce infection rates. Why do you think the medical types wear them?
However, there are two prerequisites for this to work. First, everyone has to wear them. Second, they must be worn correctly to be effective. (emphasis mine)
And there's the rub. Not everyone wears them--I don't, because I have a beard and given that, I'm just wasting the mask. Others don't for their own reasons. Of those that do, around 3/4, in my experience, wear them incorrectly. I've seen every violation of mask protocol imaginable during my trips outside the wire.
My opinion is that, unless we all wear them and wear them correctly, we may actually be making things worse via a false sense of security. For now, I'm just going with avoiding people where possible and washing my hands. It's worked so far.
Yes, masks work to prevent the wearer from passing his or her spittle on to the rest of the herd. If THEY are wearing a mask, and they cough, it prevents their virus laden droplets from spewing into the air from me ingest when I breathe. As far as a single layer mask preventing them from ingesting any virus particles? Pretty much useless. and about half of the masks are just that: a single layer of cloth that won't even filter fine dust very well.... As for spittle droplets, the masks are somewhat effective PROVIDING THEY ARE WORN CORRECTLY.... Less than 30% of the people I encounter are eve coming close to wearing their (somewhat effective) masks correctly.
Paper masks:
Worn under the nose. Useless.
improperly fitted at the nose. Pretty much useless. IF there is a gap that one can stick one's finger into at any point around the periphery of the mask, then one might as well not wear the mask.
2 strap masks, but only one strap, the other hanging loosely....see above.
Paper surgical masks....don't do much to help the wearer. Especially those where any observer can see the side of the wearer's mouth...useless for protecting the wearer.
Cloth masks:
Single layer cloth masks...again, help keep some droplets from entering the user's mouth or nose. If worn correctly. Most have the same fitment issues as the above referenced paper masks.
Same-same for wearing them when they are not covering one's nose. Or tight enough not to leak.
In addition to the above: Let's face it, if I (or you) haven't gotten exposed to Covid-19 yet, then I (or you) will be exposed at some point when we open up the country. We have all been to the store, or other places, in the past 6 weeks, most of us not wearing a mask. And the virus has been here since at least early December. Currently, there is no vaccine, so the only way to get immunity is to roll the dice and get the damned disease, and either get over it (43%), be asymptomatic (probably about 50%) , or get sick enough to require hospitalization (6%). It could be that you are part of the < 1% that die from it.
But exposed to it you will be in the next few months. For sure by the end of the year. All the "Social Distancing" or "Lockdown" does is to spread the infection times over a few moths rather than a few weeks...the whole idea was to prevent a sudden influx of cases (because the virulence was MASSIVELY overstated) to prevent the overwhelming of the health care system (which, never happened, even in such places like the greater New York area, which accounted for 40% of ALL the cases in the US.
So yes, wearing a mask can help. If worn correctly. Few do..... by my small number of observations, less that 1/3 wear them correctly. Most ineffectively enough as to be useless. It has become a fashion, nothing more. And even wearing a mask does not keep one from being exposed. In the end, you WILL be exposed. Most of us will not even know it, some will be mildly sick and a few will get VERY sick.
The whole mask wearing/social distancing/hide-in-our-homes will not prevent us from the effects of the disease if we re going to resume our normal lives at any point.
Besides, the TOP. MEN. at the CDC told us masks don't work. Either they don't know what they are talking about or they were lying. Which is it? Either way, why should we trust anything they say? They said we would need tens of thousands of hospital beds and ventilators. That turned out not to even be close, either. Such "experts".
This whole thing is bullshit. You know it, I know it and it is only the Media that is telling you (and that you believe) otherwise that is making you hide in your home and behind a mask.
Since the new fashion (and, often, requirement) is to have some sort of covering over one's face (or at least appear to, anyway), if I could find a cloth mask printed with a representation of the one Hannibal Lecter had, I'd pay good money for it.
Of course, then, I'd have to do stupid things like wear it while buying Fava beans and all that shit,
Anyone involved in this should be kicked off of the Government payroll, banned from serving in any Government job, and, if possible, prosecuted and imprisoned. If they are attorneys, they should be disbarred and prevented from ever doing any legal work, ever.
But I will remember the stupidity and choose to shop elsewhere from now on...
So I went to Menards home improvement store Wednesday for a can of spray paint and a 4 foot piece of one inch black pipe.
The spray paint is for the cylinder so it won't rust when I put it back on the backhoe (now that the cylinder is fixed) and the pipe is for a lever so I can get the mounting ears for the cylinder bent back into position with a torch and some leverage.
Now, I have gone to Menards during our time when only (ahem) "essential" businesses were open more or less weekly (I refuse to hide from this disease that is not much more contagious, virulent, nor deadly than many other "Pandemics" in my lifetime) and, until now, have never had any issues. I have walked it, bought my items, stayed 6 feet from other customers, and left. Unmasked. I sanitized my hands once in the car, and that was that.
Until as I say, Wednesday, when I attempted to enter the store only to be politely, but firmly told by the nice young (and new) security guard (who was a new addition to the store...they never had security before) that I had to wear a mask or I could not enter the store. He politely informed me that if I did not have a mask, I could buy one for $1 at the desk right there....
Now, I don't get it. For 6 weeks, Menards has allowed people in the store, even for non-"essential" items during the "stay at home order suggestion....and never required a mask. Now that the order is lifted, they require a mask on their customers. Why now? WTF? Why not all those other 6 weeks? If it is for safety, either of their customers or their staff, then why did they not require masks for the previous 6 weeks? Or is it something else?
We won't even discuss the so-called masks nor the failure in fitting or wearing....as long as one had something covering the lower half of their face, it was ok. Forget that fully half of the masks would not have protected either the wearer nor others around them. They were wearing a mask, so it was ok.
This is getting to be bullshit, The Social Conditioning is starting to worry me. Not only because my fellow citizens are going along (what happened to common sense and the American Spirit?) but because they are simply not bothering to think about the effectiveness of what they are being led told to do.
Are we seeing a rise in deaths? No. At least not so far. Nor a rise in hospitalizations either.
Which means that there were a lot of people running around with Covid-19 weeks ago, and we simply did not know it. Now we do, BECAUSE WE ARE TESTING FOR IT IN GREATER NUMBERS.
Of course, for Liberals and Journalists, this concept is apparently very difficult to grasp.
Oddly, the City of New York is only now disinfecting their subway cars.
For the first time, the city has shut down the subway and is cleaning and disinfecting their cars. All at onece.
One wonders why now? Why not a few weeks ago, when people were dying like flies and the bodies were stacked like cordwood outside of the hospitals when the infection rate was climbing and the city was first shut down?
WTF? I don't get the timing at all. Why not earlier? Something doesn't make sense here.
But that is true of many of the actions by city, state and federal officials in the "Crisis".
I smell something and it doesn't smell very nice.
So apparently there are a great number of cases in the populations of Meat Packing plants....seems that the workers are getting sick and transmitting the Covid-19 among themselves.
But, a question: Is the transmission happening in the pants, while the folks are working?
It has been my experience that these plants often employ a large number of foreign (and often, but not always, illegal) workers. Often, to save money to send home these folks live very closely, like 4 or more people in a 2 bedroom apartment or trailer...often twice that density.
Yes, improving conditions at the plant is a good idea. But I would question if the plant is the vector for the disease transmission rather than the living and social conditions amongst the workers.
And since the CDC folks (based on their response to things and conditions at the beginning of this "crisis") apparently can't do their job, don't seem to have much cognitive abilities, can't connect cause and effect, and apparently cannot think, but merely react and follow orders, I cannot help but wonder if anyone has investigated the mode of transmission or are they merely Doing Something so they can appear to have Done Something.
At best, we reduced (not stopped) the case doublings that occurred about every 10 days. Every 10 days in the larger cities, that is. Not so much in the more rural counties. Let's face it, even in New York, it wasn't the "Bodies Stacked in the Streets" we were warned about. Ever. Not even close to that....Even with the reported falsifying of cause of death (John was 200 lbs overweight and had a heart attack, but he had a cough, so it must have been Covid, even though we didn't test, so put that as "Cause of Death") ...(and yes, they ARE doing that in some hospitals...like the ones in Gary Indiana, where I have first hand knowledge of this) and likely never would have been as bad as the doomsayers CDC forecast.
Not the 6.6 million they forecast, not 4.2M, not 3.6M, not 2.4M. not 1.3M (the forecast kept decreasing every week or so, didjanotice?), not 900K, not 750K, not 600K, not 450K, not 300,000 dead.
And what cost? Our economy is shambles, 1/4 of our people out of work, An additional trillion (so far) dollars of government debt. I thought the whole "Shelter in Place" thing is a stupid move....and yet, having started, we are now wasting all of that, by opening up again. This never should have happened from start. Now we have wasted all the damage to our society and our economy that we have (and will) endure.
If all of this chaos we have created has saved even 10.000 people from Coroanavirus/Covid -19, I'd be surprised. Here is the thing, reopening simply means that the rest of us, if we haven't already been exposed, will soon be exposed. We really gained NOTHING with the debacle. If yer gonna get a case of Covid-19, yer gonna get it. Now or later. If not today, then next month or the one after that. The only way to prevent that exposure is to hide for the next year or so....until either Herd Immunity kicks in or a year or so after a vaccine is developed. And if you are one of the 7% or so that is gonna be symptomatic then yer gonna have that to deal with it. If you are one of the
And this "Pandemic" is NOTHING compared to others we have had in the US (or the world) in the past. Back then, people simply went on as normal. The Markets didn't tank, Nothing shut down, parties went on.... in the end it was a nothingurger....just a worse than usual Flu season. (Today, that 100K/1 million would likely, by population, be equal to over 300,000 in the US and close to 3 MILLION worldwide)
But the CDC and the Federal and State governments have this well in hand.....
Top Men are working on it:
** Depending on the statistics one looks at, the high end appears (for Covid 19), even with Death Rate Inflation happening, to be somewhere close to 1.2% and the low end just above 0.78%).
I mean, someday I might have a use for it....right?
My brother and I just cleaned out the shop we fixed things for our businesses in a month or two ago. We were there for like 19 years. It took WEEKS to get rid of some of the stuff.
We had replacement parts for stuff that had been obsoleted 15 or more years ago. And enough scrap metal to weld together a Titantic sized barge. Wood scraps to build an Ark....enough PVC and other pipe scraps to pipe from Lake Michigan to the Mississippi.
Plus a whole bunch of odds and ends. and other shit. Plus stuff and crap and things...
We won't talk about my personal barn and garage...
So the folks on the South Side decided, since the weather for the evening was warm and dry, it was time for street parties. Ladies dressing up and shakin' their shit. men watching, everyone having a drink or two....**
In other words, a normal Saturday night in Chicago's South Side.
The mayor, of course, is PISSED that people are ignoring her. The cops are, effectively, helpless as they have conflicting orders....Citing people, handing out fines, is not a deterrent and they know that ignoring those fines won't be enforced. And they really neither have the ability, nor want to, take hundreds of people to jail.
Guess what, Mayor Lightfoot: your "rule" only works when people are willing to comply. When hundreds, maybe thousands, choose not to, you got nuthin'.
An, of course, this is a large part of the reason that the Coronavirus is "affecting people of color disproportianately". Other ethnic groups are (more or less) complying with the Social Distancing order...not so much that disproportionately affected segment of the population.
Of course, 7 people got shot in some of those parties, but that is expected on a Saturday night in the South Side.
(*Because Fuck You That's Why) And Yes, I stole it from Phil **One wonders how they can afford such nice dress and buy the liquor since we are told they are all poor to the point of poverty and all that....
If flies nice, stall easily, turns sharper that my 182, climbs nicely (it isn't very heavy) and other than the unique characteristics of the Hershey Bar wing, it ain't a bad flyer. Pull the power back and it drops like a rock. Makes for easy spot landings.
Not an airplane I would buy, but it is fast enough that it could be a spare for me to use next time my Cessna is tits up.
I mean, It doesn't carry much, and it is narrow and the front seat is too low and all that, but at the end of it, it is big enough for two people, flies just a tiny bit slower than my plane, and is a great way to get somewhere fairly quickly....