TrickstaPriest

We are testing dead bodies for Covid-19 through the Coroner's office, and even funeral homes. There isn't under reporting happening there in CA.
 
Edit: realized I was maybe being pretty identifiable on here. Crazy people out there these days
 
Suicide, alcohol related illness, and the like are chronic. You will see those carry over a long time. 

I mean, propaganda works.
 
 
If people want to continue to compare deaths to natural causes - the Spanish Flu's US death toll was 0.7% of the total population in a year.
 
Heart disease is 0.2% and cancer 0.18% of the population every year.
 
So, something that hit us so hard it won't leave our memory, the Spanish Flu, was still 'only' twice as much as our two normal/natural leading killers in this country put together.

I mean, propaganda works.
 
 
If people want to continue to compare deaths to natural causes - the Spanish Flu's US death toll was 0.7% of the total population in a year.
 
Heart disease is 0.2% and cancer 0.18% of the population every year.
 
So, something that hit us so hard it won't leave our memory, the Spanish Flu, was still 'only' twice as much as our two normal/natural leading killers in this country put together.

I admit, I am of at least two minds.
 
On the one and, yes, American culture fetishizes guns to an astonishing degree. Insurrection from any nationwide attempt at sudden, serious restriction or regulation is a real threat.
 
Though bluntly, I think the odds are high of insurrection within the next 5 years anyway. A civil war disconnected from real economic or political issues -- only about mythology and identity. I hope I am proved wrong, but there seems to be a significant percentage of the population that is *flipping crazy* at the loss of their caste privileges and cherished myths of identity.
 
OTOH, we do have the example of gay rights. There were predictions of civil war over that, too, and it didn't happen. First laws against homosexuality were rolled back. Society didn't collapse, either in a Gay Sex Orgy or an Evangelical crusade. Then a few states tried civil unions. Again, nothing happened. Then outright marriage. And what do you know, nothing happened. Finally the Supreme Court (narrowly) declared same-sex marriage had to be legal everywhere. And God did not smite the country as He smote Sodom and Gomorrah, neither did the Evangelicals rise up in armed rebellion and the military join them. Too many people realized they had friends and family who were gay, lesbian or bisexual, and they were just people instead of some abstract boogyman of "The Gay." A solid majority of Americans think same-sex marriage is just fine, and what's the big deal?
 
Already, polling shows that a solid majority of Americans think some kind of tighter gun regulation is okay. So it may be possible to follow the same-sex marriage playbook. A few states or major cities institute small restrictions, such as on magazine size. There are lawsuits, some laws fail but some stand. Some politicians support these restrictions, the NRA fails to unseat them in the next election, and starts looking like a paper tiger. More regions institute more restrictions, and yet the people are neither crushed by jackbooted government thugs, nor massacred by brown criminals invading their homes! And the myth starts crumbling.
 
Success is not assured. Like I said, we could still get a Seinfeldian civil war over nothing, or Donald Trump could secure de facto dictatorship. But all hope for improvement is not lost.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 

But the alternatives do nothing. And if the country is so screwed up that the thought of gun regulations threatens civil war....then maybe we ought to reexamine ourselves as a country. I've always said that America is the king of ignoring social problems. We sweep them under a rug and pretend that we've "taken care of them".  America likes band aids that make them feel like they've accomplished something while in reality they've just hidden the problem. America has a knife wound and has had it for a very long time. We don't treat it or stitch it up or use antibiotics. If it starts to seep blood or otherwise be noticeably irritating, America slaps another band aid on it so that...once again...the problem is hidden. We've done that virtually our entire history. We haven't even solved the lingering problems from the Civil War for pity's sake. The point of my rant is that at some point we have to start treating these wounds...however painful and/or rancid they've become or we'll never heal. We've gotten to a point where any real positive social change will require some degree of sacrifice/pain. A consequence of us ignoring EVERYTHING for so long. I tire of our excuse to not fix anything being "it could be worse".  That honestly is "appeasement" thinking and it didn't work back in the day either. Yes...it could be worse, but it could also be better....a LOT better. Let's go for that.

We're past the point of looking at the rightness or wrongness of individual issues, because Trump's pattern has become clear. He's transparently trying to act like a king, or a mob boss, in doling out favors to his minions and sycophants while punishing those who don't bow to his demands.

Yes, just owning a gun and making loud noises about a civil war is enough to get your opponents to give up without even trying. 

Okay, first of all, deer hunting is killing. Killing an animal instead of a person is very different from a legal perspective, but not different at all functionally. Guns are designed to kill. That's their intended purpose, and what the great majority of guns in the world are used for. As for non-lethal sport shooting, I can use a garden hoe as a back-scratcher if I want to. That doesn't change what it was made for, and what it does best.
 
Honestly, the comparison of guns to home-made bombs has gotten tiresome to me. Bombs are notably inefficient tools of killing. Sure, you can kill more people in a single use with a bomb than a gun. But they're indiscriminate, difficult to deliver to a target without the user also being killed, do great collateral property damage, and are not reusable. And the more powerful the bomb, the bigger it is, hence increasingly difficult to conceal and carry.
 
In contrast, guns are the most efficient killers mankind has yet invented. Consider one tiny piece of metal, hurled from at least dozens of yards away, taking one human life. The projector of that metal can fit in one hand, hold a dozen or more projectiles that can be fired as fast as a finger can pull, and three or four times that many additional projectiles can be carried in an equally small space. It's staggering when you compare how humans killed each other for all our history before guns.
 
I would argue that a gun is more threatening to you than a bomb. Not to large numbers of people, but to you. And me, and anyone else.

Trump's threatening to cut off funds for my state for setting up the next primary election in June as mail-in only. I'm thinking of several thoughts about what he can do with that, but it would violate the rules for swearing if I posted them.
 
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/trump-blasts-mass-absentee-ballot-efforts-michigan-nevada-n1211106

I suspect the root is less the industry and more the civil religion. German industry makes lots of very nice guns, but they have lots of gun regulation too.
 
In the United States, though, we are trained from childhood that we must have guns. This begins with teaching history and the founding of the country. Why were the colonists able to win freedom? Because they had personal firearms! This history is taught somewhere between an if-then-else and a cyclical prophecy. "All nations will eventually become tyrannical, and if you don't have lots of personal firearms, you can't escape the tyranny."
 
Oddly, even our poor history lessons included counter-examples. The Native Americans of the plains did have guns, because they traded for them, but that didn't stop their rights from being taken away. The English did have a dictator, but they didn't use personal firearms to overthrow him and improve their rights.
 
As it stands now, though, far too many Americans believe that if they ever lose any rights to personal firearms then all their other rights will be stripped away. Far too many to risk a civil war with them.

Which is so strange to me. We allow "free speech zones," libel laws, and all kinds of restrictions on other rights. But somehow guns rights are supposed to be absolute.
 
The only difference I can see is that guns are a product, and there's an industry that wants no restrictions on its ability to sell its products.

"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
 
That's not ironclad, regarding regulation of any firearms, pistols or otherwise. The historical precedents for legal gun regulation and restriction in the United States are in fact as old as the country itself. https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4825&context=lcp

The point is that firearms are too ready available for any uneducated scrub with low impulse control to acquire. It really doesn't matter if guns are an "inefficient" way to kill people. If some loon shoots me a half a dozen times for some perceived slight, I'm probably going to die. I'm not asking for an instant solution. I'm asking for some kind of damn progress. We should honestly use the same gun laws Japan does. You have to go through a lot of training to be allowed to own one along with having to physically show how and where it will be kept and provide a suitable reason why you need to own one. And they check up on you even after you've gotten the gun. And of course assault weapons are out of the question...as well they should be.

Trying really hard to leave the politics for the political thread here. But I’m very sympathetic with people who are hurting from this crisis, financially and otherwise. I feel as though real people have been forgotten as this plays out. 

Careful, Hugh. Michael Bloomberg may call you to join his PR department.
 
Ain't none of us here breathing the same air as the billionaires club. Yes, wealth is relative, and overall the majority in the First World are very privileged compared to much of the Third World; but we're a helluva lot closer to them than we are to the 1%. Jealousy isn't good, but it's excusable from the many of us struggling to keep our children fed and clothed, when we look at mansions and private jets.

And in the "I think people are over it" category we have:
 
 
Whether it officially over or not this type of activity is going to unleash the full force of the Coronavirus.  Buckle up, friends.

Well, I believe our society needs to act civilized, even if some members of it don't. Abusing those whom we perceive as deserving it feels emotionally satisfying; but if we let them drag the rest of us down to their level, that diminishes us. Plus it increases the likelihood of the same abuse being applied to us.

Donald Trump is a notorious liar. He may be lying about taking it.
 
That is what I hope for.
 
If he is getting a placebo when he demanded a treatment, the truth will come out, and fuel "deep state" conspiracy theories for generations. 
 
If he suffers a serious side effect, this will also fuel those conspiracy theories.

I remember watching a television drama many years ago, in which the late great "little person" actor/singer Michael Dunn was playing a Martian visiting Earth. As is common for that type of story, the character was being used to reflect on Humanity. He wanted to learn everything about Earth as soon as possible, and the humans working with him expressed amazement at how rapidly he absorbed information.
 
"Individually we Martians are very quick-witted. It's only collectively that we're stupid."

So, our governor relaxed the restrictions effective today, somewhat.  Retailers are allowed to reopen, but at max 25% of capacity.  Also, masks are required in public, unless eating, drinking, or exercising...not sure what that last one means entirely.  Gyms might be allowed?  Ehh, maybe with adequate distancing.
 
Her remarks include a good point to the <BLEEEP> <BLEEP> <BLEEEPP>   idiots who object to masks as infringements on their freedoms.
 
 

If the next presidential election goes against Trump, whatever the margin of victory, it's almost inevitable that these groups will respond with violence. If Trump wins, they'll start acting like every other pro-government militia in the world.
 
 

Long overdue but unlikely to happen, even discounting that Trump finds them useful. Back in the Obama administration -- I think it was during the Bundy Ranch standoff -- I heard that the FBI has a policy of never going after these far-right extremists for fear of provoking a worse, more violent backlash. They call it "Weaver fever": Many believe the Ruby Ridge standoff against Randy Weaver, followed by the Branch Davidian standoff, led to the Oklahoma City bombing.
 
Now, I think coddling the fringe in this way only encourages them: It looks weak: Their anger feeds on itself, while perceived weakness increases contempt and confidence that they can get away with violent acts. So we might as well have it out and deal with any resulting insurrection, because -- as the Anti-Defamation League essay A Dark and Constant Rage points out -- this political poison has been around for decades. It isn't going away on its own.
 
Dean Shomshak
 
 

For the record, Bazza lives in the Northern Territory (Australia), where there is a better chance of being eaten by a crocodile than catching COVID-19.