JFKA Forum Journals of the Plague Year?

[Joe Bauer]

Another shooting with multiple victims?  Virginia Beach.

Seems like all across this country daily life is more and more becoming like a violent video game.

Maybe viewing and playing these thousands of times, viewing decades of violent movies and listening to violence themed rap music has numbed the minds of millions of newer generations to it all?

Younger adults ( even teenagers ) getting and carrying guns like it's normal?

In our most important areas, our entire society is massively fractured, misguided and confused and desperately needs a healthier, kinder and more hopeful common bond goal focus.

Young people today are in a hurricane of conflicting social, cultural, economic and morality confusion.

What's right? What's wrong? What's good or bad? What's important? What should we all be aiming for?

Our ethnic make up has changed so much in the last 30 years, English isn't the main language in many major American population areas anymore.

Young people in America today have seemingly a thousand different conflicting, confusing, and constantly changing stressful challenges and pressures to face just as they're facing entering the world on their own. Certainly different than my "Baby Boomer" generation.

Economic, social and gender correctness, ethnic, cultural and language diversity, political, religious, relationship and parenting demands, crime, violence, housing cost explosion madness, loss of jobs, never ending infux of millions of illegal immigrants which only adds to the ever growing financial stresses of cities, counties and states regards their societal need providing budgets.

And now with this unbelievably traumatic virus madness?

I say we are in an unprecedented national public health crisis way more stressful and damaging than at any time since WW II. And even that event didn't fracture us and traumatize us and especially our young people like what we are experiencing now.

I believe this increasing multiple victim gun violence is a by-product of societal confusion, division, fracturing, stress and trauma.

 

 

Edited March 27, 2021 by Joe Bauer

[Douglas Caddy]

Salvador Dali: The Rite of Spring

 

[Ron Bulman]

The CDC is not optimistic.  

Biden Urges States to Restore Mask Mandates (msn.com)

[Kirk Gallaway]

As  part of my journal of the plague year, I came upon this, Andy Kaufman on the Dating Game! Jim Lang was an on air am radio talent in San Francisco when I grew up.

On a more serious note,Wow! what an ensemble! a  panel discussion with Sasha Baron Cohen, Jim Carrey, Cheadle, Danson the Fonz, Simons.

 

[Ron Bulman]

My wife gets her second shot tomorrow.  Mine in two weeks.  Two weeks later I can go into a crowded restaurant mask less?  Don't know if I'll ever feel the same about face to face conversation with strangers.

[W. Niederhut]

14 hours ago, Ron Bulman said:

My wife gets her second shot tomorrow.  Mine in two weeks.  Two weeks later I can go into a crowded restaurant mask less?  Don't know if I'll ever feel the same about face to face conversation with strangers.

Ditto.  I'll be two weeks out from my second Pfizer shot on Friday, but I'm still wary about interacting with the public without a mask, especially given the risk of COVID variants and a "fourth wave."  I do need a haircut, though.  Haven't gone to the hair salon for over a year now.

David Brooks published a thoughtful piece on this subject in last week's NYT.

Opinion | How Covid Can Change Your Personality - The New York Times (nytimes.com)

[Douglas Caddy]

[Douglas Caddy]

Clever crooks with hi-tech skills:

 

 

 

 1.  LONG TERM   PARKING 

Some people left their car in the long-term parking at San Jose while away, and someone broke into the car.   Using the information on the car’s registration in the glove compartment, they drove the car to the people’s   home in Pebble Beach and robbed it.  So, I guess if we are going to leave the car in long-term parking, we should NOT leave the registration/insurance cards in it, nor your remote garage door opener. This gives us something to think about with all our new electronic technology.  
 
 
2.  GPS:  
 
Someone had their car broken into while they were at a football game. Their car was parked on the green   which was adjacent to the football stadium and specially allotted to football fans. Things stolen from the car included a garage door remote control, some money and a GPS which had been prominently mounted on   the dashboard. When the victims got home, they found that their house had been ransacked and just about   everything worth anything had been stolen. The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house.  They   then used the garage remote control to open the garage door and gain entry to the house. The thieves knew   the owners were at the football game, they knew what time the game was scheduled to finish and so they knew how much time they had to clean out the house. It would appear that they had brought a truck to empty   the house of its contents. Something to consider if you have a GPS - don't put your home address in it.  Put   a nearby address (like a store or gas station) so you can still find your way home if you need to, but no one   else would know where you live if your GPS were stolen.  
 
3.  CELL PHONES:  
 
I never thought of this! This lady has now changed her habit of how she lists her names on her cell phone   after her handbag was stolen. Her handbag, which contained her cell phone, credit card, wallet, etc., was   stolen. Twenty minutes later when she called her hubby, from a pay phone telling him what had happened, hubby says, "I received your text asking about our Pin number and I’ve replied a little while ago." When they rushed down to the bank, the bank staff told them all the money was already withdrawn. The thief had actually   used the stolen cell phone to text” hubby" in the contact list and got hold of the pin number. Within 20 minutes   he had withdrawn all the money from their bank account.  
 
Moral lesson:  
a. Do not disclose the relationship between you and the people in your contact list. Avoid using names like   Home, Honey, Hubby, Sweetheart, Dad, Mom, etc.
b. And very importantly, when sensitive info is being asked through texts, CONFIRM by calling back.
c. Also, when you're being texted by friends or family to meet them somewhere, be sure to call back to   confirm  that the message came from them. If you don't reach them, be very careful about going places to meet "family  and friends" who text you.  
 
4.  PURSE IN THE GROCERY   CART SCAM:
A lady went grocery-shopping at a local mall and left her purse sitting in the children's seat of the cart while she  reached something off a shelf/ Wait till you read the WHOLE story! Her wallet was stolen, and she reported it  to the store personnel. After returning home, she received a phone call from the Mall Security
to say that they   had her wallet and that although there was no money in it, it did still hold her personal papers. She immediately   went to pick up her wallet, only to be told by Mall Security that they had not called her. By the time she returned   home again, her house had been broken into and burglarized. The thieves knew that by calling and saying they   were Mall Security, they could lure her out of her house long enough for them to burglarize it.  
 

[W. Niederhut]

This has been a rough week for COVID denialists.

First a noted COVID denialist in Norway, Hans Kristian Gaarder, died of COVID after hosting a party in his barn near Oslo, then rocker Ted Nugent caught the 'Rona.

Nugent had recently expressed skepticism about the fact that there were no shut downs for COVID 1-18... 🤥

www.dailykos.com/stories/2021/4/19/2026571/-Noted-Norwegian-COVID-Conspiracy-Theorist-Dies-of-COVID

www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/news/ted-nugent-coronavirus-b1834274.html

Edited April 20, 2021 by W. Niederhut

[W. Niederhut]

Interesting article by William Saletan at Slate about people who don't want to get vaccinated for COVID.

Saletan distinguishes between the "Hesitant" (20% of the U.S. population) and the "Refusers" (15%.)

COVID vaccine: What we know about people who don’t want it. (slate.com)

Excerpt

Refusers are less likely to be college educated or earn high incomes, and they’re more likely to watch Fox News. Across multiple surveys, Republicans are about twice as likely as other respondents to be refusers. In a Harris poll taken last month, 37 percent of refusers, compared with 21 percent of respondents as a whole, said they were very likely “to register as a user for a potential social media website created by Former President Trump.”

[W. Niederhut]

On 8/10/2020 at 10:55 PM, James DiEugenio said:

One of the best articles I have seen on how Trump exacerbated CV 19 to the point it was out of control.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/08/trump-coronavirus-deaths-timeline.html?fbclid=IwAR1Faet5Ws3v6HpibN3SsXtMjMQiJzR8XwgYubLxGMaDQn9ndtjKHSyF34U

In thinking about the Trump/Fox/MAGA/RFK attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci, and Matt Taibbi's latest commentaries about the Wuhan Lab Leak Theory evidence, people need to recall what we all experienced during the fateful Plague Year of 2020.

This lengthy Education Forum thread about the 2020 COVID pandemic is a fascinating read-- a daily blow-by-blow account of what was happening in our communities in the U.S. and around the world.

Most of our moral indignation at the time was directed at Donald Trump's bizarre mismanagement of the COVID pandemic, as this 8/10/20 James DiEugenio post indicated.

The Lab Leak Theory received very little notice in 2020, in contrast to the news about the pandemic and the resistance to basic pandemic management by prominent Republicans, including Trump, DeSantis, Greg Abbot, Christie Noem, and others.

I, for one, was always suspicious about the claim that the pandemic just happened to originate in a marketplace near the Wuhan bio-weapons lab.

Lately, the MAGA media seems to be focusing on the Lab Leak evidence to shift the focus away from the historic Trump/GOP mismanagement of the pandemic, and to imply that the COVID pandemic was some sort of nefarious conspiracy involving Dr. Fauci and (?) the Biden/Democratic establishment that worked to end the pandemic after 2020.

Oddly, anti-vax disinformationist RFK, Jr. fits into this vague MAGA conspiracy theory as an erstwhile hero-- and, certainly, a defamer of Dr. Fauci.

But what is the theory, exactly?

Does anyone believe that the Chinese government would have unleashed a deadly bio-weapon in their own country?

Is the theory that Democrats somehow unleashed the virus to undermine Donald Trump?

Let's recall that Trump terminated Obama's Presidential Pandemic Response Team in (?) 2019, and even removed U.S. pandemic health experts from China.

Was Trump's bungling of the pandemic response supposedly part of this Democratic/Deep State/Dr. Fauci COVID-19 plot?

The "theory" makes no sense, like most MAGA rumor mongering.

Edited June 15, 2023 by W. Niederhut