Because It's May Day And We Need A Break From Politics

Because, dang it, it's May 1, and we need a break from politics, here's something different... 

My newest toy is a Blue snowball microphone. I'm still getting the hang of recording my own voice, but here's me reading Shakespeare's Sonnet 29. This is on Soundcloud.

You'll hear a few pops and S's in it, but, as I say, I'm just getting the hang of this. Also, if you listen hard enough, you'll hear wind chimes in the background. I was originally going to edit them out, but they sounded so mystical that I left them in.

Anyway, here's the link in full, if the above doesn't work:

https://soundcloud.com/michael-jay-tucker/sonnet-29


And if you're interested in the text, here's the Bard's original:


Sonnet 29: When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven’s gate;
       For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings
       That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

 

~~~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Dr. Koch’s Monsters

I read in Politico the other day that the Koch Network is not supporting the anti-quarantine protests which “spontaneously” appeared across the nation. Spontaneously, if, of course, you mean by that word carefully orchestrated by astroturfing Right-Wing organizations associated with (among other things) the Trump White House.

But, for once, according to Politico, the Koch folks aren’t involved. Which is good.

What isn’t so good is why. According to the article, “The Koch network, avatar of the tea party, rejects shutdown protests,” by Maggie Severns, is the Kochsters feel that they didn’t get enough bang for their buck back when they backed the Tea Party and other groups which practiced the tactics of direct confrontation. The Koch folks, are advocates of extreme libertarianism -- i.e., they object to the existence of the government except in so far as it provides for an army, a police force, and, sometimes, for courts. Meaning, those aspects of government that protect their position and property.

And, well, the Tea Party didn’t do much to advance those ends. Oh, yes, it helped shrink the government to a size small enough to “drown in a bathtub” (and so which could not and did not react to the Covid-19 crisis) but it also helped bring about the Trump administration, which does not fit the Kochsters vision of what a real American presidency should be about. It, well, spends money, you see, and still acts (sometimes, sort of, in a weird kind of way) like a government.

Okay, so now they’re going for a quieter approach, working “behind the scenes.”

I find all this rather fascinating. Let’s face it. If it hadn’t been for the Koch Brothers (now down to one and change), then there wouldn’t have been a Tea Party. If there hadn’t been a Tea Party, there wouldn’t have been a Trump.

In other words,  the Kochsters created the monster...but it isn’t enough of a monster for them. It has only almost killed off the United States of America. It hasn’t gone all the way.

So, Frankenstein’s Monster not being enough, they’ve decided to go for their own Godzilla, something that will actually stomp us into ruins.

Lovely. Just lovely. I can hardly wait to see what comes after that. Maybe the return of Cthulhu, all singing, all dancing, in fabulous technicolor, and with almost as many tentacles reaching into almost as many places and with almost as toxic an effect...

As the Koch organization itself.

Koch and Kraken

~~~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The Vast Right Wing Conspiracy (Revisited)

Way back when, Hillary Clinton referenced what she called the “vast right wing conspiracy” and said that it was opposed to her. She was immediately pilloried for that statement, and for years afterwards you would see people referring to themselves on the Web and elsewhere as “proud members of the vast right wing conspiracy.”

Yet, what do we know about our current political situation? Well, we know that a number of very powerful individuals...the vastly wealthy people and corporations referenced in Jane Mayer’s book, Dark Money...have constructed an enormous network of think tanks, media outlets, and astroturf organizations which has dominated American politics for decades.

Further, we know that this network has managed to more or less purchase outright the GOP, that it has acted to suppress the votes of anyone who might disagree with it, to smear and intimidate liberals, and to ram through Congress legislation broadly opposed by most Americans. We know also that it has spread lies and disinformation (“Obama is a Kenyan”), promoted conspiracy theories, smeared its opponents, launched dirty tricks campaigns against progressives, and, most recently, told Americans that Covid-19 was a hoax and then helped to organize protests against the quarantine that is our front line of defense against the disease.

In short...

If that isn’t a Great Right Wing Conspiracy, and a pretty sinister one at that...

Then it will sure do until the anti-Christ comes along. 

Conspiracy

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Niles On Covid-19 Protestors

I am a great fan of the Frasier sitcom, though my favorite characters are actually the supporting ones -- Niles and Daphne in particular.

So I was really tickled to see this on the Frasier Reddit group.

What people say when disobeying the state shelter-in-place order: “oh pish, it can’t be a crime if it’s catered” from r/Frasier

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How Trump & Fantasy Scr@wed Us

Powerful article on Politico's site, Inside America’s 2-Decade Failure to Prepare for Coronavirus, by Dan Diamond. In it, Mr. Diamond looks at how we were warned that something like Covid-19 was coming, but the prophets were often heeded only late in the game...or not all. When Mike Leavitt, Bush's secretary of health urged Americans to prepare for Bird Flu, everyone from Right Wing pundits to late show TV hosts --among them Jay Leno-- joined in a merry game of mocking him and his "alarmist" warnings.

However, until recently, Presidents did tend to pay at least some attention to their medical experts. Trump is another matter entirely. For him, science was entirely subordinate to the fantasy he wished to project upon the universe. (Not that the Left has any business being smug on that score. After all, postmodernism--which is widely believed on the Left-- has spent several decades assuring itself and others that "reality is socially created." Tell that to someone dying for lack of a ventilator.)

But, now, Trump and his fantasist enablers, and all those billionaires who were certain that everything would be fine if we just drowned government in the bathtub, have run into a situation in which no amount of fantasy can trump (sorry) reality, and in which a government small enough to drown in a bathtub is also one which cannot protect us from serious threat of death and economic depression.

So, for heaven's sake, let us vote Trump out of office, and let us make certain that nothing like him returns there, and let us (maybe most important of all) pay more attention in future to people like Mike Leavitt and less to people like Jay Leno.

After all, the lives we save may be our own.

Pay Attention

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

I love this article...and this company

I love this article in the Washington Post, and the company, and the whole concept. This is how it should be done.

I mean, think of it, a brilliant collaboration between small business, labor unions, and state and local authorities...

Now, why can't Washington be like this?

Oh, right. tRump. Sorry. Stupid of me.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/04/15/how-our-factory-went-making-hoodies-manufacturing-ppe/

How it should be done...

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

salted caramel chocolate chip cookies!

Another from Milton Brasher-Cunningham, a writer, a thinker, a Christian philosopher, and one hell of a cook!


http://donteatalone.com/recipes/salted-caramel-chocolate-chip-cookies

Drowning Governments, Killing People

There was a powerful piece over on the Washington Post’s website the other day. “When you drown the government in the bathtub, people die,” by Dana Milbank. In it, Milbank writes that for twenty-years he has been expecting a major and deadly pandemic to strike the world. In fact, he has devoted a good part of his career to warning the Powers That Be that such a thing was going to happen eventually and urging them to get ready.

And, for a while, it seemed the governments of the world were listening. In the United States, both the George W. Bush and the Obama Administrations made preparations for something awful to happened, and put defenses into place.

But, then, we got the Small Government movement. This is the idea that government should be as small and powerless as possible. (Mr. Milbank takes his title from a famous quote by anti-tax activist Grover Norquist  who once said that he wanted a government that was so small he could “drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”)

In theory, the idea behind this Libertarian, or perhaps pseudo-Libertarian theory of administration is that “less government means more freedom.” The reality is that it just transfers power from a government to a small class of wealthy men and women who no longer have any restraints on their behavior.

But, be that as it may, we had in Donald Trump the small government advocate par excellence, and we got a government that was indeed small...and which could not react to a major disaster. It might not be yet possible to the drown government in a bathtub, but thousands of Americans did drown...as their lungs fill with the fluids and debris that come with late-stage Covid-19.

As I say, this is a powerful piece. If you haven’t read it, give it a glance.

And then ask what you can do to prevent such a horror from happening again.

Answer? Vote, and vote blue.

Whatever you do and no matter who.

Vote: The Life You Save May Be Your Own

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Get Off Your F**king Hobby Horse...and VOTE

So I heard an interesting piece on NPR the other day about “political hobbyism.” It was an interview with political scientist Eitan Hersh, who argues that all too many people become involved with politics as if it were a game. They are eager to post to social media. They never miss an episode of The Daily Show. They exchange snarky images on Instagram. They bash one another for being insufficiently committed. They consider themselves politically active.

But there’s the rub. They don’t do anything else. They don’t volunteer to work for candidates for local office. They don’t talk to people with opposing views, and try to convert them. They don’t build coalitions. They don’t try to get people to the polls. They may not even vote.

And that’s really scary. Because it doesn’t matter how pure your opinions may be, or how often you post to Facebook, or how much you laugh at the witticisms of late show TV hosts...if you’re not voting, and you’re not getting other people to vote, you’re just not doing anything. You might as well be working for the other side. In fact, passively, you are.

So, please...

Keep watching John Oliver and Trevor Noah. Keep posting to social media. Keep exchanging witty memes on Instagram. Keep on debating one another. But...for Heaven’s sake, for the nation’s sake, and for your own sake...

Get out there and work. Do something for a local campaign, even if it is only donating a few bucks or a little time. See if your irrational Trump-supporting Uncle might be brought over, even just a little, to the light side of the force. And most of all...

Vote.

This is not a drill. This is not a hobby. And it is not a game.

This is, alas, all too real. 

Stop Horsing Around

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled

Love this...

The American dream. from r/WayOfTheBern

***


About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

MAGA Zombies

I do love this...

I am bad at photoshop, but I had to make this from @joshuabickel's image of dummies in Ohio protesting reasonable safety measures. pic.twitter.com/9VS7x4EcyQ

— Gregg Meller (@greggmeller) April 15, 2020

For heaven's sake, whatever you do, vote blue in 2020.

Max Boot On Why Republicans Must Endorse Biden

Here's an fascinating piece. Max Boot, one of the more amazing of the conservatives who have decided that Trump is toxic waste, is writing in the Washington Post that if you're a Republican and if you're honorable, then you must endorse Biden.

In a word, whoa.

But good for you, Mr. Boot. Well said.

You know who...

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

The Fools Who Protested The Shelter-In-Place Order

Love this...

View this post on Instagram

Good work. Really. Via @briantylercohen

A post shared by Occupy Democrats (@occupydemocrats) on Apr 17, 2020 at 11:59am PDT

 

Trump is a danger to the nation

Note: I have been writing and rewriting this piece over the past few hours. Originally, I just planned to talk about the oh-so-spontaneous protests that oh-so-mysteriously sprung up in several states attacking the shelter-in-place orders. This is what I wrote:

I read recently about the groups of people who suddenly appeared to protest the stay-at-home orders in their states. Michigan, Kentucky, North Caroline, etc., all yadnsuch gatherings.

What interests me about them is not the rightness or wrongness of their cause but rather that they have several odd characteristics. First, they all came out of nowhere. Second, the protestors were often surprisingly furious. News pictures show faces absolutely contorted with rage. Third, at least some came armed, with some rather fearsome weaponry. Fourth, all of the protests were marked by people wearing MAGA hats,  flying Trump signs, and otherwise stating their loyalty to the Trumpian branch of the GOP. Fifth, and lastly, at least some of the protestors demonstrated links to far right-wing organizations.

All of which makes me suspect that the real intent of the gatherings was not to protest shelter-in-place orders, but rather to say “fuck you, libtard,” to the whole wide world, and to support Trump in the process.

Which brings up a question. Exactly how spontaneous were these protests? How local? And might they really have been organized elsewhere, under the command of other men and women...

Say in the White House itself?

Okay, so far so good. But then this morning, I discovered that, yes, indeed, there was evidence linking none other than Betsy DeVos to the protests. So, I added this:
So there have been developments in the case of the mysteriously “spontaneous” demonstrations in several states against stay-at-home orders. It seems that, at least in the case of Michigan, there were, indeed, other hands involved. A group affiliated with Betsy DeVos, Trump’s Secretary of Education (who has devoted her life to shutting down public schools) was heavily involved with the demonstrations, and may have helped create them in the first place.

In other words, once again...

Evil reaches out from the Trump’s White House to infect the world.

You’d think I’d be at an end here, wouldn’t you? But, no, by this afternoon, I learned that Trump himself had been tweeting encouragement to the demonstrators, sending them tweets like “LIBERATE Kentucky” and “LIBERATE Michigan.” Meaning that Trump was involved in the affair up this beady little eye-balls. So, I added this:


Now we’ve learned that Trump was, in fact, behind the the protests. In fact, he was tweeting the protestors things that sound a bit like inducements to violence. And given that some of those people were heavily armed...

Well...

Doesn’t this all sound a bit like treason?

sources:

‘You Have to Disobey’: Protesters Gather to Defy Stay-at-Home Orders, New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/us/coronavirus-rules-protests.html

Armed protesters demand an end to Michigan's coronavirus lockdown orders, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/global/video/2020/apr/16/armed-protesters-demand-an-end-to-michigans-coronavirus-lockdown-orders-video

Trump Supporters Protest Shutdowns And People Say It Looks Like A Zombie Movie, Huffpost, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/shutdown-protest-zombie-movie_n_5e97c9f6c5b6ead14007841e


“Conservative group linked to DeVos family organizes protest of coronavirus restrictions in Michigan,” Salon, https://www.salon.com/2020/04/16/conservative-grouplinked-to-devos-familyorganizes-protest-of-coronavirus-restrictions-in-michigan/


“The Usual Suspects, Including Betsy DeVos, Behind Michigan ProtestsWe saw right-wing groups fund the Tea Party protests, and now we're seeing it again.” Crooks & Liars, https://crooksandliars.com/2020/04/usual-suspects-are-behind-michigan


In Trump's 'LIBERATE' tweets, extremists see a call to arms, NBCNews, https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/trump-s-liberate-tweets-extremists-see-call-arms-n1186561

He is destroying us.

~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Convid Conway

So I read the other day that Trump spokes-creature Kellyanne Conway defended her master and attacked the medical authorities and doctors who dared to disagree with the Orange One by saying that Covid-19 was a late-comer. If there was a Covid-19 then there must also have been a Covid-18, and -17, and -16, and finally all the way back to Covid-1.

Which meant, she implied, that the medical and scientific establishment must have been asleep when those other diseases came along, and now it was up to our brave and heroic (albeit pumpkin colored) Father & Teacher, from whom God takes instruction once a day, to step up and save us all.

The problem? There was no Covid-18, -17 -16, etc. The 19 in Covid-19 stands for 2019, which is when the disease was discovered. Meaning, either she is dumb as a brick or she was casting about for a lie to tell the public in the service of Dear Leader tRump. And, you know, I doubt that she is an idiot.

Of course, falsehoods are something we’ve come to expect from anyone in the Trump Administration. But, I’d submit that this is of a different order than what we’ve heard from Ms. Conway before. This is genuinely dangerous. This is the kind of statement that could get people killed.  Once you begin to cast on doubt science, and medical science at that, then you begin to encourage people to not take the kind of measures that will protect them.

Or, to put it all the another way, when you begin to behave like Trump, who has repeatedly attacked science in tweet after tweet, press conference after press conference...

You become guilty of great and deadly sins.

So let me repeat...

For God’s sake, for all our sakes, vote in 2020.

And vote blue, whatever you do.

Trump And Covid-29

~~~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

Death, Disease, and "Like a business"...

There is an excellent letter in the LA Times this week from John McGlynn, who identifies himself as a business professional in Southern California. Mr. McGlynn offers a very important observation, to wit, that government is not “like a business,” in spite of what all too many Libertarians and Deplorables would have us believe, and if you try to run a government along the lines of a corporation you’re asking for a disaster.

Which is, of course, exactly what we got when Trump et al utterly failed to respond to the Covid-19 crisis. But, then, how could Trump and the Trumpsters do otherwise? Their ideology is government-like-a-business par excellence. And a business does not concern itself with public health. If people die, well, so be it. It is not the job of a profit-making entity to worry about such things.

So, thank you very much, Mr. McGlynn, for wisely pointing out what Americans should have known all along, but which, somehow, they managed not to. And, if there is any (however thin) silver lining to this dreadful affair, it will be that people will start hearing you and others like you, and realize that “government like a business” is a direct route to mass death and endless horror.

Even if that apocalypse is profitable and improves shareholder value.

"Like A Business"

~~~

p.s., We can’t survive four more years of this. For heaven’s sakes, vote in 2020, and vote blue!

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

I don’t like Biden Either...VOTE for him ANYWAY

I am troubled by the number of people I’ve encountered of who late tell me that they cannot vote for Biden. They point to this less than stellar performance in the debates, to the (as yet completely unproven) accusations of sexual impropriety, and to his connections with the wealthy and the powerful. And they say that voting for the lesser of two evils is still voting for an evil.
But here’s the thing. The alternative to voting for Biden, is to passively support Donald Trump. 

To skip voting, or to throw away your vote on a hopeless Third Party, or to write in Bernie Sanders’ name on the ballot...none of those is helpful. They just give that much more power to the Deplorables who will line up obediently and vote for their orange glazed Führer no matter how obviously it is not in their own best interests to do so.

Oh, and have you noticed? The Right is actively attempting to suppress voter turnout...particularly of the young, of liberals, and of minorities. For Heaven’s sake, don’t do the Right any favors by suppressing your own vote...that is, by staying home on election day.

So, yeah, I would really rather be voting for Sanders or Warren. But Biden is what we’ve got.
If you must, think of him as a broken leg. Not great. But that is a hell of a lot better than having a broken neck.

Lesser of two evils, indeed.

Please?

***


About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Save Yourselves...VOTE!

Just in case you missed it, today Trump halted U.S. funding for the World Health Organization. Why? Mostly (as near as I can tell) because it gives him a way to (yet again) somehow blame someone else for his own appalling response to the Covid-19 crisis...and because it plays well to his base, who have always regarded American involvement with multinational organizations as somehow unpatriotic ... and because the pseudo-Libertarian elites who support his administration see money going anywhere except into their own pockets as blasphemy.

So, in other words, a whole lot more people are going to die and American prestige will continue to plunge, because the bloated, orange-headed moron in the White House decided to play politics and be petulant.

I have only one suggestion. Vote. If you possibly can, vote in November. Vote Blue. You may not like Biden, you may detest him...but the alternative is four more years of that horrible, disgusting, repellent creature in power.

And neither we, nor America, may be able to survive such a thing.

Trump And The Virus

***


About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Blood and Dragons (and antibodies)

This is less a political essay than a diary entry. But, here goes.

I may...repeat may...have had Covid-19 already. May not have. But may.

Way back in early February, I and everyone in my family came down with what seemed to be a very bad flu or cold. I had fever, a wracking cough, and, most of all, extreme fatigue. And I mean extreme. I spent something like two weeks doing very little more than laying on the sofa and trying hard just to keep my eyes open. (Didn’t need to self-isolate because I basically...er, ah...didn’t move.)

I and everyone in my family sought professional medical help. But, as I say, this was in February. Covid-19 was just starting to become a problem in the USA. We hadn’t recently traveled anywhere overseas at that time. We hadn’t been in the company of anyone who had. So, not even our very competent medical advisors thought of coronavirus. And even if they had, there were no test kits available.

Anyway, after a month of feeling pretty awful, we were all up and running again. By that time, of course, Covid-19 was everywhere and I began to wonder if maybe, just maybe, we had had the virus and didn’t know it.

If so, then I would have the antibodies to the virus already in my blood stream. And, if that were true, then I could donate blood for use in what’s called “convalescent plasma therapy.” I hadn’t run across the term before, but as I understand it, you take blood from someone who has already recovered from a disease and inject it into someone who is still sick. The antibodies in the donor blood then go zap the bad guy viroids. (If you’re interested, here is an article on the topic.)

I would love to be able to do this. It would be so terribly cool. Sort of like being a reverse vampire. You give blood, and maybe life, rather than take it.

So, I set out to find out how I could sign up to be a convalescent plasma donor. Turns out that’s easier said than done, just yet. Several organizations are gearing up to start taking serum donations. Among the places I’ve found doing so are the Red Cross and, in my own locality, We Are Blood.

The kicker is that you need to be able to prove that you have the antibodies in your blood stream. At the moment, the sort of test required...an coronavirus antibody titer test (I’m not making that up)... is available in only a few places. And one of those places is not (alas) Texas. So, looks like I’m out of the game for a while. Though I’m hoping to get off the bench just as soon as tests show up here in the Austin-area.

Give A Gift Of Life

But if you’re interested in being a serum donor, check and see if the Covid-19 titer test is available in your neck of the woods. It would be very, very cool if we could organize a platoon of donors to be of serum service!

So when you get a moment, hop on over to Google or DuckDuckGo or where-ever and do a search for “Coronavirus titer test near me.” If you’re lucky, test kits will be available, and you’ll soon be able to start helping save lives.

In the meantime, I’ve set up an appointment to give blood in the near future -- or, more specifically, to donate platelets, which have to do with things like healing.  I’m AB+, a fairly rare group, and it turns out that us AB-babies are in demand for both platelet and plasma donations.

So, that’s pretty cool, too. And if you can’t get a Covid-19 titer test, consider just giving blood, or platelets or “double red” or whatever. 

It’s a way of being on the side of the angels, and of pissing off the Grim Reaper, at a time when so many angels and their supporters are needed...and there is way too much Death to deal with.

Onward and upward.

mjt 

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Masks Are Marvelous

So I thought I would post a link to this story, “Simple DIY masks could help flatten the curve. We should all wear them in public” by Jeremy Howard, which recently appeared in the Washington Post. It is important, because there have been some snotty articles appearing in the press lately about how Do It Yourself face masks are worse than useless and you ought to just stop trying to make or use them.

Except...that isn’t exactly true. Yes, it is accurate to say that a DIY mask can’t take the place of a hospital grade N95 mask. But, medical professionals can wear a cloth mask over an N95 and thus extend its useful life span.

Also, just because a DIY mask isn’t hospital-grade, that doesn’t mean it’s useless. As Howard notes, outside a medical facility, in public, DIY masks can do a great deal to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and other diseases. “Studies have documented definitively that in controlled environments like airplanes, people with masks rarely infect others and rarely become infected themselves,” he says, “while those without masks more easily infect others or become infected themselves.”

So, if you’re making cloth masks for others, or if you’re wearing one to go to the store or wherever, don’t stop. You could actually be saving lives...including, maybe, your own. 

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Please Don’t WIC It Away

Okay, this one is quick but urgent. Martha just pointed out to me this piece by Marissa Higgins on DailyKos, “The real reason to leave WIC-eligible grocery items on the shelf as you stock up amid coronavirus.”

WIC, of course, is the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. Ms. Higgins further defines it as, “a federal program for low-income women with children under 5 years old. WIC generally covers eggs, milk, fortified foods, peanut butter, beans, tofu, fruits, vegetables, canned fish, and more. Women who don’t breastfeed are able to receive iron-fortified infant formula. People can also use WIC assistance at participating farmers’ markets to buy fresh produce.”

Which is all to say that it very, very important. For a lot of people, particularly children, it determines whether they have anything to eat...of not.

The kicker? WIC approved products are disappearing from grocery stores, along with everything else that people can scoop up in an age of panic buying. That means that those WIC approved items may not be available for people who really, really need them.

So, suggests Higgins, if you see the WIC symbol on a product, or see that it is “WIC approved,” and you aren’t yourself in the WIC program, consider putting it back. Someone else may very well need it more than you.

And that someone could be a baby...

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Just A Link To My Man Milton

Like it says, this is just a link to the blog of one of my favorite writers, Milton Brasher-Cunningham. Check out this recent posting on "Don't Eat Alone."

lenten journal: help somebody

 

***   Please check out my new book, Padre, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father. https://www.amazon.com/Padre-Island-Michael-Jay-Tucker/dp/1792646909

Government Isn’t Like A Business (you idiot!)

Fascinating piece on the Brookings Institute site this week, “Trump’s failed presidency” by Elaine Kamarck. In it, the talented Dr. Kamarck looks at the Trump administration and asks why it is coming apart so spectacularly.

Her answer? Well, you know how high-powered business executives and corporate CEOs and Hedge Fund managers will so often say that government would work “if only you ran it like a business?” Trump and his enablers believe that dictum as an article of faith. They want a government that would be efficient, profitable, and most of all, small enough “to drown in a bathtub.”

The kicker? Government isn’t like a business.  In particular, says Kamarck, a government has to be ready to deal with the unexpected. A government, she says, “...is in the business of preparing for low-probability events.” Things, that is, like wars, natural disasters, and, now, pandemics.

And in preparing for those-low probability but high-risk events, the Trump Administration has, she notes, “been especially inept ... from the beginning.” As a result, we have a modern plague that could have been prevented, or at least mitigated, but which wasn’t, because Trump et al never suspected it would actually happen.

The long-term take-away, I think, from Dr. Kamarck’s article, and from the Trump Administration in general, is that the run-the-government-like-a-business crowd is dangerous...every bit as dangerous as coronavirus itself.

For those who believe in such maxims, and who would put them into practice, suffer from too deep a faith in their own omni-competence.

Or to put it another way...from hubris.

Which goes before a fall, and makes the tragedy all too Greek.

~~~

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Covid-19 & The Triumph Of Trump

So I had an interesting experience today, and it involved coronavirus. No, I haven’t got it, and I don’t think I’ve been exposed to it. But I have seen the power of the fear it commands.

We had gone to a local Walmart to get a few things. We found what we needed, fortunately, but then we drifted into the aisle that was supposed to contain cleaning goods. You know of course, what we found. The shelves were utterly empty. Bleach, disinfecting wipes, antibacterial sprays...all gone. All purchased and carried away in great piles by people who will never be able to use all of it, but who fought for its possession as though their lives depended on it.

It is frightening to see such fear. To see panic in all its horrid glory.

Don’t get me wrong.   Covid-19 is dangerous, and potentially deadly -- certainly, it is a threat to those of us who are over sixty. As you know, the virus seems to be sparing the young and targeting the old. (Yes, my dear Millennials, the Universe works in mysterious ways. Your vengeance on Boomers seems to be at hand.) And certainly, it is much, much more dangerous than Trump is saying.

Yet, fear, too, is like an infection. It, too, can spread and do dreadful things in the process. Thus the panic buying...and who knows what else?...in my local store.

And, strangely enough, it is Trump who is partly responsible for the great and dangerous Fear. He is making an effort to discount the threat of coronavirus. He is saying that it is no worse than the flu, and that reports otherwise are (dreadful term) fake news.

The Triumph Of Death

But there’s the rub. Even his most ardent supporters know he is lying. In a wonderful of Orwellian doublethink, they believe and disbelieve him. They mock liberals for their fear of the virus, and yet prepare themselves for the triumph of death. Recall that many of them have been eagerly expecting the end of the world for years, and have been prepping for it all this time. How heartening it must be to feel the day is here at last.

And thus Trump does the worst that he can do. He directs his deplorables to simultaneously ignore medical advice, and to over-react.  So it is that you must stand in awe of the man. He is a quadruple threat. In one fell swoop, he establishes four distinct evils...

Fever and fear. Ignorance and arrogance.

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

To Senator Warren, With Admiration

I saw today that Elizabeth Warren has ended her bid for the presidency. This saddens me. I did not vote for her in the primary, but I greatly respect her, and I think she would have made a terrific president.

Also, on a somewhat more primitive level, I would have loved to have seen her debate Trump. Her performance in taking down Michael Bloomberg was wonderful enough, but her utter evisceration of 45 would have been glorious to behold.

But, I suppose, she made the right choice given her performance on Super Tuesday. (Where were her voters?  Why did they not cast their ballots for her? It is a mystery to me -- just as I am bewildered by some of the young people who were so energetic in their support for Bernie Sanders on the web, but who somehow declined to actually appear at the polls.)

Still, she remains a Senator, and an intense pain to Wall Street and many rabid defenders of the status quo. We’ve not seen the last of her, I’m sure. As my wife put it to me this afternoon, she will have her place in our national history...and in our future. 

So, brava, Senator Warren! You have fought the good fight, and you will continue to do so.

I very much look forward to recounting your victories.

***

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)


Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.


  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The Hero Li Wenliang

Note: This originally appeared on 25 Feb, 2020, on LiberalResistance.net. I reproduce it here with the kind permission of the editors. 



I continue to be fascinated (albeit with a chill fascination) the spread of coronavirus in China, and from there to the rest of the world. I shudder to think what’s coming, and hope that, somehow, the virus gets stopped before it goes any further.

So far, the only thing that I find remotely positive about the disease is that it seems to be sparing children.(1) Unlike, say, the great “Spanish” Influenza of 1918, which apparently targeted younger people, the coronavirus seems to leave the young alone, while hitting those of us who are older harder. As a grandfather, that reassures me a wee bit. At least I know that I may fall, but my granddaughter may be safe. Or at least safer.

Okay, but the other thing which interests me is China’s response to the problem. Like most authoritarian regimes, it has both advantages and disadvantages in this situation. The advantage is that it can impose strict measures (like fairly brutal quarantines) that simply wouldn’t fly in a more democratic society.

The disadvantage is that it is morbidly concerned about its image, both at home and abroad. So, it tends to shut down the flow of information about the disease, even when that censorship puts lives at risk.

Maybe the most telling example of this is in the treatment of Li Wenliang, the rather heroic doctor who tried to warn his country (and the world) about the danger, and for his efforts was arrested for spreading “alarmist” rumors — which only goes to prove just how well, alas, Henrik Ibsen knew human character, particularly at its worst.

Dr. Li died of the pandemic he tried so hard to prevent. But he did get, in a sense, his revenge. According to at least some reports, his story has spread wide and far in China, in spite of the best efforts of the authorities to control it. (Seems that disease and information are equally difficult to control.)

In fact, according to one article I saw on CNN, Dr. Li’s case has very, very seriously damaged the government’s reputation with its people. (2) Thus, by trying to control its image, the government managed to injured its image, perhaps beyond any hope of recovery.  Who knows? It might even result in a genuine crisis of legitimacy. It probably won’t bring down the government all by itself, but, in combination with other problems…

Maybe there’s a lesson there, for governments, and, indeed, for us all. One of the central premises of the Enlightenment, and science, is that the free flow of information is a good thing, and that attempts to prevent that freedom — however tempting it might be — become in the end destructive…even fatal.

The Enlightenment, and science, have not been popular of late. For both Right, and yes (let’s confess), the Left, it has seem so more much satisfying to rely instead on faith, received wisdom, “alternative facts,” and sophist mumblings about “postmodernism.”

Yet, here’s the lesson of the day, as provided by the coronavirus and the martyrdom of Dr. Li:  facts may be disruptive. They may be economically inconvenient.  They may clash with your faith. They may be politically incorrect. But …they are inescapable and immutable. And when you ignore them, they bite you.

Hard.



1) https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/11/the-coronavirus-appears-to-be-sparing-one-group-of-people-kids.html
2) https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/07/asia/china-doctor-death-censorship-intl-hnk/index.html

~~~

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.