Reopening Should Not Be Part of School Planning Right Now

What states and school districts are actually developing right now are “Limit Illness and Death” plans. Unacceptable.

The Oxymoronics of “Smart Restarts”

The only plan governors, school administrators or boards in the United States should be developing right now are “Keep Kids Safe” plans.

Period.

Make that the absolute, irrevocable guiding priority, and all the questions being bandied about related to mask wearing, classroom distancing, quarantining in the event of a positive test, liabilities, teacher pay in the event of quarantine and on and on disappear.

How/why?

Because the only responsible, logical, science-based response to “How do we keep kids safe?” when it comes to schools is to keep them out of schools. For now.

What states and school districts are developing now are actually “Limit Illness and Death” plans.

Not acceptable.

Continue reading “Reopening Should Not Be Part of School Planning Right Now”

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Texas GOP Leaders: “We’ll Be There In Spirit”

Nothing like calling it in to save your own skin.

The Texas GOP cares so much about its voters that it was willing to allow them to gather in ill-advised close proximity for its state convention.

Party leaders, meanwhile, planned to speak to them via teleconference.

Nothing like calling it in to save your own skin.

On July 8, “…the operator of Houston’s George R. Brown Convention Center canceled the Texas GOP convention.” Even though the in-person convention has been cancelled (not by the Texas GOP, mind you), its message couldn’t have been more clear – 

“We’re going to let you plebes gather together and infect each other with a deadly virus. We’ll give our speeches from afar to protect ourselves. Sound good?”

Or, to put it more bluntly – “We don’t care if some of you get sick and others die.”

The most frightening thing about that is not that the GOP leadership is willing to endanger its own people, but that so many of those people would have participated anyway.

Good grief.

 

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Proactive Naming: Let’s Not Call It “Coronavirus” or “Covid-19” Anymore

A new naming paradigm – Perhaps if we call it something closer to the heart… er, um, hips… people will take the pandemic more seriously.

An insightful individual recently suggested on social media that rather than “PANDEMIC,” we should call what we’re going through a “PLAGUE.”

Maybe then, they reasoned, people would take coronavirus and Covid-19 more seriously. Maybe they’d even adhere to physical distancing guidelines and wear masks in public.

I agree.

To a point. 

Given the resistance to common sense, disregard for their fellow human beings and insistence on “FreeDumb,” I recommend our new naming paradigm be even more direct, if a tiny bit misleading.

Henceforth and forever, coronavirus and Covid-19 shall be called:

The “Mask-Up-or-Your-Dick-Will-Shrink
-to-the-Size-of-a-Wine-Cork” Virus

The “Wear-a-Mask-or-You’ll-Wake-Up-With
-20-Extra-Pounds-of-Thigh-Cellulite” Disease

On the other head, given the fact that these folks aren’t smart enough to believe scientists or take the easiest of precautions to protect themselves and others from death….

Never mind.

P.S. – You have the right to smack me upside the head if I ever write or utter the word “paradigm” again, about coronavirus, Covid-19 or anything else.

 

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#NoDAPL!!!

CELEBRATE! Courage, righteousness and tenacity overcome wealth, greed and cronyism in the fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline. For now.

Federal Judge Orders Halt to Pipeline Operation

Every now and again, the good people win.

On Monday, a federal judge’s order to halt operation of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL) reinforced that belief.

The good people in this case are the members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North and South Dakota, other tribes that joined them in their lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps), and people from around the world who supported them as they fought for their sovereignty and human rights.

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Mask. There is No Other Correct Answer.

The world needs consensus-builders and compromise-finders, but not when it comes to wearing masks to overcome the coronavirus pandemic.

Sorry, Conciliators, There Is No Middle Here

The world needs conciliators, people who try to bring two sides together to find common ground.

These are the consensus-builders and compromise-finders. They help the world move forward by rounding off the jagged edges of debates and disagreements between those of us who see the world from more of a solely right or wrong, up or down point of view.

Continue reading “Mask. There is No Other Correct Answer.”