Meditations In An Emergency Five Years Later

 

My wife went in for a check-up.  The medical staff found her heart was in Atrial Fibrillation. They took her to the emergency room at the local hospital.

I went to the emergency room on December 31, 2019, at 9:30 a.m.

The emergency room was packed. People were lying on beds in the hall. I asked a nurse what was going on.  The nurse said, "It's the flu".

Later in January, my wife and I went to New York City. Every person we saw who appeared to be from the Far East was wearing a face mask.  We wondered why. 

About six weeks later, we found out.

I don't remember the exact day, but we drove by our local Publix and the parking lot was full. Everybody was buying toilet paper.

The Covid-19 crisis was in full bloom. The NBA canceled the remainder of its season. Major League Baseball postponed the start of its season. 

Tom Hanks got it. We thought we were going to lose Tom Hanks.

They (the government) requested everybody give it two weeks to "flatten the curve". Here, they said, watch this show about an amoral zoo keeper in Oklahoma. 

They (the media) told us that the Covid virus originated in a Wet Market which sold bats and pangolins instead of a lab that just happened to study viruses.  To claim otherwise was to be a sinner. One of the knuckle-dragging mouth breathers who have soiled our good nation for too long.

Last week, The New York Times published a column titled: “We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives.” Just like Tonto said to the Lone Ranger-"What do you mean 'We' kemo sabe?"

The column should have been titled, "You Were Badly Misled About The Event That Changed Our Lives By Us".

It turns out all the really smart people, for whatever reason, decided like Colonel Nathan Jessup that we couldn't handle the truth and put forth the goofy Wet Market story. Then accuse anyone who wouldn't tow the supposed scientific line to be a twenty-first-century Bull Conner. 

The crisis elevated Saint Dr. Anthony Fauci to be the nation's PCP.  He came up with the Mask mandate. Which turns out didn't work. And social distancing. Which turns out didn't work either.

Fauci has admitted there was no science (besides him being Science incarnate) behind the Mask mandate or social distancing. Scientifically speaking, he pulled the Mask mandate and social distancing out of his butt. 

Another problem was the rules that were created for us in steerage to follow.

A lot of the rules in Covid-19 were my favorite legal phrase: arbitrary and capricious.  The government decided which businesses were "essential". Small business was not. Wal-Mart was. Funny how that works.

I was able to obtain my vaccine earlier than most because I worked for a health system even though I'm not a clinician of any sort and I never saw any patients because I worked out of my home.  Grocery store workers, who literally were on the "frontline" of Covid became eligible for the vaccine in the second stage of the rollout.

Michael Brendan Doughtery said, "It’s fearful to consider how much of our law and Constitution just seemed to evaporate and how swiftly and completely it was replaced with the Absolute Sovereignty of Liberal Professional Class Conventional Thinking, however brain-dead or self-serving. The Sovereignty of Liberal Professional Class Conventional Thinking is why kids wore masks for a year after a vaccine was available to adults. And why schools had bizarre barriers on desks, and why it suddenly became okay to congregate outside so long as it was a Black Lives Matter riot and not something else protected by the First Amendment, like a Jewish funeral in Brooklyn."

In case I'm ever in front of a Senate subcommittee, I think Trump lost the 2020 election, but the day Biden was declared the winner, a group of celebrants were outside of the White House, unmasked, and drinking champagne from the same bottle without even wiping off the top. Nobody said a word to them because the virus wanted Trump to lose.

For all his Trumpness, he did fast track the vaccine so the national could go back to normal. There were those who said we couldn't trust the vaccine Trump rushed through because, hey, you can't rush these things. You might take the vaccine and grow three heads.

Until Joe Biden became President and then you had to take the vaccine or lose your job.

I took the vaccine. I had no problem with it. I thought (and think) everybody should take the vaccine. 

But, President Biden had COVID-19 three times in two years after taking the vaccine and the boosters

I worked with an individual who went deaf in one ear after taking the vaccine. Things like that happened.

Some people were very, very against the vaccine.

In strolled in our entertainment class to scold Americans they disagreed with. 

We had a late night talk show host say  "Vaccinated person having a heart attack? Yes, come right in. We'll take care of you. Unvaccinated guy who gobbled horse goo? Rest in peace, wheezy."

The "horse goo" was Ivermectin, which is an actual drug. NIH said in October of 2020 paper, "There were no severe adverse drug events recorded in the study. A 5-day course of ivermectin was found to be safe and effective in treating adult patients with mild COVID-19." 

Howard Stern who has transformed from a "shock jock" to our national nag said, "We have no time for idiots in this country anymore. We don’t want you,” Stern said. “We want you to all either go to the hospital, stay home, die there with your COVID, don’t take the cure but don’t clog up our hospitals with your COVID when you finally get it. Stay home, don’t bother with science, it’s too late. We want you to go away. We want you to leave the country. Go somewhere where they have ultimate freedom, wherever that is, some bizarro world where you don’t have to take the vaccine. I don’t know when nonsense became such a thing."

The man who created "Fartman" wonders when nonsense became such a thing.

I'm glad COVID-19 is in the rear-view mirror.  Did our betters, our smarty parts, our cultural influencers handle it well?

No. 

Mini Movie Review: "Conclave"

 

 

The Oscars were last week and once again, the winner for Best Picture was a movie I hadn't heard of, but don't worry, reports are bosoms make an appearance so you know it was art.

I have seen "A Complete Unknown" which was about the voice of a generation Bob Dylan.  I know a little about Bob Dylan because I have a lot of Bob Dylan records and have read many books about Bob Dylan.

I didn't learn anything new about Bob Dylan. He and Johnny Cash were big friends and Johnny would pop up every now and then in the movie to tell Bob not to wipe his feet and to sing through your nose and don't comb your hair. 

My wife and I have seen another movie that was nominated for Best Picture: "Conclave".

In years past, a long, boring, plodding movie was just the ticket to win all of the awards.  "Conclave" was not a long, boring, plodding movie. It was just boring and plodding. It clocks at about two hours long, which isn't that bad for a boring, plodding movie.

"Conclave" was about the new Captain America, who now has wings for some reason and the Hulk who is now red and not green.

(Checks notes)

Wait, "Conclave" is about how Roman Catholics select a pope.

If you are a Southern Evangelical like Moi, you really need to study how Roman Catholics pick their leaders. It is nothing like how Southern Baptists pick their leaders which usually has something to do with a couple of books and a tape ministry.

When a pope dies, the College of Cardinals meets at The Vatican and selects which conference they want to play basketball in.  Oops, check that again.  The College of Cardinals meets at The Vatican to select a new pope. They call it a "Conclave".

It is a pretty good movie in the sense that they have big time actors like Ralph (pronounced "Rafe") Fiennes and John (pronounced "John") Lithgow.  

All of the actors wear their Cardinal clothes and ride in a bus to the Vatican like they were on a travel baseball team.

One candidate is Lithgow, who is just a weasel.

Another is Ralph/Rafe, who is a good guy and just wants the church to be nice and not talk about sin or lay a heavy guilt trip on the laity, man.

Another is a more politically savvy cardinal that wants to drag the Church out of the 16th century because nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition.

Still another candidate is an African cardinal who had a baby in the past when he was a young Priest, so he's cut.

The final candidate is The Right Reverend Donald J. Trump, Bishop of Mar-a-Logo, who does everything but wear a  Make The Vatican Great Again hat. This guy laments the loss of the Latin Mass, for Pete's sake (notice what I did there?).

Pretty soon, all of the candidates knocked each other out of the race except this dark horse who wasn't even on the list to be in the Conclave. He was the Bishop of Kubul or Antarctica or some place.

This guy, who nobody knows, is selected as a compromise candidate because of the highly spiritual principle, "Eh, why not?"

However.

The new Pope has a secret. That's all I'll say. It's not surprising that the Cardinals will pick the least qualified candidate. I mean, it happens.

The movie is your basic Hollywood movie. Liberals-Yeah! Conservatives-Boo!  

They lay on the symbolism rather thick when Ralph/Rafe picks up one of the late Pope's turtles (the late Pope liked turtles) carries the turtle out of the Vatican and places it in a small fountain. The church is a turtle, slow, plodding, and needs a leader to pick it up and carry it to where it needs to be.  (I must admit that I are a graduate of Cobb County Public Schools.)

No violence. No cussing. No naked people.

It is one of those movies that is done well, but Lord, it was dull in parts.

 

Clint Hill

 

 

If there is one topic I have avoided in my 15 years of blogging, it is The Kennedy Assassination.

There have been many reasons for this.

One, I was four years old when IT (and it was always referred to as "IT") and I was still taking Inez* Mandated Naps.

 
Inez always told the story like this.  "Me and your grandmother were watching our stories." (That's what people called afternoon Soap Operas back then: "stories".) "Walter Cronkite came on and said Kennedy had been shot. You (meaning me) loved cartoons back then and you kept asking when the cartoons were going to come back on. You had to live two whole days without The Popeye Club."**

Two, just about everything that can be said about IT has been said.  It was a gory, terrible event and the one moment every one of a certain age can pinpoint when everything down the toilet.

Pretty soon four guys from England came over with that old long hair, everybody got color TV sets, and girls left their bras at home.

Here's your draft card, burn it or keep it. The new President, Lyndon Johnson, was not nearly as charismatic as JFK, got us into Vietnam. Martin Luther King and brother Bobby got shot.  That old long hair got longer and soon the kids were taking drugs and getting all freaky.

Things didn't calm down until Ford became President (a long story) and all of the hippies (the boys that grew their hair out) decided to settle down and make money. 

Three, for about sixty years there has been controversy about the assassination with everybody having an opinion which may/may not have a basis in fact because, let's face it, it happened a long time ago and we are just a tad bit more cynical about "official narratives".

The official narrative is a 24-year-old man took a rifle to work and shot the President of The United States from the sixth floor of (all together now) The Texas School Book Depository.  He shot three times, hitting the President twice and once hitting the governor of Texas who was sitting in front of him.

The official narrative has this man, (all together again) Lee Harvey Oswald, acting alone.

People really don't believe that. They think either the CIA, Lyndon Johnson, the FBI, Russia, or the Mafia killed the President. Oh yeah, Lee Harvey was killed by the owner of a strip club, two days later, in the basement of the Dallas Police station.

The assassination was back in the news when Clint Hill, the Secret Service Agent assigned to Mrs. Kennedy, died at the age of 95.

He was the man running towards the Presidential limousine after the shots were fired, somehow hopping on board the car, and pushing Mrs. Kennedy back into her seat where she could cradle the expired President in her lap.

At Parkland Hospital, where they took the President in a desperate but futile attempt to save his life, Hill took a call from brother Bobby who asked, "How bad is it?"  Hill's reply: "It is about as bad as it can get".

Hill lasted about 13 additional years with the Secret Service. In 1975, he flunked a physical and was retired from the Secret Service. At his retirement reception, Mrs. Kennedy, Mrs. Johnson, and Mamie Eisenhower attended. 

By his account, he spent the next several years holed up in his basement, smoking and drinking. Today, we would say he had PTSD.

He eventually began talking about IT. The story was always the same. He on the running board of the car behind the President's. He heard the first shot coming from behind him. He heard another shot coming from behind him. He heard another shot coming from behind him and saw it hit the President's head. All in the span of less than eight seconds.

Hill wrote several books, of course, having to relive what has to be the worst day at work ever. 

Hill regretted he could not do more. But that's not fair to him. He did all he could do.

By the way, Hill threw his coat over the President to cover the head wound from the media. When all was said and done, he took the coat to be dry cleaned. He presented the dry cleaning receipt at work for reimbursement.

It was turned down. 

* My mom.

** "The Popeye Club" was an afternoon show that aired on WSB-TV in Atlanta from Monday through Friday.  It starred Don Kennedy (no relation to the President) as "Officer Don" and they showed Popeye cartoons.  They didn't try to teach you anything. It was great.  The assassination happened on a Friday and it was wall-to-wall news coverage until after the burial on Monday.  "The Popeye Club" came back on the air on Tuesday.