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Day 103: COVID-19(84) Feel Better, Now?
I attended the May Day protests in Sacramento, yesterday. I drove there with my 89-year mother-in-law to participate in Operation Gridlock where we stayed in our car festooned with signs and drove (actually crawled) around the state capitol building. Separate from the vehicle demonstration, hundreds of people carrying signs and flags came to the steps of the capitol building. An account regarding the protest on the capitol steps can be read here.The story includes images of that protest plus video. Not a particularly flattering account; it emphasized the “crazy” element that the best I could tell was not a large part of that crowd but which is useful to discredit those that seek to restore constitutional government.
Below are images that I snapped from my car as we drove around.
The vehicle “parade” was quite distant from the capitol steps protest. The Highway Patrol routed the vehicles around the capitol grounds in such a way as you only clearly saw protestors on foot as they made their way from peripheral parking to the capitol building.
There were quite a few children who participated in the demonstration.
This woman emphasized the relationship between Governor Newsom and Nancy Pelosi. Although I think they are divorced now, at one point Gavin’s aunt was married to Nancy’s brother, so they were related by marriage. I think their political connections are stronger than their blood connections.
Th
This, and another sign that showed an image of Governor Newson in Nazi regalia, was the harshest personal criticism pointed at the governor.
The capitol steps protestors were moved off the capitol grounds by a phalanx of CHP officers in full riot gear, face masks and face shields. It made them look like Empire Storm Troopers from Star Wars. Not a good look for confronting people peacefully petitioning their government. There were some arrests, apparently, but the crowd was “law abiding” in a constitutional sense if not compliant with the “health order” for which violation they were ordered to disperse.
It’s hard to say where things go from here. Some businesses are defying the order and some cases have been filed with the courts. The governor has signaled more “easing” (maybe trying to get ahead to lead the parade?) but it still has a flavor of government largesse rather than respecting individual liberty. And that’s the rub.
So, feeling better, now? Not so much.
[Note: Links to all my COVID-19 posts can be found here.]
Published in General
Nicht mein Anführer!
I wonder if I could get that on a yard sign, along with an image of our governor. Or maybe a bumper sticker.
When do you tell us what slogans you put on your vehicle?
@thereticulator
Go here.
The OC beaches should be interesting this weekend. Newsom seems drunk of his power now. This is just foolish.
California doesn’t know what to do with non-lefty protesters. They leave “antifa” alone. But this . . . this is another sort of thing.
Monday’s Sacramento Bee: “Huge Spike in COVID-19 Infections Following Lockdown Protests”
The subheading will be “Pro-Trump Protesters Endanger California and the Nation” . . .”
Not bad!
Looking at those signs, I have to say that the California schools are doing one thing better than anyone else: teaching handwriting. :-) Wow. :-)
But the thing that jumps out at me is how everyone is dressed. The weather in Sacramento is well into the summer temperatures, and it will be in the summer 90s next week. There should be enough parents and grandparents in the world to realize that it is impossible to keep the kids in the house any longer. We’ve got to let people go.
I love the sign saying that Target, Lowes, Home Depot, and Walmart are open without killing people so why can’t the small businesses open?
Every time I look at the news, I see reports of new high numbers of people who are infected. That has become the new issue, and the public is freaking out because they do not understand what kind of threat those infected people represent. I’m seeing that hysteria sweep Cape Cod and Massachusetts too. Instead of looking around at the huge number of people who are carrying the virus without symptoms and who are in excellent health as good and reassuring news, people are turning viciously on people who are simply testing positive for it. For this I blame the scientists who have been way too slow and inept in explaining what carrying the virus actually means.
There’s a study in progress in Massachusetts whose results will help to some extent allay the public’s fear. The researchers are testing for both the presence of the virus and the presence of antibodies. That will move the ball a little bit if we discover happily that the all asymptomatic people have antibodies (which, alas, I don’t think they will find to be true). We still need to know the facts about people who are carrying it but don’t have antibodies to it.
I suspect that since we are seeing that it is a virus like all other viruses, the facts about carriers are out there in the bazillion studies on viruses that we’ve done over the last forty years. If someone doesn’t quickly retrieve a definitive study on that question, the politicians and scientists will have a real civil war on their hands in this country. They are pitting the two strong and highly emotional groups against each other: those who believe the carriers are infecting and killing other people and those who do not believe that. That’s what I am seeing in Massachusetts. (As an aside, these are not nice people in charge of this country right now. Good people don’t make pariahs of other people.) The fear of AIDS did not quiet down until scientists said emphatically that the virus was killed by stomach acid. The public breathed a noticeable sigh of relief. Everything changed after that. That’s what we need now, a definitive statement of the actual threat asymptomatic carriers represent to uninfected people.
Here’s the deal. This was a groundswell protest. Not a union-printed sign in the bunch.
Good point. That was something that turned me off of Republican nomination conventions. There were all those machine-made signs, and only those, in comparison to the Democratic conventions which had hand-made ones. One look was enough to make me continue my policy of not watching them. I have no idea if it was any different four years ago.
Forget about the signs. That is one good looking mother-in-law! You obviously married wisely.
We had a local protest, not officially part of the statewide action. It was covered in the local paper, with lots of pictures.
Storming the beach:
“So many of those protesters have American flags…how come they don’t light them on fire?” – staff member, probably.
Now this part is evil:
Make them afraid and keep them afraid. Not my America.
So, about that whole ‘rule of law’ thing….
Along with Comment #10 by @9thdistrictneighbor “conservatives” have much less experience with conducting protests than do leftists, so conservatives aren’t practiced in organizing and sign-making. Of course conservatives are usually too busy running businesses, working, doing church and charity work, and raising families to bother with protests. Maybe the wanna-be-rulers will realize that if they don’t want protests, they shouldn’t do things that put people out of work and prevent them from doing their own thing.
I’m still rather stunned that the “party of the working man” (which the Democrats insist they are) is quite fine with putting all workers in the unemployment line.
It’s important to get this message out, and possibly “red pill” a lot of Democrats in the process.
Well you wouldn’t be surprised if you understood that the party was only seeking the means of capturing and holding the most votes. When it was the party of the working man it was because delivering that secured votes. Once it was established that making people dependent on government was even more effective in fusing people to the party, it became the party of welfare (also know as reparations for victim groups). So by throwing even more people into unemployment it mines more votes for the party of welfare. Its only when “other people’s money” runs out to pay for it, does the mask finally and completely slip.
Well, now that the government is “eating its seed corn,” we’re going to run out of other people’s money a lot sooner.
Welfare and government jobs – but the constituencies are similar in dependence.
By the time I got there (about 1 pm), all the fun was over. I spoke with the guy with the flag. The police were not hostile; some were supportive. This is a small community. Citizens know the officers. The cops are between a rock and a hard place. The protests are a process, not an endpoint.
The other thing to consider is that some people here are favor the restrictions. They are afraid. They are snitching on their neighbors. We are in a battle for hearts and minds, the outcome of which will reverberate for years. Will the country embrace a Stasi-like future or turn towards liberty?
It sounds as if Oregon’s protest at the capital was close to a bust, probably due in part to the rainy weather. The reporter for the local fish wrap did manage to insert a comment that blaming the Chinese for the spread of the virus is racist.
I got mad thinking about that comment about racism and sent the following email to the reporter:
You wrote that blaming the Chinese for the spread of the virus is racist. How do you come to that conclusion? It is clear that the Chinese government tried to keep the outbreak secret, even disciplining the doctor who first reported it. They then lied about whether it was spread from human to human. They allowed massive New Years parties to go on knowing they had an epidemic on their hands. They also stopped all flights out of Wuhan to other cities in China, but allowed them to continue to other countries. If they had behaved responsibly, there likely would have been no pandemic.
Am I racist for saying the truth? Is Mr. Nations? You certainly so implied. I think you owe him an apology.
——-
I’d send it to the editor as well, but, conveniently, they don’t provide her email or a link.
“The Chinese” is synonymous with the government of China, not every last person who is of Chinese extraction. That is obvious to all but the most dedicated of troublemakers.
That reminds me, has anyone seen any #antifa signs at these protests?
Ouch!
My barber in Los Angeles has been open ‘quietly’.
I just found out today!
Seeing him Wed.
He served in the military.
Jealous.
Have you tried calling your barber?
I called him expecting to get his answering machine and he answered the phone.
I asked him are you open and he said yes but very quietly… See you Wed.