“The media likes to say we have the most [coronavirus] cases, but we do, by far, the most testing. If we did very little testing, we wouldn’t have the most cases. So, in a way, by doing all of this testing, we make ourselves look bad.”
– President Donald Trump, during a meeting with Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, May 6.
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“Of course it can. All great literature makes us uncomfortable, because it addresses what makes us fully human. That includes our worst traits, like hatred of those who are different from us. So if your goal is to shield kids from discomfort, you’re going to have to censor a lot of really good books.”
– Jonathan Zimmerman, education and history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, on the ubiquitous hypocrisy of liberals who want to ban books using racial slurs from grade and high school curriculums, yet remain silent about the banishment of other books by equally well-known authors with equally controversial subjects and verbiage.
This week a number of people protesting the state of Michigan’s shutdown in the midst of the COVID-19 stormed the state capital in Lansing demanding that Governor Gretchen Whitmer rescind the quarantine orders and allow anyone to return to work and shopping if they want. In other words, they don’t like that a global pandemic has usurped their presumed placement as the center of the universe. Many of the protesters arrived with guns and rifles; some wearing Nazi swastikas and others adorned in Confederate regalia (those morons keep fighting the 19th century American Civil War and damn! They still haven’t won!)
A few stood in front of law enforcement officials – the latter wearing face masks – and screamed profanities. This photo is just image of the virulent mad (mostly White) men unleashing their vitriol. Faux-President Trump has expressed support for them.
I keep thinking if a group of Black or Latino residents had shown up in the Michigan state capital building with firearms protesting something, how long would they last?
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“I really salute his leadership. Everybody has really come through, but the president has seemed particularly sensitive to the, what shall I say, to the feelings of the religious community.”
– Cardinal Timothy Dolan, New York City Roman Catholic Diocese, praising faux-President Trump on FOX News April 27.
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“We need liberal democrats to fight against the new populism; liberal socialists to fight against the frequent authoritarianism of left-wing regimes; liberal nationalists to fight against contemporary xenophobic, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic nationalisms; liberal communitarians to fight against the exclusivist passions and fierce partisanship of some ‘identity’ groups; and liberal Jews, Christians, Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists to fight against the unexpected return of religious zealotry. These are among the most important political battles of our time, and the adjective ‘liberal’ is our most important weapon.”
– Michael Walzer, writer and political theorist, in Dissent
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It looks like humans aren’t the only ones self-isolating. Of course, most animals are solitary beings, especially when tending to their young. But a cactus perch is the perfect natural defense.
For the first time in decades, an official with the Arizona Department of Game and Fish photographed an American bald eagle nesting on a saguaro cactus in central Arizona. For years, bird nests have been seen and photographed atop a saguaro cactus. But this is the first time since 1937 that such a sighting had been recorded.
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New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo responded to a comment by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) that individual states file for bankruptcy, due to the financial distress caused by the COVID-19 crisis, than apply for help from the U.S. federal government.
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“What I said when I was with you that night is there are more important things than living. And that’s saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us. I don’t want to die, nobody wants to die. But man, we’ve got to take some risks and get back in the game and get this country back up and running.”
– Republican Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, on jump-starting the economy in Texas and other states to stave off a recession.
Patrick is essentially trying to walk back a comment he’d made last month that he’d rather perish from the new coronavirus than see instability in the state’s economic system.
Too late.
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“We live in a country where skin color is hazardous to one’s health and mortality is not determined by one’s genetic code but instead by one’s ZIP code. We appeal to you to channel treatment and resources to those areas in our body politic that have suffered the most from this national infection that has allowed this virus to spread disproportionately.”
– Rev. Frederick Douglass Haynes III, pastor of Friendship West Baptist Church in Dallas.
Haynes signed a letter calling on the Trump Administration to address the racial and economic inequality that is making non-White communities more vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Chief Writing Wolf 