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Mrs Whiggins

By Mrs Whiggins
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I'd just like to point out that neither myself nor any of my fellow nurses, fellow advanced nurse practitioners, and other healthcare providers ever swore an oath that we would lay down our lives for

Bama Chick
Bama Chick

Welp, it finally happened. I snapped in public today. I went into work for a bit this morning because I’m trying to figure out the safest way to host physicians we are recruiting given our CV-19 sit

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I don't really know what to say anymore tbh. What happened last night is hard to put into words for anyone who hasn't worked in a hospital healthcare setting. Just unreal. Everyone is getting fucked.

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Mrs Whiggins

Mrs Whiggins 13050

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30 minutes ago, Dbeasy said:

 
 
 
 


This indicates one of two things. Either Trump and his administration are even stupider than we could imagine, or they know that any more delay in trying to open up the economy will throw the world into a global depression.

As I indicated in the financial thread, a $3-5T stimulus is only a bandaid for a very short period of time. There is not enough money to continue covering for the economy for long. And people don’t understand how bad it will get if we do slide into a depression.

“There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue. There's just stuff people do.” 

“There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success.”

 

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Steamboat1874

Steamboat1874 4066

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6 hours ago, Bama Chick said:


Ooooh, sexist and stupid!

Here’s some histrionics for you - you’re the worst kind of moron. A moron who doesn’t know they’re a moron but still feels the compulsion to contaminate everyone else with their stupidity. You’re mean, you’re clueless, you’re selfish, you’re incurious, and you’re boring. No woman worth a damn would ever willingly want to have sex with you for pleasure. They only do it out of pity, for a transaction, or to have a story to tell their friends about the dumb mean half-man they suffered through.

You’re the absolute perfect Trumpkin. You’re sure to take that as a compliment but know that, as usual, you will be wrong.

So take this message with a the histrionic effort I can muster - fuck you, eat shit, and go read a book.

giphy.gif

Love you Bama Chick !

Dropping the boom hammer on his ass.

Nice.....

 

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SmokeyTheBear

SmokeyTheBear 5562

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1 minute ago, Biff Tannen said:

Lol, he's reversing the task force comments. 

Seriously, if November isn't just a complete ass kicking of this completely inept jerkoff to the curb, we don't deserve to go on as a society.

One could argue that a society that elected him in the first place, does not deserve to go on. 

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Anastasis

Anastasis 23471

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36 minutes ago, DDD Dad said:

Cheese weasel has over 100% too so I’m not sure this proves anything. 

Would be interesting to see all the stats calculated without either CR rep or CR posts. I'd take a fair hit on both, but I think Food and Travel forum would bail out my ratio. 

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DDD Dad

DDD Dad 14339

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Would be interesting to see all the stats calculated without either CR rep or CR posts. I'd take a fair hit on both, but I think Food and Travel forum would bail out my ratio. 

The dog thread alone keeps me in the green.
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Guest Lobo

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Remember in "Ocean's 11" when they had all the clever nicknames for the different kinds of setups/cons that they would employ to rob the casinos, like a "Leon Spinks", "Two Jethros", a "Miss Daisy", not to mention the biggest "Ella Fitzgerald"?  

Now President Trump seems to think it's a setup to have the head of Covid-19 testify before the House subcommittee in charge of Covid-19 (and it's funding, you rubes).  And that swindle job is called an "Anthony Fauci."  And Trump would know a con-name when he hears one, since he himself is a long-con operator.  

Seriously Trumpkins, having a Covid-19 expert testify before a democratically elected group of legislators which is also populated by Replublicans as well is not a setup or an affront to your Dear Leader.  It just makes sense.  You know how when you're having an issue at the return line at Wal-Mart and you demand to speak with a manager, and the Customer Service Manager comes out?  That's Fauci, this is his department, he knows this shit backwards and forwards and can actually help you immensely if you just listen to him.  But instead you keep yelling for the General Manager?  That's Trump.  And he's not coming to help you no matter how much you yell, because he looks down on you far more than liberal elitists ever could.  The only thing worse than being ignored (which I think the liberals do ignore working class folks in middle America) is being used as pawns by people in power (Trump couldn't give a flying fuck about you).  

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SmokeyTheBear

SmokeyTheBear 5562

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11 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

It’s funny because society as a whole rejected Donald Trump’s leadership by three million votes. 

He shouldn't have even been a viable option in the primaries. Yet here we are, because greed and selfishness is the cornerstone of American Exceptionalism. 

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Brisketexan

Brisketexan 105145

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6 minutes ago, Lobo said:

The only thing worse than being ignored (which I think the liberals do ignore working class folks in middle America) is being used as pawns by people in power (Trump couldn't give a flying fuck about you).  

QFMF truth.

Trumpkins, this is you.  You aren't WRONG about your frustration with Democratic governance....what you are oh-so wrong about is that you think that being used and abused as a pawn is an improvement.

It's like the poor gal with daddy issues.  Daddy abandoned her, so she's thrilled to be with the abuser who tells her she's sexy and pimps her out to his friends and anyone else with $50, because hey, he tells me I'm pretty, he loves me!  Before, you were a neglected daughter.  To solve that problem, you decided to become an abused prostitute.  And you celebrate this as an improvement in your lot in life.  SMDH.

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Gatorubet

Gatorubet 30239

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QFMF truth.
Trumpkins, this is you.  You aren't WRONG about your frustration with Democratic governance....what you are oh-so wrong about is that you think that being used and abused as a pawn is an improvement.
It's like the poor gal with daddy issues.  Daddy abandoned her, so she's thrilled to be with the abuser who tells her she's sexy and pimps her out to his friends and anyone else with $50, because hey, he tells me I'm pretty, he loves me!  Before, you were a neglected daughter.  To solve that problem, you decided to become an abused prostitute.  And you celebrate this as an improvement in your lot in life.  SMDH.

$50? Now Raydog is following your posts.
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Guest Lobo

Guest Lobo

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1 minute ago, Brisketexan said:

QFMF truth.

Trumpkins, this is you.  You aren't WRONG about your frustration with Democratic governance....what you are oh-so wrong about is that you think that being used and abused as a pawn is an improvement.

It's like the poor gal with daddy issues.  Daddy abandoned her, so she's thrilled to be with the abuser who tells her she's sexy and pimps her out to his friends and anyone else with $50, because hey, he tells me I'm pretty, he loves me!  Before, you were a neglected daughter.  To solve that problem, you decided to become an abused prostitute.  And you celebrate this as an improvement in your lot in life.  SMDH.

Jesus, that got dark but that got accurate.  I've looked at this thing 100 different ways from Tuesday...but that's it.  That's the analogy.  Now, it'll be lost on Trumpkins because say what you want about them, most of the ones I know are good fathers/come from good fathers/good mothers/come from good mothers.  But that's what's happening here.  

The Democrats are the dad that walked out on them (and that part of the metaphor should really excite them given the racial/welfare undertones).  That guy pretended to care so long as it curried favor, then walked out/abandoned like they felt the Democrats did (and I think that's partially true).  So they then search aimlessly (from Bush 41 through Obama, or the formative years as we call them in the life of a stripper moving from GED to dental school to real estate license) for a proper leader figure.  And then a "real alpha-male" figure comes along and promises that he'll make things better.  He seems like he's got cash, has his shit together, sure he's got lots of women in his life but he'll make time for you, seems to really care for you, but also makes you feel safe in your distaste for the rest of the people outside the walls of the club.  I think we're gonna need a bigger thread.

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Biff Tannen

Biff Tannen 45690

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6 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

You aren't WRONG about your frustration with Democratic governance....what you are oh-so wrong about is that you think that being used and abused as a pawn is an improvement.

This is what we somehow have to try and make them see.  There is a way out of the bad governance that they are aggrieved about.  Burning it down or joining a death cult is pretty much the worst possible way to fix it.

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Just now, Biff Tannen said:

This is what we somehow have to try and make them see.  There is a way out of the bad governance that they are aggrieved about.  Burning it down or joining a death cult is pretty much the worst possible way to fix it.

Yeah, I don't like UT's approach to football the last 10 years but I'm not about to matriculate at the University of Oklahoma.  

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WBT

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7 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

This is what we somehow have to try and make them see.  There is a way out of the bad governance that they are aggrieved about.  

What's the way out?

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DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt

DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301

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This AP article about the impact Covid-19 is having in impoverished, rural communities is a tough but good read. As I read it, I was reminded of the sage words of our own resident Reverend, @Johnny Sack: "If you don't want to be poor, stop making bad decisions."

 

Quote

DAWSON, Ga. (AP) — The reverend approached the makeshift pulpit and asked the Lord to help him make some sense of the scene before him: two caskets, side by side, in a small-town cemetery busier now than ever before.

Rev. Willard O. Weston had already eulogized other neighbors lost to COVID-19, and he would do more. But this one stood as a symbol to him of all they had lost. The pair of caskets, one powder blue, one white and gold, contained a couple married 30 years who died two days apart, at separate hospitals hours from each other, unaware of the other’s fate.

The day was dark. There was no wind, not even a breeze. It felt to some like the earth had paused for this.

As the world’s attention was fixated on the horrors in Italy and New York City, the per capita death rates in counties in the impoverished southwest corner of Georgia climbed to among the worst in the country. The devastation here is a cautionary tale of what happens when the virus seeps into communities that have for generations remained on the losing end of the nation’s most intractable inequalities: these counties are rural, mostly African American and poor.

Nellie "Pollye Ann" Mae and Benjamin Tolbert, a couple married for 30 years, are laid to rest at Cedar Hill Cemetery on Saturday, April 18, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. Both Nellie and Benjamin Tolbert died two days apart from each other in separate hospitals from COVID-19. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

___

This story was produced with the support of the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

___

More than a quarter of people in Terrell County live in poverty, the local hospital shuttered decades ago, and businesses have been closing for years, sending many young and able fleeing for cities. Those left behind are sicker and more vulnerable; even before the virus arrived, the life expectancy for men here was six years shorter than the American average.

Rural people, African Americans and the poor are more likely to work in jobs not conducive to social distancing, like the food processing plant in nearby Mitchell County where four employees died of COVID-19. They have less access to health care and so more often delay treatment for chronic conditions; in southwest Georgia, the diabetes rate of 16 percent is twice as high as in Atlanta. Transportation alone can be a challenge, so that by the time they make it to the hospital, they’re harder to save.

At least 21 people have died from COVID-19 in this county, and dozens more in the neighboring rural communities. For weeks, Weston’s phone would not stop ringing: another person in the hospital, another person dead. An hour before this funeral, Weston’s phone rang again, and this time it was news that another had succumbed to the virus—his own first cousin, as close to him as a brother.

The Rev. Willard O. Weston Sr. of Sardis Baptist Church reacts to a phone call in which he learned of another COVID-19 death. "Who? Man, no. Oh, wow, OK. Alright, I'll call you back. Some more bad news, somebody else has passed," said Weston, on Friday, April 17, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Willie Johnson, 66, left, Horace Bell, 60, center, and Eugene Davis, 58, right, lower a burial vault into a grave at Cedar Hill Cemetery on Saturday, April 18, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

From left, Ronald Costello, Robert L. Albritten, Cordarial O. Holloway and Eddie Keith wait for the end of a funeral at Cedar Hill Cemetery on Saturday, April 18, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Cordarial O. Holloway wears a protective mask as his tie blows in the wind after a funeral at Cedar Hill Cemetery, on Saturday, April 18, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

A shovel sits in a freshly-covered grave at the Cedar Hill Cemetery on Saturday, April 18, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Some here had thought that their isolation might spare them, but instead it made the pandemic particularly cruel. In Terrell County, population 8,500, everyone knows everyone and every death is personal. As the mourners arrived at the cemetery, just the handful allowed, each knew others suffering and dying.

The couple’s son, Desmond Tolbert, sat stunned. After caring for his parents, he’d also rushed his aunt, his mother’s sister, to a hospital an hour away, and there she remained on a ventilator. Her daughter, Latasha Taylor, wept thinking that if her mother survived, she would have to find a way to tell her that her sister was dead and buried.

MORE ON THE PANDEMIC:

– The Latest: Belgium allows more shops to open next week

– The second virus wave: How bad will it be as lockdowns ease?

– Senior scientist says administration ignored virus warnings

“It’s just gone haywire, I mean haywire,” thought Eddie Keith, a 65-year-old funeral home attendant standing in the back who was familiar with all the faces on the funeral programs piling up. “People dying left and right.”

Usually, on hard days like this, he would call his friend of 30 years, who was a pastor at a country church and could always convince him that God would not give more than he could endure.

But a couple weeks earlier, that pastor had started coughing, too.

Mortician Cordarial O. Holloway, foreground left, funeral director Robert L. Albritten, foreground right, and funeral attendants Eddie Keith, background left, and Ronald Costello place a casket into a hearse on Saturday, April 18, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

___

As Georgia and other states rush to reopen, some out-of-the way places might believe that the virus won’t find them. Many here thought that, too. But it arrived, quietly at first then with breathtaking savagery.

The cemetery on the edge of town staggered graveside services, one an hour, all day. The county coroner typically works between 38 and 50 deaths a year; they reached No. 41 by mid-April. They ordered an emergency morgue.

Of the 10 counties with the highest death rate per capita in America, half are in rural southwest Georgia, where there are no packed skyscraper apartment buildings or subways. Ambulances rush along country roads, just fields and farms in either direction, carrying COVID-19 patients to the nearest hospital, for some an hour away. The small county seats are mostly quiet, the storefronts shuttered, some long ago because of the struggling economy, and some only now because owners are too afraid to reopen.

These counties circle the city of Albany, which is where authorities believe the outbreak began at a pair of funerals in February. Albany is also home to the main hospital in the region, Phoebe Putney Memorial, which serves an area of 800,000 people spanning more than 50 miles in every direction, many of them with little other access to care.

A man riding a bicycle down an empty street wears a protective mask amid the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak on Friday, April 17, 2020, in Dawson, Ga.  (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Erick Brown, left, Saundra Brown, center, and George Savage, right, stand on their porch while social distancing and wearing protective masks amid the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak on Friday, April 17, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

The hospital saw its first known coronavirus patient on March 10; within a few days, it had 60 and the ICU was full. Two weeks later, patients began flooding in from farther-flung rural communities. Helicopters buzzed from the top of the parking garage, flying patients to other hospitals that still had room to take them. They burned through six months of masks and gowns in six days, said Phoebe Putney president Scott Steiner. Then they were competing for supplies against wealthier, more politically powerful places; they paid $1 each for surgical masks that typically cost a nickel and were losing about $1 million each day.

The patients were very sick. Some died within hours. Some died on the way, in the back of ambulances. The region is predominantly black, but still African Americans died disproportionately, Steiner said. African Americans accounted for about 80% of the hospital’s deaths.

Black people have been dying at alarming rates across the country: the latest Associated Press analysis of available data shows that African Americans represent about 14% of the population in the areas covered but nearly one-third of those who have died.

An illuminated cross stands in front of a residence near downtown Dawson, Ga., on Friday, April 17, 2020. Of the 20 counties with the highest death rate in America, six of them are in rural southwest Georgia, where there are no packed skyrise apartment buildings or subways. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

By nearly every measure, coronavirus patients are faring worse in rural Georgia than almost anywhere else in America, according to researchers at Emory University in Atlanta. Although New York City had thousands more deaths, the per capita death rate in these Georgia counties is just as high.

“They are vulnerable people living in vulnerable places, people who are marginalized on a variety of measures, whether we’re talking about race, whether we’re talking about education or employment, in places that have fewer resources,” said Shivani Patel, an epidemiologist at Emory. Then COVID-19 arrived: “It’s like our worst nightmare coming true.”

Dr. James Black, the medical director of emergency services at Phoebe Putney, was born in this hospital, grew up in this region and is proud of how they’ve managed with the odds stacked against them. He hasn’t had a day off in two months. The question now, he believes, is whether society decides, in the wake of the virus, to continue neglecting its most vulnerable people and places.

Graphic highlights the impact of coronavirus in 10 hard hit southwest Georgia counties. )AP Graphic)

“I think that history is going to judge us not only on how well we prepared, it’s not going to just judge us on how well we responded,” he said, “but what we learned from it, and what we change.”

Georgia has lost seven rural hospitals in the last decade. Nine counties in rural Georgia don’t even have a doctor, according to the Georgia Alliance of Community Hospitals; 18 have no family practitioner, 60 have no pediatrician, 77 without a psychiatrist.

The Rev. Ezekiel Holley, 78, of Dawson, Ga., a leader of the NAACP, looks out from behind the office door window wearing a protective mask on Sunday, April 19, 2020, amid the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak in Dawson, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

A tattered U.S. flag whips in a heavy wind on Sunday, April 19, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Desmond Tolbert, 29, of Dawson, Ga., walks alone through the hallway of his parents' home, where he also lives, on Saturday, April 18, 2020, after both his parents, Nellie "Pollye Ann" Mae and Benjamin Tolbert died a few days apart from COVID-19 in Dawson, Ga. AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Ezekiel Holley, the longtime leader of Terrell County’s NAACP, said health care is what has left him “banging his head against a wall.”

At first Holley thought a virus would be one thing that did not discriminate. He opened the newspaper, scanned the faces in the obituaries and knew every one of them.

“Then I thought, why are low income people and people of color dying more than anyone else? This is the richest nation in the world, why doesn’t it have a level playing field?” he said. “Tell me that.”

___

At first, Benjamin Tolbert just felt a malaise; he had no appetite. Within a couple days, he could barely stand.

His son, Desmond, took him to the hospital in Albany. By then it was full, and he was sent to another hospital an hour south. Benjamin’s wife, Nellie Mae, who everyone called Pollye Ann, got sick the next day. She was routed from the Albany hospital to another an hour north.

Everyone in town knew Benjamin, 58, as a hard worker. He had worked for 28 years at a Tyson Foods plant, and yet he always found more work to do, washing his car, tending the lawn. He and his wife had been together 30 years. He was mild-mannered, but she found a joke in everything. She was a minister, she played the organ, sang gospel and danced, wildly, joyfully.

A pair of chairs belonging to Nellie "Pollye Ann" Mae and Benjamin Tolbert, who both died days apart due to COVID-19, sit in their bedroom on Saturday, April 18, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

“Oh my goodness, she was a dancer, and the dances were so hilarious, you would just fall out laughing watching her dance and laugh at herself,” said their niece, Latasha Taylor, whom they loved like a daughter. Benjamin would hang back, but Pollye Ann would pull him up and he’d dance along with her.

Both were diabetic, Pollye Ann had had heart valve surgery, Benjamin had been on dialysis. Pollye Ann’s sister, Katherine Taylor Peters, often got dialysis treatments with him. They were a close-knit family: Peters lived just blocks away.

Shortly after the Tolberts got sick, Peters called her daughter and said she too had an incessant cough and was struggling to breathe. Latasha was working hours away, so she called her cousin, Desmond, and asked him to check on her.

He put her in his car and drove her to another hospital an hour from home. They soon sedated her and put her on a ventilator.

Much of the rest is a blur for Desmond and Latasha: calls from doctors and nurses, driving hours among three hospitals, begging to see their parents but being told it was far too dangerous.

“I couldn’t see them, I couldn’t talk to them,” said Desmond, 29, who had lived with his parents all this life. Suddenly he was alone.

And all around them, neighbors were getting sick.

“So many people, it’s a feeling you can’t even explain. It’s like a churning in your stomach,” said Taylor. “People you’re normally waving at, speaking to in passing, at the pharmacy, you’re never going to see them again.”

Desmond was on the phone with a nurse as his mother took her last breath. Two days later, the call came from his father’s caregivers. Benjamin never knew that his wife got sick. She didn’t know her husband was on his death bed. They were apart, far from home, without their son at their sides.

The only solace he can find is imagining them meeting again on the other side, and that neither had to live without the other one.

___

Eddie Keith, 65, of Dawson, Ga., poses for a portrait outside of his church on Sunday, April 19, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. Keith lost his pastor to COVID-19. Keith has worked at Albritten's Funeral Service for around 35 years and was the person to retrieve his pastor. He felt like he'd lost a brother. "Why God? Why God? Why God?" Keith thought as he retrieved his pastor. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Eddie Keith had known this couple all his life, he knew their phone number by heart, where they lived, where they worked, their mothers and fathers.

“They knew me real well,” he said, “as well as I knew them.”

He has worked for the funeral home for 35 years, and part of his job is to pick up the bodies. He got a call about Pollye Ann’s passing, and when a hometown person dies someplace else, he considers it his duty to bring them home to Dawson.

Sometimes he talks to them as he drives, sometimes he sings.

When the second call came about her husband, two days later, he wondered if what was happening in his city might be too much to bear. He’s used to death. But now people were dying one right after the next, too quickly to reckon with each in real time.

Keith is a deacon at a country church down a dirt road just outside of town. His pastor, Rev. Alfred Starling, always told him that God doesn’t make mistakes, and Keith wanted to be reminded of that now, because Dawson’s people kept dying, and Keith kept retrieving them. But the next morning he was picking up a body in Tallahassee when the pastor’s wife called. He’d gone to the hospital with a bad cough, and he hadn’t made it.

They’d known each other 30 years. Once, years ago, he’d complimented his pastor’s necktie. After that, every time the pastor bought himself a tie, he bought Keith one too. It became a symbol of their love for each other. “He would always look out for me,” he said.

Keith pulled off the road and sat there a half an hour.

“Why God? Why God? Why God?” he thought, and he caught himself. He was always taught not to question God, so he asked for forgiveness.

A wooden cross made from a tree stump, known by some locals as a symbol of hope, sits outside of Phoebe Putney Memorial hospital on Monday, April 20, 2020, in Albany, Ga. The patients were very sick. Some died within hours. Some died on the way, in the back of ambulances. The region is predominantly black, but even so, African Americans died disproportionally, said Phoebe Putney Memorial's chief executive officer Scott Steiner. (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

Eddie Keith, 65, of Dawson, Ga., locks the church doors as he leaves on Sunday, April 19, 2020, in Dawson, Ga. He visits his pastor's church a couple times a week. Keith says as he loaded the body of his pastor into the hearse, he talked to him, "I didn't think you'd leave me so early," he remembers saying. "I thought we were going to grow old together." (AP Photo/Brynn Anderson)

There were three funerals the next day, and he left just after to pick up his pastor’s body.

He talked to him: “I didn’t think you’d leave me so early; I thought we were going to grow old together.”

He thought of his pastor’s favorite spiritual. “Good news, good news,” the pastor would sing and walk from behind the pulpit, a little strut in his step. “I’m going to lay down my burden, store up my cross. And I’m going home to live with Jesus, ain’t that good news.”

He sang it to his pastor as he drove him home.

___

By time the Tolberts’ funeral arrived, so many had been lost to COVID-19 that Rev. Willard Weston had gotten used to delivering his eulogies through a mask. Gloves. Hand sanitizer. Don’t touch, don’t embrace, no matter how much you want to.

“At this pace, you don’t get a chance to really take a deep breath from the previous death, and then you’re getting a call about another,” he said. He’d found himself on his knees in his bathroom, trying to scream out the sadness so he could keep going.

He put on his suit and tie.

He walked outside, looked up to the sky and pleaded with God to find the strength to deliver a double funeral.

“Lord, how can I go and do this?”

In normal times, the Tolbert family’s funeral would have drawn a packed house. Pollye Ann was a minister at Weston’s church. She could deliver testimony like no one he’d ever seen: she was like a freight train, he recalled, slow at first then faster, faster, faster. People were drawn to her.

Instead it was just him and a handful of mourners in the cemetery, staring at the two caskets. He read from scripture and told their son, Desmond, that he’d never walk alone.

He worried his instinct to comfort with an embrace would overtake his knowledge that he couldn’t, so he walked away and got in his car. He felt guilty. He prayed for God to take that guilt away. Because there was more to do. The next Saturday, he would have three funerals, back to back.

A couple weeks later, on a Friday afternoon, he was preparing to leave his empty church and head home for the weekend without a single funeral planned for the first time in weeks. It felt hopeful. Then his phone rang again.

“Man, no. Oh, wow,” he said, and his shoulders slumped.

“Some more bad news. Somebody else has passed.”

___

(AP Photos/Brynn Anderson)

There was some good news too.

Pollye Ann Tolbert’s sister survived weeks on a ventilator. She still tested positive for coronavirus and remained in isolation, so her daughter Latasha could only talk to her by phone.

The first thing she asked when she woke was how her sister and brother-in-law were doing. Latasha paused. Her mother repeated the question. It felt unreal. Mail still arrived in the mailbox for them. Their house was just as it was the day they left for the hospital. She and her cousin had washed the linens and wiped the surfaces to rid it of virus, but were otherwise too paralyzed to move a thing.

“I had to tell her that while she was sleeping, her sister and brother-in-law left us forever,” Latasha said. “They’re already buried, they’re in the ground.”

Peters told her daughter that the last thing she remembered was a doctor on the phone, telling her that her sister wasn’t going to make it. She thought she would die too, if not from COVID-19, then from grief.

She had hoped it was all a bad dream.

Then she woke up.

 

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DixonHur

DixonHur 11306

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22 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

It's like the poor gal with daddy issues.  Daddy abandoned her, so she's thrilled to be with the abuser who tells her she's sexy and pimps her out to his friends and anyone else with $50, because hey, he tells me I'm pretty, he loves me!  Before, you were a neglected daughter.  To solve that problem, you decided to become an abused prostitute.  And you celebrate this as an improvement in your lot in life.  SMDH.

Let's leave Paul Manafort and his wife out of this, ok?

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Mrs Whiggins

Mrs Whiggins 13050

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Sad, very sad @DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt

How many people on this board believe that the party who had a strategist (since deceased) who held demographic data key to the gerrymandering of districts on his hard drive would not hesitate to use similar methods of strategy to ensure that certain populations were unduly stricken during this virus? I believe @WhatTheBuck called it The Stephen Miller Plan.

 

With respect to the party affiliation and the working class-- the shorter description is "looking for love in all the wrong places."

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BrickHorn

BrickHorn 18237

Posted
Posted
37 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

He shouldn't have even been a viable option in the primaries. Yet here we are, because greed and selfishness is the cornerstone of American Exceptionalism. 

And stupidity.  Oh my God the stupidity.  This country is fucked.  FUCKED.  I weep for the future of our species. 

Sorry.  I made the mistake of scrolling through my Facebook feed this morning.

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SmokeyTheBear

SmokeyTheBear 5562

Posted
Posted (edited)
19 minutes ago, WBT said:

What's the way out?

Get rid of gerrymandering and citizens united and patriot act. Enact term limits for congress. Find all the levers of government that limit opportunities to vote and destroy them. 

*Pigging backing off @brickhorn, properly fund our education system. 

Edited by SmokeyTheBear
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DigglerontheHoof

DigglerontheHoof 21200

Posted
Posted
21 minutes ago, BrickHorn said:

And stupidity.  Oh my God the stupidity.  This country is fucked.  FUCKED.  I weep for the future of our species. 

Sorry.  I made the mistake of scrolling through my Facebook feed this morning.

Yeah, apparently "Plannedemic" is a big catch phrase trumpkins are latching onto. 

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FondrenRoad

FondrenRoad 4378

Posted
Posted (edited)
39 minutes ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

Get rid of gerrymandering and citizens united and patriot act. Enact term limits for congress. Find all the levers of government that limit opportunities to vote and destroy them. 

*Pigging backing off @brickhorn, properly fund our education system. 

All this plus reinstate the fairness doctrine.  And increase the number of representatives. 100,000 constituents each. 

Edited by FondrenRoad
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Mrs Whiggins

Mrs Whiggins 13050

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15 minutes ago, DigglerontheHoof said:

Yeah, apparently "Plannedemic" is a big catch phrase trumpkins are latching onto. 

Bots are on it big time. Russia Russia Russia. It's sad, but the whole time the GOP is laser focused on one thing: power. Well, okay, two things: power and money but the rest of us are trying to keep an eye on every single thing. The pandemic, the economy, the DoJ, voter suppresssion, Russia tampering, China and tariffs, China and whatever, and on and on. The topic earlier of search cost and inquiry fatigue for keeping up with it all is so spot on. Steve Bannon is laughing the whole time in glee but all the idiots that vote against their personal interests can crow about is Bill Gates and the 89 year old Soros. I guess they figure Soros is going to croak and they will need a new boogeyman and Gates drew the short straw.

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wildcat09

wildcat09 29354

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Goddamnit, congressional term limits aren’t a solution to anything. So long as the districts remain the same, it means replacing Louis Gohmert with Louis Gohmert 2, while forcing effective legislators who actually serve their community out with a risk of them being replaced by a fucking lobbyist.

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SmokeyTheBear

SmokeyTheBear 5562

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, wildcat09 said:

Goddamnit, congressional term limits aren’t a solution to anything. So long as the districts remain the same, it means replacing Louis Gohmert with Louis Gohmert 2, while forcing effective legislators who actually serve their community out with a risk of them being replaced by a fucking lobbyist.

yes, if that is the ONLY change to be made. it has to be several things at once. but i dont see a need for a power structure to be unchanged for a lifetime. provides for the ability to be deep rooted in the system and enact bad legislation. wouldn't be nice if mcconnell wasnt around and his philosophy of obstructionism?

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wildcat09

wildcat09 29354

Posted
Posted
1 minute ago, SmokeyTheBear said:

yes, if that is the ONLY change to be made. it has to be several things at once. but i dont see a need for a power structure to be unchanged for a lifetime. provides for the ability to be deep rooted in the system and enact bad legislation. wouldn't be nice if mcconnell wasnt around and his philosophy of obstructionism?

They've got 40 more Mitch McConnells waiting in the wings.

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DixonHur

DixonHur 11306

Posted
Posted
3 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

Goddamnit, congressional term limits aren’t a solution to anything. So long as the districts remain the same, it means replacing Louis Gohmert with Louis Gohmert 2, while forcing effective legislators who actually serve their community out with a risk of them being replaced by a fucking lobbyist.

 

Just now, SmokeyTheBear said:

yes, if that is the ONLY change to be made. it has to be several things at once. but i dont see a need for a power structure to be unchanged for a lifetime. provides for the ability to be deep rooted in the system and enact bad legislation. wouldn't be nice if mcconnell wasnt around and his philosophy of obstructionism?

I used to support term-limits, but I think the bigger issue is voting.  We need to address the gerrymandering issue, make voting easier, and potentially make it a requirement for citizens.

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NWBuck

NWBuck 8568

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt said:

This AP article about the impact Covid-19 is having in impoverished, rural communities is a tough but good read. As I read it, I was reminded of the sage words of our own resident Reverend, @Johnny Sack: "If you don't want to be poor, stop making bad decisions."

 

 

I've referred to it before, but everyone should read Dying of Whiteness.

Or, if book larnin' ain't your thing- here's talking and such: ‘Dying of whiteness’ during the coronavirus pandemic

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DDD Dad

DDD Dad 14339

Posted
Posted
21 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

happy two month anniversary to when trump lied that anyone who wanted a test could get a test.  still not true today.

GettyImages_1205520815.0.jpg

I'm afraid you are misinformed.  DT thread out front... (coincidence that Daily Texan and Donald Trump have the same initials?)

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SameSame

SameSame 1704

Posted
Posted
26 minutes ago, 4th&Five said:

happy two month anniversary to when trump lied that anyone who wanted a test could get a test.  still not true today.

GettyImages_1205520815.0.jpg

I have a friend of mine who says he never said that, fake news.  I showed him the video, he says that's not what he meant, fake news.

Conclusion is, I have some Army buddies who are real fucking idiots.

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elfenix

elfenix 34243

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happy two month anniversary to when trump lied that anyone who wanted a test could get a test.  still not true today.
GettyImages_1205520815.0.jpg
But I was told the local corner doc in a box had all the tests anyone could want. Was that not true?
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