Act!!

UD‘s advice for Arizona’s Rep. Biggs.

Israel has been encouraging illicit cultists since its founding. How can anyone be surprised that these secretive sects have under current conditions simply morphed into virus vectors? “[M]any of us [have] watched in absolute horror as our ultra-Orthodox brothers and sisters [have] attended weddings by the hundreds,” writes an Israeli observer.

Anyone could have predicted that they would ignore health guidelines and put the entire country at risk. Short of locking up thousands of people, there’s nothing to be done. God will infect them and their neighbors and it is God’s will.

It is the leaders who must be aware of threats to the community and to know when to order a shift in practice, and it is them I blame for what is about to occur. When we see hundreds if not thousands of ultra-Orthodox become ill with this virus, it is they who must answer for their deeds.

And don’t worry about our missing out in the United States!

Jewish leaders have voiced concern in recent days about an outbreak within the city’s Hasidic neighborhoods, amid growing evidence that many in the community are not taking the coronavirus health crisis seriously. Despite a state restriction on gatherings of 50 or more people, many synagogues across the city continued to hold large weddings on Tuesday. A handful of yeshivas remained open to children as well, local leaders said.

Every political leader, every city, every state, and every country that subsidized for decades – continues to subsidize – large numbers of people who teach their children contempt for secular authority and ignorance of an empirical realm that features viral infection, can take a bow.

Dedalus in the diaphane; Dalloway downtown:

This is the currency pols call walking around —

Consciousness afoot in freak-time,

The modern viral mariner’s rime.

So, thinking, along the extra sand

Piped in to make the beach expand,

How brilliantly we domesticate

Beaches and dogs… Impatiently we await

Our next trick: The all-clear! probe

Of the fatal microbe.

Bright mild sun and cloudless slate

And just enough wind to exhilarate

Make it a world well worth coming back to

After the coronal tide that terrifies you

Dissolves like the faintest reed

And our wildest fears recede.

On today’s up-and-back boardwalk march, whenever greetings were exchanged with fellow walkers:

“Mourning!”

“Mourning!”

“Mourning!”

It’s Julian Barnes’ Nothing to be Frightened of.

The grammarian Pere Bouhours [on his deathbed] said: Je vas, ou je vais mourir: l’un ou l’autre se dit. (Loosely, ‘Soon I shall, or soon I will die: both are correct.’)

***************

[L]ife is a matter of cosmic hazard, its fundamental purpose mere self-perpetuation… it unfolds in emptiness… our planet will one day drift in frozen silence… the human species, as it has developed in all its frenzied and over-engineered complexity, will completely disappear and not be missed, because there is nobody and nothing out there to miss us.

**************

[A friend] consolingly quotes a study showing that fear of death drops off after the age of sixty. Well, I have got there before him, and can report that I am still waiting for the benefit. Only a couple of nights ago, there came again that alarmed and alarming moment, of being pitchforked back into consciousness, awake, alone, utterly alone, beating pillow with fist and shouting ‘Oh no Oh No OH NO’ in an endless wail, the horror of the moment – the minutes – overwhelming what might, to an objective witness, appear a shocking display of exhibitionist self-pity. An inarticulate one, too: for what sometimes shames me is the extraordinary lack of descriptive, or responsive, words that come out of my mouth. For God’s sake, you’re a writer, I say to myself…

… cuz these guys never cooperate with the forces of reason under any circumstances cuz they are the unacknowledged rulers of the universe. So the Israeli police can visit and plead all they like, but crowding people into rooms to sway over religious texts obviously takes precedence over the godless demands of some so-called state.

*************

And Korea can plead and plead with the messiah of all messiahs but he will instruct his pathetic followers to lie and lie until coronavirus spreads through that country.

They meet often in small halls, where they are huddled close together. Members aren’t allowed to wear any accessories on their faces – like glasses or protective masks – because they are considered insults to God, several former members of the movement told South Korean media.

Moreover, participating in weekly meetings is mandatory – rain or shine, and even in case of illness. Members of the movement must clock in when they arrive and when they leave a “working session”, which allows executives of the group to monitor devotees’ diligence. A cold or early signs of flu would not be considered sufficient to exonerate a member from doing his or her duty to preach the Good Word.

Here’s why it’s crucial for all non-suicidal states to take seriously the difference between sociopathic cults and legitimate religions:

A petition signed by more than a million people has been presented to the South Korean government requesting the dissolution of the Shincheonji Church of Jesus, which counts more than 200,000 members.

Why should we need to petition our governments to outlaw homicidally debauched sects? Shouldn’t our governments already be using our laws to identify, surveil, and if need be dissolve the criminally insane operating in secret in the name of religion? Religion is not (quoting once again Katha Pollit) “what people make of it.” Not when they make of it twisted killing machines.

You have every right to nominate yourself one of the Three Christs of Ypsilanti. And if you can find enough faithful to populate a sanctuary, go for it. You get shut down when you start killing people.

… Maryland to Delaware, for another stay at the beach.

Blogging continues unimpeded.

In front of a graphic reading, “Coronavirus Impeachment Hoax,” [Fox host Trish Regan] accused Democrats of creating “mass hysteria to encourage a market sell-off” and sowing fear about the virus “to demonize and destroy the president.”

... world.

Safeguard, thy beauty is to me
Like those Nicean barks of yore,
That gently, o'er a lathered sea,
The worried-well hygienic bore
To their own healthy shore.

When quarantined I feel a rale
Thy hybrid structure virus shreds.
Thy micelle bubbles now we hail:
Thy hydrophilic head
And thy hydrophobic tail.

Now in its sixtieth year, it has hardly known a time when its fiscal affairs were not in chaos, when its board of regents was not dysfunctional, when its graduation rate was not shockingly low, and when exasperated white politicians in Austin were not talking about putting it under a conservatorship or ending its status as an independent institution.

Thirteen years later, that legacy remains fiercely intact, with Texas Southern University one of America’s most powerful epicenters of criminal negligence in the name of personal greed. One of its recent presidents just barely avoided prison; its last president is running around insisting he had nothing to do with the law school ignoring all applications not coming from people offering bribes, but time and a thousand ongoing outside investigations will tell. Meanwhile, the TSU bar passage rate in 2018 was 27%.

Hey, maybe the board of regents can help!

Ending its status as an independent institution… well, yes, but if it hasn’t happened after seventy years of malpractice , it ain’t gonna happen. What’s gonna happen? They will build new buildings. They will organize sports teams that brawl in empty arenas. The New York Times will visit and see reason to hope.

… this cause does. Help the guys loosen the grip of the feds! It’s up to us to pay their fine.

Sure, idjits are still buying McMansions; but lookee here: A sample of houses sold last week tells you a promising story: The two McMs had to take well over a hundred thousand off their asking prices, while the smallish house on Bayard Boulevard went for $56,000 over the asking price.

“I remember thinking this Trump thing is insane, but when it was down to him and Hillary, I kind of said, ‘Well, you are a Republican, and yeah he’s nuts, but maybe he’ll get better and you know he’s going to lower taxes,” Taylor said. “I slowly talked myself into it. ‘He can’t seriously be this deranged once he gets in there,’ and he’s even more deranged now than I thought then. So, I take the blame. I voted for him.”

Places like this deserve what they get. Men all over the world wear burqas to commit jewelry heists. Piaget didn’t know this?