Our friend Kary sent me this link. Pictures of New York right now on lockdown.

Thank God they are taking it seriously.

1.   When Trump is your President.

2.   When Greg Abbott is your Governor.

If you think that Trump has treated this catastrophe for political gain, then you haven’t met Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

His first plan of action again the virus was to ban abortion in Texas because it unnecessarily uses medical equipment. It took three days and God only knows how much tax money to get a federal judge to overrule that.

Now he has another idea.  Remember how I told you yesterday about the preachers who want to keep churches open for services?

Churches, synagogues and mosques in San Antonio and Bexar County can technically resume in-person religious services under Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s latest emergency order handed down Tuesday.

Actually, it’s all counties, not just Bexar (pronounced Bear for people from foreign states) but this is a San Antonio (pronounced San An-tony-oh no matter what John Wane ever said) newspaper and people in San Antonio don’t give a Big Bexar’s Butt about the rest of the world.

He sits in his office handing down emergencies orders handed to him by the religious right.

As people freekin’ die.

I remember a friend telling me that having a no-smoking section in a restaurant was like having a no-peeing section in a swimming pool.  It doesn’t work.

But, along comes the Super DeLux Brand Christians to test it again, you know, just in case.

We have a snarling Republican activist in Houston named Steven Hotze. He found three ministers to sue Harris County’s stay-at-home policy, saying it is unconstitutional.

Throughout the petition, Hotze and the pastors argue that “the circumstances presented by coronavirus do not excuse unlawful government infringements” and “the free exercise of religion…should not be sacrificed at the altar of political expediency.”

Political expediency? How ’bout life or death?  You know, if the snake-handlin’  foot washin’ speaking-in-tongues Christians want to all meet together for a fainting festival, that’s fine. As long as they don’t leave. The minute they leave carrying the virus with them, they are making me practice their religion.

Yes, they are claiming that not  letting them meet is a violation of the First Amendment.  That’s kinda amusing considering that praying in front of crowds is a violation of the teachings of Jesus.

And of course, along with Sweet Jesus, they are also whining about gun stores being closed.  Hotze argues that buying a gun is a constitutional right and the government can’t infringe on the constitution.  There are two problems with that, the first being that gun stores aren’t being forced to close.  Secondly, this is Houston, Texas.  Hell at least 70% of all gun purchases are made out of somebody’s trunk on a backroad.

Onward Christian Soldiers!

There is no shortage of weirdness during these dire times and I find joy in knowing that I am not the dumbest smart person on the planet.

This is a story about a young astrophysicist who got magnets stuck up his nose for a perfectly good reason.  The story, which is long but worth every word with sips of coffee, is guaranteed to make you smile.  without spoiling the story, I can tell you that at the end …

“My partner took me to the hospital that she works in because she wanted all her colleagues to laugh at me. The doctors thought it was quite funny, making comments like ‘This is an injury due to self-isolation and boredom.’”

I think we all have partners like that.  And anybody who can make doctors laugh is a good egg.

Thanks to Carl for the heads up.

As the Coronavirus outbreak was happening in Seattle, the Skagit Valley Chorale decided to go ahead with their regular choir practice on March 10 at the Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church about an hour south of the outbreak location.  Of the 121 members of the choir, 60 showed up and rehearsed for 2 1/2 hours.  Of those 60, 45 came down with COVID-19 and 2 are dead.  That’s an infection rate of 75% and a mortality rate 0f 3%.  Scientists believe that the forceful breathing required for singing caused the droplets in the breath to go farther and stay in the air longer.  Meanwhile, Liberty University is back in session, and mega churches all over the country are stupidly continuing their church services.

Be careful out there, stay home, and wash your hands.

Liberty University, the Chateau of Clueless founded by Jerry Falwell, has decided it ain’t real.

The decision by the school’s president, Jerry Falwell Jr., to partly reopen his evangelical university enraged residents of Lynchburg, Va. Then students started getting sick.

I dunno what everybody is so damn upset about. This is science. It’s a rare opportunity to see natural selection real time. Usually we have to wait thousands of years to see it. Now we’ll get to see it right freekin’ now.

When students started getting sick at the school with endowments of $2 billion, people in the surrounding community started saying they should not have opened the school.  Jerry Falwell, Jr., who now runs the joint, did what the right wing always does: he went from chest pounding arrogance to whiny victim in two seconds flat.

“We’re conservative, we’re Christian, and therefore we’re being attacked,” he [Falwell] said.

Michael Gillette, a former mayor of Lynchburg and a bioethicist now working with its hospitals on rationing scarce ventilators, disagrees.

“To argue that criticism of Liberty is based on political bias is unfounded and unreasonable,” he said. “Liberty just did not take this threat as seriously as others have.”

If Falwell thinks we’re going to let him kill a bunch of innocent people in surrounding communities without saying anything about it, he should be reminded that the Crusades are over.

So is my patience with these people.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.