George W. Bush, September 20, 2011 explained the motivations of those who had waged jihad against the U.S.:
Americans are asking “Why do they hate us?”
They hate what they see right here in this chamber: a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.
Depending on the state, Americans no longer have the right to assemble (see the multi-year emergency unfold in 66+ governor’s orders here in Maskachusetts, for example). Americans who want to hold a job certainly don’t have freedom of speech and they’d better not disagree with the hashtag campaign du jour (e.g., #StopAsianHate) nor with diversity and inclusion efforts. We are informed by our media that citizens of Georgia no longer have the freedom to vote.
An immigrant from Moscow, now living in New England: “I never expected to see a day when Russians would have more freedom than Americans.” (She was referring, e.g., to the freedom to leave one’s house and walk around outdoors without wearing a mask or the freedom to host a dinner party for 12 in one’s home (both illegal in Massachusetts).)
Could there be an upside to this? A jihadi who hated Americans for our freedoms now has fewer reasons to hate us!
A memorable moment from 2003…
Source: The History Channel, which notes “the war in Iraq continued for several years thereafter” (and you thought that it was the British who excelled at understatement!).
didn’t protect Boulder, Colorado, from jihad attack last month (although MSM won’t call it for the Islamic jihad that it was).
My sources inform me that “when outdoors, individuals are not required to use face covering” in Boulder. Perhaps, that’s why Boston was spared and Boulder was not.
#maskssavelives
Jihad has been a real threat to us, even the lockdown will be useless.
The picture is worth a thousand words.
I am heartsick that your state is preventing you from going outside without a face covering. Have you adjusted yet to your state not allowing you to go outside without your genitals being covered?
Wally: how many minutes (or hours) per day do you wear a mask?
“how many minutes (or hours) per day do you wear a mask?”
All the time, apparently. Only a brain severely deprived of oxygen can be THAT dysfunctioning.
I’ll admit I don’t wear a mask all that much. But plenty of people do. For instance workers at the grocery store. And I apologize if my first comment was a bit rude. But I just went jeez is he whining about masks again. Or still.
Perhaps the requirements in Massachusetts are overkill. But I am guessing the issue is this. If the requirement is weakened then many people, for instance many of the people on this blog, or god help them anyone influenced by this blog, will just not wear masks even when it is appropriate. So it becomes easier just to require them.
Shortly after you typed this I was in a Publix grocery store here in the Florida Free State. Most of the customers were masked. A Black gentleman was restocking a shelf with his mask pulled down to form a chin diaper. Should I have alerted the manager? I am assured that he suffers no loss wearing a mask for an 8-hour shift.
(I personally don’t mind the indoor mask laws. They give me a chance to feel virtuous for the few minutes per day that I am in a store and I get to tell anyone nearby that I need a moment to don the hijab of the church of shutdown. But if I had to wear it for 8 hours straight I would be thinking about transitioning to welfare/unemployment.)
> But if I had to wear it for 8 hours straight I would be thinking about transitioning to welfare/unemployment.
Not just that, why go back to work when it pays more to stay home? [1]
“DOHLEN: So I have been in this industry for over 20 years. Never in my career have I experienced a situation where we literally have people to work, but they won’t go back to work. I mean, we have clients who say to us, we’ll take five people a week if you can find them for us. We can’t find them.”
Why?
“VANEK SMITH: So Chad was doing the math back in April when the government was paying out an extra $600 in unemployment as part of the CARES Act that Congress passed back in March. And what Chad found was that people could actually make more money off of their unemployment benefits than they would by taking one of his jobs. And it was not just Chad’s math prowess that led him to this conclusion.”
[1] https://njdc-cqsrv01.prod.hclpnp.com/cqweb/
George: The New York Times did this work versus welfare tradeoff analysis for you! https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/04/23/business/economy/unemployment-benefits-stimulus-coronavirus.html
In most states it was more lucrative for the typical person to stay home than to work. Certainly there was no state in which it made sense to work in-person for anyone who put even a small price on the risk of contracting COVID-19.
The religion of masks is interesting. People will assert that someone in youth soccer won’t experience any difference in comfort or happiness playing in masks (here in Maskachusetts, even with the spring wind blowing 20 knots) versus playing without masks (Florida). And then they will proceed to tell you how smart they are and how they’re following science, unlike Trump-voting Covidiots. Yet try to put a mask on a dog and see what he does. He will immediately seek to remove it so that he can breathe freely and not have something extra on his head. So what we’re left with is that the people who say that masks are an insignificant imposition and that they’re experts in science are actually less intelligent than dogs.
Floridians are not immune to the True Faith. In a women’s fitness studio (Tribe) here in Abacoa this morning there was a sign saying that people had to be masked walking in or out. What do they do once in? They exercise like maniacs all together in one room… unmasked. Maybe this is just a way to palliate officials and comply with the Palm Beach County indoor mask order. If not, it is as though they (or the officials?) imagine that a single moment of mask-wearing (while walking in) can prevent COVID transmission during an hour of exercise.
And if it is not already obvious, this should be a wakeup call for those who advocate for and support UBI or any kind of long term “help” from government, organizations or persons. Such long term “help” has a net negative effect on the society and persons receiving it. It becomes easy to obtain and the more we get the more we will want and that makes society unproductive and lazy.
And by “help” I don’t mean just unemployment money, I mean all sort of other free stuff from subsidies to deductions.
Perhaps the closing of all of America’s schools will prevent school shootings. Let’s hope they never re open!
Technically, the mission was accomplished. I think that picture was after the battle of Baghdad.
The war was a disaster for other reasons.
> Americans who want to hold a job certainly don’t have freedom of speech and they’d better not disagree with the hashtag campaign du jour (e.g., #StopAsianHate) nor with diversity and inclusion efforts.
How is the government restricting speech here? You don’t want freedom of speech you want freedom from consequences of your speech. Not that same thing at all.
baz: by your standard the Soviet Union under Stalin had complete freedom of speech. You could say whatever you wanted about Stalin, but there might have been consequences, starting with job/apartment loss.
@baz That’s the sort of “thinking” that expensive college education produces these days.
Osama bin Laden was upset about the US troops in the Holy Land (Saudi Arabia), as I understand it. Freedom wasn’t really the issue.