According to the Lt. Governor of Texas, anyway.
Uh, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas went on Fox to say, “There are more important things than living…” pic.twitter.com/YKM6BzhRXs
— Joshua Potash (@JoshuaPotash) April 21, 2020
I’d like him to expand further on that line of thinking, beyond just vague platitudes about “saving the country”. Is allowing a large fraction of the country to die compatible with “saving the country”? He emphasizes “opening the markets” — are markets more important than the people in them?
I think he means it is less important that the poors should die, than that his wealthy friends should be compelled to make less money.
We really have to kill the Republican party.
Yeah, but if you’re dead you can’t do the more important things. Aha-flaw in his logic!
Really starting to hate rightwing dickheads ,always disliked them ,but now it is verging on a mania .
Saw film of one dickhead said he is dying for a burger ,stupid git .
The rightwing demands human sacrifice for their LORD the ECONOMY.
part of me says that they are committing suicide by coming out in the middle of a pandemic and saying out-loud that they do not care if people (you) should die of this disease. because they care more about the economy. heaven forbid that they simply give aid to the population that actually gets to them. all of this is happening in public, the arrogance and hypocrisy front and center could not be more self destructive. though what do I know I have been wrong more than I have been right.
uncle frogy
It’s 98% pandering. The same day that that the LG started sucking up those “open up everything” dumbasses, the Texas Governor was signing the declaration that all Texas public schools and universities would be closed until Fall at the earliest.
Do these idiots really not understand that there is no country and no economy if hundreds of thousands of people die?
Actually, they probably do understand that their stock portfolio is uncorrelated to the actual producing economy made up of real people doing work and that it’s only related to the perception that everything is ‘normal’, whatever that is. So live or dead, doesn’t matter, they just want the status quo – since they ain’t the ones running huge risks in going to work. If people can’t buy burgers because, well, they are dead, so what? Just buy back more McDonalds stock and everything looks great!
Navigare necesse est, vivere non est necesse.
(A bit too on the nose, if I understand the origin of this quote correctly)
People often think there are more important things than living, think suicide bombers, or the hundreds of thousands of young men who rushed to sign up for war in France just under 106 years ago. But they meant “than ME living”… in their differently misguided ways, putting others ahead of themselves. Whereas the LGOT means “than SOME NONENTITY WHO I DON’T KNOW living”, which isn’t quite so noble. Perhaps if he’ll volunteer to die, soon preferably?
“We really have to kill the Republican party.”
They’re working hard toward that same goal, but they’re trying to take everyone else with them.
I assume he will be the first to voluntarily give up his own life to help the economy then?
For many, there are things more important than life. As one example, if one were suffering from locked in syndrome, fully conscious, but utterly incapable of interacting or voluntary motion, many, if not most would consider that a literal living hell and utterly undesirable.
Some would consider paralysis in a similar light.
Some, mental function, or specifically, the severe loss of mental function, such as in dementia.
Still, this is a first for me. I’ve never heard someone, ever in all of the history that I’ve read, champion death being superior to a recession!
Worse, a mere century after the end of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, which under very similar conditions, a premature reopening resulted in severe loss of life.
Those who do not learn from history doom others to repeat those same lethal mistake, but never fear, they’ll blame the dead.
And people wonder why I have homicidal thoughts about these murderous maniacs!
@7 to sail is necessary; to live is not necessary,
If all the people saying we should open now because there are more important things than living would stop living and go do those more important things instead, the rest of us can open when it’s safe to open.
.
Fair enough. You first.
No. Nor do they care to understand.
Since he’s taken to shelter my right-wing, Trump-worshipping, Catholic. gun-nut father has been keeping a daily tab on the number of the reported COVID-19 cases and the number who have died. While my father has a BS in Chemistry, he has NO education in epidemiology; however, after each evening’s tally he seems utterly convinced that trying to “flatten-the-curve” will do nothing to save lives, just drag out the pandemic from what he thinks should have been a “couple of weeks” to years.
Of course, I COULD tell him that he doesn’t know what he is talking about because a career of formulating epoxies qualifty him to analyze medical statistics. I COULD try to point him to other authorities who would point out to him that doing nothing would result in a lot more death, not just from the disease itself but from an over-taxed health care system. While I’m at it, I COULD tell him that using COVID-19 patients as lab rats for whatever “miracle drug” out dullard of a president is presently fixated on is horribly unethical I COULD do all of those things, but he doesn’t want to hear that, nor does he want to hear facts from those who he’s convinced are “liberals” who hate America and capitalism. He wants to hear that life can now go back to “normal” and that his investments are going to be OK. He’s not going to let some “commie-cratic” governor of Federal egghead doctor tell HIM what to do!
Also, I wouldn’t tell him because the man has a really bad temper and doesn’t like having his children, especially his miserable failure of a son who will never “justify his existence.” disagree with him in the slightest. I image that’s it’s pretty hard to “shelter in place” when you’ve been thrown out of your only home by your insane right-wing father.
It’s going be a LOOOOOOOONG couple of months.
Off topic but ,Bloody Cats ,not only did one break my heart today when i had to have her put to sleep ,but one of the others has brought a baby Rabbit in when i called to get him in for the night .
It seems unhurt ,so if it survives the night i will take it to the local wildlife rescue center tomorrow .
That’s if they are taking in animals at the moment .
Back to the RWNJ’s
@15 I feel for you ,my late father was a life long Labour voter ,he hated the tories to his dying day .
I have a photo of him reacting to one of The Grantham witches chancellors budgets ,with a V sign and a raspberry .
Don’t know if you have seen the clip on youtube of a senile old fart banging on a saucepan with a wooden spoon in support of our
poor excuse for a Prime Minister .So depressing ,and there are thousands just like him in GB .
Seconding Dave rytier: he first. Like all the other who don’t think this is important.
Since nobody other than Real ‘murikans counts, the deaths of those other than Real ‘murikans is clearly less important than the portfolios of Real ‘murikans.
Which begs the question of who counts as a Real ‘murikan.
@Jaws, those Real ‘murikans hate it when I meet them while they’re blathering bullshit.
I pop my military retiree card and ask just who cares more for their country, the one that served or the coward that didn’t.
The few veterans that were so misguided rapidly snap to, once they read my rank. Nobody wants to piss off an old master sergeant. Largely because our bite is far worse than our bark, which subdues attack dogs.
“There are more important things than living…”
If Dan Patrick’s not willing to lead by example, then what is this hot air worth really? It’s a shame their followers can’t see this for what it is, asking for human sacrifices on the altar of Mammon. Just die for the stock market’s sake already. Oh, the economic uncertainty!
Its stupid because the people who drive the market are the poor and middle class who wont participate in said market once they are sick, dead, scared to grt sick, or bust taking care of their sick friends and family.
There is no greater evidence thst the Right view the market in magical terms than this.
logicalcat @22
Fer sher. They basically act as though the market is a god that will solve all their problems all by itself, thus saving them (and everyone else) from having to make any hard choices. That the market is a human creation that requires considerable supervision to work properly has completely escaped them.
My prediction is this:
If the death count gets high enough to show the idiots that
1. It’s not a hoax,
2. They’re not immune,
3. The economy will tank anyway from the expense of dealing with the disease and the loss of production;
then these same people will be absolutely enraged at the experts they are now defying because the experts weren’t convincing enough.
@20 Understood, Sarge, and agreed. I’ve asked election officials (up to and including County Clerks) with overt religious symbols hanging over the voter-registration counter to show their DD-214s, and never had one take me up on it.
Of course, them Real ‘murikans expect that I think just like them, because my collar US wasn’t on a circle… and, therefore, I obviously did not work for a living (not a ringbanger, though; I had a real undergraduate education, not four years in a monastic trade school).
We all know what he really means by that.
There are far more important things to him and the GOP, than you (singular and plural) living.
Dan Patrick and the rest of the oligarchy will cheerfully use you as human sacrifices.
And they walk their talk.
Whether it is dying in a pointless war somewhere, drinking water with lead in Michigan, or not getting health care because you don’t have the money or insurance, they sacrifice huge numbers of humans on a daily basis.
Xpost from Patheos.
Dan Patrick’s human sacrifice versus quarantine is a false dichotomy.
Your two choices are in Realityland:
1. A temporarily dead economy.
or
2. A temporarily dead economy with a large pile of dead bodies.
People aren’t going to just go about their daily business while huge numbers of people, some of whom they know, are dropping dead around them.
Even in the few states with no lock down orders, people are still de facto locked down.
People are good at doing calculations, along the line of, should I go get a cheeseburger and beer or a bag of lawn fertilizer and risk death, or should I stay home and order the fertilizer from Amazon.
Besides which, what we are doing is working as advertised.
We’ve been locked down for a whole month and already are talking about reopening the economy.
@16, davidc1:
Sorry about your loss. I’ve had to do this on several occasions and it’s generally fucking horrible. Don’t let that put you off of adopting more. Sky Daddy knows there are lots in shelters and they need good homes and humans to… well, own!
So does a betting pool on when Dan Patrick croaks from the Karmavirus count as “more important than his life”?
Asking for a fiend.
I’m sure Governor Patrick will be removing all security from the Senate any day now. Right?
Sad but true story. My father has been trying to get me into share trading for years. I’m not keen for several reasons, but I did buy some shares he recommended largely as a way to make him happy. Well, several years on, those shares had done pretty well but then they lost about 20% of their value because Argentina voted in a socialist government and there was some stock market uncertainty. Well, you should have heard my father about how terrible it was. What had the new government promised? Didn’t care. The share price went down. Why had they won the election? Didn’t care. The share price went down. How was the previous government? Didn’t care. The share price went down. What about the democratic will of the people of Argentina? Didn’t care. The share price went down.
More stupidity ” Arizona Republicans could lose control of the state House — because a lawmaker lied about her home address”
And this is not even the first time this happens https://www.rawstory.com/2020/04/arizona-republicans-could-lose-control-of-the-state-house-because-a-lawmaker-lied-about-her-home-address/
”States Being Forced To Smuggle Medical Equipment So Feds Can’t Steal It”
FEMA is impounding hospital supplies of PPE and Jared Kushner is redirecting it to Republican-run states.https://youtu.be/5jcAspTxi68
Study Of Hydroxychloroquine As Coronavirus Treatment Finds More Deaths, No Benefit https://www.huffpost.com/entry/hydroxychloroquine-study-finds-more-deaths-no-benefit_n_5e9f482ec5b660af08adeab8
@davidc1
Re: baby rabbit
Dunno if it differs with age and breed of rabbit, but I recently read a piece by the local wildlife expert that baby rabbits should not be taken anywhere when discovered close to human habitation, because first of all if they appear abandoned, that’s their survival strategy, being odour-less and camouflaged their mother leaves them in place while she feeds in the area to draw away predators, and when picked up and moved by humans they are easily traumatised and can refuse to eat at an animal rescue place.
So your cat possibly killed a baby rabbit there. Of course it may be older and already independent, and if it came inside of its own accord, I recommend just releasing it back outside that is its best chance.
=8/-DX
Here is some perspective:
“Why might Sweden’s Covid-19 policy work? Trust between citizens and state” https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2020/apr/21/sweden-covid-19-policy-trust-citizens-state
This might have worked in USA in the sixties, but a Criminal Grifter Party has spent the last 40 years shouting people should NOT trust the gocernment.
Pearls Before Swine by Stephen Pastis may have some relevant comments
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2020/03/16
https://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2020/03/05
birgerjohansson,
The Swedish approach wouldn’t work in the US for a more fundamental reason–we don’t have a functioning healthcare system. The Swedes have far more ICU beds, ventilators, etc. per capita. The Swedes have been pretty open that their goal has not even been to minimize the death toll–but rather to keep flow into the ICUs to manageable levels. That is the goal of health professionals everywhere–keep the system from collapsing. It’s just that the US started much closer to collapse than anywhere else in the industrial world, and we’re teetering on the hairy edge now, with Patrick et al. bent on pushing us over.. American exceptionalism, indeed.
@Nomadiq. No. They believe that this pandemic, like everything else in the entire universe, is a war and wars are won by your ability to take horrendous casualties by just raising another army and slogging on no matter how many die, like the coronavirus is Hannibal’s army and we just lost the Battle of Cannae. They think 300,000 dead people can–must–just be thrown down a hole and forgotten, and anyone who wouldn’t callously throw away those 300,000 people is a coward who must be stopped to prevent them from sabotaging America’s Greatness™.
@jacksprocket. Not really true. After it was made clear neither side of WWI would be “home by Christmas”, the war was quite unpopular for both the Allies and Central Powers and the officers, politicians, and royal bastards running it were not about to stand in a trench and get shelled themselves.
@39: That happens because the ruling classes have no Gold Star children — those who had a parent or uncle or aunt die needlessly in a nursing home. Far too often, that’s because those ruling classes’ parents and uncles and aunts had inherited wealth and spacious unmortgaged homes and full-time in-home caretakers…
@28 Thanks for your kind words ,can’t help feeling guilty that if i had not rehomed Callie she might stillbe alive if someone wlse had rehomed her .Another thing she and one of my other cats Misha don’t get on ,i think Misha is a semi tamed feral cat ,always fighting and coming off the worse for it .But he and Sooty ,my other cat get on ok ,they are forever licking and grooming each other .
@35 The Rabbit was still alive this morning ,the lady at the wildlife center said they have a few other rabbits there ,i suppose when they get enough they will all release them as a group ,and they will go and form a new warren .
@33: You’re not surprised, are you? This is SOP for rich conservatives.
For somthing really deptessing watch “The Planet of the Humans”.
jack16