A person bunkerooed at a roadmeet

Today was the long-awaited Cincinnati roadmeet that I hosted!

A half-dozen people showed, coming from as far away as Missouri, Tennessee, and Illinois. As Roads Scholars, we drove about the roads of Cincinnati like the unassailable superpeople we are.

Someone said the meet would have drawn even more people, except that recent circumstances may have discouraged them.

Best all, as we gathered in a restaurant parking lot as we prepared to leave, I briefly detected the unmistakable bouquet of a silent-but-deadly bunker blast.

Why I stopped trusting so-called liberal websites

I think that by now, it's clear that I'm alt-left or pirate socialist - no longer actually liberal. In the past few months - through the early presidential primaries and the coronavirus crisis - I've lost almost every shred of trust I had in so-called liberal websites and in the Democratic Party.

The websites profit off panic and fear. There's never any good news to keep morale up. It's all negativity, all the time.

I don't have the sunniest personality, but there's only so much gloom you can take.

For over 2 months, these sites have backed authoritarian methods to fight the pandemic. To this day, even after most states and countries have lifted these practices, these sites support continuing them. They bash Democrats and Republicans alike who seem to support ending these policies.

These sites have used outright lies to back up their stances. All to exploit their readership for profit.

These sites have also become increasingly classist and conspiracist.

Since these are historically liberal sites, they do of course get some pushback in the comment section. But dissenters often find themselves hounded off.

The people in charge of these websites are backstabbers. People supported these sites for years - only to have these sites betray everything they stand for.

As folks on the left and the right have found enough common ground on sites like the "LockdownSkepticism" forum on Reddit that they've begun to respect each other, I've lost respect for ostensibly liberal sites that profit off panic and prolong the crisis.

They've gone clear off a cliff, and I refuse to go off the cliff with them.

Having a (bunker) blast at Sharon Woods!

Earlier, I was informed of something uproarious that occurred on the loop trail around the lake at Sharon Woods. A man walking around the lake released a loud-and-proud bunker blast that could be heard from 100 feet away.

Maybe he was practicing for a roadmeet!

Alaska to drop all coronavirus rules

Regulatory powers shouldn't be all or nothing in the fight against coronavirus. But responses that were too authoritarian should have been rejected out of hand for being doomed to fail.

Now Alaska is set to become the first U.S. state to lift all coronavirus restrictions. Certainly, local governments will be allowed to have regulations to strike a middle ground without imposing a police state. But statewide rules will be just a memory. Alaska was also one of few places in America able to block out-of-state visitors, because it does not border any other part of the U.S. Even that restriction is probably being lifted on June 2.

It's also interesting that states that repealed lockdowns the earliest - Montana is another example - now have some of the fewest cases of this virus per capita.

Nationwide, the prevalence of this virus is estimated to be less than one-fourth of what it was at its peak, based on the case count weighted with the number of tests given. But some act as if it's only getting worse, and blogs make money by whipping up this fear. If Alaska can drop all its rules, certainly the other states can drop enough of their rules that they can honestly claim to not be a command state. But don't hold your breath. Some folks don't want anything reopened until the case count is precisely zero - which may be futile even with the long-awaited vaccines or similar preventative antibody treatments coming, as even polio still has a handful of cases each year.

Panic has accomplished nothing. Only science will win - as new treatments or even vaccines will be rolled out soon.

Left and right united against lockdowns

At long last, the right and the left have found an issue they can agree on!

That issue is coronavirus-inspired lockdowns and other authoritarian responses to the pandemic. By and large, we agree with each other that the lockdowns are a failure. I never for once doubted this policy was doomed to fail, or that it was an unwarranted infringement on civil liberties - at least in regard to shutting down small private gatherings and severely limiting movement. Now there's a Reddit board against lockdowns, where the left and right stand together.

After all, does anyone really gain from these lockdowns? There's plenty of evidence proving how ineffective and harmful they are.

This anti-lockdown coalition primarily represents the rank-and-file of the right and left. It doesn't represent anti-freedom racists who have tried to exploit this issue to recruit followers, and it doesn't represent the so-called liberal blogosphere that has profited from the crisis using fear and panic. The real battle now is against elites who refuse to sacrifice but want to control or exploit everyone else.

The rank-and-file right is actually showing respect for our side, so our side gives them respect in return. Common ground is much more productive than the screeching doom and demagoguery practiced by the blogosphere that profits off the crisis. Frenzied warnings of inescapable doom now permeate self-described liberal and conservative websites alike. Reddit commenters on the left have called it an unprecedented betrayal of what the left purports to believe, and their wallets are now closed forever to websites they once supported. Those on the right have stopped supporting their former heroes as well.

What is even still right-wing about some on the right? What is liberal about those so-called liberal blogs? Today, none of us are liberal or conservative, but leftist. The botched response to the pandemic broke the country. Why wouldn't it create a political revolution too?

Ohio primary rigged and nobody does a damn thing about it

They're not even trying anymore.

Over 300 residents of Butler County, Ohio, won't have their votes counted in the recent primary election because the Postal Service delivered their ballots late. The ballots were postmarked on or before April 27 as required - but the board of elections didn't receive them until Monday, which was 3 days past the May 8 deadline to be delivered.

Why did it take 2 weeks for the Postal Service to deliver them?

I firmly support making voting easier, especially in these tough times. But when Oregon became the first state to allow voting by mail, I foresaw this very problem. By then, many government agencies had been beset by right-wing corruption. The Postal Service was certainly no exception. I started to see the Postal Service's leadership as just some political operative who holed themselves up in their room and made a pretend post office by cutting up paper grocery bags, writing fake addresses on them, and pasting them all over the bedpost.

What exactly is being done about these lost votes? So far it's just been breezily dismissed as part of life. We suffer immensely under a media and political culture that rejects science and facts like it's going out of style. Quite frankly, I think a significant number of public officials lately have no fucking idea what they're doing.

Have no fear, the May ish is here!

The May ish of The Last Word is late because of my cardiac episode and other reasons, but now it's here, so don't spill your beer!

This issue talks about people stealing from Circle K, using bubble gum to fight coronavirus, the ruinment of aircraft carrier toilets, USA Today's stupidity, and more!

So point your pooper here...

https://www.scribd.com/document/460487980/The-Last-Word-5-2020

If that doesn't work, point it here...

http://bunkerblast.info/lastword/lw2005.pdf

Ludlow won't enforce social distancing in parks

As the U.S. is seeing far fewer new conservavirus cases, even mild social distancing measures are starting to wear on some.

The local city of Ludlow is reopening its parks, along with most park features such as basketball courts. And Ludlow police have put out a message on Twitter saying not to call the cops if people aren't following social distancing protocols. The post reads...

"Do not contact us because groups are congregating in the Parks.

"Ludlow Police WILL NOT be enforcing people's decisions to not social distance."

Yeah, it's over. Probably.

If this was April 8 - not May 8 - it might make sense to more rigidly police these rules. But I don't think it does any good now. How many weeks has it been since Kentucky has enforced these rules? There's "protests" at the Capitol all the time now. Ludlow's decision seems to run afoul of state rules, but it seems like the state rules just aren't being enforced anywhere anymore.

At this point, I think Sweden may have had the best approach all along.

Alabama! Pennsylvania! Game day bucket go boom!

Lockdowns are over - but only if you want it.

I think now we know how people - at least in America - react after being locked down for 7 weeks. They just stop caring about the lockdowns. After all, our public officials completely wasted most of these 7 weeks.

Today, walking around the neighborhood, I saw cars with Alabama and Pennsylvania license plates parked on the street. And this is in a neighborhood that doesn't get tourists even in normal times. So yes, people are going on roadtrips. I saw a news photo of Central Park from just a couple days ago, and photos of California beaches from the previous weekend, and it's obvious nobody cares about stay-at-home diktats anymore. Lockdowns wear on you. They're not just ineffective, but unsustainable.

I knew lockdowns would fail. I know that doesn't give anyone a license to do anything too stupid, but there's limits on what people can tolerate.

Conservavirus in the U.S. isn't spreading nearly as much as it was a month ago - because pandemics die. Viruses like this just don't stay prevalent for very long. They can't, and they won't. But I am convinced lockdowns delayed its decline. I've done my homework on this, and the experts were wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

Be safe - but live a little.

Another electric rate increase rubber-stamped

Because this is a day ending in y, Duke Energy's latest rate increase request was of course rubber-stamped. So our already exorbitant electric rates are going up by another 10%.

I don't remember voting for this, do you?

Tuesday's cardiac incident

I knew it would come to this, but nobody listened. I'm just lucky I'm still around to tell about it.

On Tuesday morning, I suffered a cardiac incident and a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in the lungs) and had to go to the hospital. They said I was very close to either a heart attack or a stroke. I think it may have actually been a mild heart attack.

I have been very weak since then and have mostly just laid down in bed for days.

This had been building up for 6 weeks because of the ongoing crisis. It's been 6 weeks of sheer terror. My heart has been racing all the while. The hospital said I had a heart rate of 133.

In my Facebook post about this, I only made a brief mention of what caused this health scare, yet still someone was petulant enough to drop me from their friends list. Some people are not true friends. They're just lying, idiotic bullies.

When the pandemic is allowed to end, there should be a tickertape parade for the healthcare workers who put their lives in danger to save others' lives.