In Flanders Field

  In Flanders fields the poppies blow

    Between the crosses, row on row,

   That mark our place; and in the sky

   The larks, still bravely singing, fly

    Scarce heard amid the guns below.

 

We are the Dead.

Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

   Loved and were loved, and now we lie

    In Flanders fields.

 

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

   The torch; be yours to hold it high.

   If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

    In Flanders fields.

LTC John McCrae, MD and Artillery  in the Canadian Expeditionary Force

Lessons in how the Constitution actually works:

Thoughts on the ordinance effort. I've read a great many reactions. I've sought a great many responses to the "why" question.

One of the many things I've learned, occasionally to my detriment is that to be effective and successful in politics, you have to be focused on the viable.

If you support a candidate for anything, and they have no chance at success, then while that support might make you feel better, what does it accomplish?

I get a lot of reaction that what's happened in this state is "unconstitutional." What I've never seen is a reference to where, exactly, any of this has BEEN "unconstitutional."

My position in all of this has been, from the beginning, not to give in to an emotional response about the complaints of those impacted by these mandates. My position has been, and remains, to leave "feelings" out of it.

I know the Constitution. Studied it for years, worked with it for 6 years in Olympia. Listening to those who support this ordinance, frequent claims are made regarding "constitutionality."

And with equal frequency, they have been wrong.

To determine the constitutionality of an issue, one has to find the issue and then the corresponding article or amendment.

Precedent by the Supreme Court has made it clear that restrictive requirements during pandemics or other declared emergencies are not only Constitutional, they're expected. And that's been their position for over a century.

We cannot afford the luxury of believing in dislike equaling "unconstitutional."

I get why many ordinance supporters make that claim. That claim provides justification for their opposition to mandates.

But they’re NOT “unconstitutional.” Ordinance supporters really don’t care.

As conservatives, we’re supposed to believe and uphold the Constitution. But it’s also not a malleable document, something that can be twisted into whatever you want it to be.

That’s how we got Roe v. Wade.

We all know there’s no such thing as a ghost “constitutional right to privacy.” But the Court who ruled this way, not unlike ordinance supporters, had to make one up. So they did. And the vast majority of ordinance supporters are not happy about it.

Yet, they turn around and do the exact, same, thing.

These reactions are a symptom of the failure of our education plant.

We spend no appreciable time in our schools studying this document, the underlying foundation of our country. And as a country, we all suffer from that shortcoming.

Imagine how different things would be if people had the first faintest clue as to what was actually IN that document… as opposed to what they BELIEVE is in that document.

Listening to testimony last night, I repeatedly overheard the word "discrimination."

That gets tossed around like a football, not only on this issue, but on any issue by any interest group that wants someone else, particularly in government, to feel bad about something so the interest group can get their own way.

But in THIS country, we discriminate every day of our lives. It's a matter of degree more than anything else. We eat a certain brand of bread. We drink coffee over orange juice. The military discriminates wholesale: reasons to be disqualified from enlistment include almost any medical condition, pregnancy, too tall, too short, too fat, and too skinny. Amputated limbs. Blindness. Hearing loss. Mental health issues... the list fills books of regulations and we don't give it a thought, second or otherwise.

And that’s because for purposes of ACTUAL, ILLEGAL discrimination, one has to have experienced actual discrimination based on a suspect classification.

As the attorney said last night, discrimination is only legally recognized in these areas:

• Age

• Disability

• Equal Pay/Compensation

• Genetic Information

• Harassment

• National Origin

• Pregnancy

• Race/Color

• Religion

• Retaliation

• Sex

• Sexual Harassment

• Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity

There’s nothing in there about masks OR vaccination status.

As a result, claiming “discrimination” was a nonstarter. You can’t claim that which doesn’t legally exist to be a cause to promulgate an ordinance that violates state law.

The claims made in Rob’s presentation, that these mandates lacked the force of law and thus, the state has no right of preemption was lunacy. Because the people passed SJR8200, in fact, all mandates DO have the force of law.

As court after court after court has determined in this state there has been NO Constitutional violation. Repeatedly claiming that there has without making a case that extends beyond your actual dislike or other feelings is a nonstarter.

The reality the council faced last night was stark. These people were demanding that the Council actually take a step that would have violated the laws and the state constitution of Washington, a COMPLETE violation of their oaths of office and something that those on our side of the aisle have complained about frequently when applied to the political left.

Thus, we’re showing that same kind of “flexibility” that we despise in leftists and RINOs. It was much like the demands that Inslee implement the $30 car tab initiative because it passed, while many turned around and demanded that he ignore the results of the ballot box vote of the people in the SJR8200 election… which also passed, no matter how stupidly, by a 2:1 margin.

That was a vote of the people. If Inslee had built that authority out of whole cloth, then yes, that would be an issue. But he didn’t. And the ease within which the people supporting this ordinance dismiss or ignore that fact in this matter is astonishing to me.

People who support the ordinance want what they want, period. Laws be damned, Constitution be damned, and anything else in life be damned. They want to be rebels when they have no idea what “rebellion” means.

This was the biggest case of confusing motion with action that I have personally ever witnessed.

This is a perfect example of spinning your wheels. You THINK you’re getting something done mainly because you base your actions on essentially nonexistent factors that when examined provide no justification beyond your emotional “I want that” mode.

Put the shoe on the other foot. What would the reaction be if the signatures were gathered as per the Charter and the initiative in question demanded that starting immediately, every business in Clark County be at least 50% minority owned with 50% minority employees.

Such a demand actually COULD be based on the issue of “discrimination.” Of course, I get that far too often when something “bad” happens to as minority, the answer is always going to be discrimination.

But where does anyone get the idea that this county can force businesses to hire 50% minorities, or sell/give 50% of their business to minorities?

They can’t. And we all know they can’t. No more than they could implement this ordinance. And we all, including the ordinance supporters, knew they could not do it.

In spite of the many who acted like somehow, the laws and the state constitution restricting that variety of extra-legislative hijinks was absolutely within the realm of this council’s ability.

Last night’s outcome was inevitable.

And if anyone learned anything from that debacle, it SHOULD be to deal with the way things ARE, and not waste time fantasizing about the way you WANT them to be.

Major Egan, Why'd you do it? (Originally published here on 24 Dec 08)

(NOTE: I've been posting this for 13 years now... even though it doesn't seem to be that long.

It was a part of why I decided when I retired to stop just talking about veteran issues and to start doing something about it.

Last year (2018-since retired for medical reasons), I became a veteran service officer for the Washington State Chapter of the Vietnam Veterans of America.  And for that organization, I also became Chair of Veteran Benefits Programs for this state.

If you need help, please contact a Veteran Service Officer through the Clark County Veterans Assistance Office at 1305 Columbia Street, Vancouver, WA 98660 or make an appointment by calling 360.693.7030.

All charitable organizations need actual hands-on help more than they need money.  Giving donations to these groups is important. Actually becoming involved is even more important.

I urge you to find some group that you can help... and get out there and help them.  The pay is practically nothing if you go to work for them.

But the rewards are incalculable.)

I originally posted this 13 years ago today (24 Dec). And it bears repeating.

This story was in the paper... although, unfortunately, not on the Columbian web.

It is the story of a retired Army Major, one Thomas Egan; a veteran of 2 years on the Korean DMZ, a Master's graduate of the University of Oregon; a retired Oregon Army National Guard officer.

He was found dead, apparently frozen to death, next to a bottle of booze, in Eugene, Oregon within the past few days.

Unfortunately, the story speaks for itself. Sometimes, the desire to destroy one's self can overwhelm all other instincts.

I never knew you, Major, but we served together at the same time. I have no idea what happened to you, but I wish I did... and I wish it could have been fixed.

Tomorrow is Christmas. If you know someone who needs help, take the time and the effort to try and get that help to them. Major Egan had help available, but made bad choices when it came to using it.

As I look outside at the foot of snow, I ask myself: "how many Major Egans are there?"

Is there more that could have been done?

Probably not.

But I wish there had been.

Good bye, Major. From all accounts, you served us honorably and well. I never met you, but I won't forget you.

I could have been you.

Soldier’s death resonates 

Homeless veteran froze to death though services were available

By JACK MO
(Eugene) Register-Guard 

EUGENE, Ore — Thomas Egan was a scholar and a decorated soldier. He was also a homeless alcoholic whose life ended last week when he froze to death in Eugene during an unusually long and harsh cold snap. 

His body was found covered in snow near the corner of West First Avenue and Blair Boulevard, a bottle of liquor by his side. 

News of the demise of the longtime Eugene resident troubled many local veterans — especially those who knew that with some effort and some help, the man they called Major Egan could have had a roof over his head. 

“The whole National Guard community is taking this very hard,” said Bud Dickey, a vocational rehabilitation coordinator with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs’ community reintegration service center in Eugene. 

“It’s very disturbing for all of us, because Major Egan was retired and could have been drawing his (veterans’) benefits,” Dickey said. “He had options that he did not access.” 

Egan collected monthly Social Security checks, but the amount was a pittance compared with the payments he was entitled to as a retired military veteran. When he turned 60 in July, Egan became eligible to receive $909 each month in National Guard retirement income, Dickey said. 

Egan also could have applied for a separate pension check based on unemployability. “That would have gotten him an apartment if he wanted one,” said Jay Rea, a Springfield resident who served under Egan in the National Guard in the late 1980s. “I shed a tear when I heard he died,” Rea said. “It breaks my heart because he was the friendliest guy, and so smart.” A New York native, Egan joined the Army in 1971 after graduating from Quinnipiac College in Hamden, Conn., with a bachelor’s degree in history. 

He was stationed at the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea for two years, and was reassigned to the Oregon Army National Guard in 1977. 

Earned master’s degree 

Egan earned his master’s degree from the University of Oregon in 1983, and ultimately attained the rank of major with the National Guard. 

He retired honorably in 1991, following a 20-year military career during which he was awarded several service medals and ribbons. 

Dickey said Egan’s desire to drink made him ineligible for VA housing programs that require sober living. 

Egan had declined to enroll in substance abuse treatment programs offered through the veterans agency, Dickey said. 

According to those who knew him, Egan worked sporadically. He did some landscaping, and most years helped deliver telephone books. 

Sometimes, he found an apartment to stay in for a while. At other times, he lived on the streets. In August, Egan spent two weeks at the Eugene Mission — which is less than one block from the spot where a passer-by discovered his body last week. 

Mission officials said Egan never caused any trouble there, and could have stayed any time. Dickey said Egan has no relatives in Oregon, and tracking down members of his extended family on the East Coast has been challenging. 

Dickey, who served five years with Egan in the National Guard, is helping to direct an effort to have Egan interred at the Roseburg National Cemetery. 

“He will be buried as a veteran in a veterans’ cemetery,” Dickey said. “He was a good soldier, and we’re going to get him the burial he’s due.”

(October 8, 2020) I've come to the conclusion.... that President Trump is going to lose.

I've been doing politics for a long, long time.  Thirty+ years or so to be precise.

I've held many... most... political organizational positions up to the state level, where I actually served as executive director of the Washington State Republican party.

In 2016, I knew almost from the start that Trump was going to win. He was unlike anything the political world had ever seen, and the Establishment hated him.

And they hate him still, democrat and republican. They have been doing all they can to undermine him, attack him, destroy him and his family.

They've weaponized government against him, committed treason, insurrection and attempted at least one coup.  And none of them have been indicted, reinforcing the idea that justice is an abstract construct to those in government; who have no difficulty abusing the Constitution, or in the case of Obama, using it as their own personal roll of toilet paper.

If you or I commit treason, we are arrested/indicted and face a judge and jury.

If you're a member of Congress (Ilhan Omar, for example, is likely guilty of immigration fraud and campaign fund fraud... who should lose her citizenship and go to prison, then be deported) you break the law with impunity.  If you're Maxine Waters, you call for, effectively, the overthrow of the US Government because you don't happen to like who's running it.

And you suffer no consequence for that.

Most reading this, if politically aware to any extent, already know these things.

But these attacks are no different than what he survived to get elected... and I was convinced that he was likely to win.  The crimes these thugs and others have committed had become common place, and ultimately had no impact on the electorate.

So, what's different now?

Riots have gone on for months.  Those arrested, even for felonies, are quickly released.  Murders, arson, looting, assaults, rapes.  No one seems to be held accountable and the White House refuses to act to restore order.  Democrats are silent as their terrorist allies do the dirty work the left feels is needed to get rid of Trump.

That is an extension of what leftist higher-ups have done.  Biden, Obama, Clinton, Comey, the entire upper echelon of the FBI... all should face criminal sanctions.

And when you don't prosecute the top, what message does that send to the bottom?

Terrorist groups like antifa and BLM are given free rein. They Kill.  They assault.  They attack police.  They burn.  They loot, because well, you know, nothing screams "social justice" like gutting a Louis Vuitton store for those multi-thousand dollar social justice purses.

And it goes on and on and on.  While the Fed does next to nothing about it.  Much like they've done next to nothing about the upper end leftists who have and continue to commit criminal acts with seeming impunity.

Trump was supposed to be the law and order guy.  But when it came time to applying those laws and that order, he did nothing more than threaten. As time went on, he became complicit.

Even in football, there's a saying that you're either coaching, or allowing.

After months of unrest, strategically it was becoming clear that he was allowing.

Here locally, we've undergone this same campaign, only in a micro-sense.  And defeat was the outcome.

We had a county commissioner who ran on a platform of opposition to the hated Columbia River Crossing, the unneeded, unaffordable and wasteful rip off designed to get the equally hated light rail disaster of Portland into Clark County.

He defeated a fake Republican who was rabidly in favor of loot rail and who had even lied to me about a local vote on the issue personally.

A local accountant reviewed the project and discovered that the people were being ignored, tens of millions were being misspent and that the entire process was corrupted.

Meanwhile, because this commissioner was being successful in exposing this rip off, local media and the left started vilifying him... a process that was started long before the election and continued for years after.

Leftists hated him so much that they literally changed the county's government in an effort to eliminate him, and Clark County has been suffering ever since.

The local excuse for a newspaper never let up on him.  He was criticized for everything he did, blamed for everything that went wrong and ignored for anything that went right.

He stuck to his campaign promises and became totally hated by the left as a result.

The pounding was relentless.  The lies, exaggerations, attacks... all of it went on and on and on.

So, when he ran for election as the county chair, others ran to split the vote to keep him out and they were successful.

The ultimate winner was that same fake Republican he had defeated in the first place, supported by the many other fake Republicans who endorsed him instead of the only ACTUAL Republican who was running as a write-in.

As Chair, he was the disaster I knew he would be.  RINOs typically are.

Which brings us back to this election and President Trump. Using the election I reference above, the issue becomes one of water torture.  The drip, drip, drip of lies, deceit, gullibility, voter laziness where they don't do the work; and, let's face it, voter stupidity, will have the same variety of cumulative effect nationally as it did here locally.

Joe Biden is a corrupt, dementia-addled, racist, pedophile, liar.

His VP pick is a political prostitute who had affairs with at least one married man to further her own political career.

Because of Biden's physical/mental condition, in a short time, there is little doubt that this prostitute will become president, one of the least supported democrats who ran for the president, a woman gutted on national TV by fellow democrat Tulsi Gabbard from Hawaii.

Everyone is well aware of these things.  Biden's racism isn't hidden.  His withdrawal from the presidential race in '88 over plagiarism is well known.  Many of his racist tirades are captured on video and have been played ad-infinitum. His dementia is on full-display for all the world to see.

Harris's background as Willie Brown's slut is also well known, as is her incompetence and political racism as AG for California.

And Biden's supporters don't care.

They operate out of hatred.  They'd elect Heinrich Himmler if he ran as a democrat to get Trump out of office.

And that's exactly what has happened.

This is being written on October 8, 2020.  And I seriously hope I am dead wrong.

But this time, as last time, I don't believe I am.  And I will publish this as soon as the election is decided, regardless of the outcome.

Lord help us if I'm right.  Because as a nation, we will have the government we deserve.

NOTE: (Written November 4) It is becoming clearer to me that Trump's defeat is inevitable.  He needed Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Michigan or Wisconsin.  As I write this, it appears he's behind in both Wisconsin and Michigan.  He could have lost one of the other but not both.

This observation has not been published before today and many might wonder why that is.  Many will claim this is revisionist history written after the fact.

Well, I saw no point in putting this out there because conservatives generally had used common sense and logic to determine there is no way... NO WAY.... Americans would ever support lowlife scum like Biden.

They are operating on emotion just as much as the left is.  And they had facts and figures available to support their positions.  Persuasive facts.  Persuasive figures.

But they failed to reckon with the one singular truth of politics: It doesn't matter who votes.  What matters is who counts.

I predicted back in 2016 that every election after that one would become increasingly violent.

This one is the most violent in American history as the left tore cities to pieces without fear of prosecution.

And Trump let them.

His failure was political.  His failure was to put an end to the violence and the leftist disdain for our laws. There is no question that he did a great deal of good.  But his failures... his failures to stop the violence in the cities, his failure to attack CHOP in Seattle, his failure to prosecute the leftists like Clinton, Obama, Comey, etc... his failures are what did him in.

Let this be a lesson to us all:

It is better to lose for doing the right thing than it is to slink away defeated because you ignored the right thing for political considerations.

Thank you Mr. Trump for all of the good you did.  For your efforts to return the Supreme Court to sanity, for your work on the economy.

But the fake Republicans the American people kept returning to office over and over; the failure to enforce the law; the treasonous, lying media... they all spelled doom.

And now?

We're screwed.

COVID: What is Taiwan doing right that we're doing wrong?

One of the things I've noticed over the past year is a stubborn reliance on the part of many to complain about their "rights" being violated.

As our country is passing the quarter-million new cases a day mark. I ponder the meaning of the use of the word "rights" as it's applied in this instance.

I'm fully cognicent of what rights are.  There are many definitions of course, but for the purpose of this missive, I'll briefly discuss rights in the context of what they are in THIS country.

Let me say at the outset that many deniers of this virus have one thing in common: they're dead.  From the very virus they deny.

We have enumerated rights as laid out in the Bill of Rights.  That does not mean that these rights are not subject to abuse.  Freedom of the press, for example, does not include efforts at supporting coup attempts, lies, exaggerations or attacks in an effort to act as the public relations arm of any political campaign.

"...the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances," never meant the terrorism of antifa or BLM.  It does not include riots, insurrection, assault, murder, rape, robbery, looting or burning to name a few, or as that right is generally practiced in leftist bastions like the Portland or Seattle.

Those, of course, are among the rights we have that are restricting government power.

But nowhere in that document does it say that we have the right to ignore government efforts to fight a pandemic.  And no court has yet ruled with a survivable decision that we can continue on as if this pandemic simply does not exist and that we have the RIGHT to ignore it even if it doesn't.

Well, it does.  My brother died from it shortly after Thanksgiving.  I was not allowed to be there for that.

And I get it.

I also get the hypocrisy of government officials who make edicts governing behavior which they then blithely ignore; such as those who tell us to stay home, tell us not to eat out in restaurants, tell us not to travel, and tell us to hunker down... while they simply ignore their own rules.  The Speaker of the US House of Representatives.  The governors of California, Louisiana and New York. The mayors of LA, Denver, Austin, San Francisco, San Jose; the entire California Assembly. Council members for LA and Multnomah counties.

Each and every politician, regardless of party or position, who violates the law or these edicts should be forced to resign immediately, or face impeachment.

But none of them do.  Because THEIR hypocrisy is perfectly OK.

And these are just those who've been caught.  What about those who haven't been?

The problem is that politicians send a message when they do this.  They set the example.

When politicians exempt rioters/protestors from the controls they would ram down everyone else's throat, claiming some nonexistent right to riot; when they fail to enforce the law on this suspect class, fail to treat them the same as they treat a business owner, THAT sends a message as well.

You CANNOT claim that eating in a restaurant is bad, but rioting/protesting is perfectly OK. You CANNOT claim, as Inslee stupidly did at the beginning of the response, that PUBLIC construction is fine, but PRIVATE construction is verboten. The same rules have to be enforced for everyone.  When you make a conscious decision to treat different groups of people differently because one is a known political ally and the other isn't?

That's a problem that weakens your position geometrically.

And when others, the "common folk" follow those examples that the hypocrites set in ignoring their own laws/orders... then what?

When it comes to following the rules here in Washington, there have been multiple court challenges to Inslee's edicts, and all of them have failed, as I knew they would.  Just over a year ago, the people of this state GRANTED Inslee the ability to do what he's doing at the ballot box... by an almost 2:1 margin. (For the record, I voted "no.")

We also passed another abortive, killed-by-a-moron-AG-and-Puget-Sound-Supreme-Court-initiative that would have reduced car tab fees to $30.

Many demanded that Inslee obey the vote on the car tabs, only to turn around and DISobey the vote on emergency powers.  Odd that so many seem to think they can have it both ways.

That said, I admit that I support many of the restrictive measures in place.  And the reason I support those measures is simple: the ONLY alternative those who deny the pandemic have yet to offer is to ignore it altogether, as if it's not even there.

Until recently, may of them foamed at the mouth over Sweden, who seemed to be using that particular denier mecca as THE example of how it should be handled.  Sweden, for its part, had pretty much done precisely that: ignored it.  For months.  Until recently. Now?

Not so much.

Never mind that Sweden's' death rate was 2.5 times that of, say, Washington state.  (As of now, Sweden, with it's population of 10.1 million. has 8,000 dead of COVID.  Washington state, with our population of around 7.6 million, claims 3,104.  Sweden has had the highest per capita death rate in all of Europe.  And now that reality has set in, so have their restrictions and the fact that the denier plan, of simply ignoring it to achieve "herd immunity" is a failure.)

The US Supreme Court has ruled over the last century plus that government restrictions as a result of pandemics are, in fact, Constitutional.

It’s not, of course.  The US Supreme Court addressed this issue 115 years ago. (Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11 (1905)):

“The Constitution,” Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote for a 7-2 majority, “does not import an absolute right in each person to be, at all times and in all circumstances, wholly freed from restraint.” Instead, “a community has the right to protect itself against an epidemic.” Its members “may at times, under the pressure of great dangers, be subjected to such restraint, to be enforced by reasonable regulations, as the safety of the general public may demand.”

Deniers, for the most part, can and have claimed that restrictions on business to fight COVID are NOT "reasonable regulations." But none have yet to prove their case.

The Supreme Court HAS ruled against efforts to restrict church attendance, for example.  But the reason for that is clear: not that church attendance can't be restricted, but that it cannot be discriminatory in nature... as in you cannot restrict church attendance any more or less than you restrict any other form of attendance to anything or place else.  To which, I obviously agree.

Many others have been telling us on this issue that it's to cover some insidious government effort to control us. Who hasn't seen the sheep memes, or worse yet, the despicable memes comparing this to  Nazi concentration camps.

That the virus would magically disappear once the election was over. 

Well, the election date has come and gone.  They may argue that the election isn't "over" in that the Trump campaign is attempting to dismantle the fraudulent scam of Racist Joe's election, but that isn't what they meant.

Most who made that absolutely unsupportable claim then have forgotten all about it now, because I haven't heard much from them in that regard.

I have personally been attacked by many (The typically usual anti-vaxer types to be sure) but also others who should certainly know better after my 32 years of conservative politics here locally that I'm now a leftist.  That I'm one of the sheep.  That I'm ignorant.  That I don't understand.

What THEY don't understand is I'm not going to base any medical decision on politics.  I'm not going to take a position merely because a leftist puts it out there.  Nor will I reject a position merely because a leftist puts it out there.

We have been cursed with thousands of mixed messages from dozens of agencies who, one day told us it was no big deal, then the next day demand that we go to the mattresses.

We get messages from elected representatives who tell us one thing one day and something else the next.

We were BOMBARDED by garbage like this shit from Inslee: Inslee says any COVID-19 vaccine will get added scrutiny before use in Washington. That doesn't seem to have happened.  So, it was just more of Inlee's hate-Trump shtick and, well, just another lie.

The problem?  It furthered the doubt about the COVID vaccine and increased the number of people who'll refuse to take it.  And the increase in that number? That's all on Inslee.

Yes, I say be cautious about the vaccine.  Yes, we should be careful about side effects, but what vaccine does NOT have side effects?

Meanwhile, many tell me that I don't have a clue. Here's the clue I do have: I wish my brother had the vaccine early last month.

He might still be alive.

As I review the video of my brother's funeral, I think to myself.... yeah, I've got a tiny idea about it, at least.

So, what to do.    

I have been saying for quite some time that Taiwan seems to have figured it out. Taiwan is a country of about 24,000,000.  A total of 7 have died from COVID.  they have had less than 800 cases total.

It would seem to me that we would be much farther ahead if we would follow the plan that those who've met with success have followed.

And yet, Taiwan doesn't have riots or demonstrations over COVID restrictions.  And they DO have those restrictions. Man who broke quarantine in Taiwan for 8 seconds fined $3,500

Is it possible that the people of Taiwan know more about "rights" then the people of THIS country?  Is it possible they understand that sacrifice is required to get past this?

And what about the next pandemic?  Do we decide to ignore that as well?  Can those who lead us get past their hatred of each other and stop calling those who make the decision "racists" or worse when they make the call?

Will we EVER see a government that puts country before power and REALLY puts people ahead of politics?