"Reopening while the virus remains unchecked" will mean the deaths of "lower-income families where breadwinners cannot work from home", that is Democratic voters.

And if Democrats don't return to work,

“...not just more deaths, but also a rationale for denying additional unemployment benefits and other vital assistance to those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder.”-Jacob S. Hacker, the director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-recovery.html

Disenfranchisement by murder. And in conjunction with that...

"Given up, writing off people's lives"

“I think he has given up on the hard stuff and as a consequence is writing off people’s lives,” said Andy Slavitt, the acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under President Barack Obama and now a senior adviser at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.

“Not, unfortunately, in exchange for a better economic outcome,” he added. “The economy — hiring, consumer spending, buying cars, getting on airplanes, signing leases — isn’t going to happen. It’s not going to happen until we have demonstrated we can navigate this global health crisis.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-recovery.html

And there is more...

“We have to get our country open again. People want to go back, and you’re going to have a problem if you don’t do it.”

The problem is violence. The governors who don't reopen are going to face more violent protests from Trump Low Lifes.

Trump’s cure-can’t-be-worse-than-the-disease logic is clear: As bad as the virus may be, the cost of the virtual national lockdown has grown too high. With more than 30 million people out of work and businesses collapsing by the day, keeping the country at home seems unsustainable. With the virus still spreading and no vaccine available until next year at the earliest, though, the president has decided that for life to resume for many, some may have to die.

“Hopefully that won’t be the case,” Mr. Trump said on Wednesday when asked if deaths would rise as a result of reopening, but added, “It could very well be the case.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-recovery.html

Now the ex-Quasis are using cities as illustrations, too!

The death toll on Wednesday passed 72,000, or roughly the equivalent of every man, woman and child in Evanston, Ill.; Canton, Ohio; or Wilmington, Del...
...
...the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington now predicts 134,475 deaths by Aug. 4, twice its previous estimate and about the population of Charleston, S.C.
NYT

Ex-Quasis this happens all the fucking time. Why do you just lift stuff?

Confronted with the worst public health crisis in the United States in generations, President Trump declared himself a wartime president. Now he has begun doing what past commanders have done when a war goes badly: Declare victory and go home. Cadet Bone Spurs

Yep.

Evidently the American southwest attracts nuts like Vince Gilligan and Cormac (ne Charles) McCarthy...

“McCarthy changed his name to Cormac to avoid association with the dummy Charlie McCarthy.”-Wikipedia

...I mean that in the best sense: artists whose creative imaginations are nihilistic and gratuitously violent. Neither Gilligan nor McCarthy have any attachment whatsoever to the American southwest. Both learned it for their art. McCarthy was born in Rhode Island and moved to Tennessee, his father was a prominent lawyer with the TVA. Gilligan was born and educated largely in Virginia. Both were raised Roman Catholics. Breaking Bad could absolutely be a TV serialization of one of McCarthy’s novels, it is that morally bankrupt. How these two alter boys came to be so twisted and to choose the southwest for their demented fiction is a subject for a doctor of medicine not law, but speaking of JD’s, the southwest ought to sue these tough guy manques for defamation. I mean, my God McCarthy you didn’t find the right stuff for your demonism in Rhode Island, the darkest state by size and per capita in the country? And you Gilligan, what, was Virginia’s setting too genteel for you among the slave quarters of Monticello, Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, the Confederate monuments lining the streets, and the battlefields? You want murder Gilligan, go to the Fredericksburg battlefield. “It was just murder” there and you had the Capital of Murder right there in front of your creative, imaginative face. Coulda said hello to my great, great grandfather buried and reburied somewhere in an unmarked grave thereabouts if it interested you which it obviously did not.

What synapse misfiring caused you two to turn away from the motherlodes of mayhem, Rhode Island and Virginia? You two collaborate? Vince, you take some “inspiration” from Charlie? All coincidental that hisn could be yourn and yourn could be hisn? I don’t believe that. I think Gilligan read McCarthy and McCarthy watched Gilligan and spilled his bodily essence in a frenzy of onanism.

Catholic priests bugger you guys? Did either of you know Jerry Sandusky? What made you turn out as the Eichmann and Heydrich of American arts? And are you sterilized and incapable of transmitting your peculiar DNA to another generation? A culturally sophisticated society, not the U.S.A. obviously, but myriad of other advanced societies can hope. But this is America, hope immigrates to America to die.

The Trump Death

Well, the skyline pattern holds...

...but the increases each of the last two days makes it look less like the Manhattan skyline and more like the Johnstown skyline. Good that.

1,228,603 Cumulative cases of Trump Virus.

73,431 Cumulative number of Americans killed by Trump. And the Appleton, WI skyline does look like the last two days, I’ll be jiggered.

5.97% Trump’s Kill efficiency. Soo close to 6% Trumpie. I have faith that you’ll hit it.

Night all!

Hold Still Project, Princess Kate, Duchess of Cambridge

The Duchess, an accomplished amateur photography herself, is curating photographs that capture the “feeling” in the United Kingdom under COVID-19. This is an inspired project.

God bless Princess Kate. 

God Save the Queen.

Ever wonder how Trumpie came to rely on IHME at the University of Washington?  In this article Chief WaPo reports that some of Kucky Kushner's Kids (KKK), who Grand Wizard Trump put in charge of the Trump Virus, were asked to create their own models that projected the virus' spread and damage.

But administration officials deemed some of the models “too catastrophic,” a person familiar with the situation said. The administration ultimately decided to rely primarily on a model created by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington that has had some of the most optimistic projections of cases and deaths.

The Trump Death

The Johnnies are being difficult. Their daily bar graph is only updated through May 3. I don't remember a time when they had a two day lag. Here it is as I "snipped" it at 12:03 a.m. on May 6.

What is striking to moi is the continued "skyscraper" look to the graph, a pattern that began on April 13 and had four consecutive taller skyscrapers, then three successive lower builds through April 20, then four higher builds to the Empire State Building on April 24. Then three build downs through the 27th; four build ups through May first and then two climb downs May 2nd and third. It really is an extraordinary pattern to me and extraordinarily regular. The logarithmic curve is still flattening out with a slight tilt upward. The flattening was predicted and hoped for but I at least never expected to see that repeated skyscraper pattern of daily cases in the details.

By the numbers then:

1,204,479 cumulative cases of Trump Virus.

The U.S. has passed the 70,000 number in total deaths.

71,070 Killed by Donald Trump. That is just shy of the wealthy, exclusive city of Weston, Florida.

5.90% That is Donald Trump Killing Efficiency. He kills almost six people who he infects with Trump Virus. That is Trump's highest Kill rate ever. One would expect (at least I would) that as the number of cases of Trump Virus rise with his encouragement of violent protests to "LIBERATE" the states and to reopen that Trump's Kill Efficiency will fall. So many people, he's going to have to reload. But, needless to say, as the number of cases rises the number of deaths will too. When the cases hit, say, 2,000,000, and giving Trump time to reload, dropping his efficiency to say, 5.25%, that's 105,000 people Trump will have Killed. And it needs to be restated that Trump is not even trying anymore to "flatten the curve." He's washed his hands of it, left containment up to the states, and is leading the protests to raise the number of cases and thus the deaths. Premeditated murder, in other words. 

This is what's coming next*#

#Updated 7:07 p.m. He knows that he has lost and so is declaring victory. He knows that he is a coward and could never fight in or direct a "War." He knows that he is branded a murderer who only kills the weak and vulnerable, so he is claiming he could have killed so many more. He regrets ever having involved himself in coronavirus--because it severely hurt his chance of reelection.  It's the states' responsibility. He will ignore it now, blame the governors for future outbreaks, future deaths, and he will move on to his one remaining hope, the economy. And if the economy doesn't turn around he will blame that too on the governors."I don't accept responsibility at all." He desperately needs validation, which starts with self-validation and then spreads to the population. He knows that the Russians won him the presidency and so accepts their denials that they did and now desperately needs the validation of the voting public this year, even as Russia continues its aid. To lose after all of that aid is more humiliating than Herbert Hoover and Herbert Hoover is his greatest fear. Fear is the soul of Donald Trump.

As Threat of Virus Persists, Trump Administration Signals It Will Wind Down Task Force

Trump administration officials are telling staff members of the coronavirus task force that the White House plans to wind down the operation in the weeks to come despite growing evidence that the crisis is raging on...

Asked about the New York Times report, Vice President Mike Pence, who has helped oversee the task force, acknowledged that the administration was “having conversations” about winding it down.

“We’re having conversations about that, and about what the proper time is for the task force to complete its work and for the ongoing efforts to take place on an agency-by-agency level,” Mr. Pence told reporters, adding that the task force could wrap up its work by early June.

...

Mr. Trump has stopped linking his virus news briefings to the task force’s meetings and no longer routinely arrays task force members around him in his public appearances.

...

A senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations, said the task force would be winding down as the White House moved toward Phase One of Mr. Trump’s plan to “open up” the country. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/05/us/coronavirus-live-news.html

* Updated 5:29 p.m.: The Trump Death numbers doom Trump. He knows that. So he is going to ignore it and concentrate on the economy: encourage threatening, armed protests to get governors to reopen and simultaneously cast doubt on the number he has killed and ultimately suppress those numbers. That is what his man in Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis, has been doing:

When the Miami Herald sought information from the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office last month about COVID-19 deaths in the epicenter of Florida’s coronavirus outbreak, attorneys for the state health department moved to block the records from becoming public.
...
The Miami Herald...obtained the information Thursday after the county bucked Florida’s Department of Health. But the episode is an example of how the administration of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis often has been unwilling or unable to provide crucial information about its coronavirus response — and at times has actively tried to shield critical details about the depths of the crisis from becoming public.
...
In recent weeks, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration has refused to name the nursing homes experiencing coronavirus outbreaks, even as the number of cases in long-term care facilities has passed 1,300. The Department of Corrections had until Wednesday declined to acknowledge two inmate COVID-19 deaths at a privately run prison. And the Department of Health has been unwilling to disclose the extent of an undefined backlog of unresolved coronavirus tests at private labs.
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/coronavirus/article242050696.htm


Florida medical examiners were releasing coronavirus death data. The state made them stop.

When the medical examiners’ list was available, it showed more deaths than the state’s count.

State officials have stopped releasing the list of coronavirus deaths being compiled by Florida’s medical examiners, which has at times shown a higher death toll than the state’s published count.

The list had previously been released in real time by the state Medical Examiners Commission. But earlier this month, after the Tampa Bay Times reported that the medical examiners’ death count was 10 percent higher than the figure released by the Florida Department of Health, state officials said the list needed to be reviewed and possibly redacted.

They’ve now been withholding it for nine days, without providing any of the information or specifying what they plan to remove.

Dr. Stephen Nelson, the chairman of the state Medical Examiners Commission, said the change in policy came after the state health department intervened.

...

...Hillsborough County refused for weeks to release its records, citing the same exemption as the state health department. But on Tuesday, after repeated questions from the Times, county officials released a list of people who had died from the virus.

...

The Palm Beach County Medical Examiner used to provide a spreadsheet of its COVID-related deaths, but was directed last week by county attorneys to stop releasing it, that office’s operations manager, Paul Petrino, told the Times.

Petrino said he wasn’t sure what prompted the attorneys to question whether the information was public.

“I was actually taken aback when they called us,” said Petrino...

...

The moves to withhold information comes at a sensitive moment for state leaders. Florida’s coronavirus death toll is continuing to rise and state officials have begun talks about when and how to start reopening.

...

the state health department has kept its own count of coronavirus deaths and published it to an online dashboard. Its figure has been lower than the medical examiners’ figure.

...

As the death toll has climbed in Florida, the difference between the two counts has become controversial.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/health/2020/04/29/florida-medical-examiners-were-releasing-coronavirus-death-data-the-state-made-them-stop/

Ho ho ho. At 1:24 p.m. ET today IHME, Trumpie's favorite model (that isn't 36-24-36) had been projecting 72,433 total Trump Virus deaths by August 4.

Now, less than ten hours later, IHME is projecting this here:

"Will there even be an America?"

This is the second very good, very professionally done ad put out by the Lincoln Project, a new group of anti-Trump Republicans started by, among others, George Conway, Kellyanne's husband.

I have to say, that is about the damn most moving political ad I've ever seen.

Time for a Coup d'etat

Daily Death Toll Will Nearly Double by June, Trump Administration Models Predict

The Trump administration projects about 3,000 daily deaths by early June.

As President Trump presses for states to reopen their economies, his administration is privately projecting a steady rise in the number of coronavirus cases and deaths over the next several weeks. The daily death toll will reach about 3,000 on June 1, according to an internal document obtained by The New York Times, nearly double the current number of about 1,750.

The projections, based on government modeling pulled together in chart form by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, forecast about 200,000 new cases each day by the end of the month, up from about 25,000 cases a day currently.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/04/us/coronavirus-updates.html

This is now premeditated mass murder. Their plan is to open the country and the 3,000 daily deaths are baked into their plan. Trump must be stopped. The military must step in now. A coup will kill democracy in American. Or the military can choose not to intervene and sit back and watch 3,000 Americans die every day because of a mad man.

The Trump Death: May 3, 9:41 p.m.

1,157,753 Cumulative total infections with Trump Virus. That number is significantly larger than the tenth largest city in the U.S., San Jose, California. San Jose, all of you are, or were, infected with Trump Virus.

67,674 Cumulative people Killed by the Trump Epidemic. That's Redmond, Washington, home of Microsoft! Pretty place. Too bad you're all dead. Change your name to Deadman.

5.84% Trump Kill efficiency.

Trump Revises Potential U.S. Death Toll, Saying It Could Reach 100,000

President Trump predicted on Sunday night that the death toll from the coronavirus pandemic ravaging the country may reach as high as 100,000 in the United States, far higher than he had forecast just weeks ago, even as he pressed states to begin reopening the shuttered economy.

Mr. Trump, who last month forecast that 60,000 lives would be lost, acknowledged that the virus has proved more devastating than he had expected but said he believe parks and beaches should begin reopening and schools should resume classes in person by this fall.


“We’re going to lose anywhere from 75, 80 to 100,000 people,” he said in a virtual “town hall” meeting on Fox News....

But he credited himself with preventing the toll from being worse...
Trump Says He Will Kill 75,000-100,000

"If there is no such thing as cosmic justice, what is the point of being good?"-Vince Gilligan

Take away your fear of "cosmic" retribution in the next life. Is it gone? There's no afterlife and no God or other meta-entity to fear punishing you for your acts in this life, okay? Okay, now, how many of you with Mr. Gilligan don't see "the point" in not doing it and are going out tonight to rape and murder?

This Is All Inspired by Trump

An emergency proclamation issued Thursday in Stillwater, Oklahoma, requiring the use of face masks in stores and restaurants was amended Friday after threats of violence.

"In the short time beginning on May 1, 2020, that face coverings have been required for entry into stores/restaurants, store employees have been threatened with physical violence and showered with verbal abuse," Stillwater City Manager Norman McNickle said in a statement.

"In addition, there has been one threat of violence using a firearm. This has occurred in three short hours and in the face of clear medical evidence that face coverings helps contain the spread of Covid-19."

Due to the threats of violence the city has decided to amend their emergency order but still want people to wear face masks whenever possible, the statement said.

But on Friday, Mayor Will Joyce softened the rule to encourage, not require, face coverings, after several reports emerged of employees being verbally abused and being threatened with physical violence while trying to enforce the order -- all in just three hours of the rule going into effect.
"Many of those with objections cite the mistaken belief the requirement is unconstitutional, and under their theory, one cannot be forced to wear a mask. No law or court supports this view," said City Manager Norman McNickle in a statement. "It is further distressing that these people, while exercising their believed rights, put others at risk."

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/02/us/face-masks-stillwater-oklahoma-trnd/index.html

"If there is no such thing as cosmic justice, what is the point of being good?"-Vince Gilligan

God, the internet can be distracting. I got on the Johnnies Trump Epidemic site, saw the number of dead now stood at 66,045, didn't remember the precise number killed in Vietnam, googled "Americans killed in Vietnam War", got on the Wikipedia page for that, saw "democide," wondered about Calley, googled him and voila there goes a half hour. 

Have you ever heard of the word "democide"? I had not. Never, ever. Had no idea what it meant. Know what it means? "the murder of persons by or at the behest of governments." And democide is distinguished from killing people in a war. According to this a between 429,000 and 1,119,000 South Vietnamese civilians, South Vietnamese soldiers and U.S. military personnel were killed in the Vietnam War. In addition though between 4,000 and 10,000 were victims of U.S. democide. Would that be like by Lt. William Calley (Oh, of course, he now lives in Miami. Of course he would...Oh, he was born in Miami!)? Like by war criminals? "At the behest of government," though...I don't know. I had never heard of the term before and even having the definition I don't know which victims of whom it covers. 

Just before 1 a.m. yesterday the undersigned wrote,

States are reopening too soon. The curve has not flattened. The U.S. has not, at any fucking time, had anything close to fourteen straight days of declining new cases. It's too soon and the blood on Trump's hands will continue to be accumulate, and to drip off his short, stubby fingers.

Trump has never cared about anyone but himself. His narcissism is playing out in this context as only his reelection matters. The lives of Americans, not. This today from The Guardian:

A broad coalition of US health systems has mobilized to ramp up coronavirus testing in a national effort on a scale not seen since the second world war. But declarations of false victory by the Trump administration and a vacuum of federal leadership have undermined the endeavor, leading experts to warn that reopening the US could result in a disaster.
...
But analysts say that without centralized governance and coordination, the national effort remains a competing coalition of state and local outfits hampered by duplicated work, competition for supplies, siloed pursuits of non-transferable solutions and red tape that leaves some labs with testing backlogs and others with excess capacity.

All of which leaves the US without a unified, coherent strategy for testing and contact tracing...

Without it, the imminent experiment of reopening the country could be catastrophic, warned Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina in a conference call with reporters this week.

“My concern is that we’ll end up right where we have been, with major cities having healthcare systems that get overrun quickly because of major outbreaks,” Mina said.

Meanwhile, as states begin to relax social distancing measures, the Trump administration is spreading dangerous misinformation, denying persistent supply shortages, underestimating the number of Covid-19 cases and exaggerating the margin of safety conferred by the current volume of testing and contact-tracing, experts say.
...
...at current testing levels, with only rudimentary plans for contact tracing for new cases, the US will be flying virtually blind as it reopens, said Glen Weyl, a technologist who co-authored a report issued by Harvard’s Safra Center for Ethics that calls for 5m tests a day by early June.

“We’ve done more than 200,000 tests in a single day,” Mike Pence said at a taskforce briefing this week...

“No, definitely not, you can’t open up with that number,” Weyl said of Pence’s announcement. “It’s not even remotely in the right ballpark. It’s off by a factor of 10.”
...
There are multiple categories of tests...Each test has a different degree of reliability, with different amounts of time and labor required...

“We have too many [brands of] tests, and now there are a lot of people who are committed to their tests and they run their tests on their platforms,” said Paul Reider, a renowned research chemist in the pharmaceuticals industry who teaches at Princeton University.

“If we had an effective administration – this is where the federal government comes in – they could essentially turn around and say, ‘What we would like to do is, we want one test, maybe two, that are fast, that are accurate, that are scalable and transferable, .

“You want a gold-standard test.”
...
“We don’t have a system that’s ever been built for... wide-scale testing for people who aren’t presenting to the hospital or the clinic,” said Mina. “The demand is just so much larger than our system was built for.”

The Trump administration’s response to this complicated thicket has been to declare the federal government a “supplier of last resort” and wish the states luck. “It’s pretty simple,” Trump has said. “They have tremendous capacity..."
...
To celebrate America’s reopening, Trump appears to be preparing to hit the road, with plans to visit warehouses and factory sites to advertise the economic comeback he has promised.
...
Top epidemiologists believe it’s possible that the US could get some kind of reprieve from the virus in the warmer months ahead.
...
“I hope that over the course of the next few weeks to two months, we’re going to actually see a substantial reduction in transmission,” [Michael] Osterholm [ Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota] said. “And if it does, it shouldn’t be interpreted that we won, or that somehow we’re in control.

“I hope that the case numbers continue to decrease over time, but I’m also very, very aware that they’re coming back, and we just have to remember that.”

Princess Charlotte at 5 years. Bless that beautiful little angel.

The Trump Epidemic

Broken shards densely packed, extending skyward like the Manhattan skyline.

The terrible pattern continues unchecked and unrelenting, a broken record of failure, neglect, incompetence, willful ignorance, lies, sickness, death: Five days of daily increases, April 5-9, followed by four days of decline, April 10-13; four days of increase, April 14-17, three days of decline, April 18-20; four days of increase, April 21-24, three days of decrease, April 25-27; four days increase April 28-May 1. 

34,000 new cases yesterday.

The Trump Death May 2

1,103,781 Total Americans infected with Trump Virus.

No data on daily new cases by Johnnies as of post time.

64,946 Americans Killed by Trump.

1,640 Killed by Trump May 1.

5.88% Trump Kill rate. Down one-hundreth of one percent since yesterday.

“The Trump administration’s response to the pandemic has been among the greatest leadership failures in all of American history. Not only did they fail to heed the warnings, not only did they completely screw up the testing, but the president of the United States was actively spewing deadly misinformation to the American people and denying this crisis as it was playing out.”-Jamie Metzel, World Health Organization.

So... he gets a gentleman’s “C,” do I read you correctly?...Okay, okay! “C-“.

The Ugly America

What kind of a people produces as among the most acclaimed men in their fields Thomas Jefferson, John Steinbeck, William Faulkner, Jackson Pollock, Ernest Hemingway, Vince Gilligan, the nearly as celebrated Charles aka Cormac McCarthy, Richard Rorty, and Donald Trump? Men who consciously choose and searchingly pursue as their oeuvre amorality, immorality, pain, cruelty, death, desolation, destruction, and lies?; a man who thinks, "If there is no such thing as cosmic justice, what is the point of being good?" Oh my goodness, Vince Gilligan.

It is a sick, violent, degenerate people that produces such as Gilligan and the others. I agree completely with Gilligan's sentiments here:

"I feel some sort of need for biblical atonement, or justice, or something (lolol). I like to believe there is some comeuppance, that karma kicks in at some point, even if it takes years or decades to happen."

It's gonna happen Vinny, oh, it's a comin'. Karma can pack a powerful kick; America gonna get kicked clean into oblivion. Or something lol.

Okay, that's it for me. He lets Jane, Jesse's girlfriend, choke to death right before his eyes on a heroin overdose. Breaking Bad--Done.

To ask moral questions is to recognize that there is a difference between morality and immorality. Only one species has that capacity, homo sapiens. For our species the world is black and white and a million shades of gray. Existence for species that have not the capacity is amoral and monochromatic. The minds that created Breaking Bad ask moral questions, ergo they recognize the difference. They are human beings.

Yet, through eleven episodes of season two the moral questions asked go unanswered; the line drawing is a sleight of hand that demonstrates that there are no lines. For through eleven episodes of season two every character is painted the same color. Marie shoplifts, Badger's criminal defense lawyer is a criminal lawyer; the Mexican restaurant chain's owner is the criminal lawyer's meth chain whale; Walt creates the purest, most addictive form of a substance that is (now, the creators say) illegal and immoral--it ruins people's lives, sometimes ends their lives. Walt ruins the lives even of his wife and handicapped son, with Skyler going into labor to deliver into Walt's World a daughter. Ah, innocence at last. Not so fast.  A 10 year-old riding a bicycle murders Combo, put up to it by adults in a rival drug enterprise. Little Holly is the fruit of the poisonous tree of Walt and Skyler, who last episode showed her own true color, gray, by leaving her employ with Beneke Fabricators Inc. when she discovers financial improprieties that could land boss, and soon to be lover Ted, in prison--and then returns minutes after driving off. "We manufacture things here," Ted says by way of explanation when he is caught. "We employ people. Business is bad, I've got the IRS on my ass. I'm not going to let this business go down." Walt too manufactures things; he also has the authorities on his ass; he too could end up in prison. See?  Is the point that members of our species are all the same shade of gray, an equal mixture of black and white? If so, it is an intellectually dishonest and morally barren point.We are not. No one of us is snow white or jet black but there are discernible shades of gray. Pose questions. Answer them. Draw lines. Do not make the lines you have drawn--andthus recognize as lines--disappear.

They do introduce a deus ex machina. Moral entity, the deus. But machines are not moral, ergo God as machine is not a moral entity. The deus ex machina is chemical, which is also neither good nor bad but merely is, chemotherapy. Chemo shrunk chem teacher Walt's tumor by 80%. A new lease on life! Lives are moral entities. "Man is the sum of the things he has done, and the choices he made in his life." Walt choose immorality and illegality. After getting the "good" news he goes into a bathroom to vomit and then dents the paper towel dispenser by punching it several times. In his celebratory toast at his home: "When I got my cancer diagnosis I thought 'Why me?' When I got the news that I was in remission I asked myself the same question." At the same celebration Walt pours 16 year-old Walt, Jr., aka Flynn, three glasses of tequila--in front of DEA agent Hank. Alcohol: a chemical substance that once was illegal, now is legal, but still illegal for those under 21 years of age; meth: once legal, now illegal; which alcohol causes Walt, Jr., aka Flynn to throw up in the swimming pool; just as Walt's chemotherapy cocktail causes him to throw up. The doctors recommend surgery now that the tumor is no longer inoperable. "How much will that cost?" "$170,000-$200,000." "We can do that." Walt. Skyler looks incredulously at her husband who initially didn't want to put the family through the financial hardship of chemotherapy. Surgery gives Walt a new lease on life as drug lord. I'm sorry, was there a moral question being posed?

As moral creatures we must draw lines and for our convenience the law draws them for us. No, laws are not identical with morality and should not be mixed up with morality but they do provide an approximate guide, close enough for government work, to what society has determined to be in the best interest of all; yes, it is often difficult to draw lines and the lines the law draws are not infrequently erased, they are the best an imperfect species can do. Yes, the difference between legality and illegality--and, mixing the two up now, between morality and immorality--is often a matter of degree, as our deus distinguished ten commandments from others; as the same entity proscribed seven particular sins (moral things, sins) as deadly; as there are degrees of felonies, which can land you in prison, which are distinguished by degree from misdemeanors which do not land you in prison; as the difference between ice and boiling water is a matter of degree. Perhaps you are one of those, as was the designated fall guy in episode ten, who prefers prison to freedom; or one like Walt who sees "different kinds of prison," who risks the one with gray bars over the one with broad lawns. We all must choose.

The Trump Epidemic, May 1, 12:44 a.am.

1,069,664 Total number of Americans infected with Trump Virus.

29,500 Number of Americans newly infected with Trump Virus on April 30. 
Third day in a row of increases, following the pattern. Many states are opening today, May 1.

63,006 Total number of Americans Killed by Trump.

5.89% Trump Kill efficiency.

States are reopening too soon. The curve has not flattened. The U.S.  has not, at any fucking time, had anything close to fourteen straight days of declining new cases. It's too soon and the blood on Trump's hands will continue to be accumulate, and to drip off his short, stubby fingers.