Randy Rainbow Takes On The Coronavirus

Randy Rainbow is giving us a bit of gallows humor
with "The Coronavirus Lament."

Leave to Randy Rainbow to give us a bit of comic relief for the coronavirus nightmare.

Over the weekend, Rainbow dropped a new video called "The Coronavirus Lament."

It's based on "Adelaide's Lament," by Frank Loesser, which is from the 1950 Tony-winning musical "Guys and Dolls."

I've been a nervous wreck during this crisis, so I definitely need a laugh. You do, too.

Italians React In Beautiful Way To Coronavirus Quarantine

This Italian neighborhood is deserted due to a government-imposed
coronoviris quarantine, but residents insisted on making things
beautiful anyway

Italy, as you have probably heard in the news, is pretty much locked down because of the corona virus.

That means 60 million or so Italians have been told to stay in their houses. Italians have a reputation of being very social animals, so this has to be painful for all of them. No matter how physically  healthy they feel.  

To boost each other's spirits, residents in city neighborhoods have been singing to each other from windows and balconies, even as the streets below are deserted. A viral video of this, which you can see at the bottom of this post actually made me cry a little.

When there's big calamities hit, there are sometimes awful moments of cruelty. Or moments of absurdity - witness the great Toilet Paper rushes of this week.  But also great beauty emerges from humanity in times of crisis.  This is video is just one manifestation of that.

Let this being an example of how we should behave, moving forward:

Televangelists Want People To Die Of Covid-19 So They Can Get Richer

Scamevangelist says if your church is taking coronavirus precautions, that
church is not really a religion. Obviously, if your church suggests
precautions, God would probably want you to go along with them. 

Everybody is an understandable, correct tizzy over the dangerous conornavirus, as I'm sure you're all experiencing.

One of many patterns I'm noticing is how evil televangelists and conspiracy theorists are through this whole thing.

I've always known most of these types are scum of the Earth, but to use a pandemic to get rich using scams, no matter how many people die as a result, is just....just.....I can't even come up with the word.

We give life prison sentences or the death penalty to mass murderers. Aren't these people doing exactly the same. Except not with a gun, but with words aimed at the gullible.

I've got just a few examples. Let's start with one dude named Jonathan Shuttlesworth.

Here's what he said about churches that close down and/or limit services.

"Shame on every European full gospel church, bunch of sissies, that shut down during this thing. Catholic Church not having holy water in the lobby - how holy is the water then?  That should be a sign to you that your whole religion's a fraud.  Any faith that doesn't work in real life is a fake faith. Totally fake.

If you're putting out pamphlets and telling everybody to use Purell before they come into the sanctuary and don't greet anyone, you should just turn in your ministry credentials and burn your church down -- turn it into a casino or something. You're a loser. Bunch of pansies. No balls."

Shuttlesworth has a solution to this though. Join his church!

If you join Shuttlesworth's ministry, he says. Just join up and send him all your cash, you will be given a supernatural protection from the coronavirus. So that's the scam.  So people will give this idiot donations, think they're protected, get infected and spread the virus to anyone who unwittingly comes in close contact with them.

Nice, huh?

Scammer Jim Bakker tried to sell a fake "cure" for Covid-19.
There's lots of cease and desist letters over this out there 

Same is true with Jim Bakker. You probably remember him, or his wife. He's been scamming for a long, long time.  Here's a recap, put succinctly by NPR:

"Bakker gained fame in the 1970s and '80s as the host of The PTL Club, a Christian television program he hosted with his then-wife, Tammy Faye. He stepped down from PTL after a sex scandal and later spent several years in prison after a jury found that he had defrauded his viewers out of millions of dollars."

Bakker's out of prison now for that.  So he's scamming people in a much more deadly way than his crimes earlier.

He's hawking a product called Silver Solution.  As NPR reports, Bakker had a guest on his show back on February 12 named Sherrill Sellman and implied it can cure illnesses associated with this virus.  "Well, let's say it hasn't been tested on this strain of the cornavirus, but it has been tested on other strains fothe coronavirus and has been able to eliminated it within 12 hours....Totally eliminate it. Kills it. Deactivates it."

Missouri filed a lawsuit against Bakker and his production compant to stop them from advertising and selling Silver Solution.  New York State issued a cease and desist against Bakker for this item.  Also, the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Trade Commission warned Bakker that he and his cohorts were selling unapproved new drugs in violation of the law, reports NPR.

Bakker has since taken down advertisements for Silver Solution, but Missouri is still pursuing the case because they worry Bakker might quietly start selling the stuff once attention to it starts to die down.

Creepy scamevangelist Kenneth Copeland says he can protect you from
the virus if you let him bless you by putting your hand on your TV
screen when hes on. 

Then we have the oh so creepy looking "televangelist" Kenneth Copeland, who told his viewers to put their hands on their TV screens in order to get God's protection from this virus.

Once people did that, Copeland instructed them to say "I take it, I have it. It's mine. I thank you and praise you for it."  Then I'm sure Copeland did his usual money beg for his grateful, but still very unsafe viewers.

But, according to Copeland, his viewers shouldn't be afraid because Jesus. Or Copeland. I don't know. Anyway, he said this weirdness:  "Fear is not OK. It is sin. It is a magnet for sickness and disease. The moment you begin to fear about anything, the devil goes to work on you. You are giving the devil a pathway to your body."

Got that? Coronovirus isn't a virus. It's the devil.  So an eventual vaccine won't help?

You might remember Copeland from early 2018 when he bought a private Gulfstream jet for $5.8 million.  He did so because he once called flying in a commercial airplane as "getting in a long tube with a bunch of demons." 

Anyway, I'm being Captain Obvious here. If you really want advice about coronovirus, televangelists won't help you.  Go to the CDC or better yet, the World Health Organization (WHO) if you want to learn ways to protect yourself.

If God were really speaking through these scamevangelists, I'm betting he'd be telling you to go to WHO, too.

Anti-Milk Protesters Were (Briefly) Scary, Still Dumb, Still Ineffectual

Jill Biden wrestling an anti-dairy protester away from her
husband, Joe Biden

A little highlight of the Super Tuesday primary last week was the noisy but very dumb anti-dairy direct action protesters that scared Joe Biden and the people surrounding him during a rally Tuesday evening.

A couple of idiots, identified as Sarah Segal and Ashley Froud from some outfit called Direct Action Everywhere yelling "Let Dairy Die!" ran toward Biden.  His wife, Jill Biden, demonstrating that she is a Philadelphia badass, physically blocked one of them.

The whole thing led to a now-iconic photograph of Jill Biden, teeth clenched, grabbing the protester's arms and wrestling her away from her husband.  Jill Biden, and Biden aide Symone Sanders, who forcefully and physically drove the anti-diary nuts away,  were the only ones who came out looking good from this.

According to Time Magazine:

"'The protest was intended to draw attention to the inherent violence of the dairy industry,' a spokesperson for Direct Action Everywhere tells Time over Twitter DM. 'We targeted Biden's rally because the Biden campaign has prominently featured appearances by former U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who now receives a million-dollar salary as CEO and President of the U.S Dairy Export Council.'"

It seems like Direct Action Everywhere is into these dumb stunts.  The anti-dairy protesters have interrupted  Elizabeth Warren events in the past.  And they made a splash at a Bernie Sanders rally earlier this year.

According to The Hill,  three topless women crashed the stage in February at a Nevada Bernie Sanders rally with the words, "let dairy die" painted on their chest. Another (clothed) protester, wrestled the mic from Sanders and declared, "Bernie, I'm your biggest supporter and I'm here to ask you to stop propping up the dairy industry and stop propping up animal agriculture,"

I really can't stand Direct Action Everywhere for lots of reasons, as you've probably figured out by now.  They emphasize they are nonviolent and I'm certain the demonstrators had no intention of harming Biden, Sanders and Warren.

But their protests come perilously close to violence, which paints Direct Action Everywhere as hypocrites.  Forcefully grabbing a mic from Sanders was vaguely violent, as was charging toward Biden on Super Tuesday. With all the nutcases running around out there, I'm sure Sanders, Biden and the people around them were briefly scared.

The Biden incident looked especially frightening to me.  Meanwhile, Direct Action Everywhere's Facebook states that they ".....ask folks who come into our spaces to be nonviolent in not only action, but tone and word."

They didn't make it to that standard at the Biden rally, did they?

One of the Biden protesters, Ashley Froud, told the Los Angeles Times she heard Jill Biden scream during the incident. (Who can blame her?)

"When you're so passionate and driven to do something, you don't even think about it. You just do it," Froud said.

By that logic, when somebody says, "I'm so mad at Bill I could kill him," they should just go ahead and kill Bill?

Froud told the Los Angeles Times how full of herself she is that everybody is talking about her message. "Looking at that photograph, I feel proud that I was able to deliver that message....If I could have done it another way that would have gained this much attraction, I would have, because I don't want to make people feel like they're in any fear. But it's hard to make people listen to these issues that matter."

It's hard to get the message out so you did this stupid stunt. Yes, a lot more people are now aware of your cause, but now, at least as many people won't take you seriously.

I'm pretty sure there are serious abuses in the dairy industry, at least in the big factory farm type operations. (I'm more familiar with the small farm operations here in Vermont, and it doesn't seem like there's a lot of animal abuse on those little dairy farms).

What Froud and her cohorts are failing to do is telling us why we should care, which is how you get people on board with your cause. People don't like animal abuse.  They don't like agribusiness cutting corners on safety. They want to know that what they're eating and drinking comes from good, ethical sources.

Instead, these demonstrators were just acting stupid. That doesn't inspire me to take their argument seriously, that's for sure.

Song From "A Star Is Born" Creates A New Star Being Born

Charlotte Awbery might be a case of a star is born
because she sang "Shallow" from "A Star is Born"
in a viral video 

One of my favorite songs in recent years is "Shallow" by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. As most of you know, it's from the most recent remake of the movie "A Star Is Born."

Lady Gaga has one of the best voices in the music business, and of course I'm a huge fanboy of hers. She can do no wrong.  And the song "Shallow" is absolutely gorgeous.

The reason I bring this up is that viral video, perhaps the most viral video of the year, of a woman who was accosted by a man in the London Tube who sang the first lyrics of "Shallow" and demanded the woman sing the subsequent lyrics.

The man in the London Tube, Kevin Freshwater, is a video blogger who did this as part of his shtick. He was clearly not prepared for what the woman, named Charlotte Awbery did. Hesitant at first, Awbery built up and belted it out with Freshwater's encouragement.

In that moment, well, a star was born.  The video of Awbery in the London tube went extremely viral.   It's had something like 60 million hits on social media. Her Instagram following went from 4,000 to 400,000.

This moment changed her life.  Awbery was already a professional singer, but she hadn't hit it big until now.  She is a singer and songwriter by profession.  There are previous clips of Awbery floating around out there of her singing classics like "Purple Rain" by Prince and hits by Celine Dion and Sia.

She's also had a steady string of gigs at clubs, bars, weddings, parties and such, but nothing big time.

The viral video of Awbery in the Subway singing "Shallow" pushed the original Lady Gaga/Bradley Cooper back on the iTunes Top 40.  Last week, Ellen Degeneres had her on her daytime show to sing the entire song.  I'm sure a record deal is in the works.

You never know what will come of this, of course. Will Awbery be another flash in the pan, or does this establish her as a star.  It's yet another case of how big breaks, or at least potential ones, can come out of nowhere.

This is the second time in about a year that music in a subway causes a sensation.







In any event, here's Awbery's performance on "Ellen"

Randy Rainbow's Latest, To Nurse Your Super Tuesday Hangover

The ever-productive Randy Rainbow released a new video during Super Tuesday, urging us to vote for a Democrat. Any Democrat. He doesn't care. As long as it's not GOP Trump.

This parody is from the song "Any Dream Will Do," from Andrew Lloyd Weber's "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat."

Instead of "Any Dream Will Do," Rainbow switched it to "Any Dem Will Do."

In the fast-pace time of primaries, certain aspects of this video were outdated upon release, even though he clearly made the video in the past few days.  Democrats featured in the video include Peter Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Tom Steyer, who all dropped out of the race in the day or so before Super Tuesday.  (Then Mike Bloomberg dropped out just this morning).

Of course, Rainbow doesn't even remember Steyer's name in the video, Todd or something, because this candidate wasn't exactly an overpowering presence in the Democratic lineup.

In any event, Rainbow, in his song adheres to his motto, "Any Dem will do," because despite any and all of the Democrats' individual quirks and shortcomings they're better than Trump. Such as Bernie Sanders, "He's more kvetchy than my mom."

Here's the video:

Nation Getting More And More Stupid

No Corona beer has nothing to do with a virus

There have always been a lot of stupid people around.  Frankly, I'm not especially smart, but there seems to be a big, intensifying competition out there about how extreme stupidity can get.

I don't want to be a part of that competiton.  However, I can gawk at it, because there's tons of examples out there.

I'll start with a relatively mild one, and then let it go downhill from there. You are going to be rolling your eyes and shaking your head, guaranteed.

CORONA BEER CAUSES COVID-19?

Then there was the poll that suggested 38 percent of Americans would never drink a Corona beer because it's similarly named to the Coronavirus.  As if you could get the illness from anything with the word "corona" in it.

By that logic, I guess you could get the illness by going outside on a sunny day.  After all, the sun has a cornona, right?

To my relief, this 38 percent number in the poll could easily be misleading because the poll was poorly worded.

According to HuffPost, the questions and some of the answers went like this:

Question: "Is Corona related to the coronavirus?"  Disconcertingly, 16 percent of beer drinkers were "confused" at this.  Hopefully, the respondents were drunk when they were asked.  Everybody is confused when they're drunk.

Question: "In light of the coronavirus, do you plan to stop drinking Corona?"  Four percent of people who say they usually drink Corona beer would stop because of this. Dummies.

Question: "Would you buy Corona under any circumstances now?"  This was the magic question that got all the publicity. Thirty-eight of beer drinking Americans said they would not.  I'm just hoping and praying most of those who said they would not simply don't like Corona beer and wouldn't drink it even if the coronavirus wasn't a thing.

Or, as HuffPost notes, people might stop drinking Corona because it reminds them of something unpleasant they'd rather not think about, or that drinking a Corona in front of friends or in public would set them up to be the butt of a joke.

So, my bad for not thinking through the logic, or lack thereof, in the way the poll question was worded.

That doesn't mean there's a lot of stupid people out there.  It gets worse. Keep reading.

IT'S THE DEMOCRATS' FAULT

Some of Donald Trump's most ardent supporters have noted that so far, early in this coronavirus epidemic, the majority of cases have been reported in states and cities run by Democrats.

There could be lots of reasons for that.  Bad luck? More widespread testing in those districts? More people in these areas that have traveled to countries that have been particularly hard hit? All plausible explanations. Who knows, right?

Well, the MAGA crowd sure knows what's going on, apparently.   According to Raw Story, here are some of the reasons why the coronavirus has hit places like Washington State and California, both blue states.

I don't want to provide links to these people's Twitter accounts because I don't want to reward them, here's a sampling:

Some moron named Bob Berger tweeted, "Have you noticed all new cass of the coronavirus are in Democrat states Wash. Or. Cal. I'll (sic) RI. do you think the dems are dumb enough to get sick to make Trump look bad just saying."

Yes, because people always want to come down with a potentially deadly illness to own the MAGAs.

 They get worse:  "Prediction: Democrat run cities in the US will start announcing many sick people with coronavirus "symptoms" to crash the Mkts to hurt Trump. It's sad that this is where we are as a country but it's the truth. Democrats know the only chance to beat Trump is a mkt crash."

I'll repeat the above refrain: Destroy their own 401ks to own the MAGA's? Really?

A couple more before my headache gets too extreme: "Notice how the virus is located in Democrat states? Are the Dems purposely contaminating these people? It's a fair question."  So Democrats are into committing genocide?

The answer is apparently yes according to the most stupid MAGAs.  Like this tweet: "Democrat run Blue States will infect the poor with the virus in State Run Hospitals to exploit their deaths against Trump, because, well, it's the Democrats."

This almost, but not quite, makes me wish these ignorant tweeters would come down with the virus. But that would be mean.

GARTH BROOKS AND NOT THAT SANDERS

Garth Brooks wearing a Sanders football jersey.  It references
Barry Sanders, not the Bernie Sanders. But people are too stupid
to understand that, apparently

So this happened to country music legend Garth Brooks last week:

He was in Detroit and part of the plan was to honor Barry Sanders, one of most notable running backs and Detroit Lions NFL players on record.

Brooks wore a #20 Sanders football jersey at his show, and shared a photo of him wearing it on Instagram.

I get it that not every Garth Brooks fan knows who Barry Sanders is.  But it was clearly a football jersey, right?

Nope. Some now erstwhile Garth Brooks fans exploded in anger. The football jersey Brooks wore said "Sanders" so these ignoramuses just automatically assumed Brooks was campaigning for presidential candidate and Democratic-Socialist Bernie Sanders.

As Snopes reported, one person wrote: "I had no idea you wer a big freaking liberal socialist! I've listened to your songs for the last time!" Another wrote, "If this is for Bernie Sanders, I'm done with you. I thought you wer a true American that loves our country."

You wouldn't believe how many similar declarations there were out on social media over the past few days.

As far as anybody can tell, Garth Brooks has in actuality not given any kind of opinion on who he favors for president. Other than perhaps Barry Sanders, who tweeted, "Hey @garthbrooks, want to be my VP? #Number20For2020."

Brooks tweeted back, "I would run any race with you."  At least the country music star is keeping a good sense of humor about this whole thing.

TIN HAT TIME!

I'll leave you with this, um, creative theory from an actual U.S. Congress candidate Joanne Wright who apparently approvingly retweeted the following now-deleted missive:

 OK, my headache just got much worse. Time to shut this post down for today.