Guess the European city

 

Nope.  Bolton Hill section of Baltimore

COVID surge is here in Howard County

 

   When November is over the number of cases of COVID-19 will have risen by more than 250% in Maryland and Howard County.  Approximately 50 Americans are now dying every hour. A 9/11 every 3 days. But just another golfing day for Trump.

Merriweather District all decorated for the Holidays and no one around

    The plans for people living and working in the new Merriweather District have probably been impacted by the pandemic.  The District looks like they are ready but no one came.

    Meanwhile, the line of cars on Brokenland Parkway waiting to get a COVID test at 6 am the day before Thanksgiving was 50 or 60 cars long.  The testing didn't begin till 8:30.

#hocoblogs

WKRP "Turkey Drop" episode

    

     You had to have a sense of humor that went to the absurd to enjoy the old sitcom called "WKRP in Cincinnati."  Their Turkey Drop episode in which turkeys were thrown from a helicopter under the impression that turkeys could fly is a classic.  The creator of the show had actually worked at a radio station that had tried something similar only dropping turkeys off the back of a truck with the same result.   Here is the link.

We know how this ends

 

New Columbia ice rink

 

  

OPEN NOVEMBER 21, 2020 – JANUARY 31, 2021

"The new Color Burst Ice Rink at Merriweather District is opening for the 2020 – 2021 season! We’re excited to bring more joy to Downtown Columbia this winter with a safe and enjoyable outdoor experience for the entire family. Our full-sized rink welcomes you with festive décor – the perfect place for date nights and family outings. There will be plenty of Holiday celebrations and themed events throughout the season, as well as music, food trucks, and the nearby Symphony of Lights at Merriweather Post Pavilion. Skate up an appetite? Head over to a local restaurant for a great, safe indoor or grab-and-go meal. See you on the ice!

For the safety and convenience of all guests, a limited number of visitors will be admitted to the ice rink every 30-minutes.  All visits must be reserved in advance by purchasing a timed ticket(s) online. All visitors will receive a confirmation email with a safety waiver and a receipt.  Entry is not guaranteed to those who walk up to purchase tickets. 

Those who attempt the “walk-up” purchase of tickets in-person, will be shown a QR-code to  purchase tickets on their smartphones; if the present time is fully-booked, the guest will be shown other available times to skate."

BUY TICKETS HERE

#hocoblogs

This week's funnies

 My quote of the week"

"It’s weird being the same age as old people."

New chart to determine the spread of COVID by county across the United States

    

  I have seen many charts that give the situation with COVID-19 in different states but this chart shows your chances of being exposed to someone who has COVID-19 by location and group size. Interesting to see how your chances change due to those factors.

When desperate old vain men lose their "vitality"

    Yesterday the Trump clown show moved on with Rudy Guiliani losing it in a news conference so bad that his hair dye started to run down his face.  With the way Rudy was sweating will we soon learn he is COVID positive? For this, he is getting paid $20,000 a day?

    We didn't think our Country could sink any lower than our "top clown" having a spray tan problem.

      As the song from the Gambler says it's time to "know when to hold 'em and know when to fold 'em."  Time for some more medication for the crazy old men.

The coming shutdown?

   

       One thing that has been learned in the handling of the present pandemic is that the quicker you take action to control the spread the quicker you can control the virus.  Many countries in the Far East recognized this fact and have been able to have some normalcy return to their countries.  The United States, the country of personal liberty and individual risk, has seen our Country devastated by the virus.  We still seem to be sticking our heads in the ground with Trump's idiocy killing tens of thousands of US citizens.  Now as Europe, which is in better shape than the US, begins to go into a new shut down we have Trump spreading the virus, that he had, around the Country with his rallies.   If you think we will go through this Winter without a new shutdown you are fooling yourself.  The only problem is we will wait so late that it will not have the results it could have if we were to follow Europe right now.  Some proactive actions now will restore our economy quicker than waiting for herd immunity to end the pandemic with more deaths than in all of our wars combined.  Will the US continue to be the "stupid" country?

Shut down the White House after Christmas

 

      Christmas at the White House will be different this year with no one home.  I can imagine Trump going to Mar-a-Lago soon and not coming back.  Do you think he will show up for the Inauguration? Not likely.  The whole White House should be shut down 2 weeks before the Inauguration and decontaminated before the Biden's move in.  We always knew Trump would leave behind a stink but we never knew it would be deadly.

P.S.

      Want to see what Trump would look like if he didn't have the comb-over and spray tan? Actually, it makes him look more normal.

 

A change of 0.0004% of the votes cast would have meant a second Donald Trump term

  

     A change of 100,000 votes out of over 145,000,000 votes total in 4 states would mean a second term for Donald Trump.  The Electoral College once again almost gave us another travesty of democracy by the way it determines the winner in presidential contests.  Biden winning by 5 or 6 million doesn't mean anything with this crazy system.  The only crazier system is the US Senate that gives the 2 million residents of Wyoming, North, and South Dakota three times the representation in the Senate than the 40 million residents of California.  The fear of small states being controlled by big states seems to be more important than the standard of one person one vote.  What about the injustice of small states controlling large states?

"Millie" Bailey is someone you should get to know

  

    If you have been by the Lakefront in Town Center you may have noticed a new park dedicated to "Millie" Bailey.  This remarkable 102-year-old lady is someone who has lived an interesting life that has even included skydiving this year.

   I had a chance to get to know Millie 40 years ago when she attended the Guilford Lunch Program at the Guilford Baptist Church.  What I remember was that she made the best sweet potato rolls that she brought to the Christmas lunches every year at the Lunch site.  She was a good friend of my friend Leola Dorsey who managed the Lunch site.  Now many years later it is interesting to learn more about Millie's story.  To watch her amazing story (unfortunately with commercials!) click here.

Trumpers follow their leader over the new steeper cliff

    

       With 1,500 deaths each day from COVID-19 Trump only cares about how Fox let him down by calling Arizona for Biden on election night.  Trump always turns on his friends which they have it coming.  My conservation family and friends are now moving from Fox to OAN and NewsMax which are seen as more friendly to Trump than Fox.  Don't be surprised that one of those stations gets relabeled "TrumpTV" soon.  Trumpers are moving from Facebook to the social media platform called Parlar because it doesn't fact check their false information posts.   Cultists hate reality and facts.

P.S.

    To end the week, I try to have some humor or cartoon for the week.  This week the cartoon was a real event that the Republicans held that was the funniest thing I saw last week.  I couldn't top that.

      

     We saw the Trump clown show hold a press conference at a landscaping company in Philadelphia.  I can only imagine the strange planning process that went into this event.  Let's have a press conference for the President in front of a garage door where we tack up some posters and then everyone says that is brilliant.  What was the symbolism of picking this venue?  What was the message they were trying to convey other than they are incompetent to be representing the leader of the free world? 

What does it mean to be an American today?

    

     We hear a lot about "Buy American" or "Make America Great Again."  What does that really mean in today's World?  We buy Japanese, Korean, and German cars.  We love Mexican, Chinese, Italian, and Indian food.  We love Swedish furniture.  Spanish is rapidly becoming our second language. We value that air travel allows us to visit countries all over the World. We love and pay dearly for French and Italian wines.  Credit cards have become a universal currency making foreign currency obsolete when we travel.  Remember when traveling to a foreign country meant visiting an American Express office to cash in one of their checks for the foreign currency?  Maybe if you live in the hills of West Virginia this world hasn't arrived but for 75,000,000 (and counting) of us in the United States it has been our new normal for some time.

Child abuse in Howard County may now be more hidden

   

      A news report in the Columbia Patch recently stated that child abuse reports to our local Department of Social Services were down 60%.  This isn't because less abuse is occurring but that children are not in schools and other community activities that lead to abuse reports.  Schools particularly are a prime source of child abuse reports.  Teachers and counselors seeing children on a regular basis can be the adults to recognize incidences of abuse and neglect.  Sheltering in place may not be a safe place for many children in our community.

#hocoblogs

Good Morning America visits Ellicott City again on November 5th

     Good Morning America visited Ellicott City last week.

  Watch the episode here. 

#hocoblogs

This will happen in 2 months

 Silly folks don't you know that the national debt only applies to money spent on "socialist" programs

New fashion statement

 Out with the MAGA hats

In with the Ray-Ban Aviators

If only this could happen

 

Heads I win, tails you lose

   

     The definition of delusional thinking goes like this.  For Republicans, the only honest election is one that they win.  Any election they lose has to be because of corruption and cheating.  Maybe it shouldn't be surprising for a political party that has followers that fall for every conspiracy theory that comes along.  So much for taking responsibility for your actions instead of having a victim mentality. So now who are the "snowflakes?"

P.S.

    Do the Republicans in decrying socialism want to still use tax dollars to pay for police or do they now want to "defund the police?"

Take heart the trend is moving in the right direction: Red States that have turned Blue

  I know that many Democrats today are discouraged that Trump still can get the votes that make the 2020 election so close.  We were expecting a better election night. Don't lose the fact that the United States is moving in a progressive direction.  In the past 20 years here is what is happening to our electorate.

 2000 Presidential election results                   2020 Presidential election results

Virginia-Republican                                        Virginia-----Democrat

Colorado-Republican                                       Colorado---Democrat

Nevada-Republican                                         Nevada------Democrat

New Hampshire-Republican                           New Hampshire---Democrat

      Remember when California was a dependable Red state up through 1988? How about Maryland going Red in 1988 too and its Congressional delegation being split 4 Democrats and 4 Republicans?

     Finally, with Atlanta growing so fast Georgia is becoming a purple state.  Growth in the Phoenix area has already turned Arizona from red to purple to now probably a dependable blue state.  Arizona that once had Barry Goldwater as a senator now will have 2 Democrat senators.  Growth in the Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio has moved Texas closer to become a purple state.  Much of this growth in cities is because of the movement of young people to these cities.  

Provide a Thanksgiving meal for a Howard County family

   

     The Community Action Council has been providing Thanksgiving meals for hundreds of Howard County families.  What a better way to end this tough year than to make a donation to provide a Thanksgiving meal to this effort. Here is the information from CAC:

"Did you know 1 out of 4 Howard County residents are struggling to make ends meet?  That means having a hard time paying their bills, affording their rent, and putting food on their tables.  Unfortunately, Howard County residents are facing a greater struggle because of the pandemic.   

This holiday season might look very different for Howard County families.  Many people will have to alter their holiday plans, will not be able to travel out of state, or might not even be able to leave their homes.  To ensure every Howard County resident has a warm and special holiday season, CAC is stepping in to help provide holiday meal kits.  Please help us achieve our goal of providing 2,000 meal kits for Howard County residents by donating to our food drive, please click here to donate.  For every $50 raised CAC can provide one meal kit – this includes a turkey, sides, produce, and bread!  Thank you for your support, happy holidays! "

#hocoblogs

I've given up trying to understand

      Like many of us, I have tried to understand how 40+ percent of the voters in this Country today look at the choice in this election between one person who is a corrupt, immoral, sociopath who has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of our citizens and another person who has shown decency and compassion in his life story and still choose the sociopath.  I give up.

P.S.

     It seems strange to have the section of the country that I grew up in, Northeast Pennsylvania, to become a prime battleground in this election.  This depressed coal mining area is one that has seen better days.  I, like most young people, wanted to leave as soon as we could.  The last time this area had this attention was when Bill Scranton our Governor ran for President in 1964.  He was a moderate to liberal Republican back when there was such a thing. 

Peaceful transfer of power maybe a thing of the past

   We have seen Trump bullies trying to run a Biden bus off the road.  Now the intensity of feelings on both sides has led to the businesses in DC boarding up as a precaution to the possibility of violence post-election.   We might as a Country not be at a civil war but we seem to be moving in the direction of living in two separate cultures. 

P.S.

Someone doesn't like Trump

Lastest COVID-19 data for Howard County shows some increase in spread of the virus

 

    The stat to look at in the data below is the number of positives per 100,000 population.  That is the new metric that Johns Hopkins is using to assess the spread within a community.  When you get to 10 per 100,000 then you have a difficult to control spread and we are closer at 9.12 to that than we have been since the beginning of the spread of the virus.  

P.S.

     How Maryland compares to other states.  The rural states are now some of the worst hotspots.   Look at those in comparison to New York.