God Bless America

'Re-open' protest, Olympia, Washington, April 19, Getty Images

I attended high school in New Hampshire, where the license plates say 'Live free or die'. That always struck me as existing on a fine line between a slogan and a threat. The distinction is if it's said with pride or contempt – in other words, who is expected to die?

Today we have our regular call with our financial planner. What a time to talk about finances. She takes our call, surprisingly, from her office; turns out they need to catch up on a lot of administrative work that has gone untended. I won't lie, I was kind of curious to see the inside of her house. Toward the end of the call, our conversation wanders to my mother's financial planning, which is a mess for a whole other set of reasons.

My mother trusted her money to Eric; she believed this man to be a financial planner, but he was really just a salesman, working on commission, pushing a specific sets of investments. We have been able to remove Eric and untangle most of his work, but there are a few things that are more difficult to undo – one in particular is a twenty-year annuity that is tied up with penalties. This financial planner sold my eight-nine year old mother a twenty-year annuity. When confronted, point by point, Eric repeated, "I only did what your parents asked me to do" – with the applied smile and assurance of someone who’s had practice with that line.

With thoughts of Eric still fresh, I watch the above CNN interview with Pastor Tony Spell. The context is excruciating: Spell continues to defy state orders in Louisiana, buses in hundreds of people from the surrounding counties for services, feeds them, neglects health precautions (masks, distancing), and asks for donations of stimulus checks.

The Bible tells us to lay hands on the sick and they shall recover and will continue to do that without the fear of the spread of any virus.

The interviewer for CNN, Victor Blackwell, points out that Spell's own lawyer, who attended the service on Palm Sunday is now hospitalized with COVID-19. His lawyer's wife, who did not attend, is also positive for SAR-CoV-2. Another congregant died last week, which makes Spell's assurance that 'they shall recover' an obscene con. It also gives his continued defiance the appearance of manslaughter, with a smile and a blessing. Like another who’s practiced his lines, he says:

You have no way to prove that they contracted this virus in our services.

It's Tuesday. It's always Tuesday now.

Today, the world has two and a half million cases of COVID-19, with one hundred and seventy thousand deaths. The US has eight hundred thousand cases and well over forty thousand deaths. Portugal has over twenty thousand cases and seven hundred deaths.

Any predictions the the virus would only kill sixty thousand in the US, as was reported just two weeks ago, are starting to sound like a con, too. At the present rate, the US will blow past sixty thousand by the end of April.

cases: 2,501,156 global • 800,932 USA • 21,379 Portugal

deaths: 171,810 global • 43,006 USA • 762 Portugal

---

UPDATE: Pastor Tony Spell was handcuffed and arrested near his church this afternoon, and faces charges of aggravated assault.