Posted on by Californiacontrarian

“I Raise!”


Typically at a poker table where there is money involved, you may well be faced with a very aggressive player. This aggressive player makes it known early on that he does not like to be challenged, and so the most common words out of his mouth are . . . “I raise.” If you are “mano-a-mano” in a hand with a one of these super-aggressive players, you can fully expect to be raised and re-raised. The thing to remember if you are in such a situation is just because they raise doesn’t necessarily mean that they have a good hand. 

Last week I woke up in a sweat with a bad dream . . . in fact it was a nightmare. 

I was in a poker game. The thing that made this unlike a regular poker game was that the currency used was “arbitrariness.” In other words, instead of raising $100, the super-aggressive player would have to “out-arbitrary” the other . . . if player A said or did something arbitrary, aggressive player B would do something even more arbitrary – the equivalent of “I raise.” Likewise, if in response to the “I raise” of player B, player A could then do something even more Arbitrary – the equivalent of “I re-raise.” Similar to at the poker table, where a raise or a re-raise did not mean that the raiser necessarily had a good hand, in this “arbitrary stakes game” some outlandish arbitrary statement did not necessarily mean that the raiser knew what he was talking about.

The thing that made this a nightmare rather than just a bad dreamwas that I was at the arbitrary poker table with Gavin Newsom, the “esteemed” governor of California, and Bill de Blasio, the “esteemed” mayor of New York City. 

Newsom started the betting with a purely arbitrary colored tier scheme in reference to the coronavirus. Purple tier, red tier, etc. was based on some purely arbitrary criteria, based on somethings upon which those who lived in a certain county had little or no control. 

How many Covid cases did your county have? 

“Oops, too many!” 

How many tests for the virus were done in your county? 

“Oops, not enough!”

I do not leave my house all week, but want to take my wife out to dinner on Saturday night.

“Tough!”

However audacious Newsom’s arbitrary bet may have been, immediately de Blasio said, “I raise!” He raised with something more arbitrary than Newsom’s initial foray when he announced that he “was forced” to close NYC’s public schools – serving 1.1 million children – after the positivity case rate in the city of New York exceeded a seven-day rolling average of 3%. Wow . . . 3%! That seems like a number grabbed out of thin air. This despite the fact that in NYC, the case positivity rate (based on tens of thousands of tests of school children and school staff) is only a minuscule 0.19%!! 

But it gets worse than just an arbitrary made up number of 3%. Apparently this number was arrived at during negotiations with the NYC’s United Federation of Teachers in exchange for a promise not to strike. 

Wow! Nice bet, Bill. Very audacious – a decision based on a purely arbitrary made-up number of 3%. Especially in view of the fact that  it appears that the school children are, in fact, safer in schools with a case positivity rate in schools of only 0.19%. This combined with the skullduggery of the negotiations with the teachers is going to make his raise hard to beat.

In my dream the crowd around the arbitrary poker table was hushed. Tension was in the air. Certainly Newsom had a re-raise planned. There was a rumor that he planned an arbitrary curfew. Apparently he was in negotiations with the viruses to be more contagious after ten p.m. . . . in exchange for further prolonged closures of the schools. Another rumor was that he was going to patrol the highways and the airports searching for those who had the audacity to travel for Thanksgiving . . . something that he arbitrarily advised against. 

Will Newsom’s next piece of arbitrary decision making be enough to force de Blasio to fold?

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