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Clusterfuck Nation
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You understand, there will be no meaningful resuscitation of the dear, departed, so-called greatest boom in history. Ponzi schemes don’t “bounce back,” they collapse for the simple reason that the pieces holding them up were not really there. Such are the unanticipated consequences of a media over-saturated culture that we were so easily deceived by appearances.

The emotions entrained by this implacable disaster have barely expressed themselves in the social arena. The public is still too shell-shocked by the prospect of losing everything ­– jobs, incomes, status, chattels, a future – to commence what the shrinks call “acting out.” Anyway, half the country is still acting out over the election of Mr. Trump three years ago.

But, for the moment, an interesting debate rages internationally as to whether the Covid-19 virus was some kind of engineered event designed to bring about various political outcomes. One thread declares that the Democratic Party, its media handmaidens, and a helpful Chinese leadership used the virus to blow up the US economy and finally, after several botched attempts, get rid of the vexing Mr. Trump. It’s a tidy story, but I don’t buy it, for the simple reason that the entire global economy has blown up, including China’s, so you can file that meme in the Wile E. Coyote folder.

A gloss on that one is the idea that NIAID director Anthony Fauci and other medical experts are wicked conspirators bent on destroying American morale by overstating the threat of Covid-19. This includes the phrase that the novel corona virus is “just another seasonal flu,” and so ordering people to stay away from work and business was unnecessary. Again, you’d have to ask yourself why medical experts and other plausibly intelligent people in so many other countries would do exactly the same thing. They can’t all be orcs.

Then there’s the one that has Bill Gates so worked up about climate change that he’s using his foundation’s deep resources to reduce the world’s population by sowing maximum disorder onto the scene with Covid-19 hysteria. This one casts Mr. Gates as something like a villain from a James Bond movie, deep in his Seattle mega-fortress petting a Persian cat as millions perish. Sounds like another case of Americans confusing movies with real life.

Another story has a shadowy gang of “globalists” using the disorder spawned by the virus to impose a centralized global uber-government run by international financiers. First of all, that one smacks of the hoary conspiracy theory that Bilderberger bankers (Jews especially) are scheming to take over the world – yet these supposedly hyper-clever “puppet-masters” are proving that they can’t even run the banks and their own financial ops, which are now crashing down around their ears along with everybody else’s. Thirdly, if there is trend anywhere in this collapse scenario, it is for the devolution of power downward, away from floundering centralized power structures and institutions. As they flounder, the faith of their subject peoples ebbs away and the trust horizon shrinks so that the people are no longer willing to depend on distant authorities for anything.

That floundering of centralized authorities is exactly what’s in process here in the USA. Mr. Trump surely has enough problems attempting to manage this crisis, not the least of which is his own unfortunate habit of jumbled impromptu speech that often sounds like sheer blather. Some observers like to call it “plain speech,” but in my experience even the common folk of America, the plumbers, truck drivers, and waitresses, express themselves more coherently. It’s just not very reassuring. Believe me, I don’t want to see the president fail, but I would advise him to stick to the teleprompter.

Of course, then, there is Joe Biden, the implausible nominee-presumptive of the opposition. Who are they kidding with this emperor’s new clothes scam? It’s obvious now to anyone over twelve in this land that Joe Biden is missing a few transistors on the old motherboard – not to mention the slime-trail of grift and money-laundering that he laid down in his adventures abroad as vice-president. His manner of speech, while different than Mr. Trump’s, is even more pathetically incoherent. The Democrats’ pretense that he is a viable candidate is the ultimate falsehood in a long train of barefaced falsehoods they’ve so earnestly retailed since 2016, making them utterly untrustworthy to run the nation’s affairs.

We don’t know whether anyone, or any faction, will be able to run the nation’s affairs in the months upcoming. The least credible cohort these days are the folks presiding over the financial side of things. There is plenty of debate as to whether the mega bailouts and backstops will bring on inflation or deflation, both ruinous at the grand scale. There’s abundant evidence that this flood of money-from-thin-air will do nothing to arrest the unwind of a system so rotten that it casts an odor across the boundaries of history. Wall Street has screwed America’s pooch so completely that the poor pooch can’t even squeal for mercy anymore. The Federal Reserve crew and their allied banksters have barely a few weeks before an immiserated public comes after them with the modern equivalent of pitchforks. Wait for the breaking news on the cable networks: The Hamptons are burning!


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A Too-Big-To-Fail Bankster
Three Teenagers who bring him down
Gothic doings on a Connecticut Estate.
High velocity drama!


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About James Howard Kunstler

View all posts by James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler is the author of many books including (non-fiction) The Geography of Nowhere, The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition, Home from Nowhere, The Long Emergency and the four-book series of World Made By Hand novels, set in a post economic crash American future. His most recent book is Living in the Long Emergency; Global Crisis, the Failure of the Futurists, and the Early Adapters Who Are Showing Us the Way Forward. Jim lives on a homestead in Washington County, New. York, where he tends his garden and communes with his chickens.

1,165 Responses to “Money Minus Value, No Limit”

  1. malthuss April 6, 2020 at 10:06 am #

    The market may bounce, is it a Ponzi?

    Comments online,

    In Arizona, Golf Courses were considered essential. Ain’t that some sh–! Same in Tennessee. But the Appalachian Trail is closed

    • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 10:07 am #

      “Coronavirus self-isolation activities should not include gold prospecting, officials say”

    • shotho April 6, 2020 at 10:12 am #

      Yes, it’s a ponzi!

    • Hands4u April 6, 2020 at 10:35 am #

      Theyll become gardens!

      • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 11:01 am #

        In the famous apocalyptic novel “One Second After”, that is exactly what the townspeople did . . .

        Dug up the golf course & country club, and turned it all into community vegetable gardens.

        Wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see that sort of thing start to happen across the USA, when food prices go Weimar.

        • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:39 am #

          I roto-tilled yesterday. Will I have carrots in two weeks?

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 11:45 am #

            Not a chance. More like 2 months.

            However, if you have canned/frozen/dehydrated carrots still in storage from last season, you are good to go.

          • Q. Shtik April 6, 2020 at 11:47 am #

            I roto-tilled yesterday. – Dog

            ==========

            I never understood why but do you recall that perma-cultureist, Trip Ticket, said tilling the soil was a no-no?

          • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 12:04 pm #

            Q Shtik,

            As a former gardener and attempted back to the land farmer,
            Tripp was an extremist, waiting for almost everyone to die from pesk oil [oops. Ill let the typo stand.]

            Roto takes oil but I think he disliked its upsetting the worms and other bugs. RT does aerate the soil and is sometimes necessary.

          • elysianfield April 6, 2020 at 12:11 pm #

            You rototilled? BFD, I did my taxes….

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 12:27 pm #

            Rototilling is absolutely terrible for the soil.

            And not just for the worms and beneficial insects.

            Untilled soil develops a multitude of microscopic fungal and bacterial networks that promote very beneficial symbiotic relationships between soil microorganisms and the plants that grow therein. Rototilling destroys those networks every time.

            I strongly recommend the following book as a starting point for further research:

            Teaming with Microbes: The Organic Gardener’s Guide to the Soil Food Web, by Jeff Lowenfels and Wayne Lewis

          • benr April 6, 2020 at 1:38 pm #

            Toto tilling is fine if you havfe dead soil and you are working in some good old fashioned manure or have tractored out an old creek bed full of rotting vegetation to work into the soil.
            Net positive gain then.

          • bluedog April 6, 2020 at 2:48 pm #

            I roto-till my two gardens every year and will continue to do so, as I add humus every year,I would much rather walk on a sponge then concrete,and my plants prefer not to have balls for roots.Each to his own.!!!

        • BackRowHeckler April 6, 2020 at 1:43 pm #

          CmC

          What a turnabout. The numerous golf courses round these parts were for their first 3 centuries fields for grazing cattle and sheep, and growing wheat, corn and vegetables. The 2 largest country clubs started out life as hunting/gun clubs. It’s been only in the past 50 years all that was abandoned and these golf courses were built,

          Some consider GCs a waste of space but the way I look at it is if golf courses weren’t there it would be developed into strip malls and tract housing. At least it’s open space, at least there is still hope.

          Brh

          • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 2:05 pm #

            my problem with them is the huge amount of chemicals\
            to make pretty grass…Heck here in a sustainable city [barf] gov uses round up ready on campi.

          • Nightowl April 6, 2020 at 2:59 pm #

            They also sustain quite a bit of wildlife. I spent 4 summers during my college years doing groundskeeping at various courses in the greater DC area, including Lowe’s Island, which is now a Trump course.

        • Daddyotis April 6, 2020 at 1:47 pm #

          Yes, a very good use of space in that story. In fact, a large majority of the golf course was dedicated to the large cemetery need3d to accommodate all the poor souls who starved to death. If I recall, the grave diggers were in such demand that they were offered “triple rations” if they would labor all day digging holes for starved residents.

          A good point can be taken from this. The time to start a garden and procure seeds and gear would be well BEFORE an apocalypse hits. Methinks the seed supply aisle at the local Lowe’s may be cordoned off when folks come stomping in with pitchforks in hand and desperation in their hearts.

    • neon sky April 6, 2020 at 11:16 am #

      Golf courses are open in Rhode Island too, but only for those who reside in “Little Rhody.” If the authorities spot a car with out of state plates in a golf course parking lot, then the non resident preps will be captured and fined, as happened the other day. Governor Gina is fond of telling the citizens on a daily basis to “Knock it off!” if, on her way to work, she observes people standing less than six feet apart. She’s threatening a complete lockdown if people don’t comply with her edicts.

      • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:41 am #

        Demographic profiling! But if it saves grandma it is OK.

    • 4014HAMPHEDGE April 6, 2020 at 11:44 am #

      The greatest recollection this writer has of the rail branch line travesty in progress for many decades; tracing the SP Monterey Branch rail line between Monterey and Pacific Grove, and seeing a Golf Course exactly athwart the missing trackbed.

      So much to talk about! China is run by 5 % of the population, the 70 million member Communist Party. Why not see rationale in making the other 95% go away? The Chinese have tunnel apartments and supplies in storage to see the party members through a nuclear/WMD war.

      The Chinese have been on the path of conquest since Nixon graciously thought China was a handy way to boost the US economy and hedge the Russians while doing so, This writer personally learned, in a cloud of Camel smoke, from the lips of Mr. Kong Shiao Liu, US manager of Sino-American Equipment Corporation, Chinese intentions to partner with America to keep the Russians in their place… Tom Clancy writes about the Chinese attempt to seize Russian resources. Wait for it.

      James Carter, still eligible and by most measures the equal of the current Democratic candidate for president completed Nixon’s work in behalf of China when he relinquished Protectorate status and operation of the Panama Canal. Who do you think assumed management role? This New World toehold for China has permitted the construction of port warehousing and other logistics platform for any imaginable sorts of hardware beyond Canal maintenance! Peanut savvy does not equate to Strategic acumen- your punishment has been you are living to see the results, Mr. Carter.

      USA as Globalization container bridge in the Union Pacific business model ceases, commensurate with Chinese short time of economic pre-eminence. Will the Rail Barons on Dodge Street in Omaha have the wisdom and lightness of foot to proceed with all due haste rebuilding of breadbasket district branch rail lines once emanating from the C & NW and Milwaukee Road Companies now absorbed into the mighty UP? Rumors of Mormon management at Union Pacifi, if true, certainly grease the skids towards breadbasket rail lines in the Famine Hedge Solution Set.

      Helpful reading for Union Pacific shareholders is THE LONG EMERGENCY. Must read is William Koenig’s ONE SECOND AFTER… Holding shares in one of hundreds of new era branch rail matrix companies will be an act of Patriotism & remunerative besides. Critical thinkers will understand use of railway as crucial component for preservation & rebuild of the Union Of States.

      Union Pacific is a natural: “BUILDING AMERICA” is emblazoned on thousands of UP Diesels. Moreover, without this shift of business model, the RR stockholders are in the cellar with the trucking companies

      • Q. Shtik April 6, 2020 at 11:59 am #

        Your arcane comments, Hamp, always strike me as what is known as ‘inside baseball.’

        • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 12:05 pm #

          whats arcane mean? whats arcane in hamps stuff?

      • HappyMotorist April 6, 2020 at 12:07 pm #

        LDS also has their own canneries and other food infrastructure. Investment idea: long Mormon biz.

      • bluedog April 6, 2020 at 2:53 pm #

        Lol love it.!!!!

      • butter56 April 6, 2020 at 5:58 pm #

        My brother in law works for UP. He thinks their new CEO is purposely driving away business and shrinking the company

    • zone45 April 6, 2020 at 7:09 pm #

      the market is a fantasy, and if you have no talent or skill, then you are a useless eater. Guess who gets to go first in this Brave new world?

  2. peakfuture April 6, 2020 at 10:06 am #

    We may have to wait until the food stops showing up at grocery stores before any torches and pitchforks appear.

    • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 10:08 am #

      None, not supply chain but money chain. One week or 2 of no EBT.

      • PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 10:41 am #

        Yep, you guys are both right. I’ve said it many times before on CFN– watch the food situation in a crisis like this. It’s the main indicator of a society’s stability.

        • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 12:05 pm #

          food, booze, meds.

          • benr April 6, 2020 at 1:41 pm #

            Trash pickup!
            Don’t discount the humble trash collection guys.
            Shit gets real in a week or two of rotting garbage.

          • Daddyotis April 6, 2020 at 1:55 pm #

            Lots of flammable paper-based refuse in a normal garbage bag, Benr. The bulk of the trash could likely be winnowed down taking this fraction out for use in your rocket stove (gotta heat up dinner and coffee somehow)

            Also, food refuse (a very large component of current western trash barrels) would likely be looked at with a more sober eye before pitching, and even THOSE leavings can be recruited for chicken feed and compost.

            I find that if I’m not too lazy, I can start to be creative 🙂

          • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 2:06 pm #

            Ben R, no food = no trash and no poop.

          • outsider April 6, 2020 at 2:41 pm #

            I just read that alcohol sales (to include beer and wine) are up 55% from a year ago. Hard liquor sales are up 75%.

            Yet, in my home state of PA, our fanatical Gov. Wolf has shut down all of the state liquor stores, as he deems them not “life-sustaining.” To my knowledge PA, is the only state to have done so. Now, a PA resident can no longer even buy liquor in neighboring West Virginia, which still sells it to its residents. I’m not a drinker, except for beer (the large beer warehouses have remained open).

            I have no idea what alcoholics are doing. Bathtub gin and moon shine, maybe?

          • PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 2:48 pm #

            “I have no idea what alcoholics are doing. Bathtub gin and moon shine, maybe?”

            Refer to BRH’s recipe for Orange-Vodka Smoothies 🙂 from the blog a week ago or so

          • benr April 6, 2020 at 4:10 pm #

            What about people living in the big city in apartments?
            No chickens and no place to compost.
            Heck most of the ground is paved over.
            I am now looking at small scale in container gardening just for tomatoes and herbs.

          • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 12:34 am #

            Sex, drugs and rock’n’roll is more fun and will make the rapidly foreshortening future, slightly more, bearable.

          • Beryl of Oyl April 10, 2020 at 10:06 am #

            I know what alcoholics aren’t doing. Attending AA meetings. I have heard about chapters being worried about their newest, most at-risk members, who they have lost touch with.

    • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 10:49 am #

      Or the drugs and MJ supply trains stop running north. The US will squeal when this happens.

      • PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 10:57 am #

        oh wow, ya

      • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 11:05 am #

        In my state it is legal to grow — so right between my leeks bed and the lettuce bed, lies the cannabis bed.

        No cutoff of supplies for us.

        • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 11:24 am #

          How about your poppy bed? Or Acid bed? Or Coca plants?

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 11:52 am #

            Nope.

            Neither opium poppies nor coca plants are legal here.

            And, last I heard, LSD does not grow on trees.

            BTW, you don’t need to consume one iota of your cannabis crop for it to have extreme value. It is an excellent crop to barter with, and is as valuable as cash in that respect.

          • elysianfield April 6, 2020 at 12:15 pm #

            “And, last I heard, LSD does not grow on trees.”

            CMC,
            But a close relative grows on rye….

          • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 2:00 pm #

            And psilocybin grows freely in Oregon.

        • MC Hammerabi April 6, 2020 at 11:25 am #

          People need to consume cannabis like they need a hole in the head. What’s worse than a cluster**** nation? A stoned as **** nation.

          • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:38 am #

            Stoned people stay home.

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 11:54 am #

            And tend to mind their own business.

          • elysianfield April 6, 2020 at 12:18 pm #

            “Stoned people stay home.”

            Dog,
            One of my favorite comics, once opined…”Why do they attempt to ban the only thing that makes teenagers drive slow?

          • elysianfield April 6, 2020 at 12:19 pm #

            P.J. O Rourke….

        • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 12:38 am #

          As Freewheelin’ Franklin (of the FFF Bros) said, “Dope gets you through times of no money better than money gets you through times of no dope!”.

          • BornToKillPeace April 7, 2020 at 2:43 am #

            If you are a dope smoker and prefer to read or be out in the wilderness with your “free time”, and you don’t have any dependents, one need not be a slave to an employer or $$ in general.

        • eatabanker April 7, 2020 at 4:20 am #

          “No cutoff of supplies for us.”

          Excellent. I presume you’ve got high-velocity lead and know how and where to plant that too. Or do you plan to make the rustlers disapear by waving your magic bong at them?

          There are no hermetically-sealed solutions in life.
          Good luck and enjoy your crop.

          And one last comment: “Man digs his own grave with his teeth”.

    • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:45 am #

      I had a great idea.

      People are making videos about how to make Masks.

      Cut your fabric into a rectangle and fold ………….

      I thought I could make a You-Tube video about how to make a home-brew pitchfork. Put up a Paetreon page and make a little bank.

      Then I realized if we go pitchfork I won’t ever get paid. That is no good.

      • Robert White April 6, 2020 at 1:55 pm #

        Maybe if you got stoned you would find the buried bones in the yard, K-Dog.

        RW

      • michael April 7, 2020 at 5:41 am #

        You should rather make a youtube video how to unpack you Amazon delivered mask and figure out what to do with it. There is a need in modern man for such instruction.

  3. shotho April 6, 2020 at 10:11 am #

    We should be so lucky that anyone in America is alert and capable of burning down anything, much less the Hamptons. Talk about a dumbed-down, feckless, ignorant, spoiled, whining bunch of sniveling fools.

    • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 10:12 am #

      Fool, riots [for purpose of looting] happen all too regularly.

      • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 12:48 am #

        But they tend to trash their own neighbourhoods – imagine if someone were to give them a street directory for uptown.

  4. EvelynV April 6, 2020 at 10:11 am #

    Trump’s ability to give a speech is the least of his inadequacies.

    • UN OUT OF USA April 6, 2020 at 10:33 am #

      May President Trump never be the speech giver (and horrid anti-American) that Barry Soetoro was.

      • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 11:07 am #

        There is no “Barry Soetoro”.

        That individual exists only in your imagination.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 1:33 pm #

          As does Barack Obama in yours.

        • benr April 6, 2020 at 1:49 pm #

          Wrong!
          Barry was Baracks nickname and his mom married Lolo Soetoro while in Indonesia.
          Are you going to deny Barry was not a citizen of Indonesia going to an Indonesian school as well?
          Please show us exactly how far you are willing to go to cover up all the lies by the Democrats to cover up his past.

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 4:00 pm #

            Prove it.

          • benr April 6, 2020 at 4:13 pm #

            I don’t have to.
            It’s a shame are so ridiculous.

            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreams_from_My_Father

          • Majella April 6, 2020 at 4:52 pm #

            Benr –

            Your already dodgy credibility is now in the low-end numbers.

            You’re referencing a source (“Dreams of My Father”) which, being written by Obama himself, must be utterly unreliable as far as you’re concerned, what with him being a horrible liar and all.

            CMC said ‘prove it’ meaning, I surmise, your claim that Obama was an Indonesian citizen (which makes for a welcome change to the ‘born in Kenya’ nonsense at least). There’s no such proof in the Wiki synopsis. It states that he lived in Indonesia from age 6 to 10. So?

          • benr April 6, 2020 at 6:13 pm #

            Another one who can’t see the forest through the trees and how cute you think Barry actually wrote that LOL.

  5. NWO April 6, 2020 at 10:25 am #

    This virus is not intended to be a population reducer per se, but rather, a vaccine enabler. The vaccine is where they’ll get you, in a lot more ways than one. So I guess of the 4 CT options presented, I’m going with Doors #3 and #4 combined. Yes, the planned crashing of asset prices and the economy is a feature, not a bug. Likewise, the Gates foundation is damn sure knee deep in all this. There is no either/or, there’s both and so much more. The virus itself? Massively over-hyped. Massively!

    NWO — Sounds like fucking nonsense to me. JHK Admin

    • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 10:52 am #

      Bingo!
      ==

      “They can’t all be orcs.” – JHK

      Have you looked into Fauci’s bio? Have you looked at his connections? Have you looked at his face? This is the same Vatican mafia ghoul that falsely equated AIDS with HIV and then proceeded to experiment on these HIV carriers with the most horrendous and outrageous drugs, murdering many of them in the process. This Nazi death camp behavior, James, and the media is silent about it all. Like it never happened and like they don’t know who facilitated it all. Can they all be orcs? Yes, they can! Learn your history, James!

      • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 11:10 am #

        Off your meds again this AM?

        All pharmacies are still open across the land; may we suggest that you pay your local one a visit promptly?

        • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 11:17 am #

          I don’t take medication. And keep your Nazi sedation to yourself, you pathetic little Nazi automaton.

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 11:56 am #

            I believe you’ve mistaken me for Janos.

          • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 12:08 pm #

            Nazis, Fascists, Progressives, etc., are just a marketing scam. It reality they’re all Vatican spawned Commies. When you can tell me why you’re not a Commie, we can discuss if I was mistaken. Because to my eyes you’re all the same.

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 12:20 pm #

            Not a commie,
            nor a catholic.

            Never have been,
            never will be.

          • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 12:55 pm #

            I didn’t say you’re a Catholic. I said you’re a Nazi and that there’s no difference between Nazis and Commies and all the rest of the tyrannical Vatican gov mafia spawned shit.

            “Medicating” your opponents, sedating them, poisoning them, institutionalizing them, denying them their sovereignty over their thoughts and body, murdering their individuality and their persons, is classic Nazi/Commie behavior. That’s what you advocated for, that’s what you’re all about, making you a Nazi/Commie. Capish?!

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 1:13 pm #

            So I’m a Nazi/Commie according to your definition?

            Unfortunately for you,
            your definitions of others have all the weight of a gnat’s eyelash.

            And reveal that you project onto others, the massive insecurities you feel within yourself.

          • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 1:25 pm #

            I’m not the one who tells people to sedate themselves, tells them get back on their medications, because I don’t like their thoughts. That would be you. I’m not the one who constantly parrots gov mafia commie propaganda. That would be you, again.

            What I do is state the obvious.

          • Robert White April 6, 2020 at 2:05 pm #

            Anyone that utilizes ad hominem in the gas-lighting tone of ‘off your meds again…’ variety is obviously psychopathic in approach as that sort of discourse is wholly manipulative and revealingly sadistic & malignant vis-à-vis personality.

            akmofo is right to castigate for that use of words.

            RW

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 3:52 pm #

            Akmofo is the one who labelled me a “Commie/Nazi”.

            And you don’t call that ad hominem?

            Pray tell, exactly what is YOUR definition of ad hominem?

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 3:57 pm #

            @ Akmofo —

            Since you say that I “parrot gov mafia commie propaganda”,

            perhaps you can give direct quotes from me that indicates I support:

            governments propaganda
            or
            communist propaganda
            or
            mafia propaganda.

            You cannot, and are casting aspersions without merit whatsoever. As above,your are projecting onto me, the massive insecurities you feel within yourself.

          • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 4:17 pm #

            perhaps you can give direct quotes from me that indicates I support: governments propaganda
            ==

            You can start with your “conspiracy theorist” shtick. That’s a classic gov mafia tactic used to quell dissent and dissidents. Because we’re all crazy aluminum tinfoil hat boobs.

            Well, here are some crazy “conspiracy theorist” facts for you:

            The same commie Chinese mafia poisoning and murdering their indigenous population with “fake” vaccines, controls the WHO and the world’s health policy. It is also the largest manufacturer of vaccines in the world. Neither is it a coincidence that all these virus attacks originated in China.

            This is who you’re shilling for, who emotionally and intellectually programs you, only you’re too stupid to discern it.

        • capt spaulding April 6, 2020 at 11:20 am #

          Fauci is obviously a member of the Illuminati. Fauci. Illuminati, they both end with an i, no further proof needed.

          • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 11:37 am #

            Fauci is the frontman for multiple NWO global organizations that have a political and an economic agenda to enrich themselves while Vatican Dark Ages tyranny is reimposed on the world.

            https://youtu.be/k05b8aGDCNI

            .

          • PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 11:42 am #

            I thought he was a freemason 🙂

            omg!

            maybe he’s both!!

            lul

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 11:58 am #

            I thought he was a Jew!

            Maybe he’s all three!

          • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 12:15 pm #

            What’s that, Commie? Jews are now enrolling to private Jesuit colleges, like the College of the Holy Cross? Per usual, that is some spectacular “thinking” on your part.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 2:32 pm #

            Holy Cross is no longer Catholic in other words. The Jesuits who run it fell to the Dark Side generations ago.

          • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 3:13 pm #

            Did the Catholic Vatican excommunicate the Jesuits? Did the Catholic Vatican excommunicate the Nazis? Did the Catholic Vatican excommunicate the Fascists? Did the Catholic Vatican excommunicate the Socialists? Did the Catholic Vatican excommunicate Commies? No it didn’t.

            Joseph Stalin was a Catholic priest. Hitler was a Catholic choir boy. The Catholic Vatican was the first to recognize the Nazis and give them diplomatic cover. Just like the Catholic Vatican was the first to recognize and give diplomatic cover to the Jew-murdering terrorist Jihadists junta in “Palestine”.

            They’re all tentacles of the same Vatican medusa. You want us to be deliberately blind to not see this all?

          • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 3:39 pm #

            No, they didn’t. They are corrupt. Stalin went to the seminary for a little while but decided he liked being a criminal more. He was never a priest. Hitler was baptized a Catholic. Don’t know about the choir. Stopped going once he left home. Hated Christianity because it made us weak. Agree and Disagree with that.

            He wanted to slowly transform Germany back to Paganism. But he knew that during a war was no time to do it.

            The Church signed a concordat (think that’s the word – a kind of treaty) with the Nazis. Meanwhile the Pope wrote one encyclical after another against National Socialism and sheltered many Jews in the Vatican. The Rabbi of Rome converted to Catholicism based on his personal contact with him, taking his name, Eugenio, as his own.

            Catholic Officers tried to assassinate Hitler. Watch Tom Cruise’s movie, Valkyrie.

            The Church fought countless wars against Islam. Whatever good might be said of Paganism, they wouldn’t have been able to handle Islam once Rome fell. The Pagan Romans could have handled them though.

            In any case, the Church is not the same as Islam. That’s just silly. Neither is Jewish – that’s your point. And all non-Jews are bad, right? Isn’t that what you’re trying to say? Just say it instead of spouting all these ludicrous errors. But you’re no worse than Islam which divides the World into Islamic/Non Islamic, one being good and the other bad. And yes, the Church used to do exactly the same thing. As do many Christians to do this day.

          • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 4:04 pm #

            1/ There are no errors in what I say. You yourself admit to this when you write: “No, they didn’t.” You wish to explain away the Vatican’s behavior, saying they it is corrupt. Corrupted by whom exactly? Who’s paying them to be corrupt? Are the Jihadists paying the Vatican to support Islam? Did Hitler pay the Vatican? Did Stalin pay them? Do the Socialists and the Progressives pay the Vatican to take their positions?

            2/ As for the German officers you talk of, did they act on behalf of the Vatican? Why connect them to the Vatican if they did not?

            3/ I’m not talking about the Church. I’m not talking about Christians. I’m not even talking about Catholics. I’m talking specifically about the Vatican. Why do you support it and make excuses for it? It is an evil organization even by your own standards.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 8:40 pm #

            Catholic officers tried to assassinate Hitler. You have to decide if they were “Vatican” or Nazi. Your categories don’t make any sense to me and I’m not entering into your universe.

            Hint: How could someone be a Nazi or “Vatican” and try to assassinate Hitler?

            You call anyone who says something you don’t like Nazi or Vatican.

            Why did the Church corrupt? Why does anyone? Money, fame, power, pleasure, illicit pleasures, etc. Why do Rabbis have sex with small children? Probably the same reasons Catholic priests do, or Boy Scoutmasters, or Protestant ministers.

          • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 10:00 pm #

            Them German officers were old school aristocrats who saw Hitler for the insane dumb ass he was. They understood that Hitler’s war and economic understanding were completely bankrupt. Their operation against Hitler was their own initiative and had zero institutional support from the Vatican.

            Again, to fail to address the institution that is the Vatican. It is an institution that any way you look at it, does not deserve to exist. It needs to die and disappear. It is a malignancy on humanity. It always was.

    • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 11:20 am #

      They want sovereignty over our mind and body. They are already talking about and implementing forced vaccination and forced ID to verify such, without which they will not allow you to function as part of society.

      • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 12:02 pm #

        “they”?

        Can you specify who the “they”is in this case?

        Links, please,

        or, failing that,
        the name of the manufacturer of your tinfoil hat.

        Thank you.

        • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 12:38 pm #

          Keep “thinking”. But doubtful you’ll figure it out.

      • Beryl of Oyl April 10, 2020 at 10:13 am #

        I try to dismiss all the theories involving Bill Gates. It is Bill himself making it hard to do so.

        • Q. Shtik April 10, 2020 at 1:00 pm #

          I try to dismiss all the theories involving Bill Gates. – B of O

          ===========

          My main concern with Bill Gates is that a man of his wealth can’t do something with that hair of his. It is the worst. Does he own a mirror. Doesn’t Melinda ever say to him “For Chrisake Bill do something with that friggin’ hair of yours. You’re a disgrace!

    • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 12:09 pm #

      i DUNNO but as far as Mnuchin, fact is he is a bonesman, see his wiki.

    • sophia April 6, 2020 at 12:52 pm #

      ” Sounds like fucking nonsense to me.”

      These sorts of reactions are emotional in nature. People choose what to believe far more often than actually investigating matters.

      So, billionaires are not interested in dominion and power? Billionaires who have expressed dismay at world population are not serious?

      • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 1:39 pm #

        For as long as people dismiss Conspiracy, for so long will the Conspirators continue to conquer. A vast Plan is in motion, the Elite powering down the World while being careful to stay on top.

        You are correct: They don’t need these billions of people who are just using up their resources.

        And of course, much as one may loathe them and their methods, they’re not wrong about the threat of over population.

        • sophia April 7, 2020 at 11:38 am #

          It seems that as I delve into such matters, the ease of their methods become more and more apparent to me. You’re a billionaire. You own and control the media. We know this is true. And all you have to do is say with derision something like “Oh, how silly! A conspiracy theory!”

          When actually it is not silly at all. But the human is so careful not to lose face and be seen as a fool, that they react immediately and without thought. I recall my father in law telling me that when his boys were small, of course they ran around naked and without shame. So one day he simply made a funny face and pointed at them and said, “Oooh, you’re naked!” and that was all it took.

      • benr April 6, 2020 at 1:51 pm #

        Little Georgie Soros only wants the best for humanity. Right?

        • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 2:07 pm #

          that statement makes me laugh.

    • Nightowl April 6, 2020 at 3:03 pm #

      The massively overhyped part is right. Enforcement and hype are pretty lax here in Germany tho.

      Most docs here seem to agree it is a nasty flu that is dangerous for those over 70. I think I have seen one face mask in 5 weeks.

  6. Walter B April 6, 2020 at 10:27 am #

    If printing “money” out of thin air is the solution then why are they not handing us all a few million so that we can bounce the economy back into a New Golden Age of Prosperity? Printing money to infinity is financial heroin addiction, eventually you overdose and die. This Fall should be more than just another change in the seasons. It will be a real fall, off the cliff. I can’t wait to see what the next move is, cryptocurrency anyone?

    https://www.computerweekly.com/blog/Inspect-a-Gadget/Cash-in-hand-This-cryptocurrency-body-implant-will-secure-your-cyber-cash-stash

    • PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 10:30 am #

      Yep, good question Walter.

    • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 10:53 am #

      The US has to keep its consumers spending to feed the international finance liquidity requirements. Like paying interest payments on the debts everywhere. If capital does not flow in this direction, everything shuts down.

      • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 11:08 am #

        The interest represents increasing claims on real assets. Unlike a virus, it really DOES grow exponentially. Until we end the fiction, like Germany in 1923, and Hungary in the 1940s.

        • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 11:20 am #

          Right!

    • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 11:21 am #

      How about financial planning per Fantasyland?

      • bluedog April 6, 2020 at 3:09 pm #

        Oh we entered that back in 1980 with supply side economics,or the trickle down or voo-doo economic, its your pick.!!!

    • elysianfield April 6, 2020 at 12:24 pm #

      Walter,
      Done your taxes yet? The New 1040 specifically requests information on Bitcoin and other crypto transactions….

    • David Webb April 6, 2020 at 1:28 pm #

      I’ve been trying to figure out why unlimited money printing is a good thing, but only if it’s given to the wealthy and not to the commoners. All I can figure is it’s like those seeds that have to be digested by an animal to increase their odds of germination. Apparently, the money we create can’t actually do anything for the economy until the big banks and Wall Street traders have gorged themselves on so much that it starts coming out the other end. Then like a miracle, our economic salvation springs forth from the feces they leave in their wake.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 1:45 pm #

        It’s good for those who own the printing presses and their friends in politics and the media. If they printed up infinite up money for everyone, money would lose its value. Why would they do that?

        You guys are making something very simple into a deep metaphysical question. Use the other part of you minds – the street smarts.

        • David Webb April 6, 2020 at 1:57 pm #

          I was mostly being sarcastic, I understand how it works. You missed a step though: since the banks and their Wall Street cronies get their claws on the newly manifested money first, they get to put it to use first, getting their return on it before the inflation it creates kicks in. By the time a few drops of it start to trickle down on the rest of us, it’s already lost some of it’s value.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 2:35 pm #

            Well sure. But the Fed itself creates it and can just give to whomever they want to. And the Banks create it every time they give out a loan. Surely you don’t think they go and check to see if they have enough cash in their vault?

            Some control is kept of course. They don’t want to use the magic of creating out of nothing too freely or cheaply. It might have unintended consequences. Or again, lose value. Slow and sure: that’s the way to world conquest.

      • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 1:58 pm #

        That’s quite the image. Well imagined!

    • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 1:42 pm #

      Because resources are limited. Just because other people confuse money and reality doesn’t mean they do. Their wealth depend on knowing the difference and keeping the have nots disciplined and tied to the illusion.

      Why would they share their god like power with others who have not earned it by hard work or genius or inheritance and/or fraud?

    • Robert White April 6, 2020 at 2:26 pm #

      Helicopter drops of cash into an imploding macroeconomy is not going to ameliorate the larger issue of deflation amidst the dark pool derivatives universe as it is far too large to be pumped back up by a few helicopter drops of cash from an unwinding Federal Reserve administration & balance sheet clusterfuck into wholesale deflation over the entire macro landscape.

      Market decoupling along the macro landscape will force further unwind of Commercial MBS & Residential MBS from large conglomerate hotels to residential multi-family REITs for low income neighbourhoods et cetera.

      The next year will evidence the quickest velocity driven avalanche of investment in all facets of markets that have ever existed in the world to date. When this next leg down turns to be the next shoe to drop post-08 Great Financial Crisis we will all witness the biggest S&P/DOW/TSE exchange crash that civilization has ever experienced in any time of history.

      Absolute worldwide chaos will ensue when the numbers start to be realized along the macro landscape.

      No more blue sky themed irrational exuberance will be governing overall mood of the investor class from this point onward.

      This is what happens when the music stops and too few chairs remain for all to be seated. A classic Titanic situation remains as world fate for not keeping an eye out for icebergs dead ahead.

      I can fully understand why the captain of the Titanic went back to his wheelhouse cabin for another drink.

      RW

      • dah plunge protection team April 6, 2020 at 9:14 pm #

        I tend to agree with John Michael Greer that the stock market will act like the Soviet Crop report. It will simply cease to be an economic indicator.

  7. Ishabaka April 6, 2020 at 10:28 am #

    One permanent effect will be that “science denier” will no longer be able to be used as an epithet. After all, the scientific experts informed us that:
    1. Covid-19 could not be transmitted from person to person
    2. There was no need to restrict travel from China
    3. There was no need to wear masks

    • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 11:19 am #

      That was the World Health Organization that made those statements. It is what held up Trump from cutting off China flights until the end of January. 234000 Folks escaping China made it into America during January. They entered into ports that are now the epi-centers of the plague. Thanks China, we needed that. Thanks WHO.

      Our enemies are making themselves known, only we are too dumb to do anything about it. Trump needs to stop his relationship with Xi, either Xi is essentially out of power or he is brandishing a knife getting ready to plunge it.

    • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 11:44 am #

      The masks really is the killer here. They were effective in Korea because they had them, and they deployed them, cutting down transmission.

      The FedGov lied about masks to keep non-medical people from hoarding them, because we never paid any attention to previous pandemics or the lessons of the democracies of Asia. The timing of the pandemic was always uncertain. The arrival of one some day wasn’t.

    • sophia April 6, 2020 at 12:55 pm #

      1. Covid-19 could not be transmitted from person to person
      2. There was no need to restrict travel from China
      3. There was no need to wear masks

      Stupidity or malice?
      Who finances the WHO?

      • michael April 7, 2020 at 4:52 am #

        The WHO is financed to about 60% from pharmaceutical companies.

        • sophia April 7, 2020 at 2:32 pm #

          And they plan to force vaccinate the world.

        • Beryl of Oyl April 10, 2020 at 10:24 am #

          They wouldn’t admit Taiwan, on the Communist Chinese say-so.

  8. peter m April 6, 2020 at 10:30 am #

    They can’t all be orcs.

    Because not all of them agree at all that the threat is what it is made out to be.

    To establish harsh measures and making decision based on less than complete knowledge that drive the economy into a tank, likely bankrupting a lot of small enterprises and affecting negatively the health much more than the virus could by causing long term unemployment – That is really a stupid action by our collected political “leaders”.

    Again, the question one can, has to ask: who really spreads “fake news” and acts on those? The alternate press or the government associated mainstream?

    Dr Gupta is a Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford with an interest in infectious disease agents that are responsible for malaria, HIV, influenza and bacterial meningitis.

    Dr Karin Mölling is a German virologist whose research focused on retroviruses, particularly human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).

    Dr Anders Tegnell is a Swedish physician and civil servant who has been State Epidemiologist of the Public Health Agency of Sweden since 2013.

    Dr Pablo Goldschmidt is an Argentine-French virologist specializing in tropical diseases, and Professor of Molecular Pharmacology at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris.

    Dr Tom Jefferson is a British epidemiologist, based in Rome. He works for the Cochrane Collaboration, where he is an author and editor of the Cochrane Collaboration’s acute respiratory infections group

    German Network for Evidence-Based Medicine is an association of German scientists, researchers and medical professionals…..and so on, and so on for quite a few more.

    Just a sample:

    Dr Richard Schabas is the former Chief Medical Officer of Ontario, Medical Officer of Hastings and Prince Edward Public Health and Chief of Staff at York Central Hospital.:

    “I am not preaching complacency. This disease is not going away any time soon; we should expect more cases and more local outbreaks. And COVID-19 still has the potential to become a major global health problem, with an overall burden comparable to that of influenza. We need to be vigilant in our surveillance.

    But we also need to be sensible. Quarantine belongs back in the Middle Ages. Save your masks for robbing banks. Stay calm and carry on. Let’s not make our attempted cures worse than the disease.”

    https://off-guardian.org/…/12-experts-questioning-the-coro…/

    https://off-guardian.org/…/10-more-experts-criticising-the…/

    To add – one of the “known” unknowns is if this virus actually can produce immunity. If not, we quarantine and protect ourselves during the first wave, only to get hit in a possible and probable second wave, like the common cold.

    Does this them mean we have to have a continuous self quarantine?

    I am in the higher risk group at 70, and can comfortably adhere to self quarantine drawing a Government pension.

    Maybe the solution is to self quarantine the elderly, which eliminates a large pool from the severe cases needing hospitalization,

    ” However, after further adjusting for demography and under-ascertainment, we obtained a best estimate of the case fatality ratio in China of 1·38% (1·23–1·53), with substantially higher ratios in older age groups (0·32% [0·27–0·38] in those aged <60 years vs 6·4% [5·7–7·2] in those aged ?60 years), up to 13·4% (11·2–15·9) in those aged 80 years or older. "

    https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30243-7/fulltext

    The problem is the ascertainment rate, as nobody knows how many actually carry the disease without symptoms. Some estimates go as low as .5%, which would mean that actually 20 000 UK cases would represent a total of 4 million infected residents.

    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042218v1.full.pdf+html

    This is among the known unknowns to really get a grip on how virulent this disease actually is, and why our response just might be completely disproportional.

    If we take the figure of 20 000 diagnosed cases only 1/5th actually show severe symptoms (4000 persons).

    A fatality rate of .32% below 60 means only 13 persons below the age of 60 actually die out of a total infected population of 4 million and 19.8% = 792 are over 60 ….where is the problem here that cannot be solved with self quarantine of the elderly?

    The case fatality rate drops from an estimated 3 – 5% to a low of 815/4,000,000×100 = 0,02% = 1/10 of the rate of the flu virus.

    Even if the ascertainment rate was 10 times higher, that would only mean the cfr is at the level of the regular flu.

    I do not say my calculations are right, because as the officials making the decisions I rely on uncertain facts and incomplete data.

    That should make clear that seriously the economy threatening decisions are made without sufficient knowledge of what the facts really are.

    • J. Dean April 6, 2020 at 10:40 am #

      peter m, thanks for providing such a comprehensive breakdown of “the numbers”!

      Though I must say, don’t think it can be called “self-quarantine” when your State governor or mayor orders it and local police enforce it.

      • peter m April 6, 2020 at 10:52 am #

        The advice to Self Quarantine to me means – I am the one responsible for my actions. It is an advice and with reasoned arguments ant responsible person will heed it – no enforcement necessary.

        If an older person does not want to adhere the appeal to self quarantine – then it has to accept the consequences.

        • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:13 am #

          You are crazy. I don’t give a fuck about if you are the one responsible for your actions or not. If by being irresponsible or being responsible, or if by being a forest faerie, you cause someone I Iove to become infected and die by actions which you control. It won’t be COVID that will take you out. It will be me.

          • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 11:40 am #

            If someone comes to the secure location where your locked-down person has quarantined to avoid the virus and infects him, I’ll supply the bullets for that.

            What about people who want to walk about freely, in full knowledge of the risks? I’d tattoo them with indelible ink so they couldn’t be admitted to hospital, but otherwise let them go.

            As for me, I’ll be wearing a mask for myself and potentially for others.

          • peter m April 6, 2020 at 12:18 pm #

            You are in total panic mode buddy. Nicely trained pavlovian doggy…there, there

          • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 1:51 pm #

            Tom: That’s how they intend to chip us, at least initially, with the Ink.

            https://news.mit.edu/2019/storing-vaccine-history-skin-1218

            Those without the mark will not be able to buy or sell, or go anywhere. They will set off alarms when they go into buildings, etc.

          • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 1:56 pm #

            I was thinking for of the kind of stamp you get at a nightclub, Janos.

            But the chipping, the most controlling way possible, is probably what we would get.

            Peter M: hardly. Masks seem rather like a low-cost effort, as does more frequent hand-washing. As far as supplying bullets to Kdog, who’s anti-gun, that’s just a reaffirmation of the sanctity of the home. No one should be forced to interact with possibly infected outsiders in their quarantined home. I’d have to assume you agree if you lock your own doors.

          • benr April 6, 2020 at 2:46 pm #

            Ah bullshit keyboard warrior.
            That kind of hyperbole belongs in call of duty being voiced by a 120 pound 13 year old with zits and a testosterones fueled rant not by a random 50+ year old guy sitting in his basement.
            Stop being a complete douchebag.

          • K-Dog April 8, 2020 at 6:44 pm #

            I’m not strictly anti-gun. It’s complicated. Nutcases should not have guns and I have my own way of dealing with that problem.

        • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:19 am #

          But we also need to be sensible. Quarantine belongs back in the Middle-Ages. Save your masks for robbing banks. Stay calm and carry on. Let’s not make our attempted cures worse than the disease.

          There is at yet no treatment or cure for COVID-19. We are in the middle-ages on this one. The Middle-Ages were able to deal with pandemics they did not understand by quarantine measures. That we should use them in the absence of modern methods is a no-brainer. Unless all you do is think of money and think that money is the measure of a man.

          Like Trump does.

          • capt spaulding April 6, 2020 at 11:26 am #

            Yeah, quarantine is for Sissy Marys, who don’t care whether the economy collapses because everybody stays home. What we need now, is de-regulation, and more tax cuts for corporations and millionaires, they are the job creators, and don’t deserve this stay at home bullshit.

          • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:36 am #

            @capt spaulding If a job creator stays at home I’m sure they expect to be paid. It is actually a genius move. They are at home. Call it a job.

          • peter m April 6, 2020 at 12:19 pm #

            You should have actually read what I wrote – there might be like for the common cold NO vaccine available.
            Period. So, what are you going to do? Lock down everything permanently and die of starvation?

          • Q. Shtik April 6, 2020 at 12:56 pm #

            That we should use them (masks) in the absence of modern methods is a no-brainer. – Dog

            ============

            I would make a lousy surgeon and/or a lousy Chinee. I cannot tolerate a mask on me. I simply can’t breathe. How does one get the necessary oxygen by breathing in again the air that has already had the oxygen extracted from it?

            I also have a problem with OTHER people wearing masks. Being more than half deaf I rely on lip reading to understand people talking to me. Obviously masks prevent lip reading.

            For ME the answer is simply to stay at home in my man cave.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 1:53 pm #

            Thank you, Q. I find the mask fogs up my glasses at lot and yes, the breathing is uncomfortable.

          • Nightowl April 6, 2020 at 3:24 pm #

            In an old interview, Trump said that his riches/lifestyle were cute but meaningless.

            Perhaps the problem is in you.

          • Beryl of Oyl April 10, 2020 at 10:31 am #

            That Trump is thinking about more than money is the reason he ran for president.
            It’s also the reason the Evangelicals support him.

        • Beryl of Oyl April 10, 2020 at 10:27 am #

          This isn’t even quarantine. This is a lockdown.
          I can’t help but notice that the estimated date by which the boot on our necks will be lifted, keeps getting extended every time someone in government thinks of some new demand for funding to “fight” COVID-19.

    • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 11:12 am #

      That is why conspiracy theories are flying all over the place.

      • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:21 am #

        People only like to think when it suits them to think. People want easy answers. This situation causes great vexation and an easy answer gives calm.

        • sophia April 6, 2020 at 1:07 pm #

          Look in the mirror, K-dog

          • benr April 6, 2020 at 3:06 pm #

            Has that dog ever noticed itself in the mirror some not are as self aware as others.

          • benr April 6, 2020 at 3:06 pm #

            Has that dog ever noticed itself in the mirror some not are as self aware as others.

          • K-Dog April 8, 2020 at 6:56 pm #

            If I looked in a mirror at least something would look back. That is more than you two can say.

    • snagglepuss April 6, 2020 at 11:22 am #

      It isn’t just the ‘elderly’ who are vulnerable to not surviving the outbreak, it’s anybody with underlying medical issues and/or overall poor resistance to disease. And a lot of underlying medical conditions such as diabetes & high blood pressure are related to lifestyle choices. If you want to compromise your lungs with smoking of any type, eat pepperoni sticks and pizza, get fat through lack of exercise you are inviting trouble. Low income doesn’t mean a person cannot eat a healthy diet. One has to apply dietary knowledge and habits instead of following the antics of the Kardashians. See the bit below about resistant bacteria as well, which speaks to cleanliness.
      Let’s be honest about this crisis. In many ways the ‘chickens are coming home to roost’.

      “The argument for that is that many of the coronavirus pneumonia cases are complicated by bacterial pneumonia, so if that is the case with coronavirus, then patients in a country with a low resistance rate among bacteria would have a better prognosis than those in Italy, where they have an awful lot of resistant bacteria, particularly in Lombardy.”

      • snagglepuss April 6, 2020 at 11:23 am #

        Oh yes, I forgot to mention “exercise”, which is 100% free.

        • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 11:36 am #

          Except when the police fine you for being outdoors!

          • AttackSub April 6, 2020 at 12:15 pm #

            Show me one state governor who has banned people from walking outdoors by themselves or in groups of 5 people or less?

          • sophia April 6, 2020 at 1:18 pm #

            Attack Sub,

            In other countries the rules are very strong. Need to have a document to leave the house. Allowed to leave once per day (what if you have to walk a dog?) And, I heard 2 guys got arrested in California for being out surfing, which is downright weird.
            But it is a good question that needs more concrete answers than I have on hand.
            But – there is also social pressure. I suggested to my daughter that a close neighbor with an only child might be invited over to play with her boys. I’m starting to feel rather sorry for children, and also for parents of very young toddlers who have to be cooped up with them with no outside company for weeks on end. This is going to make people crack.

            My daughter and her neighbors do not have any other people or elderly in their lives right now. So why not? Just for the kids?

            If they were even to get the virus, they would be doing their part to eventually overcome the problem. But she said she didn’t dare because other neighbors would see it and be very angry.

          • Nightowl April 6, 2020 at 3:26 pm #

            Is that really happening in the states? Here in Germany, we have spent the last 4 weekends outdoors either hiking or cycling with our 5-yr. old.

            And we were in good company. Not an Ordnungsbeamte, cop, or drone in site.

          • benr April 6, 2020 at 3:36 pm #

            I posted the link to the Stand up paddle boarder at Malibu getting arrested,
            It was taken down.

    • SW April 6, 2020 at 11:31 am #

      The scientists who are trying to add more information and a degree of sanity to these restrictions are not on TV, only the ones who are fanning the flames. NBC for the last week has all been sensationalized reporting and throwing numbers out there with no real explanations. Of the “400 + dead” how many were elderly? sick? died in accidents? Are there people in the ER who can’t be admitted to ICU b/c there are no beds or respirators? What they DON’T say is important too.

      • sophia April 6, 2020 at 1:20 pm #

        And also, I have been finding articles that throw the accuracy of the tests into doubt, not to mention using them to put Covid on a death certificate even if that is not really what killed them.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 1:55 pm #

        Someone is orchestrating the Hysteria. The names are not hard to find: Bill and Melinda Gates and the WHO for starters.

        • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 2:10 pm #

          I think The WHO! broke up after Moon killed himself.
          Too many pills.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 2:37 pm #

            No corvid 19 plush toy for you after a comment like that. None for Kdog either – he’d just tear it to pieces.

        • PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 2:53 pm #

          “and the WHO for starters.”

          Who knew Pete Townsend was just bidding his time with something dark & conspiratorial with that vicious down stroke strumming there!

          🙂

          • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 5:52 pm #

            Funny Face, I think I hate you.

    • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 11:35 am #

      The problem with self-quarantine of the elderly and sickly is that it doesn’t shut down the economy and make people beg for a bailout, the majority of whose dollars will be given over to the Fed to dole out to connected constituents.

      But, yes: until we can get a way to protect the elderly and sick, we need to lock them down and support them.

    • elysianfield April 6, 2020 at 12:27 pm #

      “That should make clear that seriously the economy threatening decisions are made without sufficient knowledge of what the facts really are…”

      Peter,
      Or…or they are made with sufficient knowledge that you and I are currently unaware.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 1:58 pm #

        Thank you. It’s simply criminal to be animating the Anti-Conspiracy meme – so well established by the elite owned media, at this time.

        Thank you expressing the opposite.

    • Q. Shtik April 6, 2020 at 12:40 pm #

      ” However, after further adjusting for demography and under-ascertainment, we obtained a best estimate of the case fatality ratio in China of 1·38% (1·23–1·53), with substantially higher ratios in older age groups (0·32% [0·27–0·38] in those aged <60 years vs 6·4% [5·7–7·2] in those aged ?60 years), up to 13·4% (11·2–15·9) in those aged 80 years or older. " – peter m

      =============

      Huh?

    • sophia April 6, 2020 at 1:00 pm #

      They aren’t all orcs because many highly eminent people are against the extreme measures. They are desperately trying to be heard. But you can’t break through hysteria.

    • dah plunge protection team April 6, 2020 at 9:19 pm #

      THERE ARE TWO VULNERABLE POPULATIONS TO COVID-19, THE ELDERLY AND THOSE WITH AN UNDERLYING HEALTH CONDITION.

      THE PROBLEM IN THE USA IS THAT HALF THE POPULATION IS OBESE, HAS DIABETES, HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE OR HAS A SLEW OF MENTAL DISORDERS…. WHICH TO COVID-19, MAKES THEM THE EQUIVALENT OF ELDERLY.

      • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 10:26 pm #

        Yes, I agree. That why we needs to lock them indoors with bottles and bottles of booze to further improve their good heath. We needs their liver in tip top shape to fight the virus when they get out.

    • michael April 7, 2020 at 6:23 am #

      X suggesting to “self quarantine” Y is a contradiction in terms.
      It is this sort of “logic” that will eventually do us in.

  9. Pete April 6, 2020 at 10:42 am #

    I understand, there will be no meaningful resuscitation.

    I want to understand, I want any piece of information that will help me make my next bold move. There may not be some monster under our collective bed, but there are those who take advantage of our fear and confusion, and they continue, unabated with their efforts to tear down the Presidency of the United States. To them, COVID-19 was a gift, and the catalyst to press their agenda. I’ll give a nod to serendipity, but it cannot possibly go unnoticed, that the agenda is communist and the actors are communist.

    But I stand here, speechless and paralyzed, as the mechanics of our nation tell me that my framastat is hosed, and I’m going to need a $2 Trillion super hydrafanized valve lifter, and by the way it’s out of warranty. My inner being is screaming B.S at the top of my lungs, as I pull out my credit card to pay the bill.

    • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:29 am #

      To them, COVID-19 was a gift. That is demented. You will change your tune when someone you know is killed by the Trump virus. If you grow a brain cell and some heart tissue you will realize that anybody who would wish for the Trump virus is sick. Even my worst enemy would not do this to me. I hope. Only depressed crazy people want the Trump virus. They should be in rubber rooms.

      • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 11:47 am #

        It’s not Trump opponents who have much to gain from this. If it WAS a Trump crippling operation, it has failed spectacularly.

        The people of the USA have suffered from this. Who do you think has benefited (I am better off financially from it, saving commuting and other costs and getting the same salary. In every other way, no.)?

        • Beryl of Oyl April 10, 2020 at 10:35 am #

          Nancy is trying to use the president’s handling of the response as grounds for the next impeachment attempt.

      • Pete April 6, 2020 at 11:50 am #

        Sorry Jim.

        K-Dog – fuck you.

        • K-Dog April 8, 2020 at 6:47 pm #

          Pushing your own personal conspiratorial soup de-jour does not do anybody any good.

      • sophia April 6, 2020 at 1:27 pm #

        Oh, for God’s sake, K-dog, you are rabid.

        My daughter and her husband and toddler (different daughter than the above) have probably had it. And they were hoping to get it. The words she used was “if we can be so lucky.”

        They seem to have gotten it because he traveled to an event that included many nationalities and of course there is the airports.

        They are in their 30’s. The baby almost had no reaction. They were a little sick, her more than him.

        • K-Dog April 8, 2020 at 6:54 pm #

          You make no sense and are only being part of the defend the POTHUS at all costs team. Don’t worry I won’t take it personally. What does your daughter and husband and toddler have to do with this. Don’t answer because we know the answer is nothing. You threw up some emotional hot words knowing that is what people are likely to remember. K-Dog -> asshole, daughter husband toddler -> K-Dog bad. Propaganda 101. I have been learning it from you for so long that if I had to pay tuition the student loan would wipe me out.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 2:02 pm #

        Schiff now wants Trump investigated over his handling of the Corona virus.

        As if any other administration would have handled it better. They all would have dithered while the CEOs had time to retire and the Elite had time to cash out of the Market or short it.

        And they all would have been accused of “racism” by the Media (owned by the same Elite) if they had tried to close the borders.

        But sure Trump was no better. Like all of them, he hoped for smooth sailing into the Election.

    • Q. Shtik April 6, 2020 at 1:17 pm #

      my framastat is hosed, – Pete

      ======

      ‘framastat’…hahaha. I had to Google it. Turns out it’s the same thing, back in the day, we called ‘a chrome plated Johnson rod’.

    • michael April 7, 2020 at 6:25 am #

      “next bold move”: invest in oil companies.
      Greta is going back to school, the batteries in EVs are not getting any bigger and the climate warriors don’t know what a cold shower is.

      Looks to me like there is no getting away from fossil fuels.

  10. PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 10:56 am #

    “The Federal Reserve crew and their allied banksters have barely a few weeks before an immiserated public comes after them with the modern equivalent of pitchforks. Wait for the breaking news on the cable networks: The Hamptons are burning!”

    There aren’t any true revolutionary bones left in the American body, imho; It’s a flaccid, flabby, flatulent body– reeking like an unwashed fishmonger full of scales & tails & bits of fish intestines. It has a greedy, pornified, drug addicted mind– like that of a butcher knife wielding sociopath, high on nihilism.

    • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 11:08 am #

      It is in perfect condition for governmental takeover.

      Get ready to kiss the Constitution good-bye.

      • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 11:49 am #

        I kissed it goodbye a while ago, John. Now I can dismiss the vision of it, too.

        1913-1917 is when it was killed. Maybe Lincoln. YMMV.

  11. K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:04 am #

    @EvelynV

    “Trump’s ability to give a speech is the least of his inadequacies.”

    Great essay today, I liked how the different woo-woo expanations about how an natural accident waiting to happen in a wet market got conflated into bat-shit crazy impossibilities were dismissed.

    Reminds me I have to drive over to Bills fortress of code and get my vaccination again today. They only last three weeks. Only ten miles.

    But Trump not being able to give a speech? O come on. The mistake is calling a Trump performance a speech. Trump lies, I think JHK only pretends to miss that. JHK pays attention to how people talk and what they say and most of what Trump does is set the stage so his buffoonery can’t be seen for what it is. Is it possible for an experienced wordsmith to miss that? This inexperienced one has no trouble seeing that Trump does not give speeches. Trump gives dog and pony shows like a mountebank does. The two are NOT comparable. Trump is a walking commercial for a cult of personality, nothing more.

    Either you are for Trump or against him and 1000+ dead a day leaves no room for ambiguity.

    “his own unfortunate habit of jumbled impromptu speech”

    A Trump so called speech is a deliberate manipulation to confuse people. Everything to Trump is a manipulation and a ”deal’.

    Trump has a pickpockets idea of science and the confusion caused by his jumbled impromptu speech is only deliberate. And transparent too, but not before you clear your mind of the airs you give Trump when he seduces you with his lies. Perhaps regardless of skill if you marinate in conservative right wing elitist bile you are easily taken in.

    If you fall for Trump bullshit you are a willing partner to his emotional confusion and cesspool of a brain-pan. Trump appears to pay attention to you and you love it. His words his tone, you crave it. The way he double fakes that smile, you eat it up.

    I fully expect a Trump troll is waiting to insult me or claim I suffer from Trump derangement syndrome. I preferred the previous descriptor, having moral fiber.

    K-Dog– Isn’t obvious I am not talking about Trump’s speeches, as in rally rhetoric, but rather his elongated off-the-cuff utterances. They are not the same. You’re pissing me off with your thick-headed condescention — JHK Admin

    • PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 11:06 am #

      You suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome

      🙂

      ha ha
      had to tease you

      • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:47 am #

        ? Hove a good day.

      • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:49 am #

        :?) Have a good day. There, that is better.

        • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 11:53 am #

          Ahhhhh, I still can’t return the smile.

        • PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 11:53 am #

          You too, bud! be safe

    • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 11:10 am #

      Your opinion is yours. It counts about as much as any opinion today, not much.

    • cc rider April 6, 2020 at 1:27 pm #

      Well K-Dog I think you are just plain deranged. Trump or no Trump.

    • sophia April 6, 2020 at 1:33 pm #

      K-dog, the tragedy of Trump Derangement Syndrome is that it completely removes the sufferer from having any ability to analyze events. Instead, everything, but everything, and I do mean everything, is evaluated in light of one standard only (which in this case is nearly irrelevant) – how does it relate to Trump and negatively at that?

      Sigh. I don’t know why I just bothered because I know you are impervious. It is one of the symptoms of the disease. It’s a mental disease. I guess I bothered because here I can say it but I cannot say it to the many other people I know who suffer from it.

      • EvelynV April 7, 2020 at 1:46 am #

        sophia do you ever put yourself to sleep with the boring thoughts flowing from you non-stop.

        • sophia April 7, 2020 at 2:36 pm #

          I’ve got a book right now I’m trying to read but it is very difficult – perhaps I should call it boring?

          • Beryl of Oyl April 10, 2020 at 10:40 am #

            I was looking at Valerie Jarret’s Twitter feed. It is allegedly about a devastating worldwide outbreak of disease, but nearly every single tweet is about President Trump.
            That seemed kind of sick and twisted to me.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 2:04 pm #

      Dog, this kind of hysteria isn’t very Presidential.

    • Robert White April 6, 2020 at 2:49 pm #

      All writers have artistic license, K-Dog. You can’t hold Jim’s perspectives up as straw man piñata to be bashed with a stick in some sort of mosh pit due to your having your knickers in a knot about something other than Jim’s perspective, or writing.

      How would you like to run a blog and get dumped on when you wanted to share ideas/perspectives for discussion/discourse?

      RW

      • benr April 6, 2020 at 3:15 pm #

        @rw

        100% AGREE with your assessment.
        Bravo.

    • EvelynV April 7, 2020 at 1:43 am #

      “condescention”

      WTF!! – Someone is coming apart at the seams.

      Whatever criticism taken from K-Dog’s faintly mild rebuke is nothing compared to what’s deserved.

      After the wearisome and tediously overused “GGG” all but disappeared from the lexicon used for the bi-weekly screeds, the virtual fawning and total lack of disapprobation for Trump’s egregious behavior and continual leadership failures makes you deserving of more than condescension.

      • Nightowl April 7, 2020 at 8:22 am #

        A spelling error means he is coming apart at the seams?

        I wonder what your grammatical error in sentence two signifies?

        Nut.

  12. JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 11:05 am #

    Questions?

    Does the virus build Permanent immunity? If it doesn’t, everything is moot. Vaccines will not work if no immunity is acquired.

    Does the virus build an apex than go back to zero? Why?

    Will it be seasonal, big question as that means it will take a slice out of society every year.

    Would China be willing to take a hit, only to come roaring back after killing the virus? Last time I looked, the Communistic world was willing to blow up part of the world to get their way. Various China experts are saying yes to this question. Remember, it was our government with corporate America, plus Wall Street that gave China our manufacturing base. I wonder what no.2 is going to feel like?

    • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 12:13 pm #

      JohnAZ

      It appears the answer is “No Immunity“.

      https://youtu.be/gAk7aX5hksU

      In this video Professor of infectious diseases Kim Woo-joo from South Korea University’s Guro Hospital explains that in South Korea people were reinfected 10 days after recovery. Kim Woo-joo is the Dr. Fauci of South Korea.

      Quarantine, with a more intelligent implementation which can’t be done with the current cave man in charge is the only path forward. A changing of the guard is called for.

      It drops because the R0 falls below 1. The apex means the virus can’t find new people to infect before it is cured in a particular infected person via recovery or death.

      Understanding the math of R0 gives the obvious conclusion that a virus should never be allowed to rage and build herd immunity. For Gail Tverberg to claim otherwise was irresponsible. She does math right? Unchecked spread produces the maximum damage. DUH

      No herd immunity means it will be seasonal unless it is wiped out by quarantine efforts.

      China killing its customer makes no sense and they have been buying up the world for Belt And Road without any opposition making the need for an attack moot. To them Trump is a temporary irritation. Their concern would be to maintain power at home but their power at home is not under threat.

      But arguing logic against that point of view is a waste of time. Hate likes to hate. More convincing is to show that COVID is a weapon in the same way that a gun is a weapon in a game of Russian Roulette.

      • elysianfield April 6, 2020 at 12:33 pm #

        ” Kim Woo-joo is the Dr. Fauci of South Korea.”

        What! Another god damned Illuminati Italian Vatican Mafioso?

        …and his name sounds Jewish, to boot….

      • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 1:51 pm #

        “Understanding the math of R0 gives the obvious conclusion that a virus should never be allowed to rage and build herd immunity. For Gail Tverberg to claim otherwise was irresponsible. She does math right? Unchecked spread produces the maximum damage. DUH”

        We allow the cold virus to rage and build herd immunity, until it mutates. The common cold costs billions every year in lost productivity, too. We don’t spend trillions s to fight it.

        I don’t think there’s a chance of stopping unchecked spread at this point. It has escaped all reasonable containment. The best we can do is let it slowly burn below the level of hospital-overloading outbreak. The very-expensive shutdown enacted in NY seems to have achieved this, given the recent drop in hospitalizations.

        Maybe we can move to a Swedish-style containment strategy, still banning large groups of over 50 people, but otherwise returning to normality?

        • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 2:11 pm #

          Swedish-style containment strategy, for sheep.

          • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 3:10 pm #

            Small steps. People shocked at a non-complete lockdown in Sweden already.

          • sophia April 6, 2020 at 4:34 pm #

            Several countries have not done lockdown and are doing well, Sweden will be in better shape next fall than the rest of us.

        • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 6:51 pm #

          We allow the cold virus to rage and build herd immunity, until it mutates

          Sorry Sherlock: Why don’t we develop immunity against common cold?

          • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 8:06 pm #

            You said “any virus.” We let rhinoviruses run wild until we achieve herd immunity to them. The virus needs to mutate to infect again.

          • sophia April 7, 2020 at 2:37 pm #

            My understanding is that we do. Once you get a cold you never get it again. But there are so many of them. Each is different.

        • elysianfield April 7, 2020 at 1:17 am #

          Dr. Tom
          “Herd Immunity” relies on either an inoculation of a viable vaccine or recovered patients who have developed an immunity…suggests that 90+ percent of the population is required to develop such.

          It is still an open question as to whether those infected and then “recovered” develop an effective immunity.

        • Majella April 9, 2020 at 12:35 am #

          “We allow the cold virus to rage and build herd immunity, until it mutates. The common cold costs billions every year in lost productivity, too. We don’t spend trillions s to fight it.”

          So, what is the annual death rate form the common cold? How many are hospitalised annually from a cold?

        • Beryl of Oyl April 10, 2020 at 10:42 am #

          I’m hearing all that hysteria over ventilator stockpiles was misplaced.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 2:09 pm #

        A weird Capitalist argument. If you have all the Power, you have all the Resources and you don’t need “customers”. The Capitalist Elite know that as so the Communist ones. We put them in power, remember?

        Capitalism is for the other guy. The big Capitalists don’t believe in it, but they want you, the sucker, to. Competition is a sin in their book.

        • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 2:11 pm #

          Swedish-style containment strategy, in no go zones?

    • sophia April 6, 2020 at 4:30 pm #

      John,

      The immunity question is really ripe for propaganda. If there isn’t immunity, then perhaps it really is a manmade virus. At any rate, we do get immunity from most colds.
      Vaccines won’t work very well anyway, if we judge by the flue vaccine. Actually, most vaccines. They do not give true immunity, which is why after 3 shots I am now vulnerable to measles. And I am pissed. I could have had immunity, but it was denied me. I could have protected my babies, but that was denied me too.

    • michael April 7, 2020 at 6:34 am #

      Of what use is a virus against which we can become immune?

      One which persists and weakens your immune system (the virus shares part of the genome of the AIDS virus in which the suppression of T-helper cells is effected) is of great societal benefit:

      Consumption is shifted from environmentally damaging items (cars, plane tickets,…) to green products (lifelong subscriptions to antivirals)
      and the citizens “renew” themselves (Logan’s Run) more frequently
      and lead more quiet, introspective lives.

      No more trips, diving excursions, cruise ship activity, wilderness disturbance, beach crowding, spring break, …

      It’s all for the good of the spirit and the environment.

  13. RB April 6, 2020 at 11:14 am #

    I need to purchase a wheelbarrow so I can take cash to buy a loaf of bread that may or may not be on the shelf. What to do, what to do?

    Mr. K left out the theory that perhaps our Creator, which so many strain to deny exists, is putting us on notice that we need to redirect our priorities. Just a thought. If this is a true item, then even if Covid 19 is “fixed”, there may well be a follow on attention getter. This theory is as good as any other.

    • daytrip April 6, 2020 at 11:54 am #

      Gaia. Shaking off humans like a dog shakes off fleas.

      Or, maybe it’s all a simulation, per Elon Musk and Joe Rogan’s conversation here:

      https://youtu.be/0cM690CKArQ

  14. SW April 6, 2020 at 11:21 am #

    All the conspiracy theories clogging the internet have whiff of a bad Hollywood script. IMO what we’re seeing is systemic incompetence and plenty of media driven panic.

    A real script could be Private Health System Meets Pandemic. A semi-hysterical friend was raging against Trump for not having enough respirators and I tried to explain to her that the people in charge in hospitals are the ones who order, pay for and store respirators so if they don’t have enough, it’s because they didn’t order them from private companies who produce them — for a profit. I’m amazed the public thinks we can go from a private, for-profit healthcare system riddled with corruption to a streamlined efficient one in two weeks flat.

    The countries who have shown themselves competent are Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam. We are not on that list and I don’t think we ever will be again.

    • PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 11:51 am #

      yeah

      I think we’ll see the type of federal response after what happened post-9/11
      …mainly the creation of another large federal department for pandemics, like the DHS was created.. and perhaps similar to the Patriot Act, a bill that will be focused around citizens’ private health information (?)
      idk.. just some thoughts

      • elysianfield April 6, 2020 at 12:34 pm #

        Pete,
        The major difference is that then we only got $500…we gettin’ $1200 NOW….

        • PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 2:56 pm #

          Will it delay Soylent Green for another month or two??

          We shall see..

    • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 11:53 am #

      Germany, too.

      Healthcare is at best a regulated utility if you want it to be profitable. Your point about the disaster of the fragilizing effect of money on healthcare “buffers” is well taken.

    • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 12:55 pm #

      The countries who have shown themselves competent are Taiwan, Singapore, Vietnam. We are not on that list and I don’t think we ever will be again.

      Australia is doing pretty well too, so far – particularly as compared to the OECD developed countries. We have an excellent national health scheme | private health mix. Plus our (conservative) government went hard and went early, on travel restrictions, closing down activities that require crowds (sports, pubs, etc), and ordering self-isolation.

      But measures are not extreme – lots of people working from home, but businesses still function, schools are still open in some states, as are many facilities.

      We have three distinct advantages:

      1. We are an island
      2. We have low population densities, even in the cities
      3. We have pretty strong social cohesion, and take it seriously

      We really “are all in this together”.

      I’m puzzled by the JHK essay today … why regurgitate the conspiracy theory blather that can be found on a thousand other lesser websites? All it does is incite the regular loonies on here, and it doesn’t take much to set those mad dogs barking.

      • Nightowl April 6, 2020 at 3:34 pm #

        Cargill’s conspiracies were much better.

        I miss the days of the coming White Ethnostate, and the New Reich.

        Russian Collusion was great too, even though Cargill never could tell us how the Russians were in bed with the alt-right neo-Nazis.

        Good times.

        • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 5:14 pm #

          I rest my case, although I’m at some risk of insulting mad dogs barking.

          Please stop talking drivel man – incoherent drivel at that.

          • Nightowl April 7, 2020 at 2:48 am #

            Your record speaks for itself. When does the Bad Orange Man put us in camps?

      • Beryl of Oyl April 10, 2020 at 10:48 am #

        Australian kids are still fairly ‘free range’, and I’ve never met an Australian who cannot swim.

        The conspiracy theories are part and parcel of the major story in the world right now.
        Using a word like regurgitate to describe mentioning these theories to discuss them seems kind of unfair.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 2:15 pm #

      So this never took place?

      http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/about

      But it did. The question then becomes, How many coincidences are you willing to accept?

      • sophia April 6, 2020 at 4:40 pm #

        Janos,

        That is the Q question.

      • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 5:11 pm #

        Totally debunked … ages ago.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 5:54 pm #

          Just like the Bell Curve, right Booby?

        • sophia April 6, 2020 at 9:41 pm #

          Even if Q had been debunked, that does not dismiss the logical question that was presented – how many coincidences can you swallow?

    • sophia April 6, 2020 at 4:37 pm #

      It also shows the idiocy of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
      What? The president is in charge of ordering respirators for all the thousands of hospitals in the land?

  15. RocketDoc April 6, 2020 at 11:49 am #

    I can tell most of us would have had a hard time in the 14th century when successive waves of plague carried off half the population. Our “little” virus at a possible CFR of 5% has us holed up in our rooms.

    The “floundering of centralized authorities” is not likely to lead to re-localization anytime soon but to a need for better tools by the ones who are tasked with making decisions and thus MORE centralization. Government is a one trick pony–it buys friends. To keep the population from getting restive, it will need to pay them….

    The cause, conspiracy or no, is a narrative secondary to the Reality of the present situation.

  16. PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 11:52 am #

    “Government is a one trick pony–it buys friends. To keep the population from getting restive, it will need to pay them….”

    very insightful! i agree

  17. DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 11:59 am #

    “This includes the phrase that the novel corona virus is “just another seasonal flu,” and so ordering people to stay away from work and business was unnecessary. Again, you’d have to ask yourself why medical experts and other plausibly intelligent people in so many other countries would do exactly the same thing.”

    JHK, why did people buy Pets.com in 1999? Pet rocks in the 1970s? Doing what others is doing is a shortcut that saves us mental processing in Kahneman’s system 2. It works really well most of the time, but it can lead to a lemming plunge over the cliffs at times.

    As to “just another seasonal flu,” well, no. Different viruses. Also, this is frightening in its effects of suffocating people. But if it kills no worse than a flu, how should we treat it.

    Excess deaths in Europe. Check Spain and Italy. Check also Sweden, where people haven’t chosen the extreme lockdown, and The Netherlands, which continues to pursue the “herd immunity” strategy:
    http://www.euromomo.eu/

    So, intelligent people in The Netherlands and Sweden have NOT done exactly the same thing, but their death graphs look the same as the lemmings. What conclusions do you draw from that?

    • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 2:18 pm #

      Dying is usually unpleasant. The fact remains that the CDC has ordered Hospitals to cook the books on this thing. Why?

      • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 3:12 pm #

        Watch the total deaths chart, Janos.its generally harder to cook the books on that.

        Of course, doing so shows there really are increased deaths at the moment in NY, since we expect about 450 per day on average and are north of that at the moment.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 3:22 pm #

          1/ As you sit home watching #COVID death counts spiral, please know the official @CDCgov guidance for coding COVID-related deaths is as follows: any death where the disease “caused or is *assumed* to have caused or *contributed to* death.” Confirmed lab tests are not required…

          View image on Twitter
          2,239
          10:15 AM – Apr 3, 2020
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          Alex Berenson

          @AlexBerenson
          Replying to @AlexBerenson
          2/ And, btw, other possibly relevant factors, like, oh, COPD, are considered secondary. The rules “are expected to result in COVID-19 being the underlying cause more often than not.” https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvss/coronavirus/Alert-2-New-ICD-code-introduced-for-COVID-19-deaths.pdf

          556
          10:18 AM – Apr 3, 2020

          JS: A reporter for the NYT. Does that help or hurt his case? The correct answer is neither because Truth is the Truth no matter who says it. The CDC is saying this and you can go to their website for yourself and see it. Thus you are wrong: The total number of deaths is being inflated and is incorrect.

          Now try to answer my other question: Why?

          • sophia April 6, 2020 at 4:45 pm #

            Janos,

            How are they inflating total number of deaths? That they are attributing most deaths to Covid whether true or not, that I believe is happening. But total deaths?

            And so far, the total deaths are not higher than usual. It is still early, but will be interesting.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 5:56 pm #

            Oh, ok, I get your/his point. My error. I meant the total number from Corvid, but Tom probably meant as you do.

          • Nightowl April 7, 2020 at 2:53 am #

            I mentioned this about 2 weeks ago, but the books are wacky in Italy, too.

            Cases of co-morbidity where Corona was also present are attributed to Corona.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 7:27 am #

            “Cases of co-morbidity where Corona was also present are attributed to Corona.”

            And so they would be, quite rightly, if my husband died of Covid contracted from a patient. He’s diabetic. He’s in no danger whatever of dying from diabetes per se because it’s controlled by metformin. None at all. So if he gets Covid and dies from it, his death will be due to Covid, comorbidities or no comorbidities. So your premise needs a little refining. That’s because your view is primarily a political one. Which may also be true in some cases on the other side of the argument, but it’s worth being aware of.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 10:07 am #

            And remember that a whole lot of people who survive invasive ventilation will come out of it with damaged lungs (and possibly other organs too). I have no reason to believe their subsequent earlier-than-normal deaths, where such occur, will be correctly attributed to Covid19. Swings and roundabouts.

  18. stelmosfire April 6, 2020 at 12:04 pm #

    The rumor mill is in overdrive. Two casual acquaintances died recently. Elderly. 81 and 85. Of course they died from the virus. Yea right. Both of them have been in and out of the hospital for the past few years. 34 dead in my county. 23 of them from the same place. The Holyoke Soldiers “Home”. That place has always been where old soldiers go to die. They tested positive for Corona. I’m starting to think this thing has been around for a while. What happened to all those mysterious “vaping” hospitalizations last fall? Did they ever really find a cause? My son in law, healthy 36, was sick as a dog in Dec. Fever, dry cough, all the symptoms.

  19. xxzzy999 April 6, 2020 at 12:12 pm #

    The DNC fix is in, Hillary will be the nominee and is the Democrat’s best candidate to run in 2020 (no matter how much the Republicans despise her… me included). She has enormous power in the party and has the base, funding and DNC support to launch by far the best campaign. Hillary received 95% of the Super Delegate’s vote in the 2016 Convention. The Super Delegates are the heart and soul of the Democrat Party, made up of all Democrat Senators, House members, Governors, ex-Presidents, etc… approx 775 delegates.

    She has learned from her mistakes in 2016… she has avoided running in the primaries, thus avoiding any negative press so far. She has been very visible lately with appearances on late night talk shows, podcasts, book tours, HULU biography launched last week during Super Tuesday, thus polishing her image before entering the race. Get ready for Trump vs. Hillary 2.0 my friends.

    • sophia April 6, 2020 at 4:49 pm #

      About #walkaway – my daughter said her red pill moment was the super delegates, and how DWS admitted that the purpose of that system was to prevent their preferred candidates from having to run against grass roots candidates.

      • sophia April 6, 2020 at 4:50 pm #

        HRC – too much evidence that she is involved in child trafficking rings. Haiti.

        • xxzzy999 April 7, 2020 at 12:26 pm #

          Have the Clintons ever been held to justice for any of their crimes? Does the DNC care about any of the Democrats’ crimes? The Pant_Suit_Pig will be the nominee my friend.

      • xxzzy999 April 7, 2020 at 12:32 pm #

        Exactly…. my red pill moment was watching the pure evil of the Democrat Party during the Kavanaugh hearings. After that, I began to follow the Democrat’s primaries, debates, etc. I then read about the DNC’s involvement in 2016 and how they function… yes, another red pill moment indeed… the DNC is in place to bring forth the Dem’s best candidate, the DNC is not meant to be fair.

        It makes one realize why Bernie is so weak… Bernie is a fool for supporting the Democrat Party, the same people that cheated him in 2016. He will again cower down and support the Democrat nominee, then tell his immature following to vote for the Democrat nominee…. the Pant_Suit_Pig again.

        • sophia April 7, 2020 at 2:41 pm #

          She is the reincarnation of Genghis Khan, proof of my theory that if you don’t like your gender the best strategy is to wait for your next incarnation when you can get one that actually works.

  20. JustSaying April 6, 2020 at 12:12 pm #

    There’s abundant evidence that this flood of money-from-thin-air will do nothing to arrest the unwind of a system so rotten that it casts an odor across the boundaries of history…

    As for Mr. Gates:

    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2020/04/no_author/ground-control-to-planet-lockdown-this-is-only-a-test/

  21. malthuss April 6, 2020 at 12:13 pm #

    I go with the conspiracy theories. starting with Event 201 and its swag, a toy.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 2:39 pm #

      And I support the Pizza Gate Conspiracy Theory. Alefantis, a small business owner, is one of the most prominent men in Washington DC? How? Why?

      • PeteAtomic April 6, 2020 at 3:01 pm #

        Maybe he just makes a damn good sausage pizza??

        • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 3:26 pm #

          Yeah, probably not. Nice attempt at using humor to deflect and deflate though. Thanks funny man.

      • Nightowl April 7, 2020 at 3:13 am #

        Which theory? The theory the Fake Nooz reported on was invented entirely by the Fake Nooz.

        Comet Pizza was always a creepy place. I played a few rock shows there back when they still had the pedo murals on the wall by the tables (long before any of this news spread).

        The facts worth reporting on (not an exhaustive list) include Alefantis’s pedoish social media accounts (which he closed); his connections to the Podestas, see Tony Podesta’s pedo art collection (which was even profiled in the WaPo); and the bizzarre Podesta emails at Wikileaks (which involve kids, what appears to be codespeak, and several individuals close to Alefantis).

        There were also a few oddities at Comet itself. The pedoesque menu logo. The motto of “Play. Eat. Drink.,” the secret/hidden bathrooms (something noone understood when I used to go there), and ofc, the pedo murals.

        • BornToKillPeace April 7, 2020 at 6:47 pm #

          My buddies played there a few years ago as well.

          Arrington de Dionyso, also a musician, is responsible for some of the murals up there and is a clown.

          I remember him playing a basement show around here years ago and being prissy about the cigarette smoke.

          Dude got paid by child traffickers for his art work.

          • BornToKillPeace April 7, 2020 at 6:50 pm #

            Jeff Koons and Tony Podesta are big names in this. I wish I would of saved the link to this article recently.

            Apparently they run a program with the usual suspects by which “art” can be moved around the world without being checked first. The designation, no joke, is labeled under “Live Art”.

        • PeteAtomic April 8, 2020 at 12:00 pm #

          wow.. yeah bizarre stuff..

          it is suspicious

  22. malthuss April 6, 2020 at 12:42 pm #

    Cargille, the aussie farmer on you tube is Self Sufficient Me.

    meanwhile,

    Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI:Dow Jones Global Indexes)

    +1,188.35 (+5.64%)

    • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 1:12 pm #

      Cargille, the aussie farmer on you tube is Self Sufficient Me.

      Thanks for that – I have heard of him, and his advice is homey and straightforward. In fact a lot of what he does is just what my parents and grandparents did – grow lots of vegetables, have fruit trees, keep chickens for eggs and meat, learn how to cure and preserve food.

      We did all that on a quarter-acre suburban block in the 1950s) – we had excellent topsoil, and Sydney rainfall is pretty reliable.\, and the climate virtually frost-free.

      But SSM is based in SE Queensland – mostly sub-tropical and never cold … abundant rainfall. It’s where we have our second home … great weather for retirees, so we escape the Melbourne winter.

      When are the stock markets going to have some connection to reality?

      • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 2:23 pm #

        The Abos can sleep naked in the cold Australian night. They don’t keep the fire going, just crowding together. It’s been studied: their bodies do something that other peoples can’t do. A White Man would be shivering all night, getting barely any sleep at all. The Abos sleep soundly however, awakening very cold. They shiver and shake while the Sun comes on strong to warm them up. I suppose they could start a fire if they needed to on cloudy or wet mornings.

        The Races: So, so very different.

        • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 3:49 pm #

          15 years ago Id have taken a book like
          ‘Mutant Message Down Under’, seriously.

        • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 5:00 pm #

          The Races: So, so very different.

          Indeed – Indigenous Australians are far superior and more resilient – and much wiser – than you could ever possibly aspire to, holed up within your pasty, sickly, weak slavic skin.

          But no need to parade your terrible vulnerabilities (and shrivelled little white dick) on here all the time. Your self-loathing isn’t much fun to watch. Just accept your whitefella inferiority – adapt to the reality – and let’s all move on, shall we?

          • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 6:03 pm #

            Self hatred? Or Tribe? In any case, absurd. They have IQ’s of 60. But sure they have a few good adaptations for life down there. Very dark skin obviously. And thicker skulls for club fighting. Good runners? Probably good distance men.

            We have everything else.

          • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 9:23 pm #

            It’s good that we all know that you’re kidding.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 12:07 am #

            Are you kidding about your contempt for Whites?

            I’m not kidding either.

          • michael April 7, 2020 at 6:54 am #

            I was always struck by the primitive nature of their rock paintings as compared to European cave art some of which is unsurpassed still.

          • BornToKillPeace April 7, 2020 at 6:55 pm #

            Cargill and Janos,

            Once again, let me suggest John Greenway’s book, “Down Among the Wild Men”.

            Janos, you would love it. He was THE red pilled folklorist of the 60s-70s.

            Cargill, you’re tripping.

          • Cargill April 8, 2020 at 10:04 pm #

            Are you kidding about your contempt for Whites?

            Just about sums you up – anyone who has respect for, and the time for, a wide range of cultures is on a plane above you – I have no contempt for whites, I have no self-loathing whatsoever.

            But you see it as tribal warfare, you’re with us or you’re agin us, or some other zero-sum lunacy from a fervid supremacist mind-set. Sad.

  23. snagglepuss April 6, 2020 at 1:20 pm #

    @DrTomSchmidt
    April 6, 2020 at 11:35 am #
    The problem with self-quarantine of the elderly and sickly is that it doesn’t shut down the economy and make people beg for a bailout, the majority of whose dollars will be given over to the Fed to dole out to connected constituents.

    But, yes: until we can get a way to protect the elderly and sick, we need to lock them down and support them.

    Agreed, but one of the problems with those same elderly is that they live in care homes where standards of cleanliness are not always high and are looked after by lower wage care assistants who might also not practice good hygiene. Even before the crisis there was always some norovirus breakout occurring on a regular basis.

    • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 1:42 pm #

      Yes, those homes are depressing and not particularly given over to healthfulness. One bad side effect of this thing is to remove the elderly from living with or even contact with their younger relatives in an attempt to keep them alive.

      Perhaps they think about Corona as CS Lewis thought about nuclear weapons and annihilation:

      If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.

      • SW April 6, 2020 at 2:30 pm #

        Dr. Tom — thanks for the quote from CS Lewis. He was the epitome of quiet, calm good sense.

  24. tom clark April 6, 2020 at 1:47 pm #

    This is what government leadership should look like in a crisis:

    http://www.kttc.com/2020/04/05/icymi-gov-tim-walz-speaks-to-minnesotans-in-state-of-the-state-address/

  25. AttackSub April 6, 2020 at 2:01 pm #

    K-Dog has jumped the shark and needs to be humanely, “put-down.”

    • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 3:15 pm #

      https://www.rt.com/business/485025-us-economy-losses-moodys/

      Moody’s (not the Blues or a cafe in Waltham, Ma) says 30% of our economy is already gone. Thanks Globalists!

      How many will die on the streets? Those who do not accept the Chip and the New Way. In other words, many.

      • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 4:51 pm #

        Moody’s (not the Blues or a cafe in Waltham, Ma) says 30% of our economy is already gone. Thanks Globalists!

        Why on earth would you blame “globalists” for the economic effects of a viral pandemic? The US has been a huge beneficiary of global trade and global production for about 150 years.

        Without globalism, the US economy wouldn’t even be half as big as it currently is … you talk nonsense man … you let your ideology and hatred get in the way of sense.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 6:05 pm #

          Who cares if it isn’t distributed fairly. You’re a Socialist, remember? You’re supposed to be opposed to things like that. Or are you still on the destructive spiral? Marx was for free trade because he knew it ruined nations.

        • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 6:42 pm #

          Nation states will always seek to trade with other nation states. This isn’t globalism.

          • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 9:30 pm #

            Globalism is the essence of “trade” – why was there a mad rush to establish colonies for three centuries – to “globalise” trade, with raw materials from the outlands, and manufactured goods in England, Holland, etc, to make those countries rich.

            Globalisation is the distribution of capital and labour to where it’s going to work most efficiently. A Boeing 777 has parts from many countries, smart phones are made up the road here in Indonesia, so it lands in Berlin $200 cheaper than making it in California.

            It’s all trade – and we have all benefitted from it. The US is in the unfortunate position (rather like England) of peaking early – you made things that either are no longer needed in huge numbers, or are easier to make in low-cost countries.

            Good luck getting that horse back in the barn … tariffs don’t work.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 12:06 am #

            Tarrrifs work for Nationalists since they seek to maintain the nation. They don’t work for Corporations who seek only profit – or for Globalists who wise to undermine the Nations for both profit and power.

            Different aims. We admit ours, and they pretend to be on the same page while having a radically different agenda.

          • sunburstsoldier April 7, 2020 at 12:36 am #

            Globalisation is the distribution of capital and labour to where it’s going to work most efficiently. –Cargill

            Does this distribution occur through a free market or a governing elite (as in Socialism)?

    • sophia April 6, 2020 at 4:56 pm #

      The thing about Trump Derangement Syndrome is that it is an obsession and an addiction. The addict needs hate biscuits every day, usually several times per day. Since the elite cabal who run this world and own the media hate Trump, they dole out fresh biscuits every day. The virus is a nice new bowl of batter for making biscuits. The facts aren’t relevant.

      • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 5:57 pm #

        Wowee – a whole lot of paranoia, conspiracy and hatred wrapped up in one modest paragraph.

        And the “elite cabal” (is that another bit of code for those Elders of Zion? It’s hard to keep up)- the elite cabal loves Trump – he is their boy, their toy, installed by all their paid-for politicians in the Republican Party.

        You may desperately hate liberalism, or progressives … and really want a one-party fascist state that locks out the Democratic Party forever, but I suggest you be careful what you wish for … your elite cabal rules the Republicans and the courts.

        The Dems – flawed as they are – are the only chance for freedom for average people.

        • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 6:31 pm #

          That is just bull poop. Reality is quite the opposite. It is Republicans –flawed as they are–who are the only chance for freedom for average people. Democrats support the imposition of a totalitarian state (they call it Democratic Socialism) which will end up grinding all who don’t agree with its agenda under its boot heel. For someone who is supposedly fact-based I’m surprised you can’t see this Cargill…

          • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 6:37 pm #

            Facts count for nothing when your underlying view of reality is marred by bias. They will only be twisted and distorted to fit your delusions…

          • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 9:43 pm #

            For someone who is supposedly fact-based I’m surprised you can’t see this Cargill…

            I don’t see it for the simple reason that it doesn’t exist.

            The vast majority of average people fare far better under Democratic governments … FDR saved the country, and wingnut Republicans have been desperate to tear down New Deal reforms ever since.

            Lincoln was the last Republican president to do something decent for the country, and even he would have been inconsequential if there hadn’t been a civil war.

            Republicans know this – Trump parlayed an angry uneducated white base to get his way into the White House (much helped by the performance of Hillary Clinton). But that won’t wash come November.

            Stand by for the Republicans to block every possible voting reform – such as absentee | postal voting … they know that suppressing the vote is their only path to office. They are undemocratic and power-obsessed – they’ve turned the American Dream into a nightmare.

            BTW the red-baiting calls of “Socialist” don’t work any more, comrade. People DO want social, political, and economic reform – Republicans only offer hate, anger, and corporate greed.

          • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 11:03 pm #

            I noticed Cargill did not respond to my main point but only deflected by pointing his finger at the Republicans…

          • BornToKillPeace April 7, 2020 at 7:00 pm #

            “Lincoln was the last Republican president to do something decent for the country, and even he would have been inconsequential if there hadn’t been a civil war.”

            And now we get to live through the period in which those Northern soldier’s family lines are demonized as being “racist” and below contempt. Cool Deal.

        • SW April 6, 2020 at 6:38 pm #

          If the Democrats are the only chance for freedom for the average person we are deeper trouble than we thought. Though the figures vary, one thing that’s happened over the space of he last 20 years is the systematic impoverishment of over half the citizen. When one out of two can’t come up with $600 for any kind of emergency and there’s no safety net, think about the consequences. Globilization, easy access to credit cards, and “great deals” on Amazon created the illusion of prosperity but for the 50% who can’t come up with enough money for a car repair or the co-pay for prescriptions — many of them outrageously expensive — the underlying stress and worry take their toll.

          The Democrats with Obama as President could have changed course with a real healthcare plan that served the populace. They didn’t and they knew they didn’t but they’ll never admit it. I voted for Obama and wished him success but he was a figurehead, the same as Joe Biden will be if he’s elected.

          • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 9:55 pm #

            The Democrats with Obama as President could have changed course with a real healthcare plan that served the populace. They didn’t and they knew they didn’t but they’ll never admit it. I voted for Obama and wished him success but he was a figurehead, the same as Joe Biden will be if he’s elected.

            I agree that the early Obama years were a crushing disappointment, however he was consumed by the Global Financial Crisis, and then a hostile Congress.

            Joe Biden would be no better – but a Democrat government would still be 5000% better than four more years of the current disaster.

          • Linda April 7, 2020 at 4:28 am #

            Cargil, Richard Nixon passed the Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act, and used an Executive Order to create the EPA. Clearly, Lincoln was NOT the last Republican president to do something decent for the country. I suggest you stick to your own country’s politics and leave us to deal with ours.

          • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 1:24 pm #

            Cargill, Richard Nixon passed the Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act, and used an Executive Order to create the EPA. Clearly, Lincoln was NOT the last Republican president to do something decent for the country. I suggest you stick to your own country’s politics and leave us to deal with ours.

            Nixon didn’t pass any acts whatsoever – do you understand how your constitution operates? Congress creates legislation.

            And by 1969 the public and political pressure to do something about pollution and environmental poisons had become irresistible, even in freedom-lovin’ America. No president would have vetoes such measures.

            And if you bring up Nixon as the only decent Republican president since Lincoln, well, that is scraping the bottom of the barrel!

            And note that the Internet is an international medium … you don’t have to salute the stars&stripes to participate in this or any other forum.

            And I have been reading JHK’s messages of doom & gloom for a very long time – maybe even longer than you.

        • sophia April 6, 2020 at 9:36 pm #

          Oh, goodness, Cargill. You live in an alternate universe. How can you even suggest that the elites love Trump? All the media and all the establishment in DC have done nothing but bash him for about 4 years not. Nonstop.

          And when I speak of Trump derangement syndrome, I’m just saying what has happened to lots of people I know – who are not like they used to be. I have never seen the like in my life. We all hated Bush or whoever, but it never turned millions of people in daily obsessors over their president hatred. And you live in Australia and take part in it!

          I said nothing hateful, but I am calling a spade a spade and nonstop vitriol is what I call hate and it doesn’t come from me.
          Diagnosing a disorder is not hate.

          You even assume I give a crap about the Republican party. I rarely vote for either party. I vote 3rd party. Both parties are corrupt.

          • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 10:06 pm #

            Oh, goodness, Cargill. You live in an alternate universe. How can you even suggest that the elites love Trump? All the media and all the establishment in DC have done nothing but bash him for about 4 years not. Nonstop.

            Oh goodness indeed.

            I’m not talking about inside the beltway, the alleged “Deep State”, or the media (whose only real agenda is more ratings). I’m talking about the corporate elite – Wall Street, vast banks and investment monsters, major corporations, and their Koch Brothers influence.

            They are the elite cabal – and they have a Republican Party fully paid for. Best to aim your guns at the real enemy, and not jump at Democrat shadows or “socialists” under the bed.

            Trump should have been impeached the day after inauguration, he is that crooked. He has been let off very lightly.

    • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 6:47 pm #

      Nice of you to be so concerned. Would you care to explain why I’m a threat? If you need to grow a brain cell. I’ll wait.

  26. AttackSub April 6, 2020 at 2:09 pm #

    sophia:

    Snagglepuss sez:
    Oh yes, I forgot to mention “exercise”, which is 100% free.

    DrTomSchmidt sez:

    Except when the police fine you for being outdoors!

    Attack Sub sez :Show me one state governor who has banned people from walking outdoors by themselves or in groups of 5 people or less?

    The answer is zero zilch nada. Just another bit of false hysteria spread by a ” Dr.”

    • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 2:26 pm #

      Some states have closed some of the parks, luckily not all of them. Not yet at least.

      • outsider April 6, 2020 at 3:03 pm #

        @Janos,
        PA has closed all of its golf courses. To me, that is just petty and downright mean. Golf is the one sport, played in the great outdoors, in which social distancing can be kept. Plans were in place to only have one rider per cart (instead of the usual two), and the carts were to be cleaned after every round.

        Even the clubhouses were to be closed to golfers, with them paying by credit card in advance. That still wasn’t enough for our insane Governor Wolf. He thinks it is not “life-sustaining.” Addicted golfers, who are probably about to start breaking everything in the house with their 5 irons, would say differently.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 3:24 pm #

          Is the 5 iron the best as a weapon? Best keep it out of the bag if you can resist the urge to destroy your own house.

        • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 4:43 pm #

          PA has closed all of its golf courses. To me, that is just petty and downright mean. Golf is the one sport, played in the great outdoors, in which social distancing can be kept.

          No – there are lots of sports and recreational activities that could be undertaken while maintaining social distancing (surfing, skiing, cycling, kayaking, hiking, swimming, etc), but people don’t, plus there are risks associated with getting to and from the recreation place.

          People need to grow up a little and have a few weeks or months of inconvenience, in return for a good long-term future.

          • sophia April 6, 2020 at 4:59 pm #

            No one has ever shut down the world and most life processes before. I don’t get why some people seem to think that it won’t have severe repercussions.
            And all for what. It is unlikely to make more than a small dent in the ultimate death toll.

          • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 5:43 pm #

            I don’t get why some people seem to think that it won’t have severe repercussions. And all for what. It is unlikely to make more than a small dent in the ultimate death toll.

            Well – epidemiologists, immunologists, and other medical experts disagree with you. Social distancing, self-isolation, and the closing down of group activity are all identified as hugely influential in mitigating spread, misery, and death.

            For the poor little rich kid Country Club Republicans to have to miss golf for a month or three – aw shucks – I’m all cut up about that.

            And the US is the world’s poster-child for how a rich, spoilt, whingeing, whining people – who can’t tolerate a few sensible restrictions for a couple of months without freaking out – wind up with the world’s worse response to the pandemic, and the world’s worst stats.

            The slogan of the country should be: “I’m an American. I’ll do what I want. Screw everybody else.”

          • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 6:22 pm #

            People are already getting antsy in Detroit. A lot of traffic on the streets and I am sure little of it is essential…

          • Rain Waters April 6, 2020 at 8:52 pm #

            People be needin to mind their own business. Who appointed your fear the right to tell me what to do salt boy ?

          • sophia April 6, 2020 at 9:30 pm #

            Cargill,

            Lots of experts are very worried, never mind destroying the economy, that financial distress will cause more deaths and other problems than the corona virus ever could.
            Do you live in some middle class bubble? Is your job safe?
            10 million people have applied for unemployment in 2 weeks, about 10 times any previous record and we’re just getting started.

            Have you ever looked into what stress does to rates of suicide divorce, alcoholism, drug abuse, child abuse, domestic abuse and heart attacks? A lot of experts, medical experts, are saying that the shutting off of the economy will kill more people than the virus would. And by the way, those are younger people, whereas nearly everyone who dies of the virus had less than a year to live.

            What society has ever asked its young to sacrifice themselves for the old?

          • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 10:14 pm #

            What society has ever asked its young to sacrifice themselves for the old?

            Just about every war that’s ever been fought, that’s all.

          • Cargill April 9, 2020 at 1:59 am #

            Do you live in some middle class bubble? Is your job safe?

            I do live in a leafy upper-middle-class suburb, and have a very middle-class lifestyle. As a retiree my income (from various sources) is secured without my having to work – yes.

            But I didn’t have it handed to me on a platter … very working class background and I was stony broke a couple of times before I turned 27 (and got a proper grown-up career going).

            No trust-fund upbringing like your current president. I was caddying at the local golf club at 12 – earning about two bucks a round.

            But irrespective of my socio-economic status (or yours or anyone else’s) – health is critical, and the lockdown procedures are there to preserve it and safeguard it.

    • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 3:18 pm #

      https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/coronavirus-lockdown-uk-arrest-fine-police-rules-latest-a9428196.html

      Maybe my link is “false hysteria.” And maybe people have been fined when they go out to exercise for violating rules.

      Oh, you meant USA only?
      https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-03-29/surfer-fined-1-000-for-ignoring-coronavirus-closure-in-manhattan-beach

      YMMV.

  27. Urbanhillbilly April 6, 2020 at 2:32 pm #

    So many people are going to find out the skill set they paid so much time and money for is useless in the post pandemic world.
    what will this new world be called? PPW?
    The Great Turning, The Great Boomerang, The Great something…

  28. jeff2002 April 6, 2020 at 2:34 pm #

    34,000 Americans died during the last flu season. The season before that, 2018-19, the number was twice that. (Those are CDC figures.) Those numbers dwarf C19 (so far). And yet no quarantines, no lock-downs for the flu.

    Meanwhile, Sweden is one of the few countries that have NOT locked down, with 477 deaths as of today, it’s arguable they are not any worse off for it.

    • Urbanhillbilly April 6, 2020 at 2:41 pm #

      In a large urban center the curve would be so quick and severe you run the risk of wiping out your hospital staff, meds, PPE, as well as the elderly. Look at New York.

      • jeff2002 April 6, 2020 at 2:46 pm #

        They do have the flu in New York, yes?

    • outsider April 6, 2020 at 2:54 pm #

      God, how I hope the Swedish model works – and shows what incompetent fools this country has for leaders. Their problem, though, is that the white Sweden of old is not today’s Sweden.

      • Doc Holliday April 6, 2020 at 3:12 pm #

        Mr. Kunstler, I enjoy your conspiracy theories. You, pretty much, covered the gamut of the spinoffs I have heard. I am going ‘Long’ on garlic, potatoes, and tomatoes, from the backyard garden, of course. I may be going ‘Semi-Long’ on squirrels, ground hogs, and deer if they become the opportunists they are known to be. That would be ” ‘ Semi- Long Rifle’ “., the crock pot knows few boundries, and, for the boundries it acknowledges, the backstop is the compost pile. Interestingly enough, though the Isolation has only been for a couple of weeks, the coyotes are getting darn right impetuous….

        • benr April 6, 2020 at 3:33 pm #

          What is the deal with Garlic?
          People are buying it up as fast as it gets stocked.

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 4:21 pm #

            Garlic is a proven anti-viral, and anti-bacterial. It is a general anti-microbial, either topically or internally.

            Before consuming it, the best practice is to chop it up, and leave it exposed to the air for 5 – 10 minutes. This allows the major compound, allicin, to oxidize and strengthen in effectiveness.

          • tucsonspur April 6, 2020 at 4:51 pm #

            Didn’t help the Italians much. Maybe too much wine weakened their immune systems. No help from the resveratrol?

          • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 5:48 pm #

            Wise they are: It’s a powerful antibiotic. Might not work against the virus itself, but might save you from its allies, certain bacteria.

          • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 6:14 pm #

            Vampires don’t like it either so that’s an added plus…

          • malthuss April 6, 2020 at 7:54 pm #

            Tucson, the garlic should be raw and fresh.

            thanks

          • Doc Holliday April 7, 2020 at 11:33 am #

            The ‘deal with Garlic’ is that I like it, a lot, and it’s no better than yanked out of the home garden with a 3 minute walk to the table. Notice I did not say I was ‘long on beets’??

      • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 4:34 pm #

        God, how I hope the Swedish model works – and shows what incompetent fools this country has for leaders. Their problem, though, is that the white Sweden of old is not today’s Sweden.

        The “Swedish model” isn’t working particularly well at all – there are many countries doing far better, in terms of fewer cases per capita (mine – Australia – has more than 11 times fewer cpm)..

        And please drop the racist nonsense – it’s just ridiculous. Next people will be saying that black-brown-yellow people cause higher rates of Covid-19 amongst us poor defenceless whities. Your rampant insecurities are on full show.

        • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 6:16 pm #

          Austria has also taken a hardline against migrants. Is there a correspondence?

        • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 8:51 pm #

          Race is a medical factor, Carguile. Some races are more vulnerable to certain conditions and diseases. Sorry if Reality doesn’t fit into your little narrative.

          Blacks are getting hit hard here. Is it because they won’t distance? Or because they’re racially more vulnerable? Certainly White are much stronger against HIV, for example.

          Weak little darkies, right Carguile? Is that bad? Why did you say it about Whites, then?

          • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 11:31 pm #

            Whites are not fed Dr Faucist’s horrific HIV drugs as do the blacks in Africa. In fact, whites aren’t even tested for the HIV virus. Yes, yet another Vatican Nazi agenda and CONSPIRACY.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 12:03 am #

            No, apparently a goodly percentage of us got some resistance somehow, courtesy of the Black Plague.

            Talk to some doctors. There are heart medicines that do wonders for Blacks but little for Whites and vice versa.

            If a pure White and a pure Negro have a child together, neither will be the best match for the child in terms of organ donation.

          • akmofo April 7, 2020 at 12:55 am #

            Yeah, it’s called food. Our diets is different, and therefore the protection afforded us by nutrition. Scumbag Vatican Nazis like Dr Faucist take advantage of this ignorance by people and experiments on them with his horrific drugs. May God strike you down to dust you disgusting soulless lizards.

          • Cargill April 9, 2020 at 2:53 am #

            Blacks are getting hit hard here. Is it because they won’t distance? Or because they’re racially more vulnerable? Certainly White are much stronger against HIV, for example.

            No – to state the totally bleeding obvious:

            – African-Americans live in much poorer households
            – they are usually much more crowded (no Hamptons)
            – they have ALWAYS had poorer access to the health system]
            – they have ALWAYS had poorer outcomes than whites, like-for-like
            – African-Americans are a far higher proportion of those doing at-risk jobs

            So all you little whiteys could possibly give thanks for the heroic work a whole range of people of colour (and Hispanics) are doing to protect your sorry little white ass.

            As someone brave once said to Tailgunner Joe on the HUAC – “Have you no dignity sir, have you no dignity?’. From that moment Joe was cactus, and he hit the bottle (even more).

    • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 4:26 pm #

      Meanwhile, Sweden is one of the few countries that have NOT locked down, with 477 deaths as of today, it’s arguable they are not any worse off for it.

      Possibly – but Sweden has a case rate per million of 714, which is more than 11 times the 63 cpm of Australia, where lock-down and travel restrictions have been imposed.

      Sweden also had 76 new deaths yesterday … quite a big percentage increase. I definitely think the jury remains out on Sweden. Meanwhile in the Netherlands – which has always had a mature and sophisticated approach to euthanasia and other end-of-life options – C19 deaths are probably hugely under-reported, because so many low-chance patients aren’t getting into ICU beds.

    • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 6:45 pm #

      You are an idiot. Every country follows the same exponential curve that does not follow quarantine procedures. Only the time scale changes. It is not arguable they are not any worse off for it at all.

  29. sprawlcapital April 6, 2020 at 3:14 pm #

    Breaking news, summer 1965: Watts is burning. This summer it may be “the Hamptons are burning”. As our host says. Will the walls, iron gates, and private security be enough to hold back the tide?

  30. Robert White April 6, 2020 at 3:27 pm #

    I have a Natural History conundrum with respect to one insane spring Redbreast Robin that seems to think that it can fly through my upper & lower glass window panes to my townhouse. This improperly programmed bird has hit the windows on the back of my townhouse for the past two days for about five hours each morning.

    I’ve tried putting plywood up against the window panes to block the view it has into my townhouse, but the bird just keeps hitting the glass even more if I block the window pane with wood.

    Never in all my years have I experienced a bird repeatedly flying into all of my back windows to my residence?

    This nutty bird has hit my window panes in attempts to fly through the window at least 500 times so far. I even went outside to yell at the insane bird twice to no avail.

    What on God’s green acre does this Redbreast Robin expect to accomplish by attempting to fly through my window panes at minimum of 500 times over the last two days?

    RW

    • Doc Holliday April 6, 2020 at 3:29 pm #

      It is a male sparring with another male, or so it thinks. Try the wood on the outside of the window, or some other material that makes its image ‘go away’.

      • Robert White April 6, 2020 at 3:46 pm #

        That explains it, Doc. And compared to the fat redbreast robins this not fat robin must be a male as you say.

        I should have realized it was a fighting response instead of thinking it wants to fly through the glass.

        And here I was thinking the bird was dumb.

        RW

  31. JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 3:41 pm #

    Observation.

    The oil market seems to be getting more tenuous. Saudi Arabia and Russia are negotiating production levels to set the price of oil.

    SA and Russkies???

    Used to be OPEC?

    Where is the vaunted US fracking industry in these talks? Is this proof that the Frack Pack are so close to insolvency that their input is inconsequential?

    • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 6:17 pm #

      JAZ,

      It doesn’t matter what price the Russians and Saudis set if they can’t get new clients and new marketshare. So far I haven’t heard of a single client that switched from buying US oil. There no demand for new oil. There’s no capacity for storage for new oil. There’s a huge glut of oil. So really the new prices are completely virtual and meaningless.

  32. BackRowHeckler April 6, 2020 at 4:09 pm #

    K-Dog seems to have a knack for pissing people off … Orlov, Totkami, JHK. He’s torquing Jim off every week and Jim has the patience of a Saint.

    Brh

    • benr April 6, 2020 at 4:19 pm #

      Being a douche bag has that effect.

      • Robert White April 6, 2020 at 4:37 pm #

        I think this COVID-19 threat is getting him down and we are witnessing the resulting anxiety manifest as a false argument with Jim just so he can vent & lyse anxiety/anxiousness & stress.

        Transference neurosis manifests with some commenters sometimes when they are highly anxious about something they are not articulating in direct fashion.

        With K-Dog we need to look at what is latent in the outburst of anxiety laden vitriol & vituperation misdirected & improperly allocated to object-relations.

        RW

        • benr April 6, 2020 at 6:26 pm #

          Or he is being a douche bag who cares why?

          • K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 6:42 pm #

            Or does he notice that once deaths passed a thousand a day the death count only started getting updated once a day?

            benr you not being concerned with American death.

            I’m not surprised. Now you would trash the memory of the dead by trying to control the narrative. I hope you are paid well for being a tool.

          • benr April 7, 2020 at 9:24 am #

            Man I wish I had a side gig showing what an utter fool you are behaving like right now.
            People die EVERYDAY!
            My concern is why we are being herded into our homes and told to stay there for a virus that is less lethal in terms of people dead then a bad flu.
            What are we not being told?
            Was someone playing with crispr and lost control of their little toy?
            If this is so horrible why is illegal immigration still being ignored?
            Why are homeless people still roaming the streets all over San Diego?
            To many things are not adding up.

          • K-Dog April 8, 2020 at 7:04 pm #

            a virus that is less lethal in terms of people dead then a bad flu.

            Not my words.

            Follow the money.

  33. sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 4:15 pm #

    The Federal Reserve crew and their allied banksters have barely a few weeks before an immiserated public comes after them with the modern equivalent of pitchforks. Wait for the breaking news on the cable networks: The Hamptons are burning! –JHK

    When I read Jim’s blogs I always get the sense that some finanial Armageddon is right around the corner. If this is the case why don’t I hear about it on conservative news sites like Townhall, Breibart, Fox, etc.? Why doesn’t the Federal Reserve sound the alarm? Surely they must see this as well. It’s like Jim has this inside information that no one else has. Where does it come from?

    • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 4:25 pm #

      Because the conservative sites you quoted all support the US financial establishment just the way it is.

      They DO NOT want it to change from the dominant control force it is today.

      • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 5:38 pm #

        That doesn’t really answer my question. If you are saying these sites are failing to report this impending financial crash simply because they don’t want the status quo to change that just doesn’t make sense. What choice will they have? Why cover up the inevitable if it is staring you in the face?

        • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 5:58 pm #

          Sunny,

          If President Trump collects himself from being played by the MSM propaganda terrorists, he could end this today. Fauci is a criminal Nazi scumbag that should be sitting in prison like the rest of the commie mafia he represents. This Nazi scumbag already caused more death and destruction that this virus nonsense ever could.

          We need to remember this next time they ask us to give them any credibility or any kind of support. Their corporations and institutions need to die and disappear. And only we can affect this, by boycotting them and withdrawing our support for anything they do.

        • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 8:19 pm #

          Okay, let me try another angle.

          Like most people here, you have heard the phrase “follow the money”.

          No website on the planet earth can sustain growing membership unless for one,
          and only on
          thing.

          And that is an unending cash flow, that never stops, no matter what.

          Now, not just those websites you mentioned, but all of the popular ones rely on the Great Financial System remaining in exactly the same position it always has.

          As in :

          ALL THE PIGS IN THE UNIVERSE ARE CONSUMING, PROCESSING, AND CRAPPING THE SAME DOLLARS AT THE SAME TIME,

          And they have a helluva lot more of them than you do.

          Did I make that clear enough?

          • akmofo April 6, 2020 at 10:18 pm #

            Yes, very clear, commie dumb ass. The bad guys breath oxygen, so let’s get rid of oxygen. That’s basically your logic.

            Instead of specifically addressing the Vatican mafia its agents and its occupied institutions, you want to completely destroy the country. This is exactly what a malevolent commie foreign agent or a commie tool would advocate. It is exactly what Commie China and the Soviet Russians hope to achieve. How people like you can be so stupid spiteful and nasty is just amazing to behold.

            You want to be governed by Chinese Commies and Russian Soviets then go and live there.

          • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 10:58 pm #

            I can’t accept your pessimism. What is the point of having a website if you have to compromise its content for the money needed to stay up and running? If you are telling me everyone out there knows about the coming financial Armageddon but won’t talk about it publicly for fear of losing money I just don’t buy it…

    • Robert White April 6, 2020 at 4:53 pm #

      Jim is wholly correct to point out that the Hamptons will be burning due to rioting by the great unwashed masses when they figure out that main street USA won’t be coming back anytime soon given the pullback in investment by small business owners & even large commercial business owners of retail stores.

      Insolvency will cascade through the main streets of the USA for almost all small business owners that can’t fund the overhead due to a downed market and less business traffic demands.

      When the poor unsecured wage serfs realize that they all have to start over again sometime down the road in two years or so they will get antsy to be sure.

      When they see all the dead stiffs piling up at the peak of disaster they will realize that main street will likely never recover to what it once was for at least three, or five years.

      Hamptons will go up in smoke due to mass outrage at the level of incompetence system wide.

      RW

      • zone45 April 6, 2020 at 5:29 pm #

        When you have a population of hungry and crazy gun owners looking for a meal or a way out of their angst, then things will go ballistic. A show down is approaching. How will that resolve?

        • BackRowHeckler April 6, 2020 at 5:37 pm #

          Probably with bloodshed.

        • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 8:30 pm #

          It will depend highly on geography.

          There is no way it will be the same in all locales.

          The single most important thing (Unequivocally) :

          The tightness, or , looseness,
          of the community.

          That’s it.

      • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 5:40 pm #

        Still not answering my question.

        • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 6:13 pm #

          Just wait. The relief act is giving hope to folks now. If this damn bug does not abate, and the economy does not turn back on, a political decision, it will sink deeper and deeper into permanent high unemployment situation. Happened in the 1930s and in 2008. Trump will be forced to turn on the economy, that is what the conservative media is banking on.

          The key, the longer the wait for turn on of the economy, the more permanent the damage.

        • Robert White April 6, 2020 at 6:42 pm #

          The shills of MSM and Federal Reserve never hypothesize doom & gloom scenario due to the job requirement of irrational exuberance which was instituted at the Federal Reserve level by Maestro Greenspan with his now notorious Greenspan Put.

          Keynesian Economists always advocate for a central planning model & massive deficit spending. They do not advocate responsible governance since Paul Volcker left office. Now the talking points of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors is always upbeat irrational exuberance no matter if the markets signal otherwise.

          Chair of Federal Reserve is paid to feed you bullshit. And the MSM is paid to undergird & support the bullshit that the Fed Chair feeds you.

          Lies, God damned lies, & statistics make the news, sunburstsoldier. Money talks & bullshit makes the news.

          RW

        • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 8:34 pm #

          Well, then we are talking past one another.

          I guess I don’t really understand your question, and

          because of that

          you can’t really understand my answer.

          Let’s just call it a draw.

  34. tucsonspur April 6, 2020 at 5:48 pm #

    Yes, the ‘store’ of value has been robbed. So, what will it be, inflation or deflation? Deflation happened in the ’30’s and some after 2008. Is the constant money printing stopping deflation while the Fed desperately tries to tune its inflation rate? Seems so. I keep wondering how much more of this can go on before the backstop ‘currency’ of confidence in the dollar is lost.

    But, as a Dutch banker once said, “Where can we go from the dollar, to the moon?”

    • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 6:09 pm #

      They are robbing from the Volk Gut. Simply criminal. Trump should declare Martial Law and stay in office. If a Democrat gets in and declares it, it may be far worse.

      • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 6:17 pm #

        If a Democrat gets in, they will not have a clue what to do. Can you imagine a tax increase as a campaign promise. The economy cannot afford any more Liberal BS, the creditors for the National debt are getting very nervous.

        • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 8:38 pm #

          If a Democrat gets in, they will not have a clue what to do. Can you imagine a tax increase as a campaign promise. The economy cannot afford any more Liberal BS, the creditors for the National debt are getting very nervous.

          I have little faith in the Democrats as a party of genuine reform or “system reset” in general, and no faith in Joe Biden in particular.

          But the reality is that a very large number of Americans face a significant reduction in their standard of living, their income, and their stake in the future. All except the rich – let’s say the top 20% of income-earners and wealth-owners.

          It seems to me a more aggressive tax system – higher rates for higher incomes – is essentially a necessity, not just to try and reduce annual deficits, but also to provide the types of services (including affordable health care) that the majority of the population clearly need and obviously want.

          Knee-jerk reactions like “No more taxes” aren’t going to solve anything.

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 8:43 pm #

            Well said.

            There are far too many knee-jerk reactions about
            nearly everything that occurs.

        • Majella April 6, 2020 at 8:53 pm #

          “the creditors for the National debt are getting very nervous.”

          JohnAZ, the ‘creditors’ for the National debt are simply the US taxpayers, and all the ‘money’ conjured up under QE I, II & III and now this debacle is just that – conjured up.

          • JohnAZ April 6, 2020 at 11:41 pm #

            Exactly. What happens when neither party has any answers?

          • benr April 7, 2020 at 9:26 am #

            That point was hit with GWBush and double down on with Barry Soetoro.

      • tucsonspur April 6, 2020 at 6:30 pm #

        It’s life or death bodily, economically and politically. Who knows what chaos will surround this election, what the Dems might be up to. Can’t go with Biden.

      • BackRowHeckler April 6, 2020 at 6:41 pm #

        Have you found any absinthe?

        Situation worsening, might need more powerful elixer.

        I was thinking of an absinthe/gunpowder cocktail.

        You can be the guy standing on the soapbox hawking our new ‘Shotgun Smoothie’, “Blast that virus to smithereens, my friends, only $20, $20 to make you immortal. Step right up, all questions will be answered, all fears will be allayed, only $20.”

        While you’re doing that I’ll be the guy circulating thru the crowd, picking pockets.

        What a team.

        Brh

        • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 8:57 pm #

          Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me. Tomorrow! What else is there to do?

          At last we are living like gods! Did you dig the pit yet? Why not line it with lime? A fire pit as well or a place to preserve meat.

      • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 8:31 pm #

        The arguments here are all over the shop, seen from across the Big Pond.

        Do you right-wingers want a system reset or not? You rail against the elites and your corporate masters pulling the strings, but then insist that the only solution is to keep the Republican in power – even if it requires a totally rigged election process, or even martial law.

        The Republicans are totally invested in (and paid for by) those very corporate elites, and they will take every measure possible to retain power and wealth, and to not re-set the system, but get it back to its old ugly self.

        I don’t get it – I don’t have a vote, but if I were a worker or farmer or a small-medium business owner on Main Street, qnd felt that I had been screwed left and right by the power elites and their corporate socialism slush-fund bail-outs, then I would certainly vote for the Democrats, right down the ticket.

        • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 8:47 pm #

          “The arguments here are all over the shop, seen from across the Big Pond.”

          Well, are you actually expecting logic from the American Proletariat?

          Sorry chum, you’ve come to exactly the wrong place.

          Perhaps you should turn to ancient Greece for your inspiration.
          They at least had a citizenry with intelligence and class.

          • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 10:41 pm #

            Well, are you actually expecting logic from the American Proletariat?

            Indeed – I guess I was over-optimistic.

            I got far more cogent arguments from my freshman media studies students back in the glorious 80s.

        • sophia April 6, 2020 at 9:15 pm #

          Cargill,

          I’d say you’re at least 30 years behind the times. You think the sad state of affairs is brought on by republicans? So that means none of the corruption was happening 3 years ago? The corporate elites pay for both parties. The democrats are quite dysfunctional at this point and the party is coming undone. They have lost the black vote, for one. And they got ride of the candidate that most people wanted. For that alone, they should lose their existence.

          • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 10:31 pm #

            I’d say you’re at least 30 years behind the times. You think the sad state of affairs is brought on by republicans? So that means none of the corruption was happening 3 years ago?

            I agree that America is in a parlous position because the two major parties are from the right, and have corporate backers.

            BTW I vote third-party too – for the Greens, and I have for decades. But at least in Australia we have preferential (ranked choice) voting, so a vote for the Greens isn’t wasted – my second preference goes to the centre-left. We don’t really have a genuine social democratic party here – both major parties are not far from the centre, left and right.

            The Democratic Party is a mess, but let’s not make the perfect be the enemy of the good. With the Republican Party, things stay the same or get much worse – and it gets worse because it was hijacked by the Tea Party, the Evangelistas, various wingnut Ayn Rand types, and the more mainstream corrupt.

            It’s been going on for a long time – longer than 30 years … probably back to Goldwater and Nixon days.

          • Nightowl April 7, 2020 at 4:07 am #

            He doesn’t have the slightest clue how things work in the States.

            There are 4 groups with real power: the neocons, the neolibs, the progressive wing of the Dem party, and the MAGA set (which are really classical liberals).

            The first two are basically one and the same, and are responsible for modern globalism, and modern corporatism (and the war that comes with it).

            The progs have virtually no power and are unfocused, and the MAGA set are working to reverse the horror the first two have unleashed over the past few decades.

            The press is nearly wholly owned by the first two, and feeds folks like Cargill their daily ration of propaganda.

          • sophia April 7, 2020 at 2:56 pm #

            Nightowl,

            That was very good and clear.

          • Cargill April 8, 2020 at 10:48 pm #

            He doesn’t have the slightest clue how things work in the States.

            Well comrade, I do actually know quite a lot – your problem is that you disagree with my political point of view, so you have to resort to personal abuse, because you have no cogent argument.

            But much xenophobia – because I don’t live in America, I can’t know as much as Americans. Nonsense.

            And btw – neoconservatism (an aggressive hawkish foreign affairs ideology) is quite different to neoliberalism (a naked-capitalism, free-trade political | economic ideology) are actually very different, and in fact their different goals have led to a lot of conflict inside the beltway.

            Not sure the progressive wing of the Democratic Party is in the ascendency over the more moderate-conservative wing – most Democrat federal politicians, and most Democrat state governors | legislatures, are pretty conservative.

            People like AOC get media and political attention precisely because she is one standout exception, rather than being the norm. Most Democrats are pretty comfortable with the broad status quo, and just wish to smooth out the rough parts of naked capitalism.

            The MAGA are based on anger, envy, religious fervour, and a sense of having the American Dream ripped from them by … somebody. I think they are a long way from classical liberalism. Ideological they are a mess – powerless lumpenproles with pitchforks in the main.

          • Nightowl April 9, 2020 at 1:52 pm #

            Tell me more, “comrade.”

        • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 10:49 pm #

          In our time what does it mean to vote Democrat? It means a vote for Socialism. And what is Socialism in the end? The totalitarian state…

          • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 11:11 pm #

            Cargill calls Socialism (totalitarianism) ‘social, economic, and political reform’. You can call a dog anything you want but it’s still a dog…

          • sunburstsoldier April 7, 2020 at 12:21 am #

            The severe risk to human freedom associated with implementing a Socialist agenda is the Achilles heel of your worldview Cargill, and nothing you can say will change that…

          • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 12:52 am #

            You seem to hold the rather bizarre view that it is either-or – the fantasy “free market” of capitalism versus the dead hand of the dreaded commies.

            This is intellectually poverty-stricken, and a sign of either drinking the Kool Aid or watching Fox News, or more likely both.

            It is a long, broad spectrum comrade, and as I have said several times, I prefer a mixed economy, centre-leftish, where capital is allowed to do private-sector stuff, while the interests of workers and the safety net are secured.

            None of the dog-eat-dog “Take seven bucks an hour and be grateful for that, otherwise we’re shipping your job straight Bangladesh! Oops, we’ve already done it!”. No mantras about hating governments.

            To equate the Democratic Party with “Socialism” is laughable – for all of us who live in the real parts of the world, the Dems would be seen as a very conservative centre-right party indeed.

            I’ not sure you would know what “Socialism” was even if it bit you on the butt – but the Dems ain’t it.

          • benr April 7, 2020 at 9:27 am #

            @cargill

            Calling DEMOCRATS mild center right says all one needs to know where your head is at.
            You even use the word comrade.

          • Cargill April 8, 2020 at 11:24 pm #

            Calling DEMOCRATS mild center right says all one needs to know where your head is at. You even use the word comrade.

            My head is certainly in a different space to the majority right-wing views on here, that’s for sure. But a bit of diversity leads to livelier discussions, no? If everyone thought exactly the same, the forum becomes a boring bubble.

            As I have asserted, in much of the world the American Democratic Party would be nowhere near the “left” end of the total political spectrum.

            I was a member of the Australian Labor Party for quite a while, and it had its own internal spectrum from left, to centre-left, to centre right. But its overall policy positions would still be to the “left” of America’s Democratic Party, but it was a million miles from being socialist. In fact many of the “genuine left” in Australia have been frustrated for decades by the too-mild reform agenda of the party.

            I don’t understand why these sorts of comparisons are so hard to understand or accept. If you think the Democratic Party is from the “left”, it just reflects how far to the right your perspective stems from.

            And btw the Australian Labor Party used the term “comrade” decades before it was associated with any of the European communist parties. We didn’t have to give up the term just because others used it.

  35. K-Dog April 6, 2020 at 6:36 pm #

    Let the fucking Hamptons burn.

    Thomas Modly: “Crew of the Teddy Roosevelt. you are no obligation to love your leadership, only to respect it. You are under no obligation to like your job, only to do it. You are under no obligation, you are under no obligation, to expect anything from leaders other than they will treat you fairly and put the mission of the ship first. Because it is the mission of the ship that matters.”

    Acting Secretary of the Navy, Thomas Modly was once a junior helicopter pilot who became an investment banker and Trump campaign donor.

    Too bad he did not slip and fall off the ship. About 6 men do a year as I recall. He remembers enough from a boot camp speech to make a total ass of himself.

    • zone45 April 6, 2020 at 8:33 pm #

      Hey K, nice fantasy. The minute that any civil unrest occurs, you can bet that it will be met with brutal and instant response.
      The nation is captive to the militarized police force. You will behave.
      Or else. All part of the master plan. So just sit down and shut up.

      • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 8:51 pm #

        Nah.

        It will be much simpler than that.

        When the Shit Hits The Fan,

        all the people in charge will flee back to their bunkers,
        wherever they may be,

        And the local police will run back to their homes to
        protect their families,

        And the local Mob Lords will be left to carve up the rest.

        • K-Dog April 7, 2020 at 4:39 am #

          Actually, you both may be right. Times which could be called — interesting.

  36. elysianfield April 6, 2020 at 6:44 pm #

    Well, ladies and germs;

    The BBC reports, this PM, that Boris Johnson, PM, has been moved to intensive care. Kung Flu. Only underlying condition is bad hair.

    I wish him a speedy recovery.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-52192604

  37. snagglepuss April 6, 2020 at 6:49 pm #

    @DrTomSchmidt
    April 6, 2020 at 1:42 pm #
    Yes, those homes are depressing and not particularly given over to healthfulness. One bad side effect of this thing is to remove the elderly from living with or even contact with their younger relatives in an attempt to keep them alive.

    Perhaps they think about Corona as CS Lewis thought about nuclear weapons and annihilation:

    If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things—praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts—not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs.

    That reminds me of Admiral David Farragut and “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. I am encouraged by the 104 year old WWII survivor who caught the Covid 19 virus and beat it. Oregon. He just celebrated his 104th birthday. The most important thing is a life well lived, not length of life. If you ever want to listen to an interesting podcast on this theme it is here. About 28 minutes. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, from 2017:

    https://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/canada-s-refugee-policy-michael-s-essay-dr-ezekiel-emanuel-living-arrangements-the-itinerant-life-geoffrey-james-mail-about-wills-and-estates-tragedy-builds-a-new-family-1.2905324/dr-ezekiel-emanuel-says-75-is-a-good-age-to-die-1.2905333

    • DrTomSchmidt April 6, 2020 at 8:13 pm #

      Thanks!

  38. axisboldaslove April 6, 2020 at 6:51 pm #

    Whether engineered or not, this virus or something like it, was going to happen and will likely happen again. Anyone with a basic understanding of ecological science understands this. Over-population, traveling widely and frequently, humans temporarily and artificially dodging Darwinism, people of lesser intelligence reproducing faster than those of higher intelligence, poor hygiene, keeping and eating wildlife in unsanitary conditions, etc., etc… the mess we are in was inevitable.

    Enjoy life while you can.

    • Robert White April 6, 2020 at 8:45 pm #

      Just as castles made of sand fall into the sea eventually, so too does the castle of Capitalism when the substrate of hegemony shifts wholesale due to the shifting sands of global debt-to-GDP which dictates terms for interest rates at the sovereign level of borrowing.

      China & Russian Federation are moving to One Belt One Road trade relations to de-dollarize & de-Americanize their trade relations because USD is no longer a great investment along lines of geopolitics.

      Once USD falters there will be no return to the Halcion days of 2019.

      RW

      • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 1:44 am #

        Wow, 2019 was halcyon? Who knew?

    • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 9:36 pm #

      The Chinese must be seen as Global Pariahs unfit to mix with others as long as they hold unto their appetite for such bizarre food.

      • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 1:41 am #

        Chlorinated chicken? Hormone sodden pork? Botuburger?

  39. zone45 April 6, 2020 at 6:53 pm #

    Not so sure about all the hype. People have been dying every second for as long as the world has been spinning.
    Around here, on the outskirts of a major city in the USA, people are doing just fine. In fact this is the greatest thing to ever happen.
    And if the economy crashes, so be it. It is long overdue for a reset.
    Time to get your shit together, folks, and get real.
    Examine yourself. What do you have to contribute to the world?
    Perhaps a kind word will work wonders. Wake up.

    • BackRowHeckler April 6, 2020 at 7:20 pm #

      Yes, a kind word, a helping hand, and and a little good will toward your fellow man go a long way, Zone45.

      -Brh

    • Cargill April 6, 2020 at 8:50 pm #

      Around here, on the outskirts of a major city in the USA, people are doing just fine. In fact this is the greatest thing to ever happen.

      I’d love to see you function as a poorly paid and overworked medical technician in an overwhelmed NYC hospital, wheeling dead people out to refrigerated trucks … would you last one shift?

      • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 9:00 pm #

        He would not last one hour.

        • zone45 April 6, 2020 at 10:00 pm #

          Hey there Card,
          You ask if I would feel the same way.
          Pity the fool? Yes, of course. We are all born of a mother.
          Not our choice of time nor place. And what to make of it?
          the self made man is just a fantasy.
          The topic of today is about money minus value.
          Money is a concept, a means to transfer energy.
          Human energy. It is an agreement that something has value.
          And value is in the conscious recognition of worth.
          Only humans trade in money. It is a fiction. Funny green paper with pictures of dead presidents. But we treasure it, because it represents a promise. And promises are easily broken.
          In the end, you are left alone. You came in with nothing, and you go out with nothing. And what did you do with your time in between? Chase after money? Fool’s gold.

  40. beantownbill. April 6, 2020 at 7:24 pm #

    In other non-related news, there’s no more Pussy Galore, alas.

    • zone45 April 6, 2020 at 7:38 pm #

      Yes, that is the down side, the local bars and strip clubs are closed.
      But on the positive side, the local mayor, governor and councilmen have stepped up and are acting like real leaders. Bravo to them.
      The USA is a union of states, and the states a union of districts.
      And believe it or not, there are many great leaders who have their shit together and get things done. So do not despair. We are all in this together and life will go on. Never be afraid. Fear will kill your spirit.

      • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 8:02 pm #

        I don’t see closing bars and strip clubs as a downside…

        • zone45 April 6, 2020 at 8:08 pm #

          Well, it put the bar tenders and strippers out of a job.
          It was a joke, friend, but not so funny for the players.

          • zone45 April 6, 2020 at 8:15 pm #

            And here we are, logging on to a computer to shoot the shit about something we have no control over.
            Look in the mirror, do you have any real skill?
            What can you do to save your own soul?
            Or are you just a victim of circumstance?
            No where to run, no where to hide.
            You want Justice, well all you have is just us.
            Harsh reality.

          • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 9:02 pm #

            @Zone45,

            Well, what if you, or one of your loved ones,
            was in that position . . .

            would you feel exactly the same way?

        • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 1:38 am #

          Sign on the local strip club – “CLOTHED until further notice”.

    • BackRowHeckler April 6, 2020 at 8:34 pm #

      Yes, there’s that. The lady was 93, I wonder how she explained to her grandchildren her stint as Pussy Galore.

      Al Kaline has passed away too.

      • beantownbill. April 6, 2020 at 10:20 pm #

        Yeah, a lot of people well-known from my youth are dying off. I was following Al Kaline when he was trying to win the batting title in 1955. He was only 20 years old when he won it.

        And I saw Goldfinger in the movies when it first came out. I remember laughing out loud when he first met Pussy Galore because I had read Goldfinger in Playboy Magazine. Sean Connery had to pronounce her name as if it was “Poozey” because the censors couldn’t have someone say pussy galore.

        • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 1:36 am #

          As a Scot, “poosey” would be his usual pronunciation.
          Honor Blackman, at 39, was five years his senior.

    • SpeedyBB April 10, 2020 at 10:55 am #

      A toast to Honor Blackman.

      She was handsome, intelligent and a determined feminist.

      And I also remember the Mad Magazine parody of her role in GOLDFINGER.

      They called her “Poontang Plenty”.

  41. malthuss April 6, 2020 at 7:54 pm #

    Fauci exposed,

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k05b8aGDCNI

    • akmofo April 7, 2020 at 9:43 am #

      But maltass, our Nazi death camp doctor, Dr Faucist, was mass murdering poor Africans supposedly having HIV by feeding them poison drugs that destroy the body. Surely you agree that he’s a good guy.

  42. Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 9:33 pm #

    I’ve said it before but I was born and raised in the DC suburbs (Northern VA). The changes I’ve seen in my lifetime have been staggering. My mother, also a native born Northern Virginian (and her mother and grandmother as well) even more so. She told me the other day she’s ready to leave. It’s that bad there now. Not only blacks now but all sorts of diversity. All dangerous.

    I remember the Barry years. No native of the area would set foot in DC unless absolutely necessary. We laughed at the tourists and wondered if they were suicidal. The gentrification has been amusing to watch, when I met my husband in the late 00’s, he wanted to go to DC to do stuff and I gasped in horror and set him straight. But we did go, and it was ok, in certain areas. I hear it’s even safer now, but the mentality I grew up with is always in my mind.

    My aunt worked in DC for the phone company in the 60’s. She was there when the blacks rioted and were burning the city. She said she got out just in time, a cop shoved her in a taxi and told the driver to DRIVE and not stop til he got over the 14th st bridge.

    The southern character was still evident when I was a kid in the late 80’s, it started fading in the 90’s and was pretty much gone with my grandmother’s generation. My uncle was the last true Virginia gentleman I can remember and he’s been gone for four years now. I just saw a picture of some crappy gentrified area (Penn Daw) apartment building that burned down. In the pictures of the people gawking, not one was white. Nobody. My grandmother lived there in the 80’s, my high school boyfriend did too. It was turning bad in the 90’s now it’s completely gone.

    I’m full of memories of the area. I could go on forever. But what good is it? It’s gone, gone with the wind and the whites and we are so utterly screwed it boggles the mind.

    Sunnnshinnnneeee

    JS: Of Amren. Amren posters are among the best people in America.
    But the Elite have chosen to replace them with the dregs of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.

    • Majella April 7, 2020 at 6:40 am #

      Dang. Skorenzy, that’s an annoying but amusing ha if you have – to c&p someone else’s post without indication of the fact until you later add your comment. For I minute there, I thought you’d come out of the closet!

      • Majella April 7, 2020 at 6:41 am #

        Habit…

    • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 7:43 am #

      “Amren posters are among the best people in America.”

      Yeah, I recall the Amren poster writing about UK immigration and deviously suggesting, in his mind-numbing ignorance, that the vast number of Pakistanis had recently arrived (he wasn’t dumb enough to add ‘off boats’ the way you habitually do).

      Here’s some actual information about South Asian immigration to the UK.

      https://www.striking-women.org/module/map-major-south-asian-migration-flows/post-1947-migration-uk-india-bangladesh-pakistan-and

      No manipulative emoting, just information. And note that I’m not judging it one way or the other – no emoting from me either – I’m just presenting some actual facts to you, to counter the Amren variety of devious, manipulative *cough* reporting.

      Talking of *coughing* I hope volodya’s OK – he’s been notable by his absence for some weeks.

  43. WayfaringStranger April 6, 2020 at 9:36 pm #

    I was gonna ignore your ageist and obsequious ass this week, but saw this over on ZeroHedge.
    Ya, I get what you’re saying about the Hamptons but how about this, this being America and all and that “ohnoes, they’ll eat the rich” narrative is still an MSM fantasy. The lower class never has its moment. Never.
    They can get shoved to the forefront to serve the needs of the savvy, and they often (okay always) buy it, and allow themselves to be used, but they never get their moment.
    Only maybe early on, after that 1776 thing, that would be the one time. I believe that was real.

    But back the the Burning Hamptons thing, how about more like this –

    Pitchfork-wielding, un-washed masses will never get within two miles of the Hamptons, they’ll all be arrested as quarantine breakers etc, they’ll stand out too much, they won’t get that far. That’s the whole point of Hampton places being far enough way from normal people, the buffer zone where you obviously don’t fit in.

    So as always the Poor will steal from their fellow Poor.
    Then the Hamptons and Hollywood people will at some point get hungry. Even Gwynneth Paltrow will run out of kale and nasty candles. Uh-oh.
    THEY will move on the trailer parks of America.
    Cher will rip the pepperoni from Ricky’s hand. Bette Midler and Alyssa Milano will relieve Bubble’s cats of their cat food, and a raving Bob De Niro will grab Julian’s drink, then ignite the whole park before screeching off in the doorless shitmobile while Cher, Bette and Alyssa Instagram (or whatever the fuck) themselves in tears in the backseat because one of them got a scratch from the trailer park people fighting back.
    This is human nature I’m describing – Haves taking infinitely from Have-nots. I am in no way a socialist. But there’s never a point at which the rich and powerful can’t find something to steal from the poor and they never conceded defeat and never NOT feel superior and more deserving. Enron, the bankster bailouts, on and on.
    Trump is meeting with that Blackstone bastard who bought all the 2008 foreclosed homes (for pennies after families were ruined, no I was not among them) to help “solve” this latest crisis.
    Right.
    The Hamptons won’t burn.
    The poor and marginal neighborhoods will. Surveillance and all that will be increased on them as a result of their “acting out”.
    That’s my prediction, tale as old as time, but of course – time will tell.

    • elysianfield April 7, 2020 at 1:06 am #

      “That’s my prediction, tale as old as time, but of course – time will tell.”

      Stranger,
      The Hampton’s huh? How many patrol units does the local PD field on the dog watch? Two? Three? Five?

      Think a flash mob.

    • benr April 7, 2020 at 9:36 am #

      Loved the trailer park reference sadly most of the people on here are clueless about your reference.

  44. Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 9:43 pm #

    A friend just sent me an e-mail and this one makes sense because of the integrity of the characters involved:

    “A plane has five passengers on board: Donald Trump, the Pope, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Hillary Clinton, and a 10-year-old school girl. The plane is about to crash and there are only 4 parachutes.
    Dr. Fauci said, “I need one. I helped develop a cure for the global health crisis that is Covid19!” He strapped on a parachute and jumped.
    The Pope said, “I need one. I have to help spiritually guide people through the global health crisis that is Covid19.” He takes one and jumps.
    Hillary said, “I need one. I’m the smartest woman in the United States.” She takes one and jumps.
    President Trump pauses for a moment and then turns to the 10-year- old. After a deep sigh, he says tenderly, “You can have the last parachute. I’ve lived my life, yours is only starting.”
    The child replies, “Don’t worry, there are two parachutes left. The smartest woman in the United States just took my school backpack.”

    KY Poster

    JS: I love this! So childish – like Trump ending Michelle’s dietary reign of public school terror on her birthday. It’s pettiness like unto their own – something they can understand.

    A co-worker is from KY and swears by Kentucky Bourbon. Any good? I’ll have to try that too. So much time and so many spirits to test….

    • elysianfield April 7, 2020 at 1:09 am #

      Janos,
      Try Ezra Brooks sour mash. Mix with a bit of 7-up…smooth, sweet and smoky.

      • Majella April 7, 2020 at 6:48 am #

        Why adulterate a wondrous whiskey with fucking lemonade??? It’ offensive enough to add ice to a single malt, but lemonade (or even worse, coke or ginger ale)?

        • benr April 7, 2020 at 9:38 am #

          As all real whisky drinkers say don’t smash someone for drinking it different than you do.

        • elysianfield April 7, 2020 at 12:10 pm #

          Majella,
          I understand the comment, and the hit on my masculinity. My only defense is that sometimes I remove the umbrella from the drink before imbibing.

          • benr April 8, 2020 at 9:43 am #

            Nice!
            You could get a nasty eye injury from those umbrellas.
            drinking is serious and sometimes dangerous business

    • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 1:29 am #

      Fifty years ago when that joke was doing the rounds the smartest dumbarse was DrK, the others were Nixon, Pope, McGovern & Harold Wilson plus the kid.

  45. sophia April 6, 2020 at 9:45 pm #

    Janos,

    What percentage of the population do you think has gone bonkers? They are very squeaky, but could it be as low as 20%.

    I’m referring to the populist, progressive, useful idiots who are carrying water for the evil cabal and don’t know it.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 10:10 pm #

      Twenty percent? No, they’re majority. Almost all Democrats and almost all Minorities. Even the Asians are now joining the Grievance Alliance. I came up with this term, but feel free to use it.

      Virginia is gone due to minority invasion. The smarter contiguous counties want to join West Virginia.

      I don’t say all these people are evil, just using your categories above: Useful idiots, some of whom are very fine people otherwise.

      • sophia April 6, 2020 at 10:49 pm #

        No, they are not a majority, of that I am sure.
        Most minorities are not crazy, you just think they are because of all the media hype.

      • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 1:25 am #

        Ripping off the Orange Oaf “…some of whom are very fine people… ” is beyond bottom of the barrel, it’s heading for the crust.

        • SoftStarLight April 7, 2020 at 1:39 am #

          Haha fine, have it your way. None of em are any good at all. Do you prefer that fix? It makes things cut and dry and easier anyhoo genius.

        • Nightowl April 7, 2020 at 4:10 pm #

          One would think someone smart enough to find this site would also be smart enough not to repeat lies that can be debunked in a 30 second search on Duck Duck Go.

          Unless one is retarded.

    • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 1:40 am #

      What percentage of the population do you think has gone bonkers?

      Everyone who thought Trump could be a competent president, and voted for him. Still a minority of course, and hopefully shrinking further by November.

      • SoftStarLight April 7, 2020 at 1:48 am #

        Oh really? So you’re really not on edge? So are you voting in November?

        • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 6:01 am #

          Don’t have the vote, comrade, being an Aussie. But I could sneak over and do one of them fraudulent ones that don’t exist!

          • benr April 7, 2020 at 9:41 am #

            Over a million people living in California have now been given a drivers license and the vote by federal law illegally.

            https://www.dailynews.com/2019/08/17/the-many-flaws-of-californias-motor-voter-program/

            Your so full of it it’s not even funny.

          • benr April 7, 2020 at 9:42 am #

            Absolutely no identification is required, or even accepted, in connection with these activities. The ballots go into the box and they will be counted. There is no way to identify or remove those ballots later if fraud is uncovered.

            And there is no way to prevent fraud, or to detect it. The state of California is intentionally refusing to validate voter eligibility data.

            This after signing up millions of people to vote at the same time as getting a drivers license!

            Stick that in your windbag.

          • sophia April 7, 2020 at 11:56 am #

            benr,

            If that is so, it calls for civil war. But softer tactics might work, like cutting off federal assistance.

          • sophia April 7, 2020 at 11:58 am #

            benr,

            Oh, and I don’t suppose such a move was put to the vote? And that idiot whom I have just dismissed wont mind a bit because he’s a paid shill for the democratic party.

            He must be paid, right? Is it possible to be able to make literate sentences and yet be that hypocritical and clueless?

          • Cargill April 8, 2020 at 11:41 pm #

            And there is no way to prevent fraud, or to detect it. The state of California is intentionally refusing to validate voter eligibility data.

            Do you have some evidence for this – other than the alt-right?

            Getting a driver’s licence is not sufficient grounds in order to be placed on the California Electoral Roll:

            To register to vote in California, you must be:

            A United States citizen and a resident of California (for information on voters in the military or overseas, please see Military and Overseas Voters),

      • sophia April 7, 2020 at 11:54 am #

        Cargill, you are utterly hopeless, and let me be clear, since Iananna has complained about vitriol, that you have just been insulted to the highest degree I am capable of.

  46. sophia April 6, 2020 at 10:11 pm #

    Wow, this is really insane. I urge everyone to read this latest post by a UK doctor about how serious health problems are being ignored because of the focus on Covid 19:

    https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/

  47. Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 10:17 pm #

    There are many ways for many men. Some follow the Yoga of Knowledge, some the Yoga of Works. Some men prefer Cathy Gale, some Emma Peel. You must find the steed that will carry you far, be it in guns, liquor, yoga, horses, or women.

    Saw an adorable picture of a kitten lying next to a gun, its paw on the trigger guard. If you sent that picture to some Democratic Cat Ladies, they would call the police on you.

    • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 10:41 pm #

      “Democratic Cat Ladies”

      They are your favorite fantasy, aren’t they Janos?

      you love them, don’t you?

      • Janos Skorenzy April 6, 2020 at 11:57 pm #

        If the Kitten didn’t want me, I don’t want the Cat – old MTGOW chant. We would get together and chant it for hours, along with others like “His name was Robert Paulson”.

        Humbert Humbert married an Old Cat to get at the Kitten. She was a bit young, not a pedo but a hebe or adolescent so I do not endorse this.

        • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 1:18 am #

          Again with this topic – fixated, much?

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 2:22 am #

            Our society is fixated on calling men pedophiles if they think a teenage woman is attractive. It’s literally insane. I get it: older Women find growing old unbearable. But you don’t get to slander men because of it.

            That’s it. Just that. Obviously such women are psychological girls in THIS society and will remain so until well into their 20’s and beyond. Ditto the boy men. But biology is still there, they are women and they are beautiful.And in a sane society they’d be getting married and having children and be ready to do so.

            And men are often so beaten down that they accept this slander. One Liberal male poster told me I should find Susan Sarandon attractive. A beautiful woman in her day – but not anymore!

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 8:27 am #

            Janos

            You really need to stop projecting when it comes to this matter. Here’s how it actually works in real life. I can’t speak for your country because it seems attracted to excess and neurosis in a whole lot of areas, but here’s how it works in the situations I’m familiar with.

            The only advantage of temporary superficial beauty, in nature, is to get a man to impregnate you. That’s it. All the rest is an add-on of civilisation and the later evolution (thankfully) of rather deeper relations between the sexes.

            Women who have daughters LOVE to hear people say how pretty their daughters are. Sorry to break it to you, but that’s the reality for anyone I’ve ever known. They don’t generally want to think superficial beauty is all their daughters have, though, as that would reflect on the job they’d done as a parent.

            And here’s the thing… No-one of 50 gives a toss how many beautiful 19-year-olds you admire, adore, shag or serially marry. But when it comes to looking at some older bloke perving over a 14-year-old, a reflex gag comes into play, which has fuck all to do with envy. And when it’s a 12-year-old like the Lolita character, it’s beyond revolting. Plenty of men would find you revolting as well, and not a few would punch your lights out if you were perving over their 12- or 14-year-old daughter.

            Not all men are as shallow as you in the first place. I met my husband when I was 48 and he was 46. I married him when I was 58. He finds 20-year-olds extremely attractive too but only to look at – the idea of actually spending time with one other than a niece is simply not attractive to most men other than the ones who want one as a status object. If he had a thing for 12-year-olds he wouldn’t be here because I wouldn’t be able to look at him.

            And perhaps you should ponder the uncomfortable fact that most of the women on here whom you think you’re getting at with the endless pontificating of your views on the matter are happily married with children. Yet there you are on your own still wittering on the sidelines about your fantasies. Maybe try to learn something from that.

            And on your oft-repeated point about wishing to marry off young girls before they’ve had any life, it’s much the same as wishing to entice young teenage boys into the armed forces before they’ve had time, opportunity or resources to formulate other options. Both are exploitative. Not to mention that having children in your teenage years is a significant cause of death for girls worldwide.

            What you really can’t abide is young women being treated as fully human and having the CHOICE that any human should have in how to live their life. It eats you away that they might have some function and purpose in life that isn’t about gratifying you.

            Let us know when you’ve found a 16-year-old that wants to be with you, without the coercion of law or circumstance, and just for yourself.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 9:12 am #

            PS women also have little burst of pride when people say how handsome their sons are.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 10:02 am #

            And by the way, Janos, growing old is perfectly fine. There’s so much superficial cr@p you don’t have to participate in or worry about. Again, can’t speak for your rather more neurotic country, so bear in mind that your views may be biased (may be??!!) and that your imagined truths aren’t remotely universal.

            The only thing that isn’t great about growing old is the lowering of your immunity to disease (your immunity to idiocy tends to skyrocket), which hits men more than women, and the slow deterioration of the body (likewise).

            I don’t think I’ve ever come across anyone whose projection issues are so completely off the charts. Get a wife and calm down.

          • elysianfield April 7, 2020 at 12:23 pm #

            “Not all men are as shallow as you in the first place. I met my husband when I was 48 and he was 46. I married him when I was 58. He finds 20-year-olds extremely attractive too but only to look at ”

            Alba,
            With respect, I have to disagree. What you suggest as “but only to look at” might reflect various other considerations…the least actionable of which is the desire, which is there and in full force. If Single…If unencumbered…If an offer freely given…If one could then choke down the understanding that the 20 something in question has ulterior motives….

            The list goes on. The average guy is constantly tortured. Some women are so sexually attractive that it is physically painful to look at them.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 12:34 pm #

            The thing is, EF, that if he chose to do more than look at them, I’d hold the door open for him. I don’t need any more crap in my life and I have a roof over my head, a pension, and a lot of good friends. And he’s 66 FFS, so if he wasn’t able to control his urges I’d feel nothing but pity, but let him go on his way.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 12:37 pm #

            And I had a father and have two brothers too, all of whom curiously got through life without the drama. Three, three and four kids respectively, and my brothers were married young, so didn’t spend years sowing wild oats either. And yet they appreciate their wives so much more than the missed opportunities.

            For men who can’t look at an attractive women without physical suffering, best not get married. We should all know our limitations and it isn’t all about us.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 1:29 pm #

            Alba: Nineteen? What about seventeen years and 364 days, with one hour to go before she becomes a real woman – someone who votes Democratic or Labor. If I look at her before that magic instant, I’m an utter monster, right? Or whatever the legal age is where you are. In most places, it’s sixteen. Monstrous!

            I’m trying to get you understand the absurdity of conflating aesethics, psychology, and biology with the Law – which is often an ass.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 2:13 pm #

            Nineteen was a random figure. Seventeen years and 364 days is fine too, if she wants you for yourself. You can get married with the permission of your parents here at 16, unless the law has changed, so if having their 16-year-old daughter married off to some old fucker is the best they can imagine for their daughter you’re good to go, as long as it’s the best she can imagine too. We don’t do forced marriages, even to oblige old fuckers.

            I wouldn’t put too much money on it though.

          • elysianfield April 7, 2020 at 7:36 pm #

            “. And he’s 66 FFS, so if he wasn’t able to control his urges I’d feel nothing but pity, but let him go on his way.

            Alba,
            Exactly the point! We try to control the urge that exists. Character, intellect, will power, fear and loathing…call it what you will…some got it…some ain’t.

            The urge is a physical urge… it’s not an intellectual curiosity.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 9:26 pm #

            Well in this case I can assure you it’s not a problem. The reasons are no-one’s business.

            And the point remains. Individual men are as they are. Doesn’t mean I need to accommodate any more crap in my life than I’m prepared to. It’s not my responsibility – I didn’t make them like that. If they want to find an 18-year-old that wants them, let them go and find one.

      • Majella April 7, 2020 at 6:55 am #

        Skorenzy
        ‘Our society is fixated on calling men pedophiles if they think a teenage woman is attractive. It’s literally insane“

        Bullshit. Those who act on warped fantasies are the pedo/hebe/whatever are the condemned. There’s still no actual ‘Thought Police’ you know, right?

    • sunburstsoldier April 6, 2020 at 11:13 pm #

      No one holds a candle to Emma Peel…

      • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 1:20 am #

        Definitely Cathy Gale for me.
        Like the women in ABBA, both over 30 during their reign, mature unlike the confected chicky-birds so prevalent these drear daze.

    • elysianfield April 7, 2020 at 12:12 pm #

      “. You must find the steed that will carry you far, be it in guns, liquor, yoga, horses, or women.”

      Janos,
      Well…three out of five ain’t bad….

      • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 1:31 pm #

        No horses or women for you, eh? Have you tried dogs?

        • elysianfield April 7, 2020 at 7:30 pm #

          Dogs? Well, if you pet them, sometimes they are amenable…but fast on their feet.

        • Iananna April 8, 2020 at 12:44 am #

          Depends how they’re cooked.

  48. sophia April 6, 2020 at 10:19 pm #

    Here are a couple of excerpts. Unbelievable, yet I hear that in the US nurses are complaining that they are being sent home because there are no patients.

    This is a UK doctor:

    Last week, in Intermediate Care, we sent two patients into the local hospital who were seriously ill. They were both sent back almost immediately. They both died. Yes, they were ill, and may have died anyway. But I believe they should both have been admitted, and treated, and they could both still be alive. They died because of COVID.

    Ambulance crews are under very heavy pressure not to admit anyone unless absolutely necessary. Some of those, not admitted, will die.

    Our local hospital now has more empty beds than at any time in history. Elective surgery has stopped, to free up resources. There is enormous managerial pressure to clear more and more people out of hospital, out of Intermediate Care beds, back home with little support available. Some of them will die because of this.

    I saw several patients yesterday while I was working in “out of hours”, who were not critically ill, but they were ill. Two of them, I felt, really needed to be followed up. A girl with weight loss over the last three months, a man with clear signs in his chest that could have been malignant.

    They will not be followed up any time soon. If at all.

    • CancelMyCard April 6, 2020 at 10:44 pm #

      “They will not be followed up any time soon. If at all.”

      Of course they will not.

      They are not part of the 1%, are they?

  49. sophia April 6, 2020 at 10:46 pm #

    A blog post, probably in Europe:

    Experts are indicating that the lockdown will last much longer than the 3 weeks originally anticipated. The lockdown is also intensifying. People are being fined and the army is mobilized to prevent people wandering in the streets. There is no exit strategy or date. Spring is in the air and people are frustrated by forced solitary confinement, could be a revolt brewing.

    • SoftStarLight April 7, 2020 at 1:21 am #

      It has got to be a nightmare to be quarantined in a city where you can’t even walk outside or go to the park. I don’t see any lockdown here. It does get super quiet in the evenings but it seems like there are people out in the day. It seems like European countries typically have more intrusive control over peoples lives. Not that its not getting more like that here though in some places.

    • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 3:15 am #

      Experts are indicating that the lockdown will last much longer than the 3 weeks originally anticipated.

      We (in Melbourne) have had a lockdown for some weeks, but we can still go for long walks around the neighbourhood without drama; quite a lot of people do it.

      Lots of regular businesses are still functioning, but nothing where people congregate – so that means essentially all leisure and discretionary spending. The impact on the economy will be tough, but our curves are flattening.

      • SoftStarLight April 7, 2020 at 9:58 am #

        LOL “our curves are flattening”. That just sounds funny. You know you have to be so super careful about curves. Some need to be flattened and some need to be enhanced lol.

        • Cargill April 9, 2020 at 12:09 am #

          “our curves are flattening”. That just sounds funny.

          Do you understand much about the Calculus, comrade? First derivatives, and second derivatives? Exponential functions?

          Flattening the convex curve and achieving a concave curve is what we are all hoping for. At the beginning we want to slow the rate at which daily events (new cases & deaths) are increasing daily, and the curve flattens.

          Then we will probably see a stabilised number of new cases, and a plateau in the curve. When the number of new cases / deaths per day starts to be fewer than the previous day, that is when we don’t want the curve to “flatten”, but to slope down as much as possible.

          There is about two weeks or so of lag between new cases and deaths, so new cases can go down (assuming testing rates don’t change much), but deaths can continue to go up for quite a while. Some countries (or parts of countries) are in this phase.

          I’m actually related to Sir Isaac Newton (his mother is an ancestor – he had no children himself), so that’s how I know all this stuff – it’s in the genes! Do you believe in genes?

    • elysianfield April 7, 2020 at 12:27 pm #

      ” Spring is in the air and people are frustrated by forced solitary confinement, could be a revolt brewing.”

      Sophia,
      The BBC reports that in Chicago, blacks are 80%+ of existing cases…while only a quarter of the city’s demographic.

      …Sounds revolting to me….

      • elysianfield April 7, 2020 at 12:29 pm #

        And…the link;

        https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52194018

        Correction…70%+….

      • sophia April 9, 2020 at 2:41 pm #

        But what is your point?

        • elysianfield April 9, 2020 at 5:53 pm #

          Sophia,
          The obvious point is that the discussed demographic might not be acting in a socially responsible manner.

  50. akmofo April 6, 2020 at 10:59 pm #

    Tucker: How long will the lockdowns last?

    https://youtu.be/ZCyqcoC747o

    A must watch to understand the insane stupidity of it all. Only this is too stupid to be stupid. This is deliberate malfeasance by the NWO Vatican gov mafia, and this time they will dearly pay for it. They’re finished!

    • SoftStarLight April 7, 2020 at 1:01 am #

      You sure are obsessed with the Vatican. I bet you want to be the Pope don’t you lol. I wonder why Israel is following the Pope’s lockdown orders since its a Vatican thing? My cousin got a corona virus test but it turned up negative. And she went to Mardi Gras! So I’m starting to wonder who really has it at all other than celebrities and politicians.

      • akmofo April 7, 2020 at 7:38 am #

        Sunny,

        That’s because I need to do the work that you don’t. Trust me, when the alt media and you all start talking about the Vatican, when you start talking about its satanic history and agenda, when you start making the connections between past and current events and the Vatican as I do, I’ll be glad to talk less about that hideous satanic institution.

        • Cargill April 9, 2020 at 1:45 am #

          That’s because I need to do the work that you don’t. Trust me

          I think you’ve been reading far too much Dan Brown … it is only fiction, you know. Anyway I thought it was the Illuminati who were the great satan, or was it the Masons, or the Knights Templar? LOL.

      • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 9:00 am #

        SSL, I’m glad your cousin didn’t get it (although the overwhelming chances are that she’d have got a very mild version of it anyway at her age), but some people who went to Mardi Gras almost certainly did get it. Chance and risk are like that, and depend entirely on how many people went with it and who they were close to while they were there.

        As regards who’s got it, many tens of thousands of people don’t have it any more because it’s already killed them. And many more currently on ventilators aren’t going to come off them alive. But it’s also the case that probably at least ten times as many people as we know (through testing) have had it have actually got it or had it and it’s hardly affected them (so they’ve probably passed it on to someone it’s affected more seriously) which lowers the overall death rate.

        And it’s everyone’s right to formulate an opinion on all the questions related to that. But some people have a responsibility for managing the situation; some others will put their own interests first and put other people at risk. And people will argue, quite rightly, about where lines should be drawn between protecting individuals now and protecting the economy.

        But I kind of think that anyone aggressively insisting that lockdowns should be lifted should voluntarily give up any right they might have to be treated in hospital should the need it, because the hospitals simply won’t be able to cope with the results of that in the short term. The UK has only 2000 intensive care beds left for the whole country, and that’s after converting a proportion of wards from standard to intensive care.

        Having said that, my husband (who is at risk both by physiology and by profession) says anecdotally that he doesn’t want to go on a ventilator anyway, partly because as an older person you’re just as likely to die anyway and partly because it does huge damage to your lungs (and deaths six months later as a result of this probably won’t even be counted as Covid deaths, despite the fact that they are). I’m tempted towards the same view. There’s a new, simpler, less invasive machine that’s being used to help people breathe that’s going to be manufactured in bulk here. I presume it’s the same over your way. Unlike invasive ventilation, you remain conscious, same as with a CPAP machine. I’d be happy with either of those, and to take my chances. Ventilators maybe not so much, at my age.

        Anyway, stay well.

        • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 9:19 am #

          PS I’ve had a sore throat for two days now – only speculating in a quite chilled manner about whether it’s old corona or new corona. 🙂

          • benr April 7, 2020 at 9:47 am #

            Had one for over a month very mild but it is there.
            I have been doing a lot of talking helping my user base get setup to work from home on the citrix workspace since most of them are college educated but can’t follow directions if it is more than three steps long.
            Can’t figure out how so many people have been using computers for 20-30 years and still barely know how to turn them on or off properly in some cases.

          • SoftStarLight April 7, 2020 at 9:51 am #

            Thank you Alba! You stay well too. My cousin had a sore throat and a fever and that is what sparked that whole corona test in the first place. And can I tell you, the results took forever to get. So she was self isolating herself from her family and was all upset about it and I told her that is what you get for going into all that sin in New Orleans. And then it turns out she didn’t even have it and so really she must have just had a cold or something because she was negative for the flu too. So all that to say, I hope that the sore throat is maybe just a little cold or allergy or something and not corona at all. Yeah lol maybe like you said it cold be an old corona lol. I hope your husband is holding up well. Is he working long hours? It would be interesting if he is noticing any trends. Yeah, the whole ventilator thing is scary. I never realized they put you in a coma for that!

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 11:38 am #

            Yes they have to sedate you for the ‘proper’ ventilators. I hadn’t realised that originally either. All this is a learning process!

            It’s weird, because like benr I seem to have had a long-running very mild cold or uninterrupted series of very mild colds for a number of weeks now (not remotely likely to be nCovid I’d have thought), which is odd in itself as I’ve hardly been with people. But while my sore throat isn’t dramatically painful, I haven’t had one like that for years. I wouldn’t care if it was nCV to be honest, if this is all it was going to be! You just don’t know, though – look at Boris – he seemed fine for quite a time before he deteriorated.

            Re my husband, he’s been off for weeks using up annual leave before the end of the tax year, so he’s due back tomorrow. He works (alternate weeks, so only part time) in the GP out-of-hours service. They’re based in a hospital but they’re not a hospital service.

            But no, although they’re an emergency service he won’t be doing longer hours because he’ll just be seeing normal patients (a number of whom will of course have Covid). But the intensive care doctors are doing 12-hour shifts and 60-hour weeks, which is pretty ‘intensive’ itself.

            Our doctors generally have a harder time of it and for less money than over your way – as JohnAZ has rightly pointed out. And they’re pounded by dumb GMC appraisals and revalidation exercises (in addition to normal internal appraisals) brought in, entirely pointlessly, after the Shipman affair, by the ‘something needs to be done’ brigade. Sometimes they use a bit of gallows humour to help them get by. 🙂

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BkwCdkKpnm8

          • sophia April 7, 2020 at 11:42 am #

            Oh, Green Alba, get yourself some vitamin C, some zinc and vitamin D pronto and you will probably kick whatever it is.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 11:55 am #

            I take Vit. D regularly, thanks sophia.

            The Vit C and zinc thing has been disproved repeatedly, according to hubby. And you just pee out excess Vit C anyway, as it’s water soluble. But if people feel they’re being helped by it, it’s all good. 🙂

            I’ve always kicked the run of the mill ‘whatever it is’ bugs without any help anyway. But Covid19 is something else, for those it gets seriously. And you can be assured that if all it took was Vitamin C and zinc we wouldn’t have lost doctors, nurses and thousands of patients.

            I wish you wouldn’t add that ‘oh’ at the start, it comes over as a weeny bit patronising, as if you were talking to a five-year-old whose hamster had just died. Just sayin’ 🙂

          • sophia April 7, 2020 at 12:23 pm #

            Green Alba,

            Okay, no more Oh.
            Vitamin C and zinc has not been disproved and is being used in at least two countries as we speak with good success. When people say it doesn’t work, I suspect they have not taken enough. They are giving 1500 mg IV and it is indeed helping – but that is a tiny dose.
            Most animals make the equivalent of 1 or 2 grams of vitamin C per day and crank out a lot more when sick. So what does that tell you? A lot of the time when they want to debunk something like vitamin C, they mess it up in some way. Because they don’t want it to work.
            Of course you pee it out. It is a water soluble vitamin and your body clears it in a couple of hours. That’s why you should take it in divided doses, 3 or 4 times per day. That is the protocol in the hospitals. They give 1500 mg 4 times per day.
            By the way melatonin might also be very helpful in avoiding the cytokine storm.
            You know, you’re scared of this and how much trouble would it be to take these things?

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 1:37 pm #

            Any time I start getting a sore throat or the sniffles, I start taking more Vitamin C and it seems to get rid of them. At least for the last few decades. One learns about one’s body over time. And many become healthier than they were in their youth. That’s been my experience as well.

            I think the form is important. A hard pill that is hard to digest isn’t going to show the dramatic results – at least not for me. I like something that I can chew on or even dissolve in my mouth. It can hit the throat directly via the saliva – which is part of the digestive process.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 4:33 pm #

            I don’t have a problem with extra Vit. C on principle, sophia – took high dose Vit. C once for some reason I can’t remember years ago. I get loads in my diet just the same, and excess dietary Vit. C doesn’t have the potential side effects that taking it in pills can have.

            But I suspect the point is entirely academic. I can pretty much guarantee you that the pointy-elbowed people have cleared the shelves already. 🙂

          • Nightowl April 7, 2020 at 4:49 pm #

            C is very good if pharmaceutical grade, particularly if taken early.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 6:36 pm #

            Seems using it in a clinical setting is entirely different from expecting it to help prevent you get Covid19.

            https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/vitamin-c-coronavirus

            But I was right to think the shelves would be empty anyway!

          • Cargill April 9, 2020 at 12:56 am #

            Can’t figure out how so many people have been using computers for 20-30 years and still barely know how to turn them on or off properly in some cases.

            We definitely agree on something here, Ben!

            I concede I have a strong IT background, but I am amazed at the disconnect between (a) the incredible reliance people have on their devices, and how much they value what they provide, and (b) how little they know about how they work.

            I have a couple of older neighbours whom I help out, and they are two types: (a) those who are really keen to learn, and take notes of new things, and (b) those whose eyes glaze over, and they just want something fixed, and that’s all.

            I think young people are probably a lot better, t least at the app level, and settings … but not really how they work.

    • sophia April 7, 2020 at 11:51 am #

      I had come to the conclusion that the upper management of the Roman church is satanic based upon my own ways of evaluating things. First, the inquisition, and second the underlying theme of underground homosexuality. I don’t mind homosexuality per se, but when it is secretive it festers. Another tip off is the unhealthy obsession with the suffering of the crucifixion. They emphasize it to the point of torture porn.
      But now, if I were to start in on the Talmud and some items in the Bible…

      • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 12:07 pm #

        The whole thing of homosexuality in the Catholic church is one of those ‘law of unintended consequences’ things, to a large degree.

        If you combine (a) a supposedly celibate clergy and (b) overwhelming condemnation of ordinary, boring homosexuals in society in general, then where would you think (a number of decades ago) young homosexual men would go, in an overwhelmingly religious society where they themselves are equally religious, to avoid the pressure of being expected to find a potential wife and the constant eager questioning of your parents (whom you daren’t tell you’re gay) than imagining or inventing a religious vocation?

        If they’d avoided (a) and (b) they wouldn’t have anything like the ‘problem’ they have.

        • sophia April 7, 2020 at 12:27 pm #

          I agree. The Orthodox Church has a much smaller problem because they have a married clergy and also have monasteries and convents for those so inclined.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 12:53 pm #

            Glad we agree on something. 🙂 I also think that if you persistently repress something it’s going to pop out in a more explosive and harmful form and might take ages to get back to a sensible modus operandi. My gay nephew just looks like any other young man of his age and neither tries to hide what he is nor even talks about it. Well he might with his friends but certainly not at family gatherings! It’s just a part of him, albeit an important one – it’s not everything about him.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 1:43 pm #

            I agree as well, unless they can screen them out somehow. The original idea was beautiful and apparently the Apostles, though almost all married, did become celibate even though still married. Giving it all to God, to put it bluntly. As time went by, it become institutionalized.

            Obviously with Homosexuality completely accepted and even lauded, the pressure should be off to hide from view – yet they continue to flock into the Priesthood, almost like they’re on the offensive now, trying to destroy it.

            One priest suggested putting the seminaries in rural monnastaries, since most Gays hate dirt and hard physical work. Any candidate who wanted to pursue more advanced studies could do so later, elsewhere. Also contact with the monks, something they might not have a chance to get again, could help with their formation.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 2:08 pm #

            “apparently the Apostles, though almost all married, did become celibate even though still married.”

            Some people will believe anything. 🙂

            But why do you celebrate sexuality in general and then talk as if it were a bad thing per se?

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 2:09 pm #

            “One priest suggested putting the seminaries in rural monnastaries,”

            You’d be better putting them in with elderly nuns. 🙂

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 3:12 pm #

            Different vocations, mein Frau. Not all things are for all people. Christ said as much, remember?

            Did I just get the German wrong again? Correct me one more time so I can try and remember this time.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 4:36 pm #

            Mein Herr; meine Frau.

            I was kidding. Just thought being trained in the same vicinity as the old nuns would lessen the temptation to join up.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 6:00 pm #

            Those damned gendered endings. Why can’t language be unisex but bathroom monsex?

            Tanks

      • Cargill April 9, 2020 at 2:01 pm #

        I had come to the conclusion that the upper management of the Roman church is satanic based upon my own ways of evaluating things. First, the inquisition, and second the underlying theme of underground homosexuality.

        Simply put, it’s a 2,000 year-old death cult … Judaism and Islam are in the same shameful class.

        The greatest waste of human intellect, and the greatest oppressor of people. in the history of our species. Without Christianity we would probably be 2,000 years more advanced, in just about every field.

        Oh well, thank god for atheists.

        PS – I don’t think the frequency of homosexuality is an unintended consequence at all; I think celibacy is-was a deliberate policy to make the priesthood safe and attractive to gay men (and sadly, pedophiles).

    • elysianfield April 7, 2020 at 12:33 pm #

      “https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-middle-east-52189059/coronavirus-israel-s-ultra-orthodox-lockdown-challenge”

      Mofo,
      Torquemada?

      …you can’t torkem outa nothin’!

      • akmofo April 7, 2020 at 1:45 pm #

        BBC? No thanks.

        • Cargill April 9, 2020 at 2:08 pm #

          BBC? No thanks.

          Yeah – it is very conservative and mainstream establishment, but it’s also very fair & balanced, with lots of resources world-wide.

  51. Iananna April 7, 2020 at 1:09 am #

    I’ve been reading JHK for the last decade and, since son gave me his old MP3, have downloaded his KunstlerCasts.
    Listening when working in the field or forest is a wonderfuI way to enjoy the contrast between reality and the rarefied realms of which they speak.
    Rarely ever looked at the Comments below the fold as those few that were visible without scrolling down seemed too adulatory for my taste but began to do so recently as the world begin winding down.
    Some correspondents have good points to make but most are not just obsessive but clearly deranged as well as mean & nasty.
    How so apparently a thoughtful person as our host can bear to see his site so soiled is a mystery.
    It is wearisome to have to wade through so much muck to find the occasional nugget but nobody ever said freedom wasn’t messy.
    Sigh.

    • SoftStarLight April 7, 2020 at 1:34 am #

      Oh you poor thing. You’ve clearly been through so much to get here so it’s a good thing you stopped to rest. You mean to tell me you don’t like to hear things that don’t sound good to hear?! Wow!! That’s totally original lol! Well its a good thing you are willing to get dirty. Now after cutting down a lot of the other commenters here do you care to leave any nuggets yourself?

      • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 2:54 am #

        I think you have made Iananna’s point very well. Well done!

    • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 2:24 am #

      What a ridiculous creature.

      • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 2:55 am #

        You too.

    • sophia April 7, 2020 at 11:44 am #

      Iananna,

      It used to be worse. I personally find people attacking one another to be unpleasant and a waste of time. I don’t say anything that I would not if sitting together in a room. But sometimes they are funny…

  52. Cargill April 7, 2020 at 2:10 am #

    The Supreme Court has ruled that Wisconsin cannot extend the deadline for absentee | postal voting by 6-7 days, to allow more people to vote in the election today (Tuesday).

    Lots of perfectly eligible voters will now not vote, because they do not wish to risk coronavirus. The decision – led by the execrable Brett Kavanaugh and a 5-4 vote on party lines – just shows you how ruthless and desperate the Republican Party is to steal power any way they can.

    Because of the obvious: the Republican Party can’t win elections if the voter numbers are higher, so they have suppressed democracy for decades. The bought judges put power and winning above the risks to American lives. Pure evil.

    • BackRowHeckler April 7, 2020 at 3:22 am #

      Do you know where Wisconsin is?

      From your vantage point in (ahem) Sidney, Australia.

      • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 5:57 am #

        From your vantage point in (ahem) Sidney, Australia.

        The spelling is Sydney, comrade. And even though that beautiful city is my home town, I now live in (cough, cough) Melbourne … another stunningly pleasant metropolis.

        And believe it or not, I’ve ventured into Wisconsin … and in fact I’m a long-time Green Bay Packers fan – go the cheeseheads!

        • BackRowHeckler April 7, 2020 at 7:15 am #

          Apparently you’ve been everywhere

          Long Beach, Harpers Ferry, Green Bay … you’ve certainly been around. Impressive for somebody living in (ahem) Australia.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 2:01 pm #

            Australians are inveterate travellers, brh. They start young. Don’t your have the Aussie barista thing going on in the US as they enjoy their gap years? Maybe not at the moment, obviously…

            Ask for directions in London in the summer and you’re almost as likely to be asking an Australian as a Brit. Only a slight exaggeration in certain places.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 2:04 pm #

            They’re famous for their stupidity and belligerence too. Cargill is a representative man.

          • GreenAlba April 7, 2020 at 4:43 pm #

            They’re famous for their friendliness and lack of pretentiousness here. Not some of the rightwing anti-science dinosaurs in government back home of course.

            My office was pretty small but we had two or three who joined us to work after they’d graduated. A couple of them met Edinburgh chaps and stayed, got married and had kids here. Nice people.

            I asked one how she coped with the weather and she said hot sunshine is fine if you don’t have to put up with it all the time.

            So easy people too.

          • Cargill April 9, 2020 at 2:18 pm #

            About 36 states and three territories … really enjoy visiting the place, but who knows when we will be back next? My wife has two nephews in Maryland she’s close to – both teachers in the prime of life.

            And as they say, they’re pissed off – firstly they got Trump, and now they’ve got a pandemic.

            Virgin Australia shut up shop today … keeping just one service going (Sydney-Melbourne), presumably to retain its operating licence. The movement of people and accommodating them, is a gigantic industry.

          • Cargill April 9, 2020 at 2:37 pm #

            Thanks for the kind words about my countrymen and women GreenAlba … yes we are inveterate travellers and we do start early. New Zealanders are very similar.

            It really took off in the mid-1960s, when Australia was pretty square and backward, and hardly a cultural hotspot.

            Flying to the UK (which even up until the 1950s was called “Home”) finally became a bit more affordable, and people headed for the UK in droves. Some still went by ship.

            We suffered the “cultural cringe” – you had to go overseas and do well there – doing well in Australia alone didn’t cut it.

            We had some renowned successes:

            – Sir Robert Helpmann
            – Germain Greer
            – Robert Hughes (NYT art critic)
            – Barry Humphries (Dame Edna)
            – Dame Joan Sutherland
            – Errol Flynn, Peter Finch, Mel Gibson, Nicole

            And who can’t like Kylie Minogue?

            And to reciprocate – Britons in general are warm, friendly, and usually sharp as a tack, quick-witted and funny. In stark contrast to our powerful cousins across the Big Pond.

            Full disclosure – despite being seventh generation Australian, I hail from Scotland, Wales, and Lincolnshire!

          • GreenAlba April 9, 2020 at 4:45 pm #

            Can we swap Clive James for Mel G, please, Cargill? Better person all round. 🙂

            My dad considered taking us over as ten-pound Poms in the 60s, but we didn’t actually do it. So never had the experience of the boat to Fremantle. 🙂

    • Iananna April 7, 2020 at 6:48 am #

      The amerikan claim to exceptionalism is well demonstrated by its being an outlier amongst other OECD in so many ways.
      Lack of democracy is the most blatant – no other developed country devolves regulation of voting so far down the food chain as to actively suppress suffrage. And apparently unashamedly. The 2016 election had the lowest turnout since in a hundred years – 2/3 would be deemed a profound achievement.
      By far the worst public health – higher infant, perinatal & maternal death rates than even many developing countries.
      Lowest literacy & numeracy rates in the West.
      More incarceration than any other country, and the ultimate obscenity, private-for-profit prisons.
      More spending on armaments (laughingly called ‘defence’) than the rest of the world put together.
      The highest energy & food consumption per head on the planet.
      I could go on but it’s too depressing.
      Exceptionally awful.

      • BackRowHeckler April 7, 2020 at 7:16 am #

        So. Move somewhere else. NKorea is looking for immigrants.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 1:46 pm #

        You’re forgetting we’re not Western anymore. Whites are only sixty percent of the population – and by far the oldest group. Focus on White Americans and we line right up with Europe to a large extent.
        Thanks for playing, drear.

    • sophia April 7, 2020 at 11:47 am #

      Cargill,

      Why does having some people afraid to go out benefit one party more than another?

      Your emotional ties to our politics seems a bit odd to me.

  53. Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 2:29 am #

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/navy-secretary-calls-roosevelts-fired-192202056.html

    Moldy backed down. His only chance was to fight. He’s toast. Think the Orange Fox isn’t going to make hay with all this? He’s for Captain and the Men! The Captain is another Mister Roberts. Both good regular Guys, not like that nasty elitist Moldy.

    Good, Trump, good. You need the People (especially the enlisted men) on your side for when you seize power. That’s the only way you’re ever going to redeem your pathetic first term in office and your betrayal of your base.

    • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 2:59 am #

      Good, Trump, good. You need the People (especially the enlisted men) on your side for when you seize power. That’s the only way you’re ever going to redeem your pathetic first term in office and your betrayal of your base.

      Yes – I’ve always said that Trump was too good as a president to satisfy his base … they wanted someone to tear down the temple, but the Golden Globe just turned it into another golf resort. LOL.

      Roll on November!

      • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 3:39 am #

        Yes, as Christ said, not one stone shall be left upon another. The days of the Great City of Gotham (and Gotham includes London, Washington, Tel Aviv, Riyadh, etc) are numbered.

        • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 5:52 am #

          Oh my goodness … we’ve got an End of Days nutter here s well!

          • SoftStarLight April 7, 2020 at 10:01 am #

            You are too smart to be so unprepared. So you really are a grasshopper? That surprises me to a great degree. I feel like you are actually an ant that wishes he wasn’t an ant. You need to follow your instinct to prepare rather than the loud voice in your head telling you that you know better than everyone else and therefore you can just lounge around and throw careless words around. Get it together!

        • JohnAZ April 7, 2020 at 10:41 am #

          Interesting thought Janos. What is going to happen to the Great metropolises? The cities have always been a dumping ground for all the human refuse when tech change and economic shake outs occur. After this virus abates, there is going to be another upsurge, of people with unusable or no skills that will not be rehired. Dump them into the cities. Will it affect immigration? Just what we need, more city dwellers.

  54. Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 3:00 am #

    https://remnantnewspaper.com/web/index.php/fetzen-fliegen/item/4841-coronagate-the-truth-emerges

    Long but worth it and funny. The models are collapsing. The Curve just won’t curve like they thought it would. So now they’re trying to claim that their measures mitigated the curve, but nations and states that didn’t close down will disprove that.

    Attn Kdog: Embedded youtube: Another German Genius, an expert in this field, castigates the whole thing. Makes a powerful argument for herd immunity, with quarantine only for the elderly.

    We’ve been had. You have to switch your campaign to fighting against the shut down. As does Trump.

    • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 3:27 am #

      The models are collapsing. The Curve just won’t curve like they thought it would. So now they’re trying to claim that their measures mitigated the curve, but nations and states that didn’t close down will disprove that.

      Perhaps you’re doing your virus-denier victory dance a bit early. Get back to us in three weeks or so.

    • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 3:32 am #

      We’ve been had. You have to switch your campaign to fighting against the shut down. As does Trump.

      I suggest you wait a while – until you can check the stats for countries that do relax restrictions … CHina, Singapore, and Korea come to mind.

      You might also want to wait until after the fall and early winter – a full year is needed before we know the nature of the pandemic.

      Do you really believe anyone would have imposed isolation and mitigation procedures if they were not necessary? What planet do you inhabit?

      • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 3:42 am #

        To attain absolute power? Of course! They see us a livestock. Just look into your own mind as to how you see Us, and then project that onto them as to how they see all regular people.

        So we’re going to be in Lockdown for a year? What planet do You live on?

        • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 3:54 am #

          To attain absolute power? Of course! They see us a livestock.

          Your right-wing paranoia knows no bounds, it seems. The left used to be scared of the state, but it looks like the wingnuts have bought out the franchise.

          And what “they” would they be?

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 4:22 am #

            You know – Them. The ones you can see only if you put on the special glasses. They live, we sleep.

    • sophia April 7, 2020 at 1:00 pm #

      Would be nice to have a tenacious dog to sink his teeth into the pants of the real perpetrators, but you just blew it Janos. You tried to put him on the same side as Trump. If Trump wants save kittens, the Deranged will be against it.

  55. Majella April 7, 2020 at 4:13 am #

    I just found this comment on youtube article – a succinct reflectin of how Himself is dealing (or not dealing) with the current reality:

    “Trump has no idea how to LEAD a country through hard times or pandemics so let me simplify this for Mr. Trump and those who think he is doing a good job. Picture a house with a father and 6 kids.

    Each kid has his own room. Now, one day the house becomes infested with cockroaches or snakes or some other dangerous pest.

    So the father first tells his kids to ignore them and they will go away but this does ot work and the pests reproduce instead. So then the father says that it’s the neighbor’s fault because he eats strange food that attracts cockroaches and snakes etc…

    That doesn’t help either and the house is crawling and the kids have bugs and snakes in bed with them.

    So then the father says, “We need to call pest control to get rid of this mess” and instead of calling pest control himself, he tells each kid to handle his or her room in whatever way the child can.

    So all the kids are calling pest control companies and nothing is coordinated. The kids don’t have enough money to pay for pest control and the father is ignoring the whole thing saying that a father is only for the purpose to contribute to the birth of the kids and buy then some clothes and food. But they each separately have to deal with the pest control situation.

    So it is with this pandemic and our President who is supposed to be the father of our country is ignoring the issue and making things worse by forcing the States to handle their own situations procuring safety equipment and tests.”

    • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 4:24 am #

      So it is with this pandemic and our President who is supposed to be the father of our country

      That’s the problem with Amerika – they elect a king every four years, and can’t stand it when he fails them. They don’t cope. When will they ever learn? The constitutional writers sure have a lot to answer for – dopes they were.

      • sophia April 7, 2020 at 1:10 pm #

        If only that were true, we might get a good king once in a while. In fact, the president has little power and the country is ruled behind the scenes.
        Oh, God, why did I bother.

    • JohnAZ April 7, 2020 at 10:33 am #

      Please refer to Amendment 10 of the Constitution.

      Your socialist slip is showing.

      • Cargill April 9, 2020 at 2:56 pm #

        I understand the 10th Amendment, but realistically that horse is out of the barn. Australia has similar provisions – the states retain their powers and jurisdiction unless such powers are expressly conferred on the federal government.

        But things have changed over time, in both countries. I know conservative parties like to resort to “states rights” occasionally, when it suits them politically, but in reality, all federal politicians couldn’t care less about state powers. The courts have mostly sided with the federal government.

        In many ways this is a good thing – rather a lot of US states remain uncultured and uncivilised … run by rubes, yokels, hillbillies, and corrupt good ole boys. So ordinary people need the protection of the generally saner and fairer feds.

    • sleek111 April 7, 2020 at 12:11 pm #

      Don’t worry…the one thing all politician know instinctively is how to get rid of the “pests”.

      Just be patient, and wait your turn.

  56. Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 4:20 am #

    Why now? Because time is running out. Soon the Global Order will collapse and unless it is a controlled collapse, they will fall too. And they realized that the Global Warming Scam had failed. As did their attempt to terrify the World into surrendering to the UN via the threat of nuclear war.

    • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 5:06 am #

      What stuff do you read or watch to get these extremely paranoid views? Do you have far too much time on your hands?

      I take the view that most human beings are pretty dumb – even the elites – and if they are not dumb, they’re so blinded by self-interest and self-protection that they couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery, let alone run a New World Order.

      Relax – have a beer – the sun will rise tomorrow.

      • BackRowHeckler April 7, 2020 at 5:37 am #

        Most human beings are pretty dumb- Cargill

        Except you, of course. You’re smarter than everybody, including your professors when you were 18.

        Brh

        • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 6:35 am #

          Most human beings are pretty dumb- Cargill

          Yes they are … certainly not clever or reliable enough to keep gigantic conspiracies of the kind that you wallow in secret.

          The Golden Globe should sell his maggot red hats with a tinfoil lining … that should fix things.

          • BackRowHeckler April 7, 2020 at 7:12 am #

            What conspiracies?

          • BackRowHeckler April 7, 2020 at 7:19 am #

            Comrade?

            I once had a history professor who called everybody Comrade. He dressed up in workingman’s clothes, but apparently his whole life was spent in academia; never worked a day in his life. Comrade.

            Brh

          • malthuss April 7, 2020 at 11:05 am #

            gigantic conspiracies

            Who donated the land for the U.N.?
            Diplomatic immunity
            Fluoride
            Chemtrails [look up, the land under is being sprayed]
            5G
            Free Masons
            Mandatory vaccinations
            Foreign Aid
            Globalism
            MK Ultra = 10

            thats a start.

          • akmofo April 7, 2020 at 11:58 am #

            Vatican Passports to Nazi criminals to escape Europe for Latin America using Vatican drug smuggling routes or ratlines.

          • malthuss April 7, 2020 at 12:27 pm #

            Bill Gates Calls For National Tracking System For Coronavirus During Reddit AMA
            https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattperez/2020/03/18/bill-gates-calls-for-national-tracking-system-for-coronavirus-during-reddit-ama/#553717276a72

            Billionaire wants to help us.

            .

          • akmofo April 7, 2020 at 12:41 pm #

            Yup, without a vaccination passport you don’t get to live. Now the question is, what are YOU going to do about it? This is what your Nazi heroes were all about. The superior ideology you wanted to subscribe to. Remember the words:

            Arbeit macht frei

            God has a sense of humor, but your karma does not.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 7, 2020 at 2:02 pm #

            The Gentiles are your misfortune.

          • Nightowl April 7, 2020 at 5:07 pm #

            When does Orange Hitler put us in camps, Cargill?

            When do you finally back your claims?

          • Majella April 7, 2020 at 10:54 pm #

            benr

            WTF? When did anyone (let alone Cargill) mention ‘camps’?

  57. K-Dog April 7, 2020 at 4:59 am #

    “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.”

    • Cargill April 7, 2020 at 5:16 am #

      It’s not rocket science: f(x) = b^x

      • michael April 7, 2020 at 7:32 am #

        It’s not nearly as simple as

        df(t)=a*f(t)dt

        (deterministic exponential growth)
        The proper formulation is stochastic

        df(t) = f(t)*[a*dt + s*dW(t)]

        with volatility s responsible for random shocks (both up and down).
        New qualitative features:
        the volatility can overcome the exponential growth from the drift:
        if s²/2>a then almost all paths go to zero, as t -> oo.

        There is no such thing as pure (nonrandom) exponential growth in natural systems. All such would have blown up long ago.

        Random setbacks keep things in check.

        • Robert White April 7, 2020 at 10:56 am #

          You post the coolest maff posts, Michael. You were educated well on technology too from what I can determine from other posts.

          What’s your background education wise if I may ask?

          RW

          • michael April 7, 2020 at 11:20 am #

            Education: Ph.D. in mathematics, interest in technology: from investing (cost me a lot of money).

        • Urinthe Village April 7, 2020 at 1:33 pm #

          W=?

          • michael April 8, 2020 at 7:18 am #

            W = W(t) is a Brownian motion (think of it as a random walk in continuous time). The details are treated in the theory of Stochastic Calculus.

  58. jtkong April 7, 2020 at 5:24 am #

    If the Joint Chief’s of Staff had pulled off Operation Northwoods, I suppose you would have mocked those who pointed out that our own military was blowing up American civilian targets. Haha haha.

    And forget about the coincidental germ game- Crimson Contagion 2019 (sponsored by Bill Gates and his merry band of flying pharmaceutical monkeys) that “predicted” a novel corona virus out of China and then set out exactly the type of world government required to manage the crisis.

    And how could these good fellas ever be motivated to do any ill? I’ll just never believe they would hurt a fly for a measly 2 trillion dollars fuel injected into their bankrupt financial institutions with a 100 billion kicker for their pig filth vaccines. I know you and others in the ever vigilant embedded press would blow the whistle if anyone dared produce a RT-PCR test that didn’t work and then manipulated the statistical results to create fear in order to usher in their dystopian wet dream of ID 2020 replete with an invisible polysaccharide 5G tattoo.

    Nope they’re looking for our safety cause they care, just like IBM did in Deutschland when they tattooed their sorting numbers onto our wrists to insure we all got to our final destination. Hahaha.

    Genetically tracked and bagged to facilitate the efficient management and transport of human cattle to google’s smart city in the cloud. Yeah James, we are all just germs needing to be cleaned in Zyklon’s NextGen temperature and pressure controlled showers. Isn’t it all just hilarious.

    • tucsonspur April 7, 2020 at 5:59 am #

      Wiki:

      Crimson Contagion was a simulation administered by the Department of Health and Human Services from January to August 2019 that tested the capacity of the U.S. federal government and twelve U.S. states to respond to a severe influenza pandemic originating in China. The exercise involves a scenario in which tourists returning from China spread a respiratory virus in the United States, beginning in Chicago. In less than two months the virus had infected 110 million Americans, killing more than half a million. The report issued at the conclusion of the exercise outlines the government’s limited capacity to respond to a pandemic, with federal agencies lacking the funds, coordination, and resources to facilitate an effective response to the virus.

      Wow! Look at the key findings:

      Federal government lacks sufficient funding to respond to a severe influenza pandemic

      Exercise participants lacked clarity on the roles of different federal agencies, and what information was important to pass on to federal partners

      HHS had issues providing accurate and relevant information to hospitals and other public health organizations

      Confusion between HHS, FEMA, and the Department of Homeland Security on which federal agency would take the lead in the crisis

      The United States lacks the production capacity to meet the demands for protective equipment and medical devices such as masks and ventilators imposed by a pandemic

      States were unable to efficiently request resources due to the lack of a standardized request process[4]

      • JohnAZ April 7, 2020 at 10:23 am #

        And it fell on deaf ears at all levels of government. The movie Contagion was done as an alert according to the screenwriter and it was ignored. The political system of the country is ineffective and hideous. The High after the Crisis will be a reshuffling of said polity and hopefully will mean the end of the two current political parties.

        Try this on for size.

        A party dedicated to results in:

        Climate change and pollution reduction. This may stem from the atmospheric change happening right now. Diseases are moving north.

        Medical care management at the national level. Coordination of emergency services. Reaction to the current situation.

        Punishment for corporations that have moved manufacturing overseas. Punishment of Free traders. Tax incentives for manufacturers opening manufacturing here.

        Continued research on virus control, both vaccines and cures. This is going to come back.

      • Majella April 7, 2020 at 10:57 pm #