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The cable news announced the other day that Covid-19 patients placed in critical care may have to be on ventilators for 21 days. Only a few years ago, I went in for an ordinary hip replacement. A month or so later, I got the hospital billing statement. One of the line-items went like this: Room and board: 36 hours…$23,482.79. I am not jiving you. That was just for the hospital bed and maybe four lousy hospital meals, not the surgery or the meds or anything else. All that was billed extra. Say, what…?

Now imagine you have the stupendous good fortune to survive a Covid-19 infection after 21 days on a ventilator and go home. What is that billing statement going to look like? Will the survivors wish they’d never made out of the hospital alive?

Right now, we’re in the heroic phase of the battle against a modern age plague. The doctors, nurses, and their helpers are like the trembling soldiers in an amphibious landing craft churning toward the Normandy beach where the enemy is dug in and waiting for them, with sweaty fingers on their machine guns and a stink in the pillbox. Some of the doctors and nurses will go down in the battle. The fabled fog-of-war will conceal what is happening to the health care system itself, while the battle rages. After that, what?

One thing will be pretty clear: That the folks in charge of things gave trillions of dollars to Wall Street while tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 survivors got wiped out financially with gargantuan medical bills. Do you think the Chargemaster part of the hospital routine will just stop doing its thing during this emergency? The billings will continue – just as the proverbial beatings will continue until morale improves! In the aftermath, I can’t even imagine the ‘splainin’ that will entail. The rage may be too intense to even get to that. For some, it may be time to lubricate the guillotines?

Meantime, of course, the global economy has shut down which suggests to me, anyway, that any prior frame of reference you may have had about money and business and social normality goes out the window. The world is still here. We’re just going to have to learn to live in it differently. The American portion of the world is in need of a severe retrofit and reprogramming. We waited too long to face this in a spell of tragic complacency and the virus has forced the issue. Here are the main things we have to attend to:

Reconsider how we inhabit the landscape. Do you think $20-a-barrel oil is a boon to the Happy Motoring way-of-life? It’s going to at least bankrupt most of the companies producing shale oil, and that’s where way-more than half of our production came from in recent years. How many ordinary Americans will be able to finance car payments now? To say suburbia will not be functioning too well mere months from now is a merciful way to put it.

The big cities will not recover from the trauma and stigma of the virus, but that is only the beginning their problems. What, exactly, will the suffering poor of the ghettos do, under orders to remain cooped-up until the end of April? These are people who are unlikely to have laid in supplies ahead of time, and a month from now they are sure to be very hungry. How will the big cities be able to manage their infrastructures with municipal bonds massively failing? How will they provide social services when tax revenues are down to a trickle? The answer is, they won’t manage any of this. They grew too big and too complex. Now they have to get smaller, and the process will not be pretty.

What will the business of America be after Covid-19? If we’re lucky, it will be growing food and working at many of the activities that support it: moving it, storing it, selling it, making an order of smaller-scaled farm machinery, including machines that can be used with horses and oxen, breeding the animals. I’m not kidding. Growing food happens in the countryside, where the fields and pastures are. There are towns there, too, associated with the farming, where much of the business of farming and the activities that support it transact. I believe we’ll see impressive demographic movements of people to these places. There are opportunities in all that, a plausible future. The scale of agriculture will have to change downward, too. AgriBiz, with its giant “inputs” of chemicals and borrowed money, is not going to make it. Farms have to get smaller too, and more people will have to work on them. Farewell to the age of the taco chip!

If we want to get around this big country of ours, and move food from one place to another, we better think about fixing the railroads. Try to imagine what six trillion dollars might have done for that crucial venture. And I’m not talking about high-speed and high-tech; I mean the railroads that were already here. Where I live, the tracks are still in place, rusting in the rain. How did we let that happen?

Then there is the question of how do we behave? You may not think that matters so much, but we’ve become so profoundly dishonest that it’s impeding our relationship with reality. On top of that we’re surly, impolite, clownish, blustering, greedy, and improvident. Believe me, that is going to change. Hardship is a great attitude-adjuster. When Americans awake from the corona coma like millions of Rip Van Winkles, it will matter again to be upright and to act in good faith. This will be a different country.


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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.

1,046 Responses to “People Get Ready!”

  1. Walter B March 30, 2020 at 9:55 am #

    You raise an interesting point about the massive hospital bills that the poor unfortunates will be hit with should they survive Jim, but not to worry, the Federal Reserve will simply print and dump magic money out of thin air. Surely this can be done forever without any ill effect, har, har, har.

    • ellipsis March 30, 2020 at 10:18 am #

      For us ordinary folks? Not very likely Walt. That would be the dreaded socialized medicine, and we’ve already heard the verdict on that.

      • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 10:21 am #

        You can’t have socialized medicine and 1% globalist greed in the same country.
        Look what happened to Italy.
        They were operating under globalism.
        They’ve finally had enough, though, it looks like.

        • ellipsis March 30, 2020 at 10:29 am #

          Totally agree. But we Americans’ got us some really hard craniums. We seem to love the drama.

          • AKlein March 30, 2020 at 11:13 am #

            Ah yes, Ellipsis, how we do so adore drama here in the US of A. How much we love the funhouse at the amusement park. Alas, now the funhouse is reality. That monster that scares you is now real.

          • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 2:06 pm #

            “People Get Ready!”

            The horse is out of the barn.

          • goat1001 March 31, 2020 at 3:12 pm #

            The Four Horsemen are out of the barn…

        • GreenAlba March 30, 2020 at 10:57 am #

          What are you specifically blaming the Italian situation on, Beryl?

          Italy and Spain are countries where generations live in closer proximity than in some other European countries (e.g. Germany). Here in the UK younger people are being advised not to visit their older and more vulnerable relatives. That’s hard to do if Grandma lives with you because you’re a much more traditional, family-oriented society.

          Germany is a richer country and started out with (a) more ventilators per head than any other European country and (b) more nurses per head too. Are you claiming Germany isn’t globalist? That would be bizarre after all the clobbering of the EU and Merkel for being just that.

          So, German globalism (not that I’m defending globalism per se) seems to be entirely compatible with an excellent ‘socialised’ healthcare system. Not as ‘socialised’ as the UK but way more efficient and sane than what pertains in the US.

          JHK gave an example of a 36-hour stay in hospital. My husband read me a post on one of his medics’ blogs a while ago from an American colleague who went to see a doctor in the US for a sore throat. After visits and recommended lab tests (in the US all sorts of clinically unnecessary things are ‘recommended’ because ker-ching) she came away with a total bill of US$28,000. Sane people scrape their jaws off the floor with difficulty after hearing such stories.

          • GreenAlba March 30, 2020 at 11:26 am #

            I could choose to eschew the NHS and see a private GP for a sore throat – uninsured if I so chose (not that I’d ever go to a GP with a sore throat unless it was a real outlier – I have a perfectly good supply of hot tea and paracetamol). It would cost me about £150 for half an hour of the good doctor’s time, and maybe another £30 or whatever if s/he gave me a private prescription for antibiotics, should they be considered appropriate.

            We just don’t get what goes on over your way.

          • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 11:29 am #

            A lot of the superfluous testing stems from fear of malpractice. The lawyers have to get piece of the pie. Litigation explains a lot of the increased price of health care here. Why can’t they fix the situation? Because we are run by lawyers here.

            Nurses make good salaries, the risk return ratio is high. Again litigation! Each patient has 24 hour care at $40/hr for the RN, plus all the other folks and tests. All insured against malpractice as well as the hospital itself.

            Remember the Golden Rule. He who has the gold, makes the rules. Here King Midas is the legal profession.

          • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 12:01 pm #

            Italy has a very old population. The globalists wanted cheap labor and a made in Italy label both, for some of their fancy designer bags and such.
            They imported entire sweatshops, workers and all, to produce these items.
            The Chinese workers understandably go home en masse at times, to a country that is a frequent incubator for disease.
            Italy has a socialized medical system.
            A lot of elderly people got sick, all at once.
            I’m not blaming anything, except to say that the open borders and policies that contributed to the “inequality” we have been seeing, haven’t done so much for the people in the middle.
            How much of that big money floating around at the top went to keeping Italy’s medical system up to date?

          • GreenAlba March 30, 2020 at 12:52 pm #

            The first two cases in Italy were Chinese tourists visiting Rome. Chinese tourists visit everywhere, regardless of globalism (unless you count international travel as globalism, in which case it was the Victorians who really got it started).

            Germany is part of the ‘globalist’ economy and seems to be doing fine, with a medical system that most Americans would consider fairly ‘socialised’ even though it’s not free to all, like the NHS (which isn’t free to visitors and migrant workers either).

            A socialised system can be as good as you make it. Americans keep saying they ‘can’t afford’ Medicare for all, yet they already pay infinitely more overall as a percentage of GDP for their healthcare system than any other comparable country. And for health outcomes that are worse than in countries that pay a lot less.

            Almost a third of what Americans pay for healthcare doesn’t go to healthcare at all, but to maintaining a parasitic bureaucracy around it. Think of the healthcare that third could pay for!

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 1:27 pm #

            Obviously you get what you have: in Somalia, neither private nor public medicine is going to be good because they aren’t very developed people, though Ms Ali says they have some have great heroic music about warriors, etc.

            Germany, with its incredible development and high level of trust (the we feeling) is going to be a winner both privately and publicly while we try to stint on the public aspect because of our greed.

            The we feeling has expanded too much, now to alien peoples who don’t reciprocate and who aren’t nearly as developed. Even Sweden is beginning to stint its own people in favor of the aliens – which is simply mind boggling.

            Despite Alba’s proud boasts, Britain lets its elderly freeze to death in favor of Muslim immigrants. But I must admit: she has the general right of this argument and clueless Americans the wrong.

          • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 2:25 pm #

            Italy and Spain are countries where generations live in closer proximity than in some other European countries (e.g. Germany). Here in the UK younger people are being advised not to visit their older and more vulnerable relatives.

            All this mental masturbation about living in close proximity. It got to Italy first. End of story BECAUSE this tool sez:

            https://www.datacat.cc/covid/

            The rate of increase is higher in the US than anywhere else though real third world countries will take that distinction away. In India you can’t do social distancing. People are already closer together than six feet. Whatcha gonna do?

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 9:28 am #

            “Despite Alba’s proud boasts, Britain lets its elderly freeze to death in favor of Muslim immigrants. ”

            Give it a rest with the demented urban myths, Janos. Energy poverty really is a problem, along with poverty in general.Why do you always pick ‘the elderly’? Lots of the ‘elderly’ are doing very well, thank you very much. A number of the luckier ones older than me got golden retirements. While lots of young families with earners in low-security jobs are reduced to using foodbanks. They will be in energy poverty too. That Muslim immigrants somehow get favours is a figment of your fevered imagination.

            And I have no proud boasts. I just see things for what they are, whether it’s here or in the US. The healthcare system that we have meant that I had timely, state-of-the-art cancer treatment at no upfront cost. But it also means that the UK is about fourth from the bottom within Europe in terms of the numbers of ventilators per head that we’ve all started off with.

            The political failing added to that is that Boris Johnson didn’t get off his arse back in January to start ordering extra ones. But you can’t just hang people on ventilators and expect the oxygen fairy to do the job. They need constant monitoring and we’re short of staff (although a lot of retired staff have come back to help out, which, given the risks, is heroic). One in four doctors in the UK is currently self-isolating with Covid symptoms. Two highly experiences ones (at least one having come back voluntarily from retirement) have died, and we’re hardly started.

            There’s been a deliberate effort on the part of TBTB (not confined to the Tories) to deprive the NHS of adequate funding, while forcing it to bleed its money into the private sector through infamous PFI schemes. Also, ordinary people can be a bit too faced – they can claim to a polling researcher that they’re happy to fork out another penny in income tax to fund a better NHS, but when it comes to the crunch they vote Tory.

            Germany’s system sounds pretty good. And they’ve been testing like mad, which is why their death rate looks good (in addition to having more capacity than anywhere else in Europe).

            Bed occupancy used to be about 75% in the NHS, which is where it should be. But over the last 30 or 40 years, following the imposition of non-clinical managers on the NHS by politicians (doctors tend to know what they’re doing) that percentage has gradually crept up to about 95%. Which is bad news for mega-bugs like MRSA as well as pandemics, since cleaned beds need time between patients, regardless of the degree of cleaning, to avoid such things.

            The problem with a totally free healthcare system is the total lack of realism on the part of patients in terms of what things actually cost. I don’t think it would be a bad thing at all if charges were introduced for some things just to stop people thinking high-quality medical care falls off trees. But you will ALWAYS have poor citizens (not necessarily feckless ones) who will require to be subsidised. And a society is rightly judged by how it treats its most vulnerable.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 9:35 am #

            “A lot of the superfluous testing stems from fear of malpractice.”

            Totally agree, JohnAZ. Good business but bad medicine!

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 9:44 am #

            BTW, Janos, the two British doctors who’ve already given their lives to Covid19 (and the NHS) were British Asians. One ENT consultant and one heart surgeon. The heart surgeon’s kids serve the British people in the NHS too.

            They’re British.

            https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52064450

            http://www.pulsetoday.co.uk/clinical/clinical-specialties/respiratory-/nhs-confirms-first-death-of-a-uk-doctor-due-to-coronavirus/20040479.article

            To you these amazing people are just ‘immigrants off boats’.

            They knew a whole lot more about humanity than you ever risk learning.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 9:57 am #

            “The rate of increase is higher in the US than anywhere else though real third world countries will take that distinction away. In India you can’t do social distancing. People are already closer together than six feet. Whatcha gonna do?”

            Agreed, K-Dog (although the impossibility of isolating Grandma is still a thing, if she lives with a working family).

            What’s going on in India is horrendous, with penniless people trying to walk 100 miles back to their villages. Ventilators??? What’s a ventilator if you live in a village at the arse-end of nowhere?

          • Nightowl April 1, 2020 at 4:42 am #

            I fail to see what globalism and “socialized” medicine have to do with one another.

            The German medical system is mixed offering a private and public option. It has been this way for decades.

            Furthermore, I would not use Germany as a champion of globalism, as there are still a lot of protections on industry here, because Germany (still) largely protects its workforce in critical domestic industries rather than outsource it.

            The battle for Germany rages on, and many want Merkel out.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 8:30 am #

            “I fail to see what globalism and “socialized” medicine have to do with one another.”

            Me neither. And the German healthcare system sounds pretty sane. I could live with that. I don’t understand how the US system doesn’t have people marching in the streets with outrage.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 8:36 am #

            “Furthermore, I would not use Germany as a champion of globalism, as there are still a lot of protections on industry here, because Germany (still) largely protects its workforce in critical domestic industries rather than outsource it.”

            Exactly. But it’s part of the EU, and those who see the EU as entirely bad because it’s ‘globalist’ aren’t willing to see that e.g. post-Brexit Britain could be entirely as globalist as pre-Brexit Britain. It depends entirely on policies. But there are some things you can’t do within the EU to protect domestic industry, e.g. state subsidies, which remove the level playing field.

            That was a problem for anyone wanting to go back to the halcyon days of British Steel. So now British steel plants are bought by Indian or Chinese operators. And Brexit or not-Brexit is an irrelevance.

          • zizzybalooba April 1, 2020 at 3:53 pm #

            “After visits and recommended lab tests (in the US all sorts of clinically unnecessary things are ‘recommended’ because ker-ching) she came away with a total bill of US$28,000.”

            $28,000 for visits and lab tests is pure BS.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 7:58 pm #

            That’s what the American doctor who got the bill thought.

            Pure BS. Glad we agree.

        • Hands4u March 30, 2020 at 11:26 am #

          I believe this may be what triggers Medicare for all as this is what will “partially” pay for the drama and trauma.

          • draupnir March 30, 2020 at 12:49 pm #

            You all talk like you think there is still going to be a functioning government by the time those of us who have survived the virus, the shortages, the riots and the subsequent disintegration of everything we’ve ever depended on, crawl, hungry, out of our dens. I thought we bought the farm with SARS, but we had a lucky, temporary escape.

          • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 2:32 pm #

            @draupnir Martial law is a functioning government.

          • draupnir March 30, 2020 at 3:17 pm #

            Martial law with what?

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 4:56 pm #

            Starting to wish we still lived in a homogeneous White Nation, a la 1960, with the ten percent of minorities overwhelmingly in the rural South?

            Wisdom has arisen in you at last.

        • WayfaringStranger March 30, 2020 at 5:08 pm #

          “You can’t have socialized medicine and 1% globalist greed in the same country”
          Britain, Germany, France, Belgium, Canada…..on and on. The common denominator that makes that combo work especially well is the central control.

      • Helen Highwater March 30, 2020 at 3:58 pm #

        I give thanks every day that I live in Canada where we have “the dreaded socialized medicine”. I recently had surgery on my hand that involved a several appointments with a plastic surgeon, a day-surgery at the hospital and a number of physiotherapy sessions at the hospital. I never saw a bill for any of it. Yes, there are some areas of our health care system that could be improved, but at least I don’t have to declare bankruptcy because I can’t pay the bill. I don’t understand why Americans put up with their government spending a trillion dollars a year on “defense” (which really means senseless imperialist wars) but can’t provide healthcare for all its citizens.

        • Helen Highwater March 30, 2020 at 4:02 pm #

          And our healthcare spending per capita is about half what it is in the US.

        • peter m March 31, 2020 at 8:31 am #

          I am an expat Canadian (because I can hardly survive on my pension there) but chose to retire to a country with a similar health care system.

          As an expat in Portugal you have the right as a temporary resident (for permanent status or citizenship you have to pass a language test, which I intend to take) to participate in the Social Security system. As a pensioner I pay nothing.

          I had total knee replacement in Canada which cost me nothing, (except of our monthly cost for the plan of 120$/family) and my wife had hers done here locally for the usual fee you pay for each hospital visit of 5€.

          You can access the Centro de Saude, and get a GP assigned, but appointments except for critical cases might take up to a month wait.
          Or you can pay 75€ for a private GP, with follow up appointments at 35€.

          The after op care is excellent, with nurses for bandage replacement even doing house visits if you are elderly or do not have a vehicle. Physio sessions will set you back 5€ each at the hospital (free in Canada). or 15€ at the private clinic.

          At the onset of lockdown here we received phone calls from the Centro if we need any help with mobility or purchasing food and a call from the Seguranca Social if we are aware of the measures that have to be taken and if we have any symptoms.

        • lasttwo March 31, 2020 at 10:55 am #

          I could not agree more I had cataract surgery and made several trips to the doctor for measurements and eye tests got the surgery the surgery was covered but I had to pay 250 dollars for the lens and I get to write off the mileage to and from the doctor and meals on my taxes. When we lived in the US we had good corporate health insurance and still a visit to the hospital for any reason was a couple thousand dollars in copays minimum . the lawyers insurance companies billing departments are all parasitic to the cost of medical care I cannot understand why people can not see that.

          • Q. Shtik March 31, 2020 at 1:29 pm #

            I get to write off the mileage to and from the doctor and meals on my taxes. – lasttwo

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

            Keep in mind, you can only deduct medical expenses in excess of 10% of adjusted gross income.

    • DrTomSchmidt March 30, 2020 at 10:43 am #

      Walt, can you comment on JHK’s thoughts on local taxation and bonding?

      It becomes obvious that this event is going to collapse heavily-indebted organizations like NY’s MTA. The MTA is losing revenue from tolls, fares, and sales taxes while expenses remain the same or have gone higher. They simply will not be able to pay their bond holders, especially when you consider the second-order effects of this: many people will want to continue working from home, for fear of the city, and that will collapse the demand for office space, which will collapse the commercial value of the buildings, which will collapse the tax revenues dependent on those buildings.

      If we do not fully reopen by Easter, we will never fully reopen again, not unless there is a wholesale debt repudiation.

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 11:35 am #

        Dr Tom

        The government just made a down payment on trying to fill in all the money being lost by business and folks being shut in. The MTA is a perfect example, as are restaurants, stores, amusement parks, things that are not necessary items during a lock down. Costs do not stop because of shutdown.

        As this progresses, the outlay from the government is just going to grow, probably on the exponential curve. The government cannot print enough money to keep everyone afloat, so we will see attrition in the service economy. Everywhere. In the World.

        • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 12:25 pm #

          MTA was a hot mess before this crisis.
          This is but one of numerous articles Larry Littlefield has written on the subject:
          https://larrylittlefield.wordpress.com/2018/08/15/an-open-secret-mta-capital-costs-have-soared-to-pay-for-underfunded-metro-new-york-construction-union-pensions/

        • DrTomSchmidt March 30, 2020 at 4:40 pm #

          Yep, John. The debt is going away, either through your hyperinflation, repudiation, or a severe haircut. The assets of places like NYC will still be present and worth something but only if the economy isn’t frozen long enough to allow them to deteriorate.

          The shutdown and resulting economic damage from it was an event horizon. We cannot cross back to that world. We can try to continue to make the financial arrangements of that world work, when we know they don’t. Or we can soberly look at what we have.

          JHK isn’t far off in thinking that the end result will be his world made by hand, if the high-order-complexity world ceases, as I think it has.

      • CancelMyCard March 30, 2020 at 11:45 am #

        Jubilee for the TBTF banks,
        Jubilee for Wall Street,
        Jubilee for the Big Corporates,

        Well, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

        Jubilee for the 90% sounds fair to me.

        • DrTomSchmidt March 30, 2020 at 4:34 pm #

          I don’t see another way. The debt is unpayable by individuals.

      • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 12:10 pm #

        Well, the MTA probably won’t be able to pay their motormen $35 per hour anymore, with 6 weeks paid vaca and full retirement after 20 years.

        • DrTomSchmidt March 30, 2020 at 4:43 pm #

          The money isn’t there for salaries, let alone capital projects. At least we built the 2nd Avenue subway a few blocks at $2bln a mile.

          I think this is every local government now, and at a time of increased demand for local government services.

          That’s why I asked Walt what the sense in his small burg was. Do they think “this sucker could go down?”

          • Cargill April 1, 2020 at 11:36 am #

            The money isn’t there for salaries, let alone capital projects. At least we built the 2nd Avenue subway a few blocks at $2bln a mile.

            Why not increase fares by 20% – there are no viable alternatives for the vast majority of passengers, so demand won’t be affected, much.

      • snarkmatic9000 March 30, 2020 at 1:12 pm #

        Fully reopening by Easter would be mass suicide, in the opinion of my wife, who is a “real” doctor.

        • DrTomSchmidt March 30, 2020 at 4:33 pm #

          Does she happen to have death numbers for Italy? The death rate there is 10.7/1000, so you’d expect 55000 people to die in any month, SM. Last I saw, only 11,000 had died from Covid in iTaly, and that basically in March.

          Here’s a page listing ACTUAL death stats from the EU:
          http://www.euromomo.eu/

          “European mortality bulletin week 12, 2020

          Link to printable version
          Pooled estimates of all-cause mortality show, overall, normal expected levels in the participating countries; however, increased excess mortality is notable in Italy.”

          Here’s the all-ages z-score graph for Europe, where more people have died of COVId than any other country:

          http://www.euromomo.eu/outputs/zscore_pooled.html

          See if you can tell me which year was more deadly in terms of excess deaths for the elderly, 2017, or 2020? For 18-64, deaths have been BELOW THE AVERAGE for this winter.

          Suicide? Hardly, except for those over 65, whom we must protect in their own quarantine.

        • WayfaringStranger March 30, 2020 at 5:23 pm #

          Love the handle. I so miss the late 90s to mid- 2000s. We couldn’t all be millionaires of course, but any American with a dream in their heart and a flaming keyboard could be a Cyrano de Bergerac. Twitter, SJWs, hipsters, and cancel culture killed snark, once an art form. They’ve made everything so crude and brutish yo could just cry.
          p.s. Pass on all our thanks to The Wife (and yourself as her emotional support animal). We stand in awe of what she is about to go through.

        • sophia March 31, 2020 at 12:51 pm #

          Snark,

          Why did you use scare quotes on the word real? What does it mean?
          I disagree by the way. The world shut down is so massively strange and incomprehensible to me that I might just start to stutter if I try to express it. It is so very odd that I keep thinking, there must be something going on that I don’t see.

          Either something new and different is about to ensue, or we have a world of hurt coming which will be far more deaths than covid could every have arranged, plus much other morbidity short of death.

          • Nightowl April 1, 2020 at 5:19 am #

            Ask him if his “real” doctor wife has the credentials of the individuals advising Trump on managing the problem.

            I suspect he will respond with more snark, rather than anything of substance.

          • Cargill April 1, 2020 at 11:49 am #

            Why did you use scare quotes on the word real? What does it mean?

            As opposed to the “pretend”doctor in the DrTomSchmidt moniker. I also think it would have been health (and therefore economic) suicide to relax restrictions by Easter Sunday. Full pews then full cemeteries.

            Clearly Dr Fauci and a few other realists have some say and some sway in the White House. But there again, Trump only backed off because Fox News told him it was bad politically.

      • Walter B March 30, 2020 at 10:15 pm #

        Yes I can Doc. I received the following non-confidential email on 13 Mar 20:

        “Please be advised that there has been substantial volatility in the bond market today. Municipal officials are urged to immediately contact their financial advisors, bond counsel and banks to determine what impact this may have on bond anticipation notes or bond sales scheduled over the next few weeks and whether any action is necessary or advisable to ensure that debt service obligations and adequate cash flow are maintained.”

        When I read this I immediately called our bond counsel and was told that one of the major banks (Goldman Sacks if my memory serves me correctly) declared New Jersey municipal debt to be junk bond status and that they were no longer going to loan money in this market. This was followed by many other institutions and the result was an increase in BAN interest rates, but more importantly, an increase in the number of “no-bids” at the bonds sales.

        Do you think that the Mightiest Magic Money Printer of Them All is going to ride in to the rescue? You will have to guess because that bit IS confidential. One mayor at two local mayors phone conferences asked how long would it be before it took a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a loaf of bread. No one answered his inquiry nor will anyone address the danger in limitless money printing. Apparently there is no downside, har, har, har. I’m thinking the Fall will occur this Fall.

        • DrTomSchmidt March 31, 2020 at 4:28 pm #

          Thanks, Walt. For a brief period, rates on triple-tax-free NY State debt went to about 3.5%. Federal Money Market is far below that. Now I understand the spike.

          NYC and NYS are not going to be able to meet requirements. Your mention from GS shows they know that too.

          Invest accordingly.

          • Walter B March 31, 2020 at 5:17 pm #

            PM’s and mattresses my friend, and plenty of pB as well to protect them.

      • sophia March 31, 2020 at 12:41 pm #

        A pet peeve of mine is the way people on public forums use abbreviations and acronyms to those who will not know what in hell it means.

        • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:10 am #

          So ask and then you will know as well.

          • sophia April 1, 2020 at 9:37 am #

            But its stupid to make your post hard to comprehend. It interrupts the flow. Not everyone knows the same acronyms. Just stop using them and type it out.

          • Q. Shtik April 1, 2020 at 12:24 pm #

            Not everyone knows the same acronyms. – sophia

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

            They’re pretty easy to learn. Let’s do lesson #1 starting with some well known ones:

            LOL = Laugh Out Loud

            And then there are offshoots from LOL

            LMAO = Laughed My Ass Off
            LMFAO = Laughed My Fuckin’ Ass Off

            BTW = By the Way

            TPTB = The Powers That Be

            You can also put your cursor on the acronym, double click and you will usually get a definition.

          • benr April 2, 2020 at 9:48 am #

            @sophia

            Some of them you will learn simply by lurking long enough and are site specific like ggg Golden Golem (Gollum) of greatness aka Trump

      • Cargill April 1, 2020 at 11:30 am #

        If we do not fully reopen by Easter, we will never fully reopen again, not unless there is a wholesale debt repudiation.

        Do you have some evidence for this? I think there is nothing mystical about Easter (in every sense), and there is a lot of resilience in the system, and lock-downs can continue for quite a lot longer without shutting off any possibility of bounce-back and recovery.

        A friend of mine works for MTA, in a non-frontline position … she has been doing bits and pieces from home, but basically has been stood down. There are some cost savings possible.

        • DrTomSchmidt April 2, 2020 at 10:01 am #

          Well, take a read here:
          https://www.zerohedge.com/personal-finance/shocking-9-million-americans-have-now-filed-unemployment-benefits-lockdowns-began

          We never recovered the position of employment before 2008. The recent employed percentage of the population barely made it above 60%, and never got back to the 65% range of before 2008. Ignore the unemployment rate.

          The longer we go, the worse the collapse gets. Our predatory managerial class, which cared so little about jobs that it sent the supply chain to China, will do everything it can to preserve “profits,” and that means cost-cutting (not the stock options of the financial “engineers” of course) A three- or four-week mandatory furlough would have taken 8% of the annual income of the affected population. Severe, but perhaps manageable for the rest of us to bail out.

          Meanwhile, the debt just grows in relative and absolute terms. You asked about the MTA raising fares. Since the fare box covers only about 50% of costs, raising fares 20% won’t come close to making up the difference. If ridership drops 20%, you need a 25% increase to remain level. Ridership has dropped 90%, while the bond holders demand their interest payments. I hoe that’s clearer.

          My brother works for the MTA as well. Hopefully his pension is well secured, since I think he’s going to be collecting it soon, at a very early age.

          • Cargill April 2, 2020 at 5:07 pm #

            Fair enough – some good points, and detail.

    • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 12:13 pm #

      Trump said Cigna and Humana are waiving copays for coronavirus treatment in his daily dog and pony show yesterday. So not to worry, Trump has you covered. Die beste aller möglichen Welten.

    • Iananna April 1, 2020 at 6:48 am #

      Burn that bridge when you come to it.

    • Goodwalkspoiled April 3, 2020 at 1:05 am #

      97% of Italian deaths involved pre-existing conditions. Diabetes, obesity, or respiratory / coronary conditions. Also 85% of infected never even get tested, meaning the true death rate is under 1/2 of 1% of those who have the virus. Media has absolutely no sense of proportion whatsoever.

  2. JustSaying March 30, 2020 at 9:58 am #

    As you say “Hardship is a great attitude-adjuster.”

    We’re not going back to normal because normal was the problem!

    https://consortiumnews.com/2020/03/27/covid-19-we-wont-go-back-to-normal-because-normal-was-the-problem/

    • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 10:31 am #

      Thanks for posting that. I only just scanned it, I can barely handle Mr. Kunstler’s big words before noon.
      I like that bit about not dismissing intact institutions as authoritarian.
      One problem I have been observing, even before the crisis du jour, was that we (in New York anyway) have been experiencing the authoritarianism from the grossly incompetent , the very people who have been working hard to politicize, undercut, and understaff our formerly functional institutions.
      Andrew Cuomo is a glaring example.

      I mentioned below the people in the billing department in my local hospital being stupid. A lot of these stupid people staffing medical facilities enjoy flaunting their authority over the customers on a good day. Try to straighten out a bill for a sick person sometime, you’ll see what I mean.

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 11:44 am #

        Andrew Cuomo is drawing a loyal crowd around himself by one thing, he is assuming responsibility for the debacle , and doing something about it. His pressers are mostly apolitical and get this, he tells the truth.

        A lot of the “fat of the land” that supports growth of Liberalism is going to be destroyed by the virus if it lasts long enough. This country, all countries are going to change politically a lot. A silver lining may be the demise of globalism, as we go more local. The international finance community will hopefully disappear.

        • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 12:05 pm #

          Where was he when New Yorkers were getting upset over the closing of so many hospitals?

          • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 12:27 pm #

            Probably meeting with Trump as Trump reduced the pandemic office on the national security office in the WH.

            Government is always going to cannibalize things they think are unnecessary due to not being used to full capacity.

          • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 2:35 pm #

            Andrew has been governor a lot longer than Donald has been president.
            People have been complaining about the hospital closings since Spitzer.

            I heard the president just streamlined and consolidated things for more efficiency, but whatever.

          • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 3:17 pm #

            Eliot Spitzer?

            You mean Love Client #9?

            LoL!

          • Nightowl April 1, 2020 at 5:21 am #

            Ask him why Cuomo was hiding thousands of ventilators.

            Watching him get caught in his own lie on TV was amusing, in a sad way, ofc.

        • DrTomSchmidt March 30, 2020 at 4:46 pm #

          I’d say the 30% asset haircut has destroyed much fat of the land, John.

          We will not have time for whiny word games in the future, at least. Time to return to work.

        • sophia March 31, 2020 at 3:20 pm #

          The bonfire of the vanities.

  3. BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 10:07 am #

    New York Times headline:

    WORLD AS WE KNOW IT ENDING
    Women and Minorities hardest hit

    1619 project will continue

    • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 10:11 am #

      I said before, use the newsprint they were going to put ink on for toilet paper.
      I heard from someone working in NYC that the situation at the hospitals is not as dire as the Times said it was.
      There should be some sort of penalty for deliberately trying to scare people during a pandemic.

      • abbybwood March 30, 2020 at 11:43 am #

        The doctor featured in the article should be in very hot water for having traipsed throughout a functioning ER with her IPhone recording video. HIPPA and all that jazz.

        Then I read that this doctor Sally What’s Her Name has a specialty as a doctor who directs “simulations”.

        And of course there is the CNN video of Mike Pompeo saying, “This is a live exercise”.

        Re-heal-lee-hay??!!

        Well, I have been playing along like a good girl for over three weeks now. Can’t complain. I have been gardening and cooking and coloring with the kids and watching some great old movies on TCM but it there is some big global thang going on that is profoundly changing our lives, I for one would appreciate being told the freakin’ truth about it.

        • draupnir March 30, 2020 at 12:40 pm #

          I read yesterday that the Pentagon is squirreling away “essential personnel” down in the bowels of Cheyenne mountain, and their building in Washington is about 80% empty. What’s that about? Surely COVID-19 will be hitching a ride with one or more of those “essential personnel,” and their support staff, and they know it. Why would they retreat to a bunker deep underground and safe from a nuclear device? How dangerous, really, is this virus, or what other, as yet undisclosed unknown, is actually coming at us.

          • DrTomSchmidt March 30, 2020 at 4:48 pm #

            One solution to COVID in NYC is a nuke. Waiting for the first brainiac to propose that.

          • BornToKillPeace March 31, 2020 at 1:42 pm #

            Speculating. Looking at the last few years domestically and globally.

            1. Radical anti-gov movement centered in Wuhan (?) / Hong Kong protests.

            2. Trade war between USA / China. Bio-weapon via China/Globalists?

            3.UkraineGate failed. The Dem’s were down again. Plummet Trump / Nationalists governments through “pandemic” they are definitely not prepared for. Wait for Nationalists to horrify their citizens/world?

            4.The global economy is done and the virus was released to distract and lock down the world?

          • sophia March 31, 2020 at 3:26 pm #

            drapnuir,

            They aren’t bunkering against the virus.

          • DrTomSchmidt April 2, 2020 at 10:04 am #

            BTKP,

            4. They needed a bailout without popular opposition. Best way to get that is to make sure people are mandatorily unemployed BEFORE asking for the money, so the unemployed DEMAND the bailout.

            They learned from 2008. We did not.

        • elysianfield March 30, 2020 at 2:13 pm #

          Abby,
          You want the truth? WE CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!

          …even if we knew it…

          …and we probably don’t

  4. abalonecranium March 30, 2020 at 10:08 am #

    My concern is: how long will we be contending with mass denial? From my experience, 99% of those with good land, water and equipment in the southwest, don’t want to share or think others are trying to take advantage of them. Not many wanting to pitch-in and help either because of their previous investment. Our community hauls away its wood chipped mulch to the landfill instead of building soil. Our local leaders are looking to business as usual. Can organizations be formed to tackle this head on?

  5. Soloview March 30, 2020 at 10:08 am #

    With such great business they are doing during the crisis, maybe the private hospitals will give 5% discount on the air sucked out of the ventilators. It would be a Christian thing to do.

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  6. Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 10:08 am #

    I do remember our president signing something or other about ‘transparent’ billing in hospitals.
    Not a panacea, but a worthy step.

    Some better emergency billing plan could be come up with, I’m sure.
    Maybe a flat rate for COVID-19 cases, something like that.
    A government that can order fast-food workers to be paid at a much higher wage than those doing similar work can surely order around billing departments.
    The billing department at my local hospital is staffed by stupid people, we need to leave them out of it.
    If anyone makes any extra money out of this, it should be the doctors and nurses, who are under considerable strain not just to do their jobs under difficult conditions, but to make sure they themselves do not fall ill, because then they cannot work.

  7. joejoepelligrino March 30, 2020 at 10:11 am #

    Whenever people who don’t like Kunstler have that said he’s a Chicken Little who always gets it wrong, I always fired back that aside from being a good writer, he only has to be right about the things he talks about once. Looks like “once” may have finally come. Yes, it will hurt, but whatever and whoever comes out the other side (maybe not me, since I’m disabled from one of our Sandbox fiascos), it will be better than what we have going right now. Good luck to those of you still invested in this thing called life; I’m jaded enough to take it or leave it.

    • Ron Anselmo March 30, 2020 at 10:20 am #

      Take it.

    • Being Frank March 30, 2020 at 10:59 am #

      Try reading between the lines of “The Geography of Nowhere”, looks to me that he is always “right”, whatever that means. Like everything worthwhile in life Kunstler requires effort and you get out no more than you are prepared to put in. It is really that simple.

      • joejoepelligrino March 30, 2020 at 11:22 am #

        His forecasts and his diagnoses are not the same thing. I like the guy quite a bit, but you’re talking about him as if he’s the kabbalah rather than a social commentator.

        • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 11:47 am #

          He is a prophet, making projection based on data he has access to. We, represented by our government, are supposed to be the problem solvers.

          Ha, what a joke. Thinking of the Deep State as problem solvers.

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 1:35 pm #

            Selfish businessmen will not be tolerated during the Long Emergency. Simple as that.

            You didn’t build that – not all by yourself you didn’t. And you only keep what you can hold.

          • DrTomSchmidt April 2, 2020 at 10:08 am #

            That’s right, Janos. The elites think that they will maintain control of the state, and that the state will continue to enforce their property “rights.” Maybe in some places. But as more and more people become immiserated, the state faces collapse.

            It already cannot afford the current arrangement. It’s about to run out of chewing gum and bailing wire.

  8. sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 10:15 am #

    Whatever happens people will adapt. Challenge stimulates creative response and brings out the best in us. Since the essence of the creative experience is identical with a genuine religious experience, challenge will also reconnect us to our Source

    • ellipsis March 30, 2020 at 10:23 am #

      Now that’s some positive thinking! Not sure how true it will turn out to be, but positive thinking’s a good thing for now.

      • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 11:08 am #

        Positive thinking is the only way forward my friend…

        • ellipsis March 30, 2020 at 11:25 am #

          It might just be, for a while at least.

    • WayfaringStranger March 30, 2020 at 5:59 pm #

      That’s not really true. The “creative experience”, the art-induced high, whatever your methods and media is not ‘identical” to the religious experience. Not in my own experience anyway. Not even close.
      They are very in-line with the generalized spiritual thing popular today. But what I would define as “religion”, not.
      Personally, I spent decades, a lifetime almost, immersed in ‘art’. With a parent as a professional, i grew up not imagining anything else for myself. went to far-away places to study and become “the best” yada yada. I busted my ass. Words do not describe. I also wrote. I certainly experienced (I think) pretty much every intense and mild state the pursuit of Art can offer.
      Went Born-Again (for like a month till the sheer assholery of all that was unbearable) Then Buddhist for years. Then, a real change occurred, un-asked for. it was unlike all cultural descriptions.There is no “high”. Zero. It’s not a drug, or coping mechanism, it doesn’t make life or people more beautiful, I do not have a song in my heart.
      There is enormous gravitas, tragedy, awareness of supreme ugliness and waste. The futility of most human behaviors and projects. THE. ARROGANCE. The evil, everywhere. And yet, the words of the Bible and reasons behind “traditional” religion does (suddenly) make sense when before it seemed often old and lame. Patterns in the world, politics, humans, it makes sense now as an over-arching theme, where previously it was confusing. Shit simplified itself. By itself, I didn’t ask for a thing. Clarity, not emotion.
      The best way to describe it is like when you’re struggling in school with algebra or geometry or some other heinous shit, and suddenly, you get it. That never actually happened for me with math, but you see what I mean. And, once you get it, you can’t UN-get it. it just IS.
      To be clear, the reason I say that is a Religious, rather than Spiritual/Emotional (wishful, needy/yearning/human-created) experience, is that it is NOT in any conflict with ancient, timeless realities. You don’t need to get rid of the “patriarchy” for it to be “kind” etc. If you think that’s necessary, then you have been misled, or are misreading. The Eternal is eternal, human fashion and failure and falsehoods have no impact.
      With a real experience you will know why we are here and why bad things happen, to good people. You won’t theorize or guess, you will know with certainty, and simplicity. And none of that will make you nicer or more at peace. it is not a High. In fact, that’s an insulting concept.
      I apologize for enraging everyone here. I’m sure I just did.I guess I’ll consider my contribution to today’s chat complete.
      Be careful out there.

      • BornToKillPeace March 31, 2020 at 1:55 pm #

        Beautiful. So well put.

        • BornToKillPeace March 31, 2020 at 1:56 pm #

          “There is enormous gravitas, tragedy, awareness of supreme ugliness and waste. The futility of most human behaviors and projects. THE. ARROGANCE. The evil, everywhere. And yet, the words of the Bible and reasons behind “traditional” religion does (suddenly) make sense when before it seemed often old and lame. Patterns in the world, politics, humans, it makes sense now as an over-arching theme, where previously it was confusing.”

      • sophia March 31, 2020 at 3:43 pm #

        Thank you, wayfarer.

  9. Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 10:18 am #

    I notice Nancy Pelosi is attempting once again to use this crisis to political advantage.
    I probably shouldn’t say once again, because she has never really stopped.
    She now wants an investigation of the president’s handling of this public health emergency. Maybe she can find something wrong with something the president thought about doing. That would be grounds for another impeachment.

    If we had an AG, some of these people would be locked up by now where they couldn’t do any more harm, at least for the duration.

    • Ron Anselmo March 30, 2020 at 10:23 am #

      She never really stopped, because she keeps going back to the bar.

    • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 11:18 am #

      Well, let us have the senate have an investigation of why Pelosi held up the relief bill with all her stupid Dem BS.

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 11:19 am #

        The GOP needs to get a lot tougher to stop these Dem gangsters in the Congress.

    • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 11:37 am #

      Try and put me in the pound and I’ll bite.

    • abbybwood March 30, 2020 at 11:56 am #

      She should start working on having Sleepy Joe removed (should he beat Trump in November. Polls have him 25 points ahead of Trump now in swing states).

      Biden has clearly lost his shit. If Pelosi ever needed to bust out the 25th Amendment for impeachment it will be the day Biden is inaugurated.

      • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 12:28 pm #

        Does he have shit to lose?

      • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 1:16 pm #

        I have heard about these polls, how is that even possible?

        • Nightowl April 1, 2020 at 5:25 am #

          Because they are fake.

          How is this even a quesiton at this juncture?

    • sophia March 31, 2020 at 3:47 pm #

      Re Nancy Pelosi and her ilk: I am predicting that something will happen or somebody will say something publicly to reflect how utterly sick we are as a country of this endless posturing.

  10. HowardBeale March 30, 2020 at 10:21 am #

    “Now imagine you have the stupendous good fortune to survive a Covid-19 infection after 21 days on a ventilator and go home. What is that billing statement going to look like?”

    Assuming rates similar to your hospital: $328,762

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    • ellipsis March 30, 2020 at 10:26 am #

      And thanks in large part to the efforts of Creepy Joe Biden you won’t be able to declare bankruptcy either. Good work Joe!

      • sophia March 31, 2020 at 3:48 pm #

        What? Did the bankruptcy laws change?

    • Urinthe Village April 1, 2020 at 1:34 am #

      That estimate is low. ICU stay can easily click along at $10k-$20k/day. That’s without all the extras. Anyone on a ventilator that long needs lots of stuff: respiratory therapy treatments, pulmonology consults and bronchoscopies, multiple line placements, frequent serum chemistries and blood counts, arterial blood gas measurements, possibly dialysis, skin care to prevent/treat decubitus ulcers, expensive antibiotics to treat/ward off hospital acquired infections, pseudomonas, etc.. Endless supplies from IV and nasogastric and ventilator tubing to band aids, gauze pads, various dressings, impervious barriers, all of which will itemized bill. If you die day on day 20, you’ve got all that plus the funeral expenses. Twenty-one days could get you to half a million or more.

      That’s what the hospital charges. That’s not what they get paid. The only person actually stuck with that kind of bill is the poor bastard who has neither Medicaid or Medicare nor commercial insurance. Don’t get sick if you are under 65, between jobs, and without insurance, but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. And read your commercial policy: it will usually have a lifetime maximum benefit. Stay under that.

  11. DianaH March 30, 2020 at 10:23 am #

    Here’s how the hospital bills will be paid. 37 states have Medicaid Spenddown provisions in which the hospital can apply directly to Medicaid for payment on the patient’s behalf if a catastrophic bill eclipses a patient’s income and/or exhausts the insurance benefit. The new stimulus act injects billions into Medicaid because Covid19 will crater the States Medicaid budget. States will go bankrupt because the Federal assistance to Medicaid will not be nearly enough.

    • ellipsis March 30, 2020 at 11:06 am #

      Let’s see how much of that magically “trickles down” to where it’s actually needed like the theory says it will.

      • Ron Anselmo March 30, 2020 at 1:54 pm #

        You mean “tinkle” down.

    • AKlein March 30, 2020 at 11:27 am #

      Oh, what you suggest sounds reasonable to be sure. But, that probably ain’t the way it actually works in real life here in the US of A. If a person leaves the hospital with a big bill, that is due and payable in 15 to 30 days. Whatever insurance does not cover the patient must cough up – pun intended. Whatever that sum may be. The only thing that “saves” the patient from having to pay in full is being indigent. So, if you’ve put away savings and other resources for a rainy day, getting CV19 could be your very rainy day, maybe more like a monsoon. Remember, here in the US, there are no free lunches, unless a person is already in dire finances. And even then it’s not “free” – such a person is quietly forced into a permanent underclass because such persons are others “clientele”. What a web we’ve managed to weave, no?

      • DianaH March 30, 2020 at 12:05 pm #

        But if you are in. One of the Medicaid Spend down states and the catastrophic bill is greater than your income and you have no assets, (they don’t count your home and your car)Medicaid will pay the hospital.
        Ordinary people might get clobbered but the hospital will get paid

  12. Kellyfrombayfield March 30, 2020 at 10:25 am #

    Another good post Jim.
    I appreciate your dedication to truth and awareness.
    I live in a small rural Ontario Canada village. We have many Amish/Mennonite small farms which I am very thankful for. At one farm you go in the garage to a fridge and get your fresh eggs. $3.00. The chickens are in the coop and yard next to it. The farmer posts the dates he is “harvesting” the chickens if you want to order one up.
    The European folks down the road make bread in their beautiful wood stove oven brought with them from Europe. They disliked our wheat so much, they now grow their own. We have so many places like this that the town has printed up a map . Plus I go down to the Lake Huron shore when the fishing boats come in for fresh perch and white fish. But alas, we now have a snitch line for people to report abusers of the “social distance ” rules. Even taking pictures of the people and posting on line. I think they are going to make me wear a yellow arm band soon if I don’t smarten up. Everyone is a health inspector now I guess.

    • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 10:37 am #

      There are theories that the corporate, massed produced wheat is behind a lot of the digestive woes afflicting increasing numbers of
      Americans.
      The Amish in New York don’t participate in the government agricultural
      programs, it’s against their religion. Smart.

      • benr March 30, 2020 at 11:25 am #

        Not the wheat per se no I believe its the round up chemical agriculture used now.

        GO back to using animal waste as fertilizer and this issue disappears.

        • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 11:53 am #

          Single crop industrial farming is an environmental travesty. Garden farming is the way to go…

          • cbeard March 30, 2020 at 12:57 pm #

            A travesty it is. But probably the only way to feed an overpopulated planet. Perhaps mother nature is about to take care of that dilemma. Maybe then we can get back to a sensible scale.

          • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:18 am #

            No the way forward is small farm hydroponics and local area supply and distribution.
            Big agra should be used for fuel sources not food.

    • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 11:48 am #

      The Amish and Mennonite communities provide a viable blueprint we can all learn something from. I have been a fan for many years…

      • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 11:51 am #

        They are a great example of an ‘intentional community’, people who come together because they share common beliefs and values…

        • Helen Highwater March 30, 2020 at 6:27 pm #

          Well it’s not really “intentional”, they are born into the community. And if they leave they are shunned.

          • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 11:17 am #

            Good point. They were originally…

    • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 12:38 pm #

      If you wore an armband that would show cooperation. But your complaining shows you are already complying. We have a snitch line too and it is not for you. It is not going to be used unless there is something to snitch on. Beer burps can spread the virus. In times like these par-tays have to be shut down. The smoking lamp is off.

    • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 1:39 pm #

      $3.00? For a dozen? You’re getting ripped off.

      • elysianfield March 30, 2020 at 2:20 pm #

        Janos,
        No, because they are free-range, living space guaranteed, organic fed, gathered lovingly by a living-wage non gender assigned farmer in a sustainable environment that is climate change sensitive.

        The chickens willfully give up their eggs to you…they want you to enjoy them.

        • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 3:17 pm #

          Such chickens also pay with their lives for these benefits. Watch Portlandia anent the fate of Colin the Chicken.

      • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 12:43 pm #

        I pay £2.75 for half a dozen delicious free-range duck eggs. I don’t buy hen’s eggs anyway, because duck eggs are delicious and significantly bigger, and local ones happen to be available at my corner shop. £2.75 for six breakfasts or two thirds of that for a delicious omelette for two (with some left over for the dog) is dirt cheap. And we don’t have American incomes.

        Would you rather have eggs produced in JHK’s back garden or in chicken hell where they all peck each other to bits because they don’t have a decent amount of space and never see the light of day?

        • sophia March 31, 2020 at 3:58 pm #

          I agree, and duck eggs make a great cake, but yet our eggs are a still better deal – totally free range, and totally free. We give away dozens every week.

          • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:27 am #

            Miss those days as a kid I had sixty hens and two roosters with a sign over the coop called,,,,Bens hens. Was selling a dozen eggs for 50 cents with bright orange yolks. Was living with my grandparents who had 8 acres backed up against the Los Angeles national forest and always figured a wild animal would get in one day and slowly eat all my birds.
            Nope was the next door neighbors dog got in while I was at school and ripped all but three hens and a rooster to shreds and even they were all bit up.
            Was devastated and my income stream disappeared.
            At 11 I had a couple hundred dollars in the bank which may not sound like a lot now but this was in 1980. I often had more money than my parents at the time. Some day I will have a chicken coop and a large garden someday.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 11:38 am #

            Sounds good, sophia! I don’t have that option. Duck eggs make brilliant creamy scrambled egg too.

            And a nice big poached duck egg on toast does me for many a breakfast. I’ve got nothing against hens’ eggs – just been easily won over by those big orange duck yolks!

    • Elrond Hubbard April 2, 2020 at 6:04 pm #

      Kellyfrombayfield: You live in Alice Munro country! A friend of mine lived in Clinton and later Goderich. Two other friends, a couple at the time, lived in Millbank for a number of years and visiting them was always a pleasure.

  13. Jeremy March 30, 2020 at 10:30 am #

    During a visit from the UK to visit my in-laws over Christmas three years ago, I developed severe pneumonia.

    I was admitted into hospital immediately upon presentation.

    I spent two nights there during which time I received two bags of saline, an IV antibiotic drip, a CT scan and a couple of antibiotic tabs.

    Imagine my surprise when, after I arrived back in the UK, I began to receive a steady stream of bills from every person that I had apparently come into contact with during my stay.

    Total – $18,700 !!
    In the UK it would be “no charge”, the exact same price as all those who are currently on ventilators right now battling COVID-19.

    Fortunately, my travel insurance paid it in full.
    Nobody from Europe ever dares to travel to the US without travel insurance.

    • SW March 30, 2020 at 10:38 am #

      When my daughter and son-in-law visit me from the UK they buy temporary health insurance too.

    • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 11:02 am #

      You make a valid point, Jeremy, but to leave things as they are right now in America or adopt Great Britain’s system is a false choice.

      We haven’t seen a true for-profit system. You can’t stay in business offering a product no one can afford to buy, and we still don’t have any idea of the real cost of medicine.

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 11:15 am #

        Add on that there is no cost consideration, what do we pay to get well, all that it takes.

      • Jeremy March 30, 2020 at 1:04 pm #

        I like the health system here in the UK. I needed a meniscus trim on my knee earlier this year; arthroscopic surgery and anaesthesia. The NHS could do it without charge – but the wait would be 40 weeks.

        I chose to go private instead – total cost £3400. Had it done in two weeks. My private health insurance paid for it minus a £100 co-pay.

        The monthly premium for my entire family is just £90 per month – that’s the total monthly amount, no employer.
        Yup – the UK health care system suits us just fine here.

        I’m not sure what you call the racket that operates over there, but you can keep it – that’s for sure!

      • snarkmatic9000 March 30, 2020 at 1:25 pm #

        Profit has no business (word intended) being in the healthcare system PERIOD!

        Cost of administration of Medicare: 3%

        Cost of administration of private health insurance: 22-25%

        Case closed.

        • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 1:49 pm #

          Well said. The madness of Americanism. Rule by the Lowest of the Low. Yet such Death Merchants are lauded as Pillars of Society by weirdo Conservative Christians. Sickness of soul, sick unto death.

        • cc rider March 31, 2020 at 9:49 am #

          Absolutely snarkmatic9000. Totally agree. I’ve been taking care of my disabled elderly Mother who is of course on Medicare. I have watched firsthand how it operates and it is MUCH more efficient that private insurance companies. Less administrative cost as you said, and less bureaucracy, which is ironic. A government run insurance that is LESS bureaucratic than the private for profits.

          Last year when I was contacting some Home Health service companies I was asked which Medicare Plan my Mother has. The regular old fashioned one or the new Medicare Advantage. When I said the old one they were relieved. Why? The Advantage is run by for profit companies and the bureaucratic bullshit they put providers through is excruciating.

          Anyone who still advocates for the current American system of health care insurance is just a fool. A foolish, foolish fool. And I’m talking about both pre and post Obamacare, which was and is a joke.

          • sophia March 31, 2020 at 4:10 pm #

            And its a nightmare for the layperson to understand. I recently went onto medicare, thinking it would be simple at last. Wow, was I wrong. I had two different tracks to choose from, and once on the track I selected I had 32 plans to choose from. The one I chose said I have a 195 dollar yearly deductible to pay for drugs. The first time I used it at the pharmacy, I expected to pay that. Actually, I paid zero. But why? Not to complain, but I have no idea why. You read stuff and try to understand it but there is no understanding it and no way to know in advance what to expect.

  14. John1945 March 30, 2020 at 10:33 am #

    Growing food,consuming food,thansforming consumed food into bio-degradable fertilizer and starting all over again ?

    Human history is much more interesting than that.

    Let calculate energy return on investment (EROI) of 3 different activities:

    Scenario A:
    Growing food

    Scenario B
    Stealing food from the pathetic food growers

    Scenatio C
    Imposing 10% food tax on the peaceful,timorous food growers

    • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 1:52 pm #

      Yes, Nilotics such as the Masai did just that to the poor Bantu farmers (themselves ruthless imperialists to the hunter gatherers they displaced in East Africa). Yet some of the Bantu Tribes gave us as good as they got, such as the Kikkuyu (sp?). In the long run of course, the warriors pastoralists had no chance against the agriculturalists.

      • John1945 March 30, 2020 at 4:43 pm #

        We should be more PC and not use terms like “steal”.
        I prefer military term “liberate”
        Liberating the city means bombing it out of existence
        Liberating the ville means burning it down.
        Is not it wonderful to liberate a VC piglet who yearns to break free and augment your miserable C-ration in the process ? W/o going thru the hassle of feeding and raising it.
        We realized it long time ago.Later on I read a short book by Franz Oppenheimer “The State” (1908) where Oppenheimer guy paints the big world-wide picture of this principle-at-work.

      • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:30 am #

        What about the Zulu who all but destroyed every other tribe in all of South Africa at the time?

  15. SW March 30, 2020 at 10:35 am #

    “The fabled fog-of-war will conceal what is happening to the health care system itself, while the battle rages. After that, what?” Well, here’s what — massive bankruptcy for the many who have no money to pay hospital bills and cratering of the medical insurance companies hit with the charges of those who are somewhat covered with insurance. Maybe they could run an ad of Pete and Amy singing a duet “If You Like Your Health Insurance You Can Keep It”! Except everyone’s was cancelled. People seem to forget while blaming the government for a shortage of ventilators that we have a private health care system and the people responsible are the CEOs and inventory managers at each hospital.

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  16. snagglepuss March 30, 2020 at 10:45 am #

    $23,472.89 is a pretty shocking number.
    I had surgery as well. Removal of a cancerous tumour which required laproscopic procedure. I checked in to the hospital on a thursday morning and left monday morning. I had to pay approximately $86.00 for the room, which was semi private. The company I work for paid for 80% of that as all employees are covered under a medical plan for which a very nominal amount is deducted off salary. I am retired now and still covered under that company plan as part of my retirement benefit. The province I live in also pays for my health care. If I get sick anywhere in Canada I can get good professional health care.

    It’s not an ouch contest as to which country has a better ‘system’, but $23,472.89 seems pretty outrageous. The word ‘racket’ comes to mind.
    Not sure why the word “socialism’ is such a boogey man word in the USA, but if you want to throw it at us, feel free. Guess Canada and Cuba will need to stand in solidarity on that matter.

    • Nightowl March 30, 2020 at 11:14 am #

      The best solution is something akin to what they have here in Germany. One gets public or private insurance and the ability to switch to public from private depends on income. If you make beyond a certain amount, you cannot switch to the public option.

      The public option is not as compy where hospital stays and wait times are concerned, but it is not bad either. And the private option, while cushier in some respects, is more expensive — particularly as one ages.

      The system in the US is grotesque. Before moving to Germany, I had to give up my employer-based plan, and I went to a walk-in clinic after getting sick shortly before our big move. It was in a good part of town, clean, and somewhat upscale, but the patients were treated like dirt. I assume because they were viewed as being poor for not having “proper” insurance. That experience alone was quite eye-opening.

      • Nightowl March 30, 2020 at 11:14 am #

        Compy should be comfy

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 11:53 am #

        You look for a system. For the majority, there is no system.

        Medicare is a system, the VA is a system, Medicaid is a funding agency for the indigent. That is it.

        • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 1:56 pm #

          Poverty of imagination meets emotional savagery. Libertarianism is simply Calvinism updated to the “needs” of latter day American hucksters in suits.

          • cc rider March 31, 2020 at 9:52 am #

            As a reformed Libertarian, I couldn’t agree with your post more JS.

    • snarkmatic9000 March 30, 2020 at 1:31 pm #

      “why the word ‘socialism’ is such a boogey man word in the USA”

      Because most Americans are ignorant, having been totally brainwashed by the predatory Anglo-Saxon capitalist system for at least 100 years.

      • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:31 am #

        Prove it guy from Venezuela or Cuba.

    • sophia March 31, 2020 at 4:17 pm #

      That is why president Trump wants to enact legislation to force billing transparency. We didn’t have this kind of racket a couple of decades ago. And if he can do that, it will be the most useful thing a president has done for the public in at least 50 years.

  17. snagglepuss March 30, 2020 at 10:47 am #

    I am now 100% well. That was 11 years ago this November.

  18. jlmartin March 30, 2020 at 10:48 am #

    Wider gauge trains would be safer faster and more efficient. Maybe a crash program to upgrade the major cross country lines, would give the nation a way to move goods and people, a way to stay connected.

    • 4014HAMPHEDGE March 30, 2020 at 1:08 pm #

      Martin: Reminds me of the Feds coming to Tahoe in July 1997 and Chamber of Commerce response to proposal for rebuilding Truckee/Tahoe City standard gauge rail line (“for passengers & freight” actual words of Fed Transportation Secretary Rodney Slater}: :Monorail! Maglev! Gondolas! No stinkin’ tracks at Tahoe!

      Slater offered Federal sponsored grants for updated railway linking Tahoe passengers to Reno Airport and in the bargain smooth rail connection to the national rail grid, and the whizzes at the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, showing the cowards they were, bowed to casinos and ski resorts demanding “SEXY” monorail run by the Lake Business Proprietors. Monorail is a plethora of unmatched cross sections meaning no national fixed guideway network.

      It was understood rail link to Reno Airport (RNO) would bring Tahoe International passengers and some 1 million plus additional visitor room nights, adequate income for the many Tahoe water quality remediations never to be completed. Instead, drivers and passengers coming up US 50 hold their breath passing by “The Bluffs”; rotten granite akin to the (collapsed) “Old Man Of The Mountain” late of New Hampshire. Rock Roulette.

      We can forgive Mr. Martins ignorance of existing 3 million railcar rolling stock fleet rendered useless with track gauge change…Or does he have !PRESTO! patented designs for up his sweaty sleeves for all rail mode associated equipment? Lets hear him discuss completely resized and redesigned paraphernalia needed with change track gauge, including automated track laying, tie changing, ballast renewal, and containers for the new order? Oh, silly me, I neglected to mention interfacing warehousing and pick up/delivery. Monster highway trucks for monster containers?

      Or using conventional containers, stacked side by side on the extra wide railcars. Loading and unloading accomplished with magnets…. There is a rare disease, an abhorrence for railway exemplified by such idiot savants as Randy O’toot, sadsack that he is, dedicating his life to the greater glory of motor mania. Not satisfied with damping railway in the lower 48, there has been a worldwide clique of rubber tire boosters attempting to end railways.

      Fortunately, as Famine Hedge alone, railway mileage (standard gauge) has been on the build around the world, probably partly in reaction to the anti-railway crowd? Inherent in genius of the railway is ability to be constructed and rebuilt by normal humans working off flatcars and pickup trucks, when fancy automated equipment is not available. Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform.

      As famine appears, as a result of false flag troposphere nuclear detonations knocking down motor food distribution, we can duly credit the pernicious movement to remove branch rail food district links. Famine is appropriate segue to Scripture: Instead of Daniel 4 V-15 Iron Bands today; more appropriate and on JHK topic is the full O.T. Chapter read in Deuteronomy 28: Divine promises of Blessings and Curse.

      Dt 28 in first half gives the story of prosperous America, now abusing the warnings and entering the second half, the Curse half of Dt 28. Baby sacrifice, debauchery, cheating the poor, etc… Washington’s Valley Forge Vision trial #3 is at hand. Note Lincoln’s acknowledgement of his duty and awareness as passing through the 2nd trial. Trump/Pence soon enough will be apprised of the Valley Forge Vision, and their unenviable place as proprietors through the 3rd Trial. Trials change people and nations.

      All is not lost, just be ready for things as they is. Fix relationships and then do the needful things, including enhancing the work of Abraham Lincoln. See the lesson for the day: 2nd Chronicles Chapter 7, verse 14. Read and heed, encouraging words for our time.

  19. malthuss March 30, 2020 at 10:52 am #

    How much longer will the quarantine continue?

    How serious is China Virus?

    • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 11:33 am #

      It depends on whose guesses you want to go with.
      The seriousness comes from the newness, in that they are learning as they go along how to treat it.

      The major difference between this virus and the flu, is that this one is in your lower respiratory tract, a more hospitable environment.

      The fear is that if the worst case scenarios come to realization, hospitals will be overwhelmed.

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 11:56 am #

        For some reason, this organism makes our immune system overreact. When the killer Ts kill viruses, they are killing parenchymal cells too. That is a cytokine storm. Too many lung cells destroyed, that is it.

        • sophia March 31, 2020 at 4:21 pm #

          Avoid aspirin, ibuprofen and blood pressure pills that end in ‘pril’ or ‘tan.’
          Take massive amounts of vitamin C.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 11:46 am #

            I read somewhere that Vitamin D can counter the (good) effect of blood pressure pills. It’s endless!

            I’ve got BP pills ending in ‘tan’. The previous one gave me an ‘ACE cough’ and the one before that gave me swollen ankles!

            Hence ending up with the one ending in ‘tan’. Am I going to succumb to nCV even more quickly than I already think I am? 🙂

    • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 2:32 pm #

      It’s a Gain of Function Bioweapon manufactured to add subterfuge to a deflating macroeconomy. Top USA bureaucrat that designed protocol for bioweapons research claims nCorona is a bioweapon but MSM & Medical Establishment are claiming conspiracy theory just as they did with respect to 911 & controlled demolition.

      RW

  20. James Kuehl March 30, 2020 at 10:55 am #

    I recently worked in a vineyard adjacent to a derelict railroad. Decades ago, they tore up the rails and ties and sold them for scrap. They even dug up the crushed stone and resold it. But the stone archway bridges over the ravines are made of stone and will last for centuries. The survey work is done, and the ties and rails could be replaced. All we’ll need is an industrious immigrant labor force willing to do the grueling labor for subsistence wages.

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    • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 11:06 am #

      Why immigrant labor force?

      • Nightowl March 30, 2020 at 11:16 am #

        Indeed. Sad that such thoughts are simply automatic among some.

        • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 11:36 am #

          It’s because that is what we bring inso many unskilled immigrants for. To work hard for peanuts.
          That’s a fact.
          Americans work just as hard, but want to be paid a living wage to do so.

          • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 11:41 am #

            That’s the current status quo but what happens when the economy goes south? Those peanuts might be mighty tasty…

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 2:01 pm #

            Corruption is a way of life and thought for those like Kruel.

            The Chinese will look over the heads of all other people to hire their own.

            White Americans will look over the heads of their own people to hire aliens. No we feeling whatsover.

            The Chinese don’t care about each other as individuals per se but they have group pride – and that’s the basis of Nationalism. Since we lack it, what’s the point of keeping on with “America”? It’s simply a farce.

        • Billy Hill March 30, 2020 at 11:41 am #

          I think the poster was being sarcastic.
          Tongue-in-cheek reference to the Chinese immigrant rail labor of the latter nineteenth century.

          • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 11:42 am #

            Yeah that’s possible…

          • sophia March 31, 2020 at 4:23 pm #

            It was obvious.

      • James Kuehl March 30, 2020 at 4:31 pm #

        It’s a historical reference to the labor force that built the railroads in the 19th century. Apologies if I offended anyone.

        • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 5:01 pm #

          If? All immigrants are created alike, right Kuehl? Just like all breeds of dogs are the same, they’re all dogs, right?

          So what if they’re radically opposed to us and have been for millennia? Or are thirty points lower than on us in IQ? They’re still human! Set the bar as low as possible (just like wages….)

          • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 5:44 pm #

            Do you post this stuff sitting around in a pair of dirty underwear?

          • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 1:22 pm #

            So much for the Urantia book then. You might as well flush it down the toilet page by page.

            You are infected with two American diseases: Optimism and Egalitarianism. A noxious brew, usually fatal. There is little hope for your recovery.

            And btw, you know I’m right, thus your anger.

      • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:33 am #

        Because your average American refuses to work hard or get their hands dirty.

        • James Kuehl April 2, 2020 at 12:55 pm #

          My direct experience at farm work proves you are correct, BenR. Farm work is hard. It’s often twelve-hour days, seven in a row. Tilling on a tractor, welding broken equipment, tying fence, digging post holes, clearing brush, harvesting crops—it ain’t for the flaccid or lazy. Many of the locals couldn’t make it until lunch and just wandered off. I would see others sitting in the shade dithering with their phones until caught and fired. On the other hand, when the migrant crews showed up, most from other countries, we stayed out of their way. They are lean, skilled, and amazingly fast and thorough in their work. It was a privilege to try and keep up with them.

    • malthuss March 30, 2020 at 11:20 am #

      invaders

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_p5MOK7CYM&t=68s

    • cbeard March 30, 2020 at 1:12 pm #

      People who would import immigrant labor and pay subsistence wages should be enslaved and forced at the point of a gun and encouraged by a whip to do said grueling labor for no wages and subsisting on bread and water.

      • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 2:04 pm #

        Ah, a man after my own heart. I’m growing my beard now as a sign of penance and renewal. Like Al Gore after he lost? Who said that? Fuck off.

      • Nightowl March 30, 2020 at 3:14 pm #

        Globalism in a nutshell.

  21. capt spaulding March 30, 2020 at 11:05 am #

    You can bet that none of them will be the top 5%, You know, the ones who are getting those huge bailout checks. As time goes by, men will lose interest in attractive females, they’ll be looking for a woman who can catch a chicken.

    • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 2:06 pm #

      Or who can wrassle a pig and look good doing it. We’re back to Lil Abner already….

  22. JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 11:13 am #

    All you folks that are talking about the cost of health care are either avoiding some issues or just want to deny them.

    The hospitals are a business with fixed and variable costs like any other business. Do you think that medical care is free? Not! The reason costs seem high is because of the indigent folks that EMTALA into the hospital. Someone has to pay for the costs of these folks. So yes, you do. The hospital I worked at ran 30% indigent. So when you say you want everyone cared for, that it is a right, you are going to pay for the folks that cannot pay for themselves.

    Socialized medicine is a joke in a healthcare crisis like this. Cost wise, everything is free, right? Not! When the dust settles, if it does, those health care facilities will come in and charge the governments for all that “free” medical care. The people will scream when their tax bills skyrocket to cover the costs. NOTHING IS FREE! Rethinking of national medical care may occur once the people find out the true cost.

    If NYC had socialized medicine right now, it would be overwhelmed from insufficient staffing much more than it is, let alone medical facilities and equipment. How many socialized medicine countries have hospital ships to assist emergency situations like NYC and LA? Competition breeds overage of services which we have now, thank goodness.

    The US system of medical care via insurance is going to take a real beating too. Premiums are going to soar after the dust settles. Big changes are going to happen here too. NOTHING IS FREE!

    The only difference between the two systems is who is responsible to pay the piper, the government or insurance companies. Either way, the folks ultimately pay for health care. Pay taxes or pay premiums.

    • ellipsis March 30, 2020 at 11:23 am #

      I hear ya. So you’ll be refusing any government write downs of your medical expenses should you get the virus then, I assume? And of course you’ll be doing the right thing and refusing delivery of any stimulus checks as well. And I know you’re not dipping your beak into Social Security or Medicare, and any of that socialist crap either. You know, because NOTHING IS FREE and you’re a RUGGED INDIVIDUALIST, and all that.

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 12:02 pm #

        Social Security is my money, invested for forty years as payroll taxes. 80% of my medical costs are Medicare, also funded from taxes over forty years. The other twenty percent is funded by me through insurance. Stimulus checks, nope. Write downs, do not know anything about it and would not count on it. So yeah, I try to stay away from dependency on the government.

        • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 12:59 pm #

          People who want to reduce Social Security and Medicare are stealing. The trust funds ensure that the government cannot steal the capital accumulated there. Yeah right! The Deep State has already stolen the trust fund for both.

        • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 1:29 pm #

          I do too John. Nothing good to be gained from depending on the government. You are a man of faith so you have that to draw on in its stead. Faith is a real power and force; perhaps the most powerful force in the universe…

    • GreenAlba March 30, 2020 at 11:54 am #

      “Socialized medicine is a joke in a healthcare crisis like this. Cost wise, everything is free, right? Not! When the dust settles, if it does, those health care facilities will come in and charge the governments for all that “free” medical care. The people will scream when their tax bills skyrocket to cover the costs. NOTHING IS FREE! Rethinking of national medical care may occur once the people find out the true cost.”

      Our new Chancellor of the Exchequer has promised all the funding necessary to get the country through Covid19, JohnAZ. The hospitals will get all the extra money they need for the ventilators, PPE and extra staffing. I’ll let you know how much the tax rate goes up in due course. I currently pay 21% income tax – in England it’s 20% for basic rate. And the first £11,500 of that isn’t taxed at all, so I pay tax on less than half my income.

      If it went up another penny in the pound I wouldn’t mind in the slightest. In fact, I’m feeling guilty because my (modest, but perfectly adequate) pension is still being paid while a whole lot of self-employed and gig-economy people aren’t able to earn any money (the government is going to help most of them, but by …June!), so I’d be more than happy to donate a chunk of my state pension to them for the duration, if there was a mechanism to do that. For now, I’ve had to settle for donating money to the Trussell Trust, which organises a network of food banks throughout the country.

      Also three quarters of a million people have volunteered to help the NHS out with extraneous jobs like ferrying non-Covid patients to and from hospital appointments, picking up prescriptions for vulnerable patients, etc. People pull together in an emergency – they’re not all just hoarding toilet paper. And for anyone who’s lost a relative to Covid19, a penny on their income tax will be the least of their worries. If it even happens (I’d still ditch HS first).

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 12:08 pm #

        I think we agree. Someone is going to have to pay for the costs of the emergency. Think microeconomics.

        We have rainy day accounts for emergencies. If insufficient, we borrow to pay the increased cost of an emergency.

        That is what all the health care agencies are doing right now. Except there are no rainy day funds, so borrowing, also known as running the presses, is financing all the activity.

        Who knows, we may just add this onto all the collective national debts and hope no one, like retirees, ever want their money.

        • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 12:35 pm #

          Personally, GA, I think that due to the increasing income gap in the US, a lower service medical system is going to be created.

      • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 2:09 pm #

        You’re so good! But what about those elderly British pensioners freezing to death though? Or young couples who have to wait years to get housing why immigrants from Pakistan wait a few days?

        • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 8:13 am #

          I’m not good at all. But the pensioners may also benefit from the food banks. I’m a British pensioner too, BTW.

          “or young couples who have to wait years to get housing why immigrants from Pakistan wait a few days?'”

          Utter ignorant bollocks. That’ll be the ones who come over in boats from Pakistan. 🙂

          And you are presumably aware, from the habits of Asians over your way, that Pakistanis are very good at acquiring their own homes. There’s a generational solidarity thing that goes on in their communities. Mum, Dad, Grandpa and Grandma will help you get on your feet – and the quid pro quo is that you’ll support them in their old age.

          Many of them end up as property-owning landlords.

          They tend to be happy to support their kids through university too, but only if they do something they approve of, like medicine, law, dentistry, engineering etc. Or something that will lead to you ending up on TV.

          If you want to study History, English or Underwater Basket-Weaving, they often think you should finance that yourself.

    • woe March 30, 2020 at 5:15 pm #

      Private healthcare insurance and pharmacy is expensive because you are paying for the 3-5 administrators that are standing behind every front line health care worker. You are not just paying for the nurse and the doctors time, but the salary of 3-5, six figure administrators to work 9-5 (with benefits) and be on the company’s softball team on the weekends. These administrators also intentionally understaffed the healthcare facilities that a person is likely to frequent. With the exception of a few places, hospitals are routinely understaffed, and don’t even talk about long term care. That incident in Washington state with the elderly care unit, one sick CNA who has to work to feed their family, could easily have infected those elderly patients, most CNAs have two jobs to make ends meet. CNA’s and nurses commonly have from 15-20 patients to care for in a long term care facility. That kind of service is low quality and your bill still comes to 4000-12000 a month. Thats not intensive medical care, that someone like me bringing you pills in a cup with a cup of water, taking vitals and a 2x a week visit from an occupational therapist. The CNA’s, nurses, and attending physician, and PT’s, OT’s ST’s do ok but that isn’t even a fifth of the cost of staying there. You’re paying for the administrators lifestyle. We have pharmacist who are working like slaves in some of these chain pharmacies. They make good money, but there is a limit to how hard a person works before it gets dangerous to the patient. You seem to think that the free market will provide, yea for those administrators,who are denying you optimal care because they have to get their cut.

    • sophia March 31, 2020 at 4:30 pm #

      Shame on you John AZ. Hospitals charge way more than an extra 30%. The charges are more like 10 times what they should be, and they are nontransparent, which ought to be illegal. Yes, we can pay for the indigent, you stingy bastard.
      You have made me mad because anger that should be directed toward the gouging rich are instead directed at poor people. Rather than solve the real problem, you just want a Dickensian country.

  23. akmofo March 30, 2020 at 11:14 am #

    What will the business of America be after Covid-19? – JHK
    ==

    More insular. China will be dropped. Manufacturing will return. The US stock markets will see all time high before the year’s end.

    Of-course, our dear friend athiest Q will be busy compiling names of Catholics and lapsed Catholics in the banking industry as well as the US government. He will have to do it himself since I’ve yet to see anyone else do such, but should a Copy & Paste internet source be available, I would be VERY interested indeed. I would also be interested in the list of names of Irish Italian Germans Dutch and so on. We must have an “open discussion on the topic of ethnicity, race, and tribalism” as our dearest German friend hmuller so innocently requested.

    Malthuss, Janos, please don’t hesitate to contribute to our lists as well. Let’s see how many names we get and how many lists we compiled. I’m looking forward to examining your efforts!

    • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 11:33 am #

      Atheism is a hothouse plant that will not survive the Long Emergency. A new Age of Faith will be one of the fruits of the collapse (or radical scale back) of the West…

      • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 11:46 am #

        I have noticed that a lot of people who bill themselves as atheist actually worship the president.
        I don’t mean they worship Trump. I mean they see the president as God, kind of like the Romans saw Jupiter as king of the Gods.
        Obama, The One, was fine with these people, because he didn’t interfere with their PC religion, he supported it.
        But then the president was Donald Trump. You think a religion can’t recognize a new God? Didn’t the Catholics switch Popes?
        Anyway this new God doesn’t do PC, and they are all upset with him.
        Watch, the next time he does a press conference. The media elevated him to God even before he was elected, and the questions they ask him at this time are not about disease and preparedness, they are asking him about words he said that violate doctrine.

        • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 11:58 am #

          Government has to be the god of atheism. It’s all that stands between them and the harsh, mechanistic universe they have constructed…

          • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 12:15 pm #

            That’s a good point, sun.

          • GreenAlba March 30, 2020 at 12:35 pm #

            “Government has to be the god of atheism.”

            A-theism doesn’t have a god. Or a religion. If people make a god of something, then you can give them an appropriate name, depending on what they ‘worship’. But ‘a-theist’ isn’t it.

            I am currently a non-theist. I regard governments with the same wariness as I regard a whole lot of other things. And the idea that I would worship either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn is the kind of nonsense only dreamed up by the religious who petulantly insist that everyone must worship someone or somethingbecause their imagination is biased and their experience of non-religious people is limited to stereotypes. There are as many types of non-theist people as there are types of people generally. Some are nice; some are mean; some are generous; some are demanding and entitled. Just like religious people.

            Anarchists are generally not religious. Neither do they have any time for governments.

            The government exists to serve us, not to be worshipped by us. And when it doesn’t serve us, we should make more fuss than we do. And by ‘us’ I don’t mean ‘me’.

          • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 1:44 pm #

            I’m not saying atheists worship government, I am saying they place their faith in government similar to how theists place their faith in God. The reason I believe a new Age of Faith is on the horizon is because the collapse (or increased impotence) of government will cause a crisis of faith which can only be resolved through a return to that which is incorruptible…

          • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 2:06 pm #

            As Paul Tillich wrote, faith is an expression of our ultimate concern. Whatever we are ultimately concerned with there our faith will lie…

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 2:17 pm #

            Alba: Negative numbers are still numbers or values. Pious Atheists weigh in at -100 whole pious Christians or Hindus or whatever clock in at +100.

            True rationality is Agnosticism or “I don’t know”. That the Zero mark of secular peace. Small p intentional. The Peace that passeth understanding is religious in the positive sense.

            Atheism is now popular. Future spiritual autobiographies will tell of young people throwing off its dogma and embracing Agnosticism and from there, awakening into positive territory, His Territory. A good “I don’t know” is thus, precious. Did you ever even tarry there? Or did you slingshot right into the Devil’s camp, fanatic that you are?

          • GreenAlba March 30, 2020 at 2:51 pm #

            I don’t think it’s really that similar. It certainly isn’t from where I’m sitting.

            I just don’t believe in ‘security’ as a thing. Never have. But it’s certainly been great having good services for the greater part of my life. I just don’t feel like complaining that my kids went to good schools at no up-front cost, and that we’ve all been able to see a doctor when we needed one likewise.

            It has nothing to do with faith, although it does have something to do with a belief in a decent society, where people aren’t deprived of basic services because of their income.

          • GreenAlba March 30, 2020 at 2:59 pm #

            Janos, I’m sorry you’re ignorant, but there isn’t anything I can do about it.

            “True rationality is Agnosticism or “I don’t know”.”

            That’s all an a-theist is. Someone without a belief in a deity for which there is no evidence. Not someone claiming they have proof of the non-existence of something.

            You are free to live in whatever fantasy world you choose. You can leave the rest of us to live in the world without constantly trying to prove – primarily to yourself – that your fantasy is real.

            It’s a nice fantasy. No-one’s denying that. For the most part anyway – it unfortunately has some vile parts.

            Your own pretend Christianity is a joke. Give me an honest a-theist any day to someone who wears the superstitious veneer of a faith in whose tenets he doesn’t even believe.

          • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 3:35 pm #

            GA

            Funny thing about Anarchists … in Russia and Spain, they made common cause with Communists in their struggle to bring down the prevailing power … then, the communists turn on the Anarchists, and hunt them mercilessly.

            See Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia’

            Brh

          • sophia March 31, 2020 at 5:12 pm #

            Oh, Green Alba, he didn’t mean that literally. He meant that atheists might fill the niche in their psyche with other things and give them a bit more gravitas than they deserve.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 11:56 am #

            Why does a person have or lack gravitas on the basis of whether they believe in a deity or not?

            That’s bizarre.

            I had a friend for a while (college and a few years afterwards) who was very born again (a Pentecostal, born of atheist parents). She would mention things like her and her husband having to decide whether or not to sell their car at a particular time (and buy another one? no idea…) and they’d pray about it.

            I didn’t find the narcissistic notion of thinking God should care about your flippin’ car lent her the slightest gravitas. 🙂

        • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 3:19 pm #

          If you don’t know and know you don’t know, you’re an Agnostic. But that isn’t good enough for you! You want to be a card carrying member of the official State Church of Atheism.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 7:59 am #

            The only card I carry that states my intentions is an organ-donor card, since I’ve mislaid my Living Will card. I don’t carry a card for anyone or anything.

            I don’t count bank plastic as signifying anything other than solvency (because I only use the debit one, not the credit one, these days).

            You misunderstand the meaning of a-theist, like the majority of people. Atheism quite literally refers to a lack of positive belief in a deity, nothing more. The more militant types require an adjective added to the noun. Like ‘militant’…

            You can identify us mere a-theists because we never bring the subject up. We are only drawn in when the smug of the other persuasion assure each other smugly that one day we will see the light etc. etc. That can be irritating and we make no claim to sainthood.

            A-theists are also by definition ‘agnostic’ on the matter, since ‘agnostic’ also means not believing something without evidence on which to base that belief.

          • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 1:28 pm #

            Yes, and the belief in Nothing, with no proof of its ultimate non-existence.

            Agnostics don’t believe in anything or nothing. They don’t know. You have not attained unto this Sublimity. You simply switched allegiance once the State Church became Atheism.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 2:11 pm #

            The established (state) church where I live is the Kirk. The Church of Scotland. It is of Presbyterian flavour. I used to go to it.

            Your endless whining about what you fantasise are other people’s beliefs is tedious and childish. And I have say, rather desperate. It shows your insecurity. Which is something I’d probably share if I were an Aryan Pagan Mystic with a Veneer of Superstitious and Opportunistic Christianism that Doesn’t Hold Water.

          • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 4:57 pm #

            Oh rubbish. I’m sure “the Kirk” is in serious decline – am I wrong? Lots of empty buildings, right? Few taking it seriously anymore, including ministers?

            Superficial as ever – cunningly so, perhaps even trying to fool yourself. The real religion is Atheism and Political Correctness, with the idealism channeled into making this world into a multi-cultural/racial paradise. What a Tower of Baloney you’ve swallowed.

          • sophia March 31, 2020 at 5:24 pm #

            Green Alba,

            Well, if we are right that there is a God and you have a soul, then of course one day you will find out.
            Not that that solves anything in the here and now…

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 8:15 pm #

            And if you’re wrong, sophia, you never will. Lucky you.

            Did you think no-one had ever said that before? 🙂

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 8:21 pm #

            “Oh rubbish. I’m sure “the Kirk” is in serious decline – am I wrong? Lots of empty buildings, right? Few taking it seriously anymore, including ministers?”

            The only churches that are growing are the happy clappies. Pretty much everywhere.

            Those that still go to the others take it seriously enough.

            As for the rest of your post, you are projecting again. You continue to show your insecurity. You know that your Aryan Pagan Mysticism has nothing to do with Christianity and the cognitive dissonance pains you and forces you into displacement behaviour. Poor you.

        • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:37 am #

          That’s as good of an insight as anything I have seen as to why Trump is hated but here is another.
          Trump was considered a Democrat and turned traitor and a traitor is the lowest form of scum in the Democrat world. In fact is still one of the only ways to actually get a death sentence without murdering anyone to this day.

    • akmofo March 30, 2020 at 11:33 am #

      Btw, Q , thank you for that list of Jews in the banking industry which you so gracelessly provided us on Friday’s blog post. But it wasn’t even a handful of Jewish names. WTF! Only a handful of Jewish names, that’s all?!! That is a complete and disgusting racist disgrace for supposed US meritocracy!

      Now, how many Jews did Boeing hire? How many did GM? Are these companies completely infiltrated by Germans, is that what’s going on here? Is that why they’re sinking into bankruptcy with shoddy quality? Do we have a Mercedes/Volkswagen syndrome on our hands here? Thieving criminal German corporations selling the public shoddy goods? Is that why we have to bail them out again?!!

      • akmofo March 30, 2020 at 11:40 am #

        That is a complete and disgusting racist disgrace for supposed US meritocracy!
        ==

        Indeed! Only a handful of Jewish names, and Jews are supposed to be the kings of money and banking. Of the 8 million Jews in the US, less then one in a million is hired as a banker?! WTF! That is racist discrimination if I’ve ever seen it!

      • Q. Shtik March 30, 2020 at 3:20 pm #

        Btw, Q , thank you for that list of Jews in the banking industry which you so gracelessly provided us on Friday’s blog post. – akmo

        =========

        Oh, you are more than welcome, akmo. But I notice you have come a bit unglued over my little (very unscientific) research project and I don’t know why. In what sense do you say gracelessly? There was barely a Goldfarb or a Feldstein in the bunch and I thought you would be pleased with that finding as it more or less confirmed your position relative to your spat with hmuller.

        You also seem more than a little annoyed by my having stated right in front of God and everybody that I’m an atheist…….. and sunburst is a little bent out of shape over it too. Have I disturbed the confirmation bias you guys’ would prefer to wallow in?

        I live in a small burg in Central NJ that has a high Jewish population (many of the more orthodox types are easily identifiable by their clothing). In the hours leading up to sundown on Fridays (when Shabbos, Shabbat, Sabbath begins) there is a noticeable quickening of the pace in town as the Jews scurry about getting things done (performing actions deemed to be ‘work’) before they turn into a pumpkin.

        I have read all your posts and I wonder what type of Jew YOU are. For example, do you wear a yarmulke at all times except when showering? Do you pre-tear a supply of toilet prior to sundown on Fridays because you don’t want to be caught taking a dump on the John at 11PM and having to tear tissue off the roll and thereby violate the ‘day of rest’ rules. And how strictly do you observe the dietary laws. (One of our many Jewish friends, Ira, a Rutgers economics prof who (whom?) I have never seen without his yarmulke on, will not eat a potato chip until he has examined the bag from which it came to see if its kosher.)

        So anyway, please describe your own level of orthodoxy or lack thereof. One of my wife’s best pals (last name Singer) and her husband (last name Seinfeld) practice no Jewish traditions and I would not doubt are atheists just like me although I would NEVER have the chutzpah to ask.

        • Q. Shtik March 30, 2020 at 3:24 pm #

          toilet paper

          • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 5:59 pm #

            I’m not bent out of shape by your claim to atheism at all. I don’t put much stock in what people believe, a little reality adjustment can turn beliefs around in an instant…

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 7:43 am #

            “I don’t put much stock in what people believe, a little reality adjustment can turn beliefs around in an instant…”

            Yep. Works from the other side too. 🙂

        • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 4:33 pm #

          Read the King James version of the Bible, Q. I dare you to as a self-proclaimed atheist. Most atheists have never even read the Bible.

          I’m a Grumpy Marxist in the secular world but an Anglican otherwise. I was raised an atheistic individual and then studied metaphysics.

          Some people are heterodox and others are orthodox in terms of their belief systems & cosmologies adhered to over time & history.

          Houses of worship exist the world over not as testament to an outdated way of thinking and believing.

          RW

          • Q. Shtik March 30, 2020 at 5:47 pm #

            Read the King James version of the Bible, Q. I dare you to as a self-proclaimed atheist. – Robert White

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

            Two or three years ago I mentally committed to reading the Bible from cover to cover. A Bible had been given to me by my mother in 1966 and I had never even cracked it. How could I tackle the Franklin Library 100 Greatest Books collection yet ignore one of the most important books of all time? It is the Catholic ‘Confraternity Version’ first issued in 1950.

            I read 68% of the Old Testament and stopped there, unable to continue. What I had read up through page 692 (Sirach Chapter 40) confirmed the epiphany I had at age 18 during a Christmas break novena. Namely that the story being told was largely myth and that my non-belief was correct.

          • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 6:06 pm #

            At least read the words of Jesus. There is something so authentic and original in his words and the way he reacted to the circumstances of his time that it at least makes you pause for consideration…

          • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 6:15 pm #

            You got a lot farther than I did!

            Most of the Old Testament is mythological in content, although much also contains a kernel of truth and is derived, however loosely, from historical records. Personally I don’t believe the bible in itself will convince anyone of the existence of God. Only a genuine personal religious experience will do the trick…

          • akmofo March 30, 2020 at 6:51 pm #

            Sunny,

            You’re absolutely right.

            I bet you when Mrs Green was almost struck down with cancer, she prayed to God. And I bet you when Q will be in the same situation, he too will do the same.

            Atheism is communism. It’s Satanism and it is fueled by depression and anger at God. But what many don’t know, is that God want to heal you, if you will only let him and follow his guidance.

          • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 10:47 pm #

            Fear of God is said to be the beginning of wisdom, Q.

            RW

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 7:17 am #

            “Read the King James version of the Bible, Q. I dare you to as a self-proclaimed atheist. Most atheists have never even read the Bible.”

            I’ve read more of it than Janos. Catholics aren’t heavy on Bible reading. If it had been down to the priesthood they’d never have been able to read it in their own language.

            I was brought up on the King James Bible. The language is unsurpassed. New versions were always a disappointment, linguistically. But that’s primarily because you love what you are used to. Most people younger than me weren’t brought up on the KJV, You can tell by how few of them can manage a simple thee, thou or ye and and a bit of exceedingly simple archaic verb conjugation.

            “Houses of worship exist the world over…”

            They do, and they are peaceful places to sit and enjoy not being outside in the bustling world. Even for people who don’t believe what their proprietors believe, although they happily follow the message of loving their neighbour, which doesn’t require a deity. People like to be obliged to do what they will not do off their own bat, sometimes. Hence they invent deities to do the obliging for them. If it works for them, who’s complaining? Not everyone needs the external obligation. Sometimes they invent obligations that are evil by moral standards, though, which is less good.

            And some who go there every week do not wish to love their neighbour, unless their neighbour is of the same tribe and has exactly the same theological variety of priest or pastor.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 7:32 am #

            “I bet you when Mrs Green was almost struck down with cancer, she prayed to God.”

            Sorry to disappoint you. I wish you had put a monetary value on that bet, though. I’d have enjoyed watching you hand over the money.

            Why would you pray to ‘God’ if you had cancer, when ‘he’ observably does not cure cancer patients, even the ones who believe ‘he’ could?

            And ‘Mrs Green’ was at no point ‘almost struck down with cancer’, but I am used to you inventing your own self-serving mythologies.

            I’d be grateful if you’d stop alluding to me in your posts, especially when your comments are pure invention. I do not wish to have any kind of discussion with you and such dishonest behaviour is a devious way of drawing a person in.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 7:37 am #

            You’d be surprised how many a-theists of a certain age retain an affection for the the King James Bible, RW, just as they love Shakespeare.

            Christopher Hitchens loved it too, and retained, as many do, a nostalgic affection for Anglicanism.

            The Bible contains much wisdom. Wisdom contributed by humans, IMHO. Because it was contributed by humans, it also contains much which is inhuman, because humans can be inhuman too, especially when over-convinced of their own righteousness.

          • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 9:21 am #

            Why would you pray to ‘God’ if you had cancer, when ‘he’ observably does not cure cancer patients, even the ones who believe ‘he’ could?
            ==

            Well, for one, I don’t believe you, because you were found to be a serial liar. And for second, the same process that causes cancer when reversed can uncause cancer. I should know since I have personal education to that fact. And so have many others.

            Eliminate the man made foods and liquids that cause inflammation and that feed viruses and disease, replace them with God’s foods and liquids that eliminate inflammation and viruses, add sunshine and clean air to your life, and you have a very good chance of reversing cancer.

            Now, Mrs Green, how would you explain the remains of intact tissue found to be present on the dug bones of dinosaurs that are supposed to be millions of years old?

          • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 9:29 am #

            Furthermore, Mrs Green, how would you explain the fact that such a thunderous finding did not make it to the Vatican propaganda outlets or anywhere in the MSM? Not newsworthy enough for our current Satanic paradigm?

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 10:40 am #

            I have no interest in what you believe, because you proved yourself on a previous thread to be an obnoxious little git unworthy of my time or consideration.

            So you can FRO, sonny.

          • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 11:10 am #

            Ah ha, and when the cancer returns, and it will, you will do exactly as I said. And you will thank God that he showed you my words.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 11:18 am #

            Believe whatever nonsense you like, little git.

          • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 11:21 am #

            Mr Green, be mighty thankful to God this little git still has the goat horns to piece the veil of lies that suffocates our lives, and he will continue to butt you in the ass and guide you out of your Vatican induced stupor.

          • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 11:23 am #

            pierce the veil

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 11:34 am #

            Piece it or pierce it. My indifference to your thoughts and doings is limitless.

          • sophia March 31, 2020 at 5:35 pm #

            It’s too bad Q, that you stopped in the Old Testament, although not surprising. I find it an insufferable, tedious and disheartening book with a few bright spots. Better you should have red the new.

        • akmofo March 30, 2020 at 5:40 pm #

          But I notice you have come a bit unglued over my little (very unscientific) research project and I don’t know why.
          ==

          No, I’m just amazed at your racist shamelessness. The racism is so ingrained you seem to be completely oblivious to it. Or, you’re putting on an act to the effect, which I think is likely the case. You’ve been suckled on this Vatican racism for so long, it’s now in your DNA.

          As to the kind of Jew I am, am the kind of Jew who doesn’t wear the Vatican’s Jew uniform. Not the Vatican’s yamulka not the Vatican’s black hats not the Vatican’s black robes and not the Vatican’s yellow star. In other words, an emancipated Heeb. The kind of Hebrew of old, who if he knew you as a neighbor would feel completely free to bring my friends over and conversate with you in the ways of old.

          • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:43 am #

            Just so we are clear.
            Jew is not a race.
            Caucasoid (White) race
            Negroid (Black) race
            Capoid (Bushmen/Hottentots) race
            Mongoloid (Oriental/Amerindian) race
            Australoid (Australian Aborigine and Papuan) race

            I see NO Jewishoid in there.
            Calling someone a racist for not liking Jews is not racism its bigotry and all humans suffer this in one form or another.

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 10:26 am #

            Technically you’re correct, Ben, but the sentiment is exactly the same. The racists and the antisemites are exactly the same people.

    • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 2:11 pm #

      Yes, the Irish control Hollywood too. Just look at the names of the owners and producers.

      • akmofo March 30, 2020 at 2:55 pm #

        The owners are Chinese and Japanese, but 95% of the people on the Hollywood sets are still Irish. Same in the Police. Same in Fire Stations. Same in the Hospitals. Same in the commie Universities. Same on commie TV stations. Same in the commie Newspapers. Same in the Government. Same in the Banks. Everywhere the gov mafia exists you the same Vatican mafia of Irish Italian and Germans. They’re damn everywhere! You can’t run away from them.

        • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 5:53 pm #

          What’s the Final Solution?

          • akmofo March 30, 2020 at 5:58 pm #

            You become an American.

  24. benr March 30, 2020 at 11:15 am #

    Finally the Chinese lies are breaking down and the truth is starting to trickle out.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/wuhan-covid-19-deaths-may-be-in-tens-of-thousands-data-on-cremations-show/ar-BB11T0Vb?ocid=spartandhp

    Portable crematoriums have been glowing away for months 24 hours a day!

    • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 11:47 am #

      We haven’t heard too much in the MSM about the riots in Hubei province.
      It’s almost as if they don’t want us to know.

      • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:44 am #

        Yea monkey see monkey do shit.

  25. malthuss March 30, 2020 at 11:19 am #

    M O B S

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6439aOtzEWs

    and invaders

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_p5MOK7CYM&t=68s

    Support this blog on PatreonSupport this blog on Substack
    Support this blog via Patreon or Substack
    • akmofo March 30, 2020 at 12:22 pm #

      Paliwood. Now on your doorsteps.

      • malthuss March 30, 2020 at 2:06 pm #

        Paki wood?

        • akmofo March 30, 2020 at 6:08 pm #

          Nope. Paliwood, with Mexican flip flops.

    • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:47 am #

      Uhh how big of a shithole do those English people live in if the backwaters of India slums are a dream vacation?
      My worst nightmare come to life!

  26. hugho March 30, 2020 at 11:21 am #

    Sensible wake up call from the man who coined the term “The Long Emergency.” Does that mean no more long screeds about the Mueller Report and the moronic milling donkeys and elephants? Ive covered this in my blogs for years but of course can’t hold a candle to Jim. The societal living structures in most of the world were perfectly set up to be leveled by any number of triggers including the pandemic trigger, if not this one then certainly the next. I am a long retired doctor who has intubated and put thousands on ventilators over a career and the thought occurred to me that maybe Trump is right. We may not need that many ventilators for the simple reason that the mortality of patients after they are placed on one in Chinese and Italian data is high, north of 70%. The danger to the person at the other end of the laryngoscope is also considerable and not many doctors possess that skill. I fear for my colleagues and I am also afraid that PTSD may come to dominate their later years.

  27. Cavepainter March 30, 2020 at 11:25 am #

    No Jim, sorry, too optimistic. Any process of recovering a workable, cohesive society will necessarily have to deal with those armies of feral individuals who’ve missed critical stages of socialization due to lack of parenting and made worse with indoctrination of partisan painting of history that “informs” them that history owes them a debt — not, emphatically, that they’ve failed to exploit the advantage of free libraries and free education.

    • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 11:27 am #

      They wii dry up and blow away thank God…

    • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 2:39 pm #

      Yes, children of single mothers and divorce, raised by the TV and Computer while Mom is working or entertaining boyfriends, or drugging it up.

      Thank Liberalism and Feminism.

  28. sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 11:25 am #

    “You may not think that matters so much, but we’ve become so profoundly dishonest that it’s impeding our relationship with reality.”

    –JHK

    This is so very important. I think dishonesty, so prevalent in our time, is a disease of civilization (at least one that has broken down in Toynbee’s terms). In the real world, outside the pale of civilization, there is simply no place for dishonesty, you either pursue truth or you die…

    • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 12:03 pm #

      As Dymtry Orlov wrote to me in an email.

      “I don’t have to be nice to you, we will never meet.”

      Dishonesty, so prevalent in our time can’t survive in a world where the people you see every day are the same.

      That is a true story and I hope his self-serving ass gets to St. Petersburg and never comes back.

      • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 12:59 pm #

        So true. I have never inquired of my neighbors where they sit on the political spectrum because it is so important to get along with the people you see every day. My neighbor two doors over rebuilt my roof and saved me a ton of money. He is a Hillary Clinton fan (whom I detest) but otherwise a great guy…

        • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 2:40 pm #

          And they never asked you? Will they regret working for you if and when they ever find out?

      • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 2:47 pm #

        Nice guyism is so American. You then project it onto others and are amazed when they don’t operate like that. You then want to attack them, like the coming Crusade against East Africans Christians who have rejected Globo-Homo.

        Those who openly supported England during the Revolutionary War had to leave this Land. Politics matter.

        Having a Nation means sharing a Vision. America really began to die when we allowed people to burn flags openly. How could that have ever be allowed? Cuz they “owned” the flag! Wow, how to think small, so small that the gutter then seems like the Grand Canyon.

  29. CancelMyCard March 30, 2020 at 11:32 am #

    “How will the big cities be able to manage their infrastructures with municipal bonds massively failing? How will they provide social services when tax revenues are down to a trickle? The answer is . . .”

    The Fed will hit the CTRL-P key a few times and bail out all the rest of the non-Wall Street crowd:

    All the pension funds
    All the State and Municipal bonds,
    All the health insurance companies,
    All the “essential services” companies,

    etc., etc., etc.

    And you know what? It just might work for awhile. When you are still the cleanest dirty shirt in the laundry basket, and people worldwide still keep accepting the trash dollar at face value, well then . . .

    the Fed will just keep on issuing electronic digits ad infinitum until no one anywhere will accept it.

    That’s the game plan, and they’re sticking to it.

    all

  30. Robert White March 30, 2020 at 11:37 am #

    Green Finance is stacked to the rafters in Mark Carney’s United Nations office, Jim. The Great Reset will stopgap the emergency finance via Emergency Preparedness Funding via the Green Finance coffers where grants & loans will be issued in Keynesian proportions.

    I was heavily influenced early on in life by my friend’s step-father who landed on the Normandy beaches on D-Day as infantry. He was Professor Emeritus Joseph Levitt Canadian History University of Ottawa. Joe was injured after landing on Normandy beach and walked with a limp for the remainder of his life. He was about 6′ 4″ in height and the most compassionate WW2 veteran I have ever encountered.

    Throughout my time in youth growing up in Ottawa I watched Joe write his Magnum Opus on Lester B. Pearson. I swear that it took him about eight years to write that historiography.

    Joe was pretty much the coolest academic I have ever met.

    Lastly, there is no possible way to utilize current railway systems as they were utilized in times past. In the countryside one does not need Grade Separation to maintain safety, but in towns & cities Grade Separation is a must have due to the degree of accidents that manifest without Grade Separation.

    The expense of restoring heavy rail systems is prohibitively far too costly to be practical IMHO.

    Be well & stay safe. And for God’s sake please consider moving away from the metropolis of NYC.

    Cheers, Robert

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    • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 12:19 pm #

      People are leaving NYC in droves. Many will most likely never return.

      • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 12:43 pm #

        I was listening to news last night and heard that State Troupers were stopping anyone with NYC license plates that were leaving the state to cross into the next jurisdiction.

        From what I can discern the MSM now regards everyone in NYC as lepers from the largest leper colony in the USA.

        I have always held NYC publishers & writers in highest regard for all the great stuff that emanated out of NYC over the history of the last two centuries plus.

        Greatest drummer the world ever knew was Gene Krupa of Chicago. Today, Chicago is denigrated for being Chicago. People lose their perspective on what really matters when SHTF from what I have seen. Anti-social contagion is spreading along with the virus. If Martial Law is not declared people have a right to retain mobility throughout society.

        Trump is the problem by not declaring Martial Law.

        RW

        • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 12:54 pm #

          When the people lose faith in the government to do their primary function, security, they will take matters into their own hands.

          Trump may be the problem by not declaring martial law, but Trump is not over reacting by declaring martial law. Which does the media and Deep State support today, or tomorrow?

          Is the maintenance of state border integrity a function of the Feds, or of the State governments? Neither one wants to do it right now!

        • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 1:12 pm #

          Ok I thought the President couldn’t declare martial law; that would be the provenance of individual governors. It wouldn’t make much sense to place Wyoming or Idaho under martial law right now. NYC, yes.

          All the best magazine and book publishing has come thru NYC, you are correct in that. In fact one of my favorite authors was the original Knickerbocker himself, Washington Irving (the only man in history to have met both Gearge Washongton and Abraham Lincoln)

          Brh

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 2:50 pm #

            And which ethnic group controls publishing? That’s right, the Germans!

            Thank you, friend of Akmo.

          • akmofo March 30, 2020 at 6:41 pm #

            Jan, you gain some you lose some. You should make nice with Q. Show him your favorite websites. Some I’m sure he already knows, but I’m sure there must be some he missed.

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 8:38 pm #

            I caught that too!

            Q: “as the Jews scurry about getting things done (performing actions deemed to be ‘work’) before they turn into a pumpkin.”

            “Scurry” – classic Anti-Semitism. Where do these people come from? I asked him if they were still giving him a hard time, and he pretended he didn’t know what I was talking about.

        • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 2:52 pm #

          And if he did, would you not condemn him for doing that?

          But I agree with your current position (which will change): Trump should declare martial law. NYC is a City of Death.

          • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 3:04 pm #

            In some ways you are a smart guy, Janos, but so is Akfomo.

            You have met your match.

            Brh

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 5:07 pm #

            You will never understand how you and your clan betrayed America. That is Mercy indeed…..

      • snarkmatic9000 March 30, 2020 at 1:45 pm #

        That’s what they said after 9-11, right?

        • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 2:13 pm #

          True, but this time I think we are dealing with a Gain of Function nCorona that is man made to be a bioweapon.
          This is not a normal occurrence in our First World society, eh.

          What if this nCorona virus ends up being a public menace for a number of years instead of the estimated/predicted four months or so?

          RW

      • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:49 am #

        Could never figure out why anyone would want to live there.

      • SpeedyBB April 2, 2020 at 9:27 pm #

        BRH, your observation triggered a strange thought. Yours truly, who has never owned a piece of real estate in his life, immediately thought (not without a healthy spread of Schadenfreude) “…Now what’s that going to do to the exalted property market…?”

        The answer is: probably nothing. Rents and prices will stay astronomical and the places will sit empty for years… just like all those malls out in Flyoverlandia.

        There is nothing sadder (& funnier) than to see an owner of a nice house or building or piece of land run smack up against reality when demand for same has suddenly drained away. It is not in their nature to cut the price, unload it and move on. But the longer it sits empty the less desirable it becomes.

        Except for the ghosts.

        (Amusing to read thirty-story tilting office building, erected in a hurry – and likely with foundation corners cut – back in the late 1990s when Jakarta was a turbo-charged go-go business.

        https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=id&u=https://www.republika.co.id/berita/senggang/unik/13/05/31/mnnpyr-5-misteri-seputar-menara-saidah-di-jakarta-timur&prev=search

    • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 12:19 pm #

      RW

      I think that JHKs insistence on trains stems from the in availability of airline transportation when the jet fuel runs out.

      When the only option is ground transportation, what choice will there be? For the folks that do not want to drive their electric cars from Denver to Chicago. ( A snicker here)

      • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 12:32 pm #

        If we are going to adopt rail it would have to be the kind that floats on magnets like the Chinese run now. Any mechanical friction is an energy waster.

        For all of the tech today we need to be running on frictionless motive transport. Magnetized rail is the only potential mode of mass transport IMHO.

        Diesel locomotive transport is yesteryear.

        RW

        • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 12:43 pm #

          We agree on this. The politics are difficult as evidenced by the California attempt at high speed rail.

          I do wonder how much the refit of 80 mph RRs would cost compared to High speed alternatives. Also, if we removed the impossible regulations how much it would reduce cost.

          • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 12:54 pm #

            Robert Moses was heavily criticized for adopting the same logic vis-à-vis renovating the slums of NYC. He advocated tearing down all the slums so that new construction could restore communities mired in slum living.

            From Commercial/Residential mass housing to mass transportation we always need to get rid of the old technology in order to renovate/rebuild infrastructure because it is far too costly to use old technology given maintenance & upkeep/servicing costs.

            Overhead costs govern the engineering IMHO. Every few decades we find everything is outdated & obsolete. Advances in engineering force these issues on costs alone.

            Robert Moses of NYC should never have been vilified the way he was vilified.

            P.S. If you don’t know who Moses was just watch Citizen Jane documentary.

            Cheers, Robert

          • elysianfield March 30, 2020 at 2:34 pm #

            “If you don’t know who Moses was”

            RW,
            Do you think we are idiots? He parted the East River…or built a bridge over it…or something….

        • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 1:02 pm #

          Are magnets a form of anti-gravity?

          • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 1:14 pm #

            In a nano-space perspective a magnetic field would be a form of anti-gravity in so far as polarity is concerned, yes.

            RW

          • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 1:21 pm #

            The reason I ask is because there are those who claim anti-gravity to be an energy source of the future. This sounds intriguing but I am just a lay person in this field…

        • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 2:58 pm #

          I think the way it may end up … a coal burning steam locomotive chugging thru town 2 days a week, stopping just long enough to take on water, drop off mail, pick up a few passengers, blow its whistle … then be on it’s way. And we’ll be grateful and happy to have it.

          Brh

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 5:09 pm #

            This is the good BRH, his heart always in the past, especially the 19th Century though the 18th was good too.

            The 20th Century? The only good part was up to the apotheosis of the landing on Normandy Beach. After that it was all downhill.

            They made some good rifles in the 20th Century. That’s about it.

          • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 6:41 pm #

            What I meant Janos is if things get bad enough we could possibly cobble an old fashioned RR together as an expediency. Do I seriously think things will come to that. No, not really. On the other hand, I’m seeing things now I never thought I’d see, so it’s within the realm of possibility.

  31. Billy Hill March 30, 2020 at 11:49 am #

    Our host has called up one of the songs that has remained lodged in my brain from long long ago:

    People get ready, there’s a train a-comin’
    You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board
    All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’
    Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord

    • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 11:58 am #

      Let the midnight special shine its ever-luvin light on me.

    • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 12:00 pm #

      I caught that too. Great song and upbeat message…

  32. K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 11:56 am #

    The new no_green new deal.

    No got green man, I got no money honey.

    Credit-card balances swelled to an unprecedented $930 billion last year and 3.28 million people filed for jobless benefits during the week ended March 21 — quadruple the previous record.

    On average it works out to be less than a days hospital stay, only a few thousand dollars for every man woman and child. It’s no big deal.

    Just like the looming death of 200,000 is no big deal because Trump saves the nation by getting out of the way of State Governors. If Trump is less incompetent and does not stay out of their way 2,000,000 could die instead. This makes our orange lizard a national hero. Think about that next time you watch him fall asleep at a press conference or snatch flies out of the air with his tongue. That is greatness you are watching.

    The financial issues will work out in a giant fire sale. As America burns to the ground things will work out. Contrary to all of you who think I’m ONLY about doom and gloom, when everyone is dead or broke things HAVE to get better.

    Lemonade from lemons, that sort of thing.

  33. Kevvia Knack March 30, 2020 at 12:10 pm #

    I live in Hollywood. The stores on Rodeo Drive and downtown Beverly Hills began boarding up their windows with plywood this weekend.

    • Beryl of Oyl March 30, 2020 at 12:21 pm #

      Good to know.

    • elysianfield March 30, 2020 at 6:46 pm #

      “People get ready, there’s a train a-comin’
      You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board
      All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’
      Don’t need no ticket, you just thank the Lord”

      “I live in Hollywood. The stores on Rodeo Drive and downtown Beverly Hills began boarding up their windows with plywood this weekend.”

      People get ready, diversity’s a-comin’,
      Get you a weapon, you ain’t gonna be bored,
      Gird your damn loins, and when the crowds a roilin’
      If you on high ground, you can thank the Lord…

      …Traditional gospel piece from the “Church of What’s Happenin’ Now”….

  34. michael March 30, 2020 at 12:10 pm #

    On the way to the horse and oxen powered agriculture 90% of people will have to die. At some point in the process a nonegligible portion of these will catch on and become hungry and violent. Available horse and oxen will be eaten.

    The horse and oxen stage will last for some months, cannibalism is next, the age of the ants comes next.

    • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 1:04 pm #

      Good to know.

  35. capt spaulding March 30, 2020 at 12:14 pm #

    “When a man unprincipled in private life, desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents….despotic in his ordinary demeanor- known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty – When such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity – to join in the cry of danger to liberty – to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion – to flatter and fall in with with all of the nonsense of the zealots of the day – it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.

    Alexander Hamilton, 1792

    The part that gets me is, “how did he know clear back then?”

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    • CancelMyCard March 30, 2020 at 12:21 pm #

      Because he knew himself all too well.

      • JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 12:47 pm #

        Was he referring to Aaron Burr at the time?

        • capt spaulding March 30, 2020 at 12:57 pm #

          I think he was just trying to work out some rap lyrics, not an easy thing to do with all those thee’s and thou’s getting in the way.

        • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 1:01 pm #

          it may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.

          It is called ‘The Art of The Deal‘.

          By letting hundreds of thousands die Trump cuts a path to a shining city on a hill. That is why he smiles. Confusion is key so we can all relax. Just repeat. ‘It won’t be me‘ 15 times in a row. Do this every hour and every day for a week. You will be fine.

          KDFP

    • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 1:06 pm #

      Do all the Trump haters out there really think Hillary would have done a better job?

      • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 11:00 pm #

        Hillary never would have embarrassed America quite as bad as Trump has, and there is no way in Hell that she would have gone Smoot-Hawley Act II into a recessionary headwind given that she is experienced enough to know better, or at least us lefties would like to believe that.

        Trump’s Smoot-Hawley Act II shenanigans didn’t help anyone, or himself, or Trump brand.

        As they say in the Day Trading community…’never go full retard’ on Wall Street.

        Trump is not the businessman he purports to be.

        RW

        • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:51 am #

          HAHAHAHAHA

          Yea right Hillary would have had us in another war inside of two months.

  36. BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 12:25 pm #

    Well, here we go.

    Rumor of several home invasions in this rural Connecticut town. Was it attempted burglary, but the residents happened to be at home? Probably not; just about everyone is home now.

    That didn’t take long.

    Brh

    • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 1:02 pm #

      Give us your beans.

  37. K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 12:49 pm #

    Biden must be having a very hard time with the social distancing. He hasn’t stuck his nose in a woman’s hair for days. And this six foot shit. Oh hell.

    Why has the media ignored sexual assault and misbehavior allegations against Biden?

    What’s a pervert to do? ‘Hard times’ and they can’t get no relief. Yeah the media looks the other way but still. It has to be cramping Joe’s style. Making his angry outbursts perfectly understandable.

    • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 12:50 pm #

      KDFP

    • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 1:02 pm #

      K-Dog, aren’t you the least bit sceptical of accusations in an incident that purportedly occured 27 years ago? And apparently nothing actually happened except he made somebody ‘feel uncomfortable’.

      • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 1:08 pm #

        Its all about optics for the politically correct crowd…

      • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 1:18 pm #

        Actually BRH, not one bit. KDFP and all that but really she presents very credibly and there are too many other stories about Joe. We have Joe on video being a total prick multiple times. And you should check your facts. Joe has obvious power issues, when he is aware of being vertical. That still happens sometimes.

        Apparently nothing actually happened‘?

        He stuck his fingers in her pussy. Having an understanding of the phy-sticks of such things I know he only tried to push his fingers in because if she was unwilling the door was likely slammed shut. From her point of view though she thinks he succeeded and from her point of view that is a totally understandable perception.

    • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 2:51 pm #

      Joe will be Joe. He’s a ‘leg’ man, apparently.

      Who isn’t?

      Brh

    • Nightowl March 30, 2020 at 4:06 pm #

      People here ignore it, too. Biden feels up kids on camera. Fact.

    • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 5:17 pm #

      Because it doesn’t matter anymore. Suspend the Elections. Let it all be on Trump. He’s strong enough to take it. In any case, he’s now listening to the same experts as Biden or anybody else would. Why go thru the rigamarole of an “election”?

  38. Ishabaka March 30, 2020 at 12:51 pm #

    Where I live – Jacksonville, Florida – “the suffering poor of the ghettos” are shooting each other with gay abandon. As the illicit drug precursor chemicals provided to the Mexican drug cartels by the Chinese Communist Party grow scarce, I imagine the turf wars and shootings will increase.

    • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 1:08 pm #

      Chinese chemicals can still come in on UPS. The brown army has you covered. Remember we only have GUIDELINES and until more people die Trump prefers to cultivate misery and confusion but really it is BAU sort of? Anyway it is part of a master plan. Don’t worry be happy.

      La plej bona el ?iuj eblaj mondoj.

      • Ishabaka March 30, 2020 at 3:22 pm #

        “The suffering poor of the ghettos” here don’t have the knowhow to synthesize the desired drugs from the Chinese precursor chemicals. Right now, they’re probably wishing they’d paid attention in high school, and taken a chemistry class….

        • benr April 1, 2020 at 8:56 am #

          Wrong bathtube meth or single jug meth is pretty easy to make.
          Whats hard is not blowing yourself up or killing yourself with the fumes.

    • Opie March 30, 2020 at 1:11 pm #

      After a three day stay for what turned out to be diverticulosis I received a bill just shy of $100,000, which my insurance company refused to pay due to incorrect coding. Long story short, they eventually took a fraction of that and let me off the hook, undoubtedly using the rest as a write off to show how they were losing money. It cracks me up in the current flap with suppliers charging high prices for masks and such, and hospitals squawking like stuck pigs over it. Talk about calling the kettle black !

      • GreenAlba March 30, 2020 at 1:18 pm #

        “I received a bill just shy of $100,000”

        There are parts of the UK where that would buy you a house!

        • GreenAlba March 30, 2020 at 1:19 pm #

          Not smart parts, but still…

        • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 1:21 pm #

          It would pay for all the masks in a hospital for 1 hour too!

        • malthuss March 30, 2020 at 2:10 pm #

          RIngo bought from John a fabulous estate.
          Back in 1970 100k US $ would buy that.

          Inflating the debt supply since 1913.

  39. zekesdad March 30, 2020 at 1:05 pm #

    “..we better think about fixing the railroads.”

    Who’s “we”? Unlike most countries, railroads in the U.S. are publicly traded companies. Burlington Northern Santa Fe for example, is owned by Berkshire Hathaway. It is up to Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern, Kansas City Southern, etc. to invest the capital in their infrastructure which they do. When I drive out West, highways often follow the same route as railroads where I see mile long freight trains doing 70 mph on welded steel rails, sometimes 20 or 30 minutes apart.

    Jim, I think you need to get out of the Northeast more. I’ve travelled between Boston and Washington, D.C. on Amtrak, and it really does seem in a lot of places like a Third World country with the exception of the Acela. I know Amtrak uses the rails of the freight carriers, but the decrepit stations, and rusting equipment bear little resemblance to first rate railroads like UP or KSC. I imagine the line most journalist and politicians travel between NYC and Washington inspires their “crumbling infrastructure” comments.

    • 4014HAMPHEDGE March 30, 2020 at 1:43 pm #

      Jimbo’s LONG EMERGENCY position, (we are all assuming the position, Boys & Girls) regarding rails is circa WWII rail matrix, reaching most all the nations cities and smaller communities factories, and breadbasket districts. Notable element before FDR made Devil’s deal with the Saudies was an America “A Lending Not A Borrowing Nation.

      See Martins post above 10:48 AM. Misguided on guideway, new age recovery must focus on enhanced existing railway mode; capacity & reach. Railway matrix redux is the one indispensable requisite to maintain the Union Of States. in post natural-manmade disaster & Climate/Resource constraints. Wars are coming as maniac sovereign leaders, particularly in the Asian and Middle East dictatorships go apeshit crazy.

      One can imagine Putin finally paying heed to his National Orthodox Christian Heritage, backing away from his threat to Israel, and hunkering down with Mother Russian Oil and unmatched Siberian full regalia Periodic Table resources…. Imagine grumpy Bear Russia leading the Eastern Hemisphere as an exemplar nation in the post apocalypse millennium. All things are possible with God, Vladimir!

      How will the Union Of States face up to imminent Dt 28 showdown with the Divine? Woodshed times at hand….

      • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 12:16 pm #

        “All things are possible with God, Vladimir!”

        All things are possible to Vladimir without God.

        Vladimir is about to fix things so that he can remain in power until 2036. While passing laws to prohibit meetings of more than two people in the street. How neat is that? God would be impressed.

  40. LewisLucanBooks March 30, 2020 at 1:40 pm #

    State Medicaid – The gift that keeps on giving. Atlantic magazine had an article about it, last month. Many States (including Washington, where I live) have a little known twist. “Estate Recovery.”

    If you’ve participated in any Medicaid program, after you pop your clogs, they’ll come after any assets you’ve managed to hang on to. That run down little house you thought you were inheriting from Grandma? Forget about it.

    There are ways around it, but it takes a lot of advance planing. And, you may have to involve a lawyer. Anyway – heads up, troops! Lew

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    • Q. Shtik March 30, 2020 at 4:21 pm #

      LewisLucanBooks

      =======

      Welcome back Lew. It’s gotta be at least 5 years.

  41. K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 1:48 pm #

    There are no red states
    There are no blue states
    There are no red casualties
    There are no blue casualties
    There are only casualties
    Now there is only the red white and blue

    I hope

    • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 2:06 pm #

      You can’t have a red, white, and blue without Bob from CANADA leaning over the fence hollering at you, K-Dog.

      No nation could be an island with me leaning over the fence hollering bloody murder & shaking my fist in the air, buddy.

      RW

      • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 2:10 pm #

        You have red and white, sorry you are feeling blue.

        • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 2:21 pm #

          Not feeling blue, but you forget opposition, eh. Don’t ever forget who your closest & biggest trading partner is, K-Dog.

          USA is not an island nation.

          RW

          • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 4:31 pm #

            Oh hell, I was not even talking about Canada. I don’t know what bug bit you today but I’m sure you guys sort of have your shit together. And WTF, you closed your borders. Mrs Dog was plotting escape. Now she can’t. Are you going to build a wall?

          • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 4:58 pm #

            Walls cost money. Canadians will provide the labour and American taxpayers can fund it. We should build on your side to save space IMHO, K. If you think about the perimeter of the USA it’s best to build closer to the center of the USA in order to save on materials, eh.

            You fund it we will build it because you know what happens when the USA builds stuff with the same bureaucrats that built the US Postal System, and Congress.

            RW

          • capt spaulding March 30, 2020 at 7:16 pm #

            The US is Canada’s Mexico.

    • malthuss March 30, 2020 at 2:11 pm #

      I am a dreamer
      i hope one day you will join us ect

  42. axisboldaslove March 30, 2020 at 1:50 pm #

    Terrific entry here, Jim! Well done! What a shame we, the world, America in particular, didn’t heed your words in your great and true vision of the future (a future which is upon us), THE LONG EMERGENCY. That new era is here. My only regret is that at 68 years of age, assuming I survive this year, I may not be strong enough to do much to help build this new world.

    Best of luck to us all.

  43. K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 2:08 pm #


    Right now, we’re in the heroic phase of the battle against a modern age plague. The doctors, nurses, and their helpers are like the trembling soldiers in an amphibious landing craft churning toward the Normandy beach where the enemy is dug in and waiting for them, with sweaty fingers on their machine guns and a stink in the pillbox. Some of the doctors and nurses will go down in the battle. The fabled fog-of-war will conceal what is happening to the health care system itself, while the battle rages. After that, what?

    Pacifists are not so keen on the analogy. They would rather just fight an epidemic.

  44. K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 2:16 pm #

    Cuomo’s dog and pony show was pretty good. Asking people to come to New York though. That part was weak. He needed to give something in return and he could have done it. He could have asked the volunteers to ask their community to follow the guidelines as if they were the law of the land. Which with competence they would be. The request for solidarity would have been taken as a gift. — KDFP

    • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 2:16 pm #

      If you are going to take you should give.

  45. Christoph Becker March 30, 2020 at 2:17 pm #

    Also my hospital bill wouldn’t be that high, but I fear the German hospitals in my area.
    After having done some intensive research on this subject, I (as a dentist) prefer to drink a self made chlorine dioxide solution with about 25 ppm as a prevention and as a cure, which costs almost nothing (about a cent or two, per patient and day).

    A good introduction in English is: https://andreaskalcker.com/en/coronavirus-special-information-for-physicians-and-researchers/ as well as Andreas Kalckers website and his book “Forbidden Health: Incurable Was Yesterday”
    If German is not a problem, http://www.freizahn.de/2020/02/mehrzweckwaffe-gegen-viren-und-bakterien/ is good compilation of studies and sources. Even for readers who don’t know German, may find there many links to important papers.

    The only really big problem with chlorine dioxide is that it has the potential to ruin the pharmaceutical industry and parts of the health care system. But, on the other hand, this is one of the simple drugs that can make life and healthcare in “A World Made by Hand” astonishingly good compared with now.

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    • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 3:13 pm #

      Why do you fear the German hospitals in your area? Are you in Germany? If not, what do you mean by German hospitals?

  46. wm5135 March 30, 2020 at 2:20 pm #

    Thank you Mr. K for a sober assessment,

    “it will matter again to be upright and to act in good faith” JHK

    Let us hope the bar is not set too high.

  47. amb March 30, 2020 at 3:39 pm #

    If SARS-Cov2 continues on its exponential trajectory, I’m contemplating either an RV up in Alaska, or a decent-sized boat off the coast of some South American port where food and supplies can be gotten every 2-3 weeks.

  48. K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 3:44 pm #

    Who do you think you are Will Smith? I’ll guess the dog being walked was a German Shepard. A video of Italian mayors bitching. Trump complains about state governors wanting to keep everyone home. He should live in an Italian town!

  49. shabbaranks March 30, 2020 at 3:53 pm #

    Jim Kunstler wrote: “The scale of agriculture will have to change downward, too. AgriBiz, with its giant “inputs” of chemicals and borrowed money, is not going to make it ”

    and yet…

    https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/03/30/agriculture-secretary-sonny-perdue-coronavirus-having-very-little-impact-on-food-supply/

    Can we reconcile the two points of view.

    Shab: Do you seriously propose that something that works for-the-moment, or that worked in the past, will continue to work indefinitely? — JHK ADMIN

    • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 4:26 pm #

      Three wheels on my wagon
      And I’m still carrying on
      The Cherokees are after me
      But I’m singing a happy song

      Reconciled, there you go.

  50. San Jose March 30, 2020 at 4:06 pm #

    I wonder how the extended homeschooling that is now going on will affect public education? With so much education material on the web, will parents withdraw from public education?

    I liked being with my kids and if I had to do it all again, I would home school. I saw too much horrible behavior from other students, teachers, and even some parents.

    Jen in Salt Lake

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    • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 5:21 pm #

      As Lao Tzu said, Close the schools. The people will benefit a hundred fold.

      Most are uneducable past the basics in any case. Thus education is really just indoctrination and internalized pressure to abandon their natural instincts to value themselves and their own more than aliens. To believe themselves rather than talking heads on the tube.

      • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 11:09 pm #

        Did he really say that?

        I’ll have to start reading him again.

        RW

    • sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 6:26 pm #

      I agree Jen, home schooling has a lot to commend to it, especially if you are not necessarily aligned with the politically correct status quo. However it does take a lot more effort to school a child at home where he/she is in their comfort zone and without the authoritarian atmosphere and peer pressure of a public or private school…

  51. K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 4:19 pm #

    2880 dead in America. The Trump has made us go full hockey stick. The last update was about +300. Get ready! Say goodbye to Grandma.

    • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 4:22 pm #

      The straw man needs a brain and the lion man needs a heart. I wonder if the orange man will understand how the exponential function works at the end of this.

      Naahhhhh.

      • K-Dog March 30, 2020 at 4:22 pm #

        KDFP

        • knuclebuster March 30, 2020 at 6:31 pm #

          K-Dog.

          I’m a thick old dumbass farmer, a knob, a bell-end. What the hell is
          KDFP?

          King David Frozen Pizza?

          • Q. Shtik March 30, 2020 at 10:53 pm #

            What the hell is KDFP? – knucle

            ==========

            K Dog For President

    • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 5:43 pm #

      It would be all different if Clinton had been elected instead of Trump.

      • K-Dog March 31, 2020 at 1:06 am #

        Yes, we would not have the virus like this but we would have to wear PPE to interact with the opposite sexes.

    • benr March 31, 2020 at 9:54 am #

      There is a reason the idiot youth in America called this the boomer remover.
      Said good bye to both my grandmas long ago.
      I would how ever like to say good bye to the kind of shit rhetoric I see you spewing daily. Right now all you are doing is stampeding the herd and its so easy being the nay sayer and prognosticator of dissent much harder to actually have a plan and execute it.
      Lots of hand wringing whining and pissing on the floor but little else in reasonable discourse.
      Tell me with all that piss on the floor did Trump smack you on the nose with a rolled up newspaper or simply put you outside without a dog house?

  52. sunburstsoldier March 30, 2020 at 5:03 pm #

    If, as JHK suggests, hardship is destined to be the new normal we will likely remember the ‘good, old days’ of our present era with fondness and nostalgia (if not acute longing). Future generations however will not have such memories to draw upon and will be better off for it. As harsh as this may sound, only through overcoming adversity and enduring hardship does character development occur. As a species we have become weak and sloppy, and perhaps it is time we were compelled to do something about it. We gain strength in mind and spirit when we strive to address severe challenge, and from the interaction between these two qualities we weave the soul; that aspect of the human being which survives mortal death…

  53. patrickd March 30, 2020 at 5:06 pm #

    “This will be a different country.”

    I laughed out loud when I read that. I don’t have argument with the article, but that line, expressing belief in the American people, is laughable. This country was founded by people who murdered the inhabitants of this land (we can call them Americans) and stole everything they could see. Has this people changed their DNA?

    These people to this day live a life based on the murder of anyone who has anything, and the theft of their things. Mideast oil, Libyan gold, whatever is visible. If an American sees it, he will kill for it.

    I think what will happen is we will see gangs roaming, killing people so they can look in the pantry. Those who do grow things will be in constant danger of being murdered when their crops come in.

    Should they stop growing things? No, but they ought to have weapons strapped to their belts, because you can’t trust an American. His charm is used to put you at ease, so he can cut your throat and steal your stuff.

    In the meantime, gas at the pump is under $2.00 per gallon, thanks to Syrian blood.

    • shabbaranks March 30, 2020 at 5:17 pm #

      The “Native Americans” were weak, technologically inferior, disorganized and ultimately stupid. They got smoked for a reason, or in fact, a multitude of reasons. Now they are captive nations. And nothing you say or do will ever change that. And in fact, the “Native Americans” are getting rich on that alone. Well played.

      • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 5:24 pm #

        Well said. Whites created this Nation. We are the Native Americans. To have let this title be taken from us and given to another people was a cognitive and spiritual defeat of the highest magnitude.

        Let Pat D go find “natives” who live in tipis and become their slave. He will have to look long and hard. Most Indians just want more stuff like all the rest of the American slobs.

        • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 5:40 pm #

          You appear to dislike America as much as Patrickd, Janos, but in another way.

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 5:48 pm #

            It’s been hijacked by Judeo-Masons and Satanists – with lots of help from ordinary Americans like you.

            Your relatively high IQ and large fund of knowledge only means you will be judged more harshly. To whom much is given, much is asked.

            President Andrew Jackson didn’t have full understanding, but he knew something was dreadfully wrong and he tried to save us – but in the wrong direction, the direction of more Democracy. A very, very great Man. But Ely prefers Nixon. Another one! Whose your favorite President? This should be fascinating….

          • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 6:06 pm #

            Probably TR, Janos.

            The Masons? Do they still exist? I remember them as a bunch of old guys in town with a secret handshake, an organization with more ranks in it than the Byzantine army. There were many civic organizations around back in the day — the Red Men, Elks, Lions, Moose (in an old Honeymooners skit; they had a secret handshake too)

            How could they hijack the country?

            As far as the Judeo part goes, Jews have been here since day 1. A guy from Philidelphia, I believe his name was Moses Solomon, helped finance the Revolutionary War for Krissake.

            Brh

          • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 6:11 pm #

            Ok his name was Haym Solomon. My mistake.

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 6:25 pm #

            TR? Oh you want to get into this? Fine. Do you really think Akmo beleives the stuff he screams about? Like the Vatican Nazis (they were enemies) owning the banks? Or the Irish controlling Hollywood? Go up and look at us fooling around. He knows I know that he doesn’t believe it. Only you believe him – and he pats you on the head like you’re a kid on a regular basis. And I assume then that you believe what he says? So you’re a vicious Anti-Catholic too?

            Here since the beginning. In very small numbers. And not everyone liked that. And they were doing terrible things as per the slave trade. Alas, so were we. Thus the Judeo-Masons. But yeah, the damage is done and the Masons aren’t really that important anymore, at least not here. Maybe on the Continent they still are. Or in South America perhaps. The workmen depart when the Masters come into the dwellings they have built for them.

            Was your guy funding the Brits too? Which side are the Judeo-Masons on? Their own side, never ours.

            You may have been right about Vodka though:

            Sky News

            Few measures have been enforced to curb coronavirus in Belarus – instead, people are being urged to drink vodka and go to saunas.

            The country – specifically its president – has shrugged off concerns about the COVID-19 outbreak, starkly illustrated on Sunday with the nation’s football matches continuing as normal.

            As most countries enforce strict measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, fans continued to shuffle into football grounds as they would any other weekend.

            Few social distancing measures appear to be in force, but spectators at some grounds did have their temperatures checked before being granted entry.

            A small number of fans opted to wear face masks while huddled together in packed stands, but they were few and far between.

            Belarusian football organisers have said they have no intention of postponing matches or cancelling the season – and the country’s leader has also shown that he is keen for sporting fixtures to continue.

            President Alexander Lukashenko took part in an ice hockey match on Saturday – controversially declaring that sport “is the best anti-virus remedy”.

            At the event, he told a reporter: “It’s better to die standing on your feet than to live on your knees.”

          • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 6:49 pm #

            No, I’m not anti Catholic, just the opposite.

            I think Akfomo is writing some of those things to antagonize you, personally. And then you return the compliment by answering one of his posts with the phrase, ‘Final Solution’.

            It’s a vicious cycle.

            Brh

          • akmofo March 30, 2020 at 7:45 pm #

            So you’re a vicious Anti-Catholic too?
            ==

            Oh, c’mon Jan, who is vicious? I’m just making friends with you Nazi lizards. It’s all good fun. Get with the program, dweeb!

          • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 8:29 pm #

            He knows who really owns and/or controls Banking, Publishing, Media, Advertising, etc.

            You don’t. When called upon it, he commences his reptilian rage. And you think he’s just trying to get my goat? He does it with everybody.

          • Nightowl April 1, 2020 at 5:44 am #

            BRH,

            Go visit the Octagon in DC on the rare occasion that their exhibit on Masonry and the United States is open (top floor, once per year?). Once the creep factor has worn off, you will likely be interested to learn more.

            The idea that Masonry has died out is rather funny to me. The country was founded on it.

    • benr March 31, 2020 at 9:31 am #

      Hay pattyboy do you think the Native Americans were all peaceful vegans?
      Let me educate you they murdered enslaved and raped each other some even ate each other.
      They were not the peaceniks or the noble savage.
      They were human beings with all the same FATAL flaws wee see today.
      Stop absorbing the leftist bullshit about white man evil.

      • cc rider March 31, 2020 at 2:28 pm #

        Ha! Trump is both white man evil AND orange man bad. No wonder TDS is so virulent and strong.

  54. BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 5:37 pm #

    When the Pilgrims showed up in Mass. Bay in 1620, they immediately noticed the abandoned villages up and down the coast. Some appeared to have been recently inhabited, others showing signs of abandonment long ago. It was a mystery. Turns out earlier expeditions to New England, by the Portugese and Spanish, Basque fisherman, English freebooters, French under Champlain, Henry Hudson, and a few others, had unleashed infectious diseases on the Indians for which they had no immunity — primarily smallpox — that had wiped out 90% of their population 1540-1620.

    Not the first pandemic brought to the Americas by Europeans — that would be on Columbus’ expedition to the Caribbean — but not the last either.

    Brh

    • malthuss March 30, 2020 at 7:01 pm #

      U N Z……COMMENT>

      just over the border in New Haven and all the local Hasidic community is getting sick with Covid-19.

      A Bat Mitzvah was fully attended in a synagogue with 100+ attending with an ensuing party.

      Meanwhile, there are mobs riding around on dirt bikes and robbing people who venture outside their homes for a walk. Interesting times.

      Security cameras and a 12 gauge 00 is the current prescription but if this continues into mob riots the AK is coming out with loaded mags.

      • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 7:39 pm #

        Community members on dirt bikes are a problem in New Haven even in good times. They’ll run you down, rob you, or both. Sometimes you can get stabbed just for good measure Not the type of erudite behavior you would expect at the home of Yale University, but there it is.

        Brh

      • BackRowHeckler March 30, 2020 at 7:43 pm #

        Most of the bikes are stolen, none are registered or insured, nobody has a motorcycle operators license, bikes are not street legal. No matter. It’s a no man’s land out there. Civilization itself has eroded into fine dust.

    • malthuss March 30, 2020 at 7:05 pm #

      Not the first pandemic brought to the Americas by European–
      The China Virus?

  55. Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 5:42 pm #

    https://www.yahoo.com/finance/news/fda-approves-emergency-use-of-malaria-pill-for-covid-19-treatment-133908197.html

    Bravo. No time for tests – it will be tested on the battlefield! We are beginning to fight back. Now declare martial law and close the borders. Judges who say nay must be defrocked.

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    • malthuss March 30, 2020 at 7:04 pm #

      Masons.
      Mnuchin is Skull n Bones. See his wiki page.

      • Robert White March 30, 2020 at 8:42 pm #

        We will all be Skull & Bones soon thanks to Mnuchin et al.

        RW

  56. tucsonspur March 30, 2020 at 7:38 pm #

    How about a few laughs? Check it out!

    https://www.nj.com/entertainment/2020/03/nj-comedians-riff-on-trumps-coronavirus-response-goes-viral.html

  57. venuspluto67 March 30, 2020 at 9:32 pm #

    Yeah, these weeks and days do kind of feel like the premier episode of “Fear The Walking Dead”, don’t they?

    • BackRowHeckler March 31, 2020 at 7:11 am #

      Yes. And if you remember, in TWD, everybody is infected, every living person.

  58. JohnAZ March 30, 2020 at 9:55 pm #

    Google Coronavirus and the top story is about what the last East Fauci models are showing him.

    Here is a hint, Easter is out of the question. April 30 is a put off.

    The first time that a daily death tally will be zero is The end of July. His projection shows a peak in the third week of April greater that 2000 deaths per day. Then a long tailing off until July.

    This is a model based on what? What is going to cause the tailing off?

    I think Trump has listened to these experts with their science predict 15 day isolations to flatten the curve, etc. I am afraid he will do something drastic to wake up the economy if some thing does not happen to show the models are correct. If something does not indicate the disease will tail off, all bets are off.

    In Trump’s words, “This country was not designed to work this way.”

    IMHO, if we do not see a tail off start in April, humanity is in dire straits.

    • toktomi March 30, 2020 at 10:08 pm #

      @JohnAZ

      “The models” back in 2000 indicated “dire straits”, end of economic growth, and human dieoff.

      DENIAL is so fucking powerful! …you people…

      ~toktomi~

    • Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 11:07 pm #

      It wasn’t designed to work this way – as if it was working before. As if it WAS designed to work with 329 million people or the coming White minority. Or industrialism and mass urbanization.

      National Socialism WAS designed with Industrialism and a huge population (mono-racial) in mind – a serious attempt to keep alive traditional values and culture in a radically changed society. It’s most serious critics were and are, Traditionalists.

      Obviously working with Nature is one thing but trying to deny it something else entirely. No one can make different races get along. India gets partial success from National Socialism because of the shared Vedic Culture – even among groups that don’t share belief in the Vedas per se, such as the Sikhs, Jains, etc. Long shared history under the Muslim threat has helped to forge them together.

      • malthuss March 30, 2020 at 11:47 pm #

        doreen dotan

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_TT6csVMkM

        • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 12:33 am #

          “The biggest problem we have as humans is trying to convince our minds of something our heart knows is a lie.”

          Wes Watson, Aryan Brotherhood

          JS: You refuse to read Bhagavad Gita, so I give you a chance to study with Wes, a man who has overcome ignorance and criminality and now, having paid his debt to society, is teaching others to do the same. He would never admit to having overcome, because that would mean he isn’t still working hard every day. In this, he is wise indeed.

          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtrEv7-tT38&t=638s

          Looks like a nice old lady. How did you find this? How does she know all this? Did she come from an orthodox or conservative Jewish background?

          • malthuss March 31, 2020 at 10:46 am #

            Doreen–you goy are humans, we jews are something else.

    • Majella March 31, 2020 at 2:38 pm #

      JohnAZ

      Yet it didn’t need to be this way…have you seen how life in Singapore is these days?

      https://youtu.be/IdDpmAt3lxo

    • Nightowl April 1, 2020 at 5:48 am #

      “Flatten the Curve” has the same sort of media psych. trauma-inducing quality as “Ground Zero,” or any other phrase rolled out in manufactured crises over the past two decades.

      I saw that in NYC they’ve got the Empire State building lit up like a giant red flashing siren.

      FEAR!

  59. toktomi March 30, 2020 at 10:04 pm #

    …waitin’ for the numbers to explode…

    I still can’t see the details but there are hints in “three weeks for stimulus checks” and “April 29 [or 30]”. The Easter references don’t seem to carry much significance.

    Happy Dieoff,

    ~toktomi~

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    • SoftStarLight March 31, 2020 at 2:17 am #

      Even a 10 to 20% death rate will not equal a die off. And even still, the contraction and ensuing disorder will not equal a die off. Not on the seven billion scale you are thinking. But this is just round one. Now. Will this bring profound changes to society? It appears inevitable. And some changes..well, no one will have forseen. IMHO.

      • cc rider March 31, 2020 at 10:08 am #

        The profound changes will be what the US government does as a result of the hyped up fear mongering. * We are going to be China-fied for the most part. IMO. That little globalist @#%$* Dr. Fauci gets aroused just thinking about this future. As well as that globalist b@*#&^ Deborah Brix. Both are also beholden to WHO and Super Big Pharma, BTW.

        Oh, and mandated by law vaccines for all! No, you won’t take the vaccine? Fine. Then you can’t work or be allowed out in public. We have a nice converted former Super Walmart for you and your……rebellious ilk.

        (Not you specifically SSL….generally speaking).

        *Will Trump be on board with this? No. I don’t think so. He’s actually not a totalitarian kind of guy, despite what some delusional types here post. Or the deranged, I should say. Trump’s days are numbered. He will not be president next year. By hook or by crook. I think the crook will be NY Gov. Cuomo. Yes, Biden is out. It just hasn’t been made official yet.

        Consider this….. http://thezman.com/wordpress/?p=20153

        • SoftStarLight March 31, 2020 at 12:57 pm #

          Yeah, I totally agree that anything is possible and the goal post moves all the time. That is why it is so important to try and take charge of the narrative.

  60. venuspluto67 March 30, 2020 at 10:09 pm #

    I’ve known ever since the Summer of 1994 when I was 27 years old that it was all going to end ugly. I merely had the cold comfort of not knowing exactly how. Well, now I guess I do.

    • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 11:06 am #

      What happened?

  61. Janos Skorenzy March 30, 2020 at 11:53 pm #

    https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2020/03/29/sweden-health-board-prioritise-migrants-over-swedes-with-pre-existing-conditions-elderly-for-virus-care/

    The End of Socialized medicine? Unless that Socialism is National Socialism which by Law would forbid any immigration at all for the most part.

    National Socialist Japan for example, (which hides its reality under a Corporate veneer) is interested in immigration from Brazil – of Japanese Brazilians that is.

    • SoftStarLight March 31, 2020 at 2:01 am #

      Sweden, as it is currently comprised, does not deserve to exist. Nor can or will it exist for much longer. Like most Western countries at this point.

      • BackRowHeckler March 31, 2020 at 5:38 am #

        Sweden will survive … as an Islamic Republic. Most native Swedes will be down with that. Outside of undergrads at NYU and Berkeley, has there ever been a group of people in the history of the world who hate themselves and their own heritage more than citizens of Sweden? The first thing to be scrapped is the national flag; the gold cross has to go. Lutheran churches if any still exist, can be converted to Mosques.

        Brh

        • K-Dog March 31, 2020 at 11:38 am #

          No they won’t. They will freeze in the winter. You worry about things that are not problems.

  62. wpa_ccc March 31, 2020 at 12:09 am #

    One mayor at two local mayors phone conferences asked how long would it be before it took a wheelbarrow full of cash to buy a loaf of bread. No one answered his inquiry nor will anyone address the danger in limitless money printing. –Walter B

    I have been hearing about the “danger of hyperinflation” “wheelbarrows” “Weimar” etc. since the US went off the gold standard during the Nixon administration in 1971. So far, with 50 years of printing fiat money under our belt, no hyperinflation.

    The inflation rate in 2019 (last full year’s data) was 1.76% … Just as a reality check, hyperinflation is rapidly rising inflation, typically measuring more than 50% per month.

    And why don’t we have hyperinflation after so many years of “pretend and extend” and so many years of “quantitative easing”? The answer is because people still have faith in the financial system.

    And how do we know people still have faith in they system? Because people still have a meaningful amount of cash in checking or savings accounts; because people rely on electronic payment systems (credit cards, bill pay etc.) for transactions; because people are still comfortable with being paid by their employer in legal tender or, if they own a business, with their customers paying in legal tender.

    Think about your net worth. How much is tied up in physical hard [i.e. gold and/or silver] assets? If it amounts to] less than 50%, chances are you still have faith in the financial system as well.

    Based on the last 50 years of printing fiat money, there is no danger, except what you are imagining in your mind. But your transactional actions belie your words. And that is why the system works. That is why there is no hyperinflation, no wheelbarrows, nor any danger of hyperinflation. They fiat money system works without increasing inflation, let alone hyperinflation. That is fact based on five decades of no gold backing up the dollar. 1.76% inflation in 2019, not 50% a month.

  63. akmofo March 31, 2020 at 12:21 am #

    Animal Names from Eden

    By Isaac Mozeson

    “..And Adam called out names to for all the beasts, for the birds of the sky and all the living things of the field…” Genesis 2:20

    The bible places a profound emphasis on the naming of every person, place or thing. What’s in a name? Everything, apparently. Semites are named for the son of Noah named SHeM (name). The name is the essence of the thing, its SHAY-Ma or reputation. Commentaries have much to say about each unknown person in a list of begats and begots or each unknown, one cametotown on the journey to somewhere else. Reputation — or name -is something to live for or die for to a Semite. No less than the supreme deity is referred to by the Jews as HaShem, The Name. The name of an animal is therefore far more than an echoic device for identification. If the chinese call a cat something like a meow (it sounds much like it) and if we’ve named a bird a Chickadee (after its call) –these are sure signs that the creature was not named at Eden by our first human ancestors.

    None of the animals are so specialized that a sub-species is named in the bible. All primordial animal names are generic: Bird or Raven, and even the “children of the raven” (Psalms ) –but never Crow, Blackbird or Grackle. Gen 2:19-20 Seals in Middle East? SEECATCH. Otherwise, general terms like /TSAKHAN so the Algonquin Indians could name their stinker (the skunk).

    “Who Named the Animals?” Where did animal names come from? According to the bow-wow theory, all words are echoic, some grunting caveman’s attempt to capture the essence of a thing by it’s sound. Among the many thousands of animal names, however, only a few creatures like the chickadee have an echoic name. Even in Chinese, where the cat word sounds like “meow meow,” echoic names are the exception. A larger set of animal names are clearly descriptive, like the grasshopper or hippopotamus (Greek for river horse). Most of the older, more generic animal names have unknown origins, suggesting that the bow-wow theory is for the dogs. Now the world’s oldest etymological text is the last place that an academic would look, but Genesis 2:20 relates that “Adam called out names for all the beasts, for the birds of the sky and all the living things of the field…” Let us see if Biblical Hebrew offers any insights into animal names of unknown origin and meaning.

    The carrion-eating BUZZARD is traced only as far back as Old French busart, a word without apparent cognate or meaning. In Hebrew, BuZ means a hawk and BeeZa spoils (of war). BoZeZ would mean the plunderer or looter, while a BuZiaR is a falconer. Unlike the EAGLE (from oKHeL, to eat or destroy), the BUZZARD is merely a scavenger who emBeZZles WaSte or BooTy. (These BZ, BT and W-ST words are related to our Bet-Zayin family of words of plunder).

    The Kiowa plains Indians named this same bird a bosen for good reason. If you think the GIRAFFE is a strange animal, check out its wierd (given) etymology. French girafe and Italian giraffa is aid to be a corruption of Arabic zirafah, although the term is meaningless is Arabic too and a G from a Z corruption is unnatural.. Using Emetology instead of etymology, one could suppose that zirafah is a common jumble (called metathesis in linguistics and relat! ed to the neurological disorder called dyslexia) of Hebrew [T]ZaVaR (neck). While Adam or any ancient human would do well to call the GIRAFFE a “neck” creature, the Hebrew term stresses the throat or front of the neck rather than the GIRAFFE’s prominent back or scruff of the neck. The Hebrew for this part of the anatomy is OReF, more correctly pronounced by Sephardim as KHoReF or GHoReF. Now we’ve got the perfect sound and sense for GIRAFFE, since GHoReF means the scruff of the neck. Like SCARF, SCRUF is a neck word whose initial S is non-historic.

    Any word with more than 3 root letters in Hebrew or any language is carrying extra baggage around the root or roots. These CRF neck words come from Biblical Hebrew KHoReF (neck) just like the CRAVat (necktie). A related Gimel-Resh term, GaRoN (throat, neck) gives us other long-necked animals, like the CRANE, EGRET and HERON, along with neckwear like the GORGEOUS GORGET, the throaty GROAN of a CROONer and the GARGLING of a GOURMET GARGOYLE.

    Returning to animals and addressing the interchangeable C/G/H/K sounds above, both the Hebrew Ayin and the Gimel are gutturals that can harden to make the hard C of Latin corvus (raven) and French corbeau (raven) or soften to make the soft H of Anglo-Saxon hraefn (raven). Do these disparate Indo-European cousins meet when linked to a common Semitic ancestor? The Hebrew raven is an OReV or KHoReBH (Ayin-Resh-Bet). Etymologists don’t have to dig far to get true word origins, but they refuse to consider Hebrew. The prolific digger among American rodents (and net surfers) is the GOPHER. The given guess in our dictionaries is an attribution to French gaufre (a honeycomb or waffle). Those who dig for a true source will consider Hebrew KHoPHeR (digger).

    Now a HORSE is a horse of course, and of course there is no known meaning for this term. It doesn’t relate to the German horse (Pferd, a knock-off of the Hebrew PHeReD or mule) or the Latin equs (an echo of Hebrew AQeV–heel or HooF). The mystery unraveled when I noticed the similarity of HORSE and HEARSE (a funeral wagon named for an elaborate plow). Unlike their Continental forbears, the British plowed with horses instead of oxen. The horse was the plower, and plower in Hebrew is HoReS[H]. The Americans continued the awkward tradition of plowing with a horse, which needs blinders and constant attention. The God-given plowing animal is clearly the SHoRe (ox), witch innately knows how to plow a SHuRa [Ya]SHaR (straight row or SuRe SeRies). True, the ox doesn’t sound like the ShoRe at all, but Aramaic constantly corrupted the Hebrew Shin to a T, later giving us the Latin taurus (bull) and Spanish toro. Reject the bull and discover a world of meaning– with the majesty and science of! Hebrew.

    • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 1:04 am #

      Sounds like Pyramid Science. All human knowledge can be correlated with the dimensions of the Great Pyramid. Of course it doesn’t work the other way – you’re not going to find out anything new by studying the Pyramid, not in this way. And you could also correlate all human knowledge with any structure, such as somebody’s house chosen at random. This kind of stuff is simply fandom.

      Of course etymology is a real study. And human languages do connect, at least within families. There is even some connection between the Semitic and the Indo-Aryan. Much less with with Afro-Asiatic. And very little with the East Asian or Black African needless to say, except perhaps within the mantric or sound aspect. Some sounds may have universal meaning, say like Mama or something like that. Of course, not all languages may adhere to this universalism, such as it is. But it may explains incredible “synchronicities” between far flung language families when it comes to certain basic words.

      Of course, being you, you try to make a system out of such lucky hits – which is like making a mountain out of molehill. Be content to know that there is a Pattern and you may have found a few of the keys to it. The long lost language of Eden was not modern Hebrew or ancient Hebrew either. Adam wasn’t circumcised nor was he a Jew…..

      • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 8:40 am #

        Isaac Mozeson found 30,000 such correlations with the Hebrew. Them are not “lucky hits”. That’s as many words as there are in the Yiddish language, which is medieval German. Shakespeare whose real name was Lady Amelia Bassano, an Italian Marrano Jewess whose family were the Royal English Court musicians, and was mistress of Henry Carey, 1st Baron Hunsdon, first cousin of Elizabeth I of England, “invented” 10,000 words in English. Them were all Hebrew words in disguise. Nothing is coincidence.

        • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 1:35 pm #

          Shakespeare a woman? Ridiculous. But at least you admit the existence of Italian Cryptos, so why couldn’t Pelosi be one too?

          • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 2:30 pm #

            Not just a woman, but a Jewish woman, and one of the first published female poets of England:

            At the age of 42, in 1611, Lanier published a collection of poetry called Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum (Hail, God, King of the Jews). At this time it was still highly unusual for an Englishwoman to publish, especially in an attempt to make a living. Emilia was only the fourth woman in the British Isles to publish poetry. Hitherto, Isabella Whitney had published a 38-page pamphlet of poetry partly written by her correspondents, Anne Dowriche, who was Cornish, and Elizabeth Melville, who was Scottish. So Lanier’s book is the first book of substantial, original poetry written by an Englishwoman. She wrote it in the hope of attracting a patron. It was also the first potentially feminist work published in England, as all the dedications are to women and the title poem “Salve Deus Rex Judaeorum”, about the crucifixion of Christ, is written from a woman’s point of view.[12] Her poems advocate and praise female virtue and Christian piety, but reflect a desire for an idealized, classless world.[13]

    • SoftStarLight March 31, 2020 at 1:46 am #

      Or could it be that God’s language supersedes Hebrew? In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God. And after the Garden when all the people gathered together to build the Tower, God confounded all of their words so that they couldn’t understand one another. It was after all that when the Hebrew tribe and language actually came about.

      • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 2:58 am #

        The Bible is only safe in your soft but strong hands.

      • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 8:54 am #

        God spoke to Abraham and to Moses in Hebrew. And if your God, Caesar Christ, was a poor Rabbi from Israel, he also spoke Hebrew. Not Greek not Latin and not Aramaic.

        • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 1:34 pm #

          Ah, the hatred of Christ begins to arise at last. The Talmud wins out!

          • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 2:54 pm #

            No, Yan, I don’t like and don’t tolerate lies. Caesar Christ is a sly Roman forgery. So is the Talmud.

  64. tucsonspur March 31, 2020 at 3:55 am #

    Another example of the foolishness, the danger, the irrationality of religion:

    https://nypost.com/2020/03/31/florida-pastor-arrested-for-holding-services-in-violation-of-coronavirus-restrictions/

    Authorities practically begged him not to do it.

    Hundreds huddled together with Death.

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    • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 8:04 am #

      Not the irrationality of religion in itself but the irrationality of fanatics. True religion is not fanatical but the quintessence of sanity as it is the gateway to the knowledge and wisdom at large in the universe…

      • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 8:16 am #

        We will need religion more than ever in our brave, new post-virus world as it is through the religious experience we draw upon the knowledge and wisdom at large in the universe. There is a strong correspondence between the religious experience and the creative experience (as in creative problem solving) as both are inner directed and make use of the deep mind or supra-conscious levels of being…

  65. BackRowHeckler March 31, 2020 at 5:06 am #

    Whoo!

    Last day of March, 2020, and one has to admit it’s been a transformative month. A short 30 days ago I don’t think I’d heard of the C- Virus yet; I was like a clueless character in a 50s scifi film, (when a radio report in the background briefly mentions strange meteorites crashing into farm fields in the next county) out in the driveway spooling monofilament onto one of my fishing reels, looking forward to spring, radio playing in the background, and on the news report a brief mention of a new sort of flu emanating out of Wuhan Province, China. Which I didn’t pay much attention too.

    Truly a Black Swan event, one for the ages.

    Brh

  66. BackRowHeckler March 31, 2020 at 6:01 am #

    If any place needs a union its these massive Amazon warehouses which have sprung up all over the country. From what I’ve heard they run their employees ragged and treat them like sh#t. The workforce needs to organize.

    • Cavepainter March 31, 2020 at 8:35 am #

      Oh, oh, oh, an objective reading of history, what? And most particularly that of the US before our Civil War, to illustrate that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s religious screed obscured the reality that labor management in the industrializing north was — in practice — often no less exploitative and inhumane than treatment of chattel labor by plantation owners in the south. Often, to the contrary, southern “owners”– by “genteel”, post Enlightenment standards of the era — not only educated and nurtured their slaves to levels above off-plantation Whites but promoted those exhibiting more promising capabilities to what amounted to a bourgeois standing. Recall, the slur of off-plantation Whites toward that plantation bourgeois as “uppity niggers”, and that bourgeois class’ reference to off-plantation Whites as “white trash”? Hmmm, sound familiar to today’s virtue signalling Alt-Left?

      • BackRowHeckler March 31, 2020 at 9:27 am #

        Well, at least people in the north were getting paid.

        Actually the pay and benefits at the Amazon warehouse up in Windsor Locks isn’t too bad; it’s the working conditions that need improvement (from what 2 people I know who work there tell me) and I doubt if Amazon will be making improvements on it’s own. Actually I’m surprised the Teamsters aren’t in there yet.

        Brh

        • capt spaulding March 31, 2020 at 10:06 am #

          Well said, Brh.

    • benr March 31, 2020 at 1:00 pm #

      I worked for UPS at the Sylmar hub as a temp in nor East LA and I can tell you UPS treated us like shit as well and they had a worthless union.
      Loading 1800 boxes an hour for $8 bucks an hour boxes coming at you that could weigh as little as an ounce to as heavy as 45 pounds. I specifically loaded trucks going to Riverside. Lasted three months in the hellish summer heat before they let me go.
      The shit we do for a paycheck when we don’t know any better.

  67. AttackSub March 31, 2020 at 7:07 am #

    You know, since we don’t have government funded health care, it’s not the federal government’s fault that initially there were an inadequate number of ventilators. Blame the bean counters at individual hospitals who draw up budgets and make purchasing decisions

    • benr March 31, 2020 at 9:24 am #

      Very true and also the idea that resources are just a phone call and purchase order away.
      We used to value being prepared as a society and hospitals used to have huge storage areas full of needed supplies but now those same supplies are seen as an expense to be shoved off till next quarter or just before being needed.
      Profit rules the words and the deeds.

    • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 11:05 am #

      One thing that may happen is an identification of the roles of various levels of government in maintaining the integrity of health care systems. Is maintenance of certain levels of medical equipment a responsibility of government in the first place? Or maybe local bond issues?

      • benr March 31, 2020 at 12:53 pm #

        Should go like this business, town/city, county, state, region, feds.
        To try and keep track of everything else in any other order is insanity.

    • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 10:48 am #

      Why is this surprising? Why should we have made and maintained a hundred thousand ventilators to maybe fight a pandemic?

      The real issue is why did we give up the ability to create a hundred thousand ventilators in three weeks if need be. Giving away our manufacturing ability should be considered a crime. People who have favored “free trade” as a directive to giving away our manufacturing capability, may they be the first to get the virus!

      If this pandemic makes the “free trade” paradigm die, it could be a silver lining!

      • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 11:07 am #

        “Giving away our manufacturing ability should be considered a crime.”

        Sadly, Maggie Thatcher’s already gawn … and got off pretty much scot free, other than a touch of dementia. She thought we’d do a lot better selling each other cappuccinos and insurance policies.

        • BackRowHeckler March 31, 2020 at 3:07 pm #

          Coal mines are closing. Do you have any problem with those lost jobs?

          • malthuss March 31, 2020 at 6:13 pm #

            Doug Casey [the guy with the bad investments] mentions in one of his books…the place is surrounded by fish and has lots of coal but the socialist gov created scarcity in both.
            ‘Crisis investing’ or ‘Crisis for the 80s or 90s’.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 7:48 pm #

            “Coal mines are closing. Do you have any problem with those lost jobs?”

            Tin mines in Cornwall closed a long time ago – it happens. Children lost chimney sweeping jobs in Victorian times because of those damned do-gooders.

            Every last medical publishing job in Edinburgh has gone, the final ones last Christmas.

            What do you think about poppy farming jobs?

    • stelmosfire March 31, 2020 at 1:36 pm #

      For the cost of this baby we could have purchased 520,000 vents at the inflated price of 25 G’s each. That 13 B does not cover airplanes and support craft. Beware the MIC!
      https://www.cnet.com/pictures/meet-the-navys-new-13-billion-aircraft-carrier/

  68. sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 8:32 am #

    The real problem is not the pandemic we now face but the fact that our technocratic civilization is unsustainable. We should consider this a wake-up call informing us we need to get back on track. How do we get back on track? Only through reconnecting with the Source via the religious/creative experience…

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  69. Ishabaka March 31, 2020 at 9:00 am #

    American citizens dutifully social distancing 03/30/2020

    https://twitter.com/i/status/1244071074356224000

    • malthuss March 31, 2020 at 10:48 am #

      ha ha

    • Q. Shtik March 31, 2020 at 1:19 pm #

      Lots of gunfire in the background and a woman yelling Fuck dat shit!…fuck dat shit!

      • stelmosfire March 31, 2020 at 1:39 pm #

        All those shots and I don’t see any bodies. That tells me the gangsta’s can’t hit shit.

      • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 2:15 pm #

        Greetings, Brother.

    • BackRowHeckler March 31, 2020 at 2:27 pm #

      Ahahahahahaha

      Louisville Sluggers.

      Yesterday in Stanford a jeweler shot to death in his store in the middle of the afternoon. IOW, in and around the ‘Hood’ its business as usual.

      • malthuss March 31, 2020 at 6:13 pm #

        of course. how could it be any better?

        ONCE THE EBT STOPS, WATCH OUT BROTHA.

  70. benr March 31, 2020 at 9:22 am #

    So the greed has over come caution and guess who has infection rates climbing again?

    https://www.oann.com/mainland-china-reports-48-new-confirmed-coronavirus-cases/

    If you have ever dealt with these people one thing they do not value is your personal space they are the perfect culture and vessels for something like this.

  71. sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 9:35 am #

    What I have been doing during this period of social distancing is taking long walks in abandoned areas of Detroit (with my MFLB). There is something about the way derelict Victorian houses are reclaimed by nature that I find aesthetically pleasing. I wonder about the families that once lived in the homes when they were new and the world seemed like bright, shiny penny full of untold possibility…

    • BackRowHeckler March 31, 2020 at 3:03 pm #

      Sunburstsoldier

      “taking long walks in abandoned area of Detroit (with my MFLB) ”

      Yikes!!!

      I hope ‘MFLB’ is a new brand of semi auto, or at least a sturdy .38 Special revolver.

      Brh

  72. akmofo March 31, 2020 at 10:42 am #

    Jerusalem Post Israel News

    Expert claims inscriptions from Egyptian exodus proves Hebrew is world’s oldest alphabet

    By DANIEL K. EISENBUD

    Critics argue first alphabet an amalgam of Semitic languages.

    ONE OF the ancient Egyptian stone slabs inscribed with the name Ahisamach, from Exodus 31:6, used by Petrovich in his research. (photo credit: COURTESY OF DOUGLAS PETROVICH)
    ONE OF the ancient Egyptian stone slabs inscribed with the name Ahisamach, from Exodus 31:6, used by Petrovich in his research.
    (photo credit: COURTESY OF DOUGLAS PETROVICH)

    Hebrew, resurrected by Eliezer Ben-Yehuda during the late 19th century after having been considered a dead language, may contain the oldest alphabet in the world, a Canadian expert contends.

    According to Douglas Petrovich, an ancient-inscription specialist, archeologist and professor of Egyptian history at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, more than 3,800 years ago Israelites enslaved in Egypt invented the alphabet using roughly two dozen Egyptian hieroglyphs.

    While critics argue that the original alphabet likely derived from a grouping of Afro-Asiatic languages – including Akkadian, Aramaic, Phoenician, Ethiopic and Hebrew – Petrovich claims that an inscription discovered on an ancient Egyptian stone slab in 2012 proves his case.

    The slab in question, known as Sania 115, dates from 1842 BCE and is on display at Harvard’s Semitic Museum. It identifies Joseph and his two sons, Ephraim and Manasseh, and is inscribed with the words “6 Levantines: Hebrews of Bethel, the beloved.”

    “I was translating Middle Egyptian and proto-consonantal Hebrew inscriptions that nobody ever had translated successfully before,” Petrovich said during a recent interview with Fox News. “There were many Aha! moments along the way, because I was stumbling across biblical figures never attested before in the epigraphical record, or seeing connections that I had not understood before.”

    “On this otherwise Middle Egyptian caption were a Canaanite syllabic and the world’s oldest attested proto-consonantal letter ‘B,’ depicting a house for the Hebrew consonant ‘bet,’” he said. “It was this single proto-consonantal Hebrew letter that helped me to understand that the world’s oldest alphabet – the language of which has been unidentified for over 150 years of scholarship – is Hebrew.”

    Petrovich said he subsequently translated 16 more Hebrew inscriptions from four other ancient slabs discovered in Egypt and Sinai, including one from 1446 BCE, which describes Moses as a figure heralded by the ancient Jews shortly before he led the exodus from Egypt.

    “I absolutely was surprised to find the Moses [reference], because he resided in Egypt for less than a year at the time of his provoking of astonishment there,” Petrovich told Fox News.

    After exhaustive research to determine whether the combination of letters could have other meanings, the researcher said he eliminated all possible options.

    “Only after realizing that every other possibility had to be eliminated, whether due to contextual or grammatical limitations, was I forced to admit that this word must be taken as a proper noun and almost undoubtedly refers to the Moses who is credited with writing the first five books of the Hebrew Bible, known as the Torah,” he said.
    While conceding that his research has been met with considerable cynicism from fellow scholars, who state that biblical dates are unreliable, Petrovich contended that the onus is on them to prove him wrong.

    “My discoveries are so controversial because, if correct, they will rewrite the history books and undermine much of the assumptions and misconceptions about the ancient Hebrew people and the Bible that have become commonly accepted in the scholarly world and taught as factual in the world’s leading universities,” he said during the interview.

    “To my skeptics, I say: ‘Continue to be skeptical. Do not accept my conclusions until you are convinced they are correct.’” Petrovich added: “Truth is un-killable, so if I am correct, my findings will outlast scholarly scrutiny.”

  73. malthuss March 31, 2020 at 10:48 am #

    call trust.

    Denmark has passed an emergency law that allows for the government to force people to take a vaccine for coronavirus.

    Citizens who refuse to be tested for the coronavirus will face fines and potential prison time, and will be prevented from entering shops, grocery stores, public institutions and hospitals while also being restricted from using public transport.

    Here’s the kicker, the law also allows the authorities to force people to be vaccinated, even though there is currently no vaccination for the virus.

    With these mandatory vaccinations it is possible that they will also include the RFID chipping of people after all this is the perfect excuse “we need to get rid of the money because the virus spreads through the money.

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    • K-Dog March 31, 2020 at 11:35 am #

      Relax, Denmark is not the US. They are not taught to push the limits and get as much as they can for themselves. They learn about SOLIDARITY which Americans don’t even know about. You don’t what SOLIDARITY is for example. Danes learn to get along with others and unlike Americans they would not overstep their authority to plant a chip.

      • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 1:43 pm #

        Read his post again: they are setting the stage to overstep natural law by making it legal to do so. Be honest with us and yourself. As the Bard said, To thine own self be true and as follows the night the day, thou canst be false to any man.

        • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 7:40 pm #

          Do you have to mangle quotations like that? It’s distressing.

          You’ve said the exact opposite of what you meant to say. And what he said.

          I don’t need to look it up because I learned it when I was 16. But you should.

          ‘As the Bard said’. Yeah…

          • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 8:22 pm #

            Obviously leaving out the “not” was a typo. Don’t be so desperate to get over on me. Have some dignity.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 8:04 am #

            Nice try, bozo.

            Allow Shakespeare some dignity and stop mangling quotations.

            Look. Them. Up.

            It still wasn’t right even with the ‘not’ reinstated.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 8:05 am #

            And I realise leaving out the ‘one’ in your petulant post must have been a typo too. 🙂

  74. JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 11:37 am #

    Why are we trying to tie Jesus to any language? Stems from a discussion between Netanyahu and the Pope. Who cares?

    Scholars say that Jesus spoke Aramaic because he spent most of his ministry in Galilee, an Aramaic speaking area at the time. However, when he entered the world of the Jewish religion, every thing was in Hebrew. Maybe, in his twelve year old story in the NT, people were amazed because here was a poor carpenter’s son conversing with the elders in Jerusalem in Hebrew.

    Maybe Jesus’ words were heard by people in their own language wherever He spoke, maybe it was one of the miracles He wrought during his ministry.

    Also, remember the writing of St. Luke, the Acts of the Apostles. He was a witness to the early church, a Roman doctor. He eventually became a witness to the early ministry of Paul.

    He witnessed the Pentecost, where people in Jerusalem heard some of the first teachings of the disciples, in their own language.

    Never take away from the Power of God. Anything is possible, every miracle is credible. Do not humanize God!

    • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 11:41 am #

      Scholars figure that Jesus spoke at least Aramaic, but also Hebrew, and probably Greek. Maybe all the above plus any other language in the audience at the moment.

      All things are possible with God.

      • wpa_ccc March 31, 2020 at 12:02 pm #

        “All things are possible with God.” —JohnAZ

        Is that because God is all-powerful? Is God powerful enough to instantly eliminate all coronavirus from earth and from human lungs?

        • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 12:06 pm #

          Apparently being deprived of breath till you croak is character forming, which is the point of us being here.

          Or something.

        • AttackSub March 31, 2020 at 12:29 pm #

          Sorry. You’re mistaking God with Santa Clause

          • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 12:43 pm #

            Good point. If God doesn’t bring us all ? than ‘He’ must not exist. However God has already given us the greatest gift of all, the freedom to participate in our own moral and spiritual development…

          • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 12:45 pm #

            The question mark is supposed to be ‘presents’ but the little icon did not transcribe for some reason…

          • SoftStarLight March 31, 2020 at 12:46 pm #

            It’s a very common mistake or assumption. That somehow because God is there and can do all things translates to that attitude in people of “if you won’t wave the wand for me then I want believe in you”. Humans are so human LOL! When you support the free flow of peoples across the entire planet then you will always run the risk of devastating global pandemic at any moment. And btw, the Lord did warn about that. But anyhoo.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 1:06 pm #

            “Sorry. You’re mistaking God with Santa Clause”

            Do you mean ‘the Santa clause’? 🙂

            I think what you’re basically saying is that you can credit ‘God’ with anything you like and never be expected to show the slightest evidence of anything.

            Which is fine if that’s what floats your boat. With or without the animals going in two by two.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 1:13 pm #

            “When you support the free flow of peoples across the entire planet…”

            So would you have begged your ancestors to stay at home in the old world so as not to spread measles and smallpox to those who had no immunity? Or are you happy to have been part of that free flow of peoples across the planet?

            You could go back to try to atone, if that’s the way you feel.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 1:13 pm #

            Didn’t your ancestors know about those lines God drew for them?

        • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 12:47 pm #

          If God wanted to, He could destroy the earth anytime. If natural history is correct, He has done it. A number of times. His rules of existence are sacrosanct.

          You are judging God by your statement. Is the virus God’s fault? If things do not go the way we think they should go, it is God’s fault? God is everything, any way you look or feel. His expression to us is our detectable universe, his rules are natural laws.

          When you violate the natural laws, overpopulation, pollution, etc., you pay the price. God gave us the power of free choice, our wonderful humanism has created the situations we face, not God.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 1:09 pm #

            So did we create ovarian and testicular cancer too? And volcanic eruptions? And earthquakes and tsunamis?

            What natural laws did any newborn baby violate in the womb to get this?

            https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/skin-children-harlequin-fetusharlequin-type-600w-1345909256.jpg

          • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 1:25 pm #

            Mrs Green,

            I had 6,000,000 such questions. Until I realized them are not the right questions to be asking. The right question to be asking, is how much worse could it have been, but wasn’t. Be ever thankful it is not worse.

          • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 1:56 pm #

            We live in God’s universe and His world. We have volcanoes, do we have to build cities on their flanks? We have cancers, mistakes in DNA, do we have to pollute the earth with carcinogens? Earthquakes and tsunamis, why build on top of faults and next to the ocean. Same with hurricanes.

            God gave us the power of reasoning, too bad we suck at it.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 7:30 pm #

            JohnAZ

            You have a devious answer for everything. Are you telling me that no-one beyond the immediate vicinity was harmed by Krakatoa blowing? That when Yellowstone blows it will be the fault of half of America for ‘choosing’ to live there? That all cancers are manmade? Cancer has been recorded since antiquity.

            And the meteor that probably exterminated the dinosaurs was because they did what? If it had landed later and killed humans instead, would that be the fault of the humans for being there?

            As I said, religious people can say ANYTHING! Which is why my husband makes a point of never arguing with them about religion. Ever. Because it’s utterly pointless. 🙂

    • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 12:13 pm #

      It impossible for these words to be scribed in flawless formal Greek on mountains of leather parchment rolls that would only be available to and can only be afforded by kings, and to be done so by poor native Hebrew speaking fisherman from Judea that are barely subsisting and are further burdened by heavy Roman taxes.

      Think about how many mistakes you make, and you are a native speaker of the language who was for decades formally schooled in the language and has an electronic dictionary available to consult and correct, and you still make mistakes. Think how many mistakes would have to have been corrected, just typos alone. How is it that all these words are perfectly spelled? How come the grammar is perfect? How come we see no mistakes and no corrections whatsoever of any kind in any of the copies? This is because it was done by multiple teams of professional scribes at the Imperial Roman Court. It is pure Roman PSYOPS propaganda.

    • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 1:45 pm #

      Akmo is trying to “own” the Lord of the Universe for his own tribe, turn God back into Jehovah, their tribal deity. Others do the same for their own tribe or religion. Christians do it too, as if God is trapped within the pages of their Bible.

      • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 2:19 pm #

        No, Jan, God is trapped within a marble statue of a man called Zeus. Then in a marble statue of a man called Caesar. Then within a wooden carving of a cross and in the Greek and Latin forgery of Hebrew testimony and prophecy.

        Yet, somehow the Hebrew God always survives as the truth.

        • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 4:00 pm #

          And before Ba’al and Zeus and Caesar and the Cross, a 1000 ton!! statue of God Pharaoh now broken to a thousand unrecognizable pieces strewn in the graveyard of history.

          https://youtu.be/FpPoZlDxOxk

        • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 8:23 pm #

          Your cognitive statue is far worse. The product of marble heads.

          • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 10:23 pm #

            Nope. There is only witness testimony to a long history of wrong and right paths as illuminated by God the consequences thereof.

  75. JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 11:59 am #

    Hmmm?

    Watching Andrew Cuomo.

    Wondering why when he talks about the situation in New York with all the bad news, the Media just listens to him with eyes and mouths agape getting ready to call him the new messiah. Why is he held up saying the identical info that Trump and his team put out two hours later?

    There is no better example of the hypocrisy of the media in this country than the contrast between these two annunciators.

    I like what I hear from Cuomo, a straight shooter in a field of liars. His message has been converging with Trump’s group over the last month or so. Cuomo seems, right now, to be a bright light in a Democratic field of scoundrels.

    JHK, could you give a paragraph on your impressions of Cuomo for us uninformed folks about his history?

    • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 12:00 pm #

      Is he a representative of the Democratic Party that has been lost?

      • AttackSub March 31, 2020 at 12:35 pm #

        Not by a longshot, JohnAZ

        https://www.ontheissues.org/Andrew_Cuomo.htm

        Plus he’s shacking up with Sandra Lee, a former Food Network “superstar”

        • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 1:40 pm #

          If we really judged our male leaders by their sexual exploits, we would not have elected at least half of the presidents in our history.

          • AttackSub March 31, 2020 at 3:22 pm #

            Read the link stating his positions on issues and tell me you support him

      • SoftStarLight March 31, 2020 at 12:36 pm #

        Some people say perception is reality. I perceive that Governor Cuomo is very empathetic and connects with people well. In addition to that he has a strong presence and a commanding attitude and appears to simply want to get the job done. Trump has the confidence, but often times he seems to care more about money making, making deals, and one-upmanship. Trump doesn’t do empathy well and has issues connecting because he doesn’t keep his most important promises. I don’t want to hear what his guesses are when we are dealing with a pandemic. I want him to do stuff and make people do stuff and I also want him to act like every life matters. Cuomo has done a very good job at exhibiting all these traits in a tough time so here we are.

        • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 12:53 pm #

          So presentation is the difference. Trump’s presentation is what got him elected, people were sick of the Deep State’s BS.

          Is Cuomo the best of both worlds? The presentation of Obama, who could have sold ice to the Eskimos, and the guts and bravado of Trump, who is not afraid of anything.

          He has stated over and over he wants no part of the Presidency. I hope he changes his mind, Biden is a potential nation destroyer.

          • SoftStarLight March 31, 2020 at 1:00 pm #

            I personally feel like Biden is definitely going to lose against Trump. But if Cuomo runs against Trump then I think Trump has a problem. If Cuomo somehow “sees the light” and turn Nationalist and Border Strong then it will be over for Trump.

          • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 1:10 pm #

            Biden is falling apart. No way while he ever be president…

          • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 1:30 pm #

            If Cuomo “sees the light”, he will leave the Progressive movement behind. We will have the remake of the Dems that is imperative for the country to survive intact. Both parties need to make America First.

        • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 1:35 pm #

          A national leader needs to make tough decisions for the good of the whole group. Sometimes the decisions hurt.
          We currently have a media that takes tough decisions and turn them always against the leader. They spend 24/7 screening for items they can use against him. He will be remembered for making the tough decisions not for the idiot media’s reactions.

          • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 1:50 pm #

            They’re all going to be listening to the same people I assume. Biden would just be a puppet. Maybe that’s better than having someone who thinks he’s real like Trump apparently does.

        • AttackSub March 31, 2020 at 3:19 pm #

          Obviously you didn’t read where he stands on the issues SSL

          • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 1:54 am #

            You know what. I do admit that my post was totally emotional. And I looked at the link you provided and there was simply too much information to read but I realize that he is liberal and open borders and all. But I do feel that he is getting positive ratings for the qualities I mentioned. And you know, he isn’t going to run for President anyways at least that is what he says now.

    • malthuss April 1, 2020 at 9:20 am #

      A Loony once told me, his voice dripping with contempt,
      that Adam didn’t eat an apple but rather, a pear.

      / Well he was a Rev Moon devotee. I read stories about their squads of ‘give us yr money’ people, going door to door.

      Your anecdotes are TOO much.

  76. AttackSub March 31, 2020 at 12:32 pm #

    One of the great political mysteries of the late 20th Century is why Mario Cuomo, Andrew’s father never ran for President.

    • BackRowHeckler March 31, 2020 at 2:14 pm #

      Too closely linked to the mob, like many of your ex RI governors and Providence mayors.

      Brh

    • Linda April 2, 2020 at 11:25 am #

      I loved Mario Cuomo and would have loved to have had him as president. But he refused. I think he also refused a Supreme Court nomination. I think he was tired. Andrew Cuomo is supposed to be a very nasty and mean individual. He is showing his best side right now with his pressers. I recall Kunstler saying that Cuomo was nasty.

  77. akmofo March 31, 2020 at 12:32 pm #

    The Associated Press

    Have Israeli archaeologists found world’s oldest Israeli Hebrew inscription?

    Lines on pottery found near Beit Shemesh written 3,000 years ago, at time of Bible’s King David.

    An Israeli archaeologist digging at a hilltop south of Jerusalem believes a ceramic shard found in the ruins of an ancient town bears the oldest Hebrew inscription ever discovered, a find that could provide an important glimpse into the culture and language of the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.

    The five lines of faded characters written 3,000 years ago, and the ruins of the fortified settlement where they were found, are indications that a powerful Israelite kingdom existed at the time of the Old Testament’s King David, says Yossi Garfinkel, the Hebrew University archaeologist in charge of the new dig at Hirbet Qeiyafa.

    Other scholars are hesitant to embrace Garfinkel’s interpretation of the finds, made public on Thursday. The discoveries are already being wielded in a vigorous and ongoing argument over whether the Bible’s account of events and geography is meant to be taken literally.

    Hirbet Qeiyafa sits near the city of Beit Shemesh in the Judean foothills, an area that was once the frontier between the hill-dwelling Israelites and their enemies, the coastal Philistines. The site overlooks the Elah Valley, said to be the scene of the slingshot showdown between David and the Philistine giant Goliath, and lies near the ruins of Goliath’s hometown in the Philistine metropolis of Gath.

    A teenage volunteer found the curved pottery shard, 15 centimeters by 15 centimeters, in July near the stairs and stone washtub of an excavated home. It was later discovered to bear five lines of characters known as proto-Canaanite, a precursor of the Hebrew alphabet.

    Carbon-14 analysis of burnt olive pits found in the same layer of the site dated them to between 1,000 and 975 B.C., the same time as the Biblical golden age of David’s rule in Jerusalem.

    Scholars have identified other, smaller Hebrew fragments from the 10th century B.C., but the script, which Garfinkel suggests might be part of a letter, predates the next significant Hebrew inscription by between 100 and 200 years. History’s best-known Hebrew texts, the Dead Sea scrolls, were penned on parchment beginning 850 years later.

    The shard is now kept in a university safe while philologists translate it, a task expected to take months. But several words have already been tentatively identified, including ones meaning judge, slave and king.

    The Israelites were not the only ones using proto-Canaanite characters, and other scholars suggest it is difficult – perhaps impossible – to conclude the text is Hebrew and not a related tongue spoken in the area at the time. Garfinkel bases his identification on a three-letter verb from the inscription meaning to do, a word he said existed only in Hebrew.

    “That leads us to believe that this is Hebrew, and that this is the oldest Hebrew inscription that has been found,” he said.

    Other prominent Biblical archaeologists warned against jumping to conclusions.

    Hebrew University archaeologist Amihai Mazar said the inscription was very important, as it is the longest proto-Canaanite text ever found. But he suggested that calling the text Hebrew might be going too far.

    “It’s proto-Canaanite,” he said. “The differentiation between the scripts, and between the languages themselves in that period, remains unclear.”

    Some scholars and archeologists argue that the Bible’s account of David’s time inflates his importance and that of his kingdom, and is essentially myth, perhaps rooted in a shred of fact.

    But if Garfinkel’s claim is borne out, it would bolster the case for the Bible’s accuracy by indicating the Israelites could record events as they happened, transmitting the history that was later written down in the Old Testament several hundred years later.

    It also would mean that the settlement – a fortified town with a 10-meter-wide monumental gate, a central fortress and a wall running 700 meters in circumference – was probably inhabited by Israelites.

    The finds have not yet established who the residents were, says Aren Maier, a Bar Ilan University archaeologist who is digging at nearby Gath. It will become more clear if, for example, evidence of the local diet is found, he said: “Excavations have shown that Philistines ate dogs and pigs, while Israelites did not.”

    “The nature of the ceramic shards found at the site suggest residents might have been neither Israelites nor Philistines but members of a third, forgotten people,” he said.

    “If the inscription is Hebrew, it would indicate a connection to the Israelites and make the text one of the most important texts, without a doubt, in the corpus of Hebrew inscriptions,” Maier said. “But it has great importance whatever the language turns out to be,” he added.

    Saar Ganor, an Israel Antiquities Authority ranger, noticed the unusual scale of the walls while patrolling the area in 2003. Three years later he interested Garfinkel, and after a preliminary dig they began work in earnest this summer. They have excavated only 4 percent of the six-acre settlement so far.

    Archaeology has turned up only scant finds from David’s time in the early 10th century B.C., leading some scholars to suggest his kingdom may have been little more than a small chiefdom or that he might not have existed at all.

    Garfinkel believes building fortifications like those at Hirbet Qeiyafa could not have been a local initiative: The walls would have required moving 200,000 tons of stone, a task too big for the 500 or so people who lived there. Instead, it would have required an organized kingdom like the one the Bible says David ruled.

    Zionism has traditionally seen archaeology as a way of strengthening and explaining the Jewish claim to Israel, and regarded David’s kingdom as the glorious ancestor of the new Jewish state. So finding evidence of his rule has importance beyond its interest to scholars.

    The dig is partially funded by Foundation Stone, a Jewish educational organization, which hopes to bring volunteers to work there as a way of teaching them a national and historical lesson.

    “When I stand here, I understand that I’m on the front lines of the battle between the Israelites and the Philistines,” said Rabbi Barnea Levi Selavan, the group’s director. “I open my Bible and read about David and Goliath, and I understand that I’m in the Biblical context.”

    While the site could be useful to scholars, archaeologist Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University urged adhering to the strict boundaries of science.

    Finkelstein, who has not visited the dig but attended a presentation of the findings, warned against what he said was a revival in the belief that what’s written in the Bible is accurate like a newspaper. That style of archaeology was favored by 19th century European diggers who trolled the Holy Land for physical traces of Biblical stories, their motivation and methods more romantic than scientific.

    “This can be seen as part of this phenomenon,” Finkelstein said.

    • malthuss March 31, 2020 at 12:51 pm #

      Now I have to read about KING Davids rule in Jerusalem.

      How many people were killed in the walled cities?

      • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 1:10 pm #

        A lot.

    • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 1:52 pm #

      The article admits they used Cannanite script. So they didn’t invent it. Maybe you should read the things you post and maybe the authors should edit their own articles since they seem confused too.

      • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 2:42 pm #

        Canaan is geographical Israel. Hebrews are Canaanites.

        “Garfinkel bases his identification on a three-letter verb from the inscription meaning to do, a word he said existed only in Hebrew.”

        • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 4:59 pm #

          No, the Israelites invaded Canaan and put the people to the sword. Read your TANAKH and get your story straight.

          • malthuss March 31, 2020 at 6:09 pm #

            Do you know where in Exodus this is mentioned?
            I have a book-‘The Dark Side of Man’ and the author mentions this but the bibliography doesnt index it.

          • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 6:10 pm #

            Only Jericho was put the sword as they blocked and refused Israel passage to the land. There was no looting of Jericho and its goods weren’t touched as the city was torched. The rest of Canaan then sent emissaries to make peace treaties with Israel, and those peace treaties were accepted and made. Hebron was purchased by Abraham prior to the exodus and after the return to Israel its new inhabitants refused to hand it back over. Hebron then made an alliance with another five Amorite cities against Israel and were defeated in battle at Gibeon, where God made the sun and moon stands still so that the battle could finish in daylight. God also hurled huge hailstones from the sky that killed the combined armies of the Canaanite alliance. And that’s that.

          • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 7:17 pm #

            God gave Canaan to Abram who was from Mesopotamia. Abram was God’s choice to be the patriarch of the Hebrew people. His family propagated into both the Arabs and Hebrews. Abram’s family dwelt in Canaan until a drought hit during the Time of Jacob and his sons. One of his sons Joseph was a soothsayer in Egypt and got the whole fam damily to move to Egypt. Four hundred years later, the discipline and procreation rate of the Hebrews scared the heck out of the Pharaoh who enslaved them. Then came Moses, trained in the imperial court. Then came the Exodus with God’s promise of a promised land, Canaan. Then a falling out of faith by the Moses generation with forty years in the desert to let that generation die out. Even Moses was not allowed to enter the Promised Land. His hand picked, Joshua, started the conquering of Canaan. Everything was positive for the Hebrews through David and Solomon until sibling rivalry caused a split in the tribes of Israel. I believe eleven tribes ended up in Samaria and Galilee and two, Judah and Benjamin ended up in Jerusalem and its area.

            Hence, Galilee, Samaria and Judaea at the time of Christ. Many Separate kings ran Judea and Israel (Galilee and Samaria) until the Babylonians destroyed Israel and Enslaved Judea.

            Very simple history. Joshua did put the current Canaanites to the sword, and successive generations wiped out the people there. Philistines best known.

          • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 8:26 pm #

            Such a god is a Devil. Thank God that Jehovah is not real, or perhaps just a thought form or egregor that serves the Jewish people.

          • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 10:04 pm #

            Well, Tyranny Rex, when dealing with lizards one must be a devil. Them lizards are now mostly dead and buried and some are in museums hung on display by their naked bones. Some have reincarnated as Satanic Vatican Commies of the various brands, but the basic idea of their vanquish is the same.

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 8:17 am #

            Jericho was torched to the ground and left abandoned for 300 years. And that’s the lesson of God for Tyranny Rex. You best learn this lesson should you wish to avoid the Devil God appear again. But you won’t. You never do. And that’s why you will become extinct, just like the dinosaurs before you.

            Egypt, prior to Jericho, was so decimated by God’s plagues, that it was felt completely open for the most cruel of the Arab tribes, the tribe of Amalek, to freely enter from the Arabian desert and rule over her for 400 years.

            This is a warning to the Vatican mafia as well. God has a sense of humour, but karma does not.

  78. SoftStarLight March 31, 2020 at 1:07 pm #

    Hey tucsonspur. You are right that a lot of times there is irrationality in religion. And also clearly, fraud. But also their is fraud in science too. So that is why I think it really is a heart issue no matter the person. Some preachers are actually wolves in sheep’s clothing. Maybe the best can be found somewhere between religion and science? They do intersect somewhere in the universe.

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    • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 1:26 pm #

      Or maybe science is Man’s exploration of the expressions of God.

      Two people describing a crime scene remember things very differently.

      One person says I accept the explanations of God given in the Bible, another says I want an explanation of why things are the way they are that makes sense to me. Both are exploring the age old questions where did we come from and where are we going?

      Who is right? Who knows? Who cares? And IMHO, both mechanisms end up with answers that are just as right. They just use a different language.

    • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 1:30 pm #

      Religion and science are not opposed to one another anyway. Science deals with the physical or outer reality where phenomena can be observed, measured, and quantified. On the other hand religion deals with the spiritual/moral or inner reality of the individual, and this is something which lies beyond the methodological scope of science.

      The reason it is difficult for a theist to convince a non-theist of the reality of God is because real faith is at bottom derived from a personal religious experience, and such experiences are only meaningful to those who have shared them.

      • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 2:11 pm #

        Yoga is the Spiritual Science but the man cannot stand apart from it since he is the object being studied and experimented on, albeit by himself. So objectivity, though not thrown out the window, (else fantasy wins), must be profoundly modified. Both experimenter and the experiment? Not easy!

        Other religions have their own versions of this, though of course they might consider this kind of language cold. Christianity and Islam prefer the image of a love affair between the soul and God. But some of the Sufis love Wisdom too, and would accept this language as long as it didn’t interfere with the love affair.

        Some Christian mystics have studied mysticism and can present it rationally, their viewpoint similar to that of such Sufis.

        • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 2:25 pm #

          Yes. You are speaking of the Inner Mystic Path which lies at the heart of all the major forms of organized religion. This path is made up of all those who have heard and responded to the Inner Voice for God, often in the face of extreme persecution from their fellow religionists.

    • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 1:48 pm #

      Is there a difference between Jesus’ message and the Roman Catholic Church? Anything Man touches is corrupted. God himself tried to realign the Hebrews over and over during the OT days. Prophets came and went trying to give God’s message, most of them rejected by the Hebrew people.

      Our job is to see past the human garbage and perceive “the Truth.”

      • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 2:04 pm #

        How can any one religion own God? Trap Him within the pages of their scripture, be it the Bible, Gita, or Koran?

        The Sufi, Martin Lings, offered a different way of seeing it via this metaphor: Each of God’s revelations to man is like a Divine Tide. The subsequent religions are like the pools left by the Tide as it goes out. Good? Yes. Necessary? Of course? But the whole of God’s Wisdom and Love? Ridiculous. And the tidal pools get smaller and smaller as they dry up over the ages, unless partially renewed by new prophets and saints.

        • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 2:15 pm #

          God speaks to the individual. The individual interprets God’s inner guidance in terms of the belief system in which he or she is brought up…

          There are many paths but only one WAY…

          • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 5:03 pm #

            Why would he talk to one who refused to study his Revelation? Or studied it and then rejected it – as you know reject parts of the your scripture, the Urantia Book?

            You have to work the stages, Sunny. You can’t go all the way on the first date.

          • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 5:33 pm #

            God talks to everyone all the time (Inner Voice) not just those who read ‘His’ supposed scriptures. The only purpose those scriptures serve is to encourage us to listen…

            I think you already know this but get a kick out of throwing a monkey wrench in the works…

          • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 8:28 pm #

            Your inner voice tells you that race doesn’t exist or that it doesn’t matter. Mine tells me the opposite.

    • tucsonspur March 31, 2020 at 6:15 pm #

      They actually intersect right here on Earth. Many books on science and religion.

      Albert Einstein once declared: “Science without religion is lame, and religion without science is blind.”

      • tucsonspur March 31, 2020 at 6:17 pm #

        The above to SSL.

        • tucsonspur March 31, 2020 at 6:29 pm #

          Also, consider books like “The God Particle” by Lederman or “The God Effect” by Clegg, on quantum entanglement, etc.

          • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 6:54 pm #

            The God Particle

            Problem solved, the primal particle.

            Uh-huh!

            Where did the God particle come from?

          • Janos Skorenzy March 31, 2020 at 8:30 pm #

            Yeah, pretty lame. God is a Proton! Who could believe that? Or worship that?

            No, God is a Quark! A Moony once told me, his voice dripping with contempt, that Adam didn’t eat an apple but rather, a pear.

  79. sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 2:11 pm #

    Holding a belief in the existence of God is not nearly as important as following the Inner Voice which speaks for God. Since following the Inner Voice is usually not a conscious process it is possible a so-called atheist can actually be more adherent to the Divine Will than a card-carrying believer. It is no secret that organized religion often provides the greatest stumbling block to genuine faith…

    By their fruits (moral integrity, righteousness, sincerity) you will know them, not necessarily by their beliefs…

    • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 6:55 pm #

      Inner voice= Holy Spirit?

      • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 7:05 pm #

        Could be John.

  80. Pucker March 31, 2020 at 2:21 pm #

    The best tasting chicken is freshly-killed Chinese chicken from the Chinese wet market.

  81. Pucker March 31, 2020 at 2:31 pm #

    Good News: Results out of Germany, which is aggressively testing (500,000 per week), seem to suggest that the case fatality rate is only 0.4%. Plus it looks like Zinc helps as an inexpensive treatment. This is ironic since it looks like the US deliberately chose not to test believing that if there was no testing then there would be no cases. I guess that this was ok until people starting showing up in hospitals and they were forced to do testing? In contrast, the Germans chose to be honest and to do aggressive testing and to let the chips fall where they may. The Germans may not be as psychotic and deranged as the Americans? The Americans always seems to prefer being dishonest. Strange society…. Now everyone is freaking out and the propaganda effect of the pandemic may have set in motion various authoritarian, bureaucratic pathologies that could go terribly awry, perhaps, a bit like during the outset of the US Civil War or WWI?

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Gy9nPAQE0&noapp=1

    • Majella March 31, 2020 at 10:00 pm #

      0.4%? Is my maths THAT bad? When I divide the 42,000 dead by the 858,000 cases, I get 4.9%

      • Majella April 1, 2020 at 9:41 pm #

        Today, I divide 937,000 by 47,000 & get the same answer. This is no annual seasonal “flu” style deal.

  82. AttackSub March 31, 2020 at 3:28 pm #

    Green Alba:

    “Sorry. You’re mistaking God with Santa Clause”

    Do you mean ‘the Santa clause’? ?

    I think what you’re basically saying is that you can credit ‘God’ with anything you like and never be expected to show the slightest evidence of anything.

    Which is fine if that’s what floats your boat. With or without the animals going in two by two.

    1) Thanks for the correction.
    2) Read Josh McDowell’s Evidence That Demands A Verdict. It was sufficient evidence for me.

    • AttackSub March 31, 2020 at 3:38 pm #

      Oh and by the way Green Alba, you do of course know that the “Flood Myth” is found in many cultures, don’t you?

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

      Warning: This link is evangelical in nature:https://www.icr.org/article/why-does-nearly-every-culture-have-tradition-globa/

      • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 7:13 pm #

        Attack Sub

        Lots of myths are recycled in various religions. Ideas that are found in Judeo-Christianity can be found in Zoroastrianism, following the Hebrew exile in Babylon, which led to cross-cultural fertilisation. Just one example.

        I don’t know why you would find this surprising.

        • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 7:15 pm #

          The point remains that believers can claim absolutely anything they like and demand that it be considered irrefutable … because ‘not amenable to scientific verification’ etc. Easy peasy.

          • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 7:26 pm #

            Belief is individual, the Holy Spirit is in each one of us, in many different forms according to culture.

            Jesus represented God to the Hebrews to say that individual response to God-in-us was paramount, all the good things flow from this. When Jesus interceded with Paul, the whole world was invited.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 8:11 pm #

            Your assertion doesn’t refute my point, JohnAZ.

            You just keep asserting. That’s fine. Keep asserting. 🙂

            I listened to it for 40-odd years. It’s not new to me.

          • GreenAlba March 31, 2020 at 8:13 pm #

            But your version is at least more appealing than that of the Aryan Mystic Pagan etc. etc.

        • sophia April 1, 2020 at 8:56 am #

          No, GA, you dismissed his point to easily. Flood myths of a major, near extinction level event, are found throughout the world. Nothing to do with the Hebrews. Of course, the Christians think it proves the Noah story, but it becomes obvious that the world had a catastrophe, yet far more than 8 people survived it.

          • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 9:44 am #

            The flood was relegated to the Mediterranean basin and occurred when the land barrier separating the Mediterranean Sea from the Atlantic Ocean was destroyed by an earthquake. It caused a tremendous loss of life which is why it has persisted in mythological form even to our day…

          • sophia April 1, 2020 at 11:30 am #

            No Sunburst, that may be true so far as it goes, but there have been in the past 12,000 years some megacatastrophes and some more localized ones.

      • sophia March 31, 2020 at 9:29 pm #

        You believers are doing a lousy job and saying silly things. Green Alba, you also say silly things.

        We are living in the material plane. It isn’t heaven. On the material plane, everything dies. We might ask why. We might ask what is the purpose of it all. But the purpose is obviously not that we live in a playpen and God makes sure no earthquakes ever happen. This is a rough place. There is probably a purpose. There is quite a bit of evidence for a spiritual reality. Not easy to prove, especially to those who have a grudge and bias against it.

        If there is a spiritual plane it is obvious that our human bodies have very poor mechanisms for detecting it. The idea that someone has committed a great crime because they don’t perceive it is – well it is just more of the demonic crap that passes for religious dogma.

        Yeah, I believe in God and I also believe in a demonic realm. People think the Bible was written under inspiration of God or the Holy Spirit but I think some of it was, and some of it was written by men with their own beliefs and agendas, and some of it was written under inspiration of demons.

        And especially, lots of theologies were written under inspiration of demons. And all these Christians who say they believe in demons and think they and their pastors are immune.

        It is pathetic. I loathe the Old Testament but Isaiah got it right. People do not even see the difference between good and evil, between light and dark, between bitter and sweet.

        They teach a bitterness and call it good news. They teach a demon and call it God. And because they call it God they think it is by definition good. And because it is a wickedness they then say if the God who must be good is wicked, then this wickedness is really good.

        And I know why all this goes on. It goes on because so many of those pithy sayings are quite true: This world is the devil’s playground. Satan is the god of this world. Well, ponder that. What does it mean? For one it means that it is quite attractive to worship the god of this world. People worship a wicked representation of God because they prefer it. God is simple and evil is complex. More interesting. Better drama.

        God the Good is an acquired taste and many have not acquired it.

        If you read autobiographies of ex-prisoners, you might be astonished at the low level of a large number of them, the predation, the violence, the crudity and the lack of responsibility. We people of the world are much like that, and the religion we arrange for ourselves suit the criminal minded. They all claim to be innocent. They blame everything else for their misery. Well, I have news for you humans – the issue is not a bad God, the issue is, why are you in prison and when will you take responsibility?

        You lose nothing, Green Alba, by not believing in the demonic god that most Christians believe in.

        • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 2:10 am #

          Who said anyone was immune to demonic activity? It sounds like you know very well that demons naturally gravitate to “anti-demons”. A spiritual law of physics? Perhaps! So I am assuming you would take your conjecture all the way and presume that this occasional demonic inspiration is not unique to Christianity, but rather occurs in all religious and spiritual traditions? Maybe any human worldview or philosophy? And that fact, coupled with the general wickedness of human nature that you so succinctly point out may mean that Green Alba believes in demonic gods be they Christian or otherwise whether she’s aware of it or not.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 7:33 am #

            Don’tcha just love it when people start discussing what you believe or don’t believe without even asking you? Hilarious. Well, not quite.

            The narcissism is amazing. ‘I can tell you what you probably believe in because my righteousness’. Nice one.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 7:36 am #

            As I pointed out already, SSL, I believed most of what you believe (well, without the fundamentalism and literalism, obviously, and with a whole lot of obvious questions to which you only dare offer yourself templated answers) for waaaay longer than you’ve even been alive.

            Yet you still feel righteous. And right. Just because.

            You believe what you believe because you were told to believe it. Same as I was. If you’d been born in Islamabad, you’d believe something else. Absolutely and without question.

          • sophia April 1, 2020 at 9:00 am #

            SSL,

            What is an anti-demon??
            Yes, most Christians fear demons, but they don’t see the true influence. How can you if you don’t see the difference between good and evil?
            Analyzing whether Green Alba believes in a demonic god – hmm, not too sure. It’s the way religious people worship a demonic god that troubles me.

          • sophia April 1, 2020 at 9:02 am #

            Green Alba,

            I do think that people can be unaware of what they actually believe or of their actual motivations, thus things like projection. So how did you come to decide that your prior belief was nonsense?

          • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 10:35 am #

            Well it was somewhat of a joke but in some ways I guess it isn’t. Sophia, anti-demon is a term I made up for that comment but I was just insinuating that, at least according to many accounts, demons appear to be attracted to good people or beings. Most likely because they want to test and torment them. Likewise, if you believe such things, the Devil and his minions don’t really need to spend much time working on the wicked because they are already, intentionally or unintentionally on the same side the demons are on. But I am not exactly sure what you mean by most Christians not understanding the difference between good and evil. It seems like all people inherently know the difference between good and evil. But most people get thrown off course by all the gray areas in life. I believe that is where the tests truly are but that is just me.

            Alba, I was more or less insinuating what Sophia picked up on. That many people are not necessarily consciously aware of what beliefs underlie their actions and perceptions. And if there is a spirit world, you may be susceptible to it precisely because you do not believe it exists. That’s all.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 10:53 am #

            I didn’t say it was nonsense, sophia. I totally understand the need for the only self-aware creature on the planet to believe it’s not just a creature like all the rest (I don’t think it is either, but not in the same way as religious people).

            But after decades of the religious beliefs into which I was indoctrinated as a child, and which were bolstered by weekly reinforcing pep talks (as well as by years of my own confirmation-biased reading, I gave myself permission to look from the outside. It was a gradual process, nothing dramatic. But there are lots of interesting books by people who have travelled the same path in different ways and have more interesting things to say than I have.

            I’ve already recommended Richard Holloway, the former Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Episcopal Church, and the American, Dan Barker, a former (incredibly fundamentalist) evangelical preacher, now co-founder of the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Barker could be less long-winded. Holloway writes well and is a compassionate and highly educated man, with no arrogance at all. I recently read his small book on the history of religions and he doesn’t even say at the end what his own judgement is, but leaves it to the reader.

            I loved Richard Holloway’s Looking into the Distance: the human search for meaning. I know no-one will read it, but there we are. It’s short – and excellent.

            I hope nCV doesn’t get me before I manage to read some more of his books, starting with Waiting for the last bus: Reflections on Life and Death which has some excellent reviews.

            He doesn’t refer to himself as an agnostic or an atheist, but an ‘after-religionist’. I guess that’s what I am for the moment too.

            The problem is that religious people can’t read the writings of such people without looking down on them – or even commiserating with them – as having ‘lost their faith’, rather than looking at the wisdom they may have gained.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 10:58 am #

            “Alba, I was more or less insinuating what Sophia picked up on. That many people are not necessarily consciously aware of what beliefs underlie their actions and perceptions. ”

            Indeed. As long as you are aware that it applies to you too. Although I would argue that what they are unaware of is not their actual beliefs (who is anyone to tell someone else what they believe or don’t believe?) but the underlying and sometimes unconscious reasons for that belief.

            I wonder what Satan and his minions found to do with themselves for all those billions of years before there were any humans to torment. 🙂

          • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 2:23 pm #

            I agree that that same rule does apply to everyone, including me. You have pointed out some of my unconscious beliefs before like my apparent attraction to Aryan Mysticism. But the other thing is that I think you make too much of a blanket assumption that religious people look down automatically at people who have left their faith. I don’t think that is the case all the time. In fact I have heard some preachers say that it is no surprise at all that people leave the faith all the time. You and them may disagree on the reasons why those people left the faith but I don’t think everyone is going to look down their nose at people who have done something they sort of expect anyway. Now they may try to get them back into the fold. That is another story.

        • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 9:38 am #

          The god atheists don’t believe in doesn’t exist so there is nothing to disbelieve…

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 10:13 am #

            “The god atheists don’t believe in doesn’t exist ”

            Sunburst

            You seem like a nice person. But telling people what kind of God they (don’t) believe in is presumptuous. Inevitable, possibly, from religious people (who all believe they’re right even with their multifarious beliefs), but presumptuous nevertheless.

            But the majority of ‘positive atheists’ would agree with you that the god they don’t believe in doesn’t exist. Which is why they don’t believe in ‘him’.

          • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 2:30 pm #

            I shouldn’t make statements like that without explaining myself better. We all hold in our mind, whether we believe in God or not, a mental projection of what God is like (old white man on a throne, etc.) usually inherited from the religious tradition in which we were raised. The non- believer is someone who rejects this mental image or ‘god’ and says ‘he’ (or she or it) doesn’t exist. Of course they are absolutely right, but the next step should be to realize what they don’t believe in never existed in the first place. I submit the real God cannot be not believed in since being infinite and eternal ‘He’ lies beyond our finite comprehension. How is it possible to not believe in something which we cannot comprehend?

          • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 2:35 pm #

            Not sure I succeeded in explaining myself any better…

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 8:18 pm #

            I knew what you meant, sunburst. I was only teasing you.

            I didn’t abandon a faith in an old man with a white beard.

            I do, however, recall imagining, as a very young child, some being entirely covered in eyes that was watching me constantly. I remember horrifying myself by realising it must even be able to see me when the bathroom door was shut!

            Imagine doing that to a child.

  83. Pucker March 31, 2020 at 5:02 pm #

    Woodrow Wilson grew up as a kid in Augusta, Georgia during the US Civil War in straitened circumstances. His dad was a Presbyterian preacher in a town church who would preach about how God and the Bible condoned Slavery. General Sherman did not rape and pillage Augusta allegedly because of some Georgia girl from the area that Sherman was Fuck’n. It appears that a big impetus for the Yankees’ occupation of the South was that they liked screwing Southern girls which they learned during Grant’s prior occupation of Mississippi. Those Southern girls can really Fuck! “Mmmm..,mmmm…mmmm…,”

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  84. Pucker March 31, 2020 at 5:22 pm #

    The Comm…unist Chinese shot JR.

    • Pucker March 31, 2020 at 7:43 pm #

      The Chicoms shot JR.

  85. tucsonspur March 31, 2020 at 5:47 pm #

    “True religion is not fanatical but the quintessence of sanity as it is the gateway to the knowledge and wisdom at large in the universe…” SS

    Is wisdom the Dark Matter, just floating out there at large in the Universe? The gateway to knowledge has been science, not religion. And so, what is ‘true’ religion? The one that executes fewer people in its name? True science, not religion, is the quintessence of sanity.

    As far as the ‘deep mind’ or ‘supra-conscious’ levels go, I think one can argue that it’s more of a spiritual connection here rather than a religious one, although the two can be as one. Something like in “The Tao of Physics”.

    Cantor looked into the Infinite, the Ein Sof.

    Ramanujan’s equations came to him in dreams.

    • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 6:32 pm #

      Yeah, ‘at large in the universe’ does give the impression knowledge and wisdom is floating around in space doesn’t it. Let’s just say there is a whole dimension of cosmic reality beyond our physical senses, as well as our scientific instrumentation, that is contactable only through direct revelation — God or ‘His’ agencies speaking directly to our heart and mind. True religion is the personal religious experience that arises from such direct contact. As I said in earlier post Science deals with the physical or outer reality where phenomena can be observed, measured, and quantified. On the other hand religion deals with the spiritual/moral or inner reality of the individual, and this is something which lies beyond the methodological scope of science.

    • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 6:40 pm #

      As far as not wanting to be I don’t think you would have lived, loved, and struggled this long if you didn’t want to be ( I’m assuming you’re no spring chicken). Those for whom the trials and tribulations of life are more than they wish to bear usually take themselves out of the picture early on. If you were able to stick it out through this vale of tears what comes after will really get you pumped up…

    • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 7:01 pm #

      “Ramanujan’s equations came to him in dreams.” –tucsonspur

      The creative experience and the religious experience are closely related in that they are both ways of acquiring knowledge that lies beyond the current pale of scientific understanding through the medium of the deep self. God ceaselessly speaks to us through our deep self but ‘His’ voice rarely filters up to our conscious mind due to the electrochemical inference of our physicality. However when it does this it results in creative insights and religious experiences…

  86. tucsonspur March 31, 2020 at 6:00 pm #

    Let it be forever written here, at CFN, the completion of Descartes’ famous statement:

    Descartes—- “I think, therefore I am”.

    Tucsonspur—-“I think, therefore I will not be”.

    You heard it here first, wisdom from the Spur.

    • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 7:36 pm #

      Think about Descartes statement

      I think, therefore I Am.

      The statement says cognizance gives existence. Conversely, existence gives cognizance.

      Now remember what Jehovah, Yahweh means,

      I AM.

      When Moses asked the burning bush who He was,

      I AM.

      When Jesus was asked who he was by Pilate, his answer was

      I AM.

      The ultimate cognizance = I AM

      • beantownbill. March 31, 2020 at 8:25 pm #

        I believe God told Moses “I am what I am”, which has a different meaning than “I am”.

        • akmofo March 31, 2020 at 10:51 pm #

          No, Bill, the correct transliteration is “I will be that I will be”

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 6:57 am #

            God isn’t static. God is the flowing electric cosmic energy that powers us and everything in the universe.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 1:49 pm #

            God is Sat Chit Ananda – Existence, Knowledge, Bliss. Or the Platonic, The Good, The True, and the Beautiful.

            But to Akmo, God is just an electrical current or something. No eternal being at all. Or is it that he just doesn’t value that? He wants a God who zap and burn!

        • stelmosfire April 1, 2020 at 10:50 am #

          BTB: God told Moses “I am what I am”

          I always thought Popeye the Sailor man said that. “I yam what I yam and that’s all what I yam!”

          • beantownbill. April 1, 2020 at 11:39 am #

            Popeye is God? I never would have figured that out!

    • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 1:43 am #

      Wow! You are so smart. I think I get it. I probably won’t pick up on the quantum physics as quickly but it is very interesting nonetheless.

      • K-Dog April 1, 2020 at 2:53 am #

        I think, therefore I’m not sure.

        • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 10:13 am #

          LOL and re-read everything I write at least five times and change it seven times before I post :-P.

      • tucsonspur April 1, 2020 at 4:58 am #

        You make me laugh, in a good way SSL. No, I’m not really that smart. Like Humphrey Bogart replies to Carmen in the “Big Sleep” when told he isn’t too tall, ‘I try to be’.

        “You walk down Piccadilly
        With a poppy or a lily
        In your medieval hand-
        And everyone will say
        As you walk your mystic way,

        If this young man expresses himself
        In terms too deep for me,
        Why, what a singularly deep young man
        This deep young man must be.”

        p.s. I’m not young.

        • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 10:22 am #

          Well good! Laughter is medicine you know :-).

      • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 9:17 am #

        I think and therefore I cannot be. –Ekhart Tolle

  87. PeteAtomic March 31, 2020 at 7:01 pm #

    wow, holy cats!

    https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-calls-for-2t-infrastructure-bill-as-phase-4-of-coronavirus-response

    Trump is proposing another $2 Trillion for infrastructure…

    geez

    in “phase 4” relief.. what were the other 3 phases?? lol..

    I guess all the laid off retail workers, bartenders & white collar types will be able to get a job building bridges..

    • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 7:16 pm #

      Better than sitting around the house watching your kids bounce off the walls.

      What better time to shore up our infrastructure than while everyone is held hostage by this virus. Of course investing money in Happy Motoring may not be the way to go but what choice do we have?

      • sunburstsoldier March 31, 2020 at 7:18 pm #

        Trump would have worked with the dems on an infrastructure bill if they hadn’t been so focused on driving him out of office…

        • BackRowHeckler March 31, 2020 at 7:34 pm #

          Yes, and I think he and his administration would have been more attuned to events in Wuhan Province, China in December if Dem impeachment efforts hadn’t been sucking all the air out of the universe. Impeachment so important 3 months ago, who gives a sh#t now. It was a grift and a distraction from day 1, and the results could prove to be disaserous.

          brh

          • JohnAZ March 31, 2020 at 7:37 pm #

            Yup!

          • Majella March 31, 2020 at 9:40 pm #

            Ah…so, Marlin – you’ve found a way to blame the Dems for Covid-19! Nice work…

          • K-Dog April 1, 2020 at 2:49 am #

            No, Majella he is just quoting Trump. A reporter gave Trump the lead and Trump ran with it. Trump is not aware that impeachment distracted him for sure, but he drew lack of focus as a logical conclusion to the unjust and treacherous attack on his person because it suited Trump to do so. His failure must be someone else’s fault. As always.

          • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 8:52 am #

            What failure?

          • Majella April 2, 2020 at 5:56 am #

            BRH; ‘ What failure?’

            Ha. None so blind as…

      • PeteAtomic March 31, 2020 at 8:54 pm #

        “Better than sitting around the house watching your kids bounce off the walls.”

        ha no doubt, that’s what I’m experiencing right now since all the schools are shuttered at the moment

  88. malthuss March 31, 2020 at 9:39 pm #

    Children lost chimney sweeping jobs in Victorian times because of those damned do-gooders.

    /What absurd deflection. Now you are Ms Ad hominem.
    –Appealing to the emotions rather than to logic or reason.

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    • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 6:35 am #

      What an absurd response. You just don’t like logic when you don’t like it. Tough.

      Jobs disappear. Whole sectors disappear. I bet you didn’t cry for the surgeons whose entire specialty disappeared when it was discovered that stomach ulcers were caused by Helicobacter pylori rather than stress and didn’t require surgery any more. I bet brh didn’t cry either. The surgeons would have had to learn another specialty.

      ‘Tis the way of the world.

      And there’s no ad hominem in there. The people who abolished child labour of that sort were admirable.

      • malthuss April 1, 2020 at 9:12 am #

        The people who abolished child labor of that sort were admirable.

        / Harry Browne pointed out that some children must work [or had to] or they would starve. Did that ever occur to you?

        • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 9:34 am #

          Yes it did. Why did you think it wouldn’t? And why did you use that tone?

          A decent society would provide for those children without them having to sweep chimneys. And it eventually did.

          • malthuss April 1, 2020 at 1:43 pm #

            from a charity pitch for $–

            THIRTY MILLION CHILDREN rely on school for food. Responding to the needs of kids during these school closures

        • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 9:39 am #

          Children used to work in factories (in developing countries they still do). They sometimes fell asleep during their 12- or 16-hour day and fell into the machinery.

          The fault lay with the factory owners and the wages they paid the children’s parents. Something worth remembering when viewing beautiful stately homes in the UK. Financed by slavery, then virtual slave labour. Many of the factories were financed by the massive compensation paid to the slave owners when slavery was abolished.

          So, yeah, thought about such things often, thanks.

  89. akmofo March 31, 2020 at 10:46 pm #

    The MSM fired 9000 reporters this year, more than the last 5 years combined. As I always said, moral bankruptcy precedes financial bankruptcy and destruction. The Vatican’s mafia stranglehold on information is dying. It won’t be long before such manufactured propaganda nonsense as was created for the corona virus will no longer be generally believed or tolerated. The Vatican gov mafia is next in line to go down.

    • sophia March 31, 2020 at 11:43 pm #

      But how does that relate to an increase in firing?

      • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 6:52 am #

        Nobody cares for and nobody is watching their propaganda crap.

        • sophia April 1, 2020 at 9:15 am #

          Thank God for that, but why would they have fired so many? I still don’t see your point. You say they are losing their grip. So they’re firing people in frustration?
          By the way, I wish it were true. I see something else, astonishing and upsetting. Those who a few years ago I would have thought poised to see through the propaganda mill that the media has become have been bewitched somehow (I suspect Facebook). They are so rabid with hatred for Trump that they now require their daily feeding of hatred, and the result is that they believe the entire set of nonsense that comes from that feeding source.
          One can see that no matter what Trump does it is wrong. He either acted too soon or too late on corona. Take your pick. He tries to make medical pricing transparency, and the very people who would praise that to the skies if it were coming from anyone else, ignore it completely. And because they can not acknowledge anything good that comes from him, they are in a position of having to denounce as awful the very things they want and believe in. They have morphed into war hawks. Thus this new world order coup that is taking place before their eyes, they support it completely.

          • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 9:29 am #

            I still cannot figure out the real source of all this rage and hatred channeled at Trump. He has certainly done nothing to warrant such extremes of dislike. It’s as if he were a lightning rod for some kind of mass psychosis…

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 9:36 am #

            So they’re firing people in frustration?
            ==

            They’re being fired because they’re not economically viable. People aren’t watching and aren’t buying the crap being advertised.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 9:47 am #

            “Thank God for that, but why would they have fired so many? ”

            Journalists and reporters have been hugely reduced in number principally because the advertising that helped pay their wages moved online.

            And people expect information for nothing these days too. Hence the newspapers often only ask nicely if you’d like to contribute to their online edition. Or offer a very cheap subscription and allow casual readers half a dozen free articles a month first to entice them in.

            Or, in the case of the Daily Wail (Mail Online), they provide a Tits and Arse sidebar. Gotta attract the punters (and therefore the advertising) somehow.

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 10:01 am #

            Their online ventures are failing just as spectacularly. They lost all credibility. They are finished. People in Israel are defying the curfews and neither the police or the army which was called in care to do anything about it. This staged nonsense is finished. Netanyahu better wise up or he’s done as well. It about credibility, and these fsckers have ZERO.

          • sophia April 1, 2020 at 10:23 am #

            Sunburst,

            I have been giving this matter a lot of thought. The gist of it is in a post I just made. I saw a review of a book by a Harvard professor who talks of the techniques that have been developed to surveil and influence us. New cars are full of cameras and most computers have hidden microphones. It is very smooth and invisible. It is a propaganda and brainwashing campaign. The result is that people under its spell change their way of reacting to any sort of information. They find ways to discount and not read or listen unless it is within the approved bubble. As for Trump, read my other post. It becomes an all-or-nothing package, and hatred of Trump is at its core. From this core, they are controlled.

          • Nightowl April 2, 2020 at 4:41 am #

            The endless propaganda. Oh how it makes me laugh.

            Feel bad for Trump though, as he actually has to deal with the mouthbreathers who push and believe this stuff 24/7.

    • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 2:25 am #

      So you basically are ultra-orthodox. Do you sport those long sidelocks?

      • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 6:53 am #

        You have shit for brains.

        • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 9:11 am #

          You lose credibility when you make these kind of personal attacks. It demonstrates a good deal of immaturity…

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 9:23 am #

            Truth never loses credibility.

          • elysianfield April 1, 2020 at 11:21 am #

            “Truth never loses credibility.”

            Mofo,
            Well, when the message loses respect, it loses credibility, and the truth goes unheard. In this, I am afraid, you are a serial offender.

            As a mental exercise, try to post for just one week without rancor, ad hominems or uncontrolled passion.

            Hard work.

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 11:55 am #

            Oh, Ely, if I did as you wish I would lose respect for myself.

            If you want a cold blooded ass licking hisser hire a german whore. They’re real pros at that. They’ll lick your ass all day and then sodomize you behind your back. And you know very well what I say is true. True as the sky is blue.

        • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 10:10 am #

          Why are you so mad at me? I was only asking a real question. I truly am curious if you are ultra-orthodox and wear the long sidelocks. I thought about it because I was reading an article about Israel having difficulty getting the ultra-orthodox communities to not congregate together in large groups in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus. And I noticed that the ultra-orthodox men all wear the sidelocks. I think you are just being trigger happy.

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 10:49 am #

            Do you have tattoos on your ass?

          • elysianfield April 1, 2020 at 11:23 am #

            “Do you have tattoos on your ass?”

            (sigh)

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 12:26 pm #

            Why the “sigh”, Ely?

            Hey, if I have to reveal my peyois, she should reveal the sailor’s tattoos on her fat ass. Why the double standards, Ely?

          • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 2:15 pm #

            Wow that is exactly what I thought and what I wanted. So basically you are ok to show your sidelocks which are on your head and can be easily seen by anyone anyway. Yet, you want me to take my clothes off to show you a tattoo I don’t have (and I’m not fat btw and I work hard to maintain myself so I don’t appreciate it) and then on top of that I see your fantasy above and I am truly shocked. You sick puppy! I’m your veterinarian and I am trying to give you some medicine and you bite me. You are simply untenable right now so back in the cage you go!

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 3:32 pm #

            Damn, you truly are dense as wood. Though you don’t fool me, I know you have a tattoo on your ass, you all do. That’s how you score your sailors.

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 10:28 am #

        Alba,

        It isn’t that I expect information for free. I would be willing to pay a small amount. A problem is that I go to a new site, I want to read maybe a linked article, but I am along, long way from knowing whether I want to be a regular reader. But they bombard me with a request to pay before I have even perused more than a paragraph. If it were a simple matter of paying 50 cents to read it, I would be more than willing. But to get out a credit card and splatter that info over the net to pay 50 cents one time is just too cumbersome.

        • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 11:05 am #

          I didn’t mean you, sophia – I meant people in general. There is an expectation, since the advent of the Internet, that information kind of belongs to everyone and no-one should have to pay for it.

          This site and sites like it are an exception, and even then payment is not obligatory but left to the individual (as with the Graun!).

          • sophia April 1, 2020 at 11:23 am #

            Alba,

            Yeah, I know you didn’t mean me, but I was explaining my issues with payment because I feel like I should be willing to pay little bits for different things I read. I do appreciate quality writing and I want there to be those who make a living at it.
            And sometimes on a blog someone makes a point and gives a link, but it is behind a paywall. This is annoying and disruptive, because what is the point of sharing info if people can’t read it? Am I going to take on a subscription every time someone who has one wants to use it to bolster their point? I would pay to have a look at the article, but not take on a subscription because someone has given a link. So this is a problem that needs some solution.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 12:55 pm #

            I agree – and the ones that I think have found a reasonable solution are the sites where you can read maybe four articles a month without paying (e.g. the New Yorker – good value there too because the articles are so long!).

            I find it annoying too when you can only read the first paragraph of an article that someone has linked to.

            On here, of course, I sometimes click on links where someone then apologises to me because their content is ‘not currently available in your region’!
            .

          • Nightowl April 2, 2020 at 4:44 am #

            Most of the stuff behind a paywall comes from sources that have verifiably lied to you more times than you can even keep track of at this point.

            So why would it be annoying that an article is behind a paywall? Perhaps you should be thankful that it is, and reassess why you even clicked on it.

          • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 6:54 am #

            The last time that happened to me, Nightowl, was when I was looking at an article on the effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine in the treatment of Covid19. It was in Medscape. I’m not aware of them having lied to me before, since you have to be a doctor to sign into their site, as far as I could see.

            You are obsessed, Nightowl. And sometimes it makes you less than reasonable.

          • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 6:56 am #

            Nightowl

            This is the article I referred to below on Oxycontin:

            https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/30/the-family-that-built-an-empire-of-pain

            It’s in a mainstream publication. It’s quite a long read, but if you can fault the investigative journalism, be my guest. It clearly wasn’t written off the cuff.

            As you once pointed out yourself, it’s not what you read, but how you read it. I agree with that.

          • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 10:05 am #

            “Perhaps you should be thankful that it is, and reassess why you even clicked on it.”

            And perhaps you should occasionally climb out of your own most estimable arse. With All Due Respect. Somewhere back in your childhood, if you can even recall it, there must have been a tiny, if half-remembered encounter with Humility or its friend Modesty. But perhaps not, in which case, my commiserations.

          • Nightowl April 2, 2020 at 5:19 pm #

            Well, Green, all I can tell you is that many years ago, I realized that the MSM deals largely in bullshit. The corporate press exists to make money for their paymasters, and thus they sell narratives where the most critical social, cultural, economic, and diplmatic issues are concerned.

            Were it only the occasional piece of verifiable shoddy journalism, I could overlook it. But at this point, in the past 6 to 7 years, I can no longer even recall all of the verifiable lies pushed across the MSM. In the last 3 alone, I could name 10 off the top of my head without even pausing to think.

            At some juncture, anything worthwhile that these ghouls might engage in is beside the point.

            You are free to consume it, but I have better things to do with my time. The money is there for quality journalism at many outlets, but balanced journalism is nearly dead, and has been replaced with accountability journalism.

            That last bit is straight from the Mouth of AP, too. Which of all of these outlets, should unquestionably be neutral and fact based in its reporting.

            http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/257410

          • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 8:18 pm #

            So you didn’t read the article on Oxycontin and list your gripes with the standard of investigative journalism?

            What a surprise.

          • Nightowl April 3, 2020 at 5:50 am #

            I have no interest in the subject.

        • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 11:12 am #

          And it’s been a shame for some of the quality newspapers (there are actually things in some newspapers worth reading) because they have been unable to pay for quality journalism (again, there is some) to the same extent. So they fill the pages with more claptrap.

          I’ve been renewing a subscription for The New Yorker for years for my husband as his Christmas present, because he asked for it and appreciates it. They have some excellent articles (especially on medical matters, for some reason) – the one on the Sacklers and Oxycontin was admirable. A piece of excellent, thoroughly researched investigative journalism, and in the Mainstream Media no less.

  90. daytrip March 31, 2020 at 11:14 pm #

    I like the analogy of the Divine Tide, with the tidal pools being religions – the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon. Zen

    Also, Christopher Marlowe wrote Shakespeare.

    • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 2:29 am #

      Not only did I like it. I loved it.

  91. BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 12:27 am #

    thousands of laptops were passed out to school age kids in Hartford last week … its the learn at home method of education for urban scholars, haha, on any given day only about 40% show up for school in the best of times. The computers are being sold and traded away … for 40 ozers and weed. But the lads are active in other ways too, 27 cars stolen last night alone in these suburbs. In New Haven a 16 yo kid shot, another kid stabbed … its 38dF out, wait till it gets hot! The fun is just starting! Shelter in place, f##k dat sh#t!!! Unregisterd motorcycles racing up and down the streets of New Haven, terrorizing the public and unhindered by the police … wow, we’re only a few weeks in, civilization is already unravelling, 400 years down the drain, it didn’t take long …

    brh

    • malthuss April 1, 2020 at 9:13 am #

      What you do not mention is the race or races of the grifters and criminals.

      • elysianfield April 1, 2020 at 11:26 am #

        What you do not mention is the race or races of the grifters and criminals.”

        Malthuss,
        You seek an answer to the obvious….

        • malthuss April 1, 2020 at 1:46 pm #

          THIRTY MILLION CHILDREN rely on school for food. Responding to the needs of kids during these school closures

  92. K-Dog April 1, 2020 at 3:03 am #

    Knowing what I know now. My first comment typed into a comment box so long ago. Would I have made it knowing that it was Pandora’s comment box into which I typed? Perhaps it is in my nature and I could not have said no to myself. But knowing then what I know now, that all this is only tears in rain perhaps I could have found the strength to move on.

    • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 6:36 am #

      Are you saying all the time you have invested on this site was not well-spent?

      • K-Dog April 1, 2020 at 11:55 am #

        That is a hard one to answer sunburstsoldier. From a personal view it improved my ability to write and communicate in general. It helped me develop intellectually. There are diamonds in the rough here despite this statement causing many to snort their coffee.

        This website let me know I belong in a world where my personal feeling of inadequacy were totally unfounded. Turns out I’m Helmholtz not Bernard and I have indeed had my island here. (That is a Brave New World Reference) I have had a personal awakening from events in real life after the reality of this blog spilled over into my real life. Then I learned about government toys firsthand; a painful truth. I felt like I was in the movie ‘The Game’ but it was my real life. The only way I would have ever got that ticket to ride was by being here, this is true. But I would have rather just have learned the knowledge without the experience.

        When I add it up I see it has been of benefit to me overall for in pain there is growth if it is mixed with courage and I have done that. Where then is my angst? The answer must be that I wanted more. Somehow for this all to matter in the big picture. Something bigger than myself.

        • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 2:00 pm #

          That’s likely something we all hunger for…

  93. Cargill April 1, 2020 at 3:05 am #

    Now imagine you have the stupendous good fortune to survive a Covid-19 infection after 21 days on a ventilator and go home. What is that billing statement going to look like? Will the survivors wish they’d never made out of the hospital alive?

    I haven’t seen much saying that COVID-19 patients – either those who recover and those who do not – are being gouged huge amounts. Is there any of this happening?

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    • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 9:14 am #

      Article in today’s local paper states hospitals in Ct have lost an estimated $500 million during the month of March … mostly due to deferred surgeries and other treatment. Believe it or not large parts of hospitals, entire wards have been shut … and people laid off.

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 9:20 am #

        These sorts of things are truly bizarre. Denying medical care to those in need to sit idle waiting for possible illness that does not yet exist.

      • stelmosfire April 1, 2020 at 10:55 am #

        Hey Backrow, I had a doctors appointment scheduled for today. Doctor called me yesterday and said not to come in. He told me to sign up for ZOOM and that he would do the exam digitally. True story hahahha

        • elysianfield April 1, 2020 at 11:28 am #

          ” He told me to sign up for ZOOM and that he would do the exam digitally…”

          Saint,
          Apparently your doctor has a sense of humor.

    • readfreak April 1, 2020 at 5:21 pm #

      If you spend 21 days on a ventilator, chances you will not make it. If you do make it you can expect to have a lot of organ damage and will probably not live another 6 months.

      • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 7:00 am #

        So, to counter the complaints that some deaths credited to Covid19 are not caused by Covid19 in isolation, it may also be true that future deaths due to Covid19 (but delayed) may not be credited to Covid19, but perhaps to ‘organ failure’.

    • Majella April 1, 2020 at 9:46 pm #

      Billing for March will be out by the 10th April.

  94. Cargill April 1, 2020 at 3:11 am #

    That the folks in charge of things gave trillions of dollars to Wall Street while tens or perhaps hundreds of thousands of Covid-19 survivors got wiped out financially with gargantuan medical bills.

    Nancy Pelosi and her side fell for a huge trick. They compromised (and basically conceded on the first package, that gives trillions to the Republican ruling class) and now she will be stymied in the Senate – there is no way they’re going to honour any commitments to now help the working class.

    The Republicans are evil and ruthless – 3 November cannot come quick enough to toss these scabs out. I just hope the Democrats are not too nice, and try to play fair. They’ll get the Lucy-football treatment again.

    • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 8:47 am #

      Biden’s just the man to lead the Dems to victory hahaha.

      He’s holed up in his basement, making a few embarrassing public appearances via a cheesy video hookup. Meanwhile, the rape accusations are flying thick and fast.

      Brh

      • Cargill April 1, 2020 at 9:37 pm #

        Meanwhile, the rape accusations are flying thick and fast.

        Yes … he’s not my idea of a Knight in Shining Armour – Democratic Party wise.

  95. tucsonspur April 1, 2020 at 4:25 am #

    Re the “God Particle’ above:

    They wanted to call it the Goddamn particle because it was so elusive and so troublesome. The particle was the Higgs boson. Now, regarding knee jerk detractors with limited knowledge in these areas, perhaps we can call them the Higgs bozos.

    It was called the ‘God Particle’ because of its deep connection to the nature of matter. To answer John’s question, it came from just that, the nature of matter. The term God was used only in the figurative sense, of course. Jeez.

    It was discovered about ten years after the book came out.

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

      About 20 years.

  96. Cargill April 1, 2020 at 5:46 am #

    Meantime, of course, the global economy has shut down which suggests to me, anyway, that any prior frame of reference you may have had about money and business and social normality goes out the window.

    The owners of all the wealth, and the holders of all the power, aren’t going to give it up very easily. I expect there will be a mighty concerted effort by capital (backed by government, the law, and the international institutions of influence) to return to BAU as soon as possible.

    And I think “the people” will go along with it – they have a huge stake in a return to something like normal times … there won’t be an appetite for revolution, reform, or re-set. I expect most people will be most concerned about a job, and social stability.

    Reconsider how we inhabit the landscape. Do you think $20-a-barrel oil is a boon to the Happy Motoring way-of-life? It’s going to at least bankrupt most of the companies producing shale oil, and that’s where way-more than half of our production came from in recent years.

    I expect the US will buy its way out of this, and get its oil from places off-shore – the domestic shale-oil industry was a short-term chimera anyway.

    The big cities will not recover from the trauma and stigma of the virus, but that is only the beginning their problems.

    Why can’t they? It’s a medical crisis, not an earthquake, bombing, or nuclear accident. As soon as it’s safe to do so, I expect cities and markets will bounce back with alacrity and pretty quickly. Industries like travel will take a longer time, but not forever.

    What, exactly, will the suffering poor of the ghettos do, under orders to remain cooped-up until the end of April? These are people who are unlikely to have laid in supplies ahead of time, and a month from now they are sure to be very hungry.

    Even if the White House does nothing – and cares even less – states and cities will have to look after the urban poor … they will have no choice. They won’t tolerate food riots and social disorder in WalMart.

    How will the big cities be able to manage their infrastructures with municipal bonds massively failing? How will they provide social services when tax revenues are down to a trickle? The answer is, they won’t manage any of this. They grew too big and too complex. Now they have to get smaller, and the process will not be pretty.

    It might not be pretty, but America is big enough and rich enough to address such issues, including the use of defence forces and that national guard.

    What will the business of America be after Covid-19? If we’re lucky, it will be growing food and working at many of the activities that support it: moving it, storing it, selling it, making an order of smaller-scaled farm machinery, including machines that can be used with horses and oxen, breeding the animals. I’m not kidding.

    I think this is fanciful, even though some of it might be desirable. But the reality is that it doesn’t take thousands of farm workers to feed thousands of people … and this has been the case for 10,000 years in one place or another.

    Growing food happens in the countryside, where the fields and pastures are. There are towns there, too, associated with the farming, where much of the business of farming and the activities that support it transact. I believe we’ll see impressive demographic movements of people to these places.

    I have serious doubts about this … country folk (in towns under say 50,000, with a significant agricultural base to their economy) are not going to welcome hoards (or even a trickle) of city people moving in, causing disruption, and basically being a burden rather than genuine assets.

    There are opportunities in all that, a plausible future. The scale of agriculture will have to change downward, too. AgriBiz, with its giant “inputs” of chemicals and borrowed money, is not going to make it. Farms have to get smaller too, and more people will have to work on them. Farewell to the age of the taco chip!

    I don’t really know enough about this, but it seems to me that big agriculture might even get a boost, because it will be more urgent to produce food as ‘efficiently’ as possible. I expect bucolic small-scale farming will only be a viable option for a pretty small rural elite – and not widespread.

    If we want to get around this big country of ours, and move food from one place to another, we better think about fixing the railroads.

    Couldn’t agree more – trains are great – but the last mile or five is always the problem.

    Then there is the question of how do we behave?

    It would be great to think that the pandemic (and our altered social conditions, however long they last) might make us better people, and make us think about what’s really important. Personally I don’t mind 80% of the shops being closed – too many of them sell far too much pointless stuff anyway.

    This will be a different country.

    With a bit of luck, but in a nice way! My concern is that the pressure to “get back to normal” will prove close to irresistible.

    • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 6:04 am #

      Impressive critique Cargill. Very level-headed and well-considered.

      • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 6:14 am #

        It will probably take a lot more than this virus to upend things permanently. We all want a better world but waiting for the Long Emergency to impose it upon us might not be the way to go…

        • elysianfield April 1, 2020 at 11:35 am #

          “It will probably take a lot more than this virus to upend things permanently”

          SBS,
          I disagree. It will be “reality”, amply offered by the pandemic, that will upend things permanently.

          Think of the off-shoring of manufacturing.

          Think of off-shoring that critical to our infrastructure.

          Think of the rending of the social contract.

    • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 6:23 am #

      Is it possible, as Ekhart Tolle teaches, that a spiritual awakening (permanent shift to higher consciousness) must precede real, positive change in our outward circumstances?

      • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 6:39 am #

        But how will such an awakening occur other than through the intense pressure created by suffering?

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 9:31 am #

        I do think that is possible.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 1:34 pm #

        “Souls are not saved in bundles” – Emerson, upon quitting the ministry. Each lonely soul approaches the Alone by itself, shorn of friends what to speak of congregations. How else can he meet the Friend? Unless he has a Guru perhaps who can lead him by the hand and is the Friend embodied.

        The New Age is false. Things are getting worse and are going to be getting worse. Things are darkest before they get really dark. Christianity alone says this? Alas, friend Sunny, No. All the Traditions say this.

  97. Pucker April 1, 2020 at 6:52 am #

    The CDC lying about the importance of wearing face masks to slow the Covid 19 virus was a bit weird. The society is pathologically dishonest. Very dark and foreboding….Miasma

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IPE3WcmiBdk

    • Cargill April 1, 2020 at 11:02 am #

      The CDC lying about the importance of wearing face masks to slow the Covid 19 virus was a bit weird.

      But understandable … to suggest masks were warranted for everyone would have led to mass purchases, hoarding, and denying frontline staff and others who really need them.

      Austria and Germany have postponed regulations requiring masks – because of lack of supply.

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 11:25 am #

        Tucker Carlson’s point was they shouldn’t have lied. It will lose them credibility when they need it next.

        • Cargill April 1, 2020 at 12:40 pm #

          I get all my moral compass from Tucker Carlson.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 1:36 pm #

            Ha, ha funny man. As Bertrand Russell said, Somehow people came to believe that a joke was a philosophical argument. You have no answer. You lose.

          • Nightowl April 2, 2020 at 2:42 pm #

            Really? I figured it was David Brock.

  98. sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 7:09 am #

    I believe if republicans and democrats, believers and non-believers could all sit down at a table and talk about what a better world would be like they would find themselves pretty much in agreement on the basics. So why don’t we ever sit down? Why do we insist on focusing on our differences?

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    • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 9:05 am #

      Nobody will be sitting around the table, SBS, unless there’s a high stakes poker game going on, playing with a stacked deck, a crooked dealer, and irascible participants with a Colt revolvers strapped on their hips and Remington Derringers tucked in their vest …

      Winner take all!

      Brh

      • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 9:13 am #

        Well as you know the table is a metaphor. Are you saying human nature is irredeemable?

        • sophia April 1, 2020 at 9:43 am #

          No, the poker game is a metaphor too. He’s saying they are not honest and decent people with good intentions. See my other comment.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 2:06 pm #

          A swallow is not a summer, Sunny. Policy must be made in reference to the average sinner, not the very few saints. One must ask something of him, but not too much. Too much is sometimes worse than too little.

      • elysianfield April 1, 2020 at 11:38 am #

        “Remington Derringers”

        BRH,
        Owned a few of them over the years. Are you aware that the classic over/under model was a 41 Caliber rimfire?

        • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 12:35 pm #

          Yes, and Bond Arms in Texas is making very similar pieces, but not in ,41 rimfire of course (which is obsolete)

          Bond derringers are pricey, but I’ve noticed they are marketing a less expensive version, just as good but not as highly finished.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 2:04 pm #

            Outside of New England, pricey becomes spendy. What are the boundaries of “pricey”? East Coast? Midwest?

            Ever walk Chicago’s Miracle Mile? Just over the river the swarthy savages swarm, massing for an attack on the Citadels. How did it come to this, Gamling? What madness possessed Whites to bring them into our Cities, when before they dwelled subjugated and at peace in the rural South?

            The Enemy used our Christian Conscience against us, did he not?

    • sophia April 1, 2020 at 9:42 am #

      I think our government passed a tipping point some years ago, in favor of psychopaths.

      • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 9:56 am #

        I should have clarified my original statement. When I spoke of republicans and democrats I didn’t mean politicians who have their noses in a feed bag but just regular citizens who identify with one party or the other…

    • daytrip April 1, 2020 at 9:47 am #

      There was one of these a few years ago. Elites like Bill Gates, etc., maybe even Oprah, can’t remember. But I do remember their conclusion: too many people.

      • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 10:00 am #

        That was their conclusion? Not much help there…

    • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 1:41 pm #

      Huh? The Democrats are Communists now who would love to put us in gulags. The FBI infiltrated the Weathermen and Bill Ayers said that 25 million White Americans will have to go and not come back.

      Life is War, Sunny. It’s gets cloudy down here. Remember the Sun (Christ/Krishna) and FIGHT. That’s the message of Bhagavad Gita. Why should Good lose to Evil?

      That’s why they hate Trump: they mistakenly think he is for the White Race. Their hatred for him is their hatred for us since he is a symbol of us to them.

  99. Pucker April 1, 2020 at 11:35 am #

    Based upon internal sources, it looks like the Covid 19 virus is flaring up again in China requiring even more vigorous containment measures by the Chinese government. The enemy is too strong. Hunker down like in the Tom Cruise remake of the movie “War of the Worlds”.

  100. BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 11:40 am #

    Its April Fools Day, but I’m thinking nobody’s in the mood for any pranks.

    On the contrary, the theological discussion upthread indicates to me we are in a serious predicament, a serious predicament indeed.

    Brh

    • K-Dog April 1, 2020 at 12:00 pm #

      I think you are right. It is April and we are stuck with fools. We wish it was a prank. But it is a predicament which for some of us will be deadly.

      • capt spaulding April 1, 2020 at 1:46 pm #

        For the first time I realized today, that the core group of Trump supporters has basically devolved into a cult. Having watched all of his broadcasts up to this point, and then watching him disavow what he said the day before, if it was unfavorable, and then reading what his supporters here say in support of him, is very unsettling. I now understand how Jim Jones was able to get his followers to drink the koolaid.

        It has now gotten to the point where he can deny what he said, even with videotape proof of it, and his followers swallow it hook, line, and sinker, when all they would have to do is go back and view what he said. This ability to deny reality has apparently existed here all along. All it needed was someone to focus it.

        The first sign of the craziness was when he was campaigning, and doing and saying things that in normal times would have gotten anyone else in trouble and out of the race. I always think back to when all it took was a strangled yelp from Howard Dean, and he was all done. Contrast that with Trump’s mocking parody of the disabled reporter, remember that ? Which didn’t slow him down with the believers one bit.

        The history of how this has happened in other countries has been made plain and clear to me, along with the understanding that it is now happening here, which I never would believed before. Apparently the mistakes he made before the coronavirus, such as disbanding the commission set up to deal with pandemics, are completely glossed over by the true believers, along with all the rest of the things he’s done.

        At this point, I can no longer trust the things I once believed to be true about this country, and I truly fear what might come to happen. The idea of rationality and reasonableness and common sense, have been tossed out. It’s not just the coronavirus that should be feared, but the new political atmosphere that seems to be taking hold here as well. I’m afraid that I’m seeing the future of our country, and it does not bode well. I’ll sit back now, and let the cultists have their say.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 2:00 pm #

          Cuomo has pierced nipples. Funny man makes a joke. You say so what?

          It means he’s into other wierdnesses. Unelectable even if not unfit to command.

          https://nypost.com/2020/03/31/andrew-cuomos-nipples-take-our-minds-off-coronavirus/

        • sophia April 1, 2020 at 2:38 pm #

          Well Captain, it goes the other way too. The Trump haters have become a cult. I explained it elsewhere, up or down thread. The Trump haters are so locked in that they are under complete control. They turn hippies into warhawks or whatever they like. all they have to do is say Tump.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 2:42 pm #

            Yes. The believers and the anti-believers or atrumpists.

            Atheism is the State Religion, something poor Alba can’t understand or refuses to.

          • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 3:16 pm #

            I don’t care about your president. He doesn’t appeal to me as a human being, but what you all think of him, one way or the other, is up to you. I permitted myself a rare comment here and there occasionally, usually in combination with a similar comment about Boris Johnson. That’s it.

            Janos, there is no ‘state religion’ in the UK. The nearest you’ll get is the Church of England, which is the legally established church in England. There is no atheist ‘state religion’. The state is and should be secular, not atheist. In its functioning, it’s not entirely secular, in reality, because the House of Lords includes a number of Church of England Prelates and the monarch is the nominally the head of the Church of England. But their function, is, thankfully, marginal to the work of the main legislature. Which is just as well, since they’re not elected.

            The ‘Lords Spiritual’ who sit in the House of Lords are 26 Bishops of the Church of England. That does not include any additional bishops who have seats due to rights of peerage.

            There are no ‘Lords Atheistic’ or indeed any ‘Atheist Party’ in the House of Commons.

            That’s because when it comes to religion, people mostly mind their own business, although many are aware that Rees-Mogg and Blair are Catholics, for example. For most of them, why would you know and why would you want to know? It’s none of your business any more than your beliefs or mine are any of theirs.

            You are obsessed. It’s not healthy.

          • capt spaulding April 1, 2020 at 4:02 pm #

            Well sophia, I don’t hate Trump, I’m afraid of him, and what he represents. I suspect that a lot of the people you call haters simply don’t believe what he says. From my own reading and viewing, as far as I can tell, he denied the corona virus from about Jan 22 to about Mar 15, even going so far at one point as to call it a “hoax”, although he denied that later on too. The things he says and then later denies, are glossed over by his supporters if not completely ignored. As near as I can tell, this country is ripe for a right wing takeover. Given his history, it wouldn’t surprise one bit if he lost the election, he would refuse to accept the result. He said as much before the last election, but his supporters have since decried that as just more fake news. From this point on, nothing he does or says will surprise me.

        • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 2:44 pm #

          Trump was elected by a group of people that had lost faith in theBS of the Deep State. The Deep State under Bush and Obama had shipped most of the manufacturing jobs out of the country for cost and climate reasons. The American public responded by in filling with service sector jobs that do not pay squat. We became a paycheck to paycheck country.

          This virus hits us right in the wrong place. Our GNP is wrapped up in the Service sector. And the target of the virus is the service sector. The virus is going to take out what is left of the economy if it lasts long enough. When the presses can no longer produce the liquidity needed to keep things afloat, the temple falls.

          Trump is a knee jerk reaction by the people against the Elite of DC. He is not enough of a schmoozer, someone who is smooth enough to change the PTB, to have made the atmosphere change in DC. He got a small amount of regeneration of manufacturing started. If HRC had continued making us a service sector weakling, this virus would be even worse.

          It is anyone’s guess what will happen in November. If this scourge does not abate, it will make no difference. Maybe a dose of Biden will give us all the dementia we need to just forget about it all.

          Whoever gets the nod better have an idea of how to reconstruct what is left. Right now, the Deep State is incapable.

          • capt spaulding April 1, 2020 at 4:43 pm #

            The manufacturing jobs moved to China because China developed the ability to manufacture, and did it cheaper than we could. I always figured that when the third world learned how to manufacture, we’d be screwed. Turned out I was right.

          • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 8:44 pm #

            That’s exactly what happened, Captain.

            Altho I would question the quality of some Chinese products, especially the steel they export.

            Brh

          • Linda April 2, 2020 at 11:33 am #

            Actually John, the jobs were shipped overseas by Clinton via NAFTA, GATT, WTO. Neither Bush nor Obama stopped it as they are all globalists. Bush One was really into the new world order and Clinton jumped onboard his bandwagon. Which is why we are here. Also Clinton’s repeal of Glass-Steagall was really repugnant, but then Clinton was owned by the banks. Later, right before he left office he did another horrific bill: The Commodity Futures Marketing Act of 2000. He really sold out our country. We were fortunate Hillary didn’t win this last time. Heaven knows what she would have had in store for us.

        • Nightowl April 2, 2020 at 4:52 am #

          Captain, any updates for us on Russian Collusion, or the coming White Ethnostate?

          Inquiring minds want to know.

          You promised us so much.

          • capt spaulding April 2, 2020 at 10:10 am #

            Check in with Fox news, they’re fair and balanced, and maybe the National Enquirer, that should wrap it up tight fer ya.

          • Nightowl April 2, 2020 at 2:40 pm #

            Why would I check with two Fake Nooz outlets? I want the latest info. direct from the source.

            Ducking out on us again?

            Quack.

    • daytrip April 1, 2020 at 12:09 pm #

      Haha. Good point. We are thrown into this world, indeed (Heidigger via Jim Morrison) But, I’d relax a bit. There’s been a lot of time made available lately for contemplation. Maybe that explains some of it.

    • malthuss April 1, 2020 at 1:42 pm #

      Some group looking for donations posted–

      THIRTY MILLION CHILDREN rely on school for food.
      Responding to the needs of kids during these school closures….

      I m like YIKES, how many more parasites can be brought into USA?

      • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 2:37 pm #

        Oh yes. In Hartford and New Haven, all 3 daily meals, plus snacks, provided by the city thru the school systems. In the summer ‘feeding stations’ are set up to make sure kids get fed. Donations are routinely solicited, and truth be told I have contributed; nobody wants to see a little one go hungry.

        It’s a simple fact mothers in our urban areas will not, cannot, and are not expected to, feed their children. Its strictly a job for the State, no questions asked. Where all the food stamp money goes is a good question. A few years back a retired judge studied foodstamp use in Hartford and determined it was the currency of the underground ghetto economy, used to purchase all types of contraband and fund illegal activity. That report was quickly denounced and squelched, as you might expect.

        Brh

        • sophia April 1, 2020 at 2:40 pm #

          I disagree. Maybe some mothers. But this is away to feed the captives junk food. It’s a real shame.

          • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 2:46 pm #

            I think they try to get good food to the kids, Sophia. I know Board of Ed in Hartford anyway employs a nutritionist. Probably New Haven, too.

            They’ve tried community gardens down there, with varying degrees of success. Lot of vandalism, people lose interest about half way thru the season.

          • Majella April 1, 2020 at 9:54 pm #

            BRH:

            “…anyway employs a nutritionist.”

            A few years back Jamie Oliver ran a TV show that sought to get the crappy food out of school lunches. I vividly recall one American school where the nutritionist counted french fires as a ‘vegetable’ and ‘pizza’ as being a balanced diet of cheese & tomato.

      • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 2:42 pm #

        His name was Judge Spada, now deceased.

        A brave and honorable man.

        Brh

      • Cargill April 1, 2020 at 4:32 pm #

        I m like YIKES, how many more parasites can be brought into USA?

        Any evidence that a lot of this 30 million are the children of recent arrivals? They might have been here for generations.

        I think it’s a complete scandal that 30 million kids in a rich country have to rely on schools for food … I trust it isn’t all slack parenting.

    • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 6:40 pm #

      I’ve already been pranked twice: once by my wife and once by my grandson…

      • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 7:17 pm #

        Nice. I love a good prank, both as prankee and prankster.

  101. sophia April 1, 2020 at 12:00 pm #

    SoftStarLight
    April 1, 2020 at 10:35 am #

    “Sophia, anti-demon is a term I made up for that comment but I was just insinuating that, at least according to many accounts, demons appear to be attracted to good people or beings. Most likely because they want to test and torment them. Likewise, if you believe such things, the Devil and his minions don’t really need to spend much time working on the wicked because they are already, intentionally or unintentionally on the same side the demons are on. ”

    Oh, no, no no. It is quite the opposite my friend. Birds of a feather flock together. The fall of man was a spiritual fall. In practical terms, it means humans became lower in their “density” to use a new-age term you probably won’t like. If you have a lot of water (like a Noah’s flood!) it will eventually settle into those striated patterns because the different sediments have different weights. Criminals find one another. Humans are vulnerable or not to demons, not based so much on some imagined demonic desire, but based on opportunity. The demons are much like microbes. They are an opportunistic infection. They infest the vulnerable. It’s unfortunate, but those who have been traumatized, sexually assaulted, are mentally ill or addicted to harmful substances are weakened in the psyche and become easy marks. But humans in general are often subject to them, as predators, because they are not uplifted enough. Whatever the demons might like to do with the saints, the saints are largely invulnerable. It is much like having a strong immune system. But the infestation is through the mind. They use fear of course, and teach and taught people all sorts of demonic crap and then the people think it came from God.

    And if the devils let go of the weak they would recover much quicker. They don’t let them go anymore than a fungus lets go of its meal. Satan is the god of this world because we humans saw things in a lower realm and responded to it. That’s what a spiritual fall is.

    “But I am not exactly sure what you mean by most Christians not understanding the difference between good and evil. It seems like all people inherently know the difference between good and evil. But most people get thrown off course by all the gray areas in life. I believe that is where the tests truly are but that is just me.”

    Very nice paragraph. I like each sentence. Yes, we inherently know good and evil. Indeed, I could list some adjectives and you will have no trouble categorizing them. Forgiving. Loving. Compassionate, Just. Angry. Vengeful. Punishing. Unjust.
    So my problem is this. Christianity (in general) teaches about a God who is angry, vengeful, punishes without letup, and never did or will forgive humans. No, he required a human sacrifice! And people wax quite emotional at the beauty of the human sacrifice that they adore. I once picked up a book on a woman’s bedside table to see what she was reading. It was by Billy Graham. And I saw this sentence: God demanded a death.
    Jesus taught forgiveness, and of a God who forgives. My argument is not with him. But his followers came up with convoluted teachings about God needing a death to avenge Adam’s sin. Look, if God required a blood sacrifice, he didn’t forgive. If Jesus had to pay our debt, God didn’t forgive, he took payment. Like any banker.
    And people have been sold this ugly story as a beautiful story and now are very attached to it. But our subconscious minds, and our hearts, are not fooled. Thus it keeps us in bondage and makes it much more difficult to discern good from evil. That discernment is a key element to getting released from this prison, and confusing theology that mixes good with evil and throws in a hook, a barb, that prevents the person from seeing clearly – and this prolongs our bondage.

    That is why I all it demonic theology. It achieves its goal. You want me to help simplify? Take this piece of scripture and ponder it relentlessly: God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.

    No darkness means no darkness. Refusing to forgive? Is that of the light? Eternal punishment. Is that really just? Is unjustness of the light?

    People get thrown off by the gray areas of life? So true. But don’t then allow your theology to be one of those confusing, gray areas. God is good. Can you believe that? Can you faithfully hold onto that?

    God is light. God is good.
    It’s a tool, a chisel, from which you can create a perfect diamond.
    But you must be willing do perform some surgery.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 1:49 pm #

      Color is the Crucifixion of Light. Creation means endarkenment since that’s what Creation is.

      How could you have forgotten these basics? Sin isn’t primarily something you do, but it is what you ARE as a created being.

      Yes, there is only the Light, but much toned down. Darkness compared to the Light in Itself. And in that dim light, being deny the Light, in their words, thoughts, and actions. You want to believe in Feminine deity. You have no proof. You even admit men are better in most ways But it’s just something you like for some reason (maybe cuz you’re a woman?) so you go with it. This is darkness.

      God isn’t light. He/She/It is Light. Ditto Good. Your light and good aren’t enough. Don’t conflate them with His.

      • Q. Shtik April 1, 2020 at 2:17 pm #

        OMG, the word salad!

        Or, should I say ‘is it not word salad?’

        • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 2:37 pm #

          Ah your right I guess in a way. It nourished me so I guess it could be a word salad but it makes total sense to me. I guess even though I know I am not the brightest in the bunch I still seem to get it lol. I love how life is so strange there is more than meets the eye all the time. It’s so exciting! I mean you are so smart you should totally get it. But you don’t! Or. You are acting like you don’t.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 2:49 pm #

            Few if any understand me as you do, ever have, or ever will.

            And you are the foremost of any I have ever met when it comes to civility and subtlety in reproof. You have excoriated me without any of these skraelings (screamers or savages) ever knowing it.

          • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 3:58 pm #

            You’re such a lap dog Janos…

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 7:22 pm #

            What a vicious thing to say, Cloudy.

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 2:46 pm #

        Oh, Janos. you are mad at me because you think I backtracked on something and I didn’t remember the conversation. You are wrong anyway. Or I have not had time to fully explain.

        Your words above are mostly on a different level. Yes, sin is who you are – that was sort of my point. The deity is feminine by definition, but the deity has the male and female aspects divided up. There is not and cannot be a superior between male and female. But they are mixed up. You cannot have a deity without female aspects. That was my point. That is what Christianity did. They took away the divine mother even though, if you look at for example Hinduism – every male guru gets and individuated name that extols his particular virtue – but every female guru is a manifestation of the divine mother. Contemplate that.

        Women are utterly, completely different than men. But they have their glory and it is the divine feminine, the divine mother. It is a perversity to call that aspect of the deity which gives birth to the world as male. The male is the Word, the organizational principle. The Intelligent Designer. But that wasn’t good enough for men. They had to usurp the birth giving function. It is a perversity and the world has not recovered.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 2:56 pm #

          The deity is feminine by definition, you say.

          Then you say there cannot be a superior between male and female.

          Which is it? You need more male organization to express your theory of feminine superiority!

          I admit the Feminine Principle is weak in the Abrahamic religions, especially Islam. I was moved to read about Cults of Mary and Fatima in certain places like Morocco which accept this kind of things.

          In the end I like the Chinese word, “Tao” – not gendered at all. But even Lao Tzu opined, “Know the masculine but adhere to the feminine”, so I admit we need more balance. But my point is that women unbalance even worse than men do. Support men and men will take care of women. Support women and men will be left to die on the streets. One sex advances by way of the other, you see. And women did not row back to save their men when the Titanic went down. Which sex is the superior again? I think it is clear.

          There are exceptions, thank Goddess!

          • sophia April 1, 2020 at 7:22 pm #

            Janos,

            You have not understood me. If we have true monotheism as Jews an Muslims do, then we must say that the deity contains the masculine and the feminine. In practice, as you say, the feminine is marginalized.
            Although I once read that Islam says that God’s perfect majesty is his active (masculine) perfection and God’s perfect beauty is his passive (feminine) perfection.
            This is the kind of thing I mean.
            But Christianity has divided the godhead into three. Because of the lack of a feminine, some say the Holy Spirit is the feminine. Me, I don’t think so. I tend to see it as masculine, but perhaps both. Why masculine? Well it is everywhere present – that is penetrative. It is given to bursts of insight and understanding – this is masculine I would say. It is a hot-warm love force. That is masculine. But as to nurturing, comforting, healing – those may be feminine so it is probably both.
            Jesus represents the Word. Words are that which definitely names things and is linear and rational. And the gospel of John says everything made was through the word. As an adherent to some form of Intelligent Design, this is the place for the Word, through which all things were made. There is a difference, you see, between that which is designed (and incredibly so), versus that which is the raw material and the potential out of which the things are formed. You need both.
            It’s interesting to contemplate the formation of a fetus. It starts out with stem cells which have the capacity to become anything. It is only later that cells which have become bone cannot become anything else. I think of the Buddhist void of pure potential. It is a chaos, an unformed void, and much like the feminine, seems a lot less interesting. It nonetheless is the womb of creation. Much like you have entropy versus the organizational force, you must have both. You cannot create unless there is material to work with which is undefined. Here is where we need a God the Mother. It isn’t a Father.
            Now stop with the nonsense. I am not saying women are superior. Without the male aspect of the godhead we would have endless nothingness. I am saying that these dualities are profound and we cannot disturb the archetypes without disturbing ourselves. Nor can we tell women that God is a threesome from which all the feminine has no part. This is the wound that led to feminism.
            The parallels with humans are many.
            But in nature the female is primary. The male was invented later, to serve the female. You may not like it but this is biology and the more you think about it, it is the only explanation for how things are. All living things have to serve life. It is called reproduction. The female gives birth and the male impregnates. So if you look at all the animals, the female is the hub of the life of the species, and the male is there to service the female just exactly when she needs it. The female is the hub of life because she is the mother. The male serves life less directly by impregnating the female.
            This is the same as my cosmic vision. The dark and empty void of potential – existence itself – is impregnated by the spark of the organizational force known and the mind or Word of God. The intelligent designer.

          • sophia April 1, 2020 at 7:27 pm #

            Oh, yes. I think that women do go off into irrationality more than men. Perhaps not individually, but as a generalization. An example is when I was in nursing school, I spent two months in the schizo ward. There was a big difference between the men and the women, same diagnosis. The men could function, could play cards, and even care for each other a bit.
            The women were each in their own private hell.
            Your arguments are completely true. Men deserve much more love and respect than they are getting from women!
            But your examples are a reaction to feminism which constantly tries to be as good as men, because they don’t understand their wound, which is existential.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 2:01 pm #

            Thankfully God is above Nature as such. He has no partner nor offspring as Mohammad said. Reproduction is not an issue. He/She/It may have incarnations, but in any case, Enlightened Beings who incarnate for the good of the world.

            We more or less agree, I guess, right now. But being a woman you will change and not remember your previous state, such as when you did put forth female superiority.

            You feel the Abrahamic Religions are unfair to women. That’s a constant. I don’t disagree, though I believe in the Patriarchy. The Feminine Divine has gotten the short shrift here in the West for the last two thousand years.

            “The male was invented to serve the female” – classic feminist superiority trip. Women exist to give birth to boys who Men will turn into Men. This is your privilege and glory. If you cannot or will not, then you can try for a direct relationship with God. Christianity for all its faults, does give women a chance for a life without men. Sacred virginity is respected.

        • michael April 1, 2020 at 3:54 pm #

          The female aspect – is it blond?

        • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 4:48 pm #

          God is Yang AND Yin; masculine and feminine in perfect harmony.

          Sophia, it seems to me the feminine principle is represented in traditional Christianity (particularly Catholicism) through Mary, the ‘Mother of God’ as well as the Holy Spirit…

          • sophia April 1, 2020 at 7:38 pm #

            Sunburst,

            Yeah, well now you can read why I think the Holy Spirit is the aspect that has both. Mary is indeed what you say, but that is also because prior religions had goddesses and Christianity removed that. It’s a substitute, but not enough.

            Too add to the above, about nature, consider that there is no purpose to have a male without a female. Of course the female cannot bring forth life without the male, but that isn’t quite the same thing. But the female exists first and is complete in her function with the invention of the male.

            I say invention because the first life was one-celled and those just divide. Those are referred to as mother and daughter cells. In order to get higher orders of life, the male was invented. Or that is how evolutionists would express it.

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 2:48 pm #

        Janos

        “God isn’t light. He/She/It is Light. Ditto Good. Your light and good aren’t enough. Don’t conflate them with His.”

        Sheesh, because I didn’t use capitals? If so, okay, I concede!

        • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 2:57 pm #

          Victory is sweet.

    • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 5:07 pm #

      You are right Sophia. The belief that God needed a blood sacrifice in order to redeem humanity is a travesty. These kind of beliefs are the reason so many rational human beings have rejected Christianity in favor of humanism…

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 8:02 pm #

        Wow, I’m impressed Sunburst. Are you newish here?

  102. JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 12:53 pm #

    Reading the interplay between the optimists and realists upthread.

    Interesting.

    Cargill, I hope you are right and the built in resources will be able to take the shocks that are coming.

    I am no so sure though. I think the whole reaction capability thing depends on how long the isolation phase lasts.

    We were told, by the experts and scientists that if we isolated, the curve would flatten. That was two days ago that the 15 day plan expired with no improvement. Now the plan is out to 30 days with mortalities of 100000 to 240000. The date of no deaths daily at the end is July 16. The apex is 2300+ deaths DAILY on the 16th of April. Uh-huh?

    Based on what? We do not know s**t about what is coming! These models are worthless, how do the geniuses know what is coming? How do they know that the curve will abate until everyone is infected and the disease runs it course. Hopefully by the end of the year. By then the entire world’s economy will be shot.

    Cargill- one of the real threats is Trump, with you right now I agree. The same thing I like about him, his wanting to do something about problems even if it is wrong, could be dangerous once he loses confidence in the experts.

    He is right about one thing though, the next two weeks are going to be deadly and on April15, we may know what is really going to happen.

    Pray for us, all of us!

    • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 1:54 pm #

      The Disease itself is a metaphor – most of the deaths coming from the body’s over-reaction. Just so, our societal death may well be from over-reacting to the disease.

      Consider the lillies of the field…. No, actually consider an EMP strike. It doesn’t seem to bother bodies at all – just delicate circuitry. And half a dozen of those, strategically placed, could bring America down, causing far more death ultimately than hundreds of nuclear warheads.

  103. Pucker April 1, 2020 at 1:15 pm #

    The other bizarre piece of news was Trump’s much ballyhooed invocation of the Defense Production Act, which gives the President authority to order US companies to produce urgently needed strategic goods. On the surface, it sounded great. But, apparently, after Trump invoked the Act, he didn’t follow up with any specific instruction to make anything. Weird…. The society seems pathologically dishonest. They just seem to do shit for show….

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

      Yeah, and he does shit like that a lot. He’s not to be trusted.

      • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 2:32 pm #

        And I trust this assessment and totally see it for what it is. I guess I just wanted to think something would change, a light bulb would go off, or something. Sigh!

    • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 2:22 pm #

      He used the act to force GM to do vents, they were reluctant.

  104. malthuss April 1, 2020 at 1:53 pm #

    Green Alba, is there a solution to slave labor in Asia?

    Is there a solution to grooming gangs in UK? Going after the most vulnerable.

    I found this,

    the French have forbidden the collection of racial statistics, the likelihood of such plans having ever been written appears to be about nil. Treasonous elites need to get the same razor-wire-and-napalm treatment as their crimmigrants
    I remember the crowds of young white idiot French celebrating the resounding defeat of Jean-Marie Le Pen in the 2002 runoff election
    I get 2 takeaways from this story. #1: No Go Areas. Seriously? The government has allowed foreigners to come into your country and settle, who hate the native’s guts and would kill any of them, including the police, that no one can go where they live? Insanity. #2: That the natives, including the government, should care that these savages are not quarantining themselves? My God, consider it a blessing, and that their ignorance will spread the disease among themselves like a heaven sent miracle.
    Not this right-wing conspiracy theory again.
    [snopes.com]
    Sharia Law Muslim ‘No-Go’ Zones
    Claim
    A number of localities in the United States, France, and Britain are considered Muslim “no-go zones” (operating under Sharia Law) where local laws are not applicable.

    False
    [theatlantic.com]
    Why the Muslim ‘No-Go-Zone’ Myth Won’t Die
    There’s no evidence of extremist takeover of areas in Europe or the United States. So why do the claims continue?
    Last week, Voice of Europe reported that police in Paris’s no-go zones were already having trouble enforcing the country’s quarantine measures. One police officer who’s assigned to the infamous Saint-Denis suburb told local media that many of the migrants living in these areas believe that the pandemic itself is a story invented by whites for the purpose of oppressing them.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 1:57 pm #

      The journalists who deny no go areas in Europe are probably very careful not to get off on the wrong stop in Washington or New York – or to drive down any street named MLK. Why? Because these are American No Go areas.

  105. Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 2:14 pm #

    Notice how Akmo exports evil. He doesn’t agree with Monarchy, so King David automatically becomes non-Jewish, since Jews can’t be evil or even desire to be oppressors. This is just one example of his mindset. All evil is projected onto non-Jews.

    • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 2:28 pm #

      He’s also ignoring the fact that the ancient Israelites essentially begged for the installation of a King over them.

      Deuteronomy 17: 14-15

      When thou art come unto the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me;

      Thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother.

      • SoftStarLight April 1, 2020 at 2:29 pm #

        And notice how important it was that a Stranger not be King. Hmmm. That doesn’t sound multicultural to me but I guess everyone has to come to their own conclusions.

      • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 3:05 pm #

        Deuteronomy 17: 16-17

        but he will not make an increase for himself of horses, and he will not turn the people back unto Egypt in order to increase horses, and YHWH said to you, you will not again turn back in this road again,

        and he will not make an increase for himself of women, and he will not turn aside his heart, and much silver and gold he will not make an increase for himself,
        ==

        David and his son Solomon made cities for imported horses – Megiddo. They acquired thousands of wives. They taxed the people mercilessly for gold and silver. They even installed Egyptian palaces for their Egyptian wives right by the Temple of cut stones, which was another strict prohibition. The worship of God is to be on humble altars of gathered uncut stone.

        In other words they turned Israel into Egypt. And then they lost it all to Egypt and Pharaoh Ramses II with death of Solomon. God has a sense of humor, but karma does not.

    • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 2:35 pm #

      Jewish heredity is followed through maternal lineage. King David’s grandmother and therefore his mother was of the Edomites. Neither is David a Hebrew name. Any discerning person with a knowledge of Hebrew language and Hebrew culture would immediately pick up on that. Hebrew names have a real meaning. Furthermore, David, was not his real name. It was a title given to him and it implied he was a stranger. DOWD means uncle, and that’s where the name David is derived from.

      • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 2:54 pm #

        Really? In my little Ct town there was a Dowd Avenue, named after a guy (Solomon Dowd) who was known as a haberdasher because he had a clothing and shoe store on main street where we did our shopping. I remember one time he had a promotion where if you bought a pair of shoes he gave you a jack knife. I still have it, a Camillus. A kindly old guy, everybody in town loved him.

        You learn something new every day here in the CFNation.

        Brh

      • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 3:03 pm #

        But Israel followed the Masculine line. So Jews aren’t Israelites, perhaps. When did it happen? When did a foreign people assume Israelite identity? With the Khazars? Or when a handful of Jews came back from Babylon and found the Land had filled up with aliens, including Edomites, who had to be assimilated? The Jewish Encyclopedia admits this happened. I don’t know when the switch in line of descent happened. Maybe Messianic Druid can weigh in. This stuff is his life.

        This is the theme of Christian Identity. Fascinating stuff. I don’t believe it per se, but I study it for insights.

        • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 3:07 pm #

          But Israel followed the Masculine line.
          ==

          That would make Arabs Jews. They are not. They descendants of Hagar the Egyptian.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 3:12 pm #

            And Abraham! He and Ishmael built the Kaaba together.

            Btw, Jews have always relied on foreign workmen to build the Temple(s). Skill in the crafts was never you strong suit. Don’t get offended: you guys were doing something else. The Arabs are the same. They relied on others to build the great Mosques.

            Even today Jews excel at music and but are destroyers in the material arts. Modern Art is their child. Also you excel in the Sciences.

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 9:11 pm #

            Do a google image search for Israeli modern art. Come to Tel Aviv and check out the art galleries. It will make your eyes pop out with lust for the art works.

            Check out the new modern neighborhoods in Israel. You will cry with envy. You’ll then understand what modern art it all about. And not the demented Vatican crap that they feed you in the US.

        • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 3:23 pm #

          When did a foreign people assume Israelite identity?
          ==

          At the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai in Midian (Northwest Saudia across the Gulf of Eilat). Remember, Abraham wasn’t Jewish, same as Adam and Noah weren’t Jewish.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 3:41 pm #

            Neither was Adam – as per my point before. So your attempts to prove Hebrew the Original Language are simply an exercise in fatuity.

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 4:01 pm #

            They were all Hebrews. They all spoke it, including Adam Abraham and even Pharaoh. Remember when Abraham spoke to Pharaoh he didn’t need interpreters. Same with Joseph. Hebrew was the language of the ancients. They even found Hebrew in the Egyptian Hieroglyphs dating about 4,000 years back. In fact, that’s how the Hebrew alphabet script, the original and first alphabet in world, was developed.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 6:02 pm #

            A strong Tribe of Semites or a coalition of such established themselves in Northern Egypt in the delta. The mocked the Egyptians by pretending to be Egyptian. No doubt Joseph rose to power among these Semitic Egyptian fakes.

            They overthrew Cush and established a Kingdom there as well and then mocked the real Pharaoh sandwiched between. Knowing his peril, Pharaoh swore vengeance against the Semite usurpers and rallied his people to the same. The Semites were expelled.

            It was a hard fight since the Semites, being in contract with other civilizations of the Middle East, had better weapons and chariots. But the Egyptians learned from them and got the better of them in the end.

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 6:31 pm #

            Actually, it was King Saul who helped the southern Pharaoh defeat the Amalekite Pharaoh is the north and helped bring to a united Egypt. Three generation later, Ramses II marched on Jerusalem and plundered it without a fight. The Jews didn’t care and were glad for it.

    • malthuss April 1, 2020 at 6:39 pm #

      you know much.

  106. akmofo April 1, 2020 at 2:15 pm #

    DOJ Inspector General Finds Rampant Errors in FBI Surveillance
    https://youtu.be/KVr-m1hIn-4
    ==

    In simple words, they made it all up.
    These FISA FBI criminals should be in jail, and so should their supervisors.

  107. wpa_ccc April 1, 2020 at 2:42 pm #

    Thousands and thousands of nurses, physician assistants, EMTs, doctors, are responding to the call to volunteer to help in epicenters.

    Civilization is a veil, and behind it not all is savage.

    • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 8:38 pm #

      Good point wpa. I’m seeing many acts of kindness and altruism in this crisis.

  108. Pucker April 1, 2020 at 2:42 pm #

    The story of this independent source is very similar to the story that I heard from the Chinese re: the Wuhan P4 lab and the source of the Covid 19 virus. It seems that “Patient Zero” was Miss Huang Yanling ???.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU&t=5s

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    • Pucker April 1, 2020 at 4:12 pm #

      In the story that I had heard of the genesis of the Covid 19 virus, a young female “Post Doc” lab worker (who appears to be Miss Huang Yanling ???? in the Wuhan P4 biohazard lab was accidentally infected and then she died very quickly. The virus was then spread to others in the subsequent improperly handling of her corpse and to friends and family paying their last respects to her corpse. What is strange is that since she was so young, the Covid 19 virus, as we know it, should not have killed her so quickly, if at all. So the virus must have mutated within her cells and then was reborn as a new virus which we know as Covid 19?

      • malthuss April 1, 2020 at 6:40 pm #

        Viruses are stronger at the beginning. As they go out, they weaken and mutate.

        Who created this virus?

  109. K-Dog April 1, 2020 at 3:01 pm #

    Serious government intervention was needed from day one of shutdown if easy restart were to happen but that is water under the bridge now. Food production in America depends on paper and plastic and food production can’t be transitioned away from that need in a heartbeat. That is but one example. A myriad of critical industries needed to be identified and their operation continued under the direction of experts who can keep working exposures to a minimum for six weeks. Stagger shifts, all sorts of things. Cardboard delivered outside closed doors to food industries that need it. The airlock opened when all is clear. Isolated cells of people getting their work done across boundaries via electric communications. Extra workers drafted into autonomous working cells as needed. Think outside the box and all that. Then from a working base of essential services an economy could have been restarted in an orderly way. But, it is too late for that! Too late now.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 3:07 pm #

      Well said. Surely we’re not going to let food rot in warehouses and crops go unpicked like we did during the Depression because of the fucking “market”.

      Yes, please continue on like this. You have a fine mind when you can rise above political obsessions like Trump (hate) or Mandella (love).

    • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 4:08 pm #

      I don’t think too many Americans want to be part of an ‘Autonomous Working Cell’. Just saying …

  110. sophia April 1, 2020 at 3:16 pm #

    GreenAlba
    April 1, 2020 at 10:53 am #

    I would certainly give the book a try if you were my neighbor and could loan it to me. My local library is far too small to carry books such as those and anyway, they are closed till further notice.

    My opinion is that there is reincarnation, and non belief is a stop that some people make on the way to sorting things out. While I tend to find atheism boring, and often there are convoluted emotional reasons for adopting it (what we call baggage) it may also serve a cleansing purpose. So this might be what you have come to in this life. We all have many things to work on and it will take lifetimes.
    It often seems to me that atheism can be a bit of a straw man, in the sense that it rejects something that is a kind of caricature of better or deeper truths. So on the one hand you are impervious to some things, but many religious persons are also impervious to critical thinking, so there.

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

      sophia

      I don’t know what finding atheism boring even means. It’s like saying not speaking Portuguese is boring. I get that it’s a put-down and is meant to be. Fine. Whatever floats your boat.

      I don’t believe in reincarnation, and never did even when I believed (or thought I believed) in Christianity.

      A-theism can’t be a caricature of anything, as it’s not a ‘rejection’ of any better or deeper truths – it just doesn’t have a positive belief in deities. For many people, it’s the end of a very long thought process that perhaps took a lifetime. For others it just comes naturally, because its opposite strikes them as ludicrous. I’m in the former group. But I’m not a ‘positive atheist’, just an a-theist. I do not claim proof of nothing but I insist on the lack of proof of something.

      As I understand it (from a passing comment in a podcast on this website) our host isn’t remotely religious. But I don’t hear you or anyone else suggesting that he’s boring, or has convoluted emotional reasons for taking the view that he has (baggage, as you so patronisingly call it).

      Americans think of religion as the norm, forgetting that in almost all other advanced nations it isn’t, it’s the exception. There are reasons for that, possibly connected with the whole mindset of American exceptionalism.

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 8:29 pm #

        Green Alba,

        Finding atheism, or atheists, boring is not analogous to speaking a particular language. For me, philosophy and reality itself and what might be going on here (for you, nothing) is very compelling and fascinating. But for the atheist, the answer is: nothing is going on, nothing very interesting is happening. Whole realms of possibility simply are dismissed. I find that boring, and I am surprised that you have reacted so prickly, and impute motives to me to insult you, which is hardly the case. I’m not really sneaky and convoluted like that.

        I didn’t say atheism was a caricature. I said that the concept of God they might have is a caricature. Actually, I don’t recall precisely what I said, but I did not say that atheism itself is a caricature. I would say right now, that I often find that atheists seem to carry an image of God that isn’t like the one of a deep mind. This is largely true of religious people, by the way. They believe in a simple and anthropomorphised conception of God, and then some of them get tired of it and become a-theists. From my point of view, neither is a deeply pondered position.

        I am not disparaging your long thought processes. Just because I don’t agree with you does not mean I disparage you or try to insult or belittle you. I don’t play those games. You’re quite likable except when you get like this.

        Our host is certainly not boring, is he? But I don’t know him personally so why speculate. I have no idea why he is not religious. Nor did I say he or you have baggage. I said for some people, that is the case.
        I understand the European theory is that all the religious nuts went to America.

        • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 6:13 am #

          sophia

          “I said for some people, that is the case.
          I understand the European theory is that all the religious nuts went to America.”

          I don’t give that any particular credence – it was too long ago. The idea of American exceptionalism remains current in the present day and goes well beyond ‘religious nuts’. I do think that religious belief can be a conscious or unconscious cultural identifier in a melting pot – or even less than a melting pot (viz. the more enthusiastic Catholicism in Brittany compared to the rest of France in times not so long ago).

          “For me, philosophy and reality itself and what might be going on here (for you, nothing) is very compelling and fascinating. But for the atheist, the answer is: nothing is going on, nothing very interesting is happening. “

          This is exactly what I find arrogant. I find it utterly compelling. Why do you think I read so much around it? I’ve spent my life reading about ‘philosophy … reality itself and what might be going on here’. But my ponderings are less valuable than your ponderings because your thoughts are ‘deeper’. Really? How do you know?

          There is always a substratum of my thoughts that is aware I may be wrong. I rarely get the impression from religious people that that is true for them.

          BTW, the important bit about the Portuguese comment wasn’t the ‘Portuguese’ – it was the ‘not’. 🙂 I could (and perhaps should) just as easily have said ‘not having green eyes’.

          Religious people have a need to lump ‘atheists’ together as if they were a ‘thing’. They are no more a thing than people without green eyes. And only in a country where religion is the norm could they think that they were. They are a huge, infinitely different variety of people who just don’t happen to buy any theory of deities – even the really ‘truly madly deep’ ones (that’s not sarcasm it’s a pun on a film title). And to keep insinuating that they think less than you, or are less deep than you, or have less imagination than you, or less interest in philosophy than you, remains arrogant, IMHO.

          Some a-theists don’t give their a-theism a second thought, ever. Others spend their lives thinking, reading and (at their own very modest or very erudite level) philosophising and searching.

          But for religious people, they’re always ‘missing something’. They’re only missing something if it’s there. And, amazingly, for all your pondering the wonders that might be, you may be wrong – it may all be in your head.

          But since it is the belief that sustains people, it’s all fine. If you are wrong, you will genuinely never find out.

          Old Pascal again…

          • sophia April 2, 2020 at 11:06 am #

            Good morning Green Alba, April 2, 2020 at 6:13 am #

            You dismiss the idea that the religious people went to
            America because it was a while ago. But influences do linger and your complaint was that Americans consider it normal to be religious. Then you mention American exceptionalism, which I don’t know what that has to do with it.

            “This is exactly what I find arrogant. I find it utterly compelling. Why do you think I read so much around it? I’ve spent my life reading about ‘philosophy … reality itself and what might be going on here’. But my ponderings are less valuable than your ponderings because your thoughts are ‘deeper’. Really? How do you know?”

            How do I do the italics?
            Look, you definitely do think philosophically. And, I think its something of an exception. For the most part, most people do not really think all that deeply and it isn’t a matter of whether or not they are religious. It is a matter of whether they are taken up with questions that are of enough interest for them to spend time thinking. It can also be that the one who rejects religion did so precisely because they began to think and examine. You do have a bit of a tendency to read motivations into other people. If I thought you were a fool I would not be arguing with you.

            But I do stand by my claim that my reality has a lot more in it. I get that you find reality compelling and so do many other materialists. But there is a lot more possibilities in my reality than yours, be it delusional or not. In the spiritualized reality there is a future, much more complexity because of that. There are long-term relationships instead of only short ones, there is God and the nature of God and one’s relationship to that as well as possibly other types of beings in this universe. There is reincarnation, which when one ponders the workings thereof, adds much complexity to what is going on. According to basic occult philosophy, there are 7 planes of existence of which the material is the 7th and densest. In your reality there is one. This is what I mean, don’t take it personally.

            “There is always a substratum of my thoughts that is aware I may be wrong.”

            So you are not a zombie then.

            “BTW, the important bit about the Portuguese comment wasn’t the ‘Portuguese’ – it was the ‘not’. ? I could (and perhaps should) just as easily have said ‘not having green eyes’.”

            Right. It was not a good analogy. See above.

            You are likely right about religious people. Yes, atheistic types are just as individualistic as others. Sometimes more so. Agree.

            Pascal’s wager was utterly stupid.

          • Q. Shtik April 2, 2020 at 11:19 am #

            Some a-theists don’t give their a-theism a second thought, ever. – Green Alba

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

            I can honestly say that ‘belief vs non-belief’ never comes up in my regular life, that is, the life outside of this CFN blog site. I feel I have made a big mistake in openly declaring my atheism here because it has stirred up a shit storm. But what is an atheist to do when confronted by an army of believers who want to save my soul from eternal damnation? It is sooo annoying!

          • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 1:01 pm #

            sophia

            “You dismiss the idea that the religious people went to
            America because it was a while ago. But influences do linger and your complaint was that Americans consider it normal to be religious.”

            Almost everyone was religious back then, whether American or European. It hasn’t lingered quite as long here.

            And it wasn’t a ‘complaint’, it was an observation. I consider it ‘normal’ to be religious too. I don’t consider it especially weird (although some beliefs do sound weirder than others, to be honest), given the make up of humans, and their history. But it’s normal to be irreligious too. A religious belief is nevertheless more ‘the norm’ (which is what I actually said) in the US than it is in the UK and large parts of continental Europe – that’s not quite the same as ‘normal’.

            As for Pascal’s wager, it was you yourself who said to me ‘Well, if we are right that there is a God and you have a soul, then of course one day you will find out., which is one half of Pascal’s wager.

            For people who believe in heaven and hell – which is most of the self-confessed Christians on this site – Pascal’s wager is eminently sensible, whichever way you choose to bet. But it assumes an evil God who would create a ‘place’ of eternal punishment. Most of them seem to have no problem with a God who could do that calling himself a God of love, but they generally wriggle out of it with semantics.

            And I’m not a materialist. I’m closer to a humanist. I’d regard someone like John Gray as a materialist, and I’m closer to Raymond Tallis, whose humanism is neither materialism nor scientism. Science, yes, but scientism, no.

          • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 1:13 pm #

            “I can honestly say that ‘belief vs non-belief’ never comes up in my regular life, that is, the life outside of this CFN blog site”.

            Likewise, Q. Even with my longest-standing friends we don’t discuss religious belief, on the whole (although one good atheist friend has told me in the past about being brought up by her granny, who was a pillar of the local church but beat her regularly with a leather belt as a child!).

            “I feel I have made a big mistake in openly declaring my atheism here because it has stirred up a shit storm.

            Nah, they should be able to cope. They’ve got righteousness on their side. 🙂 And they love ‘witnessing’. But I’m grateful that you’ve deflected some of the heat from me, just the same, as I’d be a TOTAL pariah if it was just me (there are a small number of others but they don’t let themselves be drawn in as I do!).

            Mea maxima culpa.

  111. Q. Shtik April 1, 2020 at 3:18 pm #

    So akmo,

    What about dietary laws? Do you stay strictly kosher? Have you ever had bacon and eggs? Ever have meat and dairy on the table at the same time?

    And what about the tearing of toilet tissue? Do you PRE-tear (i.e. before the Sabbath begins).

    • Q. Shtik April 1, 2020 at 3:34 pm #

      And what about the Shabbos-ready refrigerator (programmed to have the light NOT go on during Shabbos for years in advance since turning on a light is work). Do you own one of those?

      Do you have a Shabbos Goy? Perhaps a non-Jewish neighbor who you can call on to do pesky little things on the Sabbath like flip a light switch or move your car?

      • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 3:43 pm #

        Like Colin Powell’s family. Colin himself is fluent in Hebrew. No doubt this didn’t hurt in his climbing the ranks, eh Q?

        Scurry? Oh Q, my erring but beloved Brother….

        • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 4:19 pm #

          Did you hear that, Q, you made a new brother. You can now sit in secret together in the basement and do some Jew watching with your binoculars. Maybe throw a Vatican sodomy party for each other when you’re done. You can take turns as the squealing sow.

    • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 3:47 pm #

      Oh, Q, so nice to see your racist ass back.

      Dietary laws? I now keep them by default. I didn’t when I lived abroad. I ate everything, even some German? pussy from Utah, and was struck with cancer. That was a fun lesson.

      I’m mainly a strict vegan now who also eats lamb. No milk, no eggs, no sea food. I don’t look to buy kosher food, at least not consciously. But most foods in Israel are Kosher. For toilet paper on Sabbath I use your mom’s tongue. I like the way she tickles my ass.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 3:49 pm #

        Do you sacrifice the lamb yourself? How do you feel about rebuilding the Temple and starting up the Sacrifices again? What about Christ? Tell us what you think! Don’t hold back, we know it will be horrible!

        • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 4:10 pm #

          I’m very much against the rebuilding the Temple and/or giving the its ruins any reverence whatsoever. It was an abomination and it’s good that it was destroyed. That said, I would kick out and level all the mosques and churches in Israel, and forbid any religious tourism to the country. Same for the synagogues. Level them all down to the ground.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 4:16 pm #

            Interesting. So you abhor and abjure the Pharisee Sect that now rules?

            So did Christ long ago.

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 4:29 pm #

            I see them as tools of Rome. But I love them dearly as my people, misguided as they be. They love the Hebrew God, and they have a Jewish soul. You, Tyranny Rex, on the other hand, hate God and are without a soul. A real lizard of old.

          • sophia April 1, 2020 at 4:57 pm #

            Akmofo,

            I can’t keep up with your weird statements! Why was the temple an abomination?

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 5:08 pm #

            It was made with cut stone. That’s a no-no, Sophia.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 5:54 pm #

            Thank you Akmo. That’s about the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me. Once I get to Heaven, I’m going to lead a raid against the Jewish Heaven. Just for fun since there will be no want and no one can really get hurt or die. Make it more like Valhalla.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 5:56 pm #

            Stones are alive and scream when you cut them. You just don’t have the right ears. Akmo has big Vulcan ears. He lives in hovel made of straw. A Wikkiup. He can’t use wood either for the same reason. But straw offers itself to us. Likewise, he should only be eating fruits, and throwing away the seeds. Leave off with the vegetarian lamb!

          • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 9:03 am #

            “He can’t use wood either for the same reason. But straw offers itself to us. ”

            You’re better with bricks. Or so the third little piggy told me.

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 4:56 pm #

        Are you implying oral sex can spread head and neck cancer? I think that may be true.

        • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 5:26 pm #

          I’m implying that if you eat toxic food you will get cancer. Cancer is a virus, and it thrives on this toxicity.

        • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 7:53 pm #

          “Are you implying oral sex can spread head and neck cancer? I think that may be true.”

          Oral sex can spread HPV, which can cause pre-cancerous changes to cells, possibly leading to throat cancer in the future. It doesn’t cause the cancer directly.

          There is now a vaccine against HPV, though.

  112. stelmosfire April 1, 2020 at 3:20 pm #

    USA Stats for 2017 probably higher in 2019 but they’re not in yet. With big numbers like this the projected death totals of 150,000-200,000 for the Kung flu do not seem all that big. Maybe a 10% uptick in the totals. Every death is a tragedy but it seems that most of the victims of this virus already have one foot in the grave.
    Total deaths 2,813,503 (7,708/day)
    Accidents (unintentional injuries): 169,936
    Chronic lower respiratory diseases: 160,201
    Influenza 55,672
    Suicide 47,173
    Drug overdose 67,367

    • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 4:31 pm #

      Are you saying the whole thing has been blown out of proportion? If we assume for a moment this virus had been completely under the radar would we have considered what is happening now as anything more than a more serious than usual flu season?

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 4:59 pm #

        SBS,

        I suspect that is the case.

      • stelmosfire April 1, 2020 at 5:34 pm #

        SBS, to tell you the truth I don’t really know what to make out of the whole shit show. I know that the 24 hour news is panicking a lot of people when they are not really in much danger. A bunch of contradictions. 0% interest but rising mortgages? $20 oil . gas less than .95 in and still dropping? Two+ trillion plus instant new debt? Talk of another instant two trillion for roads highways and tunnels to continue happy motoring? No god damn toilet paper, really? Are people shitting more nowadays? A mystery to me.

        • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 6:34 pm #

          It’s amazing how important toilet paper becomes when the shit hits the fan…

  113. Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 3:47 pm #

    Can you imagine John Az accepting a Jubilee at the end of this, a forgiveness of all debt a la God’s Law as put forth in the Bible?

    Neither can I. People pick and choose and that’s a loathed fruit left unpicked by our latter day Christian Capitalists. Don’t know about the Jews. Never heard that they practiced this either, certainly not towards us! But they do take care of each other far better than we take of each other, there’s no doubt about that. And low interest loans to each other was one of the ways that they conquered us.

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    • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 4:12 pm #

      After Jubilee, the same people who are deeply in debt now, and that debt is forgiven, will be deeply in debt 5 years from now.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 4:14 pm #

        In other words, the System is perfect and only people are flawed.

        I admit that the weak in body, mind, and character are the first to fall. Does that make it alright? Ever watch kids play musical chairs? Not matter how fast and nimble, all but one lose.

        What’s wrong with you – any idea?

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 5:01 pm #

        Tell yourself that. It is true of some, not all.

    • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 4:36 pm #

      Help me, Akmofo.

      Jews have a convention, per the Mosaic Law, that all debt is off the books in the seventh year. Right? What is the name of the festival?

      And by the way, John AZ has no debt. The best way to avoid economic chaos.

      • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 4:45 pm #

        It’s called Yovel. Every 7th year. The sabbatical year of Shmitah. The year of rest. All debts are cleared. All private fields orchards and vineyards are open to all including the wild animals. No harvest is to be collected and no work is to be done on the land.

        • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 4:48 pm #

          It’s not mandatory by law in Israel. But there’s a huge number of Israeli farmers that follow it anyway, and they are blessed for it.

        • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 4:50 pm #

          Which made it necessary to save and store during the six years.

          A yearly equivalent of the six day work week and the Sabbath.

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 5:06 pm #

            Yup. That’s what they do. They save for the seventh year. Very hard to do in the argi business because the margins can be very tight, but they manage. Our argi produce is of very high quality so it can demand the higher price when necessary. Personally, I traveled everywhere around the globe, and I haven’t tasted better fruit and vegetable than the ones produced in Israel.

        • Q. Shtik April 1, 2020 at 5:30 pm #

          It’s called Yovel. Every 7th year. – akmo

          ==========

          https://www.truah.org/campaign/yovel-fifty-years-of-occupation/

          7th year or 50th year?

          I see the word metaphorically in this link. Is the forgiveness of debt merely metaphorical?

          What Jewish banker would be willing to make a 30 year mortgage loan in year 6 (or year 49) of a Yovel period. He’d have to be mashugana.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 5:51 pm #

            Yovel for a hovel. I’ll give you a dreidel for this old cradle (crib, yo).

          • akmofo April 1, 2020 at 6:05 pm #

            Yovel just means Jubilee. So yeah, in this case, the 7×7 Shmitah. I’m not a farmer so I don’t keep up with these things. I assumed the Jubilee is the Shmitah year and they are one and the same.

            Kinda sad that in your obsession with yids you’re more of a yid than I. Q, you should just get it over with and convert. You know that’s what you really want to be, a Vatican Yid. Only you don’t have the discipline to quit that fried bacon.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 5:41 pm #

          Jubilee is every fifty. Guess you’ve let that one go. But this sounds good too.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 5:49 pm #

            Fifty or so. I think it’s by generation and that is a bit fuzzy, at least for us. As is our understanding of what the Writer meant by it or its interpretations back then.

  114. Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 4:12 pm #

    Holy Poland, (wholly Polish) didn’t shut down the Churches. Rather the had more masses so people could be spaced apart.

    If they were multi this and multi that, no longer the Land of Poles and only Poles, they would have since that would mean the Enemy had triumphed there.

    • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 4:42 pm #

      You’re laying it on thick today, Janos, maybe too thick. You’re painting yourself into a corner you may not be able to get out of.

      Brh

      • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 4:55 pm #

        Yeah he’s really on a roll isn’t he. Must be off his meds…

        • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 5:40 pm #

          Says the guy who reads the Urantia Book, considers it as scripture with one part of his personality, but disregards it completely with another.

          • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 6:30 pm #

            Hey I’m schizophrenic what can I say…

      • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 5:44 pm #

        In other words, you have no answer to the above so you attack here on a different subject that doesn’t concern you per so, an ad hominem out of “nowhere”.

        You should be cheering about the Poles. You don’t like Muslims and Blacks in our Lands, remember?

        Your lack of inegration is on display. The result of Adam’s fall…..

  115. Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 4:20 pm #

    Many get by paycheck to paycheck as per the criminally low wages that haven’t risen in decades. So let’s say they have six months to make good a two or three month hiatus in rent or mortgage. They won’t be able to do it. So there will a giant swell in the homeless within the year, just in time for the second round of the disease. A mass die off. Good Christian Calvinists can’t wait to see God’s Justice be enacted. The clap like seals, John Az his soft hands and BRH his hard, calloused ones.

    • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 4:46 pm #

      What you are predicting could happen! No one twenty years ago would have believed the West Coast would be over run with homeless. But here we are.

      I personally think that God weeps for human injustice towards them selves. It is our choice what happens. If we followed God’s law, through Jesus, this would not be a problem right now. The virus would have been reported with the first group in China, they would have been isolated, the bats eradicated and the outbreak would not have happened. It is Man’s ego and ethnocentrism that creates these fiascos.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 5:47 pm #

        The ethnocentrism of the Chinese (their pride or “face”) and the lack of ethnocentrism on behalf of the White Race that allowed Chinese to keep flying in from China.

        So you got it half right I guess.

        • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 7:46 pm #

          Remember the spots that started first after China, Milan and Iran. Both continued flights under pressure from China into their airports because of heavy Chinese interests there. Trump stopped them on January 29.

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

        God weeps? How compassionate, as he watches us suffer! Tell him not to whimper, but to work and fix His wicked, wretched creation!

        Hold Him accountable!

        • malthuss April 1, 2020 at 6:35 pm #

          Reverend Anthropomorphic got to you.

          • tucsonspur April 1, 2020 at 7:54 pm #

            Well yeah, he has that human touch.

        • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 7:47 pm #

          Let me know how that works for you!

          • tucsonspur April 1, 2020 at 8:01 pm #

            He dare not face me, even if he were there or even if he did care.

  116. sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 4:21 pm #

    For Sophia and GreenAlba:

    Holding a belief in the existence of God is not nearly as important as following the Inner Voice which speaks for God. Since following the Inner Voice is usually not a conscious process it is possible a so-called atheist can actually be more adherent to the Divine Will than a card-carrying believer. It is no secret that organized religion often provides the greatest stumbling block to genuine faith…

    By their fruits (moral integrity, righteousness, sincerity) you will know them, not necessarily by their beliefs.

    In my opinion there are a number of folks posting on this forum that refer to themselves as non-theists or after-religionists who exhibit these fruits, which tells me whatever they claim on a conscious level they have been following the Inner Voice for a very long time and are well on their way to ‘higher ground’…

    • sophia April 1, 2020 at 5:07 pm #

      Yes, Sunburst, very well said, and I also know atheists or agnostics like that. I am married to one who calls himself agnostic and he is one of the most generous and kind persons I have ever known. Also universally liked. People can tell.

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

      I have a conscience, sunburst, and it’s a very strong one. It hasn’t become the slightest bit muted since I stopped believing in a deity. I’m also a worrier, so I worry about doing the right thing in a whole lot of situations. The right thing isn’t always the obvious right thing.

      In the secular world we just call that socialisation. You’re taught ‘good’ behaviour and you internalise it. A child, in most non-religious households, will know after a few years that it’s wrong to steal or to hit people. It doesn’t require belief in a deity. And empathy is natural to human beings, just as selfishness is.

      Ninety-five percent of the people known to me personally are kind and good. Only a tiny fraction of them are specifically religious.

      • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 7:54 pm #

        So describe criminality and bad behavior, there is lots of that going around too.

        There is a huge difference between religion and belief in God.

        Internalizing good behavior. Why? I wonder who the source for the rules of good behavior is? Who was the source of the good side of humanity? Certainly not humans.

        • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 8:25 pm #

          I have no reason to believe it wasn’t humans. Humans have evolved ‘good’ behaviour as well as bad. ‘Good’ is what promotes life and minimises suffering. Humans have evolved to be able to observe that. They also evolved to project good and evil on to an array of imagined supernatural beings.

        • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 8:28 pm #

          “Internalizing good behavior. Why?”

          Not everyone internalises good behaviour. That’s the ideal.

      • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 12:35 pm #

        I don’t believe qualities like moral integrity and righteousness can be socially indoctrinated. Character formation occurs on a deeper level. If it was all about social indoctrination then we would turn out more or less identical; mass-produced cookie-cutter human beings without free will choice. We can be indoctrinated to obey the mores of society but that’s as far as it goes…

  117. sophia April 1, 2020 at 4:48 pm #

    Captain Spaulding,

    It is true that I do not watch TV, or the news. I see only the occasional footage of Trump speaking, and I often like it. The thing is, from my point of view, it was obvious from the start of his campaign that what we call the deep state loathed him beyond anything I have seen in my lifetime. It is the main reason I voted for him, on the principle that the enemy of my enemy is my friend. It doesn’t mean I like him a lot but it meant he might break the deadlock which we have had for some decades, a real stranglehold in which it didn’t matter who you voted for and people mostly deluded themselves that it did. I have voted 3rd party for 30 years. I voted for Obama the first time because McCain was quite obviously insane, and I voted for Trump because Hillary scares the living shit out of me.
    But the antiTrump campaign, wow! It is relentless. They took their gloves off. They go on and on and they lie and lie. They have shown their dishonesty and their bias. They truly unmasked themselves. And what happened? Well, most of the people I know, instead of seeing the obvious, instead they became literally brainwashed and are now led around by the nose into any belief that the deep state wants of them. They are carrying water for their enemies and they see it not. They have done a 180 degree turn from the own lifelong ideals and they see it not. It’s like a science fiction novel. And they see it not and they cannot be reached. But their lives are taken over and consumed with endless anecdotes about how bad Trump is. So far as I can see, whether you fear him instead of hate him, you have swallowed the swill. It is all swill, all lies. Our media present packs of lies. And why all the liberal types eat it up like babes in a high chair, I cannot fathom.

    Okay, and by saying it is all lies, I don’t mean to imply he is wonderful. I simply mean my God people, wake up. We are living in an age of propaganda. They lie about everything. It ain’t journalism. They are puppets who are told what to say. Look behind the curtain.

    At this point, all the antiTrump words go right past me. I do listen to Janos a bit, because I don’t think he suffers from the syndrome.

    • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 5:27 pm #

      Very well put Sophia. The mass hysteria over Trump is so bizarre and extreme that it really defies rational explanation. You would think if you hated someone so much you won’t want to spend all of your waking hours fixated on him. It is truly some form of mass psychosis that may even have a spiritual basis…

      • sunburstsoldier April 1, 2020 at 5:31 pm #

        I don’t watch television either and if I had my way there won’t be one in the house…

        • Nightowl April 2, 2020 at 5:01 am #

          I turned off the TV 25 years ago. Not to make a statement, but because, at some point, I realiized that “garbage in, garbage out” applies here more than just about anywhere else.

      • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 8:58 am #

        “It is truly some form of mass psychosis that may even have a spiritual basis…”

        If all you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

        Only teasing, sunburst. 🙂

        • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 12:22 pm #

          Not just a hammer. I think I have a saw and a pair of pliers in here somewhere…

    • Q. Shtik April 1, 2020 at 6:38 pm #

      I do listen to Janos a bit, because I don’t think he suffers from the syndrome. – Sophia

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

      From June 16, 2015 when Trump entered the presidential race up until sometime in 2018 Trump had no stronger defender than Janos. Janos grovelled at Trump’s feet. He placed a heavy gold and jewel encrusted crown on Trump’s head. This was based on promises of building ‘the wall,’ perceiving Trump as a white nationalist, not supporting Israel, etc etc.

      Slowly but surely Janos began to realize his logic was standing firmly on quicksand. Trump named Jerusalem the capital of Israel, failed to build a wall on our southern border and was as much a white nationalist as Colin Kaepernick.

      So now Janos has managed to pull off a complete 180 with hardly anyone noticing but me. He really should be ashamed of his initial bad judgement, unless it is his current disdain for Trump that is in error.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 7:19 pm #

        I dared to hope, Q. None of the rest of them even bothered to lie to us. Jeb actually though he could win without the White Base. Now that’s delusional. So Trump spun his webs, and he is a Master at it. He spoke so feelingly that I still thinks he understands – he just doesn’t care.

        • Q. Shtik April 1, 2020 at 9:13 pm #

          though – Janos

          ==========

          thought

      • GreenAlba April 1, 2020 at 7:30 pm #

        “Janos grovelled at Trump’s feet.”

        And if I recall, SSL positively swooned. Regularly. 🙂

        • malthuss April 1, 2020 at 10:21 pm #

          what year was that?

          how long have you been here?

          • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 7:19 am #

            I’m not sure which betrays paying too little attention the most: not knowing how long I’ve been here or not knowing when your last presidential election was.

            Modesty obliges me to go for the latter.

      • tucsonspur April 1, 2020 at 7:43 pm #

        That was it. Dare to hope, to dream. I too was smitten.

        The Golden Gladiator of Gotham, The Grand Gadfly of Gotham, etc.

        The luster is lost, but what if it’s Biden and Trump, who would you dump?

        • sophia April 1, 2020 at 11:55 pm #

          Tuscon,

          I wouldn’t even consider voting for Biden, marbles or no marbles. As for Trump, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

          • tucsonspur April 2, 2020 at 6:35 pm #

            Flaws and all, he still stands tall.

            The Granitic General of Gotham.

      • sophia April 1, 2020 at 11:52 pm #

        Q,

        I see. I thought I recalled that he did like Trump. But at least it is better to change one’s mind than to be locked in place the way most people seem to be. I still like him for the astonishing way he sometimes speaks the truth. Trump, I mean.

        • sophia April 1, 2020 at 11:53 pm #

          I guess I did a similar 180 on Obama. I foolishly got taken in but not for long.

  118. Pucker April 1, 2020 at 4:59 pm #

    And there you go…

    Miss Shi Zhengli ??? of the Wuhan P4 Virology lab

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-07766-9

    The story of this independent source is very similar to the story that I heard from the Chinese re: the Wuhan P4 lab and the source of the Covid 19 virus. It seems that “Patient Zero” was Miss Huang Yanling ???.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bpQFCcSI0pU&t=5s

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    • Pucker April 1, 2020 at 5:06 pm #

      I guess that they solved that problem?

      “ Later surveys revealed large numbers of SARS-related coronaviruses circulating in China’s horseshoe bats (Rhinolophus)2 — suggesting that the deadly strain probably originated in the bats, and later passed through civets before reaching humans. But crucial genes — for a protein that allows the virus to latch onto and infect cells — were different in the human and known bat versions of the virus, leaving room for doubt about this hypothesis.”

  119. Janos Skorenzy April 1, 2020 at 6:36 pm #

    What’s Killing the White Working Class?, American Renaissance
    Stephanie Mencimer, Washington Monthly, April/May/June 2020

    Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism, by Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Princeton University Press, 312 pp.

    In early January last year, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson took to the airwaves with a 15-minute rant about the way that American capitalism was crushing families and decimating white working-class communities. He blamed small government conservatives and liberal elites alike for ignoring the economic cause of the collapse of the working class. Conservatives, he complained, blame the problem solely on the breakdown of the traditional family. “Like the libertarians they claim to oppose, many social conservatives also consider markets sacrosanct,” Carlson said. “The idea that families are being crushed by market forces seems never to occur to them. They refuse to consider it.”

    His indictment of American capitalism went viral and set off a familiar, if heated, debate, mostly on the right, where conservatives weren’t used to hearing such an assault on free market economics from one of their own. Yet Carlson’s assessment was rooted in solid academic research. In fact, his monologue could have served as the prologue for Deaths of Despair, a new book written by the married Princeton economics duo Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton. They’re the academics who first shocked the country in 2015 with a new study finding that the mortality rates of white people, particularly those without college degrees, had spiked, after nearly a century of sustained decline.

    {snip} Five years later, with Deaths of Despair, they’ve returned with a book-length investigation of the trends they first identified in 2015. Their updated data points are stark: Deaths from suicide, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related disease among middle-aged white men and women skyrocketed from 30 per 100,000 in 1990 to 92 per 100,000 in 2017. The spike in these deaths is almost exclusively confined to white Americans, both men and women, without a college degree. Mortality rates among college-educated Americans have continued to fall. Mortality rates for white-working class people in other wealthy countries are similarly in decline.

    {snip}

    Deaths of Despair is an academic book, laden with charts and facts and figures, and the authors devote a significant amount of ink to shooting down things they think are not causing the crisis—problems like obesity, for instance. But after dismissing a variety of possible causes for increasing mortality rates, they essentially come to the same conclusion Carlson did: that rapacious capitalism and predatory corporations, protected by politicians indebted to them, have destroyed the white working class. {snip}

    Deaths of Despair features a battery of distressing statistics about the state of the white working class. For white men without a college degree, the average growth in median wages between 1979 and 2017 was a negative number (?0.2 percent a year), even as median hourly earnings for all white workers grew by 11 percent in the same period. This wage deflation has had well-documented cultural ripple effects, depressing marriage rates as men’s appeal as partners fell along with their earnings. Without a stable family life, these men are more isolated, with fewer of the sorts of social buffers that might inoculate them against suicide or drug abuse. As a result, the rates for both have gone up.

    {snip} Women have always had lower rates of suicide, alcoholic liver disease, and drug overdoses, whether or not they have a four-year degree. But that has changed since the late 1990s. Working-class women without college degrees are dying from despair in about equal numbers as men. Case and Deaton don’t tease this out, but recent data suggests that white middle-aged women are now drinking themselves to death at a shocking rate. Between 1999 and 2015, alcohol-related deaths in this group soared by 130 percent.

    But Case and Deaton argue that the deaths are far more than a product of stagnant wages or economic distress. If that were the case, African Americans would surely be leading the uptick, but they aren’t. White working-class people are much less likely to be poor than black Americans are, and while African Americans still have higher overall mortality rates, those rates have been falling for the past 20 years even as they’ve risen for white people without college degrees.

    Instead, Case and Deaton point to something much broader at work in these numbers: the collapse of communities and the end of a way of life. Black communities experienced the ravages of deindustrialization decades before white communities did, along with an increase in mortality. {snip}

    That means that, just as 1980s Detroit or Baltimore was a ripe environment for the crack epidemic, white working-class areas of Kentucky or Ohio were uniquely primed for the opioid epidemic. Of the drug overdose deaths since the introduction of OxyContin, 90 percent have been among those without college degrees. {snip}

    But Case and Deaton also offer a harsh indictment of the pharmaceutical industry, which made obscene profits from getting vulnerable people hooked on deadly drugs. {snip}

    Out-of-control health care costs have helped turn good jobs into bad ones as companies outsource work to shift the cost of care elsewhere, keep wages down to compensate for rising health care costs, or eliminate many jobs entirely. {snip}

    {snip}

    {snip} Starting with the 1994 Republican revolution in Congress, both the federal government and many GOP-dominated states have made it much harder for people suffering a job loss or other calamity to access everything from Medicaid to food stamps, a trend that has likely exacerbated the current misery of white working-class people today. {snip}

    The lack of a safety net is one reason why Case and Deaton suggest that the working class in the U.S. is suffering in a way that those in other wealthy countries are not, even though the same forces of globalization and inequality are buffeting their citizens as well. {snip}

    While Deaths of Despair does an admirable job of describing the scope of this epidemic and some of its causes, apparently not even a Nobel Prize–winning economist can figure out what to do about it. {snip}

    {snip}

    In a rare moment of optimism, the authors argue that these political problems are solvable. “Democracy can rise to the challenge,” they write. “Democracy in America is not working well, but it is far from dead and it can work again if people push hard enough, just as it was made to work better in the Progressive Era a century ago and in the New Deal of the 1930s.”

    But there’s not much evidence that the ship of American democracy can be turned in time to save working-class people, in large part because they themselves don’t think it’s possible. In 2016, the enterprising Washington Post reporter Jeff Guo discovered that in counties where white people were dying the fastest, Trump performed best in the GOP primary. Since assuming office, President Trump and the GOP-controlled Senate have single-mindedly pursued policies that will harm white working-class voters, through cuts in social welfare programs like food stamps and Medicaid and by allowing huge corporate mergers. Yet these same sick and dying white working-class voters want nothing to do with the Democratic Party, whose platform at least offers some meaningful assistance.

    {snip}

    {snip} Even Tucker Carlson sees that the problem goes far beyond Trump. In his viral monologue last year, he said, “At some point, Donald Trump will be gone. The rest of us will be gone, too. The country will remain. What kind of country will it be then? How do we want our grandchildren to live? These are the only questions that matter.”

    JS: And to the extent the market is neutral or benign? To that extent it’s not allowed to work with Blacks and Hispanics raised above Whites in all kinds of ways. Politically? Don’t even ask. Whites have nothing of their own and aren’t allowed to organize on their own behalf. Culturally? Utterly loathed by their own Elite, including the Churches. The interest, care, compassion, (all limited resources) that should be going to poor Whites instead goes to minorities. The People are lost without the love of their own higher class what to speak of them actually being hated by them. THAT’s why they’re not interested in the Democrats. There’s nothing subtle about it. The subtlety is all on the Republican side on this one – with some Republicans pretending to care and then not following thru with promises. Trump comes to mind.

    • dolph9 April 1, 2020 at 7:02 pm #

      White Americans are too stupid to go after their true enemies. A people this dumb, fat, and manipulated deserves to go to history’s scrapheap.

      Think about all of the people and races of this world. Can you think of anyone dumber than white Americans? I can’t.

      Let the world pass to the Chinese, Indians, Muslims, Blacks, and Mexicans. Let Europe reclaim its past glories. Say what you will, but these peoples aren’t stupid.

      • malthuss April 1, 2020 at 10:23 pm #

        What people are smart? [arent stupid, in yr words].

      • elysianfield April 2, 2020 at 1:13 am #

        “Think about all of the people and races of this world. Can you think of anyone dumber than white Americans? I can’t.”

        dolph,
        What a curious statement. Viewed from a distance, one might assume that you have not enjoyed living with full-immersion diversity…unless, of course, you are among that demographic.

      • benr April 2, 2020 at 9:57 am #

        Having traveled all over this big blue marble I can safely say the people of the world are over all pretty all remarkably capable of gross stupidity.
        What you are attempting to say is that Americans have all become so passive we are getting rolled over due to the PC movement.
        With that I say not all of us.
        Most of this is being spoon fed to Americans from Kindergarten on through the end of their education and even work and the higher up in the Education “indoctrination” maze you go the more intense it gets.

        Liberalism is mental illness -Michael Weiner or Savage if you like.

  120. wwg1wga April 1, 2020 at 6:57 pm #

    The END march of self-organizing criticality is GASLIGHTING.

    http://www.got-truth.com/docs/The%20END%20march%20of%20self%20organizing%20criticality%20is%20GASLIGHTING.pdf

  121. tucsonspur April 1, 2020 at 7:24 pm #

    Trump dithered as disaster approached, and we’re all going to pay the price. And Pence lies and says Trump never belittled the Corona virus when ample video evidence proves otherwise.

    So now Trump appears to be facing reality, the grim figures making him unable to fake it or to wing it any further. I will now have to agree with Eliot about April. It will be the cruelest month(hopefully), only breeding corpses out of a dying land.

    On March 13th, Trump said testing would be done quickly in drive through lots across the nation. Out of about 25,000-30,000 of those big lots, only 5 are in operation and not for the general public. Hardly any testing has been done out here, so look for our numbers to balloon and spike the curve. Newsome is saying that CA. won’t peak until mid May. Wow!

    The failure of our health care system and our politicians is staggering, mind numbing. We may be on course to far surpass the total number of fatalities in all wars from the Revolutionary War on, throwing in 9-11. Fauci said that it’s possible to have 160,000,000 million infected here. At 1% fatality rate, that’s 1.6 million. What if it’s 3 or 4% or higher? Get ready to kiss your ass good by.

    A fall resurgence of the virus? It won’t be just the virus you have to worry about, and thinking about growing gardens will probably just plant you in one.

    Is all this part of God’s plan? Oh, the mystery! Don’t cry for me Lord of Virology!

    • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 7:58 pm #

      You are blaming Trump for the incompetence of thirty years worth of Deep State stupidity? That almost like blaming God for the development of a virus from eating bats.

      • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 8:03 pm #

        Trump “dithered” because all the information from WHO trying to cover up for the Chinese pointed to a much more benign organism than the monster that has developed. Who knows, maybe the organism mutated in January to the form we know today.

        The blame game is so human. Why don’t we work on getting the cure and vaccine in place ASAP, unlike what we did with SARS.

        What I hope dies in this country is the whole rotten party system.

        • tucsonspur April 1, 2020 at 8:38 pm #

          On January 23rd, we had the Wuhan Lockdown along with other cities in Hubei. 11 million in Wuhan alone. It was getting out of control earlier than that. World wide news.

          Nothing benign about that.

          I don’t think of it as blame, but as accurately assigning responsibility to better address the problem.

          Party system?, that’s another bucket of worms.

      • tucsonspur April 1, 2020 at 8:20 pm #

        C’mon John, his dithering wasn’t caused by the deep state. Aren’t we all God’s children, even the Chinee, so why did he allow all of this batshittery?

        God made the Chinee, no?
        God made bats, no?
        God allowed Chinee to eat bats, no?
        Virus comes from bats, no?

        So who should I blame, some poor, witless, starving, bat eating Chink, or the One who made them?

        • capt spaulding April 1, 2020 at 9:07 pm #

          Well tucson, Trump accepts no responsibility for any of this mess, I heard him say so in fact. The teflon one has spoken.

          • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 10:30 pm #

            What a great deal for all the blame shifters. One target Trump. He is at fault, him alone. No WHO, no Chinese, No Italians, no Iranians, no stupid Democrats yelling racist, just Trump. Simply amazing.

            With all the other BS being generated on the thread, I have finally figured out the future,

            Trump is going to run for God.

          • Nightowl April 2, 2020 at 5:33 am #

            Ah, yes. It must be the “teflon” effect that keeps him in office and impervious to your powerful argumentz.

            LOL.

          • capt spaulding April 2, 2020 at 7:30 pm #

            That’s a knee slapper. I’ll bet you crack ’em up down at the gas station. I heard Floyd thinks you’re “a caution.”

          • Nightowl April 3, 2020 at 5:55 am #

            It isn’t meant to be snarky — that is the soup you swim in.

            It highlights the fact that there is a reason none of the poo you fling sticks.

            Ponder that. With your tiny brain.

        • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 10:21 pm #

          Well, Spur.

          If you want to blame God I hope he shows up to listen.

          It is a good question though, when the blame game comes, who is going to get it?

          Our illustrious leaders are already fighting over it.

          Twits!

        • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 10:25 pm #

          BTW! Info posted this AM saying the Wuhan area is having a second surge. I wonder how that fits into all the models?

          • capt spaulding April 2, 2020 at 10:22 am #

            That’s a good question. You could probably find out more by checking with Trump’s pandemic team.

  122. BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 8:30 pm #

    Well, the horseshoe set arrived today, $49 at Ebay. Tomorrow if it’s not raining will commence installation, using some RR ties and bags of sand I have laying around here to get the job done.

    From here on in, until these Days of Plague subside, it’ll be pitchers of Screwdriver smoothies and horseshoe matches in the backyard.

    That’s if the weather holds out.

    Brh

    • tucsonspur April 1, 2020 at 8:44 pm #

      Are you not so close to the neighbors? Those clanging horseshoes could just push somebody over the edge, especially now.

      • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 8:52 pm #

        Nah, 3 acres, about half of it woodlot.

        In about a month it’ll be leafy, which will muffle the sound a bit.

        • stelmosfire April 1, 2020 at 10:17 pm #

          What ya need is a bocce court. Skill and strategy. My grandfather had a couple under the pines. A lot of wine drinkin’ and yelling goin’ on.

          • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 10:25 pm #

            Isn’t that strictly an Italian thang, Rip.

            At any rate I think installing a bocce court is a lot more involved than digging out horseshoe pits.

            Brh

        • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 12:40 pm #

          You’re a lucky man Brh. Imagine being locked down in some cramped apartment in the middle of an urban ghetto. That’s one pot that will be boiling over very soon…

    • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 10:23 pm #

      Hey, you gonna put x’s on the ground so players are six feet apart. Or disinfect the posts and horseshoes between uses? It is getting silly at times.

      • BackRowHeckler April 1, 2020 at 10:30 pm #

        Yeah that sh#ts getting old fast, JAZ.

        As far as warding off Covid 19 that’s what screwdriver smoothies are for. Hopefully horseshoe madness will help bide the time.

        • JohnAZ April 1, 2020 at 10:31 pm #

          You need to patent that, you will be a billionaire.

    • benr April 2, 2020 at 9:51 am #

      Sounds like fun!
      Throw in some Sailor Jerry, Ginger ale and a heavy squeeze of lime on Ice and I’m in.
      If only we lived near each other.

  123. tucsonspur April 2, 2020 at 12:06 am #

    I posted this a few blogs ago, before Covid really hit the fantail and elsewhere:

    Think of the sailors far away at sea
    And what may bring them misery
    Braving the oceans and braving the waves
    Being stealthily put into their graves

    “Sailors do not need to die”:

    https://www.livescience.com/aircraft-carrier-coronavirus-sailors.html

    And then I came across this on Guam of all places:

    https://popularmilitary.com/us-servicemembers-brawl-in-guam-including-a-naked-woman/

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  124. K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 3:12 am #

    ‘Humanity, in its desire for comfort, had over-reached itself. It had exploited the riches of nature too far. Quietly and complacently, it was sinking into decadence, and progress had come to mean the progress of the Machine.’ – 1909 E.M. Forster

    And now the witching hour.

    • K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 3:19 am #

      ‘there came a day when, without the slightest warning, without any previous hint of feebleness, the entire communication-system broke down, all over the world, and the world, as they understood it, ended.’ – 1909 E.M. Forster

      • K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 3:26 am #

        ‘Man, the flower of all flesh, the noblest of all creatures visible, man who had once made god in his image, and had mirrored his strength
        24on the constellations, beautiful naked man was dying, strangled in the garments that he had woven. Century after century had he toiled, and here was his reward. Truly the garment had seemed heavenly at first, shot with colours of culture, sewn with the threads of self- denial. And heavenly it had been so long as it was a garment and no more, man could shed it at will and live by the essence that is his soul, and the essence, equally divine, that is his body.’ – 1909 E.M. Forster

        • tucsonspur April 2, 2020 at 6:01 am #

          Fwiw:

          ‘After his death, Forster’s reasons for reticence came into focus. In a diary entry of 1964, he reflected that ‘I should have been a more famous writer if I had written or rather published more, but sex has prevented the latter’. His wording here is key. At King’s College Cambridge, Forster had left behind a hoard of unpublished material, including a wealth of unseen fiction: a novel, two substantial fragments, stories, plays, poems. He might not have published any more fiction in the years since A Passage, but he had been writing. It is the subject of those stories, however, that kept them hidden. Forster hadn’t been writing about ‘sex’ in the broad sense of the word, but, more specifically, the ‘sex’ which meant something to him: sex and love between men.’

          • K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 6:22 am #

            He was open to his close friends, the wiki machine told me. If he was comfortable enough to be out with his friends in an active social life, which he had, such ‘reasons for reticence’ make no sense. But anybody who has a talent for words knows any excuse to explain away lack of discipline in getting a big project done will be used since it is not skill that sleeps. Using being gay for an excuse not to write more is lame. And if someone else is saying he should have written more than he did for any reason, to that I say. They will never be the boss of me.

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

            As Balzac said after an orgasm: There goes another novel.

            Energy Kdog, energy. There is only so much. You can choose to spend it high or spend it down there. And knowing how obsessive Gays are, the answer is clear as to where he spent it.

            On a higher level: One mathematician stopped attending opera during a very creative period in his work: it was drawing off to much of the libido he needed for his work.

            You are high priest of all Israel, and you know not these things? Christ to Nicodemus and I to you.

          • Majella April 3, 2020 at 3:57 am #

            JS:
            “Energy Kdog, energy. There is only so much.”

            Is this not Himself’s guiding philosophy?

      • BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 3:53 am #

        What did they have for communications in 1909?

        Well, telegraph. Primitive telephones. Ship to shore radio that wasn’t too reliable yet.

        Commercial radio didn’t come along to 1921.

        Film studios were based in Brooklyn and New Jersey but the newsreels didn’t come along till later.

        Maybe at some point the internet will go down and that will be the end of CFNation.

        Brh

        • K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 5:58 am #

          BRH, You should download and read the whole story.

          https://archive.org/details/themachinestops_1411_librivox

          It is only twenty-five pages and you will recognize more than one well know move hiding in the prose. Truly prophetic to our time.

          Now 111 years 11 months 11 days 11 hours 11 minutes 11 seconds later:

          Our Machine Stops

          As one idea man to another you will like it.

          • K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 6:00 am #

            It is only twenty-five pages and you will recognize more than one well know movie hiding in the prose. Truly prophetic to our time.

          • BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 11:20 am #

            I’ll look into EM Forster, K-Dog.

            I knew about ‘Passage to India’, but for some reason thought Forster was a 19th century author. But I see he lived till 1970.

            Brh

          • K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 1:31 pm #

            If you read the story you will understand what I mean by Idea Man. I don’t know much about him either but I was turned on to the story and had to hunt it down. When I read it I had a whoooooohhh moment. 1909 and it has the internet and systemic system collapse. A doomer must read besides being a fine piece of prose.

            Just the thing to read as our machine breaks down and we have to kiss our asses goodbye!

        • Majella April 3, 2020 at 3:55 am #

          “Maybe at some point the internet will go down and that will be the end of CFNation.

          BRH – if the internet goes down – like forever – that alone will usher in the World Made by Hand.

  125. tucsonspur April 2, 2020 at 5:37 am #

    From the article below:

    ‘Kushner has relied on select officials, including his one-time former roommate and current U.S. foreign investment czar Adam Boehler…’

    ‘Projects are so decentralized that one team often has little idea what others are doing — outside of that they all report up to Kushner.’

    “They’re not necessarily doing something nefarious, but if they were, this is what they would do to hide it,” CREW spokesperson Jordan Libowitz said.

    ‘Yet Kushner’s role in that episode has come under increasing scrutiny, most recently following an Atlantic report that Oscar Health – a health insurer co-founded by Kushner’s brother, Josh – was asked to develop the website that would direct people to the testing sites. Kushner himself also once partially owned or controlled the company. The project, which could have violated federal ethics laws, was ultimately scrapped, and an Oscar spokesperson said the company donated the work for free.’

    Kushner to the rescue!

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/behind-scenes-kushner-takes-charge-235545283.html

    Bidding for equipment between states and FEMA, price rises, continued scarcity of vital life saving supplies and this shmuck is part of it all. Market place and the Morgue. Kushner Kapitalism. OMFG, just when you think our system of health care can’t become any more obscene, we get the Kushner vaccine!

    Coming to you soon; the Kushner Virus Exchange!

    • SoftStarLight April 2, 2020 at 1:07 pm #

      I never voted for him. Why is he such a big influencer? Should we start putting the candidate and their “team” on the ballot so we can be clear about who we are electing?

      • tucsonspur April 3, 2020 at 2:56 am #

        Good question. Probably past real estate connections with Trump et al, son in law of course, more than ample ambition(greed?), money and its power.

        Bring them on stage, let’s see all the players.

  126. tucsonspur April 2, 2020 at 6:18 am #

    ‘My poems, I think, exist in a state of tension between the love of natural beauty and the fear of natural meaninglessness or absurdity.’ Hayden Carruth

    The Curtain
    By Hayden Carruth

    Just over the horizon a great machine of death is roaring and rearing.
    We can hear it always. Earthquake, starvation, the ever-renewing sump of corpse-flesh.
    But in this valley the snow falls silently all day, and out our window
    We see the curtain of it shifting and folding, hiding us away in our little house,

    We see earth smoothened and beautified, made like a fantasy, the snow-clad trees
    So graceful. In our new bed, which is big enough to seem like the north pasture almost
    With our two cats, Cooker and Smudgins, lying undisturbed in the southeastern and southwestern corners,
    We lie loving and warm, looking out from time to time. “Snowbound,” we say. We speak of the poet

    Who lived with his young housekeeper long ago in the mountains of the western province, the kingdom
    Of cruelty, where heads fell like wilted flowers and snow fell for many months
    Across the pass and drifted deep in the vale. In our kitchen the maple-fire murmurs
    In our stove. We eat cheese and new-made bread and jumbo Spanish olives
    Which have been steeped in our special brine of jalapeños and garlic and dill and thyme.
    We have a nip or two from the small inexpensive cognac that makes us smile and sigh.

    For a while we close the immense index of images that is our lives—for instance,
    The child on the Mescalero reservation in New Mexico sitting naked in 1966 outside his family’s hut,
    Covered with sores, unable to speak. But of course we see the child every day,
    We hold out our hands, we touch him shyly, we make offerings to his implacability.
    No, the index cannot close. And how shall we survive? We don’t and cannot and will never
    Know. Beyond the horizon a great unceasing noise is undeniable.

    The machine,
    Like an immense clanking vibrating shuddering unnameable contraption as big as a house, as big as the whole town,
    May break through and lurch into our valley at any moment, at any moment.
    Cheers, baby. Here’s to us. See how the curtain of snow wavers and then falls back.

    • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 12:13 pm #

      Why is this called a poem? Reads more like prose to me…

      • K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 1:35 pm #

        Word art of some kind. And good.

    • SoftStarLight April 2, 2020 at 12:47 pm #

      Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Recently, I have been going out at night just to listen to the absolute silence that has descended over the land here. No more sounds of cars whirring down the mostly desolate road. Not a soul out most of the time. But yet, there is quite a bit of noise in the silence. Exactly, like something could crash right through it any moment.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 3:24 pm #

        The Sound of Silence

        Hello darkness, my old friend
        I’ve come to talk with you again
        Because a vision softly creeping
        Left its seeds while I was sleeping
        And the vision that was planted in my brain
        Still remains
        Within the sound of silence
        In restless dreams I walked alone
        Narrow streets of cobblestone
        ‘Neath the halo of a street lamp
        I turned my collar to the cold and damp
        When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
        That split the night
        And touched the sound of silence
        And in the naked light I saw
        Ten thousand people, maybe more
        People talking without speaking
        People hearing without listening
        People writing songs that voices never share
        And no one dare
        Disturb the sound of silence
        “Fools” said I, “You do not know
        Silence like a cancer grows
        Hear my words that I might teach you
        Take my arms that I might reach you”
        But my words like silent raindrops fell
        And echoed
        In the wells of silence
        And the people bowed and prayed
        To the neon god they made
        And the sign flashed out its warning
        In the words that it was forming
        And the sign said, “The words of the prophets
        Are written on the subway walls
        And tenement halls”
        And whisper’d in the sounds of silence

        Paul Simon

        JS: It’s said that the Sound of Silence is loudest in the Himalayas. The Om or Amen

        • malthuss April 2, 2020 at 8:44 pm #

          the song of a little violent rich jewish man. gosh, Janos, you disappoint.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:03 pm #

            You bigot! I know nothing about all that, only that he is a fine musician and song writer.

            How different my high level racism (or love for my race) is from your hate trip.

            I do not deny what you have said of course. I simply haven’t heard anything about it. The corruption of his class is well known so I wouldn’t be surprised of course.

        • SoftStarLight April 3, 2020 at 2:53 am #

          I like this song a lot :-).

  127. JohnAZ April 2, 2020 at 11:11 am #

    Well!

    The president of the Philippines, Duterte, has found a way to deal with scofflaws ignoring Coronavirus isolation.

    He just ordered them to be shot dead. Now we will see the Philippines data turn positive.

    • SoftStarLight April 2, 2020 at 12:39 pm #

      That isn’t anything new from what I understand. China did the same thing. They also allegedly wielded sick people into their homes and the people starved to death.

    • Majella April 3, 2020 at 3:52 am #

      Philippines data, with a population of over 100 million and mostly dirt poor:

      Cases to date 2,633
      Deaths to date (not including executed non-confirmers) 107

      How does that stack up against the USA? Not too flash…

  128. sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 11:28 am #

    Here in Michigan, Governor Whitmer, a Democrat who is on Uncle Joe’s list for VP, wants to keep the state on lockdown for 70 days. Doesn’t that sound absolutely crazy to you?

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    • SoftStarLight April 2, 2020 at 12:37 pm #

      Not necessarily. I would suppose it depends on the risks. Do we still even fully understand the risks? It seems to be coming out now that a certain percentage of those struck with the coronavirus have neurological symptoms like hallucinations and confusion. And people are also losing their senses of smell and taste even if they are otherwise asymptomatic.

      • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 12:48 pm #

        70 days will sink the economy to a point where it will be difficult to recover plus everyone will go bat shit crazy by then…

        • SoftStarLight April 2, 2020 at 1:10 pm #

          I suppose a bit of creativity is needed. Actually if everyone was wearing a mask and gloves we could basically get back to a new sort of normal. Companies could begin bringing back workers who are wearing that minimal PPE and move shifts around so that there is still distancing going on. We could make things so simple but clearly that is not even on the agenda in this country.

          • SoftStarLight April 2, 2020 at 1:13 pm #

            Plus our “leaders” and Corporate Masters determined that it was best to move production of just about everything overseas including masks and gloves. So we don’t make barely anything we need ourselves. In addition to creative ways of addressing the health crises it may be time to address these leaders once and for all.

          • K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 1:38 pm #

            “Plus our “leaders” and Corporate Masters determined that it was best to move production of just about everything overseas”

            They call it wisdom.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 2:28 pm #

            Trump dithered, it’s clearly on record and I remember. But even now when he’s on the right track, the mechanisms to insure any compliance with the Defense Production Act may simply not be there any more – like a brain ordering the hand to move, but the nervous system unable to relay the message.

            Clearly there are mechanism to insure compliance with civil rights strictures to the effect that the Federal Government won’t do business with companies or universities that don’t comply. But something so basic as Survival and War against Disease in the Heartland? Nothing there anymore.

            So it may not be his fault. I don’t know. Of course maybe he could be doing more even if so. Like declaring martial law….

          • SoftStarLight April 2, 2020 at 2:39 pm #

            Ah that is interesting. I didn’t even think about that right away. It’s almost like our system is booby trapped against us. I mean for Whites like we have been knowing it is. But even as a nominal nation, the system seems to be geared to tear apart and destroy rather than to build up no matter the demographic ultimately. I guess maybe this crisis is revealing how much our country has been hallowed out and sold out to the highest bidders be they Americans or foreigners. And how much the people who appear to be in charge really don’t work for us per se. Or like you said maybe ultimately they can’t.

          • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 7:02 pm #

            That’s exactly the point; government doesn’t do creativity very well. Just an iron-fisted lockdown…let the free market and the entrepreneurs who run private enterprise. Each company can come up with its own creative solutions. Get Whitmer and the demo (and republicans for that matter) out of the way…

    • Pucker April 2, 2020 at 1:14 pm #

      It looks like because of the lack of leadership and other bureaucratic and governance pathologies that they may lose control and stumble into crisis, like during the US Civil War, or WWI?

      • K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 1:59 pm #

        Rhymes for our times.

      • SoftStarLight April 2, 2020 at 2:30 pm #

        Do you think that Nationalism will make a resurgence? Most people now see how much of a failure Globalism is now. And it seems like many countries are becoming more isolated and sort of becoming more inward focused rather than outward.

        • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 7:46 pm #

          I think it will be almost unavoidable…

    • Cargill April 2, 2020 at 2:50 pm #

      Here in Michigan, Governor Whitmer, a Democrat who is on Uncle Joe’s list for VP, wants to keep the state on lockdown for 70 days. Doesn’t that sound absolutely crazy to you?

      Why is it crazy? We won’t know if it’s too little or too much until after the event … the whole pandemic is being observed in the rearview mirror. Detroit is a significant hotspot – tough measures are required.

      What does seem crazy is that there isn’t a coordinated national response (we can blame Trump and the fruitloop ideological right for that). States competing with each for supplies is really the bat-shit crazy bit.

      • BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 3:35 pm #

        What’s the national response in Australia?

        • Cargill April 2, 2020 at 5:25 pm #

          What’s the national response in Australia?

          It’s absolutely a national response here … there is a National Cabinet, comprising the Prime Minister, three keys ministers, and all the state premiers (like governors) – and the level of national uniformity is very high.

          Australia went hard and went early – we are all more-or-less locked down – and our number of cases / number of deaths remain relatively modest … we have not gone into the hockey-stick model – at least not so far.

          The case rate and death rate in the US is as scandalous as it is tragic. Apart from the obscenely incompetent response from Trump and the Boyz, that will kill tens of thousands unnecessarily, leaving it to each state governor and every mayor, is madness.

          Mad Right Ideology is going to kill all of you!

          • Majella April 3, 2020 at 3:45 am #

            Well, no ALL… but probably in excess of 5% of infected cases by the time it’s done.

          • Majella April 3, 2020 at 3:45 am #

            ‘Not ALL’

      • BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 3:36 pm #

        And what do you mean ‘We’? Why would an Australian citizen care?

        • Cargill April 2, 2020 at 5:27 pm #

          We’re all in this together, comrade … globalism has never been more necessary!

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

            We don’t need Australia’s help. Indeed, when the PLA shows up someday in Sidney, you’ll be crawling to us for help. And we just might tell you to f#kk off.

            Brh

        • AttackSub April 2, 2020 at 5:45 pm #

          Why weren’t you bitching between 2017-2019 when the death rate from the flu was over 141,000 Americans…obviously due to an “absolutely incompetent response from Trump and The Boyz? Got an answer for that, Comrade?

      • BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 3:48 pm #

        Dude, I think you’re in Australia like I’m on Mars.

        • Cargill April 2, 2020 at 5:29 pm #

          I love the way the Trump Cult just ignores any information that runs counter their warped Kool Aid minds. Carry on.

      • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 7:53 pm #

        An iron-fisted lockdown is not the solution. Give people credit for intelligence (something politicians seem unable to do). Let the entrepreneurs in the private sector figure it out. Allow businesses the flexibility to come up with their own creative solution. As soon as the government gets involved everything goes to hell in a handbasket…

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

      I don’t agree that Trump dithered. But if you have been BRAINWASHED into TDS then you have no other choice in this and many other matters to always side against Trump. It is the one and only criterion. No matter what he does it is wrong. If he had locked down on Jan 22, he would be reviled. If he avoids a nuclear war, you must wish for nuclear war. If he arrested child traffickers, you must be in favor of child trafficking. It becomes absurd. Trump weighed the possibility of economic and private life destruction – which is what the lockdown is – against the possibility of how dangerous the virus might be. And as for me, I am still not sure and I have read many articles by many experts. And some countries have not gone into lockdown and are doing well. And England also tried to avoid lockdown, but got pressured into it. Sweden has not locked down and they have one of the most sensible of governments.

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

        Good point, Sophia.

        Remember when President Trump wanted to crack down on MS-13 on Long Island at a time when MS-13 was committing brutal rapes and machete massacres of HS kids, and Nancy Pelosi objected, saying MS-13 gang members — all illegal — were people too.

  129. Pucker April 2, 2020 at 1:11 pm #

    Free Bill Cosby!

    “While most everyone in America is sheltering in place in fear of coronavirus, some celebrities behind bars, such Bill Cosby and R. Kelly, are pressing to be released from lockups where they fear the killer virus is raging or soon will be.“

  130. K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 1:55 pm #

    Gardeners are working. I guess they have decided for themselves they are an essential industry. I do understand, smoke em while you got em.

    I see them working alone cutting grass and weeding. Leaf blowers whir away. It seems innocent enough. They would not work if they were sick would they? Even if they were the chances of being infect by leaf blower have to be very small. I’m sure they wear PPE when they are in the truck together.

    Yet consulting the guidelines, A Journal of the Plague Year by
    Daniel Defoe
    (1722). A comprehensive guide to current happenings, this activity should still be forbidden.

    Tell Trump, it looks like they might be from somewhere else too. KDFP.
    Because why not, you know I could do a better job. That’s my platform. I can do a better job. Vote for me and you will too.

    • SoftStarLight April 2, 2020 at 2:41 pm #

      So it was forbidden to work outside with masks on? Or do you mean Defoe was saying that masks should be worn outside and in the truck?

      • K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 5:11 pm #

        Defoe would have them confined them indoors. Remember this is a history of what really happened when people did not have medical knowledge like they do now. They should not have been working at all. Allowing some people to work that are not in an essential industry can’t be allowed unless authorized by local authorities which in turn must be responsible to higher authority for their actions

        I think you are just giving me a civics test — KDFP.

    • BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 6:02 pm #

      “Defoe would have them confined indoors.”

      Defoe was writing about events that occurred when he was 3 years old. Indoors is where the rats were, where the fleas lived.

  131. Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 4:08 pm #

    CNN

    When dinosaurs roamed the Earth 90 million years ago, the planet was much warmer, including Antarctica at the South Pole. But in a surprising twist, researchers have discovered evidence that Antarctica also supported a swampy rainforest at the time, according to a new study.

    Researchers captured a slice of the seafloor using a drill rig aboard a polar research vessel on West Antarctica’s Amundsen Sea between February and March in 2017. The sediment core sample was taken near the Pine Island and Thwaites glaciers.

    CT scans of the sediment core revealed pristine samples of forest soil, pollen, spores and even root systems so well preserved that they could identify cell structures. The soil included examples of pollen from the first flowering plants found this close to the South Pole.

    They dated the soil, its fine-grained clay and silt to 90 million years ago. Their study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

    “During the initial shipboard assessments, the unusual coloration of the sediment layer quickly caught our attention; it clearly differed from the layers above it,” said Johann Klages, study author and geologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute. “We had found a layer originally formed on land, not in the ocean.”

    Scientists know that during the age of the dinosaurs, conditions were warmer. The mid-Cretaceous era, from 80 million to 115 million years ago, was the warmest period for Earth in the past 140 million years, the researchers said. The surface of the sea likely reached 95 degrees Fahrenheit in tropical areas. And the sea level was 558 feet higher than it is now.

    JS: Ninety five degree ocean at the tropics! Not much cooling to be had. How hot was the land? And was it desert because of the heat or just an incredible swamp like Washington DC?

    And how cold were the poles? Was Antarctica the South Pole back then or has there been a shift? It may have been. If it was this warm, imagine how warm the tropics must have been. Or was there more uniformity and less “weather” back then?

    Did the Dinosaurs war against each other? Perhaps developing weapons that ended their rather hot eden? Were some of them Theists and some Atheists? Some Christian and some Jew? Some polytheists and some monos?

    • AttackSub April 2, 2020 at 5:04 pm #

      Must have been flatulence from all the dino mobiles that the Flintstones and Rubbles et alia were driving. Happy motoring during the Cretaceous Era

    • sophia April 2, 2020 at 5:46 pm #

      Janos,

      Also, I have read that they have found tissue and blood samples in dinosaur bones. This shoots the theory of them being millions of years old. Likewise, how are we to reconcile the Piri Reis map of Antarctica?

      You must check out the electric universe theory which will lead to catastrophism. Our planet was much different not that many thousands of years ago.

      As to poles and tropics, our planet even now could be much nicer if the hot places and cold places could exchange with each other. The problem is they are locked in. For example, if there were a better opening between north and south america, and if Antarctica were not placed right atop the pole, the earth would be more temperate.

      • GreenAlba April 3, 2020 at 5:20 am #

        “Also, I have read that they have found tissue and blood samples in dinosaur bones. This shoots the theory of them being millions of years old.”

        Of course it does. How easy it is to wipe out the achievements of science just by …

        …not reading the science.

        https://www.livescience.com/41537-t-rex-soft-tissue.html

        • GreenAlba April 3, 2020 at 5:23 am #

          I’m sorry to say that I judge people’s credibility in general by their credulousness in general.

          Among other things. 🙂

    • JohnAZ April 2, 2020 at 7:13 pm #

      C’mon Janos.

      You haven’t heard of a athiestosaurus, or a polytheosaurus?

      Seriously, the migration of the continents is not well understood. Was Antarctica at the equator when the dinosaurs reigned, or was the whole planet all warmer?

      A good theory is the lighter silicate minerals continue to boil up from the mantle creating more continental area with time. Volcanoes of all sorts.

      If you look at the globe, it looks to me that all the continental land masses are drifting toward the North Pole and away from Antarctica. Would a spinning globe tend to float its loose surface toward the poles. If you spray painted a rotating sphere, would the paint move toward the poles.

  132. sophia April 2, 2020 at 5:02 pm #

    Green Alba,

    “Why does a person have or lack gravitas on the basis of whether they believe in a deity or not?”

    That isn’t what I said. I said that when there is not deity nor cosmic purpose in one’s worldview, such a person might invest other beliefs with more gravitas.

    • GreenAlba April 3, 2020 at 9:22 am #

      Values (rather than ‘beliefs’) such as love, justice, compassion and sacrifice are deserving of gravitas. Some rather more than random ‘cosmic’ beliefs or hypothetical ‘purposes’, some might argue. An argument on which I will decline to judge.

  133. sophia April 2, 2020 at 5:06 pm #

    SSL,

    “And that fact, coupled with the general wickedness of human nature that you so succinctly point out may mean that Green Alba believes in demonic gods be they Christian or otherwise whether she’s aware of it or not.”

    That is going too far for me. subconscious motivations, yes, but actually worshiping entities that she does not know about?
    Meanwhile, keep in mind that in my opinion many Christians are demon worshipers, and it is a conscious decision.

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    • GreenAlba April 3, 2020 at 9:26 am #

      Hello-o, Alba is in the room. Seriously, do you guys hear yourselves?

  134. sophia April 2, 2020 at 5:37 pm #

    Green Alba,

    “Almost everyone was religious back then, whether American or European. It hasn’t lingered quite as long here.”

    Yeah, but a lot of the people who really cared enough to uproot their lives came here. All sorts of odd cults came here.

    “And it wasn’t a ‘complaint’, it was an observation. I consider it ‘normal’ to be religious too. ”

    It was a complaint, and you mentioned it is far less in Europe.

    “As for Pascal’s wager, it was you yourself who said to me ‘Well, if we are right that there is a God and you have a soul, then of course one day you will find out., which is one half of Pascal’s wager.”

    No, by God, it is not the same. To say that if your consciousness survives the death of the body you will notice it, is not the same as Pascals wager, see below:

    “For people who believe in heaven and hell – which is most of the self-confessed Christians on this site – Pascal’s wager is eminently sensible, whichever way you choose to bet. But it assumes an evil God who would create a ‘place’ of eternal punishment.”

    Pascal’s wager is stupid because it says whether you really believe or not, you should believe or say you believe because God is an idiot who will be fooled by that and honor your pretend belief. So, he believes in a God who is offended if you don’t believe in him, and seems to ignore the little problem that you either believe or you don’t, and there isn’t a lot you can do about it.

    That’s another of my beefs with Christian dogma. What an absurdity it is to think God would be so petty and so irresponsible as to be eternally offended because someone doesn’t know if he exists or not, or even is pretty sure he doesn’t. So the heck what and whose fault is that anyway? I once told a coworker that I didn’t believe in hell because God was too good to create a hell. She reacted as if I were a wasp who had just stung her. And informed me that I would be in hell for not believing in hell. Because I said I believed God is good! I asked her if she would at least feel sorry for me and she said no.

    And that, Soft Star Light, is why I said a lot of Christians worship a demon.

    “And I’m not a materialist. I’m closer to a humanist. I’d regard someone like John Gray as a materialist, and I’m closer to Raymond Tallis, whose humanism is neither materialism nor scientism. Science, yes, but scientism, no.”

    I would not have thought of humanism as being contra materialism. Please explain. If its not too late in Scotland.

    • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 7:27 pm #

      We need to throw all the beliefs held by institutional Christianity into the garbage can and get back to the words of Christ. There is a great timeless wisdom and originality in his words we can all learn from…

      • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:06 pm #

        Your shadow is showing, cloudy.

    • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 8:54 pm #

      sophia

      “It was a complaint, and you mentioned it is far less in Europe.”

      What I said was:

      “Americans think of religion as the norm, forgetting that in almost all other advanced nations it isn’t, it’s the exception. ”

      That is an observation. An observation that may explain a number of attitudes, including the very public display of religiosity, e.g. on a blog site that isn’t primarily a religious one. And it is indeed far less the norm in Europe (Western Europe at least). That is also an observation. I am not the first to make either observation. Entire books have been written on the topic, simply because people have found the anomaly of interest.

      But you’ll have to excuse me as it’s almost 2 in the morning and enough is enough.

      Your coworker has some morally repulsive attitudes. And she is not alone. On that I think we agree.

  135. sophia April 2, 2020 at 6:32 pm #

    Janos,

    “Thankfully God is above Nature as such. He has no partner nor offspring as Mohammad said. Reproduction is not an issue. ”

    Well, yes and no. God the One contains all possibilities, but as a universe becomes manifest, there are polarities, and those polarities reflect the divine reality. Thus the need to have a feminine representation within the godhead, albeit that is truly genderless.

    “We more or less agree, I guess, right now. But being a woman you will change and not remember your previous state, such as when you did put forth female superiority.”

    I think you misunderstood me and thus you are holding a grudge. Now, you posit that men are superior, and I agree that in many ways they are. But women are also holding turf that does not belong to men.

    “You feel the Abrahamic Religions are unfair to women. That’s a constant. I don’t disagree, though I believe in the Patriarchy. The Feminine Divine has gotten the short shrift here in the West for the last two thousand years.”

    Yes, you are pretty reasonable here.

    “The male was invented to serve the female” – classic feminist superiority trip. ”

    This annoys me because goddamnit, I am an 8th grade dropout and I think for myself. Well, to be sure I read things which influence me, but I come up with this stuff myself. I want you to think about what I say instead of reacting defensively. It goes like this: Life. Life must reproduce. To reproduce, one does so out of one’s body. That is giving birth. This precedes multicellular life, which commenced with the arisal of a second sex. Does it make sense for the first sex to be male? No, it does not, for the definition of a male – and this is why I do not go along with the gender pronoun nonsense – is “he who impregnates.” We may be very complex beings with minds and souls and astral bodies, but in the material realm our bodies are designed male and female. Several design differences and every one of them relates to whether you are male or female. The male impregnates and the female gives birth. There is no sense in having an impregnator without someone to impregnate. The female is the primal gender. But then as in the godhead, perhaps the one implies the other. Perhaps they might arise simultaneously. But as a point of logic, the male serves the female. Both have the same purpose – to serve life. She serves it directly by giving birth and he serves it indirectly by impregnating her. The Bible tried to turn this basic and obvious truth around by pretending that women were created as an afterthought to serve men. Regardless of whether males are leaders, regardless of their many talents or superior strength or ability to hold harems or even make females do their bidding. It matters not – look at the animal kingdom for a simplified version. Males serve females. Try to argue that point. Males live to serve the female because every single creature lives to do its part to serve life and the female does it directly and the male does it by serving the female. Doesn’t matter if he’s the boss, doesn’t matter if he has a beautiful mane or tail – his physical purpose in life is to serve the female. Because the female is life. Which is why Adam said of Eve: I will call her Life – because she will be the mother of the living.

    “Women exist to give birth to boys who Men will turn into Men. This is your privilege and glory.”

    Well, it is indeed a special glory to have a man for a son.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 6:54 pm #

      Only the Man can guide the Woman. On her own she is defenseless and let’s face it, foolish. As Paglia says, the race of women would still be living in grass huts if left to their own devices.

      If Nature is female, then Spirit is male. Which is higher? That’s right: the Spirit!

      Man (male and female) is both matter and spirit, body and soul. Woman is closer to the Earth, with all its beauty, ugliness, and horror. Man is closer to the Spirit – or should be at least. In other words, a Man has to attain to be a Man. Woman just have to “be”, lay back and think of England so to speak.

      I’m speaking in generalities of course. Some women are able to overcome their limited material destiny. And many men do not attain unto the Spirit and are poor guides and providers to women.

      The Occultist Dion Fortune, (a woman!) said that man is positive or dominant on the physical place but woman on the emotional or astral. Thus in courtship, a man must initiate contact and indicate interest, then the woman chooses him or not. Man is positive or dominant on the mental plane and woman on the intuitive, the higher octave of the emotional. And so it goes until the Higher Unity is attained: Adam Kadmon who is both male and female and neither. The Divine Androgyne – the diametrical opposite of those poor souls who are confused about their gender.

      • sophia April 2, 2020 at 9:18 pm #

        Janos,

        I differentiate between soul and spirit.
        Yeah, I mostly agree with what you say. That Paglia, she is something else. I came to a similar conclusion.
        It is so that to be a male is an attainment. This is partially because the female is the default, the basic pattern of the human fetus. You must interfere to make a male. The male fetus produces his own testosterone and masculinizes his own brain. That the male takes longer to mature is a compliment, as a long childhood is the hallmark of our species with its superior intellect.
        All societies recognize the need to a man to become a man, and how difficult it is, but our society has denigrated and denied this process. So we have this thing, the man cave. My daughter informs me that now women want a ‘she-hut.’ Goodness, she says, don’t they realize that the whole house is her domain and the man gets the garage and now they begrudge it? This is feminist nonsense. The jealousy is so silly.
        Of course women are dominant on the emotional or astral. This is why women do have power, even though modern women don’t understand this. It has become invisible. Oh, the stupidity of the feminists. We could go on an on. Sure, it is terrible if a man beats a woman. But isn’t it also terrible if a woman uses her power to be cruel? The comics tell it like it is. One guy said a man might hurt you like cut off your arm and throw it in the river. No big deal, really, but a woman can eviscerate your soul in such a way that you never recover. Perhaps it is our materialistic age that sees only dumb matter (brute strength) as having any real worth, but who is to say that emotional life is not of equal value to physical life?

        The woman is the hub of the home and it is very difficult to have happiness if she doesn’t support that. And when a man’s emotions interfere with the happiness of the family, that is a deranged man. When a man is so volatile that his family is afraid of him, that is not a man but a pup. But most men are not volatile and do not run their family upon their emotional state.

        And so, about those grass huts. Women are on occasion really interested in things and can be inventive or give breakthroughs maybe in some science endeavor. More power to them. But in general women are just not driven to do and discover and invent. If they were, they would have invented algebra and geometry while sitting around in idleness in their harems. But they don’t. The more I examine life the more I come to the conclusion that men and women are not just a little bit different, they are very different. And the more absurd the whole modern attitude appears. And this latest crap has really made me conservative and an antifeminist.

        Oh, and by the way, leadership is a service! Yes, I look to the animals to understand these things. Males have their talents, and if they are to be allowed in the hub, of course they must be useful. Male animals have a better sense of direction for longer distances. Thus, the stallion. Horses have a male leader but all the animals are in pecking order and there is a lead mare as well. She takes care of interpersonal discipline.
        I learned that leadership is a service when we started raising chickens. We penned them up and ate them until we had just two left and we decided to free them. Young adults, we watched the rooster hover over his hen, his beloved and utter concern. We saw that he was aware of his hen, what is she doing and where is she, at all times. At evening, he says gee honey, we ought to go into the coop. When he finds food, he calls her. Sometimes he would even show her some spot and we figured out he was suggesting it might be a nice place for her to nest. And he watches for danger. She does not concern herself with his whereabouts. She does not call him to share food. And all this is because she is geared to spend much of her time sitting on eggs and raising chicks, which is an all-consuming task. And while she looks for danger, it is really helpful to have an unencumbered adult to help with that. She listens to him most of the time, but if she really doesn’t want to, she doesn’t.

        The MGTOW guys say women don’t really love men or something like that. That is not really true. Some women really do love men but I see that there is a real grain of truth there. The rooster definitely loves the hens in a way that the hens don’t particularly return. Men give true devotion and I think women do so less often. What’s bad is, women have stopped understanding any of this and so do not appreciate and respect men for their devotion and talents.

        • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:25 pm #

          Thank you for the forgoing. Yes, thank God for interfering in the hopeless femininity of nature. Thank God for Nature (capital N) and the higher potentials waiting to be unfolded in Creation. The Hindus speak of “Prakriti” in this regard.

          You are a special lady if you can understand MTGOW even a little. Do they go too far? Often as the Pain is very, very great. More power to you.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:50 pm #

            Old saying: If mama ain’t happy, nobody’s happy.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 6:59 pm #

      Since feminists think woman “create life”, they feel they can destroy it, thus the Cult of Abortion or Dark Mother worship; a modern form of the cults of Hecate, Astarte, and Cybele.

      Even during the Crisis, they had “Provider’s Day” where they lauded the only good men: Abortionists! Just contemplate the phrase “Provider’s Day” – is it not religious to the core?

      Women do not create life. Men and Woman do together in concert with the spirit. As the Bible says, By yourselves you can do nothing.

      • JohnAZ April 2, 2020 at 7:20 pm #

        Females are the lif

        • JohnAZ April 2, 2020 at 7:31 pm #

          Females are the life givers, males are the life takers. Look at the wild kingdom, males are vagrants, dominating amongst themselves to be the strongest genes to breed, females are home centered and are the rest of the story of procreation and caretaking. Both are needed. Many predator males will kill children that are not theirs.

          Some species have a male dominated society, some female. Males are good for protection and strength, it gives them something to do. Females provide civilization.

          Psychosis reigns between the sexes today because the traditional roles are no longer needed. Or so they say.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 8:57 pm #

            A rookie mistake, one encouraged by Christianity I’m afraid. There is no life without death. The death of the cell is the health of the organism. The death of the grass is the health of the cow. The death of the cow is the health of the MAGAS, as they feast.

            life=death=life=death, and so. Above all this is Life. And below, to a lesser extent, the Death of sin and evil, or unnatural destruction or taking pleasure therein. But as Hinduism shows, once cannot create without destroying. Christianity is weak in this area, equating such death with Death, Platonically in love with Eternal Form almost to the extent of denying the universe as it is.

          • sophia April 2, 2020 at 9:41 pm #

            John,

            “..the traditional roles are no longer needed. Or so they say.”

            That is partly true but not really. A modern woman can kid herself, though. She lives in an apartment and drives her car to her office job and buys food at the grocery store.

            But who invented the car, and the tools to fix it and the numbering system for socket wrenches, and the roads and the lights? Who worked the oil rig to bring gas to her car? Who used a jackhammer to build the roads? Who are most of the truckers who bring her goods to the stores? Who invented electricity? And when the ice storm came and it was below freezing for 8 days, who was out there night and day working overtime in the cold to restore the electricity?

          • sophia April 2, 2020 at 9:42 pm #

            Oh, and this was in a town (the ice storm) where I would see a car outside the store that said “A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.”

      • sophia April 2, 2020 at 9:35 pm #

        Janos,

        What crisis? What provider day?

        • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:55 pm #

          Corvid 19. The crisis. This “Provider Day”. It’s the beginning of a new holiday. There have been smaller celebrations in other places I think even before this.

          https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/486892-minneapolis-mayor-proclaims-march-10-abortion-provider-appreciation-day

          • sophia April 2, 2020 at 10:13 pm #

            Oh, you –! Gratitude for health care workers. Very appropriate. My aunt who lives in Manhattan told me that at 7 pm everyone shouts or bangs on pots and pans to give gratitude to health care workers at the change of shift.
            These things are the few positives in all this.

          • sophia April 2, 2020 at 10:15 pm #

            Oh God, I was wrong. I didn’t see that. I thought it said providers appreciation.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 10:24 pm #

            Abortion providers are health care workers? Not in my book.

    • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 7:39 pm #

      Masculine and feminine are like yin and yang, they flow into one another. There is no absolute break where one ends and the other begins.

      Each man has a feminine side and each woman has a masculine side. If this were not so they would have no common base.

      Man and woman are two halves of a single whole. Both are equally essential to the creation and upbringing of children, which is really our primary function here on earth…

      • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:28 pm #

        Yes, and as Robert Bly said, the anima or feminine side is encouraged to grow even before the masculine is formed, strangling it and stunting young men all over the Western World. Single Motherhood is a very, very, very great Evil.

        • sunburstsoldier April 3, 2020 at 6:42 am #

          That’s an interesting theory. JHK mentioned in one of his blogs, as you probably remember, Ekhart Tolle’s statement our society has too much yin (feminine) and not enough yang (masculine)…

        • GreenAlba April 3, 2020 at 8:12 am #

          “Single Motherhood is a very, very, very great Evil.”

          Yes, tell that to my friend whose shagging-around husband had nothing to do with his sons after he left and remarried, to found a new family.

          Thankfully, she brought them up to be fine young men, infinitely better than their useless father. One now married with a child of his own and the other about to be. Both responsible. Both with good jobs.

          Tell it also to my elderly friends who bought a house with their daughter, to help look after her children while she was teaching, after her husband left her with a pile of HIS debt and their house had to be sold.

          Not to mention my own experience of a useless and selfish waster.

          Back in ye olde days, of course, my mother’s best friend and her sister, were brought up (impeccably) by their mother. No-one was impolite or nosy enough to ask what happened to their father.

          There were men back then enabled by the new freedom of travel to abandon their family and start a new life in the new world, where no-one knew them. Not to mention all the single-parent families, with no evil anywhere near them except the widowhood that war brought them.

          Generalisations are born of ignorance.

          Why aren’t you married with one of these exemplary families you rave about? It’s like listening to celibate priests pontificating about sex and contraception.

  136. gustafus April 2, 2020 at 6:51 pm #

    Kunstler’s directive for a more community based society should be directed to the urban blue viruses … whose lifestyles don’t allow for village life and ethics.

    Hamilton’s Rule… we are hard wired to care about and defend THOSE WHO LOOK AND ACT LIKE WE DO …. multi culturalism iis the leftist, globalist wet dream….. but makes for hostile neighborhoods.

    I have nothing in common with the dregs of New York, or New Jersey… and you can bet the whites in Minnesota want nothing to do with the force fed Somalian, Hmong and other imports.

    Whites will continue to live as they did in the 50’s … produce and protect their families and neighborhoods… while the detritus of multi culturalism continue their nihilist downward spiral….

    and not a moment too soon….. White Western Civilization is withering under the plunging world IQ and birth rates…

    I keep hoping the virus is just late to the table in Africa… and will do the job we hoped for with Ebola.

    • EvelynV April 2, 2020 at 7:42 pm #

      Yet until the dregs of the world e.g. typical MAGAts go into this realizing there is an enormous store of goodness in all humans and prefer to focus their attention on promoting good human spirit instead of dwelling on their fears, we will all continue to suffer.

      MAGAts suffer the most. In their black hearts they know their hate based mentality is eating away at them from the inside.

      You only have to look at Trump to see that internal wretchedness is his daily experience. The joy on his face at all times, a wife who adores him, children that make him sometimes, but rarely, not embarrassed except for the one he’s hinted at wanting to play doctor with, his self deprecating demeanor exhibiting his personal self confidence, his willingness to loyally back associates who don’t see things his way, his erudite manner of studying problems and devising wise solutions for them, his meek and humble – oops have to go find someplace to puke.

      • BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 7:53 pm #

        Looks like the Trump Hate-O-Meter needs to be revved up again.

        Hate-O-Meter score: 6

        • Majella April 3, 2020 at 3:31 am #

          Why is such a succinct and apt description of Himself, albeit ironic, considered ‘hate’?

          • Nightowl April 3, 2020 at 10:09 am #

            Because it is hate — grounded in nothing other than emotion.

            Impotent.

      • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 8:01 pm #

        This is all projection. It would be humorous if it were not so sad. TDS is a god-awful infliction…

      • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:09 pm #

        Each in their own place Ev, let each be in their own place. Or did the American Indians never war against each other? C’mon. Here learn from a Bard:

        The Stranger

        The Stranger within my gate,
        He may be true or kind,
        But he does not talk my talk–
        I cannot feel his mind.
        I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
        But not the soul behind.

        The men of my own stock,
        They may do ill or well,
        But they tell the lies I am wanted to,
        They are used to the lies I tell;
        And we do not need interpreters
        When we go to buy or sell.

        The Stranger within my gates,
        He may be evil or good,
        But I cannot tell what powers control–
        What reasons sway his mood;
        Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
        Shall repossess his blood.

        The men of my own stock,
        Bitter bad they may be,
        But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
        And see the things I see;
        And whatever I think of them and their likes
        They think of the likes of me.

        This was my father’s belief
        And this is also mine:
        Let the corn be all one sheaf–
        And the grapes be all one vine,
        Ere our children’s teeth are set on edge
        By bitter bread and wine.

        Rudyard Kipling

    • Majella April 3, 2020 at 3:33 am #

      ” I keep hoping the virus is just late to the table in Africa… and will do the job we hoped for with Ebola.”

      What an arsehole.

  137. sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 7:12 pm #

    For GeenAlba (in case you missed it):

    I don’t believe qualities like moral integrity, sincerity, and righteousness can be socially indoctrinated. Character formation occurs on a deeper level. If it was all about social indoctrination then we would turn out more or less identical; mass-produced cookie-cutter human beings without free will choice. We can be indoctrinated to obey the mores of society but that’s as far as it goes…

    • K-Dog April 2, 2020 at 7:59 pm #

      You are thinking like a utopian sunburstsoldier. You just want it to be and I can’t agree. Behave ‘as if‘ you do not understand grasshopper. That will encourage understanding. Pound down your errant nails. Your soul must serve before it can rule.

      • sunburstsoldier April 2, 2020 at 8:31 pm #

        You’re on a higher plane than me K-Dog, I don’t understand what you are saying. How does a utopian think?

    • GreenAlba April 2, 2020 at 8:31 pm #

      I think you are mistaking what ‘socialisation’ means, sunburst. It includes all the human influences that help create your behaviour and attitudes, starting primarily with your parents (and including school, church, peer groups, and everything else that makes up the human fabric of your life). It’s not Brave New World. I haven’t noticed that the efforts of all our parents have resulted in cookie-cutter human beings so far, although shared values abound.

      I certainly did my best to generate moral integrity and sincerity in my own children.

      • JohnAZ April 2, 2020 at 9:08 pm #

        GA

        We, as parents, bring out attributes in our children that are there in the first place. The language center of the brain is there at birth, we populate it with a primary language. Maturation level of love and empathy express them selves at certain ages, we help them along expressing them. Children of the same parents can end up very different, good and evil. Points at DNA.

        DNA, there is the rub. What is this miraculous substance that brands us with all the elemental parts of our talents, feelings, conscience, everything? How can a couple of molecular threads control where all the parts go, whether male or female, or sometimes in between, what talents show up, how maturation happens.

        DNA, the essence of life. DNA, the set of natural laws pertaining to life. An expression of God, whatever He is.

        • sophia April 2, 2020 at 10:04 pm #

          If you believe in God, why do you ascribe all characteristics to DNA and not to soul?

          • JohnAZ April 3, 2020 at 12:38 am #

            As God is in everything, God is everything, how do we know that the soul isn’t a part of DNA.

            We really know very little, just a smidgen about the miracle of creation and life. The wonder of it awes me.

  138. BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 7:47 pm #

    Immunity boosting Screwdriver Smoothie

    1 can of frozen OJ

    1 cup whole milk

    1 cup water

    1 tsp vanilla extract

    1/3 cup white sugar

    Blend in Waring blender

    Add 2 cups crushed ice

    Add 1/2 pint Tito’s corn based Vodka

    Stir

    Pour into old Koolaid glass pitcher

    Serve with love

    Drink deep, bask in a healthful glow. You are immortal.

    Brh

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    • JohnAZ April 2, 2020 at 9:10 pm #

      I am writing this one down before BRH patents it.

      • BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 9:15 pm #

        By all means JAZ.

        I’ve given up all proprietary rights, my humble contribution to the War on Covid-19.

        Brh

    • tucsonspur April 2, 2020 at 9:26 pm #

      ‘I could be bounded in a nut hell and count myself a king of infinite space’:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=48xbhit8ZRA

      • tucsonspur April 2, 2020 at 9:27 pm #

        Ha ha shell

  139. capt spaulding April 2, 2020 at 8:01 pm #

    This just in: President Trump grew irate at today’s press conference, claiming he was misquoted by the New York Times. “Wait a minute,” said our Commander in Queef,” I said our WalMart workers are heroes, I never said they deserve a living wage.” Behind him, Vice President Pence nodded in stone faced agreement.

    • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:46 pm #

      Ah, not bad. Jokes are only funny when they contain a bit of truth to them. Alas, this one may contain more than a bit.

      • K-Dog April 3, 2020 at 2:34 am #

        No wonder about it. From a philosophy of nobody deserves anything, true liberation of want comes when a person determines that they will not be an asshole. To add structure to chaos with the zeal of an anarchist. What could be more noble than that.

  140. wwg1wga April 2, 2020 at 8:45 pm #

    Where Liberty dwells, there is MY country!

    http://www.got-truth.com/docs/Where%20Liberty%20dwells%20there%20is%20MY%20country.pdf

    • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:11 pm #

      Thus the Buffalo is the symbol of the Patriot being neither predator nor prey. Let us pray to the Buffalo, a true symbol of the Great Spirit for the old natives of the great plains.

      • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:36 pm #

        Theirs was a solar religion, hanging from a Tree like Odin to gain wisdom and blessing – and this after days of torture to get them ready for the Great Torture.

        Can you imagine women doing such a thing? No! But there is much room for Women in their religion as they also revere Mother Earth. And women have their own mysteries….

        I think women participate in the Sun Dance too in their own way. Who knows? Maybe some of them swing from the tree now too….

        In these corrupt times, the hooks are merely put in under the skin cuz the guy has to go back to “work” (there is no greater torture). But in the old days, there was the leisure to recover and men put the hooks into the very muscles.

        How little leisure we have now. And thus no great Creativity or Torture. Can we not think of War as an Art instead of a business
        for once?

          • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 10:10 pm #

            Nice. It bring up many issues though. Wolves are beautiful and do terrible things because Nature is terrible. When I lived in Idaho, I saw a book published by the Anti-Wolf lobby (ranchers). It showed a pack surrounding a mother moose and her calf. They had taken refuge in a stream but that wasn’t going to save them. They couldn’t outrun the wolves who are great runners. Mom might fight her way out but they were gonna get that cute little calf.

            Is the answer to shoot them from helicopters? Why not employ inner city kids, armed with slings and staffs to protect the herds. A way of producing more King Davids. Each youth could have a Rhodesian Ridgeback, a Dog willing to die for its herd.

            The Indians did have a beautiful understanding of Nature, never distancing themselves from it like the Hindus and Buddhists or ignoring it like Christians. Instead they were part of it, but always looking for the higher side of it. To that end, they would apologize to the animals they killed and thanking them and wishing them a happy journey.

        • Cargill April 2, 2020 at 10:12 pm #

          Theirs was a solar religion …

          Sun worship is the only religious base that makes any sense at all – the sun is the source of all life, warmth, and energy. All the others are just fictions from the fervid minds of primitive ancient men – anti-science, anti-earth, anti-women, and heaven forbid – some are even anti-bacon and anti-beer.

          • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 10:15 pm #

            Yes, let us make war against both Islam and Judaism, free their people so they can enjoy bacon and beer in peace. Deus lo Vult. God wills It.

          • Cargill April 2, 2020 at 10:32 pm #

            And Christianity makes up the third leg of the nut-fudge trifecta … what an achievement of mankind!

          • K-Dog April 3, 2020 at 2:36 am #

            At the end of the day someone is going to want to worship fusion instead.

  141. BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 9:11 pm #

    Big news in NE is Tom Brady is moving into Derek Jeter’s 24,000 sqft mansion in St. Pete. It comes with a dock to tie up the yacht. Rent is about $100,000 per month.

    In these times of trouble you’d think these professional athletes would keep a low profile, not rub people’s noses in the amount of swag that has come there way … for nothing at all, really.

    Brh

    • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:13 pm #

      Is he going to play for the “Patriots” next year, or be a traitor, breaking the little hearts of countless little people who take this crap seriously?

      • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:18 pm #

        There is this to offset the forgoing:

        https://sports.yahoo.com/patriots-plane-ferries-a-million-masks-to-us-from-china-122350435.html

      • BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 9:23 pm #

        Nah, he’s gone to Tampa Bay, lured by a $40 million contract.

        I wouldn’t mind seeing some of these professional sports franchises going bankrupt. The only question is: would they qualify for a govt bailout?

        • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:30 pm #

          Didn’t hear about it with all the Corona talk. Just rumors about something.

          Very sad, kind of a low class move for someone idealized by so many. But these guys are businessmen for the most part.

        • tucsonspur April 2, 2020 at 9:35 pm #

          The steps down form themselves, he didn’t need to form his own.

    • sunburstsoldier April 3, 2020 at 6:47 am #

      I cannot respect people who live like that when there is so much poverty and suffering in the world. How can they sleep at night?

  142. Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 9:42 pm #

    Another possibility: Bill Belichick didn’t want him anymore. He is said to be without sentiment when it comes to winning. And some have said Tom should have retired a couple of years ago.

    • BackRowHeckler April 2, 2020 at 10:09 pm #

      Janos

      Where did you acquire all that theological knowledge?

      On you own, autodidact- ically?

      Or more likely it sounds like you’ve had more than a little academic training.

      Brh

      • Janos Skorenzy April 2, 2020 at 10:13 pm #

        Bill Belichick is considered a Great Master by many in Boston. The ultimate Slavo-American Zen Master. Football is Cult there, as in Baseball, as is Hockey as is Basketball. These people made me into the madman that I am. I was forced to take refuge in God to get away from them.

        • SoftStarLight April 3, 2020 at 2:37 am #

          Or you were simply always meant to be a Spiritual Teacher. Mortals can’t really be Olympians. Not that striving to be one is bad. Quite the opposite. But the deterioration of the body over time erases that. However, a growing Sun projects more strength with time and pulls other bodies orbiting in outer darkness closer in to the life giving Light.

          • K-Dog April 3, 2020 at 2:59 am #

            Until it collapses into a black hole. Ashes to ashes. Always.

  143. tucsonspur April 3, 2020 at 4:31 am #

    From the comments:

    ‘Just like the pandemic task force his administration disbanded, this was a critical part of our defense against these outbreaks. This was actually – in essence – our early warning system…and Trump nixed it!

    ‘trump’s INTENTIONALLY MISLEADING (“Buy more stocks”) and KNOWINGLY FALSE CLAIMS (“It’s a Democratic hoax,” “Everyone who wants a test can get one,” “The 15 cases will soon be zero”) about the threat COVID-19 posed to America gave Americans a false sense of security and were intended to artificially prop up trump’s beloved economy by making everyone think all was well.’

    https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-administration-ended-pandemic-early-233508840.html

    Get the brain cells going, try to parry, try to win, try to counter, try to spin. What a choice this November!

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  144. BackRowHeckler April 3, 2020 at 4:45 am #

    The more we talk the less we give
    That’s the modern way to live
    And someone said live fast die young
    But the time runs always faster son
    Diseases come, diseases go
    Welcome to the final show
    Let’s shake hands with plastic gloves
    And watch out for the last white doves

    And believe me baby every generation
    Got it’s own disease
    and I’ve got mine so help me please
    Every generation got it’s own disease
    And I’ve got mine so help me please.

    -Fury in the Slaughterhouse 1993

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