JHK’s Three-Act Play
Clusterfuck Nation
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At least in wartime, the bars stay open. That’s how you know this is a different thing altogether from whatever else you’ve seen in your lifetime. Even those of us who signed up for this trip — that is, who expected a long emergency — may be a little bit in cosmic awe at just how much shit is flying into the ol’ fan. I know I am. The gods must have glugged down a mighty draft of Dulcolax.
Did you get the feeling, as I did, watching the Sanders-Biden debate last night — the inadequate versus the irrelevant — that the world they were blathering about possibly doesn’t exist anymore? The world of institutions that actually function? Like, the ones that conjure up whatever sum of money you demand to keep all the wheels spinning? Remember that Hemingway line about the guy who went broke? Slowly, then all at once. That’s us. Medicare for all now? Really? More like, a year from now every physician in America may be the equivalent of the old country doc toting a black bag around to home visits. Unfortunately, there aren’t enough horses left in America, and the few buggies we’ve got are all in the museum.
The mega financial bubble-of-bubbles is deflating with frightful velocity precisely because of the efforts since 2008 to artificially inflate it. The Federal Reserve gave it one final blast Sunday night — while everybody else was counting their rolls of toilet paper — and the effect was like blowing hot air into a shredded Zeppelin. Stock futures are “limit down” as I write, before the Wall Street open. Gold is getting pounded into the ground like a grape stake and silver is so low it looks like the hedge fund managers are down to pawning grandma’s table service. (Hint, the PMs will bounce back hard; the rest, probably not so much.)
Nobody really knows how deep and how harsh this gets (and perhaps the ones who have a clue ain’t sayin’). But the situation presents two salient questions: how much disorder is entailed in this ordeal? And what does the world look like when the convulsion phase of this thing is over?
Americans have never been through anything remotely like this. The disorders of the Civil War were sharp and horrendous military operations conducted mostly in cornfields, pastures, and woods (yes, and some small cities like Richmond, pop. 38,000, and Atlanta, pop. 10,000). When the smoke cleared, battered Dixieland emerged to numb civil order. Up in Yankeedom, the New York draft riots ran for a week around the small patch of Manhattan island, but everybody else went along with Mr. Lincoln’s program. After all that, America got on quickly with the lively business of the 19th century: railroads, mines, factories, and all that. The world wars took place in foreign lands, and the home-front scene of the 1940s now looks nostalgically idyllic.
The stresses mounting on the national scene today reflect the extreme fragilities of the way-of-life we constructed since then, and an awful lot of bad choices we made in the process, like suburbanizing the nation and making everybody a hostage to happy motoring. I won’t belabor that point, except to ask how are those vast regions of the country going to manage daily life as the supply chains wobble? I’d say a shortage of toilet paper may only be the beginning of their problems.
The cities — at least, the few that didn’t already implode from the inside out — made assumptions about how big and tall they could grow which don’t jibe with the new circumstances chugging ferociously down the line. Just think what a lockdown of the global economy will do to all those residential skyscraper projects lately hoisted up in New York, San Francisco and Boston? I’ll tell you: They are assets instantly converted into liabilities. And how will these cities even begin to pay for maintaining their complex infrastructures and services when the money for all that no longer exists and there’s no way to pretend that it will ever come back? Answer: They won’t be able to keep borrowing and they won’t manage. These cities will depopulate and there will be battles over who gets to live in the parts that still may have some value, like riverfronts.
I guess just about everybody can now see the idiocy of concentrating the nation’s commercial life in super-gigantic organisms like Big Box stores. It seemed like a good idea at the time, like so many blunders in history, and now that time is over. Any ecology thrives on redundancy — a lot of players doing similar things at the appropriate scale — and America’s chain retail model for a commercial ecology was an obvious fiasco waiting to happen. The people who run that, and other people who run other things in our society, must be wondering whether those supply-chains from China will come back. It’s no different than the cargo cults of the Solomon Islanders circa 1947, after the military airplanes stopped landing with all their magical goodies: time to go back to fishing from the dugout canoe.
The foolish, idiotic identity politics ginned up by the Left and their racially-inflamed, sexually-disturbed scribes in the Thinking Class have successfully destroyed the last shred of an American common culture that held the country together through earlier vicissitudes. So, one concludes that we’ll be left stewing in poisonous tensions, and perhaps some violent conflicts, before those matters head toward some sort of resolution.
Where does this all lead? Eventually, to a land and a people who operate their society in a very different way at a much more modest scale. The task of reorganizing our national life is immense. (There will be plenty to do, so don’t worry about that.) You can forget about the grandiose techno-narcissistic visions of electrified motoring and a robotic nirvana of perpetual sex-crazed leisure. Everything we do has to be downscaled, from whatever manufacturing we can cobble back together to rebuilding commercial ecosystems at a finer grain from region to region — in other words, what we now call small business, geared locally.
Expect giant AgriBiz to founder on a shortage of capital, especially, and expect smaller farms to organize emergently, worked by more humans working together. That is, if we want to keep eating. Expect the small towns in the well-watered parts of the country to revive while the groaning metroplexes spiral down into entropic sclerosis. Consider the value of our vast inland waterway system and the opportunities to move goods on them, when the trucking industry unravels. Consider lending a hand at rebuilding the railroad system in this country.
There will be economic roles and social roles for all those willing to step up to some responsibility. Young people may see tremendous opportunity replacing the wounded economic dinosaurs wobbling across the landscape. It’ll be all about going local and regional and making yourself useful in exchange for a livelihood and the esteem of others around you — aka, your community. Government has been working tirelessly to make itself superfluous, if not completely ineffectual, impotent, and rather loathsome in the face of this crisis that has been slowly-but-visibly building for half a century. Something old and played-out is limping offstage, and something new is stepping on. Aren’t you glad you watched all those debates?
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“Remember that Hemingway line about the guy who went broke? Slowly, then all at once. ”
It is called Seneca Effect.
“Fortune is of sluggish growth, but ruin is rapid”
-Roman Stoic Philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca.
Italian scientist and philosopher Ugo Bardi shows how this principle works in his book “The Seneca Effect-Why Growth is Slow but Collapse is Rapid”.
I’d say the exponential function y = 2x best illustrates it. That curve is very common in nature.
THE CHASM AHEAD might be a better and more timely introduction to Ugo Bardi’ authorship.
To JHK 11th paragraph: Waterways, Trucks and (assisted) railway expansion. Railway has ability to operate on most any fuel source and deliver economical ton-miles, waits in.the wings to once more extend into many hundreds US food production districts and perform Famine Hedge duty. Canada similarly has abandoned rail lines into Wheat Trust districts in their breadbasket provinces.
“Lending a hand ” to rebuild rail lines calls on sequestered corporate and private party wealth to come forth and “Adopt/Sponsor” individual rail corridors. Bragging about making money on this or that maneuver is futile in The Famine. William Forstchen writes “ONE SECOND AFTER” on how famine comes to North America, unexpected and quickly..
Burying your family in a well-stocked vault somewhere is asking for entrapment. Better to be part of effort to assure Famine Hedge for your locale and in concert with similar efforts across the country. Assuring distribution of victuals and necessities of life creates a team spirit and keeps skill sets in the population for rebuilding.
Sources such as Thomas Bros. City & County maps are at library and County assessors offices even more than a half entury after publication, and give rail line locations. Military base warehouses still extant are made to use rail interface, and new era container methods call for tractors enroute rail mains to serve smaller communities enroute rail mains.
Full compendium of North American rail lines from the past can be obtained from Mike Walker Publications spv.co.uk “US Rail Map Atlas” booklets. Getting serious, contact American Short Line Regional Railroad Association the go-to organization for enhancing branch rail into food districts. Railway had military moniker:
“Second Dimension Surface Transport Logistics Platform”- apolitical stand alone transportation asset.
The Army/Guard railroad transportation battalion template resides at Ft.Eustis VA and must be fully involved across many crucial food corridors in the rail enhancement effort. Nonetheless, without robust private sector corporate and individual sponsorship, Famine Hedge cannot be fully be achieved. We rise or fall together
@Excotticus
@4014HAMPHEDGE
Thank you,gentlemen,for your interest in this book which I discovered by chance at my local library.
Italians dont flood market with books but if/when they eventually choose to write something it is short,clear,lucid and to the point.
I was particularly impressed with one example.First commercial jets had square windows because it made manufacturing process easier.
When jet begins to fly a small,invisible cracks appear at the corner (fault line) of the square windows.After a couple of flights a wing falls off or even a jet body breaks in 2 pieces in mid-flight.
Thats why all windows on passenger jets are round nowadays.Funny thing is that shipbuilders built round windows (portholes) on ships well before the Age of Air Travel.
From this example Ugo Bardi proceeds to bigger things like modern financial markets…
I am already grieving for us. While I know that many things needed to change and we wanted them to change, I am most grieving the loss of community that this pandemic forces upon us. In a major storm or power failure etc we can come together and share a meal, make music and support one another. Now we are told to socially distance ourselves. EVERYTHING is cancelled. I’m getting no end to the emails cancelling every event imaginable. Even the library has closed. I’m not sure how we find our way back when the dust clears. It will be a different landscape as sure as if a massive fire had burned through it.
A bright side is that real intimacy will return – community will stay – only groupings will be smaller – more intimate. Be thankful for those close at hand. Large crowds were an attempt to avoid intimacy. Be thankful.
Many say the opposite: That this is the End of a Master Plan and that the Elite will emerge stronger than ever. They will be more than willing to “help”. Libraries – so called – will come back. What books will be allowed is quite another story. Or perhaps books will be phased out completely.
I am in my room now in Los Angeles surrounded by many of my books.
And I started with a bronchitis cough a few days ago. I haven’t flown or done any mass transit for six months. But last week I went to some restaurants at the beach and thought little of it.
Now, (I am 70 and am usually in good health), I can’t help but wonder if I will end up with Covid-19 and die leaving all my treasured books to sons who have no interest in them.
Sad. Maybe even the libraries wouldn’t want them.
I know how you feel, abbywood. I’m 65 and have a large collection of treasured books. I’ve never been interested in kindle and I think those who went that route may suffer when their connection to “the cloud” goes down.
I’m not sure I’ll live long enough to read all my books under the best of conditions. Now the corona virus may take away even that time. And one day hungry, filthy survivors camping in the ruins may use my books to keep the fires going on winter nights. Sad.
Think you boys may be watching too many Zombie movies. 5% of the population may disappear then it will be back to business as usual. Money grubbing corporations Will continue sucking the life blood out of America’s workers to the real apocalypse. Those in the lower echelon of society will die in greater numbers due to access to adequate healthcare and lack of sanitary living conditions, as planned. people living check to check may starve to death or just turn to crime to survive. My plan. If there’s anything you can count on from American’s it’s short memories once this passes, and it will pass. Found it hilarious that Norway has told it’s young studying in America to get the hell out. The reasoning was lack of collective health care with proper infrastructure. We’re a developing nation to progressive countries.American exceptionalism my ass.
You stopped just short of blaming it all on Trump. Come on, I know you want to.
Relax. There is no spoon. https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=auto&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.agenzianova.com%2Fa%2F5e6bcf1da7fbe3.23491954%2F2851060%2F2020-03-13%2Fcoronavirus-iss-in-italia-i-decessi-accertati-finora-per-causa-del-covid-19-sono-solo-due&sandbox=1
Many say the opposite: That this is the End of a Master Plan and that the Elite will emerge stronger than ever. They will be more than willing to “help”. Libraries – so called – will come back. What books will be allowed is quite another story. Or perhaps books will be phased out completely.
Is it remotely possible – even for just one episode – to leave your poisonous conspiracy stuff off the table? People are suffering all around the world, and right here on this forum, but you insist on seeing everything through your jealous, envious, snarling prism.
Give it a fucking rest, mate. Nlo-one cares about your bitterness and wing-nut posturing. Go look in a mirror.
I thought that Janos’ comment was spot on.
Many say the opposite: That this is the End of a Master Plan and that the Elite will emerge stronger than ever.
Who are the “Many” and where do they “say” it. Some crazy Anti-Semitic dark web sites?
Argumentum ad Homoinem. Completely gay argument of the type: If Hitler said 2+2=4, it doesn’t.
outsider
“I thought that Janos’ comment was spot on.”
I recall that you also thought the gilets jaunes were likely to be ‘Muslims pretending to be French citizens’. So, hmmm…
We regret to have to inform you that the Triple Threat Monster Truck Series event scheduled for this weekend in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has been cancelled.
You can still have the community of those whom you know & trust which is, to my elderly mind, much to be preferred to strangers of dubious provenance who may not be simply “friends you haven’t yet met” as the wanker brigade claim to believe.
Small communities have their own vicissitudes – a street of squinting windows & twitching curtains – but these are more manageable or, failing that, ignorable than the madding crowd.
Grand Theft America:https://youtu.be/bngLju8fPN4 End The Fed!
The link is not working.
the last paragraph was very hopeful for mr. k and i applaud him for it. yes, there will be many opportunities for those willing to work hard and responsibly, assuming that the center holds.
“assuming that the center holds”
fingers crossed for this to come to pass
Yeats would say differently:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
and two lines later:
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
That “rough beast slouching toward” us has no good intent.
Center? A people? Where? When? The idea that Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics are one people is simply an Elite idea foisted on White Americans via the media and academia. A return to Normalcy and Nature means separation from these hostile, alien elements. The return of Blacks to the Deep South will accelerate.
You do Putin’s work for him to divide us and conquer us.
Do you really think Putin is an idiot to divide the USA – you idiots are doing a fine job without needing any outside help, different from when you guys invaded and helped to destroy countries from Panama, Grenada, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela, Chile, Vietnam, Korea, etc. etc.
Maybe it is payback time, but surely not from Russia.
Unfortunately after all the pain the USA inflicted upon the RF with sanctions (which in the end only resulted in Russia to become economically more independent), Putin still seems to believe deals can be made with someone like the USA and the USA might act as a rational player.
But guys like you have your brain shat in with all the MSM propaganda of Russia “invading” anyone – as if Russia with the largest landmass on earth and all the resources it ever needs would ask for any more trouble with unruly populations than they have already in their own backyard in the Caucasus.
guys like you have your brain shat in – peter m
==============
past and past participle of shit.
Sorry, JHK, I couldn’t resist.
Bingo!! Absolutely an outstanding comment!! You are so right 100%!!!! Thank you for having the guts!! To say it! And to say the truth! Bravo ? BRAVO ? BRAVO ?
Why would they do that, it’s where the stump toothed, banjo twanging rednecks are?
Whats wrong with the banjo?
For that matter rednecks are hard workers nothing wrong with that either.
Better that over a man who looks like a women running around screaming about Social justice and throwing milkshakes at anyone they don’t agree with.
I play guitar, and can confirm that proper banjo playing takes some serious skills.
I realize it has nothing on prog snark, however.
If “the center” includes NYC and LA, we’ll all be better off it it doesn’t hold.
Hmmm?
Jim, you mean all of us won’t be driving around in $100,000 electric Teslas powered up by windmills, and flying to Mars in Tesla rocket ships?
Darn, I was so looking forward to it!
-Brh
Forget toilet paper. Any good deals on mules and plows?
Indeed, forget toilet paper. The best thing to use, and it’s ecological, is a pine cone. A word of caution, however. Be sure to go with the grain, upon application. Going against the grain has a bad effect. Just look at a pine cone and use your imagination. Best of all, when you are done, you can hurl it into the bushes. Kind of like a shit grenade.
Remember Sears catalogs.
In a nod to current technology, you could log onto a Sears website (if there was still a Sears), you could wipe with your I phone, rinse & repeat as necessary.
Now that’s what I call a “phony” solution!
Captain,
Reminds me of an incident in the distant past…;
About 25 years ago, we were deer hunting in an old growth forest about one mile from where I currently sit. Nature called, and I found a good sturdy branch to suspend myself off the ground. When finished, I located the small patch of paper towel carried for the purpose, then the branch broke and I fell into the pile just deposited.
Well, the towelette proved then entirely inadequate…Sooo the only thing remaining on my person was federal reserve notes…luckily one dollar bills. Took several to finish the job…thank God they weren’t 20’s.
Several years before this Incident, a buddy, then a detective on the local PD, told the same story…we rode him unmercifully over the incident…he used several 5’s, as I recall.
One must choose such branches carefully. I always prefer a sturdy sapling – after checking its root system.
One must always consider the root cause…
Winter was it, no leaves?
Iananna,
Deep fall it was…conifer forest.
“and I found a good sturdy branch to suspend myself off the ground.”
Is that not what leg muscles are for? I was caught short in the countryside once or twice in my younger years, but it never occurred to me that the obvious thing to do was climb a tree. Am I missing something?
Indeed you are.
A tripod is more stable then a bipod until one of the legs breaks.
I suspect there will be plenty of people willing to grow your food for you and to trade it for worthwhile things.
One big task we can undertake is to insulate all these houses that have only been profitably heated because fracked gas was so cheap.
Fracking is done as a place to pour capital into. I expect gas to go back up in price, and will place my bet accordingly. The good news is we learned how to frack, and that knowledge need not go away too.
Our wonderful “friends,” the Saudi crowd and Trump’s pal, MBS, are pumping oil like no tomorrow so they can bankrupt our already shaky, debt-heavy frackers and their bankers who are trembling so hard it’s registering a 5.6 on the Richter Scale.
Trump’s other buddy, Putin, also pumps furiously to assure as much damage to the U.S. petro and financial industries as he can. No need to nuke us, just open the spigots. He’s got us bent “over a barrel.”
Putin is pissed at us for putting sanctions on a gas pipeline he’s building to supply western Europe. Our Pentagon sees that pipeline as a threat during times of crisis when Russia could cut the flow and cripple Germany and NATO. The Russians still hate Germany for the 25 million Russians killed by the Nazis in WW-II. It ain’t over.
Yeah, but you have to admire Putin’s timing. They explicitly said they were going to pump oil to destroy fracking in return for our shutting down Nordstream 2. The oil collapse on March 6 helped kick the market and the West into a bear market and rolling crash.
It will dry up the capital for fracking. Which will dry up the supply of oil. Which will end the gas glut, since much of the gas is only a byproduct of oil production.
I don’t know that Putin hates Germany. He was long stationed there and speaks the language. Before Lord Grey successfully set the Russians against the Germans to end the Russian threat to British India, Germany and Russia got along pretty well. Maybe Putin, Xi, and the Germans are just reuniting what Mackinder called the World Island, and cutting out the Anglo-American sea powers.
If there is any doubt that Putin is the most skilled diplomat of his generation one need only to look at recent history. Russia has one overriding foreign policy objective—never again will it permit itself to be invaded by a foreign enemy.
1- The USA initiated an economic war against Russia through economic sanctions with the goal of using that plus NATO to strangle and overthrow the nationalistic Russian government and replace it with trained puppets or Chaos..
2- The end result was to encourage a military and economic alliance with China and promote diversification and increased self-reliance within the Russian economy.
3- In the era of Coronavirus, Russia remains the least impacted of any major nation because of centralized decision making and effective control over its borders..
4- As a nation with supply chains less dependent upon globalization, Russia has the lowest foreign debt load of any major country—28% of GDP vs 115% GDP in the US.
5- Russia is the natural supplier with the lowest cost of production for natural gas in Europe, and is also the low cost producer of oil.
6- The US organized and financed a coup in Ukraine and installed a WWII style Nazi leadership hostile to Russia.The US goal was to base nuclear missiles only a few minutes flight from Moscow.
7- The US used all its international clout to slow and prevent the Nordstream pipeline from providing the final lifeline between Russia and Europe.
Putin had only to take stock of the history of it’s post-war relationships with the USA/NATO to understand that in (economic) war you should strike when your enemy is weakest. The US has been able to become the marginal pricer in the world oil markets through a transparent PONZI scheme (fracking) which requires exponential expansion of capital to sustain physical operations that never generate profit. The collapse of the stock market bubble signaled Russia’s opportunity to strike and drive a stake into the heart of the fracking PONZI. And with it hasten the end of the US control of the Dollar as the world reserve currency. There is no price war between the Saudi royal family and Russia,although Russia is really the player in the driver’s seat. As the two producers that can survive low pricing, they are in effective alliance to urge along the collapse of the American energy sector and with it the global dominance of the Empire.
Third hammer
Thank you for that informative perspective on Putin, Russia, the energy-price scamming and the covert attack on US hegemony through this emergent crisis. It makes so much sense- while we’re all running round like headless chooks, you’ve pointed out what’s escaped most people, especially this dumb-arse administration and the complicit media.
One thing though – Russian debt at 28% of GDP isn’t ‘the lowest’. New Zealand is st 19% and has just committed $12.5 billion (2% of GDP) to a fiscal and economic package that will significantly reduce the financial impact on the working population, small businesses and the public health system.
Sorry Thor….danged auto-correct!
The Great Fear of British Finance, together with their assorted successors and hangers-on, was and is a working alliance between Germany and Russia. They’ve been working centuries to forestall the emergence of such a constellation….
The current administration has approached diplomacy with Russia in an entirely different manner than the Obama Admin. who were ready to put up a no-fly zone in Syria to stop the Russians from ending the reign of terror of Obama’s ISIS proxy army.
The “complicit media” wants war, because the neo cons and libs want war.
Leave it to Maj to comically misinterpret basic geopolitics.
Your President, that’s right, Trump is your President, is no personal friend of Mr Putin. MSNBC Shit for dingle berries brain.
Raygun in the 80s threatened Euroland with dire consequences and tried to ban US companies from trading there if they dared hook up to the first Russian pipelines.
That was then – it didn’t phase them – and this is now when they’ll take even less notice of the Orange Oaf.
The legitimacy of the State is on the table. The grift of Identity politics worked when the pie was growing but will it work when it is rapidly shrinking? Yes of course just like Yugoslavia circa the 90s.
“I beseech ye Mars god of war give us guidance when Sassy Stacy Adams casts her curses upon the people of the land for our sexism, racism and homophobia.”
Gentle liberals and conservatives who love gentle liberals I wish upon you no harm in any fashion I simply want my freedom from you.
Perhaps the grift if identity politics was blacks figuring out that with Hispanics being a larger group than they are, and Asians being recent, that those groups combined feel no responsibility for slavery. So the recent push was to secure what was possible from a guilty white ruling class, before it’s replaced by an uninterested Asian ruling class.
I was just noticing locally, that the people who clamor for sanctuary cities and claim great concern for illegal aliens, are really only talking about Mexicans, who aren’t even a race.
They don’t care at all about the Chinese people. Mexicans, maybe some Guatemalans or Salvadorans, from time to time Muslims, but never Chinese.
Home Depot doesn’t put up signs in Mandarin, either.
Price of Gold and Bitcoin dropping, fast.
Manipulated markets?
Only things liquid enough to sell. Physical Gold is an asset that is no one’s liability,
You cannot eat gold or the cloud. Both are only as valuable as people believe.
Skills will be the wealth of the future.
Yea, but this is about covering other leveraged bets and the difference between physical markets and paper markets driven by derivatives.
Gold and silver, like a good 45 feel best when held in your own hands.
Artisans will be welcome anywhere when MBAs are hewing water & carrying wood.
when MBAs are hewing water & carrying wood. – Iananna
============
I think you got that backward but perhaps on purpose for comedic effect.
whooooshhhh
Gold is decoupling from paper so Mr. Kunstler is correct it will bounce back hard! The manipulation will soon be as ineffective on PM’s as it is on the stock market. All paper is reverting to its true worth.
Temporary for gold, I suspect. Bitcoin, OTOH, is a sham.
The fact that current events are strongly deflationary is hitting home.
“Event 201” organized by Johns Hopkins, the World Economic Forum, and the Gates Foundation, in OCTOBER 2019, conducted a “pandemic tabletop exercise that simulated a series of dramatic, scenario-based facilitated discussions, confronting difficult, true-to-life dilemmas associated with response to a hypothetical, but scientifically plausible, pandemic”.
What was this hypothetical virus? “Event 201 simulates an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. ”
http://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/event201/
Some of you will recognize a familiar pattern here.
Drop the zero and you get Agenda 21. The Pigs symbolize People.
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/01/new-coronavirus-wasnt-predicted-in-simulation/
I’m seeing a familiar pattern, but it’s not the one you mean.
Two things are sure to increase: pregnancies and omestic violence
domestic
Why pregnancies? Old populations do not experience population booms.
yea but wait until the millennials and gen z’ers realize how much more fun real sex is than sexting…. just saying
Doc – No sports to watch. That leaves…
Parcheesi?
Perhaps. Birth rate has been dropping since forever. There’s a real break between 1964 and 1965, and we’ve never returned.
It’d be nice to see more kids running around since living in a society-wide old folks home isn’t much to bring cheer. I hope he is correct.
Even in countries that make more of an effort at “helping” parents, the birth rates stay low.
I’m thinking of places such as Norway, who have all the programs and paid leave, etc.
It’s still common to see families with one child.
On average planned parenthood does 1k abortions a day everyday.
Do the math.
They could show the 1958 NFL championship with Frank Gifford and Johnny Unitas. Johnny Carson re_runs at night
I was reading Joe Namath’s autobiography recently, but I couldn’t finish it. It made me too sad for what we’ve lost.
Lysistrata or Judith & Holofernes?
lol, Jim fixed the “country doc with a black around..” line..
ha ha..
I was just writing something smart allecky about the Confederacy, too! lol
well there is a saying in this part of the Northern Wastes you hear amongst the Finlanders here..
Sisu
pronounced see-soo in English
its grit, hardness..perseverance..
that’s what you need right now.. a little Sisu
“Americans have never been through anything remotely like this” – actually, Americans have. The Spanish flu of 1918 hit the USA hard.
It wasn’t linked to an economic meltdown. Big difference. JHK Admin.
That was a Christian, 90% White America with strictly controlled borders and immigration policy.
It was also a country that the people gave a damn about, no longer.
why should we? who is we?
70 million ‘latinos’ from the 3rd world.
muslims.
people w dual citizenship.
leftists with bizarre notions about race and gender not existing.
etc.
Right. That was America. We’ve been living in Scamerica for a long time.
Maybe since Wilson signed the Federal Reserve, the Income Tax, and got us into a war that he ran for re-election on with the slogan “he kept us out of war.” Oh, and instituted segregation in the Federal Government.
yep..might see some real ugly tribalism out there
We’ve been seeing it for a while.
Dr.Tom sez:
“We’ve been seeing it for a while.”
like a militia from Korea Town with AKs fighting it out with a militia of blacks with AKs
that type of ugly
No Petey, that was beautiful. Or do you think they should have just let the primitives savage their businesses, wives, and children?
Behold the Problem.
Herr Janos sez:
“No Petey, that was beautiful. Or do you think they should have just let the primitives savage their businesses, wives, and children?
Behold the Problem.”
No, if I were one of these kimchi eating fellas in K Town there I’d be grabbing my AK too, that’s for damn sure
lol
..but ethnic militias fighting it out on some street corner isn’t where you want your society to have sunk too there bud, so..
Oh yeah Janos, in your case especially the children. Girl children, right?
Really, Jim, as a futurist you suck, but that’s OK since all futurists suck because as Jim Morrison said in one of his songs: “the Future’s uncertain, but the end is always near”. But seriously, you have been pounding away forever on the same theme that we’ll all go back to riding trains and we’ll become a society of locavore villages with village tradesmen and artisans. And we’ll live in the world depicted in your various novels. I’m your age and well recall the visions of the future depicted in publications in the fifties, but that vision never came to pass and the vision of HG Wells in “Things to come” had atomic bombs, so named, but functionally not like the reality.
So, the world of the future you envision, which I think reflects your wishes in some way, isn’t likely to come about unless some plague like George Stewart wrote about in “Earth Abides” comes along and kills off 9,999 out of every 10,000 people, reducing the population to random wandering individuals who coalesce into small tribes. Otherwise the future is more likely to incorporate much of the present and will still have industry and large scale commerce, but maybe modified in various ways to accommodate changing circumstances.But, absent the aforementioned plague, global nuclear armageddon, or that giant asteroid strike. “World made by Hand” isn’t too likely and harping about it is starting to make you seem a tad nutty, which is a shame since you do have good ideas and I’ve followed you for as long as you’ve been blogging.
I dont know what the future holds.
Is Corona man made?
Intentionally released?
culling the herd? doesnt seem like it will kill a billion of us but it can bring about a police state.
LOL, ok Boomer! This is your normalcy bias kicking in. You are absolutely right. There is an awesome chance that the future will contain some sort of continuity with the past. What you are missing, is that there is a chance that there will be a sharp discontinuity with the past after this event, or possibly some future event. Either way increased localization seems highly likely even now as supply chains start to fall apart. At the very least let things play out a little bit before you start tossing the “you suck” ‘s around. IMHO.
I don’t blame Jim for his “vista of the atavista”. The America that Alexis de Tocqueville wrote about was a much saner place, minus slavery of course, but the small town centered community ethos of the pre-industrial age, more developed in the North, was for real. It served social life with undeniable security and stability based on a large consensus. So, on that level, I understand the desire to return to the fairer and more dignified American Way of Life. It’s just that I don’t think it is probable. Short of a still unimaginable catastrophe which would decimate the human population to scattered remnants of the species, recovery to something that still looks very much like today, is the likeliest outcome. The elites, as always formed by natural human psychological dominance traits, but in our times exchanging disciplined upbringing and learning for a fantastic sense of self-approbation and entitlement, will be back. You may rest assured. Nor will they feel in any way chastened by any mayhem that the pandemic (or their inept handling of it) will bring about. The global economy has come out of hibernation thanks to them, they will tell you. They will find a way to borrow money from Mars to keep producing more garbage and plastic to wrap it up.
I’m with you Erik. I haven’t posted since jhk told me “go fuck yourself” in an angry email a year ago in answer to my notion his recent postings were gaslighting his readers. Interesting how quickly literary conceits vanish with pushback. The world made by hand may be somewhere in the future, but for present the question is: will this country continue as a democracy or fascism? The lights are blinking red and based on the comments of many readers here, I am not optimistic.
In Earth Abides Joey was the first son of Ish and Em. Joey is the only child with an academic bent but he dies and the light of learning foes out..
Of Typhoid fever. In Earth Abides primitive life returns and all that came before is lost.
fades out, exit stage left.
Remember that one of JHKs prophesies is the re localization of everything. Reconstruction will start locally, serving local needs.
Cargill, for example, might think about worrying about his own country as they have been just about as effective as ours. His name calling and unadulterated BS should be aimed at the PTB down under.
The unraveling of the market is just the removal of all the debt based bubbles, such as student loans, real estate, health insurance, the mortgage industry, that have been developed. Bush and Obama are about to be reviled when the people here realize that their offshoring of industry, in the name of climate change, and its replacement with a service sector based on illegal immigration growth and financialization may have just collapsed. This has been coming on for a long time. Crises seem to end BS buildups. Hey, sounds like the Fourth Turning.
Mitigation is now the only way of handling the virus. If this scourge does not abate like DC has ordered, it WILL take everyone down. Watch the next year, you may see the rise of China to the primary superpower, they are already going back to work.
I regret our lording over China, their learning curve info could have avoided much of what will be called in the future, The Great Unraveling, or Whatever Happened to Uncle Sam?
Yes, we are tired of cargill, who feels ‘sorry for us’.
Ok. I’ll take that into consideration.
interesting post John.. and you think you may be right.
woops.. fat finger there
..and I think you might be right LOL
The virus will wind up being not a big deal. The economic collapse we are engaging in to react to it will wind up a VERY big deal.
Of course, poorer people are less likely to be healthy. So the response strikes me as more likely to kill people by making them poorer than the actual virus kills.
I agree the virus will end up being a nothing burger. But how can retail, already half past dead, come back from 30 or 60 days of almost no revenue? It can’t and after this is down we’ll all be more amazon dependent. Guess how that story ends.
fugeguy
Having it be a nothing burger is precisely the aim of what social distancing and rest is all about. So hopefully you are correct.
Polio is now a nothing burger, as are smallpox, and so far nuclear holocaust.
A vivid recent example is the Y2K scare. Probably billions were spent to make it so and what do you know, the tech world was able to prevent what would have been disaster of massive proportions.
Afterwards there will be the chorus of fools who crow about how wrong everyone was who predicted disaster, probably heard most abundantly on faux news.
Sounds like you took your meds this morning
I was in the IT biz with the Army all during the Y2K time. I knew, ABSOLUTELY, that Y2k was a big nothing.
Beginning about 1996-97, people started paying attention to the Y2k issues. Everyone, and I mean everyone, started re-working their software to preclude any issues when clocks ticked over from 99 to 00. In 1998 the spending really took off and continued on into 1999.
All levels of government – federal, state, city, county, and every agency in every government, and every bank and credit card and financial firm and everyone with a payroll system or an order/sales system, you name it, even makers of digital clocks, absolutely EVERYONE with a piece of software that had “date” data worked to fix the problem. ??In
the Army, as with ALL of the Federal govt, the word came down from Congress in the 1996 timeframe to fix it or else, and to do so within current budget lines for “IT Maintenance” and other such stuff.
Then Congress got scared and decided to pony up a pot of funds to speed the work. Why? Because THEY did not want to be the culprit if the shit hit the fan. That pushed the pressure down to the agency level to fix it.?
People spent money hand over fist. Old COBOL programmers came out of retirement, for nice bonus money, to work on decades-old systems, in both govt and in industry. We did our job in our agency. We checked and double checked and ran all sorts of test runs on our national defense systems for deploying the force. We tested data feeds across agencies as well as within our own agencies. We knew we were good to go.
In 1999 we hired outside auditors to come in and double check the double checkers, get an outsider to check our work. It all worked. I sat with the auditors quite a few times on the systems and products for which I was the main in-house integrator for lots of stuff, like the mileage calculator within the Defense Travel System, etc.
We got a big laugh over all the doom and gloom crap at the time. Scare mongers were saying elevators would crash to the basements, planes would fall from the air, the water utilities would stop working, the banks would lose your account and a hundred other totally vaporous scenarios. People hoarded water like no tomorrow and it took years for some of them to drink it all up. Sound familiar?
By late 1999 we were 100% good to go. So was the entire nation. Only one fluke event happened on 1-1-2000, and that was a minor glitch in one spy satellite, which NSA fixed in 20 minutes by sending up a software patch.
“Probably billions were spent to make it so and what do you know, the tech world was able to prevent what would have been disaster of massive proportions.”
That will be the spin- that they saved us! Kind of how the FED saved us in 2008. From a disaster the FED spent 95 years creating…
The bonus will be there will be no mom and pops or local business that survives. But the big boys will be bailed out and walah more central control of everything.
Super duper sweet…
I also worked on Y2K. The company I was with spent over 100mm. I joked with my boss that we should just hire someone to sign off that we were Y2K compliant, and set aside funds to reimburse clients for problems, setting aside the full 100MM as a reserve. We didn’t do that, of course.
In May of 1999, I sat and had this thought: “I know my systems are OK. I just don’t know about everyone else.” In June of 1999, I realized that everyone was saying what I had said in May. And then I realized that it had been largely invented as a crisis to funnel money to consultants.
The good news was that a lot of the new equipment we bought helped bootstrap the Internet boom. The bad news was the financial crash that resulted in 2000 from the end of Fed liquidity.
People spent money hand over fist. Old COBOL programmers came out of retirement, for nice bonus money, to work on decades-old systems, in both govt and in industry.
I was one of those older COBOL programmers who made a nice little earner going in to look at old code for Citibank Australia. In reality we could fix anything pretty quickly (coding is NOT rocket science) – but we did take our time to make some money.
Those who die can’t disagree with you. This is a dirty trick. It won’t be a big deal. For those who die it will be the deal of a lifetime.
People die all the time, K-Dog. How Bad this might be would be instructive when compared to our previous pandemic, Spanish Flu. It turns out that about 366,000 people died in Italy from that affliction in a little under a year.
I’ll be shocked if Coronavirus gets that high.
I believe that it’s only propaganda that China is “going back to work”. I just read yesterday that much of China, particularly in Hubei is still shuttered. Once they start to “get back to work” there is going to be a new outbreak. So I don’t look for normal activity to resume. But they always talk a very sweet game so I am sure they do plan to tell the world that not only are they back to work but they have also “defeated” the virus.
ya
the MSM/ppl who are telling the world that China has thing this under control are totally deluded..
Our MSM loves China just like the Elites do.
The smog patterns of industry are the true test and they can’t fake that.
Its science after all.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/01/world/nasa-china-pollution-coronavirus-trnd-scn/index.html
Yeah that is very interesting. I wonder what satellite images would reveal to us today? I bet they are still nowhere around what they used to be. And that is good from at least the Earth’s perspective.
benr, nice to know you haven’t climbed into bed with all the scatter brains who insist on minimizing the seriousness of what is about to explode on the landscape.
There is creeping sense we ain’t seen nothing yet.
Evelyn
You are right on.
Fear is the number one enemy right now. The virus impact is a big unknown right now. Unknowns breed fear!
If a bit of fear leads to the urgent manufacture of extra ventilators, I’m all for it. They won’t go off like cheese.
“If a bit of fear leads to the urgent manufacture of extra ventilators, I’m all for it. They won’t go off like cheese.”
???
I’ve read this 3 times and still I don’t understand it.
What do ventilators & cheese have in common? 🙂 lol ha ha
this must be a Britishism of some variety…
It was just for colour (possibly annatto!).
Just read ‘they don’t go off’. As in they can sit in a warehouse and no harm will come to them if they aren’t needed (as if…).
And I meant go off as in degenerate, not go off as in explosives. 🙂
But as has been mentioned already, you can’t do anything with a ventilator without a bunch of highly trained, specialist nurses to manage it. And we’re short of tens of thousands of nurses. Many of the ones from the EU have gone to friendlier countries since the Brexiters made it clear they didn’t want them. Oh dear.
I believe that it’s only propaganda that China is “going back to work”. I just read yesterday that much of China, particularly in Hubei is still shuttered
Our Chinese friends in Shanghai have been back at work for two weeks – strong social distancing and hand sanitising around the workplace, and everyone wears masks when outside.
My neighbour’s daughter, along with her Chinese husband and their kids, went back to Shanghai last Thursday from here. She’s a teacher and had been summoned back. So Shangai does definitely seem to be getting back to work.
My SO is native Chinese. That gives me a little better insight, albeit a small one.. She reports here family in Shenyang have al returned to work. Her sister who works for the government has not. But that is not surprising, she never did have to work too much..
Cargill, for example, might think about worrying about his own country as they have been just about as effective as ours. His name calling and unadulterated BS should be aimed at the PTB down under.
Funnily enough I can walk and chew gum at the same time … we have two TVs in our lounge-dining areas – one on CNN and one on Australia’s ABC News 24 – often the stories are similar.
I do care about Australia of course, and while we don’t have a huge underclass of poor non-white people, or a hyper-partisan and broken political system, we do share many of the same issues of late capitalism as the US. Although I suggest we are even more vulnerable and exposed to the vagaries of international trade – particularly in minerals, food, textiles, and energy
Despite significant differences in culture – the similarities are enormous as well. We grew up with Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best as idealised versions of the past-present, and The Jetsons as the vision of the future.
I don’t know how much you guys travel, but you can see what James’s version of a future America could be like in many countries of the world – from Greek and Eastern European villages through to small towns in Indonesia, India, and SE Asia.
There are many of us (meaning Australians and Americans who are weary of the big-city complexities and joylessness of “modern” life) who really might welcome living at the level of a self-sustaining Greek or Croatian village. Late-age hippiedom!
There are two problems with this:
(1) these places tend to be pretty poor – since right throughout history cities have been the generators of wealth, trade, myriad consumer items, health services, entertainment, etc
(2) and as a consequence of this, small-town / village life can be very closed and very boring – not everyone wants to a farmer, or a John Deere mechanic, or selling clothes or making coffee and cakes.
So for many generations the best and brightest have headed off from Podunk to bigger cities for education, careers, entertainment, finding mates, and much else.
I have difficulties with some of James’s future vision – and at best it will only apply to a fairly small percentage of the (prepared) population – the rest (those who don’t actually die) will descend into some very dystopian and awful tribal life in cities – scrounging and scrabbling and just getting by somehow, and very poor. Although the rich will continue to be rich, I expect.
That really explains why you are so misinformed.
CNN is a hot bead of lies and nonsense.
The DJIA made it 30 minutes there this AM.. down 10%, then had to stop trading..
looks like they’ve resumed their trades and its down around 8% right now…
I kinda wonder how the whole “work from home” stuff is gonna work out.. a lot of these companies may just look at the money they are saving from all the meals & hotels & plane rides and decide that the “work from home” is gonna be the new normal for all the corporate types out there..
who knows..
will robots save us or kill us? fuck zuc and bezos.
yea for sure lol
robots… maybe they’ll take over all the brick and mortar & restaurants/bars/fast food joints.. roll into the Burger King and get a whopper ala’ robot
it is near, I fear.
have you seen the amazon robots?
nope
Proof that the Stupidification of America affects the Elite as much as the rest of us.
When are the AI and robot fans going to realize that after they computerize everything and humans are eliminated, there will be no one to buy their stuff.
“When are the AI and robot fans going to realize…”
I think many do realize it, which is why they are buying bunkers and bug-out spots in remote areas.
You’ve just shown the limits of your Ideology and personality. If they control all energy and capital, they don’t need people to buy their “stuff”. The people are then just useless eaters to be gotten rid of.
Capitalism was only ever a means to an end. You see it as an end in itself. Typical low class attitude. A climber, an ass kisser or ass kicking grasper. No Aristocratic Dignity whatsoever. No Slack! Or even the capacity to understand it.
When are the AI and robot fans going to realize that after they computerize everything and humans are eliminated, there will be no one to buy their stuff.
Karl Marx actually said quite a lot about this – without a fair wage for workers, who is going to buy all the stuff that increasing mechanisation will produce?
It’s going to kill a lot,of marginal businesses that employ a lot people. NYC just made restaurants takeout only. The job losses will be unprecedented.
That “record low unemployment rate?” (You know, the one that did NOT correspond with a “record high employment rate?”) expect that to skyrocket.
yep for sure!
until they rejigger the hedonics to show how fewer people working is actually more 😉
Yes – a medical crisis is also a major economic crisis. Richard Quest on CNN was making this point very strongly this (Tuesday) morning – his view is the only question is how deep the recession might be.
And an economic crisis becomes a health crises:
https://www.apa.org/monitor/oct01/wealthhealth
“Stock futures are “limit down” as I write, before the Wall Street open. Gold is getting pounded into the ground like a grape stake and silver is so low it looks like the hedge fund managers are down to pawning grandma’s table service. (Hint, the PMs will bounce back hard; the rest, probably not so much.)”
Don’t let the slv and gld fool you. The US mint is already out of silver american eagles having already sold 3-4X as March 2019. Premiums are gapping up. Price for physical will grow much faster the derivative driven ETF’s.
The problem is the sellers of physical are asking very high premiums. Apmex and Kitco are still selling but way above spot price.
I see that not as a problem but reality rearing her ugly head.
Reality is a she? I kind of thought it was an “it”.
After being married for 26 plus years you bet my reality is a she 😉
After being married for 26 plus years you bet my reality is a she.
Well said fugeguy!
Couldn’t have said it better myself (29 years)!
The ASX (Sydney) is up about 3.5% today – near the close Tuesday. Dead cat bounce?
Millennials are going to be detoxing as the adderol supply chains dry up soon.
I feel the need to take a swipe at the Baby Boomer’s as this fucking thing goes down, for one reason. Up until that generation came into being there was a sense of the intergenerational contract.
Be kind to your family. If necessary help your family clean house. While all the Boomers are quarantined I think we need to have a nice long conversation with them about what their retirement is really going to look like….. Enjoy the Decline Folks.
“Millennials are going to be detoxing as the adderol supply chains dry up soon. ”
oh, geez lul
make an exception to open up the bouncy houses to let ’em jump around in!
While all the Boomers are quarantined I think we need to have a nice long conversation with them about what their retirement is really going to look like…..
LOL! I try to have that conversation with all the Boomers (and X’ers) I know as often as possible. Their blind faith in “the markets” is about to go poof!, like so much pixie dust before the gale.
Are hear the younguns’ are calling the virus “The Boomer Remover”
I feel the need to take a swipe at the Baby Boomer’s as this fucking thing goes down.
We are boomers (67) – and we and many in our cohort have gone through a lot (apart from building the exciting world that Xs, Zs, and Millennials now enjoy).
We have spent much of the last decade (and for many it’s ongoing) looking after our war-time parents in the last 2-3 years of their lives, and meanwhile providing massive free baby-sitting for grandkids, and in many cases, finding space in our houses for our kids and their families.
We Boomers have had a good run – a great run – but it would be a mistake to claim that it’s been all free beer and nude mud-wrestling, and we should now be denied the ventilators.
@Cargill
There are many boomers who I have great respect for, Howard Kunstler, John Michael Greer, Derrick Jensen, and Chris Martenson spring to mind. A lot of boomers I know take care of their aging “wartime parents” simply to inherit more than their siblings. There are a few boomers I know who genuinely care about their parents. You know that scene from Second Hand Lions where the relatives show up with a will for Hub and Garth? I feel like that is a perfect parody for many boomers caring for their parents. They just want the family silver ware.
The difference I see between the wartime generation and the boomers is the wartime generation actually wants their boomer children and millenial/gen-x grand children/great grand children to inherit something. The boomers meanwhile rack up more debt to enrich their own lives at the expense of the millennials and everyone else.
It’s the some of the cultural changes that came about during the reign of the boomers that are problematic. The warped mindset that came about in the 1950s and 1960s of perpetual progress, was nothing new. Under the boomers “progress” reviled the lessons of history in way it never could before.
As for the ventilators, most places seem to be using the same criteria that go into determining if someone is eligible for a kidney transplant.
The boomers meanwhile rack up more debt to enrich their own lives at the expense of the millennials and everyone else.
Some insightful stuff there … I definitely think the war-time generation (essentially all gone now) did pride themselves when they could, on passing down some silverware – I certainly know my parent and my in-laws did.
However a really big proportion die in a position of net debt – I don’t the numbers – and I don’t think it’s a peculiarity of us Boomers. Mind you – with our bratty next generation, I don’t care a great deal!
In Australia Boomers having a ball are called SKINS – Spending the Kids Inheritance Now … works for me. But anyway – it doesn’t depend on your generation really – there are some eternal verities. There are the rich with their trusts, the comfortable middle like me, and then a very large percentage who have rather few assets at all – right throughout their working lives and then when they die.
https://news.yahoo.com/half-frances-coronavirus-patients-intensive-123044974.html
Half of all French coronavirus patients in intensive care are below the age of 65. Similar situation in Italy or developing in Italy. The “experts” have been saying low risk and only the elderly need to be really concerned. I think they did it only to stave off the economic damage for as long as possible. Even if it meant that the pandemic would become even more severe. I hope that isn’t true but I have a trust issue.
SSL, The younger people are being treated because of a limited number of ventilators. They’re doing triage and the old and infirm go in the hallway.
I wonder if there is a way that Trump can just order companies to make ventilators and other medical equipment? I heard yesterday that Germany is doing something like that. I think it was Germany, but definitely a European country.
Some info on the situation in Europe, SSL:
https://www.ft.com/content/5a2ffc78-6550-11ea-b3f3-fe4680ea68b5
Germany is by far and away the best placed to deal with ICU patients, possibly why Nightowl is happy to talk smugly about fear porn, since he isn’t going to be left suffocating in a corridor, a fate I do not anticipate with any serenity.
The Germans are generally to be admired in these matters. My country, like yours (but even more so) was led by the nose into a service economy – in our case by the High Priestess Margaret Hilda Thatcher – without any thought for possible disruptions to normal service.
Also someone else mentioned elsewhere that America (and presumably by extension the UK as well?) was led into a service-economy scenario for reasons related to climate change concerns. I don’t think that argument stands up to any scrutiny.
Firstly there was, back then, no competition between nations to keep to commitments on emissions, because the process started long before any climate agreements or even serious climate discussions.
Secondly, moving production to a less advanced country means more emissions (and pollution generally) per unit of production than keeping production in countries with more sophisticated industrial plants with higher environmental standards (always a fight over your way for ideological reasons, I realise, but still). And AGW doesn’t give a toss which country the emissions came from, since it doesn’t spare anywhere in its effects.
Not aimed at you, SSL, just developing a point. Some people would like to blame everything on people concerned to limit climate damage.
Margaret Thatcher was the equivalent of Ronny Raygun. Maybe they were lovers.
Hardly, but they were said to have ‘chemistry’!
And who will “make” all the ICU nurses needed to run those vents and take care of all the patients?? And some of those nurses will also become sick.
This one HAS to go into the “We Didn’t Think” file.
Abbybwood R.N. and former ICU nurse
Exactly. My husband tells me it takes five trained ICU nurses per ventilator. We certainly don’t have them or anywhere to get them.
If half of the folks in intensive care are below 65 that means the other half are over 65…but over 65 in most parts of the world is only 15% of the total…sounds pretty scary to be over 65 in France right now.
Not just in France. 🙂
What do you think of Rosalind Cash?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bWB6Ufh4O98
there is no phone ringing, DAMMIT!
lol
Wow so even in the seventies they didn’t want a White Eve. It seems like that is the main theme. So then I wonder who the Adam is supposed to be for the White Eve? Probably an Arab lol!
Great post Jim! As you have correctly noted, it looks like the financial “markets” (irony quotes) are the greatest immediate concern this morning, right on the heels of the disruptions in the real economy, where travel, shipping, and all the things that keep the JIT economy afloat are rapidly locking up. Contagion is of course the core problem of problems with a fully integrated global economy, so it seems only fitting that a global financial contagion follows so closely on the heels of a human health contagion like this. Almost like the universe is none too subtly trying to tell us something. Like a railroad tie upside the head not subtly.
“There will be economic roles and social roles for all those willing to step up to some responsibility. Young people may see tremendous opportunity replacing the wounded economic dinosaurs wobbling across the landscape. It’ll be all about going local and regional and making yourself useful in exchange for a livelihood and the esteem of others around you — aka, your community. Government has been working tirelessly to make itself superfluous, if not completely ineffectual, impotent, and rather loathsome in the face of this crisis that has been slowly-but-visibly building for half a century. Something old and played-out is limping offstage, and something new is stepping on. Aren’t you glad you watched all those debates?”
That’s a real good, last paragraph there.. and its full of the promise of the rise of meaningful activity for a population who have become enslaved to so many harmful addictive habits & chemicals & thought patterns..
This is mainly for optimistic sentiments expressed earlier about “community” emerging from the forecast calamity. From history we know that the first alliances to arise from the vacuum of social collapse are those comprised of the most viciously opportunistic in the absence of any civil enforcement. More that of the pirate element, brutally unrestrained in acting out the most reptilian brain impulse for power and control. Do the study; humane sociability takes time, think how long Stalinist reigned in Russia, or consider the Bosnia conflict, or consult the history of the French Revolution, or how about the Cambodian Pol Pot regime, etc., etc…….
Went to the Giant supermarket last Saturday and the aisles were empty. Went to my local independent grocer and they had everything except toilet paper and sanitizing wipes.
Start planting gardens and learning how to preserve and cook real food. I am strangely optimistic.
I’m guessing you’ve never planted a garden of any size or ambition. “Victory” gardens, handled by people who knew what they were doing supplemented a family’s need for fresh veg. DID NOT feed them all all year. It staves off vitamin deficiency situations.
Even larger sized hobby gardens take enormous time energy and water and don’t keep you all fed by any stretch. Seeds of today are different than those of old. Weather is a real problem, soil is critical. This whole thing like what Bloomberg said – anyone can be a farmer, you toss a seed into the group and go have a beer, that’s all insanely wrong. Also insulting.
If you form a co-op with some neighbors, you can trade your single crop for some of what they planted.
I had problems with my venture into growing pumpkins, and I’m not someone who has never grown anything before.
A lot of things can become problems that the beginner does not foresee, and the don’t mention on the seed packet.
Hybrids that have developed so specialty plants can be grown have created fragile seeds that are not robust. Part of farming is learning what will grow in your climate. An example is tomatoes in Arizona. You would think that a growing season of more than 330 days would be terrific. Except that very few veggies tolerate the summers here. For example squash grow leaves like crazy but do not set fruit. In reality, we have two seasons, pre summer and post summer, both shorter than a lot of veggies need.
Corn works well, okra works well. Short season tomatoes are okay.
Could you share the tomatoes and g a full season? Or is t the heat?
I’m thinking of trying grains. I should be able to grow about two bushels a year.
For whatever this is worth re: the stupidity of the Big Box stores –
Tthere are some preppers saying that it’s very possible the federal government will partner with Wal-mart specifically and maybe Target and CVS since Trump has already singled them out, to turn them in to official supply distribution centers (they mean an eventual rationing program), with the military in the parking lots to keep order.
No more fat-ho fist-fights between Shaniqua, Rosalia, and Karen over pop-tarts, GI Joe will be ready to restore order.
LOL! Maybe they keep the fat-ho fist fights, but just contain them. You know, for the entertainment value. People are gonna sorely need all the entertainment they can get.
I’ll puttin’ a sawbuck on Shaniqua. 2 to 1.
Set up a makeshift ring right in the parking lot,
“In this corner Tashieka Smith, 240 lbs, lives in the Marcus Garvey housing projects”.
“In that corner Rosalie Tarbox, 80 lbs., lives on the Meth Farm at the outskirts of town.
Winning prize is a case of TP.
You could sell tickets,
Brh
Wayne Karp did that in ‘World Made by Hand’. But it wasn’t wrasslin. It was porn. With pornhub gone Wayne saw too it that needs and other things were filled.
Gawd, I remember that. The minister didn’t have a very good night, from what I recall.
“… Government has been working tirelessly to make itself superfluous, if not completely ineffectual, impotent, and rather loathsome…”
Actually, no. Forces outside of government are causing this.
The GOP, Libertarians, Fox, right wing blowhard radio, Norquist, Gingrich, evangelicals and many more have pushed the bullcrap for years to “cut taxes” and “cut government” and “de-regulate” and “get government off our backs.” By doing so we play right into the hands of our enemies who lick their chops in anticipating a moribund federal government. Our enemies use our own social media and internet to pump out lies and conspiracy theories on thousands of bogus websites and tens of thousands of bogus social media accounts using “persona management” software to keep the lies coming to befuddle citizens.
Our Federal government is the only thing holding this country, and if we lose it then we lose our country. The KGB planned 20+ years ago for the USA to break apart into several regions and you can bet your ass Putin loves the idea and works hard to make it happen by driving wedges between us and our government and between our regions. Here’s the link: https://www.the-american-catholic.com/2008/12/29/russian-professor-predicts-breakup-of-us-in-2010/
Well, here we are, the shit has hit the fan and all we got is a total moron of a carnival barker for President. Just when you need a strong federal government all we have is a Liar in Chief telling us how he has the best people and it’s all going to just go away and that’s it’s all a DEM hoax to make him look bad.
Trump is the stupid S.O.B. who fired the pandemic crew two years ago in one of his manic narcissistic fits to undo anything the black guy did.
Trump is the stupid S.O.B. whose unneeded tax cut fueled bubbles in housing and stock markets that are now crashing down around us, just like in 2008.
The same perp that pushed Bush’s tax cuts, Kudlow, is the same perp pushing Trump’s tax cuts, and with the same results and here we are again, the world crashing down around us. Any day now Kudlow, former cocaine addict, will swear that more tax cuts will solve it all. More tax cuts won’t solve a damned thing.
GOP tax cuts in the 1920s, 1980s, 2000s and 2017 all preceded huge market crashes. We’re living in a perpetual GOP Groundhog Day.
Trump’s trillion dollar tax cut pissed away the money needed to rebuild our highways and railroads. Mexico will pay for these!
I could write pages more, I’m as fed up as JHK, but I’m tired of being a voice of sanity in a shithouse of fools that much of our nation has become.
In the 1930s we sold scrap metal to Japan. We got it back at Pearl Harbor. Then we kicked their ass across half the world.
In the 1990s we built the internet and social media. We got it back in the 2016 election. Now it’s time to kick some more ass.
We’ve overcome everything the world has thrown at us. We will overcome this. I hope. But we need to get it right going forward, by relegating the GOP to the shitcan of history and be done with that bunch of liars and phonies who’ve milked the U. S. Treasury under Hoover, Reagan, G.W.Bush and Trump.
If we keep electing the GOP it will assure a national debt so huge the federal government will default (as Trump advocated in his campaign) and truly crash the world economy. If we don’t stop the GOP, we’re toast.
This may be the dumbest cut and paste I have ever read on this site.
This may be the dumbest cut and paste I have ever read on this site.
Whether a cut & paste or every sentence original – doesn’t matter at all – every line is perceptive, true, and accurate … and you know it. Which is why you have no come-back, no defence … because there isn’t one.
It’s disappointing that James went overboard on the “government is the problem” meme.
There is a lot of merit in being a small-government advocate, and a deficit hawk too … bureaucracies and legislative machinery just grow and grow if you let them – but it’s a very big and very misguided leap over to the extreme GOP position of hating and distrusting everything that comes out of DC.
And when crises do happen – like now – watch all the GOPers and fat cats be first to rush to the trough and pig out! We can’t let all the Porsche dealerships fail!
It is a classic case of binary thinking. Rep/Dem, good/evil, black/white.
Some grow out of it in adulthood, some don’t.
It appears to be too late for you.
Yes, because the Dems have all the answers we need for sure lol. The country is past the point of being a unified single state/culture. That ship sailed a long time ago.
“Our Federal government is the only thing holding this country, and if we lose it then we lose our country.”
Who exactly is “We”?
“We” is more or less completely conditioned around most of the world now by very cheap energy. As all of you know in your hearts no more cheap energy = no more “We”. “They” is another word which might loose all meaning too shortly. Difficult to see how your country, or mine (UK) will be able to recover when “we” don’t have access to these little words.
WEwewewewewewewewewe. Your post has more we’s than a pigsty!
Lol, that is Ewwww and Wewewewe is somewhat close to Ewwwww!
I believe that the worst thing the Fedgov did was push the “Great Society” on us. Now we have a country that is full of lazy takers. I call them “Welfarians”. I’m tired of working to fund the Welfarian’s degenerate lifestyles. I know A LOT of these people close up and personal, to my chagrin, so don’t be telling me that I’m just spewing right wing propaganda.
Too bad you do not have any Dem weapons to stop the GOP with!
Excellent post, MPoV … thanks
Well said POV – can’t disagree with anything at all – the truth laid bare and it sure hurts some on here!
My concern is that the Democratic Party will clutch defeat from the jaws of victory … even with the execrable Trump on the nose everywhere – including with his base for whom he’s delivered exactly nothing – I fear the Dems are not putting their best team on the field for November.
JHK–Even though you signed my copy of The Long Emergency a long 15 years ago, and the timing for all this has been slippery, I never doubted your conclusions. Thanks for your no-bullshit assessment of events all this time. But I wish there had been public officials wise enough to heed the alarm bells.
There were plenty of people ringing alarm bells as long ago as the ’60s when LBJ started the “Great Society” on borrowed money.
The people didn’t want what they were selling. It was too easy to go along and enjoy the “prosperity”. It is useless, and wrong, to just blame this on anyone other than human nature.
It’s an old story.
It won’t appear so to a lot of the MAGAts but the election of a master dunce was truly a harbinger of what is going on.
“Almost like the universe is none too subtly trying to tell us something.”
It doesn’t matter how many times you say it, only how many times they hear [ listen ].
Deuteronomy 28
I heard something loud and clear. I didn’t get it at first but I do now. Better late than never :-).
Could Corona be Kim’s “Christmas Present”
I think that is a big possibility. His little gift to the world comment was just a little too coincidental huh?
It was within a couple of days of each other.
No, AttackStub
China would snuff them if it were the case.
Actually, Jim, I’m glad I DIDN’T watch all those debates. I don’t understand how you can follow these liars, thieves, and murderrers, who masquerade as “servants of the people”. What a joke! But kudos to you for following them and pointing out their irrelevance. You’re one of the few true journalists in this country, who expose the great scam known as US politics.
It takes a strong stomach to listen to those charlatans, knowing that everything they say is a lie.
As refreshing as Ron Paul and Tulsi Gabbard are, I still have never heard them say the magic words: 1) the US is the #1 state sponsor of terrorism, and 2) all US presidents need to be brought to justice for crimes against humanity. Until these truths reach US politics, US politics will remain irrlevant, and will proceed to its fitting end.
Walter B, where art thou?
It would be interesting to learn of what your small community is up to, considering your council position.
The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
I have to say, like Huckleberry Finn, I been there before. We all have.
This is just a crescendo in the creeping authoritarianism we have experienced since 9/11, and probably even before.
Anyone remember this?
“I have stocked up on bottled water, flashlights with batteries and canned goods, and I keep the car filled with gas,” Quinn wrote in her Oct. 3 column. If someone as well connected as Quinn (she’s married to Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee) is getting jumpy, should we start jittering, too?”
https://www.salon.com/2001/10/11/dread/
Quinn is of course Sally Quinn, speaking of the terror alerts that Bush and Cheney put us through. She was all in on that, going as far as to state that we should all carry a mask at all times. I am having trouble locating the actual column where she said such a ridiculous thing.
Notice how our local news stations bill themselves as “KEEPING YOU SAFE” and “The Weather AUTHORITY”.
Believe everything they tell you, even when they get caught removing items from shelves to film ‘shortages’.
The problem here is how many morons will believe, after this latest threat fizzles out, that it is because Bill de Blasio took decisive action and closed all the bars.
We never got a believable reason for the Northeast blackout of 2003. First it was lightning, then it wasn’t, then it was “new programs” which was just silly, and now it’s as if that never happened.
So you believe the virus is a total conspiracy?
Hell no. The virus is a virus.
How does our virus compare to the Italian virus?
I do not know the answer but I talked to my doctor’s office at UCLA and they will NOT be doing the drive through testing and I was told only certain people qualify for the test and that there aren’t any tests!!!!
So Trump saying, “anyone who wants a test can get a test” was complete bullshit.
There’s nothing wrong with any of JHK’s conclusions but I personally do not expect either large cities or giant AgriBiz to go gentle into that good night. Time will tell.
However, the money and power are concentrated in both, as well as in the Tech baron’s hands. Tech megalomaniacs have planned “smart cities” and severe regional bifurcations between urban and rural zones. That group wants to bring mass immigration (planned, larger groups, coordinated by government inline with the needs of business, not Jose and the mules with rented kids) . That would allow for strong borders but still large numbers of agri-labor. Those groups of low wage immigrants would be brought into small, “hurting” (aging) white rural communities (ones that look like where JHK lives, or where I live, or maybe where y’all live) ostensibly to do the shit labor on the still surviving huge AgriBiz mono-farms. Which I assume then would supply the “well-planned”, highly surveilled smart cities. From each, to each according to their needs? And of course we can guess whose needs will take priority.
The only value in a plan like that, as opposed to JHK’s more neo-pioneer thing is that those on power and money stay in power and money. Which is the invisible war, the economic one, where the upper class truly believes they are more deserving and us lower-downs NEED to be managed, for our own good – they will fight hard to retain that position.
I guess what I’m describing (and what is actually out there being seriously discussed but in more flattering term) has been featured many times in numerous Sci Fi plots. Star Trek to The Expanse, and beyond. Always perceived as a roadmap, not a cautionary tale by the morons with money.
JHK always refers to an emergent new world, small local shops and stuff. Could be.
But he never seems (that I am aware of) to consider the likelihood of Black Markets of all types. Cottage industry, off-grid, in garages and what-not. But where you have to “know a guy”.
Keeping old appliances, computers, cars, running and re-sold, scrapping parts, smaller batches of Proctor and Gamble alternatives (as opposed to cutie-pie expensive hipster gift soaps tied with twine in calico bags). SOMETHING is going to have to happen with clothes. Most fabrics/clothes today are pounded with oil-derivative shit. That can’t go on.
Anyway, if the extreme disconnect between haves and have-nots remains and deepens, how can that black market situation not happen. But personally I imagine it as not happily out in the open, not a New Mayberry RFD, as nice as that would be, but more like a Soviet era “dimly-lit” Black Market in still rundown communities. Only because the deciding class of today hates nothing more than they hate losing control, and they will resist what JHK describes, and the politicians whom they have long ago fully bought will do as told.
You are describing the thesis of A World Made by Hand. Skills will be the replacement for wealth.
The real threat is what is going to happen when the city shelves empty out. City folks are entirely dependent on the supply chains for life itself. The new urban dream of the millennials is going to die very quickly if this goes on very long. The cities will empty out trying to survive. If you get in their way, you better have a gun.
“The new urban dream of the millennials is going to die very quickly if this goes on very long. ”
My urban reality was created by the Georgians, then the Victorians, so nothing particularly ‘new’. But you are right that we depend on supply chains. As I said before that’s not a sign of individual moral degeneracy, just a fact of life that we can’t all live on the land until an awful lot of us die off.
I decided to do an online order today for a delivery from Sainsbury’s, thinking to stock up on e.g. bread flour and other things too heavy to carry (I don’t share the TP obsession, although I have a bit more than normal in reserve).
Turns out a bunch of those people who have actual cars have decided to have their shopping delivered instead of using them, so there wasn’t a delivery slot to be had. Thanks again, car people. 🙂
And I mean not a delivery slot to be had ALL WEEK.
You gotta get the chrome plated Big Ram hood ornament, which says “Get the hell out of the way, I’m coming thru.”
GA, I fear you may get more lessons in ‘survival of the fittest’ as the young, the bold, the car people grab the available resources without a thought for your needs. Perhaps you can network with neighbors, relatives, especially younger people to care for each other, pool available information and resources.
I’m not too worried at this stage, hm. I’m slightly older than you but not ‘old old’! I can easily get to supermarkets by bus and get the stuff back in a taxi, but one person delivering it to you feels as it it involves marginally less potential virus exposure than risking the bus or a taxi. 🙂
Having said that my husband goes to work by bus, so even if I don’t use the bus, I’m going to get whatever virus he attracts either getting to work or seeing patients. He’s off work this month to use up annual leave but come April, we’re going to be pretty exposed. He’s going to be our virus gateway. At that point I’ll probably stop worrying, like the people who live right under the dam!
The corner shops still have plenty of food, even if they’ve run out of a few things like dried pasta. But we’re not looking at empty shelves. Yet.
Annoyingly, I noticed someone put a message on Nextdoor saying that if anyone was having trouble getting supplies in the supermarkets our local [insert name of local chain of small deli/groceries] still had plenty of everything. And I thought, seriously, why can’t people keep it zipped? Now we’ll have the supermarket emptiers raiding our civilised little corner shops!
Somebody did say ‘shhh’, but it was a bit late.
GA, there are products out there which boost the immune system to improve one’s odds of resisting the virus. Also some people recommend vitamin C, vitamin D, and chaga mushroom extract. But I’m sure your husband knows more about all that.
I’ve got the Vitamin D anyway, hm!
Car people?
GA if you bought that 4WD Dodge Power Wagon (8 cylinder, 410 bhp) like I suggested you could haul groceries for half of Edinburgh.
I like the thought of you behind the wheel of that cherry red dual mufflered beast, 20 inch wheels, lifted, Scottish flag tatted to your left shoulder, “live free or die” tattooed on the right shoulder, gun rack holding WW2 Lee Enfield at the back window, hauling ass out of Edinburgh with your husband and your little terrier dog, headed for the Highlands just ahead of the infected hordes, bugging out, like in some real life version of ’28 hours’. Drop the hammer on that puppy, throw into overdrive, and you’ll blow all those weenie European metro sh#tboxes clogging up the escape routes right off the road. Hell, you’ll be able to roll right over them, crushing them as you go, like at some white trash monster truck rally in Hope, Arkansas.
Brh
Thank you, brh. I’ve copied that all down to remind me of my options. 🙂
Make sure you write down about the hood ornament too. Big chrome Plated ram, weighs about 25 lbs.
You can get a replacement hood ornament. A flying pig.
https://www.amazon.com/CPW-Chrome-Flying-Emblem-Ornament/dp/B01MRWS738/ref=pd_sbs_263_1/145-0220839-5818343?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B01MRWS738&pd_rd_r=771b924c-1c45-4ed8-9673-6e91f73fded5&pd_rd_w=d0Lpb&pd_rd_wg=5gHNE&pf_rd_p=7cd8f929-4345-4bf2-a554-7d7588b3dd5f&pf_rd_r=DRWJ7ZP4MMK3VCST12MC&psc=1&refRID=DRWJ7ZP4MMK3VCST12MC
I like it. Thanks K-Dog. GA, take note.
I like the pig. 🙂
The real threat is what is going to happen when the city shelves empty out. City folks are entirely dependent on the supply chains for life itself.
Do we have any evidence so far that city stores are going to empty out? Are all the trucks going to stop running? Why would they – is the supply of diesel and gasolene going to dry up? Are all the abattoirs going to stop providing meet? Are all the farms going to stop producing vegetables, and dairy?
Being a prepared person is good … but scary scenarios don’t serve much purpose.
The supermarkets here keep saying they have plenty of supplies and are doing their best to keep everything turning over, but would people please stop panic buying because it’s making everything worse.
Sadly, most people aren’t listening.
Foodbanks are finding it a nightmare.
On the news last night we saw Americans queuing to buy…guns.
I had a vision of some guy’s head peeping over the edge of a dugout full of endless rolls of toilet paper that would be protected with the occupant’s life.
Chris Martenson in his most recent coronavirus video wrapped it up by saying “It didn’t have to be this way”. The comment I left in response to that was, “What freaking country do you think you’re talking about???”
“It is ironic to see the same Democrats who tried to impeach President Trump last month for abuse of power demanding that the Administration grab more power and authority in the name of fighting a virus that thus far has killed less than 100 Americans.” Ron Paul
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2020/03/16/the-coronavirus-hoax/#more-214433
That is such a shit-poor comparison you ought to be ashamed to admit you considered it important enough to post.
The IRONY is going to be that if following the advice of everyone who Trump opposes actually does some good at mitigating the disaster yet to arrive in full bloom, afterwards the fat bastard will be marching about claiming the credit.
No wait a minute, he is such a generous minded fat bastard, he’ll bestow all the credit on Pence.
In a similar vein:
Trump is Hitler!
We must abandon the second amendment and give our guns to Hitler!
“It is ironic to see the same Democrats who tried to impeach President Trump last month for abuse of power demanding that the Administration grab more power and authority in the name of fighting a virus that thus far has killed less than 100 Americans.” Ron Paul
Ron Paul is an A-Grade dill. He read Ayn Rand in his dorm room at age 19, and he hasn’t moved on one neurone since then.
Not many gold bugs here it seems. Has anyone commented on what JHK said about AU?
It’s always seemed strange to me that when the SHTF gold is supposed to soar.
Obviously too soon to make a definitive call about all that but how many are inclined to rush off to buy the stuff when TP has become more precious?
Buying gold is more of a hobby for the rich, those who expect to emerge from the other side of an apocalypse.
Well, I think that what’s happening right now is deflationary compression “all over the place” on account of all things financial being so hyper-inflated.
Gold is the money of kings, silver is the money of gentlemen, barter is the money of peasants and debt is the money of slaves.
I’d like to consider myself a gentleman.
Me too RIP but silver is sinking fast.
It’s always seemed strange to me that when the SHTF gold is supposed to soar.
We’re finding our superannuation (similar to a US retirement pension) is holding up pretty well – no precious metals in the mix, but a pretty diverse set of asset classes (equities, property, cash, and fixed interest).
We’re not totally au fait about what goes on inside the investment mix, but obviously as equities tank, then other assets must get some sort of boost. Anyway – we’re not out on the street, and nor are we digging up the back lawn to grow spuds. Yet.
“all US presidents need to be brought to justice for crimes against humanity.” –patrickd
US presidents by themselves cannot commit crimes against humanity. They are powerless to do so. They can be arrested and imprisoned the moment they try.
Those who commit the crimes are those who voluntarily sign up to become part of the armed forces and carry out the murders ordered by the presidents. Every single person who has ever joined the US armed forces is responsible for US crimes against humanity.
Wars will only stop when we, the little people, stop participating in the armed “services”, when we stop volunteering our bodies in the “service” of crimes against humanity, when we stop becoming mercenaries who carry out the will of presidents, when we stop accepting lifelong “veterans benefits” for our participation in crimes, when we stop saying “thank you for your service”, when we stop rewarding criminal behavior.
335,000 civilians have died violent deaths as a direct result of the US “war on terror.” That is blood on our hands.
https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2019/Direct%20War%20Deaths%20COW%20Estimate%20November%2013%202019%20FINAL.pdf
Weren’t you a marine?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
Listen to the most decorated Marine:
“I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer; a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
You still flaunting that old Smedley Butker trope, Little Jane? Give it up for God’s sake.
Smedley Butler,Brother
Semper Fi, brother!
That was a typo Attack Sub. I got a little tablet here.
US presidents by themselves cannot commit crimes against humanity. They are powerless to do so. They can be arrested and imprisoned the moment they try.
Are you sure about this one?
This is such a (mostly) fine post, Jim. Thank you! A harsh reality, but you tell it like it is and people need to here and heed these words.
But I really do wish we could do without this:
“The foolish, idiotic identity politics ginned up by the Left and their racially-inflamed, sexually-disturbed scribes in the Thinking Class have successfully destroyed the last shred of an American common culture that held the country together through earlier vicissitudes. So, one concludes that we’ll be left stewing in poisonous tensions, and perhaps some violent conflicts, before those matters head toward some sort of resolution.”
The Left AND the Right, and even the Moderate Middle- we have all done our part to contribute to this clusterfuck. Why rant about one side? Do you really mean to imply that the Right has no hand in creating this havoc?
I guess the only good thing here is that soon there will be no Left and Right. But there will be those who suffer and die and those who survive. The more people learn to work together, the more will survive. Creating division will not do much to help people survive.
We’re already working hard here in our little Sierra foothills community to help each other survive. I hope some of you are doing that where ever you are.
The most relevant question will be: will the living envy the dead in the immediate aftermath?
Oh god, I’ve asked that question as well. Hard to think about!
The Left AND the Right, and even the Moderate Middle- we have all done our part to contribute to this clusterfuck. Why rant about one side? Do you really mean to imply that the Right has no hand in creating this havoc?
Thank you – I said something very similar upthread … targetting the “left” for these ills is just nonsense – the “right” was far more culpable.
Where abouts are you located in the Sierras – around Shasta, or further south?
Everything in Ct has been shut down, bars, restaurants schools, movie theaters, colleges, everything. Welcome to Doomsday.
Just about a week ago on a tech site I read an article about a self driving flying car powered by ‘renewables’, that was right around the corner. I wonder if we will ever see it. Funding for such a frivolous and unnecessary project might be hard to come by considering current circumstances.
On a brighter there’s this young family nearby who walked around the neighborhood yesterday passing out a flyer that stated if anybody needed any help with we could call on them. He is a song and advertising writer who has written jingles you would recognize. They come from Manhattan, and the odd thing is we were kind of worried about them and wife wife suggest we walk over and see how they were doing. At least for now, right around here, people are stepping up to help one another.
Brh
Blood in the streets in the town of New Haven
Blood stains the roofs and the palm trees of Venice
Blood in my love in the terrible summer
Bloody red sun of Phantastic L.A.
Blood screams the pain as they chop off her fingers
Blood will be born in the birth of a nation
Blood is the rose of mysterious union
There’s blood in the streets, it’s up to my ankles
Blood in the streets, it’s up to my knee
Blood in the streets in the town of Chicago
Blood on the rise, it’s following me
That’s a little over the top don’t you think LB?
Settle down BRH, he could have just cut to the chase with these words:
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend, the end
Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I’ll never look into your eyes again
Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah
Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill
They come from Manhattan, and the odd thing is we were kind of worried about them and wife wife suggest we walk over and see how they were doing. At least for now, right around here, people are stepping up to help one another.
I think a lot of people will do that, when push comes to shove. Although a jingle-writer might not necessarily be what you need when there’s no food on the table.
But yes – the vast majority will be good – there is no need for ARs at 30 paces in the WalMart carpark … despite ridiculous doomer-porn talk on here and elsewhere.
I’ve read about a few cases where people initially infected by the coronavirus, tested positive, suffered through it then ultimately recovered, testing negative. After some time the same people caught it again!!!
The question being is this thing something that is going to keep coming around, wave after wave, wiping out a significant percentage of the population and cratering the economy each time until nothing’s left?
Just a thought…
Probably fake news, this thing is nothing. We’ve been assured of this by fat bastard’s numero uno advisor, Sean Hannity.
Smells like Asoka here. Oh, the stench…
Good question, goat. Here’s a good article that talks about that. Looks like we won’t know for sure until more is learned about the virus : https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucelee/2020/03/15/can-you-get-infected-by-coronavirus-twice-how-does-covid-19-immunity-work/#6180ea865c0f
I’ve read about a few cases where people initially infected by the coronavirus, tested positive, suffered through it then ultimately recovered, testing negative. After some time the same people caught it again!!!
Do you have an authoritative source for this?
There is still a lot we don’t know about whether one infection provides immunity, and if so, how much and how effectively, and for how long.
But unsupported statements are not useful.
https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2020-03-13/china-japan-korea-coronavirus-reinfection-test-positive
What is the logic that if the FED makes the near hysterical move of dropping interest rates to zero, the confidence of the market will be raised.
Asking it another way. If you are worried about stepping inside a building you’ve heard a lot of people say is toxic inside and hazardous to your health, then you suddenly see people crashing through the upper story windows and falling to earth, would that suggest to you it is now safe to go inside the building?
What, because all the broken windows allowed in more fresh air or what?
Was lowering rates precipitously something fat bastard thought up or what?
Same logic as it always is: animal spirits.
The Fed’s out of options, other than truly MASSIVE money printing in a pitiful attempt to rehypothecate the whole toxic mess. After that, comes the only true solution to our dilemma and the one whose name must never be spoken: massive debt deflation to reset this plus the previous toxic mess that Obama failed to deal with in 2008. Sometime after which, on the plus side, everything will be dirt cheap again. On the negative side, all the money you have now to buy things with will be gone and the global economy will be at the bottom of the Marianas Trench. A global reset without the dollar would be a distinct possibility.
Fat Bastard is way over his head on this one. None of his court wizards have a remote clue either.
“Fat Bastard is way over his head on this one. None of his court wizards have a remote clue either.”
…,
Might I suggest that we are ALL over our heads on this one, and no one here has a remote clue? History does not give us cookie-cutter examples of how to address a pandemic in an over-populated world of the 21st Century.
Don’t bother pointing fingers.
The pandemic is just the match that will ignite the economic fire. The fuel is the “mismanaged” economy itself. I add the quotes, because I seriously doubt it’s been mismanaged at all. This was always the end game, given that the underlying scheme is pure Ponzi.
I’ll point a finger – at the 115% debt to GDP ratio of the USA.
Sure – it’s all good and ‘deficits don’t matter’ while the USD remains the default global reserve currency with oil & other commodities are traded in USD.
When that hegemony has been even vaguely threatened, the usual response has been a ‘shock & awe’ display of bully-muscle.
Next time around, the US Government (your ‘deep state’/oligarch cabal) may have some difficulty achieving its objective – and it’ll probably be a final ‘shooting of the wad’.
Actually the illusion of the Maestro at the Fed conducting the economy is just that- an illusion. The interest rate is the inflation rate. It’s really that simple. If it wasn’t speculators could exploit the difference through arbitrage. I’m not sure the mechanics, but I know it’s done. Oil is the most important commodity in the world by far. When the price collapsed, inflation went to zero or possibly negative. The Fed had to follow. There was no choice. You can backtest this if you don’t believe it.
The point is that the Fed is not conducting the economy and no longer has the capability to do so through interest rates. Rehypothecation of “distressed assets” (what a concept!) is the only bullet left in the chamber. The simple term for that is bailout. Although, even that won’t stimulate demand, it will just keep things from collapsing right now. Fed discount window interest rates are almost entirely irrelevant (other than allow banks cheap access to speculate with), as you can’t make businesses invest no matter how cheap you make the terms on money. In any case, actual inflation rates are not uniform. For cheap shit you don’t actually need coming from China, they’re probably negative. For health care, drugs, home prices, education, and appreciating asset classes they’re exorbitantly high. There is no such thing as “the inflation rate.”
“Actually the illusion of the Maestro at the Fed conducting the economy is just that- an illusion”
L. Frank Baum knew it, too, and laid it all out 120 years ago.
Wizard of Oz reference here. Nice!
Perhaps all the commercial and retail properties that are suddenly to become vacant can be converted to housing, especially affordable housing, strip mall stores avg 1,200 sq ft and have the necessary utilities including bathrooms.
The United States has plenty of housing. What needs to happen is we need to ban housing being used as an investment vehicles. You live in your house. That is it.
1. Taking out a line of credit against your house should be illegal.
2. Mortgages should be boring. (No side betting on them.)
The United States has plenty of housing. What needs to happen is we need to ban housing being used as an investment vehicles. You live in your house. That is it.
Yeah but … in a different place at a different time, we turned our equity in our (lived-in) houses into the leverage we required for a further six investment properties – the sale of which over a later decade has allowed our early and well-funded retirement.
Different strategies for different times, comrade.
We need to rethink our retirement plans. Maybe parents should actually form relationships with their children so their family wants to help take care of them.
Maybe houses should be designed to last hold three generations? This gets into the stupidity of modern architecture. I understand not all of us are blessed to have family but what does it say about our society if people without family are in the majority?
Watch Mr. Kunstler’s ted talk on cartoon houses with porches too small to be useful, broadcasting the “We’re normal” tv show to the community.
Cargill, you’re the reason some millennial will one day trip me up and laugh as I try to get on the bus. I won’t forget. 🙂
So, if you CAN’T afford a house/home, you live in the bushes? In the culvert? That’d be the outcome of a world without a rental market.
Majella Yes I am very much against rentals. There instances where people should rent. (Not going to live somewhere for more than a few years, etc.) Such housing should be regulated. If some rich-boomer-jerk-off buys six houses and then charges the next generation of Xers and millennials through the nose to rent them out, he is not doing society any favors. Oh I should also point out the said Boomers expenses on these second homes he owns can be written off as tax write offs. All this then goes to fund his booming asses retirement. Rental housing one reason I very much dislike the boomer generation.
Here is another big problem I have with rental property. You can build a good size house for 20-40K. (Assuming you build it yourself.) So if that house garners 1K in rent per month, in a few years that house has paid for itself.
(Building a house isn’t rocket science no matter what the regulations say. I’ve built several tiny houses on trailers because my millennial friends cannot afford to build real ones. Use 2×6 construction or better, 16″ on center studs or better, galvanized nails/screws on everything, PT wherever you can, and you’re probably up to code in most places of the country.)
Going back to rentals…. Rentals artificially drive the price of real-estate up, it impoverishes poor people by them pay hundreds of thousands of dollars over a lifetime in rent for an asset that could be built for a modest fraction of that cost.
Building a house requires one thing: savings. That is something most Americans cannot do because they are paying asinine amounts for rent. Why do you think there is a tiny-house/van movement happening on the west coast. Tiny houses on trailers seem to be scaled to about the same size as “Little House in the Big Woods” so that seems to be about the sustainable building size.
I watched the debate last night and they both looked old and tired and probably welcome the cancellation of rallies so they can go home and give interviews and call it done. And what was apparent to me also was their friendship — neither really wanted to attack the other. Bernie has got to know it’s over for him now and he put up a good fight to make health care a right.
Our lack of common sense handling this pandemic is nowhere more obvious than the mess at the airports this weekend. If you didn’t have coronavirus when you got off the plane your chances increased exponentially crammed in with other people for hours as you filled out forms. Since its already in the country, moving people thru as quickly as possible and giving them instructions at passport control would have been better. All anyone can do anyhow is self-isolate unless your symptoms become severe.
One thing’s for certain, though–it’s an opportunity for all of us to figure out what’s a luxury and what’s a necessity and stop the wastefulness in our lives. There just won’t be as much money.
Perhaps Sanders finally woke up and realized that being elected president was just about the last thing in the world he should be wanting to do at this point. I have no doubt whatsoever now that had he got elected and tried to impose wide spread socialism in the wake of the coming economic collapse he would have been dealt with summarily. Whatever anyone thinks of his policy prescriptions, they’re simply not going to happen in this country at this time absent a well coordinated and heavily armed takeover, and Sanders certainly wasn’t proposing or leading anything like that.
Biden was congenitally lyin’ as always last night, so him and Trump should at least make for some very lively debates. Hip waders highly recommended!
A lot of peeps on social media suspect that Biden was pumped full of amphetamines for the debate. I really do feel sorry for that poor old guy, despite the fact that he almost certainly has had his hand in the proverbial cookie-jar, just like most long-time elected officials. The entire Democratic National Committee should be in jail for elder abuse, IMHO.
VP
Did you notice Biden’s face had a waxy look about it, like perhaps he has already passed on, has been embalmed, but is re animated strictly for campaign appearances?
The dental implants, the hair plugs, numerous facelifts … it all fits.
Brh
Isn’t that what Hitler’s Dr. Feelgood did to him to keep him going when it was obvious that the war was lost for the Germans?
Oh it’s a fascinating story, Rainmaker.
If you want to know more you can read David Irving’s biography of Hitler’s doctor. Free .pdf download on his website.
Some of the enemies of the doctor (everybody was at odds with everybody else at the top – Goebbels hated Goering and they all loathed Himmler) even accused him of trying to poison Der Furrier, but he never had the balls for that. He was feeding the hypochondriac-but-ill Hitler the usual voodoo-mix of goat glands, vitamins and other such crap spiked of course with A*M*P*H*E*T*A*M*I*N*E*S, the “active ingredient” .
At one point cocaine may also have been prescribed. This for me is the only logical explanation for the overly-ambitious invasion on the Eastern Front – classical coke-head recklessness.
BB,
Consider that the USAF, up to recent times, provided amphetamines to pilots and aircrew.
It’s that “mission oriented” thang….
What will happen is more people will qualify for Medicaid so those numbers will balloon and if states like California, Washington, Oregon not only give sanctuary to illegals but also free medical care, their economies will collapse. What Bernie doesn’t want to face is that its too late to salvage the system. The cost, corruption, incompetence and indifference will be magnified by this virus.
Trump talks about getting more respirators like they’re something he can order on Amazon. Can he order people who know how to run them too? Not quite as easy. The debates between Don & Joe will be something to see since they’re both out of touch with reality and have no problem whatsoever distorting the facts.
Not to hard to ramp up production for companies that already produce them.
Nothing wrong with signaling an increased market for these devices and they are not that complicated to plug in and turn on.
The hardest part of it is inserting the tube.
Not sure why you are taking such a jaundiced view on the President asking companies to make them and sell them it is the essence of free market economies.
Supply and demand!
Vent patients, especially in the acute setting, require close attention. O2 level, rates, pressures must be tuned and titrated to patient response, which changes real fast. Tubes require maintenance as well, suctioning and flushing and reconfirming placement. Someone has to apply a stethoscope and listen, carefully, repeatedly.
Additionally, all of these patients will have multiple drips running. These too must be titrated to the pt. Blood pressure, pH, blood gasses are all affected by meds and by vent settings.
And all of this is done by staff who must wear cumbersome protective gear while performing exacting procedures under immense pressure.
None of this is plug and play. Every ER and ICU I’ve seen is a madhouse during a good flu.
BTW, lots of vents are in use by people who will never get well. There are in every city warehouses of the vegetating ventilated damned. Brain dead, sometimes fore a real long time. Triage will be brutal on all parties.
All you said is true but it can be done was my point.
It might be time for a really smart engineer to uncomplicate the noble ventilation machine.
I watched them wheel one in for both my father and mother in law six months apart.
I am very familiar with the process and setup.
The back end monitoring is now all computer controlled as is the monitoring in a modern Hospital.
“There are in every city warehouses of the vegetating ventilated damned. ”
That’s grotesque even in a normal non-emergency scenario. I’ve got a living will to ensure I won’t be left vegetating OR wasting massively expensive medical resources. It’s easy to arrange and you get a card to carry like the organ donor one.
What does the card say? “If I poop my drawers, just shoot me!”
Nah, I’ve actually lost mine but it just gives contact details for your next of kin and your family doctor. You are supposed to give a copy of the Will to your family doctor too. Your next of kin would also be presumed to know your wishes anyway, but it makes things clear. My husband would rather jump under a bus than end up in a care home of the type where he regularly visits patients (even the nicest ones that will eat up your children’s inheritance before Sunday lunch). He’s seen too much of it.
And it doesn’t give them the right to positively hasten your demise, it just withdraws their right to give you futile treatment without your permission, e.g. a flu jab when you’re 96 and so demented you’re unaware of your own existence. Or unnecessary resuscitation should your heart mercifully stop ticking.
Hubby has instructed me just to give him the morphine and the San Miguel. 🙂
the morphine and the San Miguel. – GA
=============
‘The San Miguel’ is probably another clever bit of Brit slang but please explain.
Sorry, Q, thought it was available everywhere. 🙂
https://images.assetsdelivery.com/compings_v2/monticello/monticello1911/monticello191100185.jpg
Hubby’s normal tipple.
GA:
“That’s grotesque even in a normal non-emergency scenario. I’ve got a living will to ensure I won’t be left vegetating OR wasting massively expensive medical resources. It’s easy to arrange and you get a card to carry like the organ donor one.”
I have “Do Not Resusitate!” tattooed between my collarbones.
erk…Resuscitate…the tattoo doesn’t have the typo…
Majella
Haha… that’s asking quite a lot of a tattooist, just the same!
There’s a spelling mistake on my dad’s headstone that my mother was too courteous (or embarrassed or something…) to point out to the guy who engraved it, once she noticed it. It’s still there 40 years later, with her own entry now underneath it. Since it’s 70 miles from here, I’m not going to worry about it either.
There’s a spelling mistake on my dad’s headstone – GA
===========
Thank you for providing me with another opportunity to segue to yet another of my personal anecdotes.
On Monday past (March 16) the ball and chain (wife) and I took a ride to a cemetery in Toms River, NJ where her parents (my in-laws) are buried under a common headstone. The occasion was my father-in-laws 99th birthday (unfortunately he passed at age 75). My mother-in-law hung on another 18 years and passed in 2014, 2 days short of her 92nd B-day. She had lost most of her marbles and moved in with us in 2006. Her name was Sonja.
When she died I got in touch with the headstone people to have them add her particulars (name, year of birth and death) next to her husband’s. We saw the completed headstone for the first time on the day the urn containing her ashes was interred.
I was appalled!! Every letter on the headstone, both his and her’s, was upper case EXCEPT one. The letter j in Sonja was lower case (had a dot over it). When I got home I immediately wrote a nasty-gram asking what “possessed” the engraver to switch to lower case for one freaking letter. I told them that I could picture a day two centuries hence that some pedant like me would spot this flaw and point it out to his wife (“Hey Sally, commeer and look at this headstone”). But the deed is done and now it must stand for all time.
My wife’s eyes rolled back in her head and she said “let it go Q, just let it go.”
It never ceases to amaze me when people make statements like this:
“Trump talks about getting more respirators like they’re something he can order on Amazon. Can he order people who know how to run them too? Not quite as easy. The debates between Don & Joe will be something to see since they’re both out of touch with reality and have no problem whatsoever distorting the facts.”
You actually appear to believe Trump does not discuss issues like this with the medical personnel he has standing right the feck behind him on the stage (including the fecking US Surgeon General) oh which he is standing to give the fecking speech.
Listen to yourself and get a grip.
FFS.
I’m sure he does get a lot of advice from the Surgeon General and maybe producing respirators is easier than I thought. But having experienced staff — nurses, respiratory therapists, internists — is far more difficult to produce on the spur of the moment. There’s a reason they’re freaked out about ICU beds b/c you can have plenty of equipment but not enough people with experience to to do the job adequately. That’s what flattening the curve is about, not overwhelming the hospitals.
You actually appear to believe Trump does not discuss issues like this with the medical personnel he has standing right the feck behind him on the stage (including the fecking US Surgeon General) oh which he is standing to give the fecking speech.
I expect SW was focused on the lies that pour from Trump’s mouth every day, than on the substance.
Presumably he is offered advice – the degree to which he concentrates, takes it in, and uses it, is another matter altogether. Lots of credible reporters have exposed the White House as a rats-nest of incompetence, chaos, and toxic turf wars, all swirling around the emperor without clothes.
Anyway – even if Trump gets good advice (“We pay $150,000 a piece sir, your donor friend Arnie Bloodwater from Shit Creek Alabama will clear about $50,000 each. Getting the machines that go “bing” is not a BFD, but there are no staff to run them.”
“Who cares? Put it in my speech – we’ll sell people on the hardware … the states can take all the flak for not having any staff.”
It was a stupid post, and was exposed for being stupid.
Follow-up is well-reasoned enough to be fair tho.
He has far to fall before he lands in the low-IQ zone.
Rearranging how we will live in the future, so well addressed in The Long Emergency, worked its way into many of my conversations with young people over the years. It was encouraging to hear how many people recognize the fragility of our systems. They have considered the ramifications living with of less of everything, and many welcome the idea of a less frenetic pace.
James Kuehl,
This is some sage advice. “They have considered the ramifications living with of less of everything, and many welcome the idea of a less frenetic pace.”
I don’t believe this reality will sink in for Millennials until their parent’s debt based life style comes back to bite them in the ass in the form of bankruptcy and homelessness. You do not own your house if you took out a line of credit against it. Many Gen-xers and baby boomers pretend they are well of when in fact they are not.
The late George Carlin had a very insightful rant entitled The Arrogance of Mankind. Worth a view on YouTube. Humans have been around only a couple hundred thousand years vs. planet Earth’s billions and billions. No contest. The good Earth will shake off the human race just like millions of other species. All in good time. Viruses are just one part of the planet’s vast system of weaponry, against which Humans don’t stand a chance. Mutations will eventually clean house for good.
Carlin, as usual, breaking it down so even drunken numbskulls get half-a-clue!
and here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cjRGee5ipM
EvelynV observed, “Obviously too soon to make a definitive call about all that [ precious metals ] but how many are inclined to rush off to buy the stuff when TP has become more precious?”
The PMs are being smashed down so the banksters can snatch up as much as possible before the rest of us figure it out – we’ve been robbed [ but we got TP ].
I like my women like I like my COVID
19 and easily spread
What?
It goes like this:
I like my women like I like my COVID
19 (blank)and easily spread
I have no idea what goes in the blank.
Nothing goes in the blank. He just wants to say open sesame. It is a delusional wish which shows an understanding of women as flawed as as Trump’s understanding of Covid 19.
Open sez me –> no sex she
Attack Sub, could I have your permission to use that line? Its good.
-brh
Certainment, mon ami
EvelynV claims, “That is such a shit-poor comparison you ought to be ashamed to admit you considered it important enough to post.”
I am neither ‘us or them’. Do you not realize that RP is criticizing Trump? Do you not realize two-party horse puckey no longer matters? They are all the same.
“Do you not realize two-party horse puckey no longer matters?” –MD
So, if Ron Paul switched parties and became a Democrat, it would make no difference to you?
It actually would in my case I would consider voting for a Democrat for the first time in thirty years.
Things have changed. Dow in free fall.
DJIA … 20,188.35
-2,997.27
-12.93%
Omega Man….
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6q_fLr7hCZE
Well, there’s an advantage to this semi, half ass quarantine we find ourselves under: Peter Bogdonavich’s 1968 classic film ”Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women’, starring Mamie Van Doren, is running on the Comet Channel.
The general plot is in the year 1998 (movie was made in 1968) a spacecraft crewed by a bunch of stalwart astronauts make a voyage to Venus, which turns out to be inhabited by a bevy of hot young prehistoric babes. You can imagine the drama that ensue. File this movie under the category “so bad its good”.
Brh
I’ve somehow managed to screw my hours around so that 2:30 is my normal rising time. (I workout in the mornings) Lots of interesting stuff on at that time of the morning to wake up to, to say the least. The Epix Channels (I think there’s three) are chock full of them. The 1976 drive in flick Pom Pom Girls was on recently and was surprisingly good for a low budget throw away flick. Sort of a Dazed and Confused prequel, albeit shot in the actual year of 1976, instead of documenting it retrospectively from 15 years in the future. No irritating Mathew McConaughey either, always a plus. Twelve Monkeys was quite appropriately on Showtime this weekend. I’m going to watch it on demand so I can watch the whole thing without interruption, something I’ve never manged to do yet.
Caught parts of this timeless classic on Epix recently too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plUXguATsTQ
12 Monkeys, interesting that Brad Pitt is in it, but just in a supporting role.
That film is apropos right now.
I already mentioned the 1951 film noir classic ‘Panic in the Streets’, with Richard Widmark.
The first ‘Night of the Living Dead’ starring Gene Barry I think, fits too.
Brh
I’ve always thought that Pitt’s best roles were as a supporting actor. If you haven’t seen him in Snatch, you definitely need to. He’s priceless!
Holy Sh@t
Mamie Van Doren, star of such fifties classics as ‘Sex Kittens go to College’, ‘Vice Raid’, and ‘The Beat Generation’ is 89 years old. Some people say she was Marilyn Monroe without the intellectual acumen. I say she was more than that.
Brh
WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump has tested negative for empathy, the White House doctor confirmed on Monday.
In an official statement, Dr. Sean Conley said that Trump submitted to the empathy test even though, in the physician’s opinion, “it was not really necessary.”
“I expected him to test negative,” Conley said. “Empathy-wise, he has been entirely asymptomatic.”
Half assed quarantine indeed, Brother BRH. In my little Rhode Island the school where the young girl who got the CV from the Utah Jazz player is shut down for two weeks. All the students and staff are supposed to self-isolate for that time frame. However family members of the students and staff have free reign to go -to-and-fro. Am I missing something here?
wwwcpa the only reason RP ran as a Republican is because an incredible number of americans did not know what a libertarian was. Dont you remember how it IS?
This morning I went to my local Wal-Mart here in central Illinois. I think I saw a people in transition; not yet hysterical but aware something very bad was happening. Food riots soon would not surprise me.
Days earlier there had been some bare shelf space here and there. Now the toilet paper, paper towels, kleenex were all gone. Milk 80% gone, mostly skim and 1% left. The only eggs left were a few cartons of small brown free range chicken eggs selling at 4 times the price of normal eggs. Cold medicines 90% gone. Bottled water all gone, some soda left. Meats and canned goods were about half gone. Noticeable empty space in the freezers. Only fresh produce mostly in good supply.
I heard people complaining about not finding baby formula or diapers anywhere in town. (My mother in 1955 washed diapers by hand. This no doubt motivated her to implement an early and strict Germanic regimen of toilet training which has left me psychologically scarred to this day. But I digress.)
Welcome to dystopia world. Come for the epidemic; stay for the financial breakdown. When the banks can no longer finance trade, and the trucks stop rolling, and no one restocks the shelves, will be disappear like Ozymandias with the sands of time, – unwiped and unmourned?
Tell us more about this regimen and these scars. Remember, the cracks are what let the light in.
All i remember is the rolled up newspaper. By four months I was potty trained and wiping my own ass. Effective but brutal.
“My mother in 1955 washed diapers by hand. This no doubt motivated her to implement an early and strict Germanic regimen of toilet training which has left me psychologically scarred to this day. But I digress”
That made me laugh, hm, thank you.
By the time my younger brother was born in 1958 (the ‘surprise’ baby that turns up unexpectedly when you’re 40) my mother had acquired a little cylindrical Baby Burco contraption for boiling nappies.
Even when my first was born in 1981 we didn’t have a washing machine – just a bizarre plastic thing (brought from France) like a small tub with a motor on it that sat in the sink or bath and whizzed your clothes round in one direction so they came out in one huge, unfathomable knot. Oh, the joys… Then you had to rinse them by hand and squeeze them out, until we acquired the little cylindrical centrifuge thingy as well.
The ‘washing machine’ was a bit like this one:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/nBV1gxzm7U0/maxresdefault.jpg
For nappies, you had to soak them first in nappy solution to kill the bugs and the discolouration. Two buckets with lids I had. My mother bought me 30 square terry nappies, which did both kids – and when my kids were teenagers she still had some that she’d asked for for cleaning cloths. Although you could have shot peas through some of them by that time.
Disposable nappies are an environmental nightmare. I did use them for holidays, though and if someone else was looking after the kids.
BTW, I recall that even in the 80s, the French were bizarrely obsessed with early toilet training as well!
Good post from JHK, but he’s finding it hard to keep a tone of “I told you so” out of his writing – and realistically it has taken a massive black-swan event to trigger the emergency (the length of which is yet to play out).
And I also fervently hope that the corporations and political class learn at least something – and don’t immediately try to go back to “normal” as soon as the dust settles … I’m sure many will try to do so since there is a lot of wealth at stake. But maybe circumstances will mean that it’s not possible to go back.
However I take strong exception to this:
The foolish, idiotic identity politics ginned up by the Left and their racially-inflamed, sexually-disturbed scribes in the Thinking Class have successfully destroyed the last shred of an American common culture that held the country together through earlier vicissitudes. So, one concludes that we’ll be left stewing in poisonous tensions, and perhaps some violent conflicts, before those matters head toward some sort of resolution.
This is ahistorical nonsense, and the coronavirus crisis should not be used to beat minorities over the head yet again. Check your privilege James, and everyone else.
And the Left didn’t start it – intolerance of others, fuelled by religious bigotry and the Tea Party all came from the Right … the “left” was forced into trying to defend the weak and vulnerable – just like unions a century prior gave power to powerless workers.
So in this time of coronavirus crisis, perhaps leave the ideological battles aside … there are much bigger issues of community and economical survival to discuss – and most of James’s post does address those sensibly.
And I agree that the Dem Debates were pretty farcical in hindsight. But to be fair, just about every conversation and every planning meeting and every investment decision of the past 60 days (or 60 years?) looks pretty ridiculous in retrospect.
There are a lot of sexually-disturbed people in America. I find them disturbing.
Which they find disturbing.
What minorities are you talking about? Identity is identity, whether it’s majority or minority.
And you’re both wrong. And it don’t matter who started it, it was bound to become entrenched once the narcissists began their drumbeat of victim politics, are you listening, ladies?
But I agree that the c-virus is the most important issue of today. Personal distancing will give everyone a chance to reflect on their own personal role in this, hopefully.
A nation is a particularity. One People with One Culture who attain unity and dominance in a given area. A Singularity! And Cult is the root of Culture needless to say – just as much as Race or Ethnicity is.The Mother and Father of Nations….
You want to undo such miracles and thus you are an agent of Entropy and Chaos. Whatever remains – if anything – after you and yours have your way, will be a very low common denominator indeed.
A nation is a particularity. One People with One Culture who attain unity and dominance in a given area. A Singularity! And Cult is the root of Culture needless to say – just as much as Race or Ethnicity is.The Mother and Father of Nations….
Seeing everything through the prism or “race” and “ethnicity” can be so limiting. If you dream of a white nativist christian nation, I’d be very careful what I wished for. I can hardly think of anything more dull, boring, and uninspiring. And being white supremacist is simply not acceptable – the equality of people is sacrosanct.
Are you like those people who buys their M&Ms in just one colour?
I thought I’d check the market. I’m sitting alone and typed in Market Watch and googled. When I got to the market indicators I said:
fuck
Dead Cat Bounce tomorrow?
My guess is yes. But that cat wants to be put to rest and end it’s suffering. If the Dow goes under 20,000, maybe Jim will finally be right: 4,000, here we come!
Charles Nenner says DOW 5000 by the end of 2021.
hmuller,
I would doubt the DOW 5000, but only because there is too much money in circulation…too much pressure.
Now this is funny: McResistance Coupster prosecutors can’t even nail Roger Stone.
Stone “lied” about conduct that was legal.
Credico never felt threatened by Stone.
He “obstructed” an “investigation” that was conceived by lies from the Government. [Trump-Russia.]
https://twitter.com/Techno_Fog/status/1227021733988687873
Given that Stone is pushing for a new trial due to an activist judge approving an open NeverTrumper as a juror, this is shaping up to be a mini Muellertime redux.
What a collection of buffoons. Declass can’t come soon enough. Hang ’em all.
Yeah, a real class act.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pptzks0x6wI
Just another case about to implode by the sad gaggle of seditious conspirators you so gleefully endorse.
Guantanamo Bay has expanded, perhaps there is room for enablers, too.
Now now how ever if Mr. Stone ever reads her comments maybe he can sue her and she will then not have a rich doctor husband salary.
What “rich doctor husband salary”? Your imagination is running away with you.
You little turd! Some time ago when discussing tax rats etc, I disclosed that our ‘household income’ annually is around $500K.
If a ‘doctor husband’ could only come up with the $300K I don’t generate, he’d be a pretty pathetic doctor or choosing to work under the bridges of San Diego, no doubt.
No casinos. No restaurants. No bars. No gyms. No sports. Gold, silver, stocks all lose value.
Things have changed. Shit’s gettin’ serious.
Paper gold, paper silver lose value. Physical not really.
Israel, where the number of confirmed cases has nearly tripled to 298 in recent days, has authorized the use of phone-snooping technology long deployed against suspected Palestinian militants to track coronavirus patients.
We are totally set up for this. Phones are personal tracking devices. If you have a phone Homeland Security knows where you are. Having seen the instruments of torture myself, Galileo Galilei style, then Israel; where confirmed cases has tripled to 298, has authorized the use of phone-snooping technology long used against suspected Palestinian militants to track coronavirus patients.
I figure they will be used here too. But leave your phone at home and they can’t follow you around. It stopped my gang stalking cold. Yet this virus is a public health issue so I have a serious moral dilemma. Leave the phone home when I don’t want to be tracked or not?
The fact is phone snooping technology can identify all the people you encounter in a day so a list of people to quarantine is very easily made. Phone surveillance could effectively manage a second wave of infection if COVID 19 testing is deployed rapidly.
Phones in groups are already networked together using snooping technology to make surveillance nets so conversations are already fully recorded. Software does the job so people don’t even have to be involved until a test comes up positive. Once there is a positive test and conversations are reviewed, people without phones are identified and everybody gets locked down.
The FBI is well practiced in these skills.
No ‘your papers please‘. It is going to be show us your phone. That will be enough, just to see it in your hand.
My goodness you are talking exactly like Alex Jones only he said this was coming twenty years ago.
You know they guy the media has been calling tin foil hat conspiracy guy and lies about and attributes all sorts of things he said that did not happen or were framed differently.
Yea that guy the crazy sounding one who seems to be right more than wrong.
Wish we could say the same for the likes of cnn, abc, cbs to name a few.
Oh, yeah…the ‘gay frogs’ guy…the guy arrested for a DUI last week?…the guy selling phony Covid-19 ‘cures’ on his website?..THAT Alex Jones?
https://time.com/5802437/alex-jones-stop-hawking-phony-coronavirus-treatments-ny-attorney-general/
If he’s so ‘right’ all the time, why don’t you buy some of his snake oil and let us know day-by-day how you’re not getting infected?
K dog
Canada has closed its borders to everyone but Americans and has requested all Canadians return home immediately into 14 day quarantine. This will have an impact on the snowbirds here in Arizona, leaving a month early.
I would not be surprised to see the illegals lined up at the border trying to get back to Mexico.
The virus got across the border first.
Canada has closed its borders to everyone but Americans and has requested all Canadians return home immediately into 14 day quarantine. This will have an impact on the snowbirds here in Arizona, leaving a month early.
Is it good policy for older snowbirds in warm sunny Arizona to trek back to cold and flu-susceptible Canada? I can’t see the policy point here.
Ist case of Covid 19 reported in USA was January 15th, Canada January 25th. Canada has about 360 cases as of March 16th.
Canadians in USA will scramble to get back home because they cannot afford to get ‘sick’ in the USA where a band aid at hospitals costs hundreds of dollars.
As of today Canadian borders are closed to all non Canadians &, non permanent residents, with the exception of flight crews, diplomats, and US citizens. Given our border of more than 8800 kilometers many were asking why we did not also close the border to USA citizens. The reason of course is tied to our very interdependent economies and need for open and orderly flow of goods. This issue will be subject to review if things change.
Only four airports will accept international flights: Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto & Montreal. Most schools from kindergarten to grade 12 are closed across the country. Some cities have declared a state of emergency to allow for immediate closure of libraries, recreational centres, etc without immediate consultation. There is no time for consultation in the present crisis. If you don’t get ahead of the crisis and flatten the curve the consequences will be dire. There are only so many hospital beds, ventilators and respiratory equipment.
Unity and cooperation are and will be extremely important going forward. All branches of government regardless of political views will be in lockstep and the population will be fully behind its government, respecting health and safety directives. It will take everything we have got to survive this crisis. I wonder if the USA will be able to unify in the same way? A number of years ago an american doctor was facing certain death at the bottom of the world in Antarctica. The US military and big Hercules aircraft had to stand aside due to impossible weather conditions of more than 115 below zero. 3 Canadians in a small, humble Twin Otter bush plane flew in under perilous conditions, rescued the doctor by attaching skis to the plane and flew back to safety. Kenn Borek Air. Never doubt the resolve of the Canadian people. More importantly, don’t underestimate this virus.
Oh….I forgot to add that if you are a Canadian citizen or permanent resident trying to board a plane for Canada from overseas and you show any symptoms of Covid -19 you will be refused boarding. Airlines have been read the riot act on this issue and they are to watch for any signs/symptoms.
Canadian government will provide financial support while those people are ‘stranded’ in whatever shit hole country those people might have found themselves in….
Not sure how that will work. The Prime Minister looked straight into the television cameras and calmly said ” It’s time to come home”. If some didn’t get that message there will be no Kenn Borek air rescue. Enough said.
“Canadians in USA will scramble to get back home because they cannot afford to get ‘sick’ in the USA where a band aid at hospitals costs hundreds of dollars.”
My husband asked me last night how much I thought a home visit from a doc cost in LA. I surmised $250. He said $3200. Is this for real? Where does that money go? Doctor + car + driver for half an hour (ok, an hour – we’ll include journey time), bit of overhead cost, plus what?
$250 I could see. Even $400 I could see. He gets pissed off with entitled time wasters over here who have no clue what anything costs and think nothing of wasting ambulance time or anything else. But $3200 is insane.
Alba,
$3200 insane?
Suggesting a doctor make a home visit is insane…at any price. Home visits may exist, but I have never heard of one in the last 40 years.
Walk into an emergency room and be billed $5000+.
Medical treatment used to be pretty cheap around here, GA. We had 2 docs in our town and they lived middle class lives right in our neighborhood.
It wasn’t until insurance entered the picture in a big way that doctor bills grew astronomically.
Brh
Doesn’t surprise me, brh.
EF, if you walk into an emergency room in Ireland, which doesn’t have an NHS, it costs 100 euros.
I’m not suggesting the NHS system of charging nothing is the best way to go. People do not appreciate free things (well my generation did, because we were brought up to understand both gratitude and the responsibility that came with a free service). However, $5000 should get you a minor daybed operation with anaesthesia.
My husband makes home visits on a regular basis, many of them to expensive private nursing homes, which are not embarrassed to reassure residents’ families that there will be medical care provided as needed, without mentioning that it will not be the nursing home, the resident or the residents’ family who will be footing the bill, but the long-suffering NHS. And the nursing home staff like to cover their back, so will request a doctor just because Granny ‘isn’t herself’ and is ‘off her legs’.
He works at the out-of-hours GP service in one of our hospitals and has ‘in nights’ and ‘out nights’. They are, however, unable to give home visits to anyone except very old/frail people, or the terminally ill, who can’t be expected to get to hospital. Others, if they have difficulty getting there (or are a particularly vocal pain in the neck) may be offered a free taxi courtesy of the NHS, this being cheaper than a visit by a doctor.
Or, of course, people who might need to be sectioned because they’re at home and a threat to their own safety or someone else’s. That will require a doctor (and driver, if out of hours), a community psychiatric nurse, the police and gawd knows who else, for three hours. Mental health patients are not involuntarily incarcerated lightly.
The police sometimes enjoy the drama – it breaks up a boring shift!
“who can’t be expected to get to hospital.”
Should have said can’t be expected to get to the out of hours service (which only happens to be located on hospital premises for convenience). If they need to go to actual hospital an ambulance will obviously pick them up and take them. Gratis.
“The police sometimes enjoy the drama – it breaks up a boring shift”
Alba,
Not to be cute, but I do not remember a boring shift in Oakland, save during the dog watch after 0400….
It may have something to do with their health care. They can only be out of Canada for a period of time. Maybe it ties into that, if the want covered for the virus, they may need to be in Canada.
Kdog?
Every national health care system I ever heard of just treats everybody. How could you not, think about it. If there were exceptions it could not be national care. If you did not treat everyone the complexity of keeping track of who is eligible and who is not would obviously be far more expensive than just giving treatment to all. Which is the whole point.
If they were in the UK they’d get free treatment – emergency legislation has been passed to that effect.
Maybe Canadians are better off where they have health insurance?
I wrote just before Bloomberg dropped out that he & Trump would be the finalists. Boy was I wrong. But I also wrote then that each of them (substitute Biden for Bloomberg) would necessarily be involved in a bidding war to use fiscal stimulus in the form of giving away money to the public to address the crisis. Looks like I was wrong again. The ones ahead on this issue are various congress-critters such as Romney & Schumer as this piece at ZeroHedge explains. Meanwhile, Cheeto-dust proposes a lame payroll-tax cut. Now just how is that going to help? It’s great for those who have jobs &/or don’t get fired or furloughed but does nothing for everyone else. Trump has been listening to the wrong advisors for a long time. He will pay the price for abandoning his base.
Bloomberg’s actually in the cat bird’s seat behind the curtain providing the funding. The power players usually prefer not to take point as a politician. Too much notoriety and too much blame to be had when things inevitably don’t go exactly to plan (and often when they do). In any case, fiscal stimulus of some sort or another is literally the only play left in the playbook at this point, so it doesn’t really matter which knucklehead is in charge. Just as in 2008, the Fed has the pols over the barrel. Pick your poison: one will prolong the agony and you might live to fight another day, or we can end things right here and now and you most definitely won’t. One thing’s for sure, temporary Medicare for All like Biden proposed the other night won’t fly for long, if they ever fly at all. That kind of stuff will be labeled as socialist in a heartbeat and no politician of either stripe can bear that label for long.
Fiscal stimulus may be the only thing that will mitigate a severe economic downturn (depression?) at this point. But what will work? I have this sense that even if everyone gets a check in the mail, it will do little good. The quandary is that tons of people might just choose to save the money instead of spending it given the general uncertainty. And where can you spend it anyway when so many businesses are closed?
If Biden proposed temporary Medicare for All, then that’s an effective approach. I think at this point, most people are going to welcome “temporary” Medicare for All & even if anyone raises the S word, they will be ignored.
There are a few who are proposing that the curve shouldn’t be flattened, that we should just live life unchanged. The thing will then burn itself out quicker & yes, a few million more lives will be lost, but the economy will continue chugging along so that the general misery will be shortened thus things will get back to normal faster. There is some justification to this point of view.
But if any politician proposed this, they wouldn’t stand a chance in November. In fact, political leaders are as prone to herd behavior as the rest of us, maybe more so, thus this approach cannot be implemented anyway because even if a few did adopt it, it cannot be adopted worldwide.
“Paper gold, paper silver lose value. Physical not really.” –Tate
If you buy physical gold, that usually means buying a safe or paying for a bank safe deposit box. It’s a perfectly fine way to own gold, if that’s your goal, but it isn’t the best way to invest in gold.
Who said anything about “investing” in gold, LOL. If you think you can profitably “invest” in gold, you don’t understand the subject.
Owning gold is just an insurance policy, a hedge against TEOTWAKI. You don’t need to own much, no more than 5% max of your net worth. Unless you really believe that TEOTWAKI^2 is just around the corner. I don’t.
So, where do you store your physical gold. Once you have it, you have to protect it from being stolen.
Well, I don’t own any, but if I did I wouldn’t tell anybody. That’s probably the best way to protect it from being stolen.
Gold that you do not own is not a good insurance policy for you.
True, LOL, but it might be for somebody else. Just speaking in generalities. I used to own some but I don’t believe its suitability for me & mine anymore. My only point is that gold keeps its value over the very long run but for the short to medium run there’s a lot of volatility in its price, not as much as silver but too much for investment purposes. So it’s not a good investment; it’s only a hedge for the extreme outcome, & not even a certain one at that. One advantage, it is portable, there’s that.
And then there’s the problem with storage as you mentioned. People have painted it green & used it for a paperweight. Good a solution as any. Or you could put it in a safe deposit box. Just don’t let on to the bank, LOL, it’s not as “safe” as you think.
“Paper gold,” there are various forms some of which have very little to do with owning gold itself, but the only one that makes sense to me is Perth Mint certificates.
So, where do you store your physical gold. – wpa
==========
In the bird feeder behind the house, like Tony Soprano.
Tony Soprano had a shitload of krugerrands & a “Texas gun collection” stored in a secret compartment behind a panel in his den.
Gold is for security period. If you want return, it doesn’t work.
Absolutely correct. The dollar value of gold is just an arbitrary designation, in effect. Holding physical gold is a store of value which historically has been remarkably steady and independent of any particular currency. As anyone who knows anything about gold, knows that for the past 400 years or so one ounce can buy a reasonable quality suit. The true worth is what you can buy with it. The only caveats are if governments ban ownership, or if most of the population chooses something else as a store of value, like crypto currencies ( which IMO won’t work).
Rather have high velocity lead.
With that I can barter for everything else.
LEVLR = lead expended vs. lead returned
Well, we took a ride this afternoon, headed west on US4 to see what Doomsday might look like, traffic was lighter than usual, some restaurants and other establishments closed, gas at $2.24 per gallon, no lines, stopped in at Shoprite (supermarket chain headquartered in NJ) seemed like they were well stocked except for milk, paper towels and TP, good supply of beer and cold cuts, crowd not too bad – no panic, then drove east and stopped in at Walmart to check out the situation there.This is in one of those high end towns that people think of when they picture Connecticut. I can honestly say the situation was good. Parking lot about half full. Bought milk, eggs, paper towels, nobody brawling in the aisles, a cool vibe all around. The only thing they didn’t have was Mr. Clean.
So far the apocalypse hasn’t been too bad. Oh, and I even picked up my 2020 fishing license at Walmart, giving the day a patina of normalcy.
Brh
Went to my local Whole Foods yesterday with a long list, hoping to get maybe 2 or 3 items. Imagine my surprise when I walked out with everything on my list. There was no sanitizers of any kind, really no eggs and empty spaces for various other stuff, but basically the store looked reasonably stocked.
My wife told me when she was in the ladies room, she saw a young woman in her early 20’s coming out of a stall, going over to wash and just wet the tips of her fingers before walking out. Picture her going through the fresh fruit and veggie bins.
Maybe New England will come thru this plague in relatively good shape, Bill. We’ve had tough time here before — blizzards, that Worcester tornado and floods in the 50s, hurricanes — and things eventually returned to normal.
Take care of yourself, my friend.
Brh
It will tough on some people with casinos closed.
Ha, ha. Not me. I may be addicted, but it’s not a strong addiction. Staying away is like a slight itch that I can ignore by concentrating on something else.
To some the ditch of an itch will be no easy thing.
“really no eggs …”
Bill,
I…know a guy that bought 50 pounds of dehydrated eggs a year or so ago….
Well, if this virus thing dies out soon, the yoke will be on him (I know – groan).
“So far the apocalypse hasn’t been too bad.” –brh
This is not the apocalypse, just the thing that makes sure Trump is not re-elected. Follow the money leaving accounts. Recession to follow. President Biden a shoo-in. Even Bernie will campaign for Biden.
Tomorrow: No dead cat bounce. Asian markets are all down.
Let’s see what the futures markets do before we jump to conclusions, although you may be correct.
You are more right than s/he…DJIA has bounced up.
Nothing like an additional several hundred $billion injection to help out.
Tomorrow: No dead cat bounce. Asian markets are all down. – wpa
============
Actually the DOW futures are showing a pulse……… up 943 pts as of 12:30 am on 3/17/20
So what, Little Jane? Then we’ll have Biden. Then what? Nirvana? Your life will be complete, all your dreams fulfilled? Some people here appear to want the President to make everything better, to swoop in and take care of them personally. Take care of yourself. It’s not Trumps responsibility to take care of you.
Brh
The coronavirus had infected 128,392 people globally and killed 4,728 as of Friday morning, according to data from Johns Hopkins.
4728 divided by 128,392 gives a mortality rate of 3.7%
3.7% is 37 times more deadly than the mortality rate of the common flu.
97 (present death rate ) divided by 5850 s 1.65% This is from the USA as of 5:00 PM 3/17/2020
It must be MAGA time now.
Who would ever have imagined fatso would get interest rates into such a favorable level.
He brought the FED to heel so quickly…there’s never been a man like him.
Assuming your calculations are correct – but I think need some adjusting – 200 million dead is a tragedy of immense proportions for those of us still here. Looking at the universe as a whole, at least 90 billion light years in diameter with probably quadrillions of life forms, 200 million individual deaths is a minuscule effect, I’ll grant you that.
It might make commute times shorter. But how would survivors notice?
“Looking at the universe as a whole, at least 90 billion light years in diameter ”
Ummm.. correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought the visible universe has been ‘measured’ at 13 billion light-years…?
Daily Mail
A school has been accused of secretly allowing a 13-year-old girl to attend ‘radicalising’ mentoring sessions that convinced her that she was transgender.
Ashleigh and Ged Barnett allege that until the one-to-one sessions began last September, their daughter appeared comfortable in her body and showed little interest in transgender issues.
But they say she had changed completely by November, sporting a short haircut and talking about feeling that she was really a boy.
They were confused by the transformation until they met her headteacher to discuss another matter and learned that their daughter had been having weekly sessions with the head of the school’s LGBT group.
Last night, Mrs Barnett, 50, accused Hoe Valley School in Woking, Surrey, of allowing the teenager to be ‘brainwashed’. The school denies the claim.
‘Our daughter was egged on to feel that she’s a boy in a girl’s body,’ Mrs Barnett said.
‘The teaching assistant also pointed her in the direction of a YouTube website of a trans activist, which featured a video where they showed off their mastectomy scars and told how well the operation had gone.’
The couple said they were furious when they found school staff had let the teenager attend the sessions ‘behind our backs’.
Mrs Barnett said: ‘The school didn’t think it was fit to tell us. We are her parents, but responsibility to care for our child has been taken away. The attitude is that it’s the child’s choice and it’s got nothing to do with us.
‘Children at 13 or 14, especially girls, are sometimes not happy in their own bodies – that’s what puberty does to you. They are very vulnerable. It only takes one person with an agenda to plant a little seed that they are “in the wrong body”.’
Mrs Barnett also claimed that the teaching assistant encouraged their daughter to change in a boy’s cubicle and that staff began using a male name for her.
She alleges the teaching assistant had no formal counselling qualifications and only received training from local charity Eikon that provides ‘LGBT+ awareness sessions’ for schools.
In recent email correspondence with the couple, headteacher Jane Davies said she believed their daughter should be left to use the changing facilities she preferred.
‘We will continue to provide a safe environment for [your child], but it is not our place to alert you to how she feels,’ she wrote.
‘It is important that you understand that she is old enough to make her own decisions.’
JS: Alba says that she is “not into trannies”(!). Does she knows how that sounds to our ears. In any case, her Government is. Is she willing to stand against Big Sister Or Brother on this issue?
The moral of the story:
Protect your children from the ghouls and grabblers, and teach them to protect themselves.
Good advice, Nighowl.
Problem is, in England (and Sweden) it is virtually illegal for white woman to protect themselves from assault by muzzys and Africans.
The dreaded charge of Racism is enough to prevent these women and girls from coming forward.
Long Live the Empire!
Brh
Janos, you with the young girls again!?
You have a thing don’t you?
Any woman who loves a man is a child in your eyes, right? You were born a hate filled hag.
Sixteen is the age of consent in most parts of the world. And that is simply monstrous to you as a monster.
“You have a thing don’t you?”
Ev,
Most men have … “a thing”, as you describe it. Some are better able to control their impulses, some not.
what do you expect, in Hoe Valley ?
“Does she knows how that sounds to our ears.”
It sounds exactly the same to my ears. Stop being a berk.
My grandson’s being brought up at a sane school. The English can deal with their own Big Sisters or Big Brothers without my help.
The Tavistock folks are being sued, from what I heard, by some young woman who reckons she was given treatment when she was too young to realise what she was doing.
GOOD.
The C-virus is getting close to my very man-cave. The first confirmed case in my town (pop. 14,164) was announced Monday afternoon and Rutgers Univ in New Brunswick, NJ likewise announced a biomedical engineering prof has contracted the disease. I can look out the window of my cave and see Rutgers on the other side of the Raritan River.
I have been wiping down hard surfaces in our kitchen with Clorox wipes for the past few days……… and so far so good.
Just about everything is shut down, traffic very light and an unusual quiet has settled over the land.
Q – Chill out.
J. F. C. Q, Covid has been closer to me than my local K.F.C. for weeks now. There have to be thousands of exposed people within ten miles of me. The nursing home where most of the US deaths have come from is exactly (I’ll Measure) 12 miles away.
I too am old enough to worry, but the fact is we could catch it and hardly be bothered. We might not even know we had it. Or it could do us in and put us six feet under. (YMMV) your mileage may vary. The age thing matters if you have a bad case because then obviously you might not make it through to the other side. But you could be an old fart who is just another Typhoid Mary. Much ado about nothing.
We don’t know what the fates have in store for us but in time we have about a 60% chance of finding out. When the virus has produced enough infections resistance will present its spread. You have a 40% chance of not even getting it at all. Take reasonable precautions but stop with wiping everything down.
The Chinese took action that prevented new cases. They also did stupid shit like disinfecting streets. Reasonable precautions will be enough to wipe this scourge out if everyone cooperates.
Jesus Fucking Christ & Kentucky Fried Chicken if you were wondering.
When the virus has produced enough infections resistance will prevent its spread.
I’m chill, I’m chill!
The nursing home where most of the US deaths have come from is exactly (I’ll Measure) 12 miles away. – K-Dog
==============
The distance to the 2 cases I wrote about is no more than one mile from me as the crow flies.
Sorry…….I just looked up momentarily at my TV screen and Trump was answering someone’s question and I heard him say ‘in-DUS-try’ a couple of times and it distracted my thought process.
And speaking of words and how they are spoken, a lot of you have mentioned ‘millennials recently and I was thinking back to a couple of days ago when a reporter was interviewing a college age girl and as I listened to her response I couldn’t focus on ANY of the content because EVERY sentence was delivered in ‘up talk’. This, as you are aware, I’m sure, is where an upward inflection of the voice at the end of a sentence turns that sentence into a question. I want to tear out my hair and rend my garments and gnash my teeth. And the millennials are winning. Their up talk has spread into the adult world.
Like, I feel your pain.
A good practice to keep your kitchen sanitized corona virus or no corona virus.
Don’t pay attention to a mutt, I’ve seen them eat poopy baby diapers.
Q: “I have been wiping down hard surfaces in our kitchen with Clorox wipes for the past few days”
You can’t just wipe it down and call it good. You have to keep the surface visibly wet for 4 minutes according to the directions. 4 minutes is a long time when your standing there looking at it. Kinda like the proverbial boiled egg.
Uh-oh, I meant “you’re”. I don’t want to cause a commotion here.
You have to keep the surface visibly wet for 4 minutes according to the directions – stelmo
============
Since alcohol is the important ingredient in the wipe the surface dries almost instantaneously. I’m doing the frickin’ best that I can. But thanks for the tip.
I boil sponges and pour boiling water in the sink.
Last year I had a staph-strep infection. It was horrible.
I read staph is in the sink, on sponges, etc. Not sure what to do. No rubbing alcohol in stores.
Bleach
Q,
The Raconteur, a blogger who is an ER nurse, opines that the CV will not fly into your window at night and ass rape you. I would expect no need to wipe down your personal environment. If it is there, you already got it.
And…the link;
http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/
If you are looking for a site of unadulterated CV porn, this is it.
whats CV? O corona. I get it.
I would expect no need to wipe down your personal environment. – ely
============
Here is the logic for the wipe down, ely: My wife buys food in a supermarket nearly every day. She pulls up the driveway, calls me on the phone and asks me to come help haul the stuff in. The tote bags go straight to a granite top island in the kitchen. Everything gets unloaded onto the counter/counters. There’s no telling what all these food packages have been subjected to in the supermarket contamination-wise. I assume the worst and now our counters are covered in spiky tennis ball sized viruses (or so I picture it)………… so I wipe.
You are wise to do it. We sanitize the shopping cart before we enter the store, then the shopping bags – if we use our own plastic ones – then the packages of food, then the kitchen counters where we placed the bags before we cleaned them, then we wash our hands. A lot of work, but necessary if we want to maximize our chances of avoiding the virus. The scary part: still no guarantees.
For about twenty years I have been on the mailing list for the City of San Ramon. I don’t know how I got on the list but I have been on it so long getting unsubscribed would be a sin.
Today it sent something interesting, a link:
https://cchealth.org/coronavirus/pdf/HO-COVID19-SIP-0316-2020.pdf
I still think they are brain dead morons but the order makes me sympathetic to American libertarians. No matter how old I get I’ll never be comfortable with idiots telling me what to do. I don’t care if they mean well.
”
Of the 43 coronavirus deaths in King County, 29 were patients at Life Care Center of Kirkland. The nursing home held 120 patients, and nearly a quarter of them died.
“
And Italy now has over 2000 deaths. Yeah, you know all about it.
“When the virus has produced enough infections resistance will prevent its spread”
How many is enough?
Nearly all being senior citizens.
No, the 60% has to be spread out over society. Any group with less than 60% would be able to sustain an infection. The math is similar to math that describes a nuclear reaction. Preventative measures are like moving fuel rods out of reactive core of a nuclear reactor allowing nuclear reactions to damp out. I realize this is a simplistic analogy.
60%
So far, here in Arizona we don’t have too many cases. Same in a number of other states. It makes no sense not to have an interstate travel ban, except for food and medicines and the like, if you want to stop the spread.
Right, let people from NY, CA, WA and elsewhere travel freely into these states so we can have a control the spread failure as pathetic as the testing failure. Sure, we want to balance control against negative economic impacts. But this thing keeps growing, and soon the economic impact will be that much worse.
Trump gave himself a 10 for his efforts. I’d give him a 20. 10 for faking it, 10 for winging it.
And a final zero for not doing jack shit.
None of our politicians would saved America: Greed, restlessness, and normalcy bias would have triumphed. But not all of them would have boasted insufferably of what a great job they were doing and/or how it was really nothing anyway. Utterly ridiculous from the get go. Apparently Tucker Carlson drove over to see him and told him that it was a dire threat that had to be handled.
And any politician who by some chance did “get it” would have been utterly handicapped by the ethos I describe above. Only the Man on the White Horse could have seen this coming, had the power to stop it, and have been willing to use that power to do so despite the cries of the foolish and weak.
https://www.kiro7.com/news/local/stranger-visits-coronavirus-patient-epicenter-outbreak/UTKPJRWQONAEXGICQSDZX2MUGE/#continue_below
Too many stupid bitches in this story than I care to count. I hope the innocent patient appreciated the attention. If her visitor was ranting about Jayzus while she was doing the hugging though, the woman could not have understood her. How do I know?
Her dumb-assed bitch daughters is how. Good they were there but yeah I’d be embarrassed too if a total stranger showed up and hugged my mother when I was afraid to do it. But that in not the point. My point is that the daughters did not understand religious devotion. I grew up with the sanctioned madness so I understand it well, and I know they don’t. The visitor was doing what is called:
Witnessing for the lord.
The daughters did not understand or appreciate and the news reporter did not understand religious devotion any better. I understand witnessing as a selfish narcissistic self-serving thing to do that the lord of love would despise but that is another story. The fact that this story is full of dumb-assed bitches is the point, at least 4.
Tim Killian is very competent and is doing a great job. I have seen him interviewed a few times.
wow you mad bro? 🙂
ha
Mark 16:15 King James Version (KJV)
And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
“I understand witnessing as a selfish narcissistic self-serving thing to do that the lord of love would despise but that is another story” Do want to revise that?
No
” and preach the gospel to every creature”
ASub,
I talk to my wiener dog all the time…he don’t listen.
I’m now pretty convinced in my mind that the Corona virus plague is a Chinese Communist government military operation against the West (with the probable knowledge of the Soviets). As were the other plagues originating there.
I think the appropriate response would be a nuclear strike on Beijing and a complete embargo of all things Chinese.
No more trade or contact of any kind with China!
Yes, it does seem strange and suspicious doesn’t it. They thrive in hives, and within a hive mind. They have made it clear that they seek the destruction of all but themselves. It is they who plan to cross the Euphrates River too don’t forget with their 200 million man army. A torrential rain of neutron bombs would appropriately treat the infestation. They should be held accountable for their actions since we only have two choices. A) This was a leak from one of their laboratories, or B) the virus originated from them eating sinful abominations. And also yes, absolutely! No more trade or contact with any of the slant eyes.
Some psycho’s in the Chinese government may figure out that Chinese may have an advantage over other countries in being able to lock down their population and then smell weakness in the US?
BEIJING—When the coronavirus pandemic started worsening in the U.K. last week, Jennie Lan knew where she would feel safest: China.
The graduate student at University College London was worried Brits weren’t taking precautions, such as wearing face masks. “People here didn’t attach a great significance to the coronavirus,” Ms. Lan said. On Tuesday, she will fly to China to stay with her parents, who live in a district with no reported infections. “The local government controlled it well,” she said.
Nothing happens by accident
Nothing is coincidence
Everything is planned
“Nothing happens by accident
Nothing is coincidence
Everything is planned”
Mofo,
C’mon man….
Don’t be naive, Ely. You only need to look at the Chinese stock markets to find your answer. They were up throughout the crisis, as was the Chinese currency. They were well prepared for this. This is a Chinese military/economic attack on the West and it was planned as such.
“No more trade or contact with any of the slant eyes.
”
Their women are after your men SSL.
Or it could be exactly the reverse. We’ll probably never know for sure.
Reverse, your ass. Who’s Xi, commie? I already know, perfectly!
More likely.
Dr.Osterholm on Joe Rogan..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E3URhJx0NSw
real great run down/talk on covid19
..as the good Doc sez, its gonna be like a virus winter, not a virus blizzard..
if you live somewhere where it doesn’t snow.. then sorry for the analogy..he’s a fellow Minnesotan.. means that its gonna be 6 plus months and contain many virus ‘blizzards’ in it..
When scientist the world over can look at the DNA and see that it has wild origin how responsible is promoting your nonsense.
So your convinced it is totally a natural virus? So how did it transmit to humans?
Why would it being natural mean it could not transmit to humans? Viruses mutate.
Listen to Professor Osterholm. He explains not only why they know it is natural but why scientists would currently be completely incapable of manufacturing such a virus in a lab.
Incidentally, you will also learn about widespread BSE in American deer. Which (although not caused by a virus) may also cross the species barrier at some point.
Scrapey, similar to BSE and caused by a prion found in sheep, has been known for centuries, but does NOT cross the species barrier. There are things we don’t know. But that viruses can mutate to cross a species barrier, then mutate again to transfer directly among their new hosts is something we know.
‘Scrapie’, I think, sorry.
SSL, you said early on in this crisis that you were reading copiously about it. How come you haven’t listened to Prof. Osterholm yet?
He’s a proper source of information.
What about Event 201: An Elite run thru of a Corona Pandemic six weeks before the actual outbreak? Coincidence?
https://www.factcheck.org/2020/01/new-coronavirus-wasnt-predicted-in-simulation/
akmofo – You’re really starting to lose your grip.
Scene from the movie “Island of Dr. Moreau” starring Marlon Brando and Val Kilmer.
Montgomery to Edward Douglas: “There’s a lot of unstable phenomena out there.”
There are numerous very disturbing social pathologies out in American society than could make for a rather toxic brew in the context of the ongoing apparently intentional or inadvertent biowarfare. Such as:
Pervasive fraud and lying in the mass media, economy, and the shit show political system.
A desperate workforce with no health insurance and three quarters with no savings living paycheck to paycheck.
A population with severe sexual and mental psychoses.
A fraudulent, rigged financial system.
Lots of guns.
A younger generation than has a hostile pathological view towards the Baby Boomers, some of whom may actually welcome the virus as a “Boomer Remover”.
An population that believes itself victimized by past historical grievances.
An ignorant population with no sense of history.
Family and social breakdown.
Pervasive pathological dishonesty.
Runaway technology with vast authoritarian potential.
It could go sideways into an authoritarian system quickly.
LOL! But other than those few exceptions, everything’s just peachy, right?
[Shakes head] What a country!
Alas, ellipsis, all is not well here in the Land of Oz. The ultra-leveraged multi-millionaire to billionaire class is suffering financially because of CV-19. The full powers of the Fed and the financial system must be brought to bear to “save” them. Like MLK said, socialism for the rich, and rugged individualism for the rest of us.
Be grateful for your rugged individualism, because communism for the rich will only bury them deeper in their grave.
I love that movie! It really really creeped me out. Though for a moment in time I did wonder what it would be like to be half human/half cat like Fairuza Balk :-). Though I would really want Dr. Douglas to shoot me up with that serum to prevent a full regression, because shedding fur? Yuck.
You know, with that big laundry list of problems I would tend to think maybe you are trying to convince me that authoritarianism would be a good thing. At least in the short time? Clean up all of our problems and get ourselves back together again and then we can sort of ease up?
Used to be the purpose of the government was to protect the people of the US from foreign interference and regulate state to state interaction.
Now the purpose of the government seems to protect itself from the people.
The people in government know that they are riding the tiger and dare not get off (except through individuals comfortably retiring).
When this overly complex house of cards starts to fall there is a lot that will not survive. Expect a Napoleon or Caesar to come along when the people finally realize that he is their only chance at salvaging something from the wreckage. There is a lot of ruin in a nation, though, and we are still probably a decade or three from the final denouement.
Pucker,
My worldview is negative, in that I view a significant minority of the US as…”not socially responsible”. I observed this at a relatively young age, and my view has not been challenged. The upcoming weeks will test the theory. I am prepared to change my view if there is not significant turmoil in the urban populations.
Elrond take note.
Well, for starters, the ‘Airline Industry’ lining up for $25 billion in emergency grants, and an additional $25 billion in interest free loans “to make them whole.”
If you managed to struggle thru the 2 codgers Sunday night there arguing about energy policy in the US, you would be convinced they are both gonna shut down jet fuel production..
unless you can make planes fly with swine fat or… or firewood, like the krauts did during WWII
Only one type of plane has flown around the world without a single stop for refueling: solar powered.
And without a single passenger.
All ‘fossil fuels’ eventually have to go, the sooner the better! The only thing holding it up is Exxon and Trump have conspired to put the kabosh on windmills and solar farms. After Trump and Exxon are gotten rid of sky is the limit as far as renewables are concerned.
(In january we had a period of no sun or wind for about 2 solid weeks, a freezing mist laying over area like a wet wool blanket)
Sure you’re freezing to death in the dark in Maine — the windmills ain’t spinning, the sun ain’t shining — but think about sea level rise! Meanwhile, top climate dickheads like John Kerry’s oceanfront mansion is lit up like a Christmas tree and warm as toast. You think his place is hooked up to any windmills, ha! That’s for suckers. He himself has his own private generators with plenty of diesel fuel to keep them running far into the future.
-Brh
Our sun, as all the stars in the universe, is powered by electricity. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be able to tap these cosmic electric currents to power our world. Tesla saw this in his visions and understood it perfectly, but the Vatican gov mafia via the FBI disposed of him and his work.
Now you’re talking. How much power in the Northern and Southern lights? Get a hold of that and we will be as gods under God.
“Our sun, as all the stars in the universe, is powered by electricity
Mofo,
What an odd thing to suggest…unless you speak in metaphor. If literal, defend your thesis.
If literal, defend your thesis.
==
Very literal Ely,
Google/YouTube these keywords:
Wallace Thornhill
Donald Scott
Electric Sun
Electric Universe
Thunderbolt Project
As you do that, here’s something extra for you:
https://youtu.be/D3bmRNKYxSA
Only the best to keep you company!
Eli, listen to Akmo. He’s usually wrong but here he is right. Think of Zeus with his thunderbolts. Think he has an energy problem?
You are stuck between the Semitic and the Pagan European Worlds. Not good. It’s causing you cognitive dissonance.
But how do we get that cosmic energy down to earth level, then channeled into our houses to run vacuum cleaners and blenders to mix iced wild turkey based delicious drinks?
Therein lies the rub my friend, Akfomo.
Brh
True, buddy, it’s a serious rub. Think of the Grand Canyon as a small scar of vaporized matter from Jupiter’s thunderbolt. It’s an awesome prospect. Imagine directing it at the Chinese for their malicious perfidy. And there’s your motivation that will power unlimited households.
Mofo, et al;
I will do a bit of research.
Mofo/Janos,
Well…;
The electric universe concept does not meet the National Academy of Sciences’ definition of a “theory,” which is “a comprehensive explanation of some aspect of nature that is supported by a vast body of evidence” and “can be used to make predictions about natural events or phenomena that have not yet been observed.”
In physics, theories need math. That’s how you predict, gather evidence, verify, disprove, and support. But EU theory isn’t big on math. In fact, “Mathematics is not physics,” Thornhill said. While that equation aversion makes the theory pretty much a nonstarter for “mainstream” astronomers, it is the exact thing that appeals to many adherents.
Of course I cannot deny the thesis, but I remain skeptical.
Zeus? Zeus can kiss my big black ass….
You can’t argue with cosmic energy E. At this very moment earth is hauling ass around the sun at 67,000 mph, and spinning at 1080 mph. There has to be some way to harness that energy … maybe those gentlemen Akfomo mentioned have the answer.
brh
I remain skeptical.
==
Ely, these things take weeks months and years to look at and learn. You have done none of that. Instead, you went to the gov mafia priesthood and aped its nonsense. You remain skeptical because you remain ignorant.
It’s the same nonsense with Mrs Green. She hasn’t read Immanuel Velikovsky, so she hasn’t a clue as to how ignorant she is. Instead, she prides herself in her masterful knowledge of conventional main stream propaganda. She can’t understand that I also know everything that she knows and that propaganda works EMOTIONALLY. That is precisely why she will never read Immanuel Velikovsky.
The statistics are stark simple: 98% of people are sheep. They do not have the emotional and psychological makeup to resist and truly explore outside the box.
Until you truly understand that gov mafia priesthood lies to you ALWAYS, you will remain bound in their worldview and lies. You need to experience an emotional break with them before you can truly embark on the intellectual path away from them.
For me that occurred when I’ve experienced their malicious lies regards Israel. I knew their staged lies for what they are. I knew they were not innocent mistakes. That gave me the emotional opportunity to look further. The more I looked the more I understood how completely bankrupt and false the whole system is, the whole goddamn matrix is.
“She can’t understand that I also know everything that she knows and that propaganda works EMOTIONALLY. ”
Yeah… And last time we had a conversation you were having difficulty with the notion of why the sea is salty and lakes with rivers draining them aren’t.
Get back to me when you can cope with that.
You are a liar. A shameless liar on par with Janos. You completely shattered my image of you and all respect for you. Because there’s one thing a really can’t stand and that’s liars. You said you can and will provide a scientific account for the salt in the seas and oceans, the origins of this salt and calculations thereof. You did no such thing. Instead, you linked to a pathetic layman discussion by pathetic propaganda apes that had ZERO scientific and mathematical rigor to back any of the assertions made.
Talk whatever silly, insulting drivel you wish, Mr Mofo.
I don’t recall promising you anything. You are perfectly capable of doing your own entirely simple research. I’m not on a retainer to give you lessons in foundation-level physical geography.
The point in question would be understandable to a 10-year-old.
And I have no need whatsoever of respect from someone who talks like you.
Why don’t you widen your range, Mr Mofo?
Why don’t you ask the readership how many of them are willing to own up to NOT KNOWING why the sea is salty while rivers and drained lakes aren’t?
Your dishonesty is revolting. You’d rather lie and misdirect to “save face” than admit the obvious, that you were and are clueless. You value your pride and ego over truth and inquisitiveness and really over everything, and for that you lie shamelessly. My response to this kind of shallow and dishonourable person is complete contempt. I may be young, but I’m light years older than you. There’s no discussion with bankrupt puddles like you, only complete derision.
Contempt from you is a compliment, Mr Mofo.
If I had your respect, I’d be ashamed.
Now go and ask a ten-year-old about salinity in seas, lakes and rivers. And try not to insult them when they tell you the FACTS.
Now go and ask a ten-year-old
==
I did. Thanks for playing.
”We don’t know what the fates have in store for us but in time we have about a 60% chance of finding out.“
”In time” (in the long run) we absolutely know with 100% certainty what our fate is.
Except for billionaires who are pursuing the fountain of youth with million dollar budgets.
They won’t live forever either though, and all the all those billions won’t help them on the other side.
Anybody else have the feeling these daily white house briefings are about the DOW, not public health. It’s been eight weeks and Trump’s Obama-like claim that anyone who wants a diagnostic test can get a diagnostic test is still not true.
Have your cats been tested? All 16 of them?
that’s a week of meals at the Chinese wet bar
🙂
Trump just said, AGAIN, “within a short period of time we WILL HAVE a tremendous testing capacity” … “in the weeks ahead”
Always just around the corner. In the future.
“Our economy will come back very rapidly, very quickly, very quickly”
He thinks we are idiots.
I doubt that but we all know that you are.
Grow up what President is going to say this is a disaster everything is fawked and everyone is pissed?
Jesus in the middle of a global emergency you are being a complete unmitigated wrench.
wretch?
no meant wrench meaning a tool probably a southern California surfer thing.
Calling someone a wrench is like douchebag or use full idiot.
If a miracle happens and this sucker shows signs of abating soon, the economy will pop right back. Everything the Trump boys are saying right now is based on this premise.
The longer it goes, the more of the economy will go into stasis and the longer reconstruction will take.
Think about how fragile this US economy has been allowed to get. The number one issue ten weeks into the mess is still getting masks, and test kits. This is stupid beyond belief and is the fault of US trade policies over the last thirty years.
Ross Perot was right after all.
We let China make them for us I presume. They will use our failure to promote more globalism – the very cause of the whole thing, both disease and lack of medical materials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HA4BdsuG88g&t=214s
we WILL HAVE a tremendous testing capacity”
will come back very rapidly, very quickly, very quickly” – wpa
============
I would like to see a study done on how frequently Trump uses certain words. I would bet ‘tremendous’ comes in number one.
One of Trump’s quirks of rhetoric that I find very annoying is the repetition of a phrase at the end of a sentence. He uses it as an intensifier. But does he ever listen to himself and say “gee, that sounds pretty ridiculous, maybe I should try to break that habit”? No, I don’t think he EVER second guesses himself about any personal foible.
I haven’t seen a word count recently but during his 2016 outpourings he was found to have a vocabulary of fewer than 60 words, including conjunctions, definite & indefinite articles.
Unsurprisingly, the most often used were personal pronouns.
Q- that would require self-awareness and a sense (even very mild) of foolishness. Fat chance.
Who is to blame for the spread of the virus?
Trump? downplayed the advent of the virus at the beginning. Signed up with the folks that said it was just another flu. He did however stop Chinese and European immigration for the time being, much to the chagrin of the Libs. These two moves may limit the upward spike of occurrences. BTW, the Dem governors sound much like Trump trying to get the social distancing message out.
The government? Once the onset was understood, the CDC and NIH took over the running of the virus campaign and Trump moved to the background. The regulations within CDC limited the testing response at first. It took the pandemic and a declaration of national emergency to free up the private sector to finally start testing in needed quantities. Unfortunately, this has led to a reactive instead of proactive approach which right now, unfortunately is a characteristic of our government.
The health care community? Nobody better criticize these folks in my presence. Tireless, overworked, at high risk, these are our angels that will bail us out of this mess.
China? Read the above, then remember that China saw this monster first. Our government criticizing China for doing the same reactive thing it did itself is downright stupid. Yes, they tried to cover up the onset, maybe? Or maybe did not understand the scope of the problem. Or ran into reluctance from the people to isolate. The center of China was the perfect “Petri dish” for the infection to dig in. We, the world, needs to realize that national politics are senseless here, the virus just laughs at our political BS. This definitely includes Trump!
The real culprit? The people of these lands that have become clusters for this disease. Right now, I keep seeing articles showing how the people are thumbing their noses at the governmental agencies trying to get them to self-isolate or at least keep six feet from others and wash their hands. Pictures of crowded Miami Beach, pictures of St. Patrick’s in New Orleans, pictures of bars crowded, pictures of airports jam packed. Breeding grounds for viral production. Young people are indestructible in their own minds, a real recipe for destruction. What happens when the L strain starts clobbering them.
Whatever the cause, the Stupidification of the American public is really apparent right now. The government had put together a simple plan to super isolate everyone for 15 days to slow the advance of the disease. This is exactly what the Chinese and South Koreans did and it worked.
I doubt if the voluntary approach will work, the government is right now shutting down bars and restaurants as people just kept congregating. More closures coming. Italy has closed everything but groceries and pharmacies, everything. The US is close behind if we do not voluntarily shut this sucker down.
Watched Andrew Cuomo’s presser this AM. The man is getting his arms around the situation in New York. Same with Newsom in California. Who do they sound like? Trump’s team. Surprise! Maybe the guys in the trenches will just tell the political extremists to take a hike. And the media? Criminal! All points of the compass. They are sensationalizing everything and the public, just like every time, just absorbs the BS that is being broadcast.
Our number one priority? Stop the monster, stay home, wash up, be clean.
Number 11/2? Stop the erosion of the economy. The US is critical to restarting the world when this all ends. Stimulus may help but it is up to the people to act wisely when the fear abates by going to work, buying, not hoarding.
Any one, anybody saying that this situation is good because it destroys Trump’s economy needs to be lined up against a wall and shot!
Trump is to blame. WHO had diagnostic kits we could have used weeks ago. Other countries were using the WHO diagnostic kits. Trump refused. Trump and Trump alone is to blame for millions of American non-boomer deaths “in the weeks ahead” to quote Trump’s words which he repeated again today.
You are so full of bull. It would not have made one iota of difference how many test kits were out there and how many people have been tested. Has it made any difference over the last week that we have identified more and more folks? Nothing. Has it stopped idiots from congregating everywhere? No.
Testing shows that a problem exists, period. You people who plan to use this against Trump are really showing your ignorance.
The real question is why weren’t there more kits available on day one, and why is it taking so long to ramp up. The WHO kits were a pittance, an excuse for blame. They were used up overseas. We need millions of kits, where is the manufacturing capacity? The real fault is the policy of off-shoring manufacturing and trying to exist with a service economy. It will not work and what is going on now is just proof of it. The Deep State is teetering, I hope it collapses.
JohnAZ,
The real question is why it took until yesterday for Trump to take this seriously. And why we are not yet on full lockdown, like France. And why Trump hasn’t used his emergency powers to mobilize the manufacturing capacity that we DO have. We have lost many weeks and continue to lose precious time to criminally negligent planning and messaging by this administration. Thank god we have some serious and competent governors.
But let’s let your #1 man speak for himself.
January 22: “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.”
February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.”
February 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA… Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
February 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.”
February 25: “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.”
February 26: “The 15 (cases in the US) within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero.”
February 26: “We’re going very substantially down, not up.”
February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.”
February 28: “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.”
March 2: “You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona?”
March 2: “A lot of things are happening, a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.”
March 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work — some of them go to work, but they get better.”
March 5: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.”
March 5: “The United States… has, as of now, only 129 cases… and 11 deaths. We are working very hard to keep these numbers as low as possible!”
March 6: “I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down… a tremendous job at keeping it down.”
March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful…. the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right? This was not as perfect as that but pretty good.”
March 6: “I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it… Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.”
March 6: “I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.”
March 8: “We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.”
March 9: “This blindsided the world.”
Yesterday: “It’s bad.”
Most Americans have known exactly what he is from the day he came down that escalator. Hoping you open your eyes and ears soon.
I blame the governments of the world who spend money to create these monster viruses in their labs. This thing didn’t just evolve in a dirty market place.
Have you watched Contagion? The bed scenes, Day One, shows how easy it is for a zoonotic virus to get into the human population.
The last scenes
This will leave you with no doubt about how it started. (if the weird looking link works)
cid:369BFA42-4AA4-4341-9916-4E47EB9FCECE/f_k7vvf92r0
Hurray for ipv6!
The lab is literally 900 feet from the market.
As usual, you could not make this shit up.
Now you’re talking: Force. Government Force. It’s how Trump, Rudy, Mini Mike, and Andrew saved New York City from the Blacks. Stop and frisk those wooly headed thugs. Make them be afraid for a change. It worked. Countless thugs with long records were caught carrying weapons, intent on no good. They destroyed countless inner cities, neighborhoods, malls, and even whole cities. But they didn’t get Manhattan. Did the Jews support them? What do you think? The ones who know the score and were being impacted sure did.
“Any one, anybody saying that this situation is good because it destroys Trump’s economy needs to be lined up against a wall and shot!”
Greta, is that you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBeh1jkanrE
remember… the slow kill may have enough left in him to kill you before he dies…
🙂
there’s your covid19 outbreak training for the day…
Bernie is despised by the Democrat Party. They tolerate him because he funnels votes into the Party. Bernie has ZERO CHANCE of getting the nomination… just as in 2016.
Biden is UNELECTABLE. Too much baggage/corruption unfolding… Hunter’s involvement in Ukraine and China. Biden’s brother involved in Iraq construction projects. Biden’s deteriorating mental state are visible and very concerning. Biden would be a disaster running against President Trump, and the Democrats know this.
Hillary will be the nominee and is the Democrat’s best candidate to run in 2020 (no matter how much the Republicans despise her… me included). She has enormous power in the party and has the people and money to launch by far the best campaign. Hillary received 95% of the Super Delegate’s vote in the 2016 Convention. The Super Delegates are the heart and soul of the Democrat Party, made up of all Democrat Senators, House members, Governors, ex-Presidents, etc… approx 775 delegates.
She has learned from her mistakes in 2016… she has avoided running in the primaries, thus avoiding any negative press so far. She has been very visible lately with appearances on late night talk shows, podcasts, book tours, HULU biography launched last week during Super Tuesday, thus polishing her image before entering the race. Get ready for Trump vs. Hillary 2.0 my friends.
Hillary is the essence of corruption and baggage.
She is even more odious in personality than Orangeman bad.
Hillary is smart and has experience. Orangeman not so much.
“Hillary is smart and has experience.”
wpa,
As did Hitler, and Stalin, and Vlad the Impaler….
Over and over you show yourself to be a partisan cheer leader with nothing but a propagandist mindset in every post you make.
Yet she was destroyed by the Orange Man in the debates.
I had warmed to Trump a bit by then, but was still shocked by how poor her performance was.
She even had the questions delivered to her in advance and lots of camera trickery in her favor.
And she still choked.
Cough, cough.
Hillary was given the questions prior to the debate with Bernie, not the debate with President Trump. Donna Braziel was caught giving the questions to Hillary.
Half right. For the other half, the Baltimore Gazette disagrees with you.
Hillary is the essence of corruption and baggage.
She is even more odious in personality than Orangeman bad. – benr
=============
Not to mention: those cankles.
benr:
“Over and over you show yourself to be a partisan cheer leader with nothing but a propagandist mindset in every post you make.”
If the cap fits…
You may be right.
The sacrificial lamb candidate may be another possibility though, it has happened many times before. Go through the motions just so the public sees you are still around. Not doing it is fatal.
The DNC May be doing this with Biden. No PR firm would ever march someone like him out with any expectation of winning. If Hillary steps in however, that may change.
Bernie wants a revolution in America. Ain’t gonna happen!
We’re in the middle of an ongoing cultural revolution for the last sixty years. Slow but very profound change. What Bernie wants would only upset the apple cart and lead to war with Red America. Why bother when you can seed their lands with minorities who will then seed their wombs since their minds have already been seeded with self hatred?
During the Viking Conflict with Christianity, the Viking started giving their children Christian names. It was basically over at that point. The had already lost at the spiritual level – shouldn’t have kidnapped and then married Christian girls. The physical will fall in time once the higher principle has fallen. Conservatives accept Liberals as their moral authorities, revere the Communist, MLK, as a Conservative, etc. Same thing. You’ve lost already.
You and your Vikings, your Teutonic women, your wars and battles and on and on.
Exactly, Jan!
But what’s the purpose of conquest? Isn’t that already a lost cause? Why change others that are not you, to be like you? They can never be you, they will only destroy you and what you are.
Now you understand the wisdom of the Hebrews and the TaNaKh.
And you’re losing now to the Muslim fanatics. A Hasidic Tranny just revealed “herself” the other day over here. They’re falling too! Liberalism is Death.
Sinn Fein – for Ourselves, Ourselves Alone. At last we have found accord…..
Hasidism = Romanism = Vatican tools
As for the Muslims, they’re busy in their Stone Age world cursing Jinns and projections of themselves while turning their villages to war rubble.
Syria is just an appetizer:
https://youtu.be/13xjwTrSchw
Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudia, Yemen, Egypt, Libya, Algiers, Sudan, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and on and on, they’re all morally bankrupt and destined for complete self-destruction.
As for our “Muslims”, they’re practically Zionists already:
https://youtu.be/FnmVrbJaoxU
In a generation, they’ll all be proudly serving in the IDF, as the BBC and the other Vatican Commie-Jihadi-Nazi incitement propaganda outlets are buried in their deserved grave.
If she thinks she can run again and win she hasn’t learned squat.
Bernie has/had leverage he hasn’t used. He should have let the DNC know before the start of primary season that if they showed any evidence that they were working actively against him, that if he lost the primary because of their interference he would run as a 3rd party candidate.
Not a reckless threat that he had to win to avoid 3rd party, but rather if he lost fair and square he’d stay out.
Maybe the DNC acknowledges his running on a third party ticket and what that will do to Biden’s chances. They should probably start grass roots to create a legitimate bid in 2024.
That’s exactly why I think this whole thing is staged. Who knows what’s going on behind the scenes? To me, it seems reasonable that Bernie would have run as a 3rd party candidate from the beginning. Why hasn’t he?
I hear rumors that troops are being sent to the Vatican. I wonder why?
He virtually is a 3rd party candidate. If can’t get enough votes as a democrat he knows he can’t win as a declared 3rd party.
He knows he did win against Hillary. Take away the superdelegates and if that isn’t enough give him the one or two states they stole the win from him in and he wouldn’t have been the nominee.
He must have felt he could do it again. His DNC opponents were more prepared for him this time and apparently the young folk he counted on exposed their digital age stunted attention spans.
…would have been…
If Bernie DID run as 3rd Party, he’d come in second, but ahead of Biden.
“We don’t want Americans to travel but we want to give the airlines Billions of dollars of American taxpayer dollars in Obama-like bailouts.”
Socialism for the rich is OK when Republicans do it.
It is bad that perturbations in the economy require the government to bail out anybody. The key to success of capitalism is removal of the weak sisters and expansion of the successful types. The weakness of capitalism is what happens to the losers. In a robust economy they are reabsorbed, in a not so robust economy, they are on welfare.
Our government has no more money to pay in bail outs or welfare. In America or around the world. Each dollar being printed makes all the other dollars worth less. To big to fail is failing!
How long will people stay isolated before real revolution starts?
The weakness of capitalism is that without someone to apply the brakes, when corporations become powerful enough it becomes a tyranny.
Teddy Roosevelt barely rescued us from it at the turn of the last century. By the end of the century it had become a snowball from hell again. Capitalism and capitalism alone accounts for why all our stuff comes from out of the country now.
Misallocation of capitalism by a very corrupt Federal government manipulating with the big box corporations is responsible for the off-shoring. Capitalism, or socialism or Communism, all the isms would work if it wasn’t for the corruption of the PTB. Capitalism disseminates economic power, making it more difficult for central authority to control, Socialism or Communism makes it easier.
Remember HRC and Obama threatening voters with the destruction of the coal industry? The voters prevailed. Now the market is slowly forcing out coal in favor of natural gas. Works okay until gas depletes.
“The weakness of capitalism is that without someone to apply the brakes, when corporations become powerful enough it becomes a tyranny.”
I agree that our nation, from the start, allowed too much free rein, but people did not appreciate the limits to growth until the consequences began to loom large on the horizon. BUT, it is not only capitalism that allows power to concentrate at the top – All human political systems trend towards oligarchy, including socialism and monarchy.
The only hope for humanity is that oligarchies decay and fail as they abuse their power, or as events overwhelm them.
Life goes on.
Are you going to trash your cheque for $4,095, JohnAZ?
”Trump’s economy needs to be lined up against a wall and shot!” —JohnAZ
Trump should NOT be shot. He has stopped saying the virus is a hoax. He has stopped saying Democrats exaggerate the threat to bring him down, Today reality has forced Trump to stop lying, (until he tweets again.)
Why did you take this statement out of context, you cherry picker?
I agree, shooting would be too good. He should be forced to change bedpans in a corona virus ward until the pandemic subsides or just to give him a little bit of hope, until he emptied his millionth bed pan.
From someone who emptied his share of bedpans, stuff it!
I am seeing many stories of the failures of socialized medicine in Europe. Olga Kurylenko, a Bond girl, tested positive and has been denied a hospital bed in London. Why? Because the system has no excess capacity for a crisis. Why? Because it is run by a government and governments cannot even run themselves.
You bitch about the apparent shortage of resources here? Europe makes us look good, they are overwhelmed by their insufficient resources.
Will we as a species learn from this fiasco and improve our health care systems after it is over? Not a chance, especially with socialized, government controlled health care.
C’mon JohnAZ, sober up
You’re acting like one of those runners who celebrates victory before crossing the finish line then trips and falls and comes in last.
We have been having our ears pounded off with warnings about the tremendous shortage of rooms, respirators, and staff that will become manifest when the corona snowball gets rolling in this country.
We are already in pathetic last place in the testing and testing kit category.
And your sides policies has been what has made it all possible. If one good comes from this, I hope that globalization has a wooden stake driven through its heart.
MY side????!!!!
WTF is that??
“your side” – partisanship, even NOW?
“I am seeing many stories of the failures of socialized medicine in Europe. Olga Kurylenko, a Bond girl, tested positive and has been denied a hospital bed in London. ”
Are you suggesting everyone who tests positive for coronavirus should go to hospital, even if they’re not ill enough to need to be in hospital?
That’s insane. I’ve never heard of her but looked her up. All she says in her tweet is that she’s tested positive and her main symptoms are fever and fatigue. Doesn’t sound like a hospital case to me.
Sending someone to hospital who doesn’t need to be in hospital is a failure of medical judgement. AND insane.
If I was gasping for breath and couldn’t get a hospital bed because of some filmstar who was a bit tired and had a temperature I’d die feckin’ angry. I didn’t hear that Tom Hanks was hospitalised?
Normal people are told to stay home with symptoms unless they get severe enough to require hospitalization. You have to call ahead even if you go to get a drive through test and get permission to get tested from your primary.
Same here. And sensible.
Normal people, huh? I guess you and some of your buddies here could just rush right into the hospital regardless your symptoms.
Dr.SHIVA: https://youtu.be/FR6LXEBngkI
Your Future: Quarantine, Drugs & Vaccines or REAL Health?
Oh great, Shiva the destroyer wants to cheer me up. It’s OK Shiva, I’m ready to face death. But could you hold it off a little longer? I have a hair appointment coming up, and after that I need to get to new heels put on my shoes. Well, not shoes but pumps. Other than those two things I’d be willing to set a time up. Give me a call tomorrow.
Shiva! Why are you looking at me that way??!
Oh Alba, you aren’t the kind of person who would let anger spoil your grand exit. You wouldn’t even experience fear except a little at first. As you felt that great weight lift off, greater than you even realized, you would sink blissfully into acceptance, then remembrance, until finally…I want to use the “L” word here but then the whole thing sounds sappy.
Anyway, I could be wrong, when you are gasping for breath and experiencing the agony you might not be able to go all Hallmark card.
So scratch most of what I said.
Actually I wouldn’t be angry, Evelyn. You’re probably right. I’d just recognise my natural place at the back of the queue!!
And yes, the gasping for breath thing does rather take the bliss out of it, but other than that, who knows if we might just lie back and chill into it…
Re the acceptance etc., I do recall sitting with my mother holding her hand as she died, and I wasn’t just crying for her as my mother, but also for her as a fellow human being, and for all of us who share exactly that fate. There was a lot of human solidarity in the tears.
TMI, probably. 🙂
Could be worse our ER’s are typically stuffed with illegal aliens who can’t speak the language, have no money or health insurance and demand everything for free. They tend to be a three ring circus with kids running out of control and people coughing all over the place.
I can only imagine how bad it is now like the seventh level of hell.
“have no … health insurance and demand everything for free.”
Haha, that’s 65 million of us! Except that we queue nicely and hardly speak in the waiting room because we’re British. 🙂
Interesting. So this is hard to believe but true. My GF was forced to take her daughter to the ER in LA due to a staph infection on her lip. There was no way to avoid it. The ER was EMPTY. A couple of people getting discharged. How weird is that?
“Sending someone to hospital who doesn’t need to be in hospital is a failure of medical judgement. ”
And THAT is something that happens more in a money-based system because money-based systems also lead to more fear of litigation. Which results in BAD medical decision-making by doctors. Leaving aside the current pandemic, over-treatment by health professionals is dangerous for patients and is rampant in the US because $$$$$.
Oops, my intended reply is just above your head.
Well don’t you think there could possibly be a distinction between a failed socialized system, versus an efficient socialized system? The problem with Europe is more open borders and entirely free movement which allowed the virus to spread like wildfire. We have the same exact problem here. International flights are still cruising in and borders are open. And when you allow every single migrant that crosses the border to start collecting benefits your system is done for.