Jun 272020
 


BIS/OWI Battle of Britain. Children in an English bomb shelter 1940/41

 

Texas Hospital CEO: Covid Inpatient Count ‘Misinterpreted’ (JTN)
The Many Health Problems Caused By COVID19 (R.)
Museum of Human Rights CEO Resigns After Allegations Of Systemic Racism (CP)
Amsterdam Ejects Airbnb et al From Three Central Districts (TC)
UK to Scrap Quarantine For Travel to Greece (GR)
The Central Bank “Bailout of Everything” Will Be a Disaster (Lacalle)
Bait and Switch (Jim Kunstler)
Comey Miniseries Gets Pre-Election Airdate (JTN)

 

 

Sorry I’m late, but I walked away from my machine earlier today and went out for an early beer outside in the still wonderfully still city of Athens, because it is all too depressing to see things getting so much worse fast, not better.

I’m starting to feel like one of those reporters, if not lawyers, who listen to police scanners and chase ambulances for a living. There must have been disaster movies made that depict this kind of pandemic, but I can’t imagine any of them portraying the levels of ignorance and incompetence we’re witnessing in real life here.

 

 

Worldometer reports new cases for June 26 (midnight to midnight GMT+0) at + 194.190.

 

 

 

 

 

 

New cases past 24 hours in:

• US + 46,409
• Brazil + 46,860
• India + 18,002

 

 

 

From Worldometer:

 

 

From COVID19Info.live:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve had enough of this “it’s not so bad” stuff. Half a million dead people means you be careful with claims like that.

This particular piece wants to tell you that hospitalized people may have some other ailment too, but then if you read on you see that not even everyone who enters a hospital is tested(!) for COVID19.

Which makes it a non-story right there.

Texas Hospital CEO: COVID Inpatient Count ‘Misinterpreted’ (JTN)

Health officials in Texas are logging every single COVID-19-positive hospital patient in the state as a COVID-19 hospitalization, even if the patients themselves are admitted seeking treatment for something other than the coronavirus. That policy may be serving to artificially inflate what ostensibly seems like a significant COVID-19 surge in the state. Texas has lately been the focal point of national anxiety over concerns that a “second wave” of the coronavirus has begun there after the state began reopening nearly two months ago. COVID-19 hospitalizations there have been on a steady upward track for about the last two weeks, per the state’s coronavirus dashboard, which on Thursday recorded about 4,400 coronavirus hospitalizations in the state.


But at least part of that trend may be due to liberal coding policies by state officials. Lindsey Rosales, a spokeswoman for the Texas Department of State Health Services, confirmed to Just the News this week that the state is categorizing every inpatient in the state with a positive COVID-19 test as a COVID-19 hospitalization. “The number of hospitalized patients includes patients with a lab-confirmed case of COVID-19 even if the person is admitted to the hospital for a different reason,” Rosales said. Asked if inpatients in the state are tested for COVID-19 whenever they arrive for treatment, Rosales said, “Hospitals set their own protocols for determining when and if to test patients for COVID-19.”

Read more …

“Scientists just beginning to understand…”

I haven’t said it in a while, but it’s still true: we don’t know anything yet.

A lot of infected people who don’t die from COVID19 are not going to recover, and will be incapacitated for years. Who’s going to pay?

The Many Health Problems Caused By COVID19 (R.)

Scientists are only starting to grasp the vast array of health problems caused by the novel coronavirus, some of which may have lingering effects on patients and health systems for years to come, according to doctors and infectious disease experts. Besides the respiratory issues that leave patients gasping for breath, the virus that causes COVID-19 attacks many organ systems, in some cases causing catastrophic damage. “We thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs. We didn’t appreciate that in the beginning,” said Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California.

In addition to respiratory distress, patients with COVID-19 can experience blood clotting disorders that can lead to strokes, and extreme inflammation that attacks multiple organ systems. The virus can also cause neurological complications that range from headache, dizziness and loss of taste or smell to seizures and confusion. And recovery can be slow, incomplete and costly, with a huge impact on quality of life. The broad and diverse manifestations of COVID-19 are somewhat unique, said Dr. Sadiya Khan, a cardiologist at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. With influenza, people with underlying heart conditions are also at higher risk of complications, Khan said. What is surprising about this virus is the extent of the complications occurring outside the lungs. Khan believes there will be a huge healthcare expenditure and burden for individuals who have survived COVID-19.

Patients who were in the intensive care unit or on a ventilator for weeks will need to spend extensive time in rehab to regain mobility and strength. “It can take up to seven days for every one day that you’re hospitalized to recover that type of strength,” Khan said. “It’s harder the older you are, and you may never get back to the same level of function.” While much of the focus has been on the minority of patients who experience severe disease, doctors increasingly are looking to the needs of patients who were not sick enough to require hospitalization, but are still suffering months after first becoming infected.

Read more …

Picked this because of a new term for me: “othering”.

Is that a noun or also a verb?

Please advise me.

Do I “other” you when I say you’re beautiful?

Museum of Human Rights CEO Resigns After Allegations Of Systemic Racism (CP)

The president and CEO of the Canadian Museum for Human Rights has resigned following recent allegations of systemic racism, discrimination and claims of sexual harassment at the Winnipeg facility. The museum’s board of trustees says John Young has agreed that it is in the best interest of the museum that he step down, effective immediately. “We will act quickly to improve museum processes and our policies, and to rebuild relationships and trust with our staff and those we have let down, especially the Black and Indigenous communities, people of colour and LGBTQ2+ communities,” board chairwoman Pauline Rafferty said Thursday in a news release.“We apologize unreservedly for what has happened and we know that the fight against systemic racism, homophobia, inequality and all forms of othering must be ongoing, and must be a priority.”

Read more …

Fine by me, I’m no fan, but pretty ironic they do it at a time when there are no tourists around.

Amsterdam Ejects Airbnb et al From Three Central Districts (TC)

Another brick in the wall for vacation rental platforms: Amsterdam is booting Airbnb and other such platforms from three districts in the city’s old center from July 1, further tightening its rules for such services. In other districts in the famous city of canals, vacation rentals will only be permitted with a permit from next Wednesday, still for a maximum of 30 nights per year. The latest tightening of the city’s rules on Airbnb and similar platforms comes after a period of consultation with residents and organizations which city authorities say drew 780 responses — a full 75% of which supported banning the platforms from operating in the three central districts. “This [consultation] indicates that the subject is very much alive among Amsterdammers.


What is striking is that no less than 75% are in favor of a ban on holiday rentals in the three districts, said deputy mayor Laurens Ivens in a press release.. Furthermore, Ivens said the consultation exercise showed some support for a citywide ban on such platforms. However current pan-EU rules — notably the European Services Directive — limit how cities can respond to public sentiment against such services. Hence Amsterdam applying the ban to specific districts where it has been able to confirm tourism leads to major disruption.

Read more …

Countries that are not welcome in the EU: US, North Macedonia, Sweden, UK, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates.

UK to Scrap Quarantine For Travel to Greece (GR)

The UK government confirmed on Saturday that will scrap the requirement for holidaymakers to self-isolate for 14 days upon returning to the UK for trips Greece, France and Spain. Britons are among the biggest national groups visiting Greece every year but flights from the UK, which has seen a high rate of Covid-19 infections, are currently barred from Greek airports until at least June 30. The requirement for a 14-day quarantine was a major disincentive for British tourists. Instead of the quarantine there will be a traffic light system, with officials placing countries into green, amber and red categories based on the prevalence of coronavirus.

The Telegraph reported that as many as 50 countries could be included in the quarantine-free list when it is published on Wednesday, with restrictions lifted as soon as July 6. The move comes as Greek minister of Tourism told Reuters that the country hopes to be able to set up an “air bridge” with Britain that would allow British tourists to visit from mid-July. “I think that the most realistic prospect is around the middle of July to remove barriers from both sides,” minister Harry Theocharis told Reuters, adding that Greece was also waiting European Union guidelines on the issue. “We will keep looking at the (epidemiological) data and confirm this perhaps a few days before the middle of July,” he added.

Meanwhile, Greece’s hopes to welcome American visitors on July 1 are hanging by a thread as the European Union is considering barring tourists from the hard-hit United States at least until July 15. According to Greece’s state broadcaster ERT, the residents of a total of nine countries may be barred from visiting the nation until further notice due to epidemiological data as well as recent spikes in the number of coronavirus cases in these areas. While the information has yet to be officially confirmed by the European Union, the nine countries are reported to be: the United States, North Macedonia, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Read more …

Yes, but… Look, at some point it’s not enough just stating the obvious.

Difficult questions aplenty, but let’s see some answers.

The Central Bank “Bailout of Everything” Will Be a Disaster (Lacalle)

Despite massive government and central bank stimuli, the global economy is seeing a concerning rise in defaults and delinquencies. The main central banks’ balance sheets (those of the Federal Reserve, Bank of Japan, European Central Bank, Bank of England, and People’s Bank Of China) have soared to a combined $20 trillion, while the fiscal easing announcements in the major economies exceed 7 percent of the world’s GDP according to Fitch Ratings. This is the biggest combined stimulus plan in history. However, businesses are closing at a record pace and unemployment has reached extremely elevated levels in many countries.

There is an important risk in what I call the “bailout of everything,” or the conscious decision by governments and central banks to provide any needed support to all sectors and companies with access to debt. Most of these stimulus packages and liquidity measures are aimed at supporting current government spending and providing liquidity to companies with assets, with access to debt, and in traditional sectors. It is not a surprise, then, that at the same time as we see the largest fiscal and monetary support plan since World War II, we are already witnessing two dangerous collateral effects: the rise of zombie companies and the collapse of small businesses and startups.

According to the Institute of International Finance (IIF), the figure of global corporate bond defaults has risen to $50 billion in the second quarter of 2020 despite historic low interest rates and high liquidity. Additionally, according to Deutsche Bank and the Bank of International Settlements, the number of zombie companies in the eurozone and the US, large companies that cannot cover their interest expenses with operating profits, has rocketed to new all-time highs. In 2019 Professors Petroulakis (ECB) and Andrews (OECD) stated, “Europe’s productivity problem is partly due to the rise of zombie firms that crowd out growth opportunities for others”. This problem is only increasing in the current crisis.

Read more …

Kamala Harris is roadkill. All the rest are non-entities.

Bait and Switch (Jim Kunstler)

Suspicious minds may be prompted to wonder whether years of fake news from Wokesterdom’s media allies have finally produced the ultimate hoax: a completely fake candidate for president. Mr. Biden has gone-to-ground for three months since sweeping the Super Tuesday primaries by some strange coup of polling station magic. No campaign glad-handing, baby-kissing, and maiden-sniffing among those virus-saturated crowds for Uncle Joe this time around! And Gawd forbid any press conferences or spontaneous remarks — poor Mr. Biden tends to flub even his scripted statements. It’s a bit hard to imagine how his acceptance speech will go… and… Lordy… the debates! In the immortal words of rap impresario Jay-Z, “Nigga, Please!” (available on Amazon Music, by the way— thank you, Jeff Bezos, humanitarian).


This Joe Biden thang is being set up as some kind of bait-and-switch, but the scheme is a little too obvious, dontcha think? Mr. Biden has obliged himself to choose a “woman-of-color” as his running mate, of course, and so it is assumed that about twenty minutes after the swearing-in on January 20, 2021, Stacey Abrams (or Val Demings, or Kamala Harris, or Tawana Brawley) will become de facto president, and we’ll be off to the races, so to speak. It’s a cute gambit, but I don’t see it playing out. You may be unaware of this but the Democratic Party is actually owned, lock-stock-and-barrel, by the Clinton Foundation. It has something else in mind. Due to the unfortunate last minute discovery of Joe Biden’s incapacity to serve, She Whose Turn Was Thwarted in 2016 will perforce be the party’s nominee for an epic rematch with the Golden Golem of Greatness. Let’s face it: everybody wants to see that contest. And an election with mail-in ballots will cinch her victory.

Read more …

Comey gets to watch it in jail.

Believe me on this one: you have no idea how ugly this election will be. None.

Comey Miniseries Gets Pre-Election Airdate (JTN)

A Showtime miniseries based on former FBI Director James Comey’s memoir has been rescheduled to debut before Election Day, after its creator made an emotional plea for a chance to sway presidential voters. Billy Ray, who wrote and directed “The Comey Rule,” recoiled after learning Showtime originally planned to debut it in late November. Ray wrote an angry letter to his cast and crew about the post-election date obtained by Deadline.com. The note suggests a collective agenda behind the project:

“I know what a disappointment this is to you. It is for me too — because while I’ve made movies about my country before, this was the first time I ever made a movie for my country. We all were hoping to get this story in front of the American people months before the coming election. And that was a reasonable expectation considering that we’d been given a mandate by the network to do whatever was necessary to deliver by May 15. But at some point in March or April, that mandate changed. Word started drifting back to me that a decision about our airdate had been made at the very highest levels of Viacom: all talk of our airing before the election was suddenly a “non-starter.” I and my fellow producers asked for a chance to plead our case on the matter, but we were told that even the discussion itself was a “non-starter.”

Further down in the letter, Ray envisioned billboards screaming, “Comey Vs. Trump” in the heat of the election battle. “The Comey Rule” is based on former FBI director James Comey’s recent memoir, “A Higher Loyalty” and “more than a year of additional interviews with a number of key principals,” according to Showtime PR.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle June 27 2020

Viewing 40 posts - 1 through 40 (of 50 total)
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  • #60553

    BIS/OWI Battle of Britain. Children in an English bomb shelter 1940/41   • Texas Hospital CEO: Covid Inpatient Count ‘Misinterpreted’ (JTN) • The
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle June 27 2020]

    #60555
    zerosum
    Participant

    ” …. the levels of ignorance and incompetence we’re witnessing in real life here.”

    Maybe … its the resurgence of an ancient war tool combined with ignorance and incompetence

    USA sees virus resurgence

    WHO warns virus resurgence in Europe has begun

    Virus resurgence seen around world

    #60556
    zerosum
    Participant

    Resurgence at the same time everywhere

    Requirement of a world wide delivery system.
    Civilian travel has been reduced by +90% .

    https://www.flightradar24.com/37.99,-94.35/4

    http://www.shiptraffic.net/2001/04/north-pacific-ocean-ship-traffic.html?m=1

    Military traffic is not visible on those two links.

    #60557
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Our culture moves too fast for us to learn accurately corresponsive lessons from itself, expanding and morphing in too many directions at once, and with little cohesion other than the money that we exchange like magic communion wafers, and the ridiculously abundant energy we spend doing anything, including breathing, even when asleep. (Around 6 months of the year in most climes, either a fan or heater or AC is running even as one snores.)

    Monkeys dance around the enormous bonfire made by their resident genius, Bwonk, who’d noticed how easily certain dried grasses and seed-fluff caught fire when the early fall grass fires moved on their nearly annual journey from one side of the wind to the other, and coupled that with the sparks certain stones made when banged together. They exult in their ability to throw fuel on the fire. Some seriously fine choral hooting is heard.

    The wind makes a decisive change, the bonfire becomes an inferno, the forest catches on fire.

    The monkeys burn their home down.
    The End

    ***

    Hi boys and girls, I’m Petri the Resurgent Virus!

    ***

    Things evolve.

    A) Wall of Death

    B) Wall of Death

    C) Wall of Death

    D) Stillborn Wall of Death: c

    ***

    One wonders if a stealthy ascent to the throne by Frau Hillary (that was an ethnically-based slur, y’all, channeling the WWII-derived association of Germans with Nazis) won’t trigger the seemingly inevitable palace coup by the military.

    I keep seeing Pence ending up with the Ducal Signet. This doesn’t scare me quite as much as before, because the military has been having its ass handed to it abroad from every corner, and this Pivot to the East thing is such a joke. (Let’s piss into a new wind!) Even with Pence’s rampant Apocalyptarian Dominionism, and it’s significant presence in the military, especially the Air Force, I think they’re figuring out that maybe Jesus doesn’t want them to start wars they can only lose, including nuclear war. Right now, while MAD logic still prevails in terms of large-scale nuclear war, the Russians have a definite first strike advantage, hands down, while also possessing what appears to be significanly superior and actually effective anti-missile defense capability. (And, fwiw, is a more Xtian nation than the USA, and has been for longer than there’s been a USA, so any Abrahamically divine favor probably leans their way.)

    If we can get through this cycle of history without going globally nuclear on each other, the hard facts of Peak Oil seem likely, imo, to foment populist desire to turn those thermonuclear swords into fissile atomic plowshares generating energy for a collapsing civilization. Lotta fissile material in them warheads.

    ***

    Pence’s ability to manage the nation is perhaps even less than that of Trump. His is a relatively secure narcissism, since he has identified himself entirely with Our Lord and Savior (I think that’s what they call Him), Jesus Fernando Christ, and can thereby conceal from himself his obvious pointlessness and incompetence by his unquestioned righteousness and will to Do the Right Thing. That makes him more stable than Trump, whose narcissism lacks that shield of divinely endorsed sanctimony that religiously narcissistic moral supremacists like Pence possess, a shield of self-serving bullshit that gives Pence considerably more peace than poor sick old Donald gets.

    So, that aspect of the collapse currently doesn’t worry me quite as much as before… but that could change fast.

    p

    His expression is identical to the smug arrogance we see in Fauci’s face.

    I think this picture is priceless:

    fpt

    #60558
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Military traffic is not visible on those two links.”

    When you nail a trenchant observation, z, you nail it.

    #60560
    WES
    Participant

    I think it is fair to say, by DNC standards, witch Hillary is a women of color!

    Like most alcoholics, she is more red than white these days!

    Can the black clad BLM witch still fly on her broom to the White House?

    Maybe, if she lets the broom do the flying!

    #60561
    WES
    Participant

    Zerosum:

    I fully expect that all of Canada will soon see a resurgence in Covid-19 cases.

    Nobody is wearing masks anymore!

    Canada’s number of Covid-19 cases has stop falling. That only means one thing.

    #60562

    Or you could just watch, and listen to, Brando, 52 years ago.

    There is nothing new.

    #60563
    zerosum
    Participant

    WES
    “I fully expect that all of Canada will soon see a resurgence in Covid-19 cases.”
    I’ve just come from doing a scouting trip, to find some good places, in the mountains, to locate trail cams.
    No luck.
    I did pass, 3 reservations that had “visitors not allowed” and their gates were maned.
    I also, cruised by 4 camping areas. It drizzling, its mosquito heaven, they were overflowing with city expats flapping their arm at the attacking mosquitoes.
    I’ll keep my fingers, crossed, (my magic trick), so that stupidity and incompetence will not reach this far north.
    ———-

    #60564
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “It drizzling, its mosquito heaven, they were overflowing with city expats flapping their arm at the attacking mosquitoes.”

    There’s no denying the marvel of city expats wandering about a tailored and paved bit of forest, flapping their wings before they metamorphosize into cyborg off-road vehicles and take flight:

    The Wonders of Nature

    #60565

    Please please me; watch Brando above from like 2.30 min in, when he starts talking about MLK and what ensues from that, because A) it’s brilliant, and B) nothing you could possibly want to add to this thread 52 years later will have any meaning anymore. Here’s looking at you Bosco. Meaningless. Watch the Carson interview!

    #60566
    zerosum
    Participant

    Thanks. I listened
    “…you could just watch, and listen to, Brando, 52 years ago.

    BLM

    “….nothing you could possibly want to add to this thread 52 years later”

    Navel gazing does not change what we should have done.
    Its getting close to harvest time.

    #60567
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Will do, Raul. I takes me a bit of motivation to watch non-musical video anymore except well-done TED talks or well-done comedy. An allergy to modern cinematic media from my years alone with only sky as my TV.

    But I will eat one of these here burgers what I dun cooked for me and my wife, take a deep breath, and dive in.

    #60568
    Professorlocknload
    Participant

    Ha! Can’t help but wonder if that skyrunner contraption is faster than a speeding corona v?

    But, yeah, we see the city slickers out here on the high desert, pulling trailers behind their SUV’s, loaded with water cans, a generator, shovels and walmart lawn chairs, trying to figure out how they are going to survive on their newly acquired $20k 40 acre social distancing patch of desert. No skeeters, though, the nearest water is an hour away.

    #60569
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    The days when you could smoke on television. A different world.

    I looked into my inherent racism long ago. It’s a latent thing. In action and consciousness, I am ridiculously inclusive of anyone that doesn’t bite or glow green in the dark.

    But numerous reflexive/instinctive biological factors, along with overt and subliminal cultural mesaging, mean that whenever tensions arise, like will sidle over to like and avoid the unlike. This naturally (d)evolves into dislike.

    I often use the word nigger to remind me and others that most of us are racist under the skin (ha!). It of course gets me called racist. SOmething between shoot the messenger and pin the blame on the donkey.

    But remove the tensions and erode the negative messaging of a systemically bigoted culture, and diversity would be a delight not a dread. We’d mingle gladly, intermarry, more or less dissolve the problem. But let scarcity occur, and small diifferences between people will become fighting lines of demarcation. Racism is entirely Darwinian, from genetic inheritance to exacerbation by scarcity and other survival pressures.

    Tensions are anything but removed in our society/planet, and opposing camps of countless stripe are being formed even as we squeak.

    I no longer pay attention to large attempts to resolve such issues. We don’t form enough cohernece outside of very local groups to create the kind of solidarity it takes to solve such problems. We can’t even agree on whether we should act in concert to cope with a virus that, in effect, works in relentless lockstep against us.

    I recall that a major argument by pro-slavery forces in antebellum USA was that laws forbidding slavery violated their freedom. Hiearchic privilege conflated with freedom. States’ rights are still spoken in reverent breath by many, as if sonuvabitchery were somehow okay when practiced by smaller numbers in a smaller geoography.

    It pains me, but I have abandoned involvement with, or faith in, large-scale movements or groups. The center won’t hold… unless those involved are paid well, and even that is not really bonding, forming just a temporary gooey aggregate.

    I look at what’s in my immediate vicinity and do something there and then, then detach. Kind of Dao/Buddhist. To me, the moral of the Good Samaritan is that you help the fellow where and when you find him, using what you’ve got. Not that this will cure our ills, which I believe are terminal. But it will alleviate or even cure the ill immediately before you.

    Thinking we have to act in concert is how we got here: public indoctrination on a mass uniform level.

    What makes TAE work financially to whatever extent it does is because a) Raul does what he believes is right (for better or worse), and enough of us here like what he does to at least throw chump change his way. There’s no denying the scalar power of group action. Strength in numbers. But the vector is what makes the scalar happen, mean anything. Raul vectors; we like what he does (if only to have a group bitching club in which to commiserate our alienated souls); it motivates us (via a # of ways, some profound, some petty, with oozy overlap) to send money his way.

    We are social animals evolved through a species lineage big on hierarchy. We tend to follow leaders. Raul is a leader. I ain’t exactly a follower, but if a guy leads forthrightly and independently in a direction I deem worthy… it’s easy to follow a trail after someone else has broken through the snow crust for you.

    I doubt very much we can save the nation much less the planet (whatever saving the planet means), but we can save our souls, our consciences.

    I see Raul working to keep his soul aligned with his skin. In the process, other souls experience some salvage, are steered out of the current taking them over the falls’ edge.

    Here’s a story I wrote some years ago that looks at some aspects of this from a sideways ledge. Kind of a Moebius lens, maybe. Something about doing nwhat you can with what you’ve got despite the situation being obviously impossible. Like the guy with the really small penis who said, when his lover of the evening said, “and who do you expecty to please with *that* tiny thing?”

    “Me,” he said.

    Or like the ending of a Russian fairy tale Nobokov used to end one of his stories: “Which arrow flies the farthest? The one that hits its mark.”

    God rest ye, Martin Luther King, let nothing you dismay. Ya dun good.

    Story in next post.

    #60570
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Radioactive 3,160 words

    She was ready to die but not here, downtown, passersby struggling with their indifference to her mumbling half-life.

    Difficult to die gracefully, surrounded by abundance that wanted her to be warm, well-fed, clean, and not crazy. If she held a beggar sign above a paper cup, they would put money into it, not all of it small change. An insanely kind man once told her to stay, he’d be back. Returning, he’d given her a thousand dollars. He was obviously very high. Probably coke and E, she’d thought.

    It was in $20s, rolled tight, wrapped in rubber bands. She stashed it in her considerable cleavage, terrified. $1,000 could go a long way for a homeless person. But it was like placing a bundle of raw plutonium next to her heart. She was too crazy to safely handle so much money but not so crazy that that she didn’t know it.

    It burned in her bosom, an almost erotic Xmas glow between her breasts vibrating so powerfully she felt a brief and highly inappropriate impulse to masturbate. Right there on the street. Crazy stuff.

    She got up and pushed her grocery cart to a nearby Safeway. The difficulties began at once. She was as unwilling to leave her cart outside as a cowboy to put his horse up overnight in a town of horse thieves. Just because no one else would want her sad jumble of things wrapped in plastic and cardboard didn’t mean it would be there when she came out of the store. She knew; it had happened before.

    But store security would have nothing to do with a smelly old broad (who was really only 41 years old) shrouded in street-soaked layers of thrift-store castoffs. Not with a cart full of survival junk. It was impossible for them to conceive of her as anything but a shoplifting risk, and it was equally impossible for her to show them even a $20 bill because years of street existence had taught her not to trust persons wearing any kind of badge.

    She left, angry, humiliated, not at all surprised. But she’d tried.

    She knew she couldn’t count on her homeless colleagues. Not only had she grown increasingly distant from them as the isolation of mental illness and homelessness took over, but anything involving them and money inevitably involved drugs, and those were worse than lethal to her.

    Back in the day, before her institutionalization followed by a life on the streets, she’d sold sexual favors for drug money, gloriously wrecking her life doing drugs so she could hide from the worst symptoms of paraschizoid dementia that were equally ruining her life, disguising insanity in the more acceptable errata of heroin, X, greenbud.

    She’d transformed, in the space of a decade, from a strangely beautiful oddball named Veronica leRoi into a faceless old bag lady. From a freckle-faced red-haired art major into a shambling ladybug wearing a carapace of protective stinkwear. Between these two persons, lively nymph and shambling adult, had been a metamorphic phase during which the sun rose and set at the wrong time, a twilight of brazen risks and larger-than-life thrills where darkness brought things to life, and where sunrise, after a night’s grueling revels, loomed like a vast movie screen that by rush hour was just another plate of coffeeshop breakfast that she struggled to eat before falling into narcotic sleep.

    She experienced more and longer stays in jail. Eventually, someone did their proper job and got her a full pysch eval. This gave her three months of supervised care in the lunatarium, her name for the Medical Lake mental hospital. She’d emerged clean of street drugs but so full of anti-psych meds that she was in some fundamental way even crazier than before: the schism of knowing she was incurably nuts but medicated enough to act sane was too much paradox for a crazy person.

    The price of a license to be insane, to receive state funds and medical supervision, is to take your meds. Show up for your weekly injection. Regular bloodwork to show you’re taking your daily pills. It didn’t last long. She’d clawed the walls of her soul until she found a way out like a cat in heat shreds the basement dryer hose and escapes through the vent hole.

    Rather than be a sedated semi-crazy person hiding in a sanity suit, she became a fully insane person hiding in a street lady outfit. She didn’t consciously plan it that way, but street logic made it the natural thing to do.

    The manifold layers of a bag lady outfit protected her from people as well as the elements. No one wants to rape an old bad-smelling pile of clothes, no cop saw her as trouble so long as she mumbled and shuffled along and didn’t yell at invisible things too much, no security guard wants that walking heap of dirty laundry shopping in their store, and no one who’s been through what she had tells anyone, especially in uniform, that she has money, especially not 50 twenty-dollar bills. What to do with the money was a difficult problem for her.

    She talked to God about her problem, of course. Hard to be crazy and not talk to God, even if you were only talking to yourself. And it was as hard for God not to listen as it is not to take a stray puppy home.

    But she rarely talked to herself. She talked to Skatrina, ghost of the cat she’d adopted during her early years as a street person. Skatrina had succumbed to feline leukemia a year ago. The details of her passing are terrible to tell. Ask God if you must know.

    God gave her Skatrina’s ghost, which is to say that Skatrina couldn’t bear to leave Veronica like that, and so God granted her what one might call a backstage pass to the theater of Veronica’s soul.

    So she was talking to Skat, as usual, while she walked away empty-handed from the grocery store.

    “All dressed up and no place to go,” she said, stopping her cart and looking down at a feline patch of blank air, freeing her hands so she could use them to make her point. “You know I can’t just give it away. That man gave it to me, personally, and he wants me to do the right thing. You can’t just give away a gift.”

    A crescent of stale coffee cup styrofoam on the sidewalk nodded agreement in a passing breeze.

    “What would you do?”

    She listened carefully. People on a passing bus saw an old shopping cart woman make faces like a crazy person.

    “Well,” she said, pushing her cart again, “when you’re right you’re right. Let’s go visit the hot dog dude.”

    The hot dog dude had been selling kosher beef hot dogs, Chicago-style or with Cincinnati-style chili, almost as long as she’d been homeless. He was someone everyone trusted, even street people. He’d proven so trustworthy that the Salvation Army let him set up a donation kettle at his hot dog stand. Beginning Black Friday, he wore a Santa suit until Xmas Eve.

    He had it on now. Santa, apparently, has a thick Ukrainian accent.

    “It warms body and soul,” he said. “Inside, outside.”

    He always had a free dog for the terminal wino who needed a stiff shot of food to fortify himself for the next marathon inebriation. Plain. Bun and dog only. Merely looking at ketchup or relish could toss a wino’s cookies.

    Two weeks to Xmas: who else should she trust but Santa?

    “Hey, Red.”

    “Yo, Veronica. How’s life treat you?”

    “You know. Some days I think you’re the only person who isn’t in on it.”

    Red knew crazy people well enough to know not to ask what everybody was in on except him. Let a loony start babbling her signature delusion and she wouldn’t stop. Bad for business, and if they didn’t leave when he told them to he’d have to call the cops, which was about as much fun as collecting a gambling debt from someone’s granny.

    She looked around, then dug into her blouse.

    “Here’s $1,000. Will you hold it for me?”

    “Whoa. Ronnie, that’s lots money.”

    He shook his head. Why him? Being a saint has never been easy. If he were to find out that he was a saint, he’d quit.

    “Can I ask where you got from?”

    “Breakaway. You could tell by the glow. The guy’d broken free of the chain game. He saw me, knew it was safe to give me the money.”

    “Some guy just gave you money?”

    “Yeah. Like I said, he was obviously renegade. A living spark. I hope he makes it. Not many do.”

    “But he actually gave it for you.”

    “Yes.”

    “$1,000,” he said, counting it carefully in his pouch, out of sight.

    “Just like you see here. A roll of $20s. I can’t spend it.” Her face crumpled. “I don’t… I don’t know how, Red.”

    “How do I know it’s not bad money? You know: criminal?”

    “He had the glow, Red. The glow. Like Xmas on the 4th of July. Look at it. See how it shines? It’s not bad. No way.”

    “Well, ok, but if someone ask me about $1,000 missing cash, I give it to them.”

    He looked hard.

    “And if I have to, I tell them it comes from you. I have people count on me, Ronnie. I can’t afford trouble. But if it’s dirty, they probably won’t care where I got it. Unless they’re cops. Bent cops are devil’s mafia.”

    He put the rubber bands back around it and tossed it in the bun warmer.

    “You just want me to keep, right? Not for myself. Just keep safe for you?”

    “Take $100 for yourself. For bum food. And,” she said, like a child asking for extra allowance, “can I have a chili dog?”

    He shook his head, laughing.

    “Ronnie, you’re something else.”

    “You’re the only person I can trust, Red.”

    Still shaking his head, he handed her a chili dog.

    “Thank you. I’ll tell you when I figure out what to do with the money.”

    “You crazy woman, Ronnie, you know?”

    He winked.

    “I know.”

    She didn’t realize until she was almost there that she was at Skat’s grave. Lost in thought, she didn’t recognize it by sight but because Skat stayed back. Skat didn’t like this place. Ronnie understood; she didn’t like it either. But when she needed to really think, not be distracted by all the stuff that stirs the thoughts of crazy people, she would find herself here.

    It was a dead place, just another highway bridge underpass in downtown Spokane, void of graffiti but for one pointless scrawl like a chalk outline at a murder scene. The only time she got the old heroin jones was here. There, two feet above her head, was the drainage pipe with the loose mounting strap, now crusted with rust, no longer a nameable object, just another mysterious object en route from being one thing to becoming a part of a million other things.

    But for her, it would always be The Strap. She was sure she would be able to taste a trace of its rust in a glass of water. At the time of its use, Skat was half-unconscious, her head one huge bubble of mucus with breather holes burbling near the mouth like tiny vents in a new born mammal whose mother hadn’t yet licked away the birthing membrane. The Strap was just loose enough she could pull it back enough to place Skat’s head between the strap and the concrete wall, then wrap it around her neck like a collar, and then jam it between the drain pipe and the concrete so it would hold firm when she grabbed Skat’s shoulders, closed her eyes, and screamed bloody murder as she jumped off the tiny ledge and let her full body weight rip the head from the rest.

    It had been the only way she could think of to make sure the euthanasia was a clean kill without her having to see it happen, and she wasn’t taking her to the Humane Society. They’d take over and Skat away from her, and she wasn’t leaving Skat alone even with the nicest volunteer vet.

    She’d held the headless torso as it clawed spastically for a moment and then went still as she screamed with a fullness of intensity that made red spots swim in her tightly shut eyes as the noise found its harmonic point and was drowned out by its own echo, an enormous throat eruption followed by ringing silence.

    She couldn’t look at it, couldn’t let go of it. Fortunately, it had rained heavily and softened the ground nearby where the city grew one of those insipid bush gardens you see along highway exit ramps.

    She’d kicked and shoved her shoes off, then dug with her heels, then with her toes once it was deep enough for them to get a grip, until she felt confident she could let the body go and cover it with dirt before she saw it.

    She gathered stones and pounded them into the ground with more stones to keep the rats off. She dug another hole, this time with her hands. Then, walking backwards, her feet sweeping side to side the way that ninjas, stealth-invading an enemy’s house, do so that they don’t step on the sharp objects their intended victim might place around their bed, she’d crab-swept her way toward where she’d seen the head roll. Until her feet touched something warm, wet, and dead.

    She did with it exactly as she had with the body, except that she said goodbye before covering it with dirt and stones.

    It was a place that braced thought, forced her to focus until an answer came.

    By the time that happened, she could hear Skat meowing nearby, worried, angry, cold. She jumped into Veronica’s arms when she left the bridge’s zone of screaming silence, burrowed into her coat layers, and soon was asleep as Ronnie walked the six or seven blocks back to the hot dog man.

    “I know what to do,” she said.

    “So you will now take back your money?”

    “Yes, please. $900. Minus tax,” she joked. She was happy with her decision.

    He took the money out from the warmer, the fresh smell of yeasty bread jarring her 30 years back, family dinners, first Sunday every month. He fiddled in his apron pouch. Then he made a fake hot dog, just a bun with $900 in kosher bills, in a paper boat wrapped in aluminum foil. She placed it in an inside coat pocket.

    Then he made her another Cincinnati-style.

    “What you do with it? If you don’t mind I ask you.”

    “Get me a cat.”

    That was the easy part. Stray cats found her like crazy people found Red. The hard part was buying cat food. Finally, desperate, she’d let herself act like a crazy person, standing outside the window at Petco, unwrapping her phony hot dog and then waving a fan of $20s like a geisha looking to get lucky.

    The manager came outside.

    “Um, ma’am, um, um. How can I help you?”

    “Yes.”

    She explained the deal. He tried to talk her out of it. She stopped him short: “Mister, I’m a crazy homeless cat lady. I know what I want, and I know why.”

    Viewed from her perspective, it was a brilliant idea. She even bragged a bit to Skat.

    “The chain game can’t touch this. It can’t touch what it doesn’t understand.”

    Which was true. No one who went through her stuff, as sometimes happened, knew what to do with 90 ten-dollar gift certificates from Petco that specifically said Not Redeemable For Cash.

    She knew that she probably fed as many rats as cats, leaving little piles at certain naturally feline locations, mostly alleys. The cats that came to her, as cats always did, weren’t fondled, just fed, although whenever possible she followed the nearly invisible signs to where the cats lived, and made cardboard and shredded blanket hovels in the clever hiding places cats find.

    She didn’t pet them because if she did she’d have to keep them, and a street lady pushing a cart full of cats is asking for trouble. Not to mention her horror of having another cat get sick and die on her.

    Ten bucks a day fed a lot of cats. The cats grew healthier-looking but by the time the gift coupons ran out, half of them had already disappeared, taken in by the animal control authorities, by the kind-hearted with a home to offer, by the nature of existence. None of her business. The chain game wrote its own rules. But she’d managed to sneak a little over a thousand pounds of cat food through the loopholes.

    Red was impressed. Happy for her. It had become an official understanding that she could have a free Cincinnati-style every day his stand was open, 5 days a week plus afternoons on Saturday. It was about all she ate these days. Her stomach didn’t like her anymore. Soon, she just ate them plain.

    “You should get that looked at by doctor,” he said.

    “You should get your head examined,” she replied, a human being for a minute, something only Red got to see anymore.

    “What will you do now the money is gone?” he asked, warily.

    After some consideration, she said, “I’ll be very sad.”

    And so she was, sitting by her pushcart on a moderately cordial March day, some wind, some blue, some white, some gray, not warm but not cold, and always a patch of sunlight somewhere, nosing the sidewalk like a stray. She was ready to die, how she didn’t know, but not here. Not where they put you in a hospital like cats in the dog pound, no one coming to even consider taking you home.

    She got up, painfully, and pushed her cart to an alley by a parking lot so the sun could still reach her. Settled between two garbage cans, she blended perfectly with the junk. You’d almost have to step on her to know she was there.

    Several of the cats she’d fed for three months came to her that afternoon, drawn by her scent, something between used kitty litter and soup gone bad. She scatted them off like flies from a dying person. She didn’t feel so good.

    Another cat came to her. It didn’t beg insistently like the others to be fed, in fact, it looked remarkably well fed for being a street cat. It just walked up and meowed, not a querulous yowl nor a complaining whine. Just, “Meow.” She let it settle into her lap. They fell asleep.

    The person who found Veronica, still warm but no pulse, found a good home for the cat. We trust that Veronica did too.
    <end>

    #60571
    VietnamVet
    Participant

    I never thought we would see the fall of a second Empire, 30 years after the USSR, but here we are. Not quite the fall of Constantinople, but it is not over yet. An amoral ideology, incompetence, the fallen statues are all the symptoms.

    Hillary Clinton for Veep would be the final Grand Mal Seizure, shaking down all the marble in the Capitol. It is the Republicans who are, again, radicals bringing on a second Succession of the States (except for Mitt Romney). It is the Democrats who are pallbearers for a deadly extractive vampire capitalism, as before. Adam Schiff and Hillary Clinton reek of their venom towards the little people.

    #60572
    zerosum
    Participant

    boscohorowitz

    A feely, insightful short story.
    I hope it made you rich.

    When I was able to jump over the fence, seeing someone walking down the street and talking to themself would be enough to cross the street. as a safety precaution.
    Today, we cross the street to get away from everyone having cell conversation and disturbing our cell.conversation

    #60573
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Oh, I never sold that story. In terms of publishing, I am a decided flop. But if there’s a book market to speak of next year, that will change. (I suspect mainstream publishing will be stripped to the bone but internet publishing will expoerience a revitalization of what was briefly a hot market.

    #60574
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Today, we cross the street to get away from everyone having cell conversation and disturbing our cell.conversation”

    YOu make me laugh often, z. It’s good.

    #60575
    Carlos Jimenez
    Participant

    Boscohorowitz, I pretty much concur with what you said. Or put another way, it was the very Nicole Foss that hammered so many times in these pages or in her vids about the shrinking “confidence horizon” from the goobmint and institutions to the edges of our family and friends and not beyond. Who needs another failed gov. program? I do same, I help whoever I can in front of me and that’s it.

    I can’t read your short story right now, heck I haven’t finished reading the piece on debt that you or Dr.D put up here the other day.

    #60576
    Carlos Jimenez
    Participant

    Raul if I may say, I disagree with you. 52 years later there’s a lot of hindsight to take on. Another government program? more social engineering and welfare? The results are in and are dismal. For starters MLK’s children’s long legal fight over his estate just finished 4 years ago, there it probably went up in smoke the money that M.Brando donated to the foundation.
    For the record, I’m not white and I don’t want to be either. For becoming “white” comes with the automatic stamp of “racist” whatever the f that is.
    I am an imported and grafted member of this culture.
    But I’ve been grafted long enough to have seen the damage of so many programs, quotas, preferential treatment, EOE, Section 8, University admission quotas and all the rest to come to the conclusion that so much help to the black community or the AA community if your prefer the cant, has only destroyed it. First, substituting the father in the home by the state. Fathers are no longer necessary as providers let alone as legal husbands since that would preclude the financial help from the goobmint. Children without a father or a father figure in the home are the “at risk youth” in the making.
    I know all about the injustices and segregation the black folks suffered, furthermore, I listened for decades to Chris Hedges and Cornel West in their soaring rhetoric tell it to me but not any more. Not when there’s not a single line in them to the subject of personal responsibility. Just couple weeks ago brother Cornel was on CNN vouching for the homies and not a single exhortation to stop the mayhem and looting. I might go with that probably if they went for the Eccles Bldng… or Goldman Sucks but not wanton destruction.
    Marlon Brando’s proposition could’ve been brilliant at the time or more like par with the course of events but today it sounds like utter bollocks to me. The logical conclusion of the gov. programs to repair the damage done to the black community are insane and regular outcomes like it just happened last week when UCLA Prof. Gordon Klein was fired for not committing to full leniency or positive grades to the black students in their coming exams after the traumatic death of George Floyd.
    As James Kunstler proposes time and again, the first order of biz for the colored people would be to learn proper English to advance their prospects of employment as opposed to yet another gov. program to recognize Ebonics as a second language as Oakland School District did and I suspect many others did as well. When the village idiot, GWBush read that famous line “…the soft bigotry of low expectations” he wasn’t far off the mark for once.
    This is exactly the kind of social engineering that devalues a diploma that a black student gets not unlike the Fed printing money as electronic confeti.
    The awe inspiring quality of the paragraph that you published here, by Fredrick Douglas could hardly be written, save for historical and cultural style differences by any of the black students helped along by a myriad of crutches and gov. schemes to bring the disadvantaged students up to par. Douglas did it alone after knowing slavery in the flesh. Malcom X too not so long ago in his jail cell. Neither enjoyed any targeted assistance. Nor do today the thousands of Haitians and Caribbeans that come to Florida and get ahead even without legal status. Probably they never woke up to the existence of systemic racism and went along their way.
    For that matter all citizens in this country get royally screwed everyday by the oligarchy that it’s running this decadent empire to the ground, not just blacks.

    #60577
    zerosum
    Participant

    Education

    an education in the U.S. is observably unsatisfactory for the amount that it costs,

    In the next six weeks, after receiving deposits/tuition, more universities will begin announcing they are moving to all online courses for Fall.

    the next 5-10 years will see one to two thousand schools going out of business.

    Universities will face a financial crisis as parents and students recalibrate the value of the fall semester (spoiler alert: it’s a terrible deal).
    In addition, our cash cows (international students) may decide xenophobia, Covid-19, and H1-B visa limits aren’t worth $79,000 (estimated one-year cost of attending NYU).

    Online learning is valuable if an employer will recognize it and give you a chance to prove it combined with Co-op, or apprenticeship

    #60578
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Today’s USA white kids are raised about as educationally soft as today’s black kids, best I can tell, ebonics pandering or not.

    Malcolm X and Frederick Douglass were extraordinary individuals. Most people aren’t.

    Growing up in 1960s Chicago public ed system, I was the smart kid teachers adored. Most of the kids weren’t. School sucked for them, and the quality of erudition this achieved in them was laughably small. Public education has always been a race toward the lowest common denominator. WHite children and dark children are both being pandered to while also shamed while also pumped full of silly self-esteem-ishness (rhyemes with squeamishness) and taught mostly useless social indoctrination after say, 6th grade.

    Originally, affirmative action was necessary to get any doors opened for blacks. Legislative attempts to level the playing field weren’t all misguided. BUt, even before MLK got shot, JOhnson took the money and will that was supposed to go into a major uplift program for black people to help them get onto higher ground and be prosperously self-sustaining, went into bombing Viet Nam and Cambodia into Round-Up manure.

    Meanwhile, they started busing blacks to white schools… they didn’t bus white kids into black schools. THat speaks for itself. They could’ve put money and talent into black schools. INstead, black kids had to get up early and ride buses across town to go to schools where white walked ten mintues from home to school.

    The reason I personally am disinterested in large gov programs is not because they can or can’t work (Bismark’s kulturkampf programs were pretty impressive, I uinderstand, and put Germany in top Euro-dog position for awhile). WHile I firmly believe that any large population civilization will be hopelessly riddled with injustice and inefficiency, that doesn’t mean we’ve never done good things on a large scale. I’m disinterested because we, USA, screwed the opportunity to use our considerable wealth of those peak prosperity years to properly egalitarize our society, and instead put feel-good Band-Aids where large major programs a la Depression Era New Deal programs were needed.

    Despite all this, black people are in much better shape than nthey were in 1959. Lord have mercy. Way better. And that’s largely because of large government programs. I was a kid in the 60s. I watched this stuff happen on TV. It was a MAJOR adjustment, mostly for the better. JUst not nearly enough.

    No big programs can fix things now, and governments in general will be steadily shrinking in this century, often painfuilly and destructively, and the idea of benefitting the commonwealth will increasingly be replaced by just staying alive and intact.

    WHites and blacks are equally screwed by this in the long run, as Brando and Carson both stated, but for now, blacks still get the shit end of the stick relative to whites. It’s a bizarre love/hate dysfunctional unsustainable symbiosis, and it’s coming to an end.

    In the Name of Love

    #60579
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    So, how’s Raul this morning? My impression is you’re going through a rough patch.

    Group Hug!

    #60580

    I’m good. Trying to write a piece on the US dissolving into god knows what it will become, but having a hard time getting it together the way I think it should be. I know what it will be called: “People Are Going To Die”.

    #60581
    zerosum
    Participant

    “People Are Going To Die”.

    Cough, cough, Hint
    Republicans, those presently in power, world wide, have made impossible for Democrats, (new elected gov.), to be able to spend for necessary social and deteriorated infrastructural assets

    1. No money left in the bank
    2. Credit cards maxed out
    3. Essential expenses cut to the bare bone,
    4. Choices of weapons for obtaining more revenues are few. Gambling, dope, tariff, siege, stealing by inflation, stealing by raising interest rates,
    5. jubilee for the selected few elites.
    6. rifraf might turn against the gov. by 2024
    7. Health care infrastructures are going to get worst
    8. convid19 will keep raising its head

    Nothing new to say for us at TAE

    #60582
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Republicans” is a broad brush stroke, z, if only because people usually hear “Republicans” or “Democrats” as meaning ALL Rs or Ds, but yes, Dubya and crew broke what was left of USA governmental solvency early in his career. Today’s Dems find Republicans useful scapegoats for their vile uselessness, and Republicans vice-versa.

    But there wasn’t enough left of USA wealth even then to fix things short of turning the etnire nation into a fiscally totalitarian state.

    Funny how right at the peak of genuine resource-based USA prosperity (1960s), when we had the means to fix our primary socioeconomic problems (including environmental issues). we decided to waste huge resouce amounts, including people, turning IndoChina into a rainy desert. While signing a dirty petrodollar deal with OPEC that required us to be an expanding military empire or go broke during the lifetime of people like Kissinger who crafted that deal.

    And people wonder why a girl like Greta (remember her?) looks murderously angry as she addresses the UN. THose kids can’t p[ossibly be smart enough to know we screwed them over, right?

    Only Maven the Raven King can save us now. (I’ll write that book next year.)

    ***

    At a local savetheplenetoid superhealthyfoods grocery, a sign at the entry said, ‘Black Trans Lives Matter’. I wondered when they’ll figure out that as the list of inclusivity grows, it becomes a de facto list of exclusivity. LIke one of those Spanish names with 20 surnames.

    Because if eenough people gather around a cop killing an innocent man and send enough cam footage into the ethernet, that will stop the murder.

    IMagine if this guy used his full name. He’d’ve never killed his opponent:

    My Name is Inigo Montoya

    #60583
    zerosum
    Participant

    political Dirty tricks – dirty blanket – covid19 – dirty politics

    Reopening Of Popular Michigan College Bar Results In 85 COVID-19 Infections

    Everyone will be happy after the election – hehehehehe

    #60584

    I certainly hope bosco and zerosum are monikers for 15 year old girls, because if not, I would fear for this place

    #60585
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Fear, o mighty one. I’m a 64-year old male.

    Not sure what you’re getting at, btw.

    #60586
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “Because if eenough people gather around a cop killing an innocent man and send enough cam footage into the ethernet, that will stop the murder.”

    JUst to clarify, I forgot to put the word “Not.” after the above in the original post.

    #60587
    zerosum
    Participant

    Sorry, I don’t get the inside joke.
    I must be having a senior moment.

    #60588
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Let’s be glad they’re still just moments, z. 😉

    #60589
    zerosum
    Participant

    Hehehehehe
    ( Just white noise from a senior)

    #60591
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #60592
    zerosum
    Participant

    boscohorowitz
    I read reports that loosing your sense of smell could be a sign of having covid19!!!

    #60593
    lasttwo
    Participant

    Great comments wish I would have come back and read them sooner. Hope Raul is ok no post on 28-29 – Chicago education – I had me some and B is correct I am amazed that most everything of use I learned by 8th grade. I was a terrible student hated school with a passion. after years of factory shit jobs went back at 30. Loved learning ever since. Still most useful things I know I learned in grade school.

    #60594
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    Maybe it’s metaxa. I got drunk on Metaxa in what was then Little Greece on Chicago’s NW side and realized that Greeks are tough motherfuckers. That shit will sure smack you down.

    I’m kind of liking the image of myself as a 15-year old girl, actually. Makes me want to take advantage of myself.

    ***

    Sadly, z, my sense of smell is growing stronger as the Portland area moisture gradually heals, as much as possible, the trauma done to my nasal capillaries after about 15 cauteries to stop whacko chronic nosebleeds. Every day I smell something I hadn’t smelt in a long time, and it usually is the funkier kind.

    ***

    I’m neither for nor against Trump, per se, but am very intrigued by how his NPD is currently kicking his ass in response (or so I see it) to his disappointing reentry into the election campaign sphere. He did it to himself with covid, and I knew he would from the gitgo (respect my prophecy!!!!)…

    goo

    … because he’s entirely political, a hierarchy jockey with no capacity for dealing with actual reality, and covid is real not political, whatever motivation may lie behind its ionitial release into living human tissue. But he’s running against a man who makes a ventriloquist dummy look lively and sound articulate, and I suspect he’ll find some footing ere long and will resume the ardurous climb to an approval platform his ego can live with.

    I’m pretty sure he feels horribly betrayed. He should expect betrayal since his loyalty is ephemeral for the most part (he seems to stand by his children) but that’s not how an NPD thinks. So I see his bruised expressions from the past few days and kinda feel for him, you know? He is what he is.

    My spidey sense quivers toward something lateral, precessional, unexpected or at least misunderstood and underestimated, either born from the predictably unsettled election results come November or heading it off beforehand as covid goes nuttier with each month.

    #60595
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    This, rather than dramatic death counts, may define covid’s most significant impact as the tsunami begins slowly but inexorably spreading inland.

    How HCQ factors into this is no longer a medical question so much as a political question. One wonders if it won’t be the political straw that breaks the duopoly’s back… and restore Trump’s election prospects and that smug grin that means he’s happy.

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