Jul 012020
 
 July 1, 2020  Posted by at 11:30 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , ,


Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Portrait of Vincent van Gogh 1887

 

US Has “Way Too Much Virus” To Contain Outbreak (Axios)
Fauci Warns Of 100,000 US Cases Per Day (BBC)
US Buys Almost Entire World’s Supply Of Coronavirus Drug (Ind.)
People In Their 20s Largest Age Group Of New COVID-19 Cases In Minnesota (MPR)
The Biggest Myths About The National Deficit (Alt.)

 

 

Only yesterday I wrote “..at this point it is entirely unclear how countries like the US and Brazil will ever be able to get rid of the virus.” Dr. Fauci, also yesterday, said “We are now having 40-plus thousand new cases a day. I would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around..”

Turn around? How? CDC principal deputy director Anne Schuchat said the US has “way too much virus” to contain the outbreak.” Scott Gottlieb has even more dire numbers:

 

 

Things are not looking good at all. But there’s more. The nationwide protests are perceived, presented, played as anti-Trump manifestations. By both political sides, for political gain. And by the media for financial gain. That makes them de facto election rallies. And the pro-Trump side will not accept any more restrictions on their own rallies, which they (will) argue are just as legitimate. Because they have an election to contest.

If the BLM protests can continue, despite virus warnings and limited numbers at gatherings, then the conservatives will gather too, in comparable numbers. And they don’t “believe” in distancing or face masks, they claim they don’t reduce their risks, they reduce their freedom.

“Perfect storm” is an often abused term. But it does come to mind here and now.

And you thought the first half of 2020 was hard.

 

 

 

 

US has sixth day in a row with over 40,000 new cases

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, I would think it’s obvious by now.

US Has “Way Too Much Virus” To Contain Outbreak (Axios)

The novel coronavirus is spreading too widely and quickly to contain, CDC principal deputy director Anne Schuchat told The Journal of the American Medical Association Monday, warning she expects “this virus to continue to circulate.” Per Schuchat, “This is really the beginning, and what we hope is that we can take it seriously and slow the transmission.” Her comments are in contrast to those of senior members of the Trump administration — notably Vice President Mike Pence, who said on Friday “we have made truly remarkable progress.” COVID-19 cases are surging across the U.S., prompting states including Texas, Arizona and New Jersey to pause plans to reopen their economies in recent days.


What else she’s saying: “We have way too much virus across the country for that right now, so it’s very discouraging,” Schuchat said in her interview with the Journal’s Howard Bauchner. She said there was “a lot of wishful thinking around the country” that the pandemic would be over by the summer. “We are not even beginning to be over this,” Schuchat said. “There are a lot of worrisome factors about the last week or so.” “We’re not in the situation of New Zealand or Singapore or Korea, where a new case is rapidly identified and all the contacts are traced and people are isolated who are sick and people who are exposed are quarantined and they can keep things under control.”

Read more …

If this is a war, as many have labeled it, the US is losing it.

Fauci Warns Of 100,000 US Cases Per Day (BBC)

Top disease researcher Dr Anthony Fauci has told the US Senate that he “would not be surprised” if new virus cases in the country reach 100,000 per day. “Clearly we are not in control right now,” he testified, warning that not enough Americans are wearing masks or social distancing. During the hearing, he said about half of all new cases come from four states. Earlier, the New York governor said nearly half of all Americans must self-quarantine if they visit the state. On Tuesday, cases rose by more than 40,000 in one day for the fourth time in the past five days. The surge – which is occurring particularly strongly in southern and western states – has forced at least 16 states to pause or reverse their reopening plans, according to CNN.

Florida, Arizona, Texas and California are the four states referenced by Dr Fauci as being most heavily hit currently. For some the new measures come over a month after they first began to reopen their economies. [..] Testifying to a Senate committee on the effort to reopen schools and businesses, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases criticised states for “skipping over” benchmarks required for reopening, and said cases will rise as a result. “I can’t make an accurate prediction, but it is going to be very disturbing, I will guarantee you that,” he told Senator Elizabeth Warren. “Because when you have an outbreak in one part of the country even though in other parts of the country they’re doing well, they are vulnerable.”

“We can’t just focus on those areas that are having the surge. It puts the entire country at risk,” he added. Dr Fauci also called on the US government to produce face masks to be distributed for free to all Americans, and condemned the “all or none phenomenon” of some people who have completely disregarded social distancing measures.

Read more …

As someone said today: late-stage capitalism. Meanwhile, the UK wants to restart its HCQ testing program.

US Buys Almost Entire World’s Supply Of Coronavirus Drug (Ind.)

The US has effectively secured the world’s supply of one of only two drugs proven to help treat coronavirus. Remdesivir, which has previously been used to fight Ebola but has now been found to reduce recovery times among Covid-19 patients, is exclusively manufactured by pharmaceutical giant Gilead Sciences. The US Department of Health and Human Services (HSS) has announced it has bought up more than 500,000 doses of the drug. The figure equates to Gilead’s entire production for July, as well as 90 per cent of its production in both August and September. The US’s decision to stockpile the drug means there will likely be little supply in the rest of the world for several months.


HSS secretary Alex Azar, hailed the move, saying president Donald Trump had struck an “amazing deal”. “To the extent possible, we want to ensure that any American patient who needs remdesivir can get it,” Mr Azar added. “The Trump Administration is doing everything in our power to learn more about life-saving therapeutics for Covid-19 and secure access to these options for the American people.”

Read more …

It took about a month?!

People In Their 20s Largest Age Group Of New COVID-19 Cases In Minnesota (MPR)

More than 100 cases of COVID-19 have been reported among Minnesotans in their 20s in the Mankato area who said they went to bars on June 12 and 13 — the first weekend bars and restaurants were allowed to serve indoors. Two Mankato bars — Rounders and The 507 — were the focal points of that young adult outbreak, Ehresmann said Friday. Officials were also following up on a cluster of 30 cases at two Minneapolis bars — Cowboy Jack’s and Kollege Klub. Social media from those bars shows they were crowded, with no room for social distancing, and people who were standing and not masked, so not following the state guidance, Ehresmann said.


“It’s not that you can’t socialize. It’s not that you can’t have fun,” she said. “But you need to do in a manner that’s safe for you and the people around you.” Friday’s Health Department data showed that Minnesotans in their 20s now make up the largest age group of confirmed cases in Minnesota — 7,045 people infected, with two deaths. While those young people may be less likely to suffer complications from COVID-19, officials say the concern is that they may be unknowingly spreading the disease to grandparents or other potentially vulnerable populations.The median age of confirmed cases in Minnesota has been dipping and is now just under 40 years old.

Read more …

Stephanie Kelton is on an MMT mission. It’s not an easy one. It goes against everything we think we know about economics.

The Biggest Myths About The National Deficit (Alt.)

What drives the biggest misunderstandings about government debt in our national conversation? Stephanie Kelton: Everything is wrong. The way we talk about federal government debt is, from my perspective, we say things like we’re borrowing from China and foreigners. Hillary Clinton said when she was secretary of State that it’s a national security threat. People talk about it representing a liability to all of us, so we hear people talk about “your share [of the national debt],” a burden on future generations, that it ultimately has to be paid back, that it’s going to require higher taxes in the future. I could keep going.

So what connects all these misunderstandings? Are we thinking of the government too much like a household or a business? Yes, of course. We think that the government has borrowed, and we think that this is real debt. And neither of those things is correct. I say in the book that if I walk into a bank and borrow money, I’m borrowing money because I don’t have it. Right? That’s why I got to the bank to take out a loan. The federal government is not borrowing money because it needs money. It’s not borrowing because it doesn’t have the capacity to finance whatever it wants to spend money on. It has the fiscal capacity; it can just spend. And not only that, the government sells the bonds.

And by the time the government sells the bonds, the spending has already taken place. So the bonds cannot possibly be the tool with which the government raises money in order to spend. It’s selling the bonds after the spending had already taken place. Why does it do that? It doesn’t need to borrow, it has already financed the spending. So we don’t really understand — the public and most economists get this wrong — we don’t even understand what the purpose of selling bonds is. We treat it as a borrowing operation. It’s not. The purpose of selling the bonds is to drain off the reserves, the dollars, to remove some of the dollars the government has spent into the economy and replace them with treasuries. It’s a subsidy to the rich, is what it is.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle July 1 2020

Viewing 34 posts - 1 through 34 (of 34 total)
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  • #60665

    Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Portrait of Vincent van Gogh 1887   • US Has “Way Too Much Virus” To Contain Outbreak (Axios) • Fauci Warns Of 100,000
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle July 1 2020]

    #60666
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Portrait of Vincent van Gogh 1887

    An amazing painting; the detail in the portraiture is stunning…

    The Henry David Thoreau bit, is a biting truth…

    #60668
    John Day
    Participant

    @Boscohorowitz, “Just me and the pygmy-pony, over by the dental-floss bush… but, do you know the words to Billy the Mountain, or Evelyn, a Modified Dog? 🙂
    Additionally, and pervasively, “It can’t happen HEEERE!”

    #60669
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    from The BIggest Myth article above

    “And you’re an agricultural economy, so food prices spiral out of control. You’re trying to import food, you get hyperinflation. ”

    We’re a petro-economy, and shale oil is a joke, one whose punchline went stale awhile back. We can no longer militarily coerce other nations to continue the petrodollar system that lets us afford foreign oil; so as soon as the other nations find a way to remove themselves from that system, we’ll have hyperinflation.

    But yes, for now, we could print enough money for everyone to practice a nationw-wide lockdown and get this virus thing under control (in this case, ‘virus thing’ means both the covid pathogen and our out-of-control gov/corp-controlled media (yes, that’s a verbal paradox, Mr. Chesterton; now, back to your grave, sir: you dead) and not experience hyperinflation.

    But we haven’t, and so we now move toward increasing poverty and its attendant civil unrest.

    #60670
    John Day
    Participant

    http://www.johndayblog.com/2020/07/wanna-revolution.html
    Real Revolution Means Expanding Consciousness, Both Outwardly And Inwardly , Caitlin Johnstone
    The inward and outward expansions of consciousness exist on the same continuum, and neither is more important or more valuable than the other. People who are more interested in politics and government might see the exploration of the inner dimensions as airy fairy bullshit, and people who are more interested in spirituality and enlightenment might see the exploration of international power dynamics as deluded nonsense for muggles.
    But objectively they hold the same value. Someone engaged in relentlessly honest self-enquiry is doing something that is just as valuable as someone who is engaged in investigative journalism. Going to therapy and having transformative personal breakthroughs is as valuable as making a viral video exposing the reality of police brutality. All expand consciousness, so all are facilitating the revolution.
    In this particular sense, there’s no fundamental difference between someone like Julian Assange and someone like Eckhart Tolle. You might object that one of these men is in prison and the other is enjoying what appears to be a fairly cushy and unmolested life, but there’s a reason for that: our rulers don’t understand just how threatening the expansion of inner consciousness is to their empire. If they did, old Eckhart would be rotting in a prison cell just like Julian.
    Sociopaths don’t understand the inner dimensions. They don’t really have the cognitive software for it. They have an acute understanding of how to manipulate language and information in order to get what they want, but the notion of honest introspection with the goal of truth for truth’s sake is wholly alien for them. Someone who sees the world as a field of potential assets to be exploited will never think to look inside themselves and consider how they might be misinterpreting reality, but they will see attempts to interfere with their toxic agendas in the world as direct threats to their ability to get what they want. Which is why Julian Assange is in prison and Eckhart Tolle is not.

    Real Revolution Means Expanding Consciousness, Both Outwardly And Inwardly

    Racism and anti-racism as lies​, ​by Thierry Meyssan
    ​ ​In reality, racism and anti-racism are two sides of the same coin. Both are based on the fantasy of races that we know do not exist. In both cases, it is an outdated conformism. The racists corresponded to imperialist and colonial ideologies, the anti-racists to financial globalization. Their only common political utility is to occupy the ground to mask authentic social struggles.
    https://www.voltairenet.org/article210278.html

    ​On “White Fragility”, Matt Taibbi​
    ​ ​DiAngelo isn’t the first person to make a buck pushing tricked-up pseudo-intellectual horseshit as corporate wisdom, but she might be the first to do it selling Hitlerian race theory. White Fragility has a simple message: there is no such thing as a universal human experience, and we are defined not by our individual personalities or moral choices, but only by our racial category.
    ​ ​If your category is “white,” bad news: you have no identity apart from your participation in white supremacy (“Anti-blackness is foundational to our very identities… Whiteness has always been predicated on blackness”), which naturally means “a positive white identity is an impossible goal.”
    ​ ​DiAngelo instructs us there is nothing to be done here, except “strive to be less white.”
    https://taibbi.substack.com/p/on-white-fragility?

    ​Strip club owners, I suspect… ​
    Hoping to block Gov. Greg Abbott’s Friday decision ordering Texas bars to close due to a rise in coronavirus cases, more than 30 bar owners filed a lawsuit Monday challenging Abbott’s emergency order.
    https://www.texastribune.org/2020/06/29/texas-bars-sue-greg-abbott/?

    “This Is Not Just Accidental”, How one Coronavirus Mutation Helped the Virus Conquer the Globe
    Neville Sanjana, a geneticist at the New York Genome Center and New York University, was trying to figure out which genes enable SARS-CoV-2 to infiltrate human cells. But in experiments based on a gene sequence taken from an early case of the virus in Wuhan, he struggled to get that form of the virus to infect cells. Then the team switched to a model virus based on the G variant.
    ​ ​”We were shocked,” Sanjana said. “Voilà! It was just this huge increase in viral transduction.” They repeated the experiment in many types of cells, and every time the variant was many times more infectious.
    ​ ​The mutation in question is known as D614G, or just “G” for short. So far, the “G” mutation has been found in roughly 70% of the half a million or so samples that have uploaded to a shared database for scientists around the world. This has convinced many scientists of its significance, especially because the mutation occurs in a part of the genome that governs the infamous “spike” protein that gives the virus its name (“corona” = crown in Latin) and is believed to enable it to infiltrate human cells.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/not-just-accidental-how-one-coronavirus-mutation-helped-virus-conquer-globe

    ​Vitamin-D won’t roll over for remdesivir and big money yet…​
    ​ ​This is a retrospective cohort study which included two cohorts (active and expired) of 780 cases with laboratory-confirmed infection of SARS-CoV-2 in Indonesia. Age, sex, co-morbidity, Vitamin D status, and disease outcome (mortality) were extracted from electronic medical records.
    ​ ​The aim was to determine patterns of mortality and associated factors, with a special focus on Vitamin D status. Results revealed that majority of the death cases were male and older and had pre-existing condition and below normal Vitamin D serum level.
    ​ ​Univariate analysis revealed that older and male cases with pre-existing condition and below normal Vitamin D levels were associated with increasing odds of death. When controlling for age, sex, and comorbidity, Vitamin D status is strongly associated with COVID-19 mortality outcome of cases.

    Patterns of COVID-19 Mortality and Vitamin D: An Indonesian Study

    ​Hydroxychloroquine and zinc prospective study from France was well run. They did not give it to people with heart disease. It helped a lot. (Give zinc too, sez I.)​ Thanks Marjorie!
    In our institute in Marseille, France, we initiated early and massive screening for coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Hospitalization and early treatment with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin (HCQ-AZ) was proposed for the positive cases.
    https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1477893920302817

    UK regulators have approved the resumption of a global trial aimed at determining whether hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine are effective in preventing COVID-19 infections in healthcare settings, according to Reuters.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/global-hydroxychloroquine-study-resume-after-positive-trial-results

    H​ow treating humans as cheap commodity labor to be manipulated for profit spreads viral pandemic in America:​
    ​ ​This treatment of an essential workforce is in keeping with what the economist Michael Perelman has called the “farm worker paradox” in which he asks, “why those whose work is most necessary typically earn the least” (in pandemic-time, we can add, “…and are most compelled to risk their lives and their families’ lives.”)
    ​ ​The paradox exists, observes Perelman, because of the circular logic of capitalism. Economists argue that farmworkers earn low wages because they are not highly “productive”; that is, collectively, they generate low profit per worker. But that’s because everyday food sells cheap, and it’s cheap largely because many of those who produce it earn near-starvation wages.

    It’s Not Just Meat: All Farm and Food Workers Are in Peril

    #60671
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    JohnD: I just hum along with the words. Only Zappa song whose words stay with me are those to Camarillo Brillo, that strangely rhapsodic (listen to the guitar work) ode to hippy sleaze. Oh, and some of I Am the Slime and The Torture Never Stops.

    No Words

    #60672
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “The paradox exists, observes Perelman, because of the circular logic of capitalism. Economists argue that farmworkers earn low wages because they are not highly “productive”; that is, collectively, they generate low profit per worker. But that’s because everyday food sells cheap, and it’s cheap largely because many of those who produce it earn near-starvation wages.”

    Food grows in supermarkets. I pick food there all the time. Thew wages are so bad I have to pay them to let me pick food.

    Underneath all this is the fact that, ever since humanity learned to create reliable food surplus, organized violence, gang warfare, has been the most “profotable” human activity: steal the other guy’s surplus through coercion or the threat thereof.

    The people who produce this surplus are less-than-peasants.

    Now that science has produced a reliable surplus of advanced kill-tech, soldiers (except mercenaries, who market themselves at high prices to exploit opportunities/fill troop shortages critical to moving violence-based profits forward) are also becoming less-than-peasants:

    “The butterfly swarm of American flags spawned from the ruins of 911 has since metamorphosed backwards into the larvae of yellow Support Our Troops ribbon magnets. By 2010 they will rehatch into homeless veterans holding Anything Helps-God Bless signs, but today, May 19th, 2004, USA flags made in China are still prominent in tiny Beaujolais Flatts, flapping like applause for the pretty ladies who, smiling in the face of an aggressive paparazzi wind like Marilynn Monroe, struggle to hold down their light summer dresses frisking naughtily like unruly puppies jumping to be picked up.”

    from this damn novel that is somehow being completed despite my wastrel ways.

    #60673
    John Day
    Participant

    Zappa played Camarillo Brillo for me at the Armadillo World Headquarters, the last time he played there, 1978 I think. I was at a little table at the front with a pitcher of beer and he took my request.
    She had a snake for a pet
    And an amulet
    And she was breeding a dwarf
    But she wasn’t done yet
    She had gray-green skin
    A doll with a pin
    I told her she was awright
    But I couldn’t come in

    #60674
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #60675
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “soldiers… are also becoming less-than-peasants”

    As opposed to their former mere peasant status, that is. Anyone who works for Pharaoh gets the shaft unless they can ingratiate themselves to the inner circle.

    #60676
    zerosum
    Participant

    covid19 will spread everywhere.

    • US Has “Way Too Much Virus” To Contain Outbreak (Axios)

    If this is a war, as many have labeled it, the US is losing it.

    • Fauci Warns Of 100,000 US Cases Per Day (BBC)
    Dr Fauci also called on the US government to produce face masks to be distributed for free to all Americans,
    Hahahah pork, pork, oink,oink
    Fighting covid19 required the existing structure of a health system that did not seek exorbitant profits at the expense of health care.

    • US Buys Almost Entire World’s Supply Of Coronavirus Drug (Ind.)
    Pork, oink, it doesn’t work, USA first

    • People In Their 20s Largest Age Group Of New COVID-19 Cases In Minnesota (MPR)
    This is good new for wise seniors
    ——–
    “It goes against everything we think we know about economics.”

    • The Biggest Myths About The National Deficit (Alt.)

    An economist explains the biggest myths about the national deficit — and how we can save the economy


    Written by Cody Fenwick July 1, 2020

    “Stephanie Kelton: Everything is wrong. … look under the hood, and understand the mechanics of the federal government’s fiscal operations. Nobody taught me this stuff in my conventional economics training through grad school. I had to come to this from some outside of the academy, someone who was in financial markets who thought about things. ”

    (Read more … You won’t regret it)

    Stephanie Kelton – a new book called “The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy.”
    Here is some help

    Book Review: The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy by Stephanie Kelton


    Book Review:
    This book is a triumph, writes Professor Hans G. Despain
    ———-
    expand consciousness
    ——–

    #60677
    zerosum
    Participant

    The U.S. public health system has been starved for decades and lacks the resources to confront the worst health crisis in a century.

    Hollowed-Out Public Health System Faces More Cuts Amid Virus

    Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an interview in April that his “biggest regret” was “that our nation failed over decades to effectively invest in public health.”

    So when this outbreak arrived — and when, according to public health experts, the federal government bungled its response — hollowed-out state and local health departments were ill-equipped to step into the breach.
    States, cities and counties in dire straits have begun laying off and furloughing members of already limited staffs, and even more devastation looms, as states reopen and cases surge.

    (get informed, read more)

    #60678
    zerosum
    Participant

    search for
    Telehealth
    telemedicine
    virtual clinic
    online doctor
    Virtual doctor

    #60680
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I’m a hermit. Scheduled auto maintenance made me leave the house. Alone. Without my wife. Very dangerous for everyone. Oh, I can drive. But I’m the social equivalent of a coyote in a suburban cul de sac trying to find its way out.

    Wise-cracking with the service tech about our masks and other quarantinoid artifacts, he soon displayed a savvy perspective on the basic covid situation. He knew the numbers were going through the roof, that we’d blown our shot at preventing a pandemic, that our leadership, local, federal, and global, had failed us miserably.

    Walked outside. Old town Beaverton. Old school bar, surprisingly unyuppified unti you look close and realize that the neo-yuppy Mills and Genzers were getting pretty good at convincing retro decor. Including genuine old school lonely sots drinking beer alone at 10am.

    Everywhere else, people wore masks.

    Not inside the bar. I saw 4 people. No masks. Alcohol apparently does kill brain cells. Still, a tiny transgressive part of me cheered, because bars have always been zones of rebellion, and rebellion is my favorite conformity.

    While the Portland and Seattle metro areas seem to have begun their covid cycles with a milder version than, say, NYC, we also had (iirc) the first reported USA case of a young healthy person dying of covid.

    It rains alla time here. Oh, it’s nice, sun comes out every few hours, the rain is mostly gentle, the temperatures mild.

    But we don’t get much sunlight vitamin D. I think that when covid really get its roll on here, we’ll see a lot more people getting really sick who are not compromised by other malign conditions.

    #60681
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    PLus ca change:

    “W. R. Anderson in his column Round About Radio, published in London 1945, where he wrote: The simple truth is that you can get away with anything, in government. That covers almost all the evils of the time. Once in, nobody, apparently, can turn you out. The People, as ever (I spell it “Sheeple”), will stand anything.[19]”

    from wiki article on etymology of sheeple

    #60682
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I wonder how this might fit, metaphorically speaking, today’s general culture:

    “Possible mechanisms for this behavior include Hamilton’s selfish herd theory, neighbor copying, or the byproduct of communication by social animals or runaway positive feedback.

    Characteristics of escape panic include:

    Individuals attempt to move faster than normal.
    Interactions between individuals become physical.
    Exits become arched and clogged.
    Escape is slowed by fallen individuals serving as obstacles.
    Individuals display a tendency towards mass or copied behavior.
    Alternative or less used exits are overlooked.[4][6]”

    I think zerosum wrote that wiki. 😉

    #60683
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    It’s like a chart for the essentials of what we’re watching and fearing:

    wiki on herd behavior

    #60684
    boscohorowitz
    Participant
    #60685
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    GHive this man the Fukuyama Award:

    “Following Al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, and the United States’ subsequent inconclusive wars in Afghanistan (2001–present) and Iraq (2003–2011), initiated by US President George W. Bush, Professor Gary Weaver and his co-author Adam Mendelson, writing in 2008, cited a survey of 109 historians, 99% of whom rated Bush a “failure” as president, two-thirds rating him the “worst ever”. Weaver and Mendelson wrote that the United States had been in its “childhood” before 1898; in its “adolescence”, 1898–1945; in “young adulthood”, 1945–1991; in “adulthood”, 1991–2001. Weaver and Mendelson, from their 2008 perspective, anticipated that the traumas of the George W. Bush presidency would “season [the United States] with new strength, wisdom and maturity”, enabling it to move forward from this political midlife crisis.[7][page needed]”

    New strength, wisdom, and maturity. Uh-huh.

    #60686
    zerosum
    Participant

    boscohorowitz
    “It rains alla time here.”
    Rain is good for the garden.
    Rain cleaned the street of Seattle, (with the help of the city crew and a loader)
    Rain is bad for seeing firework on Canada Day.

    #60687
    Carlos Jimenez
    Participant

    That was fast! It was just a summer of love until Jenny Durkan’s own mansion was threatened to finally order the clearing of CHOP. No matter. The wokester crowd is demanding her head. What a pity. I had high hopes of seeing systematic racism canceled for good.
    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/seattle-police-dismantle-chop-after-protesters-threaten-mayors-7-million-house

    #60688
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    SIlly naive hopeful me (I still smoke hope) wonders if this will produce some cross-spectrum solidarity between left and right activists.

    Hope for what? Not for some kind of revolution leading to a Better Way. I guess just hope for a moment of group quasi-sanity.

    I’m experiencing hope inflation: so much hope, so little left to hope for. For me, it’s no longer the thing hoped for so much as the exercise of hope itself.

    Hope Of Deliverance

    #60689
    zerosum
    Participant

    Hope for what?
    …. so little left to hope for.

    Let me list the ways ….
    hummm ….. if I could wish …..
    Everything could be worst with a bad wish …..
    hummmm ….. I’ve done what I can change to make thing better

    #60690
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    An example of how inept our USA society/system has become:

    Phony Deaf Interpretation

    Mr. Bean should do a riff on this.

    Remember this guy? Now, he was competent. Competent tends to look extreme to us anymore:

    BIG Waves!

    #60691
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    “In this particular sense, there’s no fundamental difference between someone like Julian Assange and someone like Eckhart Tolle. You might object that one of these men is in prison and the other is enjoying what appears to be a fairly cushy and unmolested life, but there’s a reason for that: our rulers don’t understand just how threatening the expansion of inner consciousness is to their empire. If they did, old Eckhart would be rotting in a prison cell just like Julian.

    “Sociopaths don’t understand the inner dimensions. They don’t really have the cognitive software for it. They have an acute understanding of how to manipulate language and information in order to get what they want, but the notion of honest introspection with the goal of truth for truth’s sake is wholly alien for them. Someone who sees the world as a field of potential assets to be exploited will never think to look inside themselves and consider how they might be misinterpreting reality, but they will see attempts to interfere with their toxic agendas in the world as direct threats to their ability to get what they want. Which is why Julian Assange is in prison and Eckhart Tolle is not.”

    I love Caitlin.

    #60692
    ezlxa1949
    Participant

    More on Modern Monetary Theory

    Interview with Kelton by The Australia Institute (a leftish economic thinktank)
    Criticism from The Mises Institute (not lengthy)

    #60693
    zerosum
    Participant

    ezlxa1949

    More on Stephanie Kelton
    https://mises.org/power-market/mmt-not-modern-not-monetary-not-theory
    Stephanie Kelton, economics professor at SUNY Stony Brook, is the author of The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People’s Economy. Professor Kelton was an advisor to the Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns, and her ideas increasingly find purchase with left progressives. It is certainly possible that she has a future either in a Biden administration or even on the Federal Reserve Board, which is a testament to how quickly our political and cultural landscape has shifted toward left progressivism.
    And left progressivism requires a “New Economics” to provide intellectual cover for what is essentially a political argument for painless free stuff from government.

    #60694
    Carlos Jimenez
    Participant

    My “hope” was completely flippant. Next time I’ll put a sarc. warning. :). The BLM “movement” is a sac of croc.

    #60695
    oxymoron
    Participant

    I don’t wanna be all judge-y but that photo of Janet and Ben didn’t show a hell of a lot of smile lines or wrinkles. Sad and safe and bored, but hey I could be wrong. Ben probably gets his socks blown and parties hard and who knows what Janet gets up to – we know how Frankenfurter enjoyed his time with her….

    #60696
    oxymoron
    Participant

    Oh and John and Bosco – you guys are killin’ it here right now.

    #60697
    Archie
    Participant

    @oxymoron re: the sideshow

    ymmv

    #60698
    boscohorowitz
    Participant

    I think BLM is neither a sack of shit nor a sack of gold. It is the usual mixture of both. SOme brave bright kind people in BLM and some other types including chickenshit pedantic callous people.

    Like any group. Like any church I’ve seen. LIke any town council meeting I’ve attended. Like high school. KIndergarten.

    Like my old man said, “You get that many dogs together there’s bound to be a son of a boitch in there.”

    BLM is a label. The thing it labels is manifold, various, overt, and covert.

    #60699
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    ymmv

    …indeed…

    #60700
    zerosum
    Participant

    Training wheels

    Gray Man Theory: The Art Of Blending In During Disaster


    Gray Man Theory: The Art Of Blending Into The Crowdwww.thebugoutbagguide.com › gray-man-theory
    The gray man theory as a way of disappearing into the crowd so you can move unnoticed when disaster strikes.

    Gray Man Strategies 101: Peeling Away the Thin Veneer of Society


    Blending into a crowd is called becoming a gray man.

    There are people moving around us every day whose physical presence is so non-stimulating that we ignore them. They are for all intents and purposes, invisible to us.
    The Art of Blending

    Life on the Streets: 10 Lessons I Learned From the Homeless


    The homeless who live on the street are survivors. They have acquired skills and strategies to stay alive in hostile environments.

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