Mar 192021
 
 March 19, 2021  Posted by at 8:38 am Finance Tagged with: , , , , , , , ,


Camille Corot Study for “The Destruction of Sodom” 1843

 

Biden’s Tough-Guy Flexing At ‘Soulless Killer’ Putin Would Be Funny If.. (RT)
Putin Challenges Biden To A Live Public ‘Discussion’ (JTN)
Biden ‘Clearly Doesn’t Want Good Relations’ With Russia – Kremlin (RT)
A Brief List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus (Taibbi)
Journalists Yesterday Spread a Significant Lie All Over Twitter (Greenwald)
US and China Publicly Rebuke Each Other In First Major Talks Of Biden Era (G.)
Covid Spiking In Over A Dozen States—Most With High Vaccination Rates (F.)
Norwegian Scientists Say AstraZeneca DID Cause Blood Clots (RT)
Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma (Oster)
How The US Military Subverted The Afghan Peace Agreement (GZ)
FBI Now Probing Cuomo’s Corporate Immunity Law (DO)
Without Trump, Is A “Depression In Television” Coming? (Taibbi)
Building or Unbuilding America? (Nomi Prins)
Growth Of US Homelessness During 2020 Was Devastating – HUD (NPR)

 

 

 

 

My thought exactly. He made the whole thing up. Or rather, someone did it for him.

Biden’s Tough-Guy Flexing At ‘Soulless Killer’ Putin Would Be Funny If.. (RT)

[..] the likelihood of the Biden-Putin meeting occurring as described by Joe Biden is slim to none. When Biden made his trip to the Kremlin in 2011, he was fronting for the Obama administration’s “reset” with Russia. There was no opportunity, or need, for Biden’s faux machismo. The two men did meet, but as part of delegations discussing the possibility for improving relations. Not only would Biden’s insulting verbal flexing have been wildly inappropriate and inconsistent with the larger policy objectives of his visit, but it ran counter to his own feelings, expressed at the time, about Russia. “Russia has the best engineers in the world,” Biden said in a press conference after his meeting with Putin (who was serving as Russia’s prime minister, not president, at the time.) “Russia has intellectual capital. Russia is a great nation.”

These are not words one utters after telling a Russian leader in private that he has “no soul.” Biden’s struggle with the truth is well known, so it should come as no surprise to anyone that he possibly made up a meeting with Putin. Biden has been caught plagiarizing a speech delivered by former British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock, lied about his academic record and accomplishments, and manufactured from whole cloth a narrative that has him participating in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Biden’s lies all have one goal in common: to make him out to be that which he is not. So, too, his apparent lie about calling Putin soulless. Biden is desperate to be a ‘tough guy’. But for that reputation to stick vis-à-vis Putin, there had to be a ‘showdown’ moment, where the good guy faced off against the bad guy and called him out.

Since no such event exists, Biden had to make one up. And, like most of his lies, Biden repeats them long enough and often enough that they take on a life of their own, embraced as fact by unquestioning journalists. In his interview with Stephanopoulos, Biden raised the findings of the DNI report, and his conversation with Putin. “He will pay a price. We had a long talk, he and I. I know him relatively well and the conversation started off [like this]: I said, ‘I know you and you know me. If I establish this occurred, then be prepared.’”

Biden does not know Putin well at all. If he did, he would know that the last thing that would give the Russian leader pause were the fanciful tough-guy posturing of a geriatric president. There is little doubt that the Biden administration will impose additional sanctions against Russia in the days and weeks to come, citing the report as justification. There is also little doubt that these sanctions will have no impact whatsoever on the policies and practices of the Russian government. But that is not the point. Biden is not flexing for the benefit of Putin. His audience is the American people, and part and parcel of a coordinated campaign designed to drive home his mantra that “America is back.”

Read more …

Biden’s too busy.

Putin Challenges Biden To A Live Public ‘Discussion’ (JTN)

Russian President Vladimir Putin has suggested that he and American President Joe Biden engage in a live public “discussion.” The Russian leader’s proposal comes after Biden, when asked earlier this week during an ABC News interview whether he believes Putin is a killer, responded that he does believe that. A U.S. intelligence report indicates that Putin authorized influence operations related to the 2020 U.S. election, and during the interview Biden said that Putin “will pay a price.” Biden said that he told Putin: “If I establish this occurred, then be prepared.”

The intelligence report states in part: “We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, undermining public confidence in the electoral process, and exacerbating sociopolitical divisions in the US.” “I’ve just thought of this now,” the Russian president told a Russian state television reporter, according to ABC News. “I want to propose to President Biden to continue our discussion, but on the condition that we do it basically live, as it’s called. Without any delays and directly in an open, direct discussion. It seems to me that would be interesting for the people of Russia and for the people of the United States.”

Putin suggested that the “discussion” with Biden could be held on Friday or Monday: “I don’t want to put this off for long. I want to go the taiga this weekend to relax a little,” Putin said. “So we could do it tomorrow or Monday. We are ready at any time convenient for the American side.” When asked during Thursday’s press briefing if the idea is one that the administration would consider, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told the reporter she would need to “get back to you if that is something we are entertaining,” and noted that Biden will be busy in Georgia on Friday.

Read more …

Recalling your ambassador is a serious step.

Biden ‘Clearly Doesn’t Want Good Relations’ With Russia – Kremlin (RT)

The Kremlin has claimed that comments from American President Joe Biden, in which he said he believes his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to be a “killer,” is proof Washington isn’t serious about relations with the country. Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said there was no precedent for the remarks in the history of the two nations. “These are very bad statements by the US president,” he added. “He clearly doesn’t want to establish a relationship with our country, and we will proceed on that basis.” In the TV interview with ABC, which aired on Wednesday, Biden was asked by chief anchor George Stephanopoulos whether he thought Putin was “a killer.” “Mmm hmm, I do,” he replied.

He added that he had warned the Russian leader that the US would take action if it found evidence of Moscow meddling in the country’s 2020 presidential election. “He will pay a price,” Biden said. “We had a long talk, he and I… I know him relatively well. And the conversation started off, I said, ‘I know you and you know me. If I establish this occurred, then be prepared.’” A joint report by Washington’s spy agencies, published the day before, alleged that Russia was behind a campaign to “denigrate” Biden’s reputation during the campaign. The Kremlin has blasted the allegations, insisting it had not engaged in political smears against any candidates.

On Wednesday evening, Russia’s ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, was recalled to Moscow for talks on the future of ties with Washington. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that consultations were needed “to analyze what to do and where to head in the context of relations with the US.” The remarks have sparked a wave of criticism from Russian officials. The speaker of the country’s parliament, Vyacheslav Volodin, added his voice to those claiming the remarks were indicative of a diplomatic rift. The top politician argued that “this is a tantrum that comes from powerlessness. Putin is our president, attacking him is an attack on our country.”

Read more …

“We’ve spent the last five years watching as anonymous officials make major Russia-related claims, only to have those evidence-free claims fizzle.”

A Brief List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus (Taibbi)

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has released a much-hyped, much-cited new report on “Foreign Threats to the 2020 Elections.” The key conclusion: “We assess that Russian President Putin authorized, and a range of Russian government organizations conducted, influence operations aimed at denigrating President Biden’s candidacy and the Democratic Party, supporting former President Trump, [and] undermining public confidence in the electoral process…” The report added Ukrainian legislator Andrey Derkach, described as having “ties” to “Russia’s intelligence services,” and Konstantin Kilimnik, a “Russian influence agent” (whatever that means), used “prominent U.S. persons” and “media conduits” to “launder their narratives” to American audiences.

The “narratives” included “misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden” (note they didn’t use the word “false”). They added a small caveat at the end: “Judgments are not intended to imply that we have proof that shows something to be a fact.” As Glenn Greenwald already pointed out, the “launder their narratives” passage was wolfed down by our intelligence services’ own “media conduits” here at home, and regurgitated as proof that the “Hunter Biden laptop story came from the Kremlin,” even though the report didn’t mention the laptop story at all. Exactly one prominent reporter, Chris Hayes, had the decency to admit this after advancing the claim initially. With regard to the broader assessment: how many times are we going to do this? We’ve spent the last five years watching as anonymous officials make major Russia-related claims, only to have those evidence-free claims fizzle.

From the much-ballyhooed “changed RNC platform” story (Robert Mueller found no evidence the changed Republican platform was “undertaken at the behest of candidate Trump or Russia”), to the notion that Julian Assange was engaged in a conspiracy with the Russians (Mueller found no evidence for this either), to Michael Cohen’s alleged secret meetings in Prague with Russian conspirators (“not true,” the FBI flatly concluded) to the story that Trump directed Cohen to lie to Congress (“not accurate,” said Mueller), to wild stories about Paul Manafort meeting Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy, to a “bombshell” tale about Trump foreknowledge of Wikileaks releases that blew up in CNN’s face in spectacular fashion, reporters for years chased unsubstantiated claims instead of waiting to see what they were based upon.

The latest report’s chief conclusions are assessments about Derkach and Kilimnik, information that the whole world knew before this report was released. Hell, even Rudy Giuliani, whose meeting with Derkach is supposedly the big scandal here, admitted there was a “50/50 chance” the guy was a Russian spy. Kilimnik meanwhile has now been characterized as having “ties” to Russian intelligence (Mueller), and as a “Russian intelligence officer” (Senate Intelligence Committee), and is now back to being a mere “influence agent.” If he is Russian intelligence, then John McCain’s International Republican Institute (where Kilimnik worked), as well as embassies in Kiev and Moscow (where Kilimnik regularly gave information, according to the New York Times), have a lot of explaining to do.

Read more …

“..these career spies and propagandists, led by Obama CIA Director and serial liar John Brennan..”

Journalists Yesterday Spread a Significant Lie All Over Twitter (Greenwald)

Journalists with the largest and most influential media outlets disseminated an outright and quite significant lie on Tuesday to hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions, on Twitter. While some of them were shamed into acknowledging the falsity of their claim, many refused to, causing it to continue to spread up until this very moment. It is well worth examining how they function because this is how they deceive the public again and again, and it is why public trust in their pronouncements has justifiably plummeted. The lie they told involved claims of Russian involvement in the procurement of Hunter Biden’s laptop. In the weeks leading up to the 2020 election, The New York Post obtained that laptop and published a series of articles about the Biden family’s business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere.

In response, Twitter banned the posting of any links to that reporting and locked The Post out of its Twitter account for close to two weeks, while Facebook, through a long-time Democratic operative, announced that it would algorithmically suppress the reporting. The excuse used by those social media companies for censoring this reporting was the same invoked by media outlets to justify their refusal to report the contents of these documents: namely, that the materials were “Russian disinformation.” That claim of “Russian disinformation” was concocted by a group of several dozen former CIA officials and other operatives of the intelligence community devoted to defeating Trump.

Immediately after The Post published its first story about Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine that traded on his influence with his father, these career spies and propagandists, led by Obama CIA Director and serial liar John Brennan, published a letter asserting that the appearance of these Biden documents “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” News outlets uncritically hyped this claim as fact even though these security state operatives themselves admitted: “We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails…are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.” Even though this claim came from trained liars who, with uncharacteristic candor, acknowledged that they did not “have evidence” for their claim, media outlets uncritically ratified this assertion.

Read more …

Blinken got his ass handed to him.

US and China Publicly Rebuke Each Other In First Major Talks Of Biden Era (G.)

The United States and China have clashed over human rights during their first face-to-face high-level talks since Joe Biden took office, with one senior Chinese official urging the US to address “deep-seated” issues such as racism, and accusing his American counterparts of “condescension”.Any hopes that the meeting, in Anchorage, would reset bilateral ties after years of tensions over trade and cyber security during Donald Trump’s presidency evaporated when US secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan opened their meeting with China’s top diplomat Yang Jiechi and state councillor Wang Yi.

After Blinken referred to rising global concern over Beijing’s human rights record, Yang said: “We hope that United States will do better on human rights. The fact is that there are many problems within the United States regarding human rights, which is admitted by the US itself,” he said in a 15-minute speech that appeared to irritate Blinken. He added that US human rights issues were “deep-seated … they did not just emerge over the past four years, such as Black Lives Matter”. In his opening remarks Blinken had said world leaders had voiced “deep satisfaction” that the US was re-engaging with the international community after four years of Trump’s “America First” doctrine. “I’m also hearing deep concern about some of the actions your government is taking.”

Blinken, who added he had heard similar sentiments during his visits this week to Japan and South Korea, said the Biden administration and its allies were united in pushing back against China’s increasing authoritarianism and assertiveness at home and abroad. In response, Yang angrily demanded that the US stop pushing its own version of democracy at a time when it was dealing with discontent among its own population. “We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world,” he said. “Many people within the United States actually have little confidence in the democracy of the United States.” “China will not accept unwarranted accusations from the US side,” Yang said, adding that recent developments had plunged relations “into a period of unprecedented difficulty” that “has damaged the interests of our two peoples.”

Read more …

Get healthy.

Covid Spiking In Over A Dozen States—Most With High Vaccination Rates (F.)

Coronavirus cases are again spiking in 13 U.S. states, according to an analysis of trends over the past week, including some states among the highest in vaccination rates as health experts warn more contagious variants of Covid-19 will soon dominate the United States. An Axios analysis found Michigan by far leading the way in new cases, with the 7-day rolling average spiking by more than 53%. Michigan is above the U.S. average in terms of vaccination rate, according to Johns Hopkins University, but cases, positivity rate and hospitalizations are all on the rise. State health officials have placed the blame on highly contagious new variants now spreading in the state, as health experts caution national vaccination efforts are a race against the contagious strains.

Other states among the highest in vaccination rates, including West Virginia, Maine and Montana are also dealing with case spikes. Only two of the states with rising cases—Mississippi and New Hampshire—are below the U.S. average in terms of vaccination rate, according to Johns Hopkins. Top health officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, have said a variant that originated in the U.K. could become the dominant strain in the U.S. by the end of the month. That strain is believed to be some 56% more contagious and perhaps twice as deadly than the existing dominant strain in the United States. Health experts say the country is continuing to move in the right direction as a whole, with the vaccine effort hopefully ending the pandemic this year.

But what had been a rapid national case decline starting in January has slowed significantly over the past few weeks, with the U.S. continuing to average over 50,000 new cases a day, a plateau level Fauci said “concerns me.” Top health officials and President Joe Biden are also advising against expansive reopening measures that states are putting into effect, including some that have decided to lift mask mandates.

Read more …

“The clotting in those patients was triggered by a very specific “strong immune response” likely caused as a result of the AstraZeneca jab..”

Norwegian Scientists Say AstraZeneca DID Cause Blood Clots (RT)

Norwegian scientists have linked the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots – a condition seen in some people that led countries around the world to halt its use. But British and Dutch medics say there’s no evidence for such a link. “The cause of our patients’ condition has now been found,” Pal Andre Holme, the head of a research group at the Oslo University Hospital, told Norway’s VG media outlet. He was referring to the cases of three health workers under the age of 50 who suffered from severe blood clotting after receiving the AstraZeneca jab. One of the medics then died on Monday. The clotting in those patients was triggered by a very specific “strong immune response” likely caused as a result of the AstraZeneca jab, Holme explained.

In collaboration with the University Hospital of North Norway, Holme’s team detected specific antibodies that “activate” platelets and in some cases can lead to blood clots. Asked by VG if the vaccine was the “most likely” cause of this specific immune response, Holme said he believes “there is no other thing” in the history of the three individual patients which would generate such a response. None of the three patients had a history of similar health issues before, he said. I am pretty sure it is these antibodies that are the cause and I see no other reason than that it is the vaccine that triggers them.

The professor still admitted that such side effects are likely to be very rare since “we are talking about very specific antibodies.” Norway halted the use of the AstraZeneca jab in its vaccination campaign alongside many other European nations. Some 120,000 Norwegians already received the jabs produced by the British-Swedish company. According to Norwegian media, “very few” serious side effects were reported by those vaccinated to date. [..] Norwegian scientists revealed the results of their analysis just as the British medical regulator, MHRA, said that it found no evidence that could prove the link between the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clotting.

“This type of blood clot can occur naturally in people who have not been vaccinated, as well as in those suffering from COVID-19,” the MHRA CEO, Dr. June Raine, said in a statement, adding that her agency’s “thorough and careful review” showed that blood clots in veins of affected persons are occurring just as often as they would “in the absence of vaccination.”

Read more …

But you still want to vaccinate all kids?

Your Unvaccinated Kid Is Like a Vaccinated Grandma (Oster)

Different vaccines yield different results, but all of the vaccines approved by the FDA (Pfizer-BioNTech’s, Moderna’s, and Johnson & Johnson’s) are very effective, which is why the CDC has indicated that vaccinated individuals can interact unmasked with other vaccinated individuals. It hasn’t yet commented on flying, but I’m guessing the CDC will relax its flying advisories for vaccinated individuals in the next few weeks. It will continue to recommend masks, for the sake of protecting the unvaccinated population, because the science on transmission by the vaccinated is still hazy. Now think about your child. The CDC has published some risk assessments by age. For comparison’s sake, I’ll phrase the findings the way I would the results of a vaccine trial:

Being a child aged 5 to 17 is 99.9 percent protective against the risk of death and 98 percent protective against hospitalization. For children 0 to 4, these numbers are 99.9 percent (death) and 96 percent (hospitalization). The central goal of vaccination is preventing serious illness and death. From this standpoint, being a child is a really great vaccine. Your unvaccinated first grader appears to have about as much protection from serious illness as a vaccinated grandmother. Comparisons are more difficult when it comes to the risk of any infection at all. An Israeli study undergoing peer review found that the Pfizer vaccine reduces infection in asymptomatic cases by about 90 percent, and in symptomatic cases by almost 94 percent.

Child case counts haven’t been well documented, in part because asymptomatic infection appears to be so common among kids. However, the available data suggest that children are less likely than adults to contract the coronavirus, but more likely to contract it than a vaccinated grandmother. (Below, I’ll address the latest thinking on variants, and research on the possible long-term effects of less-than-serious infections, which remains murky, and controversial.) This news may feel a little mixed: Yes, kids are protected from serious illness, just like their vaccinated grandparents, but they are not as protected from contracting the virus at all. Here is where the concept of herd immunity comes in to save the summer. If the Israeli Pfizer study is anywhere near right, then case rates will fall once a large share of adults are vaccinated. They are likely to fall a lot as the virus finds fewer and fewer receptive hosts.

Read more …

Must have war.

How The US Military Subverted The Afghan Peace Agreement (GZ)

In an exclusive interview with The Grayzone Col. Douglas Macgregor, a former senior advisor to the Acting Secretary of Defense, revealed that President Donald Trump shocked the US military only days after the election last November by signing a presidential order calling for the withdrawal of all remaining US troops from Afghanistan by the end of the year. As Macgregor explained to The Grayzone, the order to withdraw was met with intense pressure from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark M. Milley, which caused the president to capitulate. Trump agreed to withdraw only half of the 5,000 remaining troops in the country. Neither Trump’s order nor the pressure from the JCS Chairman was reported by the national media at the time.


The president’s surrender represented the Pentagon’s latest victory in a year-long campaign to sabotage the US-Taliban peace agreement signed in February 2020. Military and DOD leaders thus extended the disastrous and unpopular 20-year US war in Afghanistan into the administration of President Joseph Biden. The subversion of the peace agreement with the Taliban initiated by the US military leadership in Washington and Afghanistan began almost as soon as Trump’s personal envoy Zalmay Khalilzad negotiated a tentative deal in November 2019. The campaign to undermine presidential authority was actively supported by then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper.

Read more …

“Critics say that the immunity law removed a key deterrent to corporate malfeasance, and victims and their families were subsequently stripped of their legal rights.”

FBI Now Probing Cuomo’s Corporate Immunity Law (DO)

Federal law enforcement officials are scrutinizing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s controversial move to help his donor shield nursing home executives from legal consequences during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report. The probe follows a Daily Poster investigative series detailing how one of Cuomo’s biggest donors, the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA) — a lobby group that represents hospital systems and nursing home operators — said it “drafted and aggressively advocated for” the corporate immunity provision. Cuomo’s administration quietly inserted the measure into his state’s budget as thousands lay dying from COVID-19 in New York nursing homes.

Critics say that the immunity law removed a key deterrent to corporate malfeasance, and victims and their families were subsequently stripped of their legal rights. Cuomo’s original executive order shielding front line health care workers from lawsuits was widely reported, but not the governor’s separate budget language extending immunity to hospital and nursing home corporations’ executives and board members. On Thursday, THE CITY disclosed that federal investigators looking into Cuomo’s handling of nursing home policy are now specifically asking questions about the immunity provision. The New York news outlet reports:

“FBI investigators probing the Cuomo administration’s handling of nursing homes during the pandemic last spring are seeking information about a state budget provision that gave operators legal immunity, THE CITY has learned. In recent weeks, FBI officials have been looking to interview members of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s staff and other state officials about the eleventh-hour addition to the state budget last March, according to three people familiar with the matter. The measure granted nursing homes and hospitals broad legal protections against lawsuits and criminal liability for care provided to residents and patients during the pandemic. FBI officials started to make house calls this month, showing up at people’s residences and leaving business cards, according to the three sources. Investigators’ questions have focused primarily on the nursing home immunity provision and how it “got in the state budget,” said one legislative source, who did not want to be named because of the ongoing probe.”

Read more …

Not coming, but already here.

Without Trump, Is A “Depression In Television” Coming? (Taibbi)

[..] the Democratic Party’s response to Trump — which involved multiple efforts to remove him, premised on the idea that every day he spent in the Oval Office was an existential threat to humanity — allowed stations to turn every day of the Trump years into a baby-down-a-well story (the baby was democracy). Between the Mueller investigation, two impeachments, the Kavanaugh confirmation, multiple border crises, the “Treason in Helsinki” fiasco, and a hundred other tales, every day could be pitched as a drop-everything emergency. Add the partisan rooting angle, and you had ratings gold. Imagine three or four dozen Super Bowls a year, each one played in the middle of a category 5 hurricane, and you come close to grasping the magnitude of the gift that Donald Trump was to MSNBC, Fox, and CNN.

Six or seven years ago, it was common to see CNN or MSNBC fall outside the top 20 rated cable networks, below titans like Disney, USA, TBS, and the History Channel. By 2020, the three top networks on cable — not just news networks, but overall — were Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. The fact that news ate away so much of the market share of the entertainment business in the Trump years raises questions about what exactly we were watching. Jump in your Dr. Who police box and go back to 2014, the last year Trump was not a major political figure. The cable news genre had what Variety described as an “overall down year.” It was a particularly grim time for CNN and MSNBC:

Total Primetime Viewers, 2014 Change
Fox News 1.779 million (even)
MSNBC 600,000 (down 8%)
CNN 528,000 (down 8%)
HLN 337,000 (down 16%)

CNN exemplified the pre-Trump dilemma. In 2011, the network’s average primetime viewership was 689,000. That dropped to 670,000 in 2012, and the year after that, in 2013, it fell all the way to 568,000, a 20-year low. Imagine the pucker factor at Time Warner the next year, when CNN’s entire 8-11 p.m. programming slate dropped 8% off that 20-year dip. 2013 was CNN’s first year under the management of Jeff Zucker, whose career arc leading into the Trump years was a dazzling study in failing upward. He was named head of NBC Entertainment in 2000, and rode the successes of a handful of shows — including, notably, The Apprentice — into a job as CEO of NBC Universal, where he presided over one of the most disastrous tenures of any TV executive in history. Under his leadership, NBC dropped to fourth behind ABC, CBS, and Fox, amid catastrophic decisions like trying to move Jay Leno into primetime.

When Zucker moved to CNN, he trumpeted a new plan to save the news. This is from Politico in 2013: “Zucker has told staff he wants to “broaden the definition of what news is,” meaning more sports, more entertainment, more human interest stories — and, at times, less politics.” That didn’t work out so well in 2014, though to be fair to Zucker, the ratings narrative started reversing at least somewhat before Trump jumped on the scene. But the first giant leap forward for the business as a whole came in 2015, when CNN’s average primetime audience soared to 730,000, a 30% increase, in significant part because it hosted two Republican debates starring Trump.

The news business had never seen anything like the Trump effect. The first Republican debate on Fox drew 25 million viewers and was the most-watched non-sports event in the history of cable, while the second debate drew 23 million and was merely the top show in the history of CNN. Taking note of all this was Trump himself, whose poll numbers were dipping a bit at the end of 2015. Some were predicting his demise. To this, Trump snapped, “I’m not a masochist,” and promised he’d pull out if his numbers worsened. However, he said, if he did, “There’d be a major collapse of television ratings,” adding a poisonous prediction: “It would become a depression in television.”

Read more …

“The cost of what we need but haven’t done to modernize our infrastructure has expanded to $5.6 trillion over the last 20 years ($3 trillion in the last decade alone)”

Building or Unbuilding America? (Nomi Prins)

During the Trump years, the phrase “Infrastructure Week” rang out as a sort of Groundhog Day-style punchline. What began in June 2017 as a failed effort by The Donald’s White House and a Republican Senate to focus on the desperately needed rebuilding of American infrastructure morphed into a meme and a running joke in Washington. Despite the focus in recent years on President Trump’s failure to do anything for the country’s crumbling infrastructure, here’s a sad reality: considered over a longer period of time, Washington’s political failure to fund the repairing, modernizing, or in some cases simply the building of that national infrastructure has proven a remarkably bipartisan “effort.”

After all, the same grand unfulfilled ambitions for infrastructure were part and parcel of the Obama White House from 2009 on and could well typify the Biden years, if Congress doesn’t get its act together (or the filibuster doesn’t go down in flames). The disastrous electric grid power outages that occurred during the recent deep freeze in Texas are but the latest example of the pressing need for infrastructure upgrades and investments of every sort. If nothing is done, more people will suffer, more jobs will be lost, and the economy will face drastic consequences. Since the mid-twentieth century, when most of this country’s modern infrastructure systems were first established, the population has doubled. Not only are American roads, airports, electric grids, waterways, railways and more distinctly outdated, but today’s crucial telecommunications sector hasn’t ever been subjected to a comprehensive broadband strategy.

Worse yet, what’s known as America’s “infrastructure gap” only continues to widen. The cost of what we need but haven’t done to modernize our infrastructure has expanded to $5.6 trillion over the last 20 years ($3 trillion in the last decade alone), according to a report by the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). Some estimates now even run as high as $7 trillion. In other words, as old infrastructure deteriorates and new infrastructure and technology are needed, the cost of addressing this ongoing problem only escalates. Currently, there is a $1-trillion backlog of (yet unapproved) deferred-maintenance funding floating around Capitol Hill. Without action in the reasonable future, certain kinds of American infrastructure could, like that Texas energy grid, soon be deemed unsafe.

Read more …

Make the right to housing a law.

Growth Of US Homelessness During 2020 Was Devastating – HUD (NPR)

The nation’s homeless population grew last year for the fourth year in a row. On a single night in January 2020, there were more than 580,000 individuals who were homeless in the United States, a 2% increase from the year before. The numbers, released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development Thursday, do not reflect the impact of the pandemic. “And we know the pandemic has only made the homelessness crisis worse,” HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge said in a video message accompanying the report. She called the numbers “devastating” and said the nation has a “moral responsibility to end homelessness.” Among the report’s more sobering findings: homelessness among veterans and families did not improve for the first time in many years.


Also, more than 106,000 children were homeless during the once-a-year count, conducted in most communities across the nation. While the majority of homeless children were in shelters or transitional housing, almost 11,000 were living outside. As has been the case for years, a disproportionate share of those experiencing homelessness were Black — about 39% of the total, though African Americans make up about 13% of the nation’s overall population. Twenty-three percent of those who were homeless last year identified as Hispanic or Latino. California was home to the largest number of people experiencing homelessness — 161,548 — according to the 2020 count. A quarter of all homeless individuals in the United States were living in either New York City or Los Angeles. For the first time since the government began doing the annual count, the number of single adults living outside — 209,413 — exceeded the number of individuals living in shelters — 199,478.

Read more …

 

 

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Home Forums Debt Rattle March 19 2021

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  • #71423

    Camille Corot Study for “The Destruction of Sodom” 1843   • Biden’s Tough-Guy Flexing At ‘Soulless Killer’ Putin Would Be Funny If.. (RT) • Putin
    [See the full post at: Debt Rattle March 19 2021]

    #71424
    a kullervo
    Participant

    Greetings,

    One can regard the general response to the trendy virus as:
    a) A global conspiracy theory working its way through;
    b) global stupidity reaching a paroxysmic peak.

    Is it only me who considers b) as far worse than anything else?

    To the casual observer, clear thinking is like a glossy, spotless surface: one can hardly fathom what lurks beneath.

    A better idea

    #71425
    V. Arnold
    Participant

    Camille Corot Study for “The Destruction of Sodom” 1843

    Interesting painting. Interesting that armegeddon seems to always come from the sky.

    Ritter (Scott) is always a good source; proved exemplary during the lead up to March 19, 2003…
    It should be noted that he was attacked on every (I repeat every) front for his steadfast factual reporting on the Iraq front…
    The vaccine madness is to see the world in realtime motion; surely it never stops????

    #71427
    Basseterre Kitona
    Participant

    A vaccine designer has some very important critiques on the dangers of mass vaccination for sars-cov-2:

    https://dryburgh.com/geert-vanden-bossche-mass-vaccination-danger/

    #71428
    Basseterre Kitona
    Participant

    Wow, the Geert Vanden Bossche interview finally posted…only took a week of trying.

    And if anyone doubts that vaccines can be worse than useless, please recall the dengue vaccine episode in Philippines that backfired:

    https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/03/719037789/botched-vaccine-launch-has-deadly-repercussions

    Get healthy…and avoid the vaccines (at least for now).

    #71429
    zerosum
    Participant

    TAE seeks out truth-tellers

    “influence agent.”
    An agent of influence is an agent of some stature who uses his or her position to influence public opinion or decision making to produce results beneficial to the country whose intelligence service operates the agent.

    “whisperer”

    a person skilled in taming or training a specified kind of animal, typically using body language and gentle vocal encouragement rather than physical contact.

    “Talk to the Animals – Sammy Davis Jr.”

    Oh, if I could talk to the animals, just imagine it
    Chatting with a chimp in chimpanzee
    Imagine talking to a tiger, chatting with a cheetah
    What a neat achievement it would be
    ———–
    • A Brief List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus (Taibbi)

    “We’ve spent the last five years watching as anonymous officials make major Russia-related claims, only to have those evidence-free claims fizzle.”

    • Journalists Yesterday Spread a Significant Lie All Over Twitter (Greenwald)

    “While some of them were shamed into acknowledging the falsity of their claim, many refused to, causing it to continue to spread up until this very moment. It is well worth examining how they function because this is how they deceive the public again and again, and it is why public trust in their pronouncements has justifiably plummeted. The lie they told involved claims of Russian involvement in the procurement of Hunter Biden’s laptop ….
    accusations from ex-CIA operatives without bothering to note that they were unaccompanied by evidence and that even those agents admitted they had none. ….
    Evidence-free assertions from the U.S. intelligence community merit skepticism, not blind faith — especially from people calling themselves journalists.”

    ——
    • How The US Military Subverted The Peace Agreement (GZ) – GARETH PORTER
    “The military’s plan to sabotage the agreement hinged on creating the false impression that the Taliban had reneged on its commitments. This ruse was advanced mostly publicly by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Esper. …..
    The maneuvering by the Pentagon to obstruct the Trump administration’s initiative to end an extremely unpopular war in Afghanistan was just one example in a long-established pattern of undermining presidential authority over matters of war and peace.

    When he was vice president, Joe Biden witnessed first-hand the pressures the Pentagon brass imposed on Barack Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan. With the peace agreement’s May 1 deadline for final US withdrawal just weeks away, Biden is certain to face another round of maximum pressure to keep US troops in the quagmire of Afghanistan, supposedly as “leverage” on the Taliban.”
    =========

    #71430
    zerosum
    Participant

    The USA is #1
    The USA is so strong that it can wage a war for 20 years in Afghanistan
    The USA is so strong that it can detect interference from China and Russia
    The USA is so strong that it can rebuild the country’s crumbling infrastructure
    The USA is so strong that it can spend Trillions of dollars on fighting the virus
    The USA is so strong that it can spend Trillions of dollars on the southern border security
    The USA is so strong that it can spend Trillions of dollars feeding, teaching, and housing of millions of immigrants

    • Building or Unbuilding America? (Nomi Prins)
    • Growth Of US Homelessness During 2020 Was Devastating – HUD (NPR)

    #71434
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    @ Raul

    “Make the right to housing a law.”

    Sure, but first we’ll need to build a lot more prisons-as-factories/day-labor-pools. And a lot more military barracks. Might as well make the right to legislate a house… of representatives. Oh. I see we already have.
    I have difficulty believing you seriously think such an action would improve the issue other than some immediate minimal short-term gains acheved at exorbitant cost and doomed to fail in a few years.

    ^&*

    @ a kullervo

    “One can regard the general response to the trendy virus as:
    a) A global conspiracy theory working its way through;
    b) global stupidity reaching a paroxysmic peak.

    “Is it only me who considers b) as far worse than anything else?”

    Oh no. You have me for company. Evil at least has enough sense to run from its own trouble. Stupid just doubles down on it.

    #71435
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    Here’s stupid calling stupid stupid:

    Stupid

    WP says: “Reply To: Debt Rattle March 19 2021Error: Slow down; you move too fast.”

    I get that a lot.

    #71436
    Dr. D
    Participant

    “A Brief List Of Official Russia Claims That Proved To Be Bogus (Taibbi)”

    Thanks Taibbi! Props! And Greenwald too who said the same thing.

    Solution: attack and silence Substack. ‘Cause: transgender. ‘Cause: I don’t care what, RussiaRussia, raycisss, who cares, shut them up and let’s get on that war! Those 2 Billion people aren’t going to kill themselves you know! It takes a small handful of transparent lies for us and THEN they’re happy to kill themselves and pay us for the privilege.

    But I guess no one will be happy until we have a world war to point to. Whooda knoowd?

    Speaking of mass death, look to the food this year, it’s bad. Drought already in the U.S. In March.

    https://research.rabobank.com/markets/en/documents/291425_Biblical-Lean-and-Mean.pdf

    Bill Gates was buying farmland because he’s a swell guy and just helping you out.

    “Covid Spiking in Over A Dozen States—Most with High Vaccination Rates (F.)”

    This is very strange. Except for saying they put CV in the vaccine – and why would I say that? – it’s saying more than the vaccine doesn’t work. It means they test more, and more falsely? Is anyone in the hospital? There’s still no death rate, so it’s hard to tell what’s going on.

    “Norwegian Scientists Say AstraZeneca DID Cause Blood Clots (RT)”

    Yes, but this is a whole nation and a whole nation’s doctors. Nobody’s cared before. Or about Science, or…

    One thing about the clots though is that they happen unusually fast. If I developed a CIA assassin umbrella poison I couldn’t do any better. Clearly far deadlier than Novachok, the only deadly toxin that has killed zero victims. They should have hired Pfizer.

    “But you still want to vaccinate all kids?”

    Yes, how else will they kill them all? One by one is just taking too long and the border is already full.

    I predict later they will look at you like you looked at the Nazis. That is: correctly. They experimented on people too. And they were government-adoring herd-following social democrats.

    BI Now Probing Cuomo’s Corporate Immunity Law (DO)”

    Pretty sure there’s no immunity for human rights and war crimes. But since the Supreme Court doesn’t hear cases anymore, we’ll never know. There’s always pitchforks and torches, and stuff.

    Without Trump, Is A “Depression In Television” Coming? (Taibbi)”

    Someone pointed out that the only remaining power is media, propaganda, brainwashing, word magic. But if that magic spell no longer reaches their ears, where is your control? With no thought control, where is your power? Bye bye nice man.

    But again, Taibbi is telling the truth, unlike CNN who reports it’s only OAN that has ratings fall…half as much as CNN did. So this truth must be stopped at all costs! Even if we have to destroy the whole platform and everyone who pays for it.
    Problem: nobody wants your s—t. Nobody’s buying what you’re selling. They’re turning you off, all of it. You lost.

    “The cost of what we need but haven’t done to modernize our infrastructure has expanded to $5.6 trillion over the last 20 years ($3 trillion in the last decade alone)”

    That’s okay: with the number of people they’re killing or planning to kill it would be a waste anyway. Why? Probably because they have believed since the 70s there’s an Ice Age or climate dislocation coming that will kill millions. They’ve been talking about it for decades, but calling it “Global Warming” so they could tax your heating fuel and even your breathing.

    Everybody knows what needs to be done. It’s the JOB of the middle manager apparatchiks up through the CEO level to make sure what needs to be done doesn’t happen. They’ve been effective since it’s way easier to break things and liquidate them than to build and create.

    Armageddon comes with the opening of the first seal: plague and disease. Check!

    Dengue and a hundred others failed, killing millions. Ask India and Mr. Gates. Since that’s all right there on Google, the answer is “No it didn’t.” …I know that because I very studiously refused to look. Vaccines work 100% of the people, 100% of the time. Glyphosate is safe as water. They will meet us with open arms and the war will pay for itself.

    #71437
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    @ Dr. D

    “Armageddon comes with the opening of the first seal: plague and disease. Check!”

    1 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
    2 And I saw, and behold a white horse: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.

    Bow and arrow seems a bit of a stretch as a metaphor for vaccination much less disease.

    I never could make sense of Revelations. I think it’s coded allegory for coded allegory. But I adore the more poetic passages:

    Revelation 6:12-17

    12 And I beheld when he had opened the sixth seal, and, lo, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair, and the moon became as blood;
    13 And the stars of the heavens fell unto the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken of a mighty wind.
    14 And the heavens departed as a scroll when it is rolled together; and every mountain and island were moved out of their places.
    15 And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains;
    16 And said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb:
    17 For the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand?

    Most major Hollywood movies seem to be subconscious projections of something like this. Run from Galactacus! Hide!

    As a member fo the First Church of Silly Star Wars Shit, I hold to the orthodox view: the post-mortal Obi Wan is a Being of Pure Light a la original TV Star Trek episodes. There are heretics who claim that a being of pure light is merely a hologram but they are literlist fools with no soul or hope for their ultimate fate. Our Inquisition takes such heretics and p[laces them in a secure family entertainment room to binge-watch Battlestar Galactica until they confess their sins.

    #71438
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    Today, the Edit function, clicked, closes the Edit function and makes the post permanent. Oh, the bare-bones internet, another failing infrastructure taxed to the max by corporate and government misuse.

    ^&*

    And now works again. THese platforms are running on fumes, I think.

    #71439
    zerosum
    Participant

    Check out your holy books, and your history books.
    Adam and Eve were not the first that left their social/economic system.
    The shit hit the fan even for the angels.
    They had to escape their social/economic system and set up a competing social/economic system.
    Its the untold truth.

    I see that my post reached some commentators.
    People have survived Armageddon in the past.
    People will survive Armageddon in the future.

    #71440
    phoenixvoice
    Participant

    “ global stupidity reaching a paroxysmic peak” — bingo!

    A friend posted to Facebook yesterday that she had “made antibodies” due to her vaccination. One commenter on her post said that she was thinking of getting an “antibody test” after her vaccine series. Ignorance. Stupidity. Pseudoscience. I couldn’t resist commenting that the “Covid antibody test” detects corona virus antibodies generally, and can’t detect Covid spike protein antibodies created from inoculation with the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

    Is it that my left leaning friends were always this credulous? Is it just because so many are stuck in these digital media bubble silos that surround our minds in cottony propaganda? Because we are not interacting face to face and it this is preventing many from obtaining accurate bearings on what is going on in the world?

    #71442
    Noirette
    Participant

    The vaccination of children and v. young people contra-covid is totally crazy and beyond the pale (see upstateNYer, Doc Robinson, others, in previous thread.)

    What has happened with the Pfizer, Moderna, vaccines shows there is a breakdown between ‘official’ – Gvmt. produced so to speak – advisories, and what happens on the ground.

    For ex. the UK advisory for the Pfizer jab stated clearly that,

    It is unknown whether /vaccine/ has an impact on fertility. (For men and women)

    Safety for under-16 not demonstrated.. and more …laid out pretty clearly…

    On the ground, the advisories are not followed because of hype and propaganda for the VAX which works via ascarcity thus desirable model as well as the ‘emulation model, popular movie stars, fantastic ppl, take the vax, some saintly women are even willing to die from it, and so on.

    Just like the ads strategy used for ex. for expensive handbags (some models from Vuitton) and watches (Rolex top of range..) These AD methods are used because they are the only way of by-passing the Gvmt. official strictures, not that those are in fact ‘independent’ or ‘rigorous’ or ‘best science’ etc. Many of them have been corrupted by corporare funds and the attendant melding of corps – “humanitarian” – other, ex. UN orgs – and State, and are on the take / have thru corruption become completely incompetent. Still, these various instituted bodies are obliged to pretend, and display a weak, imho unconvincing, version of ‘clean hands’ and “fulfilling our mandate.”

    Pregnant women should not be vaxxed, but on the ground, they are, and are mighty proud, and that is all fine with >> the MSM, others, nobody objects.

    So part of all that swampy mess is that if the VAX promotes health and Proteks (sic!) it must also be good for our little kiddies, who should be allowed to ‘get’ it, but, for their safety, you never know, we will test it first!

    #71443
    Mr. House
    Participant

    “Is it that my left leaning friends were always this credulous? Is it just because so many are stuck in these digital media bubble silos that surround our minds in cottony propaganda? Because we are not interacting face to face and it this is preventing many from obtaining accurate bearings on what is going on in the world?”

    Fear and denial. Since 2008, from around 2011 until about 2016 you could almost think you were crazy for thinking this was all unsustainable. I found myself thinking that from time to time. But i just couldn’t let go of 0% interest rates and QE. I remember once stating to an ex girlfriend around 2008 who was very big into the “environment” that actually a recession would be the best thing to fix climate change. A reduction in activity. The banking system was ready to blow again in 2019. We’ve reduced greenhouse gasses and spending in one swoop and most are none the wiser. People know something is wrong, but they refuse to think that those they “respect” and hold in high regard might not think the same about them. So they let themselves be led by false prophets and charlatans. And anyone who attempts to pierce this vale must be rejected. For if what i’m being told isn’t true, then what does that say about us? And worst of all, what does it say about me?

    #71446
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    phoenixvoice

    “Is it that my left leaning friends were always this credulous? Is it just because so many are stuck in these digital media bubble silos that surround our minds in cottony propaganda? Because we are not interacting face to face and it this is preventing many from obtaining accurate bearings on what is going on in the world?”

    I think it’s because they are products of public and advanced modern education. THey are trained to be professional pedants. They are like the scholars of Scholasticism.

    All of us are to some extent this way to the extent we went through the school system successfully. (I dropped out in my freshman year.) But liberals as a group are moreso, in my experience, perhaps because they lean toward the liberal arts degrees versus hard science or MBAs?

    One might say (throwing fish to the dolphins here, I am) that conservatives lean toward Law and Order and liberals lean toward Law and Orders? It’s their reactionary curse from too often being forced to deal with major social ills that conbservatives fail to address. They idealize their ideologiy, and once you idealize something, it has the right to rule and reign by whatever means deemed necessary.

    Currently, the conservative camp has become the new progressive camp insomuch as it is willing to address those social ills caused by their loyal opposition, the liberals. Either way, both sides are right, goddammit, what are you some kind of libtard/repugnican?, and that holds together about as well as two magnets of identical polarity.

    All that said, I’ve heard numerous conservatives say might dumb things about covid or you name it. Credulousness is hardly a monopoly of either side.

    #71447
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    TV Sucks Dead Fish“>TV Sucks Dead Fish

    Poor Flipper.

    We’re not allowed to see the violence on which our lives rest. It’s illegal to film inside USA slaughterhouses and feedlots. etc. etc. etc….

    You can look away from reality and look at the screen. I spend my time looking at one. (And an old-school book is a kind of screen too, and books have done great damage as well, but not nearly as much as hypnotic electronic media.)

    But reality remains behind that screen.

    #71448
    straightwalker
    Participant

    @madamski
    speaking of books… were you around NY / Woodstock in the sixties? If so, pm me: straightwalker at protonmailDOTcom.

    #71451
    a kullervo
    Participant

    @straightwalker

    Don’t let madamski wits fool you: she’s younger.

    #71452
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    I saw Woodstock on album covers. Didn’t see the movie. I remember seeing Niagra Falls and Letchworth State Park as a child on a family trip b ut then we turned south for some small town in Pennsylvania coal country to visit old relatives. I mean: old. Almost as old as me, and I am so old people think I’m younger.

    #71453
    WES
    Participant

    Here is the problem with making housing a law. The government will then use the law to define what housing is. If providing housing is too expensive or requires too much effort by the government then housing becomes defined as “a hole you need to dig in the ground, yourself”.

    Remember how lies are introduced into the media.
    The 3 liars are:
    The State Dept. uses CNN.
    The FBI uses the New York Times.
    The CIA uses the Washington Post.
    They each confirm each other’s lies to create the truth.

    #71454
    zerosum
    Participant

    TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE.
    As I hear Biden repeatedly praise his “lalaland”, these are my thoughts.
    (more embarrassing than tripping on the stairs)
    HYPOCRISY
    the practice of claiming to have moral standards or beliefs to which one’s own behavior does not conform; pretense.
    synonyms:
    sanctimoniousness · sanctimony · pietism · piousness · affected piety · affected superiority · false virtue · cant · humbug · pretense · posturing · speciousness · empty talk · insincerity · falseness · falsity · deceptiveness · deceit · deceitfulness · deception · dishonesty · dissembling · dissimulation · duplicity · imposture · two-facedness · double-dealing · phoneyness

    #71455
    WES
    Participant

    Is it just me?
    Are these mRNA things actually what we would call “vaccines”?
    Are mRNAs more correctly described as gene therapy or something else?
    Somehow I just feel mRNAs have been corruptly called “vaccines” when they are no such thing?

    #71456
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    I’ve come to the conclusion that what we are seeing with this [apparently] insane compliance to covid “science” (including vaccination compliance) is the result of decades of subordinating our health to medical professionals (I can only speak about the US situation since that’s where I live).

    The vast majority of people here call their dr at the first sign of illness, submit to every “preventative” test that’s recommended, take pills to fix the most minor health issue, and the list goes on and on. I’m genuinely shocked by how often the people I work with go to the dr. When I was a kid we went to a dr when we were seriously ill. Now you can’t see a dr when you’re seriously ill unless you’ve established a relationship with them as a “primary care physician” that you also get to visit regularly when you aren’t sick at all. $$$$$

    A few days back V. Arnold posted a comment that ended with something like … “you have to own it.” He’s absolutely right. That’s what each person needs to do. Put on the “big boy” pants and own it. But that’s what most Americans no longer do – they don’t “own” their own health or their own bodies. They subject themselves to whatever is the latest recommendation, no questions asked. To think they’d begin having independent thoughts now, after a year of fear mongering about covid, isn’t even slightly realistic.

    In some ways I don’t blame them. After decades of not participating in mainstream medicine I’ve found that being on the outside and swimming against the flow is tiring and lonely. (Now, if Dr John Day practiced in upstate NY, probably be a different story. Him, I would set an appointment with). However, in NY nearly all medical practices are owned lock, stock and barrel by corporations. Profit trumps everything, EMRs create havoc, exhausted doctors, and everyone too fatigued to care about much of anything anymore.

    #71457
    WES
    Participant

    How soon will Obama have to replace joe with harris?
    joe is deteriorating right before our eyes.
    joe is no longer viewed as weak but old and feeble.
    joe can not take calls from foreign leaders.
    joe has trouble completing his sentences.
    joe now is having trouble climbing stairs.
    The excuses are becoming quite ridiculous.
    Even the loyal media are having trouble hiding joe.
    When are we going to see the theatre curtain pulled back and Obama emerge?

    #71460
    upstateNYer
    Participant

    @WES: no, it’s not just you. The mRNA injections do not resemble what has been described as a vaccine in the past. Not to worry. As I understand it the definition of vaccine is now being edited in places like Wiki, Miriam Webster, etc. The ministry of truth and all, ya know. 😉

    Joe Biden is 2 months into his term, has not yet fielded any real reporter questions, and is already exhausted. Now who could have seen this coming?

    I grew up going to weekly church service, Sunday school, summer bible day camp, the works. As an adult I’ve not been a part of organized religion, although I consider myself spiritual. Mainly just adhere to “do unto others.” As I see it, that pretty sums up how we should act. Not sure why we need all the other claptrap just to tell us to be kind. Anyhow … lately I find myself praying to God. Seriously. I am growing that concerned about the exponentially increasing velocity of All That Is Horrible that is rumbling down the tracks.

    #71461
    WES
    Participant

    Ah yes Woodstock!
    I wasn’t there, probably too young.
    But Canada had it’s version of Woodstock north-east of Toronto.
    My Grandfather, a farmer driving a pickup, always picked up hitch hikers.
    Riding shotgun was his faithful dog Toby who never let Grandpa out of his sight!.
    Grandpa was driving by and stopped to pick up a gruff looking Woodstocker.
    However Toby had different ideas and wouldn’t let the stranger into the pickup!
    Grandpa said to the hitch hiker “Sorry, I would give you a ride but my dog won’t let me”!
    Grandpa never figured out why Toby acted up but said the hitch hiker didn’t look that gruff!
    Toby just took an instant disliking to the hitch hiker!

    #71463
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    Other than C,S,&N singing Marrakesh Express, this is my fave Woodstock moment:

    Love March

    #71465
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    As for Biden/Harris, one assumes the plan is to have Joe become seriously ill about the time we go to war with Kamala as our brave new war-time She-President. I say that but I can’t imagine anyone we can still invade and conquer. How about Britain?

    But seriously: it seems they’ve burnt that part of the playbook.

    Begin a storm trooper pogrom of ‘domestic terrorists’? Trouble with an internal American color revolution is that they’re Americans. It’s your own country that you couldn’t run before you turned it inside out with a color revolution.

    I wish I were young but know what I know now, as they say. I’d like to be able to help push some decent people through the bottleneck. Matter. Make a difference. It would be hell but hell could be fun?

    #71467
    WES
    Participant

    Madamski:

    Funny, the Marrakesh Express!
    I lived in Marrakesh, Morocco for almost a year!
    What a turbulent year it was too!
    The newly exciled shah of Iran was staying at the King of Morocco’s winter palace in Marrakesh.
    The students rioted so the king closed all the universities!
    I was working in a phosphate mine outside of Marrakesh.
    The army ringed the city with road blocks.
    I had to drive through 3 road blocks each way. Two where fixed at river bridges. The 3rd however was a floating road block that moved everyday.
    One evening when it was dark, I almost didn’t see the floating road block and barely stopped short of running the accordion spikes laid across the road. At the very last second I spotted an armed soldier standing beside the road and hit the brakes hard. I think if I had run the spikes I would have been shot dead. After that I no longer drove after dark.
    The soldiers often took away my passport for periods of time leaving me to cool my heels roadside because I wouldn’t talk in French with them so they could ask me what I was doing there since they would see me twice a day! Naturally they didn’t speak English!
    I always tried to look extra relaxed so they would get pissed off that I wasn’t getting pissed off about them keeping me waiting! Once they got pissed off they would give me my passport back and tell me to go!

    Another time I drove from Marrakesh to Casablanca to see my distributor to pick up some parts. After leaving Marrakesh, it slowly dawned on me that I was the only one driving on the normally busy highway!
    Then I noticed just off the highway there were soldiers stationed about every 3rd telephone pole. Strangely they were unarmed!
    Then when I reach a big town, I saw tons of police and soldiers standing in the town square. They all looked at me with interest but nobody made a move to stop me! So I kept driving wondering what I the hell was going on?
    I drove through the Sahara Desert with solders leaning again telephone poles and through a few more towns full of police and soldiers. Again great interest in me but nobody tried to stop me!
    The just outside of Casablanca, I was direct by hand signals from several motorcycle cops coming the opposite way to pull over and stop. I did so.
    Then suddenly a long motorcade of Mercedes cars drove past me standing on the side of the road followed by more motorcycle cops.
    Once they had gone, I hopped back into my car and drove into Casablanic.
    Upon arriving at my dealer, he exclaimed to me “What are you doing here! Don’t you know you were not supposed to drive on the highway that morning because the King’s family was traveling to Marrakesh!”
    I said I knew nothing about it! But I said it sure was a very strange drive seeing soldiers leaning against every 3rid telephone pole between Casablanca and Marrakesh, a distance of about 300 kilometers!

    #71469
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    @ WES

    “I was working in a phosphate mine outside of Marrakesh.”

    It has a ring to it, doesn’t it? LIke the o0ening to a Hemmingway short.

    Marrakesh Express

    #71475
    Doc Robinson
    Participant

    More and more “breakthrough” cases, where people are fully-vaccinated and still become infected with Covid-19, are coming to light. Here’s an example involving four people in the same family.

    What are being called “breakthrough” cases of COVID-19 are popping up across the U.S. They’re people who test positive 14 days or more after receiving their last dose of the vaccine…

    The 27-year-old’s vaccination card shows she received her second dose of the Pfizer vaccine on January 12. She said she found out she was positive on March 18 from one of the routine tests she takes weekly for work. Believing it might be a false positive, Rewerts said she took a rapid test, which also came back positive.

    She said her mother and two other family members – all fully vaccinated – also tested positive this week. They are experiencing symptoms.

    http://www.ny1.com/nyc/all-boroughs/news/2021/03/19/breakthrough-cases-of-covid-19-impact-the-fully-vaccinated

    Meanwhile, a recent study evaluated the mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna for effectiveness against 10 strains of the Covid virus that are currently circulating. For 5 of the 10 strains, the vaccines failed. The mutations were “highly resistant to neutralization.”

    The vaccines were formulated last year to fight the older strains. The vaccine designs “were finalized early in the pandemic and based on the sequence of the first-reported virus from Wuhan, China. Given the global scale and magnitude of the ongoing pandemic, including case reports of re-infection, it is clear that viral evolution will continue.”

    The proposed solution: more vaccines, as boosters.

    Multiple SARS-CoV-2 variants escape neutralization by vaccine-induced humoral immunity
    https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.02.14.21251704v2.full

    #71426
    Basseterre Kitona
    Participant

    Get healthy.

    • Covid Spiking In Over A Dozen States—Most With High Vaccination Rates (F.)

    Get healthy…and avoid the vaccines (at least for now). Here is an important critique of mass vaccination by a prominent vaccine designer (i.e., this guy is not an Evangelical Vaccine Fanatic):

    https://dryburgh.com/geert-vanden-bossche-mass-vaccination-danger/

    Also, let’s remember the example of the dengue vaccine that proved more dangerous than the actual disease:
    https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/05/03/719037789/botched-vaccine-launch-has-deadly-repercussions

    #71445
    madamski cafone
    Participant

    phoenixvoice

    “Is it that my left leaning friends were always this credulous? Is it just because so many are stuck in these digital media bubble silos that surround our minds in cottony propaganda? Because we are not interacting face to face and it this is preventing many from obtaining accurate bearings on what is going on in the world?”

    I think it’s because they are products of public and advanced modern education. THey are trained to be professional pedants. They are like the scholars of Scholasticism.

    All of us are to some extent this way to the extent we went through the school system successfully. (I dropped out in my freshman year.) But liberals as a group are moreso, in my experience, perhaps because they lean toward the liberal arts degrees versus hard science or MBAs?

    One might say (throwing fish to the dolphins here, I am) that conservatives lean toward Law and Order and liberals lean toward Law and Orders? It’s their reactionary curse from too often being forced to deal with major social ills that conbservatives fail to address. They idealize their ideologiy, and once you idealize something, it has the right to rule and reign by whatever means deemed necessary.

    Currently, the conservative camp has become the new progressive camp insomuch as it is willing to address those social ills caused by their loyal opposition, the liberals. Either way, both sides are right, goddammit, what are you some kind of libtard/repugnican?, and that holds together about as well as two magnets of identical polarity.

    All that said, I’ve heard numerous conservatives say might dumb things about covid or you name it. Credulousness is hardly a monopoly of either side.

    TV Sucks Dead Fish
    random bot noise

    #71503
    Noirette
    Participant

    Is it that my left leaning friends were always this credulous? Is it just because so many are stuck in these digital media bubble silos that surround our minds in cottony propaganda? Because we are not interacting face to face and it this is preventing many from obtaining accurate bearings on what is going on in the world? – phoenix voice.

    If by left-leaning one means, in the US, voting Dem, or being a “progressive”, ppl who might consider for ex. the Obama admin not ‘left enough’ etc., or being a Bernie Bro, angry at how he was treated .. In France, as the similarities are striking, adhering to the Socialist Party, having voted for Hollande (Socialist) as opposed to Sarkozy (who was supposedly ‘right wing’) — In fact the both were centrists but colored their positions to appeal to different demographic groups, then:

    These left-leaning ppl are, yes, credulous in the sense that they believe, or pretend to believe, adhere to, the touted facts, stances, opinions, positions, of the lefter faction within the ‘allowed’ politics in the US and France.

    They belong to, or aspire to join, or feel they truly desperately need to embrace the ethos of the 20%, of – not the richest as that metric is often used – but the 20% who occupy positions of expertise and power. E.g. sitting on decision nodes, important position in Gvmt. in education, health, working in the MSM and molding opinions, being a U prof, an expert in some kinda science, or demonstrating special gifts in the various arts, etc.

    Their main motivation is to be part of the professional-managerial class (PMC, as opposed to ‘workers’ lowly types, deplorables..), with vociferous hangers-on (spouses for ex.), or wanting to sell to those who can pay. (Hot Art, etc.) Their status, with the attendant super perks, monetary and other, is attained, or should be awarded! they feel! .. Because of moral criteria, ethical probity, political correct vision, a genuine caring for ‘lower groups.’

    Therefore, they use preachy wide-eyed posturing that appears to favor the oppressed, the victims of society (it is necessary to perpetually invent new ones..!) without ever having any impact whatsoever, for ex. on Black ppl being imprisoned for minor drug / other offenses… or the Prison Industry as a whole.

    They are hypocrites, aren’t ‘left,’ in the old sense of ppls control of production, worker’s rights, care for the weak (helping families, med care needed, education, advancing society, dealing with x y z…) They have zero interest in an egalitarian society, they just want to climb up the ladder to join the Tops, and be pandered to, admired. They thus support Big Pharma, the MIC, the Banks (Obama was a champ on that score) and ally with the neo-cons, etc. or whomever is killing efficiently.

    The ‘right’ in this frame is another story – less hypocritical.

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