boscohorowitz
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Tulsi Gabbard endorses Biden. Military taught her how to follow orders, apparently? I’m not much surprized.
Wife and I begin sewing homemade face masks tonight. Our intent is more semiotic than antispetic: someone has t lead the way in showing that you have to take your own measures. Not everything must be purchased from a store. Last time I went out, yesterday morning, to make a few purchases. I almost wore a pair of my wife’s undies on my head for funzies. But too much fun can get you into trouble, and even old and frail, I bite when cornered. So I did without that pleasure. *sigh* Always wanted to wear my wife’s undies in public.
Raul, that postal address for checks still works, right? Bonus finally came through, albeit diminished due to c-virus.
“Banks are going to go bankrupt and close their doors. They are not going to foreclose anything for the near future. So should you pay them? It will disappear anyway. Everyone on earth is making the same calculation now. Are they going to come down here and make me, or are they too busy? No change for most: they weren’t paying before now anyway.”
I’ve been looking at a mountain of recent medical bills through this very lens.
You know: “Come and get me, coppers!”
My nephew-in-law works in a call center. His toddler daughter gets every bug. He’s home, having been diagnosed with corona. Sweet. My nice is fortunately an RN and knows how to run two home quarantones at once.
A call center is a clustered workplace, but typically with cubicles and no customer traffic. If they’d established stringent protocols, they could keep their employees working without getting them sick. It would have cut into their productivity but not that much.
No grown-ups in charge these days, apparently.
“Some days back, I stated that I didn’t think we’d bring Kung Flu patients into the hospital, but instead, triage them in tents outside, then send the ones meeting criteria to some FEMA-set-up Kung Flu Treatment Center, staffed as possible, and serviced by dedicated Hazmat 9-1-1 ambulances, whisking members of the community there as appropriate, in full protective gear, 24/7/365.
“Because, as I argued with flawless logic, to do otherwise would be to
a) risk our entire healthcare system being overwhelmed and destroyed, a la Italy, and
b) make every other medical emergency impossible to deal with, thus doubling casualties from every other treatable and preventable cause of death, from heart attacks and strokes to appendicitis, because the entirety of any and every hospital would be filled with Kung Flu-infected plague petri dishes, in every nook and cranny.Turns out, TPTB, top to bottom, make the Italians look like Leonardo da Vinci.
1) We’re not putting tents up everywhere.
2) We’re not segregating people out of the hospital.
3) We’ll do a half-assed triage assessment outside the building somewhere (fill in the blank where___________)
4) Using screening criteria overtaken by reality a month ago, because the CDC, no matter how asinine, is always the CDC
4a) to wit, asking about foreign travel, even though homegrown community-acquired cases outstrip foreign travel candidates, and have for two weeks
4b) ask about exposure to known Kung Flu patients, even though the CDC and local public health departments refused to test for Kung Flu until four days ago, in most cases, (due to jackassery, fuckwittery, and a dearth of functional kits for two months) thus insuring via Catch-22, that if you never test for King Flu, nobody anyone was in contact with ever officially has Kung Flu
5) then bring the infected into an appropriate sealed negative airflow room
5a) which cleverly has no patient monitoring equipment
5b) will not allow you to get portable chest x-ray equipment into the room with the patient with respiratory problems (which, cleverly, no one thought about prior to then)
5c) which would contaminate said portable x-ray equipment every time you got it into the quarantine room
5d) which would require an extensive, nigh impossible decontamination of said X-ray equipment for each and every subsequent patient…” and so on. He does consequetive cause-and-effect logic pretty well.Old Jesse the Americain, has what strikes me as an easily understood cogent overview of the economic crash aspect of it in terms of financial markets:
Having quarantined myself, I look forward to visiting the store when next needed wearing my patented bandito anti-virus face protector. And cheap cotton gloves. By then I suspect I won’t be the only one.
And now, a little arts and crafts:
Old Man Pepe weighs in on the mysterious origins of the virus and similar stuff:
“The Federal Reserve gave it one final blast Sunday night — while everybody else was counting their rolls of toilet paper — and the effect was like blowing hot air into a shredded Zeppelin.”
Kunstler deserves honorable mention for that simile.
Winco in West Slope area of Portland had a line from the checkout encircling the entire store. I think we can say it’s mainstreamed.
And finally:
Emerging Fully Formed From Biden’s Lobotomy
She looks like a triumphant chest-burster in the article’s picture. He looks like a ventriloquist’s dummy in need of a paint job.
Also: anyone else notice how Nancy Pelosi looks more and more like Nanci Reagan? I’m Joe Biden, and I snorted this message.
Youtube apparently understands both my sense of humor and the times we’re in. Just now suggested to me:
I think the popularity contest part of this eolection, candidates and shit, will look something like this:
Or maybe this:
8 minutes ago as I write this, googlenews posts an article from The Atlantic in my feed titled The Trump Presidency Is Over… and at this point, it certainly is true, which makes the DNC’s shitting all over itself to “impeach” Trump especially tragic for them and hilarious for the rest of us.
No one is going to be holding large political rallies anytime soon, eez szo? A strange new disconnect between media reportage and political reality seems imminent. One with an unusual range of plausible probabilities. Trump could be back in solid by October even after doing his best to imitate Joe Biden in real-time presidential footage of donald Himself fucking up awfully and unignorably on something very serious like diss here klung foo thing.
Hot dog, this gonna be an exciting time to be alive.
Meanwhile, an entire world begins to wonder:
Daily medicine:
Anarchy!? Blasphemy! Or something.
I’m convinced that what blew out the 2008 bubble was energy costs. I’ve read some credible analysis to support this.
This time, the bit of unbribable reality that is crashing our economy and culture is a virus.
Reality is as reality does.
Now we can all learn how to be hospitals:
An end to gender discrimination. Everybody looks like monks from the hidden city. Nobody takes their mask off except for close family.
Yesterday I watched a neighbor, old lady, carefully sanitize every bit of hand railing from her upstairs apt to ground level. Then she poured steamy water on the porch.
Yesterday, the school bus came by,. stopped with its doors open for two minutes, then left without picking up children. Normally 3-4 kids.
I plan to do some grocery shopping tonight. Should be sociologically interesting.
Wait till the public learns that those macho metrosexuals lumberjack beards make great pathogen delivery systems.
Seeing as how death metal is bound to get a boost in the arm from all this:
Hmmm…. brain dead Joe. Just realized this clown could any day utter in public very dark private secrets involving him and other Dems. I would think they seek to muzzle him. He’s too gonezo to realize he’s already lost. Talk about a loose cannon… you know, a debate between Biden and Trump would be fascinating: intentional lying vs unintentional lying. On both sides. What a show.
My son works in a major downtown hotel in Seattle. Been there a year or more.
His hours are down to helium squeak. Hotel capacity 20%. All his roommates work in hospitality. His ex-girlfriend, who rooms with his roommate’s girlfriend, work in hospitality.
Just for shitzies, I’ll put my marker down now that the DNC, despite its stunning best efforts to lose, will end up with the White House. Things are just that crazy and that bad. Wish we could keep Trump but I think the terms of engagement are moving beyond the art of his deal. Ron Paul is simply too decent to be elected POTUS and the GOP has no real young rock stars. (Today’s GOP: the All-Male All-White Old Guys Mens Choir.)
Don’t ask me how, but I’m coming to genuinely fear a DNC win. The bar has been lowered so much by both parties, and the times so demandingly turbulent, it almost demands something that insane to happen. Last time I made an impulsive prediction like that was around ’13 when I called Cruz for ’16, not knowing that even wilder maniacs would seek the office. It’s logical to call for a Bernie win but that’s too plausible. And Tulsi’s so honest she better have half the SEAL corps guarding her if she grows real numbers. Maybe it will be in the form of Nancy Pelosi as the only player left un-coughing come election time?
The likelihood of an election contested not just partisanly but populistically cranks up the weirdness. One recalls the very successful recent gun rally in Virginia. Grass roots, real grass roots, can form ranks and move quickly these days. Gun rights, babies for better water, you name it.
“Trump will be reelected in a landslide,” says an evangelical fellow I know who follows this stuff closer than most but with that evangelical, you know… zeal. He don’t say it but somehow you know he thinks Trump is, like, Chosen, you know? Which is cool. God loves a fool and Trump is one crazy fool. Gotta love him. (Rod Stegier from Dr. Zhivago hollering “Clayyyy!!!! Clayyyy!!!!”
I said the same thing two months ago, I replied. But things like mutant viruses, a global geopolitical tailspin in full swing, and an economy shuddering downward as the result (well in progress), change that.
I saw the look on Pence’s face when Trump made him the Kung Flu Boss. Fall guy. But it won’t work.
Voters are fickle. Jimmy C was everyone’s darling until he wasn’t. Jimmy wemt in to drain the swamp and they fought him too.
That said, new things could turn in Trump’s favor. But he’s up against real, not political nor digital banking, reality. Reality, especially biological reality, wins against guys like Trump, easily. Man in the Wilderness he is not. No combovers wanted. (note to self: human hair probably makes great firestarter)
I wish it was still political reality that prevailed, cuz his loose cannonism was perfect for this transition, imo. But now it’s physical reality. You can’t bankrupt your way out of that.
I feel sorry for whomever gets the job, though. Unless it’s Jesus His Own Almighty Ass, history will not be kind to them.
“This will pass. Trump will have several bombs to drop on the DNC before the election. This is an all out media blitz to take him down. Every 4 years there is an “outbreak” about to destroy humanity, that is, until the election is over,” he replied, catching my attention. It worried him a bit, I could tell.
Oh, this outbreak ain’t gonna destroy humanity blah blah…., I replied, but it is already pincering a way over-extended just-in-time supply chain and already has ample momentum (like how a mere 6-foot tsunami can go way inland and wreak havoc) to create a major reset, which tsunami wave Trump will have great difficulty surfing to his political advantage. Unless miracles occur soon to reverse the economic hemorrhage, enormous social discomfort will create disruption without large death statistics.
It’s not Trump versus the DNC, as I see it. It’s Trump versus a major economic collapse along with the usual blase’ horrors, from smoky Australia to drowning Tennessee, or… all of which is ongoing hemorrhage too.
I don’t fear the DNC winning because I see it offering anything superior. I don’t. Many would say Bernie is but I’ve tracked him too long not to know he sucks Pentagon schnizzel like the rest of them, which is one reason why he might end up in the White house. The Praetorian guard will ignore its wealthy benefactors for awhile and back the “crazy socialist” if it’s what keeps the nation together and their defense contracts going. (I think of the Pentagon as the Catholic church but with better taste in whom to rape.)
But I don’t think it will be Bernie (which is more reason to think that’s who it will be;) ). I think fate will sweep aside Trump’s poll charisma at a very bad time and then, somehow, some ungodly Hillary Reagan beast will appear fully formed from Pelosi’s cleavage like Maggie Thatcher in a JFKennedy wig.
All I’m actually saying is that the potential for real crazy evil lurks in my gut spidey-jammies about this in an icky way of late.
There will be a period this year of many missed weeks of work, even months, for far too many people, accompanied by various shortages on the market shelves, some important, many not, but none good because every void indicates a string of jobs also now vacant. That changes a plebiscite’s mood real fast. So I’ll hold to my irrational bet on the party determined to lose so it can continue bullying Trump from the Congressional pulpit so it can avoid real disclosure about real criminal activities by most of its many — especially dominant — members.
I don’t think the DNC wants to win (I didn’t think Trump wanted the job and still think so, altho he’s learned to enjoy the ride for awhile) but will find itself somehow forced to. Like maybe the debbil will make em do it.
All that said, what makes what I suggest even entertainable as a notion is an environment so volatile it could easily turn around in a way that carries Trump to a record win. More or less equally likely. But my guts isn’t scared of Trump winning; they smell stink approaching the other direction. And if a man can’t poetically empower his wily intuitions, what fun is it?
“I dunno. If you’ve ever worked in any business or industry or tried to get anything useful done, ever (naturally that excludes government), you could shoot every “leader” and no one would notice at all. Things would probably improve.”
DOc, you say some amazingly brilliant things that you thoughtfully balance with total klunkers. The above is such. In the entire order of biological nature, hierarchy manifests itself either intra-specially or inter-specially. The function of leader runs throughout life.
Humans put a label on it, put a uniform on it, givwe it a title and a badge if only a nametag that says manager, and thereby distorts our view of and involvement in this function of focusing group activity through a central point (like a harness rigging horses to a wagon).
Give people full anarchy and they’ll elect a boss in a week. People would definitekly notice the absence.
Much more critical is the idea of submission. In nature, critters fight for dominance and submit only provisionally after some struggle. Civilized humanity, raised on a series of brain-entrainments all based on Do What You’re Told and Don’t Do What Is Forbidden, has taken the fundamentally cybernetically logical concept of Leader and turned it into something one should really only see in absurd dreams, but alas, they spilled out and colored our world.
I nominate it for the Anti-Logos Oscars, but it started wityh me wondering what boilingfrog’s scenario:
“ALL the entities that have political influence, approaching the powers-that-be in prostration, asking to be (financially) “saved”, and arguing why they are more important than the other.”
And I kept hearing Dr. Smith wailing in despair was was his usual want between bouts of thoughtless greedheadf scheming. Which produced a green sex goddess in the windshield, and who can gainsay that?
“A market crash before the November election could lead to a narrow victory by a Sanders or Bloomberg, as an angry populace blames Trump, who has taken full credit for this market bubble. The election of either would just ratchet up the vitriol and dissent roiling across the land. Discontent among the masses would spread around the world, leading politicians to try to distract their people with foreign enemies threatening their freedom. This is when the global war scenario of this Fourth Turning has the highest likelihood of commencing.”
I agree. I’d rather Trump stay in office at this point. But I think we are going to be surprized this November. I anticipate maximum weirdness.
“Even dullards are starting to lose faith in the authorities, so a descent into chaos seems imminent.” James Quinn
Elegant quotes via Market Oracle
“In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
“Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.” – Charles MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Now we begin to get a glimpse of the kinds of craziness we’re in for:
What’s so wild about this passage is that it is happening smack on top dead center of the 80-year Fourth Turning cycle. If anything were an argument for the release of this contagion being part of a deliberate globalist/anti-globalist scheme, it’s the timing. But this assumes a degree of competence I do not usually associate with global elites, who only survive by having fat governments to suck for profit. If it is an intentional release, than Dr. Strangelove got incredibly lucky,* cuz fuckers like them can’t find their own genitals with both hands tied to a stack of vintage Playboys.
*in the short run. In the long run, Dr. Strange is probably gonna get real sick after burying his mother.
“Don’t think they thought this through. Trump and Pence are seen together all the time. If both fall gravely ill, Pelosi takes over. Is that what they want? No-go for the same reason they can’t travel together. President must be tested, VP too.”
Putting aside the possibility they’ve been discretely tested and really are going commando, this speaks to me of their ultimate disconnexion from raw reality. Getting sick is for the riff-raff. If the average bloke thinks he won’t get it, what about extraordinary people like Beltway upper-crusts?
One assumes this refers to post-use TP. 😉
When we went to Costoco yesterday, it was just for our usual every-3-months TP purchase, not to, I dunno, use TP to improvise face masks to sell on e-bay.
The above is brilliant. Add some bat ears and I’m Batman! But srsly, good effective hack. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was a time when publicly wearing underwear on your head was both accepted and admired.
Meanwhile, not every population is as docile as that of China, an uncommonly unified nationality:
Something Raul pointed out yesterday that I so rarely hear articulated on this matter: this is NEW. It is ON TOP of other existing problems, pathogens, assoicated death rates/hospital stays.
This is a NEW takeaway. A new bill placed stealthily, cryptically, and literally unstoppably on us by biological reality.
No, people can’t die twice. But people that didn’t die before can and will die now. More will die than before, and like most deaths, cause an incredible amount of disruption.
I think everyone here agrees that they see no way for the global camel to withstand even one more straw on its back. This is a straw. The fact that it sits stop older heavier straws doesn’t negate its new additional and unbearable weight.
In one sense, I welcome the sense of helplessness this will cause as people realize that The System is more the cause than any cure for the virus. It will humble some of us. But who wants philosophy when they’re busy freaking out?
Went to Costco yesterday. (Portland, OR area)
We took a shopping cart off the hands of a couple just finished loading they’re car.
“It’s OK, we sanitized it,” she said.
Inside, business as usual, no sanitation kiosks or face masks.
But no TP or sanitizers either. A run earlier this week had taken it all.
****
I see no scientifically unambiguous evidence that convinces me that the DNC wants to win the presidency. They have the perfect scapegoat and are scared of their own candidates.
““US banned the sale of rubber tires”
Wow, such genius. So farmers can’t get tractors into the field and miners can’t get ore from the mines. Genius! We’re winning now! Central Planning forever!”
The word “indiscriminate” needs to be placed between “the” and “sale” in the sentence above. Yes, they continued selling tires throughout the war. I would think there was also a brief perioed when sales of rubber tires were placed on gubmint hold until they got their distribution schematics down. We grew a lot of food during WWII, and I suspect our mining during that period hit a new, even dramatic peak, for the USA.
Actually, I think the idea of the virus/economic depression/social agitation serving as Eastasia Common Enemy is plausible. Sell it right, it should work.
But first, you need a real body count. Kind of a Kung Flu Pearl Harbor. San Diego<>Los Angelos seems almost destined to be the locale for such an “event” (statistical accumulation).
Keep us focused on the War at Home. After all, we has met the enemy and him is us.
“Bosco:. To be honest, many Republicans expressed concerns back in January. I remember the big up roar from the Democrats and media when President Trump stopped direct flights from China! They were more concerned about hurting China’s feelings than the safety of their fellow countrymen!”
Aye, and as you describe, much of their perspective on the virus is driven by political strategy/ideology rather than genuine concern about the virus. Plus, these are all *expressions* of concern. When it comes to decisive, timely, functional action, one Republican’s ass looks like another Democrat’s forehead et vice-versa.
Nobody’s done anything for shit. Who cares who’s crying when about whose sky will fall? I want a bigass umbrella, and I want it yesterday.
As for neighborhood lockdowns and a tendency to abuse the authority this gives the, er, authorities: I suspect we’ll just have to get used to it. That playbook has little variation. Form a local gangster network soon or submit entirely to at least a period of draconian cops’n’block-watchsters.
As for talk of Hillary gaining accerss to the Oval Orifice: The majority of people, it seems to me, hate her more than they hate Donald Trump and Joe Biden, and people hate those two a lot.
Also, for the first time in my life, I see a very large chance of this election being postponed, something both parties would welcome, since neither can get what they want from the electoral process, which has transformed into something they don’t understand just as they desperately need to lest they all go to jail, to quote the Lady Rodham.
I think this is going to be the most unique passage in American history as any, and as paradigmatically changeful as the Civil War. Unless America gets super lucky and the infection vectors are mostly contained (it’s possible; so is winning the lottery), we’ll see something that lookas more like martial law than not, and maybe even more like martial law than martial itself.
Last summer, I had a stoplight speak to me as if I were a dog. The light was red, the big No Go orange hand was flashing, and the robovoice from the cross-switch was saying, “wait… wait… wait….” like I was a dog going for a a walk with Steven Hawking.
One wonders what it will be like when the first American wears a de facto burkha and other Americans understand immediately that this person isn’t a Muslim, just someone being smart and using their head to do something other than spread or inhale dangerous pathogens.
“Democrats are about twice as likely as Republicans to say the coronavirus poses an imminent threat”
One assumes this is because of mainstream media giving them the signal. The Republican side will soon surge ahead in conronavirus concern.
It’s like they take turns.
“This is the most frightening disease I’ve ever encountered in my career.”
I don’t think he’s hyperventilating. I think he’s merely being accurate, which of course sounds weird since we’re used to being lied to so much. I think he’s being honest, and it scares us.
