VietnamVet
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Corporate Media has gone silent on the contradictions that are splintering the West caused by incompetence and corruption that purposefully transferred of all of the wealth from the former Western Middle Class to the top 1%.
The Pandemic was publicized to get rid of Donald Trump but with him long gone, the goal now is to pass on as many bucks from every vaccine shot given to as many people as possible to Big Pharma.
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
The reality is that the US for-profit healthcare system has killed 452,279 Americans to date. More have died in one year from COVID-19 than in the four years of WWII (405,399).The Robinhood App was used to squeeze naked short stocks. Paper silver appears next. Sooner or later, like 2008, a vital cog will break and the deregulated Wall Street will seize up, once again.
The swamp creatures that brought the world Libya, Syria and Ukraine are back in charge.
There will be a concerted effort to silence Redditors, Peaceniks, Trumpeters, the 90% riffraff – The Unwoke.
I know enough to know to stay away from the stock market. The 401K is one of the greatest frauds perpetrated on working Americans. Linked above, the GameStop play comes down to; ‘The only “fundamental” that matters, 62M shs (shares) short with 50M share float. It is physical impossible to cover this short.’
In 2008, the market seized up when value of the securities tied to real estate plummeted, inter-bank transfers stopped because of fear of who would be the next Lehman, and derivative calls could not be met (AIG went under).
The big Casino could be on the point of not being able to make a payout despite all the digital dollars flowing into the market.
However, it is only tens of billions of dollars. Perhaps trading will be stopped on the targeted stocks. The punters will lose their money and current system of shorting stocks will collapse. Janet Yellen (enriched by $800,000 from the hedge fund Citadel) and the FED will huff and puff and a new old system of shorting stocks will be implemented by the SEC with new restrictions on retail investors.
We shall see what happens on Monday. Will the government cover all of the losses on Wall Street? Then everything stays the same in the middle of a pandemic depression with the shell-shocked managerial class about to implement a pacification program against Trump riffraff.
Will Americans allow 6.2% of their salaries go to Wall Street with absolutely no guarantee of any retirement benefits when Social Security is privatized? If punters can’t play on their smart phone, who stays in the game?
This will be a long weekend. $800,000 paid to Janet Yellen buys the freedom for hedge fund rescuer Citadel to do anything they want. Just as millions of Americans lost their homes after 2008 financial crisis, retail investors are going to lose every penny they put into the Robinhood App. But this time thanks to infinite leveraging with derivatives and naked shorting, Wall Street crashes for good. Just as with the Coronavirus Pandemic, the federal government today is too incompetent and corrupt to save the big casino or protect its citizens.
The veterans of the Storming of Capitol Hill are afraid and traumatized. Scared shitless of the other cult members in the Chambers. Pacification of 75 million American Trump voters is their #1 priority. The Empire is gone. The 50-state Union is next.
Whomever controls the nuclear armed ICBMs and does not fire them will be the new Western Warlords. Bill Gates will gladly pay his last penny to mercenaries to leave him and his family alone and live one more day. Literally, Joe Biden, Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi had to get the Pentagon’s buy-in for the “peaceful” transfer of power. They still screwed it up. The troops didn’t get the calories to pull 16-hour-a-day guard duty or cots to sleep on due to privatization of logistics. This is all due to politicians’ corruption, the flushing government down the toilet and restoration by neo-liberal globalists of the old-world caste system. The troops will stay in DC till March for the impeachment trial. This implies a fair amount of fear of the 75 million Americans who voted for Donald Trump.
Comments like this will soon be censored on the internet as conspiracy theories. But the real cabal was the Clinton Campaign who funded Christopher Steele dodgy dossier and blamed Russia for the election of Donald Trump. The West is so saturated with PR (propaganda) it is literally impossible to know up from down and communicate with others of a different cult.
I am watching “The Looming Tower” on Hulu. Long ago, I concluded that the two-decade global war on terror (GWOT) was not in the best interests of Americans and the wars unwinnable. But to be exposed to Al Qaeda’s powerful and moving propaganda of self-sacrifice for one’s family and religion is shocking.
True believers that profess money is the only means of determining value in life are part of a self-destructive sect. Greed and war-profiteering are destroying America. The Empire is gone — killed by coronavirus. The US federal government is incapable and the Overlords disinclined to pay for healthcare for all, find alternative effective treatments, or implement a strict public health campaign to shut down everything. Paying for testing daily of everyone, contract tracing, isolating everyone at home or in safe shelters and free treatment of the ill in two months would stop transmission and eradicate the virus. Instead, sometime this Spring, as many Americans will have died from coronavirus as died in the American Civil War. It is still unclear if the mRNA vaccines will stop the transmission of the virus. If they don’t, a million or more Americans could die if the Pandemic response remains an incompetent disorganized mess.
“There is not really a downside for seniors to be vaccinated” — as long as it makes money for corporations.
The emergency approval of the vaccines is fudged over since it is the only tool available in the West. The pandemic was used to oust Donald Trump but the fact remains that the US government response failed from the very beginning from the top down. De-industrialization, corruption and drowning it in the bathtub made an effective response impossible. In February against federal CDC orders, Washington State testing proved that there was asymptomatic community transmission since January 2020. I isolated myself with the first death in Maryland on March 3rd. By April it was likely too late for strict quarantine measures such as Australia and New Zealand implemented in March to work. In England and Wales after the first wave of infections and deaths, with the semi-privatized National Health Service care and with three lockdowns, the excess deaths in the graph above shows a steady increase — due to coronavirus. In the USA, the privatized healthcare system has been overwhelmed with new spikes when the virus moved into a new uninfected region; unhindered by haphazard lockdowns and assisted by know-nothingness and holiday travel. Perhaps there are also new variants that inadequate US testing has yet to detect. The US death rate may be plateauing. If permanent and if any correlation to the start of the vaccine injections on December 14th, is too soon to tell.
The mRNA vaccine emergency use was based on no acute toxicity in the first trials and less severe illnesses comparing vaccinated and unvaccinated. Israel is doing the first real-world study of the vaccine. One shot provides 33% efficacy against infection. The effectiveness and long-term safety of two shots are still unknown. “If a vaccine protects 80 percent of those immunized and 75 percent of the population is vaccinated, this could largely end an epidemic without other measures such as social distancing.” If the vaccine is less effective, if there are delayed reactions, or if there is jab resistance in the population; public health measures will be needed to control the pandemic.
It is manslaughter not to provide universal healthcare and a functioning nation public health system for Americans in a time of plague. Today is not too dissimilar from the past when the English exported food out of Ireland during the Potato Famine.
Since vaccines are all the neoliberal West has, they went the vaccination route with no clear knowledge of their safety and efficacy. There should have been extensive reporting required for their emergency use but that is asking too much of a government that has problems just distributing them. The 90% figure touted for the mRNA vaccines is the reduction in the severity of the disease compared to those who became ill in the unvaccinated group, a fairly small number since testing was done at the start of the pandemic.
The Israeli report would indicate the Pfizer mRNA vaccine does reduce the infection rate by 33%.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-vaccine-data-suggests-decrease-in-covid-19-infection-rate-after-first-dose-11610658607
This is a better than none. The vaccine and face masks will lower the RO value. The question is how low. Another of my gut feelings is that since around 50% of the infected shed the virus with no symptoms to get the RO under 1 and eradicate the virus will require public health measures; daily testing, isolation, and school and work bubbles. Vaccines alone will not be enough.But to avoid taxing corporations and the wealthy, there will be no healthcare for all or a working national public health system in the USA. For the foreseeable future, the Americas will have an endemic illness and a steady death rate of thousands per day of Deplorables (who clearly do not matter since they are led by Vladimir Putin and are racist). The military has already been called in once to save current US political system. Further unrest is assured.
There is no getting around the fact that 25,000 troops and turning DC into a Green Zone were necessary for the peaceful transfer of power back to the new/old Obama Administration. PR won’t hide overflowing for-profit hospitals or an economic depression. When nothing changes, the same old same old, geriatric Democrats will blame the 75 million Trump voters led by the Russians.
Former middle-class Americans will not continue the fall into poverty, homeless, addiction, illness and death peacefully. The Obama’s response to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis of PR (propaganda) while bailing out Wall Street with no reforms or jail time and making millions of Americans homeless (which elected Donald Trump in the first place) will not work the second time around in this existential Pandemic/Depression. The 10% multi-cultural global bi-coastal elite cannot continue the financial bloodletting of the heartland, there is nothing left. Indeed, the Biden/Harris Administration has a perilous challenge ahead. They must actually end the pandemic, provide family supporting jobs, and halt climate change, all of which require taxes and competence. Good luck with that.
In the USA, private public partnerships never work. Higher profits and the public good are contradictory. The neoliberal cult says only markets determine value but they keep trying again and again to cut into the stream of public money. The US Vaccine partnership will likely fail too from the virus becoming endemic, jab reluctance, and mutations. Since there are no long-term studies on mRNA vaccines, the emergency injection of millions of Americans should have been treated as a very large testing trial and extensive reporting of adverse effects and efficacy required. Israel apparently still has a working government for members of its state religion. With 50 states injecting the vaccines as they want, this is impossible. US Corporations today get away with billions of dollars for vaccines, stock buy backs, bonuses, and manslaughter.
The Biden/Harris Administration has itself in a straight jacket even before being sworn in.
They will try to restore the Empire when the homeland is quarantined in a multi-polar world with China controlling coronavirus and its economy supplying the world. Impossible.
The new Administration is completely subservient to multi-nationals and big pharma. No CEO will be jailed for their crimes for the next four years. The USA is solely dependent on the mRNA vaccine program to control the pandemic. But Americans were told a lie that there was a reserve for the second shots. There is none. Herd Immunity will be impossible if half of the population won’t or can’t get jabbed. Note the articles above on the elder deaths in Norway and USA don’t compare numbers to the normal death rate of 80-year-olds. My gut feeling is that the vaccines are more deadly to elders than stringent safe isolation to halt the transmission of the virus. But the Biden/Harris Administration is adamantly against healthcare for all and a functional national public health system. Someone should ask why is Vietnam controlling the coronavirus pandemic and the USA has the most deaths in the world? 407,202 Americans have died to date which is approaching WWII casualty levels in one year.
As the comments here point out the haphazard lockdowns and the overwhelmed for-profit hospitals increase the number of deaths. Without vaccines, there must be daily antigen testing, isolation if positive, contact tracing, public health bubbles at school and work, safe quarantine locations and free healthcare. Nothing else will work. In an insurgency this is impossible.
The only way to avoid a civil war, control the pandemic, and end the economic depression is to restore government by a for the people. The current system has failed. It will always fail. Rich getting the richer on the backs of everyone works for a while until it is overthrown or collapses. Aristocracy always loses. Except this time around, civilization may not comeback in a depleted finite world armed with nuclear weapons. No wonder the richest man on the world wants to be the First Martian.
I am old enough not to trust my memories. Beliefs are like that, the ones that calm the force are reinforced. The top 10% Congress Creatures are shell-shocked. The brain does not like unpleasantness – pain. This is what causes addictions. Drugs make the brain feel better. To take away the pain, the Swamp is going to blame the 90% that don’t look or talk like them. They will never ever blame corporate government, themselves, for 1) the loss of jobs, 2) the lower life expectancy of Americans due to illness, homelessness and drug addiction or 3) their use of identity politics which are the root causes of the unrest.
There is no indication that the Joe Biden will govern any different than before when 10 million Americans lost their homes and the endless wars expanded to Libya, Syria and Ukraine. Forever War Veterans deeply in debt with nothing left to lose add to the volatility. Surveillance and jailing won’t work.
Peace is only possible if the pandemic and the economic depression are controlled which is unlikely unless a unified national program is undertaken to control the virus and jobs are given to all able-bodied workers. Food, shelter and healthcare must be provided for all Americans. Banning corporate election money and paper ballots counted in public are necessary as starters. Violence and eventually secession are a given unless true democracy is restored.
The spike in cases in Ireland is frightening. The US federal government never grasped the dire consequences of asymptomatic transmission of coronavirus even if the virus is relatively less lethal to the middle aged and younger population. Temperature screening was and is pointless. They never considered the need to quickly develop accurate cheap tests to self-determine if one is infectious and self-quarantine. No scheme was ever prepared for reporting or forming bubbles or getting free medical care. Simply the hierarchy is more interested in giving billions of dollars to corporations to increase their profits than American lives. The number of deaths of Americans is now reaching in one year the casualty level of the four-year World War II. Plus, enough time has elapsed with enough people infected for a mutant to develop that defeats the lockdowns and wearing ineffective face masks and maybe PPE if healthcare workers are getting infected with the new British variant. The whole western political and executive hierarchy is corrupt and incompetent.
This is obvious but not acknowledged in corporate propaganda. On January 6 2021 the professional leadership class felt fear for the first time. The USA is now without a government. The tragedy is that they’ll blame the Air Force Veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan for getting herself killed. They will never admit that it is their fault. But the truth is that the 10% aristocracy cannot rule over the 90% working classes if the sole purpose is to exploit the healthy and let the sick, addicted and old die off, so the Brahmin top caste of global billionaires can get richer. The current American system is simply incapable of controlling the pandemic depression. The insurrection will continue and spread. Only restoration of government by and for the people can fix this.
Censorship of the US internet is coming, but it won’t make a difference if cassette tapes brought down the Soviet Union by telling the truth. People must and will find ways to communicate. But it will make my cabin fever intolerable.
In reply to yesterday’s “but the US oligarchs will do all they can to prevent anyone from leaving”:
Yes, the future is not “Red Dawn”. Working Americans in a coronavirus infected nation are not going anywhere. But Harvard Boys will continue making even more money from privatization and asset stripping. They can’t help themselves. Donald J Trump documents the psychopathy of the ultra-rich. The current US government has fallen but hopefully the nation will make it through to Inauguration.
The Biden/Harris Administration in order to save the USA must make the government functional again, rebuild the public health contact tracing system, and provide free healthcare and isolation centers for all to control the pandemic if the Warp Speed Vaccine Program fails. Wall Street’s control of Washington DC and their predation of Americans and the environment must end. The gig economy, exploitation, no healthcare, homelessness and the endless wars all assures continued unrest on top of community destroying wildfires and hurricanes due to climate change
A continued uncontrolled coronavirus pandemic makes New York City unlivable for Jet Setters. Global Masters of the Universe can live in mansions anywhere with high walls, electricity and guarded by mercenaries. They’ll depart the sinking ship and will move to where it is safe. The richest wants to live on Mars.
There is nothing to stop the USA from becoming the latest Yugoslavia except its citizens rising above identity politics and preventing it.
When the USA became a global empire two things happened; 1) corporations purchased politicians, got “get out jail” cards and demolished democracy and 2) the old world caste system of Brahmins, Warriors, Farmers, Laborers and Outcastes was imposed upon Americans. The 2016 election was the culmination of Americans loss of income, status and declining life expectancy. Donald Trump seized the Republican nomination from the corrupt incompetent corporatists.
The big divide in the USA today since the Storming of the Capitol is between those who blame Donald Trump solely for the pandemic, depression and unrest and those who recognize that he is just a symptom of the real cause, a failed government. The propaganda is no longer working.
Unless democracy and the rule of law are restored, the USA will splinter apart like the USSR did with the loss of the Empire. Joe Biden will fail just as the Communist Politburo failed. Perhaps like Russia in the chaos that kills millions, a charismatic authoritarian who isn’t off their rocker will arise and save the remnants. Maybe not. Too many guns. Too much anger. Identity politics and color revolutions too successful.
The Western Empire is kaput. The USA government has failed, it cannot protect its people from the plague or defend itself. Vandals were allowed to enter the inner sanctums of power.
Russia and the USA are similar. European expansionist settler nations who conquered Siberia and North America. Thirty years later the USA is suffering the same fate as the fall of the USSR. Maybe an authoritarian will save the remnants before the devastation of a second civil war. But it is clear by its ascent that the Biden/Harris Administration is bought and paid for by multi-national corporations. If there is no change, no restoration of functional democracy, millions of middle-aged Americans will die as they did in Russia.
But American hopes and dreams won’t fade away as long as the Gettysburg Address exists; “all men are created equal” — “these dead shall not have died in vain” — “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth”
The picture of the Deplorables inside the Capitol above reminds me of the 17 year old carrying a M-15 in Kenosha WI before he killed two. They look like what they are, losers. A professional job interviewer wouldn’t waste a second on them. They stormed with an assist by others the symbol of their suppression. They will keep it up until the USA splits apart. They have nothing better to do.
This is a result of why the Western Empire has fallen and pandemic spread unchecked killing a third of a million Americans to date. The US government for the last decades solely worked to increase corporate profits not for the people. It’s failed. Jobs, security, health and a purpose in life are necessary to prevent the rising chaos or a reign of authoritarianism.
The tragedy is the Inauguration in two weeks won’t change a thing; no New Deal nor an end to the perpetual war. Secession becomes inevitable.
The Storming of the Capitol.
VP Mike Pence authorized the use of National Guard troops. One Woman Protestor Dead. Curfew in effect in DC, Arlington and Alexandria. Electoral Ballots saved for another day. Capitol retaken. Another day of utterly incompetent government. This wasn’t unforeseen.
The top 10% have been in denial. Their exploitation of the 90% is ending. The Empire has fallen. The bureaucracy will remove Donald Trump and install Joe Biden. They must to get paid. But the Capitol has been spray-painted – “Restore the Constitution and government by and for the people by assuring that future elections are free of corporate money plus end the Pandemic/Depression, or the USA is finished.”
The USA has been an Empire since the Mexican War. All those forts in the South to be renamed since the veto override of the defense bill veto, were built, and named after backwater Confederates to keep the Empire together. This, the pandemic, and Ted Cruz’s secession movement signify that the globalist run hegemon that uses identity politics to separate and spread ethnic conflict across the globe is no more. It is a multi-polar world once again.
The incompetent Pandemic response and Vaccine distribution show that USA is a failed state. If Americans want to remain a North American Empire, like before, they must keep Southerners, Heartlanders, Latinos, and Bi-Coastals together. The only way to do this is restore the Constitution and the rule of law. All the election shenanigans would end with paper ballots if counted in public combined with prohibiting corporate money being spent on elections. Government by and for the people would be restored once more.
If not and the states secede and a big if, war is avoided, most likely, North American will splinter into around twelve ethnic regional states centered on military bases armed with nuclear weapons and corporate headquarter cities with lots of no man’s land in between.
“Mad Max” is 2021!
Being old, I hate all the harbingers of change that will continue through 2021;
Suffering Montezuma’s revenge in Maryland, all of today.
No US federal public health system.
Rushed vaccines with no efficacy or long term safety data.
Gas tank filled a year ago that is still more than half full.
Paying thousands of dollars for dental and auto insurance that I am not using.
Electricity going out for hours in the middle of the night for no reason.
Two Chase credit card accounts that didn’t receive my analog checks that I mailed weeks ago – now with late charges.
Paying credit cards yesterday on a slow internet with digital payments from my bank’s checking account.
Senator Ted Cruz taking the first steps for the secession of Texas.
Governor Gavin Newsom’s incompetent California hypocrisy.
The fall of the Western Empire. The ascendancy of nations that controlled coronavirus.
Going stir crazy while trying to stay alive.
Joe Biden/Kamala Harris
The efficacy and long-term safety of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is unknown at this time. It is apparently not acutely toxic with one Swiss death reported in the millions of first shots. Without functioning public health systems in the West, the only alternative is the vaccines.
Important people will get funding. Both corporations will do the minimum necessary, fudge questionable results and oversight by the US federal government will be next to nil. Since the states are still reporting COVID-19 deaths, if the vaccines are having any effect on the transmission of the virus and the severity of the illness, it should show up in the state morbidity data. If there are excessive extreme reactions to the second shots or reinfection, it will likely appear in the alternate media.
Everyone is playing Russian Roulette. Death is about 50/50 risk for me if infected – a two chamber revolver. Going to the doctor’s office is a moderate risk. Say 50/50. So getting jabbed is a four chamber risk. But, being isolated, the only risk is from a virus fomite contaminated resupply which hasn’t happen yet. So, I am stuck at home unless the vaccines work spectacularly in the next three to four months. More likely, things remain fluid, the government does nothing, mail delivery stops, and when the internet goes down, nobody gets paid.
On January 6th it looks like the Democrats will get one last shot at good governance with Congressional acceptance of the electoral vote. If they replay the first neoliberal Obama/Biden Administration, the heartland will eventually secede from either coast unless a second civil war or third world war destroys it first.
The effectiveness of mRNA vaccines on the transmissibility of coronavirus is being testing right now with the millions of humans being jabbed with it. It was rushed into use without testing the effectiveness and safety because there was no alternative in the West. There are no effective public health systems or functional governments in place to control the virus unlike Asia and the South Pacific nations. Democracy had been dismantled to increase global trade and profits. Daily testing, contact tracing and safe quarantines are too costly for global billionaires. Basically, lower castes do not matter.
If the number of COVID-19 cases decrease where injections are underway, this will prove the effectiveness or not. But it will be at the cost of all who have long haul diseases and those who died too soon – 356.579 to date in the USA.
Richard Engel, NBC foreign correspondent, at the beginning of the pandemic in Singapore identified the virus as a “Killer Cold”. An apt description. But the term disappeared immediately. The Western Empire would not, could not, tell the truth; a deadly pandemic is engulfing the world and has crowned Joe Biden, the Last Emperor.
Marvelous writing. It is true. How one dimensional the world has become when the only thing that matters is money, not the pursuit of life, liberty, fraternity and happiness.
It is obvious (unless your paycheck is involved) that the Western response to the coronavirus pandemic is solely injecting profitable vaccines. Clearly Pfizer was across the line first and gains the riches. Second there is no “greater good” anymore. With the privatization of healthcare in the USA, the public health system was decimated.
Los Angeles is running out of oxygen for its COVID patients. Vaccine logistics needs to be straightened out. There are indications of significant allergic reactions to mRNA vaccines. Yet, corporate propaganda is shameless. Dr. Anthony Fauci who didn’t control either the HIV and coronavirus pandemics is idolatrized, not called a Loser like Donald J Trump. The US Government failed across the board. Profiteering is rampant.
Unless the US Constitution and the Public Health System are restored, the dog fights over the remains between national oligarchs and global high caste billionaires are sure to result in the secession of the US Heartland from either coast like a nightmare Brexit. Only the most deluded would call that good. This is on Joe Biden and the Democrats if they continue down the current path. Today’s coronavirus death toll of 339,921 is sure to climb well above the US Civil War’s 750,000 dead. Millions more will die if a second civil war breaks out.
By next year to travel by air, get on Amtrak, get a driver’s license, any public function that has guarded gateways, you’ll have to show a digital certificate. If you don’t have a smart phone, you’ll have to go to the slow lane. The only thing that may stop this is if there are significant allergic responses to the second shot or if reinfection kicks off a cytokine storm.
I am still shocked that, despite the evidence, the media does not point out that coronavirus pandemic in high inequality states without functioning public health systems overwhelms the for-profit hospital systems. To date, the lockdowns only address this problem. If the nation was united on restoring the public health system and doing what is necessary to defeat the virus, it could be done. It is just that the oligarchs and the paid politicians don’t care and will block any attempt to use upper-class wealth to fund a public health system. But the wealthy do support spending billions of dollars on for-profit corporate vaccines since they get a cut of it.
Amazingly Time magazine blows the silence and compares the Pandemic Depression to the Great Depression and publishes a telling “Edward Hopper” picture of 2020 mid-Manhattan:
https://time.com/5876606/economic-depression-coronavirus/
Their graph adds the Great Depression that was conveniently left off the one above. Literally the world is replaying 1929 again, except now it is with a fiat currency. Austerity is the equivalent of going back on the Gold Standard. This time, a World War would be an extermination event.WaPo continues to blame everything on Donald Trump and Russia not the ruling Plutocracy. Donald Trump’s “Denial, Mismanagement and Magical Thinking” defines the Elite. If there is fraud in Facebook giving 400 million dollars to state election offices or if Dominion Voting Systems were hacked, using it after the fact to stay in power is Republican hypocrisy.
But, no matter, Joe Biden’s selecting of General Lloyd Austin as Defense Secretary assures that he has the Praetorian Guard at his back.
My Grandfather had a farm. He immigrated with the knowledge and culture of the Swedish family farm. It got the family through the Great Depression with no income until the Naval Shipyard started hiring carpenters again. He sold it in the early 1950s when he could fulltime work in Seattle. This knowledge and culture are gone except for one great granddaughter that lives on a goat farm but is trained as a Pediatrician.
I was raised with the tradition that the eldest son gets the farm. But that has disappeared along with the knowledge how to live without money. When civilizations crash and cash disappears, prepping is futile unless you are already off the grid.
The fraying at the edges is impossible to ignore. My mailed Neflix DVDs are held up somewhere in the postal system. Operation Warp Speed apparently did not do any trial runs. We shall see if ZeroHedge’s CDC report of 3150 health impact events in 112,807 injections (2.7%) is real.
A worthwhile plan is to survive the next five years by any means possible in the hope that democracy and a functional government are restored like the New Deal was in 1932.
This is beautiful writing and wistful vision of reality; what is beneath the skin.
Mark Shields Democratic pundit for 3 decades retired from Friday Nights on PBS’s NewsHour. I respectfully watch for decades. In a sense we were of a similar generation who passed through the military into civilian life. The last remaining Draftees are old and lame now and passing away like the WII and Korean Vets before. The US Army is dying; what are left are global mercenaries.
The world turned upside down with the Iraq Invasion by the crazy Republicans but in 2014 the Democrats were just as insane with the stupid aggression against Syria and Ukraine. Mark Shields continued in denial. I belatedly awakened.
The Coronavirus Pandemic documents the fall of the US government and the passing of the public health system and democracy. The sole purpose of life is to make more money for the global rich and die when no longer needed. Corporate media really doesn’t want you to see what is underneath – the “Blood Diamonds”.
Depending on which political clan, Russia or China is scapegoated to keep the scam going.
If history rhymes, the USA today is replaying the 1918/19 Spanish Flu Pandemic and the 1932 Great Depression with the economics and politics of the Gilded Age. The New Deal over the last 40 years was deregulated and privatized out of existence with Social Security the only vestige left.
Money talks. Facebook didn’t give 300 million dollars to state election offices this year for nothing. Congress didn’t give hundreds of millions of dollars to the states for electronic vote counting machines for no reason. Cash buys power. If anybody knows that the election is rigged, it is the Republicans. They depend on discouraging the opposition’s vote. Except, this year, in a pandemic, the turnout at 66.2% is the highest in over a century.
311,068 Americans have died because the two borders were not closed to international flights in February 2020. Testing is a debacle. The public health response was dumped onto 50 state governments that resulted in a haphazard incomplete lockdowns when for-profit local hospitals were overrun with COVID-19 patients. Copying the public health procedures that are working in China, Vietnam, Cuba, Taiwan, Thailand, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand are ignored as too expensive and contrary to the Elite’s imperative of eliminating government by ending taxes and regulation.
The sole thing that matters is corporate profits. But industry has gone to Asia. All that left in the USA is the scam of increasing shareholder value. It creates crap. Boeing has stopped delivery of 787 Dreamliner because of problems with assembly of the composite aircraft fuselage. Maybe they can restart the 737 Max line now that it is cleared to fly in the USA and Brazil; once the 400 in storage are delivered.
The Democrats simply do not acknowledge that they are Ivy League, Brahmin Caste, Insiders totally out of touch with reality. The Republicans are trying to secede. If politicians don’t try to get workers’ votes by allowing them to have shelter, food and a purpose in life, they will shortly be gone. Yellow shirted Proud Boys are picking for a fight.
Good Riddance 2020.
It must be reemphasized that the neo-feudal Western nations sole purpose is the facilitation of increased corporate profits not the protection of their citizens lives. Neoliberalism and globalization make a planned effective response to the coronavirus pandemic impossible; in particular in the USA, UK, Belgium and Sweden. Only Asian and South Pacific nations with functional governments and public health systems are controlling the virus.
After oligarchs re-seized power in the 1980 Reagan/Thatcher revolt, state institutions were closed to cut taxes and community and charity hospitals were turned into profit centers. Closing borders to international flights became impossible. A conscious Presidential decision was made to ignore CDC and pass authority to 50 states even though continuous transmission of the Wuhan coronavirus was observed within the USA.
Testing is a debacle. Public Health principals are ignored. Haphazard and half-ass lockdowns were implemented by localities to keep their hospitals from overflowing with COVID-19 patients. Now it is too late and triage is being implemented in the third wave hot spots. Small businesses shut down, but there is no plan to fight the virus except with for-profit vaccines that may or may not work. Intentionally, billionaires got wealthier. The Dow Jones passed 30,000.
The Supreme Court has decided, Joe Biden will be the 46th President. The Status Quo won. Dr. Anthony Fauci is responsible for the failed HIV and Coronavirus government responses but he wasn’t fired but selected to be the new President’s Medical Advisor. He is doing exactly what the health and insurance industry want; extracting more money from patients, not curing them. Continued negligence is built in. In a failed nation; the losers, the starving, the evicted, the families with sick and dead, are being given only one recourse; “Liberty or Death”.
Since 1634 America has been a settler colony and then nation. It is fertile ground for newborn religions from the Quakers and Southern Baptists to the Mormon Corridor. After closing of the frontier, Jonestown and Waco lit up. MAGA is the latest rebirth.
Corporate media is ignoring it hoping it will go away. But it can’t when so many middle-class lives have turned into hellholes.
It is not unlikely in 2021 that the pandemic will continue rage with no national public health system. The Trump Family stays in the White House. The Pentagon continues to bomb the 3rd world and prepares a first strike on Russia and China as the war with Iran escalates. The Biden Administration runs either coast from the DNC on Russian hacked computers. Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler are chief honchos of the mandatory vaccine program in rural America.
The vaccines are a chimera, right now. They may control the coronavirus pandemic. But humans are the test animals to see if the vaccines work and the risks. The bottom line is that the governments in China, Taiwan, South Korea, Thailand, Cuba, Vietnam, Australia and New Zealand are able to control the virus now with functional public health programs.
But there is a huge swath of the world from India, Russia, Europe to South and North America where nations have been so decimated by greed that they are unable to protect their citizens. Taxes on corporations and the rich are needed to fund public health programs that are proven to work. Instead, the dead and ill are paying for their failed governments. Corporate profit over human lives. The denial is huge. But, if the for-profit vaccines fail or supply and distribution collapse, wherever there is not a restoration of working government, those nations will fall into 3rd world chaos.
The USA is approaching an orange revolt. The six media owners are trying to prevent it. The swamp blob is too old, incompetent and corrupt to do anything about it. A failed vaccine program with no national public health system to continue fight against the virus would be catastrophic.
I miss V.A. too.
The NY Times had an article on how Boeing was subverted by its managers to dismiss safety to increase their bonuses and shareholder value. They wrote that this now likely would change the corporation’s focus back to engineering after killing 346 passengers and crew and the loss of billions of dollars.
This is not isolated incident. The current system that took power forty years ago places profit above human lives. No CEO has been on trial for their crimes since the Obama/Biden Administration including the Sackler Family of Purdue Pharma for the over hundred thousand Americans who died from prescription opioids that they pushed.
There is no better example than Donald J Trump. He could have changed the system. If he closed the two US borders and stopped all international flights as late as the middle of February 2020, and implemented a workable national public health of testing, tracing and isolation, like Thailand. He would have swept into a second term to cut more taxes and regulations. Instead, the second worst Presidential candidate won with 80 million votes.
The tragedy is that Joe Biden is just as incapable of controlling the coronavirus pandemic as his opponent. He is not going to restore a free public health system. He too is betting everything on for-profit vaccines.
Health officer Dr. Sara Cody said the outbreak in Santa Clara County “is like a high-speed train. Our projections tell us that we are on target to derail by around the third week of December if we don’t apply the brakes right now”. The horror is that on January 21, 2021, the day after inauguration, a national public health program to control the virus by copying what works in East Asia and the South Pacific nations is not going to happen.
More Americans will die to so the wealthy can accumulate more money; 274,332 to date from coronavirus pandemic alone.
This is very difficult to write.
It is clear that the Western ruling elite’s response to the coronavirus pandemic is if it makes money, go for it. If it doesn’t (even if it is in the public good), forget it.
Since South Korea controlled its coronavirus outbreak, it’s been crystal clear that religious ceremonies; packed together, singing, praying, and no protective equipment are super spreader events when an infected virus shedding person attends. This is likely in the USA with the virus running wild. They are extremely hard to control by public health personnel since most of the virus spreaders are asymptomatic (temperature screening is pointless) and the participants generally are anti-state (Christians in a Confucian nation or Hasidic Jews in Brooklyn NY) and they return out into the population afterwards.
The US Supreme Court has just decided that it is legal to infect, hospitalize and kill other Americans while practicing one’s religion in public.
The real problem is what is the truth, even here, except for personal antidotes. All news is transferred through filters. For example, news from RT is described as Russian propaganda. Likewise, as is US corporate media. When the Plutocrats seized power, they blamed the resulting American Rust Belt on environmentalists, hippies, liberals, anyone except the real culprits, Ivy League MBAs on Wall Street. The victims are the Trumpeters. With a failed government, the only recourse is a return to the old myths and faith. A Death Cult now controls the US Supreme Court.
On the other hand, there are the five percent Technocrats who the Democrats represent who are the overseers for the oligarchs. To take the money and avoid self-recriminations for corruption, arrogance, and incompetence; they grasped on to the belief that only money counts in life. “Greed is Good”.
The outcome is the USA is totally polarized between two fake myths. American Science and Engineering are debased to make more money. Airplanes crash, Paradise CA burns, quarter million Americans die of COVID-19. At its core, there are two 21st century Americas, one were you realize you are on your own and start prepping or you continue the slog, pushing the rocks up the hill, ignoring the risks, believing that there is a higher power and a just reward.
The USA is the same position as the Soviet Union. The propaganda no longer works. Instead of Chernobyl, it is Coronavirus that shows the incompetence. Let’s be clear, Donald Trump is trying to negate the 2020 election. He is Boris Yeltsin. If he gets Republican State Legislatures to vote him in, it is all over.
Also, it it is quite obvious that Nations with effective governments controlled the virus. Dysfunctional governments failed. The USA, UK and Belgium are the worse of the lot. At least Belgium acknowledges it has no government.
A simple explanation for the dysfunction is the rise of the Western Empire and Globalism and the dismantlement of democracy. Everything has fallen apart. The Republican Party still publicly acknowledges its fidelity to “job creators” and cutting government to a size where it can be drowned in the bathtub. Likely next year, Republicans will still control the Senate and the selection of political appointees. The USA cannot manage quarantines; universal testing, contact tracing, isolation, or form effective work and school bubbles. It is betting everything on a for-profit vaccine from the Pharmaceutical Industry next year.
Only the restoration of a functional democracy and public health social support systems will assure the defeat of the virus. The USA is no longer a safe haven (it is quarantined from the virus free world except for essential travelers). The US dollar position as the world’s reserve currency is finished. The control of 95% of Americans by the 5%, a Pandemic Depression, the rich jet setting across the world while the little people are quarantined at home, American causality numbers approaching Civil War levels; whoever is inaugurated in January 20, 2021, will be the Western Empire’s Last Emperor.
What is going on? There is way too much debt. The top 1% own all the assets and profit off the renters. The cars in line for food in Dallas are not owned but are financed with five year loan payments that keep getting rolled over.
The supply system financed with digital money is breaking down. Workers are ill, out of work, isolated at home. The USA is a sick nation supplied by a mostly virus free Asia. The Empire (whose protection money financed Wall Street) has fallen. The USA is Incapable of serving and protecting its citizens. The wealthy’s assets will not be used to rebuild the public health service to fight the pandemic in the West. The federal government has done nothing for the last eight months as a quarter million Americans died early. If fraud is proven (a possibility due to rampant corruption and incompetence; despite media denials) this will freeze the US government to a stop with the Presidential Election thrown into the House. A Dark Winter is coming, indeed.
The handful of blogs, I read every day; have gone to the ground. Fear of the future, going stir crazy, protests downtown, does that. It is natural to cling to the life raft of beliefs and faith. Except, human instincts, tend toward violence. The world is too full of people and nuclear weapons for that. The nations that controlled COVID-19 have functional governments. Science that is divorced from the drive for profit has proven to be a useful tool to observe reality. Magical thinking resulted in a quarter million Americans dying and overwhelming the for-profit healthcare system in US hot spots.
Life will only get a lot worse in the West unless there is a restoration of democracy and government that works for the greater good.
The Western Empire couldn’t have fallen. There can’t be an American Civil War 2.0 if corporate media does not publish the pictures. This unites the six corporate media owners; there is nothing to see here. “Donald Trump lost. Coronavirus is running wild.”
If Georgia stays blue and North Carolina red there are just three red states left on the US East Coast. The USA is becoming bi-polar with blue coasts and the heartland red. This is the direct result of the death of the New Deal and de-industrialization. The only way to make money is by financialization or resource extraction. Both Coasts take their cut on the goods shipped through their ports from ordering, shipping, assembly, and storage. But thanks to the Western Empire which Wall Street is desperately trying to resurrect, most money is earned through finance charges and interest on debt due to the US dollar being the global reserve currency.
Within the USA, resource extraction pollutes rivers and air flowing to the coasts but is the only source of good paying jobs, inland, unless in upper crust education or healthcare.
The US federal government has been seized by vested interests; oil, gas, industrial farming, air transportation, healthcare, education, intelligence and military suppliers. Rather than serving the people, these institutions make more money for the rich and their staffers. College students are customers, who partied, got sick, went back home and infected their families. Continuing to rake in the money from student loans or occupying Syria’s oil field are more important than health or life.
What is being ignored is the possibility of Republican State Legislators for the first-time electing Donald Trump electoral voters (for example Arizona and Michigan) not the winner, Joe Biden, due to election fraud and to end the wars. The media are most intently avoiding giving them ideas and the swamp blob gathering dirt on the legislators. This would be equivalent of hothead Southern militias firing on Fort Sumter to preserve their livelihood.
What a surprise if this explodes out of the Fog of War.
How true.
Steve Bannon talked about a horseshoe joining the Left and Right. But he is under indictment and his lawyer quit. The Squad has to suffer Nancy Pelosi for two more years with no recourse. Four soldiers were killed in a roadside explosion occupying Syria’s oil field hundreds of miles from any coast on the other side of the world that is quarantined off because of the out of control Coronavirus Pandemic in the USA. A thousand Americans died this week of the virus and death toll is beginning to rise: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-deaths-united-states-each-day-2020-n1177936
Joe Biden will keep troops over there because of Russia.Nobody talks about the oligarchy, the exploitation, the incompetency, and the media are already hyping the Biden Transition. The Swamp Blob is back. Yet, I have the feeling that this is a Brad Pitt Hollywood Movie:
“The first rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.
The second rule about fight club is you don’t talk about fight club.
But the most important rule of fight club is: Fuck the rules.”The future is simple. Restore government by and for the people and the rule of law or chaos will explode. The free world is collapsing.
The USA is full of delusions starting with that it is a democracy. There are elections but the people don’t rule. Money does.
I remember the reviews of the move “Platoon” back when it was released in 1986; “The Soldiers spent more time fighting each other than the enemy.” “If they made of movie of my year in Vietnam it would have been 90 minutes of filling sand bags and 5 minutes of sure terror.”
We Northerners/Westerners in country had nothing in common nor associated with the Oakies from Muskogee (Hillbillies – Rednecks). We who spoke TV English (no matter the race or ethnic background) were naturally assumed to be exceptional educated people (Americans).
All the statues of Stonewall Jackson, Robert E Lee and Confederate soldiers that were built at the turn of the 20th century were to restore the backwater South into the North American Empire. Now the statues are being torn down and Trumpeters called White Supremacists. The names of Confederate Generals on bases in the South will be shortly erased if Defense Secretary isn’t fired and Joe Biden somehow falls short. The Empire is gone. Industry is gone. The Last Emperor can do nothing. All that left in the USA is a service industry that can’t even keep its customers healthy. Americans are dying an early death.
The Democrats are the Professional Managers. Around 5% of the population. They earn their keep from helping the ruling plutocrats exploit everyone else. Republicans are even more crazy servile to big business and magical myths. The contradictions are getting so great that nobody can rule the West and the coronavirus is spreading like wildfire. Unless the truth is acknowledged that government can only function with the consent of the governed for the best interests of Americans; the future will be even more chaotic than today.
Being a retired lowest rung technocrat, what do I have, if there isn’t a technological, scientific or an engineered solution? Not much. So, as the alternative, I fall back to the restoration of the New Deal (regulated capitalism) and a functional government that I grew up with. Eradicating the virus is possible. China, Vietnam, Taiwan, New Zealand are doing it.
My war 50 years ago was for no good reason. They continue today. It is not rational. So you avoid thinking about it, too much, but it gets harder as the craziness grows. Americans are playing Russian Roulette right now.
