Background network noise coming out of China has started climbing noticeably again. Haven’t seen much in the way of email bot traffic like a few years ago, but those were mostly Russian. Chinese scanning and generic exploit bot activity has ramped up considerably in just the past month. The lion’s share reaching my server is shown on the thickest red line below:
“What happens if we get to November and stock markets are at all-time highs, and we’re at 15% unemployment, and the food [banks] don’t have food? Imagine this world. That world in a much lesser way is what brought us Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.”
Money-starved forces behind the Covid-19 inspired U.S. economic shutdown are now forcefully pulling in opposite directions. Science vs. Greed is center stage in a government-sponsored three ring circus largely responsible for it’s own undoing. I am not talking about just the Federal government either, despite their leading role in the inanity. State and local governments hold full responsibility for their uneven healthcare and unemployment policies, disjointed disaster preparedness and bean-counter budgeting. There’s plenty of pandemic blame to go around for everybody.
The race to determine how fast how many people get killed from an exponentially spreading, uncontrolled virus started in China. I tend to agree with the author of the article linked above, that it will likely end there as well. I’m just a 60yo Air Force retiree with a passive interest in politics and and an active distaste for discarding defective Chinese auto parts. The more I think about it, it’s almost poetic justice, but the price is too high.
What will it cost to re-orient the economy for the next century, and how much of the deleterious political and economic bullshit will get plowed under in the process? I’m starting to think we are un-wittingly on the right track at this point. Oftentimes the best way to re-build something is burn it to the ground and start over. With all the restaurants closed, maybe the obesity problem will start to improve. In any case, the lemming herd listening to Trump is already halfway over the edge.
Here’s your crossover candidate, if ever there was one. Ran across this gentleman’s TouTube™ videos in the random search attempting to decide what to do next around here, while wasting time in home jail. Planning an early parole release trip to Ace for deck hardware, conditions permitting. Sane people don’t go near Home Depot around here anymore far as I can tell, from just the full parking lot.
I’m about halfway through his shyt now, after starting to get interested a few weeks ago, purely by random chance. Carefully approached, he could easily go Dem, Repub or 3rd party and check every box. The video below is where I first ran across this guy. Pretty sure I’m a prime example of the middle-class Pennsylvania backwoods redneck version. Apparently people like us had a better chance making it into the so-called “middle class,” north of the Mason-Dixon line. Why don’t more people think like this?
Apparently it’s gotten that way here in Weld county, CO. Maybe not, when optionally participating in the exponential spread of a deadly virus, depending on whether or not you choose to leave your home. We’ll just call it regular punishment for those of us remaining in our home jails while the general population engages in viral sprees of willful ignorance.
Sittin’ tight in home jail detention, for the time being.
Not that I’m complaining about government overreach, or tyrannical pandemic measures. On the contrary, I firmly believe the angst addressing these issues is purely misplaced by people under the influence of the Trump propaganda machine. They would more appropriately be angry at a government failing to perform it’s primary function of effectively protecting their health and economy – not the consequences of failing to do so.
Well, not actually “in,” but pretty close. Weather patterns follow similarly un-predictable mountain influences here, so close enough! It’ll be cold and wet tomorrow, with the springtime transition now almost over. We should be set for summer if we don’t get a tree-breaking snowfall this week. The remnants of deadwood from last Fall’s early freeze can be seen in the last pic. Mother nature is a real bitch around here occasionally. I think she nearly killed that tree.
The last super-moon of the season, Flower Moon, was stunning. Pixel doesn’t capture any detail in it at all, but you can see it’s apparent size in that 1st shot. Finally got the deck railing project going, after buying most of the steel over two years ago. It sat on the garage floor the past two years waiting for me to get well enough to work with it. I ground out the kerosene tank welding project last summer only because I was able to do most of it sitting down.
The pups keep watch in the driveway any time I’m working in the garage or out front. Anna is more of a sleeper, than a watcher. We expect Francie to show up after exile in Florida soon. Phoebe is in Texas with Tanner, with Michelle and everybody else remaining status quo.
It didn’t take long for some of the PPE idiocy to turn up. Jared Kuntner had a group of volunteer college kids with no disaster or pandemic response management experience working on it. Reminds me of the SEI&V group at Locmar. Few others in the current administration appear even remotely qualified for their jobs, so I guess that is par for the course.
Regardless, It’s not a huge leap to lay the lion’s share of the PPE debacle blame squarely at the doorstep of the healthcare industry. Previously inexpensive equipment made from paper and plastic, yet critical in managing contagious outbreaks, is suddenly found in short supply – why? Allow me to offer a few relevant buzzwords:
BEANCOUNTERS CHINA LABOR COST PROFIT, etc. The healthcare industry in this country has been in the crapper for a long time. It just took a raging pandemic to expose their priorities. The mutherfuckers here in Denver call it a “timing” issue, they are now profusely apologizing for. Fire the lot of those cocksuckers, starting with that greedy bitch below. The “health” category on this site details a number of VA healthcare issues if you are curious to see exactly what they did to me, personally. Current summary here. Yeah, I have an ax to grind.
Yeah, I fucked up again – so what?
HMO’s, hospitals and the insurance companies they are in cahoots with dropped the ball big time. It’s been laying on the ground for years waiting for something like a PPE shortage to develop, while the bean counters pocket pennies and patient costs rise, right along with the now skyrocketing cost for the most mundane, basic medical equipment.
Lindsey Graham is enough evidence proving the proposition, but if you want confirmation, look here. “Chiefs cornerback Bashaud Breeland got snared by South Carolina’s racist prison trap last week.”
Kansas City Chiefs’ Bashaud Breeland (21) intercepts a pass against the San Francisco 49ers during the first half of the NFL Super Bowl 54 football game Sunday, Feb. 2, 2020, in Miami Gardens, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Cops really need to get their shyt together and think about what they are doing once in awhile.
People paying political attention over the last half century know that government social programs ≠ the alt-right socialist moniker given them by capitalist slaves protesting to “re-open” the economy. “The Economy” as t’were, is not a thing that can manipulated like a light switch. It has been manipulated over many decades into a place between hard financial realities and production metrics that leave a vast majority of the population as producers largely in poverty. So they live paycheck-to-paycheck.
Now we get to see what happens when the economy slows dramatically overall, and in some sectors, literally stops. It is the grand experiment in American resilience for the next century. We got through it in the 1930’s with a somewhat different outlook. Back then, people like FDR were more interested in solving problems than getting re-elected. Indications for a politically-charged recovery this time around portend less satisfactory outcomes.
Get back to work and make my money!
“In other words, we do not need a revolution or utopia, but rather a reversal of a canonical late twentieth century error: conflating economic success with shareholder value, devil take the hindmost.”
The Fuckass-in-Chief sat in front of the Lincoln Memorial attempting to explain away his lies and salvage his precious “economy” night before last. The hubris and idiocy would be laughable, were it not the source of the biggest crisis in modern history.
Expecting more of the same from the impostors posing as government officials here is par for the course. Stay-at-Home has become Safer-at-Home in Colorado where infection and death rates have not peaked. Restrictions are being tightened in some places and loosened in others, while not one lifting criteria set by the Federal government has been reached, as the Poseur-in-Chief foments rebellion.
Bury your dead and get back to work!
Some people already know where this is headed. The infectious disease experts have only just begun to understand it’s clinical implications. Nobody in their right mind believes any progress against SARS-COv2 will be made without effective testing and tracing. The U.S. healthcare system has not yet scratched the surface on that part of the project, while food lines continue growing across the country. It really hurts watching the country I dedicated the best years of my life to going down the tubes.
Who has or had the virus? Nobody knows for sure.
“The White House will not allow the leading immunologist on the coronavirus task force to testify to Congress next week, calling the request ‘counter-productive’ to the administration’s efforts to contain the virus.” I think they mean counterproductive to their efforts to contain their incompetence.
Singapore, a small, wealthy SE Asian nation, initially seeing stellar results, is now suffering a 2nd wave of hotspots. China fucked up, and the U.S. doubled down on the exact same, stupid do-nothing response. What do we call a high-intensity combination of willful ignorance and cognitive dissonance? U.S. Pandemic Response 2020! With PPE stocks already depleted, and crowds of angry bankruptcy candidates demanding their freedom, it’s gonna make the 1st wave look like a warm-up.
…Appears to be working out just as well, if not better than the last one. How’s that Mideast Peace Plan doing, Jared? Any challenges risen to and conquered over there yet? The little bitch married to Trump’s actual little bitch daughter is the star sycophant in last week’s Presidential Poseur tour 2020.
Trump’s little go-to Bitch Boy
Proposing deceitful lies to prop up a failing administration while the death toll continues to rise in a crisis only beginning here, further confirms Hell’s reservations for this collection of shameless idiots. The Chinese got it right, at this point:
Early sun on a clear day makes for a pretty mountain picture around here. I took the opportunity this morning to do a little zoom demo with the Pixel 3:
Biggest issue I see with the zoom is the image file resolution appears to be a watered-down, smaller size. It’s pretty clear in the loss of detail. Google Pixel zoom fail. Either software extrapolation is not really all it’s cracked up to be, or the next big hardware advance is waiting in the wings. Starting to look forward to the model 5. Glad I did not sample the 4, beset with an inadequate battery and other issues un-expected from the Pixel group.
I’m not going to waste much time on the smarmy cocksucker known to me and many others as Mike Dense, except to say that world-class GOP hubris and arrogance were on full display for all to see yesterday. Abbey Zimet framed it well.
Hold your breath, everybody!Wonder who told her that?
Saw Dr. Donner again Monday. No surprises, and I am instructed to just stay the course and be careful with it.
“27 APR 20: 2nd followup with Dr. Donner showed the lumbar healing as expected. Questions about losing the brace and increased activity were met with “be careful and don’t push it” response. So it looks like another couple months of convalescence is in order. Flexibility loss and muscle soreness from the nerve damage clenching are the only troubling symptoms remaining. Minor healing discomfort in the lumbar is all that remains there. Rehab now seems to apply to the entire midsection. The new left hip did not get properly re-habbed, due to the back injury. Right side was severely beaten by the left hip incubation period and following year of back injury abuse. Bones and joints seem good as they can possibly be now, if I can just struggle back to some state of relative normalcy.”
Yes, it certainly is troubling. Recognizing distractions, misinformation and in many cases, downright lies, causing confusion and angst in the Covid-19 situation is a BIG issue. But what bothers me more than questionable media reporting on BOTH sides is the source of the stupidity.
It bothers me that a qualified, knowledgeable person such as Dr. Birx gets stuck being a Trump apologist. It bothers me that a POTUS jokes about matters of life and death. It bothers me that governments at all levels feel playing games with people’s lives seems to be a popular sporting activity in governance these days.
But what bothers me the most about our current national crisis is the rising death toll amid ongoing incoherence, and increasing politicization. It really bothers me that science plays 2nd fiddle to stupidity these days.
The Cocksuckers and Christian Fuck-Asses are making us sick and robbing us blind.
Informed people understand how the Gov/Pharma/Christian bloc of economic and political control freaks torpedoed Cannabis research for decades. Will SARS-CoV2 be the big Wake-Up call?
Israel leading the way.
With Trump still touting things like household cleaners as recently as yesterday, I suppose we can only pray to their non-existent Gawds.