A Spring Fever from hell

Who would have expected that in the last year of the Trump presidency with the country  pathologically divided we (the humans race) would be visited by a monumental catastrophe - a pandemic of biblical proportions. The anti-Trumpians including Never Trump Republicans and the entire punditry often wondered how DJT would fare when confronted with a real crisis rather than the ones he inflicted on himself which he could at any time turn on or off like a spigot - see Trade War with China. Now we know.  

All of the kings horses and all of the kings men cannot now put this Humpty Dumpty back together again. We live in an age when too much is recorded digitally. Even the most obscure Internet user can find his or her life unraveling due to an unwisely posted video. And many a promising career has been short-circuited by some email note, jpeg file or video from their past. So it is with DJT in spades. It's all been recorded for all to see. It is totally impossible for this ultra publicity seeking cult figure and the 'President of the Free World' to extricate himself from his digitally recorded past. The televised blustery Nurenbergesque rallies, his rambling press conferences and his morning batches of spelling/grammar challenged Tweets are all there for posterity (and future political ads).


But in this case it is not only what he said or did, it was what he did not do during that fatal fallow period of inaction as the Covid-19 pestilence ramped up its insidious momentum. South Korea saw it. Taiwan saw it, Canada saw it. Hong Kong saw it. Why not us? With 14 intelligence agencies and a constant NSC presence in the White House, it must have taken DJT and his acolytes Herculean will power (or breathtaking stupidity) to so assiduously ignore this looming hell storm. But The Donald team managed to do so for a whole month.

But Trump aside we are still in deep doo doo. The data below are from the NY Times' daily updated mapping of the numbers of the pademic's carnage extracted from Johns Hopkins University's global tracking.  Some countries below like Japan and Brazil have lower numbers than one would expect probably due to a low level of testing or an early stage in the outbreak.

 

So as this pandemic engulfs the world, our numbers (shown in red) are positively numbing. As of yesterday (4/15/20) the US by far leads the rest of the  world in both the number infected with Corvid19, with 607318, and also with the number who have succumbed to it – over 26,000 and climbing. The table above shows those countries with the most (identified) cases along with that country's mortality rate. 

 Those countries shown in green have so far seem to have responded most successfully with low mortality rates. China is not included because their figures seem suspiciously low with a 2.2 billion population and only 84,802 infections. Those in gray have been hit the hardest so far both in terms of a high infection and a high mortality rates. It is really too early to see how this plays out globally. So far the only\ main takeaway is that US has over 3 times as may cases as any other country.  Our mortality rate at 4.29% still fairly low. Some have overwhelmed their health care systems like Spain and Italy. . This means our over worked, over burdened and under protected health workers are doing a truly selfless and heroic job.

This is just health care side of it all.  As much of the world's workforce is suddenly pulled from service in a unprecedented way no one yet has any real idea of how this will change the the once interconnected global economy as well each country's relative situation - or for that matter when all of this it will end.

Our neighbor to the north

"US surpasses Italy for the most corvid-19 deaths in the world". This was the headline in today's online edition of the Washington Post.

Without any subjective or emotional commentary on my part I will simply let others speak. This is from comments on an article in today's NY Times on the terrible death toll in New York's nursing homes as this virus invades the US.

Wayne

Ontario Canada

Reading the USA stats for coronavirus is shocking & very sad. I just compared some US stats against Canada's on coronavirus tracking websites. USA has 10 times Canada's population but these comparative stats are shocking. So far USA has 18,800 deaths & Canada has 570 deaths. USA has 501,620 case of this virus & Canada has 22,200. USA's death rate per million population is 57 while Canada's is 15. The main explanation is Canada shut down all schools March 13 & all non-essential businesses soon after. Canada's 'stay at home' & 'social distancing' also began approx. 2+ weeks earlier than USA's. These sensible but difficult protocols have reduced the coronavirus cases & deaths substantially. Both countries must continue them until health experts tell us it's safe to gradually reduce these protocols.

                        Replies to Wayne's comment 

 

Wayne:

Actually, the main explanation is that Canada is governed by intelligent, humane leaders who understand the value of society. And the USA is governed by a cult of selfishness, greed and cultured "We're #1" ignorance supported by many Americans who lack the critical thinking to grasp the basic meaning of the word 'society'. America is about to become #1...in Coronavirus deaths....because it rejects society.

                          Socrates

Downtown Verona. NJ

                                       
                                         Wayne:

In the 2008 financial crisis Paul Krugman wrote an Op-Ed about how the banks in Canada had fared much better because they were more tightly regulated. One reader's comment came in from a Canadian: "It's simple - Canada is a community. America is a market."

                                              

                                      Ruskin

                                         Buffalo, NY

Ruskin:

Correct. During that financial crisis NO Canadian bank failed while over 2000 US banks failed. There was over 11 million home foreclosures in USA & in many states the price of homes declined 40% to 50%. Canada did not have any of those dire consequences. BTW, Canada's 5 major banks actually bought out numerous US banks. Most Americans are unaware that Now many of USA's largest financial institutions are owned by these 5 major Canadian banks. EG's: TD Financial is Toronto Dominion Bank. RBC is Royal Bank of Canada, Scotia is Bank of Nova Scotia etc.

               Wayne

              Ontario Canada

Beware the Ides of March

                                         Assassination of Julius Caesar


March 15^th, The Ides of March for the Romans was a big day - religious observances were held and debts came due. But in 44 BC it was a bad day for Emperor Julius Caesar. Nineteen centuries later March 15th 1918 was also a bad day for Czar Nicholas II who was forced to abdicate. And now this year's 15^thof March we found ourselves also in our own 'Ides of March'. Things are so bad that some believe it will never be same again. Very much like the days after September 11, 2001 when our vulnerability to asymmetric jihadist warfare became tragically obvious. Now a global pandemic is triggering a monumental reset of everything.

To make matters worse this crisis would be difficult enough under the best run Executive Branch one could imagine, but we have the extreme misfortune to have it hit us under the worst run one imaginable. Fortunately the States are taking forceful initiatives on their own. But that will not be enough. We need strong, intelligent, decisive leadership.

We in the Bay Area have been in 'shelter-in-place' since early last week. It feels like it's been a month. When I go to the grocery store I now try to envision others I encounter to be surrounded by an invisible cloud  of Covid-19 viral particles waiting to infect me and myself also surrounded by such a cloud waiting to infect them. And yet I can't. They all look like normal healthy people.

We are told one of the key means to lowering the soaring infection rate is to drastically reduce human interaction. A radical reducing of exposure means practically shutting the whole economy down, Nobody politically right, left or center; religious or atheistic; PHD or high school dropout really has a clue as to where the f**k we're headed. Capitalism in one country much less globally can (painfully) come back from world wars, revolutions, depressions and of course the regular garden variety recession. But what does it mean to have to idle a huge portion of much of the global work force almost simultaneously? Remember, China although claiming 'recovery', still has over 81,000 cases three months into this. As of last Friday (3/20/20) stock markets around world were still in free fall. That means bits and bytes on computers representing trillions and trillions of dollars, euros, yens, whatever of wealth have vanished into cyberspace. In addition to the speculative wealth of all sorts of one-percenters, plungers and assorted fat cats who use the stock market as their Great Casino having taken gotten serious 'haircuts' , the rest of us have also had eaten shit. All of our 'well performing' mutual funds or our cautiously researched favorite stocks that seemed stable and might someday even soar have been pulled into this black vortex.. But what about most Americans who never have enough extra income for such amateur speculation and rely on their 401K stock portfolios managed by 'professionals' for their retirement plans?. Add to that all the state, county  and municipal civil servants with their  retirement plans with managers' who are charged with investing those massive funds in the 'the markets'. And of course there are the insurance companies, and so on.

We are in a 'fine mess' and it wasn't Oliver Hardy's fault..

Roto-Rooter River

One recent poll found that 82 percent of Republicans now trust President Trump more than they trust the media. '

A.G. Sulzberger NYTimes 9/24/19


If nearly half the US population and well over ¾ of Republicans no longer trusts the media and prefers a pathological liar, we are further up Roto-Rooter River than I thought. Any discerning citizen must acknowledge, if they want to be honest, that corporate mass media is collectively a bulwark of the established order. And in that role it needs to try to find out what is really going on. What it reports and how it is framed has an inevitable bias, that's a given. But it's the interpretation that is subjective not the facts themselves. Facts are what are objectively true until proven false then they are no longer facts. Why we choose one media outlet over another should be about interpretation of the facts not an alternate set of facts. Yet when boldface lies slip in and are accepted as truth much damage is done. As we know wars have been fostered by 'the press' based on falsehoods. Yes, you Mr. Hearst (Spanish-America War) and you Mr Sulzberger (Iraq War).


Unfortunately for many Americans truth has been reduced to something relative to its source. This is bad news for all of us. We cannot have a democracy without an agreement on basic reality. Everyone can't have a reality conveniently matching their preferences. Either it is day or night, either something is black or white, either a bit on a computer is on or off, either the planet earth is a sphere or a saucer and so on. But main stream media formerly known as 'the press' in its herd-like pursuit of a breaking story, must base their reporting on the best known information at the time or lose credibility vis a vis its competitors. Having the President call such news Fake News simply because it is unfavorable to a governing entity's agenda or his assertions, destroys something fragile and important. Furthermore it is a step toward totalitarianism.

The trouble now is that other factors are compounding the problem.  Force multiplier Internet driven innovations have moved in crowding out the old media: newspapers, radio and network television. There is always the struggle between entrenched power and privilege vs the (often futile) pursuit of progress toward a more just society. Democracy requires a free press and that's why we have the First Amendment to the Constitution. The question is whether flashy instantaneous communication innovations like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, etc. have made it too easy to profligate the Big Lie or more typically a swarm of dangerous Little Lies. All of this in the service of a state run by opportunistic oligarchs as they hide behind the “freedom of the press”. A free press allows lies to creep in, it is the price we pay for freedom of expression. But lies must be unmasked in the healthy dialogue between the opposing opinion sources. The problem is the that a set of lies can be stictched together creating a totally alternate fabrication  - AKA  conspiracy theories. Historians often uncover deeper more complicated explanations for historical events but they seldom uncover a totally new explanation of a controversial event.  For instance no one has proven unequivocally Oswald did not kill Kennedy.

Matt Zukerberg's Facebook probably now has more influence than newspapers and television combined.  Zukerberg is a strange phenomena. He looks almost alien-like with his close cropped hair and shiny round face. By opportunistically appropriating some other hotshot college techie's social networking innovation he built an empire acquiring multi-billionaire status before even reaching the age 30. By improving, monetizing and then 'viralizing' it, he created a Frankensteinian global monstrosity with over two billion users. Facebook by encouraging first the college kids and then everybody else to broadcast their personal lives like pseudo-celebrities for the whole world to see and linking them to an growing collection of friends, relatives and first second and third level acquaintances (and worse friends of friends of acquaintances), it proved a perfect pseudo antidote to social isolation and anomie. As a social toy Facebook at first seemed innocuous enough. That is until it was discovered by politicos on both the left and right. It soon became the perfect force for producing political 'siloization' of the worse kind. Instead of rude acrimonious dialogues as was the norm in the old dial-up modem Chat Room days, people could comfortably re-enforce their opinions.

While fiery acrimonious encounters still occur egged on by 'trolls' with extremist with four letter word infused vocabularies, most people can comfortably settle in with their brethren in nice 'agree-a-thons' passing around humorous memes, cartoons and articulately constructed diatribes reinforcing their views. But financing the whole thing and making Zukerberg obscenely rich is a layer of advertising that is paying for it all.  Enter devious political operatives and technically adapt extremists including white supremacists, neo-Nazis (along with Russian government operatives). While the political lefties are no angels and can be especially cruel in their lampooning of their political enemies, they cannot match the right wing' when comes to shear creative dishonesty (think 'Swiftboating' of decorated Vietnam vet John Kerry in 2004 vs draft dodging George W. Bush).

With Facebook and its ilk now such major social forces, one can't help but be concerned about big Republican Pac/Trumpian reelection money being pumping into professionally designed Big Lie and Little Lie driven ad campaigns as the quintessentially important 2020 election gets underway. This along with foreign agents with skills at manipulating American public opinion. If the Senate GOP protects El Presidente as expected in what looks to be a proforma Impeachment exercise (that the Demos were forced into by Donald Trump's sheer audacity), then the hustler-in-chief may survive the 2020 election. It so we are surely up Roto-Rooter River.

IMPEACHMENT?

The Duce

The Trump

                                         

Donald Trump with his jutting jaw and his grandiose self satisfied demeanor very much brings to mind the 1930's fascist dictator of Italy Benito Mussolini. Trump is so far not (not yet anyway) a Mussolini. He has no real program, no ideology, he is no war veteran, has no mass following (although a dangerously large one), and has not actually presided over any 'trains running on time'. But like Mussolini he did get in by legitimate parliamentary means by using working class discord and playing the nationalist card and then proceeding to consolidate power. Trump has a way to go yet but certainly has already adopted some of the Duce's mannerisms and inclinations, and that's scary.

We have allowed a proto-fascist, cheap hustler to take over the levers of power. And almost daily he finds new ones to pull with unknown results (or legality). He is proving to be quintessentially dangerous both to our country and to the world at large, and must be removed from office ASAP. But how, when nearly half of the voters support him either for Republican agenda real politick reasons or are deluded Kool Aid drinkers? It is clear impeachment can't do it. While our impeachment process was designed for something exactly like this, it won't work in this situation. The Repubs have long since ceased being any kind of 'loyal opposition' and will back Trump even as they despise him. And Speaker of the House Pelois is wary of 'the optics' of it and how it can be spun by the WH, the Repubs and pro-Trump media. As we know the Repubs have misused and thus debased the tool of impeachment by using it on Bill Clinton over his lying about his personal life. Impeachment as a Constitutionally mandated process for removal of a dangerous POTUS, packs far less wallop and carries far less disgrace than it once did. It now looks too much like mere political theater (or a cheap political maneuver as in Brazil with the “impeachment” of Lula's successor).

Nevertheless I have come around to believe that the impeachment process must be used even if it cannot actually drive the him out. The seriousness of the situation increases daily. He is running a muck. Hopefully the impeachment process will tie up the WH staff and slow down his rampage. Otherwise unimpeded he will continue to discover new outrages to commit. His impeachment is our duty to the institution of democracy even if it might not yield his actual expulsion. The political warfare will continue with or without an ongoing impeachment. But let's take our time. It's needs to be in-process when the 2020 presidential contest in full force. Trump does not need to have enough time to portray the failure to impeach as a badge of honor as he has the Mueller investigation's failure to indict. Have it still 'underway' on election day.

Having recently returned from Barcelona I can you tell that post-fascist Spain with the Socialist Party presently in power at least from a tourista point of view looks like a worker's paradise compared to the Bay Area where I live. They have lots of functional if not spiffy public high rise public housing, clean fast public transportation, excellent coffee, (somewhat) safe streets etc. I saw no street crazies; I only saw one panhandler and zero sidewalk tents. And Spain was one of the hardest hit countries by the great recession. The decaying shab factor so evident in here in the US didn't seem evident at least in the parts of Caledonia I visited. After Franco I think they appreciate democracy. I don't think we do. Many didn't bother to vote for or against Trump. We have let the Repubs jigger the voting process so that Demo Party inclined voters (Blacks, Latinos, college students) have a harder time voting. Also the positions of the candidates on the issues are less important than their expensive psychologically manipulative advertising spots. That's sad. Voting is supposed to be about expressing your position on issues not your emotional reactions to candidates.

Anyway, the forces that turned over the House of Representatives to the Demos in 2018, a laudatory accomplishment, need to again be unleashed and come together to throw out this bum in 2020!

A Slow Descent or a Sudden Plunge?

I have not posted anything since March of this year. I have left it to other commentators more erudite, informed and skillful as wordsmiths than myself  to agonize over our situation.  I hope I am proven to be overly pessimistic. But however today's election turns out the overall dynamics that I see I believe will remain in force.

 November 6. 2018

Never in my life have I had more misgivings about the future. We seem to be doomed to bitter hard times whether it's an slow descent or a sudden heart stopping plunge.  Usually it's some poor souls somewhere else but eventually everyone's turn will come. Whether it is a climate change driven fire storm or an overheated ocean spurned Category 5 hurricane, or whether it's street fighters with bandannas covering their faces hurling rocks and bottles at police or a sudden bloody ring of carnage wrought by someone armed with an assault weapon and made crazy by hatred. Whatever it is some form of  historical (and preventable) calamity will eventually track us all down. Across the globe such events seem to be erupting daily usually in the form of tribal or religious warfare. And always they are underpinned by an ever sharpening divide in wealth inequality.

This divide between factions is becoming increasingly insurmountable with many countries pushing messy democratic norms aside in favor of autocracy and 'trains running on time 'type solutions. Everywhere it's the same story the few possessing impossibly vast stores of wealth use local religious theocrats in conjunction with home grown demagogues and/or corrupt pols to manipulate the uneducated and gullible to resist any reasonable and humane approach to what is essentially an economic problem. This while the planetary resources are being pushed to their breaking point as the natural environment is ravaged and consumed. Systematic unsustainability is ignored in a mad rush to feed capitalism's monstrous appetite for growth. The only future that novelists and screenwriters can can now imagine are dysotopian nightmares – either sterile, mind controlling Orwellian police states or Mad Max barbarism on a horizon of empty desolation and dead cities. But never mind that, for the oligarchic overlords and their well paid minions, science when it cannot be teased into profitable technology, is ignored even as the warning lights flash red. Obligatory formalized acknowledgement of the 'climate change' crisis and it's dire implications is duly made but real engagement matching it's degree of seriousness remains impossible.

And to make matters worse a newly invigorated 21^st Century fascism has emerged and is normalizing itself as a legitimate political faction hiding behind the frayed banner of nationalism. The traditional mainstream centrists parties are becoming increasingly irrelevant. And the traditional left is yet to reformulate itself into something beyond simply a means of defending the remnants of social programs that resulted from capitalism's 1930s Keynesian rescue and the heady pro-labor post WWII years.

The Brit's Tories have been forced to embrace and enact the self destructive nationalistic insanity of Brexit supported by a deluded and angry working class, while its own Labor Party struggles to breath some life back into the tired discredited chimera of socialism. Here in the US the once center-right Republican Party, having sold is soul to lingering racist legacy of the old Confederacy, cynically embrace a dangerous mountebank. The once merely 'conservative' Grand Old Party that has moved so far to the right on the political spectrum that even Ronald Reagan is rolling in his grave. While the Democrats, still dazed and confused as to how they lost the presidency to such a fraud, are wondering how they allowed things to go so far 'south' (pun intended). Having long ignored a critical part of their base, the rural and rust belt trapped white working class, they now realize that they focused too much on identity politics and the placating liberals in the professional middle class. The tone deafness of the Democrats to the reality of late capitalism and its depredations on the US working class as it mutated into a heartless trade union hostile globalized version was not lost on one up and coming gifted demagogue.

When ordinary people become convinced by glib professional haters that their traditional way of life, economic livelihood and even physical safety is threatened by 'outsiders', they become mobs or sit by and watch as 'good Germans'. The reality that these so called 'invaders are' actually just ordinary people desperately fleeing the horrors of civil war, abject poverty and gang warfare is lost in the firestorm of hate fueled by fear and loathing of imaginary demons. We can only hope this fever will break before all is lost.

Proof 'climate change' is a hoax

Europe is so cold now that the Arctic appears to be a warm escape

 

Yes, it's abnormally cold in Europe and abnormally warm in Greenland. The polar vortex is apparently out or whack again. Also the northern and southern jet streams weirdly enough are interconnecting.

Here in Pacifica our problem is that our shoreline is melting with apartments buildings and homes literally at risk of falling into the ocean - and this is before any real sea level rise has even set in.

Yet SLT may not be the worst of it. There are many calamities unfolding as we warm the planet hotter than it has been in 125,000 years. Once called the the 'greenhouse effect', the terminology has becomes normalized. 'Climate change' sounds more benign. For last half of the 2oth century the great existential threat was annihilation by nuclear war - and it still is. But now a second hubris driven reality has emerged . We as a species are destroying our planet's life very capability to sustain the diversity of life as we know it. 

 

But like our own mortality it is easy to set aside the implications such an awesomely grave reality and get on with business as usual. After all life must go on. As with our inability to outlaw nuclear weapons, confronting global warming becomes just another example of our species' misuse of our several thousand year evolved tool-making genius. Simple tool making morphing over time into worldwide industrialization coupled with avarice-driven late monopoly capitalism and then malevolently entangled with our bestial territorial imperatives, makes for quite difficult nut to crack. Yet almost all 195 nations big and small some how agreed to try to tackle the problem. Hence the Paris accords.

But in the USA a large number of people voted for a political party that officially opposes doing anything about it and for a president who believes its all a “hoax”. Even the oil dependent Gulf States and the Putin-led Russkies signed on to the Paris accords. Yet we have bowed out. All of the 2016 GOP presidential candidates with one exception were off-board regarding climate change and facing up to it. And in the presidential debates it was hardly discussed.

Many of these fools hide behind fossil fuel company supported researchers or so-called contrarians who pride themselves on digging up inconsistencies and errors in the thousands of peer-reviewed research papers constantly being published. I for one hope they are right and the whole thing is a grandiose world-wide delusion, the biggest academic boondoggle in history. Then all the 'greenie' types can go back to worrying about their traditional concerns – air and water pollution, habitat loss, pesticides/ herbicides in our food, huge dead zones at the mouth of rivers, plastic islands the size of Texas in the world's oceans and so on.

Beyond the Sea Level Rise that coastal communities are facing here's a checklist of what the global warming hoax mongers claim is also happening:

• Disruption of the Jet Streams and Polar Vortex: Due to rapid warming of the arctic and less white ice surface to reflect the solar heat back, the darker water surface  is absorbing the heat and warming. This is affecting high altitudes temperatures which is in turn is disrupting the northern jet stream causing it to vary.  It now periodically dips enough to cross the equator to connect with the southern jet stream. This could have deleterious affects on agriculture by causing colder and warmer winters. Also the Polar Vortex is periodically dipping south. Whether the erratic jet streams are causing this is not clear.

• Ocean acidification. That is the name given to the ongoing decrease in the pH balance of the Earth's oceans, caused by the uptake of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. About 30–40% of the carbon dioxide released by humans into the atmosphere dissolves into the oceans, rivers and lake. Too high an acidic balance impairs shell making in marine life. That's not good.

• Coral Reef Die-offs. Life sustaining coral reefs are bleaching out and dying all over the world due to ocean temperature rise. The Great Barrier Reef off of Australia's east coast has declined by 50% since 1985. Reef health is very important to global fisheries (which were already in decline due to over fishing).

• Sixth Great Extinction Over 1,400 Endangered Species are threatened by climate change according to the International Union for Conservation. The habitats where these species have evolved and thrived over millenniums are suddenly warmer and less hospitable or there is less water due to persistent droughts. So many plants and animals are now threatened that we are now experiencing an extinction rate comparable to the last five great extinctions going back 425 million years.

• Desertification As rain pattern shift, marginally productive areas for agriculture become actual deserts. All of the world's deserts are expanding due to an increase in prolonged droughts. The horrific Syrian War was triggered by a prolonged drought.

• Forest fires as a problem worsen The incidence and intensity of forest fires are worsening. In California the main fire season now extends into December. Globally fire rage longer and occur more frequently than in the past due to prolonged drought conditions.

• Storms frequency and intensity worsen: Extreme low pressure zones that give rise to hurricanes and tornadoes are random events. So no single storm or storm season can be tied to changed climate conditions. But no one can deny extremely warm waters in Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean are not factors in the parade of nasty hurricanes and extreme rain events in 2017.