04/3/20

Fifty Fights — COVID19 War

The United States is a big country with fifty states. These individual states are the distinct battlegrounds in which the COVID19 War is being waged.

Some areas — the NY-NJ-Conn Tri-State Area — are linked at the hip, but the rest of the country is seeing a series of individual fights that may have different regional outcomes based on the elemental nature of their population density — urban/dense and rural/sparse — and the way the fight is undertaken.

There is good news and bad news:

 1. The good news — individual states, cities, counties will rise to the occasion and, through superior execution, conduct an effective campaign and bear a lighter burden.

 2. The bad news — the individual states, cities, counties who do well will become domestic immigration targets. People will start moving from high risk areas to these lower risk areas, thereby importing — potentially — the COVID19.

The phenomenon of the Manhattan Beautiful Persons moving out to their Hamptons homes is a real thing and will overwhelm the small hospitals thereat.

In addition to the political subdivision fights, there is the personal fight — you and me. We need to do our individual duty to ensure we are not the target of COVID19 and that we do not spread it.

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04/2/20

Moving Markets — President Trump And Global Oil

We are living in interesting times. We are facing a pandemic, an economic crisis, a stock market brouhaha, and an oil bust.

Today, we focus on the oil bust. In case you haven’t been following things, the Russians and the Saudis got into a pissing contest as to the level of oil output by the OPEC + bunch.

OPEC + is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries which has been around since 1960 and is in the oil pricing manipulation business. The + means Russia is in the talks.

The result of the Saudi Arabia v Russia pissing contest — the Russians would not agree to reduce production levels — was a collapse in global oil prices with some incredibly low prices — 1950s prices — which then translated into lower gasoline prices.

These two clowns wrecked the global oil business in an amateurish “who has the bigger dick” contest.

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04/1/20

Fair Comparisons — WutangCurse By The Numbers

Public opinion is driven by emotion. Emotion should be based on facts, but we suffer from an inadequate body of data and an unwillingness by the media to report the facts fairly and accurately.

Honestly, I think the media is not smart enough to be able to make the right comparisons and the lens held up to evaluate the problem is too shaky and biased.

How is the US doing v the WutangCurse?

Let me make a comparison: the United States v the European Union (a roughly comparable equivalent).

USA v EU

The United States has 331,000,000 people.

The European Union has 341,000,000 people.

[This is a subset of the European Union which is being used for comparison purposes and doesn’t include all the twenty-eight European Union countries. This is the same subset used by World O Meter from which all the numbers are taken as of 00:00 GMT, 3-31-2020.]

The US has 188,592 total cases of the WutangCurse and has suffered 4,055 deaths.

The EU has 363,150 total cases and has suffered 25,318 deaths.

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03/27/20

Profiteering — The SEIU And The N95 Mask

When is something considered profiteering in the big business of filling the essential needs generated by the WutangCurse for critical supplies such as the N95 mask?

Comes now the story of the SEIU — the Service Employees International Union, a powerful trade union that supports a number of leftist causes — which reports it has located 39,000,000 N95 masks, the type of mask that is in hot pursuit by everyone.

“Bravo,” said I, until I got a whiff of the backstory.

 

This little jewel is made by 3M which is currently producing 35,000,000 of these babies a month. The SEIU says they have identified a supplier for the 39,000,000 who can also produce 20,000,000 per week.

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03/26/20

Socrates v Gladiators

In my sheltering in place (something clearly I excel at — excuse the brag), I have taken my normal quest for truth to a new high and am reading a ton of things that I might not otherwise have read given the constraints of having to eat lunch at Green Mesquite BBQ from time to time.

Copy of Jeff Minch June 1 2007 060

In that quest, I have reinforced something that I have noted for some time: We have no real idea of how to discuss something. I almost said “civilly” but I did not. 

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03/25/20

Lives In The Balance — Damn You, Nancy Pelosi

Today, the United States Congress House of Representatives returned from recess during which the US Senate stayed in town to do the people’s business.

In their absence, the US Senate proposed, negotiated, and passed a relief bill to address the WutangCurse pandemic. There was plenty of perfidy on the part of Democrats to try to stuff that bill full of liberal pork and waste time that the nation simply does not have.

In spite of this hard work, joinder by her Dem colleagues in the Senate, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi returned before her colleagues and announced that she did not “favor” the Senate bill and would be proposing a bill of her own that found life as a 1,140 page K Street embrace of every liberal wet dream imaginable including giving money — $1,000,000,000 — to Sanctuary Cities in defiance of the Trump admin’s policy and forgiving student loan debt. Things that have nothing to do with relief from the pandemic.

This pig fest then became a 1,400 page indecipherable lard trough whose contents were unlinked to the intended relief of the pain the country is enduring from the WutangCurse pandemic.

This morning, Speaker Pelosi called the House of Representatives into session at 10:00 AM.

At 10:02 AM, she adjourned the House of Representatives without taking up the Senate relief bill.

If you are sick, unemployed, about to become unemployed, a small business in free fall, a business who cannot make payroll or rent, a business teetering on the brink, an American worried about our fellow Americans, a hospital desperately seeking assistance, a medical professional praying for more supplies — then know this:

With Lives In The Balance,

Speaker Nancy Pelosi Spit In Your Face,

Laughed At Your Struggle

One is forced to ask why any politician would do what she has done. I get it that Speaker Pelosi, a fabulously wealthy person on a power trip, is a politician. I just never realized she was also a traitor to her country, our country.

Damn you, Nancy Pelosi. Damn you to Hell.