Michael K. Smith's Blog, page 34
March 14, 2020
Nearly 500,000 People To Die From Coronavirus In U.S. In Coming Months Says Disease Expert
Below is a summary of an interview with Michael Osterholm, Regents Professor, McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health, the director of the Center For Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota. He is also the author of "Deadliest Enemy - Our War Against Killer Germs."
How bad is coronavirus?
Coronavirus is not "just the flu," but it's also not the end of the world. It's about 10 to 15 times worse than regular flu in terms of fatalities. Regular flu has a 0.1% death rate, which means one death in every 1000 cases. Coronavirus in the U.S. is expected to have a death rate of between 1 and 2 percent, that is 10 or 20 deaths out of every 1000 cases. Estimating conservatively, the U.S. will have 96 million cases over the next three to seven months, with 48 million hospitalizations (appears to be a vast overestimate - ed.), and 480,000 deaths. China has had a death rate between two and three percent. Spanish Flu (1918) had a death rate of 3.0 to 3.2%.
Northern Italy was fine a month ago, but is now experiencing a tsunami of cases, forcing doctors into the position of having to decide who they can save and who they have to let die. Doctors and nurses who are sick with coronavirus, but without serious symptoms, must work to save others. This is not just an "old person's disease", as Italy is now seeing an alarming number of people in their forties dying. Over 4000 health care workers in China have become infected with coronavirus, and many have died.
What are the risk factors?
Advanced age, smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, an already compromised immune system, pregnancy. 45% of Americans over age 45 are obese, so the U.S. may have a death rate from the disease as high as 2 percent.
What is the incubation period of coronavirus?
Four days. Unlike SARS, coronavirus can be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers of the disease for up to four days, making it particularly difficult to track.
What's the prognosis in the U.S. for coronavirus?
The crisis will last for months, and there will be no vaccine for at least a year or two. Confirmed cases of the disease are doubling every four days, which means in a few weeks we will be inundated in cases.
How is coronavirus transmitted?
Primarily by breathing. This means that wearing standard masks and gloves as a preventive measure is "largely nonsense." Hand-washing is a good general practice, but won't have much impact on coronavirus, which spreads by sharing breathing space with infected people. Avoiding crowded venues and keeping six feet of distance between oneself and others is the best preventive practice we have. Trying to stop the spread of this highly infectious disease is like "trying to stop the wind."
How will it come to a stop then?
Eventually the disease runs its course when enough people have natural immunity from having contracted the disease, so that no further transmission is possible. For example, if there are three people in a room, and two of them have had coronavirus and recovered from it, they can't infect the third person. The build-up of natural immunity in the general population is like inserting cobalt rods in a nuclear reactor core to stop the chain reaction of atoms (so the plant shuts down). Once enough people have had the disease, new cases become less and less likely. But this only happens when very large numbers have become sick. It's far better to develop a vaccine.
What is the effect of closing the schools?
Maybe not as positive as we hope. Only 2.1% of cases in China were of children and teens (under 19). On the other hand, 38% of nurses in the U.S. have children in school. When they are sent home, this presents an obstacle for nurses to go to work during the pandemic. Our thinking is too short term. We are getting ready for a brief skirmish when in fact we're in for a prolonged siege. Coronavirus will be with us for months to come, and we cannot remain shut down for such a length of time.
What is the biggest challenge related to coronavirus?
Our public health system in general, which is vastly underfunded, and operates haphazardly on a crisis-to-crisis basis. Once a given crisis abates, public concern wanes, as does emergency funding - until the next time.
Right now supply chains have gone down and we are discovering that many of our life-saving drugs come from China. Hospitals are under-stocked with needed equipment - IV bags, medicines, masks - because of unwise budget austerity and "just in time" production.
Our front-line people don't have what they need. N-95 respirator masks are in short supply, for example, which increases the chances of doctors and nurses falling sick. Stockpiling 500,000,000 N-95 masks in advance would "have made all the difference" in handling our current crisis.
What about a vaccine?
It may take two years to develop a safe vaccine. We need to have a strategy for dealing with diseases in general, not just react instinctively in crisis mode when the latest one makes its appearance. Other diseases are coming. We need to be ready.
We should fund public health departments the way we fund the fire department. We don't wait until a fire breaks out to build a station with fire trucks and trained firefighters. We make sure to have all the necessary personnel and equipment in advance.
The vaccine for regular flu is about 50% effective, which sounds pretty good when we are faced with a serious disease without any vaccine protection.
Source: Interview With Michael Osterholm, Joe Rogan Experience #1439, March 10, 2020
How bad is coronavirus?
Coronavirus is not "just the flu," but it's also not the end of the world. It's about 10 to 15 times worse than regular flu in terms of fatalities. Regular flu has a 0.1% death rate, which means one death in every 1000 cases. Coronavirus in the U.S. is expected to have a death rate of between 1 and 2 percent, that is 10 or 20 deaths out of every 1000 cases. Estimating conservatively, the U.S. will have 96 million cases over the next three to seven months, with 48 million hospitalizations (appears to be a vast overestimate - ed.), and 480,000 deaths. China has had a death rate between two and three percent. Spanish Flu (1918) had a death rate of 3.0 to 3.2%.
Northern Italy was fine a month ago, but is now experiencing a tsunami of cases, forcing doctors into the position of having to decide who they can save and who they have to let die. Doctors and nurses who are sick with coronavirus, but without serious symptoms, must work to save others. This is not just an "old person's disease", as Italy is now seeing an alarming number of people in their forties dying. Over 4000 health care workers in China have become infected with coronavirus, and many have died.
What are the risk factors?
Advanced age, smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, an already compromised immune system, pregnancy. 45% of Americans over age 45 are obese, so the U.S. may have a death rate from the disease as high as 2 percent.
What is the incubation period of coronavirus?
Four days. Unlike SARS, coronavirus can be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers of the disease for up to four days, making it particularly difficult to track.
What's the prognosis in the U.S. for coronavirus?
The crisis will last for months, and there will be no vaccine for at least a year or two. Confirmed cases of the disease are doubling every four days, which means in a few weeks we will be inundated in cases.
How is coronavirus transmitted?
Primarily by breathing. This means that wearing standard masks and gloves as a preventive measure is "largely nonsense." Hand-washing is a good general practice, but won't have much impact on coronavirus, which spreads by sharing breathing space with infected people. Avoiding crowded venues and keeping six feet of distance between oneself and others is the best preventive practice we have. Trying to stop the spread of this highly infectious disease is like "trying to stop the wind."
How will it come to a stop then?
Eventually the disease runs its course when enough people have natural immunity from having contracted the disease, so that no further transmission is possible. For example, if there are three people in a room, and two of them have had coronavirus and recovered from it, they can't infect the third person. The build-up of natural immunity in the general population is like inserting cobalt rods in a nuclear reactor core to stop the chain reaction of atoms (so the plant shuts down). Once enough people have had the disease, new cases become less and less likely. But this only happens when very large numbers have become sick. It's far better to develop a vaccine.
What is the effect of closing the schools?
Maybe not as positive as we hope. Only 2.1% of cases in China were of children and teens (under 19). On the other hand, 38% of nurses in the U.S. have children in school. When they are sent home, this presents an obstacle for nurses to go to work during the pandemic. Our thinking is too short term. We are getting ready for a brief skirmish when in fact we're in for a prolonged siege. Coronavirus will be with us for months to come, and we cannot remain shut down for such a length of time.
What is the biggest challenge related to coronavirus?
Our public health system in general, which is vastly underfunded, and operates haphazardly on a crisis-to-crisis basis. Once a given crisis abates, public concern wanes, as does emergency funding - until the next time.
Right now supply chains have gone down and we are discovering that many of our life-saving drugs come from China. Hospitals are under-stocked with needed equipment - IV bags, medicines, masks - because of unwise budget austerity and "just in time" production.
Our front-line people don't have what they need. N-95 respirator masks are in short supply, for example, which increases the chances of doctors and nurses falling sick. Stockpiling 500,000,000 N-95 masks in advance would "have made all the difference" in handling our current crisis.
What about a vaccine?
It may take two years to develop a safe vaccine. We need to have a strategy for dealing with diseases in general, not just react instinctively in crisis mode when the latest one makes its appearance. Other diseases are coming. We need to be ready.
We should fund public health departments the way we fund the fire department. We don't wait until a fire breaks out to build a station with fire trucks and trained firefighters. We make sure to have all the necessary personnel and equipment in advance.
The vaccine for regular flu is about 50% effective, which sounds pretty good when we are faced with a serious disease without any vaccine protection.
Source: Interview With Michael Osterholm, Joe Rogan Experience #1439, March 10, 2020
Nearly 500,000 People To Die From Coronavirus In U.S. In Coming Months
Below is a summary of an interview with Michael Osterholm, Regents Professor, McKnight Presidential Endowed Chair in Public Health, the director of the Center For Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP), Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Division of Environmental Health Sciences, School of Public Health, University of Minnesota. He is also the author of "Deadliest Enemy - Our War Against Killer Germs."
How bad is coronavirus?
Coronavirus is not "just the flu," but it's also not the end of the world. It's about 10 to 15 times worse than regular flu in terms of fatalities. Regular flu has a 0.1% death rate, which means one death in every 1000 cases. Coronavirus in the U.S. is expected to have a death rate of between 1 and 2 percent, that is 10 or 20 deaths out of every 1000 cases. Estimating conservatively, the U.S. will have 96 million cases over the next three to seven months, with 48 million hospitalizations, and 480,000 deaths. China has had a death rate between two and three percent. Spanish Flu (1918) had a death rate of 3.0 to 3.2%.
Northern Italy was fine a month ago, but is now experiencing a tsunami of cases, forcing doctors into the position of having to decide who they can save and who they have to let die. Doctors and nurses who are sick with coronavirus, but without serious symptoms, must work to save others. This is not just an "old person's disease", as Italy is now seeing an alarming number of people in their forties dying. Over 4000 health care workers in China have become infected with coronavirus, and many have died.
What are the risk factors?
Advanced age, smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, an already compromised immune system, pregnancy. 45% of Americans over age 45 are obese, so the U.S. may have a death rate from the disease as high as 2 percent.
What is the incubation period of coronavirus?
Four days. Unlike SARS, coronavirus can be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers of the disease for up to four days, making it particularly difficult to track.
What's the prognosis in the U.S. for coronavirus?
The crisis will last for months, and there will be no vaccine for at least a year or two. Confirmed cases of the disease are doubling every four days, which means in a few weeks we will be inundated in cases.
How is coronavirus transmitted?
Primarily by breathing. This means that wearing standard masks and gloves as a preventive measure is "largely nonsense." Hand-washing is a good general practice, but won't have much impact on coronavirus, which spreads by sharing breathing space with infected people. Avoiding crowded venues and keeping six feet of distance between oneself and others is the best preventive practice we have. Trying to stop the spread of this highly infectious disease is like "trying to stop the wind."
How will it come to a stop then?
Eventually the disease runs its course when enough people have natural immunity from having contracted the disease, so that no further transmission is possible. For example, if there are three people in a room, and two of them have had coronavirus and recovered from it, they can't infect the third person. The build-up of natural immunity in the general population is like inserting cobalt rods in a nuclear reactor core to stop the chain reaction of atoms (so the plant shuts down). Once enough people have had the disease, new cases become less and less likely. But this only happens when very large numbers have become sick. It's far better to develop a vaccine.
What is the effect of closing the schools?
Maybe not as positive as we hope. Only 2.1% of cases in China were of children and teens (under 19). On the other hand, 38% of nurses in the U.S. have children in school. When they are sent home, this presents an obstacle for nurses to go to work during the pandemic. Our thinking is too short term. We are getting ready for a brief skirmish when in fact we're in for a prolonged siege. Coronavirus will be with us for months to come, and we cannot remain shut down for such a length of time.
What is the biggest challenge related to coronavirus?
Our public health system in general, which is vastly underfunded, and operates haphazardly on a crisis-to-crisis basis. Once a given crisis abates, public concern wanes, as does emergency funding - until the next time.
Right now supply chains have gone down and we are discovering that many of our life-saving drugs come from China. Hospitals are under-stocked with needed equipment - IV bags, medicines, masks - because of unwise budget austerity and "just in time" production.
Our front-line people don't have what they need. N-95 respirator masks are in short supply, for example, which increases the chances of doctors and nurses falling sick. Stockpiling 500,000,000 N-95 masks in advance would "have made all the difference" in handling our current crisis.
What about a vaccine?
It may take two years to develop a safe vaccine. We need to have a strategy for dealing with diseases in general, not just react instinctively in crisis mode when the latest one makes its appearance. Other diseases are coming. We need to be ready.
We should fund public health departments the way we fund the fire department. We don't wait until a fire breaks out to build a station with fire trucks and trained firefighters. We make sure to have all the necessary personnel and equipment in advance.
The vaccine for regular flu is about 50% effective, which sounds pretty good when we are faced with a serious disease without any vaccine protection.
Source: Interview With Michael Osterholm, Joe Rogan Experience #1439, March 10, 2020
How bad is coronavirus?
Coronavirus is not "just the flu," but it's also not the end of the world. It's about 10 to 15 times worse than regular flu in terms of fatalities. Regular flu has a 0.1% death rate, which means one death in every 1000 cases. Coronavirus in the U.S. is expected to have a death rate of between 1 and 2 percent, that is 10 or 20 deaths out of every 1000 cases. Estimating conservatively, the U.S. will have 96 million cases over the next three to seven months, with 48 million hospitalizations, and 480,000 deaths. China has had a death rate between two and three percent. Spanish Flu (1918) had a death rate of 3.0 to 3.2%.
Northern Italy was fine a month ago, but is now experiencing a tsunami of cases, forcing doctors into the position of having to decide who they can save and who they have to let die. Doctors and nurses who are sick with coronavirus, but without serious symptoms, must work to save others. This is not just an "old person's disease", as Italy is now seeing an alarming number of people in their forties dying. Over 4000 health care workers in China have become infected with coronavirus, and many have died.
What are the risk factors?
Advanced age, smoking, obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, an already compromised immune system, pregnancy. 45% of Americans over age 45 are obese, so the U.S. may have a death rate from the disease as high as 2 percent.
What is the incubation period of coronavirus?
Four days. Unlike SARS, coronavirus can be transmitted by asymptomatic carriers of the disease for up to four days, making it particularly difficult to track.
What's the prognosis in the U.S. for coronavirus?
The crisis will last for months, and there will be no vaccine for at least a year or two. Confirmed cases of the disease are doubling every four days, which means in a few weeks we will be inundated in cases.
How is coronavirus transmitted?
Primarily by breathing. This means that wearing standard masks and gloves as a preventive measure is "largely nonsense." Hand-washing is a good general practice, but won't have much impact on coronavirus, which spreads by sharing breathing space with infected people. Avoiding crowded venues and keeping six feet of distance between oneself and others is the best preventive practice we have. Trying to stop the spread of this highly infectious disease is like "trying to stop the wind."
How will it come to a stop then?
Eventually the disease runs its course when enough people have natural immunity from having contracted the disease, so that no further transmission is possible. For example, if there are three people in a room, and two of them have had coronavirus and recovered from it, they can't infect the third person. The build-up of natural immunity in the general population is like inserting cobalt rods in a nuclear reactor core to stop the chain reaction of atoms (so the plant shuts down). Once enough people have had the disease, new cases become less and less likely. But this only happens when very large numbers have become sick. It's far better to develop a vaccine.
What is the effect of closing the schools?
Maybe not as positive as we hope. Only 2.1% of cases in China were of children and teens (under 19). On the other hand, 38% of nurses in the U.S. have children in school. When they are sent home, this presents an obstacle for nurses to go to work during the pandemic. Our thinking is too short term. We are getting ready for a brief skirmish when in fact we're in for a prolonged siege. Coronavirus will be with us for months to come, and we cannot remain shut down for such a length of time.
What is the biggest challenge related to coronavirus?
Our public health system in general, which is vastly underfunded, and operates haphazardly on a crisis-to-crisis basis. Once a given crisis abates, public concern wanes, as does emergency funding - until the next time.
Right now supply chains have gone down and we are discovering that many of our life-saving drugs come from China. Hospitals are under-stocked with needed equipment - IV bags, medicines, masks - because of unwise budget austerity and "just in time" production.
Our front-line people don't have what they need. N-95 respirator masks are in short supply, for example, which increases the chances of doctors and nurses falling sick. Stockpiling 500,000,000 N-95 masks in advance would "have made all the difference" in handling our current crisis.
What about a vaccine?
It may take two years to develop a safe vaccine. We need to have a strategy for dealing with diseases in general, not just react instinctively in crisis mode when the latest one makes its appearance. Other diseases are coming. We need to be ready.
We should fund public health departments the way we fund the fire department. We don't wait until a fire breaks out to build a station with fire trucks and trained firefighters. We make sure to have all the necessary personnel and equipment in advance.
The vaccine for regular flu is about 50% effective, which sounds pretty good when we are faced with a serious disease without any vaccine protection.
Source: Interview With Michael Osterholm, Joe Rogan Experience #1439, March 10, 2020
March 12, 2020
Comment About Democrats and Republicans: From Some Time In The Past
"Nowhere do politicians form a more separate, powerful section of the nation than in North America. There, each of the two great parties which alternately succeed each other in power is itself in turn controlled by people who make a business of politics, who speculate on seats in the legislative assemblies of the Union as well as of the separate states, or who make a living by carrying on agitation for their party and on its victory are rewarded with positions.It is well known that the Americans have been striving for years to shake off this yoke, which has become intolerable, and that in spite of all they can do they continue to sink ever deeper in this swamp of corruption. It is precisely in America that we see best how there takes place this process of the state power making itself independent in relation to society, whose mere instrument it was originally intended to be. Here there exists no dynasty, no nobility, no standing army, beyond the few men keeping watch on the Indians, no bureaucracy with permanent posts or the right to pensions. and nevertheless we find here two great gangs of political speculators, who alternately take possession of the state power and exploit it by the most corrupt means and for the most corrupt ends — and the nation is powerless against these two great cartels of politicians, who are ostensibly its servants, but in reality exploit and plunder it.
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March 10, 2020
Markets,Viruses,Petroleum,1% Rule = Democracy?
Markets,Viruses,Petroleum,1% Rule = Democracy?
Reactions to the incredibly debt ridden Ponzi Scheme that passes for thriving global capitalism range from joy over its positive nature in the cartoon version of reality presented by corporate media, to near panic over its pending doom from the best informed sources of the financial community. The sudden intrusion of a global health emergency beyond the normal one of people unable to afford health care has led to a sooner than expected market crisis with Wall Street fluctuations making president Trump’s intellectual state seem almost normal. The market drops a thousand points one day, rises two thousand the next, with sales of psychiatric drugs showing tremendous growth though only a few can afford to buy them.
Meanwhile, a world that should have ended use of petroleum yesterday is still not only dependent on its continued use today but engaged in what is called a trade war that has extended from the USA vs. everyone - especially China - to Russia vs. Saudi Arabia. The important thing to understand is that whether global capitalism speaks English, Chinese, Russian, Hebrew or Arabic, it is ultimately the same; the rich minority buys cheap and sells dear to the overwhelming majority. Whether capitalism is run by fundamentalist free market fanatics, as has been the case for too long now, social democrats, as was the case in the recent historic past and should be again to avoid total disaster, or by communists as in china and in a slightly more beneficial way for the majority, reliance on market forces and individual profit guarantee ultimate loss and threaten the destruction of what they supposedly serve: the human race.
The all too slow move from petroleum-based fossil fuels to renewable sources of energy has seen a decline in the dreadful for humanity petro business. Nevertheless, in deference to its wealthy minority owners it has been bailed out, as much else that is useless, dangerous and menacing, by banking and finance. This profit creation based on destructive material forces and immaterially existing wealth in the form of a paper and electronic fictional substance called finance, has led to a current crisis in which the normal madness is compounded by further felonious assault on logic, reason and especially earth’s life support system.
As if presently failing to provide even for cosmetic sustenance of a majority weren't enough, with low paid jobs passing for “growth” in that more are available in what's labeled a "gig" economy but for less money and benefits, we now have a possible global epidemic that will put even more strain on the insane economy, but especially on its majority of service workers who have the lowest paying jobs with the least benefits and almost nothing to fall back on in times of sickness or crisis. That is, in the USA. Most other materially developed nations have health care for all their people, and in China, where this virus was first seen, all 1 billion 400 million people are covered. Our relatively tiny population has more than 25 million people with no coverage at all and millions more with not enough coverage to afford survival of a serious illness.
Through the brilliant scientific breakthrough called fracking, a more damaging environmental technique than previous methods of sucking petroleum out of the earth, the USA has become the major producer of this fossil fuel which plays a leading role in environmental destruction. This is only fair, as America leads the world in all the most “progressive” methods of profit growth, as in weapons of war and other violence in which we are so far ahead of other backward nations that they can’t even conceive of catching up to us. In fact, the overwhelming majority of them have no such desire.
At this historic juncture brought about by political economics and their subsidiary, nature, the USA faces an election in November in which the choices should be between continuing on the path of total breakdown and destruction or moving towards a radical change which could bring about long term hope not only for the nation but the world. The political forces of reaction, some of them being sold, in perverted language fashion, as “moderate”, and their minority ownership class are desperately trying to stop the movement toward radical change, even if it only offers a return to social democratic capitalism in the short run. But at least the public surge behind Bernie Sanders will put an immediate end to the more ruthless policies of sacrificing public health to bloody profit motivations that guarantee the best health care possible to the rich and their upper middle class servants, while the rest can drop dead if they aren’t covered by profit making corporate health care. That, and many other changes that can be established without total transformation of the system – which is what is ultimately needed –will be the least offered by a Sanders administration, so naturally, all the profiteers and their employees in politics and media are dedicated to stopping him, and more important, this movement. They cannot be allowed to succeed, since that would mean the greatest loss for the American people, and humanity.
The forces of public persuasion under control of America’s rulers have turned on all engines in herding voters into the camp of supporting the so-called moderate candidate – whom Trump would love to publicly tear apart in debates – but they must be denied. All arguments against Sanders which call him radical or socialist are about as radical and socialist as feeding children before pets or taking care of the folks next door and down the street before those across borders and oceans, or financing health, community and social justice before weapons of war and the murder of millions.
Continued support for a system that teaches the supposed logic of market forces which translate to milk being more expensive than gasoline, one of thousands of contradictions easily seen by people who are able to look at them clearly, will mean that not only a global epidemic or pandemic of a virus threatens us but the system that leaves us unprotected from that possible illness is far more dangerous than the illness itself. And as to idiocy of the milk-gasoline comparison, just reflect on what it takes to get either “product”:
A cow can be milked twice a day, and it will continue to provide milk as long as it is fed and can be milked by a human with basic skills at doing what a farm kid once explained to an interviewer when asked how to milk a cow: “you just squeeze her teats is all”. While industrial methods which treat cows as products and reduce them to often dismal lives being penned up and milked by machines, the principle is still the same, and even a farm kid is capable of milking a cow. And the cow will provide more milk the next day and many many days thereafter.
Petroleum, on the other hand, is not simply milked form the earth. It involves digging quite deeply, and machinery and technology far beyond the milking machines of dairy farms, and once sucked out of earth does not return the next day but only after millions of years. It also can be dangerous to workers, many more than are involved with cow milking, and also necessitates networks of technology, underwater pipes, national and international borders being crossed by such and then a refining process involving more machinery and technology before it comes to us as gasoline.
Ask a child, whether skilled at cow milking or just having common sense, which “product” should be more expensive at the market, and if that child says “milk” it needs mental help, or is on the way of becoming an economist who explains that market forces are the gods we should all worship. Multiply that contradiction by a thousand, and think about that not only when voting, but at all times when contemplating what the hell is wrong with reality and what you can do about it but only along with your fellow citizen members of the human race. Then, if you’re an American, demand that Bernie Sanders be the candidate of one of the two capitalist parties. He is the only one who can defeat Trump and more important, help begin the process of radical transformation of the USA to a nation run by and in support of a democratic majority of its people and not just a relative handful of billionaires, their millionaire servants and their well paid professional anti-working class flunkies.That isn't just called, but will be, democracy, in action rather than just word.
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March 4, 2020
The Empire Strikes Back: Behind The Surge of "Dementia Joe"
Leave it to the DNC to find someone even less mentally competent than Donald Trump to run for president, but mission accomplished!
In spite of increasingly obvious cognitive disintegration Joe Biden made a strong showing on "Super Tuesday," ending all talk of a Bernie Sanders majority on the first ballot at this year's Democratic Party convention in Milwaukee. Of course, this was an orchestrated result and we shouldn't miss the political significance of voter consolidation behind Biden.
The DNC is stronger than the RNC was at a corresponding point in 2016, and it acted sooner than the RNC did - and very effectively. Non-stop fawning media coverage of the revival of the Biden campaign has reigned since "Lunchbox Joe" won South Carolina. Buttigieg and Klobuchar withdrew on orders from the DNC (and today Bloomberg dropped out) to consolidate behind Biden. Warren stayed in to siphon off some of the "progressive" vote from Sanders, though she has no path to the nomination. Key last minute endorsements helped Biden win in Texas, Minnesota, etc.
Sanders' lack of a killer instinct ("Joe is a friend of mine") prevented him from launching strong attacks on Biden, a great help to Joe. When Trump faced similar ganging-up tactics in 2016, he threatened to throw the election to HRC. Sanders isn't that nasty, but he better learn to be. Biden can't complete a coherent sentence, quite apart from his horrendous politics - pro-Iraq war, pro-outsourcing, pro-cuts in Social Security - and sustained hard-hitting attacks on him need to be launched yesterday.
The delegate count is probably about equal after all is said and done, but senile Joe won big psychologically.
Next up: Obama will publicly endorse Biden to keep the momentum going.
In spite of increasingly obvious cognitive disintegration Joe Biden made a strong showing on "Super Tuesday," ending all talk of a Bernie Sanders majority on the first ballot at this year's Democratic Party convention in Milwaukee. Of course, this was an orchestrated result and we shouldn't miss the political significance of voter consolidation behind Biden.
The DNC is stronger than the RNC was at a corresponding point in 2016, and it acted sooner than the RNC did - and very effectively. Non-stop fawning media coverage of the revival of the Biden campaign has reigned since "Lunchbox Joe" won South Carolina. Buttigieg and Klobuchar withdrew on orders from the DNC (and today Bloomberg dropped out) to consolidate behind Biden. Warren stayed in to siphon off some of the "progressive" vote from Sanders, though she has no path to the nomination. Key last minute endorsements helped Biden win in Texas, Minnesota, etc.
Sanders' lack of a killer instinct ("Joe is a friend of mine") prevented him from launching strong attacks on Biden, a great help to Joe. When Trump faced similar ganging-up tactics in 2016, he threatened to throw the election to HRC. Sanders isn't that nasty, but he better learn to be. Biden can't complete a coherent sentence, quite apart from his horrendous politics - pro-Iraq war, pro-outsourcing, pro-cuts in Social Security - and sustained hard-hitting attacks on him need to be launched yesterday.
The delegate count is probably about equal after all is said and done, but senile Joe won big psychologically.
Next up: Obama will publicly endorse Biden to keep the momentum going.
The Empire Strikes Back: Behind The Surge of "Senile Joe"
With Biden's strong showing on "Super Tuesday," all talk of a Sanders majority before the Democratic Convention is out the window. Of course, this was an orchestrated result and we shouldn't miss the political significance of voter consolidation behind Biden.
The DNC is stronger than the RNC was at a corresponding point in 2016, and it acted sooner than the RNC did - and very effectively. Non-stop fawning media coverage of the revival of the Biden campaign has reigned since "Lunchbox Joe" won South Carolina. Buttigieg and Klobuchar withdrew on orders from the DNC (and today Bloomberg dropped out) to consolidate behind Biden. Warren stayed in to siphon off some of the "progressive" vote from Sanders, though she has no path to the nomination. Key last minute endorsements helped Biden win in Texas, Minnesota, etc.
Sanders' lack of a killer instinct ("Joe is a friend of mine") prevented him from launching strong attacks on Biden, a great help to Joe. When Trump faced similar ganging-up tactics in 2016, he threatened to throw the election to HRC. Sanders isn't that nasty, but he better learn to be. Biden is suffering major cognitive decline, quite apart from his horrendous politics - pro-Iraq war, pro-outsourcing, pro-cuts in Social Security, and sustained hard-hitting attacks on him need to be launched yesterday.
The delegate count is probably about equal after all is said and done, but senile Joe won big psychologically.
Next up: Obama will publicly endorse Biden to keep the momentum going.
The DNC is stronger than the RNC was at a corresponding point in 2016, and it acted sooner than the RNC did - and very effectively. Non-stop fawning media coverage of the revival of the Biden campaign has reigned since "Lunchbox Joe" won South Carolina. Buttigieg and Klobuchar withdrew on orders from the DNC (and today Bloomberg dropped out) to consolidate behind Biden. Warren stayed in to siphon off some of the "progressive" vote from Sanders, though she has no path to the nomination. Key last minute endorsements helped Biden win in Texas, Minnesota, etc.
Sanders' lack of a killer instinct ("Joe is a friend of mine") prevented him from launching strong attacks on Biden, a great help to Joe. When Trump faced similar ganging-up tactics in 2016, he threatened to throw the election to HRC. Sanders isn't that nasty, but he better learn to be. Biden is suffering major cognitive decline, quite apart from his horrendous politics - pro-Iraq war, pro-outsourcing, pro-cuts in Social Security, and sustained hard-hitting attacks on him need to be launched yesterday.
The delegate count is probably about equal after all is said and done, but senile Joe won big psychologically.
Next up: Obama will publicly endorse Biden to keep the momentum going.
March 1, 2020
Does Socialism Work? Capitalism Will Never Let You Find Out
"The boys of Capital, they also chortle in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century - without exception - was either overthrown, invaded, corrupted, perverted, subverted, destabilized or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States and its allies. Not one socialist government or movement - from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in El Salvador - not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home. It's as if the Wright brothers' first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon these catastrophes, nodded their heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Humankind shall never fly."
-----William Blum, "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II."
-----William Blum, "Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II."
February 27, 2020
Fake News, False Democracy & Phony Economics
The growing popularity of an American social democratic presidential candidate who calls himself a democratic socialist has revived every anti-humanity distortion of the past, emanating from the tiny minority ruling our country through its servant class of professionals in media and politics. Newer and more bloody mythologies about supposedly existing socialisms are expanding on the incredible death tolls supposedly inflicted by previous attempts at achieving the common good by confiscating the wealth of royalty and the rich in nations where free markets were supposedly destroyed by savages who felt that one thousand people and one thousand loaves of bread meant they should be distributed one to a person. That was instead of being owned by a capitalist and sold only to those who could amass the market forces to buy bread by creating private profit for the investor-rulers who owned the bakery.
Every attempt at creating a socialist let alone communist society has incurred the bloody violent wrath of the capitalist world, beginning with the Paris Commune of the 19th century, extending to the Soviet Union and China in the twentieth, and continuing to the present when truly electoral democratic attempts at revolutionary transformation in places like Nicaragua, Venezuela and Bolivia are met with external warfare in the form of sanctions and foreign financing of internal opposition reducing populations having finally achieved balanced diets for the first time in their lives to not only scrounging for survival but living under threat of military invasion for doing so.
While this minority created imperial policy that views the world as subject renter and American wealth as royal owner will soon be replaced by real democracy if it doesn’t destroy everything in its process of failing, attempts at creating what is called a “sharing” economy are made by well meaning souls trying to take the merchant relationship away by replacing it with person to person deals, as in the ancient markets which offered humanity a place to bargain as equals. But making a deal with someone at a flea market or neighborhood swap doesn’t really amount to a social change, just as a private non-profit hardly transforms market forces. The non-profit results from massive tax write-offs for the rich making donations that insure their system remains strong, and the innocent personal bartering that takes place among well meaning people is no comparison to a truly collective worker owned democratically controlled enterprise. We might as well claim that McDonalds is “sharing” its burgers and fries with us, as Tesla is “sharing” its autos, General Dynamics “shares” its weapons, and documented pharma and undocumented dope dealers “share” their drugs. The market still rules and it remains under the ownership and control of minority wealth, with the number of dollars they command at a peak never before seen in the history of humanity. The Roman Empire’s wealth amounted to chump change compared to the trillions of dollars owned and controlled by a tiny handful of global, mostly American billionaires.
A philosopher teaching the social values of the capitalist market and calling them democratic is like a pimp teaching social values of the sex market and calling it love, or an economist doing a cost-benefit analysis of dating that skips the expense of dinner and a movie and gets right to the rape. Under the control of such market forces, unless you are the philosopher, the economist or the rapist, ultimately you get screwed. Unfortunately, it is most of the world that has been criminally abused, but rising populations of workers are demanding and taking action for radical change to transform reality before it transforms all of us into lonely souls screeching and tweeting “me-me” while all collapses around “us”.
A real sharing economy will be cooperative, not competitive, involving majority social behavior, not individually imposed anti-social-ism promoted as beneficial for all when it only rewards some at the expense of the many. And too much that passes for “progressive” politics is like the “progressive” tax system which takes far more from the vast majority while rewarding the ruling class of fantastic wealth all manner of deductions, write-offs and constitutionally sanctioned criminality that makes them richer and the rest poorer. That is regressive, not progressive, using words that have nothing to do with the actions, which speak much louder. We need radical economic changes like a 20-hour workweek at a $20 an hour minimum wage, free public transit, worker owned and controlled businesses, public banks, health care for all, and far more. At cries of “how can we afford that? made by the innocent and ignorant under the control of their slick manipulators, try this: Stop spending trillions on war and instead spend it on life.Duh? But, all those jobs will vanish. How will those workers survive? With better jobs that serve humanity – their “identity group” – the environment, and their personal and social lives. Double duh?
We can defend our nation, if such is needed, with a truly defense force that does not involve spending hundreds of billions to place our military in foreign locales. We can save lots of transportation dollars by staying the hell out of other people’s national, political and economic business unless trading with them on a fair, non-superior market forces arrangement but one that treats everyone as having the same rights of pursuit of life and liberty, but in reality instead of just rhetorically.
If we truly mean to aid foreign people in a time of need, we can do it the way Cuba does by sending doctors, nurses and medical equipment at a time of plague or disease, and not the way we’ve always done it by sending bombs, guns and bullets to help prevent looting. And to the really ignorant bordering on stupid charges that we can’t afford to offer our entire population health care under public control because taxes will have to increase: For the rich? Of course. But even if working people see a tax increase of $500, and a health care expense decrease of $1,000, unless their education has exclusively been at private schools, they can see that represents a savings of money, not a loss.
Attempts to transform economic reality have always been, at their core, to establish a class free society of truly equal citizens, with no survival aspect of life denied anyone because it is not affordable. The shame of people living in the street in a society that spends trillions on war and billions on pets should relieve us of any fear of a judgmental, righteous, vindictive Old Testament god. We’d have been wiped out by such a deity, with holocausts, earthquakes, tsunamis and worse until he-she-it was finally rid of us. But our problem is not a deity, nor even the corona virus, which may be a threat to some of us, the capitalist virus is a threat to all humanity.
The Sanders campaign is the American equivalent of the growing global demand that ends the hypocrisy of calling minority electoral rule of the rich by the name democracy and using media and political hired help to plant that idiotic notion more deeply into public consciousness. It wont work anymore. Real democracy means choosing the greater good, not the lesser evil which is the usual choice for the minority that has voted in the past. Hopefully, a majority will show up at the polls and vote for humanity in the majority, contradicting the minority shapers of what passes for conscious reality and beginning the transformation of the nation, in accordance with what is going on all over the world, from a selfish, anti-social and anti-human environment, to one of mutual aid, social justice, peace, and for the first time in human history, rule of the majority. The beginning of that pro-social democracy is dependent on the end of anti-social capitalism.
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February 19, 2020
Don't Shoot Your TV, Though You Should At Least Want To
"The struggle against structures hostile to democracy, structures of impotence, requires the development of a liberating national culture, capable of unleashing people's creative energy and capable of washing the cobwebs from their eyes so that they might see themselves and the world. The messages that television radiates into our countries, symbols that the dominant culture sells to the dominated one, symbols of the power that humbles us - these do not contribute much to the development of a liberating culture. But don't misunderstand me. Television per se should not be condemned, only television as a socially acceptable drug, Valium to deaden the mind."
-----Eduardo Galeano, We Say No, p. 213
-----Eduardo Galeano, We Say No, p. 213
February 16, 2020
75th Anniversary of the End of "The Good War"
1945: Washington
The Winners On Winning“Probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any [equal time period] in the history of man.” —U.S. War Department on the firebombings of Japan“One of the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all history.”—Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, a key aide to General MacArthur, commenting on the firebombings
“We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night of March 9-10 than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.” —Major General Curtis LeMay on the firebombings
“I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side.” —Curtis LeMay on WWII
"[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."” —Admiral William D. Leahy on the atomic bombings59<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:50331651 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Times-Roman; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:Times; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:50331651 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;}</style>
The Winners On Winning“Probably more persons lost their lives by fire at Tokyo in a 6-hour period than at any [equal time period] in the history of man.” —U.S. War Department on the firebombings of Japan“One of the most ruthless and barbaric killings of non-combatants in all history.”—Brigadier General Bonner Fellers, a key aide to General MacArthur, commenting on the firebombings
“We scorched and boiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night of March 9-10 than went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.” —Major General Curtis LeMay on the firebombings
“I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal. Fortunately, we were on the winning side.” —Curtis LeMay on WWII
"[T]he use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender. . . . [I]n being the first to use it, we . . . adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children."” —Admiral William D. Leahy on the atomic bombings59<!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:TimesNewRomanPSMT; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:50331651 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-ItalicMT; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Times-Roman; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:Times; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:roman; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:50331651 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:TimesNewRomanPS-BoldItalicMT; panose-1:0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0; mso-font-alt:"Times New Roman"; mso-font-charset:77; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-format:other; mso-font-pitch:auto; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";}size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;}</style>
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