Category Archives: Political Rants

Political Rants

Running out of Greek letters (and patience)

News of the new Omicron COVID variant is settling in, and people are understandably wary and disgusted. Every time it seems like this thing is ending, this thing is not ending, and there are few things more frustrating than that. Life prior to the pandemic seems like this strange, distant, exotic state of being that can never be entirely restored.

Of course, we really don’t know very much about Omicron. The networks are doing their best to pre-emptively scare the living shit out of everyone. I try to tune out all but the most authoritative voices; nevertheless, it eventually catches up with all of us in one way or another.

The great, untried solution

Now, we know how to get out of this. In case you haven’t heard, this is what needs to happen: rich people need to defeat their hunger for more riches. And if that doesn’t happen, we need to do the work for them. In other words, we need to separate Big Pharma from their excess profits and aggressively distribute their intellectual property (i.e. the formulae for the COVID vaccines) to the developing world.

We need to vaccinate the entire world. The only way we can do that is by compelling these manufacturers to drop their patent rights. With Moderna, it would be easy – the United States participated in their vaccine development. They can compel the others to follow suit. In the medium term, that will help poorer countries protect their citizens. But in the short term, we need to push global vaccine distribution with all of the resources we can bring to bear.

No place like home

What’s just as important as getting people vaccinated in the developing world? Getting people vaccinated in the industrialized world, and that includes right here at home. We’re still seeing almost 1,900 COVID deaths every single day, with new cases in excess of 110,000 daily. That far outstrips countries we have travel bans against, like South Africa, which is seeing about 8,000 new cases and 80 deaths a day – too many, yes, but not a fly on us.

I know – I’ve been making this case for a long time. But it’s as true now as it was in July, and in some ways it’s even MORE true now. For one thing, we know a lot more about how safe and effective the vaccines are, despite the bullshit being thrown up by the right and some on the loony left. For another, we are seeing in real time what happens when you let a virus run rampant. It’s like a massive scientific experiment – let’s see how many freakish mutations we can spawn. And at 110,000 cases a day, the hottest corner of the test mass is right here in the U.S. of A.

Keep your head down, and your chin up

When I started getting take out again regularly, back in the summer, people were just starting to gather in restaurants and pubs the way they used to, pre-COVID. No masks, lots of drinks, and plenty of yakking at one another. Now we’re seeing COVID cases overrun our local emergency rooms. County officials are telling us not to go to the ER unless we’re having a heart attack, stroke, etc.

This is nuts. And it’s going to keep happening until we take action. We need to keep pushing our electeds to take this pandemic seriously, and push global distribution of vaccines and treatments. And we need to do it now.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.
Political Rants

Keeping an eye on the foreign policy blob

After a week of nearly non-stop domestic news, good and bad, I’m going to talk about foreign policy. Think of this as the latest in an ongoing series of posts about how bad Biden’s foreign policy is. Frankly, the only good thing I can say about it at this point is that it is better than Trump’s version, albeit not by much.

Longtime readers of this blog and listeners to my podcast Strange Sound (now on hiatus) know that I have been critical of Biden’s imperial world view from the beginning. Since his candidate days, he has de-emphasized foreign affairs. His campaign web site, for instance, included almost no detailed information about his plans in this regard. That was not because he had no plans – it was because he didn’t want to talk about them.

Target Asia (again)

If you watch the mainstream media, you can’t miss the extent to which they are obsessing over China. They don’t do that unless our nation’s political leaders give them the space to bloviate. This is true of the so-called liberal networks, like MSNBC.

Morning Joe, for instance, platformed Indiana Senator Todd Young, who stuck to his party’s current insistence on referring to the nation of China as “The Chinese Communist Party”. (See Young’s pinned tweet about his “Endless Frontier Act”.) Young spent some of his time warning of China’s undue influence in the South China Sea (which, as the name suggests, is closer to them than it is to us). There have been multiple stories, also, about China’s supposed military hardware, like hypersonic missiles, and so on.

Enter the killer subs

This would be laughable if it weren’t so potentially dangerous. The United States accusing another country of throwing its weight around militarily is objectively ridiculous. We have a much, much more muscular presence on the periphery of China than China does. That includes massive military installations throughout the region, thousands of troops, fighter/ bomber squadrons, and a fleets of warships.

Case in point, as Noam Chomsky pointed out recently on Democracy Now!, a single Trident submarine holds enough nuclear weapons to destroy nearly 200 cities in Asia. We have more than one, of course, and have contracted with the Australians to ensure that there will be more killer subs patrolling the Chinese coast.

So, why the hell …. ?

Of course, this policy is about Asia writ large and who calls the shots in the region. American presidents have been focused on this for multiple administrations, with a significant uptick since the Bush II regime. A permanent presence is essential to our ability to project power – and, crucially, the credible threat of power – across the continent.

That’s why it’s target China time. Frankly, we can’t maintain a large military presence in the region without inventing some enemies. I’m personally convinced that that is the reason why the Korean conflict has remained in stasis for seven decades. We need to keep the threat level up to continue this toxic policy.

In short, regardless of what happens on the home front, we need to keep an eye on Biden’s foreign policy establishment, even – and really, especially – if they don’t want us to.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.

Political Rants

Get back onto that plague ship, you lazy prole!

The chattering classes are having a hair-on-fire moment about labor. We’ve seen this coming for a while now. I commented on it back in July when retired ad man and political commentator Don Deutsch fired off a petulant little tweet about working people, then yakked about it with Joe Scarborough.

Well, they’re back, and it’s because the service is just not what it should be. Hell, do you realize Joe and Mika had to wait two hours for a flight because there weren’t enough baggage handlers? It’s like workers don’t want to work anymore. Unprecedented … or IS it?

An ill wind, indeed

When the Black Plague ripped through Europe in the 14th Century, it created a massive labor shortage. This was due to the fact that the disease may have killed as much as 1/3 of the population. The peasants who survived were reluctant to return to their rich masters’ fields. This compelled the gentry to sweeten the pot a bit – compensate the workers more, give them money, cut their rent, etc.

That was kind of a great leap forward for labor. Then the gentry passed a law that established a kind of maximum wage. This was to protect the essential feudal relationship between lord and peasant. (They had their own Donnie Deutcshes back then, of course.) It kind of backfired, though – there was a peasant rising, and they won some concessions. By 1500 the feudal system was giving way to another system of worker exploitation.

Here’s a tip for you

What television pundits are complaining about is simple: workers are saying “fuck this lousy job.” The wealthy underwriters of cable television don’t like this. This is the part of supply and demand that drives them nuts. Their pundits roll out the claim that lazy workers are all at home, eating grapes and collecting their federal unemployment enhancement checks.

The fact is, many workers who left their jobs were in tipped industries. Wait staff make sub-minimum wage plus tips, and it’s hard for them to demonstrate that they earned enough income to receive full unemployment. Worse, they get harassed and abused at work, and have to worry about catching COVID. Patrons will tell them to take off their mask if they want a tip. Who needs that bullshit?

Same old same old

Employers, large and small, are conveniently forgetting something: COVID is still killing people. The rolling three-day average is running over 1,100 deaths a day – that’s a 9/11 every third day. Not everyone has the luxury of being able to work remotely. The more poorly-paid, low-benefit occupations tend to be in-person only, and that’s why people are not returning to those jobs.

Also, if this pandemic has taught us anything it’s that withholding labor is an effective tool. If enough people do it, rich people start squawking. When you hear that sound, you know you’re doing something right.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.