Tag Archives: COVID-19

Usual Rubbish

Breach.

2000 Years to Christmas

Are they still up there? Hmmmm. I can’t hear them right now. Maybe the stereo drove them out, or the garlic, perhaps. I always thought those people would be trouble. Did I say “always”? I meant, uh, sometimes.

Well, this has been one hell of a week for everybody here in America, am I right? Here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill, we might have been glued to the television all week if the cable company hadn’t discovered our illegal tap and pulled the plug on us. And then there was the electric company with their so-called “unpaid bills” and such. What part of abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill do they not understand? I mean, just because it’s a derelict, long-condemned building doesn’t mean it should be stricken from the grid like at scofflaw. I mean, we’re the scofflaws, people … it’s not the building’s fault that we’re squatting in it. Not really.

Anyway, as you know, over the past couple of years we’ve had some dyspeptic neighbors living upstairs in another section of the mill that we seldom visit, though it is often spoken of in legends. That notwithstanding, they have been problematic in the past with regard to, I don’t know, agreeing to little courtesies, like … not shooting us or not setting the mill on fire for kicks. (They like their kicks, these upstairs neighbors.) It was worst early on, but in recent months it had quieted down quite a bit, perhaps because of the COVID pandemic, but more likely because they got bored with intimidating us and turned their evil attentions elsewhere – to our friends squatting in the abandoned storefront across the street, for instance. Whatever misfortunes they may have visited on others, all was peace and contentment here in the hammer mill.

Holler all you want, dude. We don't have any bacon.

But that was not to last! (Dum, dum, dum!) They got all feisty with us again this week, and this time with the help of outside confederates. Now, when I say “confederates,” I’m not using that as an alternative for “friends” or “accomplices” – I mean confederates, like, the southern kind, waving the stars and bars. Those dudes as well as other denizens of the far right descended on this place like locusts. It took us a while, but we eventually worked out that they had mistaken the Cheney Hammer Mill for the federal building, which isn’t even located in our township. No matter – these MAGA hatted crazy people started scaling up the sides of the mill with those climbing cables. Not sure why they didn’t just come in through the open door and take the stairs up, but to each his own. They overran this place with as few as thirty people and started making themselves at home, except for one guy who stumbled upon our studio and started shouting “Olympus has fallen!” over and over again. (Seriously, I think these people are majorly confused about where we’re living.)

Yeah, so now we have a houseful of right-wing rioters, and nothing to offer them. My guess is that they will eventually get bored and go find someone else to kill, but until then …. hope they like banjo music!

Political Rants

Who’s the client?

As the Senate moves closer to a veto override vote on the $740 billion defense authorization act, I’ve been thinking about how eager our national legislators are to spend money when it comes to military hardware, consultants, logistics, etc, and yet how reluctant they seem to be to provide working people with the means to, I don’t know, feed themselves and their families, keep a roof over their heads, maybe see a medical professional if they need one, all in the midst of a once-in-a-century (up to now, at least) pandemic. Of course, this $740 billion doesn’t represent the full price tag of our national security posture – no, indeed, there are many billions more going into intelligence, covert operations, and of course the after-market costs of war, such as the Veteran’s administration and so on. All this money to “keep us safe”, and yet here we are – more people dying on a daily basis than in any previous armed conflict.

We have an administration that has dragged its feet on the Coronavirus since the very beginning. They are currently falling way behind on their vaccination campaign, having committed to 20 million Americans vaccinated by year’s end – it looks like they will struggle to achieve ten percent of that. When challenged on this, they shrug – it’s the states’ fault, you see. What a pathetic joke. Take the goddamn money you’re shoveling at the Pentagon and use it to get those fucking vaccines into people’s arms … now. COVID is the national security threat, fool, not a resurgent Russia or China. People are dropping dead all around us, like there’s been an invasion of invisible killer aliens, and fat boy is out golfing while his Coronavirus coordinator Veep is enjoying a skiing holiday. From the start, this phenomenal lack of urgency has been a reflection of the president’s priorities – there’s simply no perceived benefit to him in pursuing this virus, and so he pretends it doesn’t exist.

Someone on Facebook shared that photo of Trump in the oval office with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, going over the presentation of military hardware that the Prince was committing to purchase from U.S. arms manufacturers. It struck me that what I was looking at was an image of a vendor (Trump) with his client (MBS). Trump was using his office to broker a deal with Saudi Arabia – one that is currently being extended, by the way – so that they will continue to patronize him after he leaves office. How does this serve the interests of the American people? Saudi Arabia is a repressive, dictatorial regime that’s killing thousands of people in Yemen, using our weapon systems and our military’s logistical support. The jobs supported by these purchases are not worth the lives lost – far from it. The only benefit that comes from this relationship is realized by Trump, who has bragged about the money he earns from the kingdom. His entire presidency has been a branding exercise, and he’s ready to start cashing in his chips.

This is a level of cynicism beyond anything we’ve seen before. We are losing thousands of lives every day, and our leaders are too busy feathering their nests to even notice, let alone act.

luv u,

jp

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

Death and taxes.

Anyone who’s been reading this blog and listening to my podcast Strange Sound for any length of time knows that I’m a sometimes harsh critic of the institutional Democratic party. That same anyone would be aware that I am even more critical of the Republican party. The reason for this is fairly simple: whereas the Democratic party has some individuals within it – albeit a minority – who are principled progressives who want to make a difference in people’s lives, the Republican party is now literally a death cult that wants to cut rich people’s taxes. This week we exceeded 300,000 Americans dead from COVID-19, and you would barely know it by listening to GOP lawmakers or their idiotic president. (And yes, he is their president, lock, stock, and cracker barrel. I’m of the opinion that Trump is the purest expression of Republican values – selfishness, ignorance, bigotry, and self-aggrandizement.)

I know both parties have a lot to answer for, but frankly, Republican politicians are almost universally out of their minds. As I write this on a day when more than 3,400 people died of this virus across the country, we’ve seen further evidence that the administration was explicitly pursuing a strategy of “herd immunity” with regard to the Coronavirus. As reported in Politico, part-time Canadian college lecturer Paul Alexander was helping to press the CDC into adopting a strategy of having everyone become infected … or as many people as possible. This was the crack-head notion they shared with Dr. Atlas that somehow everyone getting the disease was a good thing. It’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how “herd immunity” should work – the idea is to keep people from getting a disease by inoculating large numbers of them against it. Infecting people to prevent disease is like jumping off a building to avoid falling. These people are seriously cracked.

I can’t quite work out why Trump would choose to align himself with these people and take the hands-off approach he took to this virus when to do the opposite – investing heavily on safety and prevention – would possibly have made him a much more popular president and perhaps earned him re-election. The only thing that seems likely to me is that he thought the emergence of this novel Coronavirus was just unfair, and that like a five-year-old he didn’t want to accept it. And of course, because he is, as president, the head of his party, Trump set the tone for everyone else. But make no mistake – the Republican political class would have gone there anyway. As I’ve said before – every time they come back, they’re worse. Reagan was worse than Nixon, Bush Jr. worse than Bush Sr., and Trump worse than them all. Each one of these presidents was backed up by a party that supported practically every move they made.

With all of the challenges we are facing, we need to keep them out of power. We can no longer afford to play defense on these terminal issues.

luv u,

jp

Check out our political opinion podcast, Strange Sound.