Musings

Q: Alexa, did the government release the coronavirus?:

A: https://twitter.com/i/status/1245062712956276736

                The Event 201 scenario

Event 201 simulates an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms.

The disease starts in pig farms in Brazil, quietly and slowly at first, but then it starts to spread more rapidly in healthcare settings. When it starts to spread efficiently from person to person in the low-income, densely packed neighborhoods of some of the megacities in South America, the epidemic explodes. It is first exported by air travel to Portugal, the United States, and China and then to many other countries. Although at first some countries are able to control it, it continues to spread and be reintroduced, and eventually no country can maintain control.

There is no possibility of a vaccine being available in the first year. There is a fictional antiviral drug that can help the sick but not significantly limit spread of the disease.

Since the whole human population is susceptible, during the initial months of the pandemic, the cumulative number of cases increases exponentially, doubling every week. And as the cases and deaths accumulate, the economic and societal consequences become increasingly severe.

The scenario ends at the 18-month point, with 65 million deaths. The pandemic is beginning to slow due to the decreasing number of susceptible people. The pandemic will continue at some rate until there is an effective vaccine or until 80-90 % of the global population has been exposed. From that point on, it is likely to be an endemic childhood disease.

                                           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


(NOTE: Correlation is not causation, but sometimes you have to wonder......)

Is the Trump Cult a Death Cult?

 

                                                  LISTEN: Is the Trump Cult a Death Cult?

President Donald Trump began asserting that the United States would once again be “open for business” by Easter, on April 12. He provided no scientific or medical justification for that timeline, which Dr. Anthony Fauci of the White House coronavirus task force has emphasized is “flexible". These are very dangerous times as this President is fucking crazy! Very interesting interview well worth a listen...

 Stay safe y'all.

Your “Mind” Isn’t Confined to Your Brain, or Even Your Body by Olivia Goldhill

Source: QUARTZ

You might wonder, at some point today, what’s going on in another person’s mind. You may compliment someone’s great mind, or say they are out of their mind. You may even try to expand or free your own mind.

But what is a mind? Defining the concept is a surprisingly slippery task. The mind is the seat of consciousness, the essence of your being. Without a mind, you cannot be considered meaningfully alive. So what exactly, and where precisely, is it?

Traditionally, scientists have tried to define the mind as the product of brain activity: The brain is the physical substance, and the mind is the conscious product of those firing neurons, according to the classic argument. But growing evidence shows that the mind goes far beyond the physical workings of your brain.

No doubt, the brain plays an incredibly important role. But our mind cannot be confined to what’s inside our skull, or even our body, according to a definition first put forward by Dan Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA School of Medicine and the author of the 2016 book, Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human.

Chauncey DeVega & Jared Yates Discuss How Donald Trump and the Other Plutocrats Will Use the Coronavirus to Make Life Even Worse for Working Class and Poor Americans

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Jared Yates Sexton is a writer whose political writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Republic, and elsewhere. He is the author of three collections of fiction and a crime novel. Currently he serves as an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Georgia Southern University. His new book is American Rule: How a NationConquered the World But Failed Its People.

Musings

The Conquerors of America by Manuel Garcia, Jr

Patrick Weidhaas, a colleague of mine from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and also a colleague from the union group there (Society of Professional Scientists and Engineers) sent me a note saying:

You may remember Ben Santer from the Lab, one of the foremost climate scientists. He just published an article in the online Scientific American:

How COVID-19 Is like Climate Change
(Both are existential challenges—and a president who belittles and neglects science has made them both tougher to address)

García’s reactions to Santer’s article follow, as responses to some of Santer’s entirely accurate and admirable statements:

“In the Trump administration, the buck never stops at the top.”

COVID-19: A US Scheme for Greater Consolidation of Wealth and Power? by Stephen Lendman

 

Earlier global crises were manufactured to enhance the power of US ruling authorities, serve corporate favorites, and transfer wealth from ordinary people to privileged ones.

Since the neoliberal 1990s alone, that’s what the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis, 2000 dot.com bust, and 2008-09 financial crisis were all about.

Is that what’s behind COVID-19 fear-mongering, lockdowns, and market turmoil? Are things not what they seem?

Musings

Chauncey DeVega & Jonathan Metzl Discuss How Social Inequality in America is Making the Coronavirus Even More Deadly

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Jonathan Metzl is the Frederick B. Rentschler II Professor of Sociology and Psychiatry, and the director of the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society, at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.He is the author of several books, including Prozac on theCouch and The Protest Psychosis. His new book is Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of RacialResentment is Killing America's Heartland.

Dr. Metzl explains how the novel coronavirus pandemic will further expose social inequality in America. He also shares what his contacts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have told him about their frustration and anger at not being allowed by the Trump regime to properly conduct research about the novel coronavirus.

Dr. Metzl is also deeply concerned that the partisanship of Donald Trump and his Republican Party will literally kill people in those states that refused the Medicaid expansion because of racist hostility to Barack Obama and the Affordable Care Act.

Poet’s Nook: “winter in america” by Gil Scott-Heron

From the Indians who welcomed the pilgrims
And to the buffalo who once ruled the plains
Like the vultures circling beneath the dark clouds
Looking for the rain
Looking for the rain

Just like the cities staggered on the coastline
Living in a nation that just can’t stand much more
Like the forest buried beneath the highway
Never had a chance to grow
Never had a chance to grow

“Something Is Wrong in America”: Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor & Michael Eric Dyson Debate Sanders v Biden

Gotta say, I am disappointed with Dr Dyson on this one. He certainly knows better. Dr Cornel West was right about him for his disingenuity, intellectual dishonesty & superficial politics. Don't get me wrong, Dr Dyson has his moments of irrepressible brilliance & head-spinning rhetorical flourishes, but he compromises too much with the cultural & Democratic elite that is quite puzzling.......

Greg Palast: Democracy vs Pandemic

 

 Let’s not create a precedent for Trump to cancel the November election. Rather than argue about cancelling primaries and elections, let’s talk about how we can vote without dying:

• 1. Push for mail-in balloting in all states. Some (Washington, Colorado) require it (with exceptions). 40 million were expected to vote by mail — let’s make it 90 million.
• 2. A church I visited substituted Souls-to-the-Post in place of Souls-to-the-Polls. They had a church “ballot fill-in” picnic. (These meets may have to be “virtual.”)
• 3. Check your registration NOW so you don’t have to be one of the three MILLION voters who must go in to fill out a bogus provisional ballot.
• 4. Extend early voting hours and locations. I find that early voting stations are virtually empty (except for Souls-to-Polls Sunday). You saw all those lines of fools waiting hours to vote in California. Two days before, I stood in the giant UCLA voting station for an hour and exactly three students came in to vote.
• 5. When you fill in that absurd absentee ballot and envelope — have someone else check it over to make sure you filled in the envelope carefully, signed it in TWO places (most states), with your registration signature, and ONLY using the official envelope.

Decades ago, the right wing said, “Better dead than Red.” Today: “Better postal than Orange.”

Is COVID-19 Devouring What’s Left of the Trump Presidency? by Phil Butler

Does anyone remember the scene in the original film Jaws in 1975 when Captain Quint gets devoured by the shark? Well, the COVID-19 situation in the US makes me imagine Donald Trump being devoured by a gigantic coronavirus. Or perhaps, the shark’s role could be played by western mainstream media? Either way, there is some Trump munching going on. Whatever Hollywood special effect you apply, the Trump presidency is over. Hey, by the way, did Joe Biden engineer the SARS-CoV-2?

Remembering then-Vice President Joe Biden from the days of the Ukraine coup d’é·ta, most truthtellers would not put it past old 1-percent Joe. But no matter how COVID-19 came about, Trump is just not going to be able to “Tweet” himself out of his most recent screwups. It’s a funny thing about Americans, they can be as gullible as they come, but once they catch on… And boy are they about to catch on. I almost feel sorry for the bad boy they once called The King of Debt, but Donald Trump had it coming. Now, an article on Jeff Bezos’ Washington Post by columnist Eugene Robinson, does not seem so mean and cruel in portraying Trump’s support base as the stupidest, most gullible people on earth..

The Trump Presidency Is Over by Peter Wehner

When, in January 2016, I wrote that despite being a lifelong Republican who worked in the previous three GOP administrations, I would never vote for Donald Trump, even though his administration would align much more with my policy views than a Hillary Clinton presidency would, a lot of my Republican friends were befuddled. How could I not vote for a person who checked far more of my policy boxes than his opponent?

What I explained then, and what I have said many times since, is that Trump is fundamentally unfit—intellectually, morally, temperamentally, and psychologically—for office. For me, that is the paramount consideration in electing a president, in part because at some point it’s reasonable to expect that a president will face an unexpected crisis—and at that point, the president’s judgment and discernment, his character and leadership ability, will really matter.

We Need a President Who Cares If We Live or Die. Instead We Have Trump by William Rivers Pitt

 Source: TruthOut

So the kids they dance and shake their bones
And the politicians throwin’ stones
Singing ashes, ashes, all fall down
Ashes, ashes, all fall down…
—“Throwing Stones,” John Perry Barlow / Bob Weir


We have a bad national habit of allowing a low bar to be set for our leaders, especially when we already know their flaws. A bad politician in a debate, for example, can be said to have done well if they didn’t accidentally light their podium on fire; by thwarting their own dim-bulb arsonist tendencies, they “outperformed expectations.”

Does Humanity Have a Chance?

Do you despair for the world? Does it seem like human nature will doom our society to violence and war without end? Take heart! This 10-minute video may give you hope.

Reggae Britannia Documentary

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 This documentary brought back fond memories of my childhood in the Caribbean....All of this music presented in the documentary populated my world & led to early aspirations of becoming the finest falsetto singer of reggae music in a Lover's Rock style! Alas, those dreams crashed upon the rocks of "you - better - get - a - college - degree - boy - & - get - a - real - job!"

Excellent doc!!

Greg Palast Explains How Donald Trump and His Republican Party Will Steal the 2020 Presidential Election at the Ballot Box

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LISTEN: Greg Palast on the Stolen 2020 Elections

Greg Palast is an investigative journalist whose work has been featured by the BBC, The Guardian, the Nation Magazine and Rolling Stone Magazine. He is also the author of the bestselling books Billionaires & Ballot Bandits and The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.

Palast is one of the country’s foremost experts on voter fraud and the many other ways that elections are rigged – almost always by Republicans -- so as to prevent the American people from having their votes (and political preferences) fully counted. In yet another provocative episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show,  Palast explains how Donald Trump, his Republican Party and their agents will try to steal the 2020 presidential election from the American people at the ballot box. He warns that the Democratic Party’s leadership will try to stop Senator Bernie Sanders by sabotaging the vote in the upcoming California primary.
He also details the connections between Roger Stone, the 2000 Florida presidential election “recount” fiasco, and Donald Trump.

Chauncey DeVega continues to warn the public about the dangers of the “hope peddlers” who keep lying to the American people and the world that somehow everything will somehow be alright when America returns to “normal” after Trump and his regime are forced out of power.

Suppressed: The Fight To Vote

In 2018 Brian Kemp successfully suppressed hundreds of thousands of votes to become the governor of Georgia. Suppressed: The #FightToVote uncovers the insidious tactics Kemp, and politicians across the country, use to suppress the vote and stay in power.

Our basic democratic rights are at stake, and in 2020 and beyond we need to #FightToVote. Share this film with your family and friends. Help us get to 2,020 screenings before the 2020 election by signing up for a home watch party, or to host a screening in your community, school, or faith community.

 For more information and to sign up, go to: www.fighttovote.org

The Looming Financial Nightmare: So Much for Living the American Dream by John W. Whitehead

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“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.” ― Frédéric Bastiat, French economist

Let’s talk numbers, shall we?

The national debt (the amount the federal government has borrowed over the years and must pay back) is $23 trillion and growing.

The amount this country owes is now greater than its gross national product (all the products and services produced in one year by labor and property supplied by the citizens). We’re paying more than $270 billion just in interest on that public debt annually. And the top two foreign countries who “own” our debt are China and Japan.