You can listen to an interview with the author on the podcast “Scheer Intelligence.” https://www.kcrw.com/culture/shows/scheer-intelligence
Thursday Night Blog Notes: Scams, Coronavirus, Free-For-All, Meaningless Statistics, Trump, Corruption, Graft, Greed
Thursday Night Blog Notes: Scams, Coronavirus, Free-For-All, Meaningless Statistics, Trump, Corruption, Graft, Greed
Thursday Night Blog Notes
- I can’t even keep up with the Trump scams surrounding this coronavirus crisis.
- Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, is claiming that he just now learned that asymptomatic people could pass on the coronavirus to other people.
- Every day there’s another presser with Trump congratulating corporate CEOs and touting meaningless statistics.
- The Republicans are all over twitter congratulating private industry for “contributions” and “donations.” So, the people in this country who pay taxes, are reliant on donations, charity from big business to get them through a crisis.
- This entire Trump/Repubican approach is designed to school people that the government cannot/will not help them if them are in need.
- The Federal Government, however, under the Republicans will give $500 billion of public money to corporations.
- According to Mehdi Hasan, South Korea and Japan’s unemployment rates are nothing like we are seeing in this country.
- The Navy is expected to fire the captain who raised an alarm saying that his sailors had the Coronavirus.
- The Nation is reporting that there is a Democratic primary in Wisconsin on Tuesday and Milwaukee is planning to decrease the polling places from 180 to 10. This is democracy?
- Trump is complaining on Twitter that the hospitals and states have “insatiable appetites & are never satisfied (politics?)
- I’ll never, never be able to wrap my mind around the fact that this miserable, moronic, corrupt, tasteless, bastard is president.
Bonfire of the Vanities: The Corporate Free-For-All
Bonfire of the Vanities: The Corporate Free-For-All
Today’s press conference was even more useless than usual. Trump has decided to launch some kind of drug war in the middle of the Coronavirus crisis. I sat and looked into the eyes of the men behind him, men who were uniformly congratulating him, complimenting him, carrying out his will. Every one of them is dangerous and every one of them needs to be in jail.
And, the press conference was no different from the past ones in that it reinforced the notion that:
-government is there to conduct a prolonged ad for big corporations;
-government has no role in helping people during a crisis;
-science is a hoax;
-the role of the government is to propagandize people into doing things against their self-interest.
Additional Notes from Today:
- Lt. Gen. Honore maintained in an interview this week that we have models, models which show from Day 1 what to do in this type of crisis. I don’t, he said, know why we are not using them.
- The EPA is rolling back emissions standards put in place during the Obama Administration. The federal government, in the middle of a pandemic has time to do the bidding of corporations and lobbyists to make it possible for them to poison us and make more money.
- Honore was cautioning in the interview he did with Craig Melvin of MSNBC, that we needed to keep our minds on the inevitable corruption that is going to come along with this crisis. He noted that pollution affects people of color and poor people more than others.
- Reuters (3/31/20) is reporting that this change in efficiency standards will “save automakers upwards of $100 billion in compliance costs.”
- This Coronavirus crisis is a Bonfire of the Vanities for corporate interests.
- It will be a disaster for the rest of us if we don’t stand up and make them stop.
But, as Sen. Cassidy (and the rest of the Repubican Party) maintain: Capitalism will handle it.
Burning Books: We Won’t Have To
Burning Books: We Won’t Have To
My partner woke up in the middle of the night last night worrying about the Coronavirus. He wasn’t worried about catching it, me catching it, or buying toilet paper. He was worried about books.
“All the books are going to be online.” He said to me this morning as we were lying in bed, propped up side-by-side, drinking coffee and watching the cats harass squirrels raiding the bird feeders attached to the windows.
“Before long books will all be digital and with one key stroke somebody like Trump can change them, change them just like that.”
“There won’t be any need to burn books anymore.” I said.
“There won’t be any need to burn books.”
It’s not surprising that people like us are worrying about books during this Coronavirus crisis. The Trump administration is quietly reaching out the evil fingers of authoritarianism all over the social order. I can almost feel them burrowing their way underneath the covers of the bed every night.
In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban did not seize power. The Hungarian Parliament handed it over to him by passing a new law that gives him broad powers supposedly to deal with the Coronavirus. There is no end date set for these expanded powers and others are so concerned that they are calling for the EU to expel Hungary.
Orban, who has bragged about being the champion of “illiberal democracy” now has the power to jail people who publicize what are viewed as untrue or distorted facts which could alarm people. No by-elections can be held as long as the law remains in force. The government has the power to suspend laws.
The new rules can only be lifted with a two-thirds vote of the parliament AND A PRESIDENTIAL SIGNATURE.
Tell me that’s comforting.
https://news.yahoo.com/rule-decree-hungary-reopens-wounds-011612093.html
