It's not
about being liberal or conservative anymore y'all. That is a hype offered by the fascist whores who want to confuse the people with lies while they turn this country into an aristocratic police state. Some people will say anything to attain power and money. There is no such thing as the Liberal Media, but the Corporate media is very real.
Oh joy. Don't you love protests sponsored by billionaire funded organizations.
AND
Former New York Times executive editor Howell Raines says Trump’s “doubletalk” and self-promotion at the coronavirus briefings are both counterproductive and backfiring, in this interview with MSNBC’s Ari Melber.
AND
"The tests are perfect. Just like the call was perfect. The transcript was perfect."
-- Donald Trump
Monday, 20 April 2020 at 0h 35m 52s
How the US Government handled the 1918-19 pandemic
Although experts are still uncertain, the "spanish" flu probably originated in Kansas at a army camp. It was called the Spanish flu because the information was coming from Spanish newspapers. The Wilson administration, in a misguided effort to keep up war morale, refused to acknowledge the growing pandemic. So despite what our very astute erudite current president might have said, the influenza epidemic of 1918-19 did not originate in Spain.
"All the Property that is necessary to a Man, for the Conservation of the Individual and the Propagation of the Species, is his natural Right, which none can justly deprive him of: But all Property superfluous to such purposes is the Property of the Publick, who, by their Laws, have created it, and who may therefore by other Laws dispose of it, whenever the Welfare of the Publick shall demand such Disposition. He that does not like civil Society on these Terms, let him retire and live among Savages" - Benjamin Franklin
Robert Morris was a shipper/merchant out of Philadelphia who also functioned as a banker for the nation during the Revolutionary/Constitutional Period of the United States.
During the Revolutionary War he would purchase supplies for the army/navy on his own account and funded various expeditions to Europe seeking supplies. He was named Superintendent of Finance in 1781, precursor to the Secretary of the Treasury. He was also heavily involved in the financial operations of the nascent United States government. After the Panic of 1797 however all his revenue collapsed and he tried to avoid his creditors for a few months, but eventually he was sued and then imprisoned for debt in Prune Street prison in Philadelphia from February 1798 to August 1801.
Sunday, 19 April 2020 at 0h 4m 6s
The truth about Vitamin C
Stop drinking Orange Juice. You'll completely understand after you watch the first 8 minutes.
The skinny: they destroy the natural Vitamin C when they pasteurize the product and then add synthetic Ascorbic Acid created from corn syrup. However Ascorbic Acid is NOT Vitamin C. It is the shell of the Vitamin C complex package, kind of like the apple peel instead of the whole apple.
Nutrition knowledge is still catching up on all of our misconceptions. There are very few reliable, honest purveyors of nutritional knowledge than Dr. Stan Ekberg.
Saturday, 18 April 2020 at 23h 47m 10s
Modern Monetary Theory
In a challenge to conventional views on modern monetary and fiscal policy, Professor Bill Mitchell of Newcastle University in Australia has emerged as one of the foremost exponents of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a heterodox challenge to the prevailing paradigms which dominate how mainstream economics is taught and economic policy implemented. In his works, and the interview below, Mitchell presents a coherent analysis of how money is created, how it functions in global exchange rate regimes, and how the mystification of the nature of money has constrained governments, and prevented states from acting in the public interest.
Saturday, 18 April 2020 at 19h 19m 41s
Review of various serology studies on COVID
Dr. John Campbell has been doing daily info vids reviewing statistics and discusses scientific papers and studies. Here he reviews serology studies (testing for antibodies) and using the sample to estimate the actual number of people who have contracted COVID.
The estimate is based on 3,330 blood samples that were taken from volunteers in Mountain View, Los Gatos and San Jose on April 3 and April 4 and tested for antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 .
[SOURCE:Gennady Sheyner | Palo Alto Weekly | 17 April 2020]
This large sample is a voluntary response by people responding to an online survey who have means to donate the samples by driving and waiting in a car line to get a prick on their finger. Did these people receive the survey randomly? I would assume Stanford knows what they are doing here, but you have to careful because the people who respond might have larger percentages of people who feel vulnerable to exposure due to their occupation, or did get sick at some point in the past. Hence I'd be very careful directly applying the proportion of those with antibodies in the sample of 3,330 to the entire population of Santa Clara County(1.93 million).
However, I am absolutely sure Stanford took these issues into account when they made their estimates. Here's the next paragraph in the Palo Alto Weekly article:
When adjusted for Santa Clara County's population and demographics, the number of positive results suggests that between 2.49% and 4.16% of the county's 1.93 million residents have had COVID-19.
Saturday, 18 April 2020 at 18h 12m 49s
Every villian needs an origin story
I love Beau and his home spun genuine wisdom.
Saturday, 18 April 2020 at 2h 18m 33s
Great explanation of realities and choices before us
Because the shutdown and social distancing is about the economy. If you deliberately let a virus proliferate, and "let it burn" through the population, the transport system of goods and services will get catastrophically disrupted and will break down. This includes commerce from airports, railroads, trucking and seaports. Furthermore -- and this is the big one -- there will be an increased probability that the virus mutates and we get a more virulent strain. That's what happened during the great Influenza epidemic of 1918-1919, which was more than 5 times as virulent during the second wave -- see the mortality per day graph that I posted 9 posts below.
Johns Hopkins is doing phenomenial work on the covidvirus data collection -- by city/town, county/parish, state, and nation. With other breakdowns and charts too. And something called "critical trends".
This is a regular series from Britain called Double Down News. It's favorable to Jeremy Corbin, and is akin to the media saavy non-corporate left in the United States like Robert Reich.
It came with a timestamp.
Talk of exit strategy premature? Can we trust numbers? What's happening in Prisons? Care workers dying, Trump vs WHO and more
00:00 Lockdown Exit Strategy
03:03 Testing
04:23: What's happening in Prisons?
05:12: Shielding at risk groups
08:04 Economy
10:01 Keir Starmer
13:32 German Response Vs British Response
14:35 Can we trust the Death toll?
16:27 Do Not Resuscitate
*Adults with Autism, a child with cancer and disabled patients
17:11 Heathcare workers dying
17:43 COVID-19 disproportionately effecting BAME communities and men
19:27 Trump vs World Health Organisation
21:41 Looking back at my own Coronavirus journey
So these fools who are "protesting" about the shutdown and wrapping themselves in liberty and the flag really don't have a clue, and are getting manipulated by their chosen twitter feeds from dishonest actors who are hired by organizations funded by the ultra-wealthy -- because they don't want to pay more taxes in order to handle this crisis effectively and think they can isolate themselves on their yachts, islands, mansions and gated communities while the viruse "burns out."
All you lower classes out there just have to die in order to keep the stock market from crashing just have to sacrifice for the greater good in order to accrue more profits for unenlightened ultra-wealthy people.
NOTE: I use the word unenlightened here to distinguish these ghouls from the enlightened, of which there exist plenty of honorable, patriotic examples.
Almost everyone is suffering financially from the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. Nonessential businesses across the country are shuttered. More than 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment claims over the past four weeks. Hotel rooms are empty as municipalities reliant on their taxes see holes blown in their budgets. Cuts to city services, furloughs, and layoffs of public employees are sure to follow. Weddings, church services, concerts, sporting events, and conferences are cancelled for months. There is great uncertainty about when and how the economy will reopen and trudge towards normalcy again.
Stocks sold off dramatically, and March was the most volatile month for US stock markets on record; a record that includes the Great Depression. Demand for oil plummeted as Americans stayed home, drove less, and cancelled all travel plans. Meanwhile, Russia and Saudi Arabia had a spat over oil production cuts and continued to pump unneeded oil out of the ground. The healthcare industry is not immune. Elective surgeries have been cancelled, and no one wants to visit their doctor’s office for a well visit. Dentists are at the most risk of contracting coronavirus and are closed except for emergencies.
Our economic system is so intricately connected that we have only just begun to see the ripple effects from these drastic moves. The food delivery system for restaurants is not equipped to sell products in grocery store sized packaging. Milk has been dumped and dairy cows slaughtered. The chicken industry prepared for seasonal chicken wing demand at March Madness, and now there’s a glut of spoiled chicken wings. Dutch tulips are going straight in to the garbage. It is a mess out there.
[SOURCE:Blair DuQuesnay | TheBelleCurve | 16 April 2020]
Friday, 17 April 2020 at 5h 18m 23s
Accounting Identity
Click here for a discussion of the sectorial balances in an economy.
(S-I)+(T-G)=(X-M)
Or ...
S = I + G - T + (X-M)
which implies that deficits at home (private and government) result in current account or trade deficits, and thus borrowing from abroad.
The sectoral balances equation above says that total private savings S minus private investment I has to equal the public deficit G minus taxes T plus net exports X minus imports M where net exports represent the net savings of non-residents.
Another way of saying this is that total private savings S is equal to private investment I plus the public deficit G minus taxes T plus net exports X minus imports M, where net exports represent the net savings of non-residents.
All these relationships (equations) hold as a matter of accounting and not matters of opinion.
@ timestamp 3:40
It is impossible for the private sector and the US government to both run a surplus. It can't happen