Archives for May 2020

Day 1203 The End of The Battle of Cannae, The End

Tuesday May 5, 2020 

180 Days until the election on November 3^rd

260 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

If you are familiar with Roman history you know of The Battle of Cannae. It is where Hannibal defeated the Romans. Hannibal left Carthage marched across the north of Africa through Spain and Gaul down into Italy. Hannibal had a diverse army. They didn’t speak the same language. I think there were four different language spoken within his army. He also had elephants. This may seem like a great idea until you realize that in battle elephants get scared and run. Usually, they turn and run, stomping whomever is in their way. 

The Romans on the other hand had a disciplined well trained fighting force. The Roman army practiced their advancement formations and fighting strategies in huge covered thatched roof spaces. When they fought the Greeks they were ready. The Greeks saw battle as a glorious thing in which each army met on a one another on a huge open field. The Greeks had 21 foot spears. They would join their shields together forming little notches where the shield butted together. They would line up six deep and this massive block of men would march forward. The Romans learned early on that in battle you want a short sword so that you can stand closer together. The Greeks advanced and the Romans crouched down and chopped at their ankles. It is said that Rome “shortened it sword and gained an empire.” 

When the Romans went to meet Hannibal they had their army. They had numbers on their side 86,000 to 50,000. They were confident. They were ready. Cannae is a flat plain by the sea. Mountains on one side, ocean on the other. It’s narrower than the usual field of battle that the Romans had fought on before. They lined up deeper than usual. Hannibal, his army arrayed across the plain waited. The Romans advanced. The center gave and the Romans pushed on. Then the center no longer gave it stopped. The sides had held and they swooped in from the back to seal the Romans in a box. There was no escape.

Then the slaughter began.

The Romans were so tightly packed that they could not swing their swords, short as they were. 

Bodies were piled high. Blood was ankle deep. Every once in awhile the Carthaginian rank opened up and a few got out. That was only because the Carthaginians couldn’t get in any closer to kill without letting a few out.

Those few and the ones who had stayed guarding the camp survived.

It is one of the most studied battles in history. It was the largest defeat Rome ever faced. It wasn’t until WWI and the Battle of the Somme that numbers like that were seen again.

That’s over two thousand years.

We are getting ready to see it again. In this country. 

The modeling on the number of dead from Covid-19 in this country was 60,000 to 78,000 by August 1, 2020. Not any more.

It’s now 148,000.

Why?

The modeling was based on self quarantining. We’ve decided not to do that. We will die. Maybe not you, but your fellow countryman or woman or child.

88,000 more will die.

By August 1.

With no end in sight.

I wish Jim Morrison’s words were true in this case …

“This is the end, My only friend. The End.”

But it’s not. Many more will now die. 

Meanwhile the president and his son-in-law play Good Ship Lollipop. Swinging their wooden swords and holding their paper hats on their heads. 

It’s out there. It’s waiting and we are marching out to meet it. Totally unprepared and defenseless. We will lose more to Covid than the Romans lost at Cannae, and that’s just in the increase between now and August 1 due to our not staying home.

180 Days until the election on November 3^rd

260 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Me and Covid (or am I at Ben and Jerry’s HQ?)

Day 1202 Michael Jordan, Donald Trump, and the Path to Greatness

Monday May 4, 2020 

181 Days until the election on November 3^rd

261 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

I have an ability. It’s not one I ever thought of as being anything special. That is until someone said they wanted me to help them if they ever had to move. They didn’t want me for my muscle or my stamina or anything like that. They wanted me for my ability to pack a truck. I never realized it was anything special until that person mentioned, indirectly, that they hoped I’d be available if they ever had to move. 

I can look at a space and know if something is going to fit. I’m not always right, but I’ve watched other people struggle with this kind of situation. I can also look at how much is left in a pot and pick out the right sized container to put the leftovers in. I can go to the bulk food aisle, fill up a bag with whatever is on the list to get and buy just enough to fill up the container back home to the rim. I don’t always get it right, but in each of those situations I’ve watched others who seem to have no idea. Like I said, I never thought it was a special ability.

This brings me to Michael Jordan and me. No, I’ve never met him. But I’ve picked up little stories about him. It’s one of my abilities – the ability to pick up and amalgamate stuff, to find connections in disparate things. 

ESPN is showing “The Last Dance.” The story of Michael Joran and The Chicago Bulls run at a 6^th NBA World Championship. 

Michael Jordan wasn’t always Michael Jordan. He used to be “Mike.” One of 15 kids from a town in North Carolina where racism was a thing, like it was all over the south when he was growing up. It still is, but hopefully not as bad as when he was growing up. His grandmother had a hoop in her backyard. It was dirt and no net. Mike and his brother played out there a lot. His brother was better than him. If his brother lost to Mike he beat him up. Yeah, Mike’s brother would beat him up. His father would tell Mike that he didn’t know what he was doing around tools and tell him so and tell him to go back in the house. 

For whatever reason this motivated Michael to do better. To develop an “I’ll show you attitude.”

It’s funny (funny, odd) how we develop our talents. Some are conscious, some are not. I’m not sure how much of what someone displays is “God given talent,” or ability, and how much is something that started being developed at an early age unconsciously. Malcolm Gladwell has asked the question, “Why are all NHL hockey players born in January?” Okay, maybe I got the question not quite right. Gladwell makes the point that an unusually high percentage of professional hockey players are born in the early part of the year. Why? Because the cutoff for playing in the junior leagues is December 31^st. A person born on January 1^st will be a year older than a person born on December 31^st of the previous year when they go to sign up for hockey. That twelve months makes all the difference in how much playing time and coaching they get. They’re just a little bit better at first, but over the years, due to the extra attention they get better – a lot better than the kids born in December of the previous year. It’s shown by the fact that most professional hockey players are born in the first few months of any year. (Therefore, it makes sense for parents to not push kids to higher levels of sport but to try and hold them back.)

Gladwell has also said that to be good at something takes 10,000 hours of practice. Jimi Hendrix wasn’t born a guitar god overnight. He carried a guitar everywhere he went. He played it; he slept with it. 

In the Michael Jordan story there’s a tidbit from Roy Williams. Michael told Roy he wanted to be the best. Roy said okay. Then Michael said something else, and Roy stopped him and said, “Wait a minute, you said you wanted to be the best?” Implying that whatever it was Michael had said would not make him the best. It would make him good, like 10,000 hours makes you good enough to qualify, but to be the best? That takes something more. 

One of the tidbits I know about Michael Jordan is that at North Carolina they worked on him to be a great defensive player. When he left he was great at both ends of the court. It’s because his defensive talents were developed at North Carolina.

Of all the things I know about Michael Jordan the one that is most memorable comes from the Richmond Science Museum. They have a display in the basement where you can test your abilities. One of their displays is to test your vertical leap. You can do this at home. 

Find a spot that’s two stories tall. Stand next to the wall and stretch your arm out reaching as far as you can up the wall. At that point tape a yard stick running up the wall from the end of your fingertips. Now, standing in the spot below the yardstick jump up and see how high you can touch on the yard stick.

How did you do? Seven inches? Ten? Maybe fifteen. Seventeen? That’s known as your vertical leap. Vertical jump they call it. 

The note one the sign at the Science Museum said that Jordan had a 48 inch vertical leap. In other words, you’d need to tape a foot long ruler on top of that yard stick to see where Michael can jump to. (I just checked Google and they said 46” at NC.)

Michal Jordan is 6’ 7” tall. That’s a beginning height in the NBA. That’s what you need to be to qualify. But that leap? He had to work at that. He had to develop that.

Donald Trump also developed abilities. He learned the art of the con. He had to develop that skill, and it is a skill, an ability. It has worked well for him. He went from apathetic student to failing real estate developer to prime time TV personality to president of the Untied States. How did he do that?

By conning and bullying people. By developing a skill to deceive and to lie. He’s done it for so long, that it seems normal and okay. He’s very good at it and it has served him well. Until now.

Can he pull one more rabbit out of the bag?

Could the Bulls win a sixth championship?

Yeah. But as The Last Dance shows – You Gotta Step Up. And it didn’t happen over night. Michael Jordan had ingrained in himself, from an early age, a determination to get better and not to lose.

Donald? Well, he had things ingrained in him too. They worked for him, until he got to the presidency. Kind of like Herbert Hoover. Could Trump pull it out? Legitimately? (Yes, and yes.)

What could Trump do to win? (Besides cheat with the help of the Russians, the right wing, and the his slimy Republicans pseudo buddies.) I’ll tell you.

It was made clear to me on a weekend interview with the former head of The World Bank. This man pointed out two very significant set of facts. One was that when it came to investment in public health it was almost nothing. 

He backed this up by mentioning the fact that although we’ve spent trillions on the economy we’ve spent next to nothing on public health. It works out to $11,000 per person on the economy and $125 on public health – something like that. He said we needed to spend a massive amount on public health. He sited the recent call for folks to help with contact tracing in Massachusetts and something like 100,000 people applied for less that 10,000 slots. Yes, people wanted a job, he said, but he thought it was more than that. People wanted to defeat this virus. They wanted to take action, not sit hiding in their living rooms.

And therein lies Trump’s path to victory in the fall. If he were to call for a national mobilization to defeat this virus and if he were to actually back it up with action and resources he could win. Will He?

No.

181 Days until the election on November 3^rd

261 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Sloppy Joe’s

Day 1201 The One Reality

Sunday May 3, 2020 

182 Days until the election on November 3^rd

262 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

The president says he wants to open the country back up again. Some governors are starting to do that. Some never shut down.

The one thing that people agree on is that the first step to stopping a pandemic is to test. Yet, this administration has done little to bring that about. Why? What is Trump scared of? I think it’s three things that cause his lack of action: 1) he’s never had to really do anything, 2) he’s always been able to wiggle out of it, or someone has come and bailed him out, 3) he’s doing what he’s always done (see 1 & 2) and it’s always worked; he therefore does not know how to do anything else, and he’s lazy and doesn’t want to learn how to do anything else. 

To restate what I said above in more highbrow terms: Trump is incurious, lazy and apathetic.

We are now seeing the Republican conservative right wing playbook play out. If you like what has happened to our country then you are no doubt happy with the state of the nation and the world. If you are one who calls themself a Republican, or a conservative and you aren’t happy with the state of the nation or the world then I suggest you take a deep breath and a serious look around and see what your party’s ideology and actions have wrought. (Please don’t preach “this isn’t what I stand for”, “this is what true blah blah blah is”… No MFer this is exactly what it is.) The funny thing about conservatives is that they say they don’t like socialism and they don’t like folks getting hand outs, yet they are the ones taking the biggest handouts and wrangling for the best socialist policies for themselves possible. (Oh, I’m sorry. We’ve given Steve Mnuchin, the foreclosure king of California, $500,000,000,000.00 to spend anyway he wants without any oversight and YOU want to say what?)

Don’t try and blame this on Hillary or Obama or Nancy or Chuck or anyone else.

Your president said he’s done a spectacular job. Has he?

The fact that he is using: the FBI to investigate whether hospital workers are stealing masks to sell on the black market, FEMA to seize orders of PPE from states, the AG to argue that god knows, I forget, all I read is that Barr is taking the wrong side on whatever case is coming up. The fact that Trump fired or reassigned ( take your pick ): the guy who was heading up the development of vaccines for the government,  the inspector generals who make sure money is being spent the way it is supposed to be, and the list goes on and on. The fact that when people have been begging at him, screaming at him, arguing with him, pleading with him, to invoke the War Powers Act to galvanize this nation to produce the stuff we need to fight this pandemic and he hasn’t, but instead used it to force meat packers back into infected work conditions, says something. I’m not sure what, but it’s not good. 

The fact that he was given intelligence briefings in early January and repeatedly through every month of this year and did nothing has been called: a failure of leadership, dereliction of duty, and other things far worse.

What Trump’s inactions and actions have shown us is how fragile our experiment in democracy really is. He and the virus have exposed deep flaws and problems in our systems. We are left with fundamental questions to examine and choose.

Do we like the way he and his advisors and political appointees and sycophants are running things? Do we like the way he and the gang are handling the economy? What about our health care system? Do we like having hospitals that aren’t really equipped or set up to take care of the sick?

So what’s going to happen? I’ll tell you exactly what’s going to happen. Do I have a crystal ball? No. You don’t need one. You don’t need common sense. You don’t need nothing, because it will happen right before your eyes.

Some governors will open up their states. More people will get sick and die. There will be spikes in those places and those governors will say, “Huh.” Trump will say, “I disagreed with them doing it.” The economy will get worse. More people will lose their jobs. More businesses will go bankrupt and out of business, and the president will say, “Not my fault.”

Any questions?

PS The Pyramid of Kinich Kakmo, Izamal, Mexico

Day 1200 Four Men, Two Realities

Saturday May 2, 2020 

183 Days until the election on November 3^rd

263 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Einstein talked about two kinds of facts: scientific and historic. Scientific facts are those you can verify via experiment. Things that are universally true. The speed of light, the weight of an element, the separation of water into its two elements – these are all things that can be observed by measurement and or experiment. It’s what science is all about.

There’s another kind of fact, what I call “historical fact.” It’s a one time event. The recollection of which is open to interpretation. “John killed Fred,” is an example. It’s what murder mysteries are all about. The question raised is, “Did John kill Fred?” and then “Was it murder or an accident?” What do we know to be scientifically true? Fred is dead, if we have a body and it’s identified as Fred. The rest is speculation unless we can gather more scientific facts about Fred’s death. 

Let’s say it’s not a murder but a case of something else happening. Like “Mary slapped Betty.” Mary says she touched Betty’s cheek. Betty says she was bitch-slapped by Mary. Who’s right? Is it a question of degree? What if Mary says it never happened? These are questions that can never be absolutely answered because they are events that occurred in the past. Without evidence you have to go on reputation and hunches. “Does Mary have a reputation of slapping people?” etc.

This brings me to the other three men in today’s screed: Don, Joe, and Mitch.

Donald Trump has a problem with scientific reality. He seems to want to use the tricks that work to some degree in his attempt to rework historical reality. Trump has made a career of failing upwards, of lying and deceit. You can do this with history – to some degree. You can deny that things happened, or that they happened differently than others said they happened. But scientific reality is different. You can’t separate the two elements of water and get two other elements. Maybe, you can convince someone that it’s not hydrogen but helium, but that doesn’t make it so.

Joe Biden is being accused of sexual assault. Did it happen? Who knows? Maybe Joe; maybe the woman accusing him know. Maybe not. What do we know? Well, Joe is a hugger. I’ve seen lots of footage of him hugging people: men, women, children. Politicians kiss babies, it’s part of the schtick. Could some of that behavior be unwanted? Could some of that behavior make someone uncomfortable? You bet. 

But that’s in hindsight. Joe is an old line politician. You kiss babies. You hug people. That’s what you do. Now, in the era of MeToo, people are looking with a different eye. Joe has said as much. Did he intentionally touch people inappropriately? I’ve never seen any evidence of that, have you? Is there any footage or anecdotal accounts of him copping a feel, for example? Papa Bush in his older years, yes; Joe, no. 

Could what the woman claims be true. Sure. Is it? We’ll never know for certain. Is there any verifiable evidence? So far nothing has turned up. She said she filed a complaint. Last I heard that if there was a complaint it would be under the control of the Senate. That would be Mitch McConnell. I’m sure his staff is tearing the place apart looking for it. 

If nothing surfaces then you have to go on character. Does Joe have a reputation for this kind of behavior? Not that I’m aware of. In a different time, I could see a man in Joe’s position playfully slapping someone on the butt. Look what happened to Al Franken. Franken left the Senate because of a photo of him pretending to touch a woman’s breasts and because she claimed in practicing a skit he kissed her too much. She said years later when prompted by Roger Stone that Frankin forced his tongue down her throat. What? I never understood that. If true Frankin has a long tongue.

So with Joe we’ve got a case of historical fact and its recollection. The character of the man, his behavior, and the evidence suggest that the woman is recounting events that either never happened or happened much differently that she’s remembering.

As a man, I can say that I have been subject to fantasies by women. I’m no Brad Pitt, but In have had women tell their girlfriends something about me and her that never happened. It’s in the “Oh my god, did you hear?” kind of category. Nothing of a sexual assault kind of thing, but I have been subject to a young girl thinking we had something going on when I hardly knew the person. In all those cases, and there was more than one, we were young. In each case I have got to say I have no idea what the other person was thinking, but it was nothing that I did, said, or inferred. I found the events strange at the time, and I learned to steer clear,  as much as possible, of such people. I have run into men who have told me some of the most fantastical sexual exploits about someone else or some other couple in my circle of acquaintance. I can remember in one instance looking at the couple this fellow said he had had a menage a trois with the night before and thinking “No.” Just “no”. It did leave open the question of what in the world was that fellow thinking. I came to observe him throwing out more and more statements like this during my brief association with him. We were in a two week training class. He seemed to have a fantastical story about the night before almost every morning. I’ve never understood that kind of behavior. But I’ve learned to be circumspect and steer clear as much as possible.

In Joe Biden’s case, he can’t. He has to face it head on. I think he’s doing a good job. But let’s say it did happen, then what? I would say, he’d be better off saying, “Yeah, I did it and I’m sorry.” Or “Yeah, something like that happened but not the wya she’s recounting it.” Or it could be that something happened and he doesn’t remember it.

But what if it never happened? It seems to me that something may have happened, however the recollection keeps growing and getting more serious over time. This seems more like a Roger Stone type set up than anything else.

It recalls for me the story of the crystal skull. These glass skulls were produced in a shop in Brazil I believe. They are fakes. How can an expert tell? Well, the markings on them show that they were polished on a machine, not done by hand. But the real giveaway is that in a short period or time the workmanship got better. If they were handmade centuries ago, all would be about the same quality. The mark of a fake is that the maker gets better, therefore over time the objects become better made.

It seems to me that some incident may have happened. Maybe Joe squeezed her shoulders or hugged her or something. Maybe at the time she felt uncomfortable, maybe not. Maybe upon reflection she decided she didn’t like it, that it wasn’t proper. It seems her recounting has grown over time. It’s gotten bigger, more polished. 

Now we come to Mitch. He recalling the Senate. Most of the senators, if not all, are in the category of those who could be seriously negatively impacted by this virus. They are coming back to Washington DC at the height of the outbreak for Washington. He is doing this against the advise of the Senate’s own doctor, and other health professionals.
What is he thinking? Clearly, he doesn’t believe that they will be affected. What will it take for him to think otherwise? Will it take some of the Senators getting sick? Or will some have to die? Then what? Do we get an “Oh gee, I guess I was wrong.”? Doubtful.
What we are seeing in the behavior of both Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell is the attempt to use historical recollection and gaslighting in the face of scientific verifiable reality. If several senators get sick or if they die, that’s not something you can explain away. That’s a fact.

PS The fields of Bonampak

Day 1199 – What’s Wrong With Our Hospitals?

Friday May 1, 2020 

184 Days until the election on November 3^rd

264 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

May Day! Which is different than saying, “May Day!” As in “May Day! May Day! May Day! We’re going down.”

No May Day is supposed to be the big Communist Day of Workers of the world rejoicing. Unfortunately, it seems that no matter the system, the workers get screwed. 

This is because, as Garrett Morris said on SNL impersonating a Caribbean baseball player, you have to “keep your eye on the ball.” If you think for a second that someone else is going to take care of you, you get screwed. Capitalism, Communism, authoritarianism – doesn’t seem to matter.

Take our hospitals – We thought, and by “we” I mean the collective we i.e. “It is generally assumed or thought to be true” we, that hospitals were there to take care of the sick. That turns out not to be true, just as insurance companies are not there to take care of all the people who fall sick, or hurt, or die, or whatever. Nope, not true. At least not true in America – the U. S. of A. Un-uh, nope. You might have known that insurance companies were there to make a profit, and maybe you suspected hospitals were in the same game, but I bet you thought that if you got sick you could go to the hospital and they would take care of you. Generally, that is true, but we are now discovering that if a lot of people go to the hospital and are sick – the hospital will go bankrupt and shut down. Did you know that? I didn’t. (Am I channeling Donald Trump here? OMG, help me!)

Turns out hospitals are fee based. That means they schedule patients for procedures and get paid for doing them. That’s how they make their money. People showing up sick are an inconvenience, but the hospitals put up with it because by and large it isn’t that much of a strain. But now? Now with a pandemic raging, and scheduled surgeries and procedures put on hold, hospitals are losing money – a lot of money.

BTW scheduled procedures are referred to as “elective” in that you can choose (ie elect) when you want to do them; like when the doctor has time for you. It does not mean that you don’t need it. It does include cosmetic surgery, but it also includes a back operation or a knee replacement or a tumor removal. No, they don’t need to rush to do it, but they need to get that tumor out before it grows and kills you.

It also turns out that many of the hospital doctors have been bought up by hedge funds. Hedge funds like to make money. When they aren’t making money they cut back on expenses, like now. During a pandemic doctors who get paid the hedge fund who charge by the services they perform aren’t making money. There is no category, I guess, for “subject gasping for breath and needs a breathing tube shoved down their throat so they can breath due to corona virus” so they can’t get reimbursed so the hedge fund guys say, “Sorry, we need you to cut back on your hours.”

In other words our hospitals are not there to treat the sick, They are there to perform procedures that the doctors get paid to do. 

Likewise, insurance companies are there to make a profit, not to help you in a time of need.

So the question in my mind is, “Is this what we want?”

Several things come to mind. In Britain they have a health care system based on helping the population stay healthy. How is that working out? It seems to me – pretty good. Yes, there have been problems along the way, but every year it seems to be getting better and the results are that the population is getting healthier and the cost isn’t breaking the back of the nation. It’s something like half the cost of our system.

In Canada, they have a system where the private companies are regulated by the government. This seems to work pretty well too. 

Hum, maybe we should try a system that isn’t into gouging every penny they can from us, and one that actually works during a pandemic?

And finally, all the arguments I’ve heard from the right and the Republicans are basically, “We don’t want to change, because then we couldn’t elect to have surgeries and procedures when we want them.” Yeah, right. I call BS on that, and I’d rather have a system that works during a pandemic and one that costs half the price of the current system and one that covers everybody.

Bernie’s rallying cry of “Medicare for All” can now be replaced with an even more fundamental one “Hospitals for the Sick.”

In a side note, I saw Ivanka standing near her dad. Every time I see her I’ve wondered, “Is she as dumb as she looks?” Every time I come away thinking, “Yes. Yes, she is.”

PS The Hatteras Lighthouse