Archives for December 2020

Friday December 18, 2020 (7 days til Christmas)

Election Day -45

34 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

We are getting close enough to the Inauguration that I’ll soon have to check my count to see if I’m still on track. Close enough for now.

In old news the Russians hacked our government systems back in March and have been rooting around since then. We just discovered it. Maybe, our cyber security folks were distracted with trying to keep our election process safe? Oh well, we fired that guy so never mind. Onward to a new crisis. This new one fabricated, we think, by you-know-who and his administration. It’s hard to tell at the moment.

Reports started coming in yesterday that the states promised allotments of vaccine from Pfizer were being reduced by about 30%. Seems every state was informed. Why? Governors, hospitals, and people asked. No answer was forthcoming. Then Secretary Azar made an offhand comment that Pfizer was having trouble making enough vaccine. Reporters checked with Pfizer. Imagine that! Hey, guess what? Pfizer says they have no problems making the vaccine. They’ve got millions of doses sitting on the shelf. But they haven’t been told by OUR GOVERNMENT where to ship it.

What’s going on? Time for rampant speculation.

But first – Mike Pence was shown getting the vaccine. This is I guess supposed to instill confidence. Fucker, he jumped the line. Where was I? Oh yes. 

Someone had to notify the states that their ration of the vaccine was being cut. Who did that? And why? To quote SNL’s Kate McKinnon “We don’t know that.”

I wonder if there is a mad scramble within the Trump administration to fix this problem or are they just going to do a press release saying Hugo Chavez is to blame? Or George Soros? Yeah, blame Soros. 

Are the herd immunity let ‘em all get infected clashing with reality once again? That seems the most likely, I mean how can everyone get infected if they are protected? (Jesse Jackson would like that line.) 

Whatever it is, it is cruel and in most administrations unusual but here with these folks? Business as usual. 

I am reminded of that general in the Civil War who dug a tunnel under the Confederate troops, had a giant bomb planted, blew a huge crater and then had his men charge into the crater and be picked off by the remaining Confederate soldiers standing at the rim. Said Lincoln of that general, “Only he could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Where’s that general who was on the Sunday Morning Show a few weeks ago showing how ready the government was to distribute the vaccine? Why has he not shown his head above the foxhole? What is going on?

Meanwhile the second vaccine from Moderna was approved by the FDA advisory board. The vote was 20-1, which is better than the vote for Pfizer. 

Gee, that’s great. Maybe old Operation Warp Speed can figure out by Monday how to print shipping labels and give Moderna and Pfizer quantities to ship somewhere? Or are we going to let more people die to save them via herd immunity?

Meanwhile there was a big Christmas party that Mike Pompeo threw. Nine hundred people were invited, seventy showed up, which is probably a good thing because they could then practice social distancing. Hope they brought some doggie bags to take home some of the hors d’oeurves. Mike didn’t attend because he was self quarantining. I think Mike is wrapping up his time as Secretary of State in a way befitting of him – screwed up, uncaring, and out of touch.

Bill Barr is – no wait – it’s Satan wants an investigation, a special prosecutor, to look into Hunter Biden’s taxes. This is a swell idea. I hope they appoint the Special Prosecutor. See, they cleverly think that by so doing Joe Biden can’t stop it. They are probably right. But if they do it I hope that the new AG expands the scope so we can look at all the children and relatives of politicians who may of gotten jobs from foreign governments in return for possible access to the president or others of influence. Can anyone say Jared? Don Jr.? Ivanka? Yes, I think it would be most interesting. 

Meanwhile that paragon of the Senate, the newly elected “There are three branches of government?” Tommy Tuberville has said that he may challenge to Electoral College results on January 6^th (or 5^th? Whatever.) I think this is another swell idea. If he does it, and there is an idiot in the House that will do Satan’s bidding, then this forces a vote. Republicans will have to stand by their man (Trump) and who he is helping (Putin, Iran, North Korea, etc.) or they will have to stand with the American people and democracy.

Voting is going on in Georgia for the two Senate seats. It is supposed to be a close race. Either lying thieving David Perdue and lying thieving Kelly Loefler will win or the good and righteous Raphael Warnock and the good and righteous Jon Ossofff will win. Fortunately, as you can tell, I don’t have dog in this fight. Either our democracy survives or it all goes to shit and it depends on Georgia. I hope Stacy Abrams has done enough to defeat these MFing lying PsOS. Apparently, there have been more votes cast in the first three days of early voting than in the first three days of the Presidential election. Also, more absentee ballots were requested this time. This should bode well for Democrats. Mike Pence flew down to assure the people of Georgia that they would be watching this time to prevent the election from being stolen. Good idea Mike! Apparently, they will be keeping a close eye on all those Republican officials that counted the ballots three times for Donnie in the Presidential election. I’m sure the guy who is now governor, who stole the election from Stacy Abrams, is pleased by that.

Meanwhile the death toll from the virus continues to climb and – I love this – protestors in some state (Utah? Idaho? Wisconsin? I forget) protested outside the capital building about the mask mandate that legislators were considering. The anti-maskers won due to intimidation. Good job guys, more will now die due to your efforts. Live free or die? You pick death? Okay.

Speaking of Wisconsin, Ron Johnson, the Senator from that state, who looks like a normal guy until he opens his mouth held a hearing earlier this week to review election fraud. This was said to be embarrassing because there was none. Hopefully, he got to the bottom of “it” and will be issuing a report. I assume he will use the Nunes/Chavitz/the guy with the wacky hair. What was his name? The one who got schooled by Comey about the law? Model of redaction? 

I’m looking for something like a statement like this:

“Based on all the evidence we can say without a doubt that there was XX election fraud.”

The XX represents the letters of the alphabet that are redacted. Can you guess what those letters might be? If you said, “Suck It.” You don’t understand the question. Only two letters? Go ahead. Best guess. First letter “N” second letter “O.” You are correct!

But that redaction won’t be made available to the general public for like “ever.”

Oh wait, until January 20^th? Got it.

PS The Sloth Mode “press my paw” toy. The perfect Christmas gift for those hard to buy for folks on your Christmas list.

Thursday December 17, 2020 (8 days til Christmas)

Election Day -44

35 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

We now know what the Trump administration’s strategy is toward the Covid pandemic.

INFECT!

Actually, the words in the email obtained by Politico in a Freedom of Information Act is “We Want Them Infected.”

Yup. That’s it.

It answers a lot of questions for me:

Why didn’t Satan order via the War Powers Act PPE to be made? 

– We Want Them Infected

Why didn’t Satan demand people wear masks?

– We Want Them Infected

Why did he have big rallies with no masks?

– We Want Them Infected

Why has he not ordered a nationwide lockdown?

– We Want Them Infected

There it is.

This is where Junk Science* runs into reality.

*It’s a disgrace to call this science.

I talked to a guy this summer who said, “I’m a herd immunity guy, myself.”

Yeah? Well here ya go Bunky.

We lead the world in Covid deaths. We have 4% of the world’s population and 19% of the world’s deaths from Covid. 

This is an ongoing deliberate strategy by the Trump administration.

We lost 3400 people yesterday. That’s like two 9/11s or ten mass shootings in a day, each and every day.

Would we stand for some idiot to wander around shooting people and not do anything? No? How about ten? Every day? Day in and day out?

Would we expect our government to say, “Yeah, keep going!” to the shooter?

That’s what this president and his enablers have done.

This is not an accident.

This is not incompetence.

This is what they planned and desired.

This is what they believe in.

Scott Atlas, Fox News commentator and lead on the Covid task force, Paul Alexander and Michael Caputo were tasked with kneecapping the CDC. Their job was to squelch reports and scientists at the CDC and to push the herd immunity idea.

An idea that has been shown not to work, that has no basis in fact, in science, or in logic. But that is what this administration is pursuing, and continues to pursue to this day.

I don’t know if people in government can be brought up on charges of manslaughter for killing hundreds of thousands of people through their policies or not, but if so these three along with the current president should be considered prime candidates. I mean there was a guy that the Israelis charged with killing thousands. His name was Adolf Eichmann.  He ran the death camp at Auschwitz. His defense? “I was just following orders.” 

What’s Alexander and Caputo’s defense? “Huh, we thought it would work”?

Bull Shit.

Fortunately, The Barr Justice Department has brought back the death penalty. So what if they ignored the law and court findings? So what if they said they’d only kill the most heinous of criminals, like child murderers and they killed another person instead? 

Hey, Billy Barr I got a few little tasks for you to clean up before you go on leave to enjoy Christmas with the family. I got a few mass murderers for you. Women, children, young people, old people in nursing homes, front line workers – they killed them all. No they didn’t hold the gun. They just made sure it was loaded and lots of bullets were lying around, showed people what to do, how to do it, and encouraged them to keep doing it.

You know what? They were upset when colleges closed down after re-opening because that meant their super-spreaders weren’t able to infect more people. Remember their mantra –

WE WANT THEM INFECTED

If you backed Satan. This is what you backed. You are complicit in the deaths of hundreds of thousand of your country men and women. And you can feel smug that your Republican elected officials are doing little or nothing to help you or anyone else.

Am I being a little dramatic?

No, I don’t think so.

What’s this called?

Oh yeah.

Realistic.

So not only are the Republicans in Congress doing as little as possible to help regular people while they shove through terrible unqualified judges and figure out ways to cheat at elections, enrich themselves and their buddies who keep giving their campaigns money they are out to kill you.

“Stop the Steal” F.U. “Stop the Slaughter.”

Have a nice day.

PS I went down to get a cup of coffee and learned two new things:

1) Charlie Pride attended the CMAs about a month ago, in person, now he’s dead from Covid.

2) In regards to the Covid relief bill, the commentators are saying that new blood is coming to Washington and they want to get something done. Wow, wouldn’t that be refreshing? In the next breath these same commentators bring up Republican names like Collins and Graham. WTF? How many times do you need folks like this snatching the football away? 

The other thing on the Covid bill was the question was asked what do the Republican senators have against giving aid to state and local governments? Turns out that a lot of these senators have Democratic governors and mayors and they don’t want to give them money to spend. 

Nice. 

Fortunately, by writing this I warmed up from the numbness I was feeling last night in regards to this.

And oh yeah, BTW, The Russians carried out the largest hack of our government agencies ever. What did we do? Nothing. Why? Well for one thing – we didn’t know. 

If it hadn’t been for FireEye, a security firm, that informed the government, We would not have known about it at all.

PS More fun in the Walmart “As seen on TV” aisle. Glasses to make you look bright. Oh sorry, bright glasses. Not as I was saying … 

Why is there a pill bottle in the background? More investigation is needed.

Thursday December 17, 2020 (8 days til Christmas)

Election Day -44

35 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

This is a follow up to my “Do Me Another Favor” screed, which was about investing.

In it I implored you to invest, and I suggested that you do it before today, Thursday, when the FDA is scheduled to meet about the next Covid vaccine from a company called Moderna. 

If you have invested this week in Moderna you will have watched your investment decline precipitously, which can lead directly to that, “Oh shit what did I do?” experience. (Maybe even, “Rick’s an idiot. I’ll never listen to him again.” Thought.)

But let me say this. If you invested this week, congratulations, you took the first step. If you watched your investment go down then as Jeff Goldblum said in the movie, “The Big Chill,” you need a rationalization. (Okay that’s not exactly what he said so I didn’t put it in quotes. I believe he said, “you can do without sex, but you can’t do without a rationalization every day.” Nah, that’s not quite it either.)

I will say this about buying stocks – it is not a rational process. I will also say this – it is a rational process. If you bought a stock and it goes up then it’s a rational process. You can feel confident, walk with your back a bit straighter, and feel like a titan of industry, or something like that. If the stock goes down, you can question your very being. Wonder what is wrong with yourself and desperately think of an excuse, or at least someone to blame for your foolishness.

I think the fact that the Moderna stock (MRNA) went down illustrates for me the best metaphor I have about investing in stocks. It comes from Peter Lynch, legendary investor of the Magellan Fund. He said investing in the stock market was like accompanying your crazy aunt across the street and she stops midway to yell at the traffic.

So why did it go down? It seems there was a meeting of the FDA on Tuesday about Moderna. Not exactly sure what that meeting was, because the one I am anticipating is today. However, at that time Dr. Fauci was asked about the long term effects and safety of this sort of vaccine. He said something along the lines of “We really don’t know.” That was enough to send the stock spiraling downward.

I will say this. And here comes my rationalization. In three to five years you will be glad you owned stock in companies that do mRNA work, like Moderna.

Not bad, huh?

If you bought some Moderna I urge you to be curious. To ask why, and what happened? Also, to look into mRNA research. 

There are a lot of new technologies in biology and technology, which are just coming to fruition. Learning about them, and being aware of them is interesting and exciting. As far as timing goes, there are two numbers I have heard being tossed about 42 days, and 17 years. 

The 42 days is how long it took Moderna to develop its vaccine, once it got the Covid DNA mapping from the Chinese. Seventeen years is how long people have been studying this stuff. 

If we go back seventeen years, that is 2003, and about the time that George W. Bush and the Christian Right were trying to stop stem cell research. It is stem cell research, which, I believe, played a pivotal role in developing this technology.

If you haven’t invested in Moderna or any of the Covid vaccine stocks I would urge you to keep watching them and decide to make an investment in them at some point. If you are already invested you have, I think, three choices: Stay in, Get out, Get partially out (for now). 

Here’s the tricky part. The stock is going down. When will it hit bottom and start coming back up? Most investors say you can’t time the stock market and I think they are right. Motley Fool says you are better off having a strategy to invest consistently over time and you will hit the lows, but you won’t miss the highs. I think that is a good way to look at it.

I will say this about investing. You are better off doing it than not. 

That is all. Carry on. I will, keep you informed.

PS The Joel Osteen Inspirational Cube at Walmart! Press to listen. 365 Inspirations, 52 Sermons. 39 bucks. These are Joel’s greatest inspirations (according writing on the box.)