Debt Rattle January 1 2021
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Claude Monet Boulevard des Capucines 1873 • Pfizer Vaccine First To Receive Emergency Use Authorization From WHO (RT) • New Coronavirus Variant
[See the full post at: Debt Rattle January 1 2021]Claude Monet Boulevard des Capucines 1873
Just so damn lovely; I feel the cold just looking at it…
…but, its just so much more………………“Wealth has nothing to do with hard work or entrepreneurship. America’s billionaires made 931 billion dollars from the pandemic. They got richer in their sleep. Yes, 2020 was a vintage year for capitalists, but capitalism died! Liberated from any remaining competition, colossal platform companies like Amazon own everything. So, yes, during 2020, Capitalism morphed into an insidious Technofeudalism.”
Yes, and things like “technofeudalism” require genuine management leadership skills, things of which I see no evidence in our reigning powers that be. One can’t own “everything”. Private property is an illusion sustained by rules of engagement and traditions of cooperation. Lacking, at this point, either, I see this grand balloon of bloated billionaires poised to burst. (I want to see a mash-up of Sagan and Sanders in a rap battle based on billions and billions and billions…) One supposes we will have to endure a major shooting war as part of the popping process.
%^&
My. That is the finest Monet I’ve seen. It’s like a virtual hologram. Only really good art can make things like virtual holograms.
@ madamski
You identified those who did not find a reason to complain about 2020.I’m not a 1%, nor a 10%, nor a well to do middle class or an enabler for the rich.
I am grateful that 2020 has not made the conditions of my life worst than 2019.
If my wishes came true, then everyone would find happiness in 2021.
Many front-line workers refuse Covid vaccines as distribution rollout struggles
About 50 percent of workers in California’s Riverside County have refused to take the vaccine, along with 60 percent of nursing home staff in Ohio.France is being criticized because it is the only country insisting that those offered the vaccine give their written consent after being informed of possible contraindications, and there are few takers (only 332 in the entire country, as of Wednesday night, compared to 80,000 in Germany.)
France started administering the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine on Sunday, beginning with staff and residents in care homes and those considered at risk of developing severe symptoms of the virus. It is the only country insisting that those offered the vaccine give their written consent after being informed of possible contraindications.
However, fewer than 100 people were vaccinated in the first three days. By Wednesday evening, only 332 people had received the vaccine, according to health ministry officials. The ministry has said the aim is to vaccinate 1 million elderly and at-risk people in January, requiring more than 31,200 vaccinations every day.
The health minister, Olivier Véran, admitted that France was vaccinating more slowly than other countries and suggested this was a deliberate policy to enable an information campaign rather than the result of a lack of vaccines or a logistical failure.
“We have the same number of vaccine doses as our German neighbours, we have the same aims and we will have the same results,” Véran told French television.
“If my wishes came true, then everyone would find happiness in 2021.”
I’m still riffing on that Oscar Wilde quote from a few days ago. I had a young man that worked for me a few years back. He was troubled and confused. He had a high expectation of ethics and morality from everyone around him and all he *felt* was passive nihilism from them. One day I brought my hair cutting kit in so as to do my homemade haircut that I have been doing to myself for years. I asked if he wanted me to cut his hair. He had fairly long hair that covered his neck. When I cut it off low and behold he had a small crucifix tattoo on the back of his neck. I thought about him the other day and his own cross to bear. I wished for him.
@geppetto
Thanks for good story. It reminded me of a time when I was nineteen, in the military, and struggling with the feeling that war is wrong. I made a small fuss and was court-martialed. Three or four lieutenants with shiny new bars were there to observe the colonel. I gave my speech.
The judge listened and said, “I’ll give you a choice: one year at Fort Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary, reduction in rank to Airman Basic, and a bad conduct discharge; or, keep your mouth shut, do your job, and I will sentence you to reduction to basic, $500.00 fine, and 30 days in the stockade. What will it be?” He raised his gavel.
I was stubborn and about to go to Fort Leavenworth, when I heard a voice in my head (that has happened to me twice in crucial moments).
“What are you doing? People kill each other. They have always killed each other. You asshole!”
I was shocked. Then managed to say, “Thirty days.” He repeated the sentence and bang went the gavel. Two guards grabbed my elbows from behind and marched me out.
Today I am sad because the world seems to have been taken over by liars, power seekers, and cowards who will not deal with the theft of the election. I don’t have a cross tattooed on my neck, but I can relate to your employee. Pretty soon I’ll remember that there’s me and there’s reality. Deal with it. I’ll feel relieved. I hope your employee is better now.Yesterday Dr. D started a post with the word ‘anecdotal’. John Day also posted a link to the an article by Samo Burja.
Thanks for recalling an experience that obviously help shape who you are @straightwaker. I’ll take your word over the alleged ‘experts’ anytime!
Thanks again
Geppetto:
Funny your mention of self administered “haircuts”!
I too cut my own hair and have for years.
My Father and I used to cut each other’s hair.
My 24 year old son , now cuts his own hair too.
I used to cut his hair before he took over. My son has never been to a barber in his life!
At least we don’t have to pay someone else to get a “haircut”!
Doc Robinson:
I am assuming France is making vaccine recipients take legal responsibility for vaccine maker’s legal immunity.
I would guess France’s government is also broke!
I would guess Germany’s government isn’t as broke!
https://futurecrun.ch/99-good-news-2020
99 Good News Stories From 2020 You Probably Didn’t Hear AboutStraightwalker:
Your brief stay in the military reminds me of a 5 foot tall Texan, that I worked with in New Mexico, who, drafted, served as a NCO during the Vietnam War.
He had three outstanding traits. He was a born leader, he was absolutely fearless (he didn’t give a dam), and he was smart.
He spent a good portion of his 2 year military career bouncing back and forth between being AWOL and in the brig, when he wasn’t otherwise hauling bombs for B52s from ports to airfields in northern Thailand.
He developed his own style of helping the military conduct it’s business!
When it came to moving bombs, first he made himself totally indispentsable! Being a born leader, his truck crews were totally loyal to him!
They would work hard for about 3 weeks. Then on a return trip, after unloading the bombs at the B52 air base, he and his truck convoy would then disappear into the jungle!
You know the work hard, play hard routine! I guess the Thai women were beautiful and the beer good!
After a few days of being overdue at the port, his officers would then send the military police to search and find out what had happened to them.
Sometimes it would take the MPs a week or longer to find and round up, him, all his crew, and then find the trucks parked somewhere in the jungle!
Naturally being the senior NCO, he was arrested, court marshalled to buck private, and thrown into the brig!
Usually after about a week or two, depending upon how smart or slow his latest port officer was, he would be released from the brig, given back his sargent stripes, and told to get the dam bombs moving again!
Needless to say he spent his entire 2 years being regularly being busted, promoted, busted, promoted, until he was dis-honorably discharged!
Needless to say, he greatly enjoyed his vacation in the military!
Possible double-post warning:
No one should be conscripted to fight in yet another insane war. But I cannot understand how “but all the other kids are doing it” makes moral sense of unnecessary killing, or assisting in the logistics by which other soldiers unnecessarily kill, people roughly as ‘innocent’ as you or I.
Whether a year in the pen is worse than, say, a tour of duty in Nam, is a moral question worth considering on its own merits, I would think, not the habits of history: ‘But Dad, all the other kids are killing each other!’
Now, please don’t feel singled out, any veterans here. All of us here, I presume, pay our taxes to governments more lethally powerful than and at least as brutal as, most governments throughout history. We pay for the wars that soldiers fight. If we don’t pay, we’ll be financially punished or sent to jail. Those of us who were drafted had a uniquely challenging moral dilemma before them, it being their own body, not just their pocketbook and conscience that was being taxed.
But there it is: we deserve what we submit to. We are usually more willing to submit to mandatory violence demanded of us by others than we are willing to fight those demanding that we fight others on their behalf. I say that no law is worth respecting if one can’t take it into one’s own hands. Those mythically glorified soldiers of the Revolutionary War were breaking the law by opposing British rule.
But they were a different group of kids, doing what all the other kids were doing, than the British troops conscripted or shanghaied or self-enlisted into King George’s imperial troops. There were enough local colonial kids doing this new independence/whatever thing for them to form a peer group that could place enough peer pressure and offer enough peer camaraderie for them to feel that killing a bunch of British troops (or British loyalist neighbors) for some vague notion of self-governance was worth taking a new law into their hands.
And so, as too often happens, strangers killed strangers for abstract reasons that no one really understood, reasons about which whose authors (our dear hallowed wax museum Founding Fathers) were less than sincere. A lynch mob has more moral honesty than a standing army, the existence of which stands on a pad of lies as thick as the stack of G-notes and piles of bullion used by the bankster oligarchs who’ve been inciting unnecessary* wars for many millennia in order to divert as much of those financial currencies into their account as they can get away with. * unnecessary as in not directly caused by major resource depletion necessary to two population groups
^&*
As for Wilde on socialism, all the talk of noble selfishness sounds lovely until you confront the Tragedy of the Commons and find yourself fighting for resources because you failed to create a social structure whereby those resources could be shared in a manner adequately beneficial to the group commonwealth. I neither like nor dislike socialism more than any other -ism, all of which have failed miserably in their turn. I am selfish where my self is concerned, and selfless where others are concerned. You take what you need, you give what you can, and for God’s sake don’t kid yourself that you have even a ghost of an answer to these problems at large. You don’t.
But you do have full grasp on your personal actions and how they affect your moral conscience (and, for the religious among us, I’ll add morTal conscience). Those are yours alone. Sometimes the most selfish thing a human being can do is be selfless if their moral conscience requires it.
My life is mine to live and to lose. Sadly, I have to consume the flesh of other living beings in order to survive, the Great Circle of Life being what it is. This is inescapable. All other killing… is escapable. Everyone has a price, I learned long ago. I decided that my price is that of my soul, the value of which is immeasurable to me, and worth more than any fool can offer or threaten me with.
Guys like Buddha and Jesus said the same thing, Jesus actually demonstrating this in action.
Yes, I pay my taxes. I am not morally superior to anyone here that I know of. “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and to God the things that are God’s.” Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, if only because Caesar will make you pay more money than you would already pay in taxes.
Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. Saith the gov:
I.R.C. § 7201 – ATTEMPT TO EVADE OR DEFEAT TAX Any person who willfully attempts in any manner to evade or defeat any tax imposed by this title or the payment thereof shall, in addition to other penalties provided by law, be guilty of a felony and, upon conviction thereof, shall be fined* not more than $100,000 ($500,000 in the case of a corporation), or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both, together with the costs of prosecution. * As to offenses committed after December 31, 1984, the Criminal Fine Enforcement Act of 1984 (P.L. 92-596) enacted as 18 U.S.C. § 3571, increased the maximum permissible fines for felony offenses set forth in section 7201. The maximum permissible fine is $250,000 for individuals and $500,000 for corporations.
Sayeth H&R Block:
“Moral of the Story: The IRS Saves Criminal Prosecution for Exceptional Cases
“While the IRS does not pursue criminal tax evasion cases for many people, the penalty for those who are caught is harsh. They must repay the taxes with an expensive fraud penalty and possibly face jail time of up to five years.
“But if you’re like most taxpayers who make a good faith effort to file and pay their taxes accurately and on time, you won’t end up like John.”
Give unto God that which is God’s. Saith God: ?????
Having no knowledge of what God is, only personal hopeful yearnings, I am stumped except to cite my conscience, that thing which, coincidentally, leads people to wonder about and yearn for things like a benevolent deity in the first place. It’s my conscience, and being a selfish being, I’ll hand that conscience over to a (possibly only imaginary) deity before I’ll hand it to what all the other kids are doing. One might say that I am not a socialist in that regard: your right to tell me where to swing my fist ends with it up your ass as I pull your entrails out the old-fashioned way.
As for the idea that maybe some supernatural demon might offer something otherwise unobtainable in exchange for my soul: I have met the devil, and it is me. The devil and I both learned the hard way what a cold bitch can be.
Like the man sang:
Like my old man often said: “Well don’t that just frost your ass!”
I intend to either freeze hell or warm up my cold old ass in heaven, if such things avail, but if not I for sure don’t want to spend my dying days regretting being lukewarm while I lived. And now, if you’ll excuse me, Colonel Sherburn’s ex-wife is here for an especially intimate social call.
The efficacy and long-term safety of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is unknown at this time. It is apparently not acutely toxic with one Swiss death reported in the millions of first shots. Without functioning public health systems in the West, the only alternative is the vaccines.
Important people will get funding. Both corporations will do the minimum necessary, fudge questionable results and oversight by the US federal government will be next to nil. Since the states are still reporting COVID-19 deaths, if the vaccines are having any effect on the transmission of the virus and the severity of the illness, it should show up in the state morbidity data. If there are excessive extreme reactions to the second shots or reinfection, it will likely appear in the alternate media.
Everyone is playing Russian Roulette. Death is about 50/50 risk for me if infected – a two chamber revolver. Going to the doctor’s office is a moderate risk. Say 50/50. So getting jabbed is a four chamber risk. But, being isolated, the only risk is from a virus fomite contaminated resupply which hasn’t happen yet. So, I am stuck at home unless the vaccines work spectacularly in the next three to four months. More likely, things remain fluid, the government does nothing, mail delivery stops, and when the internet goes down, nobody gets paid.
On January 6th it looks like the Democrats will get one last shot at good governance with Congressional acceptance of the electoral vote. If they replay the first neoliberal Obama/Biden Administration, the heartland will eventually secede from either coast unless a second civil war or third world war destroys it first.
…..won’t even try to unpack that. All I can say is it took me out of the ballpark into the stratosphere over the moon and back. Pretty damn cool post. Thank you. When I got back from that trip I was mused by a delightful night so many years ago, snowed in, a tiny mountain cabin, warm fire, some fine weed and spirits, a beautiful blonde amazon of a woman, a beautiful svelte brunette of a woman…and my lucky lucky lucky self.
Enjoy your evening. 🙂
@Madamski: “Yep, the bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio”. that’s where the name came from. Good song, great album.
And furthermore… You got the Holy Ghost speaking through you today, Sister?!
I grew up on marine bases during Vietnam. I stayed out of that stuff. “Don’t believe hat they tell you, Kid”, a kindly young Marine once sold me with sincerity.
I eat the flesh of plants, and eggs, and milk. That’s how far I have been able to go with non-violence.
Getting in a fist fight is different. I got in lots of them. It might be less violent than letting a bully beat you up. Maybe. Anyway, nobody could catch me running through the forest, and I never said “uncle”.
Compicated world.
@John Straightwalker. I read about your bamboo chair collapse and look at the sky.
I recognized Kohala Mtn. Rd. I did that on my bike a lot of times. It is sure fast descending to Waimea.
@WES: That guy sounds kind of like Ross Perot, for whom I once voted. (Not a Bush or a Clinton.)
I always cut my own hair, too. It’s a pony tail. I was ok cutting the kids hair , too.
@Zerosum: I set the bar pretty low, too, Brother. Hoping things go basically ok(ish) this year for us…
@Farang-V.Arnold: You live in lovely northern Thailand.
@Geppetto: You might like Straghtwalker’s book. Maybe you know The Road To Dharmsala.
@Ilargi: More COVID tomorrow, but not really anything new..
Maybe we can all get sick sooner with B117 variant. Take vitamin-D.@Farang-V.Arnold: You live in lovely northern Thailand.
Actually no; I live in west central about 40k from the infamous bridge on the river Kwai and about 40k from the Burmese border (as the crow flies)…
“a delightful night so many years ago, snowed in, a tiny mountain cabin, warm fire, some fine weed and spirits, a beautiful blonde amazon of a woman, a beautiful svelte brunette of a woman…and my lucky lucky lucky self.”
Why, Gepetto, you appear to be a lesbian! 😉
“Why, Gepetto, you appear to be a lesbian!”
You know I have never thought of that until now! It took many years before I realized the big beautiful blond Amazon was never going to be able to be loved……by a man anyway. She skillfully used me as bait to get in the sack with many other beautiful humans of her own gender. Being as thick as I can be I went along for probably too many years. No regrets really, well,maybe the money I spent on drugs, she was a fiend for experience and we had many *adventures*. I remain fascinated by women to this day,large,small,thick, thin,of all hair and skin colors,all ethnicities, I especially like the ones with large……brains. Go figure? A glutton for punishment.
I thought about your post from last night more than a little. It’s funny the things we leave in the bus of our psyche, some we just move all the way to the back row. The Huckleberry Finn metaphor(?) was not lost to me. I was starting to wonder if perhaps you had been one of my Lit or Econ instructors. You would have to be 85 to a hundred years old though and some of those were men and some of those were women. Hmmmmmmmm. Hahaha!
But it seems you are all about ‘heat’ and I can get behind that. I can close my eyes and conjure images of men torn asunder by other men in all the myriad ways we machine people do…but I can also close my eyes and conjure images of warmth, softness, innocence and youth…and those are the ones I will hold.
🙂
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