Congress controls the purse and Nancy Pelosi won’t give Trump a penny to save the USA.
I don’t blame her because the dotard will only give the money to greedy large corporations and not to the people.
Mriana, it’s nice to be reading your comments. It’s good to know you’re doing okay. Sorry to know you’re in Walmart Hell. My head would literally explode having to listen to clowns like our pal all day, “help Trump save USA” I mean how deluded can a brain get - no thinking, and nope not a shred of doubt or introspection. {hell all you get is ridiculed for even mentioning “introspection”, or respect of honesty, or “conscience”, or “morality to fellow humans”, fundamental humanity and all that}.
You know I spend decades really believing that everyone had sort of a rational compass inside - conscience, moral dedication to honesty, like that would learn, if at different rates, but all that gotten tossed out the window by the chain of real world events I’ve witnessed unfolding.
Rather than a collective learning curve, we were a nation of marks ripe for brainwashing. It’s still hard for me to comprehend how that was possible, even if I’ve payed close attention it unfolding and being a complainer all along. Why not slow down?
But then, proof is in the pudding as they say, we’d have never gotten here, had we been a nation of informed and engaged citizens. So sad so unnecessary and still no one seems to be learning a thing. Guess it shouldn’t be a surprise, but it sure does hurt in any event.
Incidentally, since this thread is about me tracking my own experience, after the initial immediacy of passion and heroic visions of the two old foggies clinging together in their cabin, that won’t be happening.
Blessedly, things have lightened up. My wife has been out of San Francisco a week now, escape day had its scary, but a good night’s sleep and no fever, been checking twice a day since. Plus today she spoke with someone at the place she was at and no employees there have come down with illness to date. Plus, she remains in Phoenix, so rather than a potentially dirty quarantine, I’m about as clean as one can hope.
Still, this has only begun, then we start picking up the pieces, it will be a new world. I’ve still got fifty bucks ready to bet that those luxury vacation cruises won’t be staring up again. One of many canaries (in the coal) to be watching these next months and years.
Fortunately I have lots of work to focus on, none of it pays a penny, but hey its an investment in someone’s future, what else is there? I’m human too, I wish as hard as anyone that my rational drive pessimism is wrong, and that sanity will prevail - but a half century of dashed hopes makes me think our window of opportunity had come and gone.
But still, I’m feeling okay, spring is here, it’s beautiful had some blessed l season snow and rain. Not near as much as we’d have liked, but you know, we take what we can get. I have a bit of company and contact with my distant people, so I’m good.
I rarely listen to the news these day because what’s the point, no one has a clue, they just jabber on and on, because jabbering is all they know how to do. I’m kept up to date enough via friends and loved one. Think globally act locally. Deal with the day that is in front of us and all that. Cheerio. 
Hand tough M.
Tim 60 % and I got on a rant at 50%. Un f’n believable. That’s why I can’t listen to the news. I’ll just wait for the hell to come to my door and then deal with it. It’s bigger than me.
My head would literally explode having to listen to clowns like our pal all day, “help Trump save USA”
Thanks. I get a little edgy by the end of the day and want to self-isolate as though I’m fighting the COVID-19. On my days off, I refuse to go to Hellmart.
I agree, many one the news do jabber on and some even make no sense- sports celebrities and the dotard are two common things.
Hey CC:, maybe the good guys are outnumbered these days, maybe they will ultimately lose, or maybe they won’t, but for sure there are still some good guys around. And the really good guys, don’t give up. That’s probably why you haven’t really given up.
As far as the Cruise Ship Industry, I hope that this new Bill (that must be passed immediately, they say, or the stock market will react very badly) doesn’t have anything for Cruise Ship businesses. Most of them are not even businesses that are based in the United States. But T rump seems to favor them for some odd reason.
I meant more than that. The US economy may be the most powerful but it has become a very vast, complex, intricate, fragile machine. Shutting it down for two weeks is like holding your breath underwater long enough to turn blue in the face. Humpty doesn’t have to fall. Once it develops a crack, we will not be able to put it together again. I don’t need to be in the President’s Situation Room to know what doomsday scenarios his team of economists have projected.No question there is a big risk of economic catastrophe, but we can't ignore the virus. The Risk Management thread is about some professor who says we need to find a way to keep the economy running while remaining locked down.
My grandad, who was in the US Army in the Pacific in WW2, told me that American kids were killed on the beaches of Normandy. If we sent 19 year olds to die defending our country, we need to step up now. I would rather risk my life facing the virus than go up against the brutality of the Germans and the Japanese. Damn right, if our ancestors are alive today, they would kick our butts.I think that generation knew about living with the risk of infectious diseases more that we do and would probably agree with self-quarantining to some extent. The big threat is not of young people dying -- its of young people transmitting to the infection to the old and then crashing the medical system with millions of oldsters seeking emergency treatment at the same time.
Wow. What the hell is going on? I seem to be finding some of Oneguy’s recent posts to be completely acceptable.
Yes, he does have a way of surprising, don’t he. 
Guess that’s why they say, hope runs eternal, or something like that.
I received an nice response from an email I sent a friend, the opening paragraph belongs in this little collection of mine.
In response to your thoughtful message. I have had much the same feelings, perhaps not as dark, but the same none-the-less. Like you, I take the long view and understand that my life is such a 'mote of dust' compared to all that exists/has existed/will exist. I’ve gone to telling people, “What’s the worst that can happen? We’ll die.” BFD. Then, silence from them as they ponder it. I think deep down, they know it to be true - BFD. But a lifetime of propping up the importance of a life cannot reckon with it.
I also like Anil Seth’s closing statement; “And when you die, there is nothing to worry about, nothing at all”
Congress controls the purse and Nancy Pelosi won’t give Trump a penny to save the USA.Of course, you could just read the Democrats bill and know that's not true. They are making sure Trump doesn't give money to himself, his friends who already have money, or for stock buybacks.
Congress controls the purse and Nancy Pelosi won’t give Trump a penny to save the USA.Of course, you could just read the Democrat's bill and know that's not true. They are making sure Trump doesn't give money to himself, his friends who already have money, or for stock buybacks.
Wishing every contributor to this forum, their family and friends a healthy outcome and a shield of infallible protection through this unusual time.
If I jump out of an air plane without a parachute and hit the ground at 120 miles an hour I wouldn’t survive, but if had worn a parachute and it deployed as expected I would take no more than a harmless tumble. If I jumped and the parachute only partially opened, I might hit the ground at 30 or 40 MPH and though I’d sustain serious injury I’d probably survive. In all 3 instances I jumped out of a plane and landed on the ground but with very different possible outcomes. I survived the experience when I was able to soften or prolong the trauma of the impact. Stretching the moment of impact out by slowing my decent made the difference. If this microbe encounters any weakened immune system its impact will be sudden, if it encounters an immune system that’s fully potentiated the microbe’s impact will be blunted and for a short but critical time the immune system can mount it’s formidable response. An all out war then ensues whose battleground is your bloodstream. An influenza strain I contracted on an overcrowded bus about 9 years ago brought me to a sober reckoning of its power. I weighed 134 when it hit me and 126 six days later when finally receded. It’s hard to conceive of a stronger flu virus then what I encountered but Covid 19 is supposedly more deadly, more virulent and certainly more contagious. This microbe has the potential to kill millions and those with prior conditions and indolent immune systems are likely to be the first to succumb.
The only defense to this threat is to minimize your social circle and build your body’s innate immune capacity for fending off threats like Covid 19 which is exactly what it was designed to do. Those who consume a plant based diet and supplement extracts like Vitamin C and other natural health promoting agents will fare much better.
Thanks Mike.
Lausten, You are right on about the Dems preventing the 500 billion T rump slush fund with the original form of the Bill. I just hope there are no hidden shenanigans, still in the Bill that gives big Corporations an unfair less limited boost compared to what small businesses and individuals will get out of this socialistic distribution of “wealth” (drawn from our debt coffers).
The Bill is almost assuredly going to pass. (As far out as that seems.) If the powers that be and the situation were reversed, do you think that the Republican Senate and House would be so bipartisan? Probably not, considering their typical recalcitrance to anything democratic.
(In February)
“China’s autocratic government acted with ferocious intensity after the belated start (on dealing with the virus). Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea and Japan quickly began preparing for the worst. The United States instead remained preoccupied with business as usual. Impeachment. Harvey Weinstein. Brexit and the Oscars…”
"…videos leaking out of China showed what was happening as it (COVID-19) spread in Wuhan: dead bodies on hospital floors, doctors crying in frustration, rows of unattended coffins outside the crematories…
What the cameras missed — in part because Beijing made Western journalists’ lives difficult by withholding visas and imposing quarantines — was the slow, relentless way China’s public health system was hunting down the virus, case by case, cluster by cluster, city by city.
___
The USA has surpassed CHI-nah in # of identified COVID-19 cases. But our rate continues on a STEEP rise. CHI-nah’s case increase rate has been FLAT for almost a month. The draconian Chinese measures took effect, apparently, in the last half of February and by March their increase rate has been FLAT.
This is a blurb from the article cited above that may be quite important to note:
“…with the virus loose in the streets while millions of Americans huddle indoors, when will it be safe to come out and go back to work?” "The virus will tell us,” said Dr. William Schaffner, a preventive medicine specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical School. When a baseline of daily testing is established across the country, a drop in the percentage of positive tests will signal that the virus has found as many hosts as it can for the moment, and is beginning to recede. When hospital admissions have hit a clear peak and begun to plateau, “we can feel optimistic,” Dr. Schaffner said. “And when they begin to drop, we can begin to smile.”
Wow. What the hell is going on? I seem to be finding some of Oneguy’s recent posts to be completely acceptable.Perhaps, Oneguy is getting soft. I need to wake him up.
The only defense to this threat is to minimize your social circle and build your body’s innate immune capacity for fending off threats like Covid 19 which is exactly what it was designed to do. Those who consume a plant based diet and supplement extracts like Vitamin C and other natural health promoting agents will fare much better.Why do you see this as a threat? Does Winter see Spring as a threat? Does a river resist its flow? I am not trolling. This is an invitation to reflect.
Yes and we all die at some point. Though most of us would prefer avoiding a hideous disease taking us out slowly and painfully.
Does modern society depend on an ongoing economic pyramid scheme? What happens when frivolous spending dies? Does quality of life mean anything to you Sree? Have you ever heard of cascading consequences?
This is the sort of bullshit that happens when we create a nation of people with absolutely no intellectual or emotional depth.
Clueless clones.
Excuse me if that sounds harsh but i am sooooooooooooooooooooooo sick of the STUPID. 
I meant more than that. -- SreeI missed this a couple days ago. I’m one of the lucky/unlucky to be working full time from home and expect to keep my job and excellent health care.
I’m not sure you see your own implications in your post Sree. You are saying that the economy runs on the workers and the soldiers, but then you want to keep the same system we have, where workers and soldiers are treated like fodder, disposable. Just as we developed new weapons during the World Wars, we need to develop new economic “weapons” against this sort of thing happening again. We have them on paper, and other countries have already deployed them.
Everything now is oriented toward workers proving they are desperate before we provide any care for them. While corporations are designed to be in debt constantly, hide their wealth, profit off land and asset ownership forever, and pass on the wealth to people who didn’t do anything to earn it. But, when people stop buying Cool Ranch Doritos every day, those numbers in accounts suddenly get exposed for what they are, meaningless.
I’m particularly in a position where I can tune it out. The country side is beautiful and spring is coming and we’re getting bouts of late season rain and snow, so it’s not going to be as dry as it was threatening, cottonwood trees have the first tinge of green I love so much, water running down the ditch, so life is great. Only when I think of the big world out there or my wife stranded hundreds of miles away, or peek at a few news stories does it come back home. This is for real, this is not a drill, and this will hurt and hurt and hurt.
One of the things about becoming an Adult is that one realizes the big world out there really does exist, as in it’s an actual factual touchable thing - it’s not in my head, it’s real people, way the f too many of them, but real nonetheless.
I genuinely believe that most “God-fearing” FOX brainwashing victims have absolutely lost touch with that adult sense of connection with the rest of humanity -it’s all about yourselves - nothing else exists within your limited conceptual abilities.
Unfortunately for youz and the rest of us, we need each other to make anything work. We are a social animal first and foremost. We are not the figment of your imagination. Me First is a sure way to hell.