The Remedy Worse Than the Disease

I sent for Ratcliffe, was so ill, That other doctors gave me over, He felt my pulse, prescribed his pill, And I was likely to recover. But when the wit began to wheeze, And wine had warm'd the politician, Cured yesterday of my disease, I died last night of my physician.  -Mathew Prior, 1714

So, thinking of the current state of affairs, is the cure worse than the disease?

Beware the Ides of March

People are assholes, if you haven't already noticed. With the arrival of corona virus aka COVID-19, the country has moved into super-asshole territory. Everybody has, by now heard of the run on basic necessities; toilet paper being the poster boy of the movement (pun intended).

Yesterday, I went to Wal-Mart with my usually small shopping list. Most of it was food-related and I had to pick up a prescription for my wife at the same time. When I arrived, the parking lot was full, and I mean full. I had to park out on the perimeter; this was my first clue that all was not well (pun intended) in the store.

I was right. Never mind that the Governor of our great state, in his infinite wisdom has banned gatherings of over 500 people, after entering and navigating the aisles for a bit it was obvious there were thousands of people in the store. Shopping carts were filled to overflowing, the checkout lines were long and even the self-checkout lines had quite a few lined up.

Okay. Get my stuff and get out asap is my shopping mantra and has been for a long time. But yesterday, that would not happen. There was clearly a run on products. Obviously, the toilet paper and paper towel racks were cleaned out. There were 2 boxes of Kleenex left and I bought one because it was on my list. The bleach shelves were empty, ditto for the vinegar. The deli was closed and I heard some choice words as people walked by it. The bar soap shelves were cleaned off. Some food shelves were empty; it must be some sort of pasta panic set in because those shelves needed restocking also.

One of the reasons I have stopped going to Wal-Mart as often as I used to is the fact that they have instituted a program where you can call in a shopping list and their employees will pick it for you and even put it in your car when you arrive. And of course, the aisles were clogged full of those too. It was something to see.

I am happy to note most people were polite and decent; some even offered rumors on what stores had TP left. But I am sad to note that in times of crisis, there are always scalpers and they have seized the day. A quick visit on-line to eBay with a search for TP in my local mailing address revealed this:

Ah, toilet paper profiteers. $40 plus shipping (and tax, eBay now adds tax) for what is usually well under $10 at the store. The old saying of never let a good crisis go to waste (pun intended) is apropos here. The ironic words in that picture are at the bottom (tell us what you think).  If I were to do that, eBay would probably ban me.

As I said in my opening statement, people are assholes (pun intended) and the run on TP shows that some rise above and beyond to the head of the pack. Congratulations, well done. One small step for man, and one smaller step for mankind.

In a few short weeks things will go back to normal, the stores will be restocked and life will seem normal again. In the meantime, we're going to have to suffer the assholes of life.

As a closing note, I have to say this whole thing has been overblown. No sports, schools are closed, St. Pats day parades are cancelled and the concert I have tickets for (since Xmas) has been rescheduled. BTW, can anybody tell me why toilet paper becomes such a valued commodity with a respiratory illness going around? What is the connection?

Does anybody really think that in this global economy, with the amount of people traveling every day that a germ can be contained? No, this will have it's run and be a memory in a few short months. More people will die and health care systems will be tested. History shows us the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 and the black plague had their run and there was little people could do about it other than take the usual precautions. Even so, millions died.

But there is a lesson here: The next time you hear of a new virus or illness going around, run to your local store and clean the shelves before anybody else. That way, if you survive the doomsday predictions... and, if you're savvy, you can even pick up a few bucks doing it.

When the wagon stops in front of your door and you hear the words bring out yer dead being shouted in, then maybe it's time to panic. Until then, I'm going to live life as normal as possible.

One sheet at a time.

The Bigots versus the Totalitarians: The Roots of Our Partisan Divide

This article sheds a different view on the current divide in America. It deserves a fair read, probably twice to see what the author is really saying. It examines what happens when society legislates what it thinks is morality to solve one problem and the unintended side effects years later. Spoiler alert: It comes from one of the few conservative colleges in America today.


https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/roots-partisan-divide/

Super Tuesday Autopsy

Thank God that's over. A whole bunch of things came out of Super Tuesday; the arrangement of dominoes left in the quest for the Democrat nomination went on a severe diet this week. Last week at the debates, there were seven people on the stage scratching and kicking each other trying to convince voters they're the chosen one. These people were:

• Joe Biden
• Bernie Sanders
• Michael Bloomberg
• Amy Klobuchar
• Elizabeth Warren
• Tom Steyer
• Pete Buttigieg

First, after a dismal showing in the South Carolina primary  Steyer dropped out. He spent the most amount of time of any candidate in the state and spent somewhere between $150-200 million without winning any delegates. Buttigieg and Klobuchar dropped out 2 days later (prior to Super-Tues) and threw whatever support they could towards Biden. Not that it matters much, Steyer has not endorsed any of the remaining candidates as of this writing. Nobody is asking for his endorsement either, probably because he has no delegates to offer.

That brought the field down to four. Then came Soooo-per Tuesday, which appears to have revived Biden. It is remarkable that even the Democrat powers-that-be are trying their best to keep Sanders from winning the number of delegates needed to lock up the nomination, probably because they know he's poison to the majority of American voters. If there were anybody responsible for Sanders being viewed as a Communist, it's probably Bernie Sanders when he opens his stupid trap by praising the systems of such murderous tyrants like Fidel Castro, not to mention his thoughts on why bread lines are a good thing. Taking a honeymoon in Moscow probably didn't help wash the red off his resume, either.

Bloomberg withdrew shortly after with the bold win of ... all the delegates of American Samoa (one). Estimates of his spending to date are somewhere between $700mil to over a billion dollars. The four delegates he won in Texas cost him over $5 million each! Sensing the danger of running a Communist against Trump in November, he too threw his endorsement along with his 53 delegates to Biden.

That leaves three still in the race, and it is obvious the next one to go is Fake-ahontas aka Elizabeth Warren. But she's not going yet, and she's not going silently either. After the embarrassment of losing in her home state, she's holding on for what she sees as a brokered convention, one that will go at least 2 rounds of voting to unleash the super-delegates (who can't vote in round one, unlike 4 years ago in the Hillary-rigged convention).

She's a fool on a fools errand. The reason many stayed as long as they did was for consideration for the #2 spot, Veep. Warren knows she's not going to get that nod because her home state is safely blue in November, not to mention she couldn't even muster winning support for herself in her home-state primary. The one in the drivers seat right now (if Biden is crowned this summer) is Klobuchar for 3 reasons: One, to appeal to female voters, two, to bring Minnesota with her in November and three, because she was canny enough to endorse Biden almost immediately when she withdrew.

Watching where her delegates end up is going to be interesting. I suspect she'll toss them to Bernie, most likely because her brand of politics is the closest to his. It will be interesting to see if she has enough to give him the nomination, and if so, everything I previously said about Warren not getting the Veep nod is out the window if she can trade her delegates for the spot on the ticket.

[added 1 day after I posted this: Warren withdrew. I didn't expect it this soon. I have no idea who she will support before the convention.]

It's going to be between Biden and Sanders. Both are rich old white men (so is Trump but at least he made his money in the private sector, not during government service); Sanders is older than Biden by more than a year. Neither one of them is a spring chicken; Sanders recently had heart problems and Biden seems often confused by mixing up the office he's running for (not the Senate this time, Joe), where he is (misidentified the state he was in) and other gaffes that are going to cost him ... not to mention the video where he brags about blackmailing the Ukraine into firing a prosecutor. And there's ... oh yeah: His son Hunter: Ukraine energy profiteer without any qualifications or experience except having the right last name, a hasty military career rumored to have ended over cocaine, and affairs resulting in children that he initially denied fathering. His life history appeals to ... nobody.

Sanders defends his wealth poorly. He calls his third house a "camp" now, but that's not really accurate. It's a real nice "camp" valued at over a half-million dollars. His 3 houses add up in value to somewhere between $1.5-2 million dollars. It's going to be tough to convince people he's just an average guy and his hard-left radical views are going to drive moderates of every persuasion away from him. Simply put, he's going to lose; the only question is what month this year it will be. Biden has better chances in November than Sanders, but he's still got a long row to hoe and I'm not sure he's up to it.

I note as a sidebar Bernie graduated from the University of Chicago in 1964, which is coincidentally the year my sister arrived there for her liberal brainwashing. She was followed by my older brother in 1965. The school is skilled in liberal arts programming; both arrived as the children of a conservative Republican family from New Hartford and by the time they left, their brains had been through so many liberal scrubbing cycles that the brainwashing they underwent is still effective even to this day.

But the clear and present danger is still lurking in the shadows, and that's Bloomberg ... or more specifically, Bloomberg's money. He wasn't lying when he said words to the effect that he bought enough Democrat Congresspeople 2 years ago to take the Republican majority away ... and it is clear that he intends to do so again. Never mind his estimated billion-dollar bath of recent, it's his money placed with Dem Super PACS that he intends to fund again that are the problem. In my Congressional district (NY-22) it is already known Bloomberg is putting ~$2mil into keeping the seat Democrat even though the margin of victory 2 years ago was less than a percent. It's going to be a rematch of 2018 and the money is going to buy advertising that will kill everybody's appetite for any sort of media. The good news is, it's a Presidential election year and NY-22 went to Trump by 16 points in 2016. If he campaigns here, chances are good the seat is going back to the Republican fold. If there is any one fatal mistake the Democrat made, it was folding under pressure and voting to impeach Trump. Trump is popular upstate and that vote has turned off a good portion of his support.

Re-electing Donald Trump in November isn't enough. If America puts Trump back in for 4 more years, they need to give him the tools he needs to do a good job, and that's by electing Congresspeople that are interested in results, not putting the political knife into his back every chance they get. Re-electing recalcitrant Democrats who care more about hurting Trump rather than anything else is the recipe for 4 years of what we have now (legislative malaise). This is not good for our country and if it continues, the die will be cast for intense political squabbling for years to come and the justification will be the power struggle we've been witnessing for the last 3 years.

As the political season passes this summer into fall, you are going to be bombarded with ads both telling you how good one candidate is while smearing the other. It's going to be stomach-wrenching; get ready for it - and also ready to tune it out, because 99.9% of it is going to be pure and unadulterated bullshit.

Be prepared, it's coming.