Faster Than Drunken Sailors on Shore Leave

Don't spend it. Seriously, don't spend a nickel of it. Put it in the bank and sit on it for now. If the $1200 you previously got from Uncle Sam is already gone, the word on the street in DC is that there's more coming. Uncle Sam is going to fire up the presses and send you another $1200, if the HEALS act currently being negotiated on Capitol Hill gets passed.

Odds are it will be, for a myriad of reasons ... The biggest being, this is an election year and both sides need to show their voters they're bringing home the bacon, so to speak. Both sides will claim victory, but neither will take the beating that should come with this trillion-dollar pork bill. Who will bother to complain about another trillion being added to the national debt when they're too busy enjoying free money?

You'll be sorry if you blow it on trinkets and doodads you really don't need ... Because you're gonna need it real soon now when all the taxing agencies already familiar with you come up short for next years budget... compounded with the fact that they're already far short of this year's anticipated revenue, thanks to Governors all over the US murdering their business base as they brag about saving us from a dismal Covid-19 fate. In reality, they didn't save very many; NYS had over 32,000 deaths as I write this. When my sister points out Florida surpassed us, she doesn't realize that's only in positive test results, not the death count. Florida was hovering just under 6,000 deaths yesterday when I looked, and that's less than 1/5 of what NYS has so far (if you believe the warped data to begin with anyway).

If there wasn't such a blatant and hypocritical approach to it, it might have been better received by the public. The rules were contorted and twisted to begin with; for example in NY State, Andrew Cuomo shut down everything that was non-essential. This included churches, theaters, gyms, barbers/hairdressers, bars, courts, museums, elective medical procedures and indoor dining (just to mention some on the list). Even construction was shut down, unless it was essential. The economy suffered and went into a recession; jobs were lost and as a result, tax dollars on all fronts were negatively impacted.

But liquor stores (!) were deemed essential and stayed open, and via the appeals process, construction of a tourist center (how essential is that) in Utica got a waiver to continue. 3 months later, the cap blew off in national racial rioting, looting and inner-city destruction. Taking it to even more hypocritical heights, when the rioters protesters were congratulated (NY Governor Andrew Cuomo said he stood with them), then even a mongoloid can see how off the wall stupid these life-saving rules are. Mass gatherings are okay one way, but not another? How do these dimbulbs even begin to rationalize this?

All layers of government are going to raise taxes; simple math dictates this. But first, you'll be softened up. Now there's a boogeyman handy to blame and his name is corona virus. This guy is going to be the sock puppet that is held up when the substantial tax increases come. For example, in the county I live in, the county executive says we're 30% off projected revenue and is begging for federal help. Never mind that the real sickness has been tax and spend for years, and that in the 2 preceding years his less than $400 million dollar budget got a $16 and $19 million dollar increase in spending blowing it well past $400 million ... now he's got his excuse: It wasn't him, it's corona virus.

Ditto for your local municipalities (towns, villages and cities) and schools ... and of course, state government. Sales tax revenues are less than 3/4 of projected numbers, unemployment is up since the Governor shuttered his business tax base ... they're being slammed from all sides. Less revenue and more spending. To top it off, the worst and most incompetent governor the state has ever had decided to journey down to Georgia and ... give them advice. The Charlie Daniels Band's song The Devil Went Down to Georgia has taken a whole new meaning lately. As long as Georgia is listening to northern Yankees giving out free advice, my advice to the Georgia governor is to do exactly the opposite of what Cuomo suggests to him because it sure as hell didn't work here.

That free dough Uncle Sam is giving you ... is going back to a government taxing agency quicker than you realize, and if you don't have it to give back, they don't care. They'll just pluck it from you in another fashion. You're going to pay more regardless of whether you have it handy or not.

And of course, what accompanies a large increase in taxes?

Prices, via inflation. Double digit-inflation. Remember when Carter was in office? Those are going to be the good-old days of inflation .... because, as the saying goes ... You ain't seen nothing yet.

Look out, it's coming to a location near you real soon now. As in, your house on your street.

Again, don't blow Uncle Sam's free money ...

Because it's not going to be free at all.

Covid-19 is a Co-morbid Topic

As the pandemic rolls on and the numbers keep climbing, there are a few things that you should consider before reaching a conclusion as to the veracity of Covid-19 data. The numbers are most likely inaccurate, to begin with. Oh, CV is certainly deadly, but it's mostly deadly to select groups of people. The young and healthy, as a whole fare much better than the old and infirm. If you die of any other cause than CV, but tested positive prior to dying, you are now a Covid death. Doesn't matter if you leap off a building or die in a car crash ... doesn't matter if you were asymptomatic or not. You are counted as a Covid death, and that is one of the reasons the numbers are practically meaningless. We don't really know if CV did them in or not, or if it was even a contributing cause. We (John Q. Public) are not being told this rather important piece of information; all we're being told is how many tested positive and how many died. Without more detailed data, this information is meaningless.

Italy was one of the early European nations to be hit with CV, and it ravaged the country rather quickly. But as we look at the numbers and assign them a weight, certain truths are emerging. Their aged population that was clustered suffered the most. But what was not initially factored into the equation was how many of them had comorbidities to begin with.

Comorbidity is a $50 medical term that simply means there are one (or more) co-existing medical conditions in a person, none of which are instantly fatal by themselves. Many are common diseases that are controllable such as diabetes, hypertension and such. And many are more severe, such as heart conditions, COPD and cancer. Combined in one person they are a lethal mix, usually with a rather short fuse.

Italy's death rate among comorbid people was extremely high; the chart below paints a grim picture. If you had one or more co-existing conditions, your risk went up significantly. If you were in the red section of the pie chart, your odds of survival were rather low.

Comorbidity and the pre-covid death rate are calculable; Dr. Mary Charlson came up with the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) a few years ago and it simply computes the 10-year survival rate in people with comorbidities. The more diagnosed medical problems you have, the higher the risk is that you will not live another 10 years. Other doctors have taken her work, refined it and added their name to her version of the CCI. But the result is pretty much the same; click on the highlighted link above to compute your own numbers if you want to assess where you stand in survivability. If you have 2 or 3 comorbidities and contract CV, I suggest you make sure your affairs are in order. You're in for a rough ride.

I note the high CV death rate in Italy is predominantly tied to comorbidity. This doesn't offer comfort to those that lost a loved one, but it does paint it in different color: Without sounding hard or uncaring, it is obvious most of these people were on the short list already. Covid may have finished them off, or removed the ability of medicine to delay the inevitable, but nonetheless, their medical problems as computed in the CCI put them at high risk.

I suspect numbers won't be all that much different in other countries including the US as the data is refined. And there are lessons to be learned here: Those with existing conditions and the aged/infirm should continue to shelter in place to the point of quarantine as much as possible.

The rest of the world should return to some form of normalcy and business should resume. We can't continue to isolate from each other forever, and I'll even go a step further by telling you I'm a firm believer in how the immune system in healthy people needs to be exercised regularly to keep its defenses active. Yes, as we grow older immunosenescence (the gradual weakening of the immune system's ability to fight) is a factor, and we should be mindful of that. But in the younger population, we should return to normalcy.

About 100 years ago, a poet named Strickland Gillilan wrote a very short poem about germs. It is entitled Lines on the Antiquity of Microbes and it goes like this:

Adam
Had'em.

As do we all.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is King

There's no shortage of gross stupidity in print lately; it's getting hard to choose just one thing because after you do, something comes along and tops it. Such are the utterings of one Jody Rosen, a liberal columnist who writes for various entities posing as newspapers. It's kind of appropriate that he poses as a journalist while using his html crayolas that somehow end up in print.

Choosing the LA Times as his vehicle, he proposed replacing our national anthem (The Star Spangled Banner) with ... wait for it .... Lean on Me, by Bill Withers.

First attacking the credibility of the existing anthem as elitist, sexist and racist, he explains in a few thousand words what's wrong with it. Never mind that the words were written by Francis Scott Key while he observed a British naval attack on Fort McHenry in 1814, and that it highlights that after severe bombardment our flag was still there (and it still is, for everybody to see in a DC museum) ... now it's racist because Key owned slaves. He's another 18th and 19th-century relic of history that is being sentenced in the 21st century by supposed do-gooders in the name of racial justice. These do-gooders, by the way, comprise mostly of criminals in one fashion or another. Some are social justice petty thieves ... and some are social-justice murderers.

Jody Rosen urges us to correct what he sees as a problem by replacing one anthem with another. Of course, what Jody fails to mention and probably doesn't want to, is that research into national anthem authors works both ways, and perhaps we ought to look at Bill Withers background to see if he's a saint or a sinner.

Uh-oh. It seems Bill laid his hands on his first wife in what the newspapers headlined as domestic violence in 1973-1974. Are we going to glorify a wife-beater by giving him the honor of composing our (new) national anthem?

Rosen also mentions John Lennon's Imagine as a possibility, although he discards it because it's too British. While I liked Lennon's Beatle music, I also recognize him as being rather violent in his youth (getting into more than one street fight) ... and also as a serial adulterer on both of his wives. Again, are these the values we want to glorify?

The point being, everybody has a skeleton or two rattling around in the closet. Every US President has closets full of skeletons (some more than others, but the skulls and bones are clearly there). I suspect most Senators, Congressmen and Governors also have some history they'd rather not talk about. I don't believe I've met any saints, or any candidates for sainthood in my life ... so far.

Getting back to Jody Rosen, I worry about the future of America. Ideas such as his are not only looney, they're dangerous. If trying to erase history is allowed to go forward as we've seen recently, it will be an exercise in futility. They can destroy every statue, upend every grave headstone and burn every book. It won't change a thing because what happened, happened and trying to revise it is not only educationally wrong, but it's also repugnant. We should learn from history, not try to change it to fit what we think is right or wrong now.

Finally, Jody's claim that our national anthem is elitist, sexist and racist is codswaddle. The tune may have been cribbed and changed, but the words belong to every American no matter what your status in life is. It's our flag, it's our anthem and Jody, here's a clue:

Stick your idea of replacing the national anthem up your ass.

That's probably where the idea came from in the first place, anyway.

Gee, That's Too Bad

A few items to write about on the anniversary of the birth of our nation...

First, I note Canadian-born rocker Neil Young doesn't like Donald Trump using one of his songs in his campaign. Specifically, Rockin' in the Free World upsets Neil when the Trump campaign plays it. He says (and I quote) "This is NOT ok with me."

Gee, that's too bad.

Well, Neil, when you joined ASCAP (American Society of Composers and Performers), you weren't even an American citizen (yet). Oh, you eventually became a citizen when America blessed you with it's wealth for writing and composing such songs as Cinnamon Girl (about a band drummer waiting to get laid after the show) and Sugar Mountain (about growing up and learning about the vices and virtues of life) ...

America paid you well for your music, Neil. But you had to join ASCAP to get your music out, and that was your downfall. ASCAP is a capitalist organization dedicated to bleeding out every cent it can by selling rights of usage for it's members. It goes around to bars and nighclubs making sure they are 'licensed' (a euphemism for shaking them down by making them pay if local garage bands play any licensed ASCAP music, which ... if they didn't, nobody would bother coming to see them). ASCAP also makes sure the jukeboxes and such are licensed, and if they aren't, they threaten legal action if somebody doesn't pay for a license.

So when Neil Young first protested about Trump using his music and demanded he stop, he was shocked to find out Trump bought a license from ASCAP to use it... And with that, there is nothing he can do to stop Trump from Rockin' in the Free World.

PS: Neil, I'm a fan of your music like Trump is, even if most of it has only 3 chords.

Next, an update on my previous blog about CHAZ. A day or so after I wrote about CHAZ, it changed its name to CHOP, but that didn't change much. Just about every person occupying CHAZ/CHOP committed some sort of crime, be it theft, larceny, burglary or simply violating numerous city ordinances by simply refusing to leave.

But my ominous prediction about CHAZ being violent and lawless sadly was fulfilled. It turned bloody pretty fast and there were some shooting deaths. Finally, the Mayor (who is a complete dumb cluck) finally had enough and ordered the police to clear it out.

Gee, that's too bad.

Finally, I want to extend my sincerest condolences to the family of Ghislaine Maxwell on her upcoming suicide. Ghislaiine is, of course, the madam Jeffery Epstein used to procure his under-aged consorts on his excursions to Pedophile Paradise, a nickname for his island retreat reputedly used for ... well, I'm sure you've read all about it. Epstein took Hillary Clinton's favorite method of getting out of a problem (others dying, not her), and now Ghislaine is either going to follow in his shoes ... or maybe, just maybe ... start singing like a canary, complete with names, dates and such.

If she survives her suicide attempt scheduled in the near future, that is.

Gee, that would be too bad.