Green Eagle

If you can read it, this Washington Post piece by Dana Milbank is brilliant. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/03/31/fireside-chat-trump-should-deliver/

What follows is a collection of articles that have appeared in the last several days on one single website, Before It's News, (no link-if you really want to see it, you can find it easy enough) that purport to explain the Coronavirus spread in our country as having nothing to do with malicious incompetence from the Trump administration.  I hope this makes it clear how unreachable these people are to any attempt at reason or factual arguments.  They can apparently trust a source that tells them all of these things at once.  It is so depressing. "The deeper that I look into Tom Hanks and his career in Hollywood the more I am realizing that he is a chosen one to push the Illuminati agenda. He must be an Illuminati Freemason 33rd Degree High Priest." Tom Hanks is one of the Hollywood pedophiles arrested by Trump.  His claim to have tested positive is just a cover story. "Pleiadian Delta Forces Send Message To Earth Regarding Coronavirus And Arrests For Crimes Agai...

Do the right thing.  Drop out NOW and turn all your delegates over to Elizabeth Warren, who has deserved to be the Democratic nominee all along.  This would put her within striking distance of Biden, and I am guessing that the number of delegates she wins from now on might just put her over, or cause a brokered convention.  Bernie has already lost.  It is only a question of whether his ego and uncontrolled anger are more important to him than the country.  And if they are, he is hardly better than Donald Trump.

George Washington Abraham Lincoln Franklin Delano Roosevelt Donald Trump This lesson in American progress brought to you by Green Eagle University (not yet declared an illegal fraud, like some "universities" I can think of.)

Because, if Hillary were President, Republicans would never let any stimulus bill get through the Senate, screaming from now until infinity that Democrats were about to create a three trillion dollar budget deficit.  They would have never allowed a penny for unemployment relief or any other sort of aid to American workers, and insisted that all of the money go to rich people and businesses, and would immediately start an intolerable din demanding that the money be paid back out of the Social Security trust fund, and with cuts to Medicare. They would trumpet until Judgement Day how this proves that Democrats are incapable of governing.  And the mainstream press would just sit there and say, "well, maybe they have a point." Deal with it:  they would care about nothing except owning the libs and keeping their corrupt criminal enterprise going until the whole country collapsed.  Of course, that is all they have ever cared about, but at least we can have their hideous b...

From Patheos: "According to reports, Spradlin, a 66-year-old Christian “musical evangelist,” fell ill while on a missionary trip to New Orleans with his wife...Friendly Atheist reports Spaldrin went to New Orleans to “wash it from its Sin and debauchery.” Probably by using it all up.  Well, easy come, easy go. 

"It can be done. ... It will take place and it will go relatively quickly.  ... If you have the right people, like, in the agencies and the various people that do the balancing ... you can cut the numbers by two pennies and three pennies and balance a budget quickly and have a stronger and better country." - Donald Trump In 2016, the last year of the Obama administration, the Federal budget deficit was $585 billion, having declined 59% during Obama's time in office, from the mess left by the previous Republican administration. Until recently, the predicted budget deficit for 2020 was over a billion dollars. Oops...then along comes the Coronavirus. Trump's planned spending on that, or at least his attempted corporate giveaway, because that is the Republican answer to any crisis, will raise the budget deficit to over three trillion dollars. Yeah, he and his fellow Republicans will whine that this was caused by an unexpected event.  But can you imagine them accep...

My world view being heavily colored by my life's experience in the movie business, I have only one question to ask today: When will the government admit that the people who are dying of coronavirus are coming back to life and thirsting for blood? Trump's cabinet, a month from now?

Well, here we are.  As I write this, the New York Stock Exchange has just closed for the day, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average standing at 19,898, essentially exactly the 19,827 that it was the day that Donald Trump took over from Barack Obama, whose two terms saw the Dow increase by 280%.  At its low, the market fell below 19,000, in what has been described as the fastest descent into a bear market in history, representing a 33% decrease in the total value of the stock market in under five weeks. I want to make what I feel is an important point about this collapse; and that is that, contrary to popular perception (aided of course by the mainstream media,) this collapse has not been primarily caused by the coronavirus pandemic.  To understand this, we can look at the behavior of the stock market during previous pandemics, and that is what I want to do now.  Here are the major pandemics since 1900, and their effect on the stock market: H1N1 Flu:  This is...

Not so funny these days, but I thought it would be a good idea to check in on the wingnuts to see what mental gyrations they are performing to avoid facing the utter failure of their demigod Trump.  So, here we go: Let's just start out with words of reassurance, which the country now so desperately needs: Katie Pavlich, Town Hall:  "President Trump Reassures America: We're Going to Win" And you can take that to the bank.  If any are still open next week. Kurt Schlichter, Town Hall:  "Joe Biden’s Bizarre Outburst Is Everything That Is Wrong With The Democrat Party" That would be when he told a lying gun nut that he was "full of shit."  No comment from Kurt about Trump delivering an Oval Office speech that nearly caused a depression.  That was not an outburst, it was statesmanship. Sheriff David Clarke, Ret., Town Hall:  "Black Voters on Democrat Racist Politicians: Nothing to See Here!" Because there is nothing there, jack...

A special song for St. Patrick's Day 2020:

Fool me ten thousand times, and I must be part of the mainstream press. So Donald Trump apparently made some kind of appearance today where he managed to seem rational for about half an hour. I turned on the TV to see how they were covering the latest 3,000 point collapse of the Dow, and instead was treated to an endless sequence of anchors and guest pundits raving about how serious and well informed Trump was.  Finally, he gets it and is doing a great job as President! Apparently none of them can remember the first two years of his administration, when every time he ceased acting like a mentally deficient, raving madman for five minutes, the press declared that he was finally "pivoting" to being Presidential, even though everyone with half a brain knew he was not capable of being anything but a narcissistic jerk, no matter what was happening around him.  Seemed like that notion had finally withered away in the face of overwhelming evidence of what he is, but apparently...

Congratulations, everybody.  The stock market just closed, with the Dow Jones industrial average having fallen 2,997 points, setting another world record in Donald Trump's string of the largest point losses in history. What is more interesting to me is that this represents a percent loss of 12.93%, just managing to outpace the 12.82% that the market lost on October 29, 1929.  I wonder when we are going to start seeing businessmen jumping out of skyscrapers again. I must add, just for fairness, that the greatest percentage loss in a single day, a colossal 22.61%, still belongs to that Republican Saint, Ronald Reagan, but of course, Reagan totally failed to put together a seemingly endless series of days like today, so I think we now can declare Donald Trump the world champion stock market destroyer, beating out the previous title holders, Reagan and Herbert Hoover. Just to be clear, this means that the market has lost just a shred under 30% of its value since February 12....

President Trump, after his Oval Office address last night, when he didn't know the microphone was still on: I guess that pretty much shows how much he really cares, or even understands what is going on, better than his eleven minute, nearly somnambulistic address did.  And if you wonder how the rest of the country responded to his attempt at inspiration, you can just look at the stock market, which his address was designed to stabilize. Here's the chart, and it is not a pretty picture: This is the largest point drop in the history of the Dow Jones average, now giving Trump's Presidency the 13 largest daily point losses in the history of the Dow.  It is, if you are interested, the fourth largest daily percentage loss in history, beaten only by the Reagan collapse in 1987, and two days in 1929, marking the beginning of the Great Depression. Here's what happened today: Immediately upon opening, the market began collapsing, resulting in an early suspension of tra...

With today's 1500 point loss, the Dow Jones average has now lost 20% of its value since its high just a month ago.  That really doesn't make Donald Trump, who has based much of his claim to be the greatest financial genius in history on the rise in the Dow, look so good, I guess.  This is causing considerable gyration on the part of Trump supporters, who are certainly not going to allow even the thought that the stock market collapse is in any way a result of his incompetence.  What I am embedding here is a 15 minute video by a stalwart Trump supporter and Qanon believer, offering what I think I can confidently say is an almost unbelievably deranged account explaining how all of this is just part of Trump's plan to make the economy stronger by making it weaker. The creator of this video has spent the last three years or so issuing almost daily releases predicting that Trump's revenge against the deep state and the evil bankers is within days of materializing.  And ...

Trump's plan to "deal with" the Coronavirus epidemic by stopping collection of payroll taxes is nothing but a way to further damage Social Security funds to make it easier for the Republicans to destroy Social Security if he is re-elected.

This short post is in reply to (and agreement with) Flying Junior, who said in a comment, "No way it's the virus." What this situation reminds me of is the start of World War I.  We were all taught that the war was started by the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Serbia in 1914.  The truth is that the origins of World War I go back at least to the early 1890's, when Kaiser Wilhelm II pushed Otto Bismarck out of the German government, and the careful balance of powers that he had created began to unravel.  It was only after numerous incidents that brought Europe to the brink of war- the Agadir and Morocco crises, the English and French fight over Egypt and the Sudan, two Balkan wars that have almost been forgotten- that things had reached a point so explosive that what might have been a fairly minor event managed to push the continent into war.  In the same way, what we see here is the result of criminal mismanagement of the economy by Republicans, that has bee...

There is certainly no more idiotic example of both siderism than the claim, heard from Republicans and a significant part of the mainstream press, that Bernie Sanders is the left wing Trump.  Sanders is a principled man who has taken reasoned positions on the issues and stood by them for years, and Trump is nothing but a criminal.  Still, there may be a similarity, pointed out by Paul Krugman in a tweet this week, about why Sanders has succeeded while the more qualified Elizabeth Warren did not: "And it didn't win over the Bernistas anyway, because they're only partly about progressive policy; they want someone who channels their sense of grievance. Warren wasn't their type precisely because of the thoughtfulness that attracted her supporters" And there is the story.  Bernie is not just about the issues, he is about chanelling his followers' anger and sense of grievance, and in that respect, he is indeed like Trump, who built his whole appeal around anger...

Well, I think I will put off opening my new business, the Wuhan Bat Kitchen, for a couple more weeks. I have commented on the instability of the stock market lately, and how that is scaring me more than the total point drop. I just want to point out that in the last nine trading days, since Monday of last week, we have seen 5 days of 1000+ swings (well, one was 999 points,) two days of 400 point swings, and only two days that were less volatile than that. Just for reference, before last Monday, there were exactly two days in the history of the stock market with 1000+ point swings. And yet the press is treating this as a minor story, like something that is totally normal.  That is bound to be a big help moving forward.  And for those of you that think that this is all due to the Corona virus, this never happened before.  Without a major perceived weakness in the economy, investors would not be spooked like this.

If you need any evidence of how damaged our electoral system is, consider this list, which I have shamelessly stolen from the Washington Post: Where Bloomberg spent on ads, and where he won vote   In states with at least 95 percent of precincts reporting STATE SPENDING PER VOTE Minn. $220 Tex.            $170 Vt.              $170 Ala.           $170 Okla. $130 Tenn. $100 N.C. $90   Va.               $60 The fact that such a thing is even possible in our country is a condemnation of not just our electoral system but the economic unfairness that has placed the resources in individual hands to tamper with elections this way.  And the fact that it didn't work means nothing; if we let this go on, soon these super-rich, self-entitled sociopaths will find a way to m...

Donald Trump carefully managing the economy in a time of crisis Well, after a one day respite in the collapse of the stock market, what is happening today, which although possibly not the greatest point collapse lately, is perhaps more insidious:  A frightening level of instability which might very well presage a true disaster. Here's the account of what is happening in the Washington Post: "The markets plunged in early trading...Stocks bounced back at midmorning, after the Federal Reserve announced it would slash the benchmark U.S. interest rate by half a percentage point, lifting the Dow Jones industrial average by 300 points. But the euphoria was short-lived; sending the Dow tumbling more than 560 points before reversing course again. Just before 2 p.m., the Dow was about 800 points in the negative column, or 3 percent. The Standard & Poor’s 500 and Nasdaq composite, meanwhile, were off about 2.8 percent." The Fed said today that "The fundament...