Base Less

The notion that ex-President AuH₂O 2020 has, in reality, 40%+ of the electorate is hallucinatory. Always was. A few missives ago, it was pointed out that registered Republicans has dipped to about 25% of voters. Where is the extra 15%+ coming from? From nowhere. They don't exist. 

Polling consistently shows Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land gets 26%-ish approval for his screwing the pooch with Covid-19. That's, of course, in line with the Republican slice of the pie. 

And, naturally, last night's debacle offers another data point: 28% for Batshit J. Moron and 60% for Biden. 

The whole point of dictatorship is for a minority to pillage the majority. That's what's at stake in a few weeks.

Dumb and Dumber - part the second

Today we find Bret Stephens ploughing the olde sod of the Secret Trump Voter. 'Cris' is one he cites, a woman whose 401(K), she says, has gone up substantially under ex-President AuH₂O 2020. 

Those who bring in more than they can spend, almost always turn to assets as the place to place such excess funds. They always have. As the econ types say, "money is fully fungible" and "all placements of money are determined by opportunity cost". To the extent that the Movers and Shakers of finance take the Fed's index interest rate seriously (and, by and large, they do), other interest rates, public and private, follow the trend if not the exact value; risk arbitrage and all that. If those excess funds are in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per household, in aggregate they make for a tsunami of moolah. Where it goes determines the public price of the widgets. If those widgets are merely electronic representations of paper stocks and bonds, well those 'virtual' prices bubble up. 

 It would be better if pundits like Stephens didn't allow such numbskulls to spout off such stupidity with impunity. Batshit J. Moron has done nothing to boost anyone's 401(K) or any other asset class. The cause has been Jerome Powell, and before him Obama, Bernanke, and Yellen. Obama, by pushing for fiscal policy, and the other Fed Chaircritters for cratering index interest rates. The Fed's instance on a near zero rate through 2023 pretty much guarantees Mr. Market will stay nicely fat for some time. It's an easy choice: government fiduciaries at near 0, or take a ride with Mr. Market. It's a no brainer, and Mr. Market keeps getting fat. Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land had nothing to do with it. Well, except to may be browbeat Powell into continuing with near 0 index rate. Could it be that ex-President AuH₂O 2020 sees a nicely lower re-fi of the 421 million dollar deep sea anchor he's built for himself? Daddy's dead and gone and can't bail him out yet again. 

So, while 'Cris' is proud to be a lesbian, which is fine by me (I don't care one way or another, of course), she's also as dumb as a sack of hair. The archetypical Trumpster. God help us.

Parallax View - part the twenty fifth

Another week's up, so here are today's numbers:

  >= 1,000 - 260
100 to 999 - 1,325 

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,085. While I've not gotten into an argument with the Topo folks over this re-definition of 'affected' counties, it certainly looks like a move to bolster ex-President AuH₂O 2020's perpetual lying. Well, the second tsunami appears to finally making it into the data. While the 1,000+ group seems inappropriately low, it is also true that the two 'orange' groups are growing. They'll make it to the top group in due time. The original expectation was that one could go from sea to shining sea only through the top two groups. Alas, southern counties in Texas and New Mexico don't appear to be generating cases. On the other hand, one can go from sea to shining sea through 25+ counties by many routes. And, given that much of the mountain west consists of low population counties, this is still quite an accomplishment. Masks? We don't need no stinkin masks!

Land of The Ghouls

While it was a trip at least a decade ago, I remain on e-mail list of Bermuda's "The Royal Gazette", mentioned a few times in the course of these musings. Islands, especially one that's a singularity, are odd ducks from an economics point of view. They have few natural resources, and in the case of Bermuda, not even terrestrial water. Australia is nearly as precarious. Today's issue had this headline in the e-mail tease: "Election 2020: 'control virus to rebuild economy'" Intrigued that teeny Bermuda understood the connection, which Batshit J. Moron clearly does not, off I went to the report. And there it was

First and foremost, contain the virus by any means necessary — recovery isn't possible without it.

All well and good. But then, later in the report comes this scavenger quote:

Perhaps our best recovery bet lies with the reinsurance sector. The pandemic could provide a spark like that created by the September 11, 2001 attacks or hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma of 2005. The sector experienced double-digit growth following these catastrophes and the knock-on effect led to economic growth in excess of 3 per cent, a feat not seen since 2007.

Just the sort of thinking dear to the heart of ex-President AuH₂O 2020: pillage the already devastated. All those bungalows with the white paint rain catching roofs and gaily painted walls hide the innards of predators. Another reason to cleave to Batshit J. Moron.

Populist? But Cleaves to The One Percent

Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land's offer to the uneducated, discriminated against, poor White folk was that he'd push them up the wealth and income ladder in no time flat. Stop all this affirmative action and reparations nonsense from those greedy dark folks. And their White fellow travelers. But continue to stop unions and ramp up 'sub-contractor' designation of folks who really are just employees. And so forth. Let the rabble vote? Not on your life. He'll put a stop to that anarchy. Hell, they'd elect Democrats. Anyone with a functioning frontal lobe knew that Batshit J. Moron was lying, of course. Now some new data, much like the old data naturally, demonstrates what My Pappy used to drone whenever the subject came up, "the richer get richer and the poor have kids, as it always has been".

The United States ranked ahead of Switzerland and Singapore in per capita wealth, but it was dead last in Allianz's index of wealth inequality.

Betting Line - part the third

This is from 29 January 2017

OK, so Kim Jong-Don has gone into blatant dictator mode, ignoring all agency heads in issuing the Muslim ban. So we're left with the over/under times to suspending the Constitution and declaring martial law (starting with Chicago, of course). 1 week 1 month 1 year Cast your vote. Vote early and often

So, today brings this from Batshit J. Moron

"(G)et rid of the ballots and you'll have a very ... there won't be a transfer, frankly. There'll be a continuation," he added, saying "the ballots are out of control."

And, I'll bet my left testicle that every one of dear readers considered that just too, too much hyperventilation. Do you think so now? And then there's this, from 'The Atlantic':

According to sources in the Republican Party at the state and national levels, the Trump campaign is discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.

Welcome to the North American version of elected dictatorship. And all those rural redneck radical right wingnuts who've been convinced (thanks to little education, naturally) that ex-President AuH₂O 2020 is really, really in their corner may finally figure out they're just fodder for his Darwinist buddies. It can't happen here.

Can You Keep a Secret?

This nonsense about not having the results of the election "that night" is so much bullshit. Prior to the mechanical voting machine, all ballots were on paper and counted by hand. It might be weeks before all were counted, especially in shitkicker states Out West. There's a reason the Electoral College meets in December.

The meeting of the electors takes place on the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December after the general election.

So, today's dustup is in Pennsylvania. Much like the hanging chad of 2000, again a bit of paper is the controversy.

"The Supreme Court was very, very clear in their ruling that the secrecy envelopes served an important purpose in ensuring the confidentiality of every ballot," said Straub. "The court has really made that official. We really don't have any plans to take that up again."

To be crystal clear: the Constitution says not one word about a secret ballot. Fact is, it wasn't until 1890-ish that such were used in the USofA. And it wasn't even our idea; we got it from the Aussies, then a shithole country.

Before 1890, partisan newspapers printed filled-out ballots which party workers distributed on election day so voters could drop them directly into the boxes. All of the states replaced these with secret ballots around 1890, popularly called "Australian ballots." They were printed by the local government and listed all the candidates impartially.

So, how long before the use of paper, but open, ballots replaced in-person voice voting? Again, paper ballots aren't in the Constitution, either.

In the United States, most states had moved to secret ballots soon after the presidential election of 1884. Kentucky was the last state to do so in 1891, when it quit using an oral ballot. But seven states did not have government-printed ballots until the 20th century. South Carolina created them in 1950 and Georgia in 1922.

Here's the story. One version, at least.

Yet voting remained quite public, Troy says, until the 1800s, as voters would sign their names under one candidate's name or another's on a public ballot.

When I was in school, it was taught that open, town meeting voting was still in use in small town New England, at least. Let's see if that's still true. Yes, yes it is.

When townspeople signed in, they received strips of mint green copier paper to hold aloft so volunteers called "tellers" could count the vote. Majority ruled, except in the few cases where a two-thirds vote was necessary. Few measures were controversial, so it was usually easy to gauge whether a motion carried by eyeballing the sea of green.

Not a voice vote, but open. No secrets in Westborough (located on I-495, then known as the Outer Beltway), which, by the way, was once a hot bed of computer high tech along with the famous Rte-128 'miracle days'; with green mint copier paper running the town. So, how long? Another recounting (he he) of 19th century voting methods.

But during the election of 1876, when Republican Rutherford B. Hayes faced Democrat Samuel J. Tilden, disputes over ballot counts in three Southern states—Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina—delayed the results of the presidential race. Because Republican officials were in the majority on the panels that certified votes, they called for recounts and quickly declared that the states had actually gone for Hayes. Democrats contested the decision, going so far as to install alternate governors and state administrations rather than accept the legitimacy of the panels' decisions. These recounts triggered a crisis on the federal level as Congress debated who held final authority to certify returns, and a president-elect wasn't chosen for months. (Hayes won, but the vote-counting controversy was not without cost: The Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from Southern states, effectively ending Reconstruction.)

Ah, them Red States have been mucking with elections for at least a 100 years. So, there's never been anything magical about day-of-vote tallying. And remember, 1937 was the first year of January inauguration, which had been in March until then.

Parallax View - part the twenty fourth

Another week's up, so here are today's numbers:

  >= 1,000 - 262
100 to 999 - 1,262 

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,071. While I've not gotten into an argument with the Topo folks over this re-definition of 'affected' counties, it certainly looks like a move to bolster ex-President AuH₂O 2020's perpetual lying. [16 September] One can only wonder what the ultimate body count will be from Sturgis and Batshit J. Moron 'Rallies', when just a Down East wedding kills folks who didn't attend. Externalities??? We don't care about externalities!!

A wedding in Maine is linked to 176 Covid-19 cases and the deaths of seven people who didn't attend the celebration, demonstrating just how easily and quickly the virus can spread at social gatherings, public health experts say.

Of course, ex-President AuH₂O 2020 is wielding all the levers of the 'unitary executive' to suppress both reporting Covid cases and contact tracing of those found. And the Red States are following his lead. [18 September] So The Big 10 has caved to Batshit J. Moron. All the while Covid is raging across the South and Midwest. Well, caved to the betting cabal as well. It's a lot of moolah.

Under-the-table NFL and college football wagers top $95 billion each year, according to the ESPN sports network. Overall, up to $150 billion is wagered illegally on sports every year in the United States, according to the American Gaming Association, a trade group.

That's a lot of moolah.

Is This Enough?

The question that perpetually trods through my brain whenever Batshit J. Moron or one of his minions yammers about open up this or that; or that kids don't get sick, so let's just go play ball. How many coaches, players, and staff have to die before Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land admits that this isn't such a great idea. There have been sporadic reports of this or that coach or player sick or dead. But here's a specific number:

At least 30 high school and club team coaches have died of coronavirus-related causes, according to a search of online obituaries. Though some were in their 70s, one was 27, another 30.

Do you think Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land will send their survivors a million-dollar annuity, as a token of his thanks for their sacrifice? I didn't think so either. Perhaps it's just a coincidence, or the reporter/editor chose to hold the story until this milestone, but -30- is the olde time marker for 'end of story'. Would that it were so.

Data, Data Everywhere

Now that the TikTok deal is done, sort of, what was accomplished? Near as I can tell, to some degree Beijing might have had its hands on Americans' loosened, but, more to ex-President AuH₂O 2020's point, said data is now to be gifted to Uncle Larry. So, we can expect the political infestation to be Radical Rabid Rural Right Wingnut-ism. That's so much better.

I Told You So - 16 September 2020

Do you, dear reader, recall the essay on 'Cottage Cheese' wherein it was deduced that commercial real estate, Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land's espoused expertise, was heading over the cliff? Do you?

Well, today's reporting makes it so. Good luck with getting bailed out. When Sleepy Joe wins in a few weeks, who do you think will find that the new bouncer won't let them into Club Bailout?? Hmmm??

They are making the case that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has the power — and access to the billions of federal funds he needs — to extend existing coronavirus relief efforts to the commercial real estate sector, which so far has been cut off from most of the stimulus money.

Moreover, here's the view of the guy who 'invented' the commercial securitizations:

Ethan Penner, a real estate investor credited with helping create CMBS, said the federal government should not be bailing out hotel and shopping center owners — borrowers he called "greedy and risk-loving, or the clueless" — after they turned to Wall Street to borrow heavily.

"The idea of bailing out owners of real estate does not even make sense to me," Mr. Penner said in an interview. "What could make that rise to the top of anyone's priority list when so many individual people are suffering and need help. These businesses should be allowed to fail."

And, in a bit synchronicity typical of the NYT, there's this report on folks just not flocking to movie theaters when now open. As has been reported, the upper classes in particular just aren't getting back into store-front consumerism while there's still Covid hanging in the air. Or, as Sleepy Joe and all of the scientific and medical community have said: the economy won't, nay can't, recover until Covid is under control. If ex-President AuH₂O 2020 had actually told the truth and galvanized the Entire Nation to take appropriate steps, and not just pawn the problem off on Blue cities in Blue states (where Batshit J. Moron and his lemmings convinced themselves it would remain), we'd be much further along; like, say, Japan. But no!!!

And, by the way, Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land didn't 'ban travel' from either China or Europe; there were loopholes big enough to allow tens of thousands to leak through. And, as some epidemiologists have pointed out, really banning such travel would not have made much difference, given the nature of geometric growth, since the virus was already well established in the USofA population, and Batshit J. Moron saw it as politically beneficial to not make a national effort to staunch the wee little critter, which has been demonstrated by virtually every other 1^st world country.

You Can't Have It

Have you seen the new Verizon 5G, mmWave (the advert doesn't use that term) teeVee commercial? The key part of the advert, in vocal fine print, is that this superduper 5G is available in "some parts of select cities". And that's how it will always be. All those Real Americans in Dirty Boots counties will be lucky to still have garden variety DSL. And those folks don't fully pay for it; you do through the FCC's Connect America Fund and others.

Since 1995 the CAF (previously called the "High Cost Fund") has distributed more than $80 billion in real dollars, the Department of Agriculture's Rural Utility Service (RUS) has given out another $7 billion since 2009 in grants and loans for telecom programs, and the National Telecommunications and Information Administration gave away another $4 billion as part of the 2009 stimulus package.

All those real Americans who've made a sort of living by the dirt under their finger nails just won't have the chance to migrate to the information economy. If they ever might want to, of course.

mmWave is only feasible in urban, and well planned suburban, areas. It's effectively a line of sight, low power, signal. All so that you can download your porn in less than a minute. Worth having, eh?

Parallax View - part the twenty third

Another week's up, so here are today's numbers:

  >= 1,000 - 250
100 to 999 - 1,250 

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,074. While I've not gotten into an argument with the Topo folks over this re-definition of 'affected' counties, it certainly looks like a move to bolster ex-President AuH₂O 2020's perpetual lying.

[8 September, some numbers]
Well, as was predicted, the knuckledraggers have created what is likely the superestspreader event so far in Covid. Good work, Radical Rightwing Rednecks. We who are about to die, give you the finger.

The 10-day Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota in August, which drew more than 400,000 people, has now been linked to more than 250,000 coronavirus cases, according to a study by the IZA Institute of Labor Economics.

Using anonymized cellphone data from the rally, researchers from the University of Colorado Denver, Bentley University, University of California San Diego and San Diego State University found the bikers, who were filmed and photographed in crowded bars, restaurants and outdoor venues mostly without face masks, allowed for many of the "worst-case scenarios" for "superspreading."

Bend It Like Henry - part the first

Henry Ford has been mentioned at various times in these missives. He represents the archetype of the vertically integrated manufacture. The River Rouge plant is the exemplar: raw materials in one end, automobiles out the other.

Construction began in 1917, and when it was completed in 1928, it was the largest integrated factory in the world.

Decades later, the American CxO class invented the conglomerate of today

Conglomerates were popular in the United States, in the 1960s, due to a combination of low interest rates, and a repeating bear-bull market, which allowed the conglomerates to buy companies in leveraged buyouts, sometimes at temporarily deflated values.

Gulf and Western was notorious.

Problems with the 45-story building's structural frame gave it unwanted fame [sic] as its base was scaffolded for years and the upper floors were prone to sway excessively on windy days, even leading to cases of nausea akin to motion sickness.

What I had long forgotten, if I ever noted

The 1997 renovation into a hotel and residential building, the Trump International Hotel and Tower (One Central Park West), by Costas Kondylis and Philip Johnson involved extensive renovation of both interior and facades. For example, the 45 stories of the original office tower were converted into a 52-story residential building, enabled by the lower ceiling height of residential spaces.

From one malignant narcissist, Bluhdorn, to Batshit J. Moron. Birds of a feather, and all that.

These days, a bear-bull cycle doesn't really exist. What we have had are a series of unrelated events disrupting the Mr. Market's tummy. And, thanks to the Fed and incompetent government (some times the Congress and some times the Administration and some times both at once), the low interest siren song continues to play.

But in semi-conductor, while there's been much consolidation, it's been, for the most part, horizontal. Now, NVIDIA has gobbled ARM. Of course, neither owns a (commercial production size) fab.

So, what happens to all those other companies having ARM licenses of various sorts? Only The Shadow knows. But I wouldn't bet on the situation becoming better for them.

You Did It, Mr. Jones, Not My Client!

I was intrigued when I saw that one of the cable channels we get announced that it would be offering 'Perry Mason Marathons'; the original with His Roundness, Raymond Burr. How cool!!! Yet, I could only stomach one episode. It was chopped up with commercials to distraction. One of the benefits of 50s and early 60s teeVee shows was that they took nearly the entire hour. Well, I was right

Fans who enjoyed the show in syndication will be pleasantly surprised by additional scenes contained in the DVD versions. The original episodes were 53 minutes long—up to ten minutes were cut to accommodate commercials in the rerun versions. If you ever wondered why an episode didn't make sense, it's probably because critical scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.

Given the antiquity of the series, it makes no sense to commercial it to death like contemporary, high production quality, shows. Evidently, the channel figures that either 1) the viewers never watched the show during its run, so don't know how long an episode was, and/or 2) even those who did are too stupid to see that the episodes have been butchered for your viewing disappointment. Another sign of the decline of Western civilization.

A Confession From The Right

Even the wicked get worse than they deserve.
-- Arthur Branch

Among the most evil, in the policy arena, is the self-named New Keynesians, who, in fact are neither New nor Keynesian. High in that pantheon is one Greg Mankiw. It's just laissez-faire in a fancy set of clothes. Or, more to the point, a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Well, even Radical Right Wingnuts sometimes, all to infrequently, show signs of brain function. Such is today's essay in the NYT.

Among other things that caused my heart to go pit-a-pat was this tidbit:

As all economics students learn, when an activity has a side effect on bystanders, that effect is called an externality. In the presence of externalities, the famous theorems of economics that justify laissez-faire do not apply. Adam Smith's vaunted invisible hand can no longer work its magic.

Holy smoke!! A lemming admitting a wrong. New Keynesian is just another name for turning Macro into the sum of a boatload of Micro; the mathification of economics is part and parcel. What's really irritating from these folks is the ignorance of policy, yet Mankiw says

Immunology, meet economics. One of the first principles of economics — perhaps the most important — is that people respond to incentives.

Say it with me, in three part harmony: incentives are created by policy, not maths. Blythe Masters remains my main example of how not to do incentive policy.

Loose Lips Sink Ships

Within hours of Woodward's "Rage" excerpts being reported by the Bezos Post, carping hit 11 on the gripe meter. The issue: Woodward withheld the 7 February admission that ex-President AuH₂O 2020 knew what Covid-19 was all about, and subsequently (and remains so) lied. The issue is simple: had Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land galvanized the Nation to take bigly efforts to mask, social distance, and not congregate, far, far fewer than the 191,000 (as I type) corpses would have happened.

Gaming it out logically.

1 - There's not a shred of evidence that Batshit J. Moron would (and still hasn't) commit 'his' government to undertake pro-active efforts even when exposed as a liar, since he views it as 'his money' and a waste since it doesn't increase his likelihood of survival; he already gets treated like an infant with a sneeze. Slough off the responsibility and cost on the governors, since it's 'just a little flu'. Those are Blue states, anyway.

2 - There's equally no evidence that Moscow Mitch's Senate would insist on a pro-active effort to stem the spread, for much the same reason

3 - The Radical Right has, from the get-go, promoted Covid-19 as the Democrat Big Blue City problem; the Real America, out in shitkicker land, wouldn't be bothered by it. of course, all those sick and dead meat plant workers, didn't matter being legal and illegal Hispanics. Now we're getting reports, surprise!!!, that teachers are dying. Who cares? Not Melania; she said so. How many Hog riders dead will get the Radical Right's attention?

Ergo: outing ex-President AuH₂O 2020 in February wouldn't have shamed him into doing The Right Thing (along with having no sense of humour, he's no shame) and would, 99.9% certain, made him stop talking to Woodward. And thus, we'd miss out on the receipts of his many other misdeeds.

Goldberg says there's more to come, and it's been reported that more tapes are forthcoming from Woodward. Payback's a bitch.

Jesus - Moses meme

Jesus saves, Moses invest.
-- anon/forever

Well, we now have, thanks to a Rocked Ribbed Republican mainstream newsguy, what ex-President AuH₂O 2020 really knew. And what he didn't do about it. The Donald didn't save, but he invested in his own bank account. Just like Vlad.

What the talking heads, so far, haven't made clear: it wasn't to avoid 'panic', but to give him an excuse to slough off the responsibility and cost on the states; at the early stages, Blue States, naturally. Batshit J. Moron, and his lemmings, were certain that Radical Red States out in the empty spaces would never see Covid-19. An infection as contagious as Covid-19 doesn't care about boundaries. And it hasn't. Schools, at all levels, are boiling as much as meat plants back in the Spring. The Donald Tapes, a phrase that will live in infamy.

If Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land had simply followed the science, demanding distancing, masks, and minimal groups, we would already be able to get close to back to normal.

Vote early and often.

Parallax View - part the twenty second

Another week's up, so here are today's numbers:

  >= 1,000 - 259
100 to 999 - 1,282 

(New) grand total of counties reads at 3,080. While I've not gotten into an argument with the Topo folks over this re-definition of 'affected' counties, it certainly looks like a move to bolster ex-President AuH₂O 2020's perpetual lying.

Nothing more to report this week. Happy Labor Day.

This Is A Surprise?

Well, you knew it had to happen; well if you're a regular reader. One expects this situation to metastasize as we move into 'flu season', which is 99.44% certain to be 'the autumn of our discontent, Covid division'.

A school district outside Buffalo, New York, has delayed the start of online-only learning programs for grades 5-12 because of mass staff resignations and leaves of absence, the superintendent announced on Friday.

In a letter to families, Williamsville Central School District Superintendent Scott Martzloff said 90 staff members have taken a leave of absence due to Covid-19 and 111 staff members resigned.
[my emphasis]

Should any regular wage earner, and that includes both teachers and meat plant workers, be required to risk serious disease and even death just to make a buck? They're not infantrymen, voluntary ("knew what he signed up for" -- Batshit J. Moron/2017) or drafted.

Batting .350

Those who have even a passing acquaintance with science have understood the warnings from physicians and epidemiologists: long term morbidity from Covid-19 is not a hoax or even a guess. All those covidiots demanding football, in particular college football (the billion dollar betting action makes no difference, right?), had better start listening. They cried Bloody Murder!! As mentioned in these missives more than once: how many students, teachers, and staff have to die in school venues for them to admit that they're fucking stupid? Not to mention, naturally, greedy.

The Big Ten is one conference that, so far, has called off fall sports, in particular the football season. Now, to no surprise, we get a report that Covid-19 is the gift that keeps on giving.

Wayne Sebastianelli, Penn State's director of athletic medicine, revealed that 30 to 35 percent of the cardiac MRI scans conducted on Big Ten athletes who had contracted Covid-19 appeared to show myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle. The announcement came during the State College Area Board of School Directors meeting.

For specifics, here's the wiki article on myocarditis.

In young adults, up to 20% of all cases of sudden death are due to myocarditis.

Will one dead lineman be enough for these morons to toss in the towel? Or is the betting game to precious?

For those interested, this is a lay-level report on Covid-19 and Myocarditis.

I Coudda Been a Contenda

Well, Mr. Market is vomiting like it's 1859. And the mainstream pundits can't quite figure it out. Well, they haven't been able to figure out why Mr. Market has been on a steroidal sugar high during the pandemic.

I'm here to tell you. It's all about opportunity cost; money is fungible and, these days, if you've got millions or billions of Bongo Bucks, moving them among government instruments, corporate bonds, and stocks is just a matter of a mouse click.

With federal instruments running near 0%, what's a Daddy Warbucks to do? Get a real job, working for wages? Not on your life! So where to put the Bongo Bucks? Stocks, of course. While some accuse the Fed of printing money, that's really not the impetus. When the Fed did print money during the Great Recession, the rationale, besides just saving the financial system from itself was that said moolah would be used for capital investment

Andy Haldane, chief economist at the Bank of England, argues that "the main reason world growth has been subpar is because businesses have not been investing sufficiently".

This was not supposed to be the case. Below-par investment was the sort of problem that central bankers' aggressive response to the crisis could fix. Many now question whether monetary policymakers can have much impact on investment.
[2015]

By and large, didn't happen. Many reports substantiate the notion that corps sat on, and continue to, piles of cash. The rich get richer, and the poor have kids.

The Aussie Way

While not, in the main, a Covid story, it does end up being involved with Covid. A long dog's journey into flight. But here's the punch line:

[Pipsqueak, the dachshund] was scheduled to fly to Sydney on August 3, but the state of Victoria imposed a strict lockdown once Pip arrived and the borders between Victoria and New South Wales were closed.
[my emphasis]

Wouldn't it be nice if the intelligent Blue Cities of the USofA could do the same? Lock up those Red State Trumpsters to kill themselves off.

Data Is Political

What with the Covid-19 data doing a nose dive, even while cluster explode in many, if not most, school settings, thanks to Thiel usurping the CDC mandate, it ought not to be surprising to realize that data is political. Dear Leader Yo! Semite of Thigh Land, and his minions, are doing muchly to staunch the flow of any kind of data on any subject that threatens his continued reign.

Today brings this reporting that not even ESPN will continue to lick his boots. Who wooda thunk it?

All I can say is, "Bring back Keith!!" This is in his wheelhouse, and even though the wiki says he's back on the payroll, I for one, ain't seen him. Go Keith!!