Sorry for the damn sermon, geez!
"With the coronavirus death toll mounting and the country facing a recession or worse, the Senate on Wednesday night approved the largest economic relief package in US history, a $2 trillion infusion to steady the cratering economy. The measure, which passed 96-0 and still needs approval by the House before going to President Trump, would send cash directly to Americans, shore up unemployment benefits, and buttress small businesses upended by the rapidly spreading virus....."
It's the upper-right corner lead if you will, and upon the turn-in I realized I was fumbling with the paper at that time and totally missed the A6, A7 turn-ins for analysis. Oh, well!
Now, if you were able to sift through last night's lengthy post, you would know the package is actually more like $6 trillion, that's right out of Larry Kudlow's own mouth, to "keep this thing goin'"
Why would the Globe's stellar female twosome omit that? Don't want to freak out the masses so we break house arrest and hit the streets all the way to the capital cities?
I do give the web version credit for bringing me this photograph, and I ask the reader to keep it in mind for the article to follow:
Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell reacted after speaking on the floor of the Senate. (Win McNamee/Getty)
Woah! Another face of evil!
You sell your stock, too, Mitch, and why has my pre$$ completely dropped that story?
I know direct you attention to the last article I noted this morning, stuck in the bottom lefthand-corner of page C5:
"Congress to bail out firms that avoided taxes, safety regulations and spent billions boosting their stock" by Jonathan O’Connell Washington Post, March 25, 2020
Airlines, as well as hotels, cruise lines, coal-mining companies, and others strangled by the coronavirus shutdowns, are lining up to receive slices of a $2 trillion aid package funded by taxpayers, yet many of these companies behaved in ways before the current economic crisis that are making a bailout tough to swallow, labor advocates and some economists say.
Yeah, the coronavirus $trangled them, not their own mismanagement and malfeasance and the debt-$tructured $y$tem we have.
The hotel giant Hilton, for example, announced a $2 billion stock buyback on March 3, weeks after coronavirus cases began affecting the industry. Cruise lines for years have avoided taxes and US safety regulations by registering their headquarters abroad. Coal companies put some of their workers in harms way and are now asking to get out of a tax that generates money to compensate former miners who have black lung disease.
Good thing you are worried sick over coronavirus.
As Congress debated the details of the bailout this week, lawmakers wrestled with how far Congress should go to help another set of American corporate titans two years after tax reform and less than a dozen years after the bank and auto industry bailouts of the Great Recession. The choice is between two options unsavory to many: bail out some of the country’s largest corporations or watch as they put more people out of work.
One might even think it is extortion when they phrase it that way.
Among those seeking assistance from a pot of at least $500 billion in the rescue package are companies employing hundreds of thousands of servers, flight attendants, housekeepers, janitors, security guards, and other workers. With unemployment already expected to reach as high as 20 percent this year, no one wants to see so many people lose their jobs.
Then Trump is finished. The Democrats could run a dead man against him and still win.
‘‘You don’t want to reward companies for doing shortsighted, short-term things the past 11 years. You don’t want to reward them for stock buybacks and excessive CEO compensation,’’ said Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First, an advocacy groups that tracks corporate subsidies. ‘‘The trouble is a lot of the companies that are in trouble right now are the ones that have been doing that.’’
Indeed, writing checks to some of the companies in need of help may require some Americans to swallow hard and look away.
As they ram it to you in the wor$t way po$$ible.
Airlines and hotel chains have in recent years dramatically increased spending on stock buybacks (which can pump up a share price without building anything or hiring anyone) and sometimes generous dividends (payments to shareholders).
Trump addressed such concerns Monday.
‘‘I don’t want to give a bailout to a company and then have somebody go out and use that money to buy back stock in the company and raise the price and then get a bonus,’’ Trump said. ‘‘So I may be Republican, but I don’t like that. I want them to use the money for the workers.’’
Now he says something after taking credit for the inflation over the last three years!
Related: Sunday Globe Special: Buying Back Stock
Holy crap!
That couldn't have been FIVE YEARS AGO!! It can't be!
Cruise lines are also facing potential cash shortages, but they are domiciled in Liberia, Panama, and elsewhere to avoid nearly all US taxes and safety regulations. Some health officials say some cruise operators should have done more to stem transmission of the virus among passengers and crew members aboard their ships.
Coal-mining companies also have asked for help, including a request that the government rescind a $220 million tax increase to support 25,700 disabled coal miners and their dependents, many of whom have suffered from black lung disease. The industry employs about 51,000 miners in surface and underground mines, federal data shows.
Don't hold your breath after the la$t ga$p.
‘‘You’ve probably heard the critics by now. How dare the coal industry ask for relief to weather the COVID-19 crisis?’’ the National Mining Association said Monday. ‘‘It’s the kind of absurd question or assertion we’ve come to expect from people who simply don’t value coal jobs like others and who remain completely out of touch with the essential role that coal plays in keeping the lights on, homes warm, and industry churning.’’
(cough)
What?
Even Boeing, the aerospace manufacturer that is accused of misleading pilots and federal safety inspectors about lapses that led to two of its 737 Max jets to crash (killing 346 people), is poised to receive a portion of a $17 billion loan program designated for businesses deemed ‘‘critical to maintaining national security.’’
So you can be a lying, $elf-$erving, mass-murdering corporation and nothing. No criminal charges, and a big phat bailout check for you.
Maybe Boeing SHOULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS!!
Let SOMEONE ELSE build the PLANES!
With its 737 Max jets still grounded and the novel coronavirus spreading among some of its own workers, Boeing may have to declare bankruptcy if it does not receive a bailout, some analysts said. Critics of the company noted that even if it goes into bankruptcy, the company could continue operating and paying employees, as airlines have done in the past, but Boeing and its subsidiaries employ 160,000 people worldwide. ‘‘We have to protect Boeing,’’ Trump said last week.
OH GOD!
OH GOD!
It was not so long ago that Americans were asked to bail out a different set of companies that appeared too big to fail. In 2008, the government propped up big banks, the same institutions that had driven the country into recession, with the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program, or TARP. Months later the government began spending tens of billions of dollars to help General Motors and Chrysler stave off liquidation.
There are important differences between those packages and the current one, which is much larger and moving through Congress more quickly. Some economists say the aid is likely to benefit workers only if it is closely tailored to ensure the money won’t end up bailing out just companies’ stock prices.
Trump’s declaring ‘‘I will be the oversight’’ for the payouts, as he did Monday, didn’t make these experts feel any better. ‘‘Industry rescues are only worth doing if they’re a rescue of payroll and wages,’’ said Josh Bivens, research director at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. He said he hoped money could be provided directly to workers to preserve jobs until the ‘‘all clear’’ is sounded. ‘‘Then they can make sense,’’ he said.
Three weeks.
Top corporations vowed to do better after the last crisis. Last year, 181 top American chief executives pledged to redefine the purpose of corporations beyond profit by signing a pact for ‘‘An Economy That Serves All Americans.’’ The pact includes promises to support employees and communities.
That was worth the paper it was written on, and cost them nothing!
Perhaps no one could have predicted the depth of the economic devastation wrought by the novel coronavirus, but some companies — at the urging of Wall Street — often put shareholders and executives first, sometimes to the detriment of preparing for another downturn, labor advocates and some economists said. Now they are in line for cash to pay their staffs as business has ground to a halt.
That's $hocking, isn't it?
A year ago Arne Sorenson, chief executive of Marriott, the world’s largest hotel chain, announced the company would return $11 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends by 2021. Its share price jumped 3 percent on the announcement.
Now the company has begun furloughing tens of thousands of employees, effectively laying them off but allowing them to maintain health benefits. Sorenson was among executives to meet with Trump, seeking a reported $150 million of direct aid to hotels. The company has since suspended dividend payments, stopped share buybacks, and cut Sorenson’s salary for the remainder of the year.
Hilton Worldwide has purchased roughly 55 million shares since 2017 for $4.3 billion, including the stock buyback announced March 3. Hilton has 60,000 employees, and 200,000 more work at Hilton-branded hotels. Tens of thousands of those have been furloughed. The company issued a statement to The Washington Post saying it is not seeking ‘‘direct financial support’’ but is working ‘‘to secure emergency relief for hotel workers that are employed by thousands of small businesses that own hotels across the country.’’
I hope Paris will be well taken care of.
Of all the industries, airlines are considered most likely to get money because of their fundamental role in the travel economy and the quality of their mostly unionized jobs. The airlines are bracing for an estimated $113 billion of losses, according to the International Air Transport Association, because many are able to operate only half or fewer of their usual routes. As of Tuesday night, the Senate bill called for up to $50 billion in aid specifically for the airline industry, but airlines have employed many of the same practices to boost their stocks. American Airlines, which has 130,000 employees, spent $13 billion on buybacks in the past decade. United, which employs 100,000, has approved $5 billion of buybacks since 2016.
American Airlines chief executive Doug Parker and United chief executive Oscar Munoz joined nine other airline executives in writing to Congress on Saturday saying that ‘‘time is running out’’ for the industry. ‘‘Unless worker payroll protection grants are passed immediately, many of us will be forced to take draconian measures such as furloughs,’’ they wrote.
American and United. Rings a bell regarding an infamous, late summer morning about 19 years a.... g.... o. COV.... ID.... 19. Weird.
Better take one last look around, readers.
Aside from the money provided to shareholders, American has also invested aggressively, spending more than $30 billion on capital improvements, $23 billion on planes, and $20 billion on increased wages and benefits for employees. In 2017, it gave pilots and flight attendants a mid-contract pay raise, angering some Wall Street banks.
You know what? I think America has had it with the Wall Street banks. They better check themselves before they find themselves hanging from lampposts. Heads up!
‘‘We wish we didn’t need help to weather this crisis, but we are fighting for a lifeline to help protect our 130,000 team members and their jobs, and the vital role aviation plays in the global economy,’’ American spokeswoman Shannon Gilson said.
United suspended its share buyback program last month and says it has invested $30 billion in recent years in new planes and technology, plus $3 billion in wages, benefits, and profit-sharing with workers. The company says it cannot continue to pay its employees without assistance if business continues to crater.
How come workers are always getting the chump change?
Some cruise line executives say they are not seeking a ‘‘bailout.’’
‘‘We don’t need a bailout in terms of giving us money. Getting a loan guarantee would be helpful,’’ Carnival chief executive Arnold Donald said recently on HBO.
Carnival spokesman Roger Frizzell said the company has not made jobs cuts as a result of the virus and is not seeking a financial bailout because the company has ‘‘created a strong balance sheet in the process that is helping us the weather the storm today.’’ Norwegian did not respond to requests for comment, and Royal Caribbean declined to comment.
Trump has pledged assistance anyway, saying Sunday: ‘‘We can’t let the cruise lines go out of business.’’
They al$o need our protection.
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It's a return to normalcy, but at what cost-- and where is the social distancing?!
That just for us, huh?
Hmmmmmm!
Going back to the front page to take a pause before picking up the pace:
"With New York suddenly an epicenter of the coronavirus crisis, epidemiologists are warning that the state’s proximity and travel ties to Massachusetts could lead to more infections here, underscoring the need for residents to distance themselves from others and take further precautions....."
One guy “just wanted to get out as soon as possible,” and who can blame him?
"Massachusetts far surpassed Governor Charlie Baker’s daily goal of completing 3,500 coronavirus tests, propelled in recent days by a commercial laboratory in suburban Marlborough that accounted for much of the surge. Quest Diagnostics’s laboratory roared to life in recent days, reporting more than 7,800 new tests over a two-day period. A company spokeswoman attributed the spike to high-capacity testing machines that began running late last week. Quest has now performed nearly half of all coronavirus tests in Massachusetts, and is providing test results, according to the company, in four to five days on average. Quest’s breakthrough made good on Baker’s pledge last week that Massachusetts was....."
Looks like a profitable Que$t for someone, and this is a test and a mass social experiment, and some are failing miserably.
Baker orders schools closed until early May
Why not just cancel the rest of the semester and start fresh in the fall?
Stimulus bill prevents Trump and his family from benefiting from loan programs
Senate Minority Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer of N.Y., and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., walked together as they headed to a lunch with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on Capitol Hill in Washington earlier this month. (Susan Walsh/Associated Press/Associated Press)
I know it was "earlier this month," but where is the social distancing between those two despicable creatures? It's like they know something that you don't amidst the pre$$ panic. In yo' face!
Judging by the looks on their faces, Nancy is saying "I sure hope they don't find out about my short-selling before the dump." Chuck: "Don't worry, everything is going to be fine, keep fund-raising."
Can you imagine it! You are sitting at home under house arrest and an e-mail pops in your box with Markey asking for some grift! HA--HA-HA-HA-HA! The $hamele$$ne$$ knows no bounds, and is a huge tell!
Getting out to my neck of the woods:
"Rural America watches pandemic erupt in cities as fear grows" by Gillian Flaccus Associated Press, March 25, 2020
DUFUR, Ore. — As the pandemic spreads through the United States, those living in rural areas, too, are increasingly threatened. Tiny towns tucked into Oregon’s windswept plains and cattle ranches miles from anywhere in South Dakota might not have had a single case of the new coronavirus, but their main streets are also empty and their medical clinics overwhelmed by the worried.
At least the firearms will help others keep their social distance.
Residents from rural Alabama to the woods of Vermont to the frozen reaches of Alaska fear the spread of the disease from outsiders, the social isolation that comes when the only diner in town closes its doors, and economic collapse in places where jobs were already tough to come by.
Yeah, they are killing our souls with this, but at the same time, they are filling us with power.
“Nobody knows what to do and they’re just running in circles, so stay away from me is what I’m saying,” said Mike Filbin, a 70-year-old cattle rancher in Wasco County, Ore., one of the few parts of the state that has yet to see a case of COVID-19. “Right now, we’re pretty clean over here, but we’re not immune to nothin’ — and if they start bringing it over, it’ll explode here,” he said.
I'm sure the pre$$ would label him a xenophobe in different times.
To make matters worse, some of the most remote communities have limited or no Internet access and spotty cellphone service. That makes telecommuting and online learning challenging in an era of blanket school and work closures, and it eliminates the possibility of the FaceTime card games and virtual cocktail hours that urban Americans have turned to in droves to stay connected.
Maybe they are better off without the ma$$ media panic pouring into their heads.
In fact, no maybe about it.
The routine ways that rural Americans connect — a bingo night, stopping in at a local diner, or attending a potluck — are suddenly taboo.
Yeah, rip the heart out of us, you monsters. They are attacking the soul of America, the rock-ribbed base of good people out here in flyover land.
“Rural people are reliant on their neighbors and have more confidence and trust in their neighbors,” said Ken Johnson, a senior demographer at the Carsey School of Public Policy and professor of sociology at the University of New Hampshire. “Now you have people who are supposed to self-isolate themselves. What does that mean when people you depend on, in order to help you, are going to put themselves and their families at risk? I don’t know what that will do in rural America.”
Yeah, and the $cummy elite can't stand it. They can't stand people loving each other and getting along, and why would they? Those responsible for so much death, destruction, and misery have a soul? Only for themselves and their selfish interests. They live behind fences and walls with security guards patrolling the premises. Living in fear!
When you think of that way, you pity the ba$tards.
Neil Bradshaw, the mayor of Ketchum, Idaho, is starting to see the answer to that question in his own community.
The rural resort town has struggled since the arrival of COVID-19, and he fears if the virus lingers too long, it could devastate it. The town is nestled next door to the tony skiing destination Sun Valley Resort and is known as the second-home haven for dozens of celebrities.
It’s also become the epicenter of Idaho’s caseload, with at least 35 cases and known community spread of the virus. At least 14 of the cases are among health care workers, forcing the town’s small medical workers to bring in replacement staffers from nearby cities.
The $elf-righteous $cum infected you and ruined your idyllic community!
“Our town thrives on people coming to town, and for the first time in our history we are discouraging visitors,” said Bradshaw, of the town of 2,700 people.
Is it a free fire zone?
Others worry about outsiders bringing the disease to truly remote areas that aren’t equipped to deal with it.....
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Related:
"Just days after New York leaders ordered people to stay home, the authorities on Wednesday mobilized to head off a potential public health disaster, with the city’s emergence as the nation’s biggest coronavirus hot spot a warning flare — and perhaps a cautionary tale — for the rest of the country. A makeshift morgue was set up outside Bellevue Hospital, and the city’s police, their ranks dwindling as more fall ill, were told to patrol nearly empty streets to enforce social distancing. Public health officials hunted down beds and medical equipment and put out a call for more doctors and nurses, fearing that the number of sick will explode in a matter of weeks, overwhelming hospitals the way the virus did in Italy and Spain. New York University offered to let its medical students graduate early so that they could join the battle. Worldwide, the death toll climbed past 20,000, according to a running count kept by Johns Hopkins University. The number of dead in the United States has topped 800, with more than 60,000 infections. New York State alone accounted for more than 30,000 cases and close to 300 deaths, most of them in New York City. Governor Andrew Cuomo, again pleading for help in dealing with the onslaught, attributed the cluster to the city’s role as a gateway to international travelers and the sheer density of its population, with 8.6 million people sharing subways, elevators, apartment buildings, and offices. “Our closeness makes us vulnerable,” he said. ‘‘But it’s true that your greatest weakness is also your greatest strength. And our closeness is what makes us who we are. That is what New York is.’’ Some public health experts also attributed the city’s burgeoning caseload, in part, to the state’s big push to test people for the virus. The order to stay at home in New York state did not go into effect until Sunday evening, and New York City’s approximately 1.1 million-student school system was not closed down until March 15, well after other school districts had shut down."
Workers on Wednesday were building a makeshift morgue at Bellevue Hospital in New York City. (Bryan r. Smith/AFP via Getty Images)
That is ALARMING and FRIGHTENING!
The drill is GOING LIVE!
"California Governor Gavin Newsom said four of the nation’s largest banks have agreed to temporarily suspend mortgage payments for those affected by the coronavirus. Wells Fargo, US Bank, Citi, and JP Morgan Chase have all agreed to waive mortgage payments for 90 days, Newsom said. Bank of America has agreed to a 30-day suspension, he said. More than 1 million Californians have filed for unemployment benefits since March 13. The news came after Congress reached a deal with the Trump administration on a stimulus package that will increase unemployment benefits by $600 per week on top of what the state provides."
Sorry for being greedy, but can't they wipe all the debt away after getting nearly $5 trillion from the $timuloot bill?
"Amid fears that the coronavirus will carve a deadly path through prisons and jails, counties and states are releasing thousands of inmates — New Jersey alone began freeing hundreds of people this week — and the federal prison system is coming under intense pressure to take similar measures. Public health and corrections officials have issued dire warnings that cramped and unsanitary conditions could turn prisons into havens for the virus, endangering not just inmates but also corrections officers and prison health care workers as well as their families and communities. Criminal-justice reform advocates from across the political spectrum have urged President Trump to use his clemency power to commute the sentences of inmates eligible for ‘‘compassionate release’’ and others who could be at risk, particularly the elderly and those with underlying medical conditions. Inside a county jail in Alabama on Friday, two inmates threatened to commit suicide if newly arrived Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees they feared had been exposed to the virus were not removed. According to video live-streamed on an inmate’s Facebook page, the two detainees stood on a ledge over a common area, nooses fashioned from sheets wrapped around their necks, and threatened to jump. The three new detainees had described being brought to the facility in the same van as an individual who was visibly ill and wearing a mask, inmates said in interviews with The Post. An ICE spokesman, Bryan Cox, said none of the three had flu-like symptoms, but he did not know whether they had been tested for the virus.The hourslong standoff ended when guards moved the new arrivals to a different unit of the jail, the Etowah County Detention Center in northern Alabama, inmates said."
You read that, and coupled with the millions of newly unemployed, you realize how that is a recipe for disaster for our society. Anyone can see it coming, which means the psychopathic ruling cla$$ is doing it ON PURPOSE in a PLANNED EFFORT!
EVIL!
"The US Justice Department’s second-highest-ranking official on Tuesday told federal law enforcement officials across the country that they should consider using terrorism laws to investigate and prosecute those who try to intentionally infect others with COVID-19. The guidance came in a memo from Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, addressing the many crimes that prosecutors might seek to explore during the global pandemic. Rosen wrote that among the wrongdoing officials might see is ‘‘the purposeful exposure and infection of others with COVID-19.’’ The guidance, thus far, appears to be theoretical. So far, the only coronavirus-related case the Justice Department has brought is a lawsuit against a website claiming to distribute coronavirus vaccines, which do not exist. State and local authorities, though, have used their own terrorism threat laws in coronavirus-related matters. New Jersey’s attorney general’s office, for example, announced Tuesday that it had charged a Freehold man with making terroristic threats and other related crimes for allegedly coughing on an employee of a Wegmans grocery store and claiming he had the coronavirus."
Bill Barr says ‘‘you will be hearing a knock on your door’’ soon, and they are going hit us so fast we won't even know what hit us.
Then again, what is he going to do with us?
Put us IN JAIL?
A FEMA quarantine camp more likely -- down at the mall, the college, whatever site they "repurpose."
This is EVIL!
"Saboteurs using ‘‘racist and vile language’’ infiltrated and disrupted online classes held by the University of Southern California, the school’s president disclosed Wednesday, the latest incident in a trend some have dubbed ‘‘Zoombombing.’’ Zoom is a popular video-conferencing tool that many colleges and universities are using to help finish their semesters through remote teaching, after the coronavirus pandemic put a halt to in-person classes. USC, a private research university in Los Angeles, has about 47,000 students, including nearly 20,000 undergraduates. Folt praised faculty and students for shifting gears to remote learning."
This is for those who do not dissent:
"Conservatives gutted the social safety net. Now, in a crisis, they’re embracing it" by Tracy Jan Washington Post, March 25, 2020
WASHINGTON — The coronavirus has exposed the weaknesses of the US safety net, forcing even conservative lawmakers to embrace its expansion for the duration of the crisis.
What net? We were already working without one.
Or do you mean that shredding thing lying on the ground next to the Constitution?
Throughout his term, President Trump has chipped away at the social safety net, proposing budgets that gutted housing assistance, food stamps, and health insurance for the poorest Americans. When Congress rejected those cuts, the Trump administration enacted rules to make it harder to access federal benefits, such as requiring recipients to work.
Where were the Demorats? Not worthy of protection like the corporations? Useful as a political tool only, huh?
Now, with businesses shuttered, workers laid off, and scores more worrying about buying groceries, being evicted, and getting sick, the swelling need for federal assistance has forced even conservative lawmakers to embrace government protections in a series of sweeping stimulus bills.
Yes, once again, they are "protecting" you.
Republicans are proposing sending direct cash payments of $1,200 to individual Americans, an idea that, on the surface, echoes former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang’s universal basic income platform. They want to bolster the unemployment insurance system after many GOP-led states spent years enacting restrictive criteria and reducing benefits.
Robert Rector, an architect of the 1996 federal welfare overhaul that instituted work requirements under President Bill Clinton and a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank that guides much of the Trump administration’s policy making, generally opposes safety net measures that do not promote work and marriage, but he would like to see more-generous benefits for individuals and cities in crisis in response to the coronavirus — for a finite period of time. ‘‘Quite frankly, I’m willing to spend more money right now,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s a very different thing in an emergency.’’
Working both $ides of the ai$le, huh?
The Families First coronavirus response package Trump signed last week dramatically expands paid sick leave and family medical leave for tens of millions of workers, provisions aimed at blunting the economic impact of the pandemic.
The United States lags behind other developed countries when it comes to providing universal health care as well as paid leave for sick workers and those who have to care for family members.
Thanks to Obummer.
‘‘Here we had this ‘strong economy’ and all of a sudden the bubble has burst, and policy makers are scrambling to put into place basic protections other societies have,’’ said Rebecca Vallas, a senior fellow at the left-leaning Center for American Progress.....
This is becoming really, really gro$$!!
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At least we are not India.... yet:
"India, Day 1: World’s largest coronavirus lockdown begins" by Karan Deep Singh and Vindu Goel New York Times, March 25, 2020
NEW DELHI — India’s economy was sputtering even before its leader announced the world’s largest coronavirus lockdown. Now the state-ordered paralysis of virtually all commerce in the country has put millions of people out of work and left many families struggling to eat.
Just like ours.
On the first day of the nationwide 21-day shutdown of nearly all services Wednesday, the streets of Mumbai, India’s largest metropolis — usually so busy it is known as Maximum City— were silent. Shuttered shops, empty train tracks, closed airports, and idle factories all across the country were signs of the economic impact of the social distancing that the Indian government said was necessary to prevent new coronavirus infections.
India has reported 606 coronavirus cases so far, but with the population density so high and the public health system so weak, Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered the country’s 1.3 billion residents to stay inside to keep India from sliding into a disaster that could potentially dwarf what China, Italy, Spain, the United States, and other countries have faced, but Modi’s effort to prevent the spread of the virus will lead to its own calamitous damage.
Manual laborers have no work, farmers cannot tend fields, online retailers and pharmacists have been harassed by overzealous police officers. Countless people have been running out of cash.
They want to get rid of that anyway, as that is one of the goals of this mon$trou$ly evil agenda.
“The kind of devastation that is going to be faced by the bottom 50 percent of the workers in the informal sector is unimaginable,” said Jayati Ghosh, an economist and professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi.
In some places, police officers have staked out roads and highways, stopping motorists and demanding to know why they were outside. Several states have closed their borders, forcing cargo trucks to simply park by the roadside.
We are this close to that here. I saw a speed trap at the bottom of the exit ramp by the highway the other day.
Flipkart, the country’s largest online retailer, found it so difficult to move people and goods that it suspended delivery of everything except food.
Grocery stores were allowed to remain open, and in the cities, crowds swarmed and emptied the shelves. At an upscale market in New Delhi, one man stuffed his Mercedes with groceries Wednesday afternoon, jumped behind the wheel, and zoomed off — wearing blue rubber dishwashing gloves and a snorkeling mask.
The National Restaurant Association of India estimated that perhaps 20 percent of the 7.3 million restaurant workers will permanently lose their jobs as employers go out of business. “Many companies may not survive this onslaught,” said Anurag Katriar, the association’s chief executive and the owner of a chain of upscale eateries.
Better get a war going soon.
Harcharan Singh, a vendor in rural Punjab state who usually goes door to door peddling everything from oranges to cauliflower, has had nothing to sell for days. The big wholesale food markets he normally relies on have all been closed.
“Our business is completely shut,” he said. “We need this money to survive, get food for our families.”
How many Indians will die of starvation and suicide?
How many women will be burned alive?
Hundreds of millions of Indians are like Singh, with little or no savings. Rickshaw drivers, for example, buy food for their families with the money they make that day. Banned from the roads, many drivers do not know how they will survive.
Economists at Barclays predicted Wednesday that the lockdown would last a month and shave 2 percentage points off India’s anemic economic growth rate. Although India is likely to escape a recession, Barclays said, such a significant slowdown would mean rising joblessness in a country where millions of young people enter the workforce every year.
Oh, good! Then all i$ well!
Modi acknowledged the trade-offs in a televised address Tuesday night, when he first announced the nationwide lockdown. “No doubt this lockdown will entail an economic cost for the country, but saving the life of each and every Indian is the first priority for me,” he said. “If we are not able to manage the next 21 days, then many families will be destroyed forever.”
That include Muslim lives, you supremacist sack of sh.....
Economists are urging the government to create a huge stimulus package to blunt the effects of the lockdown. India’s government stores an enormous grain supply, which could quickly be distributed to the poor, said Dharmakirti Joshi, chief economist at CRISIL, a Mumbai-based credit ratings agency.
With all the hunger in India, one wonders why they were sitting on it!
Joshi also urged direct cash payments to individuals, and loans to small and medium-size businesses. “Give a clear signal that you will help,” he said.
The Modi administration is deliberating what kind of stimulus to offer, and a plan is expected to be unveiled within days.
Can average and untouchable Indians wait that long?
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Related:
"As Latin America shuts down to fight virus, Brazil and Mexico are holdouts" by Ernesto Londoño, Manuela Andreoni, LetÃcia Casado and Azam Ahmed New York Times, March 25, 2020
RIO DE JANEIRO — Most leaders in Latin America reacted to the arrival of the coronavirus in the region with speed and severity: Borders were shut. Flights were halted. Soldiers roamed deserted streets enforcing quarantines, and medical professionals braced for an onslaught of patients by building field hospitals, but the presidents of Brazil and Mexico, who govern more than half of Latin America’s population — Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil and, to a lesser degree, his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador — have remained strikingly dismissive. They’ve scoffed at calls to shut down business and sharply limit public transportation, calling such measures far more devastating to people’s welfare than the virus.
Almost as if they knew something, like this is all a simulation and drill, a "live exercise," if you will.
In a region with high poverty rates, where hundreds of millions of people live in close quarters without access to proper sanitation or health care, experts say that approach could create an ideal breeding ground for the virus, with devastating consequences for public health, the economy, and the social fabric.
“This is a recipe for social implosion in a region that was already in a state of social upheaval,” said Monica de Bolle, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, who is originally from Brazil. “In a situation like this, things can break down really fast if there is a lack of trust in government and people feel very vulnerable.”
Are they emptying the jails like here?
López Obrador, a leftist, has continued to wade into crowds and kiss babies. Ruling out travel restrictions, business closings, or quarantine orders, last week López Obrador suggested Mexico would be spared by divine intervention as he held up two amulets he called “my bodyguards.”
Forgive him, for he knows no better.
It was not until Tuesday that his government closed schools, prohibited gatherings of more than 100 people, and told Mexicans to stay at home. By then, the Mexico City government had already moved to shut down much of public life, but Bolsonaro, a far-right leader who has been in office a little more than a year, has remained defiant, continuing to dismiss the virus as a “measly cold” that does not warrant “hysteria.” In a national address Tuesday night, Bolsonaro dismissed measures taken by governors and mayors as a “scorched earth” approach. Bolsonaro, who is 65, also said that if he were to get the virus, he would recover easily because of his “athletic background.”
While he spoke, Brazilians across the political spectrum banged pots outside their windows in what has become a nightly protest of his cavalier attitude, with some crying, “Out with Bolsonaro!”
Oh, those are the protests we will be reduced to?
Cheka to visit later?
As of Wednesday morning, Brazil had 2,271 confirmed cases, a sixfold increase from a week ago, and 47 deaths.
Most leaders in Latin America had regarded the new virus as a faraway problem until the first case was diagnosed in Brazil in late February. Since then, the coronavirus has spread briskly in the region.
The public health impact will probably be devastating. A large share of the population in Latin America lives in dense urban enclaves, where the virus appears to spread with the most ease. An estimated 490 million people lack proper sanitation.....
This IS beginning to look MORE and MORE like a GENOCIDAL CULL, folks.
They are GOING LIVE!
--more--"
Also see:
Britain’s Prince Charles tests positive for the coronavirus
Yeah, all these rich and powerful people are contracting the coronavirus, geez! No one is safe, right?
I'm glad I'm not hobnobbing with that sickening crowd.
Canada imposes mandatory self-isolation for returnees
Just got off the return flight from England did they.
"The number of coronavirus deaths in Spain surpassed 3,400 on Wednesday, as health authorities struggled to cope with what has emerged as the worst outbreak in the world after Italy. The overnight increase of 738 deaths, taking the death toll to 3,434, was the biggest increase the country has reported so far. A total of 47,610 people have tested positive, according to Spain’s ministry of health. The rise meant Spain leapfrogged ahead of the official death tally in China, where the global pandemic began but the rate of reported new infections has tapered off. There have been 3,285 deaths in China, according to Johns Hopkins data. Italy remains the world’s worst-hit country, with more than 6,800 dead. The picture in Spain is grim. Soldiers have discovered bodies abandoned in nursing homes where dozens have died. The capital Madrid, the worst-hit area, has turned an ice-skating rink into a morgue, but municipal workers say they lack the protective supplies to collect the dead. Spanish television has broadcast images of sickened patients sleeping in hospital corridors, while staff complain that medical supplies are so low they’ve been forced to use plastic garbage bags as protection instead of gowns. Health specialists expect the situation to get worse before it gets better, warning that hospitals could reach their capacity for new intensive care patients as early as this week, as the number of serious cases peak. Italy has been the hardest-hit nation in Europe with more than 69,000 infections and 6,800 deaths. Authorities are investigating whether a hotly contested Champions League soccer game in Milan in February poured rocket fuel on the crisis that is overwhelming Italian hospitals. Italian doctors are being forced to choose who will receive desperately needed ventilators and who won’t."
I hate to say it, but those images that were broadcast my the ma$$ media were fake, and that calls into question this photograph:
Health workers carried a body on a stretcher out of Gregorio Maranon hospital in Madrid on Wednesday, as Spain joined Italy in seeing its death toll from the coronavirus pandemic surpass that of China. (Oscar del Pozo/AFP via Getty Images)
"Citing the coronavirus, Russian President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday postponed a nationwide vote on proposed constitutional amendments that include a change potentially allowing him to stay in office until 2036. Putin didn’t set a new date for the plebiscite originally scheduled for April 22, saying it would depend on how the pandemic develops in Russia. He also announced during a televised address to the nation that the government doesn’t want Russians to go to work next week, except for those in essential sectors. Stores, pharmacies, and banks will stay open, he said. Russian authorities reported 163 more virus cases in the country Wednesday from a day earlier, bringing the national total to 658. That marked a significantly bigger daily increase from previous days, when the number of new infections grew only by several dozens. Russia’s comparatively low number of cases given its size and shared border with China raised questions and doubts about the veracity of official statistics. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin told Putin Tuesday that the low number could reflect insufficient screening in Russia rather than the actual scale of the outbreak and said the situation was “serious.” Kremlin critics have accused the authorities of manipulating coronavirus statistics to ram the constitutional vote through at any cost — allegations that the government has rejected."
NO WAY!
The ebil dictator Putin postponed a referendum that would make him Fuhrer for life?
As for the pre$$ projection regarding Russia, noted.
Mass. needs a comprehensive care response to the coronavirus
This is what they suggest:
Workers hold a trial run for a new FEMA drive-thru coronavirus testing clinic at CVS in Shrewsbury on March 19. (John Tlumacki/Globe Staff)
Sure looks like the bottom to me.
Code Blue: We’re doctors and we need personal protective equipment to shield us from the coronavirus — now
Parking manager Alain Baptiste hands out masks at a staff entrance to Brigham and Women's Hospital Wednesday. (Craig F. Walker/Globe Staff)
Again, where is the social distancing?
Can't they leave the mask on a tale so they can come and get it?
As coronavirus spreads, medical examiner tells staff to take ‘bare minimum’ of cases
You will want to read that from bottom up and from a distance because the coronavirus is everywhere.
It's a new reality with life on hold.
(flip to below B1 fold)
MIT agrees to pay food service workers through May 22
Somehow, the Globe reporters missed this [with my commentary and emphasis]:
"We’re not going back to normal; Social distancing is here to stay for much more than a few weeks. It will upend our way of life, in some ways forever" by Gideon Lichfield, Mar 17, 2020
To stop coronavirus we will need to radically change almost everything we do: how we work, exercise, socialize, shop, manage our health, educate our kids, take care of family members.
We all want things to go back to normal quickly, but what most of us have probably not yet realized—yet will soon—is that things won’t go back to normal after a few weeks, or even a few months. Some things never will.
You can read all our coverage of the coronavirus/Covid-19 outbreak for free, and also sign up for our coronavirus newsletter. But please consider subscribing to support our nonprofit journalism.
[They f***ing take time out to grift right in the middle of this? Seriously?]
It’s now widely agreed (even by Britain, finally) that every country needs to “flatten the curve”: impose social distancing to slow the spread of the virus so that the number of people sick at once doesn’t cause the health-care system to collapse, as it is threatening to do in Italy right now. That means the pandemic needs to last, at a low level, until either enough people have had Covid-19 to leave most immune (assuming immunity lasts for years, which we don’t know) or there’s a vaccine.
How long would that take, and how draconian do social restrictions need to be? Yesterday President Donald Trump, announcing new guidelines such as a 10-person limit on gatherings, said that “with several weeks of focused action, we can turn the corner and turn it quickly.” In China, six weeks of lockdown are beginning to ease now that new cases have fallen to a trickle, but it won’t end there. As long as someone in the world has the virus, breakouts can and will keep recurring without stringent controls to contain them. In a report yesterday (pdf), researchers at Imperial College London proposed a way of doing this: impose more extreme social distancing measures every time admissions to intensive care units (ICUs) start to spike, and relax them each time admissions fall. Here’s how that looks in a graph:
See second slide.
The orange line is ICU admissions. Each time they rise above a threshold—say, 100 per week—the country would close all schools and most universities and adopt social distancing. When they drop below 50, those measures would be lifted, but people with symptoms or whose family members have symptoms would still be confined at home.
What counts as “social distancing”? The researchers define it as “All households reduce contact outside household, school or workplace by 75%.” That doesn’t mean you get to go out with your friends once a week instead of four times. It means everyone does everything they can to minimize social contact, and overall, the number of contacts falls by 75%.
Under this model, the researchers conclude, social distancing and school closures would need to be in force some two-thirds of the time—roughly two months on and one month off—until a vaccine is available, which will take at least 18 months (if it works at all). They note that the results are “qualitatively similar for the US.”
Eighteen months!? Surely there must be other solutions. Why not just build more ICUs and treat more people at once, for example?
Well, in the researchers’ model, that didn’t solve the problem. Without social distancing of the whole population, they found, even the best mitigation strategy—which means isolation or quarantine of the sick, the old, and those who have been exposed, plus school closures—would still lead to a surge of critically ill people eight times bigger than the US or UK system can cope with. (That’s the lowest, blue curve in the graph below; the flat red line is the current number of ICU beds.) Even if you set factories to churn out beds and ventilators and all the other facilities and supplies, you’d still need far more nurses and doctors to take care of everyone.
See third slide.
How about imposing restrictions for just one batch of five months or so? No good—once measures are lifted, the pandemic breaks out all over again, only this time it’s in winter, the worst time for overstretched health-care systems, and what if we decided to be brutal: set the threshold number of ICU admissions for triggering social distancing much higher, accepting that many more patients would die? Turns out it makes little difference. Even in the least restrictive of the Imperial College scenarios, we’re shut in more than half the time.
See fourth slide.
This isn’t a temporary disruption. It’s the start of a completely different way of life.
Living in a state of pandemic
In the short term, this will be hugely damaging to businesses that rely on people coming together in large numbers: restaurants, cafes, bars, nightclubs, gyms, hotels, theaters, cinemas, art galleries, shopping malls, craft fairs, museums, musicians and other performers, sporting venues (and sports teams), conference venues (and conference producers), cruise lines, airlines, public transportation, private schools, day-care centers. That’s to say nothing of the stresses on parents thrust into home-schooling their kids, people trying to care for elderly relatives without exposing them to the virus, people trapped in abusive relationships, and anyone without a financial cushion to deal with swings in income.
There’ll be some adaptation, of course: gyms could start selling home equipment and online training sessions, for example. We’ll see an explosion of new services in what’s already been dubbed the “shut-in economy.” One can also wax hopeful about the way some habits might change—less carbon-burning travel, more local supply chains, more walking and biking, but the disruption to many, many businesses and livelihoods will be impossible to manage, and the shut-in lifestyle just isn’t sustainable for such long periods.
So how can we live in this new world? Part of the answer—hopefully—will be better health-care systems, with pandemic response units that can move quickly to identify and contain outbreaks before they start to spread, and the ability to quickly ramp up production of medical equipment, testing kits, and drugs. Those will be too late to stop Covid-19, but they’ll help with future pandemics.
In the near term, we’ll probably find awkward compromises that allow us to retain some semblance of a social life. Maybe movie theaters will take out half their seats, meetings will be held in larger rooms with spaced-out chairs, and gyms will require you to book workouts ahead of time so they don’t get crowded.
Ultimately, however, I predict that we’ll restore the ability to socialize safely by developing more sophisticated ways to identify who is a disease risk and who isn’t, and discriminating—legally—against those who are.
[Do you know what a LEPER is, dear readers? Because that is what this sick elitist fuck is referring]
We can see harbingers of this in the measures some countries are taking today. Israel is going to use the cell-phone location data with which its intelligence services track terrorists to trace people who’ve been in touch with known carriers of the virus. Singapore does exhaustive contact tracing and publishes detailed data on each known case, all but identifying people by name.
[Yeah, let's all be like IsraHell]
We don’t know exactly what this new future looks like, of course, but one can imagine a world in which, to get on a flight, perhaps you’ll have to be signed up to a service that tracks your movements via your phone. The airline wouldn’t be able to see where you’d gone, but it would get an alert if you’d been close to known infected people or disease hot spots. There’d be similar requirements at the entrance to large venues, government buildings, or public transport hubs. There would be temperature scanners everywhere, and your workplace might demand you wear a monitor that tracks your temperature or other vital signs. Where nightclubs ask for proof of age, in future they might ask for proof of immunity—an identity card or some kind of digital verification via your phone, showing you’ve already recovered from or been vaccinated against the latest virus strains.
We’ll adapt to and accept such measures, much as we’ve adapted to increasingly stringent airport security screenings in the wake of terrorist attacks. The intrusive surveillance will be considered a small price to pay for the basic freedom to be with other people.
[Please contemplate what he is saying. That is where these sick f***s want to take us and this world. EVIL!]
As usual, however, the true cost will be borne by the poorest and weakest. People with less access to health care, or who live in more disease-prone areas, will now also be more frequently shut out of places and opportunities open to everyone else. Gig workers—from drivers to plumbers to freelance yoga instructors—will see their jobs become even more precarious. Immigrants, refugees, the undocumented, and ex-convicts will face yet another obstacle to gaining a foothold in society.
[I'm thinking they kill the vast majority of us before then]
Moreover, unless there are strict rules on how someone’s risk for disease is assessed, governments or companies could choose any criteria—you’re high-risk if you earn less than $50,000 a year, are in a family of more than six people, and live in certain parts of the country, for example. That creates scope for algorithmic bias and hidden discrimination, as happened last year with an algorithm used by US health insurers that turned out to inadvertently favor white people.
The genocidal $upremaci$t is now bringing up race so he can advocating for killing all the white people!
Good God!
The world has changed many times, and it is changing again. All of us will have to adapt to a new way of living, working, and forging relationships, but as with all change, there will be some who lose more than most, and they will be the ones who have lost far too much already. The best we can hope for is that the depth of this crisis will finally force countries—the US, in particular—to fix the yawning social inequities that make large swaths of their populations so intensely vulnerable.
Yeah, they are doing it for our own benefit, right.
MON$TER!
--MORE--"
I would say it is time to get out of Dodge:
"The ridership collapse in Boston — by more than 80 percent on the MBTA’s subway and 50 percent on buses — is, in a good way, a sign that much of the public is taking social distancing orders seriously, even as the transit system remains in operation to ensure essential employees such as hospital and grocery workers can still get around......"
Oh, look, the Globe found the kernel of corn in the turd, and keep your distance from the grocery workers.
"Jonathan Quigley, 32, of Scituate, was arrested Tuesday for allegedly trying to strangle an MBTA Transit Police officer inside South Station. In a statement, officials said. The violence unfolded around 5:25 p.m., when a woman at the station told police she had just seen a man throw a bottle through a large window pane, shattering it, Transit police said in a statement. She pointed out Quigley as he walked toward Track 1, and an officer told him several times to stop, but Quigley ignored the commands, police said.The officer caught up to Quigley, who allegedly tried to strike the officer in the head. The officer avoided the hit, but " Quigley then grabbed the officer by his throat and began to strangle him. A violent struggle ensued where the officer was able to fend off his attacker and additional officers responded to assist.” Quigley was taken into custody on charges of strangulation, resisting arrest, and malicious destruction of property, according to the statement. He’ll be arraigned at a later date."
They should flush his ass.
Amid coronavirus, a surge in calls to Massachusetts suicide prevention hotline
Did she disinfect that phone, and why no gloves?
The Globe then helps you into your ComfortZone with Diti Kohli, Jenna Pelletier, and Meredith Goldstein (I wouldn't touch her with a 30-foot......), and I hope they got a room:
In a matter of days, coronavirus has devastated Boston’s hotel industry
These guys will take separate rooms, please:
Baker, Walsh are at odds over coronavirus construction ban
Time to head on over to the clinic and brace for the onslaught.
Dow swells nearly 500 points as Wall Street stretches stock rally into second day
A venture capitalist got coronavirus. It gave him ideas about protecting health and the economy
The story by Andy Rosen of Globe Staff, concerns one "David Frankel, who spent days laid out with coughing fits, fever, and headaches, but as the symptoms began to recede, he began to imagine with some clarity what the economy might look like as it recovers from the shock of the fast-moving pandemic. Frankel, a venture capitalist with the Cambridge early-stage investment firm Founder Collective, says tech companies will soon be trying to meet needs that might have seemed unlikely before the coronavirus turned the world upside-down. He sees big potential for innovations in fields including teleconferencing and touchless public accommodations, but believes the biggest change coming from the crisis might be a shift in public attitudes about the monitoring and sharing of real-time health data. He’s been detailing on social media his own experience with the virus in hopes that more people will be more cognizant of the threat."
David Frankel of Founder Collective predicts that as a result of the coronavirus crisis, people will be asked to share more real-time health data.Founder Collective
Looks like a nice guy, not a $elf-$erving vulture at all.
I must be going deaf.
Baker under pressure to delay April 15 tax filings to match feds
Michael Heffernan (center), the state administration and finance chief, is being pressed on extending the state tax filing deadline. (Pat Greenhouse/Globe Staff/File/2017)
One of Ma$$achu$etts' untouchables.
Takeda donates more than $6 million to fight coronavirus
That is what is known as a $hakedown! Give to the cause, support the narrative, help push the agenda -- or you won't get bailout loot.
Floyd Cardoz, the influential Indian American chef behind the groundbreaking Tabla, dies of complications from covid-19
One can only wonder what kind of evil they are cooking up in the lab.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
In "other news" (upper-half lead, of course):
"Israeli parliament speaker quits, easing constitutional turmoil" by David M. Halbfinger New York Times, March 25, 2020
JERUSALEM — The resignation of the speaker of Israel’s parliament, Yuli Edelstein, 61, a staunch ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a refusenik who spent three years in a Soviet prison before immigrating to Israel in 1987 and who had led parliament since 2013, appeared to avert a constitutional crisis that had been brewing for weeks, but it left Israel still no closer to resolving its long political deadlock.
Blue and White leader Benny Gantz has a limited window to form a government and has made overtures to Netanyahu and his Likud party about joining a unity coalition, among other things, citing the emergency posed by the coronavirus outbreak, but Netanyahu has insisted that he remain prime minister in any case.
Edelstein, a member of the Likud party, said in a statement, “As a democrat, as a Zionist Jew, as someone who fought dark regimes, and as chairman of the House, I will not let Israel deteriorate into anarchy. I will not enable a civil war.”
How rarely do you see that word in my Zioni$t-controlled, Jewi$h War Pre$$.
Critics of the high-stakes brinkmanship warned that it was undermining bedrock political institutions. Although the replacement of Edelstein as speaker appeared to be just a matter of time, analysts said the broader political stalemate showed no sign of easing and was growing more acute under the strain of fighting the coronavirus.
Amnon Reichman, a professor of public law at the University of Haifa’s Minerva Center for the Rule of Law under Extreme Conditions, said that Israeli democracy remained “under stress,” and pointed to Netanyahu’s use of emergency ordinances to address the health emergency, a measure he called drastic.
How much more does the poor, victimized Jew have to put up with anyway?
Oyvay!
“If we were to use a matrix of green, yellow, orange, and red, I’d say we are entering the orange stage,” he said.
Back to that silly, juvenile, mind-manipulating, jerk-job, huh?
The machinations, which came as hundreds of protesters with black flags demonstrated and shut down traffic outside parliament, did not end there.....
It did for me.
--more--"
Anti-incumbent government protesters celebrated the resignation of Knesset Speaker Yuli Eldenstein during a demonstration in front of the Knesset in Jerusalem on Wednesday. (Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images)
Finally, SOMEONE practicing SOCIAL DISTANCING!
Lower right quadrant:
"As states reshuffle the primary calendar, June 2 is suddenly looking more super" by Trip Gabriel New York Times, March 25, 2020
Think of it as Super Postponed Day.
June 2 had been an afterthought on the Democratic primary calendar. Ever since Joe Biden seized the mantle of front-runner, voters in New Jersey and a few other states scheduled to vote that day assumed the Democratic horse race would be over before their primaries rolled around, but with numerous states pushing back voting to June 2 because of the coronavirus pandemic, the date has gained sudden prominence. It now confers a huge bounty of delegates, second only to Super Tuesday in early March, with Indiana, Pennsylvania, and others now moving to hold their primaries June 2.
Why haven't they cancelled the remaining primaries and convention?
Although Biden has built an all but insurmountable lead, June 2 — which is 10 weeks away — will be his first chance to clinch the presidential nomination. Only then would the former vice president have a definitive reason to press for the withdrawal of Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has shown no inclination to leave the race.
Good! He may yet be the nominee!
Some Democratic strategists see possible perils in the delay. Having to wait until June 2 for the next major chapter in the nominating race largely deprives Biden of a chance to rack up interim victories that would bring media attention. President Trump, meanwhile, is promoting his leadership in a global pandemic. A Monmouth University Poll on Tuesday showed Biden with a 3-point lead over Trump among registered voters nationally, 48 percent to 45 percent, an edge the pollsters called “negligible.”
Poor Joe.
As the Democratic nominee-in-waiting, Biden may simply have to wait longer.
“This idea apparently being floated by the Sanders campaign that Bernie can stay in the race and accumulate delegates without harming Biden’s chances of winning in November is delusional,” said J.J. Balaban, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania. The lengthy pause in the primary and Sanders’s reluctance to step aside are distractions, Balaban said, from the need for Democrats to refocus on the general election race, in which Trump has a head start raising money and coalescing supporters.
OMG!!
Michael Soliman, a Democratic strategist in New Jersey, said the delay might not be all bad if it concentrates the minds of voters on the need for change in the White House.
WTF?!!
This goddamn life-or-death crisis that has us all under house arrest could be USEFUL POLITICALLY?
How DISGUSTING!
“As this crisis causes more states to push back their primaries, New Jersey voters will not only be reminded about the need for strong and steady leadership, but they will finally be in a position to play a meaningful role in securing the nomination for Joe Biden,” he said.....
And that is the most important thing.
Why not just coronate him now?
--more--"
Related:
Bye-Bye, Bernie!
Bernie's Last Stand
We have reached a pivotal moment.
Also see:
"Militants stormed a crowded Sikh temple and housing complex in Kabul on Wednesday, killing at least 25 people in a six-hour siege just as war-ravaged Afghanistan is starting to struggle with the global coronavirus contagion....."
Family members crid after an attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, Wednesday.Rahmat Gul/Associated Press/Associated Press
I'm not going to scold them for the lack of social distancing, and all that occurs just after Pompeo was there. What a coincidence.
"Boko Haram extremists have killed at least 92 Chadian soldiers in the deadliest attack on the nation’s forces, Chad’s president said. The attack took place overnight Sunday into Monday in the village of Boma in the Lac province near the border with Nigeria and Niger. President Idriss Deby gave the toll on state television late Tuesday after visiting the site. “Never in our history have we lost so many men at one time,” he said. Boko Haram extremists have killed tens of thousands and forced millions from their homes during their more than decade-long insurgency. They have carried out numerous attacks in the Lake Chad region where Cameroon, Chad, Nigeria and Niger come together. The Islamic extremist group also killed 50 Nigerian soldiers on Monday in a separate attack in Yobe state in Nigeria’s north."
Related: Boko Haram in Nigeria
Looks like GlobalResearch is UNDER ATTACK (web server down)!
Turkey indicts 20 Saudis in Khashoggi’s killing
Who remembers him now?
"A water main break flooded a street and poured water into basements in Quincy early Wednesday, Quincy Police Detective Sergeant Karyn Barkassaid. The water main break was reported at 3:42 a.m. on Belmont Street, Barkas said. The water has flooded into at least two basements of homes on the street, she said. Barkas said the Quincy Fire Department went door to door to see if homes in the area had been affected by the flooding. Parts of Belmont Street remain closed Wednesday morning."
"A crane used for landscaping tipped over and knocked out power to two homes near 25 Boyd Road just after 10 a.m. Wednesday, Fire Chief Stephen Adgate said. The crane malfunctioned while it was being used by a company to take down a tree in the neighborhood. “It damaged a fence and affected the power in the homes around it but the houses weren’t in danger," Adgate said. No one was injured or needed to be rescued. “I heard a big boom but didn’t think anything of it since we live near the highway, but then we saw police cars going down the street and found out that was when the crane hit the ground," said Sharon Simeone who lives near where the crane was working A heavy duty tow truck pulled the crane back down to its normal position by 4 p.m., she said."
"A judge has denied a motion to dismiss a class-action lawsuit against New Hampshire based gun manufacturer SIG Sauer. Judge Joseph Laplante found Monday that Derick Ortiz, who filed the lawsuit in September, had adequately proved his standing for litigation, New Hampshire Public Radio reported. Ortiz, of Snowflake, Arizona, alleges that a design flaw in the P320 could cause the gun to fire unintentionally when dropped. Ortiz says he paid $500 for the pistol and would have paid less if he was aware of the flaw. Lawyers for the Newington-based manufacturer argued in February that Ortiz was not harmed and that the company is already offering to fix all P320’s free of charge. The case will now move to discovery if Laplante decides a class action suit is warranted hundreds of thousands of SIG owners could be eligible for compensation (AP)."
Meanwhile, on this day in 1945, during World War II, Iwo Jima was fully secured by US forces following a final, desperate attack by Japanese soldiers, while in 1979, a peace treaty was signed by Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and witnessed by President Carter at the White House.
Time to get lo$t in a world of fantasy, readers, as they guide us and protect us from up there.
EVENING UPDATE:
10 new coronavirus-related deaths, 579 new cases in Mass.
More than 100 Boston hospital workers test positive for coronavirus in a disturbing rise
All due to community spread, so stay in self-confinement.
State child welfare worker infected with coronavirus, others ill and awaiting test results
The tests they are using are faulty and give false positives about 75% of the time, but so what? They swab you, you're done. Vaccination later.
Coronavirus creeping into Massachusetts senior sites
This is become genocidal evil by the most sickeningly evil psychopaths in all history.
US now leads world in number of confirmed coronavirus cases, according to Johns Hopkins University tally
Is that what the simulation called for, and what's this regarding Italy's death toll?
Italy: Only 12% of “Covid19 deaths” list Covid19 as cause Report shows up to 88% of Italy’s alleged Covid19 deaths could be misattributed
That means the ma$$ media and Johns Hopkins have been calling all deaths coronavirus no matter what! We have been lied to yet again!
Stocks surge on stimulus plan; Dow closes up 1,300, marking a three-day rally
Stop letting senators play the stock market
You are five days too late and about $5 trillion dollars too late, Globe, and don't worry, they say you need not stock up on water!