Intro

It's time for a reality check ...

Maybe we’ve reached the point of diminishing astonishment.

But I suspect that much of what we’re hammered with every day really doesn’t make much of an impact on most of us anymore. We’ve heard the same stories too often. We’ve been exposed to the same issues for so long without any meaningful resolution. We recognize that reality is rapidly becoming malleable, primarily in the hands of whoever has the biggest microphone. How else can we explain a society where myth asserts itself as reality, based entirely how many hits it gets online?

We know that many of the “issues” as defined are pure crapola, hyped by politicians on both sides pandering to “the will of the people,” which is still more crapola. Inevitably, it’s not the will of all the people they reflect, but the will of relatively small groups of people with disproportionate political influence.

Nobody wants to face up to the realities of the issues. Nobody wants to say what’s right or wrong – even when it’s obvious and there are numbers to back it up. Most of us are afraid to bring up the realities for fear of being accused of being insensitive or downright mean.

So we say nothing. Until now.

It’s time for a reality check on the fundamentals – much of which is common knowledge to many of us, already. But it might be comforting to know you are not alone …

Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Do Americans believe Pelosi and Schumer?


Pelosi and Schumer apparently think so.  Their pals in the media do, too. 

The American public can’t be that dumb.  I understand some people only hear what they want to – only stuff that reinforces the views they already hold. Hence, people who watch The View.    

But seriously, if anyone actually believes everything Pelosi and Schumer say, they are probably only a couple of IQ points above the need to be watered.  If it weren’t for their involuntary nervous system they’d forget to breathe. 

They can’t possibly be holding down real jobs; I can’t imagine any regular business hiring them, except for some horrifyingly dangerous job no one with any sense at all would do.  Or, perhaps they could get hired in government or in government-managed social services where common sense obviously isn’t always a mandatory requirement for employment.

Maybe that’s why so many employed there are Democrats. 

I prefer to think the people who claim to agree with everything said by Pelosi and Schumer realize these two are lying bullshit artists spouting a constant stream of crap no one could possibly believe.  But because they hate Trump just as much as these two, they’re okay with this nonsense.  However, they know it’s actually all ridiculous blather by these two buffoons. 

I’d rather think that’s the case. I’d hate to think that anyone could take them seriously.  

We are all aware the effects of the latest coronavirus are being felt across the world. Air travel is down. People are cancelling trips. Conventions and conferences are being rescheduled or cancelled.  Companies overseas are halting production sometimes at the request of their governments.  This is rippling across global supply chains and affecting companies here dependent on overseas suppliers.  The big banks and large investment firms are predicting economic contraction. 

Hundreds of thousands are known to have been infected with the virus, with perhaps hundreds of thousands more not documented.  A relatively tiny fraction of those known to be infected have died – less than 1%, in fact; mostly the elderly already with serious underlying conditions. 

Pelosi and Schumer blamed Trump for the deaths.  They blamed Trump for the first stock market slide because he didn’t act soon enough. They blamed him for not having enough supplies on hand, for not having a vaccine already for a month-old virus, and for not “showing leadership” in the face of such a crisis, which at that point had claimed about 11 American lives. Total.

Panic ensued. Stocks slid further.  Nice job, Nancy and Chuck.   

Then, over this weekend the Saudis and the Russians got into a pissing match.   

The Saudis wanted to curtail production to stabilize prices in the face of reduced demand from China in particular from the coronavirus event. The Russians refused to curtail production.

So the Saudis abruptly cut their crude prices by 6-7%. This caused the world crude market to plummet. Which was okay with the Russians, because they want prices to fall to curtail fracking in the U.S.; fracking here – only economic when oil prices are in the $50+ per barrel – has made the U.S. energy independent and the world less reliant on Russia’s #1 export for cash. 

Russia’s probably regretting blowing off the Saudis right now since world crude prices dropped to as low as $30 a barrel almost immediately. And make no mistake, Russia may want to hurt the U.S. fracking industry, but Russia desperately needs hard currency and oil is their biggest export. The Russian economy is taking a huge hit when world prices go this low. 

The possibility this might also hurt our own oil companies, and throw some heavily leveraged fracking companies into bankruptcy, sent our stock market down more than 2000 points.    

Now Pelosi and Schumer are blaming Trump for this slide as well. Pelosi went on TV midday to say the dramatic market slide was because nobody had confidence in the Trump administration to handle the coronavirus outbreak.  She said nothing about the collapse of oil prices as a cause. 

That’s despite leading market analysts blaming the most recent and deepest drop on the cratering oil market on top of jitters over the worldwide economic slowdown from the coronavirus outbreak. In effect, it’s a perfect storm of two unfortunate events hitting at the same time.   

Trump has nothing to do with either one.

The first started in China; the second in Saudi Arabia and Russia.  

Blaming Trump for the new shortage of masks, medical supplies, antibiotics, and critical pharmaceutical ingredients is way off base, too.

The real reason for these shortages is that almost all of them are now made in China. That’s right – China.  Why? Because it’s cheaper and more profitable to make them there.  So we don’t make them here anymore.  That’s made us far more dependent on China for our own health and safety than we should have ever allowed to happen.

If anything, Trump has been warning of our dependence on China, and the need to bring back critical manufacturing industries back to the U.S., for years. The same Democrats now accusing him of letting the U.S. run short of critical medical supplies routinely attacked him whenever he spoke of the national security need to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.     

It's impossible to believe anything Nancy and Chuck say – they are willing to destroy this country if it destroys Trump.  That’s why they are blaming Trump for everything and doing everything in their power to prevent him from succeeding.

If that means encouraging stock market drops that eviscerate people’s 401(k)s and other retirement savings, so be it.  If that means fostering unwarranted fear that the coronavirus is about to kill thousands of Americans because we are woefully unprepared to handle, so be it.   

The only thing Nancy said I believe is that she prays every day for the President. I think she does. But she never said what she’s praying for. 

With the coronavirus panic and the stock market crashing, she most likely believes her prayers have finally been answered. 

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