It just doesn't seem right ...

The country faces a decision, do what's right or continue on a path leading toward eventual dissolution,  driven by racism, greed and corruption, the three entities threatening the continued existence of a once-great nation.

From an out of control MIC governed military budget to a broken for-profit healthcare system, the list of financial and corrupt dealings of the deep state extends to forever while tearing this country apart in ways that never cease to amaze. Consider the following: (a tiny subset at best)

• Education costs. College tuition has increased by approximately 8% a year vs inflation levels of less than 1% ... - End result: student loans totaling 1.4 trillion.
• Healthcare, the broken system described above, 3.4 trillion and rising.
• Credit Card debt. 1.06 trillion. 
• Wall Street 2019 profits: 100 billion. Question, how does this benefit main street?
• Inequality ... The top 1% own 40% of the total wealth of the nation. 
• Financialization 2019 equaled 21% of GDP, the largest single sector of the GDP.
• No safety net, like that of the Scandinavian countries, exists in America. Healthcare costs as prime example No. 1.
• Racism rules -  George Floyd as prime example No. 1.
• Militarization of Police departments: 7.4 billion courtesy the Pentagon's 1033 program. Ditto Homeland Security contributions to the cause.
• Gutting the EPA equates to gutting the environment. 
• Gutting US manufacturing to goose stockholder profits, courtesy the Great Communicator Ronnie Reagan and government, done in collusion with big companies, to offshore said manufacturing, thus giving rise to modern China. Think GE.
• Ramping up fossil fuel production at the expense of sustainables
• Bankrupt foreign policy resulting in endless wars threatens the very existence of civilization. Think, Trump, China and Iran.
• The Great Depression of 2020 begins, thanks to Trump's bungled attempt to deal with COVID-19.
• Violence looms as the weather gets hotter and more and more people, not having enough money to survive, begin to seeth while Wall Street and the billionaires continue to rake in record profits.
• Tax cuts for billionaires while main street and the rest of the population continue to get screwed.
• DOJ pushing to suspend "certain" Constitutional right to citizens vis a vis COVID-19.
• The elimination of the 1st Amendment's separation of church and state clause thanks to the supremes.
• Climate Change, the existential threat to mankind, is on the move ...
• The list goes on and on and on ...

The role of the military in government is now in play ...

For years, top military leadership has tried to minimize the perception that the armed forces are being used by the president for political purposes.

The president is trumpeting his powers as commander in chief as the nation confronts the dual crises of civil unrest over racial injustice and a public health emergency. On Monday, he said he was putting Milley, the nation’s top military officer, “in charge” of restoring order and threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, an 1807 law that gives him the authority to deploy federal troops to respond to domestic disorder.

Esper and Milley appear to have embraced their new roles, unlike Trump’s first Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who resigned in protest of the decision to pull troops out of Syria, and former Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, who mostly remained in the shadows and was rarely photographed in public.

The Pentagon was “taken aback” by the president’s comments putting Milley in charge, according to one senior defense official.

“There is growing concern that this is not good for the role of the military going forward,” the official said. “Now you’ve injected the military into a moment in a political way. It just doesn’t seem right.”

No, it doesn't and ... the clock is ticking ...

Things must change ... Now

The picture of The Donald holding a bible is farcical at best. A cynical photo-op showing that the emperor has no clothes, a man desperate to be reelected is the key here as Agent Orange knows the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York is waiting to nail his ass on fraud and money laundering, among other crimes and misdemeanors, if he loses. 

As the hours ticked down to prime time, the White House prepared its unholy production. It was Monday afternoon, and President Trump was getting ready to deliver his first speech on the massive protests sweeping the country. After unflattering reports that he had spent Friday evening in a bunker, Trump summoned the press corps to the Rose Garden for maximum effect. Never mind that the chaos had given way to peaceful demonstrations outside the White House. Men and women, along the sunny edge of Lafayette Park, chanted and knelt. A young boy and girl, flanking their father, held protest signs. A vender touted coronavirus masks bearing the grim slogan of our time: “I Can’t Breathe.”

Normally, one of the most striking features of the White House is its nearness. For years, tourists who stroll down Pennsylvania Avenue have been startled to come so close to the building, which is situated with a confident, open face to the world, a contrast to the secluded warrens of power in Beijing or Moscow. In recent months, that has been less true. Last summer, the Trump Administration started building a new thirteen-foot fence, twice the height of the old one, equipped with “anti-climb and intrusion detection technology.” It closed off Pennsylvania Avenue to pedestrians and cloaked the building behind a tall, white construction wall. 

On Tuesday, in Minneapolis, hundreds of protesters, many wearing face masks to guard against the coronavirus, gathered to protest at the spot where Floyd died.

Endgame. 

For many in the crowd, Floyd’s death was the final spark to a reservoir of anger and despair. “It’s all of it. It’s all of it together,” Kandyce Baker, a thirty-one-year-old woman who held a sign with a painting of Floyd’s face, told me. “I think the tipping point for me started with Ahmaud Arbery. I’m an avid runner. I have a lot of friends who are avid runners. I ran nine marathons, and that could have been me. That could’ve easily been one of my friends.” (Arbery, who was twenty-five, was shot to death in February by two men while he was jogging in Brunswick, Georgia.) She added, “And then, after that, with Breonna Taylor and then George Floyd. It’s like having a Rodney King every day.”

Baker, who has a master’s degree in criminology, told me, “Not only do you have police protecting each other, but you also have police of color who are afraid to speak up because of the blue code of silence. And whether it’s because of retaliation, because they’re afraid that they’re going to lose their jobs . . . the police culture is incredibly toxic.

Times mus change ... Now

Comeuppance

Comeupance indeed. :)

Imagine if we could actually see this ....

Black holes are slowly releasing their secrets and now, scientists have seen jets issuing forth from one devouring its stellar companion just 10,000 light-years from earth.

May 29 (UPI) -- Scientists with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory released a new video Friday showing a pair of jets exploding from a black hole located 10,000 light-years from Earth. Chandra recorded the jets approaching speeds of nearly 80 percent the speed of light.

The black hole and a companion star form a binary system named MAXI J1820+070. The pair were first discovered in 2018, and astronomers have been closely monitoring the system ever since.

X-ray observations captured by Chandra between November 2018 and May 2019 revealed the signatures of radio jets moving at relativistic velocities.

This is what Chandra actually saw. To read the paper describing this particular black hole, click here.

Stellar is it not?

On your mark ... :)

A gem for sure. :)

The poles beckon

If anyone wants to dispute global warming, first check out what other species are doing to escape the heat. In terms of heading toward the poles, marine denizens are in the lead save for insects.

We know that global warming is forcing many animals around the world to flee their normal habitats, but now, an exhaustive analysis has shown marine species are booking it for the poles six times faster than those on land.

In the review, amphibians were found to be moving up slope at over 12 metres a year, while reptiles seem to be headed towards the equator at 6.5 metres a year.

Insects, which incidentally carry many diseases, were found to be moving poleward at 18.5 kilometres per year.

This discrepancy between land and water could exist for several reasons. It might, for instance, be a product of temperature sensitivity. Air conducts heat 25 times less effectively than water, and many land animals can easily regulate their body temperature if they want.

On the move says it all.

The light has gone out ...

A pro-democracy protest in Hong Kong in December.Credit...Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times

Hong Kong, a free enterprise and successful democratic entity, is losing it's light thanks to Xi's determination to remain in power forever. Yours truly has two Hong Konger friends who have taught me much as to just how vibrant and interesting this city truly is, two essential quantities all societies need to stay healthy as civilization moves further into the 21st century. 

HONG KONG — China and its allies are using threats and pressure to get business to back Beijing’s increasingly hard-line stance toward Hong Kong, leading companies to muzzle or intimidate workers who speak out in protest.

Lawyers, bankers, professors and other professionals interviewed by The New York Times described a growing culture of fear in offices across the city. Employees face pressure to support pro-Beijing candidates in local elections and echo the Chinese government’s official line. Those who speak out can be punished or even forced out.

Read the detailed NYTimes piece in its entirety. It's the right thing to do.

Yet another visitor ...

Hubble yet again ...

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has given astronomers their best look yet at an interstellar visitor – Comet 2I/Borisov – whose speed and trajectory indicates it is from outside of our Solar System.

This Hubble image, taken on October 12, is the sharpest ever view of the comet. Hubble reveals a central concentration of dust around the solid icy nucleus.

For more information, visit https://nasa.gov/hubble.

"Ain't" science grand? :)

Water, Water everywhere ...

With data from the Hubble Space Telescope, water vapor has been detected in the atmosphere of a super-Earth within the habitable zone of its host star.

K2-18b, which is eight times the mass of Earth, is the only planet orbiting a star outside the solar system (or “exoplanet”) within the habitable zone.

For more information, visit https://nasa.gov/hubble.

Just a matter of time when life is discovered and when it is, man's take on the universe will be changed forever.

The Economy after COVID-19

This is a shot taken by yours truly over 43 years ago, entering Wyoming on a trip lasting 3 weeks, camping in a beloved 1970 VW camper bus. I show this picture as entry point to an insightful article by a good friend who happens to know a great deal about finance and the economy and how it may spin out vis a vis COVID-19. We all know economics is not a science, never has been, never will be but it can be really valuable when practiced by guys as smart and humane as Dan. Enjoy. 

State of Play

What we are witnessing is the ongoing saga of how a solitary case of COVID 19, imported from China into Washington state, cascaded into a pandemic of epic proportions, triggered an economic crisis on a  Depression-era  scale, and continues to inflict human suffering on millions of Americans. Our fellow citizens are dying left and right, struggling to deal with the loss of their jobs and how to feed their families. Millions are experiencing a total collapse of everything they had only a couple of months ago. 

The Federal Reserve has unleashed everything in its arsenal: reducing interest rates to zero and declaring availability of unlimited liquidity in order to forestall a collapse of the financial system. Congress has declared a panoply of multi-trillion dollar emergency programs with acronyms that read like an alphabet soup.  

So where do we go from here?

An honest assessment of what we know and what we don’t, will give us some clues on where the economy is headed.  

What we know: a) according to scientists, a second wave of infection is certain to happen, b) a therapeutic drug will show up, we don’t know when, possibly after a year, c) a vaccine available on large scale is estimated to arrive late next year at earliest, and d) lack of observance of distancing in many states will prolong the duration of the pandemic.

What we don’t know is too numerous to list. Among the imponderables: how many will die before it’s over; when will the second wave hit and with what severity; when will safe and effective therapeutics and vaccines be available on a mass scale; will our medical infrastructure be able to cope with the next outbreak; how long will it take to test a large percentage of the population? The list goes on. 

Basically, we are in a highly volatile and unpredictable environment. Compounding the problem, management of the crisis by the Administration has been confused, conflicting and uncoordinated. Hence the variability of outcomes can be extremely wide; statisticians would call this a classic high standard deviation situation. That caveat notwithstanding, I will venture several observations: 

Given that unemployment claims to-date (mid-May) are approaching 40 million, or 26% of our workforce, we can safely assume that we are deep in the bowels of a depression rivaling the Great Depression when the unemployment rate peaked at 25%. 

The Office of Management and Budget and several branches of the Federal Reserve have estimated a 2nd quarter decline in GDP of around 40% annualized - the highest in decades. This is a stark reaffirmation of the severity of the trouble we are in.  

As months pass – how many months, is undeterminable - we will gradually creep out of a total shutdown and become semi functional again. At that point, statistics will show a deceleration in the rate of economic decline (as distinct from positive growth). In this phase, unemployment will “improve” from double digits with a 2 handle to something in the teens. At this point the President will no doubt cite the slowing in rate of decline as proof positive that his leadership is working and will restore the country to its former glory.

Overall, the economy will take a minimum of 3 – 5 years to stabilize and create meaningful job growth again. Jobs will come back excruciatingly slowly, and only when consumers build up enough confidence to consume again. Keep in mind that 70% of all economic activity is consumer based. The recovery will be slow and lengthy. Predictions of a V shape recovery are unfounded and unrealistic. Untold hardship will befall millions for years. Social programs will be needed to enable families to feed themselves. 

At the macro-economic level, the effects of trillions of dollars of spending on emergency aid will be felt for many years to come. Taxes will certainly rise. As they say, the piper must eventually be paid. Interest rates will initially remain low (a challenge to pensioners depending on interest income) as the Fed keeps financial markets flooded with funds. Over the longer term however, with the national debt far exceeding 100% of GDP, investors in Treasuries will demand higher yields on their investment.

Certain industries will never be the same again. Airlines will be nationalized, go bankrupt or keep struggling financially indefinitely. Many brick and mortar retailers will go the way of JC Penny and file Chapter 11. The cruise business will be decimated, becoming a shadow of its former self. Hotel chains will have to downsize or merge to survive. Office buildings will be financially challenged. Some will go bust as occupancy rates fall precipitously as a result of stay-at-home work becoming the norm for many workers. Many shopping malls will close for good due to lack of shoppers. Tens of thousands of restaurants have already closed and many will be shuttered forever. Note that restaurants are the second largest private employer with 15.6 million workers. 

Group-oriented activities will be hard hit, particularly sporting events. The NBA, NFL, AFL and the two baseball leagues will take a long time to recover, resorting to alternative non-audience formats in the meantime. 

Not since the Spanish flu have so many depended on the vagaries of a virus for their financial future.

The consequences of COVID 19 will reach far and wide. It will affect every aspect of human activity: from education to travel, from business conferences to contact sports, from grocery shopping to attending social gatherings. Only time will tell to what extent our lives will be modified.   

Conclusion

In physics, Newton tells us that every action causes a reaction. All human activity constitutes a collective action that affects the ecosystem. Now we are witnessing the reaction to our action. We cannot encroach on the animal world (bats included) with impunity. We cannot engage in human action that damages the environment and expect no reaction. Unless and until Newton’s Law is repealed, such human behavior is not sustainable.  Mother Nature will nurture and sustain us. But we abuse her blessings at our own peril. 

Arcline 1975