Thank you for visiting my site!
I’m doing my darndest to give you perspectives you won’t get anywhere else, especially in the corporate media or the partisan Montana blogs.
That said...let’s start with the most ‘important’ things first:
Daines bad.
Gianforte bad.
Trump bad.
Bullock good.
Cooney good.
Biden good.
Hopefully that’ll save you a trip to MT Post this week.
Now, let’s leave the land of make-believe and get back to the real world with real people and real problems.
I told you 23 days ago that we’d see more deaths by accident.
I failed to mention that we’d see more accidents in general.
I suffered one yesterday afternoon.
Silly, really.
I was cooking, in a rush, had to go into the other room to check on the kids, and while doing so I stubbed the hell out of my toe.
Hurt like a mother fucker.
I thought it might be broken, but it felt a lot better this morning. I think it’s probably just bruised to hell and will get better in a day or so.
At least I hope so. Even if I wanted to seek medical care, the clinics and hospitals are so plagued with fear right now that it’d be more hassle than it’s worth.
Shot of whiskey and ‘rub some dirt on it’...those’ll be the main medical cures of the future, much like they were in the past.
AMC Theatres expects it’ll keep all its theatres closed until August and perhaps September. Most figure they’ll file for bankruptcy soon. I suspect we’ll see lots of large businesses file for bankruptcy.
Our politicians ruined these businesses because of their fear. No, not fear of the virus...fear that they’ll be blamed for not doing enough. Mostly, our politicians are afraid they’ll lose their next election.
Steve Bullock is assured of a loss this November because of his actions during this crisis of fear.
He ruined thousands of small businesses in this state, ruined countless lives. I know there’s this narrative right now that we’re doing the right thing...but this is already beginning to fade.
In a couple months we’ll be arguing if this shutdown was necessary. That’ll spill-over into all political races. We’ll see Biden (or whomever inevitably takes over for him) begin to bash Trump for shutting things down.
We know that 56% of Democrats want Cuomo, compared to the 44% that want Biden.
Democrats are already beginning to realize that the shutdown is more harmful than the virus. Now they have to come up with some kind of ‘Plan B’ to blame Trump for the shutdown they wanted.
Last night I noticed that Whitney Williams put out a tweet. It included a rare thing - an image that she did not take herself.
I had to put out my own tweet in response:
7 staffers.
— Big Sky Words (@BigSkyWords1) April 10, 2020
$5,000 for self-opp-research this cycle.
$18,000 for likability polling.
Yet her life's so empty, all she can give us on #mtpol are selfies.
Despite having some of the most famous political parents in the state, she's always alone.
This campaign is on the ropes https://t.co/96pvlQnpH3
Mostly, I feel sorry for this woman.
What an empty life! Despite having tons of money, she has no friends, no family...no one.
She has seven people on staff, and yet she continually puts out selfie images and videos.
Why?
If you’ve got the people and the money to look professional, why not do it? Does she think that ‘doing it in the weeds’ is going to endear her to common Montana voters?
C’mon.
What Whitney teaches us the most is that, yes...you can get a great education and get these globe-trotting jobs that have you hobnobbing with celebrities and the rich and famous...but when you go home at the end of the day, you have no one.
That’s sad.
I know if she somehow won the governor’s race this fall, she’d feel even more empty. I hope Whitney finds what she’s looking for in life.
RD had a post up today telling us what none of the corporate media outlets will tell us: the Federal Reserve is doing some extremely dodgy things.
Seems the Fed is going to buy up trillions of dollars of risky corporate debt.
This risky corporate debt came about through speculation and playing the market. The average Wall Street trader makes $224,000. The average teacher makes around $40,000 a year.
It’s because we know what’s important: corporate profits, not kids.
If you’d like more on what the Fed has done, this is a good summary.
$1.3 billion in farm losses are expected between March and May. One big story getting attention is a farmer in Florida who dumped 5 to 6 million pounds of vegetables out to rot.
No one will buy them.
A bigger problem on the horizon is that we have no workers to pick the crops that are already ripe.
Even if we allowed people to work again, many of our migrant workers will be too fearful of the virus to go to work.
It’ll be the same story for our restaurants, where much of the farmer’s produce ends up. Many Americans won’t go back to restaurants because of fear.
We can expect half of all restaurants and bars in the country to close down. Those that do stay open will see a 50% drop in foot traffic, at least. That’ll probably last for months to come, if not a year or more...especially if the virus comes back this fall.
A Louisiana Republican put a bill forth to pull all 60,000 of our troops out of Saudi Arabia in 30 days if that country does not slash its oil production.
Congress won’t meet again until April 20, and it’s a sure bet this bill will fail miserably.
Personally, I don’t think those in Congress are essential workers. I would like to furlough them, without pay of course. Why are they better than the rest of us? I’d argue they’re worse.
But anyways, thank God we have some people in Congress that see the bigger picture: we don’t have the money to maintain our global empire anymore.
In fact, we have no money. What we do have is $23 trillion in debt...debt which we have no hope of paying off.
Thank God we have Trump in office. He’s already told us that we’ve wasted $7 trillion in the Middle East. Let us hope he pulls us out of there for good.
Every single Coronavirus model was wrong.
We didn’t need that many beds. We didn’t need that many ventilators.
People are beginning to realize that this virus isn’t even as bad as the flu. Remember, this virus has killed about 18,000 in the US so far. We’ve already lost 24,000 to the flu this year.
But the flu doesn’t impart fear, so it does the corporate media no good. The flu isn’t going to get rid of Trump, after all...so why talk about it?
I really do think this next week will be the time when most Amerians wake up to the deception our corporate media has given us.
If you’re not in a big city on the coast - Dem strongholds - then this self-isolation bullshit can end. Old people and the sick and the scaredy-cats can stay inside. The rest of us need to make a living.
Some capitalists still realize how capitalism is supposed to work.
If you haven’t heard of the exchange between this CNBC reporter and this CEO, please check it out. Here’s a bit:
Are you arguing to let airlines fail?
Yes.
But how does that make sense in the broader scheme of the economy.
This is a lie that's been propagated by Wall Street. When a company fails, it does not fire its employees...it goes through a packaged bankruptcy...if anything, what happens is the employees end up owning more of the company. The people who get wiped out are the people who own the unsecured debt and the equity...but the employees don't get wiped out and the pensions don't get wiped out.
...
And if a bunch of hedge funds get wiped out - what's the big deal? Let them fail. So they don't get the summer in the Hamptons - who cares.
Let us hope that we have more CEOs like this in the future, fewer that look to the common working man and his tax dollars to bail them out.
Let us hope.
Who are people going to vote for in November?
People with business experience...or experience taking tax dollars?
Do we want someone that’s been in the private sector, or someone that’s been in government?
Who do you think we’ll need?
I think it’s the business people, the people that have been in the private sector, the people that know how businesses run, how to make a payroll.
Nationally, that’s Trump over Biden. Here in Montana, that’s Gianforte over Cooney.
Cooney has a terrible resume for this crisis. He’s spent most of his life in government. His private sector experience?
From 2006 to 2015 he was division administrator in the Department of Labor. From 2001 to 2006 he was an executive director for Montana Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies. In 1995 he was an insurance lobbyist. From 1972 to 1979 he worked in the family grocery store.
Do you really think this guy can lead us out of the economic catastrophe that Bullock put us in?
I don’t.
Primary voting starts in a couple weeks, and I suspect Gianforte will win with huge margins.
Montanans know we need business experience now more than ever. We don’t need another life-long bureaucrat.
I have a lot more to tell you today, but let’s save it for next time.
