Friday, April 8, 2022

Fog of War, Brain Fog of Warmongers

I guess we could look on the bright side of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Covid diagnosis this week. She will be forced to postpone her provocative trip to Taiwan, which is the next apparent site of the US hegemon's "bait and bleed" operation to stop their global competitors (Russia and China, for now) right in their economic tracks by goading them into wars against their weaker neighbors.  Even the risk of nuclear war is not preventing the American gerontocracy from trying to maintain their increasingly tenuous status as Sole Remaining Superpower.

Of course, the really bad news about Pelosi's diagnosis is that even though she smugly boasts of having the emerging elite strain of the disease (she feels great because she is uber-boosted!), research clearly shows that she still is at risk for the brain fog and other sequelae in Long Covid. And since, at 82 years of age, her increasingly incoherent speech patterns might also be indicative of mental decline, the prospect of a post-Covid Pelosi traveling the globe seems especially dangerous.

It's not as though she and her cohort were not already certifiably insane. Their seemingly deliberate ploys to infect their unmasked selves at various self-congratulatory galas in the past week, and then to tweet out cheery messages of how well they're feeling and how noble they're being by isolating themselves, comprise an obvious public relations gimmick to goad the rest of us into following suit. Never mind that the elites get paid when they're out sick and have the insurance and unlimited tests and medications and wait-staff to make it all so tolerable and brag-worthy.

 The exquisite irony of them even cavalierly exposing themselves to the disease at a White House celebration of the Affordable Care Act should especially not be lost on us.

As PBS approvingly gushed,

Obama returns to the White House on Tuesday for a moment he can savor. His signature Affordable Care Act is now part of the fabric of the American health care system, and President Joe Biden is looking to extend its reach. Sign-ups under the health law have increased under Biden’s stewardship, and more generous taxpayer subsidies have cut costs for enrollees, albeit temporarily.

Didn't anybody ever tell them that stretching delicate fabric will decrease its life expectancy, if not completely ruin it?

This latest bit of White House theater is downright cruel, given that Congress has yet to renew free Covid testing and treatment for the tens of millions of uninsured citizens - the disproportionately black, brown and poor people who already were disproportionately dying from the disease - and they've agreed among themselves not to renew Covid relief for the rest of the war-torn and climate change-torn world. They seem to think there's an invisible barrier protecting the Homeland from non-American virus particles, which must be absolutely thrilled that they're being allowed to keep thriving and mutating and sneaking past Border Patrol.

For as Shakespeare observed in Hamlet,

“I do repent; but heaven hath pleas’d it so

To punish me with this, and this with me,

That I must be their scourge and minister.

I will bestow him, and will answer well

The death I gave him. So again good night

I must be cruel only to be kind.

Thus bad begins and worse remains behind.”

To divert us from the crass ingratitude that we might be feeling during these times of financial distress, meanwhile, we are supposed to cheer for the bipartisan confirmation of the first female black Supreme Court justice, revel in Congress's heroic federal criminalization of lynching, and celebrate Joe Biden's historic proclamation of the Transgender Day of Visibility. None of this political theater will do a damn thing to make people's lives better. In fact, the sheer insanity of the ruling elite will make our lives exponentially worse with every passing, cynical gesture. 

Another example of cynical kindness is Biden's extension of the student loan moratorium only through September, when he has it in his power to declare a full-scale debt jubilee and permanently forgive the loans. However, since the elites declare that such a jubilee would also unfairly reward the subset of well-educated debtors making a decent salary, they scold that permanent forgiveness would be a slap in the face to other struggling workers. Cruelty is thus conveniently redefined as kindness to the "deserving" - while the only true winners are the rent-seeking, debt-free oligarchs.

 Cruel kindness/kind cruelty  can be taken away at any moment, making the month-to-month brand of relief arguably more stressful for the desperate than a complete cutoff of help would be.

And then there is the temporary increase in SNAP (food stamp) benefits, extended last year under the Families First Act. In order for recipients to qualify for a second monthly federal stipend of as much as several hundred dollars depending on family size, each state must make a monthly application for a "flexibility" waiver from the Department of Agriculture. This availability applies only for as long as federal and state public health emergencies are continued. Not knowing from one month to the next whether or not the supplemental grant to buy increasingly costly groceries will be forthcoming makes it difficult for families to budget from one month to the next. North Carolina just became the first state to officially cut off the supplemental SNAP benefits to recipients in that state, just at a time when food prices are rising so drastically.

This week's orchestrated super-spreader event to mark Obamacare - complete with the Great Man himself deigning to show up to "savor the moment" as if it was foie gras sadistically whipped up from the livers of tortured geese - would not have been complete without another adorable Joe Biden gaffe. This is what he tweeted out to celebrate a tiny revision of the law, which allows previously excluded family members with pre-existing conditions to begin purchasing insurance product next year - provided, of course, that they have the financial means to do so.

In America, health care should be a right — not a privilege.

The fact-checked, corrected version:

In America, health care is a right only for the privileged. 

 

Foie Gras For Me. Expiring Cheez Whiz For Thee

4 comments:

  1. Conflict with China may be too much like conflict with Russia in the grotesque miscalculation of The Blob who control them.

    They expected war with Russia. They announced it was coming. They defied the Russians to do it, after the Dec 17 presentation of Russian concerns.

    They expected a very different war than they got. They expected more border skirmishing in Donbas. That is all they talked about in their many predictions of coming fighting.

    It offered them the economic advantages of sanctions, and the control of alliances under stress and needing the US, and a lot of arms sales.

    They are going for the same benefits against China. They are seeking them in the same ways.

    They made a mess of every conflict they chose for two decades, including the present one with Russia. So it is very likely they are making a mess of conflict with China too.

    They are doing it again in Ukraine, and they want to do it yet again at the same time with China. Apparently with Iran too. Maybe Venezuela too. Their hubris knows no sane limitations on numbers or range of conflicts.

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  2. The Western-oriented Asia Times website says that Chinese government officials and academics made public threats to close Taiwan's air and sea access if the US sends officials there for a coming celebration.

    "Academics and political commentators quoted in state media said China had the ability to seal off the Taiwan Strait and control airports and ports in Taiwan at any time."

    That is a specific provocation that we are warned would produce a warlike response.

    Fortunately Nancy Pelosi had to cancel, because of illness. However, somebody else is likely to go. If senior enough, that too could spark conflict.

    Clearly, things are on the very edge of conflict with China. It would not take much disregard of China's warnings to tip this into war.

    The most likely form of Chinese attack on Taiwan is closure of its air and sea access, not literal "invasion" that is so often mentioned in DC. They don't need to invade an island of 22 million people who need international trade to survive. Just close it down, and wait for it to fall apart.

    That risk is now what the US provokes, what it did just get a warning of for specific planned action.

    So when I say the US might do in China what it did in Ukraine, I mean specific actions planned, and specific warnings that those things would be provocations that will not be tolerated by China.

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  3. 193 Heartless Bastards in the House of Representatives —
    Most House Republicans voted against capping insulin costs. Why?
    They defended the right of greedy capitalists to be greedy capitalists.
    https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/house-insulin-prices/
    April 7, 2022 ~ by John Nichols

    Your Top Priority is The Emotional Comfort of the Most Powerful Elites, Which You Fulfill by Never Criticizing Them.
    Corporate journalists have license to use their huge platforms to malign, expose and destroy anyone they want. Your moral duty: sit in respectful silence and never object.
    https://greenwald.substack.com/p/your-top-priority-is-the-emotional?s=r
    April 2, 2022 ~ by Glenn Greenwald

    US Military Pollution: The World’s Biggest Climate Change Enabler —
    https://earth.org/us-military-pollution/
    Nov. 12, 2021 ~ by Jangira Lewis

    Elvis Presley ~ It's Now or Never (1960)
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QkMVscR5YOo
    “Elvis really died the day he joined the army. That’s when they killed him, and the rest was a living death.”
    ~ John Lennon

    IPCC report: ‘now or never’ if world is to stave off climate disaster
    Greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025, say climate scientists in what is in effect their final warning.
    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/04/its-over-for-fossil-fuels-ipcc-spells-out-whats-needed-to-avert-climate-disaster

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/04/final-warning-what-does-the-ipcc-third-report-instalment-say

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/apr/04/ipcc-report-now-or-never-if-world-stave-off-climate-disaster
    4 April 2022 ~ by Fiona Harvey, Environment correspondent



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  4. Valerie Long TweedieApril 17, 2022 at 12:45 AM

    You nailed it when you wrote in essence "those who can afford it" - in regard to health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. The only people I know who are benefiting from it are friends in Silicon Valley - already millionaires - who wanted to quit their lucrative jobs to start their own businesses or retire at 50 to "spend more time with their families." The reality is, the cost is just too high for people making $7.25 an hour.

    Just so my American friends have a comparison, the Federal Minimum Wage in Australia is $20.33 per hour - plus, we all get universal health care.

    Oh, please, Obama, do take a bow! You have done so much for your constituency!. . . Seriously, it is not much of a stretch for me to understand why people turned to the Republican party.

    Of course, those like Pelosi and Trump manage just fine when they get Covid. Health insurance and the best doctors DO make a difference. I know it is mean, but I wish some of these heartless people would get a version of Covid that would put them out of commission for 6 months. Then they might get an inkling of how the other three quarters live. But alas, that just isn't the way things seem to work.

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