9 pm, Eastern, and all about Coronavirus, I gather.
We have a confirmed case here in Vegas of a lady who attended a conference…so, we’ve likely got a good dose of it here in town. OTOH, we locals rarely go to the Strip, so maybe it’ll just stay there.
The Official Word of the Super Smart Experts is that Trump is doomed in November…some of them are even asserting a landslide win for Biden. The key seems to be the belief that suburban moderates are going to flock to Biden out of disgust for Trump. Yes, that is exactly what they said about Hillary in 2020…but this time, they assure us, it’ll be true because everyone loves Biden. Which is what they also said about Hillary…
My view: Biden has a 1% chance of winning – only if 10,000 die from Coronavirus or unemployment is skyrocketing over the Summer does Biden get a real chance at it…and, even then, he’s Biden: a senile, old bully who lies all the time and can’t remember where he is. Nothing will make Trump’s defeat certain – he might lose, but only if the Democrats put up a first-rate campaign talking about issues the American people care about.
Hint: the American people don’t care about the Green New Deal; fracking bans; banning AR-15’s; having Drag Queen Story Time; health care for illegals; fighting Russia; kowtowing to China; re-imposing the Paris Climate Deal; re-imposing the Iran Deal…
Bernie is staying in, at least for now – he should: Biden could implode next week.
Blogs For Victory 
I am at a loss for words over this ridiculous virus. Am I missing something? From the most recent “professional assessment” it is a severe flu that has a1% fatality rate and spreads easily. Here in the US the most recent numbers are over 1,000 infected and a little over 60 people dead .. less than a 1% fatality rate and most of the deaths are elderly people with underlying conditions. Just a reminder, there are over 300 million people in the country so again am I missing something? To put that in perspective, more people died in car accidents just yesterday. The NBA has shut down there season and the NCAA will not have fans in the stands. This morning I have less respect for the people in this country and this world than I think I ever had. “We” a are obviously a weak, frightened, easily manipulated, selfish and ignorant society and this small little virus is proving it, and the media is sensationalizing it. This is one of America’s worst moments and how many of you have thought that this might be a trial run by governments around the world to control their populations? Or am I the only conspiracy nut?
The Democrats are soon to nominate one of the least electable candidates ever. Democrats themselves have rejected Biden on two other previous POTUS opportunities and only propped him up this time to stop from losing control of their party. Trump will destroy Biden.
This is one of America’s worst moments and how many of you have thought that this might be a trial run by governments around the world to control their populations? Or am I the only conspiracy nut?
I’m slowly coming around to agreeing with you. I said a while back that the only way Trump loses is if things are turned upside down by some kind of black swan even. I think I also said that I wouldn’t put it past the Dems to figure out a way to crash the stock market. It at least appears that they’ve succeeded in doing both. The market is off another 2,000 points this morning, and trading has already been halted once. The odd thing (and fuel for a conspiracy theory) is that oil and precious metals are also in free fall, while all the cash is fleeing to treasury bonds whose yields are at all-time lows. Something is fishy in Denmark.
I came online to discuss this very thing. It sure seems odd that the Leftists in control of the sports teams are all so eager to upset sports fan—could it be that they look forward to having Trump blamed for missing some basketball games?
Oil is plummeting because of the OPEC+ / Russia squabble, but we can’t overlook the fact that Trump has been a major pain for Putin and getting rid of him would benefit Russia.
But…it is only the middle of March. If the Covid 19 bug acts like others, by the middle or end of summer it will have pretty much run its course, and all markets should explode with pent-up buying and relief. So unless they can keep the markets suppressed for almost 8 months what we are likely to see is a massive uptick in the stock market in the weeks leading up to the election, with Trump taking a victory lap.
Saudi Arabia is pumping oil for prices well below their break-even point, and so is Russia, so they can’t keep this up forever, and I think it will take a lot more than what is obviously a fleeting aberration to deter big American companies from drilling. I’ve heard that stacking a rig—that is, making it inactive—costs about $65,000 a day, so the bigger companies will be measuring that cost against what it will cost them to keep drilling.
There is no doubt that the Left is doing absolutely everything it can to leverage this into a political disaster for Trump. ranging from ticking off sports fans to tanking the stock market. But I think he is handling it well. The thing is, if this is used against him the only way to do will be to offer alternative approaches to the problem that he “should” have taken, and I can’t think of any.
My predictions are:
(1) That the Dems in Congress will fight his efforts, refuse to pass bills intended to deal with the various problems arising from the epidemic while simultaneously screeching that he isn’t “doing enough”, and end up adding to the self-inflicted damage done by their impeachment circus.
(2) That a side effect will be strengthening the border wall and other defenses—I already saw some network coverage of the problems on the border, Chinese citizens trying to cross illegally, the problems of overcrowding in detention centers and the threats to border security who have to deal with so many sick, or at least debilitated people on a daily basis.
(3) That the United States will continue to have a much lower population/confirmed cases ratio than other nations, confirming that Trump’s decisions were the right ones.
(4) That the crisis will pass by midsummer, and that the markets will not only rally, they will surge, making a big splash and providing lots of ammunition for bragging.
(5) That this will be parlayed into a focus on doing less pharmaceutical business with China and developing more research and development and manufacture of drugs here in the United States, providing yet more campaign fodder for Trump.
(6) That American oil and gas producers will not let the OPEC/Russia gamesmanship destroy the industry here, and will outlast the suicidal race to the bottom they are engaging in right now. If anything, lower driving and heating costs will add to a surge in the economy.
I don’t think this is a trial run to control population, but I would not be surprised to find it is a trial run to see if a massive and far more lethal biological attack would be successful. I lean more toward politically motivated terrorism than population control, but then I do tend to view events and suspected motives through a political prism.
Another tinfoil hat possibility would be to advance tyranny—that is, to use it as a springboard to implement Draconian controls over populations, including forced mass quarantines and martial law. I would consider that a very outlandish prospect in this country, but not so much in some others, such as China.
I think it most likely that it accidentally developed in that area of China, possibly as a side result of testing of biological weapons in a lab located near the population and market centers, and due to the abysmal sanitation of the culture there was able to develop at an alarming rate, and spread quickly. I don’t think the issue is so much “Why is it here?” as “Why is it being presented the way the media are presenting it in the United States, regarding Trump and his response to it?” And we know the answer to that.
Going back to the conspiracy theory – Hong Kong sure has been quiet lately and US markets are tanking as our media ramps up the hysteria. This is going really well for China.
I don’t think this is going well for China at all. They are losing exports, and were already hurting. Other nations looking to build more manufacturing at home instead of going to China is not going to help.
As for our markets tanking, I think they were probably too high to begin with and were due for a correction, and was just hoping it wouldn’t happen till after the election. So this is a super-correction, with a very big and obvious villain that ain’t Trump.
With any luck the media hysteria will rebound on them, as their impeachment coverage has started to, and they and the Dems continue to lose credibility.
… and that the markets will not only rally, they will surge
I agree and I have been buying stock. The cruise lines are at all time lows so I jumped in.
(5) That this will be parlayed into a focus on doing less pharmaceutical business with China
It’s reported that 85% of all antibiotics worldwide are made in China. Does anyone see a problem with that? How in the world did our political leaders allow that to happen? That’s insane.
And remember, one of Obamacare’s regulations was a double digit tax on medical devices resulting in manufacturers off shoring their production … hence the lack of testing devices.
Re: the suspension of the NBA season – will anyone care if they resume next year? Honestly that league is hard to watch and ever since I learned that the vast majority of their revenues come from China I wrote them off. I will never watch another NBA game.
Talk about not for the faint of heart; in the span of a little over an hour the DJIA went from down nearly 2,200 to down 700 to down 1,900.
After I read a book about how the market is controlled not by people making decisions but by algorithms, with changes made in such tiny bits of time that the computers literally have to be ON Wall Street so they don’t lose that tiny fraction of a second it takes for communication with the Street computers from any significant distance away, I stopped paying much attention to the fluctuations in the market. I used to think that people wise in the way of economics studied and analyzed and made decisions we should pay attention to. Now I realize that machines spin mathematical equations and react instantaneously based on what patterns appear, causing transactions of many millions of shares. With this, it is possible that some human plugged in something like “worldwide pandemic” (or, more likely, “time to crash the Trump economy and the pandemic is a great excuse”) but it still comes down to the wheels spinning till a pattern pops up, followed by massive shifts up or down.
So we are not seeing a consensus of many investors analyzing reality and making decisions on what they conclude—we are seeing a small handful of super-computers trading hundreds of millions of shares within seconds.
March Madness is canceled???? That’s it! We’re all going to hell
The panic will probably be over by the time football season gets here, more’s the pity. But I hate to see baseball take a hit (no pun intended) because even though I seldom get to a game I do love the sport.
I commented that Joe Biden’s bizarre attacks on a questioner, saying he was “full of shit” and challenging him to “go outside” with him and calling him “a horse’s ass” was going to make it harder for the Left to complain that Trump is vulgar.
Now Uncle Joe is making it harder for them to make fun of Trump’s sometimes incoherent comments. Trump at his most obtuse has never approached this level of HUH???
“You can work at McDonalds and make 3 cents, or five cents more… You go ahead and stack spaghetti sauce at a store, or a supermarket, you control the guy or the woman who brings out the carts on a forklift. What happens? They make you management,” Biden told the confused crowd.
“The bottom line is: I’m for you, because America needs you to grow,” he added.
Carts on a forklift. Who knew?
Wow, and we can expect a lot more of his incoherence over the next few months. But if you listen to MSNBC or CNN they will tell you that Biden s the consummate statesman this country needs because quote “he cares for people more than he does money”
He sure doesn’t care for people who disagree with him, challenge him or just ask questions that irritate him.
Oh, NO!!! Another victim of the deadly Covid-19!
The Treasury Department is weighing extending the April 15 deadline for filing tax returns due to the spread of the coronavirus that could force IRS workers to work from home, according to multiple reports.
How much more can we be expected to bear?
WTF???
BEIJING, March 12 (Reuters) – A spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry suggested on Thursday the U.S. military might have brought the coronavirus to the Chinese city of Wuhan, which has been hardest hit by the outbreak, doubling down on a war of words with Washington…..Earlier on Thursday, Zhao’s fellow Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang criticised U.S. officials for “immoral and irresponsible” comments that blamed Beijing’s response to the coronavirus for worsening the global impact of the pandemic.
Well we now know why our liberal media is covering for China … they are cowards of the highest order but we need to push back on this crap and hard. “Immoral and Irresponsible” hmmm maybe it’s time we should go 24/7 coverage of the Uyghers and the brainwashing and detention camps those people suffer through.
https://news.trust.org/item/20200312152307-rlv7m
My latest assessment pf covid19 … Dr. Fauci said yesterday that we can expect the crisis to last another 60 days or slightly more and that it will get worse before it improves. Alright, well according to the link below there are 5,111 deaths worldwide thus far. We discovered the outbreak approximately 5 months ago so that is averaging about 1,000 deaths around the world each month and again, is expected to last another 2 or 3 months. Do the math. I don’t think we can anywhere near the apocalypse the media is painting and that being said, when are we going to hold people in the media accountable?
The media has torn this country apart in the last 4 years and there is zero accountability. They have willfully lied about the big issues and have personally attacked anyone who challenges them. They have divided this country along every race, ethnicity, and class line possible and continue to malign those who they disagree with from Russia collusion, to Ukraine, to this manufactured pandemic and yet they all still have their jobs, excluding Chris Matthews of course who maligned the wrong the subset of people. We need to expose all of this and see that they are held accountable.
What’s bad for the country is good for the Left.
What’s good for the country is bad for the Left.
The media are for the most part the propaganda arm of the Left. Therefore the more damage they can do to the country the better they are at promoting the Left.
Mitt Romney needs to be recalled.
After his shameful impeachment vote people in Utah looked into impeaching him but that is not an option for a Senator. I would not be surprised to see a recall effort mounted after the election. The last I heard, he was finally OK with the investigation into Biden, after saying he would vote against it, but who knows with Romney?
https://www.flickr.com/photos/187405473@N05/shares/ZzB8wB
I overheard an interesting conversation at the Y Wednesday afternoon. I was on a treadmill next to two guys, one probably in his late 20’s to early 30’s and the other maybe in his 50’s. They were watching the CNN monitor up on the wall, and the older guy said something like, well, there goes the ol’ IRA. The younger guys says, yeah, but a small price to pay to get rid of Trump. The older guys replied, “that’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
I think there’s a lot of “nothing else has worked, maybe shared sacrifice will finally be the thing that sinks Trump.” One only has to look at the media and financial market reaction to the H1N1 pandemic in 2009/2010 to realize just how irrational the response is to Covid 19. IMHO, this is going to go down as one of the greatest financial and economic blunders of all time.
Love the response of “that’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” This is exactly how we should be responding to the various comments we hear. Just a blunt ““that’s about the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.” It applies to pretty much anything and everything put out by the Agenda Media and the brain-dead sheeple who buy into it.
The difference in the market reactions in 2009/2010 and now is that then the Establishment didn’t feel it so important to undermine and get rid of the president that it was worth tanking the market, costing the citizens billions of dollars in losses and plunging the nation into an unnecessary recession. That was then: This is now. And now the Powers That Be will do anything—-ANYTHING as we are seeing—to destroy this presidency.
You say “,,,this is going to go down as one of the greatest financial and economic blunders of all time.” but like the tree falling in the forest, with no one to analyze this and point it out, it will make no noise except as a weapon against Trump.
I’ll keep saying it, over and over—-we need a consortium of wealthy people to fund an hourly prime time network news show that actually presents NEWS. Imagine the impact of a true analysis of this, naming names and pointing out the lies. We need to make it clear to the public that Fake News is not just some superficial tweaking of reality, but it has actual, real-world costs, and the people pay those costs.
Back to the earlier discussion of Trump slashing the size, scope and power of federal agencies:
The EPA now accounts for $6.5 billion in deregulatory savings achieved over the course of President Donald Trump’s administration
https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/03/12/epa-chief-andrew-wheeler-rolls-back-his-agencys-overreach
Great article on some of the successes in trimming down the EPA. One example: “Soon, the EPA will finalize a rule that rejects the regulatory games played by the Obama administration in pushing its Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule, or MATS. Reducing emissions of mercury and other hazardous air pollutants from coal- and oil-fired power plants costs more ($9.6 billion annually) than it provides in benefits ($4 million to $6 million annually).
The costs were as much as 2,400 times greater than the benefits, but the Obama administration went forward with the rule anyway, claiming that questionable secondary benefits unrelated to reducing mercury emissions exceeded the rule’s costs. “
And we should remember that while this boondoggle was being promoted, we the public were saddled with CFS “light” bulbs that not only produced inferior light but contained mercury, and to be disposed of safely and legally had to be handled as toxic waste. Of course, people just threw them in the trash, meaning that we were dumping mercury into our landfills, and when one of these little toxic bombs broke very very few people followed the disposal protocol, which was to remove all pets and people from the area, ventilate it thoroughly and then, wearing protective gear, carefully collect the pieces and dispose of them at an approved site.
I wonder how much mercury was dumped into our landfills, where it will last forever and/or leach into our groundwater, while the **green” poobahs in DC were passing regulations like MATS and posturing as Protectors Of The Environment.
OK, I’m on a roll here, talking about stupid regulations.
Ever hear of DEF? If you don’t drive a fairly new diesel vehicle or farm equipment, you don’t have any reason to know about this big boondoggle. You see, diesel emissions upset a lot of people. The particulates are bigger than gasoline emissions, so they are more visible, and like flash protectors on rifle barrels the optics are what matter. (The bigger particles are not as easily airborne as gasoline emissions, but why let a fact get in the way?)
Anyway, to address this absolutely horrible issue, the Nanny State has decreed that we have to have a special, very expensive, system added to our diesel engines which injects a nasty fluid called Diesel Emissions Fluid, or DEF, into the exhaust system.
It is expensive, it is corrosive, it is supposed to be handled as a health hazard, it comes (for the urban user) in 2.5 gallon plastic jugs that are not supposed to be recycled or disposed of in a non-hazardous waste location unless thoroughly washed out first (getting it into the water!) and it is a pain in the ass.
Some DEF info:
Final Tier IV emission standards are the last step in a decades-long transition to dramatically reduce exhaust emissions from diesel engines. The evolution of diesel engines to meet Tier II, Tier III, then Interim Tier IV standards led some farmers to drag their feet on adding Diesel Exhaust Fluid (DEF) storage and transfer systems on their farms.
“This is Final Tier IV. This is the way many diesel engines are going to be fueled from now on,” says Joe Gannon, sales rep for Diamond Oil Company, Des Moines, Iowa. “It’s time to figure out how to properly store and transfer DEF on farms.”
DEF is a blend of purified liquid urea and deionized water that’s injected into the exhaust systems of specially-equipped diesel engines. The non-hazardous solution helps those engines meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s strict Final Tier IV exhaust emission standards.
Proper storage and transfer of DEF is critical to avoid damage to expensive components on Final Tier IV diesel engines.
“Dirty DEF will plug the special filters in DEF systems on tractors,” says J.J. Hoyle, also with Diamond Oil Company. “Those filters can cost hundreds of dollars to replace.”
To grasp how “clean” DEF must be kept, consider low-sulfur diesel fuel used in Tier III and newer engines is filtered to 2 microns. Fuel-grade DEF is filtered to 1 micron. For reference, a micron is one-millionth of a millimeter. Large bacteria and microbes range in size from 1 to 5 microns.
Not only must DEF be clean, it must be chemically correct.
“DEF made with poor-quality urea or unpurified water can have contaminants that cause a chemical reaction and damage catalytic converters,” Hoyle says. “Catalytic converters can cost $12,000 to $20,000 to replace.”
The challenge in developing on-farm DEF storage and transfer systems is two-fold. The first step is determining how much DEF an operation will consume and how much storage capacity is necessary. The second step is identifying storage tanks and transferring equipment that maintains DEF cleanliness and quality.
“People tend to underestimate how much DEF their equipment will use,” Gannon says. “I had a customer rent a 500-hp tractor for disk-ripping, and he initially wanted to just buy 2½-gal. jugs during the rental. He ended up going through seven 55-gal. drums of DEF during the six-week rental.
“The harder you pull a Final Tier IV engine, the more DEF it uses,” Gannon adds. “That sounds expensive, but DEF doesn’t cost that much, and [using DEF] really improves the power of the machine and the efficiency of how it uses diesel [fuel].”
Because DEF is highly reactive to many metals, it must be stored in stainless steel, polypropylene or high-density polyethylene (HDPE) storage tanks. All pumps, valves and fittings must be DEF-compatible and used only to transfer DEF.
DEF’s physical properties add to the challenge of providing adequate storage. The 32.5% blend of purified urea and deionized water in DEF freezes at 12°F. Diesel engines that require DEF come from the factory with built-intank heaters to prevent DEF from freezing during use in cold conditions and thaw frozen DEF at start-up when machines have been sitting.
“You can freeze and thaw DEF over and over, and it won’t affect its performance,” says Lee Purvis, sales rep for Blue Sky-brand DEF. “But for maximum quality control, you might want to consider heated storage tanks or tanks in heated buildings if you’re going to be using DEF below 12°F.”
DEF has a shelf life of 24 months, but prolonged exposure to temperatures above 75°F can reduce shelf life. Fresh DEF has a slightly pungent smell of ammonia. After extended exposure to temperatures above 75°F, the ammonia scent grows stronger, indicating nitrogen has vaporized, changing the urea-to-water ratio of the product.
Degraded DEF isn’t harmful to engines, but it’s economically inefficient. Computers on Final Tier IV
engines constantly monitor the amount of nitrogen in DEF passing through their Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR) system and increase or decrease the rate of DEF injected into the SCR system to provide adequate nitrogen levels to control exhaust emissions. As a result, engines consume higher rates of “stale” DEF to maintain the correct dosing rate, increasing their operating cost per hour.
While many farmers use 55-gal. barrels or 250-gal. plastic “totes” of DEF before committing to permanent storage and handling systems, some are investing in larger systems so they can buy in bulk.
“A lot of guys are buying a 1,000-gal. poly tank to store DEF, then building a cheap shell of a building around it to keep the sun off,” Hoyle says. “They add a heater on a thermostat so they’ll be able to pump it in cold weather.”
For the more urban diesel user, the DEF comes in a plastic jug, usually 2.5 gallons, and this is usually in a cardboard box. The average cost is about $15.00. From the last box of DEF I bought:
WARNING! Causes skin irritation. Causes serious eye irritation. May cause respiratory irritation. Avoid breathing vapors. Use only outdoors or in a well-ventilated area. Wear eye protection, protective clothing, protective gloves. Wash hands, forearms and face thoroughly after handling. IF ON SKIN: Wash with plenty of soap and water. Take off contaminated clothing and wash it before reuse. And it goes on and on for several more lines, repeatedly suggesting getting medical attention if irritation is severe or ongoing.
So the diesel pickup driver gets a warning that his truck is getting low on DEF, with the additional warning that if it runs out the vehicle speed will be restricted to 50 MPH. Buying it at a filling station is expensive, and who travels with gloves, eye protection and protective clothing? The plastic jugs and pour spouts tend to dribble—I’ve ruined plenty of shoes. And so on. If you accidentally put it in the fuel tank it can destroy the engine. I’ve had a DEF heater in a truck fail and have to be replaced.
Hooray for the Nanny State!
Going back to the MATS regs that cost $9.6 billion annually to provide in benefits of $4 million to $6 million annually, I’d like to see an analysis of the cost of the DEF requirements vs benefits.. As for the claim that DEF “improves the power of the machine and the efficiency of how it uses fuel” I don’t (yet) have a newer diesel tractor that requires DEF, but I can say from experience that it does absolutely NOTHING to improve the power or fuel efficiency of a diesel pickup truck engine. On the contrary, my 2000 pre-DEF diesel engine has as much power and gets far better mileage than my newer, DEF-mandated, engine does.
Typical government … finding a solution to a problem that never really existed and then having that solution create other serious issues. And this is just one small regulation on one type of vehicle. Can you imagine the morass of duplicitous and ridiculous regulations that the nanny state has enacted over the last 3 decades?
Ethanol
CFL “light” bulbs
For those of you who may have been on an island the last 3 years I can tell you what you missed in the media – they spoke exclusively of Russia collusion for 2.5 years, then a phone call made to Ukraine for another year, and now the last 5 months they have been talking about the cold and flu season. And that’s it. Nothing else happened in this country so you’re now up to date.
Well, there was some kerfluffle in the House with Adam Schifty and Jerry Waddler going on about the end of the world as we know it, and some fuss about really liking a Masked Singer till they found out it was Sarah Palin. But you pretty much covered it.
According to official statistics, more people have recovered from covid19 than are currently infected. I still don’t see the problem
Recovered:
70,920
68,690
Currently Infected Patients
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
People with power and irrational fears have nearly shut down the entire world and we are allowing it to happen. Trish Regan was just suspended at Fox Business for speaking the truth. The problem is not some cold and flu virus. The problem is power hungry incompetent governments, their virtue signaling minions in the media, and the sheeple who rely on “experts”.
This is the most over hyped non event in history.
Has it escaped everyone that the political party that promotes open borders and homeless camps are now worried about a pandemic?
Ironic would be an understatement.
Have you noticed the complete lack of coverage of the unsanitary conditions in Scat Francisco and other Dem show places, now that sanitation and personal hygiene are touted as absolutely essential to deal with Covid-19?
Great point, that’s been wiped off the news. As has the border issue, reports are that Mexico now wants to shut down our border with them … hahahahahaha what was that saying? Never let a crisis go to waste
… Mexico now wants to shut down our border with them…
Does that mean they’ll pay for the wall?