SeniorJunior

" America: The Only Advanced Country  Without Universal Health Care" Yeah, yeah, I know, but socialism ....! For another perspective, what do people in countries WITH  universal health care think about all that?                                                                             Oh dear... The New York Times has put together a straightforward little work of communications art*, methinks, in this six minute video. I love it, but I suspect the profiteers who lobby so long and so furiously to maintain their super profitable status quo hate it.   Watch it here (clickey, clickey) Other Duffer rants on Health Insurance. *Consultantitus Attack Countries with universal healthcare include Austria, Belarus, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Isle of Man, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Spain, Sweden,  Switzerland , Turkey, Ukraine, and the United Kingdom.

 Indulging My Catastrophe Imagination (Hey, I write sci-fi)   " T he warning signs of a longer pandemic" (Headline in Axios*) The perfect pla ce for a sci-fi extrapolation!   With active cases of Covid-19 mutating into Covid-21 being so numerous,  there is a (darn near) inevitable end-game story.  Thus... The End IF:     - The South African variant “evades the Pfizer vaccine”      - The UK B-1.1.7 variant is “50% more transmissible”      - More young people are getting Covid and it’s making them sicker (news pending)     - New mutations are popping up like Orville Redenbacker's best... THEN:   One or more sci-fi-horror stories are being written in the mystical language  of statistics.  ( 3σ ) Dramatis personae     -  “ Heartless Dodger ”     A new variant will dodge ALL vaccines     -  “ Brain Drainer ”   A mean mutation will turn “long Covid” into insta-dementia:      -  “ Coin Flip Killer ”  Badass   variant will be 50% fatal:  Dodger, Drainer and Killer meet, share RN

...AND FOR A GAIL COLLINS COLUMN! (Nobody calls 'em "columns" any more, I know, I know)  Almost every morning I scan the NYTimes and WaPo - mostly the Opinion sections - and clack out a few words of "comments." The general Net gratification of a few "likes," or in the case of the Times "Recommendeds" is there, and at the Times they have two layers up, the "Times Pick" which guarantees a lot of Recommends, and even higher, "NYT Replies," wherein the columnist herself responds to selected comments.  Joy unending, I suppose. I have not experienced it. However, this is a modest pick, which I hereby share with you.  Gail is talking about the infrastructure proposal and will Congress go along. will duff Tijeras, NM 6h ago Times Pick Just post a lot of pictures of what China has done in the last decades. Whole new, shiney, super modern cities, more high speed rail in one province than in all of Europe, never mind the U.S. with o

Let's Hear It for White Collar Crime! Every once in a while a new piece of highly credible information comes along that whacks me upside the head. A sort of shameful response is "I knew that." This is one of those once-in-a-whiles. Heads up . PROVEN:  Big, well known, highly successful companies are more likely to commit  "Vast corporate illegalities" than smaller or troubled companies. As an impressive research project has discovered: Big name corporations more likely to commit fraud One paragraph from the Washington State University research captures it: “Prestigious companies, those that are household names, were actually more prone to engage in financial fraud, which was very surprising,” said Jennifer Schwartz, WSU sociologist and lead author on the study. “We thought it would be companies that were struggling financially, that were nearing bankruptcy, but it was quite the opposite. It was the companies that thought they should be doing better than they w

 So, Big Truth vs. Big Lie "Big Lies" are the bread and butter, the hard currency, the soul of propaganda. They so deviate from the truth that they elicit this response: "Man, that wouldn't say something that crazy unless it was true." Then to augment the outrageousness comes REPETITION, repetition, repetition... "Man, I hear that all the time. It must be true." Everybody - EVERYBODY - is capable of being propagandized. Some of us more, some less; our susceptibility distributed along a normal curve, like everything else. So a really good Big Lie propaganda campaign can convince a very large portion of the population it targets. For instance, one whole side of the normal curve. Or even  almost everybody . Whenever I hear of a substantial number of folks who share a specific belief that defies logic or scientific findings, I suspect propaganda has worked. The anti-vaxers are a current example. Childhood jabs actually don't cause autism, but there is

America Must Restore the Value of TRUTH Currently it seems: We don't need have no stinkin' truth*  My eight million vote win! My landslide win, STOLEN! * We have "Freedom of Speech." We are free to lie, misrepresent, twist, spin, slant, and propagandize to our heart's content. The Constitution says so.  IT'S KILLING US!  We are split into "tribes" with our own truths, our own facts. It is ripping us apart, making us distrustful of fellow citizens, stabbing our democracy in the heart.  I've got a secret plan!                                            We need a CRUSADE FOR TRUTH              The Plan We Need Two (2) Freedoms of Speech Freedom of Truthful Speech   All current Constitutional protections apply only when verifiable   truth is spoken. and Freedom of Opinion Speech   No truth requirement All current protections apply when opinion is clearly labeled.  Opinion, not labeled , has no protections. SOME (TRUTHFUL) FACTS & AN OPINION The

 Three Standard Deviations Off "Normal" Describing our lame duck Prez with distribution curves "Bell" Curves, "Clappers," get it? Ding dong? Oh, forget it. Lame Duck President Trump is on the far ends of these distributions. Way weirder than most humans, and in ways that make him dangerous. I left out the killer curve, "Charismatic Cult Leader". He's clear to the right, "very high" on that one. Maybe that's why he's so interesting to watch.   So I suggest we watch the heck out of him through this lame duck period. And after!

... And More Doubles and Triples GREATEST POLITICAL CARTOONIST OF OUR TIMES* *My "times" are long enough to remember Bill Mauldin, Herblock and a ton of others.  Toles still gets my vote.  So very sorry to see him fading into the eraser crumbs. ...Oh, and I felt a throb of brotherhood with Toles at:                                  ...Since I wrote a book about exactly that. https://amzn.to/2ZRzqPo  

Is Roger Stone Trump's Heinrich Himmler? Or Just His Joseph Goebbels? OK, this is terrifying. But at least it answers the question of why the President commuted Stone's sentence. One good story on this madness.

The Daily Pandemic Report always has an unexplained Number. And it's always BIG. Here's a typical daily report from a small state (NM)  TOTAL  NUMBER OF CASES       26,268 TOTAL RECOVERED                    -13,928                           12,340 (47%)   NOT Totally Recovered Only 77 people are currently hospitalized (and 813 poor souls died). SO what about those NTR (not totally recovered) folks? It's starting to come out. An awful truth is emerging. It's not just about how many die, it's about Covid-19 being a terrible ailment that has many really rotten long term effects. Italy is calling back coronavirus survivors.  About half say they haven’t fully recovered. Washington Post headline 9/8/2020 Other than that, I feel fine. That's about half.  And it sounds pretty bad: "(Some)   recoveries are proving incomplete and sometimes excruciating."  Stuff like... - lung scarring and breathing trouble.  -  hea