Month: April 2020

A Reading for Easter

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A quote for the Faithful Few

 

John Chapter 20

1 The first [day] of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark, unto the sepulchre, and seeth the stone taken away from the sepulchre.

2 Then she runneth, and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple, whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.

3 Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre.

4 So they ran both together: and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre.

5 And he stooping down, [and looking in], saw the linen clothes lying; yet went he not in.

6 Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and seeth the linen clothes lie,

7 And the napkin, that was about his head, not lying with the linen clothes, but wrapped together in a place by itself.

8 Then went in also that other disciple, which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw, and believed.

9 For as yet they knew not the scripture, that he must rise again from the dead.

10 Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.

11 But Mary stood without at the sepulchre weeping: and as she wept, she stooped down, [and looked] into the sepulchre,

12 And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.

13 And they say unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? She saith unto them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him.

14 And when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus.

15 Jesus saith unto her, Woman, why weepest thou? whom seekest thou? She, supposing him to be the gardener, saith unto him, Sir, if thou have borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away.

16 Jesus saith unto her, Mary. She turned herself, and saith unto him, Rabboni; which is to say, Master.

17 Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not; for I am not yet ascended to my Father: but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and [to] my God, and your God.

18 Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord, and [that] he had spoken these things unto her.

 

 

Holidays Interrupted

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The recent lockdown has done a lot for bringing parents and children closer together.  Lots of moms are reconnecting with their kids as daycare and schools have shut down.  And that’s great.  Maybe a few families will reconsider the value of a two-income lifestyle.

But for the extended family, things are quite a bit different.  In my family Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas are gathering times when three and even four generations gather for a big meal and a long weekend or holiday to catch up with each other and reconnect with parents, children, brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, nieces, grandchildren and grandparents.  Everybody plays his role and we perform all the rituals we’ve come to expect.  We repeat all the old stories but with new faces in the younger ranks and maybe an older face or two missing.  We hear about who is graduating or going off to college or has a new job or is getting married.  We try to keep the younger children from getting bored by playing cards or listening to their latest imaginary adventure.  The older folks talk politics and world events.  And everyone eats way too much and for a little while gets to feel much younger again.

Well, not this year.  For the first time in several decades we can’t get together.  I won’t be seeing my brothers and sister.  I won’t even see my own children or their families.  So, no grandkids, no babies.  No fattening and delicious roast beasts or birds.  Just a regular dinner, just me and Camera Girl.  Very sad, very strange.

And I imagine this disruption is being replicated across the country in millions of families in every city and town.  The upshot is that in addition to our jobs and our savings being thrown into disarray and possibly suffering a terrible economic recession we are also isolated and our normal relationships upended.  No one wants to be the cause of someone getting terribly ill or even dying.  And if you have extremely elderly parents in their late eighties or nineties it’s reasonable to say that for the sake of saving their lives, they should be kept isolated at least until we understand this disease a little better.

But now the Health-Nazis are starting to insinuate that we may have to go through this disruption again in the summer and then every year when a fresh seasonal mutant of the coronavirus is identified.  Well, I’ve got news for them.  Not me.  I’m not in my eighties or even my seventies but even at my age there is a higher death rate than in the general population.  I might catch it from a school age relation at a holiday dinner or get together.  Well that’s too damn bad.  I’m not going to allow this charade to go on after this first silliness is ended.  Comes the Fourth of July I’m inviting everyone over for a barbecue and if that puts me in the hospital or sends me to my grave then at least I’ll have had some excellent steak and way too much pie and ice cream.  And I’ll get a chance to see my children and their spouses and my grandsons and granddaughter swimming in the pool and eating hamburgers and watermelon on a hot summer evening.

Now understand, if this thing were a threat to the young then I would understand why caution would be needed.  But it isn’t.  It’s a disease of the old and the chronically ill.  For those individuals, death is a real consideration without the COVID-19 pandemic.  If I were someone who wanted to maximize my odds of living to be a hundred and twenty then I would probably live in a bubble and avoid all contact with the young and active.  And for people of that mindset, isolation would be their own choice.  But I’m not and I won’t.  The authorities are going to have to come up with some better way to minimize the effects of this thing.  My suggestion is to end air traffic to China.  Apparently, that country has a never-ending supply of virulent respiratory diseases.  We can’t afford to let hundreds of thousands of infected people shuttle between China and the West every Chinese New Year just because we don’t want to hurt their feelings.

So that’s my thought.  I’ll get through this present phase without the consolation of enjoying the company of my extended family.  We’ll do a video get together and share some time together as we eat our sad meals apart.  But if they think I’m going to keep doing this in the future they are dead wrong.

How Many Trillions Will It Take to Defibrillate the US Economy Back to Life?

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Returning the country to prosperity is the most important thing President Trump can do to ensure his re-election.  But it is also a herculean task on a scale that’s hard to even imagine.  Think of all the mom and pop businesses like restaurants and beauty parlors that have been shut down, all the bars and dollar stores that have had to lay off their workers and are quickly eating up their cash reserves on overhead while revenues have dropped to zero.  It’s going to take the wisdom of a Solomon combined with the strategic skills of Napoleon to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  It’s going to require cash infusions on a scale that hasn’t been seen since the Second World War.  We’ve been getting used to the word trillion because of idiots like Bernie Sanders and AOC tossing it around in their Green New Deal but unfortunately, we’re about to find out what that word really means.  We’re about to find out how many trillions of dollars it takes to defibrillate the US economy back to life.  But it has to be done.

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are going to drag their heels and try to poison pill the whole thing with their liberal wish list.  Luckily the President can call them out on it and use the bully pulpit to paint them as villains starving the American people when they’re in need of a crust of bread to get them on their feet again.  And that’s exactly what he will do.  He’ll need to use all his skills to battle both the Democrats and the medical bureaucrats who think the country can last until the 22nd century without a paycheck.  But he’ll do it.  He’s aware that this is the fight of his life and one he has to win both for himself and for the country.  Letting the Democrats kill the small businesses of the United States would effectively change this into a third world nation.  And that’s exactly what they want.

I think the President realizes that he is going to have to bail out just about everybody but the billionaires.  And he’ll have to be shrewd enough to recognize how the billionaires are going to try to game this thing to their advantage.  Corporations that try to use the handouts to feather their nests while throwing their employees onto the bread lines need to be given a taste of the stick instead of the carrot.  Small businesses will be the hardest hit.  They will need hefty grants and basically interest free loans to restart.  And some businesses whose profitability was already marginal before this catastrophe are just not going to make it at all.  And so that means providing public works projects that will soak up a lot of the unemployed who worked for companies that aren’t coming back.  But it also means the government is going to have to encourage big business to expand domestic employment.  The only way to do that is to force industrial production back to the United States.  But you can’t start something like that on a dime.  That won’t be ramped all the way up for a year or two.  For now, the Federal government will be the money supply that funds corporations to employ the masses.  What an awful mess that’s going to be.  But that’s what’s going to happen.  A full court press to save the victims of this crazy lockdown from ending up on welfare.

My guess is when all is said and done it will cost ten trillion dollars basically half of the GDP of the United States for 2019.  That’s $10,000,000,000,000.  That’s a ridiculous number.  But shutting down a country of three hundred and thirty million people is a ridiculous thing to do.  So here we go.  This will be D-Day, the Manhattan Project, the Apollo Program, the Marshall Plan and the Civilian Conservation Corps all rolled up into one and accelerated into a couple of months.  What an awful mess it’s going to be.  Well, I’ve always enjoyed a good action adventure story.  Let’s hope this one is a happily ever after story.  Ten years ago, we saw the one that didn’t end well.  Luckily the hero of the story is different this time.

Laughing at the Corona Virus

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One of my oldest friends sent this to me today.  I’ll have to say that as ridiculous as it is, the laugh I got out of it did me a lot of good.  And the vindictiveness of the last holiday decision rang completely true to the spirit of all the paisans I grew up with.  Revenge and spite were their two favorite past times.  Tell me what you think.