Category: Current Events

Actual Essential Personnel

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Yesterday was an interesting day.  Earlier I was commenting somewhat ironically on the essential, critical, crucial nature of the work I was able to accomplish on my dining room table.  The industry I work in is considered important because the products are critical to some individuals.  But I think it’s important to consider the circumstances under which certain work is done before throwing around words like critical.  Let me elaborate.

Yesterday was a bizarre weather day in my neck of the woods.  We had rain that varied from sprinkles to torrents without any rhyme or reason as to when.  There was also a wind advisory that quoted a range of wind speeds from 20 mph to 65 mph.  When I see a range that broad, I usually take it with a grain of salt.  To me that sounds a little like someone not knowing very much but employing a CYA strategy in case things do get out of hand.

Around noon yesterday I hear a loud cracking noise and then thesound of a high voltage line grounding itself through normal unprotected materials like trees, guardrails and the road.  We got one last loud bang and then the lights went out.  Luckily, we have a large emergency generator on an automated transfer switch that cuts in after a few seconds so life went on.  But looking out the window I could see a very large old tree hanging across the road and suspended in the trees on my side of the road.  This looked like a big problem.

I called 911 and the fellow there took the information and said someone was on the way.  And he was right.  Emergency vehicles of all description showed up.  There was a fire engine, a state trooper, some non-descript pick up truck with flashers, two power company cherry pickers and a big highway vehicle with a heavy-duty bucket on a big arm.

They were out there for a couple of hours without any indication that much was going on.  The fire engine and the statie left.  Eventually the highway guys started walking around and assembling some gear.  Now meanwhile the storm hadn’t abated much at all.  The wind was truly impressive as it shot horizontal rain in all directions with remarkable force.  Areas of my home that almost never even get wet were flowing rivers from time to time.  I even had to sojourn out into this mess when the sump in the lower driveway starting backing up.  Leaves in the sump that hadn’t caused any problem when normal rainfall was involved blocked the outlet line enough that about six inches of water was standing on the lower driveway and advancing to the house.  I freed the clog and that pool emptied into that six-inch pipe in an impressive way.  Luckily this was April and not February so the worst I got was wet.  But when I got inside, I was convinced that the highway guys would wait until morning to work on that tree.  After all nobody would freeze to death without power in 60 degree weather and working with chain saws on hanging trees in that wind and rain seemed foolish to me.

But about an hour later I saw the highway truck change position and the two power company bucket trucks moved over to the next two telephone poles beyond where the tree was located.  And then I could hear the chainsaws and see the trees pitching around as they took it apart.  Well those guys must know their stuff.  It took about an hour to down the tree and clear the road.  After that it took a couple of more hours for the linemen to rework the wires and restore power.  By then the wind was starting to die down.

Today I went out and checked out the aftermath.

 

Interestingly the wind didn’t crack that tree it pulled it out by the roots.  I’m not sure if that made clearing the road easier or harder.  But looking at the size and estimating the weight of the tree sections that the crew was working with in that lousy weather I have to admit I’m impressed.

So, to put an end to this post, I guess I’m just saying that there’s work and then there’s real work.  If we’re going to have a world where power flows through wires across the countryside, we’ll need some men who don’t shelter in place when things go wrong.  They go out in the wind and rain and snow and do hard work so everyone else can stay warm and safe inside.  Hopefully one day soon a lot more people will remember that and once again make it part of the way we address the world we live in.  Not everyone can do essential work from the dining room table or the local Starbuck’s.

Some Progress on the Lockdown

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Now you folks may not know this but I am essential. Maybe not in respect to my blogging activities (although individuals of truly discerning taste could convince me otherwise if they tried) but relative to my other qualifications. I work in an essential industry that provides critical stuff. For the last three weeks or so I’ve only gone into work one day. But somehow, working from home I’ve been able to critically impact the essence of something or other. Or so I’m told.

But now word has come down that in a very few weeks I’ll be heading back to the salt mines. Not full time. We’ll be staggering our days at the plant on an every-other day basis (three days one week, two days the next week) which will allow us to stagger our seating arrangement and maintain enough space to prevent us from bumping into each other in the aisles. Also, we’ll be masked and bathed in hand sanitizer. It sounds wonderful until we bump into someone that’s not wearing a mask. People at this point shouldn’t be getting away with not wearing a mask, as there are lots of options to choose from and it benefits everyone’s safety.

Anyway, I take this as a sign that reality is starting to temper the paranoid risk aversion that has become like a mystery cult in most corporations. Apparently, productivity has plummeted to such an extent that corporate survival has finally overcome the fear of being sued for COVID-19 deaths in the workplace.

This is the first sign that normalcy is returning. Big corporations are the first to hear from the bureaucracy when things are about to happen. I take this to mean that we’ll start hearing about changes at the end of April. And it makes sense. Places like New York City will be the last places to end the quarantine. The density of the population and the high infection rates ensures that hospital cases will continue for months to come. But outside of the Northeast and the West Coast we can expect gradual easing on the quarantine requirements in May.

I fully expect nursing homes and assisted living facilities will maintain strict isolation to prevent the kind of deaths that occurred in Washington State at the nursing homes that were affected. And any other guidelines that the doctors can provide for truly at-risk people would be useful. But if you’re thirty-five years old and don’t have a chronic heart or lung condition or weigh three hundred pounds why do they have you sitting at home without a pay check to feed your family?

You can depend on the New York Times and CNN to declare President Trump a war criminal for letting us out of lockdown before the complete collapse of the economy and thereby threatening their election narrative. But he’s smart enough to do what needs doing. I expect he’ll run on restoring the economy to high performance and locking down the borders. And included in the border lockdown will be shutting down the air routes to China. It’s the smart thing to do and it will sell very well at election time. It will reinforce Biden’s crony links to China and resonate with anyone who has suffered because of the COVID-19 shutdowns.

So, hang in there my fellow prisoners. The jail break is coming soon so hurry up sharpening that shiv.

Finally Some Useful Data on COVID-19

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An article in the Spectator gives us quantitative information on the infection and mortality rates for this virus.  Anti-body testing in a hard hit town in Germany has some useful results:

“A team at the University of Bonn has tested a randomized sample of 1,000 residents of the town of Gangelt in the north-west of the country, one of the epicenters of the outbreak in Germany. The study found that two percent of the population currently had the virus and that 14 percent were carrying antibodies suggesting that they had already been infected — whether or not they experienced any symptoms. Eliminating an overlap between the two groups, the team concluded that 15 percent of the town have been infected with the virus.”

“Data from coronavirus deaths in Gangelt suggests an infection mortality rate of 0.37 percent, significantly below the 0.9 percent which Imperial College has estimated, or the 0.66 percent found in a revised study last week.”

Applying my patented back of the envelope calculation method that equals an expected death total for the United States of 183,000 people.  If a normal flu death total for the United States is between thirty and fifty thousand lives a year then this thing is about five times deadlier than the flu.

But here’s the rub, eighty percent (80%) of those deaths are people over seventy years of age.  By only isolating the retired population and the seriously ill and letting everyone else go back to work, we can reduce the number of deaths to a handful and still let the country get back to normal.

Let’s hope cooler heads prevail and the Health-Nazis don’t sentence us and our way of life to oblivion.

12APR2020 – OCF Update – Happy Easter

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Good Morning to everyone out there.  It’s a bright sunny day and the wind has died down, although not completely so some of my focus stack pictures I took today of some flowers are probably a mess.  There was frost on the flowers this morning which is to be expected in this weird little stretch of the world I live in.

Camera Girl and I are going to have a video family gathering later and that should somewhat assuage the isolation and she’s making a few treats to make up for the ham or lamb or turkey that could have been.

I hope all of you will have a good day and enjoy whatever company, real or virtual you may have.  And for the Christians have a very Happy Easter.

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.

 

 

President Trump Says Obama Hasn’t Endorsed Biden Because He Knows Something We Don’t

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President Trump is hinting that Creepy Uncle Joe won’t be the Democrat Candidate.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2020/04/09/trump_maybe_obama_hasnt_endorsed_sleepy_joe_because_he_knows_something_that_you_dont_know.html

He’s so much fun to listen to.  And I’m definitely not going to say he’s wrong.  I think the Democrats are panicked knowing that even though Biden prevented Bernie from being the candidate he himself is completely non-electable.  I mean, just think of it, he’s the closest thing since Bill Clinton to an unregistered sex offender as presidential candidate and he’s also suffering from late stage dementia.  The only way it could be worse is if his pants fall down during a debate.  So the only question is who do they unleash next?  Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Barbara Streisand, Oprah?  It most likely has to be an actor.  Empathy, at this stage, is all they can hope to use.

The Unholy Inception of ShatnerKhan II

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Today I was on a videoconference with the Board of Directors of the ShatnerKhan Corporation.  These august gentlemen and I began the initial planning of this great enterprise.  I must tell you, just knowing that ShatnerKhan II would happen despite the COVID-19 Plague was indeed exciting.  It would be like a shining beacon in the inky blackness of cultural hiatus that this quarantine has engendered.  It would bring hope and purpose to a weary nation.  It might even save countless lives by giving these poor souls the will to throw off the deadly clutches of this sinovirus.  “Ad astra per aspera.”

So, it was kind of fun talking about something so frivolous and light hearted.  No life and death diseases, no do or die elections just the foibles of that demigod of bad acting William Shatner.  We committed ourselves to a much more organized effort.  As you might remember ShatnerKhan I was an impromptu gathering with almost no planning, preparation or notice.  And most importantly not nearly enough time was spent on the menu for the event.  For as I’ve often stated ShatnerKhan is mostly an excuse to eat highly indigestible but exquisitely delicious and altogether splendiferous food.  So, I extracted this promise that the first thing to be fixed was the menu.  I am a reasonable man and will not prevent whatever personal favorites the Board requests.  All I ask is that dill pickles, corned beef, pastrami, pumpernickel bread, potato salad and good brown mustard are lavishly provided.  There was talk of all kinds of delicacies but we’ll see what they decide on.  I know that sausage and peppers, eggplant parmigiana and panko coated drumsticks were mentioned but I also know that Chinese food was listed at one point.  Well, at such an intellectually challenging event the sages need to keep up their strength somehow.

Moving onto the agenda we discussed how best to avoid burnout from the sheer volume of Shatneriana that was available for review.  It was decided that we would extract the quintessence of Shatner goodness from each historical record and in this way reduce the time needed to review it.  This will require great amounts of preparatory work.  And it will also require much greater technical skill than is currently at the disposal of the Board.  For I must confess that when it comes to digital expertise, we are blithering idiots.  But this aspect I’ve taken on myself to explore.  But the idea is to have a live stream that will capture us bloviating on the various scenes we are critiquing.  Of course, to maintain anonymity we will be masked.  I suggested Shatner masks.  I understand that the mask that the Michael Myers character wore in Halloween was actually based in some way on William Shatner’s face.  Whether this is true or not I have also been tasked to look into the masks and other props needed for the event.  It was suggested that I find a three-dimensional chess board and a Vulcan lyre like the ones that Spock employed during various episodes of the original series.  While I’m at it why don’t I look for Shatner’s missing hairline?  But I digress.

There was a discussion about inviting the great man himself to this great homage to his name.  But we were reminded that he’s eighty-nine and also fabulously wealthy.  But we may invite him anyway.  My guess is he won’t be too pleased by our take on his career and talents.  But who knows?  I thought maybe we should contact Kevin Pollack.  After all he’s fairly famously for imitating Shatner.  As you can see, bull was flung pretty freely at this meeting but it was quite stimulating talking about the event.  As far as timing the earliest it would be held is midsummer.  But based on the current crisis it might also be closer to September.  When asked by the Board if the readers of Orion’s Cold Fire could be a source for ideas for the gathering, I said I thought it very well might be.  I know of at least one reader who has shown enthusiasm for the idea and I think there is the potential for a collaborative effort where local groups could participate in the live streaming and eat equally indigestible, delicious and splendiferous food.  Of course, they’ll have to provide their own masks and food but the spirit of bright camaraderie will more than pay for the foodstuffs needed.

So, I’m throwing it out to the audience.  If you have any ideas practical or ridiculous that should be brought to the attention of the Board and if you have interest in remote link up during such an absurd venture leave a comment or send an e-mail and I’ll make sure you’re kept in the loop when any actual information is available.