While debates continue to rage online about what the true death toll of COVID-19 is, one thing is for certain: Russia and China’s numbers are 100% false. As of this morning, the John Hopkins COVID dashboard is recording 2,537 deaths for Russia and 4,637 deaths in China. If you trust those numbers in countries with 144 million and 1.44 billion, then I’d hate to see your investment strategy.
All of this is made worse by a crumbling hospital infrastructure. While Russian health care is universal and government funded, it suffers from a high level of bureaucracy and lack of funding. Worse still, because of the high concentration of the countries wealth in Moscow verses the rest of the nation. This causes health care to decline significantly the farther away you get from Moscow, causing places like Siberia to suffer considerably more. If you needed a place that resembles The Hunger Games, Russia would be a great fit.
We won’t get the true COVID-19 numbers from Russia, as the government will clamp down on them considerably. But given their setup, be ready for true devastation. Personally I would watch satellite pictures of light intensity, because I would expect areas, especially remote ones, to become uninhabited.
This post represents the views of the author and not those of the Department of Defense, Department of the Navy, or any other government agency.
This morning at 9:30 AM EST DaTechGuy off DaRadio returns after a one episode absence because of personal issues
Our scheduled topics:
The “Under oath” standard for Dems
21st Century Royal Governors
Some plagues & Murders are more equal than others
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FYI because of the illness in the house there will be no 12:35 AM podcast on Monday morning. I’ll be back streaming in one week
The Prospect of Elon Musk dropping California over their continued lockdown is highlighting one of the biggest facts of life concerning the left. For three years they were praying for a recession to slow down the Trump economy. Now that the Corona Virus / Wuhan Virus / CCP Virus has produced one they are desperate to keep the ball rolling. Unfortunately for them the President’s deference to the state on reopening is likely going to create a red/blue economic divide where states run by Trump supporting Governors and/or legislatures are open and thriving while states with Democrat governors or veto proof Democrat majorities hold their people back. We’ve already seen one LA district go GOP in a special election this cycle and if the Democrats insist on keeping people unemployed the revolt against the left might turn an election already looking bad for the left thanks to Biden into a disaster on the state level as well.
The dropping of the Michael Flynn case and the revelations that the Democrats were saying one thing under oath while saying a 2nd to their audience in a normal time might mean doom for them in general but I had a long talk with my parish priest on the subject and he’s noticed that when it comes to things political a real tribalism sets that blinds people to certain things. He gave an example where during the Clinton years a devout woman who would have never tolerated such behavior in her own family would comment. “The poor man, he can’t help himself.” People will find a blind spot when they need it and lately they really need it with the left.
One of the most significant revelations from the Flynn case has been the degree to which Barack Obama was involved in the attempts to destroy the Trump campaign and Flynn. This should be no surprise as Obama was always just a cheap member of the Chicago corruption gang who brought that game with him to DC. However the prospect of senior Obama people’s conduct being examined by the AG and a case that might even reach to the top is one of the reasons why the ex-president is getting involved, it’s also the reason why if evidence is found there is unlikely going to be any move against them till after the election so as not to energize the left.
It’s been interesting to see Jake Tapper questioning several democrats on the Tara Reade / Joe Biden double standard. Over the last few years he has been as NeverTrump as it gets but once the embargo on Reade ended he has not hesitated to challenge leftists on the new METOO standard of “believe all democrat candidates”. One might think this is more toward his roots and it is but if your goal is to defeat President Trump it’s necessary to get this taken care of now rather than later and Tapper’s questions actually serve this purpose better than anything the Democrats have done.
Finally this week’s Monday AM podcast was cancelled due to some issues at home. Barring disaster the livestream will resume Friday Morning at 9:30 AM and the Monday AM podcast should return three days later
Apple River Fort State Historic Site last month in Elizabeth, Illinois, located in a county that has 18 reported cases of COVID-19 as of May 10, 2020.
By John Ruberry
Illinois has the wrong governor at the wrong time.
Oh, I’m not talking about the political positions of Chicago Democrat J.B. Pritzker, the billionaire who was elected governor in 2018.
Let’s first discuss how he was elected. Largely because of support of unions, who probably fell in love with his wallet, as well as the tacit support of the most powerful politician in Illinois, longtime state House speaker Michael Madigan, Pritzker won the Democratic gubernatorial primary. That’s quite ironic as the Pritzker family has had a troubled relationship with organized labor, starting with the Pritzker-owned Hyatt hotel chain.
Pritzker largely self-funded his campaign. So did his hapless general election opponent, multi-millionaire Bruce Rauner. The one-term Republican achieved nothing as governor, other than get bested by Boss Madigan, the mother hen of Illinois’ pension bomb.
Illinois’ shelter-in-place order in response to the coronavirus was eased a bit earlier this month. Golf courses, those germ cesspools, are now open. Dine-in restaurants, health clubs, hair salons and the like are closed. Nearly one million Illinoisans, including my wife and daughter, are newly out of work.
When things get back to what we might call normal, many of businesses won’t be here anymore. Pritzker is a trust fund baby who has never had to worry about economic survival. I’m sure he’s had a few setbacks, but he could always reach into that perpetually-full cookie jar of a trust fund or his accounts in the Grand Cayman Islands. Contrast that situation to the husband and wife who met while working as servers at a restaurant twenty years ago, then saved their money and took out a second mortgage on their home to open their own restaurant. They’ve laid off their servers and bussers, and only half of their cooks kept their jobs. Revenue has plummeted. Taking a third mortgage out on their home to bail out their restaurant isn’t an option. So their dream business, their livelihood that supported children may have only one destiny. Closing down. And then they’ll have no choice but to declare bankruptcy.
Pritzker doesn’t get it.
Since the governor issued his shelter-in-place order nearly two months ago most state offices were shuttered. Yet every state employee is being paid. Let’s zoom in on Illinois’ secretary of state office, which is mainly what other places call the DMV. Driver’s licenses aren’t being issued or renewed, the same goes with license plates, unless, with the latter, you are buying a car as most car dealers in Illinois have the ability to provide at the very least temporary state tags.
Why haven’t state employees like these been laid off? Union rules just might prohibit that but we are told by Pritzker that Illinois is facing an emergency. I’m sure if he wanted to he’d find a state law to justify layoffs. But Pritzker couldn’t simply buy the governor’s office two years ago, he needed votes to win and unions supply lots of voters. And Pritzker, who is not the most dynamic campaigner–he comes across as an arrogant jerk because he is one–will need labor support again if he chooses to run for reelection.
Sales tax revenue is of course way down in Illinois. Because of that and the state’s mountain of unpaid bills and its appallingly-underfunded public worker pension plans, last month Fitch lowered Illinois’ bond to one level above junk.
Unlike its governor, Illinois has no trust fund to bail it out nor does it have bank accounts in the Grand Caymans. Courtesy of Boss Madigan Illinois hasn’t had a rainy day fund for years.
Pritzker is facing several lawsuits challenging his shelter-in-place order. But his wife violated that order by leaving the state for the refuge of their Florida equestrian estate, in the manner of a medieval royal escaping a plague.
It’s good to be king. It’s better to be a billionaire living off a trust fund who can use that cash to be elected governor and then lecture people like me as to how I should live my life. He’s been doing so in his daily press briefings on live television that pre-empt talk shows and soap operas. What fun! The Great Oz has spoken!
Rural Illinois has been particularly devastated by Pritzker’s shutdown. Many Illinois counties have fewer than ten reported cases of COVID-19. Three of them have none.
With great fanfare and expense–$65 million–Pritzker transformed Chicago’s cavernous McCormick Place Convention Center into a hospital because he told us our existing hospitals would be overwhelmed by the coronavirus and there’d be no more hospital beds. After treating 37 patients the McCormick Place hospital closed down. Pritzker took bad advice from so-called experts.
Whether the shelter-in-place order in Illinois and other states worked–or perhaps it was never needed–the lockdowns need to end, with exceptions such as preventing visitors at places with vulnerable people, such as nursing homes. Densely populated cities such as New York and Boston–but not Chicago–probably need to keep up additional protections against COVID-19.
As I wrote a few weeks ago here, a new epidemic is coming. Perhaps it’s here already. One consisting of addiction, spouse and child abuse, and suicide. Economic hardship often brings out the worst in people.
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