Black Market Dealer from Brooklyn Caught Selling Med Supplies

President Trump’s instincts about missing medical supplies were right on target. Never doubt a businessman who suspects something is amiss in the supply chain.

 

According to Jerry De Marco, reporter for The (North Jersey) Daily Voice, the F.B.I. collared a Black Market dealer with enough supplies to fill a hospital.

 

“A Brooklyn man,” he reported, “caught hoarding enough black market medical supplies to ‘outfit an entire hospital’ deliberately coughed on investigating FBI agents and told them he had the coronavirus, federal authorities said Monday.

 

“’Baruch Feldheim, 43, violated an executive order issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week that makes it illegal to hoard certain scarce health and medical resources,’ U.S. Attorney for New Jersey Craig Carpenito said.

 

“’These included N95 filtering face-piece respirators, personal protection equipment (PPE), surgical masks, disinfecting devices and other medical necessities that Carpenito said he sold to doctors and nurses at inflated prices.

 

“’In one instance, he said, Feldheim agreed to sell 1,000 N95 masks and other assorted materials for $12,000 — a 700% or so markup from the ordinary price – to a physician he met on the WhatsApp chat group Virus2020!”

 

“’Feldheim directed the physician to an auto repair shop in Irvington that ‘contained enough materials, including hand sanitizers, Clorox wipes, chemical cleaning supply agents, and surgical supplies, to outfit an entire hospital,’ Carpenito said the doctor told federal investigators.

 

“’Feldheim later told the doctor that he had been forced to move all of those supplies from Irvington to another location’ he said.

 

“Feldheim received a shipment from Canada last Wednesday of eight pallets of medical facemasks, Carpenito noted.  Soon after, FBI agents watched as people came to Feldheim’s home and left with ‘boxes or bags that appeared to contain medical supplies,’ the U.S. attorney said.

 

“’The agents approached Feldheim, identified themselves and said they needed to keep a safe distance while they asked him some questions,’ Carpenito said.

 

“Once they were within four or five feet of him, he said, Feldheim ‘coughed in their direction without covering his mouth’ and then told them he had the coronavirus.

 

“’Feldheim then lied, telling the agents he worked for a company that bought and sold personal protective equipment (PPE) but didn’t have any himself and never sold them directly, Carpenito said.

 

“Feldheim remained in custody Monday, charged with assaulting a federal officer and lying to law enforcement.”

 

Where there’s one rat, there’s bound to be a pack. We congratulate the doctor who had the courage to finger Feldheim.

 

We were suspicious from the beginning, just like the President. As we watched “shoppers” rolling out of the supermarket will cartloads of toilet paper and cleaning supplies, we wondered how much toilet paper a family really needed.

 

Even if someone was sick in the family and the family was quarantined, other relatives could have picked up supplies for them, as needed, leaving the supplies outside the door. Hoarding was completely unnecessary.

 

When I would get sick with the flu, that’s what my family did. They’d pick up whatever I needed and leave it outside my door.  After they left, I brought the bags inside.

 

We were certain “unhealthy” activities were going on at those crowded supermarkets. No one needs that many rolls of toilet paper, sanitizer, or wipes.  Someone was stocking up.  But not because they feared a quarantine.

 

“Out of chaos comes opportunity.” The quote is generally attributed to Albert Einstein.

 

We hope these Black Market criminals will soon find themselves in a very different type of “quarantine.”

 

 

 

 

 

Destination States to Metro New Yorkers: Stay Home

Yesterday’s Sunday Bergen Record was filled with six pages of obituaries.  That’s not a completely unusual number of obits during the winter here in Northern New Jersey.  But in these disquieting times, what was alarming was the number that didn’t list some cause of death.  Families also sent regards to Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, in Bergen County.

 

Holy Name and Valley Hospital in Ridgewood are the two beleaguered hospitals – Holy Name is quite small – trying to cope with the spread of the highly-contagious Wuhan Flu. The newspaper reported that many patients are on ventilators and some are in medically-induced comas.

 

The longer a patient is on a ventilator, the less likely they are to recover and, some say, the more likely they are to suffer brain damage if they do recover.

 

Meanwhile, at a Coronavirus Press Conference, President Trump got into a battle with a reporterette over a shortage of ventilators at a New York City Hospital. The President noted that the provider told him normally the hospital uses 20,000 ventilators a day.  They now are asking for 200,000.  The provider has supplied them but the “client” is claiming there still weren’t enough.

 

Ever the businessman, Trump wanted to know why. Why wasn’t 200,000 enough?  He said that the hospital authorities needed to investigate.  This got the reporterette’s hackles up, asking the President why, in this crisis, the hospital shouldn’t get any and everything it requests?

 

The President suggested, obliquely, that ‘something’ was wrong. We’re a former astrologer and occasional mind-reader.  But in this case, none of that is necessary.  What the President suspected was that the ventilators were being stolen, probably to be sold on the Black Market for outrageous prices.

 

There. Wasn’t that simple?  No need for Detective Sherlock Holmes.

 

In other news, the President had considered on travel ban to other states on the Tri-State area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. He said he consulted the governors of the afflicted states; they claim he did not.  They’re all Democrats; he’s a Republican.  You do the math.

 

Anyway, Tri-Staters are fleeing the area for their Florida vacation homes, and like the five million Wuhanians who fled their city before it could be locked down by the Chinese government, they’re taking the Wuhan Flu with them.

 

Native Floridians already don’t like Northerners. Now they’ve got their National Guard patrolling their borders.  But it may already be too late.  The virus is growing in Florida, faster (it appears) than any other state south of the Mason-Dixon Line or west of the Delaware River.

 

Critics are beginning to raise questions about China’s assertion that their Wuhan Flu crisis has passed. There are stories of victims’ families being paid off not to blab and other stories about thousands of urns being ordered, far more than the number of dead to which China will admit.  They have a holiday, of sorts, called Cremation Day, and want the urns delivered before that date in April.

 

Or so they claim.

 

Many are criticizing Dr. Fauci’s predictions of hundreds of thousands dead – by Easter. Even the Spanish Flu didn’t work that fast.  It took about a year and half for Spanish Flu to take its full toll.

 

Some think Fauci simply wants to frighten people into complying with the social distancing and non-essential travel ban. If he thinks he’s scared people, he’s wrong.  He certain has scared the people of Northern New Jersey into protecting themselves when they enter the supermarket – just about the only place you can go these days.

 

This weekend meant rising again before the Sun to stand on line at Shop Rite. Not all of those shoppers at 7 a.m. were elderly, though most were.  Shop Rite never said it would have special hours for seniors only.

 

Some of the elderly wore masks.   Almost no one wore gloves.  No one wiped the shopping cart bar before handling it.  Perhaps they assumed Shop Rite’s personnel sanitized the carts.  Maybe they did and we just weren’t there to see it.  In any case, we took our shopping cart from the parking lot and immediately wiped it with a Lysol wipe, then put the cloth in a bag in the car.

 

We wore cotton gloves, not plastic, since we’re not sure where we could get latex gloves; Shop Rite didn’t have any. Washing them each day is simple enough, anyway.  Unfortunately, some people who wore latex gloves simply dropped them on the ground even though Shop Rite provides trash barrels at every shopping cart corral.

 

Younger people are reporting symptoms of diarrhea along with the other, milder symptoms. Do they use toilet seat paper?  Do they wash before and after?  Do they spray the bathroom door before touching it and leave it in the same condition when they’re done?  Do they keep their hands off the toilet handle and sanitize it, if they do?

 

And what about the kids? The hygienic habits of children are notoriously bad.  At this point, they would be at school, certainly not cleaning handles or doorknobs, or we shudder to think, even their hands?  Could this be the actual source of the tummy troubles?

 

In any case, Shop Rite and Stop & Shop were cleared out of Imodium tablets, although they still have the liquid variety. The stomach flu that would normally find a ready petri dish at school is now making itself at home, instead.

 

What’s the matter with people, anyway? Are they suspicious of the government’s overstated numbers?  Even we think the numbers are too high.  But if people continue to be as careless as they have been in the Metro New York-New Jersey area, the number of cases, although not necessarily deaths, could climb into the hundreds of thousands.

 

We happen to be in one of the “essential” industries, although we’re part-time and our hours were reduced. Route 80 is said to be deserted; Route 287 – not so much.  There were an awful lot of cars flying down the road who clearly aren’t staying home.  And we do mean flying.  It is rather disappointing to find “company” on Southbound 287; it’s even worse on the Northbound side.  Over there, it looks like no one at all is paying attention to the edict to stay home.

 

The cops are said to be leery of pulling over cars for fear the idiot behind the wheel has the Wuhan Flu. What’s kept the numbers of sick people low is the closing of companies.  However, that also causes a huge economic hardship for many workers, although most companies seem to be keeping their workers on the payroll as long as they work from home.

 

President Trump has moved the “deadline” for the Wuhan Flu to disappear from Easter to the end of April. We think mid-May – Mother’s Day – is more likely, at least around here.  We don’t know what timeline the flu itself has.

 

There’s a Dutch cruise ship out at sea who can’t find a safe port to disembark its sick passengers. Some were transferred onto a sister ship, the SS Rotterdam.  But the ship itself was denied port in Miami and in every port all the way down to Brazil and Argentina.  We feel terrible for those poor people.  The ship left three weeks ago, which means the passengers and the line knew about the Wuhan Flu.

 

Why would vacationers take such a risk? Cruise lines and airlines will refund money; hotels will not.  That means thousands of dollars the vacationers will lose.  Up until now, travelers have balked at paying the 40 percent premium for travelers’ insurance to cover cancelled hotel reservations and other costs, especially if they’re caught overseas in the middle of an emergency like this one.

 

You couldn’t get us on a cruise ship, even before the Wuhan Flu. The Norovirus was a bad enough contagion to thank God for hearth and home.  So many Americans – and people of other nations – are stranded abroad, some sick, others just homesick. That must be horrible for them.

 

We pray that they will find their home port soon.

 

Meanwhile, even if the government’s numbers of incredibly overinflated, let’s take them at their word anyway. Stay home, if you can.  Work from home, if you’re allowed.

 

And when you go to the supermarket, for Pete’s Sake, wear a mask and gloves. Wipe the handle of the shopping cart and don’t go breathing germs on other people’s future purchases.  In particular, don’t go breathing on the employees.  Why they aren’t covering up, or their store or unions aren’t insisting that they do so is beyond us.

 

If enough supermarket workers get sick, the stores could conceivably close down. Before you selfish goobersmoochers make another run on the stores, trying to hoard items, why don’t you just cover up?

 

A-List Wuhan Flu Victims

Something we neglected to note in our astrological hobby analysis of the Wuhan Flu was the many high-level people it has affected – and even killed – since the outbreak.

 

The first to go, seemingly was Iran’s former Ambassador to the Vatican, Hadi Khosrowshahi, died on Feb. 27 of the coronavirus. Iran had an ambassador to the Holy See?  Who knew?!

 

At the time and since, a stellium of planets (a close gathering) was situated in Capricorn. Capricorn rules, well, rulers, wealthy people, the military, and the elderly.  A number of CEOs, actors, aides to politicians, even politicians themselves, like Sen. Rand Paul, and of course the elderly have contracted and/or succumbed to the virus.

 

The stellium included Saturn, Pluto, Mars, and Jupiter. The planets needed to do some “social distancing” there.  Putting Saturn, Pluto and Mars together can certainly be bad news for those groups – illness and even death.

 

Most notable of these A-Listers is none other than Prince Charles, the direct heir to the British throne has contracted the virus. He refrained from shaking hands.  But he and his subjects and visitors still got closer than the nominal six feet.   Authorities believe he became contagious around the 12^th of March; they have no idea who among the throngs, whom he greeted on behalf of his elderly mother, Queen Elizabeth II, may have had the disease.

 

Interestingly, his wife, Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, has tested negative for the virus. We should not be beguiled by such positive prognoses (not that we wish the Duchess any harm).  The Wuhan doctor who blew the whistle on the virus was tested six times and each time, the tests came up negative.

 

The planets are moving on into Aquarius, a sign that rules the masses and the young. The Media did a great disservice to the young, assuring the public that only the elderly (60 and over) and those with underlying illnesses are most susceptible to the disease.

 

As a result, they’ve been carrying on rather carelessly, not bothering to wear masks or gloves to the only places now open – the supermarkets and superstores. The disease is now running rampant among store and warehouse employees.

 

Jupiter is also on the scene. But it may be giving people a false sense of hope against its deadlier brothers.  Jupiter can also be rather irresponsible and short-sighted, taking too optimistic view of the situation.

 

What will happen when Mars – and the others shortly thereafter – join Saturn in Aquarius on April 1? Mars and Saturn will be in square (adverse) aspect to Uranus, the ruler of Aquarius. They will have moved away from deadly Pluto.  But goodness only knows what will come of a conjunction like this one.  We suspect war, given the suddenness of Aquarius, the violence of Mars, and Mars and Saturn’s military nature.

 

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced today that he also has the Wuhan Flu, after visiting virus patients at a hospital. Masoumeh Ebtekar, Vice President of Iran.  Miami Mayor Francis Suarez.  Beogona Gomez, wife of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.

 

Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson were the first Hollywood celebrities to be stricken with the virus, while working in Australia. Placido Domingo, under a cloud for #MeToo crimes, also has it. Tony-award winning scriptwriter Terence McNally (“Ragtime”) died from it.  As did actor Mark Blum (“Desperately Seeking Susan”) at age 61.  Jon Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan has it.

 

Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, 44, wife of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, tested positive for coronavirus after returning from a brief trip to the U.K. Sen. Rand Paul.  Congressman Ben McAdams (D-Utah). Congressman Mario Diaz-Balart (Fla. D-25).  New Orleans Saints Coach Sean Payton.

 

Chef Floyd Cardoz, of Bravo’s Top Chef Masters died at the age of 59. Jeff Shell, CEO of NBC.  Record producer Andrew Watt.

 

Meanwhile, the House of Representatives has passed the $2 trillion relief bill.

 

The Media is resisting referring to the coronavirus as the Wuhan Virus or Wuhan Flu. So is the World Health Organization, which, according to columnist Matt Vespa on Townhall.com, has been complicit in supporting China’s misinformation and propaganda campaign.

 

“China lied, and people died,” he writes. “That’s a fact. It’s also a fact that this pandemic originated in China. It’s called the Wuhan coronavirus. Period. China discovered evidence of this pneumonia-like illness in December and ordered its scientists to destroy samples. China dragged its feet when it came to informing the public. It kept information about human-to-human transmission buried. It kept medical crews in the dark and strong-armed doctors who were trying to do the right thing. But somehow, it’s not China’s fault. I cannot eye-roll hard enough. And remember, the World Health Organization pretty much spread Chinese misinformation in January

 

Vespa cites the Twitter notice from the W.H.O:

 

Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China????. pic.twitter.com/Fnl5P877VG

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) January 14, 2020igh

 

“Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China,” the organization had said.

 

“It also relied on information from Chinese health authorities who have been accused of obscuring facts and figures during the course of the outbreak.

“The Chinese government reportedly knew the disease was spreading before the tweet was sent, according to the South China Morning Post.

 

“And yet, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus continues to praise China for its transparency over this fiasco, according to the Daily Caller. It all makes sense when you find out that China had backed Tedros’ 2017 bid to be WHO director-general. Talk about quid pro quo, huh? And in a lengthy piece at DC, they detail this link, as well as place heavy blame on China for totally screwing up the response that could have kept this virus contained. Instead, China decided to let it spread to the rest of the world because what else would you expect from an ethnocentric, authoritarian regime that views the West with deep suspicion? (via Daily Caller):

 

“World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus won his post after China backed him in the May 2017 election.

 

“Despite all evidence to the contrary, Chinese authorities are weaving a false counternarrative in which China was actually the victim of a foreign virus that it quickly moved to contain. And the WHO is helping them do it.

 

“Tedros has praised China’s ‘transparency’ and held up the country as a model response  — even though the communist regime covered and then concealed the severity of the outbreak.

 

“Chinese authorities forced scientists who discovered the virus in December to destroy proof of the virus, U.K. newspaper The Sunday Times reported. The Chinese regime also punished doctors who tried to warn the public in the outbreak’s early stages and suppressed information about the virus online. A Chinese real estate mogul who criticized his government’s response has since gone missing.”

 

And the whistleblowing doctor, Dr. Li Wenliang, died of the virus he discovered on Feb. 5. Other Chinese doctors were censored by the government and detained.

 

According to the BBC News, “His death was confirmed by the Wuhan hospital where he worked and was being treated, following conflicting reports about his condition on state media.

 

“Dr Li, 34, an ophthamologist, tried to send a message to fellow medics about the outbreak at the end of December. Three days later police paid him a visit and told him to stop. He returned to work and caught the virus from a patient. He had been in hospital for at least three weeks.

 

“He posted his story from his hospital bed last month on social media site Weibo.

 

“Dr. Li was working at the centre of the outbreak in December when he noticed seven cases of a virus that he thought looked like SARS – the virus that led to a global epidemic in 2003. The cases were thought to come from the Huanan Seafood market in Wuhan and the patients were in quarantine in his hospital.

 

“On 30 December he sent a message to fellow doctors in a chat group warning them about the outbreak and advising they wear protective clothing to avoid infection.

 

“What Dr. Li didn’t know then was that the disease that had been discovered was an entirely new

coronavirus.

 

“Four days later he was summoned to the Public Security Bureau where he was told to sign a letter. In the letter he was accused of “making false comments” that had “severely disturbed the social order”.

 

“’We solemnly warn you: If you keep being stubborn, with such impertinence, and continue this illegal activity, you will be brought to justice – is that understood?” Underneath in Dr. Li’s handwriting is written: ‘Yes, I do.’

 

“He was one of eight people who police said were being investigated for ‘spreading rumours.’

 

“At the end of January, Dr. Li published a copy of the letter on Weibo and explained what had happened. In the meantime, local authorities had apologised to him but that apology came too late.

 

“For the first few weeks of January officials in Wuhan were insisting that only those who came into contact with infected animals could catch the virus. No guidance was issued to protect doctors.

 

“But just a week after his visit from the police, Dr. Li was treating a woman with glaucoma. He didn’t know that she had been infected with the new coronavirus.

 

“In his Weibo post he describes how on 10 January he started coughing, the next day he had a fever and two days later he was in hospital. His parents also fell ill and were taken to hospital.

 

“It was 10 days later – on 20 January – that China declared the outbreak an emergency.

 

“Dr. Li says he was tested several times for coronavirus, all of them came back negative. “

It turns out that 80 percent of the coronavirus tests China sells to other countries come back with false negatives.

 

The BBC report goes on to say, “On 30 January he posted again: ‘Today nucleic acid testing came back with a positive result, the dust has settled, finally diagnosed.’”

 

When Dr. Li, he was hailed as a hero by the global medical community. The Chinese government was not so heroic; it expelled reporters from the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and the Washington Post for reporting on the story and retaliation for President Trump’s banning of five Chinese Communist news organizations.

 

Our media, meanwhile, has been culpable not only in refraining from identifying the city of Wuhan, and its live animal market, but of misleading young people in the United States about the possibility of their contracting the virus.

 

Younger people are taking a cavalier attitude about the virus. Thousands of students crowded Florida’s beaches on Spring Break – and returned home with the virus.  Shoppers can be seen wandering into supermarkets with no protection – no masks or gloves – putting other shoppers and store personnel in danger.

 

The elderly and the health-compromised are the most vulnerable, but not the only vulnerable.  People didn’t listen in New York City, forcing New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to insist that the city be shut down.  Metropolitan Transit conductors, as well as NYPD officers and NYFD firefighters and EMTs have come down with the virus, to say nothing of the medical workers.

 

Critical protective gear is in extremely short supply everywhere, but especially in the City. That’s what comes of doing business with China.  But businesses put out of work by the epidemic have turned to making respirators, surgical masks, face shields, gloves, and hazmat suits to make up for the short supply which China, in its high dungeon over being guilty of letting this virus loose on the world, refuses to send.  Neither will India, the other Third World supplier, insisting on saving its supplies for its own citizens.’

 

No blame to them. But why didn’t we think of that?

 

We should be thinking America First. That’s what President Trump has been trying to encourage.  However, businesses, investors and Congress have all been dragging their feet.  What a boon this shutdown is to climate change environmentalists.

 

“Look at the decrease in pollution!” they boast. But at what cost?

 

Was the Wuhan Flu a result of non-existent hygiene regulations and bizarre eating habits in China? Or was it the result of an experiment gone wrong at the Wuhan Institute of Virology?  Or was it a mistake at all?

 

What better way to take out the U.S. economy? What better way to set America up for a military attack, with its medical facilities flagging under the virus crisis, with doctors and nurses getting sick and even dying? More people die of the regular flu every year than this virus.  But Wuhan Flu spreads much more easily and kills the most vulnerable.  Everyone else is sent into a panic – although not panicked enough to wear protection, it seems.

 

The virus is transmitted through the air through droplets from sneezing or coughing. So even if you have an allergy and you sneeze, since this virus does not announce itself right away, you still need to cover up.

 

People don’t even fear the regular flu enough, which hits you a like a freight train. This virus lets you get into the crossing with mild symptoms, stalls you, and then hits you – with no crossing gates, no lights, and no whistle.

Bam!

 

We’ve had the regular flu and that’s what happens. Violent shaking and sudden high fever.  Note that there’s a difference between “temperature” and “fever.”

 

Temperature: 98.7 – 100.3 degrees

Fever: Anything from 100.4 up.

 

A fever happens when a virus invades your body and your body turns up the heat to try to kill it.

 

If we were to consult astrology, the distance between Mars and Saturn and Pluto is growing, which means the number of deaths will gradually subside. That doesn’t mean the virus will.  The doctors and scientists just aren’t sure.  Some medicines are showing promise for treatment, so there is hope for the very sick.

 

We wish there was as much hope for the stupid.

 

 

 

Record $2 Trillion Stimulus Bill Passes the U.S. Senate

Late last night, the U.S. Senate passed a draft of an historic $2 trillion stimulus bill intended to combat the economic symptoms of the Wuhan Flu epidemic.

 

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) vowed that the Senate would stand together to pass the bill, which they did – 96-0.   The trouble is, the American public doesn’t know exactly what type of government glue the authors of the bill used to get the heavily divided Republicans and Democrats to stick together to get the bill passed.

 

Even some senators say they haven’t seen the draft of the text.

 

The bill’s purpose is to provide relief to workers who’ve lost their jobs or been laid off due to the epidemic and the subsequent panic on Wall Street. The final vote in the House of Representatives will come tomorrow.

 

According to Fox Business News, “By a vote of 96-0, the Senate passed a massive $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus compromise package just before midnight Wednesday, ending days of deadlock and sending the bill to the House of Representatives  — which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said will soon take up the historic measure to bring relief to individuals, small businesses, and larger corporations “with strong bipartisan support.”

 

“The 880-page legislation is the largest economic relief bill in U.S. history.

 

“The package would provide one-time direct payments to Americans of $1,200 per adult making up to $75,000 a year, and $2,400 to married couples making up to $150,000, with $500 payments per child. After a $75,000 threshold for individuals, the benefit would be reduced by $5 for each $100 the taxpayer makes. A similar $150,000 threshold applies to couples, and a $112,500 threshold for heads of households.

 

“The legislation passed by the Senate will use 2019 tax returns, if available, or 2018 tax returns to assess income for determining how much direct financial aid individuals receive. Those who did not file tax returns can use a Form SSA-1099, Social Security Benefit Statement or Form RRB-1099, a Social Security Equivalent Benefit Statement, per Page 149 of the bill.

 

“Further, the bill allocates $250 billion to extend unemployment insurance to more workers, and lengthen the duration to 39 weeks, up from the normal 26 weeks. $600 extra a week would be provided for four months. (Just before voting on the final package began late Wednesday, the Senate was debating an amendment from Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., to bar people from getting more from new unemployment benefits than they would have received on the job; the amendment needed 60 votes and failed 48-48.)

 

“The final package would additionally provide $349 billion in loans to small businesses — and money spent on rent, payroll and utilities becomes grants that don’t need to be paid back. Many hotels would qualify as small businesses under the plan.

 

“Passenger airlines would receive $25 billion for workers’ “salaries and benefits,” plus up to $25 billion more in loan guarantees and loans. Contract workers would also receive $3 billion in assistance. Airlines would have to agree not to furlough workers until at least the end of September in return.

 

“About $17 billion will go to other distressed companies like Boeing, which is seen as essential to national security. And, approximately $200 billion would be provided in tax assistance to small businesses, including through payroll tax deferrals.

 

“At the same time, the bill omits many — though not all — items from Pelosi’s version of the legislation that Republicans had called wasteful or irrelevant, including climate-change-related emissions restrictions for airlines and various diversity-related provisions.

 

“The Trump administration and lawmakers are moving ahead with a plan to give many American households direct cash relief amid the economic fallout from the” Wuhan Flu outbreak.

 

“The payments are expected to be $1,200 per adult for those with adjusted gross incomes of up to $75,000. The threshold for married couples is $150,000 – they are eligible for $2,400 and $500 per child.

 

“The relief is intended to hold Americans over until the U.S. economy is up and running again – the federal government and state governments have made the decision to shut down many businesses in an attempt to limit human-to-human contact. As a result, many people have either found themselves without a job or with reduced hours.

 

“In order to receive the benefit, an individual must have a work-eligible Social Security number. He or she cannot be the dependent of another taxpayer. The relief applies to both people without incomes and those whose sole income is derived from a benefit program, like Social Security.

 

“The IRS is administering the program and will determine eligibility based on your 2019 tax return. If that has not been filed, the agency will look at your 2018 paperwork. That includes individuals who file returns for the Earned Income Tax Credit but do not otherwise pay taxes.

 

“The individual is not expected to take any action. The phase-out rate is $5 for every $100 above the threshold.   For example, for individuals earning $75,500, the check would be reduced to $1,175.The benefit phases out entirely for those earning more than $99,000 ($146,500 for heads of household with one child and $198,000 for joint filers without children).

 

Some Republicans and many Americans, while grateful for the assistance, are concerned that people already receiving government assistance will be receiving relief money they have not earned.

 

Some of us were unemployed for the long-term, holdovers from Obama’s mis-administration and discrimination against older workers by employers. Ironically, we – personally – recently found a part-time job this year in one of the few fields considered necessary, although our hours were cut last week due to the epidemic.

 

But if the IRS is looking at our taxes for last year, they’ll find very little earned income. We wanted to work but employers were snubbing their noses at us.  Older workers were forced to take jobs in physically-tasking positions at big box stores like Wal-Mart or Stop & Shop where the virus is ravaging the employee populations.  The Wuhan Flu is said to be running like wildfire through Amazon’s 10 warehouse locations.  Younger brother was turned down last week for a position.  The angels and Mom & Dad must have been looking out for him.

 

Senate Democrats say that the self-employed and gig workers (i.e., self-employed event photographers) will be eligible for the relief money, as weddings and parties are now banned.

 

The final relief check is for $1,200 for a single person. Some people would be too ashamed to accept it, being proud of having worked even through the Obama years.

 

For those of us who were shunned, however, this isn’t just relief money.

 

It’s payback. And as icing on the cake, the usually jam-packed commute to work is a breeze.

 

Thank you, President Trump, for the helping hand. Property taxes are due at the end of next month, and our town certainly isn’t volunteering to waive our property taxes until mid-summer when people will probably be back to work.

 

This check should cover most of it.

 

 

 

 

Make Things in America Again

Mr. Friend asked us to put in a good word for American manufacturing, especially given the economic crisis that the Wuhan Flu has caused.

 

“Ask the President to bring back American jobs from China.”

 

Well, President Trump is more than happy to do so. He has brought back jobs from China by reducing or eliminating onerous regulations and taxes.  As we’ve noted previously, a certain American company that went to China years ago is coming back to the United States – to Pennsylvania, specifically.  Its new factory is nearly ready and should open in the late Spring or early Summer, barring any delays.

 

The problem isn’t the President; it’s American corporations themselves. They see a market of nearly 1.5 billion (that’s –illion with a “B”) customers (and workers, which makes labor very cheap) and they begin salivating.  Dollar signs flash before their eyes.  They neglect to see the many problems with doing business with the People’s Republic of China.

 

China is a Communist country. First, that means they run everything – and they keep most of the profits.  Second, they despise Capitalism, although they love money.  They love money so much that they do everything on the cheap, from abusing their workers to neglecting necessary health and safety inspections.  Beijing is one of the most polluted cities in the world.

 

SARs isn’t the only reason the Chinese people have worn masks for years.

 

These American companies turned a blind eye to the cat food crisis around 2000 or 2001. Cats were getting sick and dying from poisoned cat food.  The shredded variety was the Ground Zero of affected food.  My three year-old cat nearly died from kidney disease because of this food.

 

Fortunately, I have an excellent veterinarian who was able to save him. Still, at 15, my poor Mr. Kitty developed a tumor and I can’t help wondering if it developed from that cat food.

 

The Chinese, where they have regulations at all, play fast and loose with the rules. What’s theirs is theirs and what’s yours is theirs.  They regularly steal intellectual property, sending in industrial spies to steal an American company’s secrets and then build their own factory right next door, putting the American company out of business.

 

They’re very offended when critics mention their live animal markets, which include canines, Man’s best friend. In America, livestock must be vaccinated and receive regular inspections by the Department of Agriculture.  More rules are in place for when the livestock become tomorrow’s dinner.  Slaughterhouses and meat-packing places must meet strict standards before the meat makes it to the supermarket.

 

Not so much in China. Those dogs hanging up in baskets in the live market?  Do you think they’ve been inspected for diseases?  Did anyone inspect the bats and other live animals in Wuhan’s Wet Market?  Likely not.  There’s a reason you don’t generally eat non-game or non-livestock animals:  you don’t know what diseases they might be carrying.  China has said that it has tried to shut down those markets.  Still, the customers keep on coming.  The Wet Market is surrounded by restaurants which undoubtedly purchase these creatures and serve them up for lunch and dinner.

 

Now, it turns out, America purchases somewhere around 90 percent of its vitamins and medicinal products from China. There isn’t a single manufacturer of penicillin in the entire United States.

 

Are we completely out of our minds? Since so many people are out of work right now, why don’t we start opening factories to produce these medicines and vitamins ourselves?  The restaurant workers and small retail businesses who may never recover can send their workers to new or renovated factories and put them to work making American products again.

 

So many industrial parks are standing empty that could readily be converted over to the manufacture whatever product Americans might need, from penicillin to clothing and shoes to toys.

 

Let’s make “Made in China” a thing of the past. America was founded on self-reliance and hard work.  We can do it ourselves.

 

There might be 1 billion Chinese. But they don’t make things well.  In fact, they make them rather carelessly.  The Chinese workers aren’t particularly well-motivated.  With so many Chinese, the competition for jobs are fierce and the employers even fiercer.   For a “Workers’ Paradise,” China treats its workers pretty shabbily.

 

The result is arrogance from the Chinese government, threats, poisoned, disease-ridden foods, and pandemics.

 

Let’s Make Things in America Again!

 

 

Fighting Tyranny: Saturn in Aquarius Through History

Democrats in Congress have been battling the Republicans all week over the Coronavirus Aid Bill which, if signed, will give financial aid both to small businesses and workers affected by layoffs and business closures due to the virus.

 

Democrats naturally are opposed to assisting capitalist businesses or what they consider business’ “slave labor” in this crisis. In addition, they see the Wuhan Flu epidemic as an opportunity to hold Republicans hostage and demand that Republicans pay the ransom in terms of legislation favorable to forcing more regulations on carbon-based fuels, increasing fuel mileage even higher, and paying for solar and wind energy, the latter of which is incredibly expensive and ask Denmark and Spain can attest, a complete failure.  Among other things, when these monstrosities fail, there’s nowhere to dispose of their hulking their carcasses.

 

This is administrative government, signified by Saturn in Aquarius, at its worst. Saturn is the big, authoritative and restrictive government, and Aquarius represents the people and their freedom.

 

Saturn just entered Aquarius yesterday. Saturn will be joined by Mars on April 1 and Jupiter in mid-December.  But by May 11, Saturn will turn Retrograde, moving seemingly backwards in comparison to the Earth’s motion.  We can take that as a pretty good “sign” that the virus will begin to abate.  In fact, it will return to Capricorn at the beginning of July.

 

Saturn is right at home in Capricorn. Capricorn is the sign that Saturn rules.  Saturn traveling through Capricorn can be said, along with Donald Trump, to be responsible for our booming economy.

 

Now that it has gone into Aquarius – well, that’s when things start to happen, astrological history tells us. Here’s a timeline of Saturn’s activities in the sign of Aquarius through the years.  Saturn is a slow planet.  Things don’t happen right away, or at least we don’t always know what the real-life tipping point is.  For instance we don’t really know what happened on Feb. 7, 1991 that would inevitably lead to the L.A. riots.  Three weeks early, Operation Desert Storm began combat operations in the Persian Gulf.

 

Several things tend to happen. 1) Authority (that’s the planet Saturn) tends to steam roller over the rights of people.  2) Global events test the ability of government to control a massive crisis.  3)  Developments in mass transportation and science occur (one of the better outcomes of Saturn in Aquarius).  Someone today could be putting the finishing touches on some new, world-changing technology or transportation.

 

Interestingly, Saturn wasn’t in Aquarius during the American Revolutionary War; it was in equality-loving Libra, squaring Pluto in Capricorn. Now that’s a lethal combination and a testament to the bloody struggle for freedom.

 

Saturn didn’t enter into Aquarius until February 1785. At the time, the young nation was in a governmental crisis, trying to keep the rebellious colonies united.  If you’re looking for a revolution, Pluto in Aquarius is your planet.  So what happened in April 1777?

 

Well besides the Colonial militia being handed their lunch, it seems likely that the Marquis de Lafayette probably set sail for Charleston, South Carolina in April of that year to help the Continental Congress train its army, landing on June 13. France’s assistance, both militarily and financially helped the young United States of America win the war against Great Britain and win its freedom.  But the assistance bankrupted France, leading to a very different revolution.

 

In February 1785, not that much was happening when Saturn entered Aquarius:

 

January 7 – Frenchman Jean-Pierre Blanchard and American John Jeffries travel from Dover, England to Calais, France in a hydrogen gas balloon, becoming the first to cross the English Channel by air by air.

 

On January 11, 1785 – The Confederation Congress reconvenes in New York City having previously convened in Trenton, N.J.

 

June 1 – John Adams, the first American ambassador to Great Britain, has his first meeting with King George III at the Court of St. James in London.

 

July 6 – The United States dollar is unanimously chosen as the country’s money unit, the first time a nation has adopted a decimal currency.

 

But what if we went back through the ephemeris about 30 or so years, to Saturn’s previous journey through Aquarius? Let’s go back in history to March 1726.  By May, about the time the people of Philadelphia tire of being put in the stocks for being poor, Saturn goes Retrograde.

 

May 6, 1726 – Riots occur in Philadelphia as poor people tear down the pillories and stocks and burn them.   The Pennsylvania colony governor will forcefully put down the riots.

 

Then Saturn goes back into Capricorn until December when it reenters Aquarius for good and stays there for all of 1727. King George II ascends the throne of England in June and is crowned in October.  The Hanoverian Royals by the way make the current Royal Family of Great Britain look like the Partridge Family by comparison.  On Nov. 18, an earthquake in Tazriz, Persia kills 77,000.  Earthquakes happen all over the world, every day.  Predicting a big one like this would require a look at when the town was first formed and how it’s natal horoscope progressed, which is beyond this astrologer’s scope.  How much did Saturn in Aquarius have to do with it would depend on those charts?  But Mars, which was in Virgo, an earth sign, although a mutable sign (passive, in other words), would have had something to do with it, along with Uranus (sudden catastrophes) and Pluto (major changes).

 

The ascendancy of King George II and the eventual birth of his grandson, George III (the son of George II’s personally hated son, Frederick the Prince of Wales, who died young), would be more significant to our interest in tyranny (and madness). In 1728, on a scientific note, English astronomer James Bradley uses stellar aberration (first observed in 1725) to calculate the speed of light, and observes nutation of the Earth’s axis  (variations in the Earth’s tilt).

 

April 15 – Isaac Newton tells William Stukeley the story of how he developed his theory of gravity.

 

We could keep going back in history by thirties. For instance, in January 1609, Capt. Christopher Newport returns to the Jamestown Colony with fresh supplies, only to find that it has disappeared.

 

It’s a story of repressive tyrannies and those who rise up to defeat them.

 

Saturn in Aquarius – 1991

 

January 17, 1991 – Operation Desert Storm begins combat phase of the Gulf War

 

Feb. 7, 1991 – Saturn enters Aquarius

 

Feb. 7 – The U.S. recession is declared ended. Recession?  Apparently someone felt we were doing too well and slapped that moniker on the economy, when in actuality, the government hid a growing inflation.

 

March 3, 1991 An amateur video captures the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers, leading to the L.A. riots

 

Saturn in Aquarius – 1962

 

January 1, 1962 – The People’s Revolutionary Party was founded as a Marxist–Leninist political party in South Vietnam, with its leaders receiving instruction directly from the Lao Dong Party of North Vietnam.

 

January 4, 1962 – Saturn enters Aquarius.

 

January 4 – The Transit Authority of New York City introduced a subway train that operated without a crew on board. The “zombie” train kept a motorman on board to deal with any problems.

 

January 8 – The first two teams of the United States Navy SEALS, were commissioned as the United States Navy’s Sea, Air and Land teams, with an order backdated to January 1, in order to carry out President Kennedy’s recommendation for the development of “unconventional warfare capability.”

 

January 8 – In a closed session at the Presidium, Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev delivered what was later referred to as the “meniscus speech,” using the analogy of a wineglass filled to the point that it could overflow at any time. In the speech, which was not revealed until 40 years later, Khrushchev told the ministers that the U.S.S.R. was weaker militarily than the United States, and that the only way to compete against American superiority was to maintain the threat that world tensions could spill over. “Because if we don’t have a meniscus,” Khrushchev said, “we let the enemy live peacefully.”

 

Saturn Goes Retrograde May 22

 

May 22 – Continental Airlines Flight 11 from Chicago to Kansas City, Mo., is bombed over Unionville, Missouri. Thomas G. Doty, one of the passengers, who had been on his way to Kansas City to face criminal charges for armed robbery, had taken out $300,000 in insurance payable to his wife, and had bought sticks of dynamite at a hardware store, before carrying out the murder-suicide.   His body was never identified.

 

May 23 – JFK waives quota against Chinese immigrants;

 

Saturn Goes Direct October 10.

 

Oct. 16, the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis begins.

 

Saturn in Aquarius – 1932

 

March 4 – China refused to hold a conference to end the conflict with Japan, insisting that Japanese troops had to withdraw first. The League of Nations unanimously voted in favor of a demand that Japanese forces withdraw from Shanghai.

 

March 13 – The German presidential election was held. Although Paul von Hindenburg beat runner-up Adolf Hitler by more than 7 million votes, he fell less than 1% short of the 50% majority required to win outright, so a run-off election had to be held on April 10.

 

March 13 – Sweden ordered its stock exchange closed until further notice.

 

March 23 – Nazi publications were banned across Germany for durations varying from five to fourteen days after publishing attacks that were supposedly endangering the Weimar Republic The Communist newspaper The Red Flag was also banned for five days.

 

March 25, 1932 – Saturn enters Aquarius.

 

March 26 – A Japanese government spokesman said that Japan would quit the League of Nations if it asserted undue pressure over the situation in Manchuria and Shanghai and that the dispute could only be settled through direct talks with China.

 

March 27 – The 57,000-member Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany held its first party conference held its first party conference

 

April 7 – Negotiations were held in the British consulate in Shanghai between representatives of China and Japan over setting a timetable through the League of Nations for Japanese withdrawal, but the Japanese insisted that the League was not qualified to handle the issue.

 

April 8 – Martial law was declared in Chile to curb public disorder related to the country’s financial crisis.

 

April 10 – Germany holds run-off elections. The voters gave Hitler 13,418,547 or 36%, an increase of two million, and Hindenburg 19,359,983 or 53%, an increase of under a million. The Old Gentleman, now 85, was elected by an absolute majority to another seven-year term.  Hundreds were arrested in election day violence.

 

April 11 – Thousands fled the eruptions of fourteen volcanoes along the Andes in South America.

 

April 13 – Germany’s President Hindenburg passed an emergency decree ordering the SA, SS and all auxiliary forces of the Nazi Party dissolved immediately

 

 

April 14 – The Queen Street Riot occurred in Auckland, New Zealand when thousands of unemployed clashed with police while smashing and looting shops on the city’s main commercial thoroughfare. 200 were injured in the worst riot in New Zealand’s history.

 

April 14 – Adolf Hitler released a statement characterizing the government’s crackdown on his Stormtroopers as “a last blow of despair” and declaring April 24, the date of local elections, as “Retaliation Day.”

 

April 14 – A gas explosion ripped through the Ohio State Office Building being constructed in Columbus, Ohio, killing 11

 

April 20 – The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) inaugurated air conditioning on its premier train, the National Limited running between St. Louis and New York City. It was the first time that a long-distance sleeping car train offered air conditioning.

 

April 21 – In Rome, during celebrations on the traditionally observed date of the founding of the city, Benito Mussolin dedicated a large statue of Julius Caesar.

 

Saturn in Aquarius – 1903

 

Jan 17 –   A German ship, Panther, involved in blockading Venezuela, gets aggressive and enters the lagoon of Maracaibo, near a center of German commercial activity. The ship exchanges fire with a fort but because of shallow waters can’t get close enough to the fort to be effective. It withdraws.

 

Saturn Enters Aquarius January 20, 1903

 

Feb. 13  – With arbitration by Britain, Germany and Italy reach a settlement with Venezuela. Venezuela agrees to pay a reduced amount of its debt. The naval blockade will end in six days.

 

Feb. 23 – The Cuban-American Treaty is signed. It provides for Guantánamo Bay to be leased to the United States “in perpetuity.”

 

Saturn Goes Retrograde May 21, 1903

 

June 11 – Serbia’s King Alexander Obrenovic and his wife, Queen Draga, are assassinated by army officers led by Dragutin Dimitrijevic. An issue in the assassinations appears to be who would be the king’s successor. Dimitrijevic will be described as in the pay of Russians (Fall of the Eagles, by C. L. Sulzberger, p.202). Dimitrijevic will be a player in future Serb crises. Obrenovic is succeeded by his younger brother, Peter I, Serbia’s first strictly constitutional monarch.

 

Oct. 3 – Russia has failed to withdraw its forces from Manchuria as they had promised. For a couple of months Russia and Japan have been haggling over who is to have dominant influence where in the Manchuria-Korean area between their two countries. The haggling is to continue.

 

Saturn Goes Direct October 8, 1903

 

Nov. 17  Russia’s Social Democrats hold their Second Congress. (The First Party Congress was in 1898, consisting of nine delegates, all of whom were arrested.) The Second Congress meets in Brussels, but police harassment sends them to liberal Britain’s city of London. There are fifty-six delegates. They split into two factions: the Bolsheviks (majority) and Mensheviks (minority). The Bolsheviks believe that power must be taken from the ruling class in one sweep. The Mensheviks hope for progress toward socialism without a sudden and sweeping change as to which class holds power. The Bolsheviks are a majority when a crucial vote is taken after some Mensheviks walk out.

 

1904

 

Jan. 1 – Netherland Indies colony begins opium production

 

Jan. 4 –  In ‘Gonzales v Williams’, the US Supreme Court rules that Puerto Ricans are not aliens and may not be refused admission into continental United States; not until 1917 will citizenship rights be granted

 

Jan. 7 – Marconi Co establishes “CQD” as 1st international radio distress signal

 

Feb. 5 – American occupation of Cuba ends

 

Feb. 6 – Japan notifies Russia that in view of Russia’s delaying tactics and provocative military action, Japan is ending negotiations and recalling its members from Moscow

 

Feb. 9 – Japanese land troops at Chemulpo (Inchon), near Seoul, Korea; within the next three weeks they will have advanced to the Yalu River, the border of Manchuria

 

Feb. 10 – Japan and Russia declare war

 

Feb. 23 – The United States acquires control of the Panama Canal Zone for $10 million

 

Feb. 23 – Having occupied Korea, Japan signs a treaty with Korea under which it becomes a Japanese protectorate in return for Japanese protection from other powers

 

Feb. 29 –  Theodore Roosevelt, appoints 7-man Panama Canal Commission to proceed with completing a canal at the Isthmus

 

March 3 – Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany becomes the first person to make a sound recording of a political document, using Thomas Edison’s cylinder

March 5 – Nikola Tesla describes the process of the ball lightning formation in Electrical World and Engineer

 

March 6 – The Japanese fleet bombards Vladivostok, the major Russian port on the Pacific

 

March 14 – In a landmark case, Northern Securities Company v United States, the U.S. Supreme Court finds the company has violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act; first case in Theodore\ Roosevelt’s ‘trust-busting’ campaign

 

March 28 – Japanese troops advance in Korea, defeat the Russians at Chengiu, and capture the town

 

April 8 – Great Britain and France establish their Entente Cordiale, a technical treaty settling long-standing disagreements over Morocco, Egypt, Africa, and the Pacific

 

April 13 – Battle of Oviumbo (in modern Namibia): Herero tribesmen rise up against German colonists

 

April 13 – A squadron of the Russian fleet is decoyed out of Port Arthur by Japanese maneuvers, when they realize they are sailing into a trap; their battleship Petropavlovsk hits a mine and sinks, with a loss of 700 men

 

April 26 – General Kuroko leads the Japanese Army against the large Russian force at the Yalu River during the Russo-Japanese War

 

April 27 The Australian Labor Party under Prime Minister Chris Watson becomes the first Labor government in the world

 

May 1 – The first major land battle between the Japanese and Russians, the Battle of Yalu River, takes place. Some Russians surrender and others escape northward. The Russians thought they could easily defeat an East Asian army.

 

May 4 – Construction begins by the United States on the Panama Canal

 

May 26 – In two days of bitter fighting, the Japanese Army soundly defeats the Russians at Kinchan and captures the forts at Nanshan

 

May 30 The Japanese Army capture the City of Dairen after landing troops along the south coast of Manchuria

 

Saturn Goes Retrograde June 1, 1904

 

June 14 – Dutch troops occupy Kuto Reh, Sumatra, killing all inhabitants

 

June 14 – At the battle of Telissu, the Japanese rout the Russians and inflict heavy casualties

 

June 15 – Side-wheeler passenger paddlesteamer “General Slocum,” sailing on a church picnic cruise burns in New York City’s East River (1,031 die)

 

July 6 – Two Russian cruisers move into the Red Sea and begin to stop ships of Britain, Germany, and other nations they believe friendly to Japan
July 6 –  The U.S. Democratic Party nominates little-known New York Judge Alton B. Parker for presidential nominee – virtually assuring the election of Theodore Roosevelt

 

July 21 – After 13 years, the 4,607-mile Trans-Siberian railway is completed

 

July 28 – Rafael Reyes becomes dictator of Colombia after losing Panama

 

July 28 – Interior Minister of Russia, Vyacheslav Plehve is assassinated; as leader of the most reactionary elements of government, he was hated for his repressive policies

 

Aug. 9 – Libanus McLouth Todd of Rochester, New York patents his check-writing machine, the Protectograph designed to protect against check forgers

 

Aug. 10 – Battle of the Yellow Sea: Japanese fleet prevented Russians breaking out of Port Arthur

 

Aug. 11 – The Russian fleet in the harbor of at Port Arthur is exposed to Russian guns on the hill above the harbor; Russian ships attempt escape, but most are forced back into harbor by Japanese ships

 

Aug. 16 – New York City begins building Grand Central Station

 

Aug. 24 – Battle of Liao-Yang-200,000 Japanese against 150,000 Russian, Japanese tactical victory

 

Sept. 7 – British forces in Tibet force the 13th Dalai Lama to sign a treaty granting Britain trading posts in Tibet and a guarantee that Tibet will not concede territory to foreign powers

 

Sept 19 – Gen Nogi’s assault on Port Arthur: 16,000 Japanese casualties

 

Sept. 20 – Orville & Wilbur Wright fly a circle in their Flyer II (typical of a retrograde Saturn)

 

Sept. 21 – The general strike called by the Socialist Party that spread throughout Italy ends

 

Oct. 1 – Netherlands & Portugal lay down boundaries splitting Timor

 

Oct. 2 German General Lothar von Trotha issues order to exterminate Herero people of Namidia, first genocide of the 20th Century, will kill 65,000 Herero and 100,000 of the Nama tribe

 

Oct. 3 – France & Spain sign treaty for Morocco Independence

 

Oct. 15 – The Russians are driven back by the Japanese in the Battle of Shaho; both sides suffer high casualties: Japanese (16,000) and Russians (60,000)

 

Oct. 16 Russian Baltic fleet departs to Port Arthur

 

Saturn Goes Direct October 18, 1904

 

Oct. 20 – Bolivia and Chile sign a treaty ending the War of the Pacific; recognizing Chile’s possession of the coast, providing for construction of a railway linking La Paz, Bolivia, to Arica on the coast

 

Oct. 21-22 –  Russian warships on their way to the Far East to wage war against the Japanese fire on British fishing boats they mistake for Japanese torpedo boats, and they fire on each other – to be known as the Dogger Bank incident. Emotions rise in Britain, with some anger toward Germany because of Germany’s support for Russia. Britain’s new Admiral of the Fleet, John Fisher, blames Germany for inciting Russia against Britain.

 

Nov. 8 – American President Theodore Roosevelt (R) defeats Alton B. Parker (D)

 

Nov. 8 – Inventor and manufacturer Harvey Hubbell receives the first U.S. patent for a separable electric attachment plug

 

Nov. 9 – 1st airplane flight to last more than 5 minutes

 

So that tells us what has happened over the last century or so when Saturn traveled through Aquarius.

 

Saturn is currently in direct motion in Aquarius. We’ve seen in China how the government censored press reports about the progress of the Wuhan Flu, denied that it began in that city and even accused the U.S. military of planting the virus in China.  Doctors were also put under a gag order, including the doctor who discovered and treated the first patient in this out break.  He died of the flu.

 

We’re seeing our own freedoms here in America curtailed, albeit out of an abundance of medical caution. People have been ignoring the social distancing orders, visiting stores, attending weddings, and even partying during Spring Break in Florida.  Some partying students now have the virus.

 

New York City is the hardest hit city in the country at the moment. There are currently approximately 25,000 cases in the New York-New Jersey metropolitan area.  Authorities expect the number to increase, particularly on Long Island as New Yorkers seek to flee even greater lockdowns and even more food shortages due to hoarding.

 

Saturn will go retrograde on May 11 – Mother’s Day. In this case, retrograde motion is a good thing, because it means a reversal of the current situation.  We can probably expect the epidemic to subside after that point. Saturn will keep moving backward into Capricorn.  During that time, it’s possible the economy will not only recover but prosper again before heading back into Aquarius.

 

The planet will go direct again at the end of September, which may be even better news for the markets. By mid-December, Saturn will re-enter Aquarius.  However, it will be joined by lucky Jupiter.  There’s a very good possibility that scientists will find a cure for this particular disease.  And in scientific matters, we may take another step towards space travel and landing human beings on Mars.  They may even discover a reusable fuel strong enough, and yet efficient enough, to propel spacecraft beyond Earth’s orbit.

 

The only worrisome aspect this year is Mars’ entry into Aquarius in conjunction with Saturn on about March 30. Mars is a very physical planet and can be violent.  The sudden nature of Aquarius indicates that we might experience an unusually severe and unexpected snowstorm across the nation or some other violent storm.  Saturn is a planet associated with cold so one would expect that it would likely be a cold blizzard.

 

There is also the possibility of civil unrest somewhere. We don’t like to put ideas into anyone’s heads.  But we suspect those ideas are already there.  The National Guard has already been dispatched to the mostly likely areas for unrest.  Americans really do love their freedom and take umbrage at any restrictions on those freedoms.

 

Any Liberals who thought Americans had become docile sheep may find out just how much Americans dislike an intrusive, repressive government, even when it’s necessary to keep more people from falling ill. The Media might do well to “repress” these stories about the government cracking down on weddings and funerals; reporting them could fuel an unfortunate fire.

 

Let us hope that the conjunction of Mars and Saturn in Aquarius is nothing more than an unexpected Spring blizzard. None of us would be happy about it.

 

But we sure are prepared.

 

Spanish Flu Versus Wuhan Flu: What History (And Astrology) Tell Us

Getting old has its advantages it seems, especially during an panic-driven pandemic. Supermarkets have been offering Senior Hours to people 60 and over.  The only problem is that you have to get up pretty early in the morning to get on that line.

 

We went first to Stop & Shop just down the road. We were there about ten minutes to 6 a.m.  We were able to get a package of chicken breast and the last two bottles of laundry detergent, it would seem, in the galaxy.   But only one box of Irish Oatmeal which, being steel cut, is much better for sensitive digestive systems.  The other items we needed were not hoarding items – lactose-free milk, lower-sugar apple juice.

 

Then it was up to Shop Rite. The sun still hadn’t risen yet.  The doors didn’t open until 7 a.m.  and it was freezing cold out.  There we were able to procure one of the few sanitizing wipes left in Northern New Jersey.  Good thing since our office ran out of the professional cleaner.  These elderly were a more impatient lot.  As I waited for the line ahead of me to move, my ankles were bitten by some anxious cart pusher.

 

The store manager warned that limits would be strictly observed. Not like the last time I was at Shop Rite, two or three weeks ago, when people were rolling out of the store with carts filled with toilet paper.  We could a pun about runs on toilet paper – but we won’t.

 

Even though we don’t practice astrology anymore – God forbids it – but in certain instances we do consult the ol’ ephemeris to see if we can spot patterns.

 

The Spanish flu, also known as the 1918 flu pandemic, was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic. Lasting from January 1918 to December 1920, it infected 500 million people—about a quarter of the world’s population at the time. The death toll is estimated to have been anywhere from 17 million to 50 million, and possibly as high as 100 million, making it one of the deadliest epidemics in human history.

 

To maintain morale, World War I censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States. Papers were free to report the epidemic’s effects in neutral Spain, such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII, and these stories created a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit.  This gave rise to the pandemic’s nickname, “the Spanish Flu.’”  Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify with certainty the pandemic’s geographic origin, with varying views as to the origin.

 

What doctors, scientists and historians do agree upon is that its origins had to do with animals, possibly chickens – epidemiologists identify it as an avian, or bird flu – pigs, or even mules.

 

Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill the very young and the very old, with a higher survival rate for those in between, but the Spanish flu pandemic resulted in a higher than expected mortality rate for young adults. Scientists offer several possible explanations for the high mortality rate of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Some analyses have shown the virus to be particularly deadly because it triggers a cytokine storm, which ravages the stronger immune system of young adults. In contrast, a 2007 analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic found that the viral infection was no more aggressive than previous influenza strains. Instead, malnourishment, overcrowded military medical camps and hospitals, and poor hygiene promoted bacterial superinfection. This superinfection killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.

 

The Spanish flu was the first of two pandemics caused by the H1N1 influenza virus; the second was the swine flu in 2009.

 

There are two theories about when and where the Spanish flu originated.

 

The major British troop staging and hospital camp in Etaples in France has been theorized by researchers as being at the center of the Spanish flu. The research was published in 1999 by a British team, led by virologist John Oxford. In late 1917, military pathologists reported the onset of a new disease with high mortality that they later recognized as the flu. The overcrowded camp and hospital was an ideal site for the spreading of a respiratory virus. The hospital treated thousands of victims of chemical attacks, and other casualties of war, and 100,000 soldiers passed through the camp every day. It also was home to a piggery, and live poultry was regularly brought in for food supplies from surrounding villages. Oxford and his team postulated that a significant precursor virus, harbored in birds, mutated and then migrated to pigs kept near the front.

 

A report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association found evidence that the 1918 virus had been circulating in the European armies for months and possibly years before the 1918 pandemic.

United States

 

There have been statements that the epidemic originated in the United States. Historian Alfred W. Crosby stated in 2003 that the flu originated in Kansas and popular author John Barry described Haskell County, Kansas, as the point of origin in his 2004 article. It has also been stated by historian Santiago Mata in 2017 that, by late 1917, there had already been a first wave of the epidemic in at least 14 US military camps.^[22]

 

A 2018 study of tissue slides and medical reports led by evolutionary biology professor Michael Worobey found evidence against the disease originating from Kansas as those cases were milder and had fewer deaths compared to the situation in New York City in the same time period. The study did find evidence through phylogenetic analyses that the virus likely had a North American origin, though it was not conclusive. In addition, the haemagglutinin glycoproteins of the virus suggest that it was around far prior to 1918 and other studies suggest that the reassortment of the H1N1 virus likely occurred in or around 1915

 

The world was much more agrarian at the beginning of the 20^th Century that it is now.  The automobile had only been recently invented in Germany.  Cars were common by 1915, to use the historians’ date.  Until then, the horse was the means of transportation.  Streets were unpaved and covered with animal manure.  Sickness was quite common; so much so, that people then took death from communicable diseases as a given.

 

In the United States, the disease was first observed in Haskell County, Kansas, in January 1918, prompting local doctor Loring Miner to warn the U.S. Public Health Service’s academic journal. On March 4, 1918, company cook Albert Gitchell, from Haskell County, reported sick at Fort Riley, a U.S. military facility that at the time was training American troops during World War I, making him the first recorded victim of the flu. Within days, 522 men at the camp had reported sick.  By March 11, 1918, the virus had reached Queens, New York. Failure to take preventive measures in March and April was later criticized.

 

In August 1918, a more virulent strain appeared simultaneously in Brest, France; in Freetown, Sierra Leone; and in the U.S. in Boston. The Spanish flu also spread through Ireland, carried there by returning Irish soldiers. The Allies of World War I came to call it the Spanish flu, primarily because the pandemic received greater press attention after it moved from France to Spain in November 1918. Spain was not involved in the war and had not imposed wartime censorship.

 

If historians believe the disease appeared earlier, that would make sense, because Europe had been at war since 1914; American entered the war very late. More soldiers died of the Spanish flu than were killed in combat.

 

The initial influenza virus killed the very young and the very old; its second incarnation killed the young, from about aged 15 to 45, many of them being the age of soldiers. However, the virus devastated neighborhoods in Queens, where our maternal grandmother and her family lived.

 

My grandmother taught me a little rhyme from that era:

There was a little girl, and she had a little bird,
And she called it by the pretty name of Enza;
But one day it flew away, but it didn’t go to stay,
For when she raised the window, in flew in-flu-Enza.

 

Grandma spoke very matter-of-factly about many friends who died of influenza. This was a neighborhood, Germanic in origin, that had already been devastated by the fire on the General Slocum, taking church members to a picnic.

 

I was horrified. But Grandma just shrugged.  That was how early 20^th Century people viewed diseases and death.  Millions died during the Spanish Flu outbreak.  Wagons made regular rounds:  “Bring out your dead.”

 

Comparisons are being made, one hundred plus some years later to today’s Wuhan Flu. The differences couldn’t be more striking.

 

Although Wuhan Flu appears to be a cousin of the 1915/1918 influenza virus, they’re very beginnings were totally different. The Spanish flu began during a period of war, in the close confinement of army camps, where all sorts of diseases from dysentery to diphtheria were prevalent and medical treatment was practically medieval.  Often, livestock – chickens and pigs mostly – followed the camp to supply it with fresh food.  Refrigeration was still a luxury.

 

Wuhan Flu began in a Chinese city known for its exotic “cuisine” and the ingestion of wild animals not controlled for diseases.

 

The Spanish Flu travelled outward from the training camps in the United States and Great Britain and onto the battlefields of France. They also traveled homeward on leave via trains that brought a great many soldiers home to their wives and sweethearts in Queens, New York – hence, the relatively young age of the victims.

 

The Wuhan Flu came to the United States and Europe on cruise ships and first-class cabins on airliners. The poor have not been greatly affected, except by those Chinese immigrants living in New York’s Chinatowns (there’s one in every boro).  It’s the wealthy, the affluent, the connected elite serving as corporate representatives, government officials, and elite travelers who’ve contracted it and brought home, especially here to the New York City area.   Only Italy is more severely affected, at this point, than the United States, and the majority of cases are in the New York Metropolitan area.

 

An airborne virus, the flu makes itself at home in congested areas. In both cases, New York has been critically affected.  New York’s subway system opened to the public in 1904, work was begun on the Panama Canal, the Tran Siberian-Railway was completed, and Orville and Wilbur Wright were making progress on the development of flight in 1904, making it possible for people – and viruses – to travel faster.

 

With today’s commercial aviation and the congestion on cruise ships, a virus can travel even faster. Thanks to China’s mass transit, 5 million of Wuhan’s 11 million people fled the city before it could be quarantined.

 

The people of 1918 hadn’t the means to travel anywhere and if they had, customs would have stopped those who showed signs of sickness. They didn’t need a doctor’s note or a prescription to be quarantined.

 

Nor did the poor have the means to dine out. Or stock toilet paper.  Still, the crowded conditions of the tenements help the virus right along.  Much good a shelter-in-place order would have done those large, connected families.

 

Today, people’s biggest complaint is not being able to dine out, compared to the impoverished residents of those tenements who visited the farmer’s market in the city each day for their daily fare. They couldn’t have afforded to hoard food even if they had someplace to store fresh food.

 

Astrology does bear out a longer period prior to the 1918 breakout of the Spanish Flu.   Saturn was in the sign of Leo for quite some time, in conjunction with the planet Pluto, the planet of mortality and great, unrelenting changes

 

Saturn, for our purposes, represents government, usually oppressive government, rules and regulations, and trials and burdens. Saturn slows things down, drags them out, which is ideal for communicable diseases, providing the time to get a foothold.  Saturn joined up with Pluto in the sign of Cancer as early as May 1915.  America’s sun sign is Cancer, which is a likely indication that the disease began here.

 

By October of 1916, Saturn had left Pluto, the slowest moving of the planets, behind and joined up with the planet Neptune, the planet of diseases. Saturn went Retrograde (backwards) into the sign of Cancer for a while, as did Pluto which probably created a lull in the timeline of the disease.

 

But by 1917, Saturn and Neptune were back together in Leo, going direct, while Uranus was in retrograde motion, going backward, so that by 1918, the trio had met up to allow the disease to spread more widely and take on global dimensions and a tremendous toll in a society unable to cope with diseases on that scale.

 

As the world entered 1918, there was nothing to stop the virus. Saturn and Neptune were on their course.  Pluto was freewheeling around, with no aspects to really hinder it and no earth signs to ground this march of death.  Airborne Mercury and cuddly Venus had now joined Uranus in Aquarius to help spread the disease on a more personal scale and Mars was out of its element in Libra, and retrograde to boot.  Physically, there was no standing up to the Spanish Flu.

 

Today, Saturn once again entered Aquarius. The U.S. government has issued more and more edicts against personal freedom and commerce in an effort to contain the disease.  Weddings have been outlawed, all retail stores except for supermarkets, pharmacies, pet supply stores, and hardware stores have been shuttered.  All small businesses have been closed indefinitely.  Restaurants area only permitted to serve take-out and delivery – and even that is a questionable practice.

 

On April 1, Mars will enter Aquarius. Mars is a very “physical” planet.  State governments have been threatening martial law (not Marshall as in the Marshall Plan of post World-War II).  The National Guard has been put on notice.  Clearly they’re expecting trouble.  April 1^st could be that day, or sometime shortly thereafter.  Some incident may occur on that date that will make martial law inevitable.

 

Or it could be some very widespread natural catastrophe.

 

This time, the public planet of Uranus will be in Taurus, squaring Saturn. The government and the public will be at odds, probably over money and probably price-gouging, fraud and other nasty things.  The stock market, already in trouble, could be shut down or some other unfortunate financial regulation may be put into place.  Mass transit might be shut down as well.

 

Meanwhile, Jupiter and Pluto will be joining up in Capricorn. There may finally be a bolstering of the economy, or some change in fiscal policy to meet the demands of this strange market.  This is a very long-term aspect leading right up to the third week in December of this year, when Jupiter finally enters Aquarius.  Jupiter and Pluto generally indicate political and even religious machinations.   As Saturn will be joining then, Saturn ruling the military, and with Mars squaring them in Aries, this aspect can also mean war.

 

Indications are that the virus will let up in May, when Saturn goes Retrograde (backwards) and go so far as to return into Capricorn, reversing the course of the disease and the economic problems.

 

At least for a while.

 

But Saturn’s return into Aquarius is inevitable, which will occur in early 2021. That’s nearly a year away, and scientists may come up with a cure and/or a vaccine by that time.

 

Tomorrow, we’ll discuss Saturn’s travels through Aquarius over the last century or so.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

China Gives U.S. Journalists the Kaiji

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced this week that the People’s Republic of China would expel American journalists working for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. The ministry also demanded that those outlets, and the Voice of America and Time Magazine, provide detailed information about their staffing, finances, operations and real estate in China.

 

The announcement came weeks after President Trump limited the number of Chinese citizens who can work in the United States for five state-run Chinese news organizations -— Xinhua, CGTN, China Radio, China Daily and People’s Daily — to 100, stating that they would be regulated as foreign government functionaries, subject to rules similar to those applying to Chinese missions.

 

The new limits imposed by the Trump administration effectively forced 60 Chinese employees of the state-run organizations to leave the country.

 

The next day, China announced that it would expel three Journal staff members based in Beijing in retaliation for the headline of an earlier opinion column, “China Is the Real Sick Man of Asia,” which criticized the Chinese government’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak. Two of the Journal reporters, Josh Chin, an American, and Philip Wen, an Australian, flew out of Beijing the next week. A third reporter, Chao Deng, an American, had been reporting in the virus containment zone of Wuhan and could not leave.

 

The Chinese announcement went on to say that the American journalists now working in mainland China “will not be allowed to continue working as journalists in the People’s Republic of China, including its Hong Kong and Macao Special Administrative Regions.”

 

The two territories are semi-autonomous and in theory have greater press freedoms than the mainland.

 

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the decisions “are entirely necessary and reciprocal countermeasures that China is compelled to take in response to the unreasonable oppression the Chinese media organizations experience in the U.S.”

 

The statement also accused the United States of “exclusively targeting Chinese media organizations,” adding that it was “driven by a Cold War mentality.” The new limits imposed by the Trump administration effectively forced 60 Chinese employees of the state-run organizations to leave the country.

 

According to The New York Times: “Reporters at foreign news outlets in China were among those who aggressively reported on the coronavirus epidemic in January and February, including in its earliest days, when it was a regionalized outbreak in central China and the Chinese government sought to play down its severity.

 

The news organizations have also reported in the past year on other issues deemed extremely sensitive by Chinese officials, including the mass internment of Muslims in the Xinjiang region and the shadowy business dealings of family members of leaders, including President Xi Jinping.”

 

Critical reporting on the Chinese government dates as far back as 2013. After the trade war with China escalated, after a brief truce, the news war heated up, with the journalists being expelled as though they were official diplomats instead of independent reporters.

 

In recent years, it has become common for the government to harass foreign journalists and their families, in part by requiring them to undergo onerous processes to renew their visas, according to a report published this month by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China.

 

Recently, the report said, some journalists had been working under visas shorter than the standard one-year duration: six months, three months, even one month.

 

It counted nine journalists who had effectively been thrown out of the country, whether via outright expulsion or through the unexplained refusal to grant a visa, since 2013, after Mr. Xi took power.

 

Almost all the American reporters for the three news organizations named in the Tuesday announcement have press cards and visas or residence permits that expire this year. The press cards are needed to maintain residency, and turning them in effectively means the journalists would need to leave the country. Reporters who were recently given a press card and residence permit that do not expire until 2021 can presumably continue to work.

 

All three news organizations also have full-time reporters based in China who are not American citizens.

 

In Washington on Tuesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said he hoped China would reconsider the expulsions, which he called “unfortunate.” But he scoffed at Beijing’s statement that the action was being taken in reaction to the restrictions that the State Department announced last month against the Chinese news agencies.

 

“This isn’t apples to apples,” Mr. Pompeo told reporters at a State Department briefing that was scheduled before the Chinese Foreign Ministry released its statement. “You all get to ask me whatever question you want and I give you the answer. We know that that kind of freedom doesn’t exist inside of China.”

 

He maintained that the Chinese news agencies working in the United States were part of Beijing’s propaganda machine — not independent journalism outlets.

 

The fact that Beijing is trying to prevent the expelled reporters from reporting out of Hong Kong and Macau is a sign of the further erosion of press freedoms in those territories.

In October 2018, Hong Kong officials refused to renew the work visa of the Asia editor of The Financial Times, Victor Mallet, in what appeared to be an effort by the government to coerce foreign journalists to limit their activities and reporting.

 

In late 2013, China threatened to not renew the press cards for all reporters in the mainland bureaus of The Times and Bloomberg News because of investigative stories they had done, which would have led to their de facto expulsions. That prompted then Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to defend the organizations in meetings in Beijing with Chinese leaders.

 

Online access to many news outlets, including The Times, The Journal, Bloomberg and Reuters, has been blocked for years in China. In 2019, The Washington Post and The Guardian were added to the list of blocked publications.

 

Washington Post executive editor Marty Baron told The New York Post in a statement that “we unequivocally condemn any action by China to expel U.S. reporters.

 

“’The Chinese government’s decision is particularly regrettable because it comes in the midst of an unprecedented global crisis, when clear and reliable information about the international response to covid-19 is essential,’” Baron added.

 

“’Severely limiting the flow of that information, which China now seeks to do, only aggravates the situation.’”

 

Matt Murray, editor in chief of the Wall Street Journal, said in a statement: “China’s unprecedented attack on freedom of the press comes at a time of unparalleled global crisis.”

 

“Trusted news reporting from and about China has never been more important. We oppose government interference with a free press anywhere in the world. Our commitment to reporting fully and deeply on China is unchanged,” he told The Post.

 

In early March, Washington announced that five state-controlled Chinese media outlets would be restricted to 100 visas — a de facto expulsion of about a third of their Chinese employees. It cited mounting surveillance, harassment and intimidation of US and other foreign journalists working in China.

 

The Chinese news outlets — which employ about 160 Chinese citizens in the United States — include the official Xinhua News Agency and China Global Television Network, the international arm of state broadcaster CCTV.

 

Beijing has already expelled three other Wall Street Journal staffers — two Americans and one Australian — over what it considered a racist headline by the paper.

 

But that order had been viewed by some observers as a tit-for-tat move over the U.S. decision to reclassify Chinese state-run media operating in the U.S. as foreign missions, according to Agence France-Presse.

No one should be terribly surprised that the People’s Republic of China has suppressed the freedom of the press for decades. Their chief state newspaper proudly boasts the Communist saying of the day on its front page.

 

What is surprising is that The New York Times, of all newspapers, would be unceremoniously bounced from China when the Times itself regularly skews its articles towards the extreme Left.

 

Still the main newspapers did report on the Wuhan Flu, much to the distress of the Chinese officials. They’ve been spreading disinformation to discredit the American reports that the virus emanated from the handling and consumption of bats.  Even more distressing is that anyone with access to a map can see for themselves the location not only of the Wuhan seafood and wet market but the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

 

No need to consult Q about that.

 

None of this looks very good for the Chinese government. When the investigation into a quarter of a million presumptive cases of COV19, as they prefer to name it, and the resulting 10,000 deaths leads back to a major city in your country, with Western reporters (of Chinese descent) reporting on the facts first-hand, the matter can be quite disconcerting.

 

Only corporate in-house publications here in America are so stringent with their reporting and editing. We worked for one.  No bad news.  Ever.  That was okay with us.  If we’d wanted to report bad news, we’d have gone to work for some small city newspaper and worked our way up to The New York Times or perhaps The New York Daily News, which writes the best headlines in the world.

 

People are catching a highly contagious disease. Most, except the elderly and compromised, are recovering.  But they’re recovering slowly.  The city of New York now has more cases of Wuhan Flu on its hands than Switzerland.  Still, the mayor isn’t shutting down the mass transit system in the city, probably under the protest of the transit union.

 

With such an exponential rate, how long will it take for the Big Apple to leap frog over South Korea, which has considerably more common sense than New York City? Crowding into subways like sardines is the surest way to spread the disease.  Long Island’s cases are growing as well.  That would be all the traitorous investment bankers, stock brokers and even some politicians who’ve sold out the American middle class for 2016 stock prices.

 

They’re making billions while middle class and blue-collar workers are being furloughed and their retirements funds are vanishing. Were they really that nervous about the Wuhan Flu?  Or did they see an opportunity and exploit it?

 

The stock exchange finally got wise when some of the traders came down with the virus and shut the trading floor. Electronic trading is still managing to decimate the stock market, our retirement funds, and the economy.  The stock exchange, along with the transit system, should have been shuttered a month ago.  We can’t go shopping.  But the investors certainly are hunting down bargains – at our expense.

China has as much as admitted that the expulsion of American journalists is a media war, getting even for events that long pre-dated the Wuhan Flu. They don’t like that name.  Well, isn’t that too bad?

 

They are now threatening to withhold vital medicines that are made in China. Who knew we were exporting medicines from China?  Whose bright idea was that?  The same people who shopped in China for our military uniforms, even as China was building naval and military bases in the South China Sea?

 

Even now, The Times is vaguely hinting that this media war is Trump’s fault for engaging China in a trade war. Only, as usual, that’s hardly the truth.  It was their own reporting on a tyrannical government that made them media non grata.

 

New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) has ordered all non-essential workers in the state to stay at home. That means New York City, of course, where most of the cases are.

 

The stock brokers and investors will now have to stay home. But they can still manipulate the markets from home, where they can count their billions and laugh all the way to their online banks.

 

 

 

Home from School Home Schooling

In days of yore, children were called to school by the school bell, which a teacher would ring outside a one-room schoolhouse. Students of all ages attended the one-room school and older students would assist in teaching the younger.

 

In the wake of the Wuhan Flu, the alarm clock has become the new school bell. Oh, the alarm clock has always been the wake-up call for students to get up, get dressed, have some breakfast and head for school or the school bus.

 

Now the buzzing of the alarm clock means it’s time to get up, dressing is optional, have some breakfast and start learning. But this is no blizzard Snow Day.  With all the schools closed due to the pandemic, educators and students have turned to Google Classroom.

 

Using their school-issued Chromebooks, or their own laptops, students log in the Google Classroom to find out their assignments for the day. Initially released in 2014, the epidemic has provided the perfect opportunity to see if it works.

 

It had better. Because no one knows how long the pandemic will really last.  Some school systems, like the Wayne (N.J.) School District, have not only cancelled their Senior Proms but the graduation ceremonies themselves.

 

With Classroom, teachers and students can sign in from any computer or mobile device to access class assignments, course materials, and feedback. With simple setup and integration with G Suite for Education, Classroom streamlines repetitive tasks and makes it easy to focus on what teachers do best: teaching.

 

Classroom is free for schools and included with sign up for G Suite for Education. Like all Google for Education tools, Classroom meets high security standards. computer or mobile device to access class assignments, course materials, and feedback.  Classroom is free for schools and included with sign up for G Suite for Education. Like all Google for Education tools, Classroom meets high security standards.

 

Educators can track student progress to know where and when to give extra feedback. With simplified workflows, more energy can be focused on giving students constructive, personalized recommendations.

 

The thing about this ad-hoc home-schooling is that it requires a good deal more parental involvement. There is no teacher to make sure the kids are paying attention and doing their reading or exercises, although they do track the student’s progress, keeping a virtual eye on them.  One supervisor’s young scholar does his work in his jammies.  The family has a dedicated computer room, although the children are permitted to work separately.  The rule is that the older student must help his younger brother out.

 

Another supervisor finds that her two older children are responsible enough to do their assignments. But her primary grade student requires a bit more hands-on supervision.  Mom has to come in a little later to work to get this one started on her assignments.

 

Then there’s the Mom with the high-achiever advanced class sixth grader. Mom keeps an eye on him.  But we suspect she does so not because he needs it (his sisters probably do though) but because his assignments are so interesting.

 

His science assignment for this week is the Star Lab Mission. Among the many choices is creating a travel brochure for a tour of the solar system.  You can’t fly to – well, anywhere – at the moment.  But how about seeing the enormous volcanos of Mars?  Or one of Jupiter’s 79 known satellites?  Spend a year and a day on Venus (both at the same time – a day on Venus is equal to 243 Earth days and a year is 224.7 days).

 

His English assignment – a theme – is especially curious given the current situation.  Should students be permitted to video record debates and presentations?  They now participate in remote, on-line classroom lectures with their teachers.

 

Home Schooling is keeping Moms and Dads on their toes intellectually. Where does the Mountain meet the Moon in China (a Social Studies assignment)?  It’s actually a children’s story taken from Chinese folklore, which takes place in the village of Fruitless Mountain.  The heroine, 10 year-old Minli, wants to know how to bring good fortune to her impoverished family and village.  Only the Old Man in the Moon can answer her question.

 

Parents have suddenly become much more hands-on with their school-age children, and that’s a good thing. They’ve probably learned in a week more about what their children are learning than in an entire school year.

 

Students are gradually learning to be more self-reliant as well. Teacher isn’t there to talk at them all day while they just sit at their desks like lumps.  Now they have to find out the answers to questions themselves.

 

The temptation of television and computer games is a threat in this new order because the teacher isn’t there to tell them to pay attention. Neither are Mom and Dad, unless they happen to be one of the many workers laid off in this crisis.  Mom is only a phone call away, though, and she will call to make sure the kids are on the ball.

 

Pundits are saying that we’ll never be the same after this Wuhan Flu crisis.

 

Certainly, education will never be the same.

 

 

 

South Korea’s Solution to the Wuhan Flu

Before we begin, let us state for the record that China and the city of Wuhan richly deserve the title of Ground Zero (and Patient Zero) for the COVID-19 virus. Whether the virus was bioengineered in Wuhan’s Institute of Virology (where they experiment on live animals, including bats) or in the city’s infamous “Wet Market,” Wuhan is where it all began.

 

The Wuhanese – five million of their eleven million citizens – fled the city as soon as they learned of rumors that authorities were going to quarantine the city, taking the virus with them. We know we’ve stated this before.  But it can’t be repeated often enough:  Wuhan is where it began and so it should be known as the Wuhan Flu (or Virus, but “flu” is more alliterative).

 

As of 2 p.m. today, there were 212,616 cases, with 8,727 deaths.

 

1. China – 81,102
2. Italy – 35,713
3. Iran 17,361
4. Spain – 13, 910
5. Germany – 11,973
6. South Korea – 8,413
7. France – 7,661
8. U.S. – 7,3223
9. Switzerland – 3,028
10. The United Kingdom – 2,642

 

Germany and Span have leapfrogged over South Korea, which seems at a standstill at 8,413. They’ve been more or less at the number for probably a week. In other words, they seem to have contained the disease, where other country’s outbreaks are leaping ahead.

 

The death ratio seems to be about 0.025 percent of the cases. What is that ratio?  Two out of every 10,000 people will die?  Math isn’t our specialty; trying to get at the truth is.

 

So what’s South Korea’s secret?

 

Testing. Testing, testing, testing.  South Koreans don’t have to make an appointment with a doctor who, if they’re asymptomatic, will dismiss them anyway.  No; they can drive right up to a testing tent center.  They don’t even have to get out of their cars.  The hazmat-suited workers reach in, take a swab, and off you go.  The results are available in about three hours.  Presumably, the patients are given a case number and telephone number to call.

 

If they have no symptoms and no disease, they can go about their business. If they test positive, they do what sane people do:  they go home, lock themselves and their immediate family members in and telephone anyone they might have come in close contact with to tell them to go tested.

 

As far as we know, they don’t freak out because they can’t go out to eat or shop at the mall. These days, everything is online anyway.  They don’t go anywhere near the elderly or younger people with health conditions.  They patiently wait it out.  Who wouldn’t be glad to stay home and relax and get better?

 

If they’re lucky, they’ll come down with a case of the sniffles. Once the last family member has reached the two-week limit, they’re free but cautious because you can re-catch this thing.

 

The South Korean authorities took the precaution of closing everything down, of course, so no one could be tempted to wander about like Wuhan Wally. Italy, unaware that asymptomatic people wouldn’t become symptomatic for up to five days, went ahead with its fashion week in Milan.  There are no 35,713 confirmed cases there, as opposed to South Korea’s 8,413, and closing in on 3,000 deaths.  In Hubei province, the number of deaths is 3,122.

 

Had the United States not been so bureaucratic in its response to Wuhan Flu, we might be no worse off than South Korea, or the United Kingdom. They waited too long to declare an emergency and insisted on an administrative edict of asymptomatic people visiting their primary care physicians.  Worse still, they grossly underestimated the number of tests that would be needed.  They balked at the cost.

 

Meanwhile, much to the delight of the Democrats and the Media, who’ve helped drive the stock market hysteria, the Dow was down to 19,000-something points. We’re below what we were before the 2016 election.  We’re back in Obama “Redistribute the Wealth” Territory.

 

That’s what he promised to do in 2008 and with help from George Soros, the stock market crashed in 2008, wiping out millions of dollars in retirement funds. Now they’re back to finish the job.  Retirees or retiree-wannabes have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars and it’s anyone’s guess whether they’ll be able to make it back before they retire.

 

They’d have been better off investing in rocks from Mars rather than watching their retirement savings vanish into thin air. Their younger brothers and sisters might.  Maybe.  If we don’t lose our jobs, although Amazon is advertising for 100,000 workers in its Port Elizabeth facility in New Jersey.

 

Had they been able to place their savings in traditional savings bank accounts, like our parents did, they’d at least be secure if not fabulously wealthy. Whose brilliant idea was it to invest our retirement savings in a sometimes-volatile stock market?

 

Oh, wait; it was the administrative state at the behest of the banks who wanted to pay little to no interest on savings accounts and charge savers ubiquitous fees for servicing the accounts until they’d bled the savings dry.

 

If middle class workers weren’t so terrified of catching this disease and passing it on, or losing their jobs in the coming recession, they’d be mad enough to throw those Mars rocks right through the windows of the Fed. Thanks a lot, Barney Franks.

 

They have the nerve to lay this economic catastrophe at President Trump’s feet. The best thing that could happen is that the stock exchange be shut down for two weeks, just like the many small businesses who are not likely to recover.  If we can shut down small businesses, why can’t we shut down the stock market?

 

Either the stock brokers are idiots or they’re engineering events, stoking the flu phobia so that there’s such a sell-off that it actually throws the country into a 1929-style Depression (the stock market recovered very nicely the next day; the country paid for it for the next ten years until the start of World War II).

 

Since so many people are likely to be thrown out of work, maybe they should go to Washington and solicit President Trump to shut down the Federal Reserve. Permanently.  And then go to work reforming all those regulations and onerous fees that destroy our savings and force hard-working people to gamble their retirements on a notoriously unreliable stock market.

 

The nearer you get to retirement, the wisdom goes, the fewer risks you want to take with your money. We need President Trump and Vice President Pence to come up with a vaccine to prevent banks from drying up the savings of people planning for retirement, forcing them to risk it all on the stock market.  Being at the end of their working life, there’s no way for them to make up the loss, especially when the stock market is being manipulated by socialist engineers like George Soros.

 

We need a cure for Sorositis. Without independent means of living, there is no freedom and that’s precisely what the socialist Democrats had in mind all along.  We’re about to become Venezuela (we already have the shortages to prove it) unless President Trump can pull a legislative rabbit out of his hand and restore the economy – and our savings.