Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

Apologies, didn't mean to misrepresent you. We've debated things before and you seemed to lean to no cop is a good cop because there are so many bad ones guilt be association and failure to clean things up makes them all bad. You'd also said up thread to fire all active officers.

I'll cease trying to word how you feel on it, I just wanted to demonstrate by counter example that not everybody means 'reform' when they say "defund". At a minimum , the degree of 'reform' varies from change some laws and regulations to fire them and start over from scratch.

My comment of being ruled by our 'betters' was meant as a sarcastic dig on them and their abject failure in letting things rot this far and doing nothing.

Finally, my comment on public opinion on solutions being non-uniform was mostly to emphasize that as just normal, and the current status quo is just so unacceptable that it is unifying people from varied points of view to stand up against it. The most important point being that declaring, see nothing will satisfy the mob because they can't agree what to do is a twisted deception and the truth is people want things to be better than they are, and there is as you pointed out tonnes of common sense ways to go about that,

No, it's not.

Part 1: It's exactly the same gradient in both videos...probably the same exact ramp.
This is not a wheelchair ramp, which is what your ada numbers represent. If you're going to mock the video, you should at least get your ramp type right.

Part2: Where's the comparison video of Trump slowly struggling to climb this ever so steep ramp? A 3' rise in nearly 40' is not steep unless you are severely disabled. (BTW, that's about a 4.3 degree ramp, a 7.3% slope....those stripes are about 1.5' wide, and the stage floor is only two stripes up from ground level. Again, if you're going to mock the video, at least get your numbers close if not right.).

Apples to apples then, 15:20- 15:30. https://youtu.be/wY5rduEmEwk
Joe jogs, Trump barely thinks he can.

Or feel free to compare Trump's "run" at the end (the only "running" we've ever seen from him) with this then ... https://youtu.be/BY5sB7GvabY


Part3: Yes, Trump already described this event, and his description/explanation was nearly identical to yours....just like @bcglorf said. I'd say his 100% is close, Trump may have used a different arrangement of words but he said exactly the same thing.

Your implications are apparently that you think Trump is healthy, as healthy as Biden, and the media is making his poor health up. That is demonstrably false by any metric. Biden is old as fuck and my second to last choice from the Democratic field (Clinton is my last choice), but hands down Biden beats Trump in vigor, cognition, stability....just about any measure of health, mental or physical, that I've ever heard of except possibly the ability to deceive.

BTW, sarcasm could totally be interpreted from your comment. You deride the numbers given then offer your own random numbers that are exponentially farther off, and give a nonsensical excuse that this isn't a proper wheelchair ramp, how could an able bodied man possibly walk up and down it!? Many people assume nonsense like that will be taken as a joke, so refuse to use the sarcasm button.
Again, if you want to deride other people's facts, you should get yours right...it's about a 4.3 degree ramp, not 11.

People can misuse statistics to prove anything. Forfty percent of all people know that.

I'm afraid you're misrepresenting the statistics.
Those are based on overall US population, not racially divided populations.

30 per million blacks killed even though they are only 13% of the population vs 12 per million whites even though they are 76%. That's 30 dead blacks for every 12 dead whites.
Whites don't get off Scott free, but per capita it's close.
1/6 as many blacks as whites but 2.5 times more dead...making it 15 times more dead blacks per capita when divided by race...not over twice as many whites like you said.

The numbers aren't as lopsided as expected because you made a massive statistical error. Try again please.

All these issues you list are demonstrably used more often against non whites. This doesn't mean exclusively, but if your base stats are right, it should be 3-1 whites getting shafted if it wasn't racist, but it's more like 15-1 blacks/browns being shafted.

You might want to watch all those videos again.

Hitting a parked car at 60km/h and not rolling would be a clearly better outcome. The parked car is not a solid wall, it cannot bring you to a "dead stop".

Hitting a barrier and rolling is clearly worse than hitting the same barrier and sliding along it, "bouncing" off it, spinning etc even if you're clipped by another car. Again even with the sharp swerve into the barrier it would never have been a "dead stop"

Hitting the car in front which has suddenly braked would be far better than a high speed roll even if the car behind proceeds to rear end you. The closest to your "dead stop" scenario and still far better than a high speed roll.

I'm arguing with you because you often backup what you're saying with demonstrable facts, in this case you're not. You're ignoring variables, using differing experience to draw conclusions and dismissing the severity of something based on your controlled personal experience of it.

"Citation? Physics. acceleration = Δv/Δt. Larger injuries come from higher g forces."

Has nothing to do with studies in vehicular CSI. I asked for a citation relating to maximum force/time being a primary factor in vehicular CSI not a physics equation and a stunningly simplified opinion. Again this is the shit I'm arguing with you about.

No doubt. It appears to be going back to it's original site at the end.

Side note, now that you've demonstrated your abilities, Gaia, can you please push another white house into the sea for me?

He’s kinda like the Mr. Rogers of tradeworkers. I found myself blissed out and open minded just listening this demonstration of something I’d never thought about before.

What is the objective here? Is there some danger in the street that people will be protected from if they go inside the house? Are they allowed to look out of windows? Should they turn their lights off and lie on the floor? Or is this just a testosterone driven demonstration of police (state) stupidity? Police creating more police haters. Good job! MAGA!

Hahahaha demonstrably false. You're either lying intentionally or completely delusional.

He has NEVER had an approval rating above 50%. He is the only POTUS since that sort of polling was done to NEVER have majority support for his actions. Do you understand how terrible that is?

He didn't even get the majority of the peoples vote ffs.

The FACT that a REPUBLICAN group is putting out these ads should give you some insight into his epic levels of ineptitude but as I said before, you're lying or delusional so facts and reality don't enter into it.

@newtboy You don't even need intelligent leadership as shown by Australia

Sorry, you lost me at "greatest country in the world", or at the very least your list of "despite it being..." is way, way too short. Greatest at or greatest for what? Bigots per capita? Most frequent demonstrations of unsubstantiated entitlement and negative IQ's?

Classic....sounds like a meth rant.

"The point that misses the mark regarding quality, is the voices on the stroll through recordings. This specific voices are extremely the individuals they sound mechanical while much in the event that they are perusing from being a content. So when you want great outcomes with these recordings you will need to record specific voice overs. Furthermore, true to form they do give you the transcripts pores and skin recordings and demonstrate you to make the voice overs."

*ban

It'll be useful eventually, but I wouldn't bank on soon. My final project in college was related to quantum computing, which at the time (18 years ago) was effectively entirely theoretical. I've enjoyed seeing the steady, albeit slow, progress.

The areas where quantum computing will really shine are problems which involve a huge number of possible answers, but only one best or correct one. The traveling salesman problem is a classic of computer science, as you can scale it up in complexity to the point where any traditional computer will eventually choke on the sheer number of permutations to test. Great way to demonstrate the need for clever solutions and well-written algorithms vs brute force approaches. An adequately sophisticated quantum computer, however, will theoretically be able to solve the traveling salesman problem nearly instantly, regardless of the level of complexity / number of nodes to navigate. Because it just tests all possible answers simultaneously.

Your video, Demonstrating Quantum Supremacy, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Without hostility, I gotta be honest here: I don't really know what you're trying to say. My best guess is, "Treating him with compassion is good for [me]." In this case, at least, I disagree. If I were immortal and/or striving for sainthood, perhaps. But I have one life with limited time, as do those I love and seek to protect. Those who are in search of said sainthood may care for this person all they wish; and may they do it away from society and the rest of us who choose life.

It is foolish to issue probation to someone who brought a loaded gun to class. They've already demonstrated intent to harm and thus should have the option/means to do so again removed.

Lets get all countries to organize their institutions in such a way that idealistic moral imperatives and vows are binding. No cheating, not even lying. Ever. Yes you too, Saddam. And Vladimir. And Pooh too. I mean Xi Jinping. I am sure if we ask them all nicely or sign a petition or demonstrate in front of the Indian and Pakistani embassies 24/7 surely they will come around.

If we disarm now, how do we divert that asteroid when we need to?