Apocalyptic fears: coronavirus, economics... and could he nuke the world?

As the coronavirus roils world markets and rattles our sci-fi nerves with dire possibilities, it does make sense to look at the death rates from this ailment... at least the rates that have been released by the PRC masters.  So far, they appear to be flu-like, not anywhere near plague or movie-pandemic levels. Indeed, it is only because of advanced science that we know it is not just another somewhat harsh flu.

 Indeed, it is not the reported lethality rate but the rapidity that it went to rapid human-to-human transmission that both perplexes and worries me. That plus the potential economic and other side effects. We'll get to some economic factors down below.

Meanwhile, as the Red Senate serves up a Red Ending to the impeachment saga, we all know this was not the final shoe to drop. What will be next? The Epstein Files that he was killed to conceal? The contents of David Pecker's safe? Som brave Putin defector with the KGB's grand file of blackmailed Western politicians? Or the Deutsche Bank money laundering story, already in so many hands that you've got to wonder on the shared reasons and timing for this delay?

In Polemical Judo I have a chapter on "Exit Strategies" that predicted much of what we've seen and forecasts other chess moves. Shouldn't it have been reviewed, even once, by now? 

== Could he nuke the world? ==

Nathan Gardels, editor of the World Post, offers an excellent missive and warning about what Donald Trump is legally capable of doing, were he to enter a Final Meltdown. “That’s the issue raised by Joe Cirincione, who recalls that during the Watergate investigation leading to Richard Nixon’s impeachment some 45 years ago, the increasingly erratic president told visiting lawmakers: “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone and in 25 minutes, 70 million people will be dead.” And, indeed, Nixon did to go Defcon 3, the highest alert status since the Cuban Missile Crisis.

“As Cirincione points out, whatever you might think of then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, their steady heads provided much-needed restraint as Nixon descended into a bout of drink and depression that only fortified his instinct to strike out. Today, the ranks of the responsible have been decimated by successive purges. Little stands between the Donald and the bomb.”

Before you enter full-tilt depression, preparing for the apocalyptic world shared by The Postman and Death-Stranding, do consider some real factors protecting us from a Trumpian spasm-war.

1) Part of the arms control treaties of the 90s required taking pre-loaded targeting out of a majority of our missiles. Yes, it would take only minutes to re-load target programs. But commanding our forces to do so would be complicated without full cooperation from command officers and probably beyond Donald Trump’s intellectual capacity.

If he did order such re-targetings, that leaked fact might get him “25th.” (See the chapter on "The 25th Amendment" in my book.)

2) Of course most of our missiles that do have targets are aimed at sites within Russia. Is it likely Putin would allow such a command? Two Scoops would have to truly be out-of-control.

3) Lacking a Kissinger or Schlesinger, we have an amazing corps of senior officers who are among the smartest, most responsible and best-educated humans in our species history. They (and senior civil servants) have been the most vexing obstacles confronting the Putinist putsch. You can be sure that if Republicans regain obligate power, they will keep their open promise to gut all institutional protections for those mature castes.

4) In Polemical Judo I discuss a small provision that Congress could slip into almost any bill, appointing national sages… former presidents, retired justices etc. to serve on the “other body” described in the 25th Amendment. That body would make an ideal council for senior officers to alert, on almost instant notice in the event of such a melt-down. Even without VP cooperation, there’s a lot they could do, to slow things down.

The original Cirincione article from The Washington Post.

== The Great Experiment ==

Some of you asked about my apocalyptic failure nightmare for our Great Experiment. Is it one filled with tech-savvy refugees, hunting down every Fox-Putin-mafiosi to their Patagonian and sub-sea and Kiwi hideaways? (The fact-castes now persecuted by ignoramus oligarchs will do that, if put against the edge.)

No it is the much subtler conversion that Orson Scott Card pushes in every novel, but especially EMPIRE, modeled after the end of the Roman Republic, in which an American Caesar (a typical Cardian superman) manipulates us into ending our absurd "experiment" in mass rights, elections, democracy, reciprocal accountability and other Periclean nonsense, handing all power instead to the deserving and great-souled emperor.  And if that can't be O.S. Card, then let it be his hero, the opposite-to-Jesus-in-every-way Donald Trump.

That we have let this malignant propagandist push his America-undermining ethos through every Junior High School in America is a sad commentary on the intellect of our educational establishment and (ironically) evidence that he may have a point.

Those defending our Great Experiment include humans of stunning quality. This short article about Dwight Eisenhower shows how George Marshall and FDR depended on him and saw his qualities… and how we need Republicans like him, again.

But of course the towering figure in all this is Marshall, whose portrait hangs not just in the State Department today, and the Pentagon, but a dozen other places where folks in-the-know realize who showed the American Pax how to be the greatest time in human history. Here’s my essay about asking TIME to name him Person of the 20th Century.

== Political Roundup ==

What general line of work provides more donors (names confidential) to various candidates? Prepare to be amazed. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines have donated a total of $185,625 to Bernie Sanders’ 2020 campaign. By comparison, they have given $113,012 to Trump, $80,250 to Pete Buttigieg, $64,604 to Sen. Elizabeth Warren, and a relatively paltry $33,045 to former Vice President Joe Biden. 

 Interesting followup: "Most of the people who have donated to former Vice President Biden’s campaign work at a law firm or a bank. Ten of the 20 employers on Sen. Warren’s list are elite universities. Buttigieg, a former naval intelligence officer, has received more from State Department employees than any other contender, and is the preferred candidate of those employed by agencies classified only as “U.S. Government.”" All of this is grist for consideration and in my opinion actually boosts Pete, since those are the folks who can best see what's going on.

Still, remember this. The one last chance of Putin/Murdoch/MBS and the other puppetmasters is for our blue-Union coalition to get broken up by angry "splitters." If we schism, we are toast and so is the future.

You - yes, you - must find a way to quench that sanctimonious treason-to-reason whenever it comes up. Ask your enraged splitter if she or he can answer even one of these five Challenges to Splitters. Even one. We'll win this together.

 == More items ==

Political roundup: N. Carolina Republicans are trying to see how little reform - from their gerrymander cheats and crimes - they can get away with.

Meanwhile, the professionals in the Justice Department appear to be in almost-full rebellion against Wm. Barr and their appointed politician masters. There is no more important issue in the US 2020 election than the Civil Service, which the GOP will attack with hammers and tongs and volcanic fury, if they retain power.

The Digital Intelligence Lab at Institute for the Future  (IFTF) analyzed discussion on Twitter surrounding both the October and September Democratic debates. The results are surprising and a must-read for anyone who wants to help defend democracy from coordinated, sophisticated disinformation attacks.

== Economics today ==

Insiders sell stock during buyback programs, making profits when prices jump. It’s legal.” It didn’t used to be. Our parents in the Greatest (FDR) Generation banned this and dozens of other oligarchy cheats that became the very soul and purpose of the Republican Party. Moreover, these stock buybacks were instead of the investment in R&D and capital productive capacity that Goppers promised with every “Supply Side” tax gift to the rich. 

The first wave of Supply Side "reforms" at least had a plausible-sounding argument behind them... that proved absolutely and diametrically opposite to all resulting outcomes. All subsequent ones were knowing and deliberate lies.

Air travel shows what happens when we give companies ruinous power over us.” True?

Sorry, wrong target. The real enemy is public subsidies of charter and corporate jet travel, letting the rich and mighty bypass our deteriorating airports and airlines. Would we suffer so, if elites had to share our misery? They should be – (with torches yet, but I’ll settle for taxes) – chased out of those private terminals, back into First Class where they belong!  

A devastating article reveals how Boeing went from being one of the greatest engineering companies of all time to one driven into the ground by MBAs. One proposal I've long made - only half tongue in cheek -- is to ship 2/3 of our MBAs to developing nations. Our third would learn quickly to focus on product. Half of those sent over there would help develop real enterprises. And the remainder would make good farm labor. A version - naturally - of the GolgaFrincham B-Ark.

== So much for Supply Side 'stimulating' enterprise ==

Entrepreneurship is still allive in the hated California and coast. But for the most part it has gone DOWN with every so-called Supply Side "reform," as wealth disparities skyrocket and we head toward French Revolution levels of injustice. How'd that one go, by the way?

Finally, I have touted the wisdom in some old movies. Like the very end of BLAST FROM THE PAST. Now I recommend you watch an old 1954 film, Executive Suite with Barbara Stanwyck and William Holden. They knew these tricks very well, then.

Who would you trust with the nuclear codes?

Okay, when do you ever see some (rational) person take one of Donald Trump's wild, paranoid rants and declare "he didn't go anywhere near far enough"? 

Well, I am about to do that. He has lately taken flack for being the first prominent figure to (at long last) connect the dots and publicly lay at least partial blame for the 9/11 attacks at the feet of President George W. Bush, the man who was not only captain at the helm, but proximately responsible under any adult standard. Certainly, had the legitimately elected fellow - Al Gore - been in the White House, and the same tragedy occurred, we would never have heard the end of it!

To Trump's remark I grunted "amen, but let's plumb deeper!" For years I've been begging that someone with Washington access dig into FBI and Justice Dept records and see how many agents were re-assigned, after G.W. Bush's inauguration, to hunt for indictable offenses supposedly committed by Bill Clinton and his officials.

 We do know that the search for 'smoking guns' was fervid and intense… and ultimately fruitless, as the Clinton Administration -- long proclaimed by Fox to be the "most corrupt" -- in fact turned out to be the only one in U.S. history with ZERO high officials even indicted (let alone convicted) for malfeasance of office. Though not for lack of desperate GOP effort, during the first 8 months of 2001, using their complete control over all branches of government to seek anything they might pin on the Clintons, anything at all.

What I don't get is why not a single journalist has asked "what were those federal agents doing, before George Bush diverted them into that wild-goose witch hunt?"

If even one of them had been shifted from anti-terrorism duties, then suddenly Donald Trump's brash remark starts to take real substance. Might those diverted agents have uncovered the 9/11 plot in time to thwart it? Given how nearly the plotters were caught, several times, it certainly seems plausible. Especially by the standards of evidence that are currently deemed normal in Congressional committees "investigating" the death for four (as opposed to three thousand) Americans in Benghazi. 

(Note, if you tabulate aftermaths, the casualties from 9/11 might amount to forty thousand.)

The negligence of Congress to apply similar standards to a far worse failure - because it happened under a Republican president - is the most stunning of several hundred hypocrisies.

You think I am making this up, or even exaggerating? Richard A. Clarke, Bush's National Security Council counterterrorism czar and author of Against  All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror -- later testified that dire warnings were consistently not taken seriously: "This administration didn't either believe me that there was an urgent problem or was unprepared to act as though there was an urgent problem."

If you read this article, you will never again offer up the pablum that Bush bore no responsibility for 9/11… or that he "kept us safe."  That anyone would screech about Benghazi, while tacitly accepting the far greater coverup re 9/11, displays hypocrisy of truly volcanic dimensions.

== Competence with nuclear codes? ==

Only now the drama escalates! In a ramping up of the war of words between Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, Jeb has declared Trump too shallow and unstable to be trusteed with America's nuclear deterrent.  

But… but is this not - in effect -- a renunciation of the pledge that Bush himself helped corner Trump into signing? That vow to support the eventual GOP nominee, no matter whom?  Yipe, nasty stuff.

But then, which Republicans would YOU trust with the launch codes? Not wild-eyed and proudly-ignorant Carson, nor spittle-raving Cruz, nor bring-me-the-heart-of-Snow-White Fiorina. Not petulant Jindal… nor Mike Huckabee who actively calls for an end to the world.

See my earlier posting: When Does a Candidate's Religion Matter? where I posit that it should be relevant to voters if a particular candidate prays openly to hasten the day when all ambition and adventure and progress and democracy vanish, and the United States of America will come to a fiery end.

Given that every single major attributable statistical metric of US national health - including conservative ones like the economy, rate of change of deficits, business health and US military readiness - plunged across the span of both Bush administrations, could we survive another?  Which leaves Rubio -- who seems a nice fellow, though callow and utterly-utterly-utterly beholden to crazies and oligarchs.  

Sorry. By the very standard Jeb raised, we'd be insane to let any one of them have a burnt and doused match.