The really marvelous thing about those asshats is how stupid they think we all are. A) Your paycheck doesn't get bigger until after prices have gone up; and B) it doesn't buy more stuff. If you're lucky, the bigger paycheck buys only as much as it formerly did; but more likely, your bigger paycheck buys less than it did before inflation occurred.
Remember when a big Hershey bar was half a pound? They're smaller now. I just looked at Hershey's site and they don't list an 8 oz bar, except for one molded with the words "THANK YOU" on it. That's $15. They have 6.8 oz bars but they come in 12-packs starting at $40, so that's $3.34 apiece, but that's not a half-pound bar and you have to buy twelve of them. They have a 5 lb bar that costs $60, which comes to $6 for every half-pound of chocolate.
Amazon lists 1 lb Hershey bars for $19, plux tax, shipped.
My salary right now is approximately the same as my dad's salary in the mid-seventies. He was able to support a family on it (Mom did not get a job until 1979, and even then she only did so because she wanted to work, not because we needed the money), buy new cars, and even a boat, while paying a mortgage and saving money out of each paycheck for his retirement. Forty-odd years ago, someone making what I'm making right now was doing pretty well! Today? I'm not hurting at all, and I'm saving money from each paycheck, but I'm sure not able to do all that stuff like buy a boat and a new car and pay for a kid's college education and-and-and.
Because wages did not keep pace with inflation. I'm doing a job that didn't exist in 1975, so it's hard to compare, but let's face it: 46 years' worth of essentially open immigration has kept wages stagnant while inflation kept on grinding away, year after year after year. And the inflation we saw during the Carter administration was bad enough; it's nothing compared to what's coming.
But of course "democrat in White House" means we have to spin the news for the rubes, right? Can't have those hayseeds in flyover country thinking the democrats wrecked the economy yet again, can we?
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So, check this out. What I'm calling attention to specifically is the bit about China's biggest sea port being shut down by Wuhan Flu this past May.
I'm going to be blunt: I do not know what the fuck these people are talking about.The shipping bottlenecks began in late May when a coronavirus outbreak forced authorities to shut down parts of Guangdong province, which is home to Yantian, one of the world's busiest ports and a major gateway for containerized exports like electronics, furniture, home appliances and car parts.Wait. What? A new Coronavirus outbreak in China shut down their major port? In May 2021, well after vaccines were readily available throughout the west?? ABCNNBCBS and the major American newspapers all told me that China had defeated the Coronavirus, and that China was actually a role model in how to do it. In fact, here is a NY Times story praising China on its Covid success story:
NY Times: How China Beat Covid-19 and Revived Its Economy (Feb 2021)
Eighty percent of the cases of Wuhan Flu are asymptomatic. Okay? That's not eightly percent of the population; that's eighty percent of the people who get infected with the thing. Of the remaining twenty percent of cases, something like three-quarters of them get ordinarily sick: "Go to bed and rest. Drink plenty of fluids. Maybe have some chicken soup." Take two aspirin and call me in the morning, etcetera. Five percent of cases need more treatment than that; and of that five percent, something like one percent die. This is across all demographics, of course, because the fatality figures rise drastically the older the patient gets. But even the oldest patients don't die, most of the time; let's be extremely pessimistic about it and say that if you're over eighty, you have a fifteen percent chance of dying from the thing if you catch it and if you are symptomatic at all. I know the fatality figures are much lower than that--even for nonagenarians--but let's just go with it. It still means that in the absolute worst case--you're nearing 100 years old--you still have an 85% chance of living through the damned thing. And that's not a big demographic; it's very, very tiny. (And by the way this is using official figures, which themselves are not exactly trustworthy since they include "died of Wuhan Flu and then crashed his motorcycle" and other idiocies. Did you see that Portugal reestimated their fatality rate to under 1,000 dead from the thing?)
...why are the figures from foreign countries so drastically different? Why are so many Chinese people dying of the thing? And the Italians? Why does China have to shut down its biggest freaking sea port due to this thing when it doesn't even make ill 80% of the people who contract it?
The point I'm trying to make here is that all of the numbers are FUCKING GARBAGE. They were garbage a year ago, and in all that time they have not improved at all, but gotten worse. Last year when the thing was brand new and no one knew what the hell was going on, it was to be expected--but not after eighteen months' worth of data being collected.
So what the hell, guys?
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Apparently the Utah chapter of Burn-Loot-Murder has said that if you're flying the American flag, "We question your intelligence. We know to avoid you."
Is that a promise? If I fly an American flag you'll leave me the fuck alone? Because if that's so, I'll emulate my neighbor and have an illuminated flag pole put in and use it to fly the biggest frickin' stars-and-bars I can manage.
Shitheads.
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Brickmuppet covers it the best way. "It's little! It's red! It celebrates eighty million dead!"
It's a Chinese cell phone done up with a Mao motif, and it costs twenty five thousand dollars. How ironic is that.
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"Someone should maybe inform this fucking assclown about something called HIPPA, yes?" Yes.
Of course, once the public heard this, Sir Asshat tried to walk that back:
Oh but he has been misquoted and his remarks taken out of context he sez.Douchebag."Some comments I made today are being taken wildly out of context. To be clear: government has no database tracking who is vaccinated. We're encouraging people to step up to protect themselves, others by getting vaccinated. It's the best way to save lives and end this pandemic," he wrote.
Francis Porretto discusses the issue.
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I never thought I'd see the day that America had actuual for-real political prisoners. Not assholes like Mumia Abu Jamal (or whatever that commie shithead's name is) who killed a policeman in cold blood and was found guilty in a trial and jailed for it.
These are people who are being held mostly incommunicado because they entered the Capitol building on Jan 6.
Hey, how's about we only treat these people as badly as we do the terrorists at Guantanamo Bay?
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Heh. "Unintended off-site backup." I like that.
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What happens when the actual producers stop? The whole push by the left to wreck society is eventually going to yield the bitter fruit they're trying to produce.
When the stores shut because they can't stay open (because shoplifting is legal as long as you don't steal more than $950 worth of stuff) where will you buy the things you need?
* * *
I did not know that Vanguard I is expected to remain in orbit for two centuries. Dang.
* * *
Had to run to the far off-site today to drop off some PCs and pick up some wireless access points. I was there for five minutes. But at least I'm finally getting things done.
It seems like the paradigm for this job is that I'll push, push, push, push, push, and then suddenly everything's done at the same time. Argh etc. I closed half my incident tickets today.
* * *
Very cool today, dry and cloudy. I don't think we got much over 70 today; I personally did not see any thermometer reading that did not have a six for the tens' digit.
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Had trouble going to sleep last night; and then I woke up about 4:15 AM needing food. Dinner was General Tao's Chicken with beef fried rice, around 6:30, and when I got up to hit the can I realized that--other than a couple of sugar-free popsicles--I had not eaten anything after that. So I had a PBJ and went back to bed...and then had trouble falling asleep again.
*sigh*