News Update-Day 8

A picture is worth a thousand words.

A subscriber sent me this video from Italy. Remember that old TV show wherein they took kids to prisons, entitled "Scared Straight"? You'll be scared straight into self-quarantine after watching this. It's just under four minutes. I know, I know, people are sending you articles all day long, you're eyes are glazed over from info, but this is the most dramatic thing I encountered all day yesterday:

"Inside intensive care unit: Italy fights coronavirus outbreak": https://bit.ly/2WryKzi

And speaking of video, you'll wince and get a chuckle out of these inane spring-breakers, are they even smart enough to go to college and go on spring break? I know people canceling weddings, but meanwhile these nitwits can't miss out on a bit of partying?

"'If I get corona, I get corona': Miami spring breakers say covid-19 hasn't stopped them from partying": https://wapo.st/2QuTGSp

Meanwhile, there are multiple stories today that people under fifty are not as immune as they think they are:

"Younger adults are large percentage of coronavirus hospitalizations in United States according to new CDC data": https://wapo.st/33uaj5I

And there's this fiction that the United States can go it alone, that we don't need other countries. But the truth is that ship sailed years ago. Corporations are multinational and so is the supply chain. You're aware that your Mac is made in China, but are you aware the swabs used in coronavirus testing are made in Italy?

"The Latest Obstacle to Getting Tested? A Shortage of Swabs and Face Masks": https://nyti.ms/2x8G7Be

The swab cannot be made out of wood and it must be synthetic, not cotton.

"The main manufacturer of the swabs, Copan, is an Italian company whose manufacturing plant is in Northern Italy, a region that has itself been hard hit by the coronavirus outbreak. It says it has ramped up manufacturing to deal with the extraordinary demand for an otherwise unassuming product to which many doctors gave little thought, until now."

This makes me crazy. The left says to bring manufacturing back to America, not realizing prices would go insane and our lifestyles would go down. The right believes it can go it alone. And Trump believes by starting trade wars he's improving conditions in America. But just ask the farmers, who depend upon exports. We've always been in this together, maybe the coronavirus will teach us this.

I'm reading Erik Larson's "The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz": https://amzn.to/394kPC7

If you're unaware of Larson, he recreates real life stories, frequently ones you were unaware of. However, his books have no arc, they don't build, they're relatively flat, and so far, "The Splendid and the Vile" reads like a paste-up job, but still I'm intrigued, to learn so much about history I did not know. When I went to school teachers did not teach recent history, they'd lived through it and thought you knew it, when you did not.

Now if you want to go on a Larson kick, start with "The Devil In The White City," which makes the Chicago World's Fair of 1893 come alive, while a serial killer...

If you like that, then read "In The Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin." It's the story of America's ambassador to Nazi Germany, but what makes it so interesting is his not yet divorced daughter comes along with him and has a relationship with seemingly every major Nazi. Read this if you're going to Berlin, if we can ever travel again. I was stunned to drive by parks and other landmarks in the city after reading this book.

Anyway, back to "The Splendid and the Vile."

Churchill becomes prime minister. According to Larson, this is not what the entrenched wanted. Because Churchill was a man of action, and they thought his actions were unpredictable.

So one of the first things Churchill does is to hire this guy Lord Beaverbrook, who made his fortune in newspapers, to boost airplane production, which he does, dramatically! Just like in the job-seeker's bible, "What Color Is Your Parachute," skills are transferable. Beaverbrook keeps hearing no, but he doesn't back down. He steps on toes to get the job done, he stands up to the bureaucracy, goes outside his purview, all in an effort to achieve the result. They call this the "can-do spirit." America used to revel in it. But somewhere along the line, we lost our way. They're talking about Ford, which has stopped making automobiles, making ventilators. What about all these techies? Elon Musk, who won't shut down his Tesla production line, someone must be able to ramp up production of test kits and ventilators!

Churchill was a leader.

Then again, he was famous for writing and reading, just like our President today, HA!

The answer is never in the scuttlebutt, change always comes from the outside, leaders take us into the unknown, they just don't manage the existing world. Change happens, leaders anticipate it and deal with it. Information is king. Analysis is king. These are skills that have been put on the back-burner ever since college was turned into a glorified trade school. We need the liberal arts Steve Jobs always talked about. We need to teach people how to think. The situations change, the ability to analyze remains.

So I was out driving last night and I tuned into Fox News...

It was after dark, I was going out hiking, I was not near anybody nor do I plan to be.

Howard Stern is on vacation, I hear he's coming back next week. And I'm sick of the news, but I can't quite bring myself to listen to music in the car, not that I've been in the car much.

So on SiriusXM they've got the news channels, Fox, CNN and MSNBC, as well as the BBC and Bloomberg. I usually start with MSNBC...which is seemingly only good when Rachel Maddow is on, because she analyzes the news as opposed to just bloviating on it. CNN is oftentimes featuring a different story, so I check that out, and I always go to Fox to see what the enemy is going on about.

China.

It's all China's fault.

If you've been following the news, it's Tucker Carlson who convinced Trump to pivot and take the coronavirus seriously. Tucker was the lone wolf at Fox talking about the problem. But now Hannity and Ingraham have pivoted. I tuned in when Laura Ingraham was on.

She couldn't stop blaming China for the coronavirus. And the problem was the Democrats, since they did business with the country, you know, the usual suspects, like Bloomberg.

I winced and laughed simultaneously. I was not expecting a mea culpa, but I was expecting a focus on the real problem, which is infection in America. But Ingraham just had to find a new bogeyman, while laying the blame at the feet of the Democrats. Fox News was bad when Roger Ailes ran it, but now it's gone completely off the rails.

In today's world you oftentimes think you're the only one watching, or listening, but I was stunned to open my WaPo app this morning and find:

"'China has blood on its hands': Fox News hosts join Trump in blame-shifting": https://wapo.st/2UfMdri


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