China's Lying

... but then you knew that.

Personal aside: A dear friend of mine has come down with the Chicom Flu. He's older and has medical problems. That means he's in the highest of high risk groups. Prayers are welcome.

Personal message to China: Please stop eating bats. Please. Stop. No more bats. Stop eating them. Now.

On with the show.

Graphs like this are nonsense. Please don't tell our "journalists." They'll just ignore you and continue carrying water for the CCP.

Viruses loose in a population of more than 1 billion don't level off like this. Ever.

I've seen stories of the Chinese sending their people back to work. That makes sense. Socialist countries don't care about individuals except how they contribute to the GDP. The death rate is 1-2% and it only affects the old and infirm? Sounds good. Return to normal life, citizens. We'll get the economy back on track and kill off some of our deadweight meatbags. After all, life has no objective value.

Elsewhere, people are trumpeting a "leveling off" of the curves in Italy, NYC and Upper Slobolvia. So what? It's happening with an economic tourniquet applied. The real question is what happens when we go back to normal.

Right now, it's all about finding treatments, mass testing for antibodies and getting a vaccine.

Treatments

The French doctor who touted chloroquine is taken to the woodshed here. Why? What's the point of analyzing his research any more? He was an alarm bell to get us to look at chloroquine. Now that lots of people are using it, we should be getting tons more data. Even if it isn't quadruple-blind, FDA-approved, fully diverse and approved by transgender 9-year-olds, we ought to be able to eyeball the tables and get some clues. Stop nitpicking the French dude. The world has moved way past him and his 80-person trial.

If you want to know about treatments in layman's language, I highly recommend watching Tucker Carlson's show every night. He's got a regular contributor who explains them in rational, measured tones.

Racist Testing

Tucker also had on some Navy dude who is working for HHS to talk about testing. He said we're a few weeks away from being able to test the general population. If we test for antibodies, we can start getting back to normal. If it were me, I'd institute a racist national ID card whose embedded racist data included your racist Chicom Flu antibody status. A racist could scan it and find out if you were safe to allow you to shop, work and play with other racists.

Of course, we all know that ID cards are racist, so maybe we can't do that.

Humor

A friend sent this one to me. I laughed, so I figured I'd share it. I hope you stay safe and have a great day.

Hey, I Just heard a Dr. on TV saying that during this time of Coronavirus while staying at home we should focus on inner peace. To achieve this we should always finish things we start and we all could use more calm in our lives. I looked through my house to find things I’d started and hadn't finished, so I finished off a bottle of Merlot, a bottle of Chardonnay, a bodle of Baileys, a butle of wum, tha mainder of Valiumun srciptuns, an a box a chocletz. Yu haf no idr how feckin fablus I feel rite now. Sned this to all who need inner piss. An telum u luvum. And two hash yer wands, stafe day avrybobby!!!

Decide And Act

... it's better than dithering endlessly. That's the lesson my MGB electrical project has tried to teach me, but one I'm still struggling to learn.

My first version of a clean-front, fiberglass center console is done. Two coats of fiberglass left it looking marginally adequate, but it was too flimsy to use.

Hey, don't laugh. At least you can tell what I was trying to make.

I dithered for a day or two. Maybe I should just throw it out and start a new one. Instead, I added a third coat to the back which made it strong enough, but left it in terrible aesthetic shape.

Ugh.

Some work with the new Dremel that wife kitteh allowed me to buy* turned it into something vaguely adequate. It even fits in the car.

One look at this and wife kitteh will realize that this is not my midlife crisis car. There's no way I can pick up chicks with it looking like I rescued it from a troop of abusive baboons.

Once I saw that it was sturdy enough to use, it dawned on me that I could use it as a test rig for a couple of other things I needed to try. The first is my controls layout, the second is the wiring behind the console and the third is how to cut holes in fiberglass for switches and meters without making a total hash of the job. Which I will, the first time.

All in all, I needed this to be a usable product so I could take it all the way. In fact, once it's complete and the cockpit wiring harness is installed, the job is effectively done.

I still can't believe I'm writing that.

* - The Chicom Flu layoff has yielded a bountiful harvest of new tools, thanks to the approval of wife kitteh. It's an ill wind that blows no good. Or is that a wind of illness?

Whatever.

Sailing, Dogs And Cars

We broke the rules today and drove the Catican Guards out to Ocotillo Wells to see if we could find the fossil canyon. We got close, but a group of desert rats were having a good time shooting targets in a canyon just prior to the fossils, so we walked the dogs, but didn't see the site. No worries. Everyone had a good time. The fossils have been there for more than 6,000,000 years. I suspect they will still be there in another year or two.

On the way back, we took the scenic route home, Highway 94. It has lots of twists and turns. It was also beautiful. This is the perfect time of the year to be out in rural SoCal. It's green and pretty and the weather is just right. In a month or two, everything will be dead and dry.

As we drove, the dogs spent a good deal of time sitting up or standing. I wondered if they would be really tired when we got home.

I used to own a Cal 26 sailboat and loved to sail. I'd be exhausted by the time I was done. It finally dawned on me that I was tired because my whole body was getting a workout while I was on the water. My muscles had to continually react to the motion of the boat to keep me balanced while I sailed.

I figure the dogs kind of go through that when we drive. They don't completely understand the concept and can't help trying to execute doggy behaviors while the car is in motion. When we got back, they laid down, but then again, they always lay down when nothing is happening.

Hmm.

It Takes 10,000 Hours

... to truly master a skill. Or so they say. I think that's pretty accurate. I must be approaching that number in my ongoing research designed to help me fight my habitual sins. Yesterday was a great day, one where different paths of research converged in my head. I thought I'd share a few of those with you. Maybe they'll help you in some way.

Motivation

Why keep at it?

We all fight the same sins throughout our lives. Whether it's greed or anger or drink or whatever, I'd strongly argue that you're born with certain weaknesses and that's that. I know I always go to Confession for the same things.

The last time I went to Adoration, engrossed in the latest chapter of my Sisyphean battle with xxx, God said to me, "It's OK. Just keep fighting." And so I did, with more success some days and less on others.

When the Big Guy says He forgives you, but asks you to sin no more, you'd be well-advised to give it your best shot.

What To Do With Grudges

How to Hold a Grudge is a clever, funny book about clinging to past wrongs. The author tells you to hold on to them as learning experiences. Drop the anger and rage, but derive rules of interpersonal behavior from them. For example, if your brother borrows $1000 and never pays you back, forgive him, but never loan him money again.

Take Responsibility

No Excuses! is an excellent book to help you quit blaming others. At the end of the chapter called Self-Discipline and Responsibility, Brian Tracy's list of instructions includes direction to pick a person in your life who you feel has severely wronged you and forgive them completely. Examine how you contributed to the situation and take responsibility for it. He asks you to do it for one person, but it's clearly the repeatable template for a better life.

Brian says forgiveness is tremendously freeing and he's right. You'll find yourself with loads of time and energy on your hands that you used to spend obsessing on the past.

It's A Journey, Not A Destination

My latest book along these lines is the fabulous Try Softer by Aundi Kolber. Here's her summary of the book.

That may seem like the opposite of what I blog, but here's where the 10,000 hours come in to play. Your path to any skill set will include many different approaches. My father became an excellent artist as he learned color theory, perspective, composition and the technical aspects of several different media. In the end, he loved oil painting and landscapes, but he owed important parts of his skill set to practicing with watercolors and drawing people.

One of the things Aundi said that really hit me was that there is no shortcut to changing yourself and that the time spent in the effort is the reward. As you go, you have to show compassion to yourself for your failures and, at the same time, show that same compassion to others around you, all of whom are in similar struggles.

So there you go. Hopefully you can make something of my nonsense.

Why I'm Optimistic About The Coronavirus

There are three mechanisms by which the Chicom Flu crisis ends.

1. A vaccine is developed. After that, everyone who gets the shot is effectively immune. Life returns to normal.


2. An inexpensive, rapid-results test is developed. Allegedly, the British already have one. If it shows you have the antibodies, it's the same as being vaccinated and you can get back to normal life. If it shows you've got an active case, you can self-quarantine or go to the hospital. If you want to go full authoritarian, the government can be alerted and you can be branded with a scarlet letter or wear a bell around your neck or be forced to shout, "Unclean!" wherever you go. In any case, life can return to normal for almost everyone.


3. A treatment pans out. With a treatment, hospitals or doctors administer it, you get better and you end up with no disease and the antibodies. You can go back to normal life.

From an investor's point of view, one of those three things is considered complete, not when it is fully executed, but when its existence is confirmed. Remember that investors are trying to predict the future. If a rapid-results test is confirmed, then the future is set. You don't need to wait for 100,000,000 of the things to be shipped to be able to determine what will happen 6 months from now. They will be produced and shipped and used. As soon as it's confirmed, an inexorable machine will be set in motion and the outcome is known.

If you remain a pessimist, you're essentially saying that none of these three things will happen. Note that any one of them ends the crisis. If you're a pessimist, you're betting against Big Pharma which is pursuing what could be the biggest payday in history.

Big Pharma beat AIDS.

I'm not betting against them. You can if you want, but I'll take Pfizer and give you the points.

They've got equations and test tubes and microscopes and glowing liquids. How can you bet against that?

Hoping The Chicom Flu Takes Out Identity Politics

While the virus was silently spreading though New York city, their leaders were lecturing the population about the dangers of ... racism.

Identity politics, aka modern Nazi Race Theory, turned NYC into a disaster area. Maybe we can finally get past these racial obsessions now.

At about the same time the race-crazed left was destroying New York, the race-crazed people in Italy were doing the same. 

Unreal. This has got to stop.

Burning Incompetent Aliens

The Press Needs A Restart

This isn't a surprise at all and that tells you everything you need to know.

I did a screen cap of the tweet in case it gets taken down by the WaPo in a belated spasm of business competence. Like that's going to matter.

A WaPo writer saw a tweet so he called the dude's mommy. The news media's brand is now so utterly smashed that all this did was make the rubble bounce.

Back when we Catholics began to see stories of pedo priests start to leak, a lot of us wanted to hear that the Church had thrown them all out. We would have accepted parish closures in exchange for getting rid of abusers. The Church didn't do that and by hiding the creeps, they burned our brand to the ground. The news media has done that to themselves as well.

The Church can't start fresh because we represent a 2000-year continuum, but the press can. The only way to recover their utterly incinerated reputation is to form a new press organization that scrupulously polices its members, devotes itself to serving the average person and commits to total ideological equality. There is simply no way to recover from where they are right now without burning the entire institution to the ground and restarting from scratch.

It's not even worth replying to things like that tweet. At this point, what new snarks can you add?

Biden's Campaign Team Is Incompetent

Yes, the guy is going senile. Yes, he's a leaden speaker. That doesn't explain why, in the year 2020, his team can't pull off simple things like feeding him from a teleprompter and setting up a digital town hall. Here's just one example out of dozens.

What is going on here? When this is over, there are going to be some fascinating tell-all books from his campaign. Is Biden himself micromanaging things from a position of ignorance? Have all the digital professionals on the left abandoned him? Even if they have to wipe the drool off his face right before he goes on screen, there's no excuse for the failure to execute simple tasks like these.

Horrible.

Preparing For Alien Invasion

THE US WASN'T PREPARED FOR A PANDEMIC AND IT'S ALL TRUMP'S FAULT!

Err, no. Maybe we weren't prepared for this kind of pandemic, but we're not prepared for an alien invasion, either, and I don't see anyone howling to have their taxes doubled so we can establish massive underground bunkers defended by ion cannons.

Yep, we need about four times as many respirators and ICU beds as we've got. That's what you need when a crippling pneumonia sweeps through the population. If it had been a cholera clone, we'd have needed something different. If it were an arthritis epidemic, we'd need different things still.

We complain about the cost of health care and then we scream that we don't have a massive design margin built in to anticipate every possible pandemic. Maybe we need to stop screaming and accept that life can get messy sometimes.

I will say that where we are today seemed obvious to me as soon as things got out of control in Wuhan. Credit to Trump for trying to close down traffic from China and other hotspots, but I never thought that was going to do anything other than delay it.

Gratuitously returning to the press, it was no surprise that they ran with RACISM! at the start instead of suggesting we might all want to calmly prepare for what was clearly coming. They're like automatons with a limited number of procedures to execute. They have RACISM, SEXISM, RUSSIA and the other assorted ORANGE MAN BAD subroutines and that's all they can do. They're worse than useless in the best of times and this isn't the best of times.

Oh Well

Meanwhile, the weather is starting to clear here, so it's time to build my MGB's new center console from fiberglass. Pictures to follow in the coming days.

Take care, everyone.

Odds And Ends - Stocks, Cures And Strength Edition

Stocks

Yesterday, I called Monday's close as the market low for this particular crash. It's now the fourth major crash I've experienced as an investing-conscious creature. I might be getting the feel for them or I might be a total idiot. In any case, my favorite and really my only investment advice blog, Calafia Beach Pundit, thinks the worst is over as well.

Cures

The inestimable Tim Eisele left us a link to an excellent blog giving real information about candidate cures for the Chinaman's Cough. It's called In The Pipeline and the post of March 24 suggests that chloroquine-based treatments may look so promising because the virus is so weak. Almost everyone recovers so small-scale tests don't have enough participants to show an improvement over a placebo. The French study where 20 out of 20 (or 40 out of 40 or whatever it was) recovered may have been a false alarm as it's highly likely that 20 out of 20 would have recovered anyway. Unless you're at risk already, the thing is pretty wimpy.

There's a WSJ article today where a pair of math nerds argue persuasively that the death rate could be an order of magnitude or more lower than we think. That wouldn't surprise me. Wife kitteh and I are pretty sure we've had it already.

Population samples from China, Italy, Iceland and the U.S. provide relevant evidence. On or around Jan. 31, countries sent planes to evacuate citizens from Wuhan, China. When those planes landed, the passengers were tested for Covid-19 and quarantined. After 14 days, the percentage who tested positive was 0.9%. If this was the prevalence in the greater Wuhan area on Jan. 31, then, with a population of about 20 million, greater Wuhan had 178,000 infections, about 30-fold more than the number of reported cases. The fatality rate, then, would be at least 10-fold lower than estimates based on reported cases.

Next, the northeastern Italian town of Vò, near the provincial capital of Padua. On March 6, all 3,300 people of Vò were tested, and 90 were positive, a prevalence of 2.7%. Applying that prevalence to the whole province (population 955,000), which had 198 reported cases, suggests there were actually 26,000 infections at that time. That’s more than 130-fold the number of actual reported cases. Since Italy’s case fatality rate of 8% is estimated using the confirmed cases, the real fatality rate could in fact be closer to 0.06%.

I think that echoes what the data seems be saying from the In the Pipeline blog post. You'll need a massive study to find a cure because Chicom Flu isn't very dangerous. Hopefully.

Update: A doctor friend of mine on Facebook chatted me this take on the chloroquine plus azithromycin treatment.

Both meds are easy to take and I Rx azithromycin a lot already. I agree with the author that it is something (to try) and we should use it earlier. Couldn't hurt.

There is a saying, "neither be the first nor the last."

Strength

I've been watching a nearby relationship recently while dipping back into some of my self-improvement books. I learned something that I'm sure the rest of you have known for quite some time.

Strong people support those around them. Weak people tear them down. Sometimes all you need to improve a relationship is to get one or both of the participants to realize that the other person is asking for help in an area where they are incompetent.

Competent people didn't get that way all on their own. God gave them abilities and others wrote books to share wisdom gained from personal experience to give us shortcuts to better lives. Yes, the competent people worked to improve, but a little humility mixed with a realistic assessment of expertise and some Christian charity to others could result in a lot less criticism and hurt.

Just sayin'.

Wuhan Flu Hobbies

It's been too cold and humid here to take the next steps with my MGB project, so I've spent my time reading and pondering. The weather ought to clear up tomorrow and then I'll get back to doing something productive instead of navel gazing.

My time hasn't been completely wasted, I've spent it ... oh, who am I kidding? My time has been completely wasted. Completely.

Be Careful Choosing Sides

I spent some time yesterday scouring the MSM for stories of Dr. Fauci disagreeing with President Trump, specifically about the candidate treatment for the Wuhan Flu, chloroquine.

My initial conclusion was that the news media was rooting for the virus. That stuck out like a sore thumb. I'm sure that plays well inside the news rooms where they're still drying their tears because Hillary lost, but out here in rubeville, it is, shall we say, a bad look.

What I found in my research was a pack of gossip columnists from high school newspapers chattering about how Mark didn't like Suzy any more because Suzy had been making eyes at Juan which made Maria furious.

There wasn't a single actionable piece of information in the WaPo, the NYT, Yahoo News, CNN, whatever. It was trash.

When you stripped away the mean girl talk, you found that the entrepreneur had a good feeling about the drug while the scientist said the clinical trials hadn't been completed and all we had were anecdotes. Anyone who wanted to help the public make decisions would have asked about the direction the anecdotes were taking, but instead they went with howls of rage because some idiots had taken chloroquine phosphate, a fish tank cleanser, and died from it.

I'd call it worthless, but that would be an insult to worthless things everywhere.

Last night on Tucker's program, I watched an interview with the head of the FDA and then a doctor he has on regularly. They both hedged their bets as they should, but they both said the drug showed promise. The FDA dude said that doctors were free to prescribe it. The doctor dude said that early results showed that it worked particularly well in the early stages of the disease.

Experiments can indeed turn around in midstream. Something that looks good can go sideways and crash and burn. However, given that chloroquine has been around for decades and is already FDA-approved, a whole bunch of mechanisms, read: disastrous side effects, for failure are off the table.

In other words, things look really good.

Not that the idiots in the news media would tell you that. I wonder if they even understand. I doubt it. If they did, they'd dismiss it because Orange Man Bad. They're rooting for the virus because they hate Trump. In the long run, siding with the virus won't turn out to have been a good decision.

Your daily news summary.

Going out on a limb: I'm calling the market bottom right now. Yesterday's S&P 500 close of 2237 was the lowest it will go.

Success

... at making a fiberglass mold, that is.

I put on three coats of fiberglass and then popped off my MGB center console mold yesterday. I really like the results. It's too cold and wet today to start making the real center console replacement using this mold, but I think we'll be able to get it done before the weekend. The rest of the cockpit wiring is done, so once we get this finished, we'll be done with the car.

I can't believe I just wrote that. Done with the car? What do those words even mean?

The form still on the console. The second and third coats became successively easier to do as I started to get the hang of working with fiberglass. They also became successively cruder as I paid the price for not having carefully smoothed out the bubbles on earlier coats.

In retrospect, I wish I'd used bondo to fill in the holes on the existing console. Due to the Chicom Flu lockdown, I didn't go to the auto parts store to get some, so I used spackle instead. The spackle came off onto the mold. It didn't do any harm, I was able to scrape it off with a putty knife and the mold formed just the way I wanted.

The final product. Despite the second and third coats being rough, it's the first coat that matters and after I sanded it a bit, it was smooth. I could see me building more fiberglass things in the future.

Atomic Fiberglass Pork Chops

No, really.

After listing my library of self-discipline books yesterday, I went back and sampled a couple whose content I couldn't recall. Hidden there was a real gem, Atomic Habits. It turns out that the tips contained therein perfectly describe my own recent successes. It's a very simple recipe.

Pick a specific trigger, a specific, small action to take and describe it in terms of the reward you will obtain. I learn by writing. Wishing to strengthen my self-discipline, I decided to start my recent Stonewall Jacksonian effort by journaling with my morning coffee before doing anything else. It worked. I am now in the habit of doing that and it feels weird to even think about doing something else. Writing has also revealed all kinds of connections I hadn't seen before.

Yesterday, I decided to add a new habit. I'd knock off at 4 PM and then lay around, consuming moral nutrition. If 4 PM sounds a bit early, know that my day usually starts around 4:30 AM. Anyway, it worked well on the first day. Wife Kitteh and I, missing churching thanks to the Wuhan Flu, watched Bishop Robert Barron say daily Mass on YouTube.

Just as when I started the morning journaling, I was cranky and uncomfortable at first, but by the end, I was enjoying it. Subsequent days will be easier, I'm sure.

I also didn't fall back on the brewskis. Very nice.

Atomic Habits goes on to say that you can stack little habits into bigger ones, so long as the triggers and behaviors are simple and specific. For example, I could pray for five minutes after journaling. Journaling is the simple trigger and five minutes of prayer is the simple habit.

Instead, I think I'm going to let the 4 PM quitting time get settled in for a bit and then see if I can start a noontime prayer habit. If I can get those three habits going, I will remain focused on my real goal of serving God all day.

It might even cut down on my nasty snarking.

Aside: I am so grateful for those who wrote books, trying to share what they knew with the rest of us. Without them, I'd have to figure all of this out on my own. What an act of kindness it was, even from the authors whose books didn't click with me! God bless them all.

So other than learning the theory behind the habit practice, I applied the first coat of fiberglass to my center console. Fiberglass is tricky to work. It's sticky! First your hands get sticky. Then the things that stick to your hands get sticky. Then the things stuck to those. And so on until you're dragging around half the garage.

My first fiberglass thingy was always going to be crude.

I'll do a better job with the second coat today, I think.

Finally, last night, exploring the French roots of Cajun cooking, I made Julia's Sauteed Pork Chops from Jacques and Julia. They were awesome. Julia's rub is a surprising mix of spices you'd expect to see in a pumpkin pie, not on meat. Mace, allspice, cinnamon, nutmeg and so forth. Even wife kitteh, who dislikes anything gravyish, loved them.

Good gravy! These were delish!

Wuhan Flu Panic Antidote

Check out the treatment news here. You're unlikely to get it from the mouth-breathers on networks like NBC who are doing their best to induce panic. We watched NBC News for the first time in forever the other night and I swear I knew less when it was over.

Old Men Lack Stamina

... at least that's what I'm telling myself.

This purpose of this whole exercise, the one where I'm trying to take advantage of the Chicom Flu Quarantine, is to dramatically improve my self-discipline. I'm working to channel my inner Stonewall Jackson, as it were. Pushing myself to work on the MGB wiring is a means to this end, but the real goal is to become a better servant of Christ.

As I get older and through my time nursing first my father and then my mother to the end of life, I've realized that I'm running out of time to do something big. I've had some decent accomplishments in life and I know how long they take. I figure I've got time for one more. It needs to serve God. I lack discipline and that slows me down so here we are.

The lesson of the last few days is codified in Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, linked and reviewed below. The two addlepated intellectuals who, after writing the thing, had the courage to see it published anyway, tell us that as we grow tired throughout the day, our willpower declines. That's exactly what's happening to me. By 4 PM, I'm done. I might still be working, but my willpower is utterly gone. Pretty soon, a can has been popped and, on some days, we're off to the races.

Since I don't want to be doing that, the lesson here is to call it quits at 4 PM. I'm going to spend the time from 4 to 5 reading, praying, watching the daily Masses that several priests are posting on YouTube and otherwise laying around as an idle consumer of nourishing content.

Let's see how that works.

My Self-Discipline Book List

I have consumed a ton of audiobooks about self-discipline. Here's a quick list.

Winners

• No Excuses! A Brian Tracy book so that means it's excellent. It's read by the author which means you feel like a 3rd grader as you listen. I love that.
• Standing Like a Stone Wall. This is a biography of Stonewall Jackson. He's my inspiration for self-discipline. I have his photo up in my garage, next to one of Robert E. Lee. His whole life was a study in discipline.
• Atomic Habits. This is probably the best of the small-scale, practical books. It shows you how to first make use of the trigger-response-reward cycle by creating specific habits that occur under specific conditions. It then shows you how to stack habits to create much bigger ones by making the reward from one habit the trigger for another. For example, my new habit of coffee and journaling could trigger a follow-up habit of 5 minutes of prayer.
• Eat That Frog! Another Brian Tracy book. This one teaches you to do your hardest tasks first. It's great.
• Suffering Is Never for Nothing. This is inspirational. I've adopted one of her maxims already. "Do the next thing."
• Up from Slavery. This is the story of Booker T. Washington. Read it and you stop whining, guaranteed.

Flawed, Has Moments or Forgotten, Requiring Another Try

• Digital Minimalism. Hey, I forgot I had this one. I haven't heard it yet. I'll try it out today.
• The Power of Habit. This one is a scientific approach, describing how the brain forms habits. Breaking habits down into trigger-response-reward, it asserts that you need to keep the triggers and rewards the same, but learn a new response. Recognize your triggers and the reward you are trying to achieve and you can come up with a new route to get there. It's a bit too long, but has nuggets of wisdom.
• Make Your Bed. This is from a famous commencement address by Admiral McRaven. I think it's good, but overrated.
• Nathan Bedford Forrest: A Biography. Yes, I know all about the villainous parts of his life. Spare me your outrage. I also know of his redemption at the end of his life, something almost no one knows these days. All virtue posing aside, Forrest's life teaches one to find ways to win no matter the odds.
• The Fulfillment of All Desire. Another one I can't remember, but need to sample again.
• Better Than Good. Zig Ziglar is always a winner just for his voice and his stories. He's pure Mississippi corn, so don't say you weren't warned.
• The Power of Self-Confidence. Another Brian Tracy gem. This one might not belong on this list and probably repeats much of what was covered in the other two.
• Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength. This one brought me two epiphanies. The first was that willpower wanes as you grow tired. I observe this all the time, but I don't take steps to deal with it. The second was just how stupid credentialed people can be. Two eminently lettered researchers combine to fill a big book with gasps of wonder as they "discover" things that were common knowledge before the modern American university system lost its mind. They mumble a bit about their surprise at finding out what people like Stonewall Jackson and Booker T. Washington knew long ago, but it doesn't dawn on either of them that their whole industry is intellectually corrupt.

Meh

• Self-Discipline: How to Build Mental Toughness. It's a lot of yelling at you, demanding you do everything at once.
• Self-Discipline: Develop Daily Habits. It's got some good bits, but it's very poorly written.

---

Since you can't have a blog post without an image, so here are some orchids from my mom's garden. I'm sure she's looking down and smiling at them.

"Orchids, Mr. Bond."

Wives As Cranky Babies

Yesterday was devoted to wife kitteh. Happily, of course.

We drove around San Diego. We looked at the ocean and then we stopped by my parents' house. It still hasn't been sold because California probate laws require you to wait until the Second Coming to finish all of the trust paperwork after someone passes away.

As we drove, wife kitteh said, "I feel like a cranky baby."

"That's because you are being a cranky baby," I replied with a smile.

She laughed. "I'm going to be fussy until you drive me around for a while and then I'll take a nap."

And so we did. Love beats goals and daily objectives, you know. She didn't take a nap, but she felt a whole lot better after we had been out and about.

Before we went on our joy ride, I was able to paint my center console. Today, I'll coat it with wax and then a release agent. After that, I'll start making the fiberglass mold from it.

You can still see the indentations from the existing holes. I figure I'll smooth those out in the mold stage by sanding down the bumps. Spackle is an unforgiving medium, especially when you have to lay it on thick. I got tired of sanding and re-applying it, so once I got close, I gave up trying to make it perfectly smooth. We'll see if that was the right decision.

California Lockdown

Governor Gavin Newsome, his eyes firmly fixed on the White House, has put the state in total lockdown. A former mayor of San Francisco, where homeless drug addicts relieve themselves on the streets and, thanks to Gavin, the city hands them free needles as fast as it can, Gavin knows all about the time bomb upon which he sits.

In short, California progs with any sense at all, which isn't many, but certainly includes ambitious predators like Gavin, are terrified the Wuhan Flu will get into the homeless populations in LA and SF. If it does, I wouldn't be surprised to see them pulling more than a hundred dead bodies off the streets of Los Angeles every day.

And just how would you find them once they died? There would be decaying bodies all over the place. Hmm.

More importantly, how could a handsome, gay, progressive governor be anointed as the Perfect Leader by the DNC if he oversaw a reenactment of the Omega Man's end-of-the-world scenes? No, it's crucial for the safety of his political career, err, the people of California, that we totally lock down the state.

Babies And Happiness

This is for all of the young women who have fallen for the lies of modern feminism that have told you to focus on your career, that being a wife and a mother is a sellout. It's written from experience and motivated by love. I'll be a grandfather in a year or two and I can't wait. I've got my happiness and I wish you yours.

I know several women who are dear friends that manage to balance careers and family, but if you asked any of them, they'd tell you that they would instantly ditch their careers for their families. Love beats money for them, every time.

And now to my story.

---

Before our first child, my wife and I both worked. We had good jobs, plenty of disposable income and owned a house that we had renovated by hand. We traveled, ate well and could buy anything we wanted. At one point, I owned a DeLorean. We thought we knew what happiness was.

I drove one of these bad boys. What a great car!

When it came to understanding happiness, we were naive children.

The night we brought our first son home from the hospital, I lay on the downstairs couch with him on my chest so my wife could sleep. As is common with the first child, it had been a long labor and she was totally exhausted. For hours, I held him as he slept. He rested on my chest so long that I began to hurt from his weight on my rib cage.

I had thought I knew what love and happiness were before. I was so, so wrong. I had thought my purpose in life was to make money and have fun. The baby was going to be part of our lives, but not the center. We'd still travel and go out and live like we had been living.

That night, I finally understood what my purpose in life was. All I wanted to be from that moment to this was a husband and a father. There was no comparison to my past life, no frame of reference for it.

There's an old story about someone trying to explain sexual pleasure to a child.

"Is it like chocolates?" the child asks.

"Well, no," replies the adult.

"Then I won't want it."

That perfectly describes my epiphany about being a parent. It was a joy totally unlike anything else I had ever experienced. It took my life to another level, one I hadn't known existed.

I could go on and on about being dad and coaching teams. I could tell you about the quiet, solid, manly pride of providing for my family. I could tell you how my wife gave up a great career, one where she could have made mid-6-figures standing on her head, because she discovered that what fulfilled her was being a mother and a wife.

I could tell you those things, but like me before my first son, you wouldn't understand. You can't understand anymore than you could understand the awe you would feel to walk on the surface of Mars.

You'll do as you wish in your life and I have no problem with that. All people like me, older people who have lived several lives, want to do is open your eyes to the joys of a world that our modern culture tells you is "slavery." It isn't slavery at all.

Your man is designed to serve you through work. Your man is designed to protect you with his body. People talk about the "patriarchy" and howl about earnings and corporate positions. Those concerns are only important if money and power are what give life meaning.

I've had money and I've had power. I used them both to serve my wife and children.

Does that sound like some kind of oppressive, patriarchal power structure to you?

Maybe modern feminists are wrong. Maybe the world is built on love and family, not money and power. Maybe money and power exist to serve love, marriage and family.

Think about it.

Fiberglass Without Coffee

Note: Open replies to Tim and Ohioan can be found here if you want to get in one last round of the conversation.

---

Today, we work on fiberglass without coffee. Allow me to explain.

My primary strategic goal these days is to develop more self-discipline. Improvisation has always been a default behavior of mine. I don't like detail work and I typically make those up as I go along. I also have a tendency to give in to whatever strikes me at the moment. This leads to clutter, disorganization, an aggravated wife kitteh and more brewskis than I want to have.

When I've tried to tackle the symptoms in the past, it's always failed. It's taken me years to figure out that the clutter, the lack of detailed plans and the beer were not the problem, self-discipline was the problem. I started a program to strengthen that about three weeks ago and it's shown great results. For example, my car hasn't looked like a trash heap since I started.

Driven by the emotions of the moment, I like to fall back into the loving arms of caffeine when I hit the doldrums. Only this morning, I realized that crutch was itself a submission to my whims. Today, I made a totally unnecessary second cup of coffee, but I'm now going to throw it out. Too many drugs make for a bad trip, man.

So with the chemistry out of the way, here are the Chinaman's Cough Quarantine plans for today.

1. I need to create a form out of my patched center console from the MGB. That means I will sand it, spray it with release solutions and then make a fiberglass mold of it. That fiberglass mold is then used as the form for the real fiberglass console.
2. I love Cajun cooking. The Cajuns were French Canadians that the British forced to move to Louisiana after the French and Indian War. Their food has strong French influences, so I'm starting to experiment with French cooking. We're out of leftovers, so I'm going to make something vaguely French tonight. A menu and cooking plan are required.
3. I've been reading Brian Tracy's No Excuses! It's quite good. He recommends investing 3% of your gross into personal development. How would I do that? Some initial pondering should be done.
4. One of my goals outside of work is to explore lapsed-Catholic evangelization, particularly with regards to young adults and marriage. The first step of any sales effort is to understand the market. I recently finished the book I was reading, so it's time to pull some new threads. What should they be?

There. That's enough for today, methinks. Feel free to post your thoughts and goals in the comments. I'll update my progress at the end of the day.

All that sweet, delicious coffee must go down the drain. Sad!

I've Gone About As Fer As I Can Go

Everything's up to date in Kansas City
They gone about as fer as they can go
They went an' built a skyscraper seven stories high
About as high as a buildin' orta grow.

I love quoting that song from Oklahoma because the second line is appropriate for so many things.

Note: For the last several years, I've done only one post a day, but this is my second for the day. If you want to see the lead-in post, which is really a gem, you can find it here.

Well, I didn't finish the cockpit wiring, but I went as far as I could before a lack of parts stopped me. The quarantine meant I had to order the necessaries instead of driving around and shopping for them, but in the long run, it won't slow things down all that much. I'll leave you in suspense for tomorrow's goals, which I already have in mind. Instead, here's some pictorial progress from today.

I didn't have the right size putty knife to finish prepping my center console as a template, so I made one out of some sheet metal I had laying around.

This is what the center console looked like after yesterday's first coat. The template needs to be without holes, so I glued some sheet metal to the back and filled in the holes with spackle.

Here it is after today's coat of spackle. Good enough.

I added a piece to the back of my cardboard dash mock up to reflect the metal brace that is in the car, complete with the holes through which I will feed my harness.

I also added the access hole at the bottom for the the center console. This is where I will feed all wires going to that section of my cockpit controls.

Finally, here is the cockpit wiring Rubicon. Consider it crossed.

I tore out all of my cockpit wires and pulled them back into the engine compartment. As I started to build the connectors I needed, I discovered that I lacked the necessary Molex sockets and plugs. I ordered them through Newark because, thanks to Chop Fluey, I can't go to my local electronics parts supply store and shop for them. Not sure if they will be here on Friday or Monday.

I also bought some wire I needed from British Wiring. It's Red/Green, 14 strand, old boy. Just the thing to give the troops.

Tune in tomorrow to see what's next in our Kung Flu progress.

What Are You Going To Do With Your Time In Lockdown?

First, I think this is going to be over sooner rather than later. I had a dear friend who was a researcher at a Big Pharma company. Seeing how they worked and gaining an understanding of that business, I have total confidence in their ability to find, not just a vaccine, but a treatment and possibly a cure.

There are mountain ranges of money to be made here and you can bet that they are all racing to solve this puzzle. Anyone who wants to smash big pharma is an idiot. All of those profit-hating progs make profits in their own lives because someone pays them to do something. Hatred breeds ignorance.

In the past two days, I've read about four candidate protocols for dealing with Chinese Coronavirus. I know enough organic chem to make my way through the documents and they increase my optimism. At the bottom of this post are some links, in case you want to check them out.

Good friend and regular commenter Ohioan at Heart is a real, live chemist as is his wife. The papers look promising to him, too. I'd be very interested in hearing what the invaluable Tim Eisele has to say on the topic as well.

Sorry for the digression there. On with the show.

So what we have now is a brief window of time in our lives in which we can't go play outside with the other children. We have an opportunity to do and learn those things we've never done or learned. When it's over next week, two weeks from now or whenever, what will you have done with your time?

Here are some suggestions.

• Develop written goals. There is nothing better for being productive in your life than goals and concrete plans. I re-did mine a few days ago and I now feel much more confident that I'm using my time wisely.
  
• Learn a new skill or set of skills. You've got ingredients in your pantry, improve your cooking. You've got the Internet, learn a language. Journal every day and work on your writing. You have all of the knowledge of Mankind at your fingertips. Go grab some of it!
  
• Create a budget. Anyone who was on the Dave Ramsey plan before the Wuhan Flu pandemic struck is now in decent shape. Baby step 3 is to have 3-6 months of expenses in the bank. You're locked inside, so sit down with your significant other and work out a budget. When this all blows over, you'll be ready to make sure you don't get financially whacked again.

Me, I've got my goals written already. Each day, I journal in the morning as a part of my recent self-discipline kick. In that time, I lay out what will define success for that day. Today, I'm going to be insanely ambitious.

By the end of today, I will have completed my MGB's cockpit wiring harness. I don't mean the design, I don't mean a mock up, I mean the real thing with connectors and wrapping. I'll have to wait to install it as my center console will take a few days to build out of fiberglass and I've got parts arriving on Friday, but I will have completed the wiring harness.

I've decided I'm going to journal my daily progress here. Each morning, I'll post my goal(s) for the day and how they fit into my strategic goals. At the end of the day, I'll append the post with photos of my progress.

Today, I'll show my progress in a separate post because this one is already a bit long.

There. How about you? What are you going to do with this time bonanza?

Make use of this time.

Links to possible Kung Flu cures

https://www.zmescience.com/science/first-antiviral-drug-coronavirus-0423/

https://kfor.com/health/coronavirus/drug-used-to-originally-fight-malaria-showing-promise-in-treating-coronavirus-oklahoma-medical-research-foundation-says/

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/coronavirus-australia-queensland-researchers-find-cure-want-drug-trial/news-story/93e7656da0cff4fc4d2c5e51706accb5

https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/e/2PACX-1vTi-g18ftNZUMRAj2SwRPodtscFio7bJ7GdNgbJAGbdfF67WuRJB3ZsidgpidB2eocFHAVjIL-7deJ7/pub

Working Without Lists

My mojo is gone, probably for the rest of the day.

I did some work on the central console of my MGB, getting it ready to act as a template for a fiberglass version. I've also been working through some self-discipline exercises over the last two weeks that have made a real difference, but they also drag you down. Habit change can be exhausting.

If I was still working, I'd have a cup of coffee right about now so I'd be able to be productive the rest of the day. I'm not working, so I won't. I discovered that afternoon coffee led to evening anxiety from caffeine letdown which led to more beer.

Instead, I think I'll sloth about. I'll crank up my Kindleator and see what books I've got in it that will interest me.

How about you? How do you deal with a severe case of listlessness?

I considered doing something, but thought the better of it.

Addendum: And God so loved the world that He gave us naps.

Use Your Listening Ears

... when reading about how the experts do things.

Or, to use my favorite Brian Tracy quote, best said in Brian's somewhat childish voice:

If you want to learn how to do something, find someone who knows how to do it. Ask them how it's done. Then do that.

A long time ago, I checked out some hot rod websites to see how they designed and built custom electrical harnesses for their cars. Because the space behind the dash is so cramped, they recommended building a mock up of the dash out of cardboard. I thought I was close to finished with my harness, so I didn't do what the experts suggested.

My cockpit harness turned out to be a disaster.

Yesterday, in less than 90 minutes, I made a 1-1 scale model of the dash. I'm now going to build a tight, clean harness with that as my template.

Sigh.

Marx Vs. Jesus

One of the proudest moments of my life, one that gives me deep pleasure whenever I remember it, was when I took my dad sailing a few months before he died. After he died, my mom told me many times that he was walking on air for weeks afterwards.

My father desperately wanted to go sailing again. He loved to sail in a dinghy the family had owned since the early 1960s. It was a Twinkle 12, a wooden boat originally designed in 1912 that required a massive ladder to install the mast. It was preposterously out of date and a huge pain to set up for sailing. Once in the water, though, it was lovely.

Ours had its mast closer to amidships and we had a jib as well. The seats went across the hull, not down the sides, but sailing it was a lot like what you see here.

We tried four times to go sailing, failing for various reasons each of the first three. My dad turned 90 during this time and was of no use whatsoever in rigging or sailing the boat, but he wouldn't stop asking me to take him sailing.

Each time we went took a day. Their house was far from the boat launches in San Diego Bay and Mission Bay and getting everything into his van was, as typical with my dad, terribly complicated, but utterly thorough. The first time we went, the launching area on San Diego Bay was jam packed and we had to launch far from the dock. I put the boat in and then swam to the dock, towing the boat behind me.

The pier was encrusted with mussels and I ripped my legs to shreds hoisting myself out of the water. I had to do it alone as it was all my dad could do to walk to the dock and stand there. My legs were covered in blood. I didn't mind. In fact, I thought it was hilarious. That trip failed because my dad didn't remember how the mast worked and had failed to tie a knot in the end of the line that hoisted the sail. It slid right out of the mast and couldn't be re-rigged with the boat in the water.

The other two failures were similar.

He was 90 when we finally succeeded, launching in Mission Bay and sailing around a bit there. Well, we sailed and rowed because the bay's wind was so spotty. Actually, I sailed and rowed. He was too weak to lift himself onto the seat in the middle, so he sat in the bottom of the boat, getting soaked from the water that leaked through the wooden hull.

He loved it. He practically cried with joy. I'm tearing up now, just thinking of the love we shared that day.

I write all this as an introduction to one of Joe Biden's new Coronavirus advisors, Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, professor of Health Care Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Old Zeke has written extensively in the past about the value of dying at the age of 75 and how living past that point is not worth it. The article linked there points out the obvious - Joe himself is over 75, but there's a much deeper question in it in a quote from an article Zeke wrote for The Atlantic. Dig this.

But here is a simple truth that many of us seem to resist: living too long is also a loss. It renders many of us, if not disabled, then faltering and declining, a state that may not be worse than death but is nonetheless deprived. It robs us of our creativity and ability to contribute to work, society, the world. It transforms how people experience us, relate to us, and, most important, remember us. We are no longer remembered as vibrant and engaged but as feeble, ineffectual, even pathetic.

What is life? What is reality? Is it, as the Materialists claim, only physical matter? What is the meaning of life? Is it, as the Democrats claim, all about money and power? The social justice struggles beloved of the left are couched in terms of money and power. It's all about who earns what and who is a victim of whom.

Or is life spiritual as well as material? Was Jesus right, is it all about love? My father fit all of the adjectives in Zeke's paragraph and yet, that was his value to me. Without his frailty, there was no need for my strength. If he had been hale and hearty, my gift of love would have meant far less. In fact, in his hale and hearty days, my dad would have dominated the trips and the experiences would have been barely endurable.

Without weakness, without suffering, without need, there is no love because love is unnecessary. Yes, the national debt would be much lower and our unfunded pension obligations probably wiped out if we slaughtered everyone over 75. The Democrats' plans for providing everything for everyone for free might even work under those conditions.

Are we simply tiny cogs in the economy to be discarded when we wear out?

Is that what life is all about?

What Is It With This Panic Hoarding?

It's the flu. Or maybe a bad chest cold. It's not the zombie apocalypse. Even in the worst-affected places, trucks are still moving down the highways, bringing supplies to the stores. Still, here we are, fighting with each other over toilet paper.

Toilet paper? What is this fascination with toilet paper? Before the virus panic hit, I just happened to buy a case of it at Costco. Even if my experimental cooking leads to prolonged cases of dysentery, that case will last us two months, easy.

Why toilet paper?

And how about bottled water? Is water not going to come out of the tap any more? Here in San Diego, our water tastes dreadful, but we can survive on it.

Yesterday, I found myself at that metrosexual, hipster, grocery store, Whole Foods, aka Whole Paycheck. I was looking for harissa, which is a North African sauce used in some French and African dishes I want to try. It's weird enough that I braved the land of Priuses, Volts and scrawny, tatted, man-bunned androgynes because I knew I wouldn't be able to find it anywhere else.

I discovered that even among the fully woke elites, shelves had been stripped bare.

ZOMG! They're all out of organic, sustainable, non-GMO, Himalayan mung beans!

A week from now, shopping will be a breeze because all of the hoarders will have sated their panic-fueled hunger for ... toilet paper and beans?!?

What's Good For Lesbians

... isn't necessarily good for normal women because their goals are very different.

From my Lesbian Empowerment post, there's this.

The message that American culture is giving young men through the multi-billion dollar professional advertising and marketing industry is that you are useless. Women can compete with you and beat you all the time...

Our sons have plenty of friends who have gotten the message. They've got porn, weed and video games, plus jobs that keep them barely on this side of homelessness. Like guys care. We can live in total squalor as long as we have (virtual) accomplishment and sex. We've got that and, frankly, it, particularly the porn, is better than you. Way better. As in, so much better that it's like freaking heroin compared to your Zima better.

If you or your daughters want to get married, you may want to look into this kind of thing.

From the recent Marxist Love post, there's this.

Even a woman's body is a commodity (to the cultural Marxists). Everything is a commodity. There is no room for either agape or eros in this, it's all about human ants toiling for the production of stuff under the guidance of wise overseers.

But that's not life, is it? Happiness is not connected to stuff. Once you can provide for yourself and your family and you've got a little left over to visit Dollywood and ride the roller coasters, you're just as happy as Bill Gates.

Materialism isn't love, either, is it? How many men go to work on road crews and have their paychecks deposited in joint accounts so they can oppress their wives and children? Their families aren't commodities, they are the loved ones he serves by giving his life to them. He would get more pleasure if he would smoke weed, watch porn and play video games, but instead he goes to work every day and gives most of his income to others.

What does a normal woman want? Do they want the corner office and a glass-ceiling-smashing CEO position? Or do they want a husband and a family? From the unwed and/or childless young women I know, it's the latter. All of them work and all of them could easily find paths to corporate glory and riches from where they are, but they constantly pine for a family.

They want love. They want the comfort and protection that comes from having a capable, devoted and, in most cases considering my social circles, Catholic husband. They want to be feel emotionally and physically safe while they raise their children. If you gave them a choice between that and a 6-figure salary plus a fancy title over a 35-year career, they'd instantly choose the husband and kids.

Does a culture pursue the same things when women want careers vs. when women want husbands and families? Does a culture which prioritizes the desires of normal women put everything in Marxist, materialist terms? Is it all about pay and empowerment, or is it all about love and devotion? They aren't the same, you know. Pursuit of one leads away from the other.

First off, normal women want husbands who have money, power and competence. They have since time immemorial. Mountains of studies have shown they want a man who earns more than they do and is taller than they are.

If women earn as much or more than men, where are you going to find these husbands? If women want love and family, then doesn't society serve them best when it produces as large a pool of successful, confident men as possible? After all, if there's only a few good men, the odds of any particular woman landing and keeping one are pretty small.

Just how do you plan on landing and keeping the trophy husband, anyway?

If you've saturated the Internet with porn, how are you going to motivate him to pursue you and take care of you once you've connected? Why would he pop the question if his life is Marxist, too, and all he cares about is money and power?

On the other hand, if you're a lesbian, what do you care how big the pool of Mr. Rights is? In fact, you want it small, so you have less competition as you chase the corporate prizes.

What does it matter to you if the guys are all locked in their rooms with laptops and hundreds of thousands of porn videos? For you, it's better to have that accepted as it pushes the boundaries of decent behavior farther away from your own. Who is going to judge your actions when it's perfectly OK to for guys watch rape fantasies or dress like 1890s saloon-hall girls and read to toddlers in public libraries?

From my Epstein Library Empire post, there's this.

One of the reasons the Romans liked a big empire was that it pushed the borders, where lived dangerous barbarians, far, far away from them. The larger the Empire, the safer you were, no matter where you were. I'd like to suggest that Jeffrey Epstein, children in drag and trannies in the library are all part of the modern-day American cultural Empire. That is, acceptance of their behavior expands the empire by normalizing ever more degeneracy.

Remember, your behavior might be degenerate under some definition, but the farther out the borders go, the less degenerate you look.

I would argue that modern-day American culture is serving the interests of lesbians, not normal women.

Feel free to prove me wrong.

Here's a recent ad from Nissan, notable for being one of the most disliked videos in YouTube history. It's all grrrl power and, in my parlance, pro-lesbian culture. If I were a young man and had these kinds of chicks around me, I'd smile and head back to my laptop. After all, I've got it really good with my virtual harem and they don't make me feel like an oppressive, hateful monster. Live it up, real ladies! Like I care.

Odds And Ends, Coronavirus, Election And Money Edition

Some random thoughts for today.

Sickness

• As I understand it, the average age of Corona death in China is 80. In Italy, it's 82. Bad chest colds whack the elderly, particularly when they are already weakened by something else. How is this not just a bad chest cold?
• I may have it. I have a chest cold right now. It's not getting worse, it's just sitting there. Meh.
• I've decided to skip the gym until this blows over. Despite my chest cold, I could easily do my normal workout routine. I've been at this for a few months and I was seeing really good results. Curse you, Coronavirus! I want to lift!
• I'd like to see a city-wide Coronavirus test performed somewhere. I wouldn't be surprised to see the infection rate be about 5x what we think it is. If it's just a bad cold, most people won't even know they have it.
• This is going to accelerate the transition of Europe into Eurabia. Ethnic Europeans are old while the Muslims are young. Of the couple hundred dead in Italy, what's the bet that 95% of them were ethnic Italians?
• If you want to keep your country, try having babies.
• Japan must have panicked when they saw the morbidity stats. Talk about a country of old people! It's a tribute to Japanese efficiency that they haven't had thousands of deaths.
• Dig the deaths in Seattle. Almost all of them came from the same nursing home.
• I hope frequent commenter ligneus stays safe. I've been thinking of him. Love you, man. If you're reading this, know that I'm praying for you.

Political Sickness

• When will the racism foot soldiers wake up? Kamala Harris accused Joe Biden of racism on a debate stage, now she wants him to be president. Right. Like that wasn't empty of meaning. When do the rank and file realize that it's always been empty of meaning?
• Joe Biden has clearly lost it. He's getting worse every day. I watched this happen to my dad. The tipoffs to me are the emotional outbursts and fantasies. Near the end, my dad summoned me to his house to tell me how to manage their trust once they passed. He had done this in great detail before, when he was still all there. This time was different. He had angry outbursts and his stories melted together. His recollection of the past was a mess. That's where Joe Biden is now.
• No one in his entourage has love or compassion for Joe. I can't tell if his wife is part of the vulture cabal or if she's trapped and can't get out. She's either weak or evil. If she was strong and loved her man, she'd tell the world what was happening and torpedo his campaign for his own good.
• Watching the Democrats push this poor old man around is sickening. They're all sitting behind him, looking to cash in on the power if he wins. I wouldn't be surprised if the party replaced him after the convention in a "compassionate" move due to "health concerns." Meanwhile, Buttigieg, Harris, Klobuchar, Booker and the rest have their utensils out and bibs on, ready to devour the spoils.
• I agree with Tucker, Sanders is a total loser. He didn't crush Hillary with her email crimes when he had the chance and he refuses to go after Biden's cognitive decline. Video below.

Sickness and Money

• We got out of the market around the top, maybe after one day's Coronaviral decline. I'm wondering when to get back into stocks.
• If I was smart, I'd set a number and go all in when the market fell to that point and treat it as the normal SP500 buy and hold. That is, put in your money and then walk away for a few years.
• Once we realize that this pandemic is just a bad cold, the market will skyrocket and the opportunity for a huge gain will be lost.
• The old adages about not worrying if you got in at the exact bottom or got out at the exact top are super valid here. Set a number and go with it. This isn't the Omega Man scenario. You can see that now because the early virus adopters aren't getting wiped out. The virus hits, kills a few people and then peters out.

There. Those are the preposterous thoughts rattling around in my empty head these days. Take care, all. I hope you all stay healthy.

Bonus Tidbit

Dig this.

The Sacramento County Department of Public Health announced Monday it has moved past trying to contain the virus and is now hoping to mitigate its impact as new cases are reported. Placer and Yolo counties also announced they are shifting strategies in stopping the spread of COVID-19.

The most at-risk populations are the elderly and people with underlying health issues, including lung, heart and weakened immune systems.

The effort is now focused on protecting the at-risk population while encouraging healthy residents to follow simple protocols to self-quarantine as you would with any other flu or common cold, according to Dr. Peter Beilenson, director of the Department of Health Services for Sacramento County.

When government officials in the capitols of big states start treating this like cold and flu season, the panic is probably near its peak.

Who knows, I might be able to go back to the gym next Monday. By then, my Coronavirus ought to have cleared up, too.