№ 851: The Skys Are Limited

The Big Park (Paywall)

An economy in lockdown requires far fewer planes and ships, forcing owners to figure out where to store them

Nowhere is the challenge more acute than in aviation. Reeling from travel bans, many airlines have grounded their entire fleets, while most others have cancelled the majority of flights. Collectively, they have dropped tens of millions of seats from their schedules every week . . .

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(with apologies to Lionel Bart) 

  

BLUE SKIES FROWNING (May 6) — 

Who will buy my seven-three-sevens?

Who will save the air industry?

All these planes and nobody needs them

We can't give them away for free

With all the airlines grounded

'cuz everything's locked down,

Airbus and Boeing profits pounded,

their ships have run aground

No one needs a 320neo

then there's Boeing's cat-as-tro-phe

Airlines die when no one will fly them

There's nothing we can do,

plane makers' Waterloo,

because there's no one who will fly

№ 850: Donnie's Priorities

Trump gives up on virus fight to focus on economic recovery – and re-election
Donald Trump is effectively abandoning a public health strategy for the coronavirus pandemic and showing “clear willingness to trade lives for the Dow Jones”, critics say.

A leaked internal White House report predicts the daily death toll from the virus will reach about 3,000 on 1 June . . .

. . . Trump has scrapped daily coronavirus taskforce briefings and marginalized his medical experts in favour of economic officials flooding the airwaves to urge states to reopen for business – even amid rising infection rates.

“They’ve decided in a very utilitarian kind of way that the political damage from a collapsed economy is greater than the political damage from losing as many as 90,000 more Americans just in June,” said Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist. “We’re witnessing the full-scale application of a kind of grisly realpolitik that is a clear willingness to trade lives for the Dow Jones.”

HERE AND NOW (May 5) —

Gotta reopen America!
NOW!

Everyone get back to WORK!

Gotta revive my GREAT economy!

I don't care what Birx and Fauci say.  

(What do “doctors” know anyway? 
Compared to my gut, they're amateurs.
I only need doctors when I fake bone spurs.)

Gotta show everyone who the real boss is.

Say all these deaths are acceptable losses.
I don't care who dies or gets infected,

so long as I get re-elected.

Gotta figure out how to maneuver,

so no one can say, “Trump . . . WHAT! A! LOSER!”

№ 599: Making America Dust Again

Massive Bethlehem Steel headquarters in Pennsylvania demolished in seconds: ‘It breaks my heart’ (Paywall)

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
MAY 19, 2019
BETHLEHEM, PA.

Sixteen thousand tons of Bethlehem Steel collapsed in a matter of seconds Sunday as a demolition crew imploded Martin Tower, the defunct steel maker's former world headquarters.

Crowds gathered to watch the demolition of the area's tallest building, a 21-story monolith that opened at the height of Bethlehem Steel's power and profitability but had stood vacant for a dozen years after America's second-largest steel maker went out of business.

The implosion, which took 16 seconds, created a thick plume of dust that lingered for several minutes.

Tyler Kent, whose father worked at Bethlehem Steel for 46 years and raised 11 children, said his “heart stopped” as he watched the building fall. His father and other relatives took pride in working at the industrial behemoth that armed the U.S. military and helped shape skylines across the country.

“To see it come down brought a tear to my eye. I didn't think it was going to affect me emotionally like it did, but I just can't imagine it's gone. It's so sad,” said Kent, who could see the tower from his house.

RUSTVILLE, May 20

(with a nod to T. S. Eliot)

The jobs were long gone
now the headquarters too
is reduced to a pile of rubble.
Steel, glass, concrete
are no more substantial
than an Internet bubble.

Follow men who are hollow men,
that is the way the world has to end
with BOTH a bang and a whimper.
A sad simple fact made sadder and simpler.

№ 427: A Doubters' (S)Creed

Cut through
the hullabaloo!
Don't believe anything
not demonstrably true.
That includes,
not incidentally,
religion and theories
on the economy.
Having said that,
I'm willing own
there is one truth
that's sublime:
two plus two
is ALWAYS four!
I think.
Most of the time.

№ 414: Ye Gods!

What if Adam hadn't met Eve?

Would human beings ever have been conceived?

What if the first biological cell

thought, “I. DO. NOT. THINK. SO! 

This CAN NOT end well!”?

What if your parents had had different partners?

You would not be you. 

And that's just for starters.

What if battles lost had been won?

What if there'd never been an Atilla the Hun?

What if Matthew-Mark-Luke-John were lyin'?

Or merely tryin' to write Life Of Brian?

Honestly, do you not think it odd —

the notion that each clan or tribe has a god?

Would Ricardo endorse competing theonomy*

to drive down god prices and grow the economy?

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____________

*If you're wondering what theonomy is,

Mike Pence's presidency will answer that quiz