Maybe we did start the fire?

 WOW, it has been awhile. A couple of things, the wife got COVID-19, so has several of my friends. So far I have been lucky, but I seriously doubt that will last. We are in the middle of the third spike, so I am sure my luck will be running out in short order.

We are on the brink of the next election, early voting has started, although I have not gotten out to vote yet, I plan to hopefully do so this weekend. I really do not have any predictions this year for how things will go this year, other than I suspect that Joe Biden will win. I would like to point out that this election is not about Hunter Biden or even Joe Biden. This election is a referendum on President Trump's first term. I am aware that Joe Biden is not a perfect candidate, he is old and not terribly exciting, however President Trump has been a terrible president. Certainly if you are a conservative you can claim he has had a couple of wins, such as the tax cuts and getting conservative judges confirmed. But does that counter balance his failures? Iran and North Korea are doing whatever the fuck they want, Russia has gotten everything they wanted, damaged relations with Ukraine, eased sanctions, withdrawal from START, we have lost a couple of what should have been easy votes in the U.N., and we were publicly laughed at by our allies when we suggested Russia be allowed to re-enter the G7. That is just foreign affairs, his domestic policy has been even worse. If this election is between Mr. Rogers and Mary Trump's crazy uncle, Mr. Rogers is looking really good.

I have been in a couple of discussions recently about late stage capitalism and what that really means and if it is good or bad. You can call me a socialist, first, it probably does not mean what you think it means and second, I don't care. Having said that, my view of capitalism is fairly simple. The definition of capitalism is in its most basic form is the acquisition of material wealth. The purest form of capitalism is organized crime, acquisition of material wealth at any cost. Late stage capitalism is that in between stage, where we are not quite to making it legal to sell heroine to school children, but we are at the point where human life is secondary to the economy. President Trump made the conscience decision to ignore the COVID-19 pandemic to preserve the stock market and he has refused to support lock down, or even the most basic measures that other countries successfully implemented, all in the name of the economy. Never mind that as of this writing, a quarter of a million people are dead, with a thousand more dying everyday. Mind you these people did not die for god and country, these people died for the economy and they did not do so willingly. Think about that for a little while.