“You cannot tweet a recipe for Bleach Soufflé!” the hair yelled. He was squatting over the iPad, reading the morning news.
“Too French? Too fancy?” the hat asked, tapping away on Donald’s iPhone, giggling to himself.
“What if someone makes it?!?” the hair asked.
“GAH! STOP!” the hair screamed, reading the new tweet.
“NEVER!” the hat declared, hunched over the phone like a precious egg clutch.
“Biden fell asleep during Hillary’s endorsement,” the hair said quickly. “Write about that!”
“Too easy,” the hat said dismissively.
The hair began scrolling through his newsfeed. “Someone made an AI meme generator! How about that? That’s funny!” He lifted the iPad to show the hat.
Image courtesy of Heroic Mulatto Industries
“Whatevs,” the hat said. “I’m funnier than some gay robot that has gay sex with other gay robots who are also gay for gay illegal immigrants.”
“What are you even talking about?” the hair asked.
“Read the subtext, shit-for-brains,” the hat said, still working the keyboard of the phone. “Every meme boils down to gay robot sex. Everyone knows this.”
“What?”
With a cackle, the hat sent another tweet:
“Bake until done?” the hair asked. “What kind of fakakte cooking instruction is that? And it’s ‘too gamey’: T-O-O.”
“Merely added for the idiots who would complain if I didn’t,” the hair said haughtily. “Any cook that didn’t already know that shouldn’t even be attempting a souffle. Let him stick to Lysol Jello Shots or TidePods en Croute.”
“No more recipes!” the hair begged.
“I’m doing a whole book of them,” the hat said. “And I might start talking in a British accent.”
“What about Karen memes?” the hair asked. “You love Karen memes!”
“Look, de Blasio with a Karen haircut,” the hair said. “Surely you want to retweet that, right?”
“Purel soft tacos,” the hat mused, completely ignoring him.
“I dated a Karen once,” Donald said. The hat and the hair were both startled.
“I thought you were asleep, Donald,” his hair said.
“I dated a Karen once,” Donald said again, louder, squinting at the hair and the hat to be quiet. “At Wharton. 1967. Great year to be in college. I loved it, just loved it. Most of the girls had stopped wearing bras. And women wore dresses or skirts back then. I love a woman in a dress. That first day of spring when they shave their legs and put on dresses. Sundresses.”
The hat peered over the edge of the desk. “He has a full-on erection,” he observed.
“Thin dresses and girls backlit by the sun,” Donald continued as he slowly pushed the hat to the edge of the desk and then off.
“Her name was Karen, did I tell you that already? Blonde and skinny. Medium tits. Nice ass. Women were soft back then, not fat, just soft. They looked like women, not boys with fake tits. I offered to buy her some tits, in one of my business classes, I offered to buy Karen a really nice set, said it would be an investment in her. She just laughed and stabbed a pencil into my leg,” Donald made a violent stabbing motion with his right hand. “You should have seen her rockin’ knobs jiggle. It was love at first sight.”
Donald closed his eyes and whispered, “Jiggle,” again.
“He’s doing it!’ the hat said, upside-down on the floor and alarmed. “He’s touching himself!”
“Stop him!” the hair said. “We’ve got a teleconference with governors in ten minutes!”
“How am I supposed to stop him?” the hat asked, rocking back and forth to try and flip over.
“I don’t know!” the hair said. He tore himself off the iPad with a gruesome sucking sound and started to climb the Oval Office desk.
The social secretary knocked on the Oval Office door. “Mr. President?” she asked.
“She’s early!” the hat squeaked.
“Donald,” the hair said, between his grunts, “You have to stop!”
“Mr. President?” the social secretary asked, knocking louder.
“Donald!” the hat said.
“Mr. President?” she asked again. “Are you asleep? I’m going to come in.”
“Donald!” the hair said, throwing himself at the President’s clenched face, sticking and then doing his most unerotic wriggle. “You have to stop! Juicing the mushroom is why Hope left last time!”
“Hope!” Donald said, slapping both his hands on the desk. “Come in, my dear, come in.”
“Oh, Donald,” the hair said, gagging. “In your pants?”
“Now that’s what I call a Bleach Souffle!” the hat said, pausing after to let the canned laughter subside.
Too many to choose just one.
The HM shoutout is priceless, though.
Bravo, SF!
“Americanheit”
Perfect. Not 20 minutes ago somebody gave the temperature in Eurofag degrees, and I asked them what that was in American. I wish I had said Americanheit instead.
Fahrenheit. ’Muricans use Fahrenheit.
‘Cause they’re basically Krauts, doncha know . . .
She just laughed and stabbed a pencil into my leg
The good old days. When women knew how to deal with sexual harassment. None of this lawyering up bullshit.
Bravo!
And it’s ‘too gamey’: T-O-O.”
I noticed that too.
Beautiful, just beautiful. ??
Hope and chains
Hope is not a plan.
Chains, on the other hand…
Hope is a MILF. The chains are to keep her from getting away again.
Sundresses are the awesome.
And Two Scoops did get some Karen (NSFW)
I keep getting sent back to the age confirmation page.
Another find piece of modern American literature.
Yes, if you know where to look.
I seek what you did there.
Swiss will not be amused by you little searchins.
I’m letting this one slide.
I seent it
How can I find it if it doesn’t get lost first?
“That first day of spring when they shave their legs and put on dresses. Sundresses.”
That conjures some poignant memories there, Sug.
You bet. Stockholm 1981. Women came out into the parks and took off their tops to soak up Vitamin D. Wowsa!
The real Stockholm Syndrome
Wouldn’t it be great if there really was a tweeting hat? The media meltdown would be even more epic.
What I’m convinced of now is that the Hat is a gay robot.
And is doing the Donald’s tweets.
pausing after to let the canned laughter subside
Did not realize this was part of the Big Bang universe.
Note to HM:
it’s ‘you’re a teacher’: Y-O-U-‘-R-E.
It was literally generated by an AI.
Markov chains don’t care about proper spelling and shit.
I also will add that the generator passes the Turning test time and time again. It generated this with no user input:
Lol, it is at least coherent
And sometimes on point
Yes
https://imgflip.com/i/3yvp72
LOL
I got this one: https://i.imgflip.com/3yvuxy.jpg
Thought that was good enough to submit.
If only Trump properly capitalized and punctuated his tweets like that.
“Too easy,” the hat said dismissively.
The Trump campaign motto.
Same reaction for me. Way too coherent and correct to be Trump
“Purel soft tacos,” the
hairHat mused.At least I assume it s’posta be the Hat
Yes. My original sin strikes again.
There’s no such thing as an original sin.
Alt: Be creative, invent an original sin.
He does it intentionally to OWN THE GLIBS.
Thank you! I thought I had misread.
SF, I will admit I don’t really “get” the hat/hair schtick, but you are a fabulous writer.
The angel on one shoulder is Butthead and the demon on the other shoulder is Hank Hill.
(that wasn’t meant to be declaratory, there should’ve been an “IMO” somewhere in there, along with a sentence saying I don’t think that anybody truly “gets” H
H
IMO the devil on SF’s shoulder is Lovecraft’s ghost and the angel is the very first angel.
Kinda like this?
Yep.
*sips beer*
Fuck it. I’m gonna pour a drink, too. No work, muscle strain in my calf/achilles, bored. I got nothing to do but day drinking and guitar strumming.
Homer: How you can you love a box or a toy or graphics? You’re a grown man.
John Waters: It’s camp. The tragically ludicrous? The ludicrously tragic?
Homer: Oh, yeah. Like when a clown dies.
Schtick?
This is journalism. Exposing the truth about the ruling class.
I’ve always tried to imagine them to be as awful as they seem. Then I just let my natural inclinations for absurdity take over.
Too right.
Mea culpa, SF.
It’s OK, I was just confused myself.
What is there to ‘get’?
Boeing will cut 16,000 jobs after posting a massive loss
The first domino falls.
They were destined to cut those jobs. The year-long grounding of the 737 Max has seriously disrupted business operations. This current bs isn’t helping, but they were in trouble before. I have a little knowledge of the situation, and imo they were being kind and not doing the layoffs at Christmas 2019.
The weakest die first.
Tourism is dead for a couple of years.
So Airlines are dead for a couple of years.
So OEMs are dead for a couple of years.
Boeing is just a leading indicator here.
I’m bullish on tourism, actually. People are cooped up and I suspect that as soon as they are freed, they are going to go hog-wild. Look at China, as soon as they eased the lockdown, they started to flock to domestic tourist sites.
We can never be freed, people will die!
COMMENT
Relevant
I have no clue what’s going on.
So, now we need to recognize Amanda. Karen will call the cops when her neighbors step outside without her mask. But Amanda, will march down to the county courthouse and demand that people be imprisoned for jeopardizing the lives of the innocent by opening up a lemonade stand.
I’ve just thought of a new use for the Swastika. The Atlantic’s website Logo.
Sigh…. I’d say it’s not even worth giving people like this the time of day, but they seem to have the conch shell…
I hope that I am wrong. But I think air travel will be fucked for some time.
TSA is going to enjoy adding anal temperature probes to the screening process.
We’ll all get to enjoy that.
Well, I agree that the airlines will be hurting for a while. I do think the boom will start domestically, at first, and then as lock-downs ease-up, we might (might!) see a large amount of demand for international travel.
The recession will severely limit the budgets of may people. We will go back to stuffing kids into the backs of mini-vans and heading to cheap vacation spots.
The cost of flying around combined with the real risk with being trapped in a tube and breathing recycled air for several hours is going to cripple airlines catering to leisure flying.
Some of us never stopped. 🙂
I agree that cost will be a fact, but how people feel about the risk will all be dependent on how long it takes to find a treatment, if ever. If a vaccine is developed, those concerns will be moot.
We will go back to stuffing kids into the backs of mini-vans and heading to cheap vacation spots.
Isn’t that the story of how SP and OMWC met?
Yeah, we will be coming out of the lockdown into a recession, likely a deep one. Travel adn tourism will be screwed for that reason alone.
If a vaccine that’s worth anything ever shows up (to my knowledge, there has never been a good coronavirus vaccine), it will be awhile.
While I agree that having a treatment will calm people fears, that’s just more irrationality. This thing is not looking much more lethal than the flu, and for younger people its actually looking less lethal than the flu. Nobody who isn’t in a risk group should be changing their behavior at all.
Of course, in a recession, just about all industries recede. However, even in a recession, people will still travel for business, people will still get married and go on honeymoons, etc.. And again, I believe there is a lot of pent-up demand – which, irrational as it is, people might elect to spend what discretionary funds they have on travel just because of what they experienced during the lockdown prior.
I believe there is a lot of pent-up demand
Yup. For example, we were planning on going to the Indy 500 this year and swinging through to visit family on the way. Now, we’re likely to have a short visit to see family (and deliver a cat) in a couple weeks, a longer visit around 4th of July, and possibly coming back in town in August for the race.
Whether that all comes to fruition, idk. It is, however, a direct result of the governors’ pall.
The issue is even trying to plan out vacations now. At this point, it’ll matter on what’s open, and what you can do in places. I’ve got the funds saved, since I’ve already had two vacations cancelled on me this year already.
#metoo, but primarily domestic tourism I think. Casino stocks are actually doing pretty well because there’s a significant number of people who believe that the rebound is going to be strong. My guess is people will be eager to get out of the house but not wild about air travel and probably dealing with budget constraints that make weekend road trips or day trips more feasible than lengthy vacations. Also, a lot of state economies are getting torpedoed from the lack of revenues due to small business closures and safety net payouts, which I suspect will push a lot of the states that still don’t allow gambling to ease off on those restrictions in order to capture some of that money.
Currently the airlines are introducing mask-wearing requirements. The service in premium cabins has been reduced to almost nothing. The airport lounges are closed. I have little interest to fly anywhere.
Funnily enough, I was just asking the kids if we went on a road trip, where would they want to go.
I think (frugal) roadtripping will be in, camping and suchlike.
More to the point, in my search for a portable office trailer, I’ve come across some fairly good deals. Even if I DIDN’T want a portable office trailer (I don’t know that I do, really), I’d be tempted just so we could be self-sufficient and not depending on a hotel being around.
Boeing was already in the toilet because of the crash-o-matic. I still think it’s a smart move to buy them though; they’re not going anywhere. Give it 3-5 years and you’ll have made a killing (IMO).
kinnath’s retirement window — 4 to 7 years (at least it was).
kinnath’s employer’s recovery window — 3 to 5 years (best case).
At this point, kinnath hopes the inevitable RIFs come with a decent buyout package for retirees. Cause, the rest of my career is fucked.
Man that sucks. I hope for the best alignment for your finances and remaining work years.
The great recession took 6 to 8 years to clear out in our business.
I don’t think I am personally at risk for a RIF. But bonuses are gone for the foreseeable future and raises will be shit for at least a couple of years.
So I will collect a paycheck, do whatever shitty tasks they hand me to do, and then wait until full retirement kicks in.
R C’s retirement window – 2.5 years (at least it was).
R C’s employer’s recovery window – depends on the recession, but at least a year, probably more.
Depending on what my hospital does, I could easily see this thing costing me $75K net income this year. That does push back one’s retirement window.
bonuses are gone for the foreseeable future
Yup. I’m pretty sure they aren’t even going to pay the 2019 bonuses, which should have been paid a couple of weeks ago, but have been “postponed”. I think its highly unlikely they will be paid at all.
On one hand, I’m quite grateful for having a stable job where additional layoffs aren’t really being discussed.
On the other hand, I’ve been kicking ass and taking names this year, and likely won’t see the overdue promotion/raise/bonus at the end of year performance reviews. It’s not the end of the world, but it certainly disincentivizes sticking my head out and taking a risk on a big project.
Ours were paid the day just week or so before state-level lockdowns started. Last good news we had at work.
Can’t fucking type anymore. Bonus was paid the day after I hit the road for a big public event that got cancelled by state health officials. State lockdowns started the next week.
Same here, trshy.
Still coming to terms with my bonus vanishing. My main concern right now is that my current forced part-time status (0.8 FTE) will persist not for weeks, but for months. Even when Ducey, High Lord of the Deserts and the Mountains, Blessed be His Name, lifts the lockdown (and he rarely misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity), we aren’t coming back to status quo ante for months, if not years.
As I mentioned yesterday, I am thinking about moonlighting, but I am struggling to come up with something that allows me to work “top of license” for decent pay.
Lot of people seem to agree.
Boeing is up 10% today.
Give it 3-5 years and you’ll have made a killing (IMO).
Too soon?
“pausing after to let the canned laughter subside”
This adds a whole new, and quite creepy, dimension to the entire series.
The 4th wall has been breached before.
“I’m funnier than some gay robot that has gay sex with other gay robots who are also gay for gay illegal immigrants.”
Isn’t that Star Wars?
Well, shit. I guess so.
Tattoo and C-3PO
Boss, de plane full of illegal gay sex robots!
Beach Bleach Soufflé
Now Trump has gotten to the Spanish!
*facepalm*
The only thing spreading faster than the Flu Manchu is the stupid. Jeebus.
Ass Wednesday is on topic… somehow.
http://archive.li/VbWH3
These are wonderful.
I keep hoping the Midget and the Scarf Lady make appearances.
These are wonderful.
I keep hoping the Midget and the Scarf Lady make appearances.
Maybe one more appeal will do it!
BeetleJuice!
Bloomberg and Kamala Harris have both already made an appearance.
Something so horrific, only a European could have conceptualized it.
hawt
“Orwell? Huxley? Pikers. Hold my beer.”
And what better way to organize bubbles than by a social score?
Sigh….
Who invented Cottonwood trees?!?
I call your cottonwood and raise you sweet gum.
This. Little pointy maces that will carry 100 ft out of your mower are a joy.
cottonwood
Sweetgum
You misspelled ‘weeds’
Trump says the federal government will not extend its social distancing guidelines
30 (or maybe even 45) days too late, but still a ray of sunshine.
Reading how WA state came one vote away from freeing the Green River Killer (along with several other violent felons) while other jurisdictions are locking people up for swimming in the ocean or walking through a park is instructive of something… I just don’t know what. That Statism is a mental illness? That our institutions are hopelessly corrupt? That the rot in society runs so deep that it’s hopeless? All of the above?
I abhor the carceral state viscerally. The idea that people get put in cages for the trivial things they do makes my blood boil. However, the guy killed 70+ women and he was damn close to being let back out on the street. I don’t care if he’s 71 or in poor health. Extreme edge cases like that guy, I don’t know what you do with them, but you sure as shit don’t let them back out among new potential victims.
Extreme edge cases like that guy, I don’t know what you do with them,
You kill them, is what you do.
QFT
I abhor the carceral state viscerally.
This is something i’ve been thinking about. What is really more humane? Caning a guy 20 times or giving him 5 years in prison and making him a felon?
Caning is more humane, its cheaper, and it would be much more effective in reducing recidivism. It’s obvious that fatherlessness is one of the single most powerful root causes of criminality. Hell, when you control for rates of fatherlessness, the ethnic and poverty factors shrink to background noise. It’s not that poor kids commit more crime, or black kids commit more crime, its that poor black kids are fatherless at higher rates than poor white kids.
When a young punk goes to prison, he finds himself in an environment where the top dogs, the role models, the leaders are hardened violent criminals. The State basically sends criminals to advanced criminal finishing schools. You send an 18 year into prison for 3 years on his first adult assault charge, hes gonna emerge with 30 pounds of extra muscle, a network of criminal contacts, polished criminal skills, a knowledge of how to work the system, and of course now hes tagged with a record. He is, statistically speaking, doomed to being a lifelong criminal.
You take that same 18 year old, you strip him naked in the street and whip his raw with a cane, no one thinks hes tough, no one thinks hes hard, no one thinks hes anything but a crying bitch. He doesn’t make criminal contacts. He doesn’t get 3 years of tax funded weight training and time to think about more lucrative criminal endeavors. He gets 2 weeks of wincing in pain very time he sits down.
We’d be far far better off with corporal punishment for the vast majority of offenses.
SHUT THE FUCK UP SOCONTARD
Credible sources
Enforcing eight-month “structured lockdowns” could halve the economic destruction that would be wrought by Covid-19 if no social-distancing measures were imposed, according to researchers from Cambridge University and the Federal Reserve.
Reopening the economy has been a tension point in some countries, with economic damage being weighed against protecting public health and protests against lockdown measures being staged across the United States.
However, according to the study, published Wednesday by economists from Cambridge University and the U.S. Federal Reserve Board, the economic price of inaction when it comes to encouraging social distancing could be twice as high as that of a “structured lockdown.”
Using U.S. economic and population data, researchers combined macroeconomics with epidemiology to determine the economic consequences of lockdown policies. Analysts noted that their model could be applied to most developed economies.
They found that imposing no lockdown at all would be “extremely risky” for economic output, as the spread of the virus would hit workers in sectors that were vital to keep developed economies functional.
Without any social distancing, the core workforce would be hit hard — and the economy would shrink at a peak monthly rate of 30% as their industries came under pressure, the study projected.
——-
Researchers claimed that in order to protect the economy to the maximum, “core workers” — those in key industries such as health care, food and transportation — must be separated from the rest of the working population.
“What seems clear to us is that taking no action is unacceptable from a public health perspective, and extremely risky from an economic perspective,” the report’s authors said.
You want communism? This is how you get communism.
The Ministry of Plenty will decide your fate, Comrade.
These people need to be institutionalized.
No discussion at all about freedom of movement or association. No discussion at all about the moral implications of this abomination. No discussion at all about how Constitutionally offensive it is to put people on de facto house arrest with no due process. No discussion at all about the collateral damage to people’s mental health.
Nothing but evil utilitarian horseshit.
Almost like most “values” are there solely for political expediency. And most people believe stuff because they are supposed to, not because they really believe it. Because History is inevitable and all educated urbanites all believe in the same thing and agree with me personally on everything and will think so forever.
Of course, those sectors weren’t locked down anyway. The ‘Rona hit them the way it would with or without a lockdown, with possibly a very marginal delay in when some of those workers were exposed.
Just how the fuck do they propose to do that? Put one group or the other in camps, I suppose?
Do these people understand how stupid and evil they sound?
Les aristocrates à la lanterne!
Corsetti told CNBC there was “really no tradeoff between health and the economy.”
“One problem that is currently missing in the discussion is the ability to distinguish between essential sectors and non-core sectors, and this idea of thinking very carefully about the effect people may have by going around and infecting those essential workers — essential workers need to be protected and shielded,” he said.
I would like to pound this motherfucker flat, with a shovel.
no tradeoff between health and the economy
So if we had done nothing, the pandemic wouldn’t have hurt the economy at all?
currently missing in the discussion is the ability to distinguish between essential sectors and non-core sectors
Because there is no difference, dipshit. Trying to determine which is essential and non-essential is just failed central planning. Faster computers and Topper.Men. won’t make Cybersyn work any better.
These people need to be institutionalized.
Euphemism for “up against the wall?”
Nothing but evil utilitarian horseshit.
And nobody jumped over the table and knocked him right the fuck out, on the spot. That saddens me deeply.
So if we had done nothing, the pandemic wouldn’t have hurt the economy at all?
Doing nothing was not an option. LIVES WERE AT STAKE!
Clearly, he hates everyone’s grandma.
I’m 3 hours in to a two hour video meeting to present group projects. We are still going over the 3rd project out of 6.
Please don’t kill yourself https://youtu.be/ubAxMOlJ524
So fucked
https://www.wsj.com/articles/coronavirus-relief-often-pays-workers-more-than-work-11588066200
Trump could have vetoed the CARES Act, but he didn’t. Instead, he was among its biggest cheerleaders.
Why?
To play both sides of the Federalism argument I suppose.
One hand say I didnt shut your state down or close your business but for the General Welfare of citizens, I helped keep you afloat….
I dunno I need a beer
‘Cause he’s a 90’s Democrat.
Yep and a former real estate developer. Hes never been fiscally sound, ever. He borrows a billion, builds a gold plated monstrosity, and sells it for two.
In the back of his rat in a maze hyperactive mind, hes thinking how we can gold plate the stimulus and sell it to somebody for twice the face value.
Get a load of Tom Massie, here!
He’s a Get Things Done Statist.
Because his administration was pushing CARES?
True facts, brah.
My company had to do some layoffs. The management targeted people with chronic attendance problems who would have been fired in another month or two anyway. Since they were laid off and not fired, they are eligible for regular unemployment plus the COVID-related benefits. Making out like bandits.
Debt clean up? *outright prolonged laughter*
https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2020/04/29/the_debt_clean-up_that_awaits_us_490254.html
As if this mess will ever be close to cleaned up.
Serious question (that I’ve been wondering for a couple of years now):
Does it matter if it’s cleaned up?
“Saddling my children and grandchildren with debt” doesn’t seem to me to be extraspecially bad since…nothing ever happens with that debt. It doesn’t get called, doesn’t get paid, doesn’t…do anything. It just sits there accumulating zeroes and people go on getting their SS, disability, SNAP, tax refunds, pensions, unemployment, and…nothing happens.
What’s happening is that a car costs 30,000 dollars instead of 3,000 because of purposeful inflation due to monetary seigniorage.
How much is a wage proportionate to that $30,000 versus $3,000?
For instance, if I purchased gas in 1975 at 57c a gallon, today that is roughly $2.73, which is only a little higher than it was pre-Kung Flu.
Now, I would argue that most of that $30,000 is more likely the result of environmental and other regulations, the costs of union demands (e.g., GM is arguably more healthcare insurer than car maker), and mandated benchmarks than just printing money. (Notwithstanding the cash for clunkers program which took good used cars and good used car parts off the market.)
Which leads me to question how much of our printing money is due to overly burdensome regulations. Legislate it, then go into debt to subsidize it so it won’t collapse?
My questions regarding external causes of the printing of money can bloom from there.
My first job was McD’s back when Nixon was president. McD’s was running an ad that you could buy lunch at McD’s for one buck. Two burgers, a fry, and a small drink was 95 cents. The minimum wage was $1.65.
So for decades I would use my own McD’s test. How long did you have to work at McD’s to buy lunch at McD’s. The answer stayed between 35 minutes and 45 minutes for decades.
Eventually, burgers, small fries, and small drinks became “dollar” menu items (loss leaders), so I had to switch to the big mac meal as the yardstick.
But, it has been consistent for several decades that you have to work 40 to 50 minutes at the minimum wage to buy a big mac meal (there are location like airports and big cities where that is not true, but for everywhere I have lived it is true).
So wages and prices mostly stay in synch regardless of inflation (automation of course changes everything).
It’s a valid question, and I’m not sure anyone can answer it. No nation has ever had a debt this enormous while simultaneously having so much of the world’s economy dependent on it.
That is exactly what I was trying to say, thank you.
As someone said, you go broke slowly, and then suddenly. We are now in the “slowly” phase. The bigger the debt when “suddenly” arrives, the more catastrophic it will be. And it will likely, IMO, be sufficiently catastophic that the US of A as a unified nation state will not survive. You think the Commie Cough is fucking up the economy? Wait until the currency collapses, breaking the global economy as well as the US economy. Think our current supply chain hiccups are bad? They are just showing the weaknesses in our supply chain. If, or should I say when, the currency collapses, I think it will lead to a societal collapse, as in mass starvation, etc.
Exactly when “suddenly” arrives, no one can say. But math never lies, and the math says we never pay down the debt. Best case, we inflate it away. But nobody has ever inflated away debt that exceeds GDP, which is what we have now. That goes away when the currency collapses via hyperinflation and/or the government that issued the debt is vaporized.
So, you’re saying I should put a Mad Max style vehicle on the old Amex?
Ah, this is nothing that a massive global conflagration that kills a few billion couldn’t fix.
One of the books I got smuggled to me as a Canadian (because Amazon wouldn’t sell it to me directly, so I had to jump through hoops) is a little tome entitled Fiat Paper Money: The History and Evolution of Our Currency by Ralph T. Foster. One of the points he makes again and again is that there have been stupid amounts of different fiat currencies since first invented (most likely by the Chinese). With the exception of modern fiat currencies in the most advanced nations, virtually all fiat currencies have devalued to zero throughout history (and our modern ones are “in process” — the Canadian dollar, ferinstance, has lost 98% of its purchasing power since 1900 [the U.S. dollar is similar], which, if it had happened over a shorter time frame, would have had observers of the currency stating that it was in danger of collapsing).
The judgment of history is that all fiat currencies eventually collapse; the U.S., having the index currency, is the tallest midget in the room, but everything has a lifespan.
I like you. You explain things in a way I can understand.
My wife said the same thing to me once.
Once. ;-)
Something that can’t go on forever, won’t.
I realize that’s not useful in terms of making a decision, since I (nor anybody) can say when the music will stop and what happens then.
I will refer back to Viking1865 up above regarding OrangeManBad:
This is what I told people back when he first said, “Oh, hey, maybe I’ll run for president” (the third time he said it, when I didn’t take him seriously because he’d already floated that balloon twice since the 80s):
This guy was the original “too big to fail.” When Atlantic City went bust, the banks had to loan him MORE money and pray that he could work some voodoo because if he didn’t, all those banks went down with him. Somehow he did it.
How? Where did that money come from? Where did it go? Why does he still have a bunch and is he truly wealthy or is it all paper, flash, and sizzle?
To the extent our currency is backed by anything, it is backed by the ability of the federal government to extract taxes from Americans. That is not infinite, and interest payments have to be made. At some point, the debt is so large that those payments can only be made with “too much” newly printed money, because there isn’t enough tax money to do the job. But how, you ask, does the government print more money? Easy – by issuing more debt. IOW, you are in a hole filling with water, and you are digging the hole deeper.
Also of interest (hah!) – we are currently paying record low interest rates on our debt. That won’t last forever. If (when?) interest reverts to the mean, our interest payments will increase dramatically, because they are so low now. Can’t recall our current weighted average interest rate, but I believe it is less than half the historical average, and not by a little.
The long-term (centuries) historical average for interest rates is around 10%. I have no idea if we’ll see reversion to the mean in my lifetime.
There are people rooting for this.
I do love the irony that our globalized technological modern society beloved by libertarians has backfired so disastrously. Trade with China was supposed to liberate us all but instead has imprisoned us all.
Wouldn’t be the first time this happened though. See 1914 or 1932…
I am struggling with that a bit right now too. I’ve been as close to a free market absolutist as you can get for most of my life. I’m definitely not a Trumpista TARIFF EVERYTHING acolyte, but I am starting to question a little bit how wise it is to have free trade with actors dedicated to your destruction.
Personally the issue to me is that libertarians made some rather questionable assumptions about the Modern post-Cold War world that did not pan out. Trade with China was supposed to end the Chicoms. Trade with other countries was supposed to make us all free-market absolutist since big government can put up trade barriers. Open borders was supposed to make us realize that the state and its welfare programs are useless and burdensome. New science and new technology was supposed to make us all less dependent on the state.
And again the classical liberals had similar wrong assumptions in the past as well.
I have yelled for years about Dealing with Commies, low grade Thieves, nothing more, and here we are,
Outside of propaganda, the last time China posed an actual existential threat to any American was when PRC volunteer troops shot at American soldiers during the Korean War.
Seriously. What has China done that in anyway equals what Iran has done through proxies like Hezbollah bombing Marines in their barracks? Not that China is, in any way, a responsible actor on the world stage, but it is hypocritical to blame a country for playing the realpolitik game as well as we do. There is a difference between actually threatening ‘America’ and just threatening American ‘interests’ in a particular part of the world.
^This. It is essentially the kid who thinks he knows all the tricks complaining when the other kids show him they can do it too.
I hate Commies, that they are Chinese is irrelevant, The CCP is actively attempting to Destroy our Nation, at least weaken us enough they can play EarthGod or something,
To me, its less the wily yellow devils polluting our precious bodily fluids, than how stupid it is to have so much of our supply chain and economy dependent on a manifestly unreliable (for many reasons) country/economy.
Exactly what the government should be doing about that, I don’t know. I will say that the short-term quarter-to-quarter focus of too many companies in going to China is really biting us in the ass, though.
Or what Dean said.
I will say that the short-term quarter-to-quarter focus of too many companies in going to China is really biting us in the ass, though.
The fix to this is abolishing the NLRB.
I don’t disagree with anything you’ve said and “we” (the FedGov) would likely do exactly what China has done in their position. Perhaps the question should be asked of American corporations as to why they’ve allowed themselves to become so hopelessly dependent on China for their supply chains and raw materials. If I were a titan of industry, I’d probably take a look at the Chinese government and rethink having my whole operation dependent on it. I wouldn’t necessarily blackball China, but I’d diversify a little into other low labor-cost countries.
The Trumpy tariffs are an attempt to fight other forms of market distortion.
If the US Navy was 24 SSBNs, 80 or so SSNs, and 20 squadrons of P8s, no one would dare offshore their production. You couldn’t guarantee the shipping lanes. The freedom of the seas produced by the worlds only blue water navy is a huge benefit to international trade. Remember, the reason we even have a federal government in the first place is Yankee merchants wanted a US Navy paid for by those stupid backwoods hicks that wouldn’t listen to their betters. We’re coming up on 40 or 50 years of Greens, lawyers, and Green lawyers being able to exercise a de facto veto on heavy industry. Plus all the union bullshit in the Rust Belt, and the other insane levels of red tape all over the place.
You reset the legal and tax regime to the Coolidge Administration, then you’ll have factories all over America again.
Filled with robots.
Sexy, sexy robots.
WHYCOME U HATE CLEAN AIR AND WATER
Keep flogging. That dead horse will ride again!
You realize we had plagues when most of Eurasia lived and never traveled more than 50 miles from where they were born, right?
Never get between a man and his Shtick.
Well, unless you’re into that kind of thing.
If we are healthier and better able to handle epidemics than ever before than why is everyone reacting to coronavirus in such a terrible way?
Because as a society, we’re scared shitless of death.
The irony of a wealthy, healthy and free society being so completely unable to deal with any hardship and surrendering everything that made them healthy, wealthy and free never ceases to confound me.
Well, you know the old saying, “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 3 generations.”
Splendid.
4076 new cases and 4419 new deaths in the United Kingdom “Public Health England (PHE) has developed a new method of reporting daily COVID-19 deaths, to give a more complete number of those who have died from the virus. For the first time from today, Wednesday 29 April 2020, the government’s daily figure will include deaths that have occurred in all settings where there has been a positive COVID-19 test, including hospitals, care homes and the wider community. Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales already report out-of-hospital deaths. Today’s figures have been revised retrospectively by PHE since the first death on 2 March 2020 to include additional data sources. This will bring the total number of deaths in the UK to 26,097 from 2 March until 28 April, including 765 deaths reported in the 24 hours to 5 pm on 28 April […]”
So every death is now a covid death. Check.
deaths that have occurred in all settings where there has been a positive COVID-19 test, including hospitals, care homes and the wider community
So, one positive COVID test a month ago in a 1,000 bed hospital, and every single death since is now counted as a COVID death?
Since there has been a positive COVID test in London, every single death in London is now counted as a COVID death?
Does it matter if it’s cleaned up?
Welcome to Modern Monetary Theory.
https://lancasteronline.com/news/politics/gov-tom-wolf-says-he-won-t-abandon-ambitious-spending-plan-as-massive-budget-deficit/article_36a52558-899a-11ea-b55e-b76caf540c01.html
*sigh*
A lot of these states are banking on a bailout.
Piper will have to be paid eventually.
he’s a fucking clown. Montco will literally never reopen within his “guidelines”
After years of side stepping reporters who’ve been trying to get Elon to jump into social politics, Elon finally expresses an opinion. And lefties don’t like it one bit.
My favorite:
Oh, man. Commenters are now painting him as a heartless fat cat.