Thursday Morning Links

by | Apr 23, 2020 | Daily Links | 549 comments

Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas and what a beautiful morning it is as McConnell says he is not interested in bailing out states and local governments.

 

 

Ayanna Pressley still cray cray.

 

As is AOC.

 

Biden to pick his token minority woman by May 1st.

 

 

Houston Police Union’s response to Harris County Judge draconian order forcing the people to wear masks in public or be subject to a $1,000 fine.

 

Georgia Democrat state lawmaker stepping down after receiving blowback from endorsing Trump.

 

Oklahoma to reopen economy joining Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina, and with Texas and Florida opening up some portions.

 

That’s all I got for today.  I’ll leave you with a song and move along with my day.

About The Author

Banjos

Banjos

Wife of sloopy, mother to three bright, curious, and highly active young girls. Perpetually exhausted.

549 Comments

  1. leon

    “AOC Says there should be a work Boycott, after coronavirus”

    Huh… Isn’t that what we are doing now?

    • Nephilium

      I think this is more of a lockout.

    • AlexinCT

      These people seem to think that reality will mold to their ideological insanity. There is no explaining that otherwise.

      • Fatty Bolger

        That’s how commies always think.

    • Toxteth O’Grady

      A day (week / month / ____) without a Congresswoman?

      She worked briefly in the private sector, FFS. Granted, she had no ownership stake in the bar…

      • Festus

        Judging from the evidence provided she is even less credentialed as a bartender than she is as an economist unless you count having a nice rack as a prerequisite for either of those positions. In Liberland all economists and bar-staff have a great front porch!

      • Toxteth O’Grady

        Still, you’d think bartending would be somewhat educational, if only accidentally.

      • commodious spittoon

        Going by the bartendress who worked at my Tuesday night watering hole back in the Before Times, I can see how the constant adulation of half-drunk patrons would give a girl a sense of grandiosity.

      • Chafed

        Let’s not dismiss the rack.

      • bacon-magic

        The rack has been used for centuries to keep men compliant.

  2. robc

    South Carolina announced public schools closed for rest of year yesterday.

    They also announced plans to reopen public beaches this week, but left it up to the local communities. IOP, Sullivans Island, Folly, and another in the Charleston area said they still won’t allow non-residents into their cities. So I still don’t have a beach.

    • Florida Man

      Florida is keeping schools closed, which makes sense since school has continued online. Too much work getting it operational just to scrap it for a few weeks.

      • UnCivilServant

        Shutter them permanantly and transition to a government-free education system

      • Festus

        An author that truly lives in his books!

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        ☝️☝️The correct answer.

        We need an emoji that means “that right there is some good libertarian shit”

        I nominate this one:
        ?

      • R C Dean

        ?

      • DrOtto

        I have only met one Covidian, and conveniently enough, she was a school teacher who was continuing to get paid. Everyone else I have dealt with has been openly against this crap, either vocally, or passively “I know I’m not supposed to shake your hand, but…”

      • DrOtto

        I have only met one Covidian, and conveniently enough, she was a school teacher who was continuing to get paid. Everyone else I have dealt with has been openly against this crap, either vocally, or passively “I know I’m not supposed to shake your hand, but…”

      • Festus

        I actually have to agree, given the timing and the Karens.

    • RBS

      Yeah, the City of MB has not reopened the beaches here but some of the surrounding communities have. For a city that relies on tourist money and business license fees for everything our city council does an excellent job pissing both sectors off.

      • robc

        I get it for Sullivan’s Island. Bill Murray and Hootie don’t want rando outsiders giving them the cooties.

        But Isle of Palm seems dependent on tourism, I was surprised by their decision. I guess the residents there don’t realize what goose is keeping their property values high.

  3. Rhywun

    Biden to pick his token minority woman by May 1st.

    It sounds like he’s just “forming a committee” by May 1st. The lucky lady of color won’t be revealed for months.

    • Gdragon

      He’s gonna do it like way back when Charles Barkley pulled up the cover off of that big serving tray and Manute Bol’s head was underneath. It’s going to be quite a surprise for Joe.

    • Festus

      Moochelle or Oprah. Maybe that malcontent from Georgia. That’ll play well in Kenosha!

    • DrOtto

      Maybe he’ll surprise us all and nominate Sarah Palin.

  4. westernsloper

    I think a lot people should just say “no”- we’re not going back to that

    I think she is going to get her wish.

    • Pope Jimbo

      I think we will also be treated to a lot of stories from people who claim that they didn’t know how great life could be until the CV made them get off the hamster wheel. It taught them to cherish their family, smell the roses and realize that material things weren’t all that important.

      But, yeah, they are going to need the govt to keep sending them money so they can continue their journey of self-enlightenment.

      • R C Dean

        Those “funemployment” articles from 2009 will be easy to recycle.

  5. Rebel Scum

    “As far as I’m concerned, what’s happening with this administration, it’s akin to war crimes. Criminal negligence, science denials, a sluggish response,” the freshman Democratic lawmaker said in a video this week. “And so we find ourselves in the position of playing catch-up in the midst of a pandemic, which is the last place that you want to be in the midst of any public health crisis, certainly of a pandemic, is working from behind.”

    No need to tone down the rhetoric, I see. And I am pretty sure the admin’s response started in the midst of impeachment when Trump wanted to stop travel from China and you people called him racist for it.

    • Rhywun

      The Democrats playing politics as usual is ensuring that any actual lapses by the Feds get buried under an avalanche of hysterics. They should be ashamed of themselves. (Yeah, LOL.)

  6. The Late P Brooks

    Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called for a national work boycott, saying when businesses re-open people should refuse to go back to work.

    In the first episode of Seat at the Table with Anand Giridharadas on Vice, Ocasio-Cortez says the American people should not return to work in order to provide for the family after the coronavirus pandemic has been controlled.

    “When we talk about this idea of ‘reopening society’ you know, only in America- does the President, when the President tweets about liberation, does he mean go back to work. When we have this discussion about going back or reopening, I think a lot people should just say “no”- we’re not going back to that. We’re not going back to working 70 hour weeks just so that we can put food on the table and not even feel any sort of semblance of security in our lives,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

    If you and your cohorts in Congress would take a break from destroying the country, I’d appreciate it.

    What a dumb bunny.

    • leon

      When we talk about this idea of ‘reopening society’ you know, only in America- does the President, when the President tweets about liberation, does he mean go back to work

      She is a utopian socialist, you know… the dumb kind. Definitely the kind of vibes of “I hate working, so it is so oppressive that i have to do things i hate”.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I think she just cemented her reputation as a lazy moron.

        The only thing she pursues with fervor is implementing her crazy-ass ideas of forcing everyone else to her way of thinking.

      • leon

        I get the feeling she read Charles Fourier and bought into it whole hog.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        At least Taylor sought to order society into a productive system by optimizing process, his system was only totalitarian. Fourier ignored all of reality so as to guarantee only starvation, misery, and death.

      • Ted S.

        Fourier? So she transformed?

      • J. Frank Parnell

        The only thing she pursues with fervor is implementing her crazy-ass ideas of forcing everyone else to her way of thinking.

        Hey, gotta live your passion amirite?

    • Rhywun

      What a dumb bunny.

      Well, yeah, she is dumb but I think more importantly she is very evil.

      • Festus

        “Stupid and evil is no way to go through life, Daughter”

  7. Scruffy Nerfherder

    “When we talk about this idea of ‘reopening society’ you know, only in America- does the President, when the President tweets about liberation, does he mean go back to work. When we have this discussion about going back or reopening, I think a lot people should just say “no”- we’re not going back to that. We’re not going back to working 70 hour weeks just so that we can put food on the table and not even feel any sort of semblance of security in our lives,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

    I don’t even know what to say to this shit. Even the damned Soviets recognized that you have to go to work in order to eat, that civilization requires a workforce or it will fall apart completely.

    • Nephilium

      But the Soviets weren’t real Socialists!

    • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

      The new breed of totalitarian commies believe that food comes from the grocery store. Let that sink in for a moment.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        That’s probably the most frightening thing she’s said yet. Even the Green New Deal didn’t plumb the depths of mass starvation quite so suddenly and completely.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Mikey Moore admits he had no idea where electricity came from. Why would their grasp on any other aspect of where things in our society comes from be better?

        Moore said that he, like many people, thought electric cars were a good idea, “but I didn’t really think about where is the electricity coming from?”

        “I assumed solar panels would last for ever. I didn’t know what went into the making of them,” Moore added, referring to raw materials, including quartz, and the fossil fuels needed to manufacture the panels.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Bonus quote from that story.

        The economic standstill could cause carbon dioxide emissions to fall this year by the largest amount since World War Two, the chair of the Global Carbon Project said earlier this month.

        “The fact that within days animals are coming back and the skies are blue tells us that we don’t have to build a million square miles of solar panels or buy a zillion electric cars. If we just slow down and stop we can make a tremendous difference instantly,” said Gibbs.

        within days

        Uffda.

      • Trigger Hippie

        ‘If we just slow down and stop we can make a tremendous difference instantly,” said Gibbs.’

        Malthusian Death Cultist suspected…

        ‘A better approach, Gibbs suggests, would be people having fewer children. “Infinite growth on a finite planet is suicide,” he says.’

        Malthusian Death Cultist confirmed.

      • Homple

        Uffda nothing. That’s an isshta.

    • AlmightyJB

      Good. The actual and forecasted numbers coming out of Ohio for Covid do not in any way justify restrictions. 2243 flu/pneumonia deaths in Ohio in 2017. 610 CV deaths, with a forecast of less than 800 by 8/4. There were over 5000 drug overdoses (mostly due to the WOD). What’s that number going to look like with mass unemployment, not to mention the suicide rates?

      https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/states/ohio/ohio.htm

      • Florida Man

        One thing to consider, and I don’t have the numbers, is people hospitalized with COVID vs Flu/pneumonia. I think only looking at deaths is too narrow focused.

      • AlmightyJB

        Well according to this, even at peak we’re well within hospital/ICU capacity, although I’m sure there are regional issues. Ohio reports those numbers but they report all admissions but not releases so you have no idea how many are hospitalized currently from their dashboard.

        https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america/ohio

      • Florida Man

        I think useful information would be to compare number of people that get flu per year, percent hospitalization and percent that die vs COVID. Unfortunately it will take a full year to do a comparison and we’ve never destroyed the economy to attenuate flu, so even that would not be a great comparison.

        Disclaimer: I think the extent of government involvement is issuing guidelines and publishing data.

      • Tres Cool

        In the vein of Scruffy’s comment in #13, Reichsführer Dr. Acton is loving her celebrity, and doesn’t want to lose a minute of that limelight. So I’m expecting to hear a lot of “…out of an abundance of caution..” over the next week or so.

      • R C Dean

        The Branch Covidians are already pushing the “ second wave” line.

        I truly don’t understand the paralyzing fear of this virus.

      • invisible finger

        Wouldn’t we be seeing a second wave in Washington state by now? Or by second wave do they merely mean the next cold-and-flu season?

      • leon

        Second wave means whatever it needs to mean so that we can keep the “Panic” up until we have pushed through all our agenda / Every politician.

      • Nephilium

        Careful there Tres. Did you know that Amy Acton is Jewish? So comparing the state to Nazi Germany is like a hate crime.

      • Tres Cool

        And a former homecoming queen, from a broken home. Explains why she may enjoy the attention.

        I doubt she knows anyone thats out of work, or financially struggling, so why not another month or two?

      • Jarflax

        So let her strip like all the other homecoming queens with Dady issues. We’d all be happier ifd she was fucking businessmen one at a time in the champagne room instead of en masse in the Statehouse.

      • AlmightyJB

        Oh there’s no question Acton is loving this attention. It seems like she is driving a lot of this policy. She’s one of those “if it saves one person” types. She shouldn’t be let near making policy. We already now half the deaths are people over 80 and 3/4 are over 70. What we don’t know is how many if those people would have died the next time they caught a cold. Not to minimize their deaths, but all perspective and context is completely missing in the media reporting and decision making.

      • DrOtto

        I have grown to despise the word “considerate” during the panic.

      • Pope Jimbo

        In Minnesoda 113 of our 160 deaths were associated with long term residential care facilities. In other words, there are a shit ton of empty beds in the nursing homes.

        If we had a GOP governor, the press would be blaring that one stat over and over and demanding that we reopen. Instead the local media says nothing, not even that our gov said 74K would die unless we shut everything down.

      • Pope Jimbo

        That news was a day late and a dollar short.

        We had 19 news deaths yesterday, 16 of them in nursing homes.

        So 129 of 179 deaths were nursing home residents.

      • Fourscore

        I was hoping there would be no room at the inn but if this keeps up they may start drafting some of the second tier.

        I may be looking for a hidden room somewhere

      • Pope Jimbo

        Trump is really doing something about Social Security’s insolvency problem.

        Now Fourscore, please report to the nearest live-in SSA payment facility!

  8. Festus

    “Gooooo Turtle!” “Ha-ha. Go Banana!”

    • Festus

      Mornin’ Banjos! I trust that the sprites are keeping you busy? I remember when the girls were littler. It was fun but exhausting. That’s why Festus became pretty handy at fixing things outside of the house. Just wait until the dark days come and know in your heart that they’ll probably be your best friends after the storm passes.

      • Banjos

        Mornin’

  9. The Late P Brooks

    Earlier Wednesday, McConnell announced that he is open to allowing states to declare bankruptcy rather than sending additional federal money to governors who have been imploring Washington for urgent fiscal help.

    I’d be in favor of that, IF pension recipients were treated as unsecured creditors. But we all know that’s not what would happen.

  10. Scruffy Nerfherder

    That judge issuing orders to the entirety of Houston is 29 years old.

    • westernsloper

      Fuck off. Serious? I didn’t see that. How is that even possible?

      • westernsloper

        Aaaah, so she is. County Judge is one of those TX things where it is not a judicial position but administrative like county manager. Which is still no position a 29 yr old should have.

      • Fourscore

        “Give me liberty or give me death”

        Patrick Henry, 29 YO

      • A Leap at the Wheel

        Historically informed burns are best burns

      • Stillhunter

        I agree that age alone should not be the factor, but at age 29 Patrick Henry had likely gained much more wisdom than most any 29 YO today given how early in life kids were expected to contribute at the time. We balk at people comparing moral values across eras, I find this similar.

    • Chipwooder

      A 29 year old judge? What the fuck?? I have a T shirt almost as old as him.

      • Banjos

        It’s a young woman, was elected during the ‘18 democrat wave. She’s an under qualified kid overseeing a budget of $4 billion.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        The ABA and various state bar associations are pushing very hard to get young women, especially minorities, into as many positions of power as possible.

        The problem is when they’re promoted too early and get in over their heads, which happens quite often. It’s an issue for anybody, but there not an active program trying to get me (31 yo white male) into the judiciary.

      • DrOtto

        Think county commissioner, not a judge judge.

  11. Tundra

    Good morning, Banjos!

    I hope all is well in TX!

    AOC is the gift that keeps on giving, isn’t she?

    We’re not going back to working 70 hour weeks just so that we can put food on the table and not even feel any sort of semblance of security in our lives,

    Uh, I am, toots.

    It’s gonna take a lot of money to get me far, far away from you.

    I do wonder what post-WuFlu life will be like. Will more people be red-pilled? Will liberty make a run?

    Fun song! Here’s my contribution to the mix.

    Make it a fantastic day, you crazy kids!

    • Certified Public Asshat

      I work, like literally, a million hours a week.

      • Agent Cooper

        I have worked 80 hours straight since Feb 1. I have billed over $50k in freelance work since January, and I still have a six-figure 40-plus hour a week job as well. It’s not physical labor, but I am still pretty tired. We have paid down a ton of debt with the extra money.

    • Banjos

      Mornin’

  12. Translucent Chum

    Whitmer: Can’t open state until we do enough testing…

    Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says reopening Michigan’s economy is slowed by a shortage of COVID-19 tests to screen employees reentering workplaces, and she blames the Trump administration for not responding to states’ needs.

    “As of this minute, I’m scaling up to make 1 million swabs a day,” says Siblani, owner of Envisiontec, which he says is the third largest 3-D printing medical manufacturer in the world. “I can cover the state’s requirements. But I can’t get the state’s attention. They’re not responding in Lansing.”

    But still no orders from a state whose governor who said on Sunday a shortage of testing supplies is the major impediment to restarting Michigan.

    “It’s really dumb that I’m a Michigander and I’ve got swabs and the state isn’t taking them,” says Siblani, who has been in business for 18 years and specializes in medical equipment. “It’s dysfunctional.”

    Gretchen is the new Nikki.

    • Translucent Chum

      Oh, and none of our esteemed press corps will ask about this at her daily press conference.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Well that’s because Whitmer doesn’t want to open the state.

      She gambling on a VP slot by staying in the news, using the livelihoods of Michiganers as her ante.

    • Tundra

      Our cunt of a governor is playing the same game.

      The current shutdown is devastating the state’s health care system and economy generally. The number of those hospitalized in intensive care with the virus actually decreased yesterday, from 117 to 107. Commenting on part 18 of this series yesterday, a reader wrote: “I am an RN at a hospital in St. Paul and I had my last two shifts cancelled because my unit was overstaffed. I was just sitting at home not working at the hospital in this supposed “crisis” in health care. There is no way we can be more prepared now for treating patients. The justification to ‘flatten the curve’ past this point is doing more harm than good.”

      Fuck you, Walz.

      • DrOtto

        My dad was at Menards last week talking to an employee there and commented about how slow hospitals were. A passer by told him he should be ashamed of such an ignorant comment at his age. The Menards employee added his 2 cents, he worked at a hospital for 22 years and had just been laid off a month earlier and was working at Menards to make ends meet. My dad said it was priceless.

      • Sensei

        That’s great!

    • Festus

      Would. From behind.

      • Frank Dux

        Can’t handle the jaundiced looking face?

        Seriously though, be careful, I fear she might eat you afterward.

      • Festus

        Never been “Mantis’d” before? Newby.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        You mean eat his ass right?

  13. leon

    As far as I’m concerned, what’s happening with this administration, it’s akin to war crimes

    Ignores actual War Crimes committed by this regime.

  14. The Late P Brooks

    She is a utopian socialist, you know… the dumb kind

    She thinks life should be like that Star Trek “space hippy” episode. Everybody just hangs out reciting poetry and playing the lute.

      • Random Drunken Asshole

        Bring it back to Star Trek with the Shatner version

    • Tres Cool

      Get a load of Herbert over there.

  15. The Late P Brooks

    “It’s really dumb that I’m a Michigander and I’ve got swabs and the state isn’t taking them,” says Siblani, who has been in business for 18 years and specializes in medical equipment. “It’s dysfunctional.”

    Maybe if you weren’t trying to profiteer off the suffering and anguish of teh peepulz.

  16. Florida Man

    I’m pretty excited the government is going to ALLOW people to work and ALLOW people to go outside. Truly we have a sickeningly amount of freedom.

    • westernsloper

      It is at an overwhelming level these days.

      • Spartacus

        Nobody needs 18 places to go.

  17. Rebel Scum

    “When we talk about this idea of ‘reopening society’ you know, only in America- does the President, when the President tweets about liberation, does he mean go back to work. When we have this discussion about going back or reopening, I think a lot people should just say “no”- we’re not going back to that. We’re not going back to working 70 hour weeks just so that we can put food on the table and not even feel any sort of semblance of security in our lives,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

    If you are working 70 hours/week (which you probably aren’t) it is not “to put food on the table”. . . And god forbid people have the freedom to get back to their normal lives amidst a faux freakout over a relatively mild pandemic. It ain’t exactly the bubonic plague.

    • I. B. McGinty

      I work 70 hours a week…on day ass!

      * holds up hand for a high five *

      • I. B. McGinty

        Day, dat, whatever…

      • Frank Dux

        *high fives*

        BTW, where did you get that picture of my grandpa?

      • I. B. McGinty

        IMDB.

  18. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Articles like this make me wonder when the economic reality of the shutdown forces the Hopkins administration into muzzling the nitwits at their school of public health.

    Johns Hopkins University announced a series of austerity measures Wednesday after estimating the university and its medical system will have to cut costs by $475 million through June 2021. Separately, the University System of Maryland chancellor has warned of a $230 to $240 million shortfall for the current semester.

    But the ramifications of the shutdowns of those two large university systems, with their sprawling medical campuses, extensive research programs and their nearly 100,000 employees, stretch far beyond the boundaries of their campuses and affect the region’s and state’s economies.

    “On the regional economy the near term effects are devastating,” said Richard Clinch, an economist and the director of the Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore.

    Higher education has been a bright spot in the city’s economy, Clinch said, providing not just jobs but students who spend in local stores and acting as incubators for technology companies, Clinch said.

    “While Baltimore City was in decline, higher education and medicine was what kept Baltimore afloat,” he said. “So depending how bad this is, this has potentially devastating effects for the city’s economy long term.”

    Hopkins announced it will make short-term cutbacks, including stopping contributions to employee retirement plans, pay cuts for top leaders and severe restrictions on hiring to lay the groundwork for a three-year plan to make up the expected deficit. University leaders also expect to lay off and furlough some workers, although the decisions are likely to be made by individual departments and divisions within the university. Hopkins President Ronald J. Daniels said the financial implications of the pandemic exceed the last recession.

    “At no point during the Great Recession did we suffer the revenue losses that we have suffered this year,” he said. “This is a shock to the state and the country that is unprecedented.”

  19. AlmightyJB

    Will Joe sniff his new VPs hair? Will he drop his pants so she can feel his leg hair? Stay tuned for the next episode of DNCs “This is Who We Are”.

    • Festus

      I’d wager that Joe wears sock garters un-ironically. Black shin socks with sandals.

    • bacon-magic

      “Ol’ Joe needs to have a female VP, bring in the contestants.” *readies fingers

  20. The Late P Brooks

    Looking for love in all the wrong places

    U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday he “totally disagrees” with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s phase 1 plans to reopen tattoo parlors, bars, hair salons and other nonessential businesses this week.

    Trump said Kemp’s decision violates the phase 1 guidelines the White House announced last week that recommends states wait to ease social distancing restrictions until there’s widespread testing and a low level of community transmission. Trump said he respects Kemp’s right as a governor to make his own decision.

    Kemp is allowing tattoo parlors, spas, hair salons or barbershops, movie theaters and bowling alleys to reopen this week so long as they, and their patrons, follow physical distancing orders and other guidelines, Kemp announced on Monday.

    “Maybe you wait a little bit longer until you get to a phase 2. So do I agree with him? No, but I respect him and I will let him make his decision,” Trump said at a White House press conference. “Would I do that? No … But I’m going to let him make his decision, but I told him, I totally disagree.”

    STFU, you idiot.

    • AlmightyJB

      Yeah, I saw that. I don’t know what he’s thinking.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        He’s doing the wrong thing (agitating for staying shut down) the right way (bully pulpit). He’s wrong, but at least he’s not being an authoritarian while wrong.

      • AlmightyJB

        Sort of. He’s not being the authoritarian, but he’s saying the Governer should be. Let the people choose, not the would be petty dictators.

    • Viking1865

      He’s laying groundwork for media battling when they try to lay the deaths on his doorstep. This whole thing is another slap in the face to why we’re absolutely doomed. It’s the default working principle that the number one most important thing is preventing death. Period. That’s everyone across the spectrum. The idea that people die from sickness every day is not allowed to be spoken. The idea that the rights of millions to live as they please supersedes the fears of thousands is also verboten.

      The protesters yesterday in VA weren’t actually saying “fuck you, I’m a free man and I will bear the risks I choose to.” they were saying “We need a plan from Dear Leader that allows us to leave our houses sometime soon.”

  21. AlmightyJB

    Only Uncle Tom’s want to be free!

  22. Florida Man

    Random Though: Italy proved healthcare isn’t a right.

    • Tundra

      Yes. It’s a product.

      But don’t expect many people outside this hive of scum and villainy to ever admit that.

      • Viking1865

        I got in a long argument with Office Prog about it, and they basically fell back on that stupid “If you walk into the ER spurting blood, you don’t have time to shop around for the best price!!!!!”

        Yeah, and if you blow a tire in Jackson MS on a Saturday night you end up at the garage next to the Dew Drop Inn with your hair tucked under your hat. But that doesn’t mean a free market doesn’t work for auto repair.

      • l0b0t

        G/d bless you for that reference. “I ain’t even got a garage! You can call home and ask my wife.”

    • PieInTheSky

      Counterpoint: no it didn’t

      • egould310

        Counter-counterpoint: *slaps Pie in face*

      • Frank Dux

        Hmmm. That is a compelling argument. Now I don’t know what to think.

      • PieInTheSky

        It simply proved the Italian government does not spend enough on healthcare

      • UnCivilServant

        It simply proved the Italian government does not spend enough on belong in the business of providing healthcare

        FIFY

      • Florida Man

        When you show up for government healthcare and they tell you “you are over 65, no healthcare for you” it’s not a right.

      • PieInTheSky

        Or it is a right that is infringed. You will not convince any leftist with this. It is just that Italy had the wrong people in charge.

      • Florida Man

        I’m not trying to convince anyone, just pointing out a logical inconsistency.

      • PieInTheSky

        Well the logical inconsistency of healthcare not being a right is widely known in libertarianism and nowhere else…

      • Festus

        Not quite that old but if you show up with an undesirable disease you will get the treatment that you “deserve”.

  23. Rebel Scum

    Biden to pick his token minority woman by May 1st.

    I expect he’ll pick the most unlikable person he can. So it will probably be that Indian (dots, not feathers) Harris or legitimate governor of Georgia and sassy black woman, Abrams.

    • leon

      I think it’s Harris, but i don’t know how they are going to try to scrub all the articles and all the recordings of Harris going at Biden hard on that first debate. That alone could really disqualify her.

    • Drake

      Abrams would be ballot-box poison to most of the country – so go for it Joe.

      • Rebel Scum

        Dayum.

      • Tejicano

        Yeah, that’s not a good look.

      • WTF

        That is fucking savage.

    • Drake

      I know some people here didn’t care for the “cuck” label on pretend conservatives 4 years ago. But I give you Jonah Goldberg, king of the cucks.

      Quarantine protesters no heroes of civil disobedience

      As a matter of law and morality, these intentions matter. If you could ask the Founding Fathers whether what we’re going through is tyranny, they would answer, collectively, “Are you high?” or whatever the Colonial-era equivalent was.

      • Rebel Scum

        Actually they probably would have already started an insurrection, or simply advocated non-compliance.

      • Drake

        I was thinking “challenge Jonah Goldberg to a duel and shoot him in the face”.

      • Suthenboy

        We dont have to ask them, they already weighed in.

        “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

      • Florida Man

        Here’s where they have you. No one is passing any laws. They are just using executive power to do whatever they want. Check mate.

      • Viking1865

        “cuck” is just a way to denote a weak and prissy man that doesn’t insult gay men or women. Which you know, I’m no PC monstrosity, but I would hate to call Jonah Goldberg a fag and think all of our Rainbow Glibs think less of me, and it’s a plain and simple fact that all of our XX Glibs are tougher and more intelligent than Jonah Goldberg.

        It’s a real shame, his book Liberal Fascism was really quite good. But that was back before 2008, before politics just became a class war between the Front Row Kids and the Back Row Kids.

      • WTF

        Really, Jonah? The same Founding Fathers who fought a revolution during a smallpox epidemic?

      • mrfamous

        Yes, I mean the Founding Fathers had no experience with the concept of contagious infectious diseases. How could they have known or considered something like this?

  24. gbob

    Finally was able to get tested.

    Hell of a process. Testing was being done at a local park. Had to go through multiple barriers, only to be led into a dark garage where folks in bunny suits surrounded my car. Odd experience.

    Personal experience is that it’s a nasty little bug. Not that bad, but annoying. I much prefer the flu. At least that is a couple days of feeling like crap and then you’re good. This just sort of lingers.

    • bacon-magic

      Hope you get better.

  25. Florida Man

    Reading through old post I say a debate on universal suffrage. My opinion is if you pay tax, you get to vote. 15 year old grocery bagger gets a vote. Felon on work release gets a vote. 25 year old welfare recipient, no vote, etc.

    • LJW

      Before we change that law I’d like to vote that anyone under 18 doesn’t pay any taxes.

      • Florida Man

        That’s the choice. Stop taxing people that have no vote or give them a vote.

      • Viking1865

        I used to work as a supervisor at a summer camp. Let me tell you something, a 15 year old who just found out that his first paycheck is a lot less than he thought it was hates taxes and government as much as anybody else.

        One payday I had a kid storm into my office and demand “his full paycheck or he was gonna call the cops.” I said show me your stub, he pulled it out, I said “Yeah 80 hours, right there thats your full check.” and he said “No, look over here, this FICA thing took like a days pay out of it.” I said “Yeah, those are taxes.”

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        “Welcome to libertarianism, you can pick up your gadsden flag at the booth on the left”

      • Ozymandias

        Hasn’t every parent had this conversation with their teenagers when they first start working? I know both of my daughters were shocked – SHOCKED! I say – to find out how much the government took of their check…
        Then I showed them mine. You should have seen the looks in their eyes. WTF???
        Then I said, “Now you know why I hate the government.” That was all it took.

    • PieInTheSky

      Fascist

      • Florida Man

        Hag!

  26. Translucent Chum

    Doom! Doom! Oh, wait.

    The United States Navy’s hospital ship Comfort is departing New York City this week, having been deployed there to assist with the city’s coronavirus surge. It treated fewer than 200 patients during its three-week stay.

    • Rhywun

      The ship was actually sent to treat non-COVID-19 patients, who were advised to stay away from city hospitals unless it was an unavoidable emergency.

      Fuck them, I guess.

  27. Pine_Tree

    To a very large extent, I swim in the same cultural ocean as Rep. Vernon Jones. And my sense is that there are a LOT of people in the black community who feel the same way. It’s gonna show in November. Trump’s going to openly appeal for for, and it’s going to work.

    He may very well be the public tipping point on the Donks’ stranglehold on the black vote.

      • PieInTheSky

        Ha libertarians are nothing but closet republicans

  28. The Late P Brooks

    The Branch Covidians are already pushing the “ second wave” line.

    I truly don’t understand the paralyzing fear of this virus.

    Really. It’s like nobody ever died or got sick before this.

  29. Mojeaux

    Mornin’ Glibbies.

    To Brooks Brooks’s comment from the last thread, this place and you people are all extraordinarily valuable to me. Thanks to TPTB for creating and maintaining it. I throw $$$ in the pot when I can (not often enough).

    • gbob

      I can’t imagine not having you bastards around while the country goes mad.

  30. straffinrun

    One of my siblings on FB:

    I saw a post (but can’t find it) about how people were holed up in their houses with nothing for weeks on end during the Spanish flu pandemic. We have computers, videos, Zoom meetings, groceries delivered to our door, the ability to take your dog for a walk, ect…yet people are acting as if they are being oppressed. Talk to an African American or a Native American about what real, systemic oppression is like to live under and then try to justify your whining about being inconvenienced while we try to flatten the curve. Notice that people of color are not a part of the protests right now that include Confederate flags and people with guns. I truly hope we can reopen in a responsible way but I have zero tolerance for the people that have been out protesting as if they are being persecuted …give me a break!

    And y’all have asked my why I moved across the ocean…

    • Tundra

      Huh. I just thought it was Yellow Fever.

      • straffinrun

        Truthfully? Nope. Just saw too many variant strains of this particular sister in too many American women. I’m sure there are good ones out there.

      • Toxteth O’Grady

        Yeah, they’re all here. 😉

        Srsly though, I see a lot of male Karen commenters, and also a fair number of female… what would you call them? Gadsden flag wielders?

      • straffinrun

        Of course, the glib gals are not included. You all are the best.

      • LemonGrenade

        That’s because we don’t really exist, being mythical unicorns and all.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I thought it was because our shitty laws wouldn’t grant his dakimakura soul mate a green card, so he chose love and stayed in Japan to be with her.

    • PieInTheSky

      We have computers, videos, Zoom meetings, groceries delivered to our door – I am not that sure everyone has these options or the $$

      talk to an African American or a Native American – he wants native americans to educate us and enact our labor? racist much?

      whining about being inconvenienced – if you put your savings in a business and it is failing it is a lot more than inconvenienced

      There can be discussions on opening / restricting the country etc. But that is kinds stupid.

      • Pope Jimbo

        So is she sort of admitting that our country is so rich that even the poor (and minorities and women) have computers, videos, and groceries delivered?

        What a country!

      • PieInTheSky

        Wait it’s a she? Did I wrongly assume gender? I need penitence

      • Pope Jimbo

        #MeToo

        No idea why I assumed that.

      • PieInTheSky

        sexist

    • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

      I was talking with my wife the other night about whether these types are ignorant or evil. Shes convinced its just ignorance. I think there’s something more. There’s something about the forcefulness, unwavering confidence, and bile in these screeds that takes it beyond simple-mindedness and adds a tinge of evil.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        A complete lack of understanding of how the world works and an unwillingness to learn because it inconveniences their worldview.

        Most people are incapable of changing their long-held opinions. I have to remind myself of that tendency almost daily. If you’re wrong, you’re wrong. Get over it and move on.

      • Don Escaped a Landslide

        Roles, perspectives, and jobs are essentially divisible into two classes: building and talking. An astonishingly large percentage of Americans are employed as talkers. Interestingly, the talkers seem to be in charge of talking about . . . . wait for it . . . . building.

        This schism has replaced traditional gender roles. Instead of every family having its quiet disagreements about the world, now this class war is waged all day . . . . again . . . in the media.

      • RAHeinlein

        Agreed, and it’s not easy to differentiate the classes by occupation. A number of people one would assume to be a “builder” based-on profession are “talkers” who take information and communicate up and down the corporate ladder.

        Professional women recognize this almost immediately and gravitate toward the talker role.

      • Viking1865

        The Sons of Mary and the Sons of Martha.

      • straffinrun

        In her case it’s a culmination of decades of indulging in manipulative behavior to get what she wants. I cut her out years ago but keep her on FB out of simple courtesy. Is it evil or just the end result of living a life based on bullshit? I dunno. Haven’t met her in person in 25 years.

      • kbolino

        They were told they were smart. By their parents, by their teachers, and most importantly by their self-selected peers. They convinced themselves that if they say the right things and have the right thoughts, they were better than most other people. They’ve never had to face a situation where that belief is seriously challenged. But it is a fragile belief nonetheless, and so any threat no matter how trivial or mundane has to be neutralized.

      • Mojeaux

        Envy.

        To the extent that envy is actual evil, yes, but I don’t think a human condition or envy is evil.

        I don’t think most of them realize that they are actually doing anything BAD to the people who are out of work because they do not have that experience and know no one who has. Besides, those people are icky People of Walmart and don’t deserve nice things. Furthermore, they can’t make good decisions, so they need to be made to make good decisions.

        These are the useful idiots and will be the first to go when truly evil people get around to disposing of them.

        I do not believe AOC is evil. I think she’s envious and is too stupid to understand the ramifications of her actions.

        Pelosi, OTOH, is evil. Unfortunately for her, she is tone-deaf because she lives in a well-off bubble. NONE of this stuff affects her; she just wants power and she’ll keep getting it because of the bubble she lives in.

        Trump’s ad has her actually cackling after showing her freezer full of ice cream. That’s priceless.

        After almost 4 years, they still don’t know why Trump was elected and they are envious as hell.

      • Festus

        Took me a decade to cure myself of that sin, Mojo. I had to see how the sausage was made before I understood the whereforth of why my bosses were so mean to me. I think your boy is right at the cusp of that revelation. Your daughter has already passed it. I see good things in store for your future shit-lords and ladies.

      • Mojeaux

        Thanks, Festus. My daughter, it turns out, is extremely self-aware of what she wants and what makes her happy, which is not envy-driven in the least bit. I am pleased. In fact, I envy her her knowledge of herself at such a young age.

        As for my son, #protip: Honda lawnmowers are not XY-proof. Anyway, he envies weird things spawned by even more weird things. I think (hope desperately) that his having a job this summer (if he can get one) (no, he’s not going back to lawnmowing) (at all) (not even our yard) (until he has his own truck and equpment) will take up too much of his time and energy to be wasting it on his weirdo fascinations and envy. If he wants money, he’s going to have to earn it and he won’t be allowed to earn it the way he enjoys.

        XX has a job and loves it. XY ruined his chance to work at the thing he loves. That’s a very major switcheroo in my house.

        OT: The libraries are closed and XX needs a quiet place to do her schoolwork. Oops. But the Walmart management lets the kids come in on their own time and sit in the breakroom and do their schoolwork. Today is her day off and she’s going to go spend the equivalent of a shift in the Walmart breakroom to do her schoolwork. That job has made all the difference in her life. I am so happy.

      • kbolino

        In my experience, Honda lawnmowers ain’t shit. Though, nothing gas-powered really is anymore (maybe Stihl? pricey, though). I’m not sure if they’re trying to kill off gas-powered lawn equipment, or if they’re being squeezed by the EPA, or if the influx of cheap crap has driven quality down across the board, but the damn things aren’t half as good as they used to be.

        /unhelpful tangent

      • Tundra

        Huh? I’ve had three. All were excellent. I gave two away and they still see regular use.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Honda has multiple lines of engines with varying levels of quality. The consumer lawnmowers tend to have the crap ones. The commercial mowers have an according price tag.

        The EPA has had a large effect on 2-cycle engines by forcing the manufacturers to a 50:1 mix design. The tolerances on the piston/cylinder are too tight now and the engines wear out much sooner. You can offset this by using a 40-45:1 mix. The engine will smoke a little more, but it will last longer than it would otherwise.

      • kbolino

        My two biggest problems with my consumer-grade Honda lawnmower:

        – It doesn’t like hills. Put it facing the wrong way on a hill and it gets starved for gas. This is easy to fix, just face it the other way, but it’s still annoying.
        – It chokes on thick grass. By that, I don’t mean going into a field of foot-tall grass. I mean, if I wait 2 rainy weeks to mow the lawn, it will choke on the thicker sections. Up to a point, this can be ameliorated by raising the blade.

        I will grant that it starts every time and, with annual oil changes, has lasted 5 years so far.

      • Mojeaux

        With any luck and a great deal of prodding by moi, by fall, we won’t need a lawnmower at all. I’m lobbying for an apartment/townhouse (there’s one by my house that has an attached garage).

        Otherwise, I’m looking for the smallest lawn possible. Around here, that is shockingly difficult.

      • Rhywun

        I do not believe AOC is evil.

        She’s a Marxist who now has some power and is continually seeking more.

        She is evil.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Nobody is the villain in their own life story.

      • Festus

        No. She’s an imbecile. Her puppet masters are evil. Hannah Arendt. She’s a useful idiot.

      • Mojeaux

        ^^^ That is what I was trying to say, only Festus did it better.

      • Rhywun

        That doesn’t absolve her in my book.

      • R C Dean

        Ye shall judge them by the fruits of their labor.

        “But I didn’t mean for that to happen” does exactly zero to excuse you from the consequences of what you do.

      • RAHeinlein

        Agreed – she openly hates and wishes ill upon those who disagree with her – that’s evil.

      • Rebel Scum

        I remain unconvinced that she is not a Trump plant that is engaging in an elaborate troll.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        I don’t think… envy is evil.

        Hard disagree.

        I think that one of the major failings of the modern Western postmodernism is that it assumes no accountability for the emotions one feels. Beyond that, it assumes a petit truth in the emotions a person feels.

        I couldn’t resist this paradigm more fully. Feelings that encourage evil action are not petit truth, they’re petit evil. Often the best we can do in a situation is to cut that evil off at the bud, and that’s better than the alternative. However, rooting out evil in emotion and though process is very important. It removes a veil of moral ignorance.

      • Mojeaux

        I ALMOST wrote “what one does with it is evil,” but I wanted to see if anyone picked up that thought.

        Envy is a normal emotion and you have to be self-aware enough to work on it.

        Jordan Peterson says something akin to this, that when you can acknowledge your capacity for true evil, only then can you become self-aware enough to resist the more subtle forms of evil. Something like that.

        Anyway, I have recognized envy in myself, but does possessing the emotion make me evil? If so, color me evil. This is my acknowledgment of that particular vice and I’m going to own that.

        And envy is rooted in or codependent with pride.

        At the moment, however, I have no pride. None. I can’t afford any if I want to get out of the mess I’m in. It’s freeing in a way.

        But as soon as I get settled I’m going to go back to being envious of people who can market their books well enough to make a living when I’m foundering around totally befuddled and intimidated by marketing.

        AOC is envious, but she is also a child and a zealot. She doesn’t really know any better, so I’m willing to give her a pass and hope the adukts in thebroom (the voters) will spank her for it. It’s the Hillaries and Nancies of the world who are true evil.

      • R C Dean

        she is also a child

        She is an adult. If she is immature, well, she’s an immature adult, which is on her.

        She doesn’t really know any better

        She is an ignorant, immature adult. Still on her.

      • leon

        Yeah she’s 30 years old, she is old enough to not be called a child, which just gives her cover for her immaturity

      • Mojeaux

        Okay, it is true that sometimes I am tempted to give people more benefit of the doubt than they deserve.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        does possessing the emotion make me evil?

        Yup. Plain and simple. People are not morally neutral or inherently good. People are thoroughly corrupted in thought and deed, and thats all of us.

        And envy is rooted in or codependent with pride.

        Yep, and I would say that all evil is rooted in pride. (I’m not walking out on much of a limb there, it’s an old idea). I find that people tend to confuse pride and arrogance. Pride is more akin to self-centeredness than to arrogance.

        At the moment, however, I have no pride. None.

        With all due respect, bullshit. The only people who have no pride are dead. Pride is so inbuilt, so wrapped into every part of being that saying you don’t have pride, even momentarily, is like saying there are no bacteria in your body because you took an antibiotic for a few weeks and screwed up your gut biome.

      • Mojeaux

        does possessing the emotion make me evil?

        Yup. Plain and simple

        Well, you aren’t the first person to think it and you won’t be the last, but I’m not deluding myself that I do not possess envy.

      • Mojeaux

        I don’t know why my nested blockquotes did not work.

      • kinnath

        AOC is envious, but she is also a child and a zealot.

        AOC is 30 years old.

        When I was 30:

        — I had been married for 11 years

        — Had two kids

        — Worked 7 years as a printer, before going to college with two kids in school

        — In my second year of a new career as an engineer.

        AOC has utterly failed to graduate into adulthood. This is her fault, period.

      • Don Escaped a Landslide

        equipment I designed and built when I was 30 is still running every day a quarter of a century later

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        AOC is less than a year younger than me. Anybody my age who is called a child should find that highly offensive, because they should have a decade of “adulting” under their belt by now.

      • leon

        Alexander the Great had conquered the world by the time he was 33. Whats everyone else’s excuse?

      • UnCivilServant

        Yeah, but he didn’t do much after that.

      • Hyperion

        She’s a child in emotion and intelligence, while at he same time being an adult in body. That’s why she has all of these childish ideas. It’s sad that we live in a society that not only tolerates, but encourages this type of childish behavior.

        Today, we live in a society where children are indoctrinated into far left ideology from a very young age. At home, during that entire time, they are coddled by their parents, never disciplined for anything, and told that they can never do any wrong no matter what.

        Then they reach college age and the coddling and far left indoctrination continues. By the time they are the age of AOC, the making of the New Soviet Adult/Child is completed. The person at this stage is completely incapable of rational thinking or being self responsible. The world owes theme everything and they need not do anything in return to deserve it.

        This is where we are as a society. Unless we do something quickly, we’re doomed.

      • Drake

        Yes – the Tenth Commandment, like the Tenth Amendment, is there for a really good reason. Envy – when it is indulged and not tamped down hard, is evil and leads to all sorts of truly evil behavior.

    • PieInTheSky

      It’s as though the American right has come to be dominated by a very particular, narrow brand of well-funded libertarianism

      https://twitter.com/Vermeullarmine/status/1253144353570250756

      Alrighty. I keep seeing how libertarians run America. Which one of you fuckers is in charge then? Cause you ain’t doing a good job at it.

      • PieInTheSky

        If neoliberalism is in practice the financialization of the economy and all it brings, libertarianism (of various stripes) has provided an effective ideological framework for the neoliberal subject, misdirecting antipathy towards or legitimating the neoliberal operating system.

        Well I myself am convinced

      • pan fried wylie

        Purple monkey soapdish spaghetti dishwasher, I mean, ammirite?!

      • leon

        I Kinda hoped that as the left became more openly “socialist”, that the right would move to being more openly “libertarian” to counter it.

      • Drake

        Unfortunately that’s not how it works. Instead the “right” just fills the vacuum in the center vacated by the left and gobbles up the blue-collar votes.

      • kbolino

        Some have, most haven’t. The government is still there as a prize for the winner of the culture war to control. Whether motivated by sheer desire for power or simply to put “the right people in charge”, they don’t want to give that up.

        And then, of course, there are the “libertarians” who seem to have forgotten that “socially liberal, fiscally conservative” was a slogan not a statement of purpose, then allowed the political factions around them to dictate the meaning of “liberal” and “conservative”, then dropped the “fiscally conservative” part altogether.

      • Viking1865

        Honestly, the cosmotarians were never “fiscally conservative” in the real sense. They always had the idea that if they could get the GOP to ease up on the social stuff, that there was this measurable voting bloc of productive, hardworking, free market/low tax/liberty people who were voting Democrat because of the gays or the abortion or the pot. I just don’t think that’s true. I don’t think there’s an electoral bloc of people that actually cares about low taxes and small government who vote Democrat. If you cared about it, you wouldn’t be a Democrat.

        I maintain that if you could actually drill down and do a deep dive, that a sizable majority of Democratic voters are either:

        1. Actual government employees or contractors.

        2. Working in industries which might be “private” but in reality are dependent on Leviathan for their existence. Things like the various compliance fields, HR, the trial lawyers and support networks, etc. Academia of course.

        3. Directly dependent on transfer payments.

        The cosmotarian thing was thinking that someone who is a Diversity Compliance Officer at BigCorp is a “free market capitalist” who’s ripe to be persuaded to libertarian ideals because they pay a lot in taxes from their phony balony job. Or thinking that a professor at a “private” university would of course be persuaded by sweet reason. Or that a public school teacher who chafed under the tyranny of standardized testing would love to jump into the world of charter schools, when in fact the reason most of them complain about standardized tests is that it actually holds them to some standard, even if its a somewhat meaningless and arbitrary one.

      • RAHeinlein

        Bingo – Gov/Gov-affiliated versus everyone else is the genuine divide. You see this manifest in Rep/Dem polling – Dem respondents being predominately Gov-types.

      • Viking1865

        The GOP has plenty of those types to, for sure. The DoD and the VA and all the LEO grants and Drug War stuff. But I think if you stripped the franchise from all government workers and contractors, the Dems wouldn’t win another national election. For every Big Tech worker or independent restaurant owner or artist who chooses to operate as an independent contractor, there’s a dozen people who’s checks come directly or indirectly from the taxpayer, and know it, and vote accordingly.

        Thats what the cosmotarians never really understood. They thought that since their friends in DC who work for The Kennedy Center or the Brookings Institute or Georgetown were perfectly willing to read Bastiat in the June book club that they could convert them. But of course, that was a fools errand.

        People form their opinions and beliefs as much from where their rice bowl is filled as anything else. If I had taken a job as a cop when I was 18, or enlisted in the military, I’d probably be a Thin Blue Line type of Republican. If I had actually finished college as an education major, I’d probably vote Democrat. Maybe not happily, but I’d still do it.

      • kbolino

        I don’t think any of us could have quite anticipated, the cosmos included, the degree to which our culture and civic live has deteriorated. Things that seemed possible as recently as 2012 now seem extremely remote. I think there’s more to it than just government employment.

      • l0b0t

        For what it’s worth, I joined Army at 17 (That recruiter saw me comin’ a mile away – “Your mom tells me you like computers. There’s a great computer on the Vulcan Canon.”) as pretty lefty, hippy kid. I came out a teeth-knashing, fire-breathing, state-hating anarchist. Age has tempered that. Realizing that there will ALWAYS & FOREVER be an archy of some form was the key.

      • Viking1865

        “I think there’s more to it than just government employment.”

        As the government and their employees has gotten less and less competent, capable, and non partisan, it has become more and more arrogant, expensive, and dangerous.

        My grandfather was a federal machinist. He built satellites. I have a piece of one. He built the camera that the Apollo astronauts took to the moon. The Army and the Navy was expensive, but it held the line against the Communists. Your friendly mailman brought you your mail in a timely fashion. The public library was a place where kindly people read books and listened to lectures. The schools taught reading and writing and arithmetic.

        Now NASA can’t get to space without the Russians or a private company doing it for them. The Army can’t win wars and the Navy can’t stop running into each other. The post office is a joke. The librarian on the corner is organizing drag queen story hour. The schools are awful, and now they’re closed for two months.

        Oh, and all these people make more money than you, and they all despise you for shopping at WalMart with the money you have after all the taxes bite your paycheck. They treat you like a peasant.

      • kbolino

        they all despise you for shopping at WalMart … [and] They treat you like a peasant

        Yes, but why? When and how did society fracture so? There’s nothing new under the sun and all that, and yet the attitudes seem to be worse than ever before. Was there a tipping point?

      • Festus

        “Twas Lady Z!” She just so damn charming!

      • Festus

        “Twas Lady Z!” She’s just so damn charming!

      • PieInTheSky

        Double trouble?

      • Festus

        Yes. This is why I delete certain accounts on my phone. Stop laughing! Drunk-text is a disease!

      • Festus

        I’ll be the king of the Seniors complex in 25 years if the coranavidspactacular doesn’t kill me by then. Grandpa hits trim like nobody’s business!

    • kbolino

      Nobody is delivering groceries around here. Or, at least, nobody has the capacity to deliver en masse, so you’re not getting a delivery slot. Groceries and most other essentials are still obtained by going to the store, being around crowds (such as they may be), and buying the items manually. At least TP and paper towel is in stock again, low quality though it may be. Even pick-up is a farce, you’ll have to wait 7 days for a slot and then they’ll act like you should just have come in the store anyway.

      Are the reservations even shut down? The news doesn’t talk much about the tribal governments. I also wouldn’t be that surprised to find few protesters among various communities in this country because they’re just quietly ignoring the governor-emperors’ new laws anyway. But hey, at least we’ve discovered that if you protest for the wrong reasons, or with the wrong paraphernalia, that you’re just a bigot, an idiot, and should probably be locked up.

    • Rebel Scum

      people with guns

      Always to be a negative association. Unless it’s the cops. But cops murder the darkies. But only cops should have guns.

      yet people are acting as if they are being oppressed

      *sweeps multiple constitutional violations being made by state/local gov’ts under the rug*

      • R C Dean

        people are acting as if they are being oppressed

        Geez, who thinks being ordered not work and forced on the public dole, being allowed to leave your house only for certain limited purposes, having no right to protest, being banned from public spaces, is being oppressed?

        Real oppression is being expected to do the work in order to keep your job. H8er.

  31. Rebel Scum

    “I’m sick and tired of me and my family being attacked and harassed by the Democrat Party for putting my country before my party,” state Rep. Vernon Jones, who is black, said.

    Much tolerance. Such inclusion.

  32. The Late P Brooks

    You’re just not hitting it hard enough, cont’d

    The PPP’s original sin was not that it was available to franchises, but that it was way too small to serve all qualifying businesses. Congress thus turned a purported bailout program into a battle royale over funds, which meant that every dollar Shake Shack secured to spare its own employees was a dollar denied to a small suburban diner’s waitstaff. (The low dollar amount wasn’t the PPP’s only problem: By making loan forgiveness contingent on payroll maintenance, it left a sizable coverage gap for the worst-hit companies that had already laid off workers.)

    Industry titans are joining the corporate blame game. “I think you’ve seen some pretty shameful acts by some large companies to take advantage of the system,” said Howard Schultz, the former chairman and CEO of Starbucks. On CNBC, Mark Cuban chimed in, saying that public companies that take federal loans under the PPP will “kill the brand.”

    These critics are right in one important respect. It is not fair that large companies feast while small companies go hungry. But again, the fault lies with the program’s architects, not its players. And the choice confronting the bigger fish is not exactly easy: either risk public condemnation by taking the money, or risk your company’s future by not using every available financing channel. The former could kill your brand by making you seem heartless; the latter could kill your brand by forcing you to furlough employees.

    ——-

    During a pandemic, everything is scarce—your time, your toilet paper, grocery-delivery slots, and aggregate consumer demand—except for the federal government’s capacity to spend money. By creating a program that was designed to run out, Washington ignored this, then responded to mom-and-pop misery with big-business finger-pointing. The solution is as obvious today as it was three weeks ago: Add a zero and turn this small-business scramble into a massive government giveaway. We have nothing to lose, except the economy.

    Free money for everyone! Indiscriminate unlimited bailouts will save the economy.

    • Pope Jimbo

      So Pelosi’s blocking of a $251B bill to replenish that fund until they managed to get it up to $500B with extra pork was totes heroic?

  33. leon

    I saw a tweet where that mother who was arrested at the park was being called the “Karen”. No i realize she might fit the “Original” use of Karen, but i think its funny that the authoritarians among us don’t get the change in the meme. YOU boot lickers are the Karens. You always were.

    Of course it had all the “Yeah that is so right” comments, because people are ultimately retarded. Throw in some “I bet she didn’t care when Black people got harrased” comments, which i find irritating because you see it anytime a white person is arrested like this, there are inevitably going to be people throwing out “Well yeah but what about when a black guy gets arrested?”. Yeah it sucks when this happens to black guys. And yes there are people who don’t get that its the same. You are one of them.

    • Festus

      There was also a comment from a regular that knows her saying that she lives for this.

      • Mojeaux

        Michael Bluth. She was in his congregation.

  34. gbob

    From the only paper that matters.

    De Blasio Announces System For Reporting Social Distancing Violations: Knowledgeable Actors Reporting Edict Noncompliance (KAREN)

    NEW YORK, NY—At a press conference this morning, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio unveiled a new way that individual citizens can help enforce social distancing.

    “It is up to every citizen to watch and monitor everyone else and report to the police anything they don’t like,” de Blasio said. “That’s why we have created a new enforcement program: Knowledgeable Actors Reporting Edict Noncompliance, or KAREN for short.”

    With the new program, de Blasio is asking everyone to become a KAREN and use a special hotline to report anyone they see who isn’t following social distancing guidelines straight to the police.

    “It doesn’t matter if it looks like people aren’t hurting anyone,” de Blasio said. “If you see anyone not doing exactly what our social distancing guidelines say, be a true KAREN and report them to the police right away. And if you think any business is behaving improperly, I want you to be a KAREN and march right in there and ask to speak to a manager.”

    “I want everyone to know,” de Blasio added, “that KARENs are out there and they are not minding their own business.”

    To further entice people to be KARENs, de Blasio also announced a rewards program for reporting on fellow citizens: Special Tokens for Individuals Taking Care to Hassle Every Suspect (STITCHES).

    “Remember,” de Blasio said, “snitches get STITCHES.”

    • kbolino

      Something, something, shot in the nuts, something, drugs fell out

  35. The Hyperbole

    Oh good lord, someone remade/parodied “Dr. Roberts” (it’s an Beatles song, ya punks) into “Dr Fauci.”

    “He taughts us how to wash our hands…Dr Fauci.”

    Normally I ignore this kinda stupidity but **Head desk**.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Welcome to the Culture War.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Hyperbole was too busy being hyper-rational for its own sake to realize there’s an actual culture war out there.

        As John McClane once said, ‘Welcome to the party, pal!

        /gently and warmly welcomes Hyperbole.

        Itsokay. Let’s settled the war and we can bring logic back one day.

    • leon

      Normally I ignore this kinda stupidity but **Head desk**.

      They did it. I don’t know how they did it, but they broke Hyperbole.

      Truly we are at the End Times.

    • Gdragon

      This situation seems more like an Eleanor Rigby type of deal

      • Toxteth O’Grady

        Tomorrow never knows…

      • Gender Traitor

        Well, She isn’t Leaving Home.

    • Agent Cooper

      I’m not the world’s healthiest guy
      But some sneezed in my eye and I almost died
      …of the Rona.
      C-O-R-O-N-A Rona
      C-O-R-O-N-A Rona.

  36. Stinky Wizzleteats

    Well good on the Houston police then although many of the replies to the tweet are just downright depressing.

    • straffinrun

      The Houston Police Department just needs to be convinced. Drugs involved and they’ll change their tune.

  37. UnCivilServant

    Used to be my outlook spent most of its day on the inbox.

    Now it feels like it spends more time on the calendar so I can keep track of what meeting I’m supposed to be at next.

    Being a manager sucks.

    • PieInTheSky

      the pay is good and you don’t do any work / socialist

      • UnCivilServant

        My pay hasn’t changed and my workload increased.

      • PieInTheSky

        well if you read dilbert you learn managers do no work

    • Not Adahn

      Yes being a manager sucks, but I really need to get onto that track because someday I won’t be the smartest person in the room.

      • UnCivilServant

        I’ve run out of technical track, and I’m not sure someone whose work experience is a year on a helpdesk and tweleve years at the state can get a real job that pays in the same range.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Like she’s like a writer like for reals. Like you know what I mean, like OK?

      • pan fried wylie

        Save the tauntauns, and I oops, sksksksksks.

    • Translucent Chum

      She looks like she was cloned twice and ordered them to sit next to her and nod.

  38. Rebel Scum

    Florida man

    Daniel Uhlfelder
    @DWUhlfelderLaw

    Many of you have asked if I am willing to travel around Florida wearing Grim Reaper attire to the beaches and other areas of the state opening up prematurely. The answer is absolutely yes. Beginning May 1 we will hit the road here in state. Please retweet and spread the word.

    • Chipwooder

      Sounds like a very serious, thoughtful person whose opinions I should pay attention to.

    • straffinrun

      And people will find a fantastic way of mocking him. Sometimes I love humankind.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        He’ll be beaten if he isn’t careful. People really aren’t in the mood for that kind of clever social commentary right now.

      • Frank Dux

        Fingers crossed.

      • Translucent Chum

        He’s also doing to raise money for Dem candidates.

    • UnCivilServant

      You’ve already lost the chess match, go back to wherever you crawled out of.

    • Mojeaux

      I think it’s funny.

    • Not Adahn

      So, to make the point that everyone should be cowering in place he’s going to make lots of unnecessary travel and public appearances?

  39. Festus

    Happy news! Hummingbirds are back! Still snow on the ground and they are tinier than I remember from years past but Yay? Also bears have awakened from their ancient slumber. Asshoe!

    • PieInTheSky

      is the constant humming annoying? What tune?

      • UnCivilServant

        Flight of the Valkryes.

        Took forever to teach them.

      • Pine_Tree

        Umm, that’s actually what mine do too.

      • Don Escaped a Landslide

        Amazing

        I can never get anything smaller than a heron to handle the trombone parts

      • pan fried wylie

        Obviously, a minimum wingspan is required to work the slide.

      • Pine_Tree

        I guess multiple small birds like hummingbirds could do it by working together, but hummingbirds like to fight WAY to much to think that would work.

      • pan fried wylie

        Sparrows, I could see.

      • Shirley Knott

        But worth it!

    • Nephilium

      We’re supposed to get up into the 60’s today, so of course it has to rain all afternoon.

    • Suthenboy

      You are in Canada, arent you Festus?
      I have already gone through nearly ten pounds of sugar. We have about three dozen birds around here (Louisiana).
      I noticed in early march one bird came and hovered around the hook where we hang a feeder. I assume he knew there was supposed to be a feeder there and is a repeat visitor. I mixed up some sugar water and got it out as fast as I could. Now there is a constant buzz and they up to their usual antics.

      • PieInTheSky

        But is sugar not bad for them? Is it FDA and EPA approved to give birds sugar? Any diabetes among the birds? Insulin resistance?

      • pan fried wylie

        Should probably be fructose/glucose solution, not sucrose, right?

        Partly making a jab at HFCS-is-worse-than-sucrose-metabolically position, but also, from Wikipedia: “The main ingredients in nectar are sugars in varying proportions of sucrose, glucose, and fructose. … Nectar contains water, carbohydrates, amino acids, ions and numerous other compounds.”

        So, substituting nectar with sucrose-water is like replacing your meal of fruit with orange soda.

      • PieInTheSky

        I know some beekeepers feed sugar to bees and some think this is wrong and they should be left enough honey.

      • pan fried wylie

        Man, if only there was a glib who knew all about bees and honey.

  40. Rufus the Monocled

    “When we talk about this idea of ‘reopening society’ you know, only in America- does the President, when the President tweets about liberation, does he mean go back to work. When we have this discussion about going back or reopening, I think a lot people should just say “no”- we’re not going back to that. We’re not going back to working 70 hour weeks just so that we can put food on the table and not even feel any sort of semblance of security in our lives,” Ocasio-Cortez said.”

    What. The. Fuck.

    Which college did this illiberal nitwit go to again? They should refund her. Epic fail.

    • UnCivilServant

      Refund her? She’s their star pupil.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        “Brent Georgeson
        11 hours ago
        You should say it AOC! #GeneralStrike say you support the #GeneralStrike then get Bernie to do the same!”

        What the frick are people talking about? General strike for what? The economy has been stopped. Are they thinking they’re going to get a business that was destroyed will pay them a ‘fair wage’ now? I can’t even follow these insane ignoramuses.

        I’m glad people are pasting her in the Vice clip. Apparently Vice unlisted it because the first instinct of a prog is to censor or be a coward. Sorry Jimmy Dore, you’re an exception to your flock.

      • kbolino

        If you’ve already been declared non-essential, what is striking going to do? Just prove the designation correct?

      • Suthenboy

        They are desperate to leave the economy in ashes before November.

      • invisible finger

        I wonder who they’ll blame when their trust funds collapse.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        “GueCal Colombian Tropicals
        GueCal Colombian Tropicals
        11 hours ago (edited)
        I wonder how many of you have thought about this critically. In the 1920’s ironically 100 years ago, our country was forming unions & fighting for workers rights which have been consistently attacked & worn away since. “Right to Work” laws in many states mean most of us have no expectation of having a job tomorrow.

        In the 20´s, those people had families. They still held strikes & much worse. People were murdered, attacked, all kinds of stuff.

        Now your biggest concern is buying your kids crap as Beautiful Brown says just below. The idea of sacrificing now for a better future seems to be impossible for you to consider, but what better chance are we going to have than right after a complete shutdown of the whole damn world to force their hand? Demands made when they are not worried fall on deaf ears.

        They are worried now & willing to sacrifice lives just to get things moving again.

        I do not support any political figure, so what this chick says really has no impact on me. I have been suggesting not returning to work until our situation is improved for months.

        There seems to be a movement for this already too which you can find by following this hashtag:
        #GeneralStrike

        My thoughts are we should not return until some very specific things happen. Those unimportant people working fast food, driving trucks, nursing us back to health, should get a real income, paid time off , health insurance, sick leave, a full paycheck, ect…

        “Right to Work” laws need to be rescinded… Corporations need to lose the right to vote as people. Super pacs need to disappear. There is so much that could improve our (the working class) position.

        If you are not ready to suffer a few hardships to see change, you never wanted change in the first place.”

        I notice a lot of these avatars seem to have some connection to South America.

        These hard core socialist ideas have always been part of the South American socio-political landscape but now it’s filtering into the left-wing North American psyche. Back in the 1980s when Ed Broadbent led the NDP along with the Liberals and Democrats in the USA, none of this jargon was around.

        Now they all use this ‘living wage’ crap.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Long Live Simon Bolivar/Emiliano Zapata/Fidel/etc!

      • kbolino

        Corporations need to lose the right to vote as people

        Uh, what?

    • Chipwooder

      Boston U

      • Ozymandias

        In one swoop she destroyed all of Jon Silber’s work to make BU a ‘legitimate’ educational institution while being surrounded by Hahvard, MIT, and BC.
        What a fucking halfwit she is.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        They let the wolves in. That’s their fricken problem. Next time be more discerning as to who you let roam your academic halls.

        See Evergreen.

        There’s no way in hell at least ONE professor didn’t observe she’s an idiot.

      • invisible finger

        (((Boston U))) to the locals.

    • RAHeinlein

      I’m in resonance between upper right and lower left – the virus is of zero concern. My husband feels the same way even though his mother died from CV after suffering a stroke.

      • 23rd Century Temporal Boy

        Sounds like My Wife, unknown Etiology?

    • Pope Jimbo

      So whenever he went in to his brother’s wife he would waste the semen on the ground, so as not to give offspring to his brother. And what he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death also.

      C’mon guys! You shouldn’t need me to point out that spraying your spunk around in public is bad. You gots to aim! Make sure it all gets on their face, otherwise you are gonna get whacked.

      • Drake

        Maybe my favorite Bible story! His dad got the job done right (when he thought she was a hooker).

      • Not Adahn

        Since she took the money, she was a hooker.

      • Drake

        I thought she took his coat or something… Have to re-read.

  41. The Late P Brooks

    Which college did this illiberal nitwit go to again? They should refund her. Epic fail.

    They should have made her sign a nondisclosure agreement.

    “Who? Never heard of her.”

  42. PieInTheSky

    The new Library looking magnificent (and nearly complete) in the sunshine. We can’t wait to move in and begin to greet readers

    https://twitter.com/lampallib/status/1240957219274981378

    I don’t like it. And probably neither would Roger Scruton.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      It’s the Brutalist Meets Minecraft School of Architecture.

      • Mojeaux

        Disgusting, but still not as bad as brutalist.

        The little brick design is at least a nod to some traditional style to go with that function.

    • kbolino

      It looks like a fire house to me.

    • Chipwooder

      Looks like an ATC tower

    • Tejicano

      Well, given your affliction/lifestyle you were never going to see it in the sunshine anyway…

  43. Rebel Scum

    Casually cheating death.

    While reporting on MSNBC, @kwelkernbc
    dodges falling equipment as wind picks up outside of the White House

    • RAHeinlein

      These are the true heroes and why they are essential – #CuomoSays

  44. The Late P Brooks

    OT: The libraries are closed and XX needs a quiet place to do her schoolwork. Oops. But the Walmart management lets the kids come in on their own time and sit in the breakroom and do their schoolwork. Today is her day off and she’s going to go spend the equivalent of a shift in the Walmart breakroom to do her schoolwork. That job has made all the difference in her life. I am so happy.

    Awesome. Glad for you both.

    • Suthenboy

      Post peak ice age. The most recent ice age….the one we are still coming out of.

    • Hyperion

      Pretty cool, thanks!

  45. Rebel Scum

    Not the cats!

    In a news release, the CDC announced today that two New York area cats, who live in two different areas of the state, have come down with the virus. They didn’t catch it from their humans because their owners don’t have coronavirus.

    • PieInTheSky

      Them cats be fickle they cheat on the owners

      • leon

        Cats are the whores of the Pet world.

      • Rebel Scum

        Mine are indifferent to other people but like me.

    • PieInTheSky

      22 looks fun. Also 26.

      55 looks cute but can’t tell how fake those are

      • Q Continuum

        55 definitely goes against type in the boob department for you Pie. Maybe I’m starting to wear you down?

      • PieInTheSky

        I never had anything against boobs of a certain size as long as they are not too oversized, they are natural and sufficiently defy gravity. But I prefer shape over size and most big ones lack in the shape department. There are, off course, exceptions.

  46. Rebel Scum

    Protest and guns and freedom, oh my!

    “You’re out there with guns, with weapons strapped to your chest, saying, oh, you want to get — you’re fighting against the people who are telling you to stay at home, trying to save your lives, you’re upset with those people? In the meantime, there are people keeping your cities going, keeping your loved ones alive and you want to get a haircut?” Lemon said.

    “Who the hell do you think you are?” the CNN host continued. “What is wrong with people? I don’t understand.”

    Lemon later acknowledged protest rights, but mocked those protesting with guns and suggested they are hypocrites.

    “I don’t want to hear from those people who are out there protesting with guns, right, and that is threatening — a threatening look for people. You’re protesting with guns,” Lemon said. “Don’t — don’t criticize people who are taking a knee at a ball game, entertainment, saying, ‘I don’t want people protesting at a ball game,’ when people are who are peacefully protesting — don’t give me that when you’re out there protesting with guns and saying, ‘I want to get back to work, I want my liberty.’

    • Suthenboy

      “I don’t understand.”

      Is that what it is?

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Lemon is the stupidest person on CNN without a doubt.

      • Q Continuum

        Brian Stelter would like a word… or rather a vacant expression.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Stelter is just a gaslighter who twists stupid arguments to fit a narrative which actually takes some skill. Lemon’s an emotional parrot.

      • Rebel Scum

        +1 reliable source hack

      • Suthenboy

        Yep. There is enough Dunning-Kreuger there for the whole network.

      • Rhywun

        That’s saying something.

    • kbolino

      When a cop shoots an unarmed black “suspect”, he’s thinking the same things: I’m protecting myself and my community, and doing the job of keeping everyone safe.

      Does that make protests against his actions illegitimate?

    • leon

      don’t give me that when you’re out there protesting with guns and saying, ‘I want to get back to work, I want my liberty.’

      I know he probably said it in a way that sounds better than it reads, but still… the nerve of those people protesting (With GUNZ) for their liberty. I’m glad they had their guns. we need to do more to make bearing arms not mean “violent and threatening” the way he wants it to be. He wants it so that anyone who openly carries is inherently being violent.

      • Chipwooder

        Rich man who hasn’t missed a single paycheck, and could easily get by for some time if he did, hollering at unemployed working class ……and he is utterly convinced he and his side are 100% righteous, and caring, and benevolent.

        Talk about “false consciousness”.

    • Naptown Bill

      Don Lemon is his own rebuttal. That said, remember when Donald Trump was LITERALLY HITLER and was going to sic the brown shirts on black and brown bodies and otherkin and obviously Jews and so forth? Well shit, I guess they were right, because there are people getting stopped by police because they’re not wearing masks in public or they’re standing too close to people or they’re outside without a permit.

      You’d think the #resistance would cheer people on willing to confront the jackboots with armed resistance if need be. Huh. I wonder which side that puts Don Lemon and his fellow travelers on.

    • Tejicano

      the CNN host continued. “… I don’t understand.”

      The only statement he made that was close to the truth.

      “Don’t — don’t criticize people who are taking a knee at a ball game, entertainment, saying, ‘I don’t want people protesting at a ball game,’ when people are who are peacefully protesting — don’t give me that when you’re out there protesting with guns… ”

      DAFUQ? I’m willing to bet he doesn’t ever recognize the level of prejudice he is displaying in that statement. Just because they are carrying guns he KNOWS they dislike professional athletes who protest the national anthem.

    • R C Dean

      In the meantime, there are people keeping your cities going, keeping your loved ones alive and you want to get a haircut?”

      From what I can tell from a quick search, apparently his hair doesn’t grow at all, because its the same length now that its always been.

      I mean, no way would he still be getting it cut, right?

      • grrizzly

        With his haircut, you don’t really need a barber.

    • Suthenboy

      It aint just the Feds. They had plenty of help from state govts.

      • LJW

        Agreed, government in general would have been a better re-write

  47. Rufus the Monocled

    Good on the Houston police. Strong words. Alas….

    “Kelley Reid

    @LinaHidalgoTX
    @ArtAcevedo
    the union attacking county leadership is very unbecoming of the department.”

    Are you sure your name isn’t ‘Karen?’

    It’s amazing how people are willing to be sheep.

    • kbolino

      Given that the union endorsement is the best predictor of a sheriff’s election chances, I find that comment kind of rich.

  48. Hyperion

    “Oklahoma to reopen economy joining Georgia, Tennessee, and South Carolina, and with Texas and Florida opening up some portions.”

    Well, Gulag Barbie told the people to refuse to go back to work, so I’m sure this is going to backfire on them rednecks.

    • Toxteth O’Grady

      TX and OK could use the revenue given oil’s recent cratering.

    • Hyperion

      I’d gladly watch some CNN while the plagues descend upon their sets.

  49. Q Continuum

    Anyone who didn’t see this coming from a light-year away is an idiot. Hey normies, ready to get the State out of the marriage business altogether yet?

    https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2020/04/22/heres_polyamory_multi-partner_sexual-rights_crusade_on_the_horizon_122979.html

    It really is amazing though how fast and coordinated these activist groups are. They’ve already got a symbol *and* a flag? Jeepers. Of course they’ve also got an army of lawyers too I’m sure.

    What I’m really waiting for is the object-sexual movement to really get going. Then I can marry my house and cover all its repairs with my health insurance. And you parents out there should be waiting on pins and needles for the incest rights movement; then you can marry your kids and pass their inheritance to them tax-free.

    PS: Mormons from 150 years ago say “wut”.

    • Mojeaux

      Mormons from 150 years ago say “wut”.

      Those of us who acknowledge our history do, anyway.

      • Ozymandias

        Utah’s statehood was conditioned upon giving up polygamy.

        There was also the Reynolds case.

      • Mojeaux

        ? I know.

        The church has diligently tried to distance itself from it to the point of memory-holing it.

        Me, I say we embrace our freaky-deaky and let the flag fly.

        There are a lot of younguns in the church who don’t know anything about our history, by design.

      • Q Continuum

        Let me say first off that I don’t give a rat’s ass what these people do. The State shouldn’t be involved anyway, except in cases where children are not accounted for in the private prenuptial contract. What I do find interesting, however, is how the polygamy movement is compared to the SSM movement. They really are completely different.

        The SSM movement was actually quite socially conservative. It was taking something that had been a wild and stigmatized subculture and trying to domesticate it. In reality, there is no functional difference between an infertile heterosexual couple and a same-sex couple. Open polygamy, on the other hand, has a very long history, much longer than trad-marriage and, historically, hasn’t worked out all too well. I say “open polygamy” because, yes, people have been getting side action since the dawn of time and continue to do so. However, it was always more-or-less understood that most of the time, said side action would be limited to fleeting sexual dalliances that would not threaten home-and-hearth. OTOH, open polygamy, if widely practiced, drastically reorders society. I’m not going to assign value judgements either way, but conflating the two (socially, not legally) is foolish.

      • Ozymandias

        Islam would like a word…

      • Q Continuum

        Hence the “hasn’t worked out too well”. The status of women in traditional Islam is… suboptimal.

      • Ozymandias

        Then you’re changing the definition of “too well.” How many Muslims in the world? Over a billion, isn’t it?
        “Traditionally,” women didn’t do too well under Christianity, either. When did women get the franchise in Christian history? Weren’t women largely chattel until pretty recently?

        I’m not sure we disagree, I just think you’re argument needs some tightening and narrowing.

      • leon

        “Traditionally,” women didn’t do too well under Christianity, either. When did women get the franchise in Christian history?

        Ironically, Utah was one of the first places to grant women the right to vote…

      • Q Continuum

        By “well” I suppose I mean a society that generates prosperity, peace and generally respects individual rights. Sure, sexual rights are individual rights, hence the ability for people to obtain side action… and face the consequences of that choice.

        Making open polygamy the “norm” carries large burdens that, IMO, are incompatible with Western society *in its current incarnation*. I’ll amend my statement of “doesn’t do too well” to “incompatible with current societal organization”. Is it possible to create a society that generates prosperity, peace and respects individual rights in which the primary family structure is polygamous? Probably. Will that society look like 20-21st century North America? I doubt it.

      • leon

        Making open polygamy the “norm” carries large burdens that, IMO, are incompatible with Western society

        I’ll agree with that. Even when polygamy was practiced by the early Utah settlers, only something like 3% of men were polygamists.

      • UnCivilServant

        3% of men were polygamists.

        Married to what percent of the women?

      • Q Continuum

        See my comment below. I think we’re all more-or-less in agreement on this matter; it’s just a question, as Ozy points out, of what we mean by “good” or “functional” when it comes to the totality of a given society. It’s also key to consider how widely practiced such arrangements are. There seems to be a decent amount of evidence that true “relationship anarchy” either eventually degenerates into de facto monogamy (Oneida colony) or some kind of impoverished quasi-matriarchal society (inner cities and many hunter-gatherer tribes).

      • Ozymandias

        I didn’t want to put words in your mouth, Q, but I had intuited that “didn’t do too well” meant something more specific. I’ve spent some time in Muslim dominant societies, as well as openly known “side-action” societies, and I would tend to agree as a father of 5/6 girls: women do not get treated very well in those places. For as much as I am antagonistic to the (current) French, women owe a huge debt of gratitude to chivalry. Funny that the worst of the feminists decided they needed to “tear down the patriarchy!” If any of them had spent a little more time studying history or traveling to other countries, feminism might have gone down a different track.

      • Q Continuum

        People have all kinds of urges. They have urges to fight, steal, kill and fuck everything that walks. They also have urges to nurture, help and love. None of those urges are positive or negative in and of themselves. “Culture” in as much as such a thing exists, is the water in which the fish swim that influences which of those urges get emphasized, suppressed, redirected and shaped.

        I can say with absolute certainty that the societies in which I would personally want to live all have a family structure that is publicly monogamous. They just seem to have worked out in such a way that respects my rights and produces prosperity. Standard libertarian mantra: the individual is the building block of “society”. But an individual is influenced by their family of origin probably more than anything else. Changing the overall dynamic of that family (not just the plumbing of its constituents like SSM) will have knock-on effects. That is not a value judgement, just an acknowledgement of what I perceive to be a truism.

      • R C Dean

        Polygamy at any scale creates a class of disenfranchised young men (in the sense that they have no hope of having a family and all the benefits that go with it). If you are looking for one of the engines of dysfunction in Islam, this could be one. The Chinese, after their disastrous one-child policy and sex-selective abortions, have created their very own in a different way.

        There is no more destructive force known to humanity than a class of disenfranchised young men.

        An allowance for polygamy might not create as much of a problem, as long as polygamy remains very much a fringe thing. A social/religious expectation of polygamy will create this problem to some degree.

      • UnCivilServant

        Either constant strife and warfare was required for them to create the imbalance in population needed to supply the additional wives whether by stealing them or killing enough of their own men… or most muslims didn’t have multiple spouses.

        I suspect it varied depending upon how many foreigners were recently enslaved or forcably converted.

      • leon

        All the Abrahamic religions up until around the 600’s when the church formally forbade it.

      • leon

        Open polygamy, on the other hand, has a very long history, much longer than trad-marriage and, historically, hasn’t worked out all too well.

        I’m gonna need to see some evidence that “it hasn’t worked out too well”. Things that don’t work out too well, don’t have a tendency to stick around for so long.

      • kbolino

        A system can be stable while still being suboptimal.

        See: Monarchy

      • Q Continuum

        It stuck around because, polyamorists are absolutely right, it is natural; much more natural than monogamy. I’d present evidence that the societies that have flourished the most have been nominally monogamous. Trying to build an advanced society with open polygamy (IMO) runs into problems with simple math. You have to do something with the excess men, you can either exile them (FLDS) or kill them off in endless conflict (fundamental Islamism). Women also have to expect much less from their union since they’ll be sharing.

        Polyamory as portrayed in popular, modern Western culture is a luxury of the wealthy and can only be done if it stays in the minority. Most poor communities, especially inner-city black communities, have de facto open polygamy and the results are not good.

      • kbolino

        Wasn’t open polygamy, historically speaking, a sign of affluence? In places that tolerated it, kings and courtiers had concubines, but not the common man. Even the average Muslim man cannot expect to get multiple wives, despite Mohammed’s example.

      • Chipwooder

        Which then leads to the average Joe having reduced prospects for a relationship of his own

      • Tejicano

        The last Chief of the Comanche tribe, Quanah Parker, lived together with his 8 (IIRC) wives in Texas into the 20th century.

      • Don Escaped a Landslide

        He was told at Fort Sill that to be a good, reformed, Americanized chief, he could only keep one wife. He laughed his agreement this far: okay, so you tell the others.

        That matter was dropped.

      • Tejicano

        “okay, so you tell the others.”

        In case this isn’t clear – He told the authority who was saying he had to keep only one wife that this authority had to personally tell his other wives that they were no longer married to the chief.

    • Hyperion

      Exotic Joe / 3 Dudes 2020!

      We get to have 3 first ladies dudes!

    • Chipwooder

      I remember my father (pro-civil unions but against SSM) having exactly this conversation with my sister (pro-SSM) like 7 or 8 years ago. His point was that there can be all kinds of relationships, but marriage in particular has had a very specific meaning for most of human history, and once you start monkeying with it there is no boundry that cannot be crossed. “What happens when someone wants to marry their dog? Why wouldn’t they be able to? What about three men and two women?” and my sister rolling her eyes and telling him he was being ridiculous.

      Gotta say, Dad’s looking rather prescient now.

    • leon

      Of course it was bound to happen, and i’m glad for it. If you’ve seen the kind of poverty that exists in polygamist communities in large part because they are excluded from society, and the amount of shit their leaders get away with because you can’t go to the authorities over it without being guilty of a felony yourself…

      • Q Continuum

        The big bugaboo here is the distinction between “de facto” and “de jure”. There’s nothing stopping those polygamist communities from fully participating in society as-is, just without a government permission slip. They could have one (or none) “legal” spouse and an arbitrary number of “spirit spouses”. Just as SSM, they’re going the wrong direction; instead of lobbying for a better and/or different government permission slip, lobby to get rid of the government permission slip completely.

        I still argue that from a strictly logistical standpoint, places like Colorado City are dysfunctional not because of stigma or exclusion, but because the math doesn’t work. They have to get rid of the excess young men somehow, so they shun them (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_boys_(Mormon_fundamentalism)).

        But again, let me stress, from a principled POV (and a personal one) I don’t care what they do. However, to claim that, *if widely practiced*, open polygamy wouldn’t reorder society much more than SSM I think doesn’t add up.

      • leon

        I know all about the Lost boys, i know several of them personally. I agree that the system they have is part of the problem, but the living as unprosecuted known felons, does contribute to the way things are in those towns too. The boys were chased out in part because they wouldn’t go with Jeffs program, and were rebellious. I don’t know if Jeffs would have had such a tight grip on the community if they weren’t completely abandoned by the legal system as well…

      • Don Escaped a Landslide

        1 / Bull Connor

        every evil ever perpetrated was aided and abetted by the boys in blue
        when you can’t shoot back, bad law is still the law

      • Q Continuum

        Not disputing that, you’re absolutely right.

        Even absent Jeffs’ tyrannical rule and harassment by the State, what do you do with them? Low status males with no realistic mating opportunities tend to become… problematic. They do things like strap on suicide vests.

      • leon

        I don’t know. It’s a valid question.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      All I know is where does Cody find all that energy?

    • Not Adahn

      I could care less, but I’d have to make an effort to do so.

      Primarily because I will never concern myself with what’s good or best for “Society,” “Civilization,” “Culture,” or any other abstract concept/mental shortcut/predictive model that conflicts with actual human beings.

  50. Tundra

    This looks a lot like leadership to me.

    When asked how she made her decision to not issue a closure of businesses in South Dakota and to not issue a statewide stay-at-home order like many other governors did when the crisis was beginning, Noem told Breitbart News that she was focused on providing the best and most scientific response to the coronavirus crisis.

    “I looked at our state and our people here and knew they would take on the personal responsibility that would be necessary to protect their families and their communities,” Noem said. “I had a real honest conversation with them and told them what we were facing and that I needed them to make some decisions to follow CDC guidelines and that by doing that we could look at how this virus would impact our state and peak hospitalization rates going forward and do it together.”

    “I’m not one who believes in a one-size-fits-all approach, and even in South Dakota I’ve got pretty diverse communities,” she noted. “I’ve got some that are pretty sparse with not many people and then I’ve got some that are big cities as well. So I wanted to leave some flexibility there for local folks to make decisions but also recognizing that when it comes down to it that these guys had to take on the personal responsibility that is necessary to really go after this virus.”

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      That monster oughtta be in prison.

      • Q Continuum

        Worse than Hitler. Like, totes.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      Wow.

      Excellent.

    • R C Dean

      If Trump wants to shake things up for the election, make her his VP. Gives him an answer to the “but, vagina” crowd.

      Downside: she’s not from a state in play (I don’t think). But maybe in these troubled times, that old formula doesn’t count as much any more.

  51. The Late P Brooks

    HEROIC Kentucky governor (a Democrat, oddly enough) saves millions of lives, as plague ravages neighboring Tennessee

    Kentucky had reported 3,373 Covid-19 cases with 185 deaths as of Wednesday. Though it is not out of the woods, experts say the state appears to be flattening the curve.

    ——-

    Tennessee had reported 7,842 confirmed cases and 166 deaths as of Wednesday. Charts created by Kentucky resident and educator Stephanie Jolly comparing infection rates and numbers in Tennessee and Kentucky show a steeper rise in cases in Tennessee while Kentucky maintained a flatter curve. They have received a fair deal of attention in Kentucky recently as a sign that social distancing efforts have paid off, though there are caveats: Tennessee has conducted more testing and has a higher population and Winter, the epidemiologist, says it’s more useful to look at hospitalizations, though that data is harder to acquire.

    The retards at the Guardian are trying to portray Beshear as some sort of humanitarian genius. About all I see is they did a lot more testing in Tennessee. The whole thing is just another “I saw exactly what I was looking for” story, as far as I can tell. There does not appear to be a massively different outcome from one state to the other.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Tennessee has a pop of about 7 mil while Kentucky has about 4.5 mil and Tenn has more large urban areas. Of course Tennessee is going to have more cases.

      • Don Escaped a Landslide

        Normalized curves by state are out there for anyone who cares. Scroll down to the last chart and pick TN and KY. KY (and MS) is twice as bad as TN per capita.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Neat, thanks Don.

    • Viking1865

      Yeah there’s zero differences between TN and KY. None at all. Memphis doesn’t exist.

    • Chipwooder

      So, in other words, Kentucky has more deaths with a much smaller population? Wow, Andy Beshear is a fuckin’ hero!

    • Frank Dux

      Andy Beshear can suck my balls

    • R C Dean

      Oddly, Tennessee has fewer deaths. Huh.

  52. Toxteth O’Grady

    Two Qs:

    What does one call an anti-Karen, either male or female?

    Who on earth can eat as much ice cream as the Pelosi household apparently does?

    • Mojeaux

      What does one call an anti-Karen, either male or female?

      A deplorable.

    • JD is Unemployed

      I thought Nancy Five Scoops had been cutting back in recent years? Maybe she got a tapeworm.

      • Shirley Knott

        Breaking news: Adam Schiff’s species finally identified.

    • Hyperion

      “What does one call an anti-Karen, either male or female?”

      Anti-Karenite

      Or, racist climate denier (that one works to describe all deplorables).

    • Q Continuum

      I’m thinking Nancy’s diet consists of nothing by vodka tonics and ice cream.

      Well, that and the living souls of her victims.

    • Toxteth O’Grady

      I spose. I was kinda thinking of equivalent first names though: Travis? (D)wayne?

      JD, you funny.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      A misogynist, Nazi is also acceptable.

    • Drake

      I’ll always answer to Shitlord.

    • Agent Cooper

      “Who on earth can eat as much ice cream as the Pelosi household apparently does?”

      A better of yours who is allowed to have her family visit her on Easter.

  53. Sean

    Road construction has resumed on my daily commute. *sad face*

    This also corresponded with 3 state troopers parked along the route to discourage speeding. *sadder face*

  54. Rufus the Monocled

    “Neither Greenpeace, nor Greta Thunberg, nor any other individual or collective organization have achieved so much in favor of the health of the planet in such a short time,” Spanish scientist Martín López Corredoira crowed on the Science 2.0 blog.

    “A miracle happened . . . It is certainly not very good for the economy in general, but it is fantastic for the environment.”

    Evil.

    Death cult.

    https://nypost.com/2020/04/22/climate-activists-cheer-coronavirus-misery-in-name-of-environment-devine/

    • JD is Unemployed

      With that attitude I’m surprised more of those who talk like that haven’t Heaven’s Gated themselves for the good of the planet. But, no, it’s always others that have to suffer for their cause.

    • Naptown Bill

      So I wonder where they stand on the Holocaust. Fewer people, but those carbon emissions…

    • Suthenboy

      That is who they are and always were – misanthropes. Well, death and misery for everyone but themselves that is.

    • Hyperion

      Evil.

      Death cult.

      Yes

    • Q Continuum

      This should surprise no one; they are Millenarians. Every Millenarian cult must have an apocalypse or deus ex machina in which everything is changed and their new world vision is realized.

    • R C Dean

      Yup. Ginning up people to plead on Twitter or wherever for Michelle to run.

      Because the last former first lady did so well.

  55. The Late P Brooks

    “I’m not one who believes in a one-size-fits-all approach, and even in South Dakota I’ve got pretty diverse communities,” she noted. “I’ve got some that are pretty sparse with not many people and then I’ve got some that are big cities as well. So I wanted to leave some flexibility there for local folks to make decisions but also recognizing that when it comes down to it that these guys had to take on the personal responsibility that is necessary to really go after this virus.”

    Poor, deluded, feeble minded woman, brainwashed by the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy. Why can’t she be a smart, independent thinker, like that AOC lady from Brooklyn, New York?

    • Tundra

      It gets worse:

      It was a decision that I made. The facts on the ground here did not support shelter-in-place,” she said. “We just didn’t have the spread. For me personally, I took an oath to uphold our state Constitution. I took an oath when I was in Congress to uphold the United States Constitution. So I believe in people’s freedoms and liberties and I always balance that with every decision that I make as governor. I get overly concerned with leaders who take too much power in a time of crisis because I think that’s how we directly lose our country someday by leaders overstepping their proper role.”

      Chick is gonna get red-flagged, talking like that.

      • Hyperion

        The media may take a day or two away from TDS to focus on attacking her. That’s how bad she is, I tell you.

        Of course, now they have another uppity negro getting off the plantation on their hands, so not sure…

      • Drake

        Chick may well get my vote in the 2024 primaries.

      • Rebel Scum

        Would. And would vote for her.

      • Tejicano

        I wood vote for her too.

      • Hyperion

        The leaders of states who reopen are going to wind up being heroes, much to the dismay of the left. And the main reason is that people will see other states going back to normal and people going back to work and that will amplify their perception of their own misery in this bullshit. Natives will grow more restless, pressure on the lockdown cheerleaders will increase rapidly.

        There needs to be a reckoning come down on the assholes who have destroyed people’s hope. And if there isn’t, we may as well just get used to this.

      • KSuellington

        Oh please dear god may you be right. That would be a bright ray of sunshine at the end of this sewer tunnel we presently occupy.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      2024

      • Hyperion

        Not a real woman. /dems

  56. Rebel Scum

    Green New Deal

    A high-profile climate activist, Vice President Gore founded The Climate Reality Project and works exclusively on environmental issues. During his virtual endorsement of a fellow former vice president, Gore suggested that if elected, Biden should ban gasoline-powered vehicles. This radical proposal is a provision present in the Green New Deal. Despite his continued promise to hold moderate policy stances, Biden agreed with Gore

    Tbf Biden probably doesn’t even know what he agreed to.

    • Hyperion

      He agreed to whatever his handlers told him to agree to. He somewhere in the back of his feeble mind, realizes that much. At least until he forgets it again.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Gore definitely qualifies as evil.

      He knows exactly what he’s proposing and how it will hurt the populace and he plans to profit off it.

      He’s a con artist of the highest order.

    • kbolino

      The Climate Reality Project

      How many predictions from “An Inconvenient Truth” have held up so far? It wasn’t supposed to be a batting average.

      • Hyperion

        Zero. That’s exactly one less than any.

    • Count Potato

      LOL

  57. RAHeinlein

    WHO reported that 50% of European CV deaths are from long-term care facilities.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      That’s not surprising at all, this disease is very deadly for those with underlying conditions and the elderly.

  58. Rhywun

    Interesting look at the shitshow in NYC. Surprisingly, folks who are dependent on the government for everything seem to be the hardest hit.

    • PieInTheSky

      everything is structural these days.

    • RAHeinlein

      Excellent link – thanks. Didn’t realize homeless meant living with other family members…

      “There are two categories of homeless students: those who live in shelters, numbering around 36,000, and those who are “doubled up,” whose families have moved in with distant relatives or friends after losing their home.”

    • leon

      The New York City school system serves 1,126,501 students, making it by far the largest school system in the country. Of those students, about 750,000 live at or below the poverty line, and 114,000 (10 percent) are considered homeless.

      I’ll say this: I’ve been to NYC once. So i have no reference on this, but it sounds really implausible that 1 in 10 kids is homeless.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Definitions matter, particularly when you’re talking government classifications that involve federal funding

      • RAHeinlein

        From the article – homeless defined as “families have moved in with distant relatives or friends after losing their home.”

        So, if one of my adult sons lives with me he could be counted as homeless?

      • Tejicano

        Does it matter if they aren’t adults just yet?

      • UnCivilServant

        It’s probably “Have you ever slept outdoors or in a shelter?”

      • pan fried wylie

        “I went camping once…”

        “HOMELESS!”

      • Rhywun

        Who knows. Deblasio and friends certainly have an interest in pumping up the numbers, as sick as that is.

    • Drake

      In my probably biased mind, NYC is a kind of disney world for the rich and hipsters. If you are truly rich, it has everything you want (unless you want fresh air and open space). The CEO of my last company decided to live their despite our headquarters being located in one of the richest towns in New Jersey.

      To cater to the rich, there is a massive underclass of service workers who make decent money by normal standards, but in NYC live in near poverty.

      And not much in between. The middle-class there is small and usually commuting in from the outer-boroughs or NJ.

      • pan fried wylie

        (unless you want fresh air and open space)

        Penthouses.

      • Drake

        Or the Hamptons.

      • Tejicano

        During my last business trip to NYC I was speaking Spanish more than I usually do in Albuquerque.

  59. Rebel Scum

    No resuscitation for you!

    New York state just issued a drastic new guideline urging emergency services workers not to bother trying to revive anyone without a pulse when they get to a scene, amid an overload of coronavirus patients.

    While paramedics were previously told to spend up to 20 minutes trying to revive people found in cardiac arrest, the change is “necessary during the COVID-19 response to protect the health and safety of EMS providers by limiting their exposure, conserve resources, and ensure optimal use of equipment to save the greatest number of lives,’’ according to a state Health Department memo issued last week.

    First responders were outraged over the move.

    • PieInTheSky

      yet excess total deaths are attributed to coronavirus.

      • Rebel Scum

        win-win

    • Rhywun

      That’s been rescinded already. Also, it never applied in NYC and EMT’s said they would refuse anyway.

  60. Mojeaux

    Glibbies: I am done with Mozilla Thunderbird. Done, I tell you.

    Can you suggest alternative email clients? I’m willing to go through the pain and mess of changing now.

      • Mojeaux

        Now almost constant constellation of glitches. One or two occasionally I just dealt with. I only consoder changing anything when it gets bad enough that I can’t work.

    • Naptown Bill

      I use Mailbird and I’m pretty happy with it. It’s not overloaded with features I don’t use but it’s got more going on then just a barebones mail client. I use Slack for work and it integrates with that, which is nice. It’s not free, but it’s something like $15 a year or $40 forever, and there’s a free trial.

      https://www.getmailbird.com/

      • Mojeaux

        I downloaded that but never got around to installing it. Now I’m ready to do something about it.

      • Mojeaux

        I remember why I didn’t go forward with it. I had to upgrade the .NET and I didn’t feel like doing it right then.

    • Rhywun

      Yeah, Thunderbird never did seem to get the attention it needed.

      • Mojeaux

        Which is a shame. It has one plugin (bulk export emails) that I depend upon heavily and that’s the biggest reason I haven’t let it go yet.

    • Q Continuum

      Any reason you can’t use Outlook? I know, I know… Microsoft.

      But I think it works pretty darn well.

    • robc

      I haven’t used it in…oh…7 years now, but mutt used to work for me. I had a pretty good set up on it at one time. Split things up into folders nicely for me (that was mostly the procmailrc, not mutt, but still).

  61. The Late P Brooks

    While paramedics were previously told to spend up to 20 minutes trying to revive people found in cardiac arrest, the change is “necessary during the COVID-19 response to protect the health and safety of EMS providers by limiting their exposure, conserve resources, and ensure optimal use of equipment to save the greatest number of lives,’’ according to a state Health Department memo issued last week.

    Just put a plastic bag over the patient’s head. We’ll get health care costs under control if it kills you.

  62. commodious spittoon

    Has the idea been kicked around yet how things would be different under Obama or some other Democrat? We almost certainly wouldn’t be seeing the newsroom hysterics or temper-tantrums at press briefings. I don’t think there’d be as much of a totalitarian freakout on the local and state levels. I think the death toll would be much higher—not astronomical, but higher—and we simply wouldn’t worry about it. We certainly wouldn’t be calling the president a murderer with blood on his hands. Am I crazy? Am I overestimating how much Trump has broken people’s brains?

    • Naptown Bill

      You mean like H1N1?

      • robc

        Exactly. No one shut anything down for it. And it started here (well, probably in Mexico, but close enough).

      • Chipwooder

        In fairness, hasn’t WuFlu killed like 4X as many people as H1N1 in the US?

      • robc

        Yeah, somewhere between 8800 and 18300. So about 1/4th.

    • PieInTheSky

      totalitarian freakouts are in many non trump countries

      • invisible finger

        Exactly. The WHO triggered the freakout.

      • invisible finger

        I should add that the spike in cases/deaths in Washington/Seattle was the first domino in the states freaking out and shutting everything down. The National Emergency declarations for H1N1 and for C19 read like boilerplate. But since there was no reported spike in deaths anywhere, no states freaked out over H1N1. So the state freakouts over C19 would have happened no matter which chap was on duty at the White House because there were actual unusual increases in deaths.

      • R C Dean

        Disagree.

        With Obama in the White House, there would be no shrieking media urging panic and predicting/hoping for a catastrophe to hang on the President. Instead it would have been “Not to worry, Obama’s got this.” There would be no push to crash the economy; anyone who was demanding a lockdown would have been marginalized/ignored.

        Bizarrely, under Obama this probably would have been handled much better.

      • Rhywun

        Well, it is an international movement.

    • invisible finger

      The newsroom hysterics and freakouts wouldn’t be happening, but the dishonesty in the reported number would remain. There’s no way Tennessee, Georgia, and South Carolina would be opening up, military units would be sent in to ensure they didn’t. The totalitarian freakout would probably be jacked up – they’d be praising Obama for lives saved or created.

      • Fatty Bolger

        ^^^ This exactly.

    • grrizzly

      The only way to mollify the US propaganda machine is to put a Democrat in the White House. So, if you care about the newsroom hysterics and temper-tantrums, vote Democrat. Or you can ignore the propaganda machine, though other people won’t.

  63. Naptown Bill

    On a technical note, is anyone else getting 504 Gateway Timeouts after every single comment post? Or is it just me?

    • RAHeinlein

      Only if I don’t refresh after posting.

    • robc

      Its just you.

      Just kidding, see Technical Difficulties thread from last night.

      • Mojeaux

        LOL You beat me to it.

    • leon

      Yes. It is just the state of things right now. SP is working on it, but it is a particularly difficult bug.

      • Naptown Bill

        Yeah, server stuff is the worst. I’m not complaining, I just want to make sure it’s not something going sideways on my end. The ‘rona seems to be infecting our network traffic around here, what with everyone suddenly staying home and bingeing Friends all day.

      • Count Potato

        I’ve been getting for over a week, so it’s something on your end.

        Also, no need to watch Friends. HBO is streaming a bunch of their shows for free.

      • Count Potato

        I mean not something on your end.

    • Agent Cooper

      I get timeouts, and then drugs fall out of my ass.

  64. Chipwooder

    Question – since the story of the guy who died from ingesting fish tank cleaner has vanished completely, is it safe to assume now that he was in fact murdered by his wife?

    • The Hyperbole

      Didn’t she also take the fish cleaner and end up in the hospital? Failed murder/suicide maybe, or do you think she lied about taking it and faked her illness right into critical care?

      • Q Continuum

        Maybe she just didn’t take as much to provide cover for her explanation?

        Either way, I find it very hard to believe that it wasn’t either straight murder, murder/suicide or a suicide pact. If they truly thought that it would prevent coronavirus and were going off Trump’s word then… I got nuthin’.

      • Chipwooder

        That’s what I would assume – large dose for the husband, small dose for herself. Enough to make her sick, not enough to kill her. Kind of like the husband on a Dateline episode who gave himself two flesh wounds while shooting his wife to death, making it appear as if he were also a victim rather than the killer.

      • The Hyperbole

        Is that the kind of thing one can determine? Seems pretty ballsy either way, taking just enough to be placed in critical care but not a lethal dose. Maybe she only guessed, but if she’s that dumb she may also be just dumb enough to eat fish cleaner to kill the Covid-19.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      A quick search doesn’t show an arrest. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if she’s being investigated though.

      • Q Continuum

        LOL.

        I’m stealing that.

  65. KSuellington

    I’ve been saying for a couple years now that Harris will be the VP pick. I still think she should be considered the betting favorite token minority female that Joe gets to stand behind. I would put Klobuchar as second and Warren as third. God help us if they manage to pull the win out their ass. (And yes, I realize we are fucked either way, but we at least stand a better chance of some economic rebound under BOM).

    • Count Potato

      BOM?

      • invisible finger

        Bill Of Materials

        Er, Bad Orange Man

      • UnCivilServant

        No, you had it right the first time. I’m juggling too many BoMs right now, and they’re bills of material.

    • Q Continuum

      My guess is Special K. Harris alienates some (small, but nonzero) portion of the progs with her law-and-order boner. She also buys nothing regionally; Cali is already a lock. Special K is milquetoast and a blank slate people can project onto. She also has the “you betcha!” Midwestern pedigree to try and win back WI and MI, states Senile Joe has to win.

      • Don Escaped a Landslide

        buys nothing regionally; Cali is already a lock

        by George I think he’s got it

      • leon

        Also Harris burnt the bridge significantly with Biden during the first debate. Even if Biden wants her to be VP, that will make good hay for Trump team.

    • Q Continuum

      Thicc sounds so much better than “fat and lazy from binging on Oreos”.

      Would though.

    • Hyperion

      Someone stop this crazy. No one can know how much sodium is in that stuff. Putting lives in danger!

      • Agent Cooper

        Kanye is giving away 300k meals in LA from Chik-Fil-A.

        WHAT A MONSTER!

    • KSuellington

      That’s why they are still wearing their scrubs. After a twenty hour workday they take three and a half hours to protest and then a fifteen minute nap and a sandwich and back to the trenches.

      • Q Continuum

        Scrubs that are littered with germs that they’re dragging outside with them. Who’s putting whom at risk?

      • Don Escaped a Landslide

        First Wife was a trauma nurse. I firmly believe that if you need to wear scrubs, you damned well better take that shit off and shower before leaving work. If you don’t need to wear scrubs, you shouldn’t.

        * pulls on cowboy boots and runs to grocery store *

      • invisible finger

        That is s.o.p. at some hospitals. Should probably be s.o.p. at nursing homes, too.

    • Viking1865

      “Kristen, meanwhile clutched a sign reading ‘Sign up here to DIE for the economy’, an ironic jibe at the crowd’s willingness to enlist in a protest amid a global pandemic, while healthcare workers are given no such choice.”

      Wait in the UK are nurses and doctors actually slaves?

      • Count Potato

        I think this was in Arizona.

      • Viking1865

        I assumed the “an ironic jibe at the crowd’s willingness to enlist in a protest amid a global pandemic, while healthcare workers are given no such choice” was the Daily Mail writing. But I guess it could be Nurse Ratched.

        That was in Virginia. The younger cuter nurse was AZ. The doctor and his wife the retired nurse were out front of the Capitol in Richmond.

    • invisible finger

      Sounds to me like the nurses are trying to infect the protesters.

    • The Other Kevin

      So once again, the narrative has somehow changed. Are we still trying to bend the curve, or are we trying to get to 0 infections and 0 deaths?

      • Tres Cool

        Based on the bit I heard of our governor’s address yesterday (the bile stopped right at the top of my throat), seems Ohio is trying to ensure nobody is ever sick again, from anything. Ever.

      • commodious spittoon

        It’s enraging how much the mission has crept. We can’t accept the possibility of medical triage causing unnecessary deaths, but deaths from suicide/substance abuse/spousal abuse due to an economy in free-fall are perfectly fine. They’re probably mostly deplorables anyway.

    • Rhywun

      A counter-protester wears a Trump/Pence Out Now sticker over her face mask

      Politicize everything.

    • R C Dean

      I don’t get this at all. Why are the nurses out protesting?

      Because they’ve been laid off and have nothing else to do?

      If they are wearing their hospital-issue scrubs, they should be arrested for petty theft. Most hospitals issue scrubs, and require you to change out when your shift is over. They are hospital property. Taking them outside of the hospital is stealing them.

  66. The Late P Brooks

    In my probably biased mind, NYC is a kind of disney world for the rich and hipsters. If you are truly rich, it has everything you want (unless you want fresh air and open space).

    That’s what the cabin” at the Yellowstone Club is for.

    • Q Continuum

      You mean you don’t summer there? It’s simply *faaaaaaaaabulous*.