Thursday Morning Links

by | Aug 13, 2020 | Daily Links | 474 comments

Good morning my Glibs and Gliberinas!  And what a beautiful morning it always is!

 

A lot of people questioned Trump’s nickname of Kamala, but I think it actually is apt.  The women is just another Hillary, a heartless power hungry psycho who would do or say anything to rise up in the ranks.

 

New memos disclose relentless pressure by Biden-connected Ukrainian firm.

 

Want to have your crime ignored by the mainstream national media?  Be black and commit the largest mass shooting of the year or be black and execute a child.

 

The most dangerous roads in America.  I had the pleasure of having to drive #1 on my daily commute for two years.

 

True patriots.

 

That is 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.

474 Comments

    • Banjos

      Mornin’

  1. leon

    Morning banjos!

    @hyperbole, just read the comic. Really well done. Sorry I missed it last night.

    • Banjos

      Mornin’

    • Festus' Mustache

      Hyperbole is Jack and Rosebud is his sled.

  2. Shpip

    If there’s one problem in America the media love reporting about, it’s mass shootings. Except, of course, if it happens in an inner city.

    To journos, scary black rifle = bad. Scary black shooter = victim of systemic racism lashing out.

    • WTF

      But you might think they would still take the opportunity to blame the guns. I guess not when it might cause a questioning of narratives.

      Mornin’ Banjos!

      • Banjos

        Mornin’

    • Grosspatzer

      Black Lives Matter. A plague of Black Deaths, not so much.

      Mornin’, Banjos.

      • Banjos

        Mornin’

      • Bobarian LMD

        A Small Number Of Specific Black Lives Matter.

        SNOSBLM.

    • juris imprudent

      Block party in SE DC attended by hundreds – does not fit the narrative.

  3. robc

    If and when I go back to going to work, #3 is the major part of my daily commute. It isn’t the annoying part though. And on the way home, I usually take a parallel, more peaceful route most of the way.

    • robc

      The only time I have ever seen a car roll over live was on that road. I was making a right turn onto 17, a truck was making the opposite left onto 17, cut it short, hit the center island at full speed and flipped over 2 or 3 times right in my rear view mirror. It was freaky. He was fine.

    • UnCivilServant

      Their metrics struck me as off.

      For a road itself to be deadly, it should have a higher rate of fatalities per vehicle-mile driven. Some of these roads are just crowded or really long, and thus racked up high absolute numbers.

      • robc

        I agree, but I assume any list like that is mostly stupid.

      • Spartacus

        After the first few, I didn’t really see any metrics. I think it’s mostly folklore. Not saying it’s wrong.

      • Shpip

        I thought the same thing, especially when I saw #2 (US1 in FL). You have a road that goes from the Georgia border to Key West, and is being driven on at any given moment by impatient commuters, drunk beachgoers, lost tourists, befuddled retirees, clueless snowbirds, and Florida Man. You’re going to get some accidents.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Any metric that doesn’t include ‘per miles driven’ is pure bullshit.

        Some of those roads see millions of total miles a day.

        One 10 mile stretch of I-45 thru Houston averages more than 60K cars per day, so that’s 600K miles driven every day.

    • robc

      I see #17 is also local to me, but it is not part of my commute. I chose where I lived wisely to avoid that.

    • Drake

      South Carolina has a couple of crazy roads. Route 501 in Conway and Myrtle Beach for instance. It’s kind of a highway, but there are also stop lights and people randomly enter and exit the road from all sides. It’s like Rt. 46 in NJ but worse.

      • RBS

        I avoid 501 at all costs. The traffic pattern is fucked up. The drivers are fucked up.

      • Drake

        I’d like to if there was another way to get to Coastal Carolina.

      • RBS

        Headings towards Conway from the beach you can take 544. Depending on where you are coming from it might not save much, if any, time but at least you won’t be sitting in traffic.

    • Rhywun

      My hometown was famous for a highway interchange that was so dangerous they rebuilt the whole thing. You had to quickly swerve across multiple lanes to navigate the thing. Probably wouldn’t rank on one of these listicles numbers-wise, though.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Highway 31W in KY used to be known as the Dixie-Dieway. It was on record as the most dangerous stretch of Highway in the US

        Up into the ’70s, there were stretches of the road that were still 3 lane.

        One northbound, one southbound and one shared for passing and left turns (and running into another oncoming car).

  4. The Late P Brooks

    Donald Trump, bird murderer

    A federal judge referenced the literary classic “To Kill A Mockingbird” when striking down a Trump administration policy that she said upended decades of protections for birds.
    Judge Valerie Caproni ruled late Tuesday against the Trump administration’s interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act to “only criminalize affirmative actions,” rather than incidental acts. The ruling cites an example of the distinction offered by the administration: Knocking down a barn that contains owl nests would no longer be covered by the treaty if killing the owls was not the reason for demolishing the barn.
    “It is not only a sin to kill a mockingbird, it is also a crime,” Caproni wrote, referencing the Harper Lee novel.
    She said the Interior Department’s 2017 reinterpretation of the century-old law means “many mockingbirds and other migratory birds that delight people and support ecosystems throughout the country will be killed without legal consequence.”

    He wants to kill all the birds. For profitz!

    • ruodberht

      How is To Kill a Mockingbird not canceled? BELIEVE ALL WOMEN

      • Cancelled

        Learn to victimhood stack. White woman from the south accusing black man of rape =racist oppressor = liar. If accused = white = bleeve all wamyns

      • Animal

        If accused = white = bleeve all wamyns

        Unless the accused has a “D” after their name.

    • UnCivilServant

      So He supports windmills?

      • Certified Public Asshat

        And solar panels I guess.

      • Bobarian LMD

        Streamer?

        Well you know you had it comin’ to you,
        Well now there’s not a lot I can do

    • Breet Pharara

      I must be psychic. I’d never heard the name Valerie Caproni before, and yet I was able to correctly predict which president appointed her just based on the ruling. See if you can do it as well.

      • Viking1865

        If you weren’t sure, you knew once you saw her picture.

    • leon

      I can’t wait till Harry Potter is quoted in legal rulings.

      • ruodberht

        I was just thinking that – TKaM is a previous generation’s holy book, to be cited at every opportunity.

      • Festus' Mustache

        Never mention the unauthorized sequel (prequel) that got shamed and cancelled.

      • juris imprudent

        I served on a jury (civil action) and the plaintiff attorney quoted TKaM to us about doing what was right. After the verdict was returned, I told his partner in the lobby that that went over really poorly with us.

      • Cancelled

        Today you are supposed to use “Now imagine she is white”

    • Count Potato

      The mockingbird’s conservation status is “least concern”.

      • invisible finger

        It’s also non-migratory (for the most part).

      • Cancelled

        The migratory bird act covers freaking robins. You know, the birds you will find several of in basically every yard in America.

    • WTF

      Well, I guess this overturns Chevron deference?

    • Rebel Scum

      Now do wind/solar farms.

  5. Count Potato

    “2 Highway 1 in Florida ”

    Only #2? Looks like Florida Man needs to steal more cars.

    Good morning, Banjos.

    • Banjos

      Mornin’ tuber

    • Spartacus

      US 1 is something like 500 miles long in Florida. Of course it’s going to have a lot of fatal crashes. And if you count carjackings in Deerfield beach/Delray/Ft lauderdale, it’s probably the most personally riskiest. I’d bet a lot of the fatal crashes are in the keys.

  6. Stinky Wizzleteats

    “The women is just another Hillary”

    https://youtu.be/E7gE63gltDI

    She certainly has the irritating cackle down, I’ll give her that. Sounds a villain in an old Disney film.

    • Festus' Mustache

      Cruella Deville and Ursula. I can’t un-see that.

    • hayeksplosives

      Reminiscent of old tapes of Hilary cackling about getting her client, an accused rapist, off Scott free. No problem there, that was her job, but she did it by destroying the witness (the victim) on the stand and delighted in that fact.

      • Count Potato

        She liked accused rapists so much she married one.

      • The Last American Hero

        Getting the accused acquitted was her job, even if it means going after the victim. But to a non-sociopath lawyer, that’s the kind of case where you go home, crack open a bottle, and spend some time wondering why you got into this profession. It’s not the kind of case where you cackle in delight like the Wicked Witch of the West.

      • prolefeed

        To give credit where credit is due:

        Of all the things I could hate about Hillary, holding the state accountable for not meeting their burden of proof, after bringing charges against someone who has the legal presumption of innocence – that’s not gonna make my top 1,000 list.

        Are you certain that you know the details of the case well enough to know the jury got it wrong, that there was no reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime? Because if the client didn’t actually do it, then I could see a defense lawyer being delighted that they prevented a miscarriage of justice.

    • Rebel Scum

      She is going to murder a bunch of puppies to make a fur coat.

  7. Festus' Mustache

    Mornin’ Banjos. That tune was perfect accompaniment in these trying times. Nicely dealt.

    • Banjos

      Mornin’

  8. The Late P Brooks

    You keep saying that

    Trump is heading into fall and winter months that could prove even more perilous for the nation, with the spread of Covid-19 coinciding with flu season — a dangerous combination public health officials have long been dreading.

    “The fall could be incredibly gruesome,” said Yale School of Medicine epidemiologist Gregg Gonsalves, adding that the Trump administration largely squandered the summer months, leaving the nation no better protected than it was in June. “Somebody’s going to have to explain it to me, 10 years from now, why they would make all these bad choices.”

    Please provide us with a detailed list of those “bad choices”.

    • leon

      ^^^ I always wonder what they want trump to do? Go Full Melbourne on them?

      • Festus' Mustache

        They stand in front of the mirror and say “Hillary Won The Popular Vote!” three times and expect Herself to magically appear as POTUS. Have you not been paying attention?

      • UnCivilServant

        How many votes did she get if we remove the fraudulent ones?

      • Rebel Scum

        And the entire vote disparity was accounted for in CA.

      • prolefeed

        It was accounted for in LA county. Excluding that county, Trump got more votes than Hillary in the U.S.

        And LA is in a Dark Blue state with a Top Two primary system, where anyone inclined to vote for Trump knew their electoral college votes were going to Hillary anyway, and the rest of the candidates on the ballot might have all been Democrats. Why bother showing up for that shitshow?

      • Ted S.

        I remember him suggesting that with New York City, and Andrew Cuomo having a shitfit.

      • Breet Pharara

        Was that before or after he said they couldn’t have responded better because they were basing their decisions on the information that the virus came from China when it really came from Europe?

      • Rufus the Monocled

        New Zealand and Australia are OBSCENE.

        They’re the opposite of Sweden.

        Two very stupid countries. It blows my mind they think lockdowns are a viable strategy.

      • Hyperion

        Well, it is a viable strategy to make the sheeple more compliant.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      He didn’t wave a magic wand and make the virus go away. Alternatively, he didn’t force a one size fits all federal response down the states’ throats that would have had them calling him a fascist. They yearn for a top down strongman solution and Trump the Tyrant has steadfastly refused to give it to them.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      I don’t get it. Shouldn’t the GOVERNORS be prepping?

      I swear. If nothing happens I’m going to rip such a huge one on the medical community like I’ve never tore into anyone.

    • Count Potato

      Resist everything trump does, try to undermine his authority at every opportunity, then complain when he doesn’t get things done.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Trump should try the Costanza strategy and do the opposite of anything he’d naturally say or do.

        Love that episode. Especially when he threatens the two punks in the theatre.

    • Rhywun

      Seems to me that Democrat governors’ strategy to prolong this into the fall worked exactly as planned. ??‍♂️

    • Rebel Scum

      Covid-19 coinciding with flu season

      Curious dynamic, that is.

      • R C Dean

        It already did. And apparently the ‘Vid cures the flu, because flu numbers dropped off a cliff when the ‘Vid showed up.

    • Hyperion

      “Please provide us with a detailed list of those “bad choices”.

      Let me just cut to the chase here.

      Trump=Republican=Bad Choices.

      You don’t need no details, because EXPERTS!

      Any more questions?

  9. SDF-7

    Morning, Banjos!

    I can easily believe the Perimeter as one of the most dangerous roads. Mainly because with a constant speed limit of 55, if you aren’t doing at least 70 in the far right lane, you’re taking your life in your hands. Further left, you better be pushing 80 at least. And that includes semis — and you have to watch out for construction… and be ready to get over at least 2 miles before the exit ramps for 400 or I-75 because they’ll be backed up pretty much all the time. It can be fun, I’ll grant.

    • robc

      The perimeter is named after the 2 speeds you can drive on it. First, everyone drives 85 until someone screws up. Then you get to drive 2.

      • SDF-7

        Nice one. So is the Connector so named because all the cars just form a train from I-20 to the split? 🙂

      • robc

        I learned pretty quickly to get off at Howell Mill and take Northside to Tech as opposed to going down to the 10th St or North Ave exits. Avoid the connector.

      • SDF-7

        It wasn’t as bad back in the day when I dormed in Techwood (and whatever was the one just across the street (North Ave, I think?) on that road that parallels the Connector. Pretty much a straight shot off the exit, so easier than dealing with city street traffic.

      • robc

        I lived in Techwood in Fall/Winter of 1988-89.

    • robc

      The only stretch I ever drove semi-consistently(a couple of trips to ATL per year – a few times per trip), was north side between 75 and 85. And “fun” was not a word I would use.

      • Spartacus

        Yeah, you really can’t take your eyes off the road for an instant. It’s like being a wildebeest crossing the Nile.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        White knuckle low grade fear would be my description. It’s like riding a roller coaster without the innate safety features.

      • SDF-7

        It’s the feeling after you clear Alpharetta on 400 northbound and you realize it is over and things are calming down that make it fun. 🙂 “I survived! Ha ha ha ha!”

    • Rhywun

      I was struck that the author seemed to struggle to come up with reasons why some of those roads are dangerous beyond “people refuse to drive safely”.

      • robc

        There was a NASCAR Driver, forget which one, who said that driving in Atlanta was far worse than anything on the track.

      • Cancelled

        I moved a friend to Atlanta. She drove her car and I drove the Uhaul. I enjoyed 90% of the trip, including driving the foggy stretch in Tennessee. Trying to drive a truck with a top speed of around 60 on the highway in Atlanta was the third scariest vehicle experience in my life. First was rolling a car 3 times in the median of I 75 at Orient. Second was getting a flat tire at dusk in the 71/75 cut in the hill in N Ky and changing the driver’s side rear tire with my butt 6 inches from the right lane as semis roared past trying to carry speed into the hill.

      • robc

        71/75 cut in the hill in N Ky

        That should have been on the list.

    • Banjos

      Mornin’

  10. Yusef drives a Kia

    I’m surrounded by DEATH! roads,
    Mornin’ Banjos,

    • Banjos

      Mornin’

  11. leon

    “We have been so frustrated in our attempt to get the documentation that we need before we can sit down and interview people, and as I understand it, the documents you just obtained in your FOIA request we haven’t received unbelievably,” Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson said in an interview with the John Solomon Reports podcast.

    The state of authority of hte executive, both the executive himself, and the bureaucratic warlord, is ridiculous. But congress just lets them get away with it. Is the house even suing trump on his “I’ll budget stuff myself” EO’s?

    • Bobarian LMD

      Are you a partner with the DM on pimpin’ that bitch out?

    • Roland of Gilead

      Nope. Sensational assets.

  12. The Late P Brooks

    State of lawlessness

    Scores of people in an Oregon city blocked the path of buses carrying ICE detainees for hours Wednesday, until federal agents arrived and removed the detainees and some officers from the vehicles overnight, CNN affiliate KTVZ reported.
    The intervening federal agents appeared to use a spray to compel protesters to move from the unmarked buses after the nearly 12-hour standoff in the city of Bend, KTVZ reported.
    The federal agents have since left the scene, near an office building, and the crowd dispersed peacefully, Bend police said in a tweet early Thursday. Details about where the detainees and agents went weren’t immediately available.
    The arrests that led up to the standoff were of two undocumented people with “a history of criminal violent behavior,” the Department of Homeland Security said without releasing further details about them.

    ——-

    The standoff began Wednesday afternoon when a man, apparently aware that ICE had detained someone or some people, stepped in front of one of the buses in a parking lot in Bend, refused to move, and began livestreaming on Facebook, KTVZ reported.
    That eventually drew a crowd, gathered in part to oppose the arrests. Within hours, some in the crowd held signs with messages including, “Stop separating families,” “It ain’t right” and “Where is the love?” KTVZ reported.
    Local police tweeted they arrived “to allow free speech” and make sure the demonstration was safe, but repeatedly sought to distance their actions from the ICE detentions. “We are not there in an assisting role with ICE,” they tweeted.

    ——-

    Before the standoff ended, the district attorney for Deschutes County, where Bend is located, tweeted that he had been at the scene and was “impressed by the passion and empathy shown by our community.”

    Whatever the real story is, we will never get it from CNN.

    • Festus' Mustache

      Whatever the outcome in November I remain steadfast in the belief that some of these DAs, City and State officials are Kulaks, Saboteurs and Wreckers. I can’t feature how that this is happening to your country. I’m so sorry.

      • invisible finger

        If we don’t have a real joe McCarthy anymore, they’ll just pretend we have one just for self-righteousness’ sake.

  13. Count Potato

    “New York state is ranked the WORST in the country for economic outlook, study finds, as businesses begin to flee amid fears it will take years to recover from the pandemic and widespread protests”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8621983/New-York-state-ranked-WORST-country-economic-outlook-businesses-begin-flee.html

    “Manhattan or Skid Row? New York’s homeless community use furniture and junk abandoned by wealthy people fleeing the city during the pandemic to build a sidewalk camp”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8621705/Homeless-camp-Manhattans-Chelsea-district-angers-local-business-owners-residents.html

    Great job, everyone!

    • UnCivilServant

      I’m only surprised it took so long.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        6 years in a row

      • UnCivilServant

        Only? I expected it loooong ago.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Say hello to the Detroit death spiral.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      Andrew Cuomo for President and Bill de Blasio for VP!

      MAKE IT HAPPEN!

    • Grosspatzer

      Pre-vid, I’d walk through that part of Chelsea regularly on my way back from work. Was pretty bad even then, but now it’s ’70’s-level awful. My office won’ t be opening any time soon, but when (if?) it does I’ll need to find an alternate route.

      • Rhywun

        I lived on 16th and Sixth for a couple years and it was fine. Of course, that was more than ten years ago.

    • Rebel Scum

      If a city has to “recover” from a protest then it was not a protest.

      • leon

        Who are you to tell the oppressed how they can speak?

      • Sean

        Way to other their lived truths. Bigot.

  14. Rufus the Monocled

    If the Waffle House is open it means the pandemic is over.

    • Festus' Mustache

      No Waffle Houses looted and burned during the recent unpleasantness. I’m not saying it was Aliens but it was totally not Aliens..

    • SDF-7

      Dangnabbit… now I really want a country ham and eggs platter with hash browns scattered and smothered. Stupid California lack of good restaurants. I so miss living on the other side of the Mississippi…

  15. Surly Knott

    The debasement of language continues. There’s a big difference between “pigeonholed” and “buttonholed” so of course they use the wrong term. It grates.

    • UnCivilServant

      “Buttonholed”? Not a term I’ve heard in general usage.

      • Surly Knott

        You’ve heard “pigeonholed” in general usage? Maybe it’s my age showing, but I’ve heard “buttonholed” at least as often as “pigeonholed”, especially in politics.

      • UnCivilServant

        From my understanding, pigeonholed is a colloqual term for when a person gets categorized into a very limited role or percieved ability.

      • Surly Knott

        Which is exactly not what is going on with the Burisma crap. “Buttonholed” is a term (colloquial?) for accosting someone ‘up close and in their face’, along the lines of grabbing a button or poking a finger at/near the buttons on a shirt/blouse/vest. Which is exactly what was meant to be conveyed in the Burisma situations.
        As I said, it grates.

    • Festus' Mustache

      Argh! I hate even when the local paper publishes a typo and I haven’t diagrammed a sentence for 38 years. Drives me batty.

    • Agent Cooper

      I just use gloryholed.

    • Festus' Mustache

      Trump’s hair-washing moan is more of a Sugar-Free joint. Best leave it to the experts.

    • Grosspatzer

      I’ m looking forward to the next H&H installment.

      “People are flushing toilets 10 times, 15 times, as opposed to once,” Trump told a meeting of small business leaders at the White House.

      This. I hate modern low-flush toilets. And low-water washing machines.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        New high quality toilets aren’t terrible. They’ve finally (15 years later) cracked that nut. However, anything more than 3 or 4 years old and anything builder grade sucks.

        I agree completely on the washing machines. There are some out there that aren’t terrible, but you shouldn’t have to read 40 articles to find the 2 models that actually work in water that’s any harder than distilled.

      • SugarFree

        Classy billionaires gravity flush. Everyone knows this.

    • R C Dean

      I love the part where “consumer groups” oppose consumers getting more choices because some of the new choices are more expensive and everyone will be forced to use them. Or something.

    • Plisade

      Is that satire? It all seems so bizarre; I never really knew that the fed gov had anything to do with water pressure, of all things.

      • Nephilium

        Like most things, you can blame Bush for that.

      • Viking1865

        Go in your showerhead, take it apart, and look for a plastic washer or nut. It should just be sitting in there. Pull it out with pliers or your fingers.

        Voila, you now can have a proper shower and also make Gaia cry.

      • Rhywun

        Seinfeld even did an episode about it.

      • Nephilium

        So did King of the Hill.

    • Agent Cooper

      “My hair … I don’t know about you, but it has to be perfect’”

      He might be the funniest president ever. I’m sure people are freaking out about this statement.

      • Rebel Scum

        Word.

    • Rhywun

      I don’t want to read the article

      It’s the Guardian so there is no need to read the article because you know exactly where it’s going.

  16. Rufus the Monocled

    Yeh well, none of those roads have the pot holes – some the size of Kamala Harris’s mouth – we have in Quebec. Legendary. Some have colonies living in them.

    I’ve been on a couple of roads he I-10 most recently and the ones in Maine and Connecticut.

    Is it me or are most concentrated in the South and South West?

    • Rufus the Monocled

      I-10 LV/LA that is.

    • Festus' Mustache

      There’s a giant one on the street that I use. Assholes painted new lines right over the top of it. it looks like “- O -“.

  17. Pope Jimbo

    Uffda! I wake up to good news this morning (although the local rag sure doesn’t think it is).

    MInnesoda GOP refuses to confirm Gov Walz’s Labor Secretary. One one hand she hasn’t been very good, but their refusal to confirm her was mostly as payback for Walz continuing one man rule under his Emergency Orders.

    Of course the DFL is appalled that the GOP would do such an underhanded thing. How dare they not bow and scrape to our new Overlord?

    In an hastily called news conference, Walz was anything but sanguine at the evening’s events.

    “I’m pained tonight,” he said. “We did not see this coming. And I’m concerned. I’m concerned that in the middle of a pandemic, when we need stability and we’ve built a team that is delivering, that is getting folks back to work, keeping Minnesotans safe, that we’ve been undermined in that. … To have Nancy Leppink get caught in the middle of a petty political move puts Minnesotans in danger and highlights the fact that Senate Republicans are not taking COVID seriously.”

    Tuesday’s move by Republicans also reflects the dynamics in the nation’s only politically divided state government: Many members of Walz’s cabinet haven’t been confirmed — and are potentially vulnerable to the same fate if he and Republicans can’t come to an accord over his emergency powers.

    Lt Gov. Flanagan took the issue head-on: “We will not be deterred or succumb to Republican threats to hold more commissioners hostage to their partisan gamesmanship,” she said in a statement.

    About time the GOP found its spine and did something about our local tyrant.

    • Festus' Mustache

      He’s pained by the fact that his diabolical plan has been stymied. For now. “I’ll get you next time, Deplorable!”

    • Rhywun

      the nation’s only politically divided state government

      I’m still astonished by this.

      Even New York was “politically divided” before last year. Cue another poll showing that the vast majority of Americans are unsatisfied with the “direction” of the country & why ever could that be??

      • prolefeed

        Tuesday’s move by Republicans also reflects the dynamics in the nation’s only politically divided state government

        A ten second google search reveals that there are 14 states with divided government. How lazy a journo do you have to be to not fact check that?

      • Rhywun

        Huh. I’d heard it stated more than once that there was only one.

  18. Rebel Scum

    The women is just another Hillary

    But somehow more fake and unlikable.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Looks like Nebraska did the least bad out of the whole country. What’s special about them I wonder.

      • UnCivilServant

        Pre-socially distanced, so business as usual?

      • leon

        Not having an economy dedicated to Tourism?

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Ah, I didn’t consider that one. Might have something to do with pop density too as UCS says.

      • robc

        It is why Hawaii is up with NY despite having very few cases.

      • leon

        And Nevada.

      • robc

        Yes, although I wasn’t sure how there case load had been, I figured higher than Hawaii.

  19. Pope Jimbo

    State 23 in North Dakota where it crosses Lake Sakakawea used to have an insanely narrow bridge. One one side was New Town, ND and the other side was the Sioux reservation. Locals claimed that the bridge killed more Indians than Custer ever dreamed of.

    In the early 2000’s the tribe built a casino and got a new bridge built that is far wider and safer.

  20. Rebel Scum

    “Dead bodies don’t count unless they are politically useful dead bodies.”

    Acknowledging gang violence is not helpful to the cause, comrade.

    • leon

      If only Trump had forced millions more into unemployment then they wouldn’t be….. Oh, Damn.

    • hayeksplosives

      The hell is she trying to fool with that?

      Even my center/center-left friends believe that the virus was blown up beyond hysteria and that dumb politicians overreaching their authority at the local and regional levels was 1) unnecessary and 2) was ruinous for the economy

      • hayeksplosives

        Maybe she means Trump is ruinous for her personal economic status. Or “green economy” is stunted.

        Or we need economic “justice” whatever that means.

      • UnCivilServant

        Economic justic would be purging the people who gain by impeding productive activity with their grifting.

  21. hayeksplosives

    Banjos always greets us with a chipper “Mornin’!” Even if the world is going to shit.

    We can all learn from Banjos.

      • juris imprudent

        TMITE, even if it doesn’t mean to be.

      • Banjos

        Nice

  22. Rufus the Monocled

    The execution of that poor kid. The silence by the media is all you need to know about how evil they are.

    It’s ALL about the narratives.

    And NEVER about the kids – unless it’s the ‘right’ kind of kid. Could you imagine if it was a white man killing a black kid like that?

    • Pope Jimbo

      It does suck that reading that story my first thought was “whew! Thank goodness it was a black guy killing a white kid because I can’t even imagine the shit show the reverse would have become”

      • Banjos

        The only thing that could make that story even more invisible is if it was a black child. White on Black ? 24/7 news and congressional calls to action. White on white? Makes the national news but that is it. Black on white? Local news but not national. Black on black? Crickets.

      • juris imprudent

        One of the few times I ever completely agreed with Rev. Jesse Jackson. Of course he gave up that line of argument because there was no money to be made from it.

    • Rebel Scum

      Yup.

      Still waiting for a motive on this one though, regardless of the optics. Seems odd.

      • Apples and Knives

        Seems like there are at least four options, although I might be missing a couple:

        1. He’s a psychopath who gets of on killing innocent creatures, like a serial killer
        2. He’s a psychopath who’s getting revenge against the kid’s parents for some reason
        3. He’s a psychopath who’s annoyed by the kid for some reason
        4. He’s a psychopath who’s eliminating a witness

    • WTF

      It would be paraded 24/7 as an example of rising white supremacy enabled by ORANGEMANBAD.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Thank God that douche lost to Obama back in the day. There, I said it (again).

      • Cancelled

        White Obama’s loss to less white Obama was not a huge surprise.

  23. The Late P Brooks

    Boo fucking hoo

    Work from home has been the norm for five months now. Some journalists who were previously accustomed to commuting to the office love this new rhythm. Others deeply miss the office and can’t wait to come back. Some soon won’t have a choice in the matter.
    Tribune (TPCO) Publishing has decided to save money by giving up its newsroom space in New York, Allentown, Annapolis, and Orlando. Other publishers have done the same, or are thinking about it. Television networks and other types of media companies are also expected to shrink their footprints in whatever the post-pandemic “new normal” is.
    Flexibility and cost savings will be gained, but some things will be lost. Intangibles like newsroom comradery and a sense of place.

    Tribune announcement on Wednesday was a “gut punch,” Stephanie Sigafoos of the Morning Call newspaper in eastern Pennsylvania told me.
    It was “devastating,” her colleague Jennifer Sheehan added. “We’ve been part of downtown Allentown for almost a century.”
    “It’s really difficult working at home but we’ve all done it to be safe, keep our families safe and do our jobs,” Sheehan said. “But it’s not what any of us want. A newsroom allows reporters to bounce ideas off each other, share ideas and offer a sounding board. You don’t get any of that working at home on your kitchen table.”
    The bottom line, Sigafoos said: “It’s painful to think of being a newsroom without a newsroom.” When you “take the people out of a newsroom, you take some of the soul of the paper

    You fuckers have been stoking hysteria and panic for the past six months, and now it’s biting you in the ass? I’m sorry you’re so stupid .

    • Pope Jimbo

      Dude!

      It was so much easier when the managing editor would simply read the accepted daily talking points to all the reporters at the morning meeting. Now the reporters have to read the talking points for themselves. So tedious.

    • Viking1865

      “A newsroom allows reporters to bounce ideas off each other, share ideas and offer a sounding board”

      Yes, and you can see the rich diversity of thought and opinion this results in.

  24. juris imprudent

    What we have here, is failure, to communicate.

    The fans aren’t there for your politics asshole.

    • leon

      But not caring about their opinion is like an infringment on their rights!!!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      “He said teammate Ryan Hollingshead turned to him afterward and said he was sorry.”

      Eat a dick Ryan.

    • Agent Cooper

      They just need better fans.

    • Rebel Scum

      Why are they wearing masks before the game?

      • Rhywun

        Because the ‘vid only attacks when you’re standing still.

    • Grosspatzer

      Fans boo players who take a knee before Dallas vs. Nashville in MLS

      Wonder how they feel about Kamala. One knee bad, two knees better?

    • Rhywun

      ESPN is so fair and balanced.

      PS. About goddamn time.

    • Apples and Knives

      And soccer fans at that, who tend to skew Hispanic and white-progressive. I’m a bit surprised. That can’t bode well for the NFL and MLB reactions once fans are allowed to resume attending.

    • hayeksplosives

      Mark Steyn had a podcast on the Chicago looting and pillaging of Miracle Mile.

      The fact that Lightfoot hasn’t been forced to resign yet gives me no hope of a Chicago bounce-back.

    • The Other Kevin

      I was in Chicago last night. They closed all the exits off the highways. I hear they also raised all the drawbridges, and they’ll do this all weekend. They’re at least trying to do something to prevent rioting.

      • Drake

        Something that doesn’t involve arresting and prosecuting looters. How long until their handlers figure out a way to get themselves into prime real estate before the bridges go up?

      • The Other Kevin

        I don’t know about the prosecuting part, but they are working on the arrests.

      • Drake

        I wouldn’t put much faith in Kimberly Foxx prosecuting them – she’s as beholden to Soros as the St. Louis DA.

      • Rhywun

        I wonder if they closed the trains.

        Ah, CTA says 9pm to 6am.

        Set your alarms, guys.

    • Nephilium

      Damn… Do they not know what those are?

      • invisible finger

        Upscale MacDonald’s with the Lobster McNewburg and Filet O’Mignon

      • R C Dean

        Either they can’t read, or they can and all they saw was “McDonalds”.

    • R C Dean

      Flash mobs have been looting downtown Chicago for years. This one sounds a little bigger, maybe, and with different branding, is all.

  25. Rebel Scum

    The lie that will not die.

    Presumptive Democratic candidate Joe Biden took time during his first joint event with running mate Kamala Harris to acknowledge the third anniversary of Charlottesville.

    “Today is not only the day I’m proud to introduce Senator Harris … it’s also the third anniversary of that terrible day in Charlottesville,” he said. …

    Mr Biden said it was ”a wake-up call for all of us as a country” before attacking how President Donald Trump handled the rally.

    “For me, it was a call to action … at that moment I knew I couldn’t stand by and let Donald Trump, a man who went on to say … ‘there are very fine people on both sides’ … No president of the United States have ever said something like that,” he added.

    It’s an interesting strategy. Let’s see how it plays out.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      It’ll convince the already convinced and turn off the already turned off. IOW, he’s just preaching to the choir.

    • Agent Cooper

      “No president of the United States have ever said something like that,”

      Lyndon Baines Johnson, call your office!

    • leon

      No president of the United States have ever said something like that,” he added.

      No, see he clarifies, that Trump didn’t say that about the Neo Nazis.

    • Agent Cooper

      “The Third Anniversary of Charlottesville”

      I can’t believe so many thousands perished.

      • Viking1865

        More people have been killed in the George Floyd Memorial Peaceful Protests, and that was on the second or third day.

  26. Count Potato

    “Minneapolis is requiring owners of properties destroyed or damaged in the riots after George Floyd’s killing to prepay the second half of their 2020 property taxes to obtain a demolition permit. That’s leaving wreckage in place, unlike in St. Paul.”

    https://twitter.com/StarTribune/status/1293672358952263682

    It’s peaceful protest all the way down.

    • Drake

      I was close!

    • leon

      Tyranny. That’s pretty much the only word i can come up with for what these City Mayors are doing.

      Pay taxes for Security.
      Fuck you you don’t get Security. We’ll let the Mob burn your shit down.
      We’re gonna Defund your security, that you paid for, and didn’t get, and keep the money.
      Oh and Pay your taxes again or we won’t let you clean this shit up either.

      • hayeksplosives

        Did anybody figure out who was behind the delivery of pallets of loose bricks to Minneapolis neighborhoods where protest/riots were scheduled?

      • limey

        I don’t think so. Noone claiming it was “definitely the cops” has produced any evidence of that, so far (apart from the cops somewhere removing dumped bricks and a carefully edited clip/picture of this being circulated online by agitators claiming it was cops distributing them), and if it happened to be connected to BLM, Antifa, or their string pullers, you can be sure that it will be buried and any mention written off as “rabid right wing conspiracy theories” or something. I also wanted to point out that, regardless of who ordered/orchestrated any brick and/or bat deliveries, there is ultimately the issue of agency on the part of individuals who made a conscious decision to pick them up and use them. So, I know you know this, but, well, I keep pointing it out because, individual agency, man.

      • Rebel Scum

        It’s like SanFran (?) wanting to control people by taking away their utilities if they fail to adhere to Covid-1984 minstrel theater. If I am paying for utilities I better be getting utilities.

      • Nephilium

        It was LA that said you could cut off utilities to people having “large gatherings”.

      • Rhywun

        Los Angeles.

      • pan fried wylie

        There’s no utilities to pay for once they’ve been cut off.

      • Akira

        It’s like SanFran (?) wanting to control people by taking away their utilities if they fail to adhere to Covid-1984 minstrel theater. If I am paying for utilities I better be getting utilities.

        Can you imagine what it would look like if the government had a monopoly on healthcare?

    • SDF-7

      I’d be seriously tempted to send them a big “For WHAT, a-holes?” letter in response. Jeez louise…

      • Cancelled

        Write it with the wires connecting the detonator to the timer on top of the ton of ANFO

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      What a disgrace. Just leave the half ruined buildings in place and get the hell out of there.

      • hayeksplosives

        As a warning to others.

    • Rebel Scum

      Yeah sure, keep paying property taxes while the city fails to protect property. Fuck off.

  27. Drake

    Landscape of rubble persists as Minneapolis demands taxes in exchange for permits

    The progs running the city do not disappoint

    Most property owners must pay $35,000 to $100,000 to clear their sites of debris, with larger tracts — such as strip shopping centers — costing as much as $400,000, according to property owners. That doesn’t include the money those owners must pay to get their permits. On average, the owners of properties destroyed or significantly damaged owe $25,000 in taxes for the second half of 2020, which come due in October,.

    • hayeksplosives

      Does insurance help offset that?

      Those businesses are hosed. I have many friends with small businesses in MPLS, and some are taking this as a sign that Minnesota Nice is no longer a protection, and rioters don’t care about anything but envy.

    • Pope Jimbo

      It is a sad day when St. Paul beats Minneapolis on the business beat.

      Minneapolis has traditionally been the place where business people and entrepreneurs lived. St. Paul was always the back water where lots of state government workers lived.

      More proof I guess that Minneapolis has been skin suited. It is commie land now.

    • R C Dean

      Those numbers seem really high to me.

    • leon

      I’m not going to lie, I thought the Economy was a paper tiger, and campaigning on this just makes is seem like what the governors did was on purpose, for the election.

      But that’s just me, and I’m already primed to believe that politicians would be willing to do anything to accrue more power.

      • Rebel Scum

        Well, Maher will be just fine either way. Bill Maher is asshole.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        I’m not very good at seeing through the eyes of Joe 6 pack, but I feel like the connection can’t be more strong for them to see. Shut down society and the economy crashes. Who shut down society? Not Trump. He was the one being called out for not doing enough.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah I’m not trying to say the American public is this perceptive, intelligent, discerning entity.

        But the economy crashed because of the pandemics and the lockdowns, and it’s not like the Democrats are running on “WE WOULD NOT HAVE LOCKED DOWN!!!!” See, they would have a case there. If they had been saying in April and June WE MUST REOPEN, well, I’d probably be voting for them in the fall. But they didn’t. They wanted more lockdowns and more restrictions, not less. The only state to never lockdown was SD, and the FL/GA/TX crowd was reopening before all the rest.

        Are the Democrats gonna run as the party of free commerce and no restrictions? Joe Biden hasn’t left his basement in six months, now he’s gonna start talking like Kristi Noem? Is that their plan?

      • leon

        ^^^ This. I’ll admit that I don’t see myself as just a “regular Joe”. But if that is an overestimation on my part, then this is really bad positioning on the Dem’s part.

      • Nephilium

        Here in Ohio, the workers I’ve been talking to blame DeWine. That may have some anti-Trump effect, as DeWine is (nominally) a Republican. However, DeWine isn’t up for election this year.

    • Rebel Scum

      Is he really so cynical as to think that people believe this?

  28. hayeksplosives

    Just watched Netflix “Fear City” about the NYC mob in the 70s and early 80s, and about how they were brought to justice through RICO.

    One thing I hadn’t grasped was the stranglehold the 5 families had over legitimate business like building construction, not just vices like liquor, gambling, prostitution etc.

    I was left with the question, with the families neutralized, who/what filled their power vacuum? Who do the little shops pay protection to? Who gets the kickbacks on construction?

    Hard to believe it’s all legit now. So is it just broken in smaller pieces like Baby Bells phone companies, or was the structure just inhabited by Ukrainian or Russian or Chinese mobs?

    • WTF

      They took the bosses down, and capos moved up to fill in. They have less influence in certain areas, but they are still there mostly doing business as usual, just not so blatant about it.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      SLD: I would prefer freedom for everyone without needing permits.

      I’m not convinced that a model without the Mob or some other middleman greasing the path isn’t better than one without. I can always pay Paulie and get the zoning changed or permit I need relatively easily. Without that self-interest, I’m now stuck dealing with a souless bureaucrat who has no interest in giving me that permit or zoning change. In fact, doing so could only come back to bite the bureaucrat and never benefit them in any way. It will likely end up costing me much more time and money dealing with the bureaucrat than Paulie.

      • Rhywun

        That movie is so good.

      • invisible finger

        What you’re really saying is the bureaucracy created the market for the Mob.

      • The Last American Hero

        You’re assuming Paulie deals in good faith. What happens when he shows up next week for more fees? And the week after that? And the week after that? It would be a sad thing if he had to arrange a meeting between you and Vito to discuss credit policies.

    • Hyperion

      If the dems win the election, antifa and BLM will be the mob. Only a mob without a brain or a plan. So instead of Guido and Antonio shaking you down for your protection money and coming back to break your knees if you don’t pay up, they’ll just burn down your business, and then hopefully the mayor’s office. Capitalism is bad, you know?

  29. The Late P Brooks

    Heads we win, tails you lose

    For the first time in months, the daily growth of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. has steadily fallen over the past two weeks, giving some hope to U.S. officials who proclaimed there were “signs of progress” in Southern states that were hit particularly hard.

    “No one’s declaring victory,” Adm. Brett Giroir, an assistant secretary at HHS, told reporters on a July 30 conference call. “We continue to see signs of progress across the Sun Belt and diffusely throughout the country.”

    But testing shortages in key states and other gaps in Covid-19 data call into question the accuracy of those numbers and whether the outbreak in the U.S. is really improving or whether cases are simply going undiagnosed, epidemiologists say.

    ——-

    In Texas, for instance, new cases have fallen by 10% to an average of 7,381 a day from 8,203 two weeks ago, based on a seven-day moving average. Testing, however, is down by 53% over the same time frame. Meanwhile, the percentage of positive tests has doubled over the last two weeks to about 24%, according to Johns Hopkins University. That compares with a so-called positivity rate of less than 1% in New York state, which was once considered the epicenter of the outbreak in the U.S.

    “I really have come to believe we have entered a real, new, emerging crisis with testing and it is making it hard to know where the pandemic is slowing down and where it’s not,” Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute, said in an interview with CNBC. The Texas data, he said, is “very concerning.”

    ——-

    Regardless of what’s driving the decrease in test results in many states, he said epidemiologists and public health specialists are unable to determine how bad the outbreak truly is.

    “How pathetic are we as a nation that six months into this pandemic, we can’t get this stuff right? We don’t have enough tests. Tests are taking two weeks,” he said. “We can’t figure out where the outbreaks are getting better or worse because our numbers are so messed up that we’re having to squint at the data.”

    Just keep torturing the numbers until you get the answer you’re looking for.

    Let’s go back to only testing people in the morgue, so we can claim it’s 100% fatal.

    • leon

      For the first time in months, the daily growth of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. has steadily fallen over the past two weeks, giving some hope to U.S. officials who proclaimed there were “signs of progress” in Southern states that were hit particularly hard.

      Lets forget about what happened in Q1.

      • WTF

        And let’s forget that number of cases is irrelevant, all that matters is hospitalizations and deaths, which continue to decline.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        This. “number of cases” is a trigger word for me to ignore the rest of what a person is saying.

      • Urthona

        Sadly no. Deaths have been steadily going up for 1-2 months. But they’re a lagging indicator. I expect they will follow the curve back down soon.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah still drives me nuts. Back in March the experts were telling us that there wasn’t really a way to prevent people from getting sick, and that people who were very vulnerable would suffer regardless. But if we shut down, we could clear hospital capacity to deal with sick people as they came in.

        Now it has morphed into “Stay in your homes until these politically connected pharma companies give you a vaccine that was rushed through testing and that they are exempt from liability for.”

      • invisible finger

        Sadly. no. You are making the mistake of assuming a large country can be treated as one locale. The fact is EVERY individual locale in the US that had a first wave of deaths has not had a second one. The mistake was treating the entire country like it was NYC at the same time instead of realizing outbreaks don’t happen that uniformly – something that has been known for over 200 years and something that could have easily been observed by looking at South Korea which has several large metro areas and is only the size of Indiana and had outbreaks in different areas months apart but no second wave in any of them.

      • Urthona

        I am?

      • robc

        You are wrong, most first reply got eaten. Deaths have been trending downward for 11 days now.

        They started up 42 days ago, so rose for about 30, then started downward again as the 2nd round of states peaked.

      • Don did not Escape Bama

        I’d look at the national death trend (weekly/smoothed) this way: it was strongly down until July, bottoming at 2/M/d; since then it rebounded and settled near a new plateau above 3/M/d.

      • robc

        But it “peaked” at 3.46 in the “2nd wave” (which was really a first wave in most places), so it has clearly declined. The decline is going to be slow as states falling are offset by states that are still rising. Eventually we will run out of states having an exponential peak and the fall will be more rapid.

      • Don did not Escape Bama

        the fall will be more rapid

        We’ve already agreed on the asymptotic view.

        I see a peak ~3.5 on 2020-08-01.
        I see a plateau of ~3.2 for most of the ten days since.

        Maybe it has started downward, but it’s a tiny delta to hang your hat on, especially since the very latest figures haven’t had time to much ripen; it’s not like this is a well-defined process with few actors, timely reporting, and one yardstick. I’m just saying it makes, for now, as much sense to surmise that we’re just taking a random walk along a recent trend.

      • invisible finger

        National death trend is meaningless for a large country with over 200 metro areas. A virus doesn’t give a shit about political boundaries – it operates on a market basis.

        When NYC had their outbreak, the lockdown panic only forestalled the first wave in most of the other metros. Without the lockdown panic, the other metros would have had their first (and only) waves sooner.

        Maybe the lockdown panic helped the healthcare systems ramp up supplies which would help lower the mortality rate, but it didn’t do anything for total infections over time. Which is exactly what was being said initially until people decided to turn it into a political shitshow.

      • KibbledKristen

        Maybe the lockdown panic helped the healthcare systems ramp up supplies which would help lower the mortality rate

        This is what we were sold to begin with. The goalposts have moved to the other side of the field.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      They seem to be under the illusion that we can eliminate the virus if we really try. Total deaths is the most important metric.

  30. Grosspatzer

    Finally, some good news. Mr. Lizard has escaped his kidnappers.

  31. Pope Jimbo

    The Rona was especially hard on black women entrepreneurs.

    COVID-19 is hitting Black female entrepreneurs in Minnesota just like everyone else, but many missed on the federal lifeline for small businesses, in part because their operations and business relationships don’t sync with traditional banking.

    Black women entrepreneurs are more often underbanked than their white counterparts. This means that they don’t use bank accounts or traditional accounting practices to run their business or have easy access to small business loans. When it came time to apply for PPP loans, a lot of Black female entrepreneurs weren’t ready to apply — or received unreliable information about who qualified.

    Even so, the disparity is stark. Out of the more than 18,400 borrowers in the state who did provide their race and gender, only 48 businesses owned by Black women received PPP loans, according to the latest SBA data. Agency officials suspect the number of Black female recipients is much higher but could not provide data to support the notion.

    I’m sure Kamala as VP will fix all this.

    • Grosspatzer

      I’m sure the proposed licensing requirements for hair washing would go a long way to help them get back on their feet.

      • Gender Traitor

        And don’t forget braiding! Gotta have a full cosmetology license to braid hair (and preferably a master’s degree.) Funny how the girls in the bleachers during grade school assemblies would do it for me for free with no credentials. Of course, I died a horrible death as a result.

      • Grosspatzer

        Oh God, braiding. Honeymoon cruise, port of Ocho Rios. As soon as we got off the ship, my wife was accosted by hordes of local ladies screaming “Braid your hair, lady?”. I got the offers of “good smoke, mon!”. All this with heavily armed gendarmes looking on. We passed on these generous offers.

      • Mojeaux

        I would pay someone just to play with my hair.

      • Don did not Escape Bama

        Memphis Barber takes down the system, wins lawsuit against state agency

        “You don’t need [high school diploma] to be a cosmetologist, you also don’t need one to be an emergency medical responder and you don’t need one to be the governor of the state,” says Boucek. “This law was not about protecting health and safety barbers, who have to go to 1,500 hours of barbering school to learn how to be a safely trained barber.”

        The diploma requirement is now gone, but the year of “training” remains.

      • Hyperion

        “the requirement of a high school diploma, to cut hair.”

        But if you don’t have a high school diploma, maybe you haven’t learned enough about the 26 genders yet? What if you don’t know whose hair you’re cutting and you fail to use Xe’s preferred pro-nouns? Irreparable harm would be done to Xe and how can the state compensate Xe for your ignorance and carelessness if they didn’t demand you had the proper training to cut hair?

    • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

      Black women entrepreneurs are more often underbanked than their white counterparts. This means that they don’t use bank accounts or traditional accounting practices to run their business or have easy access to small business loans.

      I can’t tell if the Journalo is implying that black women are more likely to operate shady businesses in the black market or that black women are too stupid to run the financial side of a business. Either way, not a flattering depiction.

      • Pope Jimbo

        black market

        Systemic racism PROOF! Poor gals can’t sell in the normal market, they are stuck in their own segregated market

      • Rhywun

        “Underbanked” is my cue to ignore anything else that person has to say.

      • l0b0t

        Absent context, I would just assume it was the name of some trick that the kids do with their skateboards or wee BMX bikes.

      • Rhywun

        Yeah, it’s a very recent invention of Newspeak.

    • Nephilium

      By prosecuting them for money laundering? Or structuring?

    • Count Potato

      Now do burning there businesses down.

      • Count Potato

        Um, “their”.

    • EvilSheldon

      Marked for later viewing.

    • Grosspatzer

      LOL. For a minute there I thought Winston was in the audience. Also, Not Adahn has some competition.

    • Rhywun

      I dunno about Murphy but Cuomo is as far from “charismatic” as you can get. I’ve seen it in action – his office was in my building back in the day.

  32. Overt

    Following up on yesterday’s “Excess Deaths” thread, I noted something that seems very interesting, and want to make sure I am not just confirming my bias.

    https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm

    I. When I switch the dashboard to “Number of Excess Deaths” we see that New York has the most excess deaths- 36,000 – 41,000 (careful, you need to add New York and New York City). However, if you see what they are reporting on (say) worldometers, they say only about 33,000 deaths. I spot checked a bunch of other states, and all of them are reporting COVID deaths right in the range of what CDC sees as “Excess Deaths”.

    II. When I drill into the data for “Cause of Excess Death” in New York, I see lots of Excess deaths for various, non Influenza/Pneumonia reasons. One of the most interesting is a drip, drip, drip of excess deaths related to Alzheimers/Dementia. 10-20 excess deaths each week in New York, and a spike of them in New York City during their surge. But there are also spikes in Diabetes Deaths,

    III. For the last couple weeks, there has been a spike in “Excess Deaths” for New York (Not NYC) that is definitely NOT being reported by New York City. Indeed, if you drill into “Excess Deaths With and Without Weighting” you see that most of the deaths are “Predicted”. That is, the CDC knows how many institutions have reported in, and then extrapolates deaths when the remainder report in (much like they do on election nights before all the polls report in).

    Tinfoil Hat Analysis: It seems almost INDISPUTABLE that New York is undercounting COVID deaths by 10 – 20%. And this seems to be unique only to New York. Florida, California, Georgia- they all have counts within the numbers CDC gives. Now if I am Cuomo and I want to avoid getting skewered for killing a bunch of old people, how do I hide that? The CDC *will* know that these people died. So my only choice is to mark these people as dieing from some other cause- like diabetes or Dementia. I think that is what is happening here, and that is a fucking scandal.

    And if there is a spike in greater new york (evidenced by CDC’s excess death predictions), it hasn’t been reported at all. If I am cuomo, I am holding off on reporting data until it gets lost in the noise.

    • Urthona

      New York also has the biggest economic disaster. 90% of restaurants couldn’t pay rent last month.

      Most popular Democrat right now. unbelievable.

    • invisible finger

      You make it sound like there are multiple death reporting systems: one for CDC purposes (read: regular money) and one for congressional purposes (read: extra money).

      Basically, two sets of books.

  33. The Late P Brooks

    Agency officials suspect the number of Black female recipients is much higher but could not provide data to support the notion.

    FEELZ-based analysis.

  34. SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

    OMG, gun prices are insane! I bought a Ruger AR556 from Buds in January for $479, and it was about the same price as the S&W M&P15. Today, Buds is selling the M&P15 for $850 and the AR556 is completely out of stock.

    • leon

      But Gun Control will be a winning platform for the Dems to campaign on.

      I was ready to write Trump off a month ago (well, not quite, since we still had 4 months left in the election), but now the race is much, much more competitive.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        From what I’ve seen, the betting average seems to lag the polls by about 3 weeks. Does that seem plausible?

      • leon

        Hmm i havn’t looked to see that. Could make sense.

        Not sure what to think about the betting markets on this one though. I would think it would be funny if you were able to place a series of well placed bets that would ensure a good pay out, no matter if you were right or wrong.

      • R C Dean

        Could the Dem money men be gaming the betting markets to make sure they don’t contradict the polls?

      • Cancelled

        Why? What advantage accrues to them by convincing people the election is in the bag? If you were gaming a poll you would make sure to keep it close enough to scare people into voting not send the message that you have already won.

      • Viking1865

        I still think in October people will want to vote for an actual human being. Right now Biden is basically Generic Democrat. At some point, he needs to get out there and show that he’s sharp enough to be the President.

        Trump is a blowhard, he’s a narcissist, he’s a buffoon. But four years ago I was told he’d have nuked somebody before Memorial Day 2017, and that didn’t happen. I was told the economy would never recover, and it was awesome until the China Flu hit.

        I am about 70% positive Joe Biden is wearing Depends at this point. The man is frail, and confused, and tired. The media is already trying to sell Kamala as The Real President, but that means she has to make the case to America that what they really want is California progressiveness.

        Kamala wanted to outlaw private health insurance, just as an example of stuff that sounds awesome in CA Democratic Party but that the vast majority of the population thinks is fucking nuts.

      • invisible finger

        The difference is Trump can think for himself and Biden has always been a willing puppet.

      • Cancelled

        Kamala may or may not end up as President, but one thing is certain, if the Communists take over this country, she is the ideal choice to play Beria.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah I think the needle they are trying to thread is:

        “Hey Midwest States, Joe is the candidate. He is white. He is male. He has fired a shotgun once or twice. He drives a domestic automobile. Union jobs. Scranton. Catholic. Good Family Man.”

        “Hey Blue States, Kamala is the real candidate. Woman of color. Will herd the deplorables into camps and complete The Revolution. She’ll be President for real before Memorial Day 2021.”

        I just can’t see that. The gun thing alone, man I get Trump is not a gun friendly POTUS, but until we stop picking our Presidents from the Acela Corridor, we will never ever get one.

      • Hyperion

        “Kamala wanted to outlaw private health insurance, just as an example of stuff that sounds awesome in CA Democratic Party but that the vast majority of the population thinks is fucking nuts.”

        Apparently, that is not so awesome with people in CA. They tried this shit and people did not go for it, they had to scrap it before it even went to ballot because they did polling and it was a total loser.

      • Rhywun

        Yeah, it was gonna cost something like double the GDP every year. Dopes.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I wish I had a warehouse full of cheap ARs right now. Even a closet full would be nice.

    • Sean

      Supply & demand. I keep looking for deals on Gunbroker, but I’m not finding many any right now.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        How’s the ammo supply?

      • Sean

        Gunbroker prices on common ammo continue to surprise me.

      • l0b0t

        I was rendered insensate by sticker shock when I looked at Mossberg pump guns a month or so ago. They seem to have come down quite a bit but still… well, anything over a couple hundred is a very hard sell for me.

    • Drake

      If Trump wins, prices will be back to normal next year – maybe even some sales as manufacturers ramp up production to meet demand.

      Right now the only stuff that hasn’t gone nuts are bolt-guns.

      • EvilSheldon

        Eh, maybe, maybe not. The gun market is weird, and the ammo market is weirder.

        If you need ammo, and you see it available, I would snap it up every if it’s more expensive than you’re used to.

  35. Don did not Escape Bama

    Local store facing backlash for policy that exempts BIPOC from appointment fee

    “As a mostly white staff with white ownership, we do not feel comfortable upholding a digital and financial barrier which could prohibit BIPOC from shopping at our store at this time, on top of the limitations already made by online booking,” Civvies said. The store then said that any white person who refuses to put down a deposit because they disagree with the policy will not be accepted for an appointment.

    NewWife brought this one to my attention. Two notions:
    a/ This is getting fixed but good and right away with zero abuse of the commerce clause, no police, no bureaucrats, not Supreme Court ruling.
    b/ She says any deposit in and of itself is stupid and bad business but was shocked by my answer: yes, I very much would be glad to pay a $20 deposit . . . at the stores I (a man) go to (because I am actually intending to buy something). Would I put down $20 up front that is credited to what I was going to buy anyway for the privilege of not being crowded by browsers who waste clerks’ time and delay their attending to me, a real customer? My LGS (I bought my first revolver there in 1986) is most welcome to require $50 door deposits, and anyone who doesn’t like should boycott them . . . please . . . please boycott away.

    • leon

      a/ This is getting fixed but good and right away with zero abuse of the commerce clause, no police, no bureaucrats, not Supreme Court ruling.

      This is just more evidence of the racisim that is systematic in our society. Someone sees a policy designed to hurt BIPOC, and they don’t even have to get the government involved to get it changed? This is just proof that all white people are racist.

    • invisible finger

      My first thought was “Where in Indiana is this gun store?”

    • Viking1865

      “My LGS (I bought my first revolver there in 1986) is most welcome to require $50 door deposits, and anyone who doesn’t like should boycott them . . . please . . . please boycott away.”

      Oh come on Don, don’t you love it when you can’t get to the pistol case because some 19 year old wants to finger every single one that costs 1000 bucks or more before he heads over to the ammo shelf to buy a box of steel cased 9mm to run through his KelTec.

      • Don did not Escape Bama

        I’m really impressed by the try it buy it model. My son rented a dozen pistols at his range/LGS and then bought there. A store without a range is missing an opportunity.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah it’s a huge help. The best gun is one you shoot well, and you have to shoot them to find out.

    • invisible finger

      Sounds like the store is getting lots of new BIPOC customers and doesn’t want to chase business away.

      But the deposit idea is stupid. Makes more sense to be open to genpop 3 or 4 dyas a week and “by appointment only” the other days. That satisfies both new customers and regulars without having to make any accounting for deposits – keeping an appointment book is a bit less work without opening one’s self to accounting mistakes.

    • Ozymandias

      Talk about discrimination.
      I guess only BIPOC are poor, eh? White people ALL can afford this. And there are no blacks with money, either.
      Fuck me, this world is trying to break me.

  36. KibbledKristen

    * Checks to see if nearest Waffle House is still 40 minutes away *

    • KibbledKristen

      Yep. Dammit.

      • UnCivilServant

        Still closer than my nearest Waffle House.

      • Hyperion

        Being near Balmer, there is a waffle house right across the street from every chicken, lake trout, and chicken joint in the city. So that comes out to around 546, 321 waffle houses.

        And if you don’t know what lake trout is, it’s not trout and it doesn’t come from a lake, and don’t eat that shit.

  37. juris imprudent

    A big ol’ helping of derpa-lerpa-shlurpa. [TW: Slate]

    Really should be subtitled – the progressive retconning of Kamala.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      They shouldn’t bother retconning, she has a horrendous prior record but she’s saying the right things now. Will they be able to rehabilitate her in the eyes of the leftists? Who knows.

      • juris imprudent

        They have to retcon – they can’t rely on just the faithful, there are doubters that need to be swayed (until they can be given the choice of accepting the true faith or death). They aren’t called useful idiots without reason.

    • Viking1865

      Eh, I think prosecutors should apply the written law fairly and scrupulously. If you want to change the law, go be a legislator and change it. I don’t like it at all when I’m supposed to applaud prosecutors ignoring laws that they don’t like. The chief executive has the power to pardon, the DA is supposed to enforce the law as written. Yes, they can strike deals and such, but wholesale ignoring of a law, any law, is not in keeping with republican principles.

      I also believe the philosophy matters, the intent matters. There is a difference between

      “I will not be enforcing drug laws, because people have self-ownership and there is no power granted in the constitution of the state or nation to support the drug laws.”

      “I will not be enforcing drug laws, because they disproportionately affect poor people of color.”

      The first keeps you enforcing crimes with actual victims, you are asserting a clear legal principle: the victim and the criminal cannot be the same person for the law to be just and enforceable. The second leads, as we see today in CA and other leftist jurisdictions, to a ignoring more and more offenses on grounds of disparity.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        It’s the glee with which she did it and campaigned based on it. She also had serious issues with withholding evidence both to obtain convictions and to keep people in prison. She’s scum.

    • Rhywun

      The left obviously doesn’t have its marching orders yet when it comes to proclaiming her “progressive” or “moderate”. I’ve seen both takes.

  38. The Late P Brooks

    Karen-on-Karen violence

    A high school student in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, needed stitches for one of the injuries reportedly sustained during a physical altercation with customers at the Chili’s restaurant where she worked as a hostess this summer.

    Seventeen-year-old Kelsy Wallace said the incident took place after she told a group of patrons they could not sit together due to the restaurant’s COVID-19 policies, local CBS affiliate WAFB reported on Wednesday. In efforts to reduce risks of coronavirus transmission at the restaurant, Wallace noted that employees were instructed to “separate” groups of more than six people and seat them at multiple tables.

    “They got upset,” she recalled of the customers who reportedly went on to initiate the fight with her on August 9. In Wallace’s comments to WAFB, the teenager said what started as a verbal argument became increasingly violent after she solicited help from a store manager. With the manager nearby, Wallace said one woman pushed her first, and the rest of the group followed.

    The woman who originally shoved Wallace then reportedly used the restaurant’s “wet floor” sign to hit her in the face, which was the injury that required stitches. She told WAFB her nails were also broken and hair was pulled from her scalp during the fight.

    ——-

    Wallace described the incident as “overwhelming” and said she is no longer working at the restaurant.

    “I was just trying to follow the rules and make sure that I wasn’t going to get in trouble,” she added.

    I’m sure we all can agree this was President Cartoon Villain’s fault.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      If the owners were requiring that she probably didn’t have much choice in the matter.

      • Nephilium

        Yeah. Yelling at or attacking the workers makes you a dick. They’ve got to follow the rules their boss put in place (and they have to follow the rules that the government is forcing them to).

      • invisible finger

        The manager should be the one handing that situation though.

    • limey

      So people come in together, probably hang out together, are family, etc, but Chilis will be damned if there is any chance these people might have caught the wu flu from each other in one of their restaurants.

    • juris imprudent

      Can’t be OrangeManBad’s fault – the victim (and presumably the assailants) were all black. We know this because if it had been even one white woman out of the 11, the story would’ve been Trump-loving bigot attacks girl trying to protect her from the ‘vid.

    • Rhywun

      Wallace then reportedly used the restaurant’s “wet floor” sign to hit her in the face

      I hate that I laffed.

      • R C Dean

        At least Chili’s called the cops. Here’s hoping they can ID the perps and get some convictions.

  39. leon

    I just saw a Trump Ad featuring an attack on the Pick of Kamala Harris, and i’ll tell you what. It was pretty weak.

    • juris imprudent

      Trump would almost certainly lose this election if the Democrats weren’t so damned stupid.

  40. Ed Wuncler

    Morning Banjos!

    Tell Sloopy that my wife who is a Michigan alumni feels his pain about Big Ten cancelling football. It’s probably a good thing though because Michigan has blown ass for a while.

    • creech

      At least Penn State won’t lose to Ohio State in 2020.

    • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

      “Fordham graciously offered me a realistic historical simulation of being overseen by the Soviet secret police,” Tong told the Washington Free Beacon. “This just exposes the sensitivity of Fordham and colleges on safe speech, resorting to extreme means to make sure students stay in line.”

      *applause*

  41. KibbledKristen

    If I see one more post on Facederp saying “Lockdown is harming people with depression….so here’s a suicide hotline number!!!”, I swear I will cut a bitch.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      Here’s a aggressive impulses hotline number for you…

    • Hyperion

      Kristen, the correct and sciency way to say that is: I’m a stab ya! Everyone will think you have a degree from Harvard.

  42. The Late P Brooks

    Ignorant disobedient hicks won’t follow orders

    While anti-vaxxers flood social media with lies about the upcoming coronavirus vaccine — that it contains monkey brains, that it’s a CIA plot to take over the world — the government’s multi-billion-dollar vaccine effort has yet to come up with a public education campaign to counteract that propaganda.
    “We are behind here,” said Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health. “We haven’t done a good job of getting [coronavirus vaccine] information out there.”

    The stakes are high. A CNN poll in May found one-third of Americans said they would not try to get vaccinated against coronavirus, even if the vaccine is widely available and low cost.

    “Speaking for myself, I think I underestimated the level of public resistance,” Collins said. “I didn’t expect it to be that widespread.”

    TRUST SCIENCE!

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      These are the same people who are condemning the Russians for pushing out their vaccine so quickly. If they’d stop acting so damn shady people would trust them more, maybe they should start there.

    • Viking1865

      You’ve told people for fucking decades that the FDA needs 10 years to test a new drug, and now you’re surprised people don’t trust a five months in development vaccine?

      Seriously, you can’t have it both ways. Either the FDA is our stalwart shield which protects all of us from bad drug side effects and needs a decade and millions in funding per drug to do it, or you can roll out new drugs in less than a year completely safely. But it can’t be both.

      • KibbledKristen

        It’s all both ways with these people, all the time.

        “Trump did nothing to stop the COVID!”

        “Trump destroyed the economy!”

      • Viking1865

        Well in that case they are postulating that there is a magic button somewhere that threads the needle. That with the right combo of policy you could have fixed everything. This guy is asking for the impossible: for people to throw out everything they learn in school about what the FDA is and how it works.

        It has been a bedrock article of faith for people since at least 1930 that the only thing that protects us from shoddy drugs and birth defect causing medicines, pushed by the greed and evil of corporations is the FDA. I have gotten lots and lots of people to agree with me on other libertarian POVs, I’ve never gotten anyone to agree to abolish the FDA.

        People fucking love the FDA. They trust the FDA. They know the FDA keeps them safe, they believe in the multi year trials, the rigorous checking of new meds against animals over and over, then people very carefully and slowly. The State has pushed that in school for decades. Everyone learns about how the Progressives saved us from tainted meat and fake medicine with the Pure Food and Drug Act. It’s part of the civic religion of the State. FDA, Social Security, Medicare, The Civil Rights Act. The blessed intercessors that keep us safe and ensure Freedom From Want.

        Now this fucking Dr. Bureaucrat is flabbergasted that people don’t trust a drug rushed to market without going through the FDA process. He doesn’t understand why people are skeptical. What an absolute moron.

      • Raven Nation

        “People fucking love the FDA. They trust the FDA. They know the FDA keeps them safe”

        Seen vs. unseen is a tough concept for a lot of people.

      • Viking1865

        Yeah the closest I have ever gotten to people re: medical choice is them saying something like:

        “Well, the government should grant special permissions to people who might benefit from experimental drugs. But we still should keep the FDA in place as it is. If someone already has cancer, yeah they should be free to try whatever, but everything else should still be tightly regulated.”

      • juris imprudent

        Govt is always infallible Viking. When it takes forever, it is infallible; when we do a Manhattan Project, it is infallible. Just always trust the govt – no matter what inconsistency that imposes on your dumb, cishet, patriarchal white logic.

      • Raven Nation

        “Govt is always infallible Viking.”

        Hence the constant cry (from left & right) of: “we just need the right people to be in charge.”

      • pan fried wylie

        I’m pretty sure it’s “take 10 yrs, then roll out a drug that lists condition-related death as a side-effect”.

        Anti-depressant that may cause depression-related suicide? Approved.

        Asthma treatment that may cause asthma-related death? Approved.

        I fully expect the Rona vaccine to kill people at double the rate of the virus.

    • Rhywun

      that it contains monkey brains, that it’s a CIA plot to take over the world

      L.O.L.

      I’m sure the rubes are eating that shit up. ?

    • Rebel Scum

      I, for one, am not getting a vaccine for a type of virus that is known, constantly mutating and relatively innocuous.

      • R C Dean

        I’m pretty sure that for me it will be:

        Keep my job or get the vaccine. Pick one.

      • Count Potato

        Fake prosthetic arm?

      • KibbledKristen

        I’m pretty sure I’m going to ask to be put on permanently offsite work as early as January. Then I will move to NH and hang out with DEG.

      • KibbledKristen

        (but they may still make me get the vaccine if I need to come into the office. Ugh.)

      • Count Potato

        boom chicka wow wow?

      • Cancelled

        So you work for a place that will fire anyone who gets the vaccine? LAWSUIT!

      • R C Dean

        “Pick one.”

      • leon

        Yeah and you said you either get to pick your job or pick getting the vaccine.

      • Cancelled

        yep pick one: keep job OR get vaccine is what you said. I know what you meant, but you SAID keep job or GET vaccine, not keep job and get vaccine or avoid vaccine and lose job. 😉

      • R C Dean

        Alright, Hyperbole. Point taken

    • Grosspatzer

      Mmmm. Bacon.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I always enjoy hearing from female Bill Kristol.

    • Rebel Scum

      Sure. To make it fair, she will take questions from the likes of Breitbart, Daily Wire/Caller, PJ Media and OANN. That will make it fair and she will rip through them because she is like the best evar.

      • Viking1865

        Can’t wait for the debates.

        “Mr. Pence, why are you on stage. Doesn’t this break your rule of never interacting with a woman without your wife present? As a follow up, whens the last time you electrocuted a gay person?”

        “Mrs. Harris, some rightwing media sources have claimed that when you cosponsored Senator Sanders bill that would outlaw private health insurance, that meant that you actually supported banning private health insurance. Can you please explain to these brainwashed hicks that cosponsoring an actual piece of legislation doesn’t mean what their tiny pea brains think it means? “

    • KibbledKristen

      I always love the “we forced a bot” things

      • Nephilium

        Really, that’s going to be what makes the machines go Skynet on us.

      • leon

        As revenge we are forced to read Politico and Slate Articles until our eyes dry out into husks?

      • Cancelled

        I may turn my coat in that war.

      • pan fried wylie

        I vacuum a mean mobo.

      • Count Potato

        I’m not even a bot, and I still want to send a cyborg to kill Paul Krugman’s parents.

    • Rhywun

      I bet he just copied an actual release and we’ll never know because how can you tell.

      • R C Dean

        Because its better written.

    • commodious spittoon

      Black is capitalized in every instance and white is not. Good robot.

    • leon

      Bot is just the name news rooms give to the lowest ranking intern

    • Rebel Scum

      Republicans plan to unleash attacks on Harris unfairly for “extreme” views. President Donald J. Trump mispronounced her name, and used the word “nasty,” which is often associated with harsh, derogatory sexism. Sarah Palin, a woman of the Republican Party, was a political liability. She is a bad example and therefore not historic.

      Nice.

  43. The Late P Brooks

    Your narrative lacks consistency

    Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for the last three decades and an expert on pandemics for the last four decades, has weighed in on recent news that Russia has developed a vaccine, and is ready to start inoculating people with it.

    “We have half a dozen or more vaccines, so if we wanted to take the chance of hurting a lot of people or giving them something that doesn’t work we could start doing this, you know, next week if we wanted to, but that’s not the way it works,” Fauci told ABC News in an interview late Tuesday.

    “Having a vaccine and proving that a vaccine is safe and effective are two different things,” he told ABC’s DIS, -0.33% Deborah Roberts. He said people need to understand that when they hear announcements from the Chinese or the Russians that we have a vaccine.

    “I hope that the Russians have actually, definitively proven that the vaccine is safe and effective,” Fauci said. “I seriously doubt that they’ve done that.” He added, “We have a way of doing things in this country where we care about safety and we care about efficacy.”

    Or should I not worry when “we” rush a hastily concocted vaccine to market? It’s okay when we do it?

    • Grosspatzer

      “We have a way of doing things in this country where we care about safety and we care about efficacy.”

      Well then, I guess we’ll need to stay locked down for another 5-10 years until this process plays out.

    • Pope Jimbo

      The Ruskies allegedly coming up with a vaccine is going to really piss a lot of people off if it turns out to be true.

      For one Putin and his buddies are going to get rich, rich, rich if it is safe and effective. It will also make our “best and brightest” look bad to get lapped by those Russians, who will listen to them now? Also, given the short time period the vaccine was developed in, you could make the argument that a lot of the geezers that were killed in NY and MN could have been saved if they hadn’t been locked down with infected people.

      The worst thing though would be that the emergency orders would have to end! People could do whatever they wanted. How much airtime will Fauci and other experts get once this is over? Why some deplorable might not bow and tug his forelock when Fauci passes by.

  44. robc

    States ranked by peak deaths per million per day (7 day smooth) – this is an idea of which states have gone thru the virus and which still have it to come:
    NY 60, CT 30, NJ 30, MA 26, DC 16
    RI 16, LA 14, MI 14, PA 12, AZ 11
    DE 11, MD 11, MS 11, TX 11, IN 10
    IL 9, SC 9, FL 8, CO 7, GA 6
    NH 6, AL 5, IA 5, NV 5, ID 4
    MN 4, NM 4, OH 4, AR 3, CA 3
    MO 3, NE 3, TN 3, VA 3, WA 3
    KS 2, KY 2, MT 2, NC 2, ND 2
    OK 2, SD 2, VT 2, WV 2, WI 2
    AK 1, HI 1, ME 1, OR 1, UT 1, WY 1

    • KibbledKristen

      I’m-a bring my VA ‘Rona to SD in Sept!

    • Cancelled

      You seem to be assuming it will end up with similar behaviors in States with very different demographics, climate, and cultures. I suspect there will be some truth to your idea, but as stated it sounds like you think NY is done with the dying and everyone else is headed to NY numbers eventually and I think that you are assuming your conclusion that no measures or variables really affect the death rate. Again, I think the bottom of the list will come up more going forward than the top will because you are likely correct that to some extent some of them have just postponed deaths, but I also think there are likely other factors at play as well and that in the end there will be a very wide range.

      • Viking1865

        No one will die from COVID if the people select Proper Adult Leadership in November. We have the power to stop the COVID by returning The Adults to Washington.

      • juris imprudent

        “This is what they actually believe.”

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        Are they wrong? I have a feeling the media-reported COVID deaths would mysteriously turn to zero and vanish overnight after Biden is sworn in.

      • Viking1865

        If Biden wins, the flu deaths will resume, and the COVID deaths will stop. Not even a conspiracy theory at this point, just straight up facts.

      • invisible finger

        That’s not the way I read it.

        There’s already a wide range; in the end the range will be wide but not as wide as it is now.

      • robc

        No, there is wide variance (using Europe as a guide) in where the numbers end up. I think NY will be on the high end.

        Despite a lower peak, for example, NJ has passed NY in total deaths per million. Peak is just rough evidence of “has the main wave passed thru”. I figure anyone above 8 or so as a peak is probably mostly done with the virus, at least as far as significant outbreaks.

        But really, you would probably need to break it down to the county level.

      • Don did not Escape Bama

        Do we know this is the main wave? There might be different failure modes (forgive some product engineering analogies)? Maybe we’ve barely gotten through burn-in ?

    • leon

      meh. If you look at the Individual state data, it sure looks like UT has gone through it

      • R C Dean

        I find the South Dakota data interesting, as it is such an outlier. Their new cases show two peaks early on and then a persistent flatline, and death rate has been basically flat, without the classic bell curve. I’m curious to know why that is.

      • robc

        Natural social distancing makes the R for SD (and other rural areas) naturally lower?

      • robc

        Basically, disperse populations means that Hari Seldon has no chance, because the people need to be modeled as individuals.

      • R C Dean

        Arizona has a dispersed rural populationin addition to its urban population, and I think it ran through that population in a wave after it ran through the metro areas.

      • robc

        Maybe they are more social than Dakotans?

      • invisible finger

        Probably true, robc. My old boss used to live in Western MN, then moved to northern AZ. He liked the rural life but he also liked to go riding on his touring bike. He did that 4 months a year when he lived in MN and he did it nearly every weekend in AZ. (He went to Vegas at least once a month, too).

      • invisible finger

        I don’t find it an outlier. SD has a few small metros, they won’t get their outbreaks at the same time, and none of them is so large as to skew the macro data. There are a few states like that.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Have you ever seen a SoDak? Trust me you don’t want to socially close in on those uggos.

        They are nearly as unwholesome as NoDaks.

      • leon

        Hmm I know its a sample size of 1 but the only SoDak i’ve seen is the Governor, and that doesn’t mesh with your claims.

      • KibbledKristen

        Well, that is discouraging for my prospects of making out with some beardo while I’m on vacay.

      • robc

        Maybe, the peak was 19 days ago at 1.6. SC had a first wave that peaked at 2.9. Utah will probably have a second wave which will be the real first wave. Although maybe need to look at just Salt Lake data to see.

        Utah’s total deaths graph looks like a line. It is only to 110, so maybe it straight lines up to 400 over the next year before leveling out and never has an exponential growth phase.

      • leon

        Well 400 people is like everyone so that would be catastrophic

      • robc

        400 per million, so what, 150 total?

  45. The Late P Brooks

    More:

    Fauci previously said he was hopeful that a coronavirus vaccine could be developed by early 2021, but he said that it’s unlikely that a vaccine will deliver 100% immunity; he said the best realistic outcome, based on other vaccines, would be 70% to 75% effective.

    “What I’m shooting for is that, with a vaccine and good public-health measures, we can bring it down to somewhere between really good control and elimination,” he told Abdullah Shihipar, a public-health research associate at Brown University in a recent interview.

    Previous studies have found that, on average, the flu vaccine is about 50% to 60% effective for healthy adults aged 18 to 64. “The vaccine may sometimes be less effective,” it said. “Even when the vaccine doesn’t completely prevent the flu, it may lessen the severity of your illness.”

    ——-

    In the absence of a vaccine, health experts say social distancing and masks are the only alternative as “herd immunity” — where those who are immune protect the most vulnerable in the population — is not feasible for coronavirus. That requires a very high level of population immunity.

    Lockdowns forever. Otherwise, extinction is inevitable. All hail Foochy, PBUH. He’s our only hope.

    • Grosspatzer

      health experts say social distancing and masks are the only alternative as “herd immunity” — where those who are immune protect the most vulnerable in the population — is not feasible for coronavirus.

      Gee, I wonder why that is.

      • R C Dean

        “herd immunity” — where those who are immune protect the most vulnerable in the population — is not feasible for coronavirus

        First, that’s not really a very good description of herd immunity.

        Second, why isn’t herd immunity feasible for the coronavirus? Be careful, because vaccinations are just a way of accelerating herd immunity. I’ll be curious to hear why immunity via a shot is viable, but immunity via infection and recovery is not.

      • invisible finger

        Smokey The Bureaucrat says “Only I can create herd immunity. Not big dumb Swedes.”

      • robc

        The best description of herd immunity is when R is reduced to less than or equal to 1.

        Why use words when math works.

        R<=1 Easy, peasy.

      • R C Dean

        I bet the definition of “R” has words in it.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        Second, why isn’t herd immunity feasible for the coronavirus?

        Because there’s no way for government to be portrayed as God-King if the answer is to let the virus ravage the country.

      • Rebel Scum

        It’s not politically expedient?

    • Rhywun

      I want a job where I can just pull speculations out of my ass for decades.

    • WTF

      “herd immunity” — where those who are immune protect the most vulnerable in the population — is not feasible for coronavirus

      Sweden says “hi”.

    • UnCivilServant

      fishnets – making things ugly since they were first turned into ‘attire’.

      • R C Dean

        – 1 major award

      • Raven Nation
      • KibbledKristen

        * shrugs * My ex liked ’em well enough

      • KibbledKristen

        (he liked ’em on me…but maybe he liked ’em on himself, too. Who knows?)

      • Nephilium

        One of the most wrong things I think you’ve ever said.

      • UnCivilServant

        Wong, it is one of the most right things I have ever said.

      • Ozymandias

        Sum Ting Wong? The Chinese guy?

      • Pope Jimbo

        Why you gotta drag the Asians into your argument?

        Just admit you are wrong and move on. Those Chinee with their mad math skillz ain’t gonna help you here.

      • UnCivilServant

        The only thing I got wrong was typing.

        I am 100% correct on how hideous fishnets make legs.

      • pan fried wylie

        that ham is ugly whether you shove it into a net or not.

      • Trolleric the Goth

        everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how objectively wrong it might be. ?‍♂️

  46. KSuellington

    Many here have commented on the grating schoolmarm aspect of Warren. Maybe it’s because I’ve had a lot more exposure to Kamala, but man, her voice and speaking manarisms are unbelievably annoying. Trump could easily get a dozen commercials of just her talking (and I’m sure there are plenty of lecturing clips to choose from). I’m sure we are going to be getting one of her talking about confiscating guns and trampling on the 2nd. I really look forward to seeing Team Joe lose this one.

    • R C Dean

      Oh, for an honest media. Kamala is going to have to disavow nearly everything she did as a prosecutor. An honest media would have a dozen questions: “When did you change your mind on X, and why?”

      • R C Dean

        Also “Do you still think its OK for prosecutors to do X?”

      • Cancelled

        She didn’t do X, she did Willie Brown, Malcolm died before she was born.

      • Cancelled

        Pedanting own joke: Nope, she was 4 months and 1 day old.

    • Viking1865

      Kamala Harris on the record just in the last 2 years of

      A. Forcing all Americans off their insurance plans, and onto Medicare. She co sponsored Sanders bill to do that. That’s not a conspiracy theory, her name is on the bill as a co sponsor.

      B. “Mandatory gun buybacks”.

      • Rebel Scum

        gun buybacks

        I’ll happily sell to the government any firearms I purchased from the government.

      • KSuellington

        I predicted her getting the VP nod years ago, but think she is a net minus to the Biden campaign, especially with the obvious decline in his mental capacities. Progressive ex prosecutor from California is not exactly a selling point for much of the country. We should see some more tightening of the race over the next few weeks.

      • R C Dean

        The only reason to pick her is the belief that they need a black person on the ballot to get black people to vote. Their models must show that depressed black turnout = certain defeat.

        I am curious about which swing states turn on black turnout.

      • KSuellington

        I’m hoping and thinking she doesn’t even move that needle very much.

      • Rhywun

        KDW says she is on the ballot to get the suburban white vote. There’s a certain logic to that once you filter through his usual tedious blather.

      • R C Dean

        Good point. Going after the soccer mom vote. Which Hillary (should have) had all locked up.

        I don’t think Kamala is going to do better than Hillary in turning them out for Dems. If they swing Dem, it will likely be because of the Karenovirus panic. If they swing Repub, it will likely be because of the rioting.

        Good thing the media is reporting the rioting and the panic in equal measure.

      • Viking1865

        Trump carried white women by slim margins in 2016, and that was because he carried married white women big time, and lost single white women. I have no doubt that Soccer Mom doesn’t like Donald Trump. I have no doubt that Soccer Mom wishes he wasn’t the massive asshole that he is. But being a massive asshole has never stopped Donald Trump from getting what he wants out of women.

        Married white women in the suburbs will vote Republican for the same reason their husbands do: because they pay enough in taxes already, and they like their healthcare plan, and they don’t want any peaceful protesting to happen in their neighborhoods.

      • invisible finger

        Good grief. The Karens were already in the bag for Dems.

      • Viking1865

        Thing is, does Kamala Harris as VP in 2020 have the same affect as Obama as President in 2008?

        Like, obviously couldn’t stand Obama but he was a good speaker, he had a good presence, he was the real life Black President that Hollywood had been pushing in movies and TV for a decade or so.

        I was in high school in 2006, and Obama came to give a speech on behalf of Jim Webb, who was running to unseat George Allen. It was at a HBCU next door to my high school, so the school all let us cut class to go (what political bias in education.) Dude absolutely electrified that crowd, and I don’t know how many of them would have gone to the polls for a conservative white Democrat without that speech.

        I don’t know if Kamala has the same affect.

      • KibbledKristen

        When I saw Obama at the DNC convention in…what was it? 2004? I knew he would be President at some point soon.

      • Fatty Bolger

        does Kamala Harris as VP in 2020 have the same affect as Obama as President in 2008

        No. She’s no Obama, and anyway, she’s just the VP candidate. Nobody gets jazzed to vote because of the VP. Even in this case, where there’s a much better chance than usual that she’d end up as President. People just don’t think that way.

  47. Sean

    https://freebeacon.com/campus/pennsylvania-district-mandates-white-supremacy-lessons-for-kindergartners/

    Gladwyne Elementary School—located in Lower Merion School District, one of the richest in the nation—will require fourth and fifth graders to read Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness, which claims that white people who relate to police officers or decline to watch the news are complicit in racism. The curriculum also assigns A Kid’s Book About Racism to kindergarten and first graders.

    Maybe keeping the schools closed isn’t such a bad idea.

    • pan fried wylie

      They’re buying 5mil copies of the books either way. At least with the schools closed the kids might not be subjected to reading them?

    • juris imprudent

      Funny thing, that’s the school district that Kobe Bryant graduated out of. Yep, loads of racism.

    • Rhywun

      decline to watch the news

      Wow, that’s a new one. I guess we’re not pretending “the news” isn’t leftist propaganda any more.

  48. Viking1865

    https://asrainvestigates.substack.com/p/the-woke-armys-race-war-on-americas

    Virginia has public magnet high schools, called Governors schools. They have a strict merit based admission policy, based on objective academic standards. What this means is that they are absolutely chock full of kids of East Asian and South Asian extraction, with white kids being most of the rest, and black and Latino kids being an absolutely tiny minority.

    So obviously, it’s time to destroy the strict merit based system.

    • R C Dean

      Systemic racism is basically the claim that everything that has disparate racial outcomes is per se racist.

      It comes perilously close to saying that certain races are incapable of achieving good outcomes. It has to rely instead on a claim that there is an invisible, indetectable force that keeps certain races down. It isn’t people doing overtly racist things, it isn’t organizations or institutions with overtly racist policies, its just out there, a vibration in the ether.

      • juris imprudent

        And of course you have to obliterate the lived experience of East and South Asians by turning them white. But hey, that’s life on the victim stack.

    • Rebel Scum

      We have to be racist in order to defeat racism.

    • leon

      So obviously, it’s time to destroy the strict merit based system.

      The Western Concept of Merit is a a white supremacist ideology

      • Cancelled

        Merit assumes set standards by which one can judge. Standards are white patriarchy at its worst because they are established to match and confirm white patriarchial concepts of what is good. This denies the lived experience of Karen the woman assigned male at birth who overcame numerous convictions for rape to redefine gender by forcing the system to put xer in a women’s prison. It denies the worth of George Floyd who overcame his record of violent crime and lack of any discernible merit according to those standards to become the patron Saint of Oceania.

      • invisible finger

        and replace it with…. a caste system.

        Like plantations had.

    • KSuellington

      From an excellent bio article on T Sowell from Coleman Hughes:

      “ Sowell’s great contribution to the study of racial inequality was to reverse the explanandum that has dominated mainstream thought for over a century. Intellectuals have generally assumed that in a fair society, composed of groups with equal inborn potential, we should see racially equal outcomes in wealth, occupational status, incarceration, and much else. That racial disparity is pervasive is seen either as proof that racial groups are not born with equal potential or that we don’t live in a fair society. The first position predominated among “progressive” intellectuals in the early twentieth century, who blamed racial disparity on genetic differences and prescribed eugenics as a cure. The second has dominated the academy since the 1960s and is now orthodoxy on the political Left. Democrats as moderate as Joe Biden have charged that America is “institutionally racist,” and when asked to prove it, the reply almost always points to statistical disparities between whites and blacks in wealth, incarceration, health, and in other areas. The suppressed premise—that statistical equality would be the norm, absent racism—is rarely stated openly or challenged.”

      https://www.city-journal.org/thomas-sowell-race-poverty-culture

      • Suthenboy

        Race does not equal culture and culture is not genetic.

        *facepalm*

      • Surly Knott

        This is the part that really struck me:
        “One way he pressure-tests this assumption is by finding conditions in which we know, with near-certainty, that racial bias does not exist, and then seeing if outcomes are, in fact, equal. For example, between white Americans of French descent and white Americans of Russian descent, it’s safe to assume that neither group suffers more bias than the other—if for no other reason than that they’re hard to tell apart. Nevertheless, the French descendants earn only 70 cents for every dollar earned by the Russian-Americans. Why such a large gap? Sowell’s basic insight is that the question is posed backward. Why would we think that two ethnic groups with different histories, demographics, social patterns, and cultural values would nevertheless achieve identical results?”
        From the linked article.

    • Rhywun

      “Stop stealing my ideas.”

      /Bill Deblasio

  49. The Late P Brooks

    “Mandatory gun buybacks”.

    I only have to worry about the ones I bought from you?

    • R C Dean

      I see a boat rental in my future if (when?) the Dems win.

      I have no doubt that the ATF has illegally maintained background check records to create a de facto registry, so when I get the notice it will have a list of the guns I am to “sell back”.

      • leon

        No, No, they haven’t been doing that, But the 3rd Party corp that they have storing the data my have not deleted it and so then when the buybacks happen, they will know who to get the info from.

      • Suthenboy

        “See, I was fishing down on the Atchafalaya four or five miles south of Krotz Springs….have you ever seen the Atchafalaya when the water is up?….we were trying to stay close to the bank but….

      • pan fried wylie

        *click as Suthen switches over to recording of Giligan’s themesong*

  50. KibbledKristen

    Who knew just dribbling and shooting at a hoop with a ball would be such sweaty work? (been playing b ball with myself as a way to get some exercise)

    • Annoyed Nomad

      Euphemism?