Monday Morning Links

by | Mar 30, 2020 | Daily Links | 583 comments

::scans ESPN headlines::

::sighs::

Hondo’s roommate

Radical English Whig John Trenchard was born on this day. He shares it with chemist Robert Bunsen, expressionist painter and ear-cutter Vincent van Gogh, Ikea founder Ingvar Kamprad, basketball legend and great guy Jerry Lucas, brilliant guitarist Eric Clapton, Scottish actor Robbie Coltrane, rapper MC Hammer, lovely-voiced singer Tracy Chapman, English blowhard Piers Morgan, American acting legend Ian Ziering, Canadien person Celine Dion, singer Norah Jones, andassclown and NFL player Richard Sherman.

Self-portrait of the master

That’s a diverse list. Now on to…the links!

Jacobin goes out of it’s way to write something stupid as shit. But to be honest, I’m sure there are a lot of leftists fapping wildly to this. And they are near or holding the levers of power. Which is scary.

We should work on out knot-making just in case government officials use this to further erode our freedoms.

Don’t stand so close to me. Or the government will stand close enough to you to give you a $500 ticket. And as if that wasn’t authoritarian enough…it gets worse. Fucking authoritarian assholes.

Ooh, look! A piece of good news in a world going to shit. Too bad this won’t be reported on much.

Now close the rest of them!

And something else pretty cool. If you’re into that.

In Chicagoland, some people continue living as they normally would during the panic. Spoiler alert: they’re grifting.

Expect more of this.

Real estate in west Texas is about to get a lot cheaper. Not that anybody wants to buy out there.

A song for the times. Hope you enjoy it.

Now get out there and have the best day you can. And cross your fingers.

About The Author

sloopyinca

sloopyinca

583 Comments

  1. Shpip

    US-led forces pull out of 3rd Iraqi base this month

    Pulling out is a skill every man of military age should learn.

  2. Scruffy Nerfherder

    Nationalize Amazon BY PARIS MARX

    Somebody is taking their namesake too seriously.

    • ruodberht

      For the fairest?

    • Swiss Servator

      I hope they are getting hectored in the comments.

      • Seguin

        Dido.

    • Slammer

      I’m not even going to Troy to read that garbage

    • Charles Easterly

      Styx and stones….

  3. WTF

    Or the government will stand close enough to you to give you a $500 ticket.

    What statutory authority could they possibly cite if anyone wanted to fight his?

    • sloopyinca

      My guess is the FYTW clause.

      I’m more concerned with the statement Hizzonor made in the tweet though. Especially the “permanently” part.

      • WTF

        Well DeBlasio never misses an opportunity to let his authoritarian flag fly. Although I would assume that one would actually be slapped down by SCOTUS.

    • PieInTheSky

      Romanian government publicized that they already gave over 10000 fines for not respecting social distancing

      • Old Man With Candy

        It’s not social distancing, it’s LEPER LENGTHING.

    • leon

      Most municipalities are citing state authority and hoping no one challenges.

    • invisible finger

      I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but I’m surprised there’s enough police willing to go along with such bullshit. But I’ll remember it next time someone wonders how Nazi Germany could have happened, it simply doesn’t take much.

      • R C Dean

        That’s the one thing I’m not surprised by.

    • Slammer

      If you’re gonna stand close to someone in those cities and the cops show up then just assault the person you’re close to, then the cops will leave you alone

      • westernsloper

        ^ this is a man with a plan!

      • Festus

        panama

    • The Last American Hero

      FWIW, they will fine commoners. They will not fine celebrities or the politically connected, and they won’t fine the homeless/mentally ill that roam the now empty streets.

  4. Don escaped Oklahoma

    I saw Norah Jones at UNT as part of their lab concert; she stood out amongst 20 solid musicians: I knew she would be a hit.

    • sloopyinca

      She’s got some serious pipes. She’s got the second best voice of the birthday peeps, fwiw.

      • Festus

        I like Norah.

      • pistoffnick

        She has a beautiful voice.

  5. Scruffy Nerfherder

    We’re all socialists now:

    In just these past few weeks, the Fed has cut rates by 150 basis points to near zero and run through its entire 2008 crisis handbook. That wasn’t enough to calm markets, though — so the central bank also announced $1 trillion a day in repurchase agreements and unlimited quantitative easing, which includes a hard-to-understand $625 billion of bond buying a week going forward. At this rate, the Fed will own two-thirds of the Treasury market in a year.

    But it’s the alphabet soup of new programs that deserve special consideration, as they could have profound long-term consequences for the functioning of the Fed and the allocation of capital in financial markets. Specifically, these are:

    CPFF (Commercial Paper Funding Facility) – buying commercial paper from the issuer.
    PMCCF (Primary Market Corporate Credit Facility) – buying corporate bonds from the issuer.
    TALF (Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility) – funding backstop for asset-backed securities.
    SMCCF (Secondary Market Corporate Credit Facility) – buying corporate bonds and bond ETFs in the secondary market.
    MSBLP (Main Street Business Lending Program) – Details are to come, but it will lend to eligible small and medium-size businesses, complementing efforts by the Small Business Association.
    To put it bluntly, the Fed isn’t allowed to do any of this. The central bank is only allowed to purchase or lend against securities that have government guarantee. This includes Treasury securities, agency mortgage-backed securities and the debt issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. An argument can be made that can also include municipal securities, but nothing in the laundry list above.

    So how can they do this? The Fed will finance a special purpose vehicle (SPV) for each acronym to conduct these operations. The Treasury, using the Exchange Stabilization Fund, will make an equity investment in each SPV and be in a “first loss” position. What does this mean? In essence, the Treasury, not the Fed, is buying all these securities and backstopping of loans; the Fed is acting as banker and providing financing. The Fed hired BlackRock Inc. to purchase these securities and handle the administration of the SPVs on behalf of the owner, the Treasury.

    In other words, the federal government is nationalizing large swaths of the financial markets. The Fed is providing the money to do it. BlackRock will be doing the trades.

    We are watching history being made right now, and it ain’t the good kind.

    • WTF

      “Never let a good crisis go to waste.”

    • leon

      “We are watching history being made right now”

      It’s always less exciting than when you read about it in the history books.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Effectively, the Fed is giving the Treasury access to its printing press. This completely opens the door to an administration for currency and stock market manipulation.

        And as we all know here, no federal program, once implemented, goes away.

      • invisible finger

        Which is why I call it the Deep State Virus.

      • The Last American Hero

        More like a cancer that sometimes slows down or even briefly goes into remission, but never really goes away.

      • leon

        I don’t doubt its significance, I just realized that when I read how something happened in history and wonder why people put up with it, I have to realize that it was probably done in an obfuscated manner.

    • Suthenboy

      I have said before: Getting rid of government isn’t a solution. The people of low character in government, they won’t go away. We are still stuck with them.

      The same is true of people of good character. The scum is trying to crash the economy and destroy our civil society but the fact is we are still going to be here. In the end, we will win.

      • WTF

        Well you’re very optimistic. The norm throughout history has been servitude and poverty. Our current state of (relative) freedom and prosperity is an aberration, which looks unlikely to last much longer.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        In the end, we will win.

        Such an optimist!

        99.99% of human history is a history of poverty, misery, and servitude. I see a reversion to the mean as being inevitable.

      • Rebel Scum

        The scum is trying to crash the economy and destroy our civil society

        I am doing nothing of the sort.

  6. Festus

    Going OT but Neph and Diggy’s chat was the best chat ever! The best! It was hilarious to hear the voices and not one of them was a surprise except for my garbled delivery… So many in-jokes.

    • Festus

      Friday is better but I’ll be drunker.

    • PieInTheSky

      I have learned that the Astros are a bunch of cheaters in that very chat

      • Festus

        Must have been later but everyone already knew that, Vlad. I had to work yesterday.

  7. robc

    Had a papers please moment yesterday. Cops had a “safety check point” set up only allowing residents to Isle of Palms and Sullivans Island. It is to prevent people from going to the beach.

    • Festus

      It’s fucking ridiculous. I hope people start pushing back.

  8. JD is Unemployed

    West Texas is absolutely beautiful. I’d live out there if I could.

    • leon

      El Paso is in West Texas, therefore you are wrong

      • Tejicano

        I grew up there and can confirm that Leon is correct.

      • JD is Unemployed

        El Paso is de facto Mexico.

      • leon

        De facto? Let’s cede it and make it official.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        I’ve been told on the factory floor repeatedly: “we’re taking it back one bambino at a time”

        I don’t care what flavor you are: just get the f**k out of the left lane; I’ve got places to be.

      • Agent Cooper

        You just need to fall in love with a Mexican girl.

    • sloopyinca

      You must really like wind and sand.

      • JD is Unemployed

        Yes sir. T’ain’t nothin’ quite like the satisfaction of tipping the sand out of one’s boots on the porch.

      • UnCivilServant

        I thought it was more like losing a layer of unprotected skin due to windborne sand abrading away exposed surfaces.

      • JD is Unemployed

        Ultimate natural exfoliation.

      • bacon-magic

        Sand bathing. It’s gritty so you aren’t shitty.

    • PieInTheSky

      Record high °F (°C) 87
      (31) 94
      (34) 100
      (38) 103
      (39) 110
      (43) 117
      (47) 114
      (46) 113
      (45) 111
      (44) 102
      (39) 89
      (32) 88
      (31) 117
      (47)
      Average high °F (°C) 54.2
      (12.3) 58.3
      (14.6) 67.0
      (19.4) 75.8
      (24.3) 83.6
      (28.7) 91.4
      (33.0) 96.9
      (36.1) 96.6
      (35.9) 88.1
      (31.2) 77.0
      (25.0) 65.1
      (18.4) 54.7
      (12.6) 75.7
      (24.3)

      To hot. Pass

      • Festus

        Gah! I can’t stand it much over 25 degrees. My body run’s a degree and a bit Celcius over normal.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        My body run’s a degree and a bit Celcius over normal.

        That’s because of the clap. ?

      • Festus

        Probably…

    • Don escaped Oklahoma

      Europeans have a habit for about two centuries of seeing a picture of Beaumont in a magazine and buying a league of land in Junction. Don’t make that mistake with Big Bend and Odessa!

      The reason Texas isn’t really the South is their shortage of kudzu. Almost everything can be forgiven them except our being able to see every washing machine and F150 that’s blown up in the past four decades for 20 miles in every direction. Hide that crap: push it off in a cañon or arroyo, amigo!

      • Festus

        Hey Don, join the circle-jerk planned for Friday! We’re super nice and you don’t have to eat the cookie at the end!

      • JD is Unemployed

        I am aware of this – and Odessa, to be fair, doesn’t look that bad. I’m a country boy at heart so I’d rather be out in the sticks with my junker F-150 and old washing machines.

      • Festus

        ^^^ Three thumbs up!

      • Festus

        Nice pull, even if he’s a commie.

      • Slammer

        I thought it was gonna be Marty Robbins

  9. leon


    We should work on out knot-making just in case government officials use this to further erode our freedoms.
    Don’t stand so close to me. Or the government will stand close enough to you to give you a $500 ticket. And as if that wasn’t authoritarian enough…it gets worse. Fucking authoritarian assholes”

    While we are all going through bullshit, some have been more authoritarian than others. I thought California was the worst, but NYC takes it. I’m glad my governor had been adamant that not complying with the order is not a crime.

    As for threatening to permanently close churches, I think that falls under the same cluelessness that is ubiquitous on the left when it comes to religion. You saw this from Beto when he said churches that don’t toe the government line on marriage should lose tax exempt status.

    • Slammer

      Packing St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Easter Sunday in NYC would be an interesting act of civil disobedience. Hell, you could even call it a Mass disobedience

      • Pope Jimbo

        I think we can give him the benefit of a doubt and assume it was an apse of judgement. If he does it again, I guess he really is a nave who needs a catt but.

      • The Hyperbole

        So basilically we should cut him some slack?

      • mindyourbusiness

        Obviously, De Blasio and his ilk want us to altar our views.

        Speaking of social distancing, just a thought (sorry, JATNAS);we ought to put up a petition to make sure De B and his cronies are ‘social distanced’ from the rest of us. Send them t some tropical paradise. Caroline Island, say, or maybe Yap…

      • Homple

        Don’t get all incensed over this.

      • commodious spittoon

        You may get censered.

  10. Don escaped Oklahoma

    “TIPRO requests that President Donald Trump escalate U.S. diplomatic efforts with Saudi Arabia and Russia in response to their deliberate decision to flood world markets with oil, while considering other options to protect domestic energy producers,” Longanecker said.

    What’s the problem? This can be quickly fixed with $20/bbl tariff implemented quickly and ably by the Most Libertarian President of All Time™

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The tariff is coming. Mark my words.

      • sloopyinca

        I’m expecting it soon as well. For whatever good it will do…which is “none”. Demand has fallen so much it won’t stop the bleeding for months.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I think they’re trying to provide the credit markets with a reason, any reason, to backstop the drillers. Right now, nobody will touch them.

      • sloopyinca

        It’s not really the drillers as much as it is the midstream guys and frackers. Most of the drillers with deep pockets will lay off their workforce and stack up their rigs. The smaller operations will fold and somebody will pick up the slack when the price rebounds.
        The midstream guys are necessary whether oil is high or low. And the frackers are as essential to the process as the drillers are anymore. The sand companies, water companies, reclamation/remediation/disposal guys…if they fold, Halliburton and Schlumberger won’t have a viable business model on drilling operations once the rebound occurs.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        I’ll be the Ritchie lot in Midland is filling up pretty quickly.

      • sloopyinca

        I doubt it. They did such a shit job with that Kruse purchase that most of the core people they brought on have already left and started another company. And IronPlanet isn’t really equipped to sell rigs and whatnot. Besides, so much of that is overly-leveraged that the finance companies aren’t going to go BK letting it all flood the market at once.
        No, it’ll sit like it always sits during shit like this. And it’ll get leveraged again and again and everybody involved will be hoping for a bailout so it won’t be worse than every other time the price rides the roller coaster to the bottom of a hill.

        Side note: I need to get to Alice and Refugio in the next two weeks to start getting a sizable and fully liquid package ready to sell in May. I just hope my seller hasn’t gotten wise and paid someone to pour some gas and light a match.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        Alice and Refugio

        I figured RB starts seeing secondary materials soon, though: the pickups from services more than heavy equipment or rig-related.

        My pronunciation of RuhFuhrerIO has never been wrong enough to be genuine Texasese.
        * hangs hat, kicks rock *

      • sloopyinca

        Lots of states have a place with a goofy mispronounced name.
        Let me introduce you to Buena Vista (BYOON-uh Vista), VA.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        Lots of states

        No doubt.

        But it’s the national sport of Texas wrecking place names. I fully approve, mind you; it’s like baseball: why isn’t a base on balls an official at bat because reasons dude get over it. And you get German, Spanish, Czech: the delightful nonsense never ends.

        Collecting and perfecting the mispronunciations down there is just delicious: mi taza runneth over.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        Credit schmedit: Meet me at the cafe in Brownwood and I’ll bring my brother-in-law who’s gotta rig. You got a couple of buddies cuz we can do a third-for-a-quarter deal, I’ve got a hole over in the Fisher County Mississippian that’s a can’t miss.

      • OneOut

        Don the correct local pronunciation is

        Rrrrraefuuufio.

        /born in Victoria

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        It’ll do a ton of good: fill up our Treasury with moar Arab dollar!

        #logic #macroeconomics #GOP2020

      • Nephilium

        From just a couple days ago… $0.89/gallon.

      • robc

        A tariff will not make the mass of voters happy. I think most people are fine with cheap gas.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        We’ve gotta take our country back! They’re stealing our jobs! Don’t you even economics, dude!!!?

      • Jarflax

        In the new America you will be guaranteed your job under Constitution II.

    • Festus

      They wanted a Hillary but the Dems gave them a Biden. Hillary would play by the rules but they’re panicking now.

      • Suthenboy

        Biden is toast. For that matter we might soon be sticking a fork in the Democrats.

        I am imagining the old joke “Doc, it hurts when I do this” not ending with ” Then stop doing that” instead ending with “But why would I do stop?”

      • Count Potato

        I don’t know. Trump’s biggest selling point was the economy.

      • Agent Cooper

        Pandemics certainly change the dynamic, but he’s a bit protected by how visible and active he appears during this crisis.

  11. PieInTheSky

    Jacobin goes out of it’s way to write something stupid as shit. But to be honest, I’m sure there are a lot of leftists tapping wildly to this. And they are near or holding the levers of power. Which is scary.

    To be fair, is there any event or situation for which the Jacobin solution is not nationalize Amazon?

    • Festus

      No. It’s all about stealing the means of production.

      • Suthenboy

        They aren’t after the means of production. That means work. They are just after the produce. After they eat it all they just walk away. I have seen it over and over.

      • invisible finger

        ^THIS

      • Fatty Bolger

        Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.

        Or if you’re a socialist, drown the fisherman, take all his fish, and eat for a few days until the fish run out.

    • leon

      I talked with my wife about this last night. I don’t know how you can name your magazine “Jacobin” and then wonder why people think you are willing to institute reigns of terror and purges in order to obtain political power.

      • Festus

        99.75 % of the public don’t even know what a “Jacobin” is. That’s why.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Which is preposterous. Worse, they have no clue what a gulag is. They may *know* the word but they don’t know anything beyond that.

        This is why the evil end game of socialism doesn’t compute with them. They just stupidly accept the ‘compassion greater good’ bull shit on the front end.

        It’s completely unacceptable.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Or at face value. Eg.. ‘Bernie just wants to take care of the sick and poor! What’s so wrong about that? Are you inhumane?’ Or ‘Bernie just wants people to be educated so we don’t have to put up with your ignorance. You should be glad because 100% literacy rate like in Cuba means people work and that means they don’t take welfare which you hate so much!’

        Ad infinitum…

      • PieInTheSky

        the plumage don’t enter into it

      • leon

        Well of course, it is purely ornamental.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Exactly. The Jacobins were reactionaries with murderous impulses.

        It’s bizarre but at the same time I reserve the right to think they’re just immoral pieces of shits.

      • Festus

        They want power, by any means necessary. His name IS Trudeau.

      • Festus

        If the Friday Flog happens you should join up too! Late nite was hilarious. It was mostly people laughing over each other. Much fun. Many chortles.

  12. Festus

    That’s a great tune, Sloop! It’s on heavy rotation and has been since 1978.

  13. robc

    Is there anything worse than dealing with someone else’s enshringed typo?

    Just ran across a table named REDACTED_PROCCESS

    I want to fix it in our migration but I am afraid it is too deeply embedded in the code too. Ugh.

    • robc

      joez law. Of course I made a typo. But I would fix it if I could.

      • Nephilium

        How about the fact that VOIP phones in the Cisco environment still have SEP as a prefix due to legacy code. This is still in place 20 years later.

      • robc

        That is bad too, but imagine if in one specific instance it was spelled SPE instead.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        Thanks for that link! I didn’t know the history of that product, and didn’t realize the origin of the SEP prefix. Skinny, on the other hand, was my jam. We were working on migrating toward SIP as the primary protocol back in the 2012 time frame, but Skinny was so much easier to code around, probably because it wasn’t bolted on at a later date.

      • Nephilium

        Not a problem. It’s one of those things that most of us UCCE guys have learned at some point through the years.

        probably because it wasn’t bolted on at a later date.

        /deletes long rant about Peripheral Gateways

    • sloopyinca

      I don’t know what any of this means but I’m sure it could be applied to my myriad typos in the morning links, which is why I’m deciding to take offense.

      • AlexinCT

        Well played, sir!

    • ruodberht

      “google” is a misspelling and it’s lasted for a while

      • robc

        Intentional for trademark reasons, i bet.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      I’m also starting to hear murmurs that Italy may be inflating the death numbers. If someone dies and had an underlying condition but died and also had Wuhan, they put the Chink Virus down as cause of death even if it wasn’t the main cause.

      I wonder how prevalent this in all countries. Which makes me think a) the data is too volatile b) and as such makes it hard to react to it and c) when all is said and done it wouldn’t be a stunner to discover we over shot and over dramatized it.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I went thru the NYT photo essay on Italy this weekend and almost every person I saw that was laid up was old and/or fat. I don’t doubt the illness is rough on you, but I think the message to everyone should be that Westerners have gotten fat and lazy and this is the reckoning.

      • PieInTheSky

        Some say some deaths are under-counted e.g. people who dies of different things because the hospital was to busy with Wuhan.

        I have yet to see a statistic for European countries with total deaths March 2019 vs March 2020

        But, as with flu, it is impossible to clearly attribute a death to the flu or the underlying condition. No way of knowing how much old man Giuseppe would have lived without the Chianaflu

      • The Last American Hero

        But blaming the Chinaflu allows the system to cover up its other inadequacies.

      • Pine_Tree

        Well, whether the conflation is deliberate or not, that certainly seems the norm in the US. Granted that it does seem to cause some “excess” deaths, to use what I think is the right term, and probably accelerates others, but pretty much all the death figures here are for people who died “with” it, not “from” it.

      • sloopyinca

        I read yesterday that the number of total deaths in the US are 18% lower the last two weeks than the same weeks last year and on average over the last five years. That’s a huge drop off and it doesn’t even account for increased population, so the death rate is lower by even more.

      • R C Dean

        I’m about 99% sure that’s reporting lag.

    • sloopyinca

      Robinson was someone who had Detroit and public service “running through his veins,” said Jonathan Kinloch, a friend of Robinson’s and chairman of the 13th Congressional District Democratic Party. He was someone, he said, who “stood firm on the issues he believed in.”

      Oh, so he was a legacy grifter whose mom was elected six times to a city government that failed its people at every turn.

      I’m sorry he died. That sucks for his family. But let’s not pretend he wasn’t something he obviously was: another useless politician who never did fuck-all for his constituents.

      • Fourscore

        Nine total dead in MN, 7 were from nursing homes.

        Proves social distancing works,. See, that’s how we can get ahead of this inscrutable and mysterious Chinese malady.

        (I am not introverted or reclusive, I’ve been practicing Safe Social Distancing my whole life)

      • westernsloper

        Just heard the news lady say CO will not release the info on how many of our 47 deaths were from nursing homes.

      • UnCivilServant

        At least 40 of them, I’d wager.

      • westernsloper

        37 of them were over 70, so it is possible, and probably why they don’t want that info out. Hurts the narrative.

      • AlexinCT

        ^^^THIS^^^

      • leon

        Makes you wonder why they won’t release more information about it. I think it’s fairly clear that they don’t want people drawing conclusions from the data, and then using it to make decisions in contra to the orders being put out.

        Now i understand that a little bit of information is dangerous, but let’s not mistake this for what it is. Pure paternalisim, and especially that of keeping people in the dark “For their own good”, where “their own good” means: “Being ordered into their houses cowering in fear”.

      • Gustave Lytton

        The other one is hiding behind HIPAA and refusing to provide any details of where the confirmed cases are and where they they’ve been in the last two weeks so the public can make their precautions. The way this has been handled is zero transparency so the state/local health departments can’t be exposed for how fucking incompetent and slow they’ve been.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I’m impressed you were able to find out anything about the deaths, Fourscore. The place I am tracking Minnesoda stats never gets into any of that. My hunch was that the details on the 9 people who have died would undermine the panic. Your factoid proves that I think.

      • AlexinCT

        I saw an interview on TeeVee yesterday and through the whole pile of usual mendacious lefty talking point garbage, one of the doctors let it slip that the one young individual that had died was morbidly obese, and they had started seeing that was one of the major problems for people otherwise “healthy”….

        A relative in Italy confirmed the same as was true there. The ones dying are very old, or are old and have some other serious condition , or in the case of the few young people, were morbidly obese people.

        Being super fat seems to be a serious problem for anyone that gets this thing…

      • UnCivilServant

        Culls the old and fat?

        It was designed to kill off westerners!

      • Pope Jimbo

        Being super fat seems to be a serious problem for anyone that gets this thing…

        THAT CHANGES EVERYTHING!!!!! I’M GONNA DIE!!!!

      • AlexinCT

        I hear if you drink a lot or eat a lot of pussy it makes you immune…

      • UnCivilServant

        No, that’s not true.

        If you have malaria, the malaria catches the coronoavirus and you’re fine.

      • AlexinCT

        Does something like gonorrhea or syphilis also help kill corona? It sure as hell kills sex…

    • Homple

      “He refused to accept he was sick,” she said. 

      Photo makes that seem quite likely.

    • Rebel Scum

      “He wrapped his car around a telephone pole but tested positive for coronavirus. Cause of death, coronavirus.” – Italy

    • JD is Unemployed

      I’d like to play some sort of “what will he buy next?” drinking game to that, but it looks like the funs over.

  14. Tundra

    Good morning, Sloopy!

    And a good morning to the rest of you nice people!

    Holy shit, Sloop, way to come out of the gate strong. I’m already so pissed it will be noon before my blood pressure drops back to normal!

    Happy to see bases closing in Iraq, of course, but the Stasi informants and DeBlasio ass-raping the Constitution crush that positivity.

    It’s hard to imagine that there won’t be a reckoning soon.

    Very appropriate song, too!

    Have a great day, y’all!

    • Fourscore

      I’m in wonderment as to how the kick back starts?

      Got a call last night from my coffee drinking buddy that I haven’t seen for a couple weeks. We’re having coffee this morning, chez moi, I told to stop and pick up our other friend. We’ll see if we can round up more and form our own round table.

      • Pope Jimbo

        If this keeps up, the Honey Harvest will be extra fun. All the Glibs will be able to trot out their weaponry in order to repel any revenooers who might try to show up and break up the fun. Everyone will make fun of me because I only own hunting rifles and shot guns. No side arms or “assault” rifles for me.

        But seriously, I have been wondering too how the govt can let go of the tiger’s tail on this.

      • Tundra

        They don’t want to let go.

        Walz is getting off on this whole mess. He preens every time the camera goes live. He won’t willingly go back to “who’s that guy?”

  15. Rufus the Monocled

    Wanna know what’s scary? Aside from its stupid name?

    “Paris Marx is a socialist writer and urbanist. They are the editor of Radical Urbanist and have previously written for NBC News, CBC News, and Toronto Star.”

    That it gets published in the mainstream.

    • PieInTheSky

      Paris Marx will be first against the wall should the revolution come

      • leon

        How Jacobin

      • Rufus the Monocled

        It assumes it’s not a useful idiot but will be part of the kangaroo government and courts of fools doling out the mass executions.

      • Tejicano

        They all do. If you looked at where Joe Stalin was and what he was doing in 1917 you wouldn’t have a clue that he would end up on top.

      • WTF

        Backpfeiffengesicht if I ever saw one.

      • Suthenboy

        I dont think I could resist throwing a punch on sight.

      • Count Potato

        Pssst…. you have a gun.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        I’m gonna guess he can’t tell the difference between a balance sheet and an income statement.

        But it won’t stop him from talking about business.

        It’s the nerds with guns you have to worry about.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Say what you will about the Iranian intelligence services, but they are smart enough to know that kidnapping and imprisoning this guy wouldn’t make them any money. Even Obama wouldn’t come across with any cash to get him released.

      • Agent Cooper

        Real name: Bradley Schlumberger.

    • sloopyinca

      How the fuck could anybody proudly call himself an “urbanist” while the Wuhan virus is disproportionately killing people who live on top of each other in overly-dense urban environments?
      Compare Houston to NYC right now. Houston is a sprawling city where almost everybody has a lawn, a car, and some form of social distancing baked into their lifestyle. NYC is a concrete jungle of high- and mid-rise apartments and people wholly dependent on crowded, close-contact mass-transit. Which one stands to make it through this fiasco in its current form?

      • PieInTheSky

        Big cities are easier to get a bit of martial law in and isolate by force though.

      • Suthenboy

        What do you mean ‘how could they’?
        That is the whole purpose.
        They hate you passionately and seeing you dead gives them joy. If you dont die then they gleefully grind. you under their heel.

      • AlexinCT

        How the fuck could anybody proudly call himself an “urbanist” while the Wuhan virus is disproportionately killing people who live on top of each other in overly-dense urban environments?

        You think the people that peddled the glory of Gaia saving urbanization practices will have any problem going back to peddling more of that once reality finishes kicking everyone living in densely populated urban areas (Hi NYC!) in their collective nuts and shows them the dangers during such a viral event as the one we are having? Or do you think people will go right back to thinking these things will never happen?

    • Chipwooder

      “They”….what a pretentious sack of shit

    • Homple

      They? Scizophrenic or what?

  16. westernsloper

    it becomes increasingly clear that COVID-19 won’t allow things to go back to normal anytime soon — regardless of how intently Trump and his Republican death cult are prepared to risk millions of lives in service of the stock market.

    That is as far as I made it into that pile.

  17. Shirley Knott

    Post plague song from a rather appropriately named band.

  18. Tundra

    How red tape has crippled America’s coronavirus response

    Under heavy White House pressure, agencies are lifting barriers. But it was only late Thursday, for example, that the Food and Drug Administration waived some restrictions on the production and sale of surgical masks — more than two months after the first coronavirus case in the United States was confirmed, in Washington state on Jan. 20.

    It’s the latest example of red tape gone awry that could prove deadly. It took weeks for the feds to waive regs even on coronavirus testing kits. For more than a month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention only allowed the use of its test — which proved to be inaccurate much of the time — even as companies were champing at the bit to produce better and faster kits.

    But we need more government, right?

    Fuck.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      At this point ‘it was the butler’ has to be amended to ‘it was the red tape’.

    • invisible finger

      “Under heavy White House pressure, agencies are lifting barriers”

      It’s as if these agencies never had to listen to their boss before.

      • WTF

        RESIST!!11!!!

      • Suthenboy

        “restrictions on the production and sale of surgical masks”

        Were I President I would give a whole new meaning to the phrase “New Broom”.

    • Drake

      Hell, we have Governors banning the most effective medicine yet discovered to treat it. They are actively making this worse.

      • Suthenboy

        I wasn’t aware that they had the power to do that.

      • Private Chipperbot

        Michigan’s governor said she would have the license of any doctor who prescribed it revoked.

      • Drake

        I hope it costs her dearly. There will be stories of people asking for that treatment, being denied, and ending up on a ventilator and maybe dying.

      • Shirley Knott

        Which just begs for the Cuomo response — she can’t do that, it would be illegal.
        Not that that would stop her.

      • WTF

        Didn’t you know that governors become dictators whenever an emergency is declared? It’s in the constitution, right next to the FYTW clause.

      • Tejicano

        Well, they don’t have the authority to do that but they seem to have the power to do that for now.

      • Semi-Spartan Dad

        TDS strikes again.

    • The Last American Hero

      Look, 9/11 hijackers were successful in part because the 17 US intelligence agencies didn’t or wouldn’t talk to each other. So the solution was to create 2 more intelligence agencies.

    • PieInTheSky

      is there a transcript cause I aint listening

    • Ted S.

      I think it’s Q who gets blonde sided.

      • Agent Cooper

        Clappy GIF here.

  19. MikeS

    The pic in that DeBlasio social distancing story looks like an episode of Perfect Strangers.

    “On tonight’s very special episode of Perfect Strangers, Larry learns that Balki never got his green card. But the mayor has a very special surprise for them both…”

    • Rufus the Monocled

      You watched that shit?

      • Gdragon

        Of course he did, don’t be ridiculous!

      • PieInTheSky

        I mean there was not that much on on Romanian TV in the 90s. Also I was young

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Romanians saw a little Balki in them huh?

      • Agent Cooper

        You know else saw a little Balki in them?

  20. Suthenboy

    Jacobin writes something stupid. It must be Monday. Useful idiots are idiots.

    I am guessing that there will be a zillion lawsuits coming out of the behavior that the hired help is engaging in during the current end of the world.
    Government thugs shutting down churches permanently? I dont think that is going to fly either. What the hell is wrong with voters in NYC?

    The world has been going to shit for as long as there has been a world. Relax. In my short lifetime I have lived through the end of the world at least 20 times, depending on how you count them.

    Exoskeletons: We live in the greatest time in history and it is only going to get better. I hope people dont lose sight of that.

    All public projects are scams to some extent.

    Drag a tree over my driveway and get shot. Well, just about any driveway in this parish would earn you a bullet.

    Granddaddy was in the oil business. It has always been like this…volatile as hell. Nearly impossible to predict.
    “Making predictions is hard, especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra.

    • PieInTheSky

      I wonder how much money they make at Jacobin. Or do they live on mummy and daddys dime?

      Drag a tree over my driveway and get shot. Well, just about any driveway in this parish would earn you a bullet. – do not reject the gift of a good tree. Make em cut it into firewood at gunpoint and stack it somewhere

      • Suthenboy

        That depends on who you define as mummy and daddy.

      • AlexinCT

        Some live in their real parent’s (or grandma’s) basement, where they spend their days playing video games and talking about the revolution, while others likely live on the government’s dime (read what was stolen from productive tax payers) and talk about their revolution. What they all have in common is a massive dose of stupidity (they read Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao, and so on and didn’t understand any of that evil shit) and a ton of envy directed towards their betters.

    • UnCivilServant

      So fish tank cleaner cocktails?

    • Nephilium

      Just to keep in some local news.

      • Agent Cooper

        This was after some HOT TRUMP TWEETZ.

    • leon

      I can’t believe Trump browbeat our poor bureaucrats into okaying this dangerous drug that has already been banned by Nevada and Michigan.

      • Suthenboy

        Banned?

      • invisible finger

        I’m questioning the accuracy of the NYPost article. The Examiner article seems to focus on the drama even if they have the facts correct.

        The Michigan story sounds very close to the email I read from the Indiana Pharmacy Board which reminds people that hydroxychloroquine is not approved as a prophylactic for C19. The assumption is any patient with C19 that is prescribed the drug by a doctor is already hospitalized and doesn’t need to take a prescription to a retail pharmacy.

      • Drake

        Banned and warned pharmacists not to fill the prescriptions.

    • bacon-magic

      *cancels aquarium tablet order

    • PieInTheSky

      So back to drinking gin and tonic?

      • Drake

        You stopped?

    • I. B. McGinty

      Be careful with that one if you have a heart condition.

    • Drake

      I’m hoping that the trial going on in NY is as positive as the French ones.

      • Drake
      • Agent Cooper

        Obvious Russian collusion.

  21. PieInTheSky

    #Wuhan residents estimate, based on calculations of cremations and urns now being returned to families, that between 42k-46k (!!) died in city + surrounding areas in the 2.5 months of lockdown. Far more than official figure of 2535 deaths.

    https://twitter.com/eileenguo/status/1244296947705364480

    • Suthenboy

      Treatment outcomes are going to be very different here, or where you are I assume, than in a place where treatment amounts to welding doors shut and the people think pickled monkey assholes are a delicacy.

      • westernsloper

        *extra hearty chuckle @ pickled monkey assholes*

    • Tejicano

      I wonder how many families were forced to self-quarantine and ended up without anybody healthy enough to have the energy to feed the others. If you are sick and being fed you might get better. If you are sick AND malnourished your chances of survival are slim.

  22. PieInTheSky

    Bad joke of the day

    Customer: I’d like the porn in my room to be disabled.

    Clerk: Ah, we only have regular porn.

    • Rufus the Monocled

      I’m using that one!

    • AlmightyJB

      Lol

    • AlmightyJB

      They quarenteened the north early.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Yes. I believe as early as February they closed down airports and PPD soccer games. But it tells half the story. It still grew and while it grew it didn’t travel (even through the trains were still running from Venice to Rome).

    • leon

      Mother Nature is trying to punish us. He was thwarted for fighting against it.

    • Agent Cooper

      See! Astrophysicists aren’t that smart!

    • Festus

      I think Neph should just open up that one-time so we don’t start killing our families.

      • Fourscore

        Hank Williams and Disc Golfers hardest hit

  23. Rebel Scum

    Instead of letting Amazon use coronavirus to dominate even more of the economy, the company should be nationalized and reoriented to serve the public good instead of predatory capitalism.

    Also known as “market exchange”. And they do serve the “public good” as they are very popular with the “public”.

    • leon

      I called it a few days back, where people who could continue to work would be attacked because they are not suffering like everyone else who is forbidden from working.

  24. Festus

    Last night on the CBC – leading story – China sending shipments of masks and gloves to desperate Canadian hospitals. You can’t make this shit up in your own bowels. What even in the fuck is going on here? It’s like China kicked you square in the balls and then offered you an ice-pack.

    • UnCivilServant

      They’re just returning the masks and gloves Trudy sent them, while charging someone a premium rate.

    • PieInTheSky

      Then again yesterday Dutchland recalled hundreds of thousands of faulty Chinese masks.

    • PieInTheSky

      Also was there not an article about 3M massively raping up production?

      • Slammer

        STEVE SMITH ALWAYS RAPE UP PRODUCTION

      • PieInTheSky

        ramping goddamnit

      • Private Chipperbot

        Interesting autocorrect 😀

    • Rufus the Monocled

      This after that degenerate sent OUR masks there when it was clear we were gonna need them.

      …./turns woodchipper on….

      • Festus

        I shit you not. It was the lead story on the National radio broadcast.

      • Festus

        I listen to it when I take my breaks and grab a smoke.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        I’d rather take my chances than wear a mask made in China.

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Justin is dying to find his ‘just watch me’ moment.

      • UnCivilServant

        Mask come pre-infected. No need to worry that disease pass you by.

      • Festus

        Everyone get disease! Everyone equal!

      • Fourscore

        Quit taking all the blankets!

    • bacon-magic

      *forced worker sneezes on all the new masks going to the rubes

      • Festus

        You laugh but I was sneezing and sniffling again for about three hours tonight. Probably just dust. Probably.

      • bacon-magic

        My usual allergies have started…even in my own home I stifle the sneeze or cough because of the Wuhan Flu. The mind game is just as bad as the virus.

      • Festus

        I hear that my sweet little stripper! Stifling is the new Anne Frank.

  25. PieInTheSky

    Convenience stores selling Easter eggs are facing interference from “heavy-handed” officials trying to restrict the range of goods they can sell under coronavirus curbs, a trade body says.

    Some shops have been told by police and local councils that the chocolate eggs are considered non-essential goods.

    The Association of Convenience Stores (ACS) blamed “overzealous enforcement and a misreading of the rules”.

    It has told shopkeepers to carry on selling a full range of goods.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-52090441

    Won’t someone think of the overweight children?

  26. Scruffy Nerfherder

    China is finally back to normal

    A medicine seller at a market in Dongguan, southern China, was seen advertising bats, snakes, lizards and toads to assist with common ailments, the Daily Mail reported.

    “The markets have gone back to operating in exactly the same way as they did before coronavirus,” a correspondent to visited the market told the publication.

    “The only difference is that security guards try to stop anyone taking pictures, which would never have happened before.”

    Another market in Guilin, in southwest China, was full of cats and dogs crammed into cages in filthy conditions and available for slaughter.

    • PieInTheSky

      Nuke it from orbit?

      • Suthenboy

        Agreed. What a shit culture. They are a stain on the planet.

      • leon

        Wow. No. CCP is the enemy, not the Chinese people.

    • WTF

      Another third world country with nuclear weapons.

    • Slammer

      A “civilization” that’s been around thousands of years, my ass

      • Swiss Servator

        Meh. We have our own versions – anti-vaxxers, crystl rubbers, Elderberry FTW types, etc. Many here just consider their oddities more “barbaric”.

    • The Other Kevin

      The next virus is on its way! And the Chinese government is already starting the cover-up!

  27. Chipwooder

    So my daughter and I went camping this past weekened with a few of the other dads and daughters from the Y-Princesses. It was a blast, aside from the complete lack of bites when we went fishing. Better yet, it was delightfully subversive, as we had 11 in the group and therefore violated Generalissimo Coonman’s proclamation.

    • UnCivilServant

      The fish were practicing social distancing.

      • Chipwooder

        They were taunting us by occasionally jumping while ignoring our worms.

      • Fourscore

        There’s treatment for that.

      • banginglc1

        Shoot wildly into the water?

      • Festus

        Nah, they just like to watch…

    • leon

      It’s hard to choose, because there are so many brain dead people on air, but S E Cupp has got to be one of the most empty headed individuals to be givien a time slot.

      • Agent Cooper

        Have you not witnesses that airheaditry that is Alysin Camerota?

      • Rebel Scum

        She used to be alright. I suspect TDS and/or she has always been a hack playing whatever role she is being paid to play.

    • sloopyinca

      That stupid asshole has completely gone around the bend. I hope Nick Sandmann bankrupts her stupid-ass.

    • WTF

      Although she did get roasted in the replies.

    • The Hyperbole

      But the “media” is also thousands of reporters on the frontlines

      Bolding mine, she’s not talking about herself.

      • sloopyinca

        She is though. By saying “it’s also”. If this was about those people instead of her, she’d be sure to make a stark difference between the two.
        She’s looking for clout on the coattails of those “brave” people on the “frontlines” who stand around and watch what other people do. Other people much braver than those observing them and injecting their opinion into every piece they seem to write these days.
        Sorry, but there’s not much bravery in penning a piece on how doctors and nurses and truck drivers and store clerks are persevering and doing their work. The brave people are the ones these observers are watching.

      • sloopyinca

        Not to mention “media” also includes people who make tv shows, albums, apps, video games, and a whole host of other things.
        Lumping pundits in with actual reporters is bullshit. But there’s almost no difference anymore when so-called reporters do little more nowadays than try to spin every story to fit their preconceived narrative.

      • banginglc1

        Isn’t modern news just reporting the tweets you like favorably while scoffing at those you don’t?

      • Rufus the Monocled

        Yeh but she’s including herself in that group.

      • The Hyperbole

        She very clearly differentiates herself from the ‘front-line’, there’s me and there are also those on the front-line. Sloopy mocked her for being on the front-line in her luxury apartment. She may be trying to tie her and other talking heads with the reporters in the ground to get some kind of respect by proxy but she isn’t claiming to be one if them.

      • sloopyinca

        Yeah, let’s take her at her word when her first sentence is an absolute lie.
        Whatever, dude. She’s a piece of shit glomming onto others (wildly inflated) accomplishments.

      • WTF

        There’s nothing Hype won’t defend when there’s a chance to get his contrarian on.

      • Festus

        We NEED him. Otherwise it would be a bad look for the site.

      • The Hyperbole

        Or when he’s right.

      • Not Adahn

        There’s nothing Hype won’t defend when there’s a chance to get his contrarian crypto-republican pseudo libertarian bashing on.

      • The Hyperbole

        let’s take her at her word

        We are discussing what she wrote, how else should we take it? Don’t accept what she said but what we think she meant by saying it?

      • Festus

        You’re incorrigible! Nice to meet you last night, you cunte!

      • The Hyperbole

        Thanks, back at’cha. Oddly you guys hardly said anything stupid so I didn’t have to pipe up very often, next time I’ll try and participate more.

      • Jarflax

        When Trump attacks the media, he wants you to hate people like me. I’m fine with that. But the “media” is also thousands of reporters on the frontlines of THIS crisis and others, in war zones, refugee crises, genocides, and now COVID. Please don’t take your politics out on them.

        Hyperbole is flat out correct here. It is not even ambiguous. I get that you guys hate her, I hate her as well, but you cannot fight dishonest selective and edited quoting by using dishonest selective and edited quoting. In this tweet she is clearly differentiating between herself as a valid target and willing participant in the political fight and others who are not.

      • leon

        Now Look who’s defending the indefensible. 😉

      • The Hyperbole

        Thank you Jarflax, I will now hold my breath until Sloopy, Rufus, and WTF apologize. ?

      • WTF

        Why would I apologize, I said nothing that wasn’t true.

      • sloopyinca

        I’ll apologize for not reading it the same way you did. She starts by making a false premise, talks about herself, then talks about others, then tells people to not do something they aren’t doing.
        I guess I’m wrong. She wasn’t saying people shouldn’t vilify imbeciles like her. She’s saying they shouldn’t vilify people that aren’t being vilified at all.
        Fuck her and her strawman arguments and fuck anybody that can’t see what she’s doing here.

      • straffinrun

        From my quick take of it, she was intentionally pulling a quick one. Technically, Hype is right, but she worded it that way to lead people to sympathize with her. For doing nothing. My two manipulative sisters wizened me to this type of BS.

      • sloopyinca

        In this tweet she is clearly differentiating between herself as a valid target and willing participant in the political fight and others who are not.

        Well she’s basing her entire premise on a lie and then accusing people of attacking people they’re not attacking. And lumping herself in with those reporters as also being part of the media, rather than making a distinct difference between what a reporter is and what a pundit is, served no purpose other than to muddy the waters. She knows the difference. And she knows she’s lying about Trump or people “hating” on the media.

        But I’ll follow her advice: I’ll continue to not hate actual reporters who relay facts and will continue to loathe scumbags who call themselves reporters and then pass their opinion off as fact.

      • The Hyperbole

        WTF, I’m fairly certain you attacked my reputation, but as I don’t believe in slander or libel* I guess you are correct and I retract my demand of an apology.

        Sloopy, apology accepted

        *I mean I know the laws exist I just don’t agree with them.

        /Looks at Rufus, Taps foot./

      • straffinrun

        served no purpose other than to muddy the waters

        Sloop, that is exactly what she did.

      • WTF

        WTF, I’m fairly certain you attacked my reputation,

        So, are you claiming you are NOT a contrarian? And that your reputation as such is undeserved?

      • The Hyperbole

        Depends, by contrarian do you mean one who holds unpopular opinions or ideas in opposition to the majority, or one who takes the opposite position just to argue? I’ll have to ask Sloopy to tell me what the ‘spirit’ of your comment was.

      • R C Dean

        I still read it as her using the “front-line” media as a human shield for mere opinion-mongers such as herself.

      • Count Potato

        “I asked @secupp a question about a state government disappearing a leading female Wuhan physician and probably executing her for trying to alert the world about this virus.

        She responded with a Kate Winslett gif.

        I want people to actually ingest what CNN has become here.”

        https://twitter.com/redsteeze/status/1244523688789028864

      • Tundra

        Uh, she has nice legs?

      • AlexinCT

        But she doesn’t properly clean up her nethers…

      • The Hyperbole

        I wouldn’t think I should need to explain defending the indefensible to libertarians, but objecting to ‘dunking’ on someone by misconstruing what they wrote doesn’t mean I’m saying shes not a giant douche.

      • leon

        Who are you? Walter Block?

      • sloopyinca

        I’m not misconstruing the spirit of what she did. It’s patently obvious she’s wrapping herself in the flag of “media” here by glomming on to others.

      • sloopyinca

        When Trump attacks the media, he wants you to hate people like me.
        Facts not in evidence
        I’m fine with that.
        Obviously not, based in her tweets and “news” reports.
        But the “media” is also thousands of reporters on the frontlines of THIS crisis and others, in war zones, refugee crises, genocides, and now COVID. Please don’t take your politics out on them.
        Nobody has, you false-equivalating fuckhead.

    • Chipwooder

      She had better hope her looks age well. She doesn’t have much else to offer.

      • Suthenboy

        *Ding Ding Ding*

        We have a winner

    • Fatty Bolger

      “Thousands” my ass. The number of reporters doing that stuff is a tiny minority. And when Trump attacks the media, he isn’t attacking that tiny minority, and everybody knows it, including her.

    • straffinrun

      The implication being that we can call her a POS, but not real reporters? I’m fine with that.

  28. Rebel Scum

    New Yorkers who break social distancing rules will now face fines up to $500 … De Blasio: churches and synagogues that hold worship services may be closed permanently

    Seems like the perfect time for civil disobedience.

    • Slammer

      Joe Diffie died from coronavirus as well. My friend said you can’t even prop him up by the jukebox because the bars are closed

      • Festus

        Harsh but fair.

    • Drake

      John Prine is sick? That sucks, he’s in the danger zone for age and bad health.

      • Festus

        He’s been on heavy rotation for the last decade or so. Had cancer and probably doomed. Shit.

      • Chipwooder

        Yeah, if you just look at recent pictures of him, he definitely did not look hale and healthy in the first place.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        I didn’t check, but I’d guess even Vegas has dropped him from the death matchup boards

    • Gdragon

      Alan was my neighbour for over a decade, he seemed like a very nice guy. Was sad to read that this morning.

  29. Tundra

    Sick moves.

    Zac Bell does some great videos for those of you with young hockey players at home.

    • Pope Jimbo

      Zac Bell should be a goalie. His nickname could then be “Save From The”

  30. The Hyperbole

    Great news, everybody! I found some whole wheat flour, I can now start starting a sourdough starter.

    • leon

      Let me know when you end starting an sourdough starter.

      • Festus

        Ow! Nice…

    • Nephilium

      You can just use AP flour to get your starter going as well.

      • The Hyperbole

        Not according to King Arthur.

      • Chipwooder

        Strange women lying in ponds distributing whisks is no basis for a system of bakering.

      • Chipwooder

        Bakering? Christ, I obviously need more coffee.

      • Jarflax

        No you just need a watery tart to hand you a style guide to help with your grammaring.

  31. PieInTheSky

    When Johann Schultze compiled his Polabian wordlist and wrote this in the village of Süthen near Lüchow in 1725, he became the first person known to us in history to consciously record his awareness he was speaking a dying language.

    The last speaker of Polabian died in 1756.

    https://twitter.com/incunabula/status/1244184227001876480

  32. leon

    Killer quote of the day:

    “In a democracy, someone who fails to get elected to office can always console himself with the thought that there was something not quite fair about it.”
    ― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

  33. Rebel Scum

    If they weren’t moving to The Democratic Peoples Republic of Commiefornistan they could just get some guns.

    That promise had a short shelf life. It turns out that the lure of home (Markle grew up in Los Angeles) and Hollywood was too strong. The ex-royals have moved to Hollywood – a decision that might have been driven by Canada’s refusal to fund their security needs.

    On Sunday, Trump made it clear that American taxpayers also won’t be paying for the ex-royals’ security needs.

    “I am a great friend and admirer of the Queen & the United Kingdom. It was reported that Harry and Meghan, who left the Kingdom, would reside permanently in Canada. Now they have left Canada for the U.S. however, the U.S. will not pay for their security protection. They must pay!”

    • Chipwooder

      Why, precisely, would they have received taxpayer-funded security from the United States?

      • UnCivilServant

        Probably some diplomatic agreement, but they renounced their official status and can get treated like plebs.

      • Chipwooder

        Precisely. They said they didn’t want to be royals anymore and wanted to support themselves……well, they can start with this.

      • leon

        Supporting yourself is hard.

      • The Hyperbole

        Did they ask for security?

      • leon

        Probably not. I just hear that supporting yourself is hard, and that is why we need government.

      • Raven Nation

        From what I can dig up, it was an assumption based on practice in Canada but there is no indication that Harry & Meghan asked for publically-funded security in the US.

      • creech

        No, plebs have a difficult time being able to defend themselves with firearms. I’m betting Harry and Meghan have no need of boating accidents or having heavily armed security to protect them from stalkers, admirers and papparazzi.

      • Q Continuum

        Special, elite wokesters. Like DUH.

    • Festus

      I wonder if that virtual ring is pierced through his nose or more likely his balls? I think it’s Mojo that came up with the “Magic Cootch” explanation. Whatta Cuck.

  34. UnCivilServant

    Goddamit! I ran out of black spray primer.

    Naturally, that’s my most commonly used color, and the gaming store is closed thanks to Andy no brains.

    I got plenty of Gray primer, which will come in handy when I paint the trash can, but that won’t work for the minis I wanted to get to next.

    • Festus

      Amazon is your friend. Either one day or ten months out.

      • UnCivilServant

        But not today, when there was enough of a break in the weather to try to prime the next batch of minis I wanted to paint.

      • Festus

        *former model builder nods in commiseration*

  35. Rebel Scum

    It would be awesome if I could just quarantine and work from home until pollen season is over. *sneezes*

    • westernsloper

      *sprays rebel scum with Lysol*

      • Festus

        I’ve got Vyrex.

    • leon

      RACIST! you said slaves.

  36. leon

    What should happen as a result of the coronavirus response is that every politician in the country should loose their upcoming election.

    What will happen is that we will see incumbents win at even a higher rate.

    • Festus

      None of them can campaign right now. This is going to be very bad for freedom. Fear drives instincts and fearful people hunker down or lash out. The Dems don’t have a viable Candidate, yet. Loading…

  37. Certified Public Asshat

    Can we really keep this going past April? Fatigue is already setting in, how long can we really keep the corona fear going?

    • Chipwooder

      I honestly am coming to believe that some people, who won’t admit it, deep down LOVE the drama of all this shit. They want to go around thinking of themselves as characters in a dystopian apocalyptic drama.

      • Festus

        You just featured that? People love them some Drama, especially when they aren’t at any risk.

      • Chipwooder

        I’ve never really understood people all that well. It’s a large part of why I was a lousy salesman.

      • Festus

        You and I both! My parents tried to turn me into an insurance salesman when I was 18. Who the fuck buys life and health from a goddamn Hippy? Three clients did but it was not for me!

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Right, but those people will also grow tired of it. Probably by next week for most of them.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        LOVE the drama

        Correct, sir: you may have this rose.

      • Naptown Bill

        For sure. I watch a morning talk show that’s a sports radio show simulcast on TV and they were talking about a guy not too far from here who was arrested over the weekend for having a bonfire party with 60+ people. They couldn’t say enough how they thought the guy was a scumbag for getting a bunch of people together during The Coronaning. The tone quickly changed from how criminally negligent that was to how you’d expect that sort of thing from that kind of person. From epidemiology to classism and political tribalism in under thirty seconds. A lot of people’s response to this tracks their opinion on Trump, I think.

      • invisible finger

        How is that different from any other day on sports radio?

    • leon

      I, who never go anywhere anyway, am getting tired of all this shit.

      • Jarflax

        You and me both brother, you and me both. I want this over so I can go back to sitting in my room on my computer without feeling like I am bowing to tyranny.

    • Shirley Knott

      Honestly, I’ll be very surprised if it holds up to the end of April.

      • Private Chipperbot

        Whitmer will close school for the year by the end of the week and essentially lock this shit into June.

      • Shirley Knott

        Oh, no doubt. But I expect to see more and more pushback and ‘civil disobedience’.
        I cannot say enough bad things about Whitmer, so I won’t start.

    • Naptown Bill

      No. I fully expect that by May states that have enacted some sort of quarantine policies will start relaxing them. Especially if the rate of infection plateaus or starts dropping. Frankly, I suspect that as pressure from people who get tired of this shit increases, doctors and experts will start to find that the threat posed by the disease may have been slightly overestimated, or maybe the worst has passed because of some science-y explanation, and that will give politicians the ability to relax restrictions while saving face.

      • Pope Jimbo

        I thought the first crack in the wall of expertise was when that Limey doc who predicted a half million deaths walked his prediction back to 20K. But then I saw that he walked back his walk back and said that 500K was if nothing was done, but since everyone listened to him it was only going to be 20K.

        So maybe it will take another month before they find a fig leaf they can live with.

      • Shirley Knott

        He walked it back even further, to 5,700.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Some sports talking head was blasted for suggesting the NFL season would not start on time. I really do not see that happening at all. In fact, I can already picture the NFL milking it on that Thursday opener with Chris Collinsworth opining how the NFL is the glue that keeps the country together

  38. PieInTheSky

    St Michael the Archangel, Booton, Norfolk, now @TheCCT
    . Not entirely C19 fantasy but rebuilding of simpler medieval building. Creation of eccentric clergyman Rev Whitwell Elwin who borrowed from other churches eg W door is Glastonbury Abbey.

    https://twitter.com/Emma_J_Wells/status/1244169249788243968

    • Shirley Knott

      There are some lovely photos in that thread. Thanks!

  39. Rebel Scum

    IOW “Constitutional Carry”, which, according to the founding charter of the government, should already be the law.

    A state lawmaker in Georgia wants to make it legal to carry a concealed firearm anywhere in the state because of the coronavirus.

    “We need to suspend enforcement, especially during the state of emergency, when so many individuals need to be able to defend themselves and their families and their loved ones and their property,” said Republican state Rep. Matt Gurtler, according to GBP Radio.

    Under the current public health emergency declared in Georgia, Republican Gov. Brian Kemp can override state laws. Gurtler wants Kemp to suspend enforcement of certain gun restrictions in the state.

    Under current state law, Georgia residents need a permit to carry a concealed weapon.

    “I’m glad to have Gov. Kemp’s support,” Gurtler said. “He said he was committed to signing it.”

    • Don escaped Oklahoma

      I agree with the goal, but what a tiresome approach.

      The widest majority of Americans believe that rights come from paper, that, as opposed to the clear language of the 9A, rights are enumerated. So elections are about getting the leverage to bully your neighbors and kill rights so that the world is safe such as satisfies you. This primary battle has been long lost.

      Undoing that notion is worthy, but it will take at least the same two centuries that it took to get this lost down a pigtrail to undo it and get us back out on good road and rolling again. I care, but my son is not going to live long enough to see this happen. To the extent that gun rights are the vanguard of such action, a full half of Americans just think that freedom-loving people are loonies and never listen to another word about liberty after you drop the g-word; the conservatives libertarians align with in this matter aren’t much better because they have plenty of freedom-killing notions as well.

      Remind me: how early on a Monday does the drinking begin?

      • Pope Jimbo

        how early on a Monday does the drinking begin?

        It’s gotta be Tuesday somewhere. Feel free to commence with your Monday drinking as soon as the load of highball glasses in the dish washer finish up.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        the Full Tupelo also includes drinking from mason jars!

    • Pope Jimbo

      Ahem. Fake news. Everyone knows Stacy Abrams is the real gov of Georgia.

    • Chipwooder

      According to Westegg, that’s $172 in 2019 dollars.

      • invisible finger

        Closer to $1000 than $200

    • Festus

      I’m leaning toward the “fines” solution being more applicable. Don’t murder the cash-cows.

    • leon

      San Francisco health officer shot three people when one refused to wear a mandatory face mask

      Health Officer… Heh.

    • Rhywun

      TL;DR version – don’t plan on leaving the house for another couple months.

      • westernsloper

        Yes, it was just a matter of time before the “justification” pieces started rolling out. That was impressively fast actually. And ya, we have to do it just like 1918 because the world has not changed a bit since then and this virus is just like the 1918 virus.

  40. leon

    Yesterday I asked about reloading, and was directed to Suthens great series on it. Good Stuff Suthen! Thanks!

    However i was reading some of the comments, and there was one i wanted to mention. I saw some discussion about prosecutors using the type of ammo you choose for self defense against you in a case. While i have no illusions about what prosecutors will stoop to, i did want to mention that after prosecutors in Arizona successfully used that tactic, many legislatures made it illegal to use the choice of ammo against someone in a self defense case.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I load my 9mm with standard off-the-shelf FMJ. It works, it’s cheap, and it raises no questions.

    • Don escaped Oklahoma

      true story: I’ve got a press and ancillaries I’d give you just for the postage, but I’m too goddamned lazy to find which boxes in the attic it’s stored in.

      Brewing up loads to optimize power and accuracy was incredibly fun, especially for FirstWife’s M60; you can cut the pattern of WWB in half with little effort. But I haven’t hunted in years, so accuracy tighter than my inherited ability hasn’t mattered. So, somewhere after leaving my last hourly wage job, it became, like changing the oil, something I just didnt’ find time for.

      • Festus

        Seriously, Don. Join the next chat. I can’t wait to hear your voice either be a drawling imbecile or the great big head.

      • UnCivilServant

        If recordings are accurate, my voice is kinda nasally and annoying.

      • Jarflax

        Everyone sounds more nasal to themselves in a recording.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        predictably arrogant and drawling

        chicks love it; I have no idea why

      • Pope Jimbo

        Festus, you keep begging Don to join up, but I don’t see you asking any of us Minnesoda Glibs to join. What is the deal with that?

        You don’t want to hear any of us say “uffda”?

        Shoot, I am a double threat. I lived in Memphis for years and can still probably do a passable version of a Hill William (with proper usage of fixing).

        Seriously, I had no idea you guys had a meetup planned or when the next one is. Any info you can share on that?

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        MN is full of reasonable people who go to work every day, who, as Garrison Keillor wrote, after their Powdermilk Biscuits, get up and do what needs to be done. Where’s the fun in that? Y’all can compare snow blowers, I suppose.

        He wants the Full Tupelo: 4×4, tattoos bought on credit, missing teeth, trailer house, and kudzu jelly, but, sadly, none of my cousins will be on the call.

      • Pope Jimbo

        SHUT YOUR MOUTH!

        Garrison Keilor is not in any way representative of Minnesoda! He is like Jesse Jackson. He pretends to be a spokeman for a group that the NYC crowd think is fun to “know” but never have to meet.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        Mea culpa: honest mistake. MN is full of reasonable people who go to work every day, who, as Garrison Keillor wrote, after their Powdermilk Biscuits, get up and do what needs to be done Paul Wellstone wrote, just want to use taxes in a judicious manner to take care of each other to a minimum standard of care.

      • Pope Jimbo

        Look, I’m pretty mellow and am likely to let a Wellstone reference pass without resorting to violence. Tundra on the other hand will just go directly for the throat if he sees that.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        Tundra

        Yikes! We don’t want violence: MN is full of reasonable people who, as Paul Wellstone Al Franken wrote, believe in a responsible society properly managed with a sense of humor.

      • straffinrun

        Neph hosted us on his Zoom account last Friday. He may do it again next (this) Friday, too. Probably stop by the last Friday night comments and you can find a link.

    • Drake

      Unless you live in NJ (no hollow-points) just use whatever your state or local cops use. If it really came to a prosecution, the defense lawyer could just put a cop on the stand and ask him why he uses the exact same ammo.

    • kinnath

      Paul Harrell has a great video on exotic defensive rounds. He notes that prosecutors will use your choice of defensive ammo against you in a trial. He also notes that “using what the police use” will be held against you as well.

      • UnCivilServant

        Clearly, then the only true self defense would be to shoot all the prosecutors.

      • Suthenboy

        If you are shooting a revolver you can get that style (hard cast, flat nose) easily. For an auto caliber you may have to also learn to cast your own bullets.

        https://www.midwayusa.com/product/1010201652?pid=294531

        As for bullet weight you want to go mid-range and then go a little heavy. I think you can still get 147 grain for 9mm. Saeco used to make one and I have one but they no longer appear to. For 45 acp 230 is plenty heavy and Lee Precision makes a 6 cavity mold.

        That style bullet is great on paper and on nuisance critters. You can buy all kinds of magical ammo that shoots kewpie dolls and such but none of them beat a good hard cast flat nose. For heavier loads (magnum, +P) you can put gas checks on them to prevent leading. If. you start having problems with leading in softer loads just run a jacketed round through your gun every hundred or so rounds.

      • Tejicano

        Pray allow me to second Suthenboy’s recommendation to go with heavy bullets. You never know what might be in the way when it comes down to it.

      • leon

        I think you’re right, best to not give them any reason. But the truth is that a prosecutor will use anything so best to just use what you feel safest with. In reality pretty much any type will do the job, so it’s not a big thing. On the other hand i think not choosing a round you would feel safer with because you fear the prosecutor is letting the terrorists win. Like you said before (in the reloading articles) Most self defense cases hang themselves. The only thing you should be saying to cop when they come is “I’ll make a full statement when my lawyer is here”.

      • Tundra

        Related to this, are any of you members of USCCA?

        My carry instructor recommended them for the legal insurance.

  41. leon

    Another Great Quote from Thucydides:

    “Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them. Reckless audacity came to be considered the courage of a loyal supporter; prudent hesitation, specious cowardice; moderation was held to be a cloak for unmanliness; ability to see all sides of a question incapacity to act on any. Frantic violence became the attribute of manliness; cautious plotting a justifiable means of self-defense. [5] The advocate of extreme measures was always trustworthy; his opponent a man to be suspected. To succeed in a plot was to have a shrewd head, to divine a plot a still shrewder; but to try to provide against having to do either was to break up your party and to be afraid of your adversaries. In short, to forestall an intending criminal, or to suggest the idea of a crime where it was lacking was equally commended, [6] until even blood became a weaker tie than party, from the superior readiness of those united by the latter to dare everything without reserve; for such associations sought not the blessings derivable from established institutions but were formed by ambition to overthrow them; and the confidence of their members in each other rested less on any religious sanction than upon complicity in crime.”

    • PieInTheSky

      history may not repeat itself but it rhymes?

      Also stop trying to pretend to be cultured and shit.

    • Suthenboy

      Wow. What a difference 2600 years has made in human nature.

      • AlexinCT

        But when you tell the people that tell you the revolution will produce a new and better super man that we are just gonna get more of the same shit, you are the one that is seen as the idiot. I mean, it is not like we have not had a century that cost some 120 million plus people their lives, left about 3 billion living under the yoke of one of the most evil ideologies to come around, birthed the fascist movement which thought it had all the answers to the problem with marxism, resulted in a heck of a world war, and in general produced misery on a massive scale, to show us this shit don’t work. Yet here we are with people telling us we need to do it all over again.

      • Suthenboy

        It is maddening, isn’t it?

        If only memory was genetic. It is tiresome watching every generation make all the same mistakes over and over again and still half of them dont even learn then.

      • leon

        If only memory was genetic. It is tiresome watching every generation make all the same mistakes over and over again and still half of them dont even learn then.

        Thus is life. If we learned from everyone elses mistakes, we’d not have the chance to grow as individuals.

  42. Rebel Scum

    The Washington Post✔
    @washingtonpost

    Perspective: Homeschooling during the coronavirus will set back a generation of children https://wapo.st/2xwDZDf

    Interesting position considering, in the aggregate, homeschooled children outperform government indoctrinated schooled children.

    • Suthenboy

      Children? You mean commie shitweasel teachers.

      The silver lining of this pandemic of panic is getting wider.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      Finally, since states are losing standardized testing this spring, they’ll need to administer tests at the start of the next school year to see what students know after the crisis. Assessments should be informative and not used to measure or rate schools or teachers. Without this, it will be impossible to know the extent of the challenge and where resources should be deployed to deal with it.

      We won’t measure this against teachers, but it will definitely prove my bias toward homeschooling.

      • Pope Jimbo

        My current company does a lot of this standardized testing for the states. So far, the news is that they will still do the testing, just later (good for my company).

        Even more interesting is that several states are actually interested in doing additional testing to see if home learning was actually effective or not.

        This is one of the times that I am all for govt inefficiency. If our clients were private, they would simply cancel testing this year and we’d be out a lot of money. Instead the govt will try to give the tests just because they have a lot of drones that need that data for their phony-baloney jobs and they don’t care if the money spent on testing is being used wisely or not.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      In general, the only people before the crisis that were homeschooling were the ones who wanted to and were motivated to provide their children with an alternative education.

      Now you’ve got a bunch of parents who don’t care quite so much also “homeschooling.” He’s got a point, but it’s not the one he’s trying to make (or the media is trying to make for him).

    • leon

      Homeschooling has good effects because usually parents who decide to homeschool do so because they care about their kids education. It is a bit of a selection bias. so i wouldn’t be surprised that kids who are blocked from school right now are getting less education because their parents don’t actually care, but it could also have the effect to force parents to care, and we could see positive effects. That being said, the author is clearly worshiping at the altar of public education which demands the sacrifice of our children to its torment. Anyone who homeschools is not of the body of NEA.

      • invisible finger

        Whichever the case, the testing won’t prove a damn thing one way or the other. Because the schools/teachers build their curricula around “teaching to the tests” – even if 100% of the suddenly-homeschooling parents cared about making sure their kids read and do math while stuck at home, there is no way the parents are going to be able to teach to the tests.

      • leon

        They teach to the tests and yet they still fail? What are we paying teachers for?

      • UnCivilServant

        So the union can contribute to the campain funds.

    • ChipsnSalsa

      When kids were kicked out of the schools and sent home with no plan, that will be lost time.

      Don’t go blaming homechool though. I have my kids’ plan figured out for next year and have most of the materials already as a lot of suppliers were having sales in the past few weeks.

  43. The Late P Brooks

    Sometimes I check to see what they’re hyperventilating about on CNN. I just saw a segment in which some CNNPC player, seemingly on the verge of weeping, was reading a tale of some church which held their regular in house services in defiance of a local shutdown. Oh, horror. Another example of the Republican Death Cult. How can those people not see their self-destructive folly? We must save them from themselves, no matter the cost. Their gods will not save them. Only our gods, the gods of SCIENCE!, strictly obeyed, can save them.

  44. Not Adahn

    Caesar Andrew is demanding more monies because he needs to fund education, and the income tax filing deadline has been pushed out.

    a) What education? Schools are shut down indefinitely
    b) Automatic witholding means the filing deadline is irrelevant.
    c) School taxes are a separate thing and have already been collected you disingenuous fuck.

    • UnCivilServant

      The state also pisses away monies from the general fund into school districts. Part of the initiative to make sure inner city administrators can grift as much as their counterparts in the wealthy suburbs.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The result of this, and the fact that Chinese agriculture has not modernized to any great degree, is that the People’s Republic of China is perhaps more strategically dependent on imported food than any great power since Rome. And Rome, arguably, collapsed, finally, for that very reason: its foreign sources of food became less dependable. The PRC Bureau of Statistics in the 1980s recorded that there were some 50,000 rivers in mainland China. But by 2017, there were only some 23,000. Beijing, serviced by the so-called “Three Gorges Dam”, recorded in 2017 that 39.9 percent of its water was so polluted as to be unusable. Tianjin, a principal port city of the north (and with a population of 15-million), had only 4.9 percent of its water in a potable state.

      This is utterly true and why China is screwed over the long run. Without domestic food and water sufficient to meet their needs, they cannot ever hope to control their own destiny.

  45. The Late P Brooks

    After the church thing, they spent a few minutes patting themselves on the back for taking advantage of some press conference to antagonize Public Enemy Number One about something mean he said about that jackass inslee, from Washington.

    I had to tap out. How does anybody take these buffoons seriously?

  46. PieInTheSky

    This exquisite ram’s head was carved by an Etruscan master artisan from a piece of Baltic amber almost 2,500 years ago.
    Amber moved down from the Baltic via rivers from west Jutland across Germany and down the Po Valley of northern Italy to the Adriatic sea.

    https://twitter.com/ticiaverveer/status/1243476377539674118

    • leon

      Very cool. And what is cool is that some guy 2500 years ago made that and it is still being admired, and is better than anything i could do. Good work nameless etruscan!

    • UnCivilServant

      They didn’t even provide something for scale?

      • Yusef drives a Kia

        I’d say palm sized, imagine the horn ridges, a sliver of bone at night by the fire, scratch, scratch,

      • PieInTheSky

        Like a slightly bigger piece of amber

  47. Not Adahn

    From my home office, I can see the mailperson arriving. My range officer credentials just arrived. It’s amazing, yesterday I was a semi-skilled overly enthusiastic amateur wannabe, and now of a sudden I know everything and am always right.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      Well, you Do read the future……

    • Drake

      Congrats for your new omniscience. Bummer that the ranges are closed so you can’t bring your wisdom to the ignorant.

      • Invisible BEAM of the comment stream

        Bummer that the ranges are closed so you can’t bring your wisdom to the ignorant.

        That’s not true! We’re all still logging in here, aren’t we?

  48. Don escaped Oklahoma

    Minnesoda

    Grudge: people who had been in the Union three years coming down to shoot at people who had been in the Union 34 years and wanted out.

    • leon

      Haha. I also like people who were chased out of their country being asked to provide 500 men to fight a war for that country. And then, after doing so, being accused of fomenting revolution and having an Army sent to quell a non-existent rebellion.

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        lutefisk poisoning attacks the nervous system

        they need some shrimp and grits to level out their thinkers

  49. The Late P Brooks

    Speaking of teachers- somebody showed me something which can only have been a prepared statement from the teachers’ union about how hard those noble selfless educators are working, in this time of trial, to get Knowledge into your children’s heads. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to second-guess them or critique the quality or effectiveness of their efforts.

    • AlexinCT

      Lots of these teachers, especially those in college where parents fork over big bucks, are worried that when people other than insane leftists see the shit they are ‘teaching” (used as a joke, cause they indoctrinate), there will be hell to pay…

    • Ownbestenemy

      We get those calls and emails daily…about how much they have done in this time of need. I think I should pass it on someday

  50. AlexinCT

    When you have been caught by your wife with your dick in one of your sheep and she tells you now there will be hell to pay for your sheep fucking ways, blame someone else!

    That’s what China seems to be desperately trying with this whole Kung Flu shit coming from the U.S. Military.

  51. Tundra

    Lol.

    First day of ‘Distance Learning’ and the system crashes statewide.

    Fucking buffoons.

    • bacon-magic

      Distance kept.

      • leon

        Not saying this is exactly a case, as i don’t have enough info, but it does seem that a lot of the shutdown stuff has crossed the line from “We’re doing this for public saftey” to “Lets use our emergency powers to screw political enemies”

      • Gustave Lytton

        See below. The state Ed Dept is completely insane and is just blanket applying nonsense because that’s what’s important to them. Learning is a distant last. It would be nice if it was just plain malicious or deliberate, but they think they’re doing it for good reasons and so they won’t stop and re-examine any of this.

      • Gustave Lytton

        But it gets better!

        Under Governor Kate Brown’s executive order, schools are required to provide “supplemental education and learning supports” during the closure, along with other supports, including to-go breakfast and lunch for students, mental health resources and emergency child care.

        So, when students do get their schedules, the material will be supplemental, or review, of what has been learned so far this year.

        ODE stated on its website that any district seeking to offer online or remote learning must ensure that accessibility for all students, including those who are in special education, learning the English language, homeless or lack WiFi access

        https://www.registerguard.com/news/20200329/learning-in-limbo-oregon-school-districts-have-to-wait-on-state-guidance-before-solidifying-instruction-plans

        Harrison Bergeron is another goto manual.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Egalitarian bullshit

      • leon

        Oof. This is the vile thing we talked about last week or so. The “If not everyone can get educated, no one will”.

      • Rhywun

        Make sure the students crowd around the school door for their breakfast and cough on each other.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      That’s a big fear of mine, if the Net goes down, oh Shit, OTOH, this is a good time for an EMP strike, we would be finished,

    • Pope Jimbo

      Well that is surprising. Given how well our state IT department did with the online insurance site and online license tabs, I would have never thought that the online education site would perform flawlessly.

  52. Gustave Lytton

    Anyone else having sizing issues with Glibs this morning? All of the text is micro now.

    • Don escaped Oklahoma

      mine’s doing a gray out thing that it does from time to time, but today’s symptoms are tolerable

      • Toxteth O’Grady

        Ditto the gray.

      • Count Potato

        Same here, smaller text, grey, links showing as regular text.

      • Jarflax

        here as well.

      • westernsloper

        Plus you seem to have dropped one of your pistols.

      • leon

        I Never took Don for an LEO

      • Don escaped Oklahoma

        It was just so busy and didn’t read, I was trying to reduce content and zoom in some. Last night someone didn’t recognize the tiger emoji, so I think this avatar, while suitably wheels-off, is still a failure at producing the desired effect.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      yes and I hate it

      • AlexinCT

        It’s the new social distancing Glibs version…

    • Shirley Knott

      Yeah, ugly, hard to read. Looks like a page style thing as the home page is same as it ever was. I’ve been able to cure previous occurrences by shutting the browser and re-opening it, but no luck this time. Multiple attempts, too ;-(

  53. The Late P Brooks

    In general, the only people before the crisis that were homeschooling were the ones who wanted to and were motivated to provide their children with an alternative education.

    Now you’ve got a bunch of parents who don’t care quite so much also “homeschooling.” He’s got a point, but it’s not the one he’s trying to make (or the media is trying to make for him).

    I saw a thing the other day (can’t remember where; possibly Slate or some similar) about how parents who have lost their free daycare whose kids are now not in school should make no effort to educate their children, because “that’s not your job”.

    Only teachers employed by the government, in buildings belonging to the government, should attempt to indoctrinate your children. Because expert-ism.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      The mask keeps slipping.

    • Gustave Lytton

      Just like we should do what certain epidemiologists tell us to do about controlling/mitigating the virus, including how to shut down the economy and lock people at home. Because they’re experts not just is disease spread but in economics and everything else.

    • Suthenboy

      “parents whose kids are now not in school should make no effort to educate their children, because “that’s not your job”.

      Uh…that is exactly what their job is.

      Seriously, where do these slimy fuckknuckles come from?

      • Ownbestenemy

        Yeah we are doing it. First half of day is school work..its not that complicated. Plus is we now have full access to all materials used to brainwash our kids.

      • straffinrun

        You letting them slide a little? I’m not being very strict.

    • straffinrun

      My kid is absolutely loving this. Everyday she wakes up and goes to work on crafts that she’s found on her own. Dresses, doll houses, swords (got me confused, too), cookies, knitting etc. Clearly, there is no genetic disposition to those activities. And then afternoon it’s schoolwork and music. She’s learned more in these last 4 weeks than she’s learned all year in school.

      • UnCivilServant

        Your place has the facilities to make swords?

      • straffinrun

        She’s making replicas of Kimetsu No Yaiba from stuff around the house. The swords are made from old silverware. Do you know the anime?

        https://kimetsu.com/anime/

      • UnCivilServant

        It’s been something like fifteen years since I paid much attention to anime, and I wasn’t much of an expert then

      • straffinrun

        JB will know it, I guess. It’s super popular now. I don’t watch much myself, either.

      • AlexinCT

        You only like the stuff with tentacles anyway…

  54. Suthenboy

    Leon: I was distracted and took a while to reply to y our bullet comment. See above.

    • Timeloose

      Hello Suthen,

      I know you have a tree business and most of it is for lumber, but here is a real neat attachment for splitting I though you might find interesting.

      https://www.sidetool.com/mini-excavator-attachments/wood-splitter/

      There are a ton of complicated wood splitter attachments for excavators, but his one is simple and uses the hydraulics already on the excavator. It works well for the real big logs that are a pain to split.

      • Suthenboy

        Thank you Time. I only split wood for personal use. I just grow the trees and sell the timber. It might be a few years before I sell any more. If I could get away with not cutting any at all I would.
        Given the prices people are paying for hunting leases these days I might be able to get away with that and just buy my firewood.

      • Timeloose

        My friend is buying one and I found it a really neat attachment. He has several large stump cuts >4′ that are hard to split without chain sawing them in to smaller pieces. This contraption make short work of them.

      • Suthenboy

        There have been many times when I wish I had one of those.

        A huge pin oak fell over once and the trunk was over 6′ in diameter so I decided I would just use the limbs. Even those were larger than average trunks of other trees.

        Ever notice that the grain in a limb is completely different than the grain in a trunk? The grain grows in such a way that it maximizes resistance to whatever forces are applied to it. The force on a limb is perpendicular to the grain while on the trunk it is parallel.

        The grain in a limb is woven. That shit was impossible to split.

    • leon

      Thanks, I sent a reply above.

  55. The Late P Brooks

    It is better if no child learns anything than we allow the possibility some children might learn more than others.

    Why can’t you people see that?

    • Toxteth O’Grady

      Crime seems down, except for DV and even murder-suicides.

      • Toxteth O’Grady

        meant to be a standalone comment.

      • Suthenboy

        That is some top notch journalism there. Not even an image of the painting.

      • Invisible BEAM of the comment stream

        Hey, they linked to it. Whaddya want from ’em?

    • AlexinCT

      Equality of outcome over everything!

    • leon

      I mean this is part of the impeutus of the “Abolish the family” types. The sickos are so obssesed with equality that they will rip people out of their homes because some people might have a family that they aren’t loved in.

    • UnCivilServant

      The main defense of a sloth is that they are foul creatures that nothing wants to eat.

    • Suthenboy

      British Guyana circa 1990: Two injuns came into the camp with a sloth curled up on a stick and wanted to sell it as a pet. Silly pommie geologist goes over to it and starts teasing the thing. Now a sloth ordinarily is the slowest moving mammal so he thought he could get away with being cute. Finally the sloth got enough of that shit and like lightning jumped off of that stick and onto the stupid guys ass. Tore him up pretty good. He ended up with quite a few stitches.

      Have you ever noticed their claws?

      • Chipwooder

        Yes. Yes, I have. They’re nature’s Freddy Kruger.

    • straffinrun

      That turned out better than I thought.

    • Rebel Scum

      That sin is apparently not too deadly.

  56. Suthenboy

    Fuck. The incorrigible stupid of mankind in general has me wanting to pour a vodka at 10:30 in the morning.

    • Don escaped Oklahoma

      Watching NYM@CHC 1994-04-04 seems to soothe the savage breast: I loathe the Mets.

    • straffinrun

      It’s the evil and stupid that are the problem. Same as always, just that in a crisis they tend to multiply.

  57. Chipwooder

    Oh joy, Coonman is making a “major announcement” at 2. Here comes that “shelter in place” bullshit.

      • Chipwooder

        He’s going to blather about “total cases now exceed 1000 blah blah blah” yet there have still been a grand total of 25 people dead from this, and most of them in nursing homes.

    • Semi-Spartan Dad

      I don’t even understand what “shelter in place” means in terms of enforcement. If a cop asks, couldn’t anyone just say they are going to the grocery store or pharmacy?

      • Akira

        Judging from the amount of vehicles and pedestrians I see out there, there is an extremely low compliance rate. Traffic seems to be completely normal, and I doubt that every single one of those people are going to out for meds or food or going to work at a pharmacy or hospital.

      • Chipwooder

        Probably gonna shut down more businesses, though.

      • ChipsnSalsa

        my wife was concerned about what to say to an officer if pulled over (which she won’t be) but I told her to say “I’m checking on the welfare of my .”

  58. leon

    @Straff, have you listened to the latest Bob Murphy Show? i’m curious on your thoughts.

    • straffinrun

      I listened to his podcast with Dave. That one?

      • straffinrun

        The one with Oren Cass I haven’t listened to yet. What’s your take?

      • leon

        Really good listen, Solidifies the big difference between Conservatisim and Libertarianism. For me it kinda solidified that the fusionist project between the libertarians and the conservatives has outlived its use as an Anti-Communist coalition.

      • straffinrun

        You can see it in the stimulus package. Conservatives idea of “Liberty” is quite different from mine. Conservatives will go for the “burn a village to save it” or “violate free market principles to save the free market” in times of crisis which is exactly when you should be doing the opposite.

      • leon

        Yup, but the interview is really explicit. Oren was characterizing the way he saw libertarians, as people who hold up the free market as an End to itself. Bob said “well i can see that their may be some people like that, but for me it isn’t the free market, it is liberty that i’m holding up as the end”. It really surprised me that Oren didn’t understand that, and if someone who is ostensibly an Ally of our cause doesn’t get us, their is no way our enemies do.

        It is why i think, despite being attacked a lot, the criticisms of libertarianism don’t land. Oren was really surprised by how Radical it is. He asked Bob if he supported taxing people for public education, and i think even Bob was floored.

      • straffinrun

        people who hold up the free market as an End to itself

        The Tucker Carlson critique. That’s not even a strawman. It’s devoid of meaning.

      • Viking1865

        The issue with “anti-communism” as a policy platform is that the Communists are inside the US government. It’s kind of hard to sell me on “anti-Communism” when the CIA is run by John Brennan.

        The next anti-Communist war will be a civil war, not a foreign war.

      • Suthenboy

        ^This^

      • leon

        Huh haven’t listened to that one yet. I listened to his with Oren Cass on conservative critiques of the Free Market.

  59. The Late P Brooks

    Meanwhile, the economists at Rolling Stone have identified a problem

    The coronavirus pandemic has forced us to recognize, once again and with fresh eyes, that the American project has been living paycheck to paycheck. If that money suddenly stops flowing, in particular, to small businesses, manufacturers, and the service and hospitality industries, the entire country would go into arrest. And as is the nature of capitalism, economic inequality would go on steroids.

    Unfortunately, the very thing we’ve been told will help will likely only make things worse in the long term. The House of Representatives, controlled by Democrats, just passed the Senate’s $2 trillion relief bill, the largest such package in American history. However, we should not mistake ambition for competency, nor extravagance for generosity. Rather than push for a better bill and, yes, taking the risk of accelerating economic decline, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi settled on this bit of incremental progress. But at what price? This is legislation that is awesome in its inadequacy to meet the needs of the moment. Even as it jump-starts industry, the bill promises to exacerbate wealth gaps along racial lines while repeating mistakes that the nation should have learned from.

    ——-

    But as heartless as the administration and his party have been, Democrats, with few exceptions, have been just as fainthearted. Rather than continuing to push for a stronger bill that sends the most benefits to the people who most urgently need them, or one that exerts more (or any) control over the beneficence that Washington extends to Wall Street, Pelosi and her cohorts were ready to back a bill that, one day soon, they should regret passing. Every crisis is an opportunity, and so far, Democrats have allowed Republicans to seize it.

    There will be more rescue bills in the weeks and months ahead, and Democrats need to be ready. But for now, look forward to those crumbs, America. The plutocrats will still be eating gourmet.

    It were the inequalities what dunnit.

    Why can’t we just pull a few trazillion more dollars out of the magic hat (and a massive fleet of helicopters with which to disburse it), and solve inequality, once and for all?

    And none shall work, but they shall not want.

    • Don escaped Oklahoma

      Our society and capitalism have failed to deliver 60″ televisions to the last 14% of Americans.

    • Akira

      It were the inequalities what dunnit.

      I hate the conflation of inequality and poverty. It’s poverty that’s the problem. If you and I have exactly the same job with exactly the same pay, and you work a few extra weekends to get some overtime money, you haven’t made my life worse (unless I’m an extremely petty and jealous person whose happiness depends on dragging others down to my level).

      And gee, it’s almost like Democrats don’t do anything substantive to combat cronyism in Washington. It’s almost like this enmity between establishment Rs and Ds is just theater and they actually agree that the fundamental structure must remain the same.

    • Suthenboy

      Magic hat indeed. How can someone be so removed from reality and the nature of the world they live in? Even a stupid fish can figure it out but a fucking higher mammal is clueless? Jamil Smith makes that armadillo that comes here nightly look like Albert Einstein.

      Oh, and is Obumbles the pinko still the smartest guy to ever draw breath?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Gee, it wouldn’t have anything to do with the national experiment in debt, now would it?

      The entire system is structured to incentivize it with the Fed being at the top of the pyramid.

    • Rhywun

      Every crisis is an opportunity

      Go fuck yourself, commie.

    • UnCivilServant

      So there are samurai looking to test their sword on anything unfortunate enough to cross their path?

    • leon

      Take this opportunity to form your own powerful clan and claim the shogunate!

    • Fatty Bolger

      Should be interesting.

    • Drake

      Cool. “Are these season allergies or the big CV” questions answered in one place at least.

      The place looks like paradise.

      • westernsloper

        It is beautiful for sure. It is full of people who I would not rather associate with though. The snobbery is overwhelming. Oprah and her like have homes there. Ski area is ok. There are better.

    • KSuellington

      Finally. They need to do that here in SF. I’m sure about a quarter of the population here would test positive for antibodies.

  60. KSuellington

    Thank god for this place, still a small island of sanity and humor in an ocean of idiocy and anti-freedom. Also thank god for the hospital job I got getting the new Wuhan wing set up with hardware, my usual business is about 40% real estate dependent and that is totally absent right now. Off to make a few bucks, at least there is no traffic.

  61. The Late P Brooks

    Yesterday, in a phone conversation with my brother, I was edging around the borders of my rant about the lockdown, and he said something about, “Well that’s Montana. In New York, it’s a big problem.”

    I said, “Yeah, there are however many cases, in New York; out of a metro area population of 20 million or so. Not exactly wiped out yet.”

    His reply? “Yeah, but-“

  62. commodious spittoon

    de Bolshevik talking about our wartime footing re: coronavirus. Always, always the moral equivalency of war with these people. Maybe it’s time to arrest Richard Epstein for sedition, and anyone else who disagrees with upending the economy?

    • leon

      What is crazy is that Joe Biden loves to say “You can’t yell ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater”, and that logic actually fits pretty well to “You can’t say ‘Don’t Panic’ in an epedimic”. So by the logic they love to tout, they would be justified in silencing any critics.

    • Don escaped Oklahoma

      Fortunately, one doesn’t need good feet to be Commander-in-Chief during a war, or, for that matter, to play football, squash, tennis, golf . . . . .

  63. The Late P Brooks

    Normal page format seems to be back, for now.

  64. The Late P Brooks

    Silly question, but where the fuck are these projections coming from? I swear I saw something saying there will be a million dead by the 4thg of July, or some damn thing.

    Who’s in charge of the models? The CDC? Thank goodness they have no incentive to inflate the numbers in order to maximize their political influence.

    • Akira

      They come up with models that make bombastic predictions of doom that don’t come true, but they still insist that you’re not allowed to question the Scientists™ and Experts™… This whole situation seems vaguely familiar.

    • Suthenboy

      Models also have Miami underwater by the year 2000.

  65. The Late P Brooks

    You know who else should be tested for antibodies? All those spring break college kids lab rats on the beaches in Florida.

  66. The Late P Brooks

    Gee, it wouldn’t have anything to do with the national experiment in debt, now would it?

    The entire system is structured to incentivize it with the Fed being at the top of the pyramid.

    Modern Monetary Theory, FTW!

    Those Weimar Krauts were just ahead of their time. It’ll totally work, now. You won’t need a wheelbarrow full of bank notes to buy a loaf of bread. The banking app on your phone can keep track of a nearly infinite number of zeroes.

  67. straffinrun

    Someone here used the phrase “stir crazy” the other day. That is spot on how I’m beginning to feel. I can get out and go to the store, but everyday is WFH. Wind up doing stupid stuff and thinking of stupid ideas. My latest idea was to put on a puppet show for y’all if Neph does another Zoom chat on Friday night. Climbing the walls here, man.

    • robc

      Coronavirus is revenge on the extroverts for making us introverts go out and do things with people.

  68. The Late P Brooks

    Speaking of predictions of DOOM

    The White House coronavirus response coordinator said Monday that she is “very worried about every city in the United States” and projects 100,000 to 200,000 American deaths as a best case scenario.

    In an interview on “TODAY,” Dr. Deborah Birx painted a grim message about the expected fatalities, echoing that without doing any measures they could hit as high as 2.2 million, as coronavirus cases continue to climb throughout the U.S.

    ——-

    Birx said the projections by Dr. Anthony Fauci that U.S. deaths could range from 1.6 million to 2.2 million deaths is a worst case scenario if the country did “nothing” to contain the outbreak, but said even “if we do things almost perfectly,” she still predicts up to 200,000 U.S. deaths.

    ——-

    On Sunday, Birx said on “Meet the Press” that “no state, no metro area will be spared,” a message she reiterated on Monday. Even if metro or rural areas don’t see the virus in the community now, by the time it does appear, the outbreak will be significant, she added.

    Garbage in, garbage out.

    Why does anybody believe these idiots?

    • leon

      NONE WILL BE SPARED MY DOOM!

    • ChipsnSalsa

      THERE WILL BE NO SUHVIVORS!

  69. The Late P Brooks

    My latest idea was to put on a puppet show for y’all if Neph does another Zoom chat on Friday night.

    Samurai Punch and Judy, dude!

    • Invisible BEAM of the comment stream

      I’d watch that.

      • straffinrun

        Alright. If Neph sets it up, I’ll do it. *Looks up Punch and Judy*

  70. The Late P Brooks

    NONE WILL BE SPARED MY DOOM!

    REPENT, SINNER! THE END IS NIGH!

    • UnCivilServant

      The end is Nye? I knew we couldn’t trust that bowtie wearing mechanical engineer!

  71. Mojeaux

    My husband is now actually working from home and is my office mate.

    Pray for me.

    • UnCivilServant

      I think I will ask that the two of you find a harmonious working arrangement that allows both of you to do what needs to be done without driving the other crazy.

      • Mojeaux

        His “office” sucks. I should know; I had it at one time. I offered him the use of my beloved Steelcase desk that sits in my office (I use it for sewing and crafting) because I do know how much it sucks.

    • creech

      As a wise Texan once told me “I promised her for better or worse…but not for lunch.”

  72. The Late P Brooks

    Rights? You have no rights other than the ones we approve of.

    The Los Angeles County sheriff shut down gun stores after California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) left decisions on critical infrastructure up to the county governments.

    Gun rights groups sued the county, saying the closures of these stores violates the Second Amendment, according to the AP.

    The Brady Campaign released a statement in response to the designation saying the state and local governments should have the authority to shut down these businesses. The campaign’s president, Kris Brown, said in a statement that the advisory is “ill-conceived and dangerous.”

    “State and local governments are well within their constitutional rights to broadly close businesses in order to prevent the spread and flatten the curve, and they are definitely not required to designate gun industry businesses as ‘essential’ and keep them open,” she said. “There is no constitutional right to immediately buy or sell guns, and there is certainly no right to spread coronavirus while buying or selling guns.”

    Due process? Fuck that.

    • Akira

      There is no constitutional right to immediately buy or sell guns

      Um…

      • leon

        9th Amendment is just a piece of paper.

      • UnCivilServant

        I thought it was parchment.

  73. The Late P Brooks

    Pray for me.

    Noniminny dominny, blibbetty blabbetty.

    Go forth, and sin no more.