Monday Morning Links

by | May 4, 2020 | Daily Links | 489 comments

This would be nice

I had a whirlwind week last week.  This one is gonna be busy as well, but hopefully I’ll be able to contribute here beyond today. Although, if I’m being honest, part of me would like to hit the road again just to be able to sit in a lobby bar and drink a beer. Hell, it was all I could do to find food last week that was close enough to my hotels that it wasn’t cold by the time I was back to my room.

The lovely Miss Hepburn

Famous birthdays are: the guy who subjected American kids to public schools, Horace Mann, Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak, the lovely Audrey Hepburn, opinion-giver George Will, drag racing legend John Force, country singer Randy Travis, and Green Day’s Mike Dirnt.

And now…the links!

Kim living large!

The situation on the Korean Peninsula remains weird. Meanwhile, Kim may be holing up with 1000 women.

Jackboot thug cries racism. And offers zero evidence to support her accusation.

Yeah, that’s how it works. Did they expect people to have their checks miracled to them?

Chicago starts getting back to normal. I’d say “good for them”, but it really doesn’t apply.

I hope this trend catches on. Because if enough people do this, they really can’t do anything

Sorry, we’re closed!

about it.

Expect more of this. At least until places open and people start driving again.

Enjoy! Or don’t. But I will.

Now get out there and have a great day, friends!

About The Author

sloopyinca

sloopyinca

489 Comments

  1. Shpip

    Tulsa drilling rig operator Helmerich & Payne decommissioned 37 rigs and laid off 2,800 people during its second quarter as a record oil bust caused by the coronavirus pandemic continues to take its toll on the industry, the company reported Friday.

    But the planet is heeeeeaaaaallllliiiiinnnnnggg!!!!!11!

    • Don Escaped Sarcasm

      writing down the value of $563 million in assets, which included 37 drilling rigs

      Dubious: there’s a high probability those assets will be back in service in the way intended when they were bought within two years. When that happens, are they going to declare them goodwill? Found money? Profit and ready to be taxed?

      • sloopyinca

        More likely they’ll sell them to an overseas operator, claim a 1031-LKE on the proceeds and simply buy new rigs. As long as they keep those new ones long enough, they’ll be compliant.

      • Don Escaped Sarcasm

        nothing wrong with that

        but they will be in service within two years with a fair treatment to value and whether they took a loss

      • sloopyinca

        Oh sure. I was just pointing out that they’ll defer the gain on a zero-value asset by replacing it. Eventually they’ll have to pay, unless a capital gains tax holiday comes around. Which I expect to happen eventually.

      • Don Escaped Sarcasm

        right: and I’d be the last guy to criticize legitimate depreciation or depletion

        you could probably write a great article just covering those points and maybe reservoir valuation (talk about your write-downs!)

        and I could kick in a chapter on how you never accept a third-for-a-quarter deal: you only offer them!

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        When that day comes, I believe I’ll taking a large write-up on my inventory valuation.

      • Drake

        Time-value of money. I don’t know the service life of a rig, but two years on the deprecation schedule without producing any value is a financial mill-stone.

    • Ted S.

      a record oil bust caused by the coronavirus pandemic

      Caused by the government’s reaction, not by the pandemic itself.

      • Don Escaped Sarcasm

        akshually . . . .

      • sloopyinca

        More likely neither. This was coming before The Corona hit because Russia and the ME were getting into a pricing war.
        Yes, this exacerbated it, but the trend line was already pointing south.

      • Festus

        I think the Saudi Arabia, Iran and Russia waggling their respective dicks at each other has more to do with the down turn in prices than any “pandemic”.

      • AlexinCT

        Is it OK that I hope all three of these actors lose/fail in this endeavor?

      • Festus

        Perfectly copacetic.

      • Don Escaped Sarcasm

        Why, though? Of course it’s reasonable to dislike them for stylistic or historical reasons, but, from a libertarian view and preference for free markets, why should we resent their business decisions, especially those that improve our cost of living position?

        If these were individuals or corporations instead of countries, why would we resent their managing their businesses as they see fit?

      • AlexinCT

        I don’t resent their business decisions: I resent their totalitarian and fucking evil ways. I love cheap gas. I hope these three actors wreck their economy fighting each other and thus greatly curtail their ability to do mischief.

      • Don Escaped Sarcasm

        historical reasons: yeah, no problem with that, of course

      • Festus

        What Alex said. I’ve no love for those regimes but no hatred for the people that live under them. You must know by now that I’m a soft as Charmin.

  2. Don Escaped Sarcasm

    sit in a lobby bar and drink a beer

    We were out looking at houses Saturday and I kept getting hit by this sadness: we can’t just pull over for a beer on a patio when we want to. But: Memphis starts its phase 1 today.

    • Shpip

      Our local reopens at 25% capacity today. The Mrs. and I plan to be there.

      The good news is we’ll be able to get out of the house and see our bartender buddies for the first time in seven weeks.

      The bad news is that the drinks will be a lot weaker than what we’ve been pouring for ourselves.

      • Festus

        The good-bad news is that you only have to wait in line for an hour. Fucking Karens.

    • Nephilium

      Yeah. I was discussing it with the girlfriend that last year, if the weather predicted no rain, but there was clouds moving in. I’d be more willing to go out for a ride. If a storm did come through, I could duck into a bar/restaurant/coffee shop to wait it out. That’s not really an option now. Still no time frame for bars, restaurants, fitness centers, hairdressers, bowling alleys, etc to re-open up here.

      • Count Potato

        Closing gyms and fitness centers for people’s health is one galaxy brain policy.

      • juris imprudent

        You know how those seniors with comorbidities want to hit the gym!

    • robc

      Outdoor seating at restaurants is allowed starting today in South Carolina.

      • robc

        Cower-in-place is now voluntary as of today, also. It had been totally ignored anyway.

  3. Shpip

    Meanwhile, Kim may be holing up with 1000 women.

    That’s a whole lotta holes to fill.

    • Festus

      It’s good to be the King!

    • Tejicano

      Is that what the kids are calling it these days

    • bacon-magic

      They must be starving for meat there. *contemplates

      • AlexinCT

        You think they are trying to make that dough boy happy cause they think he is cute? I suspect it has more to do with them getting some food or wanting to avoid tha anti-aircraft executions…

      • bacon-magic

        I’d be in control their. *hands out bacon as monies

      • bacon-magic

        I’d be in control there. *hands out bacon as monies

      • AlexinCT

        You would be king of the hill there.

        On a side note, I remember watching a Ted talk or Youtube video with a cute Korean girl that had escaped the Nork paradise and landed in Australia. Those in her family that managed to escape went through hell, including being made to work as prostitutes in China to pay their way, but eventually she did make it out alive and without so much damage that it would wreck her for life. The one thing I found that was telling was how she was asked by her new Australian girlfriends if she had a chubby fetish. See, she only dated fat dudes, and she realized she still carried this belief that a chubby dude back home had power & wealth, so that was what made them attractive.

      • UnCivilServant

        So what you’re saying is, I need to find a girl who escaped north korea.

      • AlexinCT

        If you are a heft fella, ladies from countries where people are starving to death will love them some of you cause in their culture, you are a man of status…

      • Festus

        Well shit.

  4. PieInTheSky

    The situation on the Korean Peninsula remains weird. Meanwhile, Kim may be holing up with 1000 women. – the number of women keeps changing.

    • Festus

      1000/2000 holes in one. Who, at this point is counting?

  5. SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

    I hope this trend catches on. Because if enough people do this, they really can’t do anything about it.

    Oh, but they’ll try, and the Karen Army will cheer them on the whole way.

    • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

      Can you imagine the irony of the branch covidians torching some restaurant because the people didn’t stay locked in their houses?

      • Count Potato

        Unfortunately, yes.

  6. The Late P Brooks

    Baldridge also received an email on Thursday from the El Dorado County Environmental Management Department, the group that issues restaurants permits and conducts health inspections. The email said the department received a complaint and requested, “Please do not allow sit-down service at this time,” citing the statewide order.

    Fuck off, Slaver.

    • Ted S.

      Find the person who made the complaint and ask her why she wants to kill the diner owner.

      • AlexinCT

        My bet is that you will be told – and they will be totes serious – that it is everyone else’s job to make sure THEY don’t get infected. Personal responsibility? Fuck that!

    • Festus

      Triggered!

  7. Atanarjuat

    Since you mentioned the Kim Jong Un situation, Michael Malice is making a lot of sense when asked about it here. Skip to the 43:30 minute mark.

  8. Pat

    Jackboot thug cries racism. And offers zero evidence to support her accusation.

    I mean, the guns they were carrying were scary and black…

    • Atanarjuat

      It’s completely racist. For over a decade now, since Obama’s first term, “racist” has come to mean “things progs don’t like”.

    • Drake

      She’s got COVID-1984

    • Pat

      sparking Mayor de Blasio to call the attack ‘unacceptable’”

      Yeah, there was no way he could have seen that coming or anything.

    • leon

      Look if the mayor won’t Support the beat cop, then maybe the cops will have to stop trying to keep the city safe. / FOP

    • bacon-magic

      “The perp was about to sneeze, we want to go home safe” – cop adjusting mask around his neck

  9. PieInTheSky

    So as of today round these parts they plan to reopen some things such as barbershops and dentists on the 15th of may. Also a little more movement inside cities, but still restriction between cities. Probably not pubs or gyms though.

  10. Festus

    That Whitmer story. The replies.

    • IntraveneousWoodChipper

      She is a fucking lunatic.

      • Festus

        She’s a nightmare but the people lined up behind her in the chute are somehow worse.

  11. PieInTheSky

    Expect more of this. At least until places open and people start driving again. – also people need to buy more new cars.

    • sloopyinca

      No payments for 4 months is a pretty good incentive. Especially when the manufacturer is picking up two of the payments.

      • Festus

        My truck is probably good for another five, maybe ten years but yeah. Temptation. https://youtu.be/mA2srbaK19Y

      • sloopyinca

        I was hoping for New Order.
        ::shrugs::

      • Festus

        It was the first one that popped up. I’m not a huge fan of either band, to be honest.

      • PieInTheSky

        you need an electric vehicle

      • Ted S.

        I prefer my acoustic vehicle.

      • Festus

        They don’t work very well when the temp drops to -50C like it did last January, my Vampiric friend.

      • PieInTheSky

        irrelevant.

      • Festus

        He’s purdy.

    • Tejicano

      They’re making it extremely challenging for BabylonBee to keep their site up and running.

    • Drake

      When it gets too much for me and I’m sick of my glasses fogging up, I just pull the mask below my nose of a while. Nobody seems to care, it’s all just health-theatre at this point.

      • Festus

        Nobody is wearing them up here.

  12. Certified Public Asshat

    Yeah, that’s how it works. Did they expect people to have their checks miracled to them?

    When you don’t trust banks, you don’t have a bank account.

    • Jarflax

      If you have bounced too many checks you may not be able to get a bank account.

    • leon

      It’s not that I trust the banks. I just don’t have enough money to actually be trusting banks.

    • Pat

      I mean he’s not completely wrong though. Spielberg is overrated as fuck. DUDE SCHMALTZ LMAO the career.

      • sloopyinca

        Sorry, but saying “Cats > Jaws” is completely wrong. I don’t care who you are, there’s no gray area.
        Even OMWC would have to admit that. And his anti-Jaws bias is legendary.

      • Festus

        You don’t dig on the “jiggery buggery”” or whatever the fuck it was that they kept referring to? How Dare You!

      • Pat

        Sorry, but saying “Cats > Jaws” is completely wrong.

        Well that part is, sure, but the Spielberg sucks bit checks out.

      • Festus

        Yes. Pandering moron. I loathe his films.

      • robc

        Spielberg is just following Sturgeon’s Law: 80% of everything sucks. Unlike some other directors (Tarrantino), Spielberg has his good 20%.

      • PieInTheSky

        Unlike some other directors (Tarrantino) – what is that supposed to mean?

      • robc

        That Tarrantino doesn’t have a good 20%.

      • PieInTheSky

        robc I did not know you were incapable of correctly evaluating movies. Learn something new every day.

      • bacon-magic

        Tarrantino is a ploy the Americans have used to subvert the European peasants.

      • Pat

        I liked Reservoir Dogs. Pulp Fiction is overrated. Tarrantino’s shtick wears out quick. DUDE THE 70S LMAO the career.

      • DrOtto

        Duel, Indiana Jones Trilogy.

      • Festus

        I’ll grant Duel and Jaws scared the shit out of me when I was a little kid.

  13. The Late P Brooks

    Me me me!

    “I am greeted with a hostile press the likes of which no president has ever seen,” Trump said at the Fox News town hall Sunday night.
    “The closest would be that gentleman right up there,” Trump said, pointing to the 16th President’s statue. “They always said nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse.”

    Trump was speaking at the time of a widening divide between states that are opening economies and others that are warning of premature declarations of victory amid soaring tensions fomented by weeks of coronavirus lockdowns.

    His statement was classic Trump, not just in his audacity of comparing himself to the man many historians rate as the greatest president, but in his tendency to make every issue — even in the midst of a national tragedy in which tens of thousands of Americans have died — about himself.

    It was also striking that the President who has consciously torn at the nation’s political fault lines should make such a partisan argument under the marbled gaze of the man who warned “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

    The noble and impartial members of the press aren’t incessantly injecting editorial slurs about President Cartoon Villain in every story. It’s all in his imagination. They stick to the facts, no matter what.

    Now, Lincoln, he was a great guy. 11 out of 10 legitimate historians agree.

    • Pat

      His statement was classic Trump, not just in his audacity of comparing himself to the man many historians rate as the greatest president, but in his tendency to make every issue — even in the midst of a national tragedy in which tens of thousands of Americans have died — about himself.

      The irony… it burns.

      • R C Dean

        He didn’t really compare himself to Lincoln. He compared the abuse he gets to the abuse Lincoln got.

      • Count Potato

        I’m going to go out on a limb and say being assassinated is probably worse.

      • Festus

        Really, Karen? j/k

      • Stillhunter

        Secret service says hi.

      • bacon-magic

        That’s coming if he wins again.

      • invisible finger

        John Wilkes Booth – another show biz progressive hating on Republicans.

    • leon

      “not just in his audacity of comparing himself to the man many historians rate as the greatest president,”

      How dare he compare himself to one of the 43 other men who held the office he holds.

      • IntraveneousWoodChipper

        I love how Obama’s comparison of his first term with Lincoln’s (his was “better”) had been memoryholed in all of this.

      • Festus

        “Bla-loading”

  14. Certified Public Asshat


    Judge dismisses US women’s national soccer team’s claim for equal pay

    U.S. District Judge R Gary Klausner said he would not allow the equal pay allegations to go forward because the women’s national team previously “rejected an offer to be paid under the same pay-to-play structure” as the men’s national team. According to CBS Sports, the women’s team sought $66 million under the Equal Pay Act and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

    “The WNT was willing to forgo higher bonuses for benefits, such as greater base compensation and the guarantee of a higher number of contracted players,” he wrote in the 32-page decision. “Accordingly, plaintiffs cannot now retroactively deem their CBA (collective bargaining agreement) worse than the MNT (men’s national team) CBA by reference to what they would have made had they been paid under the MNT’s pay-to-play terms structure when they themselves rejected such a structure.”

    You mean they freely negotiated their own shitty terms?

    • Atanarjuat

      Drugs, ass, shot themselves in the ladyballs.

    • Pat

      It’s sexist because women are too incompetent to negotiate their own salaries, you see.

    • Certified Public Asshat

      To @USWNT: don’t give up this fight. This is not over yet.To @USSoccer: equal pay, now. Or else when I'm president, you can go elsewhere for World Cup funding. https://t.co/XK6t9oM94k— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) May 2, 2020

      Smart people weighing in.

      • Ted S.

        As somebody said the last time this was brought up, FIFA take a very dim view of political meddling in the national federations, to the point of banning countries from international competition.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        Wow, I was expecting some no-name blue check. Such presidential, many graceful.

      • sloopyinca

        Translation: I will pressure you to void contracts or I’ll cut your funding.

        Sounds like extortion to me.

      • AlexinCT

        One of the Biden kids is then sure to be running this racket Joe is promising to enact…

    • Breet Pharara

      Funny how the press never mentioned: the USWNT was paid more on a per game basis and annually. Their complaint was if they were paid with the men’s pay structure, a riskier one, they’d make more money. They are literally arguing that they negotiated for the safer position before the risk (how many games, tournaments they’d win) and trying to go back and take the riskier structure after the risk has already passed.

      I thought the case was dumb before, but now I actively think the USWNT fields nothing but a bunch of cuntes.

      • Festus

        That Rapinoe thing is the RA from your worst nightmares. SF needs to write something up, stat.

  15. Fourscore

    Apparently Chicago is “The City That Never Sleeps” although there are some that will never wake up. Wait ’til it gets hot. Unemployment but the cash keeps coming in, what’s not to like?

    • Festus

      My tiny corner of the world is seeing some strife. Honey is unemployed but still drawing a paycheck. She’s bored and wants me to be as busy as she is. I’m working longer hours in these difficult times. /s

  16. Pat

    Freddy McConnell: Transgender man’s bid to be named father fails

    A transgender man who gave birth to a child has lost his latest legal bid to be registered on the birth certificate as the father rather than the mother.

    Freddy McConnell appealed against a decision made by a High Court judge that a person who carries and gives birth to a baby is legally a mother.

    Mr McConnell, from Kent, wanted to be named father or parent on the document.

    He said he was disappointed by the Court of Appeal ruling, adding that his fight was “just not over”.

    Mr McConnell plans to appeal to the Supreme Court.

    • Festus

      Heh. One of my buddies had his first squamp with a girl that later claimed guy. He was mightily pissed when Jody became Daniel. I think they had something going on in the back yard for years. She was my first undergrope while dancing to Boston’s “More Than A Feeling” circa 1978. Poor guy still gets pissed off when I twist his tail about Jodi/Daniel. She was always pretty butch, spat a lot, played hockey and had terribly chapped lips. What did I care? BOOBS!

  17. Count Potato

    “DOJ sides with church suing Virginia Gov. Northam after pastor who held 16-person service faced fine, jail

    The US Justice Department is siding with a Virginia church suing Gov. Ralph Northam after its pastor was criminally cited for holding a Palm Sunday service in violation of the state’s coronavirus lockdown orders.

    The Rev. Kevin Wilson of the Lighthouse Fellowship Church on Chincoteague Island faced a $2,500 fine and possible jail time after police discovered the April 5 service being attended by 16 people inside a sanctuary that could hold about 300.

    Despite the congregants being widely separated, police still issued the summons to Wilson. The pastor responded with a lawsuit charging discrimination against the church and violation of the First Amendment.”

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8283273/DOJ-sides-church-suing-Virginia-Gov-Northam-pastor-cited-holding-16-person-service.html

    • IntraveneousWoodChipper

      Good for him. Northam shouldn’t be goven another inch.

  18. The Late P Brooks

    The President was making his best case at the start of a critical new period in the battle with Covid-19 that will play out in millions of lives in the six months until Election Day.
    The aggressive approach of some governors is already heaping pressure on those who run states still committed to stay-at-home guidelines — even with the virus still rampant in their paths.
    With Trump agitating for a spark to the nation’s economic engine, some governors are taking a gamble that in many cases contradicts the best advice of epidemiologists, but if it works, could alleviate some of the crippling unemployment triggered by the pandemic.

    What a monster. Trump is the only person in the nation dumb enough to want to jailbreak us. Against the most perfect advice of the best bureaucrats money can buy. He just wants to lure us out into the open so we’ll die, because he’ll profit from it.

    • sloopyinca

      With Trump agitating for a spark to the nation’s economic engine, some governors are taking a gamble that in many cases contradicts the best advice of epidemiologists, but if it works, could alleviate some of the crippling unemployment triggered by the pandemic.

      The same epidemiologists who are constantly reversing revising their opinions on everything from mask use to proper social distancing to useful treatments to the expected number of deaths and hospitalizations? Those brilliant and infallible epidemiologists?

      • AlmightyJB

        Only the epidemiologists who support the panic/marshall Law narrative. All other epidemiologists are racist who need to be silenced.

      • sloopyinca

        So basically, this is gonna be the next “93% of scientists agree that man-made climate change is real” bullshit.
        And they already are silencing dissenting docs. Those two who did a brutal takedown on mass lockdowns have been pulled from YouTube.

      • Count Potato

        The scary thing is those people were doctors — people credentialed to speak about medicine — that youtube silenced.

      • AlmightyJB

        You can’t argue with “science”. Not even with science.

      • invisible finger

        “93% of government-licensed doctors agree with the government…”

    • Count Potato

      “the best advice of epidemiologists”

      Yeah, sure.

    • Q Continuum

      So this guy discovers that libertarian theory doesn’t work if you don’t believe in private property. Yippie skippy for him.

      • juris imprudent

        There is no arguing with the brain damaged.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Suppose I come on to some piece of ground that you call your land. Suppose I don’t believe people can own land since nobody makes land. So obviously I don’t recognize your claim that this is yours. You then violently attack me and push me off.

      What just happened? I say that you just used aggressive violence against me. You say that actually you just used defensive violence against me. So how do we know which kind of violence it is?

      You say it is defensive violence because under your theory of entitlement, the land belongs to you. I say it is aggressive violence because under my theory of entitlement, the land does not belong to you. So which is it?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I look forward to taking all of Matty’s stuff.

      • sloopyinca

        You say it is defensive violence because under your theory of entitlement, the land belongs to you. I say it is aggressive violence because under my theory of entitlement, the land does not belong to you. So which is it?

        It’s the former. Now go away, you fucking retard.

      • Festus

        Sloopy gets it.

      • Pat

        You say it is defensive violence because under your theory of entitlement, the land belongs to you. I say it is aggressive violence because under my theory of entitlement, the land does not belong to you. So which is it?

        Well, in the absence of a state to do violence on your behalf, your theory loses because you’re an effete little bitch. Next case.

      • EvilSheldon

        It’s defensive violence, because you’re lying about your theory of entitlement.

        If you really didn’t believe in property rights, then you would hold no property interest in your own person. So you could be attacked or enslaved by anyone who wanted to bother.

        Come on, Matty, ask a tough one.

    • PieInTheSky

      what amused me was this

      • PieInTheSky

        I have no idea what happened but I did not click post comment

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I’m amused.

      • sloopyinca

        Yeah, that’s hilarious.

      • Count Potato

        LOL

      • PieInTheSky

        I wanted to paste this

        You are not, under my theory of distributive justice, entitled to the amount I am taxing you. It does not belong to you.

        I am not sure I generally understand this type of argument but it does seem to rest, in the end, on nothing objective. It is the kind of argument some leftist to is if you want to be left alone this infringes my right to force you to do what I want or something. It has no objective basis except might is right.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        If there are no inalienable rights, then power is the only metric by which you can measure anything.

        It would be instructive to seize all of the Bruenig’s belongings for the greater good and leave them in rags and on the street. By his logic, this would be moral and acceptable.

      • PieInTheSky

        It would be instructive to seize all of the Bruenig’s belongings – including his wife?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Mousy communists aren’t my thing.

      • PieInTheSky

        I remember from my lurkin days at reason that she tickled some fancies there 🙂

      • Pat

        In some photos she looks OK.

      • Pat

        In others, not so much.

      • Festus

        Waiting for a splat. She’s much prettier in the first one.

    • robc

      Ummm…he done kilt that strawman.

    • Suthenboy

      How does this person manage to dress and feed himself?

      That is the dumbest fuckin’ shit I have ever heard. Rule of the fist, really? Someone should beat the crap out of him and start ordering him around….then ask him how he feels about private property.

  19. The Late P Brooks

    A transgender man who gave birth to a child has lost his latest legal bid to be registered on the birth certificate as the father rather than the mother.

    Once upon a time, this woman would have been labeled a kook, and shipped off to the funny farm.

    I miss that America.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Then you’ll love NPR’s attempt at finding a sympathetic figure to shore up an argument for SNAP food delivery:

      Not long after the shelter-in-place order went into effect in California in March, Melissa Santos and her wife established new rules: they’d eat breakfast, try to get by with snacks, suppress hunger with coffee, and then have dinner.

      Santos is a student at the University of California, Berkeley. At 32, she’s older than most of her undergraduate peers; she spent years taking care of a grandmother with Alzheimer’s before considering her own education and career.

      The shelter-in-place order means Santos is allowed to go out to grocery stores, but her obesity puts her in a high-risk category for COVID-19, and her doctor advised her to stay home.

      • EvilSheldon

        So they’re eating two meals a day? Plus snacks, plus coffee? Exactly like I’ve been doing for most of my adult life?

        What fucking planet are these people on?

      • leon

        This is a large part of where we are going off the rails. Not only must you be afforded welfare, but you must not have to make hard choices. And you must not ever be in danger, especially as a result of your own lifestyle.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Egalitarianism requires that all outcomes be equal, personal responsibility and decision making has nothing to do with it.

      • Tulip

        Can’t her wife go to the store? Not reading stupid article.

      • Count Potato

        Oh come on, it’s about a lesbian who goes to Berkeley. How stupid could it be?

      • Count Potato

        “but her obesity puts her in a high-risk category ”

        Maybe knock off the snacks.

      • EvilSheldon

        I suppose that sending Melissa an article on intermittent fasting would be insensitive or something…

      • WTF

        Yeah, it seems she could take this opportunity to lose some of that unhealthy weight.

      • Gdragon

        ” but her obesity puts her in a high-risk category for COVID-19, and her doctor advised her to stay home.”

        I mean isn’t this problem going to potentially solve itself? If she can’t get enough food and loses some weight her doctor might permit her to unlock the door 😉

      • invisible finger

        ” a high-risk category for COVID-19″

        A phrase that means… nothing.

        A “co-morbidity” doesn’t make someone more likely to catch the virus, it only makes it harder to recover from it

  20. leon

    It’s a good week. My gym will be opening again this week. Hallelujah.

    • Count Potato

      Still not working.

      • Q Continuum

        What browser are you using?

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Netscape Navigator?

      • Count Potato

        It’s not the browser.

      • Pat

        If you’re using Cloudflare’s DNS it’s that.

      • Count Potato

        It works on one computer, but not the other.

      • Q Continuum

        Not sure… I have problems with it on my iPad or if I use Safari. It works on other browsers. If it’s not the browser then I don’t know what the problem is.

        What’s different between the two computers?

      • Count Potato

        Linux vs. OS X?

      • Pat

        If it’s not working on the Linux system check your local DNS settings. Systemd likes to hijack DNS queries through resolved (although the default is Google’s 8.8.8.8, which usually doesn’t have any problem with archive.is)

      • Q Continuum

        I’m using OS X currently; I’ve had no problems on Windows. My Linux box is a work computer so I’m not looking at T&A on it.

      • AlmightyJB

        I’m on Brave and mine worked

      • R C Dean

        Brave on iOS.

        Very rarely works for me.

      • PieInTheSky

        firefox is ok with it

    • PieInTheSky

      I protest to number 15 being included as it fetishizes POC hair and POC women are oppressed adn do not need further male gazing upon them.

    • Pat

      I’d let #1 and #9 use my good floss when they stay over.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      23 looks human. I’ll go with that one.

  21. Tundra

    Good morning, Sloopy!

    I can’t wait to start traveling again. Fucking Zoom has definitely lost its novelty.

    Good on the lady in CA. You work or you die. I liked this quote:

    The El Dorado County Sheriff’s Office does not have any plans to issue a citation to the restaurant. A spokesperson said the office’s focus continues to be awareness of the statewide order.

    I expect a lot more of that. If any of my places open up, I’ll be first in line.

    Fantastic song! My boys did an homage.

    Have a great Monday, peeps!

  22. The Late P Brooks

    During the CNN appearance, Whitmer said the protests featured “Confederate Flags and nooses,” as well as swastikas. Members of the Michigan Liberty Militia protested the state’s stay-at-home orders this week, some with weapons and tactical gear and their faces partially covered.

    Please stop. You’re killing me.

    • leon

      If you call a Dem a Nazi that really means you’re the Nazi.

    • sloopyinca

      Where’d all the photos of people in those crowds with swastikas and nooses go?
      I guess the reporters just missed them. But we can take Whitmer’s word for it. She’d never lie.

      • juris imprudent

        Like about the blocking of hospitals?

  23. leon

    Had to listen yesterday about how the protesters in Michigan are crazy. Couldn’t last a min in a fire fight. Yadda yadda. Let’s not discuss the overreach of power from the governor.

    I get annoyed by these people who are all about keeping Trump from being a tyrant, but don’t really give a shit about tyranny.

    • Suthenboy

      Oh, they give a shit, they just want their tyrant.

  24. Suthenboy

    My tank got to half-full yesterday so I topped it off. It has been over a month since I bought gasoline.

    • PieInTheSky

      By a new truck to have an extra tank!

      • PieInTheSky

        Buy goddamnit

  25. The Late P Brooks

    Whitmer said the protest wasn’t representative of Michigan and that she’s going to listen to facts and science to decide how to handle the pandemic.

    “Whether you agree with me or not, I’m working to protect your life if you live in the state of Michigan,” she said. “I am going to continue to do my job regardless of what tweets come out or what polls come out or what people think makes sense.”

    BECAUSE I SAID SO! NOW GO TO YOUR ROOM! STOP CRYING, OR I’LL GIVE YOU SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT.

    Jeepers, Mom. You don’t have to be such a cunte about it.

    • Breet Pharara

      “Listen to facts and science”

      So you’re going to see that the hospitals aren’t overwhelmed and loosen restrictions to allow more people to be infected at a quicker rate to get the a herd immunity asap without overwhelming the health care system?

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      She has no legal authority to protect my life if I do not wish it.

    • leon

      “going to listen to facts and science to decide how to handle the pandemic.”

      See, pharoah whitmer will consult with the high priests of science and decide when to let up. Your complainants fall on deaf ears, they will not move her, for she has not the heart to feel for your suffering. She has not the strength to support you. She has the mind to control you.

    • Suthenboy

      She beats you because she loves you.

    • sloopyinca

      If only they’d asked some follow up questions about policy intentions.
      “Is the goal still to flatten the curve so as to not overwhelm the medical system? Because the hospitals are at 40% occupancy and ventilator use is very low. Has the state not met that goal? Or has your goal changed now to “one more death from The Corona is one too many”?

      • invisible finger

        Government is just the term for the bait-and-switch we do together.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Whitmer could come right out and say “I’m extending the lockdown in order to create political opportunity and prove that Trump is wrong” and a significant portion of the people and the media would support her.

        FFS, she’s already said out loud that she will not respect the legislative branch and that her authority is almost absolute.

  26. PieInTheSky

    Today I learned sorption is a standalone word in Englishness although it seems the blog spellchecker also is unaware of this.

    Sorption is a physical and chemical process by which one substance becomes attached to another. Specific cases of sorption are treated in the following articles:

    Absorption – “the incorporation of a substance in one state into another of a different state”[1] (e.g., liquids being absorbed by a solid or gases being absorbed by a liquid);
    Adsorption – the physical adherence or bonding of ions and molecules onto the surface of another phase (e.g., reagents adsorbed to a solid catalyst surface);
    Ion exchange – an exchange of ions between two electrolytes or between an electrolyte solution and a complex.

    The reverse of sorption is desorption.

    • PieInTheSky

      I am actually warming up to recognize Taiwan and that China belong to Taiwan.

      • Pat

        That was the official position of the US gov for decades until we cucked ourselves to the CCP for cheap manufacturing. What a deal.

  27. The Late P Brooks

    It has no objective basis except might is right.

    Bt George, I think he’s got it!

    • PieInTheSky

      in a suit though.

  28. Gdragon

    Sheena is so great that even Eddie Vedder can make me dance to it. One of my absolute favourites, thanks for that sloopy.

    • Ted S.

      You can’t dance to Sheena?

  29. The Late P Brooks

    So- about that stupid wimmynz soccer thing. Have they reached the part of the process where the court tells the losers to pay all the winners’ legal fees, or is that yet to come?

    • juris imprudent

      Akshually, the USWNT only lost summary judgement on the pay issue. There were other issues (of lesser impact) that may continue to trial. Expect this to all get withdrawn when a settlement is reached (since the women no longer have the big club to beat USSoccer into submission).

  30. The Late P Brooks

    23 looks human. I’ll go with that one.

    It’s a trap!

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      They all are.

    • leon

      They are critical of Biden so clearly, in the tank for Trump.

    • Suthenboy

      On the phone with a hospital CEO yesterday….

      Me – “I think they are using this coronatardness to wreck the health care system and sneak in single payer.”

      Him, no hesitation: “That is exactly what they are trying to do.”

      More than that I think they are trying to wreck the economy to sneak in full-blown communism. This whole thing is a disaster like nothing we have seen before. This isn’t going to end well for anyone.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        More than that I think they are trying to wreck the economy to sneak in full-blown communism.

        They’re kids who stumbled into a candy shop after fleeing from the mall cop. They don’t know what the endgame is, but they do know that they never want it to stop.

        Memorial day. Either we’re opening back up by then, or there will be violence. The media is carrying a lot of statist water, trying to keep it as “uncertain times” rather than “bad economy”, because they know full well that the other shoe is gonna drop once people lose hope of a sharp V recovery.

  31. The Late P Brooks

    I guess The Hill advocating for maybe, someday, sometime letting the great unwashed back out in public just means that they’re right-wing agitprop.

    We’ll be ready to turn the proles loose as soon as they have been rounded up and neutered and branded fitted with their RFID tracking chips.

    Finally, America will be a place fit for decent people to live.

  32. Suthenboy

    I am only going to say this once and then duck and run.

    I love you guys…all of you….but your taste in music sucks ass.

    I also love pineapple and hate non-human food that is turnips and avocados.

    • Pat

      Pineapple and avocados are great. You can even combine them in a nice salsa.

    • juris imprudent

      How do you feel about cilantro?

      • Pat

        Certain genetic mutants can’t enjoy cilantro. For everyone else there is no excuse.

      • robc

        The mutants just need to learn to enjoy the taste of soap.

      • Drake

        Now I want some pineapple, avocado, cilantro salsa on a taco for lunch.

      • AlmightyJB

        That would be good with my smoked pork butt.

    • bacon-magic

      I also love pineapple and hate non-human food that is turnips and avocados.

      #eatallfood
      And I was “dead to you” for not liking liver and lima beans.

      • Certified Public Asshat

        Suthen likes liver and lima beans but not avocados? Worst takes ever.

      • AlexinCT

        Turnips are ass…

      • bacon-magic

        That’s not where you put them. They taste better if ingested. You kids these days…
        *sets out Stay Off Lawn post

      • AlexinCT

        They taste as if they have been in ass when ingested. That is they taste like shit, even before someone puts them in their ass..

    • Fourscore

      Tobacco Road by Erskine Caldwell

      “CHAPTER 1. Lov Bensey trudged homeward through the deep white sand of the gully-washed tobacco road with a sack of winter turnips on his back. He had put himself to a lot of trouble to get the turnips; it was a long and tiresome walk all the way to Fuller and back again.”

      Southern folks love turnips, I read it in the book when I was about 12 or so.

    • Ted S.

      I’m sure your taste in music sucks too.

  33. Pat

    Security lapse at India’s Jio exposed coronavirus symptom checker results

    Since the start of the outbreak, governments and companies have scrambled to develop apps and websites that can help users identify COVID-19 symptoms.

    India’s largest cell network Jio, a subsidiary of Reliance, launched its coronavirus self-test symptom checker in late March, just before the Indian government imposed a strict nationwide lockdown to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus. The symptom checker allows anyone to check their symptoms from their phone or Jio’s website to see if they may have become infected with COVID-19.

    But a security lapse exposed one of the symptom checker’s core databases to the internet without a password, TechCrunch has found.

    • Suthenboy

      WTF?
      List the symptoms we know about. You can count them on the fingers of one hand. Done and done. Now fuck off.

      *I dont think any of the ‘experts’ know what the fuck they are talking about. A couple of months ago I had a very strange eye infection. My lower left eyelid swelled up to the point my eye was nearly swelled shut. I have had various eye infections in my life but this was very odd. Completely different than anything I have had or seen before.
      Then ‘poof’ it just went away overnight.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      That explains millenials in a nutshell.

    • leon

      Dom ”
      ?
      ruhona
      ?
      irus”
      @Dom_Cdn
      ·
      17h
      Replying to
      @VitoGesualdi
      Man, what a hot take to grace my feed.

      It’s called disciplinary action. If the kid didn’t get it after weeks (which is more than accommodating) I say the kid has played with enough rope.

      Lots of people in this thread clearly with no kids talking about how to parent.

      Damn son. These are two parents who are gonna wonder why their kids hate them.

    • LJW

      I actually side with the kid on this one. My nephew showed me some of the things people do on Minecraft and it’s a modern form of art. She took that kids Mona Lisa and ripped it to shreds.

      • leon

        Yeah. I get taking away privileges, that happened all the time. But my parents would never destroy something i had worked on as a punishment. Part of me wonders if it is really just a really elaborate allegory for Corona-punishment.

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        Not to mention that it’s completely unrelated to the supposed issue. Kid is sleeping in (because he has nothing going on in his life and is probably depressed), and mom decides to nuke one of the few things that still brings him joy.

        1) that’s pure spite, probably because she sees his game as a threat to the attention she expects from him

        2) this is how you make your kid into a school shooter, by showing them that wanton destruction is a way to punish.

      • Ted S.

        I figured he was sleeping late because he was up late playing Minecraft.

      • LJW

        Whoops not sure why auto text decided to inset actually as though siding with the mom is actually reasonable.

    • EvilSheldon

      Congrats, Mom. You’ve successfully proven to your son that you don’t really care about him, and that he can never trust you with anything important. Nice work. Enjoy the state-run nursing home…

    • Suthenboy

      Bullshit.

      Get your ass back to China then, fucktard.

  34. The Late P Brooks

    Propaganda machine grinds slowly on

    Why I’m skeptical about Reade’s sexual assault claim against Biden: Ex-prosecutor
    If we must blindly accept every allegation of sexual assault, the #MeToo movement is just a hit squad. And it’s too important to be no more than that.

    ——-

    Pivoting again this month, Reade said that she “did not support Putin, and that her comments were pulled out of context from a novel she was writing,” according to The Times. The quotations above, however, are from political opinion pieces she published, and she did not offer any other “context” to The Times.

    Reade’s writings shed light on her political alliance with Sanders, who has a long history of ties to Russia and whose stump speech is focused largely on his position that American inequality is due to a corporate autocracy. But at a very minimum, Reade’s wild shifts in political ideology and her sexual infatuation with a brutal dictator of a foreign adversary raise questions about her emotional stability.

    ►Suspect timing. For 27 years, Reade did not publicly accuse Biden of sexually assaulting her. But then Biden’s string of March primary victories threw Sanders off his seemingly unstoppable path to the Democratic nomination. On March 25, as Sanders was pondering his political future, Reade finally went public with her claim. The confluence of Reade’s support of Sanders, distaste for the traditional American democracy epitomized by Biden, and the timing of her allegation should give pause to even the most strident Biden critics.

    For all I know (or care) it’s all bullshit. But the disparity between the response to this accusation and the one against Kavenaugh just reeks to high Heaven.

    All of them are “true” or none of them are.

    • leon

      If we must blindly accept every allegation of sexual assault, the #MeToo movement is just a hit squad. And it’s too important to be no more than that.

      LOL. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH. Stop. Stop please. Please….

      Look i think the part that helped women get really bad predators off the street is great. But this whole “Wait we didn’t mean for this to be a hit-squad” is so disengenous. You Knew it would be one, because 1) We were fucking telling you that it was becoming that, and 2) you fucking acknowledged it and said “Yes! Yes! We must believe all women. We must believe Sweatnick!”. So the left can fuck off now on changing the standard for Biden.

  35. robc

    2008 World Bank study suggesting horrible costs of possible future pandemics:

    A 1968 Hong Kong Flu pandemic would lower world GDP about 0.7%
    A 1957 Asain Flu pandemic, about 2.0%
    A 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, about 4.8%

    It looks like if we had just rode the wave, the cost would have been 1 to 2%.

    • PieInTheSky

      it is not about money it is about lives.

      • robc

        poverty causes death.

      • PieInTheSky

        not if the government redistributes enough.

      • juris imprudent

        Mint me up a whole boatload of those $1T platinum coins!

      • Pat

        It’s not about *those* lives.

      • kbolino

        That claim is really hard to believe coming from a gaggle of people whose political opinions range from pro-abortion to anti-natalist to Malthusian to nihilist to communist.

  36. Drake

    I really enjoyed this season of Westworld. Kind of timely to have a Sci-fi series set in a dystopian near-future where everyone’s lives are controlled by big-tech. A war between those who believe in per-determination vs. free-willers was deeper than what I expected of HBO.

    • Suthenboy

      I was disappointed. The story was told poorly. I had a hard time following it which means I lost interest and that made it even harder to follow. It played in the background while I went to Glibertarians.com and posted dumb comments.

    • R C Dean

      Better than season 2, which was nearly incomprehensible.

      Not as good as season 1, which was, I dunno, deeper.

      YMMV.

      • Urthona

        I didn’t like season one but watched through it because of high production values.

  37. PieInTheSky

    Weirdest things on that amItheassshole thing

    AITA for saying ‘what did she expect’ when my girlfriend told me her best friend’s affair partner has vanished into thin air when she told him she was pregnant?

    I’ve been with my girlfriend coming up to 1 year now. Her best friend has been having a 3 month affair with a married man. She knows he is married.

    She found out she was pregnant a month back and he has completely disappeared into thin air. He has blocked or deleted her from tinder and she never got his real name (they both went by aliases) and now she is desperately searching for him on Facebook but nothing even in the ballpark has come up.

    The guy offered her abortion money and offered to go with her. She refused because she has a 3 y/o and she wants a sibling for her baby.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/AmItheAsshole/comments/gda74l/aita_for_saying_what_did_she_expect_when_my/

      • EvilSheldon

        A sex worker ‘lashing out’ because her clients are objectifying her.

        Enkidu wept.

    • robc

      There is a suspicion (for good reason) that most AITA posts are an exercise in creative writing.

      • PieInTheSky

        I find that quite believable. Although none of my friends pay for my onlyfans account, so there is that.

      • Viking1865

        They changed the rules a few months ago to legalize fake posts. You used to be able to report it as fake, and the mods would make a judgement call.

        Now if its fake they want you, an Internet stranger, to prove it.

    • leon

      Recent point from Dave Smith that i liked was “Reall advice, good advice, usually stings and hurts, because people are telling us the things that we don’t want to hear, but need to.”.

      • Suthenboy

        Sad but true.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Your friend and the married dude are both assholes.

  38. Tundra

    Amash blabs.

    While Amash denounced the usage of “Nazi symbols” and the bearing of firearms by protesters because it “might be perceived as some form of intimidation toward legislators,” he added that “everyone has the right to protest,” so long as they do it responsibly.

    Oh shut the fuck up, Justin.

    • Suthenboy

      “… the bearing of firearms by protesters because it “might be perceived as some form of intimidation toward legislators…”

      Let me put this in a way that cant be misunderstood: You are the hired help. You will do as your boss (the citizenry) tells you or you will be fired.
      If you find that intimidating you should find another line of work.

    • Pat

      And when the government puts you on a watch list without due process and spies on you without a warrant he’ll be right there to stand up for your rights, unless you happen to be a Trump supporter.

      • Tundra

        Note, too, that the fucker said not a single word about libertarianism. Christ, man, you’re on national TV! At least try to fire people up!

    • kbolino

      The media’s framing of this has been disingenuous in the extreme. The “Nazi symbols” are not being endorsed by the protesters, they’re being used to equate the actions of our governments with those of the Nazis. Everybody and their brother has been equating Trump with Nazism and Hitler for 3 years, but now it’s suddenly beyond the pale to make comparisons with National Socialism?

      • Suthenboy

        They know that and everyone else knows it too.
        The MSM are lying sacks of shit.

    • Q Continuum

      He’s become such a doosh.

    • kbolino

      On the topic of Amash, I’d be willing to overlook his Robby-esque “to be sure”s if he calls out the FBI. The abuse of FISA is bad, and it is a point in Amash’s favor that he’s been pushing for reform of it, but I don’think it is enough. The FBI, and Federal law enforcement more generally, needs two critical reforms:

      1. “Lying” to them should not be a crime. Local and state police get by with just perjury, the FBI et al. should too.

      2. No handwritten notes by investigating agents should ever be admissible never mind the entirety of the evidence. All formal and informal questioning and interrogation should be videotaped. If the videotape malfunctions or the record is lost, then the FBI’s word is meaningless in court. You use informal questioning to direct an investigation, and that’s it.

    • Ted S.

      I was hoping it read “Amish babes”.

    • R C Dean

      “everyone has the right to protest,” so long as they do it responsibly.

      I see Amash has one of those copies of the Constitution with the invisible ink clauses.

      • juris imprudent

        Whether peaceably assemble includes mobs armed with torches and pitchforks, or with firearms, well YMMV.

      • R C Dean

        Exercising multiple Constitutional rights at one time does not mean that any of them can be limited.

        I can peaceably assemble, and I can bear arms. Merely bearing arms does not mean the assembly is no longer peaceable.

      • Don Escaped Sarcasm

        Constitutional

        I see this as an enumeration problem (the same way I see 2A as the wrong tool for “gun rights,” not that I’m trying to start that discussion).

        That is to say: you have a right to protest and a right to bear arms if the Constitution had never been written.

        But, as far as words written by dead white guys go, 9A says: why not both!?!

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I assume Disney already bought the rights to my life story and likeness along with the rest of the population of the world. And they copyrighted me until 2150.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      Tapper then asked Amash about the idea that, as a candidate, he might siphon votes away from presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden, thus handing the election to President Trump.

      Amash replied, noting that “the important thing is, we don’t know how the additional candidate changes a race. It’s too impossible to figure out. There are too many calculations involved.”

      Nice utilitarian evasion.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        I blame COVID

      • leon

        So the LP had a convention and Amash got the Nod?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Sarwark decided for them. It’s much simpler that way.

      • leon

        A very real prospect since the LP constitution does not allow for Online Conventions, and if no convention is had the LNC selects the candidate.

    • Suthenboy

      ‘Libertarian party’ is just an alternate spelling for ‘shit show’.

      Well…the other parties are too but the LP definitely rides the short bus.

    • Ted S.

      I wasn’t going to be sharing my shit with Disney anyway.

  39. PieInTheSky

    Libertarianism is, at best, a minority ideology. There’s no real love for it amongst the electorate. But its voices are disproportionately heard on TV politics shows, in Whitehall (and DC) and in newspaper columns.

    https://twitter.com/DJSkelton/status/1257285060136513536

    Libertarianism also secretly runs England, not just the US. I assume it is also disproportional listened to in North Korea.

    • kbolino

      Isn’t the whole point of freedom of speech so that voices can be “disproportionately heard”? How can the majority opinion be shaped if not by exposure to minority opinions?

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        meh, Socrates was an asshole anyway.

    • leon

      Everybody wants to rule the world.

      • Suthenboy

        No we dont. Leave me out, thank you very much.

      • leon

        That was a little fierce in response. I’m latterly crying rn. Tears.

      • bacon-magic

        Tears for fears?

      • AlexinCT

        EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE WORLD!

      • JaimeRoberto Delecto

        It’s alright. Let it all out.

    • Hyperion

      CPS are hiring monkeys’s now?

      • JD is Unemployed

        Hey, if they literally work for peanuts, it’s a lot cheaper for the taxpayer. Libertarian moment.

  40. Hyperion

    “Yeah, that’s how it works. Did they expect people to have their checks miracled to them?”

    Not sure how much it matters. I’ve had a ‘your are eligible, will be deposited in [account]’ for weeks now. Still nothing.

    • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

      Mine was like that for a few weeks and then it changed to “it will be deposited on April 30th” and then it was deposited.

  41. Unreconstructed

    RE: lockdowns/opening up. My outdoor soccer league had a meeting for team managers yesterday. We’re scheduling the last 2 matches of our (abbreviated) spring season for 5/24 and 5/31. I’m crossing my fingers that we’ll get to keep those dates. Of course, this means I need to get off my ass and start running, or I may die on the field the first time I sprint…

    • Certified Public Asshat

      I am looking forward to doing drop in when it reopens because I assume everyone will be level set to fat and out of shape.

    • B.P.

      Another Coronavirus death.

  42. The Late P Brooks

    From ESPN-

    William Byron showed he’s the sharpest gamer in NASCAR’s iRacing Series with his third victory in four events.

    Byron passed Timmy Hill with seven laps remaining at virtual Dover International Speedway, where NASCAR was scheduled to actually race Sunday, to win yet again on the iRacing platform. The Hendrick Motorsports driver has consistently been the best of the NASCAR professionals in simulated racing.

    And I thought thought NASCAR couldn’t suck any worse.

    • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

      The IndyCar iRacing at Indianapolis was amazing! Basically, the McLaren team had been assholes the whole series, and were lined up for a 1-2-3 finish.
      . And then the IndyCar regulars took them all out on the last lap.

    • JD is Unemployed

      NASCAR is cool, and it’s comin’ back for real in a couple of weeks apparently.

    • R C Dean

      I dunno. The iRacing has been fun.

  43. Hyperion

    “I hope this trend catches on. Because if enough people do this, they really can’t do anything about it.”

    Tanks. It’s the only way to finally get to the glorious new utopia they’ve been promising. These are some real pussy mini-dictators we’ve got going here. Tanks or people will just do whatever they want. What kind of utopia is that?

  44. PieInTheSky

    A motion which mandates the Oxford University Student Union (SU) to condemn the use of “hateful material” in mandatory teaching was passed in Student Council this Thursday.

    The motion also resolves to create a new SU Policy, entitled “Protection of Transgender, Non-binary, Disabled, Working-class, and Women* Students from Hatred in University Contexts”.

    Named the ‘Academic Hate Speech Motion’, the motion sets to establish a new policy on hate speech within the University to include ‘incitement of hatred on the grounds of gender identity, disability, and socio economic status, including to trans, non-binary, disabled, working-class, and women*’.

      • invisible finger

        You’re not alone. It happened to me on Friday, Pie.

      • Viking1865

        There is no demographic in the history of humanity that is more privileged, protected, pampered, and patronized to than the American middle class white woman born after 1970.

      • kbolino

        I think Oxford students could give the American middle-class white woman a run for her money in the privilege department.

      • Viking1865

        Nah they have shitty healthcare, tiny houses, bad food, bad weather, and Muslim rape gangs.

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      gender identity…. and women

      These people are impossible to parody.

      • leon

        incitement of hatred on the grounds of gender identity, disability, and socio economic status, including to trans, non-binary, disabled, working-class, and women*

        It is kind of interesting that they are postured as being “Brave” when they won’t even take a stand against “Hate” as a concept. Like it is somehow braver to be against only narrow forms of Hate rather than just being hateful.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        They’re useful idiots.

        To the people that know, this is only about the results. The objective is the dismantling of meritocracy and the implementation of egalitarianism (communism).

        The complete and total disruption of anything that looks like logical thought helps them.

    • Hyperion

      “Working-class”

      I think they’re a little confused on that one. Working class people do not have time for such bullshit. Which is why they’re out protesting to be able to go back to work and being called racist for doing so.

      There’s really only so far they can dumb themselves down with this form of censorship. Why don’t they just get lobotomies, it would be quicker and less painful.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        They mean welfare recipient.

    • kbolino

      The sole example given is a course on medical ethics that, by the professor’s own statements, is intentionally presenting “ableist” material in order to counter it. We really are reaching peak snowflakeism, where you can’t possibly be exposed to anything that you don’t like or is “hateful”. Nobody seems to ask the rather obvious question of, how do you know you don’t like it or that it’s “hateful” if you’ve never read/heard/seen it? I’m sure a hate speech committee will be formed to decide these matters, and before long any notion of independent thought on the part of the student body will be considered silly, passe, and eventually counter-revolutionary.

      On the topic of revolution, the inclusion of “working class” as a protected status and classism as a form of hate speech means this time, pushing communist orthodoxy into the university is not even being thinly veiled.

    • leon

      The suspect, Brandon Hicks, 25, has been apprehended, and faces a charge of attempted assault on a public servant.

      Ohh fuck off.

      • Viking1865

        Ranger Karen’s little backpack might have drowned him leon. This is Literally Treason.

      • Drake

        He needs a go-fund-me. It would cover his costs plus a lot more.

      • kbolino

        It would be yanked faster than you can say “whatever happened to the freewheeling Internet of yore?”

    • Suthenboy

      Someone should toss the DA in the lake as well.

    • Ted S.

      Did drugs fall out of the ranger’s ass when he was pushed into the lake?

  45. AlmightyJB

    Don Shula died

    • Count Potato

      RIP

    • Drake

      He makes a lot of very good points.

      • Sean

        Yes he does.

      • Hyperion

        He was spot on when he said ‘here in China’. It sure as hell looks more like China than the USA these days. The Atlantic overjoyed.

    • Hyperion

      Where’s the tanks?

      • Drake

        Hopefully manned by people like him.

    • Q Continuum

      Would the blonde right at the beginning.

    • Yusef drives a Kia

      Thanks for the autoplay warning,

    • Hyperion

      Trump has been terrible about surrounding himself with the wrong people since the very start. We somehow avoided getting Christ Christy for AG and then wound up getting the garden gnome Sessions instead and nothing has improved since.

      It’s time for Fauci and Birx both to go, they’re WHO stooges.

      If Trump weren’t so bad at picking new apprentices, he might be a little more effective.

      • kbolino

        I am not convinced things would have played out better had he gotten the people he wanted, but remember that the media and outgoing administration were trying to sabotage many of his picks from the start. Flynn’s example is the most egregious, but is hardly the only one.

      • leon

        At some point i go from “he made bad picks” to “He thinks these are good, but only slightly flawed picks”.

      • Fourscore

        His economic people aren’t any better, except for Kudlow and he seems to have rolled over, too.

      • Urthona

        He didn’t appoint that dude. Or maybe that’s what you mean.

      • juris imprudent

        OK, this explains Navarro – he is such a crackpot that Trump doesn’t notice him.

      • Drake

        Navarro appears to be the guy who gets in Fauci’s face during staff meeting and calls out his bullshit.

    • Fourscore

      Sunshine, the best disinfectant (and its free, too.) Candle makers hardest hit.

    • Urthona

      If vitamin D is a problem, average Americans should be fine.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      I’ve been taking D, C, and zinc since this all began and I haven’t gotten it so it must work. Seriously though, it only costs a few bucks and it isn’t going to hurt you so may as well.

      • Viking1865

        I posted in Glib Fit a couple weeks ago about the supplements I was starting

        Multi Vitamin, Fish Oil, Vitamin D, Glucosamine and Tumeric.

        Now, obviously placebo effect is real, but I definitely feel better just in general, more energy, waking up in the morning better, and especially the glucosamine has quieted the popping in my trick knees quite a bit.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Fish oil and turmeric are good for aches and pains too or so they say so maybe they’re helping with your knees as well. I found turmeric and ginger root taken daily helped with some back pain I was having.

      • Tundra

        What form of turmeric are you guys taking? I took glucosamine for a couple months but never noticed any benefit.

      • PieInTheSky

        i am just taking some curcumin supplement with some piperine added.

      • Shirley Knott

        Glucosamine and chodroitin often require sulfur supplementation to work. Try a bottle of Glucosamine + Chondroitin + MSM.

      • Viking1865

        I got it on Amazon. Vimerson Health

        Glucosamine with Chondroitin Tumeric MSM Boswellia.

      • Tundra

        Thanks, all. I’ll do a little research.

  46. The Late P Brooks

    I’m better than you

    Cuomo was asked about protests in his state at his coronavirus briefing in Corona, a neighborhood in the Queens borough of New York City, on Saturday, during which he said the state’s death toll was still “obnoxiously and terrifyingly high.”

    He said he understood people’s frustration with the measures, but said he disagreed with those who want the economy to reopen despite the public health risk.

    “I understand people’s frustration with the economy not being open. I get it. I want to see the economy open, for myself, for my family,” he said. “I’m not going to put dollar signs over human lives. I’m not going to do that. Not for my family and not for yours. But I understand their point of view, and I understand the First Amendment. You have an argument, you’re going to make your argument, God bless America.”

    Cuomo then lashed out at those who were gathering at rallies without a mask covering their faces, calling them “reckless” and “irresponsible.”

    Never mind why they are protesting. That’s not pertinent. How many paychecks have you missed? How many haircuts?

    Fuck off, Slaver.

    • Hyperion

      Broke, destitute, and without hope is not dead. Even dead isn’t dead unless it’s from Wuhan Flu. /Cuomo

    • Gustave Lytton

      I’m going to guess that he gave the press conference without a mask on.

      *checks*

      Yep. Just like every authoritarian in this country.

  47. Festus

    Ugh, fell on my kiester last night. Bruised myself up pretty badly. Think I’m allowed back into the bedroom again. Pray for Festus.

    • Count Potato

      Praying for your ass.

    • Suthenboy

      Fell why? What happened?

    • Fourscore

      Be careful, Son!

    • Ted S.

      Did drugs fall out of it?

  48. SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

    Question for the peanut gallery:

    I drink a Monster energy drink and I’m locked in and focused like I just took an Adderall. I drink a coffee, and focusing my attention is like wrangling a bull. What’s in the Monster that would account for the focus? I need more of that, whatever it is. Obviously the caffeine isn’t it.

    • Hyperion

      “What’s in the Monster that would account for the focus?”

      Bull semen. It says so right there on the can.

    • kbolino

      Besides having something like twice the caffeine of a cup of coffee, there’s a fuckton of B vitamins in most energy drinks.

    • Q Continuum

      B vitamins, ginseng and taurine are usually what sets energy drinks apart from coffee.

      • Incentives Matter

        Yeah, the ginseng raises your blood pressure (I used to take it, but it caused lots of nosebleeds, so I stopped) and the taurine is supposed to be good for heart function (but the evidence is mixed). The caffeine’s just the short-term “woo-hoo!” kick.

        If you want a much smoother and more pleasant energy boost, try Bomb-proof (not Bullet-proof!) Coffee. Synergistic blend of caffeine, creatine and L-tyrosine as the main active ingredients. I can attest that it actually does what it says on the tin, and tastes good, too (but I don’t use coconut oil or MCTs, ’cause I just don’t like “oily” coffee).

        Actual recipe is here (annoyingly, only as a video). I wish Will would put it down in writing somewhere, but he just won’t for some reason.

    • Stinky Wizzleteats

      If you’re focused like you took an Adderall and you need more of it why not just get some Adderall?

      • SUPREME OVERLORD trshmnstr

        It’s an option. However, I’m skeptical of regularly taking medicine for something that’s not debilitating.

      • Mojeaux

        If it is affecting your work negatively, it is sufficiently debilitating.

        Better living through chemistry.

  49. AlexinCT

    Here is an article explaining why the FBI railroaded/setup Flynn: in short, Obama on his way out needed to prevent Trump from exposing the weaponized corruption of his administration to help protect his legacy. It also explains why the usual dnc operatives with bylines unquestioningly – and despite mountains of evidence showing they were being duped/used – parroted the deep state’s bullshit accusations/lies. This was all damage control for Obama. Keep people from finding out how they abused the system, broke laws left and right, and shit on anyone they considered a political enemy. Prevent bad orange man from reversing all the horrible shit Obama did by destroying his ability to do the job. Protecting the dnc machine and the weaponized bureaucracy. Serving the will of the plebe electorate? Fuck that shit. Those deplorables should shut their fucking traps and worship Black Jeebus.

    • Hyperion

      Sadly, nothing else will happen.

      • Stinky Wizzleteats

        Something will happen but it’ll be to some mid or low level patsy. I hope Barr proves me wrong but I’m not holding my breath.

      • leon

        Not True. Amash will use his performance during the debacle to leverage an LP presidential run.

    • Not an Economist

      There is a fair amount of evidence that the Obama administration tried to handicap the incoming Trump administration. And there is some evidence that Obama himself knew of the effort.

      I know why this isn’t a bigger deal and that makes me sad. And doubly sad that I agree with Hyperion.

      • Akira

        There is a fair amount of evidence that the Obama administration tried to handicap the incoming Trump administration. And there is some evidence that Obama himself knew of the effort.

        If I recall, Obama spent the last few months of his term campaigning for Hillary and badmouthing Trump every chance he got.

        It’s bizarre how the Left – boasting about their loyalty to facts and truth – can blatantly deny something that is so obvious. I still encounter people who seriously believe that left-wing media bias is just a conspiracy theory made up by bitter right-wingers. It seems like whenever I point out that major media outlets were in actual collusion with the Clinton campaign during the 2016 election, they just hem and haw and drop the subject. It’s actually something that Dave Smith has described on his podcast, where you can corner someone in an argument and get them to concede that you have a good point, but a week later you can discuss the same thing with them and they’ll act like that previous conversation never happened.

  50. JD is Unemployed

    Man I’m broke as shit. Time to hawk some stuff.

    • AlexinCT

      As long as you ain’t offering to suck dick for a hit….

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Twenty bucks is twenty bucks…

    • Atanarjuat

      Ditto, but I did some Uber driving last night and it was pretty busy. Made about $50 in 2 or 3 hours. I’m going to try to do some every day.

      • Viking1865

        BUT WHYCOME UBER NOT PAY A LIVING WAGE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

      • JD is Unemployed

        That’s pretty good going. I would, but my car is too old, and there ain’t no uber ’round these parts because I’m up in the country.

    • bacon-magic

      Those dildos will make someone happy.

      • JD is Unemployed

        Is there really a market for used dildos? Asking for a friend.

        Actually, probably among perverts, ugh.

      • bacon-magic

        ew

    • Suthenboy

      I am not a foot fetishist….but…..

      I think I will go massage my wife’s feet now.

      • Ted S.

        I had to rub my mom’s feet growing up.

        Never again.

      • bacon-magic

        Did your family own a motel?

      • Suthenboy

        Wife….five feet tall, 98 lbs and the most finely formed, delicate feet on the planet.
        Also….she is not my mom.

      • Ted S.

        Well, I’m not rubbing your wife’s feet either. Or anybody else’s feet for that matter.

      • juris imprudent

        Bet you’d rub Mrs. Wallace’s feet, unless of course you heard what Marcellus did to the last guy that did.

    • Count Potato

      “Ever wanted to pack up the day job or start a side hustle selling feet pics?”

      I can’t say that I have.

    • Naptown Bill

      I almost never wear shoes at home when the temp is above 60F, and go barefoot in the street in the summer unless I’m entering a business, so my feet look like a crime scene. I’m serious, if you saw pictures of the bottom of my feet you’d assume they were found attached to a cadaver in a ditch somewhere.

      • R C Dean

        I travel maybe 20 feet a day without shoes on, going to and from the shower.

        One word: scorpions.

      • Naptown Bill

        Yeah, worst case scenario here is dog crap. Scorpions would be a deal breaker for me.

  51. PieInTheSky

    We used Covid-19 shutdown to do projects that would’ve been inconvenient for residents regularly (street paving, park renovations etc). One project was ripping up the 1960s vinyl floor at city hall. We thought we’d find garbage but instead we found the original from 100 yrs ago

    https://twitter.com/StevenFulop/status/1257073775113314304

    • Scruffy Nerfherder

      I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen nice terrazzo under vinyl flooring.

      I’ll bet good money that they’ll replace that old VCT with new VCT instead of refinishing the terrazzo though. I also see that all the time.

      • Viking1865

        There’s a curious hatred of beauty that permeates the 20th century government, and it is manifested in the architecture and decoration of public buildings.

        My wife’s originally from Indiana, and the county seat there has a fine old Beaux Arts courthouse. It looks the way a courthouse should look. A white stone building, placed in the middle of a green square, surrounded by shops and people, trees and memorials. Not some ugly concrete box surrounded by parking lots.

    • Gustave Lytton

      1960s vinyl floor

      How dismissive of vintage MCM flooring.

    • Suthenboy

      Someone put vinyl over that? That is as bad as painting oak furniture.

      Shoot them.

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        The problem is that most of the time the terrazzo is slab-on-grade and the plumbing is underneath it.

        So they’ll cut into the floor to repair or move the pipes but not budget to repair the terrazzo. Vinyl gets put down instead.

        I see it all the time. Floors are probably the most under-estimated cost in construction.

      • R C Dean

        That is a gorgeous floor.

        I don’t even know how or if you could repair that after cutting a trench through it. is anybody making reproductions?

  52. The Late P Brooks

    I’m going to guess that he gave the press conference without a mask on.

    You wear the mask, peasant, so the Earl doesn’t have to.

    Get Feudal, bro.

    • juris imprudent

      I’ll only bend the knee because it is a more stable shooting stance than off-hand.

  53. OBE #Learn2Essential

    New advert term being rolled out that I heard rolled into various radio advertising spots

    Help make the new normal a better normal….

    Go….Fuck….A….Duck

    • leon

      My youtube news feed was full of “States opening up, as Death Toll Rises in America” and “Texas opens up as it hits single worst day during the outbreak”.

      • Count Potato

        BREAKING: THE MEDIA SUCKS ASS

      • Scruffy Nerfherder

        Death Toll Rises in America

        That’s every day

    • Drake

      I looked at the usual state news sites and can’t find even a conversation on when NJ is going to open.

      • Count Potato

        I just read Oregon is going to remain locked down until July 6 for no apparent reason.

      • Drake

        Really going to stress-test their new authoritarian powers. I don’t see that ending well, particularly since there are basically no cases in OR.

      • juris imprudent

        LGBT governor – seriously. Should be named Ratched, but isn’t.

      • Gustave Lytton

        Excuse me. That’s Bicurious Kate.

      • Tejicano

        Is that July 6, 2020 or July 6, 2021?

      • Gustave Lytton

        The emergency declaration runs through July 6 (how convenient that it’s right after the 4th of July…), but it’s opening up before then slowly. First, there was never a complete shutdown of “non-essential” businesses. Non-emergency medical and veterinary procedures can resume (don’t get me started).

  54. R C Dean

    Today at Casa Dean:

    The desert roses are blooming. We have probably a dozen of these scattered around the front “yard” (which is raw desert – everything growing there was already there when they built the house). I’m guessing of the dozen we have, there are at least 4 different varieties – the flowers range from yellow to red. Desert rose is a cactus – they can get five feet high, probably more, and as big around.

    This is is probably the prettiest one we have this year. A close-up.

    • R C Dean

      And one of its buddies, more orange.

      The big yellow one hasn’t bloomed yet, and doesn’t look like it will do much this year.

      Next up: the prickly pears, which have the prettiest yellow flowers, and the saguaros, which are blooming really early this year, I think due to the early heat wave.

      • Tejicano

        Back when I had a house on an acre+ of land in southern AZ I had the same landscaping – all the original cacti and native plants which had been there long before the house I had built there. Some of those – teddy bear Cholla in particular – you learn to give a wide berth.

        One night some fool hoped the fence into my next-door neighbor’s yard only to discover my neighbor’s 75 lb Rottweiler. Said fool was lucky enough to clear the fence in time to not get bitten but, from the tracks found on the dirt the next morning, we deduced that he probably ran full speed into one of those Chollas. We knew something less than fortunate had happened due to the loud scream and following whimpering sounds as he made his way to wherever he came from.

      • Don Escaped Sarcasm

        wide berth

        NewWife and I went hiking the innocuous bluffs above The River yesterday, but, my trailhead routine includes some western habits. After decades of scrambling around TX, NM, and CO, my standard outfitting includes leather gloves; after clipping my compass into my belt and tucking my shirt inside my belt/pistol, on go the gloves. What I learned in TX was that if you take your eye off the ball for even a trivial second, standing or walking, you could pick up a hundred needles in the mere touching of the wrong thing. Gloves are nice, too, if you stumble in rocky terrain and want to confidently catch yourself in a fall without picking up a bunch of stitches.

        In my native, quiet, two-canopy forest, all I ever worried about was poison ivy and nettle.

      • Suthenboy

        I always explain to non-woods savvy here….never, ever, ever put your foot down without looking first. Fire ants, rattlesnakes, holes, yellow jackets, everything that lives here wants you dead.

      • R C Dean

        What I learned in TX was that if you take your eye off the ball for even a trivial second,

        you will hear a buzzing sound and realize there is a rattlesnake way too close to your foot. I have witnessed actual teleportation when that happens, as in, my hunting buddy dematerialized, and rematerialized probably ten feet away.

        Walking the mutts around our house is a head-on-a-swivel exercise. You have to scan the ground for hazards – mostly rattlesnakes, but also Gila monsters and Hate Plant nodules. And you have to scan the surrounding countryside for wildlife – mostly javalinas and coyotes. And when I say scan, I mean 360 degree situation awareness.

    • OBE #Learn2Essential

      Excellent! My cucumbers and squash have broken through the soil and moving along. Just waiting for the carrots but I think I planted them too deep.

      • Akira

        I have ~15 yogurt cups filled with compost where I’m sprouting kale, spinach, peppers, basil, and parsley. Should be ready to go out into the garden in a few weeks.

        I also started sticking the root ends of green onions in a planter, and they already have an inch or two of new growth. It’ll be nice to just step out the back door and clip off some green onion to top off my omelettes, curry, gyudon, etc.

        I wonder if green onions will winter over if they get big enough… Because if so, I could theoretically be eating the same dozen green onions for the rest of my life.

    • UnCivilServant

      Hey, RC, the weekend after thanksgiving I’m currently planning to be in Arizona, with a visit to SP and co on the itenery, should I stop by your way before heading for home?

      • R C Dean

        We are usually visiting the Dean clan in TX that weekend. Keep me posted, though – you never know.

    • Drake

      The 2 apple trees I planted last spring just flowered this morning.

      • OBE #Learn2Essential

        My citrus bloomed and was immediately invaded by ants. I think I lost the first crop of budding lemons to those little assholes.

    • Suthenboy

      I am torn. I really am born and bred here in Louisiana. My handle etc is not a schtick. I am the real thing but I spent a fair amount of my childhood in Christmas, Az and no small amount of time in Tucson. I learned to shoot on the banks of the Gila river at five years old. I get pretty nostalgic for the place. The photos you post set off an ache in me that is hard to describe. Of course the Az I remember no longer exists.

      No jumpin’ cactuses in your yard?

      • R C Dean

        You mean, the Hate Plants That Hate? You bet, although I’ve killed the ones near the driveway and the house. One I had to knock over with the FJ Cruiser.

        You learn here never to walk the dogs without taking a comb. Its by far the best way to get a Hate Plant nodule off your idiot canine. I learned that the hard way, when one of the dogs got one stuck to her face and the only way I could get it off before it did a lot more damage was to grab it with my bare hand. That was probably forty puncture wounds in one go, with those long, thin needles.

      • Suthenboy

        Gah!

        A comb….of course. I cant believe I didnt think of that.

        More than once I have had to use a stick to roll them down from my thigh to the bottom of my shoe or shoulder to the back of my hand and ended up with a lot more than 40 punctures.

        Hate plants that hate….accurate description.

      • R C Dean

        I would have never thought of it. I was told by a local.

    • Suthenboy

      i.e. “get fucked”?

  55. The Late P Brooks

    OMG today is the day. Our Lord and master Steve Bullock is going to slacken the leash, slightly. Bars and sit-down restaurants will be allowed to open, under strict “guidelines”. Under the watchful eye of the Karen Brigade, no doubt.

    I am older than 60, but I am not morbidly obese, do not have emphysema, diabetes or a faulty ticker. I will be at the bar this afternoon. Woe betide her who tries to stop me.

  56. The Late P Brooks

    Is there really a market for used dildos? Asking for a friend.

    Not “used”. Vintage.

    Learn to market.

    • Incentives Matter

      “Pre-tested.”

    • mrfamous

      “Seasoned” like a cast-iron pan

    • R C Dean

      Alexander is the third hospital worker in Russia to suffer a mysterious fall from a hospital window after attempting to highlight conditions for coronavirus patients in the country. He suffered skull fractures after the fall on Saturday and is now said to be in a critical condition. Two senior female doctors died recently after falling from hospital windows amid reports they had challenged their superiors over a lack of PPE for those treating Covid-19 patients.

      I thought, no way is that headline accurate.

      Turns it, it was.

      • Ozymandias

        In Mother Russia, gravity is a lot more aggressive.

    • Suthenboy

      A ‘mysterious’ fall. It is mysterious.

  57. OBE #Learn2Essential

    Bars in Nevada will remain closed for the foreseeable future but here is a comment on an article that I about threw my phone over.

    Local article: https://www.fox5vegas.com/coronavirus/bars-propose-safety-plans-for-reopenings/article_0bb77356-8c3c-11ea-ad1a-9b49668d7550.html

    And some asshat response:

    He is doing the what’s in the best interest for the people here, not for you, your bad habit’s or poor business practices. Those “five” friends who won’t re-open obviously have no business sense, schooling, common sense or know how to properly run a business. We have been closed this entire time, and knowing that we know how to run a proper business, have enough funds to stay afloat for at least 6 months. Keep your “poor me” stories to yourself, stay at home and get over it.

    • R C Dean

      We have been closed this entire time, and knowing that we know how to run a proper business, have enough funds to stay afloat for at least 6 months.

      I suspect this is exaggerated, if not entirely false. 180 days cash on hand? For a small business? Sure, pal.

      • creech

        My former employer ($35mm rev.) had zero debt and always $3mm in easily liquid funds. The shareholders were o.k. with taking smaller dividends. So it is possible. For a corner bar or sub shop – very doubtful.

      • R C Dean

        How many days’ cash was $3mm?

      • Ozymandias

        On a $35MM/yr business, that’s $3MM/month, roughly, assuming it’s not a seasonal business with terribly skewed revenues. Of course, now you have to know expenses to run on zero revenue for a few months… but still, a $35MM/annum business isn’t a “small” business. It may be in relative terms or by some govt declaration, but I would venture that most mom and pop’s aren’t $35MM in annual revenue.

      • creech

        The $3mm plus estimated 50% collection on outstanding receivables was enough to pay all bills for 6 months assuming 90% of employees were laid off.

      • B.P.

        The wife of a hedge fund manager who owns a boutique selling scented candles has six months of cash on hand.

      • Incentives Matter

        Only six months? Piker.

      • Akira

        The wife of a hedge fund manager who owns a boutique selling scented candles

        But how does he have time to manage the hedge fund AND sell scented candles?

        /being an ass

      • UnCivilServant

        That’s the genius of it, the candle sales patterns are used to pick the fund buys!

    • mrfamous

      It would make sense for a small business to have such a fund on hand in a different economic structure, but not the one we’ve had which insists that any excess revenues one earns must be spent somewhere on something, or else they immediately start losing value. So most people set up “investments” trying to replicate what would normally just be “savings.” The problem is that those “investments” are rarely liquid and subject to volatile swings in price/value.

      The government views this as a “feature, not a bug” and that’s why it behaves as it does. So even the richest people in the world don’t have much money “saved up.” 99.9% of the time that’s not really a problem. Welcome to the other 0.1% of the time. Enjoy.

      • Mojeaux

        insists that any excess revenues one earns must be spent somewhere on something, or else they immediately start losing value

        This is for tax write-off purposes, which is as you note, a method of punishing people for saving.

    • Akira

      Those “five” friends who won’t re-open obviously have no business sense, schooling, common sense or know how to properly run a business.

      Ah, the ol’ “if you can’t afford X, then you can’t afford to be in business anyway”. We’ve all heard it in minimum wage arguments.

      Kind of like stabbing someone in the stomach and saying, “Well if you can’t survive that, you were too weak to live anyway!”

  58. The Late P Brooks

    I suspect this is exaggerated, if not entirely false. 180 days cash on hand? For a small business? Sure, pal.

    Unless this is a billionaire trophy wife’s hobby-shop/vanity-project, or some sort of money laundering operation, I’m going with “complete and utter bullshit”.

    • OBE #Learn2Essential

      yep just an asshole on the internet.

  59. The Late P Brooks

    In Mother Russia, gravity is a lot more aggressive.

    In Russia, gravity believe in you.

    • Ozymandias

      Bingo! I couldn’t quite find the right way to cobble that thought together. Thank you, Brooksy.

    • Hyperion

      “Don Lemon is the stupidest person on CNN”

      That is not an easy accomplishment.

      • Incentives Matter

        And yet he pulls it off with a certain élan, n’est-ce pas?

  60. The Late P Brooks

    i almost forgot to check.

    The Aston I linked yesterday is at $50k with ~ 2 hours to go. No idea where it will end up.

    Git yer checkbooks out.