Dear Senator Murray,
I am writing to thank you for your leadership in this difficult time. Specifically, I want to thank you for pushing for sick leave protections for all workers. I know that it has not passed yet, but I hope that you will keep pushing. We need to be in this together by staying apart.
Thank you,
Carl Ballard
(For the rest of you, wash your hands right now.)
The morning press briefing:
Peter Alexander – “Mr. President, what do you say to Americans who are scared right now?”
GOP president cat-food-brain – “I say you’re a TERRIBLE REPORTER. That’s a very NASTY question. YOU’RE ALL FAKE NEWS!”
I feel better. Don’t you?
Dr Fauci’s faceplant while the DJIA was taking it’s usual nosedive as Doctor Dumbfuck’s orange moron was spewing nonsense….priceless.
My favorite Thai takeout place has changed their landing page to a “public statement” about their “response to the COVID-19 pandemic”.
This has gone too far.
Not every business and organization needs to develop a public response to the COVID-19 pandemic. I’d say if you aren’t in healthcare, emergency services, critical service, critical supply, or critical retail you probably don’t have a public role to play and you shouldn’t try to discover one either.
Do whatever you do as well as you can for as long as you can. If you can work from home do it. If you are ordered to close your place of business, then do it and go home. Maybe leave a note on the door so people aren’t confused.
Since about half of America is right now in the process of discovering that their residential “high-speed” internet is basically bullshit, and since keeping those meager services running will be crucial to surviving the GOP/CPACvirus meltdown, maybe it’s about time we regulated these motherfuckers like utilities?
@3 “Maybe leave a note on the door so people aren’t confused.”
A note on their website would be better so people don’t have to go to their door to find out. Even an awkwardly or ostentatiously worded one. Maybe there are people who will write PC notes for a fee.
@4 We used to. We also used to regulate how airplanes had to be built before the public could fly on them. Deregulation is a Republican thing.
Steve, of course, can continue to use the word “traitor” at will. ’cause otherwise he can’t construct a sentence to save his life.
I hope none of y’all catch the Wuhan virus.
While I’m on that subject, here’s how laissez-faire capitalism works in theory:
1. No need for government regulation because the market will efficiently sort out any shortcomings in products or services.
2. For example, if you build shitty airplanes, and a couple of them crash in quick succession and kill 346 people, the problem will fix itself because the public won’t fly on them and the manufacturer won’t be able to sell them, so the company can be counted on to fix the defects and get the planes flying again, and probably 10 times faster than if they have government regulators peering over their shoulders, because if they don’t they will go bankrupt.
3. Then, if the plane still isn’t fixed, and crashes again and kills even more people, the company will be even more highly incentivized to fix the damn thing, because now it’s staring bankruptcy right in the face. This is much more efficient, and gets the planes flying much faster, than if you have government regulators poring over the blueprints and engineering reports and fussing over things like switches and the location of wiring bundles.
4. If the plane still isn’t fixed, and crashes again and kills even more people, the company will go out of business and the vacuum will be filled by a new competitor that does a better job and builds a better product. This is the classic formula of how progress and improvements are made in a hands-off, laissez-faire economic system.
See how easy that is? Everything will sort itself out, and quickly, if you don’t interfere and let the market sort out the inevitable glitches that occur in designing and making complex modern products.
And it works just as well for simple products, too, like baby pajamas that catch fire, toys that choke children, and car seats that strangle toddlers. If you make a product that kills children in an agonizing manner, people will stop buying it, and you’ll either have to make a better product and go out of business.
Who needs government regulation? It just fouls up the gears of commerce and distorts the natural order of things. It’s kinda like distant bureaucrats in D.C. telling local officials to close their tourist beaches during a global pandemic of an extremely contagious and often fatal virus for which there’s no vaccine or treatment. What do those bureaucrats know? They should leave such decisions to local leaders, who always know what’s best for their communities, taking into consideration local needs.
Laissez-faire, baby! It’s the only way to go!
Goldy, it’s honest work. No one is paying them to shill.
That’s why it seems odd to you.
@7 “I hope none of y’all catch the Wuhan virus.”
Glad to see you read my comment @ 3/18/20 #88 and took it to heart.
Geezus. Did all that copypasta really neeeeeed to be in blockquote?
That thing is really falling apart.
@9 So you think you’re an honest man because nobody’s paying you to shill for Trumpublicans?
Sounds like wishful thinking to me.
@11 He probably didn’t even read all of it. The only part he’s interested in is a NY teenager kicking the shit out of an Asia man for no reason.
That, by the way, is the “free market” enforcing a laissez-faire quarantine. Dumbfuck, as a Libertarian free-market acolyte, should be all-in for that kind of thing.
“Gail Heriot & Peter N. Kirsanow, Members, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights”
Too funny. Two Republicans. Racist traitors like Doctor Dumbfuck, no doubt.
Your dumbfuck desperation to avoid responsibility for your treason and for your orange moron fucking up the Covid-19 response is hilarious, Doctor. Sad for you, your treason and your orange moron’s abject failure at protecting our nation isn’t funny at all.
8,
You left out:
5. Then Republicans in the Senate demand a bailout for the company and it’s incompetent board of directors.
6. Then Tom Cotton attaches an amendment to the bailout bill requiring the company to change it’s private insurance plan to eliminate reproductive healthcare services for women.
7. The GOP president cat-food-brain has a rally and claims he won the trade war over airplanes.
8. Then FOX news repeats the stupid claim.
9. Then PJ media fabricates a story claiming that their secret undercover Boat Full ‘O Dildos investigative reporters uncovered a sinister plot at the airplane company to slaughter babies and eat them which was thwarted by Tom Cotton’s amendment.
10. Then unhinged pathological liar troll who every two years claims to return from the dead cites the fake PJ story.
11. Then bot-farm pussy bandwagons the hell out of it.
12. Lather, rinse, repeat.
@15 I left them out because none of these things fit into the principles of laissez-faire capitalism. Haven’t you figured out yet that Republicans are neo-Marxists emulating the Russian corruption model?
Republican CPACvirus denier just infected the entire Georgia State Legislature.
I think maybe the entire tribe should be placed into quarantine until the danger of stupidity has passed. IOW forever.
16,
Try telling that to the Mao-troll. Who btw, according to the bot-farm pussy troll is not the least bit racist by spewing all that angry anti-Chinese argle-bargle.
One of the problems facing public health officials is that if one of the many private companies working on developing a covid-19 vaccine comes up with one, they’ll be tempted to charge whatever the market will bear, and that’s a problem because,
“Any vaccine for the coronavirus would have to made available to everyone, not just the ‘haves,’ WHO officials said, … adding the world won’t be protected from the coronavirus unless everybody is vaccinated.”
https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/20/who-officials-say-at-least-20-coronavirus-vaccines-are-in-development-in-global-race-for-cure.html
But that’s easy enough. Patents are creatures of government: Created, granted, and enforced by government. You just suspend the patent and give public necessity precedence over private property rights. Eminent domain, baby. Pay them their costs and a reasonable incentive, and take it over.
Would you argue that the scientists who developed the A-bomb should have been able to patent it and sell it to the highest bidder? Should the free market determine who gets polio shots, or which covid-19 patients get life-saving ventilators?
Covid-19 is a global emergency. Any vaccine or treatment for it should belong to nobody, it should be in the commons. Give the geniuses who come up it with a Nobel Prize, a parade, and promotions; honorary Ph.D.s, tenured positions, even labs of their own. But no stock options. This situation calls for a socialist, not a capitalist, outcome.
Responding to RR 247 previous thread,
Just so you know, Loeffler had never previously ordered any trading in her accounts since taking office prior to that one. Then, on Jan 24 the day of her classified CPACvirus intel briefing, she and her husband sold off everything in one of their companies. And in the days that followed sold off millions more. Then when they were safely out, on Feb 28th she released a statement scolding Democrats for “raising alarms” and announced that Trump and WH were doing a great job and that there was nothing to worry about.
@18 By asking me to educate the Mao-troll, you’re asking for the impossible. I trust you realize that.
@20 That might be something for a Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney to look at next year.
Looking at the stock market, you could see the point where the impeached miserable failure started his daily press conference.
“What do you say to all the scared Americans?” Citing statistical facts about death tolls.
“I’d say you’re a terrible reporter.”
Did John King call what Trump said “bullshit” live on CNN today?
http://horsesass.org/drinking-.....nt-1397943
@godwinha spews: Tuesday, 3/3/20 at 1:21 pm
US deaths from coronavirus infection (so far):
7257Tennessee deaths from last night’s tornado (so far):
2124404 Cases which had an outcome:
147 (36%) Recovered / Discharged
257 (64%) Deaths
This one is specifically for the racist incel: Testicle-eating festival is latest event to be canceled by coronavirus pandemic
Friday Evening News Roundup
Doctors and nurses surveyed by NBC News said “This system is doomed.”
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/system-doomed-doctors-nurses-sound-nbc-news-coronavirus-survey-n1164841
A Pence staffer tested Covid-19 positive. Pence’s office denies the staffer had “close contact” with anybody important.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/staffer-vice-president-mike-pence-tests-positive-coronavirus-n1165371
Americans stranded in Honduras feel abandoned and complain they’re getting no help from their government in returning home. They’re Hondurans now.
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/live-blog/coronavirus-updates-california-issues-stay-home-order-no-new-local-n1164541/ncrd1165406#liveBlogHeader
Trump can claim to have eliminated yet another holdover from Obama:
The entire post 2008 jobs recovery. Gone in just two weeks.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/lamvo/coronavirus-update-charts-unemployment-claims-laid-off-jobs
And he’s only getting started.
I’ve talked with Steve’s (aka Seattle Jew’s) wife by phone and it sounds like she’s okay and is getting help with things needing to be done. She doesn’t know how or where he picked up Covid-19. He’d had a severe bout of pneumonia in December, and he became very sick on Saturday and went to the hospital on Monday. There’s no one looking after his blog right now, so I told her I’d do it for now on an informal and ad hoc basis. Steve long ago gave me full access, so I can post, edit, or remove articles and comments. Shortbus, after getting banned from HA, likes to post comments there, so this means among other things that I’m his editor now whether he likes it or not.
@26 I think it’s fair, since he habitually claims credit for things he has no control over, to blame him for things he has no control over.
@ 25
Americans stranded in Honduras feel abandoned and complain they’re getting no help from their government in returning home. They’re Hondurans now.
On NPR this morning I listed to an interview of a woman stuck with her family in Peru after the inbound and outbound flights were prohibited.
She claimed that on the date of her departure, March 8, there was no reason to think there might be an endemic/pandemic health problem that could affect their vacation or return. Which is total bullshit but was not challenged by the interviewer.
The Americans stuck in Honduras aren’t abandoned, Roger Dumbfuck Rabbit. They’re potential vectors. Stupid ones.
Me @ 7:
Steve @ 14:
Three uses of ‘traitors’ or ‘treason’ within two sentences.
Roger Dumbfuck Rabbit well on his way to destroying the online legacy of a man who deserved far better.
You embarrass people who trust you, Roger Dumbfuck Rabbit. I knew it was you who authored the one POS post I read there just now, even before I saw your name.
First, do no harm. You’re a useless shill and you lower the standards in any debate you enter. Since you can’t help yourself but to enter every debate there is, you’ll lower the standard of that entire blog, and not slowly, either.
Sunset the blog. Leave the man’s legacy alone.
Seriously, man. You are awful.
Four Community Transit bus drivers have tested positive for the Wuhan virus. The infections do not appear to be directly related.
So what does Community Transit do? It makes the fare free. Now there’s no disincentive for jumping on a bus and giving your disease to another human being.
WTF.
@29 You’re also a potential vector — we all are — and I suspect some posters here might argue you’re stupid, too. I hope the horse isn’t letting you out of the barn.
If stupidity was contagious, everyone who touches this blog would be lobotomized. Fortunately it’s not, and we have only one brain-dead zombie here. He just returned after being absent for two years.
Clearly the troll has lost most of its investments, both financial as well as political. I have never seen it more vicious and hate-filled.
It did all this to itself, ushering in all this sadness, misery, and loss – Rushing the cockpit knowing that it would surely bring down the plane.
Well BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!
Motherfucker.
@31 Care to entertain us by identifying which POS post you’re referring to?
33,
That incompetent troll thing is already on record as a CPACvirus denier.
It should be sealed inside its tornado shelter until all danger of conservatism has passed.
@32 Yeah, they should triple the fare for people testing positive to disincentivize the homeless and other people you don’t like from riding the buses. For a really comprehensive policy, no one who attended CPAC or has attended a Pence event in the last 14 days should be allowed on the buses at all. Make it 30 days to be on the safe side.
@34 Rushing the cockpit isn’t the problem. There can come a time to rush the cockpit and consequences be damned. Rushing the cockpit when the plane hasn’t been hijacked and there’s no one but the pilots in there is the problem.
37,
It’s worried about riding CT.
So it can no longer afford the ferry vehicle fare or the fuel for the horse truck on the weekly trip to Airport Video in Mukilteo to recruit bulls for MaryKay.
Such troubled times. At least for CPACvirus deniers. Virtue signaling to the tribe cost them everything, while the tribal leaders sold at the top of the market.
#owngoal
@39 It was interesting to read its rant about me sullying the “legacy” of Late Steve’s blog given that I’ve been posting roughly half the content over there for several years, and therefore the “legacy” it referred to is about 50% mine. It must not read the fine print in that blog.
Read the fine print?
This pathetic thing has been reduced to arguing that “trusting” the official reports of communist dictators was a reasonable course for US security to pursue in response to a potential pandemic.
Hate radio programmed meat robots never read fine print.
@41 There’s no evidence he “trusted” the official reports of communist dictators. But there’s evidence he distrusted his intelligence agencies, although that won’t be news to anyone, to wit:
“President Donald Trump ignored reports from US intelligence agencies starting in January that warned of the scale and intensity of the coronavirus outbreak in China, The Washington Post reported Friday.
“Citing US officials familiar with the agencies’ reports and warnings, the Post reported that intelligence agencies depicted the nature and global spread of the virus and China’s apparent downplaying of its severity, as well as the potential need for government measures to contain it — while Trump opted to dismiss or simply not address their seriousness.
“‘Donald Trump may not have been expecting this, but a lot of other people in the government were — they just couldn’t get him to do anything about it,’ the official noted to the Post. ‘The system was blinking red.'”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/20/politics/us-intelligence-reports-trump-coronavirus/index.html
Yeah, who cares? Kinda reminds you of Bush Junior ignoring the intel reports about al Qaeda, doesn’t it? Ignoring national security threats seems to be habitual with GOP presidents. Back in the day, they didn’t see Hitler coming, either.