well this hits me close.

I live in chile, in a rural area that was one of the few not in quarantine in the area. i have a bakery and since march even before govt mandate we shifted to takeaway and closed off the shop to customers, and reduced our shift to one person on site for only 4 hours, with PPE. a week ago, a guy from out of town came (taking advantage there was no quarantine here and thus notaries like the one next to me are open) and asked to use the bathroom, my employee refused and the guy then made a one minute video showing 2 people show up without masks, he walks up and starts berating them for not respecting the law and everyone there (mostly old ladies) basically got too scared to defend themselves, so the video looks bad. we ended up on the news, shut down, huge fine, for customers' behavior outside our shop- all because of a video that intentionally made it appear like we were serving people normally when that wasn't the case.

so im now more sensitive to the corona righteous as well as these short viral videos in general. unless those people eating outside were following her around and intentionally coughing on her, there is nothing to justify her using mace on them, but i agree that the video doesnt show enough to establish that. people everywhere need to adapt to the new reality and im all for prevention including hard quarantines where necessary, but we also have to be reasonable about how we approach one another and understand there are acceptable risks, such as having picnics or playing tennis, and unacceptable ones like not wearing a mask indoors or in groups.

The REAL looters are the Reugnantc*nts. What the hell do I even pay taxes for? Because they're sure as hell not working for me. DO YOUR EFFING JOBS! IT'S WHAT YOU WERE HIRED TO DO. There should be an actual way to fire all these deadbeat employees, or at least withhold their pay.

It would help if billionaires ever paid a single penny in taxes. Billionaires basically run the country and WE pay them to do it. When the f is the government gonna work for me? It's in their f-ing job description. It's what we pay them to do. We hire them, they take our money and give it to their rich buddies. Never in my whole life have I witnessed the government doing my bidding as a citizen. They work to enrich themselves. What the f do we even need a government for at this point? They sure as f aren't leading. Paying taxes feels like the biggest charitable contribution I make every year and it goes to the least deserving people. It should be tax-deductible.

There is no correct answer.

School opening is a state issue.

No one really knows what will be few months ago.

If open then maybe alternate days dual shifts or any other way if need to open.
Then also Employees should also be open to varying work south.

I have yet to miss a day of work.
Mask up and move forward cautiously.

This mess will go away when all get nicked and let covid run its course.

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

A building with a sprinkler system should not go up in flames that quickly.
“Within 15 minutes the whole back of the building collapsed and exploded,”
“I didn’t hear no fire alarms, I didn’t see no fire sprinklers, nothing,” employee Chris Smith said.

https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/06/05/massive-3-alarm-warehouse-fire-erupts-amazon-redlands/

Not a paintball.

Whatever it was, it used explosive propulsion, not gas, you can clearly see the flash just after 21 seconds. Paintball guns give a little puff of gas sometimes, but it wouldn't light up like that. Paintball guns also don't sound like that.

I hope it was some form of "non lethal" ammunition, but remember a reporter lost an eye just the other day to something similar.

The #1 job of the police is, and always has been, to enforce the divide between rich and poor. Most pretend or believe they are there to "protect" law-abiding citizens, but times like these their true colors shine through. If there weren't such a stark divide between rich and poor, 90% of the work police do would vanish. Maybe if they actually enforced the law when it came to rich people, laws on tax evasion and wage theft, I might believe otherwise.

Of all financially-motivated crimes in the US (theft, robbery, fraud, all that rolled together) the biggest sector, outweighing ALL OTHERS COMBINED by a 2:1 factor, is wage theft. Employers not giving vacation days, or breaks they're obliged to, forcing employees to work extra hours without pay, docking pay for illegal reasons, or simply not paying what they owe. This is a criminal enterprise that steals 15 BILLION dollars a year from working-class Americans for the benefit of people who already have more money than they can use.

If you steal money from the rich and get caught, you go to jail Period.

The penalty for wage theft, literally stealing from those who cannot afford to lose more? First offense, if you're convicted (which is rare) a $10,000 fine.

Jan. 22: “We have it totally under control."
Feb. 24: “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.
Feb. 27: “It’s going to disappear."
March 7: “No, I’m not concerned at all."
March 10: “And we’re prepared, and we’re doing a great job with it. And it will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away.”

The states that are opening are doing so against the guidelines Trump himself put forward as the minimum standards for safety....two weeks of decline in New cases.

What a moronic statement....states are crashing their own economies to make Trump look bad?! That's so insane and asinine that if I thought you meant it I would call for a welfare check because you're probably a danger to yourself.

Trump signed off on the biggest socialist handout ever, but 7/8 of that cash doesn't go to citizens, it goes to corporations and their owners like Monty Bennett, including Trump and family. I'm certain they'll go to the supreme court trying to hide the actual amount Trump's family receives. He will likely actually be a billionaire when he leaves office....they all will.

Oh...So when you post videos of old crumbling abandoned buildings in Cuba it's an honest depiction of the entire country, when someone else shows some in America it's out of line and lies....hypocrite. There are way more empty buildings in America today than 3 years ago with unemployment at historic highs.

Making Everywhere Get Apocalyptic 2020

Worst "president" (lost the vote) in 243 years, erratic and inconsistent, frantically rambling incoherently or sleepily mumbling and slurring, daughter- friend's wives- employees- acquaintance- and porn star finger banging and raping Con.....I mean Don.

Just fyi

The supposed sexual assault happeend in the middle of 1993 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/politics/joe-biden-tara-reade-sexual-assault-complaint.html

Isn't it a bit odd that the person who passed the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 (so he was lobbying to get it passed and the bill was introduced in January 1993), am I the only person who thinks its odd that he passed this bill:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_Against_Women_Act
see also https://www.congress.gov/bill/103rd-congress/senate-bill/11 for the full text

So you mean to tell me
While he was co-sponsoring/writing/passing THAT PARTICULAR LAW that created the following:

--- established annual $1.6 billion toward investigation and prosecution of violent crimes against women

---codified sex crimes to make them Federal crimes

---imposed automatic and mandatory penalties on those convicted

---allowed civil cases to be brought in cases prosecutors chose to leave un-prosecuted

---created confidentiality protections for victims

---created a training program for judges to encourage them to prosecute sexual assault crimes against women


So WHILE he's making it easier to sue and bring charges against former employers and creates mandatory minimums for those found guilty and if the prosecutors don't want to do it, created a pathway for civil lawsuits to be brought - you're telling me that WHILE he's doing that, he sexually assaults one of his employees from his offices WHILE he's doing that?

That doesn't make any fucking sense.
That doesn't make any fucking sense.
That doesn't make any fucking sense.
That doesn't make any fucking sense.
That doesn't make any fucking sense.
That doesn't make any fucking sense.


That the best you got you little bitch?

...and who is surprised that large numbers of Trumpsters were foolish enough to listen to him and drank bleach?

Drink the bleach, then flush your nose with ammonia. Don't let the liberal fake media tell you it's dangerous, they just want you to be sick so it makes Daddy Trump look bad. If you don't believe me, you can at least wash your skin with a mixture of the two....just ignore the clouds of chlorine gas, they're also a liberal hoax.

Only fools on team Trump.

Care to explain why Trump gave a no bid $55 MILLION contract for distributing n95 masks to Pantera, a subsidiary of a bankrupt defense contractor company with zero employees?...a contract that lets the company owner use the power of the federal government to buy the masks at as low as $.63, then sell them to the government for $5.50 each? Pantera provides no service for that near 1000% markup, the Fed finds/orders the masks (and probably pays for them and transfers ownership to Pantera for free), then buys them back for nearly 10 times what they cost. Care to explain how that's NOT just Trump handing millions of taxpayer dollars to a rich supporter?

If you open, even with limited capacity, social distancing you may stay afloat.

If you don't open you will have ZERO tourist. That guarantees failure of business, city, county and the state.



If the employees stay home they will run out of $, go broke, loose the house and car and the job that let them keep it.

Seeing thing as a black and white choice is not allays a good thing. And this is not one of them.

Companies are made of people. They might have a different set of values than you, but my guess is that they aren't much different.

Most companies right now know that everything is messed up and are trying to use this time of low expectations for companies to do "better" stuff for their employees and their customers since some of the pressure of Wall Street's expectations has been lowered.

Scary that private companies have this much info. Just one little bribe to the right employee away from tracking whatever cell # you want to.

Sure...she claims an assault/harassment happened in 93, but never reported it anywhere until 2019, and again in 2020, and then only to non profit organizations with direct political ties to Biden and only after his candidacy was announced....but this isn't just a political smear, she really wants it investigated. *facepalm

I guess only Trump can brag about grabbing any woman by the pussy, anyone else is a monster if they're accused of the same by one accuser nearly 3 decades later.

Certainly doesn't sound one whit like Biden, nor does the timeline seem even close to honest. Odd she didn't come forward in 93, or even when he was nominated as VP, doncha think?

Trump, on the other hand, has >26 credible accusations of sexual assault,
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-sexual-assault-allegations-all-list-misconduct-karen-johnson-how-many-a9149216.htm
l
most much worse than this one including forcible rapes, many in court now (so accusations made under oath, even though Trump and Bar tried to stop the cases or pay them off to keep silent), all corroborated by his own "locker room" admissions that he assaulted innumerable women, including friend's wives, employees, contestants, and random strangers, grabbing any he wants by the genitals and forcibly kissing them, intentionally barging in on them while they're undressed (including but not limited to underage girls at his pageants), even outright raping them, all of which he says is all fine because he's rich and famous.

Jesus, @bobknight33, you're really being dumb thinking this is an issue to attack Biden on but that Trump has no exposure with. Mind numbingly dumb.

Regan National University, another sham school recently accredited by Devos. Look it up. It doesn't exist. No campus, no faculty (those few actual people listed as employees were shocked to find out, but most don't exist at all), no curriculum, no students...but good enough for Trump's idiot lackeys.

I hope that glass was though foresight rather than a learning from a previous less fortunate employee.
It's like throwing water in a chip pan.