When it's a "small" billion dollar company complaining about a huge multi billion dollar company making too much money, I dunno, the "revolution" theme doesn't really stick. Makes no difference to the consumer, game is free.

The choice, ignore all health professional advice and gather in large close groups without any social distancing during an accelerating deadly pandemic or lose all federal funding to your already criminally underfunded school system.

There is no carrot, just stick.

This type of blackmail or extortion has never been done to schools in this all or nothing way to force parents and children to ignore life and death public health issues for imagined political points.

States still can choose.

Feds do this carrot stick all the time.

This is so fucking weird for a number of reasons:

- Even the dudes handing out the masks don't seem to use them correctly - you need to cover your nose

- Arguably, wearing a mask on a beach or outside is not really that important as long as you stick to social distancing (1.5 to 2m). It's when you enter crowded or often-frequented places (stores, subways, etc) when they become a factor

Is this whole thing really that politicized atm? Scary...

Congratulations! Your video, I'm a stick! I'm not a bird!, has reached the #1 spot in the current Top 15 New Videos listing. This is a very difficult thing to accomplish but you managed to pull it off. For your contribution you have been awarded 2 Power Points.

This achievement has earned you your "Golden One" Level 462 Badge!

That's awesome. The Stick of Shame, a stick, silently watching, judging you, it knows what you did.

Your video, I'm a stick! I'm not a bird!, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I love, in my mind at least, that this is a Canadian video and of course, with grass on the side of the roadway and no snow--that he has a hockey stick lol.

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)

I'm not a big Biden fan, it was his turn last election when he gave up his candidacy because he was sad, leaving us with Clinton v Trump, but what you're saying is asinine on a Bobknight33 level.

People who voted for Obama, then voted for Trump because the DNC screwed Sanders out of HIS turn because THEY decided it was Hillary's turn don't have the same issues this time, and know clearly who Trump is now, not just bombastic but massively criminal (most convictions of any administration ever, maybe more than all who came before), petty, ignorant, inept, incompetent (120000+ dead from his incompetence), unpatriotic (let Putin put a hit on our soldiers and does nothing), racist, con man and constant liar. No Bernie bro is voting for him again. No such backstabbing has occurred this time, no DNC party politics, Biden won the primary fairly.
What's your beef?

No matter what, Republicans will blame democrats for Republican failures and take credit for Democratic progress. They always do. They will pile on any Democrat any chance they get, always do. That's not a reason to stick with Republican failure. Jebus Christ. So incredibly lame an argument.

Is that the best you've got, reelect Trump and end America or else some infantile morons will blame Biden for the horrendous Trump administration's failures? The desperation is palpable. Americans for the most part have more brains than that....Trump voters excluded.

It's far more likely that the Republicans are fading into oblivion and losing any majority anywhere. The people won't just forget Trump, the worst president in our history, nor will they forget how every Republican fell in lock step with him (except Romney).

Eratosthenes actually knew from local lore that the sun shone directly down a well at modern day Aswan, in Egypt, on the summer solstice. On the same day at noon he measured the sun's angle using a vertical stick at Alexandria.

Well explained here: https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/big-history-project/solar-system-and-earth/knowing-solar-system-earth/a/eratosthenes-of-cyrene

Any math teacher I've ever had would fail you for that. The only reason to remove units is to hide how ridiculous your measurements are....but fine, let's just use ratios...you still fall flat.

Then your trig and measurements suck, because your measurements put the stage floor at a minimum of 4.5' and the ramp a maximum length of 23.5', both of which are obviously excessively wrong.
The SS at the corners of the stage are waist high to the stage floor....are they 9' tall SS? When on stage, two stripes are waist high to Trump, is he 9' tall? I guess to save Trump, you say yes.
The stage segments are at least 10' long, using Trump as a 6'+ measuring stick....is Trump now only 3.5' tall? The ramp covers 3 segments (one slightly short with a podium) then continues for 5-8' beyond the stage (more if I use your breitbart photo)....sure, it's only 23'...that makes sense. *facepalm

Measuring on a curved screen is useless....which you have proven. Measuring based on a photo is also useless unless it's a top down long distance shot, as perspective skews the image. I guess all your college math classes omitted the concept of perspective? Just for giggles, I did it anyway, and still got a slope under 7 degrees, higher than reality thanks to skewed perspective.
It's clear you must insist your measurements are perfect but our eyes lie. Very Trumpian of you, congratulations, and bye. Enjoy your perfectly healthy, not obese and demented president and your near vertical ramps that are suddenly everywhere. Don't come to my house, my ramp is nearly 3 times the slope of the one you claim is 11 degrees, it should be impossible to climb (oddly it's not).

But sticking with Trump is sticking with your crazy chick that tries to stab you in your sleep at least once a week, is so dumb she can't read or write, is aggressive and insists you back her up on her insanity or be prepared to be stabbed extra this week, and is so inconsistent that even when you repeat her positions verbatim she claims you never support her and attacks with everything at her disposal vs an ex girlfriend who you already know is only average intelligence, isn't violent, doesn't need you to constantly legitimize their insanity, and can accept it when you disagree.

Then there's the narcissism.
Then there's the grift and graft.
Then there's the lawlessness.
Then there's the ignorance.

Yes, Trump is more interesting, like an atom bomb is more interesting than an M-80.
"May you live in interesting times" is a curse, not well wishes.

I looked up some stats just to see.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/

30 per million blacks fatally shot by police.
12 per million whites fatally shot by police.

So cops are roughly twice as likely to kill a black person, per racial group.

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045219gg

US being 76% white and 13% black, that works out to an aggregate ratio of roughly 9 whites killed per 4 blacks, per capita. In the end the death toll is high all around, white people aren't getting away scott free.

We should also consider poverty. Poverty and crime tend to track one another. It's safe to assume that areas with more crime will be more likely to experience police encounters, and hence more police shootings on average.

https://www.kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/?currentTimeframe=0&sortModel=%7B%22colId%22:%22Location%22,%22sort%22:%22asc%
22%7D

White poverty rate (9%) is roughly half of black poverty (22%), which implies that crime is also half as frequent among whites, which is roughly similar to the per capita difference in police shooting rate.

30/12 is 2.5
22/9 is 2.44
2.5 > 2.44, so it implies bias against blacks, but not as big as I expected.

As far as total people killed, cops kill plenty people of all races. The numbers don't look as lopsided as I expected, which surprises me.

I appreciate the solidarity among black people. They at least try to hold authorities to account.

White people couldn't care less when cops kill whites. They just shrug it off as 'well the guy must have done something to piss off the cop, so it was probably their own fault anyways'. You can sit on liveleak watching cops kill white people all day, but other white people never get worked up about it. It's a shame they don't have the same sense of unity as black people do.

I wish the protests were about police abuse in general. Or even goverment abuse. There are so many issues that need fixing (e.g. civil forfeiture, repeatedly trying people for the same event by tweaking charges until a conviction sticks, government budget being infinitely larger than a defendant's budget, government freezing a defendant's funds so they can't afford lawyers, etc).

-scheherazade

The scale of sensitivity has changed.

Back then, if a white dude beat up a black dude for being black, people would just say some shit about it and move on.

Today, name calling can land you in jail.

What qualifies as terrible has a lower threshold in today's social psyche.

As racism becomes rarer and milder, any remaining form sticks out that much more, and is that much more offensive.

(Same with violence. We're in the safest time in human history, but people are more worried about kidnappings and shootings than ever)

Basically, it's all relative.

I had a coworker that said to me 'this place is really racist', and I asked why. He said 'because nobody says hi to me as I walk down the hall'. My response was 'So? I never say hi to anybody'. So, I started forcing myself to say hi to people, just to maintain appearances. Otherwise, I'd just be going about my day minding my own business, and people could be getting the wrong impression.

-scheherazade