Dah Bears
Once seen…
Mar 12 2020
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Hitler takes Austria; FDR’s first fireside chat; Gacy convicted; Girl Scouts predecessor founded; Les Miserables opens.
Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.
Mar 12 2020
The reason I stop doing things is I am easily bored, also I get tired.
NBA- Cancelled. NCAA- Basically Cancelled (No Audience). Ditto all our Late Nights. F-1 Ready for off (are you kidding? look at Maranello and look at a map).
This is just the top line of the Economic consequences.
Travel ban to Europe that doesn’t include the UK? I suppose if you’re healthy enough to swim across the Channel no big. Canada is talking seriously about labeling the U.S. a “high risk” country subject to additional screening and less seriously about building a Wall and having the U.S. pay for it.
And Tom Hanks has Coronavirus (and should he survive a lucrative endorsement package). People who compare him to John Wayne (Joe Scarborough) are sadly mistaken. He’s the reincarnation of Jimmy Stewart.
Years ago my mother used to say to me, she’d say, “In this world, Elwood, you must be,” — she always called me Elwood — “In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.” Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant. You may quote me.
The Dow has already hit a ‘Limit Down‘ and will halt for 15 minutes at the Open while they resolve the +5% 1,200 point drop in Futures overnight after the Unindicted Co-conspirator Bottomless Pinocchio’s pack of lies (Transcript).
After that we shall see. The Market is still overvalued by 50% and there’s no technical bottom though some important negative indicators have already been exceeded with no sign of support.
Sure, bottom feed- if you can afford to hold and take the losses because this is not wrung out yet, the magnitude is barely apparent.
Mar 11 2020
I know I do. Currently screening people beating hot metal into weapons of murderous intent (“It weel keel”) but if I wasn’t I might be streaming this.
I feel compelled to explain myself a bit. Since LotR I am an extreme sucker for Fantasy Sci-Fi and back when Paperbacks were cheap I bought a lot of Ballentine (not the Malt Liquor though I’ve done my fair share of 40s). Gor was a fairly popular franchise among a heavily acned basement dwelling group of Incels but as someone who had actually experienced a romantic relationship with a woman I found the characters overly Pecced and Basic, regardless of sex, and the plots presaged M. Night Shyamalam by being both confusing as well as dull and predictable when revealed.
They are horrible. Thank goodness I only bought 20 or so. I’d be happy to donate them to someone who wants a complete collection except I’m not sure they’d be someone I actually wanted to talk to.
But what are you going to do? Watch the Prime Time Corona Meltdown? The limes are to keep the flies out, not improve the taste, though it does because Corona is Mexican for Budweiser and I’d recommend you drink it for spite except it’s that bad.
There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.
Mar 11 2020
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Jemelle Bouie: This Is Not the Moment for Progressives to Despair
Disappointed supporters of Bernie Sanders can actually get a lot of what they want through the medium of Joe Biden.
If South Carolina was make or break for Joe Biden, then so was Michigan for Bernie Sanders. After falling behind Biden in the Super Tuesday primaries last week, Sanders needed Michigan — where he won a stunning upset against Hillary Clinton four years ago — to reinvigorate his campaign and restore its glow of victory in the wake of his Nevada caucus win.
But Biden had too much momentum. Both nationally and in Michigan, most Democrats were ready to commit to the former vice president. In its most recent poll of the entire Democratic race, Quinnipiac University found Biden with 54 percent support to Sanders’s 35 percent. And in its average of polls for the Michigan primary, FiveThirtyEight found Biden with roughly 54 percent support to Sanders’s 31 percent. By the time news networks called the race, the results were close to the polls, with Sanders rising to over 40 percent but Biden claiming a 53 percent majority.
Strictly speaking, the Democratic race isn’t over. But even if he fights to the convention, it’s hard to see how Sanders could win a majority. All signs point to a decisive victory for Biden.
Michelle Cottle: The Democrats Are Moderately Excited
Another big night for Joe Biden, as voters seem to embrace the reassuring and the familiar. Revolution? Not this year.
Another round of Democratic voters registered their presidential preferences on Tuesday, sending a message strikingly similar to the one from Super Tuesday: They are tired of being scared, they are tired of being angry and they are not in the mood for a revolution.
There has never been any doubt about Democrats’ top priority in this election. They are desperate to beat President Trump and have spent months agonizing over which candidate is best equipped for the task. Increasingly, they are betting that the way to defeat a divisive, bomb-throwing demagogue is with his political opposite. Instead of the Bernie Sanders Revolution, they are opting for the Joe Biden Cuddle, embracing a candidate who is peddling reassurance, unity, moderation, empathy and civility.
Karen Tumulty: Biden should credit his victory in Michigan to women
As primary results were coming in from Michigan on Tuesday night, much of the commentary noted how the political landscape there had changed from 2016, when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was able to pull off a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton.
What was largely missed in charting the state’s political transformation was the powerful impact of the 2018 midterm elections — and the degree to which the face of politics in that critically important state is now female.
On Tuesday, former vice president Joe Biden won the state, and most likely the Democratic nomination, largely because Michigan women rallied behind him. Preliminary exit polls indicate that he drew 58 percent of the female vote, compared with only 35 percent for Sanders. [..]
Biden actually did significantly better among women than Clinton did four years ago, when she won only 51 percent of the female vote in Michigan, just six percentage points ahead of Sanders in this cohort.
This rallying by Michigan women — who constituted 53 percent of Tuesday’s primary electorate — might seem surprising, given that the remaining two serious female candidates dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination only last week.
But it also comes at a time when women in the state are not lacking in reassurance of their power.
Max Boot: The No. 1 reason Biden is likely to beat Trump
f God exists, she must be a political scientist with a sense of humor. That, at least, is the only conclusion I can draw from the 2020 Democratic primaries, which seem designed to disprove every commonly held notion of how you win a presidential race. [..]
The winner is going to be Joe Biden, who had just about everything going against him. He is old, inarticulate, uninspiring and gaffe-prone. He doesn’t have a radical agenda. He isn’t a new face; he has been involved in national politics longer than the median American has been alive. He had little money or organization (Sanders raised nearly three times more money in January). He finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire, and since 1972 no candidate has won a major party’s nomination without finishing at least second in one of those states.
A year ago Biden was expected to win. Two weeks ago he was expected to lose. Now he is all but certain to be the nominee after the most surprising turnaround in the history of primaries. Although future history books will treat Biden as the inevitable winner, he was anything but. [..]
Ultimately, I suspect, the outcome can be ascribed to the simple fact that most people like “Uncle Joe.” It’s a little dispiriting to admit that presidential elections, like student council elections, are essentially a popularity contest, but it’s true.
Mar 11 2020
You know, like the time she got kidnapped by a mutant replicator.
And the time after that. And the time after that. And the time after that.
Hey, you don’t hit 200+ Episodes, 3 or 4 Spin-offs, and about the same number of Direct to DVD movies by being original (I mean, 15 minutes of Christopher Judge wandering around as punishment for not working out before filming? What about those of us who sat through that?).
You give people what they want, same old, same old.
The secret to writing situational comedy is that the situation has to be exactly the same 22 minutes later. No hugging, no learning.
And Sam is never going to have a satisfactory romantic relationship because she keeps pining for Jack and he’s a bit damaged goods and, in fairness to him, knows it.
Mar 11 2020
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Bomb attack on Madrid’s commuter trains; Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic found dead; Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of Soviet Union; General Douglas MacArthur leaves Philippines in WWII.
I seldom end up where I wanted to go, but almost always end up where I need to be.
Mar 11 2020
Hey, you can’t expect me to be depressed about the market every day, I had far more important things to be depressed about.
But that doesn’t mean the fundamentals have changed. Futures indicate a 600 point loss from the bell and we’re just not very far at all from a definitional (Valuations 20% down from recent highs) Bear Market which is not at all the same as a Recession because that’s a measure of current Domestic Product and has it’s own special raft of flaws among them that it’s a lagging indicator.
Update: Make that 700.
As of 2:09 a.m. ET Wednesday, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 620 points, indicating a loss of 762.16 points at the open. S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures also pointed to losses.
Monday they halted trading 729 down after 7 and a half minutes. Over? Under? You want to play in this Casino? My Uncle did 4X for Chase and was bald as a billiard by 36.
Nah, if you really want to get paranoid you’ve got to look at the gibberish spouted at the 5:30 presser. I’ll spare you an embed but neither Kudlow or his boss looked well at all and their proposed program of Economic amelioration of the effects of Coronavirus (note they don’t care if you live or die as long as you do it quickly and cheaply) is not just cruel in being an open attack on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (Who is the exposed population at most risk? Old Republican White Guys? Silver Lining!) but is utterly ineffective. Payroll Taxes? People got no jobs. That $7.25 at MickyDs looking really attractive now. You know, I’ve always wanted to be a WalMart Greeter, I’m friendly, I’m a nice guy.
There are worse jobs.
Even Laffer couldn’t make sense of it, well, unless your goal is to take large chunks of money and throw them at Oil companies (whom, not for nothing, we already subsidize to the tune of Trillions).
Which brings us to the other indicator, Oil Futures.
The House of Saud is already kicking back $6 on every $32 Barrel for April delivery which makes the effective price of Light and Sweet $26. Russia says it is prepared to pump indefinitely at prices below $20. The truth is neither one of them can actually do that. House Aramco is trading below IPO and Russia…
Russia has a GDP $400 Billion smaller than Texas and they’re not even a particularly large State compared to California. Now if you were competing on the basis of square miles of empty wasteland then Rodina would have the inside track for sure.
But the point is that they both want to make Fracking unprofitable and if it were Huawei offering Solar Powered Commie Spy Machines that would handle your House, and the Grow Lights and Well for your CDB Personal Use Only Hemp Farm, and all your portable crap, and your Tesla, I would be so down with that even though I think Elon Musk is an idiot.
Sadly no. They want you to keep consuming at Planet dooming rates (I mean, if Corona don’t kill you first) particularly Russia which has long term contracts with China pushing exactly the same kind of sticky toxin barely suitable for paving roads that make a house in Medicine Hat, Alberta such an unattractive prospect even if it’s free.
Both see a declining share of a dwindling pool and their solution (and I’m not implying some kind of urine soaked tinfoil collusion because we know Statesmen never behave that way) is to drive U.S. Frackers out of business.
Truth is they’re not in a good position and they have only themselves to blame, most are leveraged up the wazoo and the operating costs of selling at a loss are going to have them looking at debt service sooner than later.
Thing is, money is free. 30 Year Ts at .5%. So you re-fi and cap and hope when the Market comes back the skilled workers you fired didn’t forget or find better jobs. Oil in the ground is an asset, you can trade it for other stuff at a discount if you have to.
But the likelihood is WalMart Nation for the foreseeable future and how much of that? It’s now high risk in addition to low pay and no Health Insurance. Forget Tailgating, games on TV. GrubHub and Amazon. You’ll be forced to deal with those annoying replacement humans. I predict a rise in Witch Burnings and Blue Green Riots (Constantinople during the Julian Plague).
Late stage Neo Liberal Capitalism has collapsed. I suggest Wienies and S’mores.
Mar 10 2020
Pondering the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news media and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Pondering the Pundits”.
Follow us on Twitter @StarsHollowGzt
Paul Krugman: Trump Can’t Handle the Truth
And neither can the rest of America’s right.
Let’s take a trip down memory lane.
The 2008 financial crisis was brought on by the collapse of an immense housing bubble. But many on the right denied that there was anything amiss. Larry Kudlow, now Trump’s chief economist, ridiculed “bubbleheads” who suggested that housing prices were out of line.
And I can tell you from personal experience that when I began writing about the housing bubble I was relentlessly accused of playing politics: “You only say there’s a bubble because you hate President Bush.”
When the economy began to slide, mainstream Republicans remained deeply in denial. Phil Gramm, John McCain’s senior economic adviser during the 2008 presidential campaign, declared that America was only suffering a “mental recession” and had become a “nation of whiners.”
Even the failure of Lehman Brothers, which sent the economy into a full meltdown, initially didn’t put a dent in conservative denial. Kudlow hailed the failure as good news, because it signaled an end to bailouts, and predicted housing and financial recovery in “months, not years.”
Wait, there’s more. After the economic crisis helped Barack Obama win the 2008 election, right-wing pundits declared that it was all a left-wing conspiracy. Karl Rove and Bill O’Reilly accused the news media of hyping bad news to enable Obama’s socialist agenda, while Rush Limbaugh asserted that Senator Chuck Schumer personally caused the crisis (don’t ask).
The point is that Trump’s luridly delusional response to the coronavirus and his conspiracy theorizing about Democrats and the news media aren’t really that different from the way the right dealt with the financial crisis a dozen years ago. True, last time the crazy talk wasn’t coming directly from the president of the United States. But that’s not the important distinction between then and now.
No, what’s different now is that denial and the resulting delay are likely to have deadly consequences. [..]
In 2020 we’re relearning the lessons of 2008 — namely, that America’s right-wingers can’t handle the truth.
Jennifer Senior: President Trump Is Unfit for This Crisis. Period.
His narcissism is a grave danger to our health.
The coronavirus is no longer just a slow-moving public health crisis that may soon turn into a rapid-moving one. It’s a crisis of transparency. It’s a crisis of government legitimacy. So it is in this spirit that we all have to say: enough.
Whose side is the Trump administration on? Based on every public appearance we’ve seen so far — whether it’s from a cabinet member or the director of the Centers for Disease Control or the president himself — the answer is clear: not the public’s. President Trump, hellbent on re-election, is focused on massaging numbers and silencing bearers of bad news. That’s what autocrats do. And it’s endangering lives. [..]
Because we’re testing only the sickest of the sick, the American fatality rate from the coronavirus is roughly 4 percent. It’s a frightening and highly deceptive number, even higher than China’s. (Most experts predict it’s likely to wind up at 0.5 percent, which is five times more deadly than the typical flu, and it could be as high as 1 percent.) But Trump has made the dangerous calculation that he’d prefer to keep the number of cases low than convey the full magnitude of contagion.
Eugene Robinson: While the world deals with the coronavirus, Trump glorifies himself on Twitter
A dangerous pathogen is spreading across the globe. Financial markets are having a nervous breakdown. Oil prices have collapsed. Americans are hoarding hand sanitizer and surgical masks. Air travel is down. Conferences are being canceled. Merely shaking a stranger’s hand suddenly seems like a risk.
And the president of the United States, in response, is spending hours a day glorifying himself on Twitter.
On Sunday, he retweeted a meme first posted by Dan Scavino, the White House director of social media, that showed a photoshopped Trump playing the violin, with the legend: “My next piece is called . . . nothing can stop what’s coming.” The words echoed a catchphrase associated with the looney-tunes QAnon conspiracy theory, not exactly a phenomenon to encourage at a moment when clear thinking and accurate information are vitally important. The image could not help but evoke the legend of the emperor Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Trump’s solipsistic response to the coronavirus crisis offers overwhelming proof, if any more were needed, that it was a catastrophic mistake to give an egomaniacal reality-television star such power and responsibility. We are all paying the price.
Max Boot: The right-wing media’s contempt for truth has never been more dangerous
President Trump has been widely and correctly excoriated for the way he is dealing with the novel coronavirus. By minimizing the danger, he heightens it. Even on Monday, Trump was comparing covid-19 to the ordinary flu, even though its mortality rate appears to be many times higher and its economic effect infinitely greater. New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait is right that Trump is acting like “the mayor in Jaws, blithely ignoring reports of a gigantic shark because he didn’t want to hurt the tourism season.”
But Trump could not spread disinformation all by himself. A herd of right-wing pseudo-journalists has jumped the shark along with him. They are promulgating narratives so at odds with reality that they are likely to get people killed.
Think I’m exaggerating? I only wish I were. All you have to do is go to the Media Matters for America homepage to see how the right-wing media continue to infect their followers with misinformation.
Mar 10 2020
There are six states holding primaries today that will bestow another 352 delegates to the only three candidates left in the race: former Vice President Joe Biden; Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT); and Representative Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI). Currently. Mr. Biden leads in the count with 664 delegates to Mr. Sanders’ 573 and Ms. Gabbard’s 2.
Mr. Biden has been endorsed by former candidates Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and, just yesterday Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has so far decided to not endorse anyone, as yet. The complete list of his endorsements can be seen here
After Sen. Warren withdrawal from the campaign, the Working Family Party has thrown its support to Mr. Sanders. Academy Award winning documentary maker Michael Moore and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D_NY) are his most ardent and visible support. The full lists of his endorsers can be seen here
The main focus has been of the Michigan primary where Mr. Sanders beat fellow candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton by only 1.5% of the vote. To catch up to Mr. Biden he’s going to need a much larger margin plus win in several other states. Right now the Detroit Free Press gives Mr. Biden a 24 point lead.
If Biden’s 51%-27% lead in the poll, done by EPIC-MRA for the Free Press and its media partners, holds, it would guarantee him a signature victory in Michigan — a battleground state that helped President Donald Trump win the White House four years ago. It could also starve Sanders’ formerly front-running campaign of delegates needed for the nomination and call into question how long his effort can remain viable.
The Washington primary may be another obstacle for Mr. Sanders where he won over Mrs. Clinton, 73% – 27%. It was a caucus in 2016 but Washington has since become a primary state which may narrow his margin. In Missouri, Mr. Sanders will need strong support from white voters to make up for an expected loss of black votes. Idaho, too, has switched to a primary system from a caucus this year where Mr. Sanders won 78% 0f the vote. He could still win Idaho but not as well as he did in 2016 and there are only 20 delegates in play.
North Dakota has also changed its method of choosing a candidate:
A firehouse caucus is a party-run primary so named because it is held in a public place such as a firehouse. The process is new this year for North Dakota Democrats, who have relied on a more traditional caucus where votes were collected by precinct captains and hand counted. This year, the caucuses will be held at 14 locations, where qualified voters may cast a ballot and leave instead of hanging around for multiple rounds of voting, said Alex Rohr, a party spokesman. [..]
Hotels, community centers, union halls and a casino have been booked as caucus locations — but no firehouses.
Democratic voting locations open at 11 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. Central time. Participants are not required to vote at a caucus location of their home district. Someone who lives in Bismarck, for example, may vote at a caucus in Minot, and vice versa.
Also new this year for Democrats is mail-in voting. Voters may request a ballot from the party, fill it out and mail it back. Ballots postmarked by March 5 will be counted.
This will be an uphill battle for Mr. Sanders to at least close the delegate gap.
There is one Republican caucus being held in Hawaii.
Here is the list of states holding primaries and caucuses today:
The Democrats abroad primary ends today, although we don’t expect counts to be reported for a couple of day. 21 delegates will be awarded.
The 11th Democratic debate is on March 15 in Phoenix, Arizona, hosted by CNN and Univision. before the next round of primaries in Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio, on March 17.
Mar 10 2020
Welcome to The Breakfast Club! We’re a disorganized group of rebel lefties who hang out and chat if and when we’re not too hungover we’ve been bailed out we’re not too exhausted from last night’s (CENSORED) the caffeine kicks in. Join us every weekday morning at 9am (ET) and weekend morning at 10:00am (ET) (or whenever we get around to it) to talk about current news and our boring lives and to make fun of LaEscapee! If we are ever running late, it’s PhilJD’s fault.
Bomb attack on Madrid’s commuter trains; Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic found dead; Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of Soviet Union; General Douglas MacArthur leaves Philippines in WWII.
They say women talk too much. If you have worked in Congress you know that the filibuster was invented by men.
Mar 09 2020
Look, I’m a big fan of the Baseball Bat with or without Barbed Wire Decorations. The action is natural and smooth and you only need 40 foot pounds to satisfactorily dispatch a normal human (supernatural undead creatures requiring a bit more attention and effort) but there is the brain splatter problem I’m told you can avoid with low velocity high caliber ammo.
I’m not sure what the problem is with Louie Gohmert but I’m proud, proud I tell you, he’s representin’ the First District of Texas consisting largely of three small East Texas metropolitan areas— Lufkin-Nacogdoches, Longview-Marshall, and Tyler.
But apparently he done Zombified hissef’ and there’s no self respecting Concealed Carry Assault Rifle Totin’ Texan who can let him drag kids… Kids! … around the Capitol gettin’ them all Zombified with ideas like Democracy and Rights and such.
Republican refusing to self-quarantine spotting giving tour of the U.S. Capitol to Texas tourists
By Bob Brigham, Raw Story
March 9, 2020
Multiple Republicans are self-quarantining after potential exposure to COVID-19 coronavirus at the Conservative Political Action Convention (CPAC).
New White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) have all started 14-day self-quarantines, as Trumpdemic trended on Twitter.
But Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) has refused to self-quarantine, despite being notified of potential exposure.
On Monday evening, Gohmert was spotting giving tours of the U.S. Capitol.
I’m afraid it’s a sign of the time I have to explain Zombies don’t exist and I don’t advocate violence or even prepping. I used to joke Reagan couldn’t tell the difference between a script and the news. It’s not a joke anymore.
But I am laughing. What else are you going to do?