Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Everybody saw this coming.

FFS people, this was a good thing. take the win.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

How any woman could possibly vote for this smug smarmy piece of misogynistic crap is beyond understanding.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Elections aren’t won by handwringing, cowering, and/or bashing your own candidates.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

The choice is between normal and crazy.

You are here: Home / Healthcare / COVID-19 / Friday Morning Open Thread: TGI(Can You Tell?)Friday

Friday Morning Open Thread: TGI(Can You Tell?)Friday

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Be sure to turn the sound up…


… who among us has not said ‘Excuse me’ to a furry housemate who’s chosen a napping burrow very poorly?

For the anime/manga fans among us:


(Since light novels — an evolution of last century’s pulps — are apparently quite popular in Japan, there is a standing trope about the hapless ‘author’ hiding out from their relentless editors, forever demanding moar content. Old-fashioned, usually secluded ryokan inns are obviously a good — or at least a graphically attractive — place to hide out. For a fee, they’d probably agree to adress you as ‘George R.R. Martin’… )

Jagoff employer of the day:

Good news:

And due respect for a pioneer (h/t commentor Peter D):

… When Chinese officials admit to a problem, she said, they tend to undersell it — a red flag that there’s far more to the story. This is what prompted her to stay up late on the night of Dec. 31. But Sanders said she had no idea where the story of the pneumonia outbreak in Wuhan would lead.

Her blog’s contributors — who include some medical professionals, though many merely “self-trained” disease-detection enthusiasts — routinely submit links to local news reports, medical journals and other data from around the world, with an eye toward unusual patterns. One of the tipoffs to the seriousness of the Wuhan situation was the absence of data: After the initial disclosures from officials on Dec. 31, the statements stopped.

“China always reports their good news,” she said. “When you don’t hear anything for five days, it warrants more investigation. . . . We knew something was unusual because we follow China and look for trends.”

The details pointed to a far more serious situation than Chinese officials had described. Sanders and her contributors soon started picking up “things we had never seen before” from a hodgepodge of sources, including doctors in Hong Kong, local media accounts and ordinary people in Wuhan. The bits and pieces were shocking: hospital wards with health-care workers dressed in full patient-protective suits, teams disinfecting entire streets, body bags stacked in vehicles outside hospitals.

It quickly became clear that the problem wasn’t isolated or contained. “It appeared to be an infectious and dangerous agent, [an] ominous sign for the world,” she said.

Sanders, herself a self-trained disease-tracker after working in finance and real estate, co-founded the site in 2006 as a hobby — or, as she describes it, “a fun way to meet interesting and intelligent people online.”…

Sanders doesn’t take advertising or sell anything on her site. She funds the whole enterprise out of her pocket; her overhead is just a few thousand dollars a year for server time. The rest, she says, is “a labor of love.”

These days, more than a few people seem interested. Since the outbreak in Wuhan, Sanders says, FluTrackers has attracted nearly 353,000 unique visitors who have clicked on the site 15.5 million times, far more than the 11.6 million recorded during all of 2019.

Reader Interactions

158Comments

  2. 2.

    NotMax

    “Wombat in the wash” fairly begs to be sung to the tune of Riders on the Storm.

    Moving on, FYI.

    The 7 Best Grocery Delivery Services of 2020

    N.B.: I have zero experience with any of these services. Critiques of any or all of them, and info how they’re bearing up under current onslaught in your area more than welcome. Please do chime in on this.

  4. 4.

    OzarkHillbilly

    That Hazel…

    I learned at an early age that pets and appliances are not a good mix when my mother pulled my sister’s dead Siamese cat out of the dryer.

  5. 5.

    debbie

    At the neighborhood laundromat in Cambridge (back in the early 70s), the dryers were huge and they had levers which would control the speed of the turning of the drums (slower for smaller loads, I guess). The levers looked like stick shifts. The first time I walked in, kids were playing inside them, paying for drying cyclies, and trying not to fall out as the drums went round and round. Only in Cambridge.

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    I want a pet wombat!

    Also, while we’re saluting pioneers, our own Anne Laurie has been on this pandemic since at least January, which bolsters our reputation as a full-service blog.

  9. 9.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @debbie: @NotMax: Laundromats are very expensive what with the hidden costs and all. I met my ex in one. Took 20 years to pay for that load of laundry.

  14. 14.

    Anonymous At Work

    If you let people pretend to be editors and address you are GRR Martin, you should charge them…because, boy, are you gonna hear from them…

  15. 15.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax: Grrrr.  Now we need a wombat-themed Riders on the Storm.  Happy Friday, the assignment is due at midnight local time.  :)

  16. 16.

    Baud

    @Betty Cracker:

    our own Anne Laurie has been on this pandemic since at least January, which bolsters our reputation as a full-service blog.

    QFT.  All hail AL!

  18. 18.

    Baud

    I’m half tempted to get infected so I can choose the two week period when I have to quarantine.

  20. 20.

    mrmoshpotato

    @NotMax: Exorbitant or extortionist?

    “Hey, nice clothes you got there.  It’d be a shame if they came out still damp.”

  21. 21.

    Geo Wilcox

    If Trump and Bolton hadn’t shuttered the Pandemic unit, they would have noticed the same thing Sanders did on her blog. Fucking morons.

  25. 25.

    Baud

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    It is true. I sweat the details of policy, whether we’re talking about the exact level of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, the number of mental health facilities in Iowa, or the cost of your prescription drugs. Because it’s not just a detail if it’s your kid, if it’s your family. It’s a big deal. And it should be a big deal to your president.

  26. 26.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Baud: Ummmm…….I don’t think you can choose where to be quarantined.

    “Sorry boss man.  Gotta quarantine for two weeks in the Bahamas.  Maybe there is a cure for the summertime Coronavirus.  By the way, can I have a raise?”

  29. 29.

    Scout211

    it’s going to an interesting time for California. The entire state is now on home isolation as of last night, ordered by Governor Newsom.

  31. 31.

    germy

    Some people like to obey orders. Some of us believe in civil liberties first, not last. #libertarian #coronavirus #lockdown #dontdoit— Donna Barstow Cartoonist for LA Times & New Yorker (@TaylorEvictions) March 17, 2020

    I’m going to go out today and breathe on everyone and everything. #californiacoronavirus— Donna Barstow Cartoonist for LA Times & New Yorker (@TaylorEvictions) March 15, 2020

     

    I can't believe our fucking Governor @GavinNewsom is shutting down the whole state, depriving us of civil liberties because of a MATH projection – and he won't give it to the @latimes What a scumbag coward. #coronavirus #bullshit #shady Where are our constitutional lawyers??— Donna Barstow Cartoonist for LA Times & New Yorker (@TaylorEvictions) March 20, 2020

  37. 37.

    germy

    According to stock sales disclosures by Senators after a closed door briefing on January 24 about the Coronavirus threat, the following senators sold stocks:

    Senator Richard Burr
    Senator Kelly Loefner
    Senator Dianne Feinstein,
    Senator Ron Johnson
    Senator Jim Inhofe

    — Tania Singh (@TwinklingTania) March 20, 2020

    America is a kleptocracy.
    Most people here sense it and vent about it, but officially it's heresy to admit even the possibility—even in the middle of a pandemic, when all the horrific evidence is right in front of our doomed eyes.https://t.co/0kBGOggbH3
    — Mark Ames (@MarkAmesExiled) March 20, 2020

  39. 39.

    germy

    Fun Fact: Latina, Lupe Hernandez invented hand sanitizer. She was a nurse and realized if you could put alcohol into a gel form it could be used to sanitize hands. So, ya'll got Lupe to thank! https://t.co/6AlgD9GdGR
    — Gloria Calderón Kellett aka Glorita to my family (@everythingloria) March 19, 2020

  40. 40.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @germy: FTFNYT:

    But unlike the United States, where a loss of faith in institutions has dovetailed with the drop in happiness reported by Americans, people in Scandinavian countries believe in one another and their governments, Professor Sachs said.

    “It’s part of what’s deteriorated in the United States,” he said. “This idea that we’re all in this together. That’s really being tested. We’re going to have to find that common sense of shared responsibility to pull through the crisis.”

    In Finland, 91 percent of survey respondents reported being satisfied with their president and 86 percent said they trust the police.

    “Thus, in the current crisis, people are willing to follow instructions and trust that everyone will do their part,” Frank Martela, a Finnish philosopher who contributed to the report, said in an email. “Every time the president or the prime minister holds a public speech about the issue, the overwhelming response is one of trust and commitment.”

    Mr. Martela added that Finns were volunteering in large numbers to go to the grocery store for others and had started campaigns to help artists and other people whose livelihoods are threatened by the crisis.

    “People are stating and feeling that we are in this together,” he said.
     

  43. 43.

    Amir Khalid

    My family is commenting on WhatsApp about people who get caught by the cops flouting the movement restriction and their dumb excuses. I need to hit the supermarket tomorrow to get some essentials, and I have doctor appointments on Wednesday and Thursday — all very good reasons for venturing out, so that won’t be me.

    @germy:

    Is this Donna Barstow person serious? Because if she’s kidding, it’s not funny.

  44. 44.

    hueyplong

    Feeling more than a little betrayed by Feinstein. I had assumed the meeting was GOP-only.

    Hope Newsome is thinking about when to announce Adam Schiff for her vacated seat.

  45. 45.

    JMG

    As my Brooklyn resident son noted this week, laundromats are an essential New York City service, and should be as exempt as grocery stores in any shutdown. Missed the early bird hours for seniors, cops, firefighters, etc. at my supermarket, so I’m waiting until I finish my second cup of coffee. Need onions, garlic (which should be easy) and milk and eggs (which might not be).

  46. 46.

    Van Buren

    @OzarkHillbilly: That’s me. Coworker tested positive and I am basically locked in my bedroom now. Very hard on my dogs because no one else in the house is interested in getting up at 5 to feed and walk and play with them, and also my wife’s back, as she felt it necessary to sleep on the couch.

  47. 47.

    Barbara

    @hueyplong: Feinstein claims to have a blind trust, and honestly, my assumption is that most wealthy senators are not involved in day to day trading for just this kind of risk, so I will remain open to the possibility that she did not walk out of a briefing and instruct someone to sell a bunch of stocks.  Even I never trade in individual stocks because of the risk of the perception that I might have had inside information (e.g., my office is handling something, even if I am not personally working on it).

  50. 50.

    NotMax

    Noted that the first season of the Korean series Iris is back on Netflix.

    Impressive for espionage story line and more than a few riveting action sequences. Disconcerting (to Western viewers, anyway) are sudden shifts into the sappiest of romantic melodrama, and back again. If you choose to sample it, caveat that the first episode is almost entirely honey-dripping hearts and flowers and gives next to no indication of what is to follow.

  51. 51.

    hueyplong

    @Barbara: Hope you’re right.  Seems like it wouldn’t be too difficult to verify.  And it seems like her office would be pretty motivated to tell us about that

    ETA– Have now noticed the Baud comment above.  Maybe this will have a relatively happy ending for the perceived non-crookedness of non-GOPers.

  52. 52.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @hueyplong: I think you might be conflating 2 different meetings. Feinstein was at a briefing of a Senate committtee. Burr gave a CV report based on that briefing to a (largely GOP I suspect) NC group.

  56. 56.

    Quiltingfool

    Last week my dad had to place my mom in a nursing home; that same day the home restricted visitors due to the virus.  He did get to talk to her, and she was sent to the ER for breathing problems, so he got to spend time with her there.  Yesterday, my mom passed away; my dad didn’t quite get there in time.

    Mom had been slowly failing and has suffered mental health problems and dementia for several years.  Prior to going to the nursing home, she told my dad she “wanted to go home.”  He thought she was confused about where she was, but now he thinks she was telling him she was ready to move on.  She is no longer suffering, and for that I am grateful, but losing a loved one is hard no matter what.  We don’t know about services (virus), but as she is being cremated, my dad has time to think about it.  He is going to have a hard go – he just lost someone who has been in his life over 60 years.  We will get through this.

  57. 57.

    Amir Khalid

    @mrmoshpotato:

    Even in non-plague times, trying to buy booze would get my Muslim self — and the shop, believe it or not — in trouble with the law.

  58. 58.

    germy

    My local supermarket is open for seniors only between 6:00 and 7:00 am.

    I arrived 5:59 and found a long line outside the store.

    They finally let us in.  I thought maybe they’d want proof of age, but no one checked.   A young store employee (I didn’t recognize her; maybe a new hire) exclaimed “I love you!  I love you all!” as we walked in.  I thought maybe she was being ironic, but she looked close to tears.  Unsettling.

    The store used to be open 24/7, but now they close at night for “sanitizing and restocking” but the paper products shelves were empty.  No napkins, paper towels, or toilet paper.  Some other items were missing, like hand soap and of course hand sanitizer (can any New Yorkers here tell me when Cumo’s free state-supplied sanitizer will be available?  If nothing else, I’d like to use it to clean surfaces).  I couldn’t find other products they used to stock.

    When I got to the casher, I told her “Thank God there’s still cat food; we still have a civilization!” and she chuckled.

  64. 64.

    Betty Cracker

    @Quiltingfool: Oh my gosh, that’s terrible news. I’m so sorry. Wishing strength, love and courage to you and your family. We’re here if you need us.

  65. 65.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Quiltingfool: I’m sorry Quiltingfool.

    “Wanting to go home” is a sign of Alzheimer’s/dementia.  It’s a way of saying “I want to go back to the time before this.”

  66. 66.

    hueyplong

    @opiejeanne: I had missed that.  Got it now.

    Seems like blind trusts should be required for Senators so as to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

  70. 70.

    opiejeanne

    @germy: Yeah, I looked at some of her cartoons, the ones she was most proud of, and they were. dumb and not funny. She opined that one of her cartoons depicts a family of libertarians because the three people in it are each thinking of something different they’d like for supper.

  71. 71.

    opiejeanne

    @hueyplong: Yes, and I posted my snotty comment to you before I saw the others, because I hadn’t refreshed the page. Sorry about the snottiness.

    One of the Republicans, Johnson I think, sold his stock when it was at its lowest, and I think the date was before the meeting.

  72. 72.

    lee

    …body bags stacked in vehicles outside hospitals.

    This is why I’m skeptical of the numbers coming out of China. That a smattering of reports of how people were punished for reporting any new infections.

  74. 74.

    rikyrah

    Senate GOP now has zero leverage in negotiation. And by extension neither does Trump. Can’t have millionaire members engaged in insider trading and withstand being accused of stiffing cooks, store clerks and hotel cleaning staff. Pass what you want Dems. They’ll have no choice.— David Plouffe (@davidplouffe) March 20, 2020

  78. 78.

    hueyplong

    @opiejeanne: I didn’t take your comment as snotty.  I took it as nothing more than a reminder that it’s usually a bad idea to fly off the handle before breaking news shakes out a little.

  79. 79.

    MattF

    FWIW, I’m in the cold-with-unusual-cough group, in the Jan.-Feb. time frame. No fever or shortness of breath, so who knows?

  82. 82.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Posted to the wrong thread: White nationalist hate groups have grown 55% in Trump era, report finds

    According to the SPLC report, the arrests are evidence that federal agencies are finally “hearing the alarm bells” regarding violent white nationalism.

    It points out that in the last year, “the FBI upgraded its assessment of the threat posed by racially motivated extremists to a ‘national threat priority’”, and the “Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a strategic shift toward countering racial hatred”.

    But the report says that those efforts are hampered by senior members of the Donald Trump administration like Trump aide Stephen Miller, “who has long been allied with anti-immigrant hate groups”.

    Whooodathunkit?

    Along with the increase in white nationalist groups, there was an increase in homophobic and transphobic organizations, with anti-LGBTQ groups increasing 43% in 2019. Many of those highlighted in the SPLC report are religious fundamentalists.

    I am shocked, shocked I tells ya!

  83. 83.

    Soprano2

    @Betty Cracker: I had a woman say to me yesterday “no one was paying attention to this in January”.  I said “I knew about it from a blog I read”.  I also pointed out to her that even if the general population didn’t know much about it at that time, THE PRESIDENT SURELY SHOULD KNOW AND BE TAKING ACTION AND TELLING US ABOUT IT!!!!  Clueless people, thinking that because “no one was paying attention” that makes it all good…..

  85. 85.

    opiejeanne

    @hueyplong: We’re most of us on edge a bit, except maybe Baud

    I had an awful day and can’t sleep. It’s nearly 6 and I haven’t slept at all since midnight, when a nightmare woke me up.

  87. 87.

    PST

    @Baud:

    I’m half tempted to get infected so I can choose the two week period when I have to quarantine.

    It may be too late for that, at least depending on location. I found myself thinking in February that it might be best to get it over with before the shit hits the fan. Now we may be one incubation period away from beds in hallways and sharing ventilators.

  91. 91.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    Predictions are the market will be up this morning. To me, that would show the extent to which the market is not the economy. Social distancing is going to be a body blow to the economy, no matter what stocks do.

  92. 92.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @rp: So reporting that an otherwise abhorrent individual actually tried to do something good is “wishing people get infected with fatal viruses and that the global pandemic worsens”?

    GG is plain and simply broken. Has been for sometime.

  94. 94.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: That is a very serious attribution error about Feinstein on your part.

    Trump says his holdings are in a blind trust too.

    Maybe what they say is true, maybe not, but what is to stop anyone contacting a trustee about a concern? Nothing.

  96. 96.

    different-church-lady

    @Baud: AMERICA: “Naw, we’re good with the lazy uncle who tells racist jokes and lets us drive the car when our parents are away, thanks BITCH.”

  97. 97.

    opiejeanne

    @Soprano2: I looked at the timeline of the virus yesterday, and realized I started adding to my pantry the day before the first death was reported. That was thanks to AL’s posts.

    My youngest pointed out that the rest of the family went shopping before the insanity hit because of what I told them I’d read here.

  100. 100.

    Immanentize

    @Quiltingfool: I am very sorry, QF.  No matter when a parent dies, or under what circumstances, a piece of your childhood goes with it.  Hang in there!

  101. 101.

    hueyplong

    @Quiltingfool: Very sorry for you and your family.

    We faced a similar situation regarding my wife’s mother last year.  With the time given to you by the cremation choice, you and your father will naturally end up agreeing on a path that works best.

    Peace and strength to you and yours.

  103. 103.

    germy

    Worrying about your stock portfolio rather than your constituents in the face of this thing is like coming home, seeing your house is on fire, and rushing into the house, past the room where your mother is sleeping, unaware of the blaze, and rescuing the jewelry from your safe, then running out again and not calling the fire department.

    It’s the act of an absolute psychopath, and it’s pretty much GOP orthodoxy.

    Also the cries of ‘corruption’ are missing the point. The point is not that these people sold some stock. Congress has been insider trading for decades. The point is that even though they believed that the pandemic threat was real they didn’t actually do anything to try to get the country ready DESPITE THE FACT THAT THEY ARE AMONG THE MOST POWERFUL PEOPLE IN THE COUNTRY.

    There’s a lot they could have done. If they had sold the stock and then immediately started screaming at Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell to DO something, or allied with the Democrats to push preparation, or done anything else like that, we’d be having a different reaction.

    It’s okay to save the jewelry AND your mother, but only a true psychopath snatches the jewels and leaves the sleeping person to fend for herself.

    Above is an excellent comment about Sen. Kelly Loeffler.  Someone left it over at LGM.

  104. 104.

    mrmoshpotato

    @rikyrah: I would’ve liked celebrating on 1/21/17.  Instead we listened to our (Democratic) representatives and activist groups talk about how we were going to counter the oncoming wave of bullshit. ?

  110. 110.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: Mostly I am referring to the assumptions about all the other Senators.  Maybe they all have blind trusts too?  Do you know?  I don’t.

    ETA. If this goes badly for ANY of the Republican Senators, it is going to go just as badly for Feinstein.  “Both sides!  Hypocrites.”  Those will be used to both cover for the Republicans and hurt her.  Hell, Barr might start by investigating her.  It is not good.  I hope she can prove it is some wild coincidence.  We are not in power there.

  111. 111.

    yellowdog

    @hueyplong: 1. It was a classified Senate Intelligence Committee meeting.

    2. Difi’s husband sold a single stock that had gone down. It was a biotech stock and has since gone way up. This does NOT look like insider trading. This names coming out are ANY MOCs who sold for whatever reason. The others, except for maybe Johnson, look slimy as hell.

  112. 112.

    Dupe1970

    @Baud: I was all excited and then I saw they excluded companies with more than 500 employees…. WTF??! Of course my Senators were against expanding it to larger companies for some reason (bribes.)

    I just want to live long enough to see Cruz and Cornyn replaced by Dems even Blue Dog Dems would be preferable.

  113. 113.

    Baud

    @Immanentize:

    I don’t. If they do, they should say that they do. It’s a pretty good defense absent evidence that they did not honor the blindness.

    ETA: I don’t believe Senators are subject to DOJ with respect to insider trading, but I don’t know.

  114. 114.

    MomSense

    The stores are empty.  Well, I’m glad I stocked up on supplies, but not sure how much longer I can stretch out doing laundry and I really need some more eggs.

    Also I thought I just had a cold or allergies, but now they are saying COVID starts as mild  cold symptoms for some people.

    Trump and his Fucking famadministration have fucked up the response to this pandemic.

  115. 115.

    PST

    @Quiltingfool: I am very sorry for your loss, and your father’s. My wife works for a funeral home and cemetery, and she is still going to work every day, so at least here in Chicago that is still looked on as an essential service.

  119. 119.

    Jeffro

    @germy: They cashed out to keep from losing their money…they didn’t say anything about it because to sound the alarm would be to contradict the orange moron publicly, and well we know how that goes in today’s GOP.

    They’re so afraid of their abusive ‘daddy’ that they wouldn’t even wake the rest of the house up during the fire.  Greedy AND cowardly, to the point of letting the ‘family’ get killed.  What a combo.

  121. 121.

    Barbara

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: The nature of the stock market is to get ahead of the real economy at both ends of the spectrum.  Short term dips and such are totally meaningless.  The larger picture is that it has dropped to the point it was at when Trump was inaugurated.  We’re going to see up and down days for the foreseeable future, and my personal prediction is that they will be tightly banded until people see an event horizon that is beyond the pandemic, and start making longer term choices.

  122. 122.

    Immanentize

    @Baud: Burr and Loefler seem to not have blind trusts.  I haven’t checked the others, but:

    All of Senator Feinstein’s assets are in a blind trust, as they have been since she came to the Senate. She has no involvement in any of her husband’s financial decisions,” said Feinstein spokesman Tom Mentzer.

  124. 124.

    JWR

    @opiejeanne:

    Honestly, how long do you think she’ll be keeping her job with the LA Times?

    Dunno how long she’s been there, but the odious Michael Ramirez was at the L.A. Times for quite a while. He pretty much copies the style of Paul Conrad, but twists the message into one of whackadoodle conserva-hate.

  125. 125.

    MomSense

    @yellowdog:

    I get that people disagree with DiFi on policy matters, but she has always been really ethical and she knows how the levers of government work.  I really don’t get the DiFi hate.  If she were the spoiler vote on Democratic initiatives it would make more sense.

    Also with all the talk of chloroquine being effective I decided my love of tonic water with quinine is now a health drink.  I don’t have any gin in the House, but whisky and tonic is tasty, too.

  126. 126.

    Barbara

    @Immanentize: It’s bizarre that someone as wealthy as Loeffler does not have a blind trust, especially given her husband’s job, which all by itself probably gives rise to suspicions of insider trading much of the time.  Well, I can now surmise how they became so wealthy.

  128. 128.

    NotMax

    @Immanentize

    That’s kind of warping the meaning of blind trust, more generally taken to mean no involvement with the person(s) or entity assigned the handling of the assets.

  129. 129.

    Baud

    @NotMax: I think she’s saying that she has a blind trust for her own assets, and her husband has his own assets that she doens’t get involved with.

    I don’t think she’s saying her husband manages her blind trust.  But maybe I’m wrong.

  131. 131.

    Chyron HR

    @MomSense:

    I really don’t get the DiFi hate. If she were the spoiler vote on Democratic initiatives it would make more sense.

    She has a safe senate seat that BELONGS to The Left and it’s not fair that the neoliberal corporatist shitlibs protect her from primary challenges by having her get “””more votes”””.

  132. 132.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio

    @hueyplong: The details I’ve seen so far suggest that her husband sold jointly-held stock at close to the price they paid for it. This may not have been influenced by the meeting. I certainly want to know more before she’s off the hook.

  133. 133.

    Baud

    @NotMax:

    They’ll probably clarify in the next couple of days.  As you know, now that Feinstein has been named, she’ll get most of the media focus, and no evidence she puts forward will ever be quite enough to dispel the clouds and shadows.

  134. 134.

    Barbara

    @Baud: That is how I interpreted it.  But to be honest, my spouse and I both play by the same rules (no trading in individual stocks) because close family members are frequently utilized for insider trading schemes.  It has always seemed bizarre to me when people argue that serving in Congress shouldn’t require members and their families to give up ordinary activities.  I don’t really see why.  People working in finance, law, and so on either voluntarily restrict themselves or have to observe rules imposed by their employer.  Arguing that it would limit service to wealthy people kind of ignores that the ethical lapses we are seeing were engaged in by both the most and least wealthy members of the Senate.

  135. 135.

    Baud

    @Barbara:

    The government is limited in how much it can regulate private citizens based on being related to a public official, and you can’t deny people their elected representatives based on how their relatives behave.

  136. 136.

    a thousand flouncing lurkers was fidelio

    @Quiltingfool: I’m so sorry. My mother died last summer, a couple of months shy of 103. It has been hard, and was also a relief in many ways. You already know it’s going to be hard for you and your father, but please don’t feel badly if some days you’re glad it’s over, even as you miss her.

  138. 138.

    Barbara

    @Baud: I work in the field of health care regulation and the government enforces laws that bind not just those receiving money directly from certain types of transactions but members of their immediate family.  The point isn’t to regulate the family member but to impute to the representative the activities of their close family members.  Yes, it can sometimes be harsh, but  I am not talking about extended family members and I am not talking about every kind of employment or financial activity.

  139. 139.

    Immanentize

    @Barbara: I agree one hundred percent with you.  But all that sweet lucre for getting to be Senator.  It’s a time-honored tradition!

  141. 141.

    Fair Economist

    @hueyplong: The Feinstein trade does not appear to be insider trading. It was only one stock, and the stock her husband (not her) sold was a biotech stock, which actually would be a buy from this info. It’s very different from the Loeffler and Burr trades, which involve dozens of stocks, and are targeted for the coronavirus disaster, with sales of casino stocks accompanied by *buys* of telework ones.

  143. 143.

    Baud

    @Barbara:

    government enforces laws that bind not just those receiving money directly from certain types of transactions but members of their immediate family.

    It’s much easier to deny money to people than it is to deny voters their elected representatives.

  145. 145.

    artem1s

    @Quiltingfool: I am so sorry for your loss.  My mom lost my dad ten years ago this month. They had known each other since the first grade.  Losing my dad was hard, but not being able to do anything about my mother’s grief was so much harder.  Hang in there.

  146. 146.

    artem1s

    I dug into the concerns that ibuprofen makes coronavirus symptoms worse. In short, they’re unfounded.

    sounded like BS when I first started hearing it.  Johnson & Johnson have been scare selling Tylenol for decades now.

  147. 147.

    Elizabelle

    @Quiltingfool:   My condolences to you and your dad.

    Your mom’s last gift might be sparing you both anxiety over her health during the virus days.

    How isolated is your dad?  Does he have folks around (even though he may need to grieve in private too)?

  149. 149.

    Betty Cracker

    @Baud: Maybe Biden will address this further during the election, since he’ll be subject to scurrilous lies about profiteering due to skeevy but legal actions by family members. I agree it’s a thorny issue, but stuff like this definitely undermines trust in government. I’m glad Biden takes it seriously. I hope he adopts Warren’s plan to address it.

  150. 150.

    satby

    @Quiltingfool: oh, so sorry about your mom! Deepest condolences to you, your dad, and all your family. Even when it’s a release from misery for the person, it’s a terrible loss to those left behind. May her memory be a blessing.

  151. 151.

    Gin & Tonic

    @germy: A supermarket chain here also has “senior hours” from 0600 to 0730. I arrived at around 0615 and the place was mobbed, like the afternoon before Super Bowl. Limit of two per customer on milk, eggs, OJ, stuff like that. Very limited selection of meats. Produce looked good. A few packs of TP, but that aisle was largely empty, same with the soaps and hand sanitizers. But if I wanted “social distancing” this wasn’t the place.

  152. 152.

    J R in WV

    @Quiltingfool:

    Yesterday, my mom passed away;

    We are so sorry for your loss; it is never easy no matter the circumstances. Please take care of yourself and your dad, and keep in touch!

  153. 153.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    We have three main grocery stores we patronize regularly, or used to patronize in the Before Times. The two big chain stores use Instacart and Peapod, respectively. We’re finding with those we can get most of what we want, but the prices seem kind of high and the big problem is getting a delivery slot. They’re way backed up. We also find that the offerings for online purchase are much more limited than what we know is on the shelves. So “most of what we want” actually means a lot of substitution.

    Another is a small coop. They just threw up an email form on their web page. They don’t have the infrastructure to put their inventory on line so you have to kind of go by memory. Fortunately we know that store so well that we can easily walk up and down the aisles in our minds and do our shopping. After a phone conversation with a shopper to agree on any substitutions, we got our stuff within hours.

    I’m expecting a lot of new services to spring up to close the gap between stores and the people who can’t get to them. I’m hoping somebody starts offering personal shopping services because two of our favorite stores are offering nothing that I can tell to adapt to the new situation: The produce store that always had amazing quality stuff fresh from the farm, and the specialty organic food store that has products we can’t find anywhere else.

    The economy is going to be remade. I want to do my part to support the old businesses we love and the new businesses that I hope are going to be hiring the displaced workers.

    Today I was day-dreaming about how you would make the coffee-house experience mobile and bring it to your house. I’ll put in for somebody’s KickStarter if someone wants to do that with my favorite places.

  156. 156.

    opiejeanne

    @JWR: I remember both of them. Dear Lord, I couldn’t understand why the LA Times kept Ramirez on so long. They did eventually dump him, I don’t remember which cartoon was offensive enough for that. Maybe one of his anti-abortion ones.

  157. 157.

    laura

    @Quiltingfool: I am so sorry for your loss and wish you, your dad and everyone who loved and was loved by your mother.

    Same boat. My parents were married 61 years and my mother had dementia and passed in a care facility that I couldn’t get to in time because of a traffic accident / traffic jam. The desire to go home is very common and may relate to wanting to return to a time when things made sense. Her suffering has ended. That may be of little comfort, but I hope it helps a bit.

  158. 158.

    smintheus

    It was obvious by Jan. 1 to anybody paying attention that this was a dangerous outbreak. I remember that I thought about whether we’d soon have to self quarantine because of a pandemic while I was visiting Boccaccio’s house in Certaldo on New Years Day.

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