Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

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

Tick tock motherfuckers!

If you’re pissed about Biden’s speech, he was talking about you.

Infrastructure week. at last.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

In my day, never was longer.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

The words do not have to be perfect.

We are builders in a constant struggle with destroyers. let’s win this.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Saturday Morning Open Thread: Yay for Parties, Virtual or Otherwise

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Yay for Parties, Virtual or Otherwise

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Virtuous, if not virtual:


Admit it: You’re thinking it might be worth it just for the #QuackPAC swag…

Reader Interactions

135Comments

  2. 2.

    Immanentize

    I just love how Warren keeps her eye so fixed on the issue of corruption. I said in 2016 that I thought it should be a lead theme of the Democrats, but I see why they didn’t go that way — because they were in charge of at least the executive for 8 years.

    Now, however, there is no downside to running against corruption. Get a broom! Clean ’em out!

  5. 5.

    Immanentize

    @Butch: You really have no clue what is in the bill or how much relief it would bring to the States, do you.  Please stop bringing David Dayen talking points to a thread on such a beautiful day.

  6. 6.

    SWMBO

    @Immanentize: His comment is gone.  Don’t know where or who but it’s gone.  And I read it.  Gah!  Do we really need this level of criticism of Pelosi before it even gets to the Senate where McConnell has already promised it would die?

  9. 9.

    Baud

    @SWMBO:

    I read it too. 14 Dems against it, all from Trump districts.   All other Dems voted for it. I guess it just wasn’t progressive enough.

  10. 10.

    Mary G

    I would freaking love for Tammy Duckworth to run for VP – sure Democratic replacement, and since it’s traditionally an attack position, the inventor of “Cadet Bone Spurs” would be brilliant.

  11. 11.

    Mary G

    Rick Wilson, Steve Schmidt, George Conway and all the Never Trumpers who got Twitler in a tizzy with the “Mourning in America” ad last week have another out:

    .@realDonaldTrump, it’s not us, it’s you.
    Your inaction, ineptitude, and instability have caused the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
    Do your job. pic.twitter.com/C0CNnyZHV8
    — The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) May 16, 2020

    “We’re living in your head.” Heh.

  17. 17.

    mrmoshpotato

    Not sure I’m happy about the Duckworth news.  I think our junior Senator is doing a great job in the upper chamber of Congress.

    I am certain that Governor Pritzker should sell Duckworth’s seat to one Barack Obama, however. :)

  19. 19.

    Betty Cracker

    My county is holding primaries in August for all offices except POTUS. It’s so depressing to read about the Republican candidates for sheriff, county commission, etc. I went to high school with several of them. They were dumb as rocks as kids whose dumb-as-rocks parents ran everything back then. And now the dumb-as-rocks former kids have inherited the earth. America’s shitty elites problem isn’t just an Acela corridor issue.

  20. 20.

    SFAW

    @debbie:

    Gotta be a tight squeeze.

    How so? He thinks it’s galaxy-sized, and we know there’s nothing but hot air inside. You could probably fit Andre the Giant (may he RIP) in there.

  21. 21.

    Immanentize

    @germy: She was born in Thailand, were her parents US citizens?

    Well, her dad was:

    daughter of Lamai Sompornpairin and Franklin Duckworth. Her father, who died in 2005, was a U.S. Army veteran who traced his family’s American roots to the American Revolutionary War. Her mother is Thai, of Chinese descent.

    Wiki-p

  24. 24.

    SFAW

    @Immanentize:

    Thanks for the link. I was listening to “Back to Basics” the other day, whilst cooking. I first heard him in (I think) the late 1970s (for some reason, the mental association I have is being in Harvard Square, maybe they were playing it in one of the bookstores? can’t recall). Although some of his early stuff tended to sound similar (after a while), there’s still a number of his songs that I really like.

  25. 25.

    germy

    @Immanentize:

    During a televised debate on October 27, 2016, Duckworth talked about her ancestors’ past service in the United States military. Kirk responded, “I’d forgotten that your parents came all the way from Thailand to serve George Washington.” The comment led to the Human Rights Campaign withdrawing their endorsement of Kirk and switching it to Duckworth, stating his comments were “deeply offensive and racist.”

    Former Republican presidential candidate and Senator from Kansas Bob Dole dedicated his autobiography One Soldier’s Story in part to Duckworth. Duckworth credits Dole for inspiring her to pursue public service, while she recuperated at Walter Reed Army Medical Center; although, in 2006, Dole endorsed Duckworth’s Republican opponent, Peter Roskam.

  30. 30.

    mrmoshpotato

    Jeff, retweet yourself, sir!

    I'm all for a Space Force if we use it to launch every fucking member of this criminal administration straight the fuck into the sun— Jeff Tiedrich (@itsJeffTiedrich) May 15, 2020

  31. 31.

    ThresherK

    @germy: That’s bog-standard GOP behavior.

    The only thing which surprises me about this incident (which I did not remember) is that Mark Kirk was a Republican who actually was in the military, and spent service time in a war zone.

  33. 33.

    OzarkHillbilly

    I am shocked, shocked I tell you! (NYT) The Richest Neighborhoods Emptied Out Most as Coronavirus Hit New York City

    Hundreds of thousands of New York City residents, in particular those from the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, left as the coronavirus pandemic hit, an analysis of multiple sources of aggregated smartphone location data has found.

    Roughly 5 percent of residents — or about 420,000 people — left the city between March 1 and May 1. In the city’s very wealthiest blocks, in neighborhoods like the Upper East Side, the West Village, SoHo and Brooklyn Heights, residential population decreased by 40 percent or more, while the rest of the city saw comparably modest changes.

    I know you are too.

  36. 36.

    Kay

    @Betty Cracker:

    And now the dumb-as-rocks former kids have inherited the earth. America’s shitty elites problem isn’t just an Acela corridor issue.

    I wonder if it gets worse with widening income inequality. Like- by the numbers, in a way we could measure. Jared occupied some smart strivers seat. Repeat that in each income segment- no one moves up from the rung below, leaving the top rung unchallenged, so it declines in quality. Jared really did assemble a group of people to get masks- they were all rich and successful and yet…they didn’t manage to get the masks. To GET the MASKS. They didn’t have to create a vaccine, mind you. They had to get a ton of masks from Point A to Point B and they had 3 months. And they failed. You would think they could do that.
    We know what widening income inequality does to the middle and bottom but what does it do to the top?

  37. 37.

    germy

    @SFAW:

    More idiocy?

    Gowdy: If I called Obama, he would be the last witness because I don’t like surprises… I would call Biden before Obama because President Trump was impeached for trying to investigate his political enemies. Maybe that’s what Biden did. I mean I don’t know it.. pic.twitter.com/2IZIsIyp95

    — Acyn Torabi (@Acyn) May 15, 2020

  38. 38.

    Butter Emails

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    And in many cases they also took the virus with them when they left. The poor end up being disparately impacted when the virus takes hold in a location, but it’s people of means who are the spreaders.

  39. 39.

    p.a.

    Big dog looks better in that photo than some of the times I’ve seen him lately (usually looked frail).  Is the photo recent?

  40. 40.

    Keith P.

    My young female has been snuggling up to the older female I adopted.  “Cute”, I thought, but as I watch the process, I’ve realized that it’s the younger one actually trying to take over the bed – she gradually repositions herself to the center of the bed.  The older one is currently teetering on the edge of the bed, and she doesn’t look happy.

  41. 41.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SFAW: I generally avoid it like the plague but a small exposure from time to time helps me to remember that there is still no fix for stupid.

  42. 42.

    p.a.

    @OzarkHillbilly: Would love to see similar stats from ‘Spanish’ flu time, if they were kept or could be teased from other info (cliometrics futhermucker!). But of course this was obvious to those who live through these events going back to the Black Death at least: “Yep… urgent business requires my presence in the small, easily isolated hill town.  Uh, and my wife and kids…”

  43. 43.

    Dorothy A. Winsor

    In COVID news here at the old folks home, a second worker tested positive and is home recovering. They do test and trace here, so six others were tested and are awaiting results. They’re all asymptomatic. As you may remember, a couple of weeks ago, a resident of the Memory Unit tested positive and was hospitalized. No other residents have tested positive.

  44. 44.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Keith P.: My 2 compete for the Daddy spot on the couch. One would think that the 100# Lab would have the advantage over the 45# Beagle/Spaniel mix but the little one never gives up and watches for the slightest bit of daylight between me and the Woofmeister and jumps into it. Woof has taken to subterfuge to beat Percy. Stands at the door until I get up to open it. Thinking I am going out, Percy jumps off the couch and heads out the door. Woof turns and heads for the now unoccupied couch where, if I want to sit back down I have to pick up the 25# head first which then flops back into my lap as soon as I let go of it..

  45. 45.

    SFAW

    @germy:

    As Cole is fond of saying: these fucking guys.

    Hey Cletus, maybe they should call Michelle Obama, to investigate her ties to the Black Panthers. The originals, not the NBP. Maybe Michelle was the one that had Fred Hampton murdered. I hear she also was responsible for Judge Crater’s disappearance. [Just kidding — that was Hillary.]

     

    These fucking guys, I swear.

  47. 47.

    Woodrow/asim

    @germy:  If Trump’s poll number stay frosty, expect Biden to be subpoenaed in the early Fall, if not late Summer.

    The few smart folx know to just throw smokescreens around this stuff, but fools like Gowdy take the lead of a panic-prone Trump. Trump and his cronies — with a few horrific exceptions — are horrible at playing any long-game. Therefore: throw a massive temper tantrum for the cameras about corruption, dragging in innocent people to sow doubt in the media.

  48. 48.

    Keith P.

    @OzarkHillbilly: I just realized that I left off that mine are cats.  When I had a dog, one of the cats would *always* steel his huge bed, sleeping right in the middle of it.  The dog (a pit bull) seemed to have no issue with it – he loved that cat – and would curl up around the cat

  49. 49.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @SFAW: No, just keeping it socially distant.

    @Keith P.: I thought that might be the case. It’s funny how animals adjust to new sharing arrangements.

  50. 50.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “Barack Obama is not a ‘shuck and jive’ person of color, and those are the kinds of people that Donald Trump seems to be attracted to if you look at who he surrounds himself with as far as minorities are concerned.”

    -Tara Setmayer

  51. 51.

    OzarkHillbilly

    “There’s some racism there but, most of all, it’s driven by the fact that Obama has the thing that Trump has always craved but never achieved, and that’s respect. I’ve always thought that the respect that Barack Obama gets from people in this country and around the world is something that just eats Trump alive inside.”

    -Matthew Miller

  52. 52.

    JMG

    Weekly shopping trip report. For the first time since March, the Bedford. Mass. Stop ‘N Shop was not out of anything I could see. Even had TP in 12 packs.  Meat of all kinds in normal amounts. Cleaning supplies ditto.

  53. 53.

    Kay

    Edward Wong
    @ewong
    9h
    A Democratic aide adds some detail: They say Linick’s office was looking into Pompeo’s “misuse of a political appointee” at State Dept. to perform personal tasks for himself & wife Susan Pompeo. State Dept. spokesperson hasn’t returned requests for comment on Engel statement.

    You just knew it was some sleazy crony thing. It’s never actually “big” – it’s always some self-serving, individual grabbing for personal power or the trappings of wealth. Low quality hires. Petty, small people. They can’t even pull off a heist that serves some larger aim.

  54. 54.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Hundreds of thousands of New York City residents, in particular those from the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods, left as the coronavirus pandemic hit, an analysis of multiple sources of aggregated smartphone location data has found.

    Not particularly surprising. During the plague at Rome, wealthier citizens would flee if they could. And I think it likely that those who fled the city during the earlier plagues in London were wealthier citizens.  Isaac Newton was not a working class lad.

    I’m kinda curious where these people ended up. Did they stay in the US or choose foreign destinations?

    Also, is there a Rich Twitter where these folks keep up with each other?

  55. 55.

    raven

    @Brachiator: The daughter of a friend was living there and she got out. I also have a buddy who lived in LA with his wife and 2 kids. He has a farm out in the country here that he was air b n b’ing. He loaded them up and came back to Georgia and he’s working his ass off getting crops in.

  60. 60.

    Mary G

    @Kay: I know, they had the full faith and credit of the United States at their disposal! A guy who runs an Aamerican medical supply company, and had four idle factory lines to make masks, was calling and calling and being ignored. But they were using volunteers, probably other dim rich kids, who had no idea how to do anything but look busy,   get in the way of the real experts, and sign contracts with scam artists. Two kids still in college have senior positions at the WH! They resorted to confiscating other governments’ supplies at the airports. It’s unknown what they even did with those!

  61. 61.

    OzarkHillbilly

    Simply good news: The end of plastic? New plant-based bottles will degrade in a year

    Beer and soft drinks could soon be sipped from “all-plant” bottles under new plans to turn sustainably grown crops into plastic in partnership with major beverage makers.

    A biochemicals company in the Netherlands hopes to kickstart investment in a pioneering project that hopes to make plastics from plant sugars rather than fossil fuels.

    The plans, devised by renewable chemicals company Avantium, have already won the support of beer-maker Carlsberg, which hopes to sell its pilsner in a cardboard bottle lined with an inner layer of plant plastic.

    Avantium’s chief executive, Tom van Aken, says he hopes to greenlight a major investment in the world-leading bioplastics plant in the Netherlands by the end of the year. The project, which remains on track despite the coronavirus lockdown, is set to reveal partnerships with other food and drink companies later in the summer.

    The project has the backing of Coca-Cola and Danone, which hope to secure the future of their bottled products by tackling the environmental damage caused by plastic pollution and a reliance on fossil fuels.

  62. 62.

    JMG

    OK, I need to tell this story and I hope you enjoy it. Yesterday was one of my sister-in-laws’ birthday and my brother arranged a Zoom surprise brunch for her. Last time I saw her back in February, she had a boot on one foot and said she had broken a bone in it dancing. At the party, she loosened her tongue because the boot was off and revealed the accident was that she had fallen off the platform shoes she was wearing at a 70s disco themed party. This is by far the funniest accident ever to befall anyone I know.

  64. 64.

    JPL

    In order to buy allergy D, I have to show my license and sign for it.   Anywho.. the line above mine was two initials and covid 19….    This was at the local grocery store. ugh

  65. 65.

    Brachiator

    I don’t know if this has been referenced before, but the Federal Reserve recently released a fascinating report on the economic well-being of US households. It was originally meant to focus on 2019, but has supplemental information covering April 2020, pandemic time.

    One thing that stands out is the degree to which the pandemic has absolutely hammered lower income households:

    Still, the numbers paint a grim picture: 39 percent of employed people in households making less than $40,000 lost their job or were furloughed in March. That compares to 19 percent of individuals in households making between $40,000 and $100,000, and 13 percent of people in households with an income above $100,000, a Fed official told reporters.

    Elsewhere, the study notes that

    Sixty-three percent of workers with a bachelor’s degree worked entirely from home in the last week of March. Sixty-seven percent of workers who never attended college and 60 percent who completed some college or an associate degree worked entirely outside of their homes.

    The full report, along with a short video summary and supplemental information can be found here: Federal Reserve Study.

  67. 67.

    Nicole

    @p.a.: Coincidentally, the Science Mag article Anne Laurie linked to led me to this piece:

    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/05/black-death-fatal-flu-past-pandemics-show-why-people-margins-suffer-most

    It goes into the Black Death and the 1918 Influenza bit, in terms of how, in fact, while they were presented as “everyone was at risk,” in fact, the poor suffered more.

    I think the only epidemic that did seem to single out the wealthy was the medieval sweating sickness. Or so the poor said at the time.

  68. 68.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Keith P.:

    My young female has been snuggling up to the older female I adopted. “Cute”, I thought, but as I watch the process, I’ve realized that it’s the younger one actually trying to take over the bed – she gradually repositions herself to the center of the bed. The older one is currently teetering on the edge of the bed, and she doesn’t look happy.

    When Ivana met Marla

  70. 70.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    In a couple weeks we’re having our 40th anniversary and I’m debating how to celebrate it. Before all this, I was talking about doing some kind of party, and of course I had planned to go kind of big on the gift.

    We talked about maybe inviting some friends to join us for a Zoom chat but I’m finding I don’t actually look forward to that. We each have some very good regular Zoom things going on that work surprisingly well. But as an introvert I don’t think I’d feel much like it was a party, staring into a screen and trying to maintain conversation.

    I think we’re going to just have a quiet day focused on each other, no gifts, no cards, no friends. Maybe a walk in a park, maybe a picnic outside.

  72. 72.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    @Brachiator: Those are horrific unemployment numbers, the kind of thing that makes me desperate to know how I personally can make a difference.

  73. 73.

    Brachiator

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Plant-based bottles that degrade in a year? You would have to pay scrupulous attention to expiration dates. Still, I can see soggy warehouses, garages, kitchens all over the world with liquid from expired bottles.

  74. 74.

    Kay

    I had a stay at home order ranter in the office this week and listening to him it occurred to me that the premise behind the thing is nonsense. They believe that governors instituted stay at home orders because they all crave authoritarian control and dream of denying people the right to go get a tattoo.

    But that isn’t what governors want- governors want 3% unemployment and a humming economy and no new, huge problems on their plate. Governors want an easier job, not a harder job- like everyone else. That’s what they want. That’s what the Michigan governor wants, Ohio, California, doesn’t matter.

    The idea that they got the power to shut your diner down and in exchange they got 20% unemployment, imploding state budgets, HUGE daily problems to solve and they sought out that exchange is just insane.

  75. 75.

    Nicole

    @OzarkHillbilly: The… New York Post, I want to say, did a piece early on in the pandemic about the rich fleeing, including an anecdote about a wealthy Manhattanite who called ahead to the hospital in Montauk to let them know she was  positive for Covid 19 and was coming out there to check in.  They, of course, told her to stay the fuck home, but she then got on the fucking Jitney (a bus service that runs from Manhattan to the Hamptons, Montauk, you know, the places rich people in NYC make their summer homes) WITH AN ACTIVE COVID 19 INFECTION and took it out to the hospital in Montauk.

    Reading that article I was straight up Madeline Kahn in Clue.

  76. 76.

    Kirk Spencer

    @Brachiator: Makes sense.

    I mean, the essential workforce is the one that can’t work from home – you can’t stock shelves, you can’t run a forklift, you can’t clean the hospital from home. And the vast majority of those are low income. Higher income gets to be “above” that – planners and managers and accountants and so forth.

    FWIW, it’s also worth noting how much of the essential/low income labor force is facing automation over the next decade. Yay, better opportunity for controlling infection spread. Boo, a large number of homeless, starving, people.

    Of such comes change. It’s up to us all to work on how unpleasant the change will be.

  77. 77.

    Kay

    In Governor Whitmer’s ideal scenario everyone is working, she’s collecting lots of state revenue, and there are no new “novel” problems or disasters.

    That’s what she had. The theory on the Right is she deliberately threw that away in a fanatical quest to gain power to force them to stop having family reunions. This was a good trade to her. She grabbed it. That’s the operating theory.

  78. 78.

    Brachiator

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym:

    Those are horrific unemployment numbers, the kind of thing that makes me desperate to know how I personally can make a difference.

    This is really down to public policy and employers bouncing back. This also reinforces my belief that the post-pandemic recovery may be strong, but highly asymmetric.  But there was also this nugget of optimism in the report:

    Yet in a sign that Americans are maintaining their optimism, 91 percent of people who lost their jobs or were furloughed said they expected to return to the same employer eventually, suggesting that government efforts to keep workers tied to their current jobs might be working.

    Five percent in that group had already returned to work by the time of the survey.

    Five percent is not a huge number, but it is perhaps a hopeful start.

  82. 82.

    Jinchi

    I know who Duckworth is, but I don’t know enough about her to have an opinion on her as VP pick. I think it’s very likely that Biden’s VP will have to be somebody ready to go on day one.

  83. 83.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    Are you sure they failed? I think the point in between A and B was the place where the masks were squirreled away either for their own use or to sell at great profits when the Apocalypse arrived.

  84. 84.

    polyorchnid octopunch

    @Kay: Fundamentally, given that these are almost entirely spite voters… it’s projection. Like it always is.

  85. 85.

    Brachiator

    @Kirk Spencer:

    FWIW, it’s also worth noting how much of the essential/low income labor force is facing automation over the next decade.

    Automation and technological innovation is moving up the economic food chain. Years and years ago, I worked for the LA Times in the business department. It was amazing to see how many clerical jobs disappeared with the invention of the spreadsheet. This also, of course, eliminated a path to promotion.

    Secretarial pools became obsolete years ago. A lot of the decline in middle management jobs is because of technological innovation that requires fewer workers.

    I also see construction jobs that require fewer workers because of modular building materials and improved technology.

    A lot of good paying medical technician and diagnostic jobs will likely be eliminated by AI.

    Worst case scenario is a future in which the only jobs are security guard and home care worker, taking care of the rich and guarding their loot.

  86. 86.

    Jinchi

    @Nicole: a wealthy Manhattanite who called ahead to the hospital in Montauk to let them know she was positive for Covid 19 and was coming out there to check in.

    I read that too, but it seemed like a story that was too good to be true. I’m sure lots of wealthy people fled NY as soon as outbreak panic set in and carried the virus far and wide. But to flee, planning to spend your time in a rural hospital when you think you’ve already got coronavirus?

  87. 87.

    Mai naem mobile

    I know people have been talk9ng about Kamala Harris being top in the Veepstakes but I’ve had a feeling it was going to be Duckworth.  I would like it to be Harrus partly I’ll admit because she’s half Indian but Duckworth has the better personal  life story. I think NM govenror would be a good choice as well but she probably doesn’t have foreign policy creds.  The only issue I have with Duckworth is that Rahm Emmanuel was a big original supporter of hers. Some Dean people have long memories.

  88. 88.

    debbie

    @Kay:

    We now have the precedent of power acceding to bullying. This is now how the rest of our lives will go.

  89. 89.

    WereBear

    @Keith P.: I step in to move the younger one away from the center. Some assertive cats think everyone else is just as assertive.

    “If you didn’t want to move why did you let me?”

    Enforce a boundary for the older cat and everyone is happier.

  90. 90.

    senyorDave

    @Brachiator: 91 percent of people who lost their jobs or were furloughed said they expected to return to the same employer eventually,

    I would be shocked if it ends up being anywhere near that number.  A significant number of mid level retailers will disappear.  A large number of non-chain restaurants will end up closing.  And perhaps the biggest bucket will be anything travel-related.  Until there is a vaccine, there will be a new normal for travel.   That normal will be much less travel, both leisure and business.  Leisure travel spending is dominated by seniors, or more accurately, the 55+ group.  These are the people with the time to take loner trips, and the money to afford longer, more high end trips.  These are the people most at risk, between age and underlying conditions.  And business travel will be much lower because of greatly expanded use of teleconferencing.  I would bet money that unemployment will be at least 8% through year end, and more likely to be 10%+.  The US is now in worse position than most developed countries to come out of this.  By middle of July we will be in a sever recession.  People forget that demand will be greatly depressed for several quarters.  People will be delaying most big purchases, especially cars.  And businesses will be putting off capital investment because of a combination of lower demand and disastrous 2020 results.

  91. 91.

    Bill Arnold

    Empty roads, YES!!!
    America’s most illegal record has been obliterated (Cameron Kirby, 15 May 2020)

    All the pearl-clutching about the morality of performing a Cannonball Run during a global pandemic seems to have been for nothing, with Ed Bolian reporting America’s most illegal record has been beaten seven times in the span of just five weeks.
    According to Bolian, who has been in contact with the new record holders, the time to beat is now less than 26 hours. A sub 28-hour Cannonball Run was once unthinkable.
    While he has not disclosed the exact time, that frame of reference means the drivers would have had to achieve an average speed of at least 173km/h for the 4507km journey.

    To set a Cannonball Run record, you must traditionally start at the Red Ball Garage in Manhattan, then traverse the entire United States of America as fast as possible to finish at the Portofini Inn in Redondo Beach, California,

  92. 92.

    Luciamia

    Really surprised the Baby in Chief hasn’t planned any counter event to the ‘Graduate.’ program.

  94. 94.

    Brachiator

    @Kay:

    I had a stay at home order ranter in the office this week and listening to him it occurred to me that the premise behind the thing is nonsense. They believe that governors instituted stay at home orders because they all crave authoritarian control and dream of denying people the right to go get a tattoo.

    This reminds me of the understandable reaction of some adolescents who rail or sulk because they cannot be with their friends and are angry that their usual routine has been upended.

    But what is really upsetting them is the loss of control, because there is no real way that they can defeat the virus by themselves or return to their regular lives without a great deal of risk.

    So instead, these people cry “fake news” and deny the seriousness of the epidemic and the need for lockdowns or masks or social distancing and instead focus their anger on health officials and political leaders who have “taken” their freedoms away.

    And unfortunately, because these people are stubborn adults, they are difficult to reason with, especially those who strap on weapons and threaten the public when they cannot get their way.

  96. 96.

    Kirk Spencer

    @Brachiator: Don’t disagree at all. Historically (to my casual observation) the automation of the computer era has hit the higher paying brute labor the hardest – with certain additional fields (accountants and librarians for example) that require more education and skill.

    Automation is going to hit a lot of places up and down the chain, many who don’t expect it yet. But in this specific case I’m considering the so-called essential workers who are low income.

    Stock picking/placing robots slightly modified for “no human touch curbside delivery”.

    Automated vehicles for either over-the-road or dedicated urban delivery. (Another cut in retail sales as well as delivery personnel.)

    Heavy goods warehouse operations. (digression – in the Houston area fork lift operators are a common, up-and-down, decently paying job. The local industries make most self-guided forklifts unworkable. That is, they did. I think the workable solutions are here, now, and it’s just a matter of cost curves over time.)

    As you noted, a number of med tech. See also automated and on-line check-in kiosks massively reducing (accounting/librarian size) the front desk of medical centers.

    A silver lining of the epidemic has been the recognition that there’s a potential for large scale long term unemployment – and solutions other than IGMFY are preferred.

  98. 98.

    JMG

    @senyorDave: I saw on Bloomberg yesterday that Zurich Insurance, which is one of the two biggest companies in Switzerland, said that it had found absolutely no loss of productivity from the suspension of business travel and would therefore rethink its use altogether.

  99. 99.

    germy

    @Luciamia:

    Really surprised the Baby in Chief hasn’t planned any counter event to the ‘Graduate’ program.

    I thought his endless tweeting about “Obamagate” was his counter event; a way to throw mud at the program.

  100. 100.

    Brachiator

    @senyorDave:

    I would bet money that unemployment will be at least 8% through year end, and more likely to be 10%+. The US is now in worse position than most developed countries to come out of this. By middle of July we will be in a sever recession. People forget that demand will be greatly depressed for several quarters. People will be delaying most big purchases, especially cars. And businesses will be putting off capital investment because of a combination of lower demand and disastrous 2020 results.

    A lot of very good points. I noted before that I think that recovery will be very strong, but asymmetrical.  Yep, a lot of businesses may well be gone forever, but new businesses might spring up to take their place.

    The restaurant industry has been hit hard, as has the travel, leisure and entertainment industry. Will movie theaters and concert halls exist in the post-pandemic future? Sports and all the thousands of jobs, from vendors to parking lot attendants. What happens there?

    But there are some oddities. I saw an article suggesting that home mortgage applications were still near normal levels.  And for some people, the lockdown has been relatively good. With fewer places to go and spend money, the amount of income saved has increased significantly, and there has been a measurable decrease in credit card debt.  BTW, this may also make it a good time to buy an automobile. And more people who previously used mass transit may decide that it is now time to buy a car.

    The stimulus checks that people got were not huge, but they were a significant amount of money.  The enhanced unemployment benefits may be putting more money in people’s pockets. So I think that there is a good amount of backed up demand ready to be unleashed as the economy opens up. I notice locally that some businesses have hired people to modify interior spaces to accommodate social distancing recommendations, and also see some restaurants modifying their premises to deal with more take-out service.

    So again, I think that there may be a surprisingly robust recovery, even though there may be deep pockets of unemployment and business decline in various industries.

  101. 101.

    James E Powell

    @Baud:

    And Republicans are skilled at re-directing white people’s anger, channelling it away from them.

  104. 104.

    japa21

    @JMG: A lot is going to be different when this is all said and done. A lot of companies are finding out that work at home is viable and less expensive.  Office buildings are going to lose income as companies either go all work from home or, more likely, reduce space to a fraction of what they used.

  105. 105.

    Brachiator

    @Kirk Spencer:

    Don’t disagree at all. Historically (to my casual observation) the automation of the computer era has hit the higher paying brute labor the hardest – with certain additional fields (accountants and librarians for example) that require more education and skill.

    An interesting thing here. I work with a couple of companies who provide tax preparation services. One company noted a huge decline in business among the tax preparers for whom it provides software and support. More people are using tax software products and more took advantage of the extended tax filing deadline. And some, facing unemployment, may have elected not to file at all.

    But here is the thing. The tax laws are becoming more complicated and it is becoming more difficult to pay for programming resources and to make a profit from software products. Over the past couple of seasons, I have noted more errors and the need for more patches. So what happens when more people want to turn to tax prep software, but the industry is unable to provide reliable products?

    A bit of an aside, but this dilemma may be being repeated in other industries.

    Another side trek. In Southern California and other cities, Uber but the airport van service Super Shuttle out of business. But what if Uber and Lyft fail?

    Automation is increasing, and yet Amazon is hiring thousands of new workers.

    There have been more check-in kiosks. I also noted that McDonald’s uses order kiosks for people who do not want to order at the counter. However, one study claimed that these food order kiosks were contaminated by fecal matter because people do not wash their hands, and who wants to use these things in a post-pandemic world.

    Anyway, these are random observations, but I’m thinking that we don’t really know how profoundly the post-pandemic world might look, and how this might affect jobs and employment.

    BTW, I think we are a long way away from reliable automated vehicles. And you may need a lot of human monitoring stations to support them, even if you eliminate drivers.

  106. 106.

    MomSense

    I’ve been running fans in the laundry closet since Thursday night and the area seems to be drying well.  I had to pull up the linoleum floor, but that’s fine.  I’ll be glad to have the washing machine and dryer out of my living room.  Ugh.

    I’ve decided I am going to replace the dishwasher now instead of waiting until the pandemic subsides – because it won’t and because I just need to get my house functional.

    Any thoughts on a reliable, good value, no bells and whistles dishwasher?  Lowe’s has some Frigidaire models and a whirlpool, but I have no idea which is a better brand.

    I also need to buy a carpet shampooer and I’m thinking Bissell.  I love my mom but the combo of blind, impatient, some sort of cognitive decline, and super human strength is challenging.  How does an 82 year old woman bend metal hinges and door of a stainless interior dishwasher?  I mean how is that even possible.  She has never worked out a day in her life.

  109. 109.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay:

    They believe that governors instituted stay at home orders because they all crave authoritarian control and dream of denying people the right to go get a tattoo.

    they think climate change is a plot to give the government power to “tell people what to do” or some such drivel

  110. 110.

    Nelle

    @Ceci n est pas mon nym: we had our 40th in April.  We were going to mark it by returning to two favorite places where we’ve lived..New Zealand at the end of their summer (Feb and March) and Arctic Alaska where my husband was a bush pilot in our younger years.  Both cancelled.  We bought a lively bit of art in stead, by an artist my husband used to fly for her aerial painting series of the Kaw river.  And we got good ice cream.  Very nice and we’re content.

  111. 111.

    MomSense

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    Or just madness.  I’m now looking around the house thinking I want to do a deep clean and refresh in every room.
    I’ve magic erased every door and still there is discoloration from hand prints.  What is so repulsive about door knobs?  Would it be too much for people to use the actual door knobs?

    Also if I ever meet the man who first thought it would be a good idea to put metal baseboards next to the toilet – I will kill him.  Yes, I am certain it was a man.  He’s probably the same guy who positioned the ATMs so I have to put my car in park, unbuckle, and half climb out of my window to push the keys while shielding the glare from the sun with my other hand.  I’m on the lookout for a truck driving man with no fucking sense.

  112. 112.

    Brachiator

    @MomSense:

    Any thoughts on a reliable, good value, no bells and whistles dishwasher?

    The Wirecutter site recently had some good reviews.

    They really liked a Bosch dishwasher.

  114. 114.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @MomSense:

    He’s probably the same guy who positioned the ATMs so I have to put my car in park, unbuckle, and half climb out of my window to push the keys while shielding the glare from the sun with my other hand.

    I have never been to a drive up ATM that worked with my Highlander (mid-size crossover, I guess we call them now)

  115. 115.

    japa21

    @Dorothy A. Winsor: Surgery is Monday. Yesterday she had her Covid test and that takes 24 to 48 hours. Basically if we get a call we should worry. If we don’t hear by tomorrow morning she is negative.

    Thank you for asking. I will update later Monday, although we probably won’t have biopsy results.

  117. 117.

    Mai naem mobile

    @MomSense: I did the research about 3 years ago and there was a Bosch one that kept on being recommended so I got it and it was a piece of crap. It’s possible it wa a lemon but we got a brand new one not one of those discount dent ones. Anyhoo, that was the old house. Got a Kitchenaid one in the new house. Haven’t had problems yet but it’s too new to review. One of the reasons we got a Kitchenaid was because the one we had at the old house previous to the Bosch was a Kitchenaid that lasted for close to 20 yrs with possibly 2-3 repair calls.

  119. 119.

    Doc Sardonic

    @MomSense: Personally I have had good luck with a Bosch dishwasher. Easy to install, whisper quiet and seems to be very durable. On the topic of how one can bend the hinges on a dishwasher, not difficult to do, they are designed for a finite amount of travel opening and closing. To bend one can be done by a toddler using the open door for a step to reach the countertop.

  120. 120.

    NotMax

    @MomSense

    Check out Miele. On the one hand pricier initially, on the other hand you’ll have both energy and water savings for its lifetime.

    Of the budget priced types, although an admittedly small sample size, know folks who are happy with their Maytag or Kenmore units.

  121. 121.

    Calouste

    @japa21: One sector not to be in at the moment is commercial real estate. Lots of companies are rethinking working from home, restaurants and retailers are going out of business, travel is down and will take years to recover.

    On the other hand, remodeling homes to turn a single bedroom into two home offices might be a booming business.

  122. 122.

    WaterGirl

    @Mai naem mobile: @MomSense:

    I had both my refrigerator and my washer croak while in lockdown, and had to replace both of them.  I did not like having delivery/installation people in my house.  Twice.  But what are you gonna do.

    What I learned from both experiences is that it doesn’t seem to matter which brand, but appliances are now built to last about 8-10 years.  So the new ones are not built like that awesome KitchenAid dishwasher you had for 20 years.

    @MomSense:  I love my new Bosch dishwasher, though it took me about a month to figure out where my curvy plates and dishes could go, so I didn’t love it right away.

    But whatever brand you get, if it has the option that Bosch calls “Auto Air”, get it if you can.  When that is selected, the dishwasher door automatically pops the door open when it’s done, so you never have dishes with water or a filmy residue on them.

  123. 123.

    Kirk Spencer

    @Brachiator: Accountants took a big hit in the 1980s. (Yeah, I’m that old too). What you’re seeing is a conundrum I’ve noticed, no name for it I know of.

    Automation will eliminate a huge number of jobs due to doing the day to day stuff easily. But there’s that 20% (give or take) that needs intuition, inspiration, counter-intuitive action, etc. In other words the human touch. So you still need people for those things.

    The conundrum? It takes time and experience to develop people who can handle the exceptions. Except with automation the time and experience aren’t there.

    I keep talking about accountants because they hit this curve so far ahead of the other white collar automation. Lots of lessons to learn on training effective instant experts coming from that field.

  124. 124.

    SWMBO

    @WaterGirl: First World problems.  Our dryer needed a new belt.  Got it before the Before Times.  Haven’t had a chance to install it yet.

    My husband’s office was moving from one building to another, supposedly the end of December, then January, and it finally was the last week of March. Sigh. We started locking down around mid March. My husband’s work is an essential business, so they moved, kept building computers, and shipping product. He is the designated shopper and worker.

    First week after they moved their office and we were in lockdown, the washer joined the dryer in not working.  So my husband gets to do laundry while we are locked down.  Sigh.

    The dishwasher is/has been flaky for a while.  So I have to babysit it while it runs.

    And the central air unit decided to have a leak and quit while it’s ramping up for summer here.  Couldn’t get anyone out to work on it because the ac people wouldn’t come in the house to do it.  We need a new unit but good luck with that.  We have window units that are keeping the house cool enough to not cause fights.

    So we can relate to major appliances crapping out and putting off getting someone in to work on them or replace them.  There are days I think it would be cheaper and easier to buy a new place, put in all new appliances and just use the old house (paid for) for storage.  If I could get John Cole’s dad and neighbors to come work on this place, I’d do it.

  125. 125.

    Ruckus

    @JMG:

    Other than glad handing what requirement is there for in person contact in the sales of legitimate insurance? I used to purchase health, workers comp and business insurance for my company. I think I met with my health insurance agent – once. Over the phone and mail the rest of the time, today would be online. My auto insurance agent is located 500 miles from me, I never once met anyone from the WC insurance.

    I would assume that many companies could work the same way. I used to order from a nation wide industrial supply company – online. I never used the phone. I could order any time day or night and it would be sent the next day. We use the same company where I work now and if you call before 10am, as one of the 3 warehouse locations is close, their driver brings it by before 3pm.

    My bet is that a lot of business travel is totally unnecessary, it’s just the way it used to be done. Things change.

  126. 126.

    Ruckus

    @japa21:

    I think a lot of office space/bodies to do useless tasks, was there to make the big cheeses feel like the company size made their dicks bigger, because they had more people to lord it over.

  127. 127.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Mary G: Bet there’s a small-print clause in the latest House relief bill that forbids Orangecandyass from filing eviction notices against the NeverTrumpers camped out in the capacious vacuum of his skull.

  128. 128.

    Mai naem mobile

    @WaterGirl: I completely agree. Planned obsolescence because, you know, the planet can handle it(yes, I know energy use.) My sister’s has a tenant in her first house where she left her  good but nothing special top loader Kenmore washing machine. Tenant’s been there for over 20 yrs. My sister is on her third Maytag washing machine – second front loader. The tenant’s Kenmore crapped out  2-3 years ago. The Bosch dishwasher was just an utter disappointment for me because I spent quite a bit of time looking for a dishwasher and I thought it was the right thing. I just think it was a lemon.

  129. 129.

    HinTN

    @JPL: All that means it’s that the person declined to touch something required to sign. The pharmacy knew them and initialed, putting COVID-19 there as a signifier for the refusal. FEDEX does that. It’s pretty normal and doesn’t mean the person is sick.

  130. 130.

    Brachiator

    @Kirk Spencer:

    I keep talking about accountants because they hit this curve so far ahead of the other white collar automation. Lots of lessons to learn on training effective instant experts coming from that field.

    Even though this is likely a dead thread, I will keep track of the conversation and leave a quick note.

    The example of accountants is further instructive because, with consolidations in the industry, accountants soon went from doing stuff they knew, to doing stuff that they didn’t know at all, such as management consulting and other fields. Their “expertise” was not nearly as applicable to other fields as they pretended.

    I think this will apply to other white collar or “brainy” fields that become constrained by automation and technological innovation.  Also, even though the area is currently encrusted with all kinds of magical misunderstanding, I think that AI and variants is a particular type of automation that will render a lot of supposedly intellectual jobs obsolete. So, AI will do to highly paid white collar jobs what traditional automation did and continues to do to supposedly lower skilled jobs.

  131. 131.

    TerryC

    @Kay: My son, and a decent number of my friends in low income -positions are clueless Whitmer haters. It’s driving me crazy because most of them also hate Trump.

  133. 133.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Ruckus: My bet is that a lot of business travel is totally unnecessary, it’s just the way it used to be done. Things change.

    Concur. My guess is that most bidniz travel has for years been essentially a mini-junket that gives the bidnizman a chance to get away from home without the Old Ball & Chain, knock down a few drinks on a work night without penalty & maybe chase down a bit of Tale On The Trale. (Notice I said –man and not –person – though I’d guess there have been some fairly feisty GIrls’ Days Away From Home as well…)

    You wonder what the curtailment of bidniz travail would mean for the stability of families. Or for that matter the mobility of employees. One of the groups that’s going to get hit hardest is academics – one of the perks of the life is to flit from country to country to attend conferences, conventions & colloquia on funds built into research contracts. (I believe both of my Czech friends have visited every continent but Antarctica on their employers’ koruna or euro – & taken significant time before &/or after to do a bit of touring.) And yeah, they’re mostly junkets too, but curtailing those meetings is going to play hob with developing the kind of interpersonal relationships that lead to fruitful collaborations as well as the mobility of faculty between institutions. Not really sure how that’s going to play out.

  134. 134.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Brachiator: If Trump is reelected, the recovery will be slow and feeble because he’s a dumbass and policy will continue to be chaotic and foolish (even if other Republicans want to do their typical “crypto-Keynesian only when a Republican is in the White House” thing).

    If Trump isn’t reelected, Congressional Republicans and conservative judges will be trying their best to torpedo any policy that speeds up the recovery, to hurt the Democratic administration, so unless Dems can absolutely run roughshod over them, that will be a problem.

  135. 135.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mai naem mobile: Oh man, if it’s Duckworth we’ll see birtherism redux all over. (As with Obama, there’s no actual question about her being a natural-born citizen: she is, through her father’s citizenship. But of course there are going to be a million racist crackpot hypotheses about why she actually isn’t.

    (Knowing Duckworth I kind of wish a motherfucker would. The things she’d do in response.)

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