1/ Trump's latest strategy - starve the states to get leverage....
President Donald Trump. Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
President Trump’s current pandemic strategy — emphasize current; like the cliché about the weather, if you don’t like it, wait a few hours — is a baffling knot of contradictions. He is hurling all responsibility to state governments, leaving it to them to devise effective tests and to decide when to relax social distancing.
2/ A serious story from David Wallace-Wells on how China could come out of this crisis much stronger than before.....most interesting....
Staffers prepare to spray disinfectant at Wuhan Railway Station. Photo: STR/AFP via Getty Images
When, at a meeting of the G7 late last month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo so fervently insisted that the group refer to COVID-19 as the “Wuhan virus” that the meeting dissolved rather than issue even an anodyne statement of concern, it seemed, at first blush, just another projection of Great Power xenophobia from the Trump administration — the U.S. trying to pin the blame for its own evident failures on another, more distant and more sinister enemy.
3/ Preliminary study that says coronavirus spreads many many times faster than they thought. This has some implications that are disturbing - it means [say] 50 times as many people are infected, the overwhelming majority of whom are asymptomatic so they don't know without testing that they have it and are spreading it.
The key is testing.....which Trump's gub'mint can't provide....
A new study in California has found the number of people infected with coronavirus may be tens of times higher than previously thought.
The study from Stanford University, which was released Friday and has yet to be peer reviewed, tested samples from 3,330 people in Santa Clara county and found the virus was 50 to 85 times more common than official figures indicated.
4/ Every one of you should watch this Bill Maher segment - he is beginning to think we have overreacted to the coronavirus, and that the conservatives rioting for us to get back to "normal" may have a point....the deaths from the virus of people under 50 is very small.....most of the casualties are over 65, and especially over 80. Maher sometimes says truths that are against the herd mentality, and this might be one of them. Five minutes....
5/ You will love this song.....a quarantine song, under a minute....
6/ Tom Tomorrow....
7/ Oh Lordy.....a story from Politico that says Trump could well win re-election not in spite of this disaster we are living through, but because of it.
He has been training for this moment his entire life....
It was the spring of 1995. Donald Trump was this close to finished. He had spent the previous five years constantly, and barely, avoiding financial ruin and what he worried would be a permanent stain of personal bankruptcy. In that time, his marriage had collapsed, he himself had incurred debts of almost a billion dollars, all three of his casinos in Atlantic City had filed for bankruptcy, and the best of the three, Trump Plaza, was losing almost $9 million a year. https://www.politico.com/
8/ The Trump sandwich.....note the delivery ad!
9/ Andrew Sullivan with a very good column on the virus.....
He also comments on a show on Netflix "Unorthodox" which Mary and I have watched - and loved. It's a wonderful four part series....
Photo: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
Most plagues have had scapegoats. There seems to be something deep, deep, deep in human nature that responds to existential threats like this one by seeking to blame someone else, or some other group, or even an errant individual. The most intense example of this in history is the Black Death. It was the occasion for a spasm of pathological and eliminationist anti-Semitism that surpassed anything that had happened in Europe before — laying the basis for a future Holocaust.
10/ An oldie...Buddy Hackett on the Carson Show....two very, very funny minutes....
11/ Trevor Noah on KellyAnne and more.....10 minutes....
12/ The oldies are getting the virus in Florida....
Yes, The Villages has the highest death toll of any city in Florida.
The Villages residents just weeks ago were refusing to cancel club meetings, with many dismissing the coronavirus as a hoax.
But as of Wednesday morning, well over 100 Villagers tested positive for COVID-19. The mortality rate for Sumter County, where most of the retirement community sits, nearly a dozen had died from the disease. The mortality rate in the county was more than triple that of the state as a whole.
In fact, an analysis by Florida Politics shows that among those counties with greater than 100 cases of COVID-19, the mortality rate for Sumter County remains the highest in Florida.
13/ One of my favorite music videos ever is this one from Above and Beyond, with Zoe Johnson....it's a beautiful song, Zoe has a spectacular voice and it's a mini-movie in four minutes........think "Thelma and Louise" set to great music.....
14/ Eighty three[?] of the best movies on Amazon Prime....
The Criterion Channel is the gold standard for classic cinema, but, in trawling for international and Hollywood classics, along with American independent films old and new, I was surprised to discover that Amazon, too, is a cornucopia. I capped this list at eighty-three movies but could have doubled it with ease. (Access to some of these movies requires secondary memberships, but you can avail yourself of free trials to most of them, to find out whether their offerings merit the extra cost. I find myself relying frequently on Fandor.)
15/ Scott Maxwell with another excellent column.....Central Florida, a very unfair economy....
Two new reports paint a devastating picture of Orlando’s economy.
The first is the annual wage survey from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
It shows that, once again, Central Florida ranks dead last — 50th among the 50 largest metros in America — when it comes to median wages.
Todays video - I love this one.....11 hypnotic minutes of planes landing at Birmingham airport in the brutal winter crosswinds.....
You know you have the time!
Todays Will Rogers jokes
Will Rogers, who died in a 1935 plane crash, was one of the
greatest political sages this country has ever known.
Some of his sayings:
1. Never slap a man who's chewing tobacco.
2. Never kick a cow chip on a hot day.
3. There are two theories to arguing with a woman. Neither works.
4. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
5. Always drink upstream from the herd.
6. If you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.
7. The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it back into your pocket.
8. There are three kinds of men:
The ones that learn by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence and find out for themselves.
9. Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
10. If you're riding ahead of the herd, take a look back every now and then to make sure it's still there.
11. Lettin' the cat outta the bag is a whole lot easier'n puttin' it back.
12. After eating an entire bull, a mountain lion felt so good he started roaring.
He kept it up until a hunter came along and shot him.
The moral: When you're full of bull, keep your mouth shut.
ABOUT GROWING OLDER...
First ~Eventually you will reach a point when you stop lying about your age and start bragging about it.
Second ~ The older we get, the fewer things seem worth waiting in line for.
Third ~ Some people try to turn back their odometers. Not me; I want people to know 'why' I look this way.
I've traveled a long way, and some of the roads weren't paved.
Fourth ~ When you are dissatisfied and would like to go back to youth, think of Algebra.
Fifth ~ You know you are getting old when everything either dries up or leaks.
Sixth ~ I don't know how I got over the hill without getting to the top.
Seventh ~ One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it's such a nice change from being young.
Eighth ~ One must wait until evening to see how splendid the day has been.
Ninth ~ Being young is beautiful, but being old is comfortable.
Tenth ~ Long ago, when men cursed and beat the ground with sticks, it was called witchcraft.
Today it's called golf.
And, finally ~ If you don't learn to laugh at trouble, you won't have anything to laugh at when you're old.
Todays Chicago joke
Bob was sitting on the plane waiting to fly to Chicago, when a guy took the seat beside him. The guy was an emotional wreck, pale, hands shaking, moaning in fear.
"What's the matter?" Bob asked.
"I've been transferred to Chicago- I've heard the people are crazy there. They've got lots of shootings, gangs, race riots, drugs, poor public schools, and the highest crime rate in the nation."
Bob replied, "I've lived in Chicago all my life. It's not as bad as the media says. Find a nice home, go to work, mind your own business, and enroll your kids in a nice private school. It's as safe a place as anywhere in the world."
The guy relaxed and stopped shaking and said, "Oh, thank you. I've been worried to death. But if you live there and say it's OK, I'll take your word for it. What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a tail gunner on a Budweiser truck.Todays joke for the ladies
A Spanish language teacher was explaining to her class that in Spanish, unlike English, nouns are designated as either masculine or feminine.
"House" for instance, is feminine: "la casa."
"Pencil," however, is masculine: "el lapiz."
A student asked, "What gender is 'Computer'?"
Instead of giving the answer, the teacher divided the class into two groups, Male and Female, and asked them to decide for themselves whether "Computer" should be a masculine or a feminine noun.
Each group was asked to give four reasons for its recommendation.
The men's group decided that "Computer" should definitely be of the feminine gender ("la computadora"), because:
1. No one but their creator understands their internal logic;
2. The native language they use to communicate with other computers is incomprehensible to everyone else;
3. Even the smallest mistakes are stored in long term memory for possible later retrieval; and
4. As soon as you make a commitment to one, you find yourself spending half your paycheck to buy accessories for it.
The women's group, however, concluded that computers should be masculine ("el computador"), because:
1. In order to do anything with them, you have to turn them on;
2. They have a lot of data but still can't think for themselves;
3. They are supposed to help you solve problems, but half the time they ARE the problem; and
4. As soon as you commit to one, you realize that if you had waited a little longer, you could have gotten a better model.The women won.
Send this to all the women you know...... And to all the men that have a sense of humor.
No comments:
Post a Comment