God help us, Trump is so hopped up on task force PR opportunities that he’s reportedly set to announce another task force, this one focused on economic recovery. The smoking crater that resides where the economy used to live is already actively being made worse thanks to Trump’s towering incompetence in handling the COVID-19 crisis and, predating that, his insistence on stocking the federal agencies with sycophantic idiots who were guaranteed to fuck up relief distribution.
Trump was stuck with competent people on the coronavirus task force since epidemiologists like Drs. Birx and Fauci were part of the package. He diluted that panel’s expertise with idiocy by injecting himself and toadies like Pence, Kushner, etc. Can you imagine what an assemblage of vultures, morons and ass-kissers he’ll summon to address a crisis on which Trump considers himself the foremost expert? We don’t have to imagine what a herd of feral, marauding thieves it will be — the fucking worst, of course:
This task force would likely include senior staff from the Treasury Department, the National Economic Council, the Labor Department and the Department of Commerce.
But it wouldn’t only have administration officials involved. There has been outreach to figures such as Gary Cohn, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, Art Laffer and even major sports teams and well-known athletes.
I look forward to hearing the economic opinions of deranged Trump-humpers like Curt Schilling, who lost $50 million dollars of his own and sucked up an additional $75 million in taxpayer dollars while bankrupting a video game company. Should he make the cut, laughably wrong curve person Art Laffer will contribute genius ideas such as these:
Influential conservatives have floated Laffer as the leader of the task force, and he has presented some ideas to senior White House aides on a plan to revive the economy. His plans have included a proposal to tax nonprofits, cut the pay of some public officials and offer a payroll tax holiday.
Pelosi and Schumer are going to need an extra-large bag of shush for this nonsense.
My guess is the recovery task force idiots will clash with the small contingent of experts on the coronavirus task force on when to reopen the economy, and Trump will listen to the ass-kissers. Then we’ll be right back on lock-down but with fewer resources.
November can’t come soon enough. The question is will there be a functional society left to turn around. If we’re not all full-time hunter-gatherers come January, maybe Biden can create a Trump Recovery Task Force to rebuild, as one does after devastating national disasters.
germy
Art Laffer . . . God help us.
JPL
The elections in November will be decided by those allowed to vote. If the next stimulus doesn’t include voting protections, we’re toast.
Matt McIrvin
If November comes too soon Trump wins, either because not enough people in swing states have twigged to his actually doing a bad job or because nobody in cities is able to vote.
piratedan
I just want to put all these fuckers on the big floating pile of garbage that is out in the Pacific Ocean, use a 10 mile pole and push them back out into sea, clear of any shipping lanes.
germy
Baud
Those are two of the people who need hazard pay.
Monala
Based on what I’m seeing on Twitter, rightwingers have a new talking point: Trump has saved 900,000* Americans! To criticize him means you don’t care anything about the 900k American lives he has saved!
* I’m assuming they mean that some were predicting a million deaths from Covid-19, so if only 100,000 Americans die, Trump has saved the other 900,000.
Unfortunately, I’m worried that a lot of Americans will fall for it.
mrmoshpotato
Wait. Pasty-ass shitbag Jared isn’t leading any and all task task forces?
???
gene108
If the nonprofits they want to tax are prosperity gospel megachurches and TV preachers, I’d be OK with it, but I doubt they touch those crooks, and go after local food pantries
Baud
@germy:
Good on CNN for reporting and not caving secretly, and also for this:
Litlebritdifrnt
Can someone explain to these morons (perhaps in words of one syllable so they will understand) that a payroll tax cut means NOTHING to people who are unemployed, nothing, zip, zilch, nada. They need to put cash into people’s bank accounts NOW.
Major Major Major Major
This ought to end well.
mrmoshpotato
@piratedan: Oh sure, pollute the Pacific even more!
Speaking of trash, I need to take mine out.
waspuppet
“Another way for ME to talk about whatever I want on TV for two hours!”
The Thin Black Duke
BIDEN 2020: Before Trump Kills Us All.
A Ghost to Most
Art Fucking Laffer? Where’s my wood chipper?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@germy: I think he’s more dumb and deluded than evil (I haven’t made a deep dive), but when I saw Laffer’s name come up, I thought the same thing as when I saw Kissinger had published an op/ed last week: Only the good (and smart) die young, or at least before Laffer and Kissinger.
mrmoshpotato
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Are you expecting the explanation to stick in their empty, dumbfuck heads?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@JPL:
While voting protections are important, I think Trump is toast at this point. Polls are already showing a majority disapproves of the federal government’s handling of this crisis and Trump got a pathetic bump from his “rally-around-the-flag” effect
mrmoshpotato
@Major Major Major Major: Narrator: It did not end well. It was a complete clusterfuck of dumbassery.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@waspuppet: How can the networks keep showing his marathon appearances? Granted, lots of people watch, but there are no ads. Where’s the money coming from?
Duane
@mrmoshpotato: Shitbag conman wastrel Jared has managed to bankrupt the nation’s stockpile of PPE’s so on to the next job. Failing up is such a grand proposition.
mrmoshpotato
@waspuppet: “Let me tell you how luxurious and tremendous I am! Oh so luxurious! Oh so tremendous! And the bigliest brain too!”
The Moar You Know
@germy: And in a stunning turn of events, CNN’s “above the fold” section of their landing page has 24 news items, one being about Pence’s ban, and seven being about Donald Trump.
Way to stand up to the man, toadies.
Searcher
Hey, the stock market has stabilized, what else matters?
Nicole
Since it’s an open thread, if it hasn’t been posted already, this New Yorker interview with Fran Lebowitz is pretty entertaining reading, especially the second half:
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/fran-lebowitz-is-never-leaving-new-york
Sab
@Litlebritdifrnt: It’s a backdoor way to weaken Social Security’s finances. They know exactly what they are doing.
mrmoshpotato
@A Ghost to Most: Marge Gunderson would approve – and help.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Monala:
We can’t worry about hypotheticals like that. It’s up to us to hammer home that message. 100,000 people dying is not something that can be spun.
mrmoshpotato
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Isn’t it more “sexually-assault-the-flag” when it comes to Dump?
japa21
When I hear people saying we need to open up the economy before it goes under I just say, “You can resurrect an economy, you can’t resurrect people.”
Nicole
You know, re: CNN- there are plenty of infectious disease and epidemic experts they could get on their shows who do NOT work for the federal government, and so can’t be banned from appearing by Pence, and would probably as, if not more, informative. But that would require CNN actually doing a little bit of work to find out who those people are, rather than just reaching out to their usual stable.
Lacuna Synechdoche
Believe me, I’ve no love for Schilling, but, to be fair, the game itself, Kingdoms of Amulur: Reckoning, was actually pretty decent.
For whatever that’s worth.
Major Major Major Major
@mrmoshpotato: It will mostly only hurt people where the governors don’t tell him to pound sand… I say this not in a “hooray, poor people in red states will die” way, just an observation that he’s killing his constituents. Again.
PenAndKey
@Sab: Exactly. The key takeaway isn’t that people would see a small increase in their take home paychecks. It’s to look at where those taxes that were cut would have gone.
mrmoshpotato
@Duane: “Well, that tire fire is burning bright. What’s next? Oh look! A pile of happy babies!”
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Also we shouldn’t worry about that particular thing too much since I’m sure he’ll find a way to bungle the response and kill tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more by November.
Nicole
@Sab:
Which will cause untold long-term damage to the economy, too, since it’s the people who don’t have enough income to save money that you want to give money, as it all goes right back into the economy. The rich just hoover it up out of the economy to hoard it.
I just don’t understand how the entire nation, most of whom are not rich, got so hoodwinked. The slack-jawed amazement I get on the face of so many fellow college-educated friends when I tell them every $1.00 of food stamps puts $1.33 back into the economy…
germy
@Sab:
the Biden Plan will:
mrmoshpotato
@Sab: Ahhhh good point. Didn’t even think of that – no payroll tax = no Social Security tax, no Medicare tax.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Nicole: I was thinking the same thing. Also, the White House can’t stop them from airing the correct and necessary things Fauci says, or the crazy things trump says, and they don’t have to air things like “Obama fucked up H1N1” or “the cupboard was bare” or “we had the biggest inauguration crowds ever” (no, he hasn’t said that yet in these briefings, but it wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he does).
and this threat underscores that the trump team view these “briefings” as campaign events, CNN should listen to them
Gin & Tonic
Yeah, thanks for making this Rhode Islander think about shitbag Schilling again, now that I’d basically forgotten.
mrmoshpotato
@Nicole:
But that dollar is going to the poors!
germy
Major Major Major Major
@mrmoshpotato: This is why we need neoliberal shills like Michael Bennet pushing through extra cash in unemployment checks & expanded benefits for contractors.
Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.
The idea that America will need a “Trump Recovery Task Force” is a great idea and should be used by the campaign.
Nicole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, this is a viral pandemic- none of the news outlets NEED anyone from the federal government to give scientific information to the public. There are plenty of university staff who can go on air and talk to the public. Hell, I got a fascinating spontaneous lecture from a viral expert who is a fellow parent at my son’s school about the different ways the immune system responds to illness vs vaccine in terms of long-term protection and the pros and cons of each, and that was just over breakfast one morning. The news outlets just have to be willing to do some googling and some calling but that’s wooooorrrrrrrrrrk.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
If we’re still learning new details about Nixon’s crimes, will it take 50 or 100 years for the Trump Crime Syndicate’s full tally to come out?
Roger Moore
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
They are desperate for cheap content.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Ohio has updated it’s models. Instead of 10,000 cases/day we will have 1,600/day at peak
The Twitter thread is full of people pissing and moaning, saying the models were flawed from the beginning and DeWine’s actions were destructive and unnecessary; that Ohio needs to open up by May 1st and that DeWine was listening to the doomsayers.
Here’s some replies:
I would like some opinions from people who have some expertise in this kind of modeling (Martin, Cheryl), but I suspect these people are too stupid to understand that mitigation has been successful and that the models were initially based on previous older info
mrmoshpotato
@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.: Used by Biden’s campaign, I assume.
Major Major Major Major
Mary G
Six months and two plus weeks hasn’t seemed such an eternity since I was in second grade longing for Christmas to come.
pamelabrown53
@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.:
Speaking of campaigns, I think Biden should create a shadow Recovery Task Force led by President Obama.
Nicole
@mrmoshpotato:
True. And there’s the rub. What’s the old saying, America is not a nation of rich and of poor; it’s a nation of rich and of temporarily embarrassed millionaires?
I have a 9-year-old, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the long-term effects of this pandemic on the character of the younger Zennials and Generation Alpha (or whatever it is they’re calling the kids born from 2010 to now). In NYC, there’s a real push to make people understand they aren’t quarantining for themselves; they’re doing it for someone else. I’m hopeful that, if there is any good to come from this, that a lot of the younger Americans (the ones who are still children) will grow up with a sense of responsibility to the community, and not a “everything for me” attitude, which I’m seeing in a lot of my fellow Gen-X and Millennial parents, some of whom are being real assholes about distance learning because they’re having to shoulder the burden of seeing that their child gets educated, heaven forfend (never mind that the NYC schools, at least, are all working really, really hard to provide continued education during this time- for me I’m so grateful to all the educators for what they’re doing).
I can hope, anyway.
mrmoshpotato
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin): Well, with decades-worth of being a mobster shitpile…
Ksmiami
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: get them in close quarters and send in an infected sandwich h delivery teen, let nature take its course
germy
germy
only the best peeeple.
MoCA Ace
This is going to be so fucktacular, powerfully so!!!
I’m going full hunter gatherer. Turkeys and deer in the yard almost every day and I’m expanding the garden.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Ummm…. what’s the context? Is Jamelle just randomly saying that?
mad citizen
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have no use for Laffer or Kissinger either. I had to look it up: Kissinger is ninety-fucking-six! He should have had his freedom of speech taken away in 1974–permanently.
Is Rush Limbaugh dead yet?
If it weren’t for the tens of thousands of deaths and millions of new virus sufferers, and the utter collapse of our economy, this would all be funny in watching the trump Team of Clowns actually try to do their jobs and run the Executive Branch of our formerly working government. Everything was fine when it was on autopilot. But they came out of the clouds for a visual landing and it turns out none of them can fly a plane.
germy
@mrmoshpotato: Today is Appomattox Day.
Deserves more attention, if you ask me. Should be a national holiday.
trollhattan
BoJo out of ICU.
And John Pryne is still dead.
Splitting Image
Mort Drucker, possibly the greatest caricaturist of all time, has apparently passed away at 91. He seems to have beaten coronavirus by dying of old age first.
NYT obituary.
I have trouble picking out a favourite MAD artist, but Drucker, Jack Davis, Sergio Aragones, Don Martin, and Al Jaffee are all in the running. Thankfully Jaffee and Aragones are still with us.
mrmoshpotato
@MoCA Ace: Excuse me, excuse, the most powerful, strongly, so strongly (long unneeded pause) fucktacular. -Dumbfuck J. Dump
Gin & Tonic
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): It’s going to be the same fucking morons who went on and on about how “nothing happened” at the Y2K turnover, so what was the big deal? Yeah, nothing happened because thousands and thousands of people worked on the problem for years to make sure nothing happened.
No amount of explaining will work.
germy
@Splitting Image: Drucker was always my favorite. I loved his work in the movie parodies.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
That’s what morons on DeWine’s twitter feed are doing, complaining that the notable shift downward is evidence that the models were always wrong. And if you point out that’s proof that social distancing has worked, then you’re “moving the goal posts”
sdhays
Oh, so now we’re going to tax churches?
germy
@trollhattan:
MoCA Ace
And yet he bankrupt the company. It’s not about the product, it’s the management.
germy
@sdhays:
He said non profits.
Raven
@germy: my wife is from there.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Ah yes. I shamefully forgot that. Hooray for the end of the lost cause – that never really ended. (See Jim Crow, segregation, Reagan, Bush I and II, Trump trash)
Nora Lenderbee
How does anyone take him seriously? His name alone is a dead giveaway.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
@mad citizen:
Is Rush Limbaugh dead yet?
Not yet, but if he, Hannity and a few other shits were to speak at Liberty University and join the meet-and-greet after, it might help. Maybe if Rush went to Hades because of Covid-19, some mouth-breathers might become dimly (and I do mean “dimly”) aware that something might be going on.
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic: Look here buddy. You’re still breathing, so why do we need clean air?
Salty Sam
How about up-sizing that to a barrel of Shut-The-Fuck-Up?
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Gin & Tonic:
Sadly, I think you’re right. I can understand and sympathize with people who are out of work and frustrated, but secondary peaks are a real thing.
I think opening up once cases are under control is the game plan, but we need to have expanded testing and tracking capabilities so that secondary peak doesn’t happen. Antibody testing too
Elizabelle
Jebus. Art Laffer was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom too.
By guess who?
Gin & Tonic
@mrmoshpotato: After that burrito and refried beans I had for lunch, I ain’t getting any either.
mrmoshpotato
@Salty Sam: You’re gonna need a bigger USS Shut-The-Fuck-Up.
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic: Getting high on your own supply, I see.
The Moar You Know
@Nicole: I’m on the old end of Gen X, as is my wife, who teaches junior high. The parents of her kids these days run the age gamut of younger X to older Millennials.
The emails are unreal. Really went to shit around 2008-2010. I hate people, more or less, and expect the worst from them, but goddamn, these people – on a weekly basis – make my jaw hit the floor.
And then we got the shutdown. The district instantly caved; they knew what would happen otherwise. No further grading of any assignments, and work done can only improve the grade, not bring it down. Not good enough; the parents are asking for straight As to be handed out for the entire year, and they’ll likely get that. At least it’s only the lunatics who are still complaining at this point.
I’d have hoped that some of the parents of the worst kids, having to deal with the little monsters at home for a month at this point, would re-evaluate how they’ve raised their kids and take steps to change their behavior.
Nope.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
Sadly, yes. I hate this timeline so much
Roger Moore
@germy:
They are exactly who we say they are. They want to reward rich people and punish poor people so the poor people will have more of an incentive to become rich, as if being rich weren’t already a big enough incentive.
Elizabelle
Kind of OT: speaking of other great thinkers:
The WaPost has retitled Kathleen Parker’s column today. It was originally headlined: “Now is not the time to cast blame”
It is now “All this blaming and shaming is making it harder to know what to believe.” The girl just does not know what to believe!
Nice try, Fred Hiatt
MoCA Ace
@trollhattan:
Shit, when I wished for a short stay in the ICU this is not what I had in mind
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Except Bruenig is a prominent socialist pundit.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@mrmoshpotato:
LOL, his flag humping is creepy
sdhays
@Baud: If it was Fox News and a Democratic President was “declining” interviews, they would be basically saying that s/he craps their pants at the thought of being interviewed by the tough interviewers on Fox.
mad citizen
@The Moar You Know: This all sounds like a definite signpost on the way to our inevitable Idiocracy.
Roger Moore
@Salty Sam:
I’m thinking more along the lines of a tanker of FOADIAF.
trollhattan
@Nora Lenderbee: @Elizabelle:
Guy who gave Kudlow a position of actual authority is going to be drawn to a fraud like Laffer. I’m sure his “best” work is still done on cocktail napkins.
mrmoshpotato
@Elizabelle: Haha, if most people are yelling “The Russthuglican Trump trash is to blame, and here are the receipts to back that up!”, what’s the confusion?
cain
@Nicole:
Because we worship wealth. People want to be wealthy. They think it is right around the corner.
It will all end when people forget about the boom years after WW2.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Boris Johnson is out of the ICU.
Also, I mentioned the other day that Alex Wagner is doing a podcast series for Crooked Media called “Six Feet Apart.” Today’s episode had an interview with a funeral director. He raised issues I never even thought of in a sensitive and smart way.
germy
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
Oh, sorry, I was talking about the Phillip Bump tweet.
Yeah, that seems like a terminal case of contrarianism. Trump is a neofascist, wtf would a socialist defend Trump?
Nicole
@The Moar You Know:
I swear, I got the distinct feeling from some of the rants I got from fellow parents that they don’t actually like their own children. Love them, sure. Like them, not so much. But that didn’t mean any self-reflection; it meant it was THE SCHOOLS’ FAULT FOR NOT TAKING THEM OFF THEIR HANDS. Some of them really seemed to think they could park elementary-age students in front of a computer for an 8-3 day of being lectured at in real time by a teacher, I assume so the parents wouldn’t have to deal with them (yeah, that’s not how it would work in the real world, folks). If I never have to hear the words, “synchronous learning” again, it’ll be too soon.
I’m so sorry you’re having to deal with them as part of your job. At least I can disengage from the group chats when I’ve had enough.
Betty Cracker
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Just got that notification on the phone, and I noticed (not for the first time) that even American outlets tend to drop the definite article when announcing hospitalization status for Brits: “BoJo remains in hospital.”
PenAndKey
I’m still working 50 hours a week and commuting two hours a day to and from work. My wife was laid off, but that didn’t happen until a couple weeks after my son’s school closed. We don’t have any nearby family and all the care facilities around here are closed to everyone but medical workers. He’s ten, and yet for those few weeks we had to rely on his love of video games and general willingness to do the assignments we gave him to keep him from burning the house down while we were gone. There were literally no other options, not if we wanted to keep a roof over our heads.
A lot of parents might suck, but piling on “give your kid a full school-level education with no training or warning” is a majorly stressful event and expecting parents with no pedagogical training to be able to fill the gap is unrealistic. When you add in the stress they’re very likely experience either from working themselves or worrying about their finances because they’re not working and yeah we’d like to think they should step up and be great teachers of their children, but nobody should be surprised when that doesn’t happen. They, quite frankly, have bigger concerns at the moment and if it takes letting junior play video games is what it takes to prevent a reenactment of The Shining then that’s what we’ll have to deal with as a society.
BC in Illinois
@Roger Moore:
I remember an analysis of Reagan’s economic philosophy. It was that we had made it so hard on the rich that no one wanted to be rich anymore, and that we had made it so easy to be poor that everybody wanted to be poor.
The only solution was to give money to the rich and take it away from the poor.
Kent
Teacher here with 2 kids currently at home doing their lessons. Unless I miss my guess, virtually every single school district in the country is going to treat this spring as a complete write-off. The distance learning thing is really hard and there are so many millions of kids falling through the cracks for so many reasons. What I expect is that next fall schools will just be forced to do triage and subject-by-subject figure out what they need to review/remediate/repeat and what they can just blow off and move on. Subjects like math that are more closely dependent on previous learning are likely going to have to do more remedial work than subjects like history where if you missed something like a unit on Texas History you just say fuck-it and move on.
My advice to parents is to try to keep your kids engaged in some sort of learning experience if you can. But don’t sweat the exact details. We had a clear night last night so I took my daughter out last night and we just did some astronomy. I don’t give a shit if it wasn’t exactly what was in her 8th grade science curriculum for this week. And if your teachers are doing a good job of keeping track of your kiddos progress and giving them meaningful work to do (AS THEY ARE GETTING PAID TO DO) then more power too them. If not, don’t sweat it.
jonas
*rolls eyes into next county* Right. But it’s the Democrats who are unserious because the House stimulus bill included funding for the Kennedy Center.
Betty Cracker
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): After the acrimonious 2008 primary, there were a few HRC supporters who went full wingnut. I think Bruenig and his horrid missus will follow a similar path.
RobertB
@Lacuna Synechdoche: ISTR that trying to do an MMORPG was what bankrupted the company. Schilling was a big MMO fan, and thought he had enough cash on hand to do a WoW killer. All of the backstory and a good bit of the art was repurposed into the single-player RPG.
Chris T.
Trump, verb: to shit upon; to destroy; to bankrupt. For example: “America has been trumped, and needs a recovery task force.”
Martin
@germy: Trump spent a few hours floating that the payroll holiday should be permanent. I think every Republican in the room shouted him down for showing too much of their hand.
sdhays
@germy: Ah, so he did! I stand corrected.
Recall
@germy: There is no such thing as solvency as far as the federal government is concerned.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
White socialism > neoliberalism
LuciaMia
You dont have to give any details but are you in an essential job?
Mandalay
O/T, but so far today (since 00:00 GMT) there have been 799 coronavirus deaths in New York state, and there were 779 yesterday.
It’s Thursday, and over 22% of all coronavirus deaths there have occurred since Tuesday.
But Trump wants us to get back to work.
sdhays
@trollhattan: Some people might be chastened by a brush with death like this, but I expect it to make BoJo cockier.
PenAndKey
We’ve been extremely fortunate in my school district. After the initial week of complete chaos my son’s teacher was able to set up assignments and asynchronous modules for the kids to watch for instruction. She also holds a number of 20 minute video calls every other day or so to touch base and has let all the parents know we can reach out to her for assistance if we have troubles. But yeah, it’s nowhere near what a fourth grader should be learning right now. My son spends his time doing Duolingo language lessons and coding lessons through Udemy (game development courses I already had for Unity and C# for my own learning). He’s also reading the book she assigned and doing daily reflections, as well as doing a math game online daily that I can’t remember the name of. Beyond that? Not a lot, and even then it’s only about 4-5 hours a day of instruction.
So basically he’s learning the following: math, foreign language, coding, English, and history (his book is a history novel). I highly doubt he’ll be at the fifth grade level by the end of the school year and if he had to take a standardized test I’d likely just toss it in the trash at this point, but I’m already hoping to fill that particular gap this summer in anticipation of him going back to school in the Fall.
And all this? It’s in the best school district within 30 miles. If he were in any other school in the area he wouldn’t be receiving any of that support. There’s going to be a lot of adjustment when this is all said and done. The good parents will try their best, as will the good teachers. The bad ones? They’ll do what they always do. We, as a society, will be dealing with the repercussions of this spring for a generation.
raven
GAINESVILLE, GA — With the coronavirus pandemic spreading, a Georgia Republican running for Congress is giving away a semiautomatic rifle to one “lucky” supporter who can use it to shoot “looting hordes from Atlanta.”
Paul Broun, a Tea Party Republican and former U.S. representative running for the state’s open District 9 House seat, announced a sweepstakes Friday to give away an AR-15 rifle to one person who signs up for emails from his campaign website.
PenAndKey
@LuciaMia: Let’s put it this way. Between the credentials needed to do my quality manager job, and the product we make where I work, if I don’t work a large part of the dairy industry in the US would close down about a month after I stopped doing my job. Sadly, about 30% of what I do has to be done on-site, so remote work isn’t an option either.
I’m fortunate that my employees realized very quickly that as an actual microbiologist I wasn’t full of hot air when I said this would be a major issue back in January. I also have a very good corporate support system in place so at least my compensation is good with relatively minimal outside contact. We’re a keycard facility so only employees have access to the grounds, but each employee is a potential vector every shift of every day so we’re still taking precautions.
trollhattan
@raven:
Not just an AR-15, a “freedom machine.”
Saw the ad and so want him to conclude by saying, “Now, get in mah belly!”
trollhattan
@sdhays:
Bet you’re 100% correct. “See, this is proof we needed Brexit.”
Once the docs explain to Boris he probably now has immunity, he’ll run around declaring himself “Invincible!”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Martin:
At #50, I linked to a Twitter thread by the Ohio Governor:
This a reply thread from under that thread:
What does that last comment mean? I’m not sure who the person is actually replying to. To me, it sounds as if they’re saying that because both the older OSU and newer OSU model assumed full mitigation, then that means that the drop in the projected cases can’t be because of the success of social distancing.
Am I missing anything?
PenAndKey
@trollhattan: Which will immediately make me see the “You’re a loony!” part of the Black Knight skit every time he does.
debbie
This shit needs to stop.
trollhattan
@PenAndKey:
“Have at you! Come back here and fight like a man, you sissy! Oh so that’s it, just run away.”
patrick II
He considers himself an expert on most everything. He’s a very smart guy.
Nicole
@PenAndKey:
No one is expecting parents to suddenly be full-time teachers. What would be nice is if some parents who have never faced any real adversity in their lives prior to this (despite what they may think), would stop telling teachers how to do their fucking jobs. That’s what I was reading and hearing from acquaintances and friends of mine- they were sending angry emails to teachers and administration, telling them what they expected from their child’s education during this time (never mind none of these parents have goddamn backgrounds in child education, oh noooooo, they know better just because!). And mind you, in the case of my child’s school, the distance learning HADN’T EVEN STARTED YET. The parents were complaining over something they hadn’t even experienced. It was crazy. SHUT UP AND TRY THE FUCKING GREEN EGGS AND HAM FIRST.
I agree, it doesn’t matter if kids spend a semester doing nothing but playing video games; they’re going to be fine. And I get that parents are scared and upset and trying to exert some control over an uncontrollable situation, but it gets old seeing teachers once again, be the punching bags for a frightened nation.
Poe Larity
Trump administration pulls funding for drive-through COVID-19 testing
The numbers are looking up!
Gravenstone
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): This is exactly what people have been warning about. That if we are successful in mitigating the loss of life through aggressive social restrictions, then every ill/uniformed piece of meat on two legs is going to scream that the restrictions were an overreaction. Fuck them, one an all.
Ruckus
@germy:
If there is a god, he’s probably laughing so hard that he’s going to have an apoplectic fit.
I said he because a she wouldn’t have let it go this long without some serious spanking, understanding of course that small children left alone often set the house on fire.
As trump has done.
Chyron HR
@germy:
Wow, it’s almost like Bernie is a lying piece of shit.
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
If I understand their point, what the initial poster meant was, “Ha, ha! Your initial model was wrong. You predicted 9600 peak cases with full mitigation and now you’re projecting only 1600 peak cases. How does it feel to suck that badly at modeling!” The response was, “Hey compare that to what we’d have without mitigation.” The final post was, “You don’t understand. They’re saying the modeling sucks.”
Major Major Major Major
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Many American socialists would happily vote for Herrenvolk socialism over Scandinavian capitalism.
Poe Larity
More good news:
Palantir expects revenue to top $1 billion this year
Task force winning:
Major Major Major Major
I watched some of a debate about socialism between her and like, some random dude from Reason, and she made libertarianism look good.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Dr. Ronnie James, D.O.: Well played sir. well played.
patrick II
@Gravenstone:
That reminds me of Ginsberg’s argument during VRA arguments (very rough paraphrase) — because you are dry is no reason to put down the umbrella when walking in a rainstorm.
Roger Moore
@Gravenstone:
I have to say, I’ve been very impressed by Mike DeWine in all this. He was one of the first governors to go all in on shutting stuff down, and he did it at a time when Ohio wasn’t a hotspot. Doing something drastic when the catastrophe you’re trying to avert is a hypothetical takes some real political courage. I never expected him to have it in him.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: WTF? That’s the Adolf Hitler economic recovery plan. Does it also include an invasion of Mexico and Canada so we can plunder their economies to pay for it too?
A Ghost to Most
@germy: You have a talent with a shiv, sir.
Matt McIrvin
Last I heard from Laffer, he was endorsing the theory that the 2008 crash happened because the markets were anticipating that Obama was going to win, therefore Obama caused the last recession before he was President. One of the obvious issues with this was that the big crash happened around the time of McCain’s best performance in the whole campaign–it was probably less obvious that Obama was going to win then than at any other time in 2008.
gvg
@PenAndKey: I don’t expect this to be over by fall either. Figuring out how to do next year better is a goal to aim for.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major:
At least it’s an ethos.
Shana
@MoCA Ace: If you’ve got turkeys and deer in the yard how do you manage to keep a garden going?
Between the deer, fox, squirrels and birds all we ever got was well-fed wildlife.
Baud
@Matt McIrvin:
The other obvious issue is that theory is bat shit insane.
A Ghost to Most
@Baud:
Shut the fuck up, Donnie.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Roger Moore:
So, the final post is agreeing with the first post, then?
danielx
@germy:
Art motherfucking Laffer: always wrong, never uncertain.
Fleeting Ex-istence
Been a long time since I was a church-goer, but isn’t Passover actually about being spared from a pestilence? I’m thinking there is real sermon potential here.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
See, I get the feeling that a lot of Europeans are racist themselves and that’s why their welfare states have done so well so far; most European nations are extremely racially/culturally homogeneous (frankly, a lot of nations are)
JPL
@Baud: hahahahaha this and so much this.
MomSense
Art motherfucking Laffer and his back of the napkin plagiarized horse and sparrow fuck the poors bullshit economics. How many times in the last forty years has this asshole’s economic theories ruined our lives?
jayjaybear
One thing that Republicans can reliably be counted on for is doing the entirely wrong thing economically. “Let’s tax orgs that HELP people into the ground while we free orgs that don’t give a fuck about anything but their profits from any and all tax burden!”
Kirk Spencer
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): see y2k crash
If you see a disaster and you act to avoid it, everyone thinks you wasted their time and money because it wasn’t that bad.
On the other hand it’s a great touchstone for evaluating things they tell you in the future.
jayjaybear
@raven: “looting hordes from Atlanta”
Wow…he didn’t even bother to pull out the dogwhistle.
LuciaMia
@Matt McIrvin: Silly Wabbit. To Republicans EVERYTHING can be made to be Obama’s fault. Being Holy week Im surprised theyre not hinting he had something to do with the Crucifixion.
Roger Moore
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
That’s how I read it. They think the modeling changing its prediction after more data was available proves the model is worthless. And if the model is worthless, then their optimistic imagination about what would have happened with no mitigation is just as good as the model, which proves DeWine was totally overreacting.
Subsole
@Major Major Major Major:
And everyone standing within 20 kilometers of his constituents….
Sigh.
Not throwing that at you, by the way. Just general frustration.
Everyone feeling better over at your place?
Baud
@Roger Moore:
It’s like how a snow storm in January in Minnesota proves climate change isn’t happening.
Major Major Major Major
@Subsole: Yes, red states are sadly full of many, many innocents, and this isn’t a targeted sort of pain.
I had a sore throat and cough that came on very suddenly after a walk Sunday. Monday, very minor bronchial inflammation. Fine now. It happens to me in the spring sometimes, but boy did I freak out.
Baud
@Major Major Major Major: Same here. I have to pay closer attention to my allergy symptoms now.
Subsole
@Major Major Major Major:
The only good thing I will say about libertarians is that the ones I’ve met do value a dollar. Far too much for anyone’s good, granted, but they at least appreciate the fact that money represents an investment of time and labor and the hold that has on people.
I don’t think the dirtbag left has that same visceral grasp of their supposedly-animating cause. It’s just props to them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This is funny:
What makes it funnier, the author of that lovely sentence: one time Beltway great white moderate Republican hope, Mitch Daniels! Was it just in 2012 that Daniels was going to come back to Washington from the Heartland and restore the Great Broderist Consensus of Entitlement Reform, Education Reform and Comity in the Senate? Whatever did happen to Joe Klein, anyway? I’m a political junkie and a grudge holder and in general have a fairly good memory, and seeing the name “Mitch Daniels” threw me for a split second, like the name of a TV actor who was huge in the 70s and then vanished.
FTR and before a fight starts, I’m agnostic about nouns and adjectives becoming verbs and round and round and round, language evolves, but that is one ugly sentence.
Haydnseek
@RobertB: Don’t tell me, let me guess. You get paid by the acronym.
JPL
@Major Major Major Major: Kimmel said that he and his wife wake every day with symptoms. It’s awful
Subsole
@Major Major Major Major:
@Baud:
For real. This summer is gonna be…thrilling. I always get a real bad summer cold at least once. Ugh.
jl
Only person who both deeply understands what is going on, what needs to be done, and can explain that clearly, is Fauci, IMHO. So pray hard for him, even if you do not believe the fundamental assumptions of that process.
What is going on with Birx is hard to figure. Given her reputation and experience, my best guess is that the two of them are playing good cop bad cop with Trump to keep him under control and from firing one or both of them. Let’s hope that is true.
For me, bottom line is that extremely expensive control techniques, like social distancing that involve big economic shut downs are only delaying tactics. From experience we have several models of how to control disease with more sustainable methods of controlling transmission: South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and may be some European countries to watch (let’s see how Sweden and Denmark do). From those, has to be some mix of good policies that can be adapted to the US, or different states in the US.
Doesn’t make any difference immediately over next 3 to 8 weeks (depending on the state) since most states are forced to ride some version of the exponential explosion curve until past the peak. Then come the hard modelling and policy problems to solve.
I heard Fauci and General Honore compare how to control epidemics to fighting a war, and I think they are correct. Speed, mobility, logistics, quick concentration of mass forces, ability to get inside the disease’s OODA loop, flexibility are key.
Need to think like US Grant, Eisenhower, Patton (edit: forgot Sherman). At national leadership level… I don’t even want to think about it. Probably each state or region where states can cooperate, is on its own in figuring out a good plan. Will be different range of good plans for different states and regions.
Latest horrible idea from admin is Trump’s talk about a ‘Big Bang’ opening of economy. that is very dangerous. Need incremental experiments in opening up gradually.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I disagree with Mitch. The digital world has anachrotized writing.
Barbara
@Major Major Major Major: Elizabeth Bruenig is one of the most clueless self-referential writers I have ever read. Half the time I can’t tell what point she is trying to make because she is so focused on her own experience.
Subsole
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Calvin said it best: verbing weirds language.
randy khan
Trump listening to the advice of his council of economic nincompoops on COVID-19 risks the worst kind of result – a double-dip pandemic plus a double-dip economic panic. So the odds that he’ll do it are about 3-5.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
Not quite. It’s like the way our years of intensive preparation for Y2K saving us from any serious problems meant it was an imaginary problem. Except in this case they don’t have to rely on hypotheticals to guess how badly things could have gone. They can just look at places like New York and Detroit, but they won’t because it doesn’t tell them what they want to hear.
Subsole
@germy: If Biden wins we should swear him in at the courthouse.
Betty Cracker
@Subsole: That’s an insight that rings true to me. Ironic that people who boil everything down to economics tend to have such a tenuous grasp on what it means to earn a buck.
@jl: Good theory about Birx. Her behavior has puzzled me because she’s obviously smart and competent but strays into Dear Leader territory sometimes. Your explanation makes sense.
jl
So, remember there are two camps talking about how to end extremely expensive social distancing shut downs asap. The ‘ignorant fool’ camp, and I probably don’t need to explain that. Then the experienced epidemic and outbreak control camp with lots of practical experience with diseases that have some similar characteristics to covid-19 in terms of control: bacterial meningitis, TB, whooping cough. To name some names: Gottlieb, Mostashari, Friedan.
The ‘ignorant fool’ camp talks about arbitrary end dates, and when the numbers get ‘little’ and when only 15 cases, hey, I guess they’ll go away by themselves.
The camp with good theoretical foundations and practical experience in infectious disease control talk about putting measures in place that will allow much cheaper forms of transmission control to be put in place and TESTED REAL TIME IN US CONTEXT, as extreme economic shut down controls are gradually lifted. So appropriate and massive testing program in place (two flavors, testing for control measures, and testing for population surveillance), contact tracking and quarantine, syndromic surveillance, early environmental surveillance (e.g. signs of bug in wastewater, enclosed public areas, etc), good supply and population policy on use of masks. And letting experience from successful experiments in other countries and states being the guide.
And, on national level, I don’t even want to think about it.
Subsole
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Problem there is, if we test to the needed degree it will quantify just how lung-scorchingly badly Republicans shit the national bed.
No testing, so no numbers, so plausible deniability.
Another Scott
Relatedly (?) – Reuters:
(Emphasis added.)
Wasn’t that a line in Alice’s Restaurant??
Cheers,
Scott.
Geminid
Heavy weather is forecast for the Southeast this weekend. A strong possibility of tornados Saturday and Sunday. Here in Virginia we’re supposed to get slammed Sunday evening/night.
NotMax
@Subsole
“Pay no attention to the
mannumbers behind the curtain.”//
Subsole
@jl: Yeah, that disjointed response thing is gonna be horrific, further down the line.
We are about to re-learn why this country ditched the Articles for the Constitution.
jl
More evidence on why extremely costly measures like social distancing shut downs are unsustainable, both in US and internationally. Some examples, no time to get links.
Immunization programs for polio and measles being shut down internationally. Already harm to monitoring and maintaining US immunization programs. Anyone want to add outbreaks of adult whooping cough to problem of monitoring for covid-19? Make diagnosis harder, whooping cough has basic reproduction number > 5, no or borderline herd immunity for adults. (Edit: cough and fever first symptoms, how many clinicians who haven’t seen much will get the characteristics of the whooping cough correctly in time to weed out false positives? How many covid-19 cases will be confused with whooping cough in an outbreak of something hard to figure out?)
Neglect of normal health system population health maintenance. Every avoidable heart attack, stroke, transition from prediabetes to diabetes, means more high risk people. Increasing ‘flatten the curve’ efforts in the future.
In US, more and more reports of health professional layoffs in news (unbelievable!), more and more problems keeping primary care providers operating for non-covid-19 population health maintenance.
And national level policy on these problems? I don’t want to think about it. I guess Fauci and Birx and that is about it, among top level.
Subsole
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Best explanation I heard was along the lines of “If you flipped from Bernie to Trump, you weren’t progressive. You were a libertarian who didn’t like living in a libertarian economy.”
Baud
@Subsole:
Or a racist.
cain
@The Moar You Know:
I think you should read this – https://www.reddit.com/r/ProRevenge/comments/fg94q9/keep_screwing_over_your_group_members_this/
A story of revenge by a teacher against the kind of bullshit you were just referencing. It is EPIC.
Citizen Alan
@The Moar You Know: Could be worse. I was a band director before law school and still have a lot of band director friends. And some of them are wondering if they’re witnessing the end of their profession, since ensemble performance is effectively impossible in a Covid-19 world.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
Or a sexist. Or a spoiled brat who didn’t like not getting his way.
ETA: Obviously not mutually exclusive possibilities.
Patricia Kayden
Trump Recovery Task Force = make back every last dollar that Trump lost during the Coronavirus crisis. It’s certainly not going to focus on helping regular working folk.
NotMax
FYI.
MoCA Ace
@sdhays:
Lets not get ahead of ourselves… there’s still time.
jl
OK, some good news. Some urgent elective procedures and time sensitive medical therapy for non-covid-19 at acute care hospitals restarting in SF Bay area. From radio news report.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Major Major Major Major:
Hope you feel better, man
@Baud:
You too, Baud
@Subsole:
I predict this entire admin’s response is going to be a huge scandal that will not just be memory holed
@Subsole:
To be fair, isn’t there a difference between “big L” libertarianism and “small l” libertarianism?
@Roger Moore:
Thanks, that was my interpretation too. I had to reread it a few times to understand what they were trying to say
MoCA Ace
MoCA Ace
Turkeys aren’t bad. They generally like to dust in the garden so if you just give them a spot they leave the rest along. Deer has been a battle. I have two dogs so the deer are generally more out in the field than in the garden. I use a lot of repellent spray and it helps but I may have to put up a fence if the deer population gets any higher.
MoCA Ace
@jayjaybear:
No it’s still firmly wedged up there!
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Gravenstone:
Yup. These people have to be pushed back on
laura
Spouse made a loaf of bread. The smell is heavenly. We’re gonna be big as a house shortly. That is all.
rikyrah
@germy:
uh huh ?
uh huh ??
rikyrah
@laura:
I wish I knew how to make bread?
rikyrah
@The Thin Black Duke:
Good bumper sticker?
rikyrah
@germy:
Go ask Kansas about Art.??
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@rikyrah:
Maybe you could try recipes online?
Yutsano
@Haydnseek: I thought that was Silverman.
debbie
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Are they still calling for DeWine to be recalled and Action to be fired?
NotMax
@rikyrah
No time like the present to learn. Wanna start with something simple and non-intimidating? Aside from the few ingredients, all you need is an oven, a loaf pan, a bowl and an implement with which to stir. No waiting for it to rise, no kneading. Mix ‘n’ bake.
Reviews from fellow jackals: #1 – #2.
Frankensteinbeck
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Oh, HELL, yes. Very much so. Until 9/11, I got told by brown immigrants that Americans – in the South, no less – treated them way better than Europeans had. France has quite a history of anti-Muslim laws. Germans have their lovely ‘Greeks are lazy’ schtick. Brits, bizarrely, hate the wrong kind of white people. Why is the right wing surging in Europe? Because they’re finally seeing noticeable mixing. Everybody could be cool while they felt their race was unchallenged.
CindyH
@Nicole: I have CNN on all day while I work from home and they’ve had all kinds of experts on from US states as well as WHO. However, I still want to hear from Fauci
joel hanes
@Subsole:
No testing, so no numbers, so plausible deniability.
This has been Trump’s strategy since January.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@debbie:
I’m going to assume these types are, demanding DeWine stick to his “promise” to end the stay-at-home order and other social distancing measures by May 1st, which is definitely way too soon imo. Especially with the feds ending funding for drive-thru testing. We need to be able to track and trace cases and find out who is and isn’t immune before any lockdowns can be relaxed. They don’t consider that a second wave could happen
@Frankensteinbeck:
Is it safe to say that Americans are somewhat better on balance when it comes to race relations because we’ve been a diverse nation for far longer?
At least we can have 50+1 coalitions of whites+non-whites
I know that there’s a strong TERF streak in British feminism for whatever reason too. American feminism’s embrace of intersectionality and trans rights have created a rift between them and British feminism
rikyrah
@Nicole:
Just go get everyone of the pandemic task force that Dolt45 fired. Put them on.??
joel hanes
@Citizen Alan:
band director … are wondering if they’re witnessing the end of their profession, since ensemble performance is effectively impossible in a Covid-19 world
Remember that polio and the 1918 flu happened, and that there were band directors afterward.
They’re going to devise a vaccine for SARS-COV-2
But it’ll be a lean couple years until the mass vaccinations.
jl
My response to E not showing up. My references were included:
Scott Gottlieb, Farzad Mostashari, Tom Frieden (sorry for typo, but google search corrects it).
Also, Ashish Jha good for expertise on what testing programs should look like.
They all have twitter feeds with discussion, links to research, etc.
Groucho48
@germy:
I assume this is mainly directed at Planned Parenthood.
J R in WV
@Shana:
You need a critter-proof fence around your garden spot. The bottom of the fence needs to be buried deep enough to keep rabbits out, and tall enough to keep deer out. Turkeys don’t fly over fences much, so won’t destroy that much of your garden. Having a dog around helps a lot, too.
Ruckus
@Nicole:
I had someone ask me about the virus getting in the soap and being transmitted. Explained to him that the virus has a lipid outer shell and that the soap dissolves lipids, rendering the virus effectively dead. The look on his face told me he of course had no idea what a lipid was.
Ruckus
@Boris Rasputin (the evil twin):
Probably not. The damage is so wide spread that restarting is not like flipping a switch, we are likely going to have to rewire the entire process first.
Subsole
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I hope you are right, and enough people stay activated.
As to big/small L libertarianism? Yes. In theory. America’s Libertarian Party is essentially neofeudalism trying to cloak itself in populist rhetoric about freedom and self-determination. Ancaps are a really good example of this. Personally? Most of the ones I’ve heard from are one bread-riot away from falangism.
Theoretical libertarianism is a lot more left-friendly, to the point where some strains of libertarian thought derived from actual anarchists.
I honestly haven’t paid as much attention to the theory side as I should, because I have only ever dealt with the actual practical side. From what I gather, a lot of early libertarian theory started off as a transitional “bridge” to eventual anarchist utopia. Practical anarchism, I guess? As I said, not an expert and would love to hear from folks who are.
oatler.
@Subsole: Have you seen the “libertarian” website Reason lately? The comment section is a snakepit of white supremacist basement dwellers snapping at each other like toothless piranhas.
Ruckus
@Roger Moore:
They don’t give a shit about the poor, they only care about keeping more of “their money.” Also if the poor were to die off, that would be less reason to tax as much. If the poor were to become rich that would hurt them because money is a fixed asset, there is only so much go around. That last sentence tells you everything about most of the wealthy, who have no idea what the value of money is, only the amount they have.
joel hanes
@Ruckus:
he of course had no idea what a lipid was
When I explain this, I remark along the way that “lipid” is the biochemist’s way of saying “grease”.
The virus is a dirty greasebubble around some RNA.
Many simple bacteria are greasebubbles around some DNA
These facts explain why soap and water is the greatest public health invention ever, even better than sewers.
Redshift
@Roger Moore:
Like they are with climate change. If the model’s predictions are “uncertain,” which all models except those from charlatans are, then no one knows anything and we should ignore them. And it’s okay to assume the most optimistic end of the range of results (which is especially bad with IPCC models, because they only report results that are very certain, so in every revision, the predictions are worse, not better.)
But I digress…
James E Powell
@Major Major Major Major:
Prominent socialist? You’re killing me, Smalls!
chopper
@Splitting Image:
god fucking damn it!
Ruckus
@rikyrah:
I’ve made bread before in my life but it’s been decades. I made a loaf a couple weeks back and the only thing I had to remember was to use the back side of a knife to wipe the top of the measuring cups so as not to use too much flour. Also I used instant yeast rather than regular as called for so the bread didn’t rise twice like it should have. I have no mixer, bread machine, just hands. Recipe was on the flour bag and the result was not as large, because it didn’t rise in the pan or as lite a loaf as anticipated but the flavor was incredible. It was a whole wheat bread. I’d make it again in a heartbeat and happy if it turned out exactly the same.
Give it a try, making bread isn’t actually that hard and you get to eat your mistakes, just like your successes. Here’s a good website with tips and recipes.
chopper
@germy:
if only dave berg was around to write “the lighter side of death”
Ruckus
@joel hanes:
Yep, same page. Except he has no real science background, which of course I knew but hadn’t thought about. Been a long time since I was a college tutor or helped other kids in class.
Sab
@rikyrah: Quick breads are easy. Yeast breads are slightly trickier because the yeast has limited temperature range it tolerates. Treat ot it like a newborn kitten. Not to cold not to hot but always on the warm side. Plus it likes a bit of sugar. Like a kitten it needs to be fed.
chopper
@Kirk Spencer:
same reason people hate vaccines. “we don’t get polio anymore, what’s the deal?”
Sab
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Hadn’t been a deWine fan before, but my God he has saved our state so far. Problem with epidemics is if you succeed it looks like you overreacted. I cannot imagine how bad it would be if Kasich or Mary Taylor had been in charge
Cordray would have been okay but no one would have listened.