Friday, May 29, 2020

NO IT WASN'T!


Day before yesterday, and it wasn't.  I know what the press reported, but they aren't lawyers and apparently can't read a court opinion for shit.

You really need to read some new sources of analysis.


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Watching the World Burn


Sad that we need to say that.  The media still hasn't figured out how to report on this clown.  That's another weakness exposed.


Your free speech is what makes me feel free.  Otherwise it's just censorship.  Of me.

I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.  Especially since I'm old enough to remember the anti-flouride crowd.  Had they been more powerful, I'd probably be wearing dentures by now.  Just because nimrods have a voice, doesn't mean they have to be listened to.  At all.

Another one of those conversations, huh?  Okay, I guess I better go read it....

As Kissinger observed, power is an aphrodisiac.

And winning isn't everything; it's the only thing.  Trump is not winning.
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One Of These Things Is Not Like The Other

One of these things just doesn’t belong.

Yeah, the cops in Minnesota suck, but is arresting reporters their worst offense and on par with 100,000 dead?

“Thank You!”
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“Thank You!”




Yeah, but Nixon never signed off with “Thank You!” or called so explicitly for violence to quell violence. Still, this isn’t getting better anytime soon.
Well, as long as history is repeating itself...

“Thank you!”
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Tough But Fair

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So What’s The Story Here?

The shocking level of incompetence? Or the empty bravado? Is Trump going to use the military against Americans? Is he unaware the looting started two nights ago? He clearly doesn’t know he can’t do this.

If he gave an order, I think even the Pentagon would pause. Then what? If he doesn’t give the order. he’s as impotent and useless as an old man at an orgy who forgot his Viagra. If he does, it’s impossible to say the emperor is not naked. And mad as a hatter. This’ll morning he’s back to raging about Twitter, but no mention of the note they slapped on this tweet. Whatever happens next, it won’t be good.
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Nothing to see here (yesterday edition)




Yeah, but he's got the Presidential seal! And the Presidential podium!

Nothing to see here....

That's still the best part.  And explains why Barr was standing there for the signing, and slamming social media companies with Trumpisms.  Barr knows this is to keep the boss happy (the rubber ball and blunt scissors aren't doing it) and no harm will come of it because it's a squib that will never fire. And the boss will move on to something else now.

For the record, I think Popehat and Winklevoss are saying the same thing.  I appreciate really good snark when I see it.
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Dear Universe


I'm sorry.  I was just kidding.  I didn't expect to be taken seriously. I know now that sarcasm is dangerous, and really shouldn't be tried at home.

I promise to do better next time.
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Why Don’t You ...

...go back to yelling at Twitter and voters? We’ll call you if we need you.

It’s pretty clear we won’t, because this kind of “help “ we don’t need.
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Thursday, May 28, 2020

On the other OTHER hand


Apropos of what I posted earlier....
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The Real Victim Here




Well, the stock market wasn't distracted:

Neither was the Secretary of State under Obama:


Maybe we should fix that "you can't be fired" provision.

Yeah, this is a good look for the GOP.

"First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers."*


*I had a t-shirt with that printed on it, back in the late '70's when it was popular.  I wore it down the apartment complex pool, where an older guy congratulated me on it and expressed his support for the sentiment.  He grumbled and left shortly after I laughed and said I was going to law school.  I may have even explained to him that Shakespeare meant it as a formula for chaos and anarchy, not a solution to society's ills.

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"If This Crack Pipe Wasn't So Good To Me..."


"...I'd throw it away!"

Mind you, it's a really good crack pipe!
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The Answer Is:


Trump is not a sooper-genius.

He positively doesn't know what he's doing.

He's a toddler with a shotgun.

(I still like the odds facing Google, Facebook, and Twitter.  Although Zuckerberg is a putz.
I'd watch it.)
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Just Because I Miss "Calvin and Hobbes"


Best named comic strip evah!
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She Didn't Lie


She just added 25 points to the truth.  Trump does it all the time, but he usually adds 150 points or more. But he's the President, not the Press Secretary.

And what's more truthful than even more truthful information?
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Future's So Bright!


The Law of Moses had the same insight (though, as far as I know, the Israelites never really did it.  The love of property, and power, is the root of all...something.).  The whole idea of "jubilee" connected to debt forgiveness is irrecovably Hebraic, in fact.  The article implies they got the idea from Babylon, which I don't doubt for a minute.  But we remember the Hebrews; without them, who remembers Babylon at all?

And I'm gonna shift gears and quote a bit of the interview, because I've been having the same thoughts myself:

Whereas previously, you were working in an office. As a result, there’s a lot of empty office space. Who would build a new office building? And you’re probably driving less than you were. So your car, like mine, is getting much less depreciation on it than it otherwise would. So chances are it’s going to last longer. Cars obviously aren’t going away. But the producers are dependent on the flow of new demand. And that’s going down.

So start there. And then think about basically any service establishment you want to name, all of which depend upon customer flow, and many of which depend upon packing them in because they’ve got very thin margins. This is true of almost all restaurants and bars. Now, these businesses have accumulated debts. If you cut their order flow in half, there’s no way for them to pay their debts and make their tiny margins. How can you make them viable? Only by eliminating the nonproductive factor that keeps piling up as debt, which is rent.

You can flood the system with cash on a short-term basis, but that doesn’t solve the investment problem or the consumer-demand problem. So, inevitably, there’s going to be a big reconfiguration. Exactly what form it takes, I don’t know. One thing you could do is buy the capital assets of firms that are in principle viable, or that could be viable at a lower rate of return; basically, buy off the landlords and then set up some kind of a cooperative model with the operators. That way, you get some of the community life back. That way, the downtowns come back.

My daughter works for a company that is letting employees work from home, and she finds it quite easy to do (her work is on a computer, so....).  She's also high risk because of underlying conditions, so even getting in an elevator with one other person to get to her office is a non-starter right now.  Google and Facebook are talking about letting people work from home, and the primary question is, would they get the same pay for living in Indiana as for living in San Francisco?  But I have a nephew in commercial real estate, and I'm already thinking:  if people can stay home, who needs all that office space?  Business can cut overhead there, even if they don't reduce salaries, and still add a great deal back to the bottom line.  But what of the building owners and developers?  As Galbraith points out, what of that debt load?  Shit, that could bring more than walls tumbling down, huh?

Oh, and my daughter has a one hour one-way commute, because of where she lives relative to the office, and the traffic.  She'd give that up, too, in a heartbeat.  But what of the restaurants that depend on office workers to buy lunch, not to mention the oil companies that expect to sell the gas for all those cars no longer on the road?  The mechanics expecting to repair all the wear and tear on those cars?  Texas has a gasoline tax to pay for roads; what happens when gas sales decline precipitously? Some of these changes won't be because of concern over contagion, but because people will be asking "Why do we go back to that?"

And then there are the people who clean and service those buildings.  What do they do?  And the people who sell services (Maintenance, climate control, control systems, to name a few) to those building owners.  What of them?

This is going to go beyond a debt jubilee, even if you get some of the downtowns to come back (or the office nodes, as we have here in Houston).  The Galbraith interview is worth reading, even as it wanders off into the weeds of economic theory and "rational man" type stuff (bunkum and fiction, most of that).  I'm not sure how many restaurants recover, for example, if they can't pack the place at lunch and dinner.  Reducing their capacity is like cancelling Christmas for retail stores.  Cancelling their debts won't really start them over.  If businesses start re-opening but realize many employees don't want to return to the office, and those buildings start looking ghostly, it won't be ripples in a pond from a tossed stone.

It'll be bricks through plate glass; perhaps literally.  We probably don't face apocalypse; but we face changed times ahead, and we need to start seeing that.
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So, Be Careful What You Wish For?


Now I'm almost hoping Trump succeeds.
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The Hits Just Keep On Comin'!


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Irony Last Seen Getting Into An Ambulance


Commentary:
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Let Us Now Be Dismissive of Powerful Men


Despite the dismissive wrapper, the article enclosed is worth reading.  Sure, there's a "forever search for what makes the president do the things he does."  Equally, there should be a forever search for what makes the media cover such an abnormal and aberrant President the way it does.  The blind spot is pretty apparent here:

What Limbaugh is describing is Heath Ledger's "Joker" from "The Dark Knight," except this isn't a fictional character in a scripted movie where the good guy wins, this is the sitting POTUS. Ledger's Joker is described by Michael Caine's Alfred as someone who "just wants to watch the world burn."*

And that's nothing more than a better analysis of "about 90 percent of analysis out there"?  Especially if it is, I call it scary as hell.  And Limbaugh's evident delight in his analysis and his cleverness makes him a monster.

But hey, the "forever search for what makes the president do the things he does" goes on, n'est pas?


*I saw Rick's comment, below, after I posted this, but I still want to give him credit.  Great minds thinking alike, and all that.
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