Defintively the Twix Milk but with a hard milkshake spin.

• Good tweet—

Joe Giza @JoeGiza

My grandparents and great grandparents lived a certain way their whole lives after living through The Great Depression. I’m sure today’s kids will be affected their whole lives by this current crisis in ways we can’t even think of.

5:27 PM - 16 Mar 2020

• I liked this one, too… It's said that Hopper's paintings are about the spaces between people. (Google "Hopper Hotel Lobby" for my favorite... Keep clicking until you see a wideshot version with both women, and you'll know why the wife can't quite take the meaning of the moment.)

And more in tweet form—

• There's sincere disagreement about whether today's election in Ohio is even happening… And there are sensational arguments on both sides about whether or not it should be.

• Similarly, people are ready to disassemble all sorts of legal protections and machinery to make this crisis more convenient for the polic

Er, more convenient for the citiz

Well, more convenient for somebody.


All these messes & precedents are going to be no fun to clean up in the years ahead.

Whoops— This was the link for the second part of that.

Kaus is asking some brilliant questions about the election. (Remember that?)

You could subscribe to his newsletter.

Twix Milk? Starburst Yogurt? Ugh.

If I can paraphrase a quote that is often attributed to H. L. Mencken, "nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American people."

I want a Louis Vuitton hand sanitizer

https://twitter.com/MCappetta/status/1239608804666417152

I bet the Twix Milk can make a pretty good white russian.

President Trump gets his share of criticism — some warranted, much not. But recently the president’s critics have chosen curious ground to question his response to the coronavirus outbreak since it began spreading from Wuhan, China, in December.

It has been alleged by multiple officials of the Obama administration, including in The Post, that the president and his then-national security adviser, John Bolton, “dissolved the office” at the White House in charge of pandemic preparedness. Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious.

https://archive.is/9LJ9O

Some people manage to survive the teen years, despite their best efforts to achieve room temperature.

https://www.thedrive.com/news/32589/drag-racing-florida-teens-injured-after-launching-lexus-rx-into-high-flying-flip

A partial list of messes and precedents.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/the-top-eight-most-totalitarian-proposals-in-the-wake-of-the-covid-19-threat/

What is old is new again.

https://www.sciencealert.com/a-classic-therapy-from-the-1890s-could-help-protect-against-coronavirus-experts-say

Math is hard, or "don't let auto suggest provide you the wrong order of magnitude", or "double check your work before posting".

https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/03/why-cant-liberals-do-arithmetic.php

That took longer than I thought, tho I think Iran was blaming the Joos a while back.

https://twitchy.com/gregp-3534/2020/03/17/rosanna-arquette-brings-us-to-the-blame-the-jews-phase-of-the-covid-19-pandemic-screenshot/

Hard to believe it's only been a week since the President lead the American response to this crisis:— "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away."

H.L. Mencken needed to travel more, that's for sure.

> that's for sure.

Don't get it. Never read Mencken… I'd have thought he was an aphorist. (At least Orwell tends to be cited by the paragraph.)

Meanwhile—

• The authorities have everything under control.

• Another genie out of another bottle.

What's the expiration date on those

Two more for the 'Let's not pretend the Chinese are secretly friendly' file, which is spilling from the cabinet and weeping out into the hallway....

Giving every American a thousand dollars is witless and essentially meaningless, as the money doesn't exist.

Deferrals of up to $1,000,000 in tax payments is abject lunacy. THAT's the money that we're going to miss.

It will be the slipperiest Bottle Genie of all time.

• Rampaging Bottle Genies, never again to know the darkness.

Suddenly feeling the deepest admiration for my forebears for keeping things going well for as long as they did.

• Here's a woman with an interesting voice. (PG)

Iowa, California, Ohio and now Texas... Bad times for the American voter.

We should be calm. It will go away. It may kill 10% of the retirement set and a comparative handful of younger, but go away it will. Today the news is screaming The First Corona Virus Death In TX. Read down a ways, you see it was a man In His Late 90s!!!( not that you'd know from the headline). Medicare, Social Security, and society as a whole would benefit from the natural outcome of this. Instead, we are tanking the world economy to save...people at the end of their long lives. Insane.

Yes, my parents are elderly. Yes, this may kill them SOMETHING will, and they agree this level of hysteria to give them another year or few is ridiculous.

Thanks for that advice, M4. We keep reading stories of 38yo's with no comorbidity on ventilators, so your perspective is tremendously reassuring. Curious, though... Pick a year of life, any number. How many people under that age would have to die horribly before you'd be concerned? And how close to your family would the disease have to reach before you'd be less annoyed with screaming and tanking? For all of us, "SOMETHING will."

Ask not, is how they used to put it.

Cream Cheese Genies on the Prowl.

Well I lost my mother this last summer. When you are responsible for the health and well being of an elderly person what scares you the most is being totally helpless to protect them from something like this. Especially if they are in a care facility.
I’m very glad my mother died quickly of heart failure and not suffocating with pneumonia like my father did. That was a brutal way to go,

That said. I agree the press has been inflammatory and I suspect counter productive. The government and the press have cried wolf too many times for us to automatically trust them now.

Trust is a metric, theirs and ours, not a coin for stingy collectors. We're supposed to figure stuff out, and that's not a responsibility dismissed in complaints that the rest of the world is insufficiently candid.

I've been amazed, simply stunned, at how many people are unfamiliar with the natural history of diseases of this type… Including the reckless young adults who've been congregating and snuggling up in clubs and restaurants in just the few days that I've been ensconced in my hyperstylish bachelor sex palace. 'Golly, so you're saying I might have the virus, and be shedding it into the lives of others, even though I feel perfectly okay? And this can go on for something like one to two weeks? Well, then… Let's hit the restaurant and the bar for one last Thursday night out… Hell, let's make it the weekend....'

Bill DiFucking Blasio didn't figure this out until he the slapback from his staff after *Sunday's* visit to the YMCA. Sunday! Some number of deaths in the weeks ahead, with God-knows how much of the political and economic havoc, belongs on his ledger.

Grade school science… Junior High science… High School science… And books, movies and history lessons throughout. What have these people been doing when this vast panoply of truth was paraded before them across even young lifetimes?

People are stoo-pit.

Crid is old, and works in television. I nominate him to work my 18 hour nursing days. He'd die day 1, and since he does nothing for society, it'd be no loss.

I'd give my parents lives to stop this hysteria. My parents would too. I also do everything in my power to enact my patients wishes-even if I find them absurd, personally abhorrent, or in in complete defiance of all common sense. Because I Work For My Patients. Who do yo-oh yeah, tee hee.

Crid is old, and works in television. I nominate him to work my 18 hour nursing days. He'd die day 1, and since he does nothing for society, it'd be no loss.

I'd give my parents lives to stop this hysteria. My parents would too. I also do everything in my power to enact my patients wishes-even if I find them absurd, personally abhorrent, or in in complete defiance of all common sense. Because I Work For My Patients. Who do yo-oh yeah, tee hee.

> I'd give my parents lives
> to stop this hysteria.

You have interesting ideas about sacrifice… But carry on. No tears, though.

We should be calm. It will go away. It may kill 10% of the retirement set and a comparative handful of younger, but go away it will. [...] Medicare, Social Security, and society as a whole would benefit from the natural outcome of this. Instead, we are tanking the world economy to save...people at the end of their long lives. Insane. ~ Momof4 at March 17, 2020 8:15 PM

I'd give my parents lives to stop this hysteria. ~ Momof4 at March 17, 2020 9:57 PM

Remember when tales like Logan's Run were horrifying warnings - not blueprints?

I just received notice that someone I've known for a few years, a mother in her forties with a husband and two children, has been diagnosed with this and is in the ICU. I doubt her family is casually dismissing this as something that "may kill 10% of the retirement set and a comparative handful of younger." I doubt her children are rubbing their hands in glee as they think of a soon-to-be solvent Social Security system.

There are always tradeoffs Conan. As a contractor I am more or less unemployed for the next month because the schools are all closed. Many people in other jobs are experiencing the same thing. All the waiters and bussboys and such are laid off because you can only do takeout around here. I personally am fine financially, but a lot of people aren't.

How many people are rubbing their hands in glee that SS will be solvent (however temporarily) vs how many are rubbing their hands in glee that hundreds of others are looking at becoming homeless?

**Medicare, Social Security, and society as a whole would benefit from the natural outcome of this. Instead, we are tanking the world economy to save...people at the end of their long lives. Insane.** Mom of 4

This must be that “ethical atheism” we are always hearing about, making the sacrifices others are just too weak to make. Hey, I have an idea why don’t we spread to the infection to all those useless eaters? Think about all the money we can save! But, let’s make sure we start with your mom and dad. Its perfect because, as you said, they are already down for it. Pro tip: make sure they prepay their funerals. We cremated my dad last year and it was expensive. Let us know how it goes. America salutes your initiative.

> Pro tip

❤ Sheepster