The Non-Stock Market Responds to COVID-19

‘The sleep of reason breeds monsters’ – Goya

Italy is freaking out:

Confusion spreads as Italy tries to lock down 16 million people

Washington Post  ROME — Italy on Sunday launched a complicated and urgent plan to restrict the movement of roughly 16 million people, a measure that unleashed confusion about how it could be enforced and whether it would be enough to slow the spread of the coronavirus….

Meanwhile  here at home, there seems to be a run on “survival supplies,” as an accidental view on Amazon seems to point out.

Joe Biden, Super Tuesday and Missionary Ridge

I watched the aftermath of Super Tuesday yesterday, and was astonished at the sheer imbecility of our pundits and talking heads. Then I read the navel gazing of our print mavens, and I have to say:

YOU ENTIRELY MISSED THE POINT, guys.

Let me tell you a story, about WHY General Douglas MacArthur spent his entire life trying to live up to his father, Arthur MacArthur, who won the Medal of Honor for his actions at the Battle of Missionary Ridge, in Chattanooga, Tennessee in November of 1863.

When we’re done, you will understand what the pundits (and most Civil War historians) missed.

Grievance Politics Trumps Rational Thought

UPDATE:

CNN and MSNBC both had similar panels. Elizabeth Warren could ONLY (by implication) have lost because of …

Amanda Terkel / HuffPost:

Elizabeth Warren Could Never Escape The Baggage Of Being A ‘Female Candidate’  —  She was qualified.  She persisted.  But sexism still mattered.  —  Elizabeth Warren wasn’t trying to be the first female president.  —  She wanted to be president.  She wanted to cut banks down to size and relieve student debt.

This was the original article written yesterday before Warren dropped out:

Jessica Valenti / GEN?—?:

It Will Be Hard to Get Over What Happened to Elizabeth Warren  —  I’ve had to come to terms with America’s sexism again and again  —  knew going into Super Tuesday that Elizabeth Warren was unlikely to win big.  I had prepared myself for that.  What did take me by surprise, though …

I know. On Facebook, I had to bite my tongue mightily when a poster wrote a long bit about how Bernie’s loss showed JUST HOW PREVALENT ANTISEMITISM is in America.

Moreover, the author was a Black woman.

We are headed down a dark and stupid road.

Shaving with William of Occam

 

Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth. — Sherlock Holmes

Think about this for a moment:

Trump’s new intel chief makes immediate changes, ousts top official
Brooke Seipel / The Hill

—  President Trump’s new acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell, has already made major changes at the agency, including ousting the No. 2 official.

—  Former acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire and his deputy, Andrew Hallman, resigned on Friday. According to The New York Times, Grenell told Hallman, who has worked for national intelligence and the CIA for three decades, that his service was no longer needed.…

Please note that the new “acting” director has ZERO experience in intelligence, whatsoever.

I say that because the “media” seems to have forgotten that deductive logic is also factual. The question: What does this mean? is not purely confined to the Op-ed pages, nor has it ever NOT been part of the journalist’s  Who What When Where Why.

Topless Girls on Skates on Ice

I don’t actually want to know any more THAN this:

Topless protesters storm stage as Bernie Sanders campaigns in Nevada
Shant Shahrigian / New York Daily News

—  A group of protesters blew their tops — literally — as Sen. Bernie Sanders was campaigning in Carson City, Nev., on Sunday.  —  The Democratic presidential hopeful had just finished introducing his wife Jane O’Meara Sanders as …

Heck: Topless girls on skates on ice, just thirty miles away in Reno.

That’s relatively normal for Nevada, which is, on balance, FAR more normal than these days of madness in which we (by “we” I mean “we” as in “We, the People”) now find ourselves enmired.

Nu?

A Valentine’s Day Surprise

The fractal heart

For some reason, the local alternative paper decided to “out” me. I say this because when I got to town, there were giant billboards stating REAL MEN DON’T NEED PORN.

But then, I have never tried to hide my past, so it’s not all that important. In this modern world, I am presented with a dilemma: my profession demands self-promotion (a/k/a ‘bragging’) as a distasteful and yet necessary part of marketing.

I have always hated it, but it’s here, so here it is.

This Is Going To Be Ugly

Well, day one of actual voting (as opposed to Quisling horse-race coverage of personalities and not issues, and endless polling — which we now all consider questionable) has concluded and it’s a MESS.

[…]

And there I stopped a couple days ago. I had my suspicions. Cui bono: who benefits?

We are in for a world of hurt, kiddies.

Oh, and Louisiana Republicans?

As Louisiana GOP censures Mitt Romney, David Duke laughs
Quin Hillyer / Washington Examiner

The same Louisiana Republican Party that 30 years ago refused to censure former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke decided last Saturday to censure Sen. Mitt Romney.  —  The mind reels.  The stomach sickens. The Republican State Central Committee, the elected body that controls the internal governance of the state party, essentially said Romney for too long has been mean to poor, defenseless President Trump…. [emphasis added]

Add to that (the Clusterf*** in Iowa) the shame and eternal stain of the rigged and jury-tampered impeachment “trial” and the astonishing and utterly surprising Mitt Romney act of moral courage, and the Magic 8-Ball® was entirely clouded over.