April 15, 2020

Good morning. I've been out to see the sunrise, and now I'm back...

B5F3E466-65E1-4177-8293-6881A1973ECC_1_201_a

... gazing into the internet, waiting for the bloggable things to rise out of the murk. It seems to happen every morning, but that doesn't mean it always will.

49 comments:

born01930 said...

that picture is kind of like the Statue of Liberty

Buckwheathikes said...

The fat bike tire controversy has been settled.

It was a bicycle.

Guy has filed a criminal complaint against Chris Cuomo.

https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/long-island-bicyclist-verbally-attacked-by-chris-cuomo-fires-back/

Also Cuomo now says he loves his job after saying yesterday he hates his job.

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/chris-cuomo-seems-rip-cnn-195343723.html

So, his leash-holder at CNN obviously yanked his.

Darrell said...

I hope you saw the light.

MadisonMan said...

Beautiful morning for my walk today -- if you ignore the below-normal temperatures.

Darrell said...

Snow by me in Chicago.

Sydney said...

We had a beautiful sunrise today, too. It was one of those days when the sun makes the tops of the trees facing east look like they are on fire.

iowan2 said...

Check your bank account, Our rich Uncle dropped a $2400 nugget in ours last night.
(I haven't told my grand kids they have to pay this off when they start working)

David Begley said...

If Hillary was President and she had acted exactly like Trump has, what would be the media reaction?

Sydney said...

"Rise from the murk." Boy, isn't that the truth! The mainstream media seems to have spiraled down further than I ever imagined they could. Will they ever get their reputations back? At least among the sane?

Temujin said...

Maybe it's me, but it seems that all that rises each morning these days is the same thing that rose yesterday morning. And the morning before that.

On the other hand, nice shot!

Qwinn said...

USA Today article I'm seeing linked on MSN.com:

"Governors hand experts the mic during virus briefings, presenting a contrast to Trump".

Cause you know, if you've been watching the daily briefings, that Trump NEVER ALLOWS "experts" to talk.

Except every single one, aside from yesterday.

Holy God these people are fucking maggots.

Sydney said...

I have been pondering what the relief package would have been like if Hilary were president. If past experience is any guide, it would have left small businesses to hang, while all the big donors to The Party got help.

Browndog said...

4th day in a row of snow. Definitely ready for this weather pattern to change.

I'm ready to get out there and..um.....ah, well.

rehajm said...

If Hillary was President and she had acted exactly like Trump has, what would be the media reaction?

Mercifully we'll never know for certain.

Buckwheathikes said...

"Governors hand experts the mic during virus briefings"

So, breaking social distancing rules. Are they disinfecting the mic as they hand it over? That's the contrast. You don't see Trump handing people mic's in his press conferences.

Temujin said...

Well, there's this bit on the Dem national strategy working well in Weesconsin. Voter Suppression? (might be behind paywall).

stevew said...

"If Hillary was President and she had acted exactly like Trump has, what would be the media reaction?"

We will never know but I suspect, based on their behavior and reaction during her presidential run, that they would display and write fawning admiration. We'd hear over and over about how wise it was for America to elect the most competent POTUS EVER.

That it will never happen fills me with delight.

iowan2 said...

If Hillary was President and she had acted exactly like Trump has, what would be the media reaction?

We know how the media treated Obama. He declared he wasn't King, only congress could offer relief to illegal aliens. The promptly wrote executive orders to aid illegal aliens. It was a sign of an uncanny servant of the people, thinking outside the box.

Karen said...

I hope you someday put together a book of your sunrise pictures. They are magnificent, and this one is particularly brilliant. The new Anne(Sel) Adams.

Buckwheathikes said...

Here's CNN providing cover for China's bat-soaked wet markets:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/14/asia/china-wet-market-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html

Do note this article was written by Serenitie Wang.

That's China's version of George Costanza's father.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

David Begley said...
If Hillary was President and she had acted exactly like Trump has, what would be the media reaction?


They would want a checkup from the neck up. As they would for any politician who behaved like Trump has in his recent press conferences.

tim in vermont said...

“I can’t be responsible for every undercapitalized small business” - Hillary Clinton.

gspencer said...

By endorsing doddering Joe so late in the primary game the former-president-but-still-a-Muslim avoids making two wrong endorsements, one in the primary, the other in the general.

Whenever a D loses it’s always a positive for America. Under O’s eight years, something like 1000 Ds lost seats. Yah!

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Can you imagine the reaction is any other politician was transparently attempting to buy votes like this? But the bar has been set so low with Trump that it will be a one day story at best.

Stimulus checks worth $1,200 for every American have been 'delayed for days because Trump demanded the IRS print his name on them after being told he was not allowed to sign them'

Nichevo said...

https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/long-island-bicyclist-verbally-attacked-by-chris-cuomo-fires-back/

Like a wild animal. Like a bully who was the runt of the litter. Raging beyond his ability to cohere. And was there a little fag-baiting?

“I want to be able to tell you to go to hell, to shut your mouth … I don’t get that doing what I do for a living: me being able to tell you to shut your mouth or I will do you the way you guys do each other.”

Boo hoo, a little impulse control is demanded of him. Boo hoo, he can't meet speech with (steroid-fueled?) violence, he who gets paid to talk, and not to talk nice.

Who raised this wolf? Apparently older (by 13 years) brother Andrew often functioned in loco parentis, and that apple fell right under that tree. But both Andrew and Fredo were issue of one man, Mario Cuomo.

I was young and ignorant and disposed to think well of people I had not met, but I didn't understand Bob Grant's rallying cry,

“Mario asentta mme. Tu sei propio nu’ sfaccime!”

(Read More: Bob Grant – An Intimate Memory of a Talk Radio Giant | https://nj1015.com/bob-grant-an-intimate-memory-of-a-talk-radio-giant/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral )

“Mario asentta mme. Tu sei propio nu’ sfaccime!” Mario, listen to me, you are a proper [scumbag|lowlife|something untranslatable from Neapolitan dialect of Italian].

For those with good Italian you can listen to the man himself here:

https://m.soundcloud.com/hankhayes/the-king-of-talk-radio-bob-grant-salutes-the-sfachime-mario-cuomo


But what did I know? He seemed so grave and stately in his speeches. Though some suggested he didn't run for President in 1992 because the skeletons in his closet wore pinky rings and made offers you don't refuse.

Any gate, dignified or not, by their fruits ye shall know them. Some fruity kids you got there, Mario C.

Beloved Commenter AReasonableMan said...

Trump said, “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total”.

Turley said, "Pres Trump stated that “When somebody is President of the United States, his authority is total.” The Constitution was written precisely the deny that particular claim. It also reserved to the states (& individuals) rights not expressly given to the federal government."

Qwinn said...

"Can you imagine the reaction is any other politician was transparently attempting to buy votes like this?"

I don't have to imagine. The reaction is adulation and cheers and a monolithic presentation of those politicians as being "for the people"... when the politician in question is a Democrat.

Every fucking time.

But you know this.

narciso said...

every time

Leland said...

We have a cardinal that has decided social distancing means attacking its reflection in the window for 12 hours a day. It's like having Meade constantly tapping on the window.

narciso said...

every redacted time

narciso said...

they never stop

tim in vermont said...

Well, there’s four fishing boats out there on the lake today all kind of bunched up, so I am assuming that there is a large school of crappies or maybe yellow perch out there. Nobody is taking down the tag numbers of the pickup trucks parked at the boat launch. Vermont has never been locked down like some of the states I am hearing about. The governor gave the order that no police enforcement of stay at home guidelines would happen. The libertarians joined up with the Republicans to elect our current governor. It would have been ironic had they split the vote and put a Democrat in control of this crisis here. There are usually more Libertarian + Republican votes for governor than the Democrat gets. Democrats like Leahey and Sanders win easily with huge out of state financial and logistic support.

TwoAndAHalfCents said...

Leland - when I read your comment my mind immediately went to a cardinal (church type) instead of the more common cardinal (bird type). Couldn't figure out why a priest was attacking his own reflection.

gspencer said...

"so I am assuming that there is a large school of crappies or maybe yellow perch out there"

Get the cops to write the tickets to the fish for not social distancing.

tim in vermont said...

"Get the cops to write the tickets to the fish for not social distancing.”

School is closed!

Michael said...

Cuomo also said he did not say what he said the day before. On the radio.

Ken B said...

The fat-tire biker fires back https://nypost.com/2020/04/14/long-island-bicyclist-verbally-attacked-by-chris-cuomo-fires-back/

MadTownGuy said...

Lots of articles, and click-bait on social media, about how clean the environment is now that the economy has been ramped down. More stuff to inure us to the "new normal."

J. Farmer said...

Trump is right to point out China's mendacity and efforts to hide the truth as major contributing factors to the virus' spread. However, it can't help but look opportunistic given that he spent pretty much all of January and February praising China and Xi Jinping's response to the coronavirus outbreak. This was after concerns had already been raised that China was not being truthful with its data.

narciso said...

the who was in the dark, the whistleblowers like wen jiang, (sic) were either imprisoned or dying, so tell me who do you rely on for policy advice,

Narr said...

Shaping up to be a lovely cool spring day. If I didn't have to fool with some state-required PC e-paperwork (the 21st C equivalent of loyalty oaths, whodathunk?) it would be perfect.

Checked the bank account first thing (moving slowly it was) and saw my expected SSA, and three other credits . . . but they were two state unemployment payments and the other labeled IRS Tax Refund to our son.

Nothing for us yet.

Narr
Not complaining

Ken B said...

J. Farmer said...
Trump is right to point out China's mendacity and efforts to hide the truth as major contributing factors to the virus' spread. However, it can't help but look opportunistic given that he spent pretty much all of January and February praising China and Xi Jinping's response to the coronavirus outbreak. This was after concerns had already been raised that China was not being truthful with its data.
———
Agreed. Who looks better though? Tom Cotton, but I cannot think of anyone else who does. Maybe the mayor of SF. No western national leader, no nationally prominent Democrat, no never trump columnist.

J. Farmer said...

@narciso:

the who was in the dark, the whistleblowers like wen jiang, (sic) were either imprisoned or dying, so tell me who do you rely on for policy advice,

Robert O'Brien and his deputy, Matthew Pottinger, were raising concerns about the accuracy of China's reporting and were pushing for the travel restriction in late January. Senator Burr dumped his stocks on February 7th following a coronavirus briefing and a couple of weeks later warned a private group at a luncheon of the virus' impact.

Narr said...

Several congrescritters dumped stocks after their briefings--Tucker was covering one Georgia gal pretty closely for a short time, but I don't see much about the story, which indicates that some D's are probably implicated too.

The MSDNC are willing to tolerate even R corruption if it keeps their own participation under wraps.

Narr
They're all scum



J. Farmer said...

@Ken B:

Agreed. Who looks better though? Tom Cotton, but I cannot think of anyone else who does. Maybe the mayor of SF. No western national leader, no nationally prominent Democrat, no never trump columnist.

It looks like obscure corners of the intelligence community were getting it right in early January. I've never even heard of the National Center for Medical Intelligence. Who knows how long it sifted through the bureaucracy before getting in front of somebody useful's eyes. Taiwan was also early in sounding the alarm.

I think if you look at the totality of the evidence, it's pretty clear that Trump did not believe the virus posed much threat, tended to dismiss the threat as hype, and was primarily concerned with reassuring markets. It looks like a lot of the problem were the factions within White House giving offering conflicting advice. It also didn't help that it appears Trump and the HHS Secretary didn't have a particularly great working relationship.

narciso said...

it's a bogus story, they had Hubei locked down, how do you even get in there, they knew as much we did, that's not actionable for policy purposes and we saw how the even the block from china was reacted to,

Ann Althouse said...

"Trump said, “When somebody’s the president of the United States, the authority is total”. Turley said, "Pres Trump stated that “When somebody is President of the United States, his authority is total.” The Constitution was written precisely the deny that particular claim. It also reserved to the states (& individuals) rights not expressly given to the federal government.""

Is it too much to ask that the context be preserved? Trump had said "We will soon finalize new and very important guidelines to give governors the information they need to start safely opening their states," and one of the questioners sought to clarify and used the word "authority." He said "just to clarify your understanding of your authority vis a vis governors. Just to be very specific. For instance, if a governor issued a stay at home order" and Trump interrupted to do a correction that he often does: "When you say my authority, the president’s authority, not mine, because it’s not me." He then tagged this on: "This is when somebody is the President of the United States, the authority is total and that’s the way it’s got to be."

We're talking about authority in a particular area — reopening the workplaces after they've been shut down to mitigate a pandemic — and there is an assertion that the authority of the President is necessary, so it would require a constitutional scholar to discuss the workability of governmental structures and why the federal government needs to be a backstop here. I would think there would be some discussion of how travel and commerce among the states are interconnected and no one state can operate without affecting the others. That's why there is final power here — or so the President asserts. He was not asked harder constitutional questions about individual rights (such as whether race discrimination would be allowed), but it's easy to see why the idea of things being left to the states by the 10th amendment doesn't have much pull.

wildswan said...

I got new photo editing software (not Photoshop) and this software can put totally different backgrounds in pictures. For instance, if it rained at your wedding you could take the pictures and put a glorious sunset chosen from a set of stock glorious sunsets behind the people with one click. And all the people would have the color on their faces adjusted from pallid gray to rosy, golden hour. And you could add a burst of sun rays from any direction. Or two bursts shining down on Joe Biden addressing a mighty, cheering crowd, though that might only be realistic to the NYT. So, reality without borders.

gpm said...

>>Leland: We have a cardinal that has decided social distancing means attacking its reflection in the window for 12 hours a day.

It's been a while, but I've had a few of those in New Hampshire in the past. Males, of course. Always this time of year. Another kept attacking the sideview mirror on the car. Must be frustrating that the interloper just won't leave!

Saw a small bluejay(?) in Boston this afternoon, just short of the Brookline line. Don't remember ever seeing one of those around here before.

>>Guy has filed a criminal complaint against Chris Cuomo

Not excusing Cuomo, but what is the crime in somebody forty feet away yelling vague threats against you? Maybe crimes in play regarding violation of restrictions, but what does it have to do with the bike guy (refuse to say either biker or cyclist)?

--gpm