How Far?

How far down the rabbit hole are you willing to go?

  1.   Spain’s government mandated a minimum 80-degree setting on all home air conditioning units as the transition to green power hasn’t kept up with demand.
  2.   Ukraine’s richer by $50 billion thanks to the generosity of America.  Zelenskyy is so appreciative of this gesture that he took time away from posing for the Vogue cover to reach out to China to have them bid on the rebuild after the war that is or isn’t a war.
  3. China is so concerned about the effect of burning fossil fuels that official plans call for boosting coal production capacity by 300 million tons this year. That is equal to 7% of last year’s output of 4.1 billion tons, which was an increase of 5.7% over 2020.  All of the windmills in the world matter not if China and India don’t comply.
  4.  It seems like they disagree with then-President Barack Obama who lectured us that “climate change was no longer a debate, it’s fact.”  He’s is right though.  The climate has been changing for hundreds of millions of years.
  5.  All of this paves the way for the Inflation Reduction Act, which gives away over a quarter of trillion dollars to green companies and green-leaning pet projects.  Never let capitalism get in the way of a government, er, political handout.
  6.  All of the green handouts, capitalism, and the Inflation Reduction Act collided yesterday.  The Inflation Reduction Act, the major climate bill, was signed this week, continuing the EV purchase $7500 tax credit but only those assembled in North America qualify.  Capitalism stepped in and GM and Ford raised the prices of certain electric models by $6,000 to $8,500, roughly matching the $7,500 tax credit introduced under the inflation bill.  We think that’s called a zero-sum game.
  7. Thirty-one models qualify, but the government’s process to qualify is tricky and the timing is trickier due to quotas.  The “must have” is that at a minimum “final assembly” must occur stateside.  Could this be as simple as screwing on the gas tank cap to qualify?  Wait.
  8. Actually the only thing this screws is the gas combustion car manufacturing business.  Oh, and the big, bad oil business as well.
  9. If you obsoleted much of the need for oil (good luck) you’d certainly harm the economy in Texas, Alaska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Louisiana, and Oklahoma to name a few.  What do all of these states have in common?  Hint- It’s not abortion rights, er, woman’s reproductive health.  Think red.
  10. Who wins when wind wins?  Hint-It’s not states that have or will abort abortions.  Think blue.
  11. At least we seem to be winning across the 50 united vs. that pesky pandemic.  Two vax’s and two boosters did the trick.  How?  We don’t need to revisit government political theater handouts and capitalism do we?
  12. Although the military is still requiring all of the jabs or you’re discharged from it for refusing.  Masking will be mandatory for Philadelphia students for the first 10 days of the upcoming school year that starts on Aug. 29, after which it will be “optional but strongly encouraged.”  We have to guess that the disease can only count to ten just like many students.  Make it make sense.
  13. Meanwhile, the CDC Director weighed in, “In our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations.” Dr. Rochelle Walensky said this and more in a statement to the media yesterday that goes on to recommend CDC changes.

We’re so far down the rabbit hole that Bugs Bunny just asked Dr. Rochelle, “ah, what’s up doc?”

 

The Corner of Government Rd. and Individualism Ave.

The “too big” government overreach is at it again.  It’s mad because a “too big” social media platform named Twitter is at it again.

When you attempt to censure President Trump, you’ve poked the proverbial bear.  Twitter made the mistake of “fact-checking” him one too many times coming out of this weekend.   “Fact-checking” is a nice word for censure.  Twitter’s version of what the facts are seems to be more of an opinion than grounded in fact.  It also seems like it chooses who to “fact check” and who not to.

“Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices,” Trump tweeted. “We will strongly regulate, or close them down before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again.”

So with that, a spat has turned into an all-out trending Twitter war on the very platform most in question.

Twitter is a public company.  Like it or not it should be able to choose what it sells, and to whom, however it chooses. Don’t you like it?  Start your own platform after you quit tweeting.

But, alas, our world has evolved into a virtual mess.  And Twitter, Facebook, Snap, and a few others (Pinterest anyone?) are collectively the virtual mess.  “Freedom of speech,” the right yells.  So the FCC will attempt to censure Twitter who is attempting to censure people whose opinions they disagree with.  Does Twitter get to have its own freedom of speech?

We’re at the corner of Government Rd. and Individualism Ave. again.  We’ve actually been stuck in this traffic jam for a while.  We stopped driving for about two months so we temporarily forgot our whereabouts.  Our government overreached and told us to go home.  It was for our own good they said.

The Dallas city government arrested a hair salon owner.  The NOLA mayor signed an executive order banning the sale of firearms during the stay at home order.  The NY mayor said that if you go in the water last weekend “we’ll pull you out.”  The governor of Michigan said that the longer the protests continue, the longer the lockdown will be enforced.   In other words folks, the beatings will continue until the morale improves.

In Minnesota, the government went beyond beating its citizens, or at least one citizen.  The available video of the George Floyd apprehension looks like a few government employees went way too far.  One, in particular, might have(likely) committed a homicide. Social media, the same platforms under scrutiny, quickly organized the people.  Protests formed in Minnie and LA.  Meet on the corner of Government and Individualism it screamed.  And, rightfully so we add.

The problem in Minnie is that a few of the assembled (your right under the Bill of Rights) decided to loot. “Looting” is a nice word for stealing.  It’s reserved for stealing while under the influence of civil unrest we guess.   It’s like what “gaffe” is to “senility.”  It’s reserved for incoherent thought in an election year we guess.

The problem in LA is that they decided to get on the 101 Freeway.  No stores are on the freeway.   Maybe the government that overreaches that gave them their stimulus money as well as unemployment money, as well as small business payroll money kept them from wanting or needing to loot.  Still, it’s but a few blocks from the crossroads of Government and Individualism.

Times were so much simpler when all we had was social media Russian interference in our election, a little quid pro quo or no, and to impeach or not to impeach.

Maybe when Biden stops hiding and Trump stops tweeting we can have a civilized debate about all of this.  We kid.

We wonder if we’ll need to do it from a social distance.  We don’t wonder if social media will try to have a say.

 

 

 

Made in America?

On June 12, 1987, United States President Ronald Reagan delivered a speech in West Berlin.  He was less than 100 yards from the Berlin Wall.   Reagan called for the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, to open the Berlin Wall, which had separated West and East Berlin since 1961.  “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”  Though it received relatively little media coverage at the time, it became widely known in 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall.  There is significant debate as to how much influence if any, the speech had on the wall coming down.  But in 1989 down it came as did communist rule and/or occupation in several eastern European countries in addition to the then Soviet Union, now Russia.

There isn’t much debate at all about the influence Donald J. Trump has had in getting a taller and wider wall built on the southern border of the U.S.  Over 125 miles are completed and by winter the guess is that nearly 500 miles will be hoisted.

Reagan wanted to unravel Soviet block countries.  Trump wants to block illegal immigration.  Both walls were or are steeped in controversy and divided opinions.

But the U.S. opinion should not be divided on two other walls.  One is The Great Wall of China and the other is the virtual firewall of the world wide web.

As U.S. companies figuratively lept over the Great Wall to take advantage of cheap Chinese labor to make and eager Chinese consumers to, well, consume U.S. products a bad thing happened.  We lost sight of right from wrong all because all we could see is the almighty dollar, and lots of them.

Forgetting for a minute of how horrifically the Chinese tyrants treat their people day in and day out, focus on the last 180 days.

China either leaked a virus out of a lab or didn’t.  Investigations, in spite of the World Health Organization(WHO), are ongoing.  Regardless, does anyone think that the virus didn’t start in China somehow? China is accused of asking the WHO in January to deny that human to human transmission could occur.  Further, they restricted travel from the Wuhan Provence to other areas of China but not to the rest of the world as the virus spread rapidly around the globe.

They recently revised the cases and deaths in the country, increasing both totals by an even 50%.   Oops, maybe a rounding error was uncovered.  Some medial experts put the actual carnage at 5x to 10x their count.

Yesterday news broke that the FBI is now investigating China as it’s feared that they have continued their widespread hacking of virtual walls.  Except this time it’s even worse.  Now they are trying to hack into pharma company computers to steal the vaccination research being done on the very virus that they let out of the lab or the soup.

Like him or hate him(and apparently there is no in-between), Trump has been telling us over and over again that China manipulates their currency, profits unfairly on trade deals, and conducts cyber-attack after attack.

Perhaps it’s time we listen closely, learn fast, and plan accordingly.

We’re in far too deep with a country that is doing everything that others did that we hated just 30 years ago.   Somehow we chose to close our eyes.

What are we going to do about it? And, when?  Soon isn’t soon enough.

“Made in America” sounds good.  “Not made in China” sounds essential.

 

No Respect Even Way Back When

Last week we lightened it up a bit on Friday.  The audience was howling in the aisles.  We offered a few examples of how tough life would have been for Rodney Dangerfield to have lived through these times.

Are you kidding?  It was tough to be Rodney during “normal times.”  A dozen examples of how tough it was to get respect way back when are below.

  1.  I come from a stupid family. During the Civil War my great uncle fought for the west!
  2.  I could tell that my parents hated me. My bath toys were a toaster and a radio.
  3.  I remember the time I was kidnapped and they sent back a piece of my finger to my father. He said he wanted more proof.
  4.  My uncle’s dying wish was to have me sitting on his lap. He was in the electric chair.
  5. This morning when I put on my underwear I could hear the Fruit of the Loom guys laughing at me.
  6. My wife isn’t very bright. The other day she was at the store, and just as she was heading for our car, someone stole it! I said, “Did you see the guy that did it?” She said, “No, but I got the license plate.”
  7. A girl phoned me and said, “Come on over. There’s nobody home.” I went over. Nobody was home!
  8. If it weren’t for pick-pocketers, I’d have no sex life at all.
  9. I met the surgeon general. He offered me a cigarette.
  10. I went to see my doctor.  I told him once, “Doctor, every morning when I get up and look in the mirror I feel like throwing up. What’s wrong with me? He said, “I don’t know, but your eyesight is perfect.”
  11. What a childhood I had, why, when I took my first step, my old man tripped me!
  12. I worked in a pet store and people kept asking how big I’d get.

    Unless it’s the NFL Draft turn off the TV.

 

 

Holy Ice Cream, Batman!

You remember that noted health nut Jerry Nadler, don’t you?  On the national impeachment stage he played the role of Robin.  He was quite the actor, though the green tights seemed a bit binding at times.

Adam Schiff reprised the role of Adam West and starred as Batman.  Once Catwoman, aka Nancy Pelosi, shone the green light high into the DC night the caped crusader duo went about fighting all of the crimes that The Joker, well played by Donald Trump, committed.

The play played nonstop for what seemed like forever.  As the trio carried the impeachment articles down the hall of Congress, another villain snuck onto the world stage. His name is COVID-19.

After the two impeachment votes failed in the Senate it seemed like ole Jerry went into the deep freeze like The Penguin, or even like Joe Biden.  #WhereIsJoe and #WhereIsJerry?  Well, this week Jerry surfaced.   Rumors abound, that like a penguin, Jerry was enjoying the chill in Nancy Pelosi’s side by side twin Sub Zero freezers.  There is so much ice cream to hide under it’s like heaven to Jerry.  Is it a new character opportunity perhaps?

Nadler, now mostly thawed, tweeted yesterday.  “We need to come together to beat this disease, not attack each other and divide the country.  This is a disgrace.”  Oh, the irony.  It’s as thick as a tub of Ben and Jerry’s Fudge Brownie Chocolate.

Did Nadler’s actions around Impeachment help the country come together?  And, eight weeks into the fight Jerry decides to weigh(careful now) in now?  Did Nancy, with the old sweater tied just so around her shoulders, help too by showing off her stache of decadence?  Three weeks ago, Adam Schiff floated the idea that his Intelligence Committee would begin looking into who knew what and when about this “disease” as Jerry calls it.  That’s lending a helping hand right in the middle of it.

Fear not though, Nancy told the nation on Sunday that Congress would remain recessed until May 4th, unless there was a major crisis.  Hello?  Anyone home?  Oops, sorry, apparently everyone is home.

“Come together.”  It sounds so inclusive.  It sure beats “Together Apart.”

Will Jerry have another part on a national stage soon?  We can only hope that this crime-fighting team can “come together” one more time to provide us with the great entertainment we’ve come to expect.

After all, there is only so much Netflix left to watch, together of course.

 

On the Clock

The NFL Draft is tee minus 60 hours away and counting.   Yesterday the league and its 32 teams conducted a mock draft trial run.

The Cincinnati Bengals were, of course, the first team on the clock.  And, right away a glitch halted the process.   Come Thursday if only Joe Burrow could be so lucky.

The contrast between the NFL takeover of Broadway in Nashville last year for its street party draft and this year’s virtual, shelter in place, remote draft is stark.

The Presidential Election is tee minus 6 months away and counting.   Yesterday President Donald Trump held his daily news briefing.

The national media, of course, was on the clock.  And, right away Trump did what Trump does.  If only Joe Biden can continue to be so lucky.

The contrast between Trump and how he works the media and Biden, and how he doesn’t, is stark.  Trump’s already been on Twitter this AM to berate the Morning Joe Show on MSNBC after tweeting about various topics well into the evening after his media briefing.  He’ll be at it by 5 pm CST today again, holding court that is and berating the assembled again, that is.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden only appears on Twitter when someone grabs the video from his latest, infrequent tv interview or from his seldom in-home broadcast.  The #WhereIsJoe is seen way more than Joe himself.  His performances to date have more “gaffes” than memorable moments.

Biden has cover for now.  He’s sheltering in place like all obedient senior citizens have been asked to do.  But, it looks like a new day in the nation’s approach to the invisible enemy is dawning.  Soon, “where is Joe?” will need to be “Joe has campaign speeches in Michigan and Indiana today.”  Then his physical health and mental health will be challenged as often by Trump as he challenges the media he so likes to manipulate.  He calls them “Fake News” in case you haven’t heard.

Conversely, can Joe keep the media at his side?  Hunter is still a board member in China.  Joe has a serious allegation of sexual misconduct.  Joe has a habit of losing his place even with notes right in front of him.  Saying less and appearing less will soon mean more than it does as our attention is elsewhere.

Soon Joe, like the Bengals, will be on the clock.  He has a pick, too.  It will be a VP running mate.  It will mean more than it often does as well.

America is starved for normalcy.  It will watch the draft in record numbers.  It will watch Cincinnati’s Bengals.  Will it watch the campaigns in record numbers too?  If so, what will it think of Biden’s bungles?

Emotion Recollected in Tranquility

The start of April 2020 has been tough.   But, April is National Poetry Month, and it’s worth celebrating.  Isn’t it?  We don’t have too many choices otherwise.

Could there ever be a better name for a poet than William Wordsworth?  Wordsworth, the old wordsmith, wrote: “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.”

We have lots of powerful feelings these days.  And, if you can keep your mind in a great place there is ample time for tranquility too.

With that as the backdrop, we present a poem so skillfully penned you would think it was carved from the edge of a surgeon’s scalpel.  It comes courtesy of an avid reader.

 

My Corona

 

We all had great jobs and unemployment was so low.

The market was way up, as we watched our retirement grow.

 

The U.S. was great again, and impeachment was a dud.

K.C. had won the Super Bowl, and Patrick Mahomes was a stud.

 

March Madness was starting.  Who would be king of the hoop?

Instantly, life changed when a Chinaman undercooked his bat soup.

 

But The Masters was starting soon.  We can’t miss Sunday’s back nine.

And baseball too?  But that’s America’s favorite pastime!

 

Social distancing is the CDC’s rule to observe.

All the models say we’ll flatten the curve.

 

What about Biden and Bernie and the democratic race?

6 feet apart, wear a mask and shelter in place

 

Corona is novel and like nothing we’ve ever seen.

Get in your house and serve a 14 day quarantine.

 

“Hydroxychloroquine and ZPak might help”, says the president.

Dr. Fauci says “No”, because there is no precedent.

 

Can’t we just try?  It might save our neck!

“No!”, says the Government.  We’ll send you a check.

 

Well done.  Bravo.  Amen.

It’s a Fine Line

There’s a fine line between civility and incivility in this U.S. of A.  Have you ever been stuck on a crowded plane for an extended period of time?  If so, you know.

And, the line seems to blur by the day these days.   It was there in the White House Press Room for all to see again on Sunday.

Reporters at the briefing repeatedly asked President Donald Trump why he chose not to wear a medical mask after he and his task force recommended that America start doing so just last Friday.  Nevermind that the reporter was not wearing a mask at the time he asked the question.  At least they don’t mask their disdain of the president that ended daily press briefings well over a year ago.

Trump used the backdrop of the loud whirling blades of his Marine One helicopter to “control” these scribes, especially the ones who are “fake news.”  But, the enemy that we cannot see forced Trump to confront the enemy that he can see all over again.

Another reporter, who also was not wearing a mask, noted that former Vice President Joe Biden said he would start wearing a mask outdoors.  That’s going to be difficult for Biden though.  The mask-wearing won’t be difficult, it’s the verification part.  No one has seen Biden outdoors or indoors in quite some time.  The #WhereIsJoe continues to trend on Twitter.

When we do see old school Joe indoors on his disastrous live feeds, he coughs straight into his hand old school style.  By hiding is he attempting to mask his rapidly declining cognitive/communicative skills?  Here is his latest If you can decipher the message, please share it in the BBR comment section today.

Could a Cuomo write-in nomination happen?  The NY mayor is getting plenty of airtime from the non-Fox channels.  His leadership during this existential crisis (far greater than climate change right now) is lauded daily.  He’s asked, begged, and demanded more masks, like the ones that no one in the briefing room wears, for New Yorkers.  Ventilators are in short supply as well.  New York didn’t put many of the above away for a rainy day.

Then he asked all hospitals in NY to share their equipment and supplies.  In other words, late to the social distancing need, NY got federal help and now he wants upstate to bail out the boroughs as well.  Have you ever been stuck on a crowded subway train for an extended period of time?  Too many Yanks were until not too long ago.

CNN doesn’t mask its affection for Cuomo.  They haven’t been this enamored with a possible candidate to take down Trump since Michael Avenatti appeared nearly nightly prior to his multiple run-ins with the law. We forget.  Who (er, how many) exploited Stormy?

And then there’s a not-funny irony to all of this.  In the City That Care Forgot, no one forgot to put on their masks for Mardi Gras.  And the result of putting on a costume and a mask and partying in the streets in NOLA has been a disaster.  Latoya Cantrell who has masqueraded as a mayor there for one year said that she received no federal warning not to “laissez less on temps roulet” (let the good times roll).

Do Cantrell and Cuomo play the federal help card, or bash the intervention of same for their political gain as necessary?

It’s the civil thing to do.

Another reporter asked Dr. Anthony Fauci why he was not wearing a mask.  Trump grinned as Fauci responded that the main reason to wear a mask was to protect sick individuals from spreading the virus.

Nevermind that the CDC Saturday advised us all to wear masks.  It’s the civil thing to do.

Heck, if President Trump was wearing one we would have been spared from seeing the grin.

It’s a fine line.

 

 

Ten Piece Nuggets-Random

With news coming at us from all angles and sports news scarce, we chose the Ten Piece Nuggets route this AM.   Below are as random of a collection of thoughts on a wide range of subjects as you can get.  A lot of time on our hands means that a lot enters and exits the mind these days.  The delivery matches the country’s mindset we think.  Look at it this way- at least you don’t have to tip for this delivery.

  1.  Are you still surprised that Tom Brady is a Tampa Bay Buccaneer?  Stuff happens, especially in 2020.  Jerry Rice, Brett Farve, Joe Montana, and Marcus Allen all starred for one team for a long time.  They all won Super Bowls.  They all are in the HOF.  And, they all finished their careers with a different team.  Nonetheless, it will still look strange when (should we say if?) Brady trots out from under the pirate’s ship this fall.
  2. OJ Simpson is yet another.  The longtime Buffalo Bill finished his career in a different uniform too.  He became a 49er for a stint.  Of course, he also wore a different uniform for two other stints as well.  One was for a year in the LA County uni.  And, he made yet another comeback with about an eight-year run (Run OJ, run) just outside of Vegas.  But we digress.
  3.  Speaking of drama in Vegas, predictably the NFL show must go on.  The draft is later this month, but won’t be held in the middle of the Bellagio Fountain as planned.  It will be done virtually like it was many, many years ago.  An in-studio set and a network of computers will replace a smoke-filled room and 30 phone lines.  We predict record numbers will watch and watch.
  4. Why record numbers?  If America couldn’t turn its eyes away from Tiger King, the Netflix documentary smash hit, it’s a Vegas sure tell that we are all looking for something to get our minds off of the silent enemy.
  5. While on the Tiger King subject, we wonder.  Is the only one in jail, Joe Exotic, the most “normal” person of all of the actors/characters/people in the seven-part series?  And, isn’t there another documentary screaming at Netflix emanating out of this one?  How did Carole Baskin’s first husband just disappear?  No one just disappears.
  6. And, since we are all bored out of our minds, BBR recommends Succession to you.  The characters are filthy rich, awkward, weird, and out of their minds, too.  The staff wrapped up watching season one last night.  You could do worse.
  7. Adam Schiff, who thankfully we were able to forget for two months, is back at it.  He wants his House Intelligence(we have our doubts) Committee to investigate what we the government did wrong as this pandemic raced to us and through us.  Too soon? It’s never too soon to grab the narrative.
  8. Speaking of investigations, should someone look a bit deeper into the $25 million given to the JFK Performing Arts Center?  The ink isn’t dry yet on the money that the Feds should not print, but will.   It was announced, and BBR is looking deeper into the facts, that the Center made a $5 million donation to the Democratic National Committee late last week.   We don’t know the exact definition of money laundering.  But, this looks like it could use a second rinse cycle to get the tough stains out.
  9.  At a time when nearly all hospitals have canceled elective surgeries for the foreseeable future, Planned Parenthood is requesting donations of personal protective equipment (PPE) for its staff as the group demands elective abortions continue during the coronavirus crisis in the United States.  Meanwhile, Planned Parenthood’s fighting the restrictions of our current state of shutdown.  The group is suing the state of Texas for banning services after declaring abortion “non-essential.”  This one is getting interesting.
  10.  And, finally, here is a BBR staff plea.  Tell everyone you see or talk to who is not practicing social distancing to please do so whenever possible.  Does it help or not is not the question.   It’s not the question because it would be better to do it and find out it doesn’t help than to not do it and find out that it would have.  It’s not very hard either.

Time to run.  Joe Exotic called while we were penning this.  He says that he knows where Hoffa is buried too.

 

 

(Almost) Ten Piece Nuggets

Welcome to the next day of your shelter in place life.  The canned soup blues got you down?  Worry not.  We’ve got some fresh nuggets, heavy on opinions, for you.

  1.  Do you think nearly eight years ago that Barrack Obama was vulnerable in his reelection bid?  He was.  Do you believe that Mitt Romney was a below-average candidate from the right to knock Obama off?  He was.
  2.  Do you believe that it took a candidate as weak as Hillary Rodham Clinton to lose to Donald J. Trump?  It did.  Even so, she carried the popular vote.  Trump was in the right place at the right time.  The middle of America was very tired of the same old, same old from an old and tired candidate.  And he smartly milked that for every vote that he got and she didn’t campaign hard enough for.
  3. Do you believe that Joe Biden looks like a very tired same old, same old candidate?  He does.  Is President Trump in the right place at the right time again?  He is in spite of his shaky Coronavirus leadership missteps. If it were Biden we would call them gaffes.
  4. Do you believe as bad as Biden is he still has a chance?  He does.  He does if he even gets to the general election, that is.  The #WhereIsJoe isn’t going away soon.
  5. It’s still 222 days till the general election.  What’s all of this sudden talk about Cuomo coming in on a white horse to steal the White House?  Crazy times make room for crazy twists and turns.  The DNC has shown great willingness over multiple election cycles to bend or break the rules to get to the candidate of their, not the people’s, choice.
  6. Cuomo bashed Trump for a lack of ventilators just this past week.  Where do a state’s responsibility end and the federal governments begin exactly?  CNN and MSNBC called his NY handling of the crisis very presidential like.  What do DNC, CNN, and MSNBC have in common?  Everything.
  7.  Mayor Latoya Cantrell of New Orleans bashed Trump for his poor handling of the spread of the Coronavirus as well.  He could use some help, no doubt.  To that end, we hope that the mayor and her husband will get around to paying the 90k they owe from several years of back federal income taxes soon.  It’ll help offset some of the $2 trillion that we are about to give to jumpstart our economic system.
  8. Would it have been a good idea to cancel Mardi Gras, Ms. Mayor?  For financial reasons probably not.  For political reasons probably not.  For medical reasons probably so.   Citizens from all over the world partied and stood toe to toe watching parades for 14 straight days through 2/25.  NOLA’s parish (county) is the sixth most infected one in America behind the five boroughs of NY on a percentage basis.
  9. Breaking news!  Nugget 10 was just traded for a four-pack roll of Charmin.  We’ll take a four-pack for one nugget any day.  The BBR Board of Directors will meet today.  A vote to approve the move is expected to pass unanimously.

Post digestion you should get on your Peloton bike for a bit.  Ride in place rhymes with shelter in place.