Zorro
Zorro's JournalApple Watch Series 5 on sale at Costco for $300
Looks like an unbeatable price, if the Apple Watch is your thing.
Costco also has the 16" Macbook Pro 512GB for $2100, for those interested.
I'm considering the laptop, if I can convince She Who Must Be Obeyed that it's something I could really use.
Trump blames Democrats for his grounded campaign, even as bipartisan restrictions ban his rallies
President Trump, approaching his longest stretch without a political rally since he announced his candidacy five years ago, has taken to blaming Democrats for grounding his campaign.
But even as several states begin relaxing their coronavirus restrictions, Trump has not scheduled any rallies in Republican-led states — and his campaign has not reached out to governors in swing states to inquire about holding large political events.
The claim of politically motivated closures was outlined most directly by Trump’s son, Eric, who accused Democrats of trying to strip the president of his greatest reelection weapon.
“They’re trying to deprive him of his greatest asset, which is the fact that the American people love him — the fact that he is relatable, the fact that he can go out there and can draw massive crowds,” Eric Trump told Fox News’s Jeanine Pirro on Saturday, echoing the president’s charge. “Joe Biden can’t get 10 people in a room. My father is getting 50,000 in a room. And they want to do everything they can to stop it.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-blames-democrats-for-his-grounded-campaign-even-as-bipartisan-restrictions-ban-his-signature-rallies/2020/05/19/d37e5962-99ee-11ea-ac72-3841fcc9b35f_story.html
Trump just said the corrupt part out loud
During the impeachment of Donald J. Trump, an expert witness called by Democrats floated a theoretical scenario involving the president threatening a state hammered by a natural disaster, to illustrate the corruption of Trump’s shakedown of Ukraine.
What would we think if Trump dangled federal disaster aid as leverage to force a governor to do his political bidding, asked Stanford law professor Pamela Karlin, adding: “Wouldn’t you know in your gut that the president had abused his office? That he betrayed the national interest?”
Trump has now done something very close to this. And the answer to Karlin’s question is: Yes, Trump is abusing his office and betraying the national interest:
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1263074783673102337
Trump is referring to the Michigan Secretary of State’s announcement that applications for absentee ballots will be mailed to 7.7 million residents. That’s to ensure that Michiganders can vote safely amid a pandemic that has brought more than 50,000 cases of coronavirus to the state and killed more than 5,000 people.
Trump’s new threat is not a precise parallel to Karlin’s scenario. But Trump is threatening to somehow withdraw federal aid unless Michigan drops vote by mail, a naked effort to extort Michigan into doing something that could help him politically. (Trump rage-tweeted a similar threat at Nevada.)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/20/trump-just-said-corrupt-part-out-loud/
Looks like the asshole deleted his original tweet that put his ignorance on full display, and changed the message to reflect absentee ballot applications vs. absentee ballots.
This guy shames our country every day.
President Trump, stop acting like you own the place
Nobody in business likes auditors: They can be intrusive, meddlesome second-guessers. But managers of publicly traded companies understand that independent auditing is essential, because it protects shareholders against fraud and wasteful spending — and maintains public confidence in the enterprise.
President Trump spent most of his career managing a private company. Public accountability wasn’t a big part of Trump’s business education, and maybe that helps explain his approach to the presidency. He acts as though government employees work for him, not for the public.
The latest evidence of Trump’s disdain for accountability was his ouster Friday night of State Department Inspector General Steve Linick. He was the fifth IG Trump has sacked in the past six weeks, including inspectors general for the intelligence community and the departments of Health and Human Services, Transportation and Defense. The last two officials also helped oversee the government’s $3.4 trillion pandemic relief spending.
“These firings appear to be retaliatory for the work the IGs were conducting. This strikes at the very core of the guarantees of independence built into the Inspector General Act,” argues Roslyn Mazer, former IG for the intelligence community and the Federal Trade Commission and a leading authority on the subject. She warns: “If Congress capitulates to these firings and fails to pass legislation with greater protections, it will signal the end to IG independence.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/president-trump-stop-acting-like-you-own-the-place/2020/05/19/e2b3e8d2-9a1d-11ea-a282-386f56d579e6_story.html
Pier 1 is going out of business
Source: San Diego Union-Tribune
Pier 1 Imports Inc., the seller of wicker chairs and scented candles, said it will go out of business and permanently close all 540 of its stores.
The Fort Worth company said Tuesday that it was unable to find a buyer for its business after filing for bankruptcy protection this year.
It said it will start going-out-of-business sales as soon as it can reopen stores that have been temporarily shut due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Pier 1 started with a single store in 1962 that sold beanbag chairs and love beads to hippies in San Mateo, Calif. It expanded to offer just about anything for the home, including lounge chairs and curtains, and it later adopted the logo “From Hippie to Hip.” At its height, Pier 1 had more than 1,200 stores.
Read more: https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/story/2020-05-19/pier-1-going-out-of-business-closing-stores
Trump attacks another female reporter for question about Americans going back to work:
Source: The Independent
‘That’s enough of you’
President snaps at CBS' Paula Reid after she asks what his plan is for the nearly 36 million Americans seeking unemployment aid since the coronavirus pandemic began
Donald Trump has attacked another female reporter who asked the president on Tuesday about a national reopening plan surrounding the coronavirus pandemic, calling her a “rude person” and adding: “That’s enough of you.”
The president was responding to a question from CBS’ Paula Reid, who asked him why he has yet to announce plan that would get the millions of Americans seeking unemployment aid amid the pandemic back to work.
“Just a rude person you are,” he said, before claiming “the plan is that each state is opening”.
“I think we’ve announced a plan, the plan is that we’re reopening the country, just a rude person you are,” he said. “We’re opening up our country and we’re opening it up very fast.”
“It’s opening up very effectively,” he added. “When you see the numbers I think even you will be impressed, which it’s pretty hard to impress you.”
Read more: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-latest-coronavirus-update-today-white-house-cabinet-meeting-a9523146.html
This asshole demeans, degrades, and disgraces his office and this country every day.
Moderna's vaccine results boosted its share offering -- and it's hardly a coincidence
The announcement Monday by Moderna Inc. of preliminary — very preliminary — results from its trial of a possible COVID-19 vaccine seemed at the time to reflect a global thirst for any potentially positive news in the fight against the pandemic.
On Tuesday, it looks rather different. That’s because on the heels of the vaccine announcement, the Cambridge, Mass., biotech firm announced the sale of 17.6 million new shares at a price of $76 each.
That would have been a premium of nearly 14% over the $66.69 price of Moderna stock on Friday. But it’s a 5% discount to the stock’s price at Monday’s closing.
At this valuation, in other words, the shares might have looked overpriced as of Friday. On Tuesday, following a huge burst of positive publicity, they almost look like a bargain.
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-05-19/moderna-vaccine-share-price-coronavirus-covid-19
Hyundai disavows SoCal dealer that abandoned people's cars amid pandemic
We’ve all got weird experiences to share about the coronavirus. Olivia Vera may have one of the weirdest.
She dropped off her car at a Culver City dealer in March because of engine trouble. The dealer subsequently had the car towed away as businesses throughout the region closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The towing company then slapped Vera with thousands of dollars in fees for taking in the abandoned vehicle.
As if things couldn’t get any worse, the 26-year-old Westwood resident faced the very real prospect of her car being sold off this week if she didn’t show up at the storage yard with a bag of cash (and cash only, no checks or credit cards).
https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2020-05-19/column-coronavirus-hyundai-dealer
Pole dancing and hand sanitizer: Wyoming strip club reopens with 'masks on, clothes off' party
Cleo counts out crumpled dollars, straightening the bills as she stacks them neatly on her bare leg.
“Twenty-two dollars,” the 23-year-old exclaims. “Not too bad!”
All around her, more than a dozen nearly naked women are dancing on the stage and swinging from a brass pole as music thumps and customers shower the dancers with money. It's like any other night at this rural strip club on the Colorado-Wyoming border, with one notable exception: While the dancers are all wearing barely-there outfits, every one of them is wearing a mask.
Some are bandannas. Some are surgical masks. One looks as if it was swiped from a construction site. They're a seemingly odd accessory for women wearing a mix of g-strings, bikinis and lingerie.
https://news.yahoo.com/pole-dancing-hand-sanitizer-wyoming-125908187.html
Republican attorneys general back Barr's bid to drop case against Flynn
Source: The Guardian
Fifteen Republican state attorneys general have filed a legal brief telling a federal judge they support the justice department’s attempt to drop its case against the former national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The move comes after almost 2,000 former justice department figures condemned the move to drop the case.
Flynn, a retired general, was fired by Trump for lying to the vice-president about conversations with the Russian ambassador. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI.
Obama administration requests to “unmask” Flynn, as an American speaking to surveilled foreign nationals during the investigation of Russian election interference, a routine intelligence practice, are at the heart of Donald Trump’s attempts to create a scandal, the so-called “Obamagate”, to ensnare his predecessor and his challenger at the polls this year, former vice-president Joe Biden.
Read more: https://news.yahoo.com/republican-attorneys-general-back-barrs-132033398.html
Those Republican AGs are all fucking traitors.
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