News of the Day III

[dannybolt]

That was my whole point before you decided to show up and flex your Charlie from It’s Always Sunny caliber legal skills.

Shit, I didn't know we were talking bird law.

Y'know WW is correct in that this board has a tendency for group think and definitely leans left to varying degrees. However, disingenuously showing up to crimedog mcgruff any and all Democratic Party malfeasance while extending absurd levels of benefits of the doubt to Republicans, including dear leader, certainly leads one to question the sincerity of the protestations of good faith argumentation and fair mindedness.

It's as plain as fucking day that the Minneapolis police murdered that man in broad daylight. A blind man could see it.

Most everyone here is arguing right and wrong. WW is coming along with technicalities. That's what raises the dander. Because as a law enforcement officer, at least as far as the citizenry is concerned, you are supposed to uphold what is right. When you start arguing technicalities, especially in light of a decade of posting history of doing the same shit as it pertains to political arguments, it looks like the concern is greater for the officer than for the man he murdered. And given the posting history, that's frankly not a big leap to take.

[pete]

Shit, I didn't know we were talking bird law.

A live look at DubDub at stately WaiverWire Manor:

[pete]

Why the rush to judgement when you know the M.E. can give you the answers in a day or two.

[dannybolt]

….he knows all the answers.

Pot, meet kettle. You do realize Mav stomped you a new mud hole for doing exactly that right? Like two hours ago, right?

I guess my goldfish analogy was more apt than I originally thought.

[pete]

Next time you need advise don't call me as clearly you disagree with my thinking.

Especially if the advice is on how to spell advice.

[pete]

Next time ask pete…….he knows all the answers.

Not all the answers. Just the right ones.

[BurnTHalO]

Man I have legit laughed in my living room multiple times tonight thanks to this thread. Between waiver thinking he can out lawyer a lawyer in maverick, danny having his fun, and pete calling out the spelling among other things, this has been one entertaining night

[pete]

Man I have legit laughed in my living room multiple times tonight thanks to this thread. Between waiver thinking he can out lawyer a lawyer in maverick, danny having his fun, and pete calling out the spelling among other things, this has been one entertaining night

Except all the shit going down in Atlanta tonight is literally less than a block from my office building (yes, Waiver, my building is within spitting distance of CNN Center, and yes I totally picked it just to piss you off).

There's so much pent up frustration and rage in this country from people being cooped up for three months in the midst of an absolutely insane last three and a half years or so and it's coming out now in destructive and counterproductive ways all around the country.

Meanwhile in the dimension where Spock has a beard, the Republican Senate is voting tomorrow on whether to convict Hillary Clinton in her impeachment trial for allowing a staggering 40 Americans to die of COVID-19 before getting the outbreak contained.

[pete]

Most everyone here is arguing right and wrong. WW is coming along with technicalities.

That's what DubDub does. He escapes into granular process arguments (some imagined and a few real) in order to avoid admitting the shaky moral ground on which he's standing while defending the worst abuses of his political tribe.

• A white supremacist Twitter account puts out anti-Semitic imagery and Waiver says, "Well hell, a Star of David is also the shape of a sheriff's star (kinda), so you can't prove that's anti-Semitic. Not even a million dollars of George Soros' money could make me admit otherwise!"
  
• Trump brags on video tape that he sexually assaults women without their permission and twenty women come forward saying he did what he bragged he did on the tape and he gets into a process argument about statutes of limitation, etc. "I don't condemn violence against women and those women say that Trump did exactly the thing he bragged about doing on that tape, but you can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt in Judge Wapner's People's Court that he did it, so that must mean he's 100% innocent. Have Bailiff Rusty show you out!"
  
• The Trump Campaign demonstrably was actively seeking and benefiting from Russian interference in the 2016 election, and he's arguing the finer points of FISA warrants and IC policies on unmasking. "Well, I don't condone what Manafort and Flynn did at all, but they should totally go scot free on whatever manufactured legal loophole Sean Hannity pulled out of his bunghole this week."
  
• The Border Patrol starts kidnapping kids from their parents and chucking them in wire cages and cinder block cells and Waiver starts arguing, "Well I don't condone what's happening and I'm appalled children are being abused, but this happened accidentally a small handful of times during the Obama Administration so that makes it totally ok for Trump and Stephen Miller to make it the stated policy of the United States of America."
  
• And now an officer uses a technique of putting his knee on a man's neck that Waiver admits is dangerous and doesn't comply with police policies and training for nine minutes while he struggles and pleads that he can't breathe until he dies and Waiver goes, "Well I don't condone what the officer did, but you can't prove the knee on his neck is what killed him with 100% certitude so you have to wait until Hugh Laurie in the role of Dr. House examines the body and eliminates COVID-19 and total scrotal implosion as possible causes of death before you have probable cause to cut an arrest warrant."

Did I miss any of Waiver's recent greatest hits? I mean, shoot, there's some really great Waiver deep cuts from way back in the day (like SSN board days, even) like swearing up and down, "There were TOTALLY WMD's in Iraq that were smuggled out to Syria so you can't say Dubya lied", pimping the Swift Boat Vets for Truth ("Christmas in Cambodia!!!"), and flirtations with birtherism ("I <3 Sheriff Joe"), but you've got to be a REAL fan of Waiver's virtuoso bullshit shoveling skills to remember those. It's like loving the albums your favorite band put out before the ones they got famous for.

[RSchmitz]

Never saw the delay because he was a LEO in the link you posted. Sounds just like I was saying, they waited to hear from the M.E.

“This is by far the fastest that we’ve ever charged a police officer,” Freeman said.

There's the distinction, there is usually more red tape involved to make an arrest of a police officer there for whatever reason. Even conservative hard liners like Grady Judd came out and said that he would have made an arrest as soon as he seen the tape.

[pete]

There's the distinction, there is usually more red tape involved to make an arrest of a police officer there for whatever reason. Even conservative hard liners like Grady Judd came out and said that he would have made an arrest as soon as he seen the tape.

“Well clearly Gary Judd didn’t see the video of the three other officers on the grassy knoll so what does he know?

Now I’m off to get a patent for Kitten Mittons. Take my advise. You’ll be smitten!” -Waiver (probably)

[RSchmitz]

https://www.wfla.com/news/polk-county/it-runs-chills-through-my-body-sheriff-judd-speaks-on-george-floyd-death/

Sheriff Grady Judd told 8 On Your Side he would have acted swiftly to take a Minneapolis police officer into custody after he was seen on cell phone video with his knee to a man’s neck.

That man, George Floyd, 46, died Monday.

“Based on what I can see, that police officer here would have been locked up and jailed before the sun went down,” Sheriff Judd said.

When Grady Judd of all people is saying this, you know that you have absolutely nothing to stand on.

[Donnie D]

On a different subject.

I found this data interesting, not as interesting as the Lake Superior maritime data, but still interesting.

Last month, disposable personal income jumped by 12.9%. The largest single month change since data began to be kept in 1959. Personal savings increased to 33% of disposable personal income. In other words, Americans saved $1 for every $3 they made.

Disposable income and spending have always tracked together. Not this month. Spending decreased by 13.6%.

The reasons are pretty obvious. Income grew because of the stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment payments. Savings increased because so many of the people who got the stimulus checks, didn’t either need them and saved or paid down debt or didn’t feel safe spending the money.

So all this means that a bunch of Americans in the service industry are suffering and bunch of other other Americans are sitting on a pile of unexpected cash. How fast those people choose to spend that money is going to tell us what kind of recovery we have.

Bank of America is projecting a slow recovery with spending returning to pre shutdown levels in 2023.

The CBO is forecasting record growth for the rest of this year with a return to normal in 2022. But they see economic activity exceeding the level when Trump took office in October this year.

Who is correct may well determine this election.

[dannybolt]

On a different subject.

I found this data interesting, not as interesting as the Lake Superior maritime data, but still interesting.

Last month, disposable personal income jumped by 12.9%. The largest single month change since data began to be kept in 1959. Personal savings increased to 33% of disposable personal income. In other words, Americans saved $1 for every $3 they made.

Disposable income and spending have always tracked together. Not this month. Spending decreased by 13.6%.

The reasons are pretty obvious. Income grew because of the stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment payments. Savings increased because so many of the people who got the stimulus checks, didn’t either need them and saved or paid down debt or didn’t feel safe spending the money.

So all this means that a bunch of Americans in the service industry are suffering and bunch of other other Americans are sitting on a pile of unexpected cash. How fast those people choose to spend that money is going to tell us what kind of recovery we have.

Bank of America is projecting a slow recovery with spending returning to pre shutdown levels in 2023.

The CBO is forecasting record growth for the rest of this year with a return to normal in 2022. But they see economic activity exceeding the level when Trump took office in October this year.

Who is correct may well determine this election.

But what did the Baltic Dry Index have to say?

People save in uncertain times, which these most certainly are. I'm curious to know how much of the stock market rally was people putting money in the market from their stimulus checks. I know that's where some of mine went. The rest went to debt and donations to my local food bank.

I think you are going to see a raft of white collar layoffs as companies retrench for a prolonged recovery rather than a strictly v shaped.

I'm of the opinion that we will see a small v with a long l tail. As areas reopen, some service industry jobs will come back, leading to a lowering of the unemployment rate down to elevated, but not catastrophic levels. That's your small "v". The long tailed "L" would be as the global economy slowly picks back up, with consumer and government spending driving growth leading to lowered unemployment over time.

Another thing that I think is worth noting, is people may be discounting Jerome Powell. This is a wildly different environment than the great recession. There has been very little push-back from the Right this time on pushing money into the economy, at least not yet, and the Fed is propping up not only individuals, but small businesses as well as large ones. You can argue the effectiveness, or the mix of who has benefitted and who hasn't, but the overall effort is there. That's a very good sign. The people arguing for a v shaped are rightly saying that there wasn't anything fundamentally broken in the economy (think macro, not micro there, there's plenty of bad incentives, but that goes for the entirety of our economic history), so there is still the thought that pent up demand will help bring back the economy. From a strictly personal view, I'm sitting on multiple thousands in house spending and maybe a vacation that is on pause until we are through this rough patch. I'm far from alone. Am I going to go to restaurants? I'll get takeout, but will keep my non-necessary discretionary spending to a minimum for now. Am I going to replace my fence? Yeah, as soon as I know I'm not getting caught in a layoff.

My initial back of the envelope was that the Fed was going to need to push 5T into the economy to keep it from collapsing. Not that much was needed yet, but the Fed has given every indication that they aren't about to oversee a depression. IMO Powell will keep the smoke coming off the printing presses until the economy has stabilized, and then it will become a political wrangle to see how that cash gets allocated.

To your last point; honestly, I don't think the economy will provide Trump any appreciable tailwinds outside of his base, regardless of the size and shape of the recovery. I think at this point, he's only got downsides. I know of literally zero people who voted third party/protest votes in my extended family and social circles who will break for Trump. None. I know of no traditional Democrats who are less likely to vote because of their hatred of Trump, regardless of economic recovery. On the flipside, I know of multiple Trump voters who have left the Republican party since 2016, or will not vote for Trump (because of kids in cages, not because of the economy). Of course, that begs the question if I'm so insulated that I'm one of those people who didn't understand how Reagan trounced Mondale, and this is purely anecdotal..

Feel free to ignore if my musings don't fit your narrative, especially on the political race. I'm just another Nostradumbass on the internet.

[pete]

What I’ll add to what you said Danny is that because we’re in an era of hyperpartisanship, nothing seems to move the numbers more than a handful of points. Like, I believe in just about any other time Trump would be heading toward losing ~40 states because of the pandemic and the economy right now, but his approval ratings have only really moved within the MOE because there are very few people who are undecided or pursuadable. At this point you either are in Cult45 or you can’t stand Trump, and there’s very few people in between.