Back in 2017, season three of Rick and Morty didn’t much impress me. Coupled with show co-creator Dan Harmon coming out as a democidal sociopath, I decided that Season Four of R&M was not at the top of my list. And so when it came out late last year I gave it a pass.
Decision Vindicated:
More Rick & Morty? Nah, I’m good. I don’t plan on supporting hateful fascists.
Good.
I have difficulty imagining President Biden supporting something like this; I imagine a President Sanders would actively oppose it. From the White House:
Space Policy Directive-1 of December 11, 2017 (Reinvigorating America’s Human Space Exploration Program), provides that commercial partners will participate in an “innovative and sustainable program” headed by the United States to “lead the return of humans to the Moon for long-term exploration and utilization, followed by human missions to Mars and other destinations.” Successful long-term exploration and scientific discovery of the Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies will require partnership with commercial entities to recover and use resources, including water and certain minerals, in outer space. …
Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. Outer space is a legally and physically unique domain of human activity, and the United States does not view it as a global commons. Accordingly, it shall be the policy of the United States to encourage international support for the public and private recovery and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law. …
The United States is not a party to the Moon Agreement. Further, the United States does not consider the Moon Agreement to be an effective or necessary instrument to guide nation states regarding the promotion of commercial participation in the long-term exploration, scientific discovery, and use of the Moon, Mars, or other celestial bodies. Accordingly, the Secretary of State shall object to any attempt by any other state or international organization to treat the Moon Agreement as reflecting or otherwise expressing customary international law.
Overall it seems pretty good. It calls for the international recognition of economic exploitation of space resources and the repudiation of the execrable “Moon Agreement,” which the US somehow, astonishingly, failed to get sucked into. Some examples of just how bad the “agreement” is:
The Moon Agreement would, if the US signed it, mean that if SpaceX started mining asteroids for unobtainium, Venezuela gets a share… not only in the riches produced, but in the running of the operation. Nopenopenopenope.
So, the German-owned, Portuguese-flagged cruise ship RCGS Resolute was drifting, engine off, in the Caribbean doing some engine maintenance on March 30. No passengers on board. Then the Venezuelan patrol vessel ANBV Naiguatá decided to try to board and likely sieze the ship. Orders were made for the Resolute to surrender and sail to a Venezuelan port, orders the crew wisely refused. The Naiguatá then repeatedly rammed the Resolute. End result? The Naiguatá capsized and sank, the Resolute sailed on.
The Resolute, as it turns out, was built with an incredibly tough hull for the specific purposed of plowing through ice-packed Antarctic seas. It was built like a tank, essentially. *Why* the Venezuelans decided to take the cruise ship is a bit unclear, but “piracy” seems a good bet. Venezuela, being a socialist paradise, is all about stealing other peoples stuff. Most likely the goal was to ransom the cruise ship, and quite likely the crew as well.
A glimpse into the future of the USS Bernie Sanders…
Woooo hoooooooooooo……….
On the other hand:
Truckers are saying "fuck the log rules, I'm hauling" and they're getting supplies to the stores. People are stocking…
Posted by Bart Hall on Wednesday, March 25, 2020
I am a naturally pessimistic feller. I prefer to think of it as holding to proper engineering standards: engineering tells you with certainty that some things WILL fail, some things WON’T work… what it won’t tell you is that something is assured of success, but only “probably.” When you can see a hundred ways in which a situation cannot work and only a few ways in which it might, this makes you a good engineer, but also someone that other people find kind of a bummer to hang around. Still, while I’m focusing on the worst case projections and looking forward to a likelihood of a dim personal future (because failure to recognize how things can go terribly wrong leads you to walking directly into terrible things), I expect the American people to be able to deal with this problem the way we’ve dealt with so many others. Yes, the government can certainly help, but as with FDR’s Depression Extension Programs and LBJ’s Eternal War To Perpetuate Poverty, the government is a dubious ally at best. But when the entrepreneurial spirit of the American people is unleashed, there are few things we cannot tackle.
A *lot* of people are losing and will lose their jobs. For the most part, this is a Bad Thing for society. But on the other hand, there are a number of people who *should* lose their jobs due to the pandemic. Or, rather, due to their near-treasonous response to it. Behold:
And…
And…
The economy is on the edge of utter collapse, the population is on the edge of massive infection with a virus with around a 1% mortality rate. And these jackholes crank out a 1,400 page bill that would do such vital things as mandating that airlines become carbon neutral (which would probably kill an industry that is likely to stagger anyway), and paying off ten grand of student loans for each student who unwisely took loans they couldn’t afford to pay back, and installing union officials (i.e. organized crime and/or government stooges) onto corporate boards as well as enforced “diversity,” and who knows what all else because the damn thing is 1,400 pages long.
This nonsense is calculated to torpedo any bill meant to try to rescue the economy. Just remember, this crap is more important to these people than keeping a nation from economic collapse.
Frogmarches are appropriate here.
What do we call the pandemic that originated in Wuhan, China? “Coronavirus” seems to be the accepted standard, even though that’s a whole family of viruses, not just the specific one that has locked down the planet. COVID-19 is specific but kinda blah. I’ve been calling it the Wu Flu for brevity and accuracy. The White House calls it the China Virus. But there’s an even better name:
Did he yell “this is maga country” right after?
Did you remember to pick up your Subway sandwich?— Joey Saladino (@JoeySalads) March 19, 2020
Kung Flu. I like it.
Still: since when is naming a disease after the place it came from/was detected/was identified at “racist?”
West Nile
Ebola Zaire
Ebola Reston
Marburg (Germany)
Guinea Worm
MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome)
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever
Spanish Flu (even though it seems to have originated in Kansas)
Lyme Disease (Old Lyme, Connecticut)
Zika (Zika Forest, Uganda)
Japanese encephalitis
Ross River (Queensland, Oz) Fever
Norovirus (Norwalk, Ohio)
Lassa (Nigeria) Fever
German Measles
Omsk Hemorrhagic Fever (Russia)
Hantavirus (Hantan, South Korea)
La Crosse (Wisconsin) Encephalitis
Hong Kong Flu
Yes, it’s a nightmare. As previously mentioned, I’ve got a reasonable expectation that I myself will be dead inside of a month or two, due to craptacular lungs which are probably primed to simply dissolve if I get it. And along with myself, it’s not impossible that millions of other Americans could die of this thing in a similar timeframe, especially if people keep acting stupidly. That said: if you’re looking at an existential crisis, what better way to confront it than with humor?
More memes after the break.
A remarkable tweet with the perfect reply.
Am starting to question your commitment
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 12, 2020
Remarkably, this doesn’t come from the Babylon Bee.
So… is he lying, or is it the dementia?
Protestors try to lob a firebomb at the Mexican Presidential residence and end up setting their own ablaze.
Stunning and brave, ladies.
Mexican pro abortion Feminists try to learn how to throw a bomb… without much success pic.twitter.com/PaEYqCBPvH
— Alejandro Bermudez (@albermudezr) March 9, 2020
Tim Pool has some interesting comments on this incident and the protest around it.
This video purports to be a rather bold robbery at a drugstore in San Francisco, demonstrating the inevitable results of policies that decriminalize theft.
San Francisco’s no arrest policy has anarchic results. pic.twitter.com/3FqauPHUaM
— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) March 3, 2020
