Good news, bad news

The good news? After 14 days my daughter, recently returned from Spain, is out of quarantine with no sign of coronavirus.

The bad news? The state is shut down.

For the record, here is a county-by-county map of cases in Minnesota:

Metro? Yes. Western Minnesota? Not so much

Here's Wisconsin, which is operating under similar, if slightly more strict clampdown rules:

Stay on Highway 8 and you're good

Only 3 counties have a real problem at the moment -- Milwaukee, Dane, and to a much lesser extent Waukesha.

How about our neighbors in Iowa? They aren't currently doing a clampdown.

Not so good in Iowa City and Des Moines, but otherwise?

Then consider our friends in Illinois, now under a far more draconian clampdown thanks to their governor:

Lotta clear spaces here, especially in the southeast

So my question is this -- why are governors imposing one-size-fits-all solutions on their states? I'm assuming we can still ask the question for now in this forum -- not too many blue-check thought police read this feature. When this is all over, I will be curious to see if some of these counties are still free of the virus. If you believe the narrative, a plague is spreading across the land and it's everywhere. And perhaps it is. But I wonder, just a little bit.

A lesson learned, or suspicion confirmed

We'll have time to sort all this out eventually, but one thing has become quite clear -- a lot of people are quite willing to become cheerleaders for the heavy hand of government if they have any fear at all. Mencken said it this way:

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

No, COVID-19 (or the Wuhan coronavirus, if you'd prefer) is not imaginary in the least. But there's no lack of people who are clamoring to be led to safety at the moment. Would that I had more confidence in those who are supposed to be doing the leading. And no, that's not a shot at Trump -- as always, the people you really need to watch are closer to home.

When will this end?

When people get tired of it. Spring is coming and people will want to get out and about. And at some point you're going to start getting less obedience and more questioning of the powers that be, especially about shelter-in-place rules and whatnot.

Might be time for a pool. Take a guess on when the clamps come off and put your guess in the comments.

Back in Business

Career opportunities

We were able to get our daughter out of Spain. Good thing, too, because the crackdown is on:

The Spanish government is poised to declare a 15-day national lockdown on Monday to battle coronavirus.

Under the decree being finalised, people would be allowed out only for emergencies, to buy food, or for work.

With 191 deaths and 6,046 infections, Spain is the worst-hit country in Europe after Italy, which declared a nationwide lockdown on Monday.

I understand the impulse. It may turn out to be right thing to do. But the eagerness of officials throughout the world to crack down, and the cheering they are receiving, should get your antennae up.

Maybe not as dead as we thought, though.

It would have been nice if. . .

. . . the Leader of the Free World had said at the outset of his remarks tonight that his likely useless European travel ban didn’t apply to U.S. citizens. We ended up spending a small fortune on a one-way ticket via London to get our daughter a flight home on the weekend, routing her through England to avoid restrictions that didn’t actually apply to her, so she wouldn’t be stuck in Europe. Sneaking a clarification out an hour after his presentation was, well, horseshit.

I can’t even pretend to defend this. Meanwhile, the trip to Spain I have been waiting to take for 36 freaking years is now likely a sunk cost.

Grrrr.

Wash yer hands

This was going around social media yesterday. You can go to the website and create your own, but this seems like the right choice:

Australian schoolboy outfit optional

In two weeks. . .

. . . we are supposed to go to Spain to visit Fearless Maria, currently studying in Madrid. Will it happen, or will the urge to quarantine the entire freaking world prevail? We're about to find out.

Events are in the saddle.

Ordinarily, I'm not a fan of schadenfreude, but. . .

. . . in this case I'll make an exception:

Too little, too late

Michael Bloomberg has amassed a fortune of over $60 billion. He could buy and sell me a thousand times out of petty cash. I stipulate he's a brilliant businessman and an impressive figure. But he is a terrible politician and a malevolent human being. He's now forced to admit that a time serving hack with a rictus grin has a better chance of being president than he does. If you can't get your schadenfreude on for that, you're missing out.

Feel the Bern? I don't feel much of anything

Don't fall in love, fall in line

So Joe Biden, fugitive from Madame Tussauds, is now back to being the frontrunner in the 2020 Dem circus. Is there a deeper meaning to Sooooooooper Tuesday (borrowing a little Benster HYYYYPE here)? Not really. Whatever the party apparat wants, it ultimately gets. And Bernie Sanders isn't what they want.

I was able to get exclusive video of the discussions before Super Tuesday among top Dem officials:

And just as William Holden portrayed it, Joe gets to empty the ashtrays.

It's Klo-ver

Our Amy gets the pipe:

Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar ended her campaign for president Monday afternoon and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden, as the party’s moderate wing has started to unite in a bid to stop Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders from building an insurmountable lead in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Klobuchar made the announcement official at a Biden rally in Dallas, where former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg also made a separate endorsement of the former vice president at a restaurant before the event. Former presidential contender Beto O’Rourke also was expected to announce his backing of Biden.

Don't fall in love, fall in line

I almost feel sorry for Klobuchar. She didn't even get the chance to take a victory lap in her home state before they came for her, and you know they did come for her. This was not a free will decision, any more than the decision Pete Buttigieg made the day before. And her reward for the past year of her life, for visiting every county in Iowa and all the other silly rituals she chose to undertake, is to endorse a malaprop factory who seems to be about one heckler away from a total mental breakdown.

Still, she had to know this day was coming. She wasn't going to get the nomination. She probably won't even get the Veep nod from Vice President Kinnock; about the best she can hope for, in the highly unlikely event Biden were somehow to win the nomination and then the presidency, would be something like HUD director. When 2024 rolls around, she'll be yesterday's news. Perhaps it's appropriate she knelt before Zod in Texas; at least she won't have far to go to check into her berth in the Cindy Sheehan ditch.

1000 Words

Signs, signs everywhere signs