Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

I'd note re restaraunt owners -- first, it's obviously entirely sensible to spread out the bonus, otherwise you end up paying a shit-ton of people $2000 for nothing. Second, and this builds off the first, if they're trying to attract workers it doesn't seem particularly likely that they're going fire workers to avoid a bonus -- especially if they're good. Perhaps the labor market will reverse itself and give them that option, but if the labor market is so tight that owners have to off servers and dishwashers signing bonuses then I don't them firing people.

So, I think Whitley's biggest complaint falls into the realm of "its possible" but definitely unlikely.

[iam416]

I missed this on Friday, but Geraghty just continues to destroy China: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-m...ocket-program/

This piece focuses on their ridiculous "space" program, but hits on Covid, too. Reminder, China has only 3500 Covid deaths AND has convinced the world that Covid started from some bat instead of the Virology Institute researching SARS and, for some god-forsaken reason, how to make SARS super-human-infectious and said Institute being located in fucking Wuhan.

I was adamantly opposed to pulling out of TPP, but at this point I can't ever imagine trying to cooperatively work with those fucks.

[lineygoblue]

The last trucking company I worked for offered hiring bonuses and they were paid out over a 12 month period. I got a third each at 90 days, 6 months, and one year. They couldn't very well pay it all up front, because drivers would simply hire on, grab the bonus, then quit. It was nice to know that little bump in pay was waiting at each interval.

I've never seen anything like what's going on now. I almost wish I was 20 years younger so I could pick and choose what kind of work I'd like to choose. The job market is more open than anything I've seen in my lifetime.

[Mike]

Kevin Williamson perfectly sums up why it’s so stupid for the Republican Party to continue its Trump worship.

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/05/purges-for-unity/

But, somehow, Trump has convinced McCarthy et al. that Republicans can’t win without him — even though he quite recently has demonstrated, as plainly as can be, that they cannot win with him.

Republican leaders are living in talk-radio reality.

In reality reality, things look a little different. When Trump was elected in 2016, Republicans already controlled the House of Representatives and the Senate. In 2021, they control the board of commissioners in Minnehaha County, S.D., and several very highly regarded hills of beans. Trump never got even to 50 percent approval, the first president in a generation to stay underwater for his entire term in office — and also the first since Herbert Hoover to see his party lose the White House and both houses of Congress in one term. Trump-aligned figures are hearing footsteps in Republican states, with Senator Ted Cruz, for example, having come within a few points of losing reelection to a callow nobody in a race in which he lost every city in Texas more populous than Lubbock.

One in six of the people who identified as Republicans on Election Day in 2020 no longer associate themselves with the Republican party — only 25 percent of American voters do. That’s the political price of January 6 and Trump’s post-election shenanigans. Any more unity, and Republicans will be holding their next convention in a corner booth at Denny’s.

Win a campaign for president? Trump currently can’t win a campaign for a Facebook page.

[Da Geezer]

I missed this on Friday, but Geraghty just continues to destroy China: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-m...ocket-program/

This piece focuses on their ridiculous "space" program, but hits on Covid, too. Reminder, China has only 3500 Covid deaths AND has convinced the world that Covid started from some bat instead of the Virology Institute researching SARS and, for some god-forsaken reason, how to make SARS super-human-infectious and said Institute being located in fucking Wuhan.

I was adamantly opposed to pulling out of TPP, but at this point I can't ever imagine trying to cooperatively work with those fucks.

Reporting today (from a guy named Gordon Chang at FOX) is that the Wuhan Lab is developing ethnic-specific biological warfare weapons. Even in the days of Mao, the Chinese believed that, in a total nuclear holocaust, they would have more survivors than other countries. Trouble was, there would be nothing left to "inherit". They now are allegedly addressing that issue, hoping to be the only civilization remaining after WW3.

When you look at the rocket that they let fall to earth, it shows the disregard China has for individual humans. Combined with their "risk-taking" in terms of technology, such a view of man is more than dangerous.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Reporting today (from a guy named Gordon Chang at FOX) is that the Wuhan Lab is developing ethnic-specific biological warfare weapons. Even in the days of Mao, the Chinese believed that, in a total nuclear holocaust, they would have more survivors than other countries. Trouble was, there would be nothing left to "inherit". They now are allegedly addressing that issue, hoping to be the only civilization remaining after WW3.

When you look at the rocket that they let fall to earth, it shows the disregard China has for individual humans. Combined with their "risk-taking" in terms of technology, such a view of man is more than dangerous.

No question the Chinese governed by the CCP are dangerous. That isn't going to change so, fundamentally I agree with the danger those fuck-sticks pose. Confronting them has become harder as the question of whether the US military can act as an effective conventional deterrent to, say, them invading Taiwan is questionable. There are weaknesses within though and the last thing we actually want to do is cooperate with them. OK to script FP that plays along as a ploy but the US should be willing and ready to challenge China on all fronts, military, economic and political. Being that warfare is a whole different animal these days, the US is entirely capable of challenging them. Trump had exactly the right approach - go visit, smile, shake hands ..... then fuck them.

On your second point, I doubt that China is developing some kind of ethnic specific bio-weapon. Consider the source: FOX. I suppose it's possible but the kind of research being done in Wuhan and elsewhere under stricter protective conditions than existed in that place that let SARS2 out, is called "gain of function." Its a recognized but controversially experimentation with the intent of getting ahead of a virus's capability to mutate into different strains (see Talent's link to the applicable article up-thread) The reason it's controversial is becasue of exactly what happened in the Wuhan virology lab were that fucker escaped. And let there be no doubt, it was a massive fuck-up in an ill-equipped lab that everybody in that line of work knew about and failed to act responsibly and shut the place down before what happened there in the late summer of 2019. Those accountable for the aftermath have yet to be held accountable. That includes the Chinese government, whov'e stonewalled the truth, and the outfit Fauci runs and Fauci himself.

[Hannibal]

The labor shortage is a precursor to inflation. Whodda thunk it?

[Da Geezer]

The labor shortage is a precursor to inflation. Whodda thunk it?

There has always been debate over the extent that news of present or impending inflation causes inflation. The near-total control that the government has over the media might keep the inflation story under wraps for a time. It might actually ameliorate inflation.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I missed this on Friday, but Geraghty just continues to destroy China: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-m...ocket-program/

This piece focuses on their ridiculous "space" program, but hits on Covid, too. Reminder, China has only 3500 Covid deaths AND has convinced the world that Covid started from some bat instead of the Virology Institute researching SARS and, for some god-forsaken reason, how to make SARS super-human-infectious and said Institute being located in fucking Wuhan.

I was adamantly opposed to pulling out of TPP, but at this point I can't ever imagine trying to cooperatively work with those fucks.

China wasn't part of the TPP unless you're talking about some other country being "those fucks", haha. It was an alliance specifically designed to counter China's influence and Trump threw it in the trash although Hillary, to her discredit, also campaigned against it.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Trump unraveled decades of global trade agreements signed to improve trade relationships, create interdependency (globalism) and reduce the threat of war. It was a national strategy pursued by the US by both republican and democratic administrations for at least 30 years. His objective was to reduce protections of foreign and multinational companies who exploited cheap labor to gain competitive advantage and to bring companies back to the US.

It was utterly stupid undertaking based on shitty economics and did nothing to return manufacturing to the US. However, I think what talent was pointing out is that the TTP WAS a bulwark against China's emerging trade dominance and that abandoning the TTP to substitute it's benefits to work with China opening new relationships with those fucking communist running China in the process was a fundamentally flawed FP.

[Tom W]

I missed this on Friday, but Geraghty just continues to destroy China: https://www.nationalreview.com/the-m...ocket-program/

This piece focuses on their ridiculous "space" program, but hits on Covid, too. Reminder, China has only 3500 Covid deaths AND has convinced the world that Covid started from some bat instead of the Virology Institute researching SARS and, for some god-forsaken reason, how to make SARS super-human-infectious and said Institute being located in fucking Wuhan.

Tom Clancy couldn't have written this any better- if you want to unleash a bioweapon to wreck havoc among your enemies, without it looking like an all-out act of war- then one would be hard pressed to come up with a better way to do it.

[iam416]

Trump unraveled decades of global trade agreements signed to improve trade relationships, create interdependency (globalism) and reduce the threat of war. It was a national strategy pursued by the US by both republican and democratic administrations for at least 30 years. His objective was to reduce protections of foreign and multinational companies who exploited cheap labor to gain competitive advantage and to bring companies back to the US.

It was utterly stupid undertaking based on shitty economics and did nothing to return manufacturing to the US. However, I think what talent was pointing out is that the TTP WAS a bulwark against China's emerging trade dominance and that abandoning the TTP to substitute it's benefits to work with China opening new relationships with those fucking communist running China in the process was a fundamentally flawed FP.

Nah. Just made a mistake.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Well, yes, of course. But this isn't a Tom Clancy novel.

The virologists in Wuhan were doing legitimate research not withstanding that virologists globally thought that what was going on in Wuhan was unsafe given required lab security not present there.

I do think that the Chinese government, once they realized what had happened in Wuhan, stonewalled and continue to do so. People like Fauci were complicit, along with 100s of respected virologists who had voiced concern about a super virus escaping from China's research labs. Still, they failed to insist on shutting the place down like they all knew it should have been due to this kind of Omerta among high level virologists..... and this is where we are after this massive failure of virologist in the know to act responsibly.

[THE_WIZARD_]

Heaven forbid that pay is tied to performance. Ridiculous.

Marxism is the way!

[Dr. Strangelove]

Buffalo Brewery offering a free "shot and a chaser" almost does more vaccinations in a day than the rest of the county did in a week, haha

https://buffalonews.com/news/local/free-beer-offer-results-in-more-vaccinations-than-all-erie-county-first-dose-clinics-last/article_34b5d0d2-b011-11eb-92fd-8b7017585dc1.html