Coming Soon to a Planet Near You

That 15-20% of (mostly white) people are why US Amercia can’t have nice things.

A mere $1200 for ten weeks ain’t gonna cut it.

What keeps me up at night is that we have six people and their families depending on us to make payroll for my hubby’s business. We made it this month, however two of my hub’s largest clients couldn’t pay, and they both owe us very large checks. No small business can survive months on end without revenues. We’re fortunate in that we have the resources to hang on ’til around Memorial Day, but after that we’ll have to file for bankruptcy along with everyone else if they can’t get current. (The courts will have no problem processing tens of millions of bankruptcies in the next few months, ha ha. I’m about to get real familiar with bankruptcy law, which is something I sure as hell hoped I’d never need to know much about).

We applied within hours of the Paycheck Protection Program’s launch. We got a mass email stating that the bank received our application, but no loan number, reference number, or really any way to check the status. About a week later, we received another mass email stating that they funds were already gone, thanks for playing. Apparently, they funded loans for ~1.6 million of the nation’s ~30 million small businesses, a “stampede through the eye of a needle” as one Chase exec described it. We never received any CARES Act direct deposits or checks from the IRS, even though we qualify for relief funds, nor am I expecting anything from our malevolent, destructive, incompetent federal government.

Thank the FSM that I cashed our tax refund check before the ones with Tr666p’s signature start bouncing.

I don’t even want to think about what’s going to happen to all of the tens of millions of business owners and their employees whose jobs are going to cease to exist next month, along with their health insurance during a pandemic. How can they “reopen” the economy when there’s nothing to go back to?

It’s supremely ironic that capitalism celebrated the 172nd anniversary of the publication of the Communist Manifesto by dropping dead. The stock market will surge through the stratosphere once all the small businesses are gone! For 25 years, Wall $treet has lied to us that profits don’t matter, well now revenues and customers don’t matter either, since the despicable billionaire oligarchs that’ve looted and ruined the country are now sucking trillions of dollars directly from the Treasury’s teats with QE Infinity. They can just pay each other billions of Steve buttMunchin’s Magic Munnie for stocks, yachts, and shopping mall-sized houses.

/good news/

1. Spring has been gorgeous so far, and the weather this past week was especially sunny.
2. Washington State now has the most diverse Supreme Court in national history. (Justice Mary Yu married me and my hubby, she rocks!).
3. People are fostering and adopting animals in record numbers, hooray!
4. I haven’t been stuck in a traffic jam in… over a month. In fact, I can count the number of times that I’ve driven our car on one hand since the shut downs began.
5. I’ve seen more people than ever before in my neighborhood outside working on their landscaping, playing with their kids, walking their dogs, talking with each other (at a distance).

“They call it a Depression, but people don’t seem all that depressed.”
—Max, Dark Angel

@¡Andrew!: JPMorgan Chase exec on SBA relief fund: “We didn’t even get through the first five minutes of applications.” It was exhausted that quickly.

@nojo: In fairness, no amount of munnie will be enough; the scale of the disaster is beyond comprehension, and very soon the economy’s problems will begin fueling each other and spiraling exponentially, especially after half the country can’t make their next rent/mortgage payment on May 1/May Day(!).

Absolutely no one had “total economic collapse” on their bingo card six weeks ago.

I can’t recall which of us wrote this back in 2008, but it’s even more true now that we’re all Wile E. Coyote, we’ve run off the cliff, and we just haven’t looked down yet.

/more good news/

I’ve found a lot of comfort in Chinese philosophy lately, which has to be the most Seattle thing I’ve ever said.

The Art of Effortless Living

The narrator of this Taoism documentary has an absolutely beautiful voice; I could listen to the man’s OMG sexy Australian accent all day. Very soothing.

*****5 star Yelp review; highly recommend.

@¡Andrew!: We’re on thin ice as well. I’m currently fortunate enough to be paid to work from home–on a catalogue of wildly expensive rare books that I fear no one will buy–but I don’t know how long we can hold on without some serious sales. My boss had his application quickly approved by our community bank, but no idea if it will be funded. Fingers crossed for you guys to get paid! At least people are still buying wine–Mr Cyn’s winery had its biggest March ever.

NYT: “At a White House briefing, President Trump theorized — perhaps incorrectly, in the view of experts — that throwing people in a volcano would kill the coronavirus & end the pandemic.”

Oh wait, let me get the actual NYT headline on Twitter:
“At a White House briefing, President Trump theorized — dangerously, in the view of some experts — about the powers of sunlight, ultraviolet light and household disinfectants to kill the coronavirus.”
https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1253556794405896192?s=20

Let the Darwin Awards commence.

@SanFranLefty: It’s whut plants crave.

On the other hand, we should be encouraging anyone who’d take medical, business, ethical, legal, or moral advice from Prezinazi AntiChrist to drink bleach immediately. We’d all be better off.

Hope everyone enjoyed Infrastructure Week!