Syrmax

I'm in the same boat. I actually "bought" an extra week of vacation this year but not only have i had to cancel an Orlando golf trip in March, and 2 week Italy trip (starting tommorrow - not)...no idea what int'l travel will be available. I'd like to get over to Germany and catch some of my soccer team if possible (did that last fall). Plus, doing some travelling post-covid has got to be less crowded as i don't think everyone will immediately feel up to int'l travel right away. i've been thinking of something out in western US or Western Canada for "domestic" alternatives.

I don't know if it was a protest...but yesterday, returning home from dodging the virus at Home Depot, i spotted a guy sort of jogging alongside the road, on his own. Seemed a bit oddly dressed for jogging (compared to what you usually see) but what was really odd was that he was holding up a decent sized American Flag on a pole as he jogged. It was also raining. I wonder if this was some sort of protest thing or just a guy feeling super patriotic.

Bl*w me!

One thing that i haven't run across a good explanation for...is that Fauci, etal have been saying a vaccine is usually a 12-18 month effort to get it developed, tested, approved, deployed. Which i get. However, and i could be off here a bit, the 2009 H1N1 vaccine was apparently developed within about 4-6 months. What gives? Is there something special about corona virus vaccines? In fact, even with what i believe was a shorter vaccine timeline, by the time it was rolled out in Nov 2009, the virus had pretty much run its course and the mass quantities of vaccine weren't needed (or wanted by that point...$$).

i'm belatedly putting my snowblower away for the season today. Not that i'd use it for anything we'd get in April but it's the thought that counts.

Those are vanishingly small numbers of cases. Probably in line with seasonal flu caseloads. The one size fits all responses have been excessive IMO. Hotspot areas downstate, makes sense. Not in the boonies. Cuomo should significantly relax requirements in places like Oswego County.

Will the asteroid be required to wear a mask also?

I'm not sure when the contest ends. I found what I think might be an "Official site" and no mention of a hard cutoff date. KROC leads KSYR by 3.8" this season so it will take an unusual late season storm to change things. KBUF won last year...

When does the Golden Snowball contest end? Is it thru April or maybe done already? Or can it go into 2 OT into May?

Well, Onondaga County (Syracuse area) now has more recovered cases then active (301 vs 271, respectively)...so that's a step in the right direction. Thus far 17 deaths in the County attributed to covid-19. I'm seeing more and more "out there" stuff from my Trumpist contacts. Its like conspiracy season on steroids. I just learned this morning that coronavirus testing is a Democrat plot! Who knew? I'm a fairly constant observer of politics and current events...and i have to say that I had "sympathy" for the Trumpist complaints about various Democrat conspiracies to get Trump, mainly because there was credibility to them (Russia , Ukraine nonsense, a thousand other ones played out by the MSM daily). However, I've long since passed the point of having any sympathy for them after the complete whitewash the Rumpists are perpetrating over the Feb-Mid March "Rumplestilskin" period and now questioning whether "lockdowns" were ever needed, anywhere. It's uneducated idiocy. And now, there's the Liberate the States nonsense, the cozying up to quacks like Dr. Oz, Dr. Phil, Dr. Drew, while Dr. Fauci gets roasted (they hate that he was involved with and a major advocate in Public Health in the AIDS research and cure...herd immunity was the solution for the gays per the Rumpist loons...). Sigh.

Well, most of what fell last night around here was actually liquid. about a 1/10th of an inch with only some liquid rain snowflakes towards the end. Sigh. I'm guessing that was last call for snowfall this season, as weak as it was.

Must be near Callicoon. I like that area. Family used to have a house there many many moons ago. Still remember it fondly, visited two years ago again. Enjoy.

That's a rhetorical question, right?

I'm just gonna leave THIS here. I like Zerohedge but you have to be careful on some of it. Of course I say the same about the mainstream media also... Enjoy and tighten down your tin foil hats!

Looks like (Draft) Dodgin Donnie has hit the crack pipe a lil early for the weekend?

We not only can, but it is our birthright to do so.

I don't think I'd trust any # Beijing comes up with at this point. It's just a Blizzard of Bullshit.

I need just 2-1/2" to get to 90". I say we do it as long as Spring comes by...June?

The White House Perhaps you found it conspicuous that the US presidency and Donald Trump didn’t show up until the end of this list. The White House is here in part because many of the institutional failures and mistakes described above are also effectively the institutional failures and mistakes of the White House. The FDA and CDC are both part of President Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services. So, too, are the Surgeon General and the United States Public Health Service, which we have so far let off the hook for their brazen participation in the nudging state behavior surrounding the use of masks by citizens. Perhaps you also found it conspicuous that this example isn’t getting the same clever little device that the others did. You know, where we would say that the White House told us a story about who it was, but then a lot of people died and now that story is dead? I didn’t say that…because the story isn’t dead. The narrative of the US Presidency is alive and well. And that’s a problem...

Congress Today, everybody knows that everybody knows that Congress can’t even pass an historic, once-in-a-lifetime emergency bill for a global pandemic without inserting into it every possible personal cause, special interest or political ambition. Frankly, in context of most government actions, you could even make the argument that the CARES Act is a decent bill. Relatively speaking, anyway. It contains a lot of direct aid to Americans, through direct payments, unemployment extensions, small business lending and temporary (he said, tentatively) expansions of various social safety net programs. Along with a bunch of other ridiculous shit. There’s $17 billion for “businesses critical to maintaining national security”, which is regulation-speak for bailing out Boeing shareholders for management’s disastrous execution of the 737 Max, and pretending it had anything to do with the COVID-19 pandemic. There’s a provision that prohibits use of funding for a wall with Mexico. There’s a provision that prevents recipients of loans to take actions in response to labor union formation. There’s a provision that squeezed in shortened approval processes for drugs that have nothing to do with COVID-19. Oh, and also sunscreen. The FDA is now required from congress not to review a particular sunscreen ingredient. It was important to the nation’s healing from COVID-19 to permit the use of HSA funds to purchase menstrual care products. There’s the usual ag stuff, because no bill from US Congress is complete and no congressman from Iowa electable without it. Oh, and nothing says, “Let’s urgently help businesses and families recover from this pandemic” like a fully funded abstinence program. Or a rousing performance at the newly funded Kennedy Center, which responded to its windfall by proceeding to furlough just about everybody left on staff. That’s just the nonsense that got into the bill.

...The Fed’s actions represent a gross inequity, the rough equivalent of dropping a trillion dollars from a blimp into a stadium full of billionaires, and then saying, “Well, how else are we going to get money into the hands of store owners and workers?” ...Whatever we decide tomorrow will look like, we must not forget how Wall Street has not represented our interests.

Its super long...but a lot of Shibboleths are slain. And yeah, the WHO are a pile of sh*t. Just one of many...

This is a Long Read but IMO thought provoking reading for thinking people. Fear not, the failures are institutional, not solely a matter of Left or Right politics. ...Snip.... First, the people die; then, the stories. The human toll of COVID-19 is unlikely to approach even a mean fraction of the pain visited on humanity in the first quarter of the 20th century. But what about the stories we tell about our global institutions, our shared values, and our own orthodoxies and authorities? Those stories are dying. They are dying because the institutions built on those stories failed us all, and all at once. First, the people die; then, the stories. The failures of these institutions were not simple mistakes, evidence of wrongness of one kind or another. The failures of these institutions were failures of narrative, devastating revelations of each institution’s fundamental inability to do what they said they would do. Revelations that their purpose was something other than the story they told about themselves. In various ways they each held power over us through those stories, told using the language of our needs and values and beliefs. In a single event, the world proved those stories false on their faces. ...Snip... Today, America is moving quickly on a path to frame COVID-19 as a domestic political matter, the result of failures that will be solved in the voting booth. This is a mistake. If we would not yield our birthright, we must first choose never to forget the full scope of our betrayal. ...End Snip...

We had 2-3" of snow on MAY 18th 2002 around Albany (more in hills), after one of the lousiest winters ever (01/02).

Why is it STILL snowing?? I want Spring. Make.It Stop.