Category: Cynical-C

I’m going to start creating a list below of resources and tips for those of us who have been impacted directly by the coronavirus, either by the disease itself, being quarantined, or those who are having immediate financial ramifications. Please, leave anything you come across or have found help with in the comments and I’ll post it to the top of this page in this thread.

CDC How to Protect Yourself from coronavirus infection.
CDC Symptoms of coronavirus.

IRS releases guidance on deferring tax payments due to coronavirus

Reddit’s Personal Finance job loss megathread has resources from state to state and other helpful information.

Lighter stuff but still important:

Don’t let self-quarantine get you down with these virtual museum tours, online photography collections, and more

How has the coronavirus impacted your life so far?

I’m fortunate to be able to do most of my work by telecommuting.  Our office is pretty much closed for the next two weeks (downtown Boston) so I’m just trying to balance work and home. (Not checking emails after 5pm, etc).   I’m not at the high risk level of getting too sick with it so I’m more concerned with carrying it to older relatives and so on. So taking most of the recommended precautions. Although, every single time someone reminds me not to touch my face, my eyes and nose immediately feels like they are being tickled by every feather in the entire world.

But guess which ones actually go out to vote.

I voted for Warren, and am happy about my vote. I knew she didn’t have much of a path but now she’s finished. She’ll stay in for another round of states but the reality is she finished third in her own state and the delegates aren’t going to be there for her.

We did learn that Bernie’s appeal just isn’t there. He’ll win a few more states and make this into a contest but the only way he could take this from Biden now would be for him to appeal to a wider audience than the Bernie Bros, and I just don’t think he has that in him. I’m thinking the popularity he found in 2016 may have been more due to a lot of people not liking Clinton and seeking an alternative than to Sanders really having a broad appeal. And she still beat him. Personally, I love a lot of Bernie’s message, just really not a fan of the messenger. (But if he does pull it off, yes, I’ll vote for him. How is this even a question.) As to his creepy cultish hardliners crying about the Democrats not giving him a chance….. well, you guys realize he isn’t a Democrat right? And I don’t think the DNC has to shut him out. Voters seem to be doing that job by themselves.

Bloomberg. Well, as I was writing the last paragraph, Bloomberg just suspended his campaign. He spent about half a billion dollars and the only thing he won was a territory that doesn’t vote in the presidential election. So, well played. His strategy of jumping in later reminds me of when Giuliani did something similar when he was running in 2008 and skipped all the primaries to concentrate on FL. Spectacularly bad gamble.

And as for Biden…..I’m trying to find some silver lining in having him as the eventual nominee. I’m really not excited to have him as a candidate. He’s 77 and looks about 82. I think he can beat Trump if he stays alive to November. But it’s a big concern. Who he picks as veep is going to be critical. A few good things though if Biden is the nominee is that we won’t be taking anybody out of the Senate (depending on his veep choice) when we are going to need every D (or I) possible to try to gain the majority. The other big point is Trump is scared to death of Biden. He’s so scared that he actually was impeached in an attempt to derail a Biden candidacy. Trump wanted to face off against the SOCIALIST. He’s been on Twitter all morning whining about it:

The Democrat establishment came together and crushed Bernie Sanders, AGAIN! Even the fact that Elizabeth Warren stayed in the race was devastating to Bernie and allowed Sleepy Joe to unthinkably win Massachusetts. It was a perfect storm, with many good states remaining for Joe!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2020

The flip side is now we’re going to hear Fox News go on and on about Hunter Biden for the spring, summer, and fall.

Buckle up.

This year has started off with me reading books at a glacial pace. But at least I tripled the amount of books I read in January.

The Border by Don Winslow. Book 3 of The Power of the Dog trilogy. Don Winslow is an amazing writer and this trilogy had me hooked right from the beginning. It’s fiction but based on mostly real events dealing with the Mexican drug cartels and American politics. I can’t recommend this series enough.

American Dirt by Jeanine Cummins There’s a lot of controversy surrounding this one being that it deals with a story about a family of Mexican refugees written by an author who is not Mexican. I really don’t think that an author has to be of a particular nationality or race to write about them, with the caveat that you better get it right. (I rarely look at an author’s background before reading a book they have written. My rule is just give me something good to sink my teeth into.) There are arguments to be made for or against that but it’s outside the scope of this post. The problem I had with this book is simply, it’s not very good. I got about halfway through before sending it back to the library. The writing is not that strong, the plot doesn’t feel very honest, and it wasn’t worth putting the work into finishing reading it. Hard pass.

Travels in Siberia by Ian Frazier. A mixture of travelogue and history of Siberia. I’m not even sure how I ended up reading this. It was on my goodreads list and I guess I was in a winter mood. It was worth it despite it being a very in depth book. Only pick it up if you’re in the mood for about 700 pages of Siberian travels.

Have you read anything good lately?