Category: News

Police officer shot near I-44 and Elm in Webster Groves, suspect dead

This was about 1.3 miles as the Freightliner flies from my house in Old Trees. However, it sounds like it was on the Interstate itself, so it’s not like I could say that I pushed my baby past that very spot, although we did go through the very ornate underpass many times thirteen years ago.

At a mile away right beside the highway, we wouldn’t even have heard it if we were on the front porch swing. Which we had, by the way, and we used it despite the highway.

5 lucky elk hunters will have some competition — a mountain lion.

Unfortunately, this looks to be the limit on the elk hunting licenses that Missouri will give out this year with a side story that the Department of Conservation has found evidence of a mountain lion taking an elk without a license at all.

But I would watch five men with a gun stalking an elk whilst a mountain lion stalks all of them.

Well, no, because that might be gory and bad for one or more of the men involved.

But I would certainly get a blog post out of it.

This one.

Hy-Vee to limit meat purchases at all locations

I’m glad I saw this before going to the grocery store later. It will give me the opportunity to buy meat. Of course, I’ve been buying, cooking, and freezing extra meat during the current unpleasantness anyway. So if I buy four today, four tomorrow, and four the next day, I’ll make out all right.

Just kidding. I don’t tend to shop at Hy-Vee that often. So I’ll be able to clean out my local grocery for an extra day or two until they follow suit.

I mean, who wants to run out of meat half way to Proxima Centauri? Not me, brother.

UPDATE: Apparently, Kroger-themed stores, too.

UPDATE 2: My local grocery has also implemented a limit of 5 meat items; however, that is the fresh meat section, where the meat is purportedly cut in the store. The processed lunch meat, sausage, and bacon section has no limit. So, yeah, I bought some extra.

Sometime in 2021, perhaps May or June, medical suppliers will take millions of masks and protective gear, overproduced in the summer and autumn of 2020 by every medical producer, textile mill, and specialty t-shirt shop who offered masks with your favorite team or slogan on them, and stored for almost a year in vast warehouses, and bury them in a great landfill as though they were unsold copies of E.T. for the Atari 2600.

Half of this headline is correct: SGF, Greene County extend stay-at-home orders, allow more curbside, delivery orders

Springfield and Greene County residents will be required to mostly stay at home until midnight May 4 in what leaders called a “half step” toward reopening the community.

Businesses previously deemed “non-essential,” such as clothing stores, vape shops and other retailers will be allowed to take curbside and delivery orders starting immediately.

The “extension” means the mandatory guidance from the local governments now conforms to the date set by the governor, whose ruling superceded the local hide-under-your-bed order. So the extension extends the foolishness to match the foolishness that takes precedence.

The more important, optimistic, and beginning to return to the old new normal is that the authorities are encouraging other small businesses to start minimal operations to begin ramping up to a hopeful burst of healthy economic activity on May 5.

Also, prediction: Cinco de Mayo parties are going to be lit this year.

Diaper Bank of the Ozarks sees need increase during COVID-19 pandemic

I see a demand surge coming beyond this one.

Fillyjonk has a poem about finding a dead bird in her garden. It’s not a bad poem, and she draws a lesson from the event.

Me, I’m reminded of bygone days when we were supposed to report dead birds because of the danger of the West Nile virus. I’m not sure what Neil Ferguson predicted about it, but I’m sure it would have been apocalyptic.

Schumer calls for up to $25,000 in ‘heroes’ pay for coronavirus workers

Sen. Chuck Schumer is calling for up to $25,000 in “heroes” pay for front-line health care and service industry workers as Congress pushes ahead with a new coronavirus crisis rescue package.

* * * *

Nurses, truck drivers, grocery store clerks and others are “risking their lives” to care for Americans amid the COVID-19 pandemic and economic shutdown, he said.

Ludicrous on the face, of course, but so was the $1000 checks or whatever we’re supposed to be getting to mail back to the government.

Oppose it, and you hate these workers, hey?

No word on politicos who are sheltering in front of microphones get “heroes” pay for continuing to not keep their social distance from news microphones. Heaven knows they count themselves amongst the heroes for voting to shovel Monopoly money into the wind.

Bigger corporations would be expected to foot the bill for the pay hike, he said, while the federal government would provide funding for smaller firms.

Oh, I see: Prices are going up. And you’re all fired.

Yeah, I see who cares about the working man. Not all heroes work on Capitol Hill, but those that do wear Ds.

On the other hand, I wonder how corporations will enjoy the double-whammy of lawsuits and additional expenses they’re voluntold by Democrats in Washington.

This just in: I opted to click Refresh like the fool I am.

I have speculated, apparently elsewhere, that early bits of preparation for coronavirus, including actions that retailers and businesses took before Official Middle Class Stay At Home/Close Your Shop/Actual Workers, Keep Doing What You’re Doing orders came out was to protect the companies against lawsuits which would inevitably come in the 21st century for those businesses and entities who were the last to take extreme action.

Welp.

Walmart sued over coronavirus death by family of deceased employee

It won’t be the last.

Perhaps the title is a little too certain, but this is the Internet, and the drive for clicks supersedes the drive for truth.

I don’t want to go all Bill Gertz here (I reviewed his book Treachery in 2005 and followed some of his columns in the Washington Post back in the day; he was/is quite the, erm, cautionary voice on China), but the plan after the Coronication is to decouple economically from a face-saving nation whose regime will be under the threat of losing the Mandate of Heaven, who faces uncertain demographics and dramatic, bad economic outlook but has a really big military, right?

So I would like to think that the Top Men are seriously thinking about what that might involve.

But, to be honest, I’m not very impressed with the Top Men and Women at this point.

UPDATE: As seen on Ace of Spades HQ later this morning, a story from the Washington Times but not Bill Gertz: Semper Modify: Marine Corps to undergo ‘radical’ overhaul in pivot to take on China.

But:

Pentagon officials argue that China’s rapidly improving military capabilities make the prospect of a traditional Iwo Jima-type shore landing exceedingly unlikely, and the Corps instead will shift its resources toward becoming a “stand-in” force that can operate within enemy range rather than fighting its way into theater from the sea.

So the Top Men are not planning a battle to liberate Taiwan is what you’re saying.

Top. Men. (And. Women.)

A nonprofit CEO writes in this week’s Marshfield Mail:

Unfortunately, it’s not online currently unless you want to pay a buck to get into the digital issue.

But it’s a false dilemma.

The actual article shares the anecdote of the guys who bought the 18,000 bottles of hand sanitizer and marked it up before Amazon put the kabosh on their entrepreneurial spirit and then goes on to tell people how you can help during this crisis.

As you know, gentle reader, I like to lay a couple things up. Which means I have a couple weeks (months, if rationed carefully) of canned goods at any given time. Because it’s only been a little over a decade since this region shut down for a week or so due to an ice storm (which was before we got here). And it just seems wise.

So does that make me a hoarder? I don’t expect to make money off selling my canned goods at some future date; as a matter of fact, I tend to rotate them out and donate them to the local food pantry as they come upon their “Best Buy Some More” date–which, as you know, is not when the food within goes bad but when it’s no longer at its peak of profitability or something.

The local food pantry has some guidelines for items past their date, so when the occasional can or case turns up that’s six months past the date stamped on the can, we give them to some of our friends who have a really large family and are not afraid to take canned goods out of season.

So we’ve laid up supplies and we’re helpers.

I dunno. I like to think I do my part. I could probably do more. But I take umbrage when someone whose paying job is to tell me that I am not doing enough tells me I am not doing enough.

So the county has implemented a stay at home order:

Leaders ask you to stay at home unless you are considered an essential employee, shopping for essential services for goods or exercising outside.

I’ve read the whole order which is a PDF which I cannot swipe and paste, so pardon me for embedding screenshots instead of text.

Here’s the order:

Sounds grim. You can only go to an essential business for essential activities.

Essential activities are:

Basically, you can only go to essential businesses if you need their goods or services.

What are essential businesses?

Grocery stores, liquor stores, pharmacies, auto garages, construction/home repair, taxis/people movers, laundromats, Lowes, banks, hotels, call centers, doctor’s offices, and vet’s offices.

You know, it might have been clearer if they said what should close.

Which is apparently schools, gyms, martial arts schools, and ABC Books.

So it’s not exactly martial law.

It is a sad commentary, though, at how few places I go that are not essential.

As I was at a doctor’s office today discussing it with the non-doctor person who was setting me up, basically this means you can go about your business, but you should probably not go about it today as everyone takes care of their essential business before the essential businesses don’t exactly close.

“Brian J., does that mean you’re going out every day?” you might ask. You know what I ask, gentle reader? Why are your questions sometimes in italics and sometimes in quotation marks. Don’t you have a style guide? But my answer to your question is of course not. We will run out once or twice a week for essentials, that is, perishables and booze and to tend to whatever my mother-in-law needs. But we’re not going to panic.

US Army eyes robot tanks with AI.

The old Activision game Robot Tank for the Atari 2600 is built exactly on this scenario: Robot tanks run amok, and you must operate essentially a drone tank to take them out.

If anyone needs me, I will be in the living room sharpening up my skills.

Why, yes, I do have an Atari 2600 in the living room. What a silly question!

(Link via Instapundit.)

Received in the mail today: The Springfield Business Journal Today in Business newsletter:

A missing image marker. What an apt metaphor for these days of “If you like your business, you can keep your business if you can keep your business when people are prohibited from using it.”

Full disclosure: I actually have my email client set to block images, so I never see the images, metaphor-made-for-blog-content or not.

The New York Post‘s front page offered this juxtaposition:

Is the market up? Is the market down? Yes.

Truly, the Internet is a first rate intelligence.