CHARLOTTE COUNTY, Fla. - A Punta Gorda man called 911 multiple times and asked deputies to deliver him ice cream and liquor, according to Charlotte County deputies.

Last Saturday, deputies responded to a Punta Gorda apartment after Michael James Gables, 65, called 911 to report an 'emergency.' ........(more)

https://www.nbc-2.com/story/42063781/florida-man-arrested-after-asking-deputies-to-return-with-booze-and-ice-cream

A Florida man allegedly tried to blame a weapons bust on John Wick, the legendary assassin played by Keanu Reeves in the eponymous movie franchise, according to a new report.

Cops confronted Getro Gelin, 27, at his Port St. Lucie home Sunday after a woman told police he shoved her to the ground and threatened her with a firearm, according to an arrest affidavit obtained by The Smoking Gun.

The woman told authorities Gelin may have stashed the weapon in his Porsche SUV, according to the report. Cops searched the vehicle and found a Glock 21 pistol, a semi-automatic rifle, and a bulletproof vest, according to the report.

When cops asked Gelin to explain, he explained that the SUV wasn’t even his anymore — he’d sold it “to his cousin John Wick,” according to the affidavit. ......(moe)

https://nypost.com/2020/04/28/florida-man-claims-guns-found-in-car-belonged-to-his-cousin-john-wick/

No Testing, No Treatment, No Herd Immunity, No Easy Way Out
We need to start preparing for a darker reality.


(The Atlantic) The past few months have been bleak. Every day has brought word of new casualties from the coronavirus. The world economy entered free fall. And even for those who do not have a sick relative or a mortgage that can’t be paid, the isolation imposed by social distancing has begun to take a heavy psychological toll.

In these circumstances, I—and, I imagine, many others—couldn’t resist latching onto any piece of news that promised quick deliverance from the pandemic. I scoured the papers for positive stories. And I found at least three reasons to hope that the suffering the virus imposed might end sooner than the most pessimistic experts warned.

First, because some people who have COVID-19 don’t seem to show any symptoms, I wondered whether the disease might be far more widespread than the initial data suggested, raising the prospect of the United States’ reaching herd immunity without mass casualties. Second, reports that some existing drugs might prove effective against the disease led me to hope that doctors could soon be in a much better position to heal patients who contract the virus. And third, because some foreign governments have seemed successful in containing the virus through ambitious test-and-trace programs, I thought the United States might find a way to open up its economy without inducing a large resurgence of cases.

There was real reason to indulge in each of these hopes. But in the past several days, a series of developments have undermined the factual basis for all of them. So I am, finally, starting to reconcile myself to a darker reality: The miracle of deliverance is not in sight. ......(more)

http://on.theatln.tc/DKYOMTG

The (presumably) Russian bots are at again on HuffPost, Occupy Democrats and other progressive FB sites, trying to sound like disaffected leftists, and trying to sow discord. Donnie's poor poll numbers clearly have their knickers in a bunch.
Unlike 2016, they're pretty obvious this time. And I gotta admit, troll hunting is lots of fun.

(Detroit Metro Times) Michigan’s stay-at-home order has one purpose: Stop the deadly spread of the coronavirus.

And it appears to be working.

The number of COVID-19 hospital admissions in Michigan has declined 34.2% since peaking at 3,986 on April 12. During the same period, the number of patients on a ventilator dropped 41.3%, from 1,365 to 801. ......(more)

https://m.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2020/04/28/michigan-is-flattening-the-coronavirus-curve-and-increasing-testing-capacity

(HuffPost) By the last week of January, Rob DeLeo knew it was going to get bad.

“I was having breakfast with my partner and I said, ‘We should get some extra food because we’re going to be inside for awhile,’” said DeLeo, a Bentley University professor who has been studying America’s political response to pandemics for more than 15 years.

Over the next two weeks, as he began preparing for a lengthy period of self-isolation, he was struck how calm political leaders seemed to be. The coronavirus was never mentioned at the Democratic presidential debate on Feb. 7. Even as cases appeared in major cities and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that person-to-person transmission was underway, no one seemed interested in warning Americans to get ready for a lockdown.

DeLeo later searched the congressional record and found just six mentions of the word “coronavirus” before Feb. 8.

“I’m a political scientist, not an epidemiologist,” said DeLeo. “If I was freaking out, why wasn’t anyone else?” .......(more)

https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5ea491f3c5b6d37635909669?utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063&utm_source=main_fb

from Salon:


Don't drink the bleach: Why is the elite press still covering for Trump's profound stupidity?
A new media low: "Both sides" coverage of Trump's suggestion that injecting cleaning products might be a cure

Dan Froomkin
April 24, 2020 9:01PM (UTC)


Presented with incontrovertible evidence that Donald Trump is stupid and clueless and that the American people should not follow his advice, reporters and editors in America's top newsrooms averted their eyes.

Home delivery subscribers to the Washington Post, for instance, wouldn't have a clue that Trump on Thursday evening proposed injecting patients with disinfectants to see if they would kill the coronavirus in lungs, as they do on the kitchen counter. There was no mention of it in the print edition.

Yes, Trump actually asked, after hearing a presentation on how bleach and rubbing alcohol can kill the virus on surfaces: "Is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because, you see, it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it would be interesting to check that."

Is there a stupider, more dangerous thing he could possibly say? Could he possibly give a clearer indication that he is manifestly unfit to lead the nation during a public health crisis? Small children know better than this.

But the initial Associated Press story by Kevin Freking was headlined: "Trump showcases idea heat, humidity could help fight virus," and only noted Trump's disinfectant-injecting suggestion in passing. ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/04/24/dont-drink-the-bleach-why-is-the-elite-press-still-covering-for-trumps-profound-stupidity/

from Salon:


Trump's death march to November: If they're not his voters, let 'em die
Trump can't beat the coronavirus — so now he wants to use it as a weapon in the November election

Lucian K. Truscott IV
April 25, 2020 12:00PM (UTC)


If you listen to Donald Trump, before him there was nothing.

According to Trump, before he was elected, the United States military, which was fighting wars in two countries, confronting foreign navies on the high seas, launching drone attacks willy-nilly, and had soldiers stationed in more than 100 outposts around the world, had no ammunition. In the Rose Garden on March 30, Trump said, "I'll never forget the day when a general came and said, 'Sir' — my first week in office — 'we have no ammunition.'"

On Oct. 9 of last year, he told the same story: "When I took over our military, we didn't have ammunition. I was told by a top general — maybe the top of them all — 'Sir, I'm sorry. Sir, we don't have ammunition.' I said, 'I'll never let another president have that happen to him or her.' We didn't have ammunition."

....(snip)....

Before Trump, we had no supplies of any kind: "The shelves were bare," he has told us over and over at his coronavirus briefings. The shelves he's referring to are those of the national stockpile of emergency medical equipment, the same shelves we've seen in photographs of a warehouse stacked with pallets filled with medical equipment, all of which has been there for years. But according to Trump, before he came along "the shelves were empty."

....(snip)....

But the key to Trump's plan is who dies. Watch the way he plays the game as the rest of the states make plans to reopen. He's seen the facts and figures that social distancing works. He knows opening the economy will cost lives. He's going to be very, very careful with states he expects to carry, but narrowly, like Georgia. The states that are a lock for Trump, or the states he doesn't stand a chance in? Let them rip. Get the dying out of the way now. Maybe by the fall the coronavirus infection numbers will go down, maybe not. ............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2020/04/25/trumps-death-march-to-november-if-theyre-not-his-voters-let-em-die/

(Bloomberg) As the economic carnage from the coronavirus pandemic continues, a long-forbidden word is starting to creep onto people’s lips: “depression.”

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was no commonly accepted word for a slowdown in the economy. “Panic” was the term typically used for financial crises, while long slumps were commonly called depressions. Presidents such as James Monroe and Calvin Coolidge used the d-word to describe downturns during their administrations. There was even a slump in the 1870s that many referred to as the “Great Depression” at the time.

But then 1929 came, and there was no longer any doubt as to which depression deserved the modifier “great.” The crash hit the entire world, reducing economic output 15%. And it ground on mercilessly for years -- by 1933, unemployment in the U.S. was at 25%. The Great Depression was so severe that governments permanently expanded their role in the economy.

Since the 1930s, economists and commentators have used the word “recession” to describe economic slumps, and none of them have been nearly as severe as the Great Depression. The only time this convention was really challenged was after the financial crisis of 2008. The global nature of the downturn, sparked by troubles in the financial industry, led many to draw parallels with the Great Depression. In the end, the term “Great Recession” stuck. ............(more)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2020-04-22/the-coronavirus-recession-will-rival-the-great-depression

(Bloomberg) As the economic carnage from the coronavirus pandemic continues, a long-forbidden word is starting to creep onto people’s lips: “depression.”

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was no commonly accepted word for a slowdown in the economy. “Panic” was the term typically used for financial crises, while long slumps were commonly called depressions. Presidents such as James Monroe and Calvin Coolidge used the d-word to describe downturns during their administrations. There was even a slump in the 1870s that many referred to as the “Great Depression” at the time.

But then 1929 came, and there was no longer any doubt as to which depression deserved the modifier “great.” The crash hit the entire world, reducing economic output 15%. And it ground on mercilessly for years -- by 1933, unemployment in the U.S. was at 25%. The Great Depression was so severe that governments permanently expanded their role in the economy.

Since the 1930s, economists and commentators have used the word “recession” to describe economic slumps, and none of them have been nearly as severe as the Great Depression. The only time this convention was really challenged was after the financial crisis of 2008. The global nature of the downturn, sparked by troubles in the financial industry, led many to draw parallels with the Great Depression. In the end, the term “Great Recession” stuck. ............(more)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/opinion/articles/2020-04-22/the-coronavirus-recession-will-rival-the-great-depression