The Quarantine Tapes With John Payne

31/10/2021

10/03/2021

Missouri now has more operational ma*****na dispensaries than Illinois, which has twice our population, started their medical ma*****na program five years earlier than ours, and has had legal adult use ma*****na for more than a year. And we will have more than three times the current number of dispensaries once all those currently licensed are operational.

04/01/2021

The president is a crazy person.

In the hour-long conversation on Dec. 2, President Trump repeatedly tried to get Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to alter the outcome of the presidential vote.

22/12/2020

These people are fu***ng loons.

The incident in Houston was part of a wider investigation backed by a conservative Texas nonprofit.

21/12/2020

Remember, kids, slander is not constitutionally protected free speech, and if you engage in it, you can be successfully sued for a boatload of money.

A fact-check segment that aired on his Fox Business show Friday will be rebroadcast on two other Fox programs this weekend.

20/12/2020

In addition to convicting the guys who actually killed Arbery, they need to fire all the cops who offered no assistance to him after he was shot and did nothing to investigate his murderers.

Ahmaud Arbery was still alive when police arrived in the minutes after he was fatally shot, but officers did not immediately tend to him and showed little skepticism of the suspects’ accounts on the scene, body camera videos show.

17/12/2020

Very occasionally, I will come across an article that is simultaneously fascinating and terrifying. This is one of them.

COBOL is a coding language older than Weird Al Yankovic. The people who know how to use it are often just as old. It underpins the entire financial system. And it can’t be removed. How a computer language controls the financial life of the world.

17/12/2020

This was not a consequence of the pandemic that had remotely crossed my mind.

Salvaged roadkill is a free source of protein.

17/12/2020

This couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

The scenario that McConnell fears from Trump loyalists.

17/12/2020

So does this make Josh Gibson the Home Run King?

About 3,400 players were part of these seven leagues that existed from 1920 to 1948.

14/12/2020

The Senate is dominated by really, really old people, and frankly most of them should retire. I have no doubt that they are generally in better shape than most people of their age, but there is just no way that they have the same level of mental acuity that they had 20 or 30 years ago. For the good of the country, step aside and let some new blood into the chamber.

Republicans want Grassley, 87, to seek another six-year term, and Leahy, 80, will decide next November. Shelby, 86, seems less inclined to make another run.

11/12/2020

Texas's lawsuit against a number of states that voted for Biden has absolutely no chance of changing a single electoral vote, and all the attorneys general who signed on to it damn well know it. This is pure political theater to appease the howling mobs who really believe this stuff.

So far so ordinary in the contemporary Republican Party. But what I find truly hilarious is how all these people who have been going on about the importance of the electoral college for the past four years now want the Supreme Court to effectively invalidate that system.

We don't have a singular presidential election system; we have 51 (the states and D.C.). And, within some fairly broad parameters, they all get to independently decide how to allocate their electors.

So under this system, the state of Texas has no more right to intervene in Pennsylvania's selection of electors (because remember, no one actually votes for president except the electors, and we all voted for a slate of electors, not for president directly) than they do in the Scranton mayoral race. If there were truly a national election system, perhaps that idea would hold water, but it's just not how our federalist system works, and you'd think the purported advocates of states' rights would know that.

Or, more likely, they know it, and they just don't care, because it means the cult of personality they have built around a reality show host is crumbling.

10/12/2020

This is what I see when I look through right wingers' comments these days.

09/12/2020

The Supreme Court ain't having it with Trump's bu****it.

08/12/2020

I know quite a lot about American history, but I had never heard of this. Both sad and fascinating. It's shocking how dependent we were on literal horsepower until quite recently.

A fast-moving equine flu cratered the US economy in the fall of 1872, showing all too clearly that horses were essential and deserved better treatment.

07/12/2020

I remember both the small earthquake that hit in the fall of 1990 and the complete insanity that followed when people thought the big one was coming in December. All the schools in Poplar Bluff were canceled, and I got to stay home playing Legend of Zelda II. That was pretty cool, but I gotta admit that I was little disappointed the earthquake never hit.

Thirty years ago, Iben Browning, a self-proclaimed climatologist, predicted that the St. Louis area was in for a major earthquake along the New Madrid Seismic Zone. He forecast that it would happen right around Dec. 3, 1990, sparking a media frenzy in the small town of New Madrid, Missouri, and caus...

06/12/2020

The party that has been going on about “snowflakes” and “f**k your feelings” for years now says that they are “all victims.” They are, in the words of Margaret Thatcher, “Weak. Feeble.”

“MAVA https://t.co/yzpwcnadnf”

03/12/2020

Rudy Giuliani has become the national Grandpa Simpson.

03/12/2020

Prediction: Parler will be exclusively he**ai within six months.

Parler’s lax moderation policies, in keeping with its claims to being a bastion of free speech, have helped it become a magnet for p**nographers, es**rt services and online s*x merchants.

24/11/2020

Despite what the president and his so-called "legal team" say, the election wasn't that close. It wasn't the landslide Democrats hoped for, but it was decisive, with the second largest margin of victory in the popular vote in the 21st century, behind only 2008.

First Read is your briefing from "Meet the Press" and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.

23/11/2020

The Trump campaign has severed ties with attorney and noted loon Sidney Powell. This occurred shortly after she accused Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Senator Kelly Loeffler of helping to "steal" the election for Biden in Georgia.

This is all terrible for our republic, of course, but I sincerely hope the Republican Party reaps the whirlwind here and tears itself apart.

Powell was front and center at a press conference with top Trump campaign legal brass on Thursday.

22/11/2020

I wish my home region was not constantly freaking out at health workers just for asking them to wear masks. That said, having lived in Southern Missouri most of my life, I am not surprised by this.

Amber Elliott, county health director, on the high cost of doing her job

22/11/2020

We can only hope.

Videos show protesters upset about the election results, urging that Republican officials are not re-elected for "not explicitly helping Trump to 'stop the steal.'"

20/11/2020

"And what we are seeing now, in the twilight of Trump’s kookery, is the merger of QAnon, the Republican Party, and the large part of the conservative movement that earns its bread by peddling miracle veggie pills to gullible elderly people on the radio. When I first starting writing about QAnon, some conservatives scoffed that it wasn’t a significant phenomenon, that it had no real influence on the Republican Party or conservative politics. That is obviously untrue. Rather than ask whether conspiracy kookery is relevant to Republican politics at this moment, it would be better to ask if there is anything else to Republican politics at this moment. And maybe there is, but not much."

Noah Rothman’s excellent piece in Commentary deserves to be widely read.

19/11/2020

The early twentieth century is an era that is commonly regarded as boring today, but was actually just batsh*t insane in terms of how quickly the world was changing.

In April 1904, St. Louis opened its doors to the world, welcoming millions to see the fascinating buildings and exhibits of art, technology, and history on display at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition.

18/11/2020

About a decade ago, I made it into the Jeopardy! contestant pool. I wasn't lucky enough to get the call to be on the show during my period of eligibility, but as part of the in-person audition, I had to write up some entertaining vignettes to share with Alex after the first commercial break. Wish I would have gotten the opportunity to talk with him for real, because he seemed like a class act.

Four decades of “Jeopardy!” contestants tell the story of Alex Trebek’s rise from affable Canadian TV host to cultural icon.

17/11/2020

Check out our new episode! John speaks with Brad Ketcher & Dave Roland, friends of the show and attorneys with considerable electoral experience, to discuss Trump's *ahem* misguided legal challenges to outcome of the presidential election.

Official Post from The Quarantine Tapes With John Payne

17/11/2020

Officers with Louisville Metropolitan Police Department r***d a minor on numerous occasions, and then the department tried to cover up the evidence.

LMPD and county attorney's office claimed Explorer records all turned over to the FBI. But an email indicates that's not true.

14/11/2020

This is just so crazy. Attacking their own Republican Secretary of State may make Donald Trump happy for the next month, but there is zero chance it changes the outcome, and it's only going to alienate more people in the middle.

Oh well...If that's how they wanna play it, I'm not gonna argue.

The longtime Republican is under intense pressure as he presides over a presidential recount and nationally watched runoff elections that will determine the U.S. Senate majority.

12/11/2020

These lawsuits that the Trump campaign is filing are just totally pointless. But they are amusing at least.

There's a big difference between a) waving around a stack of affidavits in a safe space and b) bringing your claims before a judge. We saw that difference on Tuesday in the Trump campaign's case in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.