ABA Bleeding Out as Laundry List of Cancelled Events Expands

The listing wreck is leaking like a macrame diaphragm, as hole after hole opens in its rotting hull. As continuing member departures deplete dues revenue and the bear market slams the ABA's investment returns, these coronavirus-induced event cancellations and the consequent loss of revenues are like a cargo hold full of anvils. If the pandemic drags on into the summer, as has been widely predicted, the Midyear Meeting may also have to go over the side. The pandemic could be the rupture that finally takes the drifting garbage scow to the bottom. "Every cloud has a silver lining," some say. Perhaps that may even be true of this lethal pandemic, if it proves to be the coup de grace of the thoroughly uck-fupped ABA.

   https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/aba-cancels-more-april-and-may-meetings-amid-covid-19-pandemic

Lat and Spouse and COVID-19

Per his social media announcement, it seems David Lat has confirmed that he is infected with the COVID-19 virus, and that his hapless husband likely is as well. Few additional details were as yet available concerning the cause or manner of his exposure, but it may possibly be linked to some error in judgment. As of the time this hit the press at ABA Journal, it was apparently deemed by Glawker not to be newsworthy (I have not looked since this morning to see if that view persists).

https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/atl-founder-david-lat-has-the-coronavirus-which-he-announced-on-social-media

Roll Call

My firm's issued the directive to work from home whenever possible so I'm no longer behind the company's WebNanny3.0 webfilter and can post again.  I thought I'd start a thread for general discussion of the great Corona Staycation of 2020.  How crazy are people in your neck of the woods?  What's left in stores?  Got any good recipes for instant ramen and spam?

I'll go first.  I live in Orange County.  As of now, our official count is 17 confirmed cases of COVID-19 (out of a county with a population of over 3 million) and no confirmed deaths.  Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm (a Cedar Fair amusement park for those of you who don't know) have already closed.  Some movie theaters are still open.  Youth sports have been suspended.  Panic shopping/the need to keep up with panic shopping has emptied many store shelves.  For those of you who have yet to see peak panic shopping, here's a list of what's gone/extremely hard to find and the order in which it went:

1.  Any sort of face mask (from basic home dust masks all the way to p100 full face respirators)

2.  Hand sanitizer

3.  Disinfecting wipes

4.  Hand sanitizer/disinfectant substitutes/ingredients (hydrogen peroxide, bleach, isopropyl alcohol)

5.  Toilet paper

6.  Toilet paper substitutes (baby wipes, flushable wipes)

7.  Paper towels

8.  Bottled water

9.  Water storage containers

10. Dried foods with a long shelf life (dry beans, rice, lentils, etc.)

11. Hand soap

12. Pasta and pasta sauce

13. Onions

14. Milk and eggs

15. Non-weird ass meats (you can still find liver)

Not saying this specific order of things will be the same in your neighborhood, but this might help if you sense a run on stores coming and need to prioritize your supplies.  It blows my mind that bottled water went so quickly and there's currently no shortage of alcohol.  People have their lockdown priorities backwards on this one.

Personally, I'm doing just fine.  My kid's school has been closed so he and I are hanging out today.  I'm doing some research and a little bit of doc review in front of my home PC.  I'm still in my PJs and am listening to AC/DC.  We've got a good supply of food, soap, and TP.  Due to several years of membership in a craft beer society (think wine club, but for beer), I have about 300 750ml bottles of good, high-alcohol beer, and due to a current membership in a distillery's club, we have about 3 gallons of hard liquor.  

 

78-Year-Old Texan Survives 40 Foot Drop After Being Pushed Off Cliff By Son

 

 

Via Turley:

"His father amazingly survived and told police that he could hear his son laughing as he fell."

Isn't that exculpatory?

Also, the pretext to lure dad to cliff's edge was a bit unusual:

McCants told his father that he wanted to show him a rattlesnake he found. He drove him to the cliff and allegedly got him to look over the edge before pushing him over. The father survived the fall with cuts and abrasions.

Clearly, they have a weird sense of humor in that family, but is it a crime?

The Last Man and the Red Death

With COVID-19 dominating the news cycle, it seems that every idiot feels compelled to give his or her uninformed take on the virus. As if on cue, Steven Chung published a new steaming pile of ignorance explaining why he's concerned about COVID-19. 

He makes it painfully obvious that he has no idea what he's talking about.  Take this passage where he tries to sound smart and informed.

While coronaviruses have been around for a long time, this newly discovered version has no cure and can be fatal, particularly to the elderly and those with weakened immune systems. 

Steven doesn't understand what a "cure" is.  Very few viral infections can actually be cured.  Once you get a virus, you're pretty much stuck with it.  Even potent anti-virals that have been developed over the last 20 years only stop the virus from replicating inside the body.  They don't actually destroy the virus in the way that antibiotics destroy bacteria.  I'm sure what Steven meant was that there's no vaccine for COVID-19.  However, there is a fundamental difference between a cure, which is accomplished by killing an active infection and a vaccine, which keeps a person from getting an infection in the first place.  Mr. Chung quite clearly doesn't understand the subject that he is writing about, which is par for the course with him.

If you're worried about Steven, don't worry, he's taking precautions to keep from getting the virus.

 I have done my best to minimize the chances of exposing myself to the virus. That means spending more time working from home. I have encouraged clients to send paperwork via email and the cloud. For those who prefer the old ways, I accept regular mail and offer to reimburse them for postage. Since this is tax season, I and other tax professionals have voluntarily self-quarantined ourselves for the next month and a half.

Call me cynical, but I don't think that human interaction is a big problem for Steven Chung.

Despite the precautions, I have accepted that I will eventually be infected. This is not because I have eaten at four Chinese and two Korean restaurants in the last week and a half. It is not because I didn’t purchase 36 rolls of toilet paper. Most likely it will simply be because I was at the wrong place at the wrong time. I might be strolling at an empty park and Patient Zero just happens to jog past me.

He's so fucking RACEIST.  He really offends a woke individual like myself.  Also, he's once again throwing around terms that he doesn't understand.  The term "patient zero" refers to the first documented case of a disease.  For COVID-19, patient zero was infected in China some time in December of 2019.  The COVID-19 patient zero is either recovered or dead at this point.  Either way, Steven absolutely could not be infected by patient zero.

So what scares me about the coronavirus? The chaos it has caused.  First, it has turned social media into a trainwreck.

Oh yeah, Twitter and Facebook were so pleasant up until the COVID-19 outbreak.  What the fuck planet is he living on?

As lawyers, we are trained to advocate for our clients. And while I won’t get into details, I am sure some of us are using the coronavirus to our advantage.

This is vintage Steven Chung.  He has no idea who lawyers are "using the cornoavirus to our advantage."  His phrase "I won't get into details," is his tell that he's just making it up.  Other than using the outbreak to argue for a continuance, it's hard to imagine how a lawyer would try to use the outbreak to his or her client's advantage.

So what are we lawyers to do about the outbreak?  Steven has the answer.

My hope is that we as lawyers will calm the panic and help people make educated choices by calling out the liars, profiteers, and opportunists, all of whom are taking advantage of this panic for their own personal gain. In these divisive times, we might not change many peoples’ minds, but it is worth a shot. And we should do our best to keep politics out of this. Lives are at stake. There will be grave consequences for any politician who maliciously tries to prevent the public from getting the help they need.

There you go.  I think that my reaction can be summed up by the image below.

Coronavirus Strikes ABA Meeting Revenues

Fortunately these days, I am not a batshit crazy, radical, leftist bar association, trying to live off meeting fees and investment income while my dues-paying members are leaving in droves. If I were, these might be pretty scary times.

As I mentioned in the comments to my last piece on the shrinking, stinking and sinking American Bar Association, the child-like observation by their treasurer, during her Mid-Year Meeting report, that "the markets have been good to us so far" actually evidenced a dependence on investment earnings that could prove devastating in the event of a major market correction. Boom. We'll see how that goes in the weeks and months ahead, as the newly lower-than-low interest rates will also ratchet up ABA's pension obligations. Leaning on the market may be an even better strategy than "the new membership model."

In an additional current development, the coronavirus scare has adversely impacted ABA's ability to attract members to various meetings that it counts on to generate non-dues revenue, and a raft of them have been cancelled, with as-yet unquantified losses.

As Illinois experiences a growing number of coronavirus cases, concentrated in the Chicago area, ABA has also cravenly beclowned itself with blatant, national origin discrimination, posting out all visitors from certain countries it believes might carry the virus to the hallowed halls of ABA headquarters.

Like "Masque of the Red Death" revisited, I suspect ABA's cowardly, discriminatory behavior will prove to avail it naught. This pandemic will not be stopped by a bunch of gutless wonders shitting themselves and trying to "profile out" the infected. Rives, of course, is specially at risk due to his age, and Rawles must be sweating bullets due to her morbid obesity and associated co-morbid health risks. Still, I don't see them getting ahead of this, and in all likelihood, the virus is even now circulating within their walls. They may only succeed in making themselves even more vulnerable while laboring under the delusion that they have made themselves secure.

If only I could play Danse Macabre on my guitar, the predicament of the capering ABA fools would be the perfect subject matter for a 2020 musical Peeps diorama! 

https://www.abajournal.com/news/article/aba-cancels-some-meetings-due-to-coronavirus-concerns-offices-are-open-but-not-to-high-risk-visitors

Iranian Researchers Stop Coronavirus Cold

Although drinking Satanic alcohol is prohibited in the enlightened Islamic Republic of Iran, a number of Iranian citizens embarked on an aggressive trial of various alcoholic beverages as a possible means of warding off the coronavirus. Some of these beverages reportedly substitute a combination of highly toxic methanol and bleach for consumable ethanol. Showing the same fervor and devotion in their attack on the disease that they would normally display against apostates and infidels, at least forty-four of the intrepid researchers testing the potential treatments are said to have attained complete imperviousness to the coronavirus as a result. Preliminary accounts indicate that collateral benefits associated with the alcohol therapy include dramatically decreased likelihood of patients either breathing in the coronavirus or absent-mindedly touching their faces. However, as of press time, none of the people reported to have achieved complete immunity to coronavirus could be reached for comment.

Meanwhile, the Iranian government, for its part, is reportedly attempting to suppress further research by hunting down and arresting the purveyors of the curative elixir, whom it deems "bootleggers."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2020/03/10/44-dead-iran-drinking-toxic-alcohol-fake-coronavirus-cure/5009761002/

Postscript: 9th Circuit AFFIRMS Judge Selena's order revoking Avenatti bail

READ, ORDER AFFIRMING DECISON TO REVOKE MICHAEL AVENATTI BAIL AND THAT HE BE DETAINED PENDING TRIAL IN CA ON 36-FELONY COUNTS.

https://docdro.id/RgBKOnW

Avenatti files reply brief in bid to over-turn Judge's Selena's bail revocation order

What do you call an appellate brief that omits to contain even a perfunctory exposition of the evidence in support of Judge Selena's order that Avenatti be confined in jail through trial and also fails to mention the probable cause standard to believe a crime was committed by Avenatti on bail, the legal presumptions thereby created or the standard of review?

This: https://docdro.id/TmNwYrN

This Aggression Will Not Stand

I know that there are many things not to like about our current President.  However, as far as I know he's never been responsible for the breakup of a groundbreaking hip hop group.  Dear God people, Bernie Sanders is dangerous!  He must be stopped, for the sake of our country.  I don't care how many NFL rushing titles he won.

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/public-enemy-flavor-flav-bernie-sanders-960272

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/garth-brooks-wears-sanders-jersey-mistaken-fans-endorsement-bernie-n1145046