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Continuing… (It's Part 6 in the saga, I fucked up. Sorry.)
So, after a few re-fueling and impromptu cigar-purchasing stops in South and Central America, we wheel up to the deserted jetway at LAX.
“Thought we were going to Elmendorf?” I asked.
“This isn’t it?” the pilot replied, feigning worry.
“No.”, I replied, “Looks like California. Fruits and nuts. All around. What’s going on? One minute we’re off to Texas, then Cali, then Texas again, now we end up here at the California airport of the iconic tower.”
“Yeah, it’s confusing enough haulin’ civilians around. But when we get a call from Virginia, we tend to comply without any questions,” the pilot explains.
“Aw, shit!”, I sort of exclaim, “Rack and Ruin called?”
“Yeah”, the pilot replies, “Figures you’d know these guys. They said they were closer to LAX rather than Texas and had us divert here. In fact, you look over there, see that dark blue Chevy? That’s them; and evidently, your ride.”
I tipped the airman from earlier a couple of cigars as he helped me with my gear off the plane and into the trunk of Rack and Ruin’s plain-Jane blue late modeled Chevy. Had to move the Sidewinder Missiles off to one side, though.
“Most honorable Agents Lack and Luin!” I quipped in my faux-racist greeting. “What the hell, guys? I’ve got to get to Japan and get some newly rigidified digits.”
“Let’s see your hand”, Agent Rack asks. “Nasty.”
“Yeah”, I sigh “And with the medicos in South America and their penchant for plaster, I don’t so much have a left hand as more of an ankylosaur tail.”
“Or Thagomizer”, Agent Ruin tittered. “Anyone gives you grief, and one upside the head should set them right. Or dead.”
“You’re a riot, Ruin.” I replied, “But not entirely incorrect.”
We all agreed that I really didn’t need any extra accouterments to make myself look more dangerous. I mean with my severe haircut, stern beard clip, and perpetual ‘Go fuck yourself’ scowl.
“Yeah”, I replied, stroking the aforementioned beard, “I just can’t get that. I’m such a people person.”
After Agents Rack and Ruin finished drying their eyes from laughing what I thought was en extremis, we finally got down to business.
“So, what’s the skinny, guys”, I asked. “New marching orders?”
“No. Not as such”, Agent Ruin said, still sniggering over my ‘people person’ comment.
I see we’re moving. Agent Rack is just driving casually, like Chewbacca when they were waiting to see if the Empire went for that expensive Bothan code.
“Then, what?” I asked, getting a slight bit piqued.
“Well”, Agent Ruin noted, “When you went to South America, you took some of your artillery collection with, correct?”
“You know I did. You even made some snide comments about my personal choice of sidearms and their ‘excessive’ calibers, if memory serves”, I reiterated.
“And if you are proceeding normally, as you always do, they’re all nestled in the trunk of this very car. All cleaned, quiet, unloaded, and smelling sweetly of Hoppe’s Number 9 and WD 40, correct?” Rack inquired.
“Yes?” I cautiously venture.
“Well, ya’ big dummy, do you think they’re going to let you saunter into Tokyo armed like the Third Fleet?” Agent Ruin chuckled.
“Um…well…I do have a Diplomatic Passport.” I ventured.
“That’s not going to work this time.”, Agent Ruin said, shaking his head. “They’re tighter than Dick’s Hatband about sidearms. Want to bring in your Rigby SXS .500 Nitro Express double rifle? Not a problem. Sidearms, especially in your alien hunting calibers, nope.”
Well, that’s just….*dandy!”, I reply, semi-put out. “Now what the hell am I going to do?”
“Ever think that’s why Ruin and I are here, now?”, Rack asks.
“And here I thought it was just so you could bask in the warm glow of my fucking wonderful personality. Or that you actually cared about me as a real goddamn human”, I joshed.
“Ummm…yeah”, Rack replies, “There’s no way we can answer that without going on some Deadpool list. “
I agreed.
“OK, here’s the deal: you get your sidearms, ammunition, speed loaders, brass knuckles, Asp, laser range finders, Sap, Zeiss scopes, Kukri, Wisconsin Cheese Whittler, Buck folding skinner, Marine K-Bar, those two ultra-illegal Cheburkov Cobra titanium switchblades...”
“Three. Olga the KGB lady sent me one for Geologist’s Day.”
“Ahem. Those three ultra-illegal Cheburkov switchblades, that Wyoming Speedholer, your MASER Time-Distance Computer, garrote, pocket rail gun and whatever else lethal you carry and deposit it in the iron box in the trunk. We’ll ensure that it’s delivered to Esme post-haste. And by post-haste I mean one of our guys will deliver it personally.”
“Well…I suppose”, I conceded, “But best send someone who’s been to the house recently. I don’t know how much bigger Khan has grown since I left on this little fantasy trip. Wouldn’t want a star on the wall in Langley for someone eaten by a mastiff. Want to see a picture….Oh, bother. That’s right. My phone’s at the bottom of fucking Lake Maracaibo.”
“Good point”, Ruin interjects, “Guess we’ll do a little road trip and deliver it ourselves. Best call Esme and let her know what’s going on.”
“I have no objections to your proposals. Please give Esme this when you see her. I had some luck in the Calaveras Casino and if I don’t send her some mad money. Ouch. She’ll never forgive me for not taking her along to Japan.” I asked.
“But I thought Esme hated Japan? Too crowded and too ‘fussy’, I believe was her estimation.” Ruin asked.
“Yes, but once she saw the Ginza, all bets were off. Shopping the likes of which even Allah himself hasn’t seen.” I replied, slowly shaking my head.
“I see”, Ruin said, “Well, since you’re off to Sapporo, perhaps you can do a recon for Esme on the shopping there.”
“Not bad. Not bad at all.”, I smiled, “Now I know why I let you guys hang around with me.”
So, as advertised, I am now standing on the tarmac at LAX, basically feeling naked.
“Can’t I keep just one switchblade?” I moaned to Agent Rack.
“Go ahead, if you’re really keen on donating it to Japanese customs”, he replied.
“Fuckbuckets.” I groused.
“There, there now. That’s the usual Dr. Rocknocker of which we’re all so fond.” Agent Ruin chuckled.
“Remember, you do have that wallet-sized credit card gizmo from the Company. So you’re not entirely ‘naked’. Think of it as an emergency breechcloth.” He smiled.
“I’d like a larger model if you don’t mind. It’s chilly out here.” I joshed.
After Agents Rack and Ruin stripped me metaphorically naked as they de-weaponized me, they handed me a Business Class ticket to Tokyo, and a pass to the Japan Airlines Hospitality Suite and Lounge.
“So sorry you guys can’t hang around and have a few farewell snorts”, I chided, “But you’ve got a bit of a drive, so best be off before the weather turns to shit.”
“Who says we’re driving?” Agent Rack asked as he hooked a thumb over his shoulder at the ready and waiting C-130 cargo plane currently taxiing slowly in our direction.
“Well, in that case”, I smiled even more broadly, “Let’s invite the flight crew to join us. That’ll make the flight home all that much more interesting.”
After near tear-jerking farewell sentimentalities, i.e., “Piss on you”, “Get stuffed” and “Take a fuckin’ hike”; Agents Rack and Ruin, my weapons and the Agency’s plain-Jane Blue Chevy were all nestled snugger than buggers in ruggers in the belly of the thundering C-130.
Now truly on my own, I trudge the hundred thousand or so centisteps to my departure terminal, make a quick recon that my flight’s still slated to go in a generally westward direction, and hightail it to the nearest courtesy desk to ask for a motorized cart to take me and my remaining luggage to the JAL Hospitality Suite.
Hey. I’m old, infirm, and currently among the walking wounded.
Anyone that disagrees risks an Ankylosaur tail club swat or Thagomizer to the skull.
Finally ensconced in the JAL Hospitality Suite, Polo Lounge of course; I was drinking Tokyo Teas (3 oz. vodka, 2 oz. gin, 2 oz. rum, 1 oz. triple sec, 1 oz. Midori, good splash of lime juice, a slight splash of 7-Up (diet, of course), over ice with a lime wheel) with Pabst Blue Ribbon Extra 1844 chasers and Hangar One’s “Fog Point” vodka on the side, hiding from the brutish realities of this foul year of two thousand and twenty-something, Common Era…
I’ve already called Esme and we’ve had a good, long chat. She still managed to give me her shopping list for whenever I find myself bored on the Ginza.
She’ll be shocked when she learns that I’m not going to be in Tokyo long, but have 1st class tickets on the Bullet Train to Sapporo. Still, I’ll probably find myself in Pole Town or the Stellar Place there, trading piles of US greenbacks for locally produced Japanese curios and clothing.
I can hardly wait.
I order another round of drinks, as the wonderful attendants in the Hospitality Suite were bored out of their skulls because of the COVID-induced drop-in customers flying anywhere that requires a hospitality room stay, and I was virtually the only one around. They tried their level best to outdo each other when it comes to Japanese efficiency and friendliness.
After a couple of hours, they ask if I would like something from the grill, as the day chef had “the COVID” and the night chef just arrived. A quick perusal of the menu and I chose a 28-ounce dry-aged Porterhouse and another round of drinks.
I usually don’t like to eat too much before I fly, but JAL tells me the flight is going to be virtually empty, something like <121 pax, all told, so restroom availability shouldn’t be too much of a concern.
Plus, who am I to say no to a free, blue 28-ounce dry-aged Porterhouse?
There was a bit of difficulty conveying to the chef through the intermediaries of the hospitality just how I wanted my steak.
“Blue,” I said.
“Brue?” was the reply.
“Rare. Very, very rare.” I continued.
Look of total bewilderment.
I drag out my Personal Language Pro, speak “Steak, very, very rate” into the infernal gizmo, and hand the contraption to the attendant.
“珍しい、非常に珍しいステーキ?”[ Mezurashī, hijō ni mezurashī sutēki?]
“Raw! Nama!” I say, louder than need be.
They toddle off to find the chef.
“How is it sir, that you would like your steak cooked?” he asks.
“Very rare. Just a minute or two per side. Inside still cold.” I instructed.
All I got for the trouble was a puzzled smile.
“Give me the language gizmo…” I type in a few words…
“お尻を洗い、角をノックオフして、ここから出してください”
[O shiri o arai,-kaku o nokkuofu shite, koko kara dashite kudasai.]
“Wash its ass, knock its horns off, and walk it out here.”
“OH!” as the lightbulb pops. “Rare. Got it! Excellent!” the chef laughs and zips back to the kitchen.
Like I always say, I’m nothing if not the international ambassador of amity and goodwill.
“Crack tubes!”
Dinner was fantastic. I do wish I could have somehow mailed the Porterhouse bone back home for Khan. After that hambone incident, he might even taste it.
Finally on the plane, in an almost empty Business Class, the flight captain informs us that we’re headed to Haneda Airport Tokyo and anyone not headed in that direction better ‘haul ass off’ the flight or forever hold their peace.
Late-night international flights tend to be a bit more wooly than your average Chicago to Omaha gig.
Especially when the flight’s damn near empty and we have the next 12 hours or so to be best friends.
We taxi, turn and head into the wind. I’m doctoring up a couple of dossiers and keeping my personal cabin attendant, Luna since there were two of us in Business and two business flight attendants, busy with her trying to play ‘Stump the Geologist’.
“I’ll bet you never had this before.” She beamed and handed me a tumbler of very dangerous-looking brown liquor.
I cautiously sniff, take a modest gulp, swirl and glug the rest down.
“Ohishi Single Sherry Cask”, I say with a muffled belch. “Light. Fruity. An Englishman’s drink.”
“Oh. You knew. Let me try again.” She smiles beatifically.
“I have no objections to your proposal.” I smile as nicely as this crotchety old Komodo Dragon could.
She returns with another flagon of spirits; it smells of obsidian, leather, and earth.
I just had some of this back in LAX. I take a snort, smile, and shotgun the rest.
“Hibiki Japanese Harmony…lovely stuff.” I smile. “A little light for my jaded palate, but I’d never turn it down if it were free.”
“Oh, you win again. Wait. One more.” She smiles and skitters off to the galley.
She returns with another soupçon of some more dangerous brown liquor.
“Here, try this. It will make you very popular at social gatherings”. She smiles.
Sniff. “Splendid.” Snort. Swirl. Smile. Shotgun.
“Kanosuke New Born, if I’m not mistaken.” I smile back. “Very nice. I really do like this one.”
“You too good at this. One more!” she stands and stomps off defiantly. She returns in a trice and hands me the glass.
“Hmm…brown. Light notes of earth, leather, dating your daughter, and Kentucky…
“Beam Suntory, right?”
“You know them all!” she says, feigning irritation.
“And I thank you. Those were all excellent. Now, anything in the dangerous clear liquor category? I asked.
Luna smiled as I palmed off a 20k yen tip.
“Oh, no sir. Wait until we land.” She demurred, referring to the gratuity; which is know is not de rigueur in the Orient, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“Just in case we never make it to Tokyo”, I laughed, unknowingly presciently.
We both chuckled about that last line as she tried out various sakes and shōchūs and an actual Japanese ‘White Liquor’ (ホワイトリカー), which were all excellent as was the company.
I tell her that I need to get some work done and could she bring me a tall Rocknocker. After explain the origins and construction of the eponymous drink, she brings me one that must tip the scales at 1 or so liters.
She settles down to an empty seat and I get after the work that I need to finish before we land. I’m about ½ way through my drink when it felt as if the plane hit a brick wall. She quivered and quaked and clutched at herself while I made some comments about the pilot’s mental health.
We dropped like a paralyzed falcon, then just as suddenly, felt like it was an express elevator to Angel’s 11. The plane bucked and shimmied, wickedly. Then we slam-danced right and fell a few more stories. It was like we were in a Mixmaster and the owner was trying out every speed.
The emergency lights in the 777-300ER popped on, and the fasten seat belt sign barked loudly so even sleeping travelers could enjoy the show.
Rinse. Spin. Shudder. Repeat.
Finally, the ride smooths out and we hear the captain on the blower.
“This is your captain speaking…ah, we seem to have hit some uncharted turbulence back there.”
“Thanks, Captain Obvious”, I muttered.
“Everything’s A-OK. “ he reports.
“That’s good”, I note.
“But…”
“There’s always the but…” I groan.
“…we have a couple of warning lights for which we can’t quite account. So to just be safe and certain, we’re going to divert to Hawaii, get a clean bill of health and resume this flight once we make sure everything here is hunky-dory.”
There were scattered groans and applause. Add them together and divide by two and the average response on the flight was “Meh. Whatever.”
Except for the other guy in Business, with whom I hadn’t shared two words. He began to absolutely lose his shit.
“Oh, man! We’re so screwed! Mechanical malfunction? What does that mean?” he positively fizzed with fear.
The flight attendants tried to calm him down, to no avail. They basically gave up and said they’d report his misgivings to the Captain.
I motioned over to my personal flight attendant, Luna, and asked if I could be of service.
“Oh, Doctor Rock”, she smiled at me, “If you could speak with him. You are so calm, and he is…”
“Losing his bloody mind”, I chuckled as I finished her sentence for her. “Of course, I’ll take a stab at it.”
So, I grab my drink and ease over to my Business Class partner and introduce myself.
“Hey, pal. How’s it going? I’m Dr. Rock, gentleman, scholar, and connoisseur of cigars and things alcoholic. You doing OK?”
He looks at me with an ashen face and his eyes the size of bloodshot dinner plates.
“Yeah. I’m Todd Schotts. I’m flying to Japan for business.” He mumbles
“No surprise there,” I reply calmly and take a slug of my drink.
“But now we’re all going to die. The plane is busted and we’ll crash…” he started off again.
“So, Todd is it? Good. You drink?” I asked.
“Yeah?”, he stammered back.
I asked Luna to make us a fresh batch of my eponymous cocktails.
“OK, Todd, listen up”, I began after the drinks were served, “I have flown literally millions of miles over the last 4 decades. On Aeroflot when it was still the USSR. On TACA (Take A Chance Airways), on Chalk’s in the Caribbean, on Bob’s Verrifast Plane Company in Rhodesia, on regional carriers that don’t even exist anymore. All over the world. Had some bad experiences flying, and me ol’ mugger, this ain’t one of them. This is nothing more than the glitch for this mission.”
I chuckled lightly and complimented Luna on a fantastic drink.
“Yeah…yeah…yeah…but we have to land and check out some lights…” Todd squealed.
“Well now, Todd. It would be rather difficult to do any external assessment while in flight, don’t you agree?” I asked.
“But we’re diverting. We have to land and that adds more risk. We’re going to crash and die!” he was coming more and more unglued.
“I will bet you every cent you have on your person and home bank accounts that that will not happen”, I chuckled.
That took him by surprise. At least it shut him up for a while.
“Look, Todd. This is Boeing’s latest model. They have the most incredible safety record. And if a little clear air turbulence were to be knocking planes out of the sky, don’t you think we’d hear about it as the press went berserk?” I asked.
“But they don’t know what the lights mean! What if one of the engines’s out? How far can we fly on one engine?” Todd stuttered.
Having my fill of a supposedly grown man with inane childlike fears, I calmly replied,
“All the way to the crash site.”
He went white.
“...hope we hit something hard. I don’t want to limp away from this.”
He went limp.
Then I went to my seat and motioned for Luna to prepare a reload.
Of course, 45 minutes later, we land without incident at Daniel K. Inouye International Airport, Honolulu Hawaii.
We were told to just wait around until they figure out what the problem if any, was.
They had officials waiting at the end of the jetway to check our COVID status and passports before they let us loose in the terminal.
I asked Luna if she knew this airport. She noted that she did.
“Is there a JAL hospitality room here at this airport? I asked.
“Yes, Doctor. It’s the Sakura Lounge. It is located on the third level above The Local, Terminal 2.” She replied.
“Please notify whoever needs to know that that’s where I’ll be for the duration”, I smiled and handed her my business card. “See you soon, I hope.”
“Oh, Dr. Rock”, she replied, “I am sure it is nothing much. We’ll be back in the air within mere hours.”
“Well then”, I smiled, “Guess I’d better get ready to hoof it to the lounge.”
“Oh, Doctor Rock”, she smiled, “No rush. I will call for you a courtesy cart. You are injured, you are Business, you are priority.”
“I love that Asian efficiency.” I smiled back and toddled down the jetway.
At the terminus of the jetway, I show my COVID-clear papers, dates and times of my Anti-Virus vaccine administrations, the letter from Virginia clearing me of all detention, and my red Russian diplomatic passport.
While in the cart, whizzing our way to the JAL lounge, the driver said “Man! You must be some kind of VIP. You were through that welcoming committee in less than two minutes!”
“Me? Nah!”, I chuckled, “Just an old phart of a geologist that they didn’t want to mess with. Not on such a bright, sunny day as this.”
“I see you’re not wearing a mask.” The driver quipped.
“Very observant. There are reasons for that.” I replied.
He careens around a corner and if this were a normal pre-Covid day, I’m certain we’d have killed hundreds. However, the airport, as I’ve come to grow accustomed to, was virtually deserted.
“Yeah? Like what?” he asks.
“Well, Scooter, 1. I have an active and hardworking immune system that I let off the chain every once in a while for exercise. Got to let it know what it’s up against, right? 2. I’ve had all my shots and some that were experimental. They seem to have worked. And 3. I find it difficult to drink and smoke cigars while wearing a mask. However, if you’d prefer, I will mask up. No problem, though it still is optional.”
“Nah, man”, he said, “I was just wondering if you were one of those religious idiots or conspiracy nuts.”
Nope”, I smiled back, “Just another geologist out in the world plying his trade for cash. Y’know, whorin’ around for money.”
He laughs aloud as we skid to a stop right in front of Lounge.
I slip the guy a $20 and ask if he’d listen for the JAL flight I was just on. If we’re going on ahead today, I’d need him to scoot by and putt-putt me back to the plane.
He laughs and pockets the $20 as quick as a mink ruts.
“No worries. I’ll just hang around this area. I hear anything about the flight, I’ll come and let you know.” He grins.
“Good man”, I say, as I hand him my card. “I’m Dr. Rocknocker. Call me Rock”.
“And I’m Kapula Mano, call me Kap” he replies.
“Good man”, I say again, “Hope to see you in a while.”
He grins, floors his electric cart, and peels out at speeds approaching 4.5 MPH.
I wander into the lounge, show my credentials, and am escorted to a post up on Mahogany Ridge.
The bar is very quiet. Besides the bartender, I can’t see anyone else in the darkened and Smooth Jazz-infused drinking emporium.
I order a local drink, a Mai Tai, just for the experience and something a bit different.
It’s served in a goldfish bowl on a stem, bedecked with a slice of lime, a sprig of mint, a stick of sugar cane, a polychromatic orchid, and the obligate paper umbrella.
“Ah. Mai Tai. I will enjoy it.” I said to no one in particular.
One was enough, and I decided to go back to the old standard. Once I explained to the bartender what that was, he made them heroic and enthusiastically.
I’m reading up on a random dossier, making notes in a new file, and puffing away on a Fuentes Onyx double Maduro Churchill cigar.
I hear a slight cough coming from my right, and this here lovely lady, she sat to my immediate starboard and looked at me semi-quizzically.
Not in the mood for shenanigans of any stripe, I give her the obligate Baja Canada nod and tilt of the drink. I return to my dossiers and continue to read and take notes.
“Excuse me!” I hear.
Fearing the worst, either the woman is Karen-oid anti-smoking or a religious fruit-and-nutburger, I slowly turn to face her and reply, somewhat glacially, I have to admit.
“What?”
“That cigar…”
“Here we go…” I mutter, eyes rolling northward.
“Smells exquisite. Could you tell me the brand? My husband would enjoy some like that.” She notes.
Instantly my demeanor switches 180^0.
“Yes, ma’am. It’s an Arturo Fuentes Onyx. Churchill size, or 60 ring x 7” length, double Maduro. Here, take one for your husband. I have an ample supply.” I smile.
“Oh, no. I couldn’t. Could I?” she asks.
“Please. I insist.” I smile the best I could given the circumstances.
“Thank you. You’re too kind…umm…Mr….?”
“Doctor. Doctor Rocknocker. World traveler, oilman, and international ambassador of amity, good drinks, and fine cigars. Call me Rock” I said.
“Oh! A Doctor?” she brightens.
“Yes, of Petroleum Geology and Engineering. Not medicine.” I chuckle.
She chuckles back.
“And I am Hella Aaberg”, as she offers her hand for a quick shake.
“Interesting name, Hella. Scandinavian or Old German heritage?” I ask.
“On my father’s side. He’s Finnish.” She replies.
“But I’ll wager your mother is not Scandinavian, correct?” I ask.
“She was from Truk, an island…”
“In the South Pacific, Micronesia. Was she from Weno city?” I asked.
“Why yes. How could you possibly know that?” she asked.
“Oh, I’ve been there. Great diving amongst the WWII wrecks. I think it’s actually called ‘Chuuk Lagoon’ or something like that now.” I said.
“That’s right! Amazing. Where else have you been?” she asked.
“Anywhere there’s oil, strife, booze, cigars, heavy explosives and typically long distances from whatever most normal people call civilization,” I replied with a chuckle.
Suddenly, I hear a voice booming out behind me.
“Why don’t you save that rapier-like wit for those musky-fuckers back home, Rocko?”
My expression changes. My eyes pop fully wide open.
“Hella?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“May I ask you a favor?”
“You can ask…”
“Thank you. Now, looking over my shoulder, is there a hulking goon of a person, thin up top, paunchy halfway down with the most ridiculously tiny sized shoes you’ve ever seen for a so-called grown man?” I ask.
“Yes. Yes, there is.” She replies.
“I thought so. Many thanks.”
I spin and launch off my barstool and grab Toivo by the hand. He hadn’t seen my left-hand Thagomizer yet.
“Toivo! You old sumbitch. What the flying fennec fox fuck are you, of all people, doing in Hawaii?” I laughed.
“Just keeping an eye on you, Rock!” he laughed equally as loud.
“No, fucking-A, seriously. What the actual fuck? What are you doing in this actual nice place?” I asked.
“Just headed to Tokyo to conduct a bit of service company business. I walked into the lounge and smelled a foul cigar. I figured it can’t be the venerable Dr. Rocknocker. He’s back at some school up north terrorizing geology and engineering grads and undergrads.” Toivo laughed.
“But there I was. Surprise!”, I laughed and pumped his hand.
“What the fuck, Rock. Now what did you do?” he asks, referring to my Ankylosaur tail club left hand.
“Ah, fuck. Long story. Oh, pardon me. Toivo, this is Hella. We were just talking about the South Seas Islands.” I said.
“Planning on running off together?” Toivo laughs, to the amusement of neither party.
“Oh, and this idiot is Toivo, a man with a congenital foot-in-mouth disorder. He’s mostly harmless.” I noted to Hella.
Greetings were shared all around. Hella made some small excuses and said she needed to depart. I gave her another cigar for her husband, shook her hand, and wished her well.
“Here’s my business card. If your husband has any questions, have him drop me a line.” I noted.
Hella smiled beautifully. She said she would. Then she thanked me shook our hands, and like that, there she was, gone.
“Well Toivo, you old bastard. Don't just stand there in the doorway like some lonesome goddamn mouse shit sheepherder, get your ass over here and have a drink.” I motioned over to my perch on Mahogany Ridge.
“Don’t mind if I do”, he says as he deftly winds his way to a seat to my left, snagging a cigar out of my pocket on the way over.
“You might want these”, I say in an exasperated tone, and hand him my gold Dunhill Hobnail lighter and V-cutter gizmo.
He cuts and fires up his heater.
“What you drinkin’, Rock”, he asks.
“Anything with alcohol, as usual. You know that Toiv.” I reply.
“No. I mean right now.” He clarifies.
“Well, I had a Mai Tai. Very nice if you like fruity, flowery drinks. It’s the locals’ favorite.” I reply.
“Sounds good. I’ll have several. And you?” Toivo asks.
“My usual. The bartender is already apprised of the situation.” I reply.
Toivo smiles the smile of one knowing his sobriety is going to be taken out for a swim. Hell, taken out and tossed into the deep end.
Toivo and I sit there, swapping lies, smoking cigars and sipping at our toddies.
Hell, Toivo was slurping them like a sump-pump during an extra-wet summer.
We chattered about family, work, whether or not Tokyo was going to host the Olympics or if the COVID-boogie man scared everyone off.
Toivo, always one afflicted with TB (“Tiny Bladder”) got up to go to the loo for the third time that hour. He left his pocket organizer on the bar and I swear on a stack of Origins of Species, I didn’t touch it.
I reached over to his vacated seat to retrieve my cigar lighter when I looked down and saw in his organizer a tab that reads “Rack & Ruin”.
“Oh. No. Fucking. Way.” I recoiled as I’d just reached out and petted a 6-foot hungover scorpion.
“One of my best friends? Secretly allied with the Agency? No. Not possible.” I drained my drink and called for another.
“No. No. No. It can’t be. No. No fucking way…” as doubt began to dissolve when I thought back to all those times I had just ‘run into’ Toivo.
“But he’s oil patch as well. That could be chalked up to coincidence.” I ruminated quizzically in my brain.
I quickly reflected back on J.M. Darhower: “Yes, you see, there’s no such thing as coincidence. There are no accidents in life. Everything that happens is the result of a calculated move that leads us to where we are.”
She may be the author of the execrable New Adult Sempre series, which Esme likes and I loathe, but she might just be right on this occasion.
Toivo return, lighter in the bladder and good sense. He never even noticed he’d left his organizer out in broad bar light for all to see.
“So, Toivo, when’s your flight?” I ask.
“Oh, man. Was I lucky. The JAL flight to Tokyo from Los Angeles had mechanical trouble and had to divert here. I got a ticket on the plane for that flight, when it continues.
“You mean ‘if it continues’,” I replied.
“Yeah. Yeah. That’s what I meant. Hey! Was that your flight?” he asks innocently. He’s really innocent of fieldcraft.
I decide to have some fun at my old friend’s expense.
“Yep. Hit some CAT (Clear Air Turbulence) and the JAL pilots reported some lighting problem. No apparent ruin to any of the systems. They relay racked their brains to figure it out, but they couldn’t that’s why I here.” I said, waiting for the words to swim upstream in Toivo’s coconut and make some sort of connection.
“Yeah. Double lucky. No problem with the plane and I get to go to Japan early.” Toivo crookedly grins.
“So, no trouble with the plane? Then why haven’t I heard that the flight’s going to resume?” I asked as I pushed a fresh, seriously strong drink to Toivo.
“Oh, must have heard it in the john.” Toivo countered and tried to cover his tracks by taking a huge gulp of his drink and damn near dying coughing.
I pound on Toivo’s back.
“Heimlich time?” I ask.
Toivo signals ‘no’.
“Jesus Christ, Rock. What was that?” he asks.
“Just my usual”, I innocently replied.
“Holy fuck. No wonder you have the reputation of…” Toivo realizes too late that he’s said too much.
“Yeah. They can rack you out. Really ruin a person if they’re not careful.” I reply icily.
“Why, Rock. Whatever do you mean?” Toivo slurred as he realized he’s been caught out.
“The jig is up, you turncoat. You know Agents Rack and Ruin from the agency. Right? You keeping tabs on me for them? You Quisling! You Benedict Arnold!” I almost was on the verge of losing my cool.
“It was nothing. They approached me years ago as I kept being mentioned in your reports. They asked me for some information. One thing leads to another…” Toivo was ready for an Ankylosaur tail club swat to the bean.
“Oh, put your fucking hands down, you asshole.” I smiled and chuckled.
“You’re not mad?” Toivo slurred badly. I had the bartender make him another special drink.
“No, Toivo. Not mad. Just disappointed.” I said, smiling like a Komodo Dragon just finishing up a fortnight-old wildebeest.
Toivo sat there and puzzled and puzzled until his puzzler was sore.
“You’re not going to kill me or anything rude like that?” Toivo asked, half-assedly trying to inject humor into the proceedings.
“Nah. The paperwork’s too ridiculous for me to do another liberation. But, Jesus Fucking Christwagons, Toivo; you could have mentioned it to me. Fuck, I thought we were friends to the end?” I said, dejectedly.
I was really getting through to Toivo. I could tell he was loaded; feeling like shit and massively deplorable.
Great fieldcraft, indeed.
I told him things “are what they are” and that I won’t blow his cover nor his honorarium.
He began to feel better. I often wonder if he was serious about the sanctioning thing.
Then I delivered the strategic missile strike.
“Just remember, Toivo. I wrote your dossier for the Company…”
He swivels to look at me.
“And one for the KGB. Olga says ‘howdy’.” I grin evilly.
Toivo short-circuited at that. Russia is his company’s bread and butter. Now he has the KGB as well as his best buddy looking over his shoulder at every move.
I bought him a few more drinks and continued to needle him about his ’leading a double life’. He was well and truly fuckered when the electric tap-tap driver from before came looking for me to whisk me back to the plane.
Seems it was simply some knocked-out wires on the plane, or slammed bulbs that were generating a false positive, indicating something other than the system that alerts one to something haywire went haywire.
Toivo was pretty much down for the count. I got him sober enough to hand them his ticket and ensure that he was really supposed to be on this flight. Thing was; h e was in Economy, and I was, as always, in Business.
I spoke to Luna, and the plane was going to be even less crowded than previously because some folks could or wouldn’t wait, or didn’t want to go on with the rest of the trip on a ‘damaged’ aircraft, or were just stupid and superstitious.
“Luna, could I pay for the difference between Business and Economy for my less than 100% conscious friend here? He’s had a rough day.” I asked.
“Dr. Rock. Just put him into Business. No one will be the wiser. Luna says so.” As she gave us a grand smile.
“Luna, I owe you. Thanks so much.” I said.
“Now get on board. Your friend looks like he needs all the downtime he can get.”
“Yes, ma’am!” I said and saluted here be best I could which dragging a schnozzled Toivo down the jetway.
I dumped Toivo in a window seat well away from my seat. I know Toivo. He snores like a semi-load of live hogs rocketing downhill locking up the brakes at 88 MPH.
Surprise! There was no one else in Business. Luna looked at me, at Toivo, and gave me a thumbs up.
Whatever I can write to further her career at JAL, she’ll have it before I deplane.
We finally get everyone settled, and with Captain Kangaroo at the helm, we bounced gracelessly off the tarmac, into the warm, tropical Hawaiian air, finally headed for the Land of the Rising Sun.
Toivo was snoring like a chainsaw hitting rusty nails as I worked on the various letters, communiques, and dossiers which needed updating before we reached touchdown. I gave Luna a thick letter with instructions not to open it until we were on the ground and Toivo and I were well off and away into the terminal.
We left Hawaii at 1300 hours, so we should arrive at Tokyo Nareda around 4:00 pm, the previous day. I was so bereft of time and time zones, I couldn’t figure out what time it really was, as judged by my biometric rhythms, so I asked Luna for a stiff drink as I was kicking off my boots and going to attempt to get some kip.
She brought me another liter or so eponymous drink. I was sawing logs by the time I slurped the last swig of that nifty drink.
Suddenly, or later, I have no idea really, some loudmouth drunk asshole from way-the-fuck-back in economy-land toward the ass end of the plane staggered into Business demanding free drinks.
Luna was nothing but civil, and asked him to both shut up and return to his seat. His air cabin hostess, or whatever the fuck they’re calling them these days, will attend to his needs.
“Naw they won’t! They want me to pay for more drinks! I’m broke but I demand more booze! You fucking owe me.” railed the asshole. “I sat at the bar in Hawaii for four hours. Them fuckers charged me an arm and a leg!”
“No, they don’t owe you shit”, I said in a voice that unmistakably loud and clear.
“Fuck you, old man! You stay the fuck out of this!” he bellowed. “Shut up or I’ll do ya’!”
“’Old man’? ‘Do me’? Excuse me. Luna, may I have a word alone with this individual?” I asked sweetly.
Luna shook her head in the affirmative, and I stood up to confront this flagrant asshole.
“Now look, Scooter. You have gone way, way over the fucking line. You are loud. You are abusive. You are obnoxious. And you stink. Plus you insulted a person who is just barely containing his righteous wrath right now. So, I’m giving you one and one only chance to shut up, sit back down before your body spontaneously develops all sort of bruises, contusions, broken bones, and unconsciousness.” I said calmly, evenly, and threateningly.
“What da’ fuck you think you’re going to do…old man?” he screeched, trying to inflate himself into full mammalian threat posture, all 5’ 9” of it.
He didn’t notice Toivo walking up quietly behind him, as Toivo was returning from the head, quiet as a moose.
“Well, Scooter, I am an Air Marshall. Duly appointed, fully trained, and properly pissed off. Right now, I can arrest you, physically detain you, turn this flight around and take you to the Hawaiian police, at your cost for the inconvenience of the entire flight. Or I could arrest you, physically detain you, and turn you over to the Japanese authorities when we land. It’s really your choice. Choose wisely.”
To be continued…⇝

The ban abuse happens every now and again where someone will report my post because it's negative to Republicans or Democrats. Recently I was banned for posting proof the Republican party has been enabling and promoting racism for over half a century. My comments were unique and I included citations to backup my points. Last fall /politics mods outright deleted a comment of mine which showed that Joe Biden has too cozy of a relationship with Republicans, campaigned for them during Trump's term, and whitewashed how horrible they are. The mods also let people harass me as much as they want and will only ban people after I've been banned and pointed out their double standard.
That said since my sources piss them off so much and they've had a long history of abusing their power, I've included my list of go-to useful info for y'all to use when necessary. There's a bit of something for everyone.
Republicans Stealing Elections
Ohio's Odd Numbers (Via Vanity Fair, 2005)
How a Supreme Court Decision Curtailed the Right to Vote in Wisconsin (Via NYT, 2020)
Clapper: Intelligence community ‘cast doubt on the legitimacy' of Trump's victory (Via The Hill, 2017)
Georgia election server showed signs of tampering, expert says (Via NBC News, 2020)
New court filing: Documents were deleted from (WI) GOP redistricting computers (Via Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, 2013)

But after the ruling, the plaintiffs identified documents - 55 so far - that should have been turned over to them but never were. Last month the court ordered the state to turn over the computers so the plaintiffs could forensically examine them because the judges found "some form of 'fraud, misrepresentation, or misconduct' likely occurred."

NRA Was 'Foreign Asset' To Russia Ahead of 2016, New Senate Report Reveals (Via NPR, 2019)
Gloves come off after Obama rips Supreme Court ruling (Via CNN, 2010)

"With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections," Obama told a packed House of Representatives chamber Wednesday night.
"I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems."

Recent ban for these citations
Report: Aide says Nixon's war on drugs targeted blacks, hippies (Via CNN, 2016)
Reagan Called Africans ‘Monkeys’ in Call With Nixon, Tape Reveals (Via NYT, 2019)

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.” --Lee Atwater, former RNC Chairman, adviser to Reagan and HW Bush Administrations, close acquaintance to Karl Rove

“I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it (racist vote manipulation),” he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” --Lyndon B. Johnson (Via Snopes)

Facebook teams with rightwing Daily Caller in factchecking program (Via The Guardian, 2019)

"With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests -- including foreign corporations -- to spend without limit in our elections," Obama told a packed House of Representatives chamber Wednesday night.
"I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. They should be decided by the American people. And I'd urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems."
Alito, part of the court's conservative majority, could be seen apparently frowning and quietly mouthing the words "not true." Via CNN, 2010

In the case of a trucker’s life vs. his cargo, Judge Neil Gorsuch ruled for the cargo (Via Denver Post, 2017)
This is the Biden info which was outright deleted from a post on /politics last fall during the 2020 election.
Former Vice President Joe Biden said he’s concerned about what would happen if Republicans get "clobbered" in next year’s election, suggesting such an outcome would be harmful to bipartisanship. (Via The Hill, 2019)
Joe Biden Says 'I Actually Like Dick Cheney' in 2015 Video, Prompting Widespread Liberal Backlash (Via NewsWeek, 2019)
Former vice president Dick Cheney to appear at fundraiser for Trump and RNC (Via WaPo, 2019)
Biden responds to criticism over calling Pence 'a decent guy' (Via The Hill, 2019)
Joe Biden's Paid Speech Buoyed the G.O.P. in Midwest Battleground (Via NYT, 2019)
Biden World shell-shocked amid Hyde furor (Via The Hill, 2019)
Biden Reverses Position, Rejects Hyde Amendment, Cites Attacks On Abortion Access (Via NPR, 2019)

Just earlier in the week, Biden's campaign affirmed the candidate's support for the ban, setting off criticism from abortion rights supporters, who called on Biden to reverse his long-held position.

Biden says marijuana may be a ‘gateway drug.' Like most of his generation, he’s not ready to legalize it. (Via WaPo, 2019)
Pelosi: Bush Impeachment `Off the Table’ (Via NYT, 2006)
George W. Bush has been advocating for Kavanaugh with wavering senators (Via PBS, 2018)
Barrett declines to say whether a president can unilaterally delay election
Amy Coney Barrett ruled using the n-word does not make a work environment hostile
Amy Coney Barrett served as a ‘handmaid’ in Christian group People of Praise
Amy Coney Barrett fails to fully disclose some past anti-abortion activism
Barrett declines to say whether a president can unilaterally delay election

Atwood says that the groups like this served as primary inspiration for The Handmaid's Tale — and it's not hard to see why. In numerous interviews, Atwood alluded to the group but did not call them out by name. In an interview for the New York Times Book Review in 1986, she said, “There is a sect now, a Catholic charismatic spinoff sect, which calls the women handmaids.” Members of People of Praise are assigned accountability advisers. For men, they are called a “head;” for women, a “handmaid.” That is until the popularity of the book and subsequent television series grew and the group changed the title to “woman leader.”

Book reveals Trump effort to persuade Justice Kennedy to step aside for Kavanaugh (Via The Guardian, 2020)

Long before Trump ran for the White House, Justice Kennedy’s son, Justin, worked as an investment banker at Deutsche. Enrich describes how he developed a relationship with Trump, his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner, helping to finance real-estate deals no other bank would touch because of Trump’s record of failing to pay his debts to lenders, contractors and business partners.
...
Justin Kennedy was part of the US branch of Deutsche Bank from 1998 to 2009. Drawn to Trump’s risk-taking and glamour, he became a Trump confidant, sitting with the real estate impresario at the US Open tennis or in Manhattan nightclubs, and chaperoning huge loans to finance Trump’s real estate spending sprees.
Kennedy, who ran the bank’s commercial real-estate team, continued to lend to Trump even though Deutsche clients had suffered severe losses when Trump’s casino business collapsed and he declared bankruptcy.

Wall Street Democratic donors warn the party: We’ll sit out, or back Trump, if you nominate Elizabeth Warren (Via CNBC, 2019)
Jeff Zucker’s singular role in promoting Donald Trump’s rise (Via WaPo, 2016)

“It may not be good for America, but it’s damn good for CBS,” Leslie Moonves, chairman of CBS, said of the Trump phenomenon in March, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
"Letter from a Birmingham Jail, MLK Jr."

Paul Ryan Keeps It All in the Family (Via New Yorker, 2017)

In the transcript published by the Post, (Kevin) McCarthy speculates that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee’s computers and, in the process, discovered whatever opposition-research materials the Democrats had gathered on Trump.
“There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” (Kevin) McCarthy said, according to Entous, a superb reporter who heard a tape recording of the colloquy. “Swear to God.”
In the Post piece, McCarthy’s remark is met with laughter, and Ryan cautions his colleagues, “This is an off the record . . . No leaks! . . . All right?”

A Russian bank gave Marine Le Pen’s party a loan. Then weird things began happening. (Via WaPo, 2018)
Russia's propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard (Via NBC News, 2019)
Tulsi Gabbard Drops a Big Hint About Running a Spoiler Campaign for Trump (Via New Yorker, 2019)
Russian web trolls boo Biden, often boost Gabbard, report finds (Via NBC News, 2019)
Opinion: Tulsi Gabbard may not be a Russian asset. But she sure talks like one (Via LA Times, 2019)
Tulsi Gabbard Is Being Used by the Russians, and to a Former US Double Agent, the Evidence Is Clear (Via Newsweek, 2019)
Here’s Exactly How Much Russian Media Loves Tulsi Gabbard — and Hates Biden (Via Vice News, 2019)

The USA PATRIOT Act provides a textbook example of how the United States federal government expands its power. An emergency happens, legitimate or otherwise. The media, playing its dutiful role as goad for greater government oversight, demands "something must be done." Government power is massively expanded, with little regard for whether or not what is being done is efficacious, to say nothing of the overall impact on our nation's civil liberties.
No goals are posted, because if targets are hit, this would necessitate the ending or scaling back of the program. Instead, the program becomes normalized. There are no questions asked about whether the program is accomplishing what it set out to do. It is now simply a part of American life and there is no going back.
The American public largely accepts the USA PATRIOT Act as a part of civic life as immutable, perhaps even more so than the Bill of Rights. However, this act – passed in the dead of night, with little to no oversight, in a panic after the biggest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor – is not only novel, it is also fundamentally opposed to virtually every principle on which the United States of America was founded. It might not be going anywhere anytime soon, but patriots, liberty lovers and defenders of Constitutional government should nonetheless familiarize themselves with the onerous provisions of this law, which is nothing short of a full-throttle attack on the American republic.

What’s Even in the USA PATRIOT Act?

What is in the USA PATRIOT Act? In the Michael Moore film Fahrenheit 9/11, then Rep. John Conyers cracked wise about how no one had actually read the Act and how this was in fact par for the course with America's laws. Thus, before delving into the deeper issues surrounding the PATRIOT Act, it is worth discussing what the Act actually says. Here’s a brief look at the 10 Titles in the PATRIOT Act:

• Title I: Enhancing Domestic Security Against Terrorism: This provision dramatically expands the powers of the President, the military and the intelligence community whenever the specter of "terrorism" is invoked. Bizarrely, it contains a provision condemining discrimination against Arabs, Muslims and South Asians, which seems to have very little to do with protecting Americans from terrorism.
• Title II: Enhanced Surveillance Procedures: Title II contains the meat of the Act with regard to massive, industrial-scale surveillance on the American public. Beyond the simple spying on Americans and their communications, Title II increases the ability of federal intelligence agencies to share your private communications with one another.
• Title III: International Money Laundering Abatement and Financial Anti-Terrorism Act: Not simply a section of the USA PATRIOT Act, Title III is an Act of Congress in its own right. You might have noticed how much more difficult it is to open a bank account or send a wire transfer after 9/11. You can blame this provision, which shredded banking privacy rights in the United States.
• Title IV: Protecting the Border: Other than expanding the number of federal employees (of course), the provision of the USA PATRIOT Act charged with protecting America's borders does little other than point toward paths for future action and study. It is worth noting that the weakest provision of the Act is the only one explicitly authorized by the Constitution -- protecting the border.
• Title V: Removing Obstacles to Investigating Terrorism: Title V authorizes bounties for the apprehension of alleged terrorists, broadens government power to conduct DNA analysis, allows for greater data sharing between law enforcement agencies and, perhaps most disturbingly, requires private telecommunication carriers to comply with government requests for electronic communication records whenever requested by the FBI. It also expands the power of the Secret Service to investigate computer fraud.
• Title VI: Providing for Victims of Terrorism, Public Safety Officers and Their Families: Perhaps the most innocuous portion of the USA PATRIOT Act, Title VI provides for a victims' fund for victims of terrorism and their families.
• Title VII: Increased Information Sharing for Critical Infrastructure Protection: The subtitle of this section of the Act is a rather wordy way of saying that the United States federal government is allowing for law enforcement agencies to share information across jurisdictional boundaries in an easier fashion than was previously legal. To that end, the Bureau of Justice Assistance was given a $50,000,000 budget for 2002 and a whopping $100,000,000 budget for fiscal year 2003.
• Title VIII: Strengthening the Criminal Laws Against Terrorism: Title VIII is where the rubber meets the road: What exactly is terrorism, according to the federal government? Unfortunately, this Title does little to clarify what terrorism is, instead focusing on declaring a number of actions (such as attacks on transit) as “terrorism,” regardless of intent.
• Title IX: Improved Intelligence: The section subtitled “improved intelligence” largely expands the powers and responsibilities of the Director of Central Intelligence.
• Title X: Miscellaneous: When the federal government titles a segment of a law “miscellaneous,” you know it’s going to include everything and the kitchen sink. And so it does: The definition of electronic surveillance, additional funds for the DEA in South and Central Asia, research on biometric scanning systems, a limitation on hazmat licensure and infrastructure protections are all addressed in Title X, which is a catchall for everything the federal government forgot to address in the first nine sections of the law.

Most of the provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act were set to sunset four years after the bill was passed into law. However, the law was extended first by President George W. Bush and then by President Barack H. Obama. The latter is particularly scandalous given that, at least in part, a rejection of the surveillance culture that permeated the Bush Administration was responsible for the election of Obama in 2008.

Passing the USA PATRIOT Act

Next, it’s important to remember the environment in which the USA PATRIOT Act was passed: Post-9/11. It is not the slightest bit of exaggeration to label the environment in which the PATRIOT Act was passed as “hysterical,” nor is “compliant” a misnomer for the Congress of the time. Opposition to the Act was slim and intensive review of one of the most sweeping Acts of Congress in American history was nonexistent.
All told, Congress took a whopping six weeks drafting, revising, reviewing and passing the PATRIOT Act. That’s less time than Congress typically spends on totally uncontroversial and routine bills that don’t gut the Fourth Amendment. The final vote found only 66 opponents in the House and one (Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold) in the Senate. The entire passage of the PATRIOT Act, from start to finish, took place behind closed doors. There were no committee reports or hearings for opponents to testify, nor did anyone bother to read the bill.
“Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism” is the bloated and overwrought full name of the bill, crafted by a 23-year-old Congressional staffer named Chris Cylke. This ridiculous name puts the focus not on the surveillance aspects or the erosion of basic civil liberties enshrined in Western society since the Magna Carta, but on patriotism. At the time of its creation, the messaging was very clear: Real patriots support massive intrusions on civil rights. As President George W. Bush said at the time, “Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.” This sentiment very much seemed to apply to American citizens.
While the argument that if you have nothing to hide you shouldn’t fear investigation is anathema in a Constitutional republic with regard to citizens, it should be standard operating procedure when it comes to our organs of government. If we cannot expect transparency from the United States Congress – elected officials charged with representing the will of the people and protecting the Constitution – then we certainly can’t expect it anywhere else.

The Unfortunate Growth of the USA PATRIOT Act

It’s no surprise to those in the liberty movement that given an inch, the government (in particular the military-intelligence community) took a mile. Even the nebulous definition of “terrorism,” largely centered around a long litany of acts rather than the motivation behind them, has expanded to include receiving military training from a proscribed organization (without actually committing any terrorist acts or even acts of violence of any stripe) as well as “narcoterrorism” – the latter particularly convenient, as the United States government continues its losing “War on Drugs.”
Indeed, in many ways, the War on (Some) Drugs was the template for the War on Terror. Both wars have no defined enemy, no defined terms of victory. Instead, they are waged against a nebulous concept, while enjoying bipartisan support for their ever-expanding budgets. What’s more, it didn’t take long for the Feds to start using the USA PATRIOT Act for things it was never intended for, including prosecuting the War on Drugs.
Perhaps the silliest application of the USA PATRIOT Act is the prosecution of Adam McGaughey. McGaughey maintained a fansite for the television series Stargate SG-1. The Feds charged him with copyright infringement and computer fraud. In the course of their investigation, the FBI leveraged the PATRIOT Act to get financial records from his website’s ISP. This was made possible by the USA PATRIOT Act amending the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, allowing for search and seizure of ISP records.
The New York Times discovered in September 2003, that the USA PATRIOT Act was being used to investigate alleged drug traffickers without what would otherwise be sufficient probable cause. These were investigations into non-terrorist acts using a law ostensibly designed to investigate terrorism. There was some suspicion that the Act was being used to investigate crimes occurring before the Act was passed, violating the ex post facto clause of the United States Constitution.
In one of the biggest power grabs (excluding virtually everything we know from Edward Snowden – more on that below), the FBI sent tens of thousands of “national security letters” and procured over one million financial records from targeted businesses in Las Vegas. These businesses were primarily casinos, car rental bureaus and storage spaces. The data obtained included financial records, credit histories, employment records and even people’s personal health records.
The FBI maintains and databases this – and, indeed, all information collected through the USA PATRIOT Act – indefinitely. In the good old days before the PATRIOT Act, the Feds were compelled to destroy any evidence they collected on someone later found not guilty of a crime. Note that the aforementioned data collection brought to public attention by Edward Snowden (which, again – we’re getting to that) falls under this provision. Not only is the government collecting obscene amounts of private and personal information about you, they’re also storing it indefinitely with no plans to stop.
What’s more, the FBI has approached public libraries to turn over the records for specific terminals, collecting information not about specific users who might be under investigation, but about anyone who has ever used the computer at the public library. Libraries, to their credit, have been very much at the forefront of resistance against the PATRIOT Act, with some litigating compliance despite operating on small budgets and others posting “canary letters,” which effectively say “The FBI Hasn’t Been Here Yet.” The removal of such a letter would warn patrons that the FBI has been sniffing around in their records.
Indeed, the greatest criticism of the PATRIOT Act is the simplest and perhaps most obvious: Why does an Act ostensibly passed to fight terrorism so drastically expand the government’s power to investigate virtually everyone else? The PATRIOT Act is not merely unconstitutional, it is an unprecedented expansion of state power in the Anglosphere, a culture based on restricted government and the primacy of individual rights.
An excellent example of this is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) expansion. Most people are familiar with the term “FISA court,” but very few people actually know what it is – a special federal court created under the Carter Administration that grants approval of electronic surveillance of both citizens and resident aliens in the event that they are accused of acting in the service of a foreign power. The last part of this sentence is very important: The FISA courts are not simply for allowing surveillance of anyone that it might be expedient to collect information about. The scope of their powers is very, very limited.
Or was.
The PATRIOT Act lowered the burden of evidence required to obtain a FISA warrant for electronic surveillance and expanded the overall scope of the FISA courts. Any savvy federal agent can now drape his charges in the garb of (what else?) “national security” and obtain electronic surveillance privileges hitherto only dreamed of by investigators. FISA courts have become pliant tools in the hands of the Feds, gladly approving their requests to monitor phone and internet surveillance, as well as access to medical, financial and educational records.

The Future of the USA PATRIOT Act

Do we still need the PATRIOT Act? Did we ever? All laws are certainly a product of their times. But this seems much more acutely true of the USA PATRIOT Act, which was passed in a rush and under duress without due consideration.
Particularly in light of the revelations from Edward Snowden – that the government is spying on everything they possibly can – it’s worth asking if there’s any walking back. He points out that the police state apparatus was originally for drug dealers, then for terrorists, but ultimately ended up being applied to anyone and everyone.
What’s more, Bob Bullard notes another frightful aspect of the USA PATRIOT Act: Terrorism-related cases are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. This means that there is little or no oversight. There is no surer hallmark of a police state than an all-powerful domestic surveillance agency with no transparency or oversight. While the USA PATRIOT Act might not create an American Stasi as such, it certainly paves the way for one.
Continue reading The USA PATRIOT Act: The Story of an Impulsive Bill that Eviscerated America's Civil Liberties at Ammo.com.

Ramtidings, dear friends! It is I, your dutiful lord and master, the eternal GM. My sabbatical proved most fruitful, having figured out some depth mechanics for 3 dimensional combat in my pet project, Blood & Thunder, a maritime piracy RPG that has been both a joy and a nerve-wracking nightmare to create. If you want to see what's going on with that, you can swing by patreon.com/BlackFlagPrintingPress to take a look or support my endeavors. But I digress, because I did not come here today to talk about Blood & Thunder, no. I came here with something else in mind, good friends, for while I have been writing my bread and butter, you have gone without your beard and butter, and this is unacceptable! And so, I have trawled the depths of my memory to bring you yet another TAAAAAALE FROM THE TABLETOP, lovingly subtitled A Prologue Into Poverty.
Life is not an easy thing. There was a time when life was very difficult for me. I had far less than most, and I went without frequently, my entire life loaded into a backpack of bare necessities. Joys were few and times were hard, but I made the best of it. I traveled the countryside, mostly alone, making friends where I could amongst the other forgotten souls who haunt the streets of the United States. I met a good number of people, many of them listless drifters in their own right, who became fast friends. We would hang out for a time, but like all drifters, we would eventually part ways, called to different places to do different things. I had just come from North Carolina. I had been in Asheville, playing bluegrass to make money with friends who eventually proved dishonest, and so I parted ways with them. While in Asheville, I had met a girl, also on the road like myself, and I developed a massive crush on her. Fortune would have it that our time together was short lived, as she disappeared on a freighter down the train tracks, and I layed curled up in a bush sick as a dog for the next 3 days.
You can't get a ride from a freighter with 8 people without getting pulled off by johnny law. Our group had fractured, and myself and one other soul continued on our own, until we parted ways in Atlanta. Now, on my own, clueless and green, I wandered aimlessly, until a friend of mine at the time reached out to me by way of the internet. He had work for me, back in California, if I could just make it there. What's 3000 miles? I've got this. I walked out of Atlanta, hitched a series of rides to Arkansas, and then caught a freighter myself, all the way back to the west coast while UP did the driving. I laid on the back of that train for 3 days until I finally ran out of water and decided to get off. I was in Los Angeles. After a bit of panhandling, I got a bus into the central valley, and my friend came and scooped me up. I worked on my friends farm for a bit, building green houses and stacking money until the time came for me to once again depart. During that time, my crush from North Carolina had found me on Facebook. We got to talking.
She told me she had gone back home to Wisconsin and was working in some greasy spoon trying to save up money to afford a bus. She'd been back for awhile now, but wasn't making any headway. Her vices were getting the best of her, and she couldn't seem to get ahead. I told her she needed to knock that shit off and clean up her act. After a long enough time talking, however, things started to get flirty and dirty.
I wanted to see her, and it's actually amazing what a guy will do for love. You're how far away? Piece of cake. Hold my beer. With the work season coming to a close, I took my pay and my leave of my old friend, and he dropped me off in Modesto at the Greyhound. On the way out, he loaded me up with gifts for my travels - a new backpack, socks, a sleeping bag, some snacks for the ride... and naturally, he gave me a gift that I always treasure. He gave me a set of RPG dice. I gave my boy a hug, wished him well in his endeavors, and promised I'd be back in the fall to help him with the harvest and gathering firewood. So I went on my merry way.
I absolutely despise Greyhounds. Have you ever been on one? It's miserable. There's no room to stretch out unless you sit in the back, right by the toilet. Some asshole is always blaring garbage mumble rap on his phone all day long. It doesn't matter who you are - at the end of the trip you exude the pungent aroma of a neckbeard. This didn't bother me too much - personal hygiene suffers when you have no way to bathe regularly, so I was used to being dirty, and my friends from the road were usually very dirty people in their own right at the time, so I could handle a certain degree of grossness... within limits. I did shower at my friend's farm before I boarded that bus, though, and was feeling rather spiffy - clean body, clean clothes. Life was good and I was on my way to see my woman.
I did my best to zone out. I tried to sleep as much as I could and ignore the general atmosphere of the bus, but that was no longer an option after a layover in Las Vegas. We boarded the bus once more after an almost 24 hour delay on our schedules, and finally got moving again. I sat in the back near the toilet, as I was no stranger to this game and wanted that bench seat, and foul smells at the time didn't bother me much... or so I thought. With the bus filling up and the seats reducing to slim pickings, it dawned on me that my coveted back seat bench was going to get shared. Then, I saw him... the Busbeard.
I'm usually a pretty nice person, but I did not want my coveted backseat benchseat getting taken up, let alone by this massive lardass that now lumbered towards me. I did everything in my power to seem as big and hostile as I could. This was all in vain, however, as some people cannot read social cues. I stared at him, dripping hostility, mentally repeating sit somewhere else like it was a Zen mantra. However, nobody wanted him to sit by them either, and so, he made his way, closer and closer, as he asked people if seats were taken until he got to me at the back. He shifted to sit into the seat, angling his ass in the general direction of my face. The smell of soggy feces-laden underwear wafted up as he slid his bulk onto the bench.
Did I mention that personal hygiene suffers on a greyhound bus ride, especially when you've been riding for days? I've taken my fair share of Greyhounds, and it's unlikely that this new arrival had been riding for awhile. He was eastbound, like the rest of us, and we were in Las Vegas. His point of origin was... not very far east. I had only been on the bus for approximately a day so far, minus the extended layover time of course, so I was getting a ittle sweaty myself, but this guy smelled as if he not only lived on this bus, but was born in the blue poop goop of the latrine. It was a question worthy of debate as to whether this man had actually employed the use of a speed stick in his life. His patchy jowels jiggled at me as he said, hi.
I responded with a gruff and monotone hello, and then turned my attentions to the window, watching the bus depot workers loading up suitcases beneath. My fate was sealed. This man was to be my travel companion all the way to Denver. I decided then that maybe it would be best to ignore him. I plugged in my phone, booted up an emulator I had downloaded, and started to play some Pokemon to whittle away the hours. It didn't take long, however, before I could feel his olfactory looming become physical looming as he examined the screen upon which I played from over my shoulder.
Busbeard: Pokemon? I fucking love Pokemon! I didn't know you could play it on a phone. How are you doing that?
His heavy respirations were like an infusion of green spearmint and halitosis.
GM: Emulators.
I went back to my game, trying to angle myself away from him in such a way that he couldn't lean over my shoulder and watch me as I trained my team, but I was effectively sandwiched between him and the wall, forced to sit straight as he leaned over and watched me play. I debated then, what I ought to do. Playing Pokemon would make the time fly, but I would be crushed between the window and a sweaty fat man. Not playing Pokemon would save me the physical agony of being squished, but I would be painfully bored for seemingly endless miles, and he may use it as an opportunity to interact further. A decision needed to be made.
I shut the emulator off and put away my phone, turning my attention back out the window as the bus pulled out of the Las Vegas terminal and began down the freeway. It was not long after we had pulled out of the station, however, when that wheezing, rasping voice chirped up again.
Busbeard: So where are you going?
I ignored him, focusing on the casinos towering in the distance of the skyline, pretending as if I hadn't heard the question, or as if it weren't addressed at me. With insistance, he repeated his question at my turned back again, searching for a response within my stony exterior. I mumbled, the Midwest, and he questioningly grunted, and asked me to repeat myself. I guess we're doing this.
GM: I'm going to the Midwest.
Busbeard: Where in the Midwest?
GM: Wisconsin.
Busbeard: I've never been to Wisconsin before, but I know they got really good cheese! Hyuk hyuk... Is that why you're going there?
Judging by his smell, he must have been an excessively avid connosieur of fine Wisconsinite cheese. However, cheese was the last thing on my mind at the time.I was enamored with my lady love.
GM: I'm going to see an old friend.
Busbeard: Oh, that's cool... who is it?
The odds of this man knowing the person who I was on my way to visit were astronomically low. Your odds of getting struck by lightning, winning the lottery, and becoming president in the same day were probably higher than this cretin knowing the one specific person whom I was going to go visit in some backwater Wisconsin town. Still, I humored him, and in the same flat voice, answered his question, and told him I was on my way to see my sweetheart.
This caught Busbeard's attention. For a grown man in his mid 30s, he let out a loud "oooooooo" like a middle schooler would when he finds out his friend has a crush. I contemplated execution methods and the subjective severity of their barbarism as he excitedly asked me where she was from.
GM: Wisconsin.
Busbeard: Yeah... but, where in Wiconsin?
GM: Fuck off, dude. I'm not going to tell you the town where she lives.
Busbeard: Heh! I'd be terrified of telling a superior male like me where my girlfriend lives, too. A little kid like you wouldn't stand a chance next to a man like me. Her panties would hit the floor from one whiff of my pheromones. It happens all the time, bro, I swear. I could have any woman on this bus. They just can't resist me. They can sense my manhood, I know it.
I shouldn't stir the pot. All common sense tells me that I should just stop myself while I'm ahead, but sometimes... sometimes I just can't help myself. I've always been a pretty reserved and self-contained person for the most part, and I just want to be left alone 90% of the time to do my thing. Apparently, that's a lot to ask, because every now and then, somebody comes and invades my personal space with their protruding belly, bad breath, and self-aggrandizement, and then I find it really hard to resist my inclination to fuck with them. I know, I know, it's wrong of me to do that, but I'm human, damnit, and something good was cooking in the kitchen. What's the harm in dipping a spoon into this self-important concoction of body odor and bravado?
GM: Any woman, huh? Tell ya what, Busbeard, I just got paid, and you seem really confident in the power of your, ahhhhh, pheromones, so... how about a wager.
I laid out the terms of my devil's bargain. With a wager of 100 dollars, I would pick a lady on the bus at the next break. Busbeard would then have to seduce her. He MUST "present" his pheromones to her, naturally. If he recovered her phone number, or anything in excess thereof, like a kiss or a consensual toilet stall consummation, it would suffice to meet my criteria and loose my grasp from the freshly printed Franklin in my wallet. He agreed enthusiastically to my terms, insisting I was going to loose and he was going to get his dick sucked in a Greyhound portajohn "blumpkin style".
We rode along in silence for the next hour or so. The sun was high in the sky when we made our next stop at some gas station in Utah, and everyone filed off the bus to stretch their legs and get their snacks. I wandered around, huffing down my smoke, chatting it up with people and making friends, seeing just who they were, asking them questions - where they were going, who they were going there with. I got to talking with one guy and his girlfriend.
The guy, who we will call Sarge, was built like a brick shithouse and was a former infantry man who served 2 tours of duty in the middle east. He was traveling with his wife, a young and pretty little thing who we will call Alexandra. They were on their way back to the east coast to stay with family. Alexandra's mom was getting old and had asked them to move in to help take care of her. They were on their way out there to steward her aging mother's estate. I remarked that that was awfully kind of them, and sincerely wished them the best on taking care of Alexandra's aging mom. I told them a little bit about myself, as well... that I was effectively living on the road, playing life by ear, and on the way to see a loved one of mine for a bit before the wind blew me somewhere else.
Eventually, the bus driver gave everyone a 5 minute warning before departure, and we all filed on board. I moved back to my seat and waited for Busbeard to arrive. He came back, cradling piles of gas station sandwiches, bags of chips, and a couple of sodas in his massive paws. He sat down beside me with a loud "oof" and offered me a drink, saying that it's the least he could do before he took my money. I took that beverage. It was both cold and delicious.
GM: Well, Busbeard, I've done my rounds, and I've come to a decision.
Busbeard: Who is it? She better be hot. I swear to God, if you make me waste my time on some dried up roastie, I'm gonna be so fucking pissed at you dude.
GM: Why would I do that dude? Naturally, I only want the best for you. No, she's very pretty. You see that girl over there, in the aisle seat? That's the one. Make your move whenever you're ready.
I pointed out Alexandra to him. I already knew this was going to end very poorly. There was no way in Hell that Alexandra would express any interest in this disgusting lardass whatsoever when she had a stable and solid man like Sarge, and Sarge wasn't about to take guff from anyone. Add on to it that Sarge was easily the size of, if not bigger than, the prodigious Busbeard himself. Sarge was also trained to kill and hardened by years of combat in the graveyard of empires. I can fight - I've fought a lot - and I would not want to square up against him under any circumstances. Busbeard was going to get the snot beat out of him and pay me 100 dollars for that privilege.
The bus took off and I listened to the disgusting sounds of Busbeard inhaling the equivalent of 5 pounds of gas station food. I was only halfway through my soda, when Busbeard emitted a satisfied belch that rumbled the seats, and the feeding frenzy had ended in an effervesence of curdling bile and preservatives just as fast as it had begun. He then started to pump himself up for the task at hand. He started to sweat with excitement and latent cardiac arrest as he prepared his pheromonal aura about himself, and then with a gruff, alright, let's do this, he stood up from his seat and waddled down the aisle, his greasy belly bumping into everybody who had chosen an aisle seat.
He approached Alexandra. They were near the front end of the bus, and so I couldn't hear a word that they were saying. I watched Busbeard as he extended an arm and held on to the overhead luggage rack, exposing the damp miasma of corn-syrup infused armpit sweat to his unsuspecting victim. His pheromones were beginning to work their magic over the unsuspecting Alexandra who would soon be enraptured by its juicy spell. I waited, leaning forward intently, when a loud shout broke the silence.
Sarge: BACK THE FUCK UP.
Alexandra started to shout, too, yelling "get the fuck away from me!"
The driver turned back and yelled for everyone to sit down and shut the hell up or he would pull the bus over.
Sarge: Please do! I'm gonna beat this fucking lardass into the pavement! Saying shit like that to my wife? Who the fuck do you think you are?
The bus driver repeated his warning, and Busbeard began to shout his protests, insisting upon his innocence.
Busbeard: B-but, I was put up to it! It was that guy, in the back seat! He said---
He pointed back at me. I yelled back, I don't fucking know that guy.
The bus driver meant his threat, and pulled the bus over. We were on a long and empty stretch on the I-15 somewhere in rural Utah. The last town I had seen was about 20 miles back. It was late spring, and it was getting hot outside that afternoon. The bus driver got out of his seat, walked up to Busbeard, and told him to get the Hell off of his bus. Busbeard kept protesting, when Sarge moved past his wife, and started forcing Busbeard towards the front door.
I've heard the threat of getting kicked off maybe a thousand times on a Greyhound, but I had never seen it play out before. Busbeard was thrown off the bus. Sarge did not join him outside and pummel him into the asphalt, regrettably, as I would have loved to have watched it. Busbeard kept pleading with the bus driver as the driver shut the door on him, sealing him out on the shoulder of a lonely stretch of highway. I breathed a sigh of relief, and stretched out my legs. It was another 15 miles before we saw signs of civilization. A part of me felt bad for Busbeard, but the other part of me said, "if I can walk 20 miles in a day with 60 lbs of shit on my back, he can do an unencumbered 15 and be fine."
The ride continued on in sweet, reclined silence for me until we reached Denver, werein there was another changeover, and this bus was much, much more desolate. The rest of the Greyhound voyage passed without incident, and I spent my time flirting with my lady love and training some Pokemons. At long last, I finally arrived in Wisconsin. She came to pick me up at the bus station, and when we approached each other, we made out like long lost lovers for a good 5 minutes before we finally caught our breath enough to say hello. I got in her car, and spent maybe a week or so with her, before it was time to take my leave. I couldn't live there forever, and so, as fast as I had drifted into her life, once again, it was time for me to disappear. We said goodbye, and she dropped me off at a lonely interstate overpass on the edge of town. I put my thumb out to catch a ride to Anywhere But Here USA.
I planned my next move, and I figured that there were some friends of hers and mine that lived not too far away in the Dakotas, and maybe I would pay them a visit next. I was in the neighborhood, and figured that I might as well say hello. I reached out to them online, and then made my way west again. They were excited for me to come see them. It was only a day into the voyage when I received a message from Janet. It said, "wait for me, I'm catching up." She had packed her backpack again, and was coming after me, hot on my tail. I told her we could meet up at our mutual friend's house.
I dialed ahead to our friends, who we shall call Sarah and Queenie. Sarah used to travel together with Janet for many months before she stabilized, and then settled down. Queenie was one of my friends from North Carolina. He was a loveable chucklefuck of a drifter, missing a few teeth, wore a skirt, and spoke in the most haggard voice you could imagine. Still... he insisted on being called Queenie. He had settled down with Sarah after they hooked up, and they were living at Sarah's house. He was on thin ice there, however, and she was threatening to kick him out.
I arrived at Sarah's and Queenie's, and spent the next few days waiting for Janet to come up on my heels. During that time, Queenie and I played a lot of Magic (he had just gotten into it), and I remembered the dice that my friend in California had given me that were laying unusued in my backpack. I asked him if he had ever played tabletop RPG's before, to which he answered no. I told him that, maybe next time I see him and I'm in a better spot, we could run a game. Eventually Janet caught up, and we prepared to leave Sarah's for good towards our own new horizons. Queenie, however, had finally broken through the thin ice upon which he skated, and was getting thrown out. On the day of our departure, we asked him if he wanted to join us in our travels so he wouldn't have to go it alone.
Thus we began from Sarah's house out into the unknown once again, a cheerful trio, and true to my word, I began to teach not only Queenie, but Janet as well, the joys of tabletop RPGs.
As I'm sure you can surmise, dear friends, that this is not the end of our story, but only the beginning of another chapter. Is Busbeard still alive? What does the future hold for Ramtide's love life? How do a gaggle of vagabond drifters play tabetop games without a table? Some of these questions will be answered, my dear friends, in our next installment of TAAAAAALES FROM THE TABLETOP.
A shoutout to my lovely patrons, Tatoferret and Sillibits. You guys are wonderful. Thank you for believing in the dream.

Hello again, and good morning!
This listing is for items that did not sell during the January 17 Auction, so you can buy anything you want right here and right now - no buyer's premiums, no additional fees.
*FREE shipping for any order over $100.
*All items priced at $1 are now .75 each
Each lot was individually imaged (front and back) for the auction - so the easiest way for you to see exactly what you're buying is to visit the auction link (the auction is over, so I'm not advertising anything different or advertising an upcoming auction) - so here that is:
https://www.invaluable.com/catalog/2qx7j50tq0?size=50&page=1&categories=&sort=
Here is the required "prove you still have the stuff" photo with the username card and today's date:
PHOTO
Payment: PayPal only. I do not have Venmo/Zello/Bitcoin or any other form of digital payment at this time. No notes if using PPFF, please. (Thank you.) If you choose to use PPFF, please make sure to send me your shipping address here as it won't automatically load with your payment.
Shipping: I will charge you what it costs me for the USPS label rounded up to the nearest dollar. For First Class that is usually $4, for USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate Small Box it will be $9. I will get you a tracking number right after payment is received and will get your package scanned into the USPS system within 24 hours of receipt of payment. I will offer "Risky Shipping" (via stamped greeting card) at my discretion for $1 - for single, small coins ONLY. NOTE: These prices are for Continental US shipping only - if you live outside the continental US, shipping will be more expensive. I am still happy to do it under the same rules as above, but just keep in mind it's going to cost more.
What do YOU need to do to buy coins from this group: send me a list of which lots you want (for example, I want to buy lots # 51, 52, 53, 54, 55) and I will send you a total. There are too many coins here (plus there are duplicates) so I cannot look up the coins you want by description - just give me lot numbers and it will be much simpler.
I'd like to make a simple and polite request - if I have sent you my PayPal information (meaning we've agreed to a deal) please finish it up as soon as you can so I can check you off the list and move on to the next person. This helps make sure you get all the coins we discussed and no one else is in limbo.
I will do my absolute best to update the ad as soon as lots sell.
LEFTOVERS:
52 China (Republic) 10 Cash $5.00
57 China (Hu-Peh Province) 10 Cash $1.00
59 Hong Kong - 1866 1 Cent NICE $8.00
61 China (Republic) 10 Cash $3.00
62 China (Kiang-Nan Province) 10 Cash NICE $20.00
63 China (Republic) 20 Cash $5.00
64 1977 D Eisenhower Dollar UNC MINT CELLO $4.00
67 British West Africa - 1940 1/10 Penny NICE $5.00
70 France (Perpignan) 1917 A 10 Centimes $5.00
71 1976 Shelbyville Dam (Illinois) Elongated/Smashed Nickel Souvenir $3.00
76 France (Orleans/Lyon/Toulouse) 10 Centimes Transportation Token (good to 31 Dec 1918) $3.00
77 Papua New Guinea - 2008 2 Kina UNC $2.00
78 Missouri Insurance Company (St. Louis) Good Luck Token $3.00
79 1900 India (Rama-Laksmana) Type C #1 (Brotman) Temple Token NICE $40.00
80 1956 Roosevelt Dime UNC TONED $6.00
83 1955 General Motors "Motorama" Medal BU $15.00
86 Central States 70th Anniversary Convention Token Jerry Lebo Advertising $6.00
87 Consolidated Numismatic Advertising Token Good For $1 Edmundston, Canada $2.00
88 France (Perpignan) 1917 A 5 Centimes $5.00
91 France (Perpignan) 1921 A 25 Centimes Scalloped Edge $8.00
93 Ukraine - 2003 100 Hryvnia UNC $2.00
94 German East Africa (Tanzania) - 1916 T 20 Heller $10.00
95 Illinois Governer Otto Kerner Inauguration Medal $2.00
96 5 Cent Trade Token NICE $3.00
98 Germany (Schleswig-Holstein) - 1923 10 Mark Notgeld UNC $10.00
99 A. Phillips Co Cambridge, Maryland 20 Cent Trade Token NICE $8.00
100 EZ Park Courtesy Token $1.00
159 Great Britain - 1949 Penny NICE $2.00
163 1959 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter UNC TONED $12.00
165 Great Britain - 1932 1 Penny NICE $3.00
166 1960 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter UNC $10.00
167 1960 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter UNC $10.00
169 Portugal - 1921 10 Centavos NICE $10.00
170 Germany (Prussia) 1700's-1800's Jeton (Token) Wilhelm 3 "Neue Ehre Neues Gluck" $3.00
172 1963 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter UNC TONED $12.00
175 1964 D Washington Quarter UNC TONED $8.00
176 Canada - 1921 1 Cent NICE $4.00
179 Stag Beer Wooden Nickel "Fair on the Square" $1.00
180 The TV Shop Slidell, LA One Wooden Buck $1.00
181 Canada - 1929 1 Cent NICE $3.00
185 1962 Type B Reverse Washington Silver Quarter NICE $8.00
186 Canada - 1920 1 Cent NICE $4.00
188 1957 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter NICE $6.00
192 Canada - 1945 5 Cents NICE $2.00
193 State of Missouri Sesquicentennial Medal $2.00
194 State of Missouri Sesquicentennial Medal $2.00
195 Canada - 1945 5 Cents NICER $4.00
196 France - 1916 2 Centimes LOW MINTAGE $2.00
197 Germany (Empire) 1914 J 2 Pfennig NICE $8.00
198 Mexico - 1946 1 Centavo NICE $1.00
200 Mexico - 1924 2 Centavos BETTER DATE $6.00
259 1954 S Washington Quarter UNC $10.00
260 1957 Washington Quarter UNC TONED $10.00
261 1963 Type B Reverse Washington Quarter UNC TONED $20.00
262 1999 D Kennedy Half Dollar UNC from Mint Set GEM BU PROOFLIKE $3.00
263 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
264 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
266 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
267 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
269 Maybrook NY Golden Jubilee Good For 10 Cent Wooden Nickel $1.00
270 Maybrook NY 1975 Golden Jubilee 25 Cent Wooden Nickel $1.00
274 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
275 World Silver - Barbados 1973 Proof 5 Dollars LOW MINTAGE $20.00
276 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
277 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
279 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 012 UNC $2.00
280 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 012 UNC $2.00
281 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 012 UNC $2.00
282 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse Book Low UNC $2.00
286 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 002 UNC $2.00
287 1983 Lincoln Cent DDO FS-101 $25.00
288 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 012 UNC $2.00
289 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 012 UNC $2.00
291 1964 D Washington Silver Quarter UNC TONED $8.00
293 1960's Terre Haute, IN Sesquicentennial Wooden Nickel $2.00
295 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 002 UNC $2.00
296 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 002 UNC $2.00
298 1982 Buffalo NY Sesquicentennial Wooden Nickel $1.00
352 Denmark - 1950 5 Ore KEY DATE $10.00
354 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
355 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
356 2009 P Lincoln Cent "Formative Years" Doubled Die Reverse 013 UNC $2.00
357 1990 Rappahannock Area Coin Club Wooden Nickel $1.00
359 Germany (Empire) - 1874 C 1 Pfennig $2.00
360 Old Time Wooden Nickel Co Support Our Troops Wooden Nickel $1.00
361 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
362 1941 S "Large S" Lincoln Wheat Cent $1.00
364 1980 D Jefferson Nickel Mint Error - Minor Curved Clip (@3:30) $3.00
365 1979 S "Type 2 - Clear S" Proof Jefferson Nickel $2.00
367 Germany (Empire) - 1895 F 1 Pfennig $3.00
368 Germany (Empire) - 1874 A 1 Pfennig $2.00
369 Germany (Empire) - 1900 F 1 Pfennig $2.00
370 Germany (Empire) - 1874 B 1 Pfennig $2.00
371 Australia - 1951 3 Pence $2.00
372 Great Britain - 1861 3 Pence $3.00
373 Germany (Empire) - 1875 J 5 Pfennig $2.00
375 50 Cents in Trade Token $1.00
376 Germany (Empire) - 1874 E 2 Pfennig $2.00
377 Clear Lake, IA Perkins Wooden Nickel $1.00
378 50 Cents in Trade Token $1.00
379 Medallic Art Co Grand Canyon National Park 50th Anniversary Medal Bronze $3.00
380 Great Britain - 1981 25 New Pence UNC $3.00
382 Pomona National Bridge / Jackson County 200 Year Anniversary Medal $3.00
383 Guyana - 1970 1 Dollar UNC $2.00
384 Germany (Empire) - 1875 J 2 Pfennig $4.00
385 Illawarrra Numismatic Association Membership Discount Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
386 San Juan Quality Royale Casino Token $1 Face Value $1.00
387 Canada - 1963 Prooflike 1 Cent Emerald Rainbow Toning $3.00
388 Artisan Silverworks Temecula, CA Wooden Nickel $1.00
389 Canada - 1966 1 Cent Emerald Toning $2.00
390 Germany (Empire) - 1875 E 2 Pfennig $2.00
391 Germany (Empire) - 1874 H 2 Pfennig $4.00
392 5 Cent Token $1.00
394 Germany (Empire) - 1894 F 1 Pfennig $3.00
395 Denmark - 1904/804 1 Ore NICE $8.00
396 Netherlands Antilles - 1965 2.5 Cents UNC TONED $6.00
397 Germany (Empire) - 1874 G 1 Pfennig $10.00
398 Netherlands - 1921 1/2 Cent BETTER DATE $2.00
399 Netherlands - 1922 1/2 Cent BETTER DATE $4.00
400 Germany (Empire) - 1874 D 10 Pfennig $3.00
451 Sweden - 1901 1 Ore $1.00
452 Norway - 1948 50 Ore Overdate 4/4 $5.00
453 Netherlands Antilles - 1959 1 Cent UNC $2.00
454 Germany (Empire) - 1899 A 1 Pfennig $1.00
455 Germany (Empire) - 1899 A 1 Pfennig $1.00
456 Germany (Empire) - 1898 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
457 Germany (Empire) - 1875 F 5 Pfennig $1.00
458 Canada - 1948 5 Cents $1.00
460 Denmark - 1951 10 Ore NICE $5.00
461 Barbados - 1973 Proof 5 Cents in OGP $1.00
462 Germany (Empire) - 1875 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
463 Barbados - 1973 Proof 25 Cents in OGP $1.00
464 Germany (Empire) - 1876 D 5 Pfennig $1.00
465 Hungary - 1965 2 Filler Key Date $5.00
466 Germany (Empire) - 1889 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
467 Germany (Empire) - 1889 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
468 Switzerland - 1968 5 Rappen UNC TONED $1.00
469 Germany (Empire) - 1875 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
470 Germany (Empire) - 1875 C 5 Pfennig $1.00
471 Trinidad & Tobago - 1973 Proof 1 Cent in OGP $1.00
473 Germany (Empire) - 1892 D 5 Pfennig $1.00
474 Germany (Empire) - 1897 A 5 Pfennig $1.00
475 Germany (Empire) - 1890 E 5 Pfennig $1.00
477 Germany (Empire) - 1890 D 5 Pfennig $1.00
478 Germany (Empire) - 1894 D 5 Pfennig $1.00
480 Barbados - 1980 Proof 25 Cents in OGP cello $1.00
481 World Silver - Switzerland 1975 1 Franc $6.00
482 Germany (Empire) - 1897 D 5 Pfennig $1.00
484 Canada (New Brunswick) - 1861 1 Cent $3.00
485 Canada (Nova Scotia) - 1861 1/2 Cent $2.00
486 Austria - 1893 10 Heller $1.00
488 Netherlands East Indies - 1921 1/2 Cent NICE KEY DATE $8.00
489 Austria - 1895 10 Heller $1.00
490 Austria - 1894 20 Heller $1.00
492 World Silver - Mexico - 1887 Do C 10 Centavos LOW MINTAGE $5.00
551 South Africa - 1965 Proof 1 Cent LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
553 Switzerland - 1902 2 Rappen KEY DATE FIRST YEAR $8.00
554 Panama - 1975 Proof 1 Centesimo in OGP $5.00
557 South Africa - 1965 Proof 5 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
560 South Africa - 1965 Proof 20 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
561 Panama - 1975 Proof 5 Centesimos in OGP $1.00
562 Panama - 1976 Proof 5 Centesimos in OGP $2.00
563 South Africa - 1965 Proof 50 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $5.00
564 South Africa - 1966 Proof 1 Cent LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
565 South Africa - 1966 Proof 2 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
566 South Africa - 1966 Proof 5 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
567 South Africa - 1966 Proof 10 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
568 Panama - 1974 Proof 5 Centesimos in OGP cello $1.00
569 South Africa - 1966 Proof 20 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
572 Panama - 1973 Proof 1/10 Balboa in OGP $1.00
573 South Africa - 1967 Proof 1 Cent LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
574 Barbados - 1973 Proof 1 Cent $1.00
575 Panama - 1973 Proof 1/4 Balboa in OGP $1.00
576 South Africa - 1967 Proof 2 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
577 South Africa - 1967 Proof 5 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
578 South Africa - 1967 Proof 10 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
579 South Africa - 1967 Proof 20 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $2.00
580 South Africa - 1967 Proof 50 Cents LOW MINTAGE 25,000 $4.00
584 Liberia - 1974 Proof 10 Cents in OGP $1.00
590 Mexico - 1923 1 Centavo NICE UNC TONED $8.00
593 Mexico - 1923 5 Centavos NICE $5.00
594 Bahamas - 1970 Proof 1 Cent in OGP $1.00
595 Mexico - 1935 20 Centavos NICE $30.00
596 Token "10" Unknown origin $1.00
652 Indiana Sesquicentennial Medal 1966 $3.00
654 Alleppey Dist Treasury 286 Token $3.00
655 Creotina Remedies Belleville, IL Token $3.00
657 Mexico - 2001 1 Peso UNC in original cello $1.00
658 Germany (Empire) - 1903 A 1 Pfennig $4.00
662 Germany (Weimar) - 1924 A 1 Pfennig NICE $6.00
664 Malaysia - 1977 50 Sen TONED UNC $3.00
665 Franklin D Roosevelt $2 Trade Token Union Maystern $3.00
666 Great Britain - 1953 5 Shillings UNC (Crown sized) $5.00
667 Russia - 1994 50 Roubles Blind Mole Rat LOW MINTAGE UNC $3.00
672 Mint of Romania Aluminum Token UNC $3.00
673 Bahamas - 1973 and 1974 Proof 1 Cents in OGP (two coins) $1.00
675 Canada - 1939 5 Cents UNC $20.00
676 Penny Press Mint 1 Dollar Token (Morgan Dollar Inspired Design) $2.00
677 Penny Press Mint 1 Dollar Token (Morgan Dollar Inspired Design) $2.00
678 France (Paris) Montmartre Auditing Firm "Good for one audition" Token $2.00
679 Thailand - Bangkok Institute of Accounting Token $1.00
680 Swedish Shooting Medal Double Pistols Design $3.00
681 1941 Mercury Dime Pin $4.00
682 Korea (Republic) - 1968 5 Won UNC $25.00
683 Korea (Republic) - 1973 50 Won NICE $5.00
684 Russia - 1994 50 Roubles Bison NICE LOW MINTAGE $2.00
685 Coca-Cola 1974 "It's the real thing" Silver Dollar City Token $5.00
686 State Mint of Romania Octagonal Token UNC $2.00
687 Canada - 1937 Dot 5 Cents UNC $10.00
688 France - 1977 10 Francs TONED $2.00
690 Saarland - 1954 10 Franken UNC $8.00
692 Mount Vernon, VA High School Token $1.00
693 Korea (Republic) - 1967 10 Won NICE $5.00
694 Korea (Republic) - 1967 10 Won UNC $40.00
695 Princes of Jerusalem - Cahokia Council A.A.S.RITE Valley of East St Louis Token $3.00
697 Magic Mountain Valencia California Souvenir Token $2.00
698 Pearl Harbor, Hawaii Driver's Association "good for one full fare" token $1.00
700 Downtown Granite City (Illinois) Shopping Center Token $3.00
751 Canada - 1957 House of Commons Medal $3.00
753 Mr. Pizza (World's Worst Pizza) Wooden Quarter Token $1.00
754 National Pony Express Centennial Medal So Called Dollar UNC TONED $5.00
755 Pulaski Bowling Center Free Game Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
756 Four Canada 1991 UNC Cents (4 coins) in OGP CELLO $1.00
757 Four Canada 1991 UNC 5 Cents (4 coins) in OGP CELLO $1.00
758 Pair of Two Thomas Jefferson 1 Cent Postal Stamps $1.00
761 Mexico - 2000 10 Pesos UNC in original cello $6.00
764 Ye Olde Curiosity Shop Seattle 25 Cent Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
765 Mexico - 2000 20 Pesos UNC in original cello $10.00
768 Morocco - AH1320 10 Mazunas $8.00
773 Diamond Dolls Pompano Beach, FL Free Hamburger Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
774 Nadine's Backwoods Bistro One Free Tap Beer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
775 Ocean Springs Mini Golf One Free Game Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
777 Poland - 2014 2 Zlotych UNC $2.00
778 Lansing, Michigan University Quality Inn One Free Well Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
780 San Jose, California Donut Delight One Small Drink 40 Cents Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
781 H.E.B. Hustle Chip Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
782 Two Mixed Tokens $1.00
784 South Gate, California Robby's Tepee 1 Glass Draft Beer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
785 Macadoo's One Free Sara Lee Bagle (with butter!) Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
786 Canada - 1970 1 Cent TONED $1.00
788 State Penal Institution 5 Cent Good For Token $3.00
790 Fishing Equipment & Tackle 10% Discount Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
791 District Treasury Alleppey 1860 Token Government of Kerala $2.00
792 Russia (Empire) - 1881 1 Kopek $1.00
793 Black Duck Buck Good For One Premium Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
794 Goodles, Michigan Cook's Cobblestone One Free Beer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
796 San Diego, California My Yogurt Place One Free Frozen Yogurt Sundae Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
797 Canada - 1939 Coronation Medal $2.00
798 Ellsworth, Maine Bicentennial Headquarters Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
800 Suwanee River Attractions 25 Cent Admission Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
851 Sunnyvale, California Odyssey Room 1 Free Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
852 Great Britain - Queen Victoria 60 Years of Rule Medal $3.00
854 Belgium - 1944 2 Franc NICE $1.00
855 Fredericksburg, Virginia Rappahannock Area Coin Club Wooden Nickel Token One free month $1.00
859 Monarch Automatic Co Northhampton Good For One Coupon in Trading Token $2.00
860 Netherlands - 1881 1 Cent $1.00
862 Mexico - 2000 20 Pesos UNC in original cello $10.00
863 Fredericksburg, Virginia Rappahannock Area Coin Club Wooden Nickel Token One free month $1.00
864 Tullahoma, Tennessee The Finish Line Free Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
865 Here's Johnny's 25 Cents off Purchase Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
866 $1 Good For Token Large $3.00
867 Canada - 1939 Coronation Medal $3.00
868 Boise, Idaho Miller's Sewing Center 25 Cent Needle Package Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
869 San Antonio, Texas Dan's 10861 FM "Round TUIT" Wooden Token $1.00
870 Belgium - 1836 2 Centimes $1.00
871 Vandalia, Ohio Skipper's $3 off purchase Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
872 Roseville, California Onyx Club One Free Beer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
873 Long Beach, California Fayette Cleaners Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
874 Beckett, Massachussetts 1965 Bicentennial Lee National Bank 5 Cent Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
875 Munhall, Pennsylvania 5 Cent Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
877 Washington, Indiana Sesquicentennial 1966 Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
878 1953 Queen Elizabeth Coronation Medal $3.00
881 Fredonia, New York Coyle's Pub One Free Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
882 Monterey, California Wharfside Restaurant Complimentary Calimari Appetizer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
883 Lyman, Wyoming Cecil Sanderson Military Token & Wooden Nickel Collector "Round TUIT" Token $1.00
884 Eastlake, Colorado Karl's Farm Dairy Inc 25 Cent Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
885 Elko, Nevada Ed's Coins & Currency "Cents of Humor" Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
887 Richmond Hot Stuff Deluxe Tattoo One Free Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
888 Australia - 2014 1 Dollar 100 Years of ANZAC $1.00
889 Sacramento, California The Tides 1 Free Beer Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
890 Lancaster, Pennsylvania The Comic Store Free Comic Wooden Nickel Token RARE $1.00
891 Bennington, Vermont Bicentennial 1961 5 Cent Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
892 Torrance, California Old Towne Mall One Free Play Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
893 Duenweg, Missouri State Bank One Quart Token NICE $3.00
894 Rotary International Token $1.00
896 Canada - 1930 House of Commons Medal $3.00
897 Greenfield, Iowa Al's Shoe Service 5 Cents Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
900 France - 1944 C 2 Francs $1.00
951 France - 1944 C 2 Francs $1.00
952 Poland - 2006 2 Zlotych $3.00
953 Poland - 2003 2 Zlotych $3.00
954 Aurora, Illinois Dairy Queen Free Small Sundae Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
955 Mullan, Idaho Silver Dollar Bar 1 Free Drink Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
956 Poland - 2004 2 Zlotych $3.00
957 New Horizons Computer Learning Center Turkey Token 10 Auction Dollars Wooden $1.00
962 Lake of the Woods 40th Anniversary Token $2.00
963 The Travancore Bank Trivandrum #103 Token $1.00
964 Perryville, Wisconsin Good For 1 Glass Tap Beer Wooden (plastic) Nickel Token $1.00
966 1925 Larkin Dollar Medal BU $8.00
968 Palmolive Soap Chicago, Illinois Good For One Cake Token NICE $5.00
969 Duenweg State Bank Duenweg, Missouri Strawberry Token Good For 1 Crate $6.00
970 Dallas, Texas City Hall Token $1.00
971 California State Numismatic Association 1973 53rd Anniversary Token $2.00
972 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (Mexico 20 Centavos) $3.00
973 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (Mexico 20 Centavos) $3.00
977 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (New Zealand 5 Cents) $3.00
979 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (New Zealand 5 Cents) $3.00
981 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (New Zealand 5 Cents) $3.00
983 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (New Zealand 5 Cents) $3.00
984 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (New Zealand 5 Cents) $3.00
987 Harry S Truman US Mint Bronze Medal in OGP $3.00
988 John Wayne US Mint Bronze Medal in OGP $5.00
989 Vietnam Veterans National Bronze Medal in OGP $3.00
992 2010 Korea Money Fair Token with original Flip $3.00
993 Matchless Metal Polish Co Liverpool 1906 Token $5.00
995 Marissa, Illinois 1967 Centennial Wooden Nickel Token $1.00
996 Central States Numismatic Society 2005 Token Original AirTite $2.00
997 Central States Numismatic Society 2005 Token Original AirTite $2.00
998 Central States Numismatic Society 2005 Token Original AirTite $2.00
999 Rustler Silver Gas Token $1.00
1000 Worldwide Bi-Metallic Collector's Club World Money Fair Encased Coin (Euro 5 Cent) $3.00

You never will get over the *energy of the casino.*
That’s what you think to yourself as you scan the floor. You look past the myriad rings and rows of slot machines, like so many pews and altars in the house of the one God you truly worship.
Your eyes glint as you see the tables. You know why you are here. You’re not one of these fat tourists playing penny slots hoping to hit it big so you can buy a lifetime supply of red lobster.
You’re a gambler. You’re here for motherfucking tendies.
You walk past the slots. Bazinga! says the Big Bang Theory slot machine to your left as some guy named “Craig” from Minetoga, Wisconsin wins $40.
Their flashing lights and cheerful alarms and mariachi music mean nothing to you.
You barely hear them at all.
You reach the tables. Baccarat, Five Card, Texas Hold ‘Em, Blackjack, Roulette
Your mouth salivates as you see the roulette wheel. You hear the spin of the wheel...the clattering of the ball as it flys around like the rollercoaster of euphoria you feel in your veins.
But you’re not here for Roulette.
Not today.
You approach a table with a strange dealer. He looks old. Very old.
“Care to play some options?” The Very Old Man asks
You take your seat at the table. “I agree to these terms and conditions.”
“Good! Let’s get started then. The buy in is $100.”
You place $100 on your side of the table.
The Very Old Man takes your $100 and places $500 on your side of the table.
The Very Old Man takes your $500 and places $75 on your side of the table.
The Very Old Man takes your $75 and places $750 on your side of the table
$750 to $5000
$5000 to $400
$400 to $ 5500
$5500 to $15000
$15000 to $2000
$2000 to $200000
$200000 to $.01
$.01 to $200
Stop. Please.
Your nose is bleeding. You feel like you have not slept in weeks and you can’t remember when it was the last time you ate. Come to think about it, you don’t remember ever entering the casino.
How did you get here? What the fuck?
The Very Old Man smiles at you.
“Would you like to close your position?”
Does he look younger? That doesn’t make any fucking sense how would that be possible. You must be tired.
”Yes” you gasp as you grab your $200 and stagger away from the table.
“Options” or whatever the fuck they’re called are clearly crazy. You know you’re never playing this game again, no way. The stress is too much.
You walk past the tables, thinking about how it’s ridiculous that the payout for blackjack is so low compared to that options bullshit. 2:1?
That’s what you got away with on your second worst position!
Thinking about it, you’re pretty pleased with how things worked out. Yes that was stressful and you could have made way more, but fuck you doubled your money!
As you work your way through the slots you rub the $200 in your pocket. Sure as fuck feels nicer than the $100 you had walking in.
BAZINGA! The machine on your right screams in a deafening roar of sound and color as some guy named Joe from Patchogue, New York wins $40.
You think to yourself. Man I would’ve made so much more if I had closed my positions at the top.
Hell, with $200 you could probably make even more playing than you did last time, and now you know to get out when you have a good profit!
You think to yourself. Fuck yes. Let’s fucking do this.
You see the door ahead of you. You’re not tired at all anymore, you are wired. You feel lightning in your veins and smell copper in the air. You turn around, you know you’re not going home.
You never will get over the energy of the casino.

According to this source. While this only accounts for the state of California, I thought Wall Street estimated around 2.25 million unemployed nationwide? I wonder what the real numbers are for the other states. Please post your state’s numbers and source if you can find them so we can add them up before the official nationwide numbers come out.
EDIT: I’ll start adding up the numbers by state if you can provide a source. Wow, so far, this is pretty sad :(
EDIT: All of these sources are saying these are claims from the past week or two. This quarantine is going to last for the foreseeable future so expect more claims throughout April...
TOTAL: ~ ???
AL ~ 17k source
AK ~ ??
AZ ~ 30k source
AR ~ 10k source
CA - 1 million
CO ~ 180k filing attempts in a single week
CT ~ 100k source
DE ~ ??
FL ~ 70k to 224k source source #2
GA ~ ??
HI ~ 40k source
IA ~ ??
ID ~ ??
IL ~ 64k just last week alone
IN ~ 54k source
KS ~ 28k just last week alone
KY ~ ??
LA ~ 70k source (just from last week!)
ME ~ 5k in just 3 days this week!
MD ~ ??
MA ~ 20k filed just on monday alone!
MI ~ 109k source (just last week alone)
MN ~ 150k source
MS ~ ??
MO ~ ??
MT ~ ??
NE ~ ??
NV ~ 206k just from casinos alone!
NH ~ 44k source
NJ ~ ??
NM ~ ??
NY ~ 1.7 million source (these are calls and are not confirmed)
NC ~ 166k source
ND ~ ??
OH ~ 139k source
OK ~ 18k source
OR ~ ??
PA ~ 540k source
RI ~ 62k source
SC ~ ??
SD ~ ??
TN ~ ??
TX ~ 281k source (I can update when I get a new source)
UT ~ ??
VT ~ ??
VA ~ 40k just last week!
WA ~ ??
WV ~ 28k source
WI ~ 101k source
WY ~ ??

It was a most unusual sight for Joe Biden’s campaign: a crowd. Across the street from the Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, in the town of Manitowoc, several hundred fans of the former Vice-President gathered in the afternoon sunshine late last month, carrying signs and wearing masks that allowed them to muster energetic, if muffled, chants. This was not a planned rally, more like a flash mob without the theatrics. Biden, insistent on modelling good medical etiquette during the pandemic, schedules no grand gatherings, leaving them to his rival, Donald Trump, who, before his coronavirus diagnosis, routinely spoke from a stage, with Air Force One positioned scenically behind him, as thousands cheered his boasts and invective.
A line of police officers kept the crowd away from the brick foundry, where Biden’s motorcade was parked. Closest to the building, about a hundred Trump supporters had gathered, many waving campaign banners. One homemade poster read “A Vote for Biden = Socialism.” Another said, “Build the Wall with Liberal Tears.” A chant for four more years merged into one for four more terms. Few on the Trump side wore a mask. All of the Biden supporters did, including Darlene Wellner, an eighty-year-old retired social worker. I asked Wellner what brought her out for Biden. She started with Trump’s dishonesty and turned to his environmental policies. “So much damage has been done. It’s just heartbreaking what is happening in this country,” she said. Wellner has taken it upon herself to write thirty postcards to people she considers fence-sitters. “If I can influence five of them, it wouldn’t be bad.”
Biden had arrived in Manitowoc, a town on Lake Michigan, largely thanks to Sachin Shivaram, the C.E.O. of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, who was so worried about Biden’s chances in the state that he contacted everyone he knew in hopes of persuading the campaign to deploy the candidate. “If you don’t have that on-the-ground presence of the candidate, it trickles down,” he told me. In his community of De Pere, he saw a surfeit of Trump signs, and almost none for his rival. At the factory, the union leadership supported Biden, but he noticed that some workers were wearing maga gear. He was thrilled to hear, about seventy-two hours ahead of time, that Biden would be seeking attention in Manitowoc, in a state where Hillary Clinton barely competed. He wasn’t alone. On the afternoon of the visit, the Manitowoc County Democratic Party storefront was bustling. “We’re in Trump country,” Karen Steingraber, a volunteer, said, as she assembled Biden-Harris signs, “but we do what we can.”
Inside the foundry, Biden delivered a series of sharp-edged attacks to a few dozen carefully distanced onlookers and reporters. The speech was good stuff for the faithful—evidence that Biden, at seventy-seven, could deliver a biting anti-Trump narrative, along with his customary empathy toward the families of the covid-19 dead and those who are struggling financially. Addressing the working-class voters in Wisconsin who favored Trump last time, he pledged, “You will be seen, heard, and respected by me.” Speaking, as he often does, from behind a surgical mask, he said, “Frankly, I’ve dealt with guys like Trump my whole life. Guys from the neighborhood I come from who would look down on us because we didn’t have a lot of money or your parents didn’t go to college. Guys who think they’re better than you. Guys who inherit everything they’ve ever gotten in their life and squander it. Guys who stretch and squeeze and stiff electricians and plumbers and contractors working on their hotels and casinos and golf courses just to put a few more bucks in their pocket. Guys who do everything they can to avoid paying the taxes they owe because they figure the rest of us, the little people, we can pick up the tab for the country.”
On paper, Wisconsin looks eminently winnable this year for Biden and the Democrats. The respected Marquette Law School poll, released on Wednesday, showed Biden ahead by five points, with a Libertarian candidate, Jo Jorgensen, receiving four per cent, and Trump favored by just forty-one per cent of likely voters. If it weren’t for the shock of 2016, when polls showed Clinton comfortably ahead in October, Biden supporters’ worry meter would be much lower. “Every Democrat is on edge,” Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Wisconsin Democratic Party, told me as we sat on his back porch, in Madison. “To me, it means that every Democrat will work their heart out.” Trump was the first Republican Presidential candidate to win the state since 1984, but his winning margin was less than one per cent of the roughly three million votes cast, suggesting that even minor adjustments in the Clinton campaign’s message or tactics could have changed the outcome. Clinton received 238,449 fewer votes than Barack Obama had four years earlier, including forty thousand fewer in Milwaukee alone. Yet she lost the state by only 22,748 votes.
Clinton and her team assumed that they would win Wisconsin with a minimal investment, even after she was pummelled in the Democratic primary, losing to Bernie Sanders by thirteen points. Only in the last two weeks of the campaign did Clinton advertise on television in Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Madison. This year, Biden has dominated television advertising for months. In one measure of the intensified effort, a list of campaign events, Biden interviews, surrogate appearances, and radio and television advertisements stretches to two single-spaced pages. And the ground game is broad. By the campaign’s count, three thousand people have done phone-banking sessions in Milwaukee, where there are forty teams of volunteers and dozens of paid staffers. (The campaign declined to say exactly how many.) “We definitely learned our lesson,” Marcelia Nicholson, the chairwoman of the Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors, told me.
Despite polling averages that have shown Trump lagging Biden for months, the Republicans, too, are boasting of their efforts on the ground and including rallies in the schedule. Before his coronavirus diagnosis, Trump had planned to hold events in La Crosse and Green Bay; Vice-President Mike Pence has visited the state five times since July, including a recent trip to Eau Claire, where he was joined by Ivanka Trump. The campaign is trying to fortify rural counties that voted for Obama twice before flipping to Trump in 2016; it also took the rare step of opening an office in Milwaukee, aiming to reduce Biden’s large margins among Black and Latino voters. Team Trump has held training sessions with more than six thousand people, according to the campaign. Samantha Zager, the deputy national press secretary, noted, “We’re the only campaign in the state currently asking Wisconsinites for their votes in person.” She described Biden’s bid for Wisconsin as “too little, too late.”
I asked Wikler how Democrats intend to avoid a nail-biter this time. “Organizing,” he said. “In 2016, you’d go into an office and no one would be there. Someone behind a table would tell you to pick up a clipboard and bring it back when you’re done.” The next year, Martha Laning, Wikler’s predecessor, began building a statewide organizing effort that would operate year-round rather than emerge near the end of a campaign cycle. “You hire organizers to recruit local leaders to build neighborhood teams. They’re volunteer team leaders, they recruit volunteers. Those teams are responsible for organizing their neighborhoods,” Wikler said, likening them to old-school ward captains. In 2018, Democrats swept the elections for statewide offices for the first time since 1982.The current ground game is a joint operation of the Biden campaign and the Wisconsin Democrats. In addition, staff and volunteers from a raft of independent organizations are working to get out the vote. In Milwaukee, significant efforts are under way by Black Leaders Organizing for Communities (bloc) and Voces de la Frontera Action, which focusses on the city’s hundred thousand Latino residents, as well as other Latinos around the state. Since Kamala Harris, a Howard University graduate and member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority, joined the ticket, organizers have been drawing strength from members of the Divine Nine historically Black fraternities and sororities. In Fitchburg, the state’s first elected Black mayor, Frances Huntley-Cooper, an Alpha Kappa Alpha, called it “an automatic network. I have so many sisters who are on the phone every day.” Many others, she said, are helping people navigate the requirements for voting by mail, and volunteering as poll workers.
Then there is money. In one sign of the Democrats’ success, last month’s live reading of the script of “The Princess Bride,” by most of the original cast, attracted an astonishing hundred and ten thousand viewers and raised $4.25 million. The cast members of “Parks and Recreation,” “The West Wing,” and “Veep” appeared on other nights. Citing the organizing oomph, the Democrats I spoke to in several Wisconsin cities expressed confidence in Biden’s chances, if the election is fair and square. Their worry is that Republicans will find ways to suppress Democratic turnout. For months, Trump has been groundlessly attacking mail-in voting, recently tweeting falsely, for example, “The Ballots being returned to States cannot be accurately counted. Many things are already going wrong.” With court battles over voting rules already under way in Wisconsin, I asked Mandela Barnes, the state’s Democratic lieutenant governor, what he foresees. He said, “Republicans are going to use any tactic they can try to keep people from voting, because they know that lower turnout is typically beneficial to them.”
More than a million voters have already requested an absentee ballot, and more than six hundred thousand have voted. Anticipating a torrent, election officials are getting creative. Some have positioned drop boxes outside public buildings, such as libraries, in Milwaukee. In Madison, a Democratic stronghold, hired clerks sit outside the City-County Building during office hours to collect ballots, first checking that they have been signed and witnessed. The city organized two events called Democracy in the Park, where poll workers stationed themselves in two hundred and six parks to register voters and receive ballots. On the first day, roughly ten thousand people delivered ballots. An attorney for two of the state’s most senior Republican legislators unsuccessfully tried to stop the exercise, arguing that it was “an illegal collection of ballots.” Republicans are also in federal court trying to limit the number of days that ballots, postmarked by Election Day, November 3rd, will be received and counted. Yet even as Trump rails against the dangers of absentee voting, the Wisconsin Republican Party is saying precisely the opposite, in literature designed to be hung on a voter’s door handle. “Absentee and Early in-person voting are safe and secure ways to guarantee your voice is heard,” the flyer says, featuring a stylized black-and-white photo of Trump, with only his trademark red tie in color, pointing at the camera. “president trump wants YOU to make a PLAN to vote TODAY!” I picked up the door-hanger at an office of the Racine County Republican Party, in Burlington. Among other handouts was a card showing a Photoshopped highway sign that read, “Caution: Democrat Voter Fraud Ahead.” Behind the counter, a volunteer, who asked not to be identified for fear of being targeted by Trump opponents, said he was afraid that Democrats would try to steal the election. “I know if Democrats lose,” he said matter-of-factly, “they will try to burn the country down.”
Trump, whose campaign is lagging financially, is distributing flyers that misrepresent Biden’s record and positions. One, with the Trump campaign’s signature, is printed handsomely in red, white, blue, and gray. It wrongly states that Biden is calling for defunding the police, that he intends to “raise taxes on the middle class,” and supports climate policy that would cost ninety-three trillion dollars. I spotted it when I visited the middle-class Milwaukee suburb of Brown Deer, where Emily Siegrist, a Democratic nurse practitioner and former soldier in the Wisconsin National Guard, is running ahead of Dan Knodl, a Republican state legislator, who defeated her in 2018. This time, she is well-funded and working hard. When I caught up with her, she was wearing cut-off jean shorts and a gray sweatshirt that said, “Girls Unite.” I asked about the Democrats’ decision not to knock on doors or hold rallies, in contrast to the Trump campaign and many down-ballot Republicans. She said it makes campaigning harder, and creates a wild card in predicting the outcome. Although her volunteers have made fifteen thousand phone calls, by her estimate, she sometimes can’t resist campaigning the old-fashioned way. “I’ll ring the doorbell and jump back. I’ll talk to them from a distance, ‘My name’s Emily. I just want to introduce myself.’ ”
Back in Manitowoc, Shivaram revelled in the positive vibes from the crowd that gathered to cheer Biden. “I had no idea that this many people supported Biden in Manitowoc,” he said. Although Biden held no rally and shook no hands, the visit accomplished its pandemic-era goals by earning plenty of local television, radio, and print coverage from the foundry speech and interviews with reporters in the larger Green Bay market. “The media coverage made the visit look big. That really energized people,” Shivaram said. So, I asked him, was he feeling better about Biden’s chances? “From my little corner, it doesn’t feel good at all,” he replied. “I’m scared he is going to lose.”

Streaming at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S82_3b9JITQ and http://ohiochannel.org/governor-live-stream.html
I recommend using the youtube link.
I will be keeping this post updated with a summary as it continues. Things I find most important will be bold. Keep in mind it will often be paraphrased. The stream itself is the best source.
Previous streams can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCporaXCeaOJgZKz7y3C0zbg
Thank you for all the awards and other offers but please save your money for the future economic uncertainty which is likely going to occur.
Ohio: 24,800 confirmed cases (with 1,557 extra probable cases), 1,388/24,800 confirmed deaths (with 146 extra probable deaths), 4,718 hospitalizations, 1,268/4,718 in the ICU
United States: 1,397,700 confirmed cases and 84,109 deaths.
Here is a link to a google drive that shows the history of cases and deaths created by kcmasterpiece347: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CNGX6aLGsyIWZctChwsQ-UdRQ8JEzhuS9I_1oVnkb4s/edit?usp=sharing
0110010001100010 has put together information on the latest and most accurate numbers here: http://covid19.danoniot.com/
Here are some graphs showing the latest information created by st1tchy:
4/7: https://imgur.com/BX95vIU
4/8: https://imgur.com/OdP8nFu
4/9: https://imgur.com/bXtPvZI
4/12: https://imgur.com/Zu2G5Dp
4/13: https://imgur.com/VqYuLzP
4/14: https://imgur.com/KD43gKy
4/15: https://imgur.com/JHwcrsJ
4/16: https://imgur.com/dNCPrZr
4/17: https://imgur.com/rzkZwuJ
4/18: https://imgur.com/4FFkKHn
4/19: https://imgur.com/bMEGH0e
4/20: https://imgur.com/a/vvOfaD6
4/21: https://imgur.com/QJXKMfx
4/22: https://imgur.com/dBSow4z
4/23: https://imgur.com/Ea7GULT
4/24: https://imgur.com/MQTZWku
4/27: https://imgur.com/UeHhlve
4/28: https://imgur.com/IPt12zi
4/29: https://imgur.com/zdVKLQA
4/30: https://imgur.com/dCeij16
5/01: https://imgur.com/bIPUbzw
5/04: https://imgur.com/G28UoY3
5/06: https://imgur.com/VitMOFA
2:03 PM: The Governor begins speaking
Today I'm wearing a tie from Case Western Reserve University
This week is Police Week. I want to thank everyone in law enforcement. Unfortunately, many events honoring our fallen police officers have had to be canceled due to COVID-19. I would like to take a moment to mention those who have died serving Ohio in 2020. Let's have a moment of silence in remembrance of their sacrifice and the sacrifices of those currently serving Ohio.
A close friend of mine, Dwight Radcliff died on May 6th. Fran and I attended his funeral. He was the longest serving sheriff at the time of his retirement in 2013.
Former state representative Andy Thompson also unexpectedly yesterday. He served the state well.
On Tuesday, I talked about childcare and explained the concerns we had. We've been discussing this for weeks, trying to figure out what the best practices for reopening would be. There really is not enough data about children and COVID-19. We want to get more data and find a way to reopen safely, in a way that protects children and childcare employees. if we do this wrong we will run the risk of exposing more Ohioans to COVID-19. Childcare providers will be allowed to reopen on May 31st. This will look different from before and I am going to have Joni Close, President of the Sisters of Charity Foundation speak about the changes we plan to make.
2:12 PM: The Governor stops speaking
2:12 PM: Joni Close begins speaking
Maximum of 9 per classroom for most children, with toddlers having a maximum of 6 per classroom. Hygienic standards will be increased dramatically. These will be only some of the changes and there will be more. Some of these might make you somewhat uncomfortable due to it being different but we believe it will be the best for you and your children.
2:16 PM: Joni Close stops speaking
2:16 PM: The Governor begins speaking
There's really no playbook out there for doing this. We need to be cautious to keep everyone safe during this pandemic. We will be constantly monitoring the current situation and we may make changes as necessary based on what we see.
We're going to perform a study into the childcare situation as it reopens. This will make Ohio a leader in the country, as we will be capable of learning more about how the virus spreads. Unfortunately, there is a lot of what we don't know and that will affect how we proceed. Childcare providers will need help due to our changes. We are going to give 60 million dollars to Ohio childcare providers, both public and private, in order to ensure they are properly funded. We will have additional information available online shortly.
2:19 PM: The Governor stops speaking
2:19 PM: The Lieutenant Governor starts speaking
May is a new chapter in our response to COVID-19. We're trying to keep a balance between health of Ohioans and the health of our economy. Some more businesses may be reopening but keep in mind that it will be up to the local health departments to control what reopens and what does not.
Day Camps will reopen on May 31st. The protocols governing day camps will be released tomorrow online.
BMVs will reopen on May 26th. We want you to use the online services, as we've put a lot of effort into moving many services there. There will be some cases where you have to go into the BMV but only go as absolutely necessary. There is still an extension on renewals, so you do not have to do this immediately.
Campgrounds will also open completely, on May 21st. They will have to meet certain requirements that are currently available online.
Gyms and fitness center may reopen on May 26th. The new protocols for them will be available later today. Non contact and limited sports will also reopen on May 26th. Other, more contact-oriented sports will be investigated for reopening as well.
Pools will also be able reopen on May 26th. The CDC has found no evidence of the spread of COVID-19 in water. Water parks and amusement parks will not be reopening based on our guidance.
Horse racing can reopen on May 22nd but spectators will be prohibited. This does not mean that Casinos or Racinos can reopen.
2:30 PM: The Lieutenant Governor stops speaking
2:30 PM: Amy Acton starts speaking
231,795 tested in total. Of those infected, 4,121 were health care workers.
We're digging deep into the policies related to childcare and how it will affect the spread of COVID-19. I want to thank our entire childcare team. We're going to be working with a national study, that will have a large focus on Ohio, in order to find out the best practices for reopening childcare. We're working to become a nationwide leader in the study of childcare during this pandemic.
2:36 PM: Amy Acton stops speaking
2:36 PM: Question Period Begins
Regarding childcare and with the possibility of further illness and death in children with COVID-19, is it possible we are gambling the lives of our children by reopening and doing this study?
Amy Acton: I don't think we're gambling by doing this. Everyone is important and deserves protection. We are going to do this based on expert advice on best practices. We need to give parents a chance to go back to work and prosper. We know of the cases of children getting far sicker and we're paying close attention to this. COVID-19 has an exaggerated response on our immune system no matter the age, but we want to make sure to learn and understand how it affects children, as well, as time goes on.
2:39 PM: There are concerns that children are not receiving the education they would have otherwise. Will schools be capable of reopening in the fall and what can you do to ensure they are receiving the education they need if they do not?
Governor: I think this is a major concern. Many teachers are making strides in distance learning but some kids don't have internet or have other issues. The fact that we know so little about COVID-19 makes us feel that schools cannot reopen any time soon but every school is currently looking into ways they can reopen. We still don't know how things will be by the fall but we will do everything we can.
2:42 PM: It sounds like many childcare centers will have to turn families away. How do you plan on advising them on that subject?
Governor: I think it's going to be difficult for any of us to predict how the market will change with these new rules. We are giving money to childcare providers in order to ensure they are capable of reopening. This is a work in progress, which means that we're still learning and finding out new ways to lessen the spread of COVID-19, while reopening childcare.
Childcare providers may have to hire more employees in order to serve the families they had in the past. Unfortunately, some may not be capable of reopening due to financial troubles. We did all of these things in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and we will keep making these decisions with that in mind.
2:46 PM: It seems that cases, deaths, and other metrics have plateaued rather than gone down. What has changed in how you perceive success as time has gone on?
Governor: We've seen a plateau over three weeks in terms of all of our metrics. We were most worried about a large surge. We're still ramping up our testing. We're doing 8,000 tests every day sat this point. We need to keep our testing capacity increasing while also ensuring our supply chain can keep getting those tests out to those who need them. Testing and contact tracing is how we're going to keep this virus from spreading. There are many other indicators, such as traffic rates throughout the state, that we are looking at in order to make future decisions regarding mitigations.
2:48 PM: Reddit is freaking out and it’s causing some problems with my updates. Fixed as of 2:50 PM.
Amy Acton: No one on our team is ignoring the concern and worry that Ohioans are feeling right now. As we go on, you need to keep in mind how at risk you are and use that knowledge to make your decisions and keep yourself safe.
2:51 PM: Using what we've learned about antibody testing, how do we know that we didn't have a surge earlier?
Amy Acton: This is a process that will take years. We won't understand COVID-19 for quite some time. Many have been claiming that they had many symptoms of COVID-19 early on in the knowledge of the disease. Obviously, as time goes on, hindsight will be 20-20. We'll keep looking into new information as it comes out.
2:54 PM: The most prevalent question I've received is regarding the unemployment system not serving Ohioans properly. I know you've made improvements but many feel it is not enough. What more can you do for them?
Lieutenant Governor: This is the thing I've been most frustrated for Ohioans about personally. Director Kim Hall has been working to do everything her team can do to improve the system and has already created the new system for 1099 employees. I know that around 100,000 people have not been served yet and many others have not been able to get through to receive more information on their claims. We're all doing everything we can to expand the system as possible. Our system is very old and difficult to update but many other states are facing these same issues. Unfortunately, we have received many fraudulent claims and those need to be policed and denied. This is part of what leads to such delays.
2:59 PM: What targets will state agencies be hitting in terms of reductions in the coming fiscal year?
Governor: We'll be discussing that with the legislature. We've already made very tough cuts but we don't have any new information available at this time. One thing I can say is that this is a very difficult time. Costs are going up and our revenues are decreasing dramatically.
3:01 PM: Do you have an idea of how many families might be left out of day cares? Will licensing become more flexible? What about using school facilities?
Governor: It's not our goal to have any families left out of the system. We're doing surveys on how many providers will be coming back. We'll adjust as necessary. We can't make any definitive statements at this time.
Lieutenant Governor: Please remember that we're working on supporting the childcare industry to ensure that all of this can work.
3:03 PM: Are you going to remove Dr. Acton's order that closed school facilities until June in order to allow youth sports to reopen?
Governor: We were actually just discussing that earlier. It's a very good point. We're still looking into that.
Lieutenant Governor: Grounds are not technically closed by the order, only buildings. We will not be forcing any local community to reopen. I am sure that as we go on, there will be things that slipped through the cracks and we want to ensure that the lines of communication are open as much as possible.
3:06 PM: Are you concerned about a pending legal battle over your orders? As you know, Wisconsin's stay at home order was struck down by their Supreme court.
Governor: I have already been sued a lot. We want to ensure that our orders conform more to what we are seeing day to day. We are seeing stories from Europe about second waves and we really don't want to have to see that in Ohio. We need to be very careful as everything opens up. Staying safe in this crucial time will decide our future numbers and whether we have to close again.
3:08 PM: There is a feeling that your Minority Health Task Force hasn't made any new statements or released more information. What is going on with this?
Governor: I will be talking about that either Monday or Tuesday. This virus has pulled back the curtain on poverty and racial issues, especially in regards to health care access. We've worked with the legislature to look into issues of infant and maternal mortality and we saw these issues already. We're now going to have to figure out new ways to help African American communities in Ohio. That will come next week.
3:11 PM: Why are we not hearing more about treatment? Also will we not be returning to normal life until a vaccine comes out? Is Hydroxychloroquine being given out to patients?
Amy Acton: I talked a lot about treatment early on but I can talk about it more in the future. We've received shipments of new drugs for use against COVID-19. There is still developing information on drugs like Hydroxychloroquine, in terms of its affect on COVID-19. For now we'll have to treat the symptoms up until we can find a cure, if we can find a cure. The thing that worries me the most is the low oxygen levels found in those with COVID-19, who are walking around, not even realizing it.
3:16 PM: How can you prove to those who are trusting in your orders that reopening as we are is safe?
Amy Acton: When we first made our orders, we were using information from George Bush's administration, that we believed would best protect Ohioans. We do know that this has had effects on the economy and even people's mental and physical health. This is going to be a collaborative process but it needs to go on with caution. The biggest thing that will slow and stop the spread of disease will be how everyone lives. Be judicious with your choices and decisions as time goes on.
3:19 PM: How do you plan on bringing forward gun reforms in Ohio that you promised, despite the pandemic?
Governor: That's a continuing discussion with the legislature.
3:21 PM: There's been information in certain nursing home facilities regarding the zone and region system you've mentioned that showed that some of them have no information regarding that system. What do you think about that?
Governor: This is not something that should be happening. I believe you that this is happening but it's something that I do not want to have happening. I don't know what facility you're talking about but I think we're going to keep moving forward on that.
Amy Acton: I'll look into this and speak to our leaders in that area regarding improving this.
3:24 PM: Are we getting close to returning to normal regarding surgeries?
Governor: It's been in the past week or so that we've released new orders regarding that. We need to keep monitoring our hospital capacity as time goes on in order to decide if we can return to normal
3:25 PM: Question Period Ends
3:25 PM: The Governor begins speaking
Thank you to all of our childcare workers and everyone else returning to work.
We'll be playing a rendition of Amazing Grace by the Combined Pinkerton North and Pinkerton Central Marching Bands.
No more updates until Monday unless it's absolutely necessary.
3:27 PM: The Stream Ended.