…so…I guess we’re all hoping yesterday was an aberration & this will be…well, maybe short & sweet is too much to hope for
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/18/trumps-most-blatant-politically-motivated-firings
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/18/trump-chris-krebs-firing-joe-biden-victory-recounts
Obama’s advice to Trump? ‘It’s time for you’ to concede to Biden.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/16/obama-60-minutes-election-trump
…although in some contexts running long does have some advantages
…but at least a little less of an endless oh-god-when-will-it-be-over sort of an affair
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/18/nra-fine-insurance-business-new-york-settlement
…because we probably don’t need another of those the way things are going
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/u-s-surpasses-250-000-coronavirus-deaths-virus-mortality-rate
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/18/us-passes-250000-deaths-from-coronavirus
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/covid-19-cases-are-rise-all-50-states-nbc-news-n1248006
https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2020/11/18/white-house-congress-shutdown-december
…which isn’t the only bit of wildly incoherent shit it would be nice to call time on
https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/lindsey-graham-voting-inquiry/2020/11/17/story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/11/17/democrats-lindsey-graham-georgia-call
…but then, some of these assholes do seem to specialize in touting shit that doesn’t add up
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/giuliani-pennsylvania-court-appearance/2020/11/18/story.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/17/tucker-carlson-expand-reporting-analysis-fox-news
…& none more so that the flailing fuckwit from whom they take their lead
…a man who recently referred to himself as “the golden goose” despite a more accurate analogy very possibly being that he’s the fatted calf to fox news’ prodigal son while the GOP is the father overjoyed to welcome their estranged progeny back into the fold
“Afghanistan risks becoming once again a platform for international terrorists to plan and organize attacks on our homelands,” he said. “And ISIS could rebuild in Afghanistan the terror caliphate it lost in Syria and Iraq,” Stoltenberg added, referring to the Islamic State militant group.
The warning, though couched in diplomatic language, marked the sharpest tone that Stoltenberg has taken toward President Trump. The United States is by far the most powerful member of NATO, and Trump has repeatedly clashed with the other partners and privately threatened to quit the military alliance altogether.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2020/11/17/jens-stoltenberg-afghanistan-trump
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/11/17/trumps-day-twitter-living-an-immaterial-world
New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), during an appearance Monday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” observed, “I think frankly we spend too much time trying to delve into the bizarre world of Trump.” He was commenting on President Trump’s remarks about distribution of a covid-19 vaccine, but it is sound advice on just about any topic — Trump’s lawsuits, the transition, the economy and the stimulus plan.
The babbling from Trump, his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and other allies is disconnected from reality (try listening to the whackadoodle assertions about voter fraud). The tweets and the comments are not intended to be taken seriously or literally; they are the noise projected through the right-wing media machine to incite anger, bamboozle his base and undermine democratic governance.
So let’s stop focusing on what Trump and his surrogates say or how they rationalize their grossly irresponsible conduct, but instead focus on the consequences and how we move forward.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/17/expand-islands-normalcy-shrink-trump
…not that ditching the lamest duck that ever failed to give a fuck
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/18/what-will-history-say-about-trump
…is going to be enough to put a lot of people back where they ought to be
…either mentally
Doering said she has covid-19 patients who need 100-percent-oxygen breathing assistance and who will also swear they don’t have the illness that has ended the lives of nearly a quarter-million people in the United States since February.
“I think the hardest thing to watch is that people are still looking for something else and a magic answer and they do not want to believe covid is real,” Doering told CNN in an interview Monday.
“Their last dying words are, ‘This can’t be happening. It’s not real,’” Doering said, adding that some patients prefer to believe that they have pneumonia or other diseases rather than covid-19, despite seeing their positive test results.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/11/16/south-dakota-nurse-coronavirus-deniers
…strategically
…or physically
‘It is terrifying to face the reality that people with a full-time job have to have a home inside a tent’
https://www.washingtonpost.com/photography/2020/11/16/homeless-seattle
…& when it comes to the numbers
…it doesn’t exactly look all that pretty
…so you might be better off skipping back to last night’s DUAN to add a bit of beauty to your morning…because a lot of shit looks like it’s shaping up to get ugly all over
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/16/biden-economy-speech-analysis
…& that’s assuming that further lurches into incoherent foreign policy don’t make it harder before he gets a chance
…& at some point the degree to which the ladies can pick up the slack is going to come up as short as I imagine their patience with the apparently blithe assumption that they’ll somehow manage has to be getting
…a point the NYT seemed to think was worth repeating
First, the parts of the economy that were smacked hardest and earliest by job losses were ones where women dominate — restaurants, retail businesses and health care.
Then a second wave began taking out local and state government jobs, another area where women outnumber men.
The third blow has, for many, been the knockout: the closing of child care centers and the shift to remote schooling. That has saddled working mothers, much more than fathers, with overwhelming household responsibilities.
…not that they’re the only ones
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2020/11/17/higher-ed-job-loss
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/pandemic-has-made-racial-retirement-gap-worse
…& apparently a bunch of the time we can’t even make it so the food that’s good for you isn’t maybe bad for you, too
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/pesticides-our-food/2020/11/13/story.html
…which is maybe not new but still manages to surprise me on account of being spectacularly fucked up when I think about it…& to tell the truth…when I think about it, this kind of thing doesn’t really make me feel all that much better?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2020/11/16/bezos-climate-grants
…I mean…yeah, sure – it’s not a bad thing that some people trying to do needful things get some funding…but the fact that there’s a guy who can put $10 billion in a fund (much the way some people write off a donation to a charity against their tax bill) & still be the richest man in the world…to the tune of something like another $190 billion…does kinda makes it still come off to me like a token effort…& I don’t feel like I live in a world where $10billion has any business being barely a drop in the bucket…but maybe it’s just me…I don’t get enough sleep to be okay losing any more so I get touchy about some weird stuff sometimes
…then again
…it feels like things aren’t exactly balancing out, here
That’s pretty dark. But these are also pretty dark times, right? Even with all the celebrating that’s going on. There are nearly a quarter of a million Americans who weren’t here for it, and the rise of coronavirus infections in the United States shows no signs of stopping. This summer the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor brought the Black Lives Matter movement to the fore, once again. Hundreds of children are still separated from their parents. President Barack Obama’s legislative legacy is actively being dismantled by President Trump. It’s easier to destroy than to build. This is the America that Coates contemplates.
“Would I give up my reasons for why I can’t celebrate so that I could be out there dancing with everybody? No, no. There’s beauty in seeing certain things, even if those things make you sometimes sad, or despairing or they hurt you. But I would rather know than not,” said Coates.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2020/11/16/ta-nehisi-coates-between-the-world-and-me
…while entirely too much seems like it hangs in the balance
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/11/18/time-call-out-gops-new-jim-crow-tactics
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/michigan-vote-canvassing-board/2020/11/17/story.html
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/18/dead-voter-conspiracy-theory-debunked
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/11/17/upshot/georgia-precinct-shift-suburbs.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/11/18/rural-city-trump-voters
…& the way some people seem to have hung in there & kept up their own personal highwire balancing acts
…well, that isn’t exactly making me feel a whole hell of a lot better about how those Senate run-off races are going to play out in the new year?
…which brings us back to the eternal question of how exactly the left seems determined to eat itself…or more precisely consistently spend a lot of time, effort & rhetoric verbally chewing off at least one of the legs it’s trying to stand on
It’s the job of the activist left to push political limits, staking out positions that sound radical today but could, with enough work, seem like common sense in the future. But in the short term, an assertive left that garners national attention can threaten the political survival of Democrats who answer to a more conservative electorate.
https://nyti.ms/2K6RSym
[…]
Left-wing populists often believe that there’s a silent majority who agree with them, if only they can be organized to go to the polls. If that were true, though, an election with record high turnout should have been much better for progressives. Instead, 2020 was a reminder of something most older liberals long ago had to come to terms with: The voters who live in the places that determine political control in this country tend to be more conservative than we are.
[…]
Moderates need radicals to expand their scope for action. Radicals need moderates to wield power in a giant heterogenous country with sclerotic institutions and deep wells of reaction. Neither camp could have defeated Donald Trump on its own. It’s frustrating now, as it was heartbreaking in 2004, that revanchist Republicans retain such a hold on America. But that’s all the more reason for Democrats to stop their counterproductive sniping and work together to beat them.
…although I feel like it should be noted that there ought to be quote marks around “the far left” simply because there’s frequently little in common between what most of the world would call the far left & the sort of stuff that lot like to throw that particular umbrella over
…& then of course there’s the stuff I mentioned a little in the comments yesterday about the case for & against making a case against the walking-talking-criminal-enterprise that has been, is (& by all indications will continue to be) the tinpot toddler & would be tyrant memorably referred to by jon stewart as fuckface von clownstick
https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/why-biden-should-pardon-trump-we-democrats-should-want-him-to
the next administration or one of the states can and should investigate citizen Donald Trump—a former president whose legal status will be no different from that of any other American. The risk of politicization of such an investigation is far outweighed by the danger posed by failing to uphold our nation’s values. To protect future presidents from retributive investigations once they leave office, however, any investigation should be limited to Trump’s conduct before and after his presidency, not his behavior while he was president. If the findings of such an investigation justify it, prosecutors should indict the former president for violations of criminal law.
I come to this view reluctantly. The risks in the approach are both real and substantial. But after having served as a prosecutor in the Department of Justice, as a senior counsel in the Whitewater investigation of Clinton, and as a Bush appointee at the Department of Homeland Security, I’ve come to recognize that challenging, balanced judgments of the sort necessary today are sometimes forced on us by circumstances beyond our control. Hard choices do, sometimes, make bad law, but they cannot always be avoided. To decline to investigate Trump’s alleged criminality after he has left office is itself a choice—and it’s the wrong one.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/10/case-criminally-investigating-ex-president/616804/
…that’s from forever ago, though…by which I mean the last week of october…this one, on the other hand, was from just the other day
It would be wrong to think about Trump’s behavior as existing on the same spectrum as that of his post-Watergate predecessors. To see why, you have to first look back on the entire Trump presidency in a different way — one that sees his possibly criminal conduct not as a byproduct of the pursuit of a political agenda but as a central, self-perpetuating feature of his tenure. In this light, Trump’s potential criminality becomes a kind of throughline, the dots that connect his life as a businessman to his entry into politics and then onward across his four years as president. One potentially illegal act led Trump to the next: from his law-bending moves as a businessman, to his questionable campaign-finance practices, to his willingness to interfere with investigations into his conduct, to his acts of public corruption and, finally, to the seemingly illegal abuse of the powers of his office in order to remain in office.
The stakes of prosecuting Donald Trump may be high; but so are the costs of not prosecuting him, which would send a dangerous message, one that transcends even the presidency, about the country’s commitment to the rule of law. Trump has presented Biden — and America, really — with a very difficult dilemma. “This whole presidency has been about someone who thought he was above the law,” Anne Milgram, the former attorney general of New Jersey, told me. “If he isn’t held accountable for possible crimes, then he literally was above the law.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/17/magazine/trump-investigations-criminal-prosecutions.html
…somewhat of a longer read those last two…but worth a look if you can spare the time…meanwhile…might be a good time for a little electric relaxation?
Where do you find the energy?
I’d be interested in hearing from folks who have school-age children who are doing remote learning. I don’t know much first first-hand; my friends and family who have kids are all at least college-age (the kids) so while a lot of them (the collegians) are back home doing it remotely, while paying full tuition and RESIDENCE FEES FOR DORMS THEY DON’T LIVE IN, about which they grumble to no end, the kids are self-sufficient. It’s one thing for society to turn like it has, unexpectedly, and create an army of stay-of at-home parents, but it’s quite another for an entire generational cohort to experience home schooling. June Cleaver was the quintessential 50s stay-at-home Mom but even she didn’t home school Wally and the Beav, off to the local public schools they went.
It’ll be interesting to see the ramifications 10 or 20 years down the road. Again, it’s one thing for us to lose a year of our lives, we don’t have kids and in fact my husband has never been busier work-wise, but what must it be like for someone who was in third grade last spring, school shut down, and now they’re in fourth grade. My siblings are unanimous in this opinion: guiding/putting up with a child going through puberty is ghastly, mostly, and the thought of also being responsible for their education…
My kids are 5 and 8 and speaking for parents, this is a fucking nightmare. It hasn’t been that bad for us personally. I am lucky to have been financially able to turn down work to stay home and supervise them, and they are each other’s best friends so they miss their friends less than a lot of other kids. But even so remote learning makes me hate my life and my friends with kids and jobs are really, really struggling. I mean, society has basically said that there’s no reason working mothers (because let’s be real, it’s predominantly mothers dealing with this) can’t do their jobs while also essentially becoming teachers to their kids. It is total bullshit that young kids can do remote school without heavy involvement from their parents. For every family I’ve talked to, this devolves into crying and screaming on a regular basis. This doesn’t even address the kids with special needs who aren’t getting the help they need which is a whole other level of nightmare.
In their great good wisdom the crack team of DeBlasio and Cuomo decided yesterday to keep indoor fucking dining open while closing schools. I’m on a text chain with a group of other parents and every single one said their kids were crying when they heard the news. Some of the parents cried too. Our school had been testing weekly and had had only one positive case.
And these are fortunate families– their lives are stable in other ways, they haven’t lost their jobs, they haven’t lost people to covid, the parents are able to help the kids with schoolwork, etc. I can’t imagine how devastating this must be for kids whose families don’t have all those advantages.
I am fortunate that my kids are well unto their teens and are capable of dealing with all of the tech issues themselves, and they’re used to the basic structure of read this/write that/do these formulas.
I can’t imagine how bad it would be for younger kids.
What this stresses for me is how much the educational software industry has been a scam. For decades going back to the days of CD ROMS there have been ridiculous promises of how this stuff was going to take over for teachers — Bill Gates clearly bought into it when he started dropping tens of millions on his public school teacher union busting lobbying projects.
Literally hundreds of billions of dollars have been spent on educational software, and while bits and pieces are nice, anyone who pretends there is serious science behind it is joking.
My eldest graduated from high school in the middle of this shit. She did okay but when her college turned to remote only, she kind of lost it. She decided to just do community college to get core classes and hope next year will be in person. My other is a senior this year! She is also super sad to be missing all the senior events but is so focused on the future she is just rocking her classes. She is liking rolling out of bed 2 minutes before class. All the parents I know with young kids are struggling and it will mess up kids for years!
It must be so hard for high school/college-aged kids. At least with little kids their world revolves to a large degree around home and their parents. It’s hard for the parents but my kids are doing ok playing at home together. I can’t imagine how this must feel for older kids, whose lives revolve around their friends and who are missing milestones that our society tells them are a huge deal.
It sounds like your daughter is smart to do community college right now. She can make progress with those core classes and save her money so she can afford the real college experience that costs $$$ when this all ends.
They are both WAY more mature than me, take after Mom. The social thing is the hardest part for sure. The younger one missing her final year of dance team is hard too but they are still holding out hope they will go back in spring. I don’t see any way that happens.
My youngest is 16 and a sophomore, his older brother is 17 and a senior. My 2 oldest boys are out of school. Based on how hard it is to get near-adults to do online school, if they were younger, grade school age, I would probably have withdrawn them from school altogether and switched to homeschooling.
My 17 year old seems to think that as long as he does the work (or… most of it… grrr…) he doesn’t actually have to show up to the class. I wake him up 3 days a week for online classes, and at least 1 of those days, he just goes back to sleep and checks his email later. It’s driving me crazy and I’m sure his teachers aren’t appreciative of it, either. Like, dude, it’s your senior year! You only have 2 academic classes! It’s basically just faffing off! Just check in and humor everyone! Argh! He’s super responsible and reliable (goes to work, does his chores, repairs phones and computers as a side job) otherwise, so it’s especially frustrating that he can’t get it together for school.
My other kid has a more untraditional school schedule even when they’re going to school (half days, mostly spent with one teacher, 2 online academic classes and 1 in-person one), so he’s actually adapted better than his brother. He connects with his 2 main teachers online every day (I don’t usually even have to remind him), and the only thing he’s struggling with is math, because that was his in-person class. But he’s slowly getting on with it. I don’t know how much he’s actually absorbing from it, though :/ He has been reading a little more, though, so that’s good.
This is one of the double edged sword of being a Democrat. We tend to think logically and realistically and consider the fallout from each decision. In the meantime, repubs are now ABOVE the law.
That kind of atomization is such a huge problem — the Dems keep falling into the trap of thinking they have an issues problem, when they have a message problem.
If you tell Democratic leadership types people have no sense of where they are for working families, the response is to look at items #35, #111 and #178 on a 322 item laundry list.
That is not messaging. The GOP literally had no platform this year. Everything they did was calculated to push messaging instead, and it almost worked.
That is not to say the Democrats should give up in issues — behind the scenes the GOP backs all kinds of issues, but they know how and when to reveal them to their base. But the Dems need to stop thinking in such micro terms about what they say — people need to hear the message first, clearly, and hear it again and then talk about the fine points.
Thanks as always for spending your sleepless nights compiling this. Your link to the article on the working homeless was heartbreaking. But then many of the linked articles are heartbreaking. The trick for me is to emerge from the DOT educated and energized vs. wishing I could cower under the blankets for the rest of the day.
I anxiously await the noon press conference, wherein “lawyers” will explain “a clear and viable path to victory.”
I wonder if it will be held at Home Depot.
If they keep to the landscaping theme I hope they hold it at this amazing garden center I went to once outside of DC. A friend who lives down there bought some azalea bushes and I offered to help her plant them. They probably won’t, it was in one of the tony liberal Maryland suburbs, and I’m sure the town and the garden center wouldn’t put up with this nonsense.
Maybe they’ll hold it in the outdoor garden center area of a Home Depot in Enid, Oklahoma or somewhere like that.
Probably be held at a white house?
Lol, you called that one Lemmy. Didn’t think he could top 4 Seasons Landscaping
The NRA/suicide thing is interesting. You’d think they’d have a vested interest in keeping gun owners alive.
A local chain of gun shops/shooting ranges had started enforcing a “nobody shoots alone” rule after a rash of suicides. Seems people don’t want their families finding their bodies, so they go to shooting ranges and do it there. Which of course means the staff and/or other patrons get to find the bodies. So this place said you have to bring a buddy or you don’t shoot. I don’t know if it’s still in place, though.
Funny (not funny) thing is, this has been a known problem for a long, long time. Gun owners are far more likely to commit suicide than non-gun owners, particularly because the means to do it is sitting right there. But, considering the general demographic of a gun owner, they are also very much prone to ignoring reality and spending more time yelling about their freedumb.
Dude.
He’s just trolling me now.
…not so much as you’d think?
…if I’d put everything I had laying about into yesterday’s…I think that probably would’ve been hard to claim as not trolling you though, to be fair
Pfft. Don’t even. I know what’s going on here.
I SEE YOU RIP
…well, I guess that’s me told then, eh?
…pretty sure meg’s on deck for tomorrow, though…so you get a break at least…because, you know…I’m not totally heartless
I’ve been thinking about Lindsey’s meddling and what made him think this was okay and then it came to me. He has probably been doing this shit in his state for years! This year it looked like he was going to face a super tight race and then landslide? I would like to see them study the results of his election after this.
Also, if anyone knows anyone of voting age in Georgia, they need to send them this…
https://www.savemyvote2020.org/georgia-voter-purge-list-2020/
I still think that once Joe/Kamala are in the White House – there needs to be investigations into the election – especially for SC, NC, Texas and Florida and the Postal Service. I know I have my tinfoil hat on – but it seems a bit hinky.
These fuckers needs to go down! They need to be in jail and not in the Senate. Come on Georgia!!!
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sen-david-perdue-helped-defense-contractor-and-sold-off-its-stock
https://www.salon.com/2020/11/18/kelly-loeffler-under-fire-for-soliciting-campaign-cash-in-halls-of-the-senate–an-apparent-crime/
We’re trying! They’re attacking Warnock for some connection to Rev Wright from like twenty years ago. And, Perdouche has commercials saying that Ossoff is trying to take away people’s healthcare. It’s all lies – but they are blanketing the airways. Hell, they pop up on all the websites I go to now. I’m hoping the infighting amongst the repubs will help depress the turnout – but they always seem to coalesce at the end and bring on the voters. The only thing that’s saving us right now is Raffensberger. If he weren’t the SOS – I think Georgia would’ve definitely been in the red column.
Keep in mind that more Republicans than Democrats cast votes in the two Senate races, and–as you say–they are likely to do what they always do and come out for their tribe on election day. No way the Democrats win either seat.
…not that you don’t probably deserve a star there…on account of your reasoning being pretty sound…but I want you to be wrong too much to give it its due?
The Tupac of dead presidents rigged the election, guys!
This is hilarious!
Microphones are always hot.
Cameras are always on.
Guns are always loaded.