Thursday Night

Rock on.

More Thread

Giving thanks to My President.

Afternoon Thread

Pheasant instead of turkey this year. A bit smaller.

Just A Little Worse

I often wonder what would things have been/be like if Covid had been just a little bit different/worse. It's easy to imagine how very tiny changes would have altered history in major if unknowable ways. What if a few more famous/powerful people died in the first wave? What if it was just a little bit more contagious, with a slightly higher mortality rate? What if, and this is probably the big one, children had similar symptomatic infection/fatality rates as adults instead of the apparent low rates they have?

Not wishing for any of those things, and only the first could have plausibly led to a better overall outcome (in the same way that people take the economy much more seriously when rich people money - STONKS - is at risk), but even little differences would have made the last several months very very different.

Still Aware Of All Internet Traditions

With Great Power Comes At Least Very Small Responsibilities

The inability of our elites to even fake it occasionally is just maddening.

Denver's mayor apologized on Wednesday for traveling out of state to visit his family for Thanksgiving, in a statement that came on the same day that he urged residents to "stay home as much as you can." Health experts have repeatedly asked Americans not to travel for the holiday, warning that it could lead to a severe spike in coronavirus cases and further tax an already overburdened healthcare system.

I know Republican lawmakers are going around the country having "cough in each other's mouths" parties to Own The Libs, but, yes, I do expect more from Team D.

Morning Thread

Two days in a row with over 2000 deaths.

At least the daily new cases appear to be almost leveling off.

Wednesday Night

Rock on.

Wednesday Evening

Enjoy.

Evening Thread

The best way to avoid disappointment is to not hope for anything.

Criminal Enterprise

I'm sure they'll be fine, though.

After years of denying allegations of lax financial oversight, the National Rifle Association has made a stunning declaration in a new tax filing: Current and former executives used the nonprofit group’s money for personal benefit and enrichment.

The NRA said in the filing that it continues to review the alleged abuse of funds, as the tax-exempt organization curtails services and runs up multimillion-dollar legal bills. The assertion of impropriety comes four months after the attorney general of New York state filed a lawsuit accusing NRA chief executive Wayne LaPierre and other top officials of using NRA funds for decades to provide inflated salaries and expense accounts.

Some Obvious Flaws In Concept Here

Shouldn't be able to blow a circuit in Idaho (I know this is exaggeration) and take down doorbells across the country.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), a core provider of internet infrastructure services, is going through a major outage today, and the service's spotty uptime is now causing huge issues at thousands of other online services across the internet. Almost all major cloud-based software app that rely on AWS for their backend are currently impacted, from Adobe Spark to Roku, and from Flickr to Autodesk. ... Among the sites who are reporting issues on the DownDetector page are services like Ring, Prime Music, Pokemon Go, Roku, MeetUp.com, League of Legends, Anchestry.com, Chime, and others.

Last Gasp

I still stick with my belief that the Trumpkins will lose interest in their hero and move onto something else (maybe something worse!). Once he loses the power to OWN THE LIBS, he won't be very much fun anymore. The cameras will follow him around for too many months after Biden is inaugurated, but that will fade, also, too.

Afternoon Thread

enjoy

The World Will Little Note

Gettysburg trip cancelled, per pool report from @matthewchoi2018.

— Josh Dawsey (@jdawsey1) November 25, 2020

Clown car losing gas.

Who Did You Think He Was

As far as I know Raffensperger has done everything he was supposed to do, meaning he did his job, so I guess yay him for that, but whatever you think of Trump, one rather obvious thing is he will fuck over absolutely anyone for the slightest thing.

By all accounts, Georgia had a wildly successful and smooth election. We finally defeated voting lines and put behind us Fulton County’s now notorious reputation for disastrous elections. This should be something for Georgians to celebrate, whether their favored presidential candidate won or lost. For those wondering, mine lost — my family voted for him, donated to him and are now being thrown under the bus by him.

Which is to say that your family supported the guy because you were quite happy for him to fuck everybody else over.

Wednesday Is New Jobless Day

This week. 778K new lucky duckies. Heading up.

They Know Even Less Than What They Say

I don't personally have all that much to say about the "should schools open" debate other than "we are a fucked up society that should have priortized ensuring that was possible by putting modest resources at least behind it and of course we didn't so let's blame teachers unions and lol everything is bad" but there have been people with very strong opinions using their academic credentials to push them to be open and, welp...

(CNN)A Brown University economics professor said she is surprised to hear the director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is relying on a website she started to promote in-person learning for schoolchildren.

...

The website incorporates data that schools and school districts voluntarily publish, along with data that some report directly to the site, but it's far from complete, Oster said. She said she was surprised that Redfield referenced it when he said that a growing body of research showed kids were not getting infected in school.

"It is totally bananas," she said. "I think we are doing as good a job as we can. This is not my field. It's crazy."

Let me try to distill it down to one sentence:

A Brown University economics professor who started a website to promote in-person learning for schoolchildren says it's "bananas" that the CDC director cited that website in order to promote in-person learning for schoolchildren, saying it was a crazy thing to do because it is not her field.

She hasn't been shy about promoting herself and this view!!!

You fucked up! You trusted us!!!

Oster knows she’ll get blamed if the reopening experiment ends in disaster. In that case, “the best I can do is say that I did something I felt was productive and helpful,” she told me. “If the result of having done that is that the policy direction I pushed was not right, at least I got the data to show that.” It would be ironic, I responded, if her own dataset proved her wrong. “It’s true!” she said. “I think this data will be useful no matter what we show. But, yes, it would be ironic if I once again show myself to be wrong. That could be my thing! But I’m hoping not.”

I guess this is an anticapatory oopsie, your bad for listening to me?

Morning Thread

Not sure why Disqus closed the comments last night.

Tuesday Night

Rock on.

Tuesday Evening

I think it's Tuesday.

Melania's Out

Maybe not today, but Trump's never going to see her again after not very long.

From the WH: "On Monday, November 30 starting at 7:00AM EST the Office of the First Lady will host a preview of the 2020 holiday décor at the White House.... The First Lady will not be in attendance. "

— Dan Froomkin/PressWatchers.org (@froomkin) November 24, 2020

Melania is obviously not some secret good person, but you don't have to be a secret good person to be repulsed by Trump. She's gonna collect her payday from whatever re-negotiated prenup she got when Trump won and get the fuck out of there, having presumably made sure her lawyers figured out how to put a legal wall around the cash.