Afternoon

Weekending.

900,000 Moved On, To Be Precise

NYT May 24, 2020: U.S. Deaths Near 100,000, An Incalculable Loss

NYT February 5, 2022: 900,000 Dead, but Many Americans Move On pic.twitter.com/CfRccN7ijy

— southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) February 5, 2022

That's A Lot Of Dead People

I admit I'm a bit of a loss when people think the appropriate response to 2500+ people per day dying from a deadly virus is pretend it isn't happening.

And no the only other response isn't "harsh lockdowns" or whatever. It is also important to ameliorate the additional harshness and uncertainty of life and ensure that essential workers - remember them - and their positions are covered.

Saturday Morning

Another weekend.

Friday Night

Rock on.

Record Release Day

Anyone remember that? Think it was Tuesday. You'd run to the mall and wait for Sam Goody's or whatever to get their shipment in, and sometimes it wouldn't show up and you'd have to find another record store.

Just random old person memory.

Happy Hour Thread

Friday edition.

Centrism Can Never Be Failed

Young people probably think one termer Jimmy Carter and failed candidate Mike Dukakis failed because they were TOO LIBERAL, and that Bill Clinton's woes (1994 midterm blowout) were for the same reason.

Oldheads know that all of them were, actually, the favored candidate of "centrists" who, as they always do, start blaming everybody else when they don't get their expected successes.

A 1998 1988 NYT editorial about Dukakis was titled, "Virtuoso of the Center," in case your memory is faulty, too!

That sunny dome! Those caves of ice!

Mostly stopped kicking it as Covid messed everything up, but this was inevitable even without Covid.

The American Dream megamall in New Jersey, crippled by construction delays and stalled store openings, is running out of money.

The more than 3-million-square-foot retail and entertainment complex nearly emptied a reserve account to make a $9.3 million payment that was due Tuesday, on about $290 million of debt supported by sales tax receipts, according to a securities filing

. Maybe someone will ask America's Most Popular TV Governor, Chris Christie, about it.

Truffle Pigs

Remain impressed by the people (including reporters) who always know to suck up to the guy worth 9 figures and blame the coffee intern for his problems. And that is, no joke, why they earn the big bucks.

Local Corruption

Absurd corruption everywhere which mostly gets ignored (focus on big cities because they're big, focus on big cities because they have journalists and media attention generally, focus on "urban places" because, you know, those people, and focus on minority govenment officials because minority politicians get targeted).

Alabama sheriffs who lost reelection in 2018 personally pocketed funds and deleted public records, an investigation by AL.com and ProPublica found. Holes were drilled through government-issued smartphones and leftover rice was poured down the drain, among other things. It’s a longstanding tradition that sheriffs aren’t typically held accountable for.

Who's The Boss

The smartest boys on the internet are convinced that the people with fancy titles in the White House are absolutely powerless over the pernicious influence of "professional democrats" who voted for That Woman (proving they are silly, immature, and incompetent).

Mr. Zients (whose name keeps disappearing from discussion in the press, weird!!!), powerless over the overwhelming force of a few 20something Sarah Lawrence grads, or whoever they are in Josh's feeble mind.

Centrist assholes would do great things, if only for "some guy with a sign," corporate anti-racist HR training, "defund the police," and of course the existence of Warren voter saboteurs.

Just incredible.

JERBS

+467K. Good news! ...revisions even better!

JUST IN: Strong jobs report for January as the US economy added 467,000 jobs. December revised to 510,000 from 199,000. November revised to 647,000 from 249,000.

— Steve Grzanich (@SteveGrzanich) February 4, 2022

BIDEN BOOM, BABY

Friday Morning

Gotta get down on Friday.

Thursday Night

Rock on.

Happy Hour Thread

Get happy.

Can't Believe They Brought Back Ari Fleischer

Aboard AF1, a reporter asked WH press secretary Jen Psaki for evidence to back up the claim that Qurayshi denotated a suicide bomb.

Psaki asked whether skeptics think the U.S. military is "not providing accurate information and ISIS is providing accurate information." 2/x

— Felicia Sonmez (@feliciasonmez) February 3, 2022

read the whole thread, as the kids say.

The Surreal Life

Make it stop.

Until CNN Hires Them Away, Anyway

Remember that very brief moment when it seemed all the Trumpkins would be shunned forever (not that I thought that).

Rudy News

Reality is surreal and bad. (

CNN)Two judges on "The Masked Singer" walked off after Rudy Giuliani unmasked himself at the end of a show taping, a source close to the show told CNN Wednesday.

Robin Thicke and Ken Jeong walked off stage following the revelation of Giuliani as a contestant on the popular Fox reality show in which contenders perform in full costume until they are eliminated.