Bolsonaro's definitely in the Trump and Putin category, or maybe his own category with Belarus and Turkmenistan

Yssom Rachtacher sounds like some obscure Yiddish playwright.

Oh yay, I love it when a game remembers to have a girl demagogue character programmed in for me to pick.

"I'm Commander Shepherd, and this is my favourite coronavirus testing facility on the Citadel."

Animating girls is too hard, so they didn't add Kim Yo-jong until the expansion.

The armor the girl demagogue characters wear is really impractical.

I wonder about Russian doctors. Not just the defenestration, but also at what point do they just say "fuck it" and go home.

6 I guess that depends on what floor they live on.

fully endorse yssom rachtacher a very excellent pseud.

7 - ouch & ha.

it took little more than a minute to access his 400,000 won ($330) cash handout from the South Korean government earlier this month. For 2.8 million Korean households it didn't take any time at all: the money was automatically wired to their bank accounts without even an application. In nearby Japan, hundreds of Tokyo residents trying to process their claims for 100,000 yen ($930) handouts had to line up for hours outside a government office in Setagaya.

Hours? I think it's now been months for some Americans.

My mom's apparently was mailed to her, so she won't get it until after the nursing homes open.

Categorize your (state or local) critter!

He's a Wolf.

Honestly, I think he's in a tough spot because the state's different regions are so varied and need different actions.

Define your wolf!

Luckily for me, it's his surname.

I think the two relevant continua to classify governors and mayors are (a) how bad they think mass death is (politically and/or morally) and (b) how capable they are of deferring to scientific authority.

Rating each respectively on a scale of 1 to 10, Newsom would be 8/8; de Blasio is 7/3; Cuomo 7/6; Kemp and DeSantis 1/1. I don't know enough to rate Abbott or Pritzker.

On a scale of looking like the bad guy in a movie from the 80s, Newsom and Cuomo get a 10, de Blasio maybe a 4, DeSantis a 5, and Kemp a 7.

True - DeSantis looks more like a hapless henchman.

Pritzker looks more like a character from a 19th century editorial cartoon.

Can we find a few more Jacinda Ardern's ?

I can't figure out how to cast Inslee though.

I don't know who that is, so I'm going to default to prostitute with a heart of gold.

Wow, nailed it.

I think Abbott is 4/4. I think he's walking a slightly finer line than DeSantis or Kemp.

17: That's a good system because it can also account for generally odious Republicans that are actually doing a good job with this one. I'd say Dunleavy is about a 2/7. I guess in Mossy's typology that would put him in with Orban.

Texas's main goal is to shut down vote-by-mail. So does mass death help or hurt that? I think that's their calculation in their dear hearts.

17 and 22: I wonder about Walsh. I think he's done pretty decently, but I don't have a good grasp of him. Baker is ok. Initially, he wanted to defer to cities and towns too much and was slow to act. I thin' he's opening up too quickly, and we don't have enough disposable masks for public facing close contact activities - like haircuts - or nursing home residents. I think he managed the ,omg term care facilities badly. We needed to throw so much ppe and training in infection control at them.

I watch 538's poll count obsessively, and Trump is finally back above 10% net disapproval differential -- better for Trump than you'd like, but fairly firmly back in the pre-Covid range.

Carney has been doing about as well as anyone could expect, though it would have been better to intervene more aggressively with the chicken processors downstate. At least everyone I've seen here has been wearing masks without hassle.

|| Speaking of demagoguery, those of you following the Flynn drama in the DC courts will be unsurprised to learn that he drew a good panel, for him, at the Circuit. Saves the Supreme Court from having to do intervene. (The Circuit panel hasn't done anything but signal, but the signal is pretty clear, I think.) |>

It will be horrible, but at least it won't be a horrible precedent?

The precedent will be that if the President's friend lies to investigators, gets charged by a special counsel because the Department is conflicted, pleads guilty and repeatedly reaffirms hid guilt under oath, and the DOJ repeatedly takes the position that the statements were material and the plea was good, and the supposed Brady violations weren't, and the judge rules, extensively on this, but then the President wants to say that the whole thing was a witch hunt orchestrates by his predecessor, so his other friend writes a dishonest brief to let the guy off, so the judge appoints a respected retired judge to advise him on the law, well, none of that matters to the president's supporters. It's important that the case be dismissed before anyone tells the judge that he has the inherent authority to deal with the guy lying to the court under oath, and that doing so does not implicate separation of powers. (While refusing to allow dismissal of a case might, as indicated in the DC Circuit case they're going to use as the basis of compelling dismissal.)

Shorter: the precedent is that no laws apply to the President or his friends. It's power all the way down. When the President is a Republican, that is.

Oh, sorry. Old computer.

Did Double Jeopardy apply?

"Girl Demagogue" is a great name for a band.

I guess Trump lying about wearing a mask counts as progress.

37: And two steps back.

I think we should be more scrupulous about the 40 comment rule.

But not in spirit.

OT: The fuck?

On the topic of the piece written , I have very great doubts that "I have a B.A. from Yellow Springs" is something that is going to wow a jury into thinking they must defer to an expert. But on the unmentioned, obvious, and more important point, what the actual fucking fuck?

What, you've never used fradulent educational credentials to score a gig?

What with having transferred between two undergrad institutions, I never satisfied the phys Ed requirements at either. I've always wondered if they're going to take my degree away sometime.

Serves you right for transferring between them by car, and not at a brisk jog.

What, you've never used fradulent educational credentials to score a gig?

Oddly enough, every time I've tried to score a gig that needed credentials, the bastards wanted to see the paperwork. Does it work differently in Spikeville?

44. Why the fuck does a university require phys ed requirements? "I'm sorry Ms L, we appreciate that your undergraduate dissertation offers an irrefutable quantum theory of gravity, but you only did 49 chin-ups, so you're a big failure." What if you use a wheelchair?

I think the only times I have had to produce actual documentary evidence of credentials were a) when I was applying for places at universities and b) when I was trying to prove that I did not require the armed forces to provide me with compulsory remedial mathematics and literacy training. b) was surprisingly difficult.

46.2 It's a holdover, mostly found at elite schools (something something well-rounded). It wasn't a requirement at my large public university, but it's more like, "you took a course in golf and passed." Folks who want to be trainers/kinesiologists or gym teachers take a lot of these courses, and folks required to have the Phys Ed credit take 1 or 2.

A lot of colleges have a swimming requirement which is usually justified as drown-proofing.

MIT had a very broad selection of possible phys Ed classes, and I amused myself while I was there by telling people that they were required to construct an academically coherent major: sailing, swimming, and fencing would be the requirements of the Piracy major; rock climbing, ballroom dancing, and pistol would be the Espionage major, and so on. And then thirty years later when I took Newt on a tour, the tour guide made the same joke. Probably with a different origin, but I like to think that people had been retelling my joke since the late eighties.

Re: credentials, at my current job, we have clients who come on site and meet with various staff about their projects. The schedules include everyone's credentials, to the point of silliness, so lists were like 9:00 Dr. Stan Liu, PhD, 10:00 Mike Smith, BS, MS and Dr. Sue Jones, DVM, 11:00 Steve Fernandez, BA, LAT. For some reason, mine just always read 13:00 Ydnew Emantsal with nothing. After a year or so, because it seemed like all the degrees were important to someone (HR? Clients?), I asked about why I never had any credentials listed like everyone else (I was literally the only one with nothing listed). Apparently, despite my having filled out the required CV when I started, they had no record of any of my degrees at HR. I was a little surprised. They said they needed a copy of my PhD. Luckily, standards were low, so I could dig out the diploma, snap a photo, and e-mail it to HR. So, I guess I could have gone on for quite a while with no proof of degree if I hadn't asked, and the proof needed was pretty flimsy.

49. So if Sttephen Hawking, who was in fact very fit as a young man, had started showing symptoms earlier than he did, MIT would have told him to fuck off?

I asked my bank about having my debit card changed to Dr nattarGcM, and they said I'd have to bring my degree certificate in for them to verify it, which I never did. My credit card company, on the other hand, just added it.

I did add Dr to my email signatures, though, years ago. Because I got very very tired of being patronised and 'splained at by curators and librarians who assume that because I write code and can add up, I must be a total ignoramus about all aspects of cultural heritage.* I haven't gotten as far as adding the post-nominal suffixes, though, although I suspect that would be a positive move with US clients.

* working environment I am mostly in, this is mostly womansplaining, rather than mansplaining, but the social dynamic is exactly the same.

50. Such responsibility for a person who only finished high school! Genius!

52. So not just adding Ph.D. but Oxon too?

51: I don't know details, but there would legally have to be some kind of disability accommodation. Either waiving the stupid requirement or providing an accessible alternative.

For my current position I was required to get my BA and my two master's degrees accredited. This meant that I needed a notarized letter from the registrar, which then had to be accredited and certified as authentic by the county where the institution is located, which all had to be accredited by the state, and finally the whole shebang had to be sent to the US State Department for the final level of accreditation. For all three degrees. Insane.

Oh, and since two of my degrees were awarded after 2000 I was also required to get a notarized letter from the registrar attesting that none of the course I took were online.*

*I wonder what's going to happen to that rule now.

(I would also assume that even in the absence of federal disability law, colleges wouldn't be insane about enforcing phys ed requirements. I'm morally certain MIT wouldn't be, other place probably wouldn't although there's always a chance of running into some irrationally rigid person.)

If you do, then try to run into them as high up as possible. It'll maximise the torque produced by your impact and give you the best chance of knocking them over.

Their being rigid will help here as they won't bend to absorb the shock.

59 It didn't work for the pterodactyl v mammoth.

There's always the pishkun option.

I finally googled pishkun. I'd been thinking it was a Russian word.

AIMHMHB I was thrown out of school at an impressionable age and have no credentials beyond 7 O Levels. Which I have often had cause to regret because I would have liked, once I was grown up, to study at a real university and, quite apart from the money, never felt I could even apply for anything interesting.

Are O levels the ones that are like OWLs or NEWTs?

re: 54

Yeah. I just use Dr. ttaM nattarGcM. No post-nominal suffixes at all. I could use MA (Hons) (Glas), B.Phil (Oxon.), D.Phil (Oxon.).

The second of those is by far that hardest one to get, but no bugger outside a very small number of people know what it is.

I can't remember. I took two at fourteen and the rest at fifteen. You're meant to take them at 16 but in those days my Latin was pretty good.

My credit card company didn't check credentials. They think I'm an Admiral.

I'm watching Lewis. I'm still trying to decide about Hathaway.

Mild to moderate being eaten by dogs seems like a bad way to go.

Apparently, you can totally inherit from the estate of somebody your dog eats.

That seems like a bad invective structure.

I'm going to link this here if no where else. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/one-final-viral-infusion-trumps-move-to-block-travel-from-europe-triggered-chaos-and-a-surge-of-passengers-from-the-outbreaks-center/2020/05/23/64836a00-962b-11ea-82b4-c8db161ff6e5_story.html

What if he meant to do that?

Eid Mubarak to you Roger!

He's a creature of reaction, resentment, and impulse. He has no plan he just shoots off the cuff. I doubt he had a clue what would happen. The thing that alarms me though is that at various levels of government we should have people who did know what would happen. So what the fuck happened? Why are we so unprepared at every single moment and in every arena?

74: I'm not sure we still have anyone left in civil service who knows what they are doing. Seriously. State was gutted early on. HHS is clearly a trainwreck, a few places excepted. NIH is still largely OK, but I am terrified about what retribution they can expect when Trump has had it with Fauci.

Oops.

Eid Mubarak Barry! thanks