Can you tell me what happened on 1/20?
Can you tell me what happened on 1/20?
After they were sworn in, Harris drew a gun right there on stage and shot Biden in the face, and then immediately pardoned herself. No one was particularly upset.
This was after the MyPillow guy parachuted onto the White House lawn, dressed as a cow, trying to rescue Trump from the Secret Service agents dragging him to the main gate.
A little over 47 hours of this presidency left.
I'm glad somebody else not from the future is here.
I neglected to mention that Harris shot Biden only after he pulled off the rubber mask and revealed that he's actually Jeffrey Epstein.
We are all still feeling fairly confident that:
1. The armed people now heading to DC won't overwhelm the inauguration by force of arms and murder the entire Democratic line of succession, leaving us with Pompeo?
2. A right-wing faction of the national guard and imported cops are not currently planning to murder the entire Democratic line of succession?
3. There isn't going to be collaboration between 1 and 2, possibly leading to an armed confrontation with the rest of the guard, in which the entire Democratic line of succession is murdered?
I cannot think of a more foolhardy thing than bringing in huge numbers of unknown quantity armed men (plus a bunch of known quantity right-wing cops, like the ones they're sending from NYC) in order to hold a ceremony where you gather all your important people in one place.
I would feel a bit better if Pelosi were going to be sequestered somewhere but I'm not hearing anything about that.
1. The armed people now heading to DC won't overwhelm the inauguration by force of arms and murder the entire Democratic line of succession, leaving us with Pompeo?
Yes, completely. I will take nearly any bet on that.
I don't think I'll ever be confident about democracy again, but I'm confident that Biden, Harris, and Pelosi have a better idea of the risks than I do.
The latest Qanon theory is that Biden has been arrested and he and Trump have had face transplants so that the man with Biden's face who is sworn in will actually be Trump.
11: and then when fake-Biden enacts sweeping recovery legislation, will diehard Q supporters interpret this as the will of their savior?
8.3- just to be sure someone check that their current deployment orders aren't called "order 66".
There's no way Trump's face on Biden's body would fool anyone. Trump has a very different body shape.
11: I like the Epstein theory better.
14:. You know nothing about the latest developments in body modification technology. Trump supporters should feel absolutely confident that by supporting fake-Biden they are actually supporting Trump.
16: I was worried that Trump supporters might rebel because of their need to trigger the libs, but then I remembered that there will always be plenty of folks on the left outraged at everything Biden does, and that should keep the fake-Biden supporting Trumpers happy.
Well, since I will no doubt spend the next few years outraged at everything Biden does, I suppose I'd better generate some goodwill now by saying that, given the constraints of the American political landscape, I find Biden's pandemic plans pretty decent and just hope he can pull them off. Part of the reason I'm so exaggeratedly anxious about the inauguration is that I'm feeling surprisingly hopeful about the pandemic response and therefore more terrified that something will go horribly wrong.
Also, having seen a lot more footage of the capitol violence, I would like formally to retract my claims about the cops (except the ones who took selfies with the crowd, etc). They were clearly let down by their Trumpist bosses, the whole thing looked terrifying and regardless of their actual politics I don't see how they could have done much different than what they did.
I would really like to be able to visit my mother again while she can still remember who I am. I'm a bit hopeful for that.
I really need guidance on how to figure out whether to keep the kids home from school or not. Local cases are out of control: 96/100k daily new cases. We don't have a caretaker anymore. Jammies has to be at the high school full time. I can teach from home.
On the one hand, safety plus civic duty. On the other hand, preserving my fucking shred of sanity. I truly am pulling my hair out over this indecision.
FWIW, the Calabat is back in school full time and our case rate is over 200/100k per day. We tried to keep him home and wound up with a depressed 7-year-old who wasn't learning anything. Transmission seems to be mostly teens, and out of school. Your sanity is allowed to count in this calculus.
I would really like to be able to visit my mother again while she can still remember who I am.
Aw geez. This is all so difficult, and just so horrible. My heartfelt sympathies, Mobes.
So my aunt (currently in hospital in TO with COVID) really rallied over the weekend, and we were all entertaining fantasies of a (near-miraculous, I guess) recovery. But while her doctor is impressed that she 'held through the weekend,' and while he is 'not ruling out recovery,' he is apparently 'not very hopeful.' My cousin reports that said doctor is 'unbelievably kind and supportive.'
I am absolutely disgusted and morally repulsed by the recent spate of US federal executions. Makes me think that I'm now living in the kind of dystopian-future sci-fi novel that I would never, ever willingly read...
This 1776 thing from the Trump Admin reads about like National Lampoon's High school Yearbook
22: my own isolated aunts are the two people I've been most worried about during all this, and I've been periodically thinking about you and your aunt over the weekend.
24: Thanks, heebie, and wishing all the best for your two isolated aunts.
This pandemic, and its weird politicization, has been so hard upon our elderly relations. They've been staying at home, staying inside, paying heed to the advice of the public health authorities, cut off from all normal human contact. And then they read that large numbers of their fellow citizens are apparently prepared to sacrifice the lives of the elderly on the altar of (no-masks, you-cannot-make-me-wear-a-mask) 'freedom.' It is very distressing, and just so depressing and disheartening.
I'm a little shocked nobody actively advocated for more covid to save Social Security money.
22: I'm really rooting for your Aunt, but one of the heartless things about this virus is how it fools you. I know of so many people who looked like they were rallying and then died. I'm thinking of someone I know through work who was sending out updates about her father who was not that old (mid 70's but Afro-Caribbean and probably had hypertension) who looked like he was getting better.
Heebie, I know that kids are typically obsessed with fairness, so this might not work, but do all four need/want to be f2f or could you just keep 2 at home? How hard would it be to hire another babysitter, such as a student who lives locally with family and is responsible about their own family's safety? (That's what one of my single-parent colleagues did, because she needed someone to help look after her twin toddlers when borders started closing and her au pair couldn't travel to the US.)
I took my post Xmas empties out today and thought damn, that was one person.
20: No one can tell you how to make that call. I'd say that the kids will be likely to get it, and they'll almost certainly be fine. It's been long enough that we should have evidence of cardiopulmonary effects in kids with mild cases. Everything I have seen suggests that the truly dangerous stuff (MCIS) is vanishingly rare. I don't know how many people have looked for, eg, ground glass opacities in kids with mild cases, but I'd have expected papers to show up by now if it were happening.
The thing I'd be more worried about is you and Jammies and the possibility of spreading it to someone vulnerable. If your family has little or no contact with vulnerable folks (ie isolated except for going to work and school), then it mostly comes down to risk for you two. You'd probably be sick, likely take weeks or months to return to normal, and then be largely OK.
At this point, individual virtuous actions in Texas are basically not going to stem the tide. There are places where it matters more, either because ICUs are full or because a region is able to maintain a relatively low case load, and neither is true for you at the moment. I'd personally rather see everyone keep their kids home (how do you staff schools with quarantines?), but it seems a bit overly pure and virtuous but not going to make a meaningful difference in outcome given your other circumstances.
I appreciate 21, 28, and 33 a lot. We don't have any contact outside of schools, so it's just Jammies and me. And since he's automatically exposed, I suppose it comes down to just me. That at least makes the stakes seem lower.
I've felt very strongly that the worst case scenario would be to keep your kids home all year and then still get Covid a week before the vaccine is available. I'm increasingly sure that I will get it right before the vaccine is available to me, either way.
Maybe I will hunt around a little for a new caregiver.
but one of the heartless things about this virus is how it fools you. I know of so many people who looked like they were rallying and then died.
Yeah, I think this is what my aunt's doctor is very gently, and very kindly, preparing us for.
So many of my in-law's friends and family in the next county over have gotten covid in the past month. But the numbers in the city are better and our son is in school.
I mean, will be tomorrow. It's way too late for school now.
35.2 is in no way possible the worst case scenario, but it would be frustrating. The thing is, as we vaccinate more people case load will drop. Some folks will get it, of course, but it will look more like areas with low caseloads (MI last summer, frex), where you have to be both careless and unlucky to be infected. No one wants to predict timelines, but I am guessing peak is about now, and unless the more contagious variant takes off faster than most people seem to expect (possible - our monitoring sucks as much as everything else about our pandemic response), or there's a manufacturing issue that prevents us from continuing to accelerate vaccination, I think we'll see a meaningfully different case load in April.
Moby, in my experience, the whole thing of failing to recognise you comes and goes. It is hugely influenced by loneliness and proximity. There isn't a single moment when you can say "She no longer recognises me". And there are things like blindness and deafness which affect it at least as much as dementia.
But it is so awful for elderly parents to be deprived of hugs. I went to really considerable lengths to have my mother a short walk away from me and now that means almost nothing at all.
Also, trying to do remote tech support on an Echo show with a middle-aged carer is unbelievably frustrating. "I've found a red wire. Should it be plugged into something?"
35.2 is in no way possible the worst case scenario, but it would be frustrating.
Oh, I know it's not on par with people dying. I'm just saying that the pain of a year of remote schooling without even the benefit of staying healthy is my own personal hell. That definitely played a big role in my reasoning for sure back in October when we decided to send them in.
40.1: She doesn't really not recognize me so much as think I'm her brother.
40: Any news on how soon your mother can get vaccinated?
Sorry for all your aunt & you are going through, JPJ. Sending good thoughts. One thing to remember, it may be prudent for a doctor to prepare family members for an unexpected downturn even in situations where that's not the most probable outcome.
I decided to step up my precautions: grocery delivery I'm not ready to move to yet as I feel that's just deflecting my risk onto a wage-earner, who I'm probably at least as healthy as; I stopped driving on highways, the outcome of an unlikely crash being especially hellish now; and I bought some KN95s to replace the cloth masks. They're a much better fit than the N95s I had during the wildfires, and are black, which feels more overtly civilian.
That reminds me that I really should try to get some better masks.
43: not as such, no. But the staff are getting tested three times a week, twice with lateral flow and once with PCR, so I am reasonably confident that the home is safe. I got tested myself today, after I reported symptoms of yesterday's cold to the ZOE pandemic tracking app (not to be confused with the government's track and trace thing). I do not expect a positive result, but it's only fair to my mother and everyone else. The cold is much better, which is good, since I have to zoom an academic in Florida at 8pm, which is normally the time when my brain cells curl up with the cat and stop work entirely.
In Florida, that's why they have a little thing called meth.
I have a Covid co-parenting thing that has had me wrapped around the axle for a few days. My ex gave my older kid (16) permission to apply for jobs, mostly restaurants, a few weeks back, without telling me. I was informed the day before the first interview with essentially no way to object without throwing an immense fit.
Older kid (they/them) is spectrum-adjacent in some way (a long-delayed diagnostic assessment is scheduled for February) and has regressed socially during lockdown. They also currently want to pursue a career in patient-facing Healthcare, which would require extended/constant patient interaction plus unpleasant sensory stimuli. The case my ex made is that a public-facing job would be good for them to understand their own ability to manage social/environmental stimuli--which I agree with and absent a pandemic would totally sell me.
It's entirely possible I could have been convinced - where I'm hung up is the decision to leave me out of the loop until I had no leverage.
I had thought my ex and I had a standing agreement that anything major required both parents to agree to a course of action. I'm feeling furious, betrayed, and disrespected but also that any retaliatory responses are disproportionate - either just telling the kids that I'm OK going behind their mom's back (Kid 2, you want a nose ring? Let's do it!) or withdrawing the extra couple hundred bucks a month above the state-mandated level of support I have been providing just because my income is so much higher than hers.
I've asked my ex to have a convo later this week, but frankly I'm stewing and not sure how to find the balance between the specific issue and the larger violation of trust. I also need to talk to my kid and express some level of anger/disappointment at being deliberately left out of the process. Mineshaftian wisdom would be appreciated.
Also, not helpful to have this pile on while I'm desperately anxious about the last few days of the Trump admin and work stress piling on. Part of why I put the convo off with my ex is just to be on the other side of the inauguration. Jeez.
It turns out that the woman I was talking to was a daughter of one of Montana's most famous citizens -- so she was very well informed on what happens when prophecy fails.
Chopper, that sounds really hard. Does the ex realise what a big deal this is for you? I would advise against retaliation, but I do so from a position of almost complete ignorance.
49, 50: I'd just scowl briefly and let it go if suitable promises of future behavior are seemingly sincere. Sixteen is a hard age and this is a hard year.
Anyway, what I was doing at sixteen without letting my parents know was certainly more risky than working during Covid. I hid it from both of them, because I'm a firm believer in equal parenting.
I'm disappointed that my kid didn't feel like they could come to me and that going behind my back was the right approach - but I'm not going to tear a strip off them. I will have a conversation with them, but it will be about ensuring that the lines of communication stay open.
(I hid an immense amount of shit from my parents. I expect my kids will hide some shit from me - but this isn't something that was hideable in the long run, so they had to know that I would find out and were OK cutting me out. Getting what you want is a life skill, and being OK prioritizing yourself over others is generally healthy within limits--but I want to avoid the complete breakdown I had with my folks.)
49: If you and your ex were in a super healthy place, you might see this as "I wish I were consulted, but I bet the big decision is whether or not to accept a job offer, once we know the particulars. This is so far just an exercise in interviewing." Not necessarily the truth, but a convenient fig leaf. Is there any way you can cajole yourself to operate from that stance anyway?
51: I'm not sure if she gets that in my mind it qualifies as a unilateral decision to change our co-parenting relationship (or if this is something that has happened all along and I was just oblivious). We're very different, but foolishly or not I had thought we were on the same page regarding the importance of consultation on anything big, especially where there was likely to be disagreement.
And definitely think through your reservations about her accepting the job, and have that conversation.
55: It would break my kid to get a job offer and not be allowed to accept it. I won't do it to them barring evidence that there are unsafe covid safety practices in place at the prospective employer, at which point my ex would likely agree with me.
58.last threw me for a loop. I had been reading the whole issue in the frame of "this is dangerous and not OK and going behind my back is a problem *because* of course in-person restaurant work is unsafe right now".
49: Have them apply as for part-time work as a receptionist at a medical (or "medical") clinic. That way, they'd be in line for a vaccine as a frontline essential worker/healthcare provider. My SIL works part time for an acupuncturist and got her vaccine last week. Honestly, even a hair salon would be better than food service right now.
"Kid applies for jobs in an insecure and unsafe industry during pandemic" seems like a decision that certainly needs discussion. "Kid applies for jobs under normal circumstances" is borderline needing of discussion to me.
Obviously, things aren't 2019-safe in restaurants regardless, but plenty of local restaurants seem to be protecting their staff fairly well and that's the kind of place I was thinking of (and the kind we get take out from).
And I say this as someone who legit enjoyed working in food service at roughly that age. I just think there are other jobs that would build the same skills with way lower risk.
58: It's all about relative risk tolerance. Yes, inherently unsafe, but so is going to Target.
60: First is safety. I view it as an unnecessary risk. My ex is a healthcare provider (in an ophthalmology clinic) and has become blase about risk because she hasn't had anything bad Covid-related happen at her workplace. The counterbalance is my kid's need for social interaction as practice for/evaluation of their ability to stand social interaction/unpleasant stimuli as they evaluate career interests. I WOULD have argued that delaying another 3-6 months isn't the end of the world, but the level of upset that would happen at this stage of the game would be extreme.
Second are the logistics of a kid without a dedicated car--the assumption that I would be available to transport kiddo to shifts on my days during business hours is a big one that I would have liked addressed in advance.
Third is an understanding of how academic performance and sports, etc. will be balanced and what will trigger associated consequences if academic or other commitments aren't met.
63: The folks I know fairly well in the service industry have a lot of friends who are getting/have gotten sick. Handing takeout bags to masked customers is fine, but with opening/closing/opening, it just doesn't seem like a good bet for either safety or stability. Right now, I'd easily take expediting or salad prep station jobs over anything resembling waitstaff. Starbucks barista, maybe.
Mostly, the places here never opened after the closing. At least the ones that I eat at (which is mostly the places I ate at before excepting the bars). They have a set-up by the door for customers/drivers to pick-up and this physically blocks entry past the vestibule. The workers are exposed to each other, masked as far as I can see.
Oh, and I also have a bit of an objection around a white UMC kid with no financial needs that can't be provided by their parents taking a job/hours that could go to an adult without those parental resources or other privileges.
I'm a firm believer in the maturing value of jobs for adolescents, especially food service and retail. I just can't justify it over an unemployed adult being able to make rent.
In the suburbs, the restaurants are fighting every restriction, lying about enforcing rules, and generally being prize shits. They are getting sick in big numbers.
66: Delivery to pre-orders in cars plus limited walk-ins for counter service and no dine-in for the jobs they have applied to, subject to ever-changing rules at the state level.
Second are the logistics of a kid without a dedicated car--the assumption that I would be available to transport kiddo to shifts on my days during business hours is a big one that I would have liked addressed in advance.
This seems like a major point of concern/leverage for you. Would you be comfortable just saying that you're not available to do this and let ex and kid figure out what to do from there?
I think you ought to work to minimize your "I should have been consulted" feelings. I mean, sure, you should have been consulted, but that's water under the bridge -- maybe worth mentioning, but not worth getting upset over and especially not worth retaliating over (if this is basically a one-off error by your ex). Let go of the part that's about you, and concentrate on your kid. The real problem is the actual result: Is it tolerable to have your kid working in a restaurant right now?
My own 18-year-old decided not to go back to his lifeguarding job, and I'm grateful. Had he decided otherwise, I think I would have ruled that lifeguarding at an indoor pool still allows some distance from people. The type of restaurant job you're talking about sounds like it's in the same ballpark, human contact-wise, but it's a tough question.
Mineshaftian disclaimer: I don't know the context, and therefore I know my comment might be really dumb.
Our new gov has lifted restrictions on restaurants and bars. We'll be done with mask mandates once we have a new law protecting business owners and employers from liability for covid exposure. This really is what the people wanted.
We're also getting new laws limiting trans-kids participation in high school sports, and limiting options for physicians treating trans-kids. I'm not saying that this is what the people actually wanted, most of them anyway, but enough are willing to put up with it to have bars open past 10 pm that we're going to get this as well.
Childless, divorceless, 2 cents: I'd weight the the risks differently. For a healthy teenager, I think the post-covid never-got-an-entry-job lost generation is a bigger threat than covid itself. I wouldn't hang up on the UMC thing either. Fixing inequality, at this level of granularity, is way above your (or more precisely, your kid's) paygrade.
I'm telling my kid that I won't let him get a driver's license until he fixed inequality.
My parents didn't make me and now we have much worse inequality than in 1988 and a totaled car.
73: I'm comfortable saying I'm not available to be a taxi during working hours.
74: not "I should have been consulted" but rather "I should have been a participant in in discussions from the beginning." This is at the core of my ongoing issues with my ex. It's not so much about the part that's about me vs. what's best for my kid, I have already been excluded from the decision-making.
Ordinarily it would be good advice, but giving ground here is not in play. Comity can be attained with an apology and promise not to do it again from her, but the first step to rapprochement is getting her to admit to herself she's in the wrong--and in the past that has required a demonstration of righteous anger on my part.
Maybe I'm being irrational--that's why I vented here and I wanted a few days before talking to her (also to talk one-on-one with my kid, since the subject was conveniently brought up during the custody handoff). I'm trying to find a way forward that addresses the underlying issue rather than makes it worse or leaves it to fester.
77: As someone who was housing semi-insecure for much of a year due to the inability to find employment, I may have a different perspective on the importance of not taking work when unemployment is as bad as it is. And they have two more years of high school to find a job, assuming things get under control in the next few months.
Thanks for all of the insight all. I'm going to be away from the Internet til later tonight. Happy to take additional advice, but I won't see it for a while.
Would a family counseling session for you and the ex be an option? It sounds like you're in the right, but it also doesn't sound like displaying righteous anger until she's intimidating into apologizing and promising not to do the thing and then just going ahead and doing it anyway doesn't seem like a great pattern.
81: Oh, she wouldn't be intimidated. One of the the things I disliked about our marriage was the need to demonstrate serious anger before she would realize I was serious (her dad was loud and angry and far more physically intimidating than me) and I dislike expressing anger intensely (my dad was loud and angry and I vowed to never be like him).
I expressed my displeasure via text and made clear my position that the behavior was unacceptable. She has acknowledged that she handled it poorly but not apologized or committed to not doing it again. Discussions ongoing (somehow texts are different than in person conversation).
I also find it easier to argue over text. There's no way to know how I learned to enjoy arguing through brief, written notes.
OT: I always kind of wondered about this. Also, Hall and Oates, for similar reasons.
83: Depends on who I am arguing with. My most recent ex-girlfriend could escalate a text fight incredibly fast that I started insisting on phone calls. (That helped, but didn't solve the problem, hence the "ex.")
||
One of my current goals is to organize my time more effectively, and I'm trying to figure out how to use my calendar for both scheduling appointments and scheduling time for different projects/ responsibilities.
I use Outlook at work and gmail/Apple iPhone calendar at home.
What I want to do - I think - is set up appointments for work meetings and events (like doctors appointments during the workday) in Outlook which I would most likely label as Personal in Outlook. I also want to set up appointments with myself for various projects in my Outlook calendar. Or is there another way to block time out in Outlook?
I would like the actual meetings to then show up in my google calendar, so that if I am at the dentist and need to schedule a follow up appointment, I can see those on my google calendar on my phone. Does anyone know how to do that or can they recommend a good website for tips?
|>
So you need google calendar to read the appointments in outlook, and presumably to be able to make some there, too (the dentist followup or whatever)? I have managed to do this the other way round, so I@m sure it's possible. But I hate outlook only very slightly less than I hate handling everything through gmail.
84: I'm Billie Jean, and I'm mad as hell...
I want to go out on a limb, and predict that this afternoon armed people in DC won't overwhelm the inauguration by force of arms and murder the entire Democratic line of succession, leaving us with Pompeo, and that a right-wing faction of the national guard and imported cops will not successfully murder the entire Democratic line of succession, either.
84: That was my exact reaction to the song until "Boogie Nights" came out. After that, my reaction was to think of the scene in "Boogie Nights".
Rule, Brittania, rule the waves!
Stena Line moved a new vessel, the Embla, to the Rosslare-Cherbourg route. The ship, which can carry 3 kilometers of trucks, had been destined for the Belfast-to-Liverpool service before volumes on that route fell by about a quarter.
89: All true, but on the other hand, nobody is going to hang Pence, either. Every rose has its thorn.
87 - I can update outlook at my desk, I guess, but yes having some calendars block time off in Outlook would be good.
I just got a filling at the dentist, and my upper lip is slightly numb on the left side. I am hungry. When they had me rinse my mouth, I dribbled on the bib thing. I think it will be an hour before I'll be able to manage it.
The fact that there was a semi-serious attempt by Trump supporters to hang Pence is something my brain has trouble taking in. I understand trying to murder your enemies, but a person who is passively your ally?
Sometimes, during the worst days of Trump, I would read the Wikipedia page for the Night of the Long Knives because it was good to remember that the reactionary enablers usually get murdered early in the process.
I just noticed that our new provost signs her name on official documents with just her first name. Huh.
Sincerely,
Provost
(This is funnier if you know the name of one of my kids.)
95: The concept of the fellow traveler is a tricky one. Crazy authoritarianism requires commitment -- when the chips are down, you gotta go all-in -- and apostates are worse than the infidels. I get a measure of hope for the future now that this attitude has become more common on the right than on the left.
98: Our physician in chief (a woman) does that to mass e-mails to people who could not be considered here equals. I've never seen an official paper document.
OT: How safe does it sound to take a train across country, using a private compartment? I suppose driving would be less risk for Covid, assuming you pack food and pee outside. But that seems like a lot of driving.
I could get dropped at the first station and walk from the destination station to a hotel, but I'd have to change trains at Chicago.
Which would involve several hours of trying to not breath anyone else's air while trying not to freeze in February.
It's not that pricy compared to before-time plane tickets, but it is expensive compared to current flying cost.
I can order a case of beer tomorrow and have it delivered to my house on Saturday. Joe Biden's America is great.
Hefe Weizen or Pilsner? The former is described as having "esters of bananas."
95: You may remember that they started breaching the Capitol shortly after Pence and McConnell started the process of accepting the election results - it was the moment the qberts decided they had outlived their usefulness.
Our new university president just tested positive for COVID. Previously our governor, a trumper, had tested positive as had, more recently, the chair of the county school board. The president actually seems like a good guy, even to this cynic. Hope he gets better. But the educational bureaucracy is not really inspiring a lot of confidence that they have pandemic management under control for the rest of us.
95, 109 It's a big country and there's someone who believes in pretty much every fool thing -- as exemplified by the tea thread, certainly -- but it's kind of hard to believe that so many people were so sure that Mike Pence had a power over elections that had somehow eluded Al Gore and Dick Cheney. Much less Hubert Humphrey, Alben Barkley, and Nelson Rockefeller. And -- yes, I had to look this one up -- even Charles Curtis. (An Indigenous person. How have we never heard of this guy?)
The power of motivated reasoning, I guess. They're apparently onto some sovereign citizen shit about the US having been a corporation since 1871, which Trump magically changed: it's too complicated for people who just wanted Trump to be a superhero and Hillary to be a supervillain.
111: Your analysis is way too rational. Trump and minions said it *and* it led to their desired outcome; and so it was "true."
Of course some "smart" intellectually dishonest law types provided cover. Has the Federalist Society said anything about John Eastman yet? (Chairman of the Federalist Society's Federalism & Separation of Powers practice group .)
103. I did DC-Chicago in October that way. 8/10.
The waiting lounge in Chicago is pretty good, was not at all crowded and had 90% mask use when I caught my return train. Amtrak staff were great about enforcement in the station. There's a reddit board for amtrak where conditions on particular trains and stations get discussed.
Thanks. That's helpful. I'm not eager to sit on a plane and driving fifteen hours each way is tiring.
The only other problem is that the train arrives at 12:30 in the morning and going back it leaves at 3:30 in the morning.
113: Was this before or after Biden's federal mask order?
Biden wasn't president in October, though Trump's campaign kind of buried the issue of who was.
An Indigenous person. How have we never heard of this guy?
He's a fascinating guy, unjustly forgotten, though I guess "Hoover's vice president" was a role ultimately doomed to obscurity for whoever happened to fill it. He generally downplayed his (complex and extensive) Native heritage since his political career took place during an extremely racist era, but he never denied it entirely and it's pretty clear that he was proud of it overall.
I imagine that at home he downplayed being in the Hoover administration.
I bet he got tired of being asked how many words the Republicans had for "economic collapse."
110: we had a much-loved longtime board of regents member die of it last week. It was a bit of a shock.
My aunt (currently dying of covid-19 in a TO hospital) to my sister, earlier today:
'I love you to the moon. And I will be there soon: one of the stars...'
Apparently, she has asked for no more treatment. 'She seems at peace, and feels ready to go.' Her vital organs are shutting down.
Myself, I am just gutted.
I'm so sorry. It's so hard people can't even say goodbye in person.
oh no. Jane, I'm so sorry. How devastating.
Oh, Jane. May her memory be eternal. I'm so sorry.
I'm so so sorry, Jane.
On the personal front, we're still in the slow recovery process. I am at the 'frustrated I don't feel better' stage, really - my brain is planning things my body can't yet handle. Yesterday I felt almost as bad as I did at the worst of it, and I'm guessing it is because I pushed myself too hard during the week, even though I thought I was listening to myself and not doing too much. Or it's just the weird nature of the virus.
How sad, JPJ. I'm sorry.
Paren, I'm hearing it's months for some folks until they have a reasonable amount of energy back. I hope you can give yourself a break and keep resting.