It’s a busy day, here in the CatBox. Diana should be here in a short time change my patch. Then, it’s a grocery delivery day. Store to Door should be here at around Noon. I scheduled an appointment on the morning of Friday 10/23 for a CAT Scan to get an idea of how bad my tumors are and to what extent, if any, the immunotherapy infusions are helping me. May all your Republicans be unemployed. However, those who are where they deserve to be may have prison jobs. (Diana just left.)
Jig Zone Puzzle:
Today’s took me 4:06 (average 5:13). To do it, click here. How did you do?
Cartoon:
Trump* Virus Update:
US Cases: 8,156,124
US Deaths: 221,895
Plus all the Trump*/GOP Plague murders Republicans are hiding from us
Short Takes:
From Daily Kos: Every Republican Supreme Court nomination follows the same pattern:
- Nominee builds up a record of statements showing their allegiance to the most extreme positions on a set of topics dear to the far right.
- Federalist Society vets the nominee against strict ultraconservative checklist on the same list of topics.
- Republican senators pretend that 1. and 2. never happened, as nominee protests they couldn’t possibly speak to any of those topics. Or to anything else.
It’s become commonplace for a candidate who has spent their career signing their name to statements calling the Roe v. Wade decision barbaric to suddenly discover that they have nothing to say on the subject while in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Nothing, that is, except for meaningless hand-waving about “precedent.” But sometimes a non-answer can speak more loudly than a scream. That’s the case when a nominee is confronted by a question that should generate a response as automatic as breathing. That was certainly the case on Tuesday morning, as Trump nominee Amy Coney Barrett weasel-worded her way through an answer that left absolutely no doubt: She intends to be there if Trump needs her to overturn the results of the election.
Earlier in the session, Barrett had been asked if she would recuse herself on a series of cases in which she had a personal or political position. Barrett’s response on all of these was the same—she would follow the rules of the Supreme Court.
This answer has a simpler meaning. It means “no.” That’s because, unlike lower courts, there are no actual rules requiring a Supreme Court justice to step back from any case. Since there are no spare justices to substitute for a recused justice, each is given absolute personal latitude to determine if they feel they need to recuse themselves on a particular topic. No one can make a Supreme Court justice recuse themselves from a case, even if that case is ruling on something in which they have a deep personal involvement or even a fiscal interest.
That also means that every appeal to Supreme Court guidelines is nothing but a dodge. Because there’s essentially nothing to those guidelines but “whatever you think best.” Barrett repeating that she would follow these guidelines is simply a refusal to answer, nothing more. [emphasis added]
Lets be real for a minute. Nobody in their right mind could think Barrett would have been nominated had she not made it cleat that the will overturn the election on behalf of her Fuhrer, if he needs it! While SCOTUS may use conscience as a guideline, Republican Injustices in SCROTUS (Republican anti-Constitutional Venereal Disease) have no conscience. RESIST!!
From NY Times: On the afternoon of Feb. 24, President Trump declared on Twitter that the coronavirus was “very much under control” in the United States, one of numerous rosy statements that he and his advisers made at the time about the worsening epidemic. He even added an observation for investors: “Stock market starting to look very good to me!”
But hours earlier, senior members of the president’s economic team, privately addressing board members of the conservative Hoover Institution, were less confident. Tomas J. Philipson, a senior economic adviser to the president, told the group he could not yet estimate the effects of the virus on the American economy. To some in the group, the implication was that an outbreak could prove worse than Mr. Philipson and other Trump administration advisers were signaling in public at the time.
The next day, board members — many of them Republican donors — got another taste of government uncertainty from Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council. Hours after he had boasted on CNBC that the virus was contained in the United States and “it’s pretty close to airtight,” Mr. Kudlow delivered a more ambiguous private message. He asserted that the virus was “contained in the U.S., to date, but now we just don’t know,” according to a document describing the sessions obtained by The New York Times.
The document, written by a hedge fund consultant who attended the three-day gathering of Hoover’s board, was stark. “What struck me,” the consultant wrote, was that nearly every official he heard from raised the virus “as a point of concern, totally unprovoked.”
The consultant’s assessment quickly spread through parts of the investment world.
No matter what fallout effects the economy, some investors will make money and other investors will lose money. The Republican Reich made sure the 0.1%, the super-rich, had the insider information to protect themselves financially, while Trump* lied to the rest of us. RESIST!!
From YouTube (a blast from the past): Billy Joel – Piano Man (Video)
Ah… the memories! Protest like the 60s! RESIST!!
Vote Blue No Matter Who Top to Bottom!!
12 Responses to “Open Thread – 10/15/2020”
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Cartoon: Yikes!
TVU: Confirmed: 1919 Active: 118 Recoveries: 1770 Deaths: 31. Not good. At all.
DK: Barrett w/do her ‘leaders’ bidding. UGH!
NYT: These Repug investors were making sure they got the money, with nary a backward glance. They should go to prison for that. Sick.
Tell Diana I missed her visit, but do say Hi to her for me. Hope that you have a good, relaxing day. Take a nap, and rest. Take good care, and Thanks, Tom.
*This just in: “Everyone in #SanFrancisco and across America: please make sure you take the opportunity to vote. Your vote is your voice – and you deserve to be heard.” ~ Nancy Pelosi ~
2. “‘No one has done more for our military’ is the least believable thing trump can say when he’s gone 110 days without speaking out about reported bounties on our troops.” ~ Tammy Duckworth ~
3. “dt is scared of any situation that he can’t control.” ~ Mark N. ~
4. “Trump’s campaign luring supporters with offer of free Coronavirus.” ~ Andy Borowitz ~
5. “What Mike Pence adds to the ticket, is that he lies in a calm voice.” ~ Julian Castro ~
6. “If Texans continue to smash voting records, Joe Biden will win Texas and the election will be over on Election Night. No waiting days/weeks to count votes in PA. If you want to destroy any chance trump has to win or steal this election, then focus on Texas. ~ Beto O’Rourke ~ re: #6. “Fingers crossed!” *pb*
TJI #2 – Trumo’s done a lot for the militry, if you count “thinning the herd” as doing something for (I don’t) Ignoring bounties is only yht tip of the iceberg. Forcing honorable senior officers out, callin g them losers and suckers, insulting Gold Star families – all these things contribute to thinning the herd dramatically.
I never even DREAMED that we’d have a chance to turn Texas Blue!
And it may not happen this year – but I hope in my lifetime I see that huge electoral college vote turn reliably blue – Blue – BLUE!
I’d love to order groceries, but the only chain that carries it is out of stock on the thing I need the most, which is a deal breaker. So I’ll keep on with workarounds, I guess. Since you are getting some, just don’t overdo on putting them away. Take your time. I hope – we all hope – your next CAT scan shows progress! BTW, with the exception of politicians, I worry about Republicans being unemployed – it frees them to take their internet hate into the real world with their guns.
Cartoon – I could write for quite a while on this, but the root problem is that racists do not see people of “other” “races” as human beings at all. Misogynists don’t see women as human beings. Homophobes don’t see LGBTQ as human beings. And so on. I have a theory that this may be connected to how they see themselves, based on something someone in the Marine Corps said to me which has haunted me for over 40 years, but this is not the place to go into that.
TVU – Sigh. Yes. And we are having fires here to. Nowhere near me, and due to the direction of the prevailing winds (and the height f the mountains). I don’t appear to be getting smoke from anywhere but the kitchen. But the biggest fire in our recorded history was 40 days ago – until yesterday.
DK (specifically Mark Sumner – a highly knowledgeable and respected staff person) – Democrats appear to beinf a decent job of being out loud with what a sham the process is. I hope at least tome of them are also doing a good job at documenting the lies so we will be prepared to impeach once we get the power (if we get the power – VOTE !!) Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) did the proverbial yeoman’s job with the money tracking, certainly. The Trump* administration may well know that if the electoral college cannot decide, the Constitution provides that election go to the House of Representatives. But they clearly think they can get around that. I pray they are wrong!
NYT – Do these people not know that a second wave of CoViD-19 is starting? Or do they just think if they ignore it , it will go away? If the latter, I have a bridge for sale (across the continent from TC’s bridge.)
Past – I’ve never followed Billy Joel, but Piano Man was so iconic that even I knew about it.
‘Toon: I just spent an hour with Theater of War, on Zoom, where the “Mothers of the Movement,” Gwen Carr, and Valerie Bell were in conversation with a variety of folks. Carr is Eric Garner’s mother, Valerie Bell is Sean Bell’s mother.
TVU: The coronavirus is surging again in the U.S. — “infections jumped by almost 17% over the past week as the number of new cases increased in 38 states and Washington, D.C.,” Axios’ Sam Baker and Andrew Witherspoon report. Germany, France, the U.K. and other European countries are also reporting an increase in cases.
The first confirmed case of COVID-19 reinfection in the U.S. was reported Monday in The Lancet, per Axios’ Fadel Allassan. The patient’s symptoms were more severe the second time, which could be related to the amount of virus they were exposed to, the immune response to it or other, unknown factors.
DK: We live in a “fake News” democracy, rather in a country run by the Oligarchs. We need to get money out of politics as much as possible.
NYT: There be the Oligarchs!
BTP: I happen to really like his music, saw him at Madison Square Garden just a few years ago. The man does sell out shows and has not released a new song in going on 30 years.
If you – or ANYONE – happens to know, I’d appreciate some info WRT CC/Subtitles on Zoom & Skype.
From a cursory search it looks like Zoom CC is available ONLY if the “provider/poster” elects that option.
Skype looks like the recipient can opt to turn on CC.
Trust me, I know that NONE of them will be perfect (even the big boys make some humorous malaprops) – but if I could follow a discussion it’d be worth a try.
It’s a great question and I wish I had an answer. (I didn’t sit in on that conversation, but I’m a long time TOW fan and when Mitch told me Brian said he would post it I knew exactly where to go.) I doubt the conversation had CC – but the video does. That will be a great help tome in transcribing the opening poem (well, opening after all the introductions) which is oee of the most powerful things I have ever heard.
Regarding your response to the ‘Toon: I’m reading “The Worm at the Core, On the Role of Death in Life,” and the thesis is about “Terror Management Theory,” by the 3 psychologists who developed the theory. A big piece of their thesis is that people use their culture’s worldview, and their sense of self-esteeem (derived from that worldview) to fight off the realization that we are not immortal. People with worldviews that threaten the dearly held one (Like Pence and his response to the presence of homosexuality), feel a need to denigrate, de-humanize, even kill the “other,” in order to keep the terror of death at bay. They go on to posit that the terror of mortality is a major driver of human behavior.
Sorry, that was supposed to go into Joanne’s post.
Cartoon: Definitely No to that.
TVU: 51,470 cases, 847 deaths. Scary. that it’s getting out of control again, with 37 states saying they’re getting so many cases in a day, that if you needed to go to the hospital for an emergency, like an accident, or heart attack, they wouldn’t have rooms available.
DK: Really shameful to think we can’t trust this nominee…only for the ones who nominated her.
NYT: tRump is Deaf, Dumb and Blind if he thinks that the Covid-19 is under control. Sick of the 1%, always getting their way especially making sure that when it comes to their money, they’re taken care of.
BFTP: Great song. Billy Joel had some great hits.
Glad you got scheduled for next Friday. I will be praying that it comes out with showing that the treatments are helping your groceries came on time and that you got everything you waned/needed.
Hope the rest of your day was a good.
I had to go and take the cable box back to exchange it, since the other one wasn’t working properly. It was nice and toasty today at 97. We have another 2 more days of this heat.
Take care. Thanks TomCat
Good to know you have a CAT-scan organised for Friday week, TomCat. I hope it shows the infusions slow the growths down or, even better, make them shrink.
3:23 Colourful but hard to eat.
Cartoon: Soon to return in full glory.
TVU: The American infection rate is increasing again, isn’t it?
DK: “…every appeal [by Barrett ] to Supreme Court guidelines is nothing but a dodge”. One thing you can’t say about Barrett is that she isn’t consistent. She has dodged each and every question put to her by Democrats during the hearing, giving Susan Collins the excuse to question her competence to fill the vacant seat.
NYT: I do not think for one minute that the big Wall-Street investors are half as dumb as Trump’s base and have stopped listening to his lies a long time ago, if they ever believed them. They can see for themselves that COVID-19 isn’t contained by any standard and that a handfull of monopolist super-companies like Amazon and Facebook make huge profits and determine a stock market which has little connection with the economy as we and Trump’s base deal with in daily reality.
BFTP: Piano man suits our moods perfectly, I think.
Thanks and way pooped TGIF Hugs to all!