Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

We still have time to mess this up!

He really is that stupid.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

I’d hate to be the candidate who lost to this guy.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Innocent people don’t delay justice.

Not all heroes wear capes.

The willow is too close to the house.

You are here: Home / Pet Blogging / Cat Blogging / Monday Evening Open Thread: Neighborhood Watch

Monday Evening Open Thread: Neighborhood Watch

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(I’m meh about the Big Lebowski, but Walter Sobchat is a great name for a big burly bicolor cat!)

Reader Interactions

150Comments

  1. 1.

    cain

    Wait.. was Aaron Purr, a host on the detective show ‘Furry Mason – the case of the missing tuna?” Maybe that was Raymond Purr.. oops.

  3. 3.

    Betty Cracker

    I’m just gonna park these two interesting tweets right here:

    Also:

    I sure hope Biden recorded that call because Trump’s totally gonna lie about it.

  5. 5.

    trollhattan

    Holy moly, that Twitter thread has the highest concentration of clever cat nyms I’ve ever encountered. And Meh really earns his name.

  10. 10.

    Ohio Mom

    I’m trying to imagine what that Biden-Trump conversation was like. Biden wasn’t going to lavish praise and Trump was not going to be forthcoming — neither had anything to offer the other. Sounds very awkward.

  14. 14.

    Betty Cracker

    @Ohio Mom: I’m not sure it was a good idea to rise to Kellyanne’s bait, but maybe Biden will figure out a way to turn it to his advantage. He surely knows none of the Trump people have any intention of acting in good faith.

  15. 15.

    trollhattan

    Gavin Newsom’s presser today summarized temp overflow hospital space either available or in process. It will include our local discarded basketball arena, which apparently hadn’t fallen into disarray to the point of uselessness.

    Newsom’s task is like dealing with a wildfire that’s two ridges away, while Cuomo’s in the middle of the fire. There’s a huge span of predicted peaks for California’s outbreak and Newsom is presuming later and larger than some models predict. Seems prudent and it’s okay to hope he’s ultimately wrong.

  20. 20.

    Mike in NC

    Per WaPo, the number of Americans to die from the Trump Virus has passed 10,000.

  21. 21.

    kindness

    It’s starting to warm up some so I’ve been keeping the door between my kitchen and the garage open.  There is a critter door in the back door of the garage so they can let themselves in and out.  What is happening a lot now is the cats will let themselves out and within 5 minutes be sitting at the patio door off the living room wanting to be let back in.  When I do they repeat and rinse within another 5 minutes.  I got tired of it.  I’m not leaving the living room door open and if they really want to come back in they have to go back to the garage door and come in on their own.  They hate that part.

  22. 22.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @trollhattan: Presumably Joe laid in a “Mr. President” wherever & whenever appropriate. On the principle that (as the military puts it) you salute the rank, not the person holding it. (Though the words probably tasted like ashes on his tongue.)

  24. 24.

    Chyron HR

    @Ohio Mom:

    “We’re going to kill you, Donald.  That’s not a political metaphor, I mean you are going to be tried for crimes against humanity and fucking executed, you evil son of a bitch.”

  27. 27.

    Ohio Mom

    Trollhattan @17: Yes, a “sir” or two, definitely a “Mr. President” in the mix — I agree with Betty, we have to figure Joe Biden knows what he is doing, he’s an old-fashioned politician used to dealing with all types.

    But he has nothing to learn from Trump and there is nothing Trump is interested in hearing about from anyone else so I assume it was a brief call.

  33. 33.

    Baud

    @Baud:

    NPR

    Vice President Biden and President Trump had a good call,” according to a statement from Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield. “VP Biden shared several suggestions for actions the Administration can take now to address the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and expressed his appreciation for the spirit of the American people in meeting the challenges facing the nation.”

     

    “We had a really wonderful, warm conversation,” Trump said at the daily coronavirus briefing at the White House. “He gave me his point of view, and I fully understood that, and we just had a very friendly conversation.”

    https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/06/828341826/biden-and-trump-discuss-coronavirus-response-by-phone

  34. 34.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    Goddamn. Turned on MSNBC to watch Ari Melber and found Trump still in full baying/​preening mode. I could take only five minutes before I had to turn it off. He is lying about everything. And the lies are becoming more outlandish.

  36. 36.

    japa21

    @Baud: I’m really not interested in how the conversation went. I want to know Biden’s first words after he hung up.

  39. 39.

    Baud

    @japa21:

    I believe protocol demands that the first words after finishing a conversation with Trump be “Christ, what an asshole.”

  43. 43.

    Elizabelle

    If any of you have wingnuts telling you that Obama depleted the emergency stockpiles:  ProPublica was curious about that too.  And the answer… is not what the wingnuts are expecting.

    How Tea Party Budget Battles Left the National Emergency Medical Stockpile Unprepared for Coronavirus

    Fiscal restraints imposed by Republicans in Congress in the early years of the Obama administration left the U.S. less prepared to respond to the coronavirus pandemic today.

    Dire shortages of vital medical equipment in the Strategic National Stockpile that are now hampering the coronavirus response trace back to the budget wars of the Obama years, when congressional Republicans elected on the Tea Party wave forced the White House to accept sweeping cuts to federal spending.

    Among the victims of those partisan fights was the effort to keep adequate supplies of masks, ventilators, pharmaceuticals and other medical equipment on hand to respond to a public health crisis. Lawmakers in both parties raised the specter of shortchanging future disaster response even as they voted to approve the cuts.

    … During the Trump administration, the White House has consistently proposed cutting the CDC and the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, which took over stockpile management from the CDC. Congress approved more stockpile funding than Trump’s budget requested in every year of his administration, for a combined $1.93 billion instead of $1.77 billion, according to budget documents.

    The White House budget request for 2021, delivered in February as officials were already warning about the dangerous new coronavirus, proposed holding the stockpile’s funding flat at $705 million and cutting resources for the office that oversees it.

  44. 44.

    Cermet

    Considering between 1 billion to 4 billion small animals & birds are uselessly slaughtered by cats every year, isn’t it irresponsible to allow pet cats to roam freely outside?

  45. 45.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @germy:

    RIP. Too bad she got tagged with that one role, because she was quite good in a lot of other things, including The Avengers pre-Emma Peel.

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Tom Nichols @RadioFreeTom
    The woman who asked him about the second half of his physical – good for her. Been wondering about that. And he was clearly flummoxed and worried by the question.

    I hope someone posts this video

  49. 49.

    Mary G

    President Trump is now lashing out at @jonkarl saying he is a "third rate" reporter. Trump angrily said to him, "You will never make it."Note: Jon Karl is asking about a federal IG report that found hospitals across the country face dire shortages of vital medical equipment.— Yamiche Alcindor (@Yamiche) April 6, 2020

    I’m so old that I remember when Jon Karl was considered a conservative cheerleader.

  51. 51.

    Sab

    @A Ghost to Most: Nonsense. My cats ( all rescues) hate to go outside. They have been there and done that. Every cat I had as a kid eventually got hit by a car ( within 2 to 5 years.)  My guys are all well over ten years old.

    I adopted my dad’s cat. He did well outside, except for the time he broke his leg, and the time he almost got his ear chewed off, and he is blind from toxoplasmosis in his eye from eating the wrong rodent. Plus tapeworms occasionally. Indoor cat now.

    He likes windowsills with open windows.

  55. 55.

    Spanky

    @Mary G: Well, it’s actually true that Karl is a third-rate reporter. What are we supposed to make of Trump saying that?

  57. 57.

    Splitting Image

    @germy:

    Can’t complain about living until 94, but she’ll be greatly missed.

    Aside from playing opposite Patrick Macnee (also very much missed), Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg share a little bit of Bond trivia: they were the only two Bond girls from the 1960s who were older than Bond in their respective films. (Connery for Blackman, Lazenby for Rigg.)

  60. 60.

    cain

    @Splitting Image:

    I was wondering given her age. Connery is like 89 or something.  (just looked it up..woot.. I’m good)

    She looks younger than him in that movie. Way younger.

  65. 65.

    NotMax

    @debbie

    With street traffic so severely reduced, digging up the pavement fronting a certain Tower ought be considered.

  68. 68.

    Sab

    @debbie: He was too preoccupied with golf.

    Where the hell was Rob Portman? By February anyone with any awareness knew this was barrelling at us. And he was okay with Trump as president for the duration.

  70. 70.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    General note: If you don’t want to watch Trump’s briefing rallies but want to follow along at a distance or occasionly dip in, Aaron Rupar (@ATRupar on Twitter) is your guy. He covers them all and posts video snippets.

  72. 72.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @germy: thanks

    @Mary G: didn’t Karl publish something a week or so ago calling on the press to be less adversarial with The Beast?

  73. 73.

    Martin

    @germy: To who? Farmers don’t sell to grocery stores – they sell to distributors. The food banks don’t really have a distribution system, and the grocery distributors aren’t willing to do that.

    States should step in here and do that at the state level. The food banks have a sorta-kinda distribution system, but I don’t think it’d be capable of working at this level where getting the goods from market to market is the hard part.

  76. 76.

    Fair Economist

    The Kinsa internet thermometer fever report lost a lot of its usefulness for the last two weeks, because of plummeting rates of non-COVID illness disguising any change from COVID. *But* now in many parts of the country, fever rates have dropped to *zero* – that’s right, literally nobody running a fever – and so the report is starting to have uses again, although the graphics aren’t too helpful, because they’re tuned to much higher baseline fever level.

    The best graphics comes from the “trends” report I linked. It’s a bit misleading, because the fire engine red mostly comes from places that hit zero now reporting a small number of cases. Probably a bad thing in the current environment, but not really showing a massive increase.

    A couple of comments:

    Covid-19 looks to be spreading geographically. It looks like a wave of initial infections that presumably came off the West coast is now reaching the Mountain West, a similar wave from Greater NYC is in West PA to Virginia, and a northbound wave from NYC is entering Maine. The areas behind the wave have higher fever rates and presumably COVID rates, but they show bluer colors indicating continuing drops because they never got to 0%. As I said, the graphics still have problems.

    There looks like there is a ferocious epidemic spread going on along I-65 from Nashville up to Indianapolis. It’s probably further down to Birmingham at least, which still has substantial fever rates, but that’s blue possibly because the infection hit before non-COVID infections disappeared. There’s also spread going on in southern GA and AL. These are, I suspect, from spring breakers on the FL panhandle aka the “Redneck Riviera” going home. DeSantis killed a LOT of people delaying the closure orders.

    It looks like the Bay Area CA may be winning the second round against COVID (after being an initial outbreak center). Fever rates are dropping to near zero throughout the area in the last day or two. If they stay down, I anticipate new case rates will plummet in about a week, followed by hospitalizations and death. The rest of the West Coast is generally heading in the right direction, but is not bouncing on 0 yet.

  77. 77.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    so anybody who needs “inspiration” for next November…

    Mark Joseph [email protected]_DC
    27m
    WOW: By a 5–4 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court reverses a lower court order extending the deadline for mail-in ballots in Wisconsin. All four liberals dissent.

    The conservative majority just effectively threw out thousands of ballots. Incredible.

    Link coming soon.

  79. 79.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    Good news: Ari Melber finally on.

    Bad news: Talking with Thomas Friedman.

  82. 82.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    all the things wrong with this….

    Aaron Rupar @atrupar
    · 1h
    Trump begins the April 6 #TrumpPressBriefing by announcing he’s dispatched “two of the leading companies, these are brilliant companies” to go to the UK and help treat Boris Johnson — but he never bothers mentioning their names

  83. 83.

    Miss Bianca

    @germy: She’s hot in that photo, and you know the best thing of all? Absolutely no work done on that face. Wrinkles, smile lines, skin that looks like skin and not some poreless plastic material. Sigh. Those were the days, my friend…

  86. 86.

    trollhattan

    @Fair Economist:

    Here’s hoping your Bay Area analysis proves correct, because that would be yuge if it proves out. Over in the Valley, a pretty big deal is this development:

    Sacramento County’s main drive-through coronavirus testing site has widened its reach to allow anyone with mild symptoms to qualify for free testing – and health officials are encouraging more residents to go online to determine whether they are eligible.

    The testing has been run by a private clinical research company called Verily – a sister company of Google – at Cal Expo since late March.

    To date, though, the testing has focused on people at high risk for COVID-19, with an emphasis on healthcare workers and first responders.

    The widening of the testing will allow more people with mild symptoms to find out if they have the virus, and will allow epidemiologists and clinicians to learn more about how the virus is spreading through the community.

    As of Monday, 462 Sacramento County residents had tested positive for coronavirus and 18 have died.

    County officials say the appointment-only site is now taking people who do not have a doctor’s referral. Residents must determine if they are eligible by responding to screening questions on the http://www.projectbaseline.com website.
    https://www.sacbee.com/news/coronavirus/article241812841.html#storylink=cpy

    Before today one needed a doctor’s referral, so they are either caught up with testing or have expanded capacity.

  89. 89.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Aaron Rupar @atrupar 25m
    “A lot of people are tired of looking at games that are 5 years old. I looked the other day, I saw somebody, I said, ‘wow, he looks great.’ I forgot it was 9 years ago” — Trump concludes by saying he’s not a big fan of watching old sporting events & hopes leagues can resume soon

    so in addition to spending two hours of every day having extended tantrums and airing all his grievances, trump in the middle of an international public health and economic, trump has time to watch reruns of old superbowls

  94. 94.

    TS (the original)

    @Betty Cracker:

    I sure hope Biden recorded that call because Trump’s totally gonna lie about it.

    Trump will just take Biden’s ideas/information and pass it off as his own. If Biden goes down the path of “bipartisanship”  my head will explode.

  95. 95.

    Sister Golden Bear

    A tale of two companies….

    Cancelled my Comcast internet (last story, but back when I bought the house it was the only provider available) because I’ve gotten a 1 GB dedicated fiber optic line installed.

    Waited more than two hours on hold, but at least the customer service agent actually wasn’t too unhelpful when I told him (white lie) that I’d moved outside of the service area.

    (FYI, they will ask you for a ZIP code of your new location so check with a service finder like this one to make sure they don’t service the area. I used 96923, which is a hamlet high up in the Sierra Nevada).

    Also cancelled DirecTV, which I’ve loved until AT&T bought them out and has steadily been running things downhill, plus my neighbors refuse to cut their trees which was causing reception problems. Final straw was when the receiver died, and I realized with being laid-off it was time to cut the cord.

    With DirectTV, I got an agent within two minutes, who didn’t even bother verifying the my “new” ZIP code, although I did tell him semi-truthfully that I couldn’t get reception.

    Signing up for Hulu Live, which has almost all the channels I want at less half the cost I was paying. A $60/year donation to PBS provides PBS content. The only major annoyance is that Hulu Live doesn’t carry the Science Channel, and it’s related brands.

  96. 96.

    TS (the original)

    @Baud:

    NYT seems to be the first with reporting.

    But of course they are – their reward for but her emails and getting trump elected.

  97. 97.

    trollhattan

    @TS (the original):

    Biden’s suggestion” “Mr. President, if I were you I’d start NASCAR back up and attend the very first race. Don’t sit in the sky box, sit in the stands with your dedicated fans. Do it soon, sir, they will love you because they miss you so very much.”

    Would he steal that idea?

  98. 98.

    cain

    @Fair Economist:

    Once it happens though, we need to start building the industry and start focusing on PPE equipment and ventilators and start building the engines and start getting those to all the states.

    I think the west coast states will have to lead and definitely ignore trump and FEMA and hiding the operations from them. They cannot be trusted. Definitely undercut the market while they are at it so that nobody goes to FEMA either.

  99. 99.

    Feathers

    I confess to sometimes seeing “The Avengers” and thinking that they were talking about John Steed and Emma or Cathy or even Tara (I came around eventually). It doesn’t happen often anymore, but I’m still kinda annoyed to realize that they’re talking about the MCU.

    I have the complete Emma Peel DVD boxset. Wish I’d picked up the Cathy Gale as well, but I was between jobs when they came out.

  100. 100.

    Gin & Tonic

    @trollhattan: RI’s governor had a news conference late last week just for kids, and in answer to some boy’s question she also clarified that the Easter bunny was considered an essential employee.

  103. 103.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WereBear:

    We are all the abused dependents of a raging narcissistic Big Daddy now. 

    1.  Ewww.

    2. We’ve been abused dependents since Jan 20, 2017.

  104. 104.

    Feathers

    @Sister Golden Bear: The donation to PBS is good, but you can also get an indoor HDTV antenna to get all your over the air channels. It works very well for me. I have a Roku TV and it even lets me pause live TV for up to 90 minutes. You need a thumb drive, but it is super easy. In theory you can also record programs but I’ve never actually gotten it to work. Maybe time to try again, they’ve upgraded the TV listings since the last time I tried.

  107. 107.

    Brachiator

    @Splitting Image:

    Aside from playing opposite Patrick Macnee (also very much missed), Honor Blackman and Diana Rigg share a little bit of Bond trivia: they were the only two Bond girls from the 1960s who were older than Bond in their respective films. (Connery for Blackman, Lazenby for Rigg.)

    Blackman and another Bond Girl, Shirley Eaton, also appeared in episodes of “The Saint.”

    I was really impressed by Blackman in “Goldfinger.” And later I also thought she was cool in “The Avengers.”

  108. 108.

    TS (the original)

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    The conservative majority just effectively threw out thousands of ballots. Incredible.

    I’m sure Sen Collins is concerned. Then again, she will only win via vote suppression, so maybe not.

  109. 109.

    debbie

    @Sab:

    He’s such a god-damned mealy mouth. I need to lay off emailing him for a while or I’ll be put on a stalker list.

  110. 110.

    TS (the original)

    @trollhattan:

    Would he steal that idea?

    I don’t believe Biden would say it – he is just too much into the “good governance” role.

  112. 112.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @WereBear: Comcast will only let you quit after you sacrifice your first-born child. They’re notorious for lengthy semi-abusive hard-sells to get you to keep from cancelling. Telling them you’ve moved out of their service area is quite literally the only way to avoid this. And then you need to call back again to double check that they’ve actually cancelled your service, and make sure they credit you for the returned equipment.

    Last time I moved, they sent me to collections for “missing” equipment even though I had the receipts showing I’d returned it. Thankfully a Comcast office was still open, so I declined the offer to mail it, dropped it off at the office, and took photos of it on their return cart. Initially, the Comcast employee didn’t want to give me a receipt (saying the warehouse would check it in), but I made damn sure she gave me one.

    So we’ll see if they try to screw me over again.

    @Feathers: I thought about a getting an HDTV antenna, but then I’d need to get a DVR as well, since I usually don’t watch TV live, except for the news. Hulu Live has the local channels that I care about, and includes DVR functionality. But it’s an option if needed.

  113. 113.

    japa21

    @TS (the original): Kind of curious as to the legal reasoning they gave.  After all, states dictate election rules.  For example, in Florida in 2000 the SCOTUS would never get involved in how the state handled the counting… oh wait

  115. 115.

    PenAndKey

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: You know, there aren’t many times I’ve been more disgusted to have been born and raised in Wisconsin than I am right now. Our legislature is currently being led by two men, Vos and Fitzgerald, who have effectively stated that they’re perfectly fine murdering their fellow citizens, even if it’s through malignant neglect, if it means they stay in power. And the US Supreme Court has just sided with them.

    Between the State Supreme Court just giving Ever’s last ditch attempt to move the election out of the peak pandemic week and this the GOP isn’t even trying to hide the fact they care more about power than anything else. Milwaukee is practically shut down and only has a handful of polling stations that can even be opened. Madison is the same way. They’re blatantly trying to stack the deck in their favor, and they don’t care at all that they’re doing so in a way that will lead to more deaths.

  116. 116.

    trollhattan

    @Sister Golden Bear:

    I discovered [shock] one may not cancel SiriusXM using their website. One must call, at which point one is speaking to somebody in the Philippines whose jerb is to propose various price-saving deals to forestall a cancellation. Heaven forfend.

    After a significant chunk of an hour the deed was done. Now I get daily emails and weekly mail from SiriusXM trying to lure me back.

    Just another slice of our shiny digital future.

  117. 117.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I think this is a bullshit decision, but it is not invalidating thousands of ballots.  Absentee ballots must be hand delivered by 8pm tomorrow or postmarked by tomorrow and received by April 13.  I got my absentee ballot today, but I am going to go deliver it in person tomorrow.

    Source.

  121. 121.

    jl

    Thanks for cut kitpix.

    I never wondered what a cute cat’s or dog’s name was when they were cutely fiddling around, or lazing around a window.

    But now I will. ‘Thanks,’  Balloon Juice!

  122. 122.

    Patricia Kayden

    NEW: public affairs folks sent this notice out to leadership on the USS Theodore Roosevelt, telling them to tell their sailors they didn’t have permission to record SECNAV Modly and that bashing “Senior Leaders” online won’t help anything. Stay out the “negative media spotlight” pic.twitter.com/xuFlQGK6rF— Geoff Ziezulewicz (@JournoGeoffZ) April 7, 2020

  124. 124.

    PenAndKey

    @Patricia Kayden: telling them to tell their sailors they didn’t have permission to record SECNAV Modly

    Someone should really tell Modly and his lackeys the first rule of hole digging.

  125. 125.

    Gravenstone

    @trollhattan: Most places do that. Order new features online? Sure. Cancel anything online? Not on your life! Spent 50 minutes on hold with DirecTV the other day to cancel my MLB package for the season we currently aren’t having. At least it was a pleasant enough 5 minute conversation with the young lady – from Ecuador (I think that’s what the post-interaction survey claimed).

  126. 126.

    Gravenstone

    @PenAndKey: 

    Our legislature is currently being led by two men, Vos and Fitzgerald, who have effectively stated that they’re perfectly fine murdering their fellow citizens

    I’ve argued elsewhere that if any of the (predominantly older) poll workers becomes ill in the coming weeks and dies from this stunt, I want those two and their entire legislative caucus charged as accessories to manslaughter. Never happen of course. Republicans can never have agency nor receive blame for their malfeasance. But yeah, they’re willfully jeopardizing people’s lives here. All to retain their own power.

  127. 127.

    Origuy

    The Declaration of Arbroath was signed on April 6, 1320. It was a letter from Scottish nobles and bishops to the Pope, rejecting English rule over Scotland and declaring Scottish sovereignty. It has been called a declaration of independence and almost certainly influenced America’s. The most famous passage from the document goes as follows:

    Because, while a hundred of us remain alive, we will not submit in the slightest measure, to the domination of the English. We do not fight for honour, riches, or glory, but solely for freedom which no true man gives up but with his life.

  128. 128.

    Amir Khalid

    Fuck it, I’m going to finish my last bag of Aussie cheddar cheese popcorn today. Even if the supermarket is all out of it on my next trip.

  130. 130.

    mrmoshpotato

    @WereBear:

    I used to think the Republican base fell for the “veneer of statesmanship” 

    For the life of me, I can’t fathom why you’d even hallucinate a “veneer of statesmanship.”

  135. 135.

    Amir Khalid

    @Mary G:

    In other news, Liverpool FC has rescinded (and apologised for) plans to furlough non-playing staff during the pandemic. The plan would have seen these members of staff paid 80% of their salaries out of public funds and 20% by the club. The anouncement of the furlough plan had infuriated fans and prominent former players, who denounced Liverpool’s owner the Fenway Sports Group for disrespecting the values of the club and the spirit of its anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone.

  138. 138.

    Elizabelle

    @Amir Khalid:   Weirdly, and per CNN reporting I have not yet seen elsewhere, looks like Trump and Modly are trying to walk their stupidity back WRT dissing Captain Crozier.

    CNN report:  is this Trump gaslighting, or did they get a clue how terribly Modly’s rant went over?  And how much the Navy and others will remember this debacle on election day??
    Trump says he may ‘get involved’ in case of Navy captain removed from duty

    “The letters shouldn’t have been sent, and certainly they shouldn’t have been leaked,” Trump said. “This is a military operation. I must tell you, I’ve heard very good things about the gentlemen. Both gentlemen, by the way, I will say this, about both gentlemen. And I may look into it from the standpoint of something should be resolved because I’m hearing good things about both of people.”

    Trump added that he “may just get involved.”

    “You have two good people and they’re arguing,” he said, “And I’m good, believe it or not, at settling arguments. I’m good at settling these arguments. So, I may look at it in great detail, in detail, and I’ll be able to figure it out very fast.”

    Trump said the letters were a “mistake,” not only because it made families “nervous,” but it also “shows weakness.”

    ….  Modly released a statement later Monday apologizing for blasting the ousted commander in an address to the ship’s crew earlier in the day.

    “I want to apologize to the Navy for my recent comments to the crew of the (USS Theodore Roosevelt),” Modly said in his statement. “Let me be clear, I do not think Captain Brett Crozier is naïve nor stupid. I think, and always believed him to be the opposite. We pick our carrier commanding officers with great care. Captain Crozier is smart and passionate.”

    He continued: “I believe, precisely because he is not naive and stupid, that he sent his alarming email with the intention of getting it into the public domain in an effort to draw public attention to the situation on his ship. I apologize for any confusion this choice of words may have caused.”

    When I saw the headline, my heart sank.  I was afraid Trump was going to fire Crozier on the spot.  But … Modly is actually out on the plank.

  141. 141.

    lol chikinburd

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: We know the plan now: Trump’s going to win a bunch of states’ electoral votes five votes to four.  He’ll win Wisconsin’s 5-2 and then 5-4, but that was somewhat clear even before the pandemic; now, the tactic’s sure to spread.

  142. 142.

    Jeffro

    @Elizabelle: trumpov saw the video of the sailors cheering a fired Crozier, and ‘thinks’, “uh oh…dis bad…maybe I can be a SuperMuricanHero here by somehow stepping in, even now…”

    Never mind that, as the phrase goes, Everything trumpov Touches Dies…

    I’m sure he’ll tell us all about it at tomorrow’s “ME!” rally, er, WH presser.  Maybe someone in the WH press corps will ask him about pardoning that SEAL psycho, or follow up on today’s question about the ‘second half’ of trumpov’s supposed physical…

  143. 143.

    Elizabelle

    @Jeffro:  I desperately hope that does not work, that it becomes obvious that Trump wanted Crozier fired.

    Modly, though, and his theatricalism.  What a nut job.

  144. 144.

    Martin

    Data time:

    At some point there’s an inflection off of the exponential curve were it starts toward something like a gaussian integral function. The graphs you may be seeing of infection is being modeled to a gaussian function because the historical trend for the number of infected is a gaussian curve, but because fatalities don’t drop, it looks like the integral of that function. The point of my models is to try and predict when that inflection point happens.

    Historically, the gaussian is the result of herd immunity taking over, which we aren’t (hopefully) relying on here, so I don’t quite know how to model out the world after that inflection because we don’t know how effective various approaches are, where herd immunity is much more of a natural and therefore more predictable function.  So, I’m looking for the point where the local (7 day, in my case) trend goes to 0, meaning zero growth in new cases over 7 days (people still dying fast, but the rate isn’t gong up) – that’s the first part of the inflection, but the slope doesn’t go negative as immediately as a gaussian function would suggest – it kind of plateaus out for a while – and then goes negative – the 2nd part of the inflection. I’m also looking for that point.

    I also have a theory that fatalities takes 21days to show the first inflection and then another 10 or so days for the 2nd. That’s based on China’s data (which may not be accurate).

    • Italy: +636. 7 day slope 0.05 vs 0.34 on the day of national lockdown. 10 days since peak. Their first inflection came at day 13 of the national lockdown and day 22 of the local one, so I assumed the local lockdown was the driver for the fatalities. (So, the peak doesn’t necessarily come right at the start of the plateau, it just means it’s the highest daily fatalities that wasn’t notably higher than the start of the plateau.) They’re on day 18 of their plateau and it’s not yet clearly turned negative.
    • Spain: New model. +700. 7 day slope 0.07 vs 0.43 on day of lockdown. Despite Spain announcing a decline in fatalities off of their peak of 961, I think they’re just in the plateau. But they  plateaued just 11 days after national lockdown, but it was 19 days after Italy’s lockdown.

    So, I think the x days since lockdown only works for the first lockdown, which makes sense. We’re not dumb, so we start taking precautions before we’re told to. The question is – how effective are those voluntary actions. In the case of Italy and Spain looking at China, not at all effective. In the case of Spain looking at Italy, possibly very effective. So, the US may degrade into a similar red vs blue situation where states that looked sympathetically (the populace, not the governor) toward CA and WA see outcomes the trend toward CA and WA timelines, and states that look antagonistically toward those states see outcomes that act more independently. This is foreshadowing toward American exceptionalism, by the way…

    • US: +1164. 7 day slope 0.17 vs 0.24 at the time of CAs lockdown. 2 days since peak. So, we see a slight easing, but it’s only 3 days, and since NY is half of fatalities, it may just be reflecting NY trends dominating the rest of the nation with other states just waiting to catch up and take over. 
    • NY: +539. 7 day slope 0.18 vs 0.48 at the time of NYs lockdown. 2 days since peak. This is a big improvement over the old trend, but the old trend was incredibly fast, and their 7 day trend is still higher than the national trend. Jury is still out, but less is better.
    • CA: +32. 7 day slope of 0.12 vs 0.24 at the time of state lockdown. 1 day since peak. So, we’re seeing consistent easing, though fatalities are still generally going up. It’s possible that CA hit our plateau on 4/1 but the data since then has been pretty lumpy, and the slope still points higher, so I’m not going to say we’re out of the woods just yet. Santa Clara is +0 for the first time in a while and has a 7 day slope of 0.06 – very similar to Italy and Spain. LA has a 7 day slope of 0.18, so it’s still climbing, if easing.
    • FL: +15. 7 day slope of 0.18 vs 0.19 at the time of state lockdown. 4 days since peak, but FLs data is so fucked up I don’t trust that peak day.

    Conclusion – I’ll keep doing this but it’s already showing diminishing value. Googles travel data by destination is maybe among the most compelling data showing the effectiveness of the various lockdowns – both state mandated as well as voluntary social distancing, and would probably give us a lot of insight into how various states will bend their local curves. My guess is that we’ll not hit the most catastrophic predictions for near term fatalities, we’ll not hit a number like 10K per day, but we’ll get stuck between 1K and 5K per day and stay there for a long fucking time as the mechanisms to get out of that state don’t get implemented because of federal inaction, and political objection to the kinds of big brotherish steps that would be necessary.

  145. 145.

    Citizen Alan

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: If they were capable of introspection, every single person who literally mocked the idea that judicial nominations should play a part in who they voted for would be out in the streets in sackcloth and ashes begging random strangers for forgiveness. But they’re not, so they aren’t.

  146. 146.

    Citizen Alan

    @Feathers: LOL. I had the exact opposite experience in 1979 when I saw “The Avengers” in TV Guide when I was about ten or so. I stayed up late w/o permission to watch it expecting to see Iron Man and Thor and got some British guy in a bowler hat. Very frustrating at the time, though I became a big fan when I was older and more able to appreciate Mrs. Peel’s charms.

  147. 147.

    Citizen Alan

    @Brachiator:

    I was really impressed by Blackman in “Goldfinger.”

    Pussy Galore was always one of my favorite Bond girls. My only objections to Goldfinger (though it’s a pretty big one) is that Goldfinger would have won in the end had Bond not literally raped Pussy into changing her allegiance.

  148. 148.

    eachother

    The 8PM outdoor howling was amazing.  I never heard anything so beautiful.  I’ve heard cats howl.  I’ve heard dogs, wolves and coyotes howl.  The human howling tonight communicated every message across the spectrum of feelings a howling can generate.  I got the message and returned in kind.

  149. 149.

    mrmoshpotato

    Well well well…

    “Even a potato in a dark cellar has a certain low cunning about him which serves him in excellent stead. He knows perfectly well what he wants and how to get it.” – Samuel Butler https://t.co/PsEBQIOzau— Hillary Warned Us (@HillaryWarnedUs) April 6, 2020

    I humbly accept this compliment.

    (Click the tweet and have a laugh.)

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