Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Today’s GOP: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

All your base are belong to Tunch.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Our job is not to persuade republicans but to defeat them.

I know this must be bad for Joe Biden, I just don’t know how.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Open Thread: Biden on Next Steps Vaccinations and Delta Variant (LIVE) 4pm ET

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  1. 1.

    WaterGirl

    I did 5 normal things in the past week.

    • I went out to dinner – outside.
    • I went to an outdoor party with a mix of vaccinated & unvaccinated – I kept my distance.
    • I got a haircut – masked the whole time.
    • I got body work for the first time in 18 months – we were both masked.
    • I had someone clean my gutters – maybe in the same outdoor space for 3 minutes max.

    .
    A couple hours ago I started to feel achy, flushed, then chilled.  Fuck all these fucking people who won’t get vaccinated.

  2. 2.

    sab

    The pitbull was spayed yesterday, came home last night and spent all day  today curled into a little ball, pretending to sleep.

    Demon cat was neutered today,  spent all day at the vet and came home “Where is breakfast and lunch. I missed both!”

  4. 4.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @WaterGirl: That sucks but it could be something other than Covid. I’m expecting a lot of cold and flu as things return to more normal because those viruses have just been waiting to get their hooks in all of us for the first time in a year and a half. Still, the anti vaxxers are infuriating.

    I did a bunch of normal stuff last week but it was in Vermont where just about everyone is vaccinated, and boy was it nice to be there. I was visiting two cousins on my mom’s side that live there – they were the last of the family I see regularly that I hadn’t seen since getting vaxxed. Maryland is not doing too bad with getting folks vaccinated, especially where I am (Montgomery County). Far West and parts of the Eastern Shore are TFG country and hence there’s more people that just won’t.

  6. 6.

    sab

    @WaterGirl: He is still spraying, but otherwise he is a sweety. You are right. Henceforth Dobby

    ETA : We call Ponyo the pitbull Goldfish because it fits her

    She answers to Ponyo. Goldfish is our name when we don’t want her to know she is being discussed.

  8. 8.

    CaseyL

    @WaterGirl: I hate to sound woo, but take some zinc.  I find taking some the instant I think I’m coming down with something can often keep it away.

    Hope it’s nothing, and you feel better soon!

  9. 9.

    NotMax

    Nolympic games.

    For decades, Nielsen’s verdict on the Games was the easiest way for advertisers and journalists to judge whether or not NBC’s coverage was resonating with viewers. The network’s press releases bragging about huge tune-in practically wrote themselves, with total viewer numbers often cracking 30 million-plus for summer Olympiads as recently as London 2012. During the first 15 years of the 21st century, NBC’s summer Olympics numbers defied gravity, adding audience even as almost everything else on linear TV declined. That changed in Rio back in 2016, but even with a nearly 20 percent drop, those Games still pulled in an average prime-time audience of just over 25 million viewers. It’s too soon to say precisely where 2021’s ratings will end up, but the first few days of data suggest a decline north of 40 percent isn’t out of the question. The technical term for this kind of Nielsen performance is “yikes.”
    [snip]
    …Anthony Crupi, a veteran reporter on the advertising beat who now serves as sports media reporter for Sportico, tells me NBC’s prime-time Olympic ratings “are actually down a lot more” than folks on Madison Avenue expected, coming in well below the numbers the network guaranteed to advertisers. While that last part isn’t all that unusual — networks regularly overpromise audience delivery — Crupi wouldn’t be surprised if NBC had to start offering so-called “makegoods” to its clients. “I imagine that the likes of Toyota and Geico are going to be offered some freebies in Sunday Night Football,” he says. Source

  10. 10.

    WaterGirl

    @CaseyL: I actually have zinc in the house, but hadn’t thought to take it.  I just took two.

    As soon as I realized I didn’t feel good, I did take everything else I had sort of fallen off of taking regularly – vitamin D, probiotic, vitamin C.

  11. 11.

    Josie

    @WaterGirl: It is so maddening that we still have to deal with this. I hope it is just a simple cold and goes away quickly. Keep us in the loop.

  12. 12.

    Albatrossity

    @sab:  Yikes! I hope you feel better soon. But yes, I’m tired of pretending that the parasites among us, who want all those normal things but are unwilling to help society get there, deserve respect. They just don’t

  17. 17.

    HumboldtBlue

    @WaterGirl:

    well shit, feel better.

    If it’s any consolation, Liverpool, despite losing, looked very good against Herta Berlin in a preseason friendly. A couple of youngsters really shone and the return of VVD and Gomez was a wonderful sight to see. Now you have something to tell Tony J and Amir.

  18. 18.

    Fair Economist

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:

    That sucks but it could be something other than Covid. I’m expecting a lot of cold and flu as things return to more normal because those viruses have just been waiting to get their hooks in all of us for the first time in a year and a half. Still, the anti vaxxers are infuriating.

    Yep, New Zealand is having a bad RSV outbreak. We do what we can, but nothing is perfect.

    @WaterGirl: Hope whatever you have is super mild!

  20. 20.

    zhena gogolia

    Well, it took five agonizing hours on phone and chat with Xfinity, but I HAVE REMOVED FOX NEWS from my cable package. I had to sacrifice TCM, but on the whole it feels really good.
    I have HBO Max, which has a bunch of movies “curated by TCM,” so I’m hoping that will get me over my Stanwyck withdrawal symptoms.
    Not another penny to those traitors. Carlson and Ingraham making fun of the heroic cops who defended the Capitol pushed me over the edge.

  21. 21.

    zhena gogolia

    @WaterGirl:

    I hope it’s nothing serious. It doesn’t sound as if you did anything terribly risky.

    A colleague of my husband’s got pretty sick with Covid (no hospital, though), although vaccinated. But he implied that he had done a lot of traveling, so we’re trying to stay calm.

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    @Josie: It is maddening.  I’m furious.  I was already furious because a week or more ago I cancelled the trip to be with family because one sister and her grandchild won’t get vaccinated.

    With delta going wild, i didn’t want to be in close quarters for a week with 2 people who just took two plane trips and refuse to be vaccinated.

    So I don’t get to see the rest of my family – 7 other people who are vaccinated.

    My sister is religious and she said she won’t get it.  God loves her so much more than the million people around the world who have died from covid, I guess.  I was furious before.  Now that I’m worried, I’m even more furious.

    I should have noted that the person I was around for a few minutes (outside) texted me 2 days later to say that she had just tested positive for covid.  So I have been exposed, but I had really hoped the contact was so minimal that i didn’t need to worry.  sigh

    The exposure was Sunday morning, so this is right in the timeframe for me to not feel well. Hoping it’s not covid, obviously.  I have been rikyrah level of careful since Feb 2020.

  24. 24.

    sab

    @Albatrossity: You meant that for Watergirl? I agree with you both. Husband wants to take unvaccinated 7 yo granddaughter out for ice cream tomorrow, and my comment was “Is that safe?”

  25. 25.

    CaseyL

    @zhena gogolia: Good for you!

    I’m hoping to be able to pull the plug on Comcast/Xfinity altogether this fall.  I’ve only kept the account for the ISP (I don’t even have a TV at this point) and have spent months looking for alternate internet providers.  Internet only = no cable TV at all = no subsidy of Fox.

  28. 28.

    RaflW

    @WaterGirl: Ahhh, crap.

    I do wonder how I’m gonna react the first time I get a cold since beginning masking late winter of ’20 (zero colds since. Not my usual track record). I’ve been hanging out with other vax’d people of late, and chances are one of these days I’ll catch something not-SARS related. And may go mildly apeshit till I can be sure it’s just a cold (fingers crossed).

    All that said, I hope you just have some kinda normal cold. Getting tested when appropriate is reasonable! But I also think going too soon could prove inconclusive?

    Oh, and I’m going to go take my daily vit D right now!

    Edit: @WaterGirl ahhh, extra-crap!

  31. 31.

    Faithful Lurker

    @WaterGirl: I’ve read that there are a lot of summer colds around and Drs won’t test for covid unless there’s  trouble breathing and a high fever. Don’t know if that’s just anecdotal. Hope you’re feeling better soon.

  32. 32.

    Joy in FL

    Watergirl, I hope you have a cold!  I’m sending you zinc-filled good thoughts.

  35. 35.

    JPL

    Yesterday, grand imp coughed a few times after I put him down.   It was a croupy cough, but still deep, and scary.   That was the only time he coughed.   Scary as hell, cuz a two year old can’t get vaccinated.   Apparently, he has learned that caretakers will react with that sound

  36. 36.

    sab

    @RaflW: My husband had to get up very very early to take Ponyo to be spayed, and that threw his system off. Spent whole day worrying about  him not her. Love these Covid times,

  37. 37.

    Soprano2

    We have 267 people in the hospital here in Springfield, MO right now. The 7-day average of daily cases is 192.86. One thing is better – 41.77% of eligible people are fully vaccinated, and 48.96% have had at least one shot. The number of one shot is growing faster than the total number vaccinated, which is good. I think a bunch of fence-sitters got off the fence.

    I sat in my mother’s room at the hospital this morning waiting for her doctor, who never came around. I finally had to leave. The case worker brought a list of rehab facilities yesterday, and I’ve started to ask people about whether they’ve had experience with any of them. I figure that’s better than looking at their Web sites. Mom seemed better this morning. I’ve talked to a caseworker about what comes next. We have to pick a rehab facility for her to go to when she leaves the hospital. I don’t think she’ll be there more than a week or two.

  38. 38.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Betty:

    So Yamiche wants to know if Americans can trust Biden on Covid? These people! 

    Would they rather he dump orange paint all over his face and call it a hoax?

  39. 39.

    VeniceRiley

    @WaterGirl: I would be furious too. Supplementwise, I was also taking selenium and bromelain during the first two waves.
    I buy at pipingrock.com their supplements are often on BOGO

  41. 41.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @sab:

    She answers to Ponyo. Goldfish is our name when we don’t want her to know she is being discussed.

    ?

  42. 42.

    prostratedragon

    @WaterGirl:  Could it be the bodywork, especially since you hadn’t had it in so long? When I used to have sessions, I’d occasionally feel like I was coming down with something for a day or so. Drink plenty of water.

  43. 43.

    dr. luba

    @CaseyL: My 89 year old mother, bless her heart, loves to watch streaming content when I’m over, but can’t handle anything more than cable when she’s alone.  (I installed an Apple TV at her house which we use.)  We’ve streamed several series, watched Ukrainian movies and videos, and stream TCM.

    I cut the cord a couple of years ago, but still access TCM and MSNBC via her account.  If you know someone who still has TCM access, perhaps they’ll let you stream it?

  46. 46.

    Frank Wilhoit

     

    @Soprano2: make the hospital discharge her on a Monday or else as near the start of the week as possible. If she goes to inpatient rehab on a Friday she will literally not be looked at for 72 hours.

  47. 47.

    sab

    Ponyo starting to lick her incission. ” Don’t do that , or you will get an Elizabethan collar, and you don’t want that!

    My first difficult spay was my beloved GSD. She would have strangled herself with an Elizabethan collar, so she had a two week series of baby nightgowns that she shredded like clockwork, three times a day.

  49. 49.

    Steeplejack (phone)

    @zhena gogolia:

    ✊

    If you decide to go all the way, I think we determined last night that whichever service has Orange and Blue packages—whatever it is that NotMax has—the Orange one does not have Fox News, the Blue one does.

  50. 50.

    prostratedragon

    @sab: I’ve heard them called something like badge of shame, but I think I like Elizabethan collar better.

    @WaterGirl:  [Counts to Thursday] Hmmm. Anyway, …

  51. 51.

    Nelle

    @WaterGirl: There is an increase of normal stuff.  Both granddaughters had fevers last week ( we watch them part-time, ages 2 and 4).  Then their vaccinated dad got a fever and sore throat.  He tested negative for covid.  So there is a more normal swirl of germs since so many unmasked and mingled

  52. 52.

    RaflW

    @Frank Wilhoit: +1 this! We discovered this annoying truth with my partner’s dad. He was supposed to get PT 2x daily and OT 1x daily. Entered the rehab unit on a Friday, got one PT Saturday and none Sunday (and zero OT on the weekend).
    The manager of the place got a right royal reaming on the phone from my partner, and I will say the following weekend was better.

  53. 53.

    zhena gogolia

    @Steeplejack (phone):

    I can’t handle yet another service. For now we have Xfinity basic package so we can get networks and PBS, and on streaming we have Prime, Britbox, Disney+ (solely for Hamilton), and HBO Max, which has some kind of TCM-curated list of films.

  54. 54.

    sab

    @Soprano2: Yikes. I have been there with my dad. Turned out okay, but I did not know what I was doing so no useful advice at all.

    In our case, I was helping to transition him into assisted living, because he was falling down all the time, and I was too little to hoist him up again. I used to have to call my husband (I should have been at home) to come help me.

    I don’t think I will ever forgive my two eldest siblings for not being there for ten years while this went down. Intervention would have been helpful. Even more, loud screaming that he needs to stay home was very much not useful. My baby sister was going through the same thing with her MIL, so we were on rhe same page.

  60. 60.

    NotMax

    @Steeplejack

    Which one is chosen (of course, can also subscribe to both) doesn’t really have a direct impact on any one channel’s coffers. It’s not like Sling Orange and Sling Blue keep separate bank accounts; it’s all one congregate pool of income from which Fox and others draw their fees.

    For the record, Orange carries fewer number of channels overall, but more sports. Blue has a larger selection of channels, is geared to a general umbrella of entertainment (and news).

  61. 61.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @CaseyL: Pro tip for cancelling cable or internet without spending hours arguing with them: Tell them you’re moving to somewhere outside their service area.

    They will ask for a ZIP code (for your new supposed home) to verify this. However, I just picked a small town in a remote area of the Sierras, and then used Google to find out what cable/internet providers served the area.

    Worked like a charm.

  62. 62.

    Another Scott

    ObOpenThread – we were talking about no-till farming recently.

    ScienceMag:

    Bountiful harvests of corn and other major crops rely on a mysterious phenomenon known as hybrid vigor. When highly inbred varieties are crossed, their offspring are taller, hardier, and bear more grain. Now, researchers report that this vigor is somehow influenced by microbes in the soil, perhaps via a plant’s immune system.

    “This is a really interesting finding,” says Giles Oldroyd, a plant geneticist at the University of Cambridge who was not involved in the research. “I am surprised it has taken until now to be studied.”

    […]

    Last year, Wagner and colleagues found an interesting clue in a field study. They discovered that the leaves and roots of hybrid corn had microbial communities that differed from those living on inbred varieties of corn.

    When winter came and the fields were fallow, Wagner tried to replicate the finding with a laboratory experiment. The researchers planted seeds in bags of a soillike substance that had been sterilized to kill all microbes. Then they added a simple community of soil bacteria—seven strains that are known to colonize corn roots—to some of the bags while leaving others sterile. When the microbes were present, the hybrids grew better than an inbred variety, as expected, with roots weighing 20% more. To their surprise, however, the hybrid and inbred corn plants grew about the same in the sterile soil, they report this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The weight of their roots and shoots hardly differed.

    The finding held up when the scientists repeated the experiment by adding a full set of microbes, taken from soil, to some of the sterilized bags. “The results look convincing,” Oldroyd says.

    The takeaway? “Something about being a hybrid makes a plant interact differently with microbes,” Wagner says. Based on some of the results, the team thinks microbes retarded the growth of inbreds, rather than giving the hybrids a special boost.

    It could be that the inbreds’ immune systems overreact to benign microbes, compromising their growth. (The experiment did not include any pathogens.) Alternatively, hybrid plants may be better able to defend against weak pathogens in the soil. “We have a lot of work planned to follow up on that idea,” Wagner says.

    Oldroyd says the results highlight the need for plant breeders to match the genetics of crops to the microbial communities with which they live. The findings drive home the importance of understanding the role of soil microbes in making agriculture more productive and sustainable, adds Corné Pieterse, a plant biologist at Utrecht University. “This holds great promise.”

    There’s still a vast amount we don’t know about even “simple” things like dirt and how to plant stuff…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  63. 63.

    NotMax

    @Sister Golden Bear

    When I went into the company’s office to cancel the cable TV (have to go in order to return the box) they asked me why. Told them truly that I was a senior on a tight income and they had raised their prices beyond my comfort level.

    Kept them as both ISP and phone provider. Since canceling cable service not a week goes by without receiving an offer in the mail to rejoin at some stupendous discount or another. Small print is always “this price applies to first year of service only.”

  65. 65.

    CaseyL

    @Sister Golden Bear: Wait: they have to consent to my ending their service? WTH?  They’ll refuse to turn off the automatic bill payment?

    PS – I’ve been with Comcast/Xfinity for ages, more than 10 years. It’s not like I’m in the first year of a 2-year contract.

  66. 66.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @WaterGirl: So sorry to hear that you aren’t feeling well and the exposure. Hope whatever it is you can knock it down with remedies on hand. So many of us have been uber careful and after a good start to the summer, it’s scary again.

    Sorry too about missing your family and the stubborn non-vaxxed.

    Guess I’ll bring a mask to my outdoor dinner tonight and not eat too much.

  67. 67.

    Another Scott

    ObOpenThread –

    “A San Diego-based sailor suspected of setting the devastating fire on the amphibious assault ship Bonhomme Richard last year is facing criminal charges in the case” https://t.co/ySXTYcxgxl

    — southpaw (@nycsouthpaw) July 29, 2021

    I hope they did a sensible, unbiased, and thorough investigation this time before bringing charges. The Navy has a bad history of charging underlings when there were systemic problems that caused disasters.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  68. 68.

    Another Scott

    ObOpenThread –

    Thread

    Klobuchar says in press call that she, Manchin and Warnock met with Schumer this week and are "very close" on an agreement for the For The People Act

    — Sam Levine (@srl) July 29, 2021

    (via LOLGOP)

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  69. 69.

    Another Scott

    Busy day in DC apparently…

    Thread.

    Things got rowdy on the House floor a few mins ago, sources tell me & @Olivia_Beavers.

    Reps. Cawthorn and McKinley got into shouting match, with McKinley repeatedly referring to Cawthorn as "junior."

    Cawthorn explains the issue: "He put me on a bill that I didn't sign onto."

    — Sarah Ferris (@sarahnferris) July 29, 2021

    Cawthorn is 25, R-NC. In a wheelchair.
    McKinley is 74, R-WV.

    Who has the best price on popcorn futures??

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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