Even in our toughest times, America always gets back up and builds a better future. We are stronger today than we were a year ago.
Watch our new video featuring @tomhanks and extraordinary Americans to celebrate one year of the Biden-Harris Administration. pic.twitter.com/T9bFeGUUcl
— Biden Inaugural Committee (@BidenInaugural) January 20, 2022
He’s earned it — we all have.
Remember, sharing is caring!
OzarkHillbilly
I gotta call my NOLA son today and tell him to stay the F off the Pontchartrain bridge.
Baud
My only regret is that we couldn’t give Biden the Senate he deserves.
edited
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly:
Oh man. And leave the tap running. It’ll be a good time to be a plumber down there.
Spanky
@OzarkHillbilly: That’s some crazy-ass driving down there in even the best weather. This DC-area driver would be staying the hell home instead of getting on icy roads with those idiots.
germy
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone ???
rikyrah
@germy:
TRUTH
Baud
@germy:
Andrea Mitchell is mad at Democrats because they exist. I don’t think I heard her once during the Trump years.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Baud
@Baud:
That couldn’t = that we couldn’t
germy
@rikyrah:
More truth from Florida Chris
Quinerly
DeSantis now saying vaccines affect fertility. WAPO. Behind paywall.
(does anyone feel like me? I am sick of the words “vaccine” and “vaccinated.” Hearing, reading, typing it. I guess this will be our lives from here on out.)
germy
Kay
@Baud:
“Benghazi!” Then “emails!” One of the worst on both.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Quinerly: I’m sick of seeing the word “DeSantis.”
I’m bracing myself.
satby
One of the regular Americans on the White House video is my friend and former co-worker Trevor, talking about Juneteenth and teaching grammar school history.
Quinerly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I guess we all are giving him too much attention. Good thing about it is the attention is infuriating Trump.
Baud
@Quinerly:
Why would I be sick of our badge of moral superiority?
lowtechcyclist
There are too many people in my neck of the woods sharing a certain coronavirus
ETA: Which reminds me, Wednesday night I was in a high school classroom-sized room with about 30 adults, most of whom weren’t masked. We bought a couple of home test kits before Omicron. About how long should I wait before testing myself for Covid, assuming I remain asymptomatic?
Gin & Tonic
@Kay: Is “crone” still an acceptable word?
Dorothy A. Winsor
Steeplejack
@Baud:
It’s a chilly 17° here in NoVA this morning, going up only to 29° later. Brr! But dry and (weakly) sunny.
zhena gogolia
Great video.
germy
zhena gogolia
@Gin & Tonic: For Andrea, we’ll allow it.
germy
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
lowtechcyclist
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Dafuq?!
Holy shit, those people are out of touch.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
It does indeed say something about Wharton students. It says that a significant number of them are divorced from reality.
WereBear
@germy: Shills who make up stuff other shills repeat to the gullible repeat it.
All the way down.
And do any of them believe it? How many anti-vaxxers made a proper stance on Facebook and snuck into another town for their shots? Not fast enough, I know.
But when reality shows up with an ICU pass, they will, in the fine Baptist tradition of my childhood, only go fishing with non-Baptists.
germy
WereBear
@satby: Wonderful!
Quinerly
@Baud: you have your own separate badge. Don’t you know that by now?
germy
@WereBear:
It reminds me of Candace Owens showing up (and taking selfies) at public events that require proof of full vaccination for entry.
Betty Cracker
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Me too! I’m also sick of the crackpot surgeon general he imported from UCLA to lie about the danger and scold people who are trying to avoid the virus. Some video platforms make me watch an ad featuring that daft shithead before the content plays, which means they’re spending my tax dollars to publicize the hot garbage. It’s beyond infuriating.
ETA: The theme of the ad campaign is “LIVE,” with the insulting implication that if you’re taking steps to avoid infection, you’re a fearful little mouse who needs to sack up and come out of your house and LIVE. Fuck everyone involved.
Steeplejack
@rikyrah:
Good morning! ?
Quinerly
Anybody else following the clusterfuck of messaging re NPR, Roberts, Gorsuch, Sotomayor, and Nina Totenberg?
narya
@lowtechcyclist: Three days, I’d say, and if you are not seeing anyone else for 10+ days and don’t get symptoms, then you could even avoid testing completely if you need to ration the tests. If you are seeing folks, then test as late as possible before you see them. And wear an N95 even if no symptoms; that’ll protect anyone if you’re infected and asymptomatic. The CDC does have some guidance around this, I think, and I can try to dig it up if you want. The basic advice I’m getting is that if you’re not testing positive but you know you’ve had it, then you’re very unlikely to infect anyone, especially if you wear an N95.
mrmoshpotato
@germy: Musk should be test subject #1.
OzarkHillbilly
Rep. Madison Cawthorn decided that a hearing on burn pits was a good time to clean his firearm
Words fail.
germy
JPL
@Quinerly: I guess it depends on how you phrase it.
sab
@OzarkHillbilly: Yikes. This usually the time of year my BIL in Baton Rouge calls us to laugh about the weather. We call him in July to laugh about the weather.
JPL
@satby: Very cool!
Kay
@germy:
Tesla recruited higher-skilled (but still hourly) employees from areas with lots of manufacturing and they offered bonuses so some people here took them up on it. Most returned, because Tesla overpromised on wages and bonuses and it’s poorly managed. They say Tesla has serious quality problems and the company isn’t concerned about it and won’t spend what it would take to fix it. They all say it, and have been for years. My son says it and he doesn’t even work for a car company- he does the electrical in (parts) production plants, but he sees all the car company production plants, so can compare.
Eventually people will figure it out. It’s inevitable.
Kalakal
Good morning all. Some morning snow related cheer. Watch the steps
https://twitter.com/i/status/1484169156115288065
What I can’t imagine is being the camera crew and just carrying on
mrmoshpotato
@Betty Cracker: I’m more of a backpack man, myself. But fuck DeathSantis and the Florida surgeon general.
rikyrah
This ????
David Darmofal (@david_darmofal) tweeted at 7:56 AM on Fri, Jan 21, 2022:
How about a moratorium on FDR comparisons by people who ignore his enormous congressional majorities, his internment of Japanese Americans, his refusal to support federal anti-lynching legislation & his exclusion of Black Americans from many of the benefits of The New Deal.
(https://twitter.com/david_darmofal/status/1484525349585231886?t=dUOGe6J_y8N_Hl5cDAQ0AQ&s=03)
germy
germy
p.a.
@germy: I used to follow Helaine Olen closely IIRC in the pre and post crash aughts. Worth checking out again.
lowtechcyclist
@OzarkHillbilly:
And sure, that’s true at all income levels. But I bet the Wharton students’ estimate of average income is much higher than that of people whose income is roughly average.
Where average-income folks would tend to be off is guessing the income of the top 1% or 0.1% or 0.01%. Most of them have no idea how stratospheric the income and wealth of the very rich tends to be in this country. It’s high enough that it seriously distorts both our economy and our politics.
p.a.
@Kay: Atrios has been all over Elon for quite a while. Money =/= intelligence; just check out NFL ownership.
#billionairedilettants
OzarkHillbilly
And it goes higher and higher every day.
lowtechcyclist
@Betty Cracker:
“Live and Let Die” would describe the situation more accurately.
OzarkHillbilly
lollipopguild
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I had a brother-in-law who was making $100,000 a year in the early 1980’s, he leased construction equipment to mines and construction companies. He actualy thought that “everybody” made as much as he did. I made $15,000 and my wife made $9000 at the time. Even after this was explained to him he still did not believe us.
p.a.
@lowtechcyclist: I just posted a graph of US public’s perceptions of these issues vs reality, from polling abt 5 years ago. Click on my nym.
Betty Cracker
@lowtechcyclist: You’re right. If I were rich and talented at video editing (sadly, I’m neither), I might put together an alternate ad with the old Bond film theme song and a montage of DeSantis, Ladapo and the covidiots.
Kalakal
This is from the UK but is a superb explainer of how inflation really works when you’re poor
https://www.thepoke.co.uk/2022/01/20/jack-monroe-true-cost-inflation/
Jack Monroe is nearly always well worth reading. I’ve been following her for years and she’ll always have a special place in my heart for bankrupting Katie Hopkins (a particularly vile English Alex Jones wannabe ) in a libel case
Steeplejack
@lowtechcyclist:
True. I read through that Nina Strohminger thread earlier and saw this eye-popping snippet (links to a Time article):
zhena gogolia
@OzarkHillbilly: She’s cagey!
Tazj
@Quinerly: All I know is Nina isn’t backing down and the story seems believable to me.I don’t know who said what to who but look at what happened, Gorsuch won’t wear a mask and Sotomayor is at home.
Kay
@p.a.:
I don’t know- maybe it’s me- but he just screams “scammy” to me. He would have to convince me the cars were safe, not the other way around. I would start with “ummmm- probably not safe”. I’m constantly amazed at the people who are presented to me as presumptively credible :)
What about him would ever make anyone think he’s a real stickler for safety, reliability and long term value?
Kay
@p.a.:
And the anti-regulatory ideology! “Do NOT test or in any way regulate my products or I will scream like a giant baby”. That’s confidence inspiring.
Soprano2
It was 4 degrees when I got up at 5:30 this morning, but it’s supposed to be in the 50’s by Monday. I swear, this whiplash is worse than it just being cold.
Hubby was feeling poorly this morning, mostly because of his winter cough and not sleeping much last night. He didn’t have a fever, though. I’m not sure it would even be worth it for him to go get tested, because it would mean having to get out in the cold air that just makes his cough worse, plus there probably aren’t any testing slots for the next 4 or 5 days anyway. Sure wish we had home tests! Makes me wish I had bought a couple when they were still available around here. He’s boosted, so I’m not that worried. I may go home at lunch to see how he is.
Baud
Y’all don’t make at least $800K/year???
I didn’t realize I was slumming it by hanging out here.
Kay
“Parent power!” Oh, wait, not THOSE parents.
This was absolutely foreseeable and inevitable and every public school official and school board member knew it. The problem with screaming “parent power!” and “parents should run public schools!” is ALL the parents need a say. Youngkin is now the principal of every public school in the state. Every parent should take their complaints directly to him.
danielx
@Kay:
Youngkin: They’re worried about masks? They probably didn’t vote for me anyway, so fuck those guys.
Soprano2
@Kay: My father the school superintendent who spent most of his career in schools would be horrified at what’s happening right now. Never mind the 7 years of schooling he took to be qualified to run a smaller school (he got his specialist degree but never went for the PhD), now any Billy Jim Bob without a high school diploma thinks they know better how to run a school than the professionals, and many politicians agree with them! It’s horrifying.
Kay
I was on a school council for a time under the theory that they needed more community input. So they wanted to try this approach where they would put students who needed more help distributed across classrooms, but that worries one set of parents with more “advanced” kids (ya know, allegedly) because they believe students who need more help take time away from their kids. So the solution was to put an additional aide in the rooms that had more kids who needed more help. But it was REALLY HARD to broker and both sets of parents were sort of miffed at the end. I’m amused that Mr. Finance Businessman told literally everyone “they” would be running “public schools” and didn’t anticipate any problems with that.
Geminid
@Kay:
Ayn Rand: “Who is John Galt?”
Elon Musk: “Me! Me!”
Kay
@Soprano2:
I think people don’t know how hard it is, but there’s real arrogance in not knowing that, so they should reflect on that. Seriously. Stop assuming you can do everyone elses job better than they can. Just stop. It’s horrible.
Kay
@Soprano2:
That doesn’t mean they can’t complain or speak or advocate. But there has to be a base level recognition that it’s a diverse group of people and best case is a compromise. It’s not “easy” or “obvious”- if it was it would have been “solved” long ago. They should also probably listen to people who have been navigating it for 20 years. They know some stuff. Or, we just relearn everything again every decade.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: The MSM narrative about the post-Trump GOP posits Youngkin and DeSantis as two different governing models Republicans can choose between. It’s a false choice. Functionally, they’re the same. One may come across as more house-trained than the other in his public persona, but you get the same horrible policies and the same screeching loonies meddling with education, healthcare, etc. A guest analyst at CNN did a piece on that recently, and she’s absolutely correct.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Terry Mac tried to make that point, but voters will not accept the idea that the GOP can’t be salvaged.
schrodingers_cat
I have a theory on why the most privileged demographic in this country is overly represented among the doomers who love to reiterate how the American democracy is done for and there is nothing we can do that will change the trajectory that we are on.
Its because they don’t have much experience in how to survive under adversity.
laura
George Hahn, New York raconteur speaks fer meeee:
George Hahn (@georgehahn) Tweeted:
This idea that Biden is failing with the pandemic is low-grade bullsh*t. The problem ain’t him. We’ve been given all the tools we need to kick this pandemic in the nuts. “Ask NOT what your country can do for you…” https://t.co/PbEQdls9Eg https://twitter.com/georgehahn/status/1484399411471990787?s=20
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Youngkin is going to look different because Democrats still control the Virginia State Senate. He won’t have to sign cruel abortion bills or crazy gun rights laws. So Youngkin can fight his soft culture war and hope that we are in fact on the back side of the pandemic. The plan is to run a prosperous state for four years and come out a success who still appears to be all things to all people.
Youngkin reminds me of a chameleon. I wouldn’t be surprised if his fleece vest shifted color as a he went from one topic to another in a speech.
Another Scott
@Dorothy A. Winsor: The story invites lots of speculation because they don’t show the data in a graph. What do the other 75% think? It’s clickbait and I didn’t click.
Cheers,
Scott.
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: I think you have a good point there. I feel that my experiences when I was in college – my mother basically had what they used to call a nervous breakdown as a result of my parent’s divorce (my father cheated on her with his secretary, how’s that for a stereotype?), and then my father died of a massive heart attack when I was 21. I think the reason my mother fell apart was because that was the first really bad thing that had ever happened to her, and she had no way to know how to handle it, or that it would get better. When my sister died, my experience with my dad’s death helped me understand that no matter how bad it felt, it would eventually get better. I’m not saying it’s good to have bad things happen to you when you’re young, but it can give you advantages later in life. My husband says there’s nothing worse than being in a situation where people are shooting at you to try to kill you, and since he experienced that when he was 20 nothing worse has happened to him.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kay: Musk had a couple of good ideas that he pushed relentlessly that have, IMO, moved us forward a lot wrt electric cars and wider energy usage. Unfortunately, he’s had a lot of bad ideas that he pushed and continues to push relentlessly…
Hopefully he’ll go >splat< before his relentless pursuit of shitty ideas completely tarnishes his genuinely useful successes. At this point, the successes don’t need him and would be better off without him.
ema
@lowtechcyclist:
Based on evolving evidence, CDC recommends fully vaccinated people get tested 5-7 days after close contact with a person with suspected or confirmed COVID-19.
lowtechcyclist
@ema:
Thanks!
I’m probably unscathed, but it’ll be good to know for sure. And with nearly two dozen unmasked people in a room here in Trump country, odds are that one or more of them were shedding Covid.
Fuckers.
schrodingers_cat
@Soprano2: Your mother went through a lot. In her case the breakdown is understandable.
All the doom-casting I am talking about is based as of now on speculation. Yes we are as a country going through tough times but times have been tough before. This is not exactly unprecedented.
Brachiator
@Betty Cracker:
Youngkin reminds me of Larry Elder and some of the other Republicans who ran against Newsom in the recent recall election. They promised all kinds of mischief with respect to handling the pandemic and other aspects of governance.
Fortunately, we soundly rejected these fools.
It is very sad that voters chose Youngkin and DeSantis. And if people see these two as the hope for the future we are all in trouble.
ema
@lowtechcyclist:
Best to test. Then go to Covidtests.gov and order four free tests. Good luck!
Gravenstone
@OzarkHillbilly: Would have been a loverly time for an accidental discharge.
Bill Arnold
@Betty Cracker:
I collect scary papers about COVID-19’s effects on the human body, but usually don’t link them here because they can be depressing. Need to start spamming these assholes on their twitter accounts with Science. Especially when they say “Science says X” when actually “Science says NOT X”.
That FL Surgeon General is a stochastic mass murderer, and should be encouraged to dive into a wood chipper. Are there any scandals that could be used to neutralize him politically? Is removal of DeSantis in the upcoming election as in-play as it looks (to this NYer)?
StringOnAStick
The school board in the red town north of me voted 3 to 1 to demand that the Governor remove the mask mandate for schools when the current rule expires in early February. The state health authority has said they plan to extend the mandate, so the wingnuts are going nuts. And all at a time when the number of active Covid cases in the county are higher than they have ever been and school staffing is a wreck due to illness. 1 in 15 people in the county are an active case of Covid right now, but yeah, get rid of those masks.