46: 💜💙💜 HAPPY BIRTHDAY PUDDLERIVER~! 💙💜💙
💙We hope you're still catching sweet dreams! 💜
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puddle is FIRST!! ♥
ReplyDeleteWow, that's quite a cake! Enjoy!
DeleteMany happy returns, puddle.
DeleteGoing back to voting, we got our voters' pamphlet yesterday; typically for California there are quite a few propositions, not infrequently opaque. I plowed through the summaries and arguments, the people who wrote the arguments, and got most of them figured out. Then I checked what the League of Women Voters had to say (very useful) and found one LA Times editorial that was helpful on one proposition. So, all figured out. One I decided not to vote on.
ReplyDeleteHave a Happy, puddle.
ReplyDeleteThis morning the air quality is very obviously improved; we can clearly see not just the trees and suchlike on the far side of the river, we can clearly see their colors for the first time in too long. There is a cool breeze out of the north, and the alleged air quality index is 100 ["moderate"]. It's of a piece with the political news; more of that later, but for now:
ReplyDeleteEarly Voting Is Underway
September 18, 2020 By Taegan Goddard
Political scientist Michael McDonald has tracked that more than 80,000 people have already returned their ballots by mail, mostly in North Carolina.
These totals will start to climb quickly as Virginia, Minnesota, South Dakota and Wyoming also begin early voting today.
OHIO;As of Friday afternoon, there have been at least 142,596 confirmed or probable cases in the state, 4,608 deaths, and 14,687 hospitalizations, according to the Ohio Department of Health.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans killed the Obamacare mandate. New data shows that it didn’t really matter.
ReplyDeleteThe main reason the mandate had less effect than expected was that subsidies and Medicaid expansion had more effect than expected. Also, the penalties were lower than in Romneycare, on which people were basing their predictions.
DeleteMarina Hyde: Matt Hancock, could you honestly think of no one better to run test and trace? [Click] Regrettably, toward the end she does level a gratuitous insult at squid.. .
ReplyDeleteThe coming months of the pandemic could be catastrophic. The U.S. still has ways to prepare. [Click] Both on communal and individual bases.
ReplyDeleteAlan, as our only witness in California, can you please tell us about the exploding trees? Please?
ReplyDeleteCan't say as I have seen any of them personally; I suppose they are some sort of recently introduced non-native pest species. We have quite a few of those.
DeleteProbably some sort of nut tree.
DeleteNew battleground state polls from Redfield & Wilson:
ReplyDeleteArizona: Biden 47%, Trump 42%
Florida: Biden 47%, Trump 44%
Michigan: Biden 49%, Trump 39%
North Carolina: Biden 47%, Trump 45%
Pennsylvania: Biden 49%, Trump 44%
Wisconsin: Biden 47%, Trump 41%
I wish someone would poll Vermonters. 😉
DeleteDeal on Drug Prices Undone by ‘Trump Cards’ [Click] Hey, thanks for doing the preliminary work for the Biden drug plan, Donald!
ReplyDeleteMother Jones Daily Newsletter
DeleteSeptember 18, 2020
President Good Deals has struck again.
The New York Times just reported that the Trump administration was on the verge of a deal with pharmaceutical companies to lower the cost of prescription drugs, but then at the last minute the talks collapsed. But it's why the deal fell apart that makes this story special:
Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, insisted the drug makers pay for $100 cash cards that would be mailed to seniors before November — “Trump Cards,” some in the industry called them.
Some of the drugmakers bridled at being party to what they feared would be seen as an 11th-hour political boost for Mr. Trump, the people familiar with the matter said.
So this dude negotiated what seems like a pretty good deal that would serve the American people—"the drug companies would spend $150 billion to address out-of-pocket consumer costs and would even pick up the bulk of the co-payments that older Americans shoulder in Medicare’s prescription drug program"—but this alone was not enough of an October surprise, so they went further and wanted to force these companies to send out little cash cards to seniors right before the election. These cards would obviously have Trump's name somewhere. The White House strenuously denied that they would be Trump-branded, but we all know that's a lie. Trump just did this exact thing with the $1,200 pandemic checks in April!
This is cuckoo's nest stuff!
Here's more from the Times:
One drug company executive said they worried about the optics of having the chief executives of the country’s leading pharmaceutical makers stand with the president in the Rose Garden as he hoisted an oversized card and gloated about helping a crucial bloc of voters.
How spectacularly stupid and unethical one must be to make Big Pharma look sane and ethical!
Happy Friday,
—Ben Dreyfuss
ReplyDeleteTrump Fumes at Chamber of Commerce [Click] Treason! Sedition! Ingratitude! Nastiness!
Mary Trump Shares Surefire Ways For Biden To Get Under Trump’s Skin In Debates [Click]
ReplyDeleteMichigan clerks must accept late ballots if mailed by Nov. 2, judge rules [Click]
ReplyDeleteBiden Aced His Town Hall Meeting, Trump Did Not [Click]
ReplyDeletehttps://www.npr.org/2020/09/18/100306972/justice-ruth-bader-ginsburg-champion-of-gender-equality-dies-at-87
ReplyDeleteTHIS IS AN ABSOLUTE DISASTER! You know McConnell will "forget" his rule about the election being too close.
There are moments in life that put everything else in perspective.
DeleteRIP RBG
What a poignant Rosh Hashanah
This will certainly be a trial for Chuck Schumer.
DeleteThe obvious response to a rushed Trump appointment is to pack the court. After winning control of the Senate.
DeleteSusan,
DeleteMcConnell is already saying that this situation is different because back then the Senate was very split but now it isn’t. 🤬
Of course he is because he is the consummate hypocrite. His brand of hyper-partisanship is the major factor in destroying our 240+ year democracy. The Democratic Party better get their ish together and help Amy McGrath take Kentucky!
DeleteYup. I agree completely.
Delete(BTW, that square box at the end of my post above is supposed to be the red-faced icon with the bad words over its mouth.)
DeleteFrom Mother Jones:
ReplyDeleteSupreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Has Died [Click] Oh, boy.
I cannot help but wonder what effect this will have on election turnout.
DeleteOh, no!!
DeleteI imagine it will make Republicans come out in droves.
DeleteEveryone else has to too.
Schumer Throws McConnell’s Words On SCOTUS Vacancy Right Back At Him [Click] The Democrats’ parliamentarian(s) will be burning the midnight oil looking for procedural blockades. There ought to be obscure and seldom (if ever) used means available.
DeleteSenate Democrats have the power to stop Trump. All they have to do is use it. [Click] WaPo January 2017. Use McConnell’s tool against him.
DeleteHere’s another approach in a June 2018 column. [Click] Doesn’t sound quite as good, but bears consideration.
DeleteI can't access the 2017 article, but the idea in the 2018 article wouldn't work today.
DeleteExcerpts from 2017 WaPo article:
Deletethe most effective tool for popular resistance lies in the Senate…
Senate Democrats have a powerful tool at their disposal, if they choose to use it…. That tool lies in the simple but fitting act of withholding consent. An organized effort to do so on the Senate floor can bring the body to its knees and block or severely slow down the agenda…
The procedure for withholding consent is straightforward, but deploying it is tricky. For the Senate to move in a timely fashion on any order of business, it must obtain unanimous support from its members. But if a single senator objects to a consent agreement, McConnell, now majority leader, will be forced to resort to time-consuming procedural steps through the cloture process, which takes four days to confirm nominees and seven days to advance any piece of legislation — and that’s without amendment votes, each of which can be subjected to a several-day cloture process as well…
McConnell can ask for consent at any time, and if no objection is heard, the Senate assumes that consent is granted. So the 48 senators in the Democratic caucus must work together… to ensure that there is always a senator on the floor to withhold consent…
Democrats can also withhold their consent from every piece of objectionable legislation McConnell tries to advance. With 48 senators in their caucus, they have the votes to block most bills. But even when Democrats don’t have the votes, they can force McConnell to spend time jumping through procedural hoops. This is the insight McConnell deployed against Reid to manufacture the appearance of gridlock, forcing him to use the cloture process more than 600 times…
Of course, it would be unwise to deploy this strategy blindly. The kind of universal obstruction pioneered by McConnell during Obama’s presidency is not in Democrats’ nature: They believe in the smooth functioning of government…
But Democrats’ concern with delivering results for their constituents is also part of who we are and something we should embrace. Even for innately cautious Democrats, some issues demand dramatic action. I
VT: 1706* (+1)
ReplyDelete58 deaths (51days)
112 active cases
Recovered:1536(+3)
In Hospital 3 (+1)
Tests 154,099 (+1096)
* Since yesterday -1 +2
WaPo: Virginians come out in force to cast ballots on the first day of early voting [Click] The early voters are reported to be disproportionately Democrats.
ReplyDeleteThe clouds dispersed in the late afternoon; I could see (albeit not clearly) the Sierra Nevada foothills. I can't recall when I last could do that.
ReplyDeleteOfficial weather report:
DeleteAQI = 61
Visibility 9 miles
Winds NW at 10-15 mph, same tomorrow.