Wednesday, October 28, 2020

6: SIX!




40 comments:

  1. 'We couldn't stand it anymore': why disaffection with Devin Nunes is growing among his constituents [Click] My "representative." From The Guardian No public polling as far as I have been able to tell.

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  2. Air quality predicted to deteriorate with change in wind direction blowing more smoke into this area. It does look worse this morning.

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    1. Did it worsen significantly?

      Here, it spit snow last evening enough to make us spiff up the garage the rest of the way and get my car inside. Then I got up at 6:00am and did $700 worth of grocery shopping. Hopefully that’s that for nearly a month.

      Mount Mansfield is still hiding under its thick blanket of cloud. But I’m pretty sure there’s a snow covered mountain under there!

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    2. I get my snow tires put on on Election Day!

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    4. During the day the visibility was definitely decreased, and when I put out the trash cans this evening the moon was orange. But it wasn't uncomfortable to breath, or stinky.

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  3. VT: 2120 (+7)
    58 deaths (3 months)
    296 active cases
    Recovered 1768 (+2)
    In Hospital 7 (+3)
    Tests 187,037 (+746)

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  4. This morning's election news seems to be basically "steady as she goes."

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  5. The Atlantic: The Catholic Temptation; Former Vice President Joe Biden is using his Scranton bona fides to win over a key voting bloc. [Click] Well, I remember what Thomas Jefferson said: “If a good man is religious, he must have a good religion.” And there are two things about Biden’s education that I empathize with: he was the first in his family to go to college, and he didn’t join a fraternity. If I didn’t live in an ultramarine blue state, I expect that I would have voted for him.

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  6. Oh, and he didn't attend an Ivy League college.

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  7. I so want this election to be over. Very tired of opening my email in the morning to 300+ emails crying for money. Too many of the campaigns are using increasing your anxiety to get you to donate. "Oh no! We're losing" "Have to close my campaign office" "Can't keep my ad on TV". VERY BAD TACTIC in my opinion.

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    1. It certainly doesn't work for me either, Susan.

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    2. I agree, especially about the extreme number of emails. The supposed "bad news" doesn't stress me because I know it's just a ploy. I'm more irritated by the supposed surveys. But even more to the point is that three emails a day aren't going to increase my likelihood of donating.

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    3. Wil gets the emails too. I don’t even get one. Over time I simply unsubscribed to every one of them, even the few I appreciate. Now, when I make a donation, within 24 hours I will get a couple related emails and immediately unsubscribe. To my surprise, it works well.

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    4. What finally made me do it was those groups like Our Revolution, which I wanted to stay subscribed to. Unfortunately, they send newsy posts out but not often under the banner Our Revolution, but under some random office person’s name. It felt too much like getting spammed.

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    5. To clarify, it was different names, and none familiar.

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    6. I'm glad unsubscribing works for someone. It often doesn't for me.

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    1. Politically Correct Bedtime Stories 2.0?

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  9. First pterosaurs were clumsy flyers but they evolved into good flyers, research suggests [Click] Which leads me to wonder why birds survived the asteroid strike, but pterosaurs did not. The reason couldn’t have been the ability to fly; perhaps it was down to birds having beaks, and therefore being more adaptable to the food sources available immediately after the disaster. Perching birds died out too-evidently because the forests burned.

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  10. It's not just you:

    A new American Psychological Association survey finds 68% of American adults say that the 2020 presidential election is a significant source of stress — up 16 points from 2016.

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    1. Definitely.

      Every. Person. I meet with says they are stressed. I get that. I am too. I think I’m doubly stressed, too, because of the local COVID numbers.

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  11. New and lapsed voters flocking to the polls [Click] A fairly detailed analysis. It’s from The Hill, so of course at the end they default to their Democrats- in- disarray theme. But still pretty informative.

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  12. Vanity Fair: AOC’s Next Four Years [Click] “The history-making congresswoman addresses her biggest critics, the challenges that loom no matter who wins, and what she’s taking on next.”

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  13. OHIO; COVID cases 205,347 and 5,256 deaths.

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  14. From Mother Jones:

    October 28, 2020
    The anonymous Trump admin official who wrote a scathing 2018 New York Times op-ed criticizing the president—and followed it with a whole book, A Warning—has revealed himself: It's...Miles Taylor.

    Wait, what?

    Miles Taylor served as chief of staff to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and the reason you know his name is because earlier this year he very publicly came out against Trump and starred in a series of videos for Republican Voters Against Trump.

    Twist?

    In 2018, Trump was reportedly apoplectic about the op-ed, even floating the possibility on Twitter that the suggested internal resistance constituted treason.

    This is a sort of confusing twist. On the one hand, Taylor has already spoken out publicly, so he gets points for that, but on the other hand, why didn't he just come out as the writer when he first started blasting Trump?

    Taylor expanded on his reasoning in a Medium post published Wednesday:

    Much has been made of the fact that these writings were published anonymously. The decision wasn’t easy, I wrestled with it, and I understand why some people consider it questionable to levy such serious charges against a sitting President under the cover of anonymity. But my reasoning was straightforward, and I stand by it. Issuing my critiques without attribution forced the President to answer them directly on their merits or not at all, rather than creating distractions through petty insults and name-calling. I wanted the attention to be on the arguments themselves. At the time I asked, “What will he do when there is no person to attack, only an idea?” We got the answer. He became unhinged. And the ideas stood on their own two feet.

    One thing is for sure: He's going to sell a lot of books.

    —Ben Dreyfuss

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    1. That's a book I bought as soon as it published. Haven't read it yet because I bought it mostly to make trump mad.

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  15. Yesterday I got my flu shot and today I definitely feel as though I'm getting the flu. Blah!

    After all these years, finally reading Humphrey Carpenter's biography of Tolkien. I read his The Inklings a good twenty-five years ago. Newer biographies always seem somehow unsettling. Maybe it's because they are increasingly removed. Carpenter had access to primary sources as well as the Tolkien family. He also makes it very clear he has no axe to grind as a critic.

    Sorry for having nothing to contribute. Feeling increasingly awful as the evening goes on.

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    1. Hope you feel better tomorrow.

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    2. Liane*in*VT had the same reaction, Cat. She has allergies and such and always reacts more than most. I have a low-normal immune system, so I never reacted to it at all. So that's good for a flu shot, but would be underwhelming if I got COVID. Maybe reacting to the flu shot says your immune system would kick COVID's butt well.

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    3. Aside from a bit of discomfort at the site of the shot, no adverse effects here. Only once have I ever had any "flu-like symptoms;" chills for a while, gone within an hour.

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  16. As of today, in Vermont:

    Biden 64.4% / Trump 29%

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    1. Massachusetts ! B 65.8% / T 28.9%

      Ohio ~ T 48.1% / B 46.3%

      California ~ B 61.1% / T 31.9%

      Illinois ~ B 55.0% / T 39.8%

      West Virginia ~ T 59.8% / B 35.7%

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    2. Thanks for the Illinois numbers -- first I have seen. About what I would have expected, though.

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