Friday’s Forum

FILED UNDER: Open Forum
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. OzarkHillbilly says:

    You Literally Can’t Believe The Facts Tucker Carlson Tells You. So Say Fox’s Lawyers

    In Carlson’s defense, Fox’s attorneys, from Kirkland & Ellis LLP and Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP, noted that meeting the standard of “actual malice” requires more than just showing someone should have researched or investigated a subject before popping off, thanks to U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

    The Fox team’s legal briefs compared Carlson’s show to radio talk-show programs hosted by ex-MSNBC and Fox Business star Don Imus, who won a case more than two decades ago because an appellate court ruled that “the complained of statements would not have been taken by reasonable listeners as factual pronouncements but simply as instances in which the defendant radio hosts had expressed their views over the air in the crude and hyperbolic manner that has, over the years, become their verbal stock in trade.”

    In sum, the Fox News lawyers mocked the legal case made by McDougal’s legal team. She alleged “a reasonable viewer of ordinary intelligence listening or watching the show … would conclude that [she] is a criminal who extorted Trump for money” and that “the statements about [her] were fact.”

    “Context makes plain,” Fox’s lawyers wrote, “that the reasonable viewer would do no such thing.”

    The judge fully agreed.

    I wonder what the legal definition of a “reasonable viewer” is because I rather suspect the vast majority of FOX news consumers are not “reasonable” and they sure as hell aren’t of “ordinary intelligence”. Shit, 5 mins of FOX news at the tire shop is enough to drop my IQ by at least 3 points. I can’t imagine what a steady diet of it does to the brain. Probably as bad as mad cow disease.

    6
  2. Bill says:
  3. Bill says:
  4. Kylopod says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    You Literally Can’t Believe The Facts Tucker Carlson Tells You. So Say Fox’s Lawyers

    This is the same thing they said about Alex Jones, where his lawyer called him a performance artist, though Jones himself immediately went on his program and denied that’s what he was.

    The article brings up Don Imus successfully using this defense. But Imus at least did things on his show that were clearly intended as comedy (whether they were actually funny, I leave others to decide). Carlson is if anything even less like that than many other right-wing commentators: Glenn Beck had his chalkboard, Limbaugh his parody songs. And he doesn’t have the cartoonish demeanor of an Alex Jones. I’m not saying any of that’s a very good defense of their spreading misinformation, I’m just saying Carlson is about the last commentator where that defense would make even a modicum of sense.

    7
  5. OzarkHillbilly says:

    Rival headline of the day: ‘He couldn’t move’: New York City man falls into sinkhole full of rats

    And just in case you can’t quite visualize the full horror:

    Shoulders was waiting for a bus in the Bronx when suddenly the concrete beneath his feet cracked open and he plummeted into a hole, breaking his arm and leg, according to his brother, Greg White.

    White told the New York Daily News: “He couldn’t move, and the rats were crawling all over him. He didn’t scream, because he didn’t want the rats going into his mouth.”

    Firefighters eventually took half an hour to extricate Shoulders from the rat-filled cavity and he was taken to a local hospital, where he is recovering.

  6. Northerner says:

    @Bill:

    Her excuse is her six year old son was supposed to be watching the weapon. I’m not a lawyer, but my guess is that in most countries that’d be pleading guilty to a bigger crime than having the gun in the first place.

    4
  7. keef says:

    I’m not sayin’ I’m just sayin’

    An email Hunter Biden received in April 2015 from a Burisma executive discussing an introduction to then-Vice President Joe Biden, which lies at the heart of a New York Post investigation, is unquestionably authentic, a cybersecurity expert told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Thursday.

    The DCNF obtained a full copy of Hunter Biden’s alleged laptop from former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani on Wednesday. The DCNF provided Robert Graham, the founder of the cybersecurity firm Errata Security, with a copy of the email and its metadata for forensic analysis.

    Graham, who has been cited as a cybersecurity expert in The Washington Post, the Associated Press, Wired, Engadget and other news and technology outlets, told the DCNF that he used a cryptographic signature found in the email’s metadata to validate that Vadym Pozharsky, an advisor to Burisma’s board of directors, emailed Hunter Biden on April 17, 2015.

    1
  8. sam says:

    Drew, no-bodeee-gives-a-shit.

    13
  9. DeD says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    I can’t imagine what a steady diet of it does to the brain.

    I’ll tell you what it does. In addition to the three-point drop in IQ, it diminishes critical thinking capacity, promotes a lazy intellect, and makes your informed friends shun any kind of intellectual discussion with you bcuz what’s the point?

    10
  10. Sleeping Dog says:

    @keef:

    What political office is Hunter Biden running for?

    8
  11. Mikey says:

    @keef: Treason-enabling loser says what?

    6
  12. MarkedMan says:

    Trump has cancelled his election night party at his (?) hotel in DC and the pundits are all speculating about how this in reaction to running out of money or sudden concerns about intermingling campaign, personal and government expenditures. I think it is much more likely that Trump is realizing he’s going to lose big and doesn’t want anyone around when it happens. This is a signature Trump behavior going all the way back to the 80’s.

    When I read that headline, it gave me hope.

    10
  13. CSK says:

    @MarkedMan:
    I agree. Furthermore, can you imagine Trump making a gracious concession speech? No, you can’t.

    2
  14. CSK says:

    @keef:
    If this is an excerpt from an article, and I assume it is, where did you find it?

    3
  15. wr says:

    @keef: Dude, even Tucker Carlson has given up on the Hunter Biden lies. But you keep choking that chicken if it makes you happy!

    4
  16. Kylopod says:

    @CSK:

    Furthermore, can you imagine Trump making a gracious concession speech? No, you can’t.

    This gets into the question of how you define a “concession.” Trump will never, ever, not a million years admit he lost the election. He’ll go to his grave crying fraud. That is an absolute certainty. (Okay, I could see him in a few offhand moments kinda sorta admitting it but blaming it on Covid or the fake news media or whatever.) But if he loses I’m sure he will (at least eventually) agree to vacate the White House in January. That’s the best “concession” we can reasonably hope for–period. Anyone who expects more hasn’t been paying attention.

    3
  17. Michael Reynolds says:

    @keef:
    Hey, Theon, I do hope you’ll drop by on November 3 so we can all tap-dance on your head.

    2
  18. wr says:

    Sorry to bring back a thread from yesterday, but I was too late to that party, and I just had to weigh in to say…

    I hate the ending of The Shawshank Redemption. Think it ruins the entire movie — artistically and thematically, if not commercially.

    The whole movie is about hope. Andy believes in it. Red does not. This is core of the story. And the resolution of that story is when Red gets on that bus, finally becoming willing to believe. That’s the end of the story because the story is about Red’s refusal of hope.

    So when they run towards each other on the beautiful beach like young lovers in a shampoo commercial, it’s bullshit. It’s pornographic in its pandering. And it cheapens everything that came before.

    Rant over.

    4
  19. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @CSK: Up his ass.

    1
  20. Kylopod says:

    @wr: Well, what can I say? I disagree. I love the ending. As I said yesterday, it’s one of the most satisfying movie endings I’ve ever seen. And I’ve read the book which doesn’t have that ending. I can take a little sentimentality and optimism if I think it’s earned. And I think a movie like Shawshank more than earns it.

    If you don’t like it, fine. To each his own. But argumentatively, I’ll say this: at some point the payoff to hope shouldn’t just be more hope.

    4
  21. Teve says:

    @TheDweck
    The most embarrassing thing about the U.S. having another civil war is it’s not even for a new reason

    12
  22. Teve says:

    DJTJ went on Fox Last night and said the media doesn’t want to talk about deaths from Covid because they are down to “almost nothing”. In the last 3 days we’ve had over 3,000 deaths.

    2
  23. Teve says:

    @JohnFugelsang

    Q. What’s the difference between the Hunter Biden Scandals and New Coke?

    The guys who were pushing New Coke realized it wasn’t working in less than a year.

    5
  24. Jen says:

    @Teve: Wow, okay that hit my gut. It’s true.

    3
  25. Teve says:

    The Hill:

    Over 9 million early votes have been cast in Texas so far. This exceeds the total number of votes cast in the 2016 election.

    5
  26. Scott says:

    I don’t have a feel for how Texas is voting but the turnout is really strong. As of yesterday, 29 Oct, just over 9M have early voted which is 53.1% of registered voters. Total registered voting in 2016 was 59.4%.

    Harris County (Houston), about 4M population, is operating for the first time, eight 24 hr voting centers. I am really curious to see how many are voting in the middle of the night.

    Early voting ends tonight (times vary depending on location). Bexar County (San Antonio) ends at 10pm.

    1
  27. gVOR08 says:

    Two GOP appointees to the 8th Circuit ruled Thursday that, contrary to rules put out by the Secretary of State, mail-in ballots in Ninnesota received after the 3rd must be sequestered. Paul Campos at LGM goes into considerable detail on just how stupid, and contrary to law, this is.

    I agree with Scott that it’s almost impossible to describe how lawless the 8th circuit ruling on absentee ballots in Minnesota actually is, but I’m going to give it a shot:

    Except it kinda isn’t lawless. They ruled that the appellants are “likely to succeed on the merits”. With Barrett joining Gorsuch, Thomas, and Boof, with Alito, conjuring up his “originalist” version of the ghost of James Madison to preside, they may well be right.

    In the recent WI case Kavanaugh wrote a sophomoric opinion, rehashing Scalito, holding that, contrary to 200 years of precedent, the state legislature and only the state legislature can make election law. In this case the legislature explicitly delegated to the SoS authority to revise rules in light of the pandemic. The legislature is fine with the SoS rules. So is the Governor. The suit was brought by two state reps who brought the suit as aggrieved Republican nominated Electors. The lower court sensibly ruled they lacked standing. The two bozos on the 8th Circuit decided otherwise, and that the lege can’t delegate the authority to make election rules.

    The newly constituted SCOTUS is going to use “originalism” to put it to the county hot and hard.

    3
  28. gVOR08 says:

    @Teve: As someone pointed out, our “almost down to nothing” death rate from COVID is higher than our fatal casualty rate in WWII.

    2
  29. MarkedMan says:

    I think Josh Marshall sums up the reality of Republican federal judges pretty well:

    This morning I’m feeling a vague sympathy with a certain class of elite liberal law professors who I think imagined they were engaged in a contest of ideas with their conservative counterparts. I’m by no means talking about all of them. I mean the folks who write high profile OpEds which tell us that even though they strongly disagree with this or that Circuit Court or Supreme Court nominee they are nevertheless eminently qualified, a sterling mind and of judicious temperament. Across the country over the last week and with extra punch last night we are seeing Republican federal judges showing that they will mix and match any theories, manufacture theories, ignore basic traditions of constitutional interpretation all to arrive at decisions which boost Republican partisan advantage as much as possible. I’m speaking precisely when I call them Republican judges.

    In a clutch – and this is a clutch – they’re dispensing with the formalities and appearances, to the extent they existed.

    6
  30. gVOR08 says:

    @gVOR08: Minnesota. Adjacent keys and no EDIT function, I swear, no slur on Minnesota intended. My brother lives there. I like the place, outside winter, which is to say in July and August.

  31. JohnSF says:

    @keef:
    Oh dear.
    Here we go again.
    As Pozharskyi was an adviser to Burisma, considering Hunter Biden was on the board, it is hardly a matter of surprise that they should be exchanging emails, is it?

    Or is it the message content; that he might have met Joe Biden?

    Firstly, it seems unclear to me if the crypto key in this email authenticates the sender or the whole email content. If only the sender, then it isn’t worth much.

    Secondly, if Pozharskyi did meet Joe Biden, that would hardly be a strange event, given that as well as his advisory role with Burisma, Pozharskyi is also:
    – National coordinator for UNIDO (United Nations Industrial Development Organization) in Ukraine)
    – Executive chairman of the International Forum on Energy Security for the Future, which was set up by a group led by former president of Poland Kwaśniewski relating to concerns re. Russian control over East European energy supplies.
    – Consultant to the United Nations Environmental Program

    This is NOT some obscure east European corporate flunky we are talking about.
    Someone in any of those posts, let alone all three, might legitimately expect to get a bit of Vice Presidential facetime, especially given Joe Biden’s assignments.
    Which is why Joe Biden’s staff saying there is no record of a meeting is credible: they have absolutely zero reason to be untruthful.
    (My expectation: they ‘met’ at a reception or some such, but did not have a sit down ‘meeting’, which would account for both sides of the story IF the email is genuine.)

    4
  32. Slugger says:

    My ADHD is in relapse, and thus I don’t have a deep understanding of the Tucker Carlson story. Please correct me.
    1. Tucker got some documents that showed serious transgressions by the Bidens.
    2. He mailed them via a service not the USPS.
    3. They disappeared in transit.
    4. They were found but were on a thumb drive not paper.
    5. There was nothing on them that Tucker wants to share in order to avoid gratuitous harm to Hunter.
    6. Fox lawyers say that Tucker is not a serious person.
    Do I have everything?

    10
  33. Scott says:

    There are some new variables in Texas that will be interesting to watch:

    1. The straight ticket ballot option has been eliminated. Meaning people actually have to go all through the ballot to vote for whomever they want to vote for. Republicans originally thought it would help them but they are not so sure anymore. We elect just about everybody so there are a lot of judges to vote for. We got some pretty bad ones in the past because of straight ticket balloting so I’m hopeful.

    2. Interestingly, in San Antonio, most of the school are off. Two reasons: one, they had a holiday (April’s Battle of Flowers) that was not used; and two, a lot of schools are used as voting locations. Put those two together and most districts decided on a school holiday. Whether it impacts voter turnout will be interesting to see.

    3. I see a lot of analysis around the country about Republican and Democratic voters. Well, that doesn’t work in Texas. Voter registration doesn’t record party affiliation. So data only comes from polling and primary elections.

    2
  34. Scott says:

    @gVOR08: Or a week of COVID deaths exceeds that of 9/11.

    2
  35. Kathy says:

    @CSK:

    I can’t even imagine Trump hiring someone to make a concession speech for him, not even to stiff him on the fee.

    2
  36. JohnSF says:

    On matters Hunter Biden, not to bore everyone I hope, but to resurrect two things from yesterdays forum which now appear to be one thing.

    It seems that the missing (and now found again) “only copy in existence” Tucker Carlson documents and the mysterious “Typhoon Invsestigations” report are quite likely one and the same thing.
    So not “the only copy” seeing as the Typhoon stuff has been knocking about the net for at least a month. In rather curious places.

    Also my suspicion that there was a whiff of Bannon to this is shared by Rick Wilson:

    This is the hot garbage Steve Bannon has been selling.

    1
  37. Teve says:

    If you want to kill 30 minutes on a deep dive into Republican politics,

    Win or lose, it’s Donald Trump’s Republican Party

    Long piece, lotsa detail.

    2
  38. Paine says:

    Josh Marshall dunks on the “elite liberal law professors” who defend their conservative colleagues:

    This morning I’m feeling a vague sympathy with a certain class of elite liberal law professors who I think imagined they were engaged in a contest of ideas with their conservative counterparts. I’m by no means talking about all of them. I mean the folks who write high profile OpEds which tell us that even though they strongly disagree with this or that Circuit Court or Supreme Court nominee they are nevertheless eminently qualified, a sterling mind and of judicious temperament. Across the country over the last week and with extra punch last night we are seeing Republican federal judges showing that they will mix and match any theories, manufacture theories, ignore basic traditions of constitutional interpretation all to arrive at decisions which boost Republican partisan advantage as much as possible. I’m speaking precisely when I call them Republican judges.

    In a clutch – and this is a clutch – they’re dispensing with the formalities and appearances, to the extent they existed.

    2
  39. Jen says:

    I’m starting to wonder if these Republican judges are aware of the impact these rulings might have on the overseas military votes.

    I have no idea who returns their ballots early and who waits until the last minute, but it seems to me that people who have always voted absentee might be more locked into a pattern of sending at a certain time–and those might be the ballots that get sequestered (or whatever other nonsense these judges are suggesting).

    They could well be suppressing Trump votes.

    1
  40. Mike in Arlington says:

    @Jen: I think it’s even more than that. Democrats are energized, so they’re more likely to get their ballots in early, Republicans outside Trump’s base are not as energized, so they’re more likely to get their ballots in later, so ballots coming in after the deadline could contain a larger proportion of republican ballots than democratic ballots.

    I’ll see if I can dig it up, yesterday I saw some statistics on the Pennsylvania mail in ballots, and 60% (give or take) of the ballots sent to democrats have been returned and only around 50% (again, give or take) of the ballots sent to republicans have been returned.

    2
  41. Scott says:

    @Jen: For the 20 years I spent in the AF, I voted absentee in Florida. The rules for Florida stated that it had to be postmarked by 7pm, election day. And had to arrive by the 10th day.

    They didn’t have the tools in those days to track like they do now. For years, I heard rumors that the military votes were only counted if the vote was close and that they could make a difference. But that was just a rumor.

    2
  42. Gustopher says:

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Shit, 5 mins of FOX news at the tire shop is enough to drop my IQ by at least 3 points. I can’t imagine what a steady diet of it does to the brain. Probably as bad as mad cow disease.

    I’m not sayin’ I’m just sayin’ @keef

    He’s graduated to zerohedge, but Fox was his gateway drug.

    3
  43. Mike in Arlington says:

    @Jen: I wasn’t able to find the data I mentioned that I saw, but this website has the updated statistics.
    https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/PA.html

    People Registered as Democrats
    Requested: 1,947,782
    Returned: 1,429,082
    Return Rate: 73.4%
    Outstanding Ballots yet to be returned: 518,700

    People Registered as Republicans
    Requested: 787,009
    Returned: 466,954
    Return Rate: 59.3%
    Outstanding Ballots yet to be returned: 320,055

    And yes, it’s possible they are banking on the number of Biden votes will be larger than the number of Trump votes will be suppressed, but that’s only assuming a 100% response rate.

    1
  44. Michael Reynolds says:

    @JohnSF:
    Don’t waste your time. Drew/keef/Theon is a man whose Titanic has sunk beneath him. He’s in the chilly waters of the North Atlantic clinging to a deck chair he hopes will float. He’s got a death grip, he’s not going to let go.

    In a few days he’ll move onto whatever conspiracy horse shit Zero Hedge serves up to soothe the losers. Yuge voter fraud! Ten million illegals voting! George (Jew) Soros (Jew) spending Jew money in a Jewy way! Space Aliens doing…something nefarious!

    There’s no bottom for Theon. He has no pride. He’ll never admit the truth, it would shatter his fragile ego.

    4
  45. CSK says:

    Since Keef didn’t answer my question about the origins of his article excerpt, I will. It comes from something called http://www.geopolitics.news.

    This site has an obvious right-wing slant. From its site description, I suspect it’s not U.S.-based: “Geopolitics News has goal to make it easier for reader to find in one place important news and analytics of events around the globe.”

    Does that sound as if it were written by someone entirely conversant with English?

    7
  46. Sleeping Dog says:

    @Jen:

    I’m starting to wonder if these Republican judges are aware of the impact these rulings might have on the overseas military votes.

    When rulings about postmarks and ballots w/o postmarks were issued last week, that got me thinking about military ballots. If you remember back to 2000, the Gore campaign considered challenging thousands of military ballots regarding lack of postmarks. In the end they didn’t and the courts didn’t rule on that. But this year with the enthusiasm that R judges have for quashing votes, the unintended consequence maybe to disenfranchise a number of members of the military.

    2
  47. Gustopher says:

    @Jen: In normal years in Washington State, the later ballot drops swing left. But that’s one state in years without a pandemic, so, how much that applies I have no idea.

    I typically get my vote in at the last minute, because I enjoyed watching Republican gubernatorial candidate Dino Rossi suffer as he slowly lost his lead, and then lost the election on the 3rd recount. I want to see that happen again.

    This year I voted very early (and my vote has been recorded — we have an excellent tracking system).

    2
  48. Jen says:

    @Scott: While it differs from state to state when absentee ballots are counted, IIRC, they are always counted.

    The notion that they only get counted in close races stems from a misunderstanding of the process, and how that process can affect outcomes. In many if not most states, absentee ballots used to be counted last. (In fact, the changing of this aspect of the process is what’s being challenged in some of these court cases, I believe.) When an election result is clear, that means that oftentimes the winner is declared before all of the absentee ballots are counted. If Candidate X is ahead by 6,000 votes and the county has received 3,000 absentee ballots, the absentee ballots will be counted–but even if every single absentee ballot is a vote for Candidate Y, it won’t change the outcome.

    If an election is close, the inclusion of the absentee ballots has a chance to affect the outcome. That’s where the misconception comes in that absentee ballots are only counted if it’s close.

    3
  49. keef says:

    “James Rosen, a reporter at Sinclair Broadcast Group, reported that a Justice Department official confirmed to him that the FBI opened up a criminal investigation into Hunter Biden and his associates that is focused on allegations of money laundering and that the investigation remains open and active today.”

    You know what this means. It should be abundantly clear. The FBI has been infiltrated by Russian agents conducting a smear campaign.

  50. Teve says:

    Building Wave of Ransomware Attacks Strike U.S. Hospitals

    You think this isn’t Putin kicking us while we’re down? And Trump too incompetent and compromised to do anything about it.

    1
  51. wr says:

    @Kylopod: First off — I respect that you and many other people love this movie and its ending. Wish I could share it. And I know why that ending is there. It’s a real crowd pleaser.

    But it is contrary to everything that’s gone before…

  52. CSK says:

    @keef:
    And this excerpt is from something calling itself http://www.thescotfree.com.

    Why do you never identify your sources? Are you embarrassed to do so?

    9
  53. Flat earth luddite says:

    Just a bit of good news from yesterday. May not be much, but here you all go. Enjoy!

    On this day in 2011, the surgeon came in to my hospital room with the news that I had stage IV cancer (colon/liver/lymphatic), and that chemo would start as soon as I healed from the emergency surgery.

    The journey has entailed week on/week off chemo, a total of 7 surgeries, and enough radiation that I stick to the refrigerator (lol!)

    NED since 6.9.2015.

    2nd colonoscopy since NED scheduled next month.

    Cancer is ugly, but the blessings I have received make the journey worth every step.

    FYI, NED means no evidence of disease. I’m now considered to be in remission. Colon cancer, especially in stage IV, currently has a 3 year survival rate of 15%, and is (IIRC) the 2nd highest death rate for cancer.

    Y’all get your colonoscopy exams scheduled, y’hear?

    We will now continue with my regularly scheduled lurking here at OTB.

    17
  54. DrDaveT says:

    @Kylopod:

    I’m just saying Carlson is about the last commentator where that defense would make even a modicum of sense.

    We require car ads that show the car flying to have a message that says “simulated: cars can’t fly” or some such. Applying the same standard, surely we can require simulated news to have a prominent caption that says “entertainment: these statements are not true” on the screen. If you want to make that defense, you shouldn’t have any objection to that…

    2
  55. Monala says:

    @Flat earth luddite: congratulations! May your health continue to be good.

    2
  56. Mikey says:

    @keef: Well, that seals it, I’m certainly not voting for Hunter Biden!

    Hahahahaha…fuck off, loser. You mush-brained turds have literally nothing of substance on the actual Presidential candidate, so you’re just trying this smear-by-association bullshit about one of his children. And of course even that is almost completely fabricated.

    5
  57. Teve says:

    @nprpolitics

    NEW: The Supreme Court has rejected a bid from Republicans to block North Carolina’s absentee ballot extension.

    The ruling means the state can count mail-in ballots received up to nine days after Election Day as long as they’re postmarked by Election Day.

    @realDonaldTrump

    This decision is CRAZY and so bad for our Country. Can you imagine what will happen during that nine day period. The Election should END on November 3rd.

    Idiot has no clue how elections work. 😛

    3
  58. Mike from Arlington says:

    @keef: Dude, you’re embarrassing yourself. The fact that they opened an investigation, even if the report is truthful, is irrelevant because:
    1) Given that Barr has been Trump’s lickspittle, it’s hard to take any investigation that could have any political impact that he starts seriously.
    2) investigations are opened all the time and then closed when nothing is found. If you said that they had an indictment, then I’ll be curious.

    As a brief aside, why do you think Trump’s DOJ didn’t indict Hillary for her emails, benghazi, the clinton foundation, pizzagate, her plot to destroy the moon, the murder of Sharon Tate or whatever crazy bs she’s been accused of? Was it the DEEP STATE? Antifa? Gremlins? Here, I’ll tell you: nobody wants to get their butts kicked in court. It’s embarrassing. An attorney bringing a bs case to court loses credibility in front of that judge, making subsequent hearings and trials more difficult. This is why when they needed to get an attorney to sign off on a decision that reeked of political interference, it was a political appointee who had little to no experience. I mean, think about it, do you really think that AG Sessions or Barr didn’t want to bring a case against Hillary Clinton if they thought that they could do it? Of course they would. They knew there wasn’t a real case, but they could cloud the water by having unending investigations to make it appear that there might be something illicit.

    8
  59. Flat earth luddite says:

    @DrDaveT:
    Although to be fair, Cracker and I both know people who believe The Onion and Andy Borowitz are actual news, not parody.

    Wait, cars don’t fly? Damn!

    1
  60. Teve says:

    North Carolina law:

    “After each general election, the State Board of Elections shall meet at 11:00 A.M. on the Tuesday three weeks after election day to complete the canvass of votes cast in all ballot items within the jurisdiction of the State Board of Elections and to authenticate the count in every ballot item in the county by determining that the votes have been counted and tabulated correctly.”

    2
  61. Teve says:

    @Mike from Arlington:

    Plus, Tracking 30 Investigations Related to Trump

    Federal, state and congressional authorities are scrutinizing many aspects of Donald J. Trump’s life through investigations related to his businesses, campaign, inauguration and presidency. We’ll be tracking them here. According to reporting by The New York Times, there are currently at least:

    12 congressional investigations

    10 federal crime investigations

    8 local and state investigations

    4
  62. Mike in Arlington says:

    @Teve: Well, that’s definitely Antifa’s doing 😉

    1
  63. JohnSF says:

    @Michael Reynolds:
    Yes, I ‘m starting to get a feel for his inner desperation. 🙂

    OTOH, it’s an mildly interesting game to tease him a bit (mea culpa); it helps me in my own slow-minded attempt to keep all the twists of this Coen-esque storyline in place; and it may interest a passing reader or lurker who chances upon it.

    1
  64. JohnSF says:

    @keef:
    Or, alternatively, that James Rosen is not entirely above doubt as the retailer of a third hand story?
    And “investigation” can be a rather hazy word.
    Especially, in both cases, a few days before the election.
    (Oh what a cynical and doubting mind I am developing, for some reason.)

    2
  65. Kylopod says:

    @wr:

    But it is contrary to everything that’s gone before…

    I’m curious about why you think this. Are you saying it’s unrealistic they found each other? Well, first of all, if you’re going to go down that path, you could just as well poke holes in the realism of what came before. The entire escape is way harder to swallow from the perspective of realism and logistics than the idea that he left enough bread crumbs on the outside to plausibly lead Red to him. You accept it within the logic of the story, or you don’t. There is something fantastical about the film, even if it isn’t overtly supernatural; it isn’t supposed to be a coldly realistic depiction of prison. Andy himself is a larger-than-life personality in a way that sometimes stretches credulity. The book actually suggests Andy becomes something of a legend and that some of the stories about him (his awesome trolling of his rapists, for example) may be apocryphal, but the movie more or less takes everything at face value. You can argue that that’s a flaw–but for better or worse, it’s what the movie chooses, and it’s present throughout its entirety, not just the end. Every step in Andy’s and Red’s journey requires a leap of faith to some extent–faith in the goodness of the characters, in the belief that things will turn out right for them. If their finding each other at the end was a betrayal of the theme of hope, why wasn’t that true about all the previous payoffs in the plot?

    3
  66. charon says:

    https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/how-fake-persona-laid-groundwork-hunter-biden-conspiracy-deluge-n1245387

    One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden’s laptop, a fake “intelligence” document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden’s son and business in China.

    The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake “intelligence firm” called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents.

    The author of the document, a self-identified Swiss security analyst named Martin Aspen, is a fabricated identity, according to analysis by disinformation researchers, who also concluded that Aspen’s profile picture was created with an artificial intelligence face generator. The intelligence firm that Aspen lists as his previous employer said that no one by that name had ever worked for the company and that no one by that name lives in Switzerland, according to public records and social media searches.

    One of the original posters of the document, a blogger and professor named Christopher Balding, took credit for writing parts of it when asked about it and said Aspen does not exist.

    4
  67. Kathy says:

    A small bit on the evolution of dogs to brighten your Friday.

    1
  68. JohnSF says:

    @Flat earth luddite:
    Congratulations on the good news.

    3
  69. Scott says:

    @Scott:
    Meet the Harris County Voters Who Showed Up After Midnight to Cast a Ballot

    Miguel Valencio was still wearing his fireproof coat and welding helmet, which conveniently doubled as a face mask, when he arrived at the Kashmere Gardens Multi-Service Center around 1 a.m. to vote. The forty-year-old engineer who works in the Houston Ship Channel for an oil-field services company had not been particularly enthusiastic this summer about casting a ballot for Joe Biden.

    Valencio’s vote in the early morning hours Friday was made possible by Harris County clerk Chris Hollins’s decision to keep eight polling locations open for 24 hours, from Thursday morning through Friday morning, rather than closing at 7 p.m. as they have the rest of the early voting period. During the extended period, 10,250 Houstonians voted, adding to what had already been record-breaking turnout in the county.

    “I just got off work and I don’t have any time during the day,” said one woman, an employee of Metro, Harris County’s public transportation agency.

    Moments later, a woman with a baby on her hip ambled by, followed by a man who identified himself as a construction project manager who was too busy to vote during the workday.

    An overworked Amazon delivery driver brought her friend to vote. A middle-aged teacher, still wearing her business-casual work attire, was desperate to go home and get some rest. And a white-haired boomer wearing an Alabama Crimson Tide cap and a pair of gym shorts looked like he’d just rolled out of bed

    Norre Citizen, a 21-year-old H-E-B employee
    a trio of Rice undergraduates

    Norma Gonzalez was worried about the state of the country, too. I intercepted the 25-year-old as she walked toward her car around 3 a.m. and asked her what had prompted her to vote so early in the morning. She started with immigration policy before mentioning her concerns about Abbott attempting to suppress voting in Harris County. Like Valencio’s, her vote was an act of defiance. “I guess it’s important to show them we’re going to vote no matter what,” she said. “And if enough people come to this 24-hour voting location, next time it will be harder for them to take it away.”

    This is how voting should be. These people give me hope.

    9
  70. grumpy realist says:

    @keef: How sweet. I suspect you believe in those letters you get sent from Nigerian princes wanting to get money out of the country, as well.

    Tell me, how much money have you lost by your gullibility?

    3
  71. JohnSF says:

    @charon:
    Charon; it’s even better than that.
    For your amusement, hopefully, some posts with some links by me from yesterday’s forum.
    1
    2
    3
    And earlier in todays thread@JohnSF

    It looks like “the document” fits the pattern so far; insinuation and a chaff screen of “detail” but no clear allegations of illegal activity that would trigger an actual investigation.
    As I’ve said before; whoever’s running this op things he/they are being very clever.
    (Hint: they aren’t)
    They are putting out first “evidence” then “corroboration” or “detail” in multiple “sources” (laptop, Typhoon, third hand reports, Bobulinski etc)
    And no formal investigation of these allegations will take place because nothing illegal is being alleged; therefore no such investigation is warranted

    But the operator thinks that is of no matter so long as the story can keep being recycled via fringe media/social media until after the election.

    Thing is, so far the story is NOT getting traction beyond confirmed Trumpkins; and Tucker Carlson’s latest step-back may wreck the media plan.

    (I also suspect at least one person involved thinks that, as well as clever, they are also very witty. I could be wrong, but there some things in this that trigger my “joker” detector. Typhoon, indeed.)

  72. Michael Reynolds says:

    @JohnSF:
    It’s the worst thing about Drew/keef/Theon, he’s so pathetic you want to pity him. That would be the decent thing to do. OTOH, he’s such a twat, and a banned twat at that, a banned twat who is so needy he comes back again and again despite being banned, that he basically gives us permission to go full Ramsay Bolton and abuse him. He brings out my inner sadist, which is not an attractive trait, but then again, he really seems to want to have his dick cut off.

    4
  73. Teve says:

    @fawfulfan

    I just realized why the name of the judge who ordered Minnesota to set aside mail-in ballots sounded so familiar.

    He’s a Trump appointee who was rated “not qualified” by the ABA in 2017 because he had a pattern of “bias” and was “gratuitously rude.”

    We are going to need to expand all the courts.

    2
  74. Mu Yixiao says:

    @CSK:

    Does that sound as if it were written by someone entirely conversant with English?

    A quick look-up shows that it’s mailing address is “Panama” (that’s it, just “Panama, PA”) and it’s hosted through a company in Serbia, but pings back an IP in the Netherlands.

    2
  75. JohnSF says:

    Hmm.
    Looks like my last comment got eat.
    So, reposting without links; can a kind admin please delete if the earlier one resurface?
    @charon:
    Charon; it’s even better than that.
    There’s some post by me on this in yesterdays forum, and earlier in this one.

    In addition:
    It looks like “the document” fits the pattern so far; insinuation and a chaff screen of “detail” but no clear allegations of illegal activity that would trigger an actual investigation.
    As I’ve said before; whoever’s running this op things he/they are being very clever.
    (Hint: they aren’t)
    They are putting out first “evidence” then “corroboration” or “detail” in multiple “sources” (laptop, Typhoon, third hand reports, Bobulinski etc)
    And no formal investigation of these allegations will take place because nothing illegal is being alleged; therefore no such investigation is warranted

    But the operator thinks that is of no matter so long as the story can keep being recycled via fringe media/social media until after the election.

    Thing is, so far the story is NOT getting traction beyond confirmed Trumpkins; and Tucker Carlson’s latest step-back may wreck the media plan.

    (I also suspect at least one person involved thinks that, as well as clever, they are also very witty. I could be wrong, but there some things in this that trigger my “joker” detector. Typhoon, indeed.)

    1
  76. Mike in Arlington says:

    @Jen: Nate Silver suggests the same thing:
    https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1322237462576582657

    1
  77. Mu Yixiao says:

    @Flat earth luddite:

    Y’all get your colonoscopy exams scheduled, y’hear?

    Had my annual physical last week. Got a letter from Exact Sciences today saying my ColoGuard package will be coming soon. I’ll be shitting in the bottle and handing it to the UPS guy promptly.

    Also had a different cancer screening this morning (all clear!).

    My father died of cancer. My mother has had two different types (she’s alive and healthy), and her sister had one of the same types.

    I’m a stubborn old ox about most health issues, but I take cancer very seriously.

    3
  78. Teve says:

    @MarkedMan:

    Trump has cancelled his election night party at his (?) hotel in DC and the pundits are all speculating about how this in reaction to running out of money or sudden concerns about intermingling campaign, personal and government expenditures. I think it is much more likely that Trump is realizing he’s going to lose big and doesn’t want anyone around when it happens. This is a signature Trump behavior going all the way back to the 80’s.

    HA! The only conclusion is that their internal polling shows him up shit creek without a paddle.

    I wonder if that news has percolated through the Trumper sites yet.

  79. Michael Reynolds says:
  80. Mu Yixiao says:

    If you want to feel like you know absolutely nothing (and have some fun doing it): Only Connect.

    It’s a BBC game show designed for smug intellectuals. I’m up to series 13 (series 16 is currently running). It’s brutal.

    2
  81. CSK says:

    @Michael Reynolds:
    I’m surprised he hasn’t posted from The Gateway Pundit. They have a huge world exclusive about Hunter Biden’s PornHub account!

    The Gateway Pundit is, of course, an absolutely unimpeachable source of topflight information.

    3
  82. CSK says:

    @Teve:
    Eric Trump says they’re gonna hold the election night festivities at the White House.

  83. JohnSF says:

    @Michael Reynolds:
    Ah,you are a nicer person than I am.
    I like to play with my food, in a cool and pitiless fashion. 🙂

    2
  84. Jen says:

    Karen O and Willie Nelson cover Queen’s Under Pressure.

    2
  85. Teve says:

    @Jen: her voice is remarkable.

    1
  86. Michael Reynolds says:

    @Mu Yixiao:
    OMG, Only Connect is a family thing with my wife and me watching and our eldest sync-watching from the Bay Area.

    We have our own rules. First, we’re allowed to take all questions and both of the walls. Second, we disregard questions that are just too British. We never outscore the teams, but that may have something to do with the marijuana consumption.

    If only Victoria Coren Mitchell was not so perfectly married to David Mitchell, she would be my back-up fantasy wife. Do you know she used to be a professional poker player in tournaments?

    1
  87. Scott says:

    @Jen: I listened to it the other day.

    Here’s the Texas Monthly article on it:

    Willie Nelson Singing ‘Under Pressure’ With Karen O Is the Duet We Didn’t Know We Needed in 2020

    1
  88. MarkedMan says:

    I want to preface this by saying that there is good evidence that locations where cloth mask cloth mask wearing is the norm are experiencing dramatically lower spread than populations where fewer masks are worn. That chart I linked to last week showed that in Tennessee, areas with 75% mask use had contained and even beaten back the same outbreak.

    Wearing a cloth mask is a good thing and, in countries where it is difficult to get a surgeons mask or an N95 mask, the more people that wear them the better the outcome for everyone.

    This is a lead in to the results from the testing I did on cloth today. As a comparison, an N95 or K95 mask is certified to stop at least 95% of particles in a controlled test, and the low end of the particle size range overlaps with the size of the coronavirus. Bottom line, its reasonable to assume it blocks 95% of the virus particles (or better) given a perfect seal on the mask.

    I tested two pieces of cloth that my wife had used in making masks. The first was from a an old cotton Hawaiian shirt. The result was 6%. The next piece I tested was one I picked out as looking the most filter-like, i.e. more fuzzy. It’s result was 12%. I then ran into a colleague and told him what I was doing and it turns out that back in March he had gone around and collected everything he could find in the building and tested it. Both cloth (woven) and other materials, including non-woven. He said that my results were typical for cloth. Non-woven materials did better but not nearly as well as an N95 mask. We did have a pretty thick non-woven toweling that is used for mopping up oil that tested in that range (better than 80%), but it was impractical to breath through. And of course cloth masks don’t have the liquid barrier that surgeon’s masks or N95 (KN95, FFP) masks have.

    We should all have access to adequate supplies of at least surgeons masks. To me, the fact that the US government has still not used emergency powers to make this happen is criminally negligent, and also an apt metaphor for the entire Republican reaction to a crisis.

    5
  89. Jen says:

    @Scott: It’s really a remarkable duet, thanks for the link I will definitely read that!

    Apropos of absolutely nothing, I can tell my blood pressure meds are working when I see a tweet thread like this one and can simply laugh it off, rather than almost blacking out from anger.

    2
  90. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: Judging from the text, my guess is The Daily Caller (well, duh…), a respected and really really unbiassed purely journalistic-only news site.

    But I want to get in on this random facts leading to conspiracy thingie. Can anybody make something out of the fact that when I was 17, I met Ian Paisley and later, my two younger cousins went on to join the Royal Ulster Constabulary’s anti-terrorism unit?

    ETA: It might help to note that I didn’t actually meet Paisley as much as go to hear him preach as a church in Belfast and shook hands with him as I left. But that still counts, right?

    2
  91. CSK says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:
    No, I tracked it down to a really, really obscure source that makes the Daily Caller look like the Times.

    2
  92. JohnMcC says:

    @CSK: That “James Rosen” quote was on the realclearpolitics site when I ran into it and it seemed to be a reprint from Sinclair. They seem to think that Sinclair is actual news.

    Aren’t they cute?

  93. al Ameda says:

    @keef:
    So, Hunter Biden lives in Los Angeles. Yet brought his laptop to a repair shop in Delaware? I guess LAhas no laptop repair businesses, right?

    3
  94. Teve says:

    @Jen: I saw that stupid asshole earlier. I hope that guy visits a farm one day and gets kicked in the junk by a Holstein.

    3
  95. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Jen: All legal ballots are counted, because there is more than on race on a ballot.

    3
  96. CSK says:

    @JohnMcC:
    Adorable.

    I don’t know why some people think that crackpot blogs are a legitimate source of information. I will say, though, that since Keef never cites his sources, he must be embarrassed by them.

  97. Teve says:

    @CSK: wouldn’t you be? 😀

  98. JohnSF says:

    @MarkedMan:
    But, the thing is, it is at base a social thing, not a personal one, from a dispassionate policy perspective.
    It’s all about shaving the overall rate-of-spread to below unity (aka replication rate aka R-number).
    If even basic mutual masking, plus distancing, plus contact limitation, etc. can achieve this, then operating theatre levels of infection control, while nice personally, are not essential socially.
    And after all, surgical masks are intended, in most cases, more to protect the patient than the medics wearing them.

  99. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Flat earth luddite: Good news indeed. I get mine every 3 years*, because my Brother in Law died from it at the age of 36.

    *might be 4 years this time around, because Covid.

  100. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Slugger: I don’t know whether you’ve got everything, but it certainly looks like the deluxe “Big Mega Whopper Nothing Burger” with extra no lettuce, no tomato, no onion, and no special sauce. Mmmmmm… My mouth is watering already.

    1
  101. OzarkHillbilly says:

    @Kylopod: While I like the ending as is just fine, there is a part of that thinks wr’s proposed ending would be better, but I like ambiguity in films and books. It’s more realistic.

  102. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @Gustopher: What amazed me was that the Republicans found someone even less qualified or notable than Rossi to run. Loren Culp may well be the poster child for “anyone can run for office.” Wa!

    2
  103. Michael Reynolds says:

    @al Ameda:
    It’s really lazy research. They should have found Hunter’s California address and then located a repairman willing to lie for a few bucks. Would have raised the level of credibility a smidge. It’s the trap of the Trump bubble: they invent these stories for the base and the base are idiots prepared to believe anything. (See: keef.) Every time they try to carry their latest bullshit baby out into the real world it dies of mockery.

    3
  104. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK:Well yes, but you still have to admit that Sinclair Broadcast Group is another of those really really reeeeeeeaalllllllly unbiassed TOTALLY objective exclusively purely journalism-only sources. It’s not like the sources are taking their material from hairball, lefty/prog pseudo news packs of lies.

    I can see why he’s expecting to be taken at his word on this stuff. I won’t, of course, but that’s why I don’t get to play with the nice kids, as Luddite is wont to say.

    1
  105. DrDaveT says:

    @Mu Yixiao:

    Got a letter from Exact Sciences today saying my ColoGuard package will be coming soon. I’ll be shitting in the bottle and handing it to the UPS guy promptly.

    Not to get all annoyingly nerdy, but I had a long talk with my doctor about ColoGuard, and we ended up deciding that it was useless.

    The problem is Bayes Rule. Applied to this situation, it’s P(cancer | positive test) = P(positive test | cancer) * P(cancer) / P(positive test).

    Suppose the test has pretty good sensitivity (detection rate): P(positive | cancer) = .9
    And suppose it has decent false negative rate: P(positive | no cancer) = .2
    Now, account for the prevalence of colon cancer. Suppose it’s 0.5% of the population (1 in 200).

    Run the arithmetic, and you find that a positive test in a random person results in a P(cancer | positive) of less than 2%. You have learned very little from the test. If it comes back negative, you’ve learned even less.

    Those are not the actual correct values for colon cancer or ColoGuard, but the argument is the same. For the amount of information one might get, we decided it wasn’t worth it.

    Disclaimer: I do not know to what extent ColoGuard false positives are correlated. If each trial is roughly independent, you might be able to get good info by repeated samples in the event of a positive. If the trials are correlated (e.g. if having a particular non-cancer condition makes false positives more likely), then even repeated trials can’t tell you much.

    1
  106. CSK says:

    @Just nutha ignint cracker:
    Oh, of course. I wasn’t disagreeing about that. I was pointing out Keef’s exact source. TheDaily Caller may be too left wing for him.

    Okay, that was a joke. But there are Trumpkins who hate, hate, hate Fox because it’s too liberal and too anti -Trump for them.

    3
  107. sam says:

    This is the man that fυckwit upthread is hoping wins the election: TRUMP: “You know, our doctors get more money if someone dies from COVID, you know that right?”

    2
  108. Just nutha ignint cracker says:

    @CSK: No problem. I knew that you were only refining my WAG about the source. And I noted that it was just a guess.

    1
  109. al Ameda says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    It’s really lazy research. They should have found Hunter’s California address and then located a repairman willing to lie for a few bucks.

    Just had tires rotated at a local shop and the counter guy (who I like, he’s always pleasant enough) told me that ‘the media’ has been sitting on the Hunter Biden story and if it was known it would blow up Joe Biden’s campaign. So I made my point about Hunter, LA, and laptop in Delaware, etc. And he said, because the contents were so damaging of course he’d take his laptops 3,000 miles away. I said, but that’s were Joe Biden lives, how would nobody notice? He said, Hunter’s a crack addict so he’s going to screw up, and he did.

    Seriously, I’m used to this, most of my 8 siblings are FoxNews consumers and Trump supporters, but … there’s no getting through.

    4
  110. MarkedMan says:

    @JohnSF: You make a good point, and I agree. 10 months into this, though, cloth vs. 10 cent surgical masks shouldn’t even be part of the discussion.

    2
  111. JohnSF says:

    @al Ameda:
    That’s the thing.
    Here’s me thinking I should try selling my Nefarious Deeds Inc ® services to these bozos, on the basis that I would at least put the effort in.
    But when the unreality-based community just eats it up anyway, why should they pay my rates?

    Another lost payday, dammit. 🙂

    2
  112. Kylopod says:

    @OzarkHillbilly: I should be clear that I had no objection to the book’s ending. I just the think the movie’s ending was a better ending for the movie. The book deals with the fuzzy line between reality and myth, and there’s an element of unreliable narrator, as not only is Red unsure whether all the stories about Andy are true, we aren’t sure how much of Red’s first-person account is accurate. The movie, as I said, leaves out most of those implications and tells the story straight, which makes it more hopeful, more optimistic. You can prefer one of those approaches over the other, but both the book and movie are consistent in terms of theme–they just explore those themes differently.

    2
  113. Teve says:

    Exactly. If you really thought it was murder, you would put shit on the line to stop it, but you don’t. You just want to stand around and be sanctimonious and look good to your friends.

    https://twitter.com/davenewworld_2/status/1322201170413264903?s=21

    1
  114. Jen says:

    @Teve: Yeah, I don’t get near that argument. There are actually some who have crossed that line, willing to commit violence to stop abortion, using this very argument.

  115. JohnSF says:

    @Teve:
    I like that guy.

    And a related point that often niggles me: when people equate abortion and murder, they ignore that hardly any legal system, even if forbidding abortion, has regarded them as the same in law.

  116. Mu Yixiao says:

    @DrDaveT:

    I talked with my doctor about the options for testing (I’ve known him all my life and trust him). At my age, without any warning signs or aggravating factors, ColoGuard is a good first screening. If any of that changes, then it’s time for a proper colonoscopy.

    ColoGuard is rated at about 92% accurate, with the main problem being false positives (which is much better than false negatives). False positives can come from things like blood (if, for example, you have hemorrhoids that tear).

    The main caveat is that it can only detect cancerous cells, not actual polyps or tumors.

  117. Teve says:

    When I’ve seen people tell the Trump crackheads that Hunter lived in California, I’ve seen the crackheads reply “But he has a house in Delaware!”

    Well thanks for the miracle of the Internet, I can tell you, He Does Not. Just search for Biden.

    1
  118. Mu Yixiao says:

    @Michael Reynolds:

    OMG, Only Connect is a family thing with my wife and me watching and our eldest sync-watching from the Bay Area.

    Do you watch QI? 8 out of 10 Cats? Mock the Week? Would I Lie to You?

    All of those are between series (or I’m unable to find new eps via “other methods”). And I’m jonesing for another source of panel shows–so if you have any to share, let me know.

    Regarding Victoria, this is what I said to a British friend of mine (a domme):

    I’m fairly certain that Victoria pegs David while making him recite the Chancelors of the Exchequer in order of height, from shortest to tallest.

    1
  119. Teve says:

    @JohnSF: nor does the Bible.

    3
  120. CSK says:

    I was just thinking that there may not be enough vodka martinis on the rocks with bleu cheese-stuffed olives in the world to get me through this coming Tuesday.

    6
  121. JohnSF says:

    @Mu Yixiao:
    Now there‘s an image that may linger in my mind.
    LMAO.

    2
  122. Mu Yixiao says:

    @JohnSF:

    Happy to be of service.

    2
  123. JohnSF says:

    @CSK:

    Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

    6
  124. CSK says:

    @JohnSF:
    Indeed.

  125. Teve says:

    @atrupa

    “There will be no heating in the winter, no air conditioning in the summer, and no electricity” — Trump on what will happen if Biden wins

    @andizeisler

    All the things you think are cake will not be cake. Your feet will become armpits. Bedsheets will turn to sandpaper. Doritos bags will all be filled with bees. The moon will put out a hit on you. The McRib will turn to kale in your hands. The…

    2
  126. Teve says:

    @JohnSF: yeah dumb move.

  127. Kathy says:

    I’m reading a book on the history of the internet as a mass medium. I’ve recognized several developments from the web’s early days (I was there), but some details have slipped my mind.

    One, in particular, is that Netscape Navigator was not given away free, but rather as shareware with a $39 price tag for the full version. I honestly lack any memory of that.

    The book wasn’t entirely clear, but I got the impression the fee applied to enterprise licenses more than to home use, or there was a “pro” paid version you could download only after payment.

    In any case, Netscape sold lots of Navigator licenses, and had hundreds of millions of dollar in revenue from that.

    Paying for a web browser? It boggles the mind.

    1
  128. Teve says:

    @Kathy: oh i remember those days. ‘Course, my first browser was Lynx.

    2
  129. JohnSF says:

    @Teve:
    I’m fond of Lynx.
    Used to use it for testing accessibility issues for websites we subscribed to.
    I liked the minimal clutter.
    I’ll have to try installing it again LOL

    First browsers I used were Mosaic and Navigator, which were both on the PC’s at Worcester Uni. in the mid-90’s .
    Grey pages! Yay! 🙂

    1
  130. Mikey says:

    @Teve: Trump’s big campaign push seems to be “Biden isn’t going to fix all the stuff I fucked up!”

    2
  131. Kathy says:

    @Teve:

    Mine too!

    A the time, though, I ran DOS exclusively on a Toshiba portable PC with a monochrome CGA plasma screen, and my main activity was in email lists. I didn’t really use the web much.

  132. JohnSF says:

    @Mikey:
    Well, given that Joe Biden probably falls short on the whole “raising the dead” thing, you have to concede he has a point there.

  133. Teve says:

    @Mikey: Trump: ‘ you see the terrible stuff happening right over there? Isn’t that awful? Well if you elect Biden that’s gonna be happening right over there!’
    Crowd: ‘SU-PER-MAN! SU-PER-MAN!’

    (They actually chant that now at his rallies)

  134. JohnSF says:

    @Teve:
    ‘My name is Orangemardyass, King of Kings!
    Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

    3
  135. DrDaveT says:

    @Mu Yixiao:

    ColoGuard is rated at about 92% accurate, with the main problem being false positives (which is much better than false negatives). False positives can come from things like blood (if, for example, you have hemorrhoids that tear).

    False positives are better than false negatives for purposes of not missing real cancer, but much worse than false negatives for purposes of getting actionable information from a test. The ratio of false positive rate to general prevalence in the population can easily render a test totally useless, even if its sensitivity (i.e. P(positive | cancer)) is 99%.

    Since you have pre-existing risk factors, your case is different and I’m not going to second-guess your doctor (or you) on how you go about not dying of colon cancer. You’re using it to determine when to get an additional colonoscopy. For an average Joe with no special risk factors, though, ColoGuard is much more likely to be a source of unnecessary anxiety than it is to catch a cancer you would not have caught with routine periodic colonoscopies. It certainly doesn’t replace them, which is the implication of the TV ads.

  136. DrDaveT says:

    @JohnSF:

    First browsers I used were Mosaic and Navigator, which were both on the PC’s at Worcester Uni. in the mid-90’s .

    In the infancy of the WWW, in 1993 or so, I knew a guy* who was a computer science grad student at Carnegie-Mellon. He had written one of the very first web-crawler applications in the world. Not as part of a class or thesis or research project, though — it was an app that scanned message boards looking for events with free food at CMU or Pitt.

    *We sang in a couple of the same groups, and occasionally competed at pinball.

    2
  137. Kathy says:

    @Teve:

    Do they not realize the “terrible stuff” is happening after Trump was elected?

  138. DrDaveT says:

    @Kathy:

    Do they not realize the “terrible stuff” is happening after Trump was elected?

    This is the part that makes me crazy. If Trump could prevent these things, why didn’t he??? If he can reverse them, why doesn’t he???

  139. Mu Yixiao says:

    @DrDaveT:

    Since you have pre-existing risk factors

    I have NO risk factors (for colon cancer–I’m at risk for others, and am being tested for those).

  140. CSK says:

    @Teve: @JohnSF: @Kathy:
    Yep, I started out on Navigator, too. I liked it.

  141. Kathy says:

    The best Tweet I’ve seen today: Dump Trump.

    But shouldn’t the dumpster be on fire?

  142. keef says:

    Great rally for Joe in St Paul today. I think he got a bakers dozen there.

  143. Kathy says:

    @DrDaveT:

    Because in the Land of Trump (aka Dumbf**kistan), reason is not welcome.

  144. Teve says:

    @Radley Balko

    A black woman inadvertently drove into a protest scene. Philly cops pulled her from her car and beat her in front of her toddler. America’s largest police union then posted a photo of the boy and claimed his mother had abandoned him on the street.

    Disband these groups and start over.

    6
  145. Teve says:

    @Kathy: @DrDaveT:

    Do they not realize the “terrible stuff” is happening after Trump was elected?

    Trumpers are not your go-to guys for Eureka! moments.

    1
  146. Mikey says:

    @keef: The St. Paul rally was a drive-in event limited to 250 in compliance with COVID-19 protection guidelines and Minnesota state law because, unlike Trump, Joe actually gives a fuck whether his supporters live or die.

    You support a venal, corrupt, evil traitor who couldn’t care less if you die suffering on a ventilator, alone. What the hell is wrong with you?

    3
  147. mattbernius says:

    @keef:

    Great rally for Joe in St Paul today. I think he got a bakers dozen there.

    Hey pookums, have you thought any more about the charity bet on President?

    Just curious, since you seem to be sure Trump is going to win, it would be a great way to get some easy money for a charity of your choice!

    Love and Bobulinskis!

    1
  148. JohnSF says:

    @keef:
    Er, big deal.
    Who cares?

    Seriously, what on earth difference does it make what turnout anyone does or does not get at a rally? Daft metric.
    Especially this year.
    You know, with a pandemic going on?

    1
  149. Jax says:

    @keef: So he’s not trying to kill his own voters to feed his own narcissism?! Well, by golly, I think that might make him a great President, compared to….that other guy.

    How does it feel to know that Trump actually does not give ANY flying fucks if you live or die of COVID? Or of hypothermia, or heat stroke, or anything, based on his recent rallies….you are simply there so he can get his rocks off and feel the love his parents never gave him, even if it kills YOU. You are expendable, ground up in the Trump machine.

    2
  150. Teve says:

    JFC

    @MikedelMoro

    NBC News: U.S. sets single-day record of 97,088 coronavirus cases Friday. It is the fifth time since Thursday, October 22nd the U.S. has surpassed its previous record. NBC News: U.S. sets single-day record of 97,088 coronavirus cases Friday. It is the fifth time since Thursday, October 22nd the U.S. has surpassed its previous record.

    1
  151. Jim Brown 32 says:

    @keef: Don’t you have some ‘Accept Jesus or Burn in Hell’ yard signs to hammer in people’s yards?

    2
  152. Gustopher says:

    @Flat earth luddite:

    Y’all get your colonoscopy exams scheduled, y’hear?

    I had a dual procedure appendectomy and colonoscopy about a year ago. Not recommended. Will not do again.

    2
  153. Flat earth luddite says:

    @Gustopher:
    The original procedure was a “rotisserie” colonoscopy & endoscopy. I knew I was in trouble when clinic sent me to ER for “tests” & nurse said, “Mr Luddite, we’ve been waiting for you. If you can get on this gurney, we have a room waiting. 2 units of blood later they’re prepping me.

    I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m allergic to hospitals…every time I go there, there’s a new hole in me!

    Gonna pass on the ‘scope/dex if it’s all the same, but Thanks anyway!

    1
  154. Bilko says:

    @keef: OMG, most Repubs have already moved on from this nonsense, realising it’s fake as a $7 bill. Keep up with the play.

    1