Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Donnie Jr was on Laura Ingraham tonight. He said covid deaths are practically down to nothing.

Over 1,000 deaths were reported today. Same as yesterday.

[lineygoblue]

What she's done, is effectively laid off most of the servers in bars and restaurants throughout Michigan. Customers will not eat inside, but instead will take their orders to go.

The Strangelove's among us will think this is a brilliant move for Gretch, because people will take their orders to go, and eat at home. Make sure you tell your favorite server that when you see them again. IF you ever see them again. Owners will have to lay off their waitstaff, or at least a good portion of it. And then Gretch will blame Trump for the unemployment numbers ....

[THE_WIZARD_]

Yes because all covid deaths are legit liney...all of them. I'm going to build a bomb shelter and hide until there is a vaccine.

[lineygoblue]

Make sure you don't come out until Gretch says its safe.

She's the only one who can save us from ourselves.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Select US and global economic sectors have surged in the third quarter with record setting growth in companies like Amazon and Google (Alphabet). That has to be viewed in context given where economic indicators were at the end of the first quarter. Nevertheless it's indicative of the underlying strength of consumerism and tech companies that, IMO, is only restrained by the negative COVID narrative being pushed here and in Europe. Of course, that results in knee jerk social and economic restrictions that are more broad ranging and less surgical.

It is apparent that officials are aware of the costs of shuttering everything instead of selectively or even by neighborhoods. Generally what produces official decisions to implement broad restrictions is a lack of testing and tracing capacity that would allow more selective restrictions. It is unfortunate that the political polarization in Washington is most likely behind the failure of efforts to pass a stimulus package that is, as I understand it, being held up, among other things, by the size of funding to states for testing and tracing. That's a head scratcher. Testing and tracing is key to effective control of the virus. Beyond that, leakers who may not get picked up in wider ranging testing and tracing, are, the numbers suggest, not going to present a significant added threat to the PH.

FL continues to remain more or less open, e.g. the Fort Lauderdale Boat show began yesterday. It is apparently well attended with masking required and good compliance with that mandate. The Sun Sentinel however continues to print headlines blaring record numbers of new cases. TBF beyond the headlines those numbers are contextualized but I'm not sure the average FL citizens understands what that means. People I talk to have increasing anxiety over going out given the negative COVID narrative they are exposed to on a daily basis. Positivity rates remain at or below 5%. Of note, two weeks ago the FL press undertook an investigation questioning how the state was reporting the positivity rate claiming it was biased to lower positivity numbers - just another attack aimed at Desantis. Really doesn't matter how the positivity rate is calculated. It remains stable around 5-6% or is downward trending over time. ICU bed space isn't a problem in FL and that is because hospitalized COVID patients aren't going there. Instead they recover and go home. CFR in FL is also downward trending and that is true nation wide. That fewer people are dying from COVID is no becoming, if not headline news, it's on the front page.

My take is that this virus can be navigated without crushing social and economic restrictions and that has been the case since day one. That we didn't know much about the virus in February makes the massive shut-downs excusable but no longer. I do not believe that a lack of testing and tracing should produce knee jerk mitigation measures undertaken on a broad scale. Fix the testing and tracing issue then move forward with more selective, surgical mitigation measures.

[iam416]

Why do you want to kill people, Buchanan? WHY????!?!?!? MURDERER!!!!

[WingsFan]

Brett is a Trumpster

[Dr. Strangelove]

More people in Texas have now voted than in 2016. That was always a given considering the population growth there but it's pretty wild that it happened before Election Day. I wonder if the perception that the state is in play this year has motivated more people to turn out (on both sides).

[Tom W]

My favorite “story” of the day is the Girl Scouts congratulating ACB in becoming the 5th ever female Supreme Court justice, an intense backlash thereto and Girl Scouts deleting said tweet and apologizing for offending everyone because they congratulated ACB on becoming the 5th female justice.


Comical. And so sad.

That was hysterical, but at least there's hope in that they're probably getting more even flak for their spinelessness.

[Cody_Russell]

Making my election take now. See ya guys again in this thread on Wednesday.
For the record, I think Biden wins the election (bold take) ... it's going to be VERY close when it comes to electoral college votes either way. Pennsylvania, Florida, and Arizona decide it.
2016, I was totally into the idea that Clinton would win handily. Oracle suckered me into that idea on this thread in 2016 too.
Maybe I'm gong to be 0-2 on election predictions ...

...

- Mail in voting/ turnout SHOULD help the Ds.
- Biden wins the popular vote, duh.
- Clinton RCP lead in battleground states was +1.6 at this time last year compared to Biden's +3.1 lead. 5 days before the election.
- Michigan and Wisconsin go to Biden by 3-5 points. Pennsylvania and Florida will be really close. As Michael Moore recently said, the polling that show's Biden's lead is large is not that accurate.
- Doubt the election is decided next Tuesday. Think it will drag out DAYS, if not weeks.
- Trump will contest it given all of the stuff he has gone through for the last 4 years.

[Mike]

My bold prediction is that it’s decided before polls close in California.

[Dr. Strangelove]

North Carolina is allowing absentee ballots to count up to nine days after Election Day as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. The Supreme Court declined to intervene and stop this. Here's what Trump said in the past hour regarding this:

"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"

Again, he seems to think or at least is trying to con people into believing that in prior elections, the vote-counting stops at the stroke of midnight. If there are still more votes to count, oh well, they just get tossed. This is never how it's worked (obviously) and it always takes weeks before all the states have a final count.

And one other note, if things worked the way Trump says they should above, a lot of overseas military ballots would never be counted.

[Mike]

His whole campaign for re-election has basically been an attempt to delegitimize the process. Bold strategy, Cotton! Let’s see if it works!

[Dr. Strangelove]

His whole campaign for re-election has basically been an attempt to delegitimize the process. Bold strategy, Cotton! Let’s see if it works!

The thing about Pennsylvania and how it could be a clusterfuck is that the state's Republican-controlled legislature refused to allow counties to start counting mail-in ballots ahead of time. That means in a lot of counties they will be counted LAST. Several already said they won't even start the mail-ins until Wednesday. We already know that Democrats have cast almost 1,000,000 more mail in ballots than Republicans have.

https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/PA.html

So late on Election Day, it's not a far-fetched scenario that Trump could have as much as a double-digit lead. That's why he's screaming that the counting should stop at that point. As time goes by and his lead whittles away, he'll be screaming FRAUD and WHERE ARE THEY FINDING THESE VOTES?? MUST STOP NOW! No matter that they were sent in weeks ago and have been just sitting around waiting to be counted...he'll call them fraudulent.

[Mike]

Yep. It's gonna be a shit show. I would love to have this settled before I go to bed Tuesday but I forgot about all the varying processes from state to state. Seems like they should start counting the mail-in ballots first thing in the morning while the in-person voting is taking place. They should be mostly caught up by night time. At any rate, it will be a fairly comfortable victory for Biden.