Joe Walsh

I'm glad to hear it! Would you consider a Kickstarter to get it re-edited and re-typeset?

But, then, Trump never has had much patience.

In my view, the good news is that we're still producing food, water, power, and all the other essentials, so the basics of civilization don't look set to go away anytime soon. And if government supports people and businesses during the downturn, everyone with diminished income will get to pay their bills and keep their heads above water. So that keeps factories, shops, and homes in the same hands they were in before the crisis. And if that government support for businesses is predicated on people remaining on the payrolls through the crisis, those businesses also won't have to lose their trained workforce. After the crisis passes, we'll have a lot of pent up demand for all those non-essentials that we couldn't get during the crisis. People will go back to work providing those things and will therefore have money to buy them as well. So it seems as though this could just be a rough period after which we're likely to see a nice rebound and a return to growth -- if we handle the crisis well. If we handle it poorly, of course, it could get pretty darned bad. Congress can easily throw vast sums of money out the window if they listen to the corporatists in both parties instead of taking care of the middle and working classes. And if people keep going out despite stay-at-home orders, more people will get the virus, and more of them will die because the hospital beds are all full. I hope we handle this crisis better than we've been handling things in general.

But we're so good at doing nothing!

Looks like we're in for a long period of staying mostly at home, and being unable to purchase many things. Could be 3 months, 5 months, or much longer. 😬

Yeah, the hording list is getting long. People don't seem to really know what to stock up on. When they started talking about Costco's in Chicago running out of TP a couple weeks ago, my wife and I decided to stock up at that point since the mania hadn't hit our area yet. Nothing crazy -- just an extra pack of TP, an extra 3-pack of tissues, a few cans of soup, etc. Enough stuff that, with what we normally keep on hand, we would be able to make it for 14 days if we couldn't even get deliveries (which seems unlikely). Then, late last week, the mania hit everywhere (including our area), and we were amazed what people were stocking up on, and how much. The guy behind me had filled his entire cart with canned soups! Another did the same with bottled water. And anything that could possibly be used as TP was flying off the shelves. Just amazing. I'm so glad Amazon and eBay have shut down a lot of the resellers, but there's still so much hoarding it's going to be a problem for a long time.

Klobuchar's out. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-klobuchar/amy-klobuchar-ends-bid-for-u-s-2020-democratic-presidential-nomination-idUSKBN20P2TF She's urging her supporters to vote for Biden.

I haven't heard anyone saying Castro wasn't that bad.

Whatever. It's the same thing he said 4 years ago, and that Obama said before that. It's politics.

Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist is better than I'd hoped. I love that it's a musical set in a world where there's an explanation for why people break out in song, dance around, then go on as if nothing happened. That it's also smart, funny, well-written, well-acted, etc. makes it a top pick for the season as far as I'm concerned. Plus, Jane Levy and Peter Gallagher are two actors I'm always happy to watch do their thing.

I didn't pay for the article, either, but we know that we pay more per capita for healthcare than any other nation, yet our outcomes aren't better. We know that other advanced nations handle healthcare in their own, individual ways. Yet they all pay less and have outcomes at least as good as ours. So there appear to be many paths to lower costs that do not sacrifice health. We also know that congress barred Medicare and Medicaid from negotiating for lower drug prices, and we know that the VA is allowed to negotiate for lower drug prices, and that the VA therefore pays less for drugs. It would seem a simple matter of will to allow Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate on drug prices, saving the nation substantially. In short, we know there are a lot of ways we could be saving money and getting at least as good of outcomes as we have now. So to the extent that any given program does things that are shown to result in lower costs with health outcomes that are at least as good as we have now, I think we should at least consider it. Medicare for All is one such. It appears to be a reasonable path to what we want: more coverage, less expenditure. Part of that is done through negotiating for lower drug costs. Part is done through eliminating the administrative overhead (we know that the overhead of Medicaid is much lower than that of any private health insurer, for example, and we know that dealing with one insurer is less costly for hospitals and doctors than dealing with many different insurers each with their own procedures and requirements). Those things seem like they're reasonable ways to reduce costs and get good outcomes. Whether they're philosophically in line with American values is a different debate. How we should handle what to cover and what not to cover is yet another debate. But they do seem to be ways to get where we keep saying we want to go.

The peer-reviewed medical journal The Lancet says Medicare for All will save us $450 billion dollars and 68,000 lives per year. But we can't afford that and it's un-American anyway.

I came of age in the 80s, so I feel a lot of nostalgia for that time period. I still enjoy some of the music and movies very much. And I still have and occasionally use several of my 8-bit computers and video game consoles from back then. And, of course, that's when I discovered role-playing, including Champions. So that's still going on, too. So the decade gets an A+ from the nostalgia perspective. But outside of nostalgia, it wasn't that great of a decade. I'd give it a C overall.

I'm not a tweeter, but this thread where Blake Zeff explains how Bloomberg gets elected was worth reading all 17 tweets. https://twitter.com/blakezeff/status/1227976156936171520

Today's update indicates that they will be scrapping the idea of using roughs, and will instead get them turned into finished B&W line art.

That's the thing about starting down the path of saying "the rules don't matter," whether it's the rules of propriety or the Constitution, or anything in between. Here we are, after decades of undeclared wars, rule by executive order, and an ever-expanding Executive Branch, and now the President can apparently do whatever he wants as long as his party holds one branch of Congress; the Senate Leadership can save Supreme Court Justice picks until his party has the Presidency; and so on. Sure, they're all called out in media, but it doesn't matter. Because the rules don't matter. Not really. Not when it comes down to it. What matters is what We The People do to the folks who break the rules. And apparently, we don't do anything to them any more, so long as they're "on our team." Which is great, because I'm fully in support of this totally Constitutional way to remake the Constitution : https://harvardlawreview.org/2020/01/pack-the-union-a-proposal-to-admit-new-states-for-the-purpose-of-amending-the-constitution-to-ensure-equal-representation/

The biggest issue is that even if Democrats retake the Senate and hold the House while winning the Presidency, that still leaves the Supreme Court. They'll strike down anything that even mildly discomforts the wealthy and powerful, no matter what that will mean for average citizens. On the other hand, the only way to solve that particular problem is to hold the Senate and the Presidency, so that's where it'll have to start. Probably not this time around, though.

It's probably 20% liberals saying "look what the idiot said now", 20% his supporters saying "look what our great leader said now", and 60% Russian bots. 😉

Meanwhile, Trump's taking credit for falling cancer rates. Cancer rates that have been falling for decades due to a decline in smoking along with better cancer treatments...the latter of which being in part the result of work by the NIH and the National Cancer Institute, both of which Trump wanted to subject to budget cuts. There is no bottom to his shamelessness. And the kicker is, his followers believe he's really responsible for things like falling cancer rates. He gets retweets and "likes" galore for these self-aggrandizing tweets.

I think you're right. Countering Trump's vision with "let's go back to the way things were before Trump" is a losing strategy, IMO. There needs to be a coherent, easily understandable vision presented by the candidate, and it needs to address the issues people care about in a way that isn't just more of the same old, same old.

Say hey, good lookin' - what ya got cookin'? How's about cooking somethin' up with me? Hey, sweet baby - don't you think maybe We can find us a brand new recipe? I got a hot rod Ford, and a two dollar bill And I know a spot right over the hill There's soda pop and the dancing's free So if you wanna have fun, come along with me Say hey, good lookin' - what ya got cookin'? How's about cooking somethin' up with me? I'm free and ready, so we can go steady. How's about saving all your time for me? No more lookin' - I know I been tookin' Hows about keepin' steady company? I'm gonna throw my date book over the fence And buy me one for five or ten cents I'll keep it till it's covered with age Cause I'm writin' your name down on every page Say hey, good lookin' - what ya got cookin'? How's about cooking somethin' up with me?

Well-written article on AOC's first year in Congress: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/01/aoc-first-year-in-washington.html

Hear that lonesome whippoorwill He sounds too blue to fly The midnight train is whining low I'm so lonesome I could cry I've never seen a night so long When time goes crawling by The moon just went behind the clouds To hide its face and cry Did you ever see a robin weep When leaves began to die? Like me, he's lost the will to live I'm so lonesome I could cry The silence of a falling star Lights up a purple sky And as I wonder where you are I'm so lonesome I could cry