Lee

If Trump somehow gets another four years...I officially give up on America, its "values", and humanity.

curse

I remember that Star Trek episode

Other than whenever Jeri Ryan came close to being naked, there wasn’t one.
   My real problem with the show was the advertising.  The next week teasers and commercials always promised not simply an interesting episode but one where something major and permanent happened to one of the characters. 
   On a good show that stuff actually happens with consequences for ongoing episodes. Voyager was the king of fake-outs. In the whole series only one person ever left and one came on.  Except for B’Elanna giving birth (and that was only because the actress was pregnant) nobody ever really evolved as a person.  People remembering the effects of “Year in Hell” or some mention of Harry Kim not being the same one they left with for example. Everything had to zero out and go back to the beginning so that the ever changing crew of writers didn’t have to keep up with any changes.
   Take series like Buffy or Babylon 5.  Major plot development every season, important characters coming in & out like thru a revolving door. 
    Voyager just cried wolf too many times for me to care anymore.

You're in our prayers, Cygnia. But you're a Hero. You've faced down demons and supervillains. If this virus had an ass, you'd kick it.

Exactly this.  The problem isn't just the cops who served the warrant, it's the entire system that led a nurse to get gunned down in her own bed.  Yet there is zero movement on the parties involved to reform no knock warrants, verify the informant's testimony, check whether the perp they're looking for hasn't already been picked up, or check whether they have the right address.  Instead the only serious charges that were leveled were for the one cop who missed, and then the prosecutor intentionally fumbled the case in court.
 
And while it might not have been a racial issue until the bullets started flying, if Breonna Taylor had been white, I guarantee you that there would have been a lot more effort to review and reform police procedures. 

Within limits, sure.  It's easy to say "the government will pay for it", but that does not make it free.  How much more taxes are you willing to pay (not impose on other segments of the population - pay yourself - "who should pay taxes?" is a completely separate question from "what should taxes pay for")?  Or, what other programs (being realistic) are you willing to cut?  More funding for COVID, so less for other medical conditions?  More old people get hospitalized, so reduce social security benefits (or tax them more heavily) to compensate?  A special medical tax?
 
Just like the death rate is not the only COVID risk we should be concerned with (thanks, LL, for those two fantastic and very sobering links), we need to think beyond the immediate when we suggest ramped up spending.
 
Of course, there are also benefits - if we train up more medical personnel and build more facilities, they can be used for other purposes after the COVID crisis has passed.  Not everything we would need is limited to COVID care.  But a lot of what we would need, and would have ongoing value, requires years to implement.  Maybe some of it should be started now so we are more ready for COVID-2X!
 
The articles LL cited show the long-term damage.  That 20 something whose health is compromised will not be able to work either.  He or she will impose costs on the medical system, and the social system, for decades.  The lower his risk of death, the higher those long-term costs.  As well, as one article noted, we do not know that "that which does not kill me makes me stronger", and many experts are concerned with the possibility that "that which does not kill me today will be back to kill me later".
 
 
So what, wall off the US and give up?  Let the countries that have taken this seriously survive, and others can wither and die?  I suggest that having RO rates over 1.0 in 47 out of 50 states is an indicator that more, not less, has to be done.
 
 
Leaving aside the fact that mortality rate is not the only consideration - that has been debunked repeatedly, with LL's links providing a great recent example, that 20something working in the theater will, for the theater to make money, serve how many people a day popcorn that he scooped up. chatted with the consumer and took their payment?  Those people will, I expect, range across all age categories, at least if we accept your theory that all we need to do in order to restore the theater's economic prosperity is reopen and people will flock to sit in areas of poor ventilation for a couple of hours at a time.
 
Those people you quarantine are also out of work while quarantined.  People don't respect social distancing or masking protocols.  What makes you think they will respect quarantine, rather than follow the example of senior elected officials?  Will we enforce quarantine (police; millitary?).  If so, who will pay the enforcers? 
 
How about the theater gets to reopen, but must fund insurance for all workers or patrons who contract COVID in a manner which can be traced back to the theater, covering their medical costs, loss of income and including long-term health damage and loss of long-term income earning potential?  If the theater has to pay the freight for all risks its opening creates, how do the economics look now?
 
I agree there are no easy right answers.  However, that includes the easy answer of "screw it and just reopen everything".
 
 
 
 
 
Oh yeah, I came here to post this, which looks exactly like recent office staff meetings.  Bonus points if you can provide an example of something your office did on a videoconference than could not have been done on a phone conference call.
 

Experts were calling for a couple of weeks of shutdown to buy enough time to start mass produce masks, gowns, and other PPE. To use the Defense Production Act to crank up producing millions of tests. And to set up contact tracing.
 
The president and the vice president, by their own admission on multiple occasions, were assuming that the virus would magically go away if we waited until the weather was a bit warmer. 
 
Yeah both the administration and the experts were looking to buy time. But they were looking to buy time for completely different reasons.
 
You still can't go into a Wal-Mart or a Home Depot and have a reasonable expectation that they'll have disposable masks for sale...NINE freaking months after the president knew there was a pandemic coming. Testing is still hard to come by and what little testing the feds did, they've scaled back. Contact tracing is still a dream by the people who want to control the virus rather than a plan being implemented by an administration which, by their own admission, wants it to spread.
 
The president, VP, and administration, as we were starting out, were intentionally withholding information from the public which the people could have used to protect themselves. And were also deliberately spreading disinformation about how deadly the virus is.
 
And none of that has stopped. The administration is still not telling the truth, as we saw last week with the congressional committee which dumped the weeks of White House data which it was sharing with Congress behind the scenes. 
 
The president is holding maskless events with no social distancing. Is saying there's a cure to the virus when one doesn't exist. Lying by saying a vaccine will be here in a couple of weeks and the military is prepared to distribute it around the country. The vaccine is at least six months away. The military hasn't even ordered the equipment which would be necessary to distribute the vaccine around the country, much less taken possession of the equipment. 
 
We can't even get into a discussion about what tool is being used to deal with the crisis, whether scalpel or chainsaw. 
 
This is not "dealing" with the crisis at all.
 
Welcome to Fantasy Island, where all your nightmares come true.

As you say, ScottishFox, we don't have numbers for suicide, overdose, and alcohol-related deaths for 2020. That argument is being driven by assumptions and anecdotes with no hard evidence to back it up. And is often being pushed by corporate interests who want laborers back at work to boost their profits. Not that I believe for a moment that's your motivation. But it's highly questionable to base public policy on a "bet." After all, many of our early bets for COVID-19 proved faulty.
 
But Old Man makes a salient point. You don't become obese from bumping into an overweight person. You don't become alcoholic from meeting someone who drinks. That's comparing apples and rocks. But everyone we encounter is a potential virus spreader.
 
I am, however, growing fatigued by the argument against restrictions focusing on deaths. That's not the only significant consequence of being sick from coronavirus. Many who have "recovered" from COVID are still suffering serious health conditions months later, and they may turn out to be permanent. You can't earn a living if you're chronically ill, let alone dead.

Beau of the Fifth Column predicted this on his YouTube channel just today. He said we can expect a flurry of spurious "news stories" related to the Bidens to be released between now and election day, to attempt to sway undecided voters while distracting from Trump's failures. All too late to be proven or disproved before the vote.
 
I can only imagine how you Yanks must feel having to put up with this behavior. I'm truly sorry.

I have to say these things.
 
1) Non-sentiant and semi-sentiant animals are not exactly on the good/evil axis. They do things for the survival of the self and their species. A lion who attacks the character is not doing it out of evil, but out of hunger, fear, or that it is in their territory and do not know their intentions. 
 
2) Sentiant beings also can attack not out of good or evil, but out of fear or misunderstanding. Just because the sword will not harm the opponent does not mean the opponent will stop fighting. Also, people who are mind control are not at that moment on the good/evil axis. The controller is evil and they must obey, but that doesn't mean they can be harmed by the weapon.
 
3) Created things like golems and non-intelagent undead can't choose to be good or evil and can be exempted from the sword. Objects like bombs can't be affected. You can't chop a door to escape a shrinking room cause the door cares not your morale outlook, nor does it have one of it's own. An evil villain tries pore sweet Polly to the train tracks. Forget slashing Polly free with that sword. The rope is not evil, just doing it's job as a rope.

You know, Canadians have always been proud that we have the longest undefended border in the world with the United States. Folks from both countries crossed back and forth all the time. We have friends and family on both sides. Despite how Americans sometimes piss us off, we counted ourselves very lucky to have the United States as our neighbor.
 
We're not used to thinking of America this way. I know it's normal for much of the rest of the world, I guess we were spoiled. But we're very uncomfortable and unhappy with this whole situation. Those of you who feel like these past few years have changed the people you used to know, and ruined your relationships? As a nation Canada feels that way about America, and we miss the old you.

I suggest you build a wall.  And make Trump pay for it.

I think this potentially could work very well.
 
First they mute Trump's mike while Biden is making his two minute speech.
 
Then they mute Trump's mic while Trump is making his two minute speech.

Pure greed at work here. The richest in the country could be taxed at 90% and they'd STILL be the wealthiest people in the country. So sick of the American lack of empathy. It makes me ashamed.

At this point I believe that rhetoric is aimed solely at the depressingly-sizeable number of Americans who already believe those hyperbolic warnings. It used to be mostly Trump who indulged in it, but it seems more Republican legislators are taking up the crazy talk. And that scares me more than anything I've heard so far, because those are the kind of claims dictators or their rivals use when they know they can't take or hold power through democratic means, and their only recourse is to inflame their supporting factions into a violent mob to force concessions from their opponents.
 
I'm growing more pessimistic for a peaceful transition of power, however the elections turn out.
 
 
Funny how the candidate who claims his opponent is senile, is the only one who apparently can't answer questions on more than one topic at a time.

A teacher asked his class how many of them were Trump fans. Not quite knowing what a Trump fan is, but wanting to be loved by the teacher, all of the kids raised their hands, except Little Johnny.
 
The teacher asked Little Johnny why did you decide to be different... again.
 
Little Johnny said, “Because I'm not a Trump fan."
 
“Why aren't you a Trump fan?"
 
Johnny said, “Because I'm a Democrat."
 
The teacher asked him why he is a Democrat.
 
Little Johnny replied, “Well my mom is a Democrat and my dad is a Democrat, so I'm a Democrat."
 
The teacher, annoyed by this answer, asked him, "If your mother was an idiot and your father a jerk, what would that make you?"
 
Little Johnny replied, “A Trump fan."

The lies, incompetence, and corruption of the current presidential administration and Republican roster of legislators has been on display so many times, I'm no longer inclined to pretend impartiality or give them the benefit of the doubt. They had their chance to show their quality, and they blew it spectacularly. They have no credibility left.

To expand on that last thought, it's taken me decades to figure out exactly why I think it is that the people who were drawn in to run for Republican office haven't grasped the idea of compromise. But here it is (I'm very rambling tonight but hopefully this makes sense).
 
In the 1970's, the Republican party had moved away from ideology. It was vaguely pro-business but it was difficult to point to a set of principles and pull together a group of voters to tell them "we're moving in this direction".
 
Gingrich won election to the House in '76 or '78 and immediately began agitating for the party to do something other than being content to be out in the cold: the last time the Republicans had been in control in the House had been in 1958. Gingrich had the idea if the party could pitch a set of beliefs to the voters, that it could build a governing coalition. And that his set of beliefs were the perfect ones to pitch.
 
When Reagan ran for president in 1980, Gingrich was part of the group which helped Reagan pull together an economic message (instead of the mess of statements which contributed to Reagan's 1976 presidential campaign being narrowly unsuccessful). When Reagan won the nomination, he put Gingrich in control of his national outreach to Republican congressional campaigns, which was unusual for such a junior member of the House to get such an important assignment.
 
From that point forward, Gingrich was in a continual guerilla war against the Republican leaders in the House, who mainly wanted Gingrich and his growing number of elected members to go away. 
 
Unfortunately, I think a lot of the problems started here in 1980, not with Gingrich but with Reagan's winning coalition.
 
Gingrich's idea of an ideology was small government, limited spending, sound monetary policy, strong national defense, etc.
 
But as Reagan was running for president, the Moral Majority group had started up mainly among evangelical Protestants and Reagan welcomed them in as part of his coalition. Gingrich didn't even consider himself to be a Christian at that point in time (and wouldn't convert to Catholicism for a couple of decades afterward).
 
But Gingrich welcomed the evangelicals to the party and continued the message that you have to fight for your ideals and make the best deals you can. But most of the people who were coming into the party were evangelical Protestants first and Republicans second. Their religion had started because of their perception that Catholicism had compromised the original ideology of the church. 
 
Those newcomers were also pushing for various culture wars issues and Reagan invited them into the party on that basis. They accepted the vague pro-business stance of the traditional Republican establishment. They also accepted, at least to a limited extent, what Gingrich considered to be ideology.
 
But they blended it together in their minds to be THIS IS IDEOLOGY in the same sense that they considered their religious beliefs to be ideology.
 
So when the people Gingrich recruited to run for office actually won a majority in the House in 1994, he brought along a lot of people who believed on some level that compromise was a sin, an evil: compromising your political ideology is no different than compromising your religious ideology.
 
That seemed to catch Gingrich by surprise, since he had been "preaching the gospel" of cutting the best deal possible all along and that difference between Gingrich and the Republicans (who he had helped into office) played a role in his eventual ouster.
 
Ironically, their ideology has continued to evolve with them tossing out, little by little, almost everything Gingrich had considered to be ideology. And their culture wars message has called every white supremacist out of the woodwork to be active members of the party (greatly accelerated by the Trump presidency).
 
But their belief that compromise is somehow evil remains.
 
And as I've mentioned before, when earmarks were banned in the 2000's so that individual members of Congress couldn't be enticed into compromise, things really started falling apart. 
 
< /rambling >

My wife passed away near the end of September 11 years ago. One of her favorite holidays was Halloween, and so we decided to hold her wake on that night. I rented out the clubhouse here at my townhome complex, and some very good friends gathered to eat, drink a bit, and reminisce about their favorite things about her. After a while, it became a little warm, and so we opened the clubhouse doors to get a little of the cool, crisp late October air. A few minutes later, a little kid in costume stood in the doorway, and said, "Trick or Treat!" An old friend of ours looked at me and smiled as we both got up, grabbed the candy bowls that I'd put around for nibbling, and gave out lots of candy.
 
There was just something so right for her to have trick or treaters at her wake, and it still brings a smile to my face, amidst the tears.

True.  If the objective is to perfectly simulate D&D, then there's no point using a different rules set.

We’ve always played with miniatures in some form of another. However when it comes to Tactics, I know someone in our group who can take a little longer than I feel it should cause he’s trying to eek out every advantage. That’s not wrong per we but unless your character is really tactical in concept, I don’t think you should wasting  all that time to get in perfect position. This isn’t Warhammer 40k! 😂 

My question has always been this: There’s this whole thing about abortion. But no one is willing to step up with daycare. Or the cost of healthcare. Or defund the military by a few million — against its trillions — to rebuild our public school system. You can’t save the children then forget about them. It’s not about being Christian; it’s code for racism and suppression of women.
 
I freely admit to spit-balling here. The “war on Christianity” is all a giant gambit based on Roe v Wade; if we have abortions, then women may not have children unintentionally and thus may finish their education, get jobs, and do better than men. It’s way, way more complex than I’m explaining here, and gets into health care, day care, education, etc. But that’s “the gist.” It’s not actually Christianity, it’s about oppression.
 
 
 
Oh, no. That was clearly a sign from his true master, Beelzebub, the Lord of the Flies himself.