archer

When I die, I want my students with me to lower me into my grave...
 
...so they can let me down one last time.

Why hasn't Donald Trump ever finished a book?
 
 
Because he always gets stuck at Chapter 11.

I stabbed a vampire, beat zombies to death and killed the devil itself...
 
my wife rushed into the room and shouted, "YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO GIVE THEM CANDIES, FRANK"

When I die, I want my students with me to lower me into my grave...
 
...so they can let me down one last time.

Allow me to once again reiterate how absolutely despairing it is to witness a family member undergo the slow-yet-sure metamorphosis to Trump supporter/science denier. FOX "News" is like The Joker: scary when it isn't ridiculous.

You look lovely.

I had to make it to fifty-five to have the confidence to dress up like this for Halloween, but at least I made it.
 

Trump left hundreds of supporters stranded in the freezing cold last night
 
Which goes to show that even the biggest Trump supporter can be turned blue.
 
(It’s funny, but not.)

Takes a lickin' and keeps on kickin'.

Just what we need: another hour of 2020....

The Texas Supreme Court drew alarmed attention Friday after directing Harris County to respond to a petition that seeks to invalidate more than 117,000 votes cast in drive-thru lanes...raising fears that the Supreme Court was giving consideration to tossing out tens of thousands of ballots.
 
The petition — filed by state Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, GOP activist Steven Hotze and two Republican candidates in Harris County — argued that drive-thru voting is an illegal expansion of curbside voting, which state law reserves for voters who have an illness or disability that could put them at risk if forced to enter a polling place.
 
https://www.statesman.com/news/20201030/court-fight-over-harris-county-drive-thru-votes-raises-alarm

One interesting thing on that story is that you can see the Biden staffer car is driving directly behind the Biden bus, in the same lane, in an attempt to keep enemy vehicles at bay. You can see as the Trumpkin truck which had been trailing behind the staffer car moves out onto the right shoulder of the road and starts speeding up to draw even with the staffer car.  
 
The camera pans away for a moment then as it comes back, you can see the Trumpkin truck coming off the shoulder of the road to sideswipe the staffer car. The staffer car moves left trying to avoid a second collision. 
 
Trump supporters are out on social media trying to argue that the staffer car "clearly" initiated the collision.
 
Here's a picture of the staffer car.
 

I thought I had posted this story earlier and written something about it but I can't seem to find it now.  Anyway...
 
Dr. Eric Cervini (tweets)
@ericcervini
I flew down to Texas to help with the Biden/Harris bus tour, intended to drum up enthusiasm at polling locations. Instead, I ended up spending the afternoon calling 911. 1/

See all these pickup trucks with Trump flags? They were sitting along I-35, waiting to ambush the Biden/Harris campaign bus as it traveled from San Antonio to Austin. 2/

These Trump supporters, many of whom were armed, surrounded the bus on the interstate and attempted to drive it off the road. They outnumbered police 50-1, and they ended up hitting a staffer’s car. 3/

The police refused to help. When I flagged down one officer, he said his hands were tied: “not my jurisdiction.” He was wearing a blue stripe bandana. 4/

Understandably, though nobody was hurt, the rest of the tour was cancelled. And as a historian who studied the rise of the Third Reich, I can tell you: this is how a democracy dies. 5/

While Germany still had elections and Hitler was merely a disgraced politician, his militia of Brownshirts interrupted his opponents’ political meetings and incited violence on the streets. You know what happened next. 6/

We don’t know what Trump’s supporters (or Russia) have planned for Tuesday. We don’t know what kind of intimidation and suppression will inevitably occur. 7/

But we can be prepared. In the next four days, we can create such a landslide that their efforts are futile, sending a message that Nazi tactics have no place in America. 8/

Consider traveling to a swing state near you to canvass in person: joebiden.com/where-to-canva… 9/

And if you can’t, please commit to one shift of phone banking per day. Since we can’t celebrate Halloween, you could do it with your roommates or loved ones. joebiden.com/take-action/ 10/

We have four days, and I sure as hell don’t want to wake up on Wednesday wishing I had done more to save our democracy. Please join me. 11/11
 
The incident continued for 40 minutes. Here's the video he took as the Trumpkins let his car by while waiting to block the Biden campaign bus.
 
The one after that is a video showing one of the Biden staffer cars trying to keep Trumpkins from getting too close to the bus and the Trumpkin truck deliberately sideswiping him.
 
 
One of the nice things about freeways is that they have license plate readers. It should be trivial to find out who owns each of those vehicles then get a warrant to look at that person's phone and/or computer to find out his co-conspirators.
 
If anyone on the federal or state level cares to try to enforce laws against them...
 
Trump today at one of his rallies praised the Texans involved in the incident and asked his audience if they'd seen the video.
 

I was listening to local AM talk radio a while back during a previous spike as they were making fun of hospitals in the state which were being overrun by coronavirus.
 
There was one hospital which had been reported in the national news the previous day because their critical care unit was at something like 121% capacity (I don't remember the exact percentage but something like that). That wasn't the only hospital mentioned in the news story being at or over peak capacity but the only one where they mentioned a percentage.
 
The guest was talking to the host and telling the audience that he'd checked and that the hospital only had 9 critical beds to start off with so being THAT over-burdened meant that they were only talking about maybe 21 people.
 
He and the host were both chuckling over that piece of coronavirus hysteria...while ignoring the fact that the rural hospital was within easy driving distance of a major city and within a 300-400 mile radius of dozens of other hospitals.
 
In normal times, a hospital would never become overrun because they load up patients into an ambulance and transfer them to one of the other hospitals.
 
For that hospital to be THAT over-burdened implies that each and every other hospital within that radius is full as well. (I've had family members who've had to be loaded into ambulances over the years and sent off to God knows where to find either empty hospital beds or doctors who were specialists in particular surgeries. So I know for a fact that they load up patients when they don't even know whether the patient will survive the ambulance trip and send them off over huge distances between one hospital and the next.)
 
Ha, ha, ha...it's only 21 people who need critical care. Let's laugh it up over covid hysteria.

Police pepper sprayed children, a woman in a wheelchair, and others who were in a march to a polling location in order to promote voting. The march was also billed as a demonstration against police violence. 
 
The marchers started off with police escort and police participating in the match...before other policemen decided to use pepper spray to clear the road. Several marchers were arrested.
 
The police started using tear gas just after the marchers had paused for a moment of silence to honor George Floyd.
 
After the incident, the police department claimed the protesters hadn't filed the necessary paperwork to close roads for the march.
 
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/523802-police-pepper-spray-demonstrators-children-at-nc-polls
 
Beatrice Frum's Twitter account indicates the marchers had a permit for the march itself and the marchers were in the area designated for the march when pepper sprayed by the police. Apparently the police are claiming that you need a separate permit to close the streets for the march?
 
"@natfrum and @beatrice_frum observed local police deliberately targeting children for tear-gassing, including one as young as maybe five. They also observed police snipers aiming at the wholly peaceful crowd. All on video."
 
Some of the marchers are reporting that the police waited until the march reached the polling place before trying to disperse the crowd and their efforts had the effect of scaring off bystanders who were already in line to vote.
 
 

Woman cast ballot early before dying of cancer, her ballot will be thrown out.

Good wishes to Cygnia and her husband.

Oregon could become 1st US state to decriminalize hard drugs through this November's ballot initiative.
 
Possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other hard drugs would result in a $100 fine or the person could opt to go into new, free addiction recovery centers which are to be paid for by taxes on marijuana sales.
 
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-portugal-arrests-elections-oregon-4feaaeb5e60f3a853810ae1853fb22ea
 
I'm excited to see this since it's a variation on the approach I've advocated for years. Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland have each decriminalize hard drugs with no uptick in overall hard drug usage in their populations (Portugal with no uptick according to the article, the Netherlands and Switzerland according to my ever-failing memory).
 
When you consider how much the US spends on law enforcement, prosecution, and prisons over drug possession offenses, we could probably instead pay for rehab plus a new house for each drug offender and still come out cheaper and have less of a drug problem.  

Oregon could become 1st US state to decriminalize hard drugs through this November's ballot initiative.
 
Possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other hard drugs would result in a $100 fine or the person could opt to go into new, free addiction recovery centers which are to be paid for by taxes on marijuana sales.
 
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-portugal-arrests-elections-oregon-4feaaeb5e60f3a853810ae1853fb22ea
 
I'm excited to see this since it's a variation on the approach I've advocated for years. Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland have each decriminalize hard drugs with no uptick in overall hard drug usage in their populations (Portugal with no uptick according to the article, the Netherlands and Switzerland according to my ever-failing memory).
 
When you consider how much the US spends on law enforcement, prosecution, and prisons over drug possession offenses, we could probably instead pay for rehab plus a new house for each drug offender and still come out cheaper and have less of a drug problem.  

I was listening to local AM talk radio a while back during a previous spike as they were making fun of hospitals in the state which were being overrun by coronavirus.
 
There was one hospital which had been reported in the national news the previous day because their critical care unit was at something like 121% capacity (I don't remember the exact percentage but something like that). That wasn't the only hospital mentioned in the news story being at or over peak capacity but the only one where they mentioned a percentage.
 
The guest was talking to the host and telling the audience that he'd checked and that the hospital only had 9 critical beds to start off with so being THAT over-burdened meant that they were only talking about maybe 21 people.
 
He and the host were both chuckling over that piece of coronavirus hysteria...while ignoring the fact that the rural hospital was within easy driving distance of a major city and within a 300-400 mile radius of dozens of other hospitals.
 
In normal times, a hospital would never become overrun because they load up patients into an ambulance and transfer them to one of the other hospitals.
 
For that hospital to be THAT over-burdened implies that each and every other hospital within that radius is full as well. (I've had family members who've had to be loaded into ambulances over the years and sent off to God knows where to find either empty hospital beds or doctors who were specialists in particular surgeries. So I know for a fact that they load up patients when they don't even know whether the patient will survive the ambulance trip and send them off over huge distances between one hospital and the next.)
 
Ha, ha, ha...it's only 21 people who need critical care. Let's laugh it up over covid hysteria.

Please tell me it's not because you want to use vast quantities of hard drugs.  

Just what we need: another hour of 2020....

Oregon could become 1st US state to decriminalize hard drugs through this November's ballot initiative.
 
Possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other hard drugs would result in a $100 fine or the person could opt to go into new, free addiction recovery centers which are to be paid for by taxes on marijuana sales.
 
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-portugal-arrests-elections-oregon-4feaaeb5e60f3a853810ae1853fb22ea
 
I'm excited to see this since it's a variation on the approach I've advocated for years. Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland have each decriminalize hard drugs with no uptick in overall hard drug usage in their populations (Portugal with no uptick according to the article, the Netherlands and Switzerland according to my ever-failing memory).
 
When you consider how much the US spends on law enforcement, prosecution, and prisons over drug possession offenses, we could probably instead pay for rehab plus a new house for each drug offender and still come out cheaper and have less of a drug problem.  

MIT-developed COVID-19 smartphone app can tell if you’re an asymptomatic carrier — by the way you cough
 
Claims  98.5 percent accuracy.
 
https://www.studyfinds.org/coronavirus-app-asymptomatic-carrier-cough/

Oregon could become 1st US state to decriminalize hard drugs through this November's ballot initiative.
 
Possession of small amounts of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other hard drugs would result in a $100 fine or the person could opt to go into new, free addiction recovery centers which are to be paid for by taxes on marijuana sales.
 
https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-portugal-arrests-elections-oregon-4feaaeb5e60f3a853810ae1853fb22ea
 
I'm excited to see this since it's a variation on the approach I've advocated for years. Portugal, the Netherlands and Switzerland have each decriminalize hard drugs with no uptick in overall hard drug usage in their populations (Portugal with no uptick according to the article, the Netherlands and Switzerland according to my ever-failing memory).
 
When you consider how much the US spends on law enforcement, prosecution, and prisons over drug possession offenses, we could probably instead pay for rehab plus a new house for each drug offender and still come out cheaper and have less of a drug problem.