Monday, August 31, 2020

Wow, wow, wow. The Miami "Heats" are in the Eastern Conference semi-finals against top-seeded Milwaukee, who have Defensive Player of the Year, holding MVP and fave for this year's MVP, Giannis Antekokounmpo. The two teams played their first game of the series tonight in the Bubble in Mouseville. And the "Male Deer" looked like they were going to springbok away from Miam-uh in the 1Q. They led 40-29. That was as good as it got for 'Wauk, though, and that was plenty good! But the "Heat"! The "Heat" fired up in the 2Q and trailed by only three at HT. They kept right on firing up. Miami handily won every quarter after the first: the second by eight, the third by nine, the fourth by five--86-64 in total, to fairly route the Eastern favorites 115-104.

No doubt who the MVP of this game was. Jimmy Butler went off for 40 on 13/20 shooting from the field and 12/13 from the line. The two old goats, Jimmy and the Dragon, slayed Bambi. Goran had 27 (9/15, 7/7). They were It for the "Heat" on the scoreboard.

Bam had 17 boards and a team-high six assists. G-Man was fairly quite if being one assist shy of a 3W can be quiet. Khris Middleton and Brooks Lopez nearly shot the "Heat" out of the Bubble in the first quarter. KM finished with 28 and Lopez had 24 but they didn't make 'em when they counted.

Tremendous win by Miami tonight, just tremendous. To climb out of that first quarter hole--to come roaring out of that hole and win in a walk over 'Wauk shows tremendous character.

Saturday, August 29, 2020

Over 1,000 students have tested positive for Covid-19 at University of Alabama since classes resumed

(CNN)

That lede understates it. It's 1,201. Prior to classes resuming August 19 they had had 158 for the year.





















In fairness those are the colors of the Russian flag.

Friday, August 28, 2020

The prettiest girl in the world on a little vacation with her handsome boyfriend. Love my child.

Trump Epidemic August 28 Final

Trump has killed an average of 891 people with his virus since February 6. At post time his total 
Killed is 181,767. Today, August 28, his toll is 943.

The seven-day average for Cases has been on a plateau of 42,000 for five consecutive iterations, Aug. 23 through August 27.























The seven-day average of Deaths has been on a drunken walk up and down the 1k plateau for twenty-one iterations since Aug. 7. It stumbled up a notch yesterday, the 27th, to 942. Tomorrow will be the last day for the week of high reported numbers of Deaths.




Thursday, August 27, 2020

Grand Old Plague Final Day Final: 180,814!



My goodness, he's almost at 181,000. Every day of the convention he has Killed over 1,000. Today, with the hour glass running out, it's 1,106. We should have two more days of high numbers of Deaths reported before the reporters take off the weekend but we are lower than we were last Thursday, yesterday was lower than last Wednesday. I predict we will be below 1k either or both Friday or Saturday before the big drop Sunday and Monday. 181,814 Killed by him since February 6. A preventable holocaust of Disease and Death. 

Grand Old Plague Convention Final Day: 180,000!



























What an accomplishment. Worthy of the fireworks celebration tonight after the Leader makes His acceptance speech from the Rose Garden over the cacophony of car horns, air horns, and bull horns, and fuck you chants.

The above is per Johns Hopkins. This is from the New York Times: Through August 26 the seven-day Cases average is on a four-day plateau of approximately 42,000 per day. Ah, the good old days when Trump was averaging infecting only half that per day, which he was through mid-June.

It's in the latter half of June that the enormous Bulge occurred, after Trump's calls to "LIBERATE!" the states resulted in re-openings. The Bulge seven-day average plateaued at about 64,000 per increment for over two whole weeks, July 16-31. Since, the Cases average had been on a consistent and precipitous drop until August 23 and this new plateau. We are back to June 30's seven-day average. Trump also wanted schools reopened, of course, and some already have. The sample size is too small as yet to say if this 42,000 leveling of the drop is due to that but if it is Trump, of course, will take no responsibility. He grew "bored" with the Trump Epidemic long ago and doesn't care.

The Deaths seven-day average has been on a slight decline since the August 17 iteration to just under 1,000. You notice that Trump never did get a bulge in Deaths to correspond to that July 16-31 in Cases. And he is not going to. Deaths lag Cases by two-four weeks and that 64k seven-day average for those two whole weeks has been "digested". If Trump cared he would be happy about. The rest of us do care and that is a huge relief. Publocc therefore predicts that the Deaths seven-day is going to continue on its downward trend. The Deaths seven-day average is now where it was in the July 26 iteration.






Wednesday, August 26, 2020

Grand Old Plague Convention Day 3: 179,000!














888 a day, every day, since February 6, 2020.

Tuesday, August 25, 2020

Grand Old Plague Convention Day Two: 178,000!





Well, the day did not go well. No not ‘tall. Per  Johns Hopkins Trump passed 178,000 Killed on Day Two. 178,477 total since Feb. 6, 1,232 for the day. Slow start,
too. It was like 300 in early afternoon, but the Dancing Switchblade cut through another thou. And then some.

Levity! It's August 25 and We're Done! Below 170,000! Right? No?

Although there’s an hour left in the day we’re going to close Dr. Levity out now. The Nobel Fool was only off by 8 days and 9,477 Deaths. Levitt is a plague. He should apply to be Special Advisor to IMPOTUS on the Trump Plague. He’d fit right in.











This is a segue: NBA basketball is, to me, the most nearly perfect of the four major American team sports. But the game of basketball at any level includes a design flaw that is just about fatal: fouls. I don't know, 30-40 times a game(?), the breathtaking action and skill of the best all-around athletes in the world stops while nine guys next to each other grabbing their shorts and one guy shoots a free throw. Coitus interruptus.

This is the segue to: Over the weekend I watched TEN hours of Rocket League with my son, five on Saturday, five on Sunday. Rocket League is a real sport played by real human beings, but in virtual reality. There is a basketball Rocket League and a hockey Rocket League but by far the most popular is soccer Rocket League. Any version of Rocket League takes some getting used to and the first impression you get is that it's hokey: cars that can fly, a ball as big as the cars--that is a turn-off for Boomers like moi who gave up cartoons like last year (ahem). But once, or if, you overcome that, and especially if you have someone as I do who can train your eyes, the skill of the uniformly young, like teenage young, Rocket Leaguers is sublime, as skillful and with reflexes as lightning-quick as you see in the NBA or NHL. And! No fouls, no rules!, no stoppage of play. Each game lasts only five minutes--because it is so intense. It is mentally draining just to watch, I can only imagine how draining to play. Rocket League has, or had, design flaws. The first, which continues, is that there is no league. Rocket League has no leagues. It has tournaments. It has tournaments out the ass. And the formats of the tournaments is confusing at best, stupid at worst. There's a semi-finals, and the winner moves on to the finals (duh), but then so does the loser of the semi-final sometime. I think they play a consolation round or something where the winner of that plays the winner of the semi-final. That is what happened earlier this year when my favorite global team, Sand Rock Gaming, won the European semi-final and faced the team they just beat in the Grand Finale, where they got swept. So there's flaw and sub-flaw, 1 and 1A. The second separate flaw has been partially eliminated: the camera angle was always at ground level and would pivot and reverse field till you ended up sea-sick. They are "experimenting" with an overhead angle which is why are you just "experimenting" with that you knuckleheads.

Rocket League is fabulous--No, it is not going to replace the NBA or Premier League in my preference; the NBA players just look like cartoon freaks and Premier League soccer is "the beautiful game" at it's most beautiful, but Rocket League's virtues are now attracting major sponsorship and technical talent to correct the obvious, like the camera angle. This weekend the North American championship was sponsored by Verizon, with commercials and everything, and it was much crisper and more professional. More nearly perfect.

The Plague of Trump


In the time it took me to compose that last post Deaths rose 177,619 to  177,773.

The Plague of Trump

Last week it was my impression that the data were coming in slower. I chalked it up to Trump's efforts to suppress it by funneling it through HHS and the burdens HHS put on the hospitals to collect it. But (literally) at the end of the day Johns Hopkins' data base seemed to catch up. I didn't notice anything untoward in the eventual numbers. Last night I wrote that today, a Tuesday, would be a tell-tale day. Deaths should be double or more what they were yesterday. I wrote that in the context that it was my "sense" that we had turned the corner on the virus. If today's numbers were lower than expected that would be a sign we had turned said corner. And so far today the numbers have been shockingly, wonderfully lower. But it's only 1:30 p.m. Maybe my sense last week that the data was coming in slower was correct? We'll know by the end of the day. For now, the Dead number 177,619. That is an increase since yesterday of only 367. For the whole-ish story we turn to the New York Times' 7-day averages through yesterday, August 24:
In the latest iteration Cases actually inched up.

Deaths are still level, as they have been comme ci comme ca since August 8. Deaths lag Cases by two-four weeks, looking at where Cases were July 24 and August 10, actually that looks about as expected for Deaths. 

I hesitatingly-eagerly await the end-of-day Deaths numbers.

The Contigency

The University of Alabama reported hundreds of cases of the virus after classes resumed last week.

(NYT)

Officials at the University of Alabama said that 531 cases had been identified among students, faculty and staff on its Tuscaloosa campus since classes resumed Wednesday. The university is holding in-person classesand said the total number of cumulative cases over that period, including infections on other campuses in the university’s system, was 566.

Monday, August 24, 2020

Grand Old Plague, Convention Edition: 177,248 Dead the first day

446 Deaths April 23, 489 April 24. In the Sunday-Monday reporting aberrations that is the lowest two-day total since July 12-13.

Daily Cases are on Aug. 24, so far, but near the end of the day, at 37,266, actually a slight rise from Aug. 23 and Aug. 17.

My sense, only that, is that we have turned a corner. I think this thing is on the run and if we pressed and pressed we would be able to defeat it in fairly quick order. I see only one contingency that could halt or reverse the trend, the opening of schools at all levels, and the resumption of super-spreader events like college tackle football. Three of the five Power Conferences, the SEC, ACC, and Big XII (which has X members) are playing. The SEC packs 'em in in mammoth capacity stadia--Alabama, Auburn, Tennessee, Texas A&M, Georgia. The Big XII, or  X, has got Texas, Oklahoma, Okie State, Texas Tech, and Couch Burn. The ACC fortunately for this contingency has Miami and Pitt. Social distancing would not be a problem in those stadia if they were giving free 100% effective vaccine shots as a lure to fans to attend. But the ACC also has Clemson.

The school and football openings are the best opportunity for Trump to reinforce his message that he is not a bird brain because a bird brain would still have the sense to fly straight ahead whilst Trump with his brain flies backwards. Tomorrow is a tell-tale day, the typical start to the week's reporting peaks through Saturday. I predict...I don't have the confidence for a prediction...I am hopeful, and that hope is not a forlorn one but has some basis in recent history, that we will be short of last Tuesday's 1.324k Deaths.

Grand Old Perverts

It now becomes our disagreeable duty to inform viewpagers that Jerry Falwell, Jr. is a wittol. It now becomes our disagreeable duty to inform what a wittol be. A wittol is a Republican. Like cuckolds are Republicans. Closeted bi-sexual men. Men who like boys. A Wittol Republican likes to watch while a real man fucks his wife. That’s Jerry, Jr.’s kink. JJ got Pool Boy hunk Giancarlo Granda


to fuck his wife Becki, nee Tilley, seen here with both Falwells “personal trainer”,

while he, the Liberty “Flame”, watched from a corner.

Pool Boy even met Bunker Boy!

And Wittol Boy endorsed Bunker Boy for IMPOTUS!
👍🏻 


And used Michael Cohen to fix Pool Boy’s lawsuit against him, Wittol Boy, and to “disappear” some x-rated pics of the threesomes! On the Right, politics is sex by other means.


Ju hear Trumpie’s delivering his acceptance speech Thursday night (when Deaths will be around 180,000) on the South Lawn of the White House. My homie Don Winslow heard:

Navalny Lives!

Doctors in Germany say Alexei Navalny is not going to die. He was poisoned last week by Putin before a flight to Omsk, Russia.

"First Confirmed Case of Virus Reinfection Found in Hong Kong"

This gets top billing in the New York Times as the most important public occurrence in the world at the moment.

“An apparently young and healthy patient had a second case of Covid-19 infection which was diagnosed 4.5 months after the first episode,” University of Hong Kong researchers said Monday in a statement.

The report is of concern because it suggests that immunity to the coronavirus may last only a few months in some people. And it has implications for vaccines being developed for the virus.

The 33-year-old man had only mild symptoms the first time, and no symptoms this time around. The reinfection was discovered when he returned from a trip to Spain...

“Our results prove that his second infection is caused by a new virus that he acquired recently...” said Dr. Kelvin Kai-Wang To, a clinical microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong.

Given that there are millions of cases worldwide, it is not unexpected that a few, or even a few dozen, people might be reinfected with the virus after only a few months, experts have said.

Things are so fucked up

Notre Dame canceled its hosting of a presidential debate but is going ahead with its football season. 

Sunday, August 23, 2020

Kellyanne Conway to Leave White House, George to Leave Lincoln Project

The Lincoln Project people are my heroes in life.


It nearly makes me weep to lose one who I came to love and admire as I did George. This decision makes me love and admire him more, and I did not think that possible. I wish that I had lived my own life one-tenth as bravely and principled as they have in just eight months.

The fate of the Republic now rests on the broad, tireless, dreadnought shoulders of seven instead of eight Atlases.









And they will save it.

I am so proud of and respect George and Kellyanne so much for this. How they did this all of these months with George at LP and Kellyanne in the WH, I don’t know. In a statement Kellyanne said,

“This is completely my choice and my voice. In time, I will announce future plans. For now, and for my beloved children, it will be less drama, more mama.”

Beloved George, one of my heroes in life, tweeted,

George Conway
@gtconway3d
So I’m withdrawing from @ProjectLincoln to devote more time to family matters. And I’ll be taking a Twitter hiatus. 

Needless to say, I continue to support the Lincoln Project and its mission. Passionately.
10:16 PM · Aug 23, 2020·Twitter for iPhone

Fifteen year-old Claudia is a special, precocious child and was so clearly being affected by the papa and mama drama. Claudia too is taking a a break from Twitter.

On Sunday, however, she also tweeted that social media was “becoming way too much,” so she had decided to take “a mental health break.”

“See y’all soon,” she wrote. “Thank you for the love and support. No hate to my parents please.”

Now I ask you, can you have more respect for a family like that? I cannot. This decision is really putting family ahead of politics. If I believed in God I would wish that God bless the Conway family. Since I don’t I will wish them the most sincere godspeed I can. Poor folks, poor, poor folks, and especially little Claudia and the other kids.

The Embarrassed Trump Supporter

This is another top-notch reporting job by the New York Times. The Times reporter concludes there are not enough voters who are too embarrassed to tell pollsters they will vote for Trump to make a difference.

1) "many [Trump supporters] are even more reluctant today than they were four years ago to declare themselves in his camp." Makes sense.

A Republican pollster who worked for Mitt Romney told the Times that in 2016 if the polling firm asked voters in phone calls (the gold standard way of polling) to press a button for their preference rather than state it verbally the percentage of Trump voters increased two-three points. Voila!

2) The undecideds. Are you kidding me, who can possibly be undecided in this race? As I have written many times, and as non-idiots have also written, people have made up their minds, for Trump or against Trump. Yet, in RCP's national average there are still 7.6% undecideds! Weirdly, at least to me, the percentage of undecided voters is less, 7 %, in RCP's six "top battleground" states than nationally. Anyway, the question remains, who the fuck are these undecided voters? If you are--well, not you, because you're reading this blog so you're intelligent and don't have a metal plate in your head--so if the Idiot down the street in your Village is a Trump supporter but too embarrassed to admit it to a pollster how are they going to hide their true preference? The alternatives are: they tell pollsters they are going to vote for Biden; they say they are going to vote for a third-party candidate; they say they are undecided. Now, which is the most likely really? I mean, come on. Of course they're going to say "undecided." The Republican theory is best explained by this North Carolina Republican state official:

“Here’s the thing I wonder: If you think about how divided we are as a country, how polarized the two sides are at the national level when it comes to the presidential race, how many people are truly undecided?” [House Speaker Tim] Moore believes that voters who say they are undecided today will decisively break for Mr. Trump and help him win the state.

According to RCP's polling average Trump leads North Carolina by 0.6% with 6.6% undecided. If they break for Trump 70-30 Trump would win North Carolina by 3.24%, less than Trump's 3.7% margin in 2016.

But wait. Might there not be some shy Republicans for Biden? What about Republicans that RVAT and Lincoln Project are specifically aiming at? Republicans like Nancy, from North Carolina.

Oh lord. "Yelled at, called names, lost friends." Nancy is not a Secret Republican Biden voter but Nancy is appealing to those who have less courage than she, those who are to afraid to say they're going to vote for the Democrat. Those Republicans might feel so intimidated that they would lie to the pollsters and say they're voting for Trump. The more brave would park themselves in the undecided column also rather than say out loud, "Biden." The Republican Party has always been intolerant to their own. The Republican Party is now fully-owned by the Trump Cult where loyalty is pledged with the "Heil Hitler!" salute and maintained by a hard core of armed Brownshirts; where to be called a "Cuck Conservative" is the gravest insult.

Often wrong, always certain, my sense is that Secret Biden Republicans outnumber Embarrassed Trump Supporters. I think Trump is shooting at the wrong target with voter suppression. Of course, he would never think of intimidating voters in suburban Charlotte where Nancy lives. He will have his Brownshirts in urban Charlotte. And he will miss Secret Republicans for Biden. A little more than half of me thinks that RVAT and Lincoln Project are going to swing this election to Biden by pealing away some Republicans.

The Plague of Trump


176,348 Cumulative total Killed by Trump reported to Johns Hopkins (post time).

985 Killed by Trump reported to Hopkins April 22 (post time).

+’s and -‘s the Cases 7-day average has been down all of August. This is fabulous news and the decline has come in two steep drops either side of a plateau. We have erased all of the gains all the way back to the beginning of July. Will the downward trajectory continue? If so, we are beating it but with schools at all levels reopening (some reclosing as soon as they reopened) it is still an open question.

A glance at the Deaths 7-day average conveys a far different picture. Deaths have plateaued. However as all experienced readers of these graphs know by now that is to be expected. Deaths lag Cases and the enormous July-August Cases bulge is being digested in recoveries and Deaths. On the other side of that Cases bulge however is the marked decline. That decline is about three weeks in making. There is just no way that Deaths are not going to fall once that more reasonable mouthful is digested.

My powers of prediction have for once been accurate. It is now midnight Aug 23 and Deaths August 22 were under 1,000–not by much to be sure! But they are under. Now we can expect in the next two days reporting artifact that will artificially depress the Deaths count dramatically. I predict a decline in reported Deaths Aug 23 to be a little over 500 and on Monday between 400 and 450. Then on Tuesday when the reporters get back to work and the aggregating sites like Hopkins and NYT begin publishing the new figures, the reported Count will rise dramatically. The 7-day average evens out those reporting artifacts. I am to a standard of probability optimistic now as to what the numbers both of Cases and of Deaths will be in the short-term, say the next two weeks.


Saturday, August 22, 2020

Judge Maryann Trump Barry: Trump “liar,” “no principles”

In secretly recorded audio, President Trump’s sister says he has ‘no principles’ and ‘you can’t trust him’


“All he wants to do is appeal to his base,” Barry said in a conversation secretly recorded by her niece, Mary L. Trump. “He has no principles. None. None. And his base, I mean my God, if you were a religious person, you want to help people. Not do this.”

Barry, 83, was aghast at how her 74-year-old brother operated as president. “His goddamned tweet and lying, oh my God,” she said. “I’m talking too freely, but you know. The change of stories. The lack of preparation. The lying. Holy shit.”
...
“What has he read?” Mary Trump asked her aunt.

“No. He doesn’t read,” Barry responded.
...
“It’s the phoniness of it all. It’s the phoniness and this cruelty. Donald is cruel.”
...
Barry told how she tried to help her brother get into college. “He was a brat,” Barry said, explaining that “I did his homework for him” and “I drove him around New York City to try to get him into college.”

Then Barry dropped what Mary considered a bombshell: “He went to Fordham for one year [actually two years] and then he got into University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams.”

“No way!” Mary responded. “He had somebody take his entrance exams?”

“SATs or whatever. . . . That’s what I believe,” Barry said. “I even remember the name.” That person was Joe Shapiro, Barry said.

Donald Trump was friends with a person at Penn named Joe Shapiro, who is deceased. Shapiro’s widow and sister told The Post last month that he never took a test for anybody, including Trump. Mary Trump has said it was a different Joe Shapiro, but that person has not surfaced.
...
The president has said he got into what was then called the Wharton School of Finance at Penn — which he called one of “the hardest schools to get in to” — because he is a “super genius.” The Post reported last year, however, that Mary’s father, Fred Jr., was close friends with a Penn admissions official. That official, James Nolan, told The Post that Fred Jr. asked him to interview his brother for admission, which he did. He was granted a place at the school, which Nolan said was “not very difficult” because more than half of applicants at the time were accepted,
...
The president, meanwhile, has publicly spoken glowingly of his sister, saying in 2016 that, “We do have different views a little bit,” while adding, “She's a very, very highly respected judge.”
...
“Donald is out for Donald, period,” Barry said.

Mary questioned Barry about what he had accomplished on his own.

“I don’t know,” Barry said.

“Nothing,” Mary responded.

“Well he has five bankruptcies,” Barry said. (Trump’s companies filed for six corporate bankruptcies but he has never declared personal bankruptcy.)

“Good point. He did accomplish those all by his self,” Mary said.

“Yes, he did. Yes, he did. You can’t trust him,” Barry said.

Alexei Navalny

Navalny’s condition has not been characterized officially but a transport stretcher that looks like a sarcophagus is not a “good look.” Here, leaving Omsk, Russia.


And here upon arrival at Tegel airport in Berlin.

The Plague of Trump


175,350 now per Johns Hopkins. The New York Times, which does not tabulate in real time as the reports come in to them, also had Trump's body count over 175,000 in their last update at 4:42 p.m.

On both sites Aug. 21 will be the fourth straight day at or over 1,000 Deaths. Hopkins has it at post time at 1,095.

This week's highs are a little lower than last week’s. I should not predict because I am so bad at it but my personality is what it is and I cannot resist predicting anything, sports, politics, epidemics. So with that disclaimer, and looking at the daily figures I don't think we're going to hit 1,000 Saturday Aug. 22. Be a little under, I predict.

 The Times 7-day Deaths averages for the five iterations through Aug. 20 have inched down.

Friday, August 21, 2020

IllegiTrump

The Trump Campaign Accepted Russian Help to Win in 2016. Case Closed.

The report...found that Konstantin Kilimnik, a longtime business associate of Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, was a Russian intelligence officer, and may have been linked to the Russian military’s hacking and leaking of the D.N.C. emails in the first place.

And remember: Mr. Trump tried this scheme again. The president was impeached for his efforts to invite foreign interference in the 2020 election, this time by Ukraine, again on his behalf. Part of that requested interference involved an attempt to smear Joe Biden. But the other part involved pinning the 2016 election interference on Ukraine rather than on Russia. Who was “almost certainly” one of the primary sources spreading that claim in the media, according to the senators’ report? None other than Konstantin Kilimnik.
...
Russia is now attempting to help Mr. Trump again this November, according to American intelligence assessments reported in The Times. For any normal president, that would be a top-of-mind concern, and he or she would be marshaling all available resources to thwart it. What has Mr. Trump done? On Sunday night, he retweeted Russian propaganda that the U.S. intelligence community had already flagged as part of that country’s efforts to skew the election.

The Intelligence Committee report shows clear coordination between Russians and the Trump campaign, though there is no evidence of an explicit agreement. The evidence the report lays out suggests Mr. Trump knew this at the time.
...
There’s no way to sugarcoat it. In less than three months, the American people could re-elect a man who received a foreign government’s help to win one election and has shown neither remorse nor reservations about doing so again.
New York Times Editorial Board


Look in the mirror America. Look at what you have become. We have one last chance, MAYBE! This is it. Blow this chance, reelect that man, and the United States of America is gone for good.

Great moments are born from great opportunity, and that's what we have here. We have one last chance. He stole it from us once. But not this time. Starting tonight, we take back the soul of our country. Starting tonight we take it to him in every precinct and in every state across the land. Starting tonight we stay after him; we shut him up. Because we can. Because we must. Starting tonight, we become the greatest country in the world again. This is the United States of America! We were born to be here—every one of us; we were meant to meet this moment. This is our time. His time is done. It's over. I'm sick and tired of hearing of Trump. This is our time. We’re ready.
Let’s go out and take it back and take him down!