Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week
24 DAYS UNTIL JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE
Bob Berwyn at Inside Climate News writes—Five Years After Paris, Where Are We Now? Facing Urgent Choices.
In thinking about how to describe 2020, I’m reminded of a TV show that compared all of the events over the course of an awful year in an effort to make sense of it. History books tell us the year 1937 was not a good one for the people of Earth. Japan invaded China, leading to numerous atrocities including the Nanjing Massacre. Tens of thousands died as Francisco Franco began to turn the tide in his favor during the Spanish Civil War.
Even with Thanksgiving in the shadows, as the holiday season—or simply colder winter months—near, many people are eager to dig into some comforting and hearty cooking. Food can, of course, have a lot of cultural meaning and family memories that go beyond the specifics of any recipe. Food can also have a lot of religious significance for those who celebrate.
Tapper doesn’t interview the White House press secretary because she’s incapable of “acknowledging reality,” and provides “no value” to a news story.
Emily Cochrane at The New York Times reports:
President Trump on Sunday abruptly signed a measure providing $900 billion in pandemic aid and funding the government through September, ending last-minute turmoil he himself had created over legislation that will offer an economic lifeline to millions of Americans and avert a government shutdown.
The signing was a sudden reversal for the president, who last week appeared poised to derail the bill.
The United States is facing still-rising pandemic deaths and both a federal government shutdown and the end of supplemental unemployment checks to those newly out of work, but Donald Trump is, of course, currently on vacation. You may be wondering where the ostensible head of the White House coronavirus “task force” has gotten to, since we haven’t heard much from him either.
Alleged vice president Mike Pence is in Vail, Colorado.
After criticizing the government funding and emergency coronavirus relief as wasteful and inadequate, the president ended up signing it.
A government shutdown was averted after the president approved the Covid relief package and annual spending bill.
“We may be looking at a government shutdown in the midst of the most difficult moment in modern American history,” Sanders said.
Larry Hogan and Gretchen Whitmer say they have few regrets about their handling of the pandemic so far.
“You don’t get everything you want, even if you’re the president of the United States,” said Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennslyvania.
“It really depends on what the travelers do when they get where they’re going.
Parenting advice on miscarriage, divorce, and friendship.
Marie Howe’s “What the Living Do” begins with an address to her brother: The kitchen sink has been clogged for days, she writes. The Drano won’t work … it’s winter again … the heat’s on too high.The poem might seem at first like a list of complaints, but it’s a list of gratitudes. Most readers won’t know that Howe’s younger brother John died of AIDS-related complications in 1989.
She started becoming more distant and less affectionate toward me.
Distrust isn’t the only barrier to a successful vaccination campaign.
This fall I received desperate messages from many of my students at Temple University, Philadelphia’s public university. They wanted to know where they could find help catching up on bills, and described having to choose between rent, groceries, and gas. Five of my undergraduates lost a family member to COVID-19.A college education is more essential than ever to economic stability.
“When television is good, nothing—not the theater, not the magazines or newspapers—nothing is better. But when television is bad, nothing is worse.”Nearly 60 years ago, the FCC chair Newton Minow delivered an excoriation of television that was officially titled “Television and the Public Interest” but would be remembered, among the broader American public, as the “vast wasteland” speech.
Protest movements aren’t designed to last forever. And when they do reach their inevitable conclusion, they tend to follow one of two familiar sequences: In one scenario, a protest triggers the resignation of an opposed leader, the reversal of an unpopular policy, or other concessions (think of the successful recent revolutions in Algeria and Sudan).
If he’s willing to do a coup, he’s probably willing to do this.
Boosted unemployment insurance? Check. A continued eviction moratorium? Check. Checks? Check. But there’s still much more that we need.
It’ll only be enough if the vaccination effort doesn’t blow it.
“We can’t let closed nationalisms impede us from living as the true human family that we are,” the pope said.
The CDC is guarding against a mutated strain.
The holiday takes on a surreal feel in some places.
“It’s not as easy as the census,” said one CEO of a Chicago nonprofit. “It’s a deeper conversation.
This year has highlighted the particularities of that thing called reading. Some found books impossible to pick up; sustained attention to text on a page is hard when the world is in so much pain. Others turned to literature anew, rediscovering the ways it can refresh and inspire.
