It appears that there have been no Electoral College surprises so far. The sessions in the six states in which The Lame Duck challenged the outcome have all come and gone, going as expected for Uncle Joe. I did read something about some Republicans' wanting to try to reverse things on January 6 when the Electoral College votes go to the House of Representatives. Most constitutional law experts expect such challenges to fail. New representatives will be sworn in on January 3, so it will be the new House accepting the results. VP Pence will open state results in alphabetical order. He may end up being the person to officially declare that The Lame Duck lost to Uncle Joe.
On the novel coronavirus front, am I supposed to worry because Virginia has not yet done the daily update scheduled for 10:00 this morning? I sincerely hope the delay is not due to any staggering increase in the number of cases. If it is, I would hope the governor would increase the restrictions. That's what is happening in Europe right now, and they're taking no prisoners. Italy, home to Vatican City and Pope Francis, is considering more stringent nationwide restrictions. They may declare the whole country a "red zone" and shut things down from December 24 to January 2. It will be interesting, should they do so, to see how they handle what must be huge crowds in Catholic churches for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.
The Netherlands is also considering tightening their restrictions. And Germany is closing all non-essential shops, schools, and nurseries from December 16 to January 10. The government minister in charge of the economy is encouraging Germans to give vouchers (aka gift cards in the US) as Christmas presents rather than go out to shop.
Vaccinations have started in the US. Health care workers, front and center, please. OPMC, a major health care corporation in Pennsylvania, has chosen staff to get the first shots at the same time as they say they estimate that only half of the employees are willing to get vaccinated as soon as it's offered to them. Health care workers! The anti-vaccine crowd is going to feed off that fact. And Dr. Fauci has stated that health care workers declining vaccinations may discourage "regular" people from getting vaccinated. This is just what we don't need as the US death toll goes past 300,000.
In more mundane news, Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians has announced that they will be dropping the team name "Indians" at the end of the 2021 season. No replacement name has yet been chosen. I'd like to see them take a page from the Washington Football Team and become the Cleveland Baseball Team. The proposed change in the team name did not go over well with The Lame Duck who tweeted that it was "Cancel culture at work." That was the last line of the tweet following "Oh no!What is going on? This is not good news, even for 'Indians.'" Raise your hand if you think The Lame Duck really wrote that. My hands are firmly on the keyboard. No words in all caps, correct punctuation, and using the concept of "cancel culture." There is no way The Lame Duck wrote that.
On the unpacking and putting away front, I finally found the box of empty sheet protectors and got all the loose craft papers protected and sorted. I still need to go through the recipes I've collected during the pandemic, but that will give me something to do this evening or tomorrow.
Still no covid data updates from the state. I really hope it's a technical reason and not just that they're so effing big they want to figure out what to do before the numbers go public.
2 comments:
The delays here are where they've found out that something's not been working correctly and there's a catch up for the previous week's under reporting. I hope that the systems there are more robust.
Congrats to Joe Biden! (I hope him clearing his throat constantly isn't a symptom of anything more than a dry throat.)
As for your unpacking, I don't remember whether you've found your Kindle yet!?
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