My family just canceled Thanksgiving, the one holiday we all have together. We had all been isolating and getting tests to make it happen, but ultimately bringing 15+ people together from across the U.S. is just not tenable. This is the worst COVID-19 has ever been.
I'm not saying this to virtue signal. But seeing that other people I trust made the same call helped me make the decision, too. And now that it's done I feel a lot less stressed. I hope Americans all weigh the risk thoroughly this year, especially w/ so many new cases...
One thing that made it crystal clear to me was this tool from Ga Tech, which can tell you the risk of someone having covid-19 based on the size of a gathering. It was 24% in my home county for a gathering of 15 people: covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu
Given that, and that there are some family members with pre-existing conditions, it's a no-brainer. No amount of upside can fix it. Hospitalizations and new cases are at record highs. I hope some people reading this just pause and give it another thought:
I'm at the "taking no bullshit" part of this exercise. If someone is still on board with "the election was stolen!" stuff after what we've seen in court & what election officials have said for 2 weeks, they're bad actors. They don't deserve to be taken seriously. Full stop.
What Pat Toomey, Brad Raffensperger, Fred Upton, WSJ editorial board, National Review, etc. are doing is not hard. Trump-friendly conservatives saying the obvious: there's no evidence, this is dangerous, it's over.
Others doing the opposite have no excuse. Total hacks.
And again, when SCOTUSblog says there's zero chance any of this comes to the Supreme Court, that's not partisan. They're not "leaning" or "being biased" all of the sudden. It's the same outlet it's always been. They're just telling you reality. It's time for everyone to wake up.
Unpopular opinion: we should stop scoffing at "never-Trump" Republicans. They just had the best election result imaginable, and POTUS + the grifter crew are now proving all the points they've been making for four years. I think they should feel more vindication than anyone.
While many on the left have loathed the Trump policies/conservative Senate, these guys & gals were warning about this: the endgame. What happens when Trump meets defeat and the Republican party has a choice.
Now we're seeing the destruction that's been slowly caused for years.
Republican senators are divided on the basic reality of who won the election. Tucker's audience is turning on him. Sidney Powell transformed into a conspiracy theorist. The ppl closest to Trump now are the biggest liars and grifters. Rudy Giuliani is running the "legal team"
1/ Just spoke to election security expert @beckerdavidj — he made some points I'm not seeing elsewhere that I'd like to share:
Every vote in the battleground states in this election was cast on a paper ballot (except for a small number of folks with disabilities). Every one!
2/ He actually listed all the states that did all paper ballots from memory, off the top of his head: FL, GA, NC, VA, PA, OH, MI, WI, MN, IA, AZ, NV.
"You can't hack a paper ballot," he points out.
3/ 95% of all votes in the U.S. this year had a paper trail. That's far more than in 2016! In fact, in 2016, GA had almost all electronic voting and Pennsylvania was pretty split. He points out that this gave us incredible transparency this year.
1/ There are basically 5 phases of fraud allegations and Trump defeat that I see. We're somewhere between Phase 3 and Phase 4. Here is how I'd break it down:
Phase 1: Sow doubt before the election. A constant barrage of nothing but claims that mail-in voting was ripe for fraud.
2/ Phase 2: After losing the election, reframe every single thing you can find that even has a whiff of peculiarity as widespread, massive, election changing voter fraud.
This was the "flood the zone" phase where my thread blew up
FWIW, at this rate, I would bet good money we don't see any crucial swing states delay the certification of their vote — even if one or two more counties go rogue. In all the states that matter, certification looks nearly guaranteed by the deadline. I'll update if that changes.
And the reason I'm confident is the same: states are not going to avoid certifying unless there are allegations of fraud that get traction. So far, we haven't even come close to that. Most of the Trump lawsuits aren't even alleging fraud. That hasn't changed at all in 2 weeks.
Both Republicans and Democrats that matter in the states that matter have not even so much at hinted at a delay in certifying the vote because responsible people hold those positions and know the election hasn't been compromised. At worst, we see more recounts like in Georgia.