I have to agree here. I don't know what's been going on in NY, but I've never understood why, for instance, the NYC case/death dashboard has always separated out nursing home cases into a whole other report which was always difficult to acquire last year (that may have changed).
For several months last spring/summer I was attempting to track *county-level* case/deaths for every state by pulling the data directly from each individual state COVID dashboard. Needless to say I quickly realized that was a futile effort for 1 person to do manually...
...and I later turned to resources like Johns Hopkins, which has a whole team of people compiling county-level data daily. But for NY in particular I remember it always being particularly difficult to patch together all the data.
Florida may have been hiding cases/ deaths last year, but if so, they weren't even showing up on the dashboard *at all* (or they were being shoved into the "non-resident" category). In NY it was just...confusing.
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It seems to me that EITHER they shouldn't have called the vote for witnesses (and accepted that the acquittal would happen today) OR they should have followed thru and actually called witnesses. This was tantamount to just saying "psyche!" for no reason. 1/
Having said that, as irritated as I am, the fact remains that the House Managers have done a phenomenal job, and *IF* it's true that calling witnesses would have delayed ANY other Senate business being done, including the #AmRescuePlan, by several more weeks... 2/
...then I do have *some* sympathy for the decision to wrap it up. Not much, but some.
HAVING SAID THAT, they better make goddamned sure the #AmRescuePlan *and* other major bills like voter protection, are pushed through ASAP. Otherwise they'll have made this call for nothing. 3/
After #COVID19 deaths being 4x higher per capita in the Blue counties last spring, 3x higher last summer, 2x higher last fall and ~20% higher over the holidays, they're now HIGHER on a par capita basis in the counties which voted for Donald Trump by 6 points or more. 2/
Counties w/highest #COVID19 *cases* per capita: 1. Crowley County, CO 2. Chattahoochee County, GA 3. Bent County, CO 4. Lincoln County, AR 5. Lake County, TN 6. Dewey County, SD 7. Norton County, KS 8. Bon Homme County, SD 9. Buffalo County, SD 10. Trousdale County, TN
And now van der Veen is REFUSING TO ANSWER THE QUESTION...from a *Republican* Senator?? WHoa.
ROFL @RepRaskin notes that van der Veen said "this is the worst experience he's ever had in DC"...Raskin says " you should've been here on January 6th!"
Trump's lawyer is now yelling at Bernie Sanders, so this is going well.
Now he's yelling at Democrats for contesting elections in the past. Apparently that means it's OK for Trump to order his thugs to slaughter half of Congress and his own VP.
Now this jackass is blaming the House Dems for the Capitol Police not calling in the National Guard to prevent Trump's thugs from invading.
He's also blaming the mayor of DC for not having beefed-up security to prevent Trump's thugs from invading.
To me the key problem is that Pres. Biden was *extremely* unequivocal in his "no ifs, ands or buts" statement a few weeks back. He left absolutely no rhetorical wiggle room for mitigating factors, etc. He didn't say "disciplined" or "except for extremely unusual circumstances".
I understand *why* he was so clear and specific with his language, given the appalling shitshow of indecency, vulgarity & corruption of the past 4 years...but I admit to wincing a bit when I first heard him say that. Over 4-8 years, SOMETHING like this scenario was gonna happen.
I didn't think it would happen in the first 3 weeks, but in a way it reminds me of when Pres. Obama said "If you like your plan you can keep it" even though there was no possible way of 100% guaranteeing that at the time. Private carriers discontinue product lines all the time.