What is he up to?

Trump says he’s coming to Pittsburgh next week:

#BREAKING NEWS: The Trump campaign is reportedly exploring having President Donald Trump hold an event in Pittsburgh next week. https://t.co/okC34p8T7R

— KDKA (@KDKA) October 8, 2020

The event is not going to be a rally. I have no idea what he has in mind but Mayor Peduto muses, isn’t he supposed to be in quarantine for 14 days?

And a commissioner for Allegheny county says we have our Covid count under control at the moment. (43 cases today in Allegheny county. That’s pretty good. Of course, we had to be grounded to get there.) We don’t need any additional cases, thank you very much.

Still can’t figure out what he’s up to. If anyone has any ideas about what kind of trouble he’s planning to start, let me know. I have to figure out what kind of bug out bag to pack.

Maybe he’s going to meet with his election lawyers and proud boys? I don’t know. But all the local government people are encouraging everyone to vote early and it goes without saying to stay out of his way.

Yep.

Yes, yes, voters will respond to this

The Covid stimulus package was passed by the House MONTHS ago. But McConnell and the Republican lead senate sat on it. They didn’t even try to negotiate. As Pelosi said, it’s not possible to compromise when the two sides do not share the same values.

So it didn’t go anywhere and millions of families are running on fumes with evictions right around the corner if they can’t pay their rent or mortgage, and utility cutoffs if they can. Don’t even get me started on what this is doing to kids. It makes me nauseous.

After Trump’s Covid Victory Tour got panned, he decided in a snit that if the ingrates were determined to vote him out, no one would get any stimulus until after the election.

Actually, that’s probably true because Biden isn’t going to let the country’s economy tank. The problem is, those in need may have to wait until January, which means a very cold Christmas. (There are ways you can buy a kid a gift. The Salvation Army helps connect kids with presents. Consider being a Santa this year.)

If Trump is re-elected- don’t dwell on it, the prospect is too awful. But if he is, there’s no guarantee that he’ll fulfill his promise to pass a stimulus package. He loves vengeance and holds grudges forever. Not only that but he lies.

Yesterday, Trump was very unpopular. The markets, the public, his advisors all thought he was a political incompetent who was going to destroy his party. Too late to worry about that now.

I guess someone talked a soupçon of sense into him because he’s now willing to negotiate.

The unemployed and state and local governments heave a collective sigh of relief.

Not so fast.

Trump is only planning to bail out the airline industry.

The rest of the voters who will witness yet another package of billions going to more corporate entities, will get nothin.

{{insert Willy Wonka clip}}

The optics look about as bad as they can get. Voters will respond accordingly.

No, no, White House aides and political campaign people, he’s had 4 years to figure this out. You can’t say he’s still new at the job.

He’s just a very slow learner.

******************

The rats are finally starting to abandon the ship. WaPo is reporting that vulnerable Republicans are finally seeing the tsunami coming and are distancing themselves from Trump.

Oo! Oo! I know how they can do it! They can tell Amy Coney Barrett to wait another 8 years when she’ll only be 56 and will have more life experience. You know, maybe become her own person or something.

If they push ahead with confirming her full speed ahead, they deserve what’s coming to them.

I swear, the whole party needs remedial classes on how to appeal to voters so they will vote for you.

Or not. We don’t want to give them any ideas.

If Randy Rainbow and Patty Lupone moderated debates.

Well done @RandyRainbow and @PattiLuPone! ”we can go back to life as we once we knew it miserable and unfair but at least without the daily threat of complete authoritarianism and apocalyptic destruction” pic.twitter.com/DaXKaYp91a

— Kenneth Cole (@kennethcolereal) October 7, 2020

They’re counting on scientific illiteracy.

Take a look at this before I attempt to mock and ridicule it:

The patient had a whopping (8g) dose of a #SARSCoV2 neutralizing IgG antibody cocktail. Then they detected antibodies. You must be kidding me, Dr. Conley? pic.twitter.com/zRugBTUMe2

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) October 7, 2020

Ok, here’s what it says. Trump had no antibodies to Covid on Thursday night. But he does now!! Whoo-hoo! One little problem: between then and now, he got a cocktail of “exogenous” antibodies from the Regeneron infusion.

So the antibodies that Conley is referring to may be coming from the antibodies he was given and not from the antibodies he has generated on his own. They can probably tell the difference if the Regeneron antibodies were tagged in some way but that isn’t mentioned here.

Another commenter speculated that when the Regeneron effect fades away, there is a good possibility that Trump will begin to shed virus if he hasn’t started to generate his own antibodies. Plus, the antibodies he received may have inhibited his own immune system to make antibodies.

It gets better.

Steroids are given to inhibit the inflammatory process. But inflammation is necessary to trigger other immune response events.

So, throwing the kitchen sink at Trump may have cured him. Or, it may have made him more likely to relapse right back to where he started from.

We simply have no way of knowing which direction he’s going from this letter.

Also, an 8 gram dose is large. He’s a husky guy but still…

The chemistry Nobel goes to two women

CRISPR- not just a place to put your lettuce.

BREAKING NEWS:
The 2020 #NobelPrize in Chemistry has been awarded to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna “for the development of a method for genome editing.” pic.twitter.com/CrsnEuSwGD

— The Nobel Prize (@NobelPrize) October 7, 2020

Amazing. Congratulations.

************

Jeez, the reaction from the guys is so typical of everything I saw in the labs. You can give men 9/10ths of every position in management but the minute you hire a woman as a director, suddenly, there are 100 other guys who got passed up unfairly.

They don’t even know they’re doing it.

{{rolling eyes}}

If Amy Coney Barrett were a Jehovah’s Witness.

If Amy Coney Barrett were a Jehovah’s Witness, she’d already be half way there what with her plain knee length long sleeved dresses and subservience to her husband. By the way, who is going to be making her decisions when she gets on the bench? Will she face consequences if she defies his headship? What would it be like to come home to sensitive new age guy in the kitchen making dinner who told you just last night about how to vote on that voting rights case??

Getting back to JW Amy.

If Amy were a JW, she wouldn’t be able to accept a blood transfusion. Plus, the commission to proselytize to absolutely everyone and know what’s better for them would mean that you couldn’t get one either.

Religious liberty means the freedom to bleed out.

Imagine a case brought before her where a minor child with a blood cancer has been denied a life saving blood transfusion by her JW parents. Sure she’s going to die but she’ll get to enter the New World paradise after Armageddon. Who are we to deny her parents that future?

A fanatic is a fanatic is a fanatic. The rest of us should have the religious liberty to live without someone else’s religion. Or doesn’t Amy believe that?

Oh, and no Christmas. Melania will appreciate that.