Obsidian Wings

Super Tuesday thread (said Wile E. Coyote)

by liberal japonicus

The references is to this. Have at it.

Wuhan's first?

by liberal japonicus

I'm back with an Abbott and Costello pun to start things off.

Obligatory exposition. I was an exchange professor in the city of Daejeon, an hour south of Seoul for one year. While there are lots of things that I hope I will write about, I thought that I would start with some discussion of the coronavirus and what I've seen in Korea and Japan. As I'm sure all of you are aware, the Chinese efforts to contain the virus have been pretty intensive/harsh/draconian (adjectives to adjust depending on your opinion of China and the danger of the virus). I'm not sure how much coverage you've gotten where you are, but here is an interesting story, and the twitter video can give all your Chinese learners some stuff to practice listening to. (不客气!) However, because I wasn't in China and I wanted to talk about my personal experiences, I won't talk anymore about that. I'll also leave Ugh's post up so folks can talk about what is happening elsewhere especially in the US. I realize that may be a bit chaotic, but I feel like the situation in Asia is quite different than the US, though reading the Guardian suggests that there are some similarities with the UK and Europe. Anyway, more below.

We are all the Corvid-19 Now

by Ugh

The U.S. border is like a hermetically sealed emergency room with full body hand purifiers, UV rays, flame throwers, exposure to the vacuum of space and Trump's hair regimen, which kills off Corvid-19.  Thank you, Mr. President.

And yet, VP and Dr. Mike Pence is in charge of the U.S. response, so, we're all safe.  

But actually, if the press wasn't scaring everyone no one would get sick, so we've got that going for us, which is nice.

Whee.

Looking forward to the quarantine requiring canceling the 2020 Presidential Election.  

Jeepers Jiminy Cricket on a Dad Gum Popsicle Stick!

by Ugh

The number of Ivy League educated representatives of the "common man*" in the FoxNews-esque-extended-Marvel-universe-social-media-ecosphere bothers me.  I mean, really?

They aren't necessarily mutually exclusive, but hey! If I've got an "R" after my name I must therefore speak for Midwestern farmers while sipping (drinking?) a 1945 bottle of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti Romanée-Conti Grand Cru (google it!).  

That said, I really don't know what I"m talking about for the most part.  

Needless to say, OPEN THREAD.

*They also claim to represent the common woman, but, jeebus.

Spinning

by wj

It's well after midnight in Iowa (and getting late here on the West Coast) and the results, even preliminary results, still aren't in from the Iowa caucuses**. In fact, they're saying it may be "late Tuesday" before we know anything. Not only after the Tuesday morning papers have got to press, but probably too late for the afternoon papers as well. The only thing we seem to know for sure is that the app for reporting results had issues.

But we've had victory speeches from most of the candidates -- which got played on the networks because, simply put, there was no real news to play. Once the results do come out, it seems likely that all the campaigns will be spinning the results like mad. From what I can see at the moment, the Biden campaign is acting like they think they under-performed. Not that this will stop them spinning, even if (or especially if) they did. And even those who did well are likely to be over-hyping their success in the hopes of getting some kind of "bounce" going forward.

So, what to make of the results, once they appear? In short, Open Thread

** That's the Democratic caucuses. To nobody's surprise, Trump won the Republican caucuses. With maybe 3% of Republicans having the courage to vote for someone else in public.