“In 1875, the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice, Italy, acquired a Latin copy of the first letter Christopher Columbus wrote to Ferdinand, King of Spain, describing his discoveries in the Americas. The letter, known as the Plannck I edition, was stolen from the library between 1985 and 1988. It disappeared without a trace, until, in May 2003, a collector unwittingly purchased the letter from a rare book dealer in the United States. He was tracked down by investigators, and the copy was examined and found to be the genuine Plannck I. The owner agreed to turn the document over, which must have been a crushing blow, considering its estimated market value of $1.3 million.”
Category: Knowledge and News
It was an insane day on Wall Street. The Fed announced emergency rate cuts, whereupon the Dow soared 590 points in five minutes. That seemed to indicate the presence of hopeful investors, but the giddy optimism dissipated and a harsh reality set in – the Dow dropped about 1300 points in the next four hours.
It gained about 1300 points, including about 800 in the final hour!
Who knew investors would be so ecstatic about Klobuchar’s withdrawal?
“He took her to Buckingham Palace twice, and on one occasion she sat on the Queen’s throne. She spotted a bowl she liked and asked Andrew if she could steal it and [mail] it to her mom. She claims that he let her, and her mom loved it!”
Should we judge him? If I were royal, I would do some equally sleazy shit. In fact, I do equally sleazy shit without being royal.
I don’t know exactly what USA today thinks this high vote count in SC means, but it’s pretty easy to explain, and the cause is obviously not what they are assuming.
South Carolina has open primaries. In 2016, there was a passionately contested Republican primary in South Carolina. Six different candidates pulled at least 7% of the vote, and emotions ran especially hot between Trump, Cruz and Rubio. Passionate conservatives were voting there, ignoring the Democratic race. About 700,000 people voted in that Republican Primary, roughly twice as many as in the parallel Democratic race. This year there was no Republican primary at all, so more voters crossed over.
Based on the exit polls (2016, 2020), this year’s breakdown was 70-25-5 (Dem-Ind-Rep), while 2016’s breakdown was 82-16-2. The results of that math:
| South Carolina Democratic Primary | 2020 | 2016 | change |
| Total votes | 538,233 | 370,904 | |
| Democrats | 376,763 | 304,141 | +24% |
| Republicans + Independents | 161,470 | 66,763 | +142% |
You can see where the bulk of the increase came from.
I don’t think South Carolina is useful as a barometer of the nation’s Democratic passion, and not just for the reasons stated above. I think many states will actually see big turn-outs because of Bernie fever, but there’s no Bernie fever in South Carolina. In fact, Bernie got a much lower percentage of the SC primary vote this year than in he did in 2016 (20% this year, 26% four years ago), and even his raw vote count was not much higher (105,000 in 2020 versus 96,000 in 2016), despite all the increased voters from both sides of the aisle.
South Carolina is Biden country, and you don’t choose Biden out of passion, but out of default. He’s the Chicken Parm of candidates. You choose him because he’s safe and you don’t like anything else on the menu.
Tadeusz, a good friend of mine, had a girlfriend with glowing genitals. He thought he had found the proverbial pot o’ gold until he discovered that she grew up in Chernobyl.
Of course she was not a millipede, or at least she was not BORN a millipede. She did develop some extra limbs after the meltdown. Tadeusz liked that. She had so many arms that she never got cramps from giving a hand job.
She’s dead now. I’ve been meaning to visit her gravesite, but it’s so hard to find an individual grave in those massive, disorganized Eastern European cemeteries. Of course, I could go at night, when she’s still glowing, but I don’t really want to go into an Eastern European cemetery at night, at least not without a crucifix and plenty of garlic. I should, though. Tadeusz says her plot is quite easy to spot after dark. In fact, small airplanes use it to find their way in a fog.
The processing team used AI to make it look fresh, upscale it to 4k, and add some color. Amazing! Watch it in full screen mode for the true effect.
Afghan president rejects part of US-Taliban deal which would see release of 5,000 prisoners: “It is not in the authority of United States to decide,” Ashraf Ghani says.
The USA apparently forgot to include the Afghan government in the negotiations – and they won’t co-operate.
Thanks, Obama!
——–
Gee, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want 5,000 newly-freed members of the Taliban to be set loose on the population. Those guys always seem so nice, and so dignified in their black suits.
I haven’t been paying close attention, but isn’t this the same sort of thing Kushner screwed up in the Israeli deal? Didn’t he announce the proposal before including the Palestinians in the negotiations?
And isn’t this the same deal we gave the Kurds? Making a deal with Turkey before consulting with or even informing our comrades-in-arms?
I though Trump was supposed to be Mr. Dealmaker. It seems that he doesn’t even grasp Negotiations 101.
Pete Buttigieg To Suspend Presidential Campaign
“The youngest male candidate is now 77-year-old former Vice President Joe Biden.”
“Oh, honey, this is Jose. I’ll be a little late tonight. I’ll see you in about … 14 days. Long story. Oh, gotta go. The boss is calling.”
Sleepy Joe seems to have engineered a landslide win.
and
Tom Steyer has had enough. He put the most money and time into SC of any candidate, but couldn’t do better than 11 or 12%.
==========
Based on the exit polls, it appears that the results will be (approximately) Biden 50, Bernie 20, with Biden winning every county.
South Carolina has open primaries, so those gross results include non-Democratic voters. Among Democratic voters only, Biden did even better, winning by nearly 40 points, about 57-18.
Operation Chaos was a failure. Biden even won a plurality among non-Democratic voters because the would-be Bringers of Chaos split their votes between Bernie, Buttigieg and Klobuchar.
Except for those scattered votes from non-Democrats, Klobuchar’s campaign was a total bust. She pulled only 1% of the Democrats who voted, and a perfect 0% of the black vote!
I know a brother and sister who fled Afghanistan. Unlike many refugees from most other countries, they have absolutely zero nostalgia for their homeland. If they could get that memory-erasing procedure from “Eternal Sunshine,” they would erase all memory of Afghanistan. America would probably like to do the same thing, because the “graveyard of empires” will now add another prominent tombstone to the many already there. The Afghanis have been invaded and/or terrorized by just about every famous conqueror you can name.
Darius the Great King? Check.
Alexander the Great? Check.
Tamerlane? Check.
Genghis Khan? Check.
Al-Qaeda? Check.
The Soviet Union? Several checks.
The British Empire? Several checks.
Only the Romans managed to avoid it. (They stopped near the modern Iran/Iraq border.)
Sooner or later, all those invaders were gone, often with many regrets for having ever been there in the first place. We now join them. About 2000 American military personnel died there, and approximately another 2000 civilian contractors.
Cool. Two scholars at Stanford have joined forces to recreate what a Christian choir might have sounded like inside Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia before it became a mosque in the 1400s.
And that really should say ONLY 350 points, because the market was down about a grand at 3:44 Eastern, then turned sharply upward and picked up some 600 points in the waning minutes.
I’m supportive of Amazon being socially responsible (God knows, Facebook ain’t gonna take the lead), and they certainly should ban snake oil sales, but I have a different take on price-gouging.
Those surgical face masks are impossible to get in brick-and-mortar stores, so if people are willing to pay ten bucks for a fifty cent mask online, they should be able to if that’s their only option.
And I want them to get the masks. The more people that have them, the better it is for me and my family! (Well, assuming the masks really have some efficacy, which is debatable for the non-infected.)
Words of wisdom (about the covid-19).
The Jennifer Lopez ass doesn’t really appeal to me, but I have to admit that she keeps it in perfect shape at age 50.
In a related story:
The FCC got 1,300 complaints over the Jennifer Lopez / Shakira Super Bowl halftime show.
“I do not subscribe to The Playboy Channel, we do not buy porn for $20 a flick, we simply wanted to sit down as a family and watch the Super Bowl.”
HOWEVER – there is something rotten in Denmark:
“Some of the complaints released as part of the FCC’s response to its FOIA were duplicates, so it is unclear whether those viewers submitted the same complaint multiple times.”
My guess: one or more churches handed their parishoners a form letter and the FCC’s address.
In Italy, where the coronavirus has infected more than 600 people, an important soccer match had to proceed. So it was played in an empty stadium.
This is a case where the government needs to get everyone on the same page, which has yet to happen. Also, it needs to be a scientific page, not a political one. If Trump doesn’t get his act together, this will be his Katrina x1000.
Well, Rachel Maddow and others, you do get a very, very dark consolation prize. There are people who actually believe what Trump says. If they continue to do so, their herd will grow much thinner, as their infection rate will far exceed the norm.
Unfortunately, they come into contact with the rest of us, so the disease will also spread faster among those who do not rely on the accuracy of Trump’s pronouncements.
Oh, oh! It is possible to get the coronavirus more than once!
Implied by that – typical vaccine immunization may not work in this case. COVID-19, in that respect, is similar to the common cold, which is also a corona virus. That’s not to say that there is no hope for prevention, but rather that the hope is not likely to come from a vaccine, and it may take much longer than we would like.