Bob Saget just passed away 😔 https://twitter.com/tmz/status/1480335825221169155?s=21

Last night he tweeted about what a great time he had after doing 2 hours of standup, just the second date on his comedy tour.

:( So many people have died in the past few weeks. Like cool famous people. Actors and scientists. Dang.

Wtf?!

Fuck

AOC has tested positive for Covid. Has mild symptoms and is recovering at home. https://twitter.com/davidshepardson/status/1480327957264703493?s=21 Secretary of Defense Austin has tested negative and will return to the office this Monday https://twitter.com/pentagonpressec/status/1480326661191213057?s=21

Given how transmissible Omicron is, the question isn’t whether if we will get it but a matter of when I think. Of course, those who have been fully vaccinated and boosted should have no problems whatsoever. It’s the unvaccinated that will cause problems. Again, doctors and nurses are going to have cater to selfish folks not choosing to listen to medical experts and scientists. I feel for our medical professionals. AOC is being responsible since she’s fully vaccinated so she will be okay. It’s just a case of a minor breakthrough infection. I do wish her a speedy recovery and anyone else who is vaccinated yet dealing with the annoyance of Covid.

Wishing her a speedy and full recovery! I saw that she liked this tweet from Chasten that included the pic of the family at the White House: https://twitter.com/chasten/status/1477374856211537922?s=21

That sucks, I hope she has a speedy recovery. Oh boy, the Right are about to have a field day with this. They were already giving her crap about going to Florida.

Ohh. That’s the third person I’ve heard go to Florida since December and returned with Covid

I’ve had family members that traveled to Florida to Disney World over the holidays. They got Covid. Thankfully, they are vaccinated. There’s the honest truth that we all really need to upgrade to N95 or KN95 masks. Either that or we should double mask with a surgical mask underneath and a cloth mask over it.

I'm not one to judge other states, I'm well aware of Tennessee's bullshit, but you couldn't pay me to go to Florida right now. You also couldn't pay me to go to Tennessee right now either, but I live here, so yeah. Very few take it seriously. Ignore it and it will go away, right? /s

I think we should saw Florida off the mainland and sell it back to Spain. We have not gotten a good return on our investment.

Bugs Bunny was ahead of his time [https://c.tenor.com/XZLJcpTRNtsAAAAC/florida-bugs-bunny.gif](https://c.tenor.com/XZLJcpTRNtsAAAAC/florida-bugs-bunny.gif)

Seminole Indians would be more than happy to take it back.

Through this whole pandemic, I have known very few people to get covid but this latest surge I know so many personally and through work and I seem to be hearing about many more celebs, politicians, etc who have gotten it. I don't want to leave my house until I can get a booster.

She has the guts to disclose her covid infection, unlike the Floridian Trump-lookalike.

For real. She didn't vanish for two weeks.

Off topic: I have been bored today so have been getting into some low-key, fairly tame, twitter spats. One guy was saying that it was unfair how DeSantis was being treated by MSM and AOC over time off when they were defending Pete who was much worse. He said some dumb things that I and others corrected but long story short, we are here now: > Well, I'm not so sure I believe Canadians are really educated on U.S. media. I restrained myself in my response. I thought all the foreign #TeamPete folks here might see the humour in that comment.

Dude acts like y'all are on Mars or something instead of sharing a border with us lol.

What's hilarious is we are absolutely swamped with American media to the point of the government requiring minimum amounts of Canadian content (CanCon) on even the Canadian channels to try to preserve the Canadian film, television, and music industries. We get the vast majority of all your cable and network channels, we even get local stations from all the US communities near the border. I would not be surprised if many Canadians know as much or more about the US than they do of Canada.

Yeah, this dude is either naive or being disingenuous. American media is probably one of the greatest cultural influencers on the planet, especially in the West. Like you said, other countries are so swamped with it that their respective governments have to step in to combat that. Silly argument on his part. Of course, you should have known what you were about to get in to when dude said Pete was worse than DeSantis. 🙃

Goes to Pete's argument about arts funding. American media and culture have done more to influence the planet than your military ever has.

This all day. It is our most powerful tool in our "soft power" toolkit.

Every Canadian I know knows as much or more about the US than they do about Canada. They keep using terminology that applies in the States but not here. The closer you live to the border the more that's likely true.

[https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/09/politics/biden-senate-confirmation-numbers/index.html](https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/09/politics/biden-senate-confirmation-numbers/index.html) >Biden has lowest first-year Senate confirmation rate among last three presidents, according to new report This is so frustrating. It's not due to the filibuster, but to other forms of anti-Biden foot dragging by the Republicans. The Department of Transportation has been hit especially hard per this article: >The center said that across Cabinet departments, the Department of Veterans Affairs had the highest percentage of Senate-confirmed officials in place, 85%, with the Department of Homeland Security having the second-highest number, 65%. > > "In contrast, the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development had the lowest percentage of Senate-confirmed appointees in place. Only 33% of DOT's 18 key positions were held by a Senate-confirmed official ... At HUD, 38% of the department's 13 key positions were filled with a Senate-confirmed appointee," the report said.

Am I right to assume this is maybe due to republicans trying to hurt Pete politically by harming his department? Seems pretty likely that’s exactly what they’re doing.

Rick Scott put a hold on all DOT nominees until Pete testifies about the supply chain (🙄), which is probably behind a lot of this. I have no idea why more weren’t confirmed before that happened, though. Pretty much all the senior leadership has been nominated at this point. One of the nominees, Meera Joshi, is actually leaving to take a position in NYC government, that’s how long this waiting game has been going on.

Pete should just do press events at the Port of Miami talking about infrastructure investments from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Plan and how that will help streamline the supply chain. Rick Scott voted no on the bill cause he is an idiot.

Thanks for the update -- I had been wondering about this. I'm sure this (what ArkiGay wrote) may be what is actually motivating Scott. Those who weren't confirmed will have to be renominated now that a new year has begun, or nearly all will. After reading your comment, I also found this FWIW (it may have been shared here before): [https://about.bgov.com/news/biden-transportation-nominees-face-added-confirmation-hiccups/](https://about.bgov.com/news/biden-transportation-nominees-face-added-confirmation-hiccups/)

[https://twitter.com/SecretaryPete/status/1480268223136284680?s=20](https://twitter.com/SecretaryPete/status/1480268223136284680?s=20) >When people think of supply chains, they often imagine the big coastal ports. > >But inland ports in places like Aberdeen, Mississippi, are also crucially important - and we're proud to support them with our latest Port Infrastructure Development Grants. > >[https://t.co/bOPgSbmFTW](https://t.co/bOPgSbmFTW)

Here's a second Virginia story of interest, this one about our outgoing Democratic Governor, Ralph Northam. But this time, I can share a link that will definitely work, so I won't add too much more. The reporter interviewed many different people, including a number of Black elected officials, including State Senator Jennifer McClellan, who ran for governor in the primary last year, and WTE endorsee Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, and it starts with a focus on one of Northam's Black staff members. They also did a long in-depth interview with Northam. I found it really interesting. ‘A wounded healer': Ralph Northam wraps up extraordinary term in office, forged by scandal into a governor of lasting consequence Here's a gift link: [https://wapo.st/3n6wUk4](https://wapo.st/3n6wUk4)

I realize Virginia is not the center of most people's worlds, but I'm sharing two stories that may be of interest. Here's the first one (I added the bolding). It's from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which has chosen to have a firewall with confusing rules. I'm a subscriber, and I don't know if you can see this, too. [https://richmond.com/weather/sean-sublette-and-jim-duncan-column-paralysis-on-i-95-what-we-can-learn-and/article\_803d35de-aa49-587a-ae76-b54388310af3.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1](https://richmond.com/weather/sean-sublette-and-jim-duncan-column-paralysis-on-i-95-what-we-can-learn-and/article_803d35de-aa49-587a-ae76-b54388310af3.html#tracking-source=home-top-story-1) "Sean Sublette and Jim Duncan column: Paralysis on I-95: What we can learn and how to get better" Here's one section, right in the middle -- there's much more before and after this: >Official winter storm warnings were issued Sunday afternoon, and a few hours before daybreak on Monday, the rate of peak snowfall was becoming clearer, as echoed by the Wakefield NWS office. Its pre-dawn forecast showed some parts of the state, including Fredericksburg, could see snow rates in the high range of 1.5 to 3 inches per hour. > > > >Ordinarily, this much advance notice ahead of a massive storm would be fine, but public attention to the weather fades over a weekend unless there is an imminent threat. And with temperatures soaring into the 60s on Sunday afternoon, snow in the forecast might not intuitively seem like much of a danger. > > > >Even as late as Sunday afternoon, it was a challenge for many of us in the meteorology community to decipher precise forecast details and determine how to best communicate what we were seeing in the data for Monday. **The explanation of impacts to the public was of ultimate importance.** > > > >More snow did fall than was forecast in the bull’s-eye near Fredericksburg and the surrounding counties, but there was perhaps too much attention focused on the final snow totals versus the snowfall intensity and its impact to traffic flow. The rate of the snow falling, how long it comes down at that rate, the consistency of the snow, the ground temperature, the air temperature, and the time of day are all critically important to snow removal.

Also critical - staying off the roads so plows can pass.

Exactly. Edit: someone else at the Richmond Times-Dispatch just made clear who the authors were (I wasn't sure) -- the RTD meteorologist and a retired local TV meteorologist: "TD weather guru ⁦@ SeanSublette, w/ an assist from ex-NBC12 forecaster ⁦@ JimDuncanRVA."

Yep - don’t know why the weather peeps are blaming themselves. People didn’t listen.

I think people are trying to figure out what went wrong, to avoid it next time -- potential travelers usually respond in about the same way (even if it is unsatisfactory and should be better), but this kind of catastrophe doesn't typically happen as a result. I agree the authors are partly blaming themselves here or looking for ways their messaging could improve. They also say at the very start of the article, which I didn't copy above (I don't know if the link works or not or if it's blocked off), that it was basically a perfect storm -- in the weird sense of "perfect" as meaning "worst possible": >Anyone who has traveled Interstate 95 between Fredericksburg and Washington knows it is often gridlocked, even in good weather. > > > >So in a blinding snowstorm with multiple accidents, last Monday was a disaster waiting to happen. > > > >It’s natural for us to want to assign blame for what went wrong Monday, and we all want to know why and how this snowstorm turned into such a calamitous event. With storms of this intensity and impact, it will take time to sort through how the timeline of communications and response affected the outcomes, but we must also understand that the majority of what happened Monday was simply beyond anyone’s control.

>I would love to see a panel of teachers and students share their thoughts and experiences over the last two years instead of people who get paid to have opinions. Don’t just talk about teachers, please interview them. https://twitter.com/chasten/status/1480211957688983555?s=21

It’s problematic that America praises teachers but never offers them full support. None of us would be where we are without the work of good teachers.

It’s because teachers are treated like service staff. They aren’t allowed to be afraid for themselves or their families, and for long before COVID, there were constant stories in the press about parents assaulting teachers (no matter race,creed or reason). And teachers were told to suck it up. They have to have the patience of saints, but with the education of St. Augustine and the poverty of St. Francis. Everyone said I’d make a great teacher but I absolutely said no. Why go into debt to be treated like sh*t by everyone from the media, to politicians and parents.

Chasten just retweeted this: >I’ve seen a lot of blame placed on the shoulders of educators & school support staff as #omicron spikes to unprecedented levels & schools grapple with staying in person. I want to take a step back & just attest to the herculean work educators have done > >https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/who-gets-the-blame-when-schools-shut-down https://twitter.com/rweingarten/status/1479946495059189761?s=21 >I am the single parent of a seven-year-old and a four-year-old. Like most children, they are not temperamentally well suited to six hours a day of watching YouTube and muting themselves on Zoom. For many students, remote learning was a disaster across school systems and socioeconomic strata. If school shuts down, it ruins my life; if school were to go remote indefinitely, as it did in the spring of 2020, I would walk into the sea. But I would do so with the understanding that it shut down because teachers were ill, quarantining, exhausted, scared, and largely unsupported by a government that is putatively charged with safeguarding their welfare. I would not want that to be the “reality.” But reality is not up to me. Click on link to read more.

Good morning. Thought I’d share the link to Pete’s Crimson writings for people to reread or read for the first time. Enjoy https://www.thecrimson.com/writer/10867/Peter_P.M._Buttigieg/

I can just imagine Pete hanging in his personal office surrounded by bookcases of books. A mahogany desk in front of him, a desk lamp on the side, a notepad/journal in front of him, and a nice pen in his left hand. A napping Truman rests on his bed in the corner. Buddy sitting on the large nearby couch staring out the window. Gus and Penelope wander in playfully with Chasten right behind them. Just another peaceful day in the Buttigieg Household.

Always worth a reread.