Events

I plan to live-blog off and on tomorrow evening, understanding the likelihood that we won't know the results of many of the races until later in the week. I'm watching these races most closely (all times CST, UTC-6): 6pm Polls close in Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, and Virginia. Of these, I mainly want to know the results in Georgia's two US Senate races, plus the US Senate race in South Carolina and the Georgia presidential totals. In Kentucky, Amy McGrath has less than a 1 in 20 chance of...

On this day 4 years ago, the Cubs won the World Series. Just six days later, we experienced one of the worst things ever to happen in US presidential politics. It turns out, today is the anniversary of other horrible things that happened to the Presidency: In 1795, James K Polk was born. In 1865, Warren G Harding was born. In 1948, Dewey defeated Truman defeated Dewey. (At least this one turned out OK.) I'm going into tomorrow a great deal more optimistic than I've felt in years. Tonight I'll have a...

Parker has taken carprofen for about a year, 50 mg with each meal, to help with his arthritis and back pain. Starting yesterday I upped it to 100 mg at breakfast. More carprofen meant less pain almost immediately. His walking pace improved about 10% today and he has seemed more active and more confident of his footing. He seems like the dog he was a year ago. But at his body weight, 100 mg per day is the maximum safe dose. Carprofen, like NSAIDs in general, puts a lot of stress on the body, particularly...

Fifty years ago today, the Grateful Dead released American Beauty: There are countless versions of the Grateful Dead to tap into, hundreds of bootlegs and remastered live recordings to queue up. Many bona fide Deadheads would say it's not even worth bothering with the studio recordings. But American Beauty, released Nov. 1, 1970, and lined with back-to-back classics that earned them the title of the great American jam band, stands out from all the rest. Meanwhile, yesterday set a couple more milestones...

My ex and I got Parker in part because every morning we could see a doggy play group right outside our bedroom window. Here's Parker, 14 years ago today, having a great time there: Today we went back to the same park. Parker initially wanted to go into the building where we lived back then, so I had to explain that someone else lives there now. Once in the park, though, he forgot all that and just strolled around with a happy look on his face: Today was a good day for him, except for the parts where he...

Milestones today: Sir Sean Connery has died at 90. On this day in 1864, just 8 days before a hotly-contested presidential election during the Civil War, Congress admitted (abolitionist, Republican-leaning) Nevada as the 36th State, adding 3 Electoral College votes towards President Lincoln's re-election and, three months later, a solid vote towards ratification of the 13th Amendment. Think about this precedent when the District of Columbia becomes a state next summer. The Atlantic's Megan Garber...

A few: Illinois set another record for Covid-19 infections with almost 7,000 reported today. Three-time Hannah Arendt Memorial Banality of Evil Award winner Stephen Miller has laid out how much more evil he would do if his boss gets re-elected. All 15 New York Times columnists look back on what we have lost in the past four years. More later.

Parker had his semi-annual vet visit this afternoon. We decided, based on the doctor's observations, that Parker didn't need to have a flu shot this year. Nor did he need a blood test, or to have the suspected fatty cyst in his side biopsied. I mentioned Sunday that he's going into the home stretch. Today's visit pretty much confirmed it. His heart and lungs are fine, and the doctor found no worrying problems anywhere else in his body, except for his spine. His German shepherd genes have slowly broken...

The UK Labour Party has suspended former leader Jeremy Corbyn after an independent report found he presided over, and did nothing about, an increase in anti-Semitism in the Party: The suspension was provoked by a statement from Corbyn that rejected the overall conclusions of the Equality and Human Rights Commission report, saying the problem was “dramatically overstated for political reasons” by opponents and the media. That statement set the former Labour leader directly at odds with his successor....

Jennifer Rubin (a Republican, I keep having to remind myself) finds former President Obama's mockery of the current president impressive and effective: In Orlando on Tuesday, Obama told the crowd, “Our current president, he whines that ’60 Minutes’ is too tough,” he said referring to Trump’s walking out of an interview last week with CBS News’s Lesley Stahl. “You think he’s going to stand up to dictators? He thinks Lesley Stahl’s a bully.” He does not need to say Trump is a “crybaby” or “weak”; he lets...