Events

The record for consecutive 21°C-plus days in Chicago is 5, set 15-19 November 1953. Today will be the third in a row, with the forecast showing the fourth, fifth, and sixth coming this weekend and on Monday. In other sunny news, the electoral map has shifted a bit overnight: Arizona's count has slowly shifted away from Biden while in both Georgia and Pennsylvania the count has put Biden ahead. In Georgia, Biden now leads by 1,200 votes, with a few thousand absentee ballots from heavily-Democratic areas...

Because it's 2020, we're still counting votes. And that's not all: The New York Times has not called the presidential vote Arizona, contra the AP and Fox News. Illinois' senior US Senator and minority whip Dick Durbin asked for the Speaker of the Illinois House Mike Madigan to resign, saying the party "paid a heavy price" for his corruption probes. A former chess champion praises the accuracy of the way Netflix portrayed the game in The Queen's Gambit. David Graham says whatever the outcome, pollsters...

The AP has called Wisconsin for Biden, as his margin over the president continues to grow as workers report on last few ballots left in Milwaukee. The New York Times believes Michigan and Nevada will also go to Biden, North Carolina won't, and Pennsylvania and Georgia are still too close to call. So as of now, the map looks like this: Nevada won't release any new numbers until 9am PST tomorrow (18:00 UTC, 11am in Chicago), but Biden's lead seems insurmountable at this point. North Carolina's secretary...

As the counting continues in the states both presidential candidates need to win, and as Biden's lead continues to increase in Wisconsin and Michigan while he catches up in Pennsylvania, I should mention that voters weighed in on other races last night. Every person bar one I voted for won in Illinois, including Joe Biden, US Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D), US Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL09), my state representative Gregory Harris (D-13), and my state senator Heather Steans (D-7). (Steans...

Good morning! We're still alive, and I still think we'll win. So do both candidates, as evidenced by the president claiming victory overnight and Biden's firm "not so fast, Charlie." The map of called races has not changed since the AP called Arizona around midnight. Nevada will eventually go to Biden, so the president needs to win 4 other states to win. Biden needs only 2. And since I finally got back to sleep around 4am, the counting has shifted Michigan and Wisconsin blue. And all evidence suggests...

Well, here we are. After just shy of four years living with the current president, I can say that his most remarkable accomplishment has been to raise the reputations of George W Bush, Warren Harding, and Franklin Pierce, if only relatively. Forty-four men have been president of the United States, one for only a month, and one who was never elected. Someone had to rank 44th in that list. It makes stack ranking so much easier when the most recent addition goes straight to the bottom. I don't know that...

Dixville Notch, N.H., votes for Biden, 5-0: The results are already in from two New Hampshire towns where voters famously head to the polls just after the stroke of midnight on Election Day. In Dixville Notch, where a handful of masked residents voted shortly after midnight on Tuesday, all five votes for president went to Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee. He is the first presidential candidate to sweep the general election vote in Dixville Notch since the midnight voting tradition began there...

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...