Dr. Frog

We can? I still mask up in public places. 😷 Last time I tried going in a store without a mask (Oct of last year) I got COVID. Once was enough! 🥴🤒🤢

And by not having strong policies of his own, he let himself get saddled with blame for unpopular things like post-COVID inflation, "defund the police", and the situation in Gaza. Not to mention his son's sleazy dealings.

While Biden talked about democracy in his speeches, he wasted his political capital on things like student loan debt instead of policies and legislation that would reinforce the institutions of democracy in this country.

TBH, I liked the man too. I just thought he was too old and we needed a more energetic leader -- one who wouldn't be so wishy-washy in support of Ukraine, who'd take a harder line on investigating and prosecuting the Jan 6 conspirators and the need for constitutional reforms.

flywithkamala.bsky.social on X: "Joe Biden reiterates that he sees himself as a transitional president to conclude #BidenTownHall. He will win the Gen Z vote! 🔥 🔥 🔥 https://t.co/x6jB5mfW5Z" / X Joe Biden reiterates that he sees himself as a transitional president to conclude #BidenTownHall. He will win the Gen Z vote! 🔥 🔥 🔥 https://t.co/x6jB5mfW5Z

And a clip from a town hall in 2020.

x.com/flywithkamal...

Biden says he’s a ‘bridge’ to new ‘generation of leaders’ while campaigning with Harris, Booker, Whitmer | CNN Politics Former Vice President Joe Biden called himself a “bridge” to future Democratic leaders Monday night as he campaigned with Sen. Kamala Harris of California, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Michigan ...

Here's one from the spring of 2020, when it became obvious Biden would be the nominee and he was trying to appeal to the youth vote.

www.cnn.com/2020/03/09/p...

Biden signals to aides that he would serve only a single term Advisers weigh the merits of a one-term pledge by the 77-year-old former vice president.

Here's the article from late 2019 where his campaign let it be known that it was "inconceivable" that he'd run for a second term, even though he didn't want to make himself into a lame duck by promising that in advance.

www.politico.com/news/2019/12...

So Much for Biden the Bridge President He ran as a short-term fix but has become a long-term proposition.

I'm not lying. Here's an article from 2023 that talks about how he walked back on what he was saying in the 2020 campaign.

www.theatlantic.com/politics/arc...

Yep. I was dismayed that Biden was running for re-election at all, after promising in 2020 that he was going to be a "transitional president" and hand things over to a younger generation. I would've voted for Biden's rotting corpse instead of Trump, but he put his ego ahead of the public good.

Money was a compelling reason. Only Harris could legally make use of the existing Biden/Harris campaign treasury. No other possible candidate had any money at all in the bank. Harris maybe wasn't the strongest candidate, but anyone challenging her would have been even weaker.

If you don't know who killed JFK, it's because you've stuffed your head with too many nutty conspiracy theories instead of facts. The bullets were ballistically matched to the rifle Oswald had bought and left in the Texas Schoolbook Repository, where he worked and where witnesses saw the shooter.

As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines, technology that could be used against certain cancers; slashed billions in funding from the National Institutes of Health, the world's largest sponsor of medical research; and threatened to oust the panel of medical experts charged with recommending preventive cancer screenings. Hundreds of N.I.H. grants and clinical trials were cancelled, affecting thousands of patients. I worried about funding for leukemia and bone-marrow research at Memorial Sloan Kettering. I worried about the trials that were my only shot at remission. Early in my illness, when I

Just an absolutely gutting essay by Tatiana Schlossberg, a writer, mother of two young children, and cousin of RFK Jr who is dying of leukemia.

www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

Back when Google first started offering "free" gmail, I thought it was obvious that they wouldn't be doing that on such a large scale without getting something of value in return, namely data mining or a large base for future data mining.

You do have the option to switch to a different mail client and/or hosting service, though. I use Thunderbird with my mail hosted at my private domain, for which I pay a few dollars a month.

There's little reason to develop new super-weapons or expand the size of your arsenal when you have assurance that nobody else is doing so, either.

In fact, Bohr's ideas did become the basis for subsequent nuclear arms treaties... secret weapons are not allowed, and signatories have to publish information about what they have in their nuclear arsenals and allow inspections by other parties to verify that their numbers are accurate.

I sure remember this. As a counterpoint, I highly recommend "The Making of the Atomic Bomb", by Richard Rhodes, which I read right around the end of the Cold War. Rhodes made a strong argument for Niels Bohr's theory of openness as the way to defuse the nuclear threat.

Falling off a ladder and breaking my leg is what caused me to get "cankles". Never knew that was a character flaw.

Swollen ankles are not a character flaw, they're a medical condition. The tribble on the head, though, is a deliberate choice. 🤷

Copley was only 15 or 16 when he painted this. 👶

This -->

Color me skeptical, but does anybody really think Trump hasn't already ordered Bondi to destroy the really incriminating evidence from the Epstein files?

Eh? Also historically used to induce abortions or labor.

I've been deferring retirement because I think I'd go crazy without something productive to do, but as I'm aging I'm getting a lot of fear about hanging around for years with Alzheimer's or other health issues that make it impossible for me to work or look after myself any more. Yikes! 😱

It's been a really long time since I played board games, but I remember "Bug-Eyed Monsters" being a total hoot. Plus "Caesar at Alesia" for a more serious war game.

Your tax dollars at work. 😢

Whatever happened to that Republican fixation on eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse" in government earlier this year? That was obviously just a phony excuse to get rid of anybody who knew anything about how to do their job, but they're all just openly robbing us blind now!

"Good trouble". 👍 Glad to see some members of the clergy are actually paying attention to Jesus's preachings.

Trans Skaters Share Fear, Anger at New US Figure Skating Policy - Anything GOEs Skaters speak out against the new U.S. Figure Skating policy for women's events.

Trans Skaters Share Fear, Anger at New US Figure Skating Policy - by @choreosequence.bsky.social

anythinggoe.com/trans-skater...

It was past his bedtime. 😴