An amusing video from the Lincoln Project, actually released last week just before the Inauguration:

Biden targets Trump's legacy with first-day executive actions

And some great ones they are, too.

Previous year is previous

At about 9:30 PM EST -- an hour away as I type this -- I will be shutting down the board for what hopefully will be less than half an hour in order to reinstall the board software.  While the board itself appears to be fine, there seems to have been some manner of corruption in the files that make up the admin control panel that makes it impossible to see or do anything on most pages.

Please try not to be doing anything when I shut the board down, okay?

Previous threads are previous:

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Quote:President Donald Trump claimed to support the little guy against the elite.

But after four years in power, examination of Donald Trump's economic record in reaching that goal has been set aside as the impeachment fight moves on to the Senate.

Just as a new report by a U.S. business group shows Trump's trade battles with China alone led to major job losses, there is a danger that as factions take sides over whether he did or did not incite an insurrection, the president's economic successes and failures will be obscured.

Quote:Perhaps one of the biggest flaws in Trump's economic strategy was that he chose policy based on how it would appeal to the ideology of his populist base. Sometimes things that appeal to a large number of people are simply wrong.

Quote:Perhaps the biggest flaw in Trump's economic strategy is the one that he celebrated as his biggest success: his $1.5-trillion overhaul of the U.S. tax system. While claiming to speak for poorer working Americans, it has been widely recorded that Trump's financial support came from the rich who benefited from tax cuts and rising markets.

Especially after the impact of COVID-19, those measures have left the U.S. more starkly divided between rich and poor than when Trump took office.

in 1963, Martin Luther King, a person who is commemorated on this day, lead a march into Washington DC.  They gathered, Peacefully, and the good Reverend told them all about how he had a dream that all men, regardless of skin color, were created equal.  That they should have equal hopes and dreams and chances.

in 1995, his successors did so again.


In both those cases, there was no talk of storming the federal government buildings.

Yet, in 2021, in response to claims that 'They stole the election', a much smaller, predominantly white skinned...  MOB did just that.




Oh, how we have fallen.  And far to few of us to stand up anymore and say "This is NOT RIGHT"

"Raining Horses", by Corb Lund, lyrics by Corb Lund and Jaida Dreyer, from the album Agricultural Tragic (released by New West Records), copyright 2020.

The earliest that Doug would have been able to get a copy of this song would be in MegaTokyo, when he had first access to music up to the 2030s. Which means he'd just come from Valdemar, and the association between horses and Companions was still fresh in his subconscious. Push the song a bit, and ... mares in the area start foaling Companions, maybe?

EDIT: Alternately, push a bit a different way, to ignore the verses and concentrate on the chorus. You get a horse, and you get a horse, and you get a horse, and you get a horse, and you get a horse ... everybody gets a horse!

No, this isn't a Politics thread.

Nearly half of Canadians miss high school literacy grade — and that's bad for economy

Quote:Nearly half of Canada's population has a big roadblock ahead of them when it comes to post-pandemic economic recovery — and it's not the novel coronavirus but a fundamental set of skills for daily life.

Poor reading and writing skills make up a literacy gap in Canada with consequences for both democracy and the economy. Experts say the gap is due in part to an abundance of jobs in the past that do not require the daily use of reading comprehension and information synthesis skills.

In short, literacy is not like riding a bike. It takes practice to retain those skills, and Canada's economy does not provide the opportunity to do that for many workers.

Despite relatively high education rates, an analysis of international assessments by Statistics Canada in 2013 showed that more than one in six adult Canadians fell short of passing the most basic set of literacy tests.

I know I'm going to write something set on February 14, 2017, and I figured "why not open it up to everybody else?" So... planning for "Valentine's Day in Another World"

Unlike Halloween in Another World, I'm not thinking of this as being a massive crossover. Valentine's Day is a day for couples, after all.

But we now have a displacee-run jewellery store, and there were a few characters who arrived already as couples but not yet married to each other. They're in a strange world where they can read stories about themselves - maybe it's time to either throw a monkey-wrench into those stories or hurry those stories along. And the relationships that are strong enough to be written about are strong enough to make official, right? (Usually yes, but in a few cases maybe not.)

And even if there isn't an official relationship present in canon, people have been forming new relationships in the Metacontinuity - maybe some of those relationships could become romantic. Assuming, of course, that both people in the relationship want to take it in that direction. (We might not have Nadesico in the Metacontinuity - yet - but the Hikaru/Seiya relationship there shows what can happen when only one person wants to take their relationship to a new level.)

So: Open call for scenes of people progressing their relationships to new levels, ending their relationships, or wishing they were in relationships, with OSA-P being a place to purchase jewellery that might be required. I could do this as a short-short showing only the characters at Blossom, but it would be a waste to leave out other couples who might be in the same situation.

Every time there's a new government in Canada* or there's a major event in the world, the Prime Minister writes mandate letters to the members of Cabinet, setting out in high level what they're expected to do.

Justin Trudeau has posted these mandate letters online.

Does anybody else do this? Or is Canada the only country that makes public the list of what each cabinet member is expected to do?


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* Continuity of legitimacy of power in Canada is provided by the Head of State, not the Head of Government.