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Michael Bloomberg Ends Presidential Bid, Endorses Joe Biden

TV stations and YouTube thank you for your blown ad money, Boomerborg.

Warren reassessing campaign after disappointing Super Tuesday

Not winning your home state is a body blow.

Who will Warren endorse?

Update:

Warren, Sanders allies scramble to find her an exit ramp

Update 2:

Elizabeth Warren ends her presidential campaign

Elizabeth Warren is dropping out of the presidential race, a source familiar with her plans tells CNN, following another round of disappointing finishes in primary contests across the country on Super Tuesday.

[...] Both Klobuchar and Buttigieg endorsed Biden on Monday. Warren, a respected progressive leader who has been fiercely critical of the former vice president and, at least until the current campaign heated up, a friend and ally of Sanders, has not yet indicated who she will support moving forward. Sanders said he spoke to Warren on Wednesday, but did not share any details from their conversation.

Live Free or Die is New Hampshire's motto, created in times of war and printed on every license plate.

A resident of the state took these words too close to heart and defied directions to self-isolate to prevent coronavirus transmission. Or maybe there were other reasons.

New Hampshire's first coronavirus patient, a hospital employee, went to an event tied to Dartmouth business school on Friday despite being told to stay isolated, officials say, and all others who went to the event are now being told to stay isolated. ...
The first patient is an employee at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, the hospital has announced. It is not aware of any patients being exposed in clinical areas and has identified any staff who might have been exposed.

New Hampshire's quarantine law (violation is a misdemeanor):

Isolation or quarantine shall be by the least restrictive means necessary to protect the citizenry which, in the case of an individual, shall be at a place of his or her choosing unless the commissioner determines such place to be impractical or unlikely to adequately protect the public health. The commissioner may, in ordering isolation or quarantine of persons, require that treatment be obtained.

If the Granite State follows its motto, residents will be phlegmatic when it comes to the new coronavirus.

Biden! Trump! Anyone but Sanders!!

Update:
Oh, I'm sorry. A link!

Update 2:
Looks like Sanders can call it a day. He lost bigly. Oh well... kind of expected it, didn't we? Those Biden states are Trump states anyway. Utah was a surprise, big spread there.

When Sanders is confidently out of the way after a few more states cast there votes, Bloomberg can then drop out, and just shovel money into the Party coffers.

With Biden as the candidate, it is uncertain what the democrats will campaign on. They have no platform that opposes, or proposes to undo the last decade, so it seems like there's nothing to do but just go through the motions and welcome four more years

Update 3:
As predicted Bloomberg dropped out, Sanders is no longer a "problem".

Well, that's it for the democrat side. Nothing left to do now. What can they possibly talk about? You are free to comment of course, but what's the point? We are where we started. Without a real independence movement, we can enjoy four more years of what the Party always wanted.

The holy grail of a perfect Hello World program may never be found.

I found the Java Enterprise Edition Hello World

With the right drugs I think I can do better.

C      ************************************************
C      Program to print Hello World to the console.
C
C      Copyright (C) 1979 Hello Worlds Expeditions.
C      For a better exploration of habitable Hello Worlds.
C      A subsidiary of Tinfoil Cat Holdings.
C
C      ************************************************
PROGRAM HelloWorld;

ENVIRONMENT DIVISION.

#include<stdio.h>

#define while if
#define struct union

DATA DIVISION.
   CONST
      Message = "Hello World";
      Times = 10;

   VAR
      I: Integer;

BEGIN
   FOR I := 1 TO Times DO {
      10 System.out.println (Message);
      20 GOSUB 10
   }
END.

Edit: a few additional improvements.

Trump's chickenpox parties coronavirus rallies are 'very safe'.

Trump was asked on Monday if he thought it was "safe or appropriate" to hold campaign rallies while there's "a public health crisis."

"These were set up a long time ago, and others are," Trump said, before harping on the Democratic presidential primary contest. "You can ask that to the Democrats because they’re having a lot of rallies. They’re all having rallies. That’s what they’re doing; they’re campaigning."

The president was pressed for a more direct answer, to which he stated, "I think it's very safe, yeah. I think it's very safe."

At least he is walking the talk.
Others are more cautious about long-planned public events.

Update: I'm of two minds on the subject. Maybe it's better to rip off the band-aid quickly and let the disease run its course, rather than waiting in suspended animation (possibly for years) while vaccination becomes available.

AMD's Threadripper 3990X can run Crysis without a graphics card

DannyB's dream will become real some day.

PITTSBURGH — There is a battle going on here within the Allegheny County Democratic Committee, a formidable force of centrist, conservative, and liberal Democrats whose backgrounds range from union halls in the city to the businessmen and women who have spread out into the leafy suburbs that hug the city limits.

A key figure in the battle is committeewoman Heather Kass, who is running for the state House. Several years ago, Kass's social media posts criticized Obamacare and the distribution of free Narcan for addicts — and insinuated support for President Trump.

Fortunately for Kass, she received 49 votes from the committee to secure its endorsement. Her opponent, liberal activist Jess Benham, received just 19.

That’s when things got interesting. Darrin Kelly, an influential local labor leader, issued a statement blasting Kass’s previous statements. The party hierarchy followed that up by saying her social media history was disqualifying.

The fight soon unraveled in many different directions and tested a party that has comfortably come together and built a force that helped keep a Democrat as the chief executive officer for five consecutive terms and the majority of the county council seats.

Now, accusations of disloyalty and closet Trumpism are being tossed around by the liberal wing of the party. The factions that once worked together well enough to enjoy a healthy coalition are splintering.

Party Chairwoman Eileen Kelly held a press conference defending the endorsement process and encouraging forgiveness of Kass’s past social media posts. But in response, local elected Democrats demanded her resignation, including two of the county’s congressmen, Rep. Mike Doyle and Rep. Conor Lamb.

        There's a reason why people listen when @Darrinkellypgh speaks. He tells it like it is.

        I agree. It's time for the Chairwoman to step aside. https://t.co/v1Dr9z730f
        — Conor Lamb (@ConorLambPA) February 21, 2020

Two things are worth watching: The chairwoman is probably going nowhere, and the April 28 Democratic primaries in Pennsylvania are going to be a spectacle. This county isn’t the only one in the commonwealth with fractures within the party. Roughly 250 miles due east along the Lincoln Highway, Lancaster County is also experiencing some serious turmoil within its party ranks.

Unlike Allegheny, Lancaster is considered a red county. Yet despite giving Trump a majority of its votes in 2016, Democrats (under Chairwoman JoAnn Hertz) fought and flipped traditionally Republican-held suburbs in the 2017 and 2019 local elections.

As thanks, Hertz was given the choice of either facing public criticisms from within the party ranks or resigning.

Forced out, Hertz was replaced in a committee election by Diane Topakian, a retired Service Employees International Union political organizer who is from the most liberal side of the party.

Places such as Allegheny and Lancaster counties have made strides in elections with Democratic candidates who ran and won as centrists. Once they are elected, however, local party apparatuses start to demand more fidelity to liberalism, and the national party stresses it in messaging. But these are the kinds of places where any gains that were made since Trump was elected may start to fall apart.

The ideological balance in this country remains firmly center-right. Yearlong 2019 Gallup poll numbers based on combined data from 21 of its telephone surveys show 37% of the country, on average, identifies as conservative, 35% as moderate, and 24% as liberal.

It also found that Republicans tend to be less fractured. They have their differences, but in the end, they conform around conservatism.

Democrats are more fractured. Survey results strikingly reflected what happened in Allegheny and Lancaster counties. As Gallup said, "Even though liberalism has been on the rise among Democrats, it is not yet the clear majority position, perhaps leading to the strong intraparty clashes." This has been seen at the local level in Allegheny and Lancaster counties, as well as the national level, in Democratic Party presidential debates.

A Democratic presidential candidate is not going to win or lose based on how fractured his or her party is. That will depend on how well the candidate can coalesce the party and motivate people to show up for him or her.

What is happening in Allegheny and Lancaster counties and countless other counties across the country shouldn’t surprise anyone. It has been reflected in every single Democratic debate of this presidential cycle.

This didn’t start yesterday, last week, or in reaction to Trump or Hillary Clinton. This party has been trying to shed its centrist members since the presidential campaign of Al Gore, and it tipped the scales with President Barack Obama — who waited until his second term to dismantle the New Deal coalition in favor of the ascendant coalition of young people, minorities, women, and just enough white, working-class voters.

Clinton failed to include the working class in her coalition and lost. If these smaller county parties mimic that in 2020, and if the Democratic National Committee and its presidential nominee follow suit, Democrats will struggle locally and nationally. The result will be fewer locally elected Democrats, a slim-to-none congressional majority, and four more years of Trump.

What I find interesting is, how this echoes the 2016 election. Democrats around the country told the party that "We want this" or "We want that". But, the party rejected all of that, and tried to ramrod Hillary into office.

Same thing here - toe the party line, or you're out.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/centrists-flirt-with-democrats-and-the-party-rebuffs-them

The US government and also those of other countries keep saying that the risk from coronavirus "remains low". They may add that the situation is evolving and sometimes even that we can expect more cases in the future.

But anyone with half a brain who thinks one or two months into the future sees a very real risk from the virus. That's especially true of voters, whose median age is over 50, because age is a big risk factor. A lot of people don't have great insurance and will have huge co-pays if they are hospitalized. Even if people don't get sick, schools may close, causing major disruption to working families.

By risk, officials seem to mean today's risk, or maybe tomorrow's, not that they have actually been testing widely for viral spread. Of course, even if someone picks up the virus today, symptoms take a while to develop. So maybe the risk of illness today is low.

Here are some definitions of risk:

Merriam-Webster: possibility of loss or injury : PERIL
Wikipedia: the potential for uncontrolled loss of something of value
dictionary.com: exposure to the chance of injury or loss; a hazard or dangerous chance
Collins: If there is a risk of something unpleasant, there is a possibility that it will happen.

None of these include an immediate time-frame in the definition of risk. Smoking is considered risky, even though its effects take years to develop. Riding a motorbike is risky, not because an accident is likely to happen soon, but because of long-term probabilities. When most people think about risk, they have a long-term horizon. A future hazard is a risk today. The official talk is a real snow job.

The government and public-health community should drop their attempts at reassuring messaging, because being talked to like an idiot is not reassuring at all, and also because this talk is used to paper-over the government's own failures. The situation is in fact uncertain and dangerous, but we are adults and know that even in good times, disaster can strike. Actions speak louder than words.

U.S. Signs Peace Deal With Taliban After Nearly 2 Decades Of War In Afghanistan

The U.S. and the Taliban have struck a deal that paves the way for eventual peace in Afghanistan. U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad and the head of the militant Islamist group, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, signed the potentially historic agreement Saturday in Doha, Qatar, where the two sides spent months hashing out its details.

Under the terms of the deal, the U.S. commits to withdrawing all of its military forces and supporting civilian personnel, as well as those of its allies, within 14 months. The drawdown process will begin with the U.S. reducing its troop levels to 8,600 in the first 135 days and pulling its forces from five bases.

The rest of its forces, according to the agreement, will leave "within the remaining nine and a half months."

The Afghan government also will release up to 5,000 Taliban prisoners as a gesture of goodwill, in exchange for 1,000 Afghan security forces held by the Taliban.

by Ted Kaczynski...

No! Wait! I meant that other guy!